02.11.2017 LISTEN Accra, Nov. 01,(dpa/GNA) - The British government on Wednesday said it plans to set a budget for Northern Ireland's devolved administration, amid a nine-month impasse in talks on reviving power sharing in the territory. James Brokenshire, London's Northern Ireland minister, said it was "very unlikely" that any agreement would be reached to form a new devolved administration in time to agree a budget by the end of November, when officials believe the territory "will begin to run out of resources." "No government could simply stand by and allow that to happen," Brokenshire told reporters after talks in Belfast. "I'm therefore now taking forward the necessary steps that would enable a budget bill to be introduced [in the British parliament] at Westminster at the appropriate moment in order to protect the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland." Brokenshire said the setting of a budget in London would not mean a return to direct rule of Northern Ireland, adding that he is prepared to withdraw the bill if agreement can be reached on power sharing by the end of the month. "Let me be clear, this is not a barrier to continued political negotiations and the government will continue to work with the parties with that intent," he said. Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive, under which the Democratic Unionist Party had worked with rival Republican Party Sinn Fein since 2007, collapsed in January after DUP leader Arlene Foster refused to cede to Sinn Fein's demands to step aside while a failed renewable heating incentive scheme was being investigated. GNA Accra, Nov. 01, (dpa/GNA) - US President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized the State Department's "diversity visa" programme for allowing the Uzbek national behind the deadly truck attack in New York to enter the country. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based," Trump tweeted on Wednesday. The suspect identified by media as Sayfullo Saipov, ploughed a rented pick-up truck into people on a pedestrian and bike path in Manhattan on Tuesday. He came to the US from Uzbekistan in 2010. Each year the State Department randomly awards a limited number of visas to people from countries that have low rates of immigration to the US. The Diversity Immigrant Visa, often called the green card lottery, grants the recipient a permanent resident card. Since 1995, around 50,000 people have been annually given the visa out of the millions who apply. Longtime Democratic lawmaker Chuck Schumer, who now holds the position of Senate minority leader, sponsored the programme in Congress. "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)," tweeted Trump. Saipov was shot by police as tried to flee the scene and is in hospital. Uzbekistan has offered to help the United States in its investigation into the attack. "Uzbekistan is ready to involve all its forces and means for providing assistance in the investigation of this terrorist attack," President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on Wednesday. "We decisively condemn all forms and manifestations of extremism and terrorism," Mirziyoyev said in the statement posted on the Foreign Ministry's website. Hours after the attack Trump said he had ordered the "extreme vetting" of foreign travelers to the US to be stepped up. The Iranian government said the attack "reflected the brutality of terrorist groups like Daesh Islamic State," according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi. No link to the Islamic State has yet been confirmed by US authorities, and there has been no claim of responsibility from the terrorist group. Uzbekistan - which is predominantly Muslim - has generally managed to avoid a spillover of Islamist extremism from neighbouring, war-torn Afghanistan. However, Russian authorities have noted a surge in terrorism suspects from the region in recent months, following a deadly bombing on a train in St Petersburg that is believed to have been perpetrated by a man from Kyrgyzstan. GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Accra, Nov. 01, (dpa/GNA) - Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Iranian capital Tehran on Wednesday for a visit seen by the Islamic republic's leadership as a clear rejection of US policy. Putin was set to meet his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rowhani, who was expecting a statement of approval from the Russian leader on the 2015 nuclear agreement that obliges Iran to cut back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. US President Donald Trump has refused to confirm whether his government will comply with the agreement and has threatened a harder line on Iran, which the US suspects has been seeking to build a nuclear bomb. Trump has also not ruled out an outright cancellation of the deal. Rowhani, also scheduled to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was expected to discuss strengthening economic ties with the leaders. The host nation believes this will show that US approval is not needed for regional cooperation. "No one is paying attention to the Americans' rhetoric," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Rahimpur said Tuesday. Putin's visit is also expected to involve discussions about Iran's cooperation with Russia in the ongoing Syrian conflict. Both Tehran and Moscow currently support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are fighting together against the Islamic State terrorist group. The two countries are in favour of new elections in Syria, albeit with al-Assad's participation. In terms of economics, the Tehran meeting will primarily look at "new avenues of trade," Rahimpur told Iran's ISNA news agency. Iran could gain access to European markets via the Black Sea, while Russia and Azerbaijan could reach Arab markets through the Gulf. GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Accra, Nov. 01, (dpa) - The ousted former president of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, on Wednesday presented his new website, which portrays him as the region's president-in-exile. In a Twitter post, Puigdemont directed his followers to the website president.exili.eu, on which the deposed leader continues to be referred to as "president Puigdemont." The Spanish central government dismissed Puigdemont's secessionist regional leadership after the Catalan parliament in Barcelona voted to proclaim an independent republic on Friday. As part of its intervention, Madrid blocked the regional government's websites. Puigdemont departed Barcelona for Brussels along with several members of his ousted cabinet on Monday. Since arriving in the EU's capital, he announced that he would continue to fight for Catalan independence. In Spain, he has been charged with rebellion, sedition and misappropriation of public funds. GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN London, Nov. 1 , GNA - Sudan has announced plans to set up a special court 'to combat crimes of terrorism and to help implement the national campaign to collect illegal arms and ammunition'. Attorney-General Omer Ahmed Mohamed, who made the announcement while visiting the volatile states of North and West Kurdufan, said the courts would free up the criminal and civil courts. Last month, the government launched a huge campaign to collect illegal weapons in North and West Kurdufan as well as Darfur, warning of 'strict legal action against all those who resist the campaign or possess arms and ammunition'. A Sudanese government spokesman told the GNA: 'The campaign is an attempt by the Sudanese authorities to consolidate peace and security in western parts of the county following massive victories by the Sudanese armed forces over rebel groups.' A counsellor at the Ministry of Justice, Hashim Osman, was quoted by a local radio station as saying: 'A tight strategy composed of legal military and media component has been set forth to successfully accomplish the arms collection campaign. 'Weapons should only be in the possession of the government in accordance with the law, which criminalises the possession of weapons by unauthorised individuals and groups.' In North Kurdufan State, a joint security force operation netted a huge haul of narcotics. In a statement, the Ccommander of the Police Force in the State, General Al-hadi Al-deheish, said: 'We need to keep a watchful eye on those who sabotage peace and security in the state and in the country.' The actions by the Sudanese government come in the wake of the lifting of economic sanctions against the country by the US after 20 years. The government of President Omar al-Bashir was accused by the US of sponsoring terrorism, and it was hit hard by the economic sanctions that were imposed. Just before President Barack Obama left office in January, he gave the Sudanese government six months to show that it was not backing terrorist activities for the sanctions to be removed. President Donald Trump did not only remove Sudan from his travel ban on predominantly Muslim states, he also lifted sanctions on Sudan this month. A government spokesman told the GNA: 'Sudan has been gradually warming up to international norms since being brought out from the cold after two decades. 'The government's campaign coincides with the increasing US and international recognition of Sudan's role in trying to achieve peace and stability in the region.' GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN The UCL Ghana Limited and its partner OAPI on Wednesday launched the Agric Management System (AMS), an innovative end-to-end solution and the Virtual Farmer Programme (VFP), which are set to revolutionalise Ghana's Agricultural Sector. The AMS is the first ever fully automated solution developed in the agriculture industry, to seamlessly manage the entire supply chain; whereas, the VFP seeks to increase the yield of crop produced in Ghana. The initiative which is being supported by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) and the Ministry of Youth and Sports; aims at attracting those working in the formal sector as means of earning additional income whilst increasing productivity in agriculture. Mr Seth Osei Akoto, Director of Crop Services at MOFA, who represented the Minister, at the launch said that in spite of developmental efforts made by successive governments, the sector was still confronted with numerous challenges. He said these included erratic rainfall, inadequate access to farm machineries and equipment, low use of farm inputs, limited access to financial services, low investment, high extension farmer ratio and unattractiveness of agriculture to attract the youth. Mr Osei Akoto said as part of the comprehensive strategy to resolve these perennial challenges, a new strategic initiative dubbed: 'Planting for Food and Jobs Campaign,' has been introduced by government. He said the primary objective of the Campaign was to ensure food security, provide raw materials for industry and as well generate about 750,000 direct and indirect job opportunities with the youth being the target. The Director of Crop Services stated that UCL wished to collaborate with MOFA, to support the implementation of the Youth in Agriculture Program (YIAP). He said the company was partnering OAPI, an Israeli Agriculture Management Company with expertise in technology-based agriculture to develop software (AMS) to run the initiative, YFP. Mr Osei Akoto said the programme was expected to provide employment to about 33,000 unemployed youth, increase food supply and export earnings and minimize rural-urban migration. He therefore commended both UCL and OAPI, and partners for supporting government's efforts in addressing youth unemployment through creation of employment opportunities. Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Haim Oz, Chief Executive Officer for OAPI, said his outfit's involvement would be at two levels; thus, transferring the know how to farmers, to develop their capacity to boost food production; and investment package for the projects. Mr Oz noted that aside financing being a major challenge within the agricultural sector, another problem was how to attract the youth who would be willing to partake in the new age of farming. Nana Kofi Anane Adjei, ICT Coordinator for the Programme, said the plan intended to attract the youth into agriculture as Ghana's agriculture age profile was getting older. There was a need to introduce new ideas also to sustain the economy as well as supply food for the sub region. Mr Anane Adjei, who said the initiative, was moulded towards job creation and production of food sufficiency, added that after the launch UCL would be reaching out through the media to sensitize the youth to recognize the opportunity they were creating and to invite them to enrol in the programme. As the global population approaches nine billion by 2050, farmers around the world including Ghana would need to increase their productivity by 70 per cent to cater for the rising demand; UCL has positioned itself as one of the companies working towards the realization of this dream in Ghana. GNA By Kwamina Tandoh, GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Gorjiors International in collaboration with Israeli Embassy and Kempinski Hotel, Gold Coast City have held the '2017 Diplomats Run-Way,' aimed to raise funds to support Fistula Surgeries for women in Ghana. The musical and fashion event saw Ambassadors of Zimbabwe, Colombia, India, Denmark, Hungary, Australia, USA, Israel, General Manager of Kempinski Hotel and Ghana-Israel Business Chamber model on the catwalk in their African wear with a common purpose of ending fistula within a generation with fashion. They showcased designs from Ghana's Royal Denis and Israeli Fashion Designer, Betty Eldad. This is the third in a row that the diplomatic community has taken part in the Run-Way to raise funds to support fistula surgeries for women in Ghana. Obstetric fistula is one of the most serious and tragic childbirth injuries. It is a hole between the birth canal and bladder or rectum caused by prolonged, obstructed labour, without access to timely and quality medical treatment. It leaves women with leaking urine, faeces or both, and often leads to chronic medical problems, depression, social isolation and deepening poverty. Ms Suzain Manassian Dodoo, the Chief Executive Officer of Gorjiors International explained that the purpose of the event was to honour national and international designers who employed ethical practices in their design and manufacturing process. She said it was also to create and sustain economic opportunity and to provide awareness about how fashion, textiles, and design could be used to eradicate women health related issues. Ms Dodoo said last year's event saw a 15-year-old girl treated of the most complicated fistula challenge through funds raised on the Diplomats Run-Way platform. Ms Dodoo said she is now back in school enjoying all the privileges of a young girl child. She said Gorjiors International is committed to bringing an end to the Fistula challenge by year 2020. Mr Ami Mehl, the Israeli Ambassador to Ghana, said the run way had come to stay and the proceeds on annual basis would be dedicated to the treatment of women suffering from Obstetric fistula. GNA By Kwamina Tandoh, GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a new campaign dubbed 'LuQuLuQu' to encourage Africans to take ownership of their local refugee and displacement problems through donations. 'LuQuLuQu', literally meaning 'caring and sharing' is centered on the African philosophy of 'Yi bi ma', 'Ubuntu' or Ujama' that promotes the principles and values of shared responsibilities, shared resources and caring for one another, inherent to African culture and belief. The campaign asked the hundreds of millions of people on the continent, or connected to Africa, to take ownership of their local refugee and displacement problems through everyday philanthropic actions. According to the UNHCR there were over 20 million displaced people in Africa, some 13,352 refugees and asylum seekers in Ghana, out of that 76 per cent were women and children, 57 per cent were under 18 years of age. Ms Needa Jehu-Mazou, Spokesperson for UNHCR, addressing a press conference in Accra to introduce the Campaign, said in Ghana UNHCR needed 8.87 million dollars to provide for refuges, but only three per cent had been funded. She said the 'LuQuLuQu' campaign seeks to create a community of supporters, a tribe who signed up to work towards promoting donations to the cause of refugees and displaced communities to provide solutions to refugees that promoted self-reliance and independence, and in so doing empowered refugees. 'With a goal to change the narrative and conversation around the fate of the displaced in Africa, the aim is to demonstrates that Africans can play a transformative role in changing lives of refugees and the uprooted,' she added. She said in the face of continuous dwindling donor support for African refugees, the initiative would engage ordinary citizens and corporate organisations to scrap the existing image of Africa's displacement crisis, and co-create with the UN Refugee Agency, a new image of the African refugee. The goal, she said was to move away from the image of dependence and powerlessness to that of self-reliance, empowerment and inclusion of refugees and displaced persons into the mainstream. Ms Jehu-Mazou said if every Ghanaian could donate five Ghana cedis a month, that amount would be enough to empower a refugee attain certain height of education to help humanity. She said the LuQuLuQu campaign would be led by a number of Ghana's high level influencers, celebrities and personalities. These personalities would work to mobilise public support for the campaign through strategic engagements and activities with the public, showing Ghanaians what kind of everyday philanthropic actions they could undertake to be part of the movement, and bring solutions for refugees. She said corporate and private enterprises were also invited to take part through new and innovative donations channels. The public could donate through an MTN Mobile Money Transfer by dialing *170# then press the pay bill button and go to general payment, then, payment code 'UNHCR' and then Enter Amount or visit donate.unhcr.org/luquluqu. Ms Jehu-Mazou noted that using social media as a galvanising tool to build a groundswell, the #doitLuQuLuQu movement challenges Ghanaians to become part of a home ground solutions approach, rooted in the sense of neighbourliness and hospitality that was typically Ghanaian. That also, she said gave Ghanaians a chance to come to the donor table as a collective and be part of reshaping the narrative on Africa and its refugees. Starting here in Ghana on November 4, 2017 at the Accra Mall, the campaign will be rolled out initially in six countries in Africa including Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. GNA By Patience Gbeze/ Issaka Ayisha, GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN The card-bearers of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in Agona East and Agona West of the Central Region have appealed to the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to reintroduce the scheme collectors system. After the NHIS has been introduced in the areas some special collectors were appointed to support in the collection and renewal of cards at various scheme branches in remote communities with commission. Barimah Owusu-Kwarteng, the spokesperson for the NHIS card-bearers in the areas made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the management of the Agona East and Agona West branches of the NHIA had organised a two-phased sensitization, registration and renewal programme at Agona-Duakwa. He said the reintroduction of the scheme collectors system would immensely help in the collection of clients expired cards for renewal to ease the burden of under-staffed branches. It would also assist clients, especially farmers in remote communities to renew their cards in good time when they expire and avoid paying penalties, Barimah Owusu-Kwarteng said. He advocated for effective collaboration between scheme managers of the branches and collectors, chiefs, municipal and district assemblies so that they could together appoint honest, God-fearing, dedicated and committed people to handle the collection. Barimah Owusu-Kwarteng said this would help to prevent financial malpractices by prospective collectors, a situation which led to the abolishing of the collection system about 12 years ago, adding that; 'if possible, such important duty should be given to assembly members.' Mr Nelson Isaac Okruw, the Agona District Public Relations Officer of the NHIA expressed gratitude to the chiefs and people of the areas for their cooperation. He assured them of them of the determination NHIA to offer them better and committed services at all times, and lauded the scheme workers for their dedicated service to the clients during the exercise and urged them to maintain the spirit. More than 1,600 clients whose NHIS cards were expired were renewed by officials of Agona Swedru branch of the scheme. Among the beneficiary communities of the programme include Agona Mankrong Junction, Agona Asafo, Agona-Kwasakrom-Zongo, Agona-Nsaba, Agona Mensakrom, Agona Kwanyako and Agona Duakwa. Some of the people interviewed by GNA commended the management of the Agona East and Agona West schemes for organizing the programme, and said it had really helped them to save time and money which they would have used in travelling to access the services of the scheme. GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Moscow, Nov. 1, GNA - Moscow will host about 150 local and foreign companies from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America this month to showcase various cocoa products and cocoa industrial equipment at the VI Salon du Chocolat, a release from the Exhibition Committee said in Moscow. From the African region, the release listed Cameroon, Cote d'Voire, Ghana, Gabon, Nigeria and Togo as cocoa producing countries that have been invited to participate in the exhibition noting that the countries have perspectives to increase export of cocoa and processed cocoa products to meet the growing demand in Russia. Russia remains one of the most promising markets for chocolate worldwide. It is also the largest European market and at the same time, its chocolate sector is considered as booming. One important objective of the Salon du Chocolat is to support the development of the chocolate industry in Russia. 'We want the Salon to be a great opportunity for those companies to sell their products and find new partners. We have changed both location and dates to increase significantly visitor traffic and make sure our exhibitors could make good sales while developing commercial relations in an informal setting,' Claire Coutin, Director of the V Salon du Chocolat, told GNA in an exclusive interview in Moscow. Salon du Chocolat in Moscow has strongly encouraged Ghana, Cameroon and Cote d'Voire to supply cocoa to the Russian market and they should continue to be present and defend the origins of their cocoa in Russia. 'We think that this is very important to pursue the international dialogue that was initiated last year among people who grow cocoa, those who are making chocolates and the final consumers. Countries such as Ghana, Cameroon and Ivory Coast played a critical role last year, educating our visitors about the origin of chocolate and cocoa of excellence,' Coutin said. Last year, Ghana was represented by the York Trade Corporation, a Canadian registered and certified trading company, and the Ghana Cocoa Board's (COCOBOD) nine-member delegation. By participating in the trade event and future ones, it will significantly help to develop, establish business relations, find and collaborate with new partners for the cocoa industry of the Republic of Ghana. The Ghana COCOBOD was established with a mission to encourage and facilitate the production, processing and marketing of premium quality cocoa, coffee and shea nut in all forms in the most efficient and cost-effective manner and to promote cocoa products both in local and international markets. The previous edition of the Salon du Chocolat was visited by 25,000 people. GNA A liberal advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit against three top Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature, alleging they are infringing on the groups free speech rights by blocking it from commenting on their Twitter feeds. One Wisconsin Now filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Madison. It names Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and state Reps. John Nygren and Jesse Kremer as defendants. Nygren is co-chair of the Legislatures powerful budget-writing committee and Kremer is one of the most conservative members of the Assembly, sponsoring a bill this year that allows for University of Wisconsin students to be expelled for disrupting campus events. One Wisconsin Now alleges that the lawmakers are increasingly using their official Twitter accounts to communicate with the public. It says that all three lawmakers have blocked the group, which it believes is an unconstitutional free-speech violation. This is a groundbreaking case that we expect will result in ensuring that everyone will have the right to respond to public officials on social media sites, like Twitter, just as they would if they were attending a town hall meeting, said the groups attorney, Christa Westerberg. The lawsuit mirrors one filed in July against President Donald Trump by First Amendment advocates who said it was unconstitutional for the president to block his critics from following him. The lawsuit was filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and cited seven individuals blocked by Trump or his aides after criticizing the president. One of the Wisconsin lawmakers, Kremer, didnt reply to a request for comment made through his legislative office. He reacted on Twitter instead, posting an identical message on his personal and official accounts: Maybe they should put out useful tweets so they werent treated as email spammers on a forum for my constituents. He also tweeted two other messages on his official account, the same one where One Wisconsin Now was blocked: Dont want to be considered useless spam? Then dont spam. And: Interestingly, I am probably one of the most accessible statesman (sic) in WI & carry on opposing viewpoint discussions regularly on social media. Vos spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment. Nygren said in a text message that he first had to speak with his attorney. Wisconsin Department of Justice spokesman Johnny Koremenos said the Attorney Generals Office had not yet received a request to represent the lawmakers. A blocked user on Twitter is unable to follow, see Twitter messages or reply to the user who blocked them. The blocked person also cant see who is following the user who blocked them or search their tweets. Also, the user who blocks them will not be notified if the blocked person mentions them in a tweet. It is unacceptable state representatives like Kremer, Nygren and Vos use forums like Twitter to broadcast their propaganda in their official capacity, on the publics dime and then block the public from challenging or responding to them, said One Wisconsin Nows director, Scot Ross. The groups lawsuit claims that government officials cant offer a public forum through Twitter and then block people or groups from participating. It is asking the court to declare the actions are a violation of First Amendment free speech rights and issue an order unblocking One Wisconsin Now and prohibiting the lawmakers from blocking any other users. One Wisconsin Now is one of the most outspoken liberal groups in the state, frequently targeting Republican office holders for criticism both through social media, press releases and sometimes lawsuits. A federal judge last year sided with the group in its lawsuit challenging Republican-authored restrictions on early voting and limitations on where it can take place. That ruling is currently under appeal. 02.11.2017 LISTEN The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) has supported the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) with 300,000 dollars worth of protective gear, Mr Edwin Ekow Blankson, Acting Chief Fire Officer, has said. Addressing personnel of the Service in Ho as part of a working tour of Regional Commands, he said the Service is committed to ensuring that all personnel had protective gear. Mr Blankson said the initiative has become necessary to adequately resource personnel of the Service to work efficiently adding that the GNPC is committed to increasing the package to a million dollars. He said the Service has also lifted the ban on study leave to improve the quality of its human resource and said a quota system would be adopted to ensure regional balance, with a priority for personnel in deprived areas. Mr Blankson said a 'Strategic Human Resource Policy' would be developed to address issues relating to promotions and capacity building within the Service, with opportunity for staff to train overseas. He said the Service would renew the National Health Insurance cards for personnel and would bear costs for the treatment of listed ailments. Mr Blankson urged personnel of the Service to demonstrate self discipline, hard work and selflessness in the discharge of their duties and make the GNFS an enviable Service in the sub-region. Madam Daniela Ntow Sarpong, Volta Regional Commander of the Service, said the region has a personnel strength of 396, and was recording a decline in fire outbreaks which she attributed to fire safety education. She appealed for more intercommunication devices adding that with 23 districts in the region having fire stations, Volta would be first to meet the target of 'One District One Fire Station'. GNA By Samuel Akumatey, GNA Ms. Christine Churchur, the Board Chairperson of the Ghana National Gas Company Limited, has called on women to be bold and get involved in governance issues and never be cowed by insults from their male opponents. She said many women are willing to go into mainstream political governance but due to insults and name calling, they shun away, contributing to the decline of women in the country's political dispensation. Speaking at a forum on 'why there are fewer women in politics' organised by the Progressive for Women Advancement, she said the name calling was meant to prevent the women from getting involved into politics and urged the women to be strong and ignore that assertion. She was of the view that, the political environment in the country makes it difficult for women to get involved into politics, because the whole democratic system was dominated by men. 'I see politics like a marketing space to sell your ideas to the public, and that women can sell better than their male counterpart when they are empowered to do so since women today are more educated than before', she added. She advised women aspiring to be politicians to discuss the issue with their husbands in a decorous manner and try to convince them to support them to prevent any form of altercation between them. Ms Churchur said there is the need to identify young potential ladies to inspire and empower them to take up leadership roles in society because many of them were willing to get involved but needed a little push and encouragement. Nana Oyi-Lithur, former Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, said for women to be in politics, they need to have a thick skin to accept every criticism that comes their way and do the right things because it was not a smooth path to walk on. She said the adoption of the affirmative action bill would help address the low participation of women into politics and encourage the participation of marginalised groups. Professor Ellen Bortei-Doku Aryeetey, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana, said the leadership role for women must begin in the early stages to prepare their minds for the tasked ahead. Dr Vladimir Antwi Danso, Director of Academic Affairs at the Ghana Armed Forces, attributed the low participation of women in politics to the structure of the country's political system where women are disadvantaged. He said until the structure was changed, there would be a decline in women representation into politics. Dr Lawrence Tetteh, an International Evangelist, said the Church must play its role of grooming young potential women to take up leadership role. He expressed concern that the Ghanaian politics was seen with an approach of violence than dialogue and urged all to be tolerant and give the opportunity for women to also take up leadership positions. GNA By Kodjo Adams, GNA Under a scorching sun, a team of British soldiers and Malawian rangers sheltered under a tree ready to pounce on their prey: poachers. The combined force, armed with rifles and handcuffs, did not encounter any poachers as it patrolled the 530 square kilometre (240 square mile) Liwonde national park in Malawi's south. But the presence of the highly-trained and well-equipped British forces was reassuring for the rangers who routinely confront gangs of poachers armed with Kalashnikovs. Liwonde, which borders Mozambique, is Malawi's leading game reserve and is home to the southern African country's largest elephant and rhino populations. The seven British soldiers are there to train 35 of Malawi's anti-poaching rangers. Prince Harry is the public face of the project that began in 2016 and earlier this year he visited the park to oversee the relocation of over 300 elephants to the Nkhotakota game park in central Malawi. 'A poaching crisis' "We were in a poaching crisis in 2015 in this park... but the situation has now been contained," said Bright Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi's parks and wildlife department. Poaching in Malawi halved the country's elephant population from 4,000 in the 1980s to 2,000 in 2015 And although the fight against the illicit wildlife trade is far from over -- poaching halved the country's elephant population from 4,000 in the 1980s to 2,000 in 2015 -- gains are being made. "The good news is that we have had only one case of a rhino being poached in two years in this park," Kumchedwa told AFP. "(British forces) are transferring military skills to Malawian rangers to use in conservation... the soldiers are adding value to the training of rangers." Michael Geldard, the British army colonel in charge of the training, described the campaign against poachers as "a game of cat and mouse with danger". "We are here to train rangers how to protect themselves from wild animals and not necessarily to shoot poachers," said Geldard, who is also Britain's defence attache to several African countries. "We are training them how to track down poachers and defend themselves from animals." Kingsley Kachoka, a Malawian who is a sergeant in the British army, told AFP he was delighted to be home "to help my country to deal with poachers". "I hope there will be a change because we are covering more ground in counter-poaching skills." 'Winning the war' Malawian ranger Edward Makupiza said that in the past he feared being shot by heavily armed Mozambican poachers who carry assault rifles when they cross the border in to Malawi in pursuit of elephants. "But now after training with the British army, I know how to protect myself and others from danger." Craig Reid runs African Parks, a conservation organisation that manages several game parks under a deal with Lilongwe, and said his team had pioneered the use of cyber-trackers and drones to tackle poaching. Patrols at Liwonde national park have led to the arrest of 130 poachers, most of whom have been sentenced to jail terms of at least six years "The landscape has changed and we have become much more professional in dealing with poaching," he said. The park also owns a helicopter used to help track poachers. "It's an expensive asset -- but it pays to use it," Reid said. "Poaching is declining dramatically," he said, with officers having seized 27,000 wire snares, 43 kilograms of ivory and 56 rounds of illegal ammunition from poachers between from August 2015 and October 2017 according to African Parks. Patrols at the park have led to the arrest of 130 poachers, most of whom have been sentenced to jail terms of at least six years following a move by the government to stiffen penalties. The maximum sentence is now 30 years. "We are winning the war against poaching," Kumchedwa said. The Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, has suggested that small and middle-sized businesses in Ghana could be the driving force of growth and development in the country. According to her, Denmark had achieved enormous success and gained recognition globally for the impact made by its small enterprises, something Ghana could benefit from. I think my visit is going to be very significant for the relations between our two countries because it means that you will find quite a large trade delegation is accompanying me and they are obviously there because they hope to develop good relations with Ghanaian businesses and opportunities, she said. We have very large, almost worldwide firms in Denmark, but we have a number of small and middle-sized Danish firms who do work worldwide and that's one of our strengths and one thing that will be of interest and inspiration for people in Ghana. You have to start somewhere and it's good to know that you can start small and expand it and make it worldwide. That's something we're very proud of in Denmark. The Danish Monarch was speaking in an interview with Director of News Programming at Citi FM, and Host of the award-winning Citi Breakfast Show, Bernard Avle, Kate Baaba Hudson of the Daily Graphic and Portia Sonia Adoley Gabor of TV3 in Denmark, and Jubal Kwaku Amedetor, also of TV3, ahead of her trip to Ghana. More aware of Ghana Queen Margrethe II expressed her excitement at the impending visit to Ghana, her first to a West African country. Citi FMs Bernard Avle shakes with the Danish Queen. She stated that her visit while building trade relations between the two countries will also foster a better understanding of the two nations. I'm very much looking forward to my visit to Ghana in a few weeks' time. It's my first time in Ghana and in fact, it's my first time in West Africa which means it's something entirely new for me. But Denmark and Ghana have had very good relations for a very long time. I know that there is a large group of Danish business people who are looking forward to being [in Ghana] with me and to see what they can do and they are excited about the prospects of working in Ghana, Queen Margarethe said. I think people in Denmark will become much more aware of Ghana because of this visit. Of course, people know about Ghana, but a visit like this always makes people more aware of what Ghana is and what the country is like. And I'm certainly going to learn a lot. Danish Trip The 3-day press trip to Denmark was organised for four selected Ghanaian journalists, including Citi Breakfast Show host, Bernard Koku Avle. The Queen, on her eventual historic visit to Ghana, is expected to be accompanied by a Danish business delegation within three focus sectors, namely food & agriculture, sustainability, maritime, infrastructure and railways. By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana This week I have asked myself, reflectively, who am I, or who have I become, or who should I become, a citizen or a spectator? I thought I have done quite well, in the last couple of years, to stand up, and to tell truth to power. But the world is becoming scarier every day, and sometimes I wonder whether God has forsaken his people. North Korea, as warned, poses a tremendous threat to the world with her regular nuclear missile testing that is getting close and closer home, with the scaring propaganda exchanges between President Trump, and Pyong Yong. When last month the American military began to fly close to North Korea, as an exhibition of military power, I felt trapped, and began to wish for an early return home, for I was then in America. What are the implications of these international nuclear and propaganda war in Ghana, and on Africa, for that matter? Ghana is a close ally of the United States of America, and several countries of the west, following from several bilateral and diplomatic agreements. What are the implications, for us, of potential missile attacks on any of these countries? And what would be the Russian response, and the position of China, in the event that a full blown nuclear conflict, involving North Korea, breaks out? Ghana government has just issued another Bond, the GHC10billion Energy Sector Bond, which is currently under-subscribed. What are the reasons for the under-subscription of the bond? And what are the implications of a successful floatation of a GHC10 billion bond, on Ghanas economy, and petroleum pricing? The government of Ghana is currently drawing up the fiscal budget for 2018. With the introduction of the Free SHS, and the introduction of the One-District-One-Factory, and several of such policy promises, the government is expected to spend heavily in social and educational interventions. What are the implications for tax burden on the ordinary citizens, and how do we help bring the conversation to the public, for everyone to be part of the discourse? Issues of climate change are engaging the attention of every government in the world. Our water bodies are drying up, galamsey is threatening livelihoods, and making the future look uncertain for our children. Our forest reserves are depleting at alarming speed, our fish stock is fast drying, and there seem to be an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, in terms of disease prevention, maternal mortality, pre-term babies are dying because of the absence of basic incubatory equipment. Vigilantism is threatening the security of this country. Government facilities are either being seized or being vandalized, government officials, including DCEs are being locked out of their offices. Several Ghanaians, including both ordinary and prominent, are saying that they no longer feel safe, because of the activities of these vigilante groups. You have been appointed as the High Commissioner of South Africa, representing the government of Ghana. You have been given an opportunity to speak to members of TESCON, university students members of the NPP, an opportunity to inspire them into greatness, to educate them on government programs, and how they could prepare themselves to take advantage of the available opportunities, a chance to ask for their inputs into the ongoing budget discussions, and a chance to educate them on the happenings in the world, and the implications on their future. You rather used the opportunity to insult Ghanaians, and create the impression that they are more Ghanaians than all others. You squandered such an opportunity, you made the members of TESCON feel that they dont have to work hard; all they need to do, is to continue to be members of TESCON, and to walk into your offices, and you will give them preference over everyone else. This is not proper. This is poor, a wrong way of thanking Ghanaians for the privilege given you to serve in such a high office. To be called Your Excellency requires a higher circumspection, and responsibility; you cannot justify why you became so irresponsible in your utterances. For those of you who dont know the story, this week, George Ayisi Boateng, Ghanas High Commissioner to South Africa, has said that we are all Ghanaians, but there are some who are more Ghanaians than others. He said this during a conversation with TESCON members in Kumasi, and that he is going to ensure that whenever there are job opportunities, he would consider NPP members first, before any other Ghanaian. And to think of it, that, George Ayisi Boateng, actually transliterated the imperatives in George Orwells Animal Farm, that we are all Ghanaians, but some are more Ghanaians than others, is the heights of the indecency in our political piggery; but I dont blame him, I blame those whose duty it is to ensure that he does not merit his position, but who are too afraid to tell the President, that George is too unwell to be a High Commissioner. George, thank you. Thank you for all that you have said, and all that you wish to do. Like Boxer in the Animal Farm, I will continue to work harder, to pay my taxes, so that you will continue to keep your position, in order to serve the special Ghanaians, those of the NPP stalk. One of my favorite quotes, in literature, is this anonymous ancient proverb, sometimes attributed to Euripides Those whom the gods will destroy, they first make mad. The NPP has been in power for ten months. I have been part of those who celebrated that victory. But the chipping away of the victory is beginning to look ugly. The Delta and the Invisible Forces began the journey back to the bush. Free SHS stabilized the situation. Then bam! We have Ayisi Boateng, with his skull on. Christian Council of Ghana, Peace Council, and all the councils, where are you? This is a spark of war, it is a whistle for segregation, an irresponsible act of low intellect that has the potential to plunge the country into vindictive attacks, and such should not be allowed to go un-condemned. Go ahead, Mr. George Ayisi Boateng, go ahead, to recruit all the NPP members into the Army, the Police, Immigration, make some Pilots, send some of the macho men to the labor wards, let them serve as Midwives, send all the members of the Delta Force, into our hospitals, let them perform surgeries, removing tooth, kidneys, and bottles. No responsible leader, worth his salt, will fall into such a filthy trench of a gutter. Your mentality is of war; such postures have brought untoward civil wars to several countries of the world. Putting you up for criminal prosecution is something I will support. But more importantly, removing you from your position as the High Commissioner to South Africa, is immediately desirable. You are too lowly-minded to occupy such a high office; Ghana deserves better. You see, heavily built men are vandalizing state facilities, locking up public officials, and destroying state properties, in the open and with impunity, all because they were those who protected the victory that was won by the NPP. Why should we need any of such people to protect the victory that was won? How could we call such a democracy a matured one? Cant we have non-aligned police force, non-aligned army officers, non-aligned electoral officials, to provide security, and to provide credible election processes, so that we dont need Azorka and his boys, we dont need Sammy Awuku and his boys, we dont need whoever lifted heavy metals to protect the victories of candidates, so that we shall have our peace of mind after elections? Ghanas democracy has grown, but I will like to repeat my concerns, that I dont see our democracy, in the current form we are practicing, as sustainable, no! There are several things fundamentally wrong with our governance and democratic journey. A situation where we need, taflatse, fools, to act in order to win elections, is never the ideal; because it results in the President being forced to appoint, taflatse oo, fools, into his government. James Kofi Annan The Vice President of the Republic, H.E. Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has assured the investor community of excellent opportunities in the health care sector of Ghana. Ghana, Dr Bawumia maintains, is open for business, and this is reflected in the various reforms being undertaken by the Nana Akufo-Addo government including the abolition of 15 nuisance taxes in the 2017 budget statement, as well as the introduction of a paperless port system and online registration for would-be businesses, among others. The Vice President gave the assurance when he led a delegation including H.E. Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, the First Lady of the Republic, senior government officials as well as officials of the Consulate of Ghana, Dubai to visit the Ajman Rulers Court and the Gulf Medical University (GMU), Ajman the leading private medical university of the region. The Emirate of Ajman is one of the seven Emirates (states) of the United Arab Emirates . In separate interactions with His Highness Sheikh Humaid Bin Rashid Al Nuaimi, Member of the Supreme Council, UAE and Ruler of Ajman, and other officials of Ajman, both Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and First Lady Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo outlined a number of areas for mutual cooperation between Ghana and Ajman, especially in the training of Ghanaian medical personnel and the establishment of medical facilities in Ghana. The delegation was later shown round the Gulf Medical University (GMU)s educational and research facilities, including the different ongoing projects of the hospitals and medical centers in the campus. Speaking after the tour H.E. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stated: We are very impressed with what we have seen here. We are happy that many Ghanaian students are pursuing their medical education at GMU. We hope to see this remarkable model of healthcare, medical education and research replicated in Ghana. Mr. Thumbay Moideen, Founder, President Board of Trustees of GMU, which is owned and operated by the Thumbay Group, disclosed that Gulf Medical University was in the process of establishing campuses in three new countries, including Ghana. Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is in the United Arab Emirates to participate in the ongoing Global Business Forum Africa taking place in Dubai. He returns to Accra on Friday November 3, 2017. The poor attitude of health workers in the country is pushing many Ghanaians into self-medication which is bad for their health. Thats according to a monitoring report by non-governmental organization SEND Ghana which surveyed more than 2000 people across the country. Our monitoring report found that clients were dissatisfied with waiting in long queues for long hours to receive treatment. They indicated that the failure of health workers to report to work on time and their dispirited attitude during working hours is the cause of self-medication," Senior Programmes Officer with SEND Ghana Mrs. Harriet Nuamah Agyemang disclosed at the launch of the report in Accra. The study interviewed and administered questionnaires to 2026 people in the Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions, with women constituting more than 56% of respondents. The report is titled: "Giving Patients Value for Money; Are Clients satisfied with the quality of Health Services. Its objective is to provide recommendations on how to improve access and quality of services in priority programs in the health sector in 30 districts in Ghana by strengthening accountability and transparency in the budget process by 2018. Its publication forms part of activities under the "Making the Budget Work for Ghana" project being implemented by SEND Ghana. The launch of the report which was done in collaboration with the Global Partnership for Social Accountability was aimed at soliciting views from various stakeholders on how to ensure effective policy planning and monitoring of various health facilities by holding workers accountable to the Ghana Health Service Code of Ethics. According to the monitoring report, most respondents were dissatisfied with the work attitude of health workers at the records section of health facilities. They also complained about inadequate staff as a result of health workers refusal to accept postings to deprived areas, as statistics show about 40% of new workers did not report to their districts of postings. In 2014 and 2015, the number of doctors in Greater Accra was over 1,000 compared to less than 50 in the Upper East region as well as Upper West Regions, the report noted. Mrs. Agyemang Nuamah however said the study showed that the number of health workers available in a facility had no influence on the level of satisfaction of clients which was mainly based on the behaviour of the health workers. In most cases, clients were very satisfied with facilities with limited workers than those with more workers, she noted. Respondents indicated that most of the health workers often attended to their acquaintances instead of following the first- come-first serve scheduling rule which they believe is unfair to them, she added. The Senior Programmes Officer with SEND Ghana also stated that 24% of the client's responded that workers were often disrespectful and showed dull attitudes to work, however majority were satisfied with particularly doctors and pharmacists because they were attentive in listening to their problems. She disclosed respondents with no education between the ages of 30 and 39 years who largely hail from the north had the highest level of satisfaction. However respondents with basic education in the same age bracket and from Greater Accra region were not satisfied with attitudes and behaviours of health workers. This she said was the case because clients with no educational background may not have the full appreciation of what constitutes satisfactory healthcare service and tend to appreciate any form of service. Mrs. Agyemang Nuamah said it's time the Ministry of Health and Ghana Health Service collaborate with civil society organizations to create awareness on the Patients Charter for citizens to know their rights, roles and responsibilities in accessing healthcare services. Chief of Party of the P4H Project at SEND Ghana Mr. Siapha Kamara advised the Ghana Health Service to increase education on good customer care and expand sentitization programmes for workers at their records section because most clients are dissatisfied with their services, especially those whose work relate to card acquisition and retrieval. The Chief of Party asked them to introduce Information Communication Technology in their work saying, "it is extremely important for facilities to use electronic recording systems to simplify and fast track the process of acquisition and retrieval of cards." Also present at the launch of the monitoring report were representatives from the Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health, other Civil Society Organizations and members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health. They noted the disclosures in the report were timely as it would assist them in proposing solutions to the major challenges facing the health sector. An Uzbek immigrant has been charged by US prosecutors with causing the deaths of at least eight people in New York by mowing them down in a truck. Sayfullo Saipov, 29, is also accused of providing material support and resources to Islamic State (IS) group. He was shot and injured by police at the scene of the attack, and received treatment in hospital. Prosecutors say Mr Saipov spoke freely to them, waiving his right to avoid self-incrimination while in custody. US President Donald Trump tweeted that he should receive the death penalty. The charges filed against Mr Saipov are federal, which means the government can override New York states ban on capital punishment. Tuesday afternoons attack saw a truck driven down a cycle lane in Lower Manhattan, hitting cyclists and pedestrians. Six people died at the scene and two more in hospital. Twelve people were injured, nine of whom remain in hospital. Federal court papers allege: Mr Saipov said the attack was planned two months ago He said he had intentionally chosen Halloween so that the streets would be crowded He wanted to display IS flags on the truck, but decided not to draw attention to himself Authorities recovered 90 graphic and violent IS propaganda videos from his phones He said he was inspired by them in particular, one in which IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asks what Muslims are doing to avenge deaths in Iraq Earlier, New York Polices Deputy Commissioner John Miller told reporters: He appears to have followed almost exactly to a T the instructions that Isis has put out in its social media channels before, with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack. A second Uzbek man wanted for questioning in connection with the attacks has been found, investigators say. The FBI had requested information on Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32. We are no longer looking for the person the information went out about, William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBIs New York field office, told reporters. We have found him and Ill leave it at that. Leading members of the private sector in Ghana and Kenya have acknowledged that both countries, considered to be regional economic gateways, have the capacity, economic and investment credentials to transform and expand trade between their respective regional markets. Intra-Africa investments and trade are prerequisites for regional and national economic development and growthIn a couple of years, Africa will have more people than India and China combined, Mr. Robert Ahomka-Linsdey, Ghanas Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry told participants from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Cote DIvoire, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, Europe and North America attending the Kenya Trade Expo Ghana 2017 event in Accra this week, as experts from government agencies and the business community converged to examine the challenges and looming opportunities for intra- and inter-regional cooperation around Africa. Trade analysts at the African Development Bank (AfDB) note that trade between African nations stands at around 16%, the lowest amongst other regions of the world. According to Ghanas Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Integration, trade flows from Kenya to Ghana was worth about US$5.3 million in 2016, while Ghanas exports to Kenya stood at US$2 million. The African Union (AU) is hoping to boost intra-African trade through the creation of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by the end of 2017. This should hopefully be the prelude to a Common Trade Market. With 25 Kenyan projects registered by the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC) in Ghana between 1994 and September 2017, mostly in the manufacturing sector, there is no reason why we cannot begin to deepen the trade ties between our respective nations. The political will exists, and manpower and technical know-how are no longer issues, Ahomka-Linsdey said, explaining that Africa is richly endowed and brimming with untapped wealth. Even as we continue to trade with Asia and the matured economies, we must now seriously begin to explore and exploit the latent opportunities around the human and material resources within our vast continent. Convened by Nana Yao Lee and Leah Nduati Lee, this years Kenya Trade Expo Ghana 2017 had as its theme Breaking New Frontiers in Intra-African Trade. The four-day event was held in partnership with the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Business Development, the Export Promotion Council in Kenya, and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Corporation in Kenya. This trade expo is a journey of learning and building relationships towards the vision of uniting Africa through trade starting with the Eastern Gateway (Kenya) and the Western Gateway (Ghana), Mrs. Leah Nduati Lee said. A Kenya-Ghana Joint Business Council being proposed by her firm will explore pragmatic trade and investment solutions between both countries. Our model for the Kenya Trade Expo Ghana is to let every stakeholder in the private and public sector and even social enterprises in the civil society do their part in facilitating investment into Africa. Ahomka-Lindsey said the Ghanaian authorities were aggressively implementing pragmatic policies and programmes aimed at fomenting a business friendly domestic economy and structurally strengthening trade and industrial growth; transforming enterprises to create more decent jobs; and reducing poverty thereby improving the livelihood of all Ghanaians. This was also part of Ghanas agenda towards attaining upper-middle income country status. Speaking during the event, Mr. Kiprono Kittony, the National Chairman for Kenyan National Chamber of Commerce and Industry said many western and American companies such as Google, Facebook, Tecno, Netflix, Shell, ZTE were setting up offices in Africa. Their presence in Africa is not an accident, its driven by the economics of trade, investment flows and profitability, Kittony said. Also in attendance at this flagship event were the representative of the Kenyan High Commissioner to West Africa, with concurrent accreditation to Nigeria and Ghana, Mr Peter Karuiki; the South African Ambassador to Ghana, Madam Lulu Xingwana; the High Commissioner of Zambia to Ghana, Mr Rayford Mbulu; the Chairman of Cellulant Corporation, Dr. Sam Kiruthi and the Chief Operating Officer of the GIPC, Mr Carl Nelson. The Pirate Party are buccaneering their way into European politics, having found a foothold in the testy soil of Central Europe after colonising, in small measure, various hamlets in Sweden, Germany and Iceland. The Czech Pirates (PPCZ), a term certainly exotic by current political pedigrees, managed to obtain over 10 percent of the vote, a result that gave them a rich harvest of 22 members in the parliamentary elections. It took nine efforts, but the Czech Pirates had been edging their way onto conspicuous terrain in various local elections, including netting 5.3 percent of the total vote in Prague in 2015. The city of Marianske Lazne also found itself having a Pirate Mayor after garnering 21 percent of the vote. Retaining their oppositional colours, the Czech Pirates are insisting on avoiding the muddying nature of coalition talks with the overall winners. (The dangers of compromising collaboration!) Their agenda is one that has become fairly known across its other incarnations: the abolition of internet censorship, the favouring of institutional transparency, and the revision of, amongst other things, punitive copyright laws. But other agenda items form their twenty point program, including improving the lot of teacher salaries and tax reform. The latter point is particularly appropriate, given the partys experimentation with testing EU laws on the subject of pirate sites through its Linking is not a Crime stance. This was sparked, in large part, by attempts by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union to target a 16-year-old for that great terror of the regulator: linking to content designated as infringing of copyright law. Launching several of their own contrarian sites, including Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, the latter carrying some 20,000 links to 5,800 movies, the Czech Pirate Party was overjoyed by the prospect of prosecution. Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. As Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukas Cernohorsky said at the time, belligerent and defiant, Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didnt run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime. The gains of the party showed a certain mood at work and, as has been the case in much of Europe, proved boisterously, and at stages angrily, anti-establishment. Check the Polish, Polish the Czech Europes redemption lies in the re-affirmation of the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 (and of Goteborg 2001), a ten-year development plan that focused on innovation, mobility and education, social, economic and environmental renewal. Otherwise a generational warfare will join class and ethnic conflicts as a major dividing line of the EU society in decline. prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic warned years ago in his seminal work Future of Europe: Of Lisbon and Generational Interval. But as with other intellectual farsighted voices, it was largely ignored. Well so, until the recent alarming elections results in central Europe. Thus, across its own political spectrum the Czechs were clearly showing they can add fuel to a brewing EU political fire, setting matters to rights on the continent while tearing down assumptions. As with any fire, however, the consequences can be searing. While the Pirates did well, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), a strident right wing outfit, nabbed similar numbers from the other side of the spectrum, sporting its own anti-EU, anti-immigrant brand. As its leader, Tomio Okamura, insists, We want to leave just like Britain and we want a referendum on EU membership. Billionaire fertilizer tycoon Andrej Babis, the sort of oligarchic figure who should always trouble democratic sensibilities, weighed in the elections with some 30 percent of the vote with his ANO party. His version of politics, another confection of anti-politics dressed for disgruntled consumption, reprises that of the businessman turned party leader. The claim made here is common: that the machinery of governance is somehow analogous to running a business. Traditional parties, foremost amongst them the long performing Social Democrats, with whom Babis had been in coalition with after gains made in 2013, found themselves pegged back to sixth position in the tally. The swill stick of politics did not tar Babis all that much, a figure who has managed to develop a certain Teflon coating in a manner similar to other billionaire leaders (think Silvio Berlusconi and a certain Donald Trump in the White House). He had become the focus of suspected tax crimes, and lost his job as finance minister. European subsidies, it was claimed, had found their mysterious way into his pocket. Such suggestions merely touched the tip of a considerable iceberg, one which also consists of allegations of previous employment with the Czechoslovak secret state security service Stb. According to Slovakias Institute of National Memory, his code name for collaboration during his espionage stint was Bures. The billionaire seemed distinctly unperturbed, and his partys showing suggested that some water will slide off a ducks back. I am happy that Czech citizens did not believe the disinformation campaign against us and expressed their trust in us. He roundly insisted that his was a democratic movement positively pro-European and pro-NATO and I do not understand why somebody labels us as a threat to democracy. These elections, however, will be savoured by a party that promises a fresh airing of a stale political scene, and one not nursing those prejudices that provide all too attractive gristle. Legislation, should it be implemented, may well remove the cobwebbed fears long associated with the Internet. But facing these newly elected figures will be ANO and an invigorated, indignant right-wing of politics, a far from easy proposition. Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. The Association of Students of Languages (ASOL) has emerged winner in the 2017 National Undergraduate Debate and Essay Competition held in Kumasi by the University of Education Winneba with sponsorship from the Institute of Liberty and Policy Innovation (ILAPI)-Ghana. The debate tournament which created room for students to determine their roles in job creation also saw the Accounting Students Association (ASA) emerging second, the Information Students Association (ISA) coming third and the Hospitality Students Association of Ghana (HOSAG) placing fourth. It started with a number of groups of which some were knocked-out until four qualified for the finals. The groups debated on the topic, "This house believes job creation is the role of the individual, not of the government with ASA as the opposition government and ASOL as the closing government for the motion, and HOSAG as the opposition government with ISA as the closing government against the motion. The debators explored on ideas of classical liberalism, creation of a free society and wealth creation through competition and innovations. The debate formed part of ILAPI-Ghana's undergraduate debate project to educate students on liberty and economic freedom as means to eradicate poverty through competition. This offered the students the first hand opportunity to learn more on classical liberalism to creating prosperity for themselves. Executive Director of ILAPI-Ghana, Peter Kwofie Bismark, after the debate, urged the nations tertiary students to focus more on Economic Freedom, property right, libertarianism and the need to start businesses while in school. He also spurred the youth to be disciplined and endeavour to impact their communities with however little they can. A representative of the ASOL team, Mary Osei, who thanked the organisers, said after reviewing literatures and some publications, I realised it's better to leave individuals to compete for survival. Government cannot be the sole job creator. I read something on Federich Bastiat, and felt I had been blind for long. I think we won because we spoke the truth." All the finalists were given medals and the ultimate winner was given a trophy. Received 1583657251694966.jpeg Ugandans should be careful not to write much judging Mr.Frank Gashumba because its difficult to trust law enforcement organs that are openly known to be partisan. Arresting Frank and publicly humiliate him in front of the cameras feeds nicely into the prevailing stereotype that a lot of opposition leaders are doing illegality while at the same time criticizing Museveni. Sometime the best defense, or rather revenge, is silence on the issue the govt expects to dominate social media.Not every arrest warrants a heated debate.Our silence and refusal to be proactive has a causal effect on those doing partisan stuff. This incident should instead prompt a much-needed conversation about partisan policing, partisan CMI, partisan army, partisan justice and the treatment of those that write opinions against chairman Museveni. Yes,there's an urgent need to address and diminish drugs and corruption in our communities, but we should be wary of aligning ourselves with elements that use that objective to tear us down, further divide us,distract us from Togikwatako, and propagate the same old tropes through new means. Basically,I think we need to be patient and listen to what Mr.Gashumba is gonna say in his defense before we pass any judgment, that's my stance. Falling back and listening and learning! Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba UK "In tribute to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Uganda, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife, discrimination and terrorism." The massive influx of Chinese tourists to Africa has in the recent years made a buzz, and it is for all possible reasons. After seven consecutive years of annual double-digit growth in spending, China continues to lead global outbound travel, reaching US$ 261 billion of Chinese travelers expenditure in 2016, a 12% growth since 2012. Approximately 135 million Chinese outbound tourists travelled in 2016, out of which 10% were bound for Africa up from 3% in 2008. As at the end of Q1/2016, Chinas economy stood at an approximate $11.3 trillion, the second largest in the world just after the US with about $17trillion. However, while the US remains on top of the chart, the case is expected to be different by 2027 in terms of tourism spending and investment as well as in total travel & tourism GDP; as China overtakes the world giant. In Africa, various data has shown that Chinese tourists spend an average of 40% in excess of their European and American counterparts. Increasing Chinese investments in the continent (Chinas total trade with Africa peaked at $222 billion by December 2014), involvement with African governments projects such as the construction of the recently launched Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya; remain among major factors that influence Chinas appetite for Africa. This, not to mention a highly tech savvy and adventurous generation of Chinese millennials with a comparatively high purchasing power. Chinese millennial travelers are fueling the growth of global tourism as they seek new and fresh experiences, states a report by Carat & Jing Travel on whats influencing Chinese millennials. Other factors include ease of travel following the introduction of direct flights between China and several African countries such as South Africa, Ethiopia, and Kenya; which according the Kenya Tourism Board (KTB) saw a whopping 100,000 Chinese visitors in 2016. Less stringent visa restrictions for Chinese travelers to countries such as Morocco and Tunisia is also a big plus. If the endlessly breathtaking destinations, wild safaris, comfortable weather to escape the massive heat waves in China are all anything to go by, then Africa can only expect stronger projections from this Asian country with a vast capital base. For instance, by having China as one of its outbound destinations, Africas leading online travel agency Jumia Travel is capitalizing on the trend by creating a link between China and the African market. This helps us leverage on the diversity of operating on both the African and Chinese markets, says Estelle Verdier, Jumia Travel COO. It is therefore up to the concerned stakeholders in the hospitality and tourism industries in Africa to gain momentum in meeting what seems to be an increasingly demanding Chinese tourism source market. Credit: Josephine Wawira About thirty (30) Journalists from twenty-five (25) countries from West and Central Africa, where 4.7 million people living with HIV are not receiving treatment, have undergone a capacity training workshop, on a new HIV Catch-Up Plan for the region. Dubbed Informing the Messengers, the regional workshop organized by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), saw the selected journalists enlightened on the new emergency plan that seeks to accelerate the HIV response in Central and West Africa. According to the UNAIDS, at time when the global response to HIV is accelerating, millions of people in Western and Central Africa are being left behind, hence the need for an urgent response that supports countries in reaching a trajectory to meet the global target to end AIDS. Figures from the global body shows that while the world witnessed a significant progress, with 57% of all people living with HIV knowing their HIV status, 46% of all people living with HIV accessing treatment and 38% of all people living with HIV virally suppressed in 2015, countries in West and Central Africa achieved only 36%, 28% and 12%, respectively, in the same period. It is estimated that in the 25 countries of western and central Africa, 6.5 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2015, including 500 000 children. The region accounted for 18% of the global HIV burden, despite having only 6% of the global population. West and Central Africa has an HIV treatment gap of 4.7 million people. Only 1.8 million people living with HIV were on antiretroviral therapy at the end of 2015. This sharply contrasts with figures from Eastern and Southern Africa, which had a treatment coverage of 54% in 2015. Again, while nine in 10 pregnant women have access to treatment in Eastern and Southern Africa, only five women in 10 do in Western and Central Africa, despite there being fewer people living with HIV in the region. The HIV Catch-Up Plan which is linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), is a political instrument and a compact between countries and the international community that supports countries strategies and plans to quickly address bottlenecks. It is to supplement national strategies and existing plans with the aim of increasing antiretroviral treatment uptake and saving lives. It also aims to put an additional 1.2 million people living with HIV in Central and West Africa, under treatment by the end of 2018. The new catch-up plan was adopted by the Heads of State and Government at the 29th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa. The two-day workshop in Dakar, Senegal, had representatives from the African-American and African Diaspora Press in the USA, and high level UNAIDS officials, including some UNAIDS Country Directors. Journalists were taken through interactive presentations and open discussions on the need to scale up the response to HIV in the region Speaking at the event, the Regional Director of UNAIDS for Western and Central Africa, Dr. Djibrill Diallo, said the workshop was to brief media practitioners on the current situation of HIV and AIDS in the region, and also to offer them the platform to network, and better inform the public on this new emergency plan, which is an essential step towards reaching the global target of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. This workshop highlights the importance the UNAIDS gives to the communication dimension of all its actions and initiatives. He said communication is one of the 4 pillars of the Catch-up Plan alongside political mobilisation, fund raising and the programmatic dimension, stressing that the UNAIDS is convinced that the media will play a fundamental role for the success of the Catch-Up Plan. The Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of UNAIDS, was optimistic that through the reports, inquiries and opinion pieces by journalists, the region can raise awareness among the populations of the region to change their behaviours and foster a positive dynamic to put an end to AIDS by 2030. He noted that as part of the plan, a total of US$ 20 million has been reprogrammed in existing Global Fund grants to cover antiretroviral therapy needs. He said new funding from PEPFAR has also been negotiated by countries. It is estimated that with this plan, at least 850 000 people, including 60 000 children, diagnosed as living with HIV but not yet enrolled in care will receive sustained high-quality antiretroviral therapy by mid-2018. The plan also hopes to ensure that an additional 250 000 people living with HIV, including 60 000 children, who have been newly tested, know their HIV-positive status and are linked to sustained high quality antiretroviral therapy by mid-2018. Ten countries in West and Central Africa have already developed and implemented their catch-up plan. These plans were developed by the local national AIDS commissions and approved by the highest political authorities. Speaking on the side-lines of the meeting, new UNAIDS Country Director to Ghana, Angela Trenton Mbonde, said the plan offers Ghana an opportunity to assess the national response and look at where there are barriers to be tackled. She was optimistic that Ghana will meet the 2020 Fast-Track Targets of having: 90% of people living with HIV know their status, 90% of those who test positive receive quality treatment, and experience suppressed viral loads. It was estimated that in 2016, there were 290.000 people living with HIV in Ghana. Less than 50% of the HIV population do not know their status. AIDS-related deaths stood at 15.000 in 2016. Ghana however has over the years shown strong commitment towards the global HIV response. The West African country chairs the UNAIDS Programme Coodinating Board (PCB). It recently pledged US$ 200.000 to support the work of the UNAIDS, making it one of the leading African donors to the UNAIDS. Dr. Djibrill Diallo, Regional Director Of Unaids For Western And Central Africa Unaids Country Director To Ghana, Angela Trenton Mbonde (left),with A Journalist From Ghana Participants Cup17-1 Some New Patriotic Party Youth in the Volta Region, have added their voice to calls for the reinstatement of suspended General Secretary, Kwabena Agyei Agyapong. Addressing the media at a press conference in Ho on Wednesday, the youth described the embattled General Secretary, Kwabena Agyapong, as an indispensable asset to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) , whose relegation apart from being an affront to accolade of the party as lovers of democracy, is affecting the general welfare of the party. We deeply appreciate the tactful way KAA, as affectionately called, smoothly managed and supervised the two-staged presidential primary and crucially, the parliamentary contests across the country which contributed immensely to the historic majority the party won in the parliamentary election. At the time of his suspension, only a handful of constituencies were outstanding. It has now emerged that some of the far-sighted and strategic decisions KAA took and for which reason he was suspended, such as granting of waivers, were crucial and needed after all,they said. Kwabena Agyepong The group led by Roland Kaykay Fiakpui, also questioned the interests of individuals who are vehemently rejecting suggestions to reinstate the suspended executive. As a political tradition, we have been touted as the kingpins of democracy and our respect for constitutionality is acclaimed. However, the unfortunate remarks emanating from some national officers clearly portrays an intention to perpetuate the suspension till the tenure of our GS runs out in April 2018. Is it any surprise that those who are the direct beneficiaries of the suspensions are the most vociferous against his reinstatement?, he quizzed. They are therefore calling on President Akufo-Addo to intervene by tempering justice with mercy. We wish to employ your esteemed media platforms to join and identify with the numerous calls from our compatriots in the Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo, Greater Accra and Northern regions to appeal to the National Council of the NPP and particularly the President of the Republic His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo-Addo, to respectfully and humbly appea to him to exercise the best endeavours of his high office as Father of all and Leader of our party to intervene to bring finality to the matter of the continued suspension from office of our elected General Secretary they added. Why Agyepong was suspended Mr. Agyepong was suspended in December 2015 for publicly rebelling against the party's decision to indefinitely suspend the party's National Chairman, Paul Afoko. He was suspended alongside the party's Second Vice Chairman, Sammy Crabbe. The National Executive Committee of the party found him guilty of violating Article 3(D) of the party's constitution which enjoins members to publicly uphold the decisions of the party, through various acts. He was also accused of engaging in unilateral actions and activities without consultation of, or authorization by the NEC [National Executive Council]. More NPP members demand Agyepong's reinstatement Some members of the party recently besieged the NPP head office in Accra to demand the reinstatement of Mr. Agyepong. The group expressed concerns that there were veiled attempts to expel Kwabena Agyapong from the party. By: King Nobert Akpablie/citifmonline.com/Ghana President Nana Akufo- Addo 02.11.2017 LISTEN The emotions and euphoria on that day was not because Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had resurrected, but because a man who had had an uphill battle in the quest to become the president of Ghana had his dream finally materialized. The Nana Addo led government was a dawn of a new page which one expected would create an utopian state that will leave the opposition in a perpetual ambience of silence. Unfortunately, pockets of the NPP youth who thought their thumbs were bigger than any person in Ghana and for that reason, it was their votes that brought the NPP into power, have deflowered the glory of the Nana Addo led government with unholy political hooliganisms. The malicious hooliganisms carried out by a section of the NPP youth is not caused by a demon, but rather the failure of the government apparatus to crack the whip against their political interest. I am not old enough to be your history tutor, but I can confidently say that it is the Nana Addo led government that we have had the highest number of ministerial and institutions in charge of security. Among these are the Minister of Defense, Minister of National Security, Minister of Interior, the IGP, National Security Advisor, etc. With all these ministries and security agencies in place, one would be left on the wilderness of wonder why a group of people could take the laws into their hands and go scot free. Since January this year, there have been reports of about twenty separate hooliganisms by a section of the NPP youth in their quest of claiming ownership of state properties and getting their share of the national cake. The president has condemned it, but as our elders say, Talking doesnt fill the basket in the farm, he must act now to bring this ungodly acts to an end. Our security and state properties cannot be exchange for the interest of members of any political party. We must be safe under your regime. The parochial interest of a vigilante group should not deny that schoolchild of food under the school feeding program. Their interest should not prevent any public officer from working. Nevertheless, Mr. President such incidents affirm the need for the creation of jobs for the youth, because an employed busy-doing youth will never engage in any act of hooliganism. It is of no doubt that the Nana Addo led government is doing quite well, even at its embryonic stage, albeit, the inability to crack the whip of vigilante groups from the NPP is their Achilles heel. And as distance tests the strength of the horse, so shall time test the integrity of Nana Addo led government. Mr. President, note that the law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. Fix the holes (vigilante groups) on the castle gate, because they are deflowering your government of its glory. We are not children of a lesser god Ntenhene Felix [email protected] The Karaga Constituency chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Tahiru Zakaria, and three others have been granted bail by the Tamale circuit court, presided over by William Twumasi. The suspects, who made their maiden appearance at the court, were granted bail in an amount of GH5,000 each with two sureties. Mr Tahiru Zakaria, with three others Baba Ali Osman, Mohammed Alhassan and Abdullai Ziblim was charged with rioting and causing unlawful harm. When DAILY GUIDE visited the court, there was seeming tension as supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had gathered at the premises and over 50 police personnel stationed there to maintain law and order. Some party bigwigs in the Northern Region were at the court to facilitate the bail process. It will be recalled that the Karaga Constituency chairman was arrested with the three others on suspicion that they were among those who caused the commotion at Karaga at dawn Wednesday. The arrest followed a directive by President Akufo-Addo to the police not to allow miscreants to take the law into their hands. Some angry NPP youth in the Karaga District of the Northern Region sealed off the DCE's office, chased away the Youth Employment Coordinator and set ablaze a motorbike. They claimed that the DCE, Alhassan Yabdow, had said that he would never work in partnership with Tahiru Zakaria. The youth accused the DCE of engaging in acts they believed would create divisions in the NPP in the constituency. Some persons are bent on destroying the Ga chieftaincy institution but they must be stopped in their tracks. Should they persist in pursuing this dangerous agenda the resultant stress could impact negatively on the chieftaincy institution and hence our heritage preserved for us over the ages by our forebears. History is replete with the positive exploits of our chiefs, legendary personalities, who in spite of the superiority of the firepower of the invading European forces stood their grounds and fought to the hilt: while many fell gallantly, others were exiled to foreign lands such as Seychelles Islands. It is unacceptable therefore for us to show the level of apathy we are exhibiting today as the Ga Mashie chieftaincy establishment is stretched beyond its seams by reactionary forces; some of them with no familial links to the royalty. It is equally disturbing to watch on as the heritage of Ga Mashie is reduced to a laughing stock in the comity of traditional establishments in the country. Things have gone so bad that should there be a call for an assemblage of the various chieftains in the country, there could be confusion when it comes to a representation of Ga Mashie. Soon after the enstoolment of Kelvin as Ga Mantse recently, we editorialized on the subject exhilarated that a closure has been brought to bear on the troubles of Ga. Some dismissed our optimism as sheer wish. They obviously saw what we did not: unfolding developments eventually proved them right. A few days ago when another person claiming to have been enstooled as Ga Mantse popped, up we gnashed our teeth and exclaimed 'oh no, not again'. Be it as it may, the confusion which those behind the manouvre spawned provided more ingredients for engineers of doom for Ga. In the face of the troubled Ga State, we stand by the side of the aggrieved and good people of this great ethnic grouping who are obsessed with the reversal of this sorry state of affairs and are putting all efforts towards the achievement of this goal. When shall we witness the Ga Mantse sitting in state to receive foreign dignitaries when they come visiting us in the country? One day the question would be posed by a visiting head of state 'is there no chief in the nation's capital?' When Ghana's President deposed a Ga Mantse and replaced same with his favourite, he had perhaps unknowingly sowed a dangerous seed which would many years after the deed create a conundrum for not only the Gas but, by extension, subsequent governments. We are at the disturbing crossroads. When the modalities for the enstoolment of a Ga Mantse are fraught with aberrations to the extent that wrong stool fathers are picked, the person these persons choose as the King would be faulty. That is the source of the Ga conundrum. Fortunately, there are court judgments to follow and independent authorities to consult in tackling this problem. The Chieftaincy Ministry has a critical role to play in this matter and should therefore not waste time in ensuring that the right thing is done. There should be a closure to this problem once and for all. A former Deputy Chief of Staff, Dr. Valarie Sawyerr, has suggested that the Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid, is struggling to clean the mess caused by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo's elephant-sized government. Madam Valarie in her recent epistle opined that, Akufo-Addo's ten-month reign has been fraught with the Bond saga, the MacDan saga, the BOST saga, the AMERI saga, the missing cocaine saga, the GH 5million [email protected] saga, the illegal deportation saga among others. Your Excellency, do you need more than ten months in Government to realize that you cannot get away with what you used to get away with in Opposition? You cannot hoodwink the people with half-truths and untruths all the time, she said. The former presidential staffer told Akufo-Addo that the era of twisting facts and peddling untruths is over, and advised the president to wake up to reality. You cannot get them to accept hook, line and sinker unrealistic dreams and expectations. You cannot twist and turn untruths into truths. You cannot dig a big hole at a spot and get your information gurus to say you actually built a mountain at that spot when the spot is accessible to all for verification. Your Minister for Information is somersaulting all over the place, struggling to present coverups for your mess-ups. With all due respect Sir, you are over-pressurising the young man. Your Excellency, if you think we have forgotten the Bond saga, the MacDan saga, the BOST saga, the AMERI saga, the missing cocaine saga, the GH 5million [email protected] saga, the illegal deportation saga, then you have another thought coming, she added. She also in the article took on Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia following some utterances the second gentleman made prior to the launch of the country's digital address system also known as Ghana Post GPS. Madam Valarie believes the Vice President deceived Ghanaians when he said the $2.5 million worth system will be more advanced than those used in the UK and United States of America. Valarie Sawyer said the Vice President tried to deceive Ghanaians with such comments. In ten months, they have devised and implemented a digital addressing system that is more advanced than that of the U.S., the U.K., Sweden and Germany? Wow! Not surprisingly, I soon found out it was simply an app that uses Google's free geographical coordinates. So, Mr. President, what is the Vice-President's excuse please? Below is Valarie Sawyerr's full article: Dr. Valerie Sawyerr writes: Mr. President! Mr. President!! Mr. President!!! How many times did I call you? Why will you not let me enjoy a peaceful Opposition? Stretching my legs in an easy chair on my patio, I heard your Vice-President say: We are introducing Ghana's digital address system with unique post-codes within every location within Ghana The digital addressing system is going to provide us the most advanced addressing system in the world. Period! This is what we are about to roll out. And it is more advanced, off course, than the United States or the United Kingdom or Sweden or Germany because they are stuck with old technology. We are leap-frogging and we are going to new technology. We are going to GPS-based technology, so even if you are standing in the middle of the River Oti and you want your address when we roll it out you will know your address in the middle of the River Oti. I said to myself Who is deceiving these people? In ten months, they have devised and implemented a digital addressing system that is more advanced than that of the U.S., the U.K., Sweden and Germany? Wow! Not surprisingly, I soon found out it was simply an app that uses Google's free geographical coordinates. Don't ask me what that means. I cannot claim to be an expert of any sort in the world of digitalization but I have access to young knowledgeable professionals who I call when I do not understand such matters. So, Mr. President, what is the Vice-President's excuse please? But Sir, why should I begrudge your Vice-President his exaggerated manipulative style. Barely a month ago, I was stretching my legs in that same easy chair when I heard you say: This project was began in the time of the great Ghanaian leader John Agyekum Kufour. It was in his time that the financing for this project was secured as far back as 2008. Unfortunately, after he left, it took five years under the NDC successor government before the construction of the project. God has his own way of doing these things a project that was begun by Kufour is going to be commissioned by Akufo-Addo. That is the way the Almighty works. I asked myself what project is he talking about and is this not a gross display of mathematical deficiency? We all know that the NDC was in power for eight years so even if it is true that for five years construction of the project was not begun, what happened to the extra three years? After sleeping for five years, did the NDC government use three years to get out of bed in stretching mode? Did the NPP government then use nine months to execute the project? I wondered whether you were cutting sod for the project or commissioning the completed project. So, I cross-checked! Lo and behold, it was the Wa Water Project. Eeeeishh! I am sure there is a word or phrase that describes a consistent and deeply ingrained tendency for manipulating the truth before audiences that the manipulator persistently deems ignorant and/or gullible, when indeed this is not the case. Especially when they attach phrases like 'God has his own way of doing these things' and 'that is the way the Almighty works'. Blasphemy of the highest order! With all due respect Mr. President, do you see how you were fumbling when you got to that part and feverishly wiping your mouth? Ahaaa! As we say in our local parlance 'if you will not allow your mother to sleep you will also not sleep!' Your Excellency, let me go back to your Vice-President. Let's try this quiz Sir: Is Google Maps Navigation a mobile application developed by Google, which normally uses a GPS satellite connection to determine its location? Did the Ghanaian Government pay US$2.5m to Vokacom, aka Afrifa, to develop a digital addressing system for the country? Did Vokacom develop a digital addressing system based on the GPS technology? Is the GPS technology new or was it invented in the 1960s in the U.S.? Does the new app developed by Vokacom use Google's free geographical coordinates to function? Will Ghana pay a US$400,000.00 annual fee to Google for embedding their online map into Ghana's new digital addressing system? Does the Ghanaian government have physical access to the server? Does another country have access to our personal information fed into the server? Did a similar Facebook App integration with Google maps cost US$500,000? Why are there so many complaints that the Ghana Post GPS App is not working efficiently? Did the Government really spend GH3.5million on publicizing the system as declared by the MD of Ghana Post, James Kwofie? #Jack Where Are You that is the slogan for the digital addressing system! Mr. President, in case you are wondering, we are talking about 'value for money'. This 'Jack Where Are You' goof will not varnish into thin air. An urgent question has been filed in Parliament for the Minister of State in charge of Public Procurement to provide details of the procurement process for the system. We are waiting patiently please. Your Excellency, do you need more than ten months in Government to realize that you cannot get away with what you used to get away with in Opposition? You cannot hoodwink the people with half-truths and untruths all the time. You cannot get them to accept hook, line and sinker unrealistic dreams and expectations. You cannot twist and turn untruths into truths. You cannot dig a big hole at a spot and get your information gurus to say you actually built a mountain at that spot when the spot is accessible to all for verification. Your Minister for Information is somersaulting all over the place, struggling to present coverups for your mess-ups. With all due respect Sir, you are over-pressurising the young man. Your Excellency, if you think we have forgotten the Bond saga, the MacDan saga, the BOST saga, the AMERI saga, the missing cocaine saga, the GH 5million [email protected] saga, the illegal deportation saga, then you have another thought coming. Your incompetent Minister for Agriculture now says the army worms have come to stay, after he said he had eradicated them; Your implementation of the First Year Free SHS programme has been woefully inadequate; You moved a whole community of Ghanaians to the United States for the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly when public officers had not been paid; Your MASLOC CEO, Stephen Amoah purchases 1,800 second-hand cars with no MASLOC board in place and no PPA (Public Procurement Authority) approval; Your Invisible Forces, Delta Forces, Kandahar boys, Bolgatanga Bulldogs just heard about the Elmina Sharks and Paga Crocodiles and other rebel groups are still terrorizing the nation Sissala West DCE flees irate youth NPP Youth lock up School Feeding Office in Tamale NPP youth storm police station in Karaga NPP youth group beats Assembly members at Adeiso. Mr. President, what happened to your democratic credentials please? Your operatives 'imprison' Appiah Stadium in a room and force him to produce an audio recording for public consumption. They handcuff him from Kumasi to the Police Headquarters in Accra where it takes almost four hours to get the police to agree to grant him bail around 9.30pm, and thereafter you issue a statement saying you are no longer interested in pursuing the case. Of course, I cannot defend the words he used on you although, Sir, I cannot remember you defending yourself when the WikiLeaks reports were released. I also remember the horrible words you and your team used on Ex President Mahama while he was in office. It is not too late to apologise to him Sir. You impose penalties amounting to over GH1billion on radio stations and shut some down in the name of administrative streamlining. Mr. President, it is important that our institutions obey and adhere to laid down rules and procedures, but I am sure you realize that by imposing unrealistic sanctions on them the message that rings clear is that you have a sinister agenda. To cut down some of the fines to 50% is still unconscionable, especially when the Schedule used for the calculation of fines had not yet been approved by Parliament. May I humbly suggest that the first review of the draconian decision should have seen a reduction of fines to the level of the applicable law, while insisting that the Radio Stations present the requisite paperwork. As things are, it may be advisable to simply declare an amnesty, give them a time frame to present the relevant paperwork and pay the fees of the years unpaid at the current rate. This would spare the nation a further loss of democratic credentials as well as imminent court cases. As for my sister Ursula, I have confidence in her that she will do the right thing and I hope my confidence is not misplaced. As I pondered over your actions this morning, I found myself singing a popular tune 'kro kro kro kro, hi hi hi hi krohi krohi kro kro kro, hi hi kro kro kro ' Your Excellency, do you remember that tune? The rhythm of the reverberating shuttle of the loom as our kente weavers produce our resplendent kente cloths. Sir, I can see you slowly weaving your way into the hole that you yourself are digging. It is so deep that if you fall in it, Mr. President you know we will not be able to find you even if all fire service and military operatives and equipment are dispatched to the scene Mr. President, what stops you from graciously acknowledging what the NDC has accomplished? Is it a narcissistic tendency that prevents you from acknowledging the good in others? Or is it your speech-writers who have decided as a policy that nothing good of the NDC should be acknowledged? Please listen to the humble advise of an Opposition Chiller you are the one who will be held responsible for the fumbling of your Government. Your writers can write for you but you are the one who must determine in the end what you actually say. Apart from the Wa Water Project, that you attempted to take credit for (naughty naughty), may I remind you of some other water projects executed under President Mahama Essakyir Water Supply Project; Kpong Water Expansion Project; Nsawam Water Expansion Projects; Teshie Water Desalination Plant; Kumasi (Barekese) Water Supply Project; Five Towns Water Supply Project (Kyebi, Osenase, Anyinam, Apedwa & Kwabeng); Kpong Intake Rehabilitation Project; Accra-Tema Metropolitan Area Supply Project; Asante Mampong Water Project; Akim-Oda-Akwatia-Winneba Water Project; Konongo-Kumawu-Kwahu Water Project; Navrongo Water Project & Small Town Water Systems across all regions. I understand the Akim Oda-Akwatia-Winneba Water Supply Project is being prepared for commissioning. Please put the devil to shame and give JM the credit when you commission it. Don't believe your Minister for Water Resources & Sanitation if he tells you that the funding was sourced in H.E. Busia's time, and H.E. Kufour planted a tree at the spot to signify sodcutting, and you built the whole system in ten months. If in doubt, just conduct a search on Google. Your Excellency, I don't mean the 'Jack Where Are You' system please ha ha ha! While we are at it, may I take the opportunity to point out that the following projects commissioned or inaugurated in the ten months you have been in office were all commenced and/or executed under President Mahama: On April 27, 2017, you cut the sod for the world's largest LPG-fired Power Plant; On April 26, 2017, you commissioned an ICT Centre at Soabe in Denkyembour District of the Eastern Region; On May 10, 2017, you commissioned the Kumasi City Mall; On May 17, 2017, your Minister for Health commissioned the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (former Ridge Hospital On May 24, 2017, your Minister for Fisheries commissioned the Elmina Fish Processing Plant; On July 6, 2017, you commissioned the FPSO John Agyekum Kufour; On September 15, 2017, you launched the New National ID Card. Kro kro kro kro, hi hi hi hi Krohi krohi kro kro kro, hi hi, kro kro kro and Mr. President what is this new thing that anytime you goof and attention is drawn to it, you throw a fake Kwesi Botchwey report at the NDC, as though that will solve the problems of the nation? Please concentrate on easing the burden of the average Ghanaian Sir, and leave the Kwesi Botchway report alone, especially the fake ones. Who are those NPP birds twittering about the Kwesi Botchwey report? The good professor says the version being bandied around is fake and is not the final version of his Committee's report. Our General Secretary Asiedu Nketia and our National Organiser Kofi Adams have said on air that it is a fake report. When the denkyems (crocodiles) have come out of the river to declare that the report on the water-bed is fake, the bird perched on a tree in the hinterland says the report is true. Aaba! Did the bird use the Vice-President's leap-frogging Ghana Post GPS to locate the address of the Kwesi Botchwey Report in the Oti River? and who are those NDC birds chirping all over the place about the NPP KB Report chirp, chirp, chirp? Kindly varnish from my sight as I daydream in peace, recalling the story of Taka, Tika and Gangali on that beautiful day in July 2011 in Sunyani. Yes, the story JM shared with us at the Sunyani Congress. I guess a number of you have forgotten. Let me jog your memory the Congress that gave Nana Konadu (NDP) 3.1% of the votes. Ahaaa I knew you would remember that. We are indeed the great NDC and we fear no foe!!! Stop chirping and get with the programme organize don't agonise!!! Kro kro kro kro, hi hi hi hi Mr. President, you are weaving your way towards the big black hole. Your Vice President will not be able to help you Sir because he is already going over the brink. You positioned him during the campaign to sell empty stories, you positioned him to insult the sitting President and to label government corrupt and incompetent, you positioned him as an economic guru when you knew he had no 'guruism' in him now he does not know what to do in Government He is lost, sidelined by the monsters you have created and when he has a chance, he squeals out of context still using your opposition campaign tactics that you taught him and coming across as incongruous and totally out of his depth. Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President!!! I called you three times please!!! I am for peace Shalom!!! 02.11.2017 LISTEN Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Robert Ahomka-Lindsay has called on African leaders to create a single continental market as a means of promoting inter-regional trade among businesses within the African region. This he said will address the infrastructure needs of Africa, reducing trade barriers, lowering transaction cost for businesses, harmonizing policies as well as improving Africas way of doing business with the rest of the world. Ensuring the regional integration succeed in Africa is a daunting task, yet surmountable if African leaders, policymakers, and relevant stakeholders give this noble dream of creating a single market the first push to see its success in our time, he said. Mr. Ahomka-Lindsay was speaking at the opening of the second Kenya Trade Expo Ghana 2017 in Accra under the theme: Breaking New Frontiers in Intra-Africa trade. The three-day event will create new opportunities and partnerships for businesses of both countries. The Trade Expo is targeting established and emerging businessmen and is aimed at enhancing trade relations between Kenya and Ghana following seven key trade agreements signed between the two countries in December 2014. The model for the Kenya Trade Expo Ghana 2017 is to develop an engaging agenda of building partnerships between government and the private sectors. It will be recalled that the first Kenya Trade Expo in Ghana took place in 2015, attracting over 2,000 emerging and established business people, government and non-government officials. Participants from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Cote DIvoire, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, Europe and North America are attending the programme. Trade volumes About 25 Kenyan projects are currently registered with the Ghana Investments Promotion Centre (GIPC) in Ghana between 1994 and September 2017 with most of them in the manufacturing sector. According to Ghanas Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Integration, trade flows from Kenya to Ghana was worth about $5.3 million in 2016, while Ghanas exports to Kenya stood at $2 million. 02.11.2017 LISTEN It was Tuesday, 31st October, 2017 around 5.30 am when I set off for Cape coast. Just after the traffic light before the West Hills Mall at Weija, a car on an alarming speed signaled me to stop. I did because the driver was wearing a Ghana police uniform. In great anger, the man in uniform came to inform me that I had crossed a red light. I did not argue. I apologised and explained I was not aware the light was red when I crossed it. He informed me that the police commander for the Odorkor area was in the car not wearing a uniform. He ordered me to explain myself to him and apologize. I was calm. The supposed commander started a tirade of verbal abuse. He really insulted me and then instructed the man in uniform to escort me to the Odorkor Police Station. I obliged. On our way, the supposed police officer advised me to negotiate a fine with his commander as going to court would be a tall order for me. However, on realizing that I was a journalist because of the pendant in my car, he threatened I would really be embarrassed if the issue came out. Before I was stopped, I was transporting a medicine to Cape Coast that ought to be in ice until it is administered to the patient. My fear was that further delays will destroy the luxury drug and affect the patient as none could be purchased from there. I was, therefore, compelled to take the advice of the officer. The officer then called the Commander to pull over his vehicle. I approached him, showed the medicine in the ice chest to the commander. That rather infuriated him the more. He poured more insults on me and then asked me what other sensible thing I had to tell him. I told him I had GHS 20 for his morning breakfast. He got extremely angry, asking how I could give that small amount to a whole Commander with many men under him. He instructed the police to take me to the station. He made further calls instructing somebody already at the station to remove my battery on arrival. I then resolved that the insults were enough and so stopped apologizing and negitiating a settlement. I was ready to face the law for allegedly violating a traffic offense. As we approached the Hong Kong police station near Lapaz, the police officer in my car started urging me to add to the GHS 20 to avoid being processed for court. But I told him I did not have more to add. So we finally got to the police station. The Commander had parked his car 50 metres from the station and was not coming out. The officer with me started pursuing me, this time forcibly to settle. I got out of the car and shouted no! I am ready for court. He told me to give him just some few minutes to go to where the commander had parked to plead for me. I rebuffed but he went anyway. When he left, I moved to the police station and asked one police officer to follow me outside. I pointed the car which the Commander was using and the police officer to see if he could recognize them as officers working with them. Immediately the supposed Commander and his officer saw me from a distance talking to the station officer, they bolted. It became clear that the two men were fraudsters trying to dupe me. They got that far because their attitude was similar to true police officers. They all sell justice. I could have been harmed. My car could have been stolen, and I could have been robbed of my money. I give glory to God. My prayer is that nobody becomes the next victim, and the police service must indeed live up to their motto, Service with integrity so that fraudsters in their midst can easily be identified. Akyena Brantuo Benjamin According to Bloomberg, eight (8) out of ten (10) small businesses fail within the first eighteen (18) months of operation. As surprising as this may seem, the figures may even rise in the next decade as millennials keep launching ideas and businesses. Working with over 200 Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in an emerging economy, Challenges Ghana through its business support services programme, International Citizen Service - has noticed that a clear trend which inhibits business growth is Leadership and Management as opposed to lack of capital. Deficiencies in leadership and management rank highest as the most frequent reasons for businesses to fail. A business that is well managed prospers; one that is not, fails. To address the challenges Ghanaian businesses face one that often leads single-handedly to their failure one has to questions as to whether there is a role for mentors to play? A business mentor is an individual who has been successful in a particular sector, organization or network, understands strategic and operational pressures, and its well positioned to provide you with the necessary direction, and introductions to help you succeed. They are not magicians, and they wont always give you the answers, but point you to the right decision says Simon Turner, Country Director of Challenges Ghana , a local social enterprise that provides business growth services to SMEs, thus the concept of being successful overnight because of a mentor is a fallacy. Mentors provide expert guidance and direction as an entrepreneur you still have the responsibility of building on that advice to make decisions towards your ultimate goal. In a highly competitive world, a lot is expected from businesses and its leaders; to be more dynamic and still comply with legal requirements in all aspects of daily business operations. To survive, businesses constantly need to adapt and evolve their processes to match ever-changing demands. Entrepreneurs, after commencing operations, get lost in these processes and gradually fail the ultimate reason why you need direction from a mentor. So what can a mentor offer for your business? Well firstly, they offer fresh operational and strategic perspectives. A business leader needs to focus on running the business and the detailed tasks involved in doing so, and that can make it difficult to step outside of it all and look at things objectively. Mentors guide business leaders through difficult decision-making processes by offering the experience and technical expertise to ensure that decision-making is approached methodically, and taking into account the key factors and analyzing the key information, to ensure a strong decision is made. At Challenges Ghana, although we offer Leadership and Management training and accreditation for entrepreneurs which covers information-based decision making, support from mentors to entrepreneurs during critical decision-making processes have proved to be very essential. Mentors are inspiring! It is worth saying more about the experience of mentors. A good mentor may have decades of multi-national, industry experience, which mean they have seen before the challenges a business faces and understand the difficulties these create. They will likely have a range of possible solutions to consider, depending on the circumstances, as well as perspectives on what has worked, and what hasnt. This knowledge and guidance can save businesses a lot of heartache along their journeys, and further, save or earn a few Cedis for the business too! The large network of mentors is what makes them ideal. This is my favorite reason at which I recommend SMEs to get mentors. In a growing economy like Ghana and increasing competition, being introduced to the right persons is very key to the success of every business. Mentors make connections and open doors. Great mentors will connect you with the right people to help you flourish, including investors and customers. Over the last couple of years, I have worked with a number of mentors as part of my role with Challenges Ghana and have seen the value they can offer to help businesses grow and thrive. Ive seen mentors help businesses through their growth process as well as offering proper management advice to enterprises. Some of the mentors have been more than willing to talk equally about their failures as well as successes, built and rebuilt multi-national organizations, crossed oceans to try out new techniques in business, all resulting in a wealth of experience leading to success. The chance to run a business is an exciting, challenging, and often daunting opportunity. So, lets ask again: why is a mentor important for your business? Because they could help you find the key to making a success of the unique opportunity you have to develop a thriving and sustainable business. Id be more than happy to share more of my personal experiences with mentors, and indeed what Challenges Ghana can offer to individuals and businesses who are keen to develop through mentorship. By Joshua Amponsem . Business Development Manager, Challenges Group Ghana. Tel: 00233541688618. 02.11.2017 LISTEN The introduction of special education as a subject, public lectures on contraceptives, and legalization of medical abortion is our first step as a country to eliminate teenage pregnancy and teenage death. Over the years the battle to promote girl-child education is been compromise by so many factors the same areas we have neglected. Fifty seven thousand teenage pregnancies were recorded nationwide in the first half of 2017 which included those having their final examination at the junior high level and senior high level. GBC on January, 24th 2017 reported on its website that the just ended 2017 BECE experienced High Rate of Pregnant Candidates. Parents, teachers and society must understand that the teenage girl getting pregnant during her basic education has a lot of health and economic hazards with social implications. The consequences include the embarrassment brought to the family as a result of the pregnancy, dropping out of school, attending antenatal clinics, her inability to write the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) or going to write the examination in her pregnant condition and increase in the family budget for the upkeep of the pregnant daughter and grandchild. Just to mention a few, In the Eastern Region it was reported that 36 pregnant girls were among the Junior High School candidates who wrote the BECE in seven districts. A 16-year-old girl of the Akyem Apiredi JHS in the Birim South District, is reported to have given birth to a bouncing baby boy whilst writing her examination in the classroom. Three pregnant girls, including a 21-year old from Apuya D/A JHS at Jacobu, were among candidates in the Amansie Central District of the Ashanti Region who wrote this years BECE. In the Huni/Prestea Valley District of the Western Region, eight pregnant girls wrote the examination. Ten girls in the Agona West Municipality of the Central Region who sat for the BECE were reported to be pregnant, an increase from four in 2013. Two girls, who delivered two days before the commencement of the examinations, could not take part. Statistic available at the Nabdam Girls Child Education Unit of the Ghana Education Service (GES) of the Upper East Region revealed that since the beginning of the 2013/14 academic year, a total of 43 teenage school girls were made pregnant. Out of the 43, 30 of them were said to be candidates in the 2014 BECE with ages ranging between 14 to 17 years. Seventeen out of the 30 pregnant candidates delivered before the examinations began. The reason of the pregnant girls in almost all the districts mentioned, was attributed to financial constraints of their parents, poverty, insufficient time for sex education, inadequate monitoring due to lack of resources, and irresponsible parenting among others. Parents are obliged to provide for their adolescent girls, their basic needs including shelter, food, clothing and relating well with them, to save them from temptations. To curb this menace, there is the need for a comprehensive sex education programme in JHSs and SHSs to protect female students from not only unwanted pregnancies but also sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Also, because adolescent girls go through many stages of development, they should be helped to manage themselves well through sex education. This is informed by the fact that the adolescence stage involves many complicated issues, and therefore it needs all concerned, especially teachers, parents, religious organizations and civil Society Organizations, to make girls aware of issues such as sex, to save them from things which can disrupt their education, and shatter their future. This will also go a long way to sensitize students on the dangers of premarital sex and unsafe abortion. Even though the panacea for unwanted pregnancies is abstinence from sex, girls who cannot abstain ought to be provided basic information on dangers associated with teenage pregnancy, diseases associated with unprotected sex, reproductive health, family planning and nutrition, to protect them. It should be noted that, the notion of most Ghanaians that sex education promotes sexual promiscuity among teenagers, is factually inaccurate and should be discarded. At the end of the day we will be saving female students, teachers, parents and all concerned from inconveniences and uncertainties associated with unwanted pregnancy. A total of 31 teenage pregnancy related deaths were also recorded during the period. This was made known by Mr. Simeon Kwabena Acheampong, the Ashanti Regional Manager of Marie Stopes International, Ghana, an international NGO, providing contraception and safe abortion services. According to him, a total of 9,100 adolescents reportedly got pregnant in the Ashanti Region during the first half of this year. He also said three teenage pregnancy related deaths were also recorded in the region during the period. Mr. Acheampong was speaking at a three-day adolescents camp meeting organized jointly by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) in Kumasi. It brought together members of the adolescent health ambassadors clubs in senior high schools (SHS) across the country. These ambassadors are being supported to create awareness on reproductive health in both their schools and communities as part of stepped up effort to prevent unwanted pregnancies which we cant even see today. The meeting was held under the theme Equipping young people as health ambassadors for sustainable development. Mr. Acheampong expressed concern about the high rate at which many young girls were getting pregnant and dropping out of school. This, he indicated, was unhelpful to the fight to reduce poverty and asked that all combined their effort to give protection to adolescent girls. Dr. Gloria J. Quansah Asare, the Deputy Director General of GHS, labelled the youth as valuable asset and said everything should be done to help them to avoid missteps and pitfalls. He spoke of the need to reach out to them with reproductive health services to make the right choices and decisions. Statistics show that majority of the Ghanaian adolescents are in school and she said that made the school a critical platform for providing adolescent and youth-friendly health services. That, she indicated, informed the decision by the GHS to form the clubs to get to them, with the right health information and services. (Source; citifmonline.com) The problem is not only with girls dropping out of school due to pregnancy but also high death among them due to illegal pregnancy termination. Recent revelations shows that Abortion among adolescents in the Kumasi metropolis is on the rise. Some uses poisonous Tree branches sticking out of uteruses, Concoctions of herbs, bleach, mashed glasses and burnt sugar. These are some of the ways women choose to have unsafe abortions in Ghana, a practice that is leading to countless of deaths and injuries each year, leaving many other women infertile. In Ghana, despite relatively progressive laws, womens access to abortion services is still extremely limited and unsafe abortion continues to be a leading cause of maternal mortality. Maternal mortality is the second most common cause of death among women in Ghana and more than one in 10 maternal deaths or 11% are the result of unsafe abortions. Each year an estimated 20% (~42 million) of all pregnancies worldwide end in induced abortions, 20 million of which are performed under unsafe conditions. Thirteen per cent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortions, most of them in developing countries. Additionally, an estimated five million women in developing countries are hospitalized each year with complications of induced abortions. Unsafe abortions are frequently carried out by individuals lacking the necessary skill and sometimes self-induced. Africa has one of the highest induced-abortion rates in the world (29 per 1000 women of reproductive age) and more than 90% of these are unsafe. These induced abortion rates tend to be higher in settings with high unmet need for contraception and are likely to keep rising unless womens access to effective contraception and safe abortion care are improved. The abortion law in Ghana was amended in 1985 to make it more liberal. The current law permits abortion carried out by a registered medical practitioner in a registered public or private health facility under the following circumstances: rape, defilement and incest; where the pregnancy poses substantial risk to the physical or mental health of the woman; or in cases of severe fetal anomaly. In 2003, a policy to provide abortion care to the full extent of the law was developed. And since 2006, service delivery standards and protocols on prevention and management of unsafe abortion including provision of comprehensive abortion care have been implemented nationwide. Despite the less-restrictive legal environment, about 15 induced abortions per 1000 women of reproductive age are performed in the country each year and two-thirds of these are unsafe. This we call as disheartening why we dont legalize abortions other than the conditions mentioned above to decrease incidence like this. In Ghana, induced abortion complications account for 11% of maternal mortality nationwide, and up to 12% of gynecological admissions in leading public tertiary hospitals. These voluntary terminations of pregnancy are more common in urban areas and among younger women. Different methods are used for these terminations. Recent evidence from one study, indicated that over 80% of the women self-induced abortions with misoprostol. According to research done by KATH in 2017, Self-induced abortions using misoprostol is a common practice among women in this study; nearly three quarters of them suffered severe morbidity. Nonetheless, severe morbidity among misoprostol users and non-users did not differ significantly but was directly related to the gestational age at which the induced abortions occurred. Health education on the dangers of self-induced abortions and appropriate use of medication abortion could help reduce complications associated with induced abortions in Ghana. Misoprostol is a prostaglandin E 1 analogue that is licensed for the treatment of peptic ulcer disease due to a prostaglandin, it also causes uterine contractions and cervical softening that has rendered most teenagers in Ghana to use that drug as a medication to induce abortion. With increasing popularity of misoprostol as an over the counter self-administered abortifacient in Ghana, it is imperative that the morbidities associated with its use are investigated. While most studies on induced abortions have compared complications of spontaneous and induced abortions, there is paucity of research on morbidities associated with misoprostol-induced abortions. This study aimed at comparing socio-demographic characteristics and clinical complications associated with misoprostol and non-misoprostol induced abortions among patients admitted to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH), Kumasi, Ghana (Source; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4118200/) Brong Ahafo Region recorded 1,224 cases of unsafe abortion among teenagers in 2016, the Ghana Health Service report has revealed. The report said the figure represented 12.7 percent of 9,612 cases of unsafe abortion recorded in the country within the period. Mr. Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer of Global Media Foundation (GLOMEF), an anti-corruption media advocacy Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), made this known in Sunyani on Tuesday March 28th 2017. Addressing a news conference to announce the outcome of a safe abortion project his NGO was implementing in the region, Mr. Ahenu observed with regret the increasing trend of teenage pregnancy and unsafe abortion in the country. He said 110,000 adolescent girls in 352 basic schools across the country got pregnant in 2016 adding that out of the figure, the Brong-Ahafo Region alone recorded 12,112 cases in 38 basic schools. Mr. Ahenu said there is the need for adolescent people to easily access safe abortion services at public health facilities to lower the high unsafe abortion rates which contributes to maternal deaths in the country. He called for a national policy guideline for the distribution of condoms in all public places and gatherings to ensure easy access. Mr. Ahenu said when the stigma attached to the use of condoms and other family planning methods such as pills, are addressed, teenagers who could not control their sexual desires would feel at ease and demand for the services. An interview with Diana Appiah, who has gone through seven unsafe abortions, is a typical example of a woman who has undergone the dangerous procedure. In an interview with The Weekend Globe, she recounted the trauma she went through as a result of her unsafe abortions. I would bleed and bleed to the extent that I sometimes lose consciousness, she said. The issue became aggravated when I was told my womb was twisted. It was at that point that I decided not to commit anymore unsafe abortions. According to Diana, her boyfriend gave her drugs to induce an abortion after they realized they could not care for the baby. Globally, 47,000 women die as a result of unsafe abortions and eight million women suffer serious and sometimes permanent injury as a result of complications. The issue disproportionately affects women in Africa and South America. And although improvements have been seen recently in the global maternal mortality rate, the proportion of deaths attributable to unsafe abortion is holding steady at 13%. Research shows that making abortion illegal does not stop it from occurring, but rather just drives it underground, forcing women to obtain clandestine and unsafe procedures. But in Ghana, unlike in other countries where abortion is illegal, the problem is not with the law. The countrys abortion laws are already relatively liberal in cases of rape, incest or the defilement of a female idiot. Abortion is also permitted if the life or health of the woman is in danger, or if there is risk of fetal abnormality. However, few women are knowledgeable about the law. Only 3% of pregnant women and 6% of women seeking an abortion are aware of Ghanas abortion law. Also, some doctors may arbitrarily choose to deny women abortions at a hospital even when the procedure should be allowed, forcing many women to undergo an unsafe procedure elsewhere. In Ghana, unsafe abortions remain a huge problem because the existing abortion law is not implemented as it is written. And implementing the law would not only save lives, but it would save money, as well. A substantial proportion of women who survive an unsafe abortion experience complications such as severe bleeding and end up in government hospitals with very life-threatening health problems that must then be paid for. Another long-term result of unsafe abortion is that ladies who have the procedure outside of a registered clinic do not receive any education about contraception or family planning, and are likely to get pregnant again and perhaps even seek another abortion. In an interview with The Weekend Globe, Faustina Fynn-Nyame, country director for the reproductive health and family planning non-governmental organization, Marie Stopes International, said the government had set up policies to ensure safe abortions are the norm, but doctors sometimes do not adhere to those policies. She said many women pursue unsafe abortions because they are not knowledgeable about the risks and that young women are more likely to rely on their friends for abortion recommendations than seeking out qualified health care options. Weve had women coming here who are bleeding to death, she said. Weve seen horrific injuries, where theres a stick still in the womens uteruses. Fynn-Nyame said that some of the cases they have seen at the clinic have been so bad that they have had to remove the uterus or fallopian tubes in order to save the womans life. An unsafe abortion can lead to a woman being infertile for the rest of her life, she said. And thats if shes lucky. If shes unlucky, shell lose her life. Fynn-Nyame called for more sensitization and education on unsafe abortions and their repercussions. But there should also be an emphasis on family planning, she said, as unintended pregnancy is the root cause of most abortions and access to quality family planning information and services can reduce unintended pregnancy rates. Experts say the best way to reduce the need for abortion is not by denying women access to safe and legal abortion procedures, but by giving them the power to control their fertility and prevent unintended pregnancy. Unfortunately many teenagers are unware the birth control methods in Ghana are absolutely free. Government hospitals and an NGO like marie stopes are known for these services as well as free consltations. Educating the youth on the use of contraceptives whether long term or short term methods can prevent these pregnancies. Till now a lot of teenager dont even know that these contraceptives are free at government hospitals or NGOs like Marie Stopes who are into these health services. Contraceptives are birth control methods. It is termed as hormonal and barrier contraception or fertility control. There are 15 different types of contraceptives which will prevent the teenager from becoming pregnant or inducing an abortion after the pregnancy to risk his life. These include condoms, the diaphragm, the contraceptive pill, implants that can take up to 5yrs prevention, IUDs (intrauterine devices) that can take up to 3yrs, sterilization and the morning after pill, injections that takes up to 3months. (Source:http://www.dred.com) WHO, United Nations Development Programme, and sexual and reproductive health experts in the United States and abroad unanimously recommend certain actions to reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancy and abortion. 1. Improve womens access to contraceptive information and counseling and to a full range of contraceptive methods. Ensure that these services are available to all women, regardless of their age, marital status, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or number of existing children. Remember that the goal is to reduce unintended, mistimed, and unwanted pregnancies and to reduce the incidence of abortion. 2. Eliminate laws and policies that discourage or deter women of any age or condition from seeking contraceptive and family planning services. Remember that the goal is to reduce unintended pregnancy and the need for abortion. In addition, mandating parental involvement or consent too often causes teens to delay an abortion beyond the safest period (the first eight weeks of gestation). Thus, such policies can increase teens risk of death or injury from abortion. 3. Legalize abortion and make services widely available. Remember that making abortion illegal does not prevent abortion. It only prevents safe abortion. Unsafe abortion costs the lives of up to 75,000 women and damages the health of millions of women every year. 4. Provide all teens and young adults with accurate, age-appropriate sexual health education, including accurate information about contraceptives, STIs, pregnancy and parenting. Good education will best equip youth to make appropriate choices about delaying the initiation of sex and about protecting themselves and their partners when they choose to have sex. (Source; Written by Sue Alford, MLS Advocates for Youth April 2011) The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union-Ghana (ICU) has mobilised more than 300 of its members from branches within Accra and Tema to donate blood to the National Blood Bank at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra. The blood donation exercise, which was held at the ICU House in Kokomlemle, last Wednesday also attracted two of its foreign partners from a group named SASK in the Netherlands. Solomon Kotei, General Secretary of ICU, in a brief statement indicated that ICU's decision to mobilise its personnel for the exercise was in response to an appeal from the National Blood Bank to replenish its blood stocks. Reiterating the importance of blood donation, he mentioned that it is an exercise which has multiple benefits for both the donor and the beneficiary and the ultimate joy of saving a life. Blood donation is comparable to sowing a seed or an investment which can be reaped in the future by the donor when he or his relation is in dire need of blood, he stated. According to him, last Wednesday's donation was the second time ICU had made an attempt to mobilise its personnel for a national assignment. He assured that this will, henceforth, be institutionalised by the union and carried out nationwide on regular basis. The general secretary further stated that the practice of donating blood to the National Blood Bank to save lives is not only a public call to duty, but also a divine responsibility being fulfilled. Mr Kotei, on behalf of the group, called on corporate bodies in Ghana to equally join in the campaign for blood donation to the National Blood Bank as a pool where the country's medical facilities can access blood for patients who are in dire need of it. Thomas Attiah, Accra Regional Officer, ICU, expressed his excitement for hosting the event for the second time, and assured that if given the opportunity, the region will continue to be the centre for such a laudable project. Mr Henry, a representative of SASK in the Netherlands, who lauded the ICU for the initiative, indicated that contemporary trends in unionism worldwide demands that unions give back to society some of their earnings as a social intervention to alleviate vulnerable groups. Joyce Oppong Adu, a representative of the National Blood Bank, added that every certified blood from any of the groups counts and relevant to save a life. She commended the management of the ICU for mobilising its members to donate blood to the National Blood Bank. The Centre for European Studies (CES) has held its Third Lecture Series on Tuesday, 31st October, 2017 at the Kofi Drah Conference Hall of the Department of Political Science, University of Ghana. The lecture was under the theme, The State of the European Union Today. The event was chaired by Ambassador Giovanni Favilli, Italian Ambassador to Ghana. It was attended by over 400 participants comprising representatives and ambassadors of the European Union member countries in Ghana, civil society, media practitioners, faculty and students of the University of Ghana. In his welcome remarks, Prof Ransford Gyampo, Director for the Centre, noted that CES has since its inception in 2016 been relentless in its diverse activities to inspire interest in European studies among faculty and students of the University of Ghana and beyond. Indeed, this year (2017), according to Prof Gyampo, the Centre has been able to organize two lecture series/roundtables on topical issues germane to European Studies with the support of key stakeholders such as the European Union (EU) Delegation and other EU Member countries in Ghana. These, he said, have culminated in the preparation and distribution of Policy Briefs to EU- Member countries, as well as other key stakeholders and policymakers in Ghana. Prof Ransford Gyampo, Director of CES making the presentation The third lecture series, according to the CES Director, was organized following extensive evidence-based research that focused on the European Union as a body. Giving the importance of Europe in world politics, Prof Gyampo was of the firm belief and conviction that an understanding of what is happening in the EU in contemporary times would help put issues of European Studies in proper perspective and shape the knowledge of students. According to Prof Gyampo, even though the EU is a powerful bloc in contemporary politics, some people have doubts and paranoia about its current state following Brexit and other challenges. So what is the state of the EU today? What is its relevance in contemporary world politics? Are there signs of strength or future disintegration of the Union? What can be done to strengthen the Union? In his brief remarks, Giovanni Favilli, Italian Ambassador to Ghana, commended the CES and its Director for the enthusiasm and hard-work in keeping and sustaining the name and image of the Centre in the hearts and minds of the EU-Member countries in Ghana. Ambassador Giovanni Favilli, Italian He was also happy that the headquarters of the EU in Brussels have also taken note of the vibrant activities of CES. Mr Favilli stressed the importance of the theme for the lecture to the EU as a body. He commended CES for fashioning out a theme, which is very relevant and topical in the EU's scheme of activities and thought. Presenting the outcome of his research, Dr. Bossman Eric Asare, Adjunct Fellow of CES & Head of the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, noted that despite its stature in global politics as a powerful bloc and its contribution to the socio-economic and political development of many Third World countries, including Ghana, the EU has in recent times been shaken by several developments that call into question the prospects of the Union in the not-too-distant future. According to him, BREXIT is a clear case of domestic political interests trumping regional or international interests. Member of Parliament for Odododiodoo constituency, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye has communicated that the Special Prosecutor Bill has reached the consideration stage. At this stage, Members of Parliament are expected to debate and propose amendments to the bill as well do a clause by clause scrutiny before it goes to the final sage for approval. The bill is one of the flagship campaign promises of president Akufo-Addo and when passed into law, is expected to establish an office of a special prosecutor to help in the fight against corruption. Speaking on JOYNEWS AM SHOW on Thursday, Mr. Vanderpuye stated that the bill has reached the consideration stage and the cumbersome and systematic nature of that stage kept the legislators in parliament late on Wednesday evening. We have to do a clause by clause consideration and it is a very difficult process, he said. Sometimes MPs have to consider the items word by word and make sure that no word in there has any other legal implications that anyone can take advantage of. "And also we have to make sure we draft a document that will stand the test of time," he added. Mr. Vanderpuye noted that a particular clause which states that the special prosecutor must be a Ghanaian kept the House debating for about an hour because the House seemed divided as to the implication of the clause. There were concerns as to whether the clause means a Ghanaian by birth, descent, or by registration or whether a dual citizen who has allegiance to another state can hold the all-important position, he noted. The opposition MP said there was consensus about the necessity of the office of special prosecutor because it is an important tool in the fight against corruption. The office of the Special Prosecutor which is expected to prosecute corruption cases was a campaign promise by the then-candidate Nana Akufo-Addo and has since then raised concerns from politicians on the other side and from some civil society groups. Some of them believe it is a ploy to perpetuate witch-hunting. Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu believes there is no independence for the office Is promised. But the latest development seems to have settled the concerns as parliamentarians have been said to reach consensus in the consideration of the bill which will move to the third reading and then will be passed by a simple majority. Razak Kojo Opoku 02.11.2017 LISTEN The Concerned Voters Movement (CVM), has called on the government to review the contract of Mr. Kojo Graham's Lot Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited at National Lottery Authority (NLA) to save more revenue for the state. Speaking to the media on November 2, 2017 in Takoradi, the Founder and President of Concerned Voters Movement (CVM), Mr. Razak Kojo Opoku, said if President Akufo-Addo, Ministry of Finance and the Board of NLA do not review the nature of contracts of Mr. Kojo Graham's Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited, according to Mr. Kojo Opoku, there is absolutely no way the Board and Management of NLA led by Mr. Kofi Osei-Ameyaw will succeed to implement President Akufo-Addo's vision of revenue maximization for development and jobs creation. Mr. Kojo Opoku also accused Mr. Kojo Graham of being supporter of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and therefore doing everything possible to sabotage the efforts of the Board and Management of the NLA. "As usual, Mr. Kojo Graham supported by the NDC members and the Deputy Director-General of NLA, Mr. Yaw Amoakohene Baafi appointed by the NPP Government are doing everything possible to sabotage the efforts of the Board and Management of the NLA". He added that it doesn't make sense for the NLA to pay Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited much more money than what the NLA pays into the Consolidated Fund. "The NLA has been and continue to operate to the utmost benefit of Mr. Kojo Graham's Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited have been enjoying 6% commission on the gross sales of NLA on daily basis". According to him, John Mahama's Administration created a monster at the National Lottery Authority (NLA) with Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited. "To continue to protect their business interest at the NLA, Mr. Kojo Graham Lots Services Ghana Limited are employing the strategy of blackmail as a tool to run down the board and Kofi Osei-Ameyaw. President Akufo-Addo's government is too wise to fall for the lies of Mr. Kojo Graham Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited. The NPP government is not as vulnerable as the John Mahama's Administration. We entreat the Ministry of Finance, the board and management of NLA led by Kofi Osei-Ameyaw to demonstrate good leadership by reviewing and possibly terminate the contract of Mr. Kojo Graham Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited. The NLA cannot continue to work to enrich individuals at the detriment of the nation. NLA on monthly basis pays Mr. Kojo Graham Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited around GHS 8million as against the NLA monthly profit of less than GHS 2 million. This mode of transaction is seriously bleeding the NLA and the Nation. NLA is only working to enrich and financially empowers Mr. Kojo Graham. According to our information, these mafia companies are spreading falsehood as well as threatening to mafia Kofi Osei-Ameyaw and the Board members of NLA because they have decided to review the nonsense contract of Lots Services Ghana Limited and Simnet Ghana Limited. CVM would like to urge the Ministry of Finance and the NLA to sack all the mafia cartel & saboteurs of President Akufo-Addo's Vision at the NLA by the end of 30th November 2017", he revealed. Source: Daniel Kaku On behalf of the entire membership of the All Africa Students Union (AASU), I would like to congratulate you on your re-election to the Presidency of Kenya. AASU is delighted that the voters have returned you to office. We wish you every success as you prepare to take up the responsibilities and challenges of your high office. The People of Kenya have entrusted you with the responsibility of ensuring the realization of their aspirations for progress, peace and prosperity. We are also mindful that this election is a very historic one, on the back to the Supreme Court of Kenyas decision to annul the earlier election and call for re-run. We are confident that electoral reforms will follow to bring back confidence to the Kenyan Democratic Governance system. The whole world is watching, let's make Africa Proud! As you know, we are foremost concerned about the democratization of education in Africa, and we look forward to your continued achievement in championing the cause of higher education in our country. We believe the best investment we can make for the future is the education of all our citizens in Africa. It will always pay rich dividends. Best wishes as you begin your second term in office. Peter Kwasi Kodjie Secretary General All Africa Students Union (AASU The international business community has expressed confidence in the set of economic measures being currently executed to close the industrialisation gap in Ghana. Endorsing Ghanas new measures Mohammed Dewji, President of METL group, a Tanzanian Conglomerate, said he is confident the new leaders on the continent of Africa, including the Ghanaian leadership, have become far more serious with industrialisation and expressed confidence that 10 years from now, we will see a transformed Ghana and Africa. I believe now governments and the new leadership have become far more serious and theyre addressing the core problems and Im confident that in the next ten years we will not be addressing a lot of these issues again. I think they will be sorted out, Dewji, who owns 41 businesses, stated. He was responding to a presentation by Ghanas Vice President, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, on the structural and economic reforms being implemented by the Nana Akufo-Addo government to formalise Ghanas economy and place the West African country on a path of rapid industrialisation, at the Global Business Forum Africa taking place in Dubai, UAE. Speaking on the topic Industrialisation- the path to growth, Dr Bawumia outlined the rationale behind Ghanas industrialisation push, emphasising that the time for talking was over. Weve got to do the things that have to be done. I am confident about what is happening on the continent. What I see happening on the continent and in my own country are efforts to address the problems. For instance, we said, weve talked about the railway problem for the longest time, lets just do it. And weve started to do it. Weve even appointed a Minister in charge of Railways in particular to get it done. Weve got an Industrialisation strategy that is also learning from the mistakes of the past, to avoid those mistakes. We are moving on a new trajectory and we are hoping that in the next ten years we see this whole industrialisation take off. But we have to work hard at it. If you look at history, it tells you that industrialisation, in whatever form it takes, is the way to go, and we are working at it. The 2017 edition of the Global Business Forum on Africa was organized by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry under the theme Next Generation Africa.. The high-profile event, held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, explores new opportunities to enhance economic cooperation and expand trade and investment ties between the Middle East and Africa. The two-day forum features a total of 24 sessions that will involve the participation of heads of state, ministers and dignitaries, policymakers, CEOs, prominent entrepreneurs, and heads of private banks, as well as UAE government and business leaders. The attention of Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) has been drawn to a publication on Tuesday, 24 October, 2017 by the Ghanaian Times, in which a research scientist at the Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Vivian Oduro, is reported to have stated that Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) foods are safe to eat and has no health risk for consumers. According to the report, Dr. Oduro gave the assurance at a days Ghana Biotech Media Outreach in Accra organised by the National Biosafety Authority (NBA) in partnership with Program for Biosafety Systems (PBS) under the auspices of the US Embassy. FSG finds it pathetically ironic that such reckless comments could come from a Senior Research Scientist of a reputable institution as the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, and most especially, at what was billed to be a training workshop intended to build capacity of journalists on genetic engineering to enable them report accurately on the subject. Dr. Oduros astonishing claims go against years of efforts by scientists culminating in the creation of important international agreements such as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the UNs Codex Alimentarius which show widespread recognition of risks posed by GM foods and crops. The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, ratified by 166 governments seeks to protect biological diversity from the risks posed by GM technology. The UNs Codex Alimentarius, worked with scientific experts for 7 years to develop international guidelines for the assessment of GM foods and crops because of concerns about the risks they pose. It would have still been misleading even if Dr. Oduro had used the duplicitous language often used by the active pro-industry propagandists such as genetically modified organisms for food, feed and processing that have been approved in accordance with international guidelines for risk assessment are as safe as the conventional counterpart. The point is that there is not a single regulatory body approving GMOs anywhere in accordance with international guidelines for risk assessment. For example, the US that is leading the pro-GM lobby in Ghana, does very little to conform to the minimum standards of regulation of GMOs. Indeed, Prof. David Schubert, professor and head, Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute, commenting on a comprehensive peer-reviewed study of US governments regulation of GMOs that he co-authored stated: One thing that surprised us is that US regulators rely almost exclusively on information provided by the biotech crop developer, and those data are not published in journals or subjected to peer reviewThe picture that emerges from our study of US regulation of GM foods is a rubber-stamp approval process designed to increase public confidence in, but not ensure the safety of, genetically engineered foods. USA: Food and Drug Administration (FDA): GMO Seralini http://www.gmoseralini.org/fda/ Which GMO is Dr. Oduro talking about, when independent peer-reviewed claims involving scientists, physicians, academics, and experts from disciplines relevant to the scientific, legal, social and safety assessment aspects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), strongly reject claims by GM seed developers and some scientists, commentators, and journalists that there is a scientific consensus on GMO safety.? See: No scientific consensus on GMO safety http://www.ensser.org/increasing-public-information/no-scientific-consensus-on-gmo-safety/ The statement makes a clearly verifiable and incontrovertible observation that: It is often claimed that trillions of GM meals have been eaten in the US with no ill effects. However, no epidemiological studies in human populations have been carried out to establish whether there are any health effects associated with GM food consumption. As GM foods are not labelled in North America, a major producer and consumer of GM crops, it is scientifically impossible to trace, let alone study, patterns of consumption and their impacts. Therefore, claims that GM foods are safe for human health based on the experience of North American populations have no scientific basis. It is not even that the companies whose products the pro-GM lobbyists are busy defending even care about independent research. They discourage it. As a precondition to buy seeds, either to plant for crops or to use in research study, Monsanto and the gene giant companies must first sign an End User Agreement with the company. Monsanto, Pioneer (DuPont) and Syngenta require anyone buying their GMO seeds to sign an agreement that explicitly forbids that the seeds be used for any independent research. As F. William Engdahl observes, Scientists are prohibited from testing a seed to explore under what conditions it flourishes or even fails. They cannot compare any characteristics of the GMO seed with any other GMO or non-GMO seeds from another company. Most alarming, they are prohibited from examining whether the genetically modified crops lead to unintended side-effects either in the environment or in animals or humans. GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food in Humans, by F. William Engdahl, Voltaire Network, 15 September 2009, www.voltairenet.org/article162087.html Independent scientists, including some of the brightest and best in the field have come under severe attacks, their reputations ruined, after coming out with adverse findings. These include Dr. Arpad Pusztai, Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, Kevin Bradley, and reputable international organisations such as the World Health Organizations International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) after IARC scientists declared glyphosate a probable human carcinogen in March 2015. In 1998, Dr. Arpad Pusztai a world expert on plant lectins and nutritionist who spent 36 years at the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, publicly announced that the results of his research showed feeding genetically modified potatoes to rats had negative effects on their stomach lining and immune system. The fight back was immediate. Dr. Pusztai was suspended and his annual contract was not renewed. Arpad Pusztai Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_Pusztai . In secret internal Monsanto documents released on Tuesday 1st August 2017 by legal firms in the U.S. it was made clear how Monsanto successfully pressured Wallace Hayes, Editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology Journal to retract the famous Seralini study which discovered the damage caused by GM maize NK603 and low doses of Roundup herbicide. GMO Seralini Monsanto Secret Documents Show Massive Attack on Seralini Study https://www.gmoseralini.org/monsanto-secret-documents-show-massive-attack-on-seralini-study/ The list of scientists who have come under attack is almost endless and the attacks are ongoing. Currently, Prof. Kevin Bradley, a professor of weed science at the University of Missouri, and a half-dozen other university weed scientists have come under attack after confronting what they believe are misleading and scientifically unfounded claims by Monsanto new low-volatility formulations of dicamba. Monsanto Attacks Scientists After Studies Show Trouble For Weedkiller Dicamba Slashdot https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/10/26/214219/monsanto-attacks-scientists-after-studies-show-trouble-for-weedkiller-dicamba Brent Wisner, an attorney from the firm that released the documents, told journalist Carey Gillam, who is also the research director for U.S. Right to Know. These show that Monsanto has deliberately been stopping studies that look bad for them, ghostwriting literature and engaging in a whole host of corporate malfeasance. They (Monsanto) have been telling everybody that these products are safe because regulators have said they are safe, but it turns out that Monsanto has been in bed with U.S. regulators while misleading European regulators. Secret Docs Show Monsantos Attempt to Influence Writers, Bribe Scientists https://www.ecowatch.com/monsanto-glyphosate-cancer-2468647604.html The health, environment, and agriculture authorities of most nations recognize publicly that no blanket statement about the safety of all GMOs is possible and that they must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Dr. Oduros astonishing claim that Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) foods are safe to eat and has no health risk for consumers, is clearly misleading and misrepresents or outright ignores the currently available scientific evidence and the broad diversity of scientific opinions among scientists on this issue. The real problem here is that such a claim further encourages a climate of complacency that could lead to a lack of regulatory and scientific rigour and appropriate caution, potentially endangering the health of humans, animals, and the environment. For Life, the Environment, and Social Justice! Edwin Kweku Andoh Baffour Communications Directorate, FSG Action sought against perpetrators of violence against journalists International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists is observed across the world every year on November 2. 02.11.2017 LISTEN An ultra modern Community Information Centre (CIC) has been inaugurated at Amanfro, in the Okere constituency of the Eastern Region to provide practical lessons in Information Communication Technology for over 2,000 pupils in the catchment area. Twenty basic schools in the communities, including Nsutem, Amanfro, Kobokobo, Asenema, Bepoase, Okrakwdwo, Nyameberkyere and its satellite communities would use the centre for their practical lessons in ICT for improved performance. This will also provide internet services to the communities and end the stress of children in that area having to trek to Koforidua, Nkurakan and Akropong to check for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results and computer placement on the internet. The facility consisting of two separate cafA/computer centres, library, dining area and pantry, reception, a mangers office and a 250-seater capacity conference hall at a cost of GHE740,000.00, was through the initiative of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Okere, Mr Dan Kwaku Botwe. Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, the MP said the move was to ensure that no child, irrespective of his or her location, lack the opportunity to have knowledge in computer education since it has become a global requirement. Mr Botwe noted that, even though Akuapem was known to be the cradle of education, there were town and communities down the Akuapem ridge that needed the intervention to ensure that children in that location were not left out in the quest of delivering quality education, particularly in the area of ICT, which had become an examinable subject. He said all the basic schools in the catchment area would rotate shifts for practicals, and that, all arrangement were advanced to facilitate the smooth movement of the children from their respective schools to the centre on each practical lesson day. The MP commended the chiefs and the opinion leaders of the area for their immense support towards the completion of the project within a record time of six months, adding that, it was one of the only two of such facilities in the entire region. Mrs Ursula Ekuful, Minister of Communications, who jointly inaugurated the facility with the MP, urge the traditional authorities to take keen interest in the facility to ensure that the purpose of equipping every child with computer knowledge was achieved. Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, the Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), on Thursday called for a national conversation on the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to help position the Agency at its rightful place. Nana Gyan- Apenteng said the GNA needed to be transformed, adding: 'This place is too good to be ruled out. This place must stand. We need to have a national conversation on the GNA to allow it to stand'. 'It is often forgotten that GNA is the official News Agency of Ghana. It is supposed to be the primary gatekeeper of news and information from and about our country', Nana Gyan-Apenteng noted. Nana Gyan-Apenteng was addressing the inauguration of an eight-member Board of Directors for the Agency in Accra. 'This is why the NMC has proposed the setting of up a committee of enquiry to look at GNA - the bigger picture in the scheme of affairs, and provide recommendations that will inform the national conversation as far as its placement is concerned. 'We hope that this conversation will result in answering the question of whether the nation needs its News Agency and if so how do we get it to work for us,' Nana Gyan-Apenteng said although things had not been good lately for the Agency, especially when it had operated without a substantive General Manager for close to one year, 'the NMC believed that the relevance of the Agency was not in doubt. He therefore tasked the new board to support the management to find creative ways of bringing that relevance to the fore. 'Today, more than ever before, people need quality information on which to base the decisions that drive their lives. 'People in Ghana and abroad need to know on a daily basis, what is happening in all parts of our country and they will be happy to have interesting stories from across the country. The GNA with its network of journalists and stringers, can provide some of these services. 'We believe that the team we have put together as a new Board is more than competent to help sustain this organisation by building on the good work of the previous Board. 'What we also need here is unity of purpose across the entire organisation. If we all pull together in the same direction there is no doubt that we will berth safely at our destination'. The new Board, chaired by Professor Olivia Adwoa Tiwaah Frimpong Kwapong, a lecturer at the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Ghana; has Dr Sarah Akrofi Quarcoo, a renowned broadcaster and a Journalism lecturer, Mr Charles Acheampong, a Communication Specialist with the National Communication Authority, and Mr Kofi Boakye, a Lawyer and Management Consultant as members. Others are: Ms Ellen Avorgbedor, a veteran Broadcaster, Dr Kwame Nyamekye, a lecturer at the Methodist University College, Mr Albert Sam, a veteran Journalist, and the General Manager of the GNA. They were sworn into office by Nana Gyan-Apenteng, who urged them to help the GNA to survive the immediate difficulties by using the knowledge and experience at their disposal to advance the cause of the Agency. The NMC Chair, said the GNA had played a critical role in the dissemination of news, as an institution established in the sub-Saharan Africa, not only to meet the needs of Ghana, but also of the African continent. He recalled that well into the 1990s, GNA was the main source of information for most news outlets, diplomatic missions and international agencies in Ghana and beyond. 'Even today, what most people are not aware of is the fact that GNA supplies much of the information, especially from outside the main cities and towns', he noted. 'However, as we all acknowledge, the impact of technology, especially Information and Communication Technologies, (ICT), on news agencies has been profound, though the biggest advantage of news agency journalism was and still remains the speed of delivery.' He called for more resources for the GNA, including financial, equipment, better trained managers, technicians and engineers and also, well trained journalists who would provide the news from across the country. Prof Kwapong said the GNA really had a history in the annals of the country and that it had so far lived to play its role very well, despite the challenges confronting it presently. She said the Board was ready to work with all stakeholders, including the staff to help turn its fortunes around so that the Agency could fulfill its mandate of informing its audience with accurate, objective information with timeliness. Mr Rex Annan, the Acting General Manager of GNA said with the provision of the needed resources, the Agency was ready to live up to its expectation of better informing the citizenry on governmental, institutional as well as relevant bodies that were important in their daily lives. 'For the better communication of what is going on in Ghana, GNA is key to bridging the gap between institutions and Ghanaians', he noted. GNA By Lydia Kukua Asamoah/ William Fiabu, GNA At Least 25 students of the Klo -Agogo Senior High School in the Eastern region have been treated and discharged as severe Malaria and suspected cases of pneumonia continue to strike students. The situation is being blamed on the accommodation crises facing the school which has compelled students to use classrooms as dormitories, without beds. Physician Assistant at Klo-Agogo Clinic, Michael Essien told Starr News students are often brought to the facility with malaria. I will say virtually, every day you see students from the Secondary School, especially first-year students reporting cases like malaria, abdominal cases but mostly malaria dominates. Klo-Agogo SHS is facing severe accommodation challenges compelling School Authorities to convert classrooms into dormitories without beds hence students sleep on the floor in the congested condition inimical to their health. Due to the congestion and lack of beds, the use of mosquito nets is an impossible option. The students who cannot endure the heat and discomfort in the dormitories are forced to sleep outside. The infrastructure crises at Klo-Agogo SHS, also known as High Klass, has also forced School Authorities to hold classes in uncompleted 12-Units storey Classroom block and pavilions. The School has no dining Hall hence a canteen built by the 2007 -2011 year group of Students Representative Council (SRC), has been turned into dining facility where students eat in turns. The Assembly Member for the Area, Harold Kuma told Starr News there is a looming Cholera outbreak in the School because students have resulted to open defecation due to the inadequate toilet facility. When you go to the toilet right now, we have eight seater; four for boys and four for girls, almost all the toilets are full, the girls; it is left with only one so when they go, they do it in polythene bags and just throw it away. So at the side of the toilet, there are some trees there when u see any polythene bag, it is a toilet Ghanas Ambassador to the United States (U.S.) His Excellency (H.E.) Dr. Barfour Agyei-Barwuah was the special guest at the diaspora engagement town hall meeting held in the Harford County Maryland, U.S. by Ghanaians in the area. At the meeting, the Ambassador interacted with Ghanaian members of Edgewood, Columbia, and Baltimore communities in Maryland on October 29, 2017. The occasion was organized by the Ghana Unity Association (GUA), a non-political, non-tribal, non-governmental and non-religious organization committed to nurturing friendship and collaborate growth between Ghanaians in the Harford County of Maryland. Ambassador Agyei-Barwuah who was accompanied by delegates from the Ghana Mission in Washington DC used the occasion to assure the community that the Free Senior High School education policy (Free SHS) started by the President Akufo-Addo government in September 2017 is indeed sustainable. Embassy officials in attendance were Stella Ansah of Trade Department, Akosua Badoo of the Diaspora Desk, Eric Boateng of Political Desk and Akosua Okyere-Badoo who is Minister of Economic and Diaspora affairs. The others are Joseph Ngminebayihi (Head of Consular and Welfare) and Stella Akosua Ansah (Head of Trade & Investment). Free SHS sustainable, says Ambassador Agyei-Barwuah to Harford County Maryland If Free SHS wasnt sustainable it wouldnt have been started at all. You have to recognize that we have had free education from birth to university in the Northern part of Ghana all these years and it has been sustainable I think as a nation we should owe everybody education at least up to the age of 16 to make the person either good enough to continue or good enough to contribute to the national economy. This is because reading and writing is crucial no matter how you look at it Ambassador Agyei-Barwuah. In his continued assurance the Ambassador gave his word at the town hall meeting that a lot of measures have been put in place to sustain Free SHS education including income from Ghanas oil revenues. He called on all in Ghana to meet and respect their tax obligations as their personal contribution to the continued success of that government policy. A question from a member of audience pointed out the fact that the quest of GUA which is to assist the health and educational sectors of Ghana is sometimes hindered by things like the cost of clearing goods intended for such purposes obtained through charities and donations, how best can the Ghana Embassy help alleviate some of these hurdles, asked the audience member. GUA was assured that anyone sending materials to Ghana from the Harford County of Maryland or anywhere in the US to support both the educational and health sectors of the economy was going to be given the needed assistance by the Embassy. The Ambassador asked that people feel free to personally contact the Embassy or his personal secretary for assistance on that and any issue because Ghanaians are the reason why the embassy exists. More information is available about the Embassy activities at www.ghanaembassydc.org . Harford County Maryland Association of Ghanaians impressed Chairman of GUA Mr. Kwaku Duah Ameyaw disclosed to TheAfricanDream.net that the association has in the past donated some books and food items to the Lighthouse Christian Orphanage at Aburi, and the Eye of the Lord Orphanage at Nsawam, both townships are in the Akuapim South District of the Eastern Region of Ghana. They also donated medical supplies including mattresses to the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi and look to do more with the promised support of the Embassy from the Ambassador. Mr. Ameyaw said the event was a great success: GUA executives are all impressed and so are Ghanaians in other parts of Maryland that were able to attend. We are very grateful to the Ambassador and his staff for making time to sit with us, we hope to work together with them to see Ghana move forward and become the nation we all want it to be. Other Executives of GUA include Dr. Wilfred Addo-Asah Vice Chairman, Douglas Okyere Secretary, Kwabena Antwi Treasurer, Anita Frimpong Financial Secretary, Kwadwo Adade Organizing Secretary and Franklin Tsiquaye Porter. The Association was formed in 2004 by Ghanaians living in the Harford County Maryland to promote harmony and unity as well as cater to the needs of Ghanaians within the community. President Alassane Ouattara on Thursday inaugurated a huge Chinese-funded dam in southern Ivory Coast designed to boost the country's power capacity by nearly 14 percent. The four-turbine, four-kilometre (2.5-mile) -long Soubre dam is expected to add 275 megawatts of power to the network's present annual supply of 2,000 MW, said Amidou Traore, managing director of the electricity firm CI-Energie. China has provided 85 percent of its cost, estimated at 331 billion CFA francs (500 million euros, $583 million). Construction began in 2013, and the first turbine went online in June. Large dam projects are widely attacked by environmentalists for their impact on river flow, which affects habitat. But Outtara, in his inauguration speech, noted the country's commitments under the 2015 Paris climate-change agreement to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent by 2030, across all sectors. "The Soubre hydroelectric dam, by producing renewable energy, will help us to reach this goal," he said, adding that companies would also get a boost in "competitiveness". The Chinese embassy described the initiative as "emblematic" of bilateral cooperations. A major economy in West Africa, Ivory Coast launched a scheme to rebuild its electrical infrastructure after a bout of violent political upheaval in 2010-11. Production will double by 2020 according to the plan, which foresees investment of nearly 16 billion euros, funded mostly from the private sector, by 2030. As the country's biggest hydro-electric scheme, Soubre will boost the share of renewables in Ivory Coast's energy mix to 45 percent, Traore said. The rest is provided by fossil fuels. The Member of Parliament for the Builsa South Constituency in the Upper East Region and a member of the Parliamentary select Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hon Clement Apaak has revealed that 80 Members of Parliament from the National Democratic Congress yesterday visited the office of the former president John Dramani Mahama to inform him to as a matter of necessity lead the NDC in the next general elections (2020). He made this known on Cruz FM's Morning Show hosted by Alhassan Bin Jibril Spelele. "Only yesterday 80 NDC MPs including myself went to the office of the former president, he wasn't present but we met his chief of staff Mr Julius Debrah and our interest was simple .He's the only person capable of leading the NDC that's it", Apaak said. He however said that the rest of the MPs who were not part were not happy that they were not informed. He said the former president John Mahama has no choice but to listen to them because they would force him and that their position is not negotiable. Hon. Apaak indicated that the longest serving legislator on the NDC side was not part of the 80 MPs who visited the office of the former president John Mahama. Meanwhile, the NDC MP stated that they will organise series of demonstrations against the former president in the event that he refuse to lead the party to capture power in 2020. Following series of reports by Citi News on the dire need for desks by first-year students of the La Presbyterian Senior High School, government and private entities have moved in address the problem. Citi News earlier reported that, students were sitting on cement blocks due to the lack of furniture, following the increase in the number of students under the governments Free Senior High School programme. Chief Executive Officer of McDan Shipping Dr. Daniel Mckorley First to donate one hundred desks to the school was the Chief Executive Officer of McDan Shipping Dr. Daniel Mckorley, who promised to donate more after assessing the situation at the school. The Municipal Chief Executive of the La Dade Kotopon Municipal Assembly, Gladys Mann Dedy also presented three hundred desks to the school on behalf of the Assembly. La Dade Kotopon Municipal Chief Executive, Gladys Mann Dedy, presenting the chairs to the school. Finally, the Ghana Education Service (GES) presented one hundred desks as part of their contribution to resolving the desks deficit in the school. This brings to a total of five hundred desks donated to the school within a space of two weeks, after Citi News expose on the desks situation at the school. The immediate past headmaster of the school, Mr. Samuel Salamat in an earlier interview with Citi News, said the school needed about five hundred desks. When we conducted the furniture audit, we had only ninety-four set of furniture, as against six-hundred and seven first-year students that were posted to the school. The students and members of the staff of the La Presby Senior High School expressed their gratitude to government for listening to their plea and coming to their aid The assistant boys perfect, Theophelos Annan, also expressed appreciation to both government and McDan Shipping for their assistance. Listen to the full report below: By: Anass S. Seidu/citifmonline.com/Ghana 03.11.2017 LISTEN The Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG), has declared a nationwide strike in protest of unpaid salaries. The teachers had threatened to down their tools if the government failed to pay salary arrears owed it members since October 2016. CETAG had lamented that, despite a directive by the National Labour Commission (NLC), asking the Ministry of Finance to pay the arrears within two weeks, they are yet to be paid. According to them, per the migration of the tertiary statuses of the Colleges of Education following the passage of the Colleges of Education Act 847 in 2012, the teachers were expected to be paid the salary difference between their previous salary levels and the new salaries from January to September 2016. CETAG has said that, until the arrears are paid, they are withdrawing their services from the 38 colleges across the country. A statement signed by the National Secretary of the Association, Prince Obeng-Himah and cited by citifmonline.com said: On the basis of this development, leadership has decided that members should withdraw our services in all the thirty-eight public colleges of education till such a time that the arrears are fully paid to members, having duly consulted all Local and Zonal branches of the Association on the matter The statement directed all members to wear red bands as a mark of the protest. Strike affects Offinso teacher trainees Teacher trainees at the Offinso College of Education in the Ashanti Region say they have begun feeling the impact of the strike by their tutors. Citi News Hafiz Tijani reported that Members of the College of Education Teachers Association of Ghana(CETAG) at the Offinso college are complying with a directive by their leaders. The tutors have boycotted lectures today [Thursday] to join their colleagues in other regions in the nationwide action. Some of the trainees who spoke to Citi News called on the Government to address the concerns of their tutors to enable them return to the classrooms. By: Mohammed Alabira/citifmonline.com/Ghana The Rwandan government has offered to help the Akufo-Addo administration undertake reforms in the countrys information Communication Technology (ICT) space. President Paul Kagame made the offer when he met with Vice President, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, on the sidelines of the ongoing Global Business Forum on Africa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The structural economic reforms being undertaken by the Ghana government, including the implementation of a National Digital Property Addressing System, the issuance of a National ID card, and the introduction of a Paperless Port system, have already received commendation from international bodies such as the World Bank. Rwanda is known for its business-friendly environment, and is ranked the highest in Africa for the ease of doing business. Explaining the offer from Rwanda, Ghanas Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who accompanied the Vice President said: Rwanda, having taken a lead in that area already, is available, willing and excited, also in line with its Pan African interest to extend a hand to Ghana, and to assist us to even quicken the pace at which we are introducing a lot of these reforms especially reforms in the area of ICT. His excellency, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia also took him through some of the reforms that we have been embarking on, and the next stage is to now formalize the exercise of cooperation, and get a team together that can now more directly tap into the Rwandan experience when it comes to doing business, when it comes to plugging ICT into various aspects of our economic and governance life as a people. The Forum, organized by the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is under the theme Next Generation Africa, and is taking place at Dubai's Madinat Jumeirah from November 1st-2nd, 2017. The high-profile event, held under the patronage of the Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, will explore new opportunities to enhance economic cooperation and expand trade and investment ties between the Middle East and Africa. The two-day forum features a total of 24 sessions that will involve the participation of heads of state, ministers and dignitaries, policymakers, CEOs, prominent entrepreneurs, and heads of private banks, as well as UAE government and business leaders. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the METL Group in Tanzania, Mohamed Dewji, will be discussing the topic Industrialization the path to growth? Arrest of Dhungel raises hope of justice for war-era victims The arrest of Balkrishna Dhungel on Tuesday for war-era murder has given a glimmer of hope to thousands of victims of the decade-long Maoist insurgency, who have been awaiting justice for over a decade now. Electoral competency Women are still underrepresented in Nepali politics and the PR system has not made it any better Govts plan to defer transfers may hit fiscal federalism The plan to institutionalise fiscal federalism has faced first big hurdle, as the Ministry of Finance is mulling over releasing the second tranche of grants to local bodies based on their fund utilisation capacity, a move that goes against the spirit of the constitution and may prevent formation of strong local governments. Half a milestone Maoist leader Dhungels arrest for war-era murder should now be followed by broader prosecution By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development and Anis Chowdhury, former Professor of Economics, University of Western Sydney, who held various senior United Nations positions in New York and Bangkok, and Zera Zuryana Idris of International Islamic University, Malaysia. Originally published at Inter Press Service Although quite selective, targeted, edited and carefully managed, last years Panama Papers highlighted some problems associated with illicit financial flows, such as tax evasion and avoidance. The latest Global Financial Integrity (GFI) report shows that illicit financial outflows (IFFs) from developing countries, already at alarming levels, continue to grow rapidly. Illicit Financial Flows Growing Rapidly With international financial liberalization enabling investments abroad, legitimate outflows have also been growing rapidly, heightening macro-financial risks to countries. Many of todays financial centres compete intensely to attract customers by offering lower tax rates and banking secrecy. It is generally presumed that IFFs are related to tax evasion and corruption. Such financial flows largely involve financial service providers, law offices and companies with transnational activities, often involving investments in real estate and other assets worth billions. Besides enabling governments and legislation, legal and accounting firms as well as shell companies have been crucial. The GFI report estimates that developing countries lost somewhere between $620 billion (bn) and $970 bn in illicit outflows in 2014. The Washington-based think tank found IFFs from the South to be 4.2-6.6% of total developing country trade for 2014, while inflows were 9.5-17.4%. Total IFFs of all developing countries in 2014 were estimated at $2,010-3,507 bn. Illicit financial flows of all developing countries, 2004-2013 During 2005-2014, IFFs from the South were 4.6-7.2% of developing countries total trade, while such inflows were 9.5-16.8%. GFI attributes about 3.3% of IFFs over this period to fraudulent trade mis-invoicing or transfer pricing. China, Russia, Mexico, India and Malaysia lead all countries in illicit capital flight. Since 2012, emerging and developing countries have lost over a trillion dollars yearly that could invested productively in industry, agriculture, healthcare, education, or infrastructure. Methodological Doubts GFI estimates have been criticized, e.g., for making unrealistic assumptions about trade-related transport costs and ignoring other explanations for errors. For instance, estimated GFI outflows include IFFs and trade mis-invoicing estimated from inconsistencies in trade data. For GFI, leakages (errors and omissions) in the balance of payments (BoP) are a type of IFFs. It assumes that all unreported leakages in inflows and outflows of a country are illicit. While long associated with capital flight, such BoP leakages may include legitimate reporting errors, as the report recognizes. But as such leakages only account for a small fraction of total IFFs estimated by GFI, they are not likely to appreciably affect overall estimates. Criminal Activities IFFs in developing countries may also be due to transnational criminal activities, which GFI estimates globally for 2014 as follows: counterfeiting ($923-1,130 bn), drug trafficking ($426-652 bn), illegal logging, ($52-157 bn), human trafficking ($150.2 bn), illegal mining ($12-48 bn), illegal fishing ($15.5-36.4 bn), illegal wildlife trade ($5-23 bn), crude oil theft ($5.2-11.9 bn), small arms and light weapons trafficking ($1.7-3.5 bn), organ trafficking ($840m-1.7 bn), trafficking in cultural property ($1.2-1.6 bn), totalling $1.6-2.2 trillion. Legitimate outflows have also increased rapidly in recent years. Besides the decades-old promotion of tax exemption for free trade or export-processing zones, some emerging market economies have recently promoted and enabled outward foreign direct and portfolio investments. Such capital outflows are said to balance portfolio investment inflows increasing foreign ownership of emerging market economies corporate sectors. But such balancing provides no protection in the event of financial panic and a rush to exit. The push for ever greater financial liberalization thus exposes them to greater fragility and vulnerability. Participating in such a race to the bottom by offering tax loopholes typically involves making ever more concessions to the rich and powerful. Rich countries have been quite selective in administering anti-bribery rules, and rarely take effective action, e.g., to prevent anonymous companies being abused, as highlighted by last years Panama Papers revelations. International Cooperation Needed The nature and scale of illicit flows mean that international cooperation is urgently needed. While progress has been slow at the United Nations, the cooperation of the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral institutions will be vital for progress. If not, rich countries will continue to call the shots through the OECD rich country club, which has been dominant on international tax matters. Peak national authorities should work closely with different bodies like the central bank, tax revenue authorities, customs authorities and police to enhance tax collection, increase government transparency, improve natural resource control by government, and enable public scrutiny of revenues and other public accounts. Such efforts will require more evidence and modes of investigation, as well as the cooperation of all relevant parties. Ultimately, political will, especially to take on powerful vested interests, will make the difference. Further international financial integration after the 1997-1998 Asian financial crises and the 2007-2009 global financial crisis has resulted not only in fast growing financial outflows from the South, but also in greater vulnerability to new sources of volatility and instability. By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She now spends much of her time in Asia and is currently working on a book about textile artisans. On Monday, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Richard Gates on twelve counts, including conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to launder money, and various charges of failure to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), and failure to register as a foreign agent, concerning activities in the Ukraine that ended in 2014. (Read the indictment here.) Im not alone in pointing out that absent Manaforts involvement in Trumps campaign, his failure to register as a foreign agent would not have been targeted, as many lobbyists are not conscientious in fulfilling this reporting requirement. See, for example, this National Review account: The offense of failing to register as a foreign agent (Count Ten) may be a slam-dunk, but it is a violation that the Justice Department rarely prosecutes criminally. There is often ambiguity about whether the persons actions trigger the registration requirement, so the Justice Departments practice is to encourage people to register, not indict them for failing to do so. Much has been made of the absence of any tax charges in the present indictment, one which alleges conspiracy to commit money laundering. The lawyers I spoke to werent unduly concerned about such seemingly missing counts, pointing out that the indictment can be amended later to include tax charges, as investigations proceed. In fact, this indictment should probably be read as a warning shot the first step in a lengthy, wide-ranging investigation. I was reminded by one lawyer I spoke to yesterday that special prosecutors have virtually limitless powers, and certainly no major lobbyist could expect to survive unscathed the level of scrutiny that will be brought to bear in this investigation. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times published a piece reinforcing that line, Andrew Weissmann, Muellers Legal Pit Bull, that reads like the work of a legal fanboy, and the message of which is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: Two decades later, Mr. Weissmann has turned his attention to a more prominent set of prospective conspirators: He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on ones perspective. It is not clear if President Trump and his charges fear Mr. Weissmann as they gird for the slog ahead. It is quite clear, former colleagues and opponents say, that they should. The million dollar question: Will this implicate or threaten Trump? So far, I think no. But we must all stay tuned and pass the popcorn. Bottom Line for Trump One goal in indicting Manafort was to force him to give up the goods on Trump regarding alleged Russian collusion in the election campaign. Yet the offenses alleged in the indictment concerned activities in the Ukraine during a specific time period ending before Manaforts campaign involvement. (The indictment also include a charge of making false statements to prosecutors in 2016, concerning these earlier activities.) As the Wall Street Journal opined: The most striking news is that none of this involves the 2016 election campaign. The indictment makes clear that Mr. Manaforts work for Ukraine and his money transfers ended in 2014. The 2016 charges are related to false statements Mr. Manafort made to the Justice Department. Theres reason to think Manafort might not have such goods to deliver. Recall that Trump initially brought Manafort into his campaign in March 2016, elevated him to campaign manager in June, and tied him in August, according to The Washington Post. Now, theres no denying that Manafort kept some very sleazy company (see, for example, this September post from John Helmer). The Journal noted (drily): Mr. Manafort has lobbied for a rogues gallery of dictators, with the occasional domestic scandal (HUD contracts). But lobbying on behalf of unsavory foreign clients this isnt per se illegal (reminding me of Michael Kinsleys quip, The scandal isnt whats illegal, the scandal is whats legal.) The Journal further notes: One popular theory is that Mr. Mueller is throwing the book at Mr. Manafort so he will cop a plea and tell what he knows about Russian-Trump campaign chicanery. But that assumes he knows something that to date no Congressional investigation has found. Prosecutors typically try to turn witnesses before they indict, and Messrs. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday. Issues With Manafort Indictment In the interests of keeping this post of readable length, Im going to limit my focus. The National Review account cited above is worth reading in full. I am of course aware of the ideological slant of that publication, but I found little to fault in its analysis admittedly, making the case for the defense and summarized thus: On first glance, Muellers case, at least in part, seems shaky and overcharged. Since Manafort has pleaded not guilty, he can and will draw on high-priced legal talent that will certainly make these and similar arguments, zeroing in on weaknesses in he governments case.. In particular, while even this National Review account concedes that the failure to register as a foreign agent seems to be a slam-dunk (leaving aside the clear political motivation of taking a particularly Javertian line on this lapse), whether this will result in a win for the government isnt wholly clear, due to possible prosecutorial overreach: Specifically, Congress considers false statements in the specific context of foreign-agent registration to be a misdemeanor calling for zero to six months imprisonment. (See Section 622(a)(2) of Title 22, U.S. Code.) That is the offense Mueller charges in Count Eleven. But then, for good measure, Mueller adds a second false-statement count (Count Twelve) for the same conduct charged under the penal-code section (Section 1001 of Title 18, U.S. Code) that makes any falsity or material omission in a statement to government officials a felony punishable by up to five years imprisonment. Obviously, one cannot make a false statement on the foreign-agent registration form without also making a false statement to the government. Consequently, expect Manafort to argue that Mueller has violated double-jeopardy principles by charging the same exact offense in two separate counts, and that the special counsel is undermining Congresss intent that the offense of providing false information on a foreign-agent registration form be considered merely a misdemeanor. Possible Fourth Amendment Violations Taint Manafort Evidence? Continuing with another potential defense argument, Ill mention another possible problem with the governments case, discussed in a Rachel Stockman opinion piece published by LawNewz. Again, lest I be accused of pro-Manafort or shudder pro-Trump bias, I want to emphasize if I can spot these issues and develop such arguments, based on on-line research, assorted back and forth email exchanges, and telephone calls conducted over the last couple of days, certainly Manaforts defense team will do this and more so please do not shoot your humble messenger. While calling the indictment very detailed and well-documented Stockman continued: there is one area that could hurt Muellers investigation. Muellers team may have obtained evidence in the raid of Paul Manaforts home that was not covered by the search warrant. That could be problematic. In a surprise raid on July 26th, FBI agents busted into Manaforts home in Alexandria, Virginia to collect documents and other materials related to the FBI probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. At the time, Manaforts attorney raised concerns about how the raid was conducted. In order for the feds to obtain a warrant, a federal judge would have to determine that probable cause existed that a crime was committed. As part of the warrant, investigators attached an affidavit which contained a list of items that FBI agents hoped to collect. Thats where the trouble appears to be in Manaforts case. The key issue is whether this constituted an illegal search, and exactly what was seized. Here, the Stockman piece relies on a September CNN report: During that raid, Muellers investigators took documents considered to be covered by attorney-client privilege, sources told CNN. Lawyers from the WilmerHale law firm, representing Manafort at the time, warned Muellers office that their search warrant didnt allow access to attorney materials. The documents in question have now been returned, the sources say. The episode raised questions about whether investigators have seen materials they werent entitled to obtain. You cant unsee something, one source said. Its not an uncommon problem in FBI investigations. US attorneys typically have separate document-review teams to prevent investigators from handling materials they arent allowed to have. Its not clear what procedures Muellers office uses. Im not taking a position on this issue one way or another, but merely flagging this as a potential problem for the governments case. Attorney-Client Privilege Pierced Finally, Id like to mention a another LawNewz opinion piece, this by Elura Nanos, which spotlights a potential problem for the defense. The piece discusses a Memorandum Opinion, unsealed at the end of October, in which D.C. federal district court chief judge Beryl A. Howell compelled grand jury testimony from a lawyer representing Manafort and Gates under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. The attorney-client privilege isnt absolute, and judges can order an attorneys testimony if it falls within certain exceptions. Over to Nanos: Now we know that the grand jury proceedings culminated in indictments, and Judge Howells ruling on the this motion to compel testimony is more than a little foreshadowing. The Courts opinion on this issue allows us to peek into the generally secret grand jury proceedings, and that peek isnt looking so good for the defendants. Now, frustratingly, Judge Howells opinions was heavily redacted interested readers may wish to click the link above to see just how extensively for themselves. Ill again rely on the Nanos account which lays out the key concern: The courts memorandum was heavily redacted, so at this point, its unclear which statements the judge meant, but this portion of the document sure sounds bad for the defendants: the above statement is false, a half-truth, or at least misleading because evidence shows that Target 1 and Target 2 were intimately involved in significant outreach in the United States on behalf of the ECFMU, the Party of Regions and/or the Ukrainian government. Yeah, things can change at trial, but even at a preliminary phase, its not good for a judge to make a finding that youre intimately involved in sinister foreign misdealings. Oh, and there was also this: Through its ex parte production of evidence, the [Special Counsels Office] has clearly met its burden of making a prima facie showing that the crime-fraud exception applies by showing that the Targets were engaged in or planning a criminal or fraudulent scheme when [they] sought the advice of counsel to further the scheme. Those seven little letters should strike fear in the hearts of Manafort, Gates, and their lawyers. The SCO hasnt just met its burden its done so clearly. Allow me to translate from judge-to-English: You guys are screwed. Take a plea or watch everyone around you even your own lawyers go down. For more in a similar vein lauding Muellers serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry, see this Atlantic account, which extensively discusses the plea agreement of Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulus and which I lack space to discuss further in this Manafort indictment post. Trump Response Id like to point to a New York Times piece, headlined In Call With Times Reporter, Trump Projects Air of Calm Over Charges that suggests that Trump is managing to keep it together, and dare I say it, respond to the Manafort indictment in a presidential way in the traditional pre-Trumpian sense of that word. Permit me to quote from the Grey Ladys account at length: (Natural News) For many years, he was a namesake at Forbes where he published authoritative-sounding articles promoting genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and other biotechnological products. But Henry I. Miller is hardly the esteemed academic that he wishes everyone perceived him as being, at least as far as his corporate conflicts of interest are concerned. You see, Miller has long proven himself to be a corporate sellout who has made a habit out of shilling for Big Industry. Whether it is his constant pushing of GMOs as the solution to world hunger or defending to its bitter end glyphosate the primary active ingredient in Monsantos Roundup herbicide as a safe and effective tool to manage industrial food crops, Miller almost always sides with the status quo. Having previously worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for nearly 15 years as a medical researcher, Miller surely knows a thing or two about how the system works. He also became a think tank fellow for scientific philosophy at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, and claims degrees from well-known institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University impressive credentials that some might say give Miller an extra measure of clout on matters pertaining to food science. But a closer look into Millers curriculum vitae reveals that much of his success can be attributed to his direct involvement with major industries that paid him the big bucks to push their products. Miller helped found the now-defunct tobacco industry front group The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, for instance, which existed on behalf of the tobacco industry to push cigarettes as healthy. Miller was also in charge of fast-approving the first licenses for genetically-engineered hormones and insulin, a major cash cow for Big Pharma. Miller also directed the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a biotech industry front group riddled with corruption and scandal. ACSH is primarily funded by pharmaceutical, chemical, and biotechnology interests that routinely attack organic and non-GMO farming, natural supplements, and practically all other non-patentable means of nourishment and survival that compete with industrial agriculture and chemical medicine. Monsanto is the pimp, and sellout academics like Miller are its prostitutes One of Millers latest indictments comes in the form of his direct involvement in forging scientific papers on behalf of Monsanto, the worlds most evil corporation. The recent release of internal company documents that the media is calling the Monsanto Papers has revealed that Miller was paid by Monsanto to put his name on articles that he technically didnt even write, at least one of which was published by Forbes. Recently unsealed email communications between Miller and Monsantos Eric Sachs show that Monsanto petitioned Miller to write a piece for Forbes challenging the finding by the World Health Organizations (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that glyphosate probably causes cancer in humans. Miller responded by saying that he would need to start from a high-quality draft, which was provided to him by Sachs. But this alleged draft appeared just days later in Forbes, with almost no changes made to it. This is what you call plagiarism, which any seasoned reader of Natural News already knows is nothing new for Monsanto. But it may come as a shock to anyone who put faith in Millers independent analysis of these matters, believing him to simply be an innocent academic affirming the claims of Monsanto. Miller may as well be Monsantos marketing manager, along with many others like him who agree to tow the corporate line in exchange for cash. Henry I. Miller, M.D, has a long history of arguing for deregulation of hazardous products and taking positions outside the scientific mainstream, warns U.S. Right to Know. Sources for this article include: USRTK.org TruthWiki.org NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Recent studies warn that children who own smart watches which their parents can use to keep track of their movements are more prone to the dangers of hacking, according to reports by The Daily Mail. To reach this conclusion, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) authorized security experts at the company, Mnemonic, to inspect three watches that are sold in the U.K., namely the Gator, Xplora, and SeTracker watches. Though these products are marketed at making children safer, parents will be shocked if they actually put them at risk because of shoddy security, said Alex Neill, managing director of home products and services at Which?, the consumer group that endorsed the study. The experts revealed that these watches can be accessed remotely by strangers to spy on young children. The devices security loopholes include GPS tracking and a mobile phone SIM card. As a consequence, hackers can identify the location of a child wearing the smart watch and see information on all of their previous movements. Some devices can even tune in to what a child is doing by sending a hidden text to the watch, according to the experts. Moreover, hackers can interrupt and alter the geographical location of the watch, which means that the hacker can fake or spoof the location of a child. (Related: Hackers begin targeting your home appliances: toilets, ovens, refrigerators and more.) Additionally, those watches with an emergency button which a child can push to call their parents in an emergency also had loopholes. The emergency button can be remotely deactivated or even reprogrammed to call other people. The experts also discovered that there is a possibility of acquiring information on the movements of children who use smart watches through the stored data on the watches user apps and linked websites. The NCC submitted their findings to European data regulators, such as the Information Commissioners Office in the U.K., which in turn contacted the companies involved. If [safety and security] cant be guaranteed, then the products should not be sold, Neill expressed. I take cyber security very seriously. I have learned that issues will come up along the way and we fix them, said Colleen Wong, developer of Gator watch and founder of Techsixtyfour. I reported this back to the manufacturer and we are launching a completely new app which will eliminate all the issues that have been found. Smart devices can also lead to children being bullied Apparently, smartphones also pose danger to children. A new study found that children who own smartphones are at a higher risk of bullying, according to another report by The Daily Mail. For the study, researchers at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts conducted a survey on around 4,500 children from third grade to fifth grade between 2014 and 2016. They found that 9.5 percent of children said they had experienced being cyberbullied. Results showed that smartphone owners were at a higher risk of being bullied. Those who were in grades three and four and owned a smartphone were more likely to reveal being a victim of cyberbulling. Meanwhile, more smartphone owners confessed they have been a cyberbully themselves. Researchers concluded that constant access to social media and texting exposes children to interactions both positive and negative with others. Moreover, it raises the possibility of a child sending a hasty unnecessary response to a schoolmates posts and messages. At the very least, parents can engage in discussions and education with their child about the responsibilities inherent in owning a mobile device, and the general rules for communication in the social sphere, psychology professor Elizabeth Englander suggested. Read more news similar to this at Robotics.news. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk 1 DailyMail.co.uk 2 A mountain pass that runs through Yosemite National Park will close to traffic Thursday ahead of winter-like storms expected to dump up to 2 feet of snow on the highest peaks, park officials said. Tioga Road, the soaring eastern entry to the park, will close to vehicular traffic at 5 p.m. Thursday. Officials will also close Glacier Point Road, which offers sweeping views of Yosemite Valley. No overnight parking will be permitted on either roadway, National Park Service officials said. Both roads will be closed through Monday, when the storms are expected to dissipate and road conditions can be assessed. State transportation officials closed Ebbetts Pass, or State Route 4, Thursday afternoon and planned to close Sonora Pass, or State Route 108, at midnight Thursday. Light rain over the northern mountains is expected as early as Thursday afternoon. But heavier rain and snow will likely fall Friday night through Saturday, with a second storm coming Sunday. Up to 2 feet of snow are forecast to fall in elevations above 8,000 feet, and at least a foot of snow is expected in Donner and Tioga passes and other areas above 6,000 feet and up, forecasters said. The storms coming in from the Gulf of Alaska will also bring rain to the San Francisco Bay Area, including North Bay counties still recovering from last month's fires. The first storm will clear by Sunday afternoon. But a second storm system is expected to hit the area Sunday night. So far, the only Lake Tahoe-area ski resort to open is Mt. Rose area on the Nevada side. But the forecast snowstorms are getting skiers excited about the upcoming ski season. "We are so excited for the coming storms and to see the first 30 inches of snow cover the Sierra over the next few weeks," said Marcie Bradley, a spokeswoman with Northstar Ski Resort in Truckee, which is scheduled to open Nov. 17. "We are ecstatic to see what bounty Mother Nature brings." In Southern California, light rain is possible throughout the weekend. One woman accused cosmetics store Sephora of giving her oral herpes after she tried a lipstick sample at the Hollywood and Highland location, according to a lawsuit. The lawsuit states the incident happened in October of 2015. In the complaint, the woman says she had never had a cold sore until after using a sample lipstick at the store. Filed on Oct. 26, 2017 to the Los Angeles Superior Court, the lawsuit complaints that Sephora "failed to clearly warn customers about the risk of getting oral herpes from trying on lipstick." The woman is suing for emotional distress for an "incurable lifelong affliction." Infectious disease experts said it is possible to transmit the herpes virus through lipstick. However, experts said the disease is short-lived on moist surfaces and that the virus may not survive long enough to be passed to another person, making the woman's lawsuit a difficult one to win. "It has to happen pretty much consecutively," Dr. Suman Radhaskrishna, Chair of infectious disease control at Dignity Health, said. "So one person uses it and puts it down and another person picks it up and uses it - perhaps that's a way of transmitting." Doctors advise beauty fans to refrain from directly applying sample lipsticks to your mouth and instead use a cotton swab. "The most important thing is that you do not pick up something that is sitting outside because you don't know how long it's been outside," Radhaskrishna said. "Ask for a salesperson; have them help you out." Sephora did not return NBC4's request for a comment. A 14-year-old girl said she was assaulted by classmates on the Dublin High School campus in what may have been a racially motivated attack, and her parents are accusing the school district of a lax response. The Dublin Police Department is investigating the Oct. 23 incident as a battery. The girl's parents, who are African American, want the attacker expelled. They say their daughter overheard students using the N-word and asked them to stop. An argument ensued, and the parents say it ended when a white student punched their daughter in the mouth, giving her a concussion. "We dont tolerate that behavior, and we take it seriously," school district spokesperson Michelle McDonald said. "And we absolutely go out of our way to make sure we correct that behavior in one form or another." McDonald said the district cant discuss specifics of the case because of student privacy. There could be a variety of punishments, she said, but expulsion is not one of them. "Expulsion is a matter of the seriousness of the offense, whether this is the first time behavior, where this is a behavior thats happened in the past," McDonlad said. "But expulsion is a very serious thing and rises to a high level when it comes to student discipline." The victims parents said the boy who attacked their daughter received a three-day suspension. They said they waited for a week for a district respoonse before finally taking the case to Dublin police. The school district released an official statement in response to the alleged attack: "Behavior or statements that degrade an individual on the basis of his/her race, ethnicity, culture, heritage, gender, sexual orientation, physical/mental attributes, religious beliefs or practices are not tolerated in Dublin Schools. "While we are unable to be specific about the details of any incident involving student discipline, the District and school leadership always look at appropriate corrections for students on a case-by-case basis. "Disciplinary measures include suspension, mediation, Youth Court and detention in cases in which racial epithets are used. Our discipline policies on these matters follow both our Districts Board Policies and California Education Code. "Dublin High has anti-bullying programs and activities in place and will continue to implement those throughout the school year." Harvest has started but govt still discussing minimum support price Paddy farmers feel let down as the government has again failed to announce the minimum support price (MSP) even though the harvest season has begun. The man on trial in the 2015 fatal shooting of Kate Steinle on San Francisco's Pier 14 gave conflicting and sometimes false answers in an interview with police after the incident, in which he seemed to confess to the shooting at one moment and then contradict himself the next. Prosecutor Diana Garcia on Wednesday showed jurors a video of a police interview with Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a 45-year-old homeless Mexican citizen charged with second-degree murder in Steinle's July 1, 2015 death. Steinle, a 32-year-old Pleasanton native and South Beach resident who was shot with a stolen gun as she walked on the pier with her father and a family friend. Defense attorneys are arguing that the fatal bullet, which ricocheted off the pier before it struck Steinle, was fired accidentally after Garcia Zarate found the gun on the pier and picked it up. The gun had been stolen from the car of an off-duty Bureau of Land Management ranger in San Francisco days earlier. Garcia Zarate, who was arrested in the area of Townsend Street and Embarcadero about an hour after the 6:30 p.m. shooting, can be seen slumped in the interrogation room in the video as he answers police questions, initially in sleepy monosyllables. Speaking largely through a police interpreter, Garcia Zarate first denied being near the scene of the shooting, saying he was instead sitting near the ballpark eating cookies or crackers, and gave police a false name and date of birth. He also declared early in the interview that he is Colombian and would pay for a lawyer. As the interrogation progressed into the early hours of the next day, Garcia Zarate acknowledged his involvement, but still gave several versions of events. "When I got there, I was walking along, there was a rag and I stepped on it and it fired and then I picked it up," the interpreter translated him as saying. A short time later, Garcia Zarate agreed twice with police when they asked if he pulled the trigger, but when they asked him again why he threw the gun in the water he responded through the interpreter "Because the gun was firing by itself." Giving frequent answers of "I don't know," Garcia Zarate never indicated a motive for the shooting, saying that Steinle had not done anything to make him want to shoot her and indicating that he had not known that he shot her. At one point, in response to repeated questions, he told police he was shooting at a sea lion, or a fish. Outside of court today Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for the public defender's office, noted that Garcia Zarate had willingly agreed to statements suggested by police that later turned out to be false, such as when he said he was only 5 feet away from Steinle when she was shot. He was, in fact, around 90 feet from her, evidence shows. He also agreed at times to statements by police suggesting that he found the gun somewhere else, but then immediately returned to saying he found it on the pier when asked to explain. Gonzalez said the evidence was, overall, consistent with the defense theory of an accidental shooting. He attributed the confusing statements in part to fatigue, as the interview was conducted between 1:50 a.m. and 5:45 a.m., and Garcia Sanchez had been sitting in custody since his arrest around 7:30 p.m. the previous evening. He also noted that Garcia Zarate had little formal education and alluded to possible mental issues. "The fact that very skilled and experience and educated interrogators can get a second-grade Mexican immigrant to adopt what they were saying, like that he was five feet away when the gun was fired, doesn't make it true," Gonzalez said. "When you compare 5 feet to 90 feet, when you get discrepancies like that it raises questions," Gonzalez said. Police lied to Garcia Zarate at several points in the interview, telling him that they had witnesses, DNA and gunshot residue evidence tying him to the shooting and had recovered the firearm, none of which were true. Lt. Anthony Ravano testified on the stand that it was a tactic used to "motivate" the suspect to be more truthful. Gonzalez said the practice was common in interrogations, as is lying on the part of defendants when they are first confronted by police. The defense cross-examination of Ravano, the lead homicide investigator on the case, is expected to continue Thursday morning. Defense attorneys expect to begin presenting their case as soon as next week. A San Francisco police officer on Halloween responded to a young boys bat signal. According to the Mission District station's Twitter page, a yet unnamed officer found out that the child did not have a costume in which to dress up. So he set out to the rectify that. A video shows the officer standing at a houses front door while the boy runs down a flight of stairs. In the officers hand is a Batman costume. Come on, dude! the officer says. Its all yours. Someone in the background can be heard saying the child was crying a fact that the boy immediately denied, drawing chuckles from the officer. Theres a mask, all that good stuff, the officer said. Alright, the boy replied. As the officer asked the boy if he thought the attire would fit him, the child flung the costume aside, said, Thank you, and threw his arms around the mans waist. The officer returned the hug. No problem, dude, he said, smiling. Additional details about the pairs interaction are unknown. NBC Bay Area has reached out to the San Francisco Police Department for a comment. A San Francisco woman sought for theft and arson was arrested last month after being spotted numerous times as she soiled BART trains, according to transit officials. Police identified the suspect as Ardis Williamson, 68. BART officials were alerted to the presence of the San Francisco woman accused of being a serial urinator and defecator when a rider shared pictures and videos of her, spokeswoman Alicia Trost wrote on Facebook. "So we had officers ride the train each morning in hopes of locating her," Trost said because they can only cite someone after observing the act he or she is accused of committing. On Oct. 20, the BART rider once again called the transit agency to report seeing Williamson, Trost said. Officers made contact and arrested her on an outstanding $5,000 warrant for theft and a no-bail warrant for arson. "Quality of life issues impact our riders and we need to keep our system safe and clean," Trost said. "We've heard folks say BART ignores these issues, we do not. We hope this person can now get the help they need." People who need to use a restroom at an underground BART station in San Francisco can use Pit Stop bathrooms at the street level, Trost said. Williamson was booked into the Redwood City jail on the warrants and an additional charge for possessing drug paraphernalia, police said. The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said its K9 officer, Jax, was fatally stabbed while trying to help subdue a knife-wielding man before police shot and killed him. Police on Wednesday said the man also stabbed his girlfriend, who is recovering at a hospital. The incident was reported at 1 p.m. Tuesday on the 500 block East Weddell Drive. Arriving officers sent Jax after the suspect, which the suspect stabbed and killed, according to police. Police then shot the suspect. "I was quite terrified," neighbor Kirby Tate said. "You hear about it all the time, but being so close to it -- literally five minutes earlier it could've been you." Sunnyvale DPS Chief Phan Ngo said Lt. Emmett Larkin shot the suspect, Jesus Birekas-Contreras, after he threw his knife at the officer. "Lt. Larkin fired his service weapon to defend himself," Ngo said. Jax, a German Shepherd, had been a member of Sunnyvale DPS for two years and was involved in 26 arrests. Flags at public safety facilities are now at half staff. "It's been a devastating loss," said Jeffrey Hunter, Sunnyvale DPS public information officer. "A lot of people within the department are very upset and members of the community as well." Ngo said a memorial service is being planned for Jax. Lt. Larkin is on paid administrative leave while the district attorney investigates the officer involved shooting. As Seen On A family of kittens was abandoned and left to fend for themselves on the side of the road in Hollis, New Hampshire and now police want to know who dumped them there. Police say it was before the sun came up on Halloween day that a man driving along Rocky Pond Road saw something that made him stop in his tracks. "He saw what appeared to be eyes, glowing eyes from the woods," said Hollis Police Lt. Joseph Hoebeke. Certainly fitting for Halloween morning, but those glowing eyes werent anything ghoulish, they were just these little guys. "What he found was a bunch of kittens in the woods and a bag of food that had apparently been dumped on opposite side of the guardrail," Lt. Hoebeke said. Police say it doesnt appear the kittens were there for too long, but nearby resident Corey Olsen says they at least survived overnight since he saw them Monday evening. "I saw a line of little creatures crossing the road," Olsen said. "Just as I was driving past, they turned around and I was like, 'whoa, those are cats.'" Olsen didnt call the police but is glad someone else eventually did. "Of course, a very sad thing," Olsen said. Officers and volunteers gathered nine abandoned kittens and brought them to the police station. "Ive been around a long time as a police officer and I still scratch my head with things like this," Lt. Hoebeke. As news spread on social media, police say the kittens quickly became the most popular pets in town. "We were able to adopt three out to people in the community," Lt. Hoebeke. "They want to help, they want to make something right they feel is wronged." The rest of the kittens were sent to Kitty Angels rescue. If you know anything about who may have dumped them, you should call the police. One of the victims killed in the terrorist attack in New York City has ties to Massachusetts. Nicholas Cleves, a 23-year-old Manhattan man, was not far from his home when he was killed. But he has relatives in the Bay State communities of Belmont and Lexington. "Such a young man," said Brenda Dzierzeski, a neighbor of Cleves' grandmother in Belmont. "Terrible, terrible, I can't believe it. He's just a lovely person." Cleves went to high school in New York, graduated from Skidmore College and was a software engineer. He was one of the eight people killed in Tuesday's violence. "As you can well appreciate, the family is bereft at this time and grieving," said Jim Burnham, a family spokesperson in New York City. "Nicholas Cleves was a fine young man, starting out a successful career, stricken down way earlier than he should have been." Cleves was the youngest victim of the rampage. The inaugural, two-day Obama Foundation Summit wrapped up Wednesday night inside Chicago's new Wintrust Arena in the South Loop, with 500 people coming from 60 countries to be inspired to make positive changes in their communities. "If nothing else, take from this summit the sense that you are able to transform the world," former President Barack Obama told the audience. Obama told the crowd to believe in themselves but limit their time online. "Constantly checking, seeing whats next, its tough to sustain things," he cautioned. The grand finale of the summit included music from Chicago natives Common and Chance the Rapper. Gloria Estefan and "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda also made appearances. Miranda spoke on the continuing crisis in Puerto Rico and shared the stage with Common. Former first lady Michelle Obama warned against over-sharing on social media. "You don't tweet every thought, she said, explaining that "first initial thoughts are not worthy of the light of day." However, she clarified that she wasn't "talking about anybody in particular." Michelle Obama also gave advice on raising daughters and sexual harassment. "If we don't teach our young girls to speak at an early age, that doesn't just happen, it takes practice to have a voice," she said. Former Vice President Joe Biden came to Chicago as well to encourage people to speak up against neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville. "The same anti-semetic bile that brought down Europe ... silence is complicity," he said. Sharing these ideas with others is the goal of the Obama Summit. "Let's get to work," Barack Obama said before leaving the stage. Obama added that "this is just the beginning," but there were no official announcements of future summits. Breakfast is serious business for this Ohio man. At 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, a man pointed a gun at a McDonald's employee in Warren, Ohio when she informed him there were no Egg McMuffins available. The employee was unharmed during the incident. Warren police say two males in their twenties entered the drive-thru at the Warren McDonald's, located 60 miles south of Cleveland. According to the employee, the driver drew his gun and yelled obscenities at her before speeding away. Warren police are still searching for the suspect. A man is accused of threatening an Old Saybrook officer with a flare gun on Wednesday, police said. Kenneth G. Grussy, was arrested Thursday after police said he threatened to shoot an officer at close range with a flare gun following a brief police pursuit in Old Saybrook. He was charged on Wednesday with criminal possession of a firearm, weapons in a motor vehicle, operating with a suspended license, operating an unregistered motor vehicle, and engaging police in pursuit. High powered flare guns that use 12 gauge "shotgun style" ammunition cartages are considered firearms in Connecticut. Grussy had been "practicing" shooting off flares at his home and at Saybrook Point for the past several weeks, according to police. The 63-year-old is not allowed to possess firearms because of a current protection order against him. Several months ago, Old Saybrook officers seized Grussy's firearms after they discovered he was firing a .22 long rifle inside his home while it was occupied by family members. In addition to the charges already listed, Grussy was served two arrest warrants stemming from additional incidents involving him firing the flare gun. One warrant charged Grussy with breach of peace and criminal possession of a firearm after he drove to Saybrook Point, spoke to a person at the point and then fired a flare over the Connecticut River. The incident triggered a marine distress dispatch for both the Old Saybrook Volunteer Fire Department and Police Department. The other warrant charges Grussy with breach of peace after he made threatening comments to others about shooting Old Saybrook Police officers at close range with a flare gun, the same gun he had with him during Wednesday's encounter before he was arrested. Justice delayed and denied Many more cases like Dhungels will have to be brought to justice before some kind of normalcy returns The first group of 30 patrol officers will be seen wearing body cameras in New Haven on Wednesday. The plan is to roll out the body cams in phases. NBC Connecticut will be able to request body camera footage through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell said at a news conference that there may be high profile cases where the department decides on its own to release that video to the public. "This is yet another tool which will heighten the level of transparency and accountability and community policing that this department is committed to," Campbell said. Body cameras are a 21st-century policing tool that can help investigations with "more precise evidence collection, enhanced timeline documentation," Mayor Toni Harp said. Video recorded on them can potentially clear officers accused of misconduct. "By putting the video out it will help to alleviate those tensions and clear up any misconceptions people may have," Campbell said. Federal and state grants funded pilot programs and the purchase of the cameras for every sworn member of the department. While the City of New Haven will allocate $350,000 annually for storing the footage on a cloud system, officers will also be able to see their video before returning to a police substation or headquarters. "They will have the opportunity to review their video footage on a department-issued cell phone," New Haven Police Assistant Chief Racheal Cain said. New Haven resident Michelle Arias shared a concern she has about the body cameras. "I think that they can press record when they want or not," Arias said. "Theres still like an issue of accountability." Still, Arias said she supports New Haven Police joining other departments in the state like in Milford and Hamden that already have body cameras. "I think this is a move in the right direction and hopefully theyre using the equipment properly," Arias said. Before starting patrol shifts with the cameras attached to their uniforms, officers are learning the general orders theyre required to record and when they shouldnt. "If an officer is dispatched to a call, a domestic, a motor vehicle stop," Campbell said of times when to record, adding they should not do so "especially dealing with juveniles, sexual assault victims." "Theyre not required to have the camera on when theyre transporting prisoners in the prisoner conveyance van," Sgt. Rose Dell said. Dell said she is interested to see what role the body camera footage will have in future court cases. The company that makes the body cameras is working on technology to automatically start recording when the officer either pulls out a gun or hears gunshots, Campbell said. The University of Hartford is taking swift action in the wake of a disturbing incident between two students. Former freshman Brianna Brochu is accused of tampering with her black roommates possessions, including putting blood on her backpack and moldy clam dip in her lotion, among other allegations. "It really should not have come to this level," freshman Parker Morano said. The university administration agrees. University of Hartford President Gregory Woodward is engaging in a student dialogue with the hope of coming up with concrete answers. "We are going to review our practices, review our process, review how the whole thing unfolded," Woodward said. The victim, Chennel Rowe, shed some light on the situation in a Facebook Live post that has been seen hundreds of thousands of times. "While Ive been here I have been getting sick, not knowing why Ive been getting sick," Rowe said on the Facebook post. While some students said the situation could have been addressed sooner, Woodward insists the university acted swiftly by launching an investigation the moment it came to light. "The victim and the university found out about the situation at the same exact moment in time," Woodward said. "Within five minutes of that moment of time, our safety and security team people were at her room." Woodward calls the situation a "wake up call" and "a chance to do better." Through open dialogue and educational sessions, Woodward hopes to tackle the difficult topic of race with the hope of creating a positive from this negative situation. Last Wednesday night, more than 400 students, faculty members, administrators, alumni, representatives from the NAACP and community leaders held a student-run multicultural meeting about the incident to allow students and speakers to talk about race on college campuses. "The black community, right now, we are really hurting because for us we just look at ourselves and we think wow this could have been us," sophomore Jade Baker said. "There is an awful lot to do to fix the way people feel and that is what I am interested in," Woodward said. Brochu is no longer a student at the university and she is facing charges of breach of peace and criminal mischief. In court on Wednesday, West Hartford police said they also asked the judge to add a charge of intimidation based on bigotry and bias. Woodward said he has met at length with Rowe and offered whatever support from the university she may need. On a recent trip to BJs Wholesale Club, Kyla Brantly saw an ad for a holiday Barbie doll. Because her 4-year-old daughter was with her, she waited until she got home to look it up online. Brantley didnt like what she found. The 28-inch Holiday Barbie is only available at BJs. Brantley said the blonde doll was on sale for $31.99 with free shipping. When she clicked on the African-American doll, it was selling for the full price of $34.99. Shipping was not included. Adding insult to injury for Brantley was the dolls description. "It said Holiday Barbie Assorted, which was kind of puzzling. Like, what is assorted?" Brantley said. The Latina version of the doll was also labeled assorted and was not on sale. "It wasn't culturally sensitive. It felt like a punch," Brantley said. She contacted BJs customer service about the discrepancy. Brantley said a representative responded with an apology for the inconvenience and offered her a $5 gift card. Brantley felt BJs was missing the point. The customer service rep later responded with an offer of a $25 gift card. Brantley expressed her disappointment with BJs in a tweet and also contacted NBC Connecticut Responds. A couple of days after our consumer team reached out to BJs, Brantley heard from someone else within the company, who thanked her for bringing the issue to their attention. The employee told Brantley BJs would redo its website to check for verbiage that could be considered insensitive, like the word assorted. "All three items are available in our clubs at the same sale price of $31.99. Due to an error, the items were mistakenly posted on our website and have been removed. We apologize for any confusion and take the feedback of our Members seriously," a BJ's spokesperson said in a statement to NBC Connecticut. The sale ended October 31. BJs sent Brantley the doll for free along with a $50 gift card. Brantley said she is satisfied with the outcome and pleased her voice was heard. "Unless somebody says something, they can't change it," she said. Nearly 1,100 people will die from drug overdoses in Connecticut this year, according to recent projections from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. While access to Narcan, or naloxone, will not solve the drug crisis, it can save lives. The medication can be used to reverse the effects of opioid drugs like prescription painkillers and heroin. "It can be a normal day. You wouldn't know when these types of things can happen," said Luz Holmes of East Hartford. She said she did not have a direct connection with the opioid crisis until she was driving home through downtown Hartford and saw a man lying right on the side of the road. "He was on the ground," she said. "He was on the sidewalk." First responders told Holmes that the man had overdosed. Witnessing the event was enough to lead her to decide to join a growing number of volunteers taking the necessary training to be able to administer the drug Narcan. Holmes said she was convinced that she would be faced with the same life and death scenario sometime in the future. "At the end of the day, you're preventing death," Holmes said. Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill projected a staggering 1,078 deaths from drug overdoses in 2017 alone. "It's just unbelievable. Your chances of seeing one is much higher than it used to be," said Dan Madden of Somers said about the number of public overdoses occurring in Connecticut. Madden, who recently completed his third year the UConn School of Medicine, had not had any "hands-on" Narcan training. He found that training at the Greater Hartford Harm Reduction Coalition (GHHRC). "It's very different from my medical classes where you sit down in a lecture hall and someone's lecturing to you about all these diseases," said. Deirdre Daly, who was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut until the end of October, said she was encouraged by the increased interest and use Narcan has been getting. Narcan kits are showing up in more public places. Milford announced in October that school nurses would be equipped with Narcan, including at the elementary school level. Many other Connecticut school districts have begun supplying it as well. "Anybody from a parent or a visitor, a staff member or even a child experimenting or stealing something out of the medicine cabinet just to see what it does," Milford Battalion Chief of Emergency Medical Services Daniel Wassmer told NBC Connecticut. Campus police and medical personnel at 16 Connecticut State Colleges and Universities are also carrying the life-saving medication this semester. "If it were your child, and Narcan were available and that would save his or her life, you would want it to be used," said Daly, who left her post on October 27. But sometimes even a life-saving drug is not enough to save a life. "I looked down on the floor and I found him," said Christine Gagnon of Southington, remembering the morning she found her 22-year-old son, Mike, on his bedroom floor. "I knew he was gone but I grabbed my Narcan," she said. The Narcan was not strong enough to break the effects of the pure fentynal that she said Mike had overdosed on. "All the hopes and dreams you have for your child was destroyed that day," said Gagnon. In the three and half heartbreaking months since her son's death, Gagnon has rearmed herself with Narcan. She said she wants to be prepared to help anyone who is on the same path as her son. "You can't get someone into treatment if they're not alive," said Gagnon. "And this is just that first step to make them alive." Gagnon is also an active member of The Roadway of Hope CT, Inc., a grassroots organization established in 2016 to bring attention to the current epidemic of substance use in Connecticut. Some programs providing treatment for substance use, including the GHHRC, can provide education and access to Narcan. In the state of Connecticut, authorized prescribers include physicians, surgeons, PAs, APRNs, dentists and podiatrists. With legislation passed in 2015, pharmacists who have been trained and certified can also prescribe and dispense Narcan, according to the Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services (DMHAS). To find Connecticut pharmacies with Narcan, click here. In October, President Donald Trump declared opioid abuse a national public health emergency and announced new steps to combat what he described as the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. A 29-year-old Henderson County woman is on suicide watch after being arrested and accused of fatally shooting her two young daughters early Thursday morning. Sarah Nicole Henderson is in the Henderson County Jail, charged with the capital murder of her children, 7-year-old Kaylee and her 5-year-old half-sister Kenlie. Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse said Henderson showed no remorse or "much emotion" when she confessed to the murders and was "just matter-of-fact" during her interview with police following her arrest. He added detectives learned she'd been planning the crime for a couple of weeks and had also intended to kill her husband. "Over the last 24 hours, the investigation shows that she planned these murders for at least the last two weeks," Hillhouse said. "It appears she also intended to kill her husband, but the entire crime did not go as planned." According to the sheriff, Henderson's husband called 911 at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday to report that she was suicidal. A second call was made minutes later to cancel the request, which canceled the EMS response, but sheriff's deputies still went to the residence. Deputies arrived at about 11:45 p.m. but left after the couple said they were fine and no one was in danger. Hillhouse said Henderson's husband called 911 nearly three hours later, at about 2:24 a.m., to report that his wife had shot both of her children. In the 911 call, the husband said he was asleep in the bedroom and the victims were sleeping in the living room. He said he woke up to his wife telling him she' shot both of the children. "I didn't want to believe it and went in there and they were dead," he said in the recording. When police arrived, both of the children were deceased. "It's a life-changing event for everyone not only the family, but all the first responders that responded to the call. It's something that you don't ever forget," Hillhouse said. Detectives arrested Henderson, who the sheriff confirmed was the subject of the original call to the home, and transported her to the Henderson County Jail where she is being kept under suicide watch. Hillhouse confirmed that Henderson's husband is not suspected of any wrongdoing. He also confirmed the man is not the father of either of the victims. A motive for the slayings has not been confirmed, and the investigation into the shootings is ongoing. Neighbors spent Thursday trying to wrap their heads around the violent incident. "I've never had a conversation with her, but the little girls would come over here and ride their little bikes around the circle driveway. They would draw pictures and put them in the mailbox for us," said Jaylyne Palmer, who's lived across the street from the Hendersons for much of the last decade. Deputies with the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, along with the Texas Rangers and Child Protective Services, are handling the investigation. Henderson is being held on $2 million bond on one charge of capital murder of a child under the age of 10. A second capital murder charge is pending. In Texas, the murder of a person under the age of 10 is an immediate capital offense punishable by death or life in prison without parole. It's not clear if Henderson has obtained an attorney. NBC 5's Frank Heinz contributed to this report. President Donald Trump is blaming one Democrat for an immigration program that was backed by both parties and signed by a Republican president in 1990. The "Chuck Schumer beauty," as Trump called the program, was also George H.W. Bush's beauty. A look at Trump's statements Wednesday as he cast political blame on Sen. Chuck Schumer specifically and Democrats generally in the aftermath of the deadly truck attack in New York City, allegedly by a citizen of Uzbekistan. TRUMP tweets: "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based." '''Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems' said Col. Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends" THE FACTS: Schumer, then in the House, now a senator, did back the lottery program. It had bipartisan support in an era when legal immigration was less contentious. He also proposed eliminating it three years ago, colleagues say. The Homeland Security Department confirmed after the tweets that the accused assailant immigrated under the diversity lottery program. He came to the United States in 2010. The program is for people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. It provides up to 50,000 visas annually by lottery. Applicants must have a high school diploma or meet work experience requirements. The program was created as part of a bipartisan immigration bill signed into law by Bush in 1990. Schumer indeed proposed a program for "diversity immigrants" that year. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said on Twitter that Schumer was among a group of eight Republican and Democratic senators who proposed eliminating the program three years ago as part of a broader bipartisan bill to overhaul U.S. immigration laws. Flake, one of the eight, said: "I know. I was there." Another of the eight, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, similarly defended Schumer, saying he "supported legislation to do away with the lottery system." Like Flake, Graham said "I was there. I know." He said the bill died in the House in face of opposition from Republicans. As for Trump's tweets, his reference to Europe's problems belies the fact that Uzbekistan is in Asia, not Europe. However, the State Department categorizes Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics under Europe in its lottery program. TRUMP at Cabinet meeting: "Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it." THE FACTS: He's been against it, but Republicans weren't at the start. Back in 1990, after a broader immigration bill containing the visa program passed the House, the legislation sailed through the Senate on an 89-8 vote. Several Republicans who are still in the Senate backed the measure. Among them: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Orrin Hatch of Utah. The lottery is extended to citizens of most countries, except about 20. Among the excluded countries are many that already have high rates of emigration to the U.S., such as Mexico, Canada and India. In the most recent figures, the State Department selected more than 125,000 people in 2015 for the lottery program, accepting the first 50,000 who applied for visas. Among them, citizens of Cameroon, Liberia, Congo, Iran and Nepal led the list, with about 5,000 visa slots each. Citizens of Uzbekistan also figured prominently in the lottery, with 4,368 selected. Those numbers don't necessarily reflect who actually came because the number was capped at the first 50,000 who applied for visas after winning the lottery. Chances of winning one of the 50,000 visas are slim. In 2012, for example, nearly 15 million people applied for themselves and family members. TRUMP tweet on merit-based immigration: "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)." THE FACTS: The president has taken steps to push for a merit-based immigration system but many of those efforts are still under development. In August, Trump embraced legislation that would dramatically reduce legal immigration and shift the nation toward a system that prioritizes merit and skills over family ties. The president promoted the bill, which would eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, at a White House event with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. But the legislation has yet to gain any significant traction and is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The White House has signaled that it may seek some of these changes in coming negotiations with Democrats over a legislative solution that would extend protections first granted under former President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump is phasing out DACA, but has given Congress time to act before recipients' work permits begin to expire. A set of immigration principles laid out by the administration last month included calls for a "merit-based" immigration system that would end so-called "chain migration" by limiting family-based green cards to include spouses and minor children. But it remains unclear if Trump will insist on these changes in the DACA talks. ___ Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report. Roused by the first major ISIS-inspired attack on U.S. soil since he took office, President Donald Trump urged swift repeal of an immigration program that brought the suspect to America and laid into a political foe he said was responsible for it though Republican George H. W. Bush signed the law. Trump insisted Wednesday that Congress must end the visa lottery program under which Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov entered the country, and he ordered still tighter scrutiny of immigrants already subject to what he calls "extreme vetting." But the White House offered no indication of what new steps the president might be planning. "We have to get much tougher, much smarter, and less politically correct," Trump said. He also said the U.S. justice system for dealing with such cases must be strengthened, declaring, "What we have right now is a joke and it's a laughingstock." Again, there was no elaboration from the White House. Trump denounced the 29-year-old suspect in the truck attack, which killed eight and injured many more, as an "animal," and said he was open to sending the man to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, instead of to trial in New York. "I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo," Trump said. Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the White House considered Saipov an "enemy combatant" and had yet to decide whether to seek to move him out of the civilian judicial system to military detention. A little later, however, prosecutors in New York filed charges in federal court accusing Saipov with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles. On the political front, Trump took to Twitter early Wednesday to blame Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who represents New York, for the bipartisan visa program used by the suspect to enter the country in 2010. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Saipov entered the U.S under the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which gives people from countries with low rates of immigration an opportunity to come to the U.S. Trump branded the program "a Chuck Schumer beauty," and called on Congress to immediately begin work to end it. It was not immediately clear when Saipov was radicalized by the Islamic State group, but the New York City Police Department said he began planning the attack weeks ago. Schumer did back the lottery program as a member of the House when it was approved with the support of both parties in 1990. It was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Trump's broadside against a senator from the state still reeling from the attack drew bipartisan criticism. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that Trump's attack against Schumer "plays right into the hands of the terrorists," by sowing division at a time when unity is needed. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said it was "probably not the best way to bring out the best in our country." Corker, who has announced he will not run for re-election in 2018, has been increasingly critical of Trump's temperament. Schumer himself offered this advice: "The president ought to stop tweeting and start leading." Sanders later said Trump "has not blamed Senator Schumer and doesn't feel that the senator is responsible for the attack." Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, defended Trump's criticism of the visa lottery program. "The diversity lottery visa's been criticized by many people as being pretty indiscriminate in terms of who's accepted into the country. I think it needs to be looked at. And I agree with the president that it can certainly be improved by more of a merit-based system." Sanders dismissed complaints that Trump was politicizing a tragedy, saying his calls for increasing extreme vetting of immigrants are "something that frankly the president has been talking about for a long time." Indeed, Trump has made repeated attempts to restrict entry into the country through various iterations of a travel ban, which have been blocked by federal courts. The administration has argued that it needs a temporary pause on entry from certain countries in order to develop stricter vetting measures and put them in place. In the meantime, the administration has worked to improve information-sharing with various countries. It also has developed new requirements for entry into the U.S., such as the use of biometric passports that are more difficult to forge. Officials could not elaborate on what new measures Trump was referring to in his tweet hours after the attack when he said he had "just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program." Sanders said that, since the tweet, the president had spoken several times with members of his national security team to "look and see" what more can be done. "But," she said, "we have put in place executive orders already since the president's taken office that help go as far as we can at this point." Trump's swift political response to the New York attacks contrasts with his wait-and-see approach after the October massacre of 59 people by a Las Vegas gunman. The White House then argued it was "premature" to discuss a legislative response and says now it is still studying whether to seek a ban on the modifications used by the Las Vegas shooter to fire his rifles at near-automatic rates. The two responses offer the latest suggestions of how the culture wars that defined Trump's campaign may be coloring his actions. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump proposed a total ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S. before embracing "extreme vetting." He has backed legislation that would curb legal immigration and shift the nation toward a system that would place an emphasis on merit and skills over family ties and diversity criteria. Trump late Wednesday repeated his call. "CHAIN MIGRATION must end now!" he tweeted. "Some people come in, and they bring their whole family with them, who can be truly evil. NOT ACCEPTABLE!" ___ Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report. What to Know Former Pa. treasurer Barbara Hafer was sentenced for lying to the FBI about accepting $675,000 in fees from an investment adviser. Prosecutors say that in a tape they had, the adviser Richard Ireland told another Pa. state treasurer that he had "taken care of" Hafer. Hafer served as state auditor general from 1989 to 1997 before serving as treasurer from 1997 to 2005. A woman who was elected four times to statewide office in Pennsylvania was sentenced Tuesday to three years on probation for lying to the FBI about accepting $675,000 from an investment adviser who had reaped tens of millions in fees through Treasury Department business. Barbara Hafer, a Republican when she was twice elected as Pennsylvania's auditor general and then twice as treasurer, avoided jail time but was fined $50,000 and ordered to perform 500 hours of community service. "I did it, that was wrong, and I'm sorry for it," Hafer told U.S. District Judge John Jones, sobbing as she asked him to consider her entire career. "I'm ashamed, I'm heartsick over the situation." The 74-year-old pleaded guilty in June to deceiving federal investigators about whether the adviser, Richard Ireland, had funneled the money to her to help her start a consulting firm after she'd left office. Jones said he considers her offense to be an isolated aberration and "a fit of bad judgment." "It doesn't take a large leap to figure out what went wrong," Jones said. "I believe that you feared that disclosing your relationship with Mr. Ireland after you left office might demonstrate something that at the worst was illegal and at best was unseemly." Her attorney argued that the crime for which Hafer pleaded guilty did not enrich her financially. The defense lawyer previously said Hafer did not dispute she broke the law and recognized how her actions caused distress to her family, friends and public supporters. [NATL] Photos From the Grave of 'America's First Serial Killer' The defense filing emphasized her "really quite inspiring life," including work as a public health nurse in the early 1970s, philanthropic efforts that continue, and activism on behalf of "women and the oppressed." Prosecutors said that when Hafer met with agents, her lawyer was with her and she knew the FBI was investigating the Treasury Department. "During the interview, federal authorities took efforts to refresh her recollection and allow her to rethink her answers," the U.S. attorney's office wrote. "Thus, as evidenced by her guilty plea, this was a willful decision and one in which she had adequate time to deliberate upon." During her guilty plea hearing, prosecutors said they had tape of a conversation in which Ireland told another former Pennsylvania state treasurer, Rob McCord, that he had "taken care of" Hafer after she left office. Jones said that recording prompted the investigation into Hafer. Prosecutors have said that while Hafer was treasurer, companies tied to Ireland collected tens of millions in fees between 2001 and 2004. Ireland was a major campaign donor to Hafer during those years. Hafer later became a Democrat. She lives in Indiana, Pennsylvania. McCord, a Democrat, resigned from office two years ago, then pleaded guilty to attempted extortion in a campaign finance-related case. He has not been sentenced, although last week the judge laid out a schedule to consider McCord's challenge to a presentence report. Criminal charges against Ireland were thrown out by Jones earlier this year, when the judge ruled during trial that prosecutors failed to prove Ireland's campaign contributions or help in McCord's private business affairs were aimed at getting official favors. A school bus crashed into a wooded area off an on ramp to Interstate 95 just south of Philadelphia International Airport Wednesday afternoon. The Durham School Services bus, which was carrying four students from Delaware County Technical High School-Folcroft, crashed on the ramp from Route 420 to I-95 southbound in Tinicum Township, Delaware County around 2:30 p.m., Pennsylvania State Police said. No other vehicles were involved, police said. A State Trooper who responded to the crash told NBC10 no one was seriously injured. Editor's Note: Police initially told NBC10 at least four people were hurt in the crash. They later said no one was injured. Cash is already rolling into Pennsylvania's coffers as a result of a sprawling, two-day-old gambling expansion law thanks a a $1-million payment from a Montgomery County resort. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said Wednesday that Valley Forge Casino Resort paid a $1 million fee to allow gambling by people who aren't taking part in other amenities there. The provision allowed the payment by the state's two licensed resort casinos to be relieved of requirements in the original 2004 casino law that gamblers also must take part in other amenities at an establishment or be guests there. You could also have paid to play, using an access card. "A few other elements of the law, one is our ability to potentially expand our slot floor an additional 250 machines and potentially add a poker room," Valley Forge Casino Resort president and CEO Eric Pearson told NBC10. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill on Monday, and the effect is immediate. Valley Forge Casino says on its website it's open to the public at no cost. Maoist Centre finalises its candidates for Valley The CPN (Maoist Centre), a constituent of the CPN-UML-led left alliance, on Wednesday finalised its candidates for three districts in Kathmandu Valley for the upcoming federal and provincial elections. A second San Diegan has died as a result of the flu in a flu season moving at a faster pace than the year prior, the County Health and Human Services Agency announced Wednesday. The 100-year-old woman, who had pre-existing medical conditions, died on Oct. 19; she tested positive for influenza A. She is the second person to die as a result of the flu. In the past week, there have been 31 new flu cases reported, bringing the total to 316 cases. Two of those were ICU cases. Influenza can lead to serious complications and even death, especially among the elderly, said Wilma Wooten, M.D., M.P.H., County public health officer, in a statement. The best protection against the flu is getting vaccinated. Do it now before the flu starts to spread. Health officials have warned of a potentially miserable flu season this year since the Southern Hemisphere was hit. In the past few months, there has been a flu strain going around Australia that's notorious for causing more severe sickness. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials told the Associated Press there's a chance the U.S. could have a similar season to Australia. Every year, the flu is estimated to cause millions of illnesses, said California Department of Public Health (CDPH) officials. That includes tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. Flu outbreaks are possible as early as October, but influenza usually peaks between December and February. The annual flu vaccine helps protect people from the flu. Health officials recommend that everyone six months of age and older take the vaccine. High-risk groups for flu complications include pregnant women, children under 2 years of age, adults aged 65 and older and nursing home residents, according to the CDPH. In an effort to stop the flu's spread, health officials also encouraged residents to stay home when sick, cover their cough or sneeze with a tissue or sleeve, wash hands thoroughly and avoid touching their eyes, nose and mouth. For the previous week, the Health and Human Services Agency Influenza Watch reports the following: Emergency department visits for influenza-like illness: 1 percent of all visits (the same as the previous week) Lab-confirmed influenza cases for the week: 31 (up from 27 the previous week) Total influenza deaths to date: 2 (compared to 1 at this time last season) Total lab-confirmed influenza cases to date: 316 (compared to 103 at same time last season) The CDPH's influenza web page offers more information about the flu. Scammers tried to benefit from the death of a woman who was killed on a highway in Virginia when a 12-year-old boy plunged from an overpass on Saturday. The family of Marisa Harris has learned of "several fraudulent GoFundMe and other accounts using our tragedy to extort money for 'funeral arrangements' etc.," they said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. One fake page on the fundraising website GoFundMe was reported to the company and removed, a spokesman said. The campaign did not receive any donations, and the user was banned. Harris' family was stunned by the "sad and disrespectful behavior," they said. Harris died after a 12-year-old boy plunged from the Cedar Lane overpass over I-66 in Vienna, Virginia, on Saturday afternoon. The child, who police did not identify, is believed to have been attempting suicide. He was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. Harris was a graduate student in clinical counseling, her family said. She wanted to devote her career to helping children. The family of the boy who plunged from the overpass was stunned by the incident, a man who said he was the boy's uncle told News4's Jackie Bensen. No pages with Harris' name appeared on GoFundMe as of Tuesday evening. Her family is still determining how they will honor her memory, their statement Tuesday said. GoFundMe guarantees that donors' funds will go to the right person. If GoFundMe determines that fraud occurred in connection to a page created after Oct. 3, 2016, donors can get as much as $1,000 back, and the beneficiary can have as much as $25,000 guaranteed. Several conditions apply. Well-intentioned donors need to be wary of scammers trying to profit from tragedies, consumer advocates told News4 earlier this year. "Disasters and tragedies generally attract questionable websites popping up and other untoward things that donors have to watch out for," said Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. Go here for tips on how to know if a fundraising page is legitimate. A 13-year-old boy from Prince George's County who disappeared Halloween night has been located and is safe, police said. Demonte Llameal Penn was last seen in the 10300 block of Cardinal Flower Court in Upper Marlboro -- a residential area -- around 5:30 p.m. He was wearing a blue jacket, white shirt and jeans at the time. Penn is described by police as an African American male, 4 feet 11 inches tall and approximately 80 pounds. Police are asking anyone with information on Penn's whereabouts to call the PGPD's Investigation Division at 301-749-5064. Four days after a powerful wind storm hit New England, there are more than 100,000 power outages across Maine. Island residents worry they could be among the last to have power restored. Central Maine Power has a goal of getting the "vast majority" of customers on line by Saturday night, but Long Island resident Mark Greene thinks he could be waiting even longer for electricity. "One tree can wreak a lot of havoc," he said, pointing to a large tree tangled in power lines, blocking the road outside his home. The east end of Long Island is completely cut off by the tree and downed lines. He said this is the longest this island of 200 year-round residents has gone without power. "This is working its way into the record books," he said. Some islanders have started commuting back and forth to the mainland, just for internet and a hot shower. "Were just getting a little tired of the cold and dark," said Katie Norton. She rides the Casco Bay Lines with her kids after school. They stay overnight with family in South Portland, then get back on the ferry in the morning. "People are getting a little cranky about it," she said, but adds that island residents are pitching in to make sure everyone gets through this prolonged power outage. "People are really helping each other," she said. Long Islands fire chief has been making house calls to check in on people, especially those without generators. Thursday morning, he used a wheel-barrow to walk through the woods to deliver a generator to Wayne Fitzgerald. He lives on the east end, and cant drive down his road until the giant tree is removed. "There is a sense of community here," said Fitzgerald. Although the isolation of living on an island adds a challenge to the power outage, he said neighbors help each other more than when he lived on the mainland. "Its a tight community." Police are seeking two vehicles of interest in connection to a hit-and-run crash that left a nurse dead Sunday in East Brookfield, Massachusetts. Worcester County District Attorney's Office Authorities are continuing to investigate the death of Lisa Germain, who was struck around 6 p.m. on East Main Street. The crash took place as a major storm was rolling through much of New England. Thursday, police released photos of an SUV and a pickup truck, both identified in surveillance footage along Route 9. Worcester County District Attorney's Office "Blink of an eye, you didn't see nothing," said Jan Savage. "It was that quick." Germain was killed in front of Savage's home. Germain was parked just steps away from Dunny's bar, where an employee says she was enjoying their well-known Blues Night. Savage says after the crash, bar customers and a driver rushed to help. "All I heard was a guy saying 'call 911.' She was laying on the ground, he was feeling for her pulse saying she had a pulse, then saying 'I don't think she has a pulse anymore,'" Savage said. Germain was a nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at MetroWest Medical Center. "We are deeply saddened by the loss of Lisa Germain," the hospital said in a statement. "She was a great friend, mentor and team member. She will be deeply missed by everyone at MetroWest." Police in New Hampshire have accused a man of leaving a cat in squalid conditions and without food or water for perhaps months. Portsmouth Police Sgt. Kuffer Kaltenborn tells the Portsmouth Herald a landlord phoned in September to say sounds of an animal in distress were heard coming from an apartment. Police found an adult female cat suffering from severe malnutrition and dehydration. She was cared for at an animal hospital. Kaltenborn says weeks of unclaimed mail were found and the apartment was filled with trash and animal feces. Only about 7 gallons of water had been piped in in three months. Police sought 59-year-old Kenneth Hale, who turned himself in Tuesday and was charged with three counts of animal cruelty. It wasn't immediately known if he had a lawyer and phone number wasn't in service. For Bruce Hanney, it was quite the sight: A convoy of National Grid trucks pulling down his North Andover street. "That's a relief," Hanney said. Hanney's power, like many in this area, went out on Monday morning. Since then, he's tried to get by. "Neighbors have been good, we have good neighbors here, we work together to get the people from down the end of the street to get them out," he said. "We've been handling it the best we can." That is why he was so relieved to see the National Grid crews on his street. "They told us tomorrow so, my wife said she saw them here last night checking things out, so we were hoping they would come today," he said. For George Breen and his National Grid team, the work has been constant since Monday. "Very busy, lots of things going on, we get our orders, we finish one we go on to the next spot," Breen said. "You do see a light at the end of the tunnel." In Andover, no power meant no school for the third day in a row. "It has been a busy and difficult couple of days for the community," Town Manager Andrew Flanagan said. "We are frustrated, it's been a difficult period of time for the community, but we are doing our best." Flanagan said school leaders would decide about school for Thursday either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Cord O'Hara, president of National Grid Massachusetts, said Wednesday that National Grid hoped to have all power restored by Thursday night. Norfolk Christian youth project celebrates 10 years Norfolk Christian youth project celebrates 10 years A thanksgiving service was held on November 1 at the House of Prayer in Norwich to mark the ten year anniversary of local Christian youth charity ENYP. Helen Baldry reports. The charity was founded in 2007 by Danny Doran Smith as the East Norwich Youth Project, involving 8 local churches to work with young people in deprived areas. Ten years on, the organisation has expanded, still with Danny at the helm, to partner with over 40 churches and reach as far as Lowestoft. Still called ENYP, the acronym now stands for Equipping and Nurturing Young People a mission that has had a remarkable impact on hundreds of young people, some of whom gave testimonies on the night and attended the service to celebrate the growth of this well loved organisation. Danny said of the ten year anniversary, It means so much to me. Its my life. Its my passion. Danny spoke of the many years of family strife in his own childhood. He described it as a childhood you tried to escape from. Homeless at the age of 11, Danny knows how it feels to yearn for a home. His vision for ENYP was to be a sanctuary for young people a home of joy, laughter and safety and a place where people are accepted and loved. The purpose of ENYP has always been to care for the poor, those experiencing financial hardship and children who have difficult family lives. Dannys method of working is to be constantly looking forward. He is skilled at expanding projects and sourcing funding for them. He said, We like to expand things. We dont like to stay the same. Bishop Graham, patron of the charity, said, I pay tribute to Danny and all the team for their pioneering capacity. Many young people spoke of increased confidence after linking with ENYP activities. The impact of ENYPs work is that a generation has been equipped to start believing in themselves and to have a voice. Lucie, who has worked for ENYP for several years said, ENYP has taught me to be true to the call God has put on my life. She described it as an organic and passionate place to work. God is well and truly at the centre. The desire to see the city saved is the fuel for what we do. The House of Prayer was decorated with balloons and bunting made by the young people. A band led a packed church in worship and everybody enjoyed an amazing cake afterwards. ENYP has been on an incredible, and sometimes challenging, journey in the last ten years and has enjoyed exceptional growth both geographically and in the breadth of services offered to young people. Heres to the next ten years! Andrew Frere-Smith reminds us of the importance of meals, and offers us some food for thought as the rising cost of living impacts our communities. Andrew Frere-Smith reminds us of the importance of meals, and offers us some food for thought as the rising cost of living impacts our communities. Latest Norfolk Christian community events Events of interest to the Norwich and Norfolk Christian community happening over the next few weeks are listed. Read more John leads Norwich churches trip to Holy Land Experienced Holy Land traveller and former CEO of YMCA Norfolk, John Drake, is leading an inter-church tour from Norwich to Israel and Palestine in March 2023, with a few places still available. Read more Christmas rhyming play by North Norfolk teacher Matthew Pickhaver, who lives in North Norfolk, has just published the third of his series of play scripts on the theme of Christmas, which is now available to buy. Read more Advent and Christmas events at Norwich Cathedral From an Advent Open Evening to Carols in the Cloister and an array of special services and concerts with Norwich Cathedral Choir, there is lots to look forward to at Norwich Cathedral this festive season. Read more Norwich church to hold Sunday healing service Witard Road Baptist Church is hosting a healing service on November 27 led by Rev Ray and Ruth Scorey from Norfolk Healing Rooms. Read more Sheringham youth attend forbidden church The youth group at Lighthouse Community Church in Sheringham were forced to meet at a secret location earlier this month when the Lighthouse building had, supposedly, been shut down by the authorities. Read more Christmas pud workshop at Norwich church Not made your Christmas pudding yet? Don't know where to start? Come along to a Christmas pudding workshop at Norwich Central Baptist Church on November 21 with MasterChef contestant Jane Wyndham. Read more Norwich Foodbank provides over 4,700 food parcels Norwich Foodbank gave out 4,793 emergency food parcels to people across Norwich in the last year with 1,790 of these going to children. Read more Poppies cascading in Sheringham church A fall of poppies cascades from the pulpit in St Andrews Methodist Church in Sheringham, and anyone is welcome to come and see them. Read more Bishop Graham's prayers for COP27 climate conference Bishop Graham is publishing daily prayers on social media for the current COP27 climate conference, and is asking all to join. Read more Discovering the Orange in your life The vibrant colours of autumn have been inspiring regular contributor Jane Walters to focus on the positive. Read more YMCA annual celebration set to inspire YMCA Norfolk is set to hold its much anticipated 2022 annual celebration and awards ceremony on November 17, after almost 3 years since the last event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more Hub manager vacancy at community shop Earlham Community Shop Community Interest Company is looking to appoint a manager for this new venture being developed in the heart of NR5 Norwich. Read more Abbey Days brings Christmas Magic to Wymondham Visitors to Wymondham Abbeys Christmas fair will be able to treat their children to a magic show and fun baking workshop while they browse more than 60 stalls. Read more Salvation Armys new Christmas Appeal in Norfolk The Salvation Army has launched their new Christmas appeal across Norfolk which, this year, has evolved from the much-loved Toys and Tins appeal. Read more Are we storing up treasures on earth? Rising prices affect us all, and Anna Heydon urges us to spare a thought for those who will be struggling with the cost of living this winter. Read more Covid leaf memorial at Norwich church St Peter Mancroft Church Norwich Presents The Leaves of the Trees an installation by sculptor Peter Walker which provides a memorial for those who died of Covid-19 Read more Medicine shortage in viral fever-affected Gorkha village Viral fever patients in Dharche Rural Municipality wards 5 and 6 of Gorkha are facing a hard time due to drug shortage. Cloud Wi-Fi vendor Aerohive Networks has signed an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement with Dell EMC to distribute its Wi-Fi hardware and its HiveManager NG Cloud Management Platform. In addition to product distribution, the relationship includes joint sales, marketing, support and services. It will also bring together Aerohives innovative products with the massive power and scale of the Dell EMC channel and services. Also on Network World: 9 tips for speeding up your business Wi-Fi Dell and Aerohive have a relationship that goes back to 2015 when Dell become a global reseller partner for Aerohives products. The following year, the two companies collaborated and enabled HiveManager NG to manage Dells N-series wired switches, as well as the Aerohive APs, giving customers a true single pane of glass. The new announcement, which was made during Aerohives quarterly earnings call, builds on the existing foundation so businesses can purchase a Dell-EMC branded and supported, cloud-managed, unified wired and wireless networking solution. The technology is the same as it would have been prior to the OEM agreement, but customers receive the benefit of avoiding the complexity of having to purchase two sets of products from two vendors, possibly from two value-added resellers (VARs). Now, everything from procurement to support can be handled through Dell. Its been my experience that businesses prefer a single throat to choke, and Dell EMC has stuck its neck out. In addition to the OEM agreement, Aerohive announced a new feature in HiveManager NG where switch stacking can be done through a GUI for Dell EMC N1500, N2000 and N3000 series switches. Stacking isnt overly difficult to do through a command line interface (CLI), but it is tedious and requires strong technical skills. Doing it through the GUI is dead simple and can be done by junior network engineers, freeing up senior talent to work on other things. HiveManager NG also supports the Dell EMC N1100 series switches. Dell EMC partnership gives Aerohive a boost The partnership could pay big dividends for Aerohive. Dell EMC has had a Wi-Fi OEM agreement in place with Aruba Networks for years, but now that Dell EMCs arch rival and biggest competitor, HPE, owns Aruba, its unlikely Dell EMC wants to do anything to contribute to their success. I dont expect Dell EMC to stop selling the Aruba products, particularly into organizations that currently use the products. But I do anticipate well see much of the new business flow Aerohives way. Also, Dell EMCs distribution capabilities and global reach are vastly superior to the tiny Aerohive, enabling Aerohive to expand into customers and regions it couldnt have on its own. Dell EMC gets great technology and an excellent cloud management tool. The marketing-speak coming out of Dell Technologies since the merger with EMC has been about infrastructure modernization. A modern network doesnt have siloed wired and wireless technologies that need to be managed independently. The OEM agreement and integrated management give Dell EMC the most competitive networking solution it has ever had, particularly because of Hive Manager NG. There are several cloud management platforms available today, but Aerohive customers have told me they love the breadth of functionality in the companys product. Many cloud management tools keep things simple by not letting administrators have access to the full range of capabilities. That might be fine for SMBs, but larger organizations want to be able to do the same things in the GUI as they can do from a command line. Phase 1 of the relationship was a reseller agreement, phase 2 will be Hive Manager integration. This next step brings a full, unified portfolio to the Dell EMC customer base. Will there be another phase? In my opinion, Dell EMC acquiring Aerohive would make the logical next step. But for now, so far, so good. Take a look at your desktop computer. What operating system is it currently running? Now take a look in your data center at all of your servers. What operating system are they running? [ Find out how MINNIX was used as the inspiration for Linux.] Linux? Microsoft Windows? Mac OS X? You could be running any of those three or one of countless others. But heres the crazy part: Thats not the only operating system youre running. If you have a modern Intel CPU (released in the last few years) with Intels Management Engine built in, youve got another complete operating system running that you might not have had any clue was in there: MINIX. Thats right. MINIX. The Unix-like OS originally developed by Andrew Tanenbaum as an educational tool to demonstrate operating system programming is built into every new Intel CPU. MINIX is running on Ring -3 (thats negative 3) on its own CPU. A CPU that you, the user/owner of the machine, have no access to. The lowest Ring you have any real access to is Ring 0, which is where the kernel of your OS (the one that you actually chose to use, such as Linux) resides. Most user applications take place in Ring 3 (without the negative). The first thing that jumps out at me here: This means MINIX (specifically a version of MINIX 3) is in all likelihood the most popular OS shipping today on modern Intel-based computers (desktops, laptops and servers). That, right there, is absolutely crazy. The second thing to make my head explode: You have zero access to Ring -3 / MINIX. But MINIX has total and complete access to the entirety of your computer. All of it. It knows all and sees all, which presents a huge security risk especially if MINIX, on that super-secret Ring -3 CPU, is running many services and isnt updated regularly with security patches. Google wants to remove MINIX from its internal servers According to Google, which is actively working to remove Intels Management Engine (MINIX) from their internal servers (for obvious security reasons), the following features exist within Ring -3: Full networking stack File systems Many drivers (including USB, networking, etc.) A web server Thats right. A web server. Your CPU has a secret web server that you are not allowed to access, and, apparently, Intel does not want you to know about. Why on this green Earth is there a web server in a hidden part of my CPU? WHY? The only reason I can think of is if the makers of the CPU wanted a way to serve up content via the internet without you knowing about it. Combine that with the fact that Ring -3 has 100 percent access to everything on the computer, and that should make you just a teensy bit nervous. The security risks here are off the charts for home users and enterprises. The privacy implications are tremendous and overwhelming. Note to Intel: If Google doesnt trust your CPUs on their own servers, maybe you should consider removing this feature. Otherwise, at some point theyll (likely) move away from your CPUs entirely. Note to AMD: Now might be a good time to remove similar functionality from your CPU lines to try to win market share from Intel. Better to do so now before Intel removes the Management Engine. Strike while the irons hot and all that. Note to Andrew Tanenbaum: Your operating system, MINIX, is now one of the most used on modern computers! Thats kinda cool, right? Note to everyone else: Were all MINIX users now. [ Also see Invaluable tips and tricks for troubleshooting Linux. ] Netmeds raises USD 14 mn from Sistema, Tanncam New Delhi , Oct 31 : Healthcare e-commerce portal Netmeds on Tuesday announced receiving latest round of funding worth USD 14 million from Tanncam, a Cambodian investment holding company, and Sistema, Russia's largest public investment holding company. (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585737 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585737 173O212O198O32) The investment, however, will be used to continue to build upon our consumer base and expand our reach to more locations in the country."Awareness, accessibility and affordability are the key USPs of Netmeds that have made it a favorite among Indian consumers. This is reflected in our growing reach, especially in tier II and III cities, rural towns and villages which lack the options and choices that metro dwellers enjoy, and our platform brings medicines and healthcare within their reach digitally," said CEO Netmeds, Pradeep Dadha.Adding to this he added that the renewed confidence in the industry and its future, is brought about by both the GST and the government's release of the draft of rules governing online pharmacies."This new seal of approval and legitimacy has reignited interest from both investors and consumers. We also believe that the investments, both made by international funds, demonstrate a healthy appetite for global investment in the Indian consumer products market and healthcare, in particular, owing to its massive potential," added Dadha. Dharmendra Pradhan to attend Asia Ministerial Energy Roundtable in Thailand New Delhi Oct. 31 : Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan will be visiting Thaliland on Wednesday to participate in the 7th Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable (AMER) conference. (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585737 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585737 173O212O198O32) India is the current chair of International Energy Forum (IEF) which is promoting the AMER - a biennial event bringing together energy ministers and experts from Asian countries.Pradhan, whose visit will be of two days, will speak on 'Natural Gas: Overcoming Market and Policy Hurdles to the Golden Age of Gas' along with energy ministers from Qatar, Brunei and Senior Representatives from Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) of Japan and Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).Energy ministers from Saudi Arabia, Russia, UAE, Thailand, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Brunei are also participating in the AMER.The 7th AMER at Bangkok will be an important IEF event before India hosts the 16th IEF Ministerial Conference scheduled in April 2018.During his participation in the 7th AMER, Minister Pradhan will invite his counterparts from Asian countries to participate in the prestigious 16th IEF Ministerial Conference in India.In the recent years, India has played a leadership role in Oil and Gas sector.On October 18, 2017, Minister Pradhan participated in the 6th Annual LNG Producers Consumer Conference held in Tokyo, Japan and called for establishing a Liquid, Flexible and Global LNG Market between the countries providing a framework to cooperate in facilitating flexibility in LNG contracts, abolition of Destination Restriction Clause and also explore possibilities of cooperation in establishing reliable LNG spot price indices reflecting true LNG demand and supply.Pradhan, during his meetings and interactions with OPEC Secretary General, has called for replacing the 'Asian Premium' with 'Asian Discount'.He has emphasized the implementation of 'Responsible and Reasonable Pricing' by producing countries.In this background, the IEF, whose membership accounts for 90% of global supply and demand for oil and gas, is an important forum to share India's views on global oil and gas scenario and the changes that are required to balance it better and benefit not only producers, but also consumers. World India Food Hackathon Brings together Young Enthusiasts to Develop Technology Enabled Solutions to Address Food Processing Challenges New Delhi : As India gets ready to host its biggest food event aiming to transform the food economy and double farmers' income, Ministry of Food Processing Industries today culminated a Hackathon, part of World Food India 2017. (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585738 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585738 173O212O198O32) A two-day long Hackathon with a focus on "Developing innovative technology-enabled solutions for challenges faced by Food Processing Sector" was organised wherein Students, Entrepreneurs, Start-ups & technology enthusiasts across the country presented their solutions to address some key issues such as food wastage, carbon footprint, maintaining freshness of fruits and vegetables, backward and forward linkages for farmers, amongst others. 156 teams from across the country registered for the World Food India Hackathon, of which 67 teams were invited to present their solutions.The event was organised with a vision to encourage and strengthen the opportunities that young India can contribute towards the high potential food industry which is set to receive 10-billion-dollar investment in the next two years. More than 1 million jobs are expected to be created in the food processing industry in the next 3 years. An expert panel of mentors drawn from academia and practitioners helped the participating teams in developing effective and robust solutions which were presented to an eminent jury, which scored the shortlisted solutions on implementation feasibility, novelty of the idea & technical robustness. Three winning teams will be felicitated by the Honourable President of India, at the Valedictory Session of WFI on 5th November 2017.Speaking about the event, Mr. Jagdish Prasad Meena, Secretory MOFPI said "World Food India is a platform to showcase the potential of our food processing sector to the world and eliminate inefficiencies in the system. As a part of this larger initiative, we intend to harness young talent of the country to and it is heartening to see such an overwhelming response for the Hackathon. We are confident that the next 3 years are going to be extraordinary in bringing out the best, with such young minds at work. We look forward to seeing more talent coming into the industry and the Government will extend full support to facilitate taking some of these ideas to reality."The panel of jury members for the event included Dr. Chindi Vasudevappa, Vice Chancellor, National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Dr. Bijaya Kumar Behera, Economic Advisor, Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Government of India, Dr. Rahul Mirchandani, Chairperson and Managing Director, Aries Agro Limited, Mr. Tarun Gupta - aZChief Technology Officer (Retail), aZ Cognizant Technology Solutions India Private Limited, Mr. L Shiva Kumar, Senior Vice President & Head - Food Business, Walmart India Private Limited, Ms Rama Vedashree, Chief Executive Officer, Data Security Council of India, Mr. Arbind Das, Whole Time Director & Chief Operating Officer, Godrej Tyson Foods Ltd, Mr. Mayank Jalan, Chairman and Managing Director, Keventer Agro Limited and Mr. Shrikant Sinha, Chief Executive Officer, NASSCOM Foundation.World Food India is supported by Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Development of North East Region, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Civil Aviation. The Confederation of Indian Industry is the National Event Partner. Serving royalty on a platter New Delhi , Oct 31 : Dine with Royalty, a unique culinary initiative which was held at the Belgian Embassy gave an opportunity to food connoisseurs to taste the heavily guarded royal culinary heritage of India. (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585738 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 31 October 2017, 1668585738 173O212O198O32) This four-day festival starting from October 26 also witnessed the Royal families interacting with the guests as they took them through a walk down memory lane sharing their family's culinary history.Six luxury tents served 35 guests at one point of time and had been set up in a manner to create the distinct royal look of the families.The Royal families from across the country served food made according to their family's culinary traditions. The cuisines on offer was an amalgamation of dishes from 12 Indian states and the menus have been limited strictly to "what the maharajas ate in the palaces", authentic historically and not available otherwise to be a part of the festival."The idea behind this concept was to promote the rich and unique culinary heritage of India. We also wanted to encourage Indian cuisine internationally and assured that it gets the respect it deserves, given the depth and diversity of the Indian cuisine," said Sonal Saxena, Founder, Dine with Royalty.She also added, "Each royal house not only extended the hospitality through food, but the members of that royal house themselves played host to the party of guests. To get the right mix of royals who could showcase the strength and diversity of the cuisine the team has travelled across the length and breadth of the country."The participants in the event included the royal families of Jodhpur, Patiala, Awadh, Amarkot, Rampur, Kotwara, Badnore, Limbdi, Balasinor, Bhainsrorgarh, Bedla, Bhopal, Bolangir, Deolia, Kalan, Jhabua, Jhalamand, Kangra, Kanota, Aaron and Myana Kishangarh, Loharu, Mahmudabad, Nimaj, Patiala, Raghogarh, Sandur, Rampur, and Santrampur.A set course meals was served everyday by different royal families. The tents, decorated by some of the renowned art designers, were unique in their representation of the heritage of the princely states serving the meal. 'Reform, Perform and Transform' to take India to greater heights: PM Modi New Delhi , Oct 31 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday applauded India's jump in the 'Ease of Doing Business index' report issued by the World Bank. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585739 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585739 173O212O198O32) Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister said that an easier business environment is leading to historic opportunities for the entrepreneurs, particularly the MSME sector."Easier business environment is leading to historic opportunities for our entrepreneurs, particularly MSME sector and bringing more prosperity," said the tweet.Prime Minister Modi also said that the present years are the easiest in terms of exploring business opportunities in India."It has never been easier to do business in India. India welcomes the world to explore economic opportunities our nation has to offer.""Guided by the Mantra of 'Reform, Perform and Transform' we are determined to further improve our rankings and scale greater economic growth," read another tweet.In accordance with the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business index', India has risen as much as 30 positions to rank 100th amongst 190 countries.The Ease of Doing Business report is based on how easy it is for companies to do business as well takes in account certain regulations based on ten parameters including starting a business, getting electricity, dealing with construction permits and paying taxes among others.Earlier in 2016, India was ranked among top 50 in three categories including minority investment, getting electricity and getting credit, but it ranked among the worst in the world in dealing with construction permits, resolving insolvency, registering property, trading across borders, paying taxes and enforcing contracts. Sorry, that page not found! Please visit our Home Page for latest updates Economic Affairs Secretary anticipates better flow of private investment New Delhi , Oct. 31 : After World Bank announced India as one of the five fastest reformers on Tuesday, India Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the government is now hopeful of an increase in private investment. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585739 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585739 173O212O198O32) "Now I am in a situation that I can say that private investment is reviving in India now," Garg said.Garg said they are working on the factors which decreased private investments."There were reasons like some wrong investments which caused a decrease. It is resolving through IBC and the new data is telling that there had been 5% growth. We are making sure with our efforts that we achieve this as well," Garg added.India climbed 30 positions to rank 100th amongst 190 countries, in the 'Ease of Doing Business' report by the World Bank. The World Bank Vice President, South Asia, Annette Dixon, said that the bank expects India to continue to make good progress in the coming years. NC fields don Ganesh Lama from Kavrepalanchok constituency 1 (Kha) The Nepali Congress has fielded notorious don Ganesh Lama, who has been charged for amassing millions of properties through illegal means, as a candidate for provincial assembly elections from Kavrepalanchok constituency 1 (Kha). President, Vice President, PM offers floral tributes to Sardar Patel on his birth anniversary; PM flags off "Run For Unity" New Delhi : The President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, the Vice President, Shri Venkaiah Naidu, and the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, today offered floral tributes at the statue of Sardar Patel, at Patel Chowk in New Delhi, on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585740 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585740 173O212O198O32) The Prime Minister later flagged off the "Run For Unity" from Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.Speaking on the occasion, the Prime Minister recalled the contributions of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, especially in uniting the nation.The Prime Minister asserted that the youth of India respects Sardar Patel, and his contribution towards the building of our nation.The Prime Minister said India is proud of its diversity, and occasions such as "Run For Unity" offer us an opportunity to reinforce that sense of pride and oneness.Shri Narendra Modi also recalled former Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi, whose death anniversary is being observed today.The Prime Minister administered a pledge to the participants. Holistic Learning is the need of hour in our Present Education System : K. J. Alphons New Delhi : In a unique initiative to give a boost to the learning of science, technology and mathematics among the youth-especially the school students, Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan (VVM) - a nationwide science talent search examination will be held on 26th November. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585741 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585741 173O212O198O32) This programme has been organized by eminent scientists and academicians associated with Vigyan Prasar (VP) - an autonomous organisation under Department of Science and Technology and National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) of Ministry of Human Resources and Development and Vijnana Bharati.A Mobile app called the VVM App was launched at a function in the national capital today by Shri Alphons Joseph Kannanthanam, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Tourism here today. In his remarks, he said, "The Vidyarthi Vigyan Manthan will provide a platform to the India's generation next to imbibe the values of science and technology for a better future. We want the students of this generation to use digital technology, learn science, learn more about India, and learn about the famous people who made science popular. I appeal our young talents to be think, understand and be analytical to ensure a holistic development of our future generation." After the App release, nearly 125 students appeared in the mock test during the function as a demonstration of the online examination in the presence of Honourable Union Minister.Shri Jayakumar, National Secretary General of Vijnana Bharati, VIBHA highlighted the different aspects of VVM and urged the students to practice on the Mobile for this test and be a part of India's Digital MissionA record number of over 91,000 students from 2078 centres across the country are expected to take the test on the same day. One of the unique features of this examination is that the test will be conducted online. Students will attend the exam through the various digital devices like, mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop in line with the vision of Digital India Campaign.The syllabus for VVM to assess the students in phase-I are; 1) Science and Mathematics' (40%) of NCERT syllabus of respective classes, 2) Indian Contribution to Science (20%) (Specially designed reading material) Published by VIBHA, 3) Biography of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai and Dr. Homi Jahangir Bhabha (20%), it is the motivational glimpses of the Indian Scientist of the Year (Specially designed reading material) and 4) General knowledge, Logic and Reasoning (20%). The VVM study material is made available to all students on the website from 01 October 2017. The examination will be conducted for two sections, junior classes (VI-VIII) and senior classes (IX-XI). However, for the evaluation purpose, students from respective classes will be compared separately.VVM is going to attempt the Guinness Book of World Record for largest online science examination for school students wherein more than 91 thousand students from 2078 centres across the country will be appearing in the examination. All the registered students will go through the mock tests to get them acquainted with the VVM APP for final examination scheduled on 26th November.Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA) is one of the largest science movement in the country led by eminent scientists and to inculcate and generate scientific temper, foster excellence in students and nurture and mentor them for their careers in pure sciences. Through VVM programme, India's generation next will be made aware about the India's Rich Contribution to Science from ancient period to modern times. Registered students will undergo multilevel testing. Successful students will get a chance to undertake study tours and interactions with renowned scientists of our country as well as abroad. The details regarding VVM can be accessed on www.vvm.org.in. BJP on back foot in Himachal, says son of CM Virbhadra Singh Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) Nov. 1 : Vikramaditya Singh, son of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, on Wednesday, said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on the back foot in the state. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585742 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585742 173O212O198O32) Vikramaditya is making debut in electoral politics as he has been fielded by the Congress from his father's constituency in the state assembly elections, slated to be held on November 9.Talking to ANI, he said that the BJP's declaration of its chief minister candidate shows its desperation.BJP President Amit Shah on Tuesday announced former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition in Himachal Assembly Prem Kumar Dhumal as party's CM candidate.Reacting on the announcement of Dhumal as the BJP's chief ministerial candidature, Vikramaditya said, "Till yesterday, the BJP leaders were saying that they didn't want a face in the state as they were banking upon the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but when they realized that the Congress party has an edge over many issues, especially, Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation then they have announced name of Dhumal so that after the defeat he should be made scapegoat. This shows that the BJP is on the back foot in Himachal Pradesh."He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's seven election rallies in a small state like Himachal Pradesh shows that there is a discomfort in the BJP camp over the popularity of Virbhadra Singh in the state.The young leader also said that participation of youth in democratic system is good."Congress has ensured enough participation of youth in these elections and it will yield good results for the state in future," Vikramditya said.Results of the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be declared on December 18. Network Intelligence appoints Altaf Halde as its Global Business Head New Delhi , Nov. 1 : Cybersecurity consulting firm Network Intelligence has announced appointment of Altaf Halde as Cyber Security Global Business Head. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585742 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585742 173O212O198O32) Halde was instrumental in growing Kaspersky Lab's product business faster than competition, as pointed out by IDC in their Endpoint security survey, 2013-14.He was also responsible for launching and building the security services arm of Kaspersky Lab with offerings around threat intelligence, cyber security trainings, penetration testing, SCADA security assessments, incident response and digital forensics.Prior to Kaspersky, Halde headed the business for other cybersecurity MNCs such as Sophos PLC, Utimaco and Pointsec."As part of our strategy to become a strong global cybersecurity player, we are ramping up our sales and marketing teams. Altaf is a veteran in the cybersecurity space, and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the business development function," said CEO Network Intelligence, K. K. Mookhey."Under his leadership, we are sure that the Network Intelligence brand will grow even more rapidly in reputation and size. His experience in growing Kaspersky Lab's business will be invaluable as we seek to grow not only our services business but also our products - Firesec and Insight," added Mookhey."I am delighted to join Network Intelligence. KK, an industry veteran and Network Intelligence have established a strong reputation in their existing markets as a committed and passionate services company. I have been impressed with the quality, skills, dedication of the team and the reputation it has with its customers. My goal is to help build this into a global brand with my expertise to win new account, setup new alliances and enter new markets," said Altaf Halde on his appointment.He added that the key is to create value for our clients in cybersecurity initiatives. Without the right strategic approach, clients will not be making the right investments for the most effective cybersecurity initiatives. I am here to help them do so.Halde has more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity with responsibilities that have included enterprise account management, channel management, critical infrastructure and government relations. World Bank report an answer to Congress: Jitendra Singh Surat (Gujarat) , November 1 : Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh on Wednesday said the World Bank report on ease of doing business is an answer to Congress and other political parties which have been targeting the Narendra Modi government over its economic reforms. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585743 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585743 173O212O198O32) India is one of the top improvers in the World Bank's 'Doing Business 2018' report and it ranks among the top 30 countries in three indicators.Jitendra Singh termed improvement of India's ranking in the World Bank report as a matter of proud not only for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but for every Indian."This development is historic. We must think how has it become possible? It has become possible due to a series of economic reforms under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. People might had faced initial difficulty during such reforms, like demonetisation or Goods and Services Tax (GST), but they had faith that these steps were in favour of their and their children's future. Congress and other opposition parties, which were opposing economic reforms, have now got an answer," Singh said.It is notable that Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has been targeting PM Modi over demonetisation and the GST.He has even termed GST as Gabbar Singh Tax.Addressing a PHD Chamber of Commerce programme on October 26, Rahul said, "Prime Minister has forgotten that all cash is not black and all black is not bad. Novermber 8th is the 'barsi' (death anniversary) of note ban. GST or Gabbar Singh Tax has unleashed tax terrorism. Small businesses are crying due to the GST."Singh also said that the BJP will secure a thumping victory in the Gujarat elections.He made this comment when he was asked about Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's three-day campaigning in South Gujarat, which kicked off on Wednesday."Every political party has a right to campaign during elections. But, people of Gujarat have made up their mind and there is no need to convince them. The BJP will secure a thumping victory in Gujarat as the people have understood that their future is secured with which political party. In the last 15 years, they have witnessed the revolutionary development in the state under Narendra Modi (12 years as CM and last three years as PM)," Singh said.He refused to comment on the probability of naming chief ministerial candidate in Gujarat like Himachal Pradesh by saying that it was the prerogative of the BJP high command.Rahul's 'NavSarjan Gujarat Yatra' would commence from Jambusar in Bharuch district on Wednesday and culminate in Surat on Friday.This is Rahul's third phase of the planned four-phase 'NavSarjan Gujarat Yatra' to cover all regions of Gujarat, ahead of the December polls. NC Prez Deuba files nomination from Dadeldhura Nepali Congress (NC) President and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is running for a seat in federal parliament from his home district Dadeldhura. Andhra to get Block Chain Technology Park Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh) , November 1 : Andhra Pradesh Information Technology (IT) and Rural Development Minister Nara Lokesh on Wednesday met with representatives of Block Chain technology companies. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585745 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/andhra-pradesh-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585745 173O212O198O32) They discussed on setting up block chain Technology Park in Visakhapatnam. Apla, Phoenix and Oasis Grace Companies came forward in support towards it.A three phase plan has been prepared in this regard.In the 1st phase, block chain technology training center will be setup in 180 days, a consortium will be formed with 12 block chain technology companies and 1000 jobs will be generated within one year.The minister said that "Andhra Pradesh Government is using technology in governance, so imminent cyber threat is higher. Through block chain technology, cyber attacks in all government departments can be prevented. The state has the potential to become global leader in development of block chain technology"."Andhra Pradesh will provide all permissions and infrastructure to setup companies at fast pace. Meanwhile the tech park is set up, the companies should start operations in temporary offices immediately as part of Designated Technology Park (DTP) policy," he added. Vijay Goel recommends Kidambi Srikanth for Padma Shri Award New Delhi , November 1 : Minister of State (MoS) for Parliamentary Affairs Vijay Goel on Wednesday wrote to Home Minister Rajnath Singh and nominated Indian badminton's new superstar Kidambi Srikanth for the prestigious Padma Shri award. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585746 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/sports-india-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585746 173O212O198O32) The last date for Padma nominations had closed on September 15.Goel in his letter to Rajnath said, "In this scenario, it is imperative to motivate the young sportsman by acknowledging his contribution to this sport in India. He is an idol for the youth of the country and millions of people have aspirations to see his achievements being recognised. Many people have approached me in the capacity of ex-Sports Minister to recommend his name for this year's Padma Shri award.""Accordingly, in the spirit of reflecting the aspiration of people of India, I recommend name of Shri Srikanth Kidambi for the Padma Shri award," the letter read.On Sunday, Srikanth continued his rich vein of form as he defeated Japan's Kenta Nishimoto 21-14, 21-13 in the finals of the French Open to become the first Indian and only fourth male shuttler in history to lift four Super Series titles in a calendar year.Srikanth has been at his menacing form from past few months, having already clinched the Denmark Open Super Series Premier, the Indonesia Open Super Series Premier and Australian Open Super Series earlier this year.Now, he has overall six Super Series titles to his name, including China Open 2014 and India Open 2015.Earlier, the Badminton Association of India had also announced a cash reward of Rs 5 Lakh for Srikanth for his French Open Super Series win. Heavy rainfall anticipated in TN: MeT Dept Chennai (Tamil Nadu) , November 1 : The MeT Department on Tuesday informed the residents of Tamil Nadu that heavy rainfall is expected in the state and its coastal regions in the coming days. (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585746 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/tamil-nadu-news.php (Posted on 01 November 2017, 1668585746 173O212O198O32) "There is a higher chance of heavy downpour in the southern parts of Tamil Nadu and in the coastal regions in the next 24 hours," told Tamil Nadu Met Department Director Dr S Balachandran.The state has been witnessing incessant rainfall for the past few days and the trend is likely to continue.In the last 24 hours, fairly widespread rainfall has been recorded all over Tamil Nadu. Donald Trump to visit China next week Beijing [China], Nov 2 : United States President Donald Trump, all set to commence his five-nation Asia tour on Friday, has confirmed a state visit to China at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585748 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/world-news.php (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585748 173O212O198O32) Trump will meet Jinping during his visit to the Asian country from November 8-10. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang announced the visit on Thursday."The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu Kang was quoted by a Chinese Daily.Lu further asserted that China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results from Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties.From Nov 5 to Nov 14, Trump will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and Philippines in his first visit to Asia since taking office. One held with around '17kg gold' in Lamjung A person was arrested with around '17 kg gold' from from Khudi of Marshyangdi Rural Municipality in Lamjung district. International Solar Alliance, EBRD sign agreement to support renewable energy New Delhi , Nov. 2 : The International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have signed a Joint Financial Partnership Declaration with an objective to deepen the cooperation in support of renewable energy. (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585748 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/business-india-news.php (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585748 173O212O198O32) "Our energy requirements are huge and we want to make optimal use of our new and renewable sources of energy," said Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who was present when the deal was signed."The ISA need to firm-up such financial partnership deals with more multilateral and bilateral donor agencies in order to meet its stated objectives of getting better technology; aiding easier costing to improve the affordability of solar energy," added Jaitley.He also urged more and more multilateral and development banks to come forward and join hands with ISA in order to help fulfil the objectives of massive and affordable deployment of solar energy among 121 ISA member countries.Earlier, Upendra Tripathy, the Interim Director General ISA had informed that the ISA and EBRD have agreed to strengthen cooperation in pursuit of their shared goals of mobilising green energy financing.He also stated that more such financial partnership deals shall be signed by the ISA in near future to achieve its mandate in a proper and effective manner."This is a very important agreement for the EBRD, which has always been eager to share its expertise with new partners and also to learn from them," said EBRD President, Suma Chakrabarti.ISA is working for deployment of over 1000 GW of solar energy and mobilising more than USD 1000 billion into solar energy by the year 2030.Similarly, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is keenly interested to increase its green financing portfolio to 40 percent of its annual business.To this effect, the EBRD launched Green Economy Transition Approach in 2015. Till date, the EBRD has invested more than a4 billion directly in renewable energy, supporting projects in over 20 countries and funding more than 6.5 GW of capacity. Tripura gets its first Rajdhani Express Train Agartala [Tripura] , November 2 : In an attempt to redefine the transportation system of the north-eastern states of the country, Union Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain has flagged off the first Rajdhani express train for Tripura from Agartala Railway station. (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585749 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/travel-india-news.php (Posted on 02 November 2017, 1668585749 173O212O198O32) Thousands flocked to see the inaugural ceremony in Agartala Railway station which was also attended by Governor Tathagata Roy.The move will benefit the residents of Agartala for whom travelling to far off places has always been a costly affair considering the landlocked terrain of the region."I work here and the inauguration of Rajdhani came as a great relief for those who work here and especially to students who are pursuing their studies in other states of the country and also for the patients who often travel to Delhi for treatment" said S.S. Singh, an employee of the Agartala Railway Station to ANI.The train will run once a week starting every Friday and covering a distance of 2,413 kms from Agartala to Anand Vihar within a span of 40 hours."I am going to Kanpur from Agartala and this train service will be a great help for people. Earlier, it was not possible to cover long distance by bus. This is a big relief from the air ticket crisis as many people could not afford it," said Swapan Saha, a resident of Agartala, to ANI.The minister said in his inauguration speech that he has personally intervened in the matter to get the shortest railway line for the Agartala-Delhi route of Rajdhani express."Within the past three years, with the formation of the BJP government, the north eastern region has got immense importance and the work to connect the states with BG line is on full swing. Work in the Nagaland and Imphal railway line has also begun. I hope that all the capitals of the region are connected by BG line by the end of 2019," said the Union Minister to ANI."A special railway line to Bangladesh and a 114 kilometre long major line connecting Agartala and Saboom has also begun" he added."I would like to congratulate the engineers and staff members who were associated with this project and thus making it a huge success" said Governor Tathagata Roy who as an engineer in the Indian Railways, prior to his foray into politics.The introduction of Rajdhani express in the region will not only improve the connectivity of the region but will also change its socio-economic status within the country. A George Washington University-led national collaborative network aimed at improving outcomes for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will receive more than $11.7 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over the next five years to help propel innovative research in the field. Kevin Pelphrey, director of the GW Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Institute and his colleagues will follow children through adolescence and into adulthood to understand differences in ASD risk between boys and girls and in how they each respond to interventions. Although boys may be more at risk, the symptoms of autism materialize differently and sometimes less severely in girls, Dr. Pelphrey said. Because of these differences, many girls go undiagnosed and miss a significant window for impactful treatments. "No one has focused on the [adolescence] period of development or focused on it in autism before, so we're very excited about that," he said. "If we understand something about brain development during adolescence, that could tell us what to predict in young adulthood, including outcomes in terms of happiness, job placement, educational outcomes, health and well being of our participants and their families." Experts have typically focused on early development and infancy as the primary time for treatment intervention for individuals with ASD. Many children, however, are not diagnosed until they are a few years older. Teenage years, he said, present a "second major opportunity" that to date has not been a research focus. Dr. Pelphrey is also one of the first researchers in this field to focus heavily on girls with ASD. As part of this evolving research, the team has for the first time enlisted women and girls with ASD to be researchers as part of a self-advocacy initiative through a key collaboration with Children's National Health System. Participants will help examine brain data and talk about the diagnosis process. The advocates also will interact with the research team to provide information about how the lab's results match up with their diagnosis experience. Dr. Pelphrey expects this process to generate interesting insights on how to further explore the data and make it more useful going forward. "We've been hearing from a lot of families that they feel the work is really meaningful and they're excited that we're studying girls," he said. "They're hopeful that future families won't have the type of trouble getting a diagnosis and getting help that they had." Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today GW leads an NIH-designated Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) network. The ACE program was created in 2007 from the consolidation of previous programs. The NIH has awarded ACE grants every five years, and 2017 marks the third grant cycle. Dr. Pelphrey first received part of the grant funding in 2012 before coming to GW. The ACE collaborators are the first group that he knows of to seriously look at how hormone levels in adolescence interact with brain and genetic differences to produce differences in the expression of autism. They will look at both boys and girls and the differences between them on an individual level. Building on the research initially funded in 2012, Dr. Pelphrey and ACE network collaborators from Harvard University/Boston Children's Hospital, Children's National Health System, Seattle Children's Hospital/University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, the University of California-San Francisco, University of Colorado-Denver and Yale University will continue to follow subjects who were studied in the first phase through adolescence. Over the past five years the collaborating institutions collected information on an unparalleled study sample, gathering genetic, brain imaging and behavioral data on 250 girls and 250 boys with autism, 200 siblings of people with autism, and 200 typically developing girls and boys, all within the range of 6 to 17 years old. "That allowed us to start to try to understand the relationship among genes and brain behavior in those kids and look for biomarkers of developmental pathways that might differ for boys and girls," Dr. Pelphrey said. Researchers will collect the same data on the participants in this second phase, Dr. Pelphrey said. This will allow them to start charting differing developmental trajectories as the study participants get older and move through key developmental transitions, through puberty and into young adulthood. Molecular tests to detect Zika virus, which enable identification of the pathogen's genetic material in body fluids, such as blood, urine, semen and saliva during the acute phase of infection, have been used routinely in prenatal checkups for pregnant women with symptoms of the disease. Nevertheless, a new study conducted in Brazil suggests that a single negative test result may not be enough to reassure family members and doctors. The results were published November, 2017 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. "We monitored a group of pregnant women with a confirmed diagnosis of Zika and tested their urine over a period of several months at intervals of about a week. In some of these women, the viral load in their urine disappeared and later returned," said Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, a professor in FAMERP - Medical School of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Sao Paulo State, and principal investigator for the project, which was supported by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP. The patients included 13 women in different stages of pregnancy (4 weeks to 38 weeks) who were receiving treatment at the Children's & Maternity Hospital (HCM) of Sao Jose do Rio Preto. According to Nogueira, the virus was detected in one patient's urine for as long as seven months. In five women, the test was again positive for Zika virus after their viral load had disappeared in previous tests. In all cases, the virus vanished from the women shortly after they gave birth. "These results suggest the virus continues replicating during pregnancy, in the fetus or the placenta, which must serve as a reservoir for the pathogen," Nogueira said. "However, viral load in the mother's fluids is intermittent and very low, almost at the detection threshold." Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today According to Nogueira, if the result of a molecular test is negative, it should ideally be repeated at least twice at intervals of no less than a week. "We typically test urine samples because they're easier to obtain and because the blood viral load is lower and disappears faster," he said. Three of the women monitored for the study had babies with complications that were probably caused by Zika: two displayed hearing loss and one was born with a brain cyst. The researchers were unable to establish a correlation between the number of times the virus was detected in the mother and the occurrence of an adverse outcome. "To do so, we will need to perform new studies with a larger number of participants," Nogueira said. Polyvalent test A new rapid test that identifies Zika virus in blood samples as well as all four serotypes of dengue virus during the acute phase of infection is described by a multinational group of researchers, including Nogueira, in an article recently published article in the journal Science Translational Medicine. According to the authors, the method is low-cost and entails no risk of a cross-reaction, unlike other tests. Consisting of a dipstick strip with antibodies that change color in the presence of a viral protein known as NS1, the immunochromatography test was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. The method was validated by research institutions in several countries, including FAMERP. "We validated it in tests on blood samples from patients with a confirmed diagnosis of both Zika and dengue attending the Sao Jose do Rio Preto general hospital for treatment," Nogueira said. Women with a history of infertility have a 10 percent increased risk of death compared to those without reported infertility struggles, according to results of a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, which examined the association between infertility and mortality as well as specific causes of death, also showed that women with a history of infertility have a 20 percent increased risk of cancer-related mortality. The results of the study were presented this week at the annual American Society of Reproductive Medicine Scientific Congress & Expo in San Antonio, Texas. "While associations between infertility and overall health have been noted in the male population, until now, the relationship between a woman's fertility and her overall health has not been as robustly examined," said lead author Natalie Stentz, MD, a fellow in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "Though we can't yet explain the association between infertility and mortality, it is possible that the condition may be an early indicator of either endocrine or inflammatory disruption that over time, leads to long term health issues such as malignancy or diabetes." In the new study, researchers examined data from the 78,214 women enrolled in the National Cancer Institute's Prostate Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer screening trial. Study participants were enrolled between 1992 and 2001, and were followed 13 years, or until study withdrawal or death. Using data collected in that study, the Penn team examined the effect of self-reported infertility (inability to conceive for one year or greater) on all causes of mortality and primary cause of death. Infertility was reported in 14.5 percent of the study population. At the completion of follow up, infertile women were 10 percent more likely to be deceased when compared to women who were able to get pregnant more easily, though the authors note that women from each group (fertile and non-fertile) died at a similar age. When examining reproductive cancers, the authors noted that while patients with infertility were 44 percent more likely to die of breast cancer, infertility was not associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer or death from ovarian or endometrial cancers. Additionally, individuals with infertility were 70 percent more likely to die from diabetes, despite both groups of women having a comparable prevalence of diabetes. "The results raise significant questions over the long-term effects of infertility and whether it is infertility itself or an underlying condition that predisposes an individual to infertility that drives these increased risks," Stentz said. However, she adds that because infertility is diagnosed during a woman's reproductive years, typically many years before the end of life, a correlation between fertility and health can be challenging to study on a population level because of the amount of time that is needed to follow these patients. "There is certainly much left to be studied - including how pregnancy and fertility treatments may affect mortality later in life - but our results highlight the fact that a history of infertility is indeed related to a woman's life long health, and opens a potential opportunity for screening and/or preventative management for infertile women for both women's health care providers and the general practitioner." Childhood obesity levels are highest in UK South Asian children, according to new research that completely changes the current understanding of the link between ethnicity and weight status in young people. The study shows that Body Mass Index (BMI) - the most widely-used measure of obesity - has painted a false picture of childhood obesity levels in different ethnic groups in the UK. Researchers at St George's, University of London and University College London, funded by the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), applied ethnicity-specific BMI adjustments to data from The National Child measurement Programme (NCMP). This programme annually assesses overweight-obesity patterns in children aged 4-5 years and 10-11 years attending state-funded primary schools in England. Applying the adjustments to the national data showed that BMI underestimates obesity levels in South Asian children by around 10 percentage points, and overestimates levels in Black children by around the same amount. Unadjusted BMI measures have suggested that Black children have the highest levels of childhood obesity but it is now clear that South Asian children do. Mohammed Hudda, lead author and Research Fellow in Medical Statistics at St George's, University of London, said: "Most of us know that BMI has its limitations but the extent of its inaccuracy in children of ethnic minority backgrounds is now becoming more apparent. Our results suggest that more than half of all South Asian boys - and two in five girls - were overweight or obese by the time they left primary school. That is extremely worrying. "After adjusting BMI to allow for ethnicity, we've found extremely high levels of overweight and obesity among South Asian children, which were not apparent using unadjusted BMI. Black children - other than older girls - had lower levels of overweight and obesity than previously demonstrated, which is a change from the conventional picture." The authors also say that the findings of this research are of particular concern given the higher risks of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases in the long-term among UK South Asians from childhood. They say it is therefore vital to concentrate efforts on the prevention of childhood obesity particularly in those of South Asian origin. Of about 3.7 million children of compulsory school age in state-funded primary education, around 330,000 are of South Asian ethnic origin and 210,000 of African origin. Dr Mike Knapton, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This research suggests there are a large number of South Asian and Black children in the UK are being misclassified into incorrect weight categories, and who may be getting inappropriate health advice. Accounting for ethnic differences in body composition is clearly a crucial factor when using BMI categories. "Accurately identifying children who are overweight or obese is critical in ensuring they and their parents are given the right information and support to reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease in later life. This is equally important for children who are underweight." According to a new study, 4 in 10 health care professionals are turning up for work even when they are down with a contagious infection such as a flu. The study titled, Working with influenza-like illness: Presenteeism among US health care personnel during the 2014-2015 influenza season, was published in the November issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC). 4 in 10 Healthcare Professionals Work while Sick. Image Credit:Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock The authors of the study say that the same health care professionals advise patients with influenza-like-illnesses to stay at home when sick to stop the spread of the infections to other persons. Healthcare professionals who take the risk of showing up for work when ill with these flu like ailments risk passing them on to infants, children and elderly patients and those with a compromised or reduced immunity since many such individuals present to the healthcare facilities. Patients with long term chronic ailments are also at risk of contracting these infections. Unlike otherwise healthy persons, these vulnerable individuals are more at risk of developing life threatening infections and complications. 4 in 10 healthcare professionals (HCPs) work while experiencing influenza-like illness (ILI) according to findings published in the American Journal of Infection Control. CREDIT APIC Additionally the spread of the infections to the community also poses a serious public health hazard. Lead researcher Sophia Chiu, MD, MPH, CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health called these numbers alarming explaining that patients are exposed to healthcare associated infection which they are five times more likely to contract when they come in contact with a healthcare professional who reports with a flu like illness. She added, We recommend all healthcare facilities take steps to support and encourage their staff to not work while they are sick. The study was conducted via a national online survey that looked at 1914 healthcare professionals during the flu season of 2014 and 2015. Healthcare professionals included not only physicians but also physicians assistants, nurses, pharmacists, assistants, clinical health care providers as well as nonclinical health care providers and residents and students. Work settings assessed included hospitals, ambulatory care set ups, physicians chambers and long term care facilities. They asked the participants of the survey to report symptoms of flu and flu like illnesses such as a fever, sore throat, cough runny nose etc. They also asked the respondents to list the reasons and factors that prompt them to report for work despite having the infection. Results revealed that of all the respondents, 414 reported an incidence of influenza like illness during the study period. Of these, 41.4 percent or 183 healthcare professionals showed up for work for an average of three days while they were experiencing the symptoms of influenza like illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC recommendation, persons with flu like illness should wait for 24 hours after fever breaks before they can come back to work. In terms of the four types of set ups that were studied, hospital based ones were most likely to have health care professionals showing up for work (almost one in two 49.3 percent). Among long term care facilities, 28.5 percent showed up for work. Clinical professionals who deal with patients first hand were most likely to report for work with symptoms (44.3 percent). Among these 67.3 percent pharmacists and 63.2 percent physicians worked with the symptoms of flu. On the other hand 40.8 percent assistants, 40.4 percent nonclinical professionals, 37.9 percent nurses and physicians assistants and 32.1 percent other clinicians worked while they were down with flu like symptoms. As the other part of the study, the team of researchers looked at the reasons why these healthcare professionals opted for working rather than taking sick leaves. The commonest reason cited was the fact that most of the respondents felt they did not feel bad enough not to work. They said they felt a professional obligation to a co-worker to not be absent from work and many said they did not find a co-worker to cover for them during their sick leaves. Some (39 percent) sought medical help when they were working despite symptoms. Over half (54 percent) did not think they were contagious and could spread the infection. Nearly half (49.8 percent) could not afford to lose pay and thus showed up for work they reported. In another finding, only 3 in 4 (77.3 percent) of these healthcare professionals had received the flu shots that prevents them from contracting flu at work. A new study published in the American Heart Association/American Stroke Associations Open Access Journal Journal of the American Heart Association has suggested an increased risk of heart and blood vessel disease in women who became mothers for the first time in their teenage years, when compared to older mothers. Credit: Photographee.eu / Shutterstock.com According to the study, women who had their first delivery before the age of 20 had a higher Framingham Risk Score, which is a commonly used measure to approximate the 10-year cardiovascular risk. However, the average risk scores of women whose first delivery was at older ages was comparatively lower. Women who had never delivered a child had the lowest risk of heart disease. Catherine Pirkle, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, cautioned teen mothers to be more careful with their lifestyle choices, which might elevate the risk of heart disease, such as maintaining an appropriate level of physical activity and a healthy body weight. She also urged physicians to provide more vigilant attention to the reproductive characteristics of women and added that women reporting early childbirths need thorough monitoring for the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Even though prior research has indicated greater cardiovascular risks among women reported with several pregnancies, the current study did not associate cardiovascular risk with the number of life-time births. Dr. Pirkle also stated that women who had never given birth may have terminated pregnancies or miscarried, but would still have encountered drastically lower average pregnancy related complication levels. The lower average risk scores in this group are due to the negligible or reduced durations of pregnancy associated body stress. The researchers collected data on the age of the mother at the time of their first delivery of 1,047 women participants aged 65-74 from Brazil, Canada, Colombia and Albania, who were enrolled in the International Mobility in Aging Study in 2012. The researchers linked heart disease risk to age at first birth with the help of Framingham Risk Score. Though the participants were screened for dementia, there exists a need for further confirmation of the findings as the research relied on self-reported delivery history. Another limitation of the study findings was that the life-expectancy of younger mothers from poorer countries might be lower than the represented age group in the study. The findings emphasize, that with increased health risks such as an increase in cardiovascular risks, there is a need for adequate sexual education for girls and adolescents and access to contraception in order to avoid adolescent childbearing in the first place, said Pirkle. She added: "If the association is mediated by lower educational attainment, poorer health behaviors and other factors caused by young motherhood, then our findings also suggest a need to provide more support to young mothers." Charity Cancer Research UK has awarded the University of Birmingham 1.5 million to fund a five-year research program aimed at finding new treatments for bowel cancer. The pioneering research, the first of its kind in the UK, will see scientists taking samples of 200 patients' bowel cancer in order to then grow avatars - or mini tumors - in the laboratory. The avatars will then be exposed to over 2,000 drugs and treatments, some of which have never been previously tested. Using genomic sequencing, scientists will also test the avatars to establish whether certain genes can make individuals predisposed to bowel cancer and whether these genes can be modified to reduce a person's risk to the disease. Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today Dr Andrew Beggs, of the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham, said: "This is exciting and pioneering research, made possible thanks to this generous award from Cancer Research UK. "Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and effects around 30,000 people a year, however only 60 to 70 per cent of people survive so therefore there is a desperate need to develop new treatments and improve existing ones. "By growing mini tumour models or avatars of bowel cancer, we can use them to test whether specific treatments work on bowel cancer with the hope that we can identify new treatments and ultimately save more lives. "We also hope to gain a better understanding as to why some patient's cancers are sensitive to radiotherapy and chemotherapy and, importantly, why others are not. This will help us better select patients who are likely to benefit from chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The award has enabled the University to recruit six scientists dedicated to this research in a new laboratory at the University's Institute for Biomedical Research. Dr Karen Noble, head of research careers at Cancer Research UK, said: "We're pleased to support the exciting work being done by Dr Beggs and his team, in particular their innovative approach to finding new treatments for bowel cancer. "Clinical research is essential to find new and more effective ways to tackle cancer. Our Advanced Clinician Scientist Fellowship Award allows us to harness talented clinical minds to turn the most promising scientific discoveries into new treatments for patients." Police arrest Durbarmarg shopkeepers Police on Tuesday arrested the operators of the branded apparel stores on Durbarmarg who were accused of overcharging customers for failure to appear to attend inquiries and produce documents. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the first three quarters in South Chinas Guangdong province reached 6.48 trillion yuan ($977.5 billion), up 7.6 percent year-on-year, while GDP in East Chinas Jiangsu province hit 6.26 trillion yuan, up 7.2 percent, reported China Business News Tuesday. The GDP growth rate in Guangdong province was 0.3 percentage points higher than that in the same period last year. In addition, Guangdongs first three quarter GDP accounted for 10.6 percent of Chinas entire GDP, 0.1 percentage points higher than the percentage in the same period last year. In the first nine months of this year, industry contributed 37.9 percent of the GDP growth in Guangdong, 1.6 percentage points higher than the same period last year and 0.5 percentage points higher than the first half of this year. Advanced equipment manufacturing and home appliance manufacturing along the west shore of Pearl River has improved a lot and the smartphone industry in Dongguan city, along the east shore of Pearl River, has been developing fast. During the first three quarters, GDP in advanced and new technology industries in Jiangsu province reached 5.47 trillion yuan, up 14.5 percent year-on-year and accounting for 42 percent of the whole output of industrial companies above the designated level. Lockheed Martin is designing Orca, the U.S. Navys Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV). Orca is being designed to support multiple critical missions. This long-range autonomous system will have the payload capability to perform a variety of missions, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; mine countermeasures; indication and warning notification; as well as serve as an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) training platform. These systems can be used for long-endurance surveillance and to deliver other payloads. The US Navy provided a design phase contract valued at $43.2 million for Orca, the U.S. Navys Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (XLUUV). This long-range autonomous vehicle will perform a variety of missions, enabled by a reconfigurable payload bay. Key attributes include extended vehicle range, autonomy, and persistence. Orca will transit to an area of operation; loiter with the ability to periodically establish communications, deploy payloads, and transit home. A critical benefit of Orca is that Navy personnel launch, recover, operate, and communicate with the vehicle from a home base and are never placed in harms way. With each new undersea vehicle that Lockheed Martin designs, we bring to bear the state-of-the-art in technology, and innovative system integration of those technologies, to increase the range, reach, and effectiveness of undersea forces and their missions, said Frank Drennan, director, submersibles and autonomous systems, business development. With decades of experience supporting the U.S. Navys mission, our engineers are approaching this design with a sense of urgency and continued agility. XLUUV Orca is a two phase competition, including the currently awarded design phase and a competitive production phase for up to nine vehicles to meet increasing demands for undersea operational awareness and payload delivery. Modular Solution Lockheed Martins solution leverages its expertise in the integration of proven and open architecture solutions, which enable reliable operations, lifecycle benefits and answering the U.S. Navys call for affordable, modular solutions that can be reconfigured based on emerging needs. Orca is in support of a Joint Emerging Operational Need, so delivering it on schedule is paramount. With Lockheed Martins experienced and industry leading team, we are able to support the Navys schedule needs. Last year, in a testament to the versatility and adaptability that its unmanned systems bring to complex missions, Lockheed Martin successfully launched Vector Hawk, a small, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), on command from the Marlin MK2 autonomous Undersea vehicle (AUV) during a cross-domain command and control event with autonomous systems hosted by the U.S. Navy. In addition to Marlin and Vector Hawk, the Submaran, an autonomous environmentally powered vehicle developed by Ocean Aero, provided surface reconnaissance, surveillance and multi-domain communications. In 2014, Nextbigfuture predicted Tiger Moms as being the driver of early adoption of genetic intelligence enhancement and the lifting of the One child policy in China. Chinas One child policy was being lifted just as embryo selection based upon intelligence for invitro fertilized (IVF) babies becomes possible and we are on the cusp of genetic engineering. Women in China who are now older were banned from having babies but now will be allowed to have children. Many will not be able to conceive naturally and will use IVF. I see IVF going from 400,000 per year worldwide to 2-8 million per year over the next 10 years. IVF babies are more easily embryo selected and accessible for genetic modification. This would provide an economic boost to China in 20-30 years and the beginnings of a significant societal shift. Genomics Prediction is a company that provides advanced genetic testing for IVF. They have developed a novel, genome-wide molecular genotyping methodology for pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos. Our approach reduces disease risk and improves newborn health outcomes by identifying candidate embryos for implantation which are genetically normal. IVF clinics already test the DNA of embryos to spot rare diseases, like cystic fibrosis, caused by defects in a single gene. But these preimplantation tests are poised for a dramatic leap forward as it becomes possible to peer more deeply at an embryos genome and create broad statistical forecasts about the person it would become. The advance is occurring, say scientists, thanks to a growing flood of genetic data collected from large population studies. As statistical models known as predictors gobble up DNA and health information about hundreds of thousands of people, theyre getting more accurate at spotting the genetic patterns that foreshadow disease risk. But they have a controversial side, since the same techniques can be used to project the eventual height, weight, skin tone, and even intelligence of an IVF embryo. Among the founders of Genomic Predictions is Stephen Hsu, a physicist who is vice president for research at Michigan State University. Some basic points worth clarifying by Stephen Hsu at this Infoproc blog: 1. GPs first product, announced at the annual ASRM (American Society of Reproductive Medicine) meeting this week, tests chromosomal abnormality. It is a less expensive but more accurate version of existing tests. 2. The polygenic product, to be launched in 2018, checks for hundreds of known single-gene (Mendelian) disease risks, and will likely have some true polygenic predictive capabilities. This last part is the main emphasis of the story, but it is just one component of the overall product offering. The article elides a lot of challenging laboratory work on DNA amplification, etc. 3. GP will only deliver results requested by an IVF physician. It is not a DTC (Direct to Consumer) company. 4. All medical risk analysis proceeds from the statistical (analyzing groups of people) to produce recommendations concerning a specific individual. 5. Stephen is on the Board of Directors of GP but is not an employee of the company. Hsus prediction is that billionaires and Silicon Valley types will be the early adopters of embryo selection technology, becoming among the first to do IVF even though they dont need IVF. As they start producing fewer unhealthy children, and more exceptional ones, the rest of society could follow suit. I fully predict it will be possible, says Hsu of selecting embryos with higher IQ scores. But weve said that we as a company are not going to do it. Its a difficult issue, like nuclear weapons or gene editing. There will be some future debate over whether this should be legal, or made illegal. Countries will have referendums on it. Laurent Tellier, a Danish bioinformatician who is CEO. Both Hsu and Tellier have been closely involved with a project in China that aims to sequence the genomes of mathematical geniuses, hoping to shed light on the genetic basis of IQ. Stephen Hsu has predicted and tracks the research towards being able to predict and select for intelligence based upon genomic information. Embryo Selection * In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) currently is used for 400,000 babies each year. * A new Alka Seltzer method for controlling PH reduces costs from $10K-20K in developed world to about $1K * Developing world was $2-4K and can be $200 * Comprehensive Chromosome Screening (about $6000) can boost successful IVF by 10-20% > Lower costs for IVF means more adoption and widespread basic genetic screening via chromosome screening will already be used for high IVF success rate * China lifting one child ban * This will mean annual birthrates will go from about 16 million ==> 25.5 million * 23-42 normal child bearing age * IVF at older ages up to 50-55 now at about 5-15% but improving * More older women in China will use IVF * China is not culturally against enhancing children (a lot of tiger moms and cultural differences) * Lower cost and more effective IVF with standard chromosome screening, easy step to gene screening * Maybe 4 million IVF / year with gene screening Children tend to fall within a spread of 13 IQ points above and below the average IQ of their parents. Positive outlier at around 2 or 3 percent where child is two standard deviations above parents Pick the smartest genome from a batch of, say, 20 embryos (but it could 50 or more embryos) to get 20-30 IQ points higher We are technologically close to non-destructive sequencing of human gametes and zygotes by sequencing 10-20 cells. Genetic Engineering for Intelligence BGI (Beijing Genomics institute has a large intelligence study of thousands of geniuses Various studies finding genes with up to 0.5% impact on intelligence Intelligence is 40-80% inheritable There are likely hundreds to a thousand genes that genetically determine intelligence Similar to height. According to Steve Hsus estimates (based on actual data) most humans have (order of magnitude) 1000 rare (-) alleles for intelligence and height One standard deviation above average has (very roughly) 30 fewer (-) variants. No negative alleles might be 30 SD above average! Such a person has yet to exist in human history Each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less, 95 percent of the population scores an IQ between 70 and 130, which is within two standard deviations of the mean. 30 SD above average would be and IQ of 550. Maybe IQ 550 is Impossible or Meaningless 550 IQ would be like a 13 foot tall person Physiology limits practical height What are intelligence limits ? Brain structure Average human height is 70 inches and 3 inch SD (standard deviation) 8 feet 1 inch 97 inches this is 9 Standard Deviations over average 235 IQ is the equivalent in intelligence of a 8 foot 1 inch person Geniuses and Society 5% of population with 30 points higher intelligence might be about $14000 more GDP per capita 5% of population with 120 points higher intelligence might be about $56000 more GDP per capita What would a society with tens of millions of Edisons, Einsteins, Steve Jobs and Elon Musks be like ? Could we get beyond them in capability? 5% of population significantly intelligence enhanced would be possible if IVF takes off and embryo selection and genetic engineering with it over the next 10-20 years. Search for truth and justice continues in Nepal: ICJ Tuesdays arrest of Balkrishna Dhungel highlights the weaknesses, as well as promises, for conflict victims seeking accountability through Nepals judicial system, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said on Wednesday, a day after the Maoist leader was picked up from Satdobato and sent to jail. Elections 2017: Sitaula, Lingden face each other for third time An uncommon electoral alliance has formed in Jhapa constituency No 3, with the decision of the Nepali Congress to field Krishna Prasad Sitaula as a first-past-the-post candidate in the federal parliament elections. Two Indian nationals held with gun in Capital Police arrested two Indian nationals with a country-made pistol in the Capital on Wednesday. Elections 2017: Women candidates few and far between in NC The Nepali Congress (NC) leadership met with severe criticism for low representation of women just as the party tried to quell the charges of nepotism and favouritism from some sections of leaders. The party on Wednesday was finalising candidates for the first-past-the-post (FPTP) category for the second phase of federal and provincial elections. 1. Yes. The ordinance goes against state law and is not in the best interest of the cities. 2. Yes. At the very least, it should be amended to give police officers some discretion. 3. No. Voters approved the ordinance by large majorities; the councils cant ignore that fact. 4. No. The petition process has to be given a chance to work. Leave the ordinance alone. 5. Unsure. Its hard to say how the cities should move forward regarding the ordinance. Vote View Results Frustrated CG employees cant bear delay The government has been back and forth on the basic minimum pay. On one hand it was quick to assure that the issue would be looked into. However on the other it has done nothing to speed up the process. This has led to a great deal of frustration among the CG employees. Matters at a standstill A meeting of the National Anomaly Committee was to be held in October. However that was postponed and what is worse is that no new date has been fixed. Many officials that we spoke to did not offer any clarity on the dates. The only reply that we got was that the matters would move after the elections. Is NAC, Non Action Committee It has been a year since the NAC was set up. Forget taking a decision, no proper meeting too has taken place. The main issue for it is to conclude the pay hike report. One one hand the Finance Minister assures that there would be a positive decision and on the other, the NAC has not decided anything as of now. What is the reason behind this inaction, CG employees have asked. Is the government even interested in giving the hike. However some officials say that the NAC will recommend the pay hike from Rs 18,000 to Rs 21,000. The question is when? The NAC is functioning as a non action committee, some say. 7th Pay Commission copies burnt Meanwhile in Rajasthan, state government employees who are disappointed over the over the 7th Pay Commission notification burnt the copy of the notification at many places. All Rajasthan state government employees federation burnt the copy of the notification at 1,500 places on Wednesday, claimed the union leaders. The union demanded the implementation of the pay commission from January 2016 instead of Oct 2017 as per the notification. It warned of agitation if the government did not heed to their demand and come out with an amicable solution. With the number of anonymous rogues from Pak rising, here's how BSF is beating down the drones Pakistan's 'Rooh Afza' cannot be sold in India: Delhi HC After a decade, Pakistani sisters released from Amritsar jail India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar After spending over 10 years in jail, three Pakistani nationals, including a minor girl, were released on Thursday. Fatima, her 11-year-old daughter Hina and Fatima's Mumtaz are the released Pakistani nationals. Two Pakistani sisters Fatima and Mumtaz were arrested along with their mother for smuggling narcotics into India in 2006. Their mother died in the prison in 2008. Fatima was pregnant when she was taken into custody and gave birth to her daughter Hina in Amritsar jail. Fatima's 11-year-old daughter, Hina. Fatima was pregnant when she was taken into custody and gave birth to her daughter Hina in Amritsar jail. Fatima thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for paying special attention to their case. "We thank him and salute India," Fatima said after the beign released from the jail. Was told PM Modi paid special attention to our case, we thank him and salute India: Fatima,Pakistani national released from Amritsar Jail pic.twitter.com/x6VF3ve9at ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 OneIndia News Infants set to get Aadhaar: Here is why After Mamata, Meghalaya CM expresses his opposition to Aadhaar over privacy issue India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Shillong, Nov 2: After West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee took a firm stand against Aadhaar, even her government approaching the Supreme Court in this regard recently, now, her counterpart from Meghalaya, Mukul Sangma, too has come out against the 12-digit unique identification number issued by the Indian government to every individual resident of the country. On Wednesday, Sangma said he was yet to enrol himself for Aadhaar as he shared the concern of the people over the right to privacy. "I have not registered for Aadhaar number. I share the same concern with my people. (Our) right to privacy is important in a democracy else the whole idea of democracy is diluted," Mukul told reporters in Shillong. In fact, the residents of hill state have started a campaign against mandatory possession of Aadhaar card and linking individual Aadhaar number with bank account, mobile phone number and social schemes, to name a few things. Sangma said, "I and my (Assam) counterpart (Sarbananda) Sonowalji have discussed and written to the Government of India. We both agreed to move in the right direction and our stand remains and we are moving together." "The issue is that we are in a situation which is different from other states. The kind of problem due to illegal immigration and influx is a common concern of the people of Meghalaya and Assam and the entire North East," he added. The chief ministers of Meghalaya and Assam had earlier shot off a letter to the Centre seeking exemption from Aadhaar. "What we are saying is not to make it compulsory and binding for Meghalaya (and Assam)," he said, adding that the registration is going on in the state for the convenience of students who are studying outside the state. Sangma claimed there were "lots of confusion" with regards to registration for Aadhaar number and "we want complete clarity on the matter". "Different authorities are giving diverse directions and inter-ministerial engagement is missing, synergy is missing and dialogue is missing," he said. In Meghalaya, the registration for Aadhaar number has crossed over 14 per cent of the population, ahead of Assam (as per UIDAI statistics), following the resumption of Aadhaar registration in June this year. However, there is a group in the state which has been urging the people to demand the Aadhaar authorities to delete the information collected from them in the database. Over 260 people have submitted a personal letter to the Meghalaya People Committee on Aadhaar (MPCA), an umbrella organisation against Aadhaar enrolment in the state, demanding the data collected from them be deleted from the system. Several civil society groups, including the Thma u Rangli u Juki (TUR) and the influential Khasi Students Union (KSU), are leading the MPCA. "The people were coerced into giving their personal details during the enrolment. This is done without having taken the consent of the people concerned and it infringes on their rights to privacy," TUR convener Angela Rangad said. "There are enough doubts that Aadhaar numbers will be misused in surveillance and control by the powers that be. We have to be extra careful before we commit ourselves to the unknown," she said. MPCA secretary Auguster Jyrwa said that a campaign to collect signatures would conclude on November 3, after which they would approach authorities concerned seeking deletion of the data. The constitution bench of Supreme Court will start hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Centre's move to make Aadhaar card mandatory for availing various services and benefits of government welfare schemes from the last week of November. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 13:41 [IST] Vietnam buys rice from India for first time in decades: Report PM Modi speaks with Vietnam PM, says both nations share vision of rules-based Indo-Pacific region Vietnam: At least 12 killed in karaoke bar fire Air Force chief B S Dhanoa on 5-day visit to Vietnam India pti-PTI New Delhi, Nov 1: Air Force Chief B S Dhanoa is on a five-day visit to Vietnam to enhance bilateral ties, the Air Force said. Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa is on an official visit to Vietnam from October 30 to November 3. "Aim of visit is to improve Bilateral Relations & #DefenceCooperation," the official handle of the Indian Air Force tweeted. Last month, Navy chief Sunil Lanba had undertaken a four-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation. The aim of his visit was to "consolidate cooperation" between the armed forces of India and Vietnam and also to "explore new avenues of defence cooperation". PTI 'Kantara' box office: Even as Bollywood's Akshays and Ajays struggle, this one hits Rs 75-crore mark Bengaluru is No 1 on Indias innovation index, home of technology: PM Modi Amit Shah to kick off 79 day Karnataka Parivartan Yatra today India oi-Vicky By Vicky BJP president Amit Shah will kick off the party's 79-day 'Karnataka Parivartan Yatra' in Bengaluru today with the aim of returning to power in the southern state. According to a BJP statement, more than one lakh party workers riding motorbikes are expected to attend a rally to be addressed by Shah. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally on January 28 on the conclusion of the yatra to be led by the party's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa. Party workers from the state's 28,000 polling booths are expected to take part in Shah's rally. Top party leaders, including Union ministers and chief ministers, will attend the yatra, which will pass through the state's 224 Assembly seats, the statement said. The Congress is in power in the state and the BJP is making all-out efforts to oust it in the Assembly polls scheduled to be held early next year. OneIndia News Bill seeking death penalty for heinous crimes to be introduced in MP Assembly India pti-PTI Bhopal, Nov 2: A Public Safety Bill seeking death penalty to those committing heinous crime against children would be introduced in the winter session of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan made this announcement in Bhopal late last night while addressing a state-level function of Madhya Pradesh foundation day. "The state government will introduce Public Safety Bill in the upcoming assembly session to ensure capital punishment in cases of heinous crime against innocent children," Chouhan said. He also alleged that confusion is being created over Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (price deficit financing scheme), which seeks to compensate farmers when prices fall below the MSP. "Those people would are trying to create confusion about Bhavantar Yojana will not succeed in their plan. The government would directly deposit the difference of modal selling rate and MSP in the bank accounts of farmers," he said. PTI BJP will win most seats, break all records in Gujarat: Amit Shah BJP MLA of Assam alleges of receiving threat calls over his Rohingya comments India oi-Amitava By Amitava A BJP MLA from Assam has alleged that he has been receiving threat calls over his comments regarding Rohingya refugees and illegal Bangladesh immigrants residing in Assam. The MLA claimed that the "Jihadi" calls were made from Philippines and the United Kingdom. Shiladitya Dev, the MLA from Hojai, Assam claimed that he had received two calls. "The caller threatened me from abstaining from making any comments on Rohingiya refugees and on the Bengali speaking Muslim population of Assam. The callers threatened me with dire consequences" alleged Dev. He further alleged that the callers had claimed that all Islamic countries remained united on the Rohingiya issue and that Dev being a loner would not be able to achieve much against the Rohingyas. Reports claim that the calls were made from the numbers +639233809345 and +4455067. The MLA lodged a complaint at the Hojai police station. Police have started an investigation. Incidentally MLA Dev has recently raked up controversy with comments having alleged communal undertones. Dev had claimed that Rohingyas from Myanmar were entering from Tripura and were being pushed into the Barak Valley in Assam by the Left Front Government of Tripura. The BJP MLA had questioned how could the Bengali speaking Muslim population of Assam demand to be declared original inhabitants of the State. He had further stated that the "Nodir Shor" (river banks) areas have become breeding grounds of terrorism. He had demanded that the Government should halt all development activities in these areas. This comment had drawn flak from the Bengali speaking Muslims inhabiting these areas. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 23:02 [IST] Congress fumes over Jaitley's 'ease of corruption' remark India oi-Vikas By Vikas Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's tweet likening UPA rule to "ease of doing corruption" has left the Congress party fuming. Congress leader Kapil Sibal told news agency ANI that Jaitley must not forget that he is the finance minister of millions of people who do business and not just of the taxpayers. "He must realise the day they feel that there is ease of doing business is the day that they will appreciate the Finance Minister. So, the Finance Minister should not rely on World Bank report given in respect with Delhi and Mumbai which deals with creamy layers of business in our society," Sibal told ANI. Jaitley had on Wednesday hit back at Rahul Gandhi over his remarks on World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings and said that under NDA rule "ease of doing business" has replaced "ease of doing corruption". "The difference between the UPA and NDA - The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business," Jaitley had tweeted. While reffering to India's 30 place jump in World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings, the Congress vice president had earlier said "everyone knows the truth". ['Ease of doing business' has replaced 'ease of doing corruption': Jaitley's dig at Congress] "Sabko maloom hai 'ease of doing business' ki hakikat, lekin khud ko khush rakhne ke liye 'Dr Jaitley' yeh khyaal acha hai (Everyone knows the truth about ease of doing business, but let Dr Jaitley keep himself happy thinking about it)," tweeted Rahul. Both the leaders have been involved in a war words over several issues including demonetisation, implementation of the GST and GDP growth rate. OneIndia News A trained chef and 'Dexter' fan, this is how Delhi man killed his live-in partner Delhi police bust Chhota Shakeels ploy to kill Tarek Fatah India oi-Vicky By Vicky Investigations being conducted following the arrest of a Chhota Shakeel right hand man has revealed that a plan was hatched to kill Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah. The police had arrested Shakeel's right man from north-west Delhi;s Jafrabad on Wednesday. The accused was carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 on his head. Naseem alias Rizwan (28), a sharp-shooter and close aide of Shakeel, was on a mission to eliminate Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah, police said. The police were on the lookout for Naseem, a contract killer wanted in several cases. On Tuesday, police received a tip-off that Naseem would come to Jafrabad and a trap was laid accordingly. When Naseem saw police personnel, he tried to flee but was nabbed after a long chase. A sophisticated pistol, four live cartridges and Rs 1.98 lakh in cash were seized from him, police added. The Delhi police's special cell had arrested one Junaid Chaudhary in June for his alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Fatah. Naseem's name crept up during investigations. He was also involved in robbing a collection agent of a businessman of Rs 10.6 lakh last month, police said. Naseem told his interrogators that he was in touch with Chhota Shakeel, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (northeast) A K Singla. He was also supposed to meet a criminal called Munna Singh, through another criminal Rashid, who was lodged in the Bijnor Jail. Singh and Rashid had told Naseem that he would get crores of rupees if he eliminated certain high-profile personalities in Andra Pradesh, police said. Naseem also told police that Shakeel had asked him to eliminate a person in Dwarka. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 7:21 [IST] Doctors call off strike after meeting with Delhi Government India oi-Shreya By Shreya Resident doctors in state government run hospitals in Delhi have called off their strike to protest against the Delhi Government's move to increase OPD timings, following a meeting with the state government. According to a report in a national daily, the doctors' union said, "A meeting was held today [on Tuesday] at the Delhi Secretariat. The attendees of the meeting included senior health officials and representatives of the doctors. We raised the issue of the additional OPD timing," Following the meeting between doctors and the state government, the registration timings for OPD was reduced by an hour, however no changes have been made in the extended OPD timing. The earlier timings were 9am to 1pm, while the OPD registration timings were from 8:30 am to 12 noon. On October 9 order, the AAP-led Delhi government had extended the timings, from 8am to 2 pm to avoid crowding. At least 15,000 resident doctors across all state-run hospitals had protested against the government's decision to increase the timings by wearing black ribbons at work and shutting down services. Dr Vivek Chouksey, president of the Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) said to India Today, "It is (a) good decision that government is working to shorten the overcrowded OPD rush, these issues can also be solved by recruiting more doctors, pharmacists and putting up more registration counters," OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 18:31 [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 Pradesh election: Get rid of 5 monsters, says PM Modi in Kangra India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged the people of Himachal Pradesh to get rid of five monsters- mining mafia, forest mafia,drug mafia,tender mafia and transfer mafia- in the state. PM Modi was addressing a public rally in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra ahead of assembly elections in November. PM said, "Himachal Pradesh CM is embroiled in corruption yet Congress in manifesto says there will be zero tolerance for corruption. Even a child won't believe it." In his tirade against the incumbent Congress-rule, he said, "There are 5 monsters in HP which we need to get rid off- Mining mafia,forest mafia,drug mafia,tender mafia and transfer mafia." There are 5 monsters in HP which we need to get rid off- Mining mafia,forest mafia,drug mafia,tender mafia and transfer mafia: PM Modi pic.twitter.com/BhiAO1pU0M ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 While striking a chord with local voters, Modi said that he had worked extensively in in the state and was very familiar with all cities and knew each and every street. Himachal Pradesh election: Congress party famous for corruption, says PM He further said that Congress has now become a laughing club, the party need to introspect as to why people are turning away from them across the country. In Himachal Pradesh, PM Modi will address two rallies in Fatehpur constituency of Kangra district and Daula Kaun in Sirmaur district on November 2. He will again visit the state on November 4 and 5 for a series of poll meetings to highlight the BJP's development agenda and the corruption issue against the Congress. OneIndia News Bolsonaro and Lula jabs at each other in debate Himachal Pradesh election: PM Modi chastises Congress over Doklam India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday once again chastised Congress party over Doklam issue during a public rally in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. PM Modi said, "Country is aware how the Doklam issue was dealt with, but the Congress even questioned that." "Someone born in a family which has ruled for decades doesn't believe his own Army and agencies?, but meets China's envoy and asks about Doklam," he said. PM Modi said, "Instead of asking Indian diplomats and foreign ministry, you (Congress) go and ask Chinese envoy. Sorry to say this shows lack of basic understanding." He asked, "Does Congress have a right to undermine sacrifices of soldiers?" In a veiled attack against P Chidambaram, he said, on of their leader is talking about freedom of Kashmir. PM Modi was addressing a public rally in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra ahead of assembly elections in November. In Himachal Pradesh, PM Modi will address two rallies in Fatehpur constituency of Kangra district and Daula Kaun in Sirmaur district on November 2. He will again visit the state on November 4 and 5 for a series of poll meetings to highlight the BJP's development agenda and the corruption issue against the Congress. OneIndia News How did you assume conversion to Islam was legal, Rajasthan HC asks cops India oi-Vicky By Vicky The Rajasthan High Court raised questions about a woman converting to Islam and her inter-faith marriage. The court sent the 22 year old woman to a government home for a week. The court sought to know from the State if there was any procedure in place to monitor religious conversions and also govern them. The judge further went on to observe that people could not change their faith based on an affidavit. Rajasthan which does not have an anti-conversion law has been given four days time to respond to the questions raised by the High Court. The Bench comprising Justices Gopal Krishna Vyas and Manoj Kumar Garg said that they were of the opinion that whether without any procedure or rule, a person can convert to another religion or not is not established and needs to be settled. The court is hearing a plea filed by Chirag Singvi who has alleged that his sister Payal is now known as Aarifa. He also alleged that his sister was converted to Islam under coercion and the marriage papers were forged. The court raised doubts about Aarifa's wedding to a Muslim man identified as Faiz Modi and said the documents she produced, including a nikahnama, contradicted each other. The court sought to know from the police how it assumed that the conversion was legal. How did you come to the conclusion that the conversion was legal, just by way of an affidavit on a stamp paper of Rs 10, the court also asked. By this way tomorrow, even i could address myself as Gopal Mohammad, Justice Gopal Krishna Vyas said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 6:11 [IST] 'Why can't a Tipu Sultan statue be built?' Siddaramaiah attacks BJP If BJP gets majority...: Amit Shah reveals CM face for Gujarat Gujarat assembly polls: BJP releases 3rd list of candidates, Alpesh Thakor to contest from Gandhinagar South BJP announces candidates for LS, assembly bypolls in four states BJP will win most seats, break all records in Gujarat: Amit Shah J&K: BJP youth leader killed by terrorists in Shopian India oi-Deepika By Deepika Shopian district youth wing president of Bharatiya Janata Party was brutally murdered by unknown persons on Thursday. According to the sources, the dead body was found in Kiloora village and the throat of the deceased was slit. The slain man was identified as Gowhar Ahmad, a resident of Shopian. Meanwhile, a BJP functionary said the deceased was associated with the party. "Bhat was the district president of the BJP's youth wing," party's media in-charge for Kashmir, Altaf Thakur, said here. He said Bhat had been associated with the party for over two years. The police have registered a case and investigations are on. OneIndia News Kamal Hassan rakes up 'Hindu terror' debate; BJP demands apology India oi-Madhuri Recommended Video Kamal Hassan makes another controversial statement over 'Saffron Terror' | Oneindia News After Tamil actor Kamal Hassan made yet another controversial statement over the phrase 'saffron terror' that the right wing cannot challenge anyone that there is no Hindu terrorism, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded an apology on Thursday. According to BJP spokesperson,'' Kamal Hassan should apologise and take his words back. In reality, there is no place because Hindus are in majority.'' Hassan in his column in the weekly Ananda Vikatan had written that Hindu extremists earlier believed in holding a dialogue to push their point, they now indulged in violence. "In the past Hindu right-wing groups would not indulge in violence, but they would hold a dialogue with the opposite parties on their arguments. But this old tactic was defeated and what they stated to do is use muscle power. They started indulging in violence," he wrote. The actor had further said that Tamil Nadu will become an example for social justice once again, and congratulated Kerala for "showing the way." His comments come at a time when his fans and leaders of all major political parties are waiting for the 'grand announcement' he is to make on November 7, on his birthday. OneIndia News From using Bhagwad Gita to local rowdies, Christian missionaries are on overdrive mode in Karnataka Karnatakas Mudhol Hound becomes first desi dog to join Indian Army India oi-Vicky By Vicky Recommended Video Mudhol Hound, first Indian breed of dog to be inducted into army | Oneindia News The Mudhol Hound from Karnataka will be the first desi dog to make it to the Indian Army. The Indian Army which uses German Shepherds, Great Swiss Mountain dog and Labradors is all set to induct the desi Mudhol Hound. The dogs from Karnataka were trained in the Army's Remount and Veterinary Corps (RVC) centre in Meerut. Six dogs have already been trained and they will soon be inducted into the Army at Jammu and Kashmir. The induction is likely to take place in December. The Indian Army had expressed its desire to use the Mudhol sight hound for surveillance and border protection duties. It has obtained six Mudhol dogs for testing at the Army's Remount Veterinary Corps at Meerut. The dogs were bred after selection, at the Canine Research and Information Centre in Thimmapur near Mudhol in Bagalkot district of Karnataka. The CRIC is a unit of the Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Sciences University, Bidar. Know about the Mudhol Hound: The Mudhol Hound, also known as Caravan Hound is an Indian breed of dog of the sight hound type. The feathered variety is commonly referred to as a Pashmi. It is also called Karwani. It is a common pet amongst villagers in India's Deccan Plateau, who use it for hunting and guarding. The Kennel Club of India (KCI) and Indian National Kennel Club (INKC) recognize the breed under different breed names. The KCI registers it as a Caravan Hound while the INKC goes with the name Mudhol Hound. The postage stamp with face value of Rs.5.00 was released by Indian Postal Department on 9 January 2005, together with 3 other dogs i.e. Himalayan Sheep Dog (Rs. 5.00), Rampur Hound (Rs. 5.00) and Rajapalayam (Rs. 15.00), in recognition of Mudhol Hound. The Mudhol or Caravan hound has well-defined characteristics. The head is long and narrow, broad between the ears with a tapering muzzle. The jaws are long and powerful, with a scissors bite. The nose is large and black. The ears are pendulous and hang close to the skull. The eyes are large and oval in shape, from dark to hazel. The expression is a piercing gaze according to Wikipedia. The neck is long, clean, and muscular, and fits well into the shoulders. The forelegs are long and straight. The back is long, broad and well-muscled. The loins are wide and deep. The chest is strong and deep with well sprung ribs. The abdomen is tucked in. The hind quarters appear wide and well-muscled. The tail is set on low, strong at the base and tapering, quite long and carried in a natural curve. The gait is high-footed, flexing all four legs, but should not be hackneyed. There are two coat varieties-one with an entirely smooth coat and the other with silky featherings on the ears, legs, and tail. Acceptable colours are fawn, fallow, red, cream, black, and mouse-grey, or any of these colours broken with a minimal amount of white. OneIndia News GAIL is hiring for 77 posts: Earn up to Rs 2 lakh, apply now @ gailonline.com Kerala: Locals oppose GAIL pipeline, clash with police in Kozhikode India oi-Chennabasaveshwar By Chennabasaveshwar A protest against a proposed Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) gas Pipeline Project turned violent as people clashed with police in Kozhikode in Kerala. Local residents and action committee members clashed with police at Mukkam in Kozhikode district on Wednesday, leading to injuries to many protesters and arrests, reported ANI. Local people have been opposing the pipeline being laid by the GAIL, stating that many will be displaced from their lands and homes. They also alleged that the compensation package for the landowners was not attractive. Trouble broke out at Eranjimavu in Mukkam between the police and protesters who were against laying of the GAIL pipeline. When the protestors destroyed the vehicle of GAIL authorities, the police retorted with lathi charge. The police also sprung into action and dismantled the shed put up by the protestors. OneIndia News Not all physical contact is sexual harassment, rules Delhi HC India oi-Deepika By Deepika The Delhi High Court on Thursday has refused to classify every "unwelcome physical contact" as sexual harassment. The court observed this while hearing an appeal challenging clean chit given to an employee of CSIR accused of sexual harassment. "All physical contact cannot be termed as sexual harassment and only a physical contact or advances which are in the nature of an "unwelcome sexually determined behaviour" would amount to sexual harassment," the court observd. The appealant had accused a colleague of sexual harassment, saying he had "held her hand and pushed her out of the laboratory". Justice Vibhu Bakhru, in his ruling, said that an accident physical contact can not be seen as a case of sexual harassment. "Undoubtedly, physical contact or advances would constitute sexual harassment provided such physical contact is a part of the sexually determined behavior. Such physical contact must be in the context of a behavior which is sexually oriented. Plainly, a mere accidental physical contact, even though unwelcome, would not amount to sexual harassment. Similarly, a physical contact which has no undertone of a sexual nature and is not occasioned by the gender of the complainant may not necessarily amount to sexual harassment," the court's verdict stated. "This Court does not find that the said conclusion to be perverse or without application of mind as was contended on behalf of the petitioner. This Court finds no merit in the present petition. The same is, accordingly, dismissed," Justice Bakhru said in his judgment. A woman employee of CSIR had accused a colleague scientist of sexually harassing her. In her complaint the woman claimed that her male colleague stormed inside the laboratory, held her hand, snatched her testing sample. In 1997, the Supreme Court in the case of Vishakha & Ors. v. State of Rajasthan, had set out the guidelines and norms for proper reporting and disposal of sexual harassment cases at work places. The case had also laid out an inclusive definition of sexual harassment that was later adopted as a norm in most of the private and public sector companies with an internal committee and grievance cell. OneIndia News (with agency inputs) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 18:52 [IST] NTPC explosion: Rahul Gandhi meets injured in Rae Bareli district hospital India oi-Madhuri Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi reached Rae Bareli district hospital in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday and met those injured in NTPC explosion. The toll in the NTPC boiler blast in Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli rose to 22 on Thursday, with two more succumbing to burn injuries, officials said. Meanwhile, the state government has ordered a magisterial probe. Gandhi was in Gujarat as part of his three-day Navsarjan Yatra ahead of the Assembly polls in the State on Wednesday. However, he decided to visit his mother's constituency in wake of unfortunate accident in the power plant. Congress president Sonia Gandhi who represents Rae Bareli in Parliament. "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon," he tweeted after addressing last meeting in a village near Surat on Wednesday. The death toll in the explosion at NTPC plant in Raebareli has risen to 26. A boiler in the NTPC's Unchahar plant exploded on Wednesday evening. Rescue operations by NDRF are still underway at the explosion site. Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh for next of kin of deceased, Rs 50,000 for critically injured and Rs 25,000 for injured. PM Narendra Modi approved ex- gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at NTPC plant in Raebareli. He also approves Rs 50,000 each for those injured in the accident. NTPC operates a 1550 Mega Watt power plant of Uttar Pradesh, which is named after Feroze Gandhi, husband of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. OneIndia News Explained: Why did the ECI freeze the symbol of the Shiv Sena Not just future of Sena but democracy at stake, says Uddhav Shiv Sena's 'booklet' leaves BJP fuming India oi-Vikas By Vikas Shiv Sena's move to distribute a booklet highlighting alleged corruption charges against BJP leaders has left the ruling party at the Centre fuming. The booklet, titled "Scamster BJP", was released on Wednesday at Matoshree, which is Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray's home. The publication mentions Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde, Vishnu Savara, Pravin Darekar, Jaykumar Rawal, Chandrashekhar Bawankule and others, along with the details of allegations against them. BJP leader Ram Kadam said that the Shiv Sena was trying to be both an ally of the ruling party and an opposition at the same time. "Shiv Sena ki dono taraf se dhol bajaane ki purani aadat hai, inhe satta mein bhi rehna hai aur vipaksh mein bhi (Shiv Sena has an old habit of beating the drum from both sides, they want to be in power as well as in the opposition)," Kadam told ANI. The booklet lists out in detail the land grab case against Khadse and the charge of irregularities in procurement of fire tenders for schools against Education Minister Vinod Tawde. Among other allegations, it also mentions charges against Karnataka BJP chief BS Yedyurappa. On Monday, Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Monday termed the BJP his party's "principal enemy" and said it is part of the Maharashtra government "just for the sake of it". The Uddhav Thackeray-led party has begun preparations for the Lok Sabha and assembly polls of 2019 and it is ready to fight elections whether or not there is an alliance with the BJP, Raut said. The Shiv Sena, which is the oldest constituent of the NDA, is leaving no stone unturned to criticise the BJP on almost every major initiative or stand taken by the Centre. Be it demonetisation, the launch of bullet train or the election campaign in Gujarat, the Shiv Sena has openly slammed the BJP. [Leave opposition, ally Shiv Sena firing salvo-after-salvo at BJP] In recent times, Sena is cornering BJP from all sides and not just through editorials in their mouth piece Saamna. Sena leaders, including chief Uddhav Thackeray, are openly lashing out at the BJP in every forum possible. The two parties, who allies at both centre and the state, even fought Mumbai civic polls seperately after bickering over seat sharing. The alliance, which is almost three decades old, is at its all time low. Every now and then one is left to ponder if the tie will snap. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 15:11 [IST] Rushdie attack a reminder of how big a threat Iran is to the US, others Terror funding: Rs 120 crore raised alone from charas smuggling India oi-Vicky By Vicky The law enforcement agencies will invoke the stringent provisions of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against the drug syndicate in Jammu and Kashmir. The decision was taken by the Ministry for Home Affairs after security agencies raised concerns about the growing drug menace in the troubled state. Law enforcement agencies raised concerns about the rise in charas smuggling in the Valley. They said that the proceeds were being used to fund terror. Drugs continue to be main funder of terrorism and the syndicate is largely controlled by the Dawood Ibrahim gang. The agencies said that charas smuggling alone has raised Rs 120 crore for the syndicate. A large part of it lands in Mumbai, the agencies also said. A probe being conducted that the syndicate operates from Pakistan. There is a handler in Anantnag who oversees the operations. The drugs are smuggled in through the border and then moved to other parts of the country either by road or sea. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 6:59 [IST] Tharoor slams both NDA and UPA for ignoring tourism sector India pti-PTI New Delhi, Nov 2: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has questioned both the NDA and the UPA governments over the handling of the tourism sector. The ex-Union minister believes that his former government and the one led by Narendra Modi have ignored the all-important sector of tourism. India, the Kerala MP said, was not investing money in building the infrastructure needed to draw tourists. "I am taken aback by the fact that both my own government and the present one seem oblivious of the fact that there's a whole series of studies that says a thousand dollars invested in tourism will employ eight times as many people as the same amount invested in manufacturing," Tharoor said on Tuesday at the concluding session of the literary festival Penguin Fever 2017. At a panel dicussion on 'The Rise of the Elephant' where the other speakers included principal economic advisor Sanjeev Sanyal and author Gurcharan Das, Tharoor asserted that investment in the tourism sector would help the elephant -- a metaphor for India -- rise. "Dubai and Singapore gets more people visiting them in a day than we get in terms of foreign tourists in a year. Very clearly this has been a missed opportunity for a very long time," he said. The Congress MP also wondered what there was to celebrate in the recently out World Bank 'Doing Business 2018' report which showed that India's rank on the 'ease of doing business' index had improved from the 130th position last year to 100th out of a list of 190 countries. "Modi promised to us that we will be in the first 50 positions within two years of his government and the fact is that after four years we are at number 100. "When the prime minister of India announces a target and fails spectacularly... it's worth pointing that out before we start celebrating too much on this," he noted. PTI International news brief: Trump rape accuser plans suit under new NY 'survivors' law and more Raj: Bundi police launches initiative to keep check on sexual offences against minors Uttar Pradesh: Woman burnt alive for resisting rape in Badaun India oi-PTI Badaun (UP), November 2: After a 27-year-old woman resisted an attempt to rape her, she was burnt alive allegedly by her brother-in-law at a village in Badaun, the police said. The incident took place last night when Neelam, a widow, was alone at her house in Labhari, they said, adding that she died on the spot. The police said that the woman's father has lodged a complaint and a search has been launched to arrest the accused, Jitendra. He has been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, they said. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 13:33 [IST] Voter slips in braille and many other firsts in the Himachal assembly elections 2017 India oi-Vicky By Vicky Apart from the use of voter-verified paper audit trail, the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections 2017 will also witness differently abled people and women manning 5 and 136 booths respectively. These are some of the firsts that the elections at Himachal will witness. Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Pushpendra Rajput said on Tuesday the Election Commission had already announced about two polling stations in each constituency (total 68) being manned by women. Rajput said that now it had been decided that disabled people would be in-charge of five booths. "Most of these people have themselves volunteered to make a new beginning, which is a welcome step," he said. The EC has also decided to issue voter slips to visually impaired people in braille. Blind people should be able to cast their vote without any problem and hence some booths would also be in braille, Rajput said. The EC has already mapped all the booths where disabled and old people will vote and has assured them of all facilities. A 'Booth Atlas' has been prepared and voters can get it from the EC website. Rajput said there would be an adequate deployment of paramilitary forces, police and home guards to ensure fair and smooth voting. "The inter-state border points have been covered under CCTV camera and vigil has been upgraded. More than 80 per cent of the weapons have been deposited by their holders," he said. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 6:39 [IST] World Bank's ease of business rankings: Why is Congress cribbing? India oi-Vikas By Vikas India has jumped a massive 30 places to 100 in the World Bank's ease of doing business rankings this year. When Narendra Modi government took the reins of the country in 2014, India's ranking in the index was 142. So essentially in three years, India has moved up by 42 places to be at 100th rank this year. To make India business friendly has been one of the key focus areas of Modi. Soon after assuming PM's post, he called for doing away with uneccessary laws and procedures that make setting up a business complex. In the last three years several procedures were simplified, rules were modified and over a 1,000 laws were abolished with the aim of bringing simplicity to conduct business in the country. Modi government's aim is break into top 50 in this index which considers many parameters to rank the countries. New Zealand currently tops the list with Singapore at second place. India's neighbours China and Pakistan are at 78th and 147th place, respectively. India has jumped 53 places from 172 to 119 on ease of paying taxes, leapt over to the 4th rank on protecting minority investors and moved 15 places from 44 to 29 on ease of businesses getting credit. Amid criticism from the opposition over the handling of the economy, the World Bank report is a major boost for the government. But the opposition did not seem too pleased with it and found lame reasons to cricise something which the entire world has lauded. Rahul Gandhi took to twitter and said said "everyone knows the truth". "Sabko maloom hai 'ease of doing business' ki hakikat, lekin khud ko khush rakhne ke liye 'Dr Jaitley' yeh khyaal acha hai (Everyone knows the truth about ease of doing business, but let Dr Jaitley keep himself happy thinking about it)," tweeted Rahul. During his address at a rally, Rahul tried to find faults with the ranking system itself. He said that World Bank has taken into account only Mumbai and Delhi while ranking India. The Congress has time and again called the BJP a party that favours big business groups. Rahul has used the expressions like "suit boot ki sarkar" to describe the Modi government. So, Rahul is doing what opposition does, that is to criticise anything and everything that the ruling party does. That is the way politics is done in our country. We can only hope that events and decisions concerning the nation would one day be viewed based on their merit rather than from the political point of view. Here is what leaders from both sides said: 'We should have been in top 50', said Shashi Tharoor Congress MP Shashi Tharoor wondered what there was to celebrate in the World Bank 'Doing Business 2018' report. "Modi promised to us that we will be in the first 50 positions within two years of his government and the fact is that after four years we are at number 100," he said. "When the prime minister of India announces a target and fails spectacularly... it's worth pointing that out before we start celebrating too much on this," he added. Jaitley compared UPA regime to 'ease of doing corruption' Finance Minister Arun Jaitley hit back at Rahul Gandhi over his remarks on World Bank's rankings and said that under NDA rule "ease of doing business" has replaced "ease of doing corruption". "The difference between the UPA and NDA - The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business," Jaitley had tweeted. Sibal defends Rahul Congress leader Kapil Sibal said that Jaitley must not forget that he is the finance minister of millions of people who do business and not just of the taxpayers. "He must realise the day they feel that there is ease of doing business is the day that they will appreciate the Finance Minister. So, the Finance Minister should not rely on World Bank report given in respect with Delhi and Mumbai which deals with creamy layers of business in our society," Sibal told ANI. BJP likens Rahul's remark to Pakistan "When you hear statements of Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party about India doing well in the economy, and making it big into the world economy, the statement appears as if they are coming from Pakistan," BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao told news agency ANI on Thursday. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 17:32 [IST] India's stand on Rohingyas gracious so far but housing them would be risky The Rohingya influx continues as Tripura police nets seven of them After China, US promises to help Bangladesh in repatriation of Rohingya refugees International oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Dhaka, Nov 2: Days after China expressed its support to Bangladesh to tackle the Rohingya refugee crisis; the United States has come forward to help the country in the "safe, sustainable and dignified repatriation of the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals". According to an estimate at least 605,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since violence broke out in Rakhine State on August 25. Bangladesh has been urging Myanmar to take back its "nationals" who are currently staying in cramped and unhygienic refugees camps spread across Cox's Bazar district. The US' latest stand on the entire refugee crisis has come as a major relief to Bangladesh which is finding it "difficult" to take care of unprecedented flow of Rohingyas from the neighbouring country. The US has assured "both financial and diplomatic" support to Bangladesh in repatriation of Rohingya refugees, reported The Daily Star on Thursday. The report added that both "Washington and Dhaka also agreed to continue the pressure on the Myanmar government in this regard". "The assurance was made by the visiting Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, Simon Henshaw, during his meeting with State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam on Wednesday. "The acting assistant secretary, who arrived in Dhaka with a delegation after a visit to Myanmar, deeply appreciated Bangladesh's decision to temporarily shelter more than 600,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals and stated that Bangladesh 'responded extremely well' to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis," added The Daily Star report. The visiting dignitaries are likely to visit different Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar on Thursday and Friday. At an event in Dhaka recently, Chinese ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang said that Bangladesh and Myanmar will sit together and resolve the Rohingya problem. "We also expressed our commitment that we stand with Bangladesh (regarding the Rohingya problem). We do hope that this issue will be settled peacefully as soon as possible," he said. Earlier, the Chinese envoy stated that China has been maintaining close contact with Bangladesh on the influx of Rohingyas to the country. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 6:50 [IST] Why killing of Masood Azhars nephew Fauji Bhai is a major shot in the arm Pak puts more curbs on Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar and Dawood to avoid FATF blacklisting China again blocks UN move to declare Masood Azhar as global terrorist International oi-PTI China on Thursday blocked another bid by the US to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UN's list of banned terror outfits. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules. The committee is yet reach the consensus. "The Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact," Hua said. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist after having blocked the move in February this year at the UN. Hua's remarks indicate that China will continue its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhar's listing during the second term of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which began over a week ago. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding on Azhar's listing. In the last two years, China has stonewalled efforts by India to declare Azhar as a global terrorist. PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 19:29 [IST] Manchester bombing case: UK asks for extradition of Abedi's brother from Libya International pti-PTI London, Nov 2: British police have requested the extradition of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi's brother from Libya. Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. PTI Manhattan attacker 'should get death penalty': Trump International oi-Vikas By Vikas US President Donald Trump has called for death penalty to Uzbek national who carried out the Manhattan terror attack which left eight people dead. A man, who mowed down civilians at Manhattan in a rented truck, was identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov from Uzbekistan. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Five Argentines and one Belgian national are among the eight killed in New York's Lower Manhattan area on Wednesday after a truck mowed down civilians. The incident took place at a bike path on West Street, just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. The 29 year old driver was shot by the police after he jumped out of the vehicle. Officials said that the man was screaming and holding fake guns in both hands. Witnesses said that the suspect was shouting Allahu Akbar following the incident. [Manhattan attacker is Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov from Uzbekistan] In the aftermath of Manhattan terrorist attack, the White House on Thursday said it has not called for inclusion of Uzbekistan in the travel ban list, but did not rule this out altogether. A day after Manhattan terror attack, US justice officials announced on Thursday that they had found a second Uzbek man they were seeking in relation to the attack OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 13:51 [IST] What if Owaisi had? Muslim users on Twitter blast Kejriwal for asking for Hindu God images on currency notes Muslim countries push UN to denounce Myanmar abuses International pti-PTI United Nations, Nov 2: Muslim countries led by Saudi Arabia want the United Nations to denounce serious rights abuses in Myanmar and demand an end to the military campaign against the Rohingya, according to a draft resolution. In one of the worst refugee crises in decades, more than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya have fled an army crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state since late August. The draft resolution, seen by AFP yesterday, introduced this week to the General Assembly's human rights committee said UN member-states were "highly alarmed" by the outbreak of violence and "further alarmed by the disproportionate use of force by the Myanmar forces" against the Rohingya. The non-binding measure is expected to come up for a vote in the committee around November 14 and be discussed in the assembly a month later. Drafted by the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the proposed resolution marks the return of Myanmar to the rights agenda at the United Nations after a one-year break. Last year, the European Union decided against presenting a measure criticising Myanmar's rights record for the first time in 15 years after recognising progress under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. Together with a separate draft resolution now before the Security Council, the measure reflects growing impatience with the Myanmar authorities as the Rohingya continue to flee across the border to Bangladesh. Diplomats, however, say China -- a supporter of Myanmar's former ruling junta -- is resisting a push by Britain and France for a council response to the crisis. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has called for an end to the attacks, is expected to press for action when he joins leaders of the Southeast Asian (ASEAN) bloc at a summit in the Philippines next week. Myanmar's government says its operations are aimed at rooting out Rohingya militants who staged attacks on police posts in late August. The draft resolution calls on Myanmar authorities "to end the ongoing military operations" that have "led to the systematic violations and abuse of human rights of persons belonging to the Rohingya community." It calls on the government to allow access for aid workers to Rakhine state, ensure the return of all refugees and grant full citizenship rights to the Rohingya. Myanmar's Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country and have been denied citizenship since 1982, which has effectively rendered them stateless. A recent report by the UN human rights office accused Myanmar of seeking to permanently expel the Rohingya by planting land mines at the border with Bangladesh where the refugees are sheltering. UN rights officials spoke to refugees who gave accounts of soldiers surrounding homes and firing indiscriminately as residents ran for their lives, and of uniformed men gang- raping women and girls. PTI Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan from UK to face trial International pti-PTI Islamabad, Nov 2: Pakistan's ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned home from London to face trial before an anti-graft court tomorrow in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on October 26 due to his non-appearance in three corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. The court would resume the hearing tomorrow. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. State-run PTV footage showed Sharif stepping out of a Pakistan International Airline plane after it landed at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. He was received by senior leaders of ruling PML-N and held a brief consultation with the party leaders at the VIP lounge of the airport. Later, he left in his private vehicle for Punjab House in Islamabad, where he was received by supporters and party workers. He is expected to hold extensive consultations throughout the day about court cases, political situation and party matters. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face "bogus cases" when he should be with his wife. "These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them," he said. Maryam and Safdar have already been indicted in corruption cases filed against them by the country's anti- corruption body National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the Supreme Court's instruction in the Panama Papers case. Earlier, Accountability Court issued bailable arrest warrant against Sharif after he failed to appear in the court in three corruption cases. Three cases were registered by NAB on September 8 against Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad, following a verdict by the Supreme Court. He was indicted in absence in three cases. Maryam and Safdar have been indicted in one case with him, while the court is proceeding separately against his two sons Husain and Hasan who are co-accused in three cases. The court during the hearing on October 9 decided to separate the trial of his sons from Sharif and his daughter and son-in-law. The cases are based on July 28 disqualification verdict of the Supreme Court and to launch three corruption cases against him, his family, and one case against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. The political future of Sharif, who leads the country's most powerful political family and the ruling PML-N party, has been hanging in balance since then. If convicted, Sharif can be jailed. Sharif's family alleges that the cases are politically motivated. PTI Will Aung San Suu Kyis visit to Rakhine State bring succour to Rohingyas? International oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Naypyidaw, Nov 2: On Thursday, Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi decided to visit violence-hit Rakhine State which is on a boil since August 25 leading to the exodus of more than 605,000 Rohingyas to neighbouring Bangladesh. "Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi is making her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine State: AFP," tweeted ANI. Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi is making her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine State: AFP ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 According to officials, Suu Kyi will be visiting the regional capital Sittwe and other towns during a day-long trip. It is not clear whether she would be visiting any of the Rohingya villages from which people are fleeing in thousands every day to Bangladesh. Her trip came as a surprise to many as it was unannounced. The Noble Peace laureate has been criticised around the world for not stopping a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims. The United Nations (UN) has termed the violence and persecution against the Rohingyas by Myanmar's military as "ethnic cleansing". The trouble in Rakhine State started after a newly emerged militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), carried out deadly attacks on police stations across the state. Afterwards, the military conducted its crackdown against the Rohingyas in their villages. Scores of people were killed in the ensuing military crackdown, and there are widespread allegations of villages being burned and Rohingya being driven out. On Thursday, government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP that Suu Kyi was "now in Sittwe and will go to Maungdaw and Buthiduang too". "It will be a day-long trip," he added. Days after China expressed its support to Bangladesh to tackle the Rohingya refugee crisis; the United States on Wednesday has come forward to help the country in the "safe, sustainable and dignified repatriation of the forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals". According to an estimate at least 605,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since violence broke out in Rakhine State on August 25. Bangladesh has been urging Myanmar to take back its "nationals" who are currently staying in cramped and unhygienic refugees camps spread across Cox's Bazar district. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 2, 2017, 12:18 [IST] Summarizing the Gaming Africa Inaugural Conference Published November 2, 2017 by Brett C The Gaming Africa Conference was hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa, with 52 regulators from across 16 African countries, and a host of others from around the world. The Gaming Africa Conference was organised by Clarion Gaming, and hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa. The inaugural event focused on the development of the online gaming industry across Africa. This watershed event for online gaming on the continent was attended by scores of organizers, delegates, and sponsors from around the world. The high-profile conference took place over 2 days and featured multiple networking and learning opportunities for participants. It concluded in Johannesburg otherwise known as Egoli, the City of Gold. Gambling regulators and thought leaders from some 52 countries were represented, including a tally of 16 African countries. Among the notable African countries in attendance were the following: South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Namibia. A Truly International Event Latin American countries such as Brazil and Argentina were represented, including many European nations such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, France, Ireland and others. The prestigious Gaming Africa conference featured front-runners in the online gaming industry such as Israel, Germany, Malta, the United States, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The UAE, Costa Rica, Cape Verde, Grenada, Hong Kong and India were also in attendance. Kate Chambers of Clarion Gaming was tasked with hosting the event. The idea gained traction at the February ICE event, and stakeholders worked hard to satisfy this important conference from a regulatory and commercial perspective. The objective of creating a sustainable online gaming industry was foremost in the minds of regulators and stakeholders. A leading player in the industry, Jaco van den Heever of TCS John Huxley sang the praises of event organizer, Clarion Gaming. Gauteng Gambling Board regulator Tanja Botha, was encouraged by the Gaming Africa summit and looks forward to future conferences. From Alternet Former campaign staffers, White House appointees and Trump family could be ensnared. Despite denials by the White House and dismissive right-wing media coverage, special counsel Robert Mueller's opening salvo -- the indictments and a guilty plea -- has stunned Washington for its aggressiveness, legal positioning and comprehensive strategy that suggests the Trump campaign and White House's problems will only deepen. "The first big takeaway from Monday morning's flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III and George Papadopoulos is this: The president of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president's campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department," wrote Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes for LawfareBlog.com. "The second big takeaway," they continued, "is even starker: A member of President Trump's campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to 'arrange a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government officials' and to obtain 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails -- and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them." By Tuesday morning, we know Manafort and Gates are taking one legal path -- fighting the special counsel's indictment, its accusations, in court, while Papadopoulos already has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, and is most likely cooperating with investigators to reduce his sentence. Mueller's first moves have been characterized by lawyers as a classic opening salvo in launching "a big case," which raises a series of questions and loose ends starting with: what else does he know and who else is targeted? "Mueller knows things, some of them about Russia, and has proof," tweeted former Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman. "He's warning other campaign witnesses against perjury. Two: He's not saying exactly what he knows or how. Uncertainty there inspires dread, may flush out evidence he doesn't even know about. Three: Early cooperation will save you from the worst. Mueller could have taken a lot harsher approach to the Papadopoulos facts. Classic leverage..." Here are half a dozen loose ends and open questions that will become evident as Mueller proceeds. 1. Will other Trump campaign aides be ensnared? The almost certain answer is yes, because at the very least, there were many recipients of the emails that were sent by Papadopoulos as he sought to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian intermediaries. Campaign staffers such as Sam Clovis, an Iowa radio host and right-wing activist who became a national campaign co-chair and has been nominated by Trump to a top Agriculture Department post, apparently supervised Papadopoulos' interactions with Russian intermediaries, the Washington Post reported. That role included an email Clovis sent to Papadopoulos saying "he would 'work it [the Russian offer of Hillary Clinton campaign emails] through the [Trump] campaign,' adding, 'great work,' according to court documents." 2. Where is Michael Flynn in this mix? Flynn, who was Trump's national security advisor during the campaign and briefly White House National Security Advisor, was not mentioned in any of the documents filed by Mueller that have been made public. Flynn also made six figures advising foreign governments and didn't report his activities to the federal government. That raises questions. Is Flynn fighting Mueller like Manafort and Gates, or has he taken the same path as Papadopoulos -- cooperating in exchange for leniency? 3. Which White House officials or Cabinet members could be implicated? Two come to mind. The first is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose role on the campaign was overseeing the foreign policy team and who was likely to have heard of the Russian offer of help. The second is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who was one of two executives running the biggest bank in Cyprus, which acquired the bank where Manafort laundered millions in unreported payments. The appearance of conflicts of interest, even based on knowledge of sordid deal-making, could imperil their tenure. 4. Which Trump family members could be implicated? Despite the White House's denials, the timeline, as known so far, shows the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were hacked in March 2016, and offered to the Trump campaign a month later in April. A meeting was held in June 2016 where Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. all met with Russians or their representatives. According to Trump Jr.'s statements, the Russians suggested they had information that could help their campaign, but then the meeting turned, as the New York Times noted, to a "discussion of the adoption of Russian children and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that sanctions Russians for human rights abuses." This timeline, which was expanded by Mueller's filings, suggests the campaign was open to Russian help and Trump family members were conduits. 5. How could President Trump be implicated? A key takeaway from Mueller's opening moves is that lying to the FBI -- as Papadopoulos did -- is as serious as any crime. After that June meeting, President Trump dictated a statement for his son to read to the media, which the press later characterized as "misleading" because it didn't mention any offer of political support from Russia. While legal experts said that level of presidential interference doesn't quite cross the threshold for obstruction of justice, it gave Mueller clues for what to focus on. On the other hand, Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey, who reportedly refused to declare his loyalty to Trump, might be seen by prosecutors as obstruction, as other details come to light. 6. Will Mueller look at Trump's shady business deals with Russians?The view held by many legal observers is Mueller will primarily stick to the mandate to investigate the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia, and only go after extreme financial crimes -- like what Manafort is accused of, for which there is no defense -- as part of a strategy to "shake the tree" to get cooperating witnesses from other campaign insiders. On the other hand, the New York State attorney general could "go wild looking at fraud and money laundering for Donald Trump operatives or Donald Trump himself," financial reporter James Henry said Tuesday. "Trump hid his tax returns for a reason." The Longer View Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). From Dispatches From The Edge As the clock ticks down on Britain's exit from the European Union, one could not go far wrong casting British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as the hopeful Miranda in Shakespeare's Tempest: "How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in't." And Conservative Party Prime Minister Theresa May as Lady Macbeth: "Out damned spot, out, I say!" With the French sharpening their knives, the Tories in disarray, the Irish demanding answers, and a scant 17 months to go before Brexit kicks in, the whole matter is making for some pretty good theater. The difficulty is distinguishing between tragedy and farce. The Conservative's Party's Oct. 1-4 conference in Manchester was certainly low comedy. The meeting hall was half empty, and May's signature address was torpedoed by a coughing fit and a prankster who handed her a layoff notice. Then the Tories' vapid slogan "Building a country that works for everyone" fell on to the stage. And several of May's cabinet members were openly jockeying to replace her. In contrast, the Labour Party's conference at Brighton a week earlier was jam packed with young activists busily writing position papers, and Corbyn gave a rousing speech that called for rolling back austerity measures, raising taxes on the wealthy and investing in education, health care and technology. Looming over all of this is March 2019, the date by which the complex issues involving Britain's divorce from the EU need to be resolved. The actual timeline is even shorter, since it will take at least six months for the European parliament and the EU's 28 members to ratify any agreement. Keeping all those ducks in a row is going to take considerable skill, something May and the Conservatives have shown not a whit of. The key questions to be resolved revolve around people and money, of which the first is the stickiest. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). By Dave Lindorff If you want to understand why the Democratic Party lost to Trump and the Republicans in 2016, why they'll probably fail to take back Congress in 2018, and why they'll probably lose big in the next presidential election in 2020, just look at their obscene stand on the GOP's proposal to slash the taxable employee deduction for contributions to 401(k) plans from the current $18,000 to just $2500. Of course the GOP proposal was classic Republican stick-it-to-the-little-guy stuff and in the end the House tax bill announced Thursday dropped it, leaving the deduction standing. But let's look at what they had been proposing: If you tell someone who makes, say, $80,000 a year, and has been putting away the typical 6% of that, or about $4800 a year, matched by perhaps another $4000 by the employer if lucky, that suddenly he or she will be limited to a tax deductible contribution of just $2500 a year, you are first of all saying you want that worker to be undersaved for retirement, but worse, you're making that employee lose out on perhaps $2000 or so in employer-contributed retirement money each year! That's outrageous, I'm sure most sentient citizens will agree. But what was the Democratic Party's position? They got up in arms saying that it was outrageous for Republicans to be cutting the tax deductible employee contribution amount from $18,000 to $2500 a year! And they said that instead they want to raise it to $25,000 a year. This in a country where the average employee who even has a 401(k) plan on the job contributes 6.2% of income, according to the investment firm Vanguard. For a person earning $50,000 a year, that would be $3100, for a person earning $80,000 -- pretty good money for that blue-collar or clerical worker that the Democrats say is their target voter -- it would be $4960, for a person earning $100,00 a year, it's $6200, and for a person earning a whopping $150,000 (putting them in likely Republican voter territory), it's $9300. How many people do you know among your working-class, middle-class, or liberal friends who could manage to contribute more than $10,000 our of their family paycheck, much less their personal paycheck, in a year? I don't know any. So what should the Democrats be proposing as this Republican tax bill gets debated? First, as a good bargaining point, that the 401(k) deduction limit should be reduced from the 2017 limit of $18,000 (or $36,000 per couple) to $10,000 a year per person ($20,000 per couple). Second, the savings from cutting the deduction from $18,000 a year to $10,000 must go towards eliminating the tax on Social Security benefits totally. What, you say? Eliminate the tax on Social Security? Can they do that? Not only can they, but when Social Security was established in 1936, and until 1984, the benefits were tax free under law, supported by several court rulings. But in 1983 during the first term of President Ronald Reagan, Democrats in Congress struck a deal with the White House to "save" Social Security by both raising the payroll tax and by taxing retiree benefits. It was and remains a huge hit on the elderly and disabled which has severely diminished the program's ability to prevent poverty among the elderly. You think you're going to get $1500 per month in benefits in retirement -- a typical worker's benefit -- and then they take away 10% or more of it, leaving it at just a net $1350 a month. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. Debunking .Progressive Left. Narratives (Image by Kurdishstruggle) Details DMCA "The media lies about Syria "and I think media heads should face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the one-sided false narrative they've been spreading since the Syrian War began." -Janice Kortkamp (November 2016) as quoted in Voices from Syria. [1] "A really important point that I've made before and I want to make again here on your show is that they [Kurds] have actually already worked with Daesh and other terrorist groups." -Sarah Abed (on this week's show) LISTEN TO THE SHOW The Western powers have been officially waging a Global War on Terrorism for about a generation now. This multi-lateral offensive is more than likely a cover for military enterprises geared toward enlarging America's sphere of influence not only in Central Asia and the Middle East, but also into the Indian sub-continent and the Far East. [2] From Afghanistan in 2001, to Iraq in 2003, to Libya in 2011. Now Syria is in the cross-hairs. Where is the anti-war movement? Less than two years after 9/11, millions upon millions around the world took to the streets determined to thwart US President Bush's criminal assault on the people of Iraq. Today, civilian populations in the US, Canada and other NATO countries seem to no longer mobilize against war. Distrubingly, supposedly "progressive" social justice groups seem to echo the rhetoric of the interventionist lobby. Democratically elected President Bashar Al-Assad is denounced as a brutal dictator. Terrorist attacks by opposition forces are ignored. The conflict is presented as a civil war and a popular uprising by freedom-loving Syrians as opposed to a foreign-backed insurgency by Islamist extremists. Groups such as Amnesty International, Me'decins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and AVAAZ have lent their credibility to these imperialist narratives. This week, on the Global Research News Hour we devote the program to a defusing of the propaganda weapons being used to trigger another 'humanitarian intervention' this time on the people of the Syrian Arab Republic. In the first half hour, guest Sarah Abed challenges the heroic narratives around Kurdish freedom fighters in Syria, and explains how Kurdish nationalism has been and continues to be an instrument of US and Israeli imperial ambitions. We then hear Mark Taliano correct the record on a 'democratic revolution' in Syria. Finally, a member of the Syrian-diaspora in Canada provides some insights into who the anti-Assad Syrians in Canada are, how they have helped derail social justice movements in Canadian cities, and how they continue to sabotage the unity of the Syrian people. Sarah Abed is a Syrian American independent investigative political commentator who focuses on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news and social media. She is a truth advocate who uses her social media accounts and website The Rabbit Hole www.sarahabed.com to counter Western media disinformation about Syria. Several of her articles have appeared at global Research. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Eduardo Galeano recente (Image by rafaelhbarroso) Details DMCA This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. I'm 73, which means that saying goodbye for the last time is increasingly a part of my life. Today, with the deepest regret, I'm bidding a final farewell at TomDispatch to one of the more remarkable writers I've known, Eduardo Galeano. I initially got involved with him in the early 1980s. I was a young editor at Pantheon Books and, on some strange impulse, decided to publish Genesis, the first volume of his Memory of Fire trilogy, based on no more than a few sample passages translated by the remarkable Cedric Belfrage. Call it intuition when it came to a book that had already been rejected by a number of U.S. publishers. (Admittedly, at the time I proudly thought of myself as the "editor of last resort" in New York publishing.) That modest decision launched me on the print journey of a lifetime. This was back in the days many of you won't remember when a book was translated and edited, often over long distances, without benefit of the Internet or email. Belfrage had been exiled to Mexico during the McCarthy years, so he and I worked together in the old-fashioned way: by mail. (I wouldn't meet him until years later: a little grey-haired gent with a cane who -- I was still young enough to be staggered by the thought -- had covered Hollywood for the British press in the silent film era.) It took forever to produce Genesis, though the process had a certain beauty to it. That first volume came out to modest attention and reviews, but its life and influence and that of the whole Memory of Fire trilogy would continue to grow in a way that only books could in those years and perhaps even in these. Eduardo was the most dramatic and beautiful of writers and he caught history -- the history of these continents and of so many of the half-forgotten figures who struggled for what truly mattered -- in a unique fashion, often in little passages of hardly a page or more. (I can still remember reading some of the more wonderful of them to my children as they were growing up.) I once wrote of him, "You somehow take our embattled world and tell its many stories in ways no one else can." How true. It took me years to meet Eduardo, since I travel nowhere, though he voyaged endlessly. (A friend of his once told him, "If it's true what they say about the road being made by walking, you must be the commissioner of public works.") Never have I met a man of more charisma who seemed less aware of it. Being with him was an experience because people regularly approached him to tell stories about their lives that were... well, there's only one word for it: Galeano-esque. I saw it happen. I've featured his work many times at this site, always with the deepest pleasure. This, I suspect, is the last time for both of us. The passages below are from his final, touching volume published by Nation Books, Hunter of Stories. And so, let me take this opportunity, one last time, to say goodbye, Eduardo, and thank you for everything, especially for the worlds you captured forever in words. Tom A Visit to Heaven and Hell Mapping Planet Earth By Eduardo Galeano [The following passages are excerpted from Hunter of Stories, the last book by Eduardo Galeano, who died in 2015. Thanks for its use go to his literary agent, Susan Bergholz, and Nation Books, which is publishing it next week.] Free By day, the sun guides them. By night, the stars. Paying no fare, they travel without passports and without forms for customs or immigration. Birds are the only free beings in this world inhabited by prisoners. They fly from pole to pole, powered by food alone, on the route they choose and at the hour they wish, without ever asking permission of officials who believe they own the heavens. Shipwrecked The world is on the move. On board are more shipwrecked souls than successful seafarers. Thousands of desperate people die en route, before they can complete the crossing to the promised land, where even the poor are rich and everyone lives in Hollywood. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). From Information Clearing House Donald Trump - Caricature (Image by DonkeyHotey) Details DMCA During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump advocated killing innocent families of suspected terrorists. "When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families," he declared. Besides the immorality of killing innocents, the targeting of civilians violates the Geneva Conventions. The George W. Bush administration unlawfully detained and tortured suspected terrorists. Determined not to send more suspects to Guanta'namo, Barack Obama's administration illegally assassinated them with drones and other methods, killing many civilians in the process. Now the Trump administration is killing record numbers of civilians and weakening the already-flimsy targeted killing rules Obama put in place. In 2013, the Obama administration promulgated a set of requirements regarding targeted killings "outside areas of active hostilities" in a Presidential Policy Guidance (PPG). The New York Times reported on September 21, 2017, that Trump's national security advisers proposed watering down Obama's PPG. These recommendations to Trump are called Principles, Standards and Procedures, or PSP. On October 29, the Times reported, "Two government officials said Mr. Trump had recently signed his new rules for such kill-or-capture counterterrorism operations, without major changes" to the PSP. Obama mounted both "personality strikes" -- aimed at named suspected terrorists -- and "signature strikes" -- in which all military-age men in an area of suspicious activity could be killed. Signature strikes are often called "crowd killings" because those perpetrating the attacks don't even know whom they are killing. Trump has presumably continued these two types of strikes. The PPG required that the target pose a continuing, imminent threat to US persons. There is no indication that Trump's new rules have changed this requirement. Moreover, even under Obama, a 2011 Department of Justice white paper said that a US citizen could be killed even when there was no "clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future." Obama presumably set a lower bar for killing non-citizens. Obama's rules also mandated near certainty that an identified "high-value terrorist" or other lawful terrorist target is present before taking a strike. One official told the Times that the administration "reduced the required level of confidence that the intended target was present in a strike zone from 'near certainty' to 'reasonable certainty.'" Signature strikes don't target named individuals. Under the new Trump rules, targets would no longer be limited to high-value terrorists, but could also include foot soldiers with no leadership roles. During the Obama administration, targeting decisions were made at the highest levels of government and the president reportedly had the final say about who would be assassinated. Under the PSP, however, these determinations would not require vetting by top administration officials, and could be made by commanders in the field. Trump advisers recommended maintaining the PPG's requirement of near certainty that civilians would not be injured or killed, and the administration agreed, according to the Times. In spite of the PPG, the Obama administration killed many civilians. Obama's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reported killing between 64 and 116 non-combatants "outside areas of active hostilities" from January 2009 to December 2015. That encompassed Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. Civilian deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were not included. And even for the included countries, the ODNI figures could be low: The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimated between 380 and 801 civilians killed outside areas of active hostilities during the same period. Even before relaxing the rules, drone strikes and other targeted killings outside areas of active hostilities have already increased from one every 5.4 days during the Obama administration, to one every 1.25 days under Trump, Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations reported. Trump granted increased authority to the CIA and the Pentagon to conduct drone strikes. He also loosened the targeted killing rules in large areas of Yemen and Somalia by designating them "areas of active hostilities." In March alone, the Trump administration killed 1,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria, according to Airwars , a non-governmental organization that monitors civilian casualties from airstrikes. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). From Counterpunch Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans. US Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call. The Bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of its "2017 Lobbying Agenda" is set to punish any individual or company that boycotts Israel for its violation of Palestinian human rights. The severe punishment could reach a million dollars in fines, and up to 20 years in jail. Although political boycott has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, the Congress wants to make a boycott of Israel the exception, even it means the subversion of US democracy. Still, protests are largely muted. The mainstream US media is yet to take US lawmakers to task, as hundreds of those elected representatives have already endorsed the unacceptable initiative. Criticizing Israel is still a taboo in the US, where the Congress is beholden to lobby pressures and kickbacks, and where the media's script on the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine is even less critical than Israel's own media. However, the infiltration of the US government is not new. It is only becoming more emboldened, due to the absence of enough critical voices that are capable of creating a semblance of balance or a serious debate on the issue. For years, ordinary US citizens have been far-removed from the entire discussion on Israel and Palestine. The subject felt alien, marred by Hollywood propaganda, religious misconception and the lack of any understanding of history. But in recent years, Israel has become an integral part of American life, even if most people do not spot the Israeli influence. "In the aftermath of 9/11, Israel seized on its decades-long experience as an occupying force to brand itself as a world leader in counter-terrorism," reported Alice Speri in the Intercept. The successful branding has earned Israeli security firms billions of dollars. The massive payouts are the result of the exploitation of American fear of terrorism, while presenting Israel as a successful model of fighting terror. In the last two decades, hundreds of top federal agents and thousands of police officers have, thus far, received training in Israel or through seminars and workshops organized on Israel's behalf. Groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs are, to various degrees, involved in turning the US police force into militarized units similar to the structure of the Israeli police. As an occupying power, Israel has blurred the lines between the police and the army. In areas like occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, both apparatus behave in a similar pattern. They "shoot to kill" as a result of the slightest provocation or suspicion. Sometimes, for no reason at all. Alex Vitale, an author and a Brooklyn College professor of sociology, described the nature of the regular trips made by federal agents and police officers to Israel. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Tilel street, Aleppo before it was destroyed by the US 'coalition'. (Image by Spetsnaz1945) Details DMCA The six-year illegal war of US aggression in Syria caused significant damage to the country and people of Syria. The Syrians that have lived through this horror are unlikely to ever fully recover from the horror they've experienced, and it is they that have had to bear the brunt of the devastating consequences of the US led war of aggression. There is no longer any question of who has been largely responsible for the chaos and suffering of innocent civilians? In an interview with Reuters, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that the United States, Britain and other countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wouldn't support the reconstruction of the Syria until there was a political transition "away from Assad". Acting US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield confirmed that Syrians would not be able to rely on any assistance to rebuild their country unless there is a change of government. The American diplomat said that restoration of Syria directly depended on regime change, and that it should be determined exclusively at talks held in Geneva. This is political blackmail pure and simple by a group of Western and Gulf Arab states that cynically call themselves "Friends of Syria". They are telling the people of Syria and the world that because the people elected a government not acceptable to the West then their country has been destroyed to punish them. It is difficult to accept the position of the Western countries since the U.S.-led Coalition's air strikes caused most of the destructions in Syria. According to Airwars monitoring organization, since the beginning of the "counter-terrorism" operation in Syria, the Coalition Air Forces have inflicted more than 14,000 indiscriminate air strikes, which led not only to the destruction of infrastructure but also to the death of at least 5,500 civilians. For example the city Raqqa has been turned into ruins due to the joint operation of the Western backed Coalition and their proxy mercenary terrorists calling themselves the "Syrian Democratic Forces" (SDF). It is no surprise that representatives of the U.S. Trump administration refused to comment further on the issues of restoration. Only Syria's allies Russia and Iran provide real assistance in the restoration of cities and the provision of humanitarian aid to the millions of internal refugees. Over the last few days, Russia delivered several tons of products and essentials to civilians in Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta. Columns of humanitarian aid are also coming from Tehran. Iran helps Syrians in Deir Ezzor with food, medicines, and clothing. Moreover, the Iranian government plans to organize the delivery of more than 200 tons of humanitarian aid to Aleppo. At the same time, during the meetings held within the framework of the 59th Damascus International Fair, the Syrian government signed a number of mutually beneficial agreements on joint construction with India, Iran, and Lebanon. Only the few countries not aligned with the West are interested in normalizing the situation in Syria. The West led by the United States has spent multi-billions of dollars for the destruction of Syria but now say they will not give a penny for reconstruction. The US never takes responsibility for the destruction of countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria nor admit its guilt. Quicklink Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their quicklinks after publishing them. To see if the quicklink was renamed or re-published, please click here. From Truthdig Co-written by *Kevin Zeese (Image by Photo by Popular Resistance) Details DMCA This week, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which promoted giving Palestine to the Jewish people, will be celebrated in London. Around the world, there will be protests against it calling for Britain to apologize for the damage it inflicted. Students from the West Bank and Gaza will send letters to the British government describing the negative impacts that the Balfour Declaration, and the Nakba in 1948, continue to have on their lives today. As Dan Freeman-Maloy describes, the Balfour Declaration is also relevant today because of the propaganda co-existing with it that justified white supremacy, racism and empire. British imperialists believed that democracy only applied to "civilized and conquering peoples," and that "Africans, Asians, Indigenous peoples the world over -- all were -- 'subject races,' unfit for self-government." That same racism was directed at Jewish people as well. Lord Balfour preferred to have Jewish people living in Palestine, away from Britain, where they might serve as useful British allies. In the same time period, Bill Moyers reminds us in his interview with author James Whitman, the laws in the United States were viewed as "a model for everybody in the early 20th century who was interested in creating a race-based order or race state. America was the leader in a whole variety of realms in racist law in the first part of that century." This includes immigration laws designed to keep "undesirables" out of the US, laws creating second class citizenship for African-Americans and other people and bans on interracial marriage. Whitman has a new book documenting how Hitler used US laws as a basis for the Nazi state. Injustice Is Legal The US government and its laws continue to perpetuate injustice today. For example, contractors who apply for state funds to repair damage from Hurricane Harvey in Dickinson, Texas, are required to declare that they do not participate in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) movement. And Maryland Governor Hogan signed an executive order this week banning any state contractors from participating in the BDS movement, after local activists defeated similar legislation for the past three years. Participation in boycotts should be protected under the First Amendment, as the right to protest Israeli apartheid should be. But, that right may also be taken away. This week, Kenneth Marcus was made the top civil rights enforcer at the Department of Education. He runs a group called the Brandeis Center for Human Rights, which actually works to attack individuals and groups that organize against Israeli apartheid on campuses. Nora Barrows-Friedman writes that Marcus, who has been filing complaints against pro-Palestinian student groups, will now be in charge of investigating those cases. Dima Khalidi, the head of Palestinian Legal, which works to protect pro-Palestinian activists, explains that in the United States, "talking about Palestinian rights, and challenging Israel's actions and narrative, [open] people up to a huge amount of risk, attacks, and harassment -- much of it legal in nature, or with legal implications." These attacks are happening because the BDS movement is having an impact. This is just one obvious area of injustice. Of course there are others such as immigration policies and travel bans. And there are racist systems in the United States that are not based in law, but are enshrined in practices such as racially biased policing, slave-wage employment of prisoners and the placement of toxic industries in minority communities. The Marshall Project has a new report on racial bias in plea bargains. War Propaganda The media, as it did in the early 20th century, continues to manipulate public opinion to support military aggression. The NY Times and other mass, corporate media have promoted wars throughout the history of US empire. From the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq to the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam and all the way back to "Remember the Maine" in the Spanish-American War, which began the modern US Empire, the corporate media have always played a large role in leading the US into war. Adam Johnson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) writes about a recent New York Times Op Ed: "Corporate media have a long history of lamenting wars they themselves helped sell the American public, but it's rare so many wars and so much hypocrisy are distilled into one editorial." Johnson points out that the New York Times never questions whether wars are right or wrong, just whether they have Congressional support or not. And it promotes the "no boots on the ground" view that it is fine to bomb other countries as long as US troops are not harmed. FAIR also points out the media's false accusation that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile there is silence about the secret Israeli nuclear weapons program. Iran has been compliant with the International Atomic Energy Agency, while Israel has refused inspections. Eric Margolis raises the critical question of whether the Trump administration put the interests of Israel, which opposes Iran, before the interests of the US when he refused to certify the nuclear agreement with Iran. North Korea is a country that is heavily propagandized in the US media. Eva Bartlett, a journalist who has traveled to and reported extensively about Syria, recently visited North Korea. She presents a view of the people and photographs that won't be found in commercial media, which give a more positive perspective on the country. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Oct 26, 2017: Outbound Medical Tourism Services Market Forecast 2023 Apollo Hospital, Revenue, WorldMed Assist, Mednamaste Outbound Medical Tourism Services https://goo.gl/iKeZZy http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-outbound-medical-tourism-services-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Outbound Medical Tourism Services Market Forecast examines the performance of the Outbound Medical Tourism Services market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Outbound Medical Tourism Services market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Flue Gas Treatment Market Forecast 2023 Alstom, Amec, Fuel Tech, Ducon, Haldor Topsoe Flue Gas Treatment https://goo.gl/oZDsj4 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-industrial-flue-gas-treatment-systems-services-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 A market study Global Flue Gas Treatment Market Forecast examines the performance of the Flue Gas Treatment market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Flue Gas Treatment market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Hamon & CieFlue Gas Treatment Market : Type Analysis Desulfurization DeNOx Particulate control Mercury controlFlue Gas Treatment Market : Application Analysis Power Generation Chemical Cement Manufacture Iron and Steel Non-ferrous Metal Processing UnitsFirstly, the report covers the top Flue Gas Treatment manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Flue Gas Treatment report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Flue Gas Treatment industry, Flue Gas Treatment industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Heart Catheterization Market Forecast 2023 Boston, Cordis, Abbott, BBRAUN Heart Catheterization https://goo.gl/eAhqVQ http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-heart-catheterization-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 A market study Global Heart Catheterization Market Forecast examines the performance of the Heart Catheterization market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Heart Catheterization market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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SCW MedicathHeart Catheterization Market : Type Analysis Angiography Catheters Guiding Catheters Pulmonary Artery Catheters PTCA Balloon Catheters Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) Catheters Electrophysiology CathetersHeart Catheterization Market : Application Analysis Diagnosis Treatment MonitorFirstly, the report covers the top Heart Catheterization manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Heart Catheterization report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Heart Catheterization industry, Heart Catheterization industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: High speed railway Market Forecast 2023 CRRC, Bombardier, Siemens AG, ALSTHOM High speed railway https://goo.gl/WFv4fg http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-high-speed-railway-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 A market study Global High speed railway Market Forecast examines the performance of the High speed railway market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the High speed railway market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.High speed railway Market : Type Analysis TGV technology ICE technology Shinkansen technology Tilting Train Magnetic levitation technologyHigh speed railway Market : Application Analysis Classic upgraded lines Dedicated High-Speed lineFirstly, the report covers the top High speed railway manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the High speed railway report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of High speed railway industry, High speed railway industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: High pole Lamp Market Forecast 2023 Bajaj, Jindal Power, Philips Lighting, Carolina High pole Lamp https://goo.gl/NBguj4 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-high-pole-lamp-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global High pole Lamp Market Forecast examines the performance of the High pole Lamp market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the High pole Lamp market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Genlux LightingHigh pole Lamp Market : Type Analysis Adjustable for Height Nonadjustable for HeightHigh pole Lamp Market : Application Analysis Square The Station Terminal The StadiumFirstly, the report covers the top High pole Lamp manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the High pole Lamp report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of High pole Lamp industry, High pole Lamp industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Fracking Fluid Market Forecast 2023 Cuadrilla, Perkin Elmer, InTech, Hexion Fracline Fracking Fluid https://goo.gl/cQCsiE http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-fracking-fluid-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Fracking Fluid Market Forecast examines the performance of the Fracking Fluid market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Fracking Fluid market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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KGaAFracking Fluid Market : Type Analysis Water-Based Foam-Based Gelled Oil-BasedFracking Fluid Market : Application Analysis Chemicals Pharmaceuticals ErtilizersFirstly, the report covers the top Fracking Fluid manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Fracking Fluid report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Fracking Fluid industry, Fracking Fluid industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Fruit Ripening Gas Market Forecast 2023 Dow, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sinopec Fruit Ripening Gas https://goo.gl/gV81YA http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-fruit-ripening-gas-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Fruit Ripening Gas Market Forecast examines the performance of the Fruit Ripening Gas market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Fruit Ripening Gas market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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INEOS Group AGFruit Ripening Gas Market : Type Analysis M Grade L GradeFruit Ripening Gas Market : Application Analysis Food Packaging Automotive IndustryFirstly, the report covers the top Fruit Ripening Gas manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Fruit Ripening Gas report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Fruit Ripening Gas industry, Fruit Ripening Gas industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Glyphosate toxicity Market Forecast 2023 Monsanto, Wynca, Tongda Agro, Jingma Glyphosate toxicity https://goo.gl/GqdEpC http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-glyphosate-toxicity-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Glyphosate toxicity Market Forecast examines the performance of the Glyphosate toxicity market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Glyphosate toxicity market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Beier GroupGlyphosate toxicity Market : Type Analysis IDA Process Glycine ProcessGlyphosate toxicity Market : Application Analysis Soluble Liquid(SL) Glyphosate Herbicide Soluble Powders (SP) Glyphosate Herbicide Soluble Granules (SG) Glyphosate HerbicideFirstly, the report covers the top Glyphosate toxicity manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Glyphosate toxicity report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Glyphosate toxicity industry, Glyphosate toxicity industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Explosive Ordnance Disposal Market Forecast 2023 iRobot, Safariland, Northrop Grumman, Scanna Msc Explosive Ordnance Disposal https://goo.gl/D6tH4o http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-explosive-ordnance-disposal-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Market Forecast examines the performance of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Cobham plc.Explosive Ordnance Disposal Market : Type Analysis Portable X-ray Systems Projected Water Disruptors Bomb containment chambers EOD Suits & BlanketsExplosive Ordnance Disposal Market : Application Analysis Defense Law EnforcementFirstly, the report covers the top Explosive Ordnance Disposal manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Explosive Ordnance Disposal industry, Explosive Ordnance Disposal industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Global Candesartan Cilexetil Market Research Report Forecast 2017 to 2021 Global Candesartan Cilexetil Market Research Report Forecast 2017 to 2021 https://www.reportsworldwide.com/report/global-candesartan-cilexetil-market-research-report-forecast-2017-to-2021 https://www.reportsworldwide.com/enquiry?report_id=42245 ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title Global Candesartan Cilexetil Market Research Report Forecast 2017 to 2021 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.The Global Candesartan Cilexetil Market Research Report Forecast 2017-2021 is a valuable source of insightful data for business strategists. 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This Candesartan Cilexetil market study provides comprehensive data which enhances the understanding, scope and application of this report.To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:This report provides comprehensive analysis of Key market segments and sub-segments Evolving market trends and dynamics Changing supply and demand scenarios Quantifying market opportunities through market sizing and market forecasting Tracking current trends/opportunities/challenges Competitive insights Opportunity mapping in terms of technological breakthroughsGlobal Ethylenediaminetetraacetic AcidEDTA Market: Regional Segment Analysis North America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaThe Major players reported in the market include: Atacand Bayer Alvogen Korea Ahn-Gook Pharmaceuticals Co.,Ltd GlaxoSmithKline NPS Medicinewise EMC Tocris AbmoleReasons for Buying this Report This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth It provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsTo Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @ReportsWorldwide.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 Oct 26, 2017: Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market Forecast 2023 Archroma, Huntsman, Kiri Industries, Yorkshire Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes https://goo.gl/KCyZWH http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-disperse-textile-fiber-dyes-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market Forecast examines the performance of the Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market 2017 report includes Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes market Size, Revenue, market Share, Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes industry volume, market Trends, Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market Forecast 2017:1. Archroma2. Huntsman3. Kiri Industries4. Yorkshire5. Milliken Chemical6. RUDOLF GROUP7. Nippon Kayaku8. Sumitomo9. Everlight Chemical10. Atul11. Kyung-In12. Bodal Chemical13. Anand international14. Organic Dyes and Pigments15. Eksoy16. Aarti Industries Ltd17. Osaka Godo18. SetasDisperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market : Type Analysis Nitro Dyes Amino Ketone Dyes Anthraquinonoid Dyes Mono Azo Dyes Di-Azo DyesDisperse Textile Fiber Dyes Market : Application Analysis Polyester Fibers, Cellulose Acetate Fibers, etc. Cotton Textiles Wool, Silk, Polyurethane FibersFirstly, the report covers the top Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes industry, Disperse Textile Fiber Dyes industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Double Suction Pump Market Forecast 2023 Xylem, Sulzer, TORISHIMA, Pumpiran Double Suction Pump https://goo.gl/v1hiEs http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-double-suction-pump-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 A market study Global Double Suction Pump Market Forecast examines the performance of the Double Suction Pump market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Double Suction Pump market state and the competitive landscape globally. 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Ruhrpumpen GroupDouble Suction Pump Market : Type Analysis Vertically HorizontallyDouble Suction Pump Market : Application Analysis Mining Power station Urban water supply Marine IrrigationFirstly, the report covers the top Double Suction Pump manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Double Suction Pump report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Double Suction Pump industry, Double Suction Pump industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. 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We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Oct 26, 2017: Glass TV Cabinet Market Forecast 2023 Sauder, DeFehr, Amarna, Alphason Glass TV Cabinet https://goo.gl/gR6X76 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-glass-tv-cabinet-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022/ A market study Global Glass TV Cabinet Market Forecast examines the performance of the Glass TV Cabinet market Size 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Glass TV Cabinet market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Glass TV Cabinet market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.Get Free Sample Of Report:The Global Glass TV Cabinet Market 2017 report includes Glass TV Cabinet market Size, Revenue, market Share, Glass TV Cabinet industry volume, market Trends, Glass TV Cabinet Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Glass TV Cabinet Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2023.Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Glass TV Cabinet Market Forecast 2017:1. Sauder2. DeFehr3. Santa Fe Rusticos4. IKEA5. Amarna6. Alphason7. BDI8. Optimum9. Munari10. Schnepel11. Simpli Home12. Baxton Studio13. Sonax14. Furinno15. Winsome WoodGlass TV Cabinet Market : Type Analysis Stand alone TV cabinet Modular TV cabinetGlass TV Cabinet Market : Application Analysis Commercial HouseholdFirstly, the report covers the top Glass TV Cabinet manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Enquiry for More Info@Further, the Glass TV Cabinet report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Glass TV Cabinet industry, Glass TV Cabinet industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Glass TV Cabinet Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.The Glass TV Cabinet research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Glass TV Cabinet market revenue worldwide.Finally, Glass TV Cabinet market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:Spire Market Research is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244United States Audiophile Headphone Market by Application, Industry Overview, Analysis and Forecast to 2023 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-audiophile-headphone-market-analysis-2011-2017-and-forecast-2018-2023 http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011093736/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011093736/buying Audiophile Headphone is one kind of Headphone used in Headphone lover or pursuer. It is of high Sound quality.The global Audiophile Headphone market will reach xxx Million USD in 2017 and CAGR xx% 2011-2017. The report begins from overview of Industry Chain structure, and describes industry environment, then analyses market size and forecast of Audiophile Headphone by product, region and application, in addition, this report introduces market competition situation among the vendors and company profile, besides, market price analysis and value chain features are covered in this report.Vendors Coverage:BeatsHarmanBoseSennheiserAudio-TechnicaSonyBeyerdynamicGradoPhilipsShurePioneerAudezeEtymotic ResearchHiFiManOPPOFor More Information About This Report:Application Coverage:By AgeBelow 1818-34Above34Product Type Coverage:Wired HeadphoneWireless HeadphonesRegion Coverage:North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaRequest Sample Copy At:Table of Content1 Industry Overview2 Industry Environment3 Audiophile Headphone Market by Type4 Major Companies List5 Market Competition6 Market Demand7 Region Operation8 Marketing & Price9 Research ConclusionInquire For This Report At:Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 HR Service Market by Elite Players 2017 - CJC, ServiceNow, NGA Human Resources, Rochelle de Greeff, PORR, Recruit Group 2017 ReportsWeb http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011191438/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/global-collaboration-software-market-size-status-and-forecast-2022 http://www.reportsweb.com/buy&RW00011191438/buy/3300 The New Report "Global Collaboration Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 Report 2017" published by ReportsWeb, 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.This report studies the global Collaboration Software market, analyzes and researches the Collaboration 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, likedaPulseConfluenceZohoEvernoteSlackBasecampMicrosoftOffice.comHootSuite MediaGoToMeetingCisco WebExTeamViewereXoGenieBeltSynageRequest a Sample atMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoCloud, SaaS, WebMobile - Android NativeMobile - iOS NativeMarket segment by Application, Collaboration Software can be split intoSMEsLarge OrganizationOtherBrowse Complete Report atKey Point from Table of Contents:1 Industry Overview of Collaboration Software2 Global Collaboration Software Competition Analysis by Players3 Company-Top Players) Profiles4 Global Collaboration Software Market Size by Application-2012-2017)5 United States Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook6 EU Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook7 Japan Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook8 China Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook9 India Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook10 Southeast Asia Collaboration Software Development Status and Outlook11 Market Forecast by Regions and Application-2017-2022)12 Collaboration Software Market Dynamics13 Market Effect Factors Analysis14 Research Finding/ConclusionPurchase Complete Report atContact Information:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.comReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Honeycomb Packaging Market - Demand from End-use Industries Driving Market https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=19829 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/honeycomb-packaging-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The global market for honeycomb packaging is expected to expand at a considerable rate in the near future due to its growing demand across several industrial verticals. The increase application of honeycomb packaging and emphasis on environment-friendly packaging are two of the key drivers for te global honeycomb packaging market. As the demand for protective packaging grows in end-user industries such as consumer goods, automotive, and furniture among others, the honeycomb packaging market will witness significant expansion. In light of these reasons, the global honeycomb packaging market is expected to reach a valuation US$14.1 bn by the end of 2024 from US$8.6 bn in 2015. Between the forecast years of 2016 and 2024, the global market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 5.7%.Honeycomb is gradually replacing bubble wrap, EPE, thermocol, EP foam, mineral wool, particle boards, rock wool, PUF, MDF, and wood in various packaging solutions. Thus, the rising focus on making packaging materials suitable to the environment and sustainable is expected to work in favour of the global market. Honeycomb packaging is gaining a strong foothold in a range of end-user industries that are in constant need of protective packaging. The report suggests that the emergence of e-commerce industry and the subsequent demand for transport of goods has provided the global market a phenomenal boost. This demand is largely a result of a need to protect damage and waste of items being shipped during transit.Get an exclusive sample of this report @Exterior Packaging Demands Higher Market Share as E-commerce Picks UpOn the basis of packaging type, the global honeycomb packaging market is segmented into interior packaging, exterior packaging, pallets and others. Exterior packaging held a dominant stance in the global market as of 2015 and is expected to do so in the coming years as well. Exterior packaging materials refer to the outer containers and boxes in which the products are packed before being shipped and transported. They are the overall outer packaging which cover the entire product and help in safe transportation from the seller to the buyer. Exterior packaging includes, cartons, boxes, containers, and crates among others. This segment is also forecasted to grow at a steady growth rate owing to continued demand from end-user industries such as automobiles, furniture, and consumer goods. Other packaging type is forecasted to witness the most rapid growth rate over the forecast period. Trays and layer pads are in constant demand in order to provide cushioning and protection of goods while shipment. They are therefore, anticipated to have a rapid growth rate.Browse Press Release of this Research Report @North America to Remain Dominant as Industries Bounce BackGeographically the global honeycomb packaging market is segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. North America led the pack in 2015 and is anticipated to have a steady growth rate over the forecast period. This is attributed to the large size of end-user industries in this region. Asia Pacific is also anticipated to register a significant growth rate in the coming years due to rapid urbanization and increased penetration of end-user industries in this region.The key players operating in the global honeycomb packaging market are DS Smith, BASF SE, Sealed Air Corporation, Sonoco Products Company, ACH Foam Technologies, Inc., Lsquare Eco-Products Pvt. Ltd., Smurfit Kappa Group, Packaging Corporation of America, WestRock Company, and Huhtamaki Group among others.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.comWebsite: Food Ingredients Market - Shifting Demand for Organic Foodstuff https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/18934 https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/food-ingredients-market.asp https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com The global market for food ingredients has been estimated by Persistence Market Researchs report to exhibit an impressive 6% CAGR during the six-year forecast period (2017-2022). Global sales of food ingredients are estimated to surpass revenues worth US$ 400,000 Mn by 2022-end.Shifting Demand for Organic FoodstuffFood ingredients have been utilized over several years for preserving, flavoring, blending, thickening, and coloring foods, playing an indispensable role in catering to serious nutritional deficiencies of consumers across the globe. Availability of convenience food has surged along with robust demand from consumers, especially in developing and developed regions where people have less time for preparing meals owing to their hectic lifestyle. In addition, ready-to-eat foods are gaining popularity on the back of increasing women workforce, thereby fuelling demand for ingredients to enhance their shelf-life. With shifting demand for organic foodstuff among consumers, a slew of organic technologies have been formulated over the recent past for processing of reagents, flavor components, processing aids, nutritional supplements and ingredients.Request Sample:Several companies in the global food ingredients market are entering into robust mergers & acquisitions for increasing their product portfolio and catering to constantly changing consumer preferences. A major trend being witnessed in the market is multinational industries focusing on the acquisition of medium-sized companies, which specialize in technology advancements but lack in funds for expansion.APEJ to Remain Most Lucrative Market for Food IngredientsAsia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is anticipated to remain the most lucrative market for food ingredients, as the region hosts a large number of food processing industries. In addition, several predominant players are focusing on relocating their production bases to emerging APEJ countries such as India, Vietnam and Thailand, as these regions have cheap yet skilled workforce. North America is expected to remain the second largest market for food ingredients. Europe will also remain a lucrative region for the food ingredients market, owing to presence of numerous confectionary and processing companies in Germany and the U.K., which in turn propel demand and production of food ingredients.By function, sweeteners are expected to retain their dominance in the global food ingredients market, with sales poised to surpass US$ 110,000 Mn by 2022-end. However, sales of food ingredients for sweeteners are projected to expand at a relatively lower CAGR than all the other function segments through 2022. In addition, witnessing a parallel expansion in sales through 2022, emulsifiers, and stabilizers, thickeners, binders, and texturizers will collectively account for over one-third revenue share of the market in 2017. Nutrients function of food ingredients are projected to witness the fastest expansion in sales through 2022.Browse Research Report:Frozen Foods & Functional Foods to Account for Approximately Similar Revenues by 2022-endFrozen foods and functional foods application of food ingredients are expected to account for approximately similar revenues in the global market by 2022-end. However, sales of food ingredients for application in functional foods will register a relatively higher CAGR through 2022. In addition, bakery will continue to be the largest application of food ingredients, with sales projected to account for more than one-third revenue share of the market in 2017. However, bakery application segment will witness a slight decline in its market revenue share by 2022-end.Starches will continue to be sought-after among products in the global food ingredients market, expanding at a steady CAGR through 2022. The largest share of revenues from sales of starches will be accounted by North America over the forecast period. Functional ingredients are projected to emerge as the fastest expanding product segment in the market through 2022, followed by enzymes & antioxidants and natural flavorings & colors.Key market players identified by PMRs report include Koninklijke DSM N.V., Kerry Group Plc, Ingredion Incorporated, Glanbia Plc, Givaudan SA, Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited, Cargill, Inc., Bunge Limited, Associated Milk Producers, Inc., Arla Foods amba, Archer Daniels Midland Company, and AngelYeast Co., Ltd.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: Nov, 2 2017: Brake Friction Products Market Forecast 2023 Tenneco, Robert Bosch, Brembo, Delphi Automotive Brake Friction Products http://bit.ly/2znkmO1 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-brake-friction-products-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com Brake Friction Products Market Research 2017A market study Global Brake Friction Products Market examines the performance of the Brake Friction Products market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Brake Friction Products market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Brake Friction Products market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Brake Friction Products Market 2017 report includes Brake Friction Products market Revenue, market Share, Brake Friction Products industry volume, market Trends, Brake Friction Products Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Brake Friction Products Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Brake Friction Products Market 2017 : Robert Bosch Aisin Seiki Delphi Automotive Federal-Mogul Brembo Tenneco Akebono Brake Nisshinbo Holdings Miba SGL CarbonBrake Friction Products Market : By Application Passenger Vehicles Light Commercial Vehicles Heavy Commercial VehiclesBrake Friction Products Market : By Type Brake Pad Brake Shoe Brake Liner Drum DiscFirstly, the report covers the top Brake Friction Products manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Brake Friction Products report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Brake Friction Products industry, Brake Friction Products industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Brake Friction Products Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Brake Friction Products research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Brake Friction Products market revenue worldwide.Finally, Brake Friction Products market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAWeb:Email: sales@spiremarketresearch.com Nutmeg Market Analysis by Region, Price, Gross Margin, Strategy and Development Processes 2017 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-nutmeg-industry-market-research-report http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011151023/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011151023/discount Nutmeg refers back to the seed or ground spice of numerous species of the myristica genus. myristica fragrans (fragrant nutmeg or actual nutmeg) is a darkish-leaved, evergreen tree cultivated for two spices derived from its fruit: nutmeg and mace. Its also a industrial supply of an important oil and nutmeg butter. Other individuals of the genus, consisting of m. argental (Papuan nutmeg) and m. malabarica (Bombay nutmeg), are of confined business fee. The California nutmeg (Torrey California) has a comparable fruit but isn't always intently associated with meristic fragans.Based on the Nutmeg industrial chain, this report mainly elaborate the definition, types, applications and major players of Nutmeg market in details. Deep analysis about market status (2012-2017), enterprise competition pattern, advantages and disadvantages of enterprise Products, industry development trends (2017-2022), regional industrial layout characteristics and macroeconomic policies, industrial policy has also be included. From raw materials to downstream buyers of this industry will be analyzed scientifically, the feature of product circulation and sales channel will be presented as well. In a word, this report will help you to establish a panorama of industrial development and characteristics of the Nutmeg market.The Nutmeg market can be split based on product types, major applications, and important regions.Major Players in Nutmeg market are:Sensient TechnologiesAjinomoto Co., Inc.Kerry Group PLCOlam InternationalAriake Japan Co., Ltd.Mccormick & CompanyAssociated British Foods PLCBrowse complete report @Major Regions play vital role in Nutmeg market are:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanMiddle East & AfricaIndiaSouth AmericaOthersMost important types of Nutmeg products covered in this report are:Culinary UseEssential OilsNutmeg ButterOthersMost widely used downstream fields of Nutmeg market covered in this report are:Meat & Poultry ProductSnacks & Convenience FoodSoups, Sauces, and DressingsBakery & ConfectioneryOthersGet sample copy @Table of Content1 Nutmeg Introduction and Market Overview2 Industry Chain Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Material Suppliers of Nutmeg Analysis2.2 Major Players of Nutmeg2.2.1 Major Players Manufacturing Base and Market Share of Nutmeg in 20162.2.2 Major Players Product Types in 20162.3 Nutmeg Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.3.1 Production Process Analysis2.3.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure of Nutmeg2.3.3 Raw Material Cost of Nutmeg2.3.4 Labor Cost of Nutmeg2.4 Market Channel Analysis of Nutmeg2.5 Major Downstream Buyers of Nutmeg Analysis3 Global Nutmeg Market, by Type3.1 Analysis of Market Status and Feature by Type3.2 Global Nutmeg Value ($) and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.3 Global Nutmeg Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.4 Global Nutmeg Value ($) and Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)3.5 Global Nutmeg Price Analysis by Type (2012-2017)4 Nutmeg Market, by Application6 Global Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)6.1 Global Nutmeg Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)6.2 North America Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.3 Europe Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.4 China Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.5 Japan Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.6 Middle East & Africa Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.7 India Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.8 South America Nutmeg Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)7 Global Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis by Regions7.1 North America Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.2 Europe Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.3 China Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.4 Japan Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.5 Middle East & Africa Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.6 India Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.7 South America Nutmeg Market Status and SWOT Analysis8 Competitive Landscape8.1 Competitive Profile8.2 Sensient Technologies8.2.1 Company Profiles8.2.2 Nutmeg Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.2.2.1 Product Introduction8.2.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.2.3 Sensient Technologies Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.2.4 Sensient Technologies Market Share of Nutmeg Segmented by Region in 20168.3 Ajinomoto Co., Inc.8.3.1 Company Profiles8.3.2 Nutmeg Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.3.2.1 Product Introduction8.3.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.3.3 Ajinomoto Co., Inc. Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.3.4 Ajinomoto Co., Inc. Market Share of Nutmeg Segmented by Region in 20169 Global Nutmeg Market Analysis and Forecast by Type and Application10 Nutmeg Market Analysis and Forecast by Region11 New Project Feasibility Analysis12 Research Finding and Conclusion13 AppendixDiscount @We provide best in classcustomer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries. Our commitment to customer service is best exemplified by free analyst support that we offer to our clients which sets us apart from any other provider. We also offer enterprise subscriptions which provide significant cost savings to our clients.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com533, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Nov, 2 2017: Gout Therapeutics Market Forecast 2023 Sandoz, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Horizon Pharma, GlaxoSmithKline Gout Therapeutics http://bit.ly/2A6dBx1 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-gout-therapeutics-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com Gout Therapeutics Market Research 2017A market study Global Gout Therapeutics Market examines the performance of the Gout Therapeutics market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Gout Therapeutics market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Gout Therapeutics market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Gout Therapeutics Market 2017 report includes Gout Therapeutics market Revenue, market Share, Gout Therapeutics industry volume, market Trends, Gout Therapeutics Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Gout Therapeutics Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Gout Therapeutics Market 2017 : AstraZeneca Horizon Pharma Takeda Pharmaceuticals GlaxoSmithKline Eli Lilly LG Life Sciences Merck Novartis Antares Pharma Astellas Pharma Boehringer Ingelheim CymaBay Therapeutics Eisai JW Pharmaceutical Teijin Pharma Vertex Pharmaceuticals Sandoz Regeneron PharmaceuticalsGout Therapeutics Market : By Application Hospitals ClinicsGout Therapeutics Market : By Type NSAIDs Corticosteroids Colchicine Urate-Lowering AgentsFirstly, the report covers the top Gout Therapeutics manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Gout Therapeutics report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Gout Therapeutics industry, Gout Therapeutics industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Gout Therapeutics Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Gout Therapeutics research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Gout Therapeutics market revenue worldwide.Finally, Gout Therapeutics market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAWeb:Email: sales@spiremarketresearch.com Nov, 2 2017: Pompe Disease Treatment Market Forecast 2023 Oxyrane, Amicus Therapeutics, EpiVax, Sangamo BioSciences Pompe Disease Treatment http://bit.ly/2xJUnvu http://www.spiremarketresearch.com/global-pompe-disease-treatment-sales-market-2017-demand-insight-key-players-segmentation-and-forecast-to-2022 http://www.spiremarketresearch.com Pompe Disease Treatment Market Research 2017A market study Global Pompe Disease Treatment Market examines the performance of the Pompe Disease Treatment market 2017. It encloses an in-depth Research of the Pompe Disease Treatment market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Pompe Disease Treatment market in the present and the future prospects from various angles in detail.The Global Pompe Disease Treatment Market 2017 report includes Pompe Disease Treatment market Revenue, market Share, Pompe Disease Treatment industry volume, market Trends, Pompe Disease Treatment Growth aspects. A wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis are also consist in the report.It shows manufacturing capacity, Pompe Disease Treatment Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.To Get Sample Report Click Here:Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Pompe Disease Treatment Market 2017 : Amicus Therapeutics Audentes Therapeutics Sanofi Genzyme EpiVax Oxyrane Sangamo BioSciences Valerion TherapeuticsPompe Disease Treatment Market : By Application Hospital ClinicPompe Disease Treatment Market : By Type Infantile-Onset Pompe Disease Adult-Onset Pompe DiseaseFirstly, the report covers the top Pompe Disease Treatment manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on geological regions.Further, the Pompe Disease Treatment report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Pompe Disease Treatment industry, Pompe Disease Treatment industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Pompe Disease Treatment Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.Browse Full Report Here:The Pompe Disease Treatment research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Pompe Disease Treatment market revenue worldwide.Finally, Pompe Disease Treatment market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.About Us:"Spire Market Research" is a leading market intelligence team which accredits and provides the reports of some of the top publishers in the field of technology industry. We are as a firm expertise in making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact Us5001 Spring Valley Road,Suite 400 East,Dallas, TX 75244, USAWeb:Email: sales@spiremarketresearch.com Military Personal Protective Equipment Market to Undertake Strapping Growth During 2024 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/military-personal-protective-equipment-market.html https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/19655 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com The top three leading players in the global military personal protective equipment market held a share of 52.2% in the overall market in 2015. These players are determined to bring in product innovation to rise above the stiff competition in the global market. Furthermore, several companies are also emphasizing on achieving technological advancements to cater to the demands of clients.View Full Report:According to the research report, the global military personal protective equipment market was valued at US$11.23 bn in 2015 and is expected to reach US$19.09 bn by the end of 2024. The market is projected to progress at a CAGR of 6.1% between 2016 and 2024.Body Armor Segment Emerges as Leading Product in Global MarketThe types of products available in the global market are body armor (IBA), advanced combat helmet (ACH), improved outer tactical vest (IOTV), pelvic protection systems (PPS), life safety jackets, military combat eye protection (MCEP), and others. Out of all the products, the body armor product segment is expected to make a significant contribution to the global market. The segment is slated to acquire a share of 33.1% by the end of 2024.In terms of geography, the global market is fragmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Saudi Arabia, and Latin America. The report indicates that North America is likely to dominate the global market with Asia Pacific following closely. The North America military personal protective equipment market is estimated to acquire a share of 24.4% by the end of 2024.Persistent Conflicts Keep Demand of Military Personal Protective Equipment HighThe highly volatile situation amongst countries in the Middle East, India, and Iraq is the key growth driver for the global military personal protective equipment market. The increasing role of ground troops in combat has augmented the demand for military personal protective equipment in the recent past. The ongoing wars and conflicts have been boosting the uptake of this equipment to ensure safety of the troops. The report states that wars in Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Iraq have collectively kept the demand for protective gear at an all-time high through the past decade.Request to download and view full ToC -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.comWebsite: Home Security Solution Market Present Scenario and Growth Prospects from 2017 to 2024 Global Market Insights, Inc. https://www.gminsights.com/request-toc/upcoming/1351 https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/1351 https://www.gminsights.com Global Home Security Solution Market increase in mobile monitoring devices, attractive protection plans, growth in the usage of smartphones & tablets, and rising customer awareness will boost the home security solution market size. Furthermore, an increase in the competition among distributors and providers to deliver numerous services due to the demand for home security appliances will have positive implications for the industry.Home Security Solution Market size is anticipated to witness growth opportunities over the forecast timeline owing to the increasing crime rates and immoral practices in residential areas. Effective and modernized security systems, such as remote monitoring services, are increasing the consumer interest in the residential security solutions, propelling the market.Technological advancements in the home security solution market have developed gradually over the years. Various features, such as sensors, alarms, smart locks, motion sensing, cameras, night vision, wireless technology, and internet connections, are available in the market making it possible for residential or homeowners to utilize them. The growing demand for wireless technology and its ease of installation have offered many opportunities for the home security solution market growth globally.Request for an in-depth table of contents for this report @Video surveillance technology is one trending factor of the home security solution market as videos gathered from the surveillance can now be shared or transferred to computers and mobile devices, making them accessible anywhere and anytime. Motion sensor lights help in lighting a doorway when an intruder is present. An increase in demand for these products will provide an opportunity for the market to grow. Furthermore, the solution providers and distributors need to work on the incorporation of advanced and technological approaches to retain old customers and acquire new ones.Residential home security solution market is booming owing to the growing trend towards high-security efficiency due to customer awareness. The integration of ICT and data usage is helping in achieving the trend. The incorporation of home security cloud-based wireless solutions is predicted to surge over the forecast timeframe. This is due to the ability of cloud-based solutions to deliver services such as personalization, interactivity, and multi-screen usage. It is anticipated that the dynamic forces aimed at home security solution market are slowly shifting towards hi-tech from mechanical activities as users are seeking improved & advanced operational efficiencies and want cost-effective solutions.Irrespective of the various advantages offered by home security solutions, the high installation cost of solutions and lack of security awareness would confine the growth of the industry. Rising awareness among users and augmented implementation of new solutions for home security systems would progressively result in the cost reduction of home security solution, positively driving home security solution market.Advanced solutions and technologies involve problems such as connectivity problems, compatibility issues, electrical interference, and software malfunctions. Wide inventive ideas are taken into consideration by industry players to overcome the problems and deliver a high operative solution in the home security solution market.The home security solution market by-products can be divided into biometric locks, keypad locks, magnetic/electric card locks, wireless, locks, sensors, cameras, and panic buttons/alarms. Advanced sensor developments for the recognition of intruders & unauthorized people and biometrics and card based access control will have a huge effect on the home security solution market. Biometrics security solutions have various applications such as facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition. Biometrics is gaining admiration and demand in home security solutions market due to its remote scanning feature, in which the door locks can be controlled from a distance.Wireless door locks scan an operators fingerprint to enable access while fingerprint door locks offer its operators a keyless door unlocking system. This home security solution market will have a huge demand in the residential sector due to its features such as advanced and personalized security. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a wireless solution applies radio frequency & electromagnetic fields and is used in physical time pursuing applications, which are gaining approval in the home security solution market.The home security solution market by solution types can be divided into access control & management, fire protection systems, intercom, intruder alarm, motion sensor lights, medical alert, and video surveillance. The industry by home type can be divided into apartments, condominiums, and independent homes. Integrated home security systems will witness a considerable market growth due to the growing awareness about elderly people requiring medical assistance, monitoring children, and detection of hazardous conditions such as gas leaks and fires.Make an inquiry for buying this report @North America is anticipated to hold a significant market share in the home security solution market due to the presence of many companies, which are providing these solutions. In the U.S., it is expected that some 15 million and more U.S. homes will invest and install in new home security solutions in the coming years. The growing list of smart home solution services and providers in the U.S. is using home security to introduce the automation services for homes. In the U.S. market, home security solution market is exhibiting a considerable growth due to an increase in the fire & smoke injuries & deaths.The Asia Pacific industry is characterized by the usage of Internet Protocol (IP). The industry in Japan is one of the major growth areas for IP camera surveillance systems. These solutions are being adopted by nursing homes, retail chain stores, homeowners, small factories, and warehouses.Major players in the home security solution market industry include Allegion PLC, Alarm.com, ASSA ABLOY, Bosch Security Systems, Control4 Corporation, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing Company Limited, Honeywell International, Inc., Ingersoll-Rand Solutions, Nortek Security & Control LLC, Tyco, and UTC Fire & Security.About Global Market InsightsGlobal Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone: 1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb: Global Travel Insurance Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 http://bit.ly/2zaWFre http://bit.ly/2lFk1A1 Travel insurance market offers a wide range of benefits for events including evacuation due to medical condition or hijack, trip cancellation due to medical emergency, loss of baggage, and loss of travel documents. Travelers are inclined toward availing travel insurance as it helps them in recovering from unexpected events occurring during travel. Various types of coverage available for travel insurance buyers are travel delay, personal liability, tour operator default, legal expenses, accidental death, emergency reunion, and others.Request Sample At:Rise in tourism, rise in globalization, and travel rules & regulations drive growth in the global travel insurance market. Low penetration of insurance policies limit growth in the industry. On the other hand, new technological developments create new opportunities in the global industry.The global travel insurance market is segmented based on insurance cover, distribution channels, users, and geography. Based on insurance cover, the market is further segmented into annual multi-trip travel insurance, single trip travel insurance, and long stay travel insurance. Distribution channels are classified into insurance intermediaries, banks, insurance company, insurance aggregator, insurance brokers, and others. Users who opt for travel insurance policies include backpackers, education traveler, senior citizens, fully independent traveler, business traveler, and family travelers. The market is divided across geographical regions, including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA (Latin America, Middle East, and Africa).Market players operating in the global travel insurance market include CSA Travel Protection, USI Affinity, Seven Corners Inc., Travel Safe, MH Ross, Allianz Global Assistance, Travel Insured International, AXA SA, AIG Travel, InsureandGo, and others. They have adopted various strategies such as expansion, collaborations, agreements, mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, joint ventures, and others to strengthen their position in the industry and gain competitive advantage.Key Benefits of the Report: The study offers an extensive analysis of the global travel insurance market in addition to current trends and projections for the future to identify investment pockets. The study offers a quantitative analysis to assist investors and stakeholders determine new opportunities. Competitive scenario helps in determining the business strategies adopted by leading market players in different regions. Geographical regions are discussed to gain understanding of market scenario and determine strategies for expansion.Report Customization At: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.Global Head Quarters5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1 (800) 910-6452Int'l: +1-971-202-1575help@researchbeam.com Human Microbiome Market to Reach US$ 3.2 Billion by the End of 2024 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/human-microbiome-market.html https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/3999 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=3999 http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ The global market for human microbiome is poised to expand at a noteworthy CAGR of 9.80% between 2020 and 2024, reaching a valuation of US$2.2 bn by 2020. By the end of forecast period, the market is expected to cross the mark of US3.2 bn. High unmet needs coupled with the growing investments by venture capital organizations and angel investors in research and development activities in the field of diagnosis and therapeutics of underrated diseases are providing a fillip to the market. With human microbiome being a novel and highly potent realm, drug manufacturers across the globe are increasing their focus on it, which is translating into the greater capital investments. Human microbiome is used for early detection and diagnosis of diseases. Moreover, it has been accredited as a new target for drug development, says a TMR analyst. The rising number of clinical trials for gut health-based diseases is also playing a pivotal role in the growth of the global market.Browse Report Details@The increasing collaborations between market players and research institutes are shaping the future of the global human microbiome market. However, several factors are acting as dark spots in the landscape. The dearth of personnel with expertise and lack of proper infrastructure for research, especially in developing countries, are impeding the upward climb of the market. Moreover, human microbiome is still in its initial stages and therefore, there are various uncertainties over its performance. Besides this, stringent government regulations for approval are acting as a bottleneck in the development of the market.North America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Latin America are the key regional markets for human microbiome across the world. Thanks to the presence of a state-of-art medical and healthcare industry and early adoption of technology, North America has occupied the top position in the global market. Researchers expect that the rising number of venture-capital funded start-ups and the increasing investments by leading players for research and development of drugs will support the North America market for human microbiome over the forthcoming years, ensuring its dominance. The human microbiome therapeutics market in North America is anticipated to report a rise at a CAGR of 9.10% between 2020 and 2024 while the regions human microbiome diagnostics market will progress at an 8.80% CAGR from 2018 to 2024.Report Overview, with TOC -The global human microbiome market is in a nascent phase, which is attracting a large number of players to foray into this market. Transparency Market Research (TMR) estimates that this, resultantly, is likely to intensify the competition within this market over the coming years. Enterome Biosciences SA, Vedanta Biosciences, Seres Therapeutics, Synthetic Biologics Inc., uBiome Inc., Second Genome, Osel Inc., Rebiotix Inc., Metabiomics Corp., MicroBiome Therapeutics LLC., and AO Biome LLC are among the frontrunners in the arena.Buy Full Report@About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: Olives Market 2017 Share and Growth Rate 2022 Reportsweb http://www.reportsweb.com/global-olives-industry-market-research-report http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011151158/sample http://www.reportsweb.com/inquiry&RW00011151158/discount The olive, acknowledged via the botanical call olea europaea, which means "European olive", is a species of small tree in the own family oleaceae, determined in the Mediterranean basin from Portugal to the Levant, the Arabian peninsula, and southern Asia as far east as china, in addition to the canary islands and reunion. The species is cultivated in many places and taken into consideration naturalized in all the nations of the Mediterranean coast, as well as in Argentina, Saudi Arabia, java, Norfolk Island, California, and Bermuda.Based on the Olives industrial chain, this report mainly elaborate the definition, types, applications and major players of Olives market in details. Deep analysis about market status (2012-2017), enterprise competition pattern, advantages and disadvantages of enterprise Products, industry development trends (2017-2022), regional industrial layout characteristics and macroeconomic policies, industrial policy has also be included. From raw materials to downstream buyers of this industry will be analyzed scientifically, the feature of product circulation and sales channel will be presented as well. In a word, this report will help you to establish a panorama of industrial development and characteristics of the Olives market.The Olives market can be split based on product types, major applications, and important regions.Browse complete report @Major Regions play vital role in Olives market are:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanMiddle East & AfricaIndiaSouth AmericaOthersGet sample copy @Table of Content1 Olives Introduction and Market Overview2 Industry Chain Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Material Suppliers of Olives Analysis2.2 Major Players of Olives2.2.1 Major Players Manufacturing Base and Market Share of Olives in 20162.2.2 Major Players Product Types in 20162.3 Olives Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.3.1 Production Process Analysis2.3.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure of Olives2.3.3 Raw Material Cost of Olives2.3.4 Labor Cost of Olives2.4 Market Channel Analysis of Olives2.5 Major Downstream Buyers of Olives Analysis3 Global Olives Market, by Type3.1 Analysis of Market Status and Feature by Type3.2 Global Olives Value ($) and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.3 Global Olives Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)3.4 Global Olives Value ($) and Growth Rate by Type (2012-2017)3.5 Global Olives Price Analysis by Type (2012-2017)4 Olives Market, by Application6 Global Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)6.1 Global Olives Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)6.2 North America Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.3 Europe Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.4 China Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.5 Japan Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.6 Middle East & Africa Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.7 India Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)6.8 South America Olives Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)7 Global Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis by Regions7.1 North America Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.2 Europe Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.3 China Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.4 Japan Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.5 Middle East & Africa Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.6 India Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis7.7 South America Olives Market Status and SWOT Analysis8 Competitive Landscape8.1 Competitive Profile8.2 Border Valley Trading8.2.1 Company Profiles8.2.2 Olives Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.2.2.1 Product Introduction8.2.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.2.3 Border Valley Trading Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.2.4 Border Valley Trading Market Share of Olives Segmented by Region in 20168.3 Gruppo Carli8.3.1 Company Profiles8.3.2 Olives Product Introduction and Market Positioning8.3.2.1 Product Introduction8.3.2.2 Market Positioning and Target Customers8.3.3 Gruppo Carli Production, Value ($), Price, Gross Margin 2012-2017E8.3.4 Gruppo Carli Market Share of Olives Segmented by Region in 20169 Global Olives Market Analysis and Forecast by Type and Application10 Olives Market Analysis and Forecast by Region11 New Project Feasibility Analysis12 Research Finding and Conclusion13 AppendixDiscount @We provide best in classcustomer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries. Our commitment to customer service is best exemplified by free analyst support that we offer to our clients which sets us apart from any other provider. We also offer enterprise subscriptions which provide significant cost savings to our clients.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com533, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028 Smart Mirror: Driven by High Market Potential in Automotive and Retail Industry https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3733 https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/smart-mirror-market.asp https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com Persistence Market Research (PMR) delivers key insights on the global smart mirror market in its latest report titled Global Market Study on Smart Mirror: Driven by High Market Potential in Automotive and Retail Industry with North America to Witness Highest Adoption By 2022. In terms of volume, the global smart mirror market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 10.7% over 2016-2022, driven by various growth factors, regarding which PMR offers vital insights in detail in this report.On the basis of the component, the market has been segmented into sensors, displays, camera and others. In terms of value share, displays have been estimated to be the dominant segment in 2015, with over 40% share of the global smart mirror market. However, the segment is expected to witness a decline of over 180 BPS in market share by the end of 2022 as compared to that in 2015.Request Sample:The global smart mirror market has been segmented by application into automotive sector, consumer & residential, healthcare, and retail sector & advertising. Of these segments, automotive sector segment is estimated to be the largest segment in the global smart mirror market in terms of revenue contribution in 2015; however, consumer & residential segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR of 12.9% over 20162022, due to increasing adoption of new & innovative technologies in the smart mirror industry by various smart mirror manufacturers across the globe.The growth of the global smart mirror market is mainly driven by the high demand of smart mirror from key applications. Also, various key players in the smart mirror market are focused towards enhancing their respective product portfolios by introducing products with new and innovative features for use across a range of application areas is fueling the growth of the smart mirror market. However, high implementation cost of the smart mirror and either relatively low or total lack of awareness among people regarding smart mirror technology are restraining the growth of the market to some extent.This report covers trends driving each segment and respective sub-segments and offers analysis and insights of the potential of the smart mirror market in specific regions. By region, Europe has been estimated to dominate the smart mirror market, accounting for over 40% value share of the overall market in 2015 and is expected to exhibit healthy CAGR of over 11.1% during the projected period.Browse Research Report:Some of the major players identified in the global smart mirror market are Gentex Corporation, Magna International Inc., Pro Display, Evervue, Seura, Alke, ad notam AG, Tech2o, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., TOSHIBA CORPORATION, Panasonic Corporation. Key players in the market follow the strategy of acquisition and mergers and are are focusing on meeting consumer demands and their needs in order to strengthen their position in the market. Furthermore, consistent investment in R&D activities in order to enhance existing products and services portfolio is another major strategy adopted by major players operating in the smart mirror market.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: Protein Ingredients Market Overview, Business Opportunities, Competitor Analysis, Forthcoming Developments & Future Investments 2017 to 2022 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1244 https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/protein-ingredients-market-1244 Market Overview:The protein ingredients market is projected to reach 5,547 KT by 2022, at a CAGR of 3.87% from 2017, in terms of market volume. Europe and North America are the major consumers of protein ingredients with Asia Pacific emerging as growing consumers. Increase in demand in overall health and wellness products with protein rich foods and beverages is driving higher demand for protein ingredients market. Globally, plant proteins have witnessing less demand which is driving higher private investments by companies involved in the Protein Ingredients market to gain consumer attention and encourage buying. Companies who manufactures plant based protein from North America and Europe are spending more on marketing activities to promote plant protein as animal protein are very popular among the consumer groups in those particular areas.Powder and bars together is estimated to dominate the protein ingredients market by more than 60% in the year 2017. However, fastest growth is witnessed under ready to drink form followed by bars. Advancements in technology in processing and overall product development has resulted in launch of various product protein ingredient forms.Pea and egg white proteins are growing traction among the consumers with each having an individual growth rate of about 3.04% and 3.44% during the period 2017-2022. These ingredients are fast emerging as major protein sources in the industry. Egg whites are growing mainly due to their amino acid profile and protein absorbability and pea protein due to its protein profile and sustainability. Soybean and whey is projected to dominate the protein ingredient sources with more than 40% by 2022. Increase in food safety issues related to animal protein, consumers are likely to shift more towards plant proteins like soybean, pea and canola.Request a Sample Report @Competitive Analysis-The Major Key Players in Protein Ingredients Market are Shandong Yuwang Industrial Co., Ltd (China) Shandong Sinoglory Health Food Co., Ltd (China) Gushen Biological Technology Group Co.,Ltd (China) Solbar (Israel) Nutripea (Canada) Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (U.S.) Solae (U.S.)Key players are investing hugely on new product launch which is more than 25% of strategy share include the new product launches by key players from last few years. Agreement and acquisitions are two main factors which are contributing more than 20% of strategy share syndicate as it helping company to penetrate the potential market across globe.Regional AnalysisEurope protein ingredients hold a major market share of about 39.4% of the overall volume in 2017. Increase in demand for high protein products is driving higher demand for protein ingredients in Europe. Growth in specific protein nutritional requirements for muscle growth, weight managements is also supporting the market growth. Canola among plant proteins and whey among animal proteins are projected to grow fastest among the various protein ingredients in Europe with estimated market share of more than 50% in the year 2017.Soybean among plant proteins and whey among animal proteins are projected to grow fastest among the various protein ingredients in Asia Pacific with estimated market share of more than 60% in the year 2017. China being one the largest consumer of soybean in the world, supports soy protein ingredient market.Market Segmentation- Form segment includes powder, bars, ready to drink, capsules & tablets and others. Application segment includes functional food, sport nutrition, meat additives, confectionery & others foods, pharmaceutical and others. Global protein ingredients market is segmented by feedstock, form, application and region. Feedstock segment includes soy, wheat, pea, canola, whey, milk, casein, egg, beef, pork and others.Access Report Details @Table of Contents1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2 INTRODUCTION3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY4 SECONDARY RESEARCH5 MARKET DYNAMICS6 MARKET TRENDS7 EMERGING MARKETS FOR PROTEINS8 MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS9 GLOBAL PROTEIN INGREDIENTS MARKET- BY FEEDSTOCK10 GLOBAL PROTEIN INGREDIENTS MARKET- BY FORM11 GLOBAL PROTEIN INGREDIENTS MARKET- BY APPLICATION12 GLOBAL PROTEIN INGREDIENTS MARKET- BY REGION13 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPEContinuedAbout 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.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com Transdermal Scopolamine Market to Reach US$ 585.3 Million by the End of 2024 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/transdermal-scopolamine-market.html https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/22322 https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=223223,300 patented inventions selected for this study have been categorized by type of NMC materials, such as non-modified, modified by cation or anion substitution and mixed with other active materials. COMPARE IP AND MARKET POSITION The report compares the main IP players and main market players. For each of them, it highlights the discrepancies between their market position and their IP position regarding the supply chain whether they make precursor, material, or batteries and the type of NMC material, such as un-modified, modified, or core-shell. The main market players are not always the main IP players. USEFUL PATENT DATABASE (>8,980 patents) The report also includes an Excel database containing the >8,980 patents and patent applications analyzed in the study. This useful patent database allows multi-criteria searches and includes patent publication number, hyperlinks to the original documents, priority date, title, abstract, patent assignees, technological segments and legal status for each member of the patent families. COMPANIES MENTIONED IN THE REPORT 3M, A123 Systems, AGC, Amperex, Automotive Energy Supply, Bak, BASF, BMW, Boston Power, BYD, Chery Automobile, FAW Automobile, Denki Kogyo/Denka, Denso, Donguan Kaixin Battery Material, DuPont, Easpring Material Technology, Ecopro, Envia, General Motors, GS Yuasa, Hitachi, Honda, Huawei, Jinhe New Materials, Johnson Controls Technology, JX Nippon Mining Metals, Kokam, L&F, Leneng Battery, Leyden Energy, LG Chem, Li-Tec Battery, Mitsubishi, Mitsui Mining & Smelting, Murata Manufacturing, Nano One Materials, Nec, Ningxia Orient Tantalum Industry, Nippon Chemical Industrial, Nissan, Panasonic, Posco, Renault, Reshine New Material, Robert Bosch, SAFT, Samsung SDI, Sanyo Electric, Seeo, SEL, SK Innovation, Solvay, Sony, Sumitomo, Tanaka Chemical, Techelios, Toda Kogyo, Toray Industries, Toshiba, Toyota, University of Chicago, Umicore Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05168529 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 __________________________ Contact Clare: [email protected] US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 SOURCE Reportlinker Related Links http://www.reportlinker.com FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month, No More Tears, founded by former Bollywood actress Somy Ali, continued its charge to help all victims of domestic violence and human and sex trafficking find a way out. So far this year, in conjunction with the nonprofit's 10th anniversary, No More Tears has helped 87 women, 17 men and 762 children charter a course free from abuse. "Abuse can happen to anyone," said Somy Ali, founder of No More Tears. "As we have seen with the Harvey Weinstein scandal, many people who have been assaulted or harassed are afraid to speak up, and we help give both women and men a voice. We want to empower them to seek help and rise above their tragic experiences." Ali does not take a salary working with No More Tears; everyone is a volunteer, and 100 percent of every donation received goes directly to the nonprofit's victims' assistance programs. Each day Ali responds to 10 to 15 abuse-related second-responder calls from law enforcement and FBI officials in South Florida. The 2nd Annual Heart in Hand Awards, held on Sunday, October 1, 2017 at EAST, Miami in Brickell, raised more than $40,000 for No More Tears. "Miami ranks No. 3 for human and sex trafficking in the U.S., so this is an issue that deeply affects South Florida," Ali said. "If one person donated $100 to No More Tears, it would provide two weeks' worth of food for a victim. There is no amount too little when we are working to save lives." From doctors, to immigration attorneys, education and job placement resources, Ali and her network of professionals go beyond the call of duty. "We really aim to provide assistance that not only removes the victim from their abusive environment, but helps them start a new life so that they never look back." Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Ali was a victim of abuse. She moved to Broward County when she was 12, and then at 15 she moved to India to pursue a career in Bollywood. While there, she starred in 10 films, her most famous being Anth (1993), and was engaged to actor Salman Khan. She came back to the U.S. at age 25 and received her degree in psychology from Nova Southeastern University, followed a degree in film from the New York Film Academy. Her first short film covered the life of Pakistani rape victim Mukhtaran Mai. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this October, No More Tears is a South Florida nonprofit organization that aims to assist and empower victims of domestic violence, human and sex trafficking. To learn more about No More Tears and how you can help, visit www.nomoretearsusa.org or call (954) 324-7669. About No More Tears No More Tears, founded by former Bollywood actress Somy Ali in 2007, aims to assist and empower victims of domestic violence and human and sex trafficking. To date, No More Tears has helped more than 5,000 victims and 100 percent of all funds raised by the organization go directly to victims' assistance programs. To learn more, visit www.nomoretearsusa.org. MEDIA RELEASE CONTACT Laurie Menekou, (954) 732-0754 (or) [email protected] SOURCE No More Tears LAS VEGAS, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- OM Liqueurs, a premier line of certified organic sugarcane spirit-based liqueurs announced, today, their partnership with Hakkasan Group to benefit Keep Memory Alive in honor of Alzheimer's Awareness Month (November). OM Liqueurs "OM Liqueurs is thrilled to be partnering with Hakkasan Group for this important cause. Our brand has always been aligned with the spirit of giving back, and November is the perfect time to support Keep Memory Alive whose work helps to provide research and treatment for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's," said Natalie Bovis, Co-founder/CMO of OM Liqueurs. "My father has Alzheimer's disease, and so when I left the Lou Ruvo/Keep Memory Alive dinner in Las Vegas last year, I was inspired to do something in my industry to raise money and bring further awareness to the cause during Alzheimer's month. I approached Hakkasan Group with this idea of creating a cocktail at their restaurants where we could donate one dollar per drink sold to the very important work that's being done at the Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas, and they were on board," said Jason Monkarsh, Co-founder/CEO of OM Liqueurs. During the month of November, for every OM Liqueurs cocktail purchased from select Hakkasan Group locations in Las Vegas, one dollar will be donated to Keep Memory Alive. These signature cocktails were created by Hakkasan chief mixologist, Tim Weigel, specifically for this worthy cause. "We are so excited for this partnership with OM Liqueurs and Keep Memory Alive. Having the opportunity to create such unique cocktails for a great cause has been truly rewarding, and we are happy to be able to do our part in supporting Alzheimer's Awareness Month," said Tim Weigel, chief mixologist of Hakkasan Group. The cocktails feature two of OM Liqueurs' signature flavors which include: Cranberry & Blood Orange; Coconut & Lychee; Meyer Lemon & Ginger; Dark Chocolate & Sea Salt. Signature recipes are available at the following locations: Hakkasan Las Vegas Restaurant: Banyan Bliss $15 OM Coconut & Lychee liqueur, Bombay Sapphire East gin, yuzu, Calpico, mint, creole bitters, guava juice. Searsucker Las Vegas: Blueberry Palmer $12 OM Meyer Lemon & Ginger liqueur, Grey Goose vodka, lemon juice, blueberry honey syrup, tea. About OM Liqueurs: OM Liqueurs was co-founded by mixology consultant, Natalie Bovis, of The Liquid Muse and entrepreneur/beverage consultant, Jason Monkarsh. OM "Organic Mixology" Liqueur has a certified organic sugarcane base distillate, all-natural ingredients and sweetened with organic agave nectar (15% ABV). Each OM Liqueurs has two flavor notes (Cranberry & Blood Orange; Coconut & Lychee; Meyer Lemon & Ginger; Dark Chocolate & Sea Salt.) Sustainability partnerships include Trees For the Future and a reusable metal straw program. OM has received medals from the International Spirits Competition, WSWA Tasting Competition, San Francisco International Spirits Competition and Nightclub & Bar's Entrepreneurs of the Year. For more information visit www.omspirits.com. About Hakkasan Group: Hakkasan Group is a worldwide hospitality company with establishments across North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. Its namesake is taken from its Michelin star restaurant that set the high-level standard for the group's collection of diverse brands. Its 'brand first' philosophy builds restaurants, nightlife, daylife and soon-to-open hotels, resorts and residences into world-class hospitality brands, all with a focus on service, design, innovation and experience. Its restaurant portfolio includes Hakkasan, with 11 locations worldwide, Ling Ling, Yauatcha, HKK, Sake no Hana, Herringbone, Searsucker and Ivory on Sunset. Under the nightlife/daylife umbrella of brands are Hakkasan Nightclub, Wet Republic, OMNIA and JEWEL Nightclub. Hakkasan Group is fully owned by Alliance International Investments LLC, an investment company based out of Abu Dhabi. For more information visit www.hakkasangroup.com. About Keeping Memory Alive: Keep Memory Alive, whose mission is to provide enhanced treatment and ultimately cures for patients and their families suffering from neurocognitive disorders, raises awareness and funds in support of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. By supporting Keep Memory Alive and its fight against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, ALS and memory disorders of all kinds, we can ensure progress toward better treatments and ultimately cures will occur in Las Vegas. For additional information call (702) 263-9797 or visit keepmemoryalive.org. Contact Information: Natalie Bovis: [email protected] Alexandra Leach: [email protected] Jennifer Buonantony: [email protected] (Press Inquiries) Related Links OM Liqueurs SOURCE OM Liqueurs CALGARY and SAN DIEGO, CA, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Oncolytics Biotech Inc. (TSX: ONC) (OTCQX: ONCYF) (Oncolytics or the Company), a biotech company developing REOLYSIN, an intravenously delivered immuno-oncolytic virus that activates the innate and adaptive immune systems to turn 'cold' tumors 'hot', today announced the appointment of Deborah M. Brown, B.Sc., M.B.A., to Oncolytics' Board of Directors. "Ms. Brown's wealth of experience in new product launches and market expansion will lend valuable insights as we progress REOLYSIN toward commercialization," said Dr. Matt Coffey, President and CEO of Oncolytics Biotech. "In addition to successfully leading the launch of a blockbuster drug in a new therapeutic category, Ms. Brown has experience in regulatory affairs, research and development and business development, which will support our clinical development programs and our pursuit of research collaborations and commercialization partnerships." In addition to being a Management Consultant since 2014, Ms. Brown is currently a Managing Partner at Accelera Canada, a specialty consultancy firm that assists emerging biopharma ventures in the United States and Europe with the development and implementation of Canadian market strategies. She held progressively senior roles at EMD Serono from 2000 to 2014, including Executive Vice President of Neuroimmunology for the company's U.S. operations, and President and Managing Director of the company's Canadian operations. In 2012, Ms. Brown was Chair of the National Pharmaceutical Organization (now Innovative Medicines Canada) and served on its Board of Directors from 2007 to 2014. She currently sits on the Boards of Life Sciences Ontario, the Strategic Executive Advisory Council for Canadian Cancer Trials Group, and her local SPCA. Ms. Brown holds an MBA from University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business, an Hons B.Sc. from the University of Guelph and completed the Merck executive development programme at the University of Hong Kong, INSEAD and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. About Oncolytics Biotech Inc. Oncolytics is a biotechnology company developing REOLYSIN, an intravenously delivered immuno-oncolytic virus. The compound induces selective tumor lysis and promotes an inflamed tumor phenotype turning 'cold' tumors 'hot' through innate and adaptive immune responses to treat a variety of cancers. Oncolytics' clinical development program emphasizes three pillars: chemotherapy combinations to trigger selective tumor lysis; immuno-therapy combinations to produce adaptive immune responses; and immune modulator (IMiD) combinations to facilitate innate immune responses. Oncolytics is currently planning its first registration study in metastatic breast cancer, as well as studies in combination with checkpoint inhibitors and targeted and IMiD therapies in solid and hematological malignancies. For further information about Oncolytics, please visit: www.oncolyticsbiotech.com. This press release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements, including the Company's belief as to the potential of REOLYSIN as a cancer therapeutic; the Company's expectations as to the success of its research and development programs in 2017 and beyond, the Company's planned operations, the value of the additional patents and intellectual property; the Company's expectations related to the applications of the patented technology; the Company's expectations as to adequacy of its existing capital resources; the design, timing, success of planned clinical trial programs; and other statements related to anticipated developments in the Company's business and technologies involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others, the availability of funds and resources to pursue research and development projects, the efficacy of REOLYSIN as a cancer treatment, the success and timely completion of clinical studies and trials, the Company's ability to successfully commercialize REOLYSIN, uncertainties related to the research and development of pharmaceuticals, uncertainties related to the regulatory process and general changes to the economic environment. Investors should consult the Company's quarterly and annual filings with the Canadian and U.S. securities commissions for additional information on risks and uncertainties relating to the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable laws. SOURCE Oncolytics Biotech Inc. Related Links www.oncolytics.ca (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130128/590935 ) Organic dairy products are obtained from livestock raised through organic farming methods. These products are rich in natural anti-oxidants and have several health benefits as compared to the non-organic dairy products. In addition, organic dairy livestock is raised without pesticides, antibiotics or hormones which can easily be transferred to the milk, decreasing its nutritional quality. The growing awareness about the excessive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and hormones such as bovine growth hormone (BGH) and recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) in non-organic dairy products is one of the major drivers for the growth of the organic dairy market. Rising health concerns among consumers regarding the consumption of synthetic ingredients coupled with increase in the prevalence of diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, etc. have prompted a shift towards organic dairy products. Technological advancements to develop ingenious products with low fat and reduced levels of sodium and sugar have also driven the demand for these products. Owing to these factors, the market is further expected to reach a value of US$ 25 Billion by 2022. Click to view the report : https://www.bharatbook.com/request-sample/927840 The report has segmented the market on the basis of product type, covering fluid milk, yogurt, cheese, butter and cream. Currently, organic fluid milk is the most popular product type, accounting for the majority of the total global market. Further, the report provides an analysis of the market on the basis of packaging type. On a regional basis, the report includes Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East. Currently, Europe represents the largest region, accounting for more than a half of the total global market. An analysis of the competitive landscape provides the details of the key players operative in the market. Some of the major players are Horizon Organic, Organic Valley, Whole Foods, Kroger and Aurora Organic Dairy. This report is a must-read for entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, consultants, business strategists, and all those who have any kind of stake or are planning to foray into the organic dairy industry in any manner. Key Aspects Analysed: Trends and dynamics in the global organic dairy market Major product types and their current and future market potential Key drivers/restraints and their impact on the current and future market scenario. Examination of the competitive landscape Types of Organic Dairy Products Covered in This Report: Organic Fluid Milk Organic Yogurt Organic Cheese Organic Butter Organic Cream Types of Packagings Covered in This Report: Pouches Tetra Packs Bottles Cans Types of Distribution Channels Covered in This Report: Supermarkets Hypermarkets Discount Stores Convenience and Grocery Stores Organic Speciality Stores Online/E-Retailing Direct Sales Major Regions Covered in This Report: Europe North America Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East Focus of the Analysis: Overview Historical and Current Market Scenario Market Trends Market Forecast To know more about report and who is it suited for, head over to: https://www.bharatbook.com/food-market-research-reports-927840/organic-dairy.html About Bharat Book Bureau: Bharat Book Bureau is the leading market research information provider for market research reports, company profiles, industry analysis, country reports , business reports, newsletters and online databases Bharat Book Bureau provides over a million reports from more than 400 publishers around the globe. We cover sectors starting from Aeronautics to Zoology. In case the reports don't match your requirement then we can do a specialized Custom Research for you. Contact us: Bharat Book Bureau W: http://www.bharatbook.com E: [email protected] P: +91-22-27810772 / 27810773 LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/company/bharat-book-bureau Twitter : https://twitter.com/researchbook Blog : https://www.bharatbook.com/blog/ SOURCE Bharat Book Bureau Legal action was recently filed against the U.S. Department of Commerce by the Legal Alliance to Stop Geoengineering (LASG). The Department of Commerce is the overseeing agency for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who is refusing to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on climate engineering. The LASG group is a part of an anti-geoengineering collaborative effort organized by Minnesota Natural Health Coalition and GeoengineeringWatch.org . Geoengineering is the science term that applies to processes of climate intervention on a global scale. Climate engineering programs are completely disrupting natural weather and climate cycles all over the world, destroying the ozone layer, and decreasing the overall hydrological cycle (which, in turn, fuels record drought and firestorms). The short video below highlights numerous verifiable factors implicating ongoing climate intervention operations as a major causal component in skyrocketing occurrences of unprecedented, deadly firestorms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLwfFtDFZDpwtijqkJiOyc-WJOaGWOfVGG&v=oNB4-73ofDw The stated purpose of geoengineering and solar radiation management (SRM) operations is to slow down or temporarily mitigate an unfolding runaway greenhouse scenario on Earth (potentially triggering "Venus Syndrome"). Climate engineering also creates a phenomenon known as "global dimming." Solar obscuration (blocking the sun) is a primary stated objective of geoengineering / SRM programs. Though "official sources" claim much of the global dimming phenomenon is a result of aircraft "condensation" trails, this narrative is a cover-up for the ongoing climate engineering operations. A primary process of climate engineering operations involves jet aircraft spraying of atmospheric aerosol particulates. These elements are then manipulated with powerful ground based radio frequency / microwave transmissions. Available evidence makes clear governments around the globe are cooperating on climate engineering operations due to the cross-border ramifications of geoengineering (the massive military of the U.S. is unarguably the largest participant). Evidence to confirm the reality of geoengineering includes a 750 page senate document, historical presidential reports, U.S. military documents, film footage, and an extensive list of climate engineering patents. The initial focus of climate intervention programs appears to have been concentrated over the polar regions. However, ongoing geoengineering programs have long since been become global in their scope and scale. Known consequences of ongoing climate engineering operations are many, and are increasing rapidly. Despite verifiable, immense destruction being inflicted on the biosphere and the entire web of life by climate engineering, all official agencies and sources still deny the geoengineering reality. In some mainstream publications, geoengineering has recently been referred to as being "our only hope." After some 70 years of covert climate engineering/solar radiation management operations, all available data makes clear - global geoengineering programs are making an already dire climate scenario far worse (not better). Further, heavy metal particulates utilized in climate engineering operations have effectively contaminated the entire biosphere. Toxic heavy metal fallout from ongoing aerosol operations has been confirmed by lab tests from the U.S., and other locations around the globe. Environmental protection agencies have not disclosed this verifiable contamination which is inflicting catastrophic damage on the atmosphere, the environment, and human health. A major percentage of these airborne particulates is made up of aluminum and barium, this creates an incendiary dust that coats foliage and structures (also contributing to the ferocity of firestorms). In an apparent attempt to hide this unfolding reality from the public for as long as possible, an illegal federal "gag order" has been placed on all National Weather Service and NOAA employees. Why would our government need to silence weather and climate scientists? Additional legal filings / FOIAs are being prepared by the LASG team of attorneys. LASG attorneys intend to fully expose the covert and illegal global climate engineering programs which have been carried out for decades without public knowledge or consent. A public outcry against geoengineering operations is desperately needed to bring the operations to light and to a halt. SOURCE GeoengineeringWatch.org; Minnesota Natural Health Coalition PALM BAY, Fla., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Parsifal Corporation, the leading industry Household Goods procurement and audit firm, is pleased to announce the television broadcast of an exclusive interview with Kathy Ireland on the weekly business television program - Worldwide Business with kathy ireland, this Sunday, November 5, 2017. Company executives, Mark Olsen, CEO and Cliff Cannon, Chief Marketing Officer will discuss their specialized technology solutions for relocation procurement and auditing. Parsifal procurement and auditing software is now being used on relocations in over 120 countries around the world, performing optimized cost efficiencies while saving their clients tens of millions of dollars each year. Visit parsifalcorp.com and see Interview Preview on News Page. Company executives, Mark Olsen, CEO and Cliff Cannon, Chief Marketing Officer will discuss their specialized technology solutions for relocation procurement and auditing. Parsifal procurement and auditing software is now being used on relocations in over 120 countries around the world, performing optimized cost efficiencies while saving their clients tens of millions of dollars each year. "Our technology is designed to catch savings in two areas," says Mark Olsen. "The first area is procurement; the secondary is through auditing. Combined they present a very powerful combination because what we can do is, not only get very competitive pricing, but ensure through the audit that the pricing that was agreed to was actually billed correctly." According to Cliff Cannon, there are five general auditing issues that are closely examined to protect customers in the moving process. "This includes authorization that the supplier bills for something the client did not authorize; billing issues, like duplicate charges or missing backup documentation; contractual issues where the supplier applies an incorrect pricing rule or rate; services that are anticipated and billed for, that actually didn't occur; and finally, shipment volume or rate where the quantity billed is verified. With our unique auditing and powerful analytics, the auditor can detect and red flag these issues quickly." For more information about this broadcast event, visit parsifalcorp.com and see Interview Preview on News Page. Also tune in to Fox Business Network as sponsored programming on Sunday, November 5, 2017 at 5:30pm EST, and Bloomberg International at 7:30am GMT, 10:30am D.F. and 3:00pm HKT. Worldwide Business with kathy ireland is a weekly business television program featuring real world insights from corporate executives from all over the globe which can be viewed on Fox Business Network as part of their sponsored programming lineup, as well as internationally to over 50 countries on Bloomberg International. Visit www.tvwwb.com for detailed airing schedules or check local listings. Parsifal is the world's leading firm providing relocation auditing services and procurement technology, touching moves in over 120 countries around the globe. Our services and products are in constant worldwide operation with corporations, carriers and move managers in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe. Parsifal Corporation assists our clients to obtain best in class household goods pricing and quality of service. And, we offer to protect that pricing and quality with expert global auditing. To find out how our expert services and relocation procurement technologies can assist your company, please visit us at www.parsifalcorp.com for more information. Contact: Cliff Cannon at (321) 574-8906 Email: [email protected] SOURCE Parsifal Corporation Related Links http://www.parsifalcorp.com KANSAS CITY, Mo., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Am Law 100 firm Polsinelli announced today recognition of its national Real Estate practice by U.S. News & World Report. The practice earned a Tier 1 ranking, the highest score, in the National 2018 Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" list. Polsinelli was recognized in 152 total categories on the 2018 "Best Law Firms" list, including being named "Law Firm of the Year" for Health Care, demonstrating the firm's ongoing commitment to producing the highest quality services and outcomes to health care, real estate and other industry clients across the country. "As our Real Estate practice continues to grow and evolve, we're proud to achieve notable recognition like this from U.S. News & World Report, which demonstrates our primary focus of providing excellent client service and quality outcomes to our clients," said newly-elected Real Estate Division Co-Chair Eric G. Greenfield. This national recognition occurs during a time of leadership changes within the firm's Real Estate & Financial Services Department. This month, Greenfield, a Chicago-based Shareholder, joins current Real Estate Division Chair John D. Petersen as Co-Chair of the firm's Real Estate Division, while Denver-based Shareholder Amy Hansen becomes Chair of the Real Estate Practice. Greenfield previously served as Vice Chair of the firm's Real Estate Practice under former practice Chair F. Chase Simmons, who was elected as Polsinelli's Vice Chair and Chairman-Elect in May to succeed Chairman and CEO Russ Welsh in January 2019. Kraig Kohring was announced last month as the firm's new Chair of the overall Real Estate & Financial Services Department. "Eric is a proven leader, strongly representing Polsinelli and our clients in the real estate industry for many years," Welsh said. "He has contributed significantly to the growth of our Real Estate practice and I'm confident that his business-minded approach will enable him to provide even greater outcomes for our clients in his new role." With a focus on student and senior housing around the country, Greenfield also works on domestic and cross-border real estate transactions, representing clients with structuring, negotiating and documenting all aspects of commercial real estate transactions, including acquisition, finance, leasing, and disposition of office, retail, industrial and warehouse assets, with a substantial representation of parties on joint venture vehicles. A graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law, he has been a valued member of the Polsinelli team since 2012 and was recently selected for inclusion on the 2018 The Best Lawyers in America list for Real Estate Law. As the new Chair of Polsinelli's Real Estate practice, Hansen represents real estate developers and investors in matters across the U.S., which work includes a broad scope of issues relating to mixed-use resort, urban and transit-oriented development projects, large scale master planned communities, and opportunistic investment in operating real estate assets in the industrial and office sectors. She is a graduate of the University of Kansas School of Law and was recently ranked in this year's Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business for Real Estate in Colorado. "Amy has emerged as a leader in our firm and has been instrumental in the success of our Real Estate practice," Welsh said. "She has become a powerful asset by helping grow our firm's presence in the Denver market and across the real estate industry from coast-to-coast. Under Amy's leadership, I look forward to watching our presence flourish within the industry." With more than three decades of successful experience, Polsinelli's Real Estate Division is comprised of more than 80 attorneys who provide practical solutions that clients value, and hold experience in areas that include transactions, financing structures and land use entitlements. The practice provides a broad range of services and capabilities for clients, including government incentives, health care real estate, real estate development, real estate transactions, real estate equity and zoning & land use. About Polsinelli Polsinelli is an Am Law 100 firm with approximately 800 attorneys in 20 offices. Ranked #17 for Client Service Excellence1 and #10 for best client relationships2 among 650 U.S. law firms, Polsinelli was also named among the top 20 best-known firms in the nation3. The firm's attorneys provide value through practical legal counsel infused with business insight, and focus on health care, financial services, real estate, intellectual property, mid-market corporate, labor and employment, and business litigation. www.polsinelli.com | Polsinelli PC | In California, Polsinelli LLP 12017 BTI Client Service A-Team Report 22017 BTI Industry Power Rankings 32017 BTI Brand Elite For more information, contact: Carrie Trent 314-552-6864, [email protected] SOURCE Polsinelli Related Links https://www.polsinelli.com Consumers are seeking out more health-conscious bottled beverage options without artificial ingredients, sweeteners or sugars. In March of 2017 bottled water officially became the most popular beverage in the U.S., replacing carbonated soft drinks. Water Joe's formulation of only water plus caffeine is the perfect pick-me-up for athletes, students, people on the go and health-conscious consumers. The 700 mL bottle of Water Joe has 85 mg of caffeine, the equivalent of a small cup of coffee or a 20 oz. soft drink. The product also comes in a 20 oz. size with 70 mg of caffeine or a one liter option with 120 mg of caffeine per bottle. "Water Joe is a great alternative for anyone looking to replace expensive energy drinks, cut down their sugar intake in beverages or live a healthier lifestyle. It's just waterwith a kick," says JD Seger, brand manager of Water Joe. Water Joe is available at grocery and convenience stores nationwide with more locations being added each week. Consumers can also check if their local store carries Water Joe by visiting waterjoe.com/get-joe and typing in their ZIP code. About Premium Waters, Inc. Premium Waters, Inc. is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota and manufactures branded and private label bottled water products. The company is a member of the International Bottled Water Association and is certified by Eurofins and the Global Food Safety Initiative. Premium Waters was the first large U.S. bottled water company to achieve SQF 2000 Level 3 certification. Today, all eight of their plants continue to hold this quality certification. SOURCE Premium Waters, Inc. SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Prezi, a visual presentation platform that helps people connect more powerfully with their audiences and customers, today announced the availability of Prezi for Salesforce, its new app on the Salesforce AppExchange, empowering businesses to connect with their customers, partners and employees in entirely new ways. Announced at Dreamforce 2017, the Prezi app on the Salesforce AppExchange allows Prezi Business customers to manage, analyze and track their presentations without ever leaving Salesforce. Features include: Easily generating shareable presentation links to send out to prospects Providing real time visibility to analytics and immediate feedback on your presentation and how it resonates with your audience Tracking the sharing of your presentation Viewing Prezi Analytics directly within the Salesforce Platform "Prezi's app on the Salesforce AppExchange lets sales teams see which parts of their presentations are generating the most interest," said Jim Szafranski, COO of Prezi. "Furthermore, sales and marketing teams can tap the viral nature of a Prezi to engage a broad audience within prospects and customers while tracking that engagement growth directly in the Salesforce Platform." Prezi Sponsoring/ Exhibiting/ Speaking at Dreamforce 2017 In addition, Prezi is a Gold sponsor at Dreamforce 2017, the most inspiring technology event of the year and the world's largest gathering of Trailblazers. Prezi is exhibiting at booth #1111 in the Dreamforce Customer Success Expo, showcasing both the Prezi for Salesforce app and Prezi Next, the full-lifecycle presentation platform so everyone can easily create visually stunning presentations, deliver them in a more natural and conversational way, and analyze their effectiveness. Prezi will be speaking on these topics at the following times: Speaking Session: "The New Business Order: Visual Stories that Sell" Time, Date, Location: 12:00pm-12:40pm Monday, November 6, 2017, Metreon AMC Theaters, City View Presidio Presenters: Peter Arvai, co-founder and CEO, Prezi and Jason Katz, story supervisor, Pixar Animation Studios Abstract: Advancements in visual technology give us the power to move audiences with story. Hear Jason Katz, Story Supervisor at Pixar Animation Studios, and Peter Arvai, CEO of Prezi, discuss how big screen trends are inspiring people to do business bigger, better, and bolder. Speaking Session: "Moving Beyond the MVP: Collaborating on a Sales Ready Product" Time, Date, Location: Wednesday, November 8, 1:00 PM - 1:40 PM, San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel, Foothill E Presenter: Jim Szafranski, COO at Prezi Abstract: The Minimal Viable Product (MVP) movement is growing as it's empowering product teams to learn about product/market fit quickly. But, if you're a sales and marketing leader who's responsible for delivering results based on substantial customer success, the MVP likely isn't helping you or your customers succeed. See how company-wide collaboration at Fiberlink (acquired by IBM) and Prezi on the creation of a "sales ready product" drove success in establishing market leadership. Salesforce, Dreamforce and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. AppExchange Salesforce AppExchange, the world's leading enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies to sell, service, market and engage in entirely new ways. With more than 4,000 solutions, 5 million customer installs and 70,000 peer reviews, it is the most comprehensive source of cloud, mobile, social, IoT, analytics and artificial intelligence technologies for businesses. About Prezi Prezi is the presentation platform that helps you connect more powerfully with your audience and customers. Unlike slides, Prezi's single, interactive canvas encourages conversation and collaboration, making your overall presentation more engaging, persuasive, and memorable. Prezi's latest offering, Prezi Next, is a full-lifecycle presentation platform so everyone can easily create visually stunning presentations, deliver them in a more natural and conversational way, and analyze their effectiveness. Founded in 2009, and with offices in San Francisco, Budapest, and Mexico City, Prezi now fosters a community of over 85 million users and over 325 million Prezi presentations around the world. Its investors include Accel Partners, Spectrum Equity, and TED conferences. For more information, please visit www.prezi.com. Media Contact: Brett Smith Prezi (415) 516-2564 [email protected] SOURCE Prezi Related Links http://www.prezi.com FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While hundreds of thousands of Americans are still reeling from this disastrous hurricane season, officials are looking ahead to the rebuilding phase and must take action now to reduce the impact of a potential "silent hurricane" that is fast approaching. According to Michael Ryan, a partner in the law firm of Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock Liberman, PA, in 2009 homeowners and communities in Florida, Louisiana and other states were hit hard by toxic Chinese manufactured drywall. "Homeowners were hit by a 'silent hurricane' of toxic Chinese drywall which wrecked thousands of homes and tens of thousands of lives," he said. The Chinese companies responsible for this destruction have avoided being held accountable. "Today, nearly 10 years on, many are still suffering." Now, with the widespread physical destruction and flooding from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, it is predicted that tens of thousands of homes and commercial buildings will need hundreds of millions of square feet of drywall. Ryan is demanding action now to protect the American people so that the past disasters of Chinese drywall are not repeated. As a lawyer who represented hundreds of homeowners impacted by Chinese drywall and mayor of a city hit by this Chinese drywall "silent hurricane," he urges a three-step approach to ensuring the protection for those Americans beginning to rebuild. First, Congress and the Administration must take immediate steps to block the import of Chinese manufactured drywall and building products until there are clear and enforceable standards to ensure the drywall is not toxic and the building products are safe. Second, the Chinese companies must agree to the same level of accountability expected of American companies and compensate Americans for any damages their products cause. Chinese manufacturers should not be allowed to seek profits here, inflict harm and destruction on the American people and then avoid the legal responsibility for what they have caused. Third, there must be a widespread education campaign to warn communities of the potential for this next "silent hurricane" before it is too late. As Ryan explained, "From a property damage sense, the effect of Chinese drywall was as bad, if not worse, for many homeowners as an actual hurricane. Homeowner insurance companies refused insurance coverage. Builders and installers went bankrupt or had virtually no insurance coverage. Homes had to be completely gutted. The economic impact for those homeowners who were able to rebuild from the toxic drywall storm was estimated at more than $650,000,000, and maybe approaching $1,000,000,000." The President of the United States is traveling to China this week and this must be a topic of discussion with the Chinese. Ryan added, "The United States Congress and the Administration must act now." He says, "Those Americans suffering from the 2017 storms deserve nothing less than all necessary effort and action to protect them this time around, before it is too late." Media Contact: Michael Ryan, 954-763-8181 SOURCE Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock Liberman, PA Related Links https://www.krupnicklaw.com SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- "In Your Right Mind," a weekly radio program that features in-depth roundtable discussions of today's leading behavioral health headlines, aired an informative show called, "Moms Who Wine," on Sunday, October 29, at 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Talk Radio 790 AM KABC Los Angeles. The broadcast discussed the variety of reasons why mental health issues and problems with drinking can develop among new moms. The show is hosted by Tonmoy Sharma, M.B.B.S., M.Sc., founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sovereign Health, who provides an in-depth medical and clinical expertise, and co-host Stefanie Wilder-Taylor. The broadcast, "Moms Who Wine," guest speakers included Dana Bowman and Susan Blank, M.D. Ms. Bowman is a long-time English teacher and part-time professor in the department of English at Bethany College, Kansas. Author of: "Bottled: A Mom's Guide to Early Recovery," and the popular momsieblog.com. She leads and presents workshops on both writing and addiction, with a special emphasis on being a woman in recovery while parenting young children. Dr. Blank is the Founder and Chief Medical Officer for the Atlanta Healing Center. A graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, she completed a residency in Psychiatry and Neurology at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Blank is President of the Georgia Society of Addiction Medicine and serves on the Advisory Board of the Georgia Physician's Health Program. She is also a member of the Board of Directors for The Georgia Council on Alcohol and Drugs. "Women in America are drinking far more than their mothers and grandmothers and their alcohol consumption is killing them in record numbers," said Dr. Sharma. "In 2013, more than a million women wound up in emergency rooms as a result of heavy drinking, with women in middle age most likely to suffer severe intoxication. And it's estimated that one in four U.S. children has an alcoholic parent." "One thing we know about young girls between the ages of 12-17 is that they've now way caught up with boys. The girls smoke more cigarettes, they use more cocaine, they're more likely to drink and use prescription drugs, but they're use is binging," explained Ms. Bowman. "The amount and frequency of drinking is not part of the criteria for an addiction. The criteria are: do you have a problem stopping once you start, and do you have trouble staying stopped in between? As women become older and become mothers, they later realize they've had an issue with alcohol for a long time." For those who are interested in listening to this past show, previous episodes of "In Your Right Mind" shows are available on iTunes or on demand. For additional questions pertaining to "In Your Right Mind," please visit the website or send questions to [email protected]. One factor that differentiates Sovereign Health from other treatment providers is its ability to offer distinct, specialized treatment programs for patients with mental illness, addiction and dual diagnosis at its facilities. For more information, visit www.sovhealth.com. About "In Your Right Mind" "In Your Right Mind" is a weekly behavioral health radio show that covers various topics each week, including mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and addiction/dual diagnosis disorders. Dr. Tonmoy Sharma and Stefanie Wilder-Taylor are the hosts of the show. In addition, each program will feature guest speakers throughout the United States participating in a roundtable discussion about headlines in behavioral health. The mission of "In Your Right Mind" is to raise awareness about behavioral health issues that get people talking. The hour-long show airs every Sunday at 5 p.m. PDT on Talk Radio 790 KABC Los Angeles. "In Your Right Mind" is produced in conjunction with Sovereign Health, a leading national provider of behavioral health treatment services. For more information, visit www.InYourRightMind.com. SOURCE In Your Right Mind Related Links https://www.inyourrightmind.com/ Its slim, one-piece seat shell is made of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GRP) and provides perfect lateral and shoulder support. The headrest and side bolsters of the handsomely sporty seat are covered in carbon-looking fine leather, while black stitched luminous green leather stripes accent the seat's contours. Deep black Dinamica microfiber fabric covers the seat cushion and backrest, ensuring pleasant feel and optimum grip. Recaro fans will particularly appreciate special touches like the embroidered Recaro logo, an elegant aluminum plaque bearing the seat's serial number, and a manufacturing certificate. Production is limited to only 300 units globally. The Recaro Pole Position SL will be available starting January 2018. For more information regarding the Recaro product reveals at SEMA this year, please visit www.recaro-automotive-sema.com. About Recaro Automotive Seating: Recaro Automotive Seating is the premium brand of Adient. At seven locations in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Japan, Mexico and the USA, we design, manufacture, and market complete seats representative of our core competencies of design, ergonomics, craftsmanship, robustness, lightweight construction, and first-class workmanship, under the brand name Recaro. Recaro Automotive Seating consists of two units: While Recaro Performance Car Seating offers passenger car seats of OEMs and the aftermarket, Recaro Commercial Vehicle Seating focuses on commercial vehicle seats in the OEM and aftermarket segments. Recaro Automotive Seating uses the brand Recaro under a license of the Recaro Holding. About Adient: Adient is a global leader in automotive seating. With 86,000 employees operating 237 manufacturing/assembly plants in 33 countries worldwide, we produce and deliver automotive seating for all vehicle classes and all major OEMs. From complete seating systems to individual components, our expertise spans every step of the automotive seat making process. Our integrated, in-house skills allow us to take our products from research and design all the way to engineering and manufacturing and into more than 25 million vehicles every year. For more information on Adient, please visit adient.com. SOURCE Adient Related Links http://www.adient.com WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Red Cross announced today that one million free smoke alarms have been installed and 285 lives have been saved due to the efforts of the volunteers and community partners who have participated in the organization's Home Fire Campaign. Rosie and Cheyenne lost their home in two minutes when a fire broke out last year. Smoke alarms installed by the Red Cross just two weeks before the fire saved their lives. Join us in our campaign to save lives, visit soundthealarm.org Home Fire Campaign installation event. Photo by Melissa Nyman/American Red Cross "Since 2014, Red Cross volunteers across the country have been teaming up with local fire departments and community partners to reduce home fire tragedies in at-risk communities," said Gail McGovern, president and CEO of the Red Cross. "We want to thank every person and organization who has supported our Home Fire Campaign and helped us reach our one-millionth milestone. These efforts will help us save even more lives." With the support of 4,400 partner organizations, the Red Cross has helped to make more than one million people safer through home visits to install free smoke alarms, assist families with developing fire escape plans and provide home fire safety education. Since 2014, the Campaign has also reached nearly 895,000 kids through youth preparedness programs, helped to create more than 340,000 home fire escape plans, and replaced more than 51,000 smoke alarm batteries. This work is made possible thanks to generous financial donations from national partners: Almost Family, Delta Air Lines and International Paper. The Red Cross has also received funding from FEMA through the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. This spring, the Red Cross will Sound the Alarm through a nationwide series of home fire safety and smoke alarm installation events from April 28 to May 13, 2018. Working with volunteers and partner organizations, the Red Cross plans to install 100,000 free smoke alarms across more than 100 major cities. Volunteers and financial contributions are needed. Join this Red Cross effort today by volunteering to install smoke alarms in your community, making a financial contribution, or taking steps to protect your own family from home fires. Together, we can Sound the Alarm about fire safety and help save lives. Visit SoundTheAlarm.org for more information. About the American Red Cross: The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies about 40 percent of the nation's blood; teaches skills that save lives; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a not-for-profit organization that depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit redcross.org or cruzrojaamericana.org, or visit us on Twitter at @RedCross. SOURCE American Red Cross Related Links http://www.redcross.org TULSA, Okla., Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Samson Resources II, LLC ("Samson" or the "Company") announced today that it has entered into an Amended and Restated Senior Secured Revolving Credit Agreement ("Senior Credit Facility") with JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent and Joint Lead Arranger, along with Capital One, N.A., and ING Capital, LLC, as Joint Lead Arrangers. The Senior Credit Facility is a $500 million Revolving Credit agreement with an initial borrowing base limit of $120 million. It has a three-year term and will expire in October 2020. Samson also announced that it has executed a binding agreement to acquire a non-operating partner's position in 20,000 gross acres / 6,700 net acres and its working interest in 74 wells (62 operated by Samson) which produce approximately 300 net barrels of oil equivalent per day, all located in Converse County, Wyoming. Closing is expected to occur on November 7, 2017, with an effective date of September 1, 2017. The Company intends to fund the acquisition from cash on its balance sheet. Joseph A. Mills, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented: "After fully paying down our prior credit facility in September, we are very pleased to announce the execution of our Amended and Restated Senior Secured Credit Facility with an initial borrowing base of $120 million. This new facility better reflects Samson's strong financial health and provides additional financial flexibility to grow our premium asset base in the Powder River and Green River Basins of Wyoming. We want to thank JPMorgan and the rest of our lender group for their support and ongoing commitment to Samson Resources." Mills further commented: "We are very excited about the addition of 20,000 gross and 6,700 net acres to our existing 146,000 net acre position in the Powder River Basin. The acquisition is complementary and accretive to Samson and enhances Samson's core acreage position in the Hornbuckle area of Converse County while expanding Samson's presence in the Frontier, Shannon, Niobrara and Mowry plays in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. We are very excited to acquire this interest from a non-operating partner in wells we already operate and manage. In particular, we believe the acreage has tremendous upside potential in the emerging Niobrara and Mowry plays and bolsters our position in this exciting basin." This acquisition follows on the announcement of Samson closing the sale of its East Texas assets in late September for a gross purchase price of $525 million and the subsequent payoff of its $210 million of senior debt. In addition, Samson previously announced a Special Distribution of $250.250 million that was paid on October 31, 2017 to unitholders of record as of the close of business on October 17, 2017. Samson is a privately held onshore exploration and production company headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Forward-Looking Statements In this press release, all statements that are not purely historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," plan," "estimate," intend," "potential" and other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on currently available business, economic, financial and other information and reflect management's current beliefs, expectations and views with respect to future developments and their potential effects on Samson. Actual results could vary materially depending on risks and uncertainties that may affect Samson and its business. Samson's actual actions and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by these statements due to a variety of factors, including (a) the ability of Samson to perform well and compete effectively upon its emergence from bankruptcy, (b) the ability of Samson to continue to attract and retain qualified employees following emergence, and (c) other risks and uncertainties as disclosed by Samson II in the future. Samson assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement made in this press release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances or actual outcomes. SOURCE Samson Resources II, LLC SarasotaMOD Highlights Opening Party at Hiss Studio and Umbrella House. Mr. Seibert will receive SAF's Art + Architecture Lifetime Achievement Award, followed by the City of Sarasota's proclamation designating November 6-12, 2017, "SarasotaMOD Week." Legacy Presentations and Film Screening at Ringling College. View a Seibert documentary followed by Florida AIA President, Joyce Owens' conversation with Mr. Seibert about his careers as an award-winning architect and yacht designer. A panel discussion, "The Midcentury Modern Phenomenon" will be moderated by architecture historian Christine Madrid French, with Carl Abbott, FAIA, contractor Pat Ball, Michael Epstein, AIA, and Joyce Owens, AIA, RIBA. Trolley Tours of Seibert and Sarasota Landmarks. Interactive trolley tours of Seibert's architecture on Longboat Key, in Lido Shores and downtown Sarasota. Includes Paul Rudolph's Cocoon House, Sarasota High School and Revere Quality House; Sarasota City Hall and Herald Tribune Headquarters. Tim Seibert Art Exhibition. SAF showcases photographs of Tim Seibert's architecture, and detailed drawings and wood models of his award-winning yacht designs. Walking Tours of Midcentury and Modern Homes. Explore homes designed by Tim Seibert and fellow luminaries Paul Rudolph, Philip Hiss and the Zimmermans. Tours include contemporary homes by Sweet Sparkman, Hive Architects and Don Chapell. Each day closes with a cocktail party at a spectacular home rarely open to the public. Rosemary District Walking Tour. Begin at the newly restored BOTA Center, a stellar example of adaptive re-use of a historically designated, midcentury commercial building. Explore new and historic architecture in Sarasota's most vibrant and walkable neighborhood with talks and refreshments. Eames Chair Art Auction. Ten artists have each transformed an iconic Eames chair to be auctioned in support of SAF programs, preservation efforts and annual scholarships. The chairs are on display at Home Resource, 741 Central Avenue. Online auction continues through Sunday, Nov 12. The artists are Carl Abbott, Jean Blackburn, Jorge Blanco, Olivia Craig, Eric Cross, Grace Howl, Tim Jaeger, Laine Nixon, John Pirman and Nathan Skiles. Visit https://goo.gl/mBc32f Event Producer, Sarasota Architectural Foundation (SAF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that celebrates the Sarasota School of Architecture movement, and advocates to preserve the midcentury modern structures that exemplify its forward-looking principles. SAF-SRQ.org Schedule and ticket purchasing at www.SarasotaMOD.com Photos available in high resolution on request. CONTACT: Janet Minker, 941-487-8728, [email protected] SOURCE Sarasota Architectural Foundation Related Links http://www.sarasotamod.com BETHESDA, Md., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Saul Centers, Inc. (NYSE: BFS), an equity real estate investment trust ("REIT"), announced its operating results for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 ("2017 Quarter"). Total revenue for the 2017 Quarter increased to $56.2 million from $53.2 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2016 ("2016 Quarter"). Operating income, which is net income before the impact of change in fair value of derivatives, loss on early extinguishment of debt and gains on sales of property and casualty settlements, if any, increased to $14.4 million for the 2017 Quarter from $12.7 million for the 2016 Quarter. The Park Van Ness mixed-use development opened in May 2016, and, as of September 30, 2017, 254 apartments were leased (93.7%). Concurrent with the opening in 2016, interest, real estate taxes and all other costs associated with the property, including depreciation, began to be charged to expense, while revenue continues to grow as occupancy increases. As a result, net income for the 2017 Quarter was adversely impacted by $0.4 million. Net income attributable to common stockholders increased to $8.4 million ($0.38 per diluted share) for the 2017 Quarter compared to $7.1 million ($0.33 per diluted share) for the 2016 Quarter. Same property revenue increased $2.2 million (4.2%) and same property operating income increased $1.1 million (2.8%) for the 2017 Quarter compared to the 2016 Quarter. We define same property revenue as total revenue minus the sum of interest income and revenue of properties not in operation for the entirety of the comparable reporting periods. We define same property operating income as net income plus the sum of interest expense and amortization of deferred debt costs, depreciation and amortization, general and administrative expense, loss on the early extinguishment of debt (if any), predevelopment expense and acquisition related costs, minus the sum of interest income, the change in the fair value of derivatives, gains on property dispositions (if any) and the results of properties which were not in operation for the entirety of the comparable periods. Shopping Center same property operating income for the 2017 Quarter totaled $31.0 million, a $0.7 million increase from the 2016 Quarter. The increase in Shopping Center same property operating income was primarily due to (a) higher base rent ($0.4 million), (b) higher other revenue ($0.2 million) and (c) lower provision for credit losses ($0.1 million). Mixed-Use same property operating income totaled $9.9 million, a $0.4 million increase from the 2016 Quarter. The increase in Mixed-Use same property operating income was due primarily to (a) Park Van Ness ($1.1 million) partially offset by (b) lower termination fees ($0.3 million) and (c) lower parking revenue as a result of a garage refurbishment ($0.2 million). As of September 30, 2017, 95.5% of the commercial portfolio was leased (not including the apartments at Clarendon Center and Park Van Ness), compared to 94.7% at September 30, 2016. On a same property basis, 95.4% of the commercial portfolio was leased as of September 30, 2017, compared to 95.3% at September 30, 2016. The apartments at Clarendon Center were 96.3% leased as of September 30, 2017, compared to 96.7% as of September 30, 2016. The apartments at Park Van Ness were 93.7% leased as of September 30, 2017, compared to 61.3% at September 30, 2016. For the nine months ended September 30, 2017 ("2017 Period"), total revenue increased to $170.6 million from $162.9 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 ("2016 Period"). Operating income increased to $46.2 million for the 2017 Period from $42.4 million for the 2016 Period. The increase in operating income was primarily due to (a) higher property operating income ($6.7 million) partially offset by (b) higher interest expense and amortization of deferred debt costs ($1.3 million), (c) higher depreciation and amortization of deferred leasing costs ($0.9 million), and (d) higher general and administrative expenses ($0.7 million). Net income attributable to common stockholders increased to $27.4 million ($1.25 per diluted share) for the 2017 Period compared to $24.5 million ($1.14 per diluted share) for the 2016 Period. The increase in net income attributable to common stockholders was primarily due to (a) higher property operating income ($6.7 million) partially offset by (b) higher interest expense and amortization of deferred debt costs ($1.3 million), (c) higher income attributable to noncontrolling interests ($1.0 million), (d) higher depreciation and amortization of deferred leasing costs ($0.9 million), and (e) higher general and administrative expenses ($0.7 million). Same property revenue increased 0.5% and same property operating income increased 0.7% for the 2017 Period, compared to the 2016 Period. Shopping Center same property operating income increased 2.3% and mixed-use same property operating income decreased 4.7%. Shopping Center same property operating income increased primarily due to (a) higher other revenue ($0.9 million), (b) higher base rent ($0.7 million) and (c) a reduction in property operating expenses, net of recoveries ($0.4 million). Mixed-Use same property operating income decreased primarily due to (a) lower termination fees ($0.6 million) and (b) lower parking revenue as a result of a garage refurbishment ($0.3 million). Funds from operations ("FFO") available to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests (after deducting preferred stock dividends) was $22.7 million ($0.77 per diluted share) in the 2017 Quarter compared to $21.3 million ($0.73 per diluted share) in the 2016 Quarter. FFO for the 2017 Quarter increased primarily due to (a) Park Van Ness ($1.0 million), (b) lower interest expense exclusive of interest expense related to Park Van Ness and Burtonsville Town Square ($0.4 million), and (c) Burtonsville Town Square, which was acquired in January 2017 ($0.4 million). FFO, a widely accepted non-GAAP financial measure of operating performance for REITs, is defined as net income plus real estate depreciation and amortization, and excluding gains and losses from property dispositions, impairment charges on depreciable real estate assets and extraordinary items. FFO available to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests (after deducting preferred stock dividends) increased 7.1% to $71.3 million ($2.42 per diluted share) in the 2017 Period from $66.5 million ($2.30 per diluted share) in the 2016 Period. FFO available to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests increased primarily due to (a) lower interest expense exclusive of interest expense related to Park Van Ness and Burtonsville Town Square ($2.2 million), (b) Park Van Ness ($1.8 million) and (c) Burtonsville Town Square ($1.2 million). Saul Centers, Inc. is a self-managed, self-administered equity REIT headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, which currently operates and manages a real estate portfolio of 58 properties which includes (a) 49 community and neighborhood shopping centers and six mixed-use properties with approximately 9.2 million square feet of leasable area and (b) three land and development properties. Approximately 85% of the Saul Centers' property operating income is generated by properties in the metropolitan Washington, DC/Baltimore area. Saul Centers, Inc. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In thousands) September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 (Unaudited) Assets Real estate investments Land $ 450,256 $ 422,546 Buildings and equipment 1,257,886 1,214,697 Construction in progress 80,163 63,570 1,788,305 1,700,813 Accumulated depreciation (478,284) (458,279) 1,310,021 1,242,534 Cash and cash equivalents 9,385 8,322 Accounts receivable and accrued income, net 55,619 52,774 Deferred leasing costs, net 27,679 25,983 Prepaid expenses, net 8,901 5,057 Other assets 12,123 8,355 Total assets $ 1,423,728 $ 1,343,025 Liabilities Notes payable $ 873,538 $ 783,400 Revolving credit facility payable 88,608 48,217 Construction loan payable 68,672 Dividends and distributions payable 18,143 17,953 Accounts payable, accrued expenses and other liabilities 24,267 20,838 Deferred income 31,040 30,696 Total liabilities 1,035,596 969,776 Equity Preferred stock 180,000 180,000 Common stock 220 217 Additional paid-in capital 344,820 328,171 Accumulated deficit and other comprehensive loss (195,584) (189,883) Total Saul Centers, Inc. stockholders' equity 329,456 318,505 Noncontrolling interests 58,676 54,744 Total equity 388,132 373,249 Total liabilities and equity $ 1,423,728 $ 1,343,025 Saul Centers, Inc. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (In thousands, except per share amounts) Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Revenue (unaudited) (unaudited) Base rent $ 45,385 $ 43,151 $ 135,436 $ 128,338 Expense recoveries 9,447 8,561 26,378 26,011 Percentage rent 67 57 968 1,016 Other 1,338 1,464 7,828 7,504 Total revenue 56,237 53,233 170,610 162,869 Operating expenses Property operating expenses 7,418 6,685 20,543 20,740 Provision for credit losses 52 391 602 1,207 Real estate taxes 6,834 6,195 20,124 18,266 Interest expense and amortization of deferred debt costs 11,821 11,524 35,585 34,268 Depreciation and amortization of deferred leasing costs 11,363 11,626 34,396 33,478 General and administrative 4,363 4,033 13,178 12,500 Acquisition related costs 57 57 Total operating expenses 41,851 40,511 124,428 120,516 Operating income 14,386 12,722 46,182 42,353 Change in fair value of derivatives (1) 1 (2) (9) Net income 14,385 12,723 46,180 42,344 Income attributable to noncontrolling interests (2,902) (2,484) (9,483) (8,530) Net income attributable to Saul Centers, Inc. 11,483 10,239 36,697 33,814 Preferred stock dividends (3,093) (3,093) (9,281) (9,281) Net income attributable to common stockholders $ 8,390 $ 7,146 $ 27,416 $ 24,533 Per share net income attributable to common stockholders Basic and diluted $ 0.38 $ 0.33 $ 1.25 $ 1.14 Weighted Average Common Stock: Common stock 21,942 21,597 21,844 21,448 Effect of dilutive options 86 182 105 96 Diluted weighted average common stock 22,028 21,779 21,949 21,544 Reconciliation of net income to FFO attributable to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests (1) Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, (In thousands, except per share amounts) 2017 2016 2017 2016 (unaudited) (unaudited) Net income $ 14,385 $ 12,723 $ 46,180 $ 42,344 Add: Real estate depreciation and amortization 11,363 11,626 34,396 33,478 FFO 25,748 24,349 80,576 75,822 Subtract: Preferred stock dividends (3,093) (3,093) (9,281) (9,281) FFO available to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests $ 22,655 $ 21,256 $ 71,295 $ 66,541 Weighted average shares: Diluted weighted average common stock 22,028 21,779 21,949 21,544 Convertible limited partnership units 7,521 7,391 7,491 7,360 Average shares and units used to compute FFO per share 29,549 29,170 29,440 28,904 FFO per share available to common stockholders and noncontrolling interests $ 0.77 $ 0.73 $ 2.42 $ 2.30 (1) The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) developed FFO as a relative non-GAAP financial measure of performance of an equity REIT in order to recognize that income-producing real estate historically has not depreciated on the basis determined under GAAP. FFO is defined by NAREIT as net income, computed in accordance with GAAP, plus real estate depreciation and amortization, and excluding extraordinary items, impairment charges on depreciable real estate assets and gains or losses from property dispositions. FFO does not represent cash generated from operating activities in accordance with GAAP and is not necessarily indicative of cash available to fund cash needs, which is disclosed in the Company's Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the applicable periods. There are no material legal or functional restrictions on the use of FFO. FFO should not be considered as an alternative to net income, its most directly comparable GAAP measure, as an indicator of the Company's operating performance, or as an alternative to cash flows as a measure of liquidity. Management considers FFO a meaningful supplemental measure of operating performance because it primarily excludes the assumption that the value of the real estate assets diminishes predictably over time (i.e. depreciation), which is contrary to what the Company believes occurs with its assets, and because industry analysts have accepted it as a performance measure. FFO may not be comparable to similarly titled measures employed by other REITs. Reconciliation of revenue to same property revenue (in thousands) Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Total revenue $ 56,237 $ 53,233 $ 170,610 $ 162,869 Less: Interest income (9) (12) (31) (36) Less: Acquisitions, dispositions and development properties (1,351) (580) (10,336) (3,314) Total same property revenue $ 54,877 $ 52,641 $ 160,243 $ 159,519 Shopping Centers $ 39,483 $ 38,331 $ 120,569 $ 119,161 Mixed-Use properties 15,394 14,310 39,674 40,358 Total same property revenue $ 54,877 $ 52,641 $ 160,243 $ 159,519 Reconciliation of net income to same property operating income Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, (In thousands) 2017 2016 2017 2016 (unaudited) (unaudited) Net income $ 14,385 $ 12,723 $ 46,180 $ 42,344 Add: Interest expense and amortization of deferred debt costs 11,821 11,524 35,585 34,268 Add: Depreciation and amortization of deferred leasing costs 11,363 11,626 34,396 33,478 Add: General and administrative 4,363 4,033 13,178 12,500 Add: Acquisition related costs 57 57 Add: Change in fair value of derivatives 1 (1) 2 9 Less: Interest income (9) (12) (31) (36) Property operating income 41,924 39,950 129,310 122,620 Less: Acquisitions, dispositions and development property 1,060 192 6,737 862 Total same property operating income $ 40,864 $ 39,758 $ 122,573 $ 121,758 Shopping Centers $ 30,971 $ 30,290 $ 95,866 $ 93,733 Mixed-Use properties 9,893 9,468 26,707 28,025 Total same property operating income $ 40,864 $ 39,758 $ 122,573 $ 121,758 SOURCE Saul Centers, Inc. Related Links http://www.saulcenters.com COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ScriptDrop, a healthcare technology company providing medication reminders and deliveries while fighting prescription abandonment and abuse, today announced that it will be featured on the educational series "Success Files" hosted by Rob Lowe, distributed to Public Television and PBS Member Stations in 2018. "Success Files" is an award-winning program that highlights new stories and innovative concepts through groundbreaking short-form and long-form documentary presentation. The feature will show how ScriptDrop teamed up with Albertsons Companies to provide relief to Hurricane Harvey victims prevented from picking up their prescriptions in the aftermath of the storm. "We're delighted that the 'Success Files' team decided to tell the story of how technology helped to alleviate at least some of the pressure on families in need," said ScriptDrop CEO, Nicholas Potts. "After Hurricane Harvey, we had patients who were struggling to meet their basic needs, so partnering with ScriptDrop to deliver their prescriptions to their homes was an easy decision and allowed our patients to stay healthy and focus on recovery efforts," says Mark Panzer, Albertsons Companies Senior Vice President of Pharmacy Health and Wellness. ScriptDrop connects patients, pharmacies and physicians to ensure that patients properly adhere to medication protocols prescribed by their physicians, and that healthcare providers and pharmacies are informed if there are problems. The complex system of reporting and notifications is implemented through the use of cutting edge blockchain technology, ensuring both the security and accuracy of the process. "After Hurricane Harvey, our data showed that people were either unable to reach the pharmacy or were dealing with other priorities," added Nicholas Potts. "By offering our expertise in prescription delivery with Albertsons Companies, we helped people by bringing prescriptions to them and assisting with copays." Albertsons stepped in to cover the cost of the deliveries and the copays were paid for by funds raised. "Success Files" will tape the segment in Houston on November 14, which will be distributed nationally in 2018. About ScriptDrop ScriptDrop offers a prescription delivery service that makes the delivery process easier for both pharmacists and patients. Once a prescription is ready, ScriptDrop sends a courier to pick up the delivery and tracks the delivery until the patient signs for it. The pharmacist can then view the signed delivery receipt in their ScriptDrop account. ScriptDrop is designed to fit into the pharmacist's workflow, enabling patients to have easy access to medicines and pharmacists to streamline processes as well as access reporting and analytical insight. Learn more at www.scriptdrop.co About Albertsons Companies Albertsons Companies is one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, with both a strong local presence and national scale. We operate stores across 35 states and the District of Columbia under 20 well-known banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen and Carrs. Albertsons Companies is committed to helping people across the country live better lives by making a meaningful difference, neighborhood by neighborhood. In 2016 alone, along with the Albertsons Companies Foundation, the company gave nearly $300 million in food and financial support. These efforts helped millions of people in the areas of hunger relief, education, cancer research and treatment, programs for people with disabilities and veterans outreach. Learn more at: http://www.scriptdrop.co/. Media Contact Nicholas Potts Email: [email protected] Tel: 615-522-7117 *LOGO: Send2Press.com/300dpi/17-1102s2p-scriptdrop-300dpi.jpg This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com SOURCE ScriptDrop Related Links http://www.scriptdrop.co The 10 th Anniversary of Seattle Wine and Food Experience promises to bring exciting changes to the event. The Grand Tasting will be held at the newly remodeled Bell Harbor International Conference Center, providing a fresh environment for the weekend's flagship event. The Grand Tasting will celebrate ten years of SWFE by highlighting ten Seattle food trends selected by Seattle magazine. An enhanced VIP Experience will feature luxury swag bags, chef demonstrations, premium tastings and more. Three days of feasting each offer unique experiences. The newest addition, Comfort, kicks off the weekend on Thursday, February 22 at Sodo Park. Cozy up with Seattle's best feel-good foods and crafty brews from mac and cheese to burgers, beer, cider and more! Indulge on sweet and savory bites from local gastropubs and taverns while sipping on a diverse array of craft beverages. Held at the glamorous McCaw Hall on Friday, February 23, Pop! Bubbles & Seafood highlights Pacific Northwest seafood for a quintessential Seattle experience. Top culinary talent will prepare fresh and sustainable seafood including oysters, salmon, crab and more. The evening will feature more than 30 sparkling wines from around the world including: west coast sparkling wines, Spanish cava, champagne and Italian prosecco plus seafood-friendly white wines and reserve reds. The Seattle Wine and Food Experience Grand Tasting finds a new home at Bell Harbor International Conference Center to wrap up the weekend on Saturday, February 24, featuring more than 25 chefs, 100 wineries and dozens of beer, cider and spirits purveyors. Seattle magazine's food and wine editors have narrowed in on ten dining trends that will form the framework of the Grand Tasting, creating a unique discovery experience for guests. Each chef will serve up their interpretation of a trend, and guests will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite. Trends include: Noodle Nation Ramen, pad thai, pho, oh my! Eat Your Veggies Listen to your mother veggies can be delicious Backyard BBQ Meat it's what's for dinner Order up! Diner Grub Burgers, fries and all your greasy spoon favorites Island Vibes Escape the grey with island flavors Pizza Heaven Answer the existential question: Thin crust or deep dish? Nacho Average Tacos Why just have one? Bottomless Brunch It's more than just avocado toast Catch of the Day Seattle's claim to fame straight from the sea Boozy sweets Desserts + booze enough said Details : Comfort Where: Sodo Park (3200 1st Avenue South, Seattle, WA 98134) When: Thursday, February 22, 2018 Hours: 6 9pm Price: $55 POP! Bubbles and Seafood Where: McCaw Hall (321 Mercer Street, Seattle, WA 98109) When: Friday, February 23, 2018 Hours: 6 - 9pm Price: $85 Seattle Wine and Food Experience - Grand Tasting Where: Bell Harbor International Conference Center (2211 Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA 98121) When: Saturday, February 24, 2018 Hours: VIP: 1 - 5pm / General Admission: 2 - 5pm Price: VIP: $110 Early Bird General Admission (November 1-15): $65 General Admission (after November 15): $75 The SWFE Weekend Pass package includes tickets to all three events plus VIP at the Grand Tasting ($220). Tickets are on sale now at www.seattlewineandfoodexperience.com. This is a 21 and older event, all admitted must have a valid I.D. About Seattle Wine and Food Experience Weekend The Seattle Wine and Food Experience Weekend is an incredible showcase of food, beverage and lifestyle that brings the pages of Seattle magazine to life. More than 275 leading wine brands, craft brewers, cider makers, distillers and chefs participate in the weekend. Gourmet bites from artisan restaurants, farmers and food purveyors highlight the Northwest's diversity of flavors. For a complete list of participating vendors and the wide variety of products to sample at this year's event, please visit the website at www.seattlewineandfoodexperience.com. About Seattle magazine For more than 50 years, Seattle magazine has chronicled the life and dynamic changes of one of the most innovative, forward-thinking cities in the United States. With a readership of more than 191,000 and a circulation of 46,000, it's the most subscribed-to city magazine in Washington state, connecting locals and newcomers to the best local food, travel, wine, beer, spirits, design, arts, culture, people, businesses and tech the region offers. Seattle magazine is published by Minneapolis-based Tiger Oak Publications which also publishes Seattle Business, Seattle Bride and custom publications locally as well as dozens of other titles across the country. Learn more at seattlemag.com and at tigeroak.com. Twitter: @seattlewinefood Facebook: /seattlewineandfoodexperience Instagram: /seattlewinefood MEDIA CONTACT: Lauren Madeja, Seattle magazine, 206.452.2977 / [email protected] SOURCE Seattle magazine SAN DIEGO, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Seismic, a global leader in marketing and sales enablement, today announced a series of major product updates that bolster existing integrations with several Microsoft services. In addition, Seismic is integrating Microsoft AI and search functionalities across the entire Seismic platform. "Microsoft has a storied history of increasing productivity and efficiency across the enterprise via innovative new technologies," said Doug Winter, Seismic CEO and co-founder. "Our relationship with Microsoft allows Seismic to further tap into those technologies and sense of innovation, building out a platform that continues to lead the way in helping sales close bigger deals and marketing have their impact felt on the bottom line." The product upgrades being rolled out by Seismic include: Seismic for Microsoft Dynamics 365: In addition to offering the entire Seismic platform from within Dynamics, Seismic is integrating a predictive content engine to automatically rank the most relevant content for the seller and the buyer at each stage of the buyer's journey. Sellers will also be able to see why content was recommended without even opening it, as Seismic for Microsoft Dynamics will automatically surface actionable data for each piece of contentsuch as usage, popularity, and buyer interest based on contextual data from the Dynamics record. In addition to offering the entire Seismic platform from within Dynamics, Seismic is integrating a predictive content engine to automatically rank the most relevant content for the seller and the buyer at each stage of the buyer's journey. Sellers will also be able to see why content was recommended without even opening it, as Seismic for Microsoft Dynamics will automatically surface actionable data for each piece of contentsuch as usage, popularity, and buyer interest based on contextual data from the Dynamics record. Seismic LiveInsights: Built on Microsoft Power BI, Seismic's LiveInsights analytics suite now provides unprecedented visibility into the effectiveness of sales content efforts by automatically surfacing data on platform adoption, content usage, and buyer engagement into one comprehensive data platform. The result is a platform for marketing teams to capture the intelligence needed to make continuous sales content improvements, and for sellers to harness real-time insights wherever they are into how prospects are engaging with content. Built on Microsoft Power BI, Seismic's LiveInsights analytics suite now provides unprecedented visibility into the effectiveness of sales content efforts by automatically surfacing data on platform adoption, content usage, and buyer engagement into one comprehensive data platform. The result is a platform for marketing teams to capture the intelligence needed to make continuous sales content improvements, and for sellers to harness real-time insights wherever they are into how prospects are engaging with content. Seismic WorkSpace: Seismic's virtual collaboration and coaching platform for marketing and sales teams will be integrated with Microsoft Office 365, allowing marketers and sellers to edit and revise content such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Word documents from within the Seismic platform in addition to providing comments and feedback capabilities. The upgrade adds further value to a feature which won Gold for Best Collaboration Solution in the 2017 Stevie Sales and Customer Service Awards and Best Document Management Solution in the 2017 WealthManagement.com Awards. "Marketing teams looking to create the most valuable content possible have long relied on Microsoft Office 365, and sales teams using Microsoft Dynamics 365 have come to see it as one of their most valuable assets in moving prospects through the sales cycle," said Winter. "These new integrations with Seismic will open up a world of opportunities for both teams' efforts with these products." Seismic taps further into Azure for AI and dynamic search Having been built and scaled on Azure, Seismic has now incorporated additional Azure offerings into their marketing and sales enablement platform. First, Seismic has integrated Azure Machine Learning into its current proprietary artificial intelligence functionalities to further increase productivity of sales teams and the ROI of sales content. Areas such as the automated tagging and organization of content, delivery of content to sales reps, and accelerating onboarding and sales training are among the first areas of the platform to be bolstered by machine learning, with additional capabilities planned. "AI promises to be a boon for sales and marketing efforts at large enterprises, increasing efficiencies for both teams while improving execution by adding additional layers of automatic data analysis," said Sajan Parihar, Director, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. "We are excited to work with Seismic in this regard and are looking forward to seeing further product innovation come out of their leading sales and marketing enablement platform." Seismic will also use Microsoft Cognitive Services to upgrade content search functionality by adding image recognition and speech to text translation within video content, taking advantage of Bing Speech API and Computer Vision API. The new search functionality will also ensure that all required information and data associated with each piece of content hosted in Seismicsuch as usage and effectiveness stats and information as to when and why it should be usedwill surface alongside content wherever it appears throughout the Seismic platform, further decreasing the time and effort on the part of the seller to determine the most relevant materials in any interaction with a customer or prospective customer. Seismic LiveInsights is available to Seismic customers today. Seismic for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Office 365 with new features will be generally available soon. To learn more about Seismic and the benefits of marketing and sales enablement, visit https://seismic.com/who-benefits-page/. About Seismic Seismic is the leading global marketing and sales enablement solution, improving close rates and delivering larger deals for sales while increasing marketing's impact on the bottom line. Large enterprises use Seismic to increase sales productivity through the automatic distribution of relevant information and personalized content to reps for any buyer interaction. Powerful content controls and visibility into usage ensures brand integrity and reduces risk. Seismic's machine learning and analytics capabilities continuously improves the entire enablement process for large enterprises, increasing the ROI of sales content and tying it directly to revenue. Headquartered in San Diego and with more than 300 employees across the globe, Seismic is privately held by its executive team and investment firms General Atlantic, JMI Equity, and Jackson Square Ventures. To see how Seismic is being used by firms in your industry, visit http://www.seismic.com. Contact: Jason Fidler Public Relations Manager, Seismic [email protected] 978-505-9148 SOURCE Seismic Related Links http://www.seismic.com This year, the campaign is focused on caregivers supporting family members suffering from Alzheimer's and other dementias. Through the efforts of these family caregivers, loved ones can remain in the community instead of living in an institution. To help raise awareness, Seniorlink is sharing the story of Pam Montana, a woman recently diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer's, and Bob, her husband and caregiver. You may view Pam's video story at https://youtu.be/FhzczzyN1T8 . Seniorlink is also supporting Alzheimer's and dementia caregivers with a Facebook group ( www.caregivernation.org ), inviting caregivers to connect with fellow caregivers, share experiences and access information from Seniorlink care professionals. "Family caregiving can be overwhelming, especially for those caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia. Caregivers often forget to care for themselves as they work to ensure that their loved ones can remain in the community," said Seniorlink Chief Executive Officer Tom Riley. "Thank You Caregiver Nation is one way that we can recognize and support family caregivers for the remarkable work that they do every day." The tasks required of family caregivers can be intense and unrelenting, with even more stress added when caring for Alzheimer's Disease and dementia patients. Family caregivers provide care for 50 million patients, at an economic value of $520 billion in uncompensated care. Approximately 15 million (30%) of those caregivers provide care for a loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia. In 2017, Seniorlink introduced the VOICE Dementia Care Program, a training program proven to help caregivers better manage and engage in the care of their loved ones. This program has resulted in improved confidence and competency for family caregivers and significant improvement in emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Seniorlink is now integrating these protocols in its care collaboration technology platform, Vela, for all of its clients. "Our nation's healthcare system cannot sustain itself without the work of family caregivers," said Riley. "Seniorlink is devoted to engaging with and supporting caregivers through a combination of technology-enabled protocols and dedicated clinicians. When caregivers have the tools and support, they can do amazing things." As part of the Thank You Caregiver Nation initiative, Seniorlink and its partners are giving away 36 care packages to family caregivers. These packages are valued at over $500 each and are designed to encourage family caregivers to relax for a few moments and recognize their own contributions. To enter to win a Care Package and join the Caregiver Nation, family caregivers can go to www.caregivernation.org. Caregivers do not need to be Seniorlink clients to participate. More information about Seniorlink can be found at www.seniorlink.com. About Seniorlink Seniorlink is a leading provider of care collaboration solutions. We serve consumers and caregivers by partnering with risk-bearing provider and payer organizations to augment existing care management capabilities through solutions that leverage human touch and technology. Our team of compassionate, experienced professionals use our proprietary platform, Vela, to encourage real-time collaboration among extended care team members, activity that results in better outcomes at a lower cost. Backed by nearly two decades of care expertise, Seniorlink leads the way on delivering high-quality care. Seniorlink's Caregiver Homes Network is the first Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) provider in the nation to receive NCQA accreditation for three-year case management (CM) with Long Term Services and Support (LTSS) Distinction. More information about Seniorlink can be found at www.seniorlink.com. SOURCE Seniorlink Related Links http://www.seniorlink.com NEW YORK, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sentinel Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in promising companies at the lower end of the middle market, today announced the acquisition of Nekoosa, a leading manufacturer of specialty paper and film products used in the graphics and commercial print markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Headquartered in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, Nekoosa produces a comprehensive suite of specialty engineered materials in four key product areas: application and pressure sensitive tapes used to protect and transfer graphics onto surfaces such as store windows and commercial vehicles; specialty synthetic papers that offer a digitally printable tear-and-water-proof alternative to lamination; sheeted digital and offset grade carbonless paper; and extruded film products used in wall panel, credit card, and lighting applications. Through a network of more than 1,000 global distributor partners, Nekoosa serves a highly-diverse base of more than 70,000 commercial print and graphics shops in 65 countries. "Nekoosa gives Sentinel an opportunity to partner with a differentiated industry leader that draws on a unique, niche product offering that is considered the 'gold standard' in its markets," said Scott Perry, a partner at Sentinel. "Nekoosa has enhanced its leadership position through its highly-specialized operational expertise, unparalleled distribution network, and excellent corporate culture committed to developing a first-class employee base. We are thrilled to partner with Nekoosa's highly talented and committed management team." "Nekoosa has a long, successful track record of innovation, leadership, and growth driven by dedicated employees," said Paul Charapata, CEO of Nekoosa. "In the last five years, we have successfully executed four add-on acquisitions and have developed a playbook for the identification and integration of complementary businesses. We look forward to working closely with our new partners at Sentinel to continue this positive trajectory." The past 12 months have been highly productive for Sentinel. Besides acquiring Nekoosa, Sentinel made four other platform investments Altima Dental , the largest dental services organization in Canada; Cabi , a leading direct marketer of women's fashion apparel; MB2 Dental Solutions , a rapidly-growing dental service organization with a unique physician-centric ownership model; and SONNY'S Enterprises , the worldwide leader in conveyorized car wash systems. During this same period, Sentinel sold Checkers & Rally's Restaurants , an iconic and innovative drive-thru restaurant chain; National Spine & Pain Centers , a leader in interventional pain management; Playcore , a North American designer, manufacturer, and marketer of a broad range of play, park, and recreation products; Power Products , a leading global provider of branded electrical products and systems; and WellSpring Consumer Healthcare , a portfolio of high-performing OTC healthcare brands. About Sentinel Capital Partners Sentinel Capital Partners specializes in buying and building businesses at the lower end of the middle market in the United States and Canada in partnership with management. Sentinel targets aerospace and defense, business services, consumer, distribution, food and restaurants, franchising, healthcare, and industrial businesses. Sentinel invests in management buyouts, recapitalizations, corporate divestitures, and going-private transactions of established businesses with EBITDA of up to $65 million. Sentinel also invests in special situations, including balance sheet restructurings and operational turnarounds. For more information about Sentinel, visit www.sentinelpartners.com. About Nekoosa Nekoosa is a leading provider of specialty engineered papers and films for the graphics and commercial print markets. Nekoosa's expertise spans coating, converting, and custom plastic extrusion capabilities, with a product offering that includes application tapes, specialty synthetic papers, carbonless papers, and capping films. The Nekoosa family of brands includes Nekoosa Coated Products, RTape Corp., CET Films, and ClingZ. For more information, please visit http://www.nekoosa.com/. Contact: Roland Tomforde Broadgate Consultants 212-232-2222 SOURCE Sentinel Capital Partners Related Links http://www.sentinelpartners.com LADERA RANCH, Calif., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SmartStop Asset Management announced today that the company has promoted Ken Morrison to chief operations officer self storage. Morrison, who joined SmartStop in 2011, previously served as senior vice president of operations. "Ken is a consummate professional with two decades of experience in managing, operating and maximizing revenue for self storage portfolios," said H. Michael Schwartz, founder, chairman and CEO of SmartStop Asset Management. "He is an exceptional leader and a key member of our executive management who will continue to play a key role in our ongoing growth." Prior to joining SmartStop, Morrison spent 14 years with Public Storage, ultimately serving as senior vice president of its northeast operations, and was responsible for more than 300 facilities in 11 states that generated in excess of $335 million in annual revenue. He attended West Valley College in Saratoga, California, as well as the Center for Creative Leadership in San Diego. SmartStop Asset Management's self storage portfolio includes 108 facilities located throughout the United States and Toronto, Canada, comprised of approximately 68,000 units. The company is the sponsor of three public non-traded real estate investments trusts that invest in self storage: Strategic Storage Growth Trust, Inc., Strategic Storage Trust II, Inc. and Strategic Storage Trust IV, Inc. About SmartStop Asset Management, LLC (SmartStop) SmartStop is a diversified real estate company focused on self storage assets, along with student and senior housing. The company has more than $1.3 billion of real estate assets under management, including 108 self storage facilities located throughout the United States and Toronto, Canada, comprised of approximately 68,000 units and 7.9 million rentable square feet. SmartStop's real estate portfolio also includes three student housing facilities with approximately 1,735 beds and 570,000 square feet of space. SmartStop is the sponsor of Strategic Storage Trust II, Inc., Strategic Storage Growth Trust, Inc. and Strategic Storage Trust IV, Inc., all public non-traded REITs focusing on self storage assets. The facilities offer affordable and accessible storage units for residential and commercial customers. In addition, they offer secure interior and exterior storage units as well as outside storage areas for vehicles, RVs and boats. Additional information regarding SmartStop Asset Management is available at www.SAM.com and more information regarding SmartStop Self Storage in the United States and Canada is available at www.SmartStop.com. Contacts Julie Leber Damon Elder Spotlight Marketing Communications Spotlight Marketing Communications 949.427.5172 ext. 703 949.427.5172, ext. 702 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE SmartStop Asset Management, LLC Related Links http://www.SmartStop.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The McClatchy Company (NYSE American: MNI) announced today that Stephanie Shepherd, corporate controller since December 2015, has resigned effective November 27 to pursue an executive finance role in the Nevada state education sector. A search for her replacement has begun. "Stephanie has been a tremendous asset to this company, a wonderful colleague and an accomplished corporate controller," said Elaine Lintecum, McClatchy's CFO. "She led the finance team to a new structure, creating centers of excellence and streamlining the finance functions across the company. We thank Stephanie for her many contributions and wish her all the best in the future." "The past two years have been characterized by exciting changes at McClatchy," said Shepherd. "I've met many friends and loved my time here, but coming from two generations of teachers, I'm excited to pursue a career in the higher education field. It was an honor to work with this team of exceptionally talented professionals and during my time here to help move the digital transformation forward by streamlining and improving the financial process at McClatchy." About McClatchy McClatchy operates 30 media companies in 14 states, providing each of its communities with high-quality news and advertising services in a wide array of digital and print formats. McClatchy is a publisher of iconic brands such as the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Sacramento Bee, The Charlotte Observer, The (Raleigh) News & Observer, and the (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram. McClatchy is headquartered in Sacramento, Calif., and listed on the New York Stock Exchange American under the symbol MNI. SOURCE McClatchy Related Links http://www.mcclatchy.com AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. (NYSE: INN) (the "Company") announced today that it has priced an underwritten public offering of 6,400,000 shares of its 6.25% Series E Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock (the "Series E Preferred Stock") at a public offering price of $25.00 per share, for gross proceeds of $160 million. The offering is expected to close on November 13, 2017, subject to customary closing conditions. The Company expects to contribute the net proceeds from this offering to its operating partnership. The operating partnership intends to use the net proceeds to redeem the Company's outstanding 7.875% Series B Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock (the "Series B Preferred Stock") on or after December 11, 2017, which is generally the date the shares of Series B Preferred Stock become redeemable by the Company. The Series B Preferred Stock has an aggregate liquidation preference of approximately $75 million, plus accrued but unpaid dividends payable therewith. Pending the redemption of the Series B Preferred Stock, the Company will use the net proceeds from this offering to reduce amounts outstanding under its senior unsecured revolving credit facility and for general corporate purposes, which may include, among other things, acquiring hotel properties in accordance with its investment strategy. Subject to market conditions and the approval of its Board of Directors, the Company may also use any remaining net proceeds to redeem a portion of its outstanding 7.125% Series C Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock on or after the date it becomes redeemable by the Company in March 2018. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Raymond James & Associates, Inc. and RBC Capital Markets, LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. The senior co-managers for the offering are Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Jefferies LLC and KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. BB&T Capital Markets, a division of BB&T Securities, LLC, Capital One Securities, Inc. and U.S. Bancorp Investments, Inc. are acting as co-managers. A registration statement relating to the Series E Preferred Stock has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is effective. A copy of the final prospectus supplement (when available) and base prospectus relating to the Series E Preferred Stock may be obtained by contacting Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith Incorporated, Attention: Prospectus Department, 200 North College Street, 3rd Floor, NC1-004-03-43, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001 or by email at [email protected] or by telephone at (800) 294-1322; by contacting Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Attention: Syndicate Department, 777 E. Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53202 or by email at [email protected]; by contacting Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Attention: Equity Syndicate, 880 Carillon Parkway, St. Petersburg, Florida 33716 or by email at [email protected] or by telephone at (800) 248-8863; or by contacting RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Brookfield Place, 200 Vesey Street, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10281-8098, or by email at [email protected] or by telephone at (866) 375-6829 or by facsimile at (212) 658-6137. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. About Summit Hotel Properties Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. is a publicly-traded real estate investment trust focused on owning premium-branded hotels with efficient operating models primarily in the upscale segment of the lodging industry. As of November 2, 2017, the Company's portfolio consisted of 79 hotels with a total of 11,590 guestrooms located in 24 states. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains statements that are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, as amended, pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "intend," "expect," "seek," "anticipate," "estimate," "approximately," "believe," "could," "project," "predict," "forecast," "continue," "plan," "likely," "would" or other similar words or expressions. For example, the fact that this offering has priced may imply that this offering will close, but the closing is subject to conditions customary in transactions of this type and may be delayed or may not occur at all. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and can include future expectations, future plans and strategies, financial and operating projections or other forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, not all of which are known to the Company and many of which are beyond the Company's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the state of the U.S. economy, supply and demand in the hotel industry and other factors as are described in greater detail in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. Unless legally required, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE Summit Hotel Properties, Inc. Related Links http://www.shpreit.com According to the report, Suning.com, the bellwether of Suning's e-commerce business, generated an operating revenue of RMB131.88 billion(US$19.95 billion) for the first three quarters, up 26.98% year-on-year. Net income attributable to shareholders from business operation climbed to RMB672 million(US$100 million), up 321.23% year-on-year. In Q3, the operating revenue rose 36.96% year-on-year. The past three quarters saw the best performance of Suning's e-retail business since it geared up for O2O from 2009. Suning Commerce's online presence also reported a 65.54% rise in revenue year-on-year to RMB66.23 billion (approximately US$10 billion, including tax), contributing slightly more than half of total operating revenue. "We're excited to see what we've achieved in the first three quarters. The retail business in China has come to a turning point. It is seen that O2O will be a trend in the next phase of the industry, and Suning is committed to fully embrace this new trend with its leading deployment of 'Smart Retail' with the expertise and technology accumulation both online and offline," said Zhang Jindong, Chairman of Suning Commerce Group and Suning Holdings Group. Founded in 1990, Suning has opened over 3,700 physical stores both around the country and overseas, delivering customized services to various communities. With retail in its genes, Suning lunched its e-commerce platform Suning.com in 2010, and now its expertise and experience in online retail has been honed over the past eight years. In 2012, Suning proposed the innovative business model which is similar to "Walmart adds Amazon", strategically balancing its online and offline businesses to improve synergy. Sun Weimin, Deputy Chairman of Suning Commerce Group, noted that while brick-and-mortar retail is the Suning's obvious strength, it has built a vibrant online presence with advanced technologies. The O2O retail model brings one-stop seamless shopping experience to consumers, while creates recognized value for Suning and its shareholders. The revenue and customer loyalty from the online business has been increased significantly since its inception. "Suning's online and offline businesses complement each other effectively. We are leveraging Suning's advantage in supply chains, logistics, data and financial services to create the best shopping experience," said Sun. By 2018, Suning plans to add 5,000 physical stores that will be connected to its online presence, while another three self-service stores would be opened during China's largest annual shopping spree, the "11/11 O2O Shopping Festival". Click here to see Suning's financial tables (Chinese only): http://www.suning.cn/static///snsite/contentresource/2017-10-31/e169e9b3-5892-4eb1-b037-83924a895ff1.pdf About Suning Holdings Group Founded in 1990, Suning is one of the leading commercial enterprises in China with 180,000 employees and two listed companies in China and Japan. Through decades of growth and transformation, Suning has established a business presence in six industries. In 2017, Suning was ranked second on the list of China's top 500 non-state owned enterprises, and for the first time in corporate history, Suning Commerce, under Suning Holdings Group was named to the 2017 list of Fortune Global 500. SOURCE Suning Holdings Group THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, November 2, 2017, Talen Energy Corporation (Talen Energy) and New Jersey Resources Corporation (NJR) announced the execution of a definitive agreement for the sale of 100% of the equity interests in Talen Energy's Interstate Energy Company LLC (IEC) pipeline subsidiary to Adelphia Gateway, LLC (Adelphia), a subsidiary of NJR. Talen Energy's IEC subsidiary currently owns and operates an 84-mile pipeline that interconnects the producing region of southeastern Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia gas market. Aggregate consideration for the sale is $189 million payable in cash, of which up to $23 million is contingent cash consideration based on certain specified conditions. The sale is expected to close in approximately 12 months, following receipt of all necessary permits and regulatory actions, including those from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. "Since December of 2016, Talen Energy's new management team has continued to deliver on its plan to improve the company's operational performance and divest non-core assets, while generating significant cash flow," said Ralph Alexander, Talen Energy's Chief Executive Officer. "This transaction will allow the company to monetize an under-utilized resource for significant cash value. We continue to evaluate the potential of Talen Energy's remaining real estate and natural gas asset footprint, including the company's significant natural gas demand across our power generation fleet." As part of the agreement, Talen Energy subsidiaries will enter into contracts with Adelphia, whereby the northern portion of the pipeline will continue to supply natural gas to Talen Energy's Martins Creek and Lower Mount Bethel generating stations. The southern 50-mile portion of the pipeline will be repurposed by Adelphia to flow natural gas to the greater Philadelphia region and provide customers with a new source of clean, safe and low-cost natural gas supply. "The sale of the IEC pipeline, together with our previously announced non-core asset sales, completes the execution of Talen Energy's $325 million non-core asset sale program announced earlier this year. I am pleased to report that we have met and exceeded this target approximately one year ahead of the schedule we committed to our investors," said Alex Hernandez, Talen Energy's Chief Financial Officer. "The IEC pipeline sale will be EBITDA neutral for Talen Energy as our gas transportation costs paid to Adelphia will be offset by O&M savings related to the sale." UBS Investment Bank acted as lead financial advisor to Talen and Bracewell LLP served as legal counsel. Investor Relations contact: Russell Clelland, Treasurer [email protected] 610-601-0130 Media Relations Contact: Todd Martin [email protected] 570-542-2881 Talen Energy Corporation, 3 Hughes Landing, Suite 800. The Woodlands, TX 77380. SOURCE Talen Energy Corporation Related Links https://www.talenenergy.com DALLAS, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TeamSupport, one of the industry's top B2B customer support software apps, has been named a "Leader" among the best help desk software solutions by G2 Crowd, a trusted site for business software reviews. G2 Crowd rates help desk products algorithmically based on data sourced from product reviews shared by G2 Crowd users and other online data sources. The Grid from G2 Crowd scores products and vendors based on reviews gathered from their user community, in combination with aggregate data collected from online sources and social networks. "TeamSupport has been identified as a Leader in our Fall 2017 Help Desk Grid Report, based on their large market presence and high levels of customer satisfaction," said Kara Kennedy, research manager, G2 Crowd. "TeamSupport's satisfaction ratings were highlighted by 'quality of support', 'ease of use', 'ease of admin', 'ease of doing business with', and 'ease of setup'. Additionally, 95 percent of users rated the product four out of five stars or better." Satisfaction ratings are calculated by a unique algorithm that considers customer satisfaction with product features, quantity and quality of reviews, and customer satisfaction with admin-specific product attributes. A Net Promoter Score (NPS) based on ratings from real users is also factored into these ratings. Market presence scores are determined by considering product and vendor market presence based on the number of product reviews, size of company, employee satisfaction, and social impact. "It is a huge honor for TeamSupport to be recognized in the Leaders quadrant," says TeamSupport CEO Robert C. Johnson, "We have worked with G2 Crowd for many years and appreciate their vendor-neutral approach to software comparison. We strive to provide a quality help desk software for B2B companies while providing exceptional customer support ourselves. Our inclusion in the Leader quadrant, thanks to our strong market presence and exceptional customer satisfaction, shows that we're on the right track and we intend to continue doing so!" The full Grid report lists data and rankings for all included help desk software products, and is available for download here. Designed by B2B support professionals especially for organizations that provide external customer support, TeamSupport offers an array of tools that make it easy for teams to work together, share information, and access their collective knowledge to solve customer challenges. TeamSupport's solution makes it simpler for support agents to resolve individual tickets while managing the overall customer relationship. Find out more at www.teamsupport.com. About TeamSupport TeamSupport, based in Dallas, Texas, is an online help desk and customer support application built specifically for business to business support. Created by a team of veteran software company executives, TeamSupport is well recognized as a leader in B2B customer support software as evidenced by top ratings on software review sites including Gartner FrontRunners, G2 Crowd, and GetApp. Learn more about why TeamSupport is one of the best help desk software solutions today and the trusted customer support software provider to prominent business clients worldwide by visiting www.TeamSupport.com. Media Contact Emma Tiernon [email protected] SOURCE TeamSupport Related Links http://www.teamsupport.com IRVINE, Calif. and SILICON VALLEY, Calif., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten-X, the nation's leading online real estate marketplace, today released its latest U.S. Retail Market Outlook, including the top five 'Buy' and 'Sell' markets for retail real estate assets. The long-term forecast depicts a retail sector in the midst of an already agonizingly slow recovery that has now reached a low water mark for the current cycle. Blame for the "non-recovery" can be laid largely at the feet of technology companies and non-traditional retailers, whose disruption of traditional brick-and-mortar has continued unabated most spectacularly with Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods. The impact of headwinds created by consumers' shift to e-commerce, and the uncertainty it has created, cannot be overstated. Ten-X Research expects the sector to wrestle with these challenges for years to come. The long-term forecast suggests investors should consider buying retail assets in Austin, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City and San Jose. These markets, clustered largely in the Southwest, have been able to defy the forces working against retail thanks to expanding populations, job and wage growth, and increasing shopper counts. Kansas City, Memphis, Cleveland, Northern New Jersey and Pittsburgh are the top markets in which investors might consider selling retail properties. These cities face adverse retailing conditions due to either economic struggles or the double whammy of slow population growth and high rents. The Ten-X Research report notes that e-commerce the sector's most formidable secular challenge and risk factor continues to grab a larger share of shoppers' spending. It now comprises 14.4 percent of total non-auto retail sales, up from less than 10 percent five years ago. With more people shopping from the comfort of home, in-store inventory needs have declined. Consumers are still shopping, but more sales are being fulfilled from warehouses while retail's per-person footprint continues to shrink. As a result, the warehouse and distribution sector has been the beneficiary of e-commerce's hegemonic rise. "The rise of online shopping puts extreme pressure on the recovery of the retail sector, demonstrated most clearly by bankruptcies of storied retail chains, sweeping store closures, and shrinking footprints," said Ten-X Chief Economist Peter Muoio. "For now, the sector is being sustained by strong economies and high incomes in some regions around the country but it faces the risk of stagnation should an economic downturn strike." Effective rents rose 1.8 percent in the second quarter from a year ago, a growth rate unchanged from the first quarter of the year. Vacancies ticked up by 10 bps to 10 percent and have now risen 20 bps over the last year. Overall deal volume in the sector sagged to a 4-year low of $14.6 billion. 2Q 2017 2021 U.S. RETAIL PROJECTIONS Top 5 Buy Markets 2016 Final Effective Rents ($ psf) 20/20 Forecast Effective Rents ($ psf) Change in Rents (%) 2Q 2017 Vacancies (%) 2021 Vacancies (%) Change in Vacancies (bps) Austin, TX 21.05 23.38 11.1% 5.3 4.3 -100 bps Denver, CO 16.42 18.08 10.1% 9.7 9.4 -30 bps Dallas, TX 16.02 17.50 9.2% 11.7 11.6 -10 bps Salt Lake City, UT 14.19 15.01 5.8% 12.5 11.6 -90 bps San Jose, CA 31.52 33.12 5.1% 5.2 6.7 150 bps Top 5 Sell Markets 2Q 2017 Rents ($ psf) 2021 Rents ($ psf) Change in Rents (%) 2Q 2017 Vacancies (%) 2021 Vacancies (%) Change in Vacancies (bps) Kansas City, MO 12.57 12.30 -2.2 % 11.2 12.2 100 bps Memphis, TN 12.33 12.22 -0.9% 13.4 14.9 150 bps Cleveland, OH 13.61 13.31 -2.2% 15.7 16.9 120 bps Northern NJ 26.19 25.92 -1.0% 8.6 9.1 50 bps Pittsburgh, PA 15.37 15.07 -2.0% 9.1 9.9 80 bps US 18.05 18.77 4.0% 10.0 10.2 20 bps The Retail Sector's Top Five 'Buy' Markets: Austin, Texas Austin's retail sector has benefited from the city's eye-popping population growth, which measured 2.9 percent in 2016 the strongest of large U.S. metro areas for the sixth year in a row. Despite the steady influx of new residents, the city's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is down to a 17-year low of 2.9 percent with education and healthcare acting as primary job-creation engines. Though the city's vacancy rate edged up 10 bps to 5.3 percent, Ten-X Research expects it to decline to 4.3 percent by 2018 and then remain in that range through 2021. Even taking into account a modeled 2019-2020 recession, rents are projected to make steady annual gains in the mid 2 percent range through 2021 annually. The combination of rising rents coupled with declining vacancies make Austin retail properties an appealing target for investors. Denver Denver's retail sector looks resilient even in the face of a recessionary scenario modeled by Ten-X beginning in 2019. Net operating income (NOI) growth is forecasted to remain in positive territory through 2021, growing 4 percent until 2018, and then eking out gains in the mid-1 percent range until 2021. Vacancies, now at 9.7 percent, are expected to decline slightly in 2018 then remain in the mid-9 percent range in the three years to follow. The city's resilience in the face of retail's various headwinds is attributed to rising employment, which is now at an all-time peak, and impressive population growth. Dallas A burgeoning economy has meant retail space remains in demand in Dallas. Retail net absorption in the city has been positive for 12 quarters in a row. The vacancy rate is down 330 bps from its peak of 11.7 percent and is forecasted to remain in a mid-11 percent range through 2021. Rents have jumped 3.2 percent from a year ago to reach an all-time peak. Growth drivers for the Dallas economy include robust job creation in professional and business services as well as financial services. Coupled with a population that is expanding at a healthy 2.1 percent clip, all bodes well for its retail prospects. Salt Lake City Salt Lake City retail properties make for appealing targets for investors, especially those willing to ride out the 2019-2020 recessionary scenario modeled by Ten-X Research. Following that projected downturn, an economic rebound is projected to pull retail vacancies down to 11.6 percent by 2021. In the interim, the vacancy rate is expected to hit a low of 11.8 percent in 2018 down from its current level of 12.5 percent. Annual NOI gains are expected to average 3.2 percent through 2018, before grinding to a halt during the modeled recession. Notably, Salt Lake City is the rare U.S. city that is currently seeing strong retail hiring with jobs in the sector up more than 3 percent from a year ago. Both across-the-board employment growth and accelerating population growth further add to the city's appeal for retail investors. San Jose, Calif. The affluent population in San Jose where per capita income measured $81,592 in 2015 is a boon for retail and consumer spending, making retail properties in the city good targets for investors. In fact, the city's retail outlook is a model of strength, including a vacancy rate of 5.2 percent and rent growth of 4.6 percent from a year ago. Investors should note that that the downturn modeled for 2019-2020 creates a significant volatility risk as a tech bust or slowdown would weigh on incomes. This in turn, would lead to spiking vacancies, stymied rent growth, and NOI declines. Still, Ten-X Research forecasts NOI regaining positive momentum in 2021. The Retail Sector's Top Five 'Sell' Markets: Kansas City, Mo. Kansas City's retail outlook is deteriorating and neither population growth nor low unemployment appear to be enough to offset worsening fundamentals. The vacancy rate is now at 11.2 percent, a jump of 110 bps over the last five quarters, and is projected to rise above 12 percent in the coming years. Ten-X Research expects NOI to fall in 2017, grow a negligible 0.1 percent in 2018 and drop 2 percent per year during Ten-X Research's 2019-2020 recessionary scenario. Moreover, economic growth in the city cannot be characterized as robust. Employment growth has slowed sharply in the past six months to 0.2 percent and demand for retail space has been hurt by a drop in retail trade jobs over the last year. Memphis, Tenn. With retail NOI projected to fall in four of the next five years and finish 2021 below current levels, investors in Memphis are among those who may consider selling their assets. Population growth has been nearly nonexistent over the last four years, while unemployment rate remains higher than the national average. The vacancy rate is forecasted to settle near a whopping 15 percent in 2021 following the modeled 2019-2020 recession, up from its current level of 13.4 percent. Meager rent growth of 0.4 percent compared to a year ago does little to improve the city's overall picture. Cleveland Cleveland's economy continues to be plagued by the baggage of decades-worth of industrial decline and its retail sector is suffering in tandem. The city's population has contracted 19 of the last 20 years. The unemployment rate is above the national average at 6.1 percent, up from a year ago. Owners of retail properties in the city should gird themselves for a deteriorating market outlook through 2021. Ten-X Research projects the vacancy rate will likely rise to nearly 17 percent during that time, up from the current 15.7 percent rate. While NOI is projected to grow marginally through 2018, it is likely to lose those gains during the modeled 2019-2020 recession, before a tepid rebound below 1 percent in 2021. Northern New Jersey According to Ten-X Research, plentiful available space hampers prospects for retail property owners in Northern New Jersey. The region's vacancy rate has already risen 60 bps over the last year to 8.6 percent and is projected to reach the low-9 percent range by 2021. NOI is forecast to drop 0.7 percent annually through 2020 before returning to growth of less than 1 percent in 2021. These weak retail fundamentals are further challenged by tepid employment growth and slowing population growth. Pittsburgh Demand for Pittsburgh retail space is weak and rents are experiencing tepid growth, making for an unimpressive outlook for retail investors. Vacancies are projected to rise to around 10 percent in 2021, even with little new supply in the pipeline. Investors should expect rent growth of under 1 percent a year in both 2017 and 2018, followed by three years of declines. The city's economy is expanding, but barely, as current job growth measures just 1 percent. Population contracted in 2016 for the fourth year in a row and unemployment remains higher than the national average. About Ten-X Ten-X is the nation's leading online real estate transaction marketplace and the parent to Auction.com , Ten-X Commercial and Ten-X Homes. To date, the company has sold 300,000+ residential and commercial properties totaling over $50 billion. Leveraging desktop and mobile technology, Ten-X allows people to safely and easily complete real estate transactions online. Ten-X is headquartered in Irvine and Silicon Valley, Calif., and has offices in key markets nationwide. Investors in the company include Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Stone Point Capital. For more information, visit Ten-X.com. SOURCE Ten-X Commercial Related Links http://Ten-X.com WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Third Quarter 2017 Highlights Net Sales of $1.6 billion , up 13% , up 13% Net Income of $207 million , up $3 million with EPS of $1.08 per diluted share, down $0.03 per diluted share , up with EPS of per diluted share, down per diluted share Adjusted EBITDA of $381 million , up 42% , up 42% Adjusted Net Income of $214 million , up $102 million with Adjusted EPS of $1.12 per diluted share, up $0.51 per diluted share , up with Adjusted EPS of per diluted share, up per diluted share Full-year outlook reaffirmed The Chemours Company (Chemours) (NYSE: CC), a global chemistry company with leading market positions in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, today announced financial results for the third quarter 2017. Chemours President and CEO Mark Vergnano said: "We continue to benefit from the strength of our high-value portfolio. Our performance in Titanium Technologies reflects our ability to provide high-quality Ti-Pure titanium dioxide to meet our customers' needs. In Fluoroproducts, we saw another quarter of increased Opteon refrigerant sales and solid demand for our fluoropolymers products. Combined with increased profitability in Chemical Solutions, we delivered substantial year-over-year improvements across all key financial metrics." Third quarter net sales were $1.6 billion, a 13 percent increase from $1.4 billion in the prior-year quarter. Volume growth in all three segments drove a 6 percent increase in revenue while higher prices, primarily for Ti-Pure titanium dioxide, added another 9 percent to revenue. Favorable currency in the quarter resulted in a 1 percent revenue increase. These results were offset by a 3 percent decline due to the portfolio effects of divestitures and site closure within Chemical Solutions. Third quarter net income of $207 million increased 1 percent in comparison to last year's third quarter, which included a gain of $169 million from the sale of businesses in the Chemical Solutions segment. Diluted earnings per share for the third quarter of 2017 was $1.08, compared to $1.11 per diluted share in last year's third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter 2017 was $381 million, a 42 percent increase compared to $268 million in the third quarter of 2016. This improvement was primarily driven by increased volume and pricing, which were partially reduced by higher variable distribution and environmental costs. Titanium Technologies In the third quarter, Titanium Technologies segment sales were $799 million, a 28 percent increase versus the prior-year quarter, driven by higher global average selling prices and demand for Ti-Pure titanium dioxide. Segment Adjusted EBITDA was $249 million, a 73 percent year-over-year improvement. Higher Ti-Pure titanium dioxide pricing and volumes were somewhat offset by increased raw material and distribution costs. Fluoroproducts Fluoroproducts segment sales in the third quarter were $637 million, an increase of 8 percent versus the prior-year quarter. Further adoption of Opteon refrigerants and increased demand for fluoropolymers drove the volume increase compared to last year's third quarter. Higher average prices of base refrigerants were partially offset by moderate contractual decline in automotive pricing for Opteon, while fluoropolymers pricing was flat versus the prior-year quarter. Segment Adjusted EBITDA was $158 million, up 10 percent versus the prior-year quarter. This improvement reflected higher price and volume partially offset by the combined impact of increased raw materials, expenses related to capital projects, and Hurricane Harvey, as well as timing of other expenses. Chemical Solutions Chemical Solutions segment sales in the third quarter 2017 were $148 million, a 19 percent decline versus the prior-year quarter, reflecting the impact of portfolio changes in 2016. Strong demand for mining solutions products was offset by a reduction of sales associated with divestitures and site closure in 2016, while price and currency variances were negligible. Segment Adjusted EBITDA was $18 million compared to $9 million in the prior-year quarter with the increase primarily related to higher volume of retained businesses and lower fixed costs. Corporate and Other Corporate and Other represented a negative $44 million of Adjusted EBITDA, $16 million higher than last year's third quarter. This increase was primarily driven by increased environmental accruals including those related to the former DuPont USS Lead site. During the third quarter 2017, the company realized a cash tax rate of approximately 9 percent. The company expects its cash tax rate to be in the low teens for the full-year 2017, reflecting the company's anticipated geographic mix of earnings. Liquidity As of September 30, 2017, gross consolidated debt was approximately $4.1 billion. Debt, net of $1.5 billion cash, was approximately $2.6 billion, resulting in a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of approximately 2.0 times on a trailing twelve-month basis. Cash provided by operating activities for the third quarter of 2017 was $112 million, reflecting the $320 million PFOA MDL settlement payment, versus $198 million in the third quarter of 2016. Year-to-date, cash provided by operating activities was $336 million, versus $324 million in the first nine months of 2016, which included a $93 million benefit of the prepayment received from DuPont. Excluding the PFOA payment, Free Cash Flow in the third quarter of 2017 was $324 million versus the previous-year quarter of $131 million. The improvement in Free Cash Flow was due to higher operating earnings and improved working capital performance of $140 million. Excluding the 2016 DuPont prepayment and the 2017 PFOA MDL settlement payment, 2017 year-to-date Free Cash Flow of $425 million would represent a $429 million improvement versus the previous-year's first nine months. Outlook "The successful implementation of our Five Point Transformation Plan has given us the solid foundation to build a future focused on growth," commented Vergnano. "We continue to expect our 2017 Adjusted EBITDA to be between $1.3 and $1.4 billion, which far exceeds our original transformation plan goal. We also expect 2017 Free Cash Flow to be positive, driven by the strength of our results and the diligent work of our employees." Conference Call As previously announced, Chemours will hold a conference call and webcast on Friday, November 3, 2017 at 8:30 AM EDT. The webcast and additional presentation materials can be accessed by visiting the Events & Presentations page of Chemours' investor website, investors.chemours.com. A webcast replay of the conference call will be available on the Chemours' investor website. About The Chemours Company The Chemours Company (NYSE: CC) helps create a colorful, capable and cleaner world through the power of chemistry. Chemours is a global leader in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, providing its customers with solutions in a wide range of industries with market-defining products, application expertise and chemistry-based innovations. Chemours ingredients are found in plastics and coatings, refrigeration and air conditioning, mining and general industrial manufacturing. Our flagship products include prominent brands such as Teflon, Ti-Pure, Krytox, Viton, Opteon, Freon and Nafion. Chemours has approximately 7,000 employees and 26 manufacturing sites serving approximately 4,000 customers in North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Chemours is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware and is listed on the NYSE under the symbol CC. For more information please visit chemours.com. Non-GAAP Financial Measures We prepare our financial statements in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ("GAAP"). Within this press release, we make reference to Adjusted Net Income (Loss), Adjusted EPS, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin and Free Cash Flow, which are non-GAAP financial measures. Free Cash Flow is defined as Cash from Operations minus cash used for PP&E purchases. The company includes these non-GAAP financial measures because management believes they are useful to investors in that they provide for greater transparency with respect to supplemental information used by management in its financial and operational decision making. Management uses Adjusted Net Income (Loss), Adjusted EPS, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin and Free Cash Flow to evaluate the company's performance excluding the impact of certain noncash charges and other special items which we expect to be infrequent in occurrence in order to have comparable financial results to analyze changes in our underlying business from quarter to quarter. Accordingly, the company believes the presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures, when used in conjunction with GAAP financial measures, is a useful financial analysis tool that can assist investors in assessing the company's operating performance and underlying prospects. This analysis should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our results as reported under GAAP. This analysis, as well as the other information in this press release, should be read in conjunction with the company's financial statements and footnotes contained in the documents that the company files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The non-GAAP financial measures used by the company in this press release may be different from the methods used by other companies. For more information on the non-GAAP financial measures, please refer to the attached schedules or the table, "Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures to GAAP Financial Measures" and materials posted to the website at investors.chemours.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. The words "believe," "expect," "will," "anticipate," "plan," "estimate," "anticipate," "target," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify "forward-looking statements" which speak only as of the date the statements were made. These forward-looking statements may address, among other things, the outcome or resolution of any pending or future environmental liabilities, litigation and other legal proceedings or contingencies, anticipated future operating and financial performance, business plans and prospects, transformation plans, cost savings targets, plans to increase profitability and our outlook for Adjusted EBITDA and Free Cash Flow, that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events which may not be accurate or realized. Forward-looking statements also involve risks and uncertainties which are beyond Chemours' control. Additionally, there may be other risks and uncertainties that Chemours is unable to identify at this time or that Chemours does not currently expect to have a material impact on its business. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include the risks, uncertainties and other factors discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016. Chemours assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement for any reason, except as required by law. CONTACT MEDIA Alvenia Scarborough Director, Brand Marketing and Corporate Communications +1.302.773.4507 [email protected] INVESTORS Alisha Bellezza Treasurer and Director of Investor Relations +1.302.773.2263 [email protected] The Chemours Company Interim Consolidated Statements of Operations (Unaudited) (Dollars in millions, except per share amounts) Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2016 Net sales $ 1,584 $ 1,398 $ 4,608 $ 4,078 Cost of goods sold 1,117 1,056 3,341 3,267 Gross profit 467 342 1,267 811 Selling, general and administrative expense 148 148 444 454 Research and development expense 20 19 61 60 Restructuring and asset-related charges, net 8 60 31 145 Total expenses 176 227 536 659 Equity in earnings of affiliates 9 9 26 17 Interest expense, net (55) (51) (161) (157) Other income, net 5 161 53 250 Income before income taxes 250 234 649 262 Provision for income taxes 43 30 130 25 Net income 207 204 519 237 Less: Net income attributable to non-controlling interests 1 Net income attributable to Chemours $ 207 $ 204 $ 518 $ 237 Per share data Basic earnings per share of common stock $ 1.12 $ 1.12 $ 2.81 $ 1.31 Diluted earnings per share of common stock $ 1.08 $ 1.11 $ 2.72 $ 1.30 Dividends per share of common stock $ 0.03 $ 0.03 $ 0.09 $ 0.09 The Chemours Company Interim Consolidated Balance Sheets (Dollars in millions, except per share amounts) (Unaudited) September 30, December 31, 2017 2016 Assets Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 1,535 $ 902 Accounts and notes receivable - trade, net 942 807 Inventories 877 767 Prepaid expenses and other 79 77 Total current assets 3,433 2,553 Property, plant and equipment 8,412 7,997 Less: Accumulated depreciation (5,462) (5,213) Property, plant and equipment, net 2,950 2,784 Goodwill and other intangible assets, net 167 170 Investments in affiliates 166 136 Other assets 404 417 Total assets $ 7,120 $ 6,060 Liabilities and equity Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 1,010 $ 884 Current maturities of long-term debt 14 15 Other accrued liabilities 546 872 Total current liabilities 1,570 1,771 Long-term debt, net 4,081 3,529 Deferred income taxes 175 132 Other liabilities 489 524 Total liabilities 6,315 5,956 Commitments and contingent liabilities Equity Common stock (par value $0.01 per share; 810,000,000 shares authorized; 185,092,058 and 182,600,533 shares issued and outstanding at September 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively) 2 2 Additional paid-in capital 830 789 Retained earnings (accumulated deficit) 388 (114) Accumulated other comprehensive loss (420) (577) Total Chemours stockholders' equity 800 100 Non-controlling interests 5 4 Total equity 805 104 Total liabilities and equity $ 7,120 $ 6,060 The Chemours Company Interim Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Unaudited) (Dollars in millions) Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 Operating activities Net income $ 519 $ 237 Adjustments to reconcile net income to cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 204 212 Amortization of deferred financing costs and issuance discount 10 15 Gain on sale of assets and businesses (14) (258) Equity in earnings of affiliates (26) (17) Deferred tax provision (benefit) 53 (29) Asset-related charges 3 109 Other operating charges and credits, net 26 33 (Increase) decrease in operating assets: Accounts and notes receivable - trade, net (110) (63) Inventories and other operating assets (91) 113 (Decrease) increase in operating liabilities: Accounts payable and other operating liabilities (238) (28) Cash provided by operating activities 336 324 Investing activities Purchases of property, plant and equipment (246) (235) Proceeds from sales of assets and businesses, net 39 707 Foreign exchange contract settlements, net 5 (1) Investment in affiliates (2) Cash (used for) provided by investing activities (202) 469 Financing activities Proceeds from issuance of debt, net 494 Debt repayments (24) (212) Dividends paid (16) (16) Deferred financing fees (6) (2) Tax payments related to withholdings on vested restricted stock units (10) Proceeds from exercised stock options, net 30 Cash provided by (used for) financing activities 468 (230) Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents 31 28 Increase in cash and cash equivalents 633 591 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of the period 902 366 Cash and cash equivalents at end of the period $ 1,535 $ 957 Non-cash investing activities Change in property, plant and equipment included in accounts payable $ (16) $ 9 The Chemours Company Segment Financial and Operating Data (Unaudited) (Dollars in millions) Segment Net Sales Three Months Three Months Ended Ended Sequential September 30, Increase / June 30, Increase / 2017 2016 (Decrease) 2017 (Decrease) Titanium Technologies $ 799 $ 625 $ 174 $ 729 $ 70 Fluoroproducts 637 591 46 710 (73) Chemical Solutions 148 182 (34) 149 (1) Total Net Sales $ 1,584 $ 1,398 $ 186 $ 1,588 $ (4) Segment Adjusted EBITDA Three Months Three Months Ended Ended Sequential September 30, Increase / June 30, Increase / 2017 2016 (Decrease) 2017 (Decrease) Titanium Technologies $ 249 $ 144 $ 105 $ 193 $ 56 Fluoroproducts 158 143 15 197 (39) Chemical Solutions 18 9 9 7 11 Corporate and Other (44) (28) (16) (36) (8) Total Adjusted EBITDA $ 381 $ 268 $ 113 $ 361 $ 20 Adjusted EBITDA Margin 24% 19% 23% Quarterly Change in Net Sales from September 30, 2016 Percentage Percentage Change Due To September 30, 2017 Net Sales Change vs. September 30, 2016 Local Price Volume Currency Effect Portfolio / Other Total Company $ 1,584 13 % 9 % 6 % 1 % (3) % Titanium Technologies $ 799 28 % 18 % 8 % 2 % % Fluoroproducts $ 637 8 % 2 % 5 % 1 % % Chemical Solutions $ 148 (19) % % 5 % % (24) % Quarterly Change in Net Sales from June 30, 2017 Percentage Percentage Change Due To September 30, 2017 Net Sales Change vs. June 30, 2017 Local Price Volume Currency Effect Portfolio / Other Total Company $ 1,584 % 3 % (4) % 1 % % Titanium Technologies $ 799 10 % 6 % 2 % 2 % % Fluoroproducts $ 637 (10) % 2 % (13) % 1 % % Chemical Solutions $ 148 (1) % (4) % 3 % % % The Chemours Company Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures to GAAP Financial Measures (Unaudited) (Dollars in millions, except per share amounts) GAAP Net Income to Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EBITDA Tabular Reconciliations Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, June 30, September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2017 2016 Net income attributable to Chemours $ 207 $ 204 $ 161 $ 518 $ 237 Non-operating pension and other post-retirement employee benefit income (7) (5) (10) (24) (19) Exchange losses (gains) 4 17 (2) (3) 37 Restructuring charges 8 14 6 31 41 Asset-related charges 1 46 2 3 109 (Gain) loss on sale of assets or businesses (169) 2 (14) (258) Transaction costs 1 1 2 2 3 18 Legal and other charges 2 7 5 10 18 24 Benefit from income taxes relating to reconciling items 3 (7) (2) (5) (10) (16) Adjusted Net Income 214 112 166 522 173 Net income attributable to non-controlling interests 1 Interest expense, net 55 51 55 161 157 Depreciation and amortization 62 73 71 204 212 All remaining provision for income taxes 3 50 32 69 140 41 Adjusted EBITDA $ 381 $ 268 $ 361 $ 1,028 $ 583 1 Includes accounting, legal and bankers' transaction fees incurred related to the Company's strategic initiatives. 2 Includes litigation settlements, water treatment accruals related to PFOA, employee separation costs and lease termination charges. 3 Total of (benefit from) provision for income taxes reconciles to the amount reported in the Interim Consolidated Statements of Operations for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017 and 2016 and for the three months ended June 30, 2017. GAAP Earnings per Share and Adjusted Earnings per Share Basic and Diluted Adjusted Net Income diluted earnings per share is calculated using Adjusted Net Income divided by diluted weighted-average common shares outstanding during each period, which includes unvested restricted shares. The table below shows a reconciliation of the numerator and denominator for basic and diluted earnings per share and adjusted earnings per share calculations for the periods indicated: Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, June 30, September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2017 2016 Numerator: Net income attributable to Chemours $ 207 $ 204 $ 161 $ 518 $ 237 Adjusted Net Income $ 214 $ 112 $ 166 $ 522 $ 173 Denominator: Weighted-average number of common shares outstanding - basic 185,431,036 181,596,161 185,069,436 184,641,599 181,452,194 Dilutive effect of the Company's employee compensation plans 1 6,206,778 1,932,395 6,057,203 5,909,015 1,089,738 Weighted-average number of common shares outstanding - diluted 1 191,637,814 183,528,556 191,126,639 190,550,614 182,541,932 Earnings per share - basic $ 1.12 $ 1.12 $ 0.87 $ 2.81 $ 1.31 Earnings per share - diluted 1 $ 1.08 $ 1.11 $ 0.84 $ 2.72 $ 1.30 Adjusted earnings per share - basic $ 1.15 $ 0.62 $ 0.90 $ 2.83 $ 0.95 Adjusted earnings per share - diluted 1 $ 1.12 $ 0.61 $ 0.87 $ 2.74 $ 0.95 1 Diluted earnings per share is calculated using net income available to common shareholders divided by diluted weighted-average common shares outstanding during each period, which includes unvested restricted shares. Diluted earnings per share considers the impact of potentially dilutive securities except in periods in which there is a loss because the inclusion of the potential common shares would have an anti-dilutive effect. The Chemours Company Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Financial Measures to GAAP Financial Measures (Unaudited) (Dollars in millions) 2017 Estimated GAAP Net Income to Estimated Adjusted EBITDA Tabular Reconciliation Estimated net income 1 $ 605 - 680 Provision for income taxes 1 2 195 - 220 Interest expense, net ~ 220 Depreciation and amortization ~ 280 Other reconciling items 1 3 ~ (0) Estimated Adjusted EBITDA 1 $ 1,300 - 1,400 1 Our estimates reflect our current visibility and expectations of market factors, such as but not limited to, currency movements, TiO 2 prices and end-market demand. Actual results could differ materially from the current estimates due to market factors and unknown or uncertainty of other factors, such as an estimate of non-operating pension benefit costs with respect to our foreign pension plans including settlements or curtailments, cost savings actions that may be taken in the future, the impact of currency movements on our results including exchange gains and losses and the related tax effects. 2 Provision for income tax is based on our current estimate of geographic mix of earnings and does not include potential tax effects of future discrete items. 3 Includes non-operating pension benefit income, exchange gains and losses, gain on sale of assets, restructuring and other charges recognized in the first half of 2017. GAAP Cash Flow Provided by Operating Activities to Free Cash Flow Tabular Reconciliation Three Months Ended Nine Months Ended September 30, June 30, September 30, 2017 2016 2017 2017 2016 Cash flow provided by operating activities 1 2 $ 112 $ 198 $ 183 $ 336 $ 324 Cash flow used for purchases of property, plant and equipment (108) (67) (69) (246) (235) Free Cash Flow $ 4 $ 131 $ 114 $ 90 $ 89 1 Cash flow provided by operating activities for the nine months ended September 30, 2017 and 2016 include the DuPont prepayment of $190 million received in the first quarter of 2016, of which $0 million and $93 million remain outstanding as of September 30, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Excluding the DuPont prepayment, Free Cash Flow for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 would have been negative $4 million. 2 Cash flow provided by operating activities for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017 include PFOA MDL settlement payments of $320 million and $335 million, respectively. Excluding the PFOA MDL settlement payments, Free Cash Flow for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017 would have been $324 million and $425 million, respectively. SOURCE The Chemours Company Related Links http://www.chemours.com LONDON, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hematologic Malignancies Market Analysis by Type (Leukemia, Lymphoma, Multiple Myeloma), By Therapy (Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy, Immunotherapy), And Segment Forecasts, 2014 - 2025 Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5171137 The global hematologic malignancies market is estimated to reach USD 85.8 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Increasing incidence of hematologic malignancies and presence of a strong product pipeline are estimated to boost the market. Moreover, increasing number of mergers and acquisitions are also expected to accelerate growth. Furthermore, governments of developing countries are spending more on healthcare and on improving healthcare infrastructure. This is likely to reduce out-of-pocket expenditure for patients. which is considered as one of the major factors driving the hematologic malignancies market. Recently it has been seen that the government sources are taking an initiative in funding the institutes for breakthrough oncology research. This is a major growth driver for the market as it will support the institutes to conduct their research on a larger-scale without any financial constraints. Federal government funding for research in oncology has led to a substantial development in cancer detection, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and quality of life for patients. Due to the advancement in cancer research, more patients with cancer are being successfully treated. The increasing investment in cancer research is expected to boost the growth of market during forecast period Further key findings from the report suggest: Multiple myeloma is expected to be one of the fastest growing segments over the forecast period owing to strong pipeline of blockbuster products Chronic myeloid leukemia was identified as the largest leukemia subtype in 2016 due to availability of large number of products and high number of target population Chemotherapy held the largest share in 2016 on the basis of therapy due to its preference as first line of therapy and wide product range Immunotherapy is anticipated to be the fastest growing segment and this can be attributed to lower adverse effects and higher efficiency North America dominated the market in 2016 owing to local presence of key players and increasing number of mergers and acquisitions Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing region over the next decade with lucrative CAGR from 2017 to 2025 due to improving economic conditions and rising healthcare expenditure Some of the key players are Pfizer, Inc.; F. Hoffmann-LA Roche Ltd; Sanofi; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; AbbVie, Inc.; Novartis AG; GlaxoSmithKline PLC; Celgene Corporation; Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc.; and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited Most of the key players are focusing on expanding their product portfolios, development of new treatment, and acquisitions. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5171137 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 Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com Global 250 Greenhouse Gas Emitters: A New Business Logic presents the latest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data from the world's 250 largest publicly traded emitters. The Global 250 is a group of businesses in the oil, gas, utility, automotive, aircraft, manufacturing, steel, mining and cement sectors. This report looks at best practices across the economy and aims to demonstrate the relationships between decarbonisation and long-term financial performance. This information is critical to investors and policymakers, alongside the demands for increased transparency and accurate and comparable performance metrics. Key findings include: This small group of companies are responsible for 1/3 of global annual emissions (including their value chains) and will help determine the fate of efforts to address climate change Comparing the relationship between multiyear decarbonisation trajectories and a broad set of financial performance metrics, there is no evidence of a trade-off between financial and environmental performance among the G250 Roughly 20% of the G250 have strategies in place to drive business transformations necessary to reduce their climate impacts A meaningful number of that 20% are demonstrating that their transformation strategies create real business value through cost structure improvements and new revenue growth opportunities, as well as risk mitigation New strategy centric metrics are introduced to better understand how firms can be assessed along their sector based decarbonisation pathways David Craig, President Financial and Risk, at Thomson Reuters, commented, "Firms that are transitioning to lower carbon business models are building competitive advantage and reputational equity for the long-term. Sustainability considerations in corporate strategic planning will be increasingly important to global economic prosperity and increasingly important to investors who are looking for this leadership." Erik Solhiem, head of UN Environment shared, "As global policymakers regulate to reduce emissions, going green is increasingly a requirement for doing business. The markets are moving rapidly, and the private sector is where some of the most exciting low-carbon innovations and new business opportunities are taking place. This leadership is essential to close the emissions gap and ensure long-term economic prosperity." Tim Nixon, Head of Sustainability Thought Leadership, at Thomson Reuters, and co-author for the report commented, "Current emission trends are flat when they should have been going down by roughly 3% per year. This delay in reduction will increase the cost and complexity of the required transformations in the future, and decreases the probability of meeting targets required for limiting disruptive climate events. The urgent commitment of non-state actors is critical." David Lubin, Co-Chairman and Managing Director of Constellation Research and Technology, remarks, "Our team has been at work with Thomson Reuters for more than two years developing a new framework for assessing the business value of sustainability strategies, including deep decarbonisation. This report reveals how leading firms climb the curve, exploiting a historic opportunity to enhance their competitiveness today and ready themselves to prosper in our fast approaching low carbon future." Lance Pierce, President of CDP North America, commented, "What's powerful about this report is it highlights in a new way what business leaders are doing to innovate and find a pathway to success in a carbon-constrained world. At CDP we are delighted to partner with Thomson Reuters and Constellation Research & Technology in helping show how the "Sustainability Premium" is real, and to pull back the curtain on the trend toward how the businesses of the future will be managing themselves." Patsy Doerr, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility & Inclusion, commented, "Providing clients with the information they need to do their jobs effectively is at the heart of what we do at Thomson Reuters. Every year, a rapidly increasing percentage of total managed assets are allocated to ESG investing. Analysts need to know which companies are operating responsibility so they can make smart investment decisions for the long haul." In collaboration with CDP, data for the report was gathered from publicly available GHG emissions data from businesses and from estimates either from CDP or Thomson Reuters environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) research data. Thomson Reuters ESG research data gathers standardized, objective, quantitative and qualitative ESG data from an estimated 5,000 publicly listed companies. View the full report here. About CDP CDP is an international non-profit that drives companies and governments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, safeguard water resources and protect forests. Voted number one climate research provider by investors and working with institutional investors with assets of US$100 trillion, we leverage investor and buyer power to motivate companies to disclose and manage their environmental impacts. Over 6,300 companies with some 55% of global market capitalization disclosed environmental data through CDP in 2017. This is in addition to the over 500 cities and 100 states and regions who disclosed, making CDP's platform one of the richest sources of information globally on how companies and governments are driving environmental change. CDP, formerly Carbon Disclosure Project, is a founding member of the We Mean Business Coalition. Please visit www.cdp.net or follow us @CDP to find out more. About Constellation Research & Technology CRT is a newly launched enterprise founded in 2016 by a team of experts in the fields of business analytics, sustainability strategy and metrics, and data science. Founded by Dr. David Lubin, and Yale University Professors Dan Esty and Jay Emerson, Constellation Research and Technology seeks to both improve the quality and reliability of ESG data, and pioneer new, business strategy centric measures of sustainability performance. CRT brought its Maturity-Momentum (M2) Model to the G250 Report applying 'maturity curve modelling' and dynamic 'momentum' analysis to the climate impact assessment. Visit https://www.constellationresearch.com/ Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of news and information for professional markets. Our customers rely on us to deliver the intelligence, technology and expertise they need to find trusted answers. The business has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges (symbol: TRI). For more information, visit www.thomsonreuters.com. Contacts Noelle Campbell Senior Director, Corporate Affairs Thomson Reuters Email:[email protected] Phone: 646-223-4558 Camilla Lyngsby Media and Communications CDP Email: [email protected] Phone number: 646-668-4184 SOURCE Thomson Reuters Related Links http://www.thomsonreuters.com TEWKSBURY, Mass., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Thrive, a leading provider of next generation managed services, proudly announced today that John Panzica has joined the company as its new head of sales. Mr. Panzica has successfully led winning sales and marketing teams for more than 25 years with a strong track record of delivering consultative, technology solutions revenue growth. Prior to joining Thrive, Mr. Panzica most recently served as a senior vice president at vXchnge, where he helped the company evangelize the cloud enabled ecosystem segment, resulting in more than $20M in annualized sales. Prior to vXchnge, Mr. Panzica was the senior vice president of sales and marketing at FiberMedia (acquired by vXchnge) and was responsible for the re-launch of the company's sales and marketing efforts. John was also the founder and vice president of the financial services practice at Switch and Data where he architected a business catering to high frequency trading, low latency market data and proximity trading, closing more than $12M in revenue in just over one year. Mr. Panzica also held senior level sales management positions at InterNAP, MCI and AmeriPak. "I'm elated to be joining a great executive management team," said Panzica. "Thrive is building something special with unique cloud enablement, cyber security and next generation mission critical services that will provide much needed innovation to the managed services industry. I look forward to continuing upon the company's recent successes and helping our team soar to even higher heights." "We're very excited to have John join our executive team," said Rob Stephenson, Thrive's CEO. "John is a proven executive with a strong track record of delivering consultative solutions that provide our customers with direct, measurable benefits. John will be a tremendous asset to Thrive in both his sales leadership and overall executive leadership roles." Mr. Panzica will be based in New York City, working side by side with Chief Strategy Officer, Marc Pantoni, after Thrive's recent acquisition of Precision IT. About Thrive Thrive is a leading next generation managed services provider. The Thrive technology solutions suite utilizes Cloud, Cyber Security, Networking, Disaster Recovery and other pioneering managed services to help compliance-driven businesses solve complex IT issues. Founded in 2001, Thrive's mandate is to provide exceptional support though its advanced MSP tools, highly trained engineering teams and a fervent dedication to customer success. Thrive was acquired by M/C Partners (www.mcpartners.com) in 2016 as a Northeast United States growth platform to service the Financial Services, Healthcare, Biotech, Life Sciences and regional Banking verticals. In developing this new technology services ecosystem, Thrive will be uniquely positioned to offer compliance-based solutions to its vertically focused client base. To learn more, visit Thrive's new and improved website www.ThriveNetworks.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. For media inquiries, please contact Brian J. Hawthorne Vice President of Marketing 781-352-5522 [email protected] SOURCE Thrive Related Links https://www.thrivenetworks.com NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The leadership of the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), President Paul T. Conway and Vice President and Chair of Public Policy Richard Knight, were honored together as recipients of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) 2017 President's Medal. The Medal was presented by ASN President Eleanor D. Lederer, MD, FASN in New Orleans at Kidney Week, the world's premier and largest nephrology meeting on November 2, 2017. "Both gentlemen are tireless, effective champions passionate about raising public awareness for kidney diseases," said ASN President Eleanor D. Lederer, MD, FASN. "Their contributions to the ASN mission in the advocacy and policy arenas are substantial and consequential, specifically regarding the Kidney Health Initiative, Nephrologists Transforming Dialysis Safety, and annual congressional visits." Conway and Knight were recognized for significantly bettering the lives of the 40 million Americans affected by kidney diseases through their years of leadership in numerous patient organizations, in support of professional medical associations, and their encouragement of greater patient engagement with the Federal government and the United States Congress. Mr. Conway has managed kidney disease for the past 37 years, including two years of peritoneal dialysis and, for the past 20 years, with a kidney transplant that he received in 1997 from a non-living donor via life-saving transplant surgery at the Virginia Commonwealth University/Medical College of Virginia (VCU/MCV) Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Knight has been dealing with renal disease since 1996. He was diagnosed in 2004 as a mid-career professional, and after two years of hemodialysis, he received his life-saving kidney transplant surgery at the Washington Hospital Transplant Center in Washington, D.C. Prior ASN President's Medal recipients have included Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and former Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington state in recognition of their respective roles as Co-Chairs of the U.S. Congressional Kidney Caucus and their efforts as champions of kidney-related legislation. Comedian and ABC and HBO television star George Lopez, a kidney transplant recipient, has also received the ASN President's Medal for his efforts to raise awareness about kidney disease and the need for more organ donors. "Paul T. Conway and Richard Knight are tireless advocates for the millions of people with kidney diseases, their families, and their caregivers," said ASN Executive Vice President Tod Ibrahim. "This dynamic duo takes every opportunity to raise awareness about kidney diseases among the public, policymakers, politicians, and the press. In addition, they help lead the kidney community's efforts to advocate for the highest quality care possibleincluding increased funding for kidney researchamong the legislative and regulatory branches of the U.S. government." Established in 1966, and with more than 17,000 members from around the globe, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) is the world's largest organization of kidney health professionals. ASN has been leading the fight to prevent, treat, and cure kidney diseases throughout the world by educating health professionals and scientists, advancing research and innovation, communicating new knowledge, and advocating for the highest quality care for patients. Upon acceptance of the award, AAKP President Paul T. Conway said "The ASN President's Medal is recognized throughout the world and among kidney professionals as a distinct and high professional honor, and I am sincerely humbled by the decision of ASN leadership. Every life has purpose and meaning and I am forever grateful to the brave organ donor whose selfless act saved my life. The fight to advance policies that facilitate, as opposed to inhibit, innovations aimed at aiding kidney patients is noble because the pre-existing and chronic conditions they suffer interfere with the innate human desire to pursue opportunity and to achieve aspiration." Richard Knight stated, "I am humbled and honored to receive the President's Medal from ASN. This award represents the gold standard all over the world for service to renal patients. I am blessed with an excellent quality of life because of the work done by the professionals within ASN. I am grateful to be able to contribute to the improvement in the life of the millions of patients who suffer from this disease. We are all focused on making patient centered care a reality. The professionals within the healthcare community are dedicated to helping patients exceed the limits placed on them by this disease. I can do no less. We must go forward together - ASN's leadership truly matters." Under Conway and Knight's leadership, AAKP has greatly expanded its national reach and capacity to positively impact public policies through the creation of the Center for Patient Engagement and Advocacy and the Center for Patient Research and Education. The two centers leverage AAKP national relationships with key influencers and facilitate greater online and grassroots patient involvement in policy, government, patient-centric innovation efforts, clinical trials, focus groups and research studies. AAKP has emerged as a key ally and central player for professional medical societies, providers, developers and researchers seeking to involve more patients in the design of new diagnostics, devices and biologics. Paul T. Conway AAKP President Mr. Conway is a Virginia resident and alumnus of the University of Maine and maintains deep roots in Maine. As a national policy and communications consultant, he combines his patient experience with a substantial career in national and state public service and advocacy. He has served under four U.S. presidents and three governors and in support of five presidential transitions. He was recently named by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as the Chair of the new FDA Patient Engagement and Advocacy Committee (PEAC) and just appointed by the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) as a Patient Voice Editor. His past Federal posts includes service as a Chief of Staff at both the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and as an agency Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. At DHS, he was awarded the DHS Secretary's Silver Medal by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff for exceptionally meritorious service to America. He has also worked as a Special Assistant in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and in several appointed posts in the Commonwealth of Virginia, including Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources. He serves as a board member in multiple patient and consumer groups including the Kidney Health Initiative (KHI), the United Network for Organ Sharing Kidney Committee (UNOS) the Center for Dialysis Innovation (CDI) at the University of Washington is the Chair of the national Patient Access to Pain Relief Coalition (PAPR). He has co-chaired several technical evaluation panels on health quality measures and metrics for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Richard Knight, MBA AAKP Vice President and Chair of Public Policy Mr. Knight is a Maryland resident and an alumnus of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and Hampton University. He is a Washington, DC, area small business owner and consultant for healthcare organizations and health-related organizations and businesses. In addition to his experience as a kidney patient and transplant recipient, Mr. Knight has a deep background in public policy. He was recently appointed to the National Institutes of Health (NIH/National Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Advisory Council and the Steering Committee of the NIDDK Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP). His past policy roles have included posts on Capitol Hill where including service as a legislative director, a liaison to the Congressional Black Caucus and as a legislative and communications strategist. He has served on numerous Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) technical evaluation panels, including CMS's panel focusing on Emergency Department Hospital Readmissions. He is a founding member of the End Stage Renal Disease Health Information Technology Project administered by the National Renal Administrators Association and the End Stage Renal Disease Forum. Among his other council positions, Mr. Knight's most recent appointments are to the National Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Advisory Council and the Steering Committee of the NIDDK Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Founded in 1969, AAKP is the largest and oldest independent kidney patient advocacy and education organization in America. Governed by a patient-majority Board of Directors, AAKP conducts national education programs designed to better inform kidney patients and policy-makers about the true impacts of kidney disease. AAKP executes a national advocacy strategy to raise the patient voice before the Executive Branch and the U.S. Congress. Tax-deductible contributions can be made through AAKP's website, www.aakp.org. Follow AAKP on social media at: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kidneypatient, Twitter and Instagram: @kidneypatients FOR MORE Information: Deborah Pelaez Marketing & Communications Manager (800) 749-AAKP [email protected] SOURCE American Association of Kidney Patients Related Links http://www.aakp.org LANGLEY, BC, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Trinity Western University announces plans to build an interpretive trail and boardwalk at its Blaauw Eco Forest bio-geography field station in Langley, B.C. that will enhance field study opportunities for biology and environmental studies students now and in the future. Since the Blaauw Eco Forest was gifted to the university in 2013, environmental studies students have discovered 336 species in the forest including the red-legged frog and Pacific sideband snail, both are species at risk. Thanks to today's financial gift of $125,000 from the Blaauw family, the university is able to construct an interpretive trail and boardwalk in the 35-acre nature reserve that will improve access to the field research area and enhance the visitor experience for the local community. The interpretive trail and boardwalk is expected to be completed by the summer of 2018. "This is an exciting addition for TWU. The Blaauw Eco Forest is conveniently close to campus, making it a great learning place for students," says Dr. David Clements, co-chair of TWU's Department of Geography and Environment. "This prime research area, together with our field school on Salt Spring Island and other travel studies opportunities, offer our students a unique, hands-on field-based program in environmental studies. The Blaauw family's generous gift will provide much improved access for students and visitors alike, as well as helping to protect the sensitive wetland habitat." TWU's Salt Spring Island field station, Crow's Nest Ecological Reserve Area (CNERA), provides students with an opportunity to spend a month on the island with hands-on learning in plants and marine life. The CNERA features examples of highly diverse Garry Oak meadow ecosystems one of the most threatened ecosystems anywhere in Canada. "We had to build everything here from the ground up and we did it in a sustainable way," says Chris Hall, TWU's Outdoor Lab Supervisor. Interview opportunities: Dr. David Clements, Co-chair of the Department of Geography and Environment at TWU, can speak to The Blaauw Eco Forest The Crow's Nest Ecological Reserve Area Environmental studies Beth Guirr, a recent TWU graduate now attending CDI College, says her biology field work directly influenced her career direction in alternative medical therapy. She is concurrently working for TWU sharing her knowledge of non-vascular plants with current students. Beth studied the Blaauw Eco Forest extensively and can speak to: The role field work played in guiding her career direction SOURCE Trinity Western University "Scott brings a keen business acumen to the creatively charged marketing process," said Suchit Bachalli, Chief Executive Officer at Unilog. "His wealth of experience in building B2B brands is invaluable to Unilog. These are exciting times for our company and to have a leader of this caliber is a win for Unilog." Frymire has more than 20 years of experience with business-to-business software companies. His experience includes 16 years of marketing ERP solutions and services to the wholesale distribution market for companies such as Prophet 21, Activant Solutions, and Epicor Software. Prior to Unilog, Frymire held marketing leadership positions with hyper-growth companies in the IT performance monitoring market, including ScienceLogic and SevOne. Over the past five years, he focused on the evolution of cloud adoption, software-defined data centers, and the Internet of Things while engaging with many Fortune 500 enterprises, top-tier wireless and broadband service providers, and global Managed Services Providers. Throughout his career, Frymire has contributed to business growth by helping companies mature their marketing strategies, teams, and capabilities. "I have a passion for working in environments where growth expectations are high," said Frymire. "That's what attracted me to Unilog. I look forward to applying my marketing experience and industry knowledge as Unilog unleashes new innovations in B2B eCommerce." About Unilog Unilog is a global technology and services company that specializes in e-commerce solutions and enriched product catalogs for the B2B marketplace. With its United States headquarters in the Philadelphia suburb of Wayne, Pa., and international headquarters in Bangalore, India, Unilog is an ISO 9001:2008- and ISO 8000-certified company that employs more than 500 people. For more information, visit www.unilogcorp.com. SOURCE Unilog Related Links https://www.unilogcorp.com. Addition of North Reno Creek adds further scale to an already large, fully permitted, and construction ready ISR project located in the United States . . North Reno Creek falls within UEC's existing permitting boundary at Reno Creek, allowing for integrated development. Increases Reno Creek's combined Measured and Indicated resource by 20%, based upon Uranerz's previously reported NI 43-101 Measured and Indicated resource of 3.8 million tons grading 0.056% U 3 O 8 yielding 4.3 million lbs at North Reno Creek. UEC plans to engage a qualified person to compete the necessary work to incorporate the North Reno Creek resource estimate into the Company's Reno Creek Project and complete an updated technical report under NI 43-101.* O yielding 4.3 million lbs at North Reno Creek. UEC plans to engage a qualified person to compete the necessary work to incorporate the North Reno Creek resource estimate into the Company's Reno Creek Project and complete an updated technical report under NI 43-101.* Opportunities to enhance UEC's development of Reno Creek by optimizing the mine plan to remove the effects of property boundaries that had previously separated mineralized roll-fronts on both properties. In particular, significant synergies exist in co-development at both the North Reno Creek Resource Unit and the Southwest Reno Creek Resource Unit, which are expected to be the first units developed within the project area. Further augments UEC's footprint in the strategic Powder River Basin in Wyoming , a uranium mining-friendly state with excellent infrastructure and an experienced labor force. Amir Adnani, President & CEO, stated: "We believe this transaction creates excellent value for our shareholders. The acquisition of North Reno Creek removes previous property boundary constraints, which historically prevented previous owners from realizing the full potential of this uranium district. We expect to realize significant project synergies in the consolidated development of Reno Creek, which will be reflected in a new and optimized pre-feasibility study ("PFS") which is expected to be completed by UEC next year.** Development of this strategically important ISR asset can now move forward in the most efficient manner as a single combined project, with shared infrastructure, processing and operating facilities." Transaction Details The Company will provide to Uranerz the following purchase price consideration at the closing of the Agreement: (a) $2,940,000 in cash; and (b) $2,450,000 in common shares of UEC (each, a "UEC Share"), with the number of UEC Shares to be calculated based on a deemed issuance price per UEC Share based on the volume weighted average price of UEC's common shares on the NYSE American for the five trading days immediately prior to (but not including) the closing date of the Agreement. North Reno Creek ISR Project Overview The North Reno Creek ISR Project is located in the Powder River Basin, Campbell County, Wyoming, approximately 80 miles northeast of Casper. Substantial historical exploration, development and project permitting were performed on the North Reno Creek property. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the mid-1980s, Rocky Mountain Energy ("RME"), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad, drilled more than 800 exploration drill holes on the North Reno Creek property. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, RME successfully operated and restored and reclaimed a uranium ISR pilot plant. Subsequently, RME nearly completed permitting and licensing for a commercial scale ISR facility. In 1992, the Reno Creek Project was acquired by Energy Fuels, Inc. (EFI) from RME. Over the next decade EFI and its successor, International Uranium Corporation (now Denison Mines), continued to advance the project toward full permitting and licensing. Subsequently, Rio Algom and Power Resources held the project until dropping all of their interests in 2003. Between 2006 and 2008, Uranerz acquired mineral and surface land interests covering approximately 1280 acres of fee mineral leases and federal mining claims comprising the North Reno Creek Project. In October 2010, Uranerz issued an NI 43-101 technical report titled "Technical Report, Reno Creek Property, Campbell County, Wyoming, U.S.A", dated October 13, 2010 (the "Technical Report"). The Technical Report, prepared by Douglass Graves, P.E. of Trec, Inc., in accordance with NI 43-101, outlined a Measured and Indicated resource of 3.8 million tons containing 4.29 million pounds of U3O8 at a grade of 0.056 percent. In addition, they reported an Inferred resource of 190,000 tons containing 142,200 pounds of U3O8 at a grade of 0.039 percent. The Technical Report is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.* The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in NI 43-101 and was reviewed by Clyde L. Yancey, P.G., Vice President-Exploration for the Company, a Qualified Person under NI 43-101. Advisors and Counsel Haywood Securities Inc. is acting as financial advisor to the Company and McMillan LLP and Holland & Hart LLP are acting as legal advisors to the Company. About Uranium Energy Corp. Uranium Energy Corp. is a U.S.-based uranium mining and exploration company. The Company's fully-licensed Hobson Processing Facility is central to all of its projects in South Texas, including the Palangana ISR mine, the permitted Goliad ISR project and the development-stage Burke Hollow ISR project. Additionally, the Company controls a pipeline of advanced-stage projects in Arizona, Colorado and Paraguay. The Company's operations are managed by professionals with a recognized profile for excellence in their industry, a profile based on many decades of hands-on experience in the key facets of uranium exploration, development and mining. Stock Exchange Information: NYSE American: UEC Frankfurt Stock Exchange Symbol: U6Z WKN: AJDRR ISN: US916896103 *Notice to U.S. Investors The mineral resources referred to herein have been estimated in accordance with the definition standards on mineral resources of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum referred to in NI 43-101 and are not compliant with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") Industry Guide 7 guidelines. In addition, measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources, while recognized and required by Canadian regulations, are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and are normally not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Accordingly, we have not reported them in the United States. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral resources in these categories will ever be converted into mineral reserves. These terms have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. In particular, it should be noted that mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources will ever be upgraded to a higher category. In accordance with Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of the reported measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources referred to herein are economically or legally mineable. **PFS Upon the closing of the transaction the Company plans to complete a new and optimized PFS based substantially on the information provided in its current and to be updated technical reports. Accordingly, the current PFS cannot be relied upon and should not be construed to reflect a current PFS in accordance with NI 43-101. Safe Harbor Statement Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented in this news release constitutes "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans, "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as "forward-looking statements". Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, the actual results of exploration activities, variations in the underlying assumptions associated with the estimation or realization of mineral resources, the availability of capital to fund programs and the resulting dilution caused by the raising of capital through the sale of shares, accidents, labor disputes and other risks of the mining industry including, without limitation, those associated with the environment, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, permits or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this news release and in any document referred to in this news release. Certain matters discussed in this news release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Federal securities laws. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. SOURCE Uranium Energy Corp Related Links http://www.uraniumenergy.com/ PITTSBURGH, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The United Steelworkers (USW) today congratulated Variety the Children's Charity on the eve of its 90th Annual Gala to be held Friday at Heinz Field and thanked the organization for its dedicated service to families in the Pittsburgh region. Variety Pittsburgh serves 54 counties in Pennsylvania and West Virginia by providing adaptive strollers, bikes and communication devices that enable disabled children and their families to enjoy activities that they would not otherwise. USW International President Leo W. Gerard, who will be honored with the 2017 Catherine Variety Sheridan Humanitarian Award at the gala, said that the charity's My Stroller, My Bike and My Voice programs have made a huge difference for thousands of families in the Pittsburgh region, including those of union members. "In the communities hardest hit by job losses due to unfair trade, too many families with disabled children feel the additional isolation of poverty," Gerard said. "When given the opportunity to show these families that they are not alone and to change a child's life for the better, we must act on it every time." Gerard credited Variety Pittsburgh CEO Charles LaVallee for uniting a wide range of organizations and individuals to benefit those in need, citing the inclusion of labor and business leaders as well as former governors from both political parties at Friday's event. "Variety's longevity and success prove that we can still find common ground without regard to the superficial differences often used to polarize us," Gerard said. "The USW is proud to be part of this diverse coalition dedicated to giving children new experiences and empowering their families to realize new possibilities." Founded in Pittsburgh in 1927, Variety has grown into an international organization with a network of 42 offices in 13 countries and has raised over $2 billion to help children in need. The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations. More information, contact: Tony Montana (412) 562-2592 or [email protected] SOURCE United Steelworkers (USW) Related Links http://www.usw.org That dream became reality on Oct. 31 when The Princeton Review ranked the University of Vermont Grossman School of Business' Sustainable Innovation MBA program No. 1 on its 2018 list of "Best Green MBA" programs . UVM took over the top spot from the University of Oregon, which dropped to No. 4 behind second-place Yale and Portland State, followed by No. 5 Stanford. The decision to replace a traditional 38-year-old MBA program with the nation's first one-year AACSB-accredited MBA focused entirely on sustainable innovation seemed risky, but according to Sharma, was perfect timing. A growing demand by companies seeking managers to convert global sustainability challenges into business opportunities for triple bottom line performance a measure of a company's financial, social and environmental impact was undeniable. "We were fortunate that the Vermont brand and UVM's strengths and identity resonated with the sustainability ethos," says Sharma. "While it was a major risk for the school, we decided to take a big leap and go 'all in' because we were convinced that the future of business education was to educate managers for tomorrow so that they could develop profitable business solutions to societal needs and demands for the next 50 years." The "Best Green MBA" rankings are based on students' assessments of how well their school is preparing them in environmental/sustainability and social responsibility issues, and for a career in a green job market. The Grossman School of Business' Sustainable Innovation MBA was also included in The Princeton Review's list of the 267 Outstanding On-Campus MBA programs. This list was based on data from surveys of 23,000 students attending the schools and of administrators at the graduate schools. Worldwide practicums with top companies, access to exclusive job network set program apart A number of aspects of UVM's Sustainable Innovation MBA set it apart from other programs. The course curriculum, based entirely on sustainability and innovation, is delivered by world class faculty in this arena under four modules: foundations of management; building a sustainable enterprise; growing a sustainable enterprise; and focusing on sustainability. Following coursework, students engage in a three-month practicum a capstone experiential project to address issues such as poverty, climate change, and the environment with companies like PepsiCo, 1% For the Planet, Philips, Ingersoll Rand, Burton, Keurig, and Facebook. Students traveled to India, Mexico, Ghana, Brazil, Denmark, China, Kenya, and Guatemala to complete practicums, which have led to sustainability and innovation-related jobs at Ben & Jerry's, King Arthur Flour, Pottery Barn, Seventh Generation and others. Students also have access to a new career management system called "Launch" designed to propel them into careers in renewable energy, clean tech, affordable health care, inclusive business, entrepreneurship within larger companies, start-ups, and other innovative ventures. The program's Changemaker Network, composed of more than 125 companies and individuals focused on sustainable business, puts students in direct contact with mentors who help them land jobs within the program's condensed 12-month format. "We devote one hundred percent of our energy to creating a robust back end that injects people into an opportunity network that helps students realize their personal and professional dreams," says professor and Sustainable Innovation MBA co-director Stuart Hart, the world's leading authority on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. "If you are a student interested in figuring out how to use the power of business and enterprise to make a positive impact on the world, that's all we do." The Princeton Review ranking comes on the heels of a No. 8 ranking by Corporate Knights a Toronto-based media and research company focused on clean capitalism in its "Better World MBA Rankings." The UVM program moved up two spots from last year and is now ranked third among U.S. schools, trailing only Duquesne University and MIT's Sloan School of Management. Corporate Knights ranks programs based on the number of core courses, institutes and centers, and faculty research produced in the last three years related to sustainability, including corporate responsibility, human rights, and ethics. "We are excited to teach and help launch the next generation of innovative leaders who will create the kinds of transformative sustainable business models and strategies that the world demands," says professor and co-director David Jones. "We are also honored to have our unique MBA program recognized by these organizations after just our third cohort of graduates." CONTACT: Jeffrey Wakefield, 1-802-578-8830, [email protected] SOURCE University of Vermont WTF asks the big questions such as, "What if Millennials are never able to afford homeownership?" New research from Ipsos shows that more than eight in 10 millennials still aspire to own a home and specifically a detached single-family home. But the home ownership rate is falling for this generation. If that doesn't change What will that mean for industries ranging from finance to consumer packaged goods, to home furnishings? How can marketers create products and messaging to address these changes? How can cities and governments create impactful policies that address important housing issues? "What the Future is a question we need to ask because the future doesn't care if we're thinking about it. It is coming regardless," said Oscar Yuan, president of Ipsos Strategy3. "We hope the questions we ask and the trends we unpack in this report will inspire the creativity needed to solve our country's housing future." Ipsos convened five experts from varying perspectives to ask what data we might need five or ten years from now that we should gather today. The experts include an economist, mayor, urban theorist, home retailer and a futurist. WTF Experts: Richard Florida , urban theorist and author of "New Urban Class" , urban theorist and author of "New Urban Class" Mary Lunghi , head of market intelligence for IKEA , head of market intelligence for IKEA Rodney Harrell , director, livable communities for AARP's Public Policy Institute , director, livable communities for AARP's Public Policy Institute Amy Webb , founder of the Future Today Institute and author , founder of the Future Today Institute and author Lawrence Yun , chief economist of National Association of Realtors (NAR) , chief economist of National Association of Realtors (NAR) Paul Soglin , mayor of Madison, Wisconsin Millennials and the Urban Crisis How will millennials' values and financial circumstances impact housing now and in the future? Millennials find themselves beset by student debt and many came of age during a weak job market and housing crash. Yet, American adults under 35 years of age make up the largest share of the housing market and 76 percent of millennials said they delayed homeownership due to student load debt, according to the National Association of Realtors. The data shows a preference to buy, but financial barriers prevent them from saving for a down payment or getting a mortgage. "The aspiration numbers today are encouraging, but they could change if people believe it will become nearly impossible to attain their dream," said Yun, chief economist, NAR. In addition, young, talented millennials continue wanting to live in city centers with its urban amenities such as cultural vibrancy, transportation and economic opportunity, but they're deterred by rising prices and competition for urban space. Meanwhile, suburban sprawl costs the U.S. economy roughly $600 billion a year related to inefficient land use and car dependency and another $400 billion indirectly from traffic congestion and pollution, according to a 2015 study from the London School of Economics. "Cities must strike a balance between offering a sufficient and diversified share of public amenities and making sure all residents have access to these resources," said Richard Florida, urban theorist and author of New Urban Class. Future of Home How will your house make your daily life easier? Several trends impacting home living right now will shape future home design. According to a recent Ipsos survey, millennials identified automated cleaning, like vacuuming robots or shower cleaners, as their top choice of innovation that would make their lives easier. In addition, smart homes and automation will impact home product design. "We want to understand the direction your home life is taking. Do you envision a smart home in your future? If you do, we have to figure out how to work with that. That feeds into our innovation and product design," said Lunghi of IKEA. Urbanization has already led builders and developers to rethink home spaces given the smaller sizes in urban areas. The "fluid home" offers multi-functionality through the house. For example, the kitchen has always been the heart of the home, but increasingly is used beyond traditional functionality. It's a gathering place for entertaining, a space for working from home or doing homework. Future kitchen design will need to accommodate this behavior. A new Ipsos survey shows the kitchen (23%) as the number one room people want to remodel in their home, ahead of the bathroom (19%) and the living room (17%). America's Aging Population As people grow older, will their homes support their changing needs? By 2060, nearly 100 million Americans will be older than 65, double what it is today and the vast majority of older adults (85%, according to recent Ipsos study) want to stay in their homes and communities as they age. This has implications on the future of housing given that homes today largely don't support mobility for the elderly. "The problem is you can't create a new housing stock overnight, so we have to start working now," said Harrell of AARP. "Nobody should be forced from their home because it doesn't work for them." Factors from the Fringe What trends outside of the housing industry will have an impact on housing in the future? Futurist Amy Webb checks in "from the fringe" identifying forces that will shape where housing heads next, including the following: Climate change, extreme weather and its impact on migration away from populous U.S. coasts Underground farming techniques that could make places like Oklahoma a "hot spot" in the future a "hot spot" in the future "Landscrapers" a new building trend for commercial structures being longer and lower Autonomous vehicles allowing longer commutes to be more realistic and productive Explore the full report at on GenPop at https://gen-pop.com/ along with articles about people and what make them tick. Each article is grounded in research and layered with perspective, examples, insights and stories. Methodology Ipsos study conducted August 16 to August 18, 2017 among 2,031 adults. Full methodology can be found at Ipsos.com About Ipsos Ipsos is an independent market research company controlled and managed by research professionals. Founded in France in 1975, Ipsos has grown into a worldwide research group with a strong presence in all key markets. Ipsos ranks fourth in the global research industry. With offices in 88 countries, Ipsos delivers insightful expertise across five research specializations: brand, advertising and media; customer loyalty; marketing; public affairs research; and survey management. Ipsos researchers assess market potential and interpret market trends. They develop and build brands. They help clients build long-term relationships with their customers. They test advertising and study audience responses to various media and they measure public opinion around the globe. Ipsos has been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange since 1999 and generated global revenues of 1,782.7 million in 2016. Contacts: Matt Carmichael, Ipsos 312.526.4786 [email protected] Michael Cowen, MSL PR 312-220-3953 [email protected] SOURCE Ipsos Related Links https://www.ipsos.com/en CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wolfram technologies have long been a major force in many areas of industry and research. Leaders in organizations and institutions have played a major role in pushing the boundaries of how the Wolfram technology stack helps a growing diversity of fields, disciplines and industries succeed through innovation. Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram recognized nine such recipients with the Wolfram Innovator Award at the Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Illinois. "It's fun to create this stuff, but it's perhaps even more fun to see all the impressive ways people use it," Wolfram said. This year's winners include: For developing a customized framework in Mathematica with over 800 new Wolfram Language functions: Youngjoo Chung, a professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, where he and his student researchers use the Wolfram Language for symbolic computing in mathematical physics. For creating an optimized computer vision algorithm in the Wolfram Language: Massimo Fazio, a professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham's School of Medicine, where he uses the Wolfram Language for optical coherence tomography and image processing in ophthalmological applications. For innovating new classes of vehicle systems using Wolfram SystemModeler: David Milner, a senior research engineer at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), where he uses Wolfram technologies for systems modeling and simulation in mechanical engineering applications for military combat vehicles. For developing educational digital humanities curricula using computational thinking and the Wolfram Language: Peter Nilsson, the director of research, innovation and outreach at Deerfield Academy, where he teaches English and developed the first high-school-level digital humanities course using the Wolfram Language. For using Wolfram SystemModeler and Mathematica for high-performance computing and minimizing risk: C. Christopher Reed, an applied mathematician at the Aerospace Corporation, where he uses Wolfram technologies for modeling and simulating structural engineering projects. For implementing inventive trading workflows using Wolfram Finance Platform: Tarkeshwar Singh, a software engineer and quantitative analyst at Quiet Light Securities who brought high-performance Wolfram technologies into workflows for the support of financial derivative trading operations. For implementing the Wolfram Language in high-volume data analysis for optimal health outcomes: Marco Thiel, a personal chair at the University of Aberdeen and affiliated with the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, where he uses Wolfram technologies in academic research, collaboration with industry and university teaching. For building a cutting-edge enterprise analytics and reporting system in the Wolfram Language: Andrew Yule, an oil- and gas-flow assurance specialist at Assured Flow Solutions, where he developed an internal toolkit written entirely in the Wolfram Language that is deployed to his colleagues through Wolfram Enterprise CDF technologies and used by everyone in the company. For modernizing mathematics education and improving student test scores using Wolfram technologies: The Mathematical Methods Computer-Based Exam System Team at the Victoria Curriculum and Assessment Authority, which uses Wolfram products to help students use technology to improve learning outcomes. The award was accepted by David Leigh-Lancaster, mathematics curriculum manager. Winners are nominated by Wolfram Research employees and selected by a panel of experts. About Wolfram Research Wolfram is the company where computation meets knowledge. A leader in scientific and technical innovation, Wolfram continues to build toward a future where sophisticated computation and knowledge-based programming are universally accessible. Combined, the new Wolfram Language, Wolfram Engine and Wolfram Cloud will make possible a computable model of the worldin essence, a global brain. Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, the world's foremost technical computing program; Wolfram|Alpha, the widely used computable knowledge engine; and the Computable Document Format (CDF), the interactive core technology behind digital content offerings by all major STEM publishers. Learn more at wolfram.com. SOURCE Wolfram Research Related Links http://www.wolfram.com The two-day auction was filled with live bidders, as well as online and absentee bidders from the Far East, South America and Europe. Top lots included DRC Romanee-Conti, several lots of which set American auction records: three bottles of Romanee Conti 2012 (lot 988) sold for $41,820 and three bottles of the 2012 (lot 989) sold for $44,280. Twelve bottles of Rousseau Chambertin 2010 (lot 1716) set a world auction record by selling for $34,440. Additional lots of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti were top performers, with 45 lots realizing $525,087, surpassing the pre-auction high estimate of $444,500. A total of 717 lots, nearly half of the auction, sold above their pre-auction high estimates, and 49 lots sold for over $10,000. "We were thrilled with the results of our inaugural D.C. auction, as was the Capital Collector himself, who joined us for both days in the sale room. The prices for rare Burgundy like DRC, Ramonet, Rousseau, Mugnier were strong, and we can't wait to bring the energy back to New York for our Holiday Auction on December 1 and 2," added Zachys' President Jeff Zacharia. In addition, as part of Zachys' California Strong initiative, Zachys will donate $12,305, 100% of the buyer's premium from California lots sold, to California wildfire relief. The company as a whole reached their $25,000 goal, and all proceeds will be split amongst the three noted charities. Zachys' next auction, The Holiday Auction, Fine and Rare, will be held in New York on December 1 and 2 at Smith & Wollensky. Guests can reserve their seat by emailing auction[at]zachys[dot]com. For more, visit https://auction.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. CONTACT Genna Cappellini 914.874.8082 [email protected] SOURCE Zachys Related Links https://www.zachys.com/what-makes-zachys-different?utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=1710DC&utm_content=DC_PostAuction_Release_About Total retail stock in Poland was 13.5 million sq m by the end of September 2017 (including 9.6 million sq m in shopping centres). In Q3 2017, the market grew by 145,000 sq m (including 134,000 sq m in shopping centres alone). The biggest projects delivered to market in the [] If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. The Bank Street Book Festival, an annual gathering of authors, illustrators, educators, and other childrens book professionals was held at Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan on October 28. The event featured a full day of panel discussions on topics relating to childrens literature and a keynote address from author Carmen Agra Deedy. David Wiesner (Flotsam), Jerry Pinkney (The Lion & the Mouse), and Barbara Lehman (The Red Book) spoke about crafting wordless picture books; Stephen Savage (Wheres Walrus?) served as moderator. The speakers discussed their processes, the challenges and power of visual storytelling, and how the experience of reading wordless picture books differs from reading books with words. Savage kicked off the panel, sharing how he turned to The Red Book, The Lion & the Mouse, and Flotsam when he was creating his own wordless book, Wheres Walrus?. Amazingly, the creators of these books are on the stage with me today, he said. He also commented that he feels the term wordless is insufficient to describe the work of the three authors. After all, would you call a symphony wordless music? Pinkney had a suggestion: Lets just call them picture books! He went on to describe his process for creating The Lion & the Mouse. Pinkney hadnt started out with the intention of creating a story without words, but as he was making the storyboard, he realized that the pictures were already conveying the story. I didnt think it needed words, he said. In fact, the cover for The Lion & the Mouse doesnt even have wordsthe imposing gaze of Pinkneys lion invites readers in instead. Lehman did initially write The Red Book with words, but found that, conceptually, the story wasnt unfolding as she wanted it to. Once she began focusing on telling the story just in pictures instead, it became a very intriguing puzzle that played itself out on the page. Lehman believes that wordless books have the merit of being uniquely accessible to all readers, regardless of language or age. For Weisner, wordless storytelling has long felt organic to him: after all, pictures were his first language. He had written drafts of Flotsam with text, but found that it truly flowed out with pictures. The panelists discussed the cues that art gives to the reader in place of wordsfor example, when readers ought to turn the page. Wiesner accomplishes this by building anticipation visually and being cognizant of how readers eyes move across the pages. Lehman added that illustrators use techniques to guide readers: action flows from the left to the right and images on the right side of the page can act as cliffhangers that compel readers to turn the page. Somewhat like the music in a movie, Lehman described the unconscious elements in a visual story and the patterns that form the internal logic of the book. Yet the authors agreed that wordless picture books often allow readers more freedom of interpretation than books with text do. They are like a self-guided tour, said Lehman. Pinkney remarked that readers ultimately turn the page when they are satisfied and are ready for what happens next. It enables them to have a sense of powerful ownership over the story. There is something especially magical about the experience of a child returning to a story they have read before and have come to know, he believes. And a wordless book can be interpreted in different ways: Its a beautiful thing. They can almost go back and create another story, Pinkney said. The panel ended on a high note as Lehman revealed the sequel to The Red BookRed Again, which releases on November 7. Cynthia Weill also delivered some breaking news: it had just been announced that Pinkney was nominated for the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award. A new group of panelists took the stage to discuss writing humorous childrens books. The speakers were Carmen Agra Deedy (The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet!), Rita Williams-Garcia (Clayton Byrd Goes Underground), and Jon Scieszka (the Guys Read series). Moderator Elizabeth Bird, childrens librarian and editor of Funny Girl: Funniest. Stories. Ever., asked the group to explain where they find humor, particularly in these complicated and often dark times. For Scieszka, writing funny stories for kids comes rather naturally, because kids are funny, he said. As a teacher, he learned that one of the job descriptions is being a stand-up comedian. Humor in the classroom is not only essential, but enriched his time as an educator and provided plenty of fodder for his books. Deedy commented on the wisdom behind humor: The kings fool has always been the most powerful person in the kingdom, she said. The fool knows that humor is mined from painful, strange, and crazy places. She shared an anecdote about the time when her Baptist Cuban mother met her daughters heavily tattooed and pierced boyfriend for the first time. She commented, You have holes! To which he replied: But I have Jesus in my heart. Her mothers response? Jesus had holes! As much as she had tried to avoid that particular encounter from ever happening, it ended up being comedy gold. Were always looking for funny because life can be so hard, so excruciating at times. Humor is sometimes the only way to ameliorate the pain of lifes little wounds. Williams-Garcia often injects humor into stories that tackle difficult subject matter. From her perspective, her characters may suffer and face insurmountable challenges, but they are more than the sum of their circumstances. She sees her characters as people who still have inner will in the face of powerlessness. She also views their hardships as strengthening them; in fact, she even enjoys throwing another hurdle into a characters life: I dont spare my characters much. I cackle a little each time I decide to bring a character down a peg, she said. Finally, the panelists weighed in on their go-to sources of humor and the kinds of humorous childrens books they are hoping to see in the future. Im reading a lot of books on slavery, Williams-Garcia joked. But she honestly would like to see more history books that take a humorous approach to their subject matter. Humor enables figures and events from history to be humanized and relatable to readers. After all, a sense of humor can tell us so much about who a person is: Id love to know what made Frederick Douglass laugh, she said. On Scieszkas wish list: more funny books for black kids. Deedy reiterated that stories about kids in hard situations can also have levity and its important to include those moments: Kids have all kinds of poverty stories, not all tragedy. She also longs for a return to focusing on stories and characters that appeal broadly to readers, while finding a way to put aside anxieties about gender and cultural representation. While she sees these issues as being very important, she has observed that were becoming so concerned, its affecting the writing. Were like pedantic gadflies. She believes that writers need not be limited or stifled, but should instead ask of their writing, Is it true? You write the truthyour truth, anyway, she said. Leonard Marcus next delivered a presentation on the history of Bank Street and its connection to Little Golden Books, the series that, for generations, has been lodged in collective memory. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Bank Streets founder, became instrumental in the Little Golden Books publishing enterprise, with many Bank Street authors writing Little Golden Books in the Writers Laboratory, Marcus recounted. Bank Street emphasized the importance of providing books to children that were less focused on once upon a time, and more centered around the here and now, or everyday realities within a childs world. Lucy Mitchell went to Golden Books because thats where you could reach children, Marcus said. In addition to focusing on realistic, conceptual topics, Little Golden Books were meant to be read, held, even scribbled inas Harold [from Harold and the Purple Crayon] would go on to do. There was even a place for the books for children to write their own names, which provided readers with a literal sense of ownership over their books and their stories. The Little Golden Books series became a conduit for Bank Streets model of relationship thinking, Marcus explained, which emphasizes teaching children to build concepts and connections through exploration and asking questions. It was in part Marcuss own library of Little Golden Books that inspired his career as a childrens literature expert, historian, and author. Admitting that perhaps he was an unusual child, he recalled always being curious about Dr. Mary Reed PhD, whose name he saw on the books (she was the first editor for the series). Incidentally, Dr. Mary Reed PhD, invented the reading table in schoolsa table where children could sit and read once they had finished their workan empowering progression toward reading choice and independence in classrooms. Next, discussing what moderator Carole Boston Weatherford called our golden age of nonfiction books for children, were Tonya Bolden, Eric Velasquez, Candace Fleming, and Don Tate. The authors spoke about how they choose what to write about, their research processes for writing their books, and the challenge of writing about complex individuals from history that may not always have the best of reputations. Bolden and Fleming credited the Library of Congress as one of their most valuable resources for information on their book subjects, but agree that the National Archives are a challenge to navigate. Tates secret research treasure trove? Pinterest. Its where he first found images of Victorian-era bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, the subject of his picture book biography Strong as Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became the Strongest Man on Earth (Charlesbridge). Tates interest in Sandow arose from his own history as a bodybuilder; he first started bodybuilding as a kid, because he felt insecure about being skinny. Tate did have to make some difficult choices about what part of Sandows life he would tell in a childrens bookparticularly when it came to Sandows personal life. When you Google Eugene Sandow, you see all of Sandow, Tate said. Apparently he was also quite the philanderer. Writing about Sandow and highlighting his positive attributes, without sugarcoating his life, was also illuminating for Tate: There is no such thing as a perfect person, he said. Tate added that he thinks he would have found Sandows story very interesting as a kid: I was writing to the eight-year-old Don Tate reluctant reader, he said. Fleming similarly came up against some challenges when writing Presenting Buffalo Bill: The Man Who Invented the Wild West. In this age of fake news, Buffalo Bills hyperbolic tendencies ended up providing a valuable teaching opportunity. Fleming felt she owed it to Bill to let him go ahead and tell his story. Then, she created sections called Panning for Nuggets of Truth, in which she treats Bill as a primary source, but pulls in additional historical sources so readers can cross-reference and determine what really happened. While learning about Buffalo Bills life, readers also gain an understanding that the truth is never as easy to uncover as it seems, Fleming said. Velasquez, who illustrated Boson Weatherfords Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library, spoke about how he first became aware of the books subject, Arturo Schomburg. When he was a child, a sensitive educator showed him an image of Schomburg. You have a lot in common with this man. He is also from Puerto Rico, the teacher said. By the time he set down to illustrate Weatherfords book, he knew a great deal about Schomburgs life and contributions. Notably, Valesquez said, he uncovered the global conspiracy of suppression of contributions of people from African descent from our culture. In closing, the speakers touched on whittling down an individuals life into 32 pages (I think of a picture book as a poem, Bolden said), and making history accessible to readers, while also urging them to ask questions. Velasquez commented on the value of a child growing into a book that might be a little beyond their level of comprehension. Finally, the authors shared their upcoming projectsincluding, for Weatherford, a picture book about the song Amazing Grace and for Fleming, a book about Charles Lindbergh. Boldens next book is Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, a Monumental American Man. She explained that she had to fight to write the book, because of some fears that the market might be oversaturated with Frederick Douglass titles. Weatherford, for one, believes readers cant know enough about the pivotal historical figure. After all, some people think hes still alive, she joked. Closing out the days events, Deedy delivered a rousing and emotional keynote address. She spoke about how small events in the life of a child can have enormous impact, shaping that child into a lifelong reader, for example, orin her casea storyteller. She shared a story from her childhood. As a Cuban refugee, she grew up in Decatur, Ga. You could say that she was a bit of a troublemaker. In fact, on the last day of elementary school, she pulled the fire alarm as a traditional end-of-year prank. The principal at the school, a powerful and imposing woman whom Deedy described as being a presencea sentinel, miraculously spared her the punishment she might have deserved at the time, requiring her only to handwrite her name 500 times. After turning in evidence of her penitence, she moved onto middle school and didnt see Miss Paris againuntil many years later (the early 1990s), at her first book launch event at a Decatur bookstore. In walked Miss Paris, as terrifying as ever and, while ancient, seemingly perfectly preserved, like shed been soaking in formaldehyde, said Deedy. Nervously agreeing to go to dinner with her former principal after the reading, Deedy first had to quickly sign books for customers. Shell sign them, and in a hurry, Miss Paris said. I trained her. A bottle of wine later and Deedy finally got up the nerve to ask Miss Paris: Why didnt you do anything to me that day? She told Deedy a secret that she was to promise never to reveal. Turns out, the two of them had something in common. Miss Paris had, in fact, once pulled the fire alarm while she was in a sorority at Wellesley. After a pause, she told Deedy what many Bank Street educators and childrens book authors understand: Sometimes we see the trajectory of a childs life, she said. And we see that all they need is to turn a degree or two this way and theyll miss the wall. Sometimes, they fly. Deedys keynote was a fitting finale to a book fest filled with humor, personal reflections, and insights into where and how the stories that most move us are made. Childrens book publishers across the country held parties as staffers showed off costumes inspired by favorite characters and books, both classic and contemporary. Weve gathered a selection of photos from the festivities. First Books eCommerce team waged an epic costume battle dressed as the characters and creators of The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Adam Rex. Members of Scholastics licensing team dressed as characters from J.K. Rowlings Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. HarperCollins publicists channeled their inner Jackies and JFKs. Suzanne Murphy, president and publisher of HarperCollins Childrens Books, paid a costumed tribute to legendary Harper editor Ursula Nordstrom. Devin MacDonald (l.) and Megan Peace of Scholastic took on the roles of Dav Pilkeys Dog Man and Cat Kid. Little, Brown staff members celebrated the Halloween launch of Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend. Disney Publishing's editorial team lit up the office as the Main Street Electrical Parade. (From l.): Rotem Moscovich, Laura Schreiber, Stephanie Lurie, and Heather Crowley. Simon & Schuster designer Russell Gordon took a page from The Official Mortal Instruments Coloring Book by Cassandra Clare, illustrated by Cassandra Jean. President and publisher Jon Anderson (l.) and executive assistant Richard Ackoon of Simon & Schuster gave a nod to Peter Reynolds's Creepy Pair of Underwear. Macmillans publicity department dressed as characters from Shannon Hales graphic memoir, Real Friends, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. In celebration of The Joy of Cookies, members of the Imprint team dressed as Cookie Monstersand a coveted cookie. Candlewick employees assembled in their festive attire. Can you find Waldo among them? Candlewicks subsidiary rights team all live in a yellow submarine. National Geographic Kids went wild with a jungle-themed costume contest. The Childrens Book Councils Early Career Committee and the Association of American Publishers Young to Publishing Group hosted a Halloween party at the Slaughtered Lamb in New York City. (From l.): The first-prize winner of the costume contest, Nora Long of Writers House, dressed as a Wild Thing; Hannah Babcock of Abrams was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; and Ellie VandenBerg of Baker Literary Scouting went as Eloise. The childrens team at Albert Whitman & Company paid homage to Gertrude Chandler Warners The Boxcar Children series, which is celebrating 75 years in print. Rodale Kids celebrated a healthy Halloween with a pumpkin carved with the Rodale logo and fruity hats in tribute to Mrs. Peanuckles Fruit Alphabet, illustrated by Jessie Ford. Holiday House put out a Halloween-themed spread for its celebration. Workman staffers got in the team spirit. (From l.): Christi Hagemann dressed as Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter series, joined by SarahMay Harel and Emily Weldon as Riverdale River Vixens, Andrew Schlager as Jughead from Riverdale, and Jocelynn Pedro as another Riverdale River Vixen. Chronicle staffers took inspiration from recent titles and products in devising costumes and decor, including this tableau of Shakespearean deaths by the marketing department. So much for alls well that ends well. Software and media company BiblioBoard and Publishers Weekly this week announced the launch of a joint effort to develop a new wave of "community reading" platforms for public libraries. The partnership will support a host of library-based reading programs through the Popup Picks initiative, a mobile e-book service, built by Biblioboard and offered through public libraries around the country, that features unmetered access to a curated collection of e-books. The program will officially kick off on November 7, with a collection of geolocated, unlimited-use e-books selected by librarians and editorial partners, including Publishers Weekly, YALLFest, and the Chicago Childrens Museum, among others. Titles will include a selection from Independent Publishers Group and Shout Mouse Press, a writing and publishing program designed to amplify diverse, often marginalized voices. The selected e-books in the program will be available for 90 days at a time. Readers can access Popup Picks by visiting PopupPicks.com, then simply hitting the Start Reading button. BiblioBoard CEO Mitchell Davis called community reading programs a powerful force, and said the latest initiative can help bring communities closer together, and benefit authors and publishers. This is the first program designed to meet the needs of libraries, publishers, and patrons in a sustainable and comprehensive way, Davis said. By using geolocation to authenticate, and having all the books available all the time, the program creates a simple and frictionless way for libraries to enhance relationships with current patrons, and to reach new digital patrons in their communities. The program builds on an initiative launched in Illinois earlier this year, in collaboration with the Reaching Across Illinois Library Systems (RAILS) consortium, now expanding to more than a dozen beta libraries nationwide, with more to come. Our goal is to make Popup Picks the Netflix for libraries. Veronda Pitchford, director of membership development and resource sharing at RAILS and a progressive voice in the library e-book space, helped incubate the project. She says the program is yet another a step toward the development of a reading ecosystem that works for everyone. Our goal is to make Popup Picks the Netflix for libraries, Pitchford says. By leveraging the librarians expertise of knowing what communities need and read, libraries can use Popup Picks to easily introduce the public to new titles and genres from independent publishers and authors. Bill Campbell, author and founder of Rosarium Publishing, distributed by IPG, said the program will help libraries connect patrons to an array of diverse books. The program is great for promoting reading, he added, and we are very excited to be part of the project. Among the libraries joining the expanded program, are the Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles County Library, the BiblioTech library in San Antonio, the Louisville Free Public Library, Metropolitan Library in Oklahoma City, and Mid-Continent Public Library in Kansas City. In addition, Charleston, SC, will launch its Popup Picks program citywide in conjunction with the upcoming 2017 BiblioSummit and YALLFest, set for the weekend of November 11. Librarians interested in adding a year-round Community Reading Platform can visit biblioboard.com/communityreading/ to set up a trial for their geographic service area. Program organizers say they hundreds of public libraries to offer Popup Picks to their communities by early 2018. Bishop T. D. Jakes has never shied away from mixing fortune and faithhis last two books, Destiny: Step Into Your Purpose (FaithWords, 2016) and Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive (FaithWords, 2015), urge readers to follow their dreams by strengthening their faith and focusing on a higher calling. Now, Jakes is looking at the role faith can play when it comes to entrepreneurial success in Soar!: Build Your Vision from the Ground Up (FaithWords, Oct.), which explores strategies and structures, and [how to] rethink ways that we can build our dreams, he told PW. With an initial print run of 300,000 copies, according to FaithWords, the new book addresses issues including unemployment due to dwindling manufacturing jobs and how to find job satisfaction. I wrote Soar because we need creative ways to go forward into the future, said Jakes. From the Rust Belt to urban centers, people are trying to reboot and remake their lives to replace or subsidize their incomes. Entrepreneurship can help us survive the turbulence of these timesthis is an opportunity to redirect our energies toward our God-given gifts and talents to provide for our families better. Jakes, who was born in West Virginia in 1957 to a businessman/entrepreneur and an educator, preached his first sermon in 1976. Today, he is the founder and lead pastor of The Potters House Church in Dallas and the CEO of the film and television production company, TDJ Enterprises. He also hosts the television program The Potters House and is a bestselling author, film producer, and the host of conferences which draw thousands of people annually. Drawing on his personal experiences with business ownership, Soar features advice including, Get around somebody who is doing what you think you would like to doimagining and reality arent the same things. Jakes believes that a selfless attitude modeled after Jesus can help individuals develop a sense of leadership. Find somebody who can mentor and model what you want to do, and enter that world from a position of servitude, he writes. When you enter serving, you can see what it takes to lead. The book is geared toward a wide range of readers who want or need to shift their focus, according to Jakes. The only thing consistent about life is that it will change, he said. I wrote to include people who are moving into the next step and need to rethink how to evolve. Rolf Zettersten, senior v-p and publisher at FaithWords, said Soar is the first book of its kind from Jakes, and it stems from the pastors observations of his congregants needs. Soar! is unique because its a business book; his others are Christian living titles, said Zettersten, who has worked on two previous Jakes' titles at FaithWords. Bishop Jakes offers advice and inspiration for people who want to start a business, take a new direction, and relaunch their careers. Marketing and publicity for Soar included a pre-order campaign that began at MegaFest in late June. FaithWords also launched national television and web adsincluding on BET and Oprah.comand a social media campaign across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as cross promotions via the publishers FirstWords bloggers. Jakes is promoting the book to his 11 million combined followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, on his television show, and on a speaking tour that includes Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Nashville until Nov. 11. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. The Susan Bulkeley Butler Leadership Excellence Award was presented to the president of Uruguay and an oncologist at Indiana University during the International Breast Cancer Prevention Symposium, co-organized by the Purdue University Center for Cancer Research in partnership with the International Breast Cancer and Nutrition collaboration, in Montevideo, Uruguay. Tabare Vazquez, the president of Uruguay, has been leading major health reforms in his country for the last two decades. As a radiation oncologist, he has taught oncology at the University of the Republic since 1987 and served as chief of the radiotherapy service of the National Institute of Oncology of the Ministry of Public Health since 1981. He was instrumental in making Uruguay the first country in Latin America to ban smoking in indoor public spaces. In recognition of his efforts, Uruguay was chosen for this years World Health Organization Summit on Noncommunicable Diseases. Vazquez met with a group of IBCN leaders from Purdue University (Sophie Lelievre of the Department of Basic Medical Sciences), the French National School of Public Health, the American University of Beirut and Taiwan Academia Sinica to receive the Susan Bulkeley Butler Leadership Excellence Award. Anna Maria Storniolo is an oncologist at Indiana University Simon Cancer Center. She founded Indianas first Breast Cancer Prevention Program, which provides individualized counseling and surveillance to hundreds of women at high risk for breast cancer. Storniolo also is the founder and executive director of the Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Cancer Center, a unique resource of annotated breast samples from healthy volunteers. The Susan Bulkeley Butler Leadership Excellence Award was established in 2011 by the International Breast Cancer and Nutrition collaboration at Purdue University with the support Purdue alumna Susan Bulkeley Butler. The award recognizes individuals who distinguish themselves by providing exceptional mentorship to women students and scientists in the field of breast cancer. Nominees have an outstanding track record of mentorship in supporting, encouraging, and promoting women students and scientists in their research, education, professional and personal development. Butler is a former Purdue trustee and CEO of the Susan Bulkeley Butler Institute for the Development of Women Leaders. She also is a visionary delegate for Vision 2020, a national project focused on advancing gender equality, and a member of the Dean's Advisory Council in Purdue's Krannert School of Management. Writer: Kayla Zacharias, 765-494-9318, kzachar@purdue.edu Source: Sophie A. Lelievre, 765.496.7793, lelievre@purdue.edu Until Tuesday, the United States had escaped the grisly scenes of carnage visited upon several cities in Europe over the past year from a rash of vehicle attacks. But on a sunny Halloween afternoon, Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant who obtained the status of legal permanent resident in the U.S. after arriving in 2010, plowed a Home Depot rental truck into a crowded bike path full of pedestrians in downtown Manhattan. Eight people are dead and more than a dozen are reported injured. The suspect exited the vehicle then brandished a pellet gun and a paintball gun before being shot in the stomach and detained by police. The attack hit home for me personally, as a native New Yorker and someone who spent his first five years after college working and attending graduate school in New York. The attack took place mere blocks from where I first began studying terrorism in a master's program at New York University. The truth is, the New York Police Department, commonly referred to as the NYPD, is one of the most professional and well-resourced police departments in the world. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD began deploying officers overseas in countries such as Israel and India where they studied the tactics, techniques and procedures employed by terrorist groups around the globe. But vehicle attacks are notoriously difficult to defend against, as I wrote in The Globe and Mail following the mid-August attacks on the crowded tourist destination of Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain. New York has already taken measures against this tactic in parts of the city, including Midtown Manhattan, where a sea of pedestrians pass through each day. Tuesday's attack was the deadliest terror attack on New York since 9/11. But it was far from the first attempt since then. For many reasons, New York remains an attractive target. In 2009, an Afghan immigrant named Najibullah Zazi was arrested for plotting suicide bombings on the New York subway system. A year later, Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American citizen, was arrested for attempting to detonate a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in Times Square. Last year, Ahmad Khan Rahami was found responsible for several serial bombings in New York and New Jersey. Now a vehicle attack has finally been deployed in a city of eight million people. It is nearly impossible to guard against such an attack. Handwritten notes indicating allegiance to Islamic State were found near the vehicle. And police on Wednesday said the accused did this in the name of ISIS. Now that the Islamic State has been ejected from its headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, effectively ending the group's goal of sustaining a caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, it is possible that the group's supporters around the globe will attempt to conduct attacks in its name, in a deranged attempt to demonstrate the continuing potency and relevance of IS. Indeed, for many of its surviving fighters, which number between 6,000 and 10,000, the fight is not over. Many of these militants will almost certainly move on to new battlefields to continue waging jihad. As New Yorker columnist and Middle East expert Robin Wright recently commented, hundreds of jihadis are believed to be searching for new battlefields or refuge in Muslim countries. In the United States, the greater threat emanates from people who are already in the country. But in the United States, the greater threat emanates from people who are already in the country, sometimes referred to as homegrown violent extremists. Tuesday's attack in New York underscores this point. In the 16-plus years between 9/11 and Tuesday's attack, 95 Americans had perished in jihadist-related attacks in the homeland; 63 of those deaths occurred during just two attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla. According to a recent report on radicalization and jihadist attacks in the West, of the 17 successful attacks linked to jihadist terrorists in the United States between June 2014 and June 2017, none were perpetrated by foreign fighters. The FBI is conducting investigations on approximately 1,000 potential homegrown violent extremists across all 50 states. As ISIS continues to lose territory, it will likely seek to emphasize high-profile attacks in an attempt to remain relevant and demonstrate capability in the face of severe adversity. This could result in an uptick in lone-wolf attacks in the West, including in the United States. Preventing each and every attack is unrealistic there are too many individuals wishing to inflict harm upon their fellow citizens and too many targets to protect. But with increased vigilance, cooperation with law enforcement and intelligence sharing, citizens can work with authorities to help mitigate the threat of terrorism, while recognizing that, because of its symbolic and cultural significance, New York will always remain in the terrorists' crosshairs. Unfortunately, the people of New York already know that all too well. Colin P. Clarke is a political scientist at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation. He is also an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT)-The Hague. This commentary originally appeared on The Globe and Mail on November 1, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. Full coverage of the Delphi murders: Look back at 5 years of stories Former Afghan warlord Ismail Khan called for the complete pullout of foreign troops, insisting only Afghans themselves can bring peace to their war-torn nation. He was speaking to RFE/RL's Frud Bezhan in an exclusive interview in his residence in Herat, western Afghanistan. Azerbaijan's independent Turan News Agency says prosecutors have dropped all charges against it and its director. The agency said that the Prosecutor-General's Office on November 2 informed the agencys director, Mehman Aliyev, that Turan now can fully resume its operations. Aliyev was also told that all restrictions that had been placed on his movements were lifted. "Common sense prevailed thanks to the pressure that rights groups, the United States, and the European Union have exerted on the Azerbaijani government," Aliyev told the AFP news agency. Turan's operations were largely suspended in September after Aliyev was detained in Baku on August 24 on charges of tax evasion and abuse of power. Turan called the charges "trumped up" and the arrest was widely denounced as a politically motivated stifling of independent media by Western governments and rights groups. Aliyev was released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest on September 12, and Azerbaijani authorities days later reinstated their tax claim against the agency. Turan was established in 1990. It publishes reports in Azerbaijani, English, and Russian, and cooperates with leading international news agencies. President Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled the South Caucasus country of nearly 10 million people since shortly before his father's death in 2003, has been criticized for cracking down on media and civil rights in the former Soviet republic. Azerbaijan is currently ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders 2017 World Press Freedom Index. With reporting by AFP Georgia's Supreme Court has upheld a guilty verdict against former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili on charges that he ordered the beating of a lawmaker in 2005. In September 2016 Merabishvili was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on charges of ordering the beating of parliament member Valery Gelashvili. Meabishvili was interior minister at the time Gelashvili was assaulted. On November 1, the Supreme Court upheld a February decision of an appeals court that rejected Merabishvili's appeal against the conviction. Merabishvili, a close ally of former President Mikheil Saakashvili and a key figure in Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution, has been in prison since 2014. He is serving a multiyear prison term for various convictions including abuse of office and bribing voters. Saakashvili, who is currently in Ukraine, is being investigated separately in the Gelashvili case. Saakashvili has been charged by the authorities in Tbilisi with instructing Merabishvili to order the assault on Gelashvili. He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Supporters of Merabishvili and Saakashvili say the charges against them are politically motivated and amount to a "witch-hunt" by Georgia's current government. In June 2016, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled that Merabishvili's detention violated the European Convention of Human Rights because the case was being used by Georgian officials for political motives. With reporting by Interpressnews.ge 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 The United States leveled terrorism charges on November 1 against a man extradited from Bosnia who had joined the Islamic State extremist group to allegedly help disseminate propaganda and recruit suicide bombers. Mirsad Kandic, 36, a U.S. resident originally from Kosovo, was extradited from Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 31, four years after he allegedly joined IS in Syria, where he helped to recruit others to the extremist cause. Kandic told associates he had helped 20,000 "brothers" join the group, U.S. prosecutors said. One of those was a man from Australia, Jake Bilardi, who Kandic helped travel through Turkey into IS territory in August 2014, they said. Seven months later, with Kandic's encouragement, Bilardi volunteered as a suicide bomber and blew himself up in an attack in Ramadi, Iraq, according to the U.S. indictment. Kandic was also a propagandist for IS, managing more than 100 Twitter accounts to provide news on the militant group's battlefield activities, prosecutors alleged. Kandic was a legal U.S. resident who lived in Brooklyn, New York before travelling to Istanbul in 2013 to join IS, prosecutors said. "Defendant Kandic abandoned the United States, his adopted country, and joined ISIS, a violent terrorist organization opposed to the U.S. and its interests," Acting US Attorney Bridget M. Rohde said. He was charged with six federal terrorism counts, including providing material support and resources to a designated terrorist group, and faces possible life in prison. Kandic's lawyer, James Branden, declined to comment on the charges. Based on reporting by AFP and dpa The Kremlin has rejected opposition politician Aleksei Navalnys claim that President Vladimir Putin and his administration are coordinating efforts to thwart his campaign for the March 2018 presidential election. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Dozhd television channel on November 2 that the presidential office has nothing to do with the issuance of official permissions to organize mass gatherings in Russian cities and towns. The comments came a day after Navalny said that in recent days, authorities across Russia have refused to let him and his team organize public meetings with voters. Navalny wrote on his website that he has no doubt that the obstacles are being "coordinated" personally by Putin, asserting that the president is concerned by the number of people attending his rallies. He said he plans to sue Putin and his administration. He also said that his staff would start holding campaign meetings on private land to avoid the need to obtain permission from local authorities. Navalny is campaigning for the election in defiance of officials who have said he is not eligible to run because of a felony embezzlement conviction that he says was politically motivated. Putin, who has held power as president or prime minister for 18 years, has not announced his candidacy but is widely expected to seek a fourth Kremlin term. His control over the levers of power would make his reelection a foregone conclusion. Navalny, who has riled the Kremlin with reports alleging corruption in Putin's government, received 27 percent of the vote in a Moscow mayoral election in 2013. Kyrgyz lawmakers have approved a resolution that transforms the Soviet-era October Revolution Day holiday into a two-day holiday called Days of History and Commemoration of Ancestors. The parliament's press service said amendments to the Central Asian country's labor laws would be introduced in the near future that formalize the name change and expand the November 7 holiday to also include November 8. Outgoing President Almazbek Atambaev on October 26 proposed that the November 7 holiday be renamed. He said the name change was needed to provide "an objective historic assessment on the national liberation uprising and the tragic events of 1916" in Kyrgyzstan, known as Urkun. The mass uprising ensued in 1916 when Russia decided to draft Central Asians into the army as unarmed workers in order to build fortifications during World War I. Many Kyrgyz and Kazakhs refused the order and openly rebelled against the Russian authorities. At least 150,000 Kyrgyz were killed by Russian tsarist troops, and hundreds of thousands fled to the neighboring Chinese province of Xinjiang. In August 2016, a public commission in Kyrgyzstan concluded that the 1916 mass crackdown constituted "genocide." A day after Atambaev's proposal, Russian State Duma speaker Igor Lebedev described his call as an "unfriendly move." With reporting by RIA Novosti Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for talks in the United Arab Emirates. The Belarusian state news agency, BelTA, says the two leaders discussed bilateral economic and political ties at their November 2 meeting in Abu Dhabi. It said the talks focused on issues related to bilateral trade, border demarcation, and cooperation in the social sector. In the area of political cooperation, Lukashenka told Poroshenko that Minsk would stick to "the course the two brotherly nations agreed upon earlier." Lukashenka's remarks on political cooperation echoed earlier assurances he gave to Poroshenko in July in Kyiv, where he promised to help resolve the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russia-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government's armed forces. Belarus hosted talks in Minsk in 2015 that were brokered by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany and led to an accord calling for a cease-fire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front lines, and constitutional reforms that would give eastern Ukraine more autonomy. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in 2014, shortly after Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and began offering military support to pro-Russia separatists in the east. Despite a large amount of evidence of Russian military assistance, Moscow continues to deny supporting the separatists in eastern Ukraine. Based on reporting by BelTA and naviny.by A Macedonian court has convicted 33 men of plotting attacks and clashing with police in a 2015 shoot-out that left 22 people dead, and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms. Amid tight security, the Criminal Court in Skopje on November 2 sentenced seven of the men to life in prison, while the remaining were handed down prison terms ranging from 12 to 40 years each. Four defendants in the case were acquitted. Delivering the verdict, presiding Judge Verka Petkovska told the courtroom that the prosecutor provided evidence that the convicted men committed or organized acts of terrorism. Defense lawyer Naser Raufi said that he did not expect such heavy sentences, alleging that the trial was staged by the "secret services" and calling for an independent investigation. All the defendants, who were ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia, denied the charges when the trial opened in February 2016. They protested while the verdict was being read, prompting the judge to order them to leave the courtroom before hearing the sentences. The court was under heavy police protection, with helicopters of flying over the building. Dozens of members of a special operations unit were also deployed. Eight members of the security forces and 14 gunmen were killed in a two-day shoot-out in May 2015 in the ethnically mixed northern town of Kumanovo near the border with Kosovo. Forty police officers were also injured. The clash occurred during a police raid that followed an attack by armed men on a border post. It was the worst unrest in Macedonia since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001 ended with a deal providing greater rights for the minority group. Ethnic Albanians make up about one-quarter of the country's population of about 2.1 million. With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. A Macedonian court has convicted 33 men on terror charges over a shoot-out with police in 2015. The clashes in the city of Kumanovo left 22 people dead. The defendants, ethnic Albanians mostly form Kosovo and Macedonia, denied the charges. (RFE/RL's Balkan Service) A U.S. judge has turned down a request by Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, to release him from home confinement. During a November 2 hearing in Washington, Judge Amy Berman Jackson kept in place the house arrest ordered for Manafort and his associate Rick Gates. Both are charged with conspiring to defraud the United States in more than a decade of dealings with political forces in Ukraine. The men had requested to be released from home confinement, denying they were flight risks and saying the large bond amounts were enough to ensure future court appearances. Bond was preliminarily set at $10 million for Manafort and $5 million for Gates after they surrendered to authorities on October 30. Both pleaded not guilty. Manafort faces 12 to 15 years in prison if convicted, while Gates faces 10 to 12 years, although prosecutors said other charges could still be filed. The judge warned the mens lawyers not to speak about the case outside of court, saying it could interfere with the ability to conduct a fair trial. The judge said the initial bond terms for both men would remain in place for now and set a November 6 hearing to consider possible changes. She said she might also set a tentative date for a trial to begin, possibly in April. The indictment against Manafort and Gates is the first to stem from Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion by associates of Trump. The indictment said the two men "generated tens of millions of dollars in income" from work they did for Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-friendly politician who was president of Ukraine from 2010-14, the Ukrainian government, Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and the Opposition Bloc, a successor party formed after Yanukovych was driven from power by pro-European protests and fled to Russia. It alleged that "in order to hide Ukraine payments" from U.S. authorities, Manafort and Gates "laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts" from about 2006 through 2016 at the earliest. It said that they also hid their work and revenue as agents of Ukrainian political parties. In a court filing, Manafort, 68, dismissed the evidence against him, saying the case by Mueller was "embellished" and that his work as an "international political consultant" naturally involved global financial transactions. Gates, 45, has also denied any wrongdoing. The indictments were welcomed in Ukraine, where prosecutors said they intend to ask the U.S. Justice Department for permission to interview Manafort about his activities in the country, although he is not charged with a crime in Ukraine. With reporting by AP and Reuters U.S. prosecutors brought terrorism charges against an Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in a New York truck rampage, saying he was inspired by the Islamic State extremist group. Prosecutors told a U.S. court in Manhattan on November 1 that Sayfullo Saipov asked to display IS's black flag in his hospital room after he was shot by police, and said "he felt good about what he had done." Saipov was brought to court in a wheelchair in handcuffs and with his feet shackled to face the charges, which could bring the death penalty. U.S. President Donald Trump said Saipov deserved the death penalty in a tweet late on November 1: "NYC terrorist was happy...he killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Prosecutors said Saipov had waived his legal rights and openly confessed to the attack while being questioned in custody at a hospital after being shot. Meanwhile, the FBI said it had found a second man from Uzbekistan, 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who it sought for questioning in the case. Saipov nodded his head repeatedly as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter. His court-appointed lawyer, David Patton, said Saipov was in "a significant amount of pain" and asked that he continue to get medical care for the bullet wound in his abdomen in a U.S. jail where he is being held without bail. "I hope, given all of the attention in this case and all of the attention that it's sure to continue to receive, that everyone lets the judicial process play out," he said. "I promise you that how we treat Mr. Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us than it will say about him." Saipov stands accused of driving a rented Home Depot pickup truck that mowed down bicyclists and pedestrians on October 31, killing eight people and injuring 12 as it barreled down a bike path near the where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. He was also charged with providing material support to a terrorist group. Prosecutors said he had 90 videos and 3,800 photos on one of his two cellphones, many of them IS-related propaganda, including images of prisoners being beheaded, shot, or run over by a tank. Court documents said that Saipov deliberately chose Halloween to stage the attack "because he believed there would be more civilians on the street" and more people would be killed. Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, that included Islamic religious references, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by IS videos that he watched on his cellphone, and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, Tyree said. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals, the agent said. Saipov rented a truck on October 22 to practice for the attack, and he initially had planned to drive the truck from the bike path across lower Manhattan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, Tyree said. Saipov considered displaying IS flags on the truck during the attack, but decided against it because he did not want to draw attention, authorities said. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that IS has put out" on how to stage attacks on Westerners. In the past few years, IS online posts have exhorted followers to use vehicles, knives, or other readily available means of killing people in their home countries. England, France, Sweden, Spain, and Germany are among the countries which have all seen similar deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. Carlos Batista, a neighbor of Saipov's in Paterson, New Jersey, said he had seen the suspect and two friends using the same model of rented truck several times in the past three weeks. Miller said Saipov was not a subject of criminal investigation before the attack, but he appears to have had links with people who were under investigation. In the New York attack, Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along a bike path before crashing into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot in the abdomen after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns, one in each hand, and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic, they said. The attack killed five people from Argentina, one from Belgium, and two Americans, authorities said. Another 12 people were injured; nine remained hospitalized in serious or critical condition. The attack quickly became a political issue in the United States when President Donald Trump cited Saipov's immigrant status in vowing to crack down on immigration, and in particular said he wants to eliminate the visa lottery program that Saipov used to come to the United States in 2010. Because of the lottery program, the slight, bearded Saipov is a legal, permanent U.S. resident. The program dates to 1990, when Republican President George H.W. Bush signed it as part of a bipartisan immigration bill. Trump called on Congress to eliminate it, saying, "We have to get much tougher, much smarter and less politically correct." Trump called Saipov "this animal" and said he had brought in other people to the United States and was the "point of contact" for 23 people, without providing further details. The president said he would "certainly consider" sending Saipov to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Saipov could be deemed an "enemy combatant," like the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, based on his actions, although no such legal determination has as yet been made. New York leaders on November 1 vowed that the city would not be cowed by the attack and said the New York City Marathon will go on as scheduled on November 5, with increased security. Some 50,000 participants and 2 million spectators are expected to participate. Acquaintances of Saipov said he was a commercial truck driver while living in Ohio, but recently moved to New Jersey with his wife and three small children and was working as an Uber driver. Mirrakhmat Muminov, a fellow truck driver from Uzbekistan, said Saipov was argumentative and "not happy with his life" as his career as a truck driver recently appeared to be falling apart. "He had the habit of disagreeing with everybody," said Muminov, who told RFE/RL that Saipov was not very religious when he came to the United States but appeared to get radicalized by reading IS posts online. A source in Uzbekistan's security services told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that Saipov's mother, father, and 17-year-old sister were being questioned in the Central Asian country on November 1. The source was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The investigation in Uzbekistan was launched after Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev said in a statement posted to the Foreign Ministry's website on November 1 that his government "is ready to use all forces and resources to help in the investigation of this act of terror." Uzbek security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told RFE/RL that Saipov's parents live in Tashkent's Uchtepa district and are merchants at the city's Bektopi market. The officials in Uzbekistan, where the state's concern about Islamic extremism have increased as citizens of the predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic have traveled to Afghanistan and the Middle East to fight alongside Islamic extremists, said the family was not known to be particularly religious. Prosecutors said Saipov took his cues from IS advice posted online, which has inspired similar attacks in Europe by Islamic extremists using vehicles to crash into pedestrians in the last 16 months. in July 2016, a man drove a large truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice, killing 86 people and injuring hundreds more. IS claimed responsibility for the attack. Five months later, a Tunisian asylum seeker who had pledged allegiance to IS extremists plowed a truck into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 48. In April of 2017, a failed asylum seeker from Uzbekistan careened down a busy street in a truck in central Stockholm, crashing into a department store and killing four people in what the prime minister called a terrorist attack. And on August 17, a driver rammed his van into crowds in the heart of Barcelona, killing 13 people, in an attack authorities said was carried out by suspected Islamist militants. In a previous vehicular attack in the United States, a Somali-born student at Ohio State University -- described by authorities as an Islamic extremist inspired by IS -- staged an attack in Ohio in November 2016 but did not kill anyone. With reporting by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service, RFE/RL correspondent Pete Baumgartner, AFP, AP, Reuters, and dpa Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned home on November 2 to face trial in an anticorruption case focused on his family's offshore wealth. Sharif, who had been in London with his wife as she received cancer treatment, is due to appear in court on November 3 over allegations linked to London properties the family owns, charges that could see the former premier jailed. Allies of Sharif, who has served as prime minister twice and was toppled in a military coup in 1999, have called the proceedings a political vendetta and suggested the powerful Pakistani army might be behind it. Sharif, 67, denounced the case in an interview on November 1 in London before flying home. "This case in the National Accountability Bureau is highly bogus and fake, which doesn't have links to corruption," he told Geo TV, comparing the process to charges laid against him after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. "There is no kickback or misappropriation of the national exchequer," he said. The country's Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from office in July over unreported sources of annual income of about $10,000, which the former premier denies ever receiving. The high court also ordered the country's National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to investigate and conduct a trial over the Sharif family's wider finances, including the London properties. Sharif maintains control of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which elected close ally Shahid Khaqi Abbasi as prime minister after Sharif was disqualified. Also facing trial before the NAB court is Sharif's daughter Maryam and her husband, Muhammad Safdar. They have all pleaded not guilty. The allegations against the family stem from the Panama Papers leaks in 2016 that appeared to show that Maryam and her two brothers owned offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and used them to buy upscale flats in London. A Supreme Court-appointed investigatory panel deemed that the family's wealth did not match its income, and accused Maryam and her brothers of signing forged documents to obscure ownership of offshore companies used to buy the London flats. The panel's report was the basis for the Supreme Court ruling disqualifying Sharif and ordering the NAB investigation and a trial. The high court ordered the trial to be concluded within six months, which would likely bring a verdict before general elections scheduled for next year. With reporting by AP and Reuters For several years now I have been seeing these reports in Western media about Central Asians in the ranks of Islamic extremist groups. Often Central Asia is described as a "breeding ground" for terrorism. I don't use Qishloq Ovozi to tell stories about my time in Central Asia, but in the aftermath of this week's tragic attack in New York City, a city I lived in, I'm going to now. On a rainy night in March 1992 I stepped off a plane at the Almaty airport. I was completely terrified and had spent the whole flight from Moscow thinking I had made the worst mistake of life, maybe a fatal mistake. I had agreed to conduct sociological research in small villages in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and that is where I would be living until the end of the year. When Teodor Shanin (he's famous, look him up) offered me the job at a meeting in Manchester, England, it seemed like a fantastic opportunity, one no one had ever had. But as the day of my arrival approached, the weight of my decision pressed on me. I had been to Central Asia before. I attended Tashkent State University in the summer of 1990. But that was when Central Asia was part of the Soviet Union, and I was in Tashkent, the biggest city in Central Asia and one with enough foreigners that I did not feel so out of place. But now I was going to remote areas. From then on, there would just be all the people who lived there -- Muslims, of course -- and me. At times I would be at least 1,000 kilometers from the closest U.S. Embassy, not that there would be any phones where I was heading. No one would be coming to help me if I got into trouble. Thoughts such as those swirled around my brain, and quickly another realization hit me: I would be totally dependent on these strangers, these Muslim peoples, for almost everything. I would be living in their homes. I couldn't bring enough food to feed myself for weeks at a time, so I would be counting on them to feed me. And as I would soon come to realize, I was the strangest person they had ever seen. Admittedly, I was not totally alone. There were locals who were working on the project with me. They actually lived in these villages for eight months at a time, whereas I passed through, staying for 10, maybe 18 days at most before moving on to another village. But of course, I didn't know these colleagues when I arrived. We would arrange to meet in some big city or town and immediately leave for the village. The peoples of Central Asia have a well-deserved reputation for hospitality, but in the first weeks I was working in the villages I had the sort of suspicious nature one gets from living in New York City. The more people smiled, the nicer they were, the more I smelled a trap. But it gradually dawned on me that there was no guile, no ulterior motives at work. Not everyone trusted me at first. They had heard stories for decades about evil Western capitalists and American imperialists and all of a sudden I showed up on their doorstep, the first Western person they had ever seen. My instructions were to observe everything the people in the villages did and join in as much as was possible. Working alongside them, eating at the same table, and sleeping on the same floor made us friends. For example, in Uzbekistan, one of the places now being described as a breeding ground for terrorism, I went from being "bizning mehmonimiz" (our guest), to being "bizning dostimiz" (our friend), to simply "bizning" (ours). And I willingly became "theirs." And I did not have to "go native." I am a Christian. In fact, the entire time I was working in the villages I had a gold-cross earring and I wore a cross on a neck chain. Always. Everyone, all the Muslims in these villages, knew. This was actually better. It created an additional bond between us. They believed. I believe. We talked about religion all the time. Never an argument, just comparing notes. On the overnight train from Tashkent to Margilan in late June 1992, one of my Uzbek colleagues and I managed to get a cabin we shared with two other travelers. The conductor, who I would soon learn was a very religious young man, came and checked our tickets and asked where I was from. Within 15 minutes our cabin was packed with people, all Uzbeks. Everyone had questions they wanted to ask me. But many of them, the conductor included, had a difficult time with "Bruce." They couldn't remember the name. We started talking about religion. I remember one person asked the crowd, "How can an ant breathe?" He answered the question, saying: "We don't know. Only Allah knows how an ant can breathe." I agreed, only Allah knew, and the conductor suddenly had an idea. "You are Burhan Beg," he said to me. "It's one of the names from the Koran." Everyone nodded in assent. At the start of August, when we had a group meeting at Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyzstan, the Uzbek colleague on the train to Margilan with me that night told all the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and other Uzbeks working with me that story. For the rest of the time I was working in the villages, I was always Burhan Beg. What I am going to say now is the most important part of this story, especially at a time when some Western media are portraying the peoples of Central Asia, and Uzbeks in particular, as intolerant extremists, or at least potentially intolerant extremists. This Burhan Beg remained a Christian. That did not bother anyone, but the times I felt most separated from the people was when they went to mosque. I participated in all the Islamic ceremonies marking births, marriages, and deaths, but going to prayers seemed to me a different matter. I talked about it and these Muslims, by now my friends, made the greatest of gestures. They asked me to come to mosque, as a Christian, and pray with them. Eventually I was even given my own prayer rug as a gift, and I took it with me along with the rest of my baggage from village to village. I never fully understood the words I was saying when I prayed at mosque, the same way I couldn't tell you what all the Latin words I say at church mean. But I was accepted -- as a Christian, as an American. We were all Allah's children, or God's, if you prefer. In November 1992, I met again with Teodor Shanin in Moscow. He asked me if I would consider continuing to work in the villages through 1993. I didn't even let him finish his question before I said, "Yes." There are bad people in the world, and they exist among every group you can name. The same can be said about good people. Yes, some Central Asians have joined terrorist groups. So have people from other parts of the world. Most people do not know much about Central Asians. I do. My fate has been in their hands more times than I can count and I never had reason to regret that. The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL The Russian Defense Ministry says Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman discussed bilateral relations and international security issues during a meeting on November 2. The meeting took place at the Defense Ministry in Moscow, a short statement said. It did not provide further details. Huntsman took up his post in Moscow last month at a time of severe tension between Russia and the United States. Ties are badly strained over issues including Russia's aggression in Ukraine, its actions in Syria, and what the U.S. intelligence community says was a concerted attempt to meddle in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Receiving Huntsmans credentials at a Kremlin ceremony on October 3, Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced dissatisfaction with the state of bilateral relations and said that Russia wants constructive, predictable, and mutually advantageous cooperation," but gave no indication whether Moscow plans to take steps in that direction. Speaking on October 7, the new U.S. ambassador to Russia said that he wants to improve relations with Russia, but he insisted the first step would be for Moscow to return Ukrainian control to territory within its internationally recognized borders. "This is an issue not only with the United States, but with Europe, Canada, and virtually every other developed country," said Huntsman. Moscow illegally annexed Ukraines Crimea region in March 2014 and supports separatists in eastern Ukraine in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014. The United States, other Western countries, and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine. In late July, Russia ordered the United States to cut the number of diplomatic personnel in Russia to 455 by September 1 -- a reduction of about two-thirds -- after the U.S. Congress approved legislation tightening sanctions against Russia.. The United States responded by ordering Russia to vacate its consulate in San Francisco and trade annexes in Washington and New York, steps intended to produce parity in the sizes of the Russian and U.S. diplomatic missions. ON MY MIND The Kremlin administration has often been compared to the Soviet Communist Party's old Central Committee -- and not just because it occupies the same building on Moscow's Staraya Ploshad. Looking at Nezavisimaya Gazeta's list of Russia's 100 most influential politicians (featured below), it is no accident that many of the names near the top of the list are either serving now (chief of staff Anton Vaino and deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko), or have served in the past (Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin) in senior Kremlin administration posts. This shadowy institution, which isn't even mentioned in the Russian Constitution, is one of the keys to understanding the behavior of Vladimir Putin's regime. In a report back in September for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Mark Galeotti showed the central role that the Kremlin administration plays in Russia's active measures and political warfare against the West. And now, in a must-read piece featured below, Novoye Vremya's Denis Vardanyan takes an in-depth look at how it works, how it manages and executes policy, who the key players are, and how labor is divided among them. It's a long read, but worth the time. IN THE NEWS U.S lawmakers have released a batch of Facebook ads linked to Russias efforts to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election and stir up emotions on sensitive social issues. The White House has called on Russia to stop blocking efforts to renew the authority of a UN investigative body charged with determining who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The Russian lawyer who met with U.S. President Donald Trump's son during last year's election campaign is seeking a new U.S. visa to testify in a money-laundering case linked to a massive tax-fraud scheme. Russian authorities say they wont hand over a Montenegrin man to his home country where he is suspected of involvement in an alleged coup attempt. On an official visit to Tehran, Vladimir Putin has vocally backed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, and hailed cooperation with Iran on the Syrian conflict. Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny says he will sue President Vladimir Putin and his administration over what he called a coordinated effort to thwart his campaign for the March 2018 presidential election. Two Russian cross-country skiers have been banned from any future Olympics over doping at the 2014 Winter Games in Russias Black Sea resort of Sochi. A topless activist from the protest group Femen set fire to several large toy bears outside a Kyiv shop selling candy made by a confectionery company owned by President Petro Poroshenko. A court in Belarus has sent opposition leader Uladzimer Nyaklyaeu to jail for 10 days after ruling that he made calls for an illegal public gathering. NEW FROM THE POWER VERTICAL BLOG On my latest Power Vertical blog post -- Putin's Long Goodbye -- I take a look at recent rumors, leaks, and speculation that the Kremlin is cooking up a scheme to keep Russia's ruler in power for life. WHAT I'M READING Inside The Kremlin Administration Novoye Vremya-New Times has a piece breaking down how the Kremlin administration -- widely seen as one of the key institutions of the Putin regime -- actually works and the division of labor among its staff. Russia's Power Elite Political analyst Dmitry Orlov has a piece in Nezavisimaya Gazeta looking at Russia's 100 most influential politicians. How Russia Misreads The West Former U.S. State Department official Kirk Bennett has a piece in The American Interest on how Russia has historically misread the West and its intentions. The Conflict In The Donbas Stefan Jajecznyk has a piece in Unilad taking the temperature and looking at the ongoing war in the Donbas. Alexander Vershbow, a former NATO deputy secretary general and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has a piece on The Atlantic Council's website on "how to end war in eastern Ukraine." And in an op-ed for The Moscow Times, Steven Pifer, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, argues that "the Kremlin's policies are entrenching in a generation of Ukrainians who will detest Russia." Russia And Cryptocurrencies In The Verge, Shannon Liao looks at Russia's "love-hate relationship with Bitcoin." Ukrainian May Also Want To Indict Manafort In The Daily Beast, Anna Nemtsova reports on Ukrainian investigators' own suspicions about Paul Manafort, and his alleged role in abuses during Viktor Yanukovych's rule. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Report On Russia The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has released a report: Russia Military Power: Building A Military To Support Great Power Aspirations. Lithuania's Reactor Fears In Foreign Policy, Reid Standish looks at Lithuania's concerns about a Russian-financed nuclear power plant in neighboring Belarus. A Kyiv court has released the 29-year-old son of Ukraines powerful interior minister after his arrest the day before by anticorruption officials on embezzlement charges. Oleksandr Avakov, son of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, was released on November 1 on his own recognizance after agreeing to wear an ankle monitor and to hand in his passport. Arsen Avakov had confirmed on October 31 that his son had been detained by the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) after his home in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been searched. NABU had said in a statement that arrests had been made, including a deputy interior minister, in an embezzlement case, but it did not immediately release the suspects names. The younger Avakov faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of "embezzling, wasting, or obtaining assets through abuse of power." Prosecutors had asked the court to detain Avakov prior to his trial, but Kyiv's Solomyanskiy District Court ordered his release, with the requirement that he wear an ankle bracelet and report to a judge should he want to leave the capital. Before his release, Avakov told the court that "I believe this case is completely politically motivated and has nothing to do with the rule of law." Former Deputy Interior Minister Serhiy Chebotary was also detained, the authorities said. Ukraine's Interior Ministry also said it considered NABU's actions grounded in politics rather than the law." "A hybrid war that is going on in Ukraine focuses on discrediting politicians and officials who firmly stand for reforming and improving state institutions, in particular the law enforcement system," a statement said. The case centers on a 2014-15 government contract for the purchase of military backpacks that was awarded to a company controlled by Volodymyr Lytvyn, a friend of Oleksandr Avakov and a co-defendant in the case. NABU alleges that Lytvyn's company sold the bags at an inflated price of about $111 each that cost the state some 14 million hryvnyas ($520,000). The bureau's prosecutors accuse Oleksandr Avakov of being the middleman who illegally directed the deal toward Lytvyn. The case threatens to split apart the slender majority of Ukraines ruling coalition consisting of Arsen Avakovs People's Front and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's bloc. Reports in the Ukrainian media have said that disagreements between Avakov and Poroshenko are intensifying, and Avakov said his sons detention was an attempt to put pressure on him. With reporting by AFP, AP, 112.ua, and Ukraiynska Pravda KYIV -- Ukrainian prosecutors intend to ask the U.S. Justice Department for permission to interview President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, following his indictment earlier this week, an official said. Prosecutors also want U.S. authorities to share any evidence they might have pertaining to an ongoing criminal investigation of a former justice minister, Serhiy Horbatyuk, prosecutor for special investigations, told RFE/RL. Yes, of course, we will do it. We are preparing a request and will ask about [U.S. officials] conducting an interrogation or sharing documents, Horbatyuk said by phone on November 2. Manafort, who has not been charged with a crime in Ukraine, is wanted by prosecutors to testify in a corruption case targeting Oleksandr Lavrynovych, who was justice minister under Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-friendly former president who fled to Russia in 2014. Prosecutors accuse Lavrynovych of illegally funneling more than $1.1 million in government funds to a powerful U.S. law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Lavrynovych was arrested in September on unrelated charges, accused of having participated in a coup detat. Lavrynovych had hired the U.S. law firm in 2011 to review the jailing of then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for allegedly brokering an unfavorable gas deal with Russia. Her sentence was viewed by much of the international community -- including Russia -- as political in nature. Tymoshenko was released in February 2014 and later reelected to parliament. Manafort became involved when he arranged for Skadden Arps to draft a report that was used by Yanukovychs allies to justify Tymoshenkos imprisonment. Court documents in the case against Lavrynovych, seen by The New York Times, alleged that Manafort designed a strategy for Skadden Arps to confirm the legality of the criminal prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko andreject any political motives of such prosecution. In June, Skadden Arps refunded $567,000 to the Ukrainian government, reportedly because the money had been placed in escrow for future work that never took place, according to The New York Times. Horbatyuk told RFE/RL that his office has made several appeals for information regarding the Lavrynovych case to the FBI and U.S. Justice Department officials since December 2014 -- each of which contained exactly one question pertaining to Manafort. We want to find out Manaforts role in it, Horbatyuk said of the Lavrynovych case. We sent a request for questioning representatives of the firm and also Manafort. We also asked about copies of documents [pertaining to the case]. Horbatyuk said Washington has not responded to the requests about Manafort. Horbatyuk also said his office has not provided any documents to Special ounsel Robert Muellers office or U.S. law enforcement for their investigation of Manafort, who was indicted on October 30 on conspiracy and other financial crimes charges. The charges relate to Manaforts longtime work as a consultant for Yanukovychs former political party. Our cases are related to each other, Horbatyuk said. Accordingly, we are interested in cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, meanwhile, told CBC News during an official visit to Canada on November 1 that his government had not been contacted by Muellers office or U.S. law enforcement. But if we receive a request we will, of course, provide the information we have, he said. Manafort and his business partner, Rick Gates, turned themselves into the FBI on October 30 as Muellers monthslong investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election gains momentum. They pleaded not guilty to all charges and were put under house arrest. A bail hearing was set for November 2. The indictment focused chiefly on Manaforts work in Ukraine, alleging that more than $75 million flowed through the offshore accounts of Manafort and Gates, and that Manafort spent more than $18 million to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States without paying taxes on that income. Yanukovych, for whom Manafort worked for nearly a decade, was driven from office in February 2014 after months of public demonstrations fueled by Ukrainian anger over the corruption that was seen as flourishing during his presidency. News of Manaforts indictment was welcomed by Ukrainians, especially those who helped expose Yanukovychs alleged corruption and the slush fund reportedly used by his political party to make millions in off-the-books payments to Manafort between 2007 and 2012. Asked whether Ukraine would try to recover any of money Manafort was paid by Yanukovych and his party, Horbatyuk said, I will be able to answer it, when it will be clear that the money paid to Manafort had a criminal origin. Until then, its hard to say, he said. Tashkent was quick to react after an Uzbek immigrant was accused of killing eight people in a truck attack in New York earlier this week. But while President Shavkat Mirziyoev quickly expressed Uzbekistan's willingness to use "all its resources" to help investigate the October 31 attack, observers continue to scrutinize Tashkent's response in light of the country's history of repression of Islam at home. Uzbek officials have not only defended their policies, but credited them with helping to wipe out radicalism at home, noting that Sayfullo Saipov, like other Uzbeks accused of terrorist attacks this year, were radicalized outside the country. "I don't believe the conditions exist inside the country for these Uzbeks to have been radicalized," Abdulaziz Mansur, deputy head of Uzbekistan's Muftiat, the state body that oversees the country's Muslim community, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on November 1. "The Uzbek youth who are carrying out these types of attacks, killing innocent people in foreign countries, they believe in the wrong ideas. They've been poisoned with false ideas by groups related to Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and other countries," Mansur continued. Series Of Terrorist Attacks Prosecutors have charged Saipov, 29, with using a rented pickup truck to run down civilians on a bike path in Manhattan in carrying out the bloodiest attack in New York City since hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Troubling for Tashkent was the fact it was at least the fourth attack abroad this year blamed on an ethnic Uzbek or Uzbek national. On New Year's Day, an Uzbek gunman allegedly burst into a nightclub in the Turkish city of Istanbul and killed 39 people. In April, an ethnic Uzbek man born in Kyrgyzstan allegedly blew up a subway train in the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing at least 14 people, and that same month an Uzbek man is accused of ramming a truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four people. Wary of radicalism, Tashkent has tightly controlled and restricted religious practices in the mainly Muslim country since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The ostensible point of all the curtailments was to combat the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a jihadist movement that appeared shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. All clerics need government approval; all madrasahs are government controlled. Even the growing of a beard, like the one groomed by Saipov, is outlawed in Uzbekistan. The reason? They are a sign of religious extremism. Escaping Uzbekistan The regime of Islam Karimov, who ruled the country with an iron fist for more than two decades until his death last year, outlawed Islamist political parties and hunted down religious activists. Facing such restrictions plus poor job prospects, millions of Uzbeks have emigrated in recent years, especially to Russia. But abroad, many struggle with a new culture and language, leaving some frustrated and susceptible to extremist influence, experts say. "I think that fact of migration is relevant to this case and the other cases [of Uzbek-linked terrorism]," Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told the Democracy Now podcast on November 2. President Mirziyoev has vowed to open his country after decades of authoritarian rule under Karimov. But these recent attacks with an Uzbekistan link now pose a challenge to the first-year leader. "I think you are already seeing a greater level of acknowledgement than we saw under the Karimov administration; I cannot imagine had this happened two years ago that Karimov would have put out a statement like Mirziyoyev did," Edward Lemon of Columbia University's Harriman Institute says. "Uzbekistan remains authoritarian and to expect the government to put up its hands and accept any guilt is a little optimistic! But I think their response was a start," Lemon says in an e-mail response. HRW recently welcomed steps taken by Mirziyoev during his first year in office to improve the country's human rights situation. HRW said that since assuming the presidency in September 2016, "the Uzbek government has released at least 16 political prisoners, relaxed certain restrictions on free expression, removed citizens from the security services' notorious 'black list,' and increased the accountability of government institutions to citizens." "The test for Tashkent is to turn positive moves into enduring structural improvements," Swerdlow wrote in the report based on a fact-finding mission inside Uzbekistan, a first after the NGO was kicked out in 2010 and only recently readmitted. HRW has also commended Mirziyoev for his willingness to acknowledge the persistence of human rights abuses, even on the international stage. The White House late on November 1 called on Russia to stop blocking efforts to renew the authority of a UN investigative body charged with determining who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But the Kremlin on November 2 rejected the U.S. calls, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying that "urgent and drastic measures must be taken to protect" the United Nations body "and all activities along this track from U.S. diktat." Authority for the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is due to expire on November 17. Russias Foreign Ministry later issued a statement saying that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by phone that it is unacceptable to politicize the work of chemical weapons inspectors in Syria. At the UN Security Council last week, Russia vetoed a renewal effort led by the United States that would have prolonged the JIM mandate until November 2018. Also last week, the UN investigative team raised Russia's ire by finding that the Syrian government was responsible for an April sarin gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun which killed dozens of people. Russia and Syria have denied the allegation. "This unconscionable attack marks the fourth time that the JIM has confirmed that [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] regime used chemical weapons, underscoring the brutal and horrifying barbarism of Bashar al-Assad and making the protection provided by Russia even more egregious," the White House said in a statement. "Russias attempts to undermine and eliminate the JIM show a callous disregard for the suffering and loss of life caused by the use of chemical weapons, and an utter lack of respect for international norms," it said. "The United States implores the UN Security Council to renew the mandate of the JIM so that we may continue to identify the perpetrators of these horrific attacks and send a clear message that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," the White House said. The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its air strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim excluded by the UN's Commission of Inquiry on Syria chairman Paulo Pinheiro. In vetoing the investigative team's renewal last week, Ryabkov cast doubt on its conclusion that Syria was behind the Khan Sheikhoun attack, saying the investigation involved "dubious witnesses and unconfirmed evidence," according to Russian news agency Interfax. The Khan Sheikhoun attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Syria's air base in Shayrat, which Western governments say was used to launch the gas attack. After years of arguing over who is behind frequently reported chemical attacks in Syria, the UN council unanimously agreed to create the JIM in 2015. Its authority was renewed it for another year in 2016. With reporting by Reuters, depa, and TASS U.S. President Donald Trump has repeated calls for an Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in a New York truck rampage to get the death penalty. However, Trump on November 2 backed away from his earlier call to send 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system... the U.S. president tweeted. ...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! he wrote in separate post. Trump had already said Saipov deserved the death penalty in a tweet late on November 1. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! he wrote, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State (IS) extremist group. U.S. prosecutors brought terrorism charges against Saipov on November 1, saying he was inspired by Islamic State. He is accused of driving a rented pickup truck that mowed down bicyclists and pedestrians on October 31, killing eight people and injuring 12. He was also charged with providing material support to a terrorist group. In the attack, police say Saipov drove the vehicle along a bike path in Lower Manhattan before crashing into a school bus. The suspect was shot by police after he jumped out of the pickup truck brandishing two air guns and yelling "God is great" in Arabic, authorities said. Saipov was brought to a court in Manhattan in a wheelchair handcuffed and with his feet shackled to face the charges against him, which could bring the death penalty. Prosecutors told the court that he asked to display IS's black flag in his hospital room after he was shot by police and said "he felt good about what he had done." They said he openly confessed to the attack while being questioned in custody at a hospital after being shot. Prosecutors also said that he had 90 videos and 3,800 photos on one of his two cell phones, many of them IS-related propaganda, including images of prisoners being beheaded, shot, or run over by a tank. Court documents said that Saipov deliberately chose Halloween to stage the attack "because he believed there would be more civilians on the street" and more people would be killed. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by the IS videos that he watched on his cell phone and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the Internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals, the agent said. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov was not a subject of a criminal investigation before the attack, but he appears to have had links with people who were under investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on November 1 that it had located another Uzbek man -- identified as 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov -- wanted for questioning as a person of interest in the attack. A law enforcement official was quoted as saying Kadirov was a friend of Saipov's. In the past few years, IS online posts have exhorted followers to use vehicles, knives, or other readily available means of killing people in their home countries. England, France, Sweden, Spain, and Germany are among the countries that have all seen similar deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and dpa H.S. polls: Washington girls steady at No. 1 in 4A, Marian girls No. 2 in 3A This photo of a crescent moon setting with an earthshine visible, next to a sculpture of a firefighter, pays homage to firefighters. Captured in Reguengos de Monsaraz, Dark Sky at the Alqueva Reserve, in Portugal. Miguel Claro is a Lisbon, Portugal-based professional photographer, author and science communicator who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory photo ambassador, a member of The World At Night and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve, he specializes in astronomical "skyscapes" that connect Earth and the night sky. Join him here as he takes us through his photograph "A Baby Moon Is Shining and Heating." A tiny sliver of the waxing moon grows larger and brighter, slowly heating up as the moon's surface reflects more and more sunlight. The sunlit side of the moon can reach temperatures of up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius). Meanwhile, on the "dark side" of the moon, temperatures can dip to minus 243 degrees F (minus 153 degrees C). While this "baby" moon is growing, warming and showing a beautiful earthshine, firefighters here on Earth face the real power of heat; these heroes show the strength and courage to save both human and animal lives amid dangerously hot conditions. [Gallery: Satellite Photos of California's Devastating Wildfires] The sculpture seen in the foreground of the image was made by two Portuguese sculptors known as the Charneca brothers. It was erected in the town of Reguengos de Monsaraz, where Portugal's Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve is located, to honor the local fire department on its 75th anniversary in 2010. To see more of Claro's amazing astrophotography, visit his website, miguelclaro.com. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Returning to the Moon NASA NASA is getting ready to send humans back to the moon again. The agency tasked by the Trump administration to land there is preparing for an uncrewed test of its spacecraft out past low Earth orbit, called Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1). The mission is slated for 2019 and will test both the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket that will bring it into space. NASA recently released a video showing planned highlights of the 25.5-day mission, where it outlined all of the steps of the rollout, launch and landing. The mission profile looks similar to the missions that Apollo astronauts performed in the 1960s and 1970s, but with a key difference: Orion's lunar orbit will bring it farther into deep space than any other crew-capable spacecraft. Here are the details. Rollout NASA As EM-1's launch date approaches, the 32-story Space Launch System with the Orion spacecraft perched on top will begin its rollout from Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building, the same location in which the Apollo rockets and space shuttles were prepared for launch. On top of a crawler, the rocket and spacecraft will roll along a 4-mile (6.5 kilometers) crawlway at a top speed of 1 mph (1.6 km/h). When they reach the launchpad, the rocket and spacecraft will climb a ramp over the flame trench. Then, the rocket will be lowered onto the pad, and the crawler will roll away. Launchpad checks NASA Engineers will spend several days making sure the rocket is ready for launch. Final safety checks will be performed, including a test to ensure that the spacecraft is cleared to leave Earth. Work crews can gain access to the spacecraft through a crew access arm, located a dizzying 300 feet (90 meters) above the ground. One of the final steps involves loading cryogenic (very low-temperature) fuels onto the rocket to give it the required boost to leave Earth, and prepare the spacecraft for its ultimate destination: the moon. Liftoff NASA Shortly before liftoff, service lines to the rocket will be severed by retracting umbilical plates, some of which are mounted on arms the size of tractor trailers. The core stage engines also will be prepared ("thermally conditioned" is how NASA puts it) for the burst of cryogenic fuel needed to power the rocket upon ignition. At 15 seconds before liftoff (T-15 seconds), water will be turned on to suppress the sound and ensure vibrations do not disturb the launch. At ignition T-0 seconds fire from the rocket will flood a trench below. When the rocket starts moving a few milliseconds later, all the umbilical arms will retract. The rocket will climb past its launch tower in just a few seconds. At liftoff, the vehicle will produce roughly 8.8 million lbs. (4 million kilograms) of thrust to counteract the 6-million-lb. (2.7 million kg) weight of the launch stack. Leaving low Earth orbit NASA The rocket will reach its maximum dynamic pressure the moment at which the atmosphere exerts its maximum force on the rocket just 90 seconds into the mission. It will jettison its solid propellant boosters after 2 minutes, then let go of its service module fairings at 3 minutes to lighten the load and make sure Orion's solar arrays are exposed. Then, it will throw away the launch abort system at 3 minutes and 40 seconds after launch. The engines will shut down when the rocket reaches the right speed, allowing the core stage to separate. Then, an interim propulsion stage powered by fuel cooled to very low temperatures, along with the Orion spacecraft, will orbit Earth and get ready for moon operations. Orion will deploy its solar arrays, and the propulsion stage will change the spacecraft's orbit, raising the point at which it'd make its closest approach to Earth (called perigee). When that is finished, Orion will receive the all-clear for its 20-minute-long trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn the engine fire that will bring it coasting to the moon. Coast phase NASA It will take about four days to get to the moon, but first, the spacecraft will still have a few milestones to reach. About 1.5 hours after launch when TLI is finished Orion will separate from the propulsion stage. Then, it will have to pass through all the satellites and satellite debris encircling Earth, as well as the Van Allen radiation belts. After it passes the belts, Orion will be in deep space. The spacecraft will remain in communication with Earth to make any necessary trajectory adjustments as it approaches the moon. Lunar entry and orbits NASA When Orion gets close to the moon, it will perform a lunar-gravity-assist maneuver to enter orbit. This means that the spacecraft will turn on its engine to slow Orion down and let it be "captured" by the moon's gravity. Orion will pass over the moon with a closest approach of just 62 miles (100 kilometers). But it will be in a highly elliptical orbit,called a distant retrograde orbit,that will bring it farther from Earth than any other crew-capable spacecraft. Its maximum distance from Earth will be 270,000 miles (435,000 kilometers) about 1,000 times farther than the International Space Station is from Earth. The spacecraft will work in this orbit for about a week. Return NASA While Orion is still at the moon, recovery teams at Naval Base San Diego will get ready for Orion's eventual splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, controllers on Earth will fire the spacecraft's engines again to speed up Orion, allowing it to break free of lunar orbit and coast home a journey that will take four days. Along the way, Orion will keep its back end pointed toward the sun to maximize cooling. Its trajectory may be adjusted to make sure that it hits Earth's atmosphere at just the right angle. Re-entry NASA When Orion gets close to Earth, it will jettison the service module that held most of its crucial components for the mission. Controllers will orient Orion's heat shield in the direction of travel to get it ready for re-entry, which starts at about 400,000 feet (122,000 m) above the Earth. The spacecraft will slam into the atmosphere at 24,500 mph (39,500 km/h) and decelerate at up to nine times the force of gravity. Outside, temperatures surrounding the spacecraft will soar to close to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 2,800 degrees Celsius), but it will be protected by the heat shield. Splashdown NASA Once the spacecraft gets through most of Earth's atmosphere, it will pass through the sound barrier; the recovery team in the Pacific will hear it when Orion emits a sonic boom. The spacecraft will jettison a protective thermal cover and deploy drogues, then parachutes, to slow down. During the last phase, Orion will pop out three main parachutes to prepare for splashdown. In 20 minutes, the spacecraft will slow from 32 times the speed of sound (Mach 32) to 0. After reaching the ground, Orion will stay powered on while Navy divers approach it from a nearby recovery ship, using small boats. The divers will attach tending lines and a towline, and then tow the ship into the recovery ship's well deck. Once the ship is safely inside, controllers will close the gate and drain the deck, completing Orion's 25.5-day mission. WASHINGTON SpaceX's Oct. 30 launch of the Koreasat-5A telecommunications satellite doubled the number of Falcon 9 missions completed in a single year and ties the company with United Launch Alliance's record of 16 launches in one year. The successful mission took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 3:34 p.m. Eastern, deploying the satellite 36 minutes after liftoff. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage booster overcame choppier waters from tropical storm Philippe to land on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" nine minutes later in the Atlantic Ocean. The Hawthorne, California-based launch services provider has now matched ULA's most active year 2009 where the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture launched five Atlas 5s, eight Delta 2s and three Delta 4s (including one Delta 4 Heavy). [In Photos: SpaceX's Koreasat-5A Launch & Rocket Landing] SpaceX and ULA now compete head-to-head in ULA's core market of government and defense missions, with SpaceX increasingly gaining share of a previously monopolized market. Lower prices have helped SpaceX expand its U.S. government customer base. Two NASA contracts awarded last week Sentinel-6A for a SpaceX Falcon 9 mission and Landsat-9 for a ULA Atlas 5 mission were worth $97 million and $153.8 million respectively. SpaceX's Falcon 9 Koreasat-5A launch. (Image credit: SpaceX webcast) In the commercial sector, SpaceX charges $62 million for a normal Falcon 9 mission, and now commands a substantial share of global business. SpaceX has topped the maximum annual launch records of Russia's Proton rocket 14 missions, six of which were government-led and Arianespace 12 missions split between six Ariane 5, three Soyuz and three Vega. One notable difference is that Arianespace launches two satellites on most Ariane 5 missions, while the vast majority of Falcon 9s launch one satellite at a time. Proton is also capable of dual-launches, but has only done so for Russian government missions, not commercial. SpaceX has more missions on its manifest before 2017 is complete, including the recently announced secretive Zuma mission, a space station resupply mission, an Iridium launch and the Falcon Heavy debut. For Koreasat, a new maritime presence Koreasat-5A is the second satellite launched this year for South Korean satellite operator KT Sat, following an Ariane 5 dual launch of Koreasat-7 and Brazil's SGDC satellite in May. The new spacecraft replaces Koreasat-5, which is only 11 years old, but lost capacity early due to a solar array drive mechanism malfunction. Most geostationary telecom satellites last for 15 years. The solar glitch didn't stop KT Sat from returning to that manufacturer, Thales Alenia Space, for both Koreasat-7 and Koreasat-5A. Unique to Koreasat-5A is an expanded maritime footprint over the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and East China Sea. KT Sat has for years desired to have a larger international presence, and views connecting boats as a way to further that goal. In August KT Sat forged a distribution agreement with Tokyo-based Hun's Corp. to bring the operator's maritime VSAT product, MVSAT, to the Japanese market. KT Sat also signed a capacity lease with Mongolian broadcaster DDish TV for an eighth of the capacity on Koreasat-5A. Koreasat-5A reaches Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the Middle East from 113 degrees east, carrying 12 Ku-band 36MHz transponders and 24 Ku-band 54MHz transponders. The satellite supports television broadcasts, internet access and network backhaul. KT Sat's total fleet consists of Koreasat-6, Koreasat-7, the ABS-2/Koreasat-8 condosat, Koreasat-5A, and, for as long as it lasts, Koreasat-5. This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. WASHINGTON NASA is considering handing over operations of one of its flagship "Great Observatories" to a private organization that would also be responsible for funding the spacecraft. In a request for information (RFI) issued Oct. 12, NASA said it was looking for U.S.-based institutions interesting in taking over operations of the Spitzer Space Telescope after NASA funding for the infrared observatory ends in 2019. Responses are due by Nov. 17. "We would be thrilled if there was a non-NASA party interested in funding the operations Spitzer for their own purposes beyond the end of our mission," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division, during an Oct. 18 meeting of the Astrophysics Advisory Committee. NASA's current plans call for operating Spitzer through March of 2019 to perform preparatory observations for the James Webb Space Telescope. That schedule was based on plans for a fall 2018 launch of JWST, which has since been delayed to the spring of 2019. Under that plan, NASA would close out the Spitzer mission by fiscal year 2020. [The Spitzer Space Telescope Explained] That plan was intended to save NASA the cost of running Spitzer, which is currently $14 million a year. The spacecraft itself, though, remains in good condition and could operating well beyond NASA's current plan. "The observatory and the IRAC instrument are in excellent health. We don't have really any issues with the hardware," said Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, Spitzer project manager, in a presentation to the committee Oct. 18. IRAC is the Infrared Array Camera, an instrument that continues operations at its two shortest wavelengths long after the spacecraft exhausted the supply of liquid helium coolant. The spacecraft's only consumable is nitrogen gas used for the spacecraft's thrusters, and Storrie-Lombardi said the spacecraft still had half its supply of nitrogen 14 years after launch. The one challenge for extended operations of Spitzer, though, is the spacecraft's orbit around the sun. Spitzer is in an Earth-trailing orbit that causes the spacecraft to drift further away from the Earth each year, complicating communications. As of October 2017, Spitzer was about 235 million kilometers from the Earth. In addition to the increasing distance, the spacecraft has to pitch to larger angles from the sun in order to point at the Earth for transmitting data. During the prime mission, Spitzer never turned more than 30 degrees from the sun, but that angle has increased by necessity during its extended mission as the spacecraft's orbital geometry changes. "When were pitch beyond 30 degrees, the solar panels aren't charging as efficiently, so we have to manage the use of the batteries," Storrie-Lombardi said. That maximum pitch angle is increasing each year, limiting the duration of communications passes. She said the spacecraft operations should be feasible at least through November 2020. Operations beyond March 2019, though, would require non-NASA funding. The RFI asked organizations interested in taking over Spitzer operations several questions about funding, including how they would raise the money and how long it would take. The RFI also asks when the interested organization would be able to take over operations, and how they would carry out an observing program using Spitzer. NASA, according to the RFI, would provide continued access to the Deep Space Network for Spitzer. Spacecraft and mission operations, currently handled at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lockheed Martin, would remain there, as would part of the science operations at NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center on the campus of Caltech. There is precedent for handing over a NASA science mission to a private organization. In 2012, NASA transferred the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX, mission to Caltech after nine years of NASA-led operations. Caltech funded operations of GALEX for another year before the spacecraft was decommissioned. Spitzer, originally known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, launched in 2003 as the last of NASA's "Great Observatories," a series of large space telescopes designed to observe the universe at different electromagnetic wavelengths. Two other Great Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, remain in operation. The fourth, the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, was deorbited in 2000, nine years after its launch. This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry. WASHINGTON Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee sharply criticized the nomination of Jim Bridenstine as NASA administrator in a confirmation hearing Nov. 1, arguing he was not qualified for the job. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), ranking member of the committee, said in an extended opening statement at the hearing that Bridenstine lacked the technical background needed for someone to effectively run NASA, and that his political record suggested he was too divisive to lead the agency. "While your time as a pilot and your service to our country in the military is certainly commendable, it doesn't make you qualified to make the complex and nuanced engineering, safety and budgetary decisions for which the head of NASA must be accountable," Nelson said. [Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump] Nelson said he feared that having someone in charge with a partisan, rather than technical, background could put at risk the safety of human space transportation systems under development. "Failure at this particular juncture could jeopardize the lives of brave astronauts," he said. "The NASA administrator should be a consummate space professional who is technically and scientifically competent and is a skilled executive." Bridenstine, in his opening statement, emphasized safety. "Of course, the most important part of any human spaceflight mission is making sure our astronauts return home safely," he said, citing his own experience as a pilot in the U.S. Navy. "I will work to promote a NASA culture where safety, transparency and independent oversight are celebrated." During the hearing, which lasted more than two and a half hours and focused almost entirely on Bridenstine over three other non-NASA nominees also under consideration, Democratic senators raised questions about Bridenstine's views on Earth science, social issues, and even his tenure as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum before he was elected to Congress in 2012. Some senators pressed Bridenstine on his views about the role human activities play in climate change. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked Bridenstine if he agreed with the statement that "climate warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities." Bridenstine responded with "yes." Bridenstine was reticent, though, to agree with questions by Schatz and other senators about whether human activity was the primary cause of climate change. "Human activity absolutely is a contributor to the climate change that we are currently seeing," he said. Asked by Schatz if it was the primary cause, he said, "It's going to depend on a lot of factors, and we're still learning more about that every day." Later in the hearing, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked Bridenstine to pledge to protect NASA scientists from any political interference in their Earth science research. "I know, because I've been told by scientists, that fear is rampant among our government scientists that they are going to be punished if they speak publicly about their work on climate change science," Markey said. "I will not punish them," Bridenstine responded. "I'm not going to reassign anybody basd on that, because that would be punishment." Several asked him about past statements he made unrelated to NASA, ranging from questions on sexual harassment and LGBTQ rights to criticisms Bridenstine had levied at other Republicans during political campaigns. Some of those issues came up in an Oct. 26 letter by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is not a member of the committee, to committee leadership. "These are some of the most divisive tactics that this senator has ever seen in either party," Nelson said after describing Bridenstine's support for, among others, a candidate who challenged Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the Republican nomination in his latest Senate race. "How do you move past all of that and keep NASA from being dragged down?" Bridenstine emphasized his past work with members of both parties in Congress, including Nelson, on past legislation such as NASA authorization bills. "I want to make sure that NASA remains, as you said, apolitical," he said. The committee's Republican majority rallied to Bridenstine's defense. "The ranking Democrat on the committee has suggested that you are somehow unqualified to serve as the administrator of NASA because you've taken a number of positions that he deems controversial," said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). "I consider wildly inappropriate this suggestion that this somehow disqualifies you." Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) said that he thought the hearing's line of questions was "a little bit disgusting" at times. Gardner was one of the few senators of either party to pose a question on NASA programs outside of Earth science, asking Bridenstine about if he supported continued development of the Orion spacecraft. "Yes sir, 100 percent," Bridenstine responded. [Orion Explained: NASA's Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (Infographic)] There was no sign that the hearing changed any minds among senators about Bridenstine's ability to serve as NASA administrator, with Democratic members of the committee skeptical, if not opposed, to him. "I truly do not think you are ready to be administrator," said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) at the conclusion of a line of questioning with him. "This senator is quite skeptical," Nelson said in his opening remarks. "Respectfully, Congressman Bridenstine, I think you've got a long way to go to prove to me you're that leader." Committee Chairman Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said in an interview after the hearing that the committee planned to meet again Nov. 8 to consider these and other nominations. Whether Bridenstine's nomination is included in that hearing, he said, will depend on how quickly members get responses to questions submitted for the record. Thune criticized Democrats for asking questions on topics he considered not relevant to NASA. "I'd like to hear a little bit more about his views on the space program, his vision for the agency," he said. If the committee does advance the nomination, action by the full Senate to confirm Bridenstine will depend on other Senate activities as well as "how cooperative the Democrats want to be" regarding the nomination, Thune said. "I think, in the end, the votes will be there, so it's just a question of how long they want to drag it out." The prospect of a party-line vote on Bridenstine's nomination, at the committee level or by the full Senate, concerned Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a supporter of Bridenstine. Cruz warned that a partisan vote could hurt bipartisan cooperation on other space policy issues. "I believe you're going to get confirmed," Cruz told Bridenstine. "But, I would say to my Democratic friends on this committee, that if the confirmation ends up going down to a party-line vote, I think that would be deeply unfortunate for NASA and for the space community." With another month comes another release from the shaker company BlenderBottle for its Color Of The Month Series. The brand has decided to theme its latest limited edition shaker around the holiday season with its obviously titled Turkey BlenderBottle. The special shaker comes colored in orange and brown and is topped off with an illustration of a turkey on the side of the cup. As per usual the best place to get your hands on the new Color Of The Month BlenderBottle is through blenderbottle.com, where itll cost you $9.99 each. T he Evening Standard's City Spy brings you the latest gossip in business circles.. Burberry rumours start Outgoing Burberry creative chief Christopher Bailey has only been packing his bags for a couple of days but the luxury fashion rumour mill has already whirred into life. Well-heeled types in fashion business circles tell Spy he has already secured a job at Ralph Lauren, the American fashion house famed for its polo player logo. Burberry said this week hed be off in late 2018. But gossips point to the fact that he has agreed to waive up to 16 million in bonuses, and suggest that would unlikely be the case unless he already had a new gig lined up. Burberry and Ralph Lauren declined to comment. Watch this space. Were Paula Nickolds and Pippa Middleton separated at birth? Spy was struck by the similarity between the John Lewis boss and Pippa when Waitrose held a bash at its Kings Cross Cookery School on Wednesday night. Given P Middi has been mocked for her scribblings on party planning and staying in shape, Nickolds will hope the similarities end there. Lively scenes at Tottenham vs Real Madrid match To Wembley, where there were lively scenes among the corporate boxes at the Tottenham vs Real Madrid match last night. West Londons Thames Materials Ltds box played host to a group of increasingly irate Spaniards in smart suits and shiny shoes banging the seats and cursing loudly as the Oles! rang out to celebrate Spurs victory. Thames specialises in waste, apt for Zinedine Zidanes struggling Los Blancos. The only way is ethics as Smith gets on wagon The hushed audience at the Institute of Directors conference at the Royal Albert Hall was stunned four years ago when the keynote speaker delivered a visceral takedown of ethical investment funds. Your duty is to maximise the returns of your investments. It is not to make moral judgments, he barked at the penguin-suited crowd. Its a very bad idea to ignore investments in all the things people like most and enjoy consuming. I wouldnt do that if I were you. Who was this anti-ethical fund crusader? Step forward Mr Terry Smith, the funds boss who yesterday launched a sustainable equity fund, shunning fags, booze and porn investments, after growing demand from investors. Looks like Smith, a noted climate-change denier who quit the UK for Mauritius, has changed his tune. S portingbet owner GVC Holdings has jettisoned its Turkish business for up to 150 million (132 million), paving the way for a potential merger with Ladbrokes Coral. The pair had been in talks over the latest tie-up in a rapidly consolidating sector although one of the sticking points on a potential deal is GVCs earnings from unregulated markets such as Turkey. Although these markets are more profitable they are vulnerable to sudden clampdowns. GVC said the sale of the business, which operates under the Superbahis brand in Turkey, would mean that only 25% of its revenues would come from grey markets. The board believes that the disposal will increase the attractiveness of the group to investors and potential consolidation partners, it added. Any final deal is unlikely to be agreed until the final outcome of the Governments review into machine stakes in January. The Turkish arm accounts for 9% of GVCs net gaming revenues and is being sold to Ropso Malta, a company backed by investors who run the operations IT. H elen Brocklebank discusses Walpole, a luxury goods trade body, and how she came to work there... What is Walpole? Walpole is the trade body for the British luxury sector and counts 200 of the UKs finest brands from Alexander McQueen to Wedgwood among its members. The sector is worth 32.2 billion to the UK economy and is forecast to employ 160,000 people by 2019. A significant part of Walpoles activity lies in nurturing future talent with our mentoring programmes investing the skills of established British brands in developing the next generation. What do you do? My job is to represent the interests of our members at home in Westminster, in Brussels and beyond. I do all I can to protect, promote, and develop the specific needs of the British luxury sector. A typical week can include a roundtable with Burberry, Jo Malone London, Yoox Net-A-Porter, The Savoy and other members to explore the impact of Brexit on retaining talent. Or there could be a session with fellow bosses in the European luxury associations to talk about joint initiatives. Were also about to put on the Walpole British Luxury Awards, which Catherine Zeta-Jones is hosting. What do you enjoy most about it? I love working with brands that make the UK famous the world over, and which invest in British manufacturing. I also enjoy nurturing emerging talent in the sector watch brand Bremont and shoe label Charlotte Olympia are both companies that started life on our Brands of Tomorrow programme. What do you find most challenging about it? Brexit. Walpole worked incredibly hard with European partners to gain sector recognition for luxury within the EU, with all of the protections and privileges that entails. Our own Government doesnt recognise the luxury sector as making a specific contribution, despite its incredible strength in markets that will become much more important to the whole economy post-Brexit. The impact of Brexit on talent is also tough, up to 60% of the luxury workforce are EU nationals and that creates a lot of uncertainty for business. What was your biggest break? After studying English Literature and French at the University of East Anglia, I got a job selling display advertising at Campaign magazine. I then moved on to Esquire and Harpers Bazaar, where I worked across editorial and commercial departments to promote brands, before setting up my own consultancy advising luxury labels on growth. My biggest break was given to me by Michael Ward, Walpoles chairman and the managing director of Harrods, when he hired me. Walpole is turning 25 and Michael recognised in me a latent ability to take Walpole to the next level. What was your biggest setback and how did you overcome it? When I arrived at Walpole earlier this year we had an important trade mission to New York scheduled. However, both the retail downturn and the geo-political climate in the US at that time threatened to distract from the impact we wanted to make for British luxury and, despite the US being the worlds largest luxury market, I took the difficult decision to postpone it. Fast forward six months and Im about to get on a plane with a dozen member brands and head to Spring Studios in Tribeca for a showcase of British luxury for US media, influencers and buyers. Timing can be everything, and now feels right. How do you juggle work with family and social life? During the week I am full on Walpole, but from Friday nights the work phone goes off. I ensure weekends are spent with my husband Nick and two children (aged 13 and 10). We live in Shepherds Bush and when Im not acting as a taxi driver for the kids, we enjoy cultural days out, such as going to the V&A museum. Any tips for people starting out? Be relentless in your quest for new experiences and for developing new skills. Always want to do better. N ow that Islamic State has been driven out of Raqqa, the caliphate surely has only months left before it loses all its territory in Syria. However, it is still a powerful force in one area on the Iraq-Syria border it has 7,000 fighters. It was the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that achieved this victory in Raqqa, with the Americans providing air support. Unfortunately, most of the buildings in Raqqa are now in ruins. There is much to be done to bring order to the country and allow the population to live in peace. However, the main danger to peace in Syria may be the Deir ez-Zor province. The two major forces currently fighting IS in this area, the SDF and Syrian government forces, are backed by the US and Russia respectively. These groups could start fighting each other over the oil fields in the area. It is down to both America and Russia to ensure this does not happen. Brian Smith T he Balfour Declaration may have passed its centenary mark today but this is not something that should be celebrated while one of the affected communities continues to suffer. The 67-word letter to Lord Walter Rothschild from then foreign secretary Arthur Balfour, which supported the creation of a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine, was key to establishing the Israel we see today. However, for the current Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to say he is proud of what Balfour did ignores the truth which has resulted in the continued persecution of Palestinians. The Balfour Declaration was signed a long time ago but much has changed since then and now we must correct the mistakes that were made. Both the UK and Sweden recognised Palestine as a sovereign state; now it is time to enact the two-state solution plan that will hopefully bring peace to region. M Richards Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently described the Balfour Declaration as a fudgerama. David Blair, his Middle East adviser at the Foreign Office, recently said in a talk for the Historical Association that in Balfours time the reference to civil and religious rights would not have included political rights. Many people believe Balfour violated the agreements made in the McMahonHussein Correspondence in 1916 that Arab independence would be recognised after the First World War. As it prepares to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, what does the Government believe on this issue? Brendan OBrien Israels first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, hoped to see the day when Israel became a member of the Commonwealth and the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill supported Israeli membership, stating that it would be a wonderful thing. A fitting way to commemorate the Balfour Declaration and to honour its legacy then would be for Her Majestys Government, as the former mandatory power in Palestine, to issue an invitation to Israel to join the Commonwealth. Zeev Portner The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbass version of the Balfour Declaration is at odds with the actual words included in the document: It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. It was a time of turmoil in 1917, with the Ottoman Empire collapsing and the distractions of the Great War, but Balfour had the support of US President Woodrow Wilson. The fact that things didnt turn out as Balfour envisioned is just realpolitik. Rev Dr John Cameron Sex abuse goes far beyond celebrities It seems that people are only willing to talk about child abuse if a celebrity is involved. In 2016, a report estimated that 58,000 children suffered some form of sexual abuse, yet this was swept under the carpet and no national newspaper has ever published these findings. Now an actor makes an allegation against a celebrity and the whole thing explodes. Does this mean that unless you are famous, it doesnt count? If you make sexual advances towards a 14-year-old you are guilty of indecent assault on a minor. This is child abuse not drunken debauchery, as it was reported in some places. Coming out as gay is an egregious excuse for anyone to use as a form of defence of sexual assault and it does not exonerate you from prosecution. But what about the innocent people living under the radar who have suffered the same kind of abuse? A victim is a victim regardless of their race, sexual orientation or occupation. We shouldnt be segregating individuals because of their status. Chris Wild Luther's intervention cannot be defended Professor Diarmaid MacCullochs defence of Martin Luther is as misleading as Luthers attack on the Catholic Church was 500 years ago [Comment, October 31]. As a prominent historian MacCulloch should know better than to celebrate Luthers claims, notably that St Paul said a person can be saved by faith alone, and that the doctrine of purgatory simply does not appear in the Bible, which it does several times. Furthermore, MacCulloch repeats the unsubstantiated claim that clerical celibacy is responsible for the Catholic Churchs sexual scandals. In reality, the tiny proportion of Catholic clergy who have engaged in paedophilia would no more have steered clear of such scurrilous behaviour had they been married. As Professor Eamon Duffy correctly states, Luthers deeds led to terrible moral, cultural and societal destruction a legacy for which we are still paying a heavy price. Dr Gregory Slysz Clarke and co have no place in EU talks Other than to subvert the UKs Brexit negotiating team, what is to be achieved by Ken Clarke, the unelected Lord Adonis and former MP Nick Clegg in their meeting with the EUs negotiator-in-chief Michel Barnier? Third-party interference would not be allowed in any other negotiations, but such is this triumvirates devotion to the EU project that they seem determined to do all they can to put a spanner in the works. Paul Lebby Both Labour and Tories are divided Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmers hypocrisy is astounding [Letters, October 31]. He berates the Government over apparent infighting on Brexit, yet ignores the fact that, contrary to Labours official line, shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner states that the UK must leave both the single market and the customs union. Both Labour and the Tories are split. Starmer should not pretend otherwise. Howard Ricklow Politics is about prinicples not age These days Tony Blair and David Cameron are deemed to be old but both were only 43 when they became Prime Minister. Age is irrelevant, its what politicians stand for that counts. Nick Fossitt Join the conversation: #esnewsviews Froome is given too little credit Edward Miller [Letters, October 31] says Lewis Hamilton is Britains greatest-ever sportsman but I would suggest that title belongs to cyclist Chris Froome, who has won the Tour de France four times. During the Tour, Froome is in the saddle for 84 hours, rides more than 3,500km and climbs 60,000m the same as riding from sea level to the top of Mount Everest six times. He deserves more praise. Patrick Burke Join the conversation: #essportviews Fashion fans queued overnight to get their hands on the highly anticipated Erdem X H&M collection, which launched on the high street this morning. Londoners braved chilly temperatures of about 6C to be first in line outside the flagship Regent Street store when doors opened at 9am. The Erdem collaboration is the latest in a long list of designer ranges to be launched at H&M, with previous designers including Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Kenzo. One of the first was Roberto Escorcio, 25, who arrived at midnight. The recruiter got on the last train from Southend to get to central London last night. He has been at every H&M designer collaboration launch for the past seven years and asked for gift vouchers for birthday and Christmas presents so he would have spending money. Roberto Escorcio waits patiently in line / Sam Pearce Today, he was spending his 400 gift vouchers on the items of Erdem menswear - the first time the Canadian designer has produced clothing for men. He bought the pyjama set (shirt 79.99 and trousers 69.99) plus shirts (69.99), blazers(139.99) and a scarf (39.99). Escorcio said: This might be the only time he makes menswear, so I had to get some. I come every year, I have met friends here and we keep in touch on Instagram. Its nice to come and be surrounded by people who really care about fashion. He added: It was cold overnight but we survived. At one point some people joined the queue thinking it was for a club which was funny. Then they wandered away when they realised what we were here for. Daniel Bishop, 29, arrived outside the Regent Street flagship at 3am. The illustrator from Elephant and Castle said he also wanted to get this hands on some of Erdems menswear. Daniel Bishop outside the Regent Street store / Sam Pearce He said: I love Erdem, he makes such lovely clothes. I loved the look of his collection. Agnes Hayim, a maths tutor from Hampstead arrived at 7am. She said: I really like Erdem but I cannot afford it. So I am so excited. I have come to several launches before - I still have all the pieces in my wardrobe. Its so great to be able to get these pieces from such big designers. Agnes Hayim queues up for the launch / Sam Pearce Erdem Moralioglu grew up between Montral and Birmingham, moving to London in 2000 to train at the Royal College of Art. He had worked with Vivienne Westwood and Diane von Furstenberg before launching his label in 2005. His gowns have been worn by some of the worlds most famous women - including Duchess of Cambridge, Nicole Kidman, Meghan Markle, Sienna Miller, Keira Knightley, Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Stone and Emma Watson. Erdem X H&M Campaign by Baz Luhrmann The collaboration with Swedish brand H&M was announced in July and is one of the most anticipated high street fashion launches of 2017. Celebrities including Alexa Chung, Kirsten Dunst and and Gala Gonzalez have already been spotted wearing some of the designs. Erdem x H&M - The Campaign and BTS 1 /17 Erdem x H&M - The Campaign and BTS Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M Behind the scenes Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign Erdem X H&M The campaign It ranges from 7.99 tights and 24.99 t-shirts up to 69.99 pair of socks, 149 coats, 199.99 hand bags and 299.99 full-length dresses. The items can be bought online or at London stores including Oxford Circus, Oxford Street East, High Street Kensington, Regent Street and the two Westfield stores. A group of 60 prominent artists have come together to honour the memory of artist Francesca Lowe, who died suddenly earlier this year. The London-based painter and printmaker tragically passed away in January aged just 37, leaving behind her husband, fellow artist Gavin Nolan, and their 5 year old son. Friends of Lowe in Londons artistic community have assembled to organise an auction of artwork in her memory, In Memoriam, featuring pieces by both emerging and established artists including Julian Opie, Mark Wallinger, Chantal Joffe, Marcus Harvey, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Ben Eine, Amikam Toren and Paul Johnson. The auction also includes a print by Francesca Lowe, work by her husband Gavin Nolan, and a painting of Lowe by artist Des Lawrence. The auction will take place online, with bidding starting for artwork at half its usual gallery price, and features the option to Buy Now. Bidding will close at 9pm on 8th November. All proceeds will go towards supporting the Nolan Lowe family. Francesca was a beautiful, charismatic, hugely talented artist. In my opinion, she was one of the best of her generation, say co-organiser Zavier Ellis, director of CHARLIE SMITH LONDON gallery in Shoreditch. We have been humbled and enthused by the way the artistic community has rallied to celebrate Frans life and work, and to help create a legacy for her young family. Francesca Lowe studied at The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, Central Saint Martins, UAL and the Royal Academy Schools, and had numerous solo shows at Riflemaker gallery in London. She won the Red Mansion Prize in 2003, followed by the Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award for Fine Art in 2004, and represented the United Kingdom at the Beijing Biennale in 2008. For more information visit inmemoriamfrancescalowe.com, or email enquiries to info@inmemoriamfrancescalowe.com S cience fiction has been responsible for some of the most compelling and awe-inspiring moments in cinema. From 1960s and 1970s classics to slick 1980s efforts and more contemporary choices, sci-fi has inspired film fans throughout the generations and will continues to do so for years to come. In celebration of the genre, these are the best sci-fi films of all time. 10. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial Steven Spielberg brought sci-fi to the masses with his 1982 movie ET, which follows a kind-hearted alien who finds comfort with a young Californian family after being stranded on Earth. It's a classic piece of family-friendly sci-fi and the flying bikes scene is one of the most iconic in cinema. 9. Donnie Darko It might seem a slightly unusual choice given the films left off the list, but few movies made over the last 20 years possess the same distinctive style and personality of Richard Kellys Donnie Darko. Its a cult classic with weird, off-kilter storytelling and one of the best soundtracks in living memory. Its also a surprisingly scary work, which first introduced Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal to film fans all over the world. 8. 12 Monkeys No list of sci-fi films would be complete without mention of Terry Gilliam. The director and Monty Python members surreal 1985 effort Brazil could also have easily made the list too, but 12 Monkeys is a genuine 1990s classic, which more than deserves a place on the list. Bruce Willis plays a prisoner who's instructed to travel back in time to locate a deadly virus that has wiped out humanity. Brad Pitt also stars in the film, which has to be remembered as one of the best of the decade. 7. District 9 District 9 takes place in the aftermath of an extra-terrestrial invasion, where aliens are forced to live in refugee camps under terrible conditions. Its a thoughtful and hugely ambitious sci-fi movie, which makes unmissable comparisons to apartheid in South Africa and has a strong message to back up the incredible CGI work on display. Fans have been waiting for a sequel for eight years now, but instead of beginning work on a follow-up to this brilliant film, producer Peter Jackson went off to make the Hobbit trilogy instead. Thanks Peter 6. The Matrix Yes, the sequels might be overblown and pretentious, but the first Matrix movie was as close to the perfect sci-fi experience you could get when it came out in 1999. The film was incredibly stylish and brilliantly entertaining, and it also saw directing pair the Wachowskis introduce filming techniques like bullet time and 360-degree shots that were so ahead of its time, they would be shamelessly copied in inferior sci-fi films for years to come. 5. Terminator 2: Judgement Day He said hed be back and he was, for one of the most thrilling sci-fi films ever made. Director James Camerons Terminator 2 not only lived up to his original film, but it became one of only a handful of sequels to surpass the achievements of the first movie, which in itself was a classic slice of 1980s sci-fi. Can Cameron pull of the same feat with the four (four!) upcoming Avatar sequels he's working on? We doubt it. 4. Alien The appeal of Ridley Scotts original Alien was that it took at the best ingredients of a taught, claustrophobic horror film and set the whole thing in a sci-fi setting. James Cameron took the spectacle up a notch with the expansive war movie Aliens, but the original film remains an absolute classic that has aged extremely well since it came out in 1979. Watching Sigourney Weavers Ripley go toe-to-toe with a terrifying xenomorph on the grubby, dilapidated spaceship Nostromo remains one of the ultimate sci-fi experiences anyone could have. 3. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back Theres no doubt that the Star Wars franchise has had an unparalleled impact on the world of sci-fi cinema. Any of the three original movies could have been included here. Weve gone for The Empire Strikes Back though, as it finds a great balance between gigantic spectacle (think of the Battle of Hoth and the revelatory light saber battle between Luke and Darth Vader) and emotional candour (Princess Leia and Han Solos heart-breaking farewell). The uninspiring prequels threatened to diminish the reputation of the franchise but, thankfully, the new generation of Star Wars films have been fantastic additions to the series. For our money, you still cant beat Episode V though. 2. Blade Runner Cinema fans have been gripped by Blade Runner fever recently, thanks to the release of Blade Runner 2049, and the sequel has served as a welcome reminder of just how great the 1982 original is. Its the second entry on the list for Ridley Scott, who has to be recognised as one of the greatest world builder in sci-fi cinema. The greasy city scenes and sepia-washed landscapes add to the films unforgettable visuals and help make it one of the most arresting sci-fi films ever made. 1. 2001: A Space Odyssey Im sorry Dave, Im afraid I cant do that 2001: A Space Odyssey is so visually stunning, its easy to forget that the film was made nearly 50 years ago. Visionary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick created one of the most iconic sci-fi films ever with 2001, which looks stunning even after half a century. Theres an incredible soundtrack, mind-bending visuals and vast, theological concepts in play throughout the film, and insubordinate computer system HAL, brilliantly voiced by Douglas Rain, is also one of the most compelling and arresting characters in sci-fi cinema. A masterpiece. J oey Bada$$ is due onstage in less than half an hour and Ive been squeezed in haphazardly for a quick interview right before the show. The New York-rapper, just 22 years old, is one of the brightest hip-hop talents to emerge from the US in recent years and has been the subject of incredible hype ever since releasing his first two acclaimed mixtapes in 2012. His last album All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ reached number five on the US Billboard 200 and his videos have collectively racked up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. So far hes reached a more niche following in the UK, but you get the sense its only a matter of time before hes reaching a bigger audience. Climbing the stairs to his green room backstage at the Kentish Town Forum, I find Joey dressed head to toe in black military gear, beret and all, which is one of the most striking stage looks Ive ever seen. He spends most of our chat slumped on the sofa with a bottle of water but he speaks articulately and hes quickly up and animated while making more passionate points. Hes a young rapper with a whole lot so say and his music has been described as some of the most politically and socially aware hip-hop of 2017. When I ask about this though, hes unimpressed with the description. Define political. Im not a politician. Im not trying to beIm not talking about passing laws and signing treaties. Im just talking about real shit that I see on the ground, on the surface. This is what's going on around me. Joey goes on to say that while he has an issue with the 'political' tag, he believes every artist should be reflecting the times they live in. This is not political music, this is real music. This is the first body of work Ive made where it wasnt for myself but it definitely wasnt for politics. I have a hard time accepting people calling it political music. Eminem hits out at Trump in televised rap His song Rockabye Baby, one of the more incandescent tracks from All-Amerikkkan Bada$$ features the lyrics, "Fuck Donald Trump", which has become one of the most spoken-about moments on the album. However, Joey insists the problems hes addressing on the record are much bigger than Trump. This album was being made before Trump got elected, he says. People need to hang themselves off of the whole Trump thing. This problem, these issues that Im talking about pre-date Trump. I had these issues even under Obama. People need to open their eyes and realise that. Yes, theres a f***ing popularised douchebag in the office right now but hes only making these problems worse, hes not the reason for the problems. Like, we had these problems with Obama. Stop thinking Donald Trump is the only problem. Like, hes one of the many problems. I wish I didnt even f***ing say his name on the album because in every interview people are asking me about him, and I dont give a f*** about him. He goes on to say: Yeah, I said f*** him but whos not saying that? Whos not on that type of wavelength? Hes a part of the times, but just a little part of it. Outspoken: Joey Bada$$ says he's interested in collaborating with Britain's best rappers / Tim P. Whitby/Getty Whether he believes himself to be political or not, theres no doubt that Joey Bada$$ is making some of the most thought-provoking and insightful hip-hop of the last decade. Hes certainly not afraid to rap about heavy themes either. Pausing for thought, he says: Theres levels to it. At the very microcosmic level, Im a black man in the US and Im describing my problems. That is the very lowest level of my album. But once you raise it up, Im a human being in the world and Im speaking for oppressed people in the world. I believe the human race cannot be good until were all good. You cant have a piece of us suffering and say that were all good. I dont care if its black people, or its Asian people, or its Latino people until were all good and were all treated fairly and respectfully then we dont have peace. He continues: We got s*** to figure out. We got problems, we got struggles, and thats the very macro-cosmic elements of this project. It transcends just being a black man in America and it becomes just being a human being in the world. T he last time I saw Michael Burleigh he assured me he had given up writing books. I wasnt convinced. Once a writer always a writer. Its not something you can just switch off. Making money with exotic investors has its merits but I doubt it has been half as much fun as writing this swashbuckling tour dhorizon. The Best of Times, The Worst of Times finds our trenchant historian and columnist attempting to write a history of now, picking a selection of flashpoints and key nations around the world. To explain the messiness and unpredictability of our new post-Cold War disorder, Burleigh provides insightful, anecdote-packed context to the ruinous rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the rise of the would-be sultan Erdogan in Turkey, Putins failed-state Russia, China, the US and the EU. Whether or not you call this history or an extreme version of long-form journalism is immaterial. Its a breakneck geopolitical gallop across the globe in the hands of a historian and commentator at the peak of his powers. Burleigh takes as his starting-point the twin, game-changing phenomena that together challenged the ascendancy of the Wests free-trade-and-liberal-democracy order: first, the 2003 Iraq War, whose baleful consequences we and the entire Middle East endure to this day, and second, the 2008 financial crash, whose reverberations continue to be felt in our depleted paychecks and unsavoury politics. The Burleigh Weltanschauung can be unforgiving and the putdowns come thick and fast. Tony Blair is a deluded idealist, the EU a geopolitical nullity. Bankers are short, bald, fat nonentities. If this all sounds like knockabout stuff, it in no way diminishes the force of Burleighs arguments, whether it is invective against the complacent cabal of international elites who have been stupendous recruiting sergeants for populist movements across the West or the neo-cons of George W Bushs presidency and their ill-starred project of global messianic transformation. The Saudis inveterate double dealers deservedly come in for a good kicking. One day, minds immeasurably greater than ours will explain why Western powers acquiesced for decades to a friendly relationship with an oil-rich kingdom whose officially sanctioned ideology was bent on our destruction. Ordinary Brits and Americans increasingly doubt the benefits of this so-called strategic relationship with a regime propagating toxic, Jew-and-Christian-hating Wahhabism when it is not preaching the destruction of the infidel Shia. There is a direct ideological connection between Saudi Arabia and more or less every suicide bomber, yet still our rulers, blindsided by arms sales, talk of our friends in Riyadh. Little wonder that the death-cult iconoclasts of Islamic State were perfectly happy to use Saudi textbooks in their schools during their short-lived, presumptuous caliphate. The assurance last week from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Saudi Arabia would return to moderate Islam and destroy extremist thoughts immediately is one for the fairies. India gets scant mention here. Burleigh compares it unfavourably with China, summarising it in a paragraph as a place of outdoor defaecation, absentee teachers and 300 million illiterates, together with a lower house of parliament in which almost a third of its 543 members are facing criminal charges, including rape, murder and kidnapping. So much for the worlds largest democracy. Until only recently the pre-eminent global force, master of all it surveyed, the liberal West is now in retreat as power is mediated through a more multi-polar world in which authoritarian China and Russia pick up much of the slack left by Trumps America. The West, Burleigh argues, could do a lot worse than showing both Russia and China more respect, rather than over-extending Nato and the EU and fretting about human rights. More pragmatism, less posturing. Certainly it is difficult to see what the US and Europe have managed to gain in recent years from their more confrontational approach to two powers who reject the Western liberal democratic model. Although The Best of Times, The Worst of Times professes to eschew futurology, there are a handful of not entirely gloomy predictions about Europe, Trumps America and Xi Jinpings China. More book reviews 1 /24 More book reviews Recovery by Russell Brand Will Russells brand of self-help prove quite so addictive? By Nicholas Lezard. Read review A Life in Questions by Jeremy Paxman Paxo refuses to answer all the really good questions, says David Sexton. Read review Politics: Between: The Extremes by Nick Clegg The basis of this book makes it impossible not to warm to Clegg, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review Serious Sweet by A L Kennedy Thank heavens for London in this tale of self-obsessed lovers. Read review The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth by Anna Keay Born a kings b****** and destined for a traitors death. Read review Man Up: Boys, Men and Breaking the Male Rules by Rebecca Asher Getting to the bottom of why boys will be boys. Read review The Course of Love by Alain de Botton A philosophical novel that does run smooth, says Johanna Thomas-Corr. Read review The Tree Climbers Guide: Adventures in the Urban Canopy by Jack Cooke How I gave this book a proper test and ended up with a broken ankle. Read review Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre Brontes classic tale in the imaginations of other writers, says Claire Harman. Read review Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran Caitlin comes clean about politics the world according to our funniest feminist. By Rosamund Urwin. Read review Spark Joy An Illustrated Guide to the Japanese Art of Tidying by Marie Kondo Theres no messing wih Marie, says Katie Law. Read review Cockfosters Stories by Helen Simpson After 50, a womans life gets better not worse. By Katie Law. Read review Stalins Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess by Andrew Lownie Joker in the spying pack. By Richard Bassett. Read review Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin The darkness that lies at the heart of the novel is offset by a lightness of touch, says Mark Sanderson. Read review Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink by Elvis Costello Elvis proves not quite so lyrical on the page, says Nick Curtis. Read review The Importance of Elsewhere: Philip Larkins Photographs by Richard Bradford His poetry paints better pictures than any camera, says David Sexton. Read review Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith Morality wins out over macabre murders, says Melanie McDonagh. Read review The Grownup by Gillian Flynn Calling all Flynnies: the con girl whos like gone girl. Read review Beyond the big-picture analysis and of rather greater relevance to most of us, perhaps, is Burleighs withering condemnation of the pathetic reality of our everyday digital lives. We are increasingly trapped in a perpetual electronic and virtual present that is turning people into incommunicative idiots capable of little more than a tweet, he writes. Ouch. S o Im sat watching the latest big-budget fashion ad sorry, short film this time for Erdems collaboration with H&M. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, its one part Great Expectations to two parts Brideshead Revisited, with a soupcon of Luhrmann-esque WTF is going on? thrown in. In keeping with Erdems ongoing love affair with florals, its very floral. A botanical theme looms large, with people saying deep and meaningless things like, As for myself, I hold no preference among flowers, as long as they are wild, free and spontaneous, before looking lasciviously at the person next to them. If only it could be like this always, says one character. Always spring. By the end of the 4.05 minutes, I am salivating not merely over the clothes, but over the nature. Its so beautiful, I swoon, staring at all the beauty through a screen. Because thats what we do, isnt it? In London, working hours are only getting longer. Who has the time or energy to go out? So we sit on our sofas and watch Autumnwatch instead of participating in real-life, actual autumn. So thank you, Baz, for inspiring me to go on a walk. I bribed my kids, I strong-armed my house guests, and off we went to Hampstead Heath. It was beautiful. There were russet leaves and everything. There was even some mist and mellow fruitfulness, albeit blighted by an ice cream van that had diversified for October and was selling sausage rolls. Isnt it depressing, said my companion, P. The fact that you cant go anywhere in London without encountering a snack outlet? I asked. No autumn, he replied. Leaves falling. Everything dying. Its sad. He really did say that. Im not making it up. But it all grows back again, I said, incredulous. Autumn isnt a one-time thing. Its seasonal. Its nature. Its P had recently been signed off work with stress-related anxiety. I felt awful that autumn was making him sad. Im glad I came out, though, he continued. Its nice out here. It is nice out there. We should probably all get out more. Erdem x H&M FLAUNT RIGHT OFF In this weeks instalment of Words I Want Banned, I bring you flaunting. Why is it exclusively used to describe female behaviour? Cant men flaunt, too? What do they do instead? Brandish? If a female celebrity isnt flaunting her curves while oozing out of her dress/bikini/whatever, shes showing off something. The latest blameless woman to fall victim of the Flaunt Police is Alicia Vikander, who, having recently wed Michael Fassbender, stands accused of showing off her wedding ring. As someone who got married on the lowdown in Ibiza, flaunting is so not Alicias style. They call it flaunting: I call it Walking Through an Airport with the Temerity to have her Left Hand on Show. Splash News #HASHSPAG Avocado, be gone. Theres only one food to be seen shovelling into your mouth on Instagram this month, and thats pasta. Not squid ink pasta or some obscure pasta in the shape of a unicorn that you can only import from Tuscany whenever theres a p in the month just your bog standard spaghetti. Im baffled. Has Chiara Ferragni suddenly fallen on hard times and had to substitute her lucrative designer partnerships with paid-for posts by the International Association of Carbs? Do these willowy influencers even eat the heaps of spag piled up before them, or do they push them out of the way, shuddering, the minute the pic is nailed? I reckon its a cheekbone thing. No matter how jowly your face, slurping spaghetti gives you cheekbones. Spagface is the new duckface, I declare. E ntrepreneurial cooks Jemima Jones and Lucy Carr-Ellison dish up fresh, nutritious and locally sourced food to many famous names. Their catering business, Tart London started from Lucys experience with assisting on photo-shoots and a desire to change the standard sandwich and snacking on nibbles routine on film sets. The venture began six years ago in New York, when Jemima met Lucy and their talk of dining out and interest to deliver good food persuaded her to join Lucys endeavours on the pop-up kitchen that changed the industry. The two began writing for the Evening Standard Magazine almost two years ago, and have their own weekly column in the print editions, as well as online. Tart publishes easy to follow recipes with quality ingredients, and the pairs wholesome dishes are popular amongst budding foodies, and practised by loyal ES Magazine readers. Tart London thanked the magazine in an Instagram post, saying Thank you to @eveningstandardmagazine for giving us the chance to write the weekly foodie column. It still feels like a dream even after completing our 100th column. But thats not all on the celebratory agenda as Tart is set to bring out their first cookery book in spring 2018, were in for more of their delicious re-invented recipes. Here are just a few of our favourites: Blood orange ice cream How to make blood orange ice cream Roast parsnip soup with prosciutto and walnuts Tart London: How to make roast parsnip soup with prosciutto and walnuts Wild mushroom pie Tart London: How to make wild mushroom pie Honey cake with brandy cream Tart London: How to make honey cake with brandy cream Asian inspired Super Food salad Tart London: how to make an Asian-inspired superfood salad Spiced Plum compote & cilli jam Tart London: How to make spiced plum compote and chilli jam Feast of mussels and clams I t's not often that you would spend 7,600 on a single shot of scotch. In order to warrant such an extortionate price that must be a seriously special whiskey - a one-of-a-kind liquor that is older than your great, great grandmother and is kept behind an elaborate vault. Quite possibly a shot of 1878 Special Reserve from The Macallan distillery in Speyside. Said whiskey is kept at Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland where millionaire Zhang Wei, 36, paid for the shot during a premium tasting session. At the time it was the most expensive dram of whiskey ever bought - with the whole bottle estimated to be worth a whopping 227,000. Only it wasn't that rare at all. When photos of Zhang enjoying the whiskey were circulated around the internet, suspicious experts called for the whiskey to be tested, questioning the dubious discrepancies on the cork and label. Whisky specialists in Dunfermeline, Scotland conducted a series of carbon dating tests on the bottle and the lab results have now proved that Wei was in fact duped, and the origin of his 7,600 shot is more likely to be from the 1970's - meaning it was not much older than Zhang himself. Zhang Wei drinking his 7,600 dram of whiskey / Facebook What's more, the specialists have said that the whisky is likely not even a single malt and is probably made up of a blend of whiskies from more than one distillery. After discovering the mistake, the hotel owner Sandro Bernasconi flew to China to reimburse Zhang, according to the BBC. Our hearts go out to the millionaire. Maybe next time he ought to save some coppers and go for a more down-to-earth dram. T uesday's terrorist attack in Manhattan, in which an Uzbek immigrant drove a pick-up truck onto a crowded bicycle path, killing eight and injuring 12, has reignited President Trumps attacks on Americas immigration and national security policy. In a late-night tweet, he recommended that the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY. Earlier in the day, he called Americas criminal justice system a joke and a laughing stock and blamed his Democratic opponents for creating the visa lottery system that allowed Saipov into the country. After the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, Trump refused to discuss gun laws, saying the moment was too raw for politics. He showed no such qualms this week. We have to get much less politically correct, Trump said on Wednesday. Were so politically correct that were afraid to do anything. The attack and Trumps response broke what had been a bad news cycle for the President since Monday, when the first indictments landed in the investigation into his campaigns alleged ties to Russia. Later this month, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, will reach right into the Presidents inner circle to interview Hope Hicks, Trumps 28-year-old director of communications, who has worked for Trump since long before he ran for the presidency. White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks steps off Air Force One upon arrival in Morristown, New Jersey / AFP/Getty Images In interrogation rooms and before grand juries, Muellers sombre army of agents is asking the questions and amassing the evidence that has Trump and his circle in knots. The Washington Post quoted a senior Republican close to the top of the White House staff: The walls are closing in. Everyone is freaking out. For Trump, this week was supposed to be a good one, with strong economic news, the appointment of a new head of the Federal Reserve, progress on his tax- reform plans and the start of a 12-day trip to Asia. Instead, it has become about terror and prosecution. Trump rose before dawn on Monday to await official news of the indictments, which had leaked on Friday, staying in his residence at the White House, channel-hopping through the cable networks and consulting a close group of lawyers and aides. His staff milled around nervously downstairs. Two of the indictments were no surprise. Paul Manafort and his associate, Richard Gates, turned themselves in rather than face the humiliation of an arrest at home. They both deny all charges against them. Paul Manafort was President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman / AP Trump hired Manafort to be his campaign manager last year for a specific task: to wrangle votes at the Republican convention at a moment when there were fears of a party revolt against Trumps candidacy. Manafort, a veteran adviser and strategist, delivered. But his past as a lobbyist for all kinds of unsavoury political leaders made him a target. During his long career he advised leaders including Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Congo) and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, who were accused of stealing billions of dollars from their countries. Then, from 2006 to 2015, he and Gates were paid by the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. During that time, Manafort is accused of failing to register as a lobbyist for foreign interests and not declaring $75 million of income which he stashed in Cyprus, the Grenadines and elsewhere. He is then said to have laundered $18 million of that income by spending it on homes in New York City and the Hamptons, cars, custom suits and accessories. He allegedly spent $849,215 at a single clothing store in New York, $520,440 at another in Los Angeles. The more surprising and perhaps most significant revelation from Monday, though, was the guilty plea extracted from George Papadopoulos, one of the opportunist gadflies who hover around political campaigns. A freelance energy consultant, he was part of a volunteer panel offering foreign policy advice to the Trump campaign. Last year Trump called him an excellent guy. This week, he Tweeted he was a low-level volunteer and liar. Former Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Kremlin-related contacts / AFP/Getty Images The US government believes President Putin of Russia mobilised his security forces to ensure Trumps victory in last years presidential elections. That included deluging social media with fake news stories, hacking Democratic Party accounts and leaking emails which were embarrassing to Hillary Clinton and her team. On Tuesday, lawyers from Facebook, Google and Twitter were on Capitol Hill explaining how the Russians were able to use their networks to disseminate propaganda during the presidential campaign. The key question for Mueller is to what extent Trump and his team welcomed Russian interference. Papadopoulos tried and failed to engineer meetings between senior Trump campaign officials and Russians whom he understood to have dirt on Clinton. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the extent of his efforts, and has co-operated with the investigators for weeks. Muellers team suspect Russian intelligence services were behind the approaches to Papadopoulos. What isnt known is whether Papadopouloss efforts were those of a desperate hack trying to seize his moment or indicative of a more profound corruption in Trumps campaign. Preet Bharara, former US attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan, told Politico that the George Papadopoulos guilty plea tells us Mueller is moving fast, that the Mueller team keeps secrets well, that more charges should be expected, and that this team takes obstruction and lying very, very seriously. On Monday, Trump told his 41 million followers on Twitter: There is NO COLLUSION! Later, his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said: Weve been saying from day one there has been no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, and nothing in the indictment today changes that. Mueller has not landed a killer blow but he has undermined the Presidents promise to drain the swamp in Washington. The campaign strategy increasingly looks to have embodied a certain strain of sleazy lobbying. There is also the risk that Manafort, Gates and Papdopolous will cave under pressure and implicate others, possibly even those close to Trump or the President himself. Gates, a business associate of Paul Manafort surrendered himself to the FBI after being charged with offenses stemming from the Russia investigation / EPA Members of Trumps staff are reportedly especially concerned about Gates because he remained involved in Trumps operations well into his presidency. He has a young family and may not be able to afford the costs of fighting prosecution. In recent months he has been employed as director of the Washington office for one of Trumps closest friends and advisors, property billionaire Tom Barrack. And finally, there is a chance Trump will explode and do something as rash as he did when he fired the FBI director, James Comey, thinking he was solving one problem by getting rid of an unco-operative colleague but creating more in the process. He could try issuing pardons to any of his allies who are indicted. He could fire Mueller but the political consequences of either would likely be brutal. More likely, he will try to stoke counter-investigations. Those close to him are urging an investigation into the sale of American uranium rights to Russia while Clinton was Secretary of State. For connoisseurs of these kinds of Washington drama, Monday was mere throat-clearing. Mueller, who looks the part tall, serious, with a long face etched deep with lines has issued his warning. You tell the truth and co-operate, or youll face the worst. Manafort could now risk 20 years in jail if he were to be found guilty of the charges alleged against him, while Papadopoulos could be treated lightly for his co-operation. And we havent even got to subjects such as the banks which funded Trumps businesses or his son-in-law Jared Kushners creaking property empire. Mueller hasnt yet sparked the explosion Trumps opponents covet. But there are more interviews and depositions to come and he is only just getting started. Save the date at Westfield London Kick-start your Christmas countdown with a great selection of things to see and do: Lurpak Christmas Kitchen Ground Floor, The Atrium, 24-26 November Alamy To celebrate everyones favourite foodie season, Lurpak is whipping up a (snow)storm in the kitchen. Come and try a few tasters and even pick up a new trick or two. Parents to be at Mamas & Papas Mamas & Papas store, first floor, 19 & 26 November, 10am-noon Find expert advice from dedicated experts on topics such as first aid, sleeping better, feeding and more. Enjoy an exclusive goody bag, demos and lots of excellent offers. For more info or to book, please ask in store Milani X Danny Defreitas with Beauty Base Beauty Base store, ground floor near Next, 25 November, 12.30pm-4.30pm Danny Defreitas Meet make-up artist and top beauty influencer Danny Defreitas with Milani Cosmetics. Get expert tips on how to use Milani products, find the best shades for you and get exclusive discounts. Kiehls Cleanse Club Kiehls store, ground floor, every Friday in November and December, 5pm-10pm Ever fancied a treatment but were too short on time? Join Kiehls for a bespoke treatment and enjoy a relaxing complimentary mini facial with some great skincare tips from their skin professionals. Plus, get two free samples to try at home. To book, call 020 8735 0710 and quote cleanse club 17 Megan Hess Boutique Ground floor, The Village, until 31 December Shop a range of limited edition illustrations and more created by Megan Hess, as the artist to celebrities and fashion icons alike brings her first pop-up store to Westfield. Charlotte Tilburys instant eye palette masterclass Ground floor, The Atrium, Every Thursday in November, 7pm-9pm, 35, redeemable in store Join Charlotte and her teams weekly class and learn how to master your look. The revolutionary control-pressed palette will change the way you apply make-up whether its for a day at the office or a night out in the city. Price includes complimentary drink. Enquire in store for details. Get festive at Westfield Stratford City Urban Decay Urban Decay store, ground floor, 24-27 November This festive season, make-up is all about creating the perfect night-time look. So, visit Urban Decay for complimentary eye looks using the Afterdark eyeshadow palette. Coach Coach store, ground floor, 24-27 November Put a stamp on it and let them know its yours with the Coach complimentary monogramming service. Wagamama Wagamama restaurant, second floor, 24-27 November PUBLICITY PICTURE Wagamama will be holding a variety of Christmas bauble surprise and delight activities! Dont miss the chance to win a bauble gift of a free drink or dish with every meal. Terms and conditions apply. Find fresh fashion at Westfield Stratford City Head east this month and update your look with four new stores, and dont miss out on celebratory deals and offers. Monki Bringing vibrant colours, shimmers and an exclusive Monki World facade, the Scandi-cool and Asian street style brand is opening its second retail store in London. Shop affordable essentials and the latest Scandi fashion collections and try on your new look in fitting rooms decorated in a spectrum of rainbow colours. Colette by Colette Hayman The Australian fast fashion brands flagship store is now open bringing a full collection of handbags and jewellery along with selected key fashion styles designed specifically for the UK market. Prices range from 1 up to 97. Weekday Shop the Swedish street-style and denim fashion brands latest AW collections focusing on comfort in voluminous silhouettes, a colourful palette and lots of shimmer and shine. Get 20 per cent off your purchase when signing up for the Weekdays newsletter. Plus, the first 100 customers will get a special gift. & Other Stories Browse endless styling choices including accessories, bags, jewellery and ready-to-wear collections, plus dedicated beauty and shoe departments at the two-floor, nearly 1,000 sq metre store. The first 50 customers will receive a special welcome gift. Discover a taste of whats new at Great Eastern Market Westfield Stratford Citys Great Eastern Market, on the lower ground floor, gets a fresh new look this month with a host of new stores and eateries too. Ergon Get a taste of Greece at the restaurant or take home a selection of Greek products from wine and seafood to herbs and coffee. Karaway Indulge in a huge selection of homemade bread, biscuits and sweet treats with an Eastern European heritage of 120 years. Chango Try some of the most authentic Argentine dishes, from empanadas to biscuits filled with Dulce de Leche (milk caramel). Delicious! Spice Mountain Why not spice up your cooking with various ingredients including blends from countries such as Portugal, Japan and Morocco? Tiramisu Getty Images/iStockphoto Have your home-made tiramisu just the way you like it. Customise your coffee-flavoured custard dessert with real Italian ingredients. Browse online to find out more about the upcoming events at Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City. A carer who bludgeoned a 90-year-old widow over the head and then stabbed her in the neck in an attempt to steal 31,000 savings from her home is facing jail today. Abosede Adeyinka, 52, burst into the home of Pam Batten, knocking her to the ground before striking her twice with a hammer she had hidden in her handbag. When Mrs Batten pleaded for mercy, Adeyinka grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it like a dart, leaving it embedded in the pensioners neck. Adeyinka had been the carer for Mrs Battens late-husband, Ernest, in the last six months of his life, and knew there were bags of cash hidden around the semi-detached West Drayton home. She kept in touch with Mrs Batten after Ernest died in October last year, making regularly comments about being short of money, Blackfriars crown court heard. Adeyinka then decided to take matters into her own hands, on April 27 this year, bursting into Mrs Battens home after the pensioner had got home from her weekly shopping trip. The pensioner said the horrifying attack has shattered her confidence, making her afraid to be home alone at night and terrified she will be attacked again. Adeyinka denied attempted murder despite being immediately identified by Mrs Batten as the attacker. A jury found her guilty following a week-long trial. Judge Peter Clarke QC said he is considering jail terms deep into double figures when he passes sentence today. Adeyinka burst into tears when the jury return its verdict, throwing her hands in the air before storming out of the dock, causing the judge to remark: She is demonstrating a complete lack of remorse. During the trial, Mrs Batten told how Adeyinka, who worked for Avant Healthcare Services, had visited her home three-times-a-week while caring for her late husband. She recalled recognising Adeyinka as her attacker straight away as she was knocked to the floor and then set upon with a hammer while pleading please dont hit me. Prosecutor Kevin Barry said Adeyinka grabbed Mrs Battens purse from the living room, before throwing a kitchen knife like a dart at the victims throat. The knife lodged in Pam Battens throat, causing a very serious wound, he said. The carer, from Hayes, west London, denied but was convicted of attempted murder. The jury found her not guilty of possession of a knife. A carer who tried to murder a 90-year-old widow by bludgeoning her over the head and stabbing her in the neck in an attempt to steal 31,000 savings has been jailed for 21 years today. Abosede Adeyinka, 52, burst into Pam Batten's home, knocking her to the ground before striking her twice with a hammer she had hidden in her handbag. When Mrs Batten pleaded for mercy, Adeyinka grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it "like a dart", leaving it embedded in the pensioner's neck. Adeyinka, a mother of three, had been the carer for Mrs Batten's late-husband, Ernest, in the last six months of his life, and knew there were bags of cash hidden around the semi-detached West Drayton home. She covered her face with a red lace scarf during the shocking attack, but Mrs Batten recognised her immediately as the professional carer who had visited her home three-times-a-week. Mrs Batten said the horrifying attack has shattered her confidence, making her afraid to be home alone at night or speak to strangers, and terrified she will be attacked again. Adeyinka, a charity worker and Sunday school teacher, burst into tears and wailed loudly as Judge Peter Clarke QC jailed her for 21 years at Blackfriars crown court this morning. "As far as you were concerned, once she had identified you, she had to die", he said. "You have shown not one iota of remorse. You planned a burglary with gloves, a mask and a hammer, it was for gain, and your victim was especially vulnerable. "You previously owed her a duty of care and she will live all her last days in fear." The court heard Adeyinka, an agency carer for Avant Healthcare Services, ambushed the pensioner when she was home alone on the evening of April 27 this year. Knowing Mrs Batten's husband had "squirrelled" away cash around the semi-detached home, she planned to burglar the house and, believing the pensioner was out she went to get a key which she knew was hidden round the side. When Mrs Batten opened the door and called out her name, Adeyinka barged through the front door and knocked Mrs Batten to the floor. She pulled a hammer from her handbag and hit the widow at least twice over the head as she lay defenceless on the ground. She grabbed Mrs Batten's handbag, as the pensioner pleaded with her: "Please don't hit me". Prosecutor Kevin Barry said Adeyinka then grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it "like a dart at the victim's throat", leaving it embedded in her neck. "The defendant was aware of the cash in the house, and went there on the day in question to steal that money, said Mr Barry. Finding Mrs Batten at home and having been recognised by her, she attacked and attempted to kill her. Adeyinka fled from the house empty handed after Mrs Batten said that her son was due to visit that evening, but her coat and bag were covered in the pensioner's blood. Mrs Batten was found lying in the hallway by a neighbour, and was close to death when she was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, the court heard. In a victim impact statement, Mrs Batten said she is now "nervous at night" and "scared someone is going to come to the door". "Before the attack, she felt lonely because her husband had died, but not afraid like she is now", said Mr Barry. "Mrs Batten now regularly uses a Zimmer frame to walk because she is unsteady on her feet and frightened to walk without it. "The hammer blows affected her vision in her right eye, and Mrs Batten said she has changed after the attack. "Before, she was the sort of person who was friends with everyone but now she is frightened if someone speaks to her. "She is nervous and wonders why this happened to her, she has lost confidence and worries she will not be able to face things in the future." Tyrone Silcott, mitigating, said the evidence suggests Adeyinka did not go to the house intent on murdering Mrs Batten. "At some point, she was recognised, and it appears that was the spur for an impulsive attack, seeking or attempting to kill Mrs Batten", he said. He said Adeyinka had worked two jobs to support her three children, spent years volunteering for charity, and worked as a Sunday school teacher at her church. Adeyinka's niece, Olajumoke Williams, told the court: "On behalf of our family, I express great sympathy for all the Battens have been through, and I hope you can move forward in peace." Adeyinka, from Hayes, west London denied attempted murder at trial but was convicted by a jury. The judge also imposed an indefinite restraining order on Adeyinka contacting Mrs Batten and her family or going to her home. A convicted fraudster has been working as a maths teacher at a Church of England school. Femi Eyinade joined Archbishop Tenisons School in south London last September but will face sanctions or a ban over his fraud convictions. The Standard has learned Eyinade was found guilty of one count of fraud and nine of fraud by false representation at the Old Bailey in November 2015, a year before taking the job. The 31-year-old had created bogus bank accounts while working as a personal banking manager for Lloyds. But he still managed to gain teaching qualifications before being convicted of the fraud, which took place between January and February 2014. Now he is facing sanctions or a ban after it emerged he has faced a fitness to practise hearing. A decision on any disciplinary action will be made in the coming days. Parents of pupils at the school, in Lambeth, today voiced concerns after it was rated inadequate by Ofsted and placed in special measures in October 2016. One said: A lot of us have been worried sick because the school was judged inadequate surely hiring convicted fraudsters is not necessarily the right way to get back on track? In its most recent inspection, in July, Ofsted said the school had greatly improved and was taking effective action towards removing the special measures. It is understood it was not Archbishop Tenisons which instigated Eyinades hearing, but that another school he had worked for flagged up the convictions. Lambeth council, which oversees the school, said the fraudsters employers had been aware of his convictions from the outset. It added that a risk assessment had found he presented no risk to children. Eyinade did not respond to the Standards requests for comment. A "despicable" conman who lied that his wife and son had been killed in the Grenfell Tower disaster to claim 12,500 in aid being handed to victims is facing jail today. Anh Nhu Nguyen, 52, pretended to be a survivor of the devastating inferno that killed at least 80 people, giving a vivid account on TV of losing sight of his family on the smoke-filled staircase as they fled. He said he had lived on the 15th floor of the tower block for the last 20 years, claiming his wife and 12-year-old son in the disaster on June 14. Nguyen started claiming money from a fund set up for victims and was put up in a Holiday Inn because he claimed to have lost his home, even meeting Prince Charles in the aftermath of the disaster. He also went to charities asking for clothes and electronic equipment, but his lies began to unravel when he gave different flat numbers when asked where he had been living in the tower block. Nguyen claimed money from a fund set up for victims of the fire Nguyen was charged by police and initially maintained his story that he was a genuine victim, but today at Southwark crown court pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud by false representation and one count of making an untrue statement for the purpose of obtaining a passport. "This defendant has engaged in what the court could only describe as a despicable offence, claiming he and his family lived in Grenfell Tower and his wife and son died in it", said Judge Philip Bartle QC. "As a result of which he received money or goods to the value of 12,500, money which would otherwise have gone to the people who were genuinely affected by this appalling tragedy. Onlookers stare at the Grenfell Tower inferno / Nigel Howard "This is a case of fraud but one which has a contemptible element to it, succeeding in receiving money out of the misery and tragedy of people who, unlike this defendant, genuinely suffered because of this terrible fire." Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay told the court because Nguyen had said he lived in one of the flats, the real resident's son had to give evidence to the police while grieving for his father. An investigation into the fire is still going on / AP "The occupant of the flat did die in the fire, and his son has been distressed in having to provide a witness statement and that someone would claim what has been claimed", he said. Following the fire, Nguyen, who was really living in Beckenham, told Sky News in an interview that he had been making a cup of tea when the blaze started, and used wet towels to try to stop the smoke coming into his flat. "The smoke was like fog, you couldn't see anything, it was very hot", he said. "I'm sad, I'm angry, I cry. It's terrible for everyone who lost for family that day." Vietnam-born Nguyen has a string of dishonesty criminal convictions dating back to 1983 and has used 17 different aliases, the court heard. The judge remanded Nguyen in custody until a sentencing hearing on December 15, and for a psychologists report. He has already indicated the conman is facing three and a half years in prison when he is finally sentenced. P olice are hunting for two teenage girls accused of threatening a fellow passenger after she asked someone to take their feet off a Tube seat. The victim was travelling on a Jubilee line train just after 1.30pm on Thursday October 26. At some point between Southwark and Finchley Road she asked a young person to take their feet off the seat. And two teenage girls, who had been unconnected to the incident, then allegedly launched a tirade of aggressive threats at the woman. The victim attempted to reason with them but was forced to move away after they made repeated threats of violence. She was so terrified that she had to ask fellow passengers to protect her if they attacked. British Transport Police officer are investigating the incident and have seen mobile phone and CCTV footage of the girls, who were both aged between 15 and 16-years-old. One was white with light brown hair, pulled into a ponytail, and a round face. She was wearing a dark jacket and blue jeans and a white top. The other was tanned with dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She had brown eyes and a mole under her left eye. Anyone who witnesses the incident who may have information can text 61016 with the reference 1700075757. A counsellor met by Princess Anne in recognition of his work with victims of sexual abuse has been found stabbed to death inside his west London flat. Julian Aubrey, 55, was found suffering multiple knife wounds in his home in Earls Court on Monday afternoon. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Detectives today appealed for witnesses to come forward as neighbours described hearing screams in the early hours. Mr Aubrey was a former co-chairman of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea LGBT liaison group and was pictured in 2014 meeting Princess Anne at Kensington town hall. He described himself as a counsellor who worked with victims of sexual abuse and offered training to patients dealing with embedded pain. Detectives today appealed for witnesses to come forward after Mr Aubrey was found stabbed to death His brother-in-law Nigel Turner said: Julian was a great guy. I cant come to terms with what happened. He had his problems but he had a lot of time for other people. He did a lot of counselling work. He was a good counsellor, he had great empathy, and Im sure he helped a lot of people. He loved art, he loved people. Its all a bit raw. Residents of the block, above a Tesco store on the corner of Warwick Road and West Cromwell Road, said Mr Aubrey had been involved in several disputes with neighbours in recent months. A neighbour said police had been called to the block to deal with disputes on many occasions adding: He does bits and pieces to wind people up. He antagonised people, but hes a human being. He didnt deserve to die in the manner he did. Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks, leading the murder inquiry, said: I am appealing for anyone who was recently in the area of Shaftesbury Place and who may have heard a disturbance coming from one of the flats to contact us. I would also like to hear from anyone who may know why Julian was targeted in his own home in such a violent way. Scotland Yard said three men had been arrested on suspicion of murder. Two men, aged 48 and 56, were held at the scene of the murder on Monday. A third man, aged 42, was arrested at nearby Longridge Road this morning. Anyone with information should call 020 8358 0200 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. A member of one of Britain's most notorious crime families has been jailed for seven years for ferrying "dirty" cash into London from across his crime empire. Tommy Adams, 59, was found guilty of a string of money laundering offences at Woolwich Crown Court in August. Adams, a member of the infamous Clerkenwell crime syndicate known as the Adams Family or A-team, used a taxi firm to make a series of cash runs between London and Manchester. Undercover police collected evidence about the criminal by bugging a cafe where he discussed plans with associates. And they caught couriers exchanging M&S bags full of cash at Euston station. Adams, from Islington, in north London, collapsed outside the Princess Alice pub, opposite the court, as he waited for verdicts to be returned. His conviction and sentence can be reported now for the first time after prosecutors dropped further charges against him, having heard he is ill in Pentonville prison after the heart attack. Adams' son Shaun Adams, 32, and family friend Lukas Menicou admitted transferring criminal property and were both given suspended sentences on Thursday. A-Team: Another brother, Patrick Adams, was jailed last year for shooting an associate The case marks the latest in a string of legal proceedings against members of the feared Adams family, who were once described by police as "worse than the Krays". The organisation was said to have been involved in loan sharking, protection rackets, money laundering and ecstasy, and was linked to a number of gangland murders. Seven other men were also found guilty of money laundering offences during the August trial. Terry, the oldest of the brothers, was jailed in 2007 for seven years for tax evasion. He was ordered to pay back 700,000 under proceeds of crime laws. He was released from prison on June 24, 2010. The third brother Patrick, or Patsy, 61, was jailed for nine years in December for GBH after shooting an associate in Clerkenwell. He claimed he was acting in self-defence and had been on the run with his wife, Constance, before he was caught by police. T he parents of a diabetic boy whose allergic reaction to insulin left him like a zombie have spoken of their joy after he was given a life-changing implant. Taylor Banks was two when he was rushed to hospital unconscious and diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, which requires treatment with insulin. His mother Gema Westwell, 32, said: Straight after taking the injections he would go into a trance-like state. He was like a zombie, unable to communicate and function. We switched Taylor to an insulin pump hoping it would help, but then he started breaking out with painful red welts all over his body. It was so upsetting because nothing we were trying to do was helping to take the pain away. These welts eventually turned into permanent areas of abnormally sunken skin, into which no insulin could be given. Taylors condition worsened until he was constantly in pain and sleep-deprived. Eventually, his parents were forced to check on him at two-hour intervals throughout the night to make sure he did not lose consciousness. Implant: Taylor Banks is the second person in the world to be fitted with the implant Clinicians discovered that Taylors allergy was only skin-deep and he was referred to Great Ormond Street Hospital aged seven in 2015. That Christmas, he featured in the Standards appeal for the hospital. Dr Rakesh Amin, a consultant in endocrinology, said: Taylors quality of life was so poor and his prognosis so bleak that to not find a solution to this allergy was not an option. The endocrine team explored options including various immunotherapies, which involve enhancing or suppressing the immune system, but none worked. Dr Amin then identified a device that could help Taylor: the DiaPort System. This involves pumping insulin into the body via a port surgically installed in the torso, bypassing the skin. Last month Taylor, who is now nine and lives in Wigan, Greater Manchester, became the first child in the UK and the fifth in the world to be fitted with the system. His father Scott Banks, 32, said: Weve already noticed the changes... I just hope that this will help him to have a chance at being a normal little boy, back in school and playing with his friends. C ontroversial plans for a new Airbnb-style scheme for NHS patients could be ready to launch as early as next month, it has been revealed. Plans emerged last week for patients to be discharged into people's spare rooms with the suggestion homeowners could be paid 50-a-day by the health service. Southend hospital last week distanced itself from the plans, designed to free up hospital bed spaces, after it emerged a the hospital could host a trial of the scheme. A spokesman said the hospital had "no intention...to support the pilot at this time". Details obtained by the Health Service Journal show that the plans had moved far enough along for a pilot scheme to start at Southend hospital, in Essex, in December. NHS officials say they are not put off by safety concerns but that they are now taking time to ensure concerns have been resolved before trials begin. Campaigners claim the scheme could "open a huge can of worms" for safeguarding issues, citing an increased risk of abuse in unsupervised living situations. Under the proposals, homeowners would be paid 50 a night and up to a maximum of 1,000 a month for looking after patients who no longer need medical care but would struggle to look after themselves. According to the original proposals, Southend hospital was set to co-fund a 50,000 pilot alongside local councils and health groups They now say they need to discuss the idea further with patient groups before going ahead. A lmost 5,000 people have signed a petition in support of a Rastafarian schoolboy who was told by his school to cut his dreadlocks off. Protesters this week staged a demonstration outside Fulham Boys School after 12 year old pupil Chikayzea Flanders was told his hair breached the schools strict uniform and appearance policy. He was taught in isolation as a result, and has now moved schools to nearby Hurlingham Academy. His mother Tuesday Flanders set up a petition urging the school to change its hair policy, saying Chikayzea has had the dreadlocks since he was a child because he is a Rastafarian, and they are part of his religion. Protesters this week staged a demonstration outside Fulham Boys School / Get West London/BPM Media But Fulham Boys School headteacher Alun Ebenezer said children who want to go to his school must abide by its strict culture, which is popular with most parents and has contributed to the school being oversubscribed. Ms Flanders said she was devastated when her son was told to cut his hair. She said: All my kids have had this hair since the day they were born. To hear someone telling you to change the way of life to attend a school is heartbreaking. The peaceful protest took place outside the school on Tuesday, with the aim of educating the headmaster, she said. Demonstrators carried placards saying stand-up racist school policies and shame on you Fulham Boys School, banged drums and spoke through a tannoy system. But headteacher Alun Ebenezer told the Evening Standard the school is not racist, adding that 7 per cent of pupils are Asian, 10 per cent are black African and 13 per cent are black Caribbean. He said: We are a strict academic boys school and have a strict uniform and appearance policy. I would stress that everyone is welcome to the school. We are not a racist school in any way, shape or form. But we have a distinct culture and when boys come to the school we expect them to respect that culture. We are strict and no nonsense which is why we are ridiculously oversubscribed. He said he could not discuss Chikayzeas case directly because it is going through the schools in-house complaints procedure. He added: Our approach is we are strict. We have a clear culture. Lots of parents have been in touch to say this is why we love this school. 15 per cent of our pupils come from private backgrounds and 44 per cent are on the pupil premium. They rub shoulders together and you cant tell who is who, they are all wearing the same. Protester Eve James told the getwestlondon website she went to the demonstration because she believed Chikayea had been discriminated against. She added: Its a basic human right to express your religious belief. Fellow protester Vivian mills said: Im completely appalled that in so-called modern times the school would implement such a policy. Its leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Its absolutely disgraceful. Among the groups which helped organise the protest were Black Child Agenda and Working Action Group. S adiq Khan has backed the Evening Standards special investigation into modern slavery and announced he is clamping down on exploitation in the construction industry. The Mayor said he was bringing different groups and agencies together to combat the issue. I applaud the Standard for campaigning against the stain of modern slavery in London, he added. These crimes have no place in our city or anywhere in the world. This campaign will make a real difference in raising awareness of these abhorrent and often hidden crimes. The EUs list of employment sectors most prone to exploitation places construction second only to sex work. High demand for migrant labour, opaque procurement procedures and fragmented supply chains make construction fertile ground for traffickers. Sadiq Khan during recent visit to Smithfield Market / PA The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner estimates there are at least 13,000 modern slaves in the UK, with many working in construction. The fight cannot be fought by the police alone, said Mr Khan. We have brought together agencies including the Met, National Crime Agency, trade unions and local authorities to tackle modern slavery in the construction industry. Dangerous conditions and threats of violence are faced by too many in the industry By Sophie Linden Imagine going to work every day with no contract, no rights and no guarantee of payment. Working in terrible, often dangerous conditions, and sometimes forced to sleep on site. The days are long, with no breaks and the lingering threat of violence. This is the reality for too many construction workers in the capital a world of slavery in which they are trapped by the need to pay rent and the broken promises of men who pick them up in a van early each morning and drive them to their next job. Of course, these crimes are in no way typical of the industry most of Londons construction firms treat their employees fairly, but they can be let down by those who exploit fractured supply chains and high demand for labour. In London, nationals from other EU countries account for 27 per cent of the construction workforce. The Met is working hard with partners to tackle the organised criminal networks at the heart of trafficking and slavery operations. At City Hall, we set up the London Modern Slavery Partnership Board in June to work with agencies including the Met, Home Office, trade unions, NGOs and local authorities, sharing intelligence and pooling resources. This way, we can target sites across London where slavery and labour exploitation is conducted in plain view at street-based pick-up points for white vans, in the car parks of some trading estates and at small-scale refurbishments. Many construction firms are themselves doing good work to prevent and eradicate abuse in their supply chains. Were also working on developing industry standards that will build on the Mayors Good Work Standard set to launch in the New Year which will encourage businesses to promote best practice in employment. And were raising awareness across relevant agencies and frontline staff to help everyone who may come into contact with people trapped in slavery from housing officers to health and safety inspectors feel confident about playing their part in fighting these crimes. Forced labour in construction is a relatively new area for law enforcement to tackle. Awareness in the sector itself is growing, but it is still difficult to grasp the true scale of the problem. Only by working together will we be able to bring about change, and improve the lives of those who are trapped and suffering. Sophie Linden is deputy mayor for crime and policing. Most victims in the UK construction industry are male, and the most common origin countries are Albania, Romania and Poland. Exploitative practices include unfair payment, inappropriate accommodation, long hours, restriction of movement, unfair contracts and the threat of violence. Workers can find themselves held in debt bondage or subject to a dangerous lack of health and safety equipment. In a recent report, the organisation Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) found that deteriorating workplace conditions were leaving construction workers especially vulnerable. In one case I was on the roof of a house, washing it while another guy helped me descend the shingle, explained C, who did not want to give his full name. I had a cable tied round my waist, and he had a cable tied around his waist, and this is how we did things. If I said I didnt want to do it, they would say: go home, well find another. And I didnt have a contract. Chris Blythe, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Building, agreed that migrants were highly at risk. We dont yet have the full picture of modern slavery on London construction sites, but we know that the risks of exploitation are higher in industries with a large proportion of migrant labour, he said. Labour exploitation or criminal activity can infiltrate any company or supply chain, so theres no room for complacency. Mr Khan added that the public have a part to play by remaining vigilant to the signs of abuse. I encourage any Londoner who is concerned to report it to the police, he said. Together, we can help ensure more perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. A probe has been launched over claims Russia used Twitter and Facebook to meddle in the UKs Brexit referendum. The two social media giants will face the Electoral Commission amid suggestions Russian-backed companies interfered with the US presidential election, The Times reported on Thursday. It comes after the watchdog launched an investigation into the multi-millionaire chairman of Brexit campaign Leave.EU, Arron Banks, into whether he breached finance rules with donations and loans. The director of political finance and regulation at the Electoral Commission, Bob Posner, told the Times: We are asking questions of Facebook and Twitter and this work is ongoing. We don't just sit back and see what lands on our doorstep. Clearly we have seen the allegations about interference in the American election and it is right that we are in a dialogue with companies like Facebook to ensure that nothing like that happened here. We need to make sure that impermissible donations do not come into the UK. Twitter promised to clamp down on its advertising after it emerged Russia paid for political ads on the site. / AFP/Getty Images It comes after fake Facebook accounts linked to Russian agents published around 80,000 posts over two years in attempts to influence the US political landscape. Half of American voters may have seen the biased posts, the social network revealed. Twitter separately found thousands of accounts linked to the St-Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency. The Russian government has denied any interference in the election and Donald Trump has denied collusion. Mr Posner told the Times: "Should our inquiries provide us with evidence that the existing campaigning rules about political finance may have been broken then we will undertake our own investigations as set out in our enforcement policy. If we believe other, criminal, offences may have been committed, then these will be referred to the police for investigation." Facebook told the newspaper it did not believe the Russian groups who had bought US political advertising were involved in the UK. Arron Banks is the subject of an investigation which launched Wednesday into the activities of firm called Better for the Country Limited, of which Mr Banks is a director. In an emailed statement, Mr Banks said: "Allegations of Brexit being funded by the Russians ... are complete bollocks from beginning to end. He signed off "nostrovia", a version of "na zdorovye", Russian for "cheers!". The Electoral Commission did not mention Russia in its statement on the Mr Banks probe. T heresa May today announced her new Defence Secretary after Sir Michael Fallon resigned in the wake of the Westminster sex scandal. The Tory veteran quit on Wednesday evening, admitting that his behaviour had "fallen below the high standards required" in the role. Mrs May's chief whip Gavin Williamson was today appointed as Mr Fallon's replacement. Just hours after his resignation, a friend said alcohol turned Mr Fallon into Jekyll and Hyde. He stepped down after it emerged he put his hand on a journalist's knee until she threatened to punch him at a dinner in 2002. Michael Fallon admitted touching the female journalist's knee in 2002 / PA It came as one Minister named on the so-called spreadsheet of shame called for the scalps of those behind the anonymous document and branded it harassment. Mr Fallon was also named on an unverified dossier shaming 36 Tory MPs over accusations of inappropriate behaviour. A friend of the former Defence Secretary told the Daily Mail: Alcohol is a power drug which turns some into a Jekyll and Hyde. Another added: Has there been flirtation that has been inappropriate? Yes, he will concede that. Justice Minister Dominic Raab revealed on Wednesday that he is named on the dossier revealed by Guido Fawkes on Monday but denied claims of inappropriate behaviour. Mr Raab condemned any form of sexual harassment directed at parliamentary staff but claimed some allegations listed on the dossier were nothing more than gossip or unsubstantiated rumour. Accused: Dominic Raab branded the dossier 'harassment' / Getty Images He told Sky News a line next to his name read: "Injunction for inappropriate behaviour with a woman." The Esher and Walton MP added: I have never been on the end of an injunction, I've never issued an injunction, nor for the record have I ever sexually harassed or sexually abused any parliamentary colleague or any member of staff." The Minister branded some of the allegations disturbing and said they needed to be investigated but said publishing false claims was a "form of harassment and intimidation". Sir Michael Fallon's career in 60 seconds He said: "Accountability should mean properly investigating any reports of abuse, without irresponsibly smearing those who have done nothing wrong." Mr Raabs comments came as Foreign Office Minister Rory Stewart revealed he had also appeared on the list. He said in a tweet: "This story is completely untrue and deeply hurtful." Theresa May will meet party leaders to discuss Westminster harassment The spreadsheet accuses numerous politicians of inappropriate behaviour towards both male and female staff. The explosive claims include one minister who is accused of being handsy with women at parties and another who was said to be perpetually intoxicated and very inappropriate with women. Mr Fallon is the first politician to step down despite radio host Julia Hartley-Brewer saying she had not regarded the incident as "anything but mildly amusing". Announcing his decision to resign as Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon said: "In the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent." Theresa May invited Westminster's party leaders to crisis talks on Monday to discuss plans for tackling sexual abuse and harassment. The Prime Minister said MPs from all parties are "deeply concerned" about allegations that have emerged in recent days as she invited political counterparts to talks on setting up a new "transparent, independent" grievance procedure. "We have a duty to ensure that everyone coming here to contribute to public life is treated with respect," she told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions. A top QC today revealed how writer Kate Maltby poured out her heart a year ago about how Damian Green made her feel uncomfortable. Ms Maltby, 31, claimed in The Times yesterday that Mr Green fleetingly touched her knee during a meeting in a Waterloo pub in 2015 and a year later sent her a suggestive text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. Mr Green has instructed libel lawyers Kingsley Napley as he battles to save his career. Today his allies said he would defend himself in a Cabinet Office inquiry into whether he broke the ministerial code. But in a major blow to Theresa Mays most senior Cabinet minister, Baroness Helena Kennedy said she is willing to give evidence to show that Ms Maltbys account is not a recent invention. She told the Evening Standard how they chatted in private after a dinner in November last year at Mansfield College, Oxford, where Baroness Kennedy is principal and Ms Maltby alleged that the minister made advances towards her. I mentor a lot of young women and I am used to hearing their concerns, said the QC. She explained how miserable she was in a world where she was expected to put up with these things. This was not after-dinner story telling. She was confiding in me about how miserable it had made her feel. She said it was affecting any decision she would make about going into politics. So when I heard she was going to be sued for libel, I contacted her to say that if anyone said she had made it up recently, I could recall that she said it a year ago. Mr Green has passed a string of text messages between him and Ms Maltby to the inquiry which he believes proves they remained friends long after the alleged knee-touching incident, which he denies. One text message was from Ms Maltby as recently as last month, allegedly saying she was sorry not to see him at the Conservative conference. Ms Maltby strongly denies that any such message was sent. These are not the sort of messages that someone would send who felt awkward, said an ally. Baroness Kennedy, a leading expert in human rights law, civil liberties and constitutional issues, said she could not speculate on what happened but she could show that Ms Maltby did not invent the incident recently. She was talking quietly to me as an older woman about her career, said the QC. She said she was trying to decide whether to go into parliament or be a special adviser or stay in journalism, and then told me this story where she had had a bad experience and had started wondering if that was a world she wanted to be in. It clearly had affected her. I left thinking, this is a very clever girl who does not share my politics but who would be good to have in politics. Baroness Kennedy said the encounter was sincere and private and not a situation where women were sharing war stories after a dinner. There was no sense of exaggeration taking place. One of the things that had upset her was that she had known him since she was a young girl, that he was of her fathers generation. T he meteoric rise of Gavin Williamson, from backroom operator to Chief Whip to Cabinet minister, has been likened to the narrative arc of House of Cards. And while his path to power has been less fraught than that of Frank Underwood - the anti-hero of the Netflix drama watched religiously by Westminster insiders - he has nevertheless picked up the nickname baby-faced assassin along the way. Williamson, the 41-year-old MP for South Staffordshire, is known for keeping a pet tarantula named Cronus in a glass box on his desk, which is said to have provided added menace when dealing with errant MPs. He described the spider as a perfect example of an incredibly clean, ruthless killer. And he gave a glimpse of those techniques in a warm-up speech for the Prime Minister at this years party conference, saying: I dont very much believe in the stick, but its amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot. Born and raised in Scarborough by Labour-supporting parents, Mr Williamson went to a local comprehensive school and sixth form college before taking a science degree at the University of Bradford. He ran a pottery and design practice before being elected to Parliament in 2010, shooting through the ranks with bag-carrier posts for ministers Hugo Swire, Owen Paterson and Patrick McLoughlin. The father-of-two got his big break as parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to David Cameron from 2013, before being selected by as Mrs Mays campaign manager for Tory leadership triggered by Mr Camerons resignation following the Brexit referendum. He has been a vital part of the PMs inner circle and as chief whip brokered the 1.5 billion supply and confidence deal with the Democratic Unionist Party after the disastrous snap election. A smartwatch could soon be able to tell women if theyre in the early stages of pregnancy. Scientific research in Switzerland has revealed a series of minor physiological changes that are apparent within a week of a woman becoming pregnant and theyre traceable on smart health devices. The next stage is creating an algorithm that can detect those changes, offering users information about their best times to conceive and signalling the start of a pregnancy. The Ava smart bracelet, which currently tracks users ovulation cycles, is planning to conduct tests for a pregnancy-detecting feature before the year ends. The Ava smart bracelet / Ava The changes scientists have discovered include a pulse variation of 2.1 beats per minute, a 0.2 degree celsius change in skin temperature. Rather than waking up every morning and trying to pee on a stick to detect the rise in hCG you would simply have the bracelet worn both night and day, Mohaned Shilaih, senior researcher at University Hospital Zurich, explains, adding that the team is recruiting women to trial the device. The current algorithm that is being used for the detection in the fertile window is working very well. Since the mechanisms underlying both of them are the same then what we perceive as the bottleneck here is simply the sample size. So once we have a sufficient number of conceptive versus non-conceptive cycles then we can probably achieve that. The Duchess of Cambridge - pregnancy style file 1 /66 The Duchess of Cambridge - pregnancy style file Scroll through the see the Duchess's best maternity looks... April 1, 2018 The Queen followed by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge exit after the Easter Mattins Service at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on 1 April 2018 in Windsor Getty Images April 1, 2018 The Duchess of Cambridge leaves after the Easter Mattins Service at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on 1 April 2018 in Windsor, England Getty Images March 22, 2018 The Duchess on her final engagement before maternity leave at the Copperbox Arena Getty Images March 21, 2018 Visiting the Royal Society of Medicine AFP/Getty Images March 17, 2018 At the St. Patrick's Day Parade AFP/Getty Images March 12, 2018 Attending the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey Getty Images March 7, 2018 The Duchess opens the new headquarters of children's mental health charity Place2Be PA Wire/PA Images March 6, 2018 Visiting Pegasus Primary School in Oxford Getty Images February 28, 2018 The Duchess visits the National Portrait Gallery in a Orla Kiely dress AFP/Getty Images February 28, 2018 Kate joins Meghan Markle at the first annual Royal Foundation Forum Getty Images February 27, 2018 Kate stepped out to visit the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Getty Images February 21, 2018 The Duchess of Cambridge during a visit to Sunderland PA Wire/PA Images February 20, 2018 The Duchess arrived at The Commonwealth Fashion Exchange Reception in an Erdem dress Getty Images February 20, 2018 The pregnant royal was also joined by Sophie, The Countess of Wessex at Buckingham Palace Getty Images February 18, 2018 The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the BAFTAs red carpet Chris Jackson/Getty Images February 7, 2018 Duchess Of Cambridge arrives to open the Action On Addiction Community Treatment Centre wearing a Goat coat Getty Images February 1, 2018 The Duchess being escorted into dinner by King Harald during her visit to Sweden and Norway with Prince Getty Images February 1, 2018 Visiting the Royal Palace in Norway Chris Jackson/Getty Images January 31, 2018 Visiting the Karolinska Institute in Sweden Getty Images January 30, 2018 Kate attends a Bandy hockey match during a Royal visit to Sweden Getty Images January 24, 2018 During a visit to the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute Getty Images January 23, 2018 At Roe Green Junior School Getty Images January 17, 2018 At Mittal Children's Medical Centre PA January 16, 2018 At Coventry Cathedral EPA January 10, 2018 At Reach Academy Getty Images December 25, 2017 At the Christmas Day Church service Getty Images December 12, 2017 At the 'Magic Mums' community Christmas party Getty Images December 6, 2017 At Media City Getty Images November 14, 2017 At Hornsey Road Children's Centre PA November 11, 2017 At the annual Royal Festival of Remembrance while pregnant with her third child Getty Images November 8, 2017 At the annual Place2Be School Leaders Forum while pregnant with her third child AFP/Getty Images November 7, 2017 At the Gala Dinner for The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families while pregnant with her third child AFP/Getty Images October 31, 2017 Playing tennis with children at the Lawn Tennis Association while pregnant with her third child Getty Images October 18, 2017 At West Ham's London Stadium for the graduation ceremony for more than 150 Coach Core apprentices while pregnant with her third child PA October 16, 2017 Wearing Orla Kiely at Paddington Station while pregnant with her third child Jonathan Brady/PA October 10, 2017 Duchess of Cambridge attends a reception at Buckingham Palace for Mental Health Day while pregnant with her third child AFP/Getty Images March 27, 2015 At the XLP Mobile recording Studio while pregnant with Princess Charlotte Getty Images March 13, 2015 At St Paul's Cathedral while pregnant with Princess Charlotte AFP/Getty Images February 12, 2015 At the home of Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR) in Portsmouth Old Town while pregnant with Princess Charlotte Getty Images March 11, 2015 Wearing Hobbs at the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery while pregnant with Princess Charlotte Getty Images January 19, 2015 At Kensington Aldridge Academy while pregnant with Princess Charlotte Getty Images June 15, 2013 On the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the annual Trooping the Colour Ceremony while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images April 29, 2013 At Naomi House Children's Hospice while pregnant with Prince George Rex Features May 22, 2013 Wearing Emilia Wickstead at a garden party at Buckingham Palace while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images April 24, 2013 At an evening reception to celebrate the work of The Art Room charity at The National Portrait Gallery while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images April 23, 2013 At The Willows Primary School, Wythenshawe to launch a new school counseling program while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images April 21, 2013 At the National Review of Queen's Scouts at Windsor Castle while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images March 19, 2013 At the Child Bereavement centre in Saunderton while pregnant with Prince George AFP/Getty Images March 17, 2013 At a St Patrick's Day parade while pregnant with Prince George Getty Images The current Ava Cycle Tracker bracelet is available to order now for 199. A n Australian minister was left red-faced after tweeting about his meeting with Michael Fallon just 10 minutes after the defence secretary resigned his post. Christopher Pyne, Australia's defence industry ministry, posed for pictures with Mr Fallon following a meeting in London in which the pair discussed "areas of collaboration". His tweet was not issued until 7.39pm - 10 minutes after the news broke that Fallon, 65, was resigning his post in disgrace. The news came after it emerged he had allegedly put his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at an event 15 years ago, prompting her to threaten to punch him. The tweet sent out by Christopher Pyne shortly after Mr Fallon's resignation / Twitter Mr Pyne had said it was "great to catch up" with Mr Fallon, citing "many areas of collaboration" on defence policy between the UK and Australia. In a resignation statement, Fallon said his past behaviour had "fallen below the high standards we require of the armed forces". He told the BBC: "What might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now." The Australian minister has not made any further comment. A documentary about an alleged Hollywood paedophile ring has gone viral after being posted online, two years after it was rejected by the film and television industry. An Open Secret, which lifts the lid on child abuse in the showbiz world, has been watched more than 3 million times after creators released the film for free. The documentary, billed as the film Hollywood doesnt want you to see, was given no theatrical release or television deal when it was completed in 2015. It focuses on the alleged abuse of young boys and teenagers seeking entry to the industry. We got zero Hollywood offers to distribute the film. Not even one. Literally no offers for any price whatsoever, Gabe Hoffman, a Florida-based hedge fund manager who financed the film, told the Guardian. An Open Secrets creators decided to upload the film to video-sharing website Vimeo this month, in the wake of a sex abuse scandal sweeping Hollywood. Hoffman said he had intended to end the free online viewings on Tuesday, but because of a surge of public interest, the window has been extended until Sunday. Director Amy Berg and her team obtained information about an alleged a paedophile ring in Hollywood, including managers, agents, publicists and directors, for the film. It tells of the lavish parties where men allegedly plied boys with alcohol and drugs and traded them for sex. Other perpetrators are said to have spent years grooming victims and earning the trust of their families before sexually assaulting them. The film features interviews with Evan Henzi, who was 11 years old when his manager, Martin Weiss, started assaulting him. Weiss pleaded no contest - a non-committal plea which carries the same effect as pleading guilty - in 2012 to two counts of child molestation, and was sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation. He was freed immediately due to time served. I shared my story in An Open Secret so other victims who have been molested for years just like me can heal, Henzi, now 24, said this week. When the film was released, I witnessed a lot of support by people who actually saw the film. What I did not witness was support from film festivals or Hollywood at large to promote the film, he added. The creators of the documentary hope it will eventually make its way on to television, Amazon or Netflix. You can watch it here. A t least three people have been killed in a shooting at a supermarket in Colorado, US police have said. Witnesses claimed around 30 shots were heard inside the Walmart in north Denver before people rushed for the exits in panic. Police are warning people to avoid the area following the shooting at around 6.30pm local time (00.30 GMT) on Wednesday. Two adult males were confirmed dead at the scene while a woman died in hospital, police said. Emergency crews work at the scene following the shooting / AP Thornton Police Department have launched a hunt for the suspect, sharing a picture of a man they wish to track down. Police want to track down this man in connection with the incident / Thornton Police Dept A spokesperson said the force was reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses in the wake of the attack. Police had said there was no longer an "active shooter" soon after arriving on the scene. The Walmart, located in a retail park on Grant Street, was surrounded by police cars as reports of the attack surfaced on Wednesday evening. Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters: "We've got multiple parties down, we're still trying to ascertain what their conditions are." A woman whose son was in the Walmart told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside, 9NEWS reported. Police interview Walmart employees and shoppers at the scene (REUTERS) / Reuters Another witness said shoppers ran out into the car park and hid behind trolleys amid the chaos. A video posted on Twitter showed the store apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Local television images showed a number of police cars and ambulances surrounding the Walmart, lights flashing. The store is adjacent to U.S. Interstate 25. Thornton is a city of more than 100,000 people located 10 miles north of Denver. E ight of the nine ex-Catalan ministers under investigation for sedition, rebellion and embezzlement have been detained without bail, a judge has ordered. One former Cabinet member, Former Business Minister Santi Vila, was set a bail of 50,000 euro (44,000). He resigned prior to the vote for independence on Friday, October 27. The decision was made on Thursday over their role in Catalonias declaration of independence. A prosecutor has also asked the National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant for ousted regional president Mr Puigdemont and four of his ex-ministers. Catalan parliament votes in favour of split from Spain Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear for questioning. The Spanish government invoked constitutional authority last week to take over running Catalonia following the region's declaration of independence. Demonstrators gather outside the Catalonian Parliament to protest against the judge's decision / AP Madrid sacked the Catalan Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for December 21. The National Court has been questioning ousted Catalan government members but a parallel Supreme Court session for six Catalan politicians was postponed until November 9. Political crisis: Protesters during a pro-unity demonstration in Barcelona / AFP/Getty Images The detained ministers include Deputy Vice President Oriol Junqueras, Interior Minister Joaquim Forn, Foreign Affairs Minister Raul Romeva, and Justice Minister Carles Mundo. Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Mr Puigdemont, were called to appear. Mr Puigdemont said he and several of his former ministers went to Brussels earlier this week for "freedom and safety". He said he would return home immediately if a fair judicial process were guaranteed in Spain. A n Egyptian lawyer has sparked outrage after saying women who wear ripped jeans deserve to be sexually harassed and raped. Nabih al-Wahsh, a prominent conservative, said it was part of the national duty to rape women wearing such garments, adding that girls who wear revealing clothing are inviting men to harass them. He made the controversial comments during a current affairs talk show called Infirad on satellite channel AI-Assema. The panel were having a heated debate on a draft law on prostitution when al-Wahsh asked: "Are you happy when you see a girl walking down the street with half of her behind showing?" He added: I say that when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her. Egypts National Council for Women has since announced plans to file a complaint against the lawyer and the TV channel. The Council has also appealed to media outlets to stop giving a platform to individuals who make comments that incite violence against women. Maya Mursi, head of the National Council for Women Doctors, said the comments were a flagrant call for rape. Despite the backlash, al-Wahsh has refused to back down, releasing a statement which said his daughter would also deserve that [rape, sexual harassment] if she decided to wear jeans that are ripped from the back. The lawyer made the headlines in October last year after his debate with a liberal cleric descended into chaos. Chairs and shoes were sent flying around the TV studio after the cleric argued women should not necessarily be required to cover their hair with a headscarf. T he man accused of carrying out a terror attack on the Lower West Side of New York, killing eight people has reportedly asked to fly the flag of ISIS in his Bellevue Hospital room. Authorities revealed on Wednesday, that Uzbeki national, Sayfullo Saipov, remained loyal to the terror group and boasted that he felt good after the attack. He is suspected of driving a pick-up truck into crowds in New York, killing eight an injuring at least 11 people. The 29 year old came to the United States in 2010 and was admitted upon presentation of a passport with a valid diversity immigrant visa. He initially lived in Cincinnati with family and friends before spending time in Florida and Ohio and then moving to New Jersey. According to neighbours and individuals who came into contact with him, he had exemplified radical behaviour for a long time but his intensity had accelerated in the last year. A Florida Imam, named Abdula, told the New York Post that before Saipov moved to New York he displayed distressing behaviour. I used to tell him, Hey, you are too much emotional, He did not learn religion properly. Thats the main disease in the Muslim community.Abdula said. Police investigate a vehicle allegedly used in a ramming incident on the West Side Highway in Manhattan, New York, / Reuters The complaint said that Saipov began planning the attack in New York a year ago after watching ISIS training videos. It said that one of the videos that he had in his possession, depicted ISIS fighters running a prisoner over with a tank. On Wednesday, an injured Saipov who was shot in the stomach by police appeared in a Manhattan federal courtroom in a wheel chair. He was read his rights and granted a court-appointed lawyer, currently he is being held without bail. In August 2012, Saipov pleaded guilty to two traffic violations in Pennsyvania. Later in 2016, records show that a warrant for Saipovs arrest was issued when he failed to pay $400 back in property taxes and refused to attend court. Missouri court records state that he was served the warrant in his Florida home in Tampa last year before he moved to New Jersey. I llegal settlements are an obstacle to peace in Israel, Theresa May has said as she welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to Downing Street. The Prime Minister stressed to her Israeli counterpart that Britain remained committed to a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state. The visit marks the 100-year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration a statement issued by Government during the First World War that signalled British support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Mrs May and the Israeli premier will attend a dinner honouring the Declaration. Theresa May is set to host Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu / Getty She said she recognised the "sensitivities" around the anniversary. Speaking in Number 10 Mrs May told Mr Netanyahu: "Britain remains committed to a two-state solution. I'm sure we will want to be talking about the peace process in the Middle East. "I also want to talk about what we see as some of the barriers and some of the difficulties like the illegal settlements in relation to that peace process." Mr Netanyahu said Israel was committed to the peace process, but the Palestinians had to accept his country's right to exist. The occasion marks the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration / GPO/News Pictures/WENN.com He said: "Israel is committed to peace, I'm committed to peace. A hundred years after Balfour, the Palestinians should finally accept a Jewish national home and finally accept a Jewish state. "And when they do, the road to peace will be infinitely closer. In my opinion peace will be achievable." Mrs May also stressed the UK's commitment to the Iran nuclear deal - which Mr Netanyahu said was flawed. But he later thanked the Prime Minister for her "resolute stand against anti-Semitism" before a speech at the dinner where she will speak out against "new and pernicious form" of the anti-Jewish hatred. Styles, 23, was performing his single Kiwi at Hammersmith Apollo when he lost his footing and nearly fell to the floor after slipping on the pulp. Speaking about the incident on Nick Grimshaws Radio One Breakfast Show he joked that he was thankful he hasnt been hit straight on with a kiwi yet. But a branch of the supermarket chain in Hulme, Manchester decided to take action to prevent a frightful fruit induced injury by checking the ID of anyone making a kiwi purchase that looked under the age of 25. An ASDA spokesperson said: We know our customers love Harry Styles and we feel its our duty to protect a fellow Mancunian from any bad kiwis amongst us. Wed hate to see a repeat of the mishap this evening, so to avoid any slippery situations, we feel this is a necessary measure. Styles was taken by surprise after suffering the embarrassing slip on stage earlier this week which he styled out with a dance. Harry Styles pauses a performance to get help for an audience member Speaking to the 5,000 strong crowd he said: You may have seen me fall earlier during this song. It appeared to be a kiwi. That was the culprit, some green seedy mush. Look there's another this could end up being a problem. His London dates also saw him halt a performance midway through after spotting a concertgoer struggling in the crowd after suffering a panic attack. His latest tour is in support of his self-titled debut solo album which topped the charts on its release in May. G igi Hadid has shut down an Islamophobic tweet in the wake of the New York terror attack. Eight people were killed and at least 11 injured after a driver plowed into pedestrians and cyclists in Lower Manhattan on Halloween. The driver was later identified as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, who claimed he carried out the attack in the name of ISIS. The aftermath saw a flurry of offensive tweets, including one from journalist Laura Loomer who shared an image of women wearing hijabs alongside the caption: Muslims are out in full force at the scene of the NYC #ISIS attack today rubbing it in everyones face. Aimlessly walking around in hijabs. She added: Youd think they'd have the decency to not walk around in hijabs @ cross street of the attack. But they don't. I bet theyre loving this. Hadid, who is a Muslim, branded Loomer a f**king moron and criticised her for spreading hate. She tweeted: Laura, I hate to give you the attention, but I need to tell you- You're a f**king moron. Loomer retweeted the post, to which Hadid wrote: Alas.. your RT only proves your classless desperation to spread hate for attention.. Hadid was praised for defending the Islamic faith with many hailing the outburst her best tweet while others hailed her as an idol. The model, who is dating Zayn Malik, was born to Dutch mother Yolanda and Palestinian Mohamed Hadid. Her sister Bella has spoken previously about their faith, telling Porter: [Our father] was always religious, and he always prayed with us. I am proud to be a Muslim. Both sisters took part in the No Ban No Wall march in New York following the announcement of President Donald Trump's immigration ban. K evin Spacey is seeking treatment after three more men came forward with allegations that they were sexually harassed by the two-time Oscar winner. The House of Cards stars spokeswoman Staci Wolfe said he was taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time, her statement added. The statement comes as Spacey is dealing with allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances on Star Trek and Rent star Anthony Rapp in 1986, when the younger actor was 14. Spacey apologised for the incident, saying he was beyond horrified although he said he did not remember the encounter. The actor sparked a backlash after he announced he was gay at the same time as he responded to Rapps allegation. Anthony Rapp: accused Spacey of a sexual advance in 1986 / AFP/Getty Images Three more men have come forward to make claims against Spacey. A West Sussex barman has claimed the 58-year-old offered him a 5,000 watch to keep him quiet after exposing himself. Daniel Beal also claimed Spacey would touch his hand each time he served him a drink at the Goodwood Park Hotel and alleged the actor had invited him to smoke weed in his hotel room. Looking back he was trying to manipulate me as soon as he walked into that bar, Mr Beal claimed. A British journalist, who has not been named, also spoke out against Spacey, claiming he propositioned him in a toilet during the Edinburgh TV festival in 2013. A third man, filmmaker Tony Montana, alleged that the star drunkenly groped him at a Los Angeles bar in 2003. Spacey has not commented on the new claims made against him. The fresh claims came as The Old Vic said it was deeply dismayed over allegations made against the former artistic director. The Old Vic would like to respond to recent media reports by making it clear that we are deeply dismayed to hear the allegations levied against former artistic director Kevin Spacey, who was artistic director from 2004-2015. Inappropriate behaviour by anyone working at the Old Vic is completely unacceptable. Production has halted on the sixth season of hit Netflix drama House Of Cards, following Rapps allegation. The stars decision to seek help came as Hollywood director Brett Ratner faced a series of sexual harassment allegations from actresses, including Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge. Movie studio Warner Brothers has severed ties with Ratner as a result of the claims. Rather is known for directing the Rush Hour film series, The Family Man, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Tower Heist. In light of the allegations being made, I am choosing to personally step away from all Warner Bros.-related activities, Ratner said in the statement. I dont want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved. Depp, who was on the red carpet with co-stars Dench, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe and director Kenneth Branagh, made the confession during an interview with host Lorraine Kelly for BUILD Series. The actor was discussing the films star-studded ensemble cast and Denchs acting skills when he told Kelly: Judi Dench is my one true love. She levitates. His comments were met with a laugh from Kelly who went on to question Depp on the character he plays in the film, the evil Edward Ratchett. Acting legend: Dame Judi Dench attends the Murder on the Orient Express premiere / Dave Benett When asked if villains are more interesting to tackle as an actor, Depp replied: I mean, sure, theres a lot more that you can explore in that regard. But Im not sure a villain ever really thinks hes a villain. Depp was also full of praise for Branagh, who as well as directing the film also stars as the detective, Hercule Poirot, saying hed film anything with the Brit. I was staggered by the beauty [of the film]. Just seeing every piece of the puzzle come together in the beautiful way that Kenneth constructed the film. Hes a force to be reckoned with, a genius. Id film anything he wanted to film with me, he gushed. The film is an adaptation of the 1934 Agatha Christie novel of the same name which sees Poirot investigate a death in his carriage on the Orient Express train from Istanbul to London. R apper Snoop Dogg has posed with a with a fake corpse appearing to be Donald Trump on his new album cover. The 45-year-old, who has criticised the US president openly in the past, is pictured standing over the body of a toe-tagged Trump covered by an American flag. Titled "Make America Crip Again", the EP features a song of the same name in which Snoop rhymes: "The president says he wants to make America great again. F**k that sh*t, we going to make America Crip again." But the new album is not a statement or political act, Snoop Dogg insisted. The cover shows a toe-tagged Trump (Doggy Style Records) "It's just good music. Certain people feel like we should make America 'great again', but that time they're referring to always takes me back to separation and segregation so I'd rather Make America Crip Again," he told Rolling Stone magazine. The cover is nearly identical to that of Ice Cubes 1991 album Death Certificate, which shows the dead body of Uncle Sam. This is not the first time Snoop Dogg, who was born Calvin Broadus, has parodied the assassination of Trump. In the music video for Lavender, Snoop Dogg is shown pointing a gun at the head of a clown character called Ronald Klump. At one point, the Trump caricature holds a press conference to announce the deportation of all doggs. When explaining the meaning of the word "crip", Snoop Dogg said it refers to a time when young black men came together to help their communities. A lot of people glorify the gang-banging and violence but forget that in the beginning, the Crips' main and sole purpose was to be the reflection of the Black Panthers," he told Rolling Stone. "They looked after kids, provided after-school activities, fed them, and stepped in as role models and father figures." In the comments section of Snoop Doggs since-deleted Instagram post of the cover, some fans criticised the artwork. One wrote: "I don't support trump. Doesn't mean I want him dead. Make America Crip Again is out now. F ormer Hollyoaks star Rachel Shenton is leaving the bright lights of Hollywood behind for the badlands of Basildon. She has been tempted back to Britain with a starring role in the second series of BBC2 comedy White Gold, about an Essex double-glazing showroom in the Eighties. Shenton, 29, will play alpha saleswoman Joanne Scott in the show by Damon Beesley, who co-wrote The Inbetweeners. Im delighted to be back working on British TV, especially on such a funny, well-written show, she said. Her Hollyoaks character, wannabe model Mitzeee Minniver, flew off for a new life in America in her final scene in 2013. In real life, Shenton won a part in US network drama Switched At Birth, about two teenagers who have grown up in very different surroundings one working-class, the other affluent. White Gold: Stars James Buckley, Ed Westwick and Joe Thomas / BBC / Fudge Park After its final season was broadcast this year, Shenton wrote and starred in a short film, The Silent Child, directed by her actor fiance Chris Overton. The actress, whose late father became deaf after undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, is an ambassador for the National Deaf Childrens Society and The Silent Child is based on the true story of a four-year-old deaf girl. White Gold returns in the spring, with the UPVC sales team looking to Spain and the timeshare business. F ormer Skins actor Sean Teale says it is incredibly important to be playing a South American Marvel superhero on TV but he doesnt want to make too much of a deal about his shows diversity. The Londoner, 25, stars in new Fox series The Gifted as Eclipse, a Colombian character with the power to absorb and manipulate light. He said: I think its incredibly important to have a South American character and a really diverse cast. But the important thing is that were not making too much of a deal about it. Because then it looks like youre riding on the coat tails of being cultured and diverse. Teales parents fled Venezuela in 1989 after a wave of protests, riots and shootings in the capital Caracas. They moved to London, where Teale was born, and he grew up in Putney. He was spotted by an agent while starring in a play at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, and went on to win his breakthrough role as Nick Levan in Channel 4 series Skins. Super powers: Emma Dumont and Sean Teale in The Gifted / Ryan Green/FOX Teale joins a long line of British actors who have portrayed Marvel characters, including Sir Patrick Stewart, Sir Ian McKellen and James McAvoy. He joked: I think they think were smart just by our accent, Oh you speak that kind of English, you must have trained at Rada. The Marvel Universe is massive so youre going to see the same thing as whats happening in the industry as a whole, with lots of British talent working in the US. He put the success of British actors in Hollywood down to their open attitude. A lot of people make jokes about British and Australian people stealing their jobs, he said. People say British people can do American accents much better than American people can do British accents. So much of it is about mind set. Weve always been way more open about the world outside our country. British teenagers have travelled an immense amount and have consumed American programming from a really young age. This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. 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The Russian invasion in 2014 accelerated the need for locally developed weapons because Russian threats prevented Ukraine from receiving new weapons from the West. Before 2014 these new Ukrainian weapons were intended mainly for the export market but now most of the new stuff is only for Ukrainian troops, at least until the war with Russia in eastern Ukraine (Donbas) is over. Skif is based on work done with neighboring Belarus to develop the Shershen ATGM. The two countries differed on design of the joint project and each went their own way with Ukraine developing the Skif. The Ukrainian ATGM is a 29.5 kg (65 pound) missile stored and fired from an 8.5 kg (18.7 pound) container that is mounted on 32 kg (70 pound) control unit. Max range of the laser guided missile is 5,500 meters. The control unit contains a thermal sight and allows the operator to manually guide the missile to a moving target or designate a stationary target in fire and forget mode. The firing unit can be detached from the tripod and operated up to 50 meters away from the rest of the system. Skif has two types of armor piercing warheads (130mm and 152mm), one capable of penetrating 1.1 meters of reactive and composite armor. There is also a fragmentation warhead that is useful against structures. Skif is touted by the manufacturer as being comparable to the Israeli Spike-LR but as a practical matter the Spike uses more advanced technology and the main advantage Skif has is lower price. Shelf life of the missiles (in their sealed containers) is 10 years but few of those produced over the next year or so are expected to remain on the shelf long. Ukraine has a long history with development of ATGMs, For example iIn 2013 Ukraine tried to interest buyers in its new Corsar ATGM, which appears to be a scaled down Skif. The 105mm (diameter) Cosar missile and its storage/launch container weigh 18 kg (40 pounds). The missile is laser homing, with a range of 2,500 meters, and its tandem warhead can penetrate 550mm of armor that is behind reactive (explosive panels) armor. At the time Poland expressed some interest, even though Poland has been using the Israeli Spike LR for several years. But Corsar is cheaper than Spike and uses laser guidance rather than the more expensive fire and forget system Israeli missiles employ. The Spike LR, along with the sealed storage/launch canister, weighs 13 kg (28.6 pounds). The canister is mounted on a 13 kg fire control system (10 kg without the tripod) for aiming and firing. The missile in its canister has a shelf life of twenty years and a range of 4,000 meters. The Spike uses a fiber-optic cable so that the operator can literally drive the missile to the target, although the missile can also be used in "fire and forget" mode. Israel is apparently flexible on what they charge for the Spike LR, saying only that it's cheaper than the similar U.S. Javelin. So the Ukrainians found that the export market was more crowded and competitive than they expected. The larger, lingered ranged and cheaper (than Spike LR) Skif may not have been the answer but if it does well in Donbas, that will be a powerful assist for sales efforts. Ukraine has a lot of other potential new weapons and has made some progress in finding customers. Before the Cold War ended in 1991, many Soviet weapons design and production operations were in Ukraine. These were inherited by the newly independent Ukraine after 1991. But most of these organizations went out of business because there was no more Soviet Armed Forces placing large orders each year. Most of the foreign sales disappeared as well. Ukraine salvaged some weapons and design capability by selling off its large Cold War stocks of Soviet weapons at low prices and developing a willingness to sell to anyone who could pay. Ukraine now has a lot of customers in Africa and Asia and noted a demand for ATGMs. These weapons are popular not just for their ability to destroy or disable most tanks but as highly portable and accurate artillery against all sorts of targets. Corsar and Skif are old technology but the Ukrainians still know how to produce it cheaply and reliably enough to attract some customers. by Austin Bay November 1, 2017 The economic and political sanctions regimen the Trump Administration has placed on North Korea and its corporate enablers may help undermine one of the dictatorship's most important industries: its global organized crime operation. Military and diplomatic analysts agree that criminal organizations influence several ongoing wars. But crime syndicate participation is rarely a decisive factor. However, trans-national narcotics trafficking organizations like Mexico's notorious drug cartels have the financial resources to bribe key government and law enforcement officials. They can also hire gunmen with military-level combat skills and arm these gunmen with better weapons than the federal police. The drug lords then employ their gunmen against competing gangs in turf wars for smuggling routes and against Mexican security forces. Their gunmen kill citizens in order to intimidate the populace. By scaring the locals into silence the gangs obtain "freedom of action" to protect turf, move drugs into the U.S. and Canada, and extort money from legitimate businesses. Military-grade firepower and the targeting of citizens and security forces is why Mexico's drug war is sometimes called a "criminal insurgency." So far, the drug cartels don't want to become the government, the goal of a classic rebellion. Drug lords want to co-opt and weaken government with cash and violence. Criminal profit is their goal. Then there's North Korea. The Kim regime, now run by dictator Kim Jong Un, is truly a criminal state where crime is a major source of hard currency. The criminals are the government. This is not a secret. For at least four decades, numerous nations and international organizations have bewailed North Korean criminal operations, to include money laundering, counterfeiting and drug trafficking. In 2010, the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute aptly described North Korea's peculiar situation as "criminal sovereignty" unique in the world's "national security arena." The Kim regime "uses state sovereignty to protect itself from external interference in its domestic affairs while dedicating a portion of its government to carrying out illicit international activities in defiance of international law and the domestic laws of numerous other nations." The regime uses an office called Central Committee Bureau 39 to coordinate most of the criminal operations. It also maintains contacts with other organized criminal groups. This is one reason investigators believe North Korean has supplied other criminal groups with intelligence information as well as transport services. North Korea deals and ships heroin throughout Asia. It supplies drug-abusing factory workers in neighboring China with methamphetamines. Bureau 39 operates cigarette and exotic animal smuggling schemes and smuggles weapons worldwide. In February 2017, media reported that North Korea had shipped encrypted communications systems and man-portable anti-aircraft missiles to unnamed countries in Asia and Africa. North Korea's Foreign Ministry doubles as a Bureau 39 smuggling front. North Korea's North African embassies allegedly smuggle illicit rhino horn and elephant ivory, natural products much-prized in Asia. Their diplomats also smuggle Congolese gold. Often criminal proceeds literally pay North Korean embassy bills. Reducing and potentially eliminating North Korea's lucrative money laundering operations was one goal of the harsh sanctions the Trump Administration placed on several Chinese and Russian financial entities. The U.S. called China's Bank of Dandong a money-laundering front. (The city of Dandong is just across the Yalu River from North Korea.) This September many major Chinese banks suspended work for North Korea, fearing targeted U.S. sanctions. U.S. investigators alleged that Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have laundered money through unscrupulous Chinese banks. Cartel money buys Chinese merchandise, which is shipped to another nation and sold. The same tricks works for laundering North Korean funds. Where does the money from the regime's organized criminal operations go? The cash definitely supports Kim Jong Un's lavish lifestyle and buys luxury goods for his inner circle. But the funds also help purchase equipment, tools, raw materials and finished goods that advance North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. That means America definitely has a national security interest in fighting North Korean crime. A new government in the United States has adopted a different policy towards the military government, at least as long as the military holds elections and soon. Because of that pressure the generals now say elections will take place in a year and the U.S. has made it clear that failure to follow through with this will have serious consequences. Normally the U.S. reduces support to unelected government that replace elected ones. Thats what happened when the military took over again in 2014. It soon became obvious that the situation in Thailand was different. The United States has long (over half a century) been Thailands major military and diplomatic ally. Given that China is a growing regional military threat (but not so much to Thailand) the U.S. would be reluctant to continue military support for Thailand if Thailand had close military ties with China. The unspoken reason is American opposition to the military government and realization by the generals that they would need all the allies they could get once they hand power back to elected officials. The consensus is that it is better to have good relations with the Americans (who are pressing for new elections) than the Chinese (who are quite comfortable with a military dictatorship). Moreover a lot of Thais are uncomfortable with the growing military power and aggressiveness of China. After 2014 the Thai military responded by still buying a lot of Western military gear and took steps like enforcing existing rules mandating that senior army officers (battalion commanders and higher) take an English competency test to prove that their ability to read and speak English was still adequate. Despite the diplomatic snubs the military government realizes that most Thais feel safer with the distant, and reliable, United States as a military ally rather than neighbor China which has a long history of mistreating smaller neighbors. Another reason for the generals to do whatever they can to improve relations with the United States is the Thai economy. It was the American connection that made Thailand a popular (and profitable) place for American firms to set up Asian manufacturing operations. Thailand became one of the most prosperous nations in the region with per-capita GDP increasing tenfold from 1960 to 2016. Thais expect this to continue. The army realized the economic problems could not be ignored. The GDP contracted 2.1 percent in the first three months of 2014 and that contraction and slow growth continued. Unemployment was still low but income was declining as were opportunities for getting better jobs. Most Thais remember that in all the post-World War II coups (1951, 1957, 1958, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1991 and 2006) the economy improved after the army took over. So the army pays attention to economic problems and it took a while to make it work. Initially accepting major investments from China did not have as much impact as hoped. Worse, the increased presence of the Chinese was not welcome. Many Thais fear greater Chinese influence in the economy will hurt Thailand in the long run. The military makes much of the fact that GDP growth so far in 2017 is the highest it has been the highest in four years. Most Thais realize that GDP growth was much higher before the latest coup in 2014 and that the future does not look bright. The Will Of The People Thais expect any government, military or elected, to take care of the economy or face even more popular anger and violence. Frosty relations with U.S. and the West in general did not help so the generals have acted accordingly. Exports are up sharply (after four years of little or no growth) as is GDP. Tourism was way up in August, with a record (for August) 3.1 million visitors. This is important for the government because tourism currently accounts for 12 percent of GDP and security problems in tourist areas have been a problem since 2012. Its not always terrorists. Tourism is a favorite target for gangsters because most targets are not well guarded and vulnerable to extortion (in return for protection from attacks.) Tourism is very sensitive to safety issues no matter what the source. Thus an August 2015 bombing in the capital led to a temporary 17 percent drop tourism. This came after the number of tourists visiting Thailand had doubled between 2010 and 2015. The target was a Hindu shrine (and popular tourist attraction) in Bangkok. At first it was believed to be the work of criminal gangs angry at a crackdown on their profitable people smuggling operations. Islamic terrorists did not claim credit for this one and no gang connection could be found. This attack did not appear to be the work of any of the usual suspects. The government admitted that those behind the bombing appeared intent on making the government look bad as well as hurting the economy (by scaring tourists away). That worked because the temple attack was the worst in Thai history leaving twenty people dead, eight of them foreign tourists. Over a hundred people were wounded. In August 2016 eleven small bombs were set off in the south on August 11th and 12th. Four people died and 34 were wounded, including ten European tourists. These attacks did less damage and were not in such a high-visibility location. There appears to be less negative impact on tourism because of that. The attacks on tourism did not continue and the negative impact on foreigners diminished. The August 2017 tourist numbers demonstrated this. If Thailand is safe for tourists foreign investors consider the area safe for major investments. The government scored some visible success in addressing corruption and bureaucracy. Dealing with these issues was a major reason for the 2014 (and earlier) coups. The latest international surveys of such things showed Thailand making a lot of progress. The World Bank survey of 150 nations shows Thailand had moved 46th place to 26th in the last year when it came to making it easier to do business. Another recent international survey, of Global Competitiveness, ranked 137 countries on how well the local conditions (low corruption, economic freedom and opportunity and robust economy) facilitated the ability of that nation to compete in global markets. The top five were Switzerland, the United States, Singapore, Netherlands and Germany. Thailand was 32, China 27, Vietnam 55, Malaysia 23, Indonesia 36, India 40 and so on to the bottom five (Mauritania, Liberia, Chad, Mozambique and Yemen). All this is not just self-defense by the military, the generals believe they can achieve their goal of fundamentally changing the nature of Thai democracy with the new 2016 constitution. That was a major reason why the generals agreed to national electrons by the end of 2018. The pro-democracy opposition is seen as less and less of an immediate threat and most Thais just want some peace and prosperity. But the generals and royalists realize that in the long term the pro-democracy movement will revive and will remember the current military effort to change the constitution to permanently grant the military more power. The Troubled Prince Another problem the military had to deal with was the new king, who had an unsavory reputation. Despite that, once his father died the new king was believed to have made a deal with the military government that would, in theory, benefit both of them in the long run. First, the former crown prince assured everyone that he would behave. In return military government freed the monarchy from constitutional and parliamentary restrictions that were part of the 1930s deal that turned the absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. The military government was changing the constitution when the old king died a year ago and that presented a rare opportunity for the new king to gain more power for the monarchy. The generals need the backing of the king because they justified their 2014 coup by insisting they were doing it to protect the monarchy. The old king was not enthusiastic about that but had learned to stand back. In 2016 the military got their new constitution ratified in a referendum and the king approved it earlier this year (April.) This sort of behavior by the new king was not a sure thing. For nearly half a century the crown prince has been misbehaving and since the 1990s, with the arrival of cheaper digital photography and phone cameras, a lot more embarrassing photos and videos of the crown prince were created. As soon as it seemed likely that the prince would become king a lot of these photos appeared on the Internet and that made the new king, and his military backers, look bad. It was probably for that reason that some critics of the military government were arrested on vague charges of trying to overthrow the monarchy. All this was absurd because if there was one thing most Thais could agree on was the popularity of the kings long-ruling father. The crown prince (and current king) is another matter. The Thai monarch generally stays out of politics and everyone feels that if things get really bad the king will step in. That rarely happened because the king has more popularity than political power and was used as a symbol by anti-populist traditionalists and as a source of ultimate salvation by pro-democracy groups. After all, it was a king who established democracy in the 1930s (to avoid a civil war) and Thais were expecting more of the same to avoid another one. But that beloved king Bhumibol died in October 2016 and his successor has much less moral authority. The new king helped persuade the pro-democracy groups (which still have the majority of voters with them) to remain calm and they have. In late 2015 pro-democracy leader (and former prime minister) Thaksin Shinawatra called on his followers (the red shirts) to play dead for the moment and wait for the military government to allow elections. The military had agreed to elections in 2018 but only after some fundamental changes were made in the constitution. The problem is the new rules give the military permanent power and privileges that an elected government would have a difficult time (via changing the constitution) repealing. The red shirts are not pleased with all this but were persuaded. Shinawatra pointed out to his followers that red shirt violence simply gave the military another excuse to hold onto power. The May 2014 coup came after months of political protests in the capital and those tensions remain. The new king and the generals recognize that most Thais are fed up with the coups. There have been twelve of them since a constitutional monarchy replaced the centuries old absolute monarchy after World War I. The royals have learned to keep their heads down, even though the military has always been staunchly royalist. The army and the new king believe they have solved this problem with reforms in the pre-coup constitution. Pro-democracy Thais have also became more adept at dealing with coups, especially since the Internet and social media proved immune to army efforts to control Internet use. New ally China admitted that even when you employ an enormous Internet censorship bureaucracy and some very effective technology the unwelcome (for the government) messages still get through. Moreover sites like Facebook are tremendously popular in Thailand, by royalists and populists alike. Thus the army was forced to come out and say it would never shut down Facebook access in Thailand or seriously threaten Internet access. Pro-democracy groups organized flash mobs and similar actions to remind the generals and the foreign media that this crises was not over. While the red shirts have lots of popular support, most Thais are more interested in economic issues and the army at first was to deal with that because of widespread opposition to military rule in Thailand and abroad. The king and armed forces believe they will still have more power even when the country is again run by an elected government. The democrats note that long-term the kings and dictators lose. Most royalists recognize that if the king becomes too unpopular the monarchy could be abolished, as it already has throughout the region. Actions have consequences. The South Still Simmers A negotiated end to the southern separatist and Islamic violence remains a possibility as the peace talks at least continue. There has been some interest among separatists for safety zones in the south. Lack of unity among the separatist groups means it is difficult to get agreement on the details. The basic idea is that security in the south would be supervised by representatives from separatists and the government and when this worked (neither side attacked) the safety zone would be expanded until it included all three southern provinces that were majority Moslem. The government could then expand economic development and infrastructure projects. Islamic terrorism and radicalism is no longer as much of an issue as it used to be. That particular cause is generally seen as counterproductive and lacks much local support. A lot of the negotiations are an effort to create some trust. For example the BRN (Barisan Revolusi Nasional) the oldest (founded in 1960) separatist group in the south as well as one of the largest has rejected the safety zone proposal. The main objection was the government refusal to allow foreign observers to monitor any peace agreement. BRN considers the Thai government an occupying force but the government refuses to accept that label. These attitudes are the main reason why it has been so difficult to get peace talks going at all, much less make any progress. The government openly blames disagreements among the southern separatist organizations for the difficulties in achieving a negotiated settlement. Despite that the major separatist groups keep showing up to talk while the violence continues to decline. That is because despite all the separatist violence since 2004 the people in the south have little to show for it. Declining popular support for the violence, and increased government economic and military effort led to violence peaking in 2009 and declining ever since. In 2007 over 80 people a month were dying from the southern violence but by 2014 that was less than 20 a month and continuing to decline into 2017. October 31, 2017: The military government refused to lift the ban on political activity, which was promised once the yearlong mourning period for the king was over. Despite evidence to the contrary the military government insisted order had not returned to the kingdom. The ban on political activity had been in place since the 2014 coup. This decision is awkward because the military government has promised national elections in 2018 and maintaining the ban on political activity even through there has been little unrest for more than a year indicates fear that a new elected government will seek to punish those who imposed the current military government. October 22, 2017: In the south (Narathiwat province) a local man serving in the army was shot dead while visiting his sick mother. Local Islamic terrorists seeking to discourage locals from joining the security forces were considered responsible. October 18, 2017: In the south (Narathiwat province) four armed men on two motorcycles ambushed two policemen on rural patrol duty and opened fire. They missed and the two policemen let their motorcycles hit the ground, took cover behind them and returned fire. The attackers were afraid the police had already called for backup and fled. Apparently no one was hurt. October 15, 2017: In the south (Narathiwat province) a local separatist group used gunfire and a roadside bomb to attack police at night. The only casualty was a Malaysian man who was visiting family in the area. He was hit by one of the dozens of bullets fired at a police checkpoint and died later in the hospital. There have been few such attacks in the area and the outcome of this one will not encourage the separatists because the death of a civilian, especially someone related to a local, costs the separatists a lot of support for more violence. October 13, 2017: The one year mourning period ended for the popular king Bhumibol, who died at 88 after a record 70 year reign. The final ceremonies generated some unrest but largely at local officials for poor planning. These ceremonies continued through October 29th without incident, except for a lot of criticism at the high cost of the events. The late king was known for his frugalness, his successor is not. Generally the military government has kept the new king on good behavior. October 10, 2017: The military government announced that elections would take place in November 2018 with the exact date to be announced by June 2018. The military government has delayed elections several times by claiming unrest continued but that attitude is difficult to sustain when the opposition keeps pointing out that there has been no significant political violence for over two years and that was no coincidence. The opposition is willing to keep the peace if there will be elections. October 9, 2017: The 28 Chinese VT4/MBT3000 tanks the army ordered in early 2016 arrived by ship. The tanks were delivered six months ahead of schedule and were in excellent condition. The VT4s also turned out to have all the latest updates for that model. The Chinese are trying to win over Thailand from decades of preferring Western weapons, even if the Western stuff costs a lot more than comparable (on paper) Russian or Chinese models. The VT4s are different. They are cheaper but they are also export models of the Type 98/99 tanks, the most modern China has. While the Type 98/99 is basically an improved Russian T-72 that sells for about $5.4 million each it is built to higher standards than was normal for Cold War era designs like the T-72. Even the export models have world class electronics and vehicle performance. If the army is satisfied with the VT4it wants to buy as many as 150. Amazon is getting a big jump on Black Friday. Less than 24 hours removed from Halloween, the e-commerce giant has turned its attention to the year's biggest shopping event with the opening of the Black Friday Deals Store. As is customary, Amazon will offer discounts across every category from now through Black Friday (and into Cyber Monday... and beyond). There are already some solid bargains on offer for those looking to get a head start on their shopping list. Chief among today's deals include 57 percent off a Klipsch R-10SWi 10-inch wireless subwoofer ($191.99), a Dyson Ball vacuum for $149.50 (half off although it is a refurb), a YI 1080p home camera for $44.99 (25 percent off) and a refurbished Amazon Echo Dot for $34.99 (22 percent off the original price). Televisions are a Black Friday staple and there will be plenty on offer this year from brands such as Samsung, Sony and LG. I'm not seeing much at the moment but that'll surely change as we dig deeper into the month. Are you eyeballing any big-ticket items this holiday season, either for yourself or loved ones? I typically struggle in that area in that there are plenty of things I want in the middle of summer but come this time of year, I can't think of a single item to add to my wish list. Disney knows that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is going to make a lot of money, but the company is giving US theaters a strict set of rules that will maximize the movie's earning potential while increasing the studio's cut of the profits. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, theaters that show the next entry in the Star Wars series must hand over a 65 percent share of the ticket-sales revenue to Disney. Most studios request around 55 percent. This is a "new benchmark," according to the WSJ, though it's only 1 percent more than what Disney asked for the last two Star Wars titles. The next demand is that theaters show The Last Jedi exclusively in their largest auditorium for a minimum of four weeks---another rule that was in place for the previous movies. While The Last Jedi will obviously be popular, this requirement could pose problems for small theaters that might have only one screen. Disney's rules will only come into play if the Last Jedi grosses $500 million in the US and Canada, which is an almost certainty, especially when you consider that the highest-grossing film of 2015, The Force Awakens, brought in over $930 million domestically. Should any theater dare to ignore Disney's rules, the company reserves the right to charge it an additional five percent of the ticket-sales revenue. This will happen for any infraction, including the cancellation of a single screening without Disney's consent. In other Last Jedi news, a new TV spot appeared during Game 7 of the World Series last night. Highlights include Luke's return to the Millennium Falcon, Finn battling Captain Phasma, and, err..., some more Porgs. Back in 2015, four years after he was killed during a raid on his compound in Pakistan, the US government released a list of books and articles that were discovered in the hideout of Osama bin Laden. Yesterday, the CIA released almost 470,000 files that were found on his hard drives, which show he had a penchant for video games (many of them erotic), movies, viral YouTube videos, and anime. The total size of all the files reaches into the hundreds of gigabytes, but the archive has been split up into four categories---audio, documents, images, and video---to make searching through them easier. As you would expect, the CIA found terror-related material, such as training videos, Bin Laden's journal, and a clip of a beheading, but there was also plenty of unexpected content. Movies including Antz, Cars, Chicken Little, and Resident Evil were discovered. There was also a surprising amount of emulated DS titles like New Super Mario Bros and Animal Crossing, along with PC games Zuma Deluxe and Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army 2, a torrent for Army Men 2, images for Pac-Man and Perestroika Girls, Final Fantasy VII, and much more. Bin Laden: The Horny Gamer Years pic.twitter.com/upFVqYpF1O --- David Thorpe (@Arr) November 1, 2017 It seems that Bin Laden (or someone at his base) was an anime fan, too. The whole Devil May Cry series is here, as are animated features such as Street Fighter 4: The Ties That Bind and Storm Rider - Clash of the Evils. YouTube videos also make an appearance. A downloaded second edition of September 11 conspiracy documentary Loose Change is listed, along with videos for crocheting blankets, baby socks, and beanie caps. There's even a copy of the viral "Charlie bit my finger" clip. Other material related to conspiracy theories, including PDF files about the Illuminati, were found. The CIA points out that some of the discoveries, such as anything related to national security, have not been made public. The malware and pornography that were apparently found have also been kept private. Here's a list of some of the copyrighted material that's being withheld from the public: Antz Batman Gotham Knight BBC Great Wildlife Moments Biography - Osama bin Laden Cars Chicken Little CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted Final Fantasy VII Heroes of Tomorrow Home on the Range Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs In the Footsteps of bin Laden - CNN National Geographic: Kung Fu Killers National Geographic: Inside the Green Berets National Geographic: Predators at War National Geographic: World's Worst Venom Peru Civilization Resident Evil Storm Rider - Clash of the Evils The Kremlin from Inside (a documentary recorded from Al Jazeera) The Story of India The Three Musketeers Where in the World is Osama bin Laden The CIA warns that despite it shifting through the content, some "offensive and/or emotionally disturbing" material might remain. It could also contain malware that the agency missed. With that in mind, you can check out Bin Laden's digital stash here. With all the controversy surrounding Facebook and the Russian ads, one might imagine that the company's bottom line is being affected. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The social network has once again beaten expectations, with shares reaching an all-time high. Facebook reported earnings of $1.59 per share on $10.3 billion in revenue for Q3 2017. Analysts had been looking for $1.28 per share on $9.48 billion in revenue. The figures mark a YoY profit increase of 79 percent, while total revenue is up 47 percent. Facebook stock, which has risen almost 59 percent since the start of 2017, reached $182 per share on the back of the news. The company also revealed the number of active monthly users has increased to 2.07 billion, up 16 percent since last year, and it now boasts 1.37 billion daily users. As usual, advertising was Facebook's primary earner, bringing in $10.142 billion in revenue, up 49 percent from last year. Mobile ads account for most of the advertising revenue---88 percent---a four percent YoY jump. "Video is exploding, and mobile video advertising is a big opportunity," said Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. In a letter to investors, Mark Zuckerberg warned that future profits could be affected as it spends more money tightening security on the platform. "Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well," the CEO wrote. "But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don't bring people closer together. We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms. We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits." Zuckerberg said the extra spending would include adding 10,000 people to its review process, monitoring for content such as child pornography, terrorism, and state-sponsored interference on the platform. The company already has 23,165 employees, up 47 percent from one year ago, but it's likely most of the new additions will be contractors. Facebook expects its total expenses for next year to increase by as much as 60%. Samsung's artistic Frame TV was initially released back in June with a pretty hefty price tag. The cheapest 55-inch option comes in at $1,999 while the larger 65-inch Frame will run you about $2,799 at the moment. However, at IFA 2017 in August, the electronics company announced a new 43-inch entry into their 4K Frame TV lineup with a significantly lower price tag than its larger predecessors. Today, it's finally available for purchase. The 43-inch Frame TV will cost you about $1,299, or $54.17/month if you opt for Samsung's special financing. Additionally, if you don't care for the Frame's standard black bezel, Samsung will let you select from a few other color and texture options for an extra $180. That might be a tough sell for some given the Frame's high base cost. The biggest draw for many potential Frame TV purchasers will likely be the device's ability to double as a personal art show. The Frame will flip through around 100 pre-loaded pieces of digital artwork whenever it isn't actively being used. If you're not a fan of Samsung's chosen art lineup, you can add to the rotation with art purchased from the Samsung Art Store or replace it entirely with your own personal photos. Speaking of Samsung's Art Store, Frame owners can either buy individual pieces of art from the store for around $20 each or opt for a $5/month Art Store subscription. This subscription will grant you access to Samsung's entire collection of artwork for however long you remain an active subscriber. If you want to grab a 43-inch Frame for yourself, you can visit Samsung's official website or stop by your local electronics retailer of choice. Shortly after Qualcomm learned that Apple may no longer be interested in using its chips for the next generation of iPhones and iPads, Qualcomm launched another legal attack on Apple for allegedly sharing proprietary code required to make modems work with other device components. As part of an ongoing battle, Qualcomm is being accused of charging too much for its chips while Apple has been using its large purchasing power to pressure suppliers and manufacturers to stop remitting royalties for the chips used in its phones. According to Qualcomm, Apple is refusing to allow an audit of how proprietary code is being handled, a requirement of an existing agreement. Qualcomm notes in its filing that an Intel engineer was included on e-mails sent by Apple employees requesting private information. Additionally, the suit mentions that a competitor of Qualcomm asked an Apple employee to request information on their behalf. It is unclear whether any proprietary information has actually been shared with unintended parties. If Apple were to drop Qualcomm's modems from its devices entirely, the chipmaker would lose approximately 7.5 percent of its annual revenue. With the iPhone 7, Apple started using Intel modems in certain models. Intel is slightly behind Qualcomm in building Gigabit LTE modems, however, having only launched its first such product earlier this year. (Apple Store in London, courtesy of Rob Price, Business Insider) Apple's new iPhone X is slated for release on November 3. At a starting price of $999, the handset is redefining the flagship category but the high cost of entry isn't deterring everyone. Prospective iPhone X owners are already lining up outside Apple retail stores around the world (and some have already been waiting for days). At Apple's Palo Alto store, for example, there were already nine people in line as of yesterday. (Apple Store in Sydney, Australia, courtesy of Instagram user hanskristensen1980) Apple previously stated that it'll have handsets available for walk-in customers on launch day. Given the seemingly high demand for the phone and countless rumors of production delays, however, the iPhone X will likely be in short supply. Pre-orders, if you recall, sold out within minutes. Shipping dates for the iPhone X on Apple's website have slipped to 5-6 weeks as of writing. The start of the line at the #AppleStore in Meatpacking. district. pic.twitter.com/8VAj3I1bjJ --- Helen Mann (@HelenMannCBC) November 2, 2017 Those hoping to score an iPhone X on launch day can also check with local wireless carrier stores and retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and Target. Third-party sites like eBay are a popular choice as well although be prepared to pay a premium for not having to wait in line. If you're still on the fence, I'd recommend checking out our recent review round-up for feedback on the device from early reviewers. Most praised the phone's OLED display and its camera setup but were a bit skeptical about Face ID. On Tuesday, Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met with envoys from the U.S. and China in the framework of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference. | Read More CHERRY HILL, N.J., Nov. 1, 2017 -- Record October - monthly sales increase 0.5 percent over October 2016 71 consecutive months of yearly month-over-month growth Best October ever for Crosstrek and Impreza 44 consecutive months of more than 10,000 Outbacks sold 51 consecutive months of more than 10,000 Foresters sold Subaru of America, Inc. today reported 54,045 vehicle sales for October 2017, a 0.5 percent increase over October 2016. The automaker also reported year-to-date sales of 532,893 vehicles, a 6.4 percent gain over the same period in 2016. October marked the 44th consecutive month of 40,000+ vehicle sales for the company. Crosstrek and Impreza monthly sales increased 29.9 percent and 123.7 percent, respectively, over October 2016. The two carlines also achieved the best October ever. "Our franchise continues to establish new sales records, despite the very competitive climate in the auto industry," said Thomas J. Doll, president and COO, Subaru of America, Inc. "These continuing records are the result of the dedication of our retailer network in delivering the best purchase and service experience possible to our customers." "With strong momentum for the all-new 2018 Crosstrek and Impreza, we expect good growth in the final two months of the year," said Jeff Walters, senior vice president of sales, Subaru of America, Inc. "We are also looking forward to the tenth anniversary of our annual 'Share the Love' event with its tradition of giving back to local and national charities," Walters concluded. Carline Oct-17 Oct-16 % Chg Oct-17 Oct-16 % Chg MTD MTD MTD YTD YTD YTD Forester 13,430 15,330 -12.4% 145,460 145,982 -0.4% Impreza 6,733 3,010 123.7% 71,322 48,080 48.3% WRX/STI 2,416 2,579 -6.3% 26,572 27,750 -4.3% Legacy 4,538 6,136 -26.0% 41,999 53,532 -21.5% Outback 15,786 18,008 -12.3% 156,277 144,434 8.2% BRZ 271 330 -17.9% 3,578 3,692 -3.1% Crosstrek 10,871 8,367 29.9% 87,685 77,177 13.6% TOTAL 54,045 53,760 0.5% 532,893 500,647 6.4% Subaru of America recently announced the return of its annual Share the Love event for 2017. This year marks the tenth year of the program and by the end of this year's event, the automaker aims to donate $115 million in total to a host of national and local charities since the inception of the Share the Love program. From November 16, 2017 to January 2, 2018, Subaru will donate $250 for every new Subaru vehicle sold or leased to the customer's choice of the following national charities with a minimum guarantee of $250,000: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), Make-A-Wish, Meals on Wheels America and National Park Foundation. Also, pre-approved Hometown Charities may be selected for donation depending on retailer participation. About Subaru of America, Inc. Subaru of America, Inc. (SOA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Subaru Corporation of Japan. Headquartered at a zero-landfill office in Cherry Hill, N.J., the company markets and distributes Subaru vehicles, parts and accessories through a network of more than 620 retailers across the United States. All Subaru products are manufactured in zero-landfill production plants and Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc. is the only U.S. automobile production plant to be designated a backyard wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. SOA is guided by the Subaru Love Promise, which is the company's vision to show love and respect to everyone, and to support its communities and customers nationwide. Over the past 20 years, SOA has donated more than $120 million to causes the Subaru family cares about, and its employees have logged more than 40,000 volunteer hours. As a company, Subaru believes it is important to do its part in making a positive impact in the world because it is the right thing to do. FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., Nov. 1, 2017 -- Hyundai Motor America today reported October sales of Hyundai and Genesis branded vehicles of 53,010 units, a 15 percent decline in comparison with the company's all-time best October in 2016. Hyundai's lineup of CUVs continues to drive growth as it sets monthly October sales records for combined CUV sales (up 12 percent), Tucson (up 8 percent) and Santa Fe (up 15 percent). The reduction in fleet sales, down 23 percent from a year ago, is a contributing factor to the overall sales decrease. SALES BY BRAND Oct-17 Oct-16 2017 YTD 2016 YTD Hyundai 51,224 61,304 547,862 646,284 Genesis 1,786 1,201 16,888 3,909 TOTAL 53,010 62,505 564,750 650,193 HYUNDAI BRAND HIGHLIGHTS "The CUV growth trend for Hyundai continues as customers are able to find the right size, versatility and performance from Tucson and Santa Fe in highly competitive segments," said John Angevine, director, National Sales, Hyundai Motor America. "With two months remaining in the year, our focus is on maintaining retail market share and working closely with our dealers for a strong close to 2017." In October, Hyundai displayed its commitment to making things better for its customers with several corporate and product initiatives. Earlier in the month, Hyundai launched its new Shopper Assurance program in Dallas, Houston, Orlando and Miami, offering customers a streamlined and modernized car buying experience. Hyundai also introduced a new Rear Occupant Alert system and showcased the aftermarket potential of its vehicles by unveiling four unique custom-builds at the SEMA Show, while drivers of its Tucson Fuel Cell accumulated more than 3 million zero-emission miles since the vehicle's launch. HYUNDAI MODELS Vehicle Oct-17 Oct-16 2017 YTD 2016 YTD Accent 5,485 6,498 50,126 68,698 Azera 162 359 2,773 4,134 Elantra 14,733 15,917 157,800 172,967 Equus 0 30 20 1,327 Genesis 0 581 1,132 22,244 Santa Fe 13,024 11,311 108,679 109,609 Sonata 7,595 14,972 115,313 170,251 Tucson 8,731 8,088 91,570 73,421 Veloster 596 3,548 11,122 23,633 Ioniq 898 0 9,327 0 GENESIS BRAND HIGHLIGHTS October Genesis vehicle sales totaled 1,786, a 49 percent increase over last year, while G80 sales were up 27 percent. "Consumer demand and awareness for G80 and G90 are increasing, directly resulting in sales growth as both of our product lines have now been available for one year. We're pleased with how our brand is performing going into November and December," said Erwin Raphael, general manager of Genesis in the U.S. market. "In October, we also launched two key initiatives an innovative new website called 'MyGenesis' for our customers and a partnership with the Executive Leadership Council." GENESIS MODELS Vehicle Oct-17 Oct-16 2017 YTD 2016 YTD G80 1,408 1,109 13,264 3,807 G90 378 92 3,624 102 HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA Hyundai Motor America, headquartered in Fountain Valley, Calif., is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout the United States by Hyundai Motor America and are sold and serviced through more than 830 dealerships nationwide. All new Hyundai vehicles sold in the U.S. are covered by the Hyundai Assurance program, which includes a 5-year/60,000-mile fully-transferable new vehicle limited warranty, Hyundai's 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain limited warranty and five years of complimentary Roadside Assistance. New Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio Stelvio Quadrifoglio, the fastest SUV in its class 2.9 V6 Bi-Turbo petrol engine, with 510hp and 600Nm torque, provides acceleration from zero to 62mph in just 3.8 seconds and on to a top speed of 176mph Q4 all-wheel drive system with AlfaTM Active Torque Vectoring as standard The comprehensive standard equipment is completed by the AlfaTM Connect 3D Nav 8.8-inch infotainment system with Apple Car Play and Android Auto LONDON - November 2, 2017: The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, the first Quadrifoglio SUV, is set to become the new benchmark in the premium compact SUV segment. With its awe-inspiring design, performance and technology, the Stelvio Quadrifoglio is the "fastest SUV around the circuit", having clocked the new record for its class on the iconic Nurburgring: 7 minutes 51.7 seconds. 510hp 2.9-litre V6 Bi-Turbo petrol engine The Stelvio Quadrifoglio is equipped with the exclusive aluminium 2.9-liter V6 Bi-Turbo petrol engine, developed with inputs and engineering know-how from Ferrari technologies. It delivers maximum power of 510hp at 6,500rpm and generates a maximum torque of 600Nm from 2,500 to 5,000rpm and is teamed with the specifically calibrated eight-speed automatic transmission, that shifts gear in just 150 milliseconds in Race mode. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio can accelerate from zero to 62mph in just 3.8 seconds, and on to a best-in-class top speed of 176mph. The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio is also incredibly efficient in terms of emissions and fuel consumption, thanks to its electronically controlled cylinder deactivation system and the "sailing" function, available in Advanced Efficiency mode. To maximise the driving experience, Stelvio Quadrifoglio is also equipped as standard with one-piece aluminium paddle shifters, integrated into the steering column. Innovative Q4 all-wheel drive system combined with AlfaTM Active Torque Vectoring For the first time, the 510hp 2.9 V6 Bi-Turbo petrol engine is combined with the innovative Q4 all-wheel drive system, which offers a potent combination of unbeatable performance, traction, driving pleasure and safety in all situations. In normal conditions, the Q4 system transfers 100 percent of the torque to the rear axle. As the wheels approach their grip limit, the system transmits up to 50 percent of the torque to the front axle in real time, by means of a transfer case. AlfaTM Chassis Domain Control (CDC) and AlfaTM Active Torque Vectoring The Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio is equipped with the exclusive AlfaTM Chassis Domain Control (CDC) unit, with differential AlfaTM Active Torque Vectoring as standard. CDC acts as the brain of the Stelvio Quadrifoglio, and coordinates all the car's electronic systems, to deliver the best performance and the utmost driving pleasure at all times. The system simultaneously assigns specific tasks to the various active systems, such as the AlfaTM DNA Pro selector, Q4 all-wheel drive, AlfaTM Active Torque Vectoring system, AlfaTM Active Suspension system and the ESC. The Torque Vectoring technology optimizes the Stelvio Quadrifoglio's drive distribution and accentuates its sporting character. The two electronically controlled clutches in the rear differential make it possible to control torque delivery to each wheel separately. This ensures the optimal transfer of power to the ground even when the car is pushed to its dynamic limits, without the need for intrusive inputs from the stability control system. Best-in-class specific power (176hp/l) and weight/power (3.6hp/kg) The Stelvio Quadrifoglio holds two best-in-class titles which make it the highest-performing SUV in its segment: with a kerb weight of 1,830kg, the model boasts the best power to weight ratio in its category at 3.6 hp/kg and the best power density at 176 hp/l. The power-to-weight ratio was delivered with the aid of ultra-lightweight materials such as carbon fiber for the driveshaft and aluminium for the engine, suspensions, brakes, doors, wheel-arches and bonnet. Due to the perfect weight distribution between the two axles, achieved by tweaking the SUV's layout and arranging the heavier elements in the most central position possible, the Quadrifoglios light weight does not adversely affect the cars torsional rigidity. It remains durable, with low noise levels and exceptional handling, even under extreme stresses. Suspension system with exclusive AlfaLinkTM technology and the category's most direct steering Up front, the Stelvio Quadrifoglio has a double wishbone system with semi-virtual steering axis, to optimise bump filtration and ensure quick, precise responses to steering inputs. By keeping the contact patch of the tire constant when cornering, this exclusive Alfa Romeo set-up affords outstanding levels of lateral grip. But regardless of speed and conditions, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio always delivers a natural, instinctive drive. The rear suspension uses a four-and-a-half link Multilink system patented by Alfa Romeo to deliver a winning combination of performance, driving pleasure and comfort. An electronically controlled damping system adapts to driving conditions instantly and enables drivers to opt for performance-biased or comfort-oriented handling. Alfa Active Suspension controls the suspensions and shock absorbers continuously to reduce movement of the body of the car in all driving conditions. It constantly interacts with the CDC and Alfa DNA Pro and calibrates its actions to suit the driving mode selected, delivering unrivaled comfort and handling. In any situation and at all speeds, driving the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio has the most direct steering ratio on the market (12.1), with a natural and instinctive feel. Integrated Brake System (IBS) and carbon-ceramic brakes Having made its debut on the Giulia, Alfa Romeo's unique Integrated Brake System (IBS) is now in use on the Stelvio Quadrifoglio. This innovative electromechanical system combines stability control with a traditional servo brake to deliver instantaneous brake response and shorter stopping distances, while also making a significant contribution to weight optimization. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio will optionally be available with carbon ceramic brake discs, offering a weight reduction of 17kg and greater mechanical strength, even at the highest temperatures in both dry and wet conditions. Unique design The design of the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio is inspired by the idea of necessary beauty, as the perfect synergy of form and function is even more extreme in this high-performance SUV. Style and design are not merely aesthetic considerations but also support crucial factors including aerodynamics, speed, power and handling. Mirroring the performance, in Quadrifoglio guise everything is raised to new heights and has an even greater visual impact. This approach is clearly reflected in the structural vents in the bonnet, the intercooler air vents at the side, the sporty side-skirt and the massive body colored wheel arches and the four exhaust tips. The nose features the iconic and immediately recognizable "Trilobo" motif, while the unmistakable "Kamm tail" rear ensures that the design is rooted in Alfa Romeo tradition. Bespoke interior with AlfaTM Connect 3D infotainment system with Apple Car Play and Android Auto The finest expression of Italian design, the interior of the Stelvio Quadrifoglio has been tailored like a bespoke suit with painstaking craftsmanship and use of premium materials, including carbon fibre, leather and Alcantara. The centre of the dashboard is dominated by the new 8.8-inch AlfaTM Connect infotainment system - with 3D navigation. It incorporates Apple CarPlay and Android AutoTM to replicate the smartphone environment on the on-board display, for constantly connected, safe, user-friendly life at the wheel. The Stelvio Quadrifoglio will arrive in the UK in summer 2018, with pricing and specification to be confirmed nearer the time. AUTO LAB TALK RADIO LIVE FROM NYC SATURDAY MORNING! 7-9 AM November 4, 2017 Auto Lab Talk Radio The Auto Lab Radio Show LIVE every Saturday 7 to 9 AM On New York City's WNYM Radio AM 970 and Streamed Worldwide On The Auto Channel This Weeks Show Broadcast Date: November 4, 2017 Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234 Auto Lab is a 28 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice. Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format. Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com. Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures This Weeks Show: November 4, 2017 IN STUDIO: Auto Lab's Real World Experts Answer Your Questions; Discuss: Repairs, Second Opinions, Regular Maintenance, How To's, Safety, Used and New Car Buying, Ombudsmen Suggestions Harold Bendell - Major Auto Fred Bordoff - Bronx Community College Automotive Technology Department-CUNY Tim Cacace - Master Mechanix Auto Repairs David Goldsmith - Urban Classics Auto Repairs AAA NY Joseph Guarino-Joe Guarino's Auto Repairs Joanne Porcelli, Esq Michael Porcelli - Auto Mobile Services Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY Broadcast Date: November 4, 2017; Auto Lab Correspondents Remote Interviews: Featuring Auto Safety News, New Car Reviews, Technology and Latest Auto World Information That Will Effect You! Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England SMART ZEBRA John Russell Senior Correspondent KIA NIRO Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety ON THE RIGHT SIDE 10 MIDSIZED CARS EARN GOOD RATINGS FOR PASSENGER-SIDE PROTECTION Robert Sinclair Jr.- AAA Northeast FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF SUPERSTORM SANDY Photo: Shannon Fagan/Getty Images/iStockphoto Recently, a screenshot of a page in a widely used nursing textbook began making the rounds on social media. The eye-popping passage which fell under the apparently well-meaning headline Focus on Diversity purported to teach nurses-in-training how to understand their patients responses to pain. Arabs/Muslims, the authors warn, May not request pain medicine but instead thank Allah for pain if it is the result of a healing medical procedure. Native Americans tolerate a high level of pain without requesting pain medication and when they do admit to needing anesthetics, they prefer drugs that have been blessed by shamans. This wasnt some relic from a used bookstore; Nursing: A Concept-Based Approach to Learning was published in 2014. WOW what textbook is this?! I'm so disgusted. pic.twitter.com/7JkKWV0fU9 lynds (@LRwriter) October 17, 2017 The outcry online was predictable and swift. On Twitter, on Facebook, and on Amazon, users condemned the textbook, the publisher, the whole medical Establishment as outdated, offensive, racist. The publisher, Pearson Education, drew comparisons to Nazis. This is truly *gobsmacking,* wrote one Twitter user. How did this happen? Another called it medical apartheid. Within 24 hours, Pearson had apologized. A chastened spokesperson promised that the offending section would be struck from the e-book and all future print editions. The wave of outrage blew over, and social media moved on. The generalizations printed by Pearson are so crude that theyre easy to dismiss, but the issue of ethnic stereotyping in medicine merits more than a daylong scandal. The Nursing textbook provided a glimpse into a broader culture in which racial stereotypes are pervasive and have life-and-death consequences. The generalizations are so crude that theyre easy to dismiss, but the issue merits more than a daylong scandal. Nursing students began tweeting equally toxic passages from other textbooks. Textbook of Basic Nursing warns that Asians may not like having their blood drawn, because they consider it to be their bodys life force and doubt that it can be regenerated. Another manual suggests that students focus on communicating nonverbally when their patients are African-American. Even as doctors on Twitter denounced the textbook, in private, they werent so sure. Spot on, one surgeon said, after seeing the list. I laughed at the description of my own ethnicity: Jews may be vocal and demanding of assistance. Its the kind of thing, as one Jewish friend pointed out, that Jews might say among ourselves. But when doctors dont trust their patients to communicate their own pain levels, instead viewing their symptoms through the lens of ethnicity, it can lead to disparities in health care and treatment. One of the most entrenched yet least supported cliches is that African-Americans are unusually resistant to pain. That stereotype has been invoked as far back as the 19th century, when physicians assured slave-owners that black people didnt really mind the brutal physical ordeals they endured. During World War II, it helped justify the militarys practice of testing chemical weapons on black soldiers. And today, white people are quicker to associate magical words like ghost and paranormal with black people, and more likely to believe that a black person could suppress his hunger and thirst or run beyond the speed of light. In a 2016 study from the University of Virginia, a team of psychologists examined doctors and nurses beliefs about biological differences between races, and explored how those false assumptions contributed to the systematic under-prescription of pain medication to black patients. For the first part of the experiment, the researchers, led by Kelly Hoffman, asked 121 white Americans without any medical background to assess a series of false statements about how members of different races responded to pain. Most of them about 73 percent endorsed at least one myth. Thirty-nine percent believed that black peoples blood coagulated faster than white peoples; 20 percent said that black peoples nerve endings were less sensitive than whites; 58 percent believed that blacks had thicker skin. Next, Hoffman put the same series of questions to 418 medical students and residents. Medical training, it turned out, did go some way toward correcting those biases the percentage of respondents endorsing false stereotypes dropped with every additional year of education but it didnt correct them completely; about half of the med students and residents still agreed with least one false claim. Worryingly, 14 percent of medical residents agreed with the mysterious statement that blacks age more slowly than whites. And Hoffman also demonstrated real-world repercussions: Med students who held more false beliefs also assessed the pain of a theoretical black patient as less severe. In one review of 217 patients who had gone to the emergency room in Atlanta with a broken bone, black and white patients reported similar rates and intensity of pain, but white patients were significantly more likely to be treated for it: 74 percent of white patients, but only 57 percent of black patients, were given painkillers. Even kids arent exempt from doctors biases: among nearly 1 million children diagnosed with appendicitis, 21 percent of black patients and 43 percent of white patients were prescribed opioids. (The ironic silver lining is that this effect may have helped spare blacks the brunt of the opioid crisis: Unnecessary painkillers are more often prescribed to whites.) Pearson has promised to review its whole curriculum, but the passage in the textbook was just an example of an endemic problem. Purging blatantly racist passages from medical textbooks is like treating a symptom, rather than the disease. Yayoi Kusamas ultimate Instagram exhibit is back in New York City tomorrow at David Zwirner featuring two new infinity rooms, new flower sculptures, 66 paintings, and a polka-dot room. The Japanese artist, 88, has described her soul-searching, polka-dotted, colorful paintings as messages of something greater. The most important thing in the world is peace, happiness and love because the world around us has such hatred, she told WWD in 2012. If I can contribute as an artist, that is how I would like to use my life. Two shows will appear at David Zwirner gallery spaces: Festival of Life, on West 19th Street (where youll find the new infinity rooms), and Infinity Nets on East 69th Street. The exhibitions include some never-before-seen paintings from her My Eternal Soul series, decorated with dots, amoeba forms, plants, and other motifs. Click through to preview the exhibition. Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life, will be on view at David Zwirner at 525 and 533 W. 19th St. Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Nets will be on view at 34 E. 69th St. Both are open to the public from November 2 through December 16. Soldiers from each of the U.S. Armys Special Forces groups stand silent during the wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of President John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 17, 2011. (U.S. Army) After Tragedy in Niger, Former Green Beret Tells of Loss, Self-Sacrifice, and Valor When a Green Beret loses his life in combat, his entire company of men will often share in the loss. The soldiers take responsibility for the wife and children of their friend. They call the soldiers wife, mother, and father and ensure his children know the values he gave his life to uphold. When you lose a guy in your company, that Green Berets wife becomes a part of that community. They really become part of the units life as well, Chris Erickson, a contributor at the national security and public policy website OpsLens and a former Green Beret. They still come to events and memorial services, and sometimes you see these kids who may not even be old enough to have memories of their father growing up, and youre trying to impart that legacy, trying to keep their fathers legacy alive, he said. Erickson recalled a deployment in which a soldier he was mentoring died in combat, and he called the mans wife to check on her after she had been informed of her loss. He said, It was one of the hardest things in the world, talking to her on the phone while we were still in the country, still in the combat zone, and her telling us to be strong. These wives of some of these service members, theyre just made of steel with the amount theyre taking on. Condolence Calls The phone calls that troops, commanders, and occasionally presidents make to the families of men and women killed in combat have recently been in the headlines. Erickson says that making those calls is the hardest thing for any commander to do, all the way up to the commander-in-chief. The widow of a Green Beret killed in an ambush by terrorists in Niger became the focus of a recent political spat, after Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) listened in on a condolence call made by President Donald Trump to the grieving woman. Wilson spread rumors among the press that Trump had been disrespectful. At the end of the day, I wish people would stop politicizing the loss of our service members at a micro level. Chris Erickson, former Green Beret A flurry of news articles followed attacking Trump and his calls to families of fallen troops, alongside reports that characterized the training mission in Niger as a shadow war. In a video, Wilson proclaimed herself a rockstar for the attention her comments garnered. The controversy subsided after Michelle Black, widow of Sgt. Bryan Black, came out herself to say she appreciated Trumps call. She told Fox News on Oct. 26, Im very grateful that he called, and he spoke to the kids. I think just the excitement from that made it a little better, even if it was just for a minute. He was very gracious, and I appreciate anyone who calls, because, like I said, that takes quite a bit of bravery to call into that kind of situation. While noise around the situation is dying down, it hit a sore spot with many veterans and others who respect the men and women who give their lives for the United States and its principles. White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly said in an Oct. 19 press briefing that this sacredness was eroded a great deal yesterday by a selfish behavior of a member of Congress. Erickson says the fact that a woman losing her husband, a soldier losing his life, and a president attempting to console her have all been politicized has only added to the tragedy. At the end of the day, I wish people would stop politicizing the loss of our servicemembers at a micro level, he said. By all means, have discussions and investigations into what happened to avoid this sort of thing from happening next time, but please dont drag grieving families into it. Special Operations The U.S. military has bases and operations in most countries around the world. According to Pew Research, in 2016 the number of active-duty U.S. military troops stationed overseas dipped below 200,000 for the first time in 60 years. The largest portions of active-duty U.S. troops were stationed in Japan (38,818), Germany (34,602), South Korea (24,189), Italy (12,088), and Afghanistan (9,023), respectively. The numbers dropped significantly elsewhere, yet the United States does maintain active-duty troops in other parts of the world, including 2,581 stationed in Sub-Saharan Africa. While many news outlets were playing up the idea that the United States has special forces troops in Niger, Erickson noted that thats what Green Berets do: We train other forces. At any given point were over the world training our partners so these attacks dont happen in these countries and so the terrorists dont have a safe place to operate, Erickson said. It can be something as simple as a counternarcotics mission in South America to eliminate funding for narcoterrorism, to training Thai commandos to combat insurgentsMaoists who want to overthrow the kingdom of Thailand and instill a state built on terrorist values. There are many quiet conflicts that U.S. Army Special Forces are engaged in, Erickson said, which are meant to not let these insurgent and terrorist groups overthrow their governments and instill their will against their people. While U.S. operations to fight terrorism under Operation Enduring Freedom have been heavily focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, the operation was never limited to those countriesand U.S. support and training for local forces has aimed to ensure the conflicts in various countries havent turned into full-scale wars. Erickson noted the anti-terrorist operations of the United States in the Philippines have included training with the Philippine army and operations to counter local terrorist groups, including ISIS affiliate Abu Sayyaf. There are a lot of bad people in a lot of places wanting to do harm to the United States, Erickson said. If were not there training, it will turn into real conflict. Its not a new fight, he said. The Cause of Freedom He added, however, that while the mission in Niger may not have been part of a full war, it doesnt diminish the sacrifice made by Black and others who were recently killed in the terrorist ambush. The Green Berets and other members of U.S. special forces are a unique breed who regularly go above and beyond the call of duty. The official motto of the Green Berets is De oppresso liber, which means To liberate the oppressed, and Erickson said this is a motto that many of the men stand by. With this motto at heart, he said, many Green Berets have given their lives for people who dont look like you, who dont have the same culture as yoursto be willing to go and lay down your life basically for strangers because you believe that freedom is one of the greatest causes that all men deserve is something we take pretty seriously. I have seen men do things under fire that on paper completely defy logic or any sense of self-preservation, he said. He noted a battle at a base where he was stationed in Afghanistan. Explosions erupted from suicide bombers, then terrorist gunfire lit up the base. Many of the allied troops ran from their bunkers in confusion, but a handful of Green Berets and security personnel grabbed their guns and charged the line to repel the threat in fairly short order. For most people, he said, when they hear explosions and gunfire, theyre going to run for cover and find somewhere safe, and that is not the reaction of a Green Beret. These two file photos show producer Harvey Weinstein (L) before the world preview screening of French Suite, March 10, 2015, in Paris; and director James Toback (R) attending the photocall for the movie 'The Private Life of a Modern Woman' during the 74th Venice Film Festival, Sept. 3, 2017, at Venice Lido in Italy. (DSK/AFP/Getty Images) Beverly Hills Police Investigating Weinstein, Toback Sexual Harassment Cases The Beverly Hills police have announced formal investigations into multiple sexual harassment or sexual assault complaints filed against Hollywood moguls Harvey Weinstein and James Toback. Weinstein, producer and co-founder of Weinstein Company, has been fired over dozens of allegations of everything from inappropriate and lewd behavior to rape, lodged by actresses and models who claim to have suffered over a span of four decades. Actress Asia Argento has tweeted a list of 93 women who have alleged that Weinstein sexually harassed, assaulted, or raped them. Argento accuses Weinstein of rape. Weinstein is currently being investigated by the police departments of New York City, Los Angeles and London, England. Weinstein has denied ever engaging in nonconsensual sex, though in an apology/explanation published in the New York Times he said he realized The way Ive behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it. I came of age in the 60s and 70s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then, he said. Weinstein has paid for the silence of at least eight women who had cause for complaint over the years. More than 300 women have accused writer/director James Toback of various levels of unwanted sexual advances. He categorically denies ever offering an actress a part in return for sexual favors. The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me, Toback told Rolling Stone. Toback claimed the accusations were the result of a conspiracy of liars, saying that the actresses hear each other. And they gang up. People read things its all, you know, me too, me too, me too, me too, me too. Despite his assertions, dozens of actresses have made that exact claim, including actresses Julianne Moore, Selma Blair, Rachel McAdams, and Natalie Morales. The list of accusations aimed at Toback stretches back into the 1980s. This is the first official investigation into the accusations against James Toback. Tobacks use of the phrase Me, too is ironic consider actress Alyssa Milano has started a campaign by that name (#metoo) encouraging women who have suffered sexual harassment or worse, to come forward and say It happened to me, too. If youve been sexually harassed or assaulted write me too as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017 The investigations into these two powerful Hollywood figures who have allegedly abused their positions to take advantage of women is leading to a wider examination of the culture of sexual abuse in Hollywoodand everywhere else. Actor Tom Hankss told NPR that he hopes the revelations on the sexual predation of producer Harvey Weinstein will bring about a change in morality in the current culture. The aspect of Oh this is the Hollywood culture Anywhere there are people in power who think its OK to manipulate those under them in a sexual manner under the guise of either helping or hindering their careerthat exists absolutely everywhere in Western societyactually, everywhere in the world, Hanks asserted. God bless, that were now at the place where theres going to beI think everybodys going to have to define a code of ethics and theyre going to have to start living and working by that code of ethics, he said. From NTD.tv Investors in major Canadian grocers appear unfazed after the Competition Bureau raided the offices of certain companies in a criminal probe tied to alleged price fixing of some packaged bread products. (The Canadian Press/Doug Ives) Canadas Competition Bureau Investigates Bread Price Fixing Allegations TORONTOAn investigation by the Competition Bureau into allegations of price fixing of packaged bread products comes as demand for the pantry staple faces pressure from health-conscious consumers and heightened competition from discount retailers. John Williams, a partner at retail consulting company J.C. Williams Group, called the probe shocking given that Canadas major retailers are governed by very-well defined codes of ethics. He also noted that the bread industry has been in turmoil as consumers look for healthier or artisan versions of the food staple, while increased competition from discount retailers also puts pressure on prices. It now has almost become a fashion item Huge aisles of white bread are slowly shrinking, Williams said. The Competition Bureau said on Oct. 31 that the Ontario Superior Court in Ottawa granted search warrants based on evidence that there are reasonable grounds to believe that certain individuals and companies have engaged in activities contrary to the Competition Act. Bureau spokeswoman Marie-France Faucher said it was conducting the searches and gathering evidence to determine the facts, but that there has been no conclusion of wrongdoing at this time and no charges have been laid. Shares of Canadas major grocers were little changed on Nov. 1, a day after several confirmed they were aware of and co-operating with the probe. Loblaw Companies Ltd. and George Weston Ltd. released a joint statement late on Oct. 31 confirming they were aware of and co-operating fully with an industry-wide investigation, but declined to comment further. Metro Inc. also put out a statement saying the investigation concerns certain suppliers and Canadian retailers, and that it was fully co-operating. Canada Bread said in a statement: It has been informed it is included in an industry-wide investigation by the Competition Bureau into pricing conduct dating back to 2001. The company is co-operating fully. A spokesman for Walmart Canada said on Nov. 1 that it is providing full co-operation to the bureau and it takes its legal obligations very seriously. Canadas Competition Act prohibits agreements that prevent or unduly lessen competition or to unreasonably enhance the price of a product, according to the bureau. That could include agreements between competitors to fix prices, or to restrict production of a product by setting quotas or other means would be considered cartel activities. Penalties for price fixing could include fines of up to $10 million, imprisonment to a maximum term of five years, or both. However, the bureau says price-fixing conspiracies are, by their nature, difficult to detect and prove. Suspicions and evidence of identical prices are not enough to prove a criminal offence, the bureau says on its website. The Competition Bureau has in recent years examined price-fixing or deceptive pricing of a variety of products, including e-books, mattresses, and chocolate. Chicken Takeaway Burglar Stuck in Vent for 7 Hours A suspected burglar had to call for police to come to his own crime scene, when an attempt to break into a takeaway chicken restaurant went wrong. British police were called to investigate a crime in progress on the morning of Nov 2 in Birmingham to find the suspect completely stuck in an air extractor vent. Response officer PC Matthew Willocks snapped a picture of the hapless suspect, who had endured 7 hours with his feet sticking out of the vent after crawling in. He said: The extractor unit had been removed and the suspect had climbed into the extractor outlet at around 2 am. He was completely stuck and couldnt move at all, he said according to the WM Police statement. The fire brigade had to come in and use the jaws of life to pull back all the extractor casing to release him. He was finally freed at 9 am from the vent at DFC Chicken, on Rookery Road, in Handsworth. The local man, 45, from Handsworth, was taken to hospital for a check-up and has been arrested on suspicion of burglary, police said. #dontgetstuck if your trying to break in. 5 hours later shouting help #triptocustody by all means ??? pic.twitter.com/EzBvfyPM5b ResponseWMP1 (@ResponseWMP1) November 2, 2017 The tweet prompted a wave of amusement on social media. Jim Nicholl said: Another fine mess Stanley. Must feel a right turkey! Some people speculated as to how he had climbed up to the vent. Judith Broug commented: Trying really hard not to laugh. Re-tweeting the photograph, the forces chief constable, David Thompson, said: Most excellent. The Communist Party of China's new Politburo Standing Committee, the nation's top decision-making body (L-R) Han Zheng, Wang Huning, Li Zhanshu, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Zhao Leji meet the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 25, 2017. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images) Chinese Regimes Most Powerful Men Take Trip to Shanghai, Sending Signals to Political Enemies Recently, an extremely rare trip by all seven members of the Chinese Communist Partys most powerful entity, the Politburo Standing Committee, to Shanghai sent plenty of important political signals. The Standing Committee members rarely travel together. Should their lives be endangered, the country might be left without political leadership. On Oct. 31, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, along with Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng, visited the site where the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was held, which was turned into a museum in Shanghai. While at the museum, Xi, along with the other six members behind him, raised their right fists to swear an oath of loyalty to the party. Afterwards, the group took a stroll at the South Lake and visited the Nanhu Revolutionary Memorial Hall. The trip was politically significant because of the location, as well as how all seven members traveled together, according to Xia Xiaoqiang, a U.S.-based current affairs commentator. Xis Thoughts, after being written into the party constitution, must be recognized and legitimized internally, said Xia. Xis political doctrine, coined Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, was incorporated into the constitution during the 19th National Congress. That put him on the same status as Mao Zedong, as he is the only other CCP leader whose thoughts are enshrined by name in the document while he is still alive. For Deng Xiaopings theory, his name was included after his death. Xia further noted that the trip elevated Xis political status by declaring and emphasizing his [Xis] authority within the party. Xi also did not choose the destination randomly, as the city is a stronghold of former party leader Jiang Zemin. In the past five years, Xi tried unsuccessfully to take down Jiang loyalists in Shanghai through his anti-corruption campaign. With Li Qianga Xi allyappointed as the new Shanghai Party boss, Xi is showing his support for Li. It also sends a signal to Jiangs faction and others about his resolve to [deal with corruption in the city], said Xia. Li is Han Zhengs replacement after Han got promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee. Han had a long tenure in Shanghai, as mayor between 2003 and 2012 and then as the citys party secretary from 2012 to 2017. Lis appointment signaled Xis commitment to tackling the Shanghai Gang, a circle of officials who owe their careers to Jiangs political patronage. Couple Arrested After 7 Kids Found Malnourished and Dirty: Reports The first thing they noticed was the smell. Officers checking on several children in a North Carolina home reported an overwhelming smell of feces and urine upon walking through the door of the home at 410 Irma Ave. in Lexington. That wasnt the worst of it. Lexington Police Department Captain Michael Hunt says his officers saw feces and urine scattered throughout the house where a couple lived with seven children, ages 1 through 6. The overall condition of the home was nasty, Hunt said. The living conditions were extremely poor. When the officers saw the children, they called an ambulance immediately. All of the children looked dirty and unfed. An 18-month-old boy had maggots in his diaper. The malnutrition had been taking place for quite some time, Hunt said. From the condition of the children, it was apparent this was an unclean environment. The officers responded to the home at 10:20 p.m. on Friday after a call from a person concerned with the welfare of several children, according to a news release from the police department. Officers arrested Jamie Leigh Hiatt, 25, and Michael Patrick McKnight, 24. Both were charged with one count of felony child abuse causing serious physical injury and six counts of misdemeanor child abuse. Both adults are being held on $100,000 bonds. Their court date is on Nov. 20. Two 18-month-old twins were rushed to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem. Maggots were found in the genital and anus area of one of the children by the medical staff at Lexington Medical Center, the police release states. Both of the twins are in good condition and will be released to the care of the county social services department and then assigned to family members or foster parents. A one-year-old child was taken to a local hospital and later released into the care of relatives. The others children, ages 3, 4, 5, and 6, were removed from the home to be placed in foster care or with family members. An 8-year-old who was at the home at the time is said to be living with their father. Three of the younger children are biological to McKnight, while the other children are biological to Hiatt. Police say they are working with social services and the district attorney to investigate and files additional charges, if appropriate. The childrens paternal grandmother, Robin Hiatt, told WXII News 12 that she called police after seeing photos of the malnourished children. When I saw the pictures, I wanted to throw up, she told FOX8. I was like, oh my God. How can you do that? How can you leave babies in that? Hiatt said, sobbing. What have they suffered through? Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors are seen as they arrive at Seongju, South Korea on Sept. 7, 2017. (Lee Jong-hyeon/News1 via REUTERS) Despite Nuclear Threats, South Korea Puts Limits on Missile Defense South Korea locked into China deal to distance itself from allies China has agreed to drop a punitive economic measure that would have cost South Korea billions in exchange for South Korea agreeing not to form closer military ties with the United States and Japan, nor install any more THAAD missile defense systems capable of taking out North Korean missiles. The agreement, made on Tuesday, ends a year-long dispute that erupted after South Korea began installing the radars and missile batteries the THAAD system uses to detect and destroy incoming ballistic missiles. Chinas communist regime sees the nearby THAAD system as a threat to its own nuclear deterrent. South Koreas foreign ministry said the new deal puts relations with China back on a normal development track. Both sides shared the view that the strengthening of exchange and cooperation between Korea and China serves their common interests, South Koreas foreign ministry said in a statement. But despite the recent easing of economic pressure on its neighbor, the Chinese regime has continued its diplomatic pressure amid a growing threat posed by North Korea. Chinas position on the THAAD issue is clear, consistent, and has not changed, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing. When South Korea went ahead with the THAAD installation, China mobilized a boycott of South Korean businesses and goods, and restricted Chinese tourism to South Korea. Data from the Korean Tourism Organization shows the country lost $6.5 billion in revenue after the influx of Chinese tourists dropped by half in the first nine months of the year. U.S. Army soldiers and a U.S. M1A2 tank and South Korean soldiers participate in a river crossing exercise on May 30, 2013 in Yeoncheon-gun, South Korea. The joint exercise is one of several the two countries have held in recent months. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) The Bank of Korea said the dispute took .4 percentage points off this years expected economic growth and the Hyundai Research Institute calculated the disputes cost to South Korea at $7.5 billion so far. Lotte Group, which provided the land where the THAAD battery was installed, is expected to sell its chain of Chinese supermarkets at a fraction of their cost after Chinese customers disappeared. The deal now leaves South Korea stuck between the threat of North Korean ballistic missiles and punitive sanctions from China. While South Korean President Moon Jae-in had already stated he would not formalize a military alliance with Japan and the United States, nor expand its THAAD system, his commitment to Beijing has now been solidified. With the increasing threat from North Korea, Moon had tightened military cooperation with Japan and the United States. The three nations have begun trilateral drills, the future of which is now in question. Meanwhile, Chinas decision to punish Seoul for taking measures to protect itself from the North has left many South Koreans resentful, fueling anti-China sentiment in the country. Trends such as these are widely believed to have unsettled China, as it sees a friendly neighbor becoming close with historic rivals. The deal to restore amicable trade comes on the eve of President Donald Trumps Asia tour, which will see him arrive in Japan on Nov. 5 before going on to visit South Korea, China, Vietnam, and The Philippines. Firefighters transport an overdose victim to a hospital emergency room in Rockford, Ill., on July 14, 2017. The woman was found on the floor of the hotel room in which she lived after taking an overdose of prescription medication and alcohol. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) Emergency Doctors Caught in the Middle of Opioid Crisis Looking for ways to close the gap between emergency rooms and treatment options WASHINGTONA veteran takes heroin to make his PTSD flashbacks stop. A 22-year-old with severe bipolar lives too far away from public transport. When she cant get her medications, her dealer shows up with heroinit helps stop her mind from racing for a little bit. An 18-year-old wants to relax and have a good sleep before his apprenticeship exam, so that he does well and can help his mom pay rent next week. He buys the anxiety medication Xanax off a friend, but neither knows the bar is laced with fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid. All three end up in the emergency room after overdosing and being revived with naloxone, the opioid antidote. Dr. Krista Brucker, an emergency room physician at the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, was there afterward to hear their stories. Brucker is also the medical director for Project Point, an initiative that is trying to find ways to bridge the gap between the emergency room and treatment for substance abuse. We do naloxone education, HIV and Hepatitis C testing, and then try and link people into ongoing treatment after that intervention in the emergency department is complete, she said at a panel discussion at the annual American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) conference on Oct. 30. The [overdose] numbers are scary, she said. They really completely fail to communicate the levels of suffering that are going on. In Indianapolis, we are completely overwhelmed by this problem. Every state has issues with opioid addiction, and emergency physicians are on the front line of the crisis. In 2016, more than 64,000 Americans died of a drug overdose and an estimated half of those deaths were attributed to opioids. The ACEP recently polled more than 1,200 emergency physicians to find out what is happening in emergency departments across the country. The results are very discouraging, said Dr. Paul Kivela, president of ACEP. Eighty-seven percent of the physicians said the problem with opioids was either increasing or remaining steady in their location. Over half57 percentsaid there are inadequate detox and treatment centers out there, Kivela said. Post-Overdose Is High-Risk Time Scott Weiner is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and author of a study that looked at the one-year mortality rate of people who had survived an overdose after being given naloxone by emergency services. Its common for emergency physicians to be keeping an eye on a patient who has just been revived with naloxone, by just observing them in the hallway, letting them sober, while busy taking care of other emergencies like heart attacks, traumas, and strokes, he said. The study, conducted in Massachusetts, looked at the patients who received naloxone over a 2 1/2year perioda total of 12,192 naloxone administrations. Our group hypothesized that that individual sobering in the hallway of the emergency department has perhaps one of the highest one-year mortalities of any of the patients being seen in the emergency at that moment, Weiner said. Excluding the 6.5 percent who died the same day, about 10 percent of the patients who initially survived were dead within one year, he said. And more than half of those died within a month. The opioid overdose patient, who sobers in the hallway, is offered a detox list, and then is discharged, has a 1 in 10 chance of being dead within one year. And their highest risk is within the first month, Weiner said. Weiner said he thinks the study grossly underestimated the number of deaths attributable to opioids. Forty percent of deaths within the first year were opioid related, according to death certificates, he said. But he thinks many deaths are not listed as opioid-related. If someone dies from an overdose, first their breathing stops, then their heart stops, and [doctors] might list the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest, he said. Brucker agreed. A lot of families dont want overdose or opiate overdose on the death record. And a lot of physicians are hesitant to put it there. She said using big databases for such studies can be limiting. Even as scary as the numbers are, theyre probably huge underestimates of the actual problem. She said that in larger urban areas, up to 50 percent of patients who are given naloxone for an overdose subsequently refuse transport to the hospital. And then there are other patients who are revived with naloxone administered by a family member or bystander and EMS is not even called. Patients surveyed by Project Point have overdosed seven times each, on average, she said. Lack of Treatment Programs Kivela said it is a great step that President Donald Trump designated the opioid crisis as a nationwide public health emergency on Oct. 26. The biggest problem right now, according to emergency physicians, is a dearth of treatment programs, he said. We need to expand resources, or expand our capabilities, or expand our scope of care. And thats something that I think the president and the government needs to assist us on, Kivela said. Weiner agreed. The most important thing is the resources that this is going to take. I heard that we spent about $3.5 billion in the Ebola responsewe had two people in this country die from that, he said. Patients who survive an opiate overdose need to be considered extremely high risk and should receive interventions like offering buprenorphine, offering counseling, and referral to treatment, prior to discharge from the emergency department. Buprenorphine is an opioid medication used to treat opioid addiction. The most commonly used version of the medication-assisted treatment is Suboxone, which is a combination of buprenorphine (an opioid) and naloxone (which blocks the effects of opioids). Suboxone has been used for opioid addiction since 2002, and methadone, the other main medication-assisted treatment, has been around for decades. One of the priorities in Trumps opioid plan is to increase access to medication-assisted treatment. Weiner said several emergency departments in the country have started Suboxone treatment directly, which stops patients from suffering the withdrawal symptoms that often make them leave and start using again. But even thats not enough, he said. We need to be able to start them in the emergency department and say, Tomorrow, you can come to this clinic, and we will take care of you and help you. And that clinic basically has to be there if theyre ready or not. Some patients arent going to be ready. A report published by the presidents opioid commission said that only 10 percent of the nearly 21 million citizens with a substance use disorder receive any type of specialty treatment; and although more than 40 percent of people with a substance use disorder also have a mental health problem, less than half receive treatment for either issue. In Bruckers project, the interviews with patients go a bit deeper, to try to figure out what else is going on, what other things need to be addressed, she said. She found that about 55 percent of her patients have a mental health illness, or have been treated for one in the past. A survey she does with her patients is called the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) score, which is 10 questions asking about abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction. These are things like physical, sexual abuse and neglect. And then measures of household dysfunction, like if a parent or a caretaker was incarcerated, or if there was domestic violence in the home, she said. We know from other studies that patients with scores of four or higher on this scale are at higher risk for all kinds of diseases, including cancer and COPDas well as injection drug use. Brucker said 60 percent of the patients who completed the ACE questionnaire had scores of four or more. So this is not just an opiate crisis, its a lot of untreated mental illness and a lot of household, childhood experience dysfunction. If were going to make meaningful interventions in the emergency department, were going to have to take these things into account, she said. Tracing the steps back to what causes addiction, there are as many paths into addiction as there are out. But, she said, the emergency department is well placed to do more, if given the resources. She said only about a third of her patients have regular access to primary care, which means the emergency department is the sole provider for a lot of patients. Only 10 percent of the nearly 21 million citizens with a substance use disorder receive any type of specialty treatment. How We Got Here Eighty percent of new heroin users begin their addiction with prescription pills. Kivela said the painkiller prescription uptick started in the late 1990s. They thought that physicians were undertreating pain. And there were actually some lawsuits that physicians were undertreating pain, he said. Pain became known as the fifth vital sign [and] everyone was now all of a sudden mandated to evaluate pain. Testing pain, however, is not a simple measure, unlike pulse, blood pressure, temperature, or respiratory rate. When an emergency department doctor asks a patient what level of pain they feel on a scale of one to 10, we frequently get 11, 12, 14, Kivela said. And the persons just walking around looking fine. So its very individual and perceptual. Kivela said that was one of the first problems. The second, he said, is the pharmaceutical industry. A lot more medicines were manufactured and marketed, and there was a lot of direct consumer marketing as well, he said. On top of that, satisfaction surveys became popular and helped propagate the overprescription of pain pills to keep patients happy. In some respects, physicians felt like [they] were forced to write a prescription, Kivela said. Several initiatives have been set up to curb painkiller prescriptions. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in August the formation of a unit that will investigate the overprescribing of opioids within the health care system. Trumps emergency declaration includes new restrictions for manufacturers of prescription opioids. Previously, only long-acting opioidsabout 10 percent of opioid prescriptionswere subject to strict regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. Recently, that was expanded to include immediate release opioids. The new requirements will make all opioids that are manufactured subject to the same strict regulations. The National Institutes of Health has initiated discussions with the pharmaceutical industry to establish a partnership to investigate nonaddictive pain relievers and new addiction and overdose treatments, as well as a potential vaccine for addiction. The Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health and Human Services are collaborating on a six-year, $81 million joint research partnership focusing on nondrug approaches to managing pain in order to address the needs of service members and veterans. Miriam Saunders (R), mother of Loretta Saunders, and her daughter Delilah Saunders leave the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, in Membertou, N.S., on Oct. 30, 2017. Loretta Saunders, an Inuk woman, was murdered in Halifax in February 2014. (The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan) Missing, Murdered Inquiry Stalled by Government Bureaucracy: Report OTTAWAThe commissioners of the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls are blaming federal red tape for the delays that have plagued the inquiry so far. In an interim report released Nov. 1 titled Our Women and Girls are Sacred, the inquiry says the federal governments procurement and contracting policies resulted in an eight-month delay setting up offices. We have faced several obstacles from a bureaucratic and procedural and policy perspective in getting our national inquiry up and running and mobilized all across Canada, chief commissioner Marion Buller told a news conference. One central element of the report: it urges the federal government to work with the provinces and territories to create a national police task force that would allow the inquiry to refer families and survivors to assess or reopen cases or review investigations. Buller compared the work of the inquiry to that of the five-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which explored the legacy of Canadas residential school systema tragedy that was purely historical in scope, she said. Our problems are historical and ongoing, Buller said, a suggestion that perhaps her inquiry will need at least as long as the TRC, if not longer. Indigenous women and girls are suffering violence. That somehow has become normalized, and that is a national tragedy it comes back to how long its going to take to do this right. As the inquirys work continues to ramp up and gain profile, more and more people are coming forward who want to be heard, she added. Of all 900 people who have come forward so far, 100 of them registered in the last month alone. The federal government has already earmarked $53.8 million over two years for the inquiry, which is aimed at examining the patterns and factors underlying the systemic causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada. From The Canadian Press Pedestrians pass newspaper boxes in downtown Vancouver. The narrowing of the window of public opinion in todays media is a dangerous thing, says author and historian Gerry Bowler. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward) Most Canadian Media Guilty of Left-Leaning Bias, Says Author Conservative viewpoint on issues such as abortion, global warming usually absent, Gerry Bowler says The majority of Canadian news outlets have a left-leaning bias and do not include enough variety or conservative voices, according to a Canadian author and historian. Gerry Bowler, who taught history at the University of Manitoba for 25 years, is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a think tank that lobbies for smaller government. Bowler recently zeroed in on news coverage in North America, suggesting it has gotten so biased toward supporting a progressive or leftist agenda that certain issues such as gay marriage, global warming, abortion, and gun control typically do not contain a conservative viewpoint. Theres a lot of Canadian life that is invisible to the media and there is a lot that is highlighted that just happens to fit the progressive agenda, he said. And that narrowing of the window of public opinion is very dangerous, whether the drift is to the right or to the left, as it is in North America in the 21st century. Bowler said people who possess left-wing values tend to gravitate to the media as a professionfrom reporters to editors to managersand they have a tendency to give a progressive perspective while rushing from one story to the next, leaving out a diverse mix of opinions and analysis. The media figures would never admit out loud to being biased. As far as they are concerned they are straight-down-the-middle objective reporters of reality, he said. Bowler points to a recent Gallup poll in the United States that finds 62 percent of Democrats say they trust the media whereas only 14 percent of Republicans found the media to be objective. He argues the situation is much the same in Canada, where conservatives feel alienated due to the kind of news coverage that gives more airtime to progressive voices favouring political correctness while stigmatizing religious or conservative views. Just look at the coverage in Canada of the American election as the results came in, he said. The CBC was absolutely disgraceful with its coveragethey were openly weeping at the results and there was no intent at objectivity at all, said Bowler, adding that the only conservative voice on a panel dissecting the election results was David Frum, a known critic of President Donald Trump. Conservatives are known to target the CBC because its a large, publicly funded institution, and Bowler and the Frontier Centre have often also focused on the state broadcaster. The CBC is not fulfilling its prime duty to reflect all Canadians and rather has become more of a cheerleader for the left, Bowler said. I love the CBC but it does not represent the whole Canadian spectrum. Its very much a left-wing organization. The Epoch Times contacted the CBC for comment and received a statement by email from Jack Nagler, director of Journalistic Public Accountability and Engagement. Stories dont simply get written, then immediately broadcast or published. Instead, theres a rigorous editing process that includes the checks and balances we need to prevent any one persons biases from shaping our content, Nagler writes. We are scrupulous about making sure that we reflect a variety of perspectives on issuesespecially those that are complicated and contentious. We recognize that our job is not to declare heroes and villainsit is to give people information and context so they can draw their own conclusions about the issues we cover. Nagler also noted the CBC embraces the idea of accountability by having an independent ombudsman that accepts complaints from the public and reviews all journalistic standards and practices on a regular basis to ensure no biases are slipping into the news coverage. Bias is in the eye of the beholder Media experts say it remains crucially important that news organizations prove to the public they have nothing to hide and are holding themselves accountable along the entire course of news reporting. I think we are at a time now where we need new definitions of what constitutes as reliable information, said Jeffrey Dvorkin, director of the journalism program at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. And I think theres an obligation for all media organizations to be more transparent about where they get their information from, how independent they are, and how accountable they are to the public. Dvorkin was the former managing editor for CBC Radio and worked with National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. He also was NPRs first news ombudsman and co-authored the Ethics Guide for Public Broadcasters for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In his years of work in journalism, he said he never met a single reporter who let their political beliefs interrupt their professional careers, and its simply unfair to portray all journalists as biased. Bias is in the eye of the beholder, he said. People today tend to seek out information that reinforces their own positions. Social media has allowed for a proliferation of other points of view, and news organizations have come under heavy criticism. Conservatives know what buttons to push to get journalists, especially, crouching against these accusations of bias, and I think its nonsense, he added. However, both Dvorkin and Bowler agree that in todays age of endless information it is incumbent upon the individual to consume a wide range of news sources and use critical thinking skills to discern how accurate the information is and where it is coming from. It will never be perfect because journalism is a human endeavour and all human endeavours are imperfect, Dvorkin said. Jared Gnam is a freelance reporter based in Vancouver. He broke into the world of journalism covering the Stanley Cup Riot in 2011. New Appointments Signal Xi Jinping Taking Charge of Chinas Security Apparatus Chinese leader Xi Jinping has plans for a big shake-up in Chinas security apparatus. After all, the countrys police force, judges, prosecutors, and all legal enforcement were once controlled by officials belonging to an opposing faction loyal to former Party leader Jiang Zemin. Xi allies and the Jiang faction have been in a bitter power struggle in the five years since Xi became head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One way their tug-of-war has played out is in the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. Under Jiangs rule, it became a powerful institution that oversaw all aspects of the countrys security apparatus. After Xi took power, he first stripped the Commission of its powerful position by leaving the agencys head out of the Politburo Standing Committeethe CCPs top decision-making body. The Commission, however, continues to be staffed by Jiang faction officials. Following the 19th National Congress when the Partys leadership personnel gets reshuffled for the next five-year term, on Oct. 31, the Commission announced its new head, Guo Shengkun. Guo, part of the Jiang faction, will step down from his current post as the head of the Ministry of Public Security, the agency in charge of all 3.5 million police (including armed police) in China. Guos replacement will be Zhao Kezhi, a known Xi ally. Zhaos appointment means that for the first time since Xi took power, the Ministry of Public Security will be under his domain. Current affairs commentator Li Linyi notes that although Xi appointed many of his allies to the top positions, including to the Politburo Standing Committee, there are also some Jiang loyalists who got promoted, suggesting that Xi had to compromise in his battle with Jiang. But while Guos promotion to the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission seems like a point scored for the Jiang faction, Li said Xis 19th congress opening speech may have hinted at what Xi really has planned. In a speech laying out his vision for the future of the Party, Xi had mentioned establishing a leadership group that will ensure the rule of law, to be led by central authorities. Li observed that Xi may intend to have this leadership group control all legal affairs, and did not rule out the possibility that Xi himself may command this contingent. Another Xi ally, Ying Yong, was also newly appointed as chief justice of the Supreme Peoples Court. With both Ying and Zhao heading important organs in the CCPs legal system, Guodespite his allegiance to Jiangwill likely have to submit to Xi, Li predicted. Meanwhile, Zhao gave clear signals of his support for Xi and vice versa, during a meeting of Party members in the Ministry of Public Security on Nov. 1 when his new position was announced. Zhao gave a speech where he urged the CCP members to maintain a high degree of unanimity with the authority of Xi, and resolutely purge Zhou Yongkangs poisonous influencereferring to the former head of Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission who was sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges. Zhou was a powerful Jiang ally and was named in a briefing given at the 19th National Congress as a conspirator in a coup plot aimed at Xi. Behind Zhao was a banner with Xi slogans. Commentator Zhou Xiaohui said the message was clear to the audience: Zhao, with the backing of Xi, will be purging the Ministry. Background The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (known as zhengfawei in Chinese) was established in 1980, but it did not have much power until Jiang Zemin took over. Under his rule, the Commission became a powerful entity, encompassing the whole countrys security apparatus. For the past two decades, it has been supervised by Jiang faction officials: Luo Gan, Zhou Yongkang, and Meng Jianzhu. Rule of law was rendered naught as they commanded the Commission however they saw fit. When Zhou was in that position, he executed the persecution of the spiritual meditation practice Falun Gonga directive from his boss, Jiangwith impunity, mobilizing police, courts, and prisons to arrest, detain, imprison, and torture Falun Gong adherents. And when Guo Shengkun was head of the Ministry of Public Security, he was also complicit in the persecution. According to a report by the nonprofit, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, Guo had personally approved the arrest and detention of a practitioner, Feng Guoyun, in Jinan City, Shandong Province, in 2014. Several high-profile human rights lawyers were also harassed and imprisoned during Guos time as police chief. Since Xi took power, he has downgraded the power of the Commission. Zhou was taken down under Xis anti-corruption campaign. The Commission has also been stripped of many important duties, and local offices of the agency will be shut down by years end. Wen Pu contributed to this report. North Koreans listen to a television broadcast of a statement by communist dictator Kim Jong Un, in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Sept. 22, 2017. (ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images) North Korea Unsettled by Increased US Military Presence in Region The increased U.S. military presence near the Korean peninsula appears to have unsettled the North Koreas leadership, which appears increasingly worried about the deployment of U.S. nuclear assets into the region. The communist regimes state-controlled media reported on Nov. 1 that there is constant danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and peace and security is always at peril. It also expressed concern about the deployment of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and other nuclear assets in the region. Over the weekend the United States flew a nuclear strike capable B-2 bomber over international waters in the Pacific. The United States currently has three aircraft carriers under command of the 7th Fleet, whose area of responsibility includes the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has for months threatened the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons, vowing to turn the U.S. mainland into ashes. North Korean soldiers look at South Korea across the Korean Demilitarized Zone on Dec. 22, 2011. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) In response, President Trump has taken a different approach from previous presidents. Trumps strategy is largely two-fold. On the one hand, he is pursuing a diplomatic solution to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. On the other hand, he is using economic pressure and the threat of military force to push North Korea. National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster said on Thursday that the only solution to the crisis is for North Korea to denuclearize. Tensions have risen ahead of Trumps visit to Asia next week, including a visit to South Korea. During his visit to China, Trump is expected to pressure Chinese leader Xi Jinping to do more about the North Korean problem. National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster talks to reporters at the White House on Nov. 2, 2017. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) In response to a sixth underground nuclear test by North Korea in early September, China agreed to a new round of U.N. sanctions. China also instructed its banks to stop providing financing to North Korea and ordered North Korean businesses operating in China to close down. North Korea relies on China for 90 percent of its trade, according to estimates, and Trump is expected to ask Xi to go beyond what has been done so far. Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis said in a testimony before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 30 that the United States routinely runs drills on the scenario of a nuclear war with North Korea. Mattis said that the United States has a guarantee from its allies in the region to help in such a scenario. The United States has deployed F-35 fighter jets to Japan and has conducted multiple joint drills with South Korea and Japan in recent months. An armed North Korean female soldier keeps watch behind a barbed wire fence on the banks of the Yalu River near Dandong in northeast China's Liaoning province on Nov. 25, 2010. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images) North Korea Would Collapse if China Opened Refugee Exit Route to South Korea, Says Defector Chinas forcible return of North Korean refugees is critical to sustaining the North Korean regime, according a high-level North Korean defector. If China allowed North Korean refugees safe passage to South Korea, a mass exodus of North Koreans would quickly bring the regime to its knees, according to Thae Yong-ho, a former deputy chief at the North Korean embassy in London. If Chinese government helped North Korean defectors go freely to South Korea, I think that there could happen the massive exodus of North population, Thae told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, DC. on Nov 1. Thae pointed to the role Hungary played in the fall of the Berlin Wall. The East German regime began to falter when Hungary opened a hole in the Iron Curtain on its border with Austria, a route that East Germans took to eventually make their way to West Germany. German reunification could not have been achieved if the Hungarian government did not open its border with Austria to provide an exit route for the East German people, said Thae. If China opened its routes for defectors to South Korea, I think the North Korean system would collapse in a very short span of time. There are estimates of 30,000 to 50,000 North Koreans living in China, virtually all them living without any form of legal protection. North Korean defectors are living without papers, under the shadows, and are being physically or sexually exploited, said Thae. Those that are repatriated are subject to extreme punishment and face torture, sexual violence, incarceration in forced labor camps, and public executions, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Many are sent to political prison camps where starvation is the norm and routine sexual assault and torture by guards runs rampant. Death rates in these camps are reportedly extremely high, writes HRW. According to Thae, the State Department, and human rights groups, China is well aware of this situation and that by repatriating North Koreans, the Chinese regime is in open violation of the U.N. refugee convention. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) said the Chinese regime violates the convention with impunity, and profits by doing so. They benefited by trafficking those people who come inparticularly the womeninto sex trafficking, labor trafficking, so they are making money out of it, he said. While the faction of the Chinese regime closely allied with North Korea is now being purged by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Xi has yet to end those practices. In September, HRW warned that China was even intensifying its policing of the border. Security has been constantly increasing over the past five years in areas on both sides of the border between North Korea and China, with increased numbers of border guards and more barbed wire fencing. China has also expanded CCTV surveillance on the border and increased checkpoints on roads leading away from the border, wrote HRW. China is also going after the networks that help North Koreans escape, said HRW. One Christian missionary told HRW that his network was cut by 80 percent after China began to detain network members. Those efforts coincide with a grimmer situation in North Korea as officials try to make up for a shortfall in cash with increased fees, taxes, and demands for bribes. Thae said conditions also worsened under Kim Jong Un. China has said it fears a refugee crisis should it lessen its efforts to reinforce its border with North Korea, but Thae said that fear is unfounded and misleading. That is not really true because North Korean defectors and North Korean population, they have a place to go. South Korea would accommodate North Korean refugees, said Thae, calling on the United States to pressure China to open up an exit route and to set up temporary camps as North Koreans make their journey to the South. Meadow Grace Boyd, 13, who was killed while waiting at a bus stop in Rogue River, Oregon, on Oct. 30, 2017. (GoFundMe/Burial & Memorial for Meadow Boyd) Oregon Teen Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver While Waiting for the Bus A hit-and-run driver struck and killed a 13-year-old girl as she was waiting at a school bus stop in Jackson County, Oregon, this week. Meadow Grace Boyd was hit by a passing vehicle in Rogue River at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 30 the Jackson County Sheriffs Office said. She was struck by a vehicle part or other object extending from the side of a vehicle, the sheriffs office said. Possible examples include, but are NOT limited to, a side mirror, top or side mounted racks, trailer parts, or cargo items. A number of people have sent in surveillance footage or called in about the incident, detectives said. Investigators believe it is likely a driver would be aware he or she struck something on the side of the road, the sheriffs office said. The driver may not, however, have realized the object was a person. Several trash cans lined the edge of the roadway in the same area where Meadow had been standing. The incident occurred before sunrise; conditions were dark and foggy. Detectives who were in contact with the girls family shared details about her life. While Meadow was small in stature, her family described her as a protectorsomeone who helped and supported people who were bullied, the sheriffs office added. Meadows family members are hoping someone will come forward with information to help them understand what happened to her. The office wrote, Meadow was the youngest of four siblings. She enjoyed spending time in the outdoors, rock climbing, and reading. Meadow had a dog named Wicket and she loved horses. Jackson County sheriffs Sgt. Julie Denney told the Mail Tribune that the incident is kind of an unusual circumstance. We definitely want to hear from more people if they have something to share, Denney said. According to a GoFundMe page set up for the girls family, No parent ever plans for this kind of situation, and we send out a measure of gratitude for those who have expressed sympathy for our pain and a desire to do something more. Those with information about this case are being asked to call detectives at 541-774-6800. A council worker walks past sacks of potatoes as he sprays disinfectant during the cleanup of the market of Anosibe in the Anosibe district, one of the most unsalubrious district of Antananarivo on Oct. 10, 2017. (Rijasolo/AFP/Getty Images) Plague Outbreak in Madagascar Worst for 50 Years The plague is spreading in Madagascar, in the worst outbreak for 50 years. Outbreaks are common in the island nation, typically making up around half of the worlds cases every year. This year, however, plague season came early, causing alarm as it rapidly spread beyond normal areas, accelerated by a rarer form of the disease. One thousand and eight hundred people are thought to have been infected in the last three months in Madagascar, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report on Oct 31. In a typical year, approximately 1,000 are infected worldwide. WHO supports #Madagascar to respond to the #plague outbreak & works w/ nearby countries & territories to reduce the risk of regional spread. pic.twitter.com/guDZroUEEx WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) November 2, 2017 One hundred and twenty-seven deaths have been reported since August, according to the WHO. The plague is usually associated with the Black Death epidemic that killed 50 million people in Europe in the 14th century, spread by rats, and their fleas. That form of plagueknown as bubonic plaguehowever, is less deadly than the airborne form, pneumonic plague, which is currently driving the epidemic in Madagascar. Professor Jimmy Whitworth, an international public health scientist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the Mail Online that the outbreak could continue to spread because it had reached heavily populated cities. He told MailOnline, Madagascar is the most plague endemic country in the world and has outbreaks every year at about this time, this outbreak though is the worst for 50 years or more. Bubonic plague typically kills 30 percent -60 percent of victims when left untreated. An untreated infection of pneumonic plague is always fatal, however. Pneumonic plague is spread through coughing, spitting, or sneezing and can kill within 24 hours if not treated. Extra screening has been put in place at airports in Madagascar to prevent the disease from spreading. The number of new #plague cases in #Madagascar is declining. Here is the latest situation report as of 31 October. https://t.co/KoHuS1yjMD pic.twitter.com/CQXXhAFNnT WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) November 2, 2017 No vaccine is available to treat the plague, but it can be treated with antibiotics, according to the Center For Disease Control. And according to the WHO, the plague can be easily prevented and treated with antibiotics if detected early enough, and infection can be prevented through the use of standard precautions. An outbreak of plague no longer unfolds in the manner portrayed by our history books, said Dr. Sylvie Briand, director of the WHOs Infectious Hazard Management Department, in a statement. Plague is an old disease, but the challenges it poses today are contemporary and fundamentally different from what we had even 40 years ago. A spokesman for the WHO said, according to the Express : While the current outbreak began with one large epidemiologically linked cluster, cases of pneumonic plague without apparent epidemiologic links have since been detected in regions across Madagascar, including the densely populated cities of Antananarivo in the central highlands and Toamasina on the east coast.Due to the increased risk of further spread and the severe nature of the disease, the overall risk at the national level is considered very high.Nine countries and territories, including tourist destinations such as the Seychelles, Mauritius, and the French territory La Reunion, have been advised to review their protocols for quarantining infected visitors. Madagascar typically reports around 500 cases of the plague annually, with plague season runs from September to April. From 2010 to 2015 there were 3,248 cases reported worldwide, including 584 deaths, according to the WHO. Police: 2 Dead, 1 Injured in Shooting at Colorado Walmart THORNTON, ColoradoMultiple people were shot on Wednesday, Nov. 1, inside a Walmartstore in a Denver suburb, local police said. Local news Denver7 have since confirmed that 2 men were killed, and a woman critically injured. According to police in Thornton, Colorado, it was not clear if an assailant or assailants have been taken into custody, taken his own life or been slain by officers. There are currently two male suspects believed to be responsible, according to Denver7. Weve got multiple parties down, were still trying to ascertain what their conditions are, Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters. About an hour after the initial alert, the Thornton Police Department said on Twitter that the gunfire had ended at the store, which was surrounded by police and fire crews. At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available, the police department said in a tweet. Massive response by law enforcement at the Colorado Walmart where the shooting happened. Police say it's not an active shooter situation. pic.twitter.com/PNw6lQ1W2r Ryan Saavedra ?? (@RealSaavedra) November 2, 2017 Thornton is city of about 120,000 people roughly 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Denver. Police in Thornton received a call around 6 p.m. Mountain time (8 p.m. ET). An hour after the incident, Thornton Police said that the gunshots had ceased at the scene. situation, and that the an active crime scene investigation was underway, reported Denver7. Local NBC affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is situated in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to U.S. Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. By Keith Coffman Dismissed Catalan Foreign Affairs chief Raul Romeva waves as he arrives with other dismissed cabinet members at Spain's High Court after being summoned to testify on charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for defying the central government by holding a referendum on secession and proclaiming independence, in Madrid, Spain, November 2, 2017. (REUTERS/Susana Vera) Spanish Prosecutor Seeks Arrest of Ousted Catalan Leader MADRIDSpains state prosecutor sought a European arrest warrant for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, now in Belgium, after he failed to appear at a High Court hearing on Thursday. Other leaders of the independence drive, that has brought thousands onto the streets of Barcelona demonstrating both for and against a break with Madrid, appeared before a Spanish court and faced prosecution demands they be held in custody. Puigdemonts lawyer in Belgium, where he has traveled with four members of his sacked cabinet, said his client would stay away from Spain while the political climate was not good; but he would cooperate with the courts. If they ask, he will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice, lawyer Paul Bekaert told Reuters. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked Puigdemont and his government on Friday, hours after the Catalan parliament made a unilateral declaration of independencea vote boycotted by the opposition and declared illegal by Spanish courts. Puigdemont ignored an order to appear before the High Court on Thursday to answer charges of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds relating to the regions secessionist push. The state prosecutor responded by asking the court to issue a European arrest warrant. The judge is due to rule on this request later on Thursday though she is widely expected to follow the prosecutors recommendations. When someone doesnt appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued, said Supreme Court President Carlos Lesmes who is also the head of the General Council of the Judiciary, Spains top judicial body. An arrest warrant would make it virtually impossible for Puigdemont to stand in a snap election in the wealthy region called by the Spanish government for Dec. 21. Puigdemont said on Tuesday he would go back to Spain only if given unspecified guarantees by the Spanish government, puzzling many Catalans who now think he has acted precipitously. President, enough is enough, said the influential Catalan newspaper el Peridico on its front page on Wednesday. Ebelio Ramos, a pensioner from the pro-independence town of Berga, said he was bemused by Puigdemonts flight. I dont know what theyre thinking about but when someone does what he did and declares independence and then flees A president has to fulfil the law and if he doesnt, it is better that he stays calm, because if he starts doing something outside the law, he is going to lose everything, Ramos said. Jail? Following a tumultuous month, attention is gradually turning to the December vote. Protests taking place in central Barcelona on Thursday to support secessionist leaders as they testified in Madrid failed to attract a big crowd. Cracks have appeared within the pro-independence coalition of centre-right and far-left parties as well as inside Puigdemonts own PdeCat (Democratic Catalan Party) where some of his allies are now pushing for a negotiated solution with the central government. The struggle has also divided Catalonia itself and caused deep resentment across the rest of Spain, although separatist sentiment persists in the Basque Country and some other areas. In Madrid, 20 secessionist leaders had been summoned by two separate courts to testify over their role in holding an illegal vote on referendum on Oct. 1 and later proclaiming independence from Spain, but only 15 turned up. Puigdemont and four members of his sacked cabinet failed to appear. All the remaining members of the dismissed Catalan cabinet but one declined to answer questions from the state prosecutor and the High Court judge who will likely open an investigation that could take several years and potentially lead to a trial. The prosecutor has asked the judge to remand the Catalan leaders in custody pending the investigation, a source with knowledge of the matter said. The judge, who will rule on this request on Thursday, might also grant them conditional bail or order them to surrender their passports. Five senior regional lawmakers and the speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, were also summoned by the Supreme Court, which handles the cases of people who enjoy parliamentary immunity. The Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to give one more week to Forcadell and the Catalan lawmakers to prepare their defense and a new hearing will take place on Nov. 9. The courts have already told the Catalan secessionist leaders to deposit 6.2 million euros ($7.2 million) by Friday to cover potential liabilities. Two recent opinion polls showed support for independence may have started to wane. But an official regional survey published on Tuesday showed some 48.7 percent of Catalans believe the region should be independent, up from 41.1 percent in June and the highest since December 2014. Scott Ostrem, 47, described by police as a person of interest in a shooting that took place in a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado, on Nov. 1, 2017. . (Thornton Police Department/via REUTERS) Suspect in Colorado Walmart Shooting Is Arrested, IDd Police have arrested a suspect in the shooting that left three people dead inside a Colorado Walmart on Wednesday night. Two men and a woman were killed in what officials said was a random shooting. UPDATE: Walmart homicide suspect Scott Ostrem has been taken into custody pic.twitter.com/q9EPq5f4ZH Thornton Police Dept (@ThorntonPolice) November 2, 2017 The gunman, identified as 47-year-old Scott Ostrem, was arrested and taken into custody on Thursday morning, the Thornton Police Department confirmed. Before his capture, the department classified him as armed and dangerous while on the run. The suspect was captured on surveillance camera footage wearing a reddish-maroon shirt, jeans, and a dark jacket. He walked in the front door of the Thornton Walmart and opened fire on shoppers with a handgun. Then he exited and got into a red Mitsubishi Mirage and drove away. Its unclear if the attack is terrorism-related, police said, although they believe it is not. Thornton Police Department spokesman Victor Aliva told reporters, citing witness accounts, that the attack appeared random. What we have determined is that it is random as of right now, Aliva said, according to Reuters. As witnesses stated, the person came in and just shot towards a group. Shooting just occurred at Walmart, 9900 Grant St, multiple parties down. Please stay away from the area. pic.twitter.com/MdffbTPLKl Thornton Police Dept (@ThorntonPolice) November 2, 2017 Walmart shooting incident, person and vehicle of interest, remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers 720-913-7867 pic.twitter.com/PFNbEALpbG Thornton Police Dept (@ThorntonPolice) November 2, 2017 A Walmart customer, Aaron Stephens, 44, of Thornton, told Reuters he was inside paying for groceries at a self-checkout stand when he heard gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets. The employees started screaming and the customers started screaming as people began to flee the store, he recounted. I ran out, too, because I didnt want to get shot. Stephens said he did not see where the shooting had come from and did not see anyone struck by bullets. Local NBC television affiliate 9News reported that a woman whose son was in the Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. Video shows massive police response outside Walmart in Denver suburb after shooting leaves 2 people dead, 1 injured https://t.co/1nZYznEarS pic.twitter.com/8wu1JSdhaJ ABC News (@ABC) November 2, 2017 A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to U.S. Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Reuters contributed to this report. Sergei Magnitskys widow, Natalia, and their son, Nikita, speak at a press conference in Ottawa on Nov. 1, 2017, while former MP and minister of justice Irwin Cotler (R), Senator Percy Downe (C), and MP John McKay listen in the background. (Limin Zhou/NTD Television) The Next Steps for Canadas Magnitsky Act The Magnitsky Act and China are an obvious fit, says human rights lawyer David Matas OTTAWAFormer Liberal MP and justice minister Irwin Cotler is pleased to finally see passed into law legislation that he pioneered as a private members bill back when he was a parliamentarian. Cotler was among the dignitaries who welcomed Sergei Magnitskys widow and son to Ottawa on Nov. 1 to mark the passing of the legislation two weeks ago. The act is named after Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who uncovered the largest tax fraud in his countrys history and subsequently died as a result of torture in 2009 while detained in Moscow. Under the legislation, foreign individuals responsible for gross human rights violations similar to those that occurred in Magnitskys case can be sanctioned. Sanctions could include barring targeted individuals from entering Canada, engaging in financial transactions in Canada, or engaging in financial transactions with Canadians outside of Canada. Other jurisdictions, including the United States, the U.K., and Estonia have also enacted their versions of a Global Magnitsky Act. We are very thankful that this law carries the name of Sergei Magnitsky, and he is not forgotten by the people, Magnitskys widow, Natalia, said in Russian at a press conference, translated by their 16-year-old son, Nikita. However, we would like to highlight the fact that this law is global, because the fight against corruption and human rights violations is a top priority of any modern government. Senator Raynell Andreychuk, who introduced the Senate bill which eventually passed to become the current Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, said at the press conference that she made sure the legislation would apply globally and not just to Russia. I took this bill from what Irwin Cotler had done, and I wanted to ensure that it is global, she said. We in Canada want to stand behind this effort and make it a global issue. That was exactly the vision of Cotler as well, whose motion passed unanimously in Parliament in 2015 supporting sanctions against any foreign nationals responsible for human rights violations, a move toward establishing a Magnitsky law. Canada will not be a haven for those who are engaging in cultures of corruption and criminality, where there is impunity in their countries and theyre not brought to account in their countries, Cotler said in an interview. Whether itd be in Russia or China or whatever, we in Canada are prepared to hold them to account here. But having the legislation passed is just the beginning. The next step, says Andreychuk, is going after the human rights violators with the new law. This is not the end of the bill. It is the start of the implementation, she said. Canada Taking the Lead Winnipeg-based international human rights lawyer David Matas believes Canada can take a lead in the world by starting with something other than Russia. China and the bill are an obvious fit, he said. Given the large number of human rights violations in the world, Matas says its important to apply the law strategically. I would think, in terms of priorities, go for the worst violators first, and go for the naming that will have the most difference, he said, adding that a good place to start is with the ongoing persecution of adherents of the Falun Gong meditation practice in China. What you have with Falun Gong is a terrible violation: widespread, big numbers. Anything that will cause the violators to pause is going to have a big effect. So I think that would be an important, early-priority use of this law. Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is a peaceful meditation discipline that has been severely persecuted by the Chinese communist regime since 1999. Matas cites some of the main perpetrators of the campaign of persecution against Falun Gong as examples of individuals who can be sanctioned under the legislation. That includes Jiang Zemin, the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party who started the persecution, and his proteges Luo Gan and Bo Xilai, Chinese officials who played major roles in the persecution and forced removal of organs from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Coincidentally, Bo, who is now serving a life sentence under current leader Xi Jinpings anti-corruption crusade, had deep ties with notable figures in Canadas business community. Its a way of preventing any Canadian connection to the human rights violations, Matas said. Used Anywhere Applicable Cotler says the fact that China is Canadas second-largest trading partner shouldnt make any difference in applying the legislation where it is warranted. Its not because theyre Chinese, its not because were targeting the Chinese government. Were saying we dont want the spillover of any cultures of corruption and criminality in any country which does not bring their violators to justice, to have it happen in Canada, he said. Being concerned about the human rights situation in China is, in fact, being pro-Chinese, Cotler said. We do care about the human rights situation in China because I see that as being pro-Chinese people. In any country where human rights violations exists, and the people who commit those violations are not brought to justice, then the people suffer from that impunity. Same Standards Conservative MP Rob Nicholson said he was happy to see the Magnitsky bill passed into law, as it was one of the bills he had his eye on right before the last federal election, when he served as the minister of foreign affairs. Its an important oneone more tool for Canada to crack down on those individuals involved with illegal activity, he said. Nicholson said all countries should abide by internationally recognized human rights standards, and the Magnitsky Act applies to everyone. Its not a question of whether we have a trade relationshipeverybody has to comply with the standards, whether itd be Russia or China or anyone else. Conservative MP James Bezan said the bill adds another tool to the toolbox of the government to target corrupt foreign officials. Whether its oligarchs in Russia, the Kremlin kleptocrats, or maybe its somebody in Ukraine, people that are harvesting organs from the Falun Gong in China, the Vietnamese communist government, or what were seeing right now in Myanmar they should get the message that Canada will not tolerate these gross human rights violations, he said. Opinion: The Trump Dossier Used in Bloodless Coup Attempt The infamous Trump dossier was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. Who would have thought it? Before the news broke, Trump joked (or was he not joking?) a couple of times on Twitter that the DNC, Hillary Clinton, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had funded the discredited document. The very same people who broke the story of the dossier ridiculed Trump for making the connection, saying his tweets were crazy. That the Clinton campaign and the Democrats were behind the dossier has been kind of an open secret. Everybody suspected it, the Clinton campaign denied it, and Clintons media allies faithfully ignored it. One New York Times reporter complained afterward that she had been misled for a year by the Clinton campaign on who had funded the dossier. Another said a Team Clinton lawyer had vehemently denied they had funded the operation. So he gave up on the story. Now we know enough to connect the dots and reveal the truth about the TrumpRussian collusion investigation. Let us start by reviewing the key facts. The whole Russian collusion narrative was well-planned and wonderfully executed by the Democrats. In August, the author of the dossier, former British spook Christopher Steele, handed the document to the FBI, and in October, approximately a month before election day, Steele reached an agreement with the FBI for it to continue paying for his research (in the end, the FBI did not do so). The dossier was shopped to media in October, who refused to publish it because its claims could not be verified. Within 24 hours of her concession speech, Clintons team decided, as recounted in the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clintons Doomed Campaign, to engineer the case against Russia and then-FBI Director James Comey. In their script, the Russian hacking of DNC email servers was the centerpiece. Clintons media allies loyally regurgitated the talking points, pushing Congress to probe the Russian interference of the 2016 election. Senate and House committees began investigations, with the Senate investigation starting before Trump was sworn in as president. Comey treated the dossier as though its claims were true. He cited the document in his briefings to members of Congress. The FBI reportedly used the dossier as evidence to obtain a secret court warrant(s) to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a one-time foreign policy adviser. It is still unclear whether secret warrants against other Trump associates were based on the dossier. In March, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was accused of having had undisclosed meetings with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, and he recused himself from the Russian probe. In May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the alleged Russian interference in the election. I have to say the whole Russian collusion narrative was well-planned and wonderfully executed by the Democrats. Team Clinton first advanced the conspiracy theory that Russia helped Trump win. Her media allies immediately started making waves and concocted at least two different versions of Russian interference conspiracies. Next, pressure was put on Sessions to force him to stay away from the Russian probe. Following Sessionss self-recusal, the biggest obstacle to appointing a special or independent counsel was removed. Finally, the Democrats got Mueller, a good friend of Comey, to lead a special counsel investigation. The Trump dossier and the Russian probe that has followed are an attempt at a bloodless coup detat. The Democrats lost the 2016 election, but instead of looking inward and honing their message, they chose without factual evidence to paint Trump as a traitor who had leveraged foreign powers to win the election. The end goal, at least for some Democrats, is for Mueller to dethrone Trump and Clinton to be installed as the president of the United States. The Russian probe is an assault against a duly elected president; it is an affront to our democracy and to the millions who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve our liberty. It has also set a bad precedent for future U.S. politics: There is no guarantee Clinton will be the last conniving and scheming sore loser. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. US President Donald Trump at a meeting with business leaders on tax reform at the White House in Washington, DC, on Oct. 31, 2017. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images) Trump Calls NYC Terror Suspect an Animal, Says He Should Get Death Penalty President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his call for the suspect in Tuesdays terror attack in New York City to receive the death penalty. Trump also said that while he would love to send 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov to the military prison on Guantanamo Bay, it would be much faster for him to be prosecuted through the regular justice system. There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed, Trump wrote on Twitter. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Trump previously expressed his disgust with Saipov, who killed eight people when he drove a rented truck down a lower Manhattan bike path, mowing down pedestrians and cyclists. On Wednesday, Trump described the man as an animal. He said it was time for the United States to move away from political correctness and protect its citizens. We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. Were so politically correct that were afraid to do anything, Trump said at the White House on Wednesday. We also have to come up with punishment thats far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. Theyll go through court for years. Saipov left a note in the truck used in the attack on which he had written, No god but god and Mohamed is his prophet, according to John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism of the NYPD. The note also said, Islamic supplication. It will endure, said Miller during a press conference, adding that the phrase is often used by the ISIS terrorist group. Saipov has been charged with two federal countsone of material support to ISIS, and the other for destruction using a motor vehicle. Miller also said that police found thousands of ISIS pictures on Saipovs cell phone and about 90 videos. The videos contained graphic footage of ISIS killing prisoners, driving over them with tanks, beheading them, and shooting them in the face. Saipov planned the attack for two months, and made a practice run before the attack on Oct. 31. A police officer secures an area near the site of a terror attack in New York on November 1, 2017. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images) All of America is praying and grieving for the families who lost their precious loved ones. Horrible act. Our hearts break for them and we pledge to renew our resolve in their memory, Trump said. Trump said that he is going to ask Congress to abandon the diversity lottery visa program (DV), under which Saipov had entered the country. Trump had previously called on the program, which admits 50,000 people from around the world each year through a lottery system, to be replaced by a merit-based system. A September 2007 report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office noted that the program opened vulnerabilities to terrorists. In 2003, States Inspector General raised concerns that aliens from countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism can apply for diversity visas, states the report. Consular officers at 6 posts reported that widespread use of fake documents, such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, and passports, presented challenges when verifying the identities of applicants and dependents. It also noted that there is a system of corruption around the DV program, stating, Some agents take advantage of DV applicants; visa agents in Bangladesh have intercepted applicants program documents and charged ransoms of up to $20,000 or coerced applicants into sham DV marriages. Tyrese Gibson Threatens to Leave Fast and Furious Amid Spat With Co-star Tyrese Gibson, the star of numerous Fast and Furious movies, suggested that he wont appear in the next installment in the popular franchise if Dwayne Johnson is in it. In a rambling, ellipsis-heavy Instagram post, Gibson wrote, Hello world, hello loyal fans and loved ones from OUR fast universe. Im sorry to announce that if [Dwayne] is in Fast9 there will no more Roman [Pearce]. You mess with family and my daughters [sic] survival I mess with yours, he added. Gibson, according to People magazine, is in a legal battle with his ex-wife over their daughter. Gibson plays former convict Roman Pearce in the franchise. Gibson then called Johnson a clown and other names such as selfish champ. All my real one [sic], he continued. Men on [sic] integrity my real ones out here stand UP folks that GP to the gym and get big naturally #NoJuice #NoOJ spin off huh? Spin off these [expletive] selfish champ pause notice whos got his arms around my shoulder and whos standing alone. An untitled Fast and Furious spinoff is slated for release in July 2019. Johnson hasnt addressed the critical Instagram post or previous posts made by Gibson. Gibsons Instagram post received an overwhelmingly negative response from other users. Chill out, bro, one wrote. Britain's Secretary of State for Defence Sir Michael Fallon addresses the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, on Oct. 3, 2017. (REUTERS/Hannah McKay) UK Defense Minister Fallon Resigns in Growing Harassment Scandal LONDONBritish defense minister Michael Fallon quit on Wednesday saying his conduct had fallen below the high standards demanded of his position, the first resignation in a sexual harassment scandal in parliament. A growing number of women and men working in Britains parliament have complained of inappropriate behavior by lawmakers, largely prompted by sex abuse allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein. Fallon apologized earlier this week for touching a radio presenters knee in 2002something the woman in question described on social media as mildly amusing. In his letter of resignation to Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday, he said there had been many allegations about lawmakers in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false but I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces, he said. I have reflected on my position and I am therefore resigning as defense secretary. May, weakened after losing her Conservative Partys parliamentary majority in a snap June election, said she appreciated the characteristically serious manner in which Fallon had considered his position and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others. May has moved swiftly after a weekend report that one of her ministers asked a female secretary to buy sex toys, the first allegation that triggered soul-searching in parliament over how junior workers are treated. Allegations of sexual abuse have ranged from a charge of rape by an activist in the main opposition Labour Party by a senior party member, to unconfirmed details of serial sex pests on a list reportedly drafted by aides and researchers in parliament. Damian Green, Mays deputy in the British government, has denied an allegation that he made an inappropriate sexual advance on a young woman. May, who has long championed the careers of female lawmakers, said earlier on Wednesday that action would be taken when there were allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct. I am very clear that we will take action against those where there are allegations that we see, and the evidence is there, that there has been misconduct, she told lawmakers. By William James Update: 17-Year-Old Girl Hit by Car While Walking Dies A 17-year-old girl who was hit by a driver that fled the scene in Severn, Maryland, while walking home last weekend has died. The heartbroken family of Kiersten Emily Wengert-Walko announced the news on social media. Kiersten died on Wednesday, Nov. 1, ABC2News reported. The teenager was rushed to shock trauma with critical life-threatening injuries, after the hit and run accident on Sunday morning, Oct. 29. She was walking with a group of friends along the 7800 block of WB&A Road after leaving a house party, Anne Arundel County Police said. The driver fled the scene and remained at large, as of writing on Thursday. Police believe the car was speeding and leaving the same party Kiersten had attended. Investigators are offering a $2,000 reward in the case. A family spokesman, Stephanie Shade, said they are heartbroken over Kiersten at 3:15 pm, On behalf of Kierstens family, we would like to thank everyone for their love, concern, and prayers. A GoFundMe page set up for Kiersten has now raised over $10,250 out of the $20,000 goal and the donations will help with funeral arrangements. According to the page, Kiersyen was in critical condition on life support, before she died. Police said the only details they had on the vehicle was that it was silver with broken headlight assembly (clear portion) and windshield damage. The vehicle should also have tinted windows. Officers first responded to a call of a pedestrian being hit on Oct. 28 at approximately 2:10 a.m. The investigation is ongoing. Anyone who may have any information about the incident or a possible vehicle is asked to call 410-222-8573 or 8082. As more people found out about Kiersten they left messages of condolence on the teenagers Facebook page. Rip Too young to have gone, one person commented. From NTD.tv Girlfriend of Vegas Gunman Stephen Paddock Might Be Hiding Something, Sheriff Suggests The girlfriend of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock might be hiding something, the citys sheriff suggested in a new interview. There is a lot of people that have hundreds and hundreds of guns, but for this individual to do it at a certain point in time and to do it all with such robust action, you would think that Ms. Danley would have some information associated with that, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told KLAS. But currently we havent been able to pull that out of her, if its in her. Marilou Danley, who is still considered a person of interest in the case, told officials that she never knew the attack was going to happen. The sheriff says something seems off. Danley will be interviewed again this week, said Lombardo, who suggested she may have been able to prevent the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, which left 59 people dead, including Paddock, and hundreds more wounded. A few days after the attack, Danley was seen being taken through the Los Angeles Airport in a wheelchair after she returned from her native country, the Philippines. Paddock, 64, had also wired $100,000 to Danleys bank account. It could have been prevented on many levels, Lombardo told KLAS. Marilou Danley, his brother, anybody that may have had some modicum of information that would have presented this individuals state of mind, but apparently right now we dont know that. No motive has been detailed in Paddocks case yet. Paddock lost a lot of money since September 2015, and Lombardo suggested that may have contributed to his rampage. I think that might have a determining factor on what he determined to do, Lombardo said. And one of his laptops in the Mandalay Bay hotel room that police stormed was found to be missing its hard drive. The hard drive was not located in the room, Lombardo said. We may never know where that hard drive is. It could have been removed years ago. Lombardo also blasted people promoting conspiracy theories and thinking that we are trying to hide stuff or are conspiring together to hide stuff, saying it was ridiculous. He also slammed Internet trolls for accusing the victims of faking deaths or injuries. Im amazed at peoples mental state to post the stuff that they post, Lombardo told KLAS. I probably shouldnt tell you this, but I wish I could locate some of these individuals or have them present themselves to me personally and Ill show them what happened out there. This week, it was reported that at least two Las Vegas officers and two security officers were on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel where Paddock had been staying, according to MGM Resorts International. Metro officers were together with armed Mandalay Bay security officers in the building when Campos first reported that shots were fired over the radio, MGM said, per the Washington Post. These Metro officers and armed Mandalay Bay security officers immediately responded to the 32nd floor. (L to R) U.S. Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson take their seats as they arrive for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing concerning the authorization for use of military force, in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 30, 2017. As Mattis and Tillerson face questions about the administration's authority to use military force, Congress is still seeking more information about the deadly ambush that killed four U.S. troops in Niger. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) War on Terrorism Today Still Covered by 2001 Authorization, Say Mattis and Tillerson Trump administration officials insist that the current U.S. military operations against ISIS and other terrorist groups are still covered by congressional authorizations that were passed in 2001-2002, dismissing the growing calls for the administration to seek a renewed authorization from Congress. Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Oct. 30 that the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress intended to be used against al-Qaeda and the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, are still valid today in justifying the ongoing wars against ISIS and other terrorist groups. The 2001 and 2002 authorizations to use military forceremain a sound basis for ongoing U.S. military operations against a mutating threat of [terrorism], said Mattis, A new AUMF is not legally required to address the continuing threat posed by al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. Similarly, Tillerson argued that the terrorist enemies of today are a continuation of the old ones that the United States have fought against. Should Congress decide to write a new AUMF, however, Tillerson said it should not repeal the old ones, so as not to cause operational paralysis and confusion in U.S. military operations. Tillerson also stressed that any new AUMF should not be time-constrained or geographically restricted, which he argued would not be appropriate considering the global nature of terrorism, which evolves rapidly over time. We are more likely to win this fight sooner if we dont tell enemies when we would stop fighting, said Tillerson. This latest statements from Trump officials are a continuation of the established view from previous U.S. administrations, which has been increasingly challenged by many in Congress and also a number of constitutional scholars. During the hearing, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) pointed out that none of the senators of the Foreign Relations Committee present that day voted for the 2001 AUMF or its 2002 version. We cant continue to go on in a situation where 70 percent of the House and the Senate has never voted on an AUMF, said Flake. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who had called for Congress to pass a new AUMF during the Obama administration, criticized the lax interpretation of AUMF by the current and preceding U.S. administrations. They had effectively created an endless war with no congressional vote against newly formed terrorist groups all over the world, Kaine said. Such a war could go on forever. Mondays hearing also raised the question whether the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs give any congressional authorization to the president to use force against North Korea, the regime that has caused rising tension in the region in the last few months with its latest string of nuclear tests and missile launches. In response to a question from Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md..), Mattis and Tillerson agreed that Trump does not have congressional authorization to strike North Korea. However, Mattis noted that Trump still has the constitutional ability to do so in case of an imminent or actual attack from the aggressive regime. Under Article II, he has a responsibility, obviously, to protect the country, Mattis said, discussing a scenario where Trump would initiate a strike against North Korea without first consulting Congress. In the case of North Korea, it would be a direct imminent or actual attack on the United States. I think Article II would apply. Amika Land, 37, from Inwood, New York, is accused of underreporting her income, allowing her to get over $200,000 in welfare and housing benefits. (Photo courtesy of the Nassau County District Attorney's Office) NY Woman Allegedly Steals $200,000 in Benefits: DA An Inwood, New York, woman is accused of stealing more than $200,000 in welfare and housing benefits over the course of four years. Police arrested her Oct. 30. Amika Land, 37, who is also known as Amika Simmons, allegedly underreported her household income to the Nassau County Department of Social Services, according to the local district attorneys office. Her gross income working at a medical practice in Nassau County allegedly ranged between $38,604 and $76,730, legally disqualifying her for welfare and housing benefits, the report said. But she got $180,868 worth of benefits from Medicaid, day care, public assistance, SNAP and Home Energy Assistance Programs, officials said. She also got more than $26,628 in Section Eight housing benefits from the countys Office of Housing and Community Development. This defendant allegedly falsified documents to steal more than $200,000 in government benefits that were earmarked for struggling families, District Attorney Madeline Singas said in a news release. Stealing from programs that provide a safety net for the needy victimizes our most vulnerable neighbors and the taxpaying public, and we will vigorously prosecute this case. Land was charged with welfare fraud in the third degree, two counts of grand larceny in the third degree, and five counts of offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree. According to the district attorneys office: The defendant was employed by a medical practice in Nassau County and worked in the billing department. Between August 1, 2011, and July 31 2015, the defendant received Section Eight housing benefits from the Nassau County Office of Housing and Community Development (NCOHD) totaling $26,628. During that time, she is alleged to have knowingly underreported her household income by submitting the same fraudulent letters to that agency that she did to DSS [Nassau County Department of Social Services]. The defendant was released from custody and is due back in court Dec. 5. If convicted of the top count, Land faces 2 years and four months to seven years in prison. S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit What's next for SD Gov. Kristi Noem as she heads into her second term? This week, as we count down to the Stars 125th anniversary, we revisit stories that have inspired readers and changed lives. For Phillipa Lue, the death of her 6-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was not in vain. Nearly three decades have passed since the plight of the terminally ill Toronto girl, in need of a bone marrow donor, spurred strangers in this city to come forward and assist in extraordinary ways. In March 1990, a frantic four-month campaign was launched to try to save Elizabeth. The brave girl with long hair and short bangs suffered from aplastic anemia, a very rare disorder caused by the failure of her bone marrow to make blood cells. Elizabeth required marrow from a stranger, so her normally shy mother put her HR job on hold and reached out for help to launch a massive drive in search of a matching donor. As the Save Elizabeth Lue campaign began, the Star was the first news outlet to write about it, and did dozens more stories, as other media joined in. Her face was all over the news. But no match was found. Elizabeth died that August. Her mother, and those who were close to the campaign at the time, say her legacy lives on. As a result of the campaign, Canadas registry of potential bone marrow and stem cell donors was bolstered by thousands of new names, particularly those from the Chinese community and other Asian communities. In memory of her daughter, Phillipa Lue is encouraging more visible minorities to sign up as potential donors, to improve the chances of survival for people from diverse communities who need bone marrow and stem cell transplants. Lives have been saved. Just over $1 million was donated by the public to help pay for the testing needed in the search for a matching donor for Elizabeth. And remaining money in the foundation set up in her name has since been used to support bone marrow and stem cell drives for more than a dozen other people. The effort to find a match for Elizabeth also brought forward Torontonians, Canadians and people around the world not just of Chinese descent. I underestimated the passion and generosity of Canadians, said Dr. Joseph Wong, a family physician and one of the key organizers of the Elizabeth Lue drive 27 years ago. The campaign began after Phillipa and her husband, Gary, got the news from doctors Dec. 29, 1989, that Elizabeth was terminally ill with aplastic anemia. Then you watch her just waste away in front of your eyes and youre not able to help her to bear the pain and suffering shes going through, Phillipa, who lives in Markham, said in a recent interview. Neither Phillipa nor Gary nor Elizabeths brother Michael were suitable matches for a bone marrow donation. Nor were there matches on the Canadian Red Cross registry (now Canadian Blood Services). To get on the registry at that time, you had to be a blood donor. One possible solution emerged: mount a campaign to find a stranger to donate marrow. The chances of finding a suitable match for Elizabeth in the Chinese community were better at 1 in 4,000 due to genetic similarities. But that meant people had to put their names on the bone marrow registry. They had to have blood drawn and consent to donate marrow if their blood test revealed a match. Marrow is in our bones and produces oxygen-carrying red cells, white cells used to ward off infection and platelets that clot blood and stop bleeding. Aplastic anemia halts production of these cells. To treat it, damaged bone marrow is destroyed, then replaced by a donors healthy marrow. Matching donors provide marrow through a process in which doctors stick a needle into the donors pelvic bone to draw the jellylike bone marrow out. But there were challenges in trying to rescue Elizabeth. For one thing doctors gave her only a few months to live after the diagnosis. There were the logistics of rallying volunteers to help launch the drive. And there would be costs to test people who came to the drive $75 (U.S.) a person. Whats more, in parts of the Chinese community, giving blood was not something done readily. According to cultural beliefs held by some, bones, blood, human tissue and organs are considered sacred because they are passed down from ones parents. Phillipa called Dr. Wong, a leader in Torontos Chinese community, for help to find a donor. Busy with his medical practice and other commitments, he was reluctant. He knew that about 120 volunteers would be needed to launch the search. And where would the money come from for the testing? I agreed after agonizing consideration that I could not bear to see a 6-year-old girl die due to the excuse Im too busy, Wong, 69, said in a recent interview. He assembled a team including Lues parents and some of their relatives. There were also volunteers such as Pauline Tong, who was active in the Chinese community; Dr. Marshall Deltoff, a Toronto chiropractor; and Helen Cox, a lab company executive who helped organize IV nurses, lab technicians and people experienced in taking blood. Dr. Wong contacted Star reporter Tony Wong (no relation) to get some exposure. Tony met Elizabeth at the Hospital for Sick Children. I saw Elizabeth and my heart broke, Tony Wong, now a television critic for the Star, said recently. I knew we (the Star) had to do something. The Star carried its first story March 16, 1990, with the headline Right donor could save life of 6-year-old with anemia. Clinics were set up in Scarborough, Toronto, Markham and other locations for potential donors to give blood. Dr. Wong arrived at the Toronto clinic in Grange Park at 8:30 a.m. on April 1 to get ready for the 10 a.m. opening, and was shocked by what he saw: 100 people already in line. A total of 1,800 people showed up at the clinics that first day. And financial donations from across the country would soon pour in through banks. Donations from places Id never heard of in Canada the response was so amazing, not just from the Chinese community, Dr. Wong recalled. Added Pauline Tong, 68, a key volunteer: I think a lot of people really identified with Elizabeth. Helped by some friends, Dr. Wong secured a $150,000 line of credit money needed to send the blood collected to a U.S. lab for testing, to get marrow data. Potential donors were tested for human leukocyte antigens, which are immune system recognition signals. Six antigens needed to be identical to the recipient. By early June 1990, more than 5,300 people had been tested in clinics, costing nearly $450,000. No match was found. As interest in the story spread, the registry grew and the search expanded overseas. In June two potential donors were found in Taiwan. But they were soon deemed not close enough a match for Elizabeth. Elizabeths tissue type was sent to Singapore, and officials in China and Hong Kong along with Jamaica, where Elizabeths family comes from were contacted, with no success. By early July 1990, 10,000 people had been tested in Canada, their names added to the registry. The number of Asians on registries in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan had also increased. But by late July the search for a donor for Elizabeth was abandoned. Her condition had worsened to the point she wouldnt survive a transplant. On Aug. 31 she died in her mothers arms. For Phillipa and the family, anniversaries of her death, birthdays and holidays are painful. But she knows some good also came from the tragedy. Among the people helped by the bolstered registry was a New Jersey woman named Cammy Lee. Lee, 44, is alive thanks to a bone marrow transplant from Virginia Lau of Richmond Hill in 1992. That operation was performed to treat Lees leukemia. Shortly afterward, Lee received four life-saving doses of Laus fresh T cells from her blood, a procedure used to treat Lees lymphoma. Lee has been cancer-free ever since. Lee met Lau in Toronto in 1994 along with Elizabeths parents, who came face to face with a woman saved by the campaign for Elizabeth. On the phone from New Jersey, Lee said Virginia saved my life. She is also grateful to Elizabeth. Lee would become a recruiter for the National Marrow Donor Program in the U.S. She sought out Asian Americans, and encouraged them to become marrow and stem cell donors. Stem cell transplants are now the more common method because donors only lose the stem cells in their peripheral blood a tiny fraction of ones whole blood. According to a recent statement from Canadian Blood Services, almost 420,000 volunteer donors are registered with the services OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network to help any patient in need. OneMatch is also part of an international network of 75 registries and 53 (umbilical) cord blood banks that are part of a global database. Currently 32 per cent of the OneMatch registry is non-Caucasian, Canadian Blood Services says. When Elizabeth was seeking a donor it was 2 per cent. Elizabeth Lues mother wants to see further increases. If youre a patient and youre a racial minority, your chances (of finding a bone marrow/stem cell donor) are slim. Most of the banks in the world are Caucasian and our bank in Canada is about (70 per cent) Caucasian, said Lue. Looking back, Lue says her daughter really didnt stand a chance during the 1990 donor drive because the pool was just too small. Time ran out . . . its a numbers game. Thats just the way it is. Read more on the Stars 125th anniversary in Saturdays special Insight section and at https://www.thestar.com/anniversary.html SHARE: Experts reacted with surprise on Wednesday to news that the Competition Bureau is investigating possible price-fixing of bread products by suppliers and retailers in Canadas grocery industry. I think its unlikely that its a widespread or very senior scheme, said Mark Satov, strategy adviser and founder, Satov Consultants Inc. Satov was reacting to the news that Competition Bureau investigators, accompanied by RCMP and local police forces, on Tuesday raided offices in Toronto, Montreal and Stellarton, N.S., where Sobeys Inc. headquarters are located. Read more: Are Canadas grocers fixing bread prices? They arrived in our Stellarton and Ontario offices (Tuesday), said Sobeys spokesperson Jacquelin Corrado. We are co-operating to support the investigation and have advised employees internally of the process underway. Loblaw and Metro have also confirmed the investigation, which is looking at activity as far back as 2001. The idea that upper management was aware of the activity seems remote, said Satov, given the potential downside, which includes criminal charges and fines. But information can flow through many different channels in the grocery industry. Recent trends in the price of bread dont seem to support a case for price-fixing, said food market analyst Kevin Grier, who tracks food prices using Statistics Canada data. Weve been in deflationary mode since June 2016 on bread and rolls. Between May 2016 and September 2017, the Consumer Price Index for bread and buns has dropped nearly six per cent, said Grier. Engaging in price-fixing would break the publics trust in grocers, he added. We trust that our grocers are giving us safe food and we trust that they are pricing the food competitively. We trust that were getting value. If they break the trust if this is true then that trust is broken and it will take a long time to fix. Gary Sands, senior vice-president, Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG), said that while his organization has been aware of concerns around bread pricing, his association did not file a complaint with the Bureau. We will await the results of this process, like everyone else, said Sands. Canada Bread Company Limited confirmed it is included in the industry-wide investigation by the Competition Bureau into pricing conduct dating back to 2001. Canada Bread describes itself as the leading producer and distributor of packaged fresh bread and bakery products, including grocery store staples like Dempsters, Villaggio and Vachon. It was purchased by Grupo Bimbo, headquartered in Mexico City, in early 2014. Grupo Bimbo is the worlds largest baking company, with operations in 22 countries. Canada Bread employs 4,175 people across Canada. Canada Bread operates with the highest ethical standards and complies with all legal and regulatory standards. The company has not been charged with any offences, according to a statement from the company. George Weston Limited, which operates one of Canadas largest bakeries, has also indicated it is aware of the investigation, as has Walmart Canada Corp. With files from the Canadian Press SHARE: MONTREALCanadian softwood lumber producers will be hammered slightly less forcefully after the U.S. government reduced export duties for most Canadian producers following failed political talks. The U.S. Department of Commerce said in its final determination released Thursday that most Canadian producers will pay a combined countervailing and anti-dumping rate of 20.83 per cent, down from 26.75 per cent in the preliminary determinations issued earlier this year. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the revised duties were issued after the United States and Canada were unable to reach a long-term settlement to the dispute. While I am disappointed that a negotiated agreement could not be made between domestic and Canadian softwood producers, the United States is committed to free, fair and reciprocal trade with Canada, he said in a news release. This decision is based on a full and unbiased review of the facts in an open and transparent process that defends American workers and businesses from unfair trade practices. Read more: Canadian lumber producers get temporary relief with end of preliminary duties U.S. duties on softwood lumber brings price surge, profit to Canada The Canadian government responded by saying it will continue to defend the lumber industry against protectionist trade measures. The U.S. Department of Commerces decision on punitive countervailing and anti-dumping duties against Canadas softwood lumber producers is unfair, unwarranted and deeply troubling, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said in a joint statement. We urge the U.S. Administration to rescind these duties, which harm workers and communities in Canada. These duties are a tax on American middle class families too, whose homes, renovations and repairs will only be more expensive. The ministers said the government will turn to litigation if required to defend the industry and expects to prevail as it has in the past. We are reviewing our options, including legal action through the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, and we will not delay in taking action. Carr plans to convene the Federal-Provincial Task Force on Softwood Lumber in the coming days to discuss developments. The U.S. agency said Canadian producers have exported softwood lumber to the U.S. at 3.2 to 8.89 per cent less than fair value. It also determined that Canada is providing unfair subsidies to its producers at rates of 3.34 to 18.19 per cent. The preliminary duties forced Canadian companies to post hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits until a final ruling of harm is made by the U.S. International Trade Commission around Dec. 18. The duties have driven up the price of lumber to cover the extra costs, adding to the cost of building a home in the United States. Canadian unions and lumber companies fear the issue will eventually cause layoffs once prices and demand falls. West Fraser Timber will continue to pay the highest duties, but its total is being cut to 23.7 per cent from 30.88 per cent. Canfor is next at 22.13, down from 27.98, Tolko at 22.07 vs. 27.03. The rate for Montreal-based Resolute Forest Products rises marginally to 17.9 per cent from 17.41 per cent and J.D. Irvings rate inches up to 9.92 per cent from 9.89 per cent. Resolute called the final determination outrageous. I wouldnt be happy if it was two per cent because it is absolutely capricious and the people this really hurts is the U.S. consumers and the U.S homebuilders, spokesman Seth Kursman said in an interview. They make lumber and are huge landowners, so these tariffs drive up the value of their land. Its helping a handful of companies motivated by their own narrow self interests at the expense of the greater North American economy and millions of jobs. The head of the Quebec Forest Industry Council was less critical. Of course, we would like the rates to be zero, but, the imposed rates do not cause the (commotion) like it did for Bombardier, said former MP and council president Denis Lebel. Lumber products certified by the Atlantic Lumber Board as being first produced in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island are excluded from any duties. Also excluded is U.S. lumber shipped to Canada for some processing and imported back into the U.S., certain box spring kits, and box-spring frame components. The United States imported $5.66 billion (U.S.) worth of softwood lumber last year from Canada. SHARE: VANCOUVERBallet Victoria has cut ties with a choreographer after renewed media attention to allegations that he took nude photographs of underage dancers in the 1980s and 1990s. Bruce Monk was fired by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 2015 after Macleans reported that several women were co-operating with a Winnipeg police investigation into photos he took of them as teenage dancers. The investigation concluded without charges and Monk declined comment on the allegations this week through his lawyer. He is facing two lawsuits, one filed by a woman in Winnipeg alleging he took nude photos of her when she was 16, and a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in Toronto. In a statement of defence in response to the Winnipeg suit, Monk denies taking any photographs of the woman when she was a minor and calls her allegations false and meritless. CBC reported on Monday that Monk has been doing volunteer and contract work with Ballet Victoria. Artistic director Paul Destrooper is quoted in the article as saying he believes Monk is innocent and nude photographs are not unusual in ballet. On Wednesday, Ballet Victoria issued a statement saying Monk would no longer work with the company. Ballet Victoria cares for the physical and emotional health of all artists, staff and volunteers with great care and diligence, it says. To (ensure) the integrity of the company Bruce Monk will no longer be involved with Ballet Victoria. The statement says Destrooper worked with Monk at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet for 11 years from 1990 until 2001 and was never aware of any inappropriate behaviour or allegations. It says Monk came to the company as a guest choreographer in 2008. When criminal allegations were made, the working relationship was suspended, but it resumed when no charges were laid. In late 2016, he began working on small contracts as a lighting and production designer and volunteered his services in the office and as a driver, the statement says. Sarah Doucet, who filed the proposed class-action suit in Toronto, said she first became aware Monk was involved with Ballet Victoria in September 2015 when she saw a photo of him rehearsing with a woman on the companys Facebook page. She said she contacted the companys board. When the company severed ties with Monk on Wednesday, Doucet said she felt relief. Its unfortunate that it took public pressure for Ballet Victoria to finally do the right thing, said Doucet. Doucet alleges in her statement of claim that she was a student at the Royal Winnipeg Ballets dance school, aged about 16 or 17, when she approached Monk to take photos for her portfolio, as it was common knowledge that the instructor would take headshots of students. She says he complained the straps of her bodysuit were ruining her neckline and alleges that he coerced her into removing the top half of the bodysuit, so her torso was naked. She was humiliated and overwhelmed by a deep sense of personal violation, the lawsuit alleges. None of the allegations has been proven in court and the class action has not been certified. The Canadian Press was not able to determine if a statement of defence has been filed in the case. Doucets lawyer, Margaret Waddell, said a court date is scheduled for the end of November to set a timetable for proceeding with the certification motion and she hopes to have it heard early in 2018. SHARE: LONDONKevin Spaceys publicist has announced that the actor is seeking treatment, as reports emerged that the London theatre where he had long been artistic director turned a blind eye to allegations of his sexual misconduct. After reports this week that Spacey had assaulted Anthony Rapp when the younger actor was 14, more men have come forward accusing the Oscar-winning actor of behaving inappropriately toward them. In a statement provided to the The New York Times on Wednesday, Spaceys publicist said: Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time. Read more: Kevin Spaceys award from International Emmys revoked Two more men accuse Kevin Spacey of sexual misconduct House of Cards cancelled amid Kevin Spacey sexual assault allegations Many of the accusations regarding Spacey took place when he was artistic director of the Old Vic theater in London, a position he held for 11 years, until 2015. The institution released a statement saying it was deeply dismayed by the allegations, adding that it had set up an email address for anyone who has worked there to make a confidential complaint about inappropriate behavior by Spacey or anyone else. Former employees of the Old Vic have come forward to say that the theater had known about Spaceys improper behavior at the time, but had turned a blind eye. We were all involved in keeping it quiet, a former employee told The Guardian newspaper. I witnessed him groping men many times in all sorts of different situations. A spokeswoman for the Old Vic refused repeated requests for an interview. On Sunday, the Star Trek: Discovery actor Rapp told BuzzFeed News that Spacey had invited him to a party at his apartment in 1986, where he had made unwanted sexual advances. Rapp said that after the other guests had left, Spacey, who appeared intoxicated, took him into his bedroom, and lay on top of him. In a statement that has been widely criticized, Spacey said he was horrified by the accusations and did not remember the incident. But if I did behave then as he describes, he said, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. The day after that apology, Netflix announced it was canceling the next season of House of Cards, in which Spacey starred. On Wednesday, another man came forward, saying that when he was a teenager, Spacey had lain on him while he was sleeping. Speaking via a video link in which his face was not visible, the man told the Victoria Derbyshire of the BBC that the episode had occurred in the 1980s in New York. The man said that when he was 17, Spacey had invited him to spend the weekend in New York. He said that Spacey had asked him to share his bed, but that he had declined and slept on the sofa. He then described waking up in the morning to find Spaceys arms around him. I was uncomfortable, at best, traumatized at worst, he said. In a statement posted on Facebook, Roberto Cavazos, a Mexican actor, said that Spacey routinely made unwanted advances toward young men. It seems that it only took a male under 30 to make Mr. Spacey feel free to touch us, he said. He also said that Spacey was often seen in the Old Vics bar, squeezing whoever caught his attention. Cavazos went on to describe his own experience with Spacey: I myself had a couple of unpleasant encounters with Spacey that were on the edge of being called harassment. SHARE: A 50-year-old woman detained by Canadian immigration officials in a maximum-security jail in Milton died on Monday, according to a brief news release from the Canada Border Services Agency. The agency, which has the power to arrest and jail non-citizens, would not disclose the womans identity, country of origin or her cause of death, as per its usual protocol. The woman is the 10th person to die in immigration detention in the last five years and at least the sixteenth since 2000. Immigration detainees are not criminally charged, but are detained on an indefinite basis, either because they have been deemed a danger to the public, are unlikely to show up for their deportation or because their identity is in doubt. The average length of detention last year was 19.5 days, but there is no limit to how long someone can stay in detention and some cases drag on for months or years. In Ontario, immigration detainees are held either at the Immigration Holding Centre, a minimum-security facility in Etobicoke exclusive to immigration detainees, or in maximum-security provincial jails, where they are treated as sentenced criminals and those awaiting trial are. An immigration detainees detention is reviewed every 30 days by the quasi-judicial Immigration and Refugee Board, but where the person is detained is at the sole discretion of CBSA officers and is not subject to any oversight. This aspect of the system was recently criticized by Superior Court Justice Alfred OMarra, who ordered longtime immigration detainee Ebrahim Toure, who had spent four-and-a-half years in a maximum-security jail, to be transferred immediately to the less-restrictive Immigration Holding Centre. The woman who died on Monday was detained at the Vanier Centre for Women, where she was apparently found in medical distress and immediately taken to hospital, according to the agencys release. She died shortly thereafter. The CBSA did not clarify whether she died at, or on the way to, the hospital, nor did it say to which hospital she was taken. It refused to answer the Stars questions on how long the woman had been detained, nor would it give the grounds for her detention. Canadas immigration detention system has come under increased scrutiny this year, in the wake of a number of high-profile court challenges. In April, Superior Court Justice Ian Nordheimer released Kashif Ali, who had spent seven years in maximum-security jail because immigration officials were unable to deport him, saying Canada could not purport to hold someone in detention forever. In August, Justice Edward Morgan ordered the immediate release of an immigration detainee whom, he said, was jailed for no real reason at all. The Liberal government has vowed to improve the system, saying it intends to reduce the use of maximum-security jails and expand alternatives to detention. The Liberals are detaining fewer people for immigration purposes than the Conservatives did under Stephen Harper, according to the most recent statistics But they have not made any policy changes to a system that has been widely criticized by human rights organizations. People keep dying in immigration holding centres and maximum-security prisons, said Nisha Toomey, spokeswoman for the End Immigration Detention Network. People will stop dying when the Canadian government stops leaving them there to die. This latest immigration detention death is the fourth since March 2016, when Melkioro Gahunga and Francisco Astorga both died in a single week. Gahunga, a 64-year-old Burundian refugee, reportedly hanged himself at the Toronto East Detention Centre, while Astorga, a 39-year-old Chilean migrant, died after overdosing on fentanyl and methamphetamine, according to a coroners inquest into his death. A 24-year-old man died at the Edmonton Remand Centre in May 2016. His identity, country of origin and cause of death have never been disclosed. Correction November 3, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version to update an incorrect photo caption that mistakenly said Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale was the man seen on the right. SHARE: WINNIPEGThe Manitoba government has voted down an opposition attempt to expand human rights protection to people who are overweight. Tory caucus members defeated a private members bill today from Liberal Jon Gerrard, which would have broadened the provinces human rights code to ban discrimination based on physical size or weight. Gerrard said overweight people need protection because many have been bullied, shamed and passed over for promotions. But Tory legislature members criticized Gerrards bill as too vague and difficult to enforce. Manitobas human rights code currently bans discrimination on grounds such as age, gender, religion and disability. Across Canada, there have been human rights commission rulings in favour of obese people, but those cases have involved people considered disabled by their obesity. Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAIndigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott is calling for an emergency meeting early next year on Indigenous child welfare, declaring that the current situation resembles the horrors of Canadas residential school system that forcibly removed young Indigenous people from their families and communities. Philpott, who fired off a letter this week to her provincial and territorial counterparts requesting their attendance at the meeting, said the rate at which Canada is apprehending Indigenous kids is among the highest in the world. To me, this is arguably the most pressing priority of my new department, Philpott said in an interview. There is no cohesive plan to examine how to get children back into Indigenous communities, she said, suggesting it is necessary to get everyone together who has a role to play, including First Nations, Metis and Inuit leaders, child and family services agencies and groups such as the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. The societys executive director, Cindy Blackstock, along with the Assembly of First Nations, has been engaged in a battle spanning more than a decade on the underfunding on child welfare services for First Nations children. The AFN held a day of action on Thursday, including a demonstration on Parliament Hill, to urge Ottawa to immediately and fully implement a 2016 decision from the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal stemming from this fight. There is still . . . theres no question, a gap in funding levels, AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde said at a press conference following the rally. We are going to keep coming back to that. Bellegarde, who welcomed next years emergency meeting on child welfare, also pointed to an NDP motion that passed unanimously in the House of Commons one year ago, calling for an immediate injection of $155 million to ensure the government complies with the tribunals findings. While the provinces and territories have a role to play, he stressed that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure adequate resources for children on reserve. Philpott said the government is working to comply with the tribunal findings but conceded Ottawa has a huge responsibility to tackle outstanding problems with Indigenous child welfare. Still, she insisted Ottawa is working to turn the tide. We know that the federal government needs to step up and be a real partner in this work, Philpott said in the letter to the provinces and territories. It is time that we do more and that we do it faster. While lots of works remains to be done, Philpott has pointed out that the government has approved more than 19,700 cases since 2016 under whats known as Jordans principle a policy aimed at ensuring First Nations children can get services without getting caught in red tape. Philpott said she spoke last week with Sen. Murray Sinclair, who led the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions examination into the residential school legacy. He told her its no coincidence provinces with the highest rates of children in foster care generally are the same provinces that had the highest rates of residential schools. Cora Morgan, a family advocate with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said Thursday the upcoming emergency meeting will be critically important, noting that the vast majority of children in the foster system in her province are Indigenous. We have to debunk that mainstream understanding that when these children are taken they are put into these loving, caring environments, she said. Thats far from the reality . . . All these children want to go home. Read more about: SHARE: OTTAWAThe constitutional guarantee of aboriginal rights does not give Indigenous groups the right of a veto over land development in the name of religious freedom, says the countrys top court. In a landmark decision on how courts should protect not only Indigenous religious beliefs, but all religious beliefs, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday that a British Columbia First Nation, the Ktunaxa people, could not block the development of a ski resort in the Jumbo Valley because they fear the Grizzly Bear Spirit they worship would depart. The high court says the constitutions religious freedom guarantee protects Canadians freedom to hold beliefs and to practice a faith, but does not require the state to protect what they believe in the object of beliefs or the spiritual focal point of worship, such as Grizzly Bear Spirit. The states duty is limited to protecting a persons the ability to manifest religious beliefs in worship and practice, or by teaching and dissemination, wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justice Malcolm Rowe. The high court said the provincial governments decision to approve the ski resort and efforts over two decades to accommodate the religious beliefs and practices of the Ktunaxa people were reasonable, and entitled to deference by the courts. Tom Oberti, the ski resort designer, planner and project manager, said in an interview the owners fully intend to kick start the development again though it has been on hold since the province decided its environmental certificate had expired in 2015. Whether the owners challenge that in order to proceed with the planned 6,500-bed resort or go with a smaller 2,000-bed resort that doesnt require the certificate is up in the air, he said. But Oberti said the project still has tremendous value because it is so difficult in B.C. to gain approval for mountain resort destinations. The case was a precedent-setting clash of rights the freedom of religious belief and aboriginal rights against land development in the broad public interest. But the high court said the courts must tread carefully when deciding such cases, and not overreach. The decision was 9-0, written mainly by McLachlin and Rowe. Justices Michael Moldaver and Suzanne Cote wrote separate reasons that concluded the developments approval did infringe the religious freedom of the First Nations group. Yet they agreed the province had acted reasonably in its limitation on those rights. The court didnt break new ground on the duty of government to consult and accommodate aboriginal rights, however it set new limits on what the religious freedom guarantee in the Charter really means. Ktunaxa Nation representatives were not immediately available for reaction, the councils office said. Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde said the decision is a blow to the Ktunaxa and shows a lack of awareness and understanding from the Supreme Court about their world view. Bellegarde said now that the judicial branch has said one thing about the development, its up to the executive and the legislative branch if theyre really true about nation-to-nation reconciliation to truly listen to the Ktunaxas concerns. New Democrat MP Wayne Stetski, whose constituency includes the Ktunaxa, told the Star in an interview the majority of my constituents do not support the project and neither does he. I dont think we need another downhill ski area in my riding we have 10 already if I remember the count so from my perspective, this area is really important to the Ktunaxa; Id like to see it stay in its natural state, said Stetski. The Ktunaxa (pronounced TeNaHa) Nation Council, representing people whose traditional territorial claim straddled the Canada-U.S. border, opposed a proposal by Jumbo Glacier Resorts. The company wanted to build a year-round overnight ski resort in the Jumbo Valley, about 55 kilometres west of Invermere, with lifts to glacier runs that were previously reachable via helicopter a $900 million project that would create up to 800 permanent direct jobs. The company has pushed back against critics including those in a documentary that airs on Netflix. It says the area is not a pristine wilderness, but is centered on an old sawmill site. It said the closest First Nation, the Shuswap Indian Band, lives 55 kilometres from the project and was consistently supportive of the project, while the Ktunaxa Nation, located approximately 188 kilometres away from the project, has been vociferously opposed. The company said the Ktunaxa were involved since the beginning in 1991 and did not bring the notion of spiritual values to the table until 2009 when one elder recalled its existence. The company says grizzly bear hunting is allowed in the project area, and since the project was first proposed, more than 70 grizzly bears have been killed in the area for sport. The company also claims Ktunaxa support the grizzly bear hunt and are involved in guide outfitting. The high court said throughout two decades of negotiations and consultations, the province tried to accommodate the Indigenous concerns, but consultations are a two-way street. When the Ktunaxa finally asserted in 2009 what the court called a novel claim that development must be barred altogether to protect the presence of the Grizzly Bear Spirit and the subjective spiritual meaning they derive from it the court said the Ktunaxa got it wrong. This novel claim that would extend [the Charters religious freedom guarantee] beyond its scope and would put deeply held personal beliefs under judicial scrutiny, the court wrote. McLachlin and Rowe said the B.C. government had met its duty to consult and accommodate the First Nations concerns. The government reduced the resort development area by 60 per cent, had ordered on-site environmental monitors, allowed for continued use of the area for traditional practices and measures designed to reduce the impact of the development on grizzly bears, the court said. Moreover, the government rejected development on the lower Jumbo Creek area and a ski lift on the west side of the valley because of perceived greater visitation by grizzly bears in these areas. It established a wildlife management area and offered to continue to protect the grizzly bear population through law and policies. There is no guarantee that, in the end, the specific accommodation sought will be warranted or possible, the ruling says. The ultimate obligation is that the Crown act honourably. The high court noted that the Shuswap, had been involved in the early negotiations and agreed their concerns were met, and the Ktunaxas later attempts to completely bar the development sought effectively to ask the courts in the guise of judicial review of an administrative decision, to pronounce on the validity of their claim to a sacred site and associated spiritual practices. While Section 35 of the Canadian constitution guarantees potential rights embedded in as-yet unproven Aboriginal claims, those rights cannot be established via a court sitting in judicial review of an administrative decision, McLachlin and Rowe wrote. Aboriginal rights must be proven by tested evidence. Justices Moldaver and Cote agreed the minister had balanced his statutory obligations with the aboriginal groups claim, however they disagreed that the Ktunaxas religious freedom wasnt infringed. The result, Moldaver wrote, is that the development of the ski resort would desecrate the area the Ktunaxa call Qatmuk and cause Grizzly Bear Spirit to leave, thus severing the Ktunaxas connection to the land. As a result the Ktunaxa would no longer receive spiritual guidance and assistance from Grizzly Bear Spirit. All songs, rituals, and ceremonies associated with Grizzly Bear Spirit would become meaningless, he wrote. Read more: Controversial B.C. resort to appeal ministers decision Read more about: SHARE: Police have arrested a suspect after a prank call about an armed hostage-taking that shut down a section of King St. W. for about three hours last week. Emergency Task Force officers surrounded the 365 Dispensary and the Underground Garage, at the southwest corner of King St. W. and Blue Jays Way, on Oct. 26 following the call. When police entered the building, they found it empty. Police then released security camera images of a person they suspected had falsely reported the armed hostage-taking from a payphone near Spadina Ave. and Cecil St. Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook said police received a tip about the mans whereabouts and he was arrested without incident around midday Wednesday. She said he was arrested in the downtown core close enough to the King St. W. and Blue Jays Way area. There is enough evidence to charge him but the specifics of his motive arent known, said Douglas-Cook. Gregory Frank Goodridge, 54, of Toronto was charged with public mischief. SHARE: For three years running, Haute Goat farm has had a booth selling their goat milk-based products at the Royal Winter Fair. This year, however, the small family run farm is looking to create a new adorable world record in goat yoga. The unconventional practice merges goats and downward dog into one bizarre, entertaining experience. Attendees can expect to be nuzzled, jumped on and just generally bothered by the curious animals during an otherwise normal yoga session. Despite this, the classes are notably therapeutic and offer stress relief to yogis. While originally aiming for 150 participants to set the record, organizers found huge demand for the one-night only event at the Royal Winter Fair which begins Friday and runs until Nov. 12. There are now about 200 people registered and the Guinness Book of World Records is scheduled to be onsite videotaping the half-hour event Friday at 6 p.m. Debbie Nightingale, who owns Port Hope-based Haute Goat with her husband Shain Jaffe, said the record will be the first of its kind. Nightingale told the Star that theyve been running goat yoga on their farm for some time, but were invited by the fair to host goat yoga in a big way this year. She said the classes have all the benefits of yoga in general, and then some. Nightingale described the sessions as joyful, saying that the connections made with the goats is more sublime than yoga on its own. Class attendees leave excited about their interactions with the goats, often comparing notes after class about the goats and their behaviour. Though initially expecting that yoga teachers would be upset by disruptive kids, Nightingale was pleasantly surprised to find that the goats dont seem to interfere with the class. Sally Staples, one of the yogis who will be leading Fridays event, has even incorporated the goats behaviour into the classes. While the goat yoga concept isnt new, there is a particular bond to be found in goats and their mannerisms. Nightingale described the Nigerian Dwarf goats on the Haute Goat farm as curious, highly intelligent creatures. And, Nightingale said, theyre just plain more fun than other types of goats. The best time to enjoy goat yoga is during baby season, as the kids leap and bound all over you, Nightingale said. The adults are more mindful of their surroundings, opting to observe participants and see whats going on around them unless there is the promise of food. While occasionally attendees get stepped on, Nightingale assured the Star that this isnt painful, as the Nigerian Dwarf is a smaller breed. The farm first acquired their goats in 2009, and wanted to share the experience with others. Haute Goat opened its doors to the public and now hosts property tours and sells goat milk-based products, such as their popular goat milk caramel corn. SHARE: Thanks to the kindness of a Toronto man, a woman has been reunited with the father she barely knew following an anguishing, 30-year separation. Cuban-native Abelino Corrales met the love of his life a Polish woman named Danuta Tarnawa at a textile factory in communist-ruled former Czechoslovakia around 1985, while he was was there on a four-year work contract. A year later, Tarnawa gave birth to their daughter; they named her Karolina. Karolina was just two years old when Corrales, a mechanic, was forced to return home to Cuba. He was in Czechoslovakia on a work contract between the two communist-ruled countries, and it had expired. Heartbroken, Corrales returned to Cuba and Tarnawa took Karolina back to Poland, where she received a cold reception from her family, who did not approve of a child out of wedlock. Still, the couple remained deeply in love and communicated through secret letters transmitted by a friend. But after 14 years of communication, the letters to Corrales abruptly stopped. Last November, about 30 years after the couples separation, a Toronto man, Andrzej Rozbicki, was at a secluded resort in Santiago de Cuba, where he struck up a conversation with a waiter at the bar. For the waiter, Orlando Corrales, the casual chat quickly struck some chords. After hearing that the Toronto man he was speaking with was Polish, and coincidentally, that his wifes name was also Danuta and his daughters name is Anna-Karolina, he told him the story of his brother, Abelino Corrales. He said My brother, who is 56 right now, never married. Over 30 years, he is looking through the (embassy), Red Cross organization, whatever (else), said Rozbicki, a Polish-Canadian orchestra director and retired Toronto music teacher. He wakes up in the night just thinking that somewhere in the world, I have a daughter. Hearing this, Rozbicki, founder of Toronto-based Celebrity Symphony Orchestra, decided he could use his strong ties to the Polish community here and abroad to help Corrales find out what had happened to his family. Though the 69-year-old Rozbicki gives credit to his intense detective work for about six weeks, he dedicated about five hours a day to the quest he said it was really a string of fortuitous events that led him to Karolina. A handwritten note from Corrales, containing scant and partially incorrect information, was all he had to go on in his search for two women in Polands population of more than 38 million. He knew Danuta Tarnawa lived in a village named Poremba. But there are about 30 villages named Poremba in Poland, and it took Rozbicki endless hours on Google maps Street View to find the right house number. Rozbicki then tracked down the local priest late on Christmas Day, thinking he might know the family. As they were chatting, the priest realized that his sister had attended a concert Rozbicki had conducted in Poland a few months earlier. It was, Rozbicki said, another coincidence, another bond. Just after New Years Eve in 2017, the priest got back in touch with Rozbicki and gave him the phone number of Karolinas aunt, her mothers sister. She just happened to be in Poland for Christmas, picked up Rozbickis call, and gave him Karolinas phone number. Because of the tense nature of the family relations, Rozbicki waited about an hour before calling Karolina, hoping her aunt would prepare her for the call. But she hadnt. So when Karolina picked up the phone while working at the supermarket in her town, she was shocked. I was completely convinced that (my father) is not looking for me anymore, that history has finished, that he went back to Cuba, Karolina, 32, told the Star through translators in a meeting at the Consulate General of Poland this week. I was convinced that he had a family down there, that hed gone on with his life and he had forgotten all about me, she said. She was eager to reconnect with him. Rozbicki facilitated Karolinas trip to Toronto the first time she had ever crossed the Atlantic ahead of their journey to Cuba on Wednesday. After speaking to Karolina for the first time, he immediately told Corrales he had found his daughter. I promised him Im going to find his daughter. Im happy because Im going to keep my promise, he said. But Rozbicki had to report something tragic to Corrales as well: Karolinas mother, Danuta Tarnawa, had died of cancer 14 years after the separation, which was why the letters stopped. Like Corrales, she never married. Though her whole village knew her father was Cuban, Karolina said her mother never spoke of Corrales because it was taboo there had been no church blessing, no official marriage, and Karolinas youth was a difficult one after her mothers death. She occupied herself with school, and had no support from her mothers family, she said. And then the phone call from Rozbicki changed her life. My second life started a year ago, she said. It was a small miracle. It opened the borders of my mind. I never had a father, and all of a sudden, I found out that I have a father, that somebody needs me. The father and daughter connected over Skype early this week through Rozbicki. They both cried for most of the conversation, Karolina said although Corrales did manage to contain his tears long enough to say, Im your father, Karolinka, a special nickname that only her family members knew. On Wednesday, Karolina, along with Rozbicki and his wife, left Toronto for Cuba to reunite with her long-lost father. Rozbicki expects they will be greeted by a large party from all the locals who have heard Karolinas story. Im learning how to have a father, and its a beautiful feeling, Karolina said. SHARE: The northbound and southbound lanes of Highway 400 near Bradford have reopened following a fatal collision that left three people dead. The highway was closed for more than 24 hours after the explosion and fire caused by tanker trucks consumed the roadways and took almost 3 hours to tame. Ontario Provincial Police said the multi-vehicle collision late Tuesday night involved at least 14 vehicles, including two fuel tankers and three transport trucks. A small, initial collision that stalled the highway traffic just up the road may have led to the chain reaction of the massive collision, police said. It is absolutely a devastating scene. It is something Ive never seen in my career, said Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, adding that there was twisted metal and unrecognizable debris scattered across the highway. Schmidt said several people were taken to hospital. Their injuries are considered non-life threatening. Premier Kathleen Wynne expressed her condolences to the victims families, calling the accident a horrible, horrible tragedy. We will in the aftermath of this collision, obviously we will look at what happened, we will be advised on whether theres more that could have been done to prevent such a crash, she said. The force said it has responded to more than 5,000 collisions this year, with 67 people killed. In the two previous years, OPP tracked 13,668 crashes involving commercial transport trucks that killed a total of 155 people. The official cause of the crash is still being investigated by police. With files from Rob Ferguson, Robert Benzie and Canadian Press. SHARE: A class-action lawsuit is not the best way for the thousands of families across Canada affected by Motherisks flawed drug and alcohol testing to fight for compensation in court, a Toronto judge has ruled. In his decision not to certify a proposed national class-action lawsuit related to the litany of problems uncovered at the Hospital for Sick Childrens Motherisk lab, Superior Court Justice Paul Perell said that because of the intensely individualistic nature of the claims, individual lawsuits would be more efficient and expeditious. The significant damages are caused not by the common unreliability of the tests, but by an individuals test being wrong with sometimes tragic consequences, he said. Class members should not suffer the disappointment of a class action that will not take them far enough on the path to substantive justice. Read more: Fallout from Motherisks flawed tests a national tragedy Whats ailing SickKids? How Torontos world-class childrens hospital missed the warning signs New rules will require forensic labs to be accredited Perell noted that there are already 328 named plaintiffs pursuing claims outside of the class-action lawsuit. The lawyers for the plaintiff said Thursday they plan to appeal the decision to Divisional Court. The main thrust of the decision, that these individuals should proceed to soldier on in individual cases, we fundamentally disagree with, lawyer Jody Brown said. It would be uneconomical to have thousands of (people) litigating on the same issues and it would deny people access to the courts. Brown said they also strongly disagree with Perells finding on punitive damages, which the plaintiff had asked him to certify on top of ordinary compensation, arguing that the defendants who include Sick Kids, Motherisk founder Dr. Gideon Koren and former lab manager Joey Gareri prioritized business interests over providing reliable test results. Perell said: However egregious the conduct of Dr. Koren and Mr. Gareri in increasing the Hospitals not-for-profit revenues and however egregious the failure of the administration of the hospital to supervise its Motherisk laboratory, and, however tragic and heartbreaking the outcomes in individual cases, a punitive award would ultimately not be visited on the defendants but rather would be inflicted on the sick children at the hospital. But Brown said no entity should be immune from punitive damages simply because they do good work outside of the bounds of a court case. Perells ruling underscores the complexity of a national tragedy with no easy fix that was the product of failings across multiple systems, including the hospital, child protection and the courts, as the Star has reported. Sick Kids made millions from Motherisks hair-strand tests, which influenced criminal cases, private custody fights and thousands of child protection decisions, ranging from parents who briefly came under the scrutiny of a child welfare agency to cases where children were removed permanently. The proposed class-action sought compensation for the estimated 10,000 individuals who produced a positive Motherisk test from 2005 to 2015, the period during which a government-commissioned review deemed the labs testing to be inadequate and unreliable for use in legal proceedings. If it were certified, the class-action lawsuit would have included a common issues trial, where issues shared across the class could be decided, followed by individual issues trials, where the unique circumstances in individual cases could be determined. But even if the plaintiff in this case proved in a common issues trial that there was a class-wide breach of duty of care, the most substantive issues whether Motherisks tests were unreliable, false and adversely influential to the outcome of the individuals court proceedings would still have to be decided individually, Perell said. This truth about the causation of the harm explains why the Motherisk Commission, which is probing affected child protection files in Ontario, established a process to pinpoint cases where the testing had a significant impact on the outcome, he said. The Motherisk Commission recognized that an unreliable test that did not influence the result of the court proceedings does not occasion a harm for which there might be compensatory damages, he said. Lawyer Darryl Cruz, who represents Koren, said Perell made the right decision. The issues are simply too individualized to be decided across the entire population of people who were tested at Motherisk and this decision will allow issues to be litigated fairly through the regular court process, he said. Queens Park appointed retired judge Susan Lang to probe Motherisk in late 2014 after a Star investigation exposed questions about the reliability of the labs hair tests. Sick Kids initially defended the reliability of Motherisks testing, but closed the lab in the spring of 2015 after learning it had been misled about Motherisks international proficiency testing results. Sick Kids CEO Michael Apkon issued a public apology in October 2015. Koren retired in June of 2015, and is now working in Israel. Led by retired judge Judy Beaman, the Motherisk Commission has so far identified 50 cases where Motherisk testing had a significant impact on decisions to remove children from their families. Rachel Mendleson can be reached at rmendleson@thestar.ca. Read more about: SHARE: Staff and students at Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts have had to endure the deaths of three of their own in the span of a month. This triple tragedy has brought a sombre and numb feeling to the building, said Wexfords principal Tom Lazarou. While principals and teachers arent specifically trained to help students process grief, Lazarou said, they can do their part by listening. Wexfords first loss was Susan Longuet, a guidance counsellor for 11 years, who died of cancer on Sept. 16. She did things for students away from Wexford and we had no idea. Its a huge loss, said Lazarou, adding that she would help students from home, supporting them with their plans for the future. Two weeks later, Nicole Sutton, a French teacher who had been at Wexford for 16 years, died of natural causes, according to the principal. It shocked us a great deal because she was very young and its tragic; she worked Friday and she passed away Saturday, he said. The biggest shock for students was 15-year-old Isaiah Witt, who died after being stabbed in East York on Oct. 7. Mohamad Ayoub, 15, couldnt sleep the night he found out his friend died. I didnt believe it, Ayoub said. If hed see someone lonely hed go up and ask to be friends. He was just so nice. After hearing about Witts death, students at Wexford began to wonder who would be next. I was telling my parents, 'if anyone else dies Im leaving the school', Ayoub said. But Lazarou assures the community that students are safest in school with their peers and teachers. Wexford turned to the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) for assistance to help students deal with the three losses. According to TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird, the board has 115 social workers who can aid staff and students. Some issues may only require one counsellor, while issues affecting a large number of students may require multiple counsellors, Bird said. A team of four grief counsellors was brought to Wexford for two days. The biggest part of a loss is to go through the process and deal with it and be more resilient about it, Lazarou said. Lazarou is positive the school will get through this. Teachers are resuming classes as normal and students are back to learning. I think what Ive realized through this is that Im human too, he said. SHARE: A coalition of unions is using Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown own campaign commercial in a new attack ad against him. Working Families funded by public- and private-sector unions released its latest TV spot Thursday, entitled Can You Believe Patrick Brown? The 30-second commercial hacks Browns slick ad from earlier this year that was designed to showcase the Tories moderate direction. It doesnt matter who you are; it doesnt matter where youre from; it doesnt matter who you love, says Brown, as a Working Families graphic splashes across the screen reminding viewers that Patrick Brown Opposed Marriage Equality as a Conservative MP in Ottawa. It doesnt matter if you belong to a union, he says, as the words Patrick Brown Voted To Restrict Unions are superimposed over his photograph. It doesnt matter how much you make, Brown intones, as Patrick Brown Wants Minimum-Wage Hike Delayed appears on screen, a reference to his concerns over the $11.60 hourly wage jumping to $14 in January and $15 in 2019. It doesnt matter where you worship, he continues, as Patrick Brown Supported A Burka Ban is emblazoned across footage of him at a temple and marching with Sikhs in the Khalsa Day parade. You have a home in the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, the PC leader concludes. Its the second ad targetting Brown by Working Families, an influential coalition that has helped swing the last four Ontario elections to the Liberals with attack ads against the Tories. With voters headed to the polls on June 7, 2018, the unions have been hammering the Tory leader on his voting record as an MP in former prime minister Stephen Harpers government between 2006 and 2015. Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton) suggested Working Families is just doing the Liberal premiers bidding. Life is good for Kathleen Wynnes well-connected friends and theyll do and say anything to keep it that way, said MacLeod, who has also been critical of Working Ontario Women, a similar anti-Tory group bankrolled by the Service Employees International Union. Last week, Working Families depicted Brown as a cartoon weathervane atop the legislative assembly whose views on major issues constantly change. Patrick Brown will say anything to get elected. He now says hes pro-choice, but when it counted Patrick Brown had a 100 per cent pro-life voting record, said the announcer. He now says he supports equal marriage, but when it counted he voted against it, he continued. He now says he welcomes labour into his party, but when it counted his votes hurt working people. When it counts for us, Patrick Brown cant be counted on. He just blows with the winds of political opportunity. Read more about: SHARE: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIAVisitors to Uluru, a giant sandstone slab jutting from the central Australian desert, have for decades ignored a sign at the rocks base that politely reads: Please dont climb. On Wednesday, the board members of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which manages the popular site also known as Ayers Rock, said they would soon stop requesting that hikers respect the landmark. Instead, they will demand it. Beginning in 2019, climbing Uluru, which is considered sacred to the regions Indigenous Anangu people, will be banned, the board said. Read more: Australian government rejects proposal for body to represent Indigenous people It is an extremely important place, said Sammy Wilson, an Indigenous community representative who sits on the parks board and is what is known as a traditional owner. Uluru, he said, is not a theme park like Disneyland. Climbing the 347-metre-tall rock in Australias Northern Territory will be banned as of Oct. 26, 2019, a historically significant date for the site. On that day in 1985, the government returned ownership of Uluru to the Anangu people. As part of that agreement, the Anangu lease the site back to the government, and the two parties jointly manage it. Uluru has, for many in Australia, come to symbolize the struggle for Indigenous rights. Mr. Wilson said some people in the government wanted to keep the rock open to hikers, but its not their law that lies in this land. Traditional owners do not climb Uluru out of respect, and they worry that hiking will damage the stone. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There has been opposition to the climbing ban. Last year, Adam Giles, a politician with an Indigenous heritage who was then the Northern Territory chief minister, called the idea ludicrous. But Sally Barnes, Australias director of national parks, said it was a significant moment for all Australians that marks a new chapter in our history. It clearly says we put country and culture first when managing this place for all Australians and our visitors from around the world, she said on Wednesday. About 250,000 people visit Uluru every year, according to the parks website. In recent years, the number of visitors wishing to climb the rock has dropped significantly, to less than 20 per cent, according to Ms. Barnes. Tour operators now offer alternatives to climbing Uluru, including camel tours around its base. The best view of Uluru is from the bottom, one social media user said on Wednesday. SHARE: NEW YORKSayfullo Saipov sped a rented truck down nearly a mile of a Hudson River bike path on Tuesday afternoon, crushing eight people to death and injuring 11 more, before crashing in front of Stuyvesant High School in Tribeca. Then he began to run. But at Chambers St., there was Officer Ryan Nash. Nash fired nine shots at Saipov, ending the worst terrorist attack in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. The police commissioner, James P. ONeill, said Tuesday that one bullet struck Saipov in his abdomen. Saipov, who police say is responsible for the attack, was brandishing two weapons, which turned out to be a pellet gun and paintball gun. Read more: Suspect in New York City truck attack charged with terrorism They went to New York to celebrate their 30-year high school reunion. Five were killed in Tuesdays bike path attack Mangled school bus, bikes and bodies everywhere in the aftermath of New York City attack To NYPD Officer Ryan Nash-thank you for your bravery & quick action in stopping yesterdays terrorist attack, William J. Bratton, a former commissioner of the New York Police Department, wrote on Twitter. Truly one of New Yorks Finest. In a news conference on Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had spoken to Nash since the attack. He is a good young man; he was very humble about what he did, but what he did was extraordinary, the mayor said. And it gave people such faith and such appreciation in our police force. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo joined in the praise, calling the officer talented and brave. Nash is a five-year veteran of the force, working day tours in the First Precinct in Lower Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the details of Tuesdays incident. He was one of four officers responding to a call from Stuyvesant High School at 345 Chambers St. on Tuesday afternoon. Nash and his partner, Officer John Hasiotis, had been summoned to help with a student who was in the nurses office and had indicated that he wanted to kill himself. Two other officers had been called as backup. Outside, Saipovs vehicular rampage was ending with a crash at Chambers St. and West St., where he slammed his white rental truck into a yellow school bus and fled into the streets. The four officers rushed out of the school, turning east toward the highway and confronting Saipov on the street. He had what appeared to be pistols in each hand and turned toward the officers as they approached. Nash was the closest, and fired nine times from his department-issued service gun. When Saipov dropped to the pavement, a civilian who had previously attempted to tackle the suspect as he was getting out of the rented truck approached the wounded man, who was still clutching the two weapons. The civilian kicked the guns out of Saipovs hands. Saipov, an Uzbeki immigrant and sometime Uber driver living in Paterson, N.J., was hospitalized at Bellevue Hospital Center, police said. SHARE: FORT BRAGG, N.C.A military judge on Thursday began deliberating the punishment for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl after defence attorneys asked for no prison time while prosecutors sought more than a decade behind bars. Army Col. Jeffery Nance said he planned to spend the afternoon considering evidence and would open court again Friday morning to continue deliberating then. It wasnt clear when he would deliver the sentence. Bergdahl faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy for walking off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. In closing arguments, prosecutors asked for a sentence of 14 years in prison, citing serious wounds to service members who looked for Bergdahl. Sgt. Bergdahl does not have a monopoly on suffering as a result of his choices, said Maj. Justin Oshana, a prosecutor. Contrasting Bergdahl to the wounded searchers, he added, The difference is all the suffering stems from his choice. But defence attorneys argued Bergdahl already suffered enough confinement during five years of brutal captivity by Taliban allies. They asked the judge to give their client a dishonourable discharge and no prison time. Their argument for leniency also cited harsh campaign-trail criticism by Donald Trump and Bergdahls mental disorders. Justice is not rescuing Sgt. Bergdahl from his Taliban captors ... only to place him in a cell, said Capt. Nina Banks, one of his defence attorneys. Bergdahl pleaded guilty Oct. 16. The judge has wide discretion on sentencing because Bergdahl didnt strike a deal with prosecutors to limit his punishment. A bad conduct or dishonourable discharge would deprive Bergdahl of most or all his veterans benefits. The 31-year-old soldier from Hailey, Idaho, was brought home by President Barack Obama in 2014 in a swap for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Obama said at the time the U.S. does not leave its service members on the battlefield. Republicans roundly criticized Obama, and Donald Trump went further while campaigning for president, repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor who deserved serious punishment. Read more: Bowe Bergdahl has given U.S. a gold mine of intelligence, agents testify In court, Bowe Bergdahl gives emotional apology to soldiers who were hurt looking for him At Bowe Bergdahls sentencing, Navy SEAL recalls firefight and grave injury during search During the multiday sentencing hearing, Bergdahl himself testified that he was sorry for the wounds suffered by searchers. He also described brutal beatings by his captors, illness brought on by squalid conditions and maddening periods of isolation. A psychiatrist testified that his decision to leave his post was influenced by a schizophrenia-like condition called schizotypal personality disorder that made it hard to understand consequences of his actions, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder brought on partly by a difficult childhood. On Thursday, prosecutors cited Bergdahls own words to argue against the idea that his thinking was clouded, displaying on a courtroom monitor quotes from an initial investigation after he returned to the U.S. Bergdahl, who has said he walked off to cause alarm draw attention to problems with his unit, described to an investigating officer how he envisioned the missing soldier alert unfolding. Bergdahl had said that the call goes all the way up to Army command, it goes to Air Force, it goes to Marines. ... It goes to every high point and everybody finds out about it. Banks countered that even though Bergdahls decision was influenced by mental illness, he now takes responsibility and stands before this court with a remorseful heart. SHARE: NAIROBI, KENYADistraught Kenyan schoolgirls huddled against an alleyway wall, trapped between stone-throwing protesters and police wielding clubs and firing tear gas in an outbreak of violence following Kenyas disputed election that left national divisions more entrenched. The girls scrambled to safety in a scene that captured the anguish of a flawed democracy facing protracted pressures unless Kenyas rival camps can somehow accommodate. The question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society of this leading East African nation will respond is a bellwether for the continent, where democracy evolves in some places and authoritarianism takes root in others. This is not just about Kenya, said Murithi Mutiga, a Nairobi-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. Its about the idea of moving toward greater and greater political competition and freedom and against those that say, Lets privilege economic development and forget political liberalism for now. Read more: Kenya Supreme Court nixed election result after commission refused to allow investigation, judges say Kenya election commissioner resigns, says new vote cannot be fair President Uhuru Kenyatta wins re-run election in Kenya Kenya is in a lull after a bruising election cycle in which an Aug. 8 vote was nullified by the Supreme Court because of flaws, and an Oct. 26 repeat vote was boycotted by opposition leader Raila Odinga. President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner both times. While most of the country of 45 million was calm, some areas were hit by ethnic tensions, violent protests, sporadic arson and looting and deadly police gunfire during clashes. Police put the death toll at 19; human rights groups say it is more than 70. We are tired of suffering in Kenya, a woman nicknamed Mama Wetu (Our Mother in Swahili) said after the clash Monday that ensnared the schoolgirls in Kawangware, a Nairobi slum of shacks and dirt paths. At one point, protesters positioned themselves behind some of the girls, using them as a shield, witnesses said. Such a scene gives the impression that Kenya is turning on itself, undermining its status as a regional economic hub, a popular tourist destination and an oasis of stability in the conflict-prone Horn of Africa region. Yet, despite the ethnic allegiances and patronage systems that handcuff Kenyan democracy, the country has avoided a repeat of the ethnic-fueled violence after the 2007 election that killed more than 1,000 people. That is partly thanks to a 2010 constitution whose human rights provisions are among the most progressive in the world, instilling some faith among Kenyans that institutions could peacefully resolve grievances. The Supreme Court, the constitutions guardian, scrapped the August presidential election after a petition from Odinga, and is likely to again consider complaints about alleged irregularities in last weeks election. Yet the Oct. 24 shooting of the police driver of a Supreme Court judge, and the failure of the court to muster a quorum the next day to consider a petition to postpone the Oct. 26 election, suggest possible efforts to intimidate the judiciary so recently seen as willing to assert its independence from political pressure. The nullification of Kenyas August vote was the first time a court in Africa had overturned a presidential election. The effects are showing up elsewhere on the continent. On Wednesday, Liberias Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to preparations for a runoff presidential election next week as it awaits a hearing on alleged voting irregularities. The possibility that Kenyas Supreme Court could nullify the second presidential election this year and order a third vote threatens a Kafkaesque situation where we have elections for years and years, said Martin Kimani, a presidential envoy and head of a government task force on counter-terrorism. We are testing our institutions and learning about their strengths and weaknesses, Kimani said. One commentator wrote in The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper, that the constitution does not cushion us against the tyranny of large ethnic groups that form alliances, lord it over smaller groups and share the spoils of power with friends, family and other supporters. In Kenya, it is a case of winner-takes-it-all, wrote Mohamed Guleid, a former county deputy governor in the opposition. He said the situation can neither be resolved by an election nor by the courts, but by leaders who go beyond political affiliations to form an inclusive government. For now, neither side is reaching out to the other. The 56-year-old president, who by law cannot run for a third term, has denounced the politics of darkness in a slap at Odinga. The 72-year-old opposition leader has promised peaceful protests and wants a new election. Kenyatta, an ethnic Kikuyu, and Odinga, a Luo, also faced off in a disputed 2013 election. Their fathers were political allies and then rivals after Kenyas independence from Britain in 1963. Theres very little ideological daylight between them, said Mutiga, the International Crisis Group analyst. Once they exit the political scene, he said, Kenyas tensions might dial down a bit. SHARE: WASHINGTONWith fanfare and a White House kickoff, House Republicans unfurled a broad tax-overhaul plan Thursday that would touch virtually all Americans and the economys every corner, mingling sharply lower rates for corporations and reduced personal taxes for many with fewer deductions for homebuyers and families with steep medical bills. The measure, which would be the most extensive rewrite of the nations tax code in three decades, is the product of a party that faces increasing pressure to produce a marquee legislative victory of some sort before next years elections. GOP leaders touted the plan as a sparkplug for the economy and a boon to the middle class and christened it the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. We are working to give the American people a giant tax cut for Christmas, U.S. President Donald Trump said in the Oval Office. The measure, he said, will also be tax reform, and it will create jobs. Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump It would also increase the national debt, a problem for some Republicans. And Democrats attacked the proposal as the GOPs latest bonanza for the rich, with a phase-out of the inheritance tax and repeal of the alternative minimum tax on the highest earners certain to help Trump and members of his family and Cabinet, among others. And there was enough discontent among Republicans and business groups to leave the legislations fate uncertain in a journey through Congress that leaders hope will deposit a landmark bill on Trumps desk by years end. Underscoring problems ahead, some Republicans from high-tax Northeastern states expressed opposition to the measures elimination of the deduction for state and local income taxes. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah called the House measure a great starting point but said it would be somewhat miraculous if its corporate tax rate reduction to 20 per cent a major Trump goal survived. His panel plans to produce its own tax package in the coming days. The House Republicans plan, which took them months to craft in countless closed-door meetings, represents the first step in their effort to reverse whats been a politically disastrous year in Congress. Their drive to obliterate former president Barack Obamas health care law crashed, and GOP lawmakers concede that if the tax measure collapses, their congressional majorities are at risk in next Novembers elections. The packages tax reductions would outweigh its loophole closers by a massive $1.5 trillion over the coming decade. Many Republicans were willing to add that to the nations soaring debt as a price for claiming a resounding tax victory. But it was likely to pose a problem for others one of several brush fires leaders will need to extinguish to get the measure through Congress. Republicans must keep their plans shortfall from spilling over that $1.5 trillion line or the measure will lose its protection against Democratic Senate filibusters, bill-killing delays that take 60 votes to overcome. There are just 52 GOP senators and unanimous Democratic opposition is likely. Read more: House GOP to keep income tax rate for wealthiest earners after criticism from Democrats U.S. House passes $4.1-trillion GOP budget in key step for upcoming tax debate Donald Trump could save more than $1 billion under his tax plan The bill would telescope todays seven personal income tax brackets into just four: 12 per cent, 25 per cent, 35 per cent and 39.6 per cent. The 25 per cent rate would start at $45,000 for individuals and $90,000 for married couples. The 35 per cent rate would apply to family income exceeding $260,000 and individual income over $200,000, which means many upper-income families whose top rate is currently 33 per cent would face higher taxes. The top rate threshold, now $418,400 for individuals and $470,700 for couples, would rise to $500,000 and $1 million. The standard deduction used by people who dont itemize, around two-thirds of taxpayers would nearly double to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples. Thats expected to encourage even more people to use the standard deduction with a simplified tax form Republicans say will be postcard-sized. Many middle-income families would pay less, thanks to the bigger standard deduction and an increased child tax credit. Republicans said their plan would save $1,182 in taxes for a family of four earning $59,000, but features like phase-outs of some benefits suggest their taxes could grow in the future. The plan clearly chooses corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers over teachers and police officers, said Rep. Bill Pascrell. One trade-off for the plans reductions was its elimination of breaks that millions have long treasured. Gone would be deductions for peoples medical expenses especially important for families facing nursing home bills or lacking insurance and their ability to write off state and local income taxes. The mortgage interest deduction would be limited to the first $500,000 of the loan, down from the current $1 million ceiling. Led by Rep. Kevin Brady, chairperson of the House Ways and Means Committee, the authors retained the deductibility of up to $10,000 in local property taxes in a bid to line up votes from Republicans from the Northeast. The panel planned to begin votes on the proposal next Monday. Its progress, but I want more, said Rep. Leonard Lance, who represents one of his states wealthier, higher-cost districts and wants the entire property tax deduction restored. On the business side, the House would drop the top rate for corporations from 35 per cent to 20 per cent. American companies operating abroad would pay a 10 per cent tax on their overseas subsidiaries profits. Cash that those firms have amassed abroad but now return home would face a one-time 12 per cent tax. U.S. President Donald Trump was talking up tax cuts saying that Americans should get ready for a cut by Christmas. Also reduced to 25 per cent would be the rate for many pass-through businesses, whose profits are taxed at the owners individual rate. But some of those companies would face higher rates. Sen. Ron Johnson said that disparity was just not acceptable, and the National Federation of Independent Business said it opposed the bill because it does not help most small businesses. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the measure but said a lot of work remains to be done. The groups chief policy officer, Neil Bradley, said pass-throughs were one concern. Read more about: SHARE: LONDONBritish police are seeking the extradition from Libya of the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber on murder charges stemming from the attack. Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber, is in custody in Libya. Police said Wednesday night that an extradition request was given to Libyan authorities earlier Wednesday. Hashem Abedi is the brother of Salman Abedi, who set off the bomb at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22 that left 22 dead and hundreds wounded. Salman Abedi blew himself up in the attack. Police say the warrant for Hashem Abedi relates to the murder of 22 people and the attempted murder of others. Investigators have said they didnt believe there was a large group involved in the attack but that they believed others were involved in the planning. They named Hashem Abedi as a suspect. The warrant for his arrest was issued by a Westminster Magistrates Court judge and approved by the home secretary. Teenage screams filled the Manchester Arena just after the explosion Monday night, and members of the audience tumbled over guardrails and each other to escape. Read more: Ariana Grande performs at Manchester benefit concert with message of defiance Woman who shielded family from blast identified as one of 22 killed in Manchester attack What we can learn from the tragic events in Manchester SHARE: Starbucks has unveiled its new seasonal cup and this time it comes with the message Give Good. Customers are encouraged to colour in the cardboard container and even draw some pictures on it. Oh, what fun. The banality of the slogan aside, it is what it is. A coffee cup. But just as last year and the one before, its seen by some as the first shot in the war on Christmas, that chimera built by conservatives so that they can claim persecution and argue that their rights are being curtailed. On an immediate level, the Christian complaint about Starbucks shouldnt concern the design of their coffee cups but that their workers are being paid minimum wage while the companys owners and directors earn millions. And that what are often immigrants and the less privileged open stores at 5 a.m. and work awful hours for an income that will never pay their rent and properly feed them. But on a grander scale it goes to the very heart of the religion-based politics that did so much to elect Donald Trump and is solidly behind Andrew Scheer at a federal level and Jason Kenney in Alberta. Put simply, the Christian right has developed a new and rather unholy trinity. They campaign and mobilize in the name of the free market, the unborn child, and homophobia. Such a distortion of faith has always held enormous power in large parts of the United States but has expanded to a worrying degree in Canada. Christmas is merely a battlefield of course and the war is seen as being far more long-term. One of the ironies of the yuletide moaning, however, is that its not atheism but capitalism that has exploited Christmas and thus ripped apart its meaning. Yet that very capitalism is revered by the same people who complain about the war on Christmas. In Canada the Christian right, while solidly economically conservative, has coalesced around issues of sex and sexuality. Oddly enough theres something decidedly pagan about the movements obsession with these issues, and their worship of the fetus god and what they see as the virtual sanctity of procreative sex. Perhaps theyve got their revolutionary Jewish thinkers mixed up more Freud than Jesus? The logical and moral discrepancies dont end there. That olive-skinned first-century Galilean never refers to abortion or homosexuality, seems delightfully unconcerned about how and why people make love, and is eager to understand and forgive those accused of sexual sin. But my golly He does go on and on about social justice, the plight of the poor, the sins of the rich, the corruption of power, and that the problems of the world are hypocrisy and self-righteous religiosity. That pristine, sparkling teaching of hope seems to have been lost somewhere along the way by many in the church, although its still flowing through the worlds body if we look for it. Thing is, those who live the authentic message tend not to make a lot of noise about what they do. Christianity should be defined not by what it opposes but by what it affirms, not by its anger but by its joy. At heart its about a terrifying and colossally challenging reclassification of love, demanding that we embrace those who we would prefer to reject and even despise. The option of hatred is no longer available it was thrown out 2,000 years ago, just as were the money men in the Temple. The paradox of all this bites away at a creed that should be life changing and world transforming. As an example, I have probably learned more about my faith from gay Christians than from any other people. Theyve stayed true even though theyve faced discrimination and sometimes worse from those around them. Yet those wonderful people who have inspired me are even now thought to be hell-bound by so many of the men and women who become visibly upset by the myth that theyre not allowed to wish others Merry Christmas in November! If the Christian right were more Christian and less right not only would the world be a better place but also people would have far more regard for Christians. Its surely not so difficult to understand and we shouldnt need a double espresso to grasp its truth, whatever the packaging. Michael Coren is a Toronto writer. Read more about: SHARE: Thirty-year-old Soleiman Faqiri died last December in a solitary confinement cell in Central East Correctional Centre, after being beaten by as many as 20 guards sent in to subdue him. On Monday, his family learned that no one will be charged for his death. Soleimans hands and feet had been shackled, and a hood put over his head. He had more than 50 cuts, bruises, and other injuries from blunt force trauma on his body, according to the coroners report. He was buried with a gash from the assault visible on his face. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Soleiman was waiting to be transferred to a mental health facility. My brother needed a bed and a doctor, instead he got handcuffs and fists, said his older brother Yusuf. This was a man with mental illness who needed help, instead he lost his life. The Faqiris have not been told why the police refused to lay criminal charges, and they have not been allowed to see the video footage of the moments leading to Soleimans death. After waiting more than 10 months for answers, all they know is that their son and brother died under conditions of violence 11 days after entering the jail, and that no one is being held responsible. The inhumanities of Canadas prison system have been repeatedly exposed. October marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of teenager Ashley Smith, who choked to death in solitary confinement, while guards stood outside and watched. But the abuses continue, largely hidden from sight and mind, shielded by a thick wall of unaccountability. People suffering mental health crises, such as Faqiri, are regularly subjected to solitary confinement even though the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture concluded in 2011 that imposition [of solitary confinement], of any duration, on persons with mental disabilities is cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and a violation of the Convention Against Torture. In 2013, the Ontario government signed a binding settlement meant to prevent segregation for prisoners experiencing mental health issues but 11 people have died in solitary confinement since then, and the percentage of people in segregation with mental health alerts increased over the course of last year. A report on provincial prisons released this April by the Ontario Ombudsman described one man who was left naked in a dirty segregation cell, where he had been confined for more than a month. In May, an officer at Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishine tweeted about a segregated inmate who was kept in a urine/feces soaked cell and was eating his own feces. For exposing this, the officer was threatened with disciplinary action. Ojibwe youth Adam Capay languished in a constantly lit solitary cell for more than 1,500 days, while his powers of speech and memory steadily deteriorated: a situation the provincial government knew about for nine months before doing anything. At least 150 people have died while locked up in Ontario jails over the last decade; the exact number is not known, because deaths in provincial incarceration are not consistently recorded. Many in-custody deaths are preventable, according to a report published in September by the Independent Review of Ontario Corrections. The report noted that coroners juries make the same recommendations over and over again following deaths in jail; the repetitive nature of the jury recommendations suggests that the ministry is not treating recommendations as issues of systemic concern or is not effectively implementing the recommended changes. The federal government has proposed new legal limits on the use of solitary confinement but will not ban it altogether, even for people with mental illness. The Ontario government has promised to correct the wrongs of the provinces correctional system, but has not yet tabled any new legislation. The state is quick to pre-emptively criminalize marginalized communities, but slow to address the abuses committed against the marginalized by its own institutions: hundreds needlessly dead or subjected to treatment the UN considers cruel, inhuman, and degrading. There is a great deal of irony in the fact that imprisonment the ultimate product of our system of criminal justice itself epitomizes injustice, a parliamentary subcommittee observed in 1977. Forty years later, it is shameful how little has changed even while the list of victims grows ever-longer. Almost a year after the death of her son, Soleiman Faqiris mother continues to visit his grave every day and cry for him. May Soleiman rest in peace, and may his family find some justice. Azeezah Kanji is a legal analyst based in Toronto. She writes in the Star every other Thursday. SHARE: The woodland caribou, a symbol of our country, considered sacred and a vital resource in many Indigenous communities, will be extinct by the end of the century if the current rate of population decline is allowed to continue. Faced with this alarming fact, the federal government five years ago took action, asking every province to develop a plan to protect the animal. In particular, Ottawa called on provincial governments to do more to preserve the boreal forest, the caribous natural habitat. The causes of the animals extraordinary decline are many, including climate change and increased predation, but none is so salient as the boreals degradation by human activity. Ottawa gave the provinces until Oct. 5 of this year to deliver. According to a new report from the federal government, not one met the deadline. Ontario in particular has been a bad actor. In 2013, the province watered down its once-lauded Endangered Species Act, granting a series of ill-judged exemptions to industry. The most controversial allows someone to kill caribou or destroy its habitat if that person is engaged in a government-approved forestry operation. This policy change was enacted in an effort to prop up the declining forestry sector, but the cost has been unacceptably high. Industrial logging and logging roads have continued to fragment the forest, making hunting easier for wolves and life more perilous for caribou. Much of the habitat in question falls on provincial Crown lands, but the federal Species at Risk Act gives Ottawa the power to impose habitat protections unilaterally on the provinces. Given provincial recalcitrance and the urgency of the problem, the feds may have to do just that. Of course, the impact on industry and jobs of greater habitat protection must be managed. But if we do nothing, the outcome is all but certain: some alive today will live to see a country without caribou. That would be a terrible loss and sign of worse to come. The caribou no doubt holds a special place in the Canadian imagination and in the lives of Indigenous peoples, but those are not the only reasons it deserves particular attention. The animal is often called a boreal bellwether; the health or weakness of the caribou population is thought to be a good indication of the health or weakness of our most expansive forest and its diverse ecosystems. In Canada, by virtue of our vast wilderness, rich wildlife, three oceans and enormous holdings of fresh water, we have a special responsibility to conserve. Yet recent reports suggest we are failing in this regard. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in this way, we are endangering our food and water, the health of our economy and the sustainability of our planet. The noted American biologist E.O. Wilson once described the loss of biodiversity as the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. In depicting a caribou, the Canadian quarter today commemorates the richness of our wildlife and wilderness. If we arent careful, that symbol will sour into one of a shameful and irreversible failure. SHARE: Caribou herds, habitat continue to decline, Oct. 31 The caribou is an important species for the people and ecosystem of Canada, and it is very disheartening to see the little effort put in by the provinces to preserve them and their habitats. This species is an integral resource for Indigenous people, who have made immense efforts in protecting caribou habitats. According to the World Wildlife Fund Canada, caribou play an essential role in our ecosystem, as their foraging behaviour affects decomposition and nutrients of the soil in their habitats. Provinces were given five years to develop plans to preserve caribou populations and restore their critical habitats, but most of them missed the deadline. Clearly, saving these animals and their habitats is not a priority, as no growth has been observed in the 51 caribou herds in Canada over the past five years. It is unfortunate an animal that is a part of Canadas rich history may be wiped out because people are not realizing how dire this situation is. Nahid Vagharfard, Maple It is unfortunate to know that there are only 51 caribou herds remaining in Canada and that they are at risk of disappearing. Although the Canadian and provincial governments attempted a five-year conservation plan, their actions have failed. The boreal forest has been experiencing numerous disturbances from human and natural activities, including forestry, mining and wildfires, which ultimately destroy the habitat for the caribous survival and reproduction. We need to immediately take action to conserve the caribou population and its habitat. Clemancy Rozario, Toronto Will anyone act to save the caribou? Ontario is not, Opinion, Oct. 25 This column drew attention to the failure of the Ministry of Natural Resources to act on woodland caribou conservation. There is one caribou herd in Ontario on the brink of extinction, which has not received much attention, where the most immediate threat is not the loss of habitat. This column states woodland caribou need large, intact swathes of boreal forest to survive, and that habitat is disappearing. Although efforts to maintain large swathes of boreal forest are laudable and critical, the statement is not entirely true. In 1981, a male woodland caribou was spotted on Michipicoten Island, a 184-square-kilometre island in Lake Superior. Having spotted the single bull, the ministry transferred some of the caribou from the Slates Islands farther north to Michipicoten. For three decades, the population flourished. Then, in 2012, wolves reached the island when an ice bridge formed. The arrival of wolves has resulted in the rapid collapse of the caribou population. A similar situation has been occurring on the Slates Islands, and caribou have disappeared entirely from the mainland of eastern Superior for the first time since the ice receded. Although both Michipicoten and the Slates islands are provincial parks, the ministry has decided to study the situation. They have used the ongoing study as an excuse not to act, as another woodland caribou herd disappears. Leo Lepiano, lands and resources co-ordinator, Michipicoten First Nation SHARE: Once one of the most powerful politicians in Ontario, George Smitherman has been forced in recent days to suffer the humiliation of learning his old Liberal Party no longer wants him. The unexpected rejection of his hopes to run as a candidate in the coming election was a shock to the man who had served as deputy premier and had held two of the governments most critical cabinet posts from 2003 to 2009 under former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty. Smitherman was hurt, angered and dismayed by the deliberate snub by Kathleen Wynnes re-election team. But he is now focusing solely on winning a Toronto city council seat in next Octobers municipal elections. Importantly, this bitter case raises questions about how serious Wynne is about leading an open, democratic party when her campaign staff runs roughshod over local riding associations when it comes to selecting candidates for the June, 2018, election. Its a similar situation that Conservative leader Patrick Brown has found himself in after a series of controversial Tory riding fights that have seen local party official resign in disgust. In Smithermans case, he says he was approached by residents in his former riding of Toronto Centre about running again in next Junes election. The seat has been vacant since September when Glen Murray quit to take a job in Calgary. Smitherman had represented the riding from 2003 until he quit the legislature to run in the 2010 Toronto mayoral race, which he lost to Rob Ford. But bosses at the Liberal headquarters told Smithermans supporters the party would not approve his application to become a candidate. The reasons, never publicly stated, were threefold: First, they wanted to keep the riding open for a high-profile candidate, possibly Toronto city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam. Second, Smitherman is linked, fairly or unfairly, to the eHealth and Ornge controversies and is seen as a political liability for Wynne. Third, Smithermans reputation of having a temper, which earned him the tag furious George, is seen as a huge liability inside and outside the party. I am not sure re-debating eHealth and Ornge would have been a great idea, a senior campaign adviser to Wynne said in an email. Plus, he was never a nice person to work for. He was known for tantrums with staff and more. Thats not acceptable anymore. Deb Matthews, the current deputy premier and Liberal campaign co-chair, said simply: Its not easy to say thanks but no thanks to an old colleague but were moving forward. He said hes nostalgic (about his time in the legislature). Well, thats not exactly what we are looking for. The snub was first reported in a blog by Steve Paikin, host of TVOs The Agenda. Smitherman then lashed out at his former party, charging on Facebook that he had learned a terrible truth about the Liberals, namely that the grassroots have all but died off and that Wynnes talk of an open party was ridiculous given that the party leaders could basically pick their own candidates. In an email exchange with me, Smitherman said many people had urged him to run provincially, but backed off when the party headquarters told them to do so. I have all the names, but some are my friends. They are doing what they were told, he said. Smitherman also said he was surprised to hear that his aggressive behaviour was one of the reasons the Wynne team wouldnt support him. I was late to hear about my tough-guy rap being the reason to reject me. Funny considering the hardball means they were willing to play to get past their own in Sudbury, a reference to the riding where two senior Liberals were charged with offering a bribe to a would-be candidate to step aside for another candidate. The pair were acquitted. What have I done tougher than that? Yell at a hospital CEO? Smitherman asked. With a provincial run closed to him, Smitherman will now focus exclusively on running for Toronto council, which he said last February he was planning to do. Smitherman is wise to focus on city politics for a political comeback. Its where his passions lie and if he wins a council seat, he can look ahead to 2022 when Mayor John Tory, who will seek re-election in 2018, wont run. That would clear the way for Smitherman to make a second bid to become mayor and forget the bitter sting of rejection by his old Liberal colleagues. Bob Hepburn's column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca Read more about: SHARE: Updated from Nov. 1 with responses from Facebook and Google. Tuesday's bloody rampage in lower Manhattan once again puts Uber Technologies Inc. in an unfavorable light. The motorist who killed eight and wounded more than a dozen was a driver for the ride-sharing company, which has drawn criticism for its screening of drivers and for its corporate culture. Uber has previously taken hits for its screening policies after events such as the August death of a passenger in St. Petersburg, Fla., who was punched by one of the company's drivers. "We are horrified by this senseless act of violence," a statement from Uber about Tuesday's tragic events read. "Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance." An Uber spokesperson stated that Saipov passed a background check, and said the company is assisting the FBI and law enforcement with their investigations. But at least one expert feels other Silicon Valley giants bear more scrutiny than Uber. "Uber is the obvious, low hanging fruit. Uber will get a little bit of blame but this will blow over, said Vivek Wadhwa, a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering in Silicon Valley. "The bigger issue should be, how is this happening, why is this happening and what is enabling it. Why is it you have radical groups in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere able to reach people who come to America?" Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department are investigating the motivation of Sayfullo Saipov, the Uber driver who used a pickup truck to kill and injure people lower Manhattan on Tuesday. But an associate of Saipov's told CBS News that Saipov was radicalized online after he arrived in the country from Uzbekistan. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN on Wednesday that Saipov adopted extremist views while in the U.S., and noted ISIS's use of the internet to radicalize and recruit attackers. "This guy was radicalized on the internet while in the U.S.," said Wadhwa, suggesting that companies such as Alphabet's (GOOGL) - Get Free Report Google, Facebook (FB) - Get Free Report and Twitter (TWTR) - Get Free Report could play a bigger role in thwarting recruitment and radicalization by groups such as ISIS. "Why aren't we asking how and why Facebook and Twitter are allowing radicalization?" Lawmakers are grilling executives from the social media outfits in Washington this week regarding Russian meddling in the Presidential election. Wadhwa suggested that Congress should also examine the role that social media plays in the radicalization of people such as Saipov. Saipov reportedly left a note saying that he committed the attacks for ISIS. "They are watching everything we do in an effort to market to us, they want to sell us ads," Wadhwa said of the large internet companies and social media networks. "Every word we write in practically every language, every photograph we post is being monitored by Facebook, Google, Twitter, all of these companies. Why can't they be limiting the spread of hatred?" In response to a request for comment, Twitter emphasized that it takes an active role in shutting down accounts linked to terrorism. "Our anti-spam tools are getting faster, more efficient, and smarter in how we take down accounts that violate our policy," the social media networks' September transparency report noted. The company suspended 299,649 accounts for promoting terrorism from Jan. 1 to June 30 of this year, with 75% terminated "before their first tweet." "Notably, government requests accounted for less than 1% of account suspensions for the promotion of terrorism during the first half of this year," Twitter's report stated. "Instead, 95% of these account suspensions were the result of our internal efforts to combat this content with proprietary tools, up from 74% in our last Transparency Report." Facebook responded by saying that it is using AI and other methods to make its social network safe. "Our Community Standards make clear that there is no place on Facebook for groups that engage in terrorist activity or for content that expresses support for terrorism, and we take swift action to remove this content when it's reported to us," a spokesperson told The Street. The company wrote in a blog post that it can use image matching to identify a video used as ISIS propaganda, for example, and is experimenting with software that can scan language to identify text linked to terror groups. For its part, Google said it uses a combination of "human flagging and human review together with technology" to identify problematic content on YouTube, pointing to an October blog post. The company said staffers watched more than a million videos to improve its technology for flagging objectionable content, and noted that more than 83% of the videos it tagged for violent extremism were taken down before receiving complaints from external users. FBI Executive Assistant Director Michael Steinbach addressed the role of social media in recruitment before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in July 2016. "From a Homeland perspective, it is ISIL's widespread reach through the Internet and particularly social media which is most concerning as ISIL has aggressively employed this technology for its nefarious strategy," Steinbach said. "ISIL blends traditional media platforms, glossy photos, in-depth articles, and social media campaigns that can go viral in a matter of seconds. No matter the format, the message of radicalization spreads faster than we imagined just a few years ago." Alphabet and Facebook are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells GOOGL or FB? Learn more now. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: With the help of very strong March and June quarter earnings reports, Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. (BABA) - Get Free Report is up about 110% on the year going into its September quarter report, which is due on the morning of Nov. 2. That spells a high bar, particularly for the company's core Chinese online marketplaces. On average, analysts polled by FactSet expect revenue of $7.84 billion (up 59% annually) and adjusted EPS of $1.04. Here are a few things to keep an eye on as Jack Ma's company reports and hosts its quarterly earnings call: Taobao/Tmall Sales Growth Alibaba's June quarter sales beat was fueled by a 57% annual increase in its "China commerce retail" revenue, which stems from its mainstay Taobao and Tmall marketplaces. That represented a big increase from the March quarter's 41% growth and also easily outpaced the 22% gross merchandise volume (GMV) growth Alibaba saw for its Chinese marketplaces in fiscal 2017 (it ended in March). This growth has much to do with Alibaba's Google/Facebook-like success at monetizing mobile traffic, especially via ads sold to Taobao/Tmall merchants and to a lesser extent Tmall commissions. Mobile devices produced 80% of Alibaba's Chinese retail commerce revenue in fiscal 2017, and as of June 30, the company's 12-month mobile revenue per monthly active user (MAU) was up 40% annually to RMB196 ($29.70). Keeping that momentum going is crucial to meeting the high expectations markets now have for Alibaba. On average, analysts expect Alibaba's China Commerce revenue, which also includes sales to wholesalers, to be up 63% in the September quarter to $5.98 billion. User Growth Though it has slowed over the last couple of years, Alibaba is still seeing substantial Chinese active user growth as the country's smartphone and e-commerce penetration rates continue rising. Tabao/Tmall's annual active consumers grew by 12 million sequentially in the June quarter to 466 million, and their mobile MAUs (including people who didn't shop) grew by 22 million to 529 million. Both of those metrics, it should be noted, saw better sequential growth than they did during Alibaba's June 2016 quarter. Doing that again in the September quarter might be easier for active consumers, which only rose by 5 million sequentially last year, than for mobile MAUs, which rose by 23 million. International Sales Alibaba's overseas e-commerce efforts have been a mixed bag to date. In many markets, the company has been more successful winning over wholesalers looking to buy from Chinese suppliers than at battling the likes of Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) - Get Free Report and eBay Inc. (EBAY) - Get Free Report for consumers. But following a pair of $1 billion investments in top Southeast Asian online marketplace Lazada that give it an 83% stake in the company, Alibaba's international footprint is now pretty substantial. Alibaba is expected to see its total "International Commerce" revenue rise 57% annually in the September quarter to $643 million. Any earnings call commentary about its Alibaba's overseas investment plans will get attention. Cloud Momentum Though it still only accounted for 4% of the company's June quarter sales, Alibaba's "Cloud computing" revenue, which largely stems from its AliCloud platform, grew 96% annually to $359 million. Paid customers grew by 75% to 1.01 million. Competition is intensifying, as Baidu Inc. (BIDU) - Get Free Report , Tencent, Amazon and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) - Get Free Report all invest in rival Chinese public cloud platforms. Nonetheless, with AliCloud maintaining a top position in a burgeoning Chinese cloud infrastructure (IaaS) market, analysts see Alibaba's cloud revenue rising 96% in the September quarter to $422 million. Spending Growth A big contributor to Alibaba's large June quarter EPS beat: The company's adjusted costs and expenses amounted to 65% of revenue, down from 73% a year earlier. Though rising in absolute terms, cost of revenue, sales/marketing spend, R&D spend and G&A spend all fell as a percentage of revenue. In addition, stock compensation expenses fell to 2% of revenue from 3%. Can Alibaba keep this trend going as it keeps making big investments in growth initiatives? Among other things, the company has been spending heavily on AliCloud, its Youku Tudou online video platform and its Koubei local commerce JV. It also recently took control of its giant Cainiao logistics JV and has begun opening supermarkets in big Chinese cities. Such investments are a key reason why analysts on average see Alibaba's EPS dropping 11% sequentially in the September quarter, even though revenue is expected to rise 6%. Annually, EPS is still expected to rise 37%, but that's below expected revenue growth of 59%. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: Markets held relative steady on Wednesday following a status-quo announcement from the Federal Reserve and a fizzle in red-hot tech stocks. While stocks cooled, investor Bill Ackman stayed hot, at least hot in the sense of his tone to shareholders of Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) - Get Free Report following comments from the company's CEO in regards to his ongoing campaign at the company. In an exclusive interview with TheStreet's Ron Orol, Ackman lashed back against a suggestion that his goals for share-price improvement at ADP can only be achieved quickly by eliminating up to 20,000 jobs. "This is a scare tactic," Ackman said in his interview with The Street. ADP CEO Carlos Rodriguez suggested recently that Ackman's goals at ADP can only be achieved quickly by eliminating 15,000 to 20,000 of its 58,000 employees. The comments come as Ackman is waging an intense boardroom battle, seeking to install three dissident directors onto the board of the payroll processor at the company's 2018 annual meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 7. As Ackman and ADP's battle gets ready to come to a head, another battle may be brewing. After a dismal week at Mattel Inc. (MAT) - Get Free Report , which has investors contemplating its value in a sale, a frequent activist investor is now the toy company's second-biggest shareholder. Southeastern Asset Management Inc. has reported a 10.25% stake in Mattel and though its stake is currently passive (it was disclosed in a 13G filing not a 13D), passive stakes are sometimes converted into activist 13D stakes. Memphis-based Southeastern's recent investments include United Technologies Corp. (UTX) - Get Free Report , set to buy airplane parts maker Rockwell Collins Inc. (COL) for $30 billion including debt after pressure from fellow activist Dan Loeb, and Deltic Timber Corp. (DEL) , which Southeastern pressured to pursue a full range of strategic alternatives. And in regards to the New York terrorist attack on Tuesday, a number of companies may find themselves under increased scrutiny. Among them, Uber Technologies Inc., which employed the motorist who killed eight and wounded more than a dozen. The ride-sharing company has drawn criticism for its screening of drivers and for its corporate culture and this certainly won't help matters, especially as news continues to trickle out that a major investment from Japan's Softbank into Uber may be in jeopardy due to ties to former CEO Travis Kalanick. This is an excerpt from "In Case You Missed It," a daily newsletter brought to you by TheStreet. Sign up here. Photo of the day: A very sweet business Kids across the country are likely munching away at the spoils of their trick-or-treating escapades. Somewhere in that pillowcase filled with goodies is likely any number of products made by Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. (TR) - Get Free Report . Its confectionary treats aside, Tootsie Roll Industries may be attracting the interest of potential buyers, or even an activist investor, if the company cannot hammer out a succession plan for its 85-year-old CEO, Ellen Gordon, TheStreet's sister publication The Deal reported. Last month, short-seller Spruce Point Capital Management LLC released a 63-page report blasting Tootsie Roll and its management. Among the criticisms were a lack of candor with shareholders, asbestos problems, poor corporate governance and declining brands and shelf space. Tootsie Roll was founded in 1896 in New York City and has managed to stay in the minds of consumers with colorful and creative ad campaigns. Above is an ad from 1961. Read more from "In Case You Missed It." Sign up here. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: Alibaba Holding Group (BABA) - Get Free Report didn't disappoint. The Chinese internet giant's fiscal second quarter, which ends in September, is typically more muted as it preps for the massive Singles' Day shopping event on Nov. 11, making the fiscal third quarter the one to watch. Instead, Alibaba on Thursday blew past analysts' expectations for the second quarter and hiked its full-year revenue growth forecast to be between 49% and 53%, up from 45% to 49%. The outperforming quarter was driven by a continued surge in its largest business, core e-commerce; its ability to monetize its mainstay Taobao and Tmall marketplaces; and efforts to expand into new commerce areas, such as offline retail, groceries and luxury items. Revenue from Alibaba's cloud business grew 99% annually to $447 million, up from $224 million one year ago. Shares of Alibaba opened at a record high on Thursday, but were down 1.1% to $183.94 by late morning. The stock has skyrocketed more than 115% so far this year vs. the S&P 500's gain of 15.1%. Alibaba held a call with investors after reporting earnings, where it gave some color on the quarterly results. Here are the biggest takeaways: 1. Investments in mobile are paying off. Alibaba has been plowing money into the mobile apps for Tmall and Taobao to improve the user experience, product personalization and ad targeting. Specifically, the company called out content-driven and community-driven improvements, such as real-time personalized product recommendations, subscription-based content and short-form videos, according to CEO Daniel Zhang. As a result, mobile e-commerce is serving as a major catalyst in the company's juggernaut core commerce business, which continues to grow at a double digit rate each year. The company noted that mobile revenue per mobile user grew at a healthy clip during the quarter, alongside further growth in annual revenue per active consumer. More users were added to the platforms during the second quarter. Mobile monthly active users increased by 20 million quarter-over-quarter to 549 million in the most recent period. Annual active consumers also grew 20 million sequentially to 488 million. These investments have generated a growing and more engaged user base, a platform that can handle scale, customer loyalty and active customers that have made the Alibaba economy "more vibrant," said Joe Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman. "It is this franchise value that underpins the sustainability as well as the capacity for future value creation of our business," Tsai told investors on the call. 2. The 'New Retail' strategy is starting to pay dividends. Alibaba clocked its first revenue gains from its "New Retail" initiatives, the strategy laid out by co-founder Jack Ma that aims to connect offline and online businesses (otherwise known as O2O). Other revenues, which includes New Retail initiatives, grew 180% year-on-year to 3.2 billion yuan ($484 million), up from 600 million yuan ($91 million) one year ago. "You actually can see that starting from this quarter, the new retail started to have some contribution to our total revenue," said CFO Maggie Wu. It's showing up in other ways, too. Alibaba's China retail segment, which falls under the core commerce business, grew 438% annually, helped by the consolidation of newly-acquired retail chains Intime and Hema. The acquisitions are just one part of Alibaba's aggressive expansion into brick-and-mortar retail -- investments where Wu said Alibaba is less concerned about profitability and more focused on rapid growth. Much of these efforts have centered on modernizing and improving the in-store retail experience via investments in data technology. The company said it expects more than 1,000 brands to convert nearly 100,000 physical locations into "smart stores" blending an offline and online retail experience. 3. Alibaba is building a logistics network unlike Amazon's. One big way Alibaba is supporting its new retail strategy is by building out its network of logistics and delivery services. The company doubled down on this effort in September when it paid roughly $808 million for a controlling stake in smart logistics company Cainaio. Alibaba also pledged to invest $15 billion in Cainaio over the next five years, as it continues to expand into offline and online retail. Part of that investment will go toward developing smart warehouses and smart delivery solutions, some of which will show up in its hybrid retail locations that serve as part store, part delivery hub. The company was quick to erase comparisons with Amazon's (AMZN) - Get Free Report Prime shipping network, however. "We don't want to think to copy the Prime model from Amazon to China," Tsai told investors on the call. "I think in China, we can generate our own model." Zhang added that Alibaba "isn't interested" in building another logistics company; instead, it plans to work with many logistics companies in China and around the world. This latest round of earnings may give CEO Jack Ma another reason to dance: More of What's Trending on TheStreet: Chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO) - Get Free Report is coming stateside. President Donald Trump on Thursday announced that semiconductor giant Broadcom is moving its headquarters back to the U.S. from Singapore. Broadcom will legally relocate to Delaware upon shareholder approval of the proposed relocation.The move is said to carry the potential of bringing over $20 billion in revenue to the U.S. Following the news, shares of Broadcom were falling over 2% in afternoon trading on Thursday on heavy trading volume. The move follows pledges from Trump both from the campaign trail and his early days in office to bring more companies and jobs to the U.S., long advocating for "buy American and hire American." "We're going to find out how we bring more jobs back," Trump said at a meeting with several CEOs in February. And PolitiFact found evidence that companies moving back and creating jobs in the U.S. has increased under Trump. The move by Broadcom follows similar steps by the likes of many companies increasing jobs in the U.S. including Ford (F) - Get Free Report , Foxconn (FXCOF) , Toyota (TM) - Get Free Report and Mazda (MZDAF) . In January, Ford said that instead of building a plant in Mexico it would invest $700 million in the U.S., expanding its plant in Flat Rock, MI. Toyota and Mazda both announced in August that the two had entered into a partnership to build a $1.6 billion U.S. assembly plant that would create up to 4,000 jobs. In July, Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer of electronics, said that it was bringing a 20 million-square-foot facility to Wisconsin with the potential to employ 13,000 people at an average salary of $53,000 annually, plus benefits, according to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Its opening is slated for 2020 when it will initially house 3,000 employees. More of What's Trending on TheStreet: College expenses can be overwhelming, but did you know there are some tax moves parents can take now to reduce their tax bill in 2023? Our tax pro says these are the key credits and deductions for college students and parents FLEETCOR Technologies, Inc. provides digital payment solutions for businesses to control purchases and make payments. It offers corporate payments solutions, such as accounts payable automation; Virtual Card, which provides a single-use card number for a specific amount usable within a defined timeframe; Cross-Border that is used by its customers to pay international vendors, foreign office and personnel expenses, capital expenditures, and profit repatriation and dividends; and purchasing cards and travel and entertainment cards for its customers to analyze and manage their corporate spending. The company also provides employee expense management solutions, including fuel solutions to businesses and government entities that operate vehicle fleets, as well as to oil and leasing companies, and fuel marketers; lodging solutions to businesses that have employees who travel overnight for work purposes, as well as to airlines and cruise lines to accommodate traveling crews and stranded passengers; and electronic toll payments solutions to businesses and consumers in the form of radio frequency identification tags affixed to vehicles' windshields. In addition, it offers gift card program management and processing services in plastic and digital forms that include card design, production and packaging, delivery and fulfillment, card and account management, transaction processing, promotion development and management, website design and hosting, program analytics, and card distribution channel management. Further, it provides other products consisting of payroll cards, vehicle maintenance service solution, long-haul transportation solution, prepaid food vouchers or cards, and prepaid transportation cards and vouchers. The company serves business, merchant, consumer, and payment network customers in North America, Brazil, and Internationally. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Mega Millions numbers for Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022 Here are the winning Mega Millions numbers and results for the lottery jackpot drawing on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. The number of applications and complaints directed to Bahrains Works Ministry via the National Complaints & Suggestions System Tawasul during the third quarter of this year amounted to 309 reports, said a top official. Communications director at the Ministry of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning Fahad Buallay explained 111 reports were received for the Northern Governorate, 90 for the Southern Governorate, 86 for Muharraq and 51 for the Capital Governorate. Another 52 reports were related to infrastructure services in the kingdom. September attracted the highest number of reports; with 154 reports, followed by August with 126 reports and then July with 110 reports. 274 reports covered the roads sector and 70 covered the sanitary sector. The Communications Directorate transferred 33 reports to other concerned government entities and detected 11 repeated reports. The directorate responded to three urgent reports, and 343 non-urgent reports. All reports were fully responded to with a100 per cent coverage. According to Buallay, the National System (Tawasul) ranked first as a means to communicate with the Works Affairs of the Ministry, by a percentage of 57 per cent, after which was the phone with 37 per cent and newspapers with four per cent of the total number of reports. The number indicates citizens satisfaction with the system and their positive approach towards staying in touch with other services electronically. In response to directives from His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, the Communications Directorate is keen to maintain the bilateral interaction available in the system, which provides owner of the report with the hotline of the concerned party in the event of detecting reports that belong to other government entities. Also, the applicant is directly contacted to take his notes or comments when needed, inform him of the expected period of time to respond to the proposal or request if the request is referred to the Studies and Designs Department or the Joint Technical Committees with other service providers. The applicant is contacted once the results are obtained from other directorates, in order to ensure that he is informed of the follow-up process by the specialists until he receives the final response. Citizens and residents can communicate with the Ministrys Works Affairs via the National Complaints & Suggestions System Tawasul, which can be accessed and downloaded on smartphones via the eGovernment link Bahrain.bh/apps. TradeArabia News Service AkzoNobel, a leading global paints company, has introduced a new brand in decorative paints in Oman, bringing together the home-grown Sadolin brand and the global colour and innovation leader Dulux. Sadolin Dulux will offer customers in Oman with an amazing range of colours and technology currently offered by Dulux. AkzoNobel announced the new brand that will feature a completely new product portfolio based on the latest global innovations and technology available. This brings a new colour delivery system with best-in-class accuracy and strength, as well as for the first time in Oman, the choice of customers to have any colour, any product all colours available in full interior and exterior range. AkzoNobel also introduced new colour and inspiration tools, such as the Sadolin Dulux Visualizer, an augmented reality mobile app; a portable and handheld paint testing service; new colour collaterals; and new in-store tinting apparatus at the gathering. Jeremy Rowe, managing director of AkzoNobel Decorative Paints, South East and South Asia, Middle East, said: This is a significant step in further strengthening our operations in Oman. Sadolin is a successful homegrown brand that has enjoyed the trust and confidence of customers. With Sadolin Dulux, we are highlighting a significant evolution of the Made in Oman brand into a global brand that will offer a never-before range of colours and products for our customers here. AkzoNobel is also introducing its ColourFutures in Oman. This is aimed at providing consumers with inspiration on what their homes can look like, and create colour palettes that will transform their living and working spaces accordingly. Along with the launch of Sadolin Dulux, we are highlighting our proprietary ColourFutures. Refreshed annually, ColourFutures has been inspiring consumers for 15 years now and is the outcome of expert analysis of social, economic and design trends. Our customers can now easily keep up to speed with the latest trends in decorative paintings for homes and commercial spaces, he added. The company has also announced Heart Wood as the 2018 Colour of the Year, following extensive research by a team of experts at the AkzoNobel Global Aesthetic Centre into trends, insights and consumer behaviours to predict paint colour palettes relevant to the future. A subtle and warm tone of grown-up pink, Heart Wood (also known as Pictured Rocks) draws from the tactile qualities of natural wood and leather, conveying comfort and ease in response to consumers wanting to nestle down more and create a welcome home, just in time for Omani residents to give their homes a facelift for the New Year. It comes in four palettes - the Heart Wood Home, the Comforting Home, the Inviting Home and the Playful Home. The new sub-brands under Sadolin Dulux meet the diverse requirements of customers with Colours of the World 88 Plus, an interior premium top coat paint; EasyClean, a stain resistant, anti-bacterial and washable premium interior paint; and the Ambiance range, one of the most premium aesthetic paints for interiors across the world. Within the exterior paint range, Sadolin Dulux offers Weathershield 88XT, a premium top coat that offers excellent quality and protection; and Weathershield Powerflexx, with the latest crack proof technology that ensures 8-year protection against a host of exterior weathering elements. AkzoNobel acquired a 50 per cent stake of Sadolin Paints Oman in 2013 after a joint venture agreement with Omar Zawawi Establishment. Since then, the company has been working on a full range of products in the Oman market. Headquartered in Amsterdam, AkzoNobels portfolio of brands include Dulux, Hammerite, Levis, Sikkens, International and Interpon. TradeArabia News Service Amid Pence Promises, Persecuted Iraqi Assyrians Still in Perilous Limbo Hundreds of thousands of persecuted Christians, Yazidis and other minorities driven from battered northern Iraq are still in a perilous limbo, as humanitarian groups struggle to make sense of a new Trump Administration initiative rolled out after Vice President Mike Pence's October 25 promise to "stop funding ineffective relief efforts at the United Nations" and "provide support directly to persecuted communities through USAID." Humanitarian groups have called the Administration declaration a big step forward in helping the sorely-neglected minority groups recover from genocidal waves of murder, rape, displacement and plunder inflicted by now-defeated ISIS forces. But there is still much uncertainty about how the initiative will work, what money will be involved, and how the effort will be coordinated--and above all, when it will get going.. There is also a lot of perplexity among some humanitarian groups about what USAID has indicated it will support and what the efforts it will not cover. "Reconstruction" of destroyed dwellings, for example, was apparently deemed a a no-no; on the other hand, "renovation" might be OK. Meantime, the clock of desperation is still ticking loudly for the refugees, huddled in tents in Kurdistan or trying, as thousands of Christianas are doing, to move back into blasted dwellings in Iraq's Ninevah province. Some of the returnees have had to flee again hurriedly as Kurdish minority forces and Iraqi government troops opened up new hostilities. In many cases, refugee numbers, especially among Ninevah's minority Christian populations, are continuing to dwindle fast. Without the kind of resettlement help foreign governments can bring, and despite the efforts of private humanitarian groups, they face the devastating prospect of finally leaving a region of the Middle East they have inhabited for 2,000 years. "These people are disappearing," said Steve Rasche, legal counsel and resettlement director for the Caldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. " They are giving up, fleeing the country. That is why the U.S. taking a real action step makes such a difference." Rasche has been an insistent critic of U.S. inaction, especially during the Obama Administration, in failing to aid the long-suffering Christian and other minorities in northern Iraq, even after former Secretary of State John Kerry declared in March 2016 that the devastation unleashed on them by ISIS constituted "genocide." Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has repeated that designation. Critics have accused the Obama Administration in particular, before and after the Kerry declaration, of doing little or nothing to help the oppressed religious and ethnic minority peoples, persisting in a "blind" aid approach that somehow never got assistance to those whose cultural and historical enclaves for millennia were being erased. The same "blind" aid policy, which claims to make no distinctions based on religion or ethnicity, was espoused by the U.N., where more than $1.4 billion in aid was channeled by the Obama White House for refugee protection and development assistance Iraq. Critics have charged that virtually none of the reconstruction aid got to the minority refugees, who shunned U.N. refugee camps due to fears of violent persecution by their largely Muslim inhabitants. (In response to Pence's October 25 remarks, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterated that U.N. "humanitarian assistance in Iraq, as in other contexts, is provided in an impartial manner on the basis of greatest need. The U.N. system maintains that humanitarian work will continue to provide assistance in Iraq on this basis.") The criticism did not end with the arrival of Donald Trump, even though the tenor of sympathy in the new Administration was markedly different. At a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on October 3, Rasche reported that "we have still yet to receive any form of meaningful aid from the U.S. Government," and that while "political appointees [were] much more willing to help us since January...even after the better part of a year, they have been unable to move the bureaucracy to take meaningful action." At the same hearing, former Congressman Frank Wolf, a longtime Republican representative from Virginia, reported after a trip to the battered area, that if "bold action is not taken by the end of the year, I believe a tipping point will be reached and we will see the end of Christianity in Iraq in a few short years and a loss of religious and ethnic diversity throughout the region." Vice President Pence's widely-reported Octobdr 25 speech before an array of Middle Eastern religious leaders and their supporters was intended as a game-changer for that prediction. Pence accused the U.N. of "too often" failing to help the most vulnerable, "especially religious minorities," and promised that the U.S. "will work hand-in-hand from this day forward with faith-based groups and private organizations to help those who are persecuted for their faith." He also vowed to visit the region in December--a signal that the new arrangements had better be put in place quickly. But will they? In fact, a Trump Administration initiative intended to put flesh on Pence's declaration was unveiled on October 30--just five days after the Vice President speech, which in bureaucratic terms was warp speed. The framework of the initiative was given an initial airing that same day at a meeting of about 30 representatives of U.S. government agencies and civilian humanitarian and human rights groups that have focused on the disastrous minority plight. But then bureaucratic complications apparently took over once again. The new program announcement took the form of an opaque and wordy invitation from USAID to "organizations and companies" to "co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate in the research, development, piloting, and testing of innovative, practical, cost-effective, and scalable interventions" to help displaced populations return to their homes, and help others remain there. The long string of exploratory stages hardly underscored the idea of emergency action. An accompanying USAID "Broad Agency Announcement" made explicit mention of "ethnic and religious groups from Christian, Yazidi, Assyrian, Turkmen, and mixed-minority towns" --and then bureaucratic process took over again. An 8-page attachment to the Announcement on USAID's website explained that new rules of "co-creation" would allow humanitarian non-government organizations to partner with USAID to "write and/or revise" a "Concept Paper" for presentation to the agency's Peer and Scientific Review Board. The deadline for initial responses to the Announcement is November 30. A USAID spokesperson told Fox News that the next stage of the process would be a "co-creativity workshop" on the assembled proposals, which would likely take place in January. According to the 8-page document, a designated USAID Contracting/Agreement Officer would designate the "Apparently Successful Partner" to work on management, control and design needs of a project before agreeing on its "shared resourcing," which might include no U.S. government money at all. Nothing in the announcement indicated that any funding will be taken from the U.N., as Pence originally declared, either. The time line indicates that even with USAID's bureaucracy in overdrive, getting actual projects out the door is unlikely before February at the earliest, and likely later--amid the dead of winter. A USAID spokesperson said the agency "could not speculate on when these would be implemented," beyond assuring that the USAID intended to "move forward quickly." Under those circumstances, Vice President Pence's December trip might prove to be ill-timed to drive effective results, regardless of his intentions. The USAID spokesperson assured Fox News that the new process "is in addition to the ongoing stabilization work that is already being done on the Nineva plain in Iraq." He continued that USAID experts are "working with humanitarian partners on the ground"--meaning the U.N. agencies that humanitarian NGOs have strongly complained about--to "prepare for winter and help ensure assistance reaches communities in need." He also noted blandly that the U.S. "is deeply committed to helping the Government of Iraq rebuild; including helping Iraqis preserve their cultural and religious diversity." At least some of the non-government attendees at the unveiling meeting found the big picture presentation bereft of other important details, including the effective distinction between forbidden "reconstruction" and allowable "renovation. "There was some head-scratching about resettling refugees in town that are in rubble, without engaging in the reconstruction of buildings," Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Studies at the conservative Hudson Institute, told Fox News. Moreover, in a still unstable situation where new Kurdish-Iraqi rivalries could replace the fratricide of ISIS, "new hurdles are arising all the time," she said. By the end of the meeting the question of overall Administration coordination of the initiative also seemed to be a puzzle. The person designated for that role is Garry Hall, senior director for international organizations and alliances at the National Security Council. Hall is also charged with coordinating all U.S. government agencies working on religious freedom, human rights and the support of fragile democracies world wide, which one attendee described as "a huge portfolio," which would "prevent him from bird-dogging the actual implementation of minority resettlement in Ninevah. "If it is serious," the Hudson Institute's Shea argues, "the Administration should appoint an inter-agency coordinator devoted to this over the next critical six months." One legislator, Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey, has been pushing for a harder approach backed by legislation to force the issue. Coauthor with California Rep Anna Eshoo of California of the bipartisan Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act of 2017, Smith wants to see the law explicitly support, among other things, the transfer of U.S. government funds to faith-based and other groups carrying out humanitarian relief and reconstruction work among the beleaguered minorities in both Iraq and Syria., as well as hold accountable those committing genocide. The bill has passed in the House, and gotten approval in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but has not been brought to a vote in the full Senate. "It's disturbing that we have found reasons not to be helpful," Smith told Fox News. What Vice President Pence has urged, he says, "needs to be undergirded with law to make it sustainable." Oman has a major opportunity to develop as an aquaculture hub with an export potential projected at $7 billion per annum, according to Teng Theng Dar, non-resident Ambassador of Singapore to Oman. He made the remark at a forum titled The Journey of Oman-Singapore Partnership and the Next Phase, organised by the Oman Economic Association (OEA) at The Cultural Club in Qurum, Muscat, said anh Oman Daily Observer report. Also taking part in the forum were Alex Miquel, CEO, Sembcorp Salalah Power and Water Company; Tan Siang Tang, CEO of Oman Air SATS Cargo; Richard Grosse, consul-general of the Singapore consulate-general in Muscat; and an executive of e-Government solutions firm CrimsonLogic. The forum was moderated by Ann Said al Kindi, board member at the Omani Economic Association. Speaking at the event, Ambassador Teng compared the sultanates potential as an aquaculture hub to Vietnam, presently the worlds third largest seafood exporter. He added that Oman and Vietnam have the same land area, weather conditions (especially in south of Oman) and almost the same coastline of a little more than 3,000 km, and if Vietnam can do it, so can Oman. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. I am a reasonably fit, experienced, 65-year old solo retiree traveler. I am at the preliminary stages of planning a two to four week vacation next Spring that I hope begins in Warsaw, swings through some or all of Riga/Vilnius/Talinn, then on to St Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. Never been to any of those places, and have the luxury of sufficient time, at least consistent with my vacation MO, to visit all those destinations - maybe two to four days at each location. I assume train travel is the best plan, save the Helsinki - Stockholm piece, and possibly the Stockholm - Copenhagen leg. Interested in the board's wisdom on these issues. Does this trip sound reasonable, can the train legs be easily scheduled and accomplished, and if I have to cut (or should add) to the itinerary, does anyone have suggestions as to what gets axed, and/or added? Is May a decent time to embark on this trip? Also, are there specific challenges traveling to and through Russia these days? Many thanks. Do you mean options as to departure/ arrival stations, or routes, or types of train? Even taking the fastest trains this takes between 4h16 (with just 1 change, at Frankfurt Airport) and 6h01 (via Brussels) so I presume you don't want an option stringing together a series of stopping trains? In which case, you will normally start off on high-speed ICE train from Amsterdam-Centraal, and for the rest it depends on what time of day you want to travel at and whether your priority is overall journey time or least number of changes. As indicated above, all you need to do is look up train timetables: entering Amsterdam-Centraal as departure station and Mainz Hbf as destination into http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en will give you all options. And incidentally the alternative is not ns.nl, which is Dutch Railways' domestic website, but https://www.nsinternational.nl/en which is the international one. This is our 1st trip to Costa Rica and we are looking for suggestions on last week of travel. We will be traveling from Samara and going to the Arenal area for 8 days. We will go to Liberia airport from this area. Our flight leaves on a Saturday at 2:00PM. Where should we plan on staying our last night? Near the airport? If not staying near the airport, what Arenal area town would be best for traveling to the airport? We will not have a rental car and plan on using shared shuttles, if possible. It is just my wife and I. In the Arenal area, we are still planning our activities but want to do hiking, exploring, seeing wildlife, visit a coffee plantation, waterfalls, and perhaps rafting. Not so much zip lining as we have done that. We are thinking of going to Arenal, Monteverde, La Fortuna and perhaps Cano Negro. Any suggestions would be appreciated, nights in each area, etc. I'm sure we will have many more questions as we get more into activities but wanted to get started with areas to stay 1st in relationship to travel from Samara and to Liberia airport. We'll be volunteering in Vietnam in 2018 and our base for a few days will be Ho Chi Minh City where we'll visit the Mekong Delta, Cu Chi Tunnels and Remnants of War museum. We will then have a few days (4 or 5) to do our own thing before leaving Vietnam. From all the recommendations, I've been looking at either Hanoi (Old quarter & Ha Long Bay) or Hoi An (Old City & Marble Mountains) but can't make up my mind which one to focus on as we would not have enough time for both. Anyone who had been to both? Which one is not to be missed? We've been to Thailand and sailed through the outcrops as well as visiting a beach inside one of them so we've had that experience but not sure how that would stack up to Ha Long Bay. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks heaps! Is your company in need of the most reliable and efficient best Best Jasmine Tea s in the market? Your good luck led you to the ideal situation, so congratulations! You are in the best possible place. By eliminating the need to read through dozens of Best Jasmine Tea reviews, we are saving you time and stress. Many customers find it difficult to decide which Best Jasmine Tea product to buy. The dilemma is brought about by the many types of Best Jasmine Tea in the market. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a clear understanding of how you may choose the most suitable Best Jasmine Tea available in the market. The Ministry of Health is reminding the public of the dos and donts when it comes to dealin Russian-backed militants launched 17 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in ATO area in Donbas in last day. This is reported by the ATO press center. "The enemy continues to violate ceasefire, using heavy weaponry. Over the past day, illegal armed groups violated the ceasefire 17 times. The Ukrainian Armed Forces opened fire on the enemy 13 times. As a result of the fighting, one Ukrainian soldier was killed, another one was wounded and one more sustained injury," the statement reads. In Donetsk direction, the tensest situation was observed in the industrial area of Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk) where the enemy used different types of grenade launchers to shell Ukrainian positions. The same weapons were used to fire at defenders of Luhanske (59km north-east of Donetsk) and Mayorske (45km north of Donetsk). In Mariupol direction, illegal armed formations opened fire from anti-tank grenade launchers and small arms on Ukrainian strongholds near Starohnativka (52km south of Donetsk). In Luhansk direction, Russian-backed militants fired 82mm mortars and weapons on infantry weaponry on Krymske (42.5km north-west of Luhansk). In addition, the enemy launched attacks on Troitske (69km west of Luhansk), using 120mm mortars. ol Canada promises to continue to provide military training assistance to Ukraine and even expand it. National Defence Minister of Canada Harjit Sajjan said this in a commentary to an Ukrinform correspondent. "We are going to continue providing our support. It is necessary to reckon the pace of the training. We will add other aspects when it will progress and expand," Sajjan said. He also drew attention to the opportunities opened up by the defensive agreement between Canada and Ukraine. "The defense agreement will help us to gain benefits from cooperation, although at the ministry level we consider various options for increasing the capacities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the National Defence Minister of Canada said. According to Sajjan, the most important component of the Canadian military assistance to Ukraine is precisely "a combination of different aspects and an increase in the level of opportunities." As reported, the Canadian government announced early March its decision to extend Canada's military training mission to Ukraine Operation UNIFIER for another two years until March 31, 2019. About 200 Canadian military instructors have been training Ukrainian servicemen within the framework of this mission. ol President Petro Poroshenko says that Ukraine and Saudi Arabia have completed the preparation of an intergovernmental agreement in the field of defense, the presidents press service reports. We have completed the discussion and are ready to sign an agreement between Ukraine and Saudi Arabia on cooperation in the field of defense, Petro Poroshenko told journalists following the first part of his visit to the Gulf countries. According to him, two large contracts in the field of military and technical cooperation are being currently implemented. Ukraine and Saudi Arabia are fully satisfied with the implementation of the contract. We are showing great progress in the field of aircraft construction, Petro Poroshenko said and added that the Ukrainian plane An-132D is already in Saudi Arabia and the parties discuss the issue on its serial production. iy One Ukrainian soldier was killed, one was wounded, and another one was injured in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in eastern Ukraine over the past day. Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Andriy Lysenko said this at a press briefing on Thursday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. Unfortunately, yesterday near Marinka, one Ukrainian serviceperson of the National Guard of Ukraine was killed, another one was wounded. Also, as a result of enemy attacks near Krymske, one serviceperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was injured. The injured Ukrainian servicepersons were immediately sent to field hospitals, Lysenko said. iy The State Space Agency of Ukraine and the Canadian Space Agency have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, the governments press service reports. The signing ceremony took place in Montreal during the Canadian-Ukrainian round table on cooperation in the aerospace sphere. The signing of this document opens new opportunities and will become a new page in the cooperation of Ukraine and Canada. Its a good sign that today our agencies are signing such important documents ... I welcome our cooperation in the aircraft construction. We can unite capabilities of Ukraine and Canada and introduce a competitive product which could then be introduced on the world market," Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman said. The signed document creates new prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation between the states in space exploration. iy The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed a Memorandum on investment cooperation in the agriculture sector. The Memorandum was signed during the official visit of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the press service of the Agrarian Policy Ministry reports. On behalf of the Ukrainian government, the Memorandum was signed by First Deputy Policy and Food Minister Maksym Martyniuk. The intergovernmental document at the legislative level defines specific areas of bilateral investment cooperation in the agricultural sector and procedures for encouraging investments in agriculture. In particular, the parties will exchange information on the investment environment, including agrarian policy, rules and regulations on attracting investments, tax regulation, potential investors, indicating their needs, as well as the availability of investment companies that intend to carry out activities in the field of agriculture and the existing investment programs, reads the statement. Also, it is noted that agriculture is a key component of the trade and economic cooperation between the countries and the share of agricultural products in overall Ukraines exports to Saudi Arabia is the largest. iy President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has met with Vice President, Prime Minister, Minister for Defence of the United Arab Emirates, ruler of the Emirate of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. This is reported by the press service of the Head of State. Petro Poroshenko and Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum noted a significant potential for intensifying practical interaction in a number of strategic areas of cooperation such as energy, aircraft engineering, space research and military and technical cooperation, the statement reads. During the meeting, the issue of preparation for the next meeting of the intergovernmental Ukrainian-Emirate commission on trade and economic cooperation planned to be held in Kyiv was discussed. The parties welcomed the reached agreement on the mutual abolition of visa requirements for citizens of Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. The President of Ukraine noted the expediency of further improvement of air communication between the two countries, taking into account the expansion of various bilateral contacts. ol The Ukrainian government is prepared to open its files to U.S. authorities investigating President Donald Trump's recently indicted former campaign manager, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said. He stated this in an exclusive interview with Canada's CBC News television channel. "We haven't received any requests for information in this regard, but if we receive a request we will, of course, provide the information we have," the channel quoted Groysman as saying. At the same time, Groysman recalled that Manafort cooperated with the Ukrainian government under former President Viktor Yanukovych, who left the country and fled to Russia during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. "My government and our term in office have absolutely no relations to this scandal," Groysman said. On October 28, Groysman began his official visit to Canada, where he met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the speakers of both chambers of parliament, and took part in a joint meeting of the standing committees for defense and international relations and other representatives of the Canadian authorities. op Ukraine and Saudi Arabia have agreed on visa facilitation and the procedure of Hajj (pilgrimage) to holy cities of Islam in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated this in his comment posted on Facebook. "We reached very important agreements on simplifying the visa regime. I was surprised to find out that today visas to Saudi Arabia are the most expensive for all Ukrainians, and, accordingly, visas to Ukraine are the most expensive for Saudis. We agreed with the King, His Majesty, that we will drastically lower visa fee rates and move towards providing and facilitating people-to-people contacts, facilitating opportunities for businessmen, entrepreneurs, and tourists," he said. Poroshenko also pointed to religious exchanges and an opportunity for Ukrainian Muslims (up to two million Muslims live in Ukraine) to carry out Hajj to Saudi Arabia. "We have agreed that we will maximize the simplification of the Hajj procedure. And I do not rule out that, on the Ukrainian side, we will make some initiatives that will help protect the rights of Ukrainian Muslims," Poroshenko said. op President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has arrived in the United Arab Emirates on a working visit, where he will discuss with the leadership of the state a bilateral cooperation in the political, investment and security fields. The Head of State informed this on his Facebook page. "Today, during a visit to the United Arab Emirates, together with the leadership of the state, we will discuss bilateral cooperation in the political, investment and security spheres," the report reads. The program of the visit includes meetings of the Ukrainian President with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nagayan, and Vice President, Prime Minister of the UAE, Defense Minister of the UAE Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. ish Following the talks between President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, ruler of the Emirate of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a visa-free regime between the two states was agreed. This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the abolition of visa requirements. An agreement on cooperation in the field of culture between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of the United Arab Emirates was also signed. The signing of the document will promote the development of cooperation between Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates in all spheres of culture and art, exchange of information on measures aimed at the protection and preservation of the national cultural heritage, as well as popularization of national cultures of Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, a Memorandum of Understanding in the field of space exploration was signed between the State Space Agency of Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency. The document provides for the development of mutual industrial, scientific and technical exchange in the field of space exploration. ish Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he hopes the agreement on visa-free travel with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will come into force in December, the press service of the head of state has reported. Poroshenko stated this after talks with UAE Prime Minister and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. "The president expressed hope that this agreement will come into force in December, after the exchange of notes," reads the statement. Poroshenko also stressed that Ukrainians would be able to travel freely to one more extremely important and attractive country and that the value of Ukrainian passports continued to grow. The president noted that work in this direction would continue. "Within several months you will learn more very pleasant news on this subject," he added. In addition, according to the presidential press service, during the talks the sides agreed on space cooperation. "This is extremely important for us and is a synergy of the potential of the two states," Poroshenko said. A memorandum on cooperation in the cultural area was signed, an agreement on the support of the Crimean Tatars by the UAE was reached, and a number of important documents were signed. op Vice President, Prime Minister, Defense Minister of the UAE, ruler of the Emirate of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum has confirmed that the UAE supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. He said this during a meeting with President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the press service of the Head of State reported. "Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum has confirmed that the United Arab Emirates supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders. An agreement was also reached on the support of the Crimean Tatars by the UAE," the report reads. During the meeting, Poroshenko underlined traditionally friendly nature of relations between Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates and expressed hope that the UAE would support the initiatives of Ukraine in the framework of international organizations aimed at protecting its sovereignty and restoring territorial integrity. ish Russian hacking group Fancy Bear, in addition to attacks on Hillary Clinton's email, also targeted the emails of Ukrainian politicians and Russian opposition members, according to the Associated Press. The agency wrote that it had obtained a previously unpublished digital hit list. In Ukraine, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Oleksiy, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. Among the targets in Russia were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants. Earlier, the United States accused Fancy Bear of attacks on Montenegro. op Close cooperation between the aerospace sectors of Canada and Ukraine will help achieve significant results, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said. He stated this in his speech at the Canadian-Ukrainian aerospace forum in Montreal, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "My message is absolutely clear. We are a space state possessing technologies and everything necessary for the implementation of successful projects in this area, and we want to act as reliable partners. I am deeply convinced that in our cooperation we will achieve joint success," Groysman said. He said that he was ready to contribute in every way to the development of cooperation between Canada and Ukraine in space exploration. "I assure you that the government is ready to take all the necessary decisions and create the necessary conditions for our qualitative, stable and strategic cooperation. We are ready to do all we can for this goal," he said. Groysman added that he wanted to start a new page in interstate relations. "We have wonderful experience, intelligence, science, which can be very useful at this stage of our cooperation. We have quite powerful education and good traditions, so our expertise and experience, coupled with the capabilities of Canadian partners, can give a very good result," he said, appealing to representatives of the Ukrainian and Canadian aerospace industries at the forum. op Ukraine has launched the procedure for the extradition to Georgia of a former official of the Georgian Interior Ministry, who was detained in Ukraine on November 1, the press center of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has reported. "According to a ruling of the Halytsky district court of Ivano-Frankivsk region, a measure of restraint was chosen against a citizen of Georgia in the form of arrest for 40 days, and the procedure for his extradition to his homeland was launched," the statement reads. The SBU noted that the detainee had been wanted since 2012 for committing violent crimes envisaged by Articles 24, 138 and 144 of the Criminal Code of Georgia. "According to Interpol, in the period from 2002, the detainee, while holding senior positions in the Georgian Interior Ministry as part of an organized criminal group of the ministry's employees, used torture, physical and sexual abuse of persons detained and convicted for committing crimes," the SBU said. It added that SBU officers had seized from the detainee two fake passports of a citizen of Ukraine, one passport of a citizen of Latvia, one passport of a citizen of Belize, drawn up for different surnames but with his photo, as well as a fake seaman's certificate, which he used to cross the state border of Ukraine and other states. Earlier, Georgian media reported that former head of the military police of the Georgian Defense Ministry Megis Kardava was detained upon entry into Ukraine on November 1. op UNICEF/UNI111396/Froutan Boys crowd around a hand pump for a drink of water in a school in the city of Mazar, north Afghanistan. 2011 KABUL, NILI, Afghanistan, 02 November 2017 Although the number of children under five years dying from diarrhoea each year in Afghanistan has dropped below 10,000 for the first time, the disease still claims the lives of 26 children each day across the country, UNICEF said today. Deaths from diarrhoea are particularly tragic because in most cases, they can be easily avoided, said Adele Khodr, UNICEF Afghanistan Representative. Using a toilet and washing your hands is literally a matter of life or death. Diarrhoea-related deaths, which now total 9,500, account for around 12 per cent of the 80,000 deaths of children under the age of five that occur annually in Afghanistan. The risks associated with diarrhoeal infections are exacerbated in Afghanistan a country where some 1.2 million children are already malnourished and 41 per cent of children are stunted. Poor sanitation and hygiene compound malnutrition, leaving children more susceptible to infections that cause diarrhoea, which in turn worsens malnutrition. Providing access to safe water and improved sanitation facilities in villages and towns across the country is critical, said Khodr. At the same time, community-led efforts to improve hygiene practices are the simple and most effective way to save lives, she added. While insecurity continues to affect humanitarian access to parts of the country and slows development, there is still progress. The district of Nili, in Daykundi province, central Afghanistan, was declared as the countrys first open defecation free district at a ceremony on 01 November. Towns and villages across Nili took on the Community-led Total Sanitation approach in which families identify areas around their homes that are used as toilets. Through a combination of shock, shame, pride and disgust, families without a toilet decide to build their latrine. Community-wide commitment and some peer pressure does the rest and typically after three to six months an entire community has given up defecating in the open, contributing to a healthier environment for everyone. In 2017, UNICEF in Afghanistan has already supported more than 500 Afghan communities to be declared and certified as open defecation free. Global research has shown that in some communities where people now use toilets rather than fields or other outside areas, stunting has been reduced by 23 per cent. Reducing cases of diarrhoea also cuts down on significant health costs that families face when having to treat their children for regular sickness. In another step forward in tackling nutrition issues, Afghanistan became the 60th country to join the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement on 16 October. The SUN Movement brings together governments, civil society, the United Nations, donors, businesses and researchers to improve nutrition by amplifying the reach and impact of each others work. UNICEF and partners are calling on all districts in the country to adopt the Community-led Total Sanitation approach and for donors to support the movement to improve and save the lives of some of the most vulnerable children in the country. ### Note to Editors For more information about Community-Led Total Sanitation, please click here For more information, please contact: Toby Fricker, UNICEF Afghanistan, Mobile: +93 (0) 730 717 940, tfricker@unicef.org Feridoon Aryan, UNICEF Afghanistan, Mobile: +93 (0) 730 717 115, faryan@unicef.org Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi traveled to the troubled northern Rakhine state for the first time since the start of a brutal military campaign against minority Rohingya Muslims. Aung San Suu Kyi met Thursday with the Rohingya Muslim community in Pandawpyin Village near Maungdaw. She also traveled to the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and met with the families of the Border Guard Police Force at the Taungbro Bangladesh-Myanmar Friendship Bridge. VOA's Burmese service reports Myanmar's de facto leader told Rohingya villagers she wants to see the reconstruction of their community, urging those tasked with implementing reconstruction plans to take villagers specific needs into account. She called on villagers to speak out about their needs and concerns before implementation begins. Aung San Suu Kyi said she expects reconstruction to go smoothly and concluded her talk by expressing her eagerness to provide proper education for the children in areas affected by violence. She also visited the Madamatine Myo village where ARSA Rohingya militants brutally killed eight native Myo last September. Madamatine village headman U Maung Tin told VOA Burmese the villagers were not able to directly voice their concerns due to time constraints, but they were pleased with Aung San Suu Kyi's visit during difficult times. The Nobel Peace laureate has come under withering criticism from the international community over her slow response to the crisis. She initially maintained there had been a huge iceberg of misinformation about the plight of the Rohingyas. The U.S. State Department says it will send a delegation this weekend to Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have settled after fleeing violence in the Rakhine state. "The delegation is in the region to discuss ways to address the humanitarian and human rights concerns stemming from the Rakhine state crisis and improve the delivery of humanitarian assistance to displaced persons in Burma, Bangladesh, and the region," a statement from the department said. A Rohingya militant attack on Myanmar police outposts in northern Rakhine in August prompted the military to launch a scorched earth campaign against Rohingya villages, creating a mass exodus of 600,000 Rohingyas from Rakhine into Bangladesh, many of them crowded into the district of Cox's Bazar. Nearly 60 percent of the refugees are children. The United Nations has described the campaign against the Rohingya Muslims as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing." The stateless Rohingya minority have long been denied basic rights in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which views them as immigrants from Bangladesh, despite the fact that many families have lived in Myanmar for generations. Myanmar is set to repatriate the Rohingyas from Bangladesh, but has accused Dhaka of waiting to begin the process until it receives $400 million in international aid earmarked to expand shelter for the refugees. VOA's Burmese Service and Nike Ching at the State Department contributed to this report. Conditions are steadily worsening at a former Australian refugee detention camp in Papua New Guinea where more than 600 asylum seekers remain holed up for a third consecutive day, a situation the United Nations calls an "unfolding humanitarian emergency." Electricity and running water have been cut off at the Manus Island camp since Tuesday, when it was officially closed and control turned over to the PNG military. But the men have refused to leave and locked themselves in the camp, citing fears they may be subjected to violence by local residents if they are taken to alternative shelters in nearby communities. But the U.N. refugee agency says the alternative shelters are still incomplete. Lawyers for the 600-plus men have appealed to Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the camp from being closed. One of the detainees, an Iranian who identified himself as Behrouz Boochani, posted on Twitter that the refugees are digging deep holes in the ground to find water. Boochani also tweeted that some of the men are becoming physically ill, with food supplies steadily dwindling. Australia scheduled the Manus camp for closure after Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled last year that the detention center was unconstitutional, as it violated the detainees right of personal liberty. Under a strict immigration policy, Australia blocks asylum-seekers from the Middle East, Africa and Asia from reaching its shores by boat, sending them to Manus Island and another center on the Pacific island nation of Nauru. The policy has come under fire from the United Nations and human rights groups over the indefinite detention of the refugees, who have reportedly suffered abuse and emotional stress. Australian film star Russell Crowe called the situation with the Manus detainees "a nation's shame" and "disgraceful" in a pair of tweets Wednesday, punctuating his anger with a profanity. Crowe said he could provide jobs and housing for at least six of the detainees, and was sure there would be "other Australians who would do the same." The 600 men have been given the option of remaining on Papua New Guinea, returning to their homeland or being resettled in a third country. Many of them are barred from accepting citizenship in Australia, even if they are granted refugee status. New Zealand's new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said Thursday her nation's offer to accept some of the detainees still remains. Ardern says she will raise the issue with her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, when the two leaders meet later this week. Australia's most famous rock the monolith known as Uluru will be closed to hikers and climbers starting in 2019, after years of campaigning by the aboriginal peoples of the area who consider it a sacred spot. The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board, made up of aboriginal owners and National Park representatives, announced the decision Wednesday. The closure will take place on a significant date: Oct. 26, 2019, the anniversary of the 1985 handover of the rock from the government back to the aboriginal people known as the Anangu. The worlds largest monolith, formerly known as Ayers Rock, is one of Australias most famous sights. Those concerned about Uluru say they worried that tourism was physically damaging the giant red outcropping and also creating a theme park atmosphere in a place holy to the Anangu. Statistics from Parks Australia indicate that the number of people who climb the rock has declined in recent years, despite drawing some 300,000 visitors per year. Only 16 percent of visitors climbed the rock between 2011 and 2015, compared to some 74 percent in the 1990s. With seemingly no end to the crisis that has displaced some 600,000 Muslim minority Rohingya from Myanmar, senior U.S. State Department officials are traveling to Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh this week to address humanitarian and human rights concerns and explore ways to improve the delivery of aid. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel for the first time as the top U.S. diplomat to Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on November 15 to address the Rohingya crisis and U.S. support for Myanmar's democratic transition. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Thursday she is joining the delegation led by Simon Henshaw, acting assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, to Cox's Bazar district in southeastern Bangladesh, where refugee camps serve as temporary homes to tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. She tweeted saying: Earlier Thursday, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi traveled to the country's conflict-torn northern Rakhine state for the first time since August 25, the day Rohingya militants attacked Myanmar police, sparking a series of reprisals by government security forces and creating a mass exodus of Rohingya refugees to neighboring Bangladesh. The Nobel Peace laureate has faced widespread criticism from the international community over her slow response to the crisis. The pace of refugee repatriation is likely to be a sticking point between the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. Media reports say Myanmar has agreed to take back from 150 to 300 Rohingya refugees per day, among the estimated 600,000 refugees who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state. For its part, the United States has rushed nearly $40 million in emergency assistance since August 25, and almost $104 million overall in fiscal 2017 to help displaced Burmese, including Rohingya Muslims. Bangladeshi Ambassador to the United States Mohammad Ziauddin sat down with VOA for a one-on-one interview on Monday, outlining his government's views on the Rohingya crisis, and how Dhaka handled the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of refugees. Ziauddin characterized the violence against the Rohingya minority as "ethnic cleansing. "He said the Rohingya are "Myanmar nationals," and it is a mistake to call them Bangladeshis. Ziauddin said Dhaka is registering Rohingya refugees to facilitate the repatriation process. He added both governments are in talks to solve the crisis, as reflected in a recent meeting between Bangladeshi Home Minister Asaduzzaman KhanandAung San Suu Kyi, but he stopped short of addressing if there is increasing tension between the two neighbors as a result of the crisis. The following is an excerpt from the interview: VOA: How would you describe the violence against the Rohingya? Would you characterize it as ethnic cleansing or genocide? Ziauddin: "It is definitely ethnic cleansing. The program of ethnic cleansing which started on the 25th of August has been of phenomenal proportions and it tends to it [s] tantamount to actually genocide. It is possibly one of the darkest chapters in human history. And, this strategic pre-planned program has led to the deaths of thousands of people men, women and children, [and] thousands of women raped, and dishonored, and hundreds and thousands of people fleeing bullets, batons, and bludgeons, to cross over to next door neighbor Bangladesh." VOA: Is the Bangladesh government asking for more humanitarian assistance from the United States? Ziauddin: "As you very well know that there are about over 600,000 Myanmar nationals who we call Rohingya, who are there in Bangladesh at this moment. And this number of people arriving in two months has created a big hit on our economy. And now, obviously, we have to look after them, to feed them. The international community has been very kind with humanitarian assistance. It has been flowing. The United States, of course, has been one of the largest contributors. In fact, the United States has contributed so far $104 million for humanitarian purposes. And we know that the U.S. will continue to do more in the coming days." VOA: How difficult is it for Bangladesh to accommodate the refugees? Ziauddin: "They are all there in an area called Kutupalong, in a place called Cox's Bazar. And over there, the government has started building 10 extra roads. And they are supposed to build about 20,000 shelters. The process is on, we're being assisted by the international community in this respect too. And at the same time, what we have done is to ensure that all who have come from neighboring Myanmar are registered. There have been 85 registration booths established and they are registering 13,000 Myanmar nationals every day. So the total number, actually registered, is over 300,000, but each and every one will be registered. So this is a big task for Bangladesh, and this has been possible because of our army, which is very well known for their peacekeeping efforts all over the world. We are one of the three largest contributors troop contributors in the world. And this army is well versed in looking after situations like this and they have been deployed and that have taken charge of ensuring that food and supplies reach each and every refugee. And at the same time they are the ones who have taken charge along with our Department of Immigration for registration of all of them, so that at the time, when it comes to their [Rohingya] return, the Myanmar government will have all the records in their hand provided, so that they can it will make it easier for them to take them back to their own, and reach them to their own heart and home in Myanmar." VOA: You call the Rohingya "Myanmar nationals. "Are you saying it is a mistake that Myanmar government calls them Bangladesh nationals? Ambassador Ziauddin: "Yes of course. How do we you know, Bangladesh nationals, Bangladesh is a country which is doing very well, as you very well know that among the least developed countries, we are one which is on a take-off stage." "So we are doing very well, so we don't believe our people would migrate or go off anywhere and settle in any other country, except if it is toward countries which would provide them a way of living which is far, far, far, far better than that can be provided by any other country within our region. So, what I mean is that, you understand that, you know, a lot of our people have migrated and are working in the Middle East, they're all over the Western world, they're working there and many of them have settled there and stayed there. So, this is how we feel, I don't think that our people would ever go to any countries because they are pretty well comfortable and self-sufficient and happy within their own within Bangladesh." VOA: Is Bangladesh open to letting Rohingya be citizens of Bangladesh, if they choose to? Ziauddin: "The thing is that the Rohingyas are Myanmar nationals. It is always preferable that they should go back to their own home from where they came. This is where they built their roots so they like to go back to their roots. For that, we need to have a proper environment. And I am sure with Myanmar, we have a really good relationship. This, also we believe, is on the basis of this kind of relationship that we have; historically, we will be able to resolve this.I believe Myanmar is going to see sense in taking them back. And these people will definitely go back, once they get the sense of confidence of returning, once they see that the environment is very friendly now." VOA: How serious a threat are the Rohingya militants who attacked Myanmar security posts in Rakhine in August, setting off the violence? Is Rohingya radicalism a worry for Bangladesh? Ziauddin: "Bangladesh does not believe in violent extremism and terrorism. We stand by any country threatened by this extremism and terrorist activities. And as you very well know, we have a zero tolerance policy toward terrorism and we are completely against any, all these attacks if has taken place in Myanmar because, if there are terrorist attacks, they should be condemned." "Now our problem is that along with the refugees, some of these militants come to Bangladesh then we have our own problems of terrorism and extremism. And it could be that these elements may join forces with those who are there in Bangladesh." "So, we want this Rohingya problem to be resolved as soon as possible, the sooner the better. At the end of the day, if anything starts happening in Bangladesh, it's going to have its effect in the region." VOA: Are you calling those militants terrorists? Ziauddin: "Of course they are terrorists. Anybody who is going to attack and disrupt the law and order in a country, they are terrorists. If their attacks tend to the death of people, they are terrorists, of course." Closing arguments at the sentencing of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will come as soon as Thursday at his sentencing for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in Afghanistan. The defense rested its sentencing case Wednesday after calling its final witness to discuss Bergdahl's mental health. The prosecution could still call a rebuttal witness, but the judge told both sides to be ready to make their final cases for the appropriate punishment. Bergdahl could spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to the charges. The military judge also could sentence him to no prison time, given mitigating factors including the five years he endured as an enemy captive. The judge has wide discretion because Bergdahl didn't strike a plea agreement with prosecutors to limit his punishment. A psychiatrist testified Wednesday that Bergdahl's difficult childhood and his washout from Coast Guard boot camp stoked serious psychiatric disorders that helped spur him to walk off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. Dr. Charles Morgan said the soldier was already suffering from a schizophrenia-like condition and post-traumatic stress disorder when he disappeared in Afghanistan. The forensic psychiatrist said interviews with family and childhood friends, as well as a lengthy exam with Bergdahl, convinced him the soldier was suffering from schizotypal personality disorder when he disappeared in Afghanistan. He said he concurred with an Army Sanity Board document that previously made the diagnosis public. On the stand, Morgan went into greater detail than previously disclosed about Bergdahl's mental health. He said Bergdahl has an internal, self-critical commentary that he doesn't recognize as his own thoughts. Bergdahl, he said, engages in fantasy and has thoughts of self-castration to purify himself. Bergdahl and others with the disorder "have this experience of their own inner life as if it's not them," Morgan said. He said the internal commentary manifests in thoughts such as: "You're never going to be good enough." However, Morgan said the commentary isn't an auditory hallucination, and Bergdahl isn't psychotic. He said Bergdahl knew right from wrong when he walked off his post. Still, the disorder makes it difficult for Bergdahl to see the second- and third-order effects of his actions and how they will impact others, Morgan said. Morgan believes Bergdahl had post-traumatic stress disorder before his 2008 Army enlistment, largely because of growing up with a quick-tempered father. Symptoms of anxiety and tunnel vision, sometimes present when he interacted with his father, occurred the night Bergdahl had a 2006 panic attack that caused his Coast Guard discharge, Morgan said. Bergdahl's father believed in corporal punishment and punched holes in the walls when he was angry, Morgan said. Growing up, Bergdahl would sometimes hide when he heard his father's truck arriving at their house in Idaho. Morgan's testimony was part of defense efforts to mitigate potential punishment. Defense attorneys have made clear that Bergdahl is competent to answer the charges. The judge, Army Col. Jeffery Nance, also said Wednesday that evidence shows Bergdahl understood his Army enlistment contract in 2008. Bergdahl has said he left his Afghanistan post intending to reach a commander at another base and describe what he saw as problems with his unit. Morgan said the decision was consistent with schizotypal personality disorder. "I think he believes there are times that, if it's the morally right thing to do, you have to break the rules," he said. "There's not a thinking through of: 'Are there other ways to achieve this goal?'" The 31-year-old soldier from Hailey, Idaho, was brought home by President Barack Obama in 2014 in a swap for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Obama said at the time the U.S. does not leave its service members on the battlefield. Republicans roundly criticized Obama, and Donald Trump went further while campaigning for president, repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor who deserved serious punishment. Also Wednesday, the defense called a witness to testify that Bergdahl had helped deliver a colony of two-dozen feral cats to her animal sanctuary. The woman, who was allowed to testify without giving her name, said that Bergdahl had a rapport with even the most skittish cats, and that she would like to hire him when his case ends. "His personal responsibility for these cats was uncanny. The devotion he had you don't see it a lot," she said. "He's almost like 'the cat whisperer.'" Britain's Defense Minister Michael Fallon has resigned after allegations of inappropriate behavior emerged. Fallon said in a resignation letter to Prime Minister Theresa May that his "previous conduct ... may have fallen below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces.'' May accepted the resignation Wednesday, saying she appreciated "the characteristically serious manner" in which Fallon had considered his position. The sexual harassment and assault allegations brought against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein have emboldened women in several countries to speak out about their experiences. In Britain, it has produced soul-searching about the growing number of reports of sexual harassment and abuse in politics. May has called a meeting of party leaders to discuss how to deal with the topic. Fallon apologized this week for putting his hand on the knee of a journalist, Julia Hartley-Brewer, in 2002, but he was not being investigated over the incident. Hartley-Brewer said she was "incredibly shocked" by Fallon's resignation and did not think his decision was based solely on the 2002 incident. "I'm assuming there are more allegations to come," she told Sky News. "I doubt very much it's because of my knee." Israelis celebrate it. Palestinians despise it. The Balfour Declaration, Britains promise to Zionists to create a Jewish home in what is now Israel, turns 100 this week, with events in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Britain drawing attention to the now yellowing document tucked away in Londons British Library. Historians still muse about Britains motivations, and its commitment to the declaration waned in the decades after it was issued. Yet the 67 words penned by a British Cabinet minister still resonate 100 years later, with both the Israelis and Palestinians seizing the anniversary to reinforce their narratives. Each side is marking the centenary in starkly different ways, shining a light on the chasm between Israel and the Palestinians that some say was cleaved on Nov. 2, 1917. Still divisive today Its so divisive even today because Zionists think that the Balfour Declaration laid the foundation stone for modern Israel and theyre right to think that and by the same token non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs see it as the foundation stone of their dispossession and misery, said Jonathan Schneer, a historian who authored a book on the document. The declaration was the result of discussions between British Zionists seeking political recognition of their goal of Jewish statehood and British politicians embroiled in World War I. Written by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British financier and Zionist leader, the declaration promised British assistance to create a Jewish homeland. His Majestys government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, the declaration goes, continuing with a caveat: It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. British motives British motives for issuing the declaration include imperialist political calculations meant to secure a foothold in the Levant amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the messianism of British politicians steeped in biblical history, hoping to restore Jews to their ancestral home. The declaration served as the basis for the British Mandate of Palestine, which was approved in 1920 by the League of Nations. The following decades saw a spike in the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine as Zionist state institutions took root. With that came increased friction with the Arab population. To Israel, international recognition Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish peoples desire to return to its historic homeland. It sees Britain as having played a supporting role in a narrative dominated by the determination, heroism and pioneering spirit of the early settlers who fought to build the state. While the state would not have arisen without settlement, sacrifice and a willingness to fight for it, the international impetus was, undoubtedly, the Balfour Declaration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week. Israel is planning a major campaign meant to drive home that narrative and highlight its warm ties with Britain, an important ally at a time when the European Union has taken steps against Israels West Bank settlements. Netanyahu will mark the anniversary in London on Thursday at a dinner hosted by the current Lords Balfour and Rothschild and attended by Prime Minister Theresa May. An anniversary concert in London this weekend will feature British performers alongside a Jewish Israeli clarinetist and a pianist who is an Arab citizen of Israel. The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasnt a tragedy. Whats been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later, Netanyahu said as he left for London Wednesday night. To Palestinians, the original sin The Palestinians see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their nakba, or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israels creation in 1948. That refugee crisis reverberates across the region today, and the Palestinians have cast Israel, through the declaration and its imperialist British patrons, as a colonial enterprise. The Palestinians, who have spent recent years seeking recognition for their state at international institutions, are demanding British accountability. They want an apology and have threatened to sue Britain over the declaration. We asked them to make it right, to make this historical oppression right by recognizing the state of Palestine and apologizing to the Palestinian people, said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki. He said they have asked Britain to issue a new declaration that would be more favorable to the Palestinians, a request he said London rejected. Protests are planned in the Palestinian territories, where thousands of students will stand in their schoolyards Thursday demanding Britain dismiss the declaration, and in Britain, where dozens of cars will be emblazoned with posters condemning the declaration. In Jerusalem, thousands of letters from Palestinian schoolchildren are to be delivered to the British Consulate. British graffiti artist Banksy organized an event marking the anniversary in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday. Children wore helmets with the British flag and a woman dressed as Queen Elizabeth unveiled a curtain to reveal the word Er... SORRY underneath an image of a crown on Israels West Bank separation barrier. Britain, meanwhile, has treaded lightly, casting the anniversary as a commemoration and not a celebration. We will mark the centenary with pride and respect, but also with a degree of sadness, as issues between Israel and the Palestinians remain unresolved, Middle East Minister Alistair Burt said last week. By the 1930s, a new government in Britain backed away from its earlier promise to the Zionists, with an official commission of inquiry deciding that Britains mandate over Palestine, with its constant internecine violence, proved untenable. The 1937 Peel Commission recommended that the land be split between Arabs and Jews. Relations between the Jews in Mandatory Palestine and Britain would further deteriorate before Israel declared independence. Israel would later capture more territory in the 1967 Mideast war, including east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, land the Palestinians want for their state. The years since have seen repeated spasms of violence and the dwindling of hopes for peace. The Balfour Declaration is being used by both sides to advance a present agenda, said Martin Kramer, a historian at Jerusalems Shalem College. There are reasons for Israelis to be grateful for it and reasons for the Palestinians to regret it, but its history. It cant be changed. A trial change to the Facebook news feed in Cambodia and other small countries is stirring criticism of the U.S. tech giant, which champions interconnectivity and openness, but is famously opaque when it comes to how its own product makes critical decisions about information sharing. Their rollout of dramatic trial changes to the news feed in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Serbia, Guatemala and Cambodia in mid October has been handled no differently - with rattled content producers still unaware even of if or when it will end. The only real source of information is a blog post from the head of their news feed - Adam Mosseri, with the company declining media requests for a two-way dialogue to date. We always listen to our community about ways we might improve News Feed, he said in the post late last month lamenting misconceptions some had about the experiment - which was dropped on users in the six countries without warning. Why Facebook implemented this trial in the middle of a crackdown on independent media in Cambodia or whether it will continue into the election campaign next year remains a mystery. There was no advanced notice, it just suddenly changed, it shocked them and even me. We just understood recently that there is a separation of feeds between Facebook accounts and Facebook pages, said Nop Vy, media director at the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, which runs the radio news channel Voice of Democracy. The changes essentially banish content posted by official pages - for instance media outlets, NGO's and businesses - from users news feeds and sends them into an extremely obscure "explore feed" - unless the page owners pay to have their content put back. Its been left to the public to speculate why an experiment with such radical consequences was begun in a country like Cambodia, which is in the midst of a political crackdown in the lead up to an election. At this point, I havent seen any communication from Facebook that acknowledges the negative impact this experiment has had within the six test markets, Maya Gilliss-Chapman, a Silicon Valley-based technology analyst and founder of Cambodians in Tech, wrote in an email. Trying out a new way to pull advertising dollars from a market losing its appetite for buying likes was more important than user experience for Facebook, said Tharum Bun, a tech blogger and founder of KokiTree, a digital marketing agency. It's the first time ever that this issue has happened. Facebook should have done much better than this. But after all, it's the global tech company that can decide without listening to their users, he said. The news feed change also comes as the company is under attack for the rampant spread of disinformation during last years U.S. election campaign. Cambodia has a lot of love stories with Facebook. But the interesting timing is Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are being grilled for their role in last year's U.S. election, Bun said. All three firms have been questioned by the U.S. Senates House Intelligence Committee this week, where regulation of their activities has been raised. But in the same week, Facebook recorded its highest ever single quarter profits of $4.7 billion and hit a record share price. With Cambodias election looming next year, the government here has shut down more than 10 stations carrying content from critical voices such as Radio Free Asia (RFA), Voice of America (VOA) and Voice of Democracy (VOD) in August. All three began urgently migrating listeners to Facebook, which is used by almost a third of Cambodians. In fact Facebook/Internet surpassed TV as their most popular source of news last year according to a study by Open Society and The Asia Foundation. RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan said the timing of Facebooks experiment was less than ideal. I can say that that the organic reach of the Khmer Services Facebook page has been affected, with a dramatic drop from the beginning of the month in comparison with the end by 50 percent, he wrote in an email. Steven Path, President of the ICT Federation of Cambodia and CEO of IT firm Pathmazing, said the big signal coming out of the trial in Cambodia was that it was a lose, lose, lose for all parties - users, brands and sponsors. I have followed Facebook quite religiously for the past ten years and definitely Facebook has gotten very, very greedy, he said, adding they risked upsetting what had been to date an effective balance between the wants of users and marketers. And Facebook has to be careful that if they are to maintain incremental increases of their active daily users, this actually, this strategy could take a hit, he said. Any backlash though would be limited by the fact that for the foreseeable future there is no social media competitor that could replace Facebook, he added. Lets look at it this way: despite Facebooks highly publicized, alleged role in allowing Russian-linked ads to spread across their platform during the 2016 U.S. elections, they just reported their best quarter ever, Gilliss-Chapman said. Whats done is done, but it would be great to see Facebook at least acknowledge the negative effect this test has had on the people, economy and politics within the test markets. The Central African Economic and Monetary Community reached a key milestone this week. Heads of state meeting in Chad lifted visa requirements for their citizens traveling within the six-member regional bloc. But challenges remain to ensuring free movement and deepening economic integration. The announcement marked the culmination of 23 years of negotiation. Citizens of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and Chad no longer need visas to travel within the six-member economic bloc. Chadian President Idris Deby made the announcement at the CEMAC heads of state summit in Ndjamena. Deby said the people have rightfully been waiting for strong actions that concretely demonstrate that the integration of central Africa is a reality, which is the main reason the Central African Economic and Monetary Community was created. He said everyone who visited Chad this week can testify that they were exempted from visa charges. CEMAC was founded in 1994, but has trailed behind other regional blocs on the continent in lifting visa restrictions. Economist Youssouf Saleh, Chad's former prime minister, said for CEMAC, it is better late than never. But he added that the effectiveness of the free movement of goods and people will depend on whether there is also an integrated and competitive economy and whether political divides that have hampered economic activity are broken. Last year, the economies of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea took a hit amid the global drop in oil prices. The two countries sealed their borders to stop job-seeking youths flooding into their countries and even began expelling some migrants from other CEMAC countries. Only Chad, Cameroon and Gabon have started issuing the CEMAC biometric passports, despite a January 2014 deadline. Security concerns are also hindering free movement. At Garoua-Boulai on Cameroon's eastern border with the C.A.R., border controls remain with travelers prevented from crossing on both sides. Cameroonian Colonel Etienne Detou said they have arrested rebel combatants from the Central African Republic trying to cross disguised as business persons and refugees. He said although there is relative peace on the Cameroon side. But he added it should be noted there are regular incursions by armed groups and highway robbers from Central African Republic. He said the military and the police should be very vigilant and self-defense groups should participate in safeguarding their territory. Cameroon and Chad are also limiting free movement of people at their common border.Both countries have suffered Boko Haram atrocities as well and want to make it harder for the terrorists to penetrate. CEMAC Commission President Pierre Moussa said the states are taking measures to address security concerns. He said for the new visa-free policy to be fully effective, the heads of state have authorized the Development Bank of Central African States to pay $2 million as part of the debt they owe the International Police Organization so that they can help secure the borders of CEMAC. Other ambitious plans for CEMAC regional integration are yet to be executed, including plans to create a regional airline and to build roads linking the regional capitals. China has indicated it will once again block Indias request at the United Nations Security Council to declare Masood Azhar, leader of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) extremist group, a global terrorist. This is not the first time China, considered an all-weather ally of Pakistan, has halted Indias efforts against Azhar at the U.N. Security Council. As one of the five permanent and veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, China has utilized its veto power twice this year to block Indias proposal of designating the JeM leader a terrorist. 'Technical hold' The proposal is on "technical hold" by China and the deadline for the hold expires Thursday. As for the listing application by the relevant country [India], there are disagreements. China put the technical hold so as to allow for more time to deliberate on this matter. To our regret, the committee so far has yet to reach consensus, Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a recent press conference. Chinese authorities said they will move forward with the application only when there is full consensus among the UNSC members. "China always maintains that on the listing matter, the 1267 Committee [Security Council Committee] shall uphold the principle of objectivity, impartiality and professionalism, and make its decisions by consensus among its members on the basis of solid evidence, Hua added. Given that the so-called "technical hold" cannot be extended when it expires Thursday, China is expected to block the request permanently. Timeline Jaish-e-Muhammad is designated as terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. India accuses its leader, Azhar, of launching several terrorist attacks on its soil, including a deadly assault on the countrys Pathankot Airbase in January 2016 and a terror attack on its parliament in 2002. Following the Pathankot attack, India initiated the move to include Azhar on the U.N. terrorist list, which would subject him to a travel ban and have his assets frozen. All 15 members of the Security Council, except China, supported Indias bid. China put a six-month hold on the request and extended it by another three months when it expired in September 2016. India renewed its request in December 2016, which China again blocked. In January 2017, the United States, with the support of France and Britain, initiated another move to blacklist Azhar and China again put a technical hold on it, which expired in August and was extended for the last time until November 2 (Thursday). Indias reaction India called China's latest statement on the issue "incomprehensible." This does not reflect well on the determination that the international community needs to display to decisively defeat the menace of terrorism, Indias External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. India has in the past repeatedly accused China of using its power at the United Nations Security Council to block Indias efforts to get a permanent seat in the Security Council and also to put terror groups that pose a threat to its security on the world bodys terror list. Pakistans reaction Meanwhile, Pakistan rejects Indias allegations against Azhar that he masterminded last years Pathankot attack. Pakistan said it had launched a comprehensive investigation, and detained and interrogated Azhar and several of his associates following Indias allegations, but found no evidence linking Azhar to the airbase attack. Azhar, the founder of JeM, is an Islamist hard-liner and is considered to be a longtime foe of India who believes in the liberation of the Indian part of Kashmir. JeM has already been blacklisted by the United Nations. More than 20 universities in China have set up research centers to promote the so-called Xi Jinping thought the vision of the country's increasingly powerful leader that was recently enshrined in the Communist Party's constitution. The push to study Xi Thought has some academic institutions competing for resources and aiming to be the first to elaborate on the top leaders ideas of governance. But some analysts worried the move is aimed at strengthening political control on campus. This is not education at all. It is a brazen attempt to impose political control, said Perry Link, a China scholar at the University of California Riverside, in an emailed reply to a VOA query. Political control? At the end of the Communist Partys 19th national congress last week, party delegates voted unanimously to make "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" a guiding principle for the party. Xi Thought was derived from his three and a-half hour report, delivered at the opening of the high-level twice-a-decade meetings on October 18, and has touched upon his ideas of government, governance, and roadmap for the countrys development in the next five decades. The move has instantly elevated the 64-year-old leaders political stature, putting him on par with Mao Zedong, the communist revolutionary who proclaimed the People's Republic of China and whose political theory known as Maoism has long been taught in Chinese schools. Right after Xis elevation, Beijings Renmin University took the initiative in tasking top scholars to set up a research center to study the current leader's political theory. Instilling 'Xi Thought' According to the official Communist Party newspaper Beijing Daily, the institute will help universities nationwide to incorporate Xi Thought into students textbooks and their minds. Within a week, more than 20 universities, including Yunnan University, Tianjin Normal University and Hebei University, followed suit to create similar research centers, while study groups have been organized nationwide. While saying Xi Thought is not as developed, written about, nor historically entrenched as that of Mao or even the notorious Gang of Four, David Zweig, chair professor of Hong Kong University of Science and Technologys social science division, said the academics push to study Xis political vision is common and to be expected in China. Zweig is not surprised that the countrys universities will compete for budgets and for being first to elaborate Xis ideas of governance. A rush to comply Right now, I think theres still a lot up in the air in terms of defining what is the core issue in Xi Jinping Thought. So, universities will be competing to a certain extent to be the one who can make major contribution to this, Zweig said. You know, people bandwagon, people rally, the party mobilizes. Thats quite common, the professor added. Zweig expects Xi Thought to be added into the existing curricula of university students, who will probably be asked to show a high level of loyalty and to memorize the top leaders key concepts. Room for reflection on errors? When you get a very powerful single leader, there are concerns about mistakes. So, youd like to see Xi Jinping Thought somehow open up to reflections on policies and policy errors and good governance and things like that, he said. But Tiananmen Square dissident Wuer Kaixi is not as optimistic, saying China is moving in a wrong and dangerous direction with Xis authoritarian rule and his ambition to influence other countries. He added Xis plan to impose political control on campus reaches a new level, "but is nothing new as the partys propaganda efforts have been systemic. However, the general publics response to the study of Xi Thought has been tepid. Public response is tepid On Sina Weibo, Chinas Twitter-like microblogging platform, netizens had almost nothing to say about news stories online about the universities efforts to study Xi Thought. One Weibo user wrote Xi Thought is an innovative adjustment to a super power countrys strategic thinking and has embodied the nature of Marxism, which is to advance with the times. Another user responded, we the work force hates these kind of brainwashing articles. But college students who VOA spoke with in Beijing, on the other hand, said the issue has nothing to do with brainwashing. One graduate student who only gave his first name, David, said that while in the West the emphasis is on individuality, we [Chinese] mostly accept collectivism." "This doesn't mean we don't ask why? We also ask why," he said. But, he added, "were willing to sacrifice our personal freedoms, including those with respect to ideology. That is, were fine with top-down ideas in exchange for the countrys unity and a relatively strong enforcement. In our current curriculum on politics, incumbent political policies are already included. So, to get to know a little bit more about the countrys new policies isnt so bad. I find it necessary, not useless, said Zhang, an environmental economics student. A professor with the Chinese Academy of Government that VOA tried to interview, however, declined to comment on the sensitive topic. An official from the United Nations' World Food Program has issued a warning about the situation in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has left 3.2 million people severely hungry. In the past year, about 1.4 million residents of Congos Kasai region have been displaced by violence that has killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed entire villages, according to Claude Jibidar, who heads the WFP in Congo. Jibidar says the situation is comparable to well-known crisis zones like Syria and Yemen. Congo, the massive central African nation, now has the highest burden of displaced people in Africa. The number of people displaced during that time period is more than Syria, than Yemen, than all the other emergencies that you know of, he said. That just tells you about how serious the situation is in the DRC. The WFP is not the only humanitarian group calling attention to the Kasai region. Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders recently warned of widespread malnutrition among children, with rates of severe acute malnutrition as high as 10 percent in some areas. Horrific tales The violence began last year after the killing of a tribal leader who defied longtime President Joseph Kabila, whose term officially ended in December 2016. Critics have accused Kabila of being slow to hold fresh elections, in what they say is a bid to cling to power. The Kasai violence quickly spiraled into ethnic clashes, massacres and abuses at the hands of armed groups, including Congos army. Jibidar, who visited the area last week, says many residents who had fled into the bush to escape violence emerged with horrific tales to tell. It is the use of machete; it is the systematical use of rape on women; it is really terrible, terrible things, he said. Kasai has been characterized by the beheading of a lot of people. You have heard about the mass graves; it has been a terrible situation. People who are coming out, they are just traumatized. Traumatized. Without significant increases in funding from donor nations, he says, the agency will run out of food by mid-November. He says the bigger solution to Kasais woes is beyond the scope of his U.N. agency. Jibidar noted the DRC government has made progress in restoring peace, along with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo. It is a question of sustained, long-term security and peace, he said. That is the first thing. Without peace and security maintained, now it is calm, it has to remain calm. People have to regain confidence and they all have to come out of the bush. What did Americans think about the presidential election on November 8 last year? In the documentary "11/8/16," executive producer Jeff Deutchman follows 16 Americans from all walks of life throughout that day. The result is an eye-opening documentary about the political and cultural divide that continues to polarize Americans. The film opens at daybreak with Americans across the United States preparing to vote. Deutchman told VOA he had a team of 50 filmmakers follow selected families, from the start of the day until the results came in. I worked with each of the filmmakers to try and identify a subject who we thought would bring something to the table, would both be compelling and also would really represent something distinct about America. We wanted to be a broad cross-section of individuals that represented diversity geographically, demographically and ideologically. Among the 16 families selected from the dozens who were filmed are a Sikh cabbie supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton in Queens, New York, and a pro-Donald Trump military veteran in Miami, an exonerated AfricanAmerican convict in Alabama, who has gotten back his right to vote for the first time in 30 years, and Jesus, a DACA recipient in San Jose, California, who feels his future is at stake if Trump were to win. In West Virginia, a conservative coal miner will be voting for Donald Trump because he is concerned about the future of the coal mining industry, which he feels will be threatened under Hillary Clinton. The documentary shows that Americans voted on issues they felt affected them personally. The film also reveals how many people believed the media projections that Hillary Clinton was going to win. As the voting booths opened that day, pollsters were projecting a 7 percent to 29 percent chance of a Trump victory. Deutchman says his documentary reveals deep cultural divisions in American society that the news media missed. He says liberal voters from urban areas listened to those with similar views from media that did not cover the rural areas as vigorously. I think its important not to get stuck in the echo chambers that we all live in. We surround ourselves with people virtually and in real life that are like-minded, and I understand that," said Deutchman. "I do it as much as anyone. But I think its really important to try and regularly confront the fact of how big this country is and to allow that vastness to inform the decisions that we make about how we vote and how we speak. The film does not take sides. The audience gets invested in these 16 characters, who, despite their political leanings, make compelling arguments based on their circumstances. As the day progresses, the lens follows the coal miners family as they angrily react to a comment on TV that there is anger in the hinterlands. In Massachusetts, a conservative, small businessman named Tom, proudly wearing a Make America Great Again hat, is voting for Trump because he believes the economy will improve under his administration. If the economy got better, and I was bringing more people or more work into my shop, and I can delegate a little bit more, Id be able to spend more time with my family. Thats huge for me, he said. In an on-camera exchange between Tom and his more skeptical wife, Gina, "11/8/16" shows how campaign messages and partisan media feed into peoples prejudices and fears. Tony believes Hillary Clinton will be elected for all the wrong reasons. When Hillary gets elected, and I think shell get elected because she is gonna ..." he says to his wife, who finishes his sentence, "... cheat? Tony continues, Shes gonna cheat, shes gonna raise the taxes on everybody and health care right now is crushing us anyway, so Im concerned that we will have a tough time making ends meet. On the other side of the spectrum, the film also shows the concerns of minorities if Donald Trump were to win. As the results start tilting toward a Republican victory, a Hispanic family in San Jose, California, is getting teary-eyed at the prospect of being separated by a hardline immigration policy. A year later, Deutchman tells VOA that America remains deeply polarized along the same lines. He said he hopes films like his, by humanizing the American electorate, can encourage dialogue. I think each of us needs to understand that we live in a very big country, and we pay a lot of lip service to the value of living in America and the value of living in a democracy, but part of what that means is that this is an enormous tent that contains multitudes of different types of people and that includes people who are everywhere on the spectrum of education level. This is what democracy is, he said. House tours, ghost tours, monument tours ... there are lots of ways to view a city. But maybe only Columbus, Ohio, has food tours. Columbus food blogger Bethia Woolf launched Columbus Food Adventures in 2010 in part because the citys diverse immigrant population, now 9 percent of the total, has created a rich and diverse restaurant scene. Woolfs company offers taco truck tours, German village tours and above all, what she calls the Alt Eats tours. This unique city tour centers on the thriving ethnic enclaves of north Cleveland Avenue, where much of Columbus immigrant community lives, eats, and plays, the Columbus Food Adventures website says. Ethnic foods Alt-Eats adventurers are guided to explore little-known ethnic restaurants, all within a few blocks of each other. We visit Indian, a Mexican bakery, we visit Nigerian, Vietnamese and Somali (restaurants), Woolf said. And then we are teaching them a little bit about the cuisine about the dishes they are going to eat. Columbus now has ethnic restaurants from more than 40 nationalities, and more are being added all the time. We recently found a market that is offering Sudanese food, Woolf said. Without leaving Columbus you can explore all these different cuisines. The tours are popular with out-of-town visitors and local residents alike. Gloria Chavez is a tourist from California: Its just a great way to try new foods and meet new people. And learning about different cultures was great. For Brian Wolf and his wife, the tour is a guide to fine eating in his own city. Now we will definitely come back to these restaurants because they're all within 10 minutes of where we live, and all of them have been delicious, he said. Momo Ghar Momo Ghar was at one time one of the restaurants on the tour. Barely more than a counter and two tiny tables, the Nepalese and Tibetan eatery is nestled inside an international grocery. But its unassuming appearance hides a big reputation. Momo Ghar is Yelps No. 1 restaurant in Columbus. Momo is dumpling, owner and chef Phuntso Lama says proudly. We make a lot of dumplings. We are making probably several thousand dumplings a day. We have to keep up with the demand. A Nepalese immigrant, Lama has a signature dumpling: Jhol Momo. It and other dumplings are made from scratch in the restaurants little open kitchen. You could say Momo is almost like a national dish of Nepal because it is so popular. So I thought it would be nice to bring the flavor to Columbus, Lama says. Her dumplings have attracted loyal customers like Columbus resident Windi Noble. All those are flavorful and super tasty and filling and really cheap. So it's a great affordable meal. Thats why we keep coming back," Noble said. The influx of immigrants to the city has also helped revitalize once-defunct suburban strip malls as the newcomers open shops and restaurants. There is approximately 150,000 to 200,000 immigrants and refugees in the central Ohio area, Guadalupe Velasquez, city assistant director for the department of neighborhoods, said. The total local and state taxes paid by immigrants is $340 million, an indication of their thriving businesses. Lama is planning a new contribution. Employees, I have about 14 or 15 of them, she said. The reason I have so many right now is I am training a lot of them because we are opening a second location in about four weeks. Lama says she's happy the flavors she brought from her native country are being embraced in her adopted home. Facebook reported better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue on Wednesday as it pushed further into video advertising, showing no sign of financial damage from the controversy over how Russia used the social network in an attempt to sway voters in the 2016 U.S. election. The company's shares, which hit a record earlier in the day, initially rose in after-hours trading, but later fell into negative territory. They have gained almost 60 percent this year. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg condemned Russia's attempts to influence last year's election through Facebook posts designed to sow division, and repeated his pledge to ramp up spending significantly to increase the social network's security, something he said on Wednesday would affect profits. "What they did is wrong, and we are not going to stand for it," Zuckerberg said of the Russians, on a conference call with analysts. Facebook is at the center of a political storm in the United States for the ways it handles paid political ads and allows the spread of false news stories. U.S. lawmakers have threatened tougher regulation and fired questions at Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch in hearings this week. Facebook, in a series of disclosures over two months, has said that people in Russia bought at least 3,000 U.S. political ads and published another 80,000 Facebook posts that were seen by as many as 126 million Americans over two years. Russia denies any meddling. Facebook's total advertising revenue rose 49 percent in the third quarter to $10.14 billion, about 88 percent of which came from mobile ads. Analysts on average had expected total ad revenue of $9.71 billion, according to data and analytics firm FactSet. Facebook in the third quarter gave advertisers for the first time the ability to run ads in standalone videos, outside the Facebook News Feed, and the company is seeing good early results, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told analysts on a conference call. "Video is exploding, and mobile video advertising is a big opportunity," Sandberg said. More than 70 percent of ad breaks up to 15 seconds long were viewed to completion, most with the sound on, she said. The 49 percent increase in total ad sales in the latest quarter compares with a 47 percent rise in the prior quarter and a 51 percent jump in the first quarter. Facebook has been warning for more than a year about reaching a limit in "ad load", or the number of ads the company can feature in users' pages before crowding their News Feed. Advertisers seem unfazed, though, spending heavily as the social network continues to attract users. The nearly 50 percent jump in ad revenue "is phenomenal, especially when for the past few quarters they've been trying to bring that expectation way, way down. Yet it keeps going up," Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth said. Of the Russia scandal enveloping Facebook publicly, Feinseth said: "In the bigger picture, I don't think it's a really big factor." The company's performance was strong in comparison with smaller social media firms Snap Inc and Twitter, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said. "Facebook grew revenues by $3.3 billion year-over-year for the quarter. This is more than Twitter and Snapchat generate combined for the full year," he said. Facebook said about 2.07 billion people were using its service monthly as of Sept. 30, up 16 percent from a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected 2.06 billion monthly active users, according to FactSet. Net income rose to $4.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, from $2.63 billion, or 90 cents per share. Analysts on an average were expecting the company to earn $1.28, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Total revenue increased 47.3 percent to $10.33 billion beating analysts estimate of $9.84 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Various U.S. investigations into how Russia may have tried to sway American voters in the months before and after last year's elections are hanging over Facebook and its competitors. There is also proposed U.S. legislation that would extend rules governing political ads on television, radio and satellite to also cover digital advertising. "We expect more scrutiny about Facebook's ad system ahead," analyst Debra Aho Williamson of research firm eMarketer said in a note. "We're also monitoring for any signs that this investigation will have a material impact on ad revenue." Federal prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against the Uzbek immigrant accused of running down and eight people with a truck in New York City. Sayfullo Saipov, 29, allegedly drove a rented truck down a crowded bicycle path in downtown Manhattan Tuesday, running over bike riders and pedestrians. The truck hit a school bus, and Saipov jumped out of the damaged truck. He was waving what turned out to be a paintball gun and a pellet gun before he was shot in the stomach by a New York police officer. Federal charges against him include providing material support to a terror group and destruction of motor vehicles. Suspect questioned in hospital Saipov asked law enforcement officers interviewing him to display an Islamic State flag in his hospital room and said he felt good about what hed done, according to the criminal complaint. U.S. President Donald Trump reacted strongly to those details in a Twitter post late Wednesday. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Trump wrote. Saipov told investigators from his hospital bed that he had planned the attack for weeks and was inspired to carry it out after watching Islamic State videos on his cellphone. According to the criminal complaint, one of two cellphones recovered from Saipovs rental truck contained about 90 videos and about 3,800 images, many of them showing Islamic State propaganda and graphic acts of violence. In particular, Saipov said he was motivated by a video in which Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi challenged Muslims in the United States and elsewhere (about) what they were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq. The second cellphones internet browsing history offered investigators important clues about Saipovs movements leading up to the attack, revealing an Oct. 4 search for the car rental in New Jersey, a search for Halloween and a car rental in New York on Oct. 15, and another car rental search on Oct. 18. Islamic State has urged its followers to do exactly what Saipov is charged with doing: use cars and trucks as weapons and drive them along busy pedestrian areas to kill as many people as possible. Deputy New York Police Commissioner John Miller told reporters notes linked to Saipov were found at the crime scene. The notes were handwritten in Arabic, Miller said. They had symbols and words. But the gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever. Authorities have also linked Saipov to social media accounts that contain Islamic State-related material. The militant group has, so far, not claimed responsibility. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the attack was the definition of terrorism. This was an attack on our values. He said there are no additional or credible threats against the city at this time and urged New Yorkers to be strong, be proud, be resilient, show the whole world right now, we will not be moved by terror. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called Saipov a depraved coward and earlier told CNN that he was radicalized domestically. Tuesdays crime using a rented truck was similar to terrorist vehicle attacks carried out in other Western countries in recent years. New America, a nonpartisan research center, said 15 vehicular attacks have been carried out since 2014, killing more than 140 people. Uzbekistans president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said Wednesday the attack was ruthless and cruel, and that his government stood ready to use all means to assist in the investigation. The New York Police Department said it will increase the number of officers throughout the city out of an abundance of caution. Masood Farivar, Ken Bredemeier and Chris Hannas contributed to this report. Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to build a self-driving car. AutoNation said Thursday that its dealerships will provide maintenance and repairs for Waymo's self-driving fleet of Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. The agreement will include additional models when Waymo brings them on line. Terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed. Google has been partnering with a number of car-centric companies like Avis, the ridesharing company Lyft, and Fiat Chrysler. AutoNation Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, runs about 360 dealerships in the U.S. House Republicans are set to unveil their far-reaching tax overhaul Thursday, making major changes yet looking to preserve current tax rules for retirement accounts popular with middle-class Americans and to retain a top income-tax rate for million-dollar earners. GOP negotiators scrambled this week to finalize details of the first major revamp of the tax system in three decades. Though working furiously, they missed a self-imposed Wednesday deadline as top Republicans batted down rumors that the public rollout could be delayed until next week. The legislation is a longstanding goal for Capitol Hill Republicans who see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to clean up an inefficient, loophole-cluttered tax code. But there is lingering opposition from northeastern Republicans fearful of losing a cherished deduction for state and local taxes and anxiety among other rank-and-file lawmakers over emerging details. 401(k) still in flux Senior GOP lawmakers confirmed the decision to retain existing rules on 401(k) accounts, which came after assurances from President Donald Trump that they would not be changed. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, had hoped to reduce 401(k) contribution limits, in part to generate new tax revenues in the near term to finance the cuts to income tax rates. Another lawmaker cautioned that the decision might still change. The lawmakers required anonymity because the tax panel was trying to keep its deliberations secret until the tax measure is released. Influential conservative Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., dismissed proposed retirement changes as a non-starter, adding thats what most of middle-income America uses as their nest egg. Brady said the panel hoped to meet Trumps goal of a cut in the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent but allowed that the change would not be permanent because of arcane Senate rules. Republicans and Trump argue that sharply cutting tax rates for businesses improves U.S. economic competitiveness, but the possibility of letting the lower corporate rates expire is rankling some longtime advocates who say the uncertainty could limit its boost to the economy. The ambitious timetable calls for passing the complex measure in the House by Thanksgiving. Some of the details The emerging plan would retain the Clinton-era 39.6 percent income tax rate for the wealthiest earners. But for that highest bracket, the tax writers were considering raising the minimum level of income to $1 million for couples or families from the current $470,000, a change that would reduce tax revenue. Trump weighed in Wednesday on Twitter: Wouldnt it be great to Repeal the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further Tax Cuts for the Middle Class. The House and Senate should consider ASAP as the process of final approval moves along. Push Biggest Tax Cuts EVER. The idea of repealing the individual mandate has been pushed by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, but was dismissed by key GOP leaders since it would add political complications to an already difficult task of crafting a tax bill that can pass the House and Senate. GOP leaders still struggled to win over lawmakers from New York and New Jersey, many of whom are opposed to repealing a lucrative deduction for state and local taxes that benefits their states more than others. A potential compromise involved a $10,000 cap to the deduction for local property taxes while repealing the deduction for income taxes. I view the elimination of the deduction as a geographic redistribution of wealth, picking winners and losers, said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., who represents eastern Long Island. I dont want my home state to be a loser, and that really shouldnt come as any surprise. Basic outline The plan outline released last month by Trump and Republican leaders called for shrinking the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, with respective tax rates of 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent and a category still to be determined. The tax system would be simplified, and most people would be able to file their returns on a postcard-sized form. The plan calls for nearly doubling the standard deduction used by most average Americans to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for families, and increasing the per-child tax credit. In addition to slashing the corporate tax rate, it also seeks to repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, a big break for the wealthy. Economic growth among countries in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to rebound this year from 20-year lows in 2016, according to the International Monetary Fund's biannual report. But despite the modest recovery, the Washington-based organization warns public debt is rising and soon could become unsustainable in some African countries. After a slowdown in 2016 where the sub-Saharan regional economy grew by just 1.4 percent, the IMF said growth is expected to almost double this year to 2.6 percent, and to reach 3.4 percent in 2018. One-third of sub-Saharan economies are growing at more than 5 percent. Speaking at a news conference in Harare this week, the IMF's Africa Department Director Abebe Aemro Selassie said he doesn't expect others to catch up. WATCH: IMF Forecasts Modest African Economic Growth; Critics Say Figures Are Pessimistic "We're still going to have a situation where 12 out of the 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, people in those countries will not be enjoying any increase in per capita income," Aemro said. "This is about 40 percent of the population. So a lot of work to be done to put in place the policies, policy environments, to get growth back up to the 5 or 6 percent we need to make a significant dent on poverty reduction going forward." Some bright spots Not all economists agree with the IMF forecasts. Too pessimistic, said Judith Tyson of the Overseas Development Institute. "They haven't really looked at the impact of the recent increases in commodity prices, and in particular, oil has moved up well over $60 a barrel in recent weeks," he noted. "And there's quite a lot of optimism that it will remain at that level. And the IMF have forecast only $50." That's a big deal for countries like Nigeria and Angola economies largely dependent on the oil sector. Tyson said it's not only the price of oil that is underestimated. "For some of the specialist metals, particularly around the electric car market this year, there's been a lot of speculation," he said. "And those are produced in large quantities in a large number of African countries, and they haven't really looked at examples of that. So for example, cobalt is a major metal that is mined in Zambia and the DRC." The IMF also flagged growing concerns over public debt now above 50 percent of GDP in half of sub-Saharan economies, just as the costs of debt servicing are rising. A court in Macedonia on Thursday convicted 33 people of planning terrorist attacks as members of an ethnic Albanian militant group. Heavy security, including helicopters flying overhead, protected the court proceedings in Skopje. Armored vehicles and at least 100 police officers deployed around the courthouse to safeguard the participants in the highly anticipated trial. Seven of the accused were given life sentences, 13 got 40-year sentences, and the rest got sentences of 12 to 20 years, all on charges including terrorism and participating in a terrorist organization. Four defendants were acquitted. Attorneys for the defendants said the proceedings were "a classic show trial" and derided the length of their clients' sentences. "We didn't expect fair sentences, but we also didn't expect such a draconian ruling," said attorney Naser Raufi. He called for an independent investigation of the proceedings. Those tried were arrested in a police raid and gunfight in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo on May 9, 2015. In the battle following the raid, 22 militants and eight Macedonian officers died. The raid was conducted in response to an attack by armed men on a border post. Some of the attackers were former fighters from the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army, a militia that had fought in the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia that killed scores of people. The insurgency ended with a deal providing greater rights for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. Ethnic Albanians now make up about one-quarter of the Macedonian population of 2.1 million. Some of the defendants were ethnic Albanians from Macedonia, while others were from neighboring Kosovo. The Albanian National Liberation Army disbanded in 2002. Some of its leaders went into politics. Lilica Kitanovska of VOA's Macedonian service contributed to this report. The indictment of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman, has sent a chill through Washingtons foreign lobbying community. Manafort and his former business associate, Rick Gates, are accused of serving as unregistered agents of a foreign government in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The law requires anyone that carries out political activities for a foreign government or foreign political party to disclose to the Justice Department their work and spending. Failure to comply carries a prison sentence of up to five years. But enforcement remains lax. Too few lobbyists register and violators are rarely punished. Between 1966 and 2015, the Department of Justice brought just seven criminal FARA cases.The Manafort indictment marks the eighth such case. Broken system Special counsel Robert Mueller's decision to include FARA charges in a 12-count indictment against Manafort and Gates has put the foreign lobbying community on notice that the Department of Justice will toughen enforcement. And members of Congress are looking into fixing what critics see as a broken system. Top Republicans, Senator Chuck Grassley and Representative Mike Johnson, introduced identical bills on Tuesday to empower the Department of Justice to enforce FARA. In an interview with VOA, Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a partner at the law firm of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock who advises clients on FARA compliance, discusses the fallout from the indictment. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: Tell us how the Manafort/Gates indictment is playing out on Washington's K Street? Rosenstein: This was really earth shattering for the legal community, folks like myself who do FARA law and political law, but it was also really earth shattering for the regulated advocacy community. Washingtons worst kept secret is that shadow lobbying, particularly on behalf of foreign governments, has been taking place (for generations). Part of the reason that was happening is because nobody felt that there was a stick to go along with whatever theoretical carrot there would have been. But that has changed now (with) the very high-profile indictment all over the press. Seeing an indictment being brought for specific FARA violations is a sign that the law itself is really on the radar of prosecutors in general and certainly the Justice Department. You (also) have members of Congress who have held hearings and will hold more hearings on FARA itself (and that) will lead to increased attention by the FARA office to be more aggressive within the bounds of their budget and statutory restraint. Q: What changes are needed to toughen enforcement of FARA? Rosenstein: One of them may have been addressed in Senator Grassleys bill, if its passed and the president signs it. Having the ability to compel individuals suspected of being unregistered agents of foreign governments to participate and produce documents, theoretically to produce testimony as part of the Department of Justices investigation, is critical to ensuring enforcement. The second issue is that the FARA unit is relatively small. The higher the priority placed on enforcement of a particular law, the larger the budget needs to be. So operating with too small a budget and too small a purview is a recipe for frustration. Q: Give us your read on the Manafort/Gates indictment. Do prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a FARA criminal conviction? Rosenstein: Assuming that the indictment bears out in terms of the actual evidence Mr. Mueller possesses, this is about as textbook an example of a FARA violation as I can think of. Whats particularly fascinating about the indictment is the second FARA charge. The first FARA charge was failure to register. The second FARA charge was making materially false statements on the FARA disclosures that were filed. This is a situation where Mr. Manafort went ahead, talked to the FARA office at the Department of Justice, made retroactive filings and apparently lied on those retroactive filings. Q: What is the penalty for a FARA violation? Rosenstein: The penalty for a FARA violation is up to five years in prison per violation and a $10,000 fine per violation. Whats interesting about the indictment is there are two counts. One count is for failing to register. The other count is for making materially false representations on the retroactive filing and making false statements to the Department of Justice. Conceivably, each one of those misrepresentations could be a separate FARA violation. I think the indictment lists four or five. You could see an aggressive prosecutor saying these are four separate willful and knowing violations. And well seek up to five years for each one. 1 A man places a candle during a vigil outside the Polytechnic School in Rosario, Argentina, Nov. 1, 2017. Five victims killed in the bike path attack near the World Trade Center in New York were part of a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from the Polytechnic School of Rosario, Argentina. Confirmation the suspect in the New York City terror attack came to the United States from Uzbekistan is reigniting concerns about the ability of terrorist groups to weaponize immigrants and refugees after they cross into the West. U.S. and European counterterror officials caution there is no straight line from immigrant or refugee to terrorist, but they worry groups like Islamic State (IS) have been growing ever more adept at manipulating some of the more vulnerable members of those populations. So far, the case of 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010 and was a permanent, legal resident, appears to be following that narrative. He was radicalized domestically, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN Tuesday. Its not the first time, Cuomo said, adding, Its a global phenomenon now. And while court records show Saipov had some traffic violations, until now he had done little to get the attention of law enforcement officials. Saipov has never been the subject of an NYPD intelligence bureau investigation, nor has he been the subject of an FBI investigation, said John Miller, New York deputy police commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism. Some connectivity Still, investigators believe Saipov came into contact with potentially dangerous people. It appears he will have some connectivity to individuals who were the subjects of investigations, though he himself was not, Miller said. Officials say once that happened, it would not necessarily have taken long for Saipov to have become radicalized. U.S. and European counterterror officials say recruiters, both online and in-person, have become so adept that they can sometimes turn potential recruits in a matter of days. The process is very individualized, a U.S. counterterrorism official told VOA. Theres not necessarily one key. And while increasingly the so-called flash-to-bang ratio, the amount of time between when a terrorist decides to attack and then acts, has grown shorter, officials say waiting weeks to launch an attack, as Saipov apparently did, would not be unusual. The Islamic State terror group has been especially opportunistic, using a combination of online expertise and a well-honed personal touch to seemingly strike at will, according to some counterterrorism officials. Investigators believe, at the very least, the group managed to inspire Saipov. He did this is the name of ISIS, NYPDs Miller said, using an acronym for the terror group, and citing a note handwritten in Arabic. The gist of the note was the Islamic State would endure forever, Miller said. WATCH: New York Uzbeks Seek Greater Community Outreach, Societal Inclusion Key catchphrases Experts say the importance of that message cannot be overlooked. Its a key kind of catchphrase used by the organization in multiple regards, Bennett Clifford, a research fellow at George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism, said. Youve seen it especially more as their territory crumbles in Syria and Iraq, Clifford said. This idea that they will stay and remain or endure in this instance is a common kind of theme of ISIS propaganda as well as the message thats shared by their supporters worldwide. Tuesdays attack also closely follows the IS playbook for vehicular attacks as laid out in its online magazine, Rumiyah, and other social media outlets, officials say. Still, there are reasons to question whether Saipov was weaponized by IS operatives, or whether the groups online propaganda simply helped him along. The level of sophistication of the attack suggests an independent actor or a networked actor rather than one directed by an external operations coordinator in IS-controlled territory, Jade Parker, a senior research associate at the Terror Asymmetrics Project (TAPSTRI), said. Nor has Islamic State issued any formal claim of responsibility, though officials and analysts say that is not unusual in cases in which the attacker survives. In the meantime, though, Islamic State supporters have played up the attack on the groups key social media sites, producing posters and other unofficial propaganda. And there are concerns the surge in propaganda may make it easier the next time Islamic State tries to get a follower or potential follower to take action. These celebrations also show Islamic State supporters who may be thinking about executing attacks that their efforts are appreciated by the group, even if it does not issue an official claim for their attacks, said Michael S. Smith II, a terrorism analyst who specializes in the influence operations of IS and al-Qaida. New Yorks Uzbek community believes 29-year-old terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov's radicalization can be attributed in part to a lack of language and culture-specific inclusion, among Uzbek nationals attempting to integrate into U.S. culture. Saipov reportedly planned his deadly attack in Lower Manhattan for weeks, leaving authorities with many questions about what led him to become radicalized in the U.S. Saipov was living in Paterson, New Jersey, 32 kilometers from New York city where some neighbors say they did not notice signs of unusual behavior. He was friendly to me, I dont know about anyone else on the block," said neighbor Carlos Batista. More preventative measures needed While New York City has a robust counter-terrorism unit, additional preventative approaches to countering radicalization are needed, according to Bennett Clifford, Research Fellow of George Washington Universitys Program on Extremism. While it's very difficult to stop an attack like a vehicular-based attack as it is happening, once the individual has decided to commit the attack, there are a number of things before that individual reaches that level that can potentially push them down a different path," said Bennett Clifford, a research fellow at George Washington University's program on extremism. Activists within New Yorks Uzbek community say whats missing from the conversation is a greater support network for its foreign nationals. In the future we want to have our own community center where we can gather together and discuss issues in Uzbek, because now there is no such place, and people need some information. So where do they seek it? The internet," community activist Ilkhomjon Kenjabayev told VOA. The conversation comes as President Trump argues for an end to the U.S. diversity visa that allowed Saipov to enter the country legally in 2010. But Abdullah Kwaja, of the Turkestanian American Association, says terrorism has no nationality. Uzbek culture does not say or teach to kill the innocent and neither [does] Islam. We came to the United States to contribute and not harm anyone," Kwaja noted. By fostering inclusion and language-specific outreach, he hopes, new immigrants will be better suited to build a prosperous community in their new country. North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns authoritarian regime may be more vulnerable than people think, a high-level defector suggests, as he urges the U.S. to use soft power against Kim. Thae Yong Ho met with the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington Wednesday. The former deputy chief of mission at the North Korean embassy in London defected to South Korea with his family last year. While on the surface, Kim Jong Un seems to have consolidated his power through this reign of terror ... the free markets are flourishing, Thae said. As more and more people get used to free and capitalist style markets, the state-owned socialist economic system becomes increasingly forgotten about. Thae says many North Koreans are no longer paying attention to or swallowing state propaganda. He says they are watching more and more illegally imported South Korean television shows and dramas. These changes ... make it increasingly possible to think about civilian uprising in North Korea as more and more people gradually become informed about the reality of their living conditions. Thae said the U.S. can help by using what he calls soft power sanctions on top of spreading disinformation that challenges Kim. This includes background on the so-called dear respected leader so people will realize Kim and his family are not gods. Thae also said if China would not threaten forced repatriation of North Korean defectors, there would be a massive exodus to South Korea that would bring on the Norths collapse. U.S. President Donald Trump has said all options are on the table in dealing with Kim, his nuclear weapons and his threats. But Thae cautioned against a pre-emptive military strike, saying it would lead to a human sacrifice in the South. North Korean officers are trained to press their button without any further instructions from the general command if anything happens. We have to remember that tens of millions of South Koreans population are living 70 to 80 kilometers away from this military demarcation line. North Korea has blasted Thae as human scum and a criminal who stole state funds. But Thae said he defected because he did not want his sons to become modern-day slaves. A U.S. judge rejected a bid Thursday by two former campaign officials for President Donald Trump to end their house arrest pending trial on charges they laundered millions of dollars they were paid to represent one-time Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych so they could hide the income from U.S. authorities. Paul Manafort, who for three months last year was Trump's campaign chairman, and his business protege, Rick Gates, who was the deputy campaign chairman, had asked a Washington judge to end their home confinement. When they were indicted Monday, a judge required Manafort to pay $10 million if he failed to show up for future court hearings in the case, and Gates $5 million. Lawyers for Manafort and Gates contended that the penalties for failure to show up for new hearings were large enough that they were unlikely to flee and that they need not be confined to their homes. But Judge Amy Berman Jackson kept the bail terms the same, pending another hearing Monday. Manafort and Gates were indicted by a grand jury in Washington as part of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, although the charges against them did not stem from the campaign. At the same time, special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the probe, announced that a Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty last month to lying to federal agents about his contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and is cooperating with investigators in their probe of other Trump campaign aides. Poland plans to bar Ukrainians with anti-Polish views, its foreign minister said on Thursday, emphasizing the nationalist credentials of his ruling party that often talks of the historic wrongs inflicted on Poles by their neighbors. Witold Waszczykowski said the policy was a reaction to disrespect shown at a Polish cemetery in the western city of Lviv, which was part of Poland before World War II. The foreign ministry said lion sculptures at the cemetery's entrances that hold shields inscribed with the Polish phrases Always faithful and To you, Poland had been covered up with boxes. Waszczykowski said Ukrainians who express anti-Polish sentiments or make it difficult to maintain ageing Polish symbols in Ukraine would be refused visas. He did not say how the policy would be applied in practice. At the moment, we are launching procedures that will not allow people with extremely anti-Polish views to come to Poland ... Those who demonstrate and use administrative instruments against Poland will also bear the consequences, Waszczykowski told state-run TVP1 television. Poland is home to between 1.5 million and 2 million Ukrainians who left their country seeking jobs after the 2014 Maidan uprising and conflict with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine plunged their economy into recession. Despite Poland's support for an independent Ukraine that can stand up to Russia, tensions over the countries troubled shared history have risen since the Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Poland two years ago. Poland last year passed a resolution that declared the World War Two-era killing of tens of thousands of Poles by units in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) genocide. Ukraine rejects that label, saying the killings were tragic and calling for reconciliation and forgiveness. Waszczykowski said Polands sympathy for Ukraines struggles with Russia must not push historical issues into the background. It cannot be that geopolitics, that the Russian aggression will be an excuse and that for years we will not settle the issues that divide us, Waszczykowski said. Robert Mercer, a billionaire who is a major financial supporter of conservative causes and has close ties to President Donald Trump, is stepping down from his position as chief executive officer of the New York investment firm Renaissance Technologies. Mercer, 71, is also selling his stake in the pro-Trump website Breitbart News to his daughters. He announced his decision in a Thursday letter to investors that also condemned white supremacists and distanced himself from former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. He said he's speaking out "to correct some of the misinformation that has been published about me." Mercer will formally step down from Renaissance Technologies January 1. The development came as another Mercer-backed company, the data firm Cambridge Analytica, faces new scrutiny for possible links to the federal probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election. President Donald Trump and Republican senators agreed not to deal with a needed fix for young immigrants in must-pass year-end spending legislation, according to some GOP lawmakers who visited the White House on Thursday. Instead, they said, a solution would likely wait until next year for some 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children. Those immigrants, known by supporters as Dreamers, are in limbo after Trump announced he was ending temporary deportation protections granted by the Obama administration and giving Congress until March to come up with a fix. Democrats have indicated they want to use a year-end spending bill to force action on Dreamers. Their votes will likely be needed to pass spending legislation to keep the government running, so the Trump-GOP stance may not end up prevailing. "No immigration bill on the omnibus or any other must-pass piece of legislation in 2017,'' said GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas after exiting the meeting with Trump. "He agreed to that, as does the Senate leadership, and I think the vast majority of Republican senators.'' Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said using the so-called "omnibus'' spending bill to resolve the status of Dreamers was "the pipe dream of some Democrats.'' "It's more likely than not to be part of a January-February time frame,'' Cornyn said of dealing with immigration legislation. Immigrant advocates have been pushing for action. In September, Democratic leaders said they had a deal with Trump to enshrine protections for the immigrants in exchange for border security measures short of a border wall. But the supposed deal immediately came into dispute and now appears to have totally unraveled if it existed at all. Still, the Senate's top Democrat voiced optimism. "There's good Republican support for DACA and I think we can get it done,'' said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, using the shorthand for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., reminded Republicans that they need Democratic votes to pass the spending bill that expires in December or face a shutdown. "Unless Republicans can keep the government open without Democratic votes, this is not their decision to make,'' Crowley said. "I have yet to see any evidence that they will be able to do that.'' Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said Republicans are trying to take away something that Democrats secured and trade for border security and other items they couldn't get otherwise. "I've been at this a long time and I'm not going to allow you to trade against a gain and something that we have accomplished as Americans. It took a lot of work to get,'' Gutierrez said. "We got it done. And we should fight for it.'' Cotton said helping those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program needs to come with measures designed to enhance enforcement of the nation's immigration laws as well as ending what he called "chain migration,'' where American citizens or lawful permanent residents sponsor family members to join them in the U.S. Cotton said that under the change he seeks, sponsors would only be able to get green cards for their spouse and their minor children. "Ending chain migration is essential to a DACA compromise, in my opinion,'' Cotton said. The president tweeted on the topic of immigration shortly after the meeting, but didn't mention the DACA program. Instead, he focused on Cotton's concern. "Congress must end chain migration so that we can have a system that is SECURITY BASED! We need to make AMERICA SAFE!'' Trump tweeted. Romania's president on Thursday accused the leftist government of mishandling the economy, slamming it for overspending and failing to attract investment. President Klaus Iohannis said that current annual economic growth of more than 5 percent was not sustainable, as it was based on spending. He noted foreign and local investment had fallen by 20 percent in the last year. Iohannis said revenue from taxes had fallen to the equivalent of one fourth of GDP, less than the 35 percent forecast for the year. The government is behaving like a person who earns more every month, but borrows more from the banks, leaving [its] debts to be paid by children and grandchildren, he said. Referring to government proposals to hike social welfare taxes for employees, Iohannis said there were concerns in the business environment, in trade unions and among Romanians, that some wages would fall when the measure comes into effect next year. Thousands have demonstrated against the plans, which the government insists will not lead to wage cuts. Romania's largest trade union CNSLR-Fratia which represents 500,000 workers in the health, transport, communications and forestry sectors, threatened to stage a strike to protest the measures, which it said would lead to lower salaries and job losses. Prime Minister Mihai Tudose reiterated the government's position saying the measures would simplify the tax-paying process. Iohannis is a critic of the leftist government. Before becoming president in 2014, he was chairman of the center-right Liberal Party. After watching for years as the United States called the shots in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin is seizing the reins of diplomacy in the Middle East, establishing footholds and striking alliances with unlikely partners. From the battlefields of Syria to its burgeoning relationships with Iran and Turkey to its deepening ties with Saudi Arabia, Russia is stepping in to fill a void left by the United States first under the Obama administration and now in the vastly inconsistent and largely hands-off policies of Donald Trump. Embroiled in controversy at home and loath to engaging in the strife-riddled region beyond fighting the Islamic State group, Trump has largely stayed on the sidelines of attempts to help find a political settlement for Syria's long-running civil war. Those efforts are now led by Russia, in partnership with Iran and Turkey, organizing local cease-fires and creating de-escalation zones that have significantly reduced the violence in the country. Russias role in Syria has raised its international profile and allowed it to claim fighting terrorist groups such as the Islamic State group while it shored up President Bashar Assads government. Moscow has stood by Tehran while Trump has refused to re-certify the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a stance reiterated by Putin himself Thursday on a visit to Tehran. It has also reached out to Irans Mideast rival Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, promising weapons deals and other investments to the Sunni power house. Bilal Saab, a senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute, said that while Russia has clearly become a more influential interlocutor on Syria, there are clear limits to its overall foray into the region. What Russia offers is transactional, as opposed to strategic. Arms sales are no substitute for deep political rapport, which is what Washington provides, despite lingering tensions with key partners, he said. Still, Putin appears to be positioning himself as Mideast broker, seeking to expand his influence in a region where the U.S. remains the most dominant military actor. Syria power broker Moscows military involvement in the Syrian war since 2015 has propped up Assads forces and turned the conflict in his favor, while Russian mediation earlier this year launched cease-fire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The talks, sponsored jointly with Iran and Turkey, have brokered local deals that have significantly reduced violence in the war-torn country. This week, Russia announced plans to host Syrian groups and government representatives for political talks on Nov. 18 just 10 days before a new round of U.N.-sponsored talks are to start in Geneva. The invitation has roiled Syrian opposition groups who described it as an attempt to bypass U.N. efforts to resolve the countrys conflict and dictate the terms of any settlement. Russia invited over a dozen groups, a mix of government representatives and political opposition parties, including for the first time the main U.S.-backed Kurdish party now in control of northern Syria. The Syrian Kurdish PYD has previously been barred from participation in political negotiations at the Geneva Talks, at Turkey's insistence. The invitation by Russia has led to speculation that Russia may use the conference to broker a wider reconciliation between Assad and the Syrian Kurds under conditions that preclude long-term U.S. influence in Syria. Russia is accelerating its effort to subvert the Syrian political process by establishing a new diplomatic framework that sets conditions to expel the U.S. from Northern Syria, said an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War this week. Badran Ciya Kurd, an adviser for the Kurdish-led self-administration who met with Russian officials ahead of the invite to Sochi, said Russia supports the Kurdish federal project while the U.S. strategy has been vague. It is not yet clear what their (Americans) strategy is after Raqqa, and we would like to understand, he said, referring to the northern city liberated from Raqqa last month. Shared interests with Iran While Iran promised a foreign policy that would be neither East nor West after its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has tilted toward Russia given its antipathy for Washington. Tehran relied on Moscows support to complete its Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2011 and received Russias S-300 surface-to-air missile system in 2016. In that time, Russia and Iran also found themselves fighting to support the embattled Syrian president. The countries regularly coordinate on Syria and have provided overwhelming military and political aid to prop up Assads government and army. On a visit to Tehran on Wednesday, Putin strongly backed Iran and its nuclear deal with world powers, saying Moscow opposed ``any unilateral change'' to the accord after Trump refused to re-certify it. Putin made the comments on a one-day trip to Tehran for trilateral talks between Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia, during which he met with both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Gulf contracts Across the Gulf Arab states, the U.S. has been the guarantor of security since the 1991 Gulf War. In recent years, however, Gulf countries have increasingly looked toward making defense deals with Russia, especially after growing wary of the U.S. detente with Iran under President Barack Obama. In the last weeks alone, Russia has gone big into Saudi Arabia, which supported the Afghan mujahedeen against Soviet troops in the 1980s. King Salman of Saudi Arabia visited Moscow last month and signed multibillion-dollar energy deals with Russia, which also agreed to sell the Iranian rival its advanced S-400 missile system, which Tehran does not possess. Other deals would include Saudi Arabia locally producing Russian anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers and automatic grenade launchers, as well as the latest version of the Kalashnikov assault rifle. King Salmans visit marked the first by any Saudi monarch to Moscow and heralded a new era of cooperation and a thawing in a bilateral relation that has been severely strained since Russia's military intervention in Syria on behalf of Assad. Close cooperation with Israel Israel and Russia maintain a close, if sometimes uneasy, relationship on regional issues particularly when it comes to the war in neighboring Syria. In recent years, the Israeli and Russian air forces have been active in Syrian skies and have maintained, throughout the fighting, a hotline to prevent clashes between their air forces. Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also held a number of meetings and phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the situation in Syria. Still, Israeli officials are concerned about Russias cooperation with Iran. But they also believe that Russian and Iranian interests could diverge as both countries compete for lucrative reconstruction contracts and political influence in postwar Syria. Israeli officials believe that Russia considers Iran a potentially destabilizing force in postwar Syria, and are cautiously optimistic that Russia understands Israel's security concerns. Russian and Israeli interests in Syria may not be the same but that doesnt necessarily mean that Russia cannot play a constructive role in Syria in Israels view or that certain understandings cant be reached between Russia and Israel with regard to Syria, said Chagai Tzuriel, the director general of Israel's Intelligence Ministry. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions Thursday warned that the Trump administration reserved the right to prosecute terror suspects in military commissions set up at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Speaking to federal prosecutors in New York two days after a man killed eight people in a terror attack in lower Manhattan, Sessions said the administration would "use all lawful tools at our disposal, including prosecution in (federal) courts and at Guantanamo Bay. "If anyone has any doubt about that, they can ask the more than 500 criminals whom the Department of Justice has convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11," Sessions said. "And they can ask the dozens of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay. Sessions did not specifically say whether he supported sending Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the New York terror attack, to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for trial but President Donald Trump raised the prospect on Wednesday, saying he would "certainly consider" the option. Trump appeared to backtrack from the threat on Thursday, tweeting that while he "would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo, but statistically that process takes much longer" than trying him in federal court in the United States. The military commissions set up at Guantanamo Bay after the attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York and Washington have secured the convictions of eight terrorism defendants out of a population of nearly 800 inmates. Three were subsequently overturned on appeal. By contrast, of the 827 terror suspects prosecuted in federal courts since the September 11 attacks, 180 have been convicted while 534 have pleaded guilty, according to a database compiled by The Intercept. The Guantanamo Bay facility has held 779 detainees during the time since it opened in January 2002 but the vast majority of the prisoners have been released and transferred to other countries, leaving 42 detainees there today, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Former president Barack Obama unsuccessfully tried to close down the prison and send the detainees to a facility in the United States. The former president argued the detention facility was too costly and counterproductive because terrorists were using its existence as a recruitment tool. But Trump and Sessions have been long supportive of keeping it open. On the campaign trail last year, Trump promised to "load it up with some bad dudes." And after he became attorney general in February, Sessions called the facility "a very fine place for holding these kind of dangerous criminals Trump's suggestion to send Saipov to Guantanamo was supported by top Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain but drew fire from Democrats in Congress. Some critics argued that unlike other terror suspects held at Guantanamo, Saipov is a U.S. permanent resident with certain Constitutional protections. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Wednesday that "it would be a mistake" to try Saipov at Guantanamo. "He should be tried in a criminal courtroom, as have hundreds of other terrorist suspects," Schiff said in a statement. "Far from the 'joke' which President Trump derided it as today, the civilian criminal justice system has a long, proven track record of imposing tough sentences on terrorists, through a process that is at once effective, fair, and respected throughout the world. In his speech to law enforcement officials in New York, Sessions offered full-throated support of Trump's anti-terror policies, including the president's controversial restrictions on travel from eight countries, most of them majority-Muslim, and his order in the wake of the New York City attack to implement "much tougher extreme vetting" of international travelers. Trump was both right and had the legal authority to issue the travel ban, the attorney general said. Two courts have disagreed, placing the third version of the controversial order on hold until its constitutionality can be determined. "President Trump made these decisions because he understands that we continue to face grave security threats from a number of groups and he is not afraid to talk openly and directly about it," Sessions said. Trump's order to reduce the number of refugees coming into the U.S. "will reduce the likelihood of potentially dangerous people getting here" and will "take some of the pressure off of the FBI and our local law enforcement," Sessions said. Jacob Zuma told South Africa's parliament on Thursday he had received no payments from private companies or individuals during his time as president, as opposition lawmakers walked out in protest over the cost to the state of his legal fees. Allegations by government and opposition politicians that the wealthy Gupta family of businessmen used a friendship with Zuma to control state businesses and influence appointments are among many scandals that have dogged his presidency. The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing and say they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. "My government is committed to fighting corruption," Zuma said in response to a question. He also said he would establish a judicial commission to investigate allegations made in a 2016 report by South Africa's corruption-fighting Public Protector. "I did not receive any payments from private individuals or companies during my tenure as president of the Republic of South Africa, other than those disclosed or reported to the necessary authorities," he said in answer to another question. The main opposition party then walked out of the session, saying Zuma was refusing to answer questions on how much the state had spent on legal fees to fight corruption allegations against him. Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane had asked how much had been spent since May 1, 2009, to defend 783 corruption charges against Zuma that were dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) before he ran for the presidency. "He is going to jail. The president is going to jail," Maimane shouted before leading the walkout. South Africa's High Court reinstated the charges last year and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Zuma. The 75-year-old president is still trying to prevent the NPA from filing the charges. The "State of Capture" report by the Public Protector, whose job is to uphold standards in public life, recommended a judicial probe into allegations of systemic corruption by Zuma, some of his ministers and heads of state-owned companies. But the president filed an application asking the High Court to set aside the report, saying he would instead set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the allegations. The court is expected to rule on that case soon. Zuma told parliament the judicial commission would investigate those corruption allegations and any others brought to its attention. "After the [High Court] judgment, I will establish it immediately. We will prove the lies and the truths," Zuma said. "The truth will be found." The report focused on allegations that Zuma's friends, the businessmen and brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, had influenced the appointment of ministers, which Zuma and the Guptas have denied. A Spanish judge Thursday ordered nine former leaders from Catalonia jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement connected to their push for the region's independence from Spain. The judge later granted one of them bail at $58,300. Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was not among those who appeared in court in Madrid. A state prosecutor has called for an international arrest warrant to be issued for Puigdemont as he did not abide by a court order to appear. Puigdemont, along with four members of his former Cabinet, have been in Brussels for a week. Puigdemont has dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated and said he would only return to Spain if he receives a guarantee that the legal process will be impartial and fair. Prosecutors have filed charges against 14 Catalan leaders, including Puigdemont and his deputy, Oriol Junqueras. Spain's central government moved to take control of Catalonia last week and disbanded the regional parliament in response to an October 1 independence referendum and subsequent declaration of independence by Catalan lawmakers. Catalonia itself is divided on the secession issue. Those who participated in the referendum opted for independence, but the opposition boycotted the vote, while the Madrid government also declared it illegal. Last week's move to strip Catalonia of its autonomy included setting up new elections in the region for December. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will go to Myanmar and accompany President Donald Trump on his visit to Asia, the State Department said in a statement Thursday. Tillerson will travel to Tokyo November 5 through 7 with the president and participate in bilateral talks between Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Tillerson and Trump will then travel to South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The secretary of state will make an additional trip to Myanmar. "The secretarys six-country trip demonstrates the administrations commitment to our alliances and partnerships in the Asia Pacific and highlights our ongoing engagement in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) on regional issues of mutual interest and concern," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement. During the trip, talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and other world leaders are expected to center on questions about how to deal with North Koreas ongoing development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Earlier this week, Tillerson took a rather strident tone towards China in a major speech just days before the president's trip, saying that the U.S. would "not shrink from China's challenges to the rules-based order." When U.S. President Donald Trump makes his first visit to China next week, a key stop on a lengthy trip to the Asian region, trade and North Korea are expected to top his agenda. Chinese officials have voiced confidence the trip could bring some significant outcomes, but analysts say that may depend largely on Trumps approach. Much has changed since President Trump and Chinas Xi Jinping met for the first time earlier this year in Florida. And much hasnt. Trade is still a huge issue, but North Korea has rocketed to the forefront of the relationship. And Trump has linked the two together in what one Chinese analyst calls his unstrategic-strategy. That strategy of linking the worlds most complex relationship ties between the United States and China with the worlds most difficult problem North Korea has yielded some results. China has approved some of the toughest sanctions to date this year against Pyongyang, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has tested the international communitys resolve with provocative missile launches and its sixth nuclear test. During his visit, Trump will try to press Beijing to do more to sway Pyongyang, but pressure alone is unlikely to sway China. Analysts said that amid the increasingly bellicose rhetoric between the U.S. and North Korea, and Pyongyangs harsh treatment of Beijing in response to sanctions, China has almost exhausted its options. Trade concessions as alternative What Beijing could do, however, is offer something else instead, said Shi Yinhong, a political scientist at Beijings Renmin University. China could launch some although limited but still more substantial trade concessions to Mr. Trump, which will not hurt the Chinese economy and financial [sector], he said. Just days before his trip, Trump called Americas deficit with China embarrassing and horrible. China quickly responded by saying that it has not intentionally sought a surplus with the United States. From Chinas perspective, Xi will be looking to create a good atmosphere during the brief meetings and show hes a successful world leader, Shi said. Also China wants to persuade Mr. Trump to not launch so much, and so constant military threats of a strike against North Korea. This will backfire and prod Kim Jong Un to further escalate [his] nuclear and missile activities, he said. On the streets in Beijing, some expressed concern about North Korea and the threat it poses to China and the region. If we can, we should use peaceful means to deal with [Kim Jung Un], but if he insists on antagonizing the world and using force to destroy others, all we can do is use force to destroy him, said Liu, a financial sector employee interviewed in Beijing. For most, however, Americas immigration policies under Trump and visas were a bigger concern - one some hope the visit will bring a softening of the U.S. policies as they are perceived by some in China. A lot of my classmates who have gone overseas would like to stay in the United States, to either live there or work, but if Trump adopts a more xenophobic policy, it will be more difficult to do that, said one graduate student, surnamed Zhang. Another woman surnamed Hao, who works in the financial services sector, said that while news reports have talked about the prospect of worsening economic relations between the two countries, most are concerned about more tangible issues like traveling abroad. I think many would like to see further loosening of visa policies, many want to go to the United States, its still very attractive, Hao said. U.S. President Donald Trump is calling for swift justice in the case of accused New York City truck terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, including the death penalty. In response to questions from reporters Wednesday, Trump said he would be open to transferring the 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant from the civilian justice system to the military system at Guantanamo. "Send him to Gitmo, I would certainly consider that, yes," he said. The president said Thursday on Twitter that he "would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer" than handling his trial through the U.S. court system. The president said he would prefer that Saipov be tried in the U.S. court system because, if convicted, the defendant could be sentenced to death. Other senior Republicans, including Trump's attorney general, appeared to differ with the president on handling the Saipov case. All lawful tools In a speech Thursday to a conference in New York City on defending national security, Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not rule out the option of declaring Saipov an enemy combatant. "Terrorists should know: This administration will use all lawful tools at our disposal, including prosecution in Article III [federal] courts and at Guantanamo Bay," Sessions said. "If anyone has any doubt about that, they can ask the more than 500 criminals whom the Department of Justice has convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11. And they can ask the dozens of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay." A leading Republican senator, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, issued a statement ridiculing the idea of prosecuting the case in federal court. "It appears the Trump administration is continuing the Obama policy of criminalizing the War on Terror by not declaring Sayfullo Saipov an enemy combatant," Graham said. The senator argued that trying Saipov in federal courts would severely limit the ability of investigators to glean valuable intelligence that could "help win the war." He added, "The Trump administration missed an important opportunity to send a strong message to terrorists and make America safer." Appearing to mimic Trump's Twitter style, Graham ended his statement by saying, "This is a huge mistake. Very sad." Entitled to due process George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says declaring Saipov an enemy combatant is fraught with legal problems. "[It] would be a wrong as a matter of law and as a matter of principle," Turley wrote in response to a VOA question. "Saipov is a legal green card holder living in the United States. He is accorded the protections of due process under the Constitution. The legal status of the proceedings at Guantanamo Bay has always been somewhat uncertain and undefined. This would be a particularly bad case to test that status for the Administration," Turley wrote. The expert on Constitutional law, told VOA, "We are defined by our values as embodied by the Constitution. Saipov will receive due process not because of who he is but who we are as a people. He will receive all of the due process that he denied to his victims. He will then be punished according to the laws of this nation." Saipov, who came to the United States legally through the diversity lottery visa program, faces numerous terrorism-related charges in connection with Tuesday's rampage down a New York City bicycle path in a rented truck, which left at least eight people dead and a dozen more seriously injured. He was wounded after the attack, and taken to a hospital where authorities say he stated his allegiance to the Islamic State and asked that he be allowed to have an IS flag in his hospital room, a request that was denied. In Photos: NY Bike Path Attack Law enforcement officials noted that Saipov's method of using a rented truck was similar to IS-inspired vehicle attacks in other Western countries in recent years. New America, a nonpartisan research center, said 15 vehicular attacks have been carried out since 2014, killing more than 140 people. Uzbekistan's president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, said Wednesday the attack was ruthless and cruel, and that his government stood ready to use all means to assist in the investigation. With the New York City Marathon due to attract more than 50,000 runners and many hundreds of thousands of spectators this Sunday, the New York Police Department said it would increase the number of officers throughout the city "out of an abundance of caution." Like a monster, it destroys everything. Thats how one school girl from a Pacific Island nation described a tsunami. On Dec. 26, 2004, a magnitude-9.1 earthquake in Indonesia set off a massive tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people across four countries and cost an estimated $10 billion in damage. Nov. 5 is World Tsunami Awareness Day and at the United Nations Wednesday, disaster risk reduction was high on the agenda. What I can tell you is that the tsunami wave cannot be stopped, said Bulgarias U.N. Ambassador Georgi Velikov Panayotov, who with his wife was on vacation in Thailand in 2004 and survived the tsunami. What we can do is build early warning systems and of course, educating the population about the devastating power of the tsunami wave, he said. On March 11, 2011, a magnitude-9 earthquake rocked northeastern Japan triggering a fierce tsunami that also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, south of Sendai. It was the most powerful quake ever recorded in Japan, killing more than 15,000 people and causing widespread damage and destruction. When the big earthquake hit Japan in 2011, people thought that we were prepared for it, said Japan's U.N. Ambassador Koro Bessho. We had embankments, we had drills, however, we had been counting on something the size of which that hits every 100 years and the earthquake was of the size of possibly every 500 years or thousand years, he said. These two events sent the countries of the region into overdrive to review and improve disaster preparedness. In 2015 the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction was born. It aims to help create a better understanding of disaster risk and enhance preparedness for an effective response. Individual countries also assessed their preparedness and planning. As a consequence of the 2004 tsunami, Indonesia passed a law on disaster management, said Willem Rampangilei, head of the Disaster Management Agency of Indonesia, which led to the creation of his agency in 2008. Our responsibilities include mitigation and preparedness, emergency response, as well as post disaster rehabilitation and reconstruction. Indonesia is an archipelago made up of thousands of islands which are disaster-prone. Rampangilei noted that 150 million Indonesians live in danger of earthquakes, 60 million from floods, and four million at risk from tsunamis. He said his government now has contingency plans for every disaster-prone city which identifies its vulnerabilities, outlines the relief response, and builds overall preparedness. The Maldives are another Indian Ocean chain of more than one thousand small islands, of which about 188 are inhabited. Until the Indian Ocean tsunami we lived in complacency, said the Maldives U.N. Ambassador Ali Naseer Mohamed. We all heard the word tsunami probably in our sixth grade geography (class), but never probably paid much attention. Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where the quake struck, is about 700 kilometers from the Maldives. Three hours after the earthquake hit, the tsunami hit the Maldives and put the entire country under water for a few minutes," Mohamed said. "About 10 percent of the islands were hit." The death toll was comparatively low 127 fatalities. But the damage was estimated at about 60 percent of the Maldives Gross Domestic Product and the country's mainstay its tourism industry took a nosedive. Early warning systems In the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, the region put in place a Tsunami Warning System. It provides alerts through three regional watch centers in India, Indonesia and Australia, and a network of 26 national tsunami information centers. In 2012, Banda Aceh again experienced an earthquake, but within eight minutes of it, early warnings were emitted across the region and no casualties were reported. There are also now tsunami early warning systems in place for the Caribbean and the Northeast Atlantic, Mediterranean and connecting seas. This week, UNESCO is helping coordinate a drill of the early warning system throughout 15 countries in the northeast Atlantic and Mediterranean. The agency hopes to evaluate local tsunami response plans, increase tsunami awareness and improve regional coordination. Educating youth At risk countries are also expanding their education programs, specifically targeting children from an early age so they know how to react in case of a tsunami. Children are taught to shelter in place till the earthquake passes and then go with their classmates to higher ground away from coastal areas to avoid the walls of water the tsunami triggers. Japan is sharing its expertise, assisting with joint evacuation drills in schools in 18 countries. It is also hosting next week a summit of high school students from 25 mainly island nations next aimed at improving their understanding on tsunami risks and on life-saving measures during such events. Building back better Countries which have experienced earthquakes and tsunamis have also learned that better building codes can save lives and prevent damage. Chile, which is one of South America's most earthquake and tsunami-prone nations, has seen the difference tougher building codes and other measures can make. In February 2010, the country experienced an 8.8-magnitude quake and a devastating tsunami that killed some 525 people. Four years later, an 8.4-magnitude earthquake struck. Fifteen people were killed in the quake, but no one in the tsunami that followed. Building codes were strengthened, said Chilean diplomat Jorge Iglesias Mori of the measures taken between 2010 and 2014. He said the country also put more resources into developing their early warning systems and expanding their disaster education programs and drills, and they joined forces with Japan, sharing knowledge and experiences. Turkey's military says eight Turkish security force members and five Kurdish militants were killed in a clash near Turkey's border with northern Iraq. A military statement said the skirmish erupted early on Thursday near the town of Semdinli, after the security forces spotted a group of rebels who were allegedly preparing to launch an attack. The military said the dead included two government-paid village guard aiding troops in the fight against the rebels. Two soldiers were also hurt in the clashes. The clashes were continuing. The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have waged a three-decade long insurgency in southeast Turkey. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people. Violence flared again in 2015 after the collapse of a two-year peace process. Ankara is anticipating who will succeed Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani, following his announcement he plans to quit. Relations between Ankara and Iraqi Kurds, once close allies, collapsed after Barzani held an independence referendum. But Ankara could be eyeing his nephew as an ideal successor. Turkey made little secret of its pleasure at Sunday's announcement by Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani that he is planning to step down. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Barzani for holding an independence referendum, which Ankara feared could fuel similar secessionist demands among its own restive Kurdish minority. At his weekly news conference, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin made clear Ankara was already looking to who will lead Iraqi Kurds going forward. "A new tableau appears when the term of office of Masoud Barzani is not extended and there will be a transfer of his duties to Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani," Kalin said. Nechirvan Barzani, a nephew of outgoing President Masoud Barzani, is widely seen as by Turkey as the ideal future leader. Being a regular visitor to Ankara, Nechirvan has developed close ties with Erdogan. The Iraqi Kurdish prime minister's coolness towards the independence referendum will likely enhance his credentials in Ankara. His close ties with Turkey reportedly extend to significant personal business investments. Analysts say he is also seen by Turkey's political leaders as sympathetic to its calls for more help in its war against the Kurdish rebel group PKK, which is has many bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen established Turkey's consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan. He said while Nechirvan Barzani is viewed as the ideal new leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey is being careful not to be seen to be interfering in the succession process. "We know that Mr. Nechirvan Barzani's relations with Ankara are best when compared to other political figures in Iraqi Kurdistan," he said. "So that would be seen as a welcome development [by Ankara], although judging by the statement of Mr. [Mevlut] Cavusolgu, who is the foreign minister of Turkey, the official position of Ankara is that this is the internal political affairs of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, so Ankara will not have an official reaction to this development." Despite Nechirvan Barzani's close ties with Ankara, the Turkish president has refused to meet him along with the rest of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership for several months, a result of the collapse in relations between the once-close allies. But Turkish presidential spokesman Kalin said a future request by the Iraqi Kurdish prime minister would now be considered, but will hinge on unspecified conditions being met by the Iraqi Kurds.Ankara is demanding the Iraqi Kurdish leadership annul the result of October's referendum vote, in which 93 percent of Kurds voted in favor of independence. Britains defense secretary has become the first Cabinet casualty of a burgeoning sex harassment scandal roiling the countrys Parliament and threatening Prime Minister Theresa Mays highly fragile minority Conservative government, already riven over Brexit. Michael Fallon resigned Wednesday after allegations that hed repeatedly put his hand on the knee of a female political journalist during a party conference. His resignation came as he was preparing for a scheduled meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis. Amid claims he had behaved inappropriately towards other women journalists, Britains 65-year-old defense secretary said he had fallen below the high standards required of his position. Several other ministers are under investigation, including Mays deputy, Damian Green, whos accused of making inappropriate sexual advances towards a journalist, and Mark Garnier, the international trade minister, who demanded his secretary buy sex toys for him and repeatedly made sexual remarks about her publicly. Garnier has dismissed the incidents as good-humored high jinks and amusing conversation, but apparently that has not satisfied May, who has declined to express her confidence in him. Two other ministers have denied allegations of sexual harassment, and in Britains House of Commons there is a swirl of rumors circulating about more ministers amid a torrent of misconduct allegations that started to flow after harassment and rape accusations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Allegations of sexual abuse have included a charge of rape by an activist against a senior lawmaker in the opposition Labour Party. Researchers and aides in the House of Commons have been keeping a list of serial sex pests in the ranks of the countrys lawmakers that include nearly 50 names. The list, portions of which are spreading across social media sites, includes seven Cabinet ministers, 14 junior ministers and eight former ministers. The culture has changed over the years and what might have been acceptable 10 or 15 years ago is clearly not acceptable now, Fallon told the BBC Wednesday. Parliament now has to look at itself and the prime minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster, he added. Government officials admit they are concerned other Cabinet ministers could be forced to resign over past conduct, not only embarrassing May but risking the longevity of her government, which is engulfed by sharp divisions over Brexit and economic policy that threaten to tear apart the Conservative Party. May has been able to just about contain, partly thanks to her deputy Damian Green, the internecine rifts by balancing her Cabinet between so-called hard Brexiters, who want a clean break from the European Union, and those who want to maintain close links with the economic bloc or not to exit at all. The fall of Michael Fallon is a mighty blow to Theresa May. Her rickety government has just lost one of its old reliables, argued veteran political commentator Polly Toynbee. She added, What an irony it would be if another good old British parliamentary sex scandal brought down this government rather than Brexit. Mays minority government is dependent on the votes of Northern Irelands Ulster Unionists. But their votes might not be sufficient if there are not only departures from her Cabinet, but also resignations from the House of Commons, thinning out Conservative ranks in the Parliament, and triggering an early election. Fallons downfall shocked Conservative lawmakers Thursday. A solid politician, they had thought the first casualty would be among the more colorful characters of the Cabinet, most likely the foreign secretary and leading Brexiter Boris Johnson, who has long been dogged by controversy over highly public affairs and the fathering of a child outside his marriage. Some lawmakers included on the list compiled by House of Commons researchers and aides have reacted angrily, complaining the definition of sexual misconduct being used is far too broad. Some lawmakers have been included in the list, nicknamed by Britains tabloid press the dirty dossier, because they had affairs with staff even though the relationships were consensual. But many of the misconduct allegations include abuse, harassment and coercion. Earlier this week, former Cabinet minister Stephen Crabb, who last year ran for the party leadership, apologized for sexting a 19-year-old woman after he interviewed her for a job. Crabb resigned from the Cabinet last year following reports of a similar incident. The House of Commons has long been notorious for sexual misadventures and misconduct and has had difficulty, despite the dramatic increase in the number of female lawmakers in recent years, from shaking off its reputation and habits as an old boys club where female staff have been considered prey and can come under pressure to agree to sexual favors to get jobs or keep them. Women lawmakers, backed by some of their male counterparts, have long campaigned for the introduction of a tough disciplinary mechanism and a grievance procedure that is transparent and not convoluted as the current one to protect staff and deter misconduct. The United Nations refugee chief says the growing crisis of global displacement is the result of weak international cooperation and the inability to prevent, contain and resolve conflicts. "Have we become unable to broker peace?" U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi asked the U.N. Security Council, which is charged with maintaining international peace and security. He noted that a series of new crises has caused massive displacement across virtually every region of the world. "The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide is now approaching 66 million," Grandi said Thursday, adding that the wars in Syria and Iraq are responsible for a quarter of all persons forcibly displaced. And while those conflicts grind on, new ones have developed and old ones have reignited, all causing untold suffering. Last year, only a half-million refugees worldwide returned home. "When I meet refugees, their first question is not about food or shelter, but about peace and security because it is security, and peace, that will convince them to return home," Grandi said. "But giving hope to millions of uprooted people, and avoiding a repeat of recent, massive outflows, ultimately rests on political solutions," he told the council. Rohingya crisis Since August 25, more than 600,000 mostly minority Rohingya Muslims have fled from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state to neighboring Bangladesh, in the wake of a military operation against Rohingya militants. The crisis has spiraled into the world's fastest-growing refugee emergency. "People continue to come, so they don't feel safe there," Grandi said of the exodus, noting the Rohingya were unlikely to return home until violence stops and people feel they can return in safety. He also urged the government to implement the recommendations in the Advisory Commission report led by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, which include carrying out inclusive development in Rakhine, more access for humanitarian workers, and progress on the citizenship issue for the stateless Rohingya. The U.S. Department of Commerce on Thursday set final duties on Canadian softwood lumber after finding that imports had been being unfairly subsidized and dumped in the United States, escalating a trade dispute with Canada in the midst of NAFTA trade talks. The decision imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties affecting about $5.66 billion worth of imports of the key building material. Canada called the measures "unfair, unwarranted and deeply troubling" and said it was considering its options, including legal action through the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization. The department said exporters from Canada had sold softwood lumber in the U.S. market at 3.20 percent to 8.89 percent less than fair value, and that Canada was providing unfair subsidies at rates of 3.34 percent to 18.19 percent. The decision followed failed talks to end the decades-long lumber dispute between the neighbors. "While I am disappointed that a negotiated agreement could not be made between domestic and Canadian softwood producers, the United States is committed to free, fair and reciprocal trade with Canada," U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said. "This decision is based on a full and unbiased review of the facts in an open and transparent process that defends American workers and businesses from unfair trade practices," Ross said. Government-owned land The disagreement centers on the fees paid by Canadian lumber mills for timber cut largely from government-owned land. They are lower than fees paid on U.S. timber, which comes largely from private land. The Canadian government argues that its fees are fair and says it is prepared to litigate the matter if a settlement cannot be reached. "We urge the U.S. administration to rescind these duties, which harm workers and communities in Canada," Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a joint statement with Canadian Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr. "We will forcefully defend Canada's softwood lumber industry, including through litigation, and we expect to prevail as we have in the past. We are reviewing our options." Jason Brochu, co-chair of the U.S. Lumber Coalition and president of Pleasant River Lumber Company, said U.S. lumber companies could now expand production to meet U.S. demand. "The massive subsidies the Canadian government provides to their lumber industries have caused real harm to U.S. producers and their workers," said Brochu. The decision is likely to further escalate tensions between the United States and Canada during difficult negotiations between the United States, Canada and Mexico to modernize NAFTA. In September, in the midst of the third round of NAFTA talks, the United States slapped preliminary anti-subsidy duties on Canadian jetmaker Bombardier's CSeries jets after rival Boeing accused Canada of unfairly subsidizing the aircraft. Days after U.S. President Donald Trump declared America's opioid epidemic a public health emergency and labeled China a main source of fentanyl, a powerful and addictive opioid, officials from both countries held talks in Beijing to discuss anti-drug intelligence and cooperation efforts. Chinese state media said that during the meetings both sides "solidified a clear direction and detailed methods for the next phase of cooperation." A report from Xinhua news agency did not elaborate, but quoted a top anti-drug official who said the two should build cooperation. At a regular press briefing earlier this week Tuesday, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying gave reassurances that Beijing would be cooperative in its efforts to control fentanyl. "China has included dozens of fentanyl analogues into the list of controlled substances though there is no abuse of fentanyl analogues in China yet," Hua said. "The Chinese government has been actively cooperating with the U.S. and other countries within a framework as the law allows." Trump has said that the production and export of fentanyl to the United States is something he will raise next week when he visits China for the first time and meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Despite pledges and Trump's upcoming visit, fentanyl can be shipped through the post in quantities small enough that make it hard to detect, and distributors can still be easily found online, according to press and U.S. government accounts. VOA Mandarin spoke with a fentanyl manufacturer by phone who said they can still smuggle fentanyl to North America. It usually takes two weeks to 20 days to send it to the U.S. through underground logistics," said the fentanyl producer who requested anonymity. "If you want to send it abroad, place an order in advance and I can find some channels to deliver it to you. Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced its first indictments of Chinese manufacturers of fentanyl. The department indicted two Chinese nationals Yan Xiaobing, 40, and Zhan Jian, 38 over the manufacture and smuggling of fentanyl and its analogues into the United States. Hua said she was unaware of the specifics of the case. In a statement announcing the indictments, the DOJ said the case revealed a new and disturbing facet of America's opioid crisis. The investigations into Zhang and Yan revealed that fentanyl and its analogues are coming to the U.S. in numerous ways, including highly pure shipments from factories in China, according to the statement. "Unwary or inexperienced users often have no idea that they are ingesting fentanyl until it is too late," the statement said. The United States Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] estimates that last year more than 20,000 Americans were killed by the opioid and its analogues, according to the statement. The National Institute of Drug Abuse estimates a higher toll about 35,000 people. Opioids act on the nervous system to relieve pain. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid analgesic, is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives, with the support of President Donald Trump, unveiled a vast overhaul of the country's tax policies on Thursday, changes that would sharply cut taxes for corporations and some middle-class families. The $1.5 trillion plan, produced by senior lawmakers after months of internal debate, would cut the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to 20 percent, a longtime goal of Republicans looking to give American companies an edge over foreign competitors and to keep U.S. businesses from leaving for foreign locations in search of cheaper labor. It would add the same amount to the country's growing $20 trillion in long-term debt. The proposal would also eliminate or trim an array of benefits that individuals have used for years to cut their tax bills, while at the same time lowering their tax rates and creating three new individual tax rates of 12, 25 and 35 percent. But in the hours after the plan was made public, the net effect for many taxpayers was uncertain, almost assuredly dependent on each family's specific financial circumstances. With this plan, we are making pro-growth reforms, so that yes, Americans can compete with the rest of the world, said House Speaker Paul Ryan, a longtime advocate for the tax overhaul. Trump said he wants the Republican-controlled Congress to approve the legislation by Christmas on December 25, but rancorous debates over it are expected. The Democratic minority in Congress is largely opposed, contending that the proposal would benefit wealthy taxpayers the most at the expense of those with much less income. A lobbying group for small businesses quickly announced its opposition over changes it said would leave "too many small businesses behind." Real estate interests also voiced objections to a proposal that would limit the amount of mortgage interest taxpayers could deduct from their tax bills on newly purchased homes and cap the existing deduction for local real estate taxes at $10,000, which would impact homeowners in such high-cost cities as San Francisco, New York, Boston and Washington. Trump, after Congress failed to approve a health care policy overhaul in recent months, is without a major legislative victory during his first nine months in office. But he is hopeful Congress will adopt the tax plan. "Were working to give the American people a giant tax cut for Christmas," Trump said. "We are giving them a big, beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut. It will be the biggest cut in the history of our country. Itll also be tax reform, and itll create jobs." He said the legislation would ... "create tremendous prosperity for our nation. We will provide a massive tax cut for American families, we will make the tax code simpler, and fair. Its called simplification." Trump added, "We will restore our competitive edge by reducing business taxes for the first time in more than 30 years, and we will bring back trillions and trillions of dollars thats now parked overseas so that money can be put to work rebuilding the United States of America, as opposed to rebuilding other parts of the world. He offered his tax remarks at the White House alongside Hock Tan, the chief executive of Broadcom Limited, who announced the semiconductor manufacturing company is relocating from Singapore to the United States, bringing back $20 billion in annual revenue to the United States. Pushed by a lack of jobs and strict control of behavior and dissent, millions of Uzbeks have emigrated in recent years. Hundreds of those joined Islamic State in the Middle East, while others turned to religious extremism in their host countries. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in a truck attack in New York on Tuesday, appears to have taken the latter path, becoming radicalized after struggling with life in the West. According to U.S. police, the 29-year-old followed online instructions from Islamic State before launching the assault. Saipov's was at least the fourth deadly attack abroad by an Uzbek national or ethnic Uzbek this year, and his actions have highlighted the outsized influence the Central Asian state of 32 million people has had on global jihad in recent months. "These things take time to prepare and what we're seeing today is a result of work that has been done over the last few years (by Islamic State and similar groups)," said Kazakhstan-based Central Asia analyst Alexander Knyazev. People who follow Uzbekistan closely say that, based on what is known so far of Saipov, he appears to be one of "a forgotten generation" of Uzbek men who left the former Soviet republic for a better life bereft of a proper religious education and unequipped to navigate the West. That, and the common difficulty of assimilating into a foreign country and culture, may have left him susceptible to extremist influences when times got tough. "He became religious on the spur of the moment," Mirrakhmat Muminov, a truck driver and Uzbek community activist who lives in Stow, Ohio, and knew Saipov, told Reuters by telephone. He said Saipov had previously lived in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. "He started studying religion in the United States," said Muminov, adding that Saipov "couldn't get enough" of the religious freedoms enjoyed in the United States after living in the strict confines of Uzbekistan. Islam is widely practiced in predominately Muslim Uzbekistan, but worship is tightly controlled by a government wary of radicalism. Ruled with an iron fist for more than two decades by former Communist Party boss Islam Karimov, who died last year, Uzbekistan has long said its tough religion policy is justified by national security concerns. Under his successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who took office at the end of 2016, the authorities have started to signal a more tolerant approach, and there are hopes that economic reforms will begin to free up the command economy. Mirziyoyev said in September that Uzbekistan had removed about 16,000 people from a 17,000-strong security blacklist of potential Muslim religious extremists and wanted "to bring them into our society and educate them." Whether such changes reduce the risk of flight or radicalization remains to be seen, and come too late for Saipov and others. Many Uzbeks have fled only to later despair of becoming bottom dollar laborers or unemployed in the West or Russia. It is at that point that some have turned to radical Islam. Volatile region Speaking from Tashkent, Steve Swerdlow, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Central Asia, said around 5 million Uzbeks had emigrated to Russia in recent years, with others like Saipov trying their luck in the West. "The radicalization process takes place outside Uzbekistan," said Swerdlow, who added that the country has one of the worst human rights records in the world and does not tolerate dissent. "They are often individuals who are far from home, who are marginalized and who are experiencing some kind of dislocation from their community and social network." With security inside the country, part of the Soviet Union until the bloc collapsed in 1991, so tight, it is not thought to have suffered an Islamist attack since 2004 when suicide bombers attacked the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent. Yet deadly ethnic tensions occasionally flare up in the Ferghana Valley, a fertile region spanning areas of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In 2010, dozens of people were killed in ethnic clashes in the Kyrgyz part of the Valley. A security source in Kyrgyzstan told Reuters that Saipov had also lived there, receiving temporary identity papers in the town of Uzgen, in the Ferghana Valley, in 2004. A statement from Uzbekistan's U.S. embassy said Saipov moved to America in 2010 having won a green card visa lottery. Mirziyoyev said his government would do all it could to help investigate the "extremely brutal" attack. Fourth Uzbek-linked attack this year Before this week's attack, an Uzbek gunman burst into a nightclub in the Turkish city of Istanbul and killed 39 people on New Year's Day. In April, an ethnic Uzbek man born in Kyrgyzstan blew up a metro train in the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing at least 14 people, and the same month an Uzbek man rammed a truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four people. Uzbek men have also swollen the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. According to a report from the Soufan Center last month, more than 1,500 Uzbeks have joined the extremist group in the Middle East, the highest number of all five Central Asian countries, all of which have provided recruits. The number of fighters from Uzbekistan is smaller than that for countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, the same report showed, but still remains statistically significant. Paul Stronski, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank, and former National Security Council staffer during the Obama administration, said radicalism among migrants from Uzbekistan, the most populous country in Central Asia with a long border with Afghanistan, could grow as more people leave to find work. "We haven't seen many extremist problems in Uzbekistan because of the lack of space and the fact that it's all been pushed underground," Stronski said. "The problem is manageable in the region. It's becoming a bigger problem outside the region." Lawyers for internet giants Facebook, Google and Twitter met with three congressional committees this week to answer questions about Russian efforts to use the platforms to spread disinformation in the 2016 presidential election, and what they are doing to stop it from happening again. Lawmakers were clear in their position that Russian use of the platforms was unacceptable, and several even called it an act of war. "Cyber is an attack against our country. When you use cyber in an affirmative way to compromise our democratic, free election system, that's an attack against America," Senator Ben Cardin said Wednesday. "It's an act of war. It is an act of war." That Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election an allegation the country adamantly denies has been the stated position of the U.S. intelligence community since last year. The lawyers said the exact scope of the alleged Russian operation remains unknown, though, even as they released more details about what Russian operatives were posting online. Twitter Sean Edgett, Twitter's acting general counsel, told lawmakers the company studied all tweets posted from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15, 2016, and found that election-related content posted by accounts linked to Russia "was comparatively small." Edgett described the criteria used to identify "Russian-linked account[s]" as "expansive," including any account that was created in Russia, any account linked to a Russian email address, or any account that "frequently tweets in Russian," among other qualifications. Using these extremely broad qualifications, Edgett said Twitter was able to identify around 36,000 automated "bot" accounts that could be linked to Russia. Those Russian-linked accounts, according to Edgett, represented 0.012 percent of total Twitter accounts during the time period, and the 1.4 million election-related tweets emanating from those accounts represented less than 0.74 percent of all election-related tweets. "Those 1.4 million tweets received only one-third of a percent [0.33 percent] of impressions on election-related tweets," Edgett told lawmakers. An "impression" is a metric used by social media companies to note how many times a specific post is served up to a user. An "impression" does not require any additional engagement by the user and doesn't even guarantee a user actually read the post, Edgett said. In addition to the bot accounts, Twitter identified around 2,700 accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), which has been described as a Russian troll farm. "Of the roughly 131,000 tweets posted by those accounts during the relevant time period, approximately 9 percent were election-related, and many of their tweets over 47 percent were automated," he said. Edgett called the number of Russian-linked accounts "small in comparison to the total number of accounts" on Twitter and said tweets from those accounts "generated significantly fewer impressions as compared to a typical election-related tweet." Last week, the company said it would take the $1.9 million that Russian-backed media outlets spent on Twitter advertising since 2011, and spend it on external research into using Twitter in civic engagement, including efforts to root out malicious accounts and misinformation. Facebook The Russian meddling campaign on Facebook was comprised of approximately $100,000 spent by "fake accounts associated with the IRA" on 3,000 ads between June 2015 and August 2017, according to Facebook lawyer Colin Stretch. The ads, Stretch said, promoted around 120 Facebook pages set up by Russian actors and meant to focus on divisive social messages about racial issues, immigration and gun rights, among others. In total, the Russian-linked Facebook pages produced around 80,000 pieces of content during the two-year time period. Stretch said approximately 150 million people may have been served up the IRA-created content, but it is impossible to know how many people actually saw the posts. He said the content equaled about 0.004 percent of content of Facebook during the time and represented approximately 1 out of every 23,000 pieces of content on the platform. "Though the volume of these posts was a tiny fraction of the overall content on Facebook, any amount is too much," Stretch said, noting the social media company removed the accounts and pages linked to the IRA. According to Stretch, more than half of all impressions of IRA-funded posts came after the election and 25 percent of the ads were never shown to anyone. "For 50 percent of the ads, less than $3 was spent. For 99 percent of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent," he said. Facebook has turned over all the Russian ads to Congress and says its review of the activity is ongoing. Google Google lawyer Richard Salgado said the company reviewed all political ads from June 2015 through last year's election, looking for "even the loosest connection to Russia, such as a Russian IP address or billing address, or use of Russian currency." The company found that two accounts it believes are "associated with known or suspected government-backed entities" spent about $4,700 on ads related to the 2016 presidential election. Salgado said the alleged Russian meddling also included use of YouTube, where the company found 18 channels with around 1,100 videos that were uploaded by individuals Google believes were associated with the Russian effort. "These videos mostly had low view counts just 3 percent had more than 5,000 views, and constituted only 43 hours of YouTube content," he told lawmakers. He added that people watch "over a billion hours of YouTube content a day, and 400 hours of content are uploaded every minute." He called the Russian-linked videos "a relatively small amount of content," but said "any misuse of our platforms for this purpose is a serious challenge to the integrity of our democracy." IN PHOTOS: A Look at Russian Social Media Election Meddling High Court Judge Justice Priscilla Chigumba is on Friday expected to preside over the hearing of an urgent chamber application filed by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) seeking an order to interdict President Robert Mugabe and the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) from instituting any processes for the appointment of a Prosecutor General (PG) to replace Advocate Ray Goba. President Mugabe last Friday reversed the appointment of Advocate Goba through an Extraordinary Government Gazette, General Notice 642 of 2017, issued and signed by Misheck Sibanda, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet. The notice repealed the General Notice 493 of 2017 issued through an Extraordinary Government Gazette. But in an urgent chamber application filed on Wednesday, ZLHR wants the High Court to interdict President Mugabe and the JSC from removing or in any other way interfere with Advocate Gobas constitutional appointment without following proper procedures as provided for in Section (259)(7) of the Constitution. ZLHR said in a statement, the JSC was scheduled to meet on November 2nd, 2017, to reconsider the process for the appointment of the new PG, notwithstanding the fact that Advocate Goba has not been validly removed from office. In a founding affidavit filed together with the urgent chamber application and signed by ZLHR Executive Director Roselyn Hanzi, the human rights organisation argued that it has a direct and substantial interest in the obedience and observance of the provisions of the Constitution by all individuals and organs bound by it and that the Constitution is the supreme law of Zimbabwe and every conduct inconsistent with it is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency. The ZLHR contended that the PG can only be removed from office by President Mugabe upon the advice of a tribunal set up in terms of Section 187 of the Constitution and that the Constitution does not provide another different route that can be followed to remove the PG from office. Hanzi argued that the purported reversal of Advocate Gobas appointment through a government gazette is unlawful, ultra vires provisions of the Constitution in addition to being in breach of provisions of the Administrative Justice Act (Chapter 10:28). ZLHR wants the High Court to issue an order declaring that the government gazette extraordinary notice number 642 of 2017 published on Friday October 27th, 2017, purporting to repeal government gazette number 493 of 2017 invalid and of no legal force and effect. The human rights organisation is also seeking an order declaring that the government gazette extraordinary notice number 642 of 2017 does not have any legal effect on the appointment of Advocate Goba as the PG of Zimbabwe duly appointed through government gazette number 493 of 2017 published on 13 September 2017. ZLHR also wants the High Court to direct President Mugabe to administer the prescribed oath of office on Advocate Goba failing which the oath of office he took on 07 July 2016 as Acting PG, be confirmed as being sufficient for his appointment to the substantive position of PG. ZLHR wants Advocate Goba to remain in office until the final determination of the matter. The government is currently advertising the PGs post in state-controlled media. There was no immediate reaction from the Ministry of Justice. A majority of Americans now view North Korea as the most immediate threat to the United States. President Donald Trump will make the Norths rival, South Korea, the second stop (Nov. 7-8) on his Asia trip and how to deal with Pyongyangs ongoing development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. automakers Larger, pricier vehicles fare better in sales Major automakers on Wednesday posted mixed U.S. new-vehicle sales in October, although Americans love affair with high-margin pickup trucks and SUVs remained in full bloom as larger, pricier vehicles fared better than passenger cars. General Motors reported an overall sales drop of 2.2 percent for the month, with consumer sales down 6.6 percent. High-margin SUV, pickup truck and crossover sales were all up. Ford said vehicle sales rose 6.2 percent in October, driven largely by a 15.9 percent jump for its popular, high-priced F-series pickup trucks. Strong demand pushed the average price tag for an F-series truck up $4,000 from the previous October, to $47,300. High-margin pickup trucks were a dominant factor in the better-than-expected results Ford posted last week. Fords low-margin fleet sales rose 14.6 percent in October. Toyotas sales rose 5.2 percent in October as strong pickup truck and SUV sales offset a 12.7 percent drop in Toyota sedans and a 27.9 percent slide in luxury Lexus sedans. Fiat Chrysler reported a 13 percent sales decline. The company has pushed to sell more of its profitable SUVs and pickup trucks, which helped lift its North American profit margin to 8.3 percent in the third quarter. Nissans sales increased 8.4 percent for the month, driven by a 12.9 percent jump in SUV, crossover and pickup sales. Honda bucked the trend as a 6.3 percent increase in passenger cars offset a 3.9 percent decline in SUV sales, for an overall increase of nearly 1 percent. Reuters social Media Facebook profit rises on video advertising Facebook reported a 79 percent jump in profit on Wednesday as it pushed further into video advertising in a quarter that was dominated by reports that Russia allegedly used the social network to meddle in the 2016 U.S. elections. Facebooks total advertising revenue rose 49 percent in the third quarter, to $10.14 billion, about 88 percent of which came from mobile ads. Net income rose to $4.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, from $2.63 billion, or 90 cents per share. Total revenue increased 47.3 percent to $10.33 billion. Facebook is at the center of a political firestorm for how it handles paid political ads and allows the spread of false news stories. U.S. lawmakers have threatened tougher regulation and fired questions at Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch in hearings this week. Facebook, in disclosures over two months, has said that people in Russia bought at least 3,000 U.S. political ads and published 80,000 Facebook posts that were seen by as many as 126 million Americans over two years. Russia denies any meddling. The company did not make any reference to the matter in its quarterly statement. Reuters INSURANCE MetLife reports drop, authorizes buyback MetLife reported a 13.8 percent fall in quarterly operating income on Wednesday, hurt by a charge related to the spinoff of its U.S. retail business, Brighthouse Financial, and the insurer authorized a $2 billion share buyback plan. New York-based MetLife booked a third-quarter charge of $1.1 billion related to the Brighthouse spinoff, more than the $1 billion it had previously estimated. Net operating income, which excludes investment and derivative gains or losses, fell to $1.17 billion, or $1.09 per share, in the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $1.36 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year earlier. Reuters Also in Business Wearable device maker Fitbit reported a loss in the third quarter compared with a profit a year earlier, hit by declining demand and growing competition for its fitness wrist bands. The company reported a net loss of $113.4 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, from $26.1 million a year earlier. Revenue fell to $392.5 million from $503.8 million. Action camera-maker GoPro reported a 37 percent rise in quarterly revenue on Wednesday, boosted by increasing demand for its cameras and drones that helped reduce inventory ahead of the holiday season. The company reported a net income of $14.7 million, or 10 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. GoPro whose cameras are worn by surfers, skydivers and other action junkies said revenue rose to $329.8 million from $240.6 million. From news services Coming today 8:30 a.m.: Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims and third-quarter productivity data. Earnings: Shell, Yum Brands, Apple, Starbucks [This story has been optimized for offline reading on our apps. For a richer experience, you can find the full version of this story here. An Internet connection is required.] Veteran Captain Justine Elena, 31. Deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. Served as a Public Affairs Officer managing embedded journalists throughout Helmand province. She is the only American-born member of her direct family. she now works at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and is an advocate for Veterans issues. Her passion is stand up comedy. (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Its never been easy to be a woman in the Marine Corps, which is the most physically demanding branch of the military and the one with the smallest percentage of female service members: 7.6 percent. Disturbing revelations in March made it even tougher: Male members of the 30,000-strong Marines United Facebook group had been soliciting and posting explicit photos of current and former female Marines without their permission, often accompanied by violent and obscene comments. The Corps continues to grapple with the fallout. Thus far, it has disciplined 44 Marines, strengthened its policies for addressing social media misconduct and established a task force to look at how it recruits, trains, assigns and mentors service members in an effort to eliminate gender bias. As it was taking these steps, we reached out to current and retired female Marines to find women interested in posing for photographs that would let them define how they were portrayed, as individuals and as service members. We also spoke with them about their experiences in and out of the Corps, and about what they hope the photographs convey. (The interviews have been edited and condensed.) There were areas of commonality: All but one said they were inspired to join the Marines in part because they had relatives who were in the Corps or another service; some said theyd had this desire since they were tiny children. All spoke about becoming a Marine in terms of the challenge of proving they had what it takes, and often, in the process, proving others wrong. It just always seemed like if you could do the Marine Corps you could do anything, said Capt. Lauren Finch Serrano. To varying degrees, being a woman in the Marine Corps has tested all of them. Stephanie Schroeder said she was discharged after reporting a rape and spent years fighting for the Veterans Affairs disability benefits she now receives. Others have stories of enduring insults, being propositioned, being stared at, feeling like they couldnt be themselves, having to prove themselves over and over. As a young woman in that time, you were easy prey, recalled retired gunnery sergeant Carrie Ann Lynch, who enlisted in 1990. It would have been easier to be a Marine if I was just invisible, said Justine Elena, a captain in the reserve who left the service a few years ago. Five have combined their careers with parenthood. Four are married all to current or former Marines, which comes with its own set of complications. Even women with negative experiences said the Marine Corps gave them a lot: It made them tougher and more disciplined; it provided meaningful, rewarding work. Several cited supportive commanding officers. Many mentioned military benefits that have allowed them to further their educations. There were mixed feelings within the group about changes such as more-demanding physical fitness standards for female Marines and opening all combat roles to women, but also excitement about advances such as the first female graduate of the infantry officer school and the first recruiting ad featuring a woman. All of the women were outraged by the Marines United scandal, though some werent surprised. Elena started a Female Marines United campaign to raise money for Headstrong, which provides mental health support to military members. But many in the group also noted that most Marines dont engage in that behavior. Im proud of my service, said Schroeder. I respect my service. I have honor. I respect the Corps values. And a lot of Marines do. Just some dont. And the some that dont f--- everything else up. I dont know any other way to say that. As we prepare to mark Veterans Day on Nov. 11, here are the stories of eight dedicated Marines. 08/19/17 -Murrells Inlet, SC. Retired Drill Instructor Bambi Bullard, 63. After retirement, she spent two decades in the paintball industry and is about to be inducted in the (new) Paintball Hall of Fame near Chicago. (Batrice de Ga/For The Washington Post) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Bambi Bullard Age: 64 Military status: Medically retired as staff noncommissioned officer Years served: 15 Location and occupation: Murrells Inlet, S.C.; semiretired business owner and former business professor A lot of people didnt even know women existed in the Marines. After I got out of boot camp some woman in an airport asked me if I was in the Girl Scouts. I volunteered to be an instructor at Parris Island. That was a little bit rough, but I made it through. In two tours, I probably had one or two recruits that I raised my voice to. I didnt need to: I was 6 feet 2 inches tall. I found it more effective to walk up behind them while they were standing at attention and just whisper. If I had not had that military background, I would have never been as successful in business as I was. The paintball industry was more open and less misogynistic absolutely less than what I experienced early in the Marine Corps. I went from a locker box of plastic pistols when I first bought into it to a nationally recognized operation. They just created the Paintball Hall of Fame. I was in the first class, and the first female, so that was pretty cool. I hope the photos convey that Marines can be hardcore in one respect, but we know how to have fun and were humans and we enjoy activities just like everybody else does. 08/26/17 -Fredericksburg, VA. Carrie Ann Lynch, 44 retired, Gunnery sergeant and her daughter Victoria, 16. She is a single mother and has been since before she was born. Her daughter is the most important person in her world. (Photo by Batrice de Ga) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Carrie Ann Lynch Age: 45 Military status: Retired as gunnery sergeant Years served: 21 Location and occupation: Fredericksburg, Va.; college student I always wanted to be a Marine. My father was a Marine before I was born. I didnt have the white-picket-fence childhood, so I knew I wanted to get out on my own, and the Marine Corps is how I did that. I got to boot camp with my Aqua Net hair spray and my big bangs and my painted toenails and my blue eyeliner, and I was in for a shock. A lot of people didnt think I could do it, and that is what pushed me toward doing it. The Marine Corps was the best thing that ever happened to me. It wasnt always rainbows and unicorns, but it made me the person that I am today. Im very thankful for the friends that I made and the experiences that I had. When I think of myself, I think of a strong mother of a strong, independent child. I hope the photo of us shows that strength. I was a single mother as active duty, and Im doing it now. Im a full-time college student and single mother of a middle-schooler. It can be done. 10/07/17 -Quantico, VA. Captain Tracey Fetherson, 29. Fetherson joined the Marine Corps in 2011; her mother and father are both marines. She was based in Camp Pendleton for three years before transferring to Quantico. (Photo by BZatrice de GZa) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Tracey Fetherson Age: 29 Military status: Active-duty captain Years served: 6 Duty station: Quantico The Marine Corps presented the best challenge for developing a leadership style, and both of my parents retired from the Marines [as sergeants major]. So I always knew I would join the Marine Corps. I knew that no matter what, I was able to succeed, because I have seen examples in my life. The numbers are significantly slim when you're talking about African American women officers; the last number I heard was about 108 from 2nd lieutenant to colonel. I feel even more that there will be nothing to stop me because there are so few of us in this position. I want to show other black women, N ot only can you join the Marine Corps, you can be successful in the Marine Corps. As a young professional, I havent reached that point in my career when I have completely separated my personal and professional life. Being a Marine is very much 24/7; there is a sense of leadership that follows me even when I take the uniform off. So we tried to re-create the same face in uniform and in civilian attire. I hope people see someone who is a powerful, beautiful leader when they look at me in my uniform. And I hope they see someone who is still powerful, strong yet approachable, still has a zest for life, still willing to live for the good moments when Im in the dress. The word we kept utilizing throughout the photo shoot was strong. 08/17/17 -Thomasville, NC. Stephanie Schroeder, 35. Medically retired from the Marine Corps. Rank: private, form 2001-2003. She was originally put out with a Personality Disorder discharge after reporting her rape. She went back over the course of 10 years fought for & won her retirement. (Photo by Batrice de Ga) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Stephanie Schroeder Age: 36 Military status: Disabled veteran Years served:2 Location and occupation: Greensboro, N.C.; advocate for victims of military sexual assault Even after everything Ive been through, I still love the Marine Corps. Who I am today is the direct result of the Marine Corps. It taught me a lot of bearing, it taught me a lot of discipline, it taught me the things that I needed, actually. The rape was different; things changed then. If I wouldve been smart, I wouldnt have said anything, and I wouldve just kept right on going and I probably would still be active today. It was overwhelming. The photo of the drenching is exactly how I felt: When it rains it pours. How much more can I take? The other photo, thats more me like who I am today the courage it takes to put that face on and put that business suit on and have that debate one leader at a time. It takes courage to talk about rape with people who dont really think much wrong is going on. Im not fighting on the ground, but its a battlefield nonetheless. My best girlfriend, she looked at me and she said: How can you go back and be around them? And I said because change. Change is worth more to me. I know that I am broken. I wont ever be the same again. But I can make the best of what I have. So thats what I do. 08/25/17 -Fredericksburg, VA. Jacqueline Huber, 51, retired, Chief Warrant Officer - 2. I She married a Marine, have four children and is now a photographer. (Photo and double exposure by Batrice de Ga) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Jackie Huber Age: 52 Military status: Retired as chief warrant officer 2 Years served: 20 Location and occupation: Fredericksburg, Va.; photography studio owner In my eyes and from what I had heard, the most difficult thing a woman could do is to join the Marine Corps. I dont know what made me want to try to do the hardest thing I could think of. It was emotionally taxing, and it was physically taxing, and more emotionally than I think I had bargained for. I built a wall to protect myself and to push people away who might otherwise try to take advantage of me or to see that I was not as strong as maybe I projected. When I got out, I had to do a lot of research and a lot of reading and a lot of educating myself on how to build a business. And a lot of things it required I didnt want to do: I didnt want to talk to people, I didnt want to be around people, I didnt want to be social, I didnt want to network. The process has been trying to tear that wall down and be more approachable and outgoing and be myself. Its okay to be myself now. Its kind of like an emergence, a rebirth after having been just held down and kind of not encouraged to be yourself. 09/02/17 -CAMP PENDLETON, CA. Juliet H. Calvin, 43 is an active-duty major based at Camp Pendleton, CA. She has served 25 years so far. She is married to a marine and together they have SIX boys. (Photo by Batrice de Ga) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Juliet H. Calvin Age: 43 Military status: Active-duty major Years served: 25 Duty station: Camp Pendleton, Calif. Most women in the Marine Corps dont have large families. Its even more rare for female officers to have large families. But I dont really feel like I have a lot of boundaries. My husband and I have a great partnership. We also have a very organized house, so everything has a specific time and a specific rhythm. When we have different active-duty stations, I generally take the family responsibilities with me. But I dont think that people have looked at me differently. Ive had really good leadership that has been supportive, but I also put a lot into my professional life. I would hope my uniform photo conveys discipline or honor, and I hope my civilian-attire photo can be a juxtaposition of being a woman as well. There are a lot of women out there that dont talk about their life as a mom or a woman because they want to conform. So I think its a positive example to put out there. I think good leadership takes on a lot of different characteristics. If I look at it from today as opposed to 25 years ago, Im very happy with where the Marine Corps is at and where its going. There are a lot of really positive changes. Some people ask me if Im going to retire anytime soon, and I tell them, no, Im still having fun. Still having fun and in great shape and still competitive. 09/15/17 -NEW YORK CITY, NY. Veteran Captain Justine Elena, 31. Deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. Served as a Public Affairs Officer managing embedded journalists throughout Helmand province. She is the only American-born member of her direct family. she now works at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, and is an advocate for Veterans issues. Her passion is stand up comedy. (Photo by Batrice de Ga) (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Justine Elena Age: 32 Military status: Captain, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Years served: Active duty, 4; reserve, 5 Location and occupation: New York City; audience supervisor for The Daily Show With Trevor Noah My parents were born and brought up in the Philippines, and my dad joined the U.S. Air Force. My uncles joined all the different services of the U.S. military. I ended up being the only American in my family and the only woman to join a military service and the only U.S. Marine and the only officer. When people met me, even if I was in uniform, they would ask, Oh, are you really in the Marine Corps? I dont know if it was because Im a minority, Im a woman or I have a very feminine look. I have so many interests. One of those was, Do I have what it takes to be a Marine? But I'm more than just a Marine. I'm a comedian, I'm a musician, I'm an artist. With the civilian photo being so much about expressing the different sides of me, the uniform photo was kind of like no side: This is what you are, and there isn't a whole lot of room for the rest of your personality. But I am going to express myself in different ways because that's what life is about. Someone out there may be wondering if they have what it takes. If I don't hold to my authenticity, it can be a deterrent to someone else. 08/31/17 -Oceanside, CA. Captain Lauren Finch Serrano, 32, active duty. She is married to a fellow marine and a mother of you; she is photographed here with her 6 months old daughter Christine. She did ROTC at Drexel University, then commissioned in 2009 as one of the first women in her field of Intelligence. She was stationed in Okinawa from 2010-14. From Okinawa I did deployments to Iraq, Korea, and Thailand. She was in DC where she attended graduate school, did a fellowship at the State Dept, and finished up a fellowship at FBI before moving to San Diego later this year. (Photo by Batrice de Ga). Daughter is Christine Victoria-Eve, born March 30,2017. Not pictured is son Alexander Joseph, born Oct. 3, 2015 (Beatrice de Gea/For The Washington Post) Lauren Finch Serrano Age: 31 Military status: Active-duty captain Years served: 8 Duty station: San Diego When you walk into a Marine Corps recruiters office theyre like, All right, this is the most bada--. Its going to be the hardest, youre going to get dirty, youre going to cry, youre going to scream, but if youre willing to challenge yourself, you can do this, you can do anything. Im a sucker for that kind of recruiting. As an intel officer, my gender was actually an advantage, because they needed women to do certain missions and fulfill certain roles that men were incapable of doing. But when it comes to family, I think the traditional gender roles still are very prevalent in the military. Theres still that expectation that Im taking care of most of the kid stuff and my husband is not. In the civilian photo, I wore my pearls and some jewelry that I think is very professional, and thats who I want to be outside of uniform. But having my kids in one or both of the photos is important to me because it shows that I do have balance in my life. I can be a bada-- Marine during the day and be here directing things going on in my shop in my uniform, and then I go home and Ive got a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old pulling my hair out and my husband is acting silly and we can kick back and be silly and goofy and fun and happy. Elizabeth Chang is an articles editor for the magazine. To comment on this story, email wpmagazine@washpost.com or visit washingtonpost.com/magazine. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Seven Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday introduced legislation designed to slow the revolving door between federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the pharmaceutical companies they regulate. The pharmaceutical industry has a deep-rooted and strong influence in Washington, and a revolving door between drug companies and government cannot undermine the safety of our communities, said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who sponsored the bill. The legislation would impose a two-year cooling off period on former officials from the DEA and the Food and Drug Administration, barring them from assisting pharmaceutical companies with lobbying efforts. The bill also expands the definition of lobbying contact to include taking part in activities such as strategy sessions. And it limits the issues pharmaceutical industry officials can handle if they join the federal government. It is not unusual for corporations to hire federal employees directly from the government, nor for industry officials to join the government in high-ranking positions. Industry representatives say the pharmaceutical industry is highly specialized, and they rely upon the expertise of former government officials to help them comply with complex drug laws. There are regulations designed to prevent potential conflicts of interest. The current restrictions include a lifetime ban on participating personally and substantially on a particular matter that the official had handled while working for the federal government. Government ethics experts say some of those laws are easily skirted. The bill could go further, but this is a nice step toward slowing the revolving door that is responsible for steering public policy in favor of the drug companies and distributors rather than in the favor of the public, said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington watchdog group. The proposed legislation follows a joint Washington Post/60 Minutes investigation into the opioid industry and its influence in Washington. Companies that manufacture or distribute highly addictive pain pills have hired dozens of high-ranking officials from the DEA during the past decade, many of them from a division that regulates some of the same companies. A decade ago, DEA investigators began to crack down on large drug companies they suspected of failing to report unusually large orders of painkillers, many of which were winding up in the hands of street dealers and users. Since then, drug companies and the law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 DEA officials 32 of them directly from the agencys division that regulates the industry. One of those DEA officials left the agency and formed a law practice to represent opioid companies. He later helped to write a law that undercut the agencys enforcement efforts against large companies accused of violating federal drug laws, according to government documents and a legal analysis of the law by the DEAs chief administrative judge. Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) introduced the legislation in the House and collected nearly $100,000 from political action committees representing drug companies. In the Senate, the laws primary sponsor was Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who negotiated a final version with DEA and Justice Department officials. In the wake of the Oct. 15 Post/60 Minutes investigation, Marino withdrew his nomination to be the nations drug czar under the Trump administration. Several co-sponsors of the Marino bill have since come under fire from their constituents and political opponents for backing the measure at the height of the nations worst drug crisis. The prescription drug epidemic has claimed nearly 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. Baldwin said her proposed legislation would serve as a check on the power the pharmaceutical industry wields on Capitol Hill. She cited an investigation by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity that found that the makers of prescription painkillers spent $880 million on campaign contributions and lobbying efforts between 2006 and 2015. The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), Edward J. Markey (Mass.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Tom Udall (N.M.) Baldwin said she plans to seek out Republican co-sponsors. Patients, families and the public need to have trust that the DEA and FDA are working for them, not powerful Washington interests, Baldwin said. The town of St. Emilion lies at the heart of several Bordeaux appellations moving toward more environmentally friendly winemaking. (Union des Syndicats de St. Emilion-Pomerol-Fronsac) More and more of us are looking beyond the wine in our glass and demanding to know how the wine is made. Whether we want wines that are natural, biodynamic, organic or sustainable, increasingly we want to know that winemakers are doing their best to protect the environment and not relying on chemicals to ripen their grapes. And the wine industry is listening. The Wine Institute in California has developed standards for sustainable winegrowing, defining environmentally friendly practices that leave growers maximum flexibility to deal with the vagaries of the weather. Industry associations in Napa and Sonoma counties, the areas most affected by the recent wildfires, have declared their goal for 100 percent of their members to be practicing sustainable viticulture. [Heres the best reason of all to drink organic wine: It tastes better.] In the Pacific Northwest, a hotbed of environmentalism, regional certifications for wineries in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia include LIVE, or Low-Impact Viticulture Enology, and Salmon-Safe, which focuses on maintaining the health of rivers around vineyards. Organic and biodynamic practices are also popular. [5 wines to try this week] This year, the winegrowers of St. Emilion and its satellite appellations in France's Bordeaux region voted to require environmental certification for wineries seeking to put the prestigious appellation names on their labels. Starting with the 2019 vintage, all wineries in the appellations of St. Emilion, St. Emilion Grand Cru, Lussac St. Emilion and Puisseguin St. Emilion will be required to be certified or in the process of being certified as sustainable, organic or biodynamic, a sort of uber-organic farming philosophy. Otherwise, they will be labeled simply as Bordeaux, a less-prestigious designation that commands lower prices. [What is biodynamic winemaking? It may involve cow horns and the cosmos.] Wine lovers and winemakers quibble over the merits of these respective certifications and their restrictions on vineyard and winery practices. Governmental regulations in the United States and the European Union confuse the subject enough to fuel several dissertations. At least a certification on the label shows the winery makes an effort to have some third-party organization evaluate and approve its environmental practices. It may not matter what certification is on the label, as long as something is. As consumers increasingly look for foods produced without pesticides and herbicides, they also want to know their wines were made with the environment in mind. And that concern for the environment doesnt stop when the grapes are harvested: St. Emilions program, for example, includes responsible water usage and composting. In St. Emilion, new requirements ban herbicides and many fungicides in vineyards, require controlled water usage and more. (Union des Syndicats de St. Emilion-Pomerol-Fronsac) No one can ignore anymore the impact of their environmental behavior, says Franck Binard, director of the St. Emilion Wine Council, which voted in May to require its members to be environmentally certified. And the market is ready. In St. Emilion, a picturesque UNESCO World Heritage site at the heart of Bordeauxs Right Bank region, about 180,000 people each year visit the wine councils store, the Maison du Vin. Over the past three years, interest in organic wines has increased dramatically, Binard said during a recent visit to Washington. Important Bordeaux markets, such as Norway, Finland and Quebec, where government agencies approve which wines can enter the market, have started favoring wines with environmental certification. And Carrefour, Frances leading supermarket chain, is considering a similar requirement, Binard said. There is a real demand, not just for organic vineyard practices, but also many questions on what you are doing to protect the environment, he says. When the St. Emilion Wine Council polled its members, it found about 45 percent were already certified or using environmentally friendly vineyard practices. Many of the rest confessed a lack of knowledge about sustainability, so the council added education to its program. The commission drafted several proposals, and the membership voted in May to require certifications. The new requirements ban herbicides and many fungicides in the vineyard, while requiring wineries to control water usage and limit their carbon footprint through energy conservation and measures, such as solar power. Other wine regions, especially in the New World, have been trying to reduce their carbon footprint for years. The California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, sponsored by the Wine Institute, a trade association, helps wineries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by limiting use of pesticides and fertilizers, especially nitrogen. The alliance's efforts also focus on conserving electricity in the winery and limiting environmental impacts from packaging and shipping wines. St. Emilions new rules do allow flexibility. There are many levels, depending on your commitment, Binard says. The aim is to ensure everyone begins on the path to certification of some sort. He said the vote to require certification took some courage, coming shortly after a devastating frost decimated much of Bordeauxs vineyards just as the new buds were most vulnerable. It was the worst frost for Bordeaux since 1991. Environmental certification will not protect against natures wrath, such as frost or hail, of course, or the wildfires that recently devastated Northern California. But this years frost throughout Europe reminded St. Emilions growers how fragile and unreliable their changing climate can be, and the importance of protecting their environment. In 2019, St. Emilion will be celebrating 20 years since UNESCOs designation. By requiring environmental certification, its winegrowers will also be taking an important step toward ensuring their future by protecting their present. Palo Alto Vineyard workers pick syrah grapes last week in Kenwood, Calif., in Sonoma County. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Northern California wine country wants you to know: It is open for business. Last month's wildfires across Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake and Solano counties sparked countless headlines about wine country burning. Dramatic photos of the winery at Signorello Vineyards engulfed in flames fed fears that venerable wineries along Napa's Silverado Trail or nearby Atlas Peak, where the conflagration started, were also destroyed. Alarmist headlines spelled the ruin of the 2017 vintage and predicted price increases and shortages in future years. Thankfully, these turned out not to be true. [Wildfires sweep across the face of the California wine industry] To be sure, the fires were the deadliest in California history. At least 42 people perished and thousands of buildings burned to the ground. Most of those were homes, displacing thousands of families into a crowded housing market that was already experiencing a shortage before the fires broke out. A handful of wineries burned down; dozens more were damaged. Vineyards were singed, though we probably wont know the full extent of the fires effect on vines until next year or even later. Vineyards actually served as firebreaks, protecting many wineries from the flames fury. The fires threatened the cities of Napa, Sonoma and Calistoga, yet these were all spared major damage by the heroic efforts of firefighters from Cal Fire and volunteers from across the country and even around the world. A sign at Cline Cellars winery on Oct. 16 in Sonoma, Calif. (Eric Risberg/AP) Downtown Sonoma is perfectly fine, says Sarah Stierch, a freelance writer based in the historic town at the heart of California wine country. We suffered no damage, and its as bucolic and lovely as ever. The fires threatened Buena Vista and Bartholomew Park wineries on Sonomas outskirts, causing Stierch and her neighbors to evacuate, but the historical landmarks were saved, she said in an email. Stierch became a hero to many during the fires with her levelheaded reporting over Twitter and Facebook, using social media at its best to keep locals informed of the latest evacuation notices and the progress of the fires. Those of us in safety hung on her every post and tweet as we worried about family, friends and favorite landmarks. [As California wine country burns, its the people, not the vines, that are suffering] As I write this, estimates of the fires economic toll have topped $3 billion. Much of that will be lost tourism revenue, as fall is high season for hotels, restaurants and wineries welcoming visitors to wine country. As soon as the fires spread to the national headlines, many tourism-based businesses began receiving cancellations. Ive spoken with countless winery staff, winemakers, vineyard owners, hotel concierges, and chefs, all who have acknowledged that visitors have been canceling left and right, fearing that theyll witness terrible devastation surrounding the area, and/or bad air quality, Stierch wrote me. One colleague who works at a tour company stated that 75 percent of their business canceled for the next month due to those fears. The remains of the Signorello Estate winery smolder on Oct. 10 in Napa, Calif. (Eric Risberg/AP) And yet, she says, most of the damage is on hillsides and more mountainous areas off the beaten tourist path. Napa Valley has little damage. Its as beautiful as ever, she says. If you drive up Highway 12 from Sonoma to Santa Rosa another major wine country route youll pass wineries like B.R. Cohn, Ledson, Chateau St. Jean and Kenwood which received some damage and youll see where the fires burned in some parklands and some damaged houses along the road. [Apocalyptic images show the devastation caused by deadly wine-country fires] If you explore the higher elevations, around Mount Veeder or Atlas Peak in Napa, or along the routes connecting Napa and Sonoma counties across the Mayacamas, you will see more of the fires effects. Carole Meredith, one of Californias most preeminent viticulturists, watched the fires from her home on Mount Veeder, where she and her husband, Steve Lagier, have a small vineyard and winery. They finally evacuated as the flames approached, and then they returned days later to find their home intact and their property relatively unscathed. Mountain vineyards, considered prime property, were more at risk than valley plantings because they have more vegetation around and between the vine rows, Meredith said in an email. Even so, the damage to vines was limited to the outer rows of vineyards and infrastructure, such as fence posts and drainage systems. The Pine Ridge Vineyards tasting room in Napa, Calif., after reopening in the wake of Californias wildfires. (Eric Risberg/AP) The more lasting damage may come not from fires, but from popular misconceptions that smoke has ruined the vintage. Almost all of the 2017 fruit was in the wineries, so it will be unaffected, Meredith said. For a few who picked during or after the fire, of course smoke taint is the big concern. Even if they dont actually have it, they will have to fight the perception that they have it. And all the wine producers in Napa and Sonoma are going to have to overcome the false perception that the 2017 vintage has been ruined. That will take a lot of effort. [These wines are cheap and available everywhere. But are any worth drinking?] There were wineries that frantically picked the remaining grapes as the fires swept down the hillsides, and Ive seen news reports and social media posts suggesting that vineyard workers were not provided protective gear. Smoke can taint human lungs, too, and we may hear of wineries being questioned for valuing the grapes over employees. But fear has turned to resilience. We will hear a lot more stories of heroism and selfless generosity, of people who helped save others homes as they watched their own burn, or offered a spare bedroom or couch to strangers in need. The effects of these fires will be felt for years. And in the years to come, as we raise our glasses of California vintage 2017, we can toast, #NapaStrong, #SonomaStrong. Exceptional Excellent Very Good WASHINGTON, DC - Wine for Nov. 8 photographed in Washington, DC. (Photo by Deb Lindsey For The Washington Post). (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post) If the cool autumn air has you thinking of hearty stews, here are some wines to match: a lush syrah and a viognier from Frances Rhone Valley, or an earthy Spanish red. And for a fun contrast, compare two styles of pinot gris: a lush version from Austria and a vibrant, fruity example from New Zealand. GREAT VALUE Domaine les Bruyeres David Reynaud Syrah Les Monestiers 2016 Rhone Valley, France, $21 Ripe, with sweet red and black fruit flavors, this lovely syrah should pair well with grilled meats, stews and even spicy dishes. Give it about 30 minutes to open up and show its flavors. Alcohol by volume: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Elite: Available in the District at the Bottle Shop, Streets Market and Cafe (Massachusetts Ave.), Wardman Wines. Available in Maryland at Bradleys Wine and Spirits in Phoenix, Frederick Wine House, the French Paradox Wines in Stevenson, Rips Wine and Spirit Shop in Bowie, Wine Bin in Ellicott City; on the list at Vini Culture in Frederick, One Eleven Main in Bel Air. Available in Virginia at Barrel Thief Wine Shop & Cafe, Ellwood Thompsons Natural Market and J. Emerson Fine Wines & Cheese in Richmond, Locke Store in Millwood, Twisted Vines Bottleshop in Arlington; on the list at Mele Bistro in Arlington, the Restaurant at Patowmack Farm in Lovettsville. Astrolabe Province Pinot Gris 2015 Marlborough, New Zealand, $20 This is an electrifying pinot gris, combining the freshness and acidity of a good Italian pinot grigio from the Alto Adige with the ripe, fruity flavors the grape can achieve in Alsace. Its new to the Washington-area market, but at this quality level, it should reach more stores shelves soon. Alcohol by volume: 13.5 percent. Distributed by Bacchus: Available in the District at Rodmans. Available in Maryland at North Charles Fine Wine & Spirits in Baltimore. Domaine les Bruyeres David Reynaud Viognier Les Monestiers 2016 Rhone Valley, France, $24 With flavors of jasmine and honeysuckle, pear and quince, and an appealing richness that can match hearty dishes, This shows viognier at its best. ABV: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Elite: Available in the District at Arrowine and Spirits and Tenley Wine & Liquor; on the list at Montmartre and Proof. Available in Maryland at Eddies Liquor in Baltimore, Rips Wine and Spirit Shop in Bowie; on the list at Turn House in Columbia. Available in Virginia at Arrowine and Cheese in Arlington; on the list at LAuberge Provencale in Boyce, the Restaurant at Patowmack Farm in Lovettsville, Tuscarora Mill in Leesburg. Meinklang Graupert Pinot Gris 2015 Austria, $19 Meinklang, in Austrias Burgenland region, is a Demeter-certified biodynamic winery and a consistent producer of energetic, high-quality wines. The Graupert pinot gris starts out rich and ripe on first impression, with pear and apple flavors. But with a little air it brightens to show berries and flowers, plus a lovely length and complexity. ABV: 12.5 percent. Distributed by Siema: Available in the District at Cleveland Park Wine and Spirits, Cork & Fork, DCanter, Wagshals Deli, Whole Foods Market (Tenleytown); on the list at Hazel, Proof. Available in Maryland at Balduccis and Cork & Fork in Bethesda; Downtown Crown Wine and Beer; Finewine.com and Pinky & Pepes Grape Escape in Gaithersburg; Fenwick Beer & Wine in Silver Spring; Frederick Wine House and Viniferous in Frederick; Grand Cru in Baltimore; Moms Organic Market (Rockville); Red: Wine, Beer & Spirits in Clarksville; on the list at In Like Flynn Tavern in Baltimore, Vini Culture in Frederick. Available in Virginia at the Caboose Market & Cafe in Ashland, Cork & Fork in Gainesville, Moms Organic Market (Alexandria, Arlington, Merrifield), Unwined (Alexandria, Belleview), Vino Market in Midlothian, Whole Foods Market (Alexandria), Wine Cabinet in Reston. GREAT VALUE Senorio de la Antigua Mencia 2012 Spain, $12 This is a savory, earthy red, with surprising complexity for a wine this inexpensive. Mencia resembles cabernet franc in flavor, so fans of Loire Valley reds or Virginia wines should enjoy this. ABV: 14 percent. Distributed by DMV: Available in the District at Pauls of Chevy Chase, Yes! Organic Market (Georgia Ave.). Available in Maryland at Bin 604 Wine Sellers in Baltimore; Cheers & Spirits in Arnold; Downtown Crown Wine and Beer in Gaithersburg; Eastport Liquors and Italian Market in Annapolis; Georgetown Square Wine and Beer, Geste Beer and Wine and Montgomery Gourmet in Bethesda; Hair o the Dog in Easton; Hillandale Beer & Wine in Silver Spring; Hunt Valley Wine, Liquor & Beer in Cockeysville; Magothy Wine & Spirits in Severna Park; Port of Call Liquors in Solomons, Rips Wine and Spirit Shop in Bowie; Riverside Liquors in Frederick; State Line Liquors in Elkton; Town Center Wine & Spirits and Yes! Organic Market in Hyattsville; the Village Pump in College Park; Waugh Chapel Wine & Spirits in Gambrills; Wine Bin in Ellicott City. Availability information is based on distributor records. Wines might not be in stock at every listed store and might be sold at additional stores. Prices are approximate. Check Winesearcher.com to verify availability, or ask a favorite wine store to order through a distributor. Craig Grossi, 34, is a former Marine who served in Afghanistan. His book, "Craig & Fred: A Marine, A Stray Dog, and How They Rescued Each Other," was just released by HarperCollins. A native of Burke, Va., Grossi splits his time between Washington and Maine. I was sort of expecting a sappy book about a veteran and his dog, but thats not what this is at all. Yeah, our story is unique, and I wanted that to shine through. So I avoided reading any book that was kind of similar, and I avoided reading other military memoirs. I wanted it to be my voice, my story. If I had walked into the publishers office and heard them, say Oh, this is just like Marley & Me, I probably would have walked out. I wanted them to understand: No, this is not like those books. What was your job in Afghanistan? I was an intelligence collector. I dont go into a lot of details in the book because some of it is sensitive. I had to get the book cleared by the [Department of Defense]. I didnt put in stuff about training and tactics. When did you go to Afghanistan? Early August 2010, and I stayed about eight months. How long are you there before you see Fred? A little over a month. We were sent north into the Green Zone. There had been no coalition presence or held ground there. That was our task. Our first day we expected to get attacked. We saw hundreds of villagers carrying everything they could on their backs. And that was scary for us. They were getting out of the battlefield. A couple hours later we had our first attack. There were 250 to 300 fighters around our position. That went on for days, and in the middle of all that was Fred. I thought he was an interesting-looking dog. He had short little legs and was running around during the day. And I'm a big softy, so I wanted to check him out. I had a piece of beef jerky, and as I walk over to him he started wagging his tail, and that stopped me in my tracks. It was so bizarre because it was the opposite of what I expected. That is one of the real anchors of the book and Fred's message in general: stubborn positivity. When you have every reason in the world to be negative and let circumstances dictate your attitude, you can still wag your tail. It's a message to all of us: It's not what happens to you, it's how you react. And then he just followed me, and one of the Marines said, "Looks like you found a friend." And I thought he said "Fred," so that's what I called him. Did you decide right away that you were going to bring him back to the States? It was probably week three where I thought, This dog is too cool to leave behind. But I left it up to him. I needed a big sign. Before we extracted I told Fred, "If you follow me to the helicopter and you're not scared off by the rotors and the noise and you follow me to the bird, I'll be ready." I had a 50-50 feeling about it. Because I didn't know how I was going to get him home. Part of me honestly hoped he didn't follow me. But the helicopter came in, and I went running toward it, and then I felt a little poke at my heel and there he was. The master sergeant was behind me, and he was like, "We're doing this!" and so we took him with us to Camp Leatherneck. It was sort of against the rules for you to bring Fred back to the States. Yeah, I worked in a gray area. [Laughs.] My sister sent me the forms. I essentially just forged them. Well, I completed the forms thats what I should say. And he was on the next flight home. A fter you sent Fred home, you were injured in Afghanistan. Yeah, I got hit with the brunt of a rocket blast. A bunch of stuff hit me in the back of the head, and the blast knocked me out. They medevaced me later that night to Camp Leatherneck, which is a massive base, because I had a brain injury. But I recovered in about a month and was back in the field. What was your worst moment there? One patrol we lost two guys. A kid I had just met the night before who was a brave young guy. And then on our way back to base we were trying to get through hip-deep mud, and we got to a bridge that crossed a huge canal. We had no other way to cross, and it was pretty much known there was going to be an IED on that bridge. My friend Justin volunteered to check the bridge. So he swept his way up and then got on his hands and knees to check for wires. He got half the way up the bridge and signaled to his partner that he found something. He stood up and turned around, and when he stood up it triggered the pressure plate. It blew him pretty far and took both his legs. We did everything we could, and we kept him going as long as we could. But it was a really bad day. You finished your eight months, and then you go back home. What was the reunion with Fred like? It was awesome. I showed up at Reagan [National Airport], and there was a huge welcome party, and it was great and overwhelming. But I really wanted to see Fred. He was at my dads in the basement. I came downstairs, and I can hear his tail whacking against the crate. And then when he sees me he just stops. Ive never heard a dog gasp before, but I swear he did. He was so excited. I just laid down and he went nuts. How did Fred rescue you? He does it kind of constantly. I got out, and within a couple of months I had a job lined up with a government contractor. I didnt want to admit that I had been affected or changed by Afghanistan. But deep down I was really frustrated and really angry, and my brain had been rattled. And to go from combat operations to boardrooms and spreadsheets was really a kick in the gut. So coming home to Fred was what kept me going. Id walk in the door, and hed practically throw my running shoes at me. Id get out of my suit and tie as fast as I could, and wed run down the hill and around the monuments and spend as much time outside as possible, and that would get me through the next day at work. Just how energetic and positive and happy he is is contagious. I rescued Fred one time, but he rescues me every day. More Just Asking For stories, features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit WP Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. Anacostias got bounce, especially at the foot of the 11th Street Bridge where Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue connect. The Playhouse, relocated from H Street NE, is adding electricity to the area, showcasing new works and emerging artists. Housed in a converted warehouse at 2020 Shannon Pl. SE, the Anacostia Playhouse shares the block with the offices of the D.C. Lottery and D.C.s Department of For-Hire Vehicles. The theater has been in Anacostia since 2013. We do see people walk in from the neighborhood, once they know were here, says Adele Robey, the Playhouses executive director. When the Playhouse arrived in Anacostia, it was a new neighbor to a gallery and arts center operating two blocks away. The Playhouse was linked to development on H Street, where it opened on a blighted block. My family lived on H Street before the 1968 riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination. Over 30 years later the theater opened among the small and boarded-up businesses and helped to attract new restaurants and shops. In the summer, actor and Bethesda theater owner Anya Randall Nebel had a crew of Bethesda people coming over to Anacostia for the first time, says Robey, to see Nebel perform in Lady Day at Emersons Bar and Grill. When I visited, I could hear voices from a rehearsal of the award-winning Word Becomes Flesh, which was directed by Gregory Morrison (known as Psalmayene 24) and was having an encore run. The Playhouse offers theater workshops for children. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever will feature children and adults. A production with Restoration Stage of The Very Last Days of the First Colored Circus by Steven Butler is also on the calendar. Consider a pre-theater meal if you plan a Playhouse outing. Options are limited, and many nearby restaurants close before the end of shows. Two good spots are Art-drenaline 365 Cafe in the Anacostia Arts Center at 1231 Good Hope Rd. SE, and Cheers at the Big Chair, 2122 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, across from the landmark Big Chair and famous for its crab fries. I stopped in Mamas Pizza Kitchen, down the block at 2028 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, for a slice to take back with me across the river. It wasnt my first trip to Mamas. It definitely wont be my last to the Anacostia Playhouse. Reader : I have been working as a contractor for a pet-sitting business. I have not been paid in full for a couple of jobs. Each time I followed up, I heard one excuse after another about why I did not receive payment. After calling several times and going by the office I was finally paid most of what I was owed, but the company still owes me about $100. I am not sure what I can do as a part-time contract worker to receive payment. The company has also not been paying other contractors. Should I let it go or pursue it? Karla: If you were a direct employee, you could file a complaint to recover unpaid wages with the federal Labor Department or your state's labor agency. However, for independent contractors like you, pursuing debts is generally a do-it-yourself prospect unless you work in New York City, where the Freelance Isn't Free Act took effect in May. The act establishes protections for freelance workers, including a process for filing complaints for nonpayment or retaliation with the city's Office of Labor Policy and Standards. Outside New York City, you can consult a lawyer or file in small claims court, but you might well question whether chasing down 100 bucks is worth the money and time investment not to mention the risk of harming your relationship with your current or future clients. No one could blame you if you decided to quietly swallow your loss and move on. [I went to D.C.s small claims court and learned a big lesson] But in addition to pragmatism and profit, lets talk about principle. The company you work for presumably doesnt let its clients ignore invoices. If you intend to keep working for the same client, repeatedly accepting less than your agreed-on rate weakens your market value and negotiating power. Finally, while $100 may not seem worth the effort for you alone, what happens when you multiply it by the number of other contractors getting stiffed? Organizing a collective effort with your fellow critter caretakers could make the process more cost-effective and make your complaints harder for your client to ignore. WASHINGTON DC - APRIL 21: Karla L. Miller is a columnist, writing about surviving the ups and downs of the modern workplace for The Washington Post in Washington, DC on April, 21, 2017. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) Although I try to avoid plugging specific services or companies, I think your first and easiest step is to join Freelancers Union , a nonprofit that supports and advocates for freelance workers nationwide and was a key player behind New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act. Freelancers Union offers a client nonpayment tool kit for members, including a checklist to help you gather proof of what you are owed, a guide to filing in small claims court, sample contract language, and an app to connect you with legal consultants. All of this helpful guidance is included with your free membership. PRO TIP: Freelancers Union also offers its members portable benefits such as health and dental plans; life, disability and liability insurance; and retirement saving accounts. Ask Karla Miller about your work dramas and traumas by emailing wpmagazine@washpost.com. Read more Work Advice columns. For stories, features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. House-cured sardines with aioli and piquillo pepper from Mola in Mount Pleasant. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post) You probably didnt expect to see sardines on the list of 2017 food trends. The small, oily fish have an assertive flavor that can be a turnoff for some. Most people associate them with cans, which runs contrary to our notion that the best food is fresh. They feel like a throwback to an era when people didnt understand exactly how good food could be. Americans "weren't going to embrace grandpa's can of sardines on the supermarket shelf," says Elizabeth Moskow, culinary director for the Sterling-Rice Group, a branding agency that put sardines on its trend forecast for the year. But high-quality canned sardines, as well as fresh ones, are making more appearances on restaurant menus. "I think the American palate may be ready for something as strong as sardines," Moskow says. Sardines are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which may reduce the risk of heart disease. They're also environmentally friendly, because they're lower on the food chain. They were considered kind of a trash fish, and not something as prized as they currently are or could be in the future, says Jon Sybert, chef and co-owner of Adams Morgans Tail Up Goat restaurant, which has rotated through several sardine dishes throughout the year. He particularly likes preparing them in a salt crust, which keeps them super moist, and serving them with a chocolate rye bread. A fisherman uses a hook to bring sardines onto a fishing boat in Matosinhos, Portugal. (Nacho Doce/Reuters) The sardine's popularity is benefiting from a recent wave of travel to Portugal, one of this year's "it" destinations. There, tourists encounter tinned sardines with beautiful packaging, canned in high-quality oils, often with spices, pickles or peppers. "The reality is you can't get fresher," says Kathy Sidell, owner of the Saltie Girl restaurant in Boston, pointing out that the fish are often canned directly off the docks. Saltie Girl has sold sardines fried, grilled, marinated and canned, served with bread and a house-made butter, similar to how the fish are presented in Portugal. "We often say it's like a charcuterie board, but with seafood," she notes. At Mola, a Spanish restaurant in Mount Pleasant, you'll find a house-cured sardine plate with an aioli and piquillo pepper, a riff on a dish co-owner Erin Lingle had in Madrid, or pan-roasted sardines with paprika vinaigrette and a side of Swiss chard. The dishes have proved popular, thanks in part to the enthusiasm of her staff. People are learning to embrace those aspects of sardines rather then find them off-putting, Lingle says. I love sardines because they are an oily, strong-flavored fish that stand up well to bold flavors. Columnist Airlines sure do love their fees, dont they? A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that domestic air carriers collected $7.1 billion in revenue from checked-bag and changed-reservations fees last year. The extra charges are helping the industry earn record profits. Passengers like Margo Schneider, a communications consultant from Delray Beach, Fla., are frustrated by being baited by a low fare online, only to find out later sometimes much later that they have to pay a $25 fee to check a bag. "I consider a checked bag to be a part of my ticket purchase," says Schneider. "I don't know anyone who doesn't fly without luggage." Airline customers are angry and getting angrier about these fee games. Two studies shine a spotlight on the reasons, which basically amount to a collective feeling of being duped by fare quotes that dont include the additional fees most travelers must pay to fly. A solution that would allow air travelers to search and compare fares is a long way off, despite regulatory efforts. The GAO report concluded that, on average, passengers who flew with at least one checked bag paid more in total for their airfare and bag fees than they did when fares included checked baggage. Research conducted in 2015 by Charles River Associates for the Travel Technology Association, a trade group, suggests that when airlines are less than forthcoming about the full price of a ticket, the ticket cost increases by $30. Airlines say they're just giving customers a choice by "unbundling" their services. But, to some passengers, the act of quoting a low fare and then charging additional fees feels like a bait-and-switch. A new study by UserTesting, a technology company, even names names. It found that all airlines received mediocre to low scores when it came to online bookings. Unsurprisingly, Southwest Airlines, a carrier known for its passenger-friendly policies, scored highest; Spirit Airlines, which isn't, scored lowest. The research noted that "hidden information" made travelers distrustful of Spirit. The most frustrating aspect of the booking process according to the study? As you might expect, its figuring out how much the final cost of your ticket will be. On nine of the 10 websites, customers rated that the most difficult task. Behind the scenes, another drama is unfolding. Airlines not only obfuscate their prices on their own sites. They also refuse to share their fee information with third parties who could repurpose the information to offer apples-to-apples comparisons. Online travel agencies are understandably unhappy with that arrangement. The Department of Transportation has already tried to help. In 2011, regulators issued a final rule requiring, among other things, that certain U.S. and foreign airlines disclose information about optional service fees on their websites. But the rule didnt end the confusion over fees airlines found new ways to obfuscate their real prices with additional fees and surcharges. As a result, the DOT has been considering a new one that would require airlines to display their fares and fees through all booking channels. Advocates say that legislation is being drafted that would make airlines disclose their fees no matter how a ticket is booked. The airline industry opposes any requirements to share data in this way, complaining that such rules would effectively re-regulate the industry. The marketplace is working, says Kathy Allen, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, an airline industry trade group. Carriers must be allowed to continue offering optional services in a manner that makes sense for both customers and the industry, without government interference. Others argue that government intervention is exactly whats needed. The future of fast, easy comparison-shopping for air travel is on the line, says Kurt Ebenhoch, executive director of the Air Travel Fairness Coalition, a group funded by travel search sites. That leaves air travelers in a difficult position. There is no credible source, online or offline, for a comprehensive selection of airfares and fees, where you can easily compare prices and then book a ticket. Airlines dont share all of that information, claiming its their right to disclose that information to whoever they choose. And theyre correct it is completely legal, even if its customer-unfriendly. Until someone invents technology to overcome this seemingly simple problem, or a solution is legislated, air travelers will have to go fare-shopping with a calculator in one hand. The airline industry is hardly alone in making their customers run the numbers carefully, as University of Richmond transportation economist George Hoffer notes. You make your best deal on a car, and in the paperwork process, they spring on you a processing fee, he says. The sign was discreetly posted, but innocuous. You get mad and feel taken. More and more passengers are reaching that get-mad-and-feel-taken phase. And in an industry in which competition has been squeezed out by mergers and bankruptcies, the only place they can turn for help seems to be their elected representatives. Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. E-mail him at chris@elliott.org. Leprosy patients sometimes had to swim to shore from the cone-shaped Okala Island upon arrival at Kalaupapa. (M.L. Lyke/For The Washington Post) My old mule Tita clopped straight up to the edge of the first switchback. One more step and wed tumble down a sheer cliff, falling almost 1,600 feet to the sea. But mules are smart creatures and, at the last instant, she swiveled 120 degrees onto the next leg of the pali trail, a rugged path that zigzags down 26 switchbacks to the historic leper colony of Kalaupapa. The isolated site is the No. 1 tourist destination on the untouristy Hawaiian island of Molokai. I felt a little queasy on that first switchback, leaning back in the saddle, bracing in my stirrups against the pitch, thinking, Whoa, thats a long way down. Luckily, bushes blocked some of the most vertigo-inducing views, and I had a mule skinner behind me strumming his ukulele and singing in that sweet Hawaiian male soprano that calms the rawest of nerves. I gave in to the music, the moment, and the instincts of my sure-footed mount. She was an ornery mule. Tita is Hawaiian for sister, and this old sister had attitude, stopping willy-nilly, tailgating shamelessly, and working the scary outside edge of the trail, even on hairpins. But I knew she knew her stuff. So, after that first turn, I put my reins around the saddle horn guides call this autopilot and let Tita make the calls as we plodded downhill in jerks and jolts. [Kayak the Alaskan glaciers of Blackstone Bay while theyre still here] The thumblike promontory taking shape below us formed of flowing lava, hammered by rough seas and swept by trade winds became the site of Hawaiis famed leper colony that was started in the 1860s, almost eight decades before an antibiotic treatment was found to arrest the disease. It was a perfect place for banishment, segregated from the rest of the island by some of the tallest sea cliffs in the world. Over the years, more than 8,000 exiles would die there, many disfigured, crippled and blinded by the sickness now commonly called Hansens disease. At its peak, the settlement had more than 1,200 residents: men, women and children. Today, only a handful remain, all in their late 70s to 90s, along with the dozens of federal and state workers who manage what is now designated the Kalaupapa National Historical Park. Only 100 outside visitors are allowed into the park each day. They must have permits and cannot talk to the former patients, take their photos or enter their properties. No one under age 16 is allowed. The view down to Kalaupapa from a turn in the steep, more-than-three-mile pali cliff) trail. (M.L. Lyke/For The Washington Post) Visitors to Kalaupapa arrive by one of three ways: They take a small plane, ride the mules, or hike the pali (cliff) trail, an arduous trek for the very fit. The three-plus-mile trail is slippery in rainy conditions, is subject to rockfalls and landslides, and narrows to a few feet in some spots. National Park Service workers occasionally pluck exhausted or injured hikers off the trail, calling for mule rescue or rolling the afflicted down the hill on a special wheeled gurney to be flown to outside islands for medical care. Mule trips pose their own risks. Riders can fall, or if they shriek, freak or try to micromanage these heavily muscled, independent animals can be pitched off. Which is why operators at the long-standing Kalaupapa Mule Ride take tourists insurance information, require them to sign waivers and stick to hard rules. Its okay if you dont have equestrian experience guides will explain what to do but you cant be over 250 pounds or be pregnant, and you must be in good health. I would add one more caveat: If you cant trust an animal, dont go. All three ways of getting to Kalaupapa are expensive, requiring permits and prearranged tours on-site. The total for my mule trip, with taxes and fees, was $230. It was pricey, but I had to go. Locals had told me Kalaupapa was a must-do, a sacred place with a special feel. Every time I pressed for details, there were no more words. Go. Youll see for yourself. Youll know. The long-lashed mules are sure-footed and trail-wise. (M.L. Lyke/For The Washington Post) To prepare, I read interviews with longtime residents in the book "The Separating Sickness." They told tales of being tracked down at home by bounty hunters who got $10 for each suspected leprosy victim reported to the Board of Health. As young children, many were yanked from school, screened and quickly sent to Kalaupapa still crying for their mothers. [No Crowds? No Rush? In Mexico, No Problemo] Many subjects told how they were shunned by old friends and relatives after being diagnosed and sent off to Kalaupapa. "My family hookai [rejected] me. They were sad and disappointed in me for getting this sickness." But there were also spouses and family members who demanded to come with their loved ones, regardless of risk. These were the kokua, the helpers. I also read up on Father Damien, canonized as a saint in 2009 for his work at the colony. The hearty, handy 33-year-old Catholic priest came to the promontorys first settlement in 1873 determined to improve the lives of the sick and save their souls for Christ, constructing for them sturdy buildings and, sometimes daily, helping build their coffins and dig their graves. Only a small percentage of humans are susceptible to the disease, but Damien was one of them. He died in 1889, nearly blind and covered in the festering lesions that had so repelled him when he first arrived. Dont touch the patients, hed been told. Within months, he was eating from the same bowl with them, sharing pipes, dressing their ulcerating sores and holding communion wafers to their tongues. I thought about all these stories as our 11-mule train neared trails bottom. My thighs were burning and my knees were stiff and numb as I dismounted, took in the dreamy sandy-white beach beside me, and looked up, stunned by the intimidating green cliff wed just come down and would be going back up. Your joints get a workout on the way down the trail. Can you guess whats going to get a workout on the way up? asked our tour guide, Norman Soares. He wore a T-shirt with the image of an open Bible and the words When all else fails . . . read the instructions. Before boarding the tour bus, I asked Soares about a restriction that puzzled me. Why no one under 16? His sunny face turned somber as he explained how infants born in the colony were taken away from parents immediately after birth for fear of contagion. Residents also grieved for children theyd left behind when they were first forced into quarantine. They needed no reminders. Some patients are still dealing with that brokenness, Soares said. He took us to the villages little bookstore, stocked with volumes on Kalaupapa and religious souvenirs of Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope, also sainted for her work helping the afflicted in the early decades. We traveled east across the peninsula to Kalawao, site of the initial leper settlement. Soares pointed to a cone-shaped island offshore and described how early sea captains with boatloads of new patients would anchor there, sometimes telling already frightened passengers to jump overboard and swim for shore in rough seas. Our last stop was St. Philomena Church, which Father Damien expanded twice to accommodate his growing flock. In front of pews, I saw the floor holes that the priest had cut. Our guide told us how patients with excessive drool would roll up big leaves into a funnel, put the narrow end into the holes, and, often through deformed lips, spit through to the ground as they listened to scripture. Gravesites at St. Philomena Church overlooked by some of the tallest sea cliffs in the world. The sainted Father Damien tended the souls of the sick. (M.L. Lyke/For The Washington Post) In the churchs graveyard, the priests admirers had festooned his fenced plot with leis and necklaces of shell and bead. I looked across the other graves in the cemetery and up, past them, to the towering cliffs knifing down into the sea, some of the peaks 3,000 feet high, furrowed with lush ravines and waterfalls. I thought about how, so visibly walled off from the world, homesick, ill, often shunned and forgotten, these exiles and thousands more buried on Kalaupapa made a life for themselves, creating a community that bonded together, celebrated together, married, buried and mourned together. In Kalaupapa, said one resident interviewed in The Separating Sickness, we are all in the same boat; we help one another. The mule ride up seemed easier on us, harder on the mules. Titas sides were heaving halfway up. I could feel her heavy heartbeat through my thighs. And our Kalaupapa tour guide was right. My bottom was seriously saddle sore by the time we reached topside Molokai. I took my tired body to a masseur the next day, and he used some swift Hawaiian Lomi-Lomi moves to pull up the bad energy from the sore spots and whoosh it away. As he whooshed, I thought about another kind of ache, the one Id experienced the day before in Kalaupapa. It was a strange sensation: a burning of heart, a tug of throat. I realized that it was that special feeling locals had described a spell cast by a place of so much sorrow, so much compassion, so much courage and such staggering beauty. Go, said the locals. Youll see for yourself. Youll know. I had. I knew. Lyke is a writer based in Washington state. Her website is marylynnlyke.com. More from Travel: In Nova Scotia, tidal-bore rafting offers a uniquely muddy adventure Hawaii's Last Refuge Molokai: A soothing step back into old Hawaii Tujuana Bigelow, mother of late UMC nursing-home resident Warren Webb, says hospital officials have been unable to explain the circumstances of her sons death. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post) Officials at the Districts only public hospital failed to report to regulators key details about the death of a patient in the facilitys nursing home in August, an incident report submitted to the D.C. Department of Health shows. The report, obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request, left out information about the case of 47-year-old Warren Webb that would likely have triggered an investigation of the long-term care unit at beleaguered United Medical Center in Southeast Washington. The report did not disclose that Webb died, let alone that he repeatedly cried out for help, complained of shortness of breath and was left lying on the floor for at least 20 minutes by his nurses after he rolled out of bed details that have been reported by The Post based on interviews with eyewitnesses and a time-stamped audio recording of the incident. Instead, the Aug. 25 report states that Webb was lower [sic] to the floor in sitting position when observed sliding out of his bed and was encouraged to wait for staff before attempting to get out of bed by himself. In response to a question on the reporting form that asks whether medical treatment was necessary, hospital officials wrote, No. [I cant breathe! A nursing-home patient called for help. His nurse left him on the floor] The reports omissions could intensify scrutiny of the hospital by D.C. lawmakers. Next week the D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on whether it will renew a $4.2 million contract for Veritas of Washington, a politically connected consulting firm that has been running UMC since last year. Earlier this week, D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) said she was gravely concerned about the safety of patients at UMC following a report in The Post about Webbs case. On Thursday, council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), chairman of the health committee, filed legislation that would end the Veritas contract. The audio recording of the incident and interviews with three eyewitnesses show that Webb called for help and said I cant breathe, but that his charge nurse, Christiana Ekwue, began arguing with his roommate and called a security guard. Webb, whose diaper came loose as he rolled onto the floor of his bedroom, was left lying in his own waste and was not lifted back into bed for at least 20 minutes. At that point his nurses could not find a pulse and began trying to resuscitate him. Webb was transferred to the emergency room and pronounced dead of a heart attack slightly more than an hour after he began crying out. A UMC spokeswoman said hospital officials, under advice of counsel, would not answer questions about the incident report. In response to previous questions about Webbs case, the hospital issued a statement asserting that timely notification to the appropriate regulatory and licensing bodies was provided. The D.C. Department of Health did not investigate the circumstances of Webbs death after UMCs report in August. The agency launched a probe based on the new information published by The Post. [At the Districts only public hospital, consultants fees mount along with trouble] Silverman said Thursday the hospitals incident report does not match the audio recording published by The Post and appears to conflict with testimony at a Monday health committee hearing from UMC officials, who said they had performed an exhaustive review of Webbs death and reported it accurately. The report is shocking to read, and does not seem to represent what actually happened, and is very distressing to me as a council member, Silverman said. And I think further explanation is needed from UMC. Toby S. Edelman, an attorney at the Center for Medicare Advocacy who reviewed the incident report at the request of The Post, said it omitted facts that would have led to regulatory scrutiny. She called the report ridiculous. It has very little connection to what really happened, Edelman said. Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said hospital administrators often try to walk a fine line in reporting incidents between honesty and protecting their institution from legal risk. The UMC report on Webb seems to have broken the fine line by leaving out vital information, particularly Webbs complaints about shortness of breath, he said. Anderson said the report also raises broader questions about the accuracy of UMCs other reporting. [Simply unacceptable: D.C. Council members press hospital operator on patients death] At the councils health committee hearing Monday, Veritas employee and interim hospital chief executive David Boucree said his predecessor, Luis Hernandez also a Veritas employee conducted a full investigation to determine what happened, in conjunction with UMC Chief Nursing Officer Maribel Torres. Torres said she also filed a report with the D.C. Board of Nursing related to the incident. On Sept. 5, Torres made a complaint to the board about one of the nurses involved in Webbs care immediately before his death, former UMC employee Peter Offor. The complaint states that Offor, a licensed practical nurse, did not respond to Warren Webbs cry for help for approximately 1hr and 15mins and that Webb subsequently passed away. The time-stamped recording of the incident shows that Webbs roommate, Gregory Gary, approached Offor at a nursing station and stated that Webb needed to be changed at 4:47 a.m. The charge nurse, Ekwue, then arrived at Webbs room about three minutes later. Webb began calling for help and saying he could not breathe as Ekwue entered his room. Amid his cries she can be heard arguing with Gary, who was pleading with her to do more to help him, and then conversing with a security guard who responded to the argument as Webb lay on the floor. At about 5:08 a.m., Ekwue can be heard asking Offor for help lifting Webb back into bed. At about 5:23 a.m. Offor can be heard calling for a crash cart, a mobile stand that holds emergency lifesaving equipment, to revive Webb. Gary and a nursing assistant who was present, Mary Uwemedimo, both said that it as Offor who recognized the seriousness of Webbs condition and called for help. Had it not been for Offor, Gary said Thursday, Webb would have died in the room without even making it to the emergency room. Mr. Pete went to work right away. Offor, who was fired from UMC, is contesting the nursing board complaint. In a written response to Torress allegation, he said that other nurses were at the back of the nursing station sleeping when Gary first asked for somebody to change Webb. I do think hes being named as a scapegoat, said Offors attorney, Neil B. Katz. I cant tell you what the reason is, because I dont know yet. The Gothamist network of local news websites announced Thursday afternoon that it would be shutting down, including the DCist site in Washington. DNAinfo in New York will also shutter. The announcement comes about a week after its New York writers voted to unionize. By 5 p.m. Thursday, all websites in the network which includes LAist, SFist, Chicagoist and Shanghaiist were redirecting to a note announcing the closures from chief executive Joe Ricketts. [What will happen to DCists archive?] Ricketts, a billionaire who founded TD Ameritrade, started DNAinfo in 2009 and purchased the Gothamist network of sites this year. The sites attract millions of visitors each month. But DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure, Ricketts wrote in the note to DNAinfo and Gothamist readers. And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasnt been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded. The closure of DCist, which was started in 2004, will leave a void in the local media scene in the nations capital. The site is known for its incremental and fast-paced coverage of local happenings, and the often-punchy voices of its writers. In the hours before it was shut down, the sites three full-time writers and editors Rachel Sadon, Rachel Kurzius and Christina Sturdivant had written on topics ranging from House Democrats suing to obtain documents on Trump International Hotel to a piece informing readers of how to dispose of Halloween pumpkins to be turned into food. The archives initially were unavailable on each site, but were restored on Friday. [Neighborhood news site built a loyal D.C. following but couldnt make money] Gothamist is the latest local news organization to show that building loyal readership isn't always enough to turn a profit. Borderstan, a D.C. neighborhood site focused on neighborhoods filled with millennials, closed in 2016. Local advertisers didnt really flock to the site like readers did, editor Tim Regan said at the time. Our readership is growing, but everything costs money, and that includes running a local news website. The citys alt-weekly, Washington City Paper, was put up for sale last month and its future remains unknown. Kurzius, DCist's associate editor, penned an article Thursday about the best blogs and news organizations to find D.C. coverage. That article is no longer available on the DCist website. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Friday endorsed Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Maryland governor a high-profile boost in a crowded primary race. We have a lot of other great candidates on the Democratic side, but I think Rushern Baker will be the best governor for the state of Maryland and is in the best position to succeed in this race in the general election, he said. Baker said he was honored to receive the endorsement of his former General Assembly colleague in the General Assembly. I have known and worked with Chris for nearly 30 years and am proud to call him not only a colleague but a friend, the Democrat said in a statement. Baker backed Van Hollen, the party favorite, over the then-U. S. Rep. Donna Edwards, a fellow Prince George's County elected official, in the Democratic primary race last year to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D), who retired. His choice to endorse Van Hollen over Edwards, who was vying to become the states first black senator, angered many African Americans in Prince Georges County. Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker III endorsed then-Rep. Chris Van Hollen for the U.S. Senate in 2016. Now Van Hollen is endorsing Bakers gubernatorial bid. (Arelis Hernandez /TWP) Because of the blowback Baker received, many expected Van Hollen to weigh in early to back Baker. Van Hollens endorsement could prove to be a blow to the gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr., who is from Montgomery County, Van Hollens home turf. Rich Madaleno is a great person, great leader and hes a great candidate, Van Hollen said Friday. I made my decisions based on the person who I think is best capable of becoming a leader and governor right now. Rushern Baker not only has the experience from the state legislature, but hes been a county executive. Mileah Kromer, a political-science professor at Goucher College, said Van Hollens endorsement is a big get for Baker. "This isn't Cory Booker or Bernie Sanders," Kromer said, noting the endorsements received by former NAACP president and gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous. "This is our senator. This is Maryland." Kromer said Van Hollen brings high name recognition to Baker, who is working to raise his profile across the state. Baker has also received the endorsement of seven members of the state legislature, including Sen. Douglas J.J. Peters (D-Prince Georges), and seven mayors in Prince Georges County. Last month, a Mason-Dixon poll declared Baker to be the strongest contender in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup against the popular incumbent, Gov. Larry Hogan (R), whose high approval ratings and sizable campaign war chest make him a formidable opponent even in a strongly blue state. The Democratic field is crowded, with eight candidates: Baker, Jealous, who has a raft of endorsements of his own; Kamenetz; Madaleno; policy consultant Maya Rockeymoore Cummings; tech entrepreneur Alec Ross; attorney Jim Shea; and Krishanti Vignarajah, a former policy director for Michelle Obama. Carolyn Nichols, an editor, writer and publisher of romance novels who influenced the genres evolutionary progression into stories that showed alluring heroines in greater positions of authority, who stand up and fight back before they give in, died Oct. 21 at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 78. The cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said her son, Christopher Nichols. Mrs. Nichols, who had grown up in Washington, moved to New York in the 1970s and launched her career in romance novels, a multibillion-dollar industry with an overwhelming female readership. Under the pen names of Iona Charles and Carolyn McKnight, she began writing what is known as regency romance novels, often set in the early 18th century and populated by barons and earls who lived in castles and dressed and talked like nobility. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was founding editor of two romance lines, Loveswept for Bantam books and Second Chance at Love for Berkley/Jove, which was aimed at an older readership that, as the name suggests, had already experienced at least one love affair. As director of the Loveswept line of books, she published more than 900 titles, stories that featured heroines in heretofore unmentioned roles, such as construction job supervisors and bar owners. The titillating titles, however, remained. In the Delaneys of Killaroo series, Mrs. Nichols offered Adelaide, the Enchantress, Matilda, the Adventuress and Sydney, the Temptress. Gone are the days when the sweet, little trembling 18-year-old virgin in the typing pool got swept off her feet by the macho, conglomerate boss, Mrs. Nichols told The Washington Post in 1985. The heroines, she said, were more likely to be spunky, spicy women ready to stand up and fight back before they give in. Theres no sadness in these books, Mrs. Nichols added. Theyre about nice people who youd really like to know. Everybodys okay. Theres none of the sadness of real life. Researchers discovered that the Loveswept book line was targeting the same potential customers as Clairol, the Procter & Gamble subsidiary that specializes in hair care and coloring. So the companies entered into a joint cooperative agreement not advertising, but promotion, insisted Mrs. Nichols. Some of the Loveswept books came with a coupon for 50 cents off the purchase of a Clairol color wash. But not just any color. It had to be same shade of hair as that of the heroine in the book. So critical is hair color in the romance novel that Mrs. Nichols had taken to supplying artists for Bantam book covers with the Clairol color charts, according to the Los Angeles Times, and there were sometimes adjustments made in the book texts so that the hair of the characters matched certain Clairol styles. On Mrs. Nicholss watch, there was also a shift in the covers of romance novels, from the classic embrace of a macho, muscular man and a well-endowed woman to one that predominantly emphasized male sex appeal, targeting a mostly female readership Carolyn Ione McKnight was born in Monroe, La., on July 29, 1939, and raised in Washington. She graduated from Wilson High School in 1957 and attended George Washington University. In the early days of public television, she was a writer for the Washington-area station WETA. 1 of 66 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Notable deaths in 2017 View Photos Remembering those who died in 2017. Caption Remembering those who died in 2017. Katherine Frey Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. In 2001, Mrs. Nichols retired as a top executive at the New American Library. Her marriage to Rodney W. Nichols ended in divorce. Survivors include her son, of Corvallis, Ore. A 27-year-old man has been arrested in connection with six burglaries over a three-week period in September and October in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. Timothy Buckman of Northeast was charged Tuesday with six counts of burglary. Police said the break-ins occurred between Sept. 21 and Oct. 10 in residences on or within several blocks of Grant Circle Park, with several near Rock Creek Cemetery. At least twice, police said, the suspect broke in through a window after midnight but was confronted by a resident and fled without taking anything. No residents were injured in the incidents. In other cases, police said, property was taken. Some of the break-ins occurred between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. Houses targeted were on the 200 block of Webster Street, the 4300 block of New Hampshire Avenue, the 700 block of Quincy Street and on two blocks of Rock Creek Church Road. The death of a woman found dead in Oxon Hill in August was a homicide, according to the results from a medical examiners report. Itimia Gray, 37, of Southeast Washington, was found unresponsive outside in the 5100 block of Deal Drive at about 9:15 a.m. on Aug. 15, after officers were called to the area for a death investigation, Prince Georges County police said. The medical examiner alerted detectives on Tuesday that Gray died of a gunshot wound to the upper body, police said. Authorities are still working to determine a motive and suspect in the case, police said. Police ask anyone with information on this case to call 301-772-4925 or, to remain anonymous, 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). D.C. police confiscated these items Monday in what they called a major drug bust in Southwest Washington. Among items found were $75,000 in cash, 53 pounds of marijuana and more than 70 grams of cocaine, they said. (Courtesy of D.C. Police) D.C. police said they were expecting to find drugs. But when officers burst into apartment 509 at Waterside Towers in Southwest Washington, they reported coming across a full-scale laboratory. There were rows and stacks of marijuana-laced substances including edibles packaged in labeled glass jars, heat-sealed plastic envelopes and clear cylinders, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court. The containers, police said in the court document, had mock prescription labels attached. Some of the drugs, police said, were packaged in amber wax. In total, authorities said they found 53 pounds of marijuana, including a green plant-like substance that tested positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, as well as the drug in edible form. In addition, police said they found 71 grams of cocaine and $75,000 in cash. Its one of the most sophisticated operations Ive seen, police said on Twitter, quoting a lieutenant in the Narcotics and Special Investigations Bureau. Police did not comment further. D.C. police said there were rows and stackcs of various marijuana-laced substances in labeled glass jars. (Courtesy of D.C. Police) The apartment is located in the 900 block of 6th Street SW, adjacent to the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater at 6th Street and Maine Avenue SW. It is about a half-mile from the new development going up along the waterfront that includes the Wharf, the Districts newest entertainment zone, with luxury living and dining along the Potomac River. The apartments, which begin renting at $1,800 a month, advertise views of the District, indoor and outdoor pools, a health club and french-door entry ways. Calls to the apartment complex were not returned on Thursday. Police did not detail what led them to this apartment on Oct. 30 and the search warrant remained sealed in court. The arrest affidavit identifies one of three people arrested as being on the apartment lease. The suspects were identified as Tiffany Frances Henry, 30, of Southwest, the leaseholder, Angela Maria Cortez, 33, from San Antonio, and Jeremy Bennett Albrecht, 42, of Southwest. Each was charged with possessing drugs with intent to distribute, along with other offenses. All three defendants were released pending D.C. Superior Court hearings on Dec. 4. They could not be reached for comment. Henrys attorney, Stuart F. Johnson, declined to comment on Thursday. Albrechts attorney, Matthew C. Rist, also declined to comment. Cortezs attorney did not return a call seeking comment. It is legal to possess marijuana in the District but only up to two ounces, and it is only legal to transfer one ounce or less to another person. Payment for any amount of marijuana is illegal. People are also allowed to grow up to six marijuana plants in their residences, with no more than three being mature at one time. Police said in the arrest affidavit that officers went to the fifth-floor apartment about 10:20 a.m. No one answered as officers shouted, Police, we have a search warrant, open the door, and entry was made through a key provided by a management, according to the affidavit. One suspect was found in a hallway; the other two in a bedroom. Police said there was too much inventory to make an initial count. Due to the large amount of loose material and these commercially packaged substances, the court affidavit says, the amount is pending processing. Detectives investigating the Oct. 6 rape of a woman waiting for a bus in Montgomery County released a composite image of the suspect Wednesday that was put together by details drawn from DNA evidence and the victims recollections. Were trying to take advantage of all technology available to us, Montgomery police spokesman Rick Goodale said of the sketch process. A month ago, a woman told police she was at a bus stop on Watkins Mill Road in Gaithersburg, near Travis Lane, at 5:30 a.m. when her assailant approached her. He grabbed her, forced her away from the bus stop and attacked her, authorities said. The man then fled. Police initially provided only a vague description of the alleged attacker: A black male in his 20s, last seen wearing a dark-colored, checkered shirt or jacket. Detectives later enlisted the services of Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company in Virginia that makes images based on phenotyping that links certain DNA markers to certain facial attributes to create an image. Montgomery police ultimately paid $3,500 for the image, Goodale said, and were able to add details about the suspect's appearance, including his dreadlocks, based on talking to the woman who reported the attack. The police department has used the company in other cases. Phenotyping is not without its skeptics. But Montgomery police say it offers them another tool. Police ask anyone with information to call 240-773-5050. Those who wish to remain anonymous, or be eligible for a reward of as much as $10,000, can call 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). The federal judge overseeing the criminal trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Rick Gates said Thursday she is inclined to impose a gag order in the case and believes that the men pose a flight risk significant enough to require close electronic monitoring. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington stated her intentions at a 30-minute hearing to review bail terms for Manafort and Gates, who were in court. Each has pleaded not guilty to a 12-count indictment unsealed Monday that charges them with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other offenses in connection with their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. She said that the men will stay on house arrest through the weekend and that both may need to remain on GPS tracking throughout the case. The men were arraigned Monday on the first criminal allegations disclosed by the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which is investigating possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs, including the 2016 election of President Trump. "This is a criminal trial, and it is not a public-relations campaign," said Jackson, a 2011 appointee of President Barack Obama. Noting extraordinary public interest in the case, Jackson gave each side until Tuesday to argue why she should not issue an order barring both sides from releasing information or commenting on the case outside court, saying, "I expect counsel to make their statements in the courtroom and in pleadings, and not on the courthouse steps." [Three former Trump campaign officials charged by special counsel] A U.S. magistrate had put the men on electronic monitoring and confined them mostly to their homes, pending the Thursday appearance, after Manafort, 68, pledged to pay a $10 million penalty and Gates, 45, promised to pay a $5 million penalty if they failed to return to court. Jackson also granted prosecutors' unopposed request to suspend the usual speedy-trial requirements because of the complexity of the case, and set a tentative trial date for spring. She set another hearing for 9:30 a.m. Monday to sort out terms for their continued release. Attorneys for Manafort and Gates said they would ask for the men to go free on their personal recognizance and remain on unsecured bond. Prosecutors insisted in court that any bail package be secured by assets. Jackson deferred ruling until seeing each side's requests, but said the tracking is important and should stay in place. "I think if they leave and don't come back, we need to know where they went," she said. [Here is who is under investigation and why] Prosecutors argued in a court filing Tuesday that both men "pose a risk of flight" based on a "history of deceptive and misleading conduct," the evidence against them, and their wealth and foreign connections. The government argued that Manafort has a greater incentive to flee because he faces spending most of the rest of his life incarcerated if convicted of charges that would carry a recommended sentence of about 12 to 15 years. Gates, if convicted, could face a recommended 10- to 12-year sentence. Prosecutors also said that Manafort held three passports, and that he registered a phone and an email account under an alias in May and traveled with it to Ecuador, China and Mexico between May and June. On Thursday, his lawyers said that Manafort's passports were all under his own name and that travel with multiple passports is "perfectly permissible," such as for travel between countries with sour relations. Mueller team prosecutors Andrew Weissmann, Greg D. Andres and Kyle R. Freeny also cited the difficulty in ascertaining each man's wealth as a strike against allowing them to remain free. The government said in loan applications and financial documents Manafort assessed his financial holdings as ranging from $136 million in May 2016 to $28 million and $63 million that August, in two separate financial applications, the government said. Gates listed his and his wife's net worth as $30 million in a February 2016 application for a line of credit, but just $2.6 million in a March 2016 residential loan application, prosecutors said. [Muellers moves send message to other potential targets: Beware, Im coming] Manafort's attorneys called prosecutors' characterization of the case against him "embellished" and filled with "loose talk" over what they said amounted to an investigation for criminal tax evasion. Jackson said she had directed both sides to put their bail proposals in writing and from the bench admonished them because they had not done that. The government's allegations about the defendants' risk of flight came in what she called an unusual, "free-standing brief", without stating what terms it wanted or would accept, and that the defendants replied without details of what they sought for a release. In a nine-page filing Thursday morning, Manafort's lawyers said their client does not pose a danger to the community and should go free on unsecured bond with the condition he not commit a crime. "Mr. Manafort is ready to defend these allegations and preserve his livelihood and his assets," attorneys Kevin M. Downing and Thomas E. Zehnle said in filings. The prospect that Manafort would "simply up and leave" his wife of nearly 40 years, two daughters and grandchildren to "live the rest of his life on the lam . . . is an imagined risk," they said. Manafort is "one of the most recognizable people on the planet today," they added, asking "where such an individual could even hide?" Gates presented a new legal team Thursday, replacing Michael Dry. It includes Walter Mack of Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York City, Shanlon Wu of Wu, Grohovsky & Whipple in Washington, and Annemarie McAvoy, a former federal prosecutor and consultant specializing in financial crime investigations. Wu said in a written motion that Gates would also seek his release. Downing on Monday had objected to prosecutors using the "valuation of assets that fluctuate greatly in different countries" to argue for Manafort's home confinement. Downing also ridiculed prosecutors for bringing what he called a trumped up "criminal tax case" with their allegations Manafort was trying to conceal assets from the government through international foreign transactions and moving money into the United States, including through accounts in Cyprus. "The funds deposited in the Cypress [sic] accounts were from legal sources," Downing and Zehnle wrote. . , adding, "It goes without saying that in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States." The filing showed signs of being hastily proofread, consistently misspelling Cyprus, for example, and at one point misidentifying Mueller's team as the "Office of Special Investigation." Correction: A previous version of this story said the judge would impose a gag order. The file has been updated to reflect the judge is considering whether to impose such an order. Also, an earlier version of this report misidentified lawyer Michael Dry as George Dry. A 14-year-old boy was arrested Wednesday and charged in connection with the robberies and thefts from six taxi drivers in Northwest Washington, according to D.C. police. The youth was charged as a juvenile and his name was not made public. Police said that a second person was with the boy in some of the cases and has not yet been arrested. In some instances, police said the youth or his companion assaulted the drivers before taking cash, wallets or cellphones. The attacks typically happened after the taxi ride concluded. The incidents happened Oct. 10 28 in the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Crestwood, Park View and 16th Street Heights. In one case, police said in a report the youth and another person hailed a cab Oct. 10 at 17th and D streets NW, near the White House, and requested to go to the Petworth Metro Station. During the trip, police said, the passengers told the driver that they had changed their minds and requested to be dropped off in the 3500 block of 10th Street NW in Park View. Once there, police said, one passenger handed the driver what appeared to be a $100 bill and then snatched that bill and other money the driver had pulled from his pocket to make change. Police said they also took the drivers iPhone. In all, police said they fled with the phone and $180. They also failed to pay the $19 cab fare. In another case, police said one of the passengers put the taxi driver in a neck hold while stopped in the 1200 block of Jefferson Street NW, in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood. Police said that occurred Oct. 28. The report says $600 was taken. Police say Jonathan Miller III was involved in an incident where a pregnant woman was doused with gasoline and set on fire. (Courtesy of Prince George's County Police) A second arrest has been made in the case of a pregnant woman being set on fire in Prince Georges County. Jonathan Edward Miller III, 27, of Temple Hills, Md., was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, arson, assault and other offenses, authorities said. Authorities previously arrested and charged the victims boyfriend Laquinn Phillips, 34, of Southeast Washington in the case. Phillips has been charged with attempted first- and second-degree murder, arson and assault. He remains in jail. [Police identify suspect charged with burning pregnant woman in Prince Georges] Investigators said that on Sept. 8, the victim was put in a bathtub in her Capitol Heights apartment and had gasoline poured on her before she was set on fire. When authorities arrived, they found the woman running out of her apartment looking for help. She had suffered severe burns. In court documents, authorities said the victim told investigators that a man she knew as Will had been involved in the incident. She said she had associated with him about five times. Detectives later showed her a photo of Miller and she said that was the man she knew as Will, authorities said. She also told them that Miller had been in her apartment, helping Phillips in the incident. At the time of the incident, Prince Georges County States Attorney Angela Alsobrooks called the act heinous. Phillips and the woman had been in an ongoing disagreement over her keeping the baby, her family members said. [Tensions over baby preceded burning of pregnant woman, father of injured woman says] Arthur Grinage, the womans father, had said his daughter is a single mother who works hard to provide for her baby girl and two sons. The attack prompted the victim to deliver the baby seven weeks early, prosecutors said. Grinage said his new granddaughter is strong and healthy. The woman is said to be recovering. Supporters of a towering cross-shaped monument at a busy intersection in Maryland asked an appeals court on Wednesday to revisit a ruling that said it was unconstitutional to have the memorial on public land. The request for a hearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit follows a decision last month by a three-judge panel that said the 40-foot-tall cross maintained with taxpayer funds excessively entangles the government in religion in violation of the First Amendment. This is a case of exceptional importance that threatens memorials nationwide. We are hopeful the Fourth Circuit will recognize the significance, said attorney Michael Carvin, who filed a petition for review Wednesday on behalf of The American Legion. Adrian Gardner, general counsel for the state agency that owns the monument, said in a statement that the use of government funds to maintain the memorial is lawful and consistent with our role as good stewards of local history. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is also among the monuments defenders and called the panels Oct. 18 ruling an affront to all veterans that should not be allowed to stand. The issue for the Richmond-based court was whether the memorial, known as the Peace Cross, is a secular tribute to local men who died in World War I or an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion that must be removed from public property. The case attracted attention from several conservative members of Congress, who said the legal challenge threatened to eliminate other monuments and inscriptions with religious significance, including at Arlington National Cemetery. [Could moving a giant cross or cutting off its arms resolve 1st Amendment case?] After the panels ruling, Hogan directed the states attorney general to defend the monuments location on a grassy median at the intersection of Maryland Route 450 and U.S. Route 1 in Bladensburg. Built in 1925 with funding from local families and The American Legion, the cross honors 49 Prince Georges County men who died in the war, listing their names on a bronze tablet. On the base are the words valor, endurance, courage and devotion. The monument sits on land owned since 1961 by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a state agency that pays for upkeep and repairs. It is part of a larger memorial park in the immediate area honoring veterans of several wars and stood without protest for decades. The legal case was brought by the American Humanist Association, a nonprofit organization that argued the cross sends a message of exclusion and gives the impression only Christians are being honored. A District Court judge in 2015 disagreed, ruling the ownership and upkeep by a state agency was driven by a secular purpose, maintaining and displaying a historically significant war memorial that has honored fallen soldiers for almost a century. The 2-to-1 ruling from the 4th Circuit reversed that decision in part because of the height of the monument. The cross is by far the most prominent monument in the area, conspicuously displayed at a busy intersection, wrote Judge Stephanie D. Thacker, who was joined by Judge James A. Wynn Jr. [Read more from the 4th Circuit opinion here] More than 2,000 people have signed an online petition submitted to the state agency in support of maintaining the monument, calling it a landmark that has become synonymous with the historic town of Bladensburg. The petition says: Dont let The American Humanist Association take this HISTORICAL piece of history away! The request for review by the full 4th Circuit was filed by the nonprofit First Liberty Institute representing The American Legion. A separate appeal for rehearing was also filed late Wednesday by the park and planning commission. If the 4th Circuit opts not to hear the case, the future of the Peace Cross could end up at the Supreme Court. The high court has not provided clear guidance when it comes to religious displays on government land, allowing some monuments with religious content to stand, while ordering the removal of others. The cases have turned on particular facts, such as the size, setting and history of the display. Two national figures in Democratic politics, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), urged Virginia voters to send Democrat Ralph Northam to the governors mansion and said his victory on Tuesday would restore hope to the country. In a crowded recreation center hall in deep-blue Arlington on Wednesday evening, Booker said a Democratic win would rejuvenate the party and lift spirits around the nation. This country is looking for hope, Booker said. This whole country right now is waiting to see what is going to happen in Virginia on Tuesday. Later, Ellison joined Northam, lieutenant governor candidate Justin Fairfax, Attorney General Mark Herring (D) and Democratic candidates for local legislative seats at a firehouse hall in Prince William County, a swing area. [Interested Virginias governors race? Follow our Facebook group] Its an indication of the mood of the country. Its an indication of whether or not the nation is ready to push back on the Trump message, Ellison told reporters after the event. He is a leader of the partys progressive wing who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during the Democratic presidential primary. While the political organization that grew out of Sanderss bid, Our Revolution, did not endorse Northam, Ellison swatted away any suggestion that the split between progressives and moderates, evident during the 2016 campaign, was on display in Virginia. This divide is made much of, but theres not really much substance there, Ellison said. We are pretty unified. Booker and Ellison were the latest high-profile figures to stump for the Democratic ticket before Northam, the current lieutenant governor, faces off against Republican Ed Gillespie on Tuesday. And they are also two of the party's most notable African Americans on the campaign trail in an election where black voter turnout is crucial. Polls have shown a tight race. Virginias contest is the only competitive gubernatorial race this year, and both parties are watching it as a harbinger of next years midterms. Northams win would suggest that disapproval of Trump can translate to Democratic success at the ballot box. A victory for Gillespie would reassure Republicans that there is a route to victory in a state where Trump is deeply unpopular. Before coming to Arlington, Booker spoke to about 50 volunteers at George Mason University who were making calls for Northam. At both appearances, he told a cautionary tale about New Jersey where voters came out in droves to elect Barack Obama as their president in 2008, and stayed home the next year, allowing Republican Chris Christie to become governor. That paved the road for cuts to Planned Parenthood and the earned income tax credit for low-income people, Booker said. Everyone wants to know why are Republicans doing this to us, he said. Republicans didnt do this to us. We did it to ourselves Booker's Senate colleague, Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), hit the trail for the Democratic ticket in Richmond on Sunday. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) rallied for Gillespie in Loudoun County on Monday. Northam on Wednesday also fended off criticism from Republicans that he flip-flopped on the issue of sanctuary cities, which dont exist in Virginia. [Did Northam cast the deciding vote on sanctuary cities?] As lieutenant governor, Northam voted against GOP legislation that would have banned sanctuary cities, which are jurisdictions that choose not to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, maintaining that immigration is a federal responsibility and not a local function. Northam's vote has factored large in Gillespie's campaign advertising, which has suggested that Northam has enabled criminals who are in the country illegally. On Wednesday, Northam said during a television interview that he would sign a ban on sanctuary cites, later clarifying that he would only do so in response to a jurisdiction declaring itself a sanctuary, which none has done. His campaign says his position is consistent with his earlier statements that he is opposed to sanctuary cities. If a city declares itself a sanctuary city and the legislature in the General Assembly passes a law saying that thats unlawful, I would support that, Northam told reporters after his event with Ellison. Its what I said today, its what Ive been saying all along. For months, the Virginia governors race maintained a civil tone. But with five days until the election, a brawl has broken out over the airwaves. Republican gubernatorial contender Ed Gillespie launched a new ad Thursday blasting a commercial that briefly aired against him as painting his supporters as racists, whipping up conservative rage online and the airwaves and directing it at the Democrat. His Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, countered with a commercial linking Gillespie to President Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the state. Gillespie's ad is a response to a commercial from the Latino Victory Fund (LVF) where a pick-up truck sporting a Confederate flag and Gillespie bumper sticker pursues a group of minority children. Officials at the fund said the ad was meant to portray the current climate of fear that Latinos and Muslim communities are experiencing. The ad itself was in response to what Latino advocates called "hate" from Gillespie's campaign, which has been airing attack ads against Northam that equates illegal immigrants with Latino gang violence. The LVF commercial only aired two days on Spanish language stations before it was withdrawn after Tuesdays terrorist attack in Manhattan that involved a pick-up truck. Despite the fact that the ad came down, Republicans and conservative media outlets howled with objections and newspapers editorialized against it. Gillespies response commercial features Fox News hosts denouncing the LVF ad. It includes clips of three groups of staid white people as the text on the screen reads Liberal Ads Portray Gillespie Voters As Racists. Ralph Northam doesnt just disagree with the millions of Virginians that dont share his liberal policy agenda, Gillespie says in one clip used in the ad. He disdains us. Its an attack on all Virginians. [Interested in Virginias governors race? Follow our Facebook group] Since September, the Gillespie campaign has been running ads that suggest Northam enables MS-13 gang violence, despite protests from Democrats and Latino groups that the commercials play on racial stereotypes and analyses from independent fact-checkers that call the ads misleading. Gillespie is also airing a series of ads tying Northam to a sex offender who briefly had his rights restored as part of Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe's restoration of rights to felons who have completed their sentence. Northam responded with ads where he speaks to the camera and calls Gillespie "despicable" for saying he would tolerate anyone hurting a child. Northam has also continued a blitz of ads attacking Gillespie's record as a lobbyist and consultant to corporations in between his stints as a Republican political operative. Those ads also included claims that lacked context, and earned four pinocchios from the Post's Fact Checkers. Sources familiar with the strategy behind the Latino Victory Fund ad told The Washington Post that the commercial featuring the pick-up truck was meant to combat soft support for Northam among minority voters. It has been replaced with a pro-Northam commercial that LVF previously aired, featuring footage of Latinos and juxtaposing Gillespie and Donald Trump with white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville. Gillespies campaign says the ad will air in media markets across Virginia, but did not provide details. Northam, whose campaign did not produce or pay for the LVF ad, has defended the group by saying they had the right to respond to Gillespies fear mongering and divisive campaign. After the group pulled the commercial, Northam added that it wasnt the kind of ad he would have aired. In response to Gillespies new ad, Northams spokesman offered a harsh assessment of the Republican's campaign. Ed Gillespie has spent upwards of $9 million making obvious racial appeals, said David Turner. The tone and tenor of Eds campaign has been nothing but division and fear mongering. We understand why they would feel this way after the millions spent on demonizing immigrants. [Gillespie, a proponent of big-tent GOP, embraces culture wars as candidate] Meanwhile, Northams campaign is going on air with his bluntest attempt yet to tie Gillespie to Trump. The ad juxtaposes photos of Gillespie and Trump. It accuses Gillespie of supporting presidents plans to take money from Virginia public schools, weaken clean air and water protections and take away health care from thousands of Virginians. Those are references to the Trump administration's moves to overhaul Obamacare and roll back regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, while supporting taxpayer-funded vouchers for parents to send their children to private schools. Gillespie has declined to directly answer whether he supports vouchers, but he does back an alternative that allows parents to take tax dollars that would have been spent to educate their children in public schools and instead use it on private school tuition. Ed Gillespie wont stand up to Donald Trump because Eds standing right next to him, the narrator in Northams commercial says. David Abrams, a spokesman for the Gillespie campaign, called it a last-minute desperate attack. Trump has endorsed Gillespie through a series of tweets, but, barring an unexpected surprise, will not hit the campaign trail for the Republican before leaving Friday for his Asia trip. . Maryland's popular Republican governor will headline a rally for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie on Saturday in Northern Virginia, lending his support to a close and heated contest just days before the election. I think hes a great leader in the Republican Party, Gov. Larry Hogan, who is seeking reelection next year, said of Gillespie on Thursday at a news conference where he announced a new state effort to increase training in the field of computer science and addressed various other issues. Im looking forward to doing what I can to see that he wins next Tuesday. According to the latest Washington Post-Schar School poll, Gillespie trails Democrat Ralph Northam, Virginia's lieutenant governor, by five percentage points, within the poll's margin of error. Gillespie has closed the gap in recent weeks, gaining among conservatives and supporters of President Trump, in part by sponsoring ads focused on Confederate monuments and the danger posed by the Latino MS-13 gang. Democratic Party officials criticized Hogans decision to participate in the racially charged campaign. Hogan announced Thursday that he has signed an executive order, proposed legislation and allocated $5 million toward improving computer science education. The order creates a task force on Cybersecurity and Information Technology to study ways to increase and diversify the talent pipeline. The legislation would create statewide computer science standards. The $5 million will pay for teaching training and equipment. Ed Gillespie. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alec Ross, who proposed universal K-12 computer science education earlier this year, called the plan "long overdue. I'm glad to see my ideas are catching on." Hogan also said Thursday that he is "anxious to get to the bottom of" allegations of widespread tampering with grades and graduation rates in Prince George's County. The governor ordered an investigation into the allegations about five months ago and said the report is finished but he has not seen it yet. The state Board of Education is expected to release a statement on Friday about the investigation. Hogan also said he is pushing Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) to weigh in on a ruling that a cross-shaped monument on public land in Prince George's County is unconstitutional. Supporters of the monument have asked an appeals court to revisit the case. The state Republican Party has launched a petition calling on Frosh to stand up for the peace cross and file an amicus brief offering the states position. Hogan, who has called the ruling an affront to all veterans, said he directed Frosh to get involved in the case more than a week ago and has not heard back from him. We will be continuing to pressure him to get an answer, he said. Donna St. George contributed to this report. Cliff Hyra, the Libertarian candidate for Virginia governor, speaks during an interview in Richmond in September. The Libertarian candidate is polling in the single digits, not enough to win but enough to potentially alter the close contest between Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam. (Steve Helber/AP) The Libertarian running for Virginia governor scolded his major-party rivals Thursday for letting the initially civil tone of the race descend into "wild-eyed accusations and divisive rhetoric." Cliff Hyra, who could play spoiler in the neck-and-neck race, called on Republican Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam to stop their attack ads. What is politics coming to, what is our society coming to, when two candidates for statewide office spend millions of dollars on ads accusing their opponent of sympathizing with violent street gangs, pedophiles, white nationalists and neo-Nazis, and of harboring supporters who want to run over our children with trucks? Hyra said at a news conference on Richmonds Capitol Square. I fear for the future of our commonwealth, and of our nation, when even the most staid candidates feel they have to descend to this level of discourse to win an election, and are willing to do so, said Hyra, a suburban Richmond patent attorney making his first run for elective office. [Meet the candidate for Va. governor who wont' be on the debate stage] Cliff Hyra, the Libertarian candidate for Virginia governor. (Steve Helber/AP) Hyras comments came just five days before Election Day, at a moment when TV ads and mailers have turned harshly negative. As Hyra called for a cease-fire, Gillespie was rolling out a new attack ad on an anti-Gillespie attack ad that was, itself, a response to earlier Gillespie attack ads. [Gillespie ad attacks Latino Victory Fund commercial: Northam ad ties him to Trump] The downward spiral began a few weeks ago with an ad from Gillespie, a longtime GOP operative and Washington lobbyist. The spot said that Northam the states lieutenant governor, a pediatrician and a onetime Army doctor who treated wounded soldiers during Operation Desert Storm had allowed members of the MS-13 street gang to prey on Virginians in sanctuary cities. Virginia has no sanctuary cities. The spot featured the tattooed faces of gang members who, as it turns out, were imprisoned in El Salvador and belong to an entirely different gang. [Virginia Republican's ad ties opponent to MS-13. Democrats compare it to 'Willie Horton'] Gillespie followed up with an ad that said Northam was soft on pedophiles, based on a sex offender who briefly got his voting rights restored by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). The whole Democratic ticket struck back last week with a mailer linking Gillespie and President Trump to the torch-bearing white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville over the summer. View Graphic The latest stories and details on the 2017 Virginia general election and race for governor. [Gillespies latest Trump headache is happening in his own backyard] Trump said there were very fine people on both sides of the protest. Although Gillespie did not join the widespread criticism of Trumps remarks, he has repeatedly condemned the white nationalists and said there was no moral equivalency between them and the counterprotesters with whom they clashed. [Virginia Democratic mailer links Gillespie to white nationalists in Charlottesville] Then Monday, a progressive Latino group launched an anti-Gillespie ad showing minority children being chased by a pickup truck that bore a Confederate flag and a Gillespie bumper sticker. Northams campaign did not produce or pay for the ad, which came from the Latino Victory Fund. But Northam initially said the group had a right to respond to Gillespies fearmongering campaign. After the Victory Fund pulled the ad Tuesday following a fatal truck attack in New York, Northam said it was not the kind of commercial he would have aired. Now Gillespie has turned backlash over the Latino Victory Fund commercial into an entirely new attack ad, saying the spot was evidence that Northam disdains millions of Virginians. Northam, meanwhile, went up on the air with a new ad saying that Gillespie wont stand up to Donald Trump. Their bitter back-and-forth has disgusted many Virginians, including the oldest of Hyras four children, he said. Theyre acting like children! he said 7-year-old Cheyenne declared. Apparently [Gillespie and Northam] think that the best strategy for getting elected to the highest office in the state is name-calling, he said. I feel like telling them, Dont make me turn this car around! He called on the candidates to focus on the economy, education, health care and criminal justice in the remaining days. And he implored voters not to let the negativity deter them from voting. Hyra acknowledged that he is not going to win. Just 4 percent of likely voters support him in the latest Washington Post-Schar School poll, which has Northam leading 49 percent to Gillespie's 44 percent, a margin that is not statistically significant. [A week before Election Day, new poll finds tightening race for Va. governor] Hyra said his greatest hope would be to hit 10 percent a threshold that would give Libertarians major-party status, making it easier for candidates to get on the ballot. He said he doesnt fear playing spoiler. I think both candidates are not good candidates, he said. I dont think they have the right plans for the future of Virginia, so Im not concerned if it affects the election one way or the other. Video still from a commercial for Ed Gillespie's 2017 campaign for Virginia governor. (N/A) Days before Virginias tight gubernatorial election, Democratic nominee Ralph Northam is still facing questions about his stance toward sanctuary cities localities that decline to enforce federal immigration laws. Never mind that Virginia has no sanctuary cities. Or that there is no evidence that they lead to increased crime or gang activity. Republicans have seized on the issue as a way of portraying Northam as soft on crime. And Northam is not alone. In tight elections from New York to Albuquerque, Republicans are using sanctuary cities to attack Democrats as enabling Latino gang violence. Democrats, who have criticized the Trump administration for deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, are struggling to explain their positions. I dont mind the term sanctuary city if we define it, but nobody ever defines it, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who leads the Latino Alliance of the Conference of Mayors. If it means that our cops arent going to be immigration agents, and that well build trust between communities, thats right. If sanctuary cities mean towns where we harbor criminals come on, thats laughable. Thats not what we are. In Virginia, Northam has repeatedly walked into a trap set by Republicans. In January, President Trump threatened to cut off federal funds to sanctuary cities. In February, the GOP-controlled state senate forced Northam, the lieutenant governor, to break a tie on a bill that would have banned sanctuary cities in Virginia. Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), the Virginia Senates majority leader, initially voted against the ban an odd move for the GOP leader to break from his party but it set up a tie forcing Northam to go on the record on a contentious issue. [Did Ralph Northam cast the deciding vote on sanctuary cities?] Ed Gillespie, who in June became the Republican nominee for governor, said he would have approved the ban. That vote, as Democrats expected, became the focus of millions of dollars in attack ads, accusing Northam of leaving Virginians vulnerable to MS-13 gang violence. In TV ads, Northam said he had favored tougher laws against gangs; in debates, Northam called the February bill a political trick. But on Wednesday, he went further, telling Norfolk television station WAVY that he could sign a similar bill but only if a Virginia city actually declared sanctuary status. Ive always been opposed to sanctuary cities, said Northam. View Graphic The latest stories and details on the 2017 Virginia general election and race for governor. Republicans, who believe that the attacks were helping Gillespie close a polling gap, rounded on Northam for changing his position. So did some progressives, who accused the Democrat of flaking on a tough, moral issue. [In a nod to conservaties, Gillespie urges eradicating gangs and sanctuary cities] I want to elect Ralph Northam, but parroting Gillespies hateful xenophobia is despicable, Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the grass roots Indivisible network of progressive groups, said in a tweet. Find your spine, Ralph. [Ad shows minority kids being chased by a truck sporting Gillespie sticker, Confederate flag] Virginia voters, meanwhile, have been unsure what to think. Chance McCracken, a bail enforcement agent in Virginia Beach, said he had not seen Gillespies ads but learned on the radio that he opposed sanctuary cities. He said he thought that meant some cities might not report any felonies to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or the federal government if Northam won. The general code of the street is you dont talk, said McCracken, 28. Its more so with immigrants. The first thing they do is flee, and theyre often hard to find because they dont have any documents. But Cathleen Gormley, who supports Northam as well as some down-ticket Republicans, called the attempt to link gangs with sanctuary cities was ridiculous. Many MS-13 gang members, she said, were born in the United States. Theyve been here for 25 years, said Gormley, 56, a lawyer who became familiar with the gang when she did juvenile law. Just because you have immigrants in your state doesnt mean youre going to have MS-13 or any other gangs. Theyre not all immigrants. Jeff Taylor, a Republican in Dinwiddie County, said that the state had a lot of Latino immigrants, most of them good, but that hed heard of sanctuary cities leading to more crime. I know some in California are pretty much letting them get away with murder, said Taylor, 57. Theyre not pressing charges, because theyre afraid theyre going to get into the system where ICE can get to them. Theres no evidence that sanctuary status has any effect on crime rates, and some law enforcement groups have argued like Garcetti that theyre less able to focus on violent crime if theyre compelled to turn noniolent immigrants over to ICE. They also say undocumented residents who are crime victims or witnesses would be less likely to turn to local police if they believe the officials are working with federal authorities and will help deport them. [In immigration crackdown, Trump targets sanctuary cities] Immigrants residing in our cities must be able to trust the police and all of the city government, the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors said in a joint statement earlier this year. But across the country, Republicans have been using the sanctuary cities debate to win votes. In Albuquerque, a Democratic-leaning city where Republicans have controlled city hall for years, Republican mayoral nominee Dan Lewis warned that his opponent would put people at risk by not coordinating with ICE. [To become governor, Gillespie shelves big tent and goes for culture warrior] Whats scary about that, whats dangerous about that, is were talking about violent offenders, Lewis said in a debate last month with Democrat Tim Keller. That is absolutely wrong, Keller countered. That is coded language. That is national talking points from the president. In New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno has spent weeks warning that Democrat Phil Murphy will turn the state over to criminals. At a town hall meeting in September, a worried constituent asked Murphy if undocumented immigrants who commit a felony or drunken driving should be reported. The field has been so tilted against the dreamers, against immigrants, my bias is going to be having their back, said Murphy. Guadagno, who has lagged in polls, grabbed hold of the issue. She ran TV ads about the grim 2007 story of an undocumented Peruvian immigrant who committed three murders. At a late October news conference, she said that Murphy had disqualified himself by suggesting he would let New Jersey police ignore orders from ICE agents and pointed to other crimes carried out by immigrants. Those are the types of people who get released back out into our communities when you declare yourself a sanctuary city, she said. Not far away, in New Yorks Nassau County, Republicans have used a similar line of attack in a direct mail ad for Jack Martins, a candidate for county executive. Meet your new neighbors! the mailer reads. [Democrat Laura Curran] will roll out the welcome mat for violent gangs like MS-13! Even New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is expected to win a landslide reelection Tuesday, has been caught off-guard by a question about immigrants and crime. In January, when the Trump administration first targeted sanctuary communities, de Blasio appeared to be caught by surprise by a question about which crimes should be reported to ICE. Is grand larceny or drunken driving a very minor offense? asked CNNs Jake Tapper. Drunk driving that does not lead to any other negative outcome, I could define as that, de Blasio said. Comments like those worry some Democrats. Simon Rosenberg, the founder of the New Democratic Network and a strategist on immigration policy, said Democrats need to be more clear that they want ICE to focus on felons, not families and that they needed to be ready to argue for some deportations. Democrats can say that President Obama was the leader who prioritized the deportation of criminals, and Donald Trump has taken his eye off the ball, said Rosenberg. We got criminals out of the country. We policed the border. When Obama left office, there were fewer undocumented immigrants in this country than there were 10 years before. Were for deporting the violent criminals first. Garcetti, who said hed studied how crime was covered on Fox News and how crimes involving immigrants were given special attention agreed that Democrats needed to focus on law enforcement. Democrats worry that even if Northam wins the close Virginia race Tuesday, Republicans will unleash waves of sanctuary city attacks into 2018. Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Penn.), who is running for Senate against Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.), said that the issue was increasingly breaking his way and Trumps way. Pennsylvanias a blue-collar state, said Barletta. Sanctuary citizens become safe havens for terrorists and people in the country illegally. People are going to understand that. An image of an ad from Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam that responds to Republican Ed Gillespies commercials tying him to MS-13 gang violence and a convicted sex offender. Columnist In Virginia, voters are weary. After a divisive and ugly presidential election, followed by the white supremacy dumpster fire that was Charlottesville, people just want a respite from the hate parade. But they arent getting it in this gubernatorial election. Attack ads are everywhere. Insults are flying. And revulsion is growing. This week, I took a drive down Lee Highway, named for the Confederate general who has become such a Rorschach test in Virginia and around the country. Along the way, at junkyards, farm stands, in suburban auto shops and hipster coffeehouses, I talked with Republicans and Democrats, with never Trumpers and forever Trumpers, with Hillary fans and Hillary haters, with devoted Berners and disaffected Berners. They all said the same thing theyre disgusted with everything about the gubernatorial election pitting Republican Ed Gillespie against Democrat Ralph Northam. Its immature, said Judy Wood, 77. And theyre not talking about anything that has to do with living here. Virginia is always one of the countrys most compelling electoral subplots, perpetually purple, its tendency to go redder or bluer a reflection of the national political pendulum. The Old Dominion is commanding even more attention than usual, given the polarization over President Trump and the violence that consumed an August Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Its made the whole country wonder what, exactly, Virginia is trying to tell us. Nothing of substance, it turns out. All theyre doing is telling us how bad the other guy is, said Lior Holtslag, 20, who helps manage Sams Junkyard on Lee Highway in Gainesville. Talk to me about how good you are; dont just trash the other guy. Its pointless. And were all sick of it. The race for governor is a choice between two moderates. Both Gillespie and Northam denounced the violence and white-power messages in Charlottesville. [Trump lit the torches of white supremacy in Charlottesville. We must extinguish them.] Though Gillespie supported Trump in the election, he has tried to distance himself from the presidents ugliest rhetoric. And that impulse nearly cost him the Republican nomination. It was a close call in the primary when Trumps mini-me, Corey A. Stewart, the anti-immigration chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, nearly beat Gillespie with a campaign swathed in Confederate colors. When Gillespie prevailed in June, there was an exhale. Maybe the hate fever was finally starting to break. Lots of voters certainly hoped so. Nope. Nasty attack ads launched last month the kind of assaults with 140-character depth and powder keg instability have turned this election into a scorched-earth battle for Virginias soul. Now theyre saying Northam will bring MS-13 into your neighborhood, and Gillespie is going to sell everyone out, and its just awful, said one voter, who thinks this is the nastiest campaign shes seen in Virginia politics since she moved to the state in 1959. (She didnt want me to use her name because she didnt want to be dragged into the public conversation.) For the past few weeks, Gillespies campaign has run ads tying Northam, a pediatrician and Army doctor, to MS-13 gangbangers and to a child pornographer. Northam supporters responded with fliers tying Gillespie to white nationalists. Then, a group called the Latino Victory Fund released an ad showing minority children being chased down by a pickup truck with a Dont Tread on Me license plate, a Confederate flag and a Gillespie bumper sticker. The ad was pulled after Tuesdays terrorist attack in Manhattan that involved a pickup truck. Listen. All this race stuff theyre all talking about? Thats not who we are, none of us, said Janis Johnson, who works as a clerk at the Buckland Farm Market in Fauquier County. I voted for Trump. I will follow him because hes my president. But what Donald Trump says about the black and white thing? Hes not speaking for us. Were neighbors. Were friends. Were all Virginians, and none of that makes sense. Johnson wants the men vying for her vote to talk about roads and schools. Jobs and health care. Others raised alarms about the opioid epidemic. I want them to talk about it like a health crisis, Holtslag said. Ive seen people go through that. And I wish theyd talk about that. That matters to me. Instead, Virginians are being subjected to low blows, attack ads and dog whistles. No wonder they cant wait for Tuesday to be over. Twitter: @petulad Reporters gather outside the Paterson, N.J., residence of Sayfullo Saipov, the man who is accused of plowing a rental truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a Manhattan bike path. (Mark Makela/Getty Images) Yaser Al-Basha was at his restaurant when he heard the news of the terrorist attack across the river. Rami Abadi was hanging out with his friends at a local hookah bar. Salah Mustafa was in his office at Citibank in midtown, talking to colleagues on the phone downtown when they heard the sirens. And one by one, in their separate places, the reactions were nearly identical. Please dont let it be a Muslim, Abadi said. I literally work in that area my family was literally walking on that bike path three weeks ago. That part of New York City is part of our lives. It could have been any of us, said Mustafa, who said he felt a surge of anger upon hearing the news. But your mind doesnt immediately just go I hope everyones okay. It also goes I hope hes not an Arab or a Muslim. It quickly emerged that Sayfullo Saipov, the man who is accused of plowing a rental truck into bikers and pedestrians, killing eight people and wounding 12 along a Manhattan bike path Tuesday, is, indeed, a Muslim. Saipov isn't Arab he's an immigrant from Uzbekistan so at least one of Mustafa's prayers was answered. But then came the other news, possibly worse than any vague association-by- ethnicity: Saipov lived in Paterson. [Horror unfolded in five nightmarish minutes] An industrial city of 147,000 set on the rolling hills of northeast New Jersey, 15 miles west of Manhattan, Paterson is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the United States. On a normal day, the citys cultural diversity and the hard-won success of its working-class immigrant community is visible in the dozens of locally owned businesses and mosques and on the campaign signs for upcoming elections, branded with the names of Arab Americans eager to play a role in shaping their society for the better. But Paterson was also notoriously the place where two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers rented an apartment in the year leading up to their attack, a fact that drew swarms of FBI agents, journalists and television news crews to the city in the aftermath of 9/11 and that swept up its mosques along with many others in a wide-scale surveillance operation by the New York City Police Department. Its a past that no one wants to revisit. When we figured out he was from Paterson, we knew trouble was coming, said Abadi, a 32-year-old graphic designer who attends the mosque next to the apartment building where Saipov was living. All eyes are going to be on Paterson now. Because of one psycho, he added. American Muslim leaders and civil rights advocates say the past two years have seen a spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric, hate crimes and harassment across the United States, fueled in part by terrorist attacks such as those in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, carried out by Muslims who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State, and in part by the broad condemnations of Islam and immigrants by President Trump and his allies responses that many American Muslims consider racist. The day after the truck attack, Trump tweeted that the United States "will be immediately implementing much tougher Extreme Vetting Procedures." Trump also said he wanted to send the attacker to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and called for the attacker to receive the death sentence. Trump has taken this horrific act and used it as an excuse not just to attack the Muslim community and immigrant Americans but also to attack some of the most fundamental rights this country holds, said Albert Fox Cahn, the legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relationss New York chapter. There was no similar call to action by Trump in the aftermath of last months Las Vegas shooting, in which a white Christian man, Stephen Paddock, killed 58 people the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The hypocrisy is jarring, Cahn said. As law enforcement officers and journalists zeroed in this week on the neighborhood where Saipov most recently lived, the anxiety of a community was palpable. Clearly now theres a fear of backlash, said Mustafa, who also serves as the spokesman for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, the largest mosque in the Paterson area. Theres a fear of tarring. Weve struggled and worked so hard to make this area an example of how successful American Muslims can be, he said. So theres now a fear: Will we be less trusted? Will we be able to do these things with this specter hanging over us, with this A-hole who was living a couple blocks away, who none of us know? . . . It just feels like every time one of these things happens, it sets us back. Saipovs home abutted the Omar Mosque, and speculation that Saipov had also prayed there had drawn a crowd of television news cameras to the mosques gates by Wednesday afternoon, even as worshipers leaving the midday prayer said consistently that they had never met the man who lived next door, never heard of him. Ive never seen him in my life. Ive been coming here for 13 years, and Ive never seen him, one man told a TV reporter who suggested that he looked about the same age as Saipov, 29. Three other mosques in the area also said that they had never seen Saipov. For many, there was an immediate desire to distance themselves not just from Saipovs alleged actions but from his identity, his ethnicity and his brand of Islam, whatever that might be. Saipov has a bushy beard, and a neighbor said his wife was always clad in niqob a deeply conservative form of dress that veils the face, head and body, leaving only the eyes visible. People like that dont come into restaurants like this, Al-Basha, whose Al-Basha restaurant and sweets shop are Paterson mainstays, said, pantomiming Saipovs long beard. A Turkish restaurant owner nearby performed the same motion. He remembered seeing Saipov at the grocery store a few months back, he said, but added: I dont talk to people like that. That is not a Muslim. This is a Muslim, he said, pointing a thumb to his chest. NEW JERSEY Ex-police chief faces hate crime charges The former police chief of a small township in New Jersey was arrested on federal hate crime and civil rights charges for what federal authorities described as a pattern of racist comments and behavior including slamming an African American teens head into a metal doorjamb and saying that black people are like ISIS, using an acronym for the Islamic State militant group. Frank Nucera Jr., 60, who was the chief of the Bordentown Township Police Department, was arrested Monday. Charges against him were unsealed Tuesday. According to a criminal complaint filed in federal district court in New Jersey, Nucera frequently referred to African Americans by racial slurs and espoused violence toward them. In November 2015, for example, when he was talking to a subordinate officer about an African American man, Nucera said, These n-----s are like ISIS, they have no value. They should line them all up and mow them down. Id like to be on the firing squad; I could do it, according to the complaint. According to court documents, Nucera smashed the head of an 18-year-old into a doorjamb while he was being escorted by two officers from a hotel in September 2016. Federal authorities said Nucera retired from the police department shortly after New Jerseys attorney general was informed of the investigation. Matt Zapotosky LOUISIANA Court rules against order on LGBT rights Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) lost his latest legal battle Wednesday over his executive order aimed at protecting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in state government. A three-judge panel of Louisianas 1st Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a lower courts December decision that the governors executive order was an unconstitutional attempt to expand state law. The unanimous appellate ruling was a victory for state Attorney General Jeff Landry (R), who had issued an opinion saying the order violated the state constitution. Edwards had agreed to comply with state Judge Todd Hernandezs order while pursuing an appeal. He contended he has the authority to issue a policy governing employment and contracting standards in the executive branch. Associated Press Calif. orders safety review of tallest dam: California will order an overall safety review of the nation's tallest dam to pinpoint any needed upgrades in the half-century-old structure, water officials said Wednesday, launching the kind of overarching review called for by a national panel of experts in September following the collapse of two spillways at the 770-foot Oroville Dam. Authorities ordered nearly 200,000 people downstream of the dam to evacuate in February when both spillways began crumbling. The feared uncontrolled releases of water over the dam did not occur, and authorities allowed residents to return home within days. Associated Press NEW JERSEY Officers indicted with kicking of burning man Four New Jersey police officers were charged criminally Thursday over a June car chase that ended with officers kicking and dragging a burning bystander. Prosecutors said a grand jury returned charges, including aggravated assault, against Jersey City police Lt. Keith Ludwig and officers M.D. Khan, Eric Kosinski and Francisco Rodriguez. Khan and Kosinski also are charged with attempted murder. On June 4, the officers chased a man whose car resembled one used in a shooting. That car crashed, setting off a fire that engulfed a vehicle not involved in the chase. A video shows the driver of the second vehicle, Miguel Feliz, exiting his car with his clothes on fire before being kicked by the officers. A police union official has said the officers tried to help Feliz. The four officers were suspended without pay following the indictments, the city said. Public Safety Director James Shea said at least 20 officers were involved in some aspect of the response to the high-speed chase, which lasted for several miles. Several protocols were violated, he said, including the length of the chase, firing shots at a moving vehicle and placing a car as a roadblock without approval from a supervisor. The 48-year-old driver of the car police were chasing was charged in August with eluding police and aggravated assault while eluding. Associated Press FLORIDA Firefighters axed after incident with noose Miami authorities are scrutinizing a fire station where a noose was found hanging over a black firefighters family photo ruined by lewd drawings. City officials fired six firefighters, and five others could be suspended or demoted. Termination letters sent to the Associated Press on Thursday said the fired firefighters drew or helped draw pictures of penises on personal photos of a colleague. Two of them were supervisors. The letters dont say who created the noose, but city manager Daniel Alfonso said the investigation continues. Alfonso said he and the fire departments chief found out on Sept. 9 about an incident involving sexually explicit and racially offensive conduct and transferred employees to other stations. After the police department began an internal investigation, 11 firefighters were suspended without pay. Of the six firefighters who were fired, two were supervisors who lied to investigators, according to the dismissal letters. One of them is accused of encouraging and helping subordinates draw lewd pictures on the photos. The firefighters have up to 10 days to dispute the decision before Miami's Fire Rescue Chief Joseph Zahralban. It is the second incident involving a noose and firefighters in South Florida this year. In June, a noose was found hanging over the chair of a black firefighter recruit in a training session in Pompano Beach, leading to one firing and three resignations. Associated Press GEORGIA Withheld evidence leads to new trial Three U.S. servicemen who have been in prison for 25 years for a racially motivated murder are entitled to a new trial because prosecutors improperly withheld evidence that would have helped the mens defense, Georgias highest court ruled Thursday. Stanley Jackson, a black man, was fatally shot around 10 p.m. on Jan. 31, 1992, while standing on a corner in a high-crime part of Savannah. Three white servicemen stationed at nearby Fort Stewart Mark Jason Jones, Kenneth Eric Gardiner and Dominic Brian Lucci were arrested less than an hour later and charged with murder. State prosecutors failed to disclose a police report that described a similar racially motivated incident later that night after they were in custody, Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice P. Harris Hines wrote in a unanimous opinion. State attorney generals office spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary said in an email that the office is reviewing the opinion and had no further comment. Peter Camiel, an attorney for the three men said Thursday that if prosecutors decide to pursue a new trial, his team will be ready to defend them. The three were convicted in November 1992 of malice murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and sentenced to serve life in prison plus five years. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld their convictions in June 1994. After police records were released in response to a 2010 open records request, the three men challenged their conviction on constitutional grounds. A lower court declined to reverse their convictions, and they appealed to the state Supreme Court. Associated Press NEW HAMPSHIRE Man challenging deportation is let go A New Hampshire man whos one of dozens of Indonesians challenging their deportation orders has been released from custody. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Patti Saris ordered Terry Rombot, of Dover, to be immediately released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Wednesday in Boston, finding that his due process rights were violated. Fosters Daily Democrat reported that Saris previously halted the deportation of dozens of Indonesians who have been staying in the country under orders of supervision through an ICE program. The newspaper said many have been in New Hampshire since the 1990s and they were told to return to Indonesia as they checked in this summer. Rombots attorney, William Hahn, says Rombot was the only one detained out of about 50 plaintiffs. Associated Press By Damali Mukhaye: City lord mayor Erias Lukwago has warned the minister of Kampala Betty Kamya against using KCCA to promote the campaign on the lifting of presidential age limit. Addressing journalists at City Hall this morning, Lukwago says Kamya on the 31st of October wrote to KCCA executive director Jenipher Musisi asking her to mobilise all councilors to be taken to the Leadership Institute in Kyakwazi for training before they pronounce themselves on the issue of Age limit as leaders of Kampala. Lukwago KCCA is not party to the controversial age limit campaign and they have never okayed it. He claims that this meeting is meant to brain wash the councilors to make them support the age limit bill, advising them to listen to their conscience voice of reason. SOMALIA Ethiopia sends troops to help fight al-Shabab Thousands of Ethiopian troops have crossed into Somalia to join a large-scale offensive against al-Shabab extremists just weeks after the worst attack in the country killed more than 350 people, border residents said Thursday. Somalias president, vowing a state of war, has visited countries in the region to seek more military support since the Oct. 14 truck bombing in the capital, Mogadishu. Somalia is preparing for an offensive with African Union multinational forces that is meant to push al-Shabab fighters out of their strongholds. Somali officials have said that the U.S. military, which this year has stepped up the fight against al-Shabab with more than a dozen drone strikes, is expected to play a supporting role. Ethiopias foreign minister, Workneh Gebeyehu, confirmed that troops had entered Somalia. It is a routine or normal military activity of the Ethiopian contingent based in Somalia to support the fight against terrorism, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. Ethiopia is one of the troop-contributing countries under AMISOM, the African Union force. Last months bombing brought collective outrage in long-fractured Somalia, with thousands of Mogadishu residents marching in a defiant rally against al-Shabab. The countrys Somali American president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, faces the challenge of pulling together regional powers while the federal government tries to assert itself beyond the capital and other major cities. Associated Press FRANCE Brother of gunman in 12 attack is sentenced The brother of a Franco-Algerian gunman who killed four Jewish people and three soldiers was sentenced to 20 years in jail Thursday over a killing rampage that heralded an era of Islamist-inspired attacks in which more than 200 have died in France. A court in Paris ruled that Abdelkader Merah was guilty of terrorist offenses. He was found to have helped in the preparation of the attack, although he did not participate himself. His younger brother Mohammed Merah shot three Jewish children and one of their parents, and then three soldiers, in the 2012 Toulouse attack. More than 240 people have been killed in France since then, primarily since early 2015. Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Abdelkader Merah to life behind bars, arguing that he was a religious radical who had mentored his younger brother and helped materially, notably in the theft of the scooter used in the killings at the Jewish Ozar Hatorah school. Abdelkader Merah denied involvement. The judge sentenced the defendant to 20 years. A second man was sentenced to 14 years for his role in providing the gun, ammunition and a bulletproof vest to the attacker. Mohammed Merah, 24, was fatally shot when he jumped, guns blazing, from the window of an apartment where he was holed up a few days after his killing rampage. The Merah killings were the first major incident of the kind since Paris subway attacks in the mid-1990s by Islamist militants linked to the GIA group in Algeria, a former French colony. Reuters 39 killed in clashes between Turkish troops, Kurdish rebels: Clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants in three mainly Kurdish provinces in southeastern Turkey killed eight security personnel and 31 militants, officials said. The fighting erupted near the town of Semdinli after the security forces spotted a group of rebels allegedly preparing to launch an attack, the military said. The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, have waged a three-decade insurgency in southeastern Turkey. Pakistan's disgraced ex-leader returns home to face trial: Disgraced former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif has returned home from London, where his wife is receiving medical treatment, to face trial in corruption cases. Sharif's political future has been in doubt since July, when the Supreme Court disqualified him from office over corruption charges. He was indicted last month. The corruption cases stem from documents leaked from a Panama law firm. From news services Regarding the Nov. 1 news article "Brought in to impose order, Kelly stirs controversy": Retired Gen. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, said that in Civil War times, loyalty to state took precedence over loyalty to country, referring to Southerners who fought for the Confederacy. In those days, as now, some military men regarded vows undertaken to defend the Constitution as inviolate, and others did not. Among Southerners who regarded such vows as unbreachable was George Henry Thomas, a West Point professor who won perhaps one of the most decisive battles of the conflict, crushing his former student John Bell Hoods Southern forces in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign. And then, of course, theres Adm. David Farragut, the hero of the Battle of Mobile Bay. Douglas Coleman, New Market, Md. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee deserves respect, but not for the reasons that some cite. Rather, the respect is deserved for the things he did that his supporters decry. Lee surrendered. He refused to mount a guerrilla campaign, as some of his officers recommended. He refused to join the "Lost Cause" movement, telling Jefferson Davis and others it was time to heal the wounds of war. He accepted defeat. Those who lionize him should follow his lead. Richard Holwill, Washington METROS FINANCIAL prospects are dire, as is its long-term outlook for adequate maintenance, dependable service and basic safety, without a major infusion of steady new revenue. Despite that fact, Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is dodging, ducking and deflecting questions of how to put Metro on a firm financial footing. His Democratic opponent, Ralph Northam, has been somewhat more forthright, though fuzzy on the details. Some 300,000 Virginians depend for their daily commute on Metro, whose health underpins not only the federal workforce but also that of thousands of other public and private employers, as well as the regions future. Metro is key to Northern Virginia, which, as the states most economically dynamic region, is critical to the commonwealths larger fortunes. Mr. Gillespie, who lives in Fairfax County, knows that he says hes a Metro rider, not a Metro basher, and suggests it would help if the transit system had a governor from Northern Virginia who understands the challenges. But he prefers to talk about everything else Metro needs in particular, cost-cutting and more rational governance. When pressed, he says those are preconditions for any additional funding. We cannot throw good money after bad, he told us. What nonsense. The main cause for Metros steady descent into its current state of disrepair the pitiable state of tracks and infrastructure that triggered the surge maintenance program known as SafeTrack was years of underfunding. Metro, the countrys only major transit system without a dedicated source of cash, has been a beggar, relying on annual appropriations from its eight jurisdictional funders. We cannot maintain this into the future, says Paul J. Wiedefeld, Metros respected general manager. Now, with Mr. Wiedefeld warning that service, safety and reliability will deteriorate rapidly without an additional $500 million annually in capital revenue, Mr. Gillespie is looking for every excuse to perpetuate the very underfunding that led to Metro's crisis. Its not that hes wrong that the system needs governance reforms, or that its cost structure and labor contracts could be streamlined to identify savings though Mr. Wiedefeld has slashed service, eliminated hundreds of jobs and improved management significantly in the past two years. Its that by making those reforms a precondition for additional funding, Mr. Gillespie would enable a future of infinitely movable goal posts vague metrics that Metro will never manage to meet to the satisfaction of Richmond. Mr. Northam also stresses reforms in transparency and accountability, and he balks at discussing specific funding mechanisms. His website is notably opaque, saying only that Metro needs "necessary changes to make the system more safe and accountable." In contrast with Mr. Gillespie, however, the Democrat has at least signaled an openness to the reform Metro most needs. "Without . . . a dedicated revenue source," he said in an online forum in the spring, "any other reforms will not be enough." That is the plain truth. Mr. Northam has uttered it. Mr. Gillespie has not. Stephen I. Vladeck is a law professor at the University of Texas and co-editor of the online forum Just Security. President Trump suggested Wednesday that he might send Sayfullo Saipov the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in a terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday to be held as an enemy combatant at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It's hard to imagine a worse idea. Let's take the legal obstacles to this approach first: Unlike everyone else who has been held at Guantanamo since 2001, Saipov was lawfully present in the United States at the time of his arrest and is therefore entitled to a full suite of constitutional protections especially those provided by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause. Although the Constitution does not categorically prohibit military detention, it erects a high bar for individuals arrested on U.S. soil, and for good reason. That's why even the George W. Bush administration claimed such authority with respect to only one noncitizen after Sept. 11 and why lower courts divided over the legality of this detention in rulings that, after the detainee was indicted on civilian criminal charges, were ultimately vacated by the Supreme Court. It also remains unresolved whether the statute on which the government's detention authority would rest in this case the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force even applies to the Islamic State, to which Saipov allegedly pledged allegiance in notes found in the truck he is said to have used in the attack. The statute was directed at the groups that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and the Islamic State did not come along until later. Like Trump, President Barack Obama argued that Congress has indeed provided the necessary authority for the use of force against the terrorist group, but no court has yet addressed the question. So the law on both of these major questions is unsettled. That doesnt mean the president cannot force the issue, but in both cases, he would be taking a substantial risk. Indeed, there are few scenarios in which the government would be less likely to prevail on the critical question of whether the 2001 AUMF covers the Islamic State than in the context of the long-term military detention of someone arrested within the United States. But beyond the legal issues, such a move would also be completely unnecessary. While Trump may believe the U.S. criminal-justice system is "a joke" and "a laughingstock," as he declared Wednesday in making his case, nothing could be further from the truth especially in terrorism cases. Since 2001, the government has secured more than 600 convictions in terrorism prosecutions in civilian federal courts, virtually none of which have been reversed. And although some of Guantanamo's defenders, such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), have argued that military detention is necessary in order to interrogate terrorism suspects like Saipov, that ignores settled precedent to the contrary. It's true that the "Miranda rule" generally does limit the government's ability to interrogate criminal suspects, but it is only an exclusionary rule; even when violated, it simply limits the government's ability to use a suspect's statements against him at trial. Given the apparent physical evidence against Saipov, it's hard to see why that would matter here. In any event, courts have also recognized a "public safety" exception to Miranda which allows the government not only to interrogate suspects without complying with the rule but also to use suspects' statements against them at trial in certain limited circumstances. Because of that exception, military detention is not necessary in cases like these. But above all, sending Saipov to Guantanamo would simply be unwise. For all of the successes of the civilian courts in post-Sept. 11 terrorism cases, the military commissions at Guantanamo have produced only eight convictions in 15 years, three of which were thrown out on appeal. If anyone needed further evidence of the dysfunction that continues to surround the Guantanamo proceedings, at almost the same time as the president's comments, a military judge was ordering the chief Guantanamo defense counsel Marine Corps Brig. Gen. John Baker taken into custody for allowing his civilian lawyers to resign over an ethical conflict. Reasonable minds will surely continue to disagree about the answers to some of the legal questions surrounding Guantanamo, including the episode involving Baker. But what no one can deny is that these military proceedings have been massively inefficient and hotly contested. And although the point may be lost on Trump, it ought not to be lost on us: The goal, in the end, should not be to score political points. It should be to serve justice not only for the victims of Tuesdays horrific attack but for its perpetrator, as well. Columnist Needing a victory to validate their majorities, congressional Republicans have chosen not to emulate Shakespeare's Henry V before Agincourt. He advocated stiffening the sinews, summoning up the blood and lending the eye a terrible aspect. The Republicans would rather define victory down. What began with a bang of promises of comprehensive tax reform will end with a whimper: The only large change will be to the national debt. Consider a small proposal repeal of the estate tax. It will be paid by an estimated 5,500 people dying this year, raising about $20 billion a pittance in the $3.88 trillion budget. Repeals significance would be philosophic rather than economic. In 1975, Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw explained what he would do with his $75,000 salary: "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste." If you work hard, make a pile, then choose to squander it on dissipations, go ahead, it's a free country. But try to pass the pile to progeny and grasping government will intervene. Ending the estate tax would extinguish the government's delusion that it has the duty and skill to prevent the intergenerational transmission of family advantages (of which money matters much less than transfers of social capital habits and aptitudes, which government cannot redistribute). Desperate to propitiate impatient constituents, Republicans say this is no time (actually, there never is a time) to fret about the national debt, which was $9 trillion a decade ago and passed $20 trillion two months ago, having increased 22 percentage points under the Republican president who preceded the present one. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) says do not worry, "we finally have a president who is willing to actually even balance the budget." Ryan underestimates the president, who has promised to eliminate not just the budget deficit but also the national debt in just eight years, without touching entitlements. Beneath the froth of political discord, America's granite-like harmony persists. The comparatively superficial discord distracts attention from this bipartisan consensus: We shall have a generous entitlement state and not pay for it. Instead, we shall offload onto future generations a substantial portion of the costs of our current consumption of government. As Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute naughtily reminds us, during half a century of Republican rhetoric of frugality, 1960 to 2010, entitlement spending grew 8 percent faster under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. In the ninth year of an unusually long expansion, and with the economy near full employment (ignore the dismal workforce participation rate), the budget deficit for the past fiscal year was $666 billion, up $80 billion from the previous year. To partially recoup revenue lost from reduced rates, Republicans reportedly flinched (Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says his fellow Republicans were "asked to vote for a budget that nobody believes in so that we have a chance to vote for a tax bill that nobody's read") from a "border adjustment tax" on imports ($1 trillion in a decade) and now have gone wobbly about completely ending the deductibility of state and local taxes ($1.3 trillion). Republicans might still be contemplating steep reductions in the amounts that individuals can put into tax-deferred 401(k) retirement accounts. This will displease the approximately 32 percent of workers who have 401(k)s and worsen the inadequate savings rate of a nation where defined-benefit pension plans are now mostly luxuries for government workers and where almost a majority of people approaching retirement have nothing saved for it. The current median Social Security payment is about $16,000 a year. When the president said tax reform is "going to be so easy," he overlooked this fact: The tax code's baroque complexity that demands radical reform makes the code almost impervious to such reform. Every provision was put there to placate a muscular faction or to create a grateful faction. Republicans should have heeded Dwight Eisenhower's axiom: "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it." They should have made the case for large reforms that annoy democratically almost everyone, simultaneously but for a large purpose. The aim should have been a revenue system that stops subordinating economic efficiency to social engineering and rent-seeking, thereby maximizing the probability of economic growth sufficient to fund the entitlement state. Such a bold aim requires a commensurately bold argument for a consumption tax or a carbon tax or a zero corporate tax rate or anything for which public-spirited people might stiffen their sinews and summon up their blood. Read more from George F. Will's archive or follow him on Facebook. Contributing columnist There is no GOP civil war. Tuesdays terrible attack and Mondays indictments knocked the meme of such a conflict off the front pages, but it will return. When it does, recall that it just isnt true. Theres a loud, persistent group of Trump critics who apparently never learned the concept of sunk costs, and theres former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who knows that theres profit and power to be found in exploiting the anger of the Never Trumpers and the anti-Never Trumpers. But this doesnt amount to a civil war, only a series of skirmishes on the fringes of the party and among its chattering Manhattan-Beltway class estranged from President Trump. The Never Trump movement has become a long-running version of Saturday Night Lives More Cowbell skit. It seems every column, editorial, television appearance, panel participation and probably every trip to Safeway must include a Never Trumpers own version of Cato the Elders Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed. Admiring lookers-on then respond via tweet or Facebook post: Well done! But it could use more cowbell. And so more cowbell we get. This More Cowbell Caucus takes a dim view of those of us willing to applaud Trump when he does something right, either directly or through his Cabinet and allies on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, the real political battles at home and genuine conflicts abroad proceed, an afterthought to those for whom denouncing Trump is now every bit the daily obligation as matins is for a monk. Sorry to disappoint, but that doesnt add up to a Republican civil war. Four data points have set off this chorus on the imaginary intra-party conflict: two speeches and two retirements. That and Bannons dislike of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which is unfathomable except as a grudge. McConnell is easily the most effective GOP Senate leader of my adult life, and the likely confirmation this week of four more circuit court judges underscores that conclusion. The flimsily constructed civil war narrative is built out of discrete episodes that have in common only the calendar. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) let fly a full-throated, hardly veiled attack on Trump, and its proximity to former president George W. Bushs address on civility dragged the latter into the same category, though there are reasons to believe that W was aiming not just at Trump but also at the More Cowbell Caucus and Democrats. Everybody tone it down, the most gracious of former presidents seemed to be saying. Retirement announcements from Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) added two more civil war talking points. Both came with Trump denunciations stapled on, which diverted from the undeniable facts in both cases. First, Flake was going to lose to Kelli Ward in a GOP primary next year, not just because of his Never Trump status but also because of the massive miscalculation of the 2013 Gang of Eights immigration reform, an enormous bust in the Grand Canyon State. Second, Corker was a disappointed office-seeker also imperiled by a potential 2018 primary triggered by his almost off-the-cuff August sideswipe of the president. As for Bannon, his critique of the Beltway GOP is sincere and grounded in a distrust of global elites that is long-standing and shared by a lot of Republicans and Democrats alike. But Bannons war is a pretty lonely one, and dont expect many more defectors from either the House or Senate GOP caucuses. The GOP wants to keep confirming Trumps judicial nominees, wants to be in the drivers seat of the calendar and will refuse self-destructive windmill-tilting in primary battles. So, a civil war, or a quintet of episodes stitched together by the mainstream medias self-interested narrative-makers? This is nothing! Dustin Hoffmans Hollywood producer Stanley Motss declares again and again in 1997s Wag the Dog. And, indeed, while the GOP has seen better days, this is nothing like the rupture of 1964, when New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was booed at the GOP convention in San Franciscos Cow Palace, much less 1880, when the pro-Ulysses S. Grant Stalwarts and the pro-James Blaine Half-Breeds were in a frenzy. And this is nothing, too, compared with the Democrats in Chicago in 1968, just as the upheavals of today hardly compare to that horrible year, or to the Watergate scandal years after, much less to a century earlier, when eradicating the evil of slavery required a butchers bill of more than 600,000 dead. Ignore those clanging cowbells. Because the GOP is likely to hang on to both Flake's and Corker's Senate seats, it is actually in better shape today than it was two weeks ago. Those four federal circuit judges expected to be confirmed this week will affect the United States for decades. More than 80 percent of GOP voters approve of Trump. The president has many critics who, like me, will ding a decision here or there and wish he'd knock off the tweeting completely. But the solid majority of Republicans prefer winning some and losing some to always losing. The GOP regulars know that the way forward is by adding seats, not throwing them away. And all the cowbells in Manhattan and inside the Beltway wont change that. Columnist Democracies sometimes collapse suddenly. More typically, they waste away. One major cause of institutional decline involves politicians putting their own immediate interests ahead of their obligations to democratic norms. We wake up one day and discover that a long series of individual choices has rotted out the constraints on authoritarian rule. President Trump plainly feels no sense of stewardship when it comes to our political system or to any accepted standards of truth. From the moment he descended that escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, he made clear that he would say and do anything to advance his purposes and to eviscerate anyone who opposed him. It should thus not surprise us that in anticipation of Robert S. Mueller III's actions this week, Trump rolled out an assault on the legitimacy of the special counsel's investigation and brazenly insisted that not he but Hillary Clinton (the holder of no public office) should be the subject of prosecutorial interest. Trump's Distract-O-Rama ought to be met with derision and condemnation. Note that by securing a guilty plea from former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians to secure "dirt" on Clinton in 2016, Mueller confirmed the central premise of his probe. Yes, there was collusion between Russia and the Trump apparatus aimed at defeating Clinton. We don't yet know for certain how high up engagement with the Russian project went. But media disclosures about contacts made by top Trump officials suggest the story won't stop with Papadopoulos. As is his way, Trump lied right out of the box after Mueller's announcements by claiming that the charges brought against his former campaign manager Paul Manafort entailed behavior that long predated last year's presidential contest. In fact, the money laundering at the heart of the indictment was, according to prosecutors, ongoing in 2016. Trumps rampage against Clinton focuses on the 2010 purchase of Uranium One, a Canadian company with U.S. assets, by the Russian nuclear authority. The deal was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States when Clinton was secretary of state. But the conspiracy side of this story was debunked long ago. As The Post's Fact Checker Glenn Kessler reported this week, Clinton, "by all accounts, did not participate in any discussions regarding the Uranium One sale" and the sale "does not actually result in the removal of uranium from the United States." Then on Wednesday morning, Trump moved to exploit the murderous New York City truck attack by casting blame on Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer because the Democrat had backed the diversity visa lottery. Trump tweeted in response to the then-unconfirmed but later verified reports that the driver of the truck, Sayfullo Saipov, entered the United States from Uzbekistan under the program. Schumer, by the way, supported a bipartisan 2013 immigration reform bill that would have abolished the lottery. Its essential to recognize that Trump is faithfully following the autocrats playbook. Hes trying to undermine a lawful inquiry that endangers his hold on power. He has suggested that his opponent in the last election deserves to be jailed. Hes inventing stories about dark coverups by his enemies to sow confusion about the proven facts of his own teams skulduggery. And now he is blaming his foes for violence and disorder. Even more alarming is the extent to which Republicans in Congress and Trump's media allies are falling into line behind their leader's efforts to obstruct and divert. As The Post's Philip Rucker and Robert Costa noted, "Republican lawmakers have mostly split into two camps: those who are wary of weighing in on Mueller's investigation and those who see it as a prime political target." Notice what's missing here: an unambiguous defense of Mueller's work. Few Republicans have stood up unequivocally on his behalf. And the pro-Trump media, from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal editorial page to radio talk show hosts, have willingly served as bullhorns for the president's anti-Clinton, anti-Mueller strategy. Whats going on cannot be written off as normal partisanship. The push to discredit and derail Mueller risks becoming an existential threat to our democratic values and republican practices. The interference by a foreign adversary in our electoral process is not a routine event. Resistance to uncovering what happened should not be seen as part of the everyday give-and-take of politics. Republican patriots have to know that whats at stake matters far more than the quick passage of a tax bill. Dont they? Read more from E.J. Dionne's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. For months, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee had worked together to craft a comprehensive energy bill. But that bipartisan spirit was tested Thursday as Republican Chair Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and ranking Democrat Maria Cantwell (Wash.) clashed over whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. ANWR is back on the legislative table again because GOP lawmakers are desperately seeking revenue to help pay for a massive package of tax cuts they debuted Thursday. As part of a budget bill passed by the Senate last month, lawmakers instructed committee members to find $1 billion in additional revenue a maneuver widely seen as designed to open the refuge to drilling. The Senate narrowly defeated an amendment from Cantwell to strip out the refuge language. [ANWR is back. It could make a tax code overhaul a lot harder.] With the tax package on center stage in the House, the senators sparred on the other side of the Capitol over whether to allow drilling on one of few undisturbed parcels of land in the United States. The sparring foreshadows the partisan rifts that are likely to divide the upper chamber over paying for a tax package that Republicans need to claim as an accomplishment. On one side of the debate sat Republicans and virtually every Alaskan elected to statewide office, who argue that opening ANWR to drilling will boost the state's economy and the nation's energy security. Using modern drilling techniques, they argue, it can be done with little environmental impact. On the other side sat virtually every Democrat, who contend that the region is too ecologically critical to indigenous caribou hunters and the broader Arctic ecosystem to bore for oil. "For those of us who call Alaska home, to suggest that we would despoil our environment for short-term gain is offensive," Murkowski said. The committee meeting turned tense at times, with Cantwell pressing her Republican counterpart about why the bipartisan energy bill has been abandoned to take up the ANWR question yet again. "This hearing is a great departure from the strong working relationship that Sen. Murkowski and I have set to work together on an energy agenda that will move our country forward," Cantwell said. "I almost want to call this 'caribou for millionaires' because it is the most ridiculous idea I've heard as it relates to meeting the tax reform agenda," she added. Tucked against the Beaufort Sea in Alaska's North Slope, a 1.5 million-acre coastal plain in the refuge has been part of a heated political debate since the 1980s. In 1989, Congress considered the issue of drilling in the refuge, and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed a pro-drilling bill. But it was shelved after the Exxon Valdez ran ashore in the Prince William Sound. In the 1990s, then-Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), Lisa's father, tried unsuccessfully, again. A 1995 attempt to open the refuge passed the GOP-controlled House and Senate but was vetoed by President Bill Clinton. A group of moderate Republicans defeated a similar attempt in 2005. [The Energy 202: Environmentalists gear up for another fight over ANWR] Alaska's elected officials turned out in force for the hearing. Rep. Don Young, Alaska's long-serving and lone member of the House, shot back at opponents of the drilling plan, without naming names, for what he saw as their ignorance on Alaskan issues. "I don't feel too comfortable on the Senate side," Young said. "I need a flashlight most of the time because sometimes it's pretty dark over her." The hearing was attended by seemingly every Alaskan elected to statewide office, including Gov. Bill Walker (I), Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott (D) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R), who all supported drilling in the refuge. During the four-hour meeting, Murkowski and other Republicans emphasized only "one ten-thousandth," or 2,000 acres, of the refuge would be open to drilling if legislation was enacted. Cantwell and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) countered that that figure discounts the impact of roads, airports and pipelines necessary to bring the oil out of the refuge and to the state's primary petroleum artery, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. At one point, Cantwell held up a map showing, she said, that drilling "will take up a significant portion of the refuge." Later, Young offered a rebuttal. "The map that the ranking member showed was actually drawn up by the Sierra Club," he added. "That bothers me. That's old information." The debate over Arctic drilling also marked one of the few times rank-and-file Republicans seemed comfortable bringing up Russia in 2017 without prompting. "Producing more energy strengthens our national security," Sullivan said. "It's not just American officials who recognize this," he added. "The Russians know this as well." President Trump moved quickly Wednesday to gain political advantage in the wake of the New York terrorist attack, casting blame on Democrats for lax immigration laws and calling the criminal justice systems handling of suspects a joke. A day after a man, identified by authorities as an Uzbek immigrant, killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path in an act authorities said was inspired by the Islamic State, Trump seized on the deadly crime to renew his calls for a series of hard-line policies. The president said he would move to eliminate a popular diversity lottery for foreigners seeking U.S. visas and direct the State Department to ramp up extreme vetting of immigrants. He also suggested he would consider sending the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States, to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We have to get much tougher, Trump said. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. Were so politically correct that were afraid to do anything. 1 of 44 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos from the aftermath of the New York truck attack View Photos A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Caption A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Andy Kiss Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Trump campaigned on vows to get tougher on terrorism and immigration, but his agenda has been largely stalled in Congress and in the federal courts, where judges have blocked several attempts by the administration to enact a sweeping travel ban on immigrants from a handful of countries, although Uzbekistan is not one of them. It was not clear how much action Trump could take on his own to make good on his renewed pledges. But his response including blaming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) for helping create the visa program that allowed Saipov to enter the country stood in sharp contrast to the White Houses reaction to the mass shooting in Las Vegas last month that killed 59 people at a country music concert. After that attack by a Nevada man who killed himself, Trump denounced the shooters act as pure evil, but White House aides and Republican allies rejected calls by Democrats for a renewed debate over gun-control laws, saying it was not appropriate to politicize the tragedy. On Wednesday, however, Trump said the United States needs a system of punishment thats far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. Theyll go through court for years. . . . We need quick justice, and we need strong justice. Trump also said the criminal justice system is a laughingstock in how suspects are prosecuted and added that keeping the country safe will require unflinching devotion to our law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence professionals. The comments are remarkable given the Justice Departments heavy focus on prosecuting terrorism cases. Just two weeks ago, a federal jury convicted a New Jersey man born in Afghanistan for detonating explosives in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York last year. [A Charles E. Schumer beauty: Trump calls for end to diversity visa program] Referring to Saipov as an "animal," Trump asserted that the 29-year-old was responsible for the entry of 23 immigrants, many of them family members. The president said such "chain migration" endangers national security, and he called for the elimination of the State Department's "diversity visa lottery," through which authorities have said Saipov came to the United States in 2010. It was not clear what evidence the president had for the claim; legal permanent residents are permitted to sponsor only their spouse and their children under 21 years of age for green cards, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lottery program issues up to 50,000 visas per year to people from dozens of countries, granting them legal permanent residency. The aim is to mix up the nations melting pot, although the visas are a tiny fraction of the roughly 1 million green cards issued annually. Its not good. It hasnt been good. Weve been against it, Trump said. He has expressed support for an immigration bill from Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and David Perdue (Ga.) that would slash legal immigration levels by half over a decade, including eliminating the diversity lottery. Democrats and many Republicans have opposed the bill. This man that came in, or whatever you want to call him, brought in with him other people, and he was the primary point of contact for and this is preliminarily 23 people that came in or potentially came in with him, Trump said. Thats not acceptable. Asked whether Saipovs family members represent a security threat, Trump replied: They certainly could. He did. They certainly could represent a threat. In 1990, Schumer, then a House member, introduced the bill that helped create the diversity visa program, which passed Congress with a bipartisan majority and was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. In 2013, however, Schumer was part of a bipartisan group of senators that sought to end the program as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package that later died in the Republican-controlled House. Schumer denounced Trumps remarks and pointed to President George W. Bushs response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in which he attempted to rally the nation to find a common approach to confront the threat. All President Trump does is take advantage horrible advantage of a tragedy and try to politicize and divide, Schumer said. This is a tragedy. Its less than a day after it occurred, and he cant refrain from his nasty, divisive habits. At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders rejected the notion that Trump had politicized the attack, saying that the president has consistently spoken about the need for tougher immigration laws. [Heres what you need to know about the Diversity Visa Lottery Program] This is something that, frankly, the president has been talking about for a long time, Sanders said. This isnt a new policy. This isnt a new position. This isnt a new conversation. The clash once again pitted the two New Yorkers against each other over an attack that played out miles from where they grew up. It also raised questions about whether the fallout could further complicate the already tenuous path for Congress to find a compromise on legislation to legalize hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants, known as dreamers. They were thrust into limbo in September after Trump announced the termination of a deferred deportation program, created by President Barack Obama, that allowed them to live and work in the United States. I have always believed in immigration as good for America so do the vast majority of Americans. I stand by that today, Schumer said. Its a good thing for America. Whether President Trump believes that or not, we dont know, because some days hes very anti-immigrant and then he calls [House Minority] Leader [Nancy] Pelosi and I to the White House and says, Lets help the dreamers. Other New York Democrats also took umbrage at Trumps response to the attacks. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the presidents tweets against Schumer and the immigration system were intended to point fingers and politicize the situation. Such tactics play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society, Cuomo said. Sanders said Trump spoke on the phone with Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D). A summary of the call from de Blasios office said the president praised the efforts of the first responders and offered federal assistance in the investigation, while the mayor thanked Trump for the help from homeland security officials. The two did not have much else to talk about, however. The call, the mayors office said, lasted approximately five minutes. Philip Rucker and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks about defending national security, at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. (Richard Drew/AP) Senate Democrats have demanded that Attorney General Jeff Sessions explain why he did not disclose a March 2016 gathering with then-candidate Donald Trump and members of his campaign team at which an adviser offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sessionss participation in the gathering was detailed in court documents released Monday by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The adviser who offered to set up the meeting was George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to the documents. Sessions had not previously disclosed the meeting, despite being asked over multiple appearances on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians. This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nations top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump teams contacts with agents of Russia, Senate Judiciary Committee member Al Franken (D-Minn.) wrote Thursday in a letter to Sessions. Senate Republicans have not rushed to Sessionss defense but were less ruffled about his participation in the Papadopoulos meeting. If anybodys got any concerns about his meeting, write him a letter and see what he says, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). A Sessions spokeswoman declined to comment this week on the March 31 meeting with Trump and campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos. But on Thursday, a person familiar with Sessionss recollections said that people who remember the conversation believed that Papadopoulos was proposing an idea of using his Russian contacts to try to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, which was immediately rejected by then-Senator Sessions. Papadopoulos was some 29-year-old that nobody had ever heard of and who struck people in the room as someone who didnt have a lot of credibility, the person said. As far as Sessions seemed to be concerned, when he shut down this idea of Papadopoulos engaging with Russia, that was the end of it and he moved the meeting along to other issues. The March 31 comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression, the person said. The attorney general immediately dismissed it and moved on. J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump adviser who attended the meeting, also recalled that Sessions "shut him down" when Papadopoulos announced that he could introduce Trump to Putin. "It was a bad idea and the Senator didn't want people to speak about it again," he said. The Washington Post also reported earlier this week that Papadopoulos sat next to Sessions during a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention, according to another person who attended. [For low level volunteer, Papadopoulos sought high profile as Trump adviser] At the time of that article, a spokeswoman for Sessions declined to comment. But on Thursday, the person familiar with Sessionss recollections said, the attorney general has no clear recollection of this person. He may have been at future Trump events that Sessions attended including a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club with some members of the foreign policy committee over the summer but Sessions doesnt recall any further interactions with him, including any phone calls or emails. Gordon said that he did not fault Sessions for not recalling things that Papadopoulos said in private settings, noting that thousands of people approached the campaign, "including many, many true volunteers." This is not the first time lawmakers have accused Sessions of withholding information from congressional testimony about interactions with or about Russians while working with the Trump campaign. During his January confirmation hearing to become attorney general, Sessions told the Judiciary Committee that he had had no communication with Russian officials, only to have The Post reveal in March that he had spoken twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. [Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose] Following the Post report, Sessions recused himself from the Justice Departments Russia probes an action that infuriated Trump. Last month, Sessions told the same committee he was not aware of any Trump surrogates having contacts with Russian officials. Democrats on the committee, including Franken, are now arguing that statement may have been false, too. He needs to clarify his testimony before our committee, said Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). There were questions that elicited exactly the kind of information that the Papadopoulos plea agreement made. The attorney general needs to explain to our committee what are the obvious implications of his presence at that meeting, and how he can square that with his testimony to our committee, said Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), another member of the Judiciary Committee. The person familiar with Sessionss interactions with Papadopoulos said that Sessions had been entirely truthful and consistent on this matter and that he had no knowledge of any conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign with any Russian or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also looking into allegations of collusion and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, also want a reckoning from Sessions. I think there are many more questions for Jeff Sessions, said Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), a member of the panel. He should be honest and disclose all truths, especially when he is under oath or testifying before the United States Congress. Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. Read more at PowerPost Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) exits the federal courthouse in Newark on Thursday. His bribery trial is expected to go to the jury next week. (Peter Foley/Bloomberg) Closing arguments delivered Thursday in the federal bribery trial of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) featured two divergent takes on nearly nine weeks of testimony in a case that could have broader legal and political ramifications. Was Menendez a dedicated public servant who in the course of his duties helped out his friend and co-defendant Salomon Melgen, or was he a corrupt politician who acted as the personal United States senator for the wealthy eye doctor? That question, and all of the details surrounding it in the 18-count indictment against Menendez, will soon be up to a jury to consider. These two defendants can no longer hide behind their power and wealth, prosecutor J.P. Cooney said during 90 minutes of closing arguments in U.S. District Court in Newark on Thursday. Use your common sense. . . . Dont let the defendants use their friendship as a camouflage for bribery. In a sharp rebuttal, Kirk Ogrosky, an attorney for Melgen, said the government used terrifying tactics, including witness manipulation and misleading testimony, to build a nonexistent case. The prosecutors are lying to you, Ogrosky said in a packed courtroom. Theyre making up a story and trying to get the evidence to fit that story. . . . You cant trust anything the government is telling you. . . . They created a show. Menendez is accused of taking gifts including a luxury Paris hotel stay, flights on private jets and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Melgen. In return, prosecutors allege, Menendez helped Melgen with a variety of concerns: getting U.S. visas for his girlfriends, intervening in his $8.9 million dispute with Medicare and trying to preserve Melgens business interests in the Dominican Republic. Menendez, who has served in the Senate since 2006, didnt take the stand during the trial. Neither did Melgen, who was convicted this year on 67 counts of Medicare fraud. Menendez could face a lengthy prison sentence if convicted and is already facing calls from Republicans to resign if found guilty. The senators attorneys will make their closing arguments Monday, and the seven women and five men on the jury are expected to start deliberations next week. A recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the conviction of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R) looms over the trial. U.S. District Judge William Walls has referred several times in the past months to the impact of the ruling, which narrowed the definition of an official act by a politician. Wells called the Menendez trial a test case for the McDonnell decision. The prosecution, which called nearly three dozen witnesses, has argued that campaign contributions from Melgen are connected to a quid-pro-quo bribery agreement with Menendez and that the other alleged bribes in the indictment resulted in Menendez being on retainer for his friend whenever he needed a favor. You cant get away with bribery because you put a politician on your payroll instead of paying him on a fee-for-service basis, Cooney said. Its called a stream of benefits. Through the testimony of 22 witnesses, the defense tried to chip away at the prosecutions case alleging a criminal conspiracy between Menendez and Melgen, who their attorneys said took vacations together and acted solely out of a close friendship, not corrupt intent. The defense, which spoke for about two hours Thursday, said Menendezs intervention in the Medicare dispute reflected his interest in the agencys policy on the multi-dosing of a drug for macular degeneration. At issue was Melgens practice of extracting multiple doses of the drug from a single vial and billing Medicare for each application of the drug. The defense has argued that Medicare allowed for the multi-dosing of some drugs but not for others, creating confusion among doctors and encouraging the waste of medicine and taxpayer money. The prosecution said the multi-dosing issue served as subterfuge for what in reality was a multi-billing issue. Cooney noted that Melgen in 2012 contributed $300,000, earmarked for New Jersey, to Majority PAC, a Democratic super PAC, a week before Menendez and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) met at Reids office to discuss the Medicare dispute with Kathleen Sebelius, then the secretary of health of human services. Melgen gave a series of contributions about the time that Menendez went to bat with officials from the State and Commerce departments on Melgens port concerns in the Dominican Republic, prosecutors say. Jonathan Cogan, an attorney for Melgen, said those contributions didnt go directly to Menendez, who cruised to reelection in his 2012 Senate race. Cogan said prosecutors have tried to link dates, emails and partial facts to paint a picture of corruption where none exists. The defense also disputed the prosecutions theory that Melgens gifts allowed Menendez to live a life of luxury he couldnt otherwise afford, arguing he traveled to the Dominican Republic to spend time with Melgen and rarely left the doctors modest home while he was there. The defenses case included character witness testimony from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). Both described Menendez as honorable and trustworthy. Defense attorneys argued in a mistrial motion this week that Walls prevented them from giving the full flavor of their case by restricting witness testimony and the introduction of exhibits. During closing arguments, prosecutors showed the jury a 2013 interview clip in which Menendez accepted responsibility for waiting more than two years to reimburse $58,500 to Melgen for trips on his private plane. The bottom line is, when it came to my attention, I paid for it, Menendez told the CNN reporter. It unfortunately fell through the cracks. Cooney said Menendez wrote the check only because he got caught by a Washington Post reporter who emailed Menendezs office in November 2012 with questions about his relationship with Melgen. Menendez, Cooney said, continued to conceal other flights and gifts he had taken from Melgen since 2006 by not listing them on Senate financial disclosure forms. What was it that Senator Menendez was so determined to hide? Cooney asked the jury Thursday. You know the answer to that question from the nine weeks youve spent in this courtroom. Cooney said Menendez and Melgen were too sophisticated to leave an obvious trail of their bribery agreement. Senator Menendez held himself out as putting New Jersey first, but the same year he became a U.S. senator, Dr. Melgen came calling with a better offer, Cooney said. He may have been elected to represent New Jersey, but he ended up representing the wealthy doctor from Florida. Ogrosky, showing exasperation at times, said a lack of substance in the governments case resulted in a long trial about nothing. I say theres been no crime thats been committed here, Ogrosky said. Sometimes the simplest answer is the right answer, that these men were friends. Read more at PowerPost By close of business Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will have added a quartet of solidly conservative judges to the federal Circuit Courts, those critical venues a step below the Supreme Court with final say on most litigation. It will be McConnells most significant achievement since the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Its also a testament to how little else Republicans have accomplished this year that McConnell was under so much pressure to show progress in this area. Social conservative groups had been demanding action to fill the federal courts and threatening to run ads critical of Senate leadership, which they viewed as moving too slowly on these lifetime appointments with the potential to issue rules for decades to come. And considering how little else senators were getting done on the legislative side, there was little excuse not to take action on judicial appointments. The pace was coming down to about one a month, said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women of America. The Republicans are in control of the House and Senate, and they need to act like they are. Democrats are flabbergasted that the majority leader could face any criticism on this issue. Theyre still fuming over what they consider to be a stolen Supreme Court seat when McConnell refused last year to consider filling the seat after the death of the late justice Antonin Scalia during Barack Obamas final year as president. Didnt he give them everything? asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). The answer, even if some of their leading activists are not pleased, is yes. McConnells move to block the Scalia seat is credited with turning out evangelical conservatives to vote for Trump and Senate Republicans. Ask a Senate Democrat the first thing they think of when it comes to McConnell and judges, and the response is almost universal. Merrick Garland, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said, unprodded. Obamas final Supreme Court nominee never got a hearing, leaving the seat open for Trump to nominate Gorsuch and secure what is mostly a 5-to-4 majority of conservative justices. Its a move that will go down as one of the defining moments of McConnells legacy for better or worse, depending on where you sit. Trump defended McConnell late Wednesday on Twitter. Thanks to @SenateMajLdr McConnell and the @SenateGOP we are appointing high-quality Federal District . . . and Appeals Court Judges at a record clip! Our courts are rapidly changing for the better, he said. Republicans could use something to brag about. In July, the Senate came up short trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act on party-line votes. This month, the emerging tax legislation faces many hurdles as Republican leaders try to use a similar parliamentary move for simple-majority victory. But on judges, the Senate GOP is genuinely united. No Republican has voted against any of Trumps judicial nominees so far, and in some cases a handful or so of Democrats are willing to cross the aisle. On Tuesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) joined two other Democrats and all 52 Republicans to confirm Amy Corey Barrett to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, after Republicans pounced on Democratic questioning about the University of Notre Dame law professors Catholic faith. And although McConnell hasnt done so yet, he has broad support in his caucus to abolish a traditional courtesy that allowed senators, even those in the minority, to block judicial appointments from their home states. This man takes credit for Neil Gorsuchs appointment: Mitch McConnell Hes moving quickly. After this week, the Senate will have confirmed eight appellate-level judges, with enough time to move a couple more before the end of the year. In contrast, in 2009, Obamas first year in office, he saw just three Circuit Court judges confirmed. Eventually, Obama left a huge liberal imprint on the 13 appeals courts. At the start of his term, one featured a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents, according to a Reuters estimate. By the end, the number was nine. The one area where Trump has been wildly successful That liberal tilt came despite Republican control of the Senate during the last two years of Obamas presidency, when the confirmation process slowed to a crawl. Now, the tilt is shifting. That blockade left about two dozen Circuit Court seats open, and McConnell is determined to fill them. "We think we're on pace here to begin to make substantial changes in the federal judiciary," McConnell told reporters Tuesday. Democrats just chuckle, perhaps bitterly, at conservative criticism of McConnells handling of the federal courts. Not only do they see McConnell working at warp speed, but his purposefulness is also a painful reminder of how Democrats and liberal activists have never engaged on judicial appointments with the same urgency as Republicans and conservative activists. The clearest example came earlier this year when, feeling pressure from their base, Democrats waged an all-out battle to try to defeat the nomination of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. They forced round-the-clock debate and ginned up an unprecedented amount of phone calls and emails to GOP senators. With little fanfare, Gorsuch a lifetime appointee, tipping the courts balance won confirmation a few weeks later. Republicans even changed the rules to approve him with a simple majority rather than the previous 60-vote requirement for Supreme Court justices. The Republicans have better connectivity with their base regarding the judiciary than we do with ours, Schatz said. We did a really good job on health care, in terms of mobilizing and inspiring folks, but we have not done the work that the right wing has on judges. Moreover, last year, when McConnell began his blockade of Garland, Democrats mounted a feeble attempt at pressuring Republicans and then simply gave up. They seemed to take for granted that President Clinton would make the appointment after her inauguration. What they did to Merrick Garland was reprehensible, Schatz said, and our response was embarrassing and tepid, and we just didnt put up enough of a fight. Read more from Paul Kane's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Cloudy with snow showers developing during the afternoon. High 34F. Winds WSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 50%.. Tonight Snow showers. Low 29F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. About one inch of snow expected. Thousands of people rally outside the regional presidential palace in Barcelona on Tuesday to show their support for those appearing in court. (Manu Fernandez/AP) A Spanish judge on Thursday ordered the jailing of eight of Catalonia's separatist leaders a week after the region declared independence, extending the tough crackdown on the breakaway effort. The decision not to free the former officials on bail ahead of their trials on charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds came after an Oct. 27 takeover of the region following the Catalan Parliaments vote to secede. The imprisonments set off an immediate outcry from independence advocates in Catalonia, who said they fit into a repressive pattern from the Spanish state that began when national police intervened with truncheons and violence to try to prevent an independence referendum from being held on Oct. 1. Town squares across Catalonia filled with protesters after the decision was announced late Thursday afternoon. A prosecutor also asked Judge Carmen Lamela to approve an international arrest warrant for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium on Monday alongside other officials. An extradition request would set the ground for a difficult diplomatic dance between Spain and Belgium, which allows E.U. citizens to claim political asylum and which is partly ruled by Flemish nationalists sympathetic to the Catalan cause. Lamela planned to decide on the warrant Friday. In denying bail, she said the leaders still in Spain were a flight risk, citing the retreat by Puigdemont and others to Brussels. [How Catalonias independence went from dream to defeat in just a month] Puigdemont refused to appear at the Madrid court on Thursday, saying that the charges were politically motivated. The leaders are facing prison terms of up to 30 years. In all, 20 officials are charged. Apart from the eight people sent to jail Thursday, a ninth was allowed free on bail of $58,000 because he resigned from the Catalan government before the independence declaration. A long and fierce repression lies ahead. We must combat the situation as Catalans do, without violence, in peace, Puigdemont said Thursday in a televised address to Catalans that appeared to be recorded in his Brussels hotel room. He has said that he remains Catalonias leader and that the decision by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to use constitutional powers to strip him of office was illegal. The decision to put the former officials behind bars meant that the highest-profile Catalan separatist leaders will probably not be able to run in Dec. 21 regional elections that Rajoy called after dismissing the government. After darkness fell Thursday, the former officials were transferred in police vans with flashing blue lights to the Alcala-Meco Prison outside Madrid. The move was condemned even by some pro-union Catalan leaders, who said it was needlessly harsh. [Catalan separatists counted on support from the E.U. They got the cold shoulder.] This is a black day for democracy and for Catalonia, said Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who appeared close to tears as she spoke to journalists late Thursday. Colau has said she believes Catalonia should have more autonomy but should not be independent. The crackdown drew condemnation from several other leaders in Europe, including the heads of Scotland and Belgian Flanders, two regions that have sought independence or more autonomy from their national governments. Jailing democratically elected government leaders = more than bridge too far, the leader of Belgiums Flanders region, Geert Bourgeois, wrote on Twitter. That was echoed by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who wrote that regardless of opinion on Catalonia, the jailing of elected leaders is wrong and should be condemned by all democrats. She added: The disagreement about Catalonias future is political. It should be resolved democratically not by the jailing of political opponents. Opinion polls show that support for independence in Catalonia is growing but that slightly less than half of the population seeks a split. Braden Phillips contributed to this report. Read more: Spain unveils sweeping spending cuts; leaders silent on bailout How Catalonias crisis is turning into a European problem The future of Catalonia may well hinge on an 84-word section of the 1978 Spanish Constitution Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Twenty-nine-year-old Sayfullo Saipov is the suspect held in the terrorist attack that left eight people dead in Lower Manhattan on Oct. 31. Heres what you shou (Video: Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post) Gift Article Share Follow Fridays updates here: ISIS claims suspected New York truck attacker as its soldier Investigators continued Thursday to probe the 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant charged with the New York truck attack, poring over his communications to see if he had any help or guidance before carrying out his deadly rampage, while President Trump publicly weighed in on the federal prosecution of the suspect. New York police officials say the attacker appears to have radicalized himself online and that it does not appear anyone else was involved, though they said that continues to be a key question in the international investigation launched after the Halloween attack in Lower Manhattan killed eight people and wounded a dozen others. Federal authorities charged Sayfullo Saipov, the suspected attacker, with providing support to a terrorist organization, saying that he was inspired by the Islamic State to carry out the rampage. The militant group, also known as ISIS, has urged its supporters to use vehicles for attacks. In the charging document, filed Wednesday, authorities said Saipov planned for a year to carry out an attack in the United States and ultimately chose Halloween because he believed more people would be outside as potential targets. Advertisement The federal prosecution against Saipov was just hours old when a potentially complicating factor emerged in the form of a presidential tweet. Since the attack, Trump has publicly criticized the American criminal justice system and weighed sending Saipov to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. In messages posted on Twitter late Wednesday and early Thursday, Trump twice called for Saipov to get the death penalty, while also abandoning the Guantanamo Bay idea. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system, Trump wrote early Thursday. He continued: There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Trumps comments, much like remarks he made about Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, could create a hurdle in the federal case. While one of the charges against Saipov one count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle could carry with it a possible death sentence, the Justice Department has not yet said whether it will seek that penalty. If prosecutors do pursue a rare federal death sentence against Saipov, defense attorneys could argue that Trumps tweets may prevent a jury from giving the suspect a fair trial. The remarks from Trump broke from the tradition that presidents and other senior officials refrain from commenting on ongoing cases in ways that could complicate proceedings, though he is not the first commander in chief to do so. In 2009, then-President Barack Obama weighed in on the case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and suggested he would get the death penalty; Obama then backtracked and said he did not mean to prejudge the case. Advertisement Saipov was charged in a criminal complaint, though authorities will eventually ask a grand jury to indict him, and he could possibly face additional charges. His next court appearance is technically scheduled for November 15, though that is very likely to change after an indictment is filed. David Patton, Saipovs attorney, declined to comment Thursday on Trumps comments. In a statement released before Trump tweeted, Patton said: In a case like this involving so much tragedy, its more important than ever to let the judicial process play out. How we as a society treat Mr. Saipov will say more about us than it will about him. At a speech Thursday in New York City that was scheduled before the truck attack, Attorney General Jeff Sessions highlighted the work federal prosecutors have done bringing cases against terrorism suspects in federal court. Advertisement He noted particularly the recent conviction of Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who set off bombs in New York and New Jersey last year; the recent unsealing of charges against three men who plotted to bomb the New York City subway and Times Square; and the apprehension of Mustafa al-Imam, a Libyan national charged with participating in the 2012 Benghazi attacks. The remarks, in some ways, seemed to be a subtle hint to the president that terror suspects can face justice in American courts. But Sessions, a vocal supporter of using the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, also made mention of the facility there. Terrorists should know: this Administration will use all lawful tools at our disposal, including prosecution in Article III courts and at Guantanamo Bay, Sessions said, according to a prepared copy of his remarks. If anyone has any doubt about that, they can ask the more than 500 criminals whom the Department of Justice has convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11. And they can ask the dozens of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay. Sessions, who attended a roll call Thursday with officers, also heaped praise on the New York City Police Department, in particular the officer who shot and wounded Saipov. Advertisement The attorney general has had a strained relationship with New York Citys leaders, and in April declared that gang murders there were the predictable consequence of the citys soft on crime stance. Sessionss remarks drew pushback from New York officials, as have some of Trumps comments. By Thursday afternoon, Trump had returned his focus to immigration, saying that he was calling for Congress to end a visa lottery program the suspected attacker used to get into the country years earlier. Trump, in one of his tweets about the New York attack, cited one of the most incendiary parts of the criminal complaint filed against Saipov. Authorities said that Saipov told them he felt good about what he had done and, while speaking to investigators, requested to display ISISs flag in his hospital room. The New York City terror attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov previously lived in New Jersey and Florida. Heres what his neighbors said about him. (Video: Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post) In the criminal complaint, the FBI described what Saipov said in his Manhattan hospital room, depicting him as a man who had reams of Islamic State propaganda on his phones and carefully plotted what he was doing. Advertisement Saipov told agents he wanted to kill as many people as he could, court papers state, and he considered putting Islamic State flags at the front and back of his truck before deciding that would draw too much attention. Authorities said Saipov told them that while he first decided a year ago to carry out an attack in the United States the country where he moved in 2010 on a diversity visa and became a legal permanent resident he only decided to use a truck two months before. Saipov rented one on the week before the attack to practice making turns with it, authorities said. A neighbor said he thought it was suspicious that Saipov was driving an apparently empty truck in recent weeks near their homes in New Jersey. Police say that on Tuesday afternoon, Saipov drove a truck onto the bike path along the west side of Manhattan and targeted cyclists and pedestrians as he careened south. Among those Saipov is accused of killing were a group of childhood friends from Argentina, now in their late 40s, who had been planning a trip to New York for years; a young mother; and two men in their 20s and 30s from New York and New Jersey. Advertisement Saipov told authorities he was particularly inspired by a video capturing Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi asking Muslims in the United States what they were doing to respond to the killing of other members of their faith in Iraq, the complaint states. Officials have said that Saipov apparently became radicalized online after he came to the United States. He appears to have followed almost exactly to a T the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels laying out guidance for carrying out an attack, according to John Miller, the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism at the New York City Police Department. Among other things, officials say Saipov used a rented truck, had brought knives and a stun gun as additional weapons and left behind notes declaring his allegiance. According to court papers, one note, written in Arabic, could be translated in part to read: Islamic Supplication. It will endure. As the Islamic State has suffered battlefield losses and seen its self-declared caliphate shrink, terrorism by vehicle has become the attack of choice for the groups adherents and supporters in other areas. The tactic has been used, with deadly results, in France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Canada. Advertisement Investigators are still exploring whether anyone else had any knowledge of or aided in the New York plot. The FBI said briefly on Wednesday it was seeking another man 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, or Muhammad Kadirov in connection with the investigation. The bureau gave no indication why they were seeking him and, minutes later, reversed course, saying they had found him but providing no further details. A person who was in touch with both Saipovs and Kadirovs families on Wednesday said that Kadirov is in New Jersey, has retained an attorney and is cooperating with law enforcement officials, but that he was not under arrest as of Wednesday evening. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said Kadirov is Saipovs cousin and seemed utterly shocked and horrified by what Saipov had done. The rampage on Tuesday afternoon ended when Saipov crashed into a school bus and emerged from his truck armed with a paintball gun and pellet gun, police said. A passer-by flagged down police officers responding to an unrelated call at a school in the area, and one of them shot and wounded Saipov, police said. Advertisement Authorities also said Saipov intended to continue his attack beyond the bike path. He told investigators he intended to keep going to the Brooklyn Bridge to kill even more people, the complaint states, but was apparently unable to after crashing the truck. Eli Rosenberg and Abigail Hauslohner in Paterson, N.J.; Renae Merle in New York; and Devlin Barrett, Sari Horwitz, Julie Tate, Philip Rucker, Amy B Wang and Samantha Schmidt in Washington contributed to this report, which has been updated. Read more: GiftOutline Gift Article More than twice as many Americans approve as disapprove of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs investigation of possible ties between Donald Trumps 2016 campaign and the Russian government, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) More than twice as many Americans approve as disapprove of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of possible coordination between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds, indicating that the conservative effort to discredit the probe has fallen flat as the case has progressed toward its first public charges. A 58 percent majority say they approve of Muellers handling of the investigation, while 28 percent say they disapprove, the Post-ABC poll finds. Peoples views depend in large part on their political leanings, but overall, Americans are generally inclined to trust Mueller and the case he has made so far. Meanwhile, fewer than 4 in 10 Americans say they believe Trump is cooperating with Muellers investigation, while about half believe he is not. A similar 49 percent think it is likely Trump himself committed a crime in connection with possible Russian attempts to influence the election, although more say this view is based on suspicion rather than on hard evidence. [Read full poll results | How the poll was conducted] Mueller's investigation entered a new phase this week as he revealed charges against three former Trump campaign officials: former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime business partner Rick Gates, and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Manafort and Gates were charged with crimes unrelated to their campaign work. In a 12-count indictment, the special counsel alleged that they engaged in a conspiracy to launder money and defraud the United States, stemming from their attempts to hide their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. Papadopoulos, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the nature and timing of his conversations with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections. His plea, which was unsealed Monday, describes how he had extensive talks to try to broker a meeting between campaign and Russian officials, and high-level members of the campaign seemed to entertain what he was doing though some seemed to be wary. [For low level volunteer, Papadopoulos sought high profile as Trump adviser] The poll finds strong backing for the charges against Manafort and Gates nearly 7 in 10 approve and a general suspicion that more is to come. A narrow 53 percent majority say those charges and the plea by Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI represented broader wrongdoing by people involved in Trumps campaign, while 28 percent think they are limited to these instances. A spokesman for Muellers office declined to comment, and a White House lawyer did not immediately return messages. Mueller and Trump have notably different styles, with the president often airing his grievances publicly, while the special counsel works largely in secret. Trump was said to have fumed Monday at news of charges in the case, and on Twitter, he tried to cast the case against Manafort and Gates as unconnected to him. "Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????" he wrote, adding minutes later, "....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!" The president and his surrogates have long sought to raise questions about the credibility of Mueller and his team. In the summer, they focused on the people Mueller was hiring, noting that many had donated to Democratic political candidates and Trump's opponent in the presidential election, Hillary Clinton. In a June 15 tweet, Trump called the probe the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history, adding that it was led by some very bad and conflicted people! More recently, Trump and his allies, buoyed by conservative media, have tried to point attention toward the Clinton campaign's role in funding the production of a salacious dossier about Trump which was prepared by a former British spy who got information from Russian sources. The special counsel has explored some of the allegations in the dossier. Conservatives have also sought to highlight Clinton's alleged role in approving the sale of a Canadian company with mining rights in the United States to Russian's nuclear energy agency. The Post-ABC poll finds politics influences peoples responses, with 78 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents approving of the way Mueller is handling the investigation, compared with 38 percent of Republicans. People on both sides of the aisle are more unified in supporting the particular charges against Gates and Manafort. A 57 percent majority of Republicans say they approve of that case, as do 78 percent of Democrats. Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty, and in a court filing Thursday, attorneys for Manafort asserted that the evidence against him had been embellished. Partisanship also colors how people perceive the significance of Muellers charges, with more than three-quarters of Democrats saying they represent broader wrongdoing by people involved in the Trump campaign, compared with a small majority of independents. Republicans are less united, with 46 percent saying wrongdoing is limited to Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos and 30 percent saying they suspect broader misconduct. Almost a quarter of Republicans say they have no opinion. An 82 percent majority of Republicans say it is unlikely that Trump himself committed a crime, although half of independents and 74 percent of Democrats say that is likely. Among the public overall, 19 percent think there is solid evidence Trump committed a crime, while 30 percent say that is merely their suspicion. Among Democrats, a 30 percent minority believe there is solid evidence Trump committed a crime. Trump had in the past inquired about his power to pardon aides, and Democrats have feared he might move to fire Mueller before the probe is complete. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though, said this week that Trump had "no intention or plan to make any changes with regard to the special counsel." And Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing the administration's handling of the Mueller probe, said there had been no talk of possible pardons for Manafort or Gates. The Post-ABC poll was conducted Oct. 30-Nov. 1 among a random national sample of 714 adults reached on cell and landline phones. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. Scott Clement contributed to this report. The Kremlin's towers and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour at sunset in Moscow on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. (Mladen Antonov/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images) Federal investigators have identified several Russian government hackers who penetrated the Democratic National Committees computers last year and siphoned out information that was released online, according to individuals familiar with the matter. Gathering the evidence necessary to bring charges against them has proven to be a challenge, and it is not clear when that might happen, the individuals said. Prosecutors and FBI agents have been in discussions about the case and could bring charges next year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Justice Department declined to comment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied his government played any role in the hacking or in seeking to influence the 2016 election. Bringing such a prosecution could stir political controversy. President Trump, both as a candidate and after his election, has repeatedly expressed skepticism that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic targets including the DNC. He famously suggested the hackers could be Russian, Chinese, or somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. By long-standing principle, the Justice Department makes decisions on prosecutions without any White House knowledge or involvement. Exceptions include national security cases in which there is a potentially significant impact on foreign relations; in such cases the White House and other agencies might get notified in advance of charges being filed. The DNC hack, revealed by The Washington Post in June of last year, was a pivotal event in a series of actions undertaken by the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election. [Russian government hackers penetrated the DNC] FBI agents had zeroed in last year on five or six individuals they believed worked for Russias military spy agency, the GRU, and hacked the DNC, according to one individual familiar with the case. The GRU is one of two Russian spy agencies that hacked the Democratic committee. But it is the one that was called out by the U.S. intelligence community in its January report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report stated the GRU "probably began cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election by March 2016." It concluded the GRU operations resulted in the compromise of the personal email accounts of Democratic Party officials and political figures. By May, the GRU had exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC. Though Russian spy agencies often use contractors to carry out their hacking activities, the individuals being scrutinized by the Justice Department are said to work for the GRU, the first person said. Separately, the FBI also has identified at least one person who was behind the persona known as Guccifer 2.0, who last year claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker who stole the DNC documents. In reality, the intelligence communitys report stated, the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and two websites to release data hacked from the Democrats. It is likely more than one person is behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona, experts said. The intelligence community report, citing press accounts, suggested the same. The DNC hackers are believed to be separate from the people behind Guccifer 2.0. At one point last year, federal prosecutors in San Francisco briefly considered indicting Guccifer 2.0, even though the true identities were not yet known. The FBI investigation into Russian cyber operations is being conducted by a variety of field offices. San Francisco has handled Guccifer 2.0. Pittsburgh and Houston are working on the GRU hackers and Washington has focused on another group, known by private sector security analysts as APT29 or Cozy Bear. That group belongs to the SVR, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Last December, the United States expelled a number of Russian operatives. According to an intelligence community official, they included 18 from the SVR, 16 from the GRU, and one from the FSB the federal security service once headed by Putin and the main successor agency to the KGB. In this March 28, 2017, photo, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani enters a hall in the Kremlin for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Sergei Karpukhin/AP) Just hours after President Trump finished calling Iran a "murderous regime" in his Sept. 19 speech at the United Nations, the administration asked French President Emmanuel Macron for a favor. Would Macron inquire whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was interested in speaking directly with Trump? All three leaders were in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, as was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who conveyed the request to Macron, according to several administration and foreign officials. Irans response, later that afternoon, was an unequivocal no. The Iranians, the French reported, dont believe youre serious and thought it was some kind of trick, a senior administration official said. In his own U.N. speech the next day, Rouhani denounced the "ignorant" rhetoric of "rogue newcomers to the world of politics," although he did not mention Trump by name. Trump has long held a deep belief in his face-to-face negotiating skill. He has said he would be "honored" to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "under the right circumstances." He also declared it an "honor" to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an international summit in July. He said recently that once he got quarreling Persian Gulf allies together with him in a room, their dispute would "quickly" end. But there seems little room for negotiation on the issues that divide the United States and Iran. Trump has said he wants to rewrite or terminate the Iran nuclear agreement; Iran and other signatories have flatly refused. He has demanded that Iran cease its ballistic missile development, which Iran says it is legally entitled to carry out. He has accused Iran of being the worlds biggest supporter of international terrorism. [For some foreign diplomats, the Trump White House is a troubling enigma] Before Tillersons request, Trump already had broached the general idea of using France as a go-between during a bilateral meeting with the French president the night before his U.N. speech, the senior administration official said. You guys have good relations with Iran, Trump told Macron, according to the official. Could you use your relations to ask if Tehran is willing, should the Americans want to talk? the official said Trump asked. Macron said sure, he would try to do that, the official said. Asked why Trump wanted to meet with Rouhani, the official said it was in order to say, Heres all the mean stuff you do in the world, and we want you to stop. . . . If not, you should know were working on a strategy to get you to confront all of this. The primary message, the official said, was that the golden Obama-era window of rapprochement is over. This official and others spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic exchanges. For his part, any seeming weakness by Rouhani toward the United States probably would undercut his already tenuous political position in the face of Iranian hard-liners seeking to undermine his presidency. Trump has accused President Barack Obama of having been soft on Iran, allowing it to expand its malign influence in the Middle East and beyond and to threaten U.S. friends in the region. Most prominently, Trump has called the 2015 nuclear accord that the Obama administration negotiated the worst deal ever. [Why every other country in the Iran deal is standing by it] Last month, responding to oversight provisions imposed by Congress, Trump refused to certify Iranian compliance with the deal. He has ordered lawmakers to come up with a proposal to rewrite the agreement and impose new sanctions, threatening otherwise to terminate U.S. participation. Word of the proposed Trump-Rouhani meeting first circulated Sunday, when Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi told reporters in Tehran that indeed, a request was made by the American side, but it was not accepted by President Rouhani. In discussing the request, some officials described it as vague and indicated that it left open the question of whether Trump, Tillerson or some other senior official was on offer to speak with Rouhani. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, queried by NBC News on Sunday about Qassemis statement, emailed that it was false, the network reported. At Tuesdays State Department briefing, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said of Qassemis assertion: I know that was something that the secretary had floated. . . . The Iranian officials said no, and that was the end of it. Asked directly whether the Iranians had specifically turned down a meeting with Trump, Nauert said, They did. Pressed further, however, she spoke only of a proposed meeting with U.S. officials, before referring any additional questions to the White House. Tillerson, the senior official said, also had raised the possibility of talks with other officials at various levels when he spoke directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sept. 20 during a multilateral meeting at the United Nations, the senior official said. Highlighting Iranian suspicions of U.S. motives, Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as prolific as Trump on Twitter wrote in a tweet to Iranians on Wednesday, My dear children, do not forget, in the important, conducive path toward ideals, your major enemy is the U.S. Erin Cunningham in Istanbul contributed to this report. A small wooden work stool, carved with designs and painted or branded with initials, is the first project that students must complete when entering the prestigious Instituto Politecnico Superior here. They keep the stools through six years of arduous classes and beyond a symbol of their progress but also of the bonds they develop with their classmates. Members of nearly every graduating class, whether from 2017 or decades past, come together at some point during the year to paint the stools again on the sidewalk outside the school, or they just bring them along during barbecues and trips together. Now, five stools from the class of 1987 are missing their owners. The classmates died in Tuesdays terrorist attack in New York while celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from the high school known as Poli. Their deaths have rocked this city about 185 miles northwest of the capital, Buenos Aires, shocking a tightknit community that revolves around the elite school founded in 1906. This Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017 photo provided by Cecilia Piedrabuena shows from left to right; Hernan Ferruchi, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, Ivan Brajckovic, Juan Pablo Trevisan, Hernan Mendoza, Diego Angelini and Ariel Benvenuto, gather for a group photo before their trip to New York City, at the airport in Rosario, in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. Mendoza, Angelini, Pagnucco, Erlij and Ferruchi were killed in the bike path attack near the World Trade Center. They were part of a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation with a trip to New York City. (Courtesy of Cecilia Piedrabuena via AP) (Courtesy of Cecilia Piedrabuena via AP) ) More than 200 people held a vigil outside the polytechnic institute on Wednesday night, spilling out onto the street as they wept and embraced. Because most friends and family members said they were too grief-stricken to leave their homes, the majority of those in attendance were teachers, students and alumni who had never met the victims. [Old friends from Argentina reunited in N.Y. Five died in a terrorist attack] What you realize is that if you dont have a direct contact, there is always a friend or a sibling who did, said Maximiliano Bosch, who graduated 10 years before the victims did. The connections at this school are strong. Teachers who had never taught the victims huddled together, most of them too sad to speak to reporters who had flocked to Rosario from the capital. I struggled to explain to my students what this loss meant, Diego Espinosa, a communication technologies teacher, managed to say. Its a huge loss to the school. Its a huge loss for the city. The friends who met in New York Diego Angelini, Hernan Diego Mendoza, Ivan Brajckovic, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, Hernan Ferruchi, Juan Pablo Trevisan, Ariel Benvenuto, Martin Ludovico Marro and Ariel Erlij were excited about being all together in one place for the first time in years. On the third day of their trip, the men, all in their late 40s, were riding bicycles alongside the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan when a rented pickup truck veered onto the bike path, accelerated quickly and began mowing down cyclists and pedestrians over a 20-block stretch. Five of the Argentines Ferruchi, Pagnucco, Erlij, Mendoza and Angelini were killed, along with three other cyclists: a Belgian woman on vacation and two American men who worked or lived nearby. At least a dozen other people were injured, including Marro, a longtime U.S. resident who joined his former classmates in New York from his home near Boston and was hospitalized with unspecified injuries. Members of the City Council in Rosario, Argentina, display a banner during a Nov. 2, 2017, ceremony in honor of five residents killed in a terrorist attack in New York on Oct. 31. (Marcos Brindicci/Reuters) The alleged perpetrator of the attack, Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, was shot and wounded by a police officer after he smashed the truck into a school bus. He is facing terrorism charges. [Investigators probe N.Y. attack suspects communications] When someone unjustly takes a life without any reason at all, how are you supposed to feel exactly? said Graciela Daneo, 63, a cousin of Benvenuto, one of the survivors. You go on a vacation and you dont expect anything to happen. You dont expect terrorism. Saipov had allegedly planned the attack for more than a year, nearly as long as the friends from Rosario had been preparing their trip. Yet for residents of the city, the tragedy seemed more like a freak accident than a planned event something they could not imagine happening to members of their own community. Even within Argentina, Rosario, the nations third-largest city, is often overshadowed by the capital and by rich, historical Cordoba, about 250 miles to the northwest. Situated in the heart of Argentinas main industrial region, Rosario is just about the countrys closest equivalent to a Rust Belt city chugging along out of the national spotlight, let alone an international one. It seems like a tragic fate that this happened to those five classmates, said Martin Boix, 39, a former student at Poli. New York is an immense city with millions of hearts passing through it, and this happens to five of Rosarios. For 111 years, the polytechnic institute has been a source of pride for Rosario, producing some of the countrys most prominent engineers, architects and politicians including Miguel Lifschitz, governor of Santa Fe, the province where Rosario is located. As many as 1,000 students apply to the school each year through an entrance exam, and only 230 are admitted. They are often expected to work up to 10 or 12 hours a day and to stay for a year longer than other high school students in Argentina. The time and effort they put in leave each graduating class feeling like a brotherhood, many students said. [Trump tweets that N.Y. attack suspect should get death penalty] At Wednesday nights vigil, Arnando Amillone, who graduated in 1953, lit a candle in front of the school and stood watching it burn for nearly a half-hour. Alumni who had graduated decades after him, even as recently as last year, began setting their candles beside Amillones. Because many students leave the institute with lifetime friendships, some of them said the tragedy in New York has made them look inward, at their own relationships and celebrations. Gonzalo Ibanez, who graduated a year after the five victims, said he and his friends from Poli were planning a trip to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation. Even though the tragedy could have happened to any group of friends from the school, he said, it will not stop them from getting together, nor from celebrating next year. And when they do, he said, he will bring along his stool. Read more Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Girls Rock Camp the global movement that empowers girls through music is coming to Winnipeg next summer. The first Girls Rock Camp took place in August 2001 in Portland, Ore. Now, there are are camps all over the world. While each camp is independent, the setup is roughly the same in every location: campers learn an instrument, form a band, write an original song and perform it live all within the space of week while learning the value of teamwork and building confidence. (And while its called Girls Rock Camp, it is also open to trans and gender-nonconforming youth, too.) Thanks to demand, many Girls Rock Camps have expanded to include year-long after-school programs, sleep-away camps and camps for grown-ups. And programming can go beyond making music of any genre, not just rock. Maggie Wong / Vancouver Sun Many camps offer DJ workshops, recording and engineering classes and instruction in everything from music video production to lighting and stage design. The movement has also attracted some star-power support: the advisory board for the Girls Rock Camp Foundation the non-profit organization that generates funds for camps that belong to the Girls Rock Camp Alliance is composed of pioneering musicians Tegan and Sara, Kathleen Hanna and Beth Ditto. Brandi Olenick, 38, is a local guitarist and founder of Girls Rock Winnipeg. She first heard about the Girls Rock movement from her friend Lenore Maier, who plays in a Saskatoon band called The Garrys and is an instructor for Girls Rock Saskatoon. She was telling me all about it, and said it was the best thing shes been doing in her life, Olenick says. Id been looking to get back into music, and I was like, OK, well, Im going to get involved with Winnipegs one, maybe just volunteer and get involved that way. A Google search quickly revealed that, while there are 10 Canadian Girls Rock Camps, there was no Girls Rock Winnipeg. And so, Olenick decided to start one. In May, she flew to Saskatoon at Maiers behest to volunteer at Girls Rock Saskatoons grown-up camp (for women 19 and older), and to do a little reconnaissance. She says it was one of the most amazing experiences shes ever had. I was like, If its this amazing for women, I cant imagine what it would be like for kids, Olenick says. And everyone I talked to was like, Why wasnt this around when we were growing up? It would have been life-changing. Ive never been in a room with that many women who all were so supportive. It was like a feminist boot camp, but it was more than that. No one was tearing each other down. There was no competition. ERIC ROBERTS Mulligrub are one of the bands being featured at the first fundraising show for Girls Rock Winnipeg. On Friday night (Nov. 3), Girls Rock Winnipeg will be hosting its first all-ages fundraising show at the Park Theatre, featuring Mulligrub, Romi Mayes, Ingrid D Johnson and the Funky Crew and Olenicks band Off Henderson. Tickets are $15 at Ticketfly, Music Trader and at the door. Show starts at 7:45 p.m. Girls Rock Winnipeg is working in partnership with the West End Cultural Centre, which is where the inaugural camp will be held next summer. Olenick is currently in fundraising mode, as well as in the process of building a board of directors and recruiting volunteers. Although the specifics havent been locked in, Olenick says the first Girls Rock Winnipeg Camp will likely be a week long, with 25 spots for girls, trans and non-binary folks ages 10 to 14. Fees and enrolment dates will be announced in the coming months. Olenick has no doubt all the hard work leading up to next summer will be rewarded with a big payoff. As Lenore was saying, you see the change in the girls, Olenick says. They come the very first day, and no ones talking to each other and being very shy. By the end of the week, this confidence comes out in these girls. And when they do their showcase, theyre just shredding it. Its a transformation that happens in six days. jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @JenZoratti If you value coverage of Manitobas arts scene, help us do more. Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism. BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER Click here to learn more about the project. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Divisive language and policies from U.S. President Donald Trump are helping push business travellers north of the border, the head of Marriott International Inc. said on Wednesday. Large groups of travellers, particularly for conferences, are changing reservations to friendlier Canadian cities such as Toronto over United States options with the view that bringing in an international group would be more hassle-free in Canada and maybe a little bit riskier in the U.S., chief executive officer Arne Sorenson said in an interview in Toronto. So-called revpar growth, a measure of financial performance based on revenue per available room, will be in the mid- to high single digits in Canada this year, compared with one to two per cent in the U.S., Sorenson said. Revpar growth alone doesnt indicate whether travellers are changing their destination. Youre going to have people coming in from everywhere and theyre going to be looking at, Can we get our people in? Are they going to want to go to that place? Sorenson said in a meeting room of the Ritz-Carlton hotel. At the moment theres a perception around the world that the U.S. is a little less welcoming than it was in the past. Sorenson cited the presidents efforts to ban travellers from some Muslim-majority countries and speeches that emphasize nationalism and criticize current immigration policy. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has defended Muslims publicly and extolled immigration. Marriott is bringing up the issue in conversations with the White House on welcoming visitors from abroad, Sorenson said, declining to provide details. Canadas economy is booming, expanding faster than any Group of Seven nations and its forecast to grow at an average of two per cent annually over the next five years. In the U.S., gross domestic product grew by 1.5 per cent last year, though it is forecast to reach 2.4 per cent next year, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg. Overall, Marriotts occupancy in both countries is better than 80 per cent. Sorenson has commented on Trumps policies in the past. The presidents travel ban is not good, period, he said at a company event in Dubai in April. The ban has been blocked by federal courts repeatedly and has drawn condemnation from employers in industries, including technology, that rely on foreign talent. Sorenson was named to the board of Microsoft Corp. last month. Sorenson was vice-chairman of then-president Barack Obamas export council and was in the delegation that visited Cuba in March 2016, part of an overture Trump has criticized. Sorenson wrote an open letter to Trump on LinkedIn soon after his election, in which he emphasized the need to unite the country and break the cycle of retribution. Former presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who has denounced the presidents character, is on Marriotts board of directors. Corporate guests represented about 70 percent of Marriotts room-nights in 2016, with leisure accounting for about 30 per cent, according to the company. This includes properties from Marriotts September 2016 acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. The Bethesda, Md.-based company is opening a St. Regis-branded hotel in Torontos financial district, replacing Trumps brand on the 65-story luxury tower. The building, now under renovation, was purchased by InnVest Hotels LP this year after financial difficulties, dozens of lawsuits and negative sentiment plagued the development. Bloomberg News Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 01/11/2017 (1841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The taxi industry is evoking the memory of the last cabbie murdered in Winnipeg as its symbol for the highest level of safety in vehicles for hire including Uber. Pritam Deol was murdered July 2001 while at work. His death led to the installation of driver shields and, later, cameras in local taxis, Scott McFadyen, spokesman for the Winnipeg Community Taxi Coalition, told a news conference Wednesday. Its a great legacy for my dad there hasnt been a taxi-related death since 2001, said Deols son, Gurpreet Deol. We want to see there is no further death, violence. This needs to apply as a standard across the industry. JEN DOERKSEN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Scott McFayden, centre, speaks about the desired safety measures for ride-sharing services like Uber in Winnipeg at Unicity Taxi offices, Wednesday. Winnipeg cabbies said all the required safety equipment, including criminal and child-abuse background checks, costs about $5,500 per vehicle, on top of annual insurance exceeding $10,000. Were asking the province and (the City of Winnipeg) to keep all the safety measures in place when Bill 30 (the Local Vehicles for Hire Act) passes and places Manitoba municipalities in charge of regulating so-called ride-sharing services, McFadyen said. Government committee hearings into Bill 30 ended Tuesday night, with about 100 speakers still to be heard. McFadyen was critical of the news media for not attending the entire hearing process, which went from 6 p.m. to midnight for four evenings, as well as three hours during the day last Friday. It is well-known that taxi driving is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, he said. There is no level of safety in the legislation, giving the City of Winnipeg a blank cheque. McFadyen said having the taxi industrys high safety standards apply to other services would scare Uber and others out of the market. However, McFadyen said, the cabbies believe Uber is simply a taxi company that doesnt want to play by the rules: We take exception with the term ride-sharing.' McFadyen said the cabbies have a meeting Nov. 10 with Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, who has also invited Manitoba Public Insurance to attend. MPI recently told a legislature committee it will set a premium rate for ride-sharing services by the end of February. KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Plastic driver protection shields in city taxis have helped prevent driver deaths from passenger attacks since 2001. City taxi owners would like the province to require Uber and other ride sharing services to have the safety measures as well when it passes the Local Vehicles for Hire Act. In the legislature Wednesday, NDP MLA Jim Maloway told Premier Brian Pallister the government had the option of conducting committee sessions last Saturday and Sunday, if it had been interested in squeezing in all of the 267 registered speakers on Bill 30. Instead, the Tories would not waive the end of proceedings Tuesday night, Maloway said. For the first time in history, a committee of this legislature did not let every speaker represent. Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler heckled that Maloway had agreed to the rules. You negotiated it, shouted Schuler, referring to a deal reached last year when Maloway was NDP house leader. nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Some flood evacuees from Lake St. Martin displaced for six years got keys to brand-new homes Thursday. The Ojibway First Nation issued a statement Thursday to celebrate the first 30 families to move in to the houses, situated on new lands. Today, the community of Lake St. Martin First Nation will present keys to the homes of the first phase of families moving back to their traditional lands. This will mark the final stages of Operation Return Home, the statement said. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Worker place a new home on a lot in the Lake St. Martin First Nation housing development. Up to 190 homes are to be ready for occupation by the end of January 2018 in a new community on new lands adjacent to the flooded out reserve land, but on higher ground, the federal governement said in its own statement. The $49.5 million cost of the housing was shared 50/50 between the province and Ottawa, the federal statement said. Ottawa paid $19.7 million for a new school and both levels of government shared servicing costs. The development includes water treatment and sewage treatment facilities, including a new lagoon. A new kindergarten-to-grade 12 school is expected to accommodate up to 324 students. Plans call for it to completed by next September. This has been a difficult time for First Nations affected by the 2011 flood, and they are determined to rebuild as safer and stronger communities. I am thrilled that members of Lake St. Martin First Nation have started to return home to their newly rebuilt community, Ottawas Minister of Indigenous Services Jane Philpott said in the statement. The homes were built on former farm lands the province purchased to replace lands lost to flood waters. About 150 homes should be ready for occupancy by the end of November. Its been a long road home, with political rancour and lawsuits marking disputes over where the new lands would be located, who and how the homes should be built, and how federal and provincial governments would co-operate on compensation to the community. Lake St. Martin was not the only Interlake First Nation that saw evacuations and lost traditional lands to the flood waters. It was, however, the worst affected and the only community that was completely gutted and had the entire population evacuated. A few families held out and refused to leave, and they remain there to this day, relying on gas-fuelled generators for electricity and wood stoves for heat. The Interlake First Nations have always maintained their lands were sacrificed to save Winnipeg when the Assiniboine River flooded in 2011, similar to arguments from other land owners along the shores of Lake Manitoba, which swelled when the province diverted flood waters north. For nearly six years, federal statistics listed nearly 2,000 people on evacuation lists, most of whom were in Winnipeg, and most of whom were from Lake St. Martin. They were initially lodged in hotels before being moved to subsidized housing. Leaders have repeatedly called for compassion, informing the public the move came at an enormous social and emotional cost for the former fishing community. The latest tally reported in the media blame about 100 deaths on the displacement; young and old alike who ended up victims of suicide, illness, addiction and crime. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Getting involved in a fraud scheme to steal credit-card data from Winnipeggers was an eye-opener for a Montreal man, a provincial court judge heard this week. Ahsan Muhammad Noor Khan was fined $20,000 Wednesday and sentenced to house arrest as part of an 18-month conditional sentence for his role described as a low-level dupe by Judge Sidney Lerner in a fraud-tourism plan. Khan owed money to a group of people and got involved in the scheme as a way to pay them back, his defence lawyer, Matthew Gould, told court. Khan pleaded guilty to 22 fraud-related charges for a week-long credit-card skimming spree at seven local businesses in February. The most information that I can give to this court at this time is that through involvement with these individuals, he got himself in a position where he was told he owed money, Gould said when Lerner asked for more details about Khans debt. Video surveillance captured the then 22 year old distracting a cafe employee while a co-accused switched out the businesss pin pad to install a credit-card skimming device. Khan and three other 22-year-old men from Quebec were accused of going into businesses near closing time and stealing credit/debit card pin pads using a false-bottomed backpack. They would leave a dummy pin pad behind and then return to the business the next morning to re-install the doctored pin pad, transmitting the stolen credit card data it collected via cellphones. After the transaction at the cafe was complete, Khan was caught on video high-fiving one of his co-accused. Khans $20,000 fine a forfeiture of the bail money his family posted for him after his arrest is poetic justice, Crown attorney Mandy Ambrose told court. In some ways, this is a bit of poetic justice, that this accused attended this province for the purpose of taking peoples financial information for his own personal gain, she said. So the Crown sees this, as a package, to be a reasonable and appropriate sentence in the circumstances, bearing in mind his lack of a criminal record. Ambrose said the laptops police seized in a Winnipeg hotel room when they arrested the four accused have yet to be searched by police and theres no information before the court about whether any stolen credit-card data was transmitted prior to the arrests. Judge Lerner imposed the jointly-recommended sentence of an 18-month conditional sentence, which will include seven months of house arrest to be served at his home in Montreal. A co-accused, Michael Guy Vincent, received the same sentence after he pleaded guilty last month. Charges against two others, Miles Lafleur-Diallo and Fabrizio Imola, are still before the court. Khan forfeited personal items that were seized by police, but the court granted exceptions to return some of his belongings to him, including a gold ring with diamonds and a Citizen watch. I just want to say, your honour, that this was definitely an eye-opener for me, and I just want to change my life around and make sure I get back on the right track, Khan told the judge. katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. If the drug flakka is in Winnipeg, it might explain the bizarre encounter the Bear Clan street patrol witnessed in the North End this summer. We came across a 20-year-old woman on Flora (Avenue) and Powers (Street). She was yelling and screaming and saying all kinds of weird things, Bear Clan council member and co-founder James Favel said Thursday, recalling the encounter outside a school. Bear Clan volunteers were gathering for their evening patrol when someone yelled for help with a crazy lady on the street. This Feb. 12, 2015 photo made available by the Broward Sheriff's Office, Fla., shows confiscated vials of flakka. This emerging drug can alter brain chemistry in such a way that users can't control their thoughts and it can increase adrenalin. (Broward Sheriff's Office via AP) When the patrol reached the corner, they saw a woman, obviously impaired, but not with any intoxicant theyd ever seen before. Her body postures were she was bending over to where her head was nearly to the ground and then snap back. Her arms were flailing. She was playing with a McDonalds cup, with mud it in. Shed dug up (some top soil) and put it in the cup and was putting water in the cup from the puddle on the street, Favel recalled. The womans eyes were open but none of the Bear Clan patrol about 20 volunteers that evening could get through to her. Theyre not even sure the woman was aware of their presence. In the end, someone called 911 for help, Favel said. That was months ago and nobodys raised flakka publicly since then, until this week when police made a drug bust and wondered if it might be the same stuff. Flakka is also called gravel and resembles crushed glass shards. The Winnipeg Police Service is aware of the drug flakka and we currently have a seizure in hand that may possibly be flakka, police spokesman Const. Jay Murray said Thursday. I stress it has not yet been confirmed and it is subject to testing by Health Canada, he said. If confirmed, it would mark the first seizure of flakka in Winnipeg. Authorities know the drug is dangerous and it has been characterized as similar to so-called bath salts, a synthetic designer powder made with various amphetamine-like chemicals that causes increased heart rate, hallucinations, paranoia and delusions. In Winnipeg, authorities say the biggest challenge is trying to talk down someone on a drug such as that, when theres no way to reach them with words. Flakka certainly presents challenges, especially in terms of how we communicate or deal with someone who is high on a substance like that. There are times, unfortunately, where officers are required to use force on someone who exhibits behaviours similar to that of what is expected from flakka, bath salts or methamphetamine, Murray said. The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said their experts have no hands-on knowledge with flakka. Rolling Stone magazine published a primer on the so-called zombie drug in 2016, describing flakka as highly addictive designer drug that causes paranoia and psychosis. Writer Annamarya Scaccia linked it to news reports involving a 19-year old Florida university student who stabbed a married couple to death and then gnawed at the male victims face. Police in Jupiter Florida believed the student was high on flakka at the time. alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Laboratory is a world leader in studying animal and human pathogens, an international conference heard on Wednesday, as experts pondered whether Manitobas deadly pig-diarrhea outbreak might have been sparked by terrorist groups. Primal Silva, the science head for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, is leading a group of 11 high-risk labs from five developed countries to standardize their protocols for preventing and dealing with outbreaks, as well as transporting pathogens across borders for study. Much of it is based off practices at the Winnipeg lab, which was largely behind the recently discovered Ebola vaccine. The lab has a biosafety Level 4 classification, the worlds highest, and Silva describes its security protocols as a box in a box. Lyle Stafford / The Canadian Press files A technician works at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. The lab has a biosafety Level 4 classification, the worlds highest. Silva said by standardizing how countries use these labs, they can prepare their governments to deal with outbreaks. For us it is about responding, in terms of the knowledge that we harness in the laboratories, and turn it into advice for the decision-makers, Silva told a conference on biological threat reduction in Ottawa. The conference, hosted by the World Organisation for Animal Health, has brought scores of scientists from multiple countries to look at biological threats including terrorist acts that threaten the worlds animals. A common theme was the need to study animal diseases alongside human ones. Silva said Winnipeg was ahead of its time in placing public-health and animal-diseases specialists together at the national Microbiology Laboratory. Research suggests at least 60 per cent of infectious diseases originate in animals before they infect humans. Silva, whos based in Ottawa and visits the Winnipeg lab multiple times each year, says viruses can circulate between humans, poultry and pigs, combining with other illnesses. They become more capable for survival. From the human perspective, thats very deadly for us, he said in an interview. Silva said his multi-country group including the United States, Britain, Australia and Germany has attracted interest from various countries, but hinted the exchange can only admit countries with solid science and good relations. Its a tricky balance, he said. It really needs a trusted partnership. At a Tuesday lunch session, a senior FBI official warned the ongoing outbreak of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) which has devastated scores of farms around Steinbach may have been an act of terrorism. The PED outbreak started in the U.S. in 2013, decimating the American pork industry and crossing into Ontario and Mexico. PED came back with a vengeance this spring, affecting more than 60 Manitoba farms, despite just 10 cases in the previous three years combined. Officials believe Manitobas current woes were caused by a poorly washed truck that arrived from the U.S. As for the 2013 spread in the U.S., Special Agent Stephen Goldsmith reportedly told the conference, pigs cant fly; it was not a natural incursion and law enforcement was only tipped off three years afterward, making it impossible to tell whether it was accidental. Jaspinder Komal, Canadas acting chief veterinary officer, said he wasnt surprised to hear those remarks. We have had incidents, where we found our system was working, Komal said, without specifying how many. I can talk about many examples of how they catch meat products, vials of viruses or bacteria. It happens all the time, but I think we are able to catch them through the system. Komal said border services entry card has been an effective tool to thwart biological threats, by asking travellers whether theyre bringing meat products, and if theyve recently been to a farm abroad. We know what the risks are, and were accordingly managing those risks, Komal said. Last month, Komal took part in a meeting of G7 countries chief veterinarians where they discussed antibacterial resistance and bird-flu risks. Next year is Canadas turn to lead the G7, and Komal said Canada will likely highlight both issues during its term. Canada is actually leading the pack in many ways, Komal said. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A recent story in the National Post revealed the disturbing fact that there are actually monuments in Canada that glorify Second World War Nazis. There is no denying the truth of these allegations, as they were accompanied by photographs of two offending statues. One is in Oakville, Ont., and it is dedicated to all those who served with the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. The second, located in Edmonton, Alta., honours Roman Shukhevych, the wartime leader of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The original source of these revelations was a series of tweets from the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. This led to an immediate response from the Canadian Ukrainian community, denouncing the Russians for attempting to incite divisiveness in Canada with fake news. We saw a similar response back in March, when it was first reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freelands maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was a Nazi collaborator during the Second World War. Instead of admitting this was true, Freeland attempted to portray herself as a victim of Russian disinformation. The problem with the simplistic blame Russia excuse, is that it does not change history. Freelands grandfather was indeed a Nazi collaborator who, as the editor of a Ukrainian-language newspaper, published anti-Semitic rants and encouraged volunteers to join the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division. This is the same unit that is immortalized and honoured by the statue in Oakville. Despite the chorus of Ukrainian apologists who claim otherwise, members of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division were no Boy Scouts. Notorious SS General Jurgen Stroop was one of the divisions early instructors. Stroop is perhaps best known for his annihilation of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Following Stroops example, the Galizien Division was involved in the punitive destruction of the Polish village of Huta Pieniacka in 1944. Men, women and children were executed in cold blood. One surviving witness described how children were killed by having their heads smashed against trees. The crime committed by the residents of Huta Pieniacka was that they had been harbouring Jews. The gory details of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien Divisions atrocities are catalogued in the book Hitlers Foreign Executioners: Europes Dirty Secrets, written by award-winning historian Christopher Hale. Then there is the controversy about the true nature of Roman Shukhevych, the Ukrainian wartime leader who is presently immortalized with a statue in Edmonton. To many Ukrainians, Shukhevych is a hero who only fought alongside the Germans initially as a matter of practicality, while in pursuit of an independent Ukraine. When the Nazi fortunes were reversed and the Soviets were again advancing into Ukrainian territory, Shukhevych did indeed turn the guns of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army on his erstwhile German allies. However, there remains the sticky issue of Shukhevychs role in the 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews in Lviv. At this juncture, Shukhevych was commanding a militia unit that he called the Nachtigall Battalion. Shukhevychs band of eager volunteers, working alongside German military troops, was responsible for the murder of between 4,000 and 6,000 Jews. Even if Shukhevych and his men later fought against the Germans, this cannot possibly exonerate him from his role in the Holocaust. While the Canadian government may wish to show absolute solidarity with Ukraine during this current crisis with Russia, we cannot do so by rewriting history. Freelands grandfather was a Nazi sympathizer. Shukhevych is a mass murderer and perpetrator of the Holocaust, even if he later presented himself as a simple patriot. The 14th Waffen SS Galizien Division was not a national liberation army, as Ukrainian apologists for the unit would have us believe. According to author Hale, Both the formation and the conduct of the Galizien reflect its origins in the German plan for mass murder. Selectively denying any aspect of the Holocaust is still denial. It is not fake news if it is true, and the Russians couldnt use the existence of Nazi monuments to embarrass Canada if such tributes did not actually exist. But they do. Scott Taylor is the founder and publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine. He is a bestselling author and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. City councillor Marty Morantz says someone needs to be held to account. Coun. Marty Morantz is right. Mr. Morantz (Charleswood/Tuxedo/Whyte Ridge), who chairs the citys public-works committee, was outraged this week by the revelation that planning for a proposed east-west corridor in his ward had taken an unexpected, and unwelcome, turn since an open house in January 2016, at which three options for the project were presented to area residents. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Coun. Marty Morantz The infrastructure enhancement, part of the southward expansion of the William R. Clement Parkway, involved a possible east-west corridor linking the parkway to Kenaston Boulevard. At the public briefing last year, the alternatives were discussed, and an option involving the widening/twinning of Wilkes Avenue was overwhelmingly favoured by residents. After that open-house session, WSP Canada the engineering consulting firm hired by the city to assist in developing the project apparently acted on its own initiative in developing a fourth option, involving a southwest extension of Sterling Lyon Parkway that would cut through several rural-like residential areas, and require expropriation and demolition of numerous homes. Mr. Morantz was not alone in his agitation. Dozens of Charleswood residents attended Tuesdays public-works committee meeting in a show of solidified opposition to the unexpected endorsement by civic administration of WSPs fourth option. What they heard from the councillor who represents their area must have been music to their ears. I want the individuals from the City of Winnipeg who are on this file, the engineers on this file, to be removed, Mr. Morantz told reporters during a break in the meeting. Circumventing the will of council is whats happened on this file. Mr. Morantz added that the unusual turn of events in the parkway expansion project had caused him, and the community he represents, to lose confidence in the citys engineering team. The end result of Tuesdays meeting was that the public-works committee voted unanimously to eliminate the controversial Sterling Lyon Parkway extension as an option. The citys chief administrative officer, Doug McNeil, admitted that major errors were made in the handling of this project. He also broke with council protocol by directly addressing the Charleswood residents in attendance: I do truly apologize on behalf of the public service, he told them. Given that the meeting ended with residents getting the relief theyd demanded, it would be easy to treat all that has occurred as bygones and move on with exploring the projects other options. But that would not be enough. Serious consideration must be given to the manner in which events unfolded between the January 2016 open house and Tuesdays committee meeting. The notion that this was simply an administrative error or a series of cross-jurisdictional oversights is a bit hard to accept; rather, this looks and feels like yet another manifestation of the eternal power struggle between the citys administrative and elected bodies. The expertise of the administrative side is essential to the successful completion of any civic undertaking. But council and, more particularly, the ratepayers its members represent must be given due and respectful consideration. The stomach-turning sleight of hand that occurred here cannot be allowed to repeat. Mr. McNeil would not say Tuesday if he would discipline city staff or dismiss WSP from the project. Mr. Morantz should make it his mission to ensure at least one of those things the removal of WSP happens, and should rightly demand that the other be given serious thought. Making clear the October 4 ambush that killed four Green Berets is to be utilized as a pretext for a major escalation of American military operations in the region, Nigerien Defense Minister Kalla Mountari requested that the US deploy armed drones against reputed militants. During an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Mountari said, I asked them some weeks ago to arm them (the drones) and use them as needed. When asked if Washington had granted the request, Mountari replied ominously, Our enemies will find out. Washington has claimed that the 800 US special forces personnel stationed in Niger are restricted to providing training and surveillance assistance to Nigerien forces and have no direct combat role. Shedding further light on the nature of the joint operation of October 4 conducted by the US elite troops with Nigerien forces, Mountari revealed that the team of 12 elite commandos and 30 Nigerien troops had been right up to the Mali border and had neutralized some bandits moments before the ambush took place. Further exposing Washingtons fraudulent claims of a non-combat role, Mountari said, They [U.S.-Nigerien contingent] came back to Niger, they greeted the population, they gathered intelligence and it was inside the country, when they didnt expect anything, that the attack happened. This damning admission by the top military official in Niger not only exposes as a lie Washingtons claim that its elite soldiers have no direct combat role, but illustrates clearly that the US is spearheading the military offensive in the region. Mountari corroborated this, saying, The Americans are not just exchanging information with us. They are waging war when necessary. We are working hand in hand. The clear proof is that the Americans and Nigeriens fell on the battlefield for the peace and security of our country. The public announcement of the request for drone strikes comes as the Trump administration has agreed to provide $60 million for a new UN-backed military offensive in West Africa, together with the completion of a $100 million drone facility in Agadez, Niger. When all these developments are taken together it must be presumed that a major US military onslaught is imminent in the resource rich region. The extent of US forces arrayed across the region has been highlighted by recent reports on the June murder of Green Beret Staff Sgt. Lance Melgar in a housing complex at the US embassy in neighboring Mali, suspected to have been carried out by two unidentified Navy Seals. The elite troops were part of the US counter-terrorism effort in Mali, charged with a mission similar to the one carried out by elite soldiers in Niger. Illustrating the murderous character of the type of operations carried out by the elite commandos deployed to the Sahel, Navy Seals were part of the special operation that conducted the 2011 raid on Osama Bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the Al-Qaeda leader was killed. The US soldiers deployed to West Africa have been mostly drawn from elite military units, such as Navy Seals and Green Berets, which carry out Washingtons most secret and illegal operations around the globe, including assassination, counter-terrorism raids, special reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, psychological operations, and training of foreign troops. On Monday in an appearance before the United Nations Security Council, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley officially pledged $60 million towards the UN-authorized G5 Sahel force, a joint US-French-led military unit consisting of 5,000 troops from the five West African countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. In June, France drafted a resolution before the UN Security Council asking the body to fund G5 Sahel, as well as requesting the council grant the five-nation force a sweeping mandate to use any means necessary to carry out its mission of neutralizing Islamist militants, drug smugglers, and human traffickers. The request for the designation of G5 Sahel as an offensive force bears similarity to the mandate granted to the UN Force Intervention Brigade formed in 2013 to neutralize the Rwandan M23 militia in eastern Congo. Washington, in agreeing to provide funding for the G5 Sahel, sharply opposed the French proposition to give the force full authorization, arguing that the resolution was overly broad and unnecessary. Fundamental to Washington s opposition is concern that France may gain a strategic advantage over the US in West Africa. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in announcing the funding pledge, elucidated Washingtons aim of geopolitical domination of the Sahel: Defeating terrorism depends on making sure terrorist organizations cannot have safe havens on any continent. This is a fight we must win, and these funds will play a key role in achieving that mission. Washingtons professed objective of fighting Islamist rebels deliberately leaves out the fact that these same Islamist militants wreaking havoc across the Sahel are the product of the US strategy of utilizing these forces as a proxy army in the 2011 US/NATO war against Libya. Following the shattering of Libyan society and the assassination of the countrys leader Muammar Gaddafi, these fighters scattered across northern Africa and throughout the Sahel. Behind the US escalation of its military offensive in the Sahel is Washingtons broader imperialist design of securing Africas vast economic resources for the American capitalist elite, in direct competition with European rivals who maintain significant economic interests in their former colonial holdings on the continent. Above all, Washingtons push for geostrategic dominance over West Africa is being driven by concerns over Chinas expanded economic influence in the region, which Washington perceives as an intolerable intervention which can only be countered by military might. Beijing secured agreements with the Nigerien government in 2008 to extract the countrys oil deposits, acquiring the Agadem block near the border with Chad. Under the terms of the agreement, Chinas state-owned China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) set out a plan for the construction of a refinery and a 2,000-mile pipeline for a capacity of 20,000 barrels per day. The author also recommends: Washington exploiting Green Beret deaths to escalate Africa intervention [27 October 2017] Why is the US at war in West Africa? [14 October 2017] Asked at televised briefing Tuesday for the number of US troops presently deployed in Syria, US Army Maj. Gen. James Jarrard, the commander of the Special Operations Joint Task Force deployed in both Syria and Iraq, told Pentagon reporters that the number was a little over 4,000. The figure took the assembled members of the media aback. It had recently been reported that over 1,000 troops were on the ground in the illegal US intervention in the Middle Eastern nation, twice the official ceiling set by the Obama administration and ostensibly maintained under President Donald Trump. In April, however, the Trump administration announced that it was turning over to the military brass the authority to set troop limits as it sees fit, allowing for rapid and unannounced escalations of the US interventions in the Middle East. Similar authority has been given to the generals in relation to the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan. When the reporter repeated the generals figure of 4,000 US troops in Syria and pointed out that previous reports had indicated closer to 1,000, the general stumbled briefly and, apparently receiving a rapid correction over his earpiece, said, Im sorry, I misspoke there; there are approximately 500 troops in Syria. What remains unanswered is whether the general just made a mistake, as the Pentagon later claimed, or inadvertently revealed that the actual number of US soldiers and Marines intervening in Syria has quadrupled in recent months. Previously there were credible estimates by military analysts that the number of troops had grown to 2,000. The additions to the official ceiling of 503 troops have been hard to conceal. US Marine artillery units have been deployed in Syria to aid in the decimation of Raqqa and other population centers. Army Rangers have been photographed storming across the north of the country in Stryker combat vehicles, while attack helicopters and their crews have been heavily involved in combat. Earlier this year, the Pentagon revealed that the real number of US troops in Afghanistan exceeded 11,000, rather than the 8,400 previously reported to the public in a deliberate undercount maintained with the complicity of the US media. The revelation came as the Trump administration gave the military brass free rein to escalate Washingtons longest war. While another 4,000 US troops are reportedly being sent, Trump and his defense secretary, former Marine Gen. James Mattis, have insisted that the exact number be kept secret so as not to tip off the enemy. The wall of secrecy surrounding the Afghanistan intervention grew higher this week, with the US militarys censoring of a quarterly report issued for the last nine years by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) to monitor the efficacy of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in the subjugation of the South Asian nation. This has coincided with the report that the CIA has been authorized for the first time to carry out drone strikes and organize hunt and kill militias, a shift of what had been military functions to the US intelligence agency. Frequently, the CIA carries out such operations using not only its own covert forces, but also military personnel. The sole motive for placing them under CIA control is to throw a mantle of secrecy over some of the most murderous actions being carried out against the Afghan people. Then there is Niger, where the deaths of four Green Berets in a fire fight early last month cast a bright light on what had previously been a war fought in the shadows, with some 1,000 US troops deployed in the central West African country and on its borders, an intervention that leading members of the US Senate claimed to have known nothing about. Whatever the sincerity of these claims, the politicians clearly understood that the war in Niger and the spreading tentacles of AFRICOM, the US militarys continental command, overseeing some 6,000 US troops spread across 24 African nations, were well-kept secrets as far as the American people are concerned. The Pentagon has made it clear that the military intervention in Africas Sahel region will only intensify. This was underscored by the statement of Nigers prime minister, Brigi Rafini, that his government is prepared to allow US drones to carry out armed attacks on the countrys territory. Behind the lies and secrecy about troop deployments from West Africa, through the Middle East and into South Asia there is the bigger lie as to the purpose of these interventions, all of which are justified in the name of a never-ending war on terror. The Syrian intervention exposes the utter duplicity of this claim. The fact is that Washington has been a chief sponsor of terrorism against the Syrian people, funneling over $1 billion in arms and money to Islamist militias linked to Al Qaeda in a bloody war for regime-change. Its key regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, poured in billions more to ignite a war that has killed hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees. The expansion of US deployments in Syria is directed not against ISIS, which has collapsed, but at seizing territory, particularly the oil fields of eastern Deir Ezzor province, in order to undermine the Assad government and combat the regional influence of its main allies, Iran and Russia. Similar considerations underlie the US intervention in Afghanistan, where American imperialism seeks to maintain its military hold over a strategic region bordering the oil-rich Caspian Basin, as well as the US presence in Niger. The latter is part of a broader attempt to counter Chinas rise as the African continents chief trading partner through the use of US military force. All of these regional conflicts have the potential of metastasizing into a full-blown world war pitting US imperialism against nuclear-armed Russia and China. Despite the feigned shock of American senators over American military operations in Niger, there is no appetite within Congress to assert that bodys constitutional power to declare war, something it long ago surrendered to the White House and the Pentagon. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Monday, the US defense secretary, Gen. Mad Dog Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made it clear that while Congress is welcome to pass a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to provide a legal fig leaf for Washingtons global wars and interventions, they have no problem continuing the fiction that the 2001 AUMF passed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks justifies all of these actions as well as any future acts of aggression. In the midst of a growing war danger, with the power to order military escalation placed firmly in the hands of a cabal of right-wing former and current generals, the Democratic Party has mounted no opposition to the Trump administration on the question of war. On the contrary, it has worked in tandem with the Pentagon and the CIA to wage a campaign of anti-Russia hysteria aimed at paving the way for a new and far more terrible conflagration. There exists within the US ruling establishment no constituency whatsoever for either reining in the US military or upholding fundamental democratic rights. The struggle against war and the threat of dictatorship requires the building of a new mass antiwar movement based on a socialist program to mobilize the working class internationally against the capitalist system. 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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 UPDATED with NBC and ABC programming: Facing what promises to be a hugely watched World Series Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros tonight on Fox, two rival networks are tweaking their schedules. CBS has opted to air repeats of SEAL Team in the 9 PM and 10 PM hours, preempting original episodes of SEAL Team at 9 PM and Criminal Minds at 10 PM. There is no change to Survivor, which airs a regularly scheduled new episode in its regular 8 PM timeslot. In the 9 PM hour, CBS will broadcast SEAL Teams Other Lives episode, which originally aired on October 4, and Boarding Party at 10 PM, which previously aired on October 11. In addition, NBC will air repeats of Law & Order: SVU at 9 PM and Chicago P.D. at 10 PM. The Blacklist will stay with an original episode in its 8 PM timeslot. ABC is staying the course, confirming it will make no changes in tonights primetime schedule. An original episode of The Goldbergs airs 8 PM, followed by Speechless at 8:30 PM, Modern Family at 9 PM, American Housewife at 9:30 PM and Designated Survivor at 10 PM. Down 3-2 in the series, the Los Angeles Dodgers battled back to top the Houston Astros 3-1 Tuesday night, forcing tonights Game 7. Last nights Game 6 scored a 15.1/26 in metered market results for Fox the best this years Fall Classic has done in early numbers and the best any Game 6 has done since 2009. Related stories Astros Beat Dodgers In Game 7 For First World Series Title 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi': Darkness Rises In New Teaser Shown During World Series CBS Developing 'True Conviction' Drama Based On Documentary From Tribeca, Seth Gordon & Erica Shelton Kodish TONIGHT: Since Trump and @PressSec cant seem to get a CLUE, weve got this one solved. Its Papadopolous, with the collusion, in the oval. pic.twitter.com/J8OjBl8BGL The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 1, 2017 The name George Papadopoulos has been on the tip of many tongues since the former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump was indicted Monday in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While Trump has attempted to distance himself from Papadopoulos by calling him a low level volunteer and someone who has already proven to be a liar, Stephen Colbert connected the dots for the president during his Late Show monologue Tuesday. Youre right, he did lie, Colbert said of Papadopoulos. To the FBI. To protect you [Trump]. Which is why he was arrested. He added, Now according to Trump, George is just some random young person hes barely heard of, like Tiffany (a sarcastic reference to Trumps younger daughter). But as Colbert noted, Trump has called Papadopoulos an excellent guy on record and been photographed in a meeting with him. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whom Colbert likened to an angry woman behind you at Target tried to explain that away earlier Tuesday, saying Papadopoulos volunteered on an advisory council that met only once. But Colbert wasnt buying it. Did you not go to health class? he asked. Collusion is like pregnancy: It only takes one time, girl. Protect yourself! A tense hostage standoff ended Tuesday night when a SWAT team stormed a Riverside, California, elementary school, fatally shooting a parent who had barricaded himself in a classroom with a 70-year-old teacher for nearly seven hours, PEOPLE confirms. The parent, Luvelle Kennon, 27, of Riverside, allegedly held first-grade teacher Linda Montgomery against her will in a classroom at Castle View Elementary School before members of the citys SWAT team used flash-bang grenades to enter the room and rescue her, Public Information Officer Ryan Railsback said at a press conference Tuesday night. Students were at lunch at the time, so no children were in the classroom with them, say police. 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. Kennon, whose daughter reportedly attends first grade at the school, was taken to a local hospital for his injuries and later died, Riverside Police say in a press release. The teacher is safe, say police. Railsback said he did not yet know what prompted the officer to shoot Kennon or what led the man to allegedly take the teacher hostage. It was not immediately clear whether he was armed. Authorities are also investigating whether Kennon had previous contact with the teacher, said Railsback. Montgomery was taken to a local hospital after suffering scrapes and abrasions when she was grabbed and pulled into an empty classroom, he said. She is OK, but traumatized, said police, local TV station KTLA 5 reports. Montgomery has taught at the school for decades, her daughter, Michelle Montgomery, told ABC 7. She loves teaching, she said. Kennons uncle told ABC 7 that family members took Kennons car keys away from him that morning after he suffered a breakdown but that he was still able to get to the school. He had a breakdown, and he relapsed again, Carl Jackson, who said he is Kennons uncle, told ABC 7. Thats all, hes not dangerous. Story continues Kennon is not a bad guy, never been in trouble, he said. Hes a good kid, just having an emotional breakdown. He doesnt have no access to weapons. Kennon was seen carrying a backpack but no weapons, say police. A School District on Edge for Hours The ordeal began shortly after 11 a.m., when police received a 911 call about a disturbance at the school, authorities say in the release. Kennon had allegedly forced his way past staff in the main office at Castle View Elementary School, said Riverside Unified spokesman Justin Grayson, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. PEOPLEs special edition True Crime Stories: 35 Real Cases That Inspired the Show Law & Order is on sale now. The parent did not check in with the front desk, which is required by the school, said Railsback. A male substitute teacher confronted Kennon, who responded by hitting the teacher in the face, said Railsback. The substitute teachers face was bloodied and his nose was broken, KABC reports. He was treated at a hospital, say police. This person is also a hero, Railsback said, according to ABC 7. He did everything he could to try to prevent the suspect from taking the teacher into the classroom and being held hostage, to the point where he got hit in the face pretty good. After barging past the front desk, Kennon then dragged Montgomery into an empty classroom, say police. Responding officers isolated the building where Kennon was holding the teacher and put the school in lockdown, before they evacuated students and staff from the school to a nearby park. During the standoff, crisis negotiators were able to communicate with Kennon but didnt know whether the teacher was safe, say police in the release. After hours of trying to convince the suspect to surrender, the release says, authorities made the decision to send a SWAT team into the room about 6 p.m. The team entered the classroom to rescue the teacher and an officer-involved shooting occurred, says the release. The suspect was shot and the teacher was successfully rescued. Police began releasing students to their parents after 1 p.m. Castle View Elementary School will remain closed for the rest of this week, and crisis counselors and support staff will be available for all students and staff affected by the incident. Police have arrested a suspected gunman who allegedly nonchalantly walked into a Walmart outside Denver on Wednesday night and opened fire on the customers, killing three people before fleeing the scene, PEOPLE confirms. Scott Ostrem was taken into custody hours after police launched a manhunt for him, the Thornton, Colorado, Police Department announced on Twitter Thursday. Police said the killings appear to be a random act of violence and not an act of terrorism. It is not immediately clear Thursday morning what charges Ostrem may face or if he has retained an attorney who could comment on his behalf. Two men and a woman were killed in the shooting, which occurred around 6 p.m. at the Walmart in Thornton, police said. The men died inside the store and the woman died later that night at a hospital, authorities said on Twitter. 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. Suspect in Walmart shooting Authorities at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart store in Thornton, Colorado, on Wednesday. Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila said Ostrem allegedly nonchalantly walked into the store and opened fire, the Associated Press reports. This is a very heinous act, Avila said. We dont know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act. No Walmart employees were hurt in the attack, a company official told local TV station KUSA. Nearly 50 witnesses were reportedly taken to a nearby police station in the wake of the shooting before being released. There was also a brief lockdown at a nearby medical center. Police investigate a shooting at a Walmart store in Thornton, Colorado, on Wednesday. One shopper, Aaron Stephens, told KUSA that he was at the self-checkout when he heard the gunfire. At first I thought it was a firecracker, he said. It sounded more it was louder I was like, what the hecks going on? Then I heard two more shots and I freaked out and hit the ground. He added: Employees were screaming. Customers were running like crazy. And I went out with everybody else. Guadalupe Perez told the AP that she heard the gunshots as she was in the store with her young son. She recalled hearing someone yell, Lets go. Lets go. Leave the groceries. You see all these things in the news and you go through it, its scary, she said. But thank God were okay and nothing happened to us. President Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort turned himself in to the FBI on Monday after being charged with money laundering, tax fraud and conspiracy against the United States. Manaforts alleged crimes have piqued the interest of almost everyone except apparently Fox News but especially computer security researchers who worked to uncover Manaforts James Bond-inspired email password: bond007. It wasnt hard for researchers to crack that case. According to Business Insider, the not-so-subtle password hints Manafort set up for his Adobe account included secret agent and James Bond. And since Manafort broke the cardinal rule of internet passwords using the same one for multiple accounts researchers were also able to access Manaforts Dropbox account using the same bond007 password. The puzzle first presented itself in February, after hackers broke into Manaforts daughters iPhone and published about 300,000 of her alleged text messages to the dark web. Among those messages was Manaforts former email address, uncovered by a security researcher who goes by the online name Krypt3ia. (Manafort told Politico in February that hackers had successfully broken into his daughters phone and confirmed the authenticity of some of the texts between him and her, but declined to comment on most of them.) Another researcher found that accounts using Manaforts email address were compromised in two major security hacks: the 2013 Adobe hack, and the 2012 Dropbox hack, Business Insider said. The Trump administration has sought to downplay Manaforts role in the 2016 campaign in the wake of his indictment, with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying Monday, Paul Manafort was brought in to lead the delegate process, which he did, and was dismissed not too long after that [in August]. But the leaked text messages sent and received by Manaforts daughter Andrea Manafort Shand suggest that her fathers influence with Trump extended far beyond what he and his administration have claimed. Story continues Even after Manafort stepped down from the campaign last August amid reports of his ties to Russia, Manafort Shand told friends that her father was still one of Trumps closest allies. As I suspected, my dad resigned from being the public face of the campaign but is still very much involved behind the scenes, Manafort Shand texted a friend in August. He felt he was becoming a distraction and that would ultimately take a toll on the campaign. Manafort Shand also described her father as being super tight with the entire Trump family and one of the worlds greatest manipulators. Like he just tells you the sky is green over and over, she said. And eventually you are like is it? Its confidence. When you say something unwaveringly, people start to believe it. I mean yea that got Trump where he is today, a friend replied. Yup. Perfect allies, Manafort Shand agreed. Trump probably has more morals than my dad. Which is really just saying something about my dad. My dad is a psycho!!! Manafort Shand also claimed that her fathers role in Trumps campaign was generally much greater than the public was led to believe and that Manafort was responsible for choosing Mike Pence as Trumps vice president and for hiring Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. Manafort Shand told sister Jessica Manafort that their father was brought on to be convention manager, but really it was always to run st. Manafort pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday. He was released on $10 million bond and placed on house arrest, per the Associated Press. Manaforts lawyer, Keith Downing, told reporters outside the courthouse that theres no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. The Old Vic, a London theater that Kevin Spacey ran as artistic director for more than a decade, released a statement on Tuesday saying it was deeply dismayed by the allegations of sexual misconduct recently made against the actor. The Old Vic would like to respond to recent media reports by making it clear that we are deeply dismayed to hear the allegations levied against Kevin Spacey, who was Artistic Director from 2004-2015, the theater said in a statement posted to its website. The theater also opened a confidential email tip line for employees and associates of the theater to file any complaints about his behavior while running the theater, promising that any experience shared will be treated in the utmost confidence and with sensitivity. Also Read: 'House of Cards' Suspends Production on Season 6 Amid Kevin Spacey Scandal Inappropriate behaviour by anyone working at The Old Vic is completely unacceptable, the theater continued. We aim to foster a safe and supportive environment without prejudice, harassment or bullying of any sort, at any level Any behaviour we become aware of which contravenes these goals will not be tolerated. The statement comes a day after The Old Vic was forced to defend itself by a claim from Royal Court Theatres Victoria Featherstone that people had concerns about Spacey during his time as artistic director. Also Read: 'House of Cards' Spinoff in Works Amid Kevin Spacey Sexual Misconduct Accusation During Kevin Spaceys tenure as artistic director no complaints were made against him. No complaints have been made since he left, an Old Vic spokesperson told the Evening Standard. On Sunday, Star Trek: Discovery star and Broadway veteran Anthony Rapp said Spacey tried to seduce him three decades ago, when Rapp was 14. Spacey has apologized but said he does not remember the events in question. Related stories from TheWrap: 'House of Cards' Spinoff in Works Amid Kevin Spacey Sexual Misconduct Accusation Zachary Quinto, George Takei Join Critics of Kevin Spacey Merging Apology and Coming Out TV Academy Revokes Kevin Spacey's Emmy Founders Award Amid Scandal Tonights episode of NBCs breakout drama This Is Us is being edited to remove a line referring to Kevin Spacey in the wake of recent sexual assault allegations made against the Oscar-winning actor. In the original version of The 20s episode, Kevins roommate mentions hes booked a role on a movie starring Spacey. The line was written and shot weeks ago, before the allegations against Spacey surfaced. The reference is being removed and replaced, Deadline has confirmed. The fallout against Spacey has continued since Sunday when Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp accused the House of Cards star of making sexual advances against him in 1986 when he was 14 years old. On Monday, Netflix announced that House of Cards would end with its upcoming sixth season. Today, Netflix and series producer MRC said that filming on the upcoming sixth season of the Washington, D.C.-set drama was suspended indefinitely to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew. The script change was reported first by TVLine. Related stories More Men Allege Kevin Spacey Sexual Misconduct; Including Actor, Filmmaker Kevin Spacey MasterClass Dropped From Online Instructional Video Hub 'Bad Boys' TV Spinoff Starring Gabrielle Union Lands At NBC With Big Commitment Photo credit: Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved From Esquire Eight people are dead and at least 12 injured after a terror attack in Lower Manhattan. A rented truck entered a bike path and drove for approximately 14 blocks, striking pedestrians along the way. Officials identified the driver as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov. Saipov immigrated to the U.S. legally from Uzbekistan in 2010, had a Florida driver's license and may have been living in New Jersey. A New York City police officer shot Saipov in the abdomen. He is in critical condition but expected to survive. A man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial on Tuesday, killing at least eight and injuring 12 in what the mayor called "a particularly cowardly act of terror." The driver was shot in the abdomen by police after jumping out of the truck with what turned out to be a fake gun in each hand and shouting what witnesses said was "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," authorities said. The man underwent surgery and was in critical condition but was expected to survive. Officials who weren't authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity identified the attacker as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov and said he is from Uzbekistan and came to the U.S. legally in 2010. The officials said Saipov has a Florida driver's license and may have been staying in New Jersey, and a family friend described roots he had in Ohio, where he lived years ago and was a commercial truck driver. The driver in Tuesday's attack barreled along the bike path in a rented Home Depot truck for the equivalent of about 14 blocks, or around eight-tenths of a mile, before slamming into a small yellow school bus. The mayhem and the burst of police gunfire set off panic in the neighborhood and left the pavement strewn with mangled bicycles and bodies that were soon covered with sheets. Video shows broken bikes on NYC bike path after driver made "purposeful turn," crashing into people; at least 7 dead https://t.co/kcQD2fXckk pic.twitter.com/YhtFNSwC0P - ABC News (@ABC) October 31, 2017 "I saw a lot of blood over there. A lot of people on the ground," said Chen Yi, an Uber driver. Story continues Eugene Duffy, a chef at a waterfront restaurant, said: "So many police came, and they didn't know what was happening. People were screaming." Police closed off streets across the western edge of lower Manhattan along the Hudson River, and officers rushed into the neighborhood just as people were preparing for Halloween festivities, including the big annual parade through Greenwich Village. A police bomb squad scoured the truck but found no explosives. "This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them," Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "So many police came, and they didn't know what was happening. People were screaming." New York and other cities around the globe have been on high alert against attacks by extremists in vehicles. The Islamic State group has been exhorting its followers to mow down people, and England, France and Germany have seen deadly vehicle attacks in the past year or so. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a "lone wolf" attack and said there was no evidence to suggest it was part of a wider plot. The city's police commissioner, James O'Neill, said a statement the driver made as he got out of the truck and the method of attack led police to conclude it was a terrorist act. On Twitter, President Donald Trump called it "another attack by a very sick and deranged person" and declared, "NOT IN THE U.S.A.!" While police did not specifically blame the Islamic State group for the New York bloodshed, Trump railed against the extremist group, tweeting: "We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!" Records show Saipov was a commercial truck driver who formed a pair of businesses in Ohio after moving to the U.S. The first business, Sayf Motors Inc., used the address of a family friend near Cincinnati with whom Saipov had stayed for a couple of weeks after his arrival in the country. The second, Bright Auto LLC, used an address near Cleveland. A trucking industry website listed Saipov at a Paterson, New Jersey, address that authorities were searching Tuesday night. Court records related to trucking-related infractions list Saipov with addresses in Paterson and the Cleveland suburbs. CBS New York said Saipov was also an Uber driver in New Jersey. Photo credit: St. Charles County Department of Corrections via KMOV The family friend with whom Saipov stayed in Ohio, Dilnoza Abdusamatova, told The Cincinnati Enquirer Saipov was "really calm" and worked hard. "He always used to work," Abdusamatova said. "He wouldn't go to parties or anything. He only used to come home and rest and leave and go back to work." Police said Saipov rented the truck at about 2 p.m. in New Jersey, entering the bike path about an hour later on West Street a few blocks from the new World Trade Center, the site of the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history. The truck then turned at Chambers Street, hitting the school bus and injuring two adults and two children. A paintball gun and a pellet gun were found at the scene, police said. At least two covered-over bodies could be seen lying on the bike path, and the front end of the truck was smashed in, as was the side of the school bus. Two law enforcement officials said a note was recovered inside the truck. One official said the note was handwritten in a foreign language, possibly Arabic. The contents were being investigated, but the officials said the document supported the belief the act was terrorism. Graphic Content: Footage from a student of the scene of the truck crash in Lower Manhattan. Video: Tawhid Kabir https://t.co/0BrRAxK3YF pic.twitter.com/gYQAn9xeQH - New York Magazine (@NYMag) October 31, 2017 Tom Gay, a school photographer, heard people saying there was an accident and went down to West Street, where a woman came around the corner shouting, "He has a gun! He has a gun!" Gay said he stuck his head around the corner and saw a slender man in a blue track suit running on West Street holding a gun. He said a heavyset man was chasing him. He said he heard five or six shots, and the man in the tracksuit fell to the ground, gun still raised in the air. He said a man came over and kicked the gun out of his hand. Argentina's foreign ministry said five of the dead hailed from that country. Belgian officials said one of the dead was from there. The city's Halloween parade went on as scheduled after the attack, but security was increased, with extra officers, heavy-weapons teams and sand trucks parked as protective barriers along the route. A Home Depot Inc. spokesman said the company, based in Atlanta, was "fully cooperating" with law enforcement in the truck attack investigation. ___ Colleen Long and Jake Pearson are Associated Press writers. AP writers Sadie Gurman in Washington, Tom Hays and Adam Geller in New York, Michael Balsamo in Los Angeles and Michael Sisak in Philadelphia contributed to this story. You Might Also Like WASHINGTON Lawmakers made public a trove of Russian-backed social media ads designed to sway opinion and sow discord, primarily during the 2016 presidential election. The release of the ads by House Democrats came as representatives for Facebook, Google, and Twitter faced their third hearing this week on what the companies discovered about the extent of Russian influence on their platforms, and what they plan to do about it in the future. Some of the ads covering topics like Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders, Islam, and illegal immigration were shown during earlier hearings. They had been supplied by Facebook, but lawmakers made only a few public until Wednesday. A Facebook ad, from an account Stop A.I., shows a picture of a woman in a burka and announces, Religious face coverings are putting American people at huge risk! We must not sacrifice national security to satisfy the demands of minorities. All face covering should be banned in every state across America. Another from the same account urges, Kick Sharia out of America! The spots show the sophistication in mimicking ongoing movements, like an account called Black Matters. That spot drew 224,000 likes. Another faux group, called Defend the 2nd, promoted the right to bear arms. Another, from a group called Being Patriotic, was for the rights of police officers. A petition campaign, from an organization called Donald Trump America, calls for disqualification and removal of Hillary Clinton from the presidential ballot as dynastic succession of the Clinton family in American politics breaches the core democratic principles laid out by our Founding Fathers. It included a link to the White Houses We the People petition site. Other spots are somewhat puzzling, like an ad featuring a buff Bernie Sanders from the group LGBT United. It pitched Buff Bernie: A coloring Book for Berniacs. Story continues A fake group called Heart of Texas sponsored a spot on the border patrol, with the message, Thanks to Obamas and Hillarys policy, illegals come here because they wait for amnesty promised. The wrong course had been chosen by the American government, but all those politicians are too far from the border to see who actually sneaks through it illegally. An Instagram sponsored post from a group called American veterans attacks Killary Clinton, while a group called Army of Jesus had a Facebook ad in which Jesus and Satan are arm wrestling. The message from Satan: If I win, Clinton wins! From Jesus: Not if I can help it! It urges users to press like to help Jesus win! Related stories Facebook Rakes in Record Profit, But Zuckerberg Cautions Fighting Abuse Will Be Costly Dianne Feinstein to Internet Firms: 'I Don't Think You Get It' on Russian Influence Senators Press Facebook on What It Did to Counter Russian Influence on 2016 Election Subscribe to Variety Newsletters and Email Alerts! UPDATE: Nov. 2 A man who wished to remain anonymous says Kevin Spacey attempted to rape him when he was 14 years old, New York Magazine reported Thursday. The man said that Spacey, 24 at the time, told me how he was in love with me before he went to the actors apartment and began a sexual relationship that comprised several encounters. Spacey attempted unwanted penetrative sex in their last encounter, he said, and it ended when the teenager ran outside. I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator, the man told New York Magazine. PREVIOUSLY: Several men have now shared stories of being sexually harassed by Kevin Spacey after Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp came forward with his own story earlier this week. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Rapp said that the House of Cards star invited him to a party and made a sexual advance toward him on a bed in the 1980s. At the time, Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. In response, Spacey posted a widely criticized apology to Twitter on Monday that contained his first public declaration of being gay. On Tuesday, film director Tony Montana told Radar Online that Spacey groped him in 2003. HuffPost confirmed the story with Montana. He grabbed me very hard, Montana told HuffPost. The Overnight documentarian said he was ordering a drink at a bar in 2003 when Spacey put an arm around him and made a joke about the title of a movie hed recently been in. Then he tried to convince Montana to leave with him, the filmmaker said. Montana told Radar Spacey grabbed my whole package. This designates ownership, Montana recalled the actor telling him. Montana said that Spacey then followed him into the bathroom, after which Montana told the actors friends to take him home, and the group ended up leaving. Montana hopes that sharing his story has an impact not just regarding issues of sexual harassment, but people using power in other threatening manners in Hollywood. I would hope that is going to lessen, if not go away, he told HuffPost. I hope that this isnt just a phase, it isnt just a cycle thats going to come and go. Story continues On Wednesday, a man who wished to remain anonymous shared another story, on BBC 2s Victoria Derbyshire program, saying that he spent a weekend at the actors New York City home as a 17-year-old in the mid-80s. Spacey allegedly pressured the teen into sharing his bed and was sobbing when his guest refused the offer. In the morning, I woke up and [Spaceys] head was on my stomach and his arms were wrapped around my torso, very affectionately, I would suppose, the man said. He certainly wasnt aggressive, but it was affectionate and certainly not something I was comfortable with as a heterosexual male. The two had met at a summer theater program. Spacey would have been in his mid-20s at the time. I was uncomfortable at best, traumatized at worst, the man said, per the BBC. Another story about the House of Cards star appeared in the British tabloid The Sun on Tuesday. The publication reported that Spacey exposed himself in 2010 to a man named Daniel Beal, who was working as a bartender at an English hotel. The allegations have been enough to concern Londons Old Vic theater, where Spacey served as artistic director from 2004 to 2015. While the theater claims no complaints were made against Spacey during his tenure there, it released a statement Tuesday expressing its deep dismay about its former employees alleged misbehavior. We aim to foster a safe and supportive environment without prejudice, harassment or bullying of any sort, at any level, the statement read. Old Vic has opened a tip line, confidential@oldvictheatre.com, for those who have been involved with its productions to share any complaints anonymously. However, a report published Wednesday in the Guardian claims that a number of people have contacted the publication with stories about misbehavior by Spacey during his time as artistic director at the Old Vic. Citing stories by one anonymous and one named source, the publication accused the theater of ignoring past complaints. According to Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos, unwanted sexual advances toward younger men were common when Spacey was at the Old Vic. In a Spanish-language Facebook post shared Monday, Cavazos said he personally experienced behavior that was on the borderline of being considered assault. Spacey would allegedly make his advances after inviting younger actors to meet with him to talk about their careers setting up Champagne picnics on stage as a meeting spot or else he would approach men at bars. Those of us who knew him in London when he was director of the Old Vic Theatre know that there will be many more victims who will dare to tell their stories in the next days and weeks, he wrote. I wouldnt be surprised if the numbers were similar to those of Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein, the now former head of The Weinstein Company, stands accused by more than 50 women of sexual harassment and assault. Netflix, home of House of Cards, announced this week that the upcoming sixth season of the fan-favorite series would be its last. Production has been suspended while executives address any concerns from cast or crew. Do you have a story to share? Email sara.boboltz@huffpost.com. Also on HuffPost LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 13: Dwayne Johnson, Lauren Hashian and daughter Jasmine Johnson attend a ceremony honoring him with a star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 13, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by JB Lacroix/ WireImage) WESTWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 13: Will Smith and Jaden Smith attend the Premiere Of Netflix's 'Bright' at Regency Village Theatre on December 13, 2017 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 13: Annette Bening (L) and Warren Beatty attend the Museum of the Moving Image Salute to Annette Bening at 583 Park Avenue on December 13, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 13: Alec Baldwin (L) and Colin Kaepernick attend Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Hosts Annual Ripple Of Hope Awards Dinner on December 13, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Ripple Of Hope Awards) HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 12: Actress Rebel Wilson arrives for the premiere of Universal Pictures' 'Pitch Perfect 3' held at The Dolby Theater on December 12, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images) HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 12: Actress Hailee Steinfeld arrives for the Premiere Of Universal Pictures' 'Pitch Perfect 3' held at The Dolby Theater on December 12, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images) HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 11: (L-R) Nick Jonas, Jack Black, Dwayne Johnson, and Kevin Hart attend the premiere of Columbia Pictures' 'Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle' on December 11, 2017 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 11: Sienna Miller attends the New York premiere of 'Phantom Thread' After Party at Harold Pratt House on December 11, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Bruinooge/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) BEVERLY HILLS, CA - DECEMBER 11: (L-R) Actors Sharon Stone, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Bell and Alfre Woodard attend Moet & Chandon Toasts The 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards Nominations at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on December 11, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Moet & Chandon ) NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 08: Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron attend 'The Greatest Showman' World Premiere aboard the Queen Mary 2 at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal on December 8, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 07: Gal Gadot attends the 2017 GQ Men of the Year party at Chateau Marmont on December 7, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for GQ) LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 06: Zac Efron seen at Capital Radio Studios on December 6, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Neil Mockford/GC Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 05: Jennifer Aniston is seen at 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on December 05, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by RB/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images) DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - DECEMBER 07: Cate Blanchett attends the IWC Photocall on day two of the 14th annual Dubai International Film Festival held at the Madinat Jumeriah Complex on December 7, 2017 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for DIFF,) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 06: Demi Lovato attends Refinery29 29Rooms Los Angeles: Turn It Into Art at ROW DTLA on December 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Araya Diaz/WireImage) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 06: Janelle Monae attends Refinery29 29Rooms Los Angeles: Turn It Into Art at ROW DTLA on December 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 06: Sterling K. Brown (L) and Kathryn Hahn at The Hollywood Reporter's 26th Annual Women In Entertainment Breakfast presented in partnership with FIJI Water at Milk Studios on December 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for FIJI Water) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 06: Angelina Jolie speaks onstage at The Hollywood Reporter's 2017 Women In Entertainment Breakfast at Milk Studios on December 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images) Actress Jennifer Lawrence attends The Hollywood Reporter 2017 Women In Entertainment Breakfast, on December 6, 2017, in Hollywood, California. / AFP PHOTO / VALERIE MACON (Photo credit should read VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images) BEVERLY HILLS, CA - DECEMBER 05: Actor Ashley Judd speaks onstage at The Paley Center for Media on December 5, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 05: Sebastian Stan, Craig Gillespie, Allison Janney, Steven Rogers, Bryan Unkeless, Tonya Harding, Ricky Russert and Margot Robbie attend NEON and 30WEST Present the Los Angeles Premiere of 'I, Tonya' Supported By Svedka on December 5, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for NEON) NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 05: Diane Kruger discusses 'In The Fade' with the Build Series at Build Studio on December 5, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Roy Rochlin/WireImage) MADRID, SPAIN - DECEMBER 04: Actress Jessica Chastain attends 'Molly's Game' Madrid premiere at Callao Cinema on December 4, 2017 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Pablo Cuadra/WireImage) MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - DECEMBER 03: Actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis arrive at the 2018 Breakthrough Prize at NASA Ames Research Center on December 3, 2017 in Mountain View, California. (Photo by Miikka Skaffari/Getty Images,) WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA - DECEMBER 04: Reese Witherspoon (R) and Ava Phillippe attend Molly R. Stern X Sarah Chloe Jewelry Collaboration Launch Dinner on December 4, 2017 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Sarah Chloe Jewelry) LOS ANGELES, CA - DECEMBER 04: Chris Pratt is seen at 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' on December 04, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by BG017/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images) BEVERLY HILLS, CA - DECEMBER 03: Julianne Hough attends The Trevor Project's 2017 TrevorLIVE LA on December 3, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by JB Lacroix/ WireImage) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 27: Armie Hammer and Saoirse Ronan poses with her award at the 2017 Gotham Awards sponsored by Greater Ft. Lauderdale Tourism at Cipriani, Wall Street on November 27, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 27: Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman attend the GreenSlate Greenroom at The 2017 Gotham Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on November 27, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for GreenSlate) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 27: Robert Pattinson and James Franco attend IFP's 27th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on November 27, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images) NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 27: Actor Timothee Chalamet is seen Downtown on November 27, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Raymond Hall/GC Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 27: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during an official photocall to announce the engagement of Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle at The Sunken Gardens at Kensington Palace on November 27, 2017 in London, England. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been a couple officially since November 2016 and are due to marry in Spring 2018. (Photo by Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage) TOKYO, JAPAN - NOVEMBER 27: Actress Jessica Chastain attrends the press conference for 'The Zookeeper's Wife' at Roppongi Hills on November 27, 2017 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Jun Sato/WireImage) SAN JOSE, CA - NOVEMBER 14: Katy Perry performs during her 'Witness' tour at SAP Center on November 14, 2017 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 24: Actors Jane Krakowski and Maya Rudolph attend FOX's 'A Christmas Story Live!' Lighting Event featuring the leg lamp at The Grove on November 24, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images) Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Barack Obama is a good sport, so naturally he's spent years putting up with fans who wanted to take selfies with him. He smiled that gorgeous smile and stared into the many phone screens held up in the air by strangers' arms ... but he doesn't really like selfies, okay? As the former POTUS kicked off the first day of The Obama Foundation Summit a Chicago gathering of inspiring civic leaders like Prince Harry and Lin-Manuel Miranda USA Today reported that he made a very bold move and straight up banned selfies with him and his wife, Michelle. SEE ALSO: Barack Obama has reportedly been called for jury duty "It may seem trivial, but it's not," Obama said about his dislike of selfies. "I say this because ... one of the weird things about becoming president is I found that people were no longer looking me in the eye and shaking my hand." This isn't the first time Obama has spoken up about selfies and trolled millennials for their obsessive cell phone usage. During a speech at D.C.'s Benjamin Banneker Academic High School last year, Obama took to the stage and joked that those who had to wait for him were so lucky they had their phones to keep them company. While flawlessly impersonating a millennial, he jokingly composed a text to a friend saying "he was right there, girl I couldn't believe it" and then lifted his arm to mimic taking a selfie. We get you, Barry. In addition to being extremely impersonal, the sheer act of taking a selfie can look extraordinarily dumb Earlier this year when discussing social media at the University of Chicago, Obama also brought up safety concerns related to sharing selfies online, advising people to be more cautious. "If we had pictures of everything Ive done when I was in high school, I probably wouldn't have been President of the United States," Obama joked. "So I would advise all of you to be a little more circumspect about your selfies and what you take pictures of." Story continues As the father of two teenage daughters, Obama probably already deals with his fair share of dad selfies, so maybe cut the guy a break next time you see him and give him a nice, respectful look in the eyes instead. WATCH: Celebs are sharing embarrassing puberty throwback pics for a good cause Michael Jacksons Thriller is on nearly every curated Halloween party playlist, so it was only a matter of time before the song manifested itself at the ultimate Halloween bash. Heidi Klum and guests recreated Michael Jacksons Thriller video for her annual Halloween blowout. (Photo: Getty Images) On Oct. 31, Halloween queen Heidi Klum dressed as the werewolf in the Thriller music video replete with a cast of zombies to attend her 18th annual eponymous soiree, held at the Moxy Hotel in New York City and sponsored in part by SVEDKA Vodka. Klum was unrecognizable to those in attendance, including this style writer who unknowingly walked right beside her. Heidi Klum, right, and designer Zac Posen (Photo: Getty Images) Given the hype around the party, all the regular people (see: non-celebrities) made major efforts to arrive in their Halloween best. There was no shortage of mermaids and mermen, glamorous skeletons, and Maleficents, dressed so convincingly it was as though they walked off a Hollywood set. Heather Graham in Dia de los Muertos finery. (Photo: Getty Images) Of course, the non-celebrities were roped off from the VIP section, where DJ Questlove reigned, guarded meticulously by security. Heidi Klum, left, with guests Mike Myers and Nick Cannon. (Photo: Getty Images) Also seen: Mike Myers in military garb, his Austin Powers co-star Heather Graham in Dia de los Muertos garb, designer Zac Posen as a zombie, and Nick Cannon as a Black Panther. Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty. Alexandra Mondalek is a writer for Yahoo Style + Beauty. Follow her on Twitter @amondalek. A father held an elementary school teacher hostage in a classroom for 7 hours before being shot by police A Riverside, California elementary school was the scene of a hostage crisis Tuesday afternoon and into Tuesday evening. A disturbed father held a teacher hostage in a classroom for seven hours. SWAT officers used flash-bang grenades to save the teacher and the man ended up being shot during the rescue. The father, who later died from his gunshot wound, was identified as 27-year-old Luvelle Kennon. The 70-year-old teacher, Linda Montgomery, fortunately only endured scratches from when pulled into the classroom. Police are not yet clear why Kennon was shot during the rescue mission. Kennon, who has a daughter in first grade, entered the school at around 11:15 a.m. Tuesday morning. He did not follow Castle View Elementary School protocol by signing in at the main office. According to Riverside Unified spokesman Justin Grayson, Kennon forced his way past staff members and proceeded to enter the building. Officer Ryan Railsback stated in a press conference on Tuesday that a male teacher tried to stop Kennon, but the confrontation resulted in Kennon hitting the teacher in the face, ultimately breaking the teachers nose. Kennon then allegedly grabbed Montgomery and barricaded the two of them in an empty classroom. His motive still remains unclear, and police are unsure if Kennon was armed at the time. According to People.com, Kennons family reportedly took away his car keys that morning after he suffered an emotional breakdown. From Prince Harry's Invictus Games to Prince William's hospital work, it's clear that the British royal family is serious about their charitable causes, and Kate Middleton is no exception. The Duchess of Cambridge spent Wednesday hosting a roundtable at Kensington Palace, and the topic at hand was mental health for mothers. At least 20% of women are affected by mental health problems during pregnancy or in the first year following the birth of a child. Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) November 1, 2017 The Duchess of Cambridge today hosted a roundtable discussion on maternal mental health at Kensington Palace with The Royal Foundation. pic.twitter.com/LFMzAhpvSu Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) November 1, 2017 That number is no small matter, and Middleton knows it. RELATED: Prince Harry Learned to Understand the Monarchy by Watching Princess Diana She has spoken out about the importance of maternal health before, and during this talk with experts from different universities, charities, and children and family centers, she was reportedly "keen to understand" the nuances of mental health even better. The Duchess is keen to develop an understanding of the issues surrounding maternal mental health, and to learn what support is available. Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) November 1, 2017 "If left untreated, maternal mental health problems can have significant and long lasting effect on the woman and her family," Kensington Palace said. We're happy to see Middleton stepping up for those who need it. The Black River Falls High School Student Senate and Waksik Wacek Club recently passed a resolution in support of the November designation of Native American Heritage Month. The designation of November as National Native American Heritage month goes back to 1990 and is meant to raise awareness of the history and culture of American Indian people. The Black River Falls High School has a significant Native American student population and the History and Social Studies Department has worked for years to more naturally integrate this part of history into the curriculum. "Monthly designations such as this are good if they promote greater awareness and understanding," according to history teacher Paul Rykken. "On the other hand, we feel strongly that the many diverse voices that make up the American past be brought into our classes throughout the school year." The Student Senate is in its 14th year and acts as a voice for students. 34 students were elected to the Senate in September under a new organizational structure. Each student represents their advising group. The Waksik Wacek Club is a Native student organization that meets throughout the year. The term "Waksik Wacek" is Ho-Chunk. Last year, the Student Senate changed its Constitution to include Waksik Wacek as a parallel body, similar to the "government-to-government" relationship between Tribal Nations and the U.S. Government. Arielle Whiteeagle is this year's president, Kyrah Holata is vice president and Alena Cornelius is serving as secretary. Minnie Lonetree, Rineah Williams and Naomi Falcon will all be assisting with communications. Student Senate officers include President Nolan Plaisance, Vice-President Kim Leadholm, communications director Sonja VanAuken and secretary Maggie Roou. Eli Youngthunder and Paul Rykken co-advise both organizations. Desiree Pettibone and Forrest Funmaker also assist with Waksik Wacek. Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia in the ensemble drama This is Us - (Channel 4 images must not be altered or manipulated in any way) Channel 4 Picture Publicity, Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2TX A reference to Kevin Spacey has been removed from a forthcoming episode of NBC drama This Is Us, in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct levelled at the Oscar-winning actor. In the unedited version of this Tuesday's episode, one character said he had been given a role in a film starring Spacey, but according to film news site Deadline Hollywood, the line was "removed and replaced" prior to broadcast. Actor Anthony Rapp, 46, has claimed Spacey attempted to "seduce" him at a party in the Eighties, when he was 14 years old. Spacey has said he does "not remember the encounter" in a statement posted on Twitter. Spacey, 58, added: "If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour." Filmmaker Tony Montana has also claimed the actor "groped" his crotch while intoxicated in 2013. Spacey has yet to offer a public statement in response to this second allegation, and as of Tuesday evening was unavailable for comment. Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright in Netflix's House of Cards Credit: AP This Is Us is not the first television show to have been affected by these allegations. Yesterday, production was halted indefinitely on the sixth series of Netflix's political drama House of Cards, in which Spacey stars. The actor was set to receive an International Emmy this month for his role in the show, but the honour has been rescinded "in light of recent events", according to a statement released by the awarding body. Rapp and Montana's claims follow a recent spate of sexual harassment allegations aimed at powerful Hollywood figures, sparked by last month's New York Times investigation into disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein. In recent weeks, both Weinstein and former Amazon Studios head Roy Price have lost their jobs amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale are among the high-profile actors who have claimed to be personally harassed by Weinstein, who is currently under investigation by Scotland Yard for seven allegations of sexual assault. What we know about the driver of the truck that killed eight people in New York City In the immediate aftermath of the truck crash that killed eight people and injured nearly a dozen more in New York City, law enforcement officials have begun investigating the suspect behind the attack to learn more about his motives and potential links to terrorist groups. The suspect has been identified as a 29-year-old man named Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, according to reports, and it seems Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan in Central Asia, has known addresses in both New Jersey and Florida, according to CBS News justice and homeland security correspondent Jeff Pegues. Saipov reportedly moved to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010, and has been a truck driver and an Uber driver in the recent past. He doesnt appear to have an extensive criminal history, with CBS News finding only four traffic tickets to his name. A spokesperson for Uber confirmed to CBS News that Saipov has been banned from the app, though he did successfully pass a background check to become a driver. Investigators are looking into whether Saipov has links to wider groups within ISIS or if he acted as a lone wolf, and they are also looking into his residences, vehicles, and electronic devices for signs of plans leading up to the attack. According to CNN, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said today that it appears that Saipov was radicalized domestically, adding, The evidence shows and again, its only several hours, and the investigation is ongoing but that after he came to the United States is when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics. We have no evidence yet of associations or a continuing plot or associated plots, and our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he himself performed, Cuomo continued. Law enforcement officials told CNN that Saipov has been linked to social media accounts that contain ISIS-related material. Investigators have already begun searching Saipoys residences in both New Jersey and Florida. Story continues NYC attack Saipov attempted to flee the scene but was shot in the abdomen by NYPD officer Ryan Nash. He underwent surgery last night and is reportedly cooperating with officials. Saijpoy is reportedly married to a woman named Nozima Odilova, a fellow Uzbek, and they have been married since 2013. They married in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where Saipov has also reportedly spent time living in recent years. While this is all the information known so far, were sure more information about Saipov will be released as its uncovered. Mary Kate Ashley Olsen bridesmaids friends wedding It takes two or in this case, 18. Dynamic duo Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen once again served as bridesmaids on Saturday, July 22, this time celebrating a fellow fashion industry friends nuptials in New Yorks Hudson Valley region. The Elizabeth and James designers, 31, managed to infuse their cool sense of style into a bridal party of 18 ladies. The maids all wore derivatives of floral prints and posed for group snapshots on the steps of a home that included perfectly manicured hedges and bright floral displays. Ashley looked festive in a printed and sleeved black dress while her sibling sported her signature look in an oversize dress. Mary-Kate accessorized her outfit with a flower crown and silk green flats. We did it ! #mrandmrsflames A post shared by Sarah Staudinger (@staud) on Jul 22, 2017 at 3:50pm PDT When the bride says wear floral, you wear floral. #mrandmrsflames A post shared by kylemilleryoga (@kylemilleryoga) on Jul 22, 2017 at 4:29pm PDT Flower girls we love you #mrandmrsflames A post shared by JORDAN KLEIN (@jordanmollyklein) on Jul 23, 2017 at 10:40am PDT When your wedding vision is George Harrison finding God in India #mrandmrsflames A post shared by @lilywaronker on Jul 23, 2017 at 8:25am PDT The bride, Gomelsky creative director Cassie Coane, married Jim Koenig at Fox Fodder Farm operated by Southwood Property in the Hudson Valley. Another note-worthy bridesmaid included DJ Harley Viera-Newton. MARRIED #mrandmrsflames A post shared by Harley Viera-Newton (@harleyvnewton) on Jul 23, 2017 at 12:30pm PDT So in with #mrandmrsflames A post shared by Fox Fodder Farm (@foxfodderfarm) on Jul 23, 2017 at 6:07am PDT @cassiecoane in Danielle Frankel at her epic wedding #mrandmrsflames A post shared by Danielle Frankel (@daniellefrankelstudio) on Jul 24, 2017 at 8:17am PDT A post shared by Harley Viera-Newton (@harleyvnewton) on Jul 24, 2017 at 8:12am PDT This is the second known time the Olsen twins have served as bridesmaids in 2017. Back in March, the two stepped out as bridesmaids in a friends tropical wedding in New Zealand. Related Articles Michelle Obama commanded the stage at the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago on Wednesday, wearing an eye-catching plaid dress. The former first lady paired her look with strappy, black heels, $295 hoop earrings, and a $2,000 chain choker with white diamonds and sea pearls both pieces by Jennifer Fisher. Michelle Obama looked edgy in plaid while giving a speech at the Obama Foundation summit. (Photo: Getty Images) With husband Barack Obama listening in the audience, Michelle sat for a conversation about friendship, social media, and parenting with her poet pal Elizabeth Alexander. I love my husband and he is my rock, but my girlfriends are my sanity, said Michelle, according to People. And when you live eight years in the White House, and you cant even open a window, you cant walk out on your balcony without notifying three people, your walk outside is you walk around the same circle in the South Lawn over and over again, because the thought of you leaving those gates requires 50 peoples attention, and work and convenience. When you live like that for eight years, you need your girlfriends. And nothing is spontaneous. All our spontaneity was basically taken away from us. I even do this now, like, Can I leave? I dont leave until some 30-year-old tells me Maam, you can leave now. I had to plan my time with my GFs that kept me grounded and brought me laughter. Michelle Obama (Photo: Getty Images) Michelle also shared her thoughts on male friendships or lack thereof saying, Women, we do it better than men. Im, you know, sad for you guys. Yall should get you some friends. Get you some friends and talk to each other, cause thats the other thing we do; we straighten each other out on some things, our girlfriends. She even name-checked her husband. Sometimes Im like, Barack, who you talking to? And it cant just be [Chicago businessman] Marty [Nesbitt]. Yall need to go talk to each other about your stuff because theres so much of it. Its so messy. Michelle also reflected on the unique experience of parenting daughters Malia, 19, and Sasha, 16, in the White House. We could have spent eight years feeling sorry for them, that they were living in a bubble, that every misstep for them would be on YouTube or that they had to drive around in their teenage years with men with guns that they didnt have access to their father in a way. We couldve felt bad for them and there wouldve been a truth there. Story continues Yesterday Michelle Obama and Prince Harry surprise these students at Hyde Park Academy on the South Side. #MichelleObama #princeharry #ObamaSummit #chicago A post shared by Barack Obama Fanpage (@the_obamas_) on Nov 1, 2017 at 10:20am PDT She continued, But our view was, this is their life, and we cant apologize for the life they have, because a whole lot of it is good. So it was like, Get up, go to school, dont feel sorry for yourself. Yes, its hard but its hard for everybody. We have to raise our children to be the adults we want them to be, and that starts young. You cant be so afraid that life will break them that you dont prepare them for life. The first lady added that she was proud of her daughters composure in the spotlight, saying, They have brought me so much happiness and pride, how they have carried themselves and responded to the pressures that they didnt ask for, living a life they didnt want but coming out on the other end as good, solid people. That happiness and pride can bring me to tears. Social media was also on the table, with Michelle advising people to pause before they tweet. When you have a voice, you cant just use it any kind of way, you know? she said, according to CNN. You dont just say whats on your mind. You dont tweet every thought. Most of your first initial thoughts are not worthy of the light of day. When the audience laughed, perceiving her remarks as a dig toward President Trump, Michelle said she wasnt talking about anybody in particular, Im talking about all of us. Michelle has been maximizing her time in Chicago: On Halloween, she teamed up with Prince Harry (a speaker at the summit) to surprise kids from Hyde Park Academy, leaving them adorably speechless. Prince Harry and @michelleobama made a surprise visit to students at Hyde Park Academy in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/dMAuIzSYsZ Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 31, 2017 Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. The news has been hard to watch since the 2016 election, no matter where you stand politically. Things are tense, scary, and a lot is going on each and every day, which is why it didnt help that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders snapped at journalist April Ryan when she asked a question about slavery. Were not saying the job of press secretary is easy its likely extremely stressful getting up in front of groups of reporters each and every day. But the Trump administrations press secretaries have been infamously easy to anger. Remember Sean Spicer? Or Anthony Scaramucci? And things got especially uncomfortable Wednesday when current press secretary Sanders snapped after receiving a question about the White Houses position on slavery and the Civil War. In case you missed it, earlier this week Donald Trumps Chief of Staff John Kelly appeared on Fox News to discuss the removal of Confederate monuments across the country. During the interview, Kelly defended Confederate general Robert E. Lee, adding [] the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand. And people were quick to take issue with this statement. Last night, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that the Civil War was a product of our failure to "compromise" and praised Robert E. Lee. It was straight Lost Cause-ism, no chaser. He should watch this video. Everyone should. pic.twitter.com/KHYdNBd9UD Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 31, 2017 Enough about John Kelly being the adult in the room. Hes out here praising Robert E. Lee and falsifying history. pic.twitter.com/22BXNOqSMt Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) October 31, 2017 John Kelly, youre a general and you dont know why the Civil War happened? What do you think caused World War II? A zoning issue? #LSSCpic.twitter.com/t3cZyYLxob The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 1, 2017 Many also noted that, when it comes to slavery, there shouldnt have to be any compromise. Then, on Tuesday, press secretary Sanders defended parts of John Kellys comments, specifically in regards to Robert E. Lee, saying, All leaders are flawed. As she left the podium, journalist April Ryan called out, Does this administration believe slavery was wrong? to which Sanders gave no reply. Story continues On Wednesday, Ryan again asked Sanders to clarify the administrations stance on slavery and compromise. Sanders told Ryan that she wasnt going to relitigate the Civil War, adding, I think it is disgusting and absurd to suggest anyone inside this building would support slavery. Tense exchange when April Ryan asks Sanders if Trump believes that slavery is wrong. (via ABC) pic.twitter.com/TxnVwXIgZF Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 1, 2017 There is nothing disgusting or absurd about a journalist trying to do her job and make sense of the administrations defense of a controversial historical figure who fought to keep slavery in place. And Sanders initial defense of Kellys comments, in which she said all leaders are flawed, was reminiscent of Trumps initial response to the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville this summer, in which he said that there were many sides to the issue. @AprilDRyan working overtime to keep it real and in your face about General John Kellys remarks that Robert E Lee was honorable man. #crazypic.twitter.com/cuWWrOQh8C Audra MsBlu Berger (@MsBlunyc) November 2, 2017 For her part, Ryan defended her line of questioning on CNN, saying: There was still confusion. So I asked a simple question. As theyre supporting the confederacy and these statues and Robert E. Lee []. Thats a legitimate question. When all is said and done, we think its fair to say that a journalist politely and respectfully asking a question deserves a polite and respectful answer in return. Representatives of our White House can and should do better. On Wednesday, Michelle Obama attended the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago and spoke with poet and close friend Elizabeth Alexander about things that are most important to her. Among them: family and the arts. Art is the first language we speak, truly, she told the audience during the on-stage discussion. Every child, before they talk, theyre given some paper, a pencil, some crayons Its life that yanks that instinct from them. Were now living in public school systems where art, music, P.E.the things that bring life and joy are the first things that are cut. Its often the hook that gets kids to then understand that math is important, its the thing that gets them to school to do reading. We are trying to remind this country, this world, that arts are not a luxury. Its the thing that unites us. When it comes to raising women to be strong and confident in their own voice, the former First Lady has pointers. We ask [women] to speak up, we ask them to speak their mind, we ask them to just say no, to speak out against sexual harassment, to speak out against inequalitybut if we dont teach our young girls to speak at an early age, that doesnt just happen. It takes practice to have a voice," she said. "You have to use it again and again and again before you can say No or Stop. Dont touch me." That being said, Obama also stated the importance of being careful with the voice you have, and not abusing the power that comes with it. When you have a voice, you cant just use it any old way, she said. You dont just say whats on your mindyou dont tweet every thought. Most of your first initial thoughts are not worthy of the light of day. Im not talking about anybody in particularIm talking about us all, she clarified, inciting an eruption of laughter from the audience. Tweeting and social mediathat is a powerful weapon that we just hand over to little kids. You need to think, and spell it right, and have good grammar, too. Story continues Amen, Mrs. Obama. Between giving empowering speeches and serving as a role model to both her two daughters and women and men across the world, Michelle says its essential to find some time for herself. When you have children, you have to be fiercely organized to get anything done. I learned that if I dont put myself up on the priority list, somehow my kids will eventually get knocked down on that list, she explained. Our health is the thing that will keep us going. Its something that we cannot afford to ignore. Whatever that is for you; it has to happen. I can get a lot done, but I have to be organized about me. I have to plan my happiness. We think happiness just happensand it can, but you have to work in some happiness too. Youve got to think about, in this year, when am I going to laugh? When am I going to have fun? When am I going to stop and smell the roses? And then youve got to plan itbecause if you dont, the work, the need, the agenda, will overcome everything. Part of that essential self-care involves logging some time with her gal pals said Michelle, who wore a multicolored plaid dress for the occasion. I love my husband and he is my rock, but my girlfriends are my sanity. And when you live eight years in the White House, and you cant even open a window, you cant walk out on your balcony without notifying three people, your walk outside is you walk around the same circle in the south lawn over and over again, because the thought of you leaving those gates requires 50 peoples attention, and work and convenience. When you live like that for eight years, you need your girlfriends. And nothing is spontaneous. All our spontaneity was basically taken away from us. I even do this now, like, Can I leave? I dont leave until some 30-year-old tells me Maam, you can leave now. I had to plan my time with my GFs that kept me grounded and brought me laughter. As for parenting, Michelle has a directive straight from her mother: raise your children to be "independent, well-meaning, kind, compassionate people." "Sometimes we treat our children too preciously because of the issues theyve dealt with," she said. "Barack and I, we thought about with Malia and Sasha, OK, we couldve spent eight years feeling sorry for them that they were living in a bubble that every misstep for them would be on YouTube, that their privacy, they didnt have access to their father in a way We couldve felt bad for them, and there wouldve been a truth there. But our view was this is their life, and we cant apologize for the life they have because a whole lot of it is good. RELATED: Prince Harry and Michelle Obama Made These Chicago High School Students' Day I cant cherish you to death. We have to raise our children to be the adults that we want them to be, and that starts young. You cant be so afraid that life will break them that you dont prepare them for life. Sometimes our fear keeps us from pushing our kids out into the cold cruel world. And then theyre not ready and we wonder why. Those are some powerful words. The White House used the deadly attack in lower Manhattan this week to re-route the conversation back to President Donald Trumps travel ban, hinting that the administration may consider adding Uzbekistan where perpetrator Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov emigrated from to the list of targeted countries. Look, thats maybe something thats looked at, but that isnt something that weve called for at this time, but we certainly havent ruled it out, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during Wednesdays briefing. A look at recent terror incidents in the U.S. demonstrates, however, that a blanket ban on non-visa holders from Muslim-majority countries (the latest iteration of which was temporarily struck down in federal court last month) wouldnt have successfully kept the terror threat out of the country, according to experts. A third of the foreign-born perpetrators of attacks in the past few decades immigrated to the U.S. legally, making the travel ban argument moot because it wouldnt have stopped people with green cards and visas from coming in. And besides, the threat that someone born abroad will commit an attack on U.S. soil remains minuscule. If the death toll from the New York attack doesnt rise, a total of 3,037 people have been murdered on U.S. soil by 182 foreign-born terrorists from 1975 through October 31, 2017, Cato Institute immigration policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh wrote on Wednesday. Of those 182 foreign-born terrorists, 63 initially entered with green cards. This means, he added, that those who did enter the country legally have killed about 0.5 percent of all people who have died in terror attacks on U.S. soil carried out by a foreigner. And although some 1,500 Uzbek nationals have left the country to fight with terror groups in Iraq and Syria, according to a Soufan Center report, the countrys risk of exporting terror remains low. Only three terrorists born in Uzbekistan attempted attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2016, Nowrasteh added, and no one was killed. Story continues Another attack in London by a loser terrorist.These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017 The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 15, 2017 The Trump administration has been working with countries around the world to strengthen vetting capabilities, according to the September presidential memorandum announcing the newest ban. It determined that Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen didnt meet the demanded information-sharing criteria. Uzbekistan, however, fully complied with the administrations requests, otherwise it may have been included in the ban in the first place. If Uzbekistan was to be added to this list, it would be even more readily apparent that that really is whats happening here that the president is the one driving the outcome and not an objective set of criteria developed by experts in immigration vetting, David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, told HuffPost. But, as Trumps repeated demands for extreme vetting illuminate, experts say the problem isnt with a lack of vetting but with how to prevent people from becoming radicalized once theyre in the U.S. Can we determine who might later radicalize at the time we do that screening and vetting? asked Theresa Brown, director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. And the answer is not very well, frankly, because were talking about future impact. Elise Foley contributed reporting. Also on HuffPost Investigators inspect the truck. Investigators inspect the truck. Emergency crews at the the scene of a violent incident on West Street in Manhattan, New York City. Multiple bikes crushed along a bike path in lower Manhattan. First responders assist a woman injured on the bike path. First responders tend to a victim. A police officer at the scene. A body covered on West Street in Manhattan. Emergency personnel at the scene. Police gather at the scene after reports of multiple people injured after a truck plowed through a bike path in New York City. The truck drove down a popular biking path in lower Manhattan. State Police stand near the scene of a pickup truck attack, on West Street in Manhattan, New York, U.S., October 31 2017. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Security forces cordon off the area. New York Fire Department (NYFD) and New York Police Department (NYPD) vehicles sit parked on a blocked off street. New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers on Chambers Street surround the rented Home Depot Inc.. A pickup truck used in an attack sits on the intersection of West and Chambers Street. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Amanda Knox has published an essay memorializing her former roommate, Meredith Kercher, on the 10th anniversary of the young British womans brutal slaying. Ten years ago tonight, my friend was raped and murdered by a burglar when she was home alone in the apartment we shared while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, Knox wrote for Westside Seattle on Wednesday. Now 30, Knox recounted time spent with her roommate as beautiful and banal, calling Meredith my closest friend in a new and exciting time in our lives. Knox and Kercher lived together with two Italian women in a four-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in Perugia, a well-known artistic and cultural hub often frequented by travelers and students studying abroad. Amanda Knox Reveals She Had Non-Sexual Romantic Relationship With a Woman in Prison I remember that I loved her accent, Knox wrote. I remember the time I wanted to get dressed up and she happily loaned me a pair of her tights, like a big sister. Trips to the grocery store, joint-ventures to explore a new city they could temporarily call home and moments spent discussing future plans bonded the young women, Knox wrote. That all came crashing down on Nov. 2, 2007, when Kercher was found dead in their apartment. Knox was accused of killing Kercher in the apartment they shared. In 2009, she and her then-boyfriend, 23-year-old Italian student Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of stabbing Kercher to death. Knox and Sollecito's convictions were eventually overturned and they were freed on appeal two years later. A third man, 20-year-old Rudy Guede, was ultimately convicted of Kerchers murder. He remains behind bars. Suspected Gunman Arrested After 3 Shoppers Shot Dead At Walmart Store My memories of Meredith are buried beneath the horrific autopsy photos and crime scene footage I saw, the slurs I was called, the death threats I received [and still receive], the false accusations I fought, the years of wrongful imprisonment I endured, the multiple trials and slanderous headlines that juxtaposed our names and faces, unfairly interlocking her death with my identity, Knox wrote. Story continues Because of this, Knox wrote she has never been allowed to mourn her. There are some people who believe I have no right to mourn Meredith, Knox wrote. They believe that I had something to do with her murder I didnt or that Meredith has been forgotten in the wake of my own struggle for justice she hasnt. Either way, they feel that Meredith and I are inextricably linked, so its simply not fair that I havent lost everything, as she has. They are wrong, she continued. This day of mourning belongs to everyone whose lives Meredith touched. She noted like everyone else who cared for Kercher, her entire life changed because of Kerchers death. I hate it that my memories of her are buried beneath the years of suffering Raffaele and I endured in the wake of her murder, Knox wrote. And its depressing to know that mourning her comes at the price of being criticized for anything I say or dont say today. But most depressing of all is that Meredith isnt here, when she deserves to be. She is painfully missed by everyone who loved her. I miss her, and Im grateful for the memories of our time together. Related Articles: By Matt Spetalnick and Prak Chan Thul WASHINGTON/PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Just days after the killing of a prominent Cambodian government critic last year during a crackdown by the country's longtime leader, President Barack Obama dispatched Washingtons chief human rights envoy to Phnom Penh to attend the activist's funeral. In meetings with Cambodian authorities, then-Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski warned the military not to intervene in the political turmoil or else crucial U.S. ties would suffer, sending a clear message that America stood behind the opposition. It was one example of the kind of high-level, rapid-response U.S. diplomacy that President Donald Trump has so far avoided in Cambodia even as the Southeast Asian nation together with many of its neighbours - has lurched increasingly away from the democratic path. As Trump prepares to depart on his first Asia tour, which will bring him face-to-face with a number of leaders with poor human rights records, his administration has been taking a more muted approach than his predecessor to such concerns, said current and former U.S. officials, rights activists and diplomats. In addition to the situation in Cambodia, they cite what they see as a slow, overly cautious response to Myanmars Rohingya crisis, Trump's failure to publicly call out autocratic leaders he meets over rights abuses, an eagerness to engage with the Philippines' controversial president, Rodrigo Duterte, and a less vocal approach to human rights in China. National security adviser H.R. McMaster pushed back against the notion that Trump would downplay human rights on his Nov. 3-14 trip, saying he would speak out "about the importance of promoting freedom and individual rights." When asked why Trump condemns U.S. adversaries such as Syria and Venezuela on human rights grounds but not the Philippines, Turkey and Russia, McMaster told reporters on Thursday: "How much does it help to yell about these problems? It hasn't really delivered in recent history anyway." Story continues AMERICA FIRST The dominant view within Trumps White House is that under his America First world-view human rights concerns related to allies and strategically important countries should be managed gently to avoid impeding job-creating business deals or undercutting security efforts such as isolating North Korea, several Trump aides said. Soft-pedalling human rights may also help Washington avoid alienating countries in Southeast Asia that it wants to keep from moving further into China's orbit, those aides said. Beijing puts little pressure on its neighbours over such issues. This approach, however, has sown frustration among some U.S. diplomats who deal with human rights and disappointed dissidents in several countries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen people involved in these matters in Washington and Asian capitals. The failure so far to fill several senior Asia and human rights posts at the State Department is a further handicap, they say. Obama's former top Asia adviser, Evan Medeiros, is one of those critical of what he sees as the Trump administration's lower-key approach to human rights. Its a false dichotomy to say that somehow a focus on human rights detracts from American security or economic well-being, he said. Even under Obama, however, there were some in the human rights community who at times found fault with U.S. actions. While the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was praised for stressing human rights in Asia-Pacific trade negotiations, he faced criticism that he suspended sanctions on Myanmar prematurely and lifted a ban on the sale of lethal arms to Vietnam. He spoke eloquently and sometimes delivered, said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. But he also didnt fully use the carrots and sticks of American power. Though Trump has said little on human rights beyond condemning adversaries such as North Korea and Venezuela, United Nations envoy Nikki Haley has been one of the few top aides who have spoken out more broadly. She visited sub-Saharan Africa and pressed leaders to tackle political and humanitarian problems. 'WE ARE NOT HERE TO LECTURE' Trump set the tone in Saudi Arabia in May when he told an audience that included monarchs and strongmen from the Muslim world: We are not here to lecture. He has hosted several autocratic leaders - including Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who had been frozen out of White House visits since leading a 2014 military coup - but has steered clear of publicly criticizing their records on human rights. Such visits under Obama usually included addressing rights concerns, the Democratic president's former aides said. McMaster insisted that Trump preferred to deal with such issues "quietly in every relationship." One closely watched meeting will be with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. Trump praised him in a phone call in April for a bloody anti-drugs campaign. An administration official told reporters human rights would be part of their "frank and friendly discussions." But the government in Manila has been feeling less heat from the Trump administration about extrajudicial killings linked to drugs crackdown, according to a foreign ministry official. Its a very different White House under President Donald Trump, not like under President Barack Obama, who pushed human rights hard during his term, the official told Reuters. We are not hearing this from the White House. Another issue expected to be front and centre is Myanmars Rohingya crisis. Trumps critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have chided the administration for what they have seen as a halting response. U.S. officials have been reluctant to label the situation as ethnic cleansing even though the United Nations has used the term. Myanmar rejects that accusation, saying action was needed to combat terrorism. Two months after an outbreak of violence that sent more than half a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing into Bangladesh, Washington has now sent a senior delegation, announced a planned visit by Tillerson on Nov. 15, and is threatening modest sanctions. CAMBODIA CRACKDOWN When Kem Ley, a popular Cambodian political commentator, was killed by a gunman in July 2016, Malinowski, the State Department official, flew to Phnom Penh just days later and met top aides to Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for more than three decades. Malinowskis stern words helped give local diplomats leverage to press rights concerns behind the scenes, said one U.S. official involved in Southeast Asia diplomacy. This year Hun Sen has intensified his crackdown, including the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha, while also stepping up rhetoric against Washington. The State Department has largely limited its response to statements of deep concern. Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan said Cambodia had not felt pressure from Washington and Trump was clearly taking a different approach than Obama. "Their tone is lighter. Before, they would bully," said ruling party parliamentarian Sok Eysan. The change under Trump, he added, "means we are on the right path towards democracy," an assertion that contradicts human rights advocates who say the political climate has deteriorated. In Vietnam, dissident Nguyen Quang A expressed pessimism about Trumps visit. Nguyen, who was detained by authorities on his way to meet Obama during a visit last year, said: I don't think Trump will talk about human rights. Just look at his words and actions. The White House has not signalled that Trump plans to meet any dissidents during his Asia trip, something Obama frequently did in his foreign travels. In Beijing, some U.S. diplomats expressed frustration over what they see as botched messaging signalling a retreat on human rights. But the officials said the administration has supported work on behalf of Chinese dissidents. A Beijing-based diplomat from another Western country said, however, that U.S. participation in meetings between Western allies to coordinate strategy on human rights was much reduced, for example, when it came to putting out joint statements on issues of concern. China has been relieved to see Trump giving human rights less weight, according to a Chinese diplomat in Washington. But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: As for human rights, we are always willing to have constructive dialogue with countries of the world on the basis of mutual respect. (Additional reporting by by Jason Szep in Washington, Antoni Slodkowski in Yangon, Manuel Mogato and Karen Lema in Manila, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Matthew Tostevin in Bangkok; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Ross Colvin) Former prosecutors say the ex-Trump aide is being used as leverage in Muellers inquiry and the public charges are intended to send a message to others George Papadopoulos in October pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Kremlin-related contacts. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images In the heat of the 2016 election campaign, George Papadopoulos was a jet-setting political operative on the rise. But now, experts say, the 30-year-old is almost certainly being used as a lure to catch bigger fish in the wider inquiry being led by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, which is examining Russian interference in the 2016 election. Federal investigators on Monday revealed that Papadopoulos was the first person to agree to cooperate with the Mueller inquiry under the terms of a plea agreement. Hes bait, absolutely, said John Lauro, a white-collar criminal defense attorney operating in New York and Florida. How serious are the allegations? The story of Donald Trump and Russia comes down to this: a sitting president or his campaign is suspected of having coordinated with a foreign country to manipulate a US election. The story could not be bigger, and the stakes for Trump and the country could not be higher. What are the key questions? Investigators are asking two basic questions: did Trumps presidential campaign collude at any level with Russian operatives to sway the 2016 US presidential election? And did Trump or others break the law to throw investigators off the trail? What does the country think? While a majority of the American public now believes that Russia tried to disrupt the US election, opinions about Trump campaign involvement tend to split along partisan lines: 73% of Republicans, but only 13% of Democrats, believe Trump did nothing wrong in his dealings with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. What are the implications for Trump? The affair has the potential to eject Trump from office. Experienced legal observers believe that prosecutors are investigating whether Trump committed an obstruction of justice. Both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton the only presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the last century were accused of obstruction of justice. But Trumps fate is probably up to the voters. Even if strong evidence of wrongdoing by him or his cohort emerged, a Republican congressional majority would probably block any action to remove him from office. (Such an action would be a historical rarity.) Story continues What has happened so far? Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous pleaded guilty to perjury over his contacts with Russians linked to the Kremlin, and the presidents former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide face charges of money laundering. When will the inquiry come to an end? The investigations have an open timeline. They clearly put pressure on him, and I would not be surprised if he then engaged others being investigated and had tape-recorded conversations with them, in person or on the phone. On Monday, federal investigators made public the details of Papadopouloss October charge. The indictment revealed Papadopoulos was in Europe during the 2016 campaign, meeting Russian intermediaries and telling Donald Trumps team that he could arrange a meeting between the future president and Vladimir Putin. But, the indictment said, by January 2017, just days after the inauguration, Papadopoulos was trying to convince federal agents that his Russian contacts were nobodies and his 2016 dealings with them had had no bearing on the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos was arrested and has been named by the FBI as a proactive co-operator. He pleaded guilty on 5 October to lying to federal investigators but the indictment was sealed and only revealed on Monday, the same day Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort was charged with money laundering and other crimes. Manafort pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Monday afternoon. That move was definitely meant for public consumption. They wanted to send a message to others, who will think, Theyre talking to him about me if Im going to cooperate this might be the time. They will be panicking, or maybe they are already cooperating, said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor of law at the University of Michigan. In order to persuade Papadopoulos to cooperate, investigators could have threatened to charge him with obstruction of justice, which can carry a 20-year prison sentence, or other suspected crimes relating to his foreign dealings, she said, instead of charging him merely with lying to investigators. Papadopouloss activities relate directly to the Trump campaign, which make them significant, she said. The much more serious charges laid against Manafort and his associate Rick Gates dont involve the Trump campaign but could still be used as leverage in a plea deal to persuade him to cooperate on the wider scope of Muellers investigation, she said. Donald Trump may know hes done nothing wrong, in which case he has nothing to worry about. Or he may know that Paul Manafort knows where all the bodies are buried, said McQuade. Noah Bookbinder, a former federal prosecutor and now executive director of the pressure group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said it was routine to begin a large, complex investigation such as Muellers by arresting a lower-level player. He cited Watergate, Iran-Contra, any number of organized crime trials and, during the George W Bush administration, the corruption case involving Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the prosecution of Scooter Libby, aide to former vice-president Dick Cheney, in a CIA leak case. Thats exactly whats unfolding here, Bookbinder said. He added that after his arrest Papadopoulos would probably go into what is known among prosecutors as the proffer period. Between the July arrest and his pleading guilty behind closed doors on 5 October, Papadopoulos would have been expected to demonstrate just how much he could help the investigation. Bookbinder said this proactive cooperation would affect the leniency of any eventual sentence. Charging Papadopoulos with lying, and laying harsh charges against Manafort and Gates was an aggressive move by prosecutors who are steeped in complex white-collar crime cases, Bookbinder added. Alongside Muellers signature on Papadopouloss offense sheet are the names of prosecutors Jeannie Rhee, a senior adviser to Barack Obamas attorney general Eric Holder; Andrew Goldstein, who ran the public corruption unit in the southern district of New York for then US attorney Preet Bharara, whom Trump fired; and Aaron Zelinsky, a federal prosecutor in Maryland under then US attorney Rod Rosenstein, who is now deputy attorney general. Im sure they told Papadopoulos, Youre going to go to jail and a lot of people cooperate when they hear that, said Todd Blanche, an attorney in New York and another former federal prosecutor. Every successful case of this nature needs a cooperator. If you assume theres collusion, its very difficult to prove that without someone on the inside. Lori Lightfoot, president of the Chicago police board, an attorney and also a former federal prosecutor, said she was impressed that there had been no leaks to the press about Papadopouloss arrest and guilty plea, showing that Muellers team was playing it straight. Why would someone like Papadopoulos, an ambitious member of the Trump election campaigns advisory team, whom the future president once called an excellent guy allow himself to get caught lying and then flip so easily? People who are in politics are used to spinning the message and not being fulsome. But when the FBI comes knocking, you have to do a 180 and either say nothing except talk to my lawyer or tell the truth, said Lightfoot. Dont lie youll be out of your depth. Provo, Utah, was the 20th stop on our Listen to America road trip. We spoke to residents and passersby near the Provo City Library for a day. Heres what they had to say: I plan to stay here the rest of my life. We have lots of opportunities here for recreational things. Burt Knudson, 79, retired I flee to here for the strict political persecution from China ... Im very lucky to flee here and to tell the world what we are facing. Rovssel Liu, 20, artist I decided to move here because I like hiking. I really like the community here because we have a really tight-knit kind of underground scene in Provo. Weve got a really, really tight-knit queer community here. Brianna Cluck, 24, direct support professional at home for adults with disabilities I think its just a great city and I think that its progressing ... Ive been doing things to better [Brigham Young University] and also Provo. I think thats the biggest part of BYU and Provo, the opportunity of being able to make the difference you want to see. Erin Tapahe, 21, student Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. I like going to BYU, but Im not sure Im going to stay in Utah because Im more of a Democrat and I think Id do better in a different part of the country. Kirk Earl, 23, student Its really a growing community. My kids go to a dual-immersion Mandarin-speaking program in elementary school. Its growing. I feel like the vibe is changing here so were happy to be here. Becca Kearl (and son, Theo), 37, works in nonprofit Its full of opposition. Its got brand new things going on. Its got very traditional things. Its got conservatives. Its got a huge hipster movement. The LGBT community is really growing here. Jody England Hansen, 59, artist/activist Were going back to school. Its just kind of like an easy, slow, cheap place to live right now. Beatriz Pahulo, 31, stay-at-home mom Moved here for school. Didnt expect to get married and raise a family, but I love the environment and culture. Peniva Pahulo, 32, freight associate I spent five years in Provo ... Its got a good feel to it, a good vibe. I enjoy that. Jeffrey Butler, 41, financial adviser Im from about half an hour north of here. My parents went to Brigham Young University, all my siblings have gone here so its where I wanted to go to school ... I like the college-town atmosphere. Emily Ashcraft, 24, student I converted to the LDS church in my early 20s. Came out to go to school in the late 60s at BYU. Was here about a week and called my mother in the South and said, Im not sure Ill ever come back there. I can breathe here. Joyce Baggerly, 77, retired Its a relatively safe community. Its more diverse than you might expect it to be. Its where I live with my wife. Alex Quinn, 34, student Related... The 15 Most Instagrammable Spots In Provo, Utah Janelle Reeves: I Live In Provo, Utah, And This Is My Style Pullin' Up In Provo: HuffPosts Listen To America Tour Stops In Utah Also on HuffPost Mo Elinzano (back to camera) talks to Samantha Tomaszewski, Curtis Wong and Carol Kuruvilla during HuffPost's visit to Provo, Utah, on Oct. 18, 2017, as part of "Listen To America: A HuffPost Road Trip." Passers-by check out the "Listen To America" tents during HuffPost's visit to Provo. Haily White and Willow Vrablic sign up to be interviewed. Craig Cooley walks to the video tent to be interviewed, accompanied by Emma Reilly and Hayley Miller. Abram Charriet talks to HuffPost staffer Hayley Miller. HuffPost and Peak XV staff put together swag bags before events get rolling in Provo. One of multiple interviews is conducted during HuffPost's visit to Provo. Bus driver Bobby Jansen cleans the HuffPost bus. Nick Schaffer plays with Max while his mother, Sarah Hess, is interviewed. HuffPost staffer Samantha Tomaszewski talks to Jody England Hansen after her interview. Jared Labrum and his sons Beckett and Stockton wait to be interviewed. A street scene in Provo, Utah. People are interviewed in the tents. Yulia Tanner and her daughter Olivia wait to be interviewed. Audience members enter the "Who Are Mormon Millennials And How Will They Change America?" event at Provo City Library on Oct. 18, 2017. Moderator Melissa Jeltsen (far right) and panelists Eric Baker, Ashley Lee and Carley Porter take part in the "Who Are Mormon Millennials And How Will They Change America?" event. Ashley Lee speaks at the Mormon millennials panel discussion. The audience listens to a discussion about the role of Mormon millennials. Moderator Melissa Jeltsen speaks to the panel. Panelist Carley Porter answers questions. Audience member Lee Hales asks questions of panelists Eric Baker, Ashley Lee and Carley Porter (not shown). Panelist Eric Baker speaks at the event. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Game show host Alex Trebek isnt so high on hash brownies after a bad experience he had with them. The Canadian-born Jeopardy! host told The Daily Beast he accidentally sampled the drug-laced desserts when he first arrived in California in the early 1970s. Trebek was at a friends house in Malibu when he saw a tray of brownies and helped himself. I love brownies Im a chocoholic and I didnt realize that they were hash brownies. And whoa, he told the outlet. That threw me for a loop. I took down about a half-dozen. Trebek said he ate the brownies on a Friday, but was so looped he wasnt able to leave his friends house until Sunday afternoon. I spent the next day and a half in bed, he said. It was not a good trip, and I have not done any of that stuff since! However, Trebek has certainly inhaled, according to a 2015 interview he did with Howard Stern. I have smoked marijuana, he told Stern. I had terrible arthritis in my shoulders and a friend of mine said, You should try marijuana; itll help get rid of the arthritis. It didnt, and so I didnt continue smoking. Trebek also admitted to Stern that he tried cocaine on the behest of his accountant at the time. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. A lost species of salamander has been rediscovered alive and well in Guatemala. The Jackson's Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni), a brilliant yellow-and-black amphibian, was last seen in 1975 and feared extinct. But this month, a guard at the Finca San Isidro Amphibian Reserve (also called the Yal Unin Yul Witz Reserve) in the Cuchumatanes Mountains spotted a juvenile of the species while out on patrol. The guard, Ramos Leon, snapped a photo and sent it to Carlos Vasquez, a curator of herpetology at USAC University in Guatemala, who confirmed its identity. Vasquez himself had spent more than 3,000 hours hunting for the salamander since 2005, and trained Leon and his fellow guards on how to search for it. "We had started to fear that the species was gone, and now it's like it has come back from extinction," he said. "It's a beautiful story and marks a promised future for the conservation of this special region." [Golden Wonder: Photos of the Jackson's Climbing Salamander] Stunning rediscovery The Jackson's Climbing Salamander is known as the "golden wonder" for its bright-yellow body, which is topped by a black streak running from its head to most of the way down its tail. It's named after its discoverer, Jeremy Jackson, who first identified it while exploring the Cuchumatanes with his friend Paul Elias, who was a college student at the time. They found three new species of salamander on that trip, including the long-limbed salamander (Nyctanolis pernix) and the Finca Chiblac Salamander (Bradytriton silus). Those species were found again on expeditions in 2009 and 2010, but the Jackson's salamander stayed missing. The nonprofit group Global Wildlife Conservation put the Jackson's salamander on its Top 25 "most wanted species" list as part of its Search for Lost Species initiative. The initiative, which launched in April, aims to seek out 25 species that have not been seen for years or decades but aren't confirmed extinct. Among them are the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus mayri), seen only once in 1928 in Indonesia, and the pink-headed duck (Rhodonessa caryophyllacea), last seen in Myanmar in 1949. Story continues Finding lost species It was shocking to find the Jackson's salamander so quickly, said Lindsay Renick Mayer, a spokesperson for Global Wildlife Conservation. The group had planned an expedition to the region to search for the salamander in January, but Leon found the amphibian first. "The night I got the news from Carlos that Bolitoglossa jacksoni had been rediscovered, I flew off the couch where I'd been falling asleep, let loose a string of expletives (in a good way), and did a little happy dance," Jackson, the salamander's original discoverer, said in a statement. He went on to praise the reserve that has protected the unwitting salamander species throughout the years. "I'm more than delighted that Yal Unin Yu Witz exists so that Jacksoni and other wonders can survive, and I'm so pleased to hear that it was a guard protecting the preserve who found this beauty," he said. "I love this story because it conveys how protecting habitat gives species a fighting chance to survive on this planet," Don Church, the president of the Austin, Texas-based Global Wildlife Conservation, said in the statement. "This rediscovery can only be a good omen for the future of the Search for Lost Species campaign. It's a sign that if we get out there and work at it, many of these species can be found and saved." Original article on Live Science. Editor's Recommendations Prince Harry may have had his eye on Meghan Markle long before the couple ever met. According to royals expert Katie Nicholl, Harry had a crush on the actress from watching her on "Suits" two years before he was ever introduced to the star. SEE ALSO: Meghan Markle & Prince Harry likely shacking up next month, June wedding 'best bet' sources say "He had a crush on [Markle's character] Rachel Zane two years before he met Meghan," Nicholl explains in Channel 4 special "When Harry Met Meghan: A Royal Romance" airing on Friday. "The reason I know is because I was having drinks with one of his friends." Not only did he have a crush on Markle from her time on the USA hit, but he went so far as to describe her as his "ideal girl." See photos of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry together: "She told me she'd been on a night out with Prince Harry," Nicholl continued. "He was single at the time, so she said, 'Harry, who's your ideal girl?' And he said, 'Meghan Markle from 'Suits.''" If Nicholl's story is correct, that would mean that Harry has had his eye on Meghan since 2014, as they first met in July of 2016. They've been dating ever since, with more and more details of their notoriously private relationship slowly coming to light as public intrigue grows. SEE ALSO: Meghan Markle meets Queen Elizabeth for palace tea in her 'private sitting room': Report The pair made their public debut at Harry's Invictus Games in Markle's adopted hometown of Toronto, where they adorably held hands and packed on some PDA at various events throughout the two-week event. Markle even reportedly met Queen Elizabeth earlier this fall with an intimate tea in her "private sitting room" at Buckingham Palace. Multiple reports have claimed that the couple is already engaged, but are waiting for the right time to come forward with their exciting news. The reports have not been confirmed or denied by palace officials, who will be the first to officially announce the engagement when they're ready. Story continues See more photos of Meghan Markle: More from AOL.com: Prince William promises to teach Prince George this one thing Kate Middleton will make British history one awesome way when she becomes queen Queen Elizabeth has won a massive lifetime sum through horse racing Women in professional environments around the world are speaking up about sexual harassment, a so-called Weinstein effect emerging after the Hollywood producer was accused of abusing or harassing dozens of women over decades. Here, three countries dealing with their own post-Weinstein scandals: United Kingdom The highest echelons of British power have been hit by a number of sexual abuse claims since the Weinstein scandal. On Wednesday, Conservative lawmaker Michael Fallon resigned as defense secretary, admitting that his personal conduct fell below the high standards we require of the armed forces. It had seemed as if Fallon would weather criticism for repeatedly touching journalist Julia Hartley-Brewers knee in 2002, after Hartley-Brewer dismissed the incident as mildly amusing and said he should not resign because of it. But there are suggestions that more allegations against him would come out, the London Times reports. Full medical check-up this morning and, yes, both of my knees are still intact. Get a grip, people.* *Although not on my knee, obviously. pic.twitter.com/FBZ5eLCa1s Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) October 31, 2017 Fallons resignation comes after anonymous parliamentary staff compiled a list of around 36 lawmakers from the ruling Conservative Party accused of behavior that includes both consensual affairs and sexual harassment. The list, which has not been verified, was leaked and makes claims against certain parliamentarians, which include being handsy in cabs, inappropriate with staff and having affairs. Many of the accused have denied the claims, but there are fears that more ministers will be forced out as the scandal continues to emerge. Caroline Edmonson, a parliamentary administrator, told the Mail on Sunday that trade minister Mark Garnier made her buy two vibrators and called her sugar t-ts in front of witnesses. Garnier denied that the incidents constitute harassment. Story continues On Wednesday, Conservative party activist and journalist Kate Maltby alleged that one of U.K. Prime Minister Theresa Mays closest allies, First Secretary of State Damian Green, fleetingly touched her knee in a pub and sent her a suggestive text message in 2016. According to an article she authored in the London Times, Green wrote in a message: Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I felt impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime? Green, who is married, has denied the claims and has reportedly hired libel lawyers. The opposition Labour party has not been immune to scandal. Bex Bailey, who was a member of the partys national executive committee, told the BBC that she was raped by a senior Labour party official at a 2011 party event when she was 19 years old. But she was dissuaded from reporting the incident by another official in case it would damage her career, she said. The party has launched an independent investigation since the claim went public and has urged the police to look into it. An unnamed Westminster staffer told the Guardian that she was sexually assaulted by a lawmaker in a hotel bedroom. She attempted to raise the incident with at least four different authorities, including the lawmakers party, but she believes they did not take her claim seriously. France In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, French women have been sharing their personal experiences with the hashtag #Balancetonporc, which roughly translates to rat out your pig. Among the accused are Christophe Arend, a lawmaker in French President Emmanuel Macrons party, and former Socialist Party minister Pierre Joxe. Both men deny any wrongdoing. When asked whether sexual harassers should be denounced by France Info, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said no because denunciation isnt part of my political history. Three hours later, Le Maire posted a video on his Twitter account apologizing for his words. I expressed myself poorly. I regret it, he said. It goes without saying that if I were aware of acts of sexual harassment against a woman, I would be the first to signal them. Je me suis exprime ce matin sur le probleme du harcelement sexuel subi par les femmes en France et je me suis mal exprime. Je le regrette. pic.twitter.com/jI3JpAyKFh Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) October 16, 2017 Macron vowed on Oct. 15 to change the rules in France. He said women would be able to press charged for wolf-whistling and acknowledged that France had a culture of silence when it came to harassment. Canada Gilbert Rozon, the founder of Montreals Just for Laughs comedy festival, resigned in October after at least nine women accused him of sexual harassment and assault spanning three decades. Among his accusers is television presenter Julie Snyder, one of Quebecs biggest stars. Radio host Eric Salvail also said he would seek counseling after being accused of several incidents of harassment. Several of Weinsteins accusers are Canadian, including actors Sarah Polley and Erika Rosenbaum. An unnamed actress from Toronto has filed a lawsuit against Weinstein, Miramax, the company he founded, and its former owner the Disney Corp. By Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Laila Bassam BEIRUT (Reuters) - With Islamic State near defeat in Syria, Damascus is setting its sights on territory held by Kurdish-led forces including eastern oil fields, risking a new confrontation that could draw the United States in more deeply and complicate Russian diplomacy. President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies appear to have been emboldened by events in Iraq, where Kurdish authorities have suffered a major blow since regional states mobilised against their independence referendum, analysts say. Rivalry between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the United States, and the Syrian government backed by Iran and Russia is emerging as a fault line with their common enemy - Islamic State - close to collapse in Syria. Syria's main Kurdish groups hope for a new phase of negotiations that will shore up their autonomy in northern Syria. Assad's government, however, is asserting its claim to areas captured by the SDF from the jihadist group, known in Arabic by its enemies as Daesh, in more forceful terms. On Sunday, Damascus declared Islamic State's former capital at Raqqa would be considered "occupied" until the Syrian army took control - a challenge to Washington which helped the SDF capture the city in months of fighting. And the eastern oil fields seized by the SDF in October, including Syria's largest, will be a target for the government as it tries to recover resources needed for reconstructing areas it controls, according to a Syrian official and a non-Syrian commander in the alliance fighting in support of Assad. "The message is very clear to the SDF militants and their backers in the coalition, headed by America: the lands they took from Daesh are rightfully the Syrian state's," said the non-Syrian commander, who requested that his name and nationality be withheld. "Regarding the resources of the Syrian people in the east - oil and so on - we will not allow anyone to continue to control the country's resources and to create cantons or to think about self government," added the commander, who is part of a military alliance that includes numerous Iran-backed Shi'ite militias from across the region. The Syrian official said the SDF could not keep control of oil resources. "We won't permit it," said the official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity as he was giving a personal view. The United States has not spelt out how military support for the SDF will evolve after Islamic State's defeat, a sensitive point due to the concerns of its NATO ally Turkey. Ankara regards Syrian Kurdish power as a threat its national security as its forces are fighting Kurdish PKK rebels over the border in Turkey. The U.S.-led coalition, which has established several military bases in northern Syria, has been helping the SDF shore up control of the recently captured al-Omar oil field in Deir al-Zor province. "Many people will say that will help them with (political) negotiations, but only if the United States remains with them, otherwise they are going to get clobbered," said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria and head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "I think the Syrian government is going to push on some of these oil wells, in the same way as Iraq just pushed to get Kirkuk oil, and in the same way the Iraqi push is going to embolden the Syrian army," he said. KIRKUK "LESSON" Iraqi Kurds took control of large areas outside their autonomous region during the fight against Islamic State. However, last month's independence referendum prompted Western opposition and fierce resistance from Baghdad, Ankara and Assad's Iranian allies, and the Kurdish authorities have since lost much territory to Baghdad, including oil producing areas around the city of Kirkuk. The Syrian official said this should serve "as a lesson for the Kurds in Syria, so they think about the future". Regional sources say the U.S. unwillingness to stop Iraqi government forces, backed by Shi'ite militias, from recapturing Kirkuk sent an encouraging message to Assad and his Iranian allies to retake the SDF-held oil areas in Syria. With critical military support from Russia and the Iran-backed militias, Assad has recovered swathes of central and eastern Syria from Islamic State this year, having defeated many anti-Assad rebel factions in western Syria. The Kurdish YPG militia, the dominant force in the SDF, controls the second largest chunk of Syrian territory - around a quarter of the country. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they are not seeking secession. The YPG and Damascus have mostly avoided conflict during the Syrian civil war, setting aside historic enmity to fight shared foes. Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria have meanwhile focused on establishing an autonomous government which they aim to safeguard. Moscow has called for a new "congress" of Syrian groups that may start work on a new constitution. The Russian Foreign Ministry published on Tuesday a list of 33 groups and political parties invited to a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Nov. 18. A Syrian Kurdish official told Reuters the administration in northern Syria had been invited to the congress. Kurdish officials said they discussed their political demands with the Russians as recently as last month. A senior Kurdish politician said government statements directed at the Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria were contradictory, noting that the Syrian foreign minister had said in September that Kurdish autonomy demands were negotiable. "One day they say we are willing to negotiate and then someone else denies this or puts out an opposing statement," Fawza Youssef said in a telephone interview with Reuters. "One of them declares war and the other wants to come negotiate. What is the regime's strategy? Dialogue or war?" After the final defeat of Islamic State in Deir al-Zor, "the situation will drive all the political sides and the combatants to start the stage of negotiations", Youssef said. The SDF has also pushed into Arab majority areas, including Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor, where it is working to establish its model of multi-ethnic local governance. Analysts believe the Syrian Kurdish groups could use the SDF-held Arab areas as bargaining chips in negotiations with Damascus. "There is no other option than to negotiate," Youssef said. "Either a new stage of tensions and attrition will start - which we are 100 percent against - or a stage of dialogue and negotiations will start." (Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp) By Valerie Volcovici WAYNESBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing. He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course. "I think there is a coal comeback, said the 33-year-old son of a miner. Despite broad consensus about coal's bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget. Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants. "I have a lot of faith in President Trump," Sylvester said. But hundreds of coal-fired plants have closed in recent years, and cheap natural gas continues to erode domestic demand. The Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. Although there have been small gains in coal output and hiring this year, driven by foreign demand, production levels remain near lows hit in 1978. A White House official did not respond to requests for comment on coal policy and retraining for coal workers. What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation's poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity. Federal retraining programs have fared better, with some approaching full participation, in the parts of Appalachia where mining has been crushed in a way that leaves little hope for a comeback, according to county officials and recruiters. They include West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal resources have been depleted. Story continues But in southern Pennsylvania, where the industry still has ample reserves and is showing flickers of life, federal jobs retraining programs see sign-up rates below 20 percent, the officials and recruiters said. In southern Virginia's coal country, participation rates run about 50 percent, they said. "Part of our problem is we still have coal," said Robbie Matesic, executive director of Greene Countys economic development department. Out-of-work miners cite many reasons beyond faith in Trump policy for their reluctance to train for new industries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen former and prospective coal workers, career counselors and local economic development officials. They say mining pays well; other industries are unfamiliar; and theres no income during training and no guarantee of a job afterward. In Pennsylvania, Corsa Coal opened a mine in Somerset in June which will create about 70 jobs one of the first mines to open here in years. And Consol Energy recently expanded its Bailey mine complex in Greene County. But Consol also announced in January that it plans to sell its coal holdings to focus on natural gas. And it has commissioned a recruitment agency, GMS Mines and Repair, to find contract laborers for its coal expansion who will be paid about $13 an hour - half the hourly wage of a starting unionized coal worker. The program Sylvester signed up for was set up by GMS. The new hiring in Pennsylvania is related mainly to an uptick in foreign demand for metallurgical coal, used in producing steel, rather than domestic demand for thermal coal from power plants, the industry's main business. Some market analysts describe the foreign demand as a temporary blip driven by production problems in the coal hub of Australia. Officials for U.S. coal companies operating in the region, including Consol and Corsa, declined requests for comment. The coal industry has stabilized, but its not going to come back, said Blair Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the mines who is now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvanias oldest coal regions. We need to look at the future. EMPTY SEATS The Pennsylvania Department of Labor has received about $2 million since 2015 from the federal POWER program, an initiative of former President Barack Obama to help retrain workers in coal-dependent areas. But the state is having trouble putting even that modest amount of money to good use. In Greene and Washington counties, 120 people have signed up for jobs retraining outside the mines, far short of the target of 700, said Ami Gatts, director of the Washington-Greene County Job Training Agency. In Westmoreland and Fayette counties, participation in federal job retraining programs has been about 15 percent of capacity, officials said. "I can't even get them to show up for free food I set up in the office," said Dave Serock, an ex-miner who recruits in Fayette County for Southwest Training Services. Programs administered by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal and state partnership to strengthen the regions economy, have had similar struggles. One $1.4 million ARC project to teach laid-off miners in Greene County and in West Virginia computer coding has signed up only 20 people for 95 slots. Not a single worker has enrolled in another program launched this summer to prepare ex-miners to work in the natural gas sector, officials said. Greene County Commissioner Zimmerman said hed like to see a big company like Amazon or Toyota come to southwestern Pennsylvania to build a distribution or manufacturing plant that could employ thousands. But he knows first the region needs a ready workforce. Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Robinson said the company the company typically works with local organizations to evaluate whether locations have an appropriate workforce and has no current plans for distribution operations in Western Pennsylvania. Toyota spokesman Edward Lewis said the company considers local workforce training an "important consideration" when deciding where to locate facilities. SIGNS OF LIFE Sean Moodie and his brother Steve spent the last two years working in the natural gas industry, but see coal as a good bet in the current political climate. I am optimistic that you can make a good career out of coal for the next 50 years, said Sean Moodie. Coal jobs are preferable to those in natural gas, they said, because the mines are close to home, while pipeline work requires travel. Like Sylvester, the Moodie brothers are taking mining courses offered by Consols recruiter, GMS. Bob Levo, who runs a GMS training program, offered a measure of realism: The point of the training is to provide low-cost and potentially short-term labor to a struggling industry, he said. "Thats a major part of the reason that coal mines have been able to survive," he said. "They rely on us to provide labor at lower cost." Clemmy Allen, 63, a veteran miner and head of the United Mineworkers of America's Career Centers, said miners are taking a big risk in holding out for a coal recovery. Hes placing his hopes for the region's future on retraining. UMWAs 64-acre campus in Prosperity, Pennsylvania - which once trained coal miners - will use nearly $3 million in federal and state grants to retrofit classrooms to teach cybersecurity, truck driving and mechanical engineering. "Unlike when I worked in the mines," he said, "if you get laid off now, you are pretty much laid off." Follow Trumps impact on energy, environment, healthcare, immigration and the economy at The Trump Effect - https://www.reuters.com/trump-effect (Refiles to remove repeated words "the company" in paragraph 26) (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot) Related Video: Watch news, TV and more on Yahoo View. By Stanley Carvalho ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Construction work on Bangladesh's first nuclear power reactor will start next month with Russian collaboration and completion slated for 2024, the country's minister for science & technology said on Wednesday. Bangladesh has been planning to build nuclear plants since the 1960s but a lack of support and other factors have delayed the much-needed project in a country known for frequent power cuts. Two nuclear reactors, each with 1,100 megawatts of capacity are being built by Russia's Rosatom, which is also funding 90 percent of the costs, Yeafesh Osman told Reuters on the sidelines of a nuclear conference in Abu Dhabi. He declined to disclose the cost of the project. But a Russian source told Reuters the estimated cost of the two reactors is around $12.5 billion. "All the auxiliary structures are completed and first concrete pouring will be next month. We have suffered enough by delays, we need nuclear power as part of our energy mix," he said, adding it will reduce CO2 emissions greatly and help secure much-needed electricity. The two VVER-1200 pressurized water reactors will be operational in 2024 and 2025 respectively, he said. The reactors will be at Rooppur, 200 km north-west of the capital Dhaka. Rosatom will build and maintain the plants, supply fuel as also provide training for staff, he said. Russia has already built two VVER reactors in neighboring India, at Kudankulam and is planning to build two more. Nuclear power will contribute about 10 percent of the country's energy mix when both reactors are ready. Currently, Bangladesh relies on hydro, coal and expensive gas to meet the country's surging power needs. Bangladesh has plans to continue with its nuclear power program by building two more reactors in the short-term, Osman said, without giving details. The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the site and has given the thumbs-up for the project, he added. (Reporting by Stanley Carvalho, editing by David Evans) Right after Berlin-based travel activities booking platform GetYourGuide announced its $50 million Series C, one of Europe's biggest tourist draws, the city of Paris, was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks. The awful events in Paris were clearly not good news for a tourism-dependent business. "We closed the round on the eve of the Paris attacks... which kind of grounded the business for almost two months," GetYourGuide co-founder and CEO Johannes Reck tells TechCrunch. "In Europe literally no one went on sightseeing tours. "It's been quite a turbulent journey since the last fund raise." Yet today, two years on, GetYourGuide is announcing a $75M Series D, bringing on board new lead investor Battery Ventures, with all its existing investors also participating in the round (including KKR, Spark Capital, Highland Europe, Sunstone Capital and Nokia Growth Partners). The round brings its total raised to ~$170M. Sad to say, terrorism hasn't gone away. Anything but. Since the Paris attacks of November 2015 there have been a number of other attacks carried out by individuals or small terror cells in many locations across Europe -- including Nice, Berlin, London, Manchester and Barcelona to name a few. Many of these cities are also popular tourist destinations. But despite violent attacks on high profile tourist locations being an all-too-common news story -- in Barcelona this August terrorists targeted the tourist-packed street of Las Ramblas, and had also been planning to bomb another guidebook staple: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia -- GetYourGuide says its business has not suffered any more major freezes like the one that occurred after Paris. On the contrary, it's been able to show late stage investors the kind of robust growth metrics that get VCs proffering term sheets. "Throughout 2016 and particular in 2017 the momentum just came back at such an extraordinary pace," says Reck. "And this year we've been growing faster in absolute numbers of course but also in relative metrics than in all of the previous years. So we've really accelerated." Story continues This summer the 2009 founded startup passed a cumulative 10 million tickets booked milestone, with nearly half of those booked in 2017 alone. "We've seen a tremendous impact from the Paris attacks but then, after that, no further attack has had any real impact that you could measure. It's almost like travelers now are kinda of used to this," he suggests. "They don't see it as a massive threat anymore. Which I honestly also think is the right way to look at it. "I mean the people who were hurt the most after the Paris attacks were the local Paris suppliers. Many of which went bankrupt or had to lay off staff. So I'm grateful to travelers that they don't punish the local suppliers. They got punished twice -- they got the Paris attack and then they didn't get revenue. It was really bad." And the apparent resilience of tourists to terror tactics hints at the underlying growth story in the travel market in recent years that's also enabled GetYourGuide to keep scaling its business. Its key markets are "all the European markets"; both from a source customer and travel destination point of view -- and "definitely" Germany and the UK on the source front. But Reck also says the US is its fastest growing source market now, and "soon the number one source market globally". "We've made significant inroads," he says of the US market, adding this is "something that two years ago I frankly would have never believed we would have been able to pull off". He puts US traction down to GetYourGuide's "relative strength in Europe" (vs competitors), and to Europe itself being a massive travel activities market -- worth $150BN annually -- which he says has also meant it has always made sense for GetYourGuide to stay headquartered in Europe. Even though it had to go outside the region to seek and secure this late stage funding. The Europeans could not stand the pace, and typically didnt also have the appetite for risk that such a venture at this scale requires. "Unfortunately I have to say, as an entrepreneur in the European ecosystem, we just don't have the density of growth funds in Europe that we need," says Reck. "In this round we closed the round from start to finish in eight weeks. So it was a very, very fast process. And trust me it was basically just US investors being involved in this. The Europeans could not stand the pace, and typically didn't also have the appetite for risk that such a venture at this scale requires." "This was the first time we were really at a scale and profile where everyone wanted to invest," he continues. "Every investor that we've met had a very keen intent to become a part of it, just because it's a very exciting market at a very exciting juncture in time." "Travel activities is a huge growth market," he adds. "More and more people want to do activities -- if you look at millennials, I think seven or eight out of ten would rather book an experience than buy a physical item. And overall mobile usage at destinations is still skyrocketing -- with lower roaming costs and better wi-fi. So we're on a huge growth trajectory. Less than one per cent of the global travel activities segment is being booked online yet with an intermediary like GetYourGuide. And there's just so much reason for doing that -- we're growing very fast." Another on the up travel trend he flags is food, noting that 16 per cent of leisure travel spending goes on restaurants or food related experiences. "There's a wealth of really creative food experiences now popping up in many cities," he notes. "Which is also something that we're hosting on the platform." Growth in the travel activities online booking market generally is being driven by more tourist attractions opening up to online bookings via third party platforms -- including offering incentives for travelers to book their tickets ahead of time, such as skip the line or VIP entry, reckons Reck. He says momentum is also being driven by the general digital feedback loop of Internet research combined with online reviews helping to weed out bad quality and raise standards among tour suppliers -- and thus also grow demand for activities and day trips as more consumers share their (positive) experiences. "The major trend here is that it's not the same tourists than the tourists that you had 10 to 20 years ago. [Then] there were these old school tour operators. Really bad reputation. They would all show you the most touristy parts of town... Now because we have so much content around the activity and customer reviews etc it's becoming much harder for the tour operators to do a bad job... So essentially we're in a new age of tour supplier, all of which have really tremendous customer satisfaction." "In these past two years while we've more than quadrupled our total transaction volumes we've also increased customer satisfaction by more than 50 per cent," he adds. "Which is really due to the improved offerings. There are many completely new companies that never existed before that have now been created to serve customers in a much more authentic and better way. So no more tourist shops and stops in places where you'd never want to go." GetYourGuide is "very close to profitability", according to Reck, with some 15 million unique monthly active users at this stage. The Series D funding round does not yet an EU unicorn make, though he says valuation was not "the key driver" for the round. Rather the priority was to bring on "a really good investor that understands the space", and to get terms that allow it to remain "a founder driven company". Battery Ventures general partner Itzik Parnafes is joining GetYourGuide's board, bringing decades of experience advising tech-focused businesses across a range of industries -- but with a particular focus on marketplaces and tourism. The company has already made significant progress in carving out a large and high-profile niche in the European travel market. Im looking forward to working closely with the Board to support its efforts to capitalize on what I think is a very exciting segment of global tourism," said Parnafes in a statement on the GetYourGuide funding. "This raise gives us a lot of flexibility," adds Reck, saying that it will provide "many years" of runway. "We didn't just want to raise the capital to burn it in the next two years -- at this point, because the company is so sizable, it was also to have significant funds on the balance sheet so that we can pursue strategic opportunities and just take a longer term view than we could before." An IPO is also not yet on the horizon -- though going public is "definitely under consideration". But Reck says the plan is to go public "ultimately", using what he dubs "the luxury of being private" to continue to invest in the tech and pursue "longer term opportunities". The Series D funding is going firstly towards international expansion, with a big push planned for the US market and also into Asia (Reck describes this bit as the "boring execution game that we just need to be really good at"). Investment will also go on product dev, with the team already working on ways to try to enhance personalization of the product and generate effective recommendations for extra activities for travelers to book. The end game is to have GetYourGuide be more like a travel companion or assistant -- i.e. rather than a platform used once or twice, ahead of time, to book the odd flagship tourist experience. Nudging users to transact with GetYourGuide multiple times per tourist destination is their revenue-amplifying goal. "We're trying to hone our recommendation algorithms -- and we're actually working quite a lot on machine learning and AI right now in order to really understand what customers want, to understand customer intent," he says. "Before they book, when they book, after they've booked -- and then really have tailored recommendation. So that we can become a much more integral part of their trip." "A couple of years down the line, with what we're building, with a smartphone you'll have a companion in your pocket that you can take out at any point in time and will recommend you the best things for you to do for your trip at this very point in time," he adds. "We'll be able to direct you there, the ticketing will be totally integrated with the local provider, the check-in experience will be really seamless. So I think that's where we're really moving with the company -- and with the travel activities industry overall is to be the content, really the exciting part of the trip. And constantly inspiring the traveler to do more and to do more exciting things at their destination." Reck puts a 12 to 24 month timeframe on GetYourGuide being able to have automatic recommendations up and running for users based on their geolocation and "profile", though he says it is already taking the "first steps" to tailor recommendations -- by, for example, analyzing what people were searching for in Google when they landed on its platform. "It's something I'm super excited about because it will make travel overall so much better," he adds. "So far no company really, in travel, has managed to do personalization really well." The travel companion vision does raise the question of where GetYourGuide will get the necessary personal data to profile its users and power relevant enough recommendations for extra stuff for them to do on each trip. Reck says it's already started building out partnerships to help profile customers for travel activity suggestion purposes. "One thing we've done recently is we're now the exclusive partner of Easyjet, of KLM, and a host of other airlines where we have very tightly integrated partnerships where we can leverage each others' data essentially to understand the customer profile. And we continue to pursue that," he notes. So when an EU airline asks you to specify if your trip is for business or pleasure as you're purchasing your flights, it might also be sharing that intel with GetYourGuide (and vice versa). Reck characterizes this as a win-win all round: For travelers, because they get more relevant recommendations; and for destinations because "it will help to spread the traveler away from just the main tourist zone where everyone is at right now, into a much more diversified portfolio of locations and also of activities". However profiling customers does imply a loss of privacy. And with incoming changes to EU privacy law -- under the GDPR which will be in force from next May -- all companies doing business in the region and gathering EU citizens' personal data at scale are likely to need to be rather more explicit in informing their customers about what personal data they are gathering and for what specific purposes, as well as enabling people to ask to have their data deleted on request. So while consumers might be okay with travel companies profiling them if it means that they end up having better holidays, all companies involved in this data-sharing chain are going to need to get good at explaining which bits of personal data they are gathering and why. On the competition front, Reck says GetYourGuide is not concerned about Airbnb's moves into offering travel experiences via its platform -- arguing that the vacation accommodation platform's focus is currently too narrow to be a threat to its more mainstream tourist market positioning. Rather he's more concerned about Chinese rivals, and mentions that as one of the reasons why GetYourGuide intends to hold off on IPOing in the short term ("not having to really optimize the profits on a quarterly basis" is, he argues, "particularly" important if you play against "such long term players as the Chinese"). "Airbnb has a very unique set of products that I would consider to be more PR products than real products. It's relevant for a very small sub-segment of, I would say, very artsy types of customer that look for very, very curated and unique experiences in a city," he argues. "Those products have not been demonstrated to be successful in the main market yet. And I don't see that happening moving forward unless Airbnb really dramatically changes their strategy which I think would be detrimental to their brand -- which is all about uniqueness. I think they won't be a real competitor. But we'll see." "The most interesting competitors to me are all out of China," he adds, name-checking Hong Kong-based, Sequoia-backed Klook as one -- a 2014-founded company which last month raised a $60M Series C and added Goldman Sachs to its investor roster. "The Chinese are really innovating super fast," he says. "China outbound is just a massively growing market. It's something that we'll also make sure to tap into. But what we see now -- the key competitive landscape, it's not even GetYourGuide vs Airbnb, Booking.com or Expedia. All these companies, all the large corporates are very focused on their money makers, which is accommodation, but the more interesting competition that is going on -- that will be going on over the next five to ten years will be the one between GetYourGuide from the Western hemisphere and all the Chinese companies that are coming up." Moving faster is something Reck says, with hindsight, he wishes the business had been able to do. But then GetYourGuide grew out of a student project and the young, first-time founders were effectively learning on the job -- with running a startup doubling as their defacto MBA. "If anything, I would do a lot of things faster," he says when asked what he would change if he could. "We took a very long time in the beginning. We could have literally skipped like three years or so at the beginning by having a clearer strategy and raising more funds earlier. "We kind of dabbled along with a lot of different business models, building a lot -- on content and SEO and partnerships that were kind of semi-fruitful. In the beginning having a lot of inexperienced junior people, and frankly being inexperienced junior founders. On the positive side, that was like our entrepreneurship MBA if you want. So we had the luxury to, under the radar, mature as entrepreneurs before really going into the limelight and raising a lot of funding. "What I see as more problematic with some of the founders today is that the ecosystem is a lot more mature so you get seed funding very quickly, you have a lot more instructions from experienced people which is all great. It also puts the founders under pressure to really mature at a very, very fast pace -- and I'm not quite sure whether I myself would have made that, to be honest. So for us I think it was good the way how it ended up being." What's his biggest challenge now? Recruiting, says Reck without hesitating. "Hiring really good people and experienced people." He says the current team is composed of around 15 per cent German speaking staff and 85 per cent who had been brought in from elsewhere -- mostly from the Europe Union and some from even further afield. "We need to constantly relocate people into Berlin or Zurich which is the engineering office... We constantly have to find talent abroad, need to assess it and need to relocate them." But that's a necessary price for GetYourGuide remaining located at the heart of its market, says Reck. "It would have been a completely bad decision to relocate the company to the US for many reasons... One thing I've learnt it's not because the talent is worse here it's really just the lack of experience -- so we have a lot of really high calibre talent, we have great universities... we have many, many very high powered universities with very bright minds and well educated people coming out of. What you really need to infuse the companies with is experience. And that's what we've tried by always bringing on a mix of Silicon Valley talent... alongside a lot of really good local talent." "And the good thing about being a big fish in a smaller pond is that you stand out so much more -- so we can really hire and recruit the best people across all of Europe," he adds. The Fantasy Bra is here, which means its almost time for theVictorias Secret Fashion Show. Victorias Secret AngelLais Ribeiroannounced Wednesday that shell be wearing the$2 million bra called the Champagne Nights Fantasy Bra at this years show. Ive been holding this secret for too long and I am beyond honored to announce that I will be wearing the Champagne Nights Fantasy Bra this year! Ribeiro wrote onInstagram. I am very happy and thankful for my Victorias Secret family for trusting me and all the support from my on family, friends and fans! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! A post shared by Lais Ribeiro (@laisribeiro)on Nov 1, 2017 at 6:19am PDT A post shared by Lais Ribeiro (@laisribeiro)on Nov 2, 2017 at 10:42am PDT According to People, the multi-million dollar bra is made ofdiamonds, yellow sapphires and blue topaz. It weighs in at over 600 carats and took around 350 hours to create. Ribero has walked in the Victorias Secret show six times, but this is the first time she will wear the Fantasy Bra. I never cried so much in my entire life and I have a baby, Ribeiro told People. It was so emotional. I couldnt believe it when they told me. It was so beautiful. Take a look at some of the past Fantasy Bras below: 2017 Victoria's Secret Angel Lais Ribeiro reveals the 2017 Champagne Nights Fantasy Bra on Nov. 1, 2017 in New York City. 2016 Model Jasmine Tookes presents a $3 million Fantasy Bra creation during the 2016 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at the Grand Palais in Paris, France, Nov. 30, 2016. 2015 Model Lily Aldridge presents the $2 million Mouawad Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra, dubbed the "Fireworks Fantasy Bra" during the 2015 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in New York, Nov. 10, 2015. 2015 The $2 million Mouawad Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra, dubbed the "Fireworks Fantasy Bra", is revealed at the Victoria's Secret store in Santa Monica, CA on Nov.2, 2015. The bra dazzles with over 6,500 precious gems of diamonds, blue topaz, yellow sapphires and pink quartz all set in 18-karat gold. 2014 Models Adriana Lima (L) and Alessandra Ambrosio wearing the Mouawad Fantasy Bra walk the runway at the annual Victoria's Secret fashion show at Earls Court on Dec. 2, 2014 in London, England. 2014 Models Adriana Lima (L) and Alessandra Ambrosio attend the Victoria's Secret Dream Angels Fantasy Bra debut at the Fashion Show mall on Nov. 13, 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. 2013 Victoria's Secret model Candice Swanepoel poses for photographers with the Royal Fantasy Bra gift set, valued at $10 million during a photo opportunity at the Victoria's secret store in New York City on Nov. 6, 2013. 2013 Candice Swanepoel, wearing the Royal Fantasy Bra and Belt, walks the runway at the 2013 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show at Lexington Avenue Armory on Nov. 13, 2013 in New York City. 2012 Model Alessandra Ambrosio poses with the 2012 Fantasy Bra backstage at the 2012 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Nov. 7, 2012 in New York City. 2012 Victoria's Secret Angel Alessandra Ambrosio walks the runway wearing the Victoria's Secret's Million-Dollar Fantasy Bra during the 2012 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Nov. 7, 2012 in New York City. 2011 Supermodel Miranda Kerr poses for pictures at the unveiling of the 2011 Fantasy Treasure Bra at Victoria's Secret on Oct. 19, 2011 in New York City. 2010 Adriana Lima wearing $2 million fantasy bra by Damiani walks the runway during the 2010 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Nov. 10, 2010 in New York City. 2010 Adriana Lima reveals the $2 million bombshell fantasy bra designed by Damiani exclusively for Victoria's Secret at Victoria's Secret on Oct. 20, 2010 in New York City. 2008 Victoria's Secret Angel Miranda Kerr walks the runaway wearing the 2008 Fantasy Bra during the 2008 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Nov. 15, 2008 in Miami Beach, FL. 2007 Model Selita Ebanks walks the runway at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2007 in Hollywood, CA, on Nov. 15, 2007. 2006 Karolina Kurkova wearing "The Victorias Secret Hearts on Fire Diamond Fantasy Bra" in 2006. 2005 Gisele Bundchen during Behind the Scenes at the Victoria's Secret 2005 Splendor Fantasy Bra Photo Shoot in New York City. 2003 Supermodel Heidi Klum posing along side the $11 million Fantasy Bra at a fitting for the Victoria's Secret 2003 Fashion Show on Nov.10, 2003 in New York City. 2001 Victoria's Secret model fittings, in preparations for the Victoria's Secret 2001 Fashion Show (scheduled for Tuesday Nov. 13.) Pictured: Model Heidi Klum wearing the $12.5 million Fantasy Bra. New York City 11/12/2001. Photo: Evan Agostini/ImageDirect. 2000 Supermodel Gisele Bundchen shows off a $15 million red hot fantasy bra set from Victoria's Secret lingerie line in 2000. The red satin bra and matching G-string panty are covered with 300 carats of Thai rubies set with diamonds and semi-precious stones. The gift includes the $3.7 million body bracelet, and a diamond belt with 76 diamonds of two carats each set in gold. 2000 Supermodel Gisele Bundchen shows-off the $15 million 'Fantasy Bra' in New York City on Dec. 7, 2000. Related... What the Angels Are Most Nervous About Before The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 18 Gorgeous Bras That Aren't From Victoria's Secret Victoria's Secret is Starting to Pay a Price for Photoshopping Its Models This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada, under pressure from allies to boost its commitment to peacekeeping, will propose offering helicopters for use by U.N. forces in Mali and could later provide troops to work as trainers, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government, which came to power in 2015 and quickly promised to make 600 soldiers available for peace operations, last year said it would consider sending soldiers to Mali but has repeatedly put off a decision amid fears of casualties. The stalling has irritated other nations, which say it could harm Canada's efforts to win a seat on the Security Council. Canada is prepared to send six helicopters for use by the 10,000-strong U.N. force in Mali, which is helping deal with a militant threat, said the sources, who requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. More than 80 members have been killed since 2013, making Mali the world's deadliest peacekeeping operation. Canada is hosting an international peacekeeping conference later this month and officials are preparing a special meeting on the sidelines to discuss the needs of the Mali mission, both in terms of providing troops and helping train local forces, the sources said. One option for Canada would be to send soldiers to act as trainers, a role they are already playing in northern Iraq, said one source. They could either be based in Mali or nearby nations. Although Ottawa has sent three separate fact-finding missions to the Mali region, Canadian officials said they have yet to take a final decision on whether to send troops. "We realize there is growing impatience for a final decision," said a Canadian source familiar with government thinking. Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan told reporters that "when it comes to peace support operations... we will make sure that we take our time to make a responsible decision." He declined to give further details. Defense experts said that given the scale of the Mali challenge, they doubted whether even 600 Canadian troops could make a difference on the front lines. A senior diplomat from a nation involved in peacekeeping said the Canadian government should have studied the Mali mission carefully before publicly discussing the possibility of sending troops. "If soldiers start coming home in coffins, it's debatable whether Sajjan could give a coherent explanation of why Canada was there in the first place," said the diplomat. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by David Gregorio and Dan Grebler) Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) (AFP) - When Sayfullo Saipov used a truck to mow people down on a New York street, ultimately killing eight according to terror charges, he guaranteed his former homeland Uzbekistan would receive the worst kind of headlines. People from ex-Soviet Central Asia have been at the heart of high-profile attacks this year in the United States, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. Yet Saipov, according to official accounts, came into contact with radical Islamic ideologies not in the country of his birth, but in the one he adopted seven years ago: the US. Saipov moved to America in 2010 under a visa programme -- President Donald Trump's response to Tuesday's attack was to announce tougher vetting for immigrants. "Most of these attackers come from rather secular backgrounds and tend to radicalise in their country of destination rather than origin," said Yan Matusevich, research officer at the Vienna-headquartered International Centre for Migration Policy Development. Thousands of former residents of the region's five countries known as the "stans" -- -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq since 2011. However incidents involving violent extremism at home have been relatively rare. - Global form of radicalisation - But if one single theme does link the Central Asia-born assailants of very different backgrounds accused of attacks this year in New York, Istanbul, Saint Petersburg and Stockholm, it is migration. Uzbek national Abdulgadir Masharipov, who killed 39 people in a January 1 attack on a nightclub in Istanbul had lived and trained as a militant in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Turkish authorities. Another Uzbek, Rakhmat Akilov, who ploughed a truck into a crowd of pedestrians in Stockholm in April, killing five, was a failed asylum seeker reportedly at risk of deportation. Akbarjon Djalilov, identified as the 22-year-old bomber behind the Saint Petersburg metro blast in April that killed 16 people including himself was born in Kyrgyzstan but left for Russia with his family aged 17. Story continues While the series of attacks appear to form a "Central Asian pattern" Matusevich argues they are part of "a broader, more global form of radicalisation" and the attackers' "actual life situations were quite diverse". Saipov worked as an Uber driver in New Jersey. Uzbekistan's government has said that there was nothing to indicate he was an extremist before leaving. Saipov was described by his former neighbours in the capital Tashkent "in very positive terms", said the government's statement on Wednesday. "His parents followed traditional Islam and were never seen in connection with any extremist branches," it added. - 'Adept at delivering message' - Looking for a common thread, analysts focus on exposure to online extremist content, particularly produced by the Islamic State group in whose name Saipov committed the attack, according to New York police. "The only thing we can say about commonalities between Saipov and (Istanbul attacker) Masharipov is that they were Uzbeks living outside the country with access to Islamic State propaganda material," said Deirdre Tynan, Central Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group. While stressing it is "too early" to say if Saipov had direct contact with IS, Tynan says the organisation has been adept at delivering its message in Russian and Central Asian languages across a variety of platforms. Sleek IS propaganda appearing to target Central Asians gained international attention in 2015 when a child identifying as a Kazakh IS recruit was shown in a video executing an alleged Russian spy. Another video released months later featured a former special forces chief from Tajikistan who defected to IS. IS's sophisticated media strategy has been critical in helping recruit Central Asians, setting it apart from other radical organisations operating in the region, Tynan says. But rights monitors say the group's global prominence has also given former Soviet governments a pretext to intensify crackdowns on devout Muslims. Likewise in Russia, since the April bombing in Saint Petersburg, security services have visibly increased raids targeting Central Asian migrants, sometimes claiming to have foiled extremist plots. "You get the impression that some of these arrests have a political thrust, to identify (to the public) an enemy of sorts," Svetlana Gannushkina, a renowned Russian rights defender whose work focuses on migration, told AFP. "And who are Russia's enemies? Well, the external enemy is the United States, but the internal enemy is (Central Asian) migrants," Gannushkina said. By Soyoung Kim and Ben Blanchard SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping replied to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's congratulatory message on China's Communist Party Congress, saying he hopes to promote ties between the two countries, North Korea's state news agency said on Thursday. The friendly exchange is relatively routine, but it comes as China has come under intense pressure from the United States to do more to rein in the North's missile and nuclear tests, which have raised tensions globally. China has been increasingly frustrated over ally North Korea's weapons tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions, repeatedly calling for restraint and urging all sides to speak and act carefully. Xi's message comes days before U.S. President Donald Trump makes his first official visit to Asia, with North Korea high on the agenda. It follows Tuesday's unexpected agreement between Seoul and Beijing to move beyond a year-long dispute over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. "I wish that under the new situation, the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development and thus make a positive contribution to ... defending regional peace and stability and common prosperity," Xi wrote in the message dated Nov. 1, according to the North's official news agency KCNA. DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not give details of the message from Xi to Kim but confirmed it had been sent to express thanks for Kim's congratulatory messages. Many countries had sent messages to China over the congress and, to be polite, China had written back to say thank you to them, she added. "I believe this is in the interests of both sides and has important meaning for resolving the present problem we are facing and maintaining regional peace and stability," Hua told a daily news briefing in Beijing. The message had yet to be carried by Chinese state media as of Thursday afternoon. China and North Korea often exchange diplomatic correspondence and ceremonial letters, although personal messages between the leaders tend to be few. Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, said the exchange of messages appeared "totally routine", while noting that Kim's congratulatory message was shorter than one sent after the previous Communist Party congress five years ago, when Xi first came to power. After a flurry of activity including a sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3, Pyongyang did not disrupt last month's party congress with another test as some analysts had expected. It has not tested a missile since launching one over Japan on Sept. 15, the longest such lull this year. But Zhao said this was likely due to "technical reasons rather than political reasons". "There are no signs that they are going to give up on additional missile or nuclear tests," he said. Nam Seong-wook, a professor of North Korea Studies at Korea University in Seoul, said Xi's reply to Kim could be interpreted as "China's strategic ambition to embrace both North Korea and South Korea" ahead of Trump's visits to South Korea and China. Xi has previously sent messages to Kim, most recently last year when Xi expressed his congratulations for a party congress in North Korea. Neither leader has visited the other's country since assuming power. Kim sent a congratulatory message to Xi last week at the end of China's Communist Party Congress, wishing him "great success" as head of the nation. (Reporting by Soyoung Kim in SEOUL and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Additional reporting by Philip Wen in BEIJING; Editing by Tony Munroe) The Trump administration has long denied colluding with Russia. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were recently indicted on conspiracy charges. (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty) Special counsel Robert Mueller unveiled the first charges in the Russia probe against members of President Trumps inner circle and more are likely coming. There were 12 counts in the indictments handed up by a federal grand jury against Paul Manafort, President Trumps former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, Manaforts former business partner, including conspiracy to launder money and failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. But perhaps the most sinister-sounding is count one: conspiracy against the United States. Trump has repeatedly denied that his campaign colluded with Russia, and this charge does not allege that he did. Conspiracy and collusion may be synonyms in colloquial conversation, but they mean different things legally. Collusion vs. conspiracy The term collusion is widely used in the present context to refer to alleged coordination between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents to affect the 2016 presidential election, but it has no legal definition and is not necessarily criminal (with the exception of violating antitrust laws: companies fixing prices to manipulate markets). Sam Pillsbury, a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, put it simply: Conspiracy is a federal crime; collusion is not. Collusion describes the larger wrong that has been alleged against the Trump campaign, encompassing both political wrongdoing basically disloyalty to the U.S. and a variety of criminal and civil law violations that may have been committed as part of the collusion, Pillsbury told Yahoo News. But the specific charge is conspiracy, which is a crime under the common law, the criminal codes of all states and the federal law, according to David Gray, a professor of law at the University of Maryland. Count one alleges that Manafort and Gates conspired against the United States, and took specific steps to further their scheme. Given the nature and scope of the alleged conspiracy, that could amount to scores of individual acts of financial malfeasance, Gray told Yahoo News. Story continues According to Pillsbury, conspiracy allegations give prosecutors wide scope for proving criminal liability and broad latitude in the type of evidence they can present. Republican nominee Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka with Rick Gates at the Republican Convention in 2016. (Photo: Brooks Kraft/ Getty Images) Classic organizational investigation John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has worked on cases similar to the Russia probe over more than three decades in law enforcement and homeland security. He said Muellers team appears to be involved in a classic organizational investigation, similar to a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) case or a CCE (continuing criminal enterprise) case. The goal of these investigations is to determine whether a group of people engaged in activities that constitute a crime. In this case, it would be Russian interference with our election and whether people in the U.S. were engaged in a criminal conspiracy to achieve this objective. A variety of charges can arise from these investigations, Cohen told Yahoo News. Cohen, now a professor of professional practice in criminal justice at Rutgers University, said that during organizational investigations, his teams would map out criminal organizations and determine the first suspects they would like to go after. In some cases, wed go after people we thought would flip and cooperate with us to get us more information, Cohen said. In other cases, we would identify people and arrest them on some charge because we felt it would so disrupt the other organization that it would provide opportunities to gain additional information and intelligence. He said that participants in a continuing criminal enterprise could be prosecuted for a whole series of offenses. Such charges could include money laundering, tax evasion or wire fraud. Muellers team may or may not wrap all these charges together with an overall prosecution under the RICO statute or under a CCE alleging that all the different criminal offenses were part of an ongoing, illicit relationship that included activities to disrupt, interfere with or manipulate the results of the 2016 presidential election. Paul Manafort makes his way past photographers as he walks from Federal District Court in Washington on Monday. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) Possible charges connected to collusion Stuart Green, a professor of law at Rutgers Law School, said opening charges are often referred to as low-hanging fruit, and its often easier to prosecute someone for covering up criminal wrongdoing than it is to prove the underlying wrongdoing as demonstrated by decades of white-collar criminal prosecutions. Green said there is no crime as such in politicians digging up dirt on their opponents even with the help of a foreign government but depending on how it was carried out, there could be criminal liability. So what possible allegations of wrongdoing might Mueller be investigating? Green said there are three plausible charges connected with collusion that could come about from the Russia probe: helping with the hacking of the DNC, exchanging things of value with Moscow and receiving stolen property. If the Trump campaign assisted in or coordinated the dissemination of the emails stolen from the DNC or John Podesta, that could constitute a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Green said. Theyd be charged with aiding and abetting in the hacking of the DNC computers. We know that the DNC hack happened, but the question is how much the Trump campaign knew about it and whether it was complicit in it. Were the Russians acting on their own? How much was the Trump campaign involved? Green said campaign finance laws could apply if the Trump campaign and Moscow exchanged the DNC emails, and that these constitute what the statute refers to as a thing of value. The campaign could instead be charged with receiving stolen property. Either of these would represent a somewhat novel application of those statutes. Green emphasized that as these cases proceed, its often easier to prosecute cover-ups than wrongdoing. If someone on the Trump campaign lied to government investigators, it could give rise to a false statements charge. Its lying to the government affirmatively, but also failing to provide information that is required, Green said. Those are relatively straightforward charges to prove. It depends on whats been said during interviews. You dont need to be under oath to be prosecuted for false statements. Lying to an FBI agent or federal investigator could constitute a false statement. Paul Manafort, left, leaves Federal District Court in Washington on Monday. (Photo: Alex Brandon/AP) Intelligence community findings The intelligence community concluded that the Russians were involved in an extensive and sophisticated influence and propaganda campaign in which they sought to achieve multiple goals: sow discord within the United States, interfere with the election and undermine confidence in the government. Although Russia and its predecessor, the U.S.S.R., have conducted these operations against the U.S. for decades, this time they were able to use social media and other means to influence far more people. It is public knowledge that Manafort and others in the Trump campaign had long-standing relationships with individuals or entities associated with the Russian government. The indictment alleges that Manafort was involved in a multiyear relationship with ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and that through this business relationship he received and concealed millions of dollars. He stands accused of laundering the money through offshore accounts and failing to register as a foreign agent. Historical documents The controversial TrumpRussia dossier, which was written by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, refers to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Yanukovych worrying that payments to Manafort were not concealed adequately and could come to light, creating a trail to Russian operations. The similarity of language in the Steele dossier and the indictment struck Cohen as an indication that the investigation is looking at the actions of these individuals as they relate to Russia going back much further than the 2016 election and that the indictment likely doesnt contain all that Mueller knows about possible collusion, or even Manafort and Gates in particular. At this stage in an investigation, an indictment of an individual who is just one part of a potential criminal enterprise is not going to contain everything that the government knows, Cohen said. It will only contain enough information to successfully file the charges you want to file. That the current indictment does not include crimes explicitly linked to collusion does not mean such charges are not forthcoming, he said. It is still too early to tell. So to come out and say, This didnt mention collusion in the American election thats not really at this stage a valid point to make. Though it may be technically accurate, it doesnt necessarily fully represent how those activities fit into the bigger picture, Cohen said. Rick Gates looks on as candidate Donald Trump prepares to accept the presidential nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention in 2016. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty) Muellers opening salvo The allegations in the indictment are significant, covering Manafort and Gatess relationships with individuals and entities associated with the Russian government as well as accused illegal activities intended to hide payments that came from those relationships and conceal the relationships from the U.S. government. Conspiracy against the United States, Green explained, is a serious charge but might not be as serious as it sounds to a layperson. He said it does not mean conspiring to overthrow the government or conspiring to aid the enemies of the government. Rather, it means a conspiracy that violates or undermines federal law. The victims could even be private citizens or federally insured banks. It doesnt have anything to do directly with treason or conspiring against the U.S. in a common-sense understanding. Its more of a term of art, Green told Yahoo News. The United States [in this instance] just means Congress and the federal courts have jurisdiction over the case because it involves a federal crime or the United States government. He said conspiracy to defraud the United States involves impeding the operations of the U.S. government even if it doesnt constitute a specific crime against the U.S. Typically, courts allow both provisions to be charged in the same indictment based on the same conduct, so they are not mutually exclusive, Green said. Where did the rest of the money go? David M. Shapiro, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former FBI special agent who worked in counterintelligence against the Soviet Union, said that if you look past the formal legalese, a clear picture emerges of the allegations: There was an awful lot of money coming from officials in Ukraine allied with Russia and seeking to influence policy in the United States that was going to lobbyists who failed to disclose who was paying them. As an expert in forensic accounting, Shapiro said what he found most interesting about the indictment of Manafort and Gates was the absence of detail about the disposition of the $75 million that allegedly passed through the company run by the two men. The indictment specifies that $18 million went to Manafort and $3 million went to Gates leaving $54 million unaccounted for. I have two main questions, Shapiro told Yahoo News. One, who and what were the sources for the $75 million going in and, two, where did the $54 million going out thats not accounted for go? Were seeing basically commissions paid to Manafort and Gates, but clearly theres a lot more going on. Theres a lot of money out there thats unexplained. United States Legal Code The Justice Department says that courts have defined defrauding the government as activities that affect the government in at least one of three ways: They cheat the government out of money or property, obstruct or interfere with legitimate government activity or make wrongful use of a governmental instrumentality. The general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. 371) outlines what would constitute conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States: If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor. Read more from Yahoo News: Walmart employees and shoppers leave the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton - REUTERS Two men and a woman were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart on Wednesday night that forced customers to either hide or flee. Thornton police reported "multiple parties down" and advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. The men died at the Colorado store, and the woman died at a hospital. Police spokesman Victor Avila said a man nonchalantly entered the store and fired a handgun into a group of people before fleeing in a car. No one has been arrested. "This is a very heinous act," Avila said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act." The spokesman said there is currently no indication that the shooting was an act of terror. Denver Walmart shooting map Reports of shots fired came shortly before 6:30 p.m. local time, a police spokesman told local 9NEWS in Denver. An hour after the incident, the situation, the nature of the incident or status of the threat remained unclear, he said. Local television images showed a number of police cars and ambulances surrounding the store, lights flashing. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by more bursts of gunfire, The Denver Post reported. He said customers started screaming and running for the exits. Story continues "I was scared. I feared for my life," said Stephens, who has lived in Thornton for 20 years. Meanwhile, Brandon Bonney said he received a call from his brother, who was inside the store. "Bro, I'm inside Walmart, and there's a shooting here," Bonney said his brother told him. Bonney told his brother to silence his phone, stay calm and "just get somewhere and hide," The Post reported. Investigators have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting or the condition of the injured woman. Local NBC affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the store apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Empty Walmart after Customers evacuated after shooting at Thornton Walmart on Grant Street in Thorntonpic.twitter.com/K0pDQ58FVX TrumpRussia (@TrumpEra_2017) November 2, 2017 One woman on Facebook said her son had told her there was a shooting at the store. "OMG! My son Nathan just called me shooting at Thornton Walmart just now..many shots fired!!" Junie Toni Manz wrote on Facebook. "Angela Martinez-Garcia and her son Johnny and her mom Meka were in the store during shooting and had to run out...They are shaken up." By Doina Chiacu WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, had three U.S. passports, millions in assets and ties to Russian oligarchs, according to federal court documents after his indictment on tax fraud and money laundering charges. Manafort and associate Rick Gates pose a significant flight risk because of the serious nature of the charges, the strong evidence of guilt, their wealth and "their history of deceptive and misleading conduct," federal prosecutors said in a filing Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Manafort, 68, and Gates, who also worked on Trump's campaign, pleaded not guilty on Monday in a 12-count indictment, ranging from money laundering to acting as unregistered agents of Ukraines former pro-Russian government. The charges came as part of federal special counsel Robert Mueller's 5-month-old investigation into alleged Russian efforts to tilt the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor and potential collusion by campaign aides. The allegations are not related to campaign activities but reveal close ties to Russia, and include activities from 2006 to 2017, which overlaps with the mens' work on Trump's campaign. The two men are under house arrest and have relinquished their U.S. passports, with a $10 million bond set for Manafort and a $5 million bond for Gates. "Both defendants have substantial ties abroad, including in Ukraine, where both have spent time and have served as agents of its government," according to the government's memorandum in support of the conditions of release. "And both Manafort and Gates have connections to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who have provided millions of dollars to Manafort and Gates." The next hearing in the case, set for 2 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Thursday, will concern the bail conditions that were set at Monday's arraignment. Manafort was a longtime U.S. Republican operative before turning his attention to political consulting overseas. Story continues He submitted 10 passport application in the last decade and currently holds three U.S. passports, the memo said. It is rare but legal to hold three valid passports. People can apply for more than one passport under limited circumstances, including when a foreign country will deny entry to someone holding a passport showing travel to certain other countries or when a visa request is being processed but a person needs a valid passport for immediate travel, a State Department official said on Wednesday. The official could not comment on Manafort's passport records but said requests for more than one valid passport are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Asked about the information in the memo, Manafort lawyer Jason Maloni told Reuters on Wednesday his client "looks forward to having these allegations tried before a judge and jury." The memo said Manafort's financial assets were substantial but difficult to quantify because he listed figures on loan applications and other financial documents since 2012 that ranged from $19 million to $136 million. Manafort and Gates owned or controlled entities and accounts worldwide including in Cyprus, Grenadines, Seychelles and England, it said. Manafort traveled to Mexico, China and Ecuador in 2017, prosecutors said. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Karen Freifeld, Sarah Lynch; Editing by Bernadette Baum) Former DNC chair Donna Brazile (Photo by Larry French/Getty Images for SiriusXM): Getty Images Donna Brazile, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) interim chair, has claimed that the party organisation helped Hillary Clintons campaign rig the 2016 Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders. In a Politico op-ed, Ms Brazile alleged that Ms Clinton was controlling the finances of the party before officially winning the 2016 Democratic nomination for president. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the partys integrity, Ms Brazile said about the arrangement. The piece, titled Inside Hillary Clintons Secret Takeover of the DNC, is an excerpt from Ms Braziles forthcoming book. Last year, Ms Brazile took over as DNC chair after Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out of the role over leaked emails suggesting she may have favoured Ms Clinton during the primary. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clintons team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested, Ms Brazile wrote. By Sept 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart, Ms Brazile said. The proof, according to Ms Brazile, was a joint fundraising agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America. It had been signed in August 2015, four months after the former Secretary of State announced she was running for president and a year before she officially became the Democratic nominee. Ms Brazile said joint fundraising committees were created between the DNC and both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns during the 2016 election cycle. However, Ms Clinton was the only candidate who raised money for the party, she said. In a statement to Fox News, Ms Wasserman Schultz didnt directly address Ms Braziles allegations but defended her tenure as head of the DNC. "It was a tremendous honor to be asked by President Obama to serve as chair of the DNC, Wasserman Schultz said on Thursday. I am proud of the work our team did to support Democrats up and down the ballot in the 2016 election and to re-elect the president in 2012. Story continues DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa, who works under current DNC chair Tom Perez, told Fox News that the partys official policy is to not take sides during the primaries. The DNC must remain neutral in the presidential primary process, and there shouldnt even be a perception that the DNC is interfering in that process, Ms Hinojosa said. In an interview with CNBC, Mr Perez said, Were moving forward, when asked about the Ms Braziles allegations. One of my goals here as DNC chair is to make sure that the nominating process for 2020 is a process that is totally fair and transparent for everybody, he said. Ms Clinton has so far declined to comment. Washington (AFP) - A North Korean defector on Wednesday told the US Congress a domestic uprising could lead to the collapse of Kim Jong-Un's regime, as he warned against the consequences of military intervention. Thae Yong-Ho, one of the highest ranking officials to have defected in recent years, was testifying before the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives at a time of soaring tensions between Pyongyang and the West over the regime's nuclear and missile tests. Much of his commentary focused on how his homeland had evolved since Kim came to power in 2011 following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il. "While on the surface Kim Jong-Un seems to have consolidated his power through this reign of terror, simultaneously there are great and unexpected changes taking place within North Korea," said the former deputy ambassador to Britain, who fled to South Korea in August 2016. "The free markets are flourishing," he said, adding: "As more and more people get used to free and capitalist style markets, the state-owned socialist economic system becomes increasingly forgotten about." Thae added that the country's welfare system has collapsed, and that "millions of civil servants, army officers and security forces are dependent on bribes and state assets' embezzlement for their survival." North Koreans "don't care about state propaganda but increasingly watch illegally imported South Korean movies and dramas," weakening the regime's hold. "These changes... make it increasingly possible to think about civilian uprising in North Korea as more and more people gradually become informed about the reality of their living conditions," Thae argued. "Today, Kim Jong-Un thinks that only nuclear weapons and ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) can help him avert the continuing disintegration of the North Korea system," he added. Story continues While arguing for more counter-narrative efforts inside North Korea, Thae cautioned against military conflict. President Donald Trump and Kim have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about another conflict on the peninsula where the 1950-53 Korean War left millions dead. "Some people do not believe in soft power but only in military options," said Thae. "But it is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all non-military options before we decide that military action against North Korea is all that is left. "We have to see the human sacrifice from this military option." A North Korean soldier looks through binoculars toward South Korea - EPA POOL US President Donald Trump will not go to the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) on the border of North Korea and South Korea during his Asia trip, a senior administration official said on Tuesday. "The president is not going to visit the DMZ. There is not enough time in the schedule," the official told reporters in a background briefing. Instead, Trump will be the first American president to visit Camp Humphreys, a military installation south of the South Korean capital of Seoul. "We thought that would make more sense in terms of its messaging, in terms of the chance to address families and troops there," the official said. US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis visited the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula last week and Vice President Mike Pence made the same trip in April. North Korea | Kim Jong-uns fiery relationship with the US The official noted the two Trump administration forays to the zone. "It's becoming a little bit of a cliche, frankly," the official said. Mr Trump leaves for his first trip to Asia this week and is expected to arrive on October 5 in Tokyo. Separately, two U.S. officials said a decision may be made for the three aircraft carriers currently in the Asia Pacific region to carry out an exercise to coincide with Trump's trip. The officials said no decision had been made, but it would be the first exercise with three U.S. aircraft carriers in the region since 2007. North Korean soldiers (back) look on as US Defense Minister James Mattis (L) and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo (R) speak to the media at the Joint Security Area (JSA) on the Demilitarized Zone Credit: EPA A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the buildup of naval forces was part of the military component of the Trump administration's strategy to put "maximum pressure" on North Korea, which includes sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Earlier on Tuesday, the State Department welcomed a decision by China and South Korea to resume normal ties after a year-long standoff over a decision by Seoul and Washington to deploy a missile defense system to counter North Korea's nuclear programme. Ancient Egypt: Cursed Tomb of Men Who Built Giza Pyramid Reopened After 30 Years Its the sort of tourist attraction many of us might think twice about visiting a cursed tomb with a grim warning about snakes and scorpions taking vengeance on all who visit. Egypt has opened the supposedly cursed tomb where the builders of the Great Pyramid of Giza were buried for the first time since it was discovered 30 years ago.. The tomb dates from 4,500 years ago, and has a cemetery of workers along with supervisors of the works. MOST POPULAR TODAY ON YAHOO UK Donald Trump says Manhattan truck attacker Sayfullo Saipov should get the death penalty Wife who poured boiling water over husbands mistress is jailed for five years This golden retriever mum adopted two leopard cubs and its too adorable Mother and son posed as Christian worshippers to rob elderly women in churches Icelands biggest volcano is about to erupt after being struck by a series of earthquakes Egypts Ministry of Antiquities announced that it was to be opened this week, part of a drive to open more ancient sites in the area. The construction of the pyramids is thought to have involved several thousand workers although experts are still puzzled over how the large blocks were dragged to the site. Opening the workers cemetery site at Giza Plateau to visit #pyramids #ministry_antiquities #archaeology #discovery #tombs #egypt #giza A post shared by Press office (@ministry_antiquities) on Nov 1, 2017 at 5:19am PDT In his book Valley of the Golden Mummies, researcher Zahi Hawass said that the tombs included the warning, All people who enter this tomb who will make evil against this tomb and destroy it may the crocodile be against them in water, and snakes against them on land. May the hippopotamus be against them in water, the scorpion against them on land. If anyone has an excuse to be tired its Pope Francis, who in addition to being 80 years old is also the spiritual leader for more than a billion Catholics around the globe. In a recent interview with Catholic television program TV2000, the pontiff admitted that sometimes fatigue gets the best of him while hes praying. When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep, Francis said in the interview published on YouTube on Tuesday, according to translation by The Guardian. Saint Therese did it too, he said, referencing a 19th-century French nun. Saint Therese of Lisieux was known to frequently fall asleep during prayer, according to Society of the Little Flower, which promotes education about the mystics life. She was embarrassed by her inability to remain awake during her hours in chapel with the religious community, the society explains on its website. But Therese eventually concluded that just as parents love their children as much while asleep as awake, so God loved her even though she often slept during the time for prayers. The pope similarly noted that Christians are invited to feel like children lying in the arms of a loving father while they pray. Francis starts and ends his days in prayer, rising at roughly 4:45 a.m. and turning the lights off by 10 p.m. His schedule is packed and busy and made possible with at least one nap during the day. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, despite U.S. President Donald Trump's public assertion that such talks are a waste of time. Using the so-called "New York channel," Joseph Yun, U.S. negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang's United Nations mission, the official said, at a time when an exchange of bellicose insults between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fueled fears of military conflict. While U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Oct. 17 said he would continue "diplomatic efforts ... until the first bomb drops," the official's comments were the clearest sign the United States was directly discussing issues beyond the release of American prisoners, despite Trump having dismissed direct talks as pointless. There is no sign, however, that the behind-the-scenes communications have improved a relationship vexed by North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier days after his release by Pyongyang in June and the detention of three other Americans. Word of quiet engagement with Pyongyang comes despite Trump's comments, North Korea's weapons advances and suggestions by some U.S. and South Korean officials that Yun's interactions with North Koreans had been reined in. "It has not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance," said the senior State Department official. Among the points that Yun has made to his North Korean interlocutors is to "stop testing" nuclear bombs and missiles, the official said. North Korea this year conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and has test-fired a volley of missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that, if perfected, could in theory reach the United States mainland. The possibility that Pyongyang may be closer to attaching a nuclear warhead to an ICBM has alarmed the Trump administration, which in April unveiled a policy of "maximum pressure and engagement" that has so far failed to deter North Korea. At the start of Trump's presidency, Yun's instructions were limited to seeking the release of U.S. prisoners. "It is (now) a broader mandate than that," said the State Department official, declining, however, to address whether authority had been given to discuss North Korea's nuclear and missile program. In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China welcomed any dialogue between the United States and North Korea. "We encourage North Korea and the United States to carry out engagement and dialogue," Hua told reporters, adding that she hoped talks could help return the issue to a diplomatic track for resolution. SANCTIONS AND ENGAGEMENT NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has urged all United Nations members to fully and transparently implement sanctions against North Korea, which he said has emerged as a global threat. Speaking at the United Nations on Sept. 19, Trump vowed to "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies, raising anxieties about the possibility of military conflict. Twelve days later, after Tillerson said Washington was probing for a diplomatic opening, Trump said on Twitter that his chief diplomat was "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man" - his mocking nickname for the North Korean leader. Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday they said would prevent Trump from launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea on his own, highlighting the issue days before the Republican's first presidential trip to Asia. A high-ranking North Korean defector said in Washington on Tuesday that he backed the Trump administration's policy of pressuring Pyongyang through sanctions, coupled with "maximum engagement" with the leadership and increased efforts to get information into North Korea to educate its people. "I strongly believe in the use of soft power before taking any military actions," Thae Yong Ho, chief of mission at Pyongyang's embassy in London until he defected in 2016, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The New York channel is one of the few conduits the United States has for communicating with North Korea, which has itself made clear it has little interest in serious talks before it develops a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the continental United States. The last high-level contact between Yun and the North Koreans was when he traveled to North Korea in June to secure the release of Warmbier, who died shortly after he returned home in a coma, the State Department official said. The Trump administration has demanded North Korea release three other U.S. citizens: missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song. Warmbiers death was a factor in the chilling of U.S.-North Korean contacts around that time but the biggest impact came from Pyongyangs stepped-up testing, the official said. The official said, however, that "the preferred endpoint is not a war but some kind of diplomatic settlement" and suggestions that Washington is setting up a binary choice for Pyongyang to capitulate diplomatically or military action were "misleading." Diplomacy, the official said, "has a lot more room to go." But Trump's threats against North Korea are believed to have complicated diplomatic efforts. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Matt Spetalnick; additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Clarence Fernandez) Executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter testify about Russian election interference efforts on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017 in Washington: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik Facebook has raised its estimate as to how many Americans saw Russian-generated content in the run-up to the 2016 election to 150 million, as senators railed against the conduct of the tech company during the latest hearings into election . Executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter were in their second day of testifying to Congress about a campaign, directed by the Russian government, to cause turmoil in the presidential election. The scope of Russian activity was also revealed to be wider than previously stated. Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had said Russian-linked operatives disseminated tens of thousands of misleading or inflammatory posts that, juiced by thousands of Facebook advertisements, appeared before some 126 million Americans. On Wednesday Mr Stretch increased that estimate to around 150 million Americans who were exposed to the content, when Facebook-owned image sharing site Instagram is included. The companys representatives have at times faced withering questions from lawmakers incensed that the platforms did not do more to identify Russian-generated content that spread widely. In a heated exchange yesterday, Minnesota Democrat Al Franken seemed incredulous the companies allowed foreign actors to purchase ads. Senators continued to apply pressure on Wednesday, chastising the tech industrys representatives for downplaying the threat. I don't think you get it, said Sen Dianne Feinstein, D-California, whose state hosts the headquarters of all three companies. What we're talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare. The Russian-linked content Facebook has identified so far was largely intended to divide, the company has said, by highlighting fractious social issues. Among the examples of Russian-generated content senators have displayed were Facebook pages claiming Democratic nominee Hillary was despised by the overwhelming majority of the military and a fake Miners for Trump event page. Story continues Sen Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, had previously excoriated Twitter for a closed-door hearing he called deeply disappointing and inadequate on almost every level, and he again called the tech sector to task for not initially acknowledging what he called a threat to American democracy. Concerns about Russian infiltration were blown off by the leadership of your companies, Mr Warner said. All of what the Russians did last year, said Maine independent Angus King, has basically been a free pass. Tech companies have been scrambling to show they are taking the issue seriously. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had to walk back his statement, made shortly after the election, that it would be crazy to suggest Facebook functioned as a vessel for Russian influence. Twitter and Facebooked have proclaiming their commitment to election integrity and rolled out new advertising disclosure rules. Lawmakers have introduced a measure that would regulate online political ads like broadcast and print advertising, requiring disclosures about who is paying for content. Tech executives sidestepped questions about whether they would back that bill, saying they supported the concept and pointing to internal steps to increase transparency. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A second Uzbek man wanted for questioning in the investigation of Tuesday's fatal truck attack in New York City has been located, an FBI official said on Wednesday, though no details were provided on where the man was found or why he was wanted. The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday issued a wanted poster on Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, a 32-year-old native of Uzbekistan. Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbekistan immigrant who has been living in New Jersey, was charged on Wednesday with committing the attack in the name of the Islamic State militant group. U.S. law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, separately on Wednesday said Saipov had been in contact with Kadirov and one other person. The officials, who asked not to be identified because the investigation is ongoing, did not provide further details. Kadirov was located after the wanted poster went out, William Sweeney, assistant director-in-charge of the New York FBI office, told a news conference. He declined to disclose any details. "Earlier as we came in this evening, we were seeking information about an individual," Sweeney said. "Many of you in this room received that alert. "We are no longer seeking that individual," he said. The New York FBI office on Twitter said it was still seeking any information the public might have on Kadirov. Tuesday's attack on a bike path in Manhattan killed eight people. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh and Leslie Adler) By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli lawyer has shed light in a new book on the role the Mossad intelligence agency has played in U.S. litigation she pursues against the international financing of Israel's enemies. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Orthodox Jewish mother of six, heads the not-for-profit Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which has named Palestinian authorities, Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and North Korea as defendants in lawsuits it has brought. Many of the cases were heard in U.S. courtrooms, either because victims of Palestinian shootings and bombings or Hezbollah rockets held American citizenship, or to target suspected militant funds held in banks in the United States. Titled "Harpoon" after the codename of the Mossad finance-tracking unit Darshan-Leitner worked with, the book lays out how Israel targets foes' bank accounts as well as arsenals. In the closest that the secretive Mossad can come to a public endorsement, its former director provided praise for the book on its cover. Darshan-Leitner, who mostly is engaged by private citizens, said that after her law center began suing Palestinians over attacks during a revolt that they launched in 2000, she was invited to Mossad headquarters for a consultation. "I explained to them what we do, how and where lawsuits are filed, what evidence and jurisdiction is required, the general rules," she told Reuters. "Their response was: What do we have to do to file more lawsuits? What do you need?" That, Darshan-Leitner said, evolved into regular briefings, held in quiet cafes, where she would get tip-offs about suspect finances to focus on during the U.S. courts' discovery hearings. Her Harpoon interlocutors, she said, have never given her documents that might betray the sources of their information: "They recited all the data from memory. It was pretty amazing." At times, the materials were turned into formal affidavits, filed in the name of Israel's government, said Darshan-Leitner, adding that her role in Harpoon was as an unpaid volunteer. Among cases to which she credits the cooperation are a $655 million judgment in New York against Palestinian authorities in 2015 and the disbanding of a planned 2011 activist flotilla to Gaza, after insurers were warned that they could be criminally liable for the bid to challenge Israel's blockade. The former verdict was voided, in a decision now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the latter had no clear financial gain so no payout was sought. Darshan-Leitner said that around 10 percent of $2 billion worth of U.S judgments in her favor have been paid. That suggests that Israel also sees the litigation as a way to score points against its adversaries in the court of public opinion. "The struggle itself is very important, as it gives the victims a sense of vindication and puts pressure on the countries (being sued)," Darshan-Leitner said. "Harpoon" was submitted, in accordance with Israeli law, to military censors who, Darshan-Leitner said, cut a fifth of the text to suppress some details about intelligence methods and personnel. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alison Williams) Melania Trump will be protected by an all-female unit of officers during her and President Trump's upcoming visit to Japan. Japan is experimenting with the all-female teams to combat various security challenges ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics, which will be hosted in Tokyo, reported Newsweek. The move is also in response to the country's sexual assault problems. RELATED: Donald and Melania Trump through the years The job is to look out for any dangers and suspicious individuals at the destination of female dignitaries, police Sgt. Kawamura Reiko told Japanese media Wednesday. "Our aim is to be gentle and astute, utilizing the viewpoint and sensibility unique to women to ensure there wont be any dangerous things or suspicious people at the location, she said. SEE ALSO: Ivanka Trump backs out of President Trump's Asia trip to focus on tax reform According to the Japan Times, over 10,000 Japanese police officers will be on duty when the first couple visits later this month as part of President Trump's first major trip to Asia since taking office. From November 3 to 14, the president will reportedly visit five countries -- Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Following his controversial coming-out statement, Kevin Spacey has been accused of sexual misconduct by other men. Spaceys message to live as a gay man was originally in response to actor Anthony Rapp accusing him of unwanted sexual advances when he was 14 years old. Now, in a new interview with Vulture, another man says he was involved in a sexual relationship with Spacey when he too was 14 years old. The relationship eventually soured, the man says, after Spacey allegedly tried to rape him. The man chose to remain anonymous to protect his and his current partners privacy but revealed that he was a former acting student of Spaceys in the early 80s. He said, I went to Saturday acting classes in Westchester County, outside of New York, around 1981. I was 12, and [Spacey] taught at the school, maybe just for half a year. He wasnt a known person at that time. Nothing inappropriate happened between the student and Spacey during those classes, but a few years later, the two bumped into each other. Spacey gave the man, then 14 years old, his number and invited him to his apartment in New York. He said, I went and saw him at an apartment he was renting on the Upper West Side. We started a sexual relationship that first visit The man saw Spacey three or four more times before the alleged attack took place. He was visiting Spaceys apartment when, he claims, the actor suddenly tried to force himself on him. He told Vulture, He must have come up behind me and yanked down my baggy jeans and Im like, No, I dont want to. And he pushes hard, and grabs me. I throw him off of me, and I run crying down the stairs and out into the street. Kevin Spaceys lawyer replied to Vulture about the relationship in an email: Mr. Spacey absolutely denies the allegations. Spaceys former student spoke with Vulture because he was upset with the actors response to Rapps accusations. And he didnt pull any punches when describing what he claims Spacey did, saying, I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator. When you look at his statement, you realize also hes profoundly narcissistic. He thinks this is about being caught that hes gay. In related news, Kevin Spaceys initial statement outraged many in the LGBTQ community including those in late night: News headlines scroll above the Fox News studios in the News Corporation headquarters building in New York: AP Photo/Richard Drew Several Fox News employees have complained that the channel is starting to feel "like an extension of the Trump White House in light of its recent political coverage. A number of TV personalities and senior Fox employees were reportedly horrified by the channels stories on the indictment of two former Trump campaign officials. The indictments dominated coverage on other major channels, but were downplayed by several Fox News hosts. "I'm watching now and screaming," one Fox News personality told CNN of the coverage. "I want to quit." "It is another blow to journalists at Fox who come in every day wanting to cover the news in a fair and objective way," another senior employee said. Five employees spoke with CNN in the wake of the indictments, which marked the first major development in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump campaign. While most news shows lead with the indictments, Fox News host Sean Hannity dedicated most of his show to coverage of Hillary Clinton, and her ties to a uranium deal and controversial dossier. Probably the biggest scandal of all is Bill and Hillary Clinton selling out Americas national security to Putin and the Russians, Mr Hannity claimed. Host Laura Ingraham addressed the indictments by calling them a nothingburger that in no way suggested collusion with Russia. The channels chief Washington correspondent noted that Donald Trump was far removed from the allegations," while contributor Michael Goodwin argued that Mr Mueller should resign. If there was collusion, any evidence or even an allegation has yet to be revealed by the special counsel, said John Roberts, the channels chief White House correspondent. In a statement, a Fox News representative said the network covered the breaking news "accurately and fairly across both news and opinion programming. Another employee, however, told CNN the coverage was an embarrassment, that undermined the good work being done by other employees. Story continues But the channels coverage did not differ significantly from that of other conservative platforms. Prominent radio host Rush Limbaugh also opened his show by addressing the dossier, claiming that news of the indictments was simply meant to shift attention away from Ms Clintons ties. Alex Jones, the creator of popular website and radio show InfoWars, called the indictments a bunch of sour grapes. He topped his website with stories about sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey. Breitbart News, the conservative website run by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, ran only two pieces about the indictment on Monday. One covered Ms Ingrahams nothingburger comments, and the other was headlined: Paul Manafort Indicted on 12 Counts Unrelated to 2016 Campaign. Getty Images As news unfolded that Donald Trumps ex-campaign manager was facing charges for money laundering, Fox News turned its attention elsewhere. Rather than reporting on what most major news organisations considered to be the biggest political news of the day, the conservative news outlet instead focused on hamburger emojis and allegations regarding former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The charges against Mr Manafort were filed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is currently trying to figure out whether Trump campaign advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The indictment suggests that Mr Manafort, who served as head of the Trump campaign from June to August 2016, was a highly paid agent for pro-Russian foreign interests. Just before the revelation that Mr Manafort was told to turn himself in by federal authorities, the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends aired an interview with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, during which she lambasted Ms Clinton and the Democratic National Committee over the Russia dossier that has cast a shadow over Mr Trumps administration. The hunt for details about the 35-page document, which sets out allegations of ties between Mr Trump and the Kremlin, has intensified in recent months. It was reported last week that the report was in part funded by the Clinton campaign and DNC. Paul Manafort just agreed to turn himself in to the FBI. What should we report on? CNN: Manafort MSNBC: Manafort Fox News: Hamburger emoji pic.twitter.com/Wjsvkb2coW Roberto Ferdman (@robferdman) October 30, 2017 People should be looking into any coordination...between the Clinton campaign, the DNC, the Russian dossier, Ms Conway told the shows hosts. While other major cable news organisations such as CNN and MSNBC were focusing on Mr Manafort, Fox News was displaying hamburger emojis and allowing an economist to question Americans patriotism. Story continues The President also attempted to downplay reports about what has happening with Mr Muellers Russia investigation, tweeting about the DNC and his predecessor Barack Obama. Report out that Obama Campaign paid $972,000 to Fusion GPS, Mr Trump wrote, referring to the private research firm in Washington, DC that produced the dossier. The firm also got $12,400,000 (really?) from DNC. Nobody knows who OK'd! He also praised Fox & Friends, which he also routinely cites on social media. In a later tweet on Monday, Mr Trump falsely claimed that Mr Manaforts alleged conduct occurred years ago, before he was ever part of the Trump campaign. The indictment alleges that Mr Manafort and his associate Rick Gates generated tens of millions of dollars of income as a result of their work for the Ukrainian government, and that in order to hide the profits from US authorities, they laundered the money from 2006 to 2016. Both defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus????? Mr Trump wrote on Twitter. Paris (AFP) - France on Thursday announced an overhaul of its Legion d'Honneur awards system, as part of President Emmanuel Macron's mission to clean up politics. The prizes have been in the spotlight since Macron announced last month that France would strip Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein of his Legion of Honour over lurid sex assault allegations. French Presidents have traditionally handed out some 3,000 such awards each year to French citizens and foreigners alike under a two-century-old system. But government spokesman Christophe Castaner said the numbers would be drastically cut from next year and awarded solely on the basis of merit, as originally intended. "We do not have the Legion d'Honneur to butter people up," Castaner said, adding the honours should not be part of an "old boys' network". There will be a 50 percent cut in civilian honours from 2018-20, a ten percent drop in military awards and 25 percent fewer gongs for foreigners, he said. Efforts will be made to select award-winners who better reflect modern France, he said, noting that "white men aged over 60" currently account for too many of the recipients. Asked whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- one of many heads of state granted the Legion d'Honneur -- should be stripped of his, Castaner said authorities could consider this "legitimate" request. Macron, elected in May, has made improving the standards of public life a central theme of his presidency following a string of political scandals in France. The first law he signed prevents politicians from hiring relatives, after the presidential campaign of rightwing rival Francois Fillon was torpedoed by revelations he paid his family hundreds of thousands of euros. Macron had already signalled he planned to crack down on Legion d'Honneur handouts, surprising many in July by awarding just 101 to mark Bastille Day instead of the customary 500-600. Story continues - Galliano, Armstrong - Set up by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the prizes have previously been awarded almost systematically to former ministers, academics, ambassadors and military officers. Half have been granted to women since 2008 under a policy change by then president Nicolas Sarkozy. The Legion d'Honneur is open to foreigners whose cultural or scientific talents are deemed to have contributed to France, but they have also been dished out in pursuit of diplomatic objectives. Last year the decision to bestow one on Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef -- the heir to the throne at the time though he has since been sidelined -- sparked a storm of criticism. Weinstein, honoured in 2012, is not the first foreigner to be stripped of his Legion d'Honneur. Fashion designer John Galliano's was taken away in 2012 after an anti-Semitic rant in a Paris bar, while cyclist Lance Armstrong lost his two years later over doping revelations. Late Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega lost his over drug trafficking convictions which saw him serve time behind bars in France as well as the United States. Geneva (AFP) - A decade of slow progress towards better parity between the sexes has screeched to a halt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said Thursday, warning the global gender gap was now widening. In recent years, women have made significant progress towards equality in a number of areas such as education and health, with the Nordic countries leading the fray. But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialise until 2234, WEF said in a report. "A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006," it said. The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracks the disparities between the sexes in four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment. A year ago WEF estimated that it would take 83 years to close the remaining gap. But since then women's steady advances in the areas of education, health and political representation have plateaued, and for the fourth year running, equality in the workplace has slipped further from view. Thursday's report said that at the current rate of progress, it would now take a full 100 years on average to achieve overall gender equality. The estimated time needed to ensure full equality in the workplace meanwhile has jumped from 80 years in 2014 to 170 years last year to 217 years now, according to the report. - 'Shift into reverse' - "In 2017, we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse," Saadia Zahidi, WEF head of education, gender and work, said in a statement. Even more than in the workplace, political participation stubbornly lagged behind, with women still accounting for just 23 percent of the world's decision makers, according to the report. Story continues But political representation is also the area where women have made the most advances in recent years, the report said, estimating it will take 99 years to fully rectify the situation. The picture is not all bleak: the march towards gender equality in education could reach the finish line within a mere 13 years, it said. And the situation varies greatly in different countries and regions. For instance, while Western European countries could close their gender gaps within 61 years, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will take 157 years, the report estimated. Overall, the Nordic countries once again dominated the top of the table: men and women were most equal in Iceland, followed by Norway and Finland. Rwanda came in fourth, with another Nordic country, Sweden, in fifth place. They were joined by Nicaragua, Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand and the Philippines in the top 10, with Syria, Pakistan and finally Yemen at the bottom of the rankings. Among the world's 20 leading economies, France fared the best, taking 11th place overall, up from 17th place last year and 70th place in 2006. France's rise is largely thanks to increasing numbers of women in politics, including complete parity among government ministers. The United States meanwhile dropped four spots to 49th place due to women's dwindling political representation, with a "significant decrease in gender parity in ministerial level positions," the report said. Pristina (AFP) - Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci has launched a rare attack on the country's Western supporters in recent weeks, an outburst that analysts say could be linked to coming war crimes indictments. An EU-funded tribunal has been set up at The Hague to try crimes allegedly committed by senior members of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as it battled the forces of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic in the 1998-1999 war. But Thaci, the KLA's political leader during the war, says Kosovo has received nothing it was promised -- such as visa-free travel in the EU -- in exchange for adopting a special law authorising the tribunal. "Kosovo has kept its word. The international community has not," the president said in October at a presentation of a survey showing that most Kosovo Albanians consider the court unjust, and that more than half are ready to protest if KLA fighters are indicted. The first indictments could be announced before the end of the year -- and Thaci himself is widely suspected to be among those appearing on the list. The court's creation stems from a Council of Europe report in 2011 which accused Thaci of heading a mafia-style network that orchestrated the kidnapping and disappearance of about 500 civilians, mostly Serbs. He has denied the explosive claims, telling AFP early last year that he had "nothing to hide". But prominent commentator and Thaci critic Veton Surroi wrote in the Koha Ditore newspaper that the president's recent comments could be a sign that "the special court's frequent heavy breathing is being heard." Belul Beqaj, a political science professor, told AFP that the president "aims to destabilise the situation to save himself" from the tribunal. - 'Pro-EU leader' - Thaci, 49, said the unfulfilled pledges to Kosovo included quick application for membership in the Council of Europe and UNESCO, visa-free travel in the EU, and the creation of its own army. Story continues "The international community did not accomplish any of these promises; on the contrary Kosovo's euro-Atlantic journey has been made more difficult," he said in October. US and European officials in Pristina responded by denying there had been any kind of bargaining over the court set-up. But Shqipe Pantina from the main opposition party Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) said Thaci's declaration showed how "the dirty games he has played so far" were starting to backfire. Bekim Collaku, one of Thaci's close allies, refutes the suggestion that his boss is turning his back to Europe. He is "without doubt the most pro-EU head of state in the Western Balkans, even beyond," Collaku said. But Kosovo needs "equal treatment" to that of its neighbours, and "so long as this is not the case, the president cannot applaud those who leave Kosovo isolated," he added, without mentioning the special court. The Kosovo conflict killed 13,000 people, most of them ethnic Albanians, and ended after a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia. A decade later Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence, a move supported by Western powers but denied by Belgrade and Moscow. Last year Thaci described the KLA struggle as a "just and clean one" and said he would "fully support any attempts to do justice". But he now expresses doubts about a court that will deal only with crimes on the KLA side and not "around 400 massacres committed by Serbs". An association of families of the war's victims subsequently asked him to support an amendment to the law on the special court so that it also investigates Serb crimes. - Provoking crisis? - Many of Kosovo's leaders are former KLA fighters. In order to retain their faltering grip on power, they joined forces for an election in June behind Ramush Haradinaj, now prime minister, and parliamentary speaker Kadri Veseli. For Ramush Tahiri, a political analyst, "They control vital state mechanisms. There are signals that they intend to defend themselves by provoking a crisis." And their parties "may try to trigger discontent," said Lulzim Peci, a security expert. He warned that any attempt to "play the card of destabilisation to delay the work of the court" could backfire against Kosovo, leaving it isolated and even under sanctions. Others warn that Kosovo's citizens have no choice but to prepare for the indictments, which could come at any time. "There is no turning back," said criminal law professor Ismet Salihu. Unveiled at SEMA 2017 as the first hypercar built completely from the ground up by Texan tuner extraordinaire John Hennessey and his crack team, the Venom F5 arrives with a claimed top speed in excess of 300mph and a twin turbo V8 engine, also developed in hose that sends 1600hp solely to the rear wheels. And if the car can deliver on those statistical claims then it will have earned the right to call itself the F5 -- a nod to the highest possible wind speed category according to the Fujita (F-Scale) scale. "[We expect the F5] to be the first road car capable of achieving more than 300mph and have worked closely with Pennzoil to get us across the finish line," said John Hennessey of the new car. But if it really is to set a new record -- don't forget, for the moment, the performance is theoretical -- it is going to have to beat some very tough competition. Bugatti Chiron The biggest automotive obstacle to overcome will be the Bugatti Chiron. Like the Venom, it has yet to make a run at setting an ultimate top speed but in early tests the car, which has a 16-cylinder, 8-litre 1500hp engine, can comfortably hit 261mph. What's more, the VW-owned brand has an ace up its sleeve. It has access to VW's testing track, one of the few places on earth with a long enough straight to actually attempt to set top speed records. Koenigsegg Regera The latest piece of carbon fibre physics defying machinery from Swedish engineering genius Christian Von Koenigsegg is also waiting for the right conditions to set its ultimate top speed. But the twin-turbo V8 powered, transmission free (it is the first car to ditch a gearbox altogether in favour of a hybrid battery coupling) can go from 0-400km/h (roughly 250mph) in under 20 seconds. Aston Martin Valkyrie A Formula 1 technology-derived hypercar developed in partnership with Red Bull racing, this Aston's figures have yet to be independently verified. However, the company says that thanks to its ultra-lightweight build, its 6.5-litre Cosworth-built V12 and the same extremely quick and extremely robust dual clutch transmission system found in the Bugatti, this car will comfortably hit 250mph. Zenvo TS1 Denmark's only supercar company is still going strong after launching ten years ago. The latest iteration of its sole model, the Zenvo TS1 Anniversary edition -- unveiled in Geneva this year -- can go from 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds and on to an electronically limited speed of 233mph, thanks to a 1163hp 5.8-litre turbocharged V8. And like the Venom, production for the car will be capped at 25 examples. Ruf CTR Designed as a visual homage to the Porsche 911s of the mid 1980s, the CTR is thoroughly modern once you get past the retro aesthetics. It uses an in-house developed and built 700hp flat-six engine mounted in the rear, and can go from a standstill to 100km/h in 3.5 seconds and on to a 223mph (360km/h) top speed. However, even if the Venom can't quite come up with the goods against Bugatti or Koenigsegg, it will still be able to lay claim to being the world's only hypercar designed and built in the US. The Ford GT was an international project and the car, though American, is assembled in Canada. Hillary Rodham Clinton visited The Daily Show With Trevor Noah where she critiqued President Donald Trump's response to the New York City terrorist attack. Having served as first lady during the Oklahoma City bombing, as a New York senator during 9/11, and Secretary of State during the numerous tragedies, Clinton is fairly qualified to share her opinion on dealing with terrorist attacks. Clinton said, "What you want is a president...to bring the country together, talk about what happened with the event that they are concerned about, but not to point fingers, not to scapegoat, not to try to set Americans against each other. And, unfortunately, that is just not part of the job that our current president accepts or is willing to perform." Clinton went on to chastise Trump for using the tragic event to promote divisive legislation at a time when Americans need to come together. She said, "He just doesn't have any empathy. And you can disagree with somebody over all kinds of partisan issues, but you want to have a president who can try to put himself into the shoes, the feelings of somebody else. And he has not been able to do that." Facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault, Brett Ratner took legal action against one of his accusers on Wednesday. According to Variety, Ratner filed a defamation suit against Melanie Kohler, a woman who claimed on Facebook that the 48-year-old director and producer had raped her in the mid-2000s. Kohler penned her Facebook post more than a week before the publication of a Los Angeles Times report in which six women detailed how Ratner allegedly sexually harassed or assaulted them. In her post, Kohler wrote that Ratner was a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago, according to the defamation suit, which was filed in federal court. Kohler said Ratner had preyed on me as a drunk girl. At least seven women have accused Hollywood producer Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or assault. (Photo: Michael Tran via Getty Images) Ratners attorney told TMZ that Kohler said the director forced her to have sex after theyd met at a club in Los Angeles in either 2004 or 2005. Ratners suit, which characterized the Facebook post as libel per se, alleged that her claims were entirely false, fabricated and fictional. The suit seeks general, special and punitive damages for Ratners alleged emotional distress, worry, anger and anxiety, and injuries to his personal and professional reputations, Variety reported. On Wednesday, the Times published its expose on Ratners alleged history of sexual predation. In the feature, six women, including actresses Olivia Munn and Jaime Ray Newman, discussed their alleged encounters with Ratner. Munn recalled an incident in 2004 when she said Ratner masturbated in front of her in his trailer. Actress Natasha Henstridge accused Ratner of forcing her to perform oral sex on him. Actress Olivia Munn is one of 6 women accusing filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct https://t.co/Ep3nrFeok8 pic.twitter.com/JxQkvu618G Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 1, 2017 Through his attorney, Ratner denied the allegations leveled against him in the Times article. Story continues Warner Bros. reportedly severed ties with Ratner on Wednesday. The Hollywood Reporter said the studio chose not to renew its production deal with Ratner and will be removing him as producer from the upcoming film The Goldfinch. Related... 6 Women Accuse Hollywood Producer Brett Ratner Of Sexual Harassment Or Misconduct: Report Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. The Trump International Hotel Washington D.C. is in a building leased from the U.S. governments General Services Administration, located blocks from the White House. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON All 17 Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today filed a novel lawsuit against the Trump administration to force it to turn over documents about the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. records, they say, that will reveal details about how the president is personally profiting while in office. The lawsuit represents the latest legal challenge to Trumps controversial decision to retain ownership of his international real estate firm, which operates the Trump International Hotel in a building leased from the governments General Services Administration. This hotel is not just a building with Donald Trumps name on it, said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the House committee. It is a glaring symbol of the Trump administrations lack of accountability and a daily reminder of the refusal by Republicans in Congress to do their job. This may be standard operating procedure in foreign countries, but not here. Not in America. Guided by a Georgetown law professor, the Democrats are employing an unusual legal tactic to get Trump International Hotel records: They are using an obscure law, enacted during the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, that authorizes any seven members of the House oversight panel to obtain records from a federal agency. The Trump International Hotel has been a lightning rod for the presidents critics ever since he took office in January. Almost immediately, the GSA stopped providing Congress with regular updates on the hotels expenses and profits under its government lease. Nevertheless, some records about the hotels operations have surfaced: In August, the GSA inadvertently posted privileged and confidential documents showing that the hotel earned $1.97 million in profits during the first four months of this year. The hotel has become a favorite of lobbying groups and foreign governments seeking to influence the administration. Story continues The documents showing the hotels profits have since been removed from the GSA website, and no further updates have been made available to the public or Congress. Asked for comment by Yahoo News, Pam Dixon, the GSA press secretary, emailed Thursday: GSA does not comment on pending litigation. The lawsuit seeks GSA documents including monthly expense records so that the committee can investigate whether the Office of the Presidency is being used for private gain and the extent to which the Trump Hotel is receiving payments from foreign governments, according to a fact sheet explaining the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington. The panel also wants to see records relating to why the GSA reversed an earlier legal interpretation of the lease, which prohibits any elected official of the Government of the United States from sharing in the profits of the hotel. The lawsuit is not the first to be filed over Trumps business operations while he is serving as president. Three other suits have been filed contending that the president is receiving unconstitutional emoluments from foreign governments through his ownership of the hotel. A demonstrator holds an American flag near the Trump International Hotel during a protest in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 18, 2017. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) A judge in New York is currently weighing a motion by the Justice Department to dismiss one of the suits on the grounds that the plaintiffs, including a liberal legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, lack standing to bring the case because they cant show that they have been injured by the presidents conduct. But the new lawsuit being brought Thursday by the House members is significant because if it survives a court challenge, it could give congressional Democrats new leverage to pry documents out of the Trump administration on a host of other issues. Their case relies on the little-known seven member statute. Enacted in 1928 and signed by President Calvin Coolidge, it provides that any seven members of the principal House oversight committee can request reports and documents from federal agencies, which are required to provide them. The law has only occasionally been used over the years, with varying results. Reps. Dennis Hastert (who went on to become speaker of the House) and Rob Portman (now a U.S. senator), both Republicans, successfully invoked the law in 1994 to obtain documents about a Texas savings and loan from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But in 2006, when Rep. Henry Waxman, then the ranking Democrat on the House panel, along with other Democrats filed a lawsuit under the seven member statute to obtain Medicare records from the Bush administration, they lost on the grounds that they lacked standing to bring the case. (Before the Democrats had a chance to appeal, they regained control of the House that year, and the case became moot.) David C. Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor who drafted the complaint being filed today, said the House Democratic case gained new traction last summer after the GSA notified Cummings in a letter that it would not turn over records about the Trump International Hotel. In doing so, a GSA official cited a new Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that the administration would produce records only when requested by a full committee or subcommittee (currently controlled by Republicans). Individual members of Congress, including ranking minority members, do not have the authority to conduct oversight in the absence of a specific delegation by a full house, committee, or subcommittee, the Justice Department legal opinion read. They basically said, Were not going to give the stuff to Democrats, said Vladeck. But in so doing, he argued, they ignored the fine print in the 89-year-old seven member statute and gave the Democrats new grounds to bring their lawsuit. Read more from Yahoo News: A 36-foot-tall effigy of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is scheduled to be set ablaze at a bonfire celebration Saturday in England. The wooden likeness of the former Hollywood producer will be burned at the annual British Bonfire Night festival, a famous tradition upheld by the Edenbridge Bonfire Society in memory of Guy Fawkes' 1605 failed attempt to blow up the Parliament. Every year, the organization selects an infamous celebrity effigy to be burned alongside the traditional effigy of Guy Fawkes. Click through photos of the Weinstein effigy: Weinstein, who faces a mountain of rape, sexual harassment, and sexual assault accusations in Britan alone, was chosen "as a result of recent allegations regarding the Hollywood producers sexual conduct," the organization said Wednesday. Last year, the society set ablaze an effigy of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. "As with last year there were many strong contenders for this years celebrity guy, particularly in the political and cultural world," a spokesperson for the society said. "However, Weinstein was the obvious option due to allegations of outrageous and despicable conduct, which we at Edenbridge Bonfire Society obviously found completely abhorrent." SEE ALSO: Harvey Weinstein donated $10K to Bill Clinton's legal fund during Lewinsky sex scandal The spokesperson also added: "While the burning of the guys is aimed as a light-hearted way to mark the traditional bonfire night celebrations in the UK, there is of course nothing funny about Weinsteins behaviour, so it seemed only fair that he gets his comeuppance in effigy form." The society's bonfire event reportedly raises thousands of dollars for local charities. RELATED: Harvey Weinstein with Clinton, Obama and other top Democrats Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of various cities on Thursday to protest on the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration, which helped lead to Israel's creation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas used the occasion to denounce the declaration, writing in a newspaper opinion piece that "the creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another". Several Palestinian leaders have called on Britain to apologise for the 67-word declaration that said it viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Around 4,000 people gathered in the West Bank city of Nablus, where effigies supposed to represent British Prime Minister Theresa May and former British leader Arthur Balfour were set ablaze. A few thousand more gathered in Gaza and hundreds in Ramallah. Smaller rallies were held in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, where protesters burned a British flag. Several dozen Palestinians also protested outside the British consulate in Jerusalem. In Nablus, marchers chanted "Oh the English colonisers, we want an apology from you." In Ramallah signs called Balfour "the promise of he who doesn't own to those who don't deserve" -- a common expression in Arabic for the Balfour Declaration. Some protesters held black flags calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed the right to return, as they marched from Ramallah's Arafat Square to a nearby British cultural office. "Balfour promised to establish the Israeli entity and its result is everything the Palestinian people still suffer from today, such as displacement, destruction and pain," said Abu Haitham Amro, 70, who was carrying a Palestinian flag. In Gaza, more than 3,000 people took part in a march from a square in Gaza City to the local United Nations headquarters. Story continues - Hopes for solution fade - The Balfour Declaration is celebrated among Israelis, who see it as a major step toward the founding of their state in 1948 at a time when Jews were facing persecution elsewhere. But the war surrounding Israel's creation also led to some 750,000 Palestinians either fleeing or being expelled from their homes -- what they call the "Nakba", or catastrophe. Senior Palestinian official Mahmoud Al-Alul told AFP in Ramallah the British government should apologise. "It is unprecedented for criminals to celebrate their crime. That the British prime minister insists on celebrating this means they persist in the oppression of the Palestinian people." In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War. It has since annexed east Jerusalem and the occupation of the West Bank continues. Hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are greatly diminishing. "The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday before departing for London, where he is marking the anniversary. "What's been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later. I hope they change their mind, because if they do they can move forward finally to making peace between our two peoples." Abbas wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper: "We have endorsed the two-state solution for the past 30 years, a solution that becomes increasingly impossible with every passing day. "As long as the state of Israel continues to be celebrated and rewarded, rather than held accountable to universal standards for its continued violations of international law, it will have no incentive to end the occupation," he added, referring in particular to Israeli settlement building. India will purchase more than 100 armed helicopters for its navy to replace its outdated French-designed fleet in a military deal worth $3.2 billion, an official said Wednesday. The defence acquisition council approved funding for the purchase of 111 multi-utility helicopters for attack missions, search and rescue, surveillance operations and medical evacuation. A spokesman for the Indian navy said on Twitter the new aircraft were a huge step toward addressing a "critical void of helicopters" for the naval fleet, which currently uses the French-designed Chetak model. The government will identify a foreign military hardware company and a local defence firm to develop the helicopters in a joint partnership. India, the world's largest defence importer, wants to build more of its hardware in country. Under a new policy, it is inviting global military manufacturers to set up shop as minority partners in India. It is banking on foreign companies to bring in new technology in the crucial defence sector, which imports 90 percent of its equipment. India has been investing tens of billions in updating its Soviet-era military hardware to counter long-standing territorial disputes with its nuclear-armed neighbours China and Pakistan. The navy's ageing light-utility helicopter, the Chetak, is a licensed version of a French model built by India's Hindustan Aeronautics Limited since 1975. A file photograph dated 1998 showing Saudi-born billionaire Osama Bin Laden smiling as he sits in a cave in the Jalalabad region of Afghanistan. - EPA A newly released trove of documents recovered from Osama bin Ladens Pakistan compound have revealed secret dealings between Iran and al-Qaeda. Nearly half a million files found on the computer seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on the al-Qaeda founder's hideout in Abbottabad were released by the CIA on Wednesday. A never-before-seen 19-page document purportedly written by a senior member of al-Qaeda details an arrangement between Iran and members of the group to strike American interests in "Saudi Arabia and the Gulf." In exchange, Shia Iran offered Sunni militants "money, arms and training in Hizbollah camps in Lebanon." Iranian intelligence facilitated the travel of some operatives with visas, while sheltering others. The author of the file, described as "well-connected," explains that al-Qaeda's forces violated the terms of the agreement of the deal, however, resulting in several men being detained. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House Credit: AP Iranian connections to Hizballah and Palestinian militant groups, such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are well-documented, but its ties to al-Qaeda have until now mostly been shrouded in secrecy. The timing of the release comes as US President Donald Trump is trying to decertify a bilateral deal agreed with Iran to end its nuclear proliferation programme, which was negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama and one which he has described as the worst deal ever made. Mr Trump has been keen to portray Tehran as Americas greatest threat and will no doubt seize upon the documents as proof of the Islamic republics support for terrorism in the region. Speaking at a national security seminar organised by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington DC last month about the release of the documents, Mike Pompeo, CIA director, said al-Qaeda and Iran have always built "secret and open" ties. Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo arrives for a closed briefing before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. Credit: Reuters Mr Pompeo attributed the relationship between the two parties to the fact that they view the West as a common enemy, referring to an "ideological consensus" of their cooperation against the West. Story continues He added that the two sides did not fight against each other because they considered the West a greater threat to them. Mr Pompeo stressed that CIA is still watching these relations, especially with the complexity of the situation in Syria, noting that US intelligence is tracking the terrorist organisations' loss of territories in Syria and Iraq. His comments have raised alarm bells among critics of Mr Trump's new strategy to counter Iranian influence, wary that hawks like Mr Pompeo may be making a case for war. The documents also contained a log of bin Ladens video collection, which included pornographic material, several Hollywood movies and three documentaries about himself. Two newly-released videos also show scenes from the wedding of bin Ladens son Hamza, the first picture of the heir apparent as an adult. The images are not current, but they are much more recent than the photo al-Qaeda is willing to distribute. According to Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, scholars from the foundation who were allowed to study the trove before it was made public, it provides new insights. The Abbottabad repository confirms that bin Laden was anything but retired when US forces knocked down his door. He was not a mere figurehead, they write in the Long War Journal. During the final months of his life, Osama bin Laden was communicating with subordinates around the globe. Recovered memos discuss the various committees and lieutenants who helped bin Laden manage his sprawling empire of terror. With 470,000 files released in one trance, it will likely take weeks for journalists, academics, and other researchers to shift through the documents in the trove and contextualise their significance. BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq wants the Kurdistan region to stop independent crude exports and to hand over sales operations to the Iraqi state-oil marketer SOMO, the company's director said on Thursday. Iraq is talking to Turkey to allow SOMO to sell the Kurdish crude that arrives by pipeline in Ceyhan, the Turkish terminal on the Mediterranean, acting SOMO director general Alaa al-Yasiri told reporters in Baghdad. About 530,000 barrels per day (bpd) used to arrive in Ceyhan via the pipeline until mid-October, of which about half came from the Kurdistan Regional Government's oilfields and the rest from Kirkuk, a disputed province claimed by both the Kurdish region and Iraqi authorities in Baghdad. Output from Kirkuk fell in mid-October, when Iraqi forces took back control of the northern region's oilfields from Kurdish fighters who had been there since 2014. Kurdish Peshmerga forces deployed in Kirkuk in 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of an advance by Islamic State militants. The Kurdish move prevented the militants taking control of the oilfields. The pipeline carried on average 419,000 bpd in October, down from 600,000 bpd in September, said Farid al-Jadir, the director general of North Oil Company, which operates Kirkuk. NOC should resume exports from Kirkuk through the Kurdish pipeline this month, after the two sides agree on terms of use, Yasiri said. Kirkuk would also export by tanker trucks about 15,000 bpd to the refinery of Kermanshah in Iran, he added. Yasiri expected an old pipeline that bypasses most of the Kurdistan region to resume operation in three months. The pipeline was severely damaged by Islamic State after it took over Mosul's Nineveh province in 2014. U.S.-backed Iraqi forces ousted the group from Mosul in July, after a nine-month campaign supported by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. Iraq, the second-largest producer of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries after Saudi Arabia, supported any future decision by the group to support oil prices, Yasiri said. OPEC is expected to extend curbs on oil output when it meets in Vienna at the end of month. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Edmund Blair) He has joked about hurting journalists. He harshly criticized a black congresswoman, got his facts wrong, then refused to apologize. And this week he argued that Confederate statues should not be taken down, calling Robert E. Lee an honorable man. That wasnt President Donald Trump. That was his chief of staff, John Kelly, a former Marine general who has been seen as the last, best hope for the White House to become more effective. But Kellys public statements in recent weeks have shown that he agrees more with Trumps view of the world than either his critics or his supporters previously thought. Heres a quick look at some of their agreements. The United States faces constant threats from terrorism Trump regularly talks about the major threat that the United States faces from radical Islamic terrorism. After federal judges blocked a version of his travel ban in February, he tweeted: The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast! The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2017 In an interview on Fox and Friends in May, Kelly said that the threat of terrorism is constant and nonstop. I was telling Steve on the way in here if he knew what I know about terrorism hed never leave the house in the morning, Kelly said, referring to the Fox host Steve Doocy. Asked if he meant those remarks tongue in cheek, he doubled down: There are incredible plots against the United States, terrorism plots against the United States, he said later. America used to be a better place Trumps campaign slogan was Make America Great Again. Hes often spoken about the good old days when he claims that law enforcement was tougher on criminals, argued that when he was in high school and college everybody used to say we never lost a war and said that people stopped saying Merry Christmas because it wasnt politically correct. Story continues Kelly has also lamented that America has changed, although his exact comments were different. When I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country, he said at a news conference. He argued that women were sacred and looked upon with great honor when he was younger, that the dignity of life was held in higher esteem and that religion, that seems to be gone as well. Journalists are not your friend Trump regularly attacks the press, arguing reporters are tremendously dishonest and that its frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write. He likes to joke about his dislike of the media, making a crack about their unattractiveness during a recent Halloween event for reporters children in the Oval Office. Like many chiefs of staff before him, Kelly has sought to more strictly control press access to the White House in the name of discipline. At a Coast Guard graduation in May, Kelly, then the head of Homeland Security, joked with Trump after he received a ceremonial saber: Use that on the press, sir. It was a lighthearted moment, but it may have showed a similar view of the press. Rep. Frederica Wilson is not a good person After Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson criticized Trumps handling of a phone call with a military widow, Trump went on the attack, calling her wacky and arguing that lawmakers like her are killing the Democrat Party. He then doubled down, again calling her wacky and arguing that she is a disaster for Dems and the gift that keeps on giving for the Republican Party. At a White House press briefing in October, Kelly criticized Wilson as an empty barrel and said he was stunned and appalled that she took credit for getting funding for a building at an event he attended in Miami. The Miami Herald found video that showed Kelly got the facts wrong, but on Monday Kelly stood by his comments saying he would never apologize. Confederate statues should not be taken down In an interview in May, Trump argued the Civil War could have been prevented if leaders like Andrew Jackson had been alive to work out a compromise. In a press conference in August, Trump argued that statues honoring Confederate leaders should not be taken down, saying that would lead to statues of other historical figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson being taken down as well. In an interview on Monday, Kelly called Confederate general Robert E. Lee an honorable man, said that the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and argued that it would be a mistake to take down Confederate statues because it would lead to unfair reassessments of historical figures like Christopher Columbus. I think it shows you just how much of a lack of appreciate of history and what history is, he said. By Ed Cropley NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's government denied a request by Supreme Court judges for extra security after one of their bodyguards was shot, preventing them from holding a hearing that could have delayed last week's presidential election, a senior judicial source said on Tuesday. The court has been centre stage since it annulled an Aug. 8 vote won by President Uhuru Kenyatta, citing procedural irregularities and ordering a repeat vote within 60 days. The decision was the first of its kind in Africa, where governments often hold sway over judges. It angered some of Kenyatta's supporters, who said the judges had thwarted the will of the people. Kenyatta won 98 percent of the vote in the Oct. 26 re-run after opposition leader Raila Odinga boycotted it on the grounds it would not be fair because the election board had failed to implement reforms he sought after the court decision. The Supreme Court had been due to meet on Oct. 25 to deliberate on an eleventh-hour request to delay the re-run. But the day before, the bodyguard of its deputy chief justice was shot as he bought pot plants beside a highway. Only Chief Justice David Maraga turned up for the Oct. 25 hearing. Without a minimum quorum of five judges, Maraga said the court could not make a ruling on the petition, paving the way for the election re-run to go ahead. Asked about the request by the judges, Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said security for all judges was enhanced in the wake of the shooting. "If anybody is telling you to the contrary, they are not telling the truth," he told Reuters. The government said the bodyguard's shooting was a robbery rather than an attempt to intimidate the judges, whom Kenyatta had branded as "crooks" after they voided the August election. Treating the shooting as a regular crime angered the judges, who demanded they get extra security, the judicial source said. "In Kenya, ordinary criminals don't attack government vehicles driven by armed government agents who know how to shoot," the source said. The justices demanded that their security should be publicly guaranteed given the tensions over the election or else they would refuse to attend hearings, the source said. At least 55 people have died in political violence since the August vote. The European Union monitoring mission raised the issue of intimidation after the Supreme Court hearing failed to go ahead on Oct. 25, saying it was vital that judges be allowed to work "in freedom and safety". "The lack of a quorum is highly unusual for a Supreme Court hearing and has raised serious questions among Kenyan stakeholders, including about possible political interference," it said in a statement that day. (Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) WASHINGTON A little more than two years after recommending that the coastal plain of Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be designated as wilderness, a move that would have permanently protected the area from commercial development, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Thursday voiced support for oil and gas drilling in this remote and fragile ecosystem. Although a significant change in course, the move comes as little surprise. The Trump administrations 2018 fiscal year budget calls for allowing oil and gas production in the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, also known as the 1002 area. The administration says that development there would generate an estimated $1.8 billion over a decade a figure thats both highly disputed and only slightly more than the $1.6 billion President Donald Trump is looking to slash from the Interior Departments annual budget. Greg Sheehan, principal deputy director of the FWS, was among a dozen panelists to testify during an hours-long, and at times tense, hearing Thursday of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. As expected, he went to bat for a Republican-led effort to open the refuge to energy exploration and extraction. We support responsible development, in whatever form or fashion that best occurs in, he said. Sheehan added that if Congress passes legislation, the agency would use the best science, the best technologies and other strategies to ensure activities have the least amount of impact on the native wildlife species. A grizzly bear walks across tundra in the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo: Chlaus Lotscher via Getty Images) The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), described by some as Americas Serengeti, covers more than 19 million acres in northeastern Alaska. It is home to polar bears, caribou, moose and hundreds of species of migratory birds. In 1980, with the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, Congress expanded the refuge, but opted not to give wilderness status to the 1002 area, setting it aside for potential future oil and gas development. Granting leases for that purpose, however, requires an act of Congress. Story continues The issue of drilling in the arctic refuge has long been the subject of controversy and debate. Over the last several decades, many attempts to open the area to drilling as well as others aimed at banning it have failed. The battle over this pristine slice of arctic land has been given new life under the Trump administration, which is pushing for increased fossil fuel development in its quest for energy dominance. In May, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order to jump-start Alaskan energy production. He said at the time that the move was an important first step in a smart and measured approach to energy development in ANWR. Republicans, including Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other state lawmakers, have for years been advocating for opening ANWRs coastal plain. The Senate budget plan includes a provision that tasks the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, of which Murkowski is chair, with finding $1 billion in additional revenue over the next decade to help pay for tax reform. Murkowski stressed Thursday that opening up a small portion of the 1002 area to oil and gas would not only get the job done, but benefit both the state and the nation for decades. We are asking [for] 2,000 acres, or about one ten-thousandth of the refuge, she said. And weve waited nearly 40 years for the right technologies to come along so that the footprint of development is small enough to ensure that the environment continues to be respected and will not be harmed. This is not a choice between energy and the environment. We are past that. But the economic benefits that supporters of the proposal often speak about are not clear cut. An analysis by the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that by drilling in the refuge, the U.S. government would likely only collect $37.5 million over 10 years. David Murphy, an assistant professor at St. Lawrence University, concluded in a report published Wednesday that drilling there would have little appreciable effect on increasing U.S. energy security, and that current presidential and congressional budget projections are unrealistic, and thus that it would be fiscally irresponsible to pursue this path on a budget justification. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that previous lease sales in the Arctic suggest the U.S. is likely to collect less than a fifth of that billion-dollar goal over the next decade about $145.5 million from auctioning off territory in the sprawling northeast Alaska refuge. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the minoritys ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said she is both disturbed by the process budget bills require only a simple majority vote and cannot be filibustered and finds it hard to believe that there will be the economic incentive to drill in ANWR. We are here today because someone has come up with a ludicrous idea that we can pass a tax reform bill that raises the deficit and increases our taxes, and that will take a sliver out of a wildlife refuge to do it, she said. I almost want to call this caribou for millionaires because it is the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard as it relates to meeting the tax reform agenda. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who joined the hearing as a panelist, called drilling in the refuge an issue of national security and dismissed the idea that opening the coastal plain would have severe negative environmental impacts. To make his point, he reached for a pen. I represent Alaska, he said, drawing a small dot on the tip of his nose. You see anything different with my nose right now? (The mark was clearly visible) This little dot on my nose I weigh 225 pounds this little dot is what were talking about, he said. I dont think it changed my appearance very much, because the coastal plain is not that pristine area you see in the propaganda thats portrayed by all the environmental groups. It is a flat terrain that in fact was set aside by this Congress for development and not preservation, he added. Perhaps the most powerful testimony Thursday came from Samuel Alexander, a representative of the Gwichin tribe. He said it is the duty of Gwichin people to protect the land and animals on it. And the tribe, he said, views drilling in the 1002 area as an attack on their freedom and the caribou on which they depend. Money cant buy our wealth, but the reckless pursuit of money can take it away, he said. And for that, we will never stop fighting to protect the porcupine caribou herd and our way of life. Asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) about claims that developing oil in ANWR and elsewhere in the U.S. under strict environmental regulations helps mitigate the effects of climate change, Alexander said it reminded him of a phrase he and others used during his time in the Army: a self-licking ice cream cone. Thats really what this has become, he said. We are trying to drill more oil, pump out more pollutants to address climate change and the impact that it has. That is just insanity to me. Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallot said Thursday that developing the coastal plain will allow us to have fiscal resources to meet rapidly changing climate circumstances. Otherwise, we have no real ability to respond. Earlier this month, Senate Republicans blocked an attempt by Cantwell and other Democrats to bar drilling in ANWR. On Thursday, Democrats accused Republicans of putting short-term economic gains over environmental protection. It ought to be clear, Cantwell said. If you want to open up the arctic refuge, you should just admit youre going to destroy the wildlife refuge. Murkowski swung back. We clearly disagree that this is an either-or proposition, she said. It clearly is not. For those of us who call Alaska home, to suggest that we would despoil our environment for short-term gain is offensive. Also on HuffPost Scientific Name: Diceros sumatrensis Common Name: Sumatran rhino Category: Rhino Population: < 250 individuals Threats To Survival: Hunting for horn -used in traditional medicine Scientific Name: Eleutherodactylus thorectes Common Name: Macaya Breast-Spot Frog Category: Frog Population: Unknown Threats To Survival: Habitat destruction due to charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture Credit: Robin Moore Scientific Name: Scaturiginichthys vermeilipinnis Common Name: Red-Finned Blue Eye Category: Freshwater Fish Population: 2,000 - 4,000 Individuals Threats To Survival: Predation by introduced species Scientific Name: Rafetus Swinhoei Common Name: Red River Giant Softshell Turtle Category: Turtle Population: 4 known individuals Threats To Survival: Hunting for consumption and habitat destruction and degradation as a result of wetland destruction and pollution Scientific Name: Neurergus kaiseri Common Name: Luristan newt Category: Newt Population: < 1000 mature individuals Threats To Survival: Illegal collection for pet trade Scientific Name: Poecilotheria metallica Common Name: Peacock Parachute Spider Category: Spider Population: Unknown Threats To Survival: Habitat loss and degradation as a result of deforestation, firewood collection and civil unrest Scientific Name: Atelopus balios Common Name: Rio Pescado Stubfoot Toad Category: Toad Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Chytridiomycosis and habitat destruction due to logging and agricultural expansion Scientific Name: Johora Singaporensis Common Name: Singapore Freshwater Crab Category: Crab Population: Unknown Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation - reduction in water quality and quantity Scientific Name: Abies beshanzuensis Common Name: Baishan Fir Category: Conifer Population: 5 mature individuals Threats To Survival: Agricultural expansion and fire Scientific Name: Actinote zikani Common Name: None Category: Butterfly Population: Unknown, one population remaining Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation due to pressure from human populations Scientific Name: Aipysurus foliosquama Common Name: Leaf Scaled Sea-Snake Category: Sea snake Population: Unknown, two subpopulations remain Threats To Survival: Unknown - likely degradation of coral reef habitat Scientific Name: Amanipodagrion gilliesi Common Name: Amani Flatwing Category: Damselfly Population: < 500 individuals est. Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation due to increasing population pressure and water pollution Scientific Name: Antilophia bokermanni Common Name: Araripe Manakin Category: bird Population: 779 individuals (est 2010) Threats To Survival: Habitat destruction due to expansion of agriculture and recreational facilities and water diversion Scientific Name: Antisolabis seychellensis Common Name: Seychelles Earwig Category: Earwig Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Invasive species and climate change Scientific Name: Aphanius transgrediens Common Name: None Category: Freshwater fish Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Competition and predation by Gambusia and road construction Scientific Name: Ardeotis nigriceps Common Name: Great Indian Bustard Category: Bird Population: 50 -249 mature individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat loss and modification due to agricultural development Scientific Name: Ardea insignis Common Name: White Bellied Heron Category: Bird Population: 70-400 individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat destruction and degradation due to hydropower development Scientific Name: Astrochelus yniphora Common Name: Ploughshare Tortoise / Angonoka Category: Tortoise Population: 440-770 Threats To Survival: Illegal collection for international pet trade Scientific Name: Aythya innotata Common Name: Madagascar Pochard Category: Bird Population: Approximately 20 mature individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation due to slash-and-burn agriculture, hunting, and fishing / introduced fish Scientific Name: Azurina eupalama Common Name: Galapagos damsel fish Category: Pelagic fish Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Climate Change - oceanographic changes associated with the 1982 / 1983 El Nino are presumed to be responsible for the apparent disappearance of this species from the Galapagos Scientific Name: Bahaba taipingensis Common Name: Giant yellow croaker Category: Pelagic fish Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Over-fishing, primarily due to value of swim-bladder for traditional medicine - cost per kilogram exceeded that of gold in 2001 Scientific Name: Batagur baska Common Name: Common Batagur/ Four-toed terrapin Category: Turtle Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Illegal export and trade from Indonesia to China Scientific Name: Bazzania bhutanica Common Name: None Category: Liverwort Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation and destruction due to forest clearance, overgrazing and development Scientific Name: Beatragus hunteri Common Name: Hirola Category: Antelope Population: < 1000 individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat loss and degradation, competition with livestock, poaching Scientific Name: Bombus franklinii Common Name: Franklin's Bumble Bee Category: Bee Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Disease from commercially bred bumblebees and habitat destruction and degradation Scientific Name: Brachyteles hypoxanthus Common Name: Northern muriqui Category: Primate Population: < 1,000 individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat loss and fragmentation due to large-scale deforestation and selective logging Scientific Name: Bradypus pygmaeus Common Name: Pygmy sloth Category: Sloth Population: < 500 individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat loss due to illegal logging of mangrove forests for firewood and construction and hunting of the sloths Scientific Name: Callitriche pulchra Common Name: None Category: Freshwater plant Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Exploitation of the species' habitat by stock, and modification of the pool by local people Scientific Name: Calumma tarzan Common Name: Tarzan's Chameleon Category: Chameleon Population: Unknown Threats To Survival: Habitat destruction for agriculture Scientific Name: Cavia intermedia Common Name: Santa Catarina's Guinea Pig Category: Guinea Pig Population: 40-60 individuals Threats To Survival: Habitat disturbance and possible hunting; small population effects Scientific Name: Cercopithecus roloway Common Name: Roloway Guenon Category: Primate Population: Unknown Threats To Survival: Hunting for consumption as bushmeat, and habitat loss Scientific Name: Coleura seychellensis Common Name: Seychelles Sheath-Tailed Bat Category: Bat Population: < 100 mature individuals (est 2008) Threats To Survival: Habitat degradation and predation by invasive species Scientific Name: Cryptomyces maximus Common Name: None Category: Fungus Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Limited availability of habitat Scientific Name: Cryptotis nelsoni Common Name: Nelson's Small-Eared Shrew Category: Shrew Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: habitat loss due to logging cattle grazing, fire and agriculture Scientific Name: Cyclura collei Common Name: Jamaican Iguana Category: Iguana Population: Unknown (declining) Threats To Survival: Predation by introduced species and habitat destruction Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Prosecutors are trying to seize ex-Trump campaign chiefs Long Island house Tom Barrack secured a loan on property in 2004 Paul Manaforts house in the Hamptons is one of four properties prosecutors under the auspices of special counsel Robert Mueller are trying to have forfeited. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/Reuters The leader of a pro-Trump Super Pac once held a mortgage on one of the properties owned by Paul Manafort which federal prosecutors are trying to seize. Tom Barrack, a close friend of Donald Trumps who leads the Rebuilding America Now Super Pac, made a secured loan tied to Manaforts house in the Hamptons in July 2004. The loan to Manaforts wife Kathleen, who was listed as the owner of the house consolidated $1.76m in previous loans and also included a loan of $382,002.98 with the property as collateral, according to records in the Suffolk County clerks office. The county clerk records a satisfaction of mortgage or full repayment of the loan on 8 March 2006. A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment on the loan while a spokesman for Barrack simply told the Guardian the loan was repaid in accordance with the terms and declined to comment further. The property, located at 174 Jobs Lane, Water Mill, New York, is one of four owned by Manafort listed in the indictment that federal government seeks to have forfeited as derived from proceeds traceable to the offense(s) of conviction. Barrack, a billionaire real estate investor, has long been friends with Manafort and was reportedly responsible for connecting the political operative with the Trump campaign. According to the New York Times, the two met over coffee in February 2016 at a Beverly Hills hotel where Manafort successfully urged Barrack to advocate on his behalf with Trump. Shortly thereafter, Manafort joined the Trump campaign to manage the delegate process and within weeks, was effectively running it. In addition to his ties with Manafort, Barrack also hired Rick Gates, described in the indictment as Manaforts right hand man, after Gates was forced to leave a pro-Trump Super Pac earlier this year. Gates, who joined the Trump campaign with Manafort after working for the political operative overseas for a decade, was indicted with Manafort on Monday. The loan came shortly before Manafort started his work in Ukraine in 2005 in an effort to improve the image of Ukrainian strongman Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russian Party of Regions. Both Manafort and Gates advised Yanukovych and helped him win Ukraines 2010 presidential election. However, the Ukrainian president left power in 2014 after a violent crackdown on pro-EU protesters led to his government being overthrown. Yanukovych fled to Russia shortly thereafter and, in the aftermath of his departure, Russian-backed forces invaded the Crimean peninsula and eastern Ukraine. Tripoli (AFP) - A Libyan armed group holding the brother of the assailant in the deadly concert bombing in Manchester turned down Thursday a British police request for his extradition. "No. Hashem Abedi will not be extradited," Ahmed Ben Salem, spokesman for the "Deterrence Force" which acts as the police of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, told AFP. On Wednesday, British police investigating the May bombing that killed 22 people had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, in Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for Hashem Abedi. But Ben Salem said Libya had no extradition accord with Britain, and that "the Abadi affair is with the attorney general's office which is in charge of the investigation". According to the Deterrence Force, Hashem Abadi has admitted to having been in Britain at the time of preparations for the attack and that he was "fully aware of the details of the terrorist operation". We have not been able to verify the jobs, said Secretary Mark Hogan at a recent public hearing of the Joint Committee on Audit. In this statement, the head of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation confirmed what several years of audits repeatedly found: our state awarded hundreds of millions in tax credits and cash payments to companies to create jobs without ever checking to see if jobs were actually created. WEDC is the state agency overseeing economic development efforts. It hands out tax credits and cash payments to corporations to create and retain jobs. WEDC writes contracts for companies to receive state money. When a company abides by the contract, it receives a payment, a certificate for a tax break, or their loan is forgiven. Secretary Hogans statement above was his response to questions from myself and others who asked whether he was going to follow the law. We did not trust WEDC was prepared to follow recommendations of the Legislative Audit Bureau to set up policy and really start following the law. The law states WEDC must verify the company actually created jobs, not just their word. Its a bit like your son telling you he cleaned his bedroom. You always walk upstairs and check to make sure. In the last four years, audit after audit by the nonpartisan LAB found WEDC never verified companies followed through with their contracts. Numerous times, companies admitted they failed to hold up their end of the bargain. Instead of enforcing the contract, WEDC changed it to reflect what the company did do and gave them the money anyway. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars went to companies without WEDC staff independently verifying the promised jobs. Even when WEDC knew a company didnt comply with the terms of its contract, it would sometimes still award tax credits and cash payments. In other cases, WEDC claimed the promised (but not delivered) jobs on the WEDC website even though it knew the numbers werent accurate. For example, auditors found WEDC claimed credit for 485 jobs a company promised to create. The company pulled out of the program and created no jobs, but the state website still showed 485 promised jobs. In another case, WEDC claimed credit for keeping 340 jobs despite the company going out of business. In a third case, WEDC claimed credit for 68 jobs that werent created because the company sold its Wisconsin operation. In yet another example, a company informed WEDC it only created 18 jobs of the 226 promised. WEDC still claimed the entire 226 jobs on its website. In another instance, a company promised 657 jobs. WEDC staff decided the company was only eligible for tax credits for 489 jobs. But WEDC still claimed the additional 168 jobs on its website. Another example showed a company reported the creation of 742 jobs, but WEDC staff found only 678 were eligible for tax credits. The online data still reflected the larger number. During the hearing, I found it difficult to determine if WEDC was incompetent or deliberately skirting the law. I was most disturbed when Secretary Hogan flat-out said no to my request to release documents to LAB so auditors could complete their work. The document I wanted released was a study by an independent attorney the state paid $8,600 to answer the question: Is WEDC complying with statutes? (are they following the law?) This question was central to the findings of the audit. If agency leaders didnt think there was a law they needed to follow, I had no hope they would follow the audit recommendations and adopt verification policies and procedures. I left the hearing with many unanswered questions. Does Secretary Hogan understand he must follow the law? What is Secretary Hogan hiding in the document he refused to release to auditors? How can lawmakers stop WEDC from rewriting contracts if companies dont deliver? How can we get an accurate count for how many jobs were created with the millions of taxpayer dollars? But the most pressing question was: How can we possibly trust WEDC to oversee a $3 billion contract with Foxconn? Coon Creek Fire and Rescue will hold its annual Firefighters Dance at the Coon Valley Village Hall, Saturday, Nov. 4, from 7-11 p.m. Doors open at 5 p.m. Music will be by Leather & Lace. Admission is by donation. Refreshments will be available, and grilled chicken sandwiches will be served. The majority of proceeds from the dance will be put toward the purchase of a trailer to transport the departments Kubota UTV. Currently, the UTV is transported inside of Squad 2, a Chevrolet Step Van. The plan is to primarily pull the trailer and Kubota behind the departments brush unit. The trailer also provides the versatility to transport the UTV with other vehicles. The new Rescue 1 will be on display during the dance. Fifty percent of the purchase price of the vehicle was paid with tax dollars, with the other 50 percent coming from donations. In addition, the fire station will be open, and people are invited to see the equipment. Coon Creek Fire & Rescue has been serving the Coon Valley area since 1908, something longtime Fire Chief Russ Cornford said is a milestone in itself. We are blessed to live in such a beautiful area with so many generous and grateful people supporting us. Join us on Nov. 4 and check out our new rescue vehicle, Cornford said. The Vernon County Dairy Promotion presented its 2017 Restaurant of the Year and Friend of the Dairy Industry awards at the annual Vernon County Dairy Gala held in Viroqua on Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Viroqua VFW. The Dairy Gala is a joint venture sponsored by the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee and the Vernon County Cooperative Association. 2017 Dairy Industry Restaurant of the Year Rockys Supper Club Three generations of the Rockys Supper Club were on hand for the 2017 Dairy Gala, Rockys has been a family owned and operated restaurant since April 1, 1972. Located on Hwy. 35 in the village of Stoddard the restaurant is entering its 46th year in business. Positioned along the Great River Road they draw a wide array of customers from across the Coulee Region and are open Tuesday through Sunday evenings at 5 p.m. Customer favorites at the restaurant include: Rockys original batter fried cheese curds, Friday fish fry, mouth-watering prime rib and its one of a kind bleu cheese fish. For the past 32 years, Rockys Supper Club has been the Top in Sales during La Crosse River Fest serving over two tons of cheese curds to hungry customers who line up annually for the deep fried treasure. Thats a lot of cheese, Business owner, Jaynne Lepke said. In a typical week Rockys uses plenty of dairy products including 100 pounds of cheese curds, 15-20 pounds of butter, 25 pounds of cheese, 5 gallons of ice cream, and 6-8 gallons of its homemade bleu cheese dressing. Over its 45 years in business, Lepke and her entire family truly appreciate the hard working farming community, as well as all the dedicated employees and loyal customers for making Rockys Supper Club a successful, friendly place to enjoy quality food and drink. Rockys is a proud supporter of the dairy industry and extremely grateful to have received this special recognition. 2017 Friend of the Dairy Industry Tim Rehbein When the Vernon County Dairy Promotion Committee was nominating people for the 2017 award one name gained unanimous support, Tim Rehbein was selected for his support and enthusiasm for the dairy industry and agriculture in general. Rehbein was born in Manitowoc to the late Donald and Wilma Rehbein. One of eight siblings, Tim jokes, that after his mother gave birth to four girls she changed doctors and then gave birth to four boys. He is the oldest of the male children and they were all raised on a dairy farm. He graduated from Mishicot High School and was active in the FFA where he won numerous awards. After high school he attended UW-Madison earning a degree in Agriculture Education. While interning at Hillsboro High School he was introduced to and fell in love with the Driftless Region of Wisconsin and began seeking employment in the area. He spent decades as the Vernon County Ag Agent (February 1982 to June 1985 and March 1989 through 2014). He took a break from the position during which time he earned his Masters Degree in Meat Animal Science at UW-Madison in 1987 and when the position in Vernon County reopened, Rehbein was rehired. During his break as the Vernon County Ag Agent he married Judy Ostrem in 1985. The couple were blessed with three children, Micah (Devin) Voss graduated from UW-La Crosse and teaches at Coon Valley Elementary School; Bailey graduated from UW-Stout, with a degree in food science and works at a small USDA inspected meat plant in Elmwood; and Sylas, currently a junior at UW-Stout he is majoring in mechanical engineering. Rehbein has many fond memories of his time as the county ag agent including learning the art of raising tobacco and eventually how to spit it out, not swallow it, during tobacco spitting contests. He always enjoyed the All Breeds Dairyman banquet; the twilight meetings for Holstein, Guernsey and Jersey breeders and the ever-popular and labor intensive dairy breakfasts. One of his greatest accomplishments and one that is still growing today and as fruitful as ever was the introduction of grape growing in Vernon County. The venture did not come without its share of challenges, but Rehbein said he is sure more cheese has been sold with wine over the years, than chewing tobacco ever will. Cheese and wine just go better together, Rehbein said. When Rehbein left his opposition as the county ag agent he remained connected to agriculture working at Driftless Meats between Westby and Viroqua. Unfortunately in 2016, Rehbein was severely injured while on the job and is still in recovery today. I thank God that I am still alive, Rehbein said, God kept me alive to heal so that is what my full time job is right now. Its been a very slow process, but with the amazing support of my family and friends it makes every day worth the fight. Vernon County Cooperative Association The Vernon County Cooperative Association presented its 2017 Friends of the Cooperative awards at the event. This years recipients were Orlan and Denise Bakkum of Westby and Kevin and Julie Larson of Viroqua. Their bios were published earlier in the Westby Times and Vernon County Broadcaster. The Vernon County Fair Association also presented its 2017 Dairy Youth Awards to area 4-H participants at the Dairy Gala. Approximately 135 people attended the event which highlights the importance of the dairy industry and the effectiveness of member-owned cooperatives to the economic strength of an area. Wine samples for the Dairy Gala were furnished by Vernon Vineyards and Branches Winery and sponsored by the Vernon County Cooperative Association. Cheese trays were provided by Westby Cooperative Creamery and Organic Valley and crackers were donated by the Viroqua Food Cooperative. The meal was catered by the Viroqua VFW. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has a simple piece of advice for President Trump. Stop tweeting, McCain said in an interview with NBCs Tom Brokaw that aired on Thursday. Trump has long used the social media platform to criticize the media and attack myriad targets that often include lawmakers within his own party, such as McCain. I think I would also say, Look, theres no reason to attack Republicans, McCain added. Weve got enough people who attack them. John McCain, Donald Trump, Michelle Obama (Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters, Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Kamil Krzaczynski/Reuters) McCains advice for the president would seem to mirror remarks made by former first lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday in Chicago. You dont tweet every thought, she said in what seemed to be a subtle dig at Trump. Most of your initial thoughts arent worthy of the light of day. She added: Im not talking about anybody in particular; Im talking about us all. Her comments came hours after Trump lashed out at Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggesting he was responsible for protecting the U.S. visa program that was said to have been used by the suspect in Tuesdays Manhattan terror attack. The president ought to stop tweeting and start leading, Schumer said in response. The American people long for leadership not divisiveness; not finger-pointing, not name calling. This is a tragedy, its less than a day after it occurred and he cant refrain from his nasty, divisive habits. Its a freewheeling and controversial habit that would seem hard to break, particularly for a president who seems obsessed with the medias coverage of his presidency. He uses Twitter to lash out at both that coverage and a range of foes real and perceived. When somebody says something about me, I am able to go bing, bing, bing, and I take care of it, Trump told a Fox Business host last month. The other way, I would never be able to get the word out. Trump also marveled at the power of social media and what he sees as his mastery of tweeting. They are well-crafted, the president said. I was always a good student. I am, like, a person that does well with that kind of thing. And I doubt I would be here if werent for social media, to be honest with you. Read more from Yahoo News: Meghan McCain has a lot on her plate these days, but her life is about to get even busier. Besides co-hosting The View last month and helping her dad, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), battle brain cancer, the 33-year-old now has a wedding to plan. US Weekly first reported that McCain as engaged. While she never announced the name of her boyfriend-turned-fiance, Page Six revealed on Thursday night that McCain was engaged to conservative writer and publisher Ben Domenech. He retweeted Page Sixs story with a sweet message: McCain has made reference to her boyfriend on social media several times since early 2016, though the closest shes come to posting photos of him is his homemade meals. McCain and Domenech are well into wedding planning, an insider told US Weekly. Thats definitely a change from an interview McCain gave to the Los Angeles Times back in January 2015. Back then, she was skeptical about marriage. I spend a lot of time dancing in gay bars and want my gay friends to be able to get married, but I dont know if I ever want to get married and have kids, she said. And I think thats a common struggle. UPDATE: This story was updated early Thursday with the name of McCains fiance. Also on HuffPost Poppy Delevingne Poppy Delevingne Angelina Jolie Kim Kardashian Solange Knowles Amal Clooney Lauren Conrad Olivia Palermo Kaley Cuoco Lindsay Ellingson Jessi Cruickshank Jessica Simpson Ashley Tisdale Katie Couric Stacy Keibler George Clooney & Amal Alamuddin The couple tied the knot at the historic Aman Canal Grande Venice in Italy on Sept. 27. Jenny McCarthy & Donnie Wahlberg The lovebirds tied the knot in St. Charles, Ill., outside Chicago on Sunday, August 31, 2014. Ashlee Simpson & Evan Ross The couple wed in Greenwich, Connecticut on Sunday, August 31, 2014, in front of friends and family. Gabrielle Union & Dwyane Wade The longtime loves married on August 30, 2014 in Miami, Florida. Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie The couple tied the knot in August 2014 after nine years together. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this slide stated that Pitt and Jolie were together for eight years before tying the knot. Piper Perabo & Stephen Kay The "Cover Affairs" star married Kay on July 26, 2014 in NYC. Adam Levine & Behati Prinsloo Adam Levine married Behati Prinsloo in Mexico on Saturday night, July 19, in front of an intimate group of approximately 275 guests, which included Robert Downey Jr. Jessica Simpson & Eric Johnson The longtime couple wed at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California on July 5. Olivia Palermo & Johannes Huebl Palermo married Huebl on June 28 nuptials in Bedford, New York. Katie Couric & John Molner Couric tied the not on June 21 in a ceremony held at the couple's home in East Hampton, New York. Zachary Levi & Missy Peregrym The "Chuck" star married Peregrym in Maui, Hawaii on June 14. Emily Maynard The former "Bachelorette" married Tyler Johnson in a surprise ceremony on Saturday, June 7, at her new husband's parents' estate in South Carolina. Casey Wilson The actress married "Happy Endings" creator David Caspe in Ojai, California on May 25. Kim Kardashian & Kanye West The pair tied the knot in an extravagant wedding in Florence on May 24. Brian Baumgartner & Celeste Ackelson "The Office" star married Ackleson on April 26, 2014. His former co-stars were there to cheer him on! Ginnifer Goodwin & Josh Dallas The co-stars tied the knot on April 12, 2014. They are expecting their first child together very soon! Jamie Lynn Spears & Jamie Watson Britney Spears' little sister tied the knot with businessman Watson in New Orleans on March 14, 2014. Teresa Palmer & Mark Webber Palmer legally married her fiance on February 7, 2014 while pregnant with their son, Bodhi. Alexa Vega & Carlos Pena, Jr. The "Spy Kids" star married Big Time Rush singer Pena Jr. in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on January 4, 2014 Justin Bartha & Lia Smith "The Hangover" star said "I do" to Smith on January 4, 2014 in Oahu, Hawaii. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. In the scheme of wedding planning, 6 weeks is but a blink of the eye. And while most couples are just beginning to settle on a date, these two planned one very chic wedding. New York City set the stage for this intimate gathering of family and friends designed by Bespoke Only, with florals and all the greenery by Peartree Flowers and images captured by Judy Pak. Imagine the most stunning, chic, beautifully modern cocktail party you've ever been to and you get this perfect celebration. Planning a wedding takes a very long time, and Jodi and David love each other so much that they did not want to wait. After considering eloping, but realizing it was not for them, as they both wanted their families to be present, they did the next best thing- had a small wedding for immediate family 6 weeks after they got engaged and surprised everyone else by telling them in the save the date that they were married and now wanted to party with everyone. It was funny because people didn't know if they were married already or first going to getting married. It was as if they did not know how to read the card. That said, they wanted an amazing party to friends, family, food, photos, dancing and more. To this end, they planned with Bespoke Only, a huge cocktail party on what turned out to be the most gorgeous NYC Sunday night in June. They enlisted to help of many vendors including Judy Pak, who captured the most incredible images. Their emotion, love and excitement was captured in every photo. They did a terrific job- so much so, that the photographers themselves felt like friends. Jodi and David wanted them to have as much fun as everyone at the party- and this shows in every image. What was so special was that Jodi and David were able to relive their wedding with all their friends and family through decorative elements such as calligraphed vows in a mirror, displaying items used in the ceremony, and wearing the same jewelry as a nod to those they love present and past for all to see. While yes Jodi and David's wedding and celebration was somewhat unorthodox, it was perfect for them and their wanting to start their life as a unit immediately. And perhaps the biggest perk to come from it, like their website says, it allowed David to move into Jodi'a apartment sooner. Photography: Judy Pak Photography | Florals: Peartree Flowers | Dress: Mark Ingram Atelier | Invitations: Suite Paperie | Catering: Mauzone Main Event Caterers | Makeup and Hair: Face Time Beauty Concierge | Calligraphy : Ink Revival | DJ : Generation Events | Planning and Design: Bespoke Only | Rentals: Patina | Rentals : Party Rental LTD MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia hopes that all Syrian opposition groups will attend a Moscow-backed Syrian congress in southern Russia on Nov. 18 despite some objections, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported. The event, called the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, was first mentioned by President Vladimir Putin last month who said he believed that militants in Syria would soon be defeated. It is due to be held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. But while Damascus has backed the Russian plan, some opposition groups have rejected the idea, calling it an attempt to rehabilitate President Bashar al-Assad's government. They have said they will stick to U.N.-brokered Geneva peace talks. Asked if Moscow still hoped to see opposition groups like the High Negotiations Committee, which has refused to come, attending, Interfax cited Bogdanov as saying: "We hope that everyone who believes that the fate of the country, its unity, its territorial integrity and its sovereignty are important will participate." (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn) Nicomi Stewart, a mother in Rochester, New York, is disgusted after an automated call sent to her phone from the citys school district mispronounced her daughters name as a racial slur. Stewarts daughter is named Nicarri. Stewart told WHAM TV the message clearly began, This is Edison Career and Technology High School. Your daughter, N****r, has missed period one on The call came after Nicarri missed a day of class at Edison Career and Technology High School. The racially insensitive robocall came more than once so Stewart was able to record the message. I was like, wow, am I really hearing you correctly, did the machine just say this? Stewart told WHAM TV. It was unbelievable. I was shocked. I was disgusted. I was upset. Even stranger: Stewart said the robocalls correctly pronounced Nicarris name last year. Although a school administrator told Stewart her daughters name would be removed from the automated calling system, she says shes received at least two other calls that mispronounced her daughters name the same way. Its disrespectful and its degrading. I dont even use that word in my house, so why is my child being called this? Stewart told WHAM TV. Nicomi Stewart says her daughter's high school keeps sending robocalls that mispronounce the name of her daughter Nicarri as a racial slur. (Photo: WHAM TV) Lawrence Bo Wright, the deputy superintendent of administration for the Rochester City School District, publicly apologized to Stewart. Representatives from the district have talked with the family and apologized profusely, as we should, he told WHAM TV. We cant say enough how sorry we are. He blamed the issue on a software error with Blackboard Connect, a vendor it contracts with to send out mass notifications. Its very similar to technologies that you use that are centered around GPS, where sometimes the system will have mispronounced a name, Wright told the station. And thats how that occurred. When HuffPost contacted Blackboard Connect to get more details on how the reported slur could happen, they responded with this statement: Blackboard Connect includes an automated text to speech [TTS] software feature that allows customers to place automated phone calls by entering text. The system automatically generates pronunciations based on typed text. In this case it appears that the system mispronounced the recipients childs name, sounding like a racial slur. Blackboard takes this issue very seriously and we are working with the school district and our TTS vendor to correct the problem. We sincerely apologize for this very unfortunate technical issue. Story continues A company spokesman also expressed regret that WHAM TV bleeped out the supposed slur during its story. He pointed HuffPost to this page that uses the same speech software the company uses in its robocalls and suggested typing out the name of Stewarts daughter. Wright promised Stewart the district would only contact the family through a phone call or email until the problem is rectified, but Stewart said shes still receiving those calls, including one earlier this week. Theyre making me look like Im slightly bananas and lying about this, when theyre saying they rectified something they havent rectified yet, Stewart told WHAM TV. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Pizza With A Side Of Racism A Papa John's customer snapped a photo of her receipt, which contained an offensive racial slur in place of the customer's name. 'Best Butt' Discount One woman was surprised to find that along with her veggie bowl, she received a discount for having the 'best butt' and being the 'best looking' person in the fast food joint. Dry Cleaner Gaffe A customer got quite a surprise when he picked up his freshly-laundered shirts. The anonymous consumer, dubbed 'Asshole, Alex' apparently had the cleaning bill comped. Profanity-Laden Receipt Two Burger King employees were fired after a customer noticed that his receipt read 'F*ck You' where it would normally say 'Thank You'. Bruins Celebrate In Style After the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, they partied... hard. The team apparently rang up a $156,000 bar tab at a nightclub in the Foxwoods Casino, according to the Boston Globe. Restaurant Settles Suit Over Racial Slurs A California steak house settled a lawsuit with a customer that claimed his credit receipts contained several racial slurs where his name should have been. Radio Shack Refund Gets Ugly A Maryland woman got a little something extra along with her refund when she discovered that an associate deemed her an 'ugly itch' from 'ghettohood, USA'. Chick-Fil-A In Hot Water Chick-Fil-A garnered national attention after a customer snapped a photo of two receipts that had labeled Asian-American customers as 'Ching' and 'Chong'. Walmart Customers Find Jesus A couple claimed their Walmart receipt contained the face of the Son of God. Now THAT'S An Account Balance An ATM customer found this surprising receipt still in the machine. The receipt, which shows a whopping balance of nearly $100 million, supposedly belonged to hedge fund manager David Tepper. Server Has Choice Words For Kids A server at a Chichos Pizza restaurant labeled his customers as 'high as shit kids'. Fortunately, the customers had a sense of humor and posted the receipt to Reddit to much fanfare. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Keith Coffman THORNTON, Colo. (Reuters) - At least three people were killed in a shooting inside a Walmart store on Wednesday in suburban Denver, where police said they had not yet taken anyone into custody. Police in Thornton, Colorado, did not immediately release any information about the circumstances of the shooting or who was responsible for the gunfire. Two men were killed in the shooting. A women, who was injured in the shooting, was taken to a hospital where she later died, Thornton Police Department said on Twitter. "Detectives currently reviewing security footage & witnesses being interviewed for assistance with suspect(s)," police said on Twitter. No one had been taken into custody, police said. The situation appeared potentially ominous from authorities' initial reports. "We've got multiple parties down, we're still trying to ascertain what their conditions are," Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters by telephone not long after police arrived on the scene. About an hour after the initial alert, police said on Twitter that the threat of gunfire had ended at the store, which was surrounded by police and fire crews. "At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available," the police department said in that tweet. Confirmation of the two fatalities came about 20 minutes later. Thornton is city of about 120,000 people roughly 10 miles (16 km) northeast of downtown Denver. Avila said police were called to the store at about 6:30 p.m. Mountain time (8:30 p.m. ET) and that the gunshots had ceased by the time the first officers arrived at the scene. A Walmart customer, Aaron Stephens, 44, of Thorton, told Reuters he was inside paying for groceries at a self-checkout stand when he heard gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets. "The employees started screaming and the customers started screaming" as people began to flee the store, he recounted. "I ran out, too, because I didn't want to get shot." Story continues Stephens said he did not see where the shooting had come from and did not see anyone struck by bullets. Local NBC television affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in the Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is situated in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to U.S. Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. (Reporting by Keith Coffman in Thornton and Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Sandra Maler and Michael Perry) By Simon Cameron-Moore YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar insisted on Wednesday it was ready to set up a repatriation process for Rohingya Muslims even as more risked their lives fleeing the country, but it voiced fears Bangladesh was delaying an accord to first get international aid money. A senior Bangladesh home ministry official described the accusation as outrageous. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled predominantly Buddhist Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since late August to escape violence that accompanied a brutal military counter-insurgency operation after Rohingya militant attacks on security posts in Myanmar's Rakhine State. Stung by international criticism and accusations of ethnic cleansing, Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has said Rohingya refugees who can prove they were resident will be accepted back. But for now, the flow of people is one-way, with Rohingya still preferring to risk being destitute in Bangladesh rather than stay in Myanmar in fear of their lives. Zaw Htay, a spokesman for Suu Kyi, said Myanmar was ready to begin the repatriation process any time, based along the lines of an agreement with Bangladesh that covered returns of Rohingya to Myanmar in the early 1990s. He said Bangladesh had yet to accept those terms. "We are ready to start, but the other side did not accept yet, and the process was delayed. This is the number one fact," Zaw Htay, Director-General of the Ministry of the State Counsellor's Office, told journalists on Tuesday. A memorandum of understanding on border liaison posts was signed with Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan following talks in the Myanmar capital, Naypyitaw, last week, but there was no progress on reviving the old agreement. Zaw Htay linked the delay by Bangladesh to the money raised so far by the international community to help build gigantic refugee camps for the Rohingya. "Currently they have got $400 million. Over their receipt of this amount, we are now afraid of delaying the program of deporting the refugees," he said in comments carried in a front-page article in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Wednesday. "They have got international subsidies. We are now afraid they would have another consideration as to repatriation," he said. A senior Bangladesh home ministry official gave a scathing response. "Their claim is outrageous. We are stunned," the official told Reuters in Dhaka. "How can they say this when everyone knows who are making the delay?" The Bangladesh government issued a statement last Thursday saying that Myanmar had not agreed to 10 points put forward by its minister at last week's talks, including the full implementation of the recommendations of an Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, chaired by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, for a sustainable return of Rohingya. Khan told Bangladesh media last Friday that the two sides were unable to form a joint working group but said it should be set up by the time Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali goes to Myanmar for further talks on Nov. 30. HAUNTED BY DEATH, INSECURITY The United Nation's new interim resident coordinator for Myanmar began his new job on Wednesday. Knut Ostby, a Norwegian, has stepped into the key humanitarian and diplomatic role at a time of growing strains with the Myanmar government over the handling of the Rohingya crisis. Meantime, while Myanmar and Bangladesh work out how Rohingya can eventually go home, the grim exodus from Myanmar continues. Seven Rohingya, including three babies and two children, drowned making the perilous sea crossing up the coast from Myanmar to Bangladesh earlier this week. Given the horrors endured by many Rohingya now living in refugee camps it would be unsurprising if they were in no hurry to return to their old home. U.N. investigators interviewing Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh said on Friday they had gathered testimony pointing to a "consistent, methodical pattern" of killings, torture, rape and arson. A worry for Myanmar as it prepares to scrutinize any returnees is the risk of Islamist militants sneaking into the country, as several groups, including al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), have called for a jihad to fight for the Rohingya. (This version of the story fixes typo in second paragraph) (With reporting by Simon Lewis in YANGON and Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Editing by Paul Tait, Michael Perry and Nick Macfie) Seoul (AFP) - North Korea slammed US President Donald Trump as "incurably mentally deranged" in a personal attack ahead of his first visit to Asia, as the South's leader insisted Washington could not take military action on the peninsula without his agreement. Trump and the North's leader Kim Jong-Un have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about another conflict on the peninsula where the 1950-53 Korean War left millions dead. The US leader has warned of "fire and fury", telling the UN General Assembly that Washington would "totally destroy North Korea" if it had to defend itself or its allies. Washington and Seoul have been in a security alliance for decades, and the US has 28,500 troops stationed in the South to defend it from the North. Trump dubbed Kim "Rocket Man" in the same speech -- Pyongyang has tested missiles apparently capable of reaching much of the US mainland -- and days later Kim responded with a personal statement calling him a "dotard", an obscure term for a weak or senile old man. The US president is due in Asia at the weekend and ahead of his arrival the North's state-run KCNA news agency lashed out at "bellicose and irresponsible rhetoric" by the "master of invective". Washington has deployed key military assets including jet fighters and aircraft carriers near the peninsula following the North's sixth nuclear test in September, which also saw the United Nations impose an eighth set of sanctions on the isolated country. Trump, KCNA said late Tuesday, "disclosed his true nature as a nuclear war maniac before the world and was diagnosed as 'incurably mentally deranged'". The North has a long history of colourful personal attacks against US leaders. It has called Trump's predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush a "monkey" and "half-baked man". Story continues It has railed against former South Korean president Park Geun-Hye as a "witch" and a "crafty prostitute" who had Obama as her "pimp". - 'Tragic history' - Despite the fire-breathing rhetoric, South Korean President Moon Jae-In on Wednesday said his country would not develop or possess nuclear weapons, unlike its neighbour. South Korean media and opposition politicians have called for the return of US tactical nuclear weapons, which were withdrawn from the peninsula in the 1990s. Some have suggested that if Washington does not agree -- Defense Secretary Jim Mattis expressed doubts about the prospective move at the weekend -- Seoul should develop a nuclear capability of its own, in order to ensure a so-called "balance of terror" on the peninsula. In his address to the National Assembly Moon, who has advocated engagement to bring the North to the negotiating table, insisted: "There should be no military action on the peninsula without our prior consent." The fate of the flashpoint region should be determined by Koreans, he added, saying the country should "not repeat the tragic history" of colonisation and division. The Korea peninsula was controlled by Japan from 1910 to 1945, and after Tokyo's surrender ended the Second World War it was divided into separate zones of occupation by Russia and the US. The latest standoff has heightened concerns among South Koreans, who have over decades grown indifferent to regular threats of attack from Pyongyang. But even some Trump advisers say US military options are limited because any armed conflict on the peninsula would be expected to cause huge casualties. Seoul is home to 10 million people and only about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the heavily-fortified border, within range of Pyongyang's massive artillery forces. Pyongyang hails its nuclear arsenal as a "treasured sword" to protect itself from potential invasion by its "imperialist enemy" the US, but has threatened to bracket the US Pacific island of Guam with missiles. Trump's itinerary includes Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, with all eyes on his message to the North and Kim. In the South Trump is due to address parliament, visit a US military base, and hold a summit with Moon, although he will not go to the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas. Nestled between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is Greenland, a slab of ice and rock that has caused more controversy than one might expect from the least densely populated country in thew world. For a long time, the Mercator map misrepresented Greenland as a giant land mass almost as big as Africa, but a 1970s reassessment cut it down to size, showing that its actually only about one-fourteenth of the continents area. Now, in a cruel coincidence, new NASA maps show that Greenland is actually physically shrinking, and its happening at a much quicker pace than scientists once thought. On Wednesday, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a team of NASA scientists together with collaborators from over 30 institutions published the most accurate high-resolution maps of Greenlands bedrock and coastal seafloor, using data from NASAs OMG campaign short for Ocean Melting Greenland, but apt for describing its scary findings. The maps revealed some terrible news for the countrys 54,100 inhabitants: While scientists had long known that some of the glaciers comprising the icy landmass were melting because of climate change, it now appears that up to four times the original number of glaciers are under threat. Greenland's coasts are lined with glaciers, some of which extend into the warmer waters deep in the ocean. These results suggest that Greenlands ice is more threatened by changing climate than we had anticipated, said Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Josh Willis, who wasnt involved in making the maps, in a statement from NASA. Greenland is considered the worlds largest island, and about 80 percent of it is covered with a permanent ice sheet. Along its long, convoluted coastline, as NASA describes it, are free-floating glaciers, which are the most vulnerable to climate change. Previous estimates showed that, if all of Greenlands ice were to melt, it would add 21.58 feet to global sea rise. On the left, dark blue regions show land that extends 4,900 feet below sea level. On the right, the darkest red regions show the parts of the land that are connected to the ocean, and the white line shows how far the ice sheet extends. Story continues The new maps suggest that the effects of climate change on Greenland will be seen much sooner than expected. Its hard to estimate the rate of glacier melt without knowledge of how they move and how deep the glaciers extend underwater, but the OMG data revealed what was going on beneath the waters surface. It showed that two to four times as many glaciers actually extend deeper than 600 feet below sea level than scientists previously thought. If all of Greenland's ice melts, it could lead to a sea level rise of 24.34 feet. It may seem intuitive that the water gets colder as you go deeper into the ocean around Greenland, but the opposite is true. The surface water is actually colder, because it flows down from the Arctic ocean; beneath that is water thats about 6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, which flows from more temperature southern waters. The discovery that there are more glaciers that dip into these warm waters than previously expected is terrible news for Greenlanders, whose country is literally shrinking, and for the rest of us, wholl actually have to deal with 24.34 feet of sea level rise, according to the new estimates. At current rates of climate change, the scientists estimate it will take several centuries for all of Greenlands ice to melt, giving future mapmakers one less landmass to worry about. Photos via NASA/JPL/UCI, UCI, Flickr / Stig Nygaard Photos via NASA/JPL/UCI, UCI, Flickr / Stig Nygaard Written by Yasmin Tayag More articles by Yasmin Follow Yasmin on Twitter tweetshare More From Inverse Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood. Start your day with LAist Sign up for How To LA, delivered weekday mornings. Subscribe The same L.A. County Sheriffs deputy who was arrested last month on suspicion of sexually assaulting two women inside a Lynwood jail is now facing a civil rights lawsuit stemming from what appear to be two additional sexual assault allegations. The federal civil rights lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges that in August, Giancarlo Scotti approached a pregnant woman inmate inside her jail cell at the Century Regional Detention Facility, exposed his genitals to her, and forced her to perform oral sex on him, the L.A. Times reports. A second woman included in the lawsuit alleges that Scotti sexually assaulted her in a shower stall on September 12, just a day before his arrest. Both women have since been released from custody and allege that they were penalized by jail staff after they spoke to investigators about Scotti, according to the Times. In a statement on Wednesday to LAist, the L.A. County Sheriffs Department said detectives with its Criminal Investigations Bureau have interviewed 150 witnesses and gathered additional evidence during its ongoing criminal investigation related to the allegations. Any allegation of predatory behavior within our custody environment is taken very seriously, the Sheriffs Department said in a statement. Sheriff Jim McDonnell continues to emphasize that, Criminal misconduct, especially criminal misconduct that preys upon a vulnerable population, will not be tolerated and will be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.'" The department says its aware of a case involving three victims that was submitted to the Los Angeles County District Attorneys Office for filing consideration on October 4, but its unclear whether this is the same case that was filed on Tuesday. The department declined to comment, citing its ongoing investigation, However, we can state that the arrest of Deputy Giancarlo Scotti, a 31-year-old, ten-year veteran of the Department on September 13, 2017, was made within hours of the initial complaint. At a press conference held last month, Sheriff McDonnell called Scottis alleged crimes horrific and said the department had a public obligation to pursue the evidence in the case, according to Southern California News Group. Scotti was released on $100,000 bail and placed on paid administrative leave at the time. The lawsuit against Scotti was filed amid protests by anti-incarceration activists against the countys proposed expansion of several jails, including the construction of a new womens facility in Lancaster that would replace the current one in Lynwood. o Donald Trump North Korea slammed US President Donald Trump as "incurably mentally deranged" in a personal diatribe ahead of his first visit to Asia as head of state, amid high tensions over Pyongyangs nuclear ambitions. Trump and the Norths leader Kim Jong-un have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about a potential conflict on the divided Korean peninsula. Trump has warned of "fire and fury" and "calm before the storm", telling the UN General Assembly that Washington would "totally destroy North Korea" if it had to defend itself or its allies. He dubbed Kim "Rocket Man" in the same speech Pyongyang has tested missiles apparently capable of reaching much of the US mainland and days later Kim responded with a personal statement calling Trump a "dotard", an obscure term for a weak or senile old man. The US president is due in Asia at the weekend and ahead of his arrival the Norths state-run KCNA news agency lashed out at "bellicose and irresponsible rhetoric" by the "master of invective". North Korea | Kim Jong-uns fiery relationship with the US "He absolutely needs medicine for curing his psychical disorder," it said. The US has deployed key military assets including jet fighters and aircraft carriers near the peninsula following the Norths sixth nuclear test in September, which also saw the United Nations impose an eighth set of sanctions on the isolated country. KCNA described the sanctions drive as "desperate efforts" that would prove ineffective and Trumps hostile rhetoric as "hysteric spasmodic symptoms". Trump, it said late Tuesday, "disclosed his true nature as a nuclear war maniac before the world and was diagnosed as incurably mentally deranged". Trumps itinerary includes Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, with all eyes on his message to the North and Kim. Story continues Pyongyang says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against possible invasion by the US. During a November 7-8 visit to the South a security ally of Washington that hosts 28,500 US troops Trump is due to address Seouls parliament and visit a US military base, although he will not go to the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Koreas. (SALT LAKE CITY) A Utah nurse who was arrested for refusing to let a police officer draw blood from an unconscious patient settled Tuesday with Salt Lake City and the university that runs the hospital for $500,000. Nurse Alex Wubbels and her lawyer, Karra Porter, announced the move nearly two months after they released police body-camera video showing Detective Jeff Payne handcuffing Wubbels. The footage drew widespread attention online amid the national debate about police use of force. The settlement covers all possible defendants in a lawsuit, including individual police officers, university police and hospital security guards. The payout will be divided among the city and the University of Utah. Wubbels plans to use part of the money to fund legal help for others trying to get similar body-camera video. She said that in cases like hers, video is essential to being heard and believed. We all deserve to know the truth, and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage, and thats what happened in my case, she said. No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience I went through. She said she also plans to give a portion of the $500,000 to a nurses union and help lead a campaign to stop physical and verbal abuse of nurses on the job. University of Utah hospital officials said in a statement they support Wubbels and have changed their procedures and training on how police and health care workers interact to ensure nothing similar happens again. A spokesman for Salt Lake City didnt immediately return messages seeking comment. Wubbel was following hospital policy when she told Payne he needed a warrant or the consent of the patient to draw blood after a July 26 car crash. The patient was not under arrest or suspected of wrongdoing. Payne had neither. He eventually dragged Wubbels outside and handcuffed her as she screamed that she had done nothing wrong. Story continues She was released without being charged but has said the incident left her feeling terrified and bullied. In a call for changes, Wubbel and her lawyer released the video they had obtained through a public records request. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown has since apologized and fired Payne after an internal investigation found he violated department policies. Brown said in a disciplinary letter that he was deeply troubled by Paynes conduct, which he said brought significant disrepute on the department. Payne is appealing that decision, saying the firing was an unfair reaction to the negative publicity. The patient was an off-duty Idaho reserve police officer driving a semitrailer when he was hit by a man fleeing police in a pickup truck. He later died of his injuries. Lt. James Tracy, a police supervisor who ordered the arrest of the nurse, was demoted to officer and also is appealing. He said he suggested Payne consider handcuffing the nurse and that his superiors had never informed him of the hospitals blood-draw policy, according to appeal documents. Wubbels said she was relieved at the discipline and would be disappointed if its overturned, though she stressed that decision is out of her control. The police have to police themselves, she said. This is something I never would have expected to happen, but Im also honored by the weight of it. The hero of Tuesday's deadly terror attack in New York has emerged as one of the city's men in blue. A five-year veteran of the NYPD, 1st Precinct Officer Ryan Nash was reportedly making his normal rounds when suspect Sayfullo Saipov allegedly crashed through a Manhattan bike path, killing at least 8, and collided with a school bus before leaping from his rented pickup truck. Watch: Hero Nanny Rescues 5-Year-Old Boy That's when Nash, 28, shot Saipov once in the abdomen, CBS New York reported. Saipov was taken to a hospital, where he's currently undergoing questioning. Saipov was in critical condition but is expected to survive. Without Nash's quick thinking, authorities believe the death toll could have been much higher. "He is a hero there is no doubt," New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CBS This Morning. Nash joined the department in July 2012 and is reportedly a very active cop with more than 50 arrests on his record. He was taken to a hospital to be treated for ringing in the ears. Cuomo on Wednesday went on to praise the efforts of Nash and his fellow first responders. "The NYPD did a great job," he said. "Fire FDNY did a great job. We have first responders who are heroes. And that's what you saw yesterday." Saipov is a truck driver who came to the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan, CBS News reported. His most recent address was in Tampa, Fla., but he also had addresses in Ohio and New Jersey since immigrating to America. In the truck, investigators found handwritten notes in Arabic, where Saipov reportedly pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State. Watch: Swamp Rescue Hero Trashed by Skeptics "This was an act of terrorism... aimed at innocent civilians," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "This action was intended to break our spirit." But that will never happen, the mayor added. Police say the suspect acted alone. Related Articles: CIA Files Osama bin Laden had the Charlie Bit My Finger video on his computer when he was shot and killed during a covert operation carried out by the US government in 2011. The majority of materials released by the CIA were related to Bin Laden's terror operations, such as clipart appearing to depict the 9/11 terror attacks. But some of the files were benign in nature and included children's programmes such as Tom and Jerry and instructions for crocheting butterflies, socks and baskets. The government seized the al-Qaeda founder's computer in May 2011 during a raid on his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The package of 470,000 files the intelligence agency released this week is the fourth tranche of materials to be made public by the government since May 2015. Todays release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization, said CIA Director Mike Pompeo. CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security. The copyright-protected materials include more than two dozen videos such as Antz, Cars and other animated films, the role-playing game Final Fantasy VII and Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and two other documentaries about the former al-Qaeda leader, the CIA said. The al-Qaeda founder may have had a plethora of childrens content on his computer because he was living with his family in the walled compound where he was killed by US Navy Seal Team 6. Materials that still have not been released are being withheld because they could harm national security, are blank, corrupted or duplicate files, are pornographic or are protected by copyright, the CIA said in a statement. Particle physicists have uncovered a large, hidden void in Khufus Pyramid, the largest pyramid in Giza, Egypt built between 2600 and 2500 BC. The discovery, published in Nature, was made using cosmic-ray based imaging and may help scientists work out how the enigmatic pyramid was actually constructed. The technology works by tracking particles called muons. They are very similar to electrons having the same charge and a quantum property called spin but are 207 times heavier. This difference in mass is quite important as it turns out it determines how these particles interact when hitting matter. Highly energetic electrons emit electromagnetic radiation, such as X-rays, when they hit solid matter making them lose energy and get stuck in the target material. Due to the muons much higher mass, this emission of electromagnetic radiation is suppressed by a factor of 207 squared compared to electrons. As a result, muons are not stopped so quickly by any material, they are highly penetrative. Muons are commonly produced in cosmic rays. The Earths upper atmosphere is constantly bombarded with charged particles from the sun but also from sources outside of our solar system. It is the latter that provide the more energetic cosmic rays that can produce muons and other particles in a chain of reactions. contact@hip.institute As muons have a relatively long lifetime and are pretty stable, they are the most numerous particles seen from cosmic rays at ground level. And although a lot of energy is lost on the way, muons with very high energies do occur. Doing science with muons The particles are fairly easy to detect. They produce a thin trail of ionisation along the path they take which means that they knock electrons off atoms, leaving the atoms charged. This is quite handy, allowing scientists using several detectors to follow the path of the muon back to its origin. Also, if theres a lot of material in the way of the muon, it can lose all of its energy and stop in the material and decay (split into other particles) before being detected. Story continues These properties make muons great candidates for taking images of objects that otherwise are impenetrable or impossible to observe. Just like bones produce a shadow on a photographic film exposed to X-rays, a heavy and dense object with a high atomic number will produce a shadow or a reduction in the number of muons being able to pass through that object. The first time muons were used in this way was in 1955, when E. P. George measured the overburden of rock over a tunnel by comparing the muon flux outside and inside of the said tunnel. The first known attempt to take a deliberate muogram happened in 1970 when Luis W. Alvarez looked for extended caverns in the second pyramid of Giza, but found none. Within the last decade or so, muon tomography has experienced a bit of a fresh boost. In 2007, a Japanese collaboration took a muogram of the crater of the volcano Mt Asama to investigate its inside structure. Muon scans are also being used to investigate the Fukushima reactor remnants. In the UK, the University of Sheffield is proposing to use measurements of the muon flux to monitor carbon storage sites. Exploring Khufu The easiest way to use muons to investigate large objects such as a pyramid is to look for differences in the muon flux coming through it. A solid pyramid would leave a shadow or a reduction in the number of muons in that direction. If there is a large hollow void inside the pyramid the muon flux would be increased in the direction of that void. The bigger the difference between solid and hollow the easier it becomes. All you need to do is sit somewhere near the ground, look a bit upwards from the horizon towards the pyramid and count the number of muons coming from every direction. As cosmic muons need to be somewhat energetic to pass through a whole pyramid and as our detector eyes are relatively small, we need to sit there and count for quite a while, typically several months in order to count enough muons. In the same way as we have two eyes to get a 3D image of the world in our brains, we want two separate detector eyes to get a 3D image of the void inside the pyramid. contact@hip.institute The interesting thing about the approach of this team is that they have chosen three different detector technologies to investigate the pyramid. The first one is a bit old fashioned but offers a supreme resolution of the resulting image: photographic plates which get blackened by the ionisation. These were left for months inside of one of the known chambers in the pyramid and analysed in Japan after data taking was finished. For the second method plastic scintillators that produce a light flash when a charged particle passes through them were employed. These kinds of detectors are used in several modern neutrino experiments. And finally chambers filled with gas, where the ionisation caused by the charged particles can be monitored, were used to look directly along the direction of the newly discovered cavern. The electronic signal of those detectors was directly phoned back to Paris via a 3G data link. Of course a pyramid with three known caverns and a large hollow gallery inside is a bit of a complex object to take a muogram of (it only shows light and dark). So often these pictures need to be compared to a computer simulation of the cosmic muons and the known pyramid, with warts and all. In this case, a careful analysis of the pictures of the three detectors and the computer simulation yielded the discovery of a 30 metre long void, up to now unknown, inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza. What a great success for a new toolkit. The technique can now help us study the detailed shape of this void. While we dont know anything about the role of the structure, research projects involving scientists from other backgrounds could build on this study to help us discover more about its function. Its great to see how cutting-edge particle physics can help us shed light on the most ancient human culture. Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of a revolution in science making it truly interdisciplinary. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. The Conversation Harald Fox receives funding from STFC. (Photo courtesy of Pat McGrath Labs; Art by Quinn Lemmers for Yahoo Lifestyle) Yahoo Lifestyle would like to introduce you to The New-New, a column by Beauty Director Dana Oliver on the latest products, tools, and treatments on which shed happily spend her hard-earned money. I love a good liquid matte lipstick, but my biggest complaint when it comes to wearing this product is that it makes my lips even drier. Lip scrub or moisturizing balm can certainly help solve this issue. However, am I asking too much to simply wake up in the morning, apply a matte lipstick, and for it to remain smooth throughout the day? Not according to Pat McGrath. The beauty legends latest launch, LiquiLUST007, is without a doubt the most comfortable liquid matte lipstick Ive ever worn. McGrath first hinted that she was working on something new during Paris Fashion Week, uploading seductive images and videos to Instagram of perfectly painted pouts. Well, my wait for velvety-smooth lips is over now that Ive got my hands on samples from Pat McGrath Labs. Packaged in sleek yet simple lacquered tubes, LiquiLUST007 is available in six dynamic matte shades ($38 each), ranging from a mauve-pink to a deep eggplant. Like a true artist, McGrath also offers kits ($75) that include her signature shimmery microfine pigment and clear gloss that can be worn on top of the lipsticks or alone. However, Im sure diehard beauty fanatics will add the Everything 9-piece kit ($150) to the top of their holiday wish lists. Testing Pat McGrath LiquiLUST007 in Nightshade and Revelation Red. (Photos: Dana Oliver for Yahoo Lifestyle) Staying true to my admiration for in-your-face lip colors, I tried LiquiLUST007 in Nightshade and Revelation Red. I must confess that I didnt exfoliate my lips before application. Instead, I massaged on just a tiny bit of Freshs Sugar Lip Caramel Hydrating Balm and then put on the liquid matte lipstick. While the product is absolutely buildable, I appreciate how highly pigmented the shades are with just a single swipe. My managing editor, Laura Kenney, told me she couldnt take her eyes off the combination of my rich purple lip and navy turtleneck. I was giving a look! Finding a red lipstick that looks good on my deep skin tone isnt easy, but McGrath has also crafted a true blue-red thats my new boo. Story continues The real test came when I ate an everything bagel with tofu spread, and I can report that the lippie passed! It also withstood my drinking lots of water through a straw, and when I tell you that it didnt make the skin on my lips chapped or flaked, Im not lying. If you havent joined the liquid matte-lipstick bandwagon, I suggest you hop onboard quickly with Pat McGraths runway-to-real-life take on the trend. Pat McGrath Labs Limited-Edition LiquiLUST007 ($38-$150) will be available Nov. 16 exclusively on patmcgrath.com. Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Paul Manafort, President Trump, Vladimir Putin (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty) We now live in a bizarre land of dueling realities, as if the entire country were a series on the Syfy channel. So if youre not one of those people who hears everything from right-wingers on Facebook or talk radio, or one who only follows the leftists on Twitter or MSNBC, you might have a hard time figuring out what to make of the latest turn in our political drama. According to one narrative, echoed by conspiracist voices on the right, the special prosecutor looking into Russia is on a politically motivated trawling expedition, and what hes finally reeled in amounts to a couple of scrawny carp: a short-lived campaign manager and his protege, both of whom are being charged with crimes unconnected to last years campaign, along with a know-nothing volunteer who acted on his own pointless delusions when he cultivated Russian emissaries. The real scandal, according to this version of events, is that Democrats were the ones who funded all this muckraking research into Donald Trumps Russia ties in the first place, and it was Hillary Clinton who took money from Russians in exchange for giving away a chunk of Americas precious uranium, but of course the liberal media doesnt want to talk about any of that. If you buy the other narrative, though, which permeates social media and the op-ed pages of the liberal intelligentsia, were now months even weeks away from the end of the Trump presidency. Robert Mueller has executed only the first in what will be a steady rain of indictments, each one contributing to rising waters around the president himself, who clearly brokered a deal with a foreign government to help him win. In truth, neither of these narratives really reflects what we know to this point; the rightist reality is pure illusion, and the leftist reality is well ahead of the facts. But if you ask me, the weeks events are already confirming a third, important narrative about this president and one thats just as damning as any criminal conspiracy. Story continues Lets first examine whats real and not real in the parallel narratives around Muellers investigation. To you Trump backers whove emailed me to say this is all about media duplicity and Clinton cover-ups, I have to break it to you: Youre getting duped. Thats not to say the media isnt liberal or anti-Trump; Ill grant you all that. But in a desperate effort to dismiss what Mueller has unearthed, conservative media has purposely conflated a bunch of things that, taken in context, arent terribly relevant at the moment. Yes, it does appear that Democrats funded some of the sleazy research into Trump and his ties to Russians, along with rival Republicans. Yes, some Democratic lobbyists including the brother of John Podesta, Clintons campaign chairman appear to have done some of the same lobbying for pro-Russian interests that Paul Manafort, Trumps onetime campaign manager, did. Yes, there was a pretty arcane deal under the Obama administration to sell some American uranium to a company with Russian investors, and one former investor had given money to the Clinton Foundation. But we already knew that our politics on both sides, and always where the Clintons are concerned is distorted by unseemly greed and influence-mongering, from interests both domestic and foreign. None of this detracts from the gravity of what Trumps campaign is accused of doing, which is actively colluding with another government to install an American president. As for my Trump-hating friends who say the truth is out and justice is at hand, Id caution against over-extrapolating. The charges against Manafort, to this point, are charges a diligent prosecutor probably could bring against a lot of lobbyists in Washington. They have nothing to do with collusion. And it really isnt certain at this point that George Papadopoulos, one of the less-than-impressive names on Trumps less-than-impressive roster of so-called foreign policy experts during the campaign, had any real impact when it came to fostering cooperation between his Russian contacts and the candidate. Thats the thing about hastily adding random advisers to a campaign, all because you wake up one day and realize that you really have no campaign to speak of and you want to sound more substantive than you are. Those advisers can then run around doing anything they want on your behalf. The only thing for sure right now is that Mueller has his talons into some Trump associates who would probably throw the president off a plane before theyd spend a single day in jail, so its fair to assume that whatever they know will be known to all of us before long. Is it at least plausible that Manafort and Papadopoulos and others in their orbit could have been acting as de facto Russian agents without Trump or his coterie of little Trumps really being aware of it? Or that the Trumps were vaguely aware of what was happening but didnt think it was such a big deal? I actually do think thats plausible. And its a version of events I find just as disconcerting as any other. Because the picture that emerges here is of a president who turns out to be an easy mark for every spy and con man who walks through the door. Of course the Russians were trying to work sources in both parties to their own advantage thats what the Russians do, everywhere. Im sure the American electoral system is a door theyve been pushing on for decades, every four years, in the vaguest hopes of finding a path to influence. Imagine how surprised they must have been when that door suddenly swung open, with their American recruits sitting at the top levels of the campaign and even delivering them a meeting in Trump Tower with the candidates son. It must have felt like Christmas in the Kremlin. No wonder Vladimir Putin set out to help elect Trump. Wouldnt you have, too, if you were the strongman of a rival power? He didnt need some explicit deal. It must have been clear as Russian crystal that this was a potential first family he could manipulate and outmaneuver, unlike all the more sophisticated political operations over the years that never would have given his agents the time of day. The same holds true, in a sense, for Manafort. Its pretty clear now that one of the partys shadier operatives came out of a long retirement from electoral politics because he saw a rare opening no one else wanted to help Trump then and thought he could profit from his proximity to power. Manafort materialized from nowhere, bent on using the Trumps as a bodybuilding supplement for his off-books lobbying business, so he could buy himself more custom suits. And what did Trump, the streetwise mogul whos always going on about his fancy degree from Wharton, say? You seem like a credible guy. Youre hired! Let me introduce you to Jared! I dont know right now what Trump did or didnt do, knowingly, to compromise the democracy, and unless your name is Mueller, youre probably not qualified to say, either. Well find out in time. What we do know and it may well be the most charitable interpretation of the facts we have is that Trump and his entire family were hopelessly out of their depth and dangerously credulous when it came to running for president, and now theyre running the country. Theres no narrative here in which we dont have a patsy for a president, in a dangerous and confusing world. If that doesnt scare you, it should. Read more from Yahoo News: After conquering Mount Everest, Philippine adventurer Carina Dayondon is set to sail to China aboard a wooden replica of an ancient boat in the hopes of boosting national pride in a forgotten maritime prowess. Dayondon is planning to sail from Manila to southern China early next year, recreating trade and migration voyages made before Spaniards colonised the Philippines in the 1500s. "People tell me I am crazy. They ask: 'Wow, why climb Mount Everest? Why go to China on this tiny thing,'" Dayondon told AFP in Manila Bay aboard one of the two boats that will make the expected six-day sailing journey. "I'm excited because our team will be more inspired realising how good our forefathers were. We have to let people know we should be proud of being Filipino," the 39-year-old added. Dayondon, a petite but muscular coast guard officer, created history in 2007 when she and two other countrywomen became the first Filipinas to summit the world's highest mountain. Arturo Valdez, who led their Everest support team, is also heading the sailing mission and similarly sees the journey to China as a chance to inspire Filipinos. "Like Mount Everest, I want this to be symbolic of what our people can accomplish, of what can be possible out of the so-called impossible," the 69-year-old said. The vessels are a copy of a "balangay", which date back as far as 320 AD. "Early trade with China and Southeast Asia was made possible by watercraft," Ligaya Lacsina, researcher at the National Museum's maritime division, told AFP. "Europeans during the colonial period were effusive in their praise of Southeast Asian boat-building skill. But somehow we've paid very little attention to this." Tribal boat-builders from the southern Philippines, where the boats originated, have made the replicas of the balangay using skills passed on down the generations. The boats, 18 metres (60 feet) long by three metres (10 feet) wide, are made of hardwood planks, include two sails, two rudders and a roofed area. Story continues Their journey to the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou will be about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), and the crew members are aiming to do it with as little modern technical help as possible. "We have no night-sailing capability so we can be run over by a super tanker. That's my fear. The greatest difficulty of replicating an ancient voyage is modernity because there are new port protocols," Valdez said. "This kind of boat is being treated as a maritime hazard." - 'Spirit of a nation' - Daily life aboard the boat is a struggle, according to Dayondon. "We sleep anywhere because we don't have quarters. We have no toilet. We just hold the rope and use a harness and do the proper position so we don't fall," she said. Nevertheless, a third boat with a motor will accompany the balangays otherwise they will not be allowed into Chinese ports. Their trip is planned to commemorate a journey made about 600 years ago by a sultan from the southern island of Sulu who went to China to pay tribute to Ming Dynasty rulers there but who but died of an illness on his way home. The voyage to China will be the team's second maritime quest following a 17-month journey that began in 2009 around Southeast Asia. One of the group's biggest challenges is off the water -- finding enough money to fund the adventure. The team members plan to open the vessels to the public for educational tours and even wedding shoots to raise money for their upkeep in Manila Bay. Valdez, who also shepherded the first Philippine men up Mount Everest in 2006, said he hoped the government would financially back such feats but they had not. "Filipinos love us when we climb Mount Everest, love us with our exploits but they are not willing to pay for that. And that makes us a poorer nation," he said. "Blazing a trail and going beyond what is normal, that is the spirit of a nation. That is how you build a nation, out of a dream." Washington (AFP) - US Republican leaders unveiled a sweeping tax bill Thursday that would dramatically slash corporate rates, but the measure was already under fire from within the party despite pressure from President Donald Trump. Simmering disagreements persisted over what should end up in the largest tax overhaul since Ronald Reagan's 1980s presidency, with at least one House Republican openly opposing the legislation. The effort, conducted largely in secret in recent months, is seen by many Republicans as a shot at political redemption after they and Trump failed in their high-stakes bid to repeal and replace Barack Obama's signature health care reforms. "This is it. This is a very important and special moment for our country," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in announcing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Ryan said a family of four would save an average of $1,182 a year under the plan, which he hailed as an overhaul that will "deliver real relief" for working Americans. "It will help you save for retirement," he said. "It will help you save for a rainy day." Trump applauded the bill as an "important step" towards tax relief, but he acknowledged the hurdles ahead in getting the controversial measure through Congress. Speaking in the Oval Office, the president said he expected to be able to lock in a "giant tax cut" for Americans before Christmas this year. The Republican Party is under intense pressure to score a major legislative victory in 2017, but it will likely need to do all the heavy lifting as Democrats have united against the legislation. - 'Half-baked' plan - Senate rules allow for the measure to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. But with the cuts expected to cost far more, tax-writers have scrambled to find other ways to boost revenues and cut spending to cover the costs. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi swiftly blasted the new plan as a "half-baked bill" that would "plunder the middle class" in order to further enrich the wealthy. Story continues The bill condenses the existing seven tax brackets to just four, plus an effective fifth bracket at zero percent. Critically, it keeps the top rate for wealthy tax-payers at 39.6 percent, rather than 35 percent as proposed in September under the White House tax outline. But it raises the threshold for the top bracket to $1 million for married couples, from the current $470,700 -- meaning a major tax break for earners within that window. The corporate tax rate would be permanently lowered to 20 percent from 35 percent, a move Republicans insist will provide rocket fuel for the US economy to take off. The bill roughly doubles the standard deduction that individuals and families can claim on their taxes, and expands the child tax credit, while eliminating a raft of deductions, including for alimony payments and some medical expenses. It also eliminates the estate tax, beginning in 2024, on money inherited by Americans through a parent's death, and repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax. The home interest deduction will be limited to loans up to $500,000, instead of the current $1 million. That move drew the ire of the National Association of Home Builders, which said limiting the deduction will hurt homebuyers in expensive markets. - Apprehension - With the release of the highly anticipated bill, the hard sell begins. Some rank-and-file members from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey had opposed plans to curb local tax deductions as a way to help cover the cost. A compromise was struck, so that homeowners can write off property taxes up to $10,000 while other state and local deductions are eliminated. But New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin said there was "not enough progress" on the issue. "I'm a 'no' on this bill in its current form," he said in a statement. The sell might be even tougher in the Senate where Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority, can afford only two defectors. A handful of GOP senators have already expressed reservations, including Bob Corker, a Trump critic who said he hopes the final bill "will not add to the deficit." Senate Republicans Marco Rubio and Mike Lee voiced disappointment that the child tax credit was not expanded more. This family paid homage to ancestors by taking portraits at a plantation. (Photo: Scottie. O.) This beautiful family is giving the internet a reminder of American history. Brittany Mayos youngest child was turning 1, and she and her husband wanted to celebrate this milestone with a family portrait. Mayo had a specific vision in mind for the location of the photo shoot: a plantation in her native Louisiana, to pay homage to her ancestors. Mayo, 29, tells Yahoo Lifestyle: I wanted the photos to be used in our home as a conversation starter to cover those topics that so many of us usually avoid. We have many friends of other ethnicities, and I wanted the opportunity to educate and engage in conversation that would normally be deemed uncomfortable by them. The Mayos from Baton Rouge, La. (Photo: Scottie. O.) She contacted professional photographer Scottie. O., who, at just 23, has more than a decade of experience. They came across the scenery of the photo shoot by accident because their original planned location was being used by a wedding party. Scottie O. decided to look around the area and stumbled across Tezcuco, a plantation that is now in ruins because of a fire in May 2002. Records show the plantation was built by slave labor starting in 1855. She tells Yahoo Lifestyle, I found this spot and loved how the light fell on the space. And I really enjoyed that the ruins of the plantation conveyed a strong sense of overcoming a dark history, as opposed to operating plantations that tend to idolize the culture of slave owners. so, I shot a family session at the remains of a plantation that burned down. here a reminder that we are seeds. let them try to bury us. pic.twitter.com/3AKhpaP4rp scottie. o. (@scottieo_) August 15, 2017 I hope these images inspire people to celebrate the love they have among family, says the photographer. Its an exhausting political climate from all sides. Its important to remember the love we have between our friends and family is necessary to help us recharge and regroup. Story continues Viewers have expressed deep love and admiration for what these photos represent. And as Scottie O. caption her viral tweet, I shot a family session at the remains of a plantation that burned down. Here a reminder that we are seeds. Let them try to bury us. Beautiful family and beautiful pictures Jay'Andrelle (@JayAndrelle) August 17, 2017 The second picture is what triumph and hope looks like. A happy black family sitting on the gutted shell of a plantation. Beautiful. Andy (@osoleve) August 16, 2017 Took a horrible past and created something beautiful and strong love this Joshua Werner (@JoshuaFrantic) August 16, 2017 Holy moly. Powerful shots. Amazing work! Krees! (@cganders) August 17, 2017 Mayo acknowledges that all feedback has not been positive, but she is happy that the images are creating a bigger topic of conversation. Many people have asked, How on earth we can even think about stepping foot on a plantation?' she says. I do, simply to revere my ancestors. Today, when we bury our loved ones, we go back and visit their burial sites over time. In a sense, plantation visits are the same for me. Mayo adds: I knew I wanted to ignite more conversation, but I had no idea it would cause this much of a stir. Our goal was met and then some. Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. The month of October was bookended by two national tragedies: the mass shooting in Las Vegas, which left 59 dead and over 500 injured, and a lone wolf terror attack in New York City, where a 29-year-old male barreled down a popular New York City bike path, killing eight and injuring over a dozen. The cause of the incidents differed. Authorities immediately concluded the attack in New York City was terrorism, while the motives of the Las Vegas shooter are still unknown. The death toll in Las Vegas was also significantly higher. But both of these incidents, which came so close to each other, sparked discussions about policy, the first about gun control and the second about terrorism and immigration, since the suspect was identified as an immigrant from Uzbekistan. President Trump and the White House reacted very differently to both of these incidents, however, declining to weigh in on policy after Las Vegas, and then immediately doing so following the New York City attack. The following is an overview of these separate reactions in the 24 hours after each incident unfolded. The immediate aftermath Las Vegas: Trump tweeted approximately five hours after the overnight attack: My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you! The White House also told reporters that Trump had been briefed on the attack and the Administration was monitoring the situation closely and offered support to Las Vegas officials and keeping those affected in our thoughts and prayers. My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2017 New York: The White House told reporters Kelly had briefed Trump and that thoughts and prayers are with those affected. Four hours after the attack, the White House sent out an official statement from the President offering support to law enforcement in their investigation and thanking the first responders. Story continues But during this time frame, Trump also sends out a series of tweets, in which he called the suspect a very sick and deranged person, railed against ISIS being allowed to enter the United States and offered condolences to the victims. In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017 We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017 My thoughts, condolences and prayers to the victims and families of the New York City terrorist attack. God and your country are with you! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017 At approximately 9:30 p.m., Trump tweeted for a fourth time: I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this! I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 12 to 20 hours after the attacks Las Vegas: President Trump addressed the nation from the White House the morning after the mass shooting. In a brief speech, he thanked First Responders, called for national unity and directed flags to fly at half-staff in honor of the victims. Our unity cannot be shattered by evil. Our bonds cannot be broken by violence, Trump told Americans. And though we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today and always will forever. The White House planned a moment of silence for the victims, and Trump subsequently said during his meeting with Thailands Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha that he would visit Las Vegas. The White House also said Trump had spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. New York: Trump linked the attack to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, arguing that he was the driving force behind the diversity lottery program, which the Department of Homeland Security said was the program under which the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, entered the United States in 2010. (While Schumer did support the measure creating this program nearly 30 years ago, he also sought to end it in recent years as part of a bipartisan immigration reform.) Trump tweeted two more times, apparently citing the Fox News morning show Fox and Friends, and describing how he wants to replace the lottery system with merit based immigration. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter), he wrote on Twitter. The terrorist came into our country through what is called the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 "Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 Trump then gave remarks before a Cabinet meeting, where he reiterated these sentiments after offering condolences to the victims of the attacks. Were going to as quickly as possible get rid of chain migration and go to a merit-based system, Trump says. We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. Trump also says he would consider sending the suspect to Guantanamo Bay. The first White House briefing after the attacks Las Vegas: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders choked up during the White House briefing when she recalled stories from Las Vegas. At that point, several Democratic lawmakers had begun issuing calls for more stringent gun control regulations. When asked about the White Houses position on this issue, Sanders said it was not the time to discuss policy and that any suggestions are premature. Today is a day for consoling the survivors and mourning those we lost, she tells reporters. Theres a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country. New York: As she did with Las Vegas, Sanders opened her daily briefing by offering thoughts and prayers for the victims, highlighting the resilience of New Yorkers and praising the heroic actions of Ryan Nash, the police officer who shot the suspect. But she also quickly dove into policy implications, arguing that this incident showcases the need to heighten security measures for people seeking to enter the United States. We must vet those seeking entry to the United States thoroughly, she said. The first question for Sanders was about the discrepancy between the White Houses reluctance to discuss policy after Las Vegas, when gun control was on the table, and its willingness to discuss it after New York City, when immigration is the issue at hand. Sanders denied any change. This wasnt about going the political route, she said. This is something that, frankly, the President has been talking about for a long time. This isnt a new policy, this isnt a new position, this isnt a new conversation. The President has been talking about extreme vetting and the need for that, for the purpose of protecting this country since he was a candidate. She also disputed that Trump had blamed Schumer. The President has not blamed Senator Schumer and doesnt believe he is responsible for the attack, she said. President Donald Trump took to Twitter the morning after a terrorist attack in New York City to criticize a green card lottery which he blamed for allowing the alleged driver into the country. But the facts are a lot more complicated than Trumps tweets suggest. Lets start with the basics: Eight people were killed and 11 were injured on Tuesday afternoon when a driver struck several pedestrians on a bike path in lower Manhattan, an incident which is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Law enforcement officials have identified the driver as Sayfullo Saipov, 29. In his tweets, Trump claimed that Saipov got into the country through the Diversity Visa Lottery program, which he argued was a creation of Democrats and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and claimed was importing Europes problems. The terrorist came into our country through what is called the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 "Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 However, it is not yet confirmed how Saipov came to the U.S., the green card lottery was created on a bipartisan basis by Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, Schumer supported the program but has also sought to end it in recent years and theres little evidence that the lottery has led to terrorism. Story continues Lets look at the facts, one by one. Homeland Security says the man came to the U.S. through a green card lottery In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump said that the terrorist came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program.' This claim appears to have originated with a report local ABC affiliate, which cited unnamed authorities. On Wednesday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that the individual identified in the New York City terror attack was admitted to the U.S. upon presentation of a passport with a valid diversity immigrant visa in 2010, according to the Washington Post. The green card lottery was created on a bipartisan basis In a tweet Wednesday morning, Trump referred to Democrat Lottery Systems, an apparent reference to the the green card lottery, also known as the Diversity Visa Lottery program. But the Diversity Visa Lottery program was created by Congress in 1990 in a bill that passed on bipartisan votes and was signed into law by a Republican president. Congress created the program as part of the Immigration Act of 1990, and it went into effect in 1995. Under the program, the State Department offers 50,000 visas each year to immigrants from parts of the world where relatively few people have recently immigrated from. The bill was a bipartisan effort, passing the Senate in an 89-8 vote, with 38 Republicans voting for it, including current Sens. Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch and Mitch McConnell. President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, signed the bill into law. Chuck Schumer created the program, but also sought to end it On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that the green card lottery is a Chuck Schumer beauty, apparently arguing that he was to blame for the program. He then quoted a guest on the Fox and Friends morning show saying that Schumer is helping to import Europes problems. The idea for the program came from a bill proposed in 1990 by Schumer, then a member of the House of Representatives. The proposal was then absorbed into the House immigration bill, which passed on a bipartisan basis. But in recent years, Schumer has sought to do away with the program. In 2013, he helped write a bipartisan bill that would have gotten rid of the green card lottery while making broader changes to immigration policy. That effort was ultimately blocked by House Republicans who thought it was not stricter on other measures. Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who was a member of the bipartisan Gang of Eight along with Schumer and has sparred with Trump recently, noted that in a response to Trump this morning on Twitter. Actually, the Gang of 8, including @SenSchumer, did away with the Diversity Visa Program as part of broader reforms. I know, I was there https://t.co/QQFJzPyRzC Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) November 1, 2017 Theres little evidence that the program has led to terrorism Apart from Saipov, whose method of entry into the U.S. has not yet been confirmed, theres not much evidence that the program has led to terrorism. In 2002, Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Ali Hayet, whose spouse came to the U.S. through the program, shot and killed two people at the Los Angeles airport. In 2004, the State Departments inspector general raised concerns that the green card lottery contains significant vulnerabilities to national security as hostile intelligence officers, criminals and terrorists attempt to use it to enter the United States as permanent residents. But the U.S. Government Accountability Office reviewed the green card lottery in 2007 and found no evidence that immigrants who came through it posed a threat of terrorism, though it raised concerns about fraud. We found no documented evidence of DV [Diversity Visa] immigrants from state sponsors of terrorism committing any terrorist acts, the report read, adding that some individuals, including terrorists and criminals, could use fraudulent means to enter or remain in the United States. In 2011, the Congressional Research Service looked into the program again, but found no additional evidence that it led to terrorism. Prince Michael Jackson, the oldest son of the late Michael Jackson, was rushed to the hospital Thursday morning following a motorcycle accident in LA. He was released not long after with no serious injuries. Prince was out biking after it had rained and wiped out on wet pavement, TMZ reports. An ambulance arrived to quickly transport him to a local hospital. The 20-year-old got a bit scuffed up but suffered no broken bones -- and he still had a sense of humor even while strapped into the ambulance. "Well s--t," he captioned a photo of himself being transported to the hospital. Although he spent much of his life avoiding the spotlight, Prince has made a more conscious effort to make public appearances in recent months. His sister, Paris, has also started to embrace her fame, quickly becoming one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood. Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to Iran to sign a joint statement with the country's leaders Wednesday, Moscow said a move that signals the Kremlin is prepared to remain close to the increasingly isolated state.Putin is due to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with talks expected to deepen the countries' economic and political ties. Azerbaijan's President Iham Aliyev will also be present at the meetings.The Kremlin told CNBC that the meeting was at Rouhani's invitation and was the second time that the presidents had met, their last get together being in August 2016 when a trilateral summit was held in Baku, Azerbaijan.The topics for discussion will range from trade and economic cooperation to political issues, including the "the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and discussions on regional conflicts," the Kremlin said in an emailed statement.Energy links, transport and the Resht-Astara railway route, part of the international North-South transportation corridor, would also form part of the talks.Moscow said the leaders would sign a joint statement later Wednesday, signaling that deals could be agreed.Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov confirmed this, telling reporters on Wednesday: "I am confident that today's visit by the Russian president to Tehran will be marked by new important agreements, and we will soon learn about them," Russia's TASS news agency reported.Nuclear dealThe visit comes at an interesting time for Tehran, given its considerable isolation in the Middle East and uncertain position on the world stage after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to renege on an international nuclear agreement with Iran.The 2015 nuclear pact was reached between Iran and the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, France and Germany and heralded a rapprochement between the Islamic Republic and the West; it was a landmark achievement of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Iran agreed to limit its nuclear energy program in return for the lifting of international sanctions that had crippled its economy.Trump has since accused Iran of violating the terms of the agreement and said it does not serve U.S. national interests and in October threatened to disavow the deal.Still, Russia appears ready to defend Iran, a country that it has links to beyond the nuclear deal, having allied with Tehran in terms of military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.Earlier in October, Putin said he would support Iran's nuclear deal even if the U.S. withdrew its support, saying that it was not for Russia to decide whether Iran was complying with the deal but for the International Atomic Energy Agency.Ryabkov told reporters Wednesday that the responsibility for any possible collapse of the deal would lie entirely with the U.S., Russia's TASS news agency reported."The situation is deteriorating, as the sentiment in the U.S. Congress is highly anti-Iranian," he said, according to a TASS report Wednesday."No changes, amendments or corrections to the current agreement are possible, as it is a very well-measured and delicate balance of interests and compromises," Ryabkov said. "If something needs to be discussed additionally, it should be a totally different issue for discussion I see no intention to conduct such discussions with the Iranian side." Russian President Vladimir Putin is heading to Iran to sign a joint statement with the country's leaders Wednesday, Moscow said a move that signals the Kremlin is prepared to remain close to the increasingly isolated state. Putin is due to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with talks expected to deepen the countries' economic and political ties. Azerbaijan's President Iham Aliyev will also be present at the meetings. The Kremlin told CNBC that the meeting was at Rouhani's invitation and was the second time that the presidents had met, their last get together being in August 2016 when a trilateral summit was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. The topics for discussion will range from trade and economic cooperation to political issues, including the "the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and discussions on regional conflicts," the Kremlin said in an emailed statement. Energy links, transport and the Resht-Astara railway route, part of the international North-South transportation corridor, would also form part of the talks. Moscow said the leaders would sign a joint statement later Wednesday, signaling that deals could be agreed. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov confirmed this, telling reporters on Wednesday: "I am confident that today's visit by the Russian president to Tehran will be marked by new important agreements, and we will soon learn about them," Russia's TASS news agency reported. Nuclear deal The visit comes at an interesting time for Tehran, given its considerable isolation in the Middle East and uncertain position on the world stage after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to renege on an international nuclear agreement with Iran. The 2015 nuclear pact was reached between Iran and the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, France and Germany and heralded a rapprochement between the Islamic Republic and the West; it was a landmark achievement of former U.S. President Barack Obama. Iran agreed to limit its nuclear energy program in return for the lifting of international sanctions that had crippled its economy. Trump has since accused Iran of violating the terms of the agreement and said it does not serve U.S. national interests and in October threatened to disavow the deal. Still, Russia appears ready to defend Iran, a country that it has links to beyond the nuclear deal, having allied with Tehran in terms of military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Earlier in October, Putin said he would support Iran's nuclear deal even if the U.S. withdrew its support, saying that it was not for Russia to decide whether Iran was complying with the deal but for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ryabkov told reporters Wednesday that the responsibility for any possible collapse of the deal would lie entirely with the U.S., Russia's TASS news agency reported. "The situation is deteriorating, as the sentiment in the U.S. Congress is highly anti-Iranian," he said, according to a TASS report Wednesday. "No changes, amendments or corrections to the current agreement are possible, as it is a very well-measured and delicate balance of interests and compromises," Ryabkov said. "If something needs to be discussed additionally, it should be a totally different issue for discussion I see no intention to conduct such discussions with the Iranian side." More From CNBC By Panu Wongcha-um BANGKOK (Reuters) - Authorities in Thailand's southeastern Chonburi province braced for more demonstrations on Wednesday after hundreds of furious residents gathered a day earlier in a rare protest to complain about bureaucratic incompetence. Residents complained about long lines that lasted more than 12 hours and general disorganization surrounding activities to mark the funeral of late King Bhumibol Adulyadej who was cremated in Bangkok last week in a $90 million funeral. The protest defied a junta ban on gatherings of more than five people that has been in place since a May 2014 coup. It is also rare because anything remotely related to the monarchy is a sensitive topic in Thailand - the royals are protected by a draconian lese-majeste law, which criminalize all perceived insults toward the monarchy. The Chonburi protests, however, were directed at the local authorities and not at the palace. Protesters in the sea-side province shouted "Get out!" on Tuesday as they demanded that provincial governor Pakarathon Tienchai step down over what they said was poor organization of ceremonies to mark the funeral. Many wore yellow, the king's color. There have been similar calls for the governor of Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok, to step down. Some in Nonthaburi reported waiting for up to eight hours to lay flowers for the late king. Chonburi Governor Pakarathon spoke to the crowd on Tuesday and denied his staff had mismanaged the event. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Tuesday urged Thais to forgive those involved in the funeral organization and overlook any problems that arose. "The number of people who took part in the funeral caused a few problems," he said. PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to see King Bhumibol's funeral in Bangkok last week. The late king, who ruled for more than seven decades, was seen as a father-figure. For those unable to make the trip to Bangkok, 85 miniature replicas of the cremation pyre were arranged across Thailand. Hundreds of other areas were designated as places for mourners to lay flowers. "I waited 13 hours!" shouted one Chonburi protestor on Tuesday. Similar stories have emerged around the country as netizens took to social media to vent their anger. Some said the mismanagement exposed Thailand's jarring class divide. Chonburi protesters said they were unhappy with the funeral's $90 million budget. The late king frequently spoke about self-sufficiency and was portrayed as a frugal man despite his own enormous wealth. Others still argued that government officials were given preferential treatment when laying flowers. "Officials went first before the public," Tanarit Kumwivat, form the northern province of Chiang Mai, said in a Facebook post. The Chonburi protest comes at the end of an epoch. King Bhumibol, who was also known as "the people's king", was a rare figure of unity in the politically divided nation and his death has left some Thais anxious about the future. (Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre) A prominent Republican lawmaker criticized on Wednesday the argument that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was the reason Donald Trump won. Presiding over a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina stressed that Russian subterfuge before and after last Novembers election was sweeping and aimed to generally divide our society. A lot of folks, including many in the media, have tried to reduce this entire conversation to one premise: foreign actors conducted a surgical executed covert operation to help elect a United States president, Burr said at the Wednesday hearing, where three executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google testified on their sites roles in hosting foreign disinformation. Im here to tell you this story does not simplify that easily. This is an incredibly complex story, he continued. We can look at the content of the ads and the pages they directed people towards. What we cannot do, however, is calculate the impact that foreign meddling had on this election. Its human nature to make the complex manageable and determine things that fit your conclusions. Thats bias. Burr chairs the Select Committee on Intelligence, one of several congressional organs that have spent months looking into Russias role in influencing political discourse in the months leading up to and following the election that saw Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in a startling upset. Some Trump critics have linked his unexpected win to foreign action, especially after it was learned that a former Trump campaign advisor admitted he lied to the F.B.I. about conversations during the campaign with officials linked to the Russian government. But Burr also dismissed the idea that the parallel inquiries within Congress and under the aegis of the Department of Justice were politically motivated witch hunts, as Trump himself calls them. This isnt about re-litigating the 2016 presidential election. This isnt about who won or lost this is about a foreign hostile power that tried to divide our society along issues like race, immigration, and Second Amendment rights. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry suggested Thursday that electricity created specifically by fossil fuels is needed to prevent sexual assaults in Africa. During an Axios/NBC event in Washington, Perry said that a young girl in Africa he did not specify which country told him electricity would not only free her from having to rely on firelight to read, but would also reduce the risk of sexual assault. When the lights are on, when you have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts, the former governor of Texas told the crowd. So from the standpoint of how you really affect peoples lives, fossil fuels is going to play a role in that. I happen to think its going to play a positive role. Full Perry quote on fossil fuels/sexual assault pic.twitter.com/KH6pyApIYU Timothy Cama (@Timothy_Cama) November 2, 2017 Its true that electricity to power streetlights in dark villages would likely prevent some instances of sexual violence against women and girls in Africa. Without the security and protection afforded by light, women and girls may not feel comfortable going out at night, even to latrines or washing areas, a 2012 report from the United Nations Refugee Agency reads. Darkness provides cover for crime and vandalism, and puts women and girls at risk of rape and sexual harassment. But fossil fuel isnt the only way to make this happen and its not particularly environmentally responsible. Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use have caused the planet to warm at a significantly greater rate since the early 1900s. Many developing regions have begun investing more resources in renewable energy, such as wind or solar power, rather than coal. Researchers have cited Africa in particular as having huge untapped resources for renewable energy. Still, the Trump administration, several members of which have deep ties to the oil and gas industry, has made fossil fuel development a priority, despite all indications that clean energy is better for both the environment and the economy. Story continues Its going to take fossil fuels to push power out into those villages in Africa, Perry said at the event Thursday. A representative for the Energy Department attempted to clarify Perrys comments in a statement to HuffPost. The Secretary just returned from Africa, where people made the point to him directly over and over about the impact that power has on their citizens, the statement reads. One person told him about how light can be a deterrent to sexual assault and security in remote areas. But many Twitter users were uncomfortable with Perry using one girls story of sexual assault to peddle an antiquated and irresponsible form of energy development. Obviously Perry's use of sexual assault victims to promote Trump's fossil fuel agenda is offensive. Let's just get that out of the way. Emily Atkin (@emorwee) November 2, 2017 But Perry's comments also willfully ignore the renewable energy boom and increasing potential in the developing countries he claims he wants to help. Emily Atkin (@emorwee) November 2, 2017 Its as if @SecretaryPerry thought, Sexual assault is a hot topic right now; let me drop it in as a non sequitur. https://t.co/QkDpcpLqqA Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) November 2, 2017 great news, i thought i'd lost my capacity to be shocked, but i actually haven't! this is! insane! https://t.co/jyZNY5XFl0 Addy Baird (@addysue) November 2, 2017 DOEs Rick Perry used a tale of African sexual assault victims in a Bible-drenched allegory to promote 45s fossil fuel agenda. Outrageous. Ashanti Washington (@byashantib) November 2, 2017 Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Washington (AFP) - The Russian-led effort to spread misinformation and sow discord ahead of the 2016 US election also used the social network Instagram, parent company Facebook acknowledged in Congress on Wednesday. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a hearing that Instagram posts by suspect Russian accounts were seen by some 20 million Americans last year. "We now discovered, in the last 48 hours, 120,000 Russian-based posts on Instagram," Stretch told the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. The latest data on Instagram is on top of the estimated 126 million Americans exposed to Facebook posts from Russian entities seeking to create divisions during the election campaign. "So all told, that gets you to approximately -- a little less than 150 million," Stretch said in response to questioning from Democratic Senator Mark Warner. The hearing was the second in Congress this week in which social media and internet firms including Google and Twitter have been called to explain how fake news and other disinformation was allowed to spread during the election campaign. Many of the social media posts came from the Internet Research Agency, which has been linked to Russian intelligence efforts to disrupt the US election. Twitter told lawmakers on Tuesday it found that nearly 37,000 automated "bot" accounts with Russian links generated 1.4 million tweets that were seen by a potential 288 million people in the three months before the November presidential election. Google has found accounts linked to Russia which launched ads on YouTube, the video-sharing platform of the internet giant. Kent Walker, the general counsel for Google, said the company would release a transparency report next year "showing data about who is buying election ads on our platform and how much money is being spent." - Lawmakers split - Warner, who has become one of the most vocal critics of the internet firms, repeated his claim that the social media operations were misused. Story continues "Russian operatives are attempting to infiltrate and manipulate American social media to hijack the national conversation and to make Americans angry, to set us against ourselves and, at their most basic, to undermine our democracy," the senator said. Republican Senator Richard Burr however downplayed the Russian role, arguing the media has blown it out of proportion. "A lot of folks, including many in the media have tried to reduce this entire conversation to one premise; foreign actors conducted a surgical executed covert operation to help elect a United States president," Burr told the hearing. "I'm here to tell you this story does not simplify that easily. It is shortsighted and dangerous to selectively focus on one piece of information and think that that somehow tells the whole story." Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who represents California, said the internet firms "have a huge problem" to fix. "You've created these platforms, and now they are being misused, and you have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will," Feinstein told the lawyers for the companies. Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said the messaging platform is "troubled" by the apparent misuse by foreign actors and is working to remedy the problem. He said less than one percent of election-related tweets people saw came from Russian-linked automated accounts but acknowledged that there were "instances where Russian-linked activity was more pronounced." WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A second Uzbek man is wanted for questioning by authorities in the investigation of Tuesday's truck attack in New York City that killed eight people, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a wanted poster issued on Wednesday it was seeking information on Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, a 32-year-old native of Uzbekistan. Another Uzbek man, Sayfullo Saipov, 29, was charged on Wednesday with commiting the attack in the name of the Islamic State militant group. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh) A math teacher in Milwaukee has created an empowering rap with his students that will get anyone in the mood to learn. Terrance Sims, a sixth-grade teacher at Milwaukee Excellence Charter School, posted a video on YouTube on Oct. 21 that shows his students celebrating the idea of learning, being respectful and motivating others. Two of Sims students, Aryn Fears and Savannah Patterson, are the stars of the video, which is set to the music from Tee Grizzleys First Day Out. The rap which is titled Excellence First! and includes lyrics like education is contagious, if its knowledge, let me hear it, and educated, motivated, melan-ated (a reference to melanin) started as a project from Sims. His class, however, quickly added to his original lyrics to make it an even more empowering anthem. Sims and his friend create videos in their spare time, and the duo decided to turn the song into a full production, bringing equipment to the school to create the music video. The dedication and hard work put into the anthem quickly paid off. Jada Pinkett Smith and Dule Hill are just two of the celebrities who have shared the video on social media and praised the students for the creativity. Hopefully they can make striving for excellence popular again:) I love this! https://t.co/NyFYIHhSTK Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) October 25, 2017 Former first lady Michelle Obama, who gets name-dropped in the song, also saw the video on the Black Girls Rock Instagram page and left a comment for her young queens Aryn and Savannah. Story continues Stay focused. Stay motivated. Never quit, Obama wrote. Im with you, and couldnt be prouder. In an interview with Good Morning America on Wednesday, Sims said he incorporates music throughout many of his lessons for his students. I use hip-hop in my class because thats the culture they represent, he said. He has also made videos in the past around black identity, including one about Black Lives Matter and one titled Black Is Be-You-Ti-Ful. Sims told HuffPost that the video is in honor of his late father, who also inspired his organization Sims Strong. He thanked the many celebrities who have shared his work and brought attention to the uplifting video. I think the feedback is beautiful, he said. Its very nice to see celebrities in the hip-hop community appreciate the work. Before catching the attention of thousands, Sims knew the most important purpose of the video: to teach others to love themselves and love the art of learning. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma told South Africa's parliament on Thursday he had received no payments from private companies or individuals during his time as president, as opposition lawmakers walked out in protest over the cost to the state of his legal fees. Allegations by government and opposition politicians that the wealthy Gupta family of businessmen used a friendship with Zuma to control state businesses and influence appointments are among many scandals that have dogged his presidency. The Guptas and Zuma have denied any wrongdoing and say they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. "My government is committed to fighting corruption," Zuma said in response to a question. He also said he would establish a judicial commission to investigate allegations made in a 2016 report by South Africa's corruption-fighting Public Protector. "I did not receive any payments from private individuals or companies during my tenure as president of the Republic of South Africa, other than those disclosed or reported to the necessary authorities," he said in answer to another question. The main opposition party then walked out of the session, saying Zuma was refusing to answer questions on how much the state had spent on legal fees to fight corruption allegations against him. Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane had asked how much had been spent since May 1, 2009 to defend 783 corruption charges against Zuma that were dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) before he ran for the presidency. "He is going to jail. The president is going to jail," Maimane shouted before leading the walkout. South Africa's High Court reinstated the charges last year and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Zuma. The 75-year-old president is still trying to prevent the NPA from filing the charges. The "State of Capture" report by the Public Protector, whose job is to uphold standards in public life, recommended a judicial probe into allegations of systemic corruption by Zuma, some of his ministers and heads of state-owned companies. But the president filed an application asking the High Court to set aside the report, saying he would instead set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the allegations. The court is expected to rule on that case soon. Zuma told parliament the judicial commission would investigate those corruption allegations and any others brought to its attention. "After the (High Court) judgment, I will establish it immediately. We will prove the lies and the truths," Zuma said. "The truth will be found." The report focused on allegations that Zuma's friends, the businessmen and brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, had influenced the appointment of ministers, which Zuma and the Guptas have denied. (Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Catherine Evans) Swedish startup Uniti says it's selected the manufacturing location for its all-new lightweight electric vehicle along with a planned Dec. 9 worldwide launch before investors, buyers, supporters and business partners, including Siemens and Kuka Robotics. Uniti says it has begun transitioning its operations to the new site in Landskrona, a small city in southern Sweden that is across the Oresund from Copenhagen. There, it will expand its evaluation prototyping process and production planning in parallel, while making renovations to the light industrial building. The company says the new site provides it with access to well-established shipping and logistics infrastructure, high-speed Internet and clean energy. Uniti's funky flagship is a two- or four-seater made of composite biomaterials and carbon fiber, developed with the use of virtual reality and built on what the company says is a new kind of platform. The car weighs just 992 pounds and has a range of 300 kilometers (186 miles) from a 11- or 20-kWh lithium-ion battery and 15-kilowatt hub motors. It comes equipped with electronic steering, full-screen display, autonomous driving features and a small auxiliary battery that Uniti says is easily swapped with the main battery and can provide enough power for trips of up to 30 km, or about 18 miles. It's envisioned as an urban car for millennials (apparently they're the hot market demographic in Europe, too) or as a daily commuter vehicle for families. Uniti finished its FundedByMe campaign last year with more than 1.23 million euros ($1.4 million) from 570 investors in 45 countries. It launched a new equity crowdfunding campaign on its website in September The company says it now has 915 pre-orders for the EV, whose target price is around 20,000 euros ($23,000). First deliveries are expected in early 2019. Swedish startup Uniti sets debut date for crowdfunded urban EV originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 02 Nov 2017 13:20:00 EDT. Teen Vogues staying power in a constantly-dwindling teen magazine market kept it in print for over a decade. Now, as news emerges that it will stop publishing issues of the magazine, it truly feels like the day of the teen magazine is coming to an end. WWD reported Thursday that, along with slashing about 80 jobs and reducing the frequency of most of its titles, it will also cease operations on Teen Vogues print side. A source confirmed the news to HuffPost, adding that the digital version, run largely by digital editorial director Philip Picardi, will continue. One of the first signs of collapse was a dip in print readership (the New York Times reported in 2013 that readership was half what it was when the magazine launched). Rumors that the glossy may fold started back in Nov. 2015, when parent company Conde Nast announced that Vogue would begin handling the magazine from the business side. Those rumors rocketed once again when it was announced in May 2016 that Teen Vogues founding editor-in-chief Amy Astley, who was tapped to launch the mag in 2003, departed to head up the team at Architectural Digest. Teen Vogue's August 2015 cover (Photo: Teen Vogue) It was hit yet again with rumors in November 2016, when it was announced that the magazine would scale back to a quarterly schedule. Interestingly, it was Astley who expressed the challenges of serving a teen audience through print to Adweek in 2012. This current generation is best served with mobile, digital products and newsstand special issues, she said. Theres always room for more creativity and more voices, but its easier to do that digitally. Its incredibly hard and expensive to compete [in print]. But the tide seemed to turn in 2016, under the leadership of editor-in-chief Elaine Welteroth and Picardi, but it was the digital side, under the leadership of Picardi, that garnered a ton of positive attention, specifically during the 2016 presidential election. Welteroth has undoubtedly been more visible as the face of the brand (she has appeared in a guest spot on Blackish, speaks regularly on panels with major media players and regularly chums up with celebrities on Instagram). But Picardi has been busy building up what can only be described as an empire, leading digital at both Teen Vogue and Allure and most recently launching Them, an LGBTQ brand at Conde. Story continues Philip Picardi, Marie Suter; Yara Shahid and, Elaine Welteroth. (Photo: Stefanie Keenan via Getty Images) Teen Vogue stood the test of time, even when most of its competitors could not. When YM shut down in 2004, Conde Nast, which purchased its assets, used its list of subscribers to bolster Vogues younger counterpart, NBC reported at the time. Two years later, in 2006, both Elle Girl and Teen People saw the same fate. Both ended print circulation, and both maintained a digital presence. Today, ElleGirl.com redirects to the Elle website, and TeenPeople.com redirects to People. In 2008, CosmoGirl shut down. Seventeen which is now the last man standing and had double the circulation of Teen Vogue in 2013, according to the New York Times absorbed its readership. Aside from the digital-first habits of teens today, Carolyn Dubi, who in 2008 was the director of media planning agency Initiative, told the New York Times that teens simply werent as drawn to teen content anymore. Theyre turning toward books that are not so teen-oriented, so theyll turn to a Cosmopolitan or a Glamour or a Vogue, she said. But in the wake of its end, we cant help but feel a pang of sadness and nostalgia. Teen Vogue exposed young people to real topics they cared about without rushing them toward adulthood, answering questions about things like trying to be perfect, sibling rivalries and critical mothers, Astley told the New York Times in 2013. The publication warned about the dangers of getting high in a way that your cool, more mature older sister would, as opposed to your health teacher. Best of all, it spoke to teens, not at teens. Its features on high school and college style around the country gave readers a sense of camaraderie, as opposed to the grown up versions of fashion mags that seemed so far off. For anyone who grew up on Vogues spunky, down-to-earth little sister, the loss of Teen Vogue represents more than just another nail in the print world coffin. Every month that brought a shiny, compact new issue of Teen Vogue was an opportunity to learn about brands and industry insiders to which we may not have otherwise encountered, to recount stories from teens just like us, and to pine over the current teen heartthrob of the moment. All of it whether hard-hitting topics, back-to-school style inspo, celebrity interviews or otherwise gave young women a voice, a voice weve used, and will continue to use long after the mag publishes its last issue. Related... Teen Vogue Is Not Ending Its Print Run, Contrary To Rumors Amandla's Teen Vogue Cover Story By Solange Is As Epic As It Sounds Teen Vogue Writer Twists Knife After Taking Down Tucker Carlson Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. (Photo: HuffPost) (Photo: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters) TOP STORIES (And want to get The Morning Email each weekday? Sign up here.) TRUMP CALLS FOR NYC TERROR SUSPECT TO FACE THE DEATH PENALTY The president said hes open to sending Sayfullo Saipov to Guantanamo Bay and called the U.S. justice system a joke. Prosecutors said the Uzbeck immigrant, who was inspired by ISIS, had been planning the attack for a year. Heres what we know about the victims, one of whoms husband said, This loss is unbearable and impossible to grasp. [Reuters] [Tweet | Share on Facebook] TAKE A LOOK AT THE RUSSIA FACEBOOK ADS Did you see one of these during the last election cycle? While Twitter may have ignored this Russia-run account, the Trump campaign did not. Prosecutors are weighing charges against Russian government officials in the DNC hacking case. And the AP uncovered a digital hit list for Russian hackers that expanded far beyond U.S. political figures. [HuffPost] HOUSTON, WE HAVE A WORLD SERIES Congrats to the Houston Astros, who won Game 7 of the World Series over the LA Dodgers 5-1 to take home their first World Series pennant in franchise history. And to top it all off, Astros star Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend after the big win. [HuffPost] AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI SAID U.S. IS IRANS NUMBER ONE ENEMY And that the country would never accept the bullying over the nuclear deal. [HuffPost] THE EPA REPLACED ITS TOP SCIENCE ADVISERS WITHOUT TELLING THEM This is really a destruction of the scientific integrity at EPA. [HuffPost] OTHERS COME FORWARD WITH KEVIN SPACEY SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS Several men shared stories of groping and other advances. And elsewhere in Hollywood, six woman accused producer Brett Ratner of sexual harassment or misconduct, and Dustin Hoffman was accused of sexually harassing a 17-year-old intern. [HuffPost] AT LEAST 3 KILLED IN SUBURBAN DENVER WALMART SHOOTING Police are searching for the gunman, who walked into the Walmart nonchalantly and started shooting customers and store clerks at random. [HuffPost] Story continues WHATS BREWING WHERE TO GET HELP CHOOSING OBAMACARE PLANS THIS YEAR Prices are going up for some people, coming down for others. Many areas have lost plans; some have gained new ones. And you dont have a lot of time to sort out your options. This years open enrollment period is shorter than in the past. [HuffPost] DID YOU KNOW THE CHARLIE BIT MY FINGER VIDEO WAS IN OSAMA BIN LADENS PERSONAL VIDEO COLLECTION? We didnt, and neither did Charlies father. [HuffPost] JAKE TAPPER HAS HAD ENOUGH WITH FOX NEWS The CNN host unloaded on the conservative network in a blistering takedown. [HuffPost] STOP THE PRESSES Beyonce will be voicing Nala in the live-action Lion King and people are understandably freaking out. [HuffPost] IF YOU DIDNT HAVE THE FEELS SEEING LUKE SKYWALKER RETURN TO THE MILLENNIUM FALCON You need to brush up on your Star Wars canon. You have 43 days, people. [HuffPost] BUT SERIOUSLY, JELENA IS HAPPENING Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber were spotted on another outing this time riding bikes. [HuffPost] ...READY FOR IT? The new Starbucks holiday cup is here. Yes, it is only November 2. [HuffPost] BEFORE YOU GO Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Sayfullo Saipov, the suspected driver who killed eight people in New York on Tuesday. (Photo: St. Charles County [Mo.] Dept. of Corrections/AFP/Getty Images) Just a few days before Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, was arrested in the deadly truck attack on a New York City bicycle path, another Uzbek man was sentenced by a federal judge in Brooklyn to 15 years in prison for conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic terror organization ISIS. That man, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, was one of five men from Uzbekistan arrested in Brooklyn since 2015 for conspiring to join the Islamic State. In 2014, Juraboev had threatened online to kill then-President Barack Obama, drawing the FBIs attention to himself and to two associates one Uzbek, one from neighboring Kazakhstan who were charged with plotting to join ISIS fighters in Syria or to carry out violence in the United States, including a plan to bomb Coney Island. Its not clear whether Saipov, who had most recently been living in Paterson, N.J., had ties to any of these men specifically. But officials said that Saipovs name had surfaced in a separate investigation before Tuesdays attack, in which he allegedly drove a truck for nearly a mile down a riverfront bicycle path, killing eight and injuring 11 before he was shot and captured by police. By Wednesday evening, federal agents had located a second Uzbek man, 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who they believe had been in contact with Saipov. In this courtroom drawing, defendant Akhror Saidakmetov, left, an interpreter, center, and defendant Abdurasul Juraboev appear at federal court in New York on terrorism charges, Feb. 25, 2015. Saidakmetov and Juraboev are two of the three men arrested on charges of plotting to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group and wage war against the U.S. (Photo of sketch: Jane Rosenberg/AP) The dust had barely settled on the West Side Highway before President Trump began reigniting his push for tougher restrictions on immigration and even travel to the U.S. as a way to keep out terrorists. Uzbekistan has never been mentioned by Trump as a potential threat and was not listed in any of the several versions of the administrations travel bans. But natives of the former Soviet republic, which borders on Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and other central Asian countries, are very much on the radar of security officials in other countries. Uzbek nationals have been accused in a number of violent attacks in the name of ISIS, including the New Years Eve shooting at a nightclub in Istanbul that killed 39 and a truck attack in Stockholm this April that left five people dead and several others injured. Authorities in Turkey have identified citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan among those responsible for the deadly attack on Istanbul Ataturk Airport in 2016. We cannot say for sure when or where these individuals were radicalized, but what makes Islamic State different from groups like al-Qaida or the Taliban is its ability to reach potential recruits in their native language, be that Russian or Uzbek, [and] whether they are living in Central Asia, Russia, Europe or the U.S., Deirdre Tynan, Central Asia project director for the International Crisis Group, told Yahoo News. These are accessible, slick and well-produced campaigns across a range of platforms. Recruiters and others interested in Islamic State can communicate online creating a sense of community and purpose that can be compelling and very difficult for the authorities to take action on. Muslims pray during the Eid al-Fitr holiday in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in June. (Photo: Bahtiyar Abdukerimov/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) In recent years, the Islamic States sophisticated recruitment campaign seems have had notable success in penetrating the fringes of Uzbekistans Muslim majority. But Islamic extremism is endemic in the nation, whose autocratic government has long been condemned by international human rights groups for systemic religious persecution, even codifying restrictions on religious freedom into the national law. In fact, Erica Marat, associate professor and director of the Homeland Defense Fellowship Program at National Defense University, said that radical Islams presence on the fringes of Uzbek society predates the countrys independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991. Inside Uzbekistan, its always been a way of political protest to an oppressive government, said Marat, an expert on security issues in post-Communist countries. Under officially atheist Soviet rule, the government always made it worse by trying to control religious expressions, and presenting itself as the only legitimate power. Although they constitute an overwhelming majority of the countrys population, Muslims have long been targets of religious persecution at the hands of the Uzbek government. In 2004, Human Rights Watch reported that, over the previous decade, the governments persecution of Muslims who dont align with an officially authorized branch of the faith had resulted in the arrest, torture, public degradation, and incarceration in grossly inhumane conditions of an estimated 7,000 people. Resentment against the oppressive government, run by President Islam Karimov from 1989 until his death in 2016, led to the emergence in 1998 of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, a militant Islamist group aimed at overthrowing Karimov. In more recent years, however, the IMU has expanded its purview beyond Uzbekistans landlocked borders, allying itself first with al-Qaida and the Taliban, and eventually with the Islamic State. In 2015, the IMUs leadership announced that the Uzbek group was not just an ally, but actually a part of ISIS. According to an October 2017 report by the Soufan Center, a nonprofit focused on global security research, ISIS has recruited an estimated 1,500 soldiers from Uzbekistan to fight in Syria or Iraq. In addition to the desire for freedom of religious expression, Marat points to the economic opportunities provided by ISIS as a major selling point for some financially frustrated Muslims in Uzbekistan and the surrounding region. Fighters joining from Central Asia are also known to be attracted to ISIS precisely as a way of earning a living, she told Yahoo News. Still, while Marat said that Uzbekistan is certainly among the places that have seen an increase in radicalization and support for ISIS, she emphasized that Islamic extremism is still very much confined to the countrys political fringe. Its important to know that there are far more people living in Uzbekistan and the wider region that condemn extremism, she said. The entrance to the financial institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where Sayfullo Saipov studied between 2005 and 2009, according to police records. (Photo: Timur Karpov) Marat also cautioned against conflating the growing allure of ISIS in Uzbekistan (and in Central Asia generally) with the radicalization of Saipov, who has lived in the United States since 2010. These are two parallel processes, as I see them, she said, suggesting that while Saipov may have been exposed to militancy in Uzbekistan, I think his radicalization could have really taken place here in the U.S. News stories since Saipovs arrest are consistent with that view. Unfortunately, this is a common story for migrants from different regions, coming from countries where community support and large families really help you to succeed in life, the Western experience of relying on your own work, your own effort is a bit of a shock, she said. Some people are able to flourish in this Western environment. Others, however, get frustrated and feel that theyre failures because theyre unable to live their American dream or whatever they believe the West to be. ISIS, with its larger-than-life ideology, offers this venue for young men and some women to feel like they belong, to regain some sense of community, she said. Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the New York City truck attack, is seen in this courtroom sketch appearing in a Manhattan federal courtroom in a wheelchair. (Photo of sketch: Jane Rosenberg/Reuters) What ultimately led to Saipovs radicalization is not yet clear, but according to court documents outlining the federal charges filed against him Wednesday, he told investigators that hed been planning to carry out an attack for a year and had been inspired to do so by watching ISIS videos on his cellphone, particularly one in which ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called on Muslims living in the United States to retaliate for Muslims killed in Iraq. As the case against Saipov moves forward, Marat said, its really important to understand the specific moments in the life of this attacker that led him to radicalize, what is it in his behavior, the challenges that he faced. Im not trying to defend him, she clarified, but understanding his grievances, his perception of life in the U.S., would really help us understand why individuals, especially from Muslim countries, are radicalized in the U.S. I think, in this sense, ethnicity, or place of birth, is a poor predictor, Marat continued. Its more about what are the experiences that immigrants live in the U.S. Read more from Yahoo News: Sam Clovis speaks during a news conference as then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump watches: AP President Donald Trumps pick for chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture has withdrawn his nomination after the Russia investigation raised questions about his time on the Trump campaign. Sam Clovis Mr Trumps former campaign co-chair, and his top pick from the agriculture job withdrew from the nomination shortly after his communications with former campaign staffer George Papadopoulos were revealed as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling and possible Russian connections to the Trump campaign. Recently released documents show that a number of officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of Mr Papadopouloss efforts to reach out to Russian officials. Mr Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about meeting a professor with alleged connections to the Russian government and contact with a woman calling herself "Putin's niece". Questions had already been raised about Mr Clovis' qualifications for the administration post. He is a self-described sceptic of climate change and Democrats have also flagged a number of other views. Mr Clovis has previously been criticised for rejecting the scientific consensus that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change as not proven, and had been criticised for statements made arguing against gay marriage. In a letter to Trump describing his decision, Mr Clovis made no mention of the Russia controversy, but cited the political climate inside Washington. The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day, Mr Clovis wrote in the letter, dated Wednesday. As I am focused on your success and the success of this Administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence. In terms of the indictment of Mr Papadopoulos, in addition to his plea, the FBI released a trove of the former campaign staffer's emails. The recipients' names are shielded in the emails, but Mr Cloviss lawyer has confirmed that references to the campaign supervisor indeed refer to Mr Clovis, who served as campaign co-chair. Story continues The documents show Mr Papadopoulos emailed Mr Clovis and other campaign officials about his meeting with the aforementioned professor. Mr Papadopoulos said that they had discussed arranging a meeting with Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump. Mr Clovis responded that he would work it through the campaign, and added: great work. A few months later, the documents show that Mr Clovis seemed to encourage Mr Papadopoulos to continue preparations for an off the record meeting with Russian officials, the documents reveal. Mr Cloviss lawyer told the Washington Post that the campaign co-chair always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign. She added that his responses to Mr Papadopoulos were courtesy by a polite gentleman from Iowa. But Senator Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee who would have need to confirm Mr Clovis after a hearing scheduled fro next week, said the documents raised concerns about Mr Cloviss nomination. "From early on, I have strongly opposed the nomination of Sam Clovis to be the chief scientist at USDA," she said in a statement. "...As we consider his nomination, I will be looking into these facts, along with his questionable qualifications and long history of divisive and outrageous statements." Donald Trump and Sam Clovis addressing a gathering for a non-declared presidential campaign stop in 2015 (ZUMA/REX ) On Monday, however, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave no inclination that Mr Cloviss nomination was in jeopardy. Asked if Mr Trump was still comfortable with his pick for USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, she replied: "I'm not aware of any change that would be necessary." On Thursday, Ms Sanders said in a statement: Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: We respect Mr. Clovis' decision to withdraw his nomination. There were some questions that our distinguished ranking member had for him that I think under the circumstances and given the votes his decision was a good one, said Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Ms Stabenow, said Mr Clovis' decision to back out was the right thing to do, adding he maybe, barely had the votes to win confirmation. She called the withdrawal was a "victory for science and our farmers who rely on agricultural research." Ms Stabenow said Mr Clovis' "lack of qualifications and long history of politically divisive statements were disqualifying, and the recent news surrounding his time as co-chair of the Trump campaign has raised even more questions." Mr Clovis is a former Iowa talk radio host and political science professor. He has a bachelors degree in political science, an MBA degree, and a doctorate in public administration, but no hard background in science. The news came as US judge ordered Mr Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort to remain under home arrest and wear an electronic monitoring device for now as he awaits a tentative trial date on money-laundering and other charges. Mr Manafort, who ran Trump's presidential campaign for several months last year, and his associate Rick Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday to a 12-count indictment. The charges include conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Both men appeared in court in Washington. US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said initial bail terms for the pair would remain in place for now, and set a bail hearing for Monday to consider changes. Mr Manafort and Gates are under house arrest, under unsecured bonds of $10 million and $5 million respectively, which means they do not have to post the bail unless they fail to show up for court or violate other conditions. Prosecutors have argued there is a risk the men would flee. They are also subject to electronic monitoring. Mr Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, argued that while his client is willing to comply with a daily curfew, he would like to have the GPS monitoring lifted. Judge Jackson also sharply warned lawyers for the duo about speaking about their case outside of court. This is a criminal trial and not a public relations campaign, JudgeJackson said during a hearing. I expect counsel to do their talking in the courtroom and in their pleadings, and not on the courthouse steps. Washington (AFP) - A long-time Donald Trump supporter was forced to withdraw his name from consideration for a ministerial post Thursday, after becoming ensnared in the Russia-election probe. Sam Clovis said he would no longer seek confirmation as an undersecretary in the Department of Agriculture, amid questions about his connections with Russia. Clovis' attorney this week admitted he was the "campaign supervisor" who encouraged a junior aide, George Papadopoulos, to pursue back channel contacts with Kremlin-connected officials. "The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position," Clovis said in a letter to Trump Wednesday, obtained by AFP. "The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day." Congress had also questioned the former radio host's lack of scientific experience given the position as under secretary for research, education and economics. "Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration," said Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, adding "that is not why his nomination was abruptly pulled today." "Last year Mr. Clovis, while serving as the co-chairman for the national Trump campaign, gave the green light to George Papadopoulos' attempts to collude with Russian operatives and obtain stolen emails from the Clinton campaign. " Had he continued with the confirmation process, Clovis would have had to answer questions under oath about the campaign's dealings with Russia. He had been an early and vocal Trump supporter. "I worked hard during the campaign and take some pride in the accomplishment of having you elevated to the Presidency," he said. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said "we respect Mr. Clovis's decision to withdraw his nomination. [caption id="attachment_1928" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Ryan Patrick.[/caption] President Donald Trump nominated Texans from two well-connected political families as top law enforcement officers in the state in Ryan Patrick for U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas and Joseph D. Brown for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. Patrick, a former Harris County prosecutor who served a judge of the 177th District Court in Houston from 2012 to 2016, is the son of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Brown, who has served as Grayson County District Attorney since 2000, is the son of late state District Judge David Brown of Sherman and the nephew of the late U.S. District Judge Paul Brown of Sherman. Ryan Patrick and Joe Brown will be excellent United States Attorneys, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. They have both already had distinguished careers in public serviceRyan as an assistant district attorney and state district court judge in Houston, and Joe as the elected district attorney of Grayson Countyand I know they will continue to serve the people of Texas honorably in their new roles. I commend the President for these excellent nominations and I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will move quickly to confirm them. While both Patrick and Brown are known as staunch political conservatives, theyve also won the respect of Texas criminal defense lawyers for their fair approach to the law. When he was a judge, I was impressed with how hard he worked to be fair, Houston criminal defense attorney Stan Schneider said of Patrick. And by that I mean, if an issue came up, he didnt trust the lawyer to look up the law and tell him what it was he researched it himself. If you had to pick a young Republican to be U.S. attorney, hes not a bad choice, Schneider added. You want someone like him whos willing to put in the work to do a good job. Hell be there early in the morning and late at night to get the job done. And while Patricks father has drawn attention to himself for his hard-right politics, lawyers whove appeared before Patrick have seen nothing political in the way he conducted himself as a judge. I cant say any of his rulings were any different. I never heard anyone say anything bad about him, said Houston criminal defense attorney Seth Kretzer. I think hell do a pretty good job. Brown also is also well-known and well-liked by attorneys in his home town of Sherman. Hes a reasonable man and is someone you can talk to and will listen. It doesnt mean that hell agree with you but Ive always been impressed with the way hes run his office, said Sherman criminal defense attorney John Hunter Smith. Its also meaningful that Brown is from Sherman, which is one of the busiest districts in the Eastern District, Smith said. Its nice to have someone that is from this area and not someone who is from the outside. They know the lawyers and the communities, Smith said. Brown previously served as an associate at Dallas Cowles & Thompson in the 1990s before returning to his home in Sherman to become a prosecutor. While at the civil firm, Brown made a great impression on the firm founder, Jim Cowles, who wrote a recommendation letter to the American Bar Association on Browns behalf for the U.S. Attorney position. I dont know anybody who doesnt like the guy, I dont know anybody that doesnt respect him. Hes a quiet guy but hes very good at the practice of law, Cowles said. Hes a quiet, good, solid American guy. And I cant think of anybody better for the Eastern District. Jim Bridenstine has a problem. The Oklahoma congressman and President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator really wants the job, but he may not get it, and not for the reasons you might think. On Wednesday, during Bridenstine's confirmation hearing before the Senate's Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee, the congressman was hit hard by Democrats serving on the committee who were questioning his beliefs on climate change, partisan politics, and social issues. SEE ALSO: Trump's pick to lead NASA reveals controversial global warming views While Bridenstine seemed to weather the storm of questions well for the most part, his views and record when it comes to LGBTQ rights are coming back to haunt him in a big way. Multiple senators questioning Bridenstine were critical of his positions on LGBTQ rights over the years. U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Tulsa. Image: Sue Ogrocki/AP/REX/Shutterstock "Your recent public service career does not instill great confidence about your leadership skills or ability to bring people together," Senator Bill Nelson said in his opening statement during the hearing. Bridenstine has railed against rulings affirming same-sex marriage and gave a speech on the floor of the House against allowing the Boy Scouts to admit gay members. He also came out against former President Barack Obama's order allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms corresponding with their gender identities, not just their birth certificates. Bridenstine also co-sponsored a bill that would have defined marriage as between a woman and a man. "You have advocated for discriminatory policies toward the LGBT community, which runs contrary to the civil rights of these Americans and poisons our national discourse," Nelson, who flew to space with NASA aboard the space shuttle, added. At first blush, it may seem like this line of questioning is irrelevant for the head of an agency focused on exploring space and learning more about our own planet. Story continues But the fact is that NASA is a huge agency with about 18,000 diverse employees, and if the administrator of that agency is biased against whole swaths of the population, that could present quite a problem. Earth from above. Image: NASA Science is performed by scientists, and scientists are people. When people feel unsafe or unwelcome, it makes it harder to do a job well and do it right. NASA and the sciences at large are no different. Senator Patty Murray penned a letter against Bridenstine's nomination, citing his views on LGBTQ people as a major reason he shouldn't be NASA administrator. Murray said: Murray added that Bridenstine also "has a history of supporting anti-Muslim groups," and he "voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act" in 2013. Senator Maggie Hassan questioned Bridenstine about his past remarks defending statements about assaulting women Donald Trump made in the Hollywood Access tape surfaced during the 2016 election. Hassan drew a line between those statements and sexual harassment and assault in the sciences, a topic that has come up with increasing frequency in the past few years. Bridenstine responded that he would work to make sure that everyone at NASA knows "what sexual harassment is and to not even get close to it." He also seemed to express regret for his defense of Trump's statements. That regret may not be enough for some of the senators who will eventually vote on Bridenstine's confirmation. If Bridenstine is confirmed he will be the leader of an agency tasked with inspiring young people perhaps more than any other government agency today, Senator Cory Booker said in his emotional statement during the hearing. "You're going to be in a position not just managing people, but at least in my eyes, you're up for an office to be one of the most inspiring leaders in America, where children will look to you," Booker said during the hearing. "...Tell me how you think a child will view a leader who thinks they are immoral or engaging in immoral acts." Bridenstine responded: "I believe that every person has dignity and worth. Every person has value. The personal views I have on sexual morality are my personal views. As a leader, should I be confirmed to be the NASA administrator, certainly I can tell you that NASA is unique in its ability to inspire and educate young folks." But Booker wasn't satisfied. The New Jersey senator continued to press the nominee, asking Bridenstine what he would say if asked about his views on sexual morality. Bridenstine dodged that question as well. "I want to see everybody who works at NASA be able to excel based on the merits of their work exclusively," Bridenstine said in response. Booker explained that he's not sure if Bridenstine will be confirmed, but that if he is, he needs to work to affirm "the dignity and the worth of all folks," something that Bridenstine hadn't done when it came to LGBTQ issues in the past. "It is critically important, should you have the privilege of serving in this position that is about inspiration, that is about elevating the potential and possibility of all human beings," Booker said. "It is very, very important that you are not seen as someone who stands in judgment of people because of who they are, and that, in fact, [you] can speak to the aspirations of all folks whether they are gay, straight, black, or white or what have you." President Trump on Thursday backed off the possibility of sending the New York City terror suspect to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the commander in chief reiterated his call for the 29-year-old suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, to be executed. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed, Trump tweeted Thursday. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Trump made a similar denouncement late Wednesday night, tweeting that Saipov SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Saipov is accused of driving a truck into a bike path in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring a dozen more. After fleeing the vehicle while brandishing what police said were fake weapons, he was shot and apprehended by the NYPD. Authorities said Saipov was inspired by the so-called Islamic State, and he was charged with providing support to a terrorist organization as well as violence and destruction of a motor vehicle. Trump on Wednesday publicly mulled the idea of sending Saipov to Guantanamo, a move backed by Republican foreign policy hawks like Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who wanted to treat Saipov as an enemy combatant. No terror suspect detained in the U.S. has been sent to the military prison since 9/11. The presidents tweets could also complicate the federal case against Saipov. As the New York Times reported on Thursday: Presidents are typically advised never to weigh in on pending criminal cases because such comments can be used by defense lawyers to argue that their clients cannot get a fair trial especially when the head of the executive branch that will prosecute the charges advocates the ultimate punishment before a judge has heard a single shred of evidence at trial. Read more from Yahoo News: Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed a battery of tough measures to curb immigration after a deadly terror attack in New York, but left the White House scrambling to figure out how to fulfil his promises. Looking to burnish his hardline image after what appeared to be the first major jihadist attack on the homeland during his administration, Trump pledged sweeping changes and later called for the attacker to be put to death. Surrounded by the cabinet, Trump -- who ran for the White House on a promise to end what he called "radical Islamic terrorism" -- announced he was "starting the process of terminating" America's green card lottery. "Diversity lottery. Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It's not nice," he said. "We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything." The program was created 27 years ago and awards US permanent resident visas to around 50,000 applicants from around the world each year. According to Trump, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, identified by authorities as the man who plowed a rented truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a New York City bike path Tuesday, came to the country via the program in 2010. - Trump urges execution - Trump also floated deep changes to how terror suspects are prosecuted and said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention center which holds suspected foreign jihadists in Cuba. "(We) have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now," Trump said. Trump continued his hardline rhetoric on Twitter Wednesday night, calling for the attacker's execution. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!", he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group. The White House was forced to walk back some of his comments, stressing that he was not taking executive action but looking to Congress to change decades-old laws. Story continues "We're going to continue pushing for and advocating for getting rid of this program," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the green card lottery. Sanders also ruled out executive action to introduce "quicker" and "greater" punishment for those guilty of terror offenses. "I believe he was voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this," Sanders said. And just hours after Trump and the White House suggested declaring Saipov an "enemy combatant" -- opening the possibility of detention without charge and possible dispatch to Guantanamo -- that idea was also undercut. - Closing doors to immigration - Prosecutors in New York quickly announced two initial charges against Saipov: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Saipov, 29, who was arrested after being shot by police, planned for weeks to undertake his attack in the name of Islamic State group, following online instructions from the jihadist organization, officials said. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was "radicalized domestically" only after he came to the country, "when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics." Trump ran for election last year promising a crackdown on immigration, including building a wall on the Mexican border and banning Muslim immigrants. This year he has already slashed the country's annual refugee intake by more than 50 percent to 45,000, tightened visa issuance around the world and ordered a ban on travelers from 11 unnamed "high-risk" countries. Refugee experts say all but one have Muslim-majority populations; they do not include Uzbekistan. The officially titled Diversity Lottery Program aims to diversify the origins of people granted permanent residence -- so-called green cards -- in the United States. In 2015, lottery applications were received from more than 14 million people, of whom 49,377 won green cards, including 2,524 Uzbeks. - Few US attacks by immigrants - Trump said he wants to move US immigration to a "merit-based system" and not allow immigrants to bring their extended families. Republicans in Congress have tried for several years to eliminate the visa lottery program, but were stifled by Democratic resistance. Trump blamed the program on Chuck Schumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, even though it was resoundingly supported by both parties and signed into law in 1990 by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush. Tuesday's incident was the second time the lottery has been tied to a jihadist attack inside the United States. In July 2002, an Egyptian man whose wife entered the country on the green card program shot two people dead at the ticket counter for El Al, the Israeli airline. Otherwise, Trump's immigration crackdown would not have prevented any of the deadly jihadist attacks inside the United States over the past 16 years. Most have been perpetrated by US-born and radicalized perpetrators. And most have family ties to countries not covered by Trump's travel bans -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and others. President reacted to New York attack by targeting Chuck Schumer for sponsoring diversity immigrant visa program under which Sayfullo Saipov entered US Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington on Tuesday. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP One prompted a sombre tone, quotation from scripture and prayer for unity. The other brought a barrage of tweets, peppered with capital letters and exclamation marks and bent on divisiveness and blame. Donald Trump had sharply contrasting responses to the mass shooting in Las Vegas and the terrorist attack in New York that bookended the month of October. The morning after Stephen Paddock fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, killing 58 people at a country music concert, Trump was at his most presidential, stating from the diplomatic room at the White House: In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one and it always has. But when it came to solutions, the president offered little more than looking at gun control laws as time goes by. Eight people were killed and 11 wounded when motorist Sayfullo Saipov, 29, originally from Uzbekistan, allegedly ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson river in Manhattan on Tuesday, before being shot by a police officer. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York since September 11 2001. Trump rattled off several tweets in the immediate aftermath and, on Wednesday, went highly personal and political, raising the prospect of sending the suspect to Guantanamo Bay and taking aim at the Democratic Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and an immigration lottery programme he helped design. The terrorist came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, a Chuck Schumer beauty, the US president posted at 7.24am ET. I want merit based. Trump was responding to the fact, confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, that Saipov had entered the US from Uzbekistan under the diversity immigrant visa programme. Story continues Also known as the green card lottery, the state department scheme grants 50,000 visas each year to people from parts of the world with relatively low immigration rates over the previous five years. Schumer was one of its architects in 1990, although he later backed moves to scrap it. Senator Chuck Schumer at the US Capitol in Washington on Tuesday. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters A few hours later, making his first televised remarks on the atrocity, Trumps tone was at first somewhat reminiscent of his post-Las Vegas address. All of America is praying and grieving for the families who lost their precious loved ones, he said before a cabinet meeting. Horrible act. Our hearts break for them and we pledge to renew our resolve in their memory. But soon he reverted to the blame game, saying that he would ask Congress to immediately begin work on terminating the immigration programme. He advocated for a merit-based programme, but claimed he was being stopped from doing this by Democrats.We also have to come up with punishment thats far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now, he said. We need quick justice and we need strong justice. Much quicker and much stronger than we have right now, cos what we have now is a joke and its a laughingstock and no wonder so much of this stuff takes place, and I think I can speak for plenty of other countries too that are in the same situation. The Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have advocated that Saipov be held as an enemy combatant and taken to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Asked about this possibility, Trump replied: I would certainly consider that, yes. Send him to Gitmo. I would certainly consider that, yes. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said at a press briefing later on Wednesday: The point he was making is that he supports or would support that, but he wasnt necessarily advocating for it, she said. Sanders added: I believe we would consider this person to be an enemy combatant. Of the 775 detainees who have passed through Guantanamo, none of them have been arrested within the US for acts committed on US mainland soil. Trump was condemned for seeking to score political points off the tragedy. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York state, told reporters: The presidents tweets, I think, were not helpful. Cuomo added: You play into the hands of the terrorist to the extent you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society and the tone now should be the exact opposite by all officials on all levels. His tone was echoed by New Yorks mayor, Bill de Blasio, who told the same press conference: This should be a unity moment where the focus is on solving the crime and figuring out how we can move forward together, not pointing fingers. At Wednesdays press briefing, Sanders was challenged about why Trump leaped on policy solutions after New York when he remained silent after Las Vegas. Look, this wasnt about going the political route, she told reporters. Pressed further on the contradiction, Sanders replied: I said it wasnt appropriate to politicise the conversation, which I dont believe we are. Were talking about protecting American lives and there are things that this president has consistently and repeatedly talked about, advocated for, pushed for, introduced executive orders for, supported legislated for, time and time again long before he was president of the United States. In 2013, Schumer was among the so-called Gang of Eight senators whose plan to overhaul immigration laws included the elimination of the diversity lottery. Another of the eight, the Republican senator Jeff Flake, tweeted on Wednesday: Actually, the Gang of 8, including @SenSchumer, did away with the Diversity Visa Program as part of broader reforms. I know, I was there. The bill passed in the Senate but not in the House. Schumer, an old verbal sparring partner of Trump who has lately attempted to make policy deals with the president, issued a statement in response to the criticism. President Trump, instead of politicising and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution anti-terrorism funding which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget, he said. Trumps proposed budget recommended funding of $448m for the Urban Area Security Initiative, which helps cities including New York to prevent, mitigate, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism, a cut of more than 25% from its current $605m. The president is also seeking to eliminate anti-terrorism funding for the non-profit security grant programme, which typically provides anti-terrorism funds to schools, museums, stadiums, religious and community centres. A budget recently passed by the House and Senate is silent on the issue. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) WASHINGTON Imagine if rather than reminding you to sign up for health insurance at the start of open enrollment, your employer ignored the matter entirely and instead spent company time and money bashing the insurance program. For the millions of Americans who dont get health coverage through work and could use some help from the Affordable Care Act, no imagination is necessary. Even as large and small companies across the country are urging their employees to sign up for next years insurance, President Donald Trump and his administrations top health care officials have said exactly zero about the Obamacare enrollment period. People dont have basic information. They dont know when open enrollment starts. They dont know when it ends. They dont know there are subsidies to help them pay for it, said Lori Lodes, who once helped run the office that administered the federal health insurance exchange under President Barack Obama. They are making it so fewer people enroll. The White House has declined to answer repeated questions about whether Trump, notwithstanding his opposition to his predecessors signature legislative achievement, would still encourage Americans who otherwise lack health insurance to sign up for it on the exchanges. One White House aide, on the condition he not be named, said Trump believes Americans will figure it out for themselves. The president trusts Americans to know their own health care and coverage needs best certainly more than the federal government does, the aide said. They dont need the government telling them whats best for them when it comes to health insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Obamacare, did not respond to HuffPost queries about whether Acting Secretary Eric Hargan would be promoting the start of the six-week enrollment period. A press officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who declined to give his name, said the office was doing its job. Were not hiding that open enrollment has started, he said. We would put out a fact sheet. I tweeted out that open enrollment started this morning. Story continues The agencys press office had, in fact, sent out two tweets on the topic Wednesday morning: Exchange Open Enrollment period begins today Nov. 1 to Dec 15 coverage starts on Jan. 1. healthcare.gov and Starting today consumers can log in to HealthCare.gov or call 1-800-318-2596 to enroll in 2018 coverage healthcare.gov/. But that Twitter account has only 5,456 followers. HHSs passive neglect is overshadowed by Trumps active sabotage, which has led people who need insurance to wonder if its even available, Lodes said. On May 28, for example, the president tweeted, ObamaCare is dead - the Republicans will do much better! At an Oct. 16 Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said the Affordable Care Act shouldnt even be discussed. Obamacare is finished. Its dead. Its gone, he said. Its no longer you shouldnt even mention. Its gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore. Americans who believe that what the president says is true could reasonably conclude that the law had been repealed months ago, Lodes said. People are very, very confused. More so than ever before, she said. Trumps assault on the health care law has gone far beyond the verbal. He has shortened the enrollment period and slashed the budget for enrollment period advertising. He and congressional Republicans have also refused to abide by the laws requirement that insurance companies be reimbursed for subsidizing out-of-pocket expenses for low-income customers. That last decision alone has driven up premiums by as much as 38 percent, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Insurers are also citing uncertainty about the programs future as a reason to raise premiums. In other words, Lodes said, Trump is right when he claims costs are going up: Yes, because you made it this way. Lodes now helps run Get America Covered, which is beating the drums to encourage eligible Americans to sign up for health insurance in the coming weeks. The groups website features a video in which Obama promotes enrollment its similar to the videos and ads he appeared in as president. But that effort is little match against an administration that appears ready to see Americans go without insurance rather than push a program it does not like, Lodes said. She predicted that enrollment in the coming weeks will not match the 12.2 million who signed up on the exchanges by the end of last years open enrollment. They dont want people to sign up. If they wanted people to sign up, theyd help people, she said. There should be zero reason for fewer people to be signing up this year. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. President Donald Trump said he wanted to send Sayfullo Saipov, the man arrested for a deadly terror attack in New York City, to Guantanamo. For years, Trump has wanted to send terrorists to the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Hes tweeted about it, spoken about it in interviews and promoted the idea on the campaign trail. So after a green card holder inspired by the self-described Islamic State drove a truck through a Manhattan bike lane, killing eight people, it wasnt a huge surprise that Trump told reporters hed consider sending the attacker to Gitmo; after all, it serves his anti-Muslim agenda. But within 24 hours, Trump retreated. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo, Trump tweeted, but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system. It would indeed take longer. No one has been sent to Guantanamo in nine years; doing so would set off a legal battle. And setting aside the question of whether sending a legal permanent resident arrested in the United States to Guantanamo would even be legal, it would undoubtedly take much, much longer to secure justice for the victims families. Nonetheless, the presidents tweet is a noteworthy reversal, and came a day after he called civilian terror trials a joke and a laughingstock. Trump has opposed bringing the men currently imprisoned in Guantanamo to New York City to face trial in federal court, writing in 2012 that bringing the Sept. 11 trial to the city would have been worse than the slow military proceedings in Guantanamo. (Five years later, the Sept. 11 trial still hasnt begun, and a separate military trial went off the rails this week, with a judge finding a Marine general in charge of the defense guilty of contempt.) But on Thursday, Trump wrote that maybe there was something appropriate about putting Saipov on trial in New York City. ...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 The last time a new detainee arrived in Guantanamo was nearly a decade ago, in 2008. The Obama administration, which wanted to shut down the detention facility, significantly lowered the inmate population there. Story continues The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented detainees at Guantanamo, issued a statement on Wednesday calling the facility a prison exclusively for Muslims and calling Trumps suggestion to send Saipov there idiotic. Fifteen years has proven no one will ever be successfully tried or brought to justice at Guantanamo, and the president and his supporters within his own party are deluded if they believe otherwise, the statement said. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights told HuffPost on Thursday that there was no rational reason to send Saipov to Guantanamo, but that Trump was trying to send a message to his supporters that Muslims who commit terrorist attacks are somehow less human and dont deserve a fair trial. Trumps initial desire to send Saipov to Guantanamo shows how far the mistreatment of Muslims can go, said Dr. Maha Hilal of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. The fact that he is a Muslim is absolutely a deciding factor of whether or not he is sent to Guantanamo. Guantanamo, in the context of the war on terror, was built to house an entirely Muslim population,Hilal said. The Justice Department charged Saipov in New York federal court on Wednesday evening. The case against him, laid out in an FBI agents affidavit, is a legal slam dunk: Theres a mountain of evidence. He was caught red-handed. He waived his rights and confessed. He allegedly even asked to hang an ISIS flag in his hospital room. Theres effectively zero doubt Saipov will be convicted. The Trump administration will likely seek the death penalty, and theyll very likely secure it. Sending Saipov to Guantanamo, on the other hand, would have kicked off a massive legal battle. Convicting him though the military commissions process could have taken years. Then thered be the appeals process. Still, in a speech in New York on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Trump administration would use all lawful tools at our disposal, including prosecution in [federal] courts and at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Guard Tower Located between Guantanamo's Camp Five and Camp Six. Guantanamo detainee received physical therapy A skinny Guantanamo detainee receives physical therapy on Tuesday, April 16, 2013. Empty cell block A cell block at Guantanamo's Camp VI that had been occupied until a raid on April 13, 2013. One detainee had written "stop tortur us. stop desclate our relgion" on the wall of his cell. The officer in charge of the facility said that detainees had hoarded all types of materials in the communal area. Guantanamo Camp VI video feeds A Guantanamo guard looks over a video screen at Camp VI at Guantanamo in April. Detainees had blocked 147 of the prison's 160 cameras, according to a military official. Weapons Water bottles filled with gravel were amongst the weapons officials said they confiscated from detainees after the raid in April. Weapons Other weapons included broom sticks and shanks. Occupied block A guard checks on detainees in a sparsely populated block of Guantanamo's Camp Six in April. Guantanamo Medical Facility Military officials show journalists the room where some detainees were being force fed during the ongoing hunger strike at the facility. Force Feeding chair A restraining chair used to feed detainees at Guantanamo. Cans of Ensure at Guantanamo A guard displays cans of Ensure used to force feed detainees at Guantanamo. Detainee handprint A handprint is shown on a Camp VI cell block that was occupied by a detainee until a raid in mid-April. Detainee shoe A shoe from a detainee left on the now-empty cell block. Shower camera Cameras are everywhere in Guantanamo's Camp VI, even inside the shower. Cell block The second level of an empty cell block in Camp VI as seen from below. Camp VI Sign A sign outside Guantanamo's Camp VI. Guantanamo Flag At Half Staff A flag flying over Guantanamo's Camp Six flys at half staff in honor of victims of Boston Marathon massacre. Camp Five Guards Guards at Camp Five stand watch during morning prayers. Camp Five Cell Block An empty cell block in Guantanamo's Camp Five. "Splash" Shields Face shields intended to prevent guards from being hit in the face by "cocktails" of urine, feces and semen. Water handoff A guard hands water to a detainee on the Bravo block of Guantanamo's Camp Five. Dead Banana Rat A dead banana rat on the road to Guantanamo's prison facilities. Sunrise By Guantanamo's Camp Five Obama, Hagel On Joint Detention Group Board President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel pictured at the headquarters of Joint Task Force Guantanamo's Joint Detention Group headquarters. Ryan Reilly is HuffPosts senior justice reporter, covering criminal justice, federal law enforcement and legal affairs. Have a tip? Reach him at ryan.reilly@huffingtonpost.com or on Signal at 202-527-9261. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Scott Garrett lost his re-election bid for his congressional seat in New Jersey. Now he's President Donald Trump's nominee to run the Export-Import Bank. (Photo: Scott J. Ferrell/Getty Images) WASHINGTON As a Republican congressman from New Jersey, Scott Garrett took to the floor of the House in 2015 and lambasted the Export-Import Bank as an institution that embodies the corruption of the free enterprise system. He consistently opposed the reauthorization of the bank and wanted to shutter it. Now, he wants to run it. Garrett lost his re-election bid in 2016 in large part because he lost the backing of financial institutions after he made anti-gay remarks. In April, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate him to lead the institution that helps finance U.S. exports. Trumps pick has split many traditional GOP allies, with groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposing Garretts confirmation. Now that he needs a new job and wants to run the bank, Garrett is trying to reassure everyone that he supports it. Let me be crystal clear on this point: If I am confirmed, the Export-Import Bank will continue to fully operate, point-blank, Garrett told the Senate banking committee Wednesday morning. But what Garrett was less clear about was why he changed his mind. Democratic senators repeatedly pressed Garrett on why they should believe hes now sincere. It seems to me whats changed is youve been offered this good-paying job to run the Export-Import Bank, not the change of the Export-Import Bank, but perhaps the change of your situation, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said. I believe in this bank, and Im not sure you do, added Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who was frustrated that Garrett refused to say he was wrong in his previous denunciations of the agency. Will you admit now that your crusade to kill the bank was a mistake? asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Garrett, again, refused to do so. While Democratic senators were the ones who mainly pressed Garrett on this point, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) did so as well. The reason for the change is perhaps more important than the change, he said. Garrett never really gave a policy explanation for why he shifted on the bank. His reversal came down to two main reasons: Trump is president, and he now wants to run the bank. Story continues Senator, if the question is, what has changed since 2015, what we have seen changed is a new administration, Garrett told Brown. What we have seen change is a new agenda by this administration to see to it that the economy actually grows, and that businesses are given a fair chance to grow their businesses both nationally and internationally as well. That is a significant change since 2015. Later, Garrett also told Scott, My role has changed. I am not in a legislative function. I commit ... to carry out the letter of the law as established by Congress, he added. In 2015, Garrett told fellow Republicans in a closed-door meeting that he wouldnt pay his dues to the National Republican Congressional Committee because the organization supported some gay candidates. Garrett later clarified that he didnt oppose gay people running for office, but he believed the GOP should not support candidates who back same-sex marriage. His comments cost him support from Wall Street donors, who had been a major source of funding for his previous campaigns. Want more updates from Amanda Terkel? Sign up for her newsletter, Piping Hot Truth, here. Also on HuffPost Taking Security Seriously Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) talks with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) before the start of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing concerning the roles and responsibilities for defending the nation against cyberattacks, on Oct. 19, 2017. With Liberty And Justice... Members of Code Pink for Peace protest before the start of a hearing where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Oct. 18, 2017. Committee members questioned Sessions about conversations he had with President Donald Trump about the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, the ongoing investigation about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and other subjects. Whispers Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, speaks with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) before a confirmation hearing for Christopher Sharpley, nominee for inspector general of the CIA, on Oct. 17, 2017. Not Throwing Away His Shot Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical "Hamilton," makes his way to a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies in the Rayburn Office Building during a round of meetings to urge federal funding for the arts and humanities on Sept. 13, 2017. Medicare For All Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), center, speaks on health care as Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), left, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), right, listen during an event to introduce the Medicare for All Act on Sept. 13, 2017. Bernie Bros Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pack his office on Sept. 8, 2017. Members of the "Draft Bernie for a People's Party" campaign delivered a petition with more than 50,000 signatures to urge the senator to start and lead a new political party. McCain Appearance Sen. John McCain, second from left, leaves the Capitol after his first appearance since being diagnosed with cancer. He arrived to cast a vote to help Republican senators narrowly pass the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017. A Narrow Win Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, center, speaks alongside Sens. John Barrasso, left, John Cornyn, right, and John Thune, rear, after the Senate narrowly passed the motion to proceed for the replacement of the Affordable Care Act on July 25, 2017. Kushner Questioning Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, arrives at the Capitol on July 25, 2017. Kushner was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting about contacts he had with Russia. Hot Dogs On The Hill Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) prepares a hot dog during the American Meat Institute's annual Hot Dog Lunch in the Rayburn Office Building courtyard on July 19, 2017. And Their Veggie Counterparts Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) visits the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals veggie dog giveaway on July 19, 2017, countering a National Hot Dog Day event being held elsewhere on Capitol Hill. Poised For Questions Callista Gingrich, wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, waits for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on her nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican on July 18, 2017. Speaking Up Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 17, 2017. In The Fray Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks to members of the media after announcing the revised version of the Senate Republican health care bill on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2017. Anticipation Christopher Wray is seated with his daughter Caroline, left, as he prepares to testify at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be the next FBI director on July 12, 2017. Up In Arms Health care activists protest to stop the Republican health care bill at Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 10, 2017. Across A Table Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Capitol Hill on June 29, 2017. Somber Day House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks about the recent attack on the Republican congressional baseball team during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill on June 15, 2017. Family Matters Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, and his sons, Jack, 10, and Brad, arrive in the basement of the Capitol after a shooting at the Republican baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 14, 2017. A Bipartisan Pause Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), right, coach of the Republican congressional baseball team, tells the story of the shooting that occurred during a baseball practice while he stands alongside Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), left, a coach of the Democratic congressional baseball team on June 14, 2017. Hats On Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) reacts about the shooting he was present for at a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, as he speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 14, 2017. Public Testimony U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sworn in to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on June 13, 2017. Comey's Big Day Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017. Conveying His Point U.S. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testifies at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his interactions with the Trump White House and on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on June 7, 2017. Selfie Time Vice President Mike Pence takes a selfie with a tourist wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda on June 6, 2017. The vice president walked through the rotunda after attending the Senate Republican policy luncheon. Budget Queries Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney testifies before the House Budget Committee about President Donald Trump's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017. Flagged Down By Reporters Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaves a closed committee meeting on Capitol Hill on May 24, 2017. The committee is investigating possible Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election. Shock And Awe House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hold a news conference on the release of the president's fiscal 2018 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2017. Seeing Double Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) arrives in the Capitol for the Senate Democrats' policy lunch on May 16, 2017. Honoring Officers President Donald Trump speaks at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service on the West Lawn of the Capitol on May 15, 2017. Whispers Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), right, and ranking member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) talk during a hearing with the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 11, 2017. Skeptical Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates arrives to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election on Capitol Hill on May 8, 2017. Differing Opinions Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) gives a thumbs-up to protesters on the East Front of the Capitol after the House passed the Republicans' bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on May 4, 2017. The protesters support the ACA. Real Talk United States Naval Academy Midshipman 2nd Class Shiela Craine (left), a sexual assault survivor, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Military Personnel with (2nd from left to right) Ariana Bullard, Stephanie Gross and Annie Kendzior in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 2, 2017. Kendzior, a former midshipman, and Gross, a former cadet, were both raped twice during their time at the military academies. The academy superintendents were called to testify following the release of a survey last month by the Pentagon that said 12.2 percent of academy women and 1.7 percent of academy men reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact during the 2015-16 academic year. In Support Of Immigrants Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.), center, is joined by dozens of Democratic members of the House of Representatives to mark "Immigrant Rights Day" in the Capitol Visitor Center on May 1, 2017 in Washington, D.C. The Democratic legislators called on Republicans and President Donald Trump to join their push for comprehensive immigration reform. Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would end the popular US green card lottery after a radicalized Uzbek man who entered the country under the program killed eight people in New York. "I am starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program," Trump told reporters. "We have to do what's right to protect our citizens," he told reporters. "We will get rid of this lottery program as soon as possible." The 1990 program awards US permanent resident visas to around 50,000 applicants from around the world each year, opening the door as well for members of their broader families to follow them, so-called chain migration. According to Trump, Sayfullo Saipov, who plowed a rented truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a New York City bike path Tuesday, came to the country via the program. Saipov was arrested after being shot by police and officials said he planned to undertake his attack in the name of Islamic State for weeks, following online instructions from the jihadist group. Trump's threat would further close the doors to hopeful US immigrants, after slashing the country's annual refugee intake by more than 50 percent, tightening visa issuance around the world and attempting to ban travelers from 11 countries, most of them with Muslim-majority populations. Uzbekistan is not among the 11. The program Trump threatened Wednesday aims to diversify the origins of people granted permanent residence -- so-called green cards -- in the United States. In 2015 the green card lottery, applications were received for more than 14 million people, and 49,377 won green cards. That included 2,524 Uzbeks. Trump said he wants to move US immigration to a "merit-based system" and not allow immigrants to bring their extended families. "We want to get rid of chain migration," he said. Washington (AFP) - A man suspected of walking into a Walmart store in Colorado and "nonchalantly" shooting to death two men and a woman has been arrested, police said Thursday. The seemingly random shooting Wednesday in Thornton, Colorado comes a month after a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history. Police identified the suspect in the latest shooting as 47-year-old Scott Ostrem, and said on Twitter he had been taken into custody. Police spokesman Victor Avila said the suspect calmly walked into the Walmart store at 6:10 pm. "He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store," the Denver Post quoted Avila as saying. "From what we have right now it appears to be random. Its a crazy world we live in." Police said the fatalities were two men and a woman. The female victim died later at the hospital. More than 33,000 gun-related deaths occur annually in the United States, according to a study released this month. Moves to curb gun ownership have failed repeatedly to make it through the US Congress over the years, despite a lengthening string of violent episodes. Recent collisions involving two U.S. warships and commercial vessels in the Western Pacific were both avoidable, according to a report by the Navy concluding that multiple failures led to the deaths of 17 sailors. Both of these accidents were preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents, Adm. John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations said on the publication of a Navy report into the incidents Wednesday. In reports the New York Times called harrowing, the Navy revealed a litany of errors aboard the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain, detailing missed warnings, ignored protocols, and stories of American sailors desperate attempts to save their drowning shipmates. We must never allow an accident like this to take the lives of such magnificent young Sailors and inflict such painful grief on their families and the nation, Richardson said. Fallout from the incidents has been swift and far-reaching; the former head of the Seventh Fleet was removed in August due to a loss of confidence, and two of the McCains top officers were also relieved from duty in October. Several other Navy officers opted for early retirement in the wake of the tragedies. Heres what the Navy determined went wrong. USS Fitzgerald, June 17, 2017 On the morning of June 17, the USS Fitzgerald a first class Navy destroyer collided with the ACX Crystal, a 30,000-ton Philippine container ship that was bound for Tokyo from Nagoya. Seven of Fitzgeralds crew were killed. Several other sailors, including the ships captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, were injured. According to the Navys report, the Fitzgeralds collision came down to an accumulation of small errors over time. These errors included a lack of planning for safety, the ships leadership not adhering to well-established navigational protocols, and a failure to carry out basic watch practices. Affording much of the blame to the Fitzgeralds commanding officer, the report notes its crew was unprepared for the situation in which they found themselves through a lack of preparation, ineffective command and control, and deficiencies in training and preparations for navigation. Story continues U.S.S. John S. McCain, Aug. 21, 2017 The Navy found that a loss of situational awareness while responding to mistakes in one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes led to a collision involving another guided-missile Navy destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, off the coast of Singapore. A breach in the McCains hull caused parts of the ship to flood, killing 10 crew members and injuring five. The collision with a Liberian-flagged merchant ship happened as sailors struggled to respond to errors they made in operating the ships steering and propulsion systems, the report found. The tragedy was a result of complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance, according to the Navys summary. The McCains commanding officer was faulted for disregarding recommendations on safety preparation from other senior Navy officials. Nobody on the ships Bridge watch team had been properly trained to correctly operate its control console during a steering mishap. What Are the Implications for U.S. Defense? The Navys report comes just as President Donald Trump prepares to make his maiden voyage to Asia, and at a time of increased military tensions among regional powers. The U.S. has a longstanding and robust Naval presence throughout the Asia Pacific, with key bases in Japan and Guam. One primary responsibility of these forces is the protection of American allies, particularly as North Korea steadily enhances its nuclear capabilities. In early September, the Navy pushed through new rules governing how much sleep sailors are afforded and limiting their workweeks, which had been found to sometimes exceed 100 hours. The new directives also require ships in crowded sea lanes to broadcast their positions, and make it more difficult for ships whose crews lack basic seamanship skills to leave port. Read more: The Navy Is at a Breaking Point. Heres Who Can Save It But military officials have questioned why it took two deadly accidents for the Navy to put such rules into place, according to the New York Times. The Navys own experts and congressional watchdogs had reportedly issued warnings on potential problems dating back to 2010. Professor a Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based lecturer on international relations at Troy University, tells TIME the collisions should not be a signal for adversaries to underestimate the capabilities of the U.S., but rather to remind us of the difficulty in conducting naval operations over long distances in congested maritime spaces. The June and August collisions appear to have resulted from human error, Pinkston added, but the cause could have been something worse and more difficult to correct, such as a cyber attack or an electronic warfare attack by an adversary. The U.S. military continues to conduct multinational exercises in the region, he said, the vast majority carried out without incident. By Laura Zuckerman (Reuters) - In a deal hailed by activists as a first, a federal judge on Wednesday approved an agreement between conservationists and the U.S. government halting controversial methods such as aerial gunning to kill "nuisance animals" in Northern California. Under terms of the accord Wildlife Services, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, will suspend for at least six years its practice of gunning down coyotes from helicopters and airplanes and using traps to kill creatures in wilderness areas in 16 counties in California. The agreement stems from a June lawsuit filed by WildEarth Guardians and other conservation groups alleging the Wildlife Services had violated federal law by failing to analyze the environmental impacts of killing hundreds of wild animals in Shasta, Sierra and 14 other northern California counties. "We are working to put Wildlife Services out of the cruelty business by dragging its archaic practices out of the shadows and pushing the program to embrace modern ethics and science in wildlife management," said Michelle Lute, wildlife coexistence campaigner for WildEarth Guardians. Wildlife Services is to complete an extensive study of its activities in those areas by 2023, including its use of M-44s, spring-loaded devices that emit sodium cyanide and which have been called "cyanide bombs." Wildlife Services is at the center of several lawsuits across the U.S. West, including those linked to those devices after one placed in Idaho earlier this year to kill coyotes instead temporarily blinded a boy and killed his pet dog. Lute said the settlement in California was the first of its kind and would be used as a template in cases in other western U.S. states. Tanya Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the USDA program, said the deal was struck in the spirit of compromise and settlement, and did not constitute an admission of any kind to claims or facts relating to issues in the legal dispute. "While the settlement conditions may affect the use of certain tools in some areas of the state, (the agency) believes the changes do not restrict our ability to protect agriculture, property, natural resources or public health and safety in California," she said in an email. (Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Sandra Maler) By Sharon Bernstein (Reuters) - Conservative activist Laura Loomer was banned from the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft on Wednesday after unleashing an anti-Muslim tweetstorm in the wake of the New York City attack on Tuesday that killed eight people, the companies said. Loomer released numerous posts on Twitter about Muslims on Tuesday and Wednesday, accusing passersby in hijabs of enjoying the attack in New York and complaining that taxi and ride-sharing companies hired extremists. "Someone needs to create a non-Islamic form of @uber or @lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver," tweeted Loomer, who briefly worked for the right-wing news site Rebel Media. "I'm late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn't find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min!" she wrote in another Twitter post, referring to a Wednesday news conference about the attack in New York. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant suspected of plowing a truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path, had been a driver for Uber, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Saipov was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting on behalf of the militant group Islamic State. Loomer's comments about Muslims and Muslim drivers caused an uproar on the social media service. By Wednesday evening, Uber, which Loomer had previously criticized as anti-Semitic, said she would not be able to use the service. "Ms. Loomer was banned for violating our Community Guidelines," Uber spokesman Matt Kallman said in an email. Her Lyft account was also deactivated, said Scott Coriell, a spokesman for that ride-sharing service. Loomer was quick to respond, again using the Twitter platform to say that Uber was trying to "ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns." She did not respond immediately to a request for further comment submitted through her Facebook page. In June, Loomer disrupted a performance of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" because the character of the assassinated Roman dictator was costumed to resemble U.S. President Donald Trump. (Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Paul Tait) A far-right media personality has been barred from using two major ride-sharing applications after posting a series of anti-Muslim comments on Twitter. Laura Loomer, whose bio describes her as a citizen journalist who previously worked for Canadas Rebel Media and undercover watchdog group Project Veritas, tweeted a photo of two women wearing hijabs on Manhattans Greenwich Street, near where 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a pick-up truck down a bike path Tuesday, killing at least eight people and injuring 12 others. Loomer wrote on Twitter that the women were aimlessly walking around in hijabs, and rubbing it in everyones faces. You'd think they'd have the decency to not walk around in hijabs @ cross street of the attack. But they don't. I bet they're loving this. Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2017 Loomer also accused ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft of hiring terrorists and complained about not being able to find non-Muslim drivers. I'm late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn't find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min! This is insanity. Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2017 Nearly every cab @uber @lyft driver in NYC is Muslim. It's extremely unfortunate and this is a conversation we need to have for our safety. Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2017 Was this terrorist also an @Uber driver? Why is uber hiring Islamic terrorists? #BoycottUber https://t.co/ccQtaBZMom Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2017 Uber confirmed to HuffPost on Tuesday that Saipov had passed a background check to become a driver for the app in New Jersey. He was an active driver at the time of the attack, having recorded over 1,400 trips in six months, but has since been banned from the app, Uber said. Saipov was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting on behalf of the militant group Islamic State. Loomer appeared to use this information as grounds for raising safety concerns about all Muslim taxi drivers. In the wake of Loomers comments, Uber and Lyft confirmed that the commentator had been banned from using their apps on Wednesday. This passengers account has been deactivated, meaning they can no longer access the Lyft platform, a company spokesperson told HuffPost on Thursday. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost that Loomer had violated community guidelines and her account was permanently deactivated. Loomer responded on Facebook and Twitter to the news of her ban, declaring that she would take legal action against the ride-sharing companies. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Wouldn't it be nice to push a button on your smartphone and have a Mercedes S-Class show up? That's exactly what the founders of the service thought before launching it in San Francisco in 2010. Cashless The service is cashless. A fare is automatically charged to the credit card on file and a receipt is e-mailed. Split Your Fare Sharing the ride with friends? Uber will split the bill and charge separate credit cards. "No more pay-me-backs or IOUs," says the website. Options Uber lets customers pick a ride that matches their "style and budget." Options range from a low-cost service called uberX to a luxury service called UberLux. Options vary between cities. Reviews Riders can rate their experience after a trip and leave additional feedback about the driver. Investors Investors in the company include Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures and First Round Capital. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Moscow (AFP) - Russia on Thursday dismissed a report by a UN-led panel that blamed the Syrian regime for a sarin gas attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun as "superficial and unprofessional". "We believe that the report turned out to be superficial, unprofessional and amateurish," said the foreign ministry's security and disarmament department head, Mikhail Ulyanov. "The mission did their research from a distance, that in itself is a scandal." At least 87 people died on April 4 this year when sarin gas projectiles were fired into Khan Sheikhun, a town in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria. Images of dead and dying victims, including young children, in the aftermath of the attack provoked global outrage and a US cruise missile strike on a regime air base. A joint panel by the UN and the world's chemical watchdog Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that the Syrian regime was responsible, and that the air force had dropped a bomb on the town, releasing the deadly nerve agent. Russia and Syria have however presented an alternative theory that an explosive device was set off on the ground. Ulyanov on Thursday suggested the sarin gas was poured inside the crater in the ground left by the bomb. He spoke as part of a panel of foreign ministry, air force and other Russian officials presenting slides that showed elaborate diagrams of regime war planes' trajectories and satellite images in an effort to cast doubt on the UN report. The officials also showed video footage of rescue personnel working in the crater wearing "only respirators and cotton gloves." Ulyanov said the video had been filmed after rebels detonated the bomb and before the sarin gas was poured into the crater. "If it were an aerial bomb, the bomb's tail would be in the crater, but there are no traces of an aerial bomb," he said. "The verdict against Damascus that has been issued so confidently turned out to be baseless," he said. Beijing (AFP) - Beijing on Friday hit back at a US decision to exclude a Chinese bank from the American financial system over its alleged ties to North Korea, slamming the move as "long-armed jurisdiction". Washington had alerted other businesses in June that it planned to take the action, but it finally went into effect on Thursday, just as President Donald Trump was to set off on an Asian tour. China "strongly opposes the long-armed jurisdiction imposed by any country," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing. China has been "comprehensively, actively, meticulously and strictly" implementing UN sanctions, she added. Trump has demanded that Beijing do more to push its neighbour North Korea to stop efforts to build a nuclear-armed missile capable of reaching American cities. He will bring this message to President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week, but China is reluctant to push too hard and risk destabilising Kim Jong-Un's North Korean regime. Officials in Washington warn that, while they would prefer Kim to come to the table, Trump has not ruled out a pre-emptive strike to prevent him from crossing the missile threshold. But, alongside this sabre-rattling, Washington is also slowly stepping up secondary sanctions on foreign institutions like the Bank of Dandong which it accuses of funnelling illicit funds. This risks angering China, but hawkish commentators argue that it remains the only way short of war to force Pyongyang, and perhaps more importantly Beijing, to reconsider its strategy. "Banks and businesses worldwide should take note that they must be vigilant against attempts by North Korea to conduct illicit financing and trade," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Along with the ban on Bank of Dandong, the Treasury also issued new guidance to international banks' risk and compliance officers to help them spot North Korean attempts to infiltrate world finance. Story continues Banks from China and around the world find it hard to operate if they are barred from the US financial system, which is a clearing house for most dollar-denominated transactions. In addition to the financial measures, Washington may also decide to re-designate North Korea as a "state sponsor of terrorism" -- a formal blacklist that would add to sanctions pressure. - Warmbier death - Yet the Trump administration does not seem to be in a hurry, despite the president's anger over the death of US student Otto Warmbier after he was imprisoned during a visit to the North. Warmbier died in June this year, just days after he was released from custody and sent home in a mysterious coma. His parents said their son showed signs of torture, including teeth that appeared to have been "rearranged," and hands and feet that were disfigured. Trump then accused the North Korean regime of torturing the 22-year-old. But the US coroner Lakshmi Sammarco, who examined Warmbier's body after his death, said there was no clear evidence of physical torture -- including no recently broken bones or damaged teeth. On August 2, Trump reluctantly enacted a law that was forced on him by the US Congress pressing for new economic and political sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea. One clause of that act required the US State Department to state within 90 days whether North Korea should be named a terror sponsor -- a deadline lawmakers say expired on Tuesday. The State Department said it had calculated the deadline differently and was working toward a Thursday announcement, but as office hours came to an end there was no news. Congressman Ted Poe, chairman of the House subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, was unimpressed and followed up with the State Department to ask about the delay. "To me, the very law is clear. The designation should have occurred by October 31," he said. Earlier, at the White House, National Security Adviser HR McMaster had said the designation was still an option that is "under consideration" and that news would come "soon." He cited the murder of the North Korean leader's half-brother Kim Jong-Nam, who was attacked in February with VX nerve agent at a Malaysian airport, as one reason the regime might be deemed terrorist. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United States on Wednesday voted against a UN resolution condemning the US embargo on Cuba, in a break from last year's abstention by the former administration that highlighted a thaw in relations. The resolution was overwhelmingly adopted by a vote of 191 to 2, leaving the United States and Israel as the only opposing voices in the General Assembly. The 193-nation assembly has voted overwhelmingly every year since 1991 to demand an end to the embargo, delivering a rebuke to Washington over its Cuba policy. But in a first, the United States last year abstained as the administration of former president Barack Obama worked to repair relations with Havana and end more than five decades of enmity. Taking the floor ahead of the vote, US Ambassador Nikki Haley dismissed the debate as "political theatre" and an attempt by Cuba to "distract the world's attention from the destruction it has inflicted on its own people." "As long as the Cuban people continue to be deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedoms -- as long as the proceeds from trade with Cuba go to prop up the dictatorial regime responsible for denying those rights -- the United States does not fear isolation in this chamber or anywhere else," she said. Haley pledged that the US decision two years ago to open diplomatic relations with Cuba would remain unchanged, saying "our friendship and good will toward the Cuban people remain as strong as ever." The US State Department said the decision to once again vote against the UN resolution was part of a review of US policy that seeks to focus on democratic reforms in Cuba rather than building ties. Imposed in 1959 at the height of the Cold War, the trade embargo on Cuba has remained in force and can only be lifted by the US Congress, which has steadfastly rejected such a move. - A government of millionaires - The resolution presented by Cuba stresses the "necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed" by the United States against Cuba. Story continues It noted that President Donald Trump has rolled back some of the measures taken by Obama. Addressing the assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed Haley's remarks as "disrespectful, offensive and interfering" and said the current US policy was a "return to the past." "President Trump does not have the least morale authority to question Cuba," said Rodriguez. "He is heading a government of millionaires aiming to implement savage measures against low-income families, against the poor people in this country, minorities and immigrants." "He is pursuing a program that encourages hatred and division." Trump in June announced new travel restrictions and banned trade with Cuban businesses linked to the military and the intelligence services, a move that put key economic sectors including tourism out of reach to American firms. The United States restored diplomatic ties with Cuba in July 2015 and a month later re-opened its embassy in Havana. Obama made a landmark visit to the communist-ruled island in March 2016. Washington (AFP) - The United States will once again vote against an annual UN resolution condemning its embargo against Cuba, one year after it abstained for the first time in a quarter of a century. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that US Ambassador Nikki Haley would oppose the measure when Cuba brings it before the General Assembly on Wednesday. "We've historically voted against that resolution. Last year, the United States abstained," Nauert said, looking back on a 26-year ritual that has seen Washington isolated on the issue. "Ambassador Haley will be reversing last year's abstention and will be voting against the resolution this year," she said. Nauert explained that the vote, which will likely see Haley in a minority of one or two in the General Assembly, would underscore President Donald Trump's new Cuba policy. "The Trump policy on Cuba gives greater emphasis to advancing human rights and democracy in Cuba while maintaining engagement that serves US national interests," she said. Trump's predecessor, former president Barack Obama, oversaw slowly warming ties with Havana and a loosening of the trade embargo, symbolized by last year's decision to abstain. But Trump has tightened up some of the openings that had begun to appear in the embargo and has hardened the tone against the communist-run island, casting a new chill on ties. Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump's administration will revive Wednesday the annual US tradition of voting against a UN resolution condemning the American trade embargo against Cuba. For just over a quarter of a century, Cuba has brought the motion before the General Assembly, and every year, Washington and one or two diehard allies voted against -- until last year. Then, former president Barack Obama decided to abstain from the vote, marking with a symbolic gesture the cautious thaw in relations that his White House had begun to negotiate with Raul Castro's communist regime. Under Trump, that thaw may be over, even if the neighbors and former Cold War foes have not yet cut off diplomatic ties. In any case, on Wednesday the United States and probably Israel will once again be in a minority of two. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that US Ambassador Nikki Haley would oppose the measure to underscore Trump's tough new stance on Cuba. "We've historically voted against that resolution. Last year, the United States abstained," she said. "Ambassador Haley will be reversing last year's abstention and will be voting against the resolution this year. "The Trump policy on Cuba gives greater emphasis to advancing human rights and democracy in Cuba while maintaining engagement that serves US national interests," Nauert said. - Sick diplomats - Trump's predecessor Obama, oversaw slowly warming ties with Cuba and Havana, including a reopening of the countries' embassies in Havana and Washington and a careful loosening of the trade embargo. But Trump has vowed to enforce more strongly the restrictions on US tourism and trade that had begun to shift, even before a more recent diplomatic spat over alleged attacks on the health of US diplomats in Havana. US officials say that at least 24 diplomats have suffered a variety of problems, including hearing loss and brain trauma, since last year due to "health attacks" that some initially blamed on a covert sonic device. Story continues After initially cooperating in an investigation, Cuba has angrily denied that the "attacks" took place and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez over the weekend dubbed the claims "political manipulation aimed at damaging bilateral relations." But Nauert insisted that the decision to resume the symbolic opposition to the motion was not connected to this incident but part of a broader review of US policy to focus on demanding Cuban democratic reforms rather than building ties. A draft of this year's resolution, seen by AFP, notes that Trump has already rolled back some of the measures taken by Obama. - Flagrant violation - It recalls "the measures adopted by the executive of the United States in 2015 and 2016 to modify several aspects of the application of the embargo, which contrast with the measures announced on 16 June 2017 to reinforce its implementation." Ahead of the vote, Cuba's UN mission issued a statement denouncing the fact that 70 percent of Cubans were born and raised under an embargo that "hinders Cuba's economic development and constitutes a flagrant violation of the human rights of the Cuban people." "With his policy towards Cuba, President Trump reverses the progress achieved in bilateral relations after Presidents Raul Castro Ruz and Barack Obama announced on 17 December 2014 the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and the beginning of a process to normalize bilateral ties," it added. The United States restored diplomatic ties with Cuba in July 2015 and a month later re-opened its embassy in Havana. Obama made a landmark visit to the communist-ruled island in March 2016. His administration saw the thaw as a diplomatic victory But restoring full trade and financial ties with Cuba would have required legislative action by Congress, where the Republican majority has said human rights concerns must first be addressed. During his campaign, Trump visited the Cuban exile community in Miami -- traditionally led by conservative voters opposed to any rapprochement with the one-party Castro government -- and promised them his support. This year, after his election victory, he returned to Miami to address a group of activists and veterans of the failed CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles and announced he was rolling back some of the breaches in the embargo. Back in August, Disney shared the news about the birth of two endangered Sumatran tiger cubs the first tigers to be born at Disneys Animal Kingdom. Today, theres an update about efforts to save their species in the wild, along with a progress report on the cubs. Disney is supporting the efforts of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and their partners to reverse the decline of Sumatran tigers by conducting a tiger population survey in Indonesia and taking steps to increase the wild population of Sumatran tigers by 25 percent in the next decade. In the video below, Anne Savage, PhD, conservation director, explains the significance of this project, funded in part by guests unlocking a $100,000 contribution to the Wildlife Conservation Society through Connect to Protect, a digital mobile adventure at Disneys Animal Kingdom. Disney Parks, through the Disney Conservation Fund, has committed $1 million to protect and restore habitats of at-risk wildlife through the Connect to Protect program. Speaking of Sumatran tigers the cubs at Disneys Animal Kingdom are two months old and now have names: Jeda, the male cub, (above left) and Anala, the female cub. The cubs continue to bond with their mother, Sohni, and are really showing their personalities, which inspired their names. Jeda is very laid-back, just like his father Malosi. His name means pause in Malay. It is inspired by his markings. You might notice that Jeda has two parallel lines inside a stripe on his head that resemble a pause button. Anala has an independent spirit and is very quick to explore new things. Her name means fiery, sizzling in Hindi. The cubs wrestle with each other constantly and love jumping on plants and logs, said Erin Heavey, an animal care specialist who cares for the tigers. Jeda in particular loves ripping the bark off the logs and playing with all the pieces that come off. Anala is becoming more adept at sneaking and pouncing and loves hiding behind things (even when she isnt entirely hidden) and trying to surprise attack Sohni or her brother. This is actually something she gets from Sohni, who loves to hide and sneak even though she isnt always very covert about it. Disney will share more about when Jeda and Anala will go on stage in their habitat on Maharajah Jungle Trek. In the meantime, Guests can continue to visit their parents and learn about how they can join Disney in reversing the decline of these beautiful tigers in the wild at DisneyAnimals.com. Comments (2) The Utah nurse who was forcefully arrested in a hospital just won a huge settlement This is some good news! Remember the nurse in Utah who was arrested in July when she wouldnt give police a blood sample from an unconscious patient? Well, shes about to receive a hefty sum of cash. Alex Wubbels will get $500,000 from a settlement, according to Time, and the money will reportedly come both from Salt Lake City itself and the University of Utah. Karra Porter, Wubbels lawyer, confirmed the amount to CNN. Wubbels ultimately believes that viral body camera footage of the incident likely contributed to the favorable outcome. The video, as described by CNN, depicts Wubbels forceful arrest while she was at work in the hospital. The publication reports that the officer responsible was let go by the Salt Lake City police department as a result of the incident. No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience I went through, Wubbels said about the news of her settlement, according to Time. A Utah nurse who was arrested for protecting her patient gets a $500,000 settlement https://t.co/J77o5FRvBy pic.twitter.com/GTMcgzLPvR CNN (@CNN) November 1, 2017 Some people believe she should have been awarded even more money. This is still low in my opinion. Forcefully and wrongfully arrested nurse doing her job should be the headline https://t.co/kas5CP9SSR Off-season Windians (@DFluckesFans) November 1, 2017 Others are happy to see this resolved in her favor. Nurse settles for 500 thousand for being falsely arrested at Utah hospital ... about time!!! pic.twitter.com/gWVHTUFu2M RogelioGarcia Lawyer (@LawyerRogelio) November 1, 2017 Still others have used this incident to highlight the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement. #BLM bc an entire country is outraged over a nurse being wrongfully arrested, but y'all are silent when black men are murdered in the street drewww (@werdrew_) September 2, 2017 Its good to see Wubbels get some form of justice, but its important to remember that for many, the outcome is quite different. According to Time, Wubbels has a plan for the settlement money she is going to put some of it toward a nurses union [that will] help lead a campaign to stop physical and verbal abuse of nurses on the job. Another sum will go toward helping to fund legal help for others trying to get similar body-camera video. Sayfullo Saipov, the suspected Islamic extremist charged with using a truck to kill eight people on Tuesday in Lower Manhattan, was still a toddler when his homeland of Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union. Its ancient cities, like Bukhara and Samarkand, with their splendid mosaics and slim minarets, had been centers of Islamic culture for more than a millennium. But these were not especially pious places at the time of Saipovs birth. After three generations of communist rule, his elders had grown accustomed to the governments official adherence to atheism. It was part of a system that saw religion as a form of dissent and sought to repress it accordingly. Saipovs generation was different. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, new mosques and Islamic movements began to spring up in Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia. Religious observance across the region became intertwined with a renewed sense of identity and national pride, often encouraged and financed by foreign powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which sought to insert their versions of Islam into the void left behind by the Soviet collapse. In Uzbekistan, it wasnt long before this resurgence of piety faced another round of repression. Islam Karimov, the cunning Soviet functionary who went on to rule the country from the moment of its independence in 1991 until his death in 2016, instructed his security services to monitor religious groups and shut down any mosques deemed even potentially extremist. So this part of society was effectively pushed out of Uzbekistan starting in 1990s, says Sergei Abashin, an expert on the region at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia. By the late 1990s, an extremist underground had taken shape in the country, focused primarily on the goal of overthrowing the Karimov regime. Its deadliest and most prominent group was the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, or IMU, which the U.S. officially designated a terrorist organization in Sept. 2000. With dreams of creating an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia, the IMU pulled off a series of attacks in Uzbekistan in the 1990s. But the agents of Karimovs secret police were so pervasive and violent human rights groups have documented incidents of them boiling people alive that many IMU fighters fled to neighboring Afghanistan in the 2000s, where they fought alongside the Taliban against U.S. and NATO forces. Story continues Throughout that period, Uzbekistan also saw a massive exodus of migrants going abroad to seek work and opportunity. An estimated 2 million Uzbek migrants now live in Russia, where they do much of the grunt work involved in construction, road maintenance and other labor-intensive industries. But in recent years, an increasing number of Uzbek migrants have sought their fortunes in the West, and a small but thriving business has formed around the lottery system for American green cards. Abashin, who studies migration from Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia, says specialized brokers often file hundreds of applications for this lottery at a time. Uzbek Facebook pages and websites offer this service for less than $3 per application, while the lucky customers who win a green card are usually asked to pay more in order to retrieve their documents. This sort of targeted, mass application for green cards has become really popular, Abashin says. In total, he estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 Uzbeks have gone to the U.S. this way. Among them, reportedly, is Saipov. Once they arrive, their integration in American society is often harder than it would be in Russia or other parts of the former Soviet Union, where they can usually find a community that speaks their language and understands their culture. Given the cost of returning to Uzbekistan from the U.S. for visits and the minuscule size of the Uzbek community inside the U.S. these migrants are often drawn to religion as a source of belonging. Contacts with family back home is more rare than it would be for them in Russia, says Abashin. They feel more torn from home, more foreign, and even if they like it in the U.S, its often very lonely there. So they tend to look for contacts in the broader Muslim community or online. And thats where you get the risk of radicalization. Both in Russia and the European Union, two acts of terrorism committed by ethnic Uzbeks have recently borne out this picture. In April of this year, Akbarzhon Jalilov detonated a bomb in the St. Petersburg subway, killing at least 15 people. Only 22 years old at the time of the attack, he was still in his teens when he arrived in Russia in 2011 to find work. Investigators believe that his radicalization, reportedly including a trip to Syria in 2014, took place after he left his hometown of Osh, a city in Kyrgyzstan with a large community of his fellow Uzbeks. Four days after that attack in St. Petersburg, Rakhmat Akilov, a 39-year-old Uzbek national, plowed a beer truck into a crowd of shoppers in central Stockholm, killing four people and wounding more than a dozen others in the worst terrorist attack Sweden had seen in decades. The Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan said in a statement that Akilov had been radicalized after arriving in Sweden in 2014 and had been sending ISIS propaganda videos over the Internet back to his friends in Uzbekistan. He committed the attack only after Swedish authorities denied his asylum request and ordered his deportation. Nobody back home thought he is an extremist, or even a Muslim, says Danil Kislov, the editor of Ferghana News, an independent news site based in Moscow that reports on Uzbekistan and covered the Stockholm attack in detail. He drank alcohol, he didnt worship, he says, referring to Akilov. But it seems like there were a lot more personal issues once he got to Sweden. His life didnt work out. After reports of the Manhattan attacker reached the Ferghana newsroom, Kislov sent his reporter in Uzbekistan to find out more about Saipovs roots. It turned out to be a tricky assignment. After asking the authorities for the Saipov familys address, the reporter was detained and questioned by police, who eventually gave him an address in the old city of central Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. By local standards, this was a gesture of remarkable transparency on the part of the authorities, who would typically have told the journalist to get lost. After the old dictators death in Sept. 2016, however, the country has shown signs of opening up to the West. The new leader of the country, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, wants the Americans to love him, says Kislov. He wants to have the image of a democratic reformer. The morning after the attack in Manhattan, the President sent condolences to the White House along with a pledge that his country is ready to use all forces and resources to help in the investigation of this act of terror. But Saipovs loyalty or links to terrorist groups if they even exist are more likely to lead back to Syria than to his homeland. Since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, the remnants of the Islamist underground in Uzbekistan and other parts of the former Soviet Union have largely gone to join the caliphate that ISIS declared in 2014. In that sense it was lucky for us here, says Maj. Gen. Apti Alaudinov, a senior counter-terrorism officer in the Russian region of Chechnya. They mostly went to fight and die over there. Few have come back. As recently as 2014, the Islamist forces fighting in Syria have included a unit of Uzbeks known as the Imam Bukhari Jamaat, which released its own propaganda videos of training camps that were staffed by Uzbek-speaking commanders. The Russian intelligence services estimated in 2015 that around 2,500 fighters had gone to join ISIS from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. There were entire units of them there, says Saeed Mazhaev, a low-ranking ISIS fighter from Russia who returned home from Syria in 2014. In the ISIS safe house in southern Turkey where he was equipped and prepared for battle, he recalls dozens of other fighters speaking Russian and a variety of Central Asian languages. Among the tasks of ISIS commanders in Syria was recruitment, says Mazhaev, typically using online forums and messaging apps to communicate with potential jihadis in their native languages around the world. It is still unclear whether the Manhattan attacker may have been remotely indoctrinated in this way. His arrival in the U.S. in 2010 would suggest that he sat out the war in Syria far away from the so-called Islamic State, which was declared four years later. But that does not mean he was immune to its propaganda. Five longtime friends from Argentina, celebrating the anniversary of their high school graduation, two young Americans and a Belgian mother were among those killed in Tuesdays terrorist attack in New York City, officials and family members said. Eight people died and 11 others were seriously injured after a 29-year-old driver, identified as Sayfullo Saipov, plowed his rental truck into pedestrians and bicyclists on a popular bike path near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, authorities said. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack a cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians at a news conference Tuesday. Officials said it was the worst terrorist attack in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. Those who died were remembered as young entrepreneurs, successful business owners and beloved caregivers. Heres what to know about the victims so far: Ann-Laure Decadt, 31 Ann-Laure Decadt, a mother of two from Belgium, was riding a bicycle during a visit to the U.S. on Tuesday when she was fatally struck from behind during the truck drivers rampage, according to her husband Alexander Naessens. She was 31. I am a broken man, Naessens told TIME. Decadt leaves behind a 3-year-old son and a three-month-old son. Naessens remembered Decadt as a fantastic wife and the most beautiful mother. He said Decadt was in New York City with her mother and two sisters both of whom were unharmed. Ann-Laure Decadt, of Belgium, is one of the eight victims of the New York terror attack on Oct. 31, 2017. Ariel Erlij, 48 Ariel Erlij, a well-known businessman in Argentina, and some of his old friends were in New York City to mark the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation when they were killed, Argentinas foreign ministry said in a statement. Erlij, 48, had organized and helped fund the reunion trip for his former classmates many of whom were architects, according to Argentinas La Nacion newspaper. The trip, which included a stop in Boston, had been planned for more than a year. Five of the victims were from Rosario young entrepreneurs, members of the citys society. I imagine they had beautiful families, President Mauricio Macri said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Story continues Erlij was the chief executive of Ivanar, a steel manufacturing company in Argentina, La Nacion reported. Erlijs friends told the Washington Post he had three children, loved going to the gym and always made time for family and friends outside of work. He managed to become a successful businessman, without forgetting about his friends, Jose Lo Menzo told the newspaper. It is a loss without meaning. Erlij and his friends set off for the U.S. on Saturday, wearing matching white T-shirts emblazoned with the word libre, or free. They had graduated together from the Polytechnic School of Rosario, Argentina in 1987, according to the AP. (From left) Hernan Ferruchi, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, Ivan Brajckovic, Juan Pablo Trevisan, Hernan Mendoza, Diego Angelini and Ariel Benvenuto, gather for a group photo before their trip to New York City, at the airport in Rosario, Argentina, Oct. 28, 2017. Mendoza, Angelini, Pagnucco, Erlij and Ferruchi were killed in the terrorist attack in New York on Oct. 31. Alejandro Damian Pagnucco Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, an Argentinian architect, was part of the group of friends killed while touring New York City. He was lovingly known as Picho, according to La Nacion. He was 49, according the newspaper, though the NYPD said he was 47. It was a dream of Pagnuccos to visit New York City, his daughter, Ornee Pagnucco told the Washington Post. Were shattered, she said. Its been really hard. Hernan Ferruchi, 47 Hernan Ferruchi, 47, was also an architect from Argentina who lost his life in the deadly terrorist attack. He had studied at the National University of Rosario after graduating high school, La Nacion reported. Diego Enrique Angelini, 47 Diego Enrique Angelini, 47, was a father of three and an architect who had a studio in Argentina, according to La Nacion. Hernan Diego Mendoza, 47 Hernan Diego Mendoza, 47, was also an architect in Argentina. He was remembered for his love of rugby. Darren Drake, 32 Darren Drake was the perfect son who enjoyed going for bike rides during his breaks at work, his father told reporters outside his New Jersey home Wednesday. Thats what the 32-year-old project manager at Moodys was doing when a truck driver deliberately struck and killed him in New York City. I hope he didnt feel any pain, Jimmy Drake said, according to NJ.com. Darren Drake lived at home with his parents in New Milford, where they had dinner together every night. He was a Rutgers University graduate with political aspirations who was trying to earn his second masters degree, according to his father. The younger Drake had just lost nearly 100 lbs. after undergoing weight loss surgery. While other people would take cigarette or coffee breaks, he would go out and ride the bike for 15 or 20 minutes, Jimmy Drake said. Nicholas Cleves, 23 Police identified Nicholas Cleves, 23, of New York City as the eighth victim. Scott Ostrem nonchalantly entered the Walmart before killing three people: AP A 47-year-old man suspected of walking into a store and killing three people has been detained by police. Colorado man Scott Ostrem was arrested on Thursday morning, about 14 hours after the shooting at a Walmart that witnesses said appeared to be random. His arrest followed a brief chase in which Mr Ostrem attempted to flee law enforcement, but was blocked by traffic. Police had warned the Denver community that Mr Ostrem was armed and dangerous, and to avoid the suspect if he was seen in public. An anonymous tip later led police to the suspects home, which is about five miles away from the Walmart. In interviews, police described a cool-headed shooter, who calmly walked into the supermarket before opening fire. After killing two men and a woman, the shooter simply left the building. He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store, Victor Avila, a Thornton police spokesman, said. Mr Avila indicated that their description of the event was based on several witnesses in the Walmart, who said that the shooting appeared to be random. Aaron Stephens, 44, said he was in the self-checkout line in the supermarket when he heard a gun shot, followed soon after by more bursts of gunfire. The scene was pandemonium: customers were screaming and rushing as quickly as they could to the exits while the shooter casually left. I was scared, Mr Stephens told The Denver Post. I feared for my life. The shooting was met with hundreds of emergency responders, who circled the Walmart and the shopping centre it is located in. The three victims have yet to be named by police, though police say they were the only three victims of the attack. The woman who was shot was rushed to the hospital, but was later pronounced dead. Others were treated for anxiety-related conditions following the shooting. The attack is just the latest incident of gun-related violence in the US, where the problem runs rampant. The country has some of the highest rates of gun violence, including mass shooting events that typically gain broader media attention. Story continues Hundreds of mass shootings have already occurred in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts mass shooting events based on the FBIs definition any event in which four or more people selected indiscriminately, not including the perpetrator, are killed. The US has more mass shootings than any other country in the world, a reality punctuated by high-profile incidents, such as the attack in Las Vegas where 58 people were killed and 500 more were injured after a gunman opened fire on a country music festival. That shooting, the worst in United States history, was just over a month ago. The study indicating that the US has more mass shootings than any other country is more refined than the FBI definition, and does not include gang killings or killings that involve multiple family members. The US also has some of the most lenient gun acquisition laws in the developed world. In many states, individuals are able to buy guns without background checks, and many states also do not ban assault-style rifles, a type of gun designed almost explicitly to kill people, and one with limited practical utility in terms of hunting or recreation. Since late September, alt-right members have advanced the idea that anti-fascist groups will begin a violent insurrection on 4 November. But no antifa groups are planning to protest so what gives? According to a new conspiracy theory, antifa groups want to start a civil war on November 4. But the idea rests on some very slender reeds. Photograph: Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images If you are inside the alt-right information bubble, you might be preparing yourself for a civil war to commence this Saturday. Since late September, the idea has been circulating on Facebook groups, subreddit message boards, Twitter, and leading conspiracy media outlets that on 4 November, anti-fascist groups will begin a violent insurrection. Some websites are telling their readers that antifa groups are planning to kill every single Trump voter, Conservative and gun owner this weekend. Hundreds of Facebook posts show how seriously consumers of such media are taking the news, and comments like One more threat against white people and I swear to God Im going to take a goddamn car and run over every fucking one of them are not unrepresentative of the response. But antifa groups have no plans to protest that day, and the small leftist groups who are planning protests have only dubious connections to the antifa movement. So what gives? The whole thing rests on some very slender reeds, according to Spencer Sunshine, who recently wrote a report on the theories for the far right-monitoring group Political Research Associates. In the conspiracy underground on YouTube, he explains, there has been talk that there was going to be a civil war starting in November for some months. Beginning in late September, three things kicked it a into higher gear. First, Refuse Fascism, a small group linked to the Revolutionary Communist party, staged a visually spectacular protest in Los Angeles. They blocked the 101 freeway and held up signs that enigmatically spelled out Nov 4 it begins. This is the same group that is organizing a series of protests around the country against the Trump-Pence regime this weekend. Story continues Second, a video posted on a Facebook page called Vets Before Illegals went viral. The video, entitled Antifa sets a date for civil war, claimed that on their website, they are calling for an open civil war that will start in November, and set out alleged plans for attacking police officers, then citizens and the government. Last, but by no means least, the rumor was picked up and amplified by Alex Jones, the radio star with an audience of millions. As Sunshine explains, Jones is a kind of meta-conspiracy theorist now who harvests other peoples theories and repackages them to fit his narratives and his audience. Once Jones had mentioned it, Sunshine explains, the rumor mill exploded: Once Jones says something, even more people pick up on it and put their own spin on it. Joness website was still running the story on Wednesday morning. An absurd turn In recent days, the story took an absurd turn, and had its closest brush with more mainstream conservative media, when Gateway Pundit, a longtime conservative blog that has recently expanded into news coverage,published a story by its White House correspondent, Lucian Wintrich, claiming that an antifa leader had promised to behead white parents on 4 November. The tweet the story was based on, however, was a joke from an account that had no apparent ties to any antifa groups. In a telephone interview, Wintrich conceded that the tweet his reporting was based on was not serious, and that it was unlikely that there would be a revolution on Saturday. But he did not back away from the story, presenting it as a critique of leftist rhetoric. The radical left is always making jokes about killing white people. What would happen if I made a joke about killing all black parents? That would be a national headline. If its appropriate for them to demonize [conservatives] over quite innocent jokes, why would we just roll over when they make inappropriate jokes? Whats good for the goose is good for the gander. The piece included a detailed account of antifa ideology, which included the claim that the activists are larpers (live action role-play) attempting to find someone/thing to sexually interact with. When asked what sources he drew on in reporting on their ideology, Wintrich said: I did go to school at Bard College. I received my education around people who Im sure are on terrorist watchlists as socialist or communist extremists. As Sunshine says, Refuse Fascism activists have been supportive of antifa groups in the past, and often show up to the same demonstrations, but there is no formal connection between them and antifa. They are also small, he says, and their protest is explicitly nonviolent and specifically directed against the administration, not rightwing activists or police. Mark Bray, historian and author of Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook, agrees. Prior to 2017, the far right didnt really know what antifa was, he says, adding that the focus on these groups has a number of causes. It is an extension of the demonization of anarchists in general, but it is also a way to smear mainstream liberals who have no links to antifascist groups. And to some extent, this particular panic has succeeded in energizing a particular slice of the right. As Sunshine puts it: It motivates the base, its part of the apocalyptic narrative they use theres always a dangerous event just over the horizon. Also, he says: Its a call for vigilante activity. There are currently tons of threats against leftwing activists. And unless there is a confrontation as a result of rightwing counter-protesters turning out to shut down the revolution, its all likely to come to nothing. There is no revolution or civil war planned for 4 November, says Bray. You can quote me on that. Related: Watch interviews and in-depth news coverage from "Daily Vice" on go90. This live event has ended. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday his nominee for the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. The president tapped Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell to take the reins from current Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Yellen and Powell, in addition to several others, were rumored as Trump's potential picks. Kevin Warsh, former governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, Stanford University economist John Taylor and White House Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn were also reportedly in the running for the position. Powell emerged as the front-runner for the top Fed job after a months-long search for a nominee. He will need Senate confirmation to replace Yellen, whose term expires in early February. Trump made the announcement at 3 p.m. from the White House. (Reuters contributed to this report) The White House on Wednesday is scheduled to hold its first press briefing after a terror attack in New York City left eight people dead and 11 injured. Watch the press briefing live at 2:30 p.m. ET above. A driver stuck several people on a bike path in lower Manhattan on Tuesday. The suspect, a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan named Sayfullo Saipov, then exited his rental truck with what are believed to be imitation firearms. Saipov was shot by police and taken into custody; he survived the incident. I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this! Trump tweeted Tuesday night following the attack. Trump also said the suspect arrived in the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which he called a Chuck Schumer beauty, a reference to the Senate Minority Leader and New York senator with whom Trump frequently butts heads. In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A.! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017 My thoughts, condolences and prayers to the victims and families of the New York City terrorist attack. God and your country are with you! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017 The terrorist came into our country through what is called the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 If you buy health insurance on your own, rather than through an employer, picking a policy for 2018 is going to be more complicated than usual. Prices are going up for some people, coming down for others. Many areas have lost plans; some have gained new ones. And you dont have a lot of time to sort out your options. This years open enrollment period is shorter than in the past. In most states it will end on Dec. 15, after just six weeks. All the information you need is out there, along with people who can decipher it and guide you through the enrollment process. But it helps to know where to look and, particularly this year, it may help to look in more than one place. Here are some of the resources and people you can consult: HealthCare.gov And Its State-run Marketplace Counterparts You probably know about HealthCare.gov and CuidadoDeSalud.gov the one-stop-shopping, federally run websites that, in 38 states, individuals use to find health insurance policies and enroll in them. The exceptions are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. They have their own websites, as does the District of Columbia. These sites will let you know quickly whether you are eligible for tax credits that could discount your premiums by hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and in some cases wipe out premiums altogether. They will also let you know all about the policies you can buy with those tax credits providing information not just on premiums, but also on out-of-pocket expenses, doctor and hospital networks, and formularies for prescription drugs. (Formularies are lists of drugs that insurance companies will or wont cover, along with whatever co-payments youll need to pay to get them.) In the past, information about networks and formularies hasnt always been totally accurate or up to date. Thats a big deal. You dont want to get a policy thinking it will pay for visits with a longtime doctor or cover a prescription you use regularly, only to discover too late that it wont. If theres a provider or drug of particular importance to you, double-check with insurers, providers and drugstores to confirm any information from the websites. Story continues The websites also have glossaries to explain key concepts, such as the difference between a deductible and an out-of-pocket maximum. If you need more help or if you just prefer to deal with a person rather than a website the sites all have call centers with trained professionals who can answer questions and sign you up directly. The number for HealthCare.gov is 1-800-318-2596. In the 12 states plus the District of Columbia that dont use HealthCare.gov, the phone numbers for their call centers are on their state websites. Note that HealthCare.gov will be down for maintenance on almost every Sunday during open enrollment for up to 12 hours, 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern, each time. Trump administration officials say this is normal. Officials who worked at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration say this is a lot more planned maintenance than the system has needed previously. Online Brokers And Insurer Websites This year, for the first time, you can go through the entire application process through one of several websites that HHS has designated a direct enrollment partner. Five of the partners are online brokers that look and operate a lot like HealthCare.gov. You can even get the law's tax credits through them. One of the partner sites, Health Sherpa, offers only the plans that are available on government websites. The other four eHealth, GetInsured, GoHealth and Stride Health also offer off-exchange plans. Off-exchange policies are plans that insurers dont sell through the government sites and for which you cant use the laws tax credits. They provide consumers with extra options, but you need to be careful when you consider them. HuffPost readers: Are you shopping for health insurance through an exchange like HealthCare.gov or directly from an insurance company? Tell us about your experience during the current open enrollment period email jonathan.cohn@huffpost.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state, and phone number, if youre willing to be interviewed. If your income is too high to qualify for that financial assistance, because your income is more than four times the poverty line ($48,240 a year for an individual and $98,400 a year for a family of four), you might discover off-exchange plans cheaper than comparable plans available through the government websites. It depends on your individual financial circumstances and the plans available where you live. The catch is that some of these off-exchange plans do not live up to the Affordable Care Acts requirements. They may not cover all 10 essential benefits, for example, and they might not be available to people with pre-existing conditions. They also might not satisfy the laws individual mandate, which applies a financial penalty on people who could get affordable insurance but decline to get it. An example would be short-term insurance plans which, in many cases, are available for only three months at a time and cannot be renewed afterward. They tend to cover less and, partly as a result, they tend to be cheaper. You dont have to worry about this at Stride Health. Even its off-exchange plans meet the Affordable Care Acts standards, a company official said. But the other three partner sites with off-exchange plans all include some noncompliant policies. The websites should make clear which ones abide by the Affordable Care Act rules and which ones dont. Insurers also run their own websites, by the way. They tend to offer detailed information about their own plans but, naturally, they dont offer information about their competitors. To date, HHS says it has approved eight insurer sites as direct enrollment partners meaning, again, you can actually complete an application and qualify for financial assistance on their websites. Those insurer websites are Aspirus Arise Health Plan in Wisconsin; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan; Centene, which offers plans in in several states; Dean Health Plan in Wisconsin; Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey; Oscar Health, which operates in several states; and Security Health Plan of Wisconsin. HHS says it will be approving more partner websites soon, perhaps before open enrollment ends on Dec. 15. Navigators, Assisters And Counselors If you want a human being to answer your questions, to teach you more about your options, and to help you enroll, you can turn to a variety of individuals and groups who have received special training and are officially authorized by the Affordable Care Act to do just that. The law calls them navigators, assisters and certified enrollment counselors. They include everybody from people at nonprofit organizations whose sole purpose is Affordable Care Act outreach to social workers at community clinics who work with people on a number of different government programs. You can find the advisers in your area through HealthCare.gov use the find local help link or through one of the state websites. The Trump administration has dramatically cut funding for navigators this year, so, especially with the shorter open enrollment period, their services may be in high demand. It makes sense to seek them out sooner rather than later. By law, these counselors have no ties to insurers and receive no money from them. Agents And Brokers Agents and brokers have been advising people about insurance and selling policies for a long time and many of them have years of experience they can use to help you figure out which insurance option is best for you. Agents sell policies from just one carrier or sometimes a few. Brokers typically sell from many. Both are subject to state licensing requirements. The ones who can help you enroll in exchange plans directly must receive special certification from their states or the federal government. The ones youll find through the HealthCare.gov local help option have gone through that process. Agents and brokers also operate on commission, which they get from the insurers, unless they work for just one carrier, in which case they might be paid on salary. That means you dont have to pay them separately. But remember: They may be telling you only about the plans they sell or that pay them commissions. Other Sources Of Information The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has an exhaustive list of 300 questions and answers about open enrollment. HealthInsurance.org has its own, thorough guide to open enrollment as well as detailed, independently reported information on whats happening in each state. It also has an online form where you can get quotes from a local broker. Get America Covered, which two former HHS officials from the Obama administration recently founded, is publishing fact sheets and toolkits for open enrollment. Obamacare Facts has a great deal of information, as well. Related Coverage A Guide To Open Enrollment That Won't Make Your Head Spin Here's What You Need To Know About Obamacare Enrollment This Year The Uninsured Rate Is Going Up Again Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. By Shenequa Golding A freshman at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut has been slapped with a hate crime due to behavior against her former roommate. Brianna Rae Brochu, 18, bragged in a now deleted Instagram post about secretly terrorizing her roommate, which included rubbing a used tampon across one of her bags. Brochu is white and her roommate Jazzy Roe is black. Since news of Brochus behavior has been made public, University of Hartford President Greg Woodward called Brochus conduct reprehensible. It is clear there is work to be done at our University to ensure that all students feel safe, respected, and valued. The conversations that began with student groups, faculty, and staff yesterday are going to continue and involve our full community, Woodward said. Brochu is no longer a student at the university, and is prohibited from stepping foot on campus or contacting Roe, according to a judge order. West Hartford police are asking that the charge of of intimidation based on bigotry or bias also be added to the charge of peace and criminal mischief case. On Oct. 17, Rowe was moving out of her apartment she shared with Brochu when Brochu asked if she was leaving. It was then Brochu took to social media to brag about all the things she did to force her roommate out. Rowes resident assistant who after screen grabbing Brochus post made Rowe aware. Finally did it yo girl got rid of her roommate!! After 1 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesnt shine, and so much more I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie. Jazzy Roe took to Twitter to create a video speaking about her experience and quickly JusticeForJazzy began to trend. Story continues That roommate couldve killed Jazzy. And shell do it again to another black person unless true justice is served. #JusticeForJazzy BlackGirlinTheRing (@ShellieLovee) October 31, 2017 Briana Brochu was sent to college as a racist & her parents should now watch her go to prison as one. This is a hate crime! #JusticeForJazzy Andrea Roberts (@MadMik2014) November 1, 2017 Briana Brochu is repulsive and evil. She needs to be charged with multiple hate crimes and given a lengthy prison sentence. #JusticeforJazzy Laura Miers (@LauraMiers) November 1, 2017 During her brief court appearance Brochu remained silent in Hartford Community Court Wednesday morning (Nov. 1) Her case has been transferred to Hartford Superior Court where she will reappear before a judge Nov. 15 This post White College Freshman Brags About Rubbing Used Tampon On Roommates Bag first appeared on Vibe. A former college freshman in Connecticut has been charged with a hate crime after she allegedly tormented a black roommate she called Jamaican Barbie. Hartford police arrested Brianna Rae Brochu on Saturday after they say she admitted to committing a series of vile acts against Chennel Jazzy Rowe in order to get Rowe to move out of the dorm they shared at the University of Hartford. Police said Brochu confessed to licking Rowes dining utensils and smearing menstrual blood on her backpack, according to the Hartford Courant. However, she did not admit to any of the other heinous acts she posted about on social media, telling police that anything else she described was merely an attempt to appear funny. On Instagram, where her account has since been made private, Brochu had boasted about putting moldy clam dip in Rowes lotions, spitting in her coconut oil and sticking Rowes toothbrush where the sun doesnt shine. "I can finally say goodbye to Jamaican Barbie" This is a crime. she could have killed her. #JUSTICEFORJAZZY pic.twitter.com/c3cKsgKhqp tsunami taj (@EverythingTaj) October 31, 2017 According to a court document obtained by Heavy.com, Brochu told police she began to lash out due to a hostile environment caused by Rowes rude behavior. She accused Rowe of not compromising, and posting Snapchat videos of me sleeping and making fun of me snoring. Brochu also said shed been trying to get a room change since early October, but had been unsuccessful. Brochu was charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace on Saturday, but an additional charge of intimidation based on bigotry or bias a hate crime charge was added on Wednesday. She was expelled from the university the same day, according to the New York Times. Story continues She will not be returning to the institution, the schools president, Gregory S. Woodward, told the Times. Brochu had been attending the school on a four-year, $20,000-per-year art scholarship, according to Heavy.com. Rowe believes Brochus actions were racially motivated, especially since her former dormmate called her Jamaican Barbie. Rubbing bloody tampons on my things, ... she posted pictures of my Steve Madden bag that I had been sleeping next to the whole time on my bed with blood stains on it, Rowe told local station WTIC TV. Rowe also discussed the ordeal in a Facebook live post on Monday and said she had been feeling sick lately, but wasnt sure why. It started with throat pain. I thought maybe because its colder up here, Im just probably catching a cold, she said in the video. She added, The sore throat pain got worse and it was just throat pain. And this was happening for about a month. It got to the point where I had extreme throat pain where I couldnt sleep, to the point where I couldnt speak. Like Id try to whisper, and I could barely whisper. Rowe was upset that Brochu had been posting about the things she was doing to her since early September, but she only found out on Oct. 17, when she was moving out, according to Heavy.com. In her live video, Rowe said that school authorities told her she could be removed from her campus residence if she spoke out about her situation. She speculated that the university might have responded to the situation more quickly if she were white and Brochu were black. If the race roles were reversed, I feel like this would have gone down a different route, she said. The incident is getting worldwide attention and #justiceforjazzy has become a trending hashtag on Twitter. Woodward, the school president, released a statement on Wednesday, calling Brochus behavior reprehensible while insisting that the university followed proper protocol: The University strictly and swiftly followed all procedural and legal processes related to this alleged event; claims to the contrary are based on misinformation. The incident has brought about accusations of racism, and I want you to know that I hear and share your anger and frustration. Acts of racism, bias, bullying, or other abusive behaviors will not be tolerated on this campus. I pledge to do everything in my power to work with our community to address related concerns together. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Bullying Even kids who share the same identity -- be it racial or gender -- can be guilty of bullying and discrimination against each other. Ontario's Ministry of Education defines bullying as "a form of repeated, persistent, and aggressive behaviour directed at an individual or individuals that is intended to cause (or should be known to cause) fear and distress and/or harm to another person's body, feelings, self-esteem, or reputation." Cyberbullying Social media can be a platform for bullying to continue even after school is out. Cyberbullying occurs when young people take malicious actions online. through chat rooms, email, social sites and instant messaging. Stock Answer To 'What Are You?' "You don't need to go into full confessional mode, but have fun with it, if that helps. Or be perfectly honest," author Jonathan R. Miller said. Miller writes e-books with multi-ethnic characters and themes. You don't have to talk about all the nuances of your family tree every time you're asked about your background, he said. That can be exhausting. Find something that works for you personally. Real Answer To 'What Are You?' "I like the word 'mixed' because it's a messy word, and in my experience growing up mixed is exactly that," Miller said. He suggests that it's important to allow yourself to truly wrestle with questions of identity in environments you consider safe. A Friend To Confide In If you are struggling with your identity, you don't have to tell the whole world, but confide in a friend that you trust. Having someone to confide in is important. "If you can, find someone who you can talk to about your most honest, ever-evolving, often-messy answer to the question, 'What am I?'" Miller said. If You Can't Speak, Write "Maybe you don't have anyone trustworthy to talk to honestly about your experiences. Write about them. It helped me, sometimes, to get those out," Miller said. It may not make a lot of sense initially and it might feel uncomfortably personal, but write. Keep a journal, write short stories and rename the characters, try your hand at poetry -- whatever feels best. Let Your Identity Be An Open Question "You are likely being told at different times, more or less, to hurry up and get off the fence, pick a side and get on with it," Miller said. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be unsure of who you are, even if your peers seem to have their acts together, he said. Teenage years are discovery years. Miller also quoted author Rainer Maria Rilke: "'Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ... Live in the question.' That's good advice. Difficult to follow, but good." Embrace The Chameleon When it comes to mixed heritage, "you don't have to be 'both' or 'other' or 'all of the above' all of the time. Sometimes the only way to figure out what you are is to choose one thing and be it for a while," Miller said. Explore how it feels to fully embrace a single aspect of your identity, for short period of time. See "what stick and what slides off." It's simply learning, Miller said. Don't Be Afraid To Abandon The Labels Altogether "I can't tell you how many multi-racial people I've met who have chosen a single race or ignored race entirely and been perfectly content with the decision. A biracial friend of mine used to tell me, 'I'm black and white, yes, but I'm black. Period,'" Miller said. He said he knows many people have chosen to identify with only one aspect of their multi-background, while others have embraced the blend. Get Involved In Life Find creative ways to occupy your time, Miller said. Join a group or do an activity (with others) where you are empowered to be who you are, instead of having to act how others think you need to be in order to fit in. Be Proud Of Who You Are Take pride in your ethnic (culture, color or religion) heritage. You have no control over your heritage, and you can't change that fact that this is who you are. So embrace it and learn as much as you can. "You may feel like it would be an insult to your heritage to embrace one aspect of yourself above the others, but trust me, it wouldn't be. This is important: it is not your job to uphold, with perfect equity and grace, all of the elements that went into your making," Miller said. Have A Ready Defense Against The Identity Police "Often they're the 'gatekeepers' that decide whether you're 'in' or 'out.' But what you can do is have a ready answer for the 'charges' they level against you. Whether you use humour, earnestness, or self-righteous anger, it helps to have your defense lined up and ready," Miller said. Sometimes people think all the "members" of their cultural or ethnic community must behave, dress and think a certain way. But as an individual, you can do whatever you want and find your own identity. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. scholarship, news and new ideas in legal history The White House said Wednesday that it considers the New York City terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov an enemy combatant, a legal option in terrorism cases that has been rarely pursued in recent years. I believe we would consider this person to be an enemy combatant, yes, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during the press briefing. I think the actions that he took certainly justify that. Saipov is accused of killing eight people and injuring at least a dozen others in a truck attack in lower Manhattan on Tuesday, the deadliest terror attack in New York City since 9/11. The White House follows two powerful Republican senators arguing for the enemy combatant designation as well: Arizonas John McCain and South Carolinas Lindsey Graham. Saipov should not be read Miranda rights, as enemy combatants are not entitled to them, McCain said in a statement. He qualifies as an enemy combatant under the law of war, Graham said on Fox News. A designation of enemy combatant means suspects can be held without certain rights granted to citizens, so they arent guaranteed a lawyer, for example, and they can be held indefinitely. The president has the power to name enemy combatants. President Obamas administration didnt use the term to symbolically separate the new administration from Bush detention policies, the New York Times reported in 2009, although Obama did not close the Guantanamo Bay detention center for enemy combatants due to congressional restrictions. Earlier Wednesday, President Trump said he would certainly consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo. But Sanders clarified the comment at the briefing, saying that the point [Trump] was making is that he supports or would support that, he wasnt necessarily advocating for that. A Finnish airline made headlines this week after weighing some of its passengers before they boarded planes. Some reports suggested this would become the airlines new normal, but in fact, the weigh-ins ran for a limited time and were totally voluntary. Still, theyre worth discussing for the interesting reason behind them. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Helsinki-based Finnair asked for passenger volunteers to be weighed before departing Helsinki Airport. The airline did so to check its unique passenger population against weight estimates provided by the European Aviation Safety Agency, according to the airlines communications director Paivyt Tallqvist. Passengers who volunteered boarded a scale with their outerwear and carry-on luggage. Their weight was only visible to the airline clerk, Tallqvist told HuffPost. A Finnair pilot boards the scale with his carry-on bag at Helsinki Airport. He was one of some 180 volunteers to be weighed by the airline. (Photo: Paivyt Tallqvist) Like many European airlines, Finnair relies on passenger weight estimates provided by the EASA in 2009, Tallqvist said. They use the estimates along with the weights of checked luggage, aircraft and cargo to make important safety calculations that affect balance, performance and fuel consumption, she added. The EASAs weight estimates put the average male passenger at about 187 pounds and the average female passenger at about 147 pounds. However, passenger weights can vary by nationality, ticket class (for example, men in first class tend to weigh more than those in economy, the BBC reports) and time of year (Finnish passengers usually contribute more weight in winter due to their bulky coats, Tallqvist said). Finnair wants to collect its own data so it can be sure what its own average passenger weighs. This is part of having a very strong safety culture in our organization, Tallqvist said. We want to see if the data were using for calculations is accurate. We use them for every flight, and theyre important for the aircrafts performance. When you explain this to [passengers], they understand. Finnair gate agents stand ready to welcome volunteer passengers during this week's tests at Helsinki Airport. (Photo: Tallqvist Paivyt) Finnair is analyzing the results of this weeks test and will weigh about 2,000 more passengers on a voluntary basis during winter and spring, Tallqvist added. Story continues This isnt the first airline to break out the scales. In 2013, now-defunct Samoa Airlines attracted media attention for its practice of charging passengers partly based on their weight. In 2015, Uzbekistan Airlines announced it would weigh passengers before boarding, citing an allegedly bogus international airline rule. The airline zapped its program before any weigh-ins took place. The following year, travelers filed complaints against Hawaiian Airlines for weighing them before flights to American Samoa, which the airline said was part of a test similar to Finnairs. Also on HuffPost Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. Best Overall Coach-Class Airline in North America: JetBlue Even after the current downgrading, JetBlue's extra legroom still beats any other airline. The de facto charge for a checked bag, at $15 over the minimum fare, is less than on most other airlines. The satellite-based Wi-Fi is free, at slow speeds, and $9 an hour for enough bandwidth to stream movies. And seats in JetBlue's Airbus planes are an inch wider than on any competitors' 737s. Related: 7 Embarrassing Travel Gadgets That Actually Work (Photo: JetBlue) Most Consumer-Friendly Coach-Class Airline in North America: Southwest Its "two checked bags at no extra charge" and "no ticket-change penalty" policies make Southwest a clear winner for being nice to customers. Fortunately, at least so far, Southwest seems to have convinced Wall Street that those passenger-friendly policies gain more revenue in total customers than it would gain by imposing fees and losing customers. With other giant carriers charging checked bag fees of $25 a pop, even one checked bag gives Southwest a $50 round-trip fare advantage. Southwest has even managed to tame the chaos of its unique no-advance-assignment boarding process: You get your boarding group and number when you check in, which you can do online starting 24 hours before departure; at the airport, you line up according to number, and get on the plane with a minimum of pushing and shoving. (Photo: Southwest Airlines) Best Frequent-Flyer Program for Occasional Travelers, North America: Alaska Mileage Plan Coolest Coach-Class Airline in North America: Virgin America Yes, JetBlue beats it by the measurements, but Virgin America keeps earning great survey ratings for its flashy decor, well-trained flight attendants, top inflight technology, and general flair. Obviously, lots of travelers like what it has to offer. You might like it, too. The "Branson cool factor" also applies to Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia. (Photo: Virgin America) Best Ultra-Low-Fare Coach-Class Airline in North America: Allegiant The nod for best ultra-low-fare carrier for coach-class service goes to Allegiant, not because of its base productwhich is down there with Spirit in terms of sheer torturebut because it alone brings the only low-fare mainline service to dozens of communities where travelers would otherwise have to rely on regional flights to nearby hubs, with the usual hassle, wasted time, and high fares of hub connections. Allegiant's "nowhere to somewhere" business model gives travelers to/from communities as small as Hagerstown, Missoula, Owensboro, Provo, South Bend, and Stockton access to nonstop flights to 16 of the country's primary leisure travel destinations, including Honolulu, Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, and Phoenix. If you live in or near a big city, you'd never even think about Allegiant. But it's a no-brainer if you live in the sticks. Related: How to Get a Refund on a Non-Refundable Flight (Photo: Allegiant via Chris Parypa Photography/Shutterstock.com) Best Coach-Class Airline for Seniors in North America: Southwest Southwest is the only airline to offer useful senior fares for travelers 65 or over. Senior fares aren't as low as Southwest's initial lowest "Wanna Get Away" fares for travelers of any age, but when those lowest-fare buckets sell out or when they're no longer available less than a week in advance, Southwest's unrestricted senior fares are usually a lot less than any remaining any-age fares. (Photo: Southwest Airlines) Best Extra-Legroom Airline in North America: JetBlue JetBlue, which starts out with a 1- to 3-inch advantage for regular coach, retains a similar advantage for its extra-legroom cabin. And the price, capped at $90 for a transcontinental flight, is likely to be lower than the variable prices other airlines charge. This is a big advantage JetBlue has over Virgin America, the one airline that surveys usually place in the same class as JetBlue. On Virgin America, the extra-legroom seats, limited to bulkhead and exit rows, cost more than three times the regular-coach fare: more than $900 on a transcon, for example, compared with a base coach fare of $300. Yes, you get extras along with the legroom, but that huge fare premium is a deal breaker for someone who just wants enough space to use an e-reader or tablet comfortably. Related: 10 Tasty Carry-on Snacks You Can Make Yourself (Photo: JetBlue) Best Coach-Class Airline for Intercontinental Flights: Japan Airlines Japan Airlines' new-design Sky Wider economy seats provide the roomiest international economy class you can currently find. Contrary to what most other airlines are doing, JAL is sticking with eight-across seats in its 787s and nine-across in its 777s. That's one fewer seat in each row than the current standard among most other lines, and the remaining seats are almost two inches wider than competitors' seats. The new cabins also offer an industry-leading 34-inch pitch, compared with the 30- to 32-inch pitch you find on most other intercontinental airlines. The onboard catering generally earns high marks, as well; economy travelers enjoy individual 10-inch screens, and the new 777s and 787s provide satellite-based Wi-Fi. Related: 8 Foods You Should Never Eat Before Flying (Photo: Japan Airlines via Vytautas Kielaitis/Shutterstock.com) Best Coach-Class Airline for Transatlantic Flights: Turkish Like JAL, Turkish is sticking with nine-across seating in its 777s, and the onboard service generally earns high marks. Swiss International also rises above others for catering. (Photo: Turkish Airlines) Best Low-Fare Coach-Class Airline for Transatlantic Flights: Norwegian Norwegian flies 787s from a handful of U.S. cities to Scandinavia and from Los Angeles or New York to London/Gatwick. It recently started flying from Baltimore, Boston, and New York to Guadeloupe and Martinique. Fares are usuallyalthough not alwayslower than on the giant airlines, and its 787 product is on par with what the big competitors offer. Related: We Flew on Norwegian's 787 Dreamliner (and It Was Awesome) (Photo: Norwegian Air) Best Business-Class Airline with Coach-Class Prices: La Compagnie The giant airlines will charge you around $1,200 for a nonstop summer round-trip flight between New York and Paris in a cattle-car economy cabin. But two people paying $1,495 each can move up to an angle-flat business-class seat, with business-class cabin service, on La Compagnie, the niche French airline offering low-cost business-class service from Newark to London/Luton and Paris/DeGaulle. La Compagnie's current fare is almost $1,000 less than the premium economy fares on Open Skies or Air France. The price gap between regular economy and La Compagnie isn't always this small. But whenever it is, you sure feel better when you arrive in London or Paris after an overnight in business class than in economy. It's worth considering. Related: 7 Secrets of Ultra-Cheap Europe Flights (Photo: La Compagnie) Best Coach-Class Airplane for Short Flights: Embraer The Embraer 170/175/190/195 series might seem a surprise call, but seats are at least as wide as on A320 series, and they're all two-by-two, with no middles. You never feel bottled up the way those 737s and A320s make you feel. And while it's not technically an airline, this aircraft makes the list because you should look for it when searching for any short-haul coach-class flight. You Might Also Like: 10 Free Things You Can Get at the Airport 10 Things You Should Pack (But Probably Won't) 10 Ways to Speed Through Airport Security (Photo: Thinkstock/iStock) This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Jennifer Appel, right, and Tasha Fuiava sit with their dogs on the deck of the USS Ashland Monday, 30 October 2017 in Okinawa, Japan: AP Photo/Koji Ueda Officials have raised a number of questions about the rescue of two women stranded at sea for nearly five months, particularly about how an emergency locator beacon on board was never activated. US Coast Guard spokesman Lieutenant Scott Carr told the Associated Press that after the agency reviewed the details of the incident through interviews with the Tasha Fuiava and Jennifer Appel, authorities found that an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) was on board but never used. This type of device can be turned on manually, but usually activates a satellite signal when submerged under water. The pair were sailing on what was supposed to be a one-month trip from Hawaii to Tahiti. The Hawaii residents claimed a three-day tropical storm in May threw them off course when they were finally rescued by the US Navy off the coast of Japan on 25 October. Alleged inconsistencies began to arise almost immediately. The National Weather Service has no record of a storm on or near 3 May, the night the women claim they were first thrown off course. Ms Appel and Ms Fuiava also claimed that they did not turn back towards any Hawaii islands after the initial storm because there were no places to dock their sailboat despite only being 50 feet long. Their next possible landing point, part of the island nation of Kiribati, was deemed uninhabited and with a reef that was too shallow to dock by Ms Appel. Christmas Island has about 2,000 residents and well-used port for large vessels The women did not use flares on board or somehow make it to land, where help would have been a days hike away. In initial media interviews, neither Ms Appel or Ms Fuiava mentioned the EPIRB device but did say they had several communications devices which were all non-functioning or had been thrown overboard in the storm. Phillip R Johnson, a retired Coast Guard officer who was responsible for search and rescue operations, told CBS News that "if the [EPIRB] was operational and it was turned on, a signal should have been received very, very quickly that this vessel was in distress. Story continues Though Mr Johnson said failure of a device like that is rare, improperly functioning batteries may cause a problem. Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer 2nd Class Tara Molle told the Associated Press that they asked why during this course of time did they not activate the EPIRB. She had stated they never felt like they were truly in distress, like in a 24-hour period they were going to die. There is also the instance of contact with the Sea Nymph vessel, which was made off the coast of Tahiti in June. The captain of the vessel said they were not in distress and expected hit land the next morning. The timeline of that contact did not match up with the womens story, however. By the date contact was made with the vessel that identified as the Sea Nymph the women reportedly had lost use of engines and the rigging and mast of the boat suffered severe damage. Both women and their dogs appeared in good physical health at the time of rescue. There is no criminal investigation at this time. From Esquire UK If you want to make sure you only fly with the very best next year, this latest airline ranking is a good place to start. The annual assessment of the world's air carriers has been released by AirlineRatings.com and when it comes top-class passenger experience, there's one airline that continues to claim the number one spot. For the fifth year in a row, Air New Zealand has received the best airline accolade, beating rivals Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia which were ranked inside the top five. The assessment is based on 13 criteria, judging airlines on factors like passenger reviews, financial performance, fleet age, environmental leadership and staff management. To be named airline of the year, a carrier must have a seven-star safety rating and for airlines offering long-haul flights, the quality of premium economy and level of passenger comfort is crucial to the evaluation. Air New Zealand - judged to have the best premium economy class - was commended for "continually innovating in all cabins," along with its super comfy flat beds. The airline was also praised for its "seemingly endless" innovations, particularly the wristbands which allow parents to keep track of their children when they're travelling alone. The judges commended the airline for being serious about minimising its impact on the environment, as well as looking after its staff. Other category award-winners include Singapore Airlines, which was named as having the best first class service and the best cabin crew. When it comes to economy, Korean Air came out on top, while Qantas picked up the best catering award. Here's the best airlines in the world list in full, ranked 1-10 according to AirlineRatings.com. 1. Air New Zealand 2. Qantas 3. Singapore Airlines 4. Virgin Australia 5. Virgin Atlantic 6. Etihad Airways 7. Nippon Airways 8. Korean Air 9. Cathay Pacific 10. Japan Airlines And here are the category award-winners: Story continues Airline of the Year: Air New Zealand Best First Class: Singapore Airlines Best Business Class: Virgin Australia Best Premium Economy: Air New Zealand Best Economy: Korean Air Best Cabin Crew: Singapore Airlines Best Catering: Qantas Best Lounges: Qantas Best In-flight Entertainment: Emirates Best Domestic Class: Qantas Regional Airline of the Year: Aegan Airlines (Greece) Most Improved Airline: Tianjin Airlines (China) Ultra-Low-Cost Airline: VietJetAir.com (Vietnam) Best Long-Haul Airline: Etihad (for the Middle East and Africa), Korean Air (Asia-Pacific), Virgin Atlantic (Europe) and Air Canada (the Americas) Best Low-Cost Airline: Westjet (the Americas), Scoot (Asia-Pacific) and Norwegian (Europe) You Might Also Like The 29-year-old man accused of killing eight people in a truck attack in New York was associated with Isis, authorities have said. As investigators started to question Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who is recovering in hospital after being shot by a police officer, officials were seeking for clues to how the man who moved to the US in 2010 became radicalised. Officials said after he left the truck after allegedly mowing down people on a city bike path, Mr Saipov had yelled Allahu akbar. Meanwhile, various reports said he left a note in the vehicle claiming he committed the attack for Isis. Officials said Mr Saipov was an Uber and commercial truck driver and had most recently been living in Paterson, New Jersey. Intelligence officials believe the man who was married with two children, was a lone actor and was not part of a broader plot. At the same time, attention has focussed on how and why the young man became radicalised. In the New Jersey neighbourhood he lived in, people said the family had lived in a property on and off for the last three years. Some people said they only saw Mr Saipov attend the local mosque occasionally. CNN said Mr Saipov has been linked to social media accounts that contain Isis-related material, according to a law enforcement official. The official also said Mr Saipov has been somewhat cooperative with FBI and New York police investigators who questioned him in the hospital overnight. In an interview with the network the morning after the attack on Lower Manhattan, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the suspect was radicalised domestically. He said investigators were still investigating the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the attack. Mr Cuomo said the suspect was a depraved coward. All the evidence points to a lone wolf mode. There is an evolution of tactics for the jihads, he said. Its no longer about training camps in a geographic area. They have a global platform in the internet. And their template is very simple - rent a car, rent a truck, and cause mayhem. Story continues He added: He was a depraved coward. He was associated with Isis and radicalised domestically. He said it was not just New York that was being tanged by such individuals, though the city had seen a series of them, the most deadly terror attack being the Al-Qaida terror attacks of 9/11. He added: Its going to continue. Belgian Ann-Laure Decadt, a mother of two boys, was among eight people killed: Facebook/Ann-Laure Decadt Two US victims in the Halloween terror attack in New York have been identified among the eight dead, which include visitors from Argentina and Belgium. Darren Drake, 33, of New Jersey worked at Moodys Investors Service in the Freedom Tower, the former location of the World Trade Centre, and was riding his bike in between meetings along the West Side Highway path where suspect Sayfullo Saipov had allegedly driven a pickup truck south approximately 20 blocks. His father James Drake told NorthJersey.com that he and wife Barbara were still in shock over the death of their only child. The young man was also pursuing a second Masters degree at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, said his father. Life was perfect for him, Mr Drake said of his son, adding that he was the most innocent, delicate kid in the world. Mr Drake believes his son was one of the six victims declared dead at the scene. Nicholas Cleves was also among the victims. Mother Monica Missio was too distraught to comment publicly. Mr Cleves, a West Village resident, was thought of fondly by those in his neighbourhood. Hes absolutely lovely, he was a sweetheart, warm and friendly. He would come in every day, a deli worker Dianne told the New York Post. Mr Cleves had just completed his bachelors degree in computer science and physics from Skidmore College in Pennsylvania. Dianne noted: There are some people who are just good, and he was. Six of the victims were visitors to the city. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said: Six of them came from other nations here because they saw New York is a special place to be. And we now, and forever, will consider them New Yorkers. A Belgian mother of two, Ann-Laure Decadt, was also identified as one of the victims. Ms Decadt is from Staden, a town of just 11,400 people. She was visiting New York with her mother and sisters when she was run over by the rented Home Depot pickup truck while riding a bicycle. Story continues Husband Alexander Naessens told a Belgian newspaper, in a statement translated from Flemish, that his wifes death was unbearable and that she was the most beautiful mom of our three-month- and three-year-old sons. Her mother and sisters were unharmed. Staden Mayor Francesco Vanderjeugd told the New York Post his small town is in shock. Everybody knows each other. Its unbelievable because she was a young mother and she was so committed to the community, he said. Mr Vanderjegud echoed many US politicians when he said: Its an attack not only in New York but also an attack on our community on our way of life. The mayor mentioned Mr Naessens is holding up but struggling with how to tell his older son about Ms Decadts death. Rosario, in Argentina, was particularly hard hit with the loss of five residents: Hernan Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernan Ferruchi. The victims were among eight friends celebrating marking their 1987 graduation from the Polytechnic School of Rosario with a US trip to New York and Boston, near where one of their classmates lives. In Rosario, a minute of silence was observed at the high school, the Argentina flag was flown at half-mast, and a candlelight vigil has been scheduled. Argentinas President Mauricio Macri said the mens deaths has hit all Argentines hard, adding that theres no place for gray areas the fight against terrorism must be committed to from head to toe. According to one Argentine official, four of the men died at the scene while one died after being taken to the hospital. Mr Erlij, the chief executive at Argentine steel products manufacturing company Ivanar, had treated his friends to the trip. The surviving friend who is recovering from injuries in the hospital, Martin Ludovico Marro, is a Boston-area resident working for a division of pharmaceutical giant Novartis. Twelve victims remain in hospital, four in critical but stable condition and at least one undergoing an amputation, said New York City Police Commissioner James ONeill. Sayfullo Saipov, from Tampa, Florida, remains in stable condition after being shot in the stomach by a police officer after he reportedly crashed the truck into a school bus containing two adults and two children. The FBI has been searching his home and neighbourhood in Paterson, New Jersey, where he has been living with his wife and children for less than a year. Neighbours of the man suspected of having killed eight people in Lower Manhattan are outraged and disgusted by the acts of a man who many say had been seen in the area, but was otherwise not well known to the Muslim community. Muslims living close to the Omar mosque in Paterson, New Jersey, which is located very close to the home of alleged attacker Sayfullo Saipov, said the acts of terror and violence against innocent civilians were not a facet of Islam, and were instead the product of a disturbed, criminal mind. They are sick people. They are not representing me, a Muslim, Mohammed Khalil, who lives just a block from the mosque, said of jihadi terrorists. They are criminals. Mr Saipov is suspected of having driven a rented pick-up truck down a bike path in Lower Manhattan, leaving a trail of smashed bikes and bodies in his path. Eight people have been confirmed dead by officials, and at least 11 others were injured in the attack. The attacker is said to have exited his vehicle after crashing into a school bus near Chambers Street, the location of several schools which were letting out children for the Halloween evening. He then is said to have waved a pellet gun and a paintball gun in the air while pledging himself to Allah. He was shot by police. Officials later named the suspect as Mr Saipov, and indicated that he had come to the United States in 2010, and has since lived in Florida and New Jersey. He was later said to have been residing in an apartment building just around the corner from the Omar mosque, in a multi-family red-brick apartment complex within throwing distance of the house of worship. The city of Paterson is located 25 miles to the north-west of New York. But mosque officials say that Mr Saipov was not a member, even though he had been seen at prayer services previously. He is not associated with the mosque, Ibrahim Matari, the president of the mosque, said on Wednesday, speaking through an interpreter, on a dreary day. Story continues Others said that they had seen Mr Saipov around and that he was friendly, though not particularly outgoing. Khalid Hinnawi, who said he frequently prayed at the mosque, said that he had seen Mr Saipov around and that they would exchange hellos. But, Mr Hinnawi stressed that violence was not fundamental to his communitys beliefs. We dont have nothing to do with this guy, Mr Hinnawi said. We are American citizens. Its not fair. Its not fair. One neighbour of Mr Saipovs, Carlos Batista, said that he had been aware of Mr Saipov since he moved to the area a year ago, but that there was nothing out of the ordinary about him. Mr Batista, who is not Muslim, said Mr Saipov generally spent time with two to three other individuals, as well as his wife and children. At one point, when Mr Batista said he was being loud late at night with a motorcycle, Mr Saipov had been an advocate for peace when one of those two or three other individuals got heated. He had stepped in when things looked like they were going to get physical. Other than that run-in, not much else stood out or changed. Same old, same old, all the time, Mr Batista said of the suspected killers behaviour over the past year. The community now is grappling with the aftermath of the attack, and some say their past proximity to a man they barely knew is worrisome. Theyre not sure what will happen now that theyve been associated with such a high profile crime. Were scared, said a woman who works at the nearby Falafel Abou Reda restaurant, a spot located a block away from the mosque. Were scared. The Iranians are showing no signs of panic in light of the Israeli threats to drive them out of Syria. They have a lot of experience with the Israeli leadership, and they understand what many Israelis have yet to comprehend: The person accusing half his people of being sourpusses who keep missing opportunities is himself the national master of missed opportunities. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Iranians studied the way the Israeli security echelon under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu handled the nuclear crisis at the beginning of the decade, and they have no reason to assume that something in him has changed: All talk and no action. Business as usual. Today its already clear, more than in the past, that the Iranians didnt take Israels threats to attack Irans nuclear facilities seriouslynot even during the critical years, 2011-2012, when the Israeli government created the impression that it was prepared and about to make a decision to destroy the Iranian nuclear project at any given moment. Netanyahu will talk and threaten, but its unlikely Israel will carry out a wide-scale military operation that will pull the rug from under Irans feet in Syria (Photo: EPA) Western diplomats who served in Tehran during those years, Iranian exiles residing in the West and other sources are able to tell their Israeli colleagues today that the Iranians were never afraid of an independent Israeli strike at the time. They were afraid of an American attack that would perhaps be carried out together with Israel or as a result of an Israeli provocation that would push the United States to launch a military operation. According to reports that accompanied the nuclear crisis in the beginning of the decade, then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak maintained as well that Israel could attack on its own, as a last resort. But an effective attack with international backing, which wouldnt leave Israel in a state of isolation, could only be carried out together with the US. There were some people in Israel who estimated that the Americans would discuss a joint military option with us only if they were convinced that Israel had the ability and willingness to carry out a military operation deep within Iran. Indeed, they did hold very concerned dialogues with Israel based on the intelligence they had, which indicated that Israel had acquired independent abilities to attack. The US closely followed the Israeli preparations and was updatedin an informal and unauthorized mannerby our own people, who believed that an Israeli strike was a dangerous idea. At the end of the day, the Israeli military pressure created three phenomena: The Israeli public actually took its leadership seriously, and received a daily dose of anxiety over an unconventional war with Iran; the Americans stepped up their threats of military action and economic sanctions on Tehran, but that was what eventually led to an initial agreement with Iran in 2013, which Israel was left out of; and at the same time, in their difficult anxiety periods, the Americans promised to supply Israel with security aid in imaginary scopes, as long as it halted its military preparations, and even presented Israel with military abilities that they promised to use if Israel suffered the slightest damage. Netanyahu, however, refused to be impressed by the American goodwill at the time: He believed that he, with his rhetoric power, would lead the American representatives against their president. The national master of missed opportunities lost in every possible corner. He lost security aid in sums that Israel could only dream of, and received instead a generous annual grantthough one whose size was not unusual when compared to previous grantsfrom US President Barack Obama. That didnt stop him from marketing this missed opportunity to the public as an extraordinary achievement. Netanyahu never believed in the efficiency of economic sanctions as an absolute solution to the nuclear issue. Sanctions, as far as he is concerned, as just an interim stage. He believes in the military solution. In the Obama era, a joint Israeli-American attack was unrealistic. Donald Trump is giving him some hope that the military vision will be implemented, but according to the American presidents conduct so far, its a false hope. Netanyahu is enjoying the image he has built for himself of the father of the military option against Iran: He is the one who identified the problem, he offered solutions, and thanks to him, the nuclear development in Iran was postponed. These are half-truths. He is not the one who started the preparations for the military optionit was former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, towards the end of his term, began allotting money to preparations for a major military operation, while favoring the Mossads secret activity. The military preparations continued during the Ehud Olmert era too, in which the Mossad was said to have scored impressive achievements in postponing the project. Netanyahu was in the opposition at the time. He was in on the secret. He didnt invent anything and didnt offer anything new, apart from a series of eloquent speeches on the nuclear issue. The world moved in a different direction, leaving us behind. When he already presented his own strategy for a military move, he was overpowered by the army and the Mossad. This is what is going to happen vis-a-vis Syria as well. Netanyahu will talk, threaten and sweep the masses off their feet, but its unlikely that Israel will carry out a wide-scale military operation that would pull the rug from under Irans feet in Syria. Moreover, it doesnt seem like Israel is being included in any diplomatic moves that could support a military operation to drive the Iranians away from the region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told British Prime Minister Theresa May Thursday that he would not work to cancel the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers, but rather seek to improve and fix it. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "The goal that I have in mind is not keeping or eliminating the deal; its improving the deal and correcting its main flaws," Netanyahu said during the two leaders' meeting at 10 Downing Street. "And I think those who want to keep the deal should cooperate in correcting the deal." Netanyahu and May meet at 10 Downing Street (Photo: AFP) "Arab countries now see Israel not as an enemy, but as their indispensable ally in the battle against militant Islam. The threat we all see is a resurgent Iran that is bent not only on dominating the region, but bent on developing nuclear weapons," Netanyahu told May. Netanyahu and May meet at 10 Downing Street (Photo: Koby Gideon/GPO) The prime minister was in London to attend a banquet hosted by descendants of Balfour and the recipient of his declaration, Jewish community leader Walter Rothschild, in the gilded halls of Lancaster House mansion. "Israel is committed to peace, Im committed to peace," Netanyahu stressed. "A hundred years after Balfour, the Palestinians should finally accept the Jewish national home and finally accept the Jewish state. And when they do, the road to peace will be infinitely closer. In my opinion, peace will be achievable." Netanyahu and May meet at 10 Downing Street (Photo: AFP) Netanyahu thanked May for welcoming him, "and for inviting me to mark with pride a great historical event, a great event in Jewish history, British history and world history." He went on to say that "A hundred years ago, the Balfour Declaration helped pave the way for the reestablishment of an independent state for the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. A hundred years later, our two countries, our two democracies Israel and Britain are strong allies and partners. "We cooperate closely on intelligence. We cooperate closely in the battle against terrorism. And weve saved, through this cooperation, countless livesBritish lives, Israeli lives. We cooperate in cybersecurity, in technology, in business and enterprise. We share the values of freedom and democracy and peace," he added. The Israeli premier also thanked May for her "resolute stand against anti-Semitism, for your resolute stand on the historical truth." Netanyahu arrives at 10 Downing Street (: ) X Netanyahu also met with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Thursday. On Friday morning, he is scheduled to speak at Chatham House and answer questions. Later, Netanyahu and his wife Sara will participate in an event at the London Stock Exchange, with the Israel prime minister opening the trade. He will then meet with heads of corporations in Britain. On Sunday, Netanyahu will meet with Britain's chief rabbi and then with the heads of the Jewish community in the country. He will return to Israel on Sunday. Boiler Room and Ballantine's Scotch Whisky has announced the launch of True Music Africa - a four-city tour, kicking off in Cape Town on 23 November Boiler Room and Ballantines True Music platform champions artists with a pioneering spirit, challenging them to continue pushing boundaries. True Music Africa will tell the stories of varied music scenes sweeping the continent via compelling documentaries and live-streamed parties. Africa is full of diverse sounds and artists pioneering creativity. As the influence from a vast range of music genres across the continent is increasingly felt in European and American production, global tastemakers are looking towards their thriving underground scenes for inspiration. Our previous shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg with Boiler Room were some of the most sonically exciting weve had the pleasure of working on. So, this time around were looking forward to going back and getting even deeper under the skin of diverse nightlife cultures with True Music artists, said Patrick Venning, Ballantines marketing director. The Cape Town show features some of the countrys most well-respected original self-starters, including: K$ Dope Saint Jude Youngsta CPT Aux Womdantso DJ Lyle Boiler Room x Ballantines True Music Africa follows the success of the recent global True Music projects, headlined by Maya Jane Coles and Seth Troxler, as well as multiple visits to South Africa together. The project will be the first time Boiler Room have hosted their signature broadcast events in Cameroon or Kenya. We're very excited to be taking our partnership with Ballantine's to Africa to celebrate pioneers of new sounds across four territories. Our vision for this project has been to work with artists who have crafted not just the sound, but often the ground up infrastructure of hyper-local music communities as well, added Blaise Bellville, Boiler Room founder and CEO. truemusic.boilerroom.tv. Academic publisher Springer Nature says it has blocked access to articles within China to comply with demands from the Chinese government. The company said yesterday about 1 percent of its content available online in global markets has been blocked in compliance with local distribution laws. The articles related to topics such as Taiwan, Tiananmen Square and Tibet considered sensitive by the ruling Communist Party. They can only be viewed with a virtual private network allowing users to skirt Chinas tight internet censorship regime, known as the Great Firewall. The newspaper Financial Times reported that at least 1,000 articles were blocked. The decision by Springer which owns Nature magazine and Palgrave Macmillan books, and produces periodicals such as Scientific American prompted anger from academics, FT reports. Two months after Cambridge University Press acceded to similar pressures from Beijing, before reversing course after an intense backlash against its surrender of academic freedom. In August, academic publisher Cambridge University Press restored more than 300 politically sensitive articles that had been removed from the publishers website in China at the behest of authorities. Its a symbol of how unprepared we are in the west for Chinas influence expanding outwards, said Jonathan Sullivan, director of the University of Nottinghams China Policy Institute and author of one of the censored articles told FT. Its about how we perceive our relationship with China and how much we value principles versus the instrumental benefits of pleasing the authorities in China. Springer said in a statement that it had blocked access to a small percentage of our content [less than 1 per cent] in mainland China but that the articles remained available elsewhere. It said it was obliged to comply with local distribution laws, which are enforced by its partner, the state-owned China National Publications Import & Export Corporation. Springer added that the Chinese censorship would have no influence from an editorial perspective on the content we publish and that it remained committed to safeguarding the integrity of the scientific record. MDT/Agencies Young Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong warned yesterday that Chinas rise means human rights are in increasingly greater danger of being overshadowed globally by business interests. He was responding to questions about his expectations for an upcoming Asian tour by President Donald Trump, who will visit China and four other countries. The 21-year-old, Hong Kongs most famous activist, is out on bail while he appeals a prison sentence related to his involvement in massive 2014 pro-democracy protests. Business interests override human rights, he said in an interview with The Associated Press. It unfortunately seems to be a common trend in the world under a rising China. During Trumps Asian trip, he said theres likely to be a lot of uncertainty. No one can expect what will suddenly be published on his Twitter. But he urged Trump to not let human rights lose out to commercial considerations, hinting that U.S. business interests could also someday be directly affected by Chinas rising clout. As an example, he referred to the recent case of British human rights activist Benedict Rogers, who was barred from entering Hong Kong on what many suspect to be Beijings request, and said it might happen again. The day may come for U.S. politicians to be blocked from entering Hong Kong and when politicians or businessmen from the U.S. might not be possible to enter such an international financial center, how can they keep silent on the erosion of Hong Kong autonomy? he said. Beijing promised to let Hong Kong maintain wide autonomy and civil liberties after its 1997 handover from Britain under the one country, two systems blueprint, but pro-democracy activists and lawmakers fear that Chinas communist rulers are reneging on their promises. Wong urged the U.S. and other Western countries to pay closer attention to how the China model threatens Asia-Pacific stability. The China model is a reference to economic development without corresponding democratic reforms as well as the name of a controversial booklet praising Chinas one-party rule the Hong Kong government planned to distribute in 2012 to schools as part of moral and national education. Wong helped lead protests forcing the government to shelve those plans. Wong was given bail last week, two months into a six-month prison sentence. He and a fellow activist, Nathan Law, were both sent to prison after the justice secretary won a legal challenge overturning more lenient sentences. The move sparked fears Hong Kongs independent judiciary was under threat. Theyre due in court Nov. 7 to appeal the sentences. Wong, who is also awaiting sentencing for another case, is prepared to go back to jail. He turned 21 while behind bars and said it might not be the last time I will celebrate my birthday inside prison. During his time behind bars, Wong had to do compulsory marching exercises 30 minutes a day and ate with a spoon because forks, knives and chopsticks are banned. Not being allowed a phone he couldnt update his popular social media accounts but Wong said being unplugged allowed him the opportunity for spiritual reflection. Prison news was limited to Hong Kongs pro-Beijing publications, but he read books such as I Am Malala, by 20-year old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai. Out of prison, he is making the most of time, hanging out with his parents and girlfriend, playing video games and enjoying favorite local foods like Hong Kong-style milk tea. Wong plans to keep fighting for full democracy in Hong Kong. In the short term, he said his political party, Demosisto, will announce a candidate as early as next week to run in a by-election next year for the citys semi-democratic legislature to fill a seat vacated when Law was disqualified because of a government legal challenge. In the long run, he said theres plenty of work to do getting Hong Kongers to adjust their mindset to resist Beijings tightening grip. I still believe Hong Kong people can overcome even though we are inside the prison set by China.Kelvin Chan & Yi-Ling Liu, Hong Kong, AP Thomas Jefferson may have been the first winemaker in Virginia, but it took another 200 years for the industry to blossom in the state. Today, with 300 wineries, Virginia is the fifth-largest wine region in the United States. While 70 percent of the states wineries are clustered in eastern Virginia, its worth a trip across the Blue Ridge Mountains to the west side, where some of the states best wines are produced in the scenic Shenandoah Valley. Nestled between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountain ranges, the valleys dry climate, warm days and cool nights produce some outstanding grapes. The valley is about an hours drive from Washington, D.C., but my husband Rick and I approached it from the south, after driving up a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had planned to stay one night in the charming town of Strasburg and then head the four hours home to Pennsylvania until we discovered the multitude of wineries in the area and added another day to our trip. There are two dozen wineries in Shenandoah County, primarily family owned boutique operations growing French- American hybrid grapes. We visited five of the tasting rooms in the northern region, all of which boasted stunning mountain vistas. Tasting fees ranged from USD4.75 to $10, and wines were priced at $18-$30. Shenandoah Vineyards in Edinburg, established in 1976, is still run by 90-year-old Emma Randel, who lives in the log house where her mother was born in 1895. Two decks offer lovely views of the mountains. Fifteen acres are planted with riesling, chardonnay, vidal blanc, seyval blanc, chambourcin and traminette. We were partial to the Rebel Red blend. Eleven miles to the north in Maurertown is the North Mountain Vineyard & Winery. At 300 meters of elevation, this land has been farmed since the 1700s, and grapes first were planted in 1982. In addition to more traditional varietals, North Mountain grows the German-Austrian gruner veltliner and zweigeit grapes. The winery makes a spiced wine based on a traditional German gluhwein and an Oktoberfest white blend of traminette, vidal blanc and riesling. We bought a bottle of claret, a Bordeaux-style wine that North Mountain supplies to George Washingtons Mount Vernon plantation. From North Mountain, we took a beautiful, winding route over the mountain to the Cedar Creek Winery near Star Tannery, perched at 1,100 feet (335 meters) on the banks of its namesake creek. Cedar Creek produces only 30 cases of cabernet franc and 120 cases of chardonnay each year. Here, you can experience a vertical tasting, sampling different vintages of each wine with owner Ron Schmidt, a retired law enforcement officer. We thought Cedar Creeks wines were the best of the tour, especially the 2009, 2010 and 2012 cabernet franc and the 2011 chardonnay. At lunchtime, we traveled to the Valerie Hill Vineyard & Winery in Stephens City, where the tasting room is in a Federal-style brick manor house built in 1807 by Revolutionary War Capt. Peter Rust. The winery was serving chili and cornbread, which we enjoyed with a glass of 2015 petit verdot on the screened porch. Valerie Hill features live music on weekend afternoons. And from October to February, History & Hauntings dinners include a tour of the building and ghost stories about a woman in the cellar who cries for help and a boy locked forever in the attic. The fee is $49 per person. The James Charles Winery & Vineyard in Winchester, established in 1995, produces 10,000 cases per year of a variety of wines, including ameritage, cabernet franc, petit verdot, riesling, sauvignon blanc and viognier, for which it won a double gold medal at the 2016 San Francisco International Wine Competition. The winerys expansive patio provides a scenic setting to enjoy a bottle of wine and a bread and cheese plate. For $30, you can attend a vintners table seated tasting with food pairings. Our final stop was Veramar Vineyard in Berryville, which has 26 acres (10 hectares) of grapes including the Spanish white varietal albarino and Americas oldest native grape, Norton. Veramar consistently earns ratings in the 80s from the likes of Wine Enthusiast and Robert Parker, most recently for its 2015 merlot, chardonnay, cabernet franc and seyval blanc. We picked up bottles of the latter two. Veramar hosts picnics on its large patio on Friday and Saturday afternoons for $29.99, and plans a music and tree lighting gathering Dec. 2 with mulled wine and cookies. In addition to the wineries, the Shenandoah Valley is dotted with historic sites dating back to colonial times. You can hike in Shenandoah National Park. Quaint inns and bed and breakfasts include The Inn at Narrow Passage in Edinburg, the site of Stonewall Jacksons headquarters in 1862, and the Hotel Strasburg. Sally Carpenter Hale, AP Yesterday morning local time, Macau, alongside seven other cities around the world, was officially designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy by the director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova. With this designation, Macau has become the third Chinese city to hold the prestigious position, joining Chengdu and Shunde, who had this title conferred upon them in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The designation of Macau as a member city of UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) will bring new opportunities for the territory, according to a statement released yesterday by the Office of the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture. The statement explained that gastronomy [is] a driver to preserve Macaus cultural identity, while promoting sustainable development and expanding its international cooperation, and noted that these advantages would offer a new direction for Macaus development. This title reflects the global recognition of Macaus 400-plus- year old culinary legacy and the increasing interest among the young generation in gastronomy culture and especially Macanese cuisine. It will also provide favorable conditions for food traditions to continuously thrive, the office said. I am extremely happy that we joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of Gastronomy, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam said yesterday. Macau will cherish this new title and make good use of it to help transform our city into a world center of tourism and leisure. Gastronomy has all along been a distinctive element of our culture [] and we will devote our utmost efforts to bring our unique elements to contribute to the enrichment of the network, he added. As for the creativity which this new title will encourage, the Office expects the designation to stimulate stakeholders in gastronomy and agents in other creative sectors to explore how the culinary scene and other cultural aspects can fuse to diversify the economy. This will not only broaden the creative capacity in gastronomy but also enable Macau to collaborate with other UCCN members in different creative areas to experiment in synergistic initiatives, such as gastronomy with films, music, design and more, the statement noted. The member cities that have started these crosscutting initiatives that link gastronomy to the other creative arts can serve as advisors to the younger members. Calling on the experience of the older member cities will foster new opportunities for global cooperation in the cultural and creative industries. The UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy program is part of its UNESCO Creative Cities Network, covering the seven creative fields of crafts and folk art, design, film, gastronomy, literature, music and media arts. Launched in 2004, the UCCN was created to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable development with regard to economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects. In November last year, representatives from 16 Creative Cities of Gastronomy convened in Macau, along with experts and academics in the field, to attend Macaus first edition of the International Gastronomy Forum, Macau. According to Tams Office, this forum helped put Macau in the sights of the UNESCO committee and aided with its application for yesterdays designation. A man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial yesterday [Macau time], killing at least eight and seriously injuring 11 in what the mayor called a particularly cowardly act of terror. The driver was shot in the abdomen by police after jumping out of the truck with what turned out to be a fake gun in each hand and shouting what witnesses said was Allahu Akbar, Arabic for God is great, authorities said. The man underwent surgery and was in critical condition but was expected to survive. Officials who werent authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity identified the attacker as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov and said he is from Uzbekistan and came to the U.S. legally in 2010. The officials said Saipov has a Florida drivers license and may have been staying in New Jersey, and a family friend described roots he had in Ohio, where he lived years ago and was a commercial truck driver. The ride-hailing service Uber confirmed later on that Saipov was one if its drivers. The company said he passed a background check and had been actively driving on the platform for more than six months. He has since been banned from the Uber app. We are horrified by this senseless act of violence, the company said in a statement. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our assistance. The driver in yesterdays attack barreled along the bike path in a rented Home Depot truck for the equivalent of about 14 blocks, or around eight-tenths of a mile, before slamming into a small yellow school bus. The mayhem and the burst of police gunfire set off panic in the neighborhood and left the pavement strewn with mangled bicycles and bodies that were soon covered with sheets. I saw a lot of blood over there. A lot of people on the ground, said Chen Yi, an Uber driver. Eugene Duffy, a chef at a waterfront restaurant, said, So many police came, and they didnt know what was happening. People were screaming. Females were screaming at the top of their lungs. Police closed off streets across the western edge of lower Manhattan along the Hudson River, and officers rushed into the neighborhood just as people were preparing for Halloween festivities, including the big annual parade through Greenwich Village. A police bomb squad scoured the truck but found no explosives. This was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. New York and other cities around the globe have been on high alert against attacks by extremists in vehicles. The Islamic State group has been exhorting its followers to mow down people, and England, France and Germany have seen deadly vehicle attacks in the past year or so. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called it a lone wolf attack and said there was no evidence to suggest it was part of a wider plot. The citys police commissioner, James ONeill, said a statement the driver made as he got out of the truck and the method of attack led police to conclude it was a terrorist act. On Twitter, President Donald Trump called it another attack by a very sick and deranged person and declared, NOT IN THE U.S.A.! While police did not specifically blame the Islamic State group for the New York bloodshed, Trump railed against the extremist group, tweeting, We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough! Records show Saipov was a commercial truck driver who formed a pair of businesses in Ohio after moving to the U.S. The first business, Sayf Motors Inc., used the address of a family friend near Cincinnati with whom Saipov had stayed for a couple of weeks after his arrival in the country. The second, Bright Auto LLC, used an address near Cleveland. A trucking industry website listed Saipov at a Paterson, New Jersey, address that authorities were searching. Court records related to trucking-related infractions list Saipov with addresses in Paterson and the Cleveland suburbs. The family friend with whom Saipov stayed in Ohio, Dilnoza Abdusamatova, told The Cincinnati Enquirer Saipov was really calm and worked hard. He always used to work, Abdusamatova said. He wouldnt go to parties or anything. He only used to come home and rest and leave and go back to work. Police said Saipov rented the truck at about 2 p.m. in New Jersey, entering the bike path about an hour later on West Street a few blocks from the new World Trade Center, the site of the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history. The truck then turned at Chambers Street, hitting the school bus and injuring two adults and two children. A paintball gun and a pellet gun were found at the scene, police said. At least two covered-over bodies could be seen lying on the bike path, and the front end of the truck was smashed in, as was the side of the school bus. Two law enforcement officials said a note was recovered inside the truck. One official said the note was handwritten in a foreign language, possibly Arabic. The contents were being investigated, but the officials said the document supported the belief the act was terrorism. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Tom Gay, a school photographer, heard people saying there was an accident and went down to West Street, where a woman came around the corner shouting, He has a gun! He has a gun! Gay said he stuck his head around the corner and saw a slender man in a blue track suit running on West Street holding a gun. He said a heavyset man was chasing him. He said he heard five or six shots, and the man in the tracksuit fell to the ground, gun still raised in the air. He said a man came over and kicked the gun out of his hand. Argentinas foreign ministry said five of the dead hailed from that country. Belgian officials said one of the dead was from there. The citys Halloween parade went on as scheduled after the attack, but security was increased, with extra officers, heavy-weapons teams and sand trucks parked as protective barriers along the route. A Home Depot Inc. spokesman said the company, based in Atlanta, was fully cooperating with law enforcement in the truck attack investigation. Colleen Long & Jake Pearson, New York, AP Authorities are trying to figure out how a longtime criminal recently released from an Alabama prison ended up in a Utah canyon where hes suspected of killing a 23-year-old devout Mormon immigrant from China. ChenWei Guo came to the United States in 2012 and dreamed of opening a consulting firm. He was studying computer science in his first year at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Friends say the 23-year-old smiled easily, loved to dance and could be found trekking canyons around Salt Lake City, like the one where his body was found Monday night. A 24-year-old ex-convict is suspected of shooting the student to death after demanding Guos car, according to Utah authorities. Police found Guos body still in his vehicle in a canyon just east of campus, prompting a campus-wide lockdown and a massive overnight manhunt at the school and in the rugged foothills nearby. Austin Boutain surrendered without incident yesterday [Macau time] at a city library several miles away, about 15 hours after Guo was found. It just seemed like the most senseless thing to do, take the life of such a great person, said Steve Comrie, a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation that included Guo. Boutain has a rap sheet that includes drug, car theft and weapons charges in Minnesota and Alabama dating back to his days a juvenile. He was paroled in May after serving a year and a half in an Alabama prison for being a convicted sex offender and failing to report his whereabouts to police. Alabama court records show Boutain and his wife Kathleen married in 2014 and had two children. He filed for divorce in January while imprisoned, but the split wasnt finalized in court. Boutain and his wife were wanted for questioning with the killing of a 63-year-old Golden, Colorado man whose truck is missing but which authorities say Boutain may have driven to Utah. Police said Mitchell Bradford Ingle, whose body was found Tuesday in his trailer home, may have been friendly with the Boutains but it wasnt clear how they met and how the older man was killed. Kathleen Boutain was jailed in Utah on unrelated drug and theft charges after she reported to police that her husband had assaulted her while they were camping in the canyon. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown and University of Utah police did not have details about how Boutain encountered Guo and later evaded hundreds of officers who swarmed the campus after the shooting. A lockdown at the university, which has about 32,800 students, ended yesterday and school officials canceled classes for the day. About 175 students had to shelter in the library Monday night because they couldnt return to their homes. Lindsay Whitehurst, Salt Lake City, AP A forum on the recently unveiled Tourism Master Plan was organized this week at the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST). During the event, several scholars from local universities voiced their doubts regarding the exact definition of the governments goal of turning Macau into a World Center of Tourism and Leisure. Zeng Zhonglu, a professor from the Macau Polytechnic Institute, questioned: What exactly will it be after 15 years? The government did not explain it, which is a relatively big flaw. In Zengs opinion, if the government carries on with this plan, then there will be many problems. He gave an example of a probable future issue, saying that tourists will no longer appreciate the current facilities in 15 years. He then said that the government should develop plans that avoid spending huge amounts of money and that wont have tourists not liking the tourism projects funded with that money. Overall, our tourism structure depends strongly on the greater China area, with the portion of overseas tourists being relatively low, remarked Zeng. The Vice President of MUST, Pang Chuan, agreed with Zeng and enquired about what exactly should a city have in order to be called the Worlds Tourism and Leisure Center? The president of the Macau Civil Aviation Employees Association, Hu Gaohong, also wondered whether there can be a criterion to [comprehensively define a World Center of Tourism and Leisure. When talking about Las Vegas, which Hu visited recently, the association head described how the whole streets in Las Vegas are filled with people, and they are very happy. The whole city seems like a party is ongoing. However, although Macaus revenue exceeds Las Vegass, I cannot feel a happy atmosphere. It seems that there are not too many people on the streets because they are inside the casinos. In Hus opinion, Macau can provide more air tourism related products, for example, taking the passengers to fly above Hong Kong or to fly to one of Zhuhais islands for a visit. Macau can absolutely become an aviation training base. The deputy director of the Macau Government Tourism Office, Cheng Wai Tong, defended the Macau government, saying that the tourism master plan was designed to coordinate with and reply to [the request of] the SAR government regarding building Macau into a World Tourism and Leisure Center. This positioning was given to Macau by the Central [Government]. Another professor from the Institute for Tourism Studies, Zhao Weibing, indicated that Macau has been doing a poor job, compared to mainland China and Australia, in terms of making tourism plans. The mainlands tourism industry develops rapidly and in good order, and Australia is the worlds pioneer in regard to making tourism plans. [] Macaus tourism plan commenced a little bit late, and ended up missing a very good time, [] the first five years [after the handover] were a golden time for making tourism plans, said Zhao. Zhao tempered his statement by adding that the governments tourism master plan was issued in a timely manner. TWIN FALLS Twin Falls City Council incumbents are outspending and out-campaigning their challengers, according to new finance reports. Candidates were required to file campaign disclosure statements by Tuesday. In Twin Falls, theyre competing for three seats currently held by Suzanne Hawkins, Greg Lanting and Christopher Reid. City elections in odd-numbered years typically dont trigger high-dollar campaigns, and some of this years challengers hadnt raised any contributions to their campaigns this filing period unlike the incumbents. Reids opponent, Brian Bell, hasnt spent anything, according to his reports, nor has he solicited any contributions. And Lanting is the only one in his race who has solicited contributions no surprise, he also outspent his opponents. Hawkins, meanwhile, faces three challengers and appears to be getting a run for her money from challengers Eric Smallwood and Liyah Babayan. Heres a quick look at the numbers from the disclosure reports this filing period. The reports are available to view in full on the citys website, tfid.org. $497.76 What Christopher Reid spent on his campaign, mostly at Vistaprint.com, Facebook and Standard Printing. $725 What Reid brought in for contributions. His biggest single donation was $400 from Ken Romney. $4.44 What Larry Houser spent on his campaign (at Office Max). All of it was his own money, and he hasnt raised any donations. $301.58 What Tim Allen spent, all of it his own money. He hasnt raised any outside contributions, either. $1,830.10 Lantings expenditures, mostly made to local media outlets. Hes raised $1,710 in contributions. $1,000 What Idaho Association of Realtors donated to both Greg Lanting and Hawkins. The organization was both incumbents largest single contributor. $2,300 What Hawkins raised in campaign contributions. $1,538.09 What Hawkins spent, mostly through the Times-News, Standard Printing and Vistaprint.com. $199.28 What Leon Mills spent (all from his own and his spouses money). $968.75 What Eric Smallwood raised for his campaign. His largest donation was $500 from James Holesinsky. $113.12 What Smallwood spent on his campaign but this doesnt include the $503.50 in outstanding debt. $890 What Liyah Babayan raised in campaign contributions, mostly from 23 people who donated $50 or less. $644.35 What Babayan spent for her campaign at VistaPrint.com, Facebook and Copy-It. Editor's note: This story was updated at noon Nov. 2 to include figures from Liyah Babayan's financial disclosure report. GOODING Two Magic Valley residents suspected of stealing four guns from Simerlys Department Store in Wendell have been arrested in Boise. Cruz Rubalcava of Wendell and Zackery Tyler of Twin Falls were arrested Wednesday by Boise City Police. Details of the arrests have not been released. Each have been charged in Ada County with new felony counts. Rubalcava has been charged with two counts of grand theft, misdemeanor obstruction, felony Possession and unlawful entry. Tyler has been charged burglary, grand theft and misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance. One of the guns stolen from Simerlys has been recovered, and the search will continue for the other three, a statement from the Gooding County Prosecutors Office said. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also investigating. Gooding County has filed charges of burglary against the two and is investigating possible charges of grand theft. Rubalcaba also faces possible charges in Jerome County on suspicion of felony eluding and possession of stolen property, the prosecutors office said. All agencies involved are still diligently investigating and gathering new evidence that will be carefully reviewed and analyzed, the statement said. The Gooding County Prosecutors Office will provide updates as we are able to do so. RUPERT Prosecutors have struck a plea deal with a Rupert man who police say choked a 16-year-old girl and cut her with a shard of glass after she told him to stop kissing her. Case Weems, 18, was originally charged with felony injury to a child. Minidoka County Prosecutor Lance Stevenson said Weems has agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor battery. The amended charge states that Weems touched or struck the girl and threw her to the ground, placing a choke hold on her. She was unable to speak and started to lose consciousness. Police said the girl met Weems at a shed near a Rupert supermarket. Inside the shed, Weems started kissing her and attacked when the girl told him to stop and hit him with her elbow. The girl took a piece of broken glass when she left the shed because she was scared Weems would assault her again, police said. Investigators found blood and pieces of glass inside the shed. Weems, who went to the hospital emergency room to treat cuts on his hands, told police hed been cut when he fell on broken glass near the store. A change-of-plea and sentencing hearing was set for Tuesday in Minidoka County Magistrate Court. BURLEY New apprenticeship programs are being developed in Mini-Cassia that will allow students to test drive a career, learn skill sets for specific jobs and provide companies with future employees. The School to Registered Apprenticeship Program, which launches mid-November, will allow students to work paid summer jobs with the companies. Upon completion students will earn a federal certification. The Idaho Department of Labor, College of Southern Idaho, Cassia County School District, Minidoka County School District and industry sponsors Fabri-Kal, High Desert Milk and McCain Foods collaborated to develop the two-year class for high school students. This is really exciting because it is industry-driven and its the first time the two school districts have worked together on a project like this, said Karla Robinson, the controller at High Desert Milk, which is paying the first-year teachers salary. The three companies helped develop the class curriculum based on industry needs. The machine operator class is open to high school juniors and seniors in both school districts and will be held at Mount Harrison Junior/Senior High School before school. The central location was chosen because the companies said the districts needed to work together, said Debbie Critchfield, the spokeswoman for Cassia County School District. The class is operating as a pilot program in Cassia County. If it works well, the program will be expanded to include the high schools in the outlying communities, said Curtis Richins, director at Cassia Regional Technical Center. Students are responsible for transportation to the class and sign a performance contract with the company that includes being on time. Its treated just like a job, Richins said, and the students have to apply for the position. Students are also guaranteed pay raises as they reach company-established benchmarks. The machine operator class includes 144 classroom hours and 2,000 training hours on the job with one of the three sponsoring companies. While theyre on the job, the students get paid between $10 and $12 an hour. I think all manufacturers are feeling the squeeze of the low unemployment rate in the area, Robinson said. We need to get the word out that there are some really good jobs here. The programs leaders also hope to shift a narrative that paints manufacturing as low-skill or low-wage work. In fact, they said, many manufacturing jobs are high tech, and companies need skilled employees. After 30 days on the job a new employee here is still not trained, Robinson said. The program has been in the works for two years. It had to be approved by the U.S. Department of Labor because there are rules regarding minors working in heavy industry. Similar programs have been successful in Northern Idaho, but this is the first time its being attempted in the Magic Valley. Minico High School launched an industrial maintenance training program last year, but it is yet to meet the approval of the U.S. Department of Labor, said Chet Jeppesen, a workforce consultant with the states labor department. The programs second year will also begin mid-November. A third program, diesel technology, is still under development, with a planned start in January. Justin Tate, a diesel technology teacher at Minico High School, said the first year of the industrial maintenance program, which is held at Minico High School, was very successful. Twenty students signed up for the class and 16 completed the first year. Every student had employment that wanted it over the summer, he said, and the pay range was $12 to $14 per hour. It was not entry-level pay. Now, the two-semester course counts as a one-credit elective at the high school level, but they are working to get it approved for CSI credit. Chad Evans is a heavy duty diesel technology instructor at CRTC. He said diesel techs are in great demand across the Magic Valley in many sectors. Just look around at our ag base, he said. Evans used to work for a Kenworth dealership in Mini-Cassia and said hiring employees that want to stay in the area was always challenging. Every shop wants the superstar to come right to work for them, Evans said. But those people already have good jobs with companies who are willing to pay to keep them. The new diesel tech apprenticeship program will allow students to make $14 to $16 per hour out of high school and $20 to $22 per an hour a few years after, Evans said. I think the program will be pretty cool, said Quintin Ward, a CRTC diesel tech student. This will allow us to get experience and good pay and be a step ahead of everybody else. Ward has already invested about $3,000 in tools in preparation for a career in diesel technology, and he plans to apply for the program. Jeppesen, the state labor consultant, said the areas youth tend to leave after high school. Forty percent are going to college, but where is the other 60 percent going? he said. Why not integrate that 60 percent into the workforce? These are good jobs here with good pay and benefits. The program can also give students a way to earn money through college. Stotz Equipment, which sells and repairs John Deere equipment in Burley, is one of the sponsors of the diesel technology apprenticeship program. Store manager Victor Caratachea has worked with companies in other states that had successful apprenticeship programs. Now, he said, Its about growing our own. The program starts with holding career fairs so students can check out the kinds of jobs available in an industry, Caratachea said. In the old days youd think of a mechanic as being dirty with a wrench in their hands, but in reality today they have a laptop in their hands, he said. Ninety percent of it is technology-based. The company also works to retain employees and has a generous college tuition program and tool allowance for employees who go to college, with a debt-forgiveness program if the employee stays three years. I dont want any of my guys looking at their check and wondering how they will make it to the next one, Caratachea said. I want them to be happy and to think that it is a great place to work. said Chet Jeppesen, a workforce consultant with the Idaho Department of Labor said. This is a first in the Magic Valley, Jeppesen said. High Desert Milk stepped up to pay the first-year teachers salary, Curtis Richins, director at Cassia Regional Technical Center said. TWIN FALLS The Twin Falls School District has received the highest-possible mark on its yearly audit. School trustees approved the audit report last week, compiled by Twin Falls-based Ware & Associates. Trustee Todd Hubbard was absent from the Oct. 25 meeting. Auditors say the school district has strong internal financial controls, but not enough fund balance money to use in case of an emergency to maintain operations. With internal controls, they kind of set the bar on that end for the size that they are, auditor Ben Ware said Tuesday. They do a really great job at checks and balances. Bob Seaman, fiscal affairs director for the Twin Falls School District, wasnt available to comment this week because of a vacation. Two of the topics Ware brought up during last weeks meeting: The district has an aging accounting staff thats experienced, efficient and will be hard to replace, and the need for a larger fund balance. The school district had about $2.7 million in fund balance at the end of the 2016-17 fiscal year a $1.1 million decrease from the previous year. Thats only enough to cover about two weeks of operating expenses. In our opinion, wed like to see that fund balance bump up, Ware said. Typically, the recommendation is enough to cover three to four months of operating expenses. But its uncommon for school districts to have that much in fund balance. Schools overall in Idaho are just underfunded, as a general statement, Ware said. The Twin Falls School Districts audit report notes a budget violation, which Ware said sounds much worse than it is and is a technicality. Idaho Code requires auditors to make a note when an agency exceeds its published budget on the expenditure side. The school districts violation was spending $225 more than budgeted for bond fees due to being charged more than estimated, Ware said. Really, its a slap on the hand because they have a fund balance, he said, but auditors are required to report it. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy BEIJING, ChinaChinese President Xi Jinpings pledge to build a world-class army by 2050 is making his neighbors nervous, but analysts say Beijings military ambitions do not constitute a strategic threatfor now. With purchases and construction of fighter jets, ships and hi-tech weaponry, Chinas military budget has grown steadily for 30 years, but remains three times smaller than that of the United States. Now, Beijing wants to catch up. We should strive to fully transform the peoples armed forces into a world-class military by the mid-21st century, Xi told 2,300 delegates of the Chinese Communist Party, which he heads and which controls the army. The comments, made during the partys twice-a-decade congress, were aimed in part at domestic nationalists, but also intended to show other countries Chinas desire to be strong economically as well as militarily, said James Char, a military analyst at Singapores Nanyang Technological University. ADVERTISEMENT During Chinas so-called Century of Humiliation, starting around the mid-19th century, the country lost almost every war it fought, and was often forced to give major concessions in subsequent treaties. Thats why China, more than any other country, dreams of a strong army. Not to bully other countries, but to defend ourselves, said Ni Lexiong from Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. But Xis call to build a military that can fight and win has alarmed Chinas neighbors, several of whom are embroiled in tense border disputes with the superpower. This summer India and China engaged in a bitter, weeks-long military confrontation over a disputed area in the Himalayas. Japan regularly faces off with Chinese maritime patrols close to the Senkaku islands, which are called the Diaoyu in Mandarin and claimed by Beijing. And Beijing asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, despite rival claims from countries including Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Beijing has reclaimed islands it controls in the sea in order to cement its claims and installed military aircraft and missile systems on them, causing tensions to spiral in recent years. Chinese activities are a security concern for the region encompassing Japan and for the international community, said a recent Japanese defense report. It is incontestable that the countrys rise as a military power is setting off an arms race in Asia, said Juliette Genevaz, China researcher at the France-based Military School Strategic Research Institute. This arms race in Asia has several causes, she said, noting North Koreas nuclear weapons program as one of the contributors. But, Chinas military build-up and reclaiming activities in the South China Sea [are] a major factor. Chinas military expenditure in 2016 was an estimated $215 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, putting it in first place in Asia, well ahead of India ($56 billion), Japan ($46 billion) and South Korea ($37 billion). The country has not participated in any conflict since a month-long border war against Vietnam in 1979 that killed tens of thousands of people and a 1988 skirmish, also with Hanoi, over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, that left 64 dead. But it has been busy boosting its military activities abroad. This year, Beijing opened its first foreign military base, in Djibouti. Since 2008, its navy has participated in anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden. The country is the largest contributor to United Nations peacekeeping operations among the permanent members of the Security Council, with some 2,500 soldiers and military experts deployed. AFP The moves are all part of a larger, decades-long effort to modernize the countrys military, which had become riddled with corruption, incompetence and waste. But while Xi flexed his muscles at the head of Chinas central military commission during his first term, he is likely to observe more caution in the future, having consolidated his power base by bringing down two of the countrys highest-ranking army officers for corruption, said James Char. He also reaffirmed the partys absolute control over the army during the recently concluded congress. Now that its done, he does not need to risk an external crisis any more. Therefore, we can reasonably expect Beijing will conduct less coercive diplomacy in the near- to medium-term, Char said. The Chinese military will continue to operate further and further away from Chinas shores, and probably also establish more overseas bases, he added. But, while it will continue to aggressively defend its own territorial claims, it will likely act cautiously abroad and will not engage in overseas constabulary missions such as those carried out by the US military in Iraq or Afghanistan for example. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. 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. ~ Two Bahraini Shia critics, known as members of the opposition, were charged Wednesday for espionage for Qatar in an attempt to destabilize the tiny Gulf monarchy, in what looks like a deepening of the diplomatic spat between Qatar on the one hand and Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain plus Egypt on the other hand. Bahrains Public Prosecutor has pressed espionage charges against Sheikh Ali Salman, secretary general of Al-Wefaq party, and Sheikh Hassan Sultan for colliding with Qatar to carry out hostile attacks in Bahrain and damage its national interests and prestige, state-run news agency, BNA, reported. The men, according to authorities, transferred confidential information to Qatar and received financial support from the Emirate. They additionally met with Qatari officials and affiliated agents of the Lebanon-based Shia group Hezboallah. Al-Wefaq has been banned and its Secretary General Sheikh Salman has been arrested in 2015 and is currently serving a four-year prison sentence for inciting hatred and insulting the interior minister. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt have severed ties with Qatar since June 5 over accusations that it supports terrorism. Tuesday, Bahrain imposed visa on Qatari visitors and residents, a decision the government said was for security precautions. On Sunday, it threatened to balk at participating in the December Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit if Qatars membership is not frozen or Doha does not change its policies. African Heads of State and CEOs on Wednesday flocked to Dubai to take part in the two-day Global Business Forum on Africa, meant to strengthen Dubais economic and business ties with the continent, where Dubai has positioned itself as a link for huge potential investments. The forum, held under the theme of Next Generation Africa, is aimed at exploring promising markets around the world for Dubai enterprises and businesses, and business opportunities for public and private sector stakeholders. Chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Majid Saif Al Ghurair, said Dubai has strengthened its position as global gateway for African companies, while the UAE continues to lead the GCC region in the volume of foreign investment flows into Africa. Dubai is committed to lower down the obstacles that are hampering Africas growth and to contribute to business expansion in the continent, he said, pointing out that Africas young and fast-growing population, along with its rising middle class, offer tremendous potential. The continent is experiencing an infrastructure boom, which is creating plenty of trade and investment opportunities, he said. He also underscored the rapid growth rate of the African business community in the UAE, saying the number of African companies registered with Dubai Chamber exceeds 17,000, up 41 per cent compared to 2015. Youth entrepreneurship is another important topic on the agenda as it remains a key factor for maintaining Africas rise. Much like young UAE nationals, young Africans are incredibly entrepreneurial and have their sights set on developing innovative solutions to solve some of the continents most pressing challenges, he was quoted by local media as saying. We are confident that Africas entrepreneurs will bring positive changes to Africa and usher in a new area of economic and social progress. Dubai is keen to use its strategic location and status as a thriving business hub to contribute towards Africas future growth, Al Ghurair said. Over the last five years, the Dubai Chamber has opened representative offices in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya to assist UAE companies that want to expand their footprint on the continent and also to attract African businesses to Dubai. Rwandas President Paul Kagame, who was one of the key speakers, said the divisions that hampered African growth were ending and the continent was moving towards a unified economic bloc. Kagame said a number of economic unity initiatives had been adopted in Africa in the fields of customs unions, infrastructure projects, electricity links and railway networks. Africa currently has several economic blocs, including the East African Community, the South African Development Community, the West African Economic Community and the Economic Community of Central African States. The Ugandan president also shared lessons of his years of experience and highlighted what he sees as the priorities for the upcoming generation of African leaders pan-African trade, investment and tourism. PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Found Objects Missed Connections Fulfillment Centera new play that has garnered national acclaim and happens to be set right here in Albuquerqueis making its local debut this Thursday thanks to Fusion theater company. The piece, which was written by Abe Koogler and premiered in New York City just this year, is about a young man who finds himself in Albuquerque and employed at a fulfillment center. With that scenario as the jumping off point, the existential questions begin to bubble up, rearranging seemingly average lives. Initial performances of the play (from Nov. 2 to 18) are happening at The Cell Theatre (700 First Street NW) and the run is rounded out by a pay-what-you-wish showing at The KiMo (423 Central Ave. NW) on Saturday, Nov. 17. More information and tickets are available online at fusionnm.org. View in Alibi calendar Building Bridges TEDxABQWomen hits the KiMo Theatre (423 Central Ave. NW) this Thursday, Nov. 2 showing off a cadre of super-talented local femmes. Hosted by Nathalie Kossar, who recently published her own book of waggish humor titled Pattern Behavior: The Seamy Side of Fashion, the event also features the likes of Val Day-Sanchez, who will speak on diversity in media and the importance of addressing race in New Mexico and the country at large, as well as performers like dancers Crystal Zamora and Amanda Valdez. The theme of this event is Bridges, and all the performers and speakers are addressing the multiple avenues in which we can build these to foster greater connection and harmony in our community. This event, totally packed with talent, is well worth the $21 to $42 tickets. The presentations begin at 5pm. View in Alibi calendar Into the Unreal A native of Buenos Aires and a current resident of South Florida, Pablo Brescia's literary works bridge time, culture and perception and have been likened to Roberto Bolano and Jorge Luis Borges. Brescia makes a visit to Albuquerque and is sitting down at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (1701 Fourth Street SW) for several hours to share his work through a reading and sign copies of his various work afterward. Brescia's most recent work of short stories, La Derrota de lo Real or The Defeat of the Real, will receive special attention over the course of the discussion. This free event plays out between 2 and 4pm on Saturday, Nov. 4. Jailed Mauritanian former senator and senior opposition figure Mohamed Ould Ghadda said he will not accept any idea of temporary release. Mohamed Ould Ghadda who led other Senators in rejecting a referendum, which scrapped the Senate in the West African nation, was arrested on August 10, 2017. He faces a corruption probe, according to the Public Prosecutors Office. In an interview released by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the senator and 12 others defendants have rejected the idea of provisional release. Ould Ghadda, member of a coalition of opposition parties, is considered as one of the most vocal politicians criticizing the administration of President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. According to HRWs researchers who visited the senator in jail, Ould Ghadda has rejected the idea to seek bail from the court because it would be easier for them [the court] to leave the case. There are only two acceptable options: judge me or acquit me, Ould Ghada was quoted as saying. In its report, Human Rights Watch urged the government to free the opposition leader or grant him a prompt and fair trial, if they have sufficient evidence to try him for a recognizable criminal offense. In his latest appearance in court, Mohamed Ould Ghadda has been interrogated about financial support he allegedly received from Mohamed Bouamatou, a Mauritanian pro-opposition businessman. The court summoned and interrogated 12 other senators, four independent journalists, and two union leaders. 50 years after the Biafra civil war, Nigerias government has accepted to pay $245million compensation to the victims, local media reported. According to papers of the court of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS Court of Justice, the federal government of Africas most populous nation has agreed to pay the damages, following legal action lodged by victims. The regional court gave the ruling while ordering all parties in the matter to abide by the terms of the settlement. Part of the terms of the settlement stated that the government undertakes to pay 50 billion naira directly to war victims and to spend 38 billion naira on clearing abandoned landmines and on building schools, courts, churches and mosques in the war-ravaged region. The plaintiffs claimed that apart from physical injuries, the abandonment of the war weapons has deprived them of the use of their farmlands, schools and churches etc. A total of 17,000 bombs were recovered in the war ravaged communities, the court said. The ruling has indicated that medical experts employed on behalf of the federal government will screen and identify true victims of the war. About 685 persons were selected and classified as survivors while 493 of them, including those who sued the federal government, were confirmed as victims of either landmines or other dangerous military ordinance. Georgia increases kiwifruit export to Japan Georgia is increasing the export of kiwifruit in Japan, announces the Ministry of Agriculture of Georgia.The Minister of Agriculture Levan Davitashvili stated Japan was an interesting market for Georgia and exporting kiwifruit to Japan was important for the country.Davitashvili met the President of Japanese trading company Agri and co-founder of Georgian kiwifruit producing company Nergeta at his office today to discuss ways on how to boost kiwifruit export to Japan.As the President of Agri said there was significant potential for developing kiwifruit culture in Georgia as the climatic conditions are preferable in the country.Georgian kiwifruit has perfect quality. Last year we imported Georgian kiwifruit for the first time and it was much appreciated there. We think this year consumption of imported kiwifruit will increase. Due to high demand we plan to increase import of Georgian kiwifruit, said President of Agri.The Nergeta company, which claims to produce Europes "sweetest green kiwifruit, first exported kiwifruits to Japan in 2016.This year, the company plans to export about 100 tonnes of kiwifruits to Japan, said the Ministry of Agriculture. The News in Brief GEL Depreciates Further Against USD, EUR Georgian national currency, Lari (GEL) fell to 2.5206 against U.S. Dollar and to 2.9635 against Euro on October 25. The GEL was trading at 2.4894 against U.S. Dollar a day earlier, with the Euro-Lari exchange rate standing at 2.9240. Meanwhile, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) announced on October 25 that the key refinancing rate would remain unchanged at 7%. The GEL started depreciating in November, 2014, falling to its record low of 2.7846 against U.S. Dollar on December 22, 2016. It continued falling throughout most of January this year and started recovering from February. The GEL was relatively stable for about five months before September, hovering around 2.39-2.44 per U.S. Dollar, about 40% weaker compared to November, 2014, when GEL first started depreciating. But from early September it started falling again. (civil.ge) Saakashvili spends night in tent camp outside Ukrainian parliament Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian President turned fiery Ukrainian oppositionist who leads the Rukh Novikh Sil movement, spent the night in protesters' tent camp opposite the Verkhovna Rada national parliament, Vestnik Kavkaza reports. Saakashvili said yesterday that he was planning to stay in one of the tents, for the purposes of which he had taken some warm clothes along with him. He said Ukraines unicameral parliament will begin its weekly plenary session on November 7, during which it will have an opportunity to pass bills demanded by Saakashvili and his supporters. The protesters demand to strip Rada deputies of their parliamentary immunity, amend the election laws, and set up an anticorruption tribunal. Saakashvili said that if those bills are passed, the protestors will withdraw from Kievs governmental district. "People are waiting for November 7. The President has made his promise, Parliament has made its promise. If they fulfill them, the people will leave," TASS cited him as saying. (ipn) Ukraine's Immigration Service to expel Saakashvilis 20 Georgian co-fighters Ukraine's Immigration Service has decided to expel 20 Georgian supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili, despite the fact that all of them have the right to live in Ukraine. Ukraine's General Prosecutor Yuri Lutsensko said that the people were illegally allowed to live in Ukraine during the period when Mikheil Saakashvili was the governor of Odessa district. "These 20 individuals have no basis for being in Ukraine and they will be expelled. The Immigration Service is working on it now, said Lutsenko. (ipn) Council of Europe reacted to attack on journalist of Echo of Moscow Strasbourg: Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland reacted to the attack on Tatyana Felgenhauer, deputy editor of the radio "Echo of Moscow", as a result of which the woman was seriously stabbed. "Secretary-General Jagland is outraged by the brutal attack on the deputy editor of Echo of Moscow, Tatyana Felgenhauer, which took place on the territory of a well-known Russian radio station. The Secretary General would like to express his support to Mrs. Felgenhauer, who is now hospitalized, and to all those who work in Echo of Moscow, the Council of Europe press service said. He said that journalists should be able to freely express themselves, to carry out their duties without hindrance, and this case should be investigated within the next few days. Yesterday, October 23, a man broke into the Moscow office of the radio station Echo of Moscow and wounded the leading Tatyana Felgenhauer with a knife. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation on Moscow opened a criminal investigation into the man's attack on the leading radio station Echo of Moscow. (Frontnews.eu) @alextdaugherty Miami Republican Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen will receive a letter to officially apply for Congressional Hispanic Caucus membership, and then the body, currently made up of all Democrats, will vote on their application. Ros-Lehtinen has no intention of joining the caucus despite the invitation to apply, a spokesman for the congresswoman said. The CHC executive council discussed Curbelo's potential candidacy during a closed-door meeting on Thursday, according to three members in the room. Curbelo has been trying to join the caucus since February, but the body has yet to make a decision. "The congressmans intention has always been to join the Hispanic Caucus," said Curbelo spokeswoman Joanna Rodriguez. At issue is Curbelo's immigration stance. Some members of the caucus are concerned that inviting Curbelo would be antithetical to the group's position on immigration since Curbelo has not co-sponsored a version of the Dream Act, which would give the children of undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. The Dream Act has Republican co-sponsorship, including from Ros-Lehtinen, who urged a vote on the measure during a speech on Thursday. "Let's bring the Dream Act to a vote so that these young people can make their American dream a reality," Ros-Lehtinen said on the House floor. " The clock is ticking." But Curbelo has his own proposal, the Raising America's Children Act, that provides a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers but is more narrowly tailored than the Dream Act. Curbelo has pitched his solution as a conservative alternative to the Dream Act. "Even when I got into the caucus 14 years ago there was a vote by the other members and we'll take that vote," said Arizona Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva. "Once we're done that, he can possibly stop complaining that he hasn't been given an audience and start complaining about the result." Grijalva does not plan to vote for Curbelo even if he signs onto the Dream Act. "He's politicized it more than it should be," Grijalva said of Curbelo's desire to join the group. "He's the one running around whining about the fact that he's not being allowed in because he's a Republican. It has nothing to do with that. It's a political strategy to try to make himself in a competitive district look like he's a victim. He's not a victim." "We are absolutely, in writing, making it very clear that we recognize that Curbelo and Ileana informally have asked that they be part of the caucus, now they're going to be invited to formally say they want to be a member of the caucus," said CHC chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham. "Every member of our caucus gets a vote." Lujan Grisham said the letter will be sent to Curbelo and Ros-Lehtinen tomorrow and that a vote could take place next week if the Miami lawmakers reply promptly. Lujan Grisham has not made up her mind on whether she will vote for Curbelo, though she said "it may persuade some members" to vote for him if he signs onto the Dream Act. As for Ros-Lehtinen's candidacy, Grijalva said "she's been pretty consistent on our issues" but that the letter to her was more of a "gesture on her part." Ros-Lehtinen, who is retiring in 2018, was once part of the CHC but left along with other Republican members in 2003 over differences on Cuba policy. The caucus at one time included members from both parties, but several Florida Republicans walked out years ago and formed their own group, the Congressional Hispanic Conference. That group is chaired by Miami Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, who has said hes not interested in joining the other caucus. UPDATED 3:49pm Ros-Lehtinen says she has no intention of joining the CHC. I had informal conversations with Michelle and Lucille (Roybal-Allard) over this issue and I told them that I am saving money in my remaining time in Congress to pay for some Congressional costs I have outstanding and I dont want to use those funds to pay dues to the Caucus," Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement. "Carlos is an outstanding legislator who merits being made a part of the Caucus and I hope that he is accepted by the Caucus." Lesley Clark contributed via @lesleyclark WASHINGTON -- Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo's bid to join the all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus is hitting a hurdle, stemming in part from the Miami Republican's decision not to co-sponsor an immigration bill with support from both sides of the aisle. The caucus could discuss Curbelo's bid at its weekly meeting Thursday, a week after some members privately raised questions about his inclusion. Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., had predicted last week that members would easily extend an invite to Curbelo. But Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. said Wednesday that members wanted more time to deliberate and seek further clarification about how it would work to have a Republican join the all-Democratic group. I dont think the caucus should be anybodys foil, Grijalva said. Curbelo is a top target for national Democrats eager to win his Democratic-leaning district in south Florida in 2018, but has insisted his bid to join the caucus is not politically motivated. He said he waited until after last years election to make the request. Curbelo had asked to join the group that takes up issues of concern to the Hispanic community in February, but has claimed that Democrats are deliberately stalling his induction. Lujan Grisham said shes been positive about Curbelos potential membership, but acknowledged that in this climate some caucus members have reservations. There is no effort to delay taking an action. Theres more of a thoughtful process to figure out whats the best way forward, she said. More here. Latvala said the fallout from the Clemens controversy underscores the need for a package of ethics reforms in the 2018 session of the Legislature, including a ban on family members of legislators lobbying the Legislature and a ban on legislators law partners lobbying the Legislature. "The bottom line is, you can legislate till the cows come in, but you cant legislate ethics and morality in people, Latvala told reporters. One of the big questions college students face is whether they can even afford to stay enrolled from one semester to the next. "I think it's astounding that for many students, it can be $200 or $400 or $600 that will keep them at the University of Montana," said Dean Brock Tessman. Tessman, head of the Davidson Honors College, said "micro-grant" programs have been emerging that help students who need assistance to stay enrolled. A number of isolated efforts are taking place on campus, and he believes they are making a difference. Tessman's remarks came Wednesday at a meeting of the UM president's cabinet with deans. UM officials talked about the growing importance of retaining students and ensuring they graduate not simply boosting enrollment numbers. Provost Beverly Edmond said she believes freshman enrollment is going to level out as planned. The number of incoming freshman increased 2 percent from last fall to this fall. The bump translates to just 20 students, but it's significant compared to the previous drops of 200 freshman, according to UM. At the meeting, Edmond said UM has the opportunity to establish itself as the premier institution in the state of Montana and nationally for student success because of efforts already in place as pilots or ongoing programs. "Since I arrived, I've been talking about expanding our conversation in the context of enrollment management beyond the very important issue the university faces with recruitment to the other components of enrollment management, which are retention, persistence and completion," Edmond said. Brian French, executive director of the Office for Student Success, said Complete College America is offering the Montana University System guidance in how to be responsive to students and make more data-driven decisions. Complete College America is a national nonprofit that aims to increase the number of Americans with college degrees or certificates. One initiative UM has signed onto is a push to get students to take 15 credits each semester, French said. UM also is focused on advising, including an effort to direct only those students who need college algebra to take it; college algebra is a deterrent for many students to stay enrolled, but it also isn't required for all degrees. "We've made great strides in that area, and we've actually been recognized as one of the states that's furthest along," French said. Braden Fitzgerald, president of the Associated Students of the University of Montana, said it's key to pass on the message about taking 15 credits each semester to high schools. There, he said, the prevalent culture is to tell students it's fine to take five or six years to finish college. "It's important to stress this program to high school guidance counselors," Fitzgerald said. Higher education officials are stressing the importance of staying on track with 15 credits not only to make sure students graduate, but to make college more affordable. In Montana, the cost of an extra year of college, including living expenses, can be some $20,000 at a flagship. A couple of cabinet members said it's important to have parallel strategies, though. Some single parents and nontraditional students may not be able to take 15 credits every semester. "We're committed to their success as well," Dean Reed Humphrey said. President Sheila Stearns agreed and said places that have moved the dial on helping students get through college by encouraging more credits aren't seeing other students fall by the wayside. "They don't leave behind the other 40 percent," Stearns said. And Provost Edmond said multiple strategies need to be in place on a campus: "This is not a one-size-fits-all. It's a smorgasbord of activities." At the meeting, cabinet members also discussed the project to set program priorities. Dean Chris Comer said some students have mistakenly believed the project will result in their inability to complete degrees, which he stressed is not the case. "Students will be able to finish no matter what," Comer said. He also said students need to hear that message: "We have to address those rumors. We can't just let them float," Comer said. A task force on priorities is evaluating some 400 units at UM, academic and administrative. Next week, it's slated to identify how units are prioritized on the spectrum of ones set for growth versus "disinvestment" in preparation for recommendations to the president. In other business: Dean Stephen Kalm invited people to attend a performance called Meredith Monk A Celebration Service. Kalm described Monk as a creative genius. The "wordless" dance and vocal performance is scheduled for 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 3 and 4, at University Congregational Church, 405 University Ave. in Missoula. Tickets cost $15 for general admission and $12 for students and seniors. Dean Larry Abramson announced DiverseU, a forum Nov. 1 and 2 billed as a way to "explore the complexities of human experience, promote understanding, and create community through the practice of civil discourse." The sessions are interactive and he encouraged attendance and questions. RESIDENTS CATCH BURGLAR Police said two people were at home when a man broke into a residence on the 800 block of Silver Street Tuesday evening. The residents were sitting in a back room, police said, when they heard a noise coming from the front of the home. Police said the residents went to inspect the front of the house, at which time they discovered that a man had entered their home and had taken three of their DVDs. After being discovered, police said, the man attempted to run away, but one of the residents was able to stop him and keep him at the scene while police were called. When police arrived, around 5:15 p.m., they arrested Harold Watson, 32, of Butte and took him to the Butte detention center, where hes now facing a felony burglary charge. WOMAN ASSAULTED Police arrested a 19-year-old Billings man for partner, family-member assault Tuesday afternoon after they responded to a domestic disturbance call on the 2000 block of Oregon Avenue. Police said it was a neighbor who had contacted Butte dispatch. When police arrived at the residence, they encountered Mason Rodriquez, for whom there was a warrant for his arrest relative to an Oct. 29 incident. According to police, Rodriquez allegedly assaulted a female victim Oct. 29 by pulling a hoody she was wearing and causing damage to her neck. At the time of the Oct. 29 call, police said, Rodriquez had left the Oregon residence, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. As of Wednesday morning, Rodriquez remained in the Butte jail, where hes facing a misdemeanor charge of partner, family-member assault. MAN WITH SWITCHBLADE Police say they were assisting parole officers with a routine search of a man on the 600 block of South Jackson Street Tuesday night when they allegedly discovered that the man was in possession of a switchblade. Police said the blade was discovered as officers patted down Jeffery Freund, 42, of Butte. Freund was arrested, taken to jail and was cited for possession of a switch blade, a misdemeanor. DANGEROUS DRUGS Police were assisting parole officers during a Tuesday night search of a mans home on the 800 block of Placer Street when they discovered dangerous drugs and several items of drug paraphernalia. According to police, the items included a loaded syringe, an empty syringe, a lighter and arm band. James Gragg, 54, of Butte was arrested at the scene. He faces charges of parole violation and drug possession, both of felonies, along with a misdemeanor for possessing drug paraphernalia. JUMPER FOUND AT MOTEL Authorities found a man Wednesday who they said jumped out of a window at an Uptown Butte chemical dependency program on Monday morning. Based on a tip, parole and probation officers found Smokey Geldrich at Eddy's Motel. Geldrich was taken into custody without incident, authorities said. Officials believe Smoky Geldrich, convicted for possession of dangerous drugs, landed on the roof of another building and then made his way to an alley, according to the release. DANGEROUS DRUGS Police arrested Natalie Rich, 32, of Butte at 10 a.m. Wednesday for possession of dangerous drugs, obstructing justice, and an out-of-jurisdiction warrant, all felonies, and for one misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. Police were assisting parole and probation officers on the 1200 block of south Montana Street and said they found about 1.6 grams of methamphetamine and needles during a search. When officers arrived, Rich gave a false name, according to police. MISDEMEANOR FORGERY Police arrested Tamara Forward, 27, of Butte at about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday for forgery and criminal contempt, both misdemeanors. Forward allegedly tried to cash a check for $1,775 at Walmart. The check aroused suspicion because it reportedly had several erasures and alterations. When confronted, Forward fled the store, but police found her at Front and Utah, they said. Police also found a warrant for her arrest for criminal contempt. AGGRAVATED DUI Police arrested Cody Keller, 20, of Butte at 4:48 a.m. Thursday for two misdemeanors: aggravated DUI and careless driving. Keller allegedly struck a guard rail at Shields and Second, and a Breathalyzer test indicated he was double the legal limit for alcohol. FIRST OFFENSE DUI Police arrested Key Klungland, 24, of Butte at 2 a.m. Thursday at Park and Montana for DUI per se, which is a lesser count if the incident is a first offense, and also was stopped for failure to have lights on. Both are misdemeanors. Officers said they noticed Klungland driving without headlights on Park Street, pulled him over, and gave him a Breathalyzer test. DRUG PARAPHERNALIA During a parole and probation search of Paul Giot, 39, of Butte at 2 p.m. Wednesday on the 500 block of South Colorado Street, officers arrested Giot for possession of drug paraphernalia because they found a glass pipe, scales, and syringes, they said. FOUND WITH SYRINGE Police booked Lindsey Kindt, 34, of Butte for possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor, at about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday. Officers said they found Kindt sitting in her car stopped in the middle of Silver Bow Boulevard and Monroe. Police said they found a syringe on Kindt. Ridge Waters it is. Butte-Silver Bow commissioners chose that as the official name of Buttes $8.7 million water park Wednesday night, backing a recommendation by the Parks and Recreation Board. The name plays on Buttes East Ridge and headwaters to the Columbia River system and was recommended in part because of its future marketability in logos and promotions that could draw more summer visitors to Butte. Although a few commissioners questioned the name, others said the process for choosing one was open to the public and suggestions were welcome from anyone. After some brief discussion, the council voted 8-4 for the name. "This may not be my favorite name or anyone's favorite name but the process worked," Commissioner Jim Fisher said. "To the naysayers I think this is a name that is going to work." The Parks Division let anyone make suggestions via the county's website and invited fifth- and sixth-graders to weigh in, too. About 200 names were submitted and a committee narrowed them to Ridge Waters, Treasure Cove and 406 Waterpark. The parks board last month nixed 406 Waterpark because that play on Montanas area code is widely used and its popularity might not last. It forwarded Treasure Cove and Ridge Waters to the council, with the latter its top choice. Treasure Cove plays on Montanas nickname as the treasure state, but some parks board members and subsequently some commissioners thought it sounded too much like a casino. Omitted from contention were any people's names, words used with other pools or waterparks in Montana, and any mining terms or those so distinctive to Butte they could turn off potential visitors. We talked about how it (a name) would sound to the Butte community but also how it sounds to people outside of Butte, Parks Director J.P. Gallagher said Wednesday. Cathy Tutty, a parks board member, said the hope is to draw people not just from Whitehall, Anaconda and other nearby places, but those 120 miles or more away, too. The whole idea in everything we are doing is for it to be a regional facility that will attract people, she said. The target date for opening is Memorial Day weekend in May. Nonprofits invited to list services Every Thanksgiving Day, The Montana Standard inserts in the paper a list of nonprofit organizations and services in southwest Montana. Called "Giving Thanks," the listings are free. Organizations that were listed last year have been or will be contacted to update the list. Organizations not listed are invited to submit information to editor@mtstandard.com. The information should include the name of the organization, address, phone number, contact name and number, a brief description of the services offered, and how a person can make donations. The deadline for submissions is Thursday, Nov. 9. Questions? Call 406-496-5510. Coalition meeting, coat drive Saturday The Butte Area Rising Coalition (BARC) will hold its monthly membership meeting from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Nov. 4, at the Carpenters Union Hall, 156 W. Granite St. Discussions include action plans opposing current policy, support of progressive candidates in 2018 elections, and local issues including homelessness and opposition to I-183. During the meeting, new or clean and gently worn coats will be collected for Native Americans living on the Crow Reservation. Coats will be delivered to the upcoming indigenous conference at Fairmont Hot Springs for distribution later in the month. Details: Geoff Gallus at 406-490-3499. Toastmasters name top speaker Top O' The Mornin' Toastmasters named John Grill as this week's best speaker. There was a tie between Mike Gribben and Joe McBride on best topic respondent. Best evaluator was Diana Jensen. The next meeting is at 6:30 a.m. Monday, Nov. 6. Library to again give concert tickets Butte-Silver Bow Public Library has revived "Check Out the Performing Arts!" In partnership with the Mother Lode Theatre, Butte Symphony, and Butte Community Concert, BSBPL will once again offer tickets for checkout to library patrons. Tickets will be available at the reference desk on the second floor one week prior to show time. Patrons may check out one ticket and must have their library card with them. Please call the library for more information or ticket availability at 406-723-3361. November shows include "Tuesdays with Morrie" at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, and at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16, with the Chiara String Quartet. Arts council hosts decoupage workshops DILLON The Southwest Montana Arts Council is looking for people to sign up for a decoupage workshop Saturday, Nov. 11, with teaching artist Maria Gallegos. Decoupage is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf, and other decorative elements. There will be three workshops at the Art Center, 120 N. Montana St., Dillon: 10 to 11 a.m. for second- through sixth-graders, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for seventh- through twelfth-graders, and 1 to 2 p.m. for adults. The youth classes are free, and the adult class is $5. Each class has room for 20 participants, so sign up by emailing SMACarts@gmail.com or calling 406-683-6208. Animal control impounds listed These are animals that have been picked up by Butte animal control. If you think one of the following animals is yours, please call the Chelsea Bailey Butte-Silver Bow Animal Shelter at 406-497-6528 or stop by between 1 and 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Cats: Seven-month-old male shorthaired gray tabby, picked up Tuesday on Excelsior Street One-year-old brown and gold male, neutered, picked up Tuesday on Oregon and Arizona MISSOULA A Whitehall man will go to prison for 30 months for being a felon in possession of a gun, the U.S. Attorneys Office in Missoula announced Wednesday. Terry Lynn Sturdevant will have three years of supervised release and must pay a $100 special assessment. Chief U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen presided over the hearing. On March 5, 2016, the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office received a call about a fight between two brothers with a knife in Whitehall. Sturdevant was fighting with his half-brother. According to medical personnel, he had a short-barreled revolver that he was pointing at his half-brother and a friend during the argument. Both Sturdevant and his half-brother sustained cuts during the fight. By the time deputies arrived, Sturdevant had fled the house. Officers found him in the backyard. In the same area, they also found a .22-caliber revolver loaded with one spent round and four live rounds. In 2009, Sturdevant was convicted of felony second degree burglary in the state of New York. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Paulette Stewart and investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office. The U.S. Attorneys Office is partnering with federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement to identify those responsible for significant violent crime in Montana. A centerpiece of this effort is Project Safe Neighborhoods, a recently reinvigorated Department of Justice program that has proven to be successful in reducing violent crime. The Sturdevant sentencing is part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods program. On Halloween a picture of Congressman Gianforte standing proudly in front of a clear-cut greeted readers of The Montana Standard. Gianforte was promoting his Litigation Relief for Forest Management Projects Act. A companion bill which is co-sponsored by Republican Senator Daines and Democrat Senator Tester is in the Senate. Their goal is to Congressionally overturn the Cottonwood court decision which required the Forest Service to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service on logging in lynx critical habitat. The Montana Congressional delegation claims the sky is falling because federal agencies are now required to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when critical habitat is designated for threatened and endangered species. But their bills do nothing more than allow logging companies that have already unsustainably clear-cut their private lands to now clear-cut our publicly owned National Forest lands, endangered wildlife be damned. Gianforte was quoted in the article saying: About 140,000 acres of timber harvest are being held up by the Cottonwood decision. Gianforte also said his bill would block frivolous lawsuits despite the fact that judges do not hear frivolous lawsuits, they throw them out. The truth, instead of Gianforte's alternative facts, tells a different story. A total of 15,054 acres of logging were enjoined in four timber sales in lynx critical habitat which is a long way from the 140,000 acres that Gianforte claimed. These are the East Reservoir Timber sale in the Kootenai National Forest, the Stonewall Timber sale in the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest and the Bozeman Watershed, and East Boulder sales in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest. What Gianforte failed to mention is that the Forest Service already re-initiated consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service last November to comply with the court order and the government completed the analysis, known as a Biological Opinion, on October 18. This is a fact that Gianforte has not disclosed to the public. Nor have Gianforte or Montanas senators withdrawn their bills. The analysis is only about 45 pages long and did not require any public comment process. In general, the law requires that Biological Opinions such as this one take about six months to complete. Gianforte also didnt have the courage to tell citizens that by the Forest Services own estimates these four timber sales will cost taxpayers $6 million to subsidize timber sales for companies like RY Timber, which is owned by Idaho billionaires, the Yanke Family Trust. The Forest Service proposed clear-cutting over 5,100 acres (8 square miles) and bulldozing over 23 miles of new logging roads in lynx critical habitat with just these four timber sales, which is why they were challenged in court. The harsh reality, undeniably proven by all the best available science, is that more logging means less lynx. If were going to actually recover lynx as required by the Endangered Species Act, its obviously time to say no more bulldozing roads and clear-cuts in lynx critical habitat. Spending millions more on subsidies to clear-cut our National Forests wont stop wildfires, but it will destroy what makes Montana great, which is simply the best hunting and fishing in the nation. Tell Daines, Tester, and Gianforte to protect, not destroy, our forests, the abundant clean water they produce and the native ecosystems they sustain. Americans deserve facts on public policy issues, not D.C. lies. That means Congressman Gianforte and Senators Daines and Tester must stop deceiving the people with alternative facts and start telling the truth. Americans probably have heard more about Russia over the past year than at any time since the demise of the Soviet Union. For all the talk, theres more confusion and suspicion than ever. Regrettably, much of the furor is directed against Americans, instead of where it belongs: at Russian government agents sowing discord. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Marc Elias, a Washington attorney whose firm represented Hillary Clintons campaign and the Democratic National Committee, retained the Washington firm Fusion GPS to do oppo research on Donald Trump last year. Fusion GPS subcontracted with former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier, reporting Russian informants allegations improper ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, along with salacious claims about Trumps personal behavior in Russia. Meanwhile in the U.S. Senate last week, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Diane Feinstein, D-California, split on their committees investigation of Russian influence. Grassley declared that he will probe a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to allow Russian-backed investors to purchase mines representing 20 percent of the U.S. uranium supply. Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is already pursuing an inquiry in the uranium mining deal, which involved some investors who had contributed to the Clinton Foundation. If Grassley and Nunes investigate a seven-year-old transaction involving uranium mines purchased by Russians, maybe they should also investigate the 2003 deal in which the federal government, then headed by President George W. Bush, waived antitrust concerns and allowed Russia mining giant Norilsk Nickel to acquire controlling interest in Montanas Stillwater Mining Co., which was and still is the only platinum and palladium mine in the United States. At the time, that deal was one of the largest ever purchases of a U.S. company by Russian interests. (Norilsk no longer owns Stillwater Mining.) There are more plot twists and shadowy characters in the unfolding Russia stories than in a John le Carre novel. But this is a real problem for our nation. Americans must separate fact from fiction and focus on the important issue of Russias cyber warfare. That is why the Department of Justice Investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is extremely important. The indictment Friday of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, and Rick Gates, Manafort's former deputy who was still working for the Trump inauguration committee two weeks ago, indicates lengthy and meticulous investigative work by FBI experts in finance and international transactions. The 12-count indictment accuses both Manafort and Gates with conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government (Ukraine), making false statements and failing to report foreign bank accounts. The grand jury indictment alleges that the pair received $75 million from the government of Ukraine and that Manafort personally laundered about $18 million to support his luxurious lifestyle in the United States. President Donald Trump reacted on Twitter Monday soon after Manafort and Davis surrendered to the FBI: "Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????" He then added: "Also, there is NO COLLUSION!" The indictment unsealed Monday doesn't mention the Trump campaign nor does it make allegations about any ties between Trump and the Kremlin. Trump's tweet is wrong about the timing of the alleged Manafort-Gates crimes. Count 11 alleges that Manafort and Gates made false statements in November 2016 and again in February 2017 in which they denied setting up covert lobbying of the U.S. government on behalf of the government of Ukraine. It's disturbing the the president's first response to these criminal charges is to lash out at his political opponents, again trying to distract the public and the media from a serious national issue that he doesn't want to talk about. Despite the partisan split in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the panel has a hearing scheduled today when Facebook, Twitter and Google executives are invited to testify about Russian disinformation. Those social media giants were the means by which millions of Russian troll messages were transmitted to U.S. voters before the 2016 elections. Americans must not allow partisan disputes to distract us from the quest for the truth. Congressional committees should produce bipartisan conclusions. Savvy readers must consider their sources of information. The mainstream media has its shortcomings, but readers and viewers know where journalists are coming from. Professional U.S. journalists make mistakes and facts may change, but readers can trust that we are working to get the truth out as soon as possible. The Billings Gazette Eastern Iowa Community Colleges received a grant for $4,940 from the Mexican consulate for the English Language class they are coordinating at the Tyson Foods plant in Columbus Junction, Iowa. "The grant itself is designed to support persons of Mexican heritage and their English learning," said Sarah Rissler, the English Language Acquisition Coordinator for Eastern Iowa Community Colleges. The money will go to fund English learning classes that are being run onsite at the Tyson Foods plant. "We have a partnership with Tyson's Foods and we are hoping to begin a partnership with West Liberty Foods," Rissler said. "They have a number of Mexican heritage folks who work at both locations, and we are hoping to offer English classes at their locations." The inaugural class began in August and ended in October. According to Rissler, the program's end-of-program assessment revealed that participants experienced improvement in their English reading. "We had 31 people who ended up enrolled with us, and most of the folks that we worked with achieved at least one level gain. That is equivalent to progressing in reading one year's worth of schooling. We had a handful of folks who made two level gains." "As to why we decided to invest in the ESL program on site, I would suggest it is part of our retention effort to retain our hard-working team members who may have potential for growth but (be) limited by language and communication," said Joseph Blay of Tyson. "If we are able to invest in their education and communication skills, it is (more) likely they (will) stay and work with us." These classes met four days a week for two hours a day. "It's geared for the demands of the job," Rissler said. "For example, at Tyson's they asked we work on particular terminology to help them be successful in the workplace. They wanted to focus on safety terminology: how far to stand from someone, how to use different machines, and what different protections are called." Rissler explained that the class has to be particularly focused on the reading of signs. She said important signs can be ignored, if the student has not had much exposure to them. "For a person without much background in education, they may not understand that a picture that they see is actually a sign that carries meaning," Rissler said. "It's called pre-literacy. For folks that do not understand what a sign means, they could be in danger of hurting themselves. We want them to understand that the signs they are encountering everyday at work." The example she points to, is the exit sign. While it literally uses the word 'exit,' the implicit message is to mark a doorway as an exit. In cases of emergency, knowing the signs' meaning can be a matter of life and death. Class begins right after work. Students clock out and walk to the classroom. There is a boardroom-style table with chairs all around it and a white board. When everyone arrives, class begins. "We find that if a person is going directly from work and is staying at work to do their learning experience, they are more inclined to complete the program because you don't have time to go home, take a shower, kind of talk yourself out of it because you are already right there," Rissler said. For Rissler, it is important that language learning resources are offered to students through the K-12 system and their parents. "What we are trying to do for the adult population, is give them the skills they will need to communicate or survive and we do hope it's more than survive but the area is predominantly English speaking," Rissler said. "We want to allow people to learn English when they are ready to do so." Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy President Donald Trump will not visit the DMZ, a senior administration official announced Tuesday during a briefing from the White House podium. Last Monday, the White House first signaled Trump would most likely forgo a visit to the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea when he visits Asia next month, bypassing what has been a symbolic opportunity for US commanders in chief to stare into the Hermit Kingdom. "The President is not going to visit the DMZ," the official said, explaining that "there is not enough time in the schedule" and that visiting the DMZ has become "a little bit of a cliche." The official said the White House had to pick between a visit to the DMZ or a visit to Camp Humphreys, a joint US-South Korean military base, which South Korean President Moon Jae-in invited Trump to visit. The official said the White House felt Camp Humphreys "would make more sense in terms of the President's message" by drawing attention to "South Korea's role in sharing the burden of supporting this critical alliance." Last week, an official had said "we don't think it sends any message either way." Trump has employed increasingly volatile rhetoric in his comments about North Korea, promising to rain "fire and fury" on the regime if it continued threatening the United States. Since then, the North has conducted a massive underground nuclear test and launched several ballistic missiles. While some members of Trump's administration have advocated talks with the North Koreans, Trump has downplayed the potential for effective diplomacy. He and his advisers have warned that no options -- including military ones -- are off the table. The official speaking Tuesday noted that Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis have all visited the DMZ and concluded: "It's becoming a little bit of a cliche, frankly." The White House also defended Trump's approach to the North Korean crisis, insisting that Trump is not closing the door to diplomacy, but rather rejecting the possibility of direct talks with North Korea at this time. Two senior administration officials insisted Tuesday that the Trump administration is still engaged in ramping up pressure on the North Korean regime through diplomacy, despite Trump's tweet earlier this month that his secretary of state was "wasting his time trying to negotiate" with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un. "The President did not tweet that diplomacy was a waste of time. He tweeted that direct talks were a waste of time," a senior administration official said. "The diplomatic campaign goes on. But the administration's position -- the President's clear position -- is that direct talks with North Korea are unwise at this time." A second administration official said that while the Trump administration has "made clear that the door was open" for talks with North Korea, "North Korea has shown zero inclination to engage in substantive talks with anyone in the world on the subject." "The operative question is why is that the case, and it would be good to explore that," the official said. CNN's Kevin Liptak contributed to this report. Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi [] Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] Armando G. Hernandez passed away unexpectedly on October 19, 2017 in Napa, CA at the age of 51. He was born in El Llano, Michoacan. At a very young age he and his family relocated to St. Helena California where he was raised. After graduating from Justin Siena High School in 1985 he continued his education at Napa Valley Junior College. Armando entered an apprentice program with Waste Management, Inc. and finished his education at the College of Alameda with a Heavy Duty Mechanics Degree and was State Licensed as a Journeyman Technician. Armando worked for Inglenook Winery. There he learned the art of making wine. As he taught this skill to his younger brothers, they all realized this would be only one of many passions they would always share. Armando left the wine industry and worked for Epps Chevrolet, Ed Bozarth Chevrolet, Jimmy Vasser Toyota and Bonanza Ford. Working for these car dealerships as well as driven by his love for his 67 Camaro SS and 69 Chevelle SS he knew in his heart that being a mechanic was his calling. 16 years ago Armando found his permanent workplace with his work family at Waste Management Inc. While working for Waste Management Inc. he pursued his calling and vocation of choice to become a Journeymaniesel Technician. He is survived by his wife Judith of 24 years, his children Monique and Marco (his pride and joy). His parents Jesus and Ma.Elena, his siblings Jesus (Megan), Guillermo (Holly), Julian, Teresita (Jorge) and his nephews and niece Necalli, Penelope, Miguel Angel and Brian. A Mass will be said for him at St. Apollinaris Catholic Church (3700 Lassen St, Napa), on Monday, November 6, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. Viewing will be in the Tulocay Chapel (411 Coombsville Road, Napa) on Sunday, November 5, 2017 starting at 12:00p.m. The Rosary will be prayed at 6:00 p.m. Memories may be shared at www.Tulocaycemetery.org. This presidency is raising all kinds of novel constitutional questions. Starting in January, people who could not have pronounced "emoluments" a month previously were opining confidently that President Donald Trump was violating the Constitution's clause about them. Now we're having to consider just how far the president's pardon power runs. Trump has reportedly asked his aides that question. Now conservative lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey are urging him to use the pardon power expansively, to block prosecutors from investigating and charging "anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign," including the president himself. Their Wall Street Journal op-ed goes even further, advising pardons for anyone involved in arguably related Obama administration misconduct. Whether the courts would be obliged to respect a presidential self-pardon is a disputed question. But let's assume that judges could not review the pardons that Rivkin and Casey recommend, as they cannot review the vast run of pardons. Trump should restrain himself from issuing these pardons even if he has the legal power to grant them -- and even if his anger over special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation of possible collusion between his campaign and Russia tempts him to make them. The conservative lawyers say the pardons are necessary to end the "madness" that the investigation has already produced. But they do not justify that characterization of the harms that blanket pardons would prevent. They suggest two harms from allowing Mueller to continue. First, they claim that he is threatening to intrude on presidential authority by treating Trump's firing of James Comey as director of the FBI as obstruction of justice. "A president cannot obstruct justice through the exercise of his constitutional and discretionary authority," they say. The statutes can be read to suggest that presidents can indeed obstruct justice in that way: A corrupt motive can convert legal into illegal activity. But even if Rivkin and Casey are right about presidential immunity, their argument against Mueller is highly speculative. The possibility that Mueller will stretch the law to the detriment of the presidency is not a good reason for pre-emptively pardoning people for lying to the FBI or committing other illegal acts. Second, the authors note that the investigation is deeply enmeshed in partisan politics. Trump's political opponents are hoping, sometimes openly, that it will lead to impeachment. Some of his supporters have "tremendous bitterness" about the investigation, which they see "as an effort by Washington mandarins to nullify their vote." And Rivkin and Casey note that pardons have been used in the past to foster civil peace. They offer an alternative way to make sure presidents do not commit serious misconduct: Congress can investigate them and, depending on the results, impeach and remove them from office. But this argument self-destructs. A congressional investigation would be politicized in exactly the same way that they lament. Trump's enemies would want the investigation to result in his ouster, and his supporters would treat it as an illegitimate attempt to undo the election. Any mechanism for keeping a president within the bounds of law runs the risk of becoming the stuff of partisan controversy. If we don't want to run that risk, we will just have to give up on holding presidents accountable. Pardons all around won't make for national harmony anyway. They would make the controversies already swirling around Trump burn hotter. They would lead to more and louder calls for impeachment. And they should. The standards governing impeachment are not entirely clear. A conscientious congressman would not consider his mere disagreement with an administration's policies proof that a president had committed the "high crimes and misdemeanors" that warrant removal under the Constitution. But abuse of the pardon power qualifies, and using pardons to short-circuit an investigation that threatens the president's political interests would be an abuse. Let's hope Trump rejects this bad advice. The indictment of Paul Manafort and his longtime business partner Rick Gates should have come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, it was precisely because of news reports in the summer of 2016 on some of the same matters contained in Mueller's indictment - charges of illicit cash payments to Manafort by the party of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and Manafort's assistance with undisclosed foreign lobbying - that Manafort was fired from Donald Trump's campaign (though somehow Gates managed to stay on). Special counsel Robert Mueller's court filing tells a sordid tale of influence-peddling on behalf of Yanukovych, Vladimir Putin's man in Kiev. But while Monday's revelations were in no way an indictment of Trump-Russia collusion, they were a searing indictment of Trump's judgment in bringing Manafort into his campaign in the first place. My first job in Washington in 1989 was at Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, long before Manafort began working for Yanukovych. Trump was a client then and has known Manafort for decades. Did it not occur to Trump that, given Manafort's recent client roster, this was probably not the person he wanted running his presidential campaign - or that hiring him might come back to haunt Trump as president one day? How was being a pro-Putin lobbyist not disqualifying for Trump? For his part, Manafort is a victim of his own hubris. He would probably not be in legal jeopardy today if he had not raised his head and become the public face of the Trump campaign. In Washington, you can line your pockets with work for Putin-backed clients, or you can be a public figure leading a presidential campaign, but you can't do both. Manafort reportedly tried. According to the indictment, he was engaged in money laundering of his Ukraine payments during his time on the Trump campaign and afterward. Similarly, the court's "statement of the offense" on George Papadopoulos for providing false statements to the FBI contains no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion but shows bad judgment on the part of Trump's campaign for bringing Papadopoulos aboard. Papadopoulos was such a junior foreign policy figure that his announcement as a member of Trump's foreign policy team in March 2016 was met with this mocking Post headline: "One of Trump's foreign policy advisers is a 2009 college grad who lists Model UN as a credential." The statement goes into great detail about his efforts to court a Kremlin-connected professor, a "niece" of Putin (who was not actually his niece) and a "Russian MFA connection." But Mueller's court filing also shows that those contacts produced little. Papadopoulos was unable to set up the meeting between Trump and Putin in Moscow that the Russians desperately wanted (a footnote in the plea deal quotes an email between campaign officials that said "We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips"). When it became clear the Putin meeting would not happen, Papadopoulos tried to pitch himself to travel to Moscow to represent the campaign, which also never happened. In other words, Papadopoulos was a peripheral figure whose failing efforts to impress the campaign with his Russian contacts seem to have come to naught. Still, why bring him on in the first place? We know that in early 2016 Trump was having trouble attracting talented foreign policy advisers, but this was ridiculous. A presidential front-runner doesn't bring people onto his foreign policy advisory team who still consider "U.S. Representative at the 2012 Geneva International Model United Nations" to be resume-worthy. This was a guy who would have a hard time landing a job as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill, and suddenly, he's conducting back-door diplomacy with Russian officials and doing interviews with the Russian press, in the name of the Trump campaign? What could go wrong? Much has been made of the professor telling Papadopoulos that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and thousands of "emails of Clinton." But the document does not indicate that anyone at the Trump campaign took Papadopoulos up on this. Moreover, WikiLeaks did not release "emails of Clinton" but Democratic National Committee emails - so it's not clear that the professor's offer was any more truthful than his introduction to Putin's "niece." Since Papadopoulos has been a government informant since his arrest in July, perhaps there is more to come on this front. But as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy points out, the statement of offense seems to be more exculpatory than incriminating for Trump: If the Russians were offering Clinton emails through Papadopoulos, "that would mean Trump and his campaign had nothing to do with the acquisition of the emails" and thus had not committed a crime. Accepting "dirt" from Russian sources would have been unsavory if it happened. But that's arguably less unsavory than the Clinton campaign paying for dirt on Trump from Russian sources. In other words, there's still no more public evidence of criminal collusion with Russia than there was before charges were brought. But there is plenty of evidence that the Trump campaign had catastrophically bad judgment in choosing its most senior and junior advisers - and that Russia's spy network sought to exploit that weakness. Decades ago, the late Orville Magoon asked some workers to clear brush on an old, long-neglected hillside vineyard on his Guenoc estate in Napa County that was part of his Lake County property. After hours of clearing the hillside, the workers took a break when Magoon arrived for a chat. One of them pointed to what he said was an amazing sight. I walked over to this one scrawny vine, Magoon told me in the late 1980s, and it was still alive, with a lot of leaves still on the vine. What amazed him was that that area of the vineyard hadnt been planted to grapes since 19th century actress Lillie Langtry owned the estate in the late 1890s! Left untended, and un-irrigated, for a century, that lone petite sirah vine had survived and may even have produced grapes at some point and Magoon then said he discovered something even more amazing. At some point in its life, that vine had a challenger, he said. A small sapling had grown up within inches of the vine, and that vine saw that as a threat and it strangled the sapling! He said he found remnants of the tiny tree with tendrils wrapped around it. The story reminds me of the many ways in which grapevines are remarkably self-protective and true survivors. After a young vine is firmly rooted in a vineyard, it usually does not need irrigation. Ever. Many vineyards are so self-sufficient that they do not need any form of water, sending their roots deep into the earth to survive, and still produce a viable crop from which to make great wine. Growers call them dry-farmed. In times of severe heat and drought, grapevines know enough to shut down, put nutrients back into storage as they prepare for a difficult stretch as if waiting for Mother Nature to correct a weather imbalance. If winter brings floods, vines typically are dormant and are unaffected. The fires that raged throughout Northern California over the last two weeks did far more damage to buildings than they did to vines. Yes, some vines were lost, but that loss was minimal. In many ways, vineyards acted almost as if they were firebreaks, reducing the potential for wind-ripped embers to create further havoc. There are two reasons you dont see large oak trees in vineyards. First, the shade of trees blocks the vital sunlight so necessary for even ripening of the fruit. And the vast root system of large trees competes with the delicate root systems of vines. Vines adjacent to large trees usually do not make good wine. Growth is stymied. The removal of trees before vineyards go in also removes potential combustibles. Without that fuel source, the fires that approached large vineyard had less to feed upon. As I drove through outskirts of devastated Glen Ellen on Tuesday, just north of the Arrowwood winery, I saw farmland that had been blackened and was laden with soot. Every spring, I look forward to driving that same stretch of road because that land is always under a blanket of blue wildflowers. And it will be again. It is part of springs rebirth and Sonoma Valleys beauty and heritage. It will return, once fall has sent the vines into senescence, once winter has dropped additional rain, once spring arrives to brighten the vineyards of Ledson, Kenwood, Landmark, Kunde, St. Francis, St. Jean, B.R. Cohn, Imagery, Mayo Family, Hamel Family, and a dozen more picturesque properties along Highway 12. John Donnes classic poem No Man is an Island applies to all the deaths from the fires and how each effects us all. Nothing compares to that heartache. The rebirth of the buildings, roads, and landscaping, the recommitment to the land and the people, and all that follows in our efforts for homeostasis has already begun. Its a task undertaken with heavy hearts, to be sure, but the message of the vines reaches out like a beacon to remind us that time will heal some of the scars, and that despite such grievous loss, we can move forward we must move forward. The losses may be sad, but the single word that came out of this tragedy most obviously was family. I have heard that word so often over the decades in a wine industry I have covered for more than 40 years that at one point I thought it was a cliche. No longer. We are all in this together and our efforts to revive the spirit of the wine industry are already evident. Like Orville Magoons little grapevine, the family of wine will return. No wine of the week. Russia set to test ballistic missile that could obliterate an area the size of France While North Korea has become the primary focus of all things relating to nuclear warfare, Russia has been preparing to test-launch its newest and biggest ever nuclear missile. The so-called Satan 2 is a 100-ton intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that has been under construction since 2009 and is ready to be tested by the end of the year at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Mirny, Arkhangelsk Oblast. If the initial trials prove successful, then the massive warhead could be in use by as early as 2019. Also known as the RS-28 Sarmat, the Satan 2 will be replacing the R-36 Voevoda, which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) called Satan in the 1970s. The Satan 2 is said to have a top speed of seven kilometers (km) or 4.3 miles per second, a range of 10,000 km or 6,213 miles, and is twice as light as the original Satan. The missile is said to have been designed to evade anti-missile shield systems and radar defenses. Moreover, it can deliver over a dozen nuclear warheads of 40 megatons which is 2,000 times as powerful as Little Boy and Fat Man, the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The payload carried by the Satan 2 can wipe out France, the United Kingdom, or Texas, according to Russian television channel Zvezda. The first tests for the Satan 2 were planned as far back as last year, but delays pushed it back to March then April. Speaking to the Kommersant, a source claimed that The main aim is to check the rockets systems at the moment of leaving the silo, the switching on of the Sarmats first stage, and the following five seconds [of flight]. As reported by DailyMail.co.uk, the Satan 2 was developed as a part of Russias efforts to bolster its military strength. The missile will supposedly be used by Strategic Missile Troops in the regions of Orenburg and Krasnoyarsk, though there is the possibility that it could serve as a carrier for the hypersonic nuclear warhead Object 4202. Sergei Shoygu, Russian Minister of Defense, is said to be monitoring developments on the Satan 2. Currently, there is no word on where the Satan 2 is being kept,though it could easily reach the U.K. if launched from Russias east coast, claimed TheSun.co.uk. The announcement of the Satan 2s creation has invoked a wide range of reactions. Some, like former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy Paul Craig Roberts, have warned of its terrifying potential. Roberts said: The atomic bombs that Washington dropped on these helpless civilian centers while the Japanese government was trying to surrender, were mere popguns compared to todays thermonuclear weapons. One Russian SS-18 wipes out three-fourths of New York state for thousands of years. Five or six of these Satans as they are known by the U.S. military, and the East Coast of the United States disappears. (Related: Thermonuclear missile launch near Los Angeles is final sign of World War III on the precipice US, China and Russia all escalating covert attacks in run up to global war) Still, others like author Arkady Ostrovsky, have gone on to claim that the displays of military strength are born from Russian leader Vladimir Putins desperation and weakness. (Russia) is once again using the threat of nuclear arms to blackmail the West, stated Ostrovsky. Mr. Putin sees Russias wars as a form of self-defense, driven by the need to deter the West. Russias military-industrial complex is unable to produce anything close to Soviet volumes of hardware. But the countrys relative economic and military weakness compared with NATO does not make the country any safer; on the contrary, it poses a big risk. The only way Russia can compensate for the gaps in its conventional forces is to invoke the threat of a nuclear strike. Although it remains to be seen what the Satan 2 will be used for once it has been proven to be operation, we believe that its still best to stay on your toes when it comes to Russia. Visit Nuclear.news to stay updated on the Satan 2 and all other news on nuclear weaponry. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk TheSun.co.uk Emory is among 19 universities that filed an amicus brief Nov. 1 in support of students attending college while participating in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program. Established in 2012, DACA allows certain individuals who entered the United States as undocumented immigrants before the age of 16 to request deferred action from removal proceedings for renewable two-year periods. The universities, all of which admit DACA students, filed the brief in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division. The brief is in support of a motion for provisional relief in four cases pending before the court that challenge the Department of Homeland Securitys Sept. 5, 2017, memorandum rescinding the DACA program. As distinguished American institutions of higher education, the universities "have educated and helped launch the careers of many celebrated leaders and innovators in all fields," the brief notes. Like other students at these universities, DACA students aspire to be among the next generation of these leaders, the brief continues, "and by virtue of the DACA program which protects participants against near-term deportation, allows them to work lawfully, and enables them to travel abroad these students have been able for the first time to access educational and life opportunities on nearly equal terms with their peers." In contrast, the decision to rescind DACA "deters young people from pursuing higher education and precludes the remarkable students enrolled at amici institutions from deriving the full benefit of their time on our campuses," the universities state. "The governments action therefore threatens amicis ability to attract and educate the most talented individuals and so undermines their educational missions," the brief argues. "Indeed, ending DACA forces future scholars, innovators and leaders to choose between withdrawing to the margins of our society and national economy or returning to countries that they have never called home. Whatever they choose, their gifts and education are lost to this nation." DACA students attending these universities "were selected because they are outstanding students," including valedictorians, student government leaders, athletes, artists and "role models for younger children in their communities," the brief states, describing them as "American in everything except immigration status." The brief provides several examples of current DACA students or recent alumni who have made significant impacts through research and public service. "While DACA did not provide our students and alumni a path to citizenship, it did offer them a measure of security and access to opportunities for educational and professional development," the brief states. Rescinding the policy "impedes the ability of the undersigned institutions to advance their missions, imposes a direct harm on their current students and alumni, and deprives the United States of the benefit of the DACA students' considerable talents," the brief concludes. "Accordingly, the Court should grant Plaintiffs' request for provisional relief." In addition to Emory, the brief is signed by Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University. All faculty, staff, students and alumni are invited to Emorys annual Veterans Day commemoration on Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 11 a.m. on the Emory Quadrangle. Veterans Day at Emory is sponsored by the Employee Council, Emory Veterans Association and the Office of the President. There will be a flag ceremony with Emory veterans and ROTC cadets and remarks by Emory President Claire Sterk. The guest speaker this year is Michael Heekin, who served as a captain in the U.S. Army and as former chief operations officer of WedMD. Jeff Rosensweig, Goizueta Business School associate professor of finance, will be the master of ceremonies, first introducing Sterk, who will speak about Emory's initiatives to serve and support veterans. Rosensweig is the founding faculty sponsor for the Emory Veterans Association. Following Sterks remarks, attendees will observe a moment of silence to commemorate the original Armistice Days ending of World War I hostilities at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th month. Heekinss remarks follow the moment of silence. In addition to being a veteran, Heekin serves on the board of the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Research and Education Foundation. He has also been associate dean of the Florida State University College of Law. He received accounting and law degrees from the University of Florida and an MBA in finance and marketing from the Wharton School. After the ceremony, attendees are invited to enjoy refreshments provided courtesy of Tab Ansari, professor of pathology in the School of Medicine, who served as an officer in the Navy and is a Vietnam veteran. This will be our ninth annual Emory Veterans Day Ceremony and it seems to grow larger each year, says Andrew West, a key organizer, veteran and senior center administrator of the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance in the Emory School of Medicine. The Veterans Day ceremony is incredibly important to me and to the Employee Council representatives, notes Deena Keeler, Employee Council president. The proposal to honor veterans at Emory was initiated in 2008, supported by West, then-Employee Council President Matt Engelhardt and Emory Historian Gary Hauk, with the first ceremony held in 2009. West attributes the event's continued success to the many people who have championed it through the years, including former Emory President James Wagner, Sterk, Hauk, Engelhardt, Ansari, Rosensweig, the Emory Veterans Association and the Employee Council. "Most importantly, we are grateful to everyone who attends this event each year to show their support, West says. Supporting those who served One initiative concurrent with this years Veterans Day Celebration is an invitation to Emory alumni to become mentors for a day through Veterati, a digital mentoring platform that supports the careers of service members, veterans and military spouses who are transitioning into the civilian workforce. Co-founded by Emory alumnus Daniel Rau 13B, Veterati links these job seekers with successful professionals for free, one-hour mentoring phone calls. The Emory Alumni Association (EAA) and Veterati are partnering to provide alumni with the opportunity to support this community by using personal career and professional growth experiences to advise and accelerate the futures of those who served in the U.S. military. Several projects hosted by the EAA for the upcoming Emory Cares International Service Day, held this year on Saturday, Nov. 11, also focus on serving veterans. Contact the EAA for more information. Also of interest for Veterans Day, a new exhibit titled A Question of Manhood: African Americans and World War I will be on view through Jan. 8 in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, located on the tenth floor of Woodruff Library. In conjunction with this exhibit, a screening of the film Men of Bronze: The Black American Heroes of World War I will be Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 6:30 p.m. in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library. For more information on Emorys ongoing and extensive involvement with veterans, including investing in veterans as students and caring for veterans in the community, please see Veterans at Emory. Emory Universitys Gregory Ellison isnt taking a conventional road to life as a public scholar. What began as a call to action on a local Atlanta radio station four years ago has grown into grassroots organization and global movement. Ellison shares that journey in his latest book, Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice. What Ellison describes in Fearless Dialogues is a groundbreaking methodology he developed, an initiative he says is committed to creating unique spaces for unlikely partners to engage in hard, heartfelt conversations. These arent conversations that go nowhere, he says, but are designed for participants to see gifts in others, hear value in stories, and work for change and positive transformation in self and other. Ellisons road toward the Fearless Dialogues movement grew out of his first book, Cut Dead But Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men," published in 2013. In it, Ellison, associate professor of pastoral care and counseling at Emorys Candler School of Theology, invites readers to enter the lives of five young men. He traces their journeys from a sense of their own invisibility to a sense of understanding of themselves and the world around them. Ellison was leading a combined summer seminar-think tank series of conversations on Cut Dead. The group of 12 diverse professionals quickly became committed to a shared aim. They vowed to remain in community, to see and hear those without a voice and to address any rising discord they encountered. And then the fever pitch of discord, as Ellison describes it, hit the national news headlines: No Justice: Thousands March for Trayvon Martin. We began by saying, Lets have a conversation with the community, says Ellison. The group put the word out through print and social media and local radio. More than 300 people responded to the call, showing up at Candler on a Saturday afternoon in July. There was no initial intent that the work we were doing in creating a space for conversation would develop into a movement," Ellison says. But a movement it has become. In the last four years, Ellison and the Fearless Dialogues team have worked with more than 20,000 people, including gang leaders in New Orleans, activists in Ferguson, heads of state in the Bahamas, and more recently, in partnership with schools and corporations. Behind it all is Ellison, a native of Atlanta and graduate of Atlanta Public Schools, Emory University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He has dedicated his teaching, research and scholarship to bringing unlikely partners together to really see and hear each other, as a first step in changing the way people see themselves and the world and maybe even changing the world itself. Unlikely conversation partners In writing Fearless Dialogues, Ellison brings to readers not only his own research and study, but also his lived experiences with key people, both well-known and unknown, who have shaped his academic career and his lifes work. They include individuals such as author/activist Parker Palmer, author/theologian Barbara Brown Taylor and his unpublished but influential grandmothers. What I sought to do in writing the book was to put unlettered persons like my grandmothers in conversation with distinguished authors and theorists, and not to privilege one over the other, Ellison explains. We seek to create the same type of environment in the work of Fearless Dialogues: that no one persons story is more important or less important than anothers. In the book Ellison recalls how his paternal grandmother, Franceina Ellison, helped him overcome fear of what he calls country dark, the dark of a rural landscape, unfamiliar and scary to a six-year-old Atlanta boy who was terrified by not being able to see his hand in front of his face. My grandmother taught me how to face fears of the unknown, he says. That became a benchmark in how we help individuals in Fearless Dialogues move into spaces that are unfamiliar. Likewise, his maternal grandmother, Mary Jane Simpson, introduced him to another tenet of Fearless Dialogues success formula: radical hospitality. Ellison describes how she routinely fed 30 to 40 people a day. Anyone who was hungry was welcome at her table, he says. At the time I thought all of these people were family because of the way she treated them. As I got older, I recognized that these were folks coming off of the streets in need of a meal. From experts such as Simpson, Henri Nouwen and others, Ellison outlines how Fearless Dialogues engages radical hospitality so that participants may sidestep the fear of strangers that can stop conversations before they begin. Ellisons narrative in Fearless Dialogues, as he weaves together theory and research with innovative stories and connections, is called eclectic in a recent Publishers Weekly starred review. The reviewer also calls him a theologian for our times. The reason Ive written Fearless Dialogues is not necessarily as a how-to manual, says Ellison, but it does explain the tenets and theories of our work so that families, faith communities and organizations can begin to have these conversations that are so richly needed in todays political and social climate. Story Highlights Majorities confident in Niger's national government, military Perceptions of safety high, despite decline from 2015 49% of Nigeriens approve of President Mahamadou Issoufou WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Although the Oct. 4 attacks that killed U.S. and Nigerien soldiers have drawn new attention to U.S. military engagement in Africa, Niger has been dealing with militant groups within and near its borders for years. Amid Niger's efforts to combat groups linked to Boko Haram, al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, among others, Nigeriens' confidence in their national government and military remains high: Three in five express confidence in their national government, and more than four in five are confident in their military. While Niger has been a counterterrorism partner of the U.S. and other countries since 2001, its security situation has become increasingly volatile in the wake of growing violence in neighboring countries. Since 2011, Niger has fought numerous terrorist organizations based in Libya and Mali that are active in the remote Northern reaches of the country. Additionally, Niger has participated in multinational military operations against Boko Haram in its Southeastern region since 2015. Throughout these conflicts and crises, Nigeriens' confidence in their national government has remained steady. Niger returned to civilian rule in 2011 following a coup that ousted then-President Mamadou Tandja. Since this transition, confidence in Niger's national government has increased and sits well above last year's average (48%) across countries in West and Central Africa. Confidence in Niger's military, which historically has played an active role in national politics, also has remained strong during this period of conflict. It currently receives a higher level of confidence than any other military in West and Central Africa, with the exception of Ghana and Senegal. However, Nigeriens' confidence is down slightly from where it was even a few years ago. In April/May 2017, 83% of Nigeriens said they have confidence in their military, compared with 92% in 2015, when military operations with Boko Haram began. The Nigerien army suffered a high-profile defeat to the group in early 2016, which may have contributed to this decrease. Access Global Survey Data Shape your research on global issues with access to opinions from every corner of the Earth. Learn more Perceptions of Safety Remain High in Niger Amid continued violence in parts of the country, significantly fewer Nigeriens say they feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live. Eighty-three percent of Nigeriens felt safe in 2015, compared with 67% in 2017. Despite this decline, perceptions of safety in Niger are currently as high or higher than any other country in the region. Half of Nigeriens Approve of Issoufou's Job as President While Nigeriens' confidence in their national government remains high, President Mahamadou Issoufou's approval rating has declined 20 percentage points in the past two years. In 2015, 69% of Nigeriens approved of the way Issoufou was handling his job as president, compared with 49% in April/May 2017. In addition to escalated fighting with extremist groups, the drop in approval ratings also comes in the wake of the controversial presidential election in early 2016. The main opposition candidate was arrested before the election for his role in a human trafficking scandal. The opposition claimed this arrest was politically motivated and alleged fraud in the first round of voting, leading the main coalition to boycott the runoff. Implications Niger has been at the center of recent efforts to combat various extremist groups in West Africa. It is a member of the Multinational Joint Task Force against Boko Haram, as well as the United Nations-backed G5 Sahel antiterrorism military force. Niger will likely continue to play a key international role following plans by the U.S. to increase its antiterrorism focus in the region in light of the recent deaths of four American soldiers. For now, Niger's military response has been accompanied by stable confidence in the institutions carrying out the country's counterinsurgency strategy. However, local dynamics have contributed to a decline in Issoufou's job approval rating. Declining support could lead to an unstable political environment, which could further complicate security initiatives in the region. - Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally visits Rakhine State amid Rohingya crisis. - Visiting the troubled border district of Maungdaw, which has seen the greatest exodus of people. - Over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Rakhine State to Bangladesh since the violence began on August 25th. Myanmar's Leader Aung San Suu Kyi is visiting Rakhine State after months of Violence against the Rohingya Muslims there that has led to the mass exodus of refugees to Bangladesh. The report of her visit was confirmed by her spokesperson who confirmed that Suu Kyi would indeed be visiting the worst hit area of Rakhine State. Suu Kyi who is a Nobel Peace Prize winner has faced heavy criticism from the international community since the latest round of violence began with many calling for her nobel prize to be withdrawn. Lately Suu Kyi, who does not control the military, has appeared to take a stronger lead in the crisis, focusing government efforts on rehabilitation and pledging to repatriate refugees. Spokesman Zaw Htay said Suu Kyi was visiting the troubled border district of Maungdaw, which has seen the greatest exodus of people. "She will go to Maungdaw, and I cannot give any more details," he told Reuters. The ongoing Rohingya crisis in Myanmar's Rakhine State has seen over 600,000 Muslim refugees flee violence to Bangladesh leading to strong criticisms from the international community and sanctions from the United States of America. - Spain jails 8 members of ousted Catalan government, issues EU arrest warrant for Puigdemont. - Puigdemont plans to remain in Belgium and cooperate with the authorities there. - The charges include sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds A Spanish court has on Thursday ordered that eight former leaders of Catalonia's regional government be remanded in custody as they continue to face trial over their involvement in the independence crisis that saw the region declare its short-lived independence which led to Spain imposing direct rule and subsequently calling for fresh elections in the region. Carmen Lamela, sitting in Spain's national court, jailed the eight former ministers including Puigdemont's deputy, Oriol Junqueras on Thursday while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds. Carlos Puwigdemont had already travelled to Belgium before Spanish prosecutors indicated they would be pursuing the charges and at that point, the former Catalan leader indicated that he was not seeking Asylum in Brussels. In a written request to Lamela, prosecutors said that Puigdemont and four other members of his administration were aware that they had been ordered to testify, but had chosen not to attend. "Repeated attempts to deliver the summons at home and repeated phone calls have been ignored," they said. "For his part, Carles Puigdemont has publicly stated his intention not to appear and has requested to make a statement via videoconference, without giving any information about his current whereabouts." Consequently, they added, they were requesting Puigdemont be found and arrested, along with the four other regional ministers who are also in Belgium. Late on Tuesday, Puigdemont's Belgian lawyer Paul Bekaert told state broadcaster VRT that a warrant had been issued for for the five Catalan politicians. "I have just heard from my client that the warrant has been issued for the president and four of his ministers who are in Belgium," he said. "Mr Puigdemont will stay here. He has said that he will fully cooperate with Belgian authorities during the procedure," Bekaert said. Other members of the ousted Catalan government previously appeared in Court on Thursday in response to summons from Spanish prosecutors. It is still unclear whether they could potentially face jail term for their role in attempting to break Catalonia away from Spain. Those detained are: Former Deputy Vice President Oriol Junqueras Former Interior Minister Joaquim Forn Former Foreign Affairs Minister Ral Romeva Former Justice Minister Carles Mund Former Labour Minister Dolors Bassa Former Government Presidency Councillor Jordi Turull Former Sustainable Development Minister Josep Rull Former Culture Minister Meritxell Borras Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 00:39:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close GENEVA, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The decision by Switzerland's main supermarkets to introduce a plastic bag charge has led to plummeting of the plastic demand, said a report released on Wednesday. According to the report released by the Swiss public radio SRF, since the introduction of a small charge, demand for such bags has fallen by more than 80 percent at Swiss chain-store Migros, more than 85 percent at Coop and 74 percent at Spar. Swiss chain-store Coop, for example, said that it has been able to save 850 tons of plastic a year. In Switzerland, Migros was the first retailer to stop giving out plastic bags for free a year ago. Coop and most other large supermarkets, including Denner, Spar and Manor, followed suit. Switzerland is one of many countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use of plastic bags. According to local media, the Swiss retail industry has targeted to reduce the use of free plastic bags by 80 percent by the beginning of next year, though they will remain available for fruit and vegetables. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 02:15:22|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong (R) meets with Song Tao, special envoy of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping, in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 1, 2017. Song, who is also head of the CPC Central Committee's International Liaison Department, is visiting Hanoi to brief the Vietnamese side on the 19th CPC National Congress. (Xinhua/Le Yanna) HANOI, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam and China pledged here on Wednesday to further promote the development of bilateral relations. The pledge came as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong met with Song Tao, special envoy of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Xi Jinping. Song, who is also head of the CPC Central Committee's International Liaison Department, is visiting Hanoi to brief the Vietnamese side on the 19th CPC National Congress. At their meeting, Song conveyed Xi's message that China and Vietnam should view the special significance of the bilateral relations from a higher vantage point and a deeper level, and China is ready to work with Vietnam to push the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two countries and the socialist causes of the two countries to new horizons. For his part, Nguyen Phu Trong thanked Xi's message and said Vietnam has paid close attention to and spoken highly of the great significance and achievements of the 19th CPC National Congress. He congratulated Xi on his re-election as the general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPC as well as the elevation of the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the party's guiding principles. Nguyen Phu Trong said Vietnam is willing to join hands with China to push forward the development of the ties between the two parties and those between the two countries in the right direction that meets the requirements of the times. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 02:15:24|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close by Salah Takieddine BEIRUT, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Farmer Abou Ajwad Sharif is busy like his fellow cannabis farmers during this period of the year in harvesting before the rainfall, as this plant must be dried under the sun before being manufactured during December and January. Sharif, who has a strong structure, wears a straw hat to protect him from the sunshine, is always cautious and vigilant about every move he takes while leading a large group of 20 workers. "Our concern is to collect the harvest before the rainfall. The rain kills our season, which will increase our losses in light of the recession we are witnessing," Sharif said. But it consoles them that they can keep the reaped cannabis in a special dry store for many years for future sale. Whoever visits the Bekaa Valley during this time of the year will be attracted by the hundreds of workers scattered in the vast plains planted with cannabis to the east and west of the city of Baalbek, the northern Bekaa and the Hermel heights on the eastern border with Syria. The visitor can see on the sides of the main roads and at the entrances of the villages, dozens of fields in a scene that can be described as surreal, where these fields survived the pursuit of the Lebanese authorities, which traditionally destructed these cannabis fields before being harvested. The destruction of the cannabis fields was carried out according to security authorities in the Bekaa, "based on a political decision imposed by local and international circumstances" and carried out by the security forces with the support of the Lebanese army. The same sources added that destruction operations have been halted since 2012 because of the Syrian crisis and the situation on the eastern border with Syria, and also the preoccupation of the security forces in controlling these borders and facing the expansion of Islamic State and al-Nusra Front in northern Bekaa. The suspension of fields' destruction led to an increase in cultivated areas at a time when the government and the international community are failing to provide the assistance promised years ago to the farmers to train and support them in a 300-million-U.S. dollar International Alternative Agriculture Project. Samir, an activist in local development in the Bekaa region, said "Lebanon did not receive from this project more than 17 million dollars and most of the money was dedicated for researches about alternative crops such as thyme, anis, hazelnuts, chestnuts, pistachios, saffron and jojoba." He added "the cost of these crops is higher compared with the low-cost and high-profit cultivation of cannabis for the vast majority of the population." "The authorities meanwhile are confused with the calls to legalize the cultivation of cannabis for medical uses according to specific controls, which meets the support of a number of politicians. But these calls are not serious and are for electoral purposes," Samir said. The activist estimated that the area planted with cannabis is between 30,000 and 40,000 acres, and the cost of planting each acre with cannabis is about 150 dollars while the crop is sold for 500 dollars, with a total annual revenue from this agriculture of about 800 million dollars annually, the main source of income for about 30,000 families in Bekaa. But for Abou Amer, a cannabis farmer, "if the cannabis fields survived destruction this year, the production was still not fully saved because of the low prices and recession. No more than 20 percent to 30 percent of the crop could be sold, and this does not cover the cost." Abou Tamer Kheireddine, another cannabis farmer, said "we are not outlaws and we grow cannabis simply because we failed last season and lost our money in planting potatoes and apples due to the recession and the small capacity of the local market and the absence of export." He added "we never expected a recession in the cannabis trade but it is all due to the war in Syria, which led to the closure of our transit routes, not to mention the local prosecution and harassment, which closed also the routes to transport the cannabis to the Arab and European countries." Abou Adham, with a nickname "king of Hashish," said this year's crop will enter his big warehouse to add to the huge quantities of last year's harvest. "We are facing lots of troubles in selling our crops to the traditional markets in Egypt and European countries because of the bad situation of the routes," he said, adding that "we are facing losses accumulated year after year and the ounce price does not exceed 200 dollars, while it used to be sold four times this price." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 02:20:26|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close A doctor of China Medical Team in Rwanda examines a patient at a health post in Kibungo, Eastern Province, Rwanda, on Nov. 1, 2017. The 18th China Medical Team in Rwanda on Wednesday launched a week-long free treatment activity in Rwanda's Kibungo. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran) by Lyu Tianran and Frank Kanyesigye KIBUNGO, Rwanda, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The 18th China Medical Team in Rwanda on Wednesday launched a week-long free treatment activity in Rwanda's Kibungo Cell. Hundreds of local residents gathered at the health post in Kibungo, Eastern Province, around 9:30 a.m. to receive free medical care from the Chinese doctors. The doctors from departments of orthopedics, internal medicine, surgery, stomatology, acupuncture, anesthesiology and maternity provided consultations and treatment, after donating medicines to the health post. "I have been suffering from painful swollen legs for the past two years and have visited several healthcare centers in my area," said Jean d'Arc Mukandutiye, 47, who got diagnosis, medicines, recommendation of further medical checkup from the Chinese doctors. "It's expensive to access medical checkup and treatment in hospitals. I tried to get treatment in hospitals but I couldn't afford," said the mother of seven. The patients at the site reported health problems ranging from dental problems, malaria, hypertension, diabetes, reproductive health, influenza, arthritis, typhoid to skin diseases. Emmanuel Ndayambaje, who suffered a terrible headache for the past six months, said the health centers he visited failed to diagnose the problem. The Chinese doctors explained to him the cause of the headache, he said. The 60 years old expressed his gratitude for the free medical services, as it has been difficult for him to access health services in Kigali due to his financial constraints. Eugenie Imurinde, head of Kibungo health post, thanked the Chinese medical team for the work they have done for the health center. "Many patients especially in rural areas fail to access treatment even for minor problems, due to lack of money for treatment and sometimes the long distances involved," Imurinde said. "When our health post can't handle complicated health problems and refer these patients to hospitals, they don't go because of financial difficulties," she said. Providing free treatment to Rwandans is one of the Chinese medical teams' main assignments, according to the team leader Lu Jun. The team aims to provide Rwandan patients with convenience through such activities, she said. China started to dispatch medical team to Rwanda in 1982, and there have been hundreds of medical staff working in Rwanda since then. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 02:40:36|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close Liu Zhenmin (C, front), UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, addresses the high-level symposium on "Building Global Energy Interconnection, Promoting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", at the UN headquarters in New York, Nov. 1, 2017. The high-level symposium was held here Wednesday at the UN headquarters in New York aimed to find out ways for affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all. (Xinhua/Li Muzi) UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- A high-level symposium was held here Wednesday at the UN' s headquarters in New York aimed to find out ways for affordable, reliable and sustainable energy for all. The symposium, with the theme of "Building Global Energy Interconnection, Promoting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," was co-hosted by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) and the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization (GEIDCO). UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that "We want to make sure that we move into a situation in which energy becomes the key factor of stainability and obviously with a global interconnection effectively working we can produce energy where it can be done in a more friendly way to the environment and to the risk of climate change." "When we discuss global interconnection in relation to energy we are at the centre of the two key words that express our global concerns - stainability and inclusivity," the UN chief said. Liu Zhenya, GEIDCO chairman, said that the world is facing major challenges such as resources shortage, environmental pollution and climate change, which pose serious threat to the survival and development of humankind, adding that accelerating energy transformation is the key to achieving the 2030 Agenda targets. Global Energy Interconnection (GEI) is a modern energy system that is dominated by clean energy, centers on electricity and features connectivity, joint contribution and benefit sharing. It is, in essence, a combination of smart grids, Ultra High Voltage (UHV) grids and clean energy. The building of GEI will be in alignment with the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to accelerate the world's green and low-carbon development, protect the ecological environment of the earth, facilitate infrastructure connectivity and sustained economic growth. The aim of the system, Liu said, is to make sustainable energy accessible to everyone, eradicate poverty and hunger, reduce regional gap, facilitate South-South and North-South cooperation, so as to usher in a new global development landscape marked by green and low carbon development, peace and harmony, and common prosperity. "Building GEI is an important strategic action concerning the future of mankind. We must go through a development process from achieving consensus to forming synergy and taking joint actions," Liu said. GEIDCO has been committed to promoting the coordinated and sustainable development of the world energy along with economy, society and environment. In order to implement the 2030 Agenda, GEIDCO formulated the "Global Energy Interconnection Action Plan for promoting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" (or the "Action Plan"), which was released at the high-level symposium. GEI proposed to establish specialized agency under the UN to accelerate the formulation of international conventions and regulations, coordinate power grid planning for countries, regions, continents and the whole world. The energy organization also suggested creation of special funds and bringing in all parties' effort to build GEI for sustainable development. The action plan specified Ten Actions and Five Mechanisms corresponding to the 17 SDGs of the agenda, which includes the concept promotion, clean development, universal access to electricity, power grid interconnection, electricity replacement, smart grid, innovation-driven development, capacity building and policy support. The Five Mechanisms include global electricity planning, transnational project construction, global electricity trade, interconnected power grid coordination and collaboration in technical standards. Experts believe the GEI Action Plan provides the world's sustainable development with a global solution and a guide on action. As an affiliated entity to the UN Secretariat,the UNDESA is in charge of the economic, social and environmental issues. It is committed to implementing the 2030 Agenda, helping countries tackle economic, social and environmental challenges, and supporting the international cooperation in sustainable development. A cooperation agreement was signed this May between the UNDESA and GEIDCO to carry out joint research and projects. In March 2016, GEIDCO was established in Beijing with the aim to build a cooperation platform featuring "extensive consultation, joint contribution, shared and win-win development." The platform will promote the world energy transition to green and low-carbon development and contribute to innovative, coordinated and sustainable development of human society. Since its founding, GEIDCO has rallied all parties' efforts to promote the concepts, conduct research and planning, carry out international cooperation and implement projects to advance the GEI development to a new stage marked by joint action. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 03:15:47|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses a gathering in Harare, Zimbabwe, Nov. 1, 2017. Robert Mugabe on Wednesday reaffirmed his support for death penalty in the wake of increased murder cases in the country. (Xinhua) HARARE, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday reaffirmed his support for death penalty in the wake of increased murder cases in the country. He decried the increase in rape and murder cases, and called on the nation to respect the sanctity of human life. His call came after the recent murder of a Roman Catholic Sister Ruvadiki Plaxedes Kamundiya in Mutoko, Mashonaland East Province. A man has been arrested for suspectedly raping the woman before killing her and throwing the body in a nearby dam. Mugabe, a devout Catholic, said such callous acts call for the harshest penalty. "Let's restore the death penalty. People have lost respect for human life. They are killing others recklessly and willy nilly. Is that what we fought the country for?" Mugabe said. Zimbabwe's constitution adopted in 2013 allows men aged between 18 and 70 convicted on aggravated murder to be sentenced to death by hanging while women and children are exempted from the punishment. However, the Zimbabwean government has not carried out any executions since 2005 partly due to the absence of hangman. At least 80 convicts are on the death row. Zimbabwe's civil society has in the past called for the abolishment of the death penalty, saying the sentence is cruel and a violation of the right to life. Several countries in southern Africa including Mozambique, Angola, Namibia and South Africa have abolished the death penalty. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 03:45:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TEHRAN, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kham Khamenei on Wednesday hailed Iran-Russia cooperation in the fight against terrorist groups in Syria, Press TV reported. The solution of the Syria crisis requires continued cooperation between Tehran and Moscow, Khamenei said in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on Wednesday. Iran and Russia cooperation in the fight against the terrorist groups, backed by certain countries, has had important outcomes, making Russia an "influential" player in the developments of West Asia, he was quoted as saying. "The defeat of U.S.-led coalition supporting terrorists in Syria is an undeniable reality, but they keep hatching plots," he said. Khamenei noted that the Syrian people are the ultimate decision-makers regarding their country's issues. All issues pertaining to the Damascus government should be solved based on intra-Syrian efforts, and the Syrian government should not be "pressured" into implementing "any plans," he added. Khamenei stressed the need for regional countries to resolve their issues without foreign interference, saying "Americans seek to interfere in all issues of the region and the world." Putin described Iran as "a strategic partner" and a "great neighbor," stressing that Russia welcomes expansion of bilateral relations. Also, Putin hailed Iran-Russia cooperation in the war against terrorism in Syria, calling for "a suitable political process to be considered in the Arab country." "We proved to the world that we are able to resolve our region's highly important issues without (any help from) extra-regional countries," he said. Putin is visiting Iran to attend the tripartite summit of Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 04:06:06|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close Refugees seeking reunion with family members in Germany take part in a hunger strike in Athens, Greece, on Nov. 1, 2017. Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas outlined on Wednesday the government's plan to improve the living conditions of thousands of refugees and migrants stranded in Greece ahead of winter, pleading to Europe and Turkey for more efforts to keep alive the 2016 deal aimed to curb flows into Europe and share the burden. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos) ATHENS, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Greek Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas outlined on Wednesday the government's plan to improve the living conditions of thousands of refugees and migrants stranded in Greece ahead of winter, pleading to Europe and Turkey for more efforts to keep alive the 2016 deal aimed to curb flows into Europe and share the burden. During a press briefing in Athens the Greek official said that Greece intends to create among other measures more reception centers on the Aegean Sea islands and the mainland to decongest the existing camps, as well as house people on ships if deemed necessary. Local authorities objected to the creation of more hotspots on the islands last year calling instead for the transfer of more people to the mainland. However, under the 2016 Europe-Turkey agreement refugees and migrants reaching the islands from cannot travel to the mainland until their asylum bids are examined. The Greek Minister voiced concern during the briefing over the spike in the flows from Turkey since August. Following the implementation of the Turkey- EU deal the number of daily arrivals had dropped by 97 percent compared to the 2015 levels, he noted. However in September this year on average 214 people per day reached Greece up from 56 on average per day in March 2017. "We are concerned with the increase. In our view the EU-Turkey agreement is still in effect from Turkey's side. We have increased our diplomatic contacts and pressure so that both parties, Europe and Turkey, will meet their commitments," Mouzalas said. The Greek official called on other European countries to accept more people in need, such as unaccompanied minors. "Europe is hypocritical regarding the unaccompanied minors issue. They do not accept their relocation. Our view is -and this is the also the view of the European Commissioner of Human Rights for a long time- that the age rather ethnicity is the priority. When Britain, Germany, France or other countries refuse to accept minors because they are not Syrians but Afghans or Pakistanis, this is a violation," he said. Currently there are 2,900 unaccompanied minors among the more than 60,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece after the closure of borders along the Balkan route to central Europe in the winter of 2016. More than one million people had reached Greece and continued the journey to central and northern Europe from early 2015 until then. Shortly before Wednesday's press conference, one dozen refugees launched a hunger strike opposite the Greek parliament building on Syntagma square protesting delays in family reunifications. Hayyan from Syria told Xinhua that they represent about 4,000 refugees awaiting transfer to Germany - most of which are families who are waiting already for more than 18 months in Greece. His children are in Germany for two years. "Think if for two and half years you do not see your daughter, what will you do? What will you feel? And the kids, if they do not see their parents what will they feel?" he was asking as protesters chanted slogans such as "Reunite us with our families now!" "We do not know from which side is the problem. We just want to know where we are. How long to wait? When will we travel? Give me data, give me an appointment. Tell me you will travel this day," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 07:57:04|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close Clashes break out between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers when Palestinians holds a protest against the Balfour Declaration in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Nov. 1, 2017. November 2 marks 100 years since the Balfour declaration, which is the name given to the letter dated in 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary back then Arthur James Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was then a leader of the British Jewish community, announcing the British support for the Jewish people to build their state on the lands of Palestine. (Xinhua/Mamoun Wazwaz) Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 08:32:45|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Sayed takes care of his sister Afifa at Children's Hospital in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Oct. 25, 2017. The Bangladeshi 7-year-old sister Afifa has been suffering from congenital cerebral palsy. The 10-year-old brother, Sayed, and Afifa came to China in 2013 with their father who aims to study for doctorate at Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Xi'an. Afifa since then received medical treatment in China and his brother has to receive homeschooling to better help their parents take care of his sister. A Chinese charity organization recently collected 100,000 yuan (about 15,000 U.S. dollars) for the improvished family. (Xinhua/Liu Xiao) Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 08:02:03|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to China from Nov. 8 to 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a press release on Thursday morning. The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-U.S. relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said. He said China stands ready to work with the United States to achieve important results for Trump's visit and Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 09:04:06|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch (L) and Twitter Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett arrive for a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, on Nov. 1, 2017. U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing on Wednesday with Facebook, Twitter and Google on Social Media Influence in the 2016 U.S. Elections. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu) Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 09:42:36|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Violence in Libya killed 23 civilians and injured 15 others in October, the United Nations mission in the North African country said Wednesday. "From 1 October to 31 October 2017, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) documented 38 civilian casualties - 23 deaths and 15 injuries - during the conduct of hostilities across Libya." the mission said in a report. "Victims included 11 men killed and seven injured, three women killed and three injured, and nine children killed (six boys and three girls) and five injured (three girls and two boys)," it added. Airstrikes, explosive remnants of war, and gunfire caused the most civilian casualties, the report said. The UN mission demanded all fighting parties in Libya stop using mortars and other indirect weapons in civilian areas, and keep fighters or other military objectives away from populated areas. "All executions of captives must cease and all those captured including fighters must be treated humanely in all circumstances. Murdering or torturing captives is also a war crime, regardless of what the captive may be accused of," the report said. Since the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime, Libya has been plagued with escalating violence and unrest, as well as political division. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 09:47:39|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close CHARIKAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- At least 15 people were killed and nearly 30 others wounded in an oil tanker explosion in Charikar, capital of eastern Afghan province of Parwan overnight, a local official said Thursday. The incident occurred late Wednesday night in central neighborhood of the city after a sticky bomb attached to the fuel truck exploded, causing fire on the nearby bus, the official told Xinhua anonymously. "Fifteen people, including a woman, burned to death, and 30 others wounded. The number of the casualties may rise as several injured were in critical condition," the source said. Further details about the incident are still forthcoming amid the absence of any official statement. The vehicles were running slowly on the crowded road connecting Afghan capital of Kabul to northern region when the blast occurred. The source added that the attack was a terrorist act and the fire caused panic among the resident of the city, 55 km north of Kabul. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants warned local logistic companies not to transport fuel and goods for the government and foreign forces stationed in the country. More than 2,640 civilians were killed and over 5,370 others injured in conflict-related incidents in first nine months of the year, according to figures released by the United Nations mission in the country. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 10:12:48|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close SYDNEY, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Most ancestors of Australian lizards and snakes, including some of the world's deadliest species, migrated from Asia to the southern continent as early as 30 million years ago, according to latest research. About 85 percent of the more than 1,000 snake and lizard species in Australia descended from creatures that floated across the ocean, most likely on driftwood, Dr Paul Oliver, the lead researcher of the study under the Australian National University, was quoted on Thursday by the university's Research School of Biology as saying. "Around 30 million years ago it appears that the world changed, and subsequently there was an influx of lizard and snakes into Australia," said Dr Oliver. The migration was likely spurred by Australia's gradual split from Antarctica. "We think this is linked to how Australia's rapid movement north, by continental movement standards, has changed ocean currents and global climates." The research, which included animal data modelling and simulations, helps explain how Australia contains about 11 percent of the world's 6,300 reptile species, the highest for any country, the school posted on its website. Those include the venomous death adder, black tiger and red-bellied black snakes. The reptiles' migration to Australia was clustered in time, said Oliver. "The influx of lizards and snakes into Australia corresponds with a time when fossil evidence suggests animal and plant communities underwent major changes across the world," he said. "The movement of Australia may have been a key driver of these global changes." The school's findings have been published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution scientific journal. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 10:17:50|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close By Matthew Rusling WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump will head to Asia later this week, at a time when growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula show no sign of de-escalating. Trump is slated to visit five Asian countries on Nov. 3-14, and Pyongyang's nuclear program is expected to top his list of topics to be discussed with leaders in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. The trip comes amid an ongoing war of words between Trump and Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s leader Kim Jong Un, with Trump threatening "fire and fury" against the DPRK if it endangers the United States. Kim has threatened to turn the United States into a "sea of fire." The businessman-turned-president wants to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons, and is trying to ratchet up the pressure on the DPRK, in a game of brinkmanship that has many leaders on edge. This comes amid continued missile tests by the DPRK, and after Kim's claims that he can hit targets in the United States. Despite the heightened rhetoric, experts say the DPRK will not be letting go of its nuclear weapons program anytime soon. Experts say that the Kim family -- Kim Jong Un, father Kim Jong Il, and grandfather Kim Il Sung -- have always been astute geopolitical observers. The latter two Kims saw how leaders in Iraq and Libya were toppled by the United States after getting rid of their nuclear programs, and Kim Jong Un does not want to suffer the same fate. Pyongyang sees nuclear weapons as the only ticket to its survival, many U.S. experts say. Troy Stangarone, senior director at the Korea Economic Institute, told Xinhua that the DPRK faces a security dilemma. "It is surrounded by hostile powers in (South Korea), the United States, and Japan ... From the (DPRK's) perspective, in the absence of nuclear weapons it would not be able to secure its survival," he said. Other experts argue that the DPRK has always sought nuclear weapons. The DPRK "has been seeking nuclear weapons since the beginning of its existence," Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua. When asked whether Trump's rhetoric will help his goal of ridding the DPRK of nukes, Stangarone said that unlike political opponents and U.S. companies, "Kim Jong Un cannot be intimidated" by Trump's rhetoric. "While President Trump's Tweets can coax businesses into toeing the line, there is no share price or public opinion for Kim Jong Un to be concerned about when Trump Tweets," Stangarone said, referring to the social media platform Trump often uses to get his messages out. "Trump's traditional weapon is just not one that he can wield against North Korea. Instead, President Trump's Tweets and rhetoric most likely have the opposite effect and reinforce the perception that North Korea needs its weapons programs," Stangarone said, using the American name for the DPRK. "President Trump's rhetoric may have some benefit in signaling the seriousness of U.S. concerns to China, but ... the United States could have solicited the same cooperation from China with less provocative rhetoric," he said. Paal said Trump's rhetoric may "at most introduce caution into the (DPRK's) testing, for fear of a military response, but is inadequate to address the problem as a whole." PROLONGED ISSUE AWAITS PROPER SOLUTION The current tensions beg the question of why previous U.S. presidents failed in their attempts to negotiate with the DPRK over its nuclear program. Stangarone said there used to be the perception that there was time to resolve the dispute, which lowered the level of urgency of those involved. "Since the threat did not seem imminent, the international cooperation we have witnessed over the last year was not possible," Stangarone said. These factors, along with a misunderstanding of the DPRK's objectives by the international community, allowed the DPRK to develop its programs with minimal costs, he said. Paal said past policies failed because the DPRK will not take no for an answer, "so deception and a failure to develop credible verification doomed the efforts." Trump has said all possibilities are on the table, including a military one, and recent weeks have seen U.S. forces in the region ramp up their readiness. Stangarone said there is no certainty that the United States would be able to eliminate all of the DPRK's nuclear and missile weapons programs with a preventative attack. That does not mean the United States would be unable to take out significant portions of the program, and it could put the program back many years, but a military strike is unlikely to completely resolve the issue, Stangarone said. When asked the odds of the United States denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula via military means, Paal said: "I hope they are vanishingly low, because the costs of doing so would be prohibitively high." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 10:22:51|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close JINAN, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Companies expect booming trade between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) ahead of the upcoming annual East Asia Summit in mid-November, which sets to promote regional cooperation. East China's Shandong province, the nearest province to the ROK, has over 5,000 companies funded by the ROK. Wang Chao, a sales manager at Weihai ShinHan Precision Co. Ltd, said sales dropped as much as 50 percent in the first half year, though the fluctuation has been lowered to around 5 percent. ShinHan produces car parts for KIA vehicles and has been in business China for over 15 years. "As far as I know, sales of some Korean brands almost halved in the second quarter this year, and the dip in sales hurt us," he said. "Now we are back within the normal range, which is a great relief." Wen Xue, manager of the Qingdao factory of a cable producer headquartered in Busan, said their company has experienced no worrying sales issues, but imports from the ROK have been not as smooth as before. "Our company has been doing business here for 13 years. There are down moments, but we hope the up-moment will soon come," he said. "Most of my colleagues and I are not pessimistic about the prospects because economic ties between the two countries were very close before, and there is a heavy dependence on Chinese products in the ROK," he said. This year, sales of South Korean firm Ceragem Cosmetics have also been slipping. Cosmetics imports to China from January to September were 9.5 million yuan (1.4 million U.S. dollars), down 20 percent year on year, said Yin Chunshi, company manager. "There was a period that consumers really liked cosmetics from ROK. If I look at our sales for October, and figures are getting better. I hope the Korean brands will continue to win the hearts of Chinese buyers," she said. "It is in the interest of people in both countries to give a boost to trade. The calls from the public show we need to look forward and make steady progress, and to help companies and the economy grow," said Zhang Weiguo, director of Shandong academy of social sciences economics institute. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 10:22:52|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will pay an official visit to Vietnam from Thursday to Friday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Thursday morning. Wang will hold talks with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, and will meet the leaders of Vietnam, said Hua Chunying. They will exchange views on scheduled high-level visits, bilateral ties, and global and regional issues of common concern, Hua said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 10:37:54|Editor: Song Lifang Video Player Close HOUSTON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. state of Texas is seeking nearly 61 billion U.S. dollars in federal government support for recovery from Hurricane Harvey, local media reported Wednesday. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other officials briefed top Washington officials and the Texas legislative delegation Tuesday afternoon on the previously undisclosed plan, the Houston Chronicle newspaper reported. Much of the funding would go to the Houston area -- Texas' largest city and the fourth largest in the United States. Other projects include three "coastal spines" to control flooding, new reservoirs and buyouts of thousands of properties. The plan appears to mirror much of a longstanding plan in the Houston area to buy out properties in the most flood-prone areas. For the first time, Texas leaders pushed up the official total damage estimate from Harvey to an estimated 180 billion dollars, up from 150 billion dollars. The state's new request for federal funding includes only part of that, covering only flood and hazard mitigation as well as public infrastructure such as schools, government buildings, roads and bridges. It could be tough for Texas to garner the full funding as Puerto Rico and Florida that saw hurricane damage and California that suffered from wildfires are also in line for billions more in federal disaster funding. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 11:08:02|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Gremio became the first Brazilian club since 2013 to reach the Copa Libertadores final by completing a 3-1 aggregate victory over Ecuador's Barcelona de Guayaquil on Wednesday. Having won last week's semifinal first leg 3-0 away from home, Gremio could afford to sit back and defend at Gremio Arena, which is exactly what they set out to do. Jonathan Alvez gave his side a glimmer of hope with a 33rd-minute strike but the hosts took control thereafter and were unlucky not to score a late equalizer when Jael's header struck the woodwork. Gremio will meet Lanus in the final after the latter overcame River Plate 4-3 on aggregate in their all-Argentina semifinal. The first leg of the final will be played at Gremio Arena on November 22 and the decisive return fixture is slated for Buenos Aires a week later. Gremio are bidding for their third Copa Libertadores title and first since 1995 while Lanus will be making their first appearance in a final. The last Brazilian side to reach the decider of South America's top club competition were Atletico Mineiro, who defeated Paraguay's Olimpia on penalties to clinch the 2013 title. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 11:08:02|Editor: Jiaxin Video Player Close by Xinhua writers Wang Wen, Huang Hexun NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- When New Yorkers dressed up for Halloween parade in lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, nobody knew a real "horror story" was happening just blocks away. In what authorities called a terrorist attack, a 29-year-old man driving a rented pickup truck plowed along a bike path near World Trade Center for more than one mile, leaving eight people dead, and a dozen more injured. Reports said the man shouted "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great" in Arabic, when he exited the truck after colliding with a school bus. He was shot by a uniformed police officer and was taken into custody later. "It's scary to think that it (terror attack) happened so close to where you go to school every day. I'm down there all the time, walking around and hanging out," said Gregory Rico, a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) which is close to the site. Rico was having a class when the attack happened. He said everybody was getting phone calls and texts from families and friends before he and his classmates knew exactly what was going on. "I can't even imagine what they (people who saw the attack and those hurt in the incident) were thinking at the time," said Rico. On Wednesday, police blocked streets near the crime scene as investigation continued, including the one leading to BMCC's main entrance. Students were advised to enter the main campus through Harrison Street or through the Washington Market Park entrance. Lucas Musse, another BMCC student, said he did not feel safe walking around any more since the supposedly unusual terror attacks are "becoming usual" occurrences. The incident is the deadliest terror attack that has hit the city with a population of over 8.5 million since the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The corner of Chambers and Greenwich streets was the closest place public and media could get to the scene. On Wednesday, the corner saw more passers-by on the day than usual, as people took pictures and videos of the scene, and asked police officers questions. The deadly attack seemed not to have daunted New Yorkers. Life goes on as usual for them just one day after the attack. "What happened was very sad and unfortunate, but I don't think this will restrict us from living our lives and going forward," said Beverly Robertson, who has lived in the Wall Street area for about 35 years. "It's been 16 years since something really major has happened. It's a pretty good track record for New York," said Robertson, who said twice that she feels safe living in the city. Like Robertson, residents in lower Manhattan were sticking to their daily routines. Terry Denson was among those who walked their dogs in the morning. "This is where we live and I'm not going to move. I'm still going to go to grocery stores, walk my dog and pick up life as normal," said Denson. However, for those who have lost their families or friends, life will never be the same again. Of the eight killed, five were from Argentina, one from Germany and the remaining two U.S. nationals, said Daniel A. Nigro, commissioner of New York City Fire Department, at a press conference on Wednesday. Of those injured, three have been released from the hospital, and four were critically injured, but in stable condition, Nigro said, adding that the others were seriously injured. Bouquets were placed on the ground in front of Consulate General of Argentina in New York in memory of the deceased. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed terrorism charges against the suspect, identified as Sayfullo Saipov. Saipov faces two charges, namely, providing material support for a terrorist organization, specifically the Islamic State group, and a federal charge of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle with willful disregard for human life. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment or death penalty. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 12:08:15|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian government on Wednesday condemned the attack in New York City, which left eight people dead and a dozen others injured. On Tuesday afternoon, the attacker, who has been identified as Sayfullo Saipov, plowed a pickup truck down a busy bike path in Lower Manhattan. The slain victims include six foreign tourists, five from Argentina and one from Belgium. In a statement released by the Foreign Ministry, the Brazilian government condemned the attack and expressed its condolences to the families of the victims. "The Brazilian government condemns the terrorist attack that occurred yesterday, October 31, in New York City, which resulted in the deaths of eight people," it said. "Brazil expresses its condolences to the families of the victims, offers wishes of quick recovery to the injured," the ministry added. Saipov has been arrested by police and is now in custody. He faces two charges, namely, providing material support for a terrorist organization, specifically the Islamic State, and a federal charge of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle with willful disregard for human life. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 12:23:19|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close COLOMBO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull arrived in Sri Lanka Thursday on a one-day visit, the foreign ministry said. During his stay, he is expected to hold discussions with President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on wide ranging issues. In an earlier statement released by the Australian High Commission in Colombo, Turnbull said that as this year marks the 70th anniversary of Australia's bilateral relationship with Sri Lanka, he was delighted to be able to visit the island country. "I had the pleasure of meeting President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe during their visits to Australia earlier this year." "I look forward to continuing our discussions on strengthening our economic links, defence engagement, and our work together to combat trans-national crime, particularly people-smuggling," Turnbull said. The Australian prime minister arrived in Sri Lanka after concluding visits to Israel and Palestine. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 12:23:20|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close SUVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Fiji's Micro and Small Business Grant (MSBG) has significantly improved the lives of at least 83,425 Fijians over the past years. Speaking at the disbursement of business grants in Levuka on Thursday, a town on the eastern coast of the Fijian island of Ovalau, Fiji's Minister for Industry and Trade Faiyaz Siddiq Koya said that since the inception of this event in 2014, the Fijian government had invested a total of 16 million Fijian dollars (7.7 million U.S. dollars) to support 16,685 recipients all over the island nation. Through the MSBG, 15,000 micro and small business entrepreneurs had been formalized. According to a press release by Fiji's Department of Information on Thursday, the minister was in Levuka to give another 80 Fijians a total grant of 82,528.96 Fijian dollars (39,724.00 U.S. dollars) for business projects. This grant can be invested and utilized in different ways, such as, sole trader business, agriculture, edible farming of crops. Recipients will be monitored by the ministry, six months from now and training or additional support will be offered to allow these small business ventures to grow. Koya said that the continuous support given to the MSBG initiative portrayed the Fijian government's commitment to improving the standard of living and providing sustainable livelihood for all Fijians. The Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) contributed up to 60 percent of total employment and up to 40 percent of national income in emerging economies, said Koya. By formalizing MSMEs, the Fijian government was able to account for everyone's actual contribution to the economy. According to Koya, the MSMEs in Fiji were present in all the 21 Industries that contributed towards Fiji's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With strong and resilient MSMEs, Fijians would grow the economy by being empowered, and being resilient to external shocks and market fluctuation, said the minister. Rob M. I heard a saying once when I was young, and it so impressed me that I've carried it around my whole life: When the room says you're drunk, lie down. I know I've often taken up plenty of space here to point out my general distaste for our nation's glassy-eyed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but what I've never told you is that I'd guess he's generally a good guy in the awkward position of discovering that everything he believes is wrong. Like most people in this position, he'd rather tell himself that the rest of the world is crazy than look in the mirror and admit he's wrong. It's understandable, and in almost any other case, I'd find it hard not to sympathize. But we're talking about the attorney generalsomeone who literally holds the freedom of millions under his sway. Frankly, I find it hard to feel too much compassion for the man when his personal struggle with reality threatens the freedom of so many of my compatriots. Especially now that the room is finally telling Sessions to lie down. Yes. A Gallup poll released last week found that 64 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing cannabis. It's by far the warmest the country has ever been towards the subject. Compare that number to the underwhelming 12 percent who were in favor of it in 1969, the first time Gallup asked the question. To some, the most shocking results of the poll will be the Republican response. For the first time ever, the majority of GOP voters answered in favor of cannabis legalization. It's a slim majorityonly 51 percentbut it's a marked increase of 9 percentage points since last year. These numbers must be disconcerting to Sessions, but I wonder if he even realizes his culpability. As I've said before, I suspect one of the most powerful propellants of cannabis acceptance has been the apparent anti-cannabis stance of the Trump Administrationand the Department of Justice by associationcoupled with the overwhelming number of people looking to take on any contrarian position against an unpopular populist president. Basically, cannabis is in the right place at the right time. And maybe we're seeing Sessions crack a little when he says things like, I think it would be healthy to have some more competition in the supply [of medical cannabis], to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month. But it would be prudent of us to remember that he immediately followed this up by implying that he would continue to block progress on cannabis research by delaying applications for research facilities who want to grow cannabis under a new Drug Enforcement Agency policy that was announced last summer. Remember that? It was one of those nearly unbelievable news stories last year that entered our purview for about a week and then danced off, forgotten. A refresher: The DEA announced over a year ago that it would be relaxing its stranglehold on cannabis research. Up until that point, the only institution federally sanctioned to grow cannabis for research was the University of Mississippi (and they're samples were weak and poorly maintained by many accounts). The new policy would increase the number of facilities allowed to grow the federally illegal plant, and interested cultivators were encouraged to apply. So far, though, there hasn't been a single application approved since the announcement, and the 26 applications that were turned in are still being processed according to the DEA. At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sessions was asked about the progress of these applications and he waffled. Im sure we dont need 26 new suppliers, he said. He was also concerned about paying for DEA oversight of the operations. But he did seem to be mostly acquiescent about the whole thinglike a stray at the pound, lying at the bottom of a cage with its belly exposed. It seemed like such a victory, until I heard Sessions in an interview with conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt last week. Ol' Hewitt suggested to Sessions that dropping a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) case on one producer and the banks that service them would shut this all down. Sessions seemed to disagree about the effectiveness of one case, but said that the federal laws clearly are in effect in all 50 states. And we will do our best to enforce the laws as were required to do so. His response to whether there is a current attempt to prosecute any producers or dispensaries: I cant comment on the existence of an investigation at this time. Not exactly promising, but not terribly frightening either. I'll reserve my fears for the time being and focus more on honing my cooking skills. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I really need to work on my creamed spinach game. Lie down, Jeff, lie down. We got it from here. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 12:48:26|Editor: Liangyu Video Player Close by Peerzada Arshad Hamid NEW DELHI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in a boiler blast in northern state of Uttar Pradesh of India has risen to 20, as rescuers from national disaster response force (NDRF) and police are continuing search for the missing ones in the wake of the blast, police said Thursday. Over 100 others injured in the blast are undergoing treatment at different hospitals. "Total number of casualties could go up once the blades of boiler are cut," a police spokesman said. Some media reports put the death toll at 25. "Twenty-five people were reported dead and over 100 injured when a blast took place at NTPC's thermal power plant at Unchahar in Rae Bareli district on Wednesday," a New Delhi based television news channel News18 said. The blast took place Wednesday inside the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant at Unchahar Raibareli, about 110 km southeast of Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. According to a senior police official Anand Kumar, the pressure inside the ash pipe triggered the blast of the boiler. "It's believed that accumulation of ash inside pipe and furnace of the boiler exploded due to pressure at the power plant," Kumar said. About 150 workers were said to be present inside the plant when the blast took place. The victims are said to be workers employed in the power plant. The power plant has been operating for the past 30 years. Reports said the blast triggered a massive fire, following which the plant was shut down. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "deeply pained" by the accident. "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored and officials are ensuring normalcy is restored," Modi wrote on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is currently on a three-day visit to Mauritius, has directed state's top officials to send all possible help for the victims. He has also announced ex gratia relief of 3,095 U.S. dollars for each family that has lost its member in the accident. He also announced seriously injured persons would be provided with an assistance of 773 U.S. dollars each, while as those with minor injuries would get 387 U.S. dollars each. The NTPC plant is a secured facility and entry is restricted to employees only. The power plant is guarded by paramilitary India's Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a paramilitary wing mandated to provide security to major installations of India like nuclear installations, space establishments, airports, seaports, power plants and sensitive buildings, etc. Authorities have ordered a probe into the explosion and the reasons that led to accumulation of ash in pipe and the furnace of the boiler. The NTPC, in a statement, described the incident as "unfortunate." According to the NTPC, the blast took place in the boiler of 500 MW under trial unit. Meanwhile, the opposition leader from Congress party Rahul Gandhi would be visiting Raebareli to meet the victims. In India, coal power plants form the backbone of electricity generation. However, experts say many are overdue for replacement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 13:03:28|Editor: Jiaxin Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- An analysis of data from the Kepler space telescope has revealed 20 extraterrestrial worlds that might be able to host life, science magazine New Scientist reported. Each new world comes with a varying orbit time, including one that takes the equivalent of 395 Earth days to circle its star and another taking only 18 days to complete a single orbit, reported the magazine earlier this week. The exoplanet with a 395-day orbit time is one of the most promising worlds for life on the list, Jeff Coughlin, the Kepler team leader told the magazine. "If you had to choose one to send a spacecraft to, it's not a bad option," he said. The exoplanet, dubbed KOI-7923.01, is about 97 percent the size of Earth but is colder like tundra regions. Its chilly temperature is due to the distance from its star and the fact that its star is slightly cooler than the Sun. Nevertheless, scientists said it is still warm and large enough to hold liquid water which is essential to life. In June, NASA announced that Kepler discovered 219 new planet candidates outside our Solar System, among which 10 are near-Earth size and orbit in their star's habitable zone. So far, Kepler has detected more than 4,000 exoplanet candidates, according to the U.S. space agency NASA. Launched in March 2009, Kepler is NASA's first mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. The space telescope halted its mission in 2013 due to a technical glitch and began a new extended mission called K2 in 2014. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 13:23:32|Editor: Jiaxin Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The United States voted against a UN resolution condemning America's trade embargo against Cuba on Wednesday, a latest move underscoring the new Cuba policy launched by the Trump administration to deviate from the Obama legacy. The resolution was overwhelmingly approved in the UN General Assembly by a vote of 191-2, with only the United States and Israel voicing opposition. The voting result is the same as that in 2015 though differing from last year's abstention by the Obama administration, which emphasized a thaw in bilateral relations between the two former Cold War foes. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blamed Havana for the embargo, saying prior to the vote that the United States will continue to oppose the resolution "as long as the Cuban people continue to be deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedoms." Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla fought back, saying the U.S. blockade is "a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans" and qualifies as "an act of genocide." One day earlier, the Trump administration notified its intention to vote against the resolution which called for an end of the trade embargo imposed in 1959 by the United States. Accusing Cuba of engaging in human rights abuses, U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a press briefing that U.S. opposition underscored the new Cuba policy initiated by the Trump administration to put greater emphasis on advancing human rights and democracy in Cuba. The past U.S. administrations perhaps "have turned and looked the other way," said Nauert. The new approach announced by U.S. President Donald Trump in mid-June imposed restrictions on Americans' travel to Cuba and U.S. business with Cuban military. Meanwhile, it kept the restoration of normal U.S.-Cuban diplomatic ties untouched and retained the U.S. embassy in Cuba. Experts saw Trump's new directive as making "moderate" changes to his predecessor's policy, rolling back part of Obama's content while keeping most of it intact. Therefore, the impact of Trump's new rules on U.S.-Cuba relationship is believed to be limited. However, tension between the two former Cold War enemies has been growing in recent months over the alleged "acoustic attacks" against U.S. diplomats in the embassy in Havana. In early October, the U.S. government expelled 15 Cuban officials from the Cuban embassy in Washington as a response to the Cuban authorities' "failure" to "take appropriate steps to protect our diplomats." Havana later denounced the expulsions as "unjustified" and accused the United States of insufficient cooperation and politicizing the issue that is still under investigation. Cuban officials, who were in charge of the ongoing investigation into the incidents, announced last week that preliminary results showed there were no such alleged attacks. At Tuesday's briefing, Nauert said voting against the UN resolution was "a separate matter" from the alleged "acoustic attacks." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 13:28:33|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close SYDNEY, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A major Australian producer of abalone, which forms one of the country's top premium seafood exports to China, opened a new processing plant in South Australia's state capital Adelaide on Thursday. The facility of Yumbah Aquaculture, touted as the largest abalone producer in the southern hemisphere, cost 1 million Australian dollars (771,368 U.S. dollars) and is expected to process more than 600 tons of abalone a year, the company said in a media release. High-quality seafood is an important part of the state's plan to capitalize on the increasing global demand for premium products, South Australia's Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Minister Leon Bignell, who opened the plant, was quoted as saying. Australian's seafood exports to China totaled 85 million Australian dollars in 2016, with premium abalone products worth 32 million Australian dollars, figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade showed. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in December 2015, is also set to eliminate the 10 to 14 percent tariff on abalone by Jan 1, 2019. "The aquaculture industry in South Australia is one of the largest in economic value in Australia and the most diverse in the country," Bignell said. "To have Yumbah's central processing facility here in South Australia -- receiving abalone from across the country and exporting it to the world -- is great for the State's economy and employment." Packaged sales of abalone from the new plant are estimated to be more than 26 million Australian dollars next year alone, the company said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 13:48:37|Editor: Mengjie Video Player Close CANBERRA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Australian authorities have promised unprecedented levels of security for the country's biggest horse racing carnival which attracts more than 300,000 people. The Melbourne Cup Carnival begins on Saturday and features four days of racing over the following week, with crowds flocking to Flemington Racecourse for the annual sporting spectacular. Despite "no specific threat" to the carnival being established, Victoria Police Superintendent David Clayton said, "We learn from what's happening overseas and we ensure that we use any intelligence that is relevant to inform us to ensure we have an appropriate and proportional security environment at an event." Clayton told Australian media on Thursday that at the moment there is no specific threat to Australia or to this event "that would cause us to increase our already very good security arrangements." "We have a highly visible policing presence supported by specialists who are present at the event to ensure that we can provide a safe environment for the public," he added. The Victoria Racing Club (VRC) is expecting up to 100,000 people at Derby Day, the first day of the carnival, and the Melbourne Cup, the biggest event in Australian thoroughbred racing, which is held next Tuesday. Lisa Neville, Victoria's Police Minister, confirmed on Wednesday that emergency sirens would be installed across Melbourne to broadcast messages during a major incident or attack. "We are also upgrading all of the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras which is what is fed into the monitoring and assessment," Neville said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 14:03:41|Editor: Jiaxin Video Player Close SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two paramilitary troopers belonging to India's Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were wounded Thursday after militants attacked their convoy in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The convoy was attacked in Anantnag town, about 52 km south of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "A convoy of CRPF with six buses on their way back to nearest Mattan was fired by militants. In the attack two CRPF men were wounded," Rajesh Yadav, Srinagar based spokesman of CRPF told Xinhua. "The wounded troopers have been referred to nearest medical facility and are said to be stable." Militants however managed to escape without any damage. Police officials said following the attack, contingents of paramilitary and police were rushed to the locality to carry out searches for the militants. According to local media reports five CRPF men were wounded in the attack. So far no militant outfit has claimed responsibility of the attack. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 14:23:45|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's approval rating rose this week, nearing 70 percent, on expectations for improved relations with China, a survey showed Thursday. According to the Realmeter poll, support for Moon was 69.4 percent this week, up 2.2 percentage points from the previous week. It was based on a survey of 1,522 voters conducted from Monday to Wednesday. It had 2.5 percentage points in margin of error with a 95 percent confidence level. Moon's support score came closer to 70 percent in about two months on expectations for enhanced ties with China, the pollster said. Multiple local media reports expected the frosty ties, caused by the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to South Korea, to thaw gradually. Support for Moon gained ground after his state of the nation address in the National Assembly on Wednesday. He emphasized his government's top priority will be placed on the economy, which focuses on people, and peace on the Korean Peninsula. The daily approval rating for Moon advanced to 71.7 percent on Wednesday, topping 70 percent for the first time in about two months. Support for Moon's ruling Democratic Party rose 1.7 percentage points over the week to 50.9 percent this week. The main opposition Liberty Korea Party followed with 17.5 percent in support scores, down 1.4 percentage points from a week earlier. The centrist People's Party won 6.6 percent in approval score, while the minor conservative Righteous Party gained 4.4 percent and the minor progressive Justice Party earned 5.7 percent. China and South Korea have been maintaining communications on the Korean Peninsula issue through diplomatic channels, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Enhancing communication and cooperation is in accordance with the common interests of China and South Korea, a ministry press release said, adding, "Both sides agree to return communication and cooperation in various fields to the normal track as soon as possible." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 15:19:00|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two police officers and a child were injured in a bomb attack in Afghanistan's eastern province of Ghazni on Thursday, a provincial government spokesman said. The blast occurred in the morning after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) placed near a local logistic company went off in Police District 2 of provincial capital Ghazni city, spokesman Harif Noori told Xinhua. The injured did not suffer life-threatening wounds and were shifted to a hospital, Noori said, adding that the blast also damaged nearby shops. The local company is providing food for security forces, the spokesman said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants warned local logistic companies not to provide service to government forces and foreign troops stationed in the country. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 15:24:03|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkish security force on Thursday clashed with PKK militants on Turkish-Iraqi border in southeastern Hakkari province, leaving two soldiers and two security guards killed. According to local media, the clashes erupted while the PKK militants were trying to enter the Derecik border town's rural area from Iraq, and four PKK militants were killed by the security force in the conflicts. A security operation supported by air has been launched in the region. The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU, resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015 after a brief reconciliation period. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 15:29:05|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Three people were killed Wednesday evening in a shooting inside a Walmart supermarket in Thornton, a Denver suburb in the U.S. state of Colorado, according to local media reports. Police were called to the Thornton Walmart store around 6:00 p.m. (2400 GMT), according to KMGH TV. The store was evacuated after police arrived at the scene. Thornton Police Department initially announced around 6:30 p.m. (0030 GMT, Thursday) that "multiple parties" were down in the shooting. An hour later, they tweeted "at this time this is not an active shooter" and confirmed two adult men were dead and another women was injured in the fatal incident. In a video clip posted online, an employee of the Walmart told local TV that he heard probably five or six shots at least. "Everyone got down, everyone started screaming, it was crazy!" he said. Denver 7 news channel cited a Homeland Security official as saying that it is yet to know any terrorism links at this time. So far, there is no suspect in custody, the official said. The shooting incident triggered a new wave of advocate for gun control on social media. A user named NyxSea tweeted "this is how mass shootings have become normal in the US. When I read that there was 1 death #ThorntonWalmartShooting I said thank God." "Thanks to @NRA lobbyists and lawmakers beholden to them, THIS is what America looks like. THIS is every city, every day," tweeted Shanon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grassroots organization working to end gun violence. The state of Colorado witnessed a mass shooting in July 2012. Twelve people were killed and 59 others injured in Aurora, a suburb 10 miles (16 km) east of Denver, where a heavily armed gunman burst into a packed theater and sprayed the audience with bullets. According to the non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive, there have been 299 mass shooting incidents so far this year in the United States. Also on Wednesday, two people were shot dead near a college in the Manhattan borough of New York City. The country now is split on whether to have controls on guns or follow the 1789 Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 15:34:07|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close NEW DELHI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The death toll at a boiler explosion in a government-run coal-fired power plant in India's Uttar Pradesh state has risen to 26, officials said Thursday. "The death toll now stands at 26, while over 100 injured people are undergoing treatment at various hospitals in the state. The toll may rise later in the day as the condition of some are critical," Uttar Pradesh's Home Secretary Arvind Kumar told the media in capital Lucknow. The blast occurred at the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant at Unchahar town in the state's Raebareli district, some 110 km from Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow, Wednesday evening when nearly 200 workers were on duty. Officials said rescuers have launched a massive search operation to look for plant workers still feared trapped under the debris. "The accident took place in the ash-handling section of the plant and ash gushed out at high -temperature, burying several workers working around the area. The plant has been shut down, but we are looking for survivors," senior official Sanjay Kumar Khatri told the media. The plant is almost 30 years old, but the boiler pipe burst took place in the 500 MW power generating unit that started operating in March this year. And the boiler that had exploded was actually on a trial run. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 15:39:09|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The University of California (UC) Wednesday echoed an appeal that urges a U.S. federal judge to keep an immigration policy that provides for no immediate deportation of undocumented alien minors. In a press release issued Wednesday, the UC echoed the voice of other organizations and individuals that have sued U.S. President Donald Trump's administration over its rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and called for keeping the scheme operating while legal motions proceed. DACA, established by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2012 and revoked by Trump in September 2017, was an immigration policy that allowed some individuals who entered the United States as minors, mostly illegally, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work permit. Together with other organizations, such as a group of U.S. states led by California, the county of Santa Clara, the city of San Jose, as well as six individual DACA recipients, the UC argued that the federal government violated federal procedures, failed to justify its decision and did not undergo the proper notice-and-comment process required to rescind DACA. They asked the court to maintain DACA pending a final court ruling. "As a result of the termination of the program, the University and its students will lose the vital contributions that DACA recipients have made as students and employees," UC President Janet Napolitano wrote in one declaration. The UC has approximately 4,000 undocumented students, a substantial number of whom are DACA recipients. The university vowed to continue support for its undocumented students by offering a series of benefits including financial aid to those students in the entire UC system. Although the Trump administration rescinded the DACA program on Sept. 5, 2017, its full implementation was delayed six months to give the Congress time to decide how to deal with the undocumented population affected by the policy. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 16:14:16|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkish security force on Thursday clashed with PKK militants on Turkish-Iraqi border in southeastern Hakkari province, leaving eight members of security force killed. According to local media, the clashes erupted while the PKK militants were trying to enter the Derecik border town's rural area from Iraq, and five PKK militants were killed by the security force in the conflicts. A security operation supported by air has been launched in the region to capture other PKK militants who sought to hide in the mountainous border region. The eight martyred Turkish security force members include six soldiers and two members of the country's state-backed village guard militia. The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the EU, resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015 after a brief reconciliation period. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 16:44:26|Editor: ying Video Player Close LUSAKA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese community in Zambia held a cultural performance here on Wednesday to celebrate the 53rd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. The event, organized by the Chinese embassy in collaboration with the Zambia Chinese Association, involved various performances such as dance, music, drama and Kung Fu shows at a Chinese-built government complex. Zambian Minister of Tourism and Arts Charles Banda said he looked forward to more cultural exchange programs between the two countries to share ideas and experiences in the development of creative arts and cultural industries. "It is my sincere belief that the event ... will inspire Zambian artists and the public in general not only to appreciate the Chinese arts and culture, but also to rekindle their desire and appetites to develop the sector to such levels as we are about to witness," the minister said. Banda said such cultural exchanges play a critical role in enabling the two peoples to interact and learn from each other, adding that the Zambian government was committed to developing the cultural sector into a viable and sustainable component of the country's development. He further lauded China for its continued assistance to Zambia's development, saying the government remains committed to fulfilling its obligations under different agreements signed between the two countries. For his part, Chinese Ambassador to Zambia Yang Youming said the development of the China-Zambia traditional friendship is a typical story of deepening mutual understanding, closer integration and expanding cooperation. "It is not only bolstered by the frequent bilateral political exchanges and increasing economic and trade cooperation between the two countries, the cultural exchanges and cooperation also play an irreplaceable role," the ambassador said. The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1964, which made Zambia the first southern African nation to forge diplomatic relationship with China. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 16:44:27|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Samsung Electronics, South Korea's tech behemoth, on Thursday announced new senior executives for the country's biggest family-controlled conglomerate, where Chairman Lee Kun-hee was hospitalized for long and Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong was behind bars over corruption charges. Samsung said in a statement that former heads of Samsung's three divisions were promoted in recognition of their contribution to the company's success. Kwon Oh-hyun, a former vice chairman and head of the device solutions (DS) division, was named chairman of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, the company's primary research center of components and materials, for his expertise. Yoon Boo-keun, a former president and head of the consumer electronics (CE) unit, was appointed as vice chairman responsible for external corporate relations. Shin Jong-kyun, a former president and head of the IT & mobile communications (IM) division, was promoted to vice chairman responsible for nurturing Samsung's future leaders. The promotion came amid worry about the leadership vacuum, caused by Chairman Lee who has been hospitalized for about three and a half years and Vice Chairman Lee, the chairman's only son and heir apparent, who was in jail over his involvement in a corruption scandal embroiling impeached President Park Geun-hye. Kim Ki-nam, a newly appointed head of the DS division, will additionally serve as chief executive of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, according to the statement. President Kim Hyun-suk, a new head of the CE division, will lead the digital appliance business as well as Samsung Research, which was created by combining the company's main hardware and software research centers. It marked the first time a chief executive directly oversees the research center, Samsung said. Koh Dong-jin, a new head of the IM unit, will continue to lead the mobile communications business, which makes smartphones, Samsung said. In addition, seven executive vice presidents were promoted to presidents to shift the leadership generation. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 17:24:39|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The 13th Chinese American Film Festival (CAFF) kicked off Wednesday at the Ricardo Montalban Theater in Hollywood in the western U.S. city of Los Angeles. CAFF, a China-U.S. cultural event recognized by both U.S. and Chinese governments, will screen more than 100 excellent films from both countries in mainstream theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Houston, Dallas and other major cities in the United States. "Culture exchange and cooperation is the very foundation of China-U.S. relations. Of the past 13 years, China American Film Festival has made significant contributions in this regard," said Sun Lushan, acting Consul General of China in Los Angeles, in his opening address. "Chinese American Film Festival plays an important role to promote the exchange between China and U.S. film industry. China-U.S. film cooperation will have a broad vista as exchanges in the field have been on increase day by day," said Miao Xiaotian, president of China Film Co-production Corporation. Noting the great efforts of the CAFF organizer over the past 13 years, Stu Levy, who chairs the International Committee of Producers Guild of America (PGA), said the festival helps bridge the U.S. and Chinese film industries and bring their filmmakers together. On behalf of the city of Los Angeles and mayor Eric Garcetti, Levy proclaimed Nov. 1 as "Chinese American Film and Television Festival Day." Both the CAFF and Chinese American TV Festival are organized by EDI Media Inc, which offers media relations services in the United States, with the support of China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television and the Chinese Embassy in the United States. The 2017 Chinese American TV Festival already kicked off on Monday in Los Angeles. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 17:29:41|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close TALUQAN, Afghanistan, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- At least five civilians were killed and 13 others wounded when two rival armed groups clashed in northern Afghanistan's province of Takhar, local police said Thursday. "The incident occurred late on Wednesday night, when two armed groups entered a fierce fight in the relatively secure Chah Ab district, leaving five civilians dead and 13 others, including a district police chief and two policemen, wounded," Khalil Asir, provincial police spokesman, told Xinhua. Sporadic clashes continued in some parts of the district township on Thursday morning, said the source adding security forces arrived at the scene to calm down the skirmish. Ordinary Afghans usually suffer at the hands of irresponsible armed groups, particularly in remote areas, where the government control is weak. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 17:39:45|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close NANJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Police in east China's Jiangsu Province have caught a gang making and selling guns, and seized 180 guns, they said Thursday. More than 3,000 gun parts and 20,000 steel ball bullets were also seized after an investigation that lasted two and half months, said Cao Xiang, police chief of Jiangyan District, Taizhou. Fourteen suspects, including the gang leader surnamed Shen, were detained in connection with the case. Shen confessed to the illegal manufacturing, processing and selling of gun parts. More than 3,200 people from 30 provincial areas were involved in the case, with most of them having purchased guns or parts online from the gang, Cao said. Under Ministry of Public Security Bureau supervision, local police started an investigation in mid-April, after an express package labeled as a "fine pipe" was found to be a gun barrel. According to police, Shen registered an online store in March. To avoid being caught, the gang sold the parts separately, and buyers would later assemble the guns themselves. By the time of the arrests, more than 3,000 parts had been sold via the store. In China, it is illegal for civilians to possess guns or buy and sell gun parts. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 17:59:55|Editor: Yurou Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Beijing witnessed a year-on-year decline in the density of hazardous fine particle matter PM 2.5 in the first nine months this year, local authorities said Thursday. The city's average PM 2.5 density dropped to 60 micrograms per cubic meter in the first three quarters, down 3.2 percent compared with the same period last year, and down 34.8 percent compared with 2013, according to the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau. As winter arrives, Beijing faces months of heavier air pollution due to heating by coal burning. From January to September, 16,000 heavy-duty diesel vehicles were fined a total of 7.25 million yuan (1.1 million U.S. dollars) for excessive emissions. Beijing's 5.8 million vehicles produce more than 10 tonnes of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbon compounds annually. Heavy-duty diesel vehicles only account for 4 percent of the total vehicles in the capital, but discharge half of the nitrogen oxide, and 90 percent of particulate matter from car exhausts. The city has made increased efforts to deal with pollution in recent years. In 2017, it will decrease coal use by helping 700 villages move to clean energy, removing 300,000 vehicles from roads, and shutting down 500 factories. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 18:35:02|Editor: ying Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- China is a big contributor to global economic growth, and a healthy and sustainable economy matters more than the growth rate, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said. "I do not focus on whether China is growing at 6 percent, 6.5 percent or 6.9 percent. When I look at it, I want it to be healthy and sustainable growth," Paulson told reporters in Beijing Wednesday. "China's economy needs to grow more with consumption, and less driven by investment. It is a positive sign that growth from net exports is very small compared with consumption," said Paulson, chairman of the Paulson Institute. "With China opening up its market and lowering market access, it will boost Sino-U.S. relations which are the most important ones in the world. A closed market benefits no one, and both China and the United States will gain from opening-up," he said. Paulson was optimistic about future relations, and said that though the situation was complex, dialogue would help reduce friction and build trust. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 18:50:08|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close NAIROBI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two members of Kenya Airways cabin crew were arrested at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on Thursday with narcotic substances while about to fly to Benin in West Africa, police and the airline have confirmed. A police at the airport said the two cabinet crew members were arrested a few minutes to their take-off to Cotonou, Benin. "We have not established the value of the narcotics but investigation is underway," the police officer told Xinhua by telephone. The airline has confirmed the arrest. "Two members of Kenya Airways cabin crew were arrested for allegedly carrying undeclared items (suspected to be drugs) out of JKIA," the airline said in a statement. Kenya Airways, which flies to several destinations across Africa, said it is aware of the incident and is working in tandem with the relevant authorities to get to the bottom of the matter. "Kenya Airways adheres to all regulations and laws of Kenya and the countries it operates in. In addition, all members of crew are trained on these regulations and laws and are expected to adhere to them at all times," it said. The airline said it remains committed to the integrity of its operation and does not condone any illegal activities by its staff members. The latest incident comes barely a month after security officers arrested two Kenya Airways staff in a drug trafficking circle. The officers intercepted 4 kilograms of narcotics disguised as Kenyan coffee in the staff restroom in a flight destined for Hong Kong on Oct. 15. The two, who have close ties with Nigerian drug barons, are suspected to have been trafficking drugs to China, Netherlands and India. The two were nabbed after a tip off from friendly foreign security agencies who had observed an influx of narcotics emanating from Kenyan flights. It is suspected that a cartel comprising airport staff and in-flight attendants has been receiving narcotic drugs from a yet-to-be-identified person and sneaking it into flights. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 18:55:10|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close MANILA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines called on Thursday for stronger international cooperation in the fight against terrorism, saying the victories against Islamic State (IS) in Mosul, Raqqa and Marawi does not mean the group no longer poses a serious threat to the world. "The defeat suffered by the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and the Philippines does not mean the fight is over," Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said in a statement. Cayetano's statement came in the wake of an IS-inspired terrorist attack in New York killed eight people and seriously injured at least 12 others. Cayetano strongly condemned the truck attack in Manhattan on Wednesday, which authorities said was carried out by an IS-inspired sympathizer from Uzbekistan. Cayetano also expressed his sympathies to the families of the victims. "The terrorist attacks in New York and other places abroad during the past several weeks tell us the threat remains real," Cayetano said, calling on the international community to intensify its efforts in going after Islamic State and its affiliate organizations around the world. Cayetano said the fight against terrorism is a key priority of President Rodrigo Duterte and is among the issues that will be discussed in the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit and related meetings to be held in Manila this month. "The Philippines is more than ready to do its share in helping make the world a safer place," Cayetano said. He said Manila is looking forward to cooperating with other countries, particularly in intelligence sharing and capacity-building as part of the country's counterterrorism efforts. Cayetano also expressed his appreciation to the United States, Australia, China, Russia and other countries for the assistance extended to the Philippines during the campaign to liberate Marawi from IS-funded militants. The five-month war in Marawi in the southern Philippines claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, including more than 900 extremists and 165 soldiers and policemen. The conflict, which ruined the city, also displaced more than 400,000 residents. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 18:55:11|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close CAIRO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- At least five militants were killed and six others were wounded as the Egyptian army foiled a terrorist attack against a checkpoint in North Sinai province, the Egyptian army said in a statement on Thursday. "Some terrorist elements attempted to sneak into the area surrounding the checkpoint and after fire exchange they hid in nearby places where the air forces immediately pursued and targeted them," said the statement, noting the raid also destroyed a vehicle and the two buildings where they hid. Over the past couple of days, similar air raids have killed a large number of terrorists involved in the recent deadly anti-police attack at a mountainous area in western Fayoum province south of the capital Cairo. The anti-police attack took place during two-day confrontations between security forces and terrorists that started on Oct. 20, leaving 16 policemen dead and 13 wounded. The clashes also left 15 militants either dead or injured. Last week, the security forces also announced the killing of 12 "very dangerous terrorist elements" in the western desert region near Al-Wahat highway on the outskirts of Giza, south of Cairo, where the 16 policemen were killed. Egypt has been suffering a wave of bloody insurgency that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group. Terror attacks have been centered in restive North Sinai province bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well. Most of the terrorist operations have been claimed by a Sinai-based group affiliated with 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| 2017-11-02 19:10:13|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close BAGHDAD, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The government of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan denied accusations by Iraqi military that the Kurds reneged on draft of agreement with federal military to redeploy federal forces in disputed areas and border crossing points, Kurdish media said on Thursday. "We have not reached any agreement. The Iraqi military delegation presented only a draft in a meeting between the Iraqi and Kurdish regional delegations. The next day, a different version of the draft was presented by the (Iraqi) military delegation, and we have replied to both versions," the Kurdish Rudaw media net quoted a Kurdish statement as saying. The Kurdish statement came a few hours after the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) on Wednesday night accused the Kurdish military of reneging on the draft of agreement. The JOC also accused the Kurds of moving their forces during the negotiated period and building new defensive lines to hamper the redeployment of the federal forces. The accusations between the two sides came as the Iraqi forces are pushing to redeploy in all the areas that the Kurdish region had extended after 2003. On Oct. 31, a JOC statement said that a team headed by the Iraqi Army's Chief of Staff, Othman al-Ghanmi, conducted a visit to the crossings of Faysh-Khabur and Ibrahim al-Khalil to determine the security requirements for redeployment of federal forces in the two crossings. The Kurdish and federal joint team was formed to avoid military confrontations between the two sides after last week's clashes that occurred as the government troops advanced to seize more disputed areas. Tensions have been running high 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. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 19:15:17|Editor: ZD Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- China said it hopes Japan's Shinzo Abe will pursue positive policies towards China during his new tenure following his re-election as prime minister on Wednesday. "China hopes the new Japanese cabinet pursues positive policies towards China, improves bilateral ties with concrete action, and works with China to ensure the right direction for bilateral relations," Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying said at a regular news briefing. Hua said China has always advocated for developing bilateral relations by abiding by the four political documents signed since normalizing ties in 1972 and the four-point principled agreement reached in 2014. Both countries should work in the spirit of taking history as a mirror while looking into the future, said the spokesperson. "We hope Japan abides by these documents and consensuses," Hua said. Abe, who has been Japanese prime minister since December 2012, was re-elected Wednesday after garnering a majority vote in the lower house while his ruling coalition holds a majority in the upper house. Related: Spotlight: Abe reelected as Japanese PM amid calls for further probe into scandals TOKYO, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- As the leader of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Shinzo Abe was formally reelected as the country's prime minister on Wednesday while the realigning opposition forces continued calling for breaking the Abe dominance and further probing into a couple of cronyism scandals implicating the prime minister. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 19:25:23|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Chinese state councilor Yang Jiechi (R) meets with a Republic of Korea delegation led by former Prime Minister Lee Soo-sung in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 2, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling) BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese state councilor Yang Jiechi on Thursday urged the Republic of Korea to settle the issue of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system properly and work with China to bring the bilateral ties back to the normal track. Yang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks while meeting with a ROK delegation led by former Prime Minister Lee Soo-sung in Beijing. During the meeting, Yang introduced the achievements made at the 19th CPC National Congress. Yang said China attaches great importance to its relations with the ROK and hoped that the ROK can work together with China for advancing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. Lee extended congratulations on the achievements of the 19th National Congress of the CPC, saying that the ROK stands ready to make efforts in promoting exchange and cooperation between the two countries. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 19:30:26|Editor: ZD Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The State Council, China's cabinet, announced the appointment and removal of three senior officials Thursday. Xiao Jie was appointed deputy secretary-general of the State Council, and Chen Xiaodong was appointed assistant foreign minister. Du Yongsheng was removed from his post as deputy head of the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets. The photo taken on Jan. 18, 2017 shows a plane of Swiss Air stops at a runway of the Geneva international airport. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan) GENEVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A runaway seven-year-old girl slipped through security checks at Geneva Airport in Switzerland and onto a plane without a ticket before a crew member spotted her and handed her over to police, an official said Wednesday. Bertrand Stampfli, head of communication for Geneva airport, said in statement that the incident was "eminently regrettable" and acknowledged it could have turned out worse. Airport authorities said they are reinforcing measures to ensure that children are accompanied by adults when passing through security checks at the airport which lies on the Swiss border with France. In the Oct. 29 incident, the girl, who was not identified, had slipped away from her parents at Geneva's main railway station and traveled a few minutes by train to the airport. She was apprehended after authorities established through video surveillance that she had slipped through security just over 30 minutes earlier. The girl repeatedly "took advantage of her small size" and dodging through a barrier with a "ruse" to make it look like she was traveling with adults ahead of her or behind her, Stampfli said. She failed to get through security in her first attempt, but "a second time, she managed to maneuver around an open lane by sneaking into a passage accessible only to a child of her size," said the official. Stampfli said that an alert air crew member, who had spotted the girl trying to board one of its flights, flagged her to the crew of the airline, which in turn alerted police, Swissinfo, the website of the Swiss national broadcaster reported. The airport official said, "What this shows is that while controls for adults and accompanied children are effective, there are holes to fill when it comes to unaccompanied children." An armed soldier and an armed police officer patrol outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, on May 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Ray Tang) LONDON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Two 14 year old schoolboys arrested by counter terrorism cops in northern England were both charged Wednesday night with conspiracy to murder. The boys, from the small market town of Northallerton in North Yorkshire, were arrested last Saturday as part of an intelligence led investigation, supported by North Yorkshire Police. Following an investigation by detectives from Counter Terrorism Policing North East, the two teens have been charged with conspiracy to murder. One of the boys has also been charged with aggravated burglary. They have been held in custody and will appear Thursday before magistrates in Leeds. The names of the boys have not been released because of their age. The mayor of Northallerton has called for security to be reviewed at the town's largest public annual event in the wake of the two arrests. Thousands of townsfolk are expected at an annual "Guy Fawkes" fireworks event this weekend. Mayor John Forrest told local media he had been stunned by last weekend's intense police activity in the town, which saw the North-East Counter Terrorism Unit take two 14-year-olds into custody "on suspicion of preparing for an act of terrorism". Forrest issued a call for residents to unite and "show spirit" ahead of the town celebrating its 50th fireworks display on Sunday. The mayor said: "It is unbelievable that this sort of thing has happened and is putting Northallerton on the map for all the wrong reasons. The danger is people letting it get them down. "I would like to see the residents of Northallerton just carry on and to keep their chins up. Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Winward of North Yorkshire Police, said: "We wholeheartedly understand the concerns shared by the communities in Northallerton and the wider area of North Yorkshire. "However we would like to reassure the public that local officers are committed to ensuring the public remain safe, and are working hard to reassure those communities who have been affected." Stuart Carlton, Director of Children and Young People's Services at North Yorkshire County Council, said; "We fully recognise that there are concerns as a result of this investigation. We are working with the police to provide reassurance to the local community, and in particular to the young people, parents and staff connected with this case and we will continue to provide support with our partners." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 19:50:37|Editor: ZD Video Player Close (Xinhua file photo) BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Trade between China and countries along the Belt and Road amounted to 786 billion U.S. dollars in the first three quarters, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Thursday. The volume was a 15-percent increase from the same period last year, MOC spokesperson Gao Feng told a press conference. From January to September, Chinese businesses directly invested 9.6 billion U.S. dollars in countries along the Belt and Road, up 29.7 percent year on year. Investments made by Belt and Road countries in China stood at 4.24 billion U.S. dollars, up 34.4 percent year on year. Chinese businesses have helped build 75 economic and trade cooperation zones in 24 countries along the Belt and Road, generating over 209,000 jobs, according to Gao. The Belt and Road is a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along -- and beyond -- the ancient Silk Road trade routes. The modern version comprises an overland Silk Road Economic Belt and a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 20:10:44|Editor: ZD Video Player Close LONDON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Gavin Williamson was appointed on Thursday as the new British defense secretary to replace Michael Fallon, who resigned Wednesday over allegations about his past inappropriate behavior. Williamson, the former chief whip, was a surprise appointment to the role, having risen quickly through the cabinet ranks but holding no real defense experience. Julian Smith, the former deputy, has been appointed chief whip and Esther McVay, who only returned to British Parliament this year, takes on the deputy role. British Prime Minister Theresa May's minority government suffered a heavy blow Wednesday night with the resignation of Fallon. In a letter to the prime minister, Fallon said that his behavior had "fallen short" of the "high standards" expected of the British armed forces. Accepting his resignation, May said in a separate letter that she noted the "characteristically serious manner" in which Fallon had considered his position. The resignation came a day after Fallon admitted he had touched the knee of a journalist at a party conference event 15 years ago. Fallon apologized this week over the past incident in which he made unwanted advances to the journalist, Julia Hartley-Brewer, repeatedly placing his hand on her knee. Allegations of inappropriate behavior have been swirling around U.S. film producer Harvey Weinstein over the past weeks since the Weinstein scandal encouraged women to speak out about their experiences of sexual abuse or harassment. Related: British defense chief Fallon resigns in "sex pest" row engulfing Westminster LONDON, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Britain's Defense Secretary Sir Michael Fallon resigned Wednesday night, becoming the first big political casualty of a "sex pest" scandal engulfing Westminster. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 20:25:50|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close CAIRO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Egypt has paid Libya 250 million U.S. dollars to complete a total payment of 1.5 billion dollars out of a 2-billion-dollar loan borrowed in March 2013, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) told official MENA news agency on Thursday. "Only two installments of 500 million dollars are remaining and they will be paid next year," MENA quoted CBE Deputy Governor Rami Abul-Naga as saying. He added that Egypt paid Turkey on Wednesday the last 200-million-dollar installment of a loan borrowed in October 2012, stressing "Egypt is committed to paying all its foreign debts on time." CBE Governor Tarek Amer said in early October that Egypt had paid 17 billion dollars of its foreign debts since the country floated its local currency in November 2016 to face the shortage of foreign currency, noting that Egypt plans to pay another 8 billion dollars before the end of 2017. Egypt's foreign debts rose by about 42 percent to reach 79 billion dollars in the 2016-17 fiscal year that ended late June, compared to 55.8 billion dollars a year ago. "Foreign debt is within the safe amount as per international standards," said the CBE governor in a previous statement. Suffering economic slowdown over the past few years of political turmoil and relevant security challenges, Egypt started last year a strict three-year economic reform program including austerity measures, energy subsidy cuts and tax increases, besides local currency floatation, which all led to nationwide price hikes. Egypt's reform program is encouraged by a 12-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund, a third of which has already been delivered to Egypt in two tranches in November 2016 and July 2017. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 20:30:52|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close SUVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The defense ministers of Fiji and Australia held talks on Thursday as part of their efforts to strengthen the two countries' military cooperation. Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne, who arrived in Fiji's third largest city of Nadi on Wednesday night, hailed her two-day visit to Fiji a success. Talking about her talks with her Fijian counterpart Ratu Inoke Kubuabola, Payne said "we had a very convivial meeting last night (Wednesday) and I was honoured with a welcome ceremony, and this morning (Thursday) we had a very useful bilateral discussion." "We had an excellent meeting in Brisbane in March this year where we formalized Fiji's acquisition of the Bush Master Protected Mobility Vehicles," she added. The Fijian minister said he was grateful to host Payne and the last visit to Fiji by an Australian defence minister was back in 1992. On Tuesday, Kubuabola said that the visit by Payne would be a special one as relationships continue to grow between Fiji and Australia in the areas of defence. He also said that maritime security and the establishment of a Regional Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief (HADR) and Peacekeeping Centre at the Blackrock Camp in Nadi was high on their agenda. It was reported that the Australian defense minister also visited on Thursday the Blackrock Camp in Nadi, which is used for pre-deployment training and HADR evacuation purposes when the need arises. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 20:56:03|Editor: ZD Video Player Close An S-400 missile system pictured in a Russian base in Syria's northwestern province of Latakia on Dec. 16, 2015. (Xinhua/AFP)(File photo) ISTANBUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's bid to buy Russian S-400 air defense system risks falling through under increasing U.S. and NATO pressure, analysts told Xinhua. Ankara may back out by citing Russian unwillingness to transfer the technology as a pretext, said Hasan Koni, a professor of public international law at Istanbul Kultur University. "TURKEY COULD GIVE UP" NATO and the United States had expressed concern about Turkey's choice of Russian missiles, and the latest warning from a top NATO officer was stronger. Turkey would have to face some consequences should it go ahead with the S-400 deal, Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of NATO's Military Committee, reportedly told a group of journalists last week. The purchase of the Russian system would not only block Ankara from being part of an integrated air defense system with its NATO allies, but also result in some other restrictions, the general said. Given Turkey's currently highly strained ties with the U.S., Koni does not expect Ankara to step back within a short time, saying it could take one or two years for the country to abandon the bid eventually. If Ankara were to go back on the deal right away, it would leave the impression of a defeat at home, negatively affecting the ruling party's image. In 2015, Turkey backed away under U.S. and NATO pressure from a deal with a Chinese firm on the supply of a long-range air defense system similar to S-400. "The chances today are even less than 10 percent for Turkey to buy this system," said Haldun Solmazturk, a retired general with the Turkish military. Maintaining that it was not much probable for Turkey to buy the missiles right from the beginning, he sees Ankara's move as a step taken, without consulting experts, to mend ties with Russia damaged after a Turkish jet shot down a Russian bomber along the Syrian border in November 2015. Following around a year of talks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed in September that Turkey had signed a deal to buy the S-400 system. He underlined Ankara's determination to press ahead with the deal by saying that an advance payment had been made. "Depending on how Turkey's ties with the U.S. will progress, Ankara could give up buying the S-400," said Celalettin Yavuz, a security policy analyst from Istanbul Ayvansaray University. The U.S. is preparing to impose sanctions on several dozens of Russian companies to avenge alleged Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election, including state-run Almaz-Antey and Rosoboronexport, the producer of the S-400 system and its exporter. Those who engage in a "significant transaction" with the companies in question unveiled by the U.S. State Department last Friday will be facing U.S. sanctions. "The sanctions on Russian companies may negatively affect Turkey's final decision regarding the S-400," Koni said. A head-on confrontation with the U.S. could also take its toll on the Turkish economy, which is already showing signs of stress. The Turkish economy is adversely affected whenever a crisis breaks out between Washington and Ankara, noted Yavuz, a former captain in the Turkish Navy. Turkey is already angry at the U.S. for arresting two of its citizens on charges of violating UN sanctions against Iran and money laundering. One is Reza Zarrab, a Turkish citizen of Iranian origin who once faced charges of bribing some cabinet ministers in Turkey several years ago. The other is Hakan Atilla, a deputy general manager of Turkey's state-owned Halkbank. The U.S. court also issued an arrest warrant for Zafer Caglayan, a former Turkish minister of economy. Washington is sending a message that those who cooperate with the Russian companies blacklisted will face sanctions, Beyazit Karatas, deputy chairman of Turkey's Patriotic Party, was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Karatas, a former general in the Turkish military, argued that Ankara and Moscow could simply disregard the U.S. threat. PENDING ISSUES Despite Erdogan's remarks, there seems to be pending issues to be addressed for the deal with Russia to be finalized. For instance, Russia's apparent unwillingness to share the S-400 system's sophisticated technology with Turkey is a roadblock. Ankara appears to be ready to buy the first batch of the S-400 missiles off-the-shelf, but demand transfer of technology and joint production in the medium term. "We have agreed in principle (with Russia) on joint production in the medium and longer term. If the Russians would not accept that, we would make a deal with another country," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuoglu said in early October. "Russia would not agree to transfer technology to Turkey in NATO," said Koni. U.S.-Turkey ties have been strained further to a new low lately after both suspended non-immigrant visa applications for each other's citizens last month. Many tend to think that General Pavel's remarks were representing the attitude of the United States. For Yavuz, the U.S. Defense Department was threatening Turkey through the NATO general. The U.S. and NATO had earlier warned that the Russian missiles could not be integrated into the NATO's air defense system, a condition that Ankara accepted. Unlike previous warnings, however, Pavel said this time that even without being integrated into the NATO system, the mere presence of S-400 would "create challenges for allied assets" on the same territory. Pavel did not clarify what "allied assets" he was indicating. But his remarks, some press reports said, suggested that he was referring to the new-generation stealth F-35 fighter jets which Turkey has committed to buy as well. Both Koni and Yavuz think that the U.S. may block the delivery of the newly developed F-35 jets to Turkey if the S-400 deal is finalized. Back in 1994, Washington delayed the delivery of three frigates to Ankara due to tension in ties, noted Yavuz. Unlike the two analysts, Solmazturk does not expect the U.S. to block F-35 delivery, but believes Pavel's warning indicates that Turkey would face some restrictions on integration with the NATO's air defense system. Turkey may be denied some software in F-35 jets, added Solmazturk, who chairs the Incek debates at the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkey Institute. Turkey is one of the partner countries in the production of F-35 jets and expects to get the first batch of two jets in 2019. Ankara is planning to buy a total of 100 F-35 jets. Noticeably, the U.S. Congress' perception of Turkey has become rather negative mainly due to its alleged growing slide toward authoritarianism. In early September, before Erdogan spoke of the S-400 deal with Russia, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate discussed whether Washington should stop exports of sophisticated weaponry to Turkey if the deal is settled. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will be visiting the U.S. next week, with the S-400 issue expected to be on the agenda. Koni feels that if the conflict in Syria is settled without further increasing tension between Ankara and Washington, then Turkey would not lean more toward Russia to the detriment of the U.S. and NATO. Washington's continued arming of Syrian Kurdish fighters, regarded by Ankara as terrorists, has been a major irritant in bilateral ties. Russian army S-400 medium-range and long-range surface-to-air missile system rehearse before the World War II anniversary in Moscow, May 7, 2017. (Reuters photo) ISTANBUL, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkey's bid to buy Russian S-400 air defense system risks falling through under increasing U.S. and NATO pressure, analysts told Xinhua. Ankara may back out by citing Russian unwillingness to transfer the technology as a pretext, said Hasan Koni, a professor of public international law at Istanbul Kultur University. "TURKEY COULD GIVE UP" NATO and the United States had expressed concern about Turkey's choice of Russian missiles, and the latest warning from a top NATO officer was stronger. Turkey would have to face some consequences should it go ahead with the S-400 deal, Gen. Petr Pavel, chairman of NATO's Military Committee, reportedly told a group of journalists last week. The purchase of the Russian system would not only block Ankara from being part of an integrated air defense system with its NATO allies, but also result in some other restrictions, the general said. Given Turkey's currently highly strained ties with the U.S., Koni does not expect Ankara to step back within a short time, saying it could take one or two years for the country to abandon the bid eventually. If Ankara were to go back on the deal right away, it would leave the impression of a defeat at home, negatively affecting the ruling party's image. In 2015, Turkey backed away under U.S. and NATO pressure from a deal with a Chinese firm on the supply of a long-range air defense system similar to S-400. "The chances today are even less than 10 percent for Turkey to buy this system," said Haldun Solmazturk, a retired general with the Turkish military. Maintaining that it was not much probable for Turkey to buy the missiles right from the beginning, he sees Ankara's move as a step taken, without consulting experts, to mend ties with Russia damaged after a Turkish jet shot down a Russian bomber along the Syrian border in November 2015. Following around a year of talks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed in September that Turkey had signed a deal to buy the S-400 system. He underlined Ankara's determination to press ahead with the deal by saying that an advance payment had been made. "Depending on how Turkey's ties with the U.S. will progress, Ankara could give up buying the S-400," said Celalettin Yavuz, a security policy analyst from Istanbul Ayvansaray University. The U.S. is preparing to impose sanctions on several dozens of Russian companies to avenge alleged Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election, including state-run Almaz-Antey and Rosoboronexport, the producer of the S-400 system and its exporter. Those who engage in a "significant transaction" with the companies in question unveiled by the U.S. State Department last Friday will be facing U.S. sanctions. "The sanctions on Russian companies may negatively affect Turkey's final decision regarding the S-400," Koni said. A head-on confrontation with the U.S. could also take its toll on the Turkish economy, which is already showing signs of stress. The Turkish economy is adversely affected whenever a crisis breaks out between Washington and Ankara, noted Yavuz, a former captain in the Turkish Navy. Turkey is already angry at the U.S. for arresting two of its citizens on charges of violating UN sanctions against Iran and money laundering. One is Reza Zarrab, a Turkish citizen of Iranian origin who once faced charges of bribing some cabinet ministers in Turkey several years ago. The other is Hakan Atilla, a deputy general manager of Turkey's state-owned Halkbank. The U.S. court also issued an arrest warrant for Zafer Caglayan, a former Turkish minister of economy. Washington is sending a message that those who cooperate with the Russian companies blacklisted will face sanctions, Beyazit Karatas, deputy chairman of Turkey's Patriotic Party, was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Karatas, a former general in the Turkish military, argued that Ankara and Moscow could simply disregard the U.S. threat. PENDING ISSUES Despite Erdogan's remarks, there seems to be pending issues to be addressed for the deal with Russia to be finalized. For instance, Russia's apparent unwillingness to share the S-400 system's sophisticated technology with Turkey is a roadblock. Ankara appears to be ready to buy the first batch of the S-400 missiles off-the-shelf, but demand transfer of technology and joint production in the medium term. "We have agreed in principle (with Russia) on joint production in the medium and longer term. If the Russians would not accept that, we would make a deal with another country," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuoglu said in early October. "Russia would not agree to transfer technology to Turkey in NATO," said Koni. U.S.-Turkey ties have been strained further to a new low lately after both suspended non-immigrant visa applications for each other's citizens last month. Many tend to think that General Pavel's remarks were representing the attitude of the United States. For Yavuz, the U.S. Defense Department was threatening Turkey through the NATO general. The U.S. and NATO had earlier warned that the Russian missiles could not be integrated into the NATO's air defense system, a condition that Ankara accepted. Unlike previous warnings, however, Pavel said this time that even without being integrated into the NATO system, the mere presence of S-400 would "create challenges for allied assets" on the same territory. Pavel did not clarify what "allied assets" he was indicating. But his remarks, some press reports said, suggested that he was referring to the new-generation stealth F-35 fighter jets which Turkey has committed to buy as well. Both Koni and Yavuz think that the U.S. may block the delivery of the newly developed F-35 jets to Turkey if the S-400 deal is finalized. Back in 1994, Washington delayed the delivery of three frigates to Ankara due to tension in ties, noted Yavuz. Unlike the two analysts, Solmazturk does not expect the U.S. to block F-35 delivery, but believes Pavel's warning indicates that Turkey would face some restrictions on integration with the NATO's air defense system. Turkey may be denied some software in F-35 jets, added Solmazturk, who chairs the Incek debates at the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkey Institute. Turkey is one of the partner countries in the production of F-35 jets and expects to get the first batch of two jets in 2019. Ankara is planning to buy a total of 100 F-35 jets. Noticeably, the U.S. Congress' perception of Turkey has become rather negative mainly due to its alleged growing slide toward authoritarianism. In early September, before Erdogan spoke of the S-400 deal with Russia, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate discussed whether Washington should stop exports of sophisticated weaponry to Turkey if the deal is settled. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will be visiting the U.S. next week, with the S-400 issue expected to be on the agenda. Koni feels that if the conflict in Syria is settled without further increasing tension between Ankara and Washington, then Turkey would not lean more toward Russia to the detriment of the U.S. and NATO. Washington's continued arming of Syrian Kurdish fighters, regarded by Ankara as terrorists, has been a major irritant in bilateral ties. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 21:06:06|Editor: ying Video Player Close Xi Jinping (C), chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), poses for a group photo with Zhang Shengmin (1st L), secretary of CMC discipline inspection commission, after a promotion ceremony in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 2, 2017. The Central Military Commission (CMC) on Thursday promoted Zhang Shengmin to the rank of general, the highest rank for officers on active service in China. (Xinhua/Li Gang) BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Central Military Commission (CMC) on Thursday promoted Zhang Shengmin, secretary of its discipline inspection commission, to the rank of general, the highest rank for officers on active service in China. At the promotion ceremony, CMC Chairman Xi Jinping presented Zhang with a certificate of command, shook hands with him and extended his congratulations. Zhang is also a member of the CMC. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 21:11:09|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close DAR ES SALAAM, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania's Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said on Thursday at least 34 people have been convicted of killing people with albinism in the country and sentenced to death by hanging during the period from 2006 to 2016. "Several other cases of people accused of killing people with albinism are still pending in courts throughout the country," Beatrice Mpembo, a State Attorney from the DPP told a two-day consultative meeting to strategize on countering brutality and killings of people with albinism. She told the meeting organized by Tanzania Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG) in the political capital Dodoma that 67 cases of the killings of people with albinism were still pending in courts across the country. Mpembo said her office has been facing difficulties in administering cases related to the killings of people with albinism and attacks on such people due to insufficient evidence. "Most cases related to the killings of people with albinism involve some family members, as a result it has been difficult to get sufficient evidence due to lack of cooperation from the relatives thus contributing to delays in delivering ruling on the cases," Mpembo said. She said the worst of such killings was recorded in the east African country in 2008 where some 19 people with albinism were killed. Ralph Meela, a senior police officer in charge of Offences Against Persons and Traffic Related Offences, said people with albinism or mothers with children born with the genetic disorder have been denied their rights. "These people fail to take appropriate action because they lack awareness of their rights," said Meela. He said there was need to raise public awareness on the killings of people with albinism throughout the country because the police could not eliminate the problem single-handedly. Killings of albinos have been driven by the belief advanced by some witch doctors that the body parts of people with albinism have properties that confer wealth and good luck. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 21:46:17|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close RAMALLAH, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip held protests on Thursday marking 100 years of the Balfour Declaration, which paved way for the establishment of Israel on the lands of Palestine. Demonstrators protested British government's celebrations of the centenary of Balfour Declaration with Israeli officials in London. They also urged the British government to apologize for "its historic injustice against the Palestinian people." Mahmoud Aloul, vice chairperson of Fatah Party, told Xinhua "this, with no doubt, comes in response to this deliberate British impertinence against the Palestinian people. They have committed a crime 100 years ago and today they still insist on it, as per the statements of the British prime minister and the new crime to celebrate this memory." "They are aware that their crime has led to the displacement and huge sufferings of hundreds of thousands back then and led to destruction of cities, towns," added Aloul. Political activist and writer Adnan Dagher said "the Palestinian people held demonstration today for all the world to remember that we are still suffering from that engagement, the Balfour engagement 100 years ago, and to prove that still we are struggling to have our independent state." The Balfour Declaration is the name given to the letter dated November 2, 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary back then Arthur James Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was then a leader of the British Jewish community, announcing the British support for the Jewish people to build their state on the lands of Palestine. Theresa May, the British Prime Minister announced over a week ago that her country "will certainly mark the centenary with pride." "We must also be conscious of the sensitivities that some people do have about the Balfour Declaration and we recognize that there is more to be done. We remain committed to the two state solution in relation to Israeli and the Palestinians," she added. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded during his UN General Assembly speech last September that Britain apologize for the Balfour Declaration and compensate Palestinians for the occupation of their lands after that letter paved the way for it. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 21:56:20|Editor: ying Video Player Close KATHMANDU, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Over 50 women entrepreneurs from China and South Asia gathered in Nepal on Thursday to participate in the seminar entitled "Belt and Road: Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs." The one-day seminar was organized in Kathmandu by Nepal-China Executive Council to explore greater opportunities and prospects of the Belt and Road Initiative for the women entrepreneurs of the region. Participants in the seminar were entrepreneurs, professors and professionals from China and South Asian countries including Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. They stressed on mutual efforts, assistance and cooperation to get the maximum benefits from the initiative. "21st century is the century of women empowerment, which highly contributes to social and economic development of any country. I am sure that the Chinese initiative will open the market for women entrepreneurs in trade and tourism," Nepalese Health Secretary Kiran Regmi said after inaugurating the event. She also appreciated the way women perform with more accountability and sincerity to accomplish the tasks. On the occasion, the Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong said that China and South Asia posses various similarities so can move ahead and develop together. "Through the cooperation and mutual efforts, the whole region can be more prosperous," Yu said. Attending the seminar, women entrepreneurs and scholars highlighted that women can play a greater role in strengthening diplomacy and connecting the nations. They were of view that women entrepreneurs can function with the essence of peace and inclusiveness to make any initiative successful. The seminar was organized on the sideline of China-South Asia Expo that kicked off in Kathmandu on Thursday morning. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:11:24|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Mohan Bahadur Basent (C), Nepali Minister for Information and Communication, and Gao Shuxun (2nd L, front), head of China-South Asia Expo Executive Committee, visit stalls of the China-South Asia Expo 2017 in Kathmandu, Nepal, Nov. 2, 2017. The China-South Asia Expo kicked off in Nepal's capital on Thursday with the aim to expand and enhance regional trade. (Xinhua/Sunil Sharma) KATHMANDU, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The China-South Asia Expo kicked off in Nepal's capital on Thursday with the aim to expand and enhance regional trade. This is the first time this expo is being held outside China as it used to be organized only in China's Kunming. The four-day event is being organized by China-South Asia Expo Secretariat and co-organized by Yunnan International Exposition Affairs Bureau and Nepal-China Executives Council. More than 100 Chinese businessmen are attending the event while the Chinese delegation is led by Gao Shuxun, head of the China-South Asia Expo Executive Committee. The event being held at the Exhibition Hall showcased goods from China and South Asian countries like Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. According to the organizers, the event has been organized with an aim to promote regional communications, expand trade in the region and build a larger platform of cooperation and exchanges between China and South Asia. "At a time when trade deficit is high within the region, such expos will help to encourage exports and balance trade. The expo will not only help China but also whole South Asia to prosper together with collective effort," Mohan Bahadur Basent, Nepali Minister for Information and Communication, told Xinhua after inaugurating the event. The minister said that it will also create investment opportunities in whole region. This regional event, being organized since 2003, is also believed to help facilitate policy coordination between the countries and translate complementary advantages into common growth of the entire region. Gao Shuxun, Head of China-South Asia Expo Executive Committee, told Xinhua, "Such overseas expos will enhance business cooperation in the whole region and will also contribute to China's Belt and Road Initiative." The expo has 150 standard booths and pavilions where China displays goods covering electronic and information technology, handicrafts, ethnic costumes, food processing and packaging machines, energy and tourism products, among others. Dang Zhen, an exhibitor from Yunnan of China, told Xinhua, "I am here to showcase my products related to Tibetan black clay pottery and find some local dealers for the future business." Nepal and other South Asian countries showcase gems and jewellery, leather products, garments, tea, coffee and handicrafts in the expo. Chinese stalls and their spectacular products with reasonable price have been the major attraction for the visitors. On the sidelines of the expo, Diqing Prefecture of Yunnan Province has been staging on-site tourism promotion activities including folk songs and dances. The event, which will conclude on Nov. 5, also features a number of workshops and interactions focusing on Belt and Road Initiative. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:16:27|Editor: ying Video Player Close Visiting Swiss President Doris Leuthard (R, Front) and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev (L, Front) review the guard of honor in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, on Nov. 2, 2017. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev met here on Thursday with his Swiss counterpart Doris Leuthard, who came to the Balkan country to boost bilateral ties. (Xinhua/Zhan Xiaoyi) SOFIA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev met here on Thursday with his Swiss counterpart Doris Leuthard, who came to the Balkan country to boost bilateral ties. "I want to express my satisfaction with the increasing activity of our economic ties," Radev said at a joint press conference after bilateral talks. Switzerland is the ninth largest foreign investor in Bulgaria, and bilateral trade amounted to 260 million euros (some 302 million U.S. dollars) last year, Radev said. "We discussed ways to expand this cooperation, especially in the fields of investment, small and medium-sized enterprises development, and the IT sector," Radev said. They discussed the security of Europe and the migrant crisis, and possible Swiss support for Bulgaria's striving to enter Schengen area, Radev said. Leuthard, the second Swiss president to pay an official visit to Bulgaria, said in turn that her country wants a strong Bulgaria and a strong Europe. Switzerland would support Bulgaria's desire to become part of the Schengen area, she said. Meanwhile, her country could help Bulgaria in the areas of vocational education, environmental protection, justice, and the fight against corruption, she said. Later on Thursday, Leuthard will meet with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:16:30|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni on Thursday celebrated the annual Water Festival in Phnom Penh with huge crowds of revelers coming from across the country. The monarch, along with Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen and other notable figures and foreign diplomats, watched the boat races over the Tonle Sap River in front of the Royal Palace in the afternoon and enjoyed illuminated floats and a firework display at night. Some 265 dragon boats with about 18,000 oarsmen from across the country have taken part in the regatta, according to the National Committee for Organizing National and International Festivals. Khin Sam Ath, a 40-year-old boater from eastern Phnom Penh's Chrouy Changvar district, said his boat has 73 racers and the crew had trained about ten days before the competitions. "We join the race every year. It's our national festival that creates a joyful atmosphere for the athletes and participants," he told Xinhua. "We are not professional boat-racers. After this festival, we return home and make our living based on our careers." Om Phat, a team minder of a racing boat from southeastern Prey Veng province, said it was the first time his 24-men boat participated in the regatta since a 2010 stampede on a Koh Pich bridge during the final day of the Water Festival that killed 353 people. "This is the first time we have joined the race again since the Koh Pich stampede," he told Xinhua. "It's a centuries-old festival left from our ancestors, so we need to join together to preserve it." The Water Festival, which will last until Saturday, is the largest annual festival in this Southeast Asian nation. During the three-day holiday, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, especially those from rural areas, are expected to flock to Phnom Penh to enjoy the festival. Lieutenant General Touch Naroth, chief of the Bodyguard Department, said that 12,300 security personnel have been deployed to ensure security and safety, as tankers, cargo trucks and buses are banned from entering the central part of Phnom Penh during the festival. Srin Sok Kean, 36, a resident of eastern Tboung Khmum province, about 150 km from Phnom Penh, said it was the first time she came to see the festival. "I feel excited and fresh to see the regatta, and the river air is pretty chilly," she told Xinhua. Another festival goer Him Try, 80, a native of Tboung Khmum province, said: "This is the first time I come to watch the Water Festival because I want to see the beauty and development of Phnom Penh." According to some histories, the Water Festival traces its roots to the 12th century when Angkorian King Jayvarman VII's navy defeated that of his Cham rivals. Water Festival is also a traditional event that marks the end of the rainy season and the reversing course of the Tonle Sap River that connects the Tonle Sap Lake with the Mekong River. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:21:32|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close AMMAN, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Scores of Jordanians on Thursday held protest in Amman over British officials' Balfour Declaration celebrations. The Jordanian protestors carried banners slamming the "Israeli occupation and the massacres against the Palestinians," in front of the British embassy in Amman. They also criticized Britain for holding celebrations of the Balfour Declaration. "I am here today to voice my condemnation of the awful Balfour Declaration, which resulted in the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland," Hamad Sobhi, a 26-year-old Jordanian protestor told Xinhua. "It is a disgrace to see British officials celebrating this disastrous declaration," he added. November 2 marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, which is the name given to the letter dated in 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary back then Arthur James Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was then a leader of the British Jewish community, announcing the British support for the Jewish people to build their state on the lands of Palestine. Theresa May, the British Prime Minister announced over a week ago that her country "will certainly mark the centenary with pride." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded during his UN General Assembly speech last September that Britain apologize for the Balfour Declaration and compensate Palestinians for the occupation of their lands after that letter paved the way for it. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:26:34|Editor: liuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Turkey established on Thursday a joint venture consist of five companies to produce its first home-made car, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. In the ceremony to announce the consortium held in Presidential Complex in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "Hopefully consortium for the domestically-made car will complete its prototype in 2019 and start commercial sales in 2021." Anadolu Gorup, BMC, Kiraca Holding, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding will jointly produce Turkey's first indigenous automobile. The president offered his "full support" for the venture, saying he is ready to buy the first car. A special team will be established at the Presidency to help the consortium to overcome obstacles, Erdogan said. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim noted the project "will add new success to the ongoing achievements of Turkey." Turkey attempted to produce its first home-made car, Devrim (Revolution), in 1961, which was not a success. The production of Devrim cars was halted after first prototypes. James Macharia (L), Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development and Liu Xianfa (2nd L), Chinese Ambassador to Kenya attend the launch and flag off of the Madaraka Express Train in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 1, 2017. Kenya's ministry of transport on Wednesday launched a new inter-county train service of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) with the hope of further boosting business and tourism along the new railway. (Xinhua/Charles Onyango) NAIROBI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's ministry of transport on Wednesday launched new inter-county train service of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) with the hope of further boosting business and tourism along the new railway. James Macharia, Cabinet Secretary of Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development, presided over the launch of the inter-county train service that will make stops in seven stations between the Kenyan capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa. Macharia said the launch of an inter-county SGR passenger train service marked a significant milestone in Kenya's quest to become a transport and logistics hub. James Macharia, Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development delivers his speech during the launch and flag off of the Madaraka Express Train in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Charles Onyango) He noted the second component of SGR passenger train service will boost inter-connectivity in Kenya's hinterland, stimulate investments and revitalize domestic tourism. The launch of the inter-county train service on the Nairobi-Mombasa line came as demands run high for efficient and fast transport services. Macharia noted that demand for the passenger train service dubbed Madaraka Express has been on the rise since it was launched by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on May 31. "The Madaraka Express has ferried over 350,000 people since its launch five months ago," Macharia remarked, adding that online booking, enhanced security and construction of access roads will encourage many Kenyans to use the SGR service. The launch ceremony was also attended by Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Liu Xianfa and senior executives from China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC). James Macharia (2nd L), Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development and Liu Xianfa (2nd R), Chinese Ambassador to Kenya join the traditional dancers during the launch and flag off of the Madaraka Express Train in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Charles Onyango) Ambassador Liu said the Nairobi-Mombasa railway dovetails with Beijing's quest to promote economic progress in the East African Nation as outlined in the Belt and Road Initiative. "From the very beginning, the SGR has been endowed with a significant role in facilitating the development of Kenya and realization of 2030 vision," said Liu. Li Quanhuai, vice president of CRBC, said the launch of an inter-county passenger train service will inject fresh vitality in Kenya's transport sector and boost economic growth. Li Quanhuai, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) Board chairman delivers his speech during the launch and flag off of the Madaraka Express Train in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, Nov. 1, 2017.(Xinhua/Charles Onyango) "The successful launch of the inter-county passenger train will not only provide more choices for passengers in terms of time and destinations, but also reinforce the population and commodities circulation along the railway as a key driver for Kenyan economy," said Li. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:46:42|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MOSCOW, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russia said Thursday it will agree to continue a UN investigation into use of chemical weapons in Syria if the quality of the group's work drastically improves. "We are for the extension because the very fact of using chemical substances as a weapon is a totally unacceptable phenomenon for us, and I hope, for our many partners in the UN Security Council," said Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Nonproliferation and Arms Control Department. But the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) created to investigate chemical attacks in Syria "should really start working, not as it is doing now," he said at a press conference. Ulyanov said that Russia later on Thursday would present its own draft resolution at the UN Security Council on the extension of the JIM mandate with recommendations for the UN General Secretary and the OPCW head. Last week Russia blocked a UN Security Council draft resolution on the extension of the JIM mandate, citing the need to examine its latest report which the Foreign Ministry called "superficial and unprofessional." The JIM report issued later on Oct. 26 attributed the responsibility for the high-profile chemical incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria' s Idlib province in April to Damascus. Ulyanov and experts from Russia's Defense Ministry and Industry and Trade Ministry provided at the press conference technical proof that the Syrian government was innocent of perpetrating the chemical attack, contrary to the report's allegation. They said that members of the JIM based their conclusions on secondary and unconvincing evidence, without personally visiting the location of the incident. A chemical attack was reportedly launched on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria on April 4 and killed dozens of people. The Syrian government has repeatedly dismissed Western accusations of its responsibility. The Khan Sheikhoun attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Syria's air base in Shayrat, which Western governments say was used to launch the gas attack. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:46:43|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Photo taken on Nov. 2, 2017 shows the Chinese giant panda Cai Tao at the Indonesia Panda Castle in Taman Safari Indonesia. Indonesian officials supervising the Chinese giant pandas now kept in the nation's safari park said on Thursday that the exotic animals were ready for public expose in the near future after completing a 31-day quarantine period. (Xinhua/Du Yu) JAKARTA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian officials supervising the Chinese giant pandas now kept in the nation's safari park said on Thursday that the exotic animals were ready for public expose in the near future after completing a 31-day quarantine period. Taman Safari Indonesia (TSI) Director Jansen Manansang said that results from health examinations over the male and female pandas, namely Cai Tao and Hu Chun, showed excellent records with two animals already well-adapted with nature, climate, weather and with crews who take care of them in the TSI's panda facility. "Figures from health examinations over them were excellent. The most important things now were the food and the habitat. They were exactly the same like in their origin places," Jansen said in TSI premises in Bogor, West Java. TSI management is now in the process of assessing the proper date to initiate the public expose for the Chinese giant pandas, he added. According to Jansen, the TSI would limit a maximum 200 people to watch the pandas each day. TSI has built a 5,000 square meter panda exhibit in its premises, called Indonesia Panda Castle, located about 55 km south of the capital Jakarta. It was situated on a hill with a height of 1,800 meters above sea level and average temperature between 15 to 24 degree celsius. The exhibit is featured with Chinese culture-themed restaurant and a store that sells Panda-associated souvenirs. Cai Tao and Hu Chun arrived in Indonesia on Sept. 28 after going through 5-hour direct flight from an airport in China's Chengdu city. The arrival of the Chinese giant pandas followed the China-Indonesia breeding loan agreement, which enables the two pandas to stay at least 10 years in Indonesia before returning to China after breeding their children for Indonesia. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 22:51:45|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close NAIROBI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Foreign nationals seeking to study in Kenyan universities will now be required to obtain a certificate of good conduct from the local police before they are admitted to various institutions across the country. The Director of Immigration and Registration of Persons Gordon Kihalangwa said in an interview that the directive which takes effect very soon will enhance the crackdown of criminal networks dominated by foreigners especially those coming from war-torn countries. "We are issuing this directive not to block foreigners from studying in our country but to ensure everyone entering the country is free from criminal record. Consequently, the certificate from police will be a confirmation that nationals from other countries have never been involved in activities such as fraud and terrorism," Kihalangwa said. The move he said is aimed at fighting war against terrorism, fraud and drug abuse and influence among students population in the country. University students have become soft targets of Al-Shabaab militants who recruit them to wage against their governments. This is evidenced in the killings of the 147 university students which apparently was planned and executed by former university students' recruits. Barely three weeks ago, two university staff from Southern Coast were attacked and killed by gunmen whom police suspected to be from Al-Shabaab militia group. The gun open a fire at the car they were travelling in. According to police reports, many varsity students in Kenya are radicalized and lured into joining terror groups with a promise to become wealthy. Another police report released in April this year indicated that a significant number of youths who have been pursuing degrees in Kenyan universities have been lured into acts of terrorism. The report further noted that institutions of higher learning had become centers of radicalization and recruitment by recruiters from Somalia and Syria. Consequently, the security agencies released the names of four students from a local university who had already joined the terror groups. Kihalangwa said his officers had identified some satellite towns and residential areas within the capital city where young foreigners with unknown motives reside. The immigration director said that the new regulations will be shared by the Education Cabinet Secretary who will then direct universities to implement it. He added that foreign students will be required to write a letter addressed to the immigration director indicating the course they intend to pursue and its duration. In addition, the students will submit copies of their academic testimonials, proof of funds, and a commitment letter from their sponsor. Commission for University Chairman Professor Chacha Nyaigotti- Chacha welcomed the move saying it will form part of the new regulations that are being put in place to enhance security in universities. "Our local universities are highly regarded by foreign nationals because of our diverse and quality university education system. We welcome all nationals but again regulations should be put in place to ensure our students are safe," Chacha said. Already, most universities have started implemented the biometric registration of students to ensure universities keep bio data of all its students. This is to help in tracking activities of all students with an aim of curbing security threats. Kombo Owuonda, an assistant academic registrar in a local university said he was not aware of the directive but welcome the day. "I am not aware of this, perhaps the university will communicate in due course. It's a good idea anyway because in this error of students attack in universities, you cannot trust anyone," Owuonda said. Data from Commission for University Education indicates that local universities admit at least 5,000 foreign learners annually, mainly for study in private institutions, and mostly from the Eastern Africa region. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:11:56|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MADRID, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Spanish state prosecutor asked judge on Thursday to issue European arrest warrant for sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four other members of ousted Catalan regional government. The Spanish authorities has demanded Puigdemont, who has been in Brussels since last Friday, to return to Spain for questioning over the charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds. Eight former members of Puigdemont's deposed government, including his former deputy Oriol Junqueras, appeared in Spain's High Court in Madrid on Thursday, to answer questions from judge High Court Carmen Lamela. Puigdemont and four more former ministers opted to remain in Brussels insisting they would not get a fair hearing in what was a "political trial". Puigdemont's lawyer Paul Bekeart told reporters that the climate in Spain was "not good. It is better to have some distance", but insisted that if asked, his client would "cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice". However, Spanish prosecutors are against Puigdemont being allowed to testify by video-conference. "When someone doesn't appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued," said Carlos Lesmes, Spain's Supreme Court President. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:21:59|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The World Series champion Houston Astros will be honored with a parade through downtown on Friday, local media reported on Thursday. "It's a true privilege to proudly host this magnificent salute to our hometown team that has earned history," Houston mayor Sylvester Turner was quoted by ESPN as saying on Thursday. "As we bounce back from Hurricane Harvey, we are more than ready to welcome our heroes home in proper form." The Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 5-1 in Game 7 of the 2017 World Series on Wednesday night, winning their first World Series title in franchise history. The parade will begin at the corner of Smith and Lamar Streets and make a loop downtown. According to ESPN, players with the World Series trophy, management, team owner Jim Crane and Astros mascot Orbitare are expected to be there. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:22:00|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close CAIRO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court upheld on Thursday a ruling handing a nephew of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi a five-year jail term over committing acts of violence, riot and sabotage in response to Morsi's removal in mid-2013, official MENA news agency reported. The Court of Cassation's ruling involves three convicts including Morsi's nephew, Mohamed Saeed Mohamed Morsi, who has been charged with committing violence against peaceful citizens and storming a college inside Zagazig University in Sharqiya province, north of the capital Cairo, following Morsi's ouster. The verdict is final as it comes after an appeal against a similar one issued by Zagazig Criminal Court. Last week, a misdemeanors court in Zagazig sentenced Morsi's son Osama, a lawyer, to three years in prison over his illegal possession of two penknives in his handbag. The verdict is still appealable. Morsi's youngest son Abdullah was sentenced in 2014 to one year in jail after being convicted of possessing hashish cigarettes. The former Islamist president was removed by the military in early July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group. Most Brotherhood leaders, including Morsi and the group's top chief Mohamed Badie, are currently in custody and many of them received appealable death sentences and life imprisonments over various charges varying from inciting violence and murder to espionage and jailbreak. Morsi is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence over inciting deadly clashes between his supporters and opponents in late 2012 and a 25-year jail term over leaking classified documents to Qatar. Since Morsi's removal, Egypt has been facing a rising wave of terrorism that left hundreds of policemen and soldiers dead, most of which have been claimed by a Sinai-based militant group loyal to the Islamic State (IS) regional terrorist group. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:32:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson discussed U.S. President Donald Trump's upcoming visit to China by telephone on Thursday. Yang, who is also a member of Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, exchanged views with Tillerson on the preparation of Trump's state visit to China next week at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Yang and Tillerson agreed to enhance cooperation and coordination to ensure the visit is a success. The two also exchanged views on international and regional issues of common concern. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:32:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A wild roller-coaster ride hijacking almost half of Catalans has ground to a halt, as Madrid cut the Gordian knot by invoking article 155 of the Spanish Constitution and imposed direct rule on the once-autonomous region. All the signs are that Madrid's takeover, entering its first week, has been running smoothly and has won ovation among a broad swath of Barcelonans. In the meantime, with deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdement fleeing to Brussels, and some of his cohorts being summoned to Spanish court for charges including "rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds", Catalan separatists have landed in hot water. "The central government's takeover, aimed at stabilizing the situation and bringing the normal life back, is certainly good," 38-year-old Eueni Gegeni Prat, an editor at a truck business website, told Xinhua. "The separatists' thinking is nonsense," Plat quipped, stressing that "independence will not make Catalonia richer, instead it will result in economic calamities". Since the independence referendum on Oct. 1, uncertainty over Catalonia has already begun to bite. According to the College of Mercantile Registers of Spain, a total of 1,821 companies left Catalonia to other places in Spain between Oct. 2 and 27. The region's two main banks, the fourth largest Banc Sabadell and third largest Caixabank, are among the companies, with the former moving its headquarters to Alicante and the latter to Balearic Islands. "I am a native Catalan, but I have traveled all over Spain and all the world. I think Catalan's nationalists are very narrow-minded, they should open their eyes wider," said Plat. Even some teenagers in Barcelona have a good grasp of the fallout of independence. Eric, 16, speaking to Xinhua at Plaza Catalonia in downtown Barcelona, said: "I back staying in Spain; I don't support separatists, because independence will bring bad consequences." "The central government has no choice but to take over the administration of Catalonia," said the young student, adding, "I think it's right." Riding roughshod over Spanish Constitution and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's repeated dire warnings, Catalonia's separatist regional government went ahead with the independence referendum. Some 2.2 million out of 5.4 million eligible Catalan voters cast votes in the referendum and 90 percent of them voted for splitting from Spain. An opinion poll commissioned by Catalan regional authority in July showed that 49.4 percent of Catalans were against independence while 41.1 percent were in favor. The low turnout of the Oct. 1 referendum indicated that most anti-independence Catalans have given short shrift to the referendum, which from the outset was ruled illegal by Spanish constitutional court. Despite that, the Catalan parliament on Friday voted for "the formation of a Catalan Republic as an independent and sovereign state with social and democratic rights". The unilateral declaration of independence was quashed at a gallop by Madrid, which later on the day dissolved the Catalan parliament, deposed Catalan cabinet and called a fresh regional election on Dec. 21. Former members of the Catalan regional government, including former deputy prime minister Oriol Junqueras, arrived at the Spanish National Court in Madrid on Thursday to face questioning over a misuse of funds and other issues related to the declaration of independence. Puigdemont was not among them as he opted to remain in Belgium after traveling there from Barcelona on Sunday. Five former ministers who traveled to Belgium along with Puigdement have also chosen not to return to Spain to face trial. Puigdemont alleged it was a "political trial," although his lawyer said he would be willing to make his declaration from Belgium, something the prosecution appeared unwilling to accept. The sacked president is being prosecuted for rebellion as well as sedition and misuse of public funds. He could face up to 30 years in prison if found guilty. Puigdement's fleeing has caused disappointment among pro-independence activists and has sparked howls of outrage among anti-independence Catalans. Asked by Xinhua at Plaza Saint Jaume, where the Catalan government is situated, a crop of pro-independence activists admitted that there is little chance to continue the independence bid. Most of them said they haven't made the decision whether they will cast votes in the snap election called by Spain's central government in Catalonia on Dec. 21. However, Puigdement said at a press conference at Brussels' press club on Monday that he accepted the snap election. Catalan independence must be "slowed down" to avoid unrest, said the deposed Catalan president, insisting that he does not want to drag his fellow citizens into a spiral of violence. "We have been forced to adapt our work plan to avoid violence." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:32:07|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close DAMASCUS, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Syria has turned from a wheat producer to an importer of the staple material, as mills and silos in the country had been largely destroyed in the war, said a Syrian minister in a recent interview with Xinhua. "In 2010, Syria had around 3.5 million tons of wheat. The domestic production exceeded the needs. Our stock back then was sufficient for three years. Now, we have become a wheat importer," said Abdullah al-Gharbi, Syria's minister of internal trade and consumer protection. The minister said the government aimed to shore up the current stock of wheat with the help of allies, mainly Russia. He added that the stock had declined to a very dangerous level in July 2016, when the amount was only enough for a few days. "Now, our supplies are sufficient for 210 days and we hope to make our stock of wheat last for 360 days in 2018," he said. Wheat is an important staple material in Syria. Despite the lack of production due to the grinding war and Western sanctions, the government kept providing bakeries with wheat with the help of Russia and Iran. The minister, meanwhile, said their biggest obstacle was securing equipment to repair the mills and silos destroyed by the rebels in the rural areas in Syria. "Now we need to restore our mills and silos but we are facing major difficulties in securing the proper equipment or necessary technology as a result of the sanctions on Syria," he said. The Western sanctions had affected the livelihood of the Syrians, he added. "The European and U.S. sanctions imposed on us are illogical as they affect the production of our food," he said. The minister also welcomed foreign investments in Syria, including those from China. "We have signed contracts with the Iranians, the Russians and there are reciprocal visits between us and Chinese companies to discuss construction of mills and silos," he continued. The minister said most of the silos in rebel-held rural areas in Syria had been completely destroyed. In Hama province, the rebels destroyed the Mardes mill which used to produce 300 tons of wheat per day, the minister said. He added that a large mill is under construction with the help of Russia in Hama, which will produce 600 tons of wheat per day, noting that it will be ready by the end of 2017. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:37:09|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli, who is also head of the the State Council South-to-North Water Diversion Project Construction Commission, presides over a meeting of the commission in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 2, 2017. Vice premier Wang Yang, who is vice head of the commission, also attended the meeting. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) BEIJING, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chinese vice premier Zhang Gaoli on Thursday demanded more benefits from the south-to-north water diversion project. The project, one of the country's largest infrastructure schemes, was designed to take water from the south to dry areas in the north, including Beijing. A good mechanism must be established to optimize transfer of water resources to serve the country's key strategies, including the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The project must ensure water for Xiongan New Area, according to Zhang, who is also head of the the State Council South-to-North Water Diversion Project Construction Commission. Vice premier Wang Yang, who is vice head of the commission, also attended the meeting, emphasizing water quality and environmental protection during the process. Both highlighted the importance of helping those displaced by the project. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:37:10|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close GENEVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A UN report released Thursday said the terrorist group calling itself Islamic State perpetrated serious violations that amount to "international crimes" while a nine-month military campaign was carried out to liberate Mosul City in Iraq. The report is published by the UN assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) about the actions of IS, also known as ISIL or Daesh. Using direct witness testimony, the report documents mass abductions of civilians, the use of thousands as human shields, the intentional shelling of civilian residences, and indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to flee the city. "During the course of the operation to retake Mosul City thousands of civilians were subjected to shocking human rights abuses and clear violations of international humanitarian law," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein. In July, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and affiliated armed groups retook the city which had fallen under the control of IS in June 2014. At least 2,521 civilians were killed during the military operation, mostly due to IS attacks, the report found, including 741 people who were executed. Another 1,673 were wounded. Additionally, as of 26 October 2017, the Civil Defense Corps reported that they had recovered the remains of 1,642 civilians from underneath rubble in Mosul. The report recounts that early in November 2016, in areas of Mosul under IS control, members of the group used loud speakers to announce that residents of areas retaken by the ISF were considered "legitimate targets" because of their 'failure' to fight against government forces. "This so-called 'fatwa' was accompanied by a sustained campaign of ISIL attacks on eastern Mosul that directly targeted civilians," the report states. The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said the report documents evidence of the mass atrocities committed by IS against civilians and Mosul itself. This is the city that IS claimed as its capital, but they really sought its ultimate and deliberate destruction, says the report. "Daesh's reign of terror has spared no one, inflicting untold suffering on unarmed residents whose only guilt is that they lived in the areas under ISIL's control. "Their evil acts did not stop at killing and terrorizing residents, as they wantonly destroyed cultural and religious monuments, including the city's iconic leaning minaret Al-Hadba, in total disregard of history and Islam, the religion this terrorist organization falsely claimed to represent," notes the report. It calls on the international community, including the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to act to ensure that those responsible for international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are held accountable. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:42:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MOGADISHU, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- International charity Save the Children has called for joint effort to fighting pneumonia, the forgotten killer disease in Somalia. The charity said in a report released on Thursday that pneumonia kills more than two children every hour in Somalia, even though it can be treated with antibiotics costing as little as 0.50 U.S. dollars. "The situation is worse in Somalia. Food shortages as a result of drought in the country has left millions of children malnourished; making them more vulnerable to diseases including pneumonia," Abdiqafar Hange, the Area Representative for Save the Children Puntland said during the launch of the report in Garowe. "We are doing all it take to save these children. We should not ignore pneumonia at this critical time," Hange added. The report, Fighting for Breath is part of the global report which also marks the launch of Save the Children's effort against pneumonia, which aims to save a million lives in the next five years. The report indicates that 14,561 Somali children succumbed to pneumonia in 2015 alone -which is more than two children dying every hour. This implies 24 percent of all under five mortality is due to pneumonia. The situation may get worse if drastic measures are not taken to save children's lives. Puntland Minister of Health Abdinasir Osman Isse who launched the report said the government has prioritized prevention and treatment of pneumonia. "However, we cannot do it alone. We need all the key stakeholders to join efforts and ensure children have access to quality health services at all levels of service delivery," Isse said. He said there is a need to increase investment in the primary health care systems as well as prioritize effective prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia. Pneumonia is responsible for the deaths of more children under five than any other disease - more than malaria, diarrhea and measles combined. According to the charity, more than 80 percent of the victims are children under two years old, many with immune systems weakened by malnutrition or insufficient breastfeeding and unable to fight the infection. Infants are at their most vulnerable in the first weeks of life. Save the Children is calling for 166 million under-twos to be immunized and for action to help 400 million worldwide with no access to health care. Half of all mothers in Africa have no health care around the time of birth. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, who is backing the global effort, said the cost of vaccines - 9.15 dollars in poor countries - was too high. "Pharmaceutical companies, governments, aid donors and UN agencies need to come together to make the vaccine prices more affordable to save more lives," Annan said. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-02 23:52:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CAIRO -- At least five militants were killed and six others were wounded as the Egyptian army foiled a terrorist attack against a checkpoint in North Sinai province, the Egyptian army said in a statement on Thursday. "Some terrorist elements attempted to sneak into the area surrounding the checkpoint and after fire exchange they hid in nearby places where the air forces immediately pursued and targeted them," said the statement, noting the raid also destroyed a vehicle and the two buildings where they hid. (Egypt-Sinai-IS) - - - - NEW DELHI -- A major fire broke out at a chemical factory in India's financial capital Mumbai Thursday, officials said. "The blaze stared at the factory located in Taloja area of Mumbai around 1 a.m. (local time) and soon engulfed large parts of the charcoal tar unit. Fortunately, there have been no reports of any casualty as all the workers were safely evacuated," a senior police official said. (India-Mishap-Fire) - - - - KUWAIT CITY -- Five Kuwaiti citizens were killed and 13 others injured Thursday in a road accident while visiting the southern Iraqi city of Karbala, the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported. A bus, transporting the Kuwaiti nationals, toppled over on the road between Basra city and Al-Nasseriya, Kuwaiti Ambassador to Iraq Salem Al-Zamanan told KUNA. (Kuwait-Road Accident) - - - - MADRID -- Spanish state prosecutor asked judge on Thursday to issue European arrest warrant for sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four other members of ousted Catalan regional government. The Spanish authorities has demanded Puigdemont, who has been in Brussels since last Friday, to return to Spain for questioning over the charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds. (Spain-Catalan-Arrest) - - - - MOSCOW -- Russia said Thursday it will agree to continue a UN investigation into use of chemical weapons in Syria if the quality of the group's work drastically improves. "We are for the extension because the very fact of using chemical substances as a weapon is a totally unacceptable phenomenon for us, and I hope, for our many partners in the UN Security Council," said Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Nonproliferation and Arms Control Department. (Russia-Syria-Chemical use) Enditem | 2017-11-03 05:34:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Britain's Prince Charles(L) met with Brunei's Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah in Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of Brunei, November 2, 2017. Britain's Prince Charles arrived here on Thursday to visit Brunei during a tour of Southeast Asia. (Xinhua) BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Britain's Prince Charles arrived here on Thursday to visit Brunei during a tour of Southeast Asia, and he will meet Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. According to an earlier statement from the British High Commission to Brunei, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will visit Brunei and personally congratulate the Sultan on the golden jubilee of his accession to the throne. The visit demonstrates the warm and special relationship between the two royal families, especially the close friendship between the Sultan and Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, the statement said. Prince Charles and his wife last visited Brunei in 2008, when they visited the British Forces Brunei in Seria where the Prince interacted with the Gurkha Battalion as their Colonel in Chief. As part of his regional tour, Prince Charles and his wife visited Brunei after Singapore, and will travel from Brunei for their first visit to Malaysia, after which they will go to India. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 00:07:23|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The British government has provided 4 million U.S. dollars worth of demining equipment to the Libyan government to remove landmines in the city of Sirte. "The British government has delivered 4 million U.S. dollars equipment to the Libyan authorities to help make Sirte safe," the British Embassy to Libya said on social media Thursday. "This equipment is part of a broader package of UK assistance to help stabilize Libya which includes training to help remove landmines and improvised explosive devices from Sirte, Benghazi and other areas across Libya," the embassy added. The International Stability and Security Company JANUS will provide training to Libyan military engineers and police on use of the delivered equipment, the embassy said. "This equipment is a tangible sign of the UK's commitment to helping the people of Sirte, Benghazi, and other areas rebuild their lives after the defeat of Daesh. A stable, secure, and prosperous Libya is in our shared interest," said British Ambassador to Libya, Peter Millett. Since the forces of the UN-backed Government last year defeated IS affiliates and took over the city of Sirte, located some 450 km east the capital Tripoli, the city has been suffering from remnants of munitions of the fighting, as well as landmines laid by IS in a number of districts and neighborhoods. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 00:22:33|Editor: ying Video Player Close Wang Jun, Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Cote d'Ivoire, speaks during the inauguration ceremony in Soubre, Cote d'Ivoire, Nov. 2, 2017. Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday inaugurated the Chinese-built Soubre hydroelectric power station, the largest of its kind in the West African country. (Xinhua/Li Baishun) SOUBRE, Cote d'Ivoire, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday inaugurated the Chinese-built Soubre hydroelectric power station, the largest of its kind in the West African country. The 4.5-km-long hydropower dam at Naoua Falls on the Sassandra River, with an installed capacity of 275 megawatts (MW), is expected to increase hydro power in Cote d'Ivoire's energy mix and cement the country's status as a key power producer and supplier in West Africa. The Soubre project, dormant for several decades due to lack of funding, was launched in February 2013 with funding from China. One of Soubre's four total generator units started generating electricity in May, about eight months ahead of schedule, according to the builder Sinohydro Corporation Limited, which is under PowerChina. "The Government of Cote d'Ivoire is very satisfied with the quality and speed of the construction of the Soubre hydroelectric dam," Alassane Ouattara, President of Cote d'Ivoire, said at the inauguration ceremony held in front of the dam. The president said Cote d'Ivoire is willing to have more cooperation with China. Hailing it as "one of the landmark achievements of cooperation between China and Cote d'Ivoire," Wang Jun, Charge d'affaires of the Chinese Embassy in Cote d'Ivoire, noted in his speech that the hydro station has helped deepen the bilateral economic and trade cooperation, especially in the areas of energy and hydroelectricity. "Soubre dam is of high quality and built within a shorter period than schedule. I've been impressed by both the determination and flexibility shown in the Chinese builder's work," said Teyssiaux Jean, an engineer with Tractebel Engineering, a French company in charge of quality supervision over Soubre's construction. The cost of the Soubre project is about 572 million U.S. dollars, of which 85 percent is financed by the Export-Import Bank of China and 15 percent by Cote d'Ivoire. Cote d'Ivoire has the ambition to push its power production capacity to 4,000 MW by 2020. Thursday's inauguration of Soubre adds to the country's existing capacity of around 2,000 MW. "With Soubre dam, we're on course to meet the target of 4,000 MW by 2020," said Thierry Tanoh, energy minister of Cote d'Ivoire, noting that the dam contributes greatly to the improvement of people's livelihoods. Following the Soubre inauguration, a foundation laying ceremony was held at the same site for the 112-MW Gribo-Popoli project, a dam 15 km downstream of Soubre, to be built also by Sinohydro. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 00:22:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close HELSINKI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Eastern Finland Police Department said Thursday that a 20-year-old man was suspected of killing another foreign man with knife. The incident happened in Mikkeli, south eastern Finland, on Wednesday, said the police, adding that both the suspect and the victim were foreign students studying in Finland. The suspect was caught near the crime scene soon after the killing. He was interrogated by police on Thursday, and his remand hearing will be at Eastern Savo District Court on Friday. A third person, who was allegedly at the scene when the crime took place, was also questioned, but he was not suspected of a crime. The motive for the killing remained unknown. Police did not disclose the citizenship of the two foreign students. At this stage, the case was being investigated as a murder, according to police. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 00:52:41|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government will repatriate tens of thousands of people displaced by recent conflicts along the boundary of Somali and Oromia regional states, an official said on Thursday. Speaking to journalists, Mitiku Kassa, Commissioner of Ethiopia National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRC), said the repatriation will go hand in hand with a peace conference aimed to build trust and confidence of residents and officials from both regional states. Speaking exclusively to Xinhua in October, Negeri Lencho, Minister of Ethiopia Government Communication Affairs Office (GCAO), said Ethiopia's defense forces and police will be deployed in conflict hotspot areas along the 1,500-km-long border between the two regional states to keep peace and aid the repatriation. Ethiopia's biggest regional states Oromia and Ethiopia Somali have been locked in a dispute over the delineation of their common boundary for almost two decades. A referendum in October 2004 was supposed to demarcate the boundary between the two regional states, but its implementation has been stalled ever since with both sides accusing each other of non-compliance with the referendum results. Heavy clashes along the Oromia-Somali boundary in September left scores of people dead and tens of thousands displaced. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 01:12:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close CHICAGO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. federal agents have expanded a corruption investigation first targeted at labor leaders in Fiat Chrysler to General Motors and Ford, the Detroit News revealed on Thursday. After filing corruption charges against a former Fiat Chrysler labor executive and the wife of a late union vice president, FBI investigators have issued subpoenas in recent weeks for information about training centers financed by GM and Ford. Several representatives of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the biggest trade union in automobile sector in North America, are accused of participating in a 4.5-million-U.S.-dollar scheme that siphoned corporate training funds earmarked for blue-collar workers. The training programs are operated jointly with the union, according to sources familiar with the investigation. In an exclusive report, the Detroit News said the ongoing investigation is focused on whether training funds were misappropriated and if labor leaders at GM and Ford also received illegal benefits. A similar scandal was first exposed when a former Fiat Chrysler labor executive and the wife of a deceased union leader were accused and formally indicted this summer for conspiring in a scheme that drained large amount of money from union training center funds. It led to concerns in the U.S. society that big automakers might try to buy labor peace by corrupting union leaders. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 01:27:52|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ZAGREB, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Ivica Todoric, the founder and owner of Croatia's biggest private company Agrokor, is on the Europol's list of Europe's most wanted fugitives for suspected corruption, forgery of administrative documents and fraud, Croatian news agency Hina reported on Thursday. Todoric, 66, is still the owner of Agrokor, the biggest retail chain in the region that was hit in January by a heavy debt crisis. The Croatian government took over the management of the company and is now trying to restructure and revive it. On Oct. 16, Croatian police arrested former executives of the company on suspicion of a white-collar crime. They were all released from prison and now they are waiting for prosecution. Todoric is not in Croatia and the court ruled one-month investigative detention for him in absentia. On Thursday, after the news about Europol's list broke out, Todoric wrote on his blog that he was not hiding and that his conscience was clear. "As a man whose human rights are deeply violated I have the right to oppose political persecution," Todoric wrote. "My lawyers are in contact with the authorities and competent institutions who know my address even before any investigation has been initiated against me," he said in the statement. A doctor of China Medical Team in Rwanda examines a patient at a health post in Kibungo, Eastern Province, Rwanda, on Nov. 1, 2017. The 18th China Medical Team in Rwanda on Wednesday launched a week-long free treatment activity in Rwanda's Kibungo. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran) by Lyu Tianran and Frank Kanyesigye KIBUNGO, Rwanda, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- The 18th China Medical Team in Rwanda on Wednesday launched a week-long free treatment activity in Rwanda's Kibungo town. Hundreds of local residents gathered at the health post in Kibungo, Eastern Province, around 9:30 a.m. to receive free medical care from the Chinese doctors. The doctors from departments of orthopedics, internal medicine, surgery, stomatology, acupuncture, anesthesiology and maternity provided consultations and treatment, after donating medicines to the health post. "I have been suffering from painful swollen legs for the past two years and have visited several healthcare centers in my area," said Jean d'Arc Mukandutiye, 47, who got diagnosis, medicines, recommendation of further medical checkup from the Chinese doctors. "It's expensive to access medical checkup and treatment in hospitals. I tried to get treatment in hospitals but I couldn't afford," said the mother of seven. The patients at the site reported health problems ranging from dental problems, malaria, hypertension, diabetes, reproductive health, influenza, arthritis, typhoid to skin diseases. A doctor of China Medical Team in Rwanda examines a patient at a health post in Kibungo, Eastern Province, Rwanda, on Nov. 1, 2017. The 18th China Medical Team in Rwanda on Wednesday launched a week-long free treatment activity in Rwanda's Kibungo. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran) Emmanuel Ndayambaje, who suffered a terrible headache for the past six months, said the health centers he visited failed to diagnose the problem. The Chinese doctors explained to him the cause of the headache, he said. The 60 years old expressed his gratitude for the free medical services, as it has been difficult for him to access health services in Kigali due to his financial constraints. Eugenie Imurinde, head of Kibungo health post, thanked the Chinese medical team for the work they have done for the health center. "Many patients especially in rural areas fail to access treatment even for minor problems, due to lack of money for treatment and sometimes the long distances involved," Imurinde said. "When our health post can't handle complicated health problems and refer these patients to hospitals, they don't go because of financial difficulties," she said. Providing free treatment to Rwandans is one of the Chinese medical teams' main assignments, according to the team leader Lu Jun. The team aims to provide Rwandan patients with convenience through such activities, she said. China started to dispatch medical team to Rwanda in 1982, and there have been hundreds of medical staff working in Rwanda since then. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 02:18:06|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close VILNIUS, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- In the next long-term EU budget in 2021, Lithuania will receive the necessary funding for the country's most important projects, such as the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant (NPP), Gunther Oettinger, European Commissioner for budget and human resources, said on Thursday. "The decommissioning of the Ignalina NPP is a long-term, exceptionally costly and unprecedented project. The decommissioning will not be possible by 2038 unless there is sufficient support from the EU," said Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Svernelis while meeting Oettinger. "I will try to include a special line in the next financial perspective enabling you to successfully resolve this issue through co-financing," Oettinger was quoted as saying in a statement released by Lithuania's government. According to Oettinger, it would be unfair to put this financial burden on the shoulders of Lithuania alone. The commissioner also promised to look more closely into the possibilities of compensating Lithuanian farmers for the losses incurred by them as a result of heavy rains this year. During their meeting, Skvernelis and Oettinger also discussed EU funding for Rail Baltica project, and the synchronization of the Lithuanian electricity system with continental European networks. While in Vilnius, Oettinger took part in a parliamentary conference on the future of EU finances, specifically, how to make Lithuania's economy more robust and socially-oriented. Oettinger said the first draft of the EU's multi-annual financial framework for 2021 to 2027 would be announced in May 2018, at which point the negotiating process among EU member states and the European Parliament would begin. The European Commission proposals will become the ground for negotiations on the new financial perspective, Oettinger was quoted by local media as saying at the conference. Oettinger is currently touring the remaining EU member states in order to find their views on the long-term budget beyond 2020. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 02:53:17|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TRIPOLI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Libyan National Committee for Human Rights on Thursday expressed deep concern over military incursions in the western city of Warshaffana. Clashes took place on Wednesday between armed groups in Warshaffana and others from Zintan. Warshaffana was also shelled by the forces of the UN-backed Government National Accord, according to leaders in Warshaffana. The National Committee for Human Rights in Libya warned from "the consequences of these armed movements as a sign of a new escalation of violence and armed clashes, which pose a serious threat to the safety and lives of civilians in the areas." "This armed escalation has serious and negative effects on the efforts and endeavors to achieve national and social reconciliation, restoring national security and stability, and fighting terrorism in Libya," the Committee said in a statement. The Committee called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the international community to take all legal and humanitarian actions to "stop any form of escalation of acts or threats to the security, safety and lives of civilians in Warshaffana." "If the real aim of this mobilization is to combat organized crime and secure roads, there are other peaceful mechanisms that can be adopted instead of increasing the crisis and escalation of the situation," the statement said. Areas near Warshaffana suffer crimes of kidnappings and armed robberies, as well as murder. The committee demanded the government to immediately stop all military movements in Warshaffana, as well as to relieved Osama Jweli, commander of the western military region, from duties "for his involvement in human rights violations in western Libya that could be war crimes." Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 03:23:29|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIRUT, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese Army's Logistics Brigade received Thursday a number of Hellfire air-to-surface missiles from the United States, according to a statement from the army. "The army also received a number of 60mm mortars as part of the American support program," the statement added. Last month, a ceremony was held at the Lebanese Air Force Hamat base where the Lebanese Air Force received from the United States two A-29 Super Tucano aircraft. The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard highlighted during the ceremony the partnership between the two armies, noting over the last decade, the U.S. government has invested over 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in training and equipment, and has trained over 32,000 Lebanese troops. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 03:33:32|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Indiscriminate shelling by fighters of the Shiite Houthi group killed five children and injured three others in Yemen's southwestern province of Taiz on Thursday, a government official told Xinhua. The Houthi rebels fired mortar shells at a residential neighborhood in the outskirts of Taiz, leaving five children killed and three others injured, the government source said on condition of anonymity. "Some of the mortar shells struck a house and left about three family members killed," the source said. "Other shells bombed a nearby house and killed two more children and critically injured three others," he added. Yemen's official Saba News Agency confirmed in a short statement that "the Houthi militia committed a new massacre in Taiz by killing children." Last month, random shelling by the Houthi rebels killed 74 civilians, including 17 children and three women, and wounded 143 others, according to local Yemeni humanitarian organizations. Local Yemeni officials said that the pro-Houthi forces usually targeted the residential neighborhoods controlled by the Saudi-backed government in Taiz with mortar shells and rockets, causing casualties among innocent civilians. Yemen's internationally-backed government, allied with the Saudi-led Arab military coalition, has been battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels over control of the country for over two years. The coalition began a military air campaign in March 2015 to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to the power. The coalition also imposed air and sea blockade to prevent weapons from reaching Houthis, who had invaded the capital Sanaa militarily and seized most of the northern Yemeni provinces. UN statistics showed more than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, had been killed since the coalition intervened in the Yemeni civil war that also displaced around 3 million. The impoverished Arab country is also suffering the world's largest cholera epidemic since April, with about 5,000 cases reported every day. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 03:38:35|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Chinese Ambassador to Greece Zou Xiaoli (L, Front), China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) vice head Ning Jizhe (C, Front) and Greek Deputy Minister of Economy and Development Stergios Pitsiorlas (R, Front) attend the second meeting of the working groups under the 2017-2019 Greece-China Action Plan in Athens, capital of Greece, on Nov. 2, 2017. Greek and Chinese state officials and representatives of major enterprises signed here Thursday a series of memoranda of understanding to promote bilateral economic cooperation in key sectors under the 2017-2019 Greece-China Action Plan. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos) ATHENS, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Greek and Chinese state officials and representatives of major enterprises signed here Thursday a series of memoranda of understanding to promote bilateral economic cooperation in key sectors under the 2017-2019 Greece-China Action Plan. The plan was sealed in May this year in Beijing during the visit of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Following the inaugural meeting in Beijing of the working groups established for the materialization of this framework, a Chinese delegation led by National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) vice head Ning Jizhe visited the Greek capital for the second meeting in order to advance collaboration. "The basis of this cooperation we believe is that Greece's growth strategy meets China's Belt and Road Initiative and the benefits are mutual," Greek deputy economy and development minister Stergios Pitsiorlas said welcoming the Chinese delegation. "Today we have the first tangible results. The signing of a series of agreements and MOUs are the first steps in the implementation of this action plan; therefore we are on the right path," he said. On his part, Ning said he is happy to see that the action plan has provided a good collaboration platform and some initial tangible results have been achieved. Ning hoped that under the principle of planning together, building together and benefiting together, the two sides can enhance their cooperation on investment, trade, and industrial capacity under the Belt and Road Initiative. On Thursday, the two sides specified details of cooperation projects included in the three-year action plan, and witnessed the signing of several MOUs which are expected to further boost bilateral ties. Among them was the signing of an agreement between Shenhua, China's largest coal producer, through its subsidiary for renewable energy sources Shenhua Renewable Co. Ltd, and Copelouzos Group, one of the largest investment groups in Greece, for the acquisition of 75 percent of the shares of four wind parks developed by the Greek company. In addition, a three-party agreement (MOU) was signed between Shenhua, Copelouzos Group and Power Public Corporation (PPC), Greece's largest power utility, for the entrance of Shenhua as a partner in the joint company of PPC and Copelouzos Group, PPC Solar Solutions. ADMIE, Greece's power transmission operator, also signed an MOU with China Development Bank, following the acquisition earlier this year of a minority stake in the company by China's State Grid. ADMIE Chairman and CEO Manos Manoussakis told Xinhua that cooperation with the Chinese side so far has been excellent -- the efficiency of ADMIE has already improved and subsequently the company seeks deeper collaboration with Chinese partners. "Today we signed a very important memorandum of understanding with China Development Bank in order to explore the possibilities for financing our new projects and our company's working capital," Manoussakis said. "Ahead of us, there are great interconnection projects between the mainland of Greece and the Greek islands, and also international interconnection projects in the Mediterranean sea," he added. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 03:53:40|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close HELSINKI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- While the process of European integration is feared of stalling, the Nordic countries have made another step forward in adopting a resolution to introduce a joint electronic identity system. The announcement was made during a Nordic Council meeting in Helsinki on Thursday. The Nordic Council is a cooperative forum of the parliaments of the five countries namely Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. According to the newly-adopted plan, a resident of any of the five Nordic countries may in the future be identified almost instantly in another of the five for daily use, such as collecting social benefits or opening a bank account. Currently, a Nordic citizen has the right to choose where to live and work in the five countries, but if moving to a new country he or she nevertheless has to apply for an ID number in order to open a bank account, to apply for a mobile phone number, or even to receive a salary. The development of the e-ID is a spin-off of a wider initiative two years ago raised by the Centrist grouping in the Council about an actual Nordic citizenship. Anna-Maja Henriksson, member of the Finnish delegation and the Nordic Council Centrist grouping, made a formal introduction of the plan at the Helsinki session on Thursday. She said the e-ID would be "a bit like a key a Nordic resident can use to open doors that would be otherwise remain closed as he or she does not have a civil registration number for the country he or she currently lives in". The new system will not be based on the current social security numbers at all, but will be an electronic identification. The current social security numbers will remain valid and functional. Although there is no timetable given, but the plan is based on a mutual recognition of current e-identification and e-signature systems maintained across the Nordic countries. Henriksson told media that she believed Finland would be in the lead for producing an e-ID that would work for everybody in the region. Finnish Prime Minister and leader of the Finnish Center Party, Juha Sipila, told the Council that his government would go ahead with the plan. File Photo: Soldiers attend a military parade in central Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) showcased its military muscles by parading all of its most-advanced ballistic and tactic missiles, including a submarine-launched ballistic missile which could strike targets 1000 km away. (Xinhua/Zhu Longchuan) WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The White House said on Thursday that the United States was considering relisting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a state sponsor of terrorism. "That is an option that's under consideration," said U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster here at a briefing, adding that the decision would be part of the U.S. overall strategy on the DPRK. The consideration came as U.S. President Donald Trump was set to start his five-nation official trip to Asia. McMaster said that one of the major objectives of Trump's Asia trip was to strengthen international efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Former U.S. President George W. Bush removed the DPRK from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2008 in exchange for the DPRK's scaling back in its nuclear programs. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 04:33:50|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ZAGREB, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Croatian government proposed a new budget for 2018 on Thursday, with the growth rate projected at 2.9 percent. "Our framework is determined by the fact that a six-year recession is over and based on growth, exports of goods and services, personal consumption, investments, and better absorption of European funds," Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at the beginning of the government session. The proposed budget forecasts revenues of 129 billion kune (19.96 billion U.S. dollars), which is 6.1 percent more than the current budget, while expenditures are projected to be 133.3 billion kune, an increase of five billion kune. The prime minister said he expects the budget to be balanced in 2019, and in 2020, to have a surplus of 0.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The general government deficit in 2018 is expected to be at 0.9 percent of GDP. "In 2018, our ambition is that a share of public debt to GDP is 76.6 percent; in 2019, 73.4 percent; and in 2020, 69.5 percent of GDP. These are the frameworks of our responsible policy of fiscal discipline, sustainability and a very rational approach to public finances," Plenkovic said. The budget has been increased for most ministries, the most for economy departments and environmental protection. The budget has been reduced for the ministries of finance, interior, and justice. The defense ministry's budget is to grow by almost ten percent. Finance minister Zdravko Maric also presented on Thursday a draft budget revision for this year, under which total budget revenues will amount to 122.45 billion kune, while expenditures will be reduced by 1.6 billion kune to 126.8 billion. Under the draft budget revision, most money -- 1.1 billion kune -- will be directed to the health ministry, and most will be used for the payment of state and county hospitals' due debts. Economy minister Martina Dalic said the most important feature of both the budget revision for 2017 and the draft budget for 2018 was "that they continue on a steady path to reducing the deficit, thus contributing to the reduction of public debt and indebtedness, which is one of the government's most important strategic and economic goals." (1 U.S. dollar = 6.5 Croatian kune) Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 06:09:09|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close CHICAGO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- DowDuPont, the recently combined chemical giant, said on Thursday it planned to shut down some plants in a bid to cut costs up to 3 billion U.S. dollars annually. A cellulosic ethanol plant in the town of Nevada, the U.S. state of Iowa, is being closed as part of the plan, putting some 90 employees out of work, reported Radio Iowa. DowDuPont hopes to find a buyer for the Iowa plant. The world's largest chemical company has announced that it will shrink its global workforce, consolidate facilities and shut down selected assets in a plan aimed at generating cost savings of three billion U.S. dollars over the coming years. DowDuPont was created this summer by the merger of longtime Dow component DuPont with former rival Dow Chemical. The newly minted giant now plans to split itself into three new companies, focusing separately on agriculture, specialty products and materials science. It's not disclosed how many jobs would be affected by the workforce shrinking scheme. "These actions are designed to integrate the organization post-merger and create strong foundations for the three intended companies," DowDuPont said in a statement. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 06:09:10|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close HAVANA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A new space to deepen trade relations between Cuba and China was celebrated on Thursday of the XIII Bilateral Business Committee where companies from both nations explored new trade and business opportunities. Within the framework of the 35th Havana International Trade Fair (FIHAV 2017), the event was attended by more than 70 businessmen from both countries and led by the Vice President of the Chamber of Commerce of Cuba, Odalys Seijo and Hong Xiao, Economic and Commercial counselor of the Embassy of China in the Island country. Seijo recalled that Cuba was the first country in the region to establish relations with the People's Republic of China, which led to close historical ties. "Strong cooperation relationships were established in various sectors that have been strengthened and diversified over time, reaching higher levels which have made China our main trading partner in the exchange of goods," she said. The Cuban official said the committee, beyond an exhibition of products or a business forum, is also a reflection of the friendship between both countries and the growing possibilities of establishing new trade and investment agreements. "We hold this meeting of the bilateral business committee at a time when Cuba continues to update its economic and social model and with new foreign investment policies and strategic development projections until 2030," she said. In this regard, Seijo expressed her country's wishes to see more Chinese entrepreneurs participate in the new business opportunities presented by Cuba at this fair. Meanwhile, Hong Xiao, economic and commercial counselor at the Chinese embassy, called the event "an efficient dialogue and communication platform" between Chinese and Cuban companies through which better mutual understanding and trust are achieved. "The economic-commercial cooperation between Cuba and China continues to grow and expand in a dynamic and diversified way and despite some latent obstacles we hope to have a bright future and great expectations," she said. She also noted that in 2016, China stood out as Cuba's main partner in the import and export of goods while the island country is Beijing's largest trading partner in the Caribbean region, due to the joint efforts of entrepreneurs from both nations. "This year, Cuba's exports to China must grow at an impressive rate. However, China's exports to Cuba are experiencing difficult times and to this day the pressure continues for many businessmen due to the economic difficulties that this Caribbean nation is going through," she said. Hong indicated that Cuba proposed a new business portfolio with attractive investments at FIHAV 2017 and invited more Chinese companies to strengthen exchanges. A commercial delegation from the Chinese province of Henan, led by Wan Xu, deputy secretary general of the Henan provincial government, also participated in the event. Several Chinese and Cuban companies presented their perspectives for development and cooperation to promote new commercial ties. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 06:19:19|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close HELSINKI, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Finnish Minister for Transport and Communications Anne Berner said on Thursday the poor availability and quality of satellite based positioning in the Arctic sea areas will be "a real problem in the near future". Addressing the Nordic Council in Helsinki, Berner noted that new services require high precision to be functional. "If we combine our Nordic know-how of data communication with space technology, we will create promising new business opportunities", she said. "In Enterprise structures such as New Space Economy, small satellites could offer solutions to the challenges related to positioning and remote analysis," Berner said. Berner said that it is the intention of Finland to promote a full scale use of satellite data in the Arctic areas. Satellite pictures can be used for services that can benefit both the observation of the environment and local livelihood. The Finnish minister said the Nordic countries could jointly work on the current problems being taken up in the EU or the European Space Agency. She noted the Nordic Council has asked the governments in the Ministerial Council to provide financing in 2019 for a review of safety risks and environmental security in Arctic seafaring. Positioning, telecommunications and meteorology are all major challenges in the Arctic area. The Nordic countries have top expertise in the three areas and various partnerships could be created, she said. Berner noted that the Nordic ministerial council is giving financial support to improve climate data in the Arctic area within the operations of the World Meteorological Organization. Finland is currently involved in the plans for a data communication cable to Asia and a rail road to Arctic coast, she added. The Nordic Ministerial Council is working on its Arctic program of cooperation 2018-2021. The Nordic countries will spend 36 million Danish kronas during the next four years. Being the eighth Nordic program for the Arctic since 1996, it also focuses on indigenous peoples, families, health and social conditions in the Artic and climate issues. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 06:29:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close RIGA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics affirmed here Thursday Latvia's support for Macedonia's integration with the EU and urged the country to carry on with necessary reforms. Rinkevics made the remarks during a meeting with his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Dimitrov to discuss international affairs, the situation in the Western Balkans, bilateral relations, the Latvian Foreign Ministry informed. "I confirm Latvia's readiness to support Macedonia's way to the EU and NATO both politically and practically. We are ready to talk about issues that have be solved both in the EU and NATO context. I am glad that Macedonia is developing as a democratic country and we welcome the reform processes currently taking place in Macedonia," said Rinkevics. He also praised the implementation of the project of Strengthening of the Rule of Law in Macedonia, which is a pre-accession assistance instrument worked out by the Latvian Justice Ministry in collaboration with Croatia. He noted that both Latvia and the whole European Union (EU) are interested in a stable Western Balkan region. Speaking at a news conference following the talks, Dimitrov voiced confidence that Macedonia will become a partner in the Europe's democratic space. He said Macedonia believes that the Baltics and the Balkans have a common future in the EU, the Macedonian foreign minister stressed, adding that his country is determined to move forward and achieve progress, offering the European Commission sufficient proof that the Balkan country's judiciary is independent and its media free enough. This will give Macedonia the opportunity next year to start convincing EU member states, including Latvia, that Macedonia deserves an invitation to start accession talks with the EU, Dimitrov added. Dimitrov is in Latvia on a working visit this Wednesday and Thursday. Source: Xinhua| 2017-11-03 07:09:28|Editor: ying Video Player Close OTTAWA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Thursday announced that he will visit Vietnam and the Philippines from November 6 to 14, 2017. "Canada and Vietnam's relationship is anchored in strong people-to-people connections, and has expanded greatly in the last forty years. I look forward to meeting with Vietnam's leaders to advance important issues like good governance and human rights, strengthen our trade and investment cooperation, and create more opportunities for our middle class," Trudeau said. Trudeau will pay an official visit to Vietnam. In Hanoi, he will meet with the President of Vietnam, Tran Dai Quang, the Prime Minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the Chairperson of the National Assembly of Vietnam, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, as well as the Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong. He will then head to Ho Chi Minh City, where he will meet with Vietnamese business leaders, and participate in an armchair discussion at Ton Duc Thang University. Finally, he will travel to the city of Da Nang to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting. At the Economic Leaders' meeting, the Prime Minister will promote Canada as a partner of choice for trade and investment in the region, and deepen economic cooperation with APEC economies. After the APEC Leaders' Meeting, the Canadian prime minister will travel to the Philippines to attend the 31st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila. At the Summit, he will take part in the Canada-ASEAN Commemorative Summit to review relations between Canada and the 10 ASEAN countries and identify areas where the two sides can increase collaboration. "Everyone - including women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples - should have the opportunity to benefit from the opportunities that flow from the global economy. That is the message I will bring to the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting and the ASEAN Summit. Canada will continue to promote a progressive trade agenda that benefits the middle class, and look for more opportunities to engage the Asia-Pacific region," Trudeau added. An exhibition by the Sculpture Union art club of SFCC. Runs through 11/1. Santa Fe Community Colleges Visual Arts Gallery presents LAUNCH!, an exhibition by the Sculpture Union art club of SFCC. This inaugural event features selections from each of the groups members. The exhibit opens with a public reception on Thurs., Sept. 28 from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition continues through Nov. 1. The exhibition includes sculpture in diverse media and conceptual approaches from SFCC sculpture students including Janet Abrams, Colin Barker, Faye Bates, David Burling, Charlie Carruthers, Cary Cluett, Dason Culver, Monique DeNys, Rose Driscoll, Lisa Freeman, Douglas Hall, Marty Helldorfer, Ezra Hubbard, Caroline LeBlanc, Nina Mastrangelo, Royce Montoya, Annette Morreale, Susan Ohori, Tom Osgood, Dick Podmore, John Shoemaker, Spencer Snyder, Karen Taliakos, Penny Truitt and R. J. Ward. The Sculpture Union, a recently formed club, includes students, faculty and staff with a wide variety of styles, experience and backgrounds. Their many talents are nourished and expanded with the help of outstanding faculty, many of whom exhibit nationally and internationally in a variety of media, and the excellent facilities at the community college. Many of the students have also shown their work at galleries across the U.S. Each member has selected one of his or her best works, promising a very eclectic display in a wide variety of media. SFCC offers an Associate of Arts in Fine Arts degree with a concentration in sculpture. Courses are designed for transfer to university or college studio art programs. The program includes options for an internship component and professional development courses to build career skills. With four dedicated sculpture studios, a covered exterior workspace and an exterior courtyard, the Sculpture Program emphasizes pluralistic approaches to sculpture as a means of visual communication. Diverse coursework is offered, including forging, mixed-media assemblage, welding, woodcarving, santero carving, glass casting and stone carving. Students are encouraged to gain an understanding of traditional and contemporary approaches to sculpture and how it complements other art disciplines. Advanced students have access to private studios on campus. SFCCs Visual Arts Gallery is open to the public, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. Admission is free. For information, contact Clark Baughan at clark.baughan@sfcc.edu or 505-428-1501 or visit the Visual Arts Gallery. Images available. King of Bhutan calls on the President of India Ram Nath Kovind New Delhi, Thu, 02 Nov 2017 NI Wire His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan, along with Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Prince of Bhutan called on the President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, at Rashtrapati Bhavan (November 1, 2017). Welcoming the King and Queen to India, the President said that it is a privilege to welcome the King on the anniversary of his Coronation Day. He also thanked them for bringing the Royal Prince on his maiden visit to India. The President complimented the King of Bhutan on the successful completion of the first decade of his reign and his vision for a stable, happy and prosperous Bhutan. He stated that India is delighted to see the rapid progress made in Bhutan while simultaneously preserving its very special culture as well as protecting the environment. India has been happy to share its knowledge, experience and resources with Bhutan. Our development cooperation has been guided by the priorities set by the Government and people of Bhutan. The President said that India and Bhutan share exemplary bilateral relations. Our relations are unique and special. Our bilateral ties are based on utmost trust and understanding. We should do everything to make it a model of bilateral cooperation, which will be noted by others in the neighbourhood. The President said that security concerns of India and Bhutan are indivisible and mutual. He conveyed deep appreciation for the King of Bhutans personal involvement and guidance and the support provided by Bhutan in addressing the recent situation in the Doklam area. He added that the manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in the Doklam area is a clear testimony to our friendship. Source: PIB "Nivesh Bandhu" An Investor Facilitation Portal to be Launched during World Food India 2017 New Delhi, Thu, 02 Nov 2017 NI Wire Launch of Food Regulatory Portal Announced Union Minister of Food Processing Industries, Harsimrat Kaur Badal chaired the Press Conference detailing about the activities to be undertaken in the World Food India 2017 Expo, here today. As India gets ready to host its biggest food event aiming to transform the food economy and double farmers income, Badal gave a glimpse of the magnitude of the event to media in an interactive session. Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti also graced the occasion with her presence. Speaking on the occasion, Harsimrat Kaur Badal said World Food India is a mega event which would showcase the entire value chain in the food sector. 160 Global CEOs will come under one roof. Globally & Nationally it is one of the biggest event. This event is expected to generate Rs. 65000 Crore worth of investment and 10 lakh jobs. She also said that this event will take the varied flavours of India to the world and showcase the healthy multigrain 'khichadi' to the visitors.There has not been any mega event before of this scale where FDI commitment has got crystallized even before the start of the event. "We have a vision of transforming Indian food economy and doubling farmers income by bringing latest technologies evolution and best practices into the system in keeping with the vision articulated by Honourable Prime Minister" said the Minister. "We are working towards easing the process of doing business for Global and Domestic industry players as well as bringing in new talent to achieve Indias greatest potential in the coming years" she said. As global and Indian food companies prepare to explore business opportunities in India at World Food India 2017, MoFPI and FSSAI, the apex Regulatory body for Food Safety in India announced a powerful new tool called the Food Regulatory Portal. Planned as a single interface for food businesses to cater to both domestic operations and food imports, this portal would be a game changer for effective and transparent implementation of the food safety laws in the country. Aiming to create an enabling environment for businesses to operate, the portal is strategically aligned with Governments mission of One Nation, One Food Law. Smt Badal said that FSSAI's Food Regulatory portal will be a step forward in that direction and she congratulated FSSAI for implementing it. She also said that during World Food India 2017, an Investor Facilitation Portal Nivesh Bandhu will be launched to assist investors to make informed investment decisions. "India is ready with open arms to welcome global food companies" said Smt Badal. The portal would provide information on Central and State Governments investor friendly policies, agro-producing clusters, infrastructure, and potential areas of investment in the food processing sector. Smt Badal also appealed to each individual to take a pledge NO WASTE ON MY PLATE- to make India Food Secure. Minister of State for Food Processing Industries, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti said that after World Food India a good response from investor community is expected in Food Processing Sector. More than 40 countries have committed FDI in Food Processing Sector till now. This is the first time such Exhibition on Food Processing is happening in India. Spelling out more details of the upcoming three day event, Minister Smt Badal informed that the mega convention is scheduled to be inaugurated by Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi on 3rd November 2017. Mr Maris Kucinskis, Prime Minister of Latvia & Mr Serzh Sargsyan, President of Armenia will also be addressing the Inaugural Session. President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind will address the Valedictory Session on 5th November 2017. World Food India 2017 will provide global businesses a platform to explore Indian market across the value chain in food processing and food retail, to bring together global & Indian leaders across the food value chain and Showcase the strengths of India in the Food processing & allied sectors; Connect domestic and international businesses for possible partnerships and Facilitate collaboration, investment flow and encourage sourcing from India. Exclusive CEOs roundtables have been scheduled with Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi, Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Shri Arun Jaitley and Minister of Commerce and Industry Shri Suresh Prabhu with CEOs of leading global & Indian food processing companies. Illustrative list of Industry Captains participating in World Food India from across the globe and India includes Mr Paul Bulcke , Chairman of the Board of Directors, Nestle, Mr Pieter Boone, Chief Operating Officer & CEO, Metro Cash and Carry, Mr Brian J McNamara, CEO, GSK Consumer Healthcare, Ms. Amanda Sourry, President, Food Unilever; Mr.Sharafuddin Sharaf, Al Sharaf Group; Mr.Yusuff Ali, Managing Director, LuLu Group, Mr Kishore Biyani, CEO, Future Group; Mr Krish Iyer, CEO, Walmart India; Mr Amit Agrawal, CEO, Amazon, India to name a few. A total of 60 Global CEOs including Asia Pacific (APAC) leadership of leading companies will be interacting with leading CEOs from 100+ top Indian food processing leaders. Over 1000 m B2B meetings are expected to take place over three days. World Food India 2017 has received tremendous response globally, attracting participation from more than 40 countries, 27 state governments including all the North-Eastern states. Germany, Denmark, and Japan are the partner countries for the event while Italy and Netherlands are the focus countries. International Ministerial & business delegations with 200+ members from 15 countries will take part in B2B/B2G meetings. The mega event would also host 8 sectoral conferences, 2 plenary sessions on India the preferred destination with the Finance Minister of India as the Guest of Honour and one on One Nation, one food law- an enabling regulatory environment for investment in the food sector in association with the Food Standards and Safety Authority of India. In addition, there are 20 State sessions and 6 country sessions. 7 sectoral publications would be released at the event. A massive exhibition spread over 40,000 sq mtrs in the verdant C- Hexagon lawns of India Gate is expected to attract significant footfalls. More than 800 global companies representing 22 Countries & domestic companies will be exhibiting. Special focus on Farmer Producer Organizations & Women Entrepreneurs will connect them to corporates international & Indian- increasing opportunities for sourcing & business. Ministry of Food Processing Industries Theme Pavilion provides an exciting view of Indias offering to the world in terms of products, a geo mapping of produce availability and mega food parks, through multiple technologies like Virtual & Augmented reality. A special feature of the Event is the Food Street - a lively vibrant zone, that will showcase Indian and foreign cuisines using Indian ingredients, flavours and fragrances, specially curated by Chef Sanjeev Kapoor. The Food Street is a unique concept that would act as a platform for guests to learn about the globalisation of Indian food through interactive chef talks and demonstrations, experience the traditional flavours as well as modern fusion food and give the attendees a wholesome experience about the diverse uniqueness that Indian food offers. The event is supported by Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Development of North East Region, Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Civil Aviation. Source: PIB Share Nokia (News - Alert) today introduced new session border controller software that it created specifically to address cloud-native environments. And it noted that Miercom has validated that it is on par with hardware-based SBC solutions. The Nokia SBC lets communication service providers control, manage, provide quality assurance for, and secure access, IMS, over-the-top, peering, and VoLTE applications. This software supports OpenStack and VMware telco-cloud environments. And its used by more than 90 service providers around the world. The release, out later this month, features quality of experience monitoring and alerts. It leverages the Nokia CloudBand Application Manager to allow for cloud scaling automation. It delivers new lawful intercept capabilities that help users meet select regional regulations. And it supports Optimal Media Routing and the Session Recording Protocol. "All service providers deploying IP-based communications services need session border control to protect the network at the boundaries, says Bhaskar Gorti, president of applications and analytics at Nokia. We're the only vendor to offer a cloud-native SBC solution that is field proven in large communication service provider networks with tens of millions of subscribers. Miercom CEO Rob Smithers added that "Nokia's cloud-based SBC software demonstrated impressive levels of performance, security and scalability in our testing, delivering high signaling and media plane performance, powerful encryption/decryption capabilities, strong DoS and DDoS protection, and more. It offers service providers a safe, reliable and affordable way to migrate their session border controllers to a cloud environment." The testing company added that it has validated this Nokia SBC solution: delivers carrier-grade performance for the most demanding signaling and media plane use cases when implemented as virtual network functions; demonstrated high resiliency in failover tests under a load of 800 calls per second with Transport Layer Security; features high-density transcoding, encryption, decryption and other compute-intensive tasks; mitigates of DDoS attacks without degradation in voice or video call handling and quality; and supports the highest per-VNF capacity for software-based media and signaling compared to other pure-cloud SBC competitors. photo courtesy of BigStock Edited by Mandi Nowitz We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Click the photo to write a caption and have a chance to win a free subscription to the Norfolk Daily News. Algerian authorities have been rounding up sub-Saharan Africans in and around Algiers and have deported more than 3,000 to Niger since August 25, 2017, without giving them an opportunity to challenge their expulsion, Human Rights Watch said. Those expelled include migrants who have lived and worked for years in Algeria, pregnant women, families with newborn babies, and about 25 unaccompanied children. Nothing justifies rounding up people based on their skin color, and then deporting them, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. A countrys power to control its borders is not a license to treat people like criminals or to assume they have no right to be there because of their race or ethnicity. Few days ago, Nigers Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yacoubou officially expressed his countrys concern over the surge in the numbers who were forcibly expelled by Algeria and abandoned on the borders in harsh conditions. Over 20,000 Nigeriens were kicked out of Algeria in four yearsthis is a major concern for us, said Yacoubou, voicing hope to see Algeria cooperate with Niger on the migration issue. Nigers protests at the inhumane treatment suffered by its nationals in Algeria is a reaction to the black man-hunt launched by Algerian authorities, which are surfing on a wave of anti-migrant populism espoused by senior political figures in the country, who described migrants as a source of criminality, and as representing a threat to national security. During successive waves of arrests, security forces rounded up sub-Saharan migrants on the streets, on construction sites where many work, and in their homes. The migrants were taken to a facility in Zeralda, a suburb of the capital, where they spent one to three days in crowded halls with no mattresses and little to eat during the day, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. The migrants were then bused 1,900 kilometers south to a camp in Tamanrasset, then expelled to Niger. A nongovernmental organization based in Gao, Mali, said that several Malians were also expelled at the Algeria-Mali border, an insecure region with minimal government presence where armed groups, including some linked to Al-Qaeda, are active. Those expelled have included both Nigeriens and hundreds of citizens of other countries such as Mali, Cameroon, Cote dIvoire, and Guinea all nationals of sub-Saharan countries, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which runs an assistance program for migrants in Agadez, Niger. Under international law, Algeria should not discriminate based on race or ethnicity or subject migrants to arbitrary detention, inhuman and degrading treatment. For its part, Amnesty International had slammed 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. Amnesty condemned the arbitrary arrests made by the Algerian authorities on a basis of racial profiling. Some of those arrested and deported are undocumented migrants, while others have valid visas. Morocco has reinforced its production capacities of industrial lubricants, which are increasingly exported to the African market. Speaking to le360 news portal from Accra, director of oil company, Afrique Petromin Internatoinal, Hicham Bouzoubaa said that Morocco offers massive investment opportunities for the development of the lubricant industry. He said the kingdom is increasingly becoming a key lubricant supplier to the African market. Morocco saw its production of lubricants rise from 400 tons in 2014 to 30,000 tons in 2016 thanks to the adoption of incentives attracting investments by several multinationals. Export potential towards Africa will be further bolstered after Moroccos membership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), he noted. The Centenary of the Balfour Declaration has been marked by celebrations in London and protests in Gaza and Ramallah where Palestinians continue to reel from the yoke of Israeli occupation. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in London where he will attend a banquet this evening at Londons Lancaster House mansion, protesters took to the streets of major Palestinian cities and the UK to call for acknowledging the suffering the declaration caused for the Palestinian people, and to recognize Palestinian statehood. Protesters in Gaza and Ramallah vented their frustration at the Declaration, which they blame for the setting up of Israel on their land. The Palestinians decry the declaration, dated November 7, 1917, which marks Britains promise to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 leading to the eviction of many Palestinians from their lands. Britain controlled Palestine, under a United Nations mandate, from 1922 until after the end of World War II. Under British patronage, the Zionists began building the institutions of a state, including a government-in-waiting, the Jewish Agency; a fund-raising arm, the Jewish National Fund, to buy land and colonize Palestine; and a proto-army known as the Haganah. A century on, every Palestinian is still affected by the consequences of that decision, especially refugees yearning to return. Palestinians continue to suffer under an occupation that has lasted 50 years. The legacy of the Declaration is apparent in the fraudulent transformation of the character, demography, culture and landscape of Palestinian cities notably Jerusalem. Palestinian citizens of Israel, for their parts, are undergoing an intricate and cruel system of discrimination and exclusion in a country that claims to be democratic. William Kristol and other conservative opponents of Trump are acknowledging their isolation from their own party. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images For all the problems the president and his allies have had this year with the Republican Party (particularly in the U.S. Senate), their plight looks idyllic compared to that of their bitterest intraparty enemies, the #NeverTrump gang. As David Weigel of the Washington Post explains today, the core of the #NeverTrump movement has been regularly getting together under the auspices of a group calling itself the Meeting of the Concerned. A lot of familiar names are apparently still in the movement: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol (who said of Trump hes dead to me after the moguls infamous 2015 dismissal of John McCains POW saga); columnists Mona Charen (long associated with National Review, the magazine that early in 2016 devoted an entire issue to an effort to delegitimize Trump among conservatives) and Max Boot (a foreign-policy expert who has repeatedly challenged Trumps mental fitness for office); Evan McMullin (who actually ran against Trump in the 2016 general election as an independent candidate); and a couple of ex-congressmen, Bob Inglis and David Jolly. As Weigel reports, this gang of discontents have decided to issue a public statement asking congressional Republicans to preempt any presidential action against Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. But ironically, what appears to have motivated them to do so is the recognition that theyve lost the battle and the whole GOPs in the tank for Trump. In interviews, members of the Meeting of the Concerned said that the Mueller issue forced their hand. Several said that the influence of conservative media, especially the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News, Wall Street Journal and New York Post, made them worry that the president would fire Mueller and spark a constitutional crisis. Charen pointed to a weekend of Wall Street Journal op-eds that laid out a case for ending the Russia probe, building on months of attacks on Muellers integrity. But if The Wall Street Journal has been Trumpified, of what value is this motley crew of dissenters? And who is likely to be listening on Capitol Hill, particularly with the like-minded Jeff Flake and Bob Corker headed for the exits? Nobody, it seems, according to their own assessment, as articulated by McMullins former running mate Mindy Finn: Theres a leadership vacuum, Finn said. Ideally wed have more members of Congress standing up for the rule of law, being willing to challenge the president. Given that theyre not doing that, we felt that groups like this need to exist and need to speak out. So this statement is less a rallying cry than a cry of despair aimed at the history books more than at todays historymakers. Or perhaps some of them are genuinely motivated by the moral hazard of associating themselves with the president so many fellow conservatives now idolize: Donald Trump is reshaping the heart of the GOP into something that is very dark and very diseased, said [former congressman] Inglis. My nightmare scenario is a Republican Party that loses its soul. Its one thing to lose an election. Its another to lose your soul. And its another thing altogether to lose your party to Donald J. Trump. The bosses of the Senate, circa 1889. Photo: Historical/Corbis via Getty Images Democrats and Republicans cant agree on much, these days. But the profound threat that Vladimir Putin poses to our republic is one. John McCain has suggested that Russian interference in the 2016 campaign was an attack on the foundation of democracy. Hillary Clinton has called it a a cyber 9/11 and a direct attack on our institutions. Senators, congressmen, and commentators from both sides of the aisle have voiced similar sentiments. This rhetoric might be a tad hyperbolic, but it isnt wildly so. A large (and growing) body of evidence suggests that Russian agents aided the campaign of an American presidential candidate, in hopes of furthering their own special interests and, perhaps, gaining a sympathetic ear at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In pursuit of this end, the Kremlin disseminated mendacious propaganda over American social media and cable news, while using stolen emails to discredit their preferred candidates opponent. Its possible that Putin might have even explored leveling an attack on our electoral infrastructure itself thereby directly barring some Americans from having their voices heard at the ballot box. In a liberal democracy, the legitimacy of a state is founded on the integrity of its elections. Spread doubt about the latter, and the former starts to fall away. If Americans believe that their leaders do not derive their power from the popular will, but merely from the favor of shadowy puppet-masters, then civic engagement and social trust will decay. Voter participation will decline, along with confidence in public institutions. And these developments will, in turn, make it easier for bad actors to manipulate the democratic process. Eventually, cynicism about democracy could make some voters welcome the prospect of authoritarian rule. This is why its so vital that Russian interference in our elections is investigated and deterred. Thats also why Congress must not pass Presidents Trumps regressive tax cuts. That may sound like a non sequitur. The debate over tax policy in the United States is generally framed as a conflict between rival economic theories. Democrats may claim that cutting taxes on the rich will slow the economy, or drive up the debt, or force cuts to popular domestic programs. But few would put supply-side cuts on a list of threats to liberal democracy in the United States. And yet, the idea that increasing economic inequality and sustaining popular sovereignty are incompatible endeavors wasnt always alien to our politics. In fact, as the Roosevelt Institutes Marshall Steinbaum recently noted, the New Deal reformers who brought robustly progressive taxation to the United States understood the policy as a means of altering the distribution of power in society. That the rich can easily convert their wealth into political dominance was a common-sense proposition for Americans born into a Gilded Age. Thus, the point of confiscatory top marginal rates wasnt to maximize efficiency or growth but to limit the monied elites capacity to shape the American political economy to their whims. This argument for soaking the rich is just as salient now as it was in the robber barons heyday: In 2016, American billionaires aided the campaigns of their preferred presidential candidates, in hopes of furthering their special interests and perhaps, gaining a sympathetic ear at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In pursuit of this end, well-heeled donors funded propaganda campaigns through social media and television advertisements, while a few sought to use stolen emails to discredit their preferred candidates opponent. Some right-wing plutocrats even financed efforts to impose voting restrictions and felon disenfranchisement laws thereby directly barring some Americans from having their voices heard at the ballot box. Some may take exception to this (implicit) analogy: American elites attempting to influence our elections through political speech and Russian operatives trying to do so through cyberattacks are categorically different phenomena. This is certainly true; but it also does nothing to negate the premise that the political influence of American multi-millionaires, billionaires, and corporations undermines the integrity of our democracy, in many of the same ways that Russian interference does. Does anyone really believe that RT has done more to distort Americans understanding of and faith in their political system than Rupert Murdochs Fox News? Or that Sputnik has had a more corrosive influence on American discourse than Robert Mercers Breitbart? Or that Putins oligarchs have done more to disconnect American policy from the popular will than the funders of the Koch network? Or that the Kremlins interference in our politics has done more to damage public confidence in our institutions than K Streets? Koch, Koch, Murdoch, Mercer, Mercer. Photo: Getty Images Such claims are facially absurd. The furor over Russias election hacking is justified. But the discrepancy between how seriously our political elites take the threat that Russian meddling poses to our democracy and how blithe they are about the one that concentrated wealth poses to it is not. Its true that discussions of big moneys corrosive influence arent wholly absent from the American political conversation. But they are typically confined to debates over campaign finance laws. This is unfortunate and not merely because the Supreme Court has erected a mountainous roadblock on the path to federal reforms. So long as the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans own as much as the bottom 90 percent, the threat of creeping plutocracy in the U.S. will remain even if Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo were somehow overturned. After all, campaign donations are just one of the many ways that well-heeled elites influence the political process and not necessarily the most effective. Charles and David Kochs most fruitful investments werent made in discrete presidential campaigns, but in funding a political network that cultivates and mobilizes conservative activists throughout the United States and think tanks and lobbies that shape elite opinion in D.C. It is hard to see how one can impose tight restrictions on political organizing and policy research in a free and open society let alone, one with constitutional protections of speech as robust as our own. Pushing for more public financing of elections should be part of any plan for limiting the influence of big money in politics. But steeply progressive taxation is just as essential to that goal and liberals would do well to emphasize this point in the upcoming debate over Donald Trumps tax plan. The presidents initial framework for tax reform would deliver 80 percent of its benefits to the top one percent of American earners, according to a preliminary analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Its possible that the Republicans final plan will be a bit less regressive than that but not much less so. The heart of Trumps package is a giant tax cut for corporations, which will deliver the bulk of its (figurative and literal) dividends to wealthy shareholders and corporate executives. Other core provisions of the plan include the abolition of the tax on estates worth more than $5.5 million and a giant cut in the rate paid by wealthy small business owners (including the owner of a little mom-and-pop shop called the Trump Organization). The stakes of these regressive cuts might strike some Americans as abstract. After all, as they raid the federal treasury for their billionaire benefactors, Republicans do intend to set aside a bit of hush money for the witnesses in the middle class. And since the GOP does not (currently) plan to attach spending cuts to their tax package, most American households will come out ahead in the near-term. Progressives can (and should) argue that these tax cuts will threaten popular domestic programs down the road. But Democrats shouldnt rely exclusively on decrying the tax cuts second-order effects; not when the first-order one is to exacerbate economic inequalities that are strangling our democracy. And there is no question that reducing the tax burden of the wealthy will swell those inequalities. Conservatives maintain that such disparities in income are a worthy price for the economic growth that supply-side tax cuts will provide to all Americans. But as the economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have documented (along with countless other members of their profession) the correlation between regressive tax cuts and economic growth exists in Republican dogma, not empirical reality: [D]ata show that there is no correlation between cuts in top tax rates and average annual real GDP-per-capita growth since the 1970s. For example, countries that made large cuts in top tax rates, such as the United Kingdom or the United States, have not grown significantly faster than countries that did not, such as Germany or Denmark. While the Reagan tax cuts did not give the U.S. a significant edge over its peers in economic growth, they did give Americas economic elite a far larger share of growth than their peers in other Western countries. Crucially, this is not solely due to a predictable increase in the American richs post-tax income: Between the 1970s and 2013, the top one percents share of pre-tax income more than doubled from under 10 percent to over 20. This is not because globalization and automation inevitably create a winner-take-all economy. Japan and continental Europe have been reshaped by those forces, and yet saw no similar explosion in the income share of their rich. Conservatives might attribute the growth in the one percents share to the beneficent incentives of low income-tax rates: Wealthy Americans responded to tax cuts by producing more, and thus increased their pre-tax income. And yet, if growth in the one percents paychecks wildly outpaces growth in the broader economy, then the rich probably arent getting richer by creating more value but by extracting it. As Piketty and Saez write: [W]hile standard economic models assume that pay reflects productivity, there are strong reasons to be sceptical, especially at the top of the income distribution where the actual economic contribution of managers working in complex organisations is particularly difficult to measure. Here, top earners might be able to partly set their own pay by bargaining harder or influencing compensation committees. Naturally, the incentives for such rent-seeking are much stronger when top tax rates are low. In this scenario, cuts in top tax rates can still increase top income shares, but the increases in top 1% incomes now come at the expense of the remaining 99%. In other words, top rate cuts stimulate rent-seeking at the top but not overall economic growth the key difference with thesupply-side, scenario. Thus, even if tax cuts for the rich arent financed by spending cuts, ordinary Americans have nothing to gain from them and much to lose. Since the Reagan tax cuts, workers have seen their share of productivity gains plummet; the gap between the wealth of rich and poor households along with that between white and black ones has exploded; the middle class has become more reliant on debt to finance their homes, automobiles, and childrens educations; the amount of money that corporations and wealthy individuals invest in influencing American politics has skyrocketed; and policy-making has become ever-more tilted to the needs of these economic elites as a result. Virtually everything that we fear Russian interference could do to our democracy, these inequities have done already. Over the past four decades, Americans have become increasingly convinced that their nations political and economic systems are rigged against them. In November 2015, a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey found 64 percent of Americans agreeing with the statement, my vote does not matter because of the influence that wealthy individuals and big corporations have on the electoral process. One year later, 75 percent of 2016 voters told Reuters/Ipsos that they were looking for a strong leader who can take the country back from the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, social trust, civic engagement, voter participation, and confidence in public institutions have all fallen precipitously. Polls show Americans are losing faith in democracy itself, and are growing more sympathetic to authoritarian appeals. Absent this context of disillusion and distrust, its unlikely that Trumps demagogic campaign (or the Kremlins attempts to aid it) would have stood much chance of success. The economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America, Franklin Roosevelt famously said at the 1936 Democratic convention. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. As Republicans work to consolidate the power of those royalists in the coming months, Democrats should (once again) call for their overthrow. A memorial near the site of Tuesdays terror attack on November 1, 2017. Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images Federal prosecutors filed terrorism charges against the suspect in the Manhattan truck attack on Wednesday, alleging that he was inspired by ISISs online propaganda and spent months planning the attack, selecting Halloween because he thought the streets would be busier and wanted to kill as many people as he could. The criminal complaint said he decided to use a rented truck as a weapon to inflict maximum damage against civilians. Sayfullo Saipov, who was shot by NYPD officer Ryan Nash during the attack, made his first court appearance on Wednesday evening in a wheelchair. His hands and feet were chained, and five guards stood behind him. The Uzbek immigrant followed the hearing through a Russian interpreter, but responded in English when asked if he understood the proceeding, saying, Yes, maam. Saipov was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles, resulting in death. Eight people were killed in the attack and a dozen were injured. The vehicle charge raises the possibility that he will face the death penalty. Saipov did not enter a plea and was ordered held without bail. According to the criminal complaint, Saipov began planning the attack a year ago, and had rented a truck like the one used in the attack to practice making turns. Saipov mowed down bikers and pedestrians along a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway, then exited the vehicle after hitting a school bus. Prosecutors say he had intended to head all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge, killing many more people along the way. A note found at the scene read in Arabic, No god but god and Mohamed is his prophet, and Islamic Supplication. It will endure, referring to ISIS. Investigators found 90 videos and 3,800 images, many which appeared to be ISIS propaganda, on his cell phone. He had also conducted online searches for Halloween in NYC and truck rentals. Saipov worked as a truck driver, and for the ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft in recent years. ISIS has also called for its followers around the world to use vehicles to kill civilians. He appears to have followed almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out on its social-media channels to its followers, New York deputy police commissioner John Miller said at a press conference. Prosecutors said Saipov considered displaying ISIS flags on the truck during the attack, but decided it would attract too much attention. According to court papers, Saipov asked to display an ISIS flag in his hospital room, and indicated that hes proud of what he did. After the hearing, Saipovs court-appointed lawyer said he hoped people would let the judicial process play out, adding, I promise you that how we treat Mr. Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us than it will say about him. Earlier in the day, President Trump called the U.S. justice system a joke and said hed consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay. He tweeted late on Wednesday night: NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Trump has been a frequent proponent of the death penalty, dating back to at least 1989, when he took out an ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five, five young men who were later cleared by DNA evidence. Presidents usually dont weigh in on pending criminal cases, as it gives defense attorneys an opportunity to argue that their client was unable to obtain a fair trial yet Trump has done so repeatedly. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahls attorneys recently used this strategy after Trump said on multiple occasions that he should be executed for desertion. The military judge refused to dismiss the case, but said I will consider the presidents comments as mitigation evidence as I arrive at an appropriate sentence. Its the economy, Steyer. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images For much of last year, the Democratic leadership campaigned on its opposition to Donald Trump, while left-wing activists implored the party to run on its support for progressive economics. In 2017, the tables appear to have turned. In recent months, grassroots progressive groups and some of the partys most liberal donors have called on Democrats to push for Trumps impeachment. But the Democratic Establishment has waved away their pleas, arguing that the party will be better off emphasizing its Better Deal economic message, while delegating the case against Trumps fitness for office to the president, himself. This conflict has come to a head in recent days. Last month, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer called on Democratic candidates to commit to impeaching the president at the next available opportunity. The liberal megadonor then dropped $10 million on an ad campaign arguing for Trumps ouster. Nancy Pelosi was not pleased. As Politico reports: Nancy Pelosi offered a forced smile recently when asked on MSNBC about a Tom Steyer-sponsored ad calling for President Donald Trumps impeachment. Thats a great ad, Pelosi said twice, before rushing to plug the Democrats Better Deal economic agenda as the TV hit wrapped up. Pelosi played it off, but privately she was peeved. She told lawmakers at a Democratic leadership meeting soon after that she had reached out to the Democratic megadonor to tell him that his $10 million ad campaign was a distractionPelosi has encouraged lawmakers to talk up what a Democratic majority can deliver for voters, plugging their economic message on repeat in hopes that it will eventually break through with voters. In the early days of the Trump administration, the Democrats most caustic leftist critics assailed the party for putting too much focus on Trumps Russia scandals and not enough on an affirmative economic agenda. That critique appears to have gotten through: On the (narrow) question of whether Democrats should downplay the Russia affair so as to foreground pocketbook issues Nancy Pelosi now appears more closely aligned with the dirtbag socialists of Chapo Trap House than the progressive Democrats of MoveOn.org. The case for emphasizing economics is simple: The Republican Partys dependence on libertarian billionaires has forced it to adopt a radically unpopular agenda. Red America may disdain Colin Kaepernick, unauthorized immigrants, and godless cosmopolitans, but even your average conservative Republican doesnt like the sound of cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid to pad the passive income of the idle rich; or increasing the deficit by $1.5 trillion to fund corporate tax cuts, while sparing only $1 billion on the opioid epidemic. In 2016, 73.5 percent of the American electorate espoused broadly left-of-center views on economic policy, according to a recent analysis of Democracy Fund Voter Study Group survey data. Democrats have everything to gain from polarizing the electorate on economic issues. And devoting (relatively) little bandwidth to Trump-bashing may aid that endeavor especially considering how many Democratic senators are up for reelection in red states next year. On the other hand, the case for Trumps impeachment is pretty darn strong. Over the past few months, the president has repeatedly issued tacit threats of a preemptive military strike and/or nuclear attack against Kim Jong Uns regime in North Korea. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Republican senator Bob Corker revealed that these threats did not represent some deliberate good cop, bad cop routine, but were merely the impulsive ravings of a man who sees the presidency as a reality show. The senator went on to say that Trumps advisers have to prevent him from taking destructive actions on a regular basis, and that the presidents impulsiveness could spark an unnecessary world war. This week, multiple high-ranking members of the Trump campaign were indicted for defrauding the U.S. government, while serving as covert agents of Vladimir Putins cronies in Ukraine. Oh, and one of the Trump campaigns foreign-policy advisers admitted that he had tried to set up a meeting between the Republican candidates team and the Russian government after being told that the Kremlin possessed stolen Clinton emails. One can hardly fathom what congressional Republicans would have done had Barack Obama ever provided them with such fodder for apoplectic outrage. And campaigning against Trump probably makes more sense as a midterm strategy than it did as a general-election one. Midterms typically function as referenda on the incumbent administration. And theyre generally decided by turnout, not persuasion. Given these realities and the fact that the Democrats road to a House majority runs through historically Republican districts turned blue in revulsion to Trump hollering about the presidents innumerable offenses to his office and human dignity might just be a winning play. At the end of the day though, the most cogent analysis of the competing Democratic strategies might be LOL nothing matters. History generally shows that the out party in a midterm doesnt typically need much of a message if the presidential party is unpopular, Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the election-prognostication website Sabatos Crystal Ball, told The New Republic in July. Midterms are historically referendums on the ruling party. In other words, despite the Democrats internal fissures, opposition to Trump may be enough in 2018 for them to make significant gains. Democrats performance next November will be determined less by messaging than candidate recruitment, macroeconomic conditions, the GOPs legislative performance, and what species of mess Trump decides to cook up in the weeks before Election Day. Best then to use the campaign to proselytize for the partys economic vision, and let Trumps deficiencies speak for themselves. Stumping for a populist fiscal agenda may not make a huge difference in the 2018 battle, but establishing credibility on pocketbook issues will increase the partys prospects of (eventually) winning the wider war. Protests in Barcelona. Photo: Lola Bou/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images A Spanish judge on Thursday jailed eight leaders of the former Catalan government after judging them a flight risk ahead of potential trials for rebellion and sedition. The move follows last weeks vote by the parliament of Catalonia to declare independence from Spain. Judge Carmen Lamela has also been asked to approve an international arrest warrant for former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and four other regional ministers who fled to Belgium and failed to report to court Thursday. The judge is expected to rule on the warrant Friday, but the process could be complicated if Puigdemont decides to seek asylum in Belgium. The jailing of the former ministers caused an uproar in Catalonia, where pro-independence protesters filled the streets. Protest outside Ajuntament de Barcelona pic.twitter.com/cltLu5SZKU stephen carlin (@stephencarlin) November 2, 2017 Public officials criticized the move too. This is a black day for democracy and for Catalonia, said Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau. A government democratically elected at the ballot box is in jail. There is a common front to achieve the freedom of the political prisoners. Im ashamed that they lock up opponents in my country, said Pablo Iglesias, leader of Podemos, which opposes independence. We dont want Catalan independence, but today we say free the political prisoners. Criticism came from abroad too. Geert Bourgeois, the leader of Belgiums Flanders region, which has sought independence itself in the past, wrote on Twitter, Jailing democratically elected government leaders = more than bridge too far. Benign junta? Photo: Pool The scariest thing this Halloween wasnt that generals are running the government; its that we kinda want them to. Members of Donald Trumps family and entourage, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and China-hawk trade adviser Peter Navarro, will not be playing a major diplomatic role in the presidents upcoming visit to Asia, Politico reported last week. Instead, the presidents handler-Cabinet, a group dominated by military generals, will be calling the shots. White House chief of staff John Kelly has so far managed to ensure that the official delegation is dominated by the coterie of senior officials increasingly referred to as the adults in the room at the White House, such as National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Defense Secretary James Mattis. That these mens job is to protect Trump from himself is no longer a point of debate. Kelly and Mattis are retired Marine generals, and McMaster is a serving lieutenant general in the Army. These men occupying some of the top positions in the White House represent an unusual level of military access to and control over the president, author Mark Perry writes in a troubling piece at Politico Magazine. Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies, calls these men a benign junta and says we should be grateful for having them there. Perrys other expert compares Trumps staff of generals to the Turkish general staff and admits that the problem is Trump himself: If the president were not such a polarizing figure these appointments wouldnt be a problem, Bryan McGrath, a naval war expert at the Hudson Institute, says In many cases the generals and admirals have more experience on some issues than anyone else. Why would be deny ourselves the benefit of their wisdom? But even for McGrath, there are nagging doubts. It almost sounds like we expect these men to take on the role of the Turkish general staffas guarantors of the secular constitution. The neoconservative Trump critic Jennifer Rubin, who also uses the word junta to describe Kelly and his fellow brass, wants to bar generals from serving in government, calling on Congress to stomp out creeping military authoritarianism. That is a remarkable statement coming from an American Likudnik who has built a career as a professional proponent of war and militarism both here and in Israel. Rubins criticism of Kelly, however, is that he has actually failed to impose discipline on this White House: In other words, government by the military is bad in general, but even worse in this case because John Kelly is not particularly good at politics. Regardless of how she got there, her conclusion is right: We should not, as a rule, have generals running our government. First, because military-dominated governments are dangerous, and second, because they are, indeed, not good at much of the stuff governments have to do. Nor are these generals the only way in which the armed forces appear to be leading, rather than following, U.S. foreign policy. The Navy has three aircraft carriers arriving in the Pacific in the lead-up to Trumps Asia trip, just conducted a missile defense drill off South Korea, and is geeking out over its cool new nuclear submarine (a category of military wares in which were currently arms-racing with China). It looks like U.S. strategy in the Pacific, under the guidance of these generals, is to ramp up the hard power and intimidate North Korea and China into doing as we say. So again, to come at Rubins point sideways, the policy the generals are pursuing is one of no-first-offer negotiations with North Korea backed by suggestive shows of force which Rubin, a neoconservative, doesnt necessarily mind at all. The real problem is that Kelly hasnt managed to take away Trumps Twitter account, which makes those plans harder to pull off. These shows of force will inevitably set the tone for the high-stakes diplomacy this week, for which the plan is, as always, to keep Trump from saying something that derails the work of the adults in the room. And therein lies Cohens gratitude, which reflects the fact that the president is widely acknowledged to be a loose cannon who requires the guidance (or restraint) of a steady hand. For its many faults, the military is still considered more trustworthy by the U.S. public than religious leaders or school principals, to say nothing of the media or elected officials, and is one of the few institutions Trump is able to respect. Its not surprising to see generals fill the yawning leadership gap in this government. It is frightening, however, to see so few civilian institutions enjoying that level of trust, and a country that looks to the armed forces for its political leaders is on a dangerous path. Perry has spent more than enough time in the Middle East to appreciate the threats a Cabinet of generals poses to liberty. Yet Trump is making this level of military involvement in civilian leadership necessary through his unorthodox and unpredictable behavior (hence Cohens gratitude). In requiring constant supervision, he puts these military leaders in the untenable yet understandable position of protecting the public from the president we elected. Theres a reasonable case to be made that people who have experienced war firsthand should be involved in making our foreign policy rather than letting Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, or Peter Navarro dictate it. Unfortunately, Trump is also flirting with foreign-policy crises in which a military-led approach is incredibly risky. Case in point: China and North Korea already recognize the capabilities of the U.S. and dont need aircraft carrier roll-bys to remind them. Its not clear what the point of this latest gesture is, other than to antagonize. The trouble, in other words, is that both Cohen and Rubin are right: A U.S. soft coup of military men running the government while Trump holds rallies and robs the till, then safely shuffling him through his term and out of office without starting a nuclear war, sounds like a better outcome than, well, Trump starting a nuclear war. But in promoting a military-first approach to foreign policy, the generals at the helm may be exacerbating the same risks they are supposedly defusing by running interference on Trumps Twitter feed. Even if the benign junta were indeed keeping disaster at bay by reining in Trumps worst impulses, its existence would be fundamentally bad for the country and we should find the need for it disturbing. As it is, were not even guaranteed protection from those impulses. A big fear that underpins this blurring of military and civilian roles is that, as Rubin rightly points out, it politicizes the military by forcing a man of relative integrity like John Kelly to defend Trump when he does the indefensible, which he lacks the political skills to do anyway. Theres a good reason to keep partisan politics separate from the armed forces: Its never good to worry about the military being owned by a particular party or faction within your government, or for partisan politics to have a role in the armed forces as military leaders are selected, promoted, or groomed with Cabinet positions in mind. But thats exactly the risk you run when you have a president who requires adult supervision. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images Traditionally, congressional hearings that prominently feature the internet or technology in general have led to some of our national legislatures most embarrassingly clueless moments. (Remember when Alaska senator Ted Stevens compared the internet to a series of tubes?) But this week, in three congressional hearings held over the course of two days, representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter faced a barrage of often very sharp of questions from lawmakers over how their platforms were used and abused throughout the electoral process. Its almost almost enough to make one optimistic for an appropriate and adequate legislative response: Congress is so close to getting it. It, in this case, being both the scale and the nature of the threat posed by megaplatforms like Facebook and Google, not to mention those companies inability or unwillingness to self-regulate. While ads purchased by fake, Russian-linked accounts were the pretext, and often the subject, of the hearings, it was clear in the questioning that legislators understand that immense, centralized search and social media like Google and Facebook warp the political process in ways were still beginning to understand and that neither company can be trusted to fix this on its own. So what can be done? Over the course of this week, senators and representatives from both parties seemed to inch closer and closer to figuring that out. To start, they asked about the ads, and there were some pointed questions about those ads. Senator Al Franken effectively called bullshit on Facebooks carelessness: How could Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were coming from Russia? The flip side of these companies much-hyped advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence is that when these systems fail, they fail hard. Yesterday, California senator Kamala Harris asked each of the three companies how much revenue they earned from ads that ran alongside posts made by Russian sock puppets. None of the three tech reps could say. The conversation broadened at points though to talk about the more concerning issue of how those sock puppets used Facebooks free services to sow discord. The vast majority of posts attributed to Russia did not directly reference the election, but instead focused on divisive issues that the election centered around: immigration, gun control, LGBT rights. The problem with these posts, as Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch put it, was authenticity: it was not that paid Russian trolls were swarming online debate with vile (as he put it) far-right stances, it was that they were doing so under the guise of being Americans. North Carolina senator Richard Burr highlighted a situation in which right- and left-wing people were manipulated to counterprotest each other in Texas. Both sides were driven by Facebook groups attributed to Russia. Vermont senator Patrick Leahy came sooo close to articulating the terrifying underlying issue when he put up a big board of political content taken from Facebook the day of the hearing. These strongly resemble pages youve already linked to Russia. Can you tell me that none of these pages were created by Russia-linked organizations? Its very similar. Hes not wrong! Its not just that Facebook had trouble distinguishing between Russian and American accounts its that users cant either. Can the companies moderate this content effectively themselves? Almost certainly not! In maybe the weeks most blistering testimony, Louisiana senator Joe Kennedy said point-blank that Facebook couldnt possibly mind its entire store of advertisers. Im trying to get us down from la-la land here. The truth of the matter is you have 5 million advertisers that change every month, every minute, probably every second. You dont have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is, do you? Today, right now. Not your commitment, Im asking about your ability. If it cant verify the origin of 5 million advertisers, the idea of verifying the authenticity of 2 billion users is laughable. What are companies like Twitter and Facebook to do about their impostor problem? No option seems tenable. Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett tried to articulate why the company doesnt require users to verify their identities, but stumbled (sidenote: these companies need to get much better at articulating why anonymity online is important and vital). Facebooks terms of service require users to go by their actual names, but it has no mechanisms in place to actually verify compliance. Adding such oversight would be costly and invasive. Congress could pass legislation, but then they would be getting into the thorny legal area of regulating speech on private services, which is a third rail if Ive ever seen one. Illinois senator Dick Durbin asked on Tuesday, How are you going to sort this out consistent with the basic values of this country when it comes to freedom of expression? None of the companies had a good answer. Thats because, as Congress is soooo close to realizing, there is no good answer. As Matt Stoller from anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets observed watching the proceedings, My sense is that there are only two ways to deal with dominant platforms and free speech. Break em up, or accept private censorship. None of these companies want censorship, because their businesses rely on users giving them content and data for free, and in tandem the tech companies rely on the low overhead that minimal content moderation allows. Yesterday, Virginia senator Mark Warner excoriated the companys reps: Weve raised these claims since the beginning of the year, and the leaders of your companies blew us off. Your earliest presentations show a lack of commitment and a lack of resources. Sure, maybe the companies were just short-sighted, but thats doubtful. Their business models necessitate their being as accepting of user-generated content as possible, even if they find it detestable. (Fun detail: While Facebooks general counsel was testifying before Congress about how much the company respects the American electorate, Mark Zuckerberg was courting Chinese president Xi Jinping and preparing to announced billions of dollars in revenue this quarter.) But in congressional hearings about the destabilization of American democracy, none of the companies could come right out and say that taking on the onus of censorship was a bad business proposition. The implication was still there, however, looming over everything: These companies are not going to solve this problem themselves. Which leaves us with the other option Stoller mentioned: breaking up the companies, whether thats through direct antitrust prosecution or legislation that allows more competition in the marketplace. Members of Congress spent this week attacking web-industry Goliaths from every angle, and they spent a lot of time going over the problem and the flaws of various solutions. They noted that the companies are enormous, but I dont recall anyone saying that the companies are too big an important distinction. Congress is sooooooo close to figuring out. old beef It Sure Looks Like Trump Sicced the IRS on His Enemies A Trump aide says he wanted to get the IRS on his political opponents which is exactly what happened to James Comey. Andrew Kyamagero ANDREW KYAMAGERO, popularly known as Omuntu Wa wansi, was raised to be a pastor but he later chose journalism. He is a co-host of the morning show dubbed Morning Saga; Akasambattuko on Galaxy FM. He also does some other media projects. Quick Talk caught up with him at Centenary park last week. What were you doing before you joined radio? Actually my entire [career] has been radioOkay, I sold juice in my senior six vacation. This is my second job. Well, my dad wanted me to be a pastor, but I was honest with him [jokingly:] I told him you will have to deal with so many pregnancies, because ndi muntu (Im human) [That poor dad! He must have had such high hopes, even naming his son kyamagero (miracle)]. Are you saying you cant help yourself around women? You see, women from my point of view are emotional and men are rational. Now, imagine me being a pastor and I have to meet around five women daily...They come with challenges and you are their source of hope. Because they know you have the ear to listen, they trust that you will help them and over time before you know it Oh Lord have mercy! [His wild imagination sends him and Quick Talk into giggles.] OK; where did you go to school again? I went to Hormisdallen and then completed my primary education at Kirinya Church of Uganda in Bweyogerere. I then went to Busoga College Mwiri for only one term and left. Why the hurry!? There were issues of boy-boy something and I did not like it. I am from a Christian background and I told my dad it was wrong. I then went to Ntebetebe St Johns in Bweyogerere where I completed my senior four. From there I went to Bethel Covenant College in Bwebajja, where I did my senior six and then to Westminster to pursue my theology degree. So, you are a theologian! I was ordained, but I dont practise. It was boring. Like I said, I naturally love to interact with people in a more relaxed way. When I came back, I told my dad, here are your papers, then I enrolled for mine. I pursued a degree in Mass Communication at Kampala University and here I am. Before I forget, are you married? I am not married, but I have a stay-in partner. She is called Linda Ndagire and we have a son. We are having our introduction next year. We decided to give it time and take it slow. We dont need to rush because we are not going anywhere. Okay, tell me more about Linda. She is the opposite of me; she is an introvert, extremely quiet and she is my shock absorber [giggles]. I am a bumpy-humpy guy, I meet so many people, hug my female friends and when they call me, I answer with Baibe, but she knows me. Really? For us our relationship is not based only on love, because love fluctuates. We choose to go with the ideology of understanding. So, when I meet people and hug them deeply, she knows it means nothing. OkWhat if she was the one hugging guys deeply? I would understand. I told you, I am liberal-minded. It could be a friend that she studied with and he lives in France and wants to peck her on the lips; hey, I know this is Uganda but I wouldnt be confrontational. [By coincidence, his phone rings and he alerts Quick Talk that it is Linda. He talks to her briefly, mostly giggling and laughing. He then tells her that he will call her back] Fair enough Man, with the work I do if you are not understanding, you cant hold a marriage. It takes a lot of trust, endurance and praying, because if you dont pray, man, the girls in Kampala are serious! Haa? How serious are they? Man, if they want you, they will walk up to you and tell you they want you. So, if you want to go for a simple ride, be on their to-do list and you will be done. And I dont want to be on that kind of list.the diseases we have in Kampala! Gosh, I hate taking tablets. For me, it just doesnt work. What is your worst moment in life? It was in 2014 when I lost my daughter. I love daughters a lot. It was such a dark week for me. [First, on] Monday morning I receive a call and someone tells me a piece of land I had bought in Luweero was actually not mine; that I had been conned. What? I tried looking for the guy who sold it to me and he was nowhere. I had 34 pigs on that land; so, I asked for some time to fix the situation. The following morning, I was informed that they had all been poisoned to death. I played it cool and the following day while I was having a breather, my wife called me [to say] our daughter was dead. Oh nooo! It is from that week that I developed a sense of gratitude. To be grateful for the little I have. It was challenging, especially for my wife and I focused on rejuvenating her. I prayed for her, I interceded and we came back to life. Kyamagero was born to John Ssebowa and Rose Kirabo Nantongo. He is the last child and only boy in the family. He prefers not to reveal his age. pbaike@yahoo.com No single institution is in charge of foreign affairs: Khawaja Asif 02 November, 2017 Related News Imran Khan distributed loan cheques under Kamyab Jawan Programme PTI govt to face all challenges coming its way: Imran khan More on this View All Tips for Taking Incredible iPhone Travel Photos Top 2021 Accessories We Know You Will Love Types of Casino Payment Methods Are Slot Developers Important for players? Best Poker Hands ever played on a Casino Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry Woke Bingo ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday indirectly conceded that his ministry was not in authoritative control of the countrys foreign policy. Winding up discussion on the recent visit of the US secretary of state to South Asia and the new American strategy on Afghanistan, he said the foreign policy was being shaped by different institutions and no single institution was in charge of the foreign affairs. However, he said the policy was framed in the light of recommendations of the National Security Committee and parliament. The foreign minister, while referring to the remarks made a day earlier by Senator Farhatullah Babar who criticised him for advising the Americans to have an Afghan policy free from the influence of generals and asked him to apply the same in Pakistan, said: I agree that it should be so. He made it clear that he had not unwittingly criticised American generals for their failure in Afghanistan, saying the new US policy was ineffective because it was influenced by the generals who suffered defeat in Afghanistan. The Americans have devised a framework for their policy for South Asia, which is in fact focused on Afghanistan. It was devised by generals who have struggled in Afghanistan for the last 15 years. I do not think any policy can be made by people with that baggage and mindset, he remarked. Mr Asif said he had urged the US State Department and other policy-making institutions of the country to have greater control of the American policy instead of relying on President Trumps rejected approach to this problem. If America frames its policy free from the influence [of these generals], it will be much more successful and effective. When they make Pakistan scapegoat, they are in fact covering up their own failures [in Afghanistan], he repeated. I am saying this very wittingly. The minister said the concerns expressed and suggestions made by the lawmakers would serve as a guideline in framing the foreign policy. He made it clear that the countrys foreign policy would not be subservient to interests of external powers and would keep in view interests of the country. Beginning his speech with an acknowledgement of Donald Trumps assertion that things have started getting better in US-Pakistan relations, and thanking the American president for the endorsement, Mr Asif reiterated that Pakistan wanted a regional solution to the Afghan problem. The entire region has a role to play in the Afghan process, and Pakistan wishes for a regional solution to the security challenges faced by the country, he asserted. The American secretary of state has told the US Senate that Pakistan needs effective communication on intelligence matters. If intelligence is shared with us effectively, we can expect better results in the future, he said. Enforced disappearances Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry informed the Senate that three women and three children from Awaran, who had gone missing in Quetta, were in the custody of law enforcement agencies. The Balochistan government has informed us that they had been arrested for attempting to cross the border, he said. Earlier, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani regretted that the state continued to make people disappeared in violation of five articles of the Constitution 4, 9, 10, 10-A and 14. Mr Chaudhry said the government had zero tolerance for enforced disappearances and claimed that the trend had declined if not completely eliminated. On the call of Tahir Hussain Mashhadi of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, all opposition members in the house staged a walkout in protest against the arrest of the women and children. Senator Usman Khan Kakar of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, an ally of the government, also joined them. Earlier, speaking on a calling-attention notice regarding disappearance of the wife and children of a Baloch nationalist leader, Senator Babar of the Pakistan Peoples Party warned that a Pakistan delegation to the UN review conference next week would have a hard time explaining mysterious disappearances of citizens with alarming impunity. He said the activists dissenting from the state narrative faced three threats they disappear mysteriously, are charged under the Pakistan Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) for endangering integrity of the federation and beaten black and blue in broad daylight by invisible people. The latest disappearance of the family of the Baloch dissident, the prosecution under PECA of a journalist in Quetta for posting comments viewed as critical of a security agency and the beating up of journalist Ahmad Noorani by invisible people in Islamabad demonstrated this dangerous trend in stifling dissent, he said. Mr Babar said the Senates human rights committee had at a meeting in September last year in Karachi made some recommendations for addressing the issue of missing persons in Sindh. When the committee again visited the city last month it was shocked to find that scores of more people had disappeared, he said. Till today not one person has been charged or investigated for involvement in the crime. The unanimous recommendations of the Senate made over a year ago remain unimplemented, he deplored. Ethics committee Chairman Rabbani announced that the Senates ethics committee had been operationalised, terming it a big step towards putting in place a mechanism for self-accountability. He said Senate rules had already been amended to incorporate code of conduct for members. He said the committee ethics, headed by the deputy chairman, consisted of all members of the business advisory committee. White House shared with Pakistan list of 20 terrorist groups WASHINGTON: The White House retains a list of 20 terrorist groups that the Trump administration claims are operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is believed to have shared this list with Pakistani officials. The sources, however, rejected the suggestion as incorrect that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a list of 75 terrorists to Pakistani officials when he visited Islamabad last week. Mr Tillerson told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday that Pakistan was willing to target terrorists if provided specific information about their whereabouts and Washington plans to give Islamabad the opportunity to do so. Addressing another briefing, Mr Tillerson said the US and Pakistan had been engaged in a very healthy exchange of information on terrorists since his visit to Islamabad last week, which aimed at re-enforcing US President Donald Trumps message to Pakistan to take action against the Taliban and the Haqqani network. He said the information that the US delegation gave Pakistan went beyond just names of individuals and also expected to receive information from Pakistan that would be useful in targeting militants. The future exchange of information, he said, would go beyond specific location on any given day of where certain individuals or certain cells may be located. The White House list, released on The Washington Posts demand, includes three types of militants groups: those who launch attacks into Afghanistan, those who attack targets inside Pakistan and those who are focused on Kashmir. Top on the list is the Haqqani network which, the United States claims, has safe havens in Fata and uses them to launch attacks into Afghanistan. Pakistan strongly rejects the charge, saying that there are no such safe havens inside the country. Harakatul Mujahideen is a Pakistan-based militant group operating primarily in Kashmir. The US says that group had links to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well. Jaish-e-Mohammed operates mainly in Kashmir and the liberation of the Indian occupied Kashmir is its declared objective. Jundullah is associated with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and was commanded by militant Hakimullah Mehsud, the Emir of TTP until his death in November 2013. It had vowed allegiance to the militant Islamic State group. The United States identified Lashkar-e-Taiba as one of the largest and most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. Founded in 1987 by Hafiz Saeed, Abdullah Azzam and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan, the group had its headquarters in Muridke. It too is focused on Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the 2001 Indian parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Lashkar-i-Jhanghvi, an offshoot of anti-Shia sectarian group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, was founded by former SSP activists Riaz Basra, Malik Ishaq, Akram Lahori and Ghulam Rasool Shah. The US blames this group for committing hundreds of target killings and dozens of mass attacks inside Pakistan. Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organisation of various militant groups, was based in Fata, but has now relocated to Afghanistan. The US says that the group wants to enforce its own interpretation of Sharia and plans to unite against Nato-led forces in Afghanistan. It has conducted hundreds of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. Other groups on the list are: Harakatul Jihadi-i-Islami, Jamaatul Ahrar, Jamaatud Dawa al-Quran and Tariq Gidar Group, which is one of 13 TTP affiliates. The Tariq Gidar Group has been behind some of the deadliest attacks inside Pakistan, including the Dec 16, 2014, massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar that left 132 schoolchildren and nine staffers dead. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Commander Nazir Group, Indian Mujahideen, Islamic Jihad Union, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan ISIS-Khorasan, Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent and the Turkistan Islamic Party Movement are also on the list. For Immediate Release Click here for the full press kit in English >> Cliquez ici pour le dossier de presse complet en francais >> UPDATE: The trial began November 9. In the village of Kavumu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), families once endured the unspeakable: children abducted in the night and raped. Nearly five years after the first attacks and after an international mobilization of supporters, a trial to prosecute the alleged offenders will begin on Monday, November 6. Eighteen suspects will face charges, including a local politician. The trial will be a turning point for the fight against impunity in DRC, and civil society both locally and internationally played a decisive role in bringing about this historic moment. On Monday, November 6, international observers will pay close attention to the village of Kavumu in Congos eastern province of South Kivu. It will be the epicenter of one of the most anticipated trials of the year. The defendants are alleged members of an armed militia who, for years, abducted and raped children in this village. In just a few short years, Kavumu has been a symbol both of the large-scale crimes of sexual violence that have devastated the country, and a demonstration of the impunity with which those crimes are accompanied. The trial itself is one of the few of its kind and could set a crucial precedent. The importance of Kavumu extends far beyond the impact on survivors and their families, said the NGO TRIAL International. This trial punctures the code of silence and undermines the judicial inertia that often surrounds sexual violence cases in South Kivu. That authorities are now fully reckoning with this issue head-on is a huge step forward for Congolese justice. Babies among the victims Some of the agony of these cases is due to the age of the 46 victims some as young as just a year old when they were raped. The attacks also fit a similar pattern that was repeated over the course of many years. The perpetrators broke into our houses at night to kidnap our daughters, said a mother of a victim who asked for anonymity to protect her from reprisals. They raped them out of pure superstition, and many suffered injuries that will linger with them the rest of their lives. Urged on by a concerned international community and courageous civil society members, the Kavumu military prosecutor took over the case in 2016. During the investigation, 18 suspects were charged with crimes against humanity, since their alleged crimes were both numerous and systematic. NGOs on the front line The trial in Kavumu will take place thanks to the mobilization of both Congolese and international civil society groups. Together, they combined their expertise to draw the attention of national authorities and help to build a solid case against the alleged offenders. We are hopeful that our combined efforts will allow survivors and their families to finally obtain justice and live in peace after so much pain, said the NGO Physicians for Human Rights, which has supported investigative efforts in Kavumu since the first rape cases were reported. We are hopeful this process will hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes. And we hope that the collaboration between the medical and legal communities, as well as international and national NGOs, can sustain an effective response system that can prevent future instances of sexual violence. An additional difficulty was the vulnerability of the survivors, all of whom were children at the time of the attacks. These children relive the aggression perpetrated against them every time they tell their story. The trials proceedings are demanding and require deep psychological support, said Panzi Hospital, which specializes in the treatment of survivors of sexual violence. On the legal front, the challenge will be proving the systematic nature of the attacks. In order to make a case of crimes against humanity, prosecutors must show that the crimes were part of an organized endeavor, a high bar in a country as unstable as DRC. We have been waiting years for this trial to begin, as have the families of all the survivors, said the NGO community working on these cases. We now hope that the trial will be conducted in good faith and that the Congolese justice system will justly punish the offenders proportional to the gravity of their crimes. Additional Media Contacts TRIAL International Communications Department (French and English) GMT +1 +41 22 519 03 96 I media@trialinternational.org trialinternational.org Hopital de Panzi Crispin Kashale (French only) GMT +2 +243 841 228 062 I crispin.kashale@gmail.com fondationpanzirdc.org 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. Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America. I hadn't heard the term "piebald" deer until a few years ago. Over the years I had seen a few whitetails with white fur, but just thought it was some sort of color variation. Two springs ago, I saw a piebald doe over in Pawlet, Vermont, during a trout fishing outing over that way. Upper Hudson Valley QDMA recently posted on its Facebook page a picture of a white-and-brown deer in the region, and asked followers if they had seen any. There were quite a few pictures posted in response, which was surprising to me. Readers had photos of piebald deer from the Cossayuna, Schuylerville and northern Rensselaer County areas. I didn't realize they were that prevalent. Unfortunately, that white fur is often not just indicative of a color issue, but these deer often have genetic problems too, which can be passed on to their young. QDMA's website has an interesting article about the condition, linked here. I'm not sure what I would do if given the opportunity to take a piebald deer. The Native Americans left them alone, believing it was bad luck to shoot them, and they seemed to know a lot more about nature's spirits than we do. -- Don Lehman BALLSTON SPA A Corinth man who was charged in July with burglarizing a South Glens Falls business and stealing a sport-utility vehicle before deliberately crashing it into his ex-girlfriend's car has been sentenced to up to 3 years in state prison Lance E. Abare, 26, pleaded guilty to felony burglary for the theft of a Ford Explorer SUV from Bodies by Jay on Sept. 13, police said. He is accused of breaking into Bodies by Jay on Saratoga Avenue and stealing keys, then intentionally driving the Explorer into a car owned by his ex-girlfriend that was parked on Pine Street in Corinth, according to police. Abare also pleaded guilty to felony driving while intoxicated in the case. Saratoga County Judge James Murphy imposed concurrent prison terms for the felonies that will amount to 1.5 to 3 years in prison. WHITE CREEK State Police arrested a Vermont woman Thursday for theft of goods from the Nuns of New Skete after troopers shared surveillance photos via social media. The monastery has long made products, including its renowned cheesecakes and other baked goods, available with payment on the honor system at the gift shop in its monastery on Ash Grove Road. But police said thieves have been taking advantage of the good will, and earlier this week they released surveillance photos of two women who they believed to have been involved in recent thefts. Leads generated from those photos led to the arrest of Angelique E. Smith, 45, of North Arlington, Vermont for misdemeanor petit larceny Thursday evening, police said. State Police said Smith went into the unmanned gift shop with her 21-year-old daughter, who was not charged, on two occasions, stealing $250 worth of cheesecakes and pastries. The cakes sell for $49 and up through the monastery website. Trooper Dane Pfeiffer, who investigated the case, said the agencys decision to release surveillance photos of the two women generated leads from social media, including information about potential suspects that ultimately led to an arrest. Smith is scheduled to appear in White Creek Town Court on Nov. 16. State Police also investigated a similar theft last June, and surveillance video was used to identify an elderly Bennington, Vermont, woman who paid $132 restitution after she was confronted by troopers for goods she stole from the organizations gift shop. But she was not charged, because the nuns declined to have the case prosecuted. This time, the nuns have opted to have the thieves prosecuted, Pfeiffer said. New Skete operates two monasteries one run by nuns, the other by monks, in White Creek. The monks raise purebred German shepherd dogs on a property to the east on New Skete Road. A representative of the monastery said the organization had no comment on the matter Thursday. The acting director of the Office of Government Ethics said in a letter to a Democratic member of Congress that the White House Counsel's office is looking into whether Jared Kushner violated any laws when he met with business entities which later loaned more than $500 million to his company. In the letter dated March 22, OGE director David Apol said, "The White House informed me that they had already begun this process. I have asked the White House to inform me of the results of that process." CNN has reached out to the White House Counsel's office and Kushner for comment. Apol sent the letter to Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who wrote regarding a variety of ethical questions around Kushner's White House role. In a letter dated March 14, Apol also told Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal that he had discussed ethical concerns about Kushner with the White House Counsel's office "in order to ensure" that office looks into whether any law or regulation had been violated. "During that discussion, the White House informed me that they had already begun this process," Apol wrote. Two companies confirmed earlier this month that they have provided hundreds of millions in loans to Kushner's family business, but disputed in letters to Democratic lawmakers that there was a connection between those loans and meetings Kushner had with their executives. 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!) Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Home Regional News East Genesis Health System's latest expansion will improve patients' access to health services while investing in the continuing development of west Davenport. As construction crews worked in the background on a new Genesis HealthPlex, located at 3200 W. Kimberly Road, Genesis officials discussed its progress and how it will provide "one-stop" access to health services. The $13.6 million HealthPlex will centralize several of Genesis' health services into one building, including two family medicine offices, pediatrics, physical therapy, and lab, x-ray and other services. The two-story, 43,000-square-foot building also will house a new Genesis Convenient Care. "This is a great opportunity for us to combine services for patients, especially in west Davenport," said Dr. Kurt Andersen, the health group's executive medical officer. It will be Genesis' third HealthPlex, joining its existing facilities in Moline and Bettendorf. Andersen said health care providers' and patients' experiences from the other two facilities have helped in shaping the design and modifications for the new Davenport facility. Among the changes, he said will be an emphasis on care teams by co-locating the entire medical team from physicians, nurses, physician assistants, medical assistants and support staff into "care pods." "Hopefully, patients will see more of a team approach," Andersen said. He added that the care team model is not new for Genesis, but it is the first time the model has been incorporated into the building's design. HealthPlex will combine the current family medicine practices nearby on Division Street and at 53rd Street and Northwest Boulevard as well as Genesis' pediatrics services, which will relocate from West Campus. Andersen said the move will provide more convenient accessibility for families of pediatrics patients. Genesis will retain its Convenient Care, now located within the 53rd Street facility, for the immediate future, he said. Kevin Rossmiller, Genesis Health System's engineering and construction director, said the building is being constructed on "a tight site," but will create more efficient space for the medical staff and patients. He estimated it would be completed by August 2018. The HealthPlex construction team includes Davenport-based Estes Construction and BLDD Architects, with an office in Davenport. "The second level (of the HealthPlex) is being built to have growth so we could add more family medicine in the future," Andersen said. "New practitioners are attracted to new facilities where they can practice alongside experienced practitioners." Davenport Mayor Frank Klipsch, whose family physician will move to the HealthPlex, said the project is positive news for west Davenport. "This makes a strong statement that this part of the community is equally important." In fact, he said more development is in the works there with new housing projects. "This facility is out in front of the additional development to come this way," Klipsch added. William Albracht, author of Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnams Firebase Kate, will discuss his book and experiences at noon Monday, Nov. 13, at Black Hawk College, 6600 34th Ave., Moline. The program will be in building 4, second floor, in conference rooms 1 and 2. Guests should park in Lot 3 off 34th Avenue. Lunch will be provided. For more information, contact Ashtin Trimble at trimblea@bhc.edu or call309-796-5143. Albracht, a Black Hawk alumnus, is a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and retired U.S. Secret Service officer. He served on the protection details of four American presidents and numerous foreign dignitaries over a White House career spanning 25 years. After his retirement, Albracht managed executive security operations for the Ford Motor Co. before he returned to his hometown to open a security consulting business. His presentation is sponsored by the college library. --Times staff A 33-year-old Davenport man is in federal custody on child pornography charges. Kevin Dean Green is charged with one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possession child pornography. Green was arrested Tuesday and had his first appearance on the charges Wednesday in U.S. District Court, Davenport. Green was implicated as having child pornography based upon an FBI investigation into a Florida man who is a registered child sex offender. According to the criminal complaint filed by a local special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on June 29, an undercover agent in the Washington, D.C., FBI field office identified a user of the Kik instant messaging app as kidluvrl during undercover activity as a trader and possessor of child pornography as well as a possible contact offender. During the conversation with the undercover agent kidluvrl discussed sexually assaulting his 3-year-old child and sent the undercover agent an image of him exposing himself near the child. The person using the kidluvrl handle turned out to be a man named Thomas Edward Abney, a registered child sex offender who resided in Leesburg, Florida. Agents with the FBI field office in Jacksonville, Florida, served a search warrant at Abneys residence on June 29. Abney was arrested and the child victim was saved from further abuse by Abney. A review of Abneys Samsung Galaxy Note 5 cell phone revealed that he had chatted on Kik with a person using the handle havingsomefun67. During their chats, Abney and havingsomefun67 had explicit discussions that included havingsomefun67 obtaining child pornography from Abney and his desire to produce child pornography with his own children. The text of the chats indicated that Abney and havingsomefun67 already had exchanged child pornography. The FBI submitted an administrative subpoena for the Kik account belonging to havingsomefun67. The display name for the account submitted by Kik was tina levi and the email address of kevingreen1719@gmail.com. The internet provider addresses provided by Kik for havingsomefun67 were assigned to CenturyLink. On July 7, the FBI submitted an administrative subpoena to CenturyLink for the internet provider address. Through that internet provider information the FBI was able to track down Green to a home in Davenport he shares with his girlfriend. On Greens cell phone agents discovered about 370 images of child pornography. The majority of the images appeared to be screen shots from websites Green visited off of which the FBI was able to capture the names and uniform resource locators, or web addresses, of 37 different websites. Some of the websites were located by FBI investigators. A detention hearing for Green is scheduled for Monday in U.S. District Court, Davenport. The FBI has not yet indicated how far the investigation has spread nationally from when they arrested Thomas Abney. In May 2016, Leslie Klipsch of Davenport arrived in the small village of Maore, Tanzania, where residents buried a 2-year-old boy just a couple of days before. The small child, she was told, drank from a bucket of contaminated water before it had properly been boiled and contracted a waterborne illness. Leslie used heartbreaking this week to describe the tragedy and lingering sadness she witnessed during her most-recent visit to the East African nation. I think its something that we have the answer to, she continued, emphasizing that the means exist to bolster access to clean water in Tanzania and other developing countries. This is a problem that could be solved in our lifetime if we reallocated the resources that we have here, so I think that makes it especially devastating. Hundreds of Quad-Citians are expected to turn out next Saturday for the Water Party, an annual fundraiser in downtown Davenport co-organized by Leslie, her sister-in-law, Tesi Klipsch, and Shayna Hamma, to increase awareness about the issue. Proceeds from this years event will benefit Empower Tanzania, an Iowa-based nonprofit organization that provides support to Tanzanian villages in need. Leslie, who serves as the communications director for Empower Tanzania, said they hope to raise $50,000 this year, which will supply clean water to about 1,750 people in the village of Njiro. The communitys well is broken, so the money will go toward repairing or replacing the system. Women and children there currently must walk from six to nine miles to the nearest clean water source. At times, they resort to scrounging and consuming dirty water from puddles or hand-dug holes. Its a very dangerous place for children, said Phil Latessa of West Des Moines, who is executive director of Empower Tanzania. Theyre in need of a lot of peoples energy. This past years Water Party raised more than $43,000, which helped fund the construction of a new solar-powered well in the village of Pangaro. Its really changed the lives of those people, Latessa said, commending Leslie and her partners for spearheading the effort. Its critically important. 'Their water was disgusting' The Water Partys roots date back to November 2008, when a few Quad-City area moms set out to raise enough money to build maybe one community well in the poverty-stricken African nation of Liberia. The group included Leslie, Tesi, then of Blue Grass, and Jody Landers, then of Muscatine. They launched a fundraising campaign called Water for Christmas, and in 2009, they hosted their first event in Davenport, called Wine to Water. By the end of the next year, the group had collected $275,000, which the activists sent to Charity: Water, an internationally respected nonprofit agency based in New York City that oversees water projects in developing countries. Over the past decade, they have raised close to $500,000, paying for the construction and rehabilitation of wells in 12 villages of Liberia, Uganda, India and Tanzania. Tesi and her husband, Zach, who now live in Kalamazoo, Michigan, have adopted three boys, Tariku, Tomas and Binyam, from Ethiopia. Every time the mother of five looks at them, she is reminded of the suffering she observed in 2008 when they picked up their first adopted son, Tariku. We saw tiny little kids carrying these 50-pound buckets of water on their heads and carrying little siblings on their back in slings, Tesi recalled. Their water was disgusting, but that was the only available option. All three of her boys from Ethiopia, she noted, were adversely affected by unclean water. Its part of their story, Tesi said, as it is for virtually every kid in developing countries. In 2011, Leslie and her husband, Jake Klipsch, principal of Mid City High School in Davenport, adopted their daughter, Sintayehu, from Ethiopia. Regardless of her strong ties to Africa, she stressed, I think its worth caring about the people who live there. Together, the Klipsch sisters-in-law interview women and mothers to produce a weekly podcast called Mama Bear Dares. Leslie, who has two biological children, also runs a co-working space in downtown Davenport, COWORKQC, where the freelance writer and editor spends a lot of her time. Following the bout of recent natural disasters in the U.S., including hurricanes and wildfires, Leslie acknowledged that many Quad-Citians may be suffering from compassion fatigue, but she still expects a strong response from the community. Every time you turn on the faucet, just think about how easy it us for us to get clean water thats safe for us and safe for our children, she said. Thats just not a fact of life for so many people. By now, it's already evident the 2018 race for Illinois governor is a contest like no other. The amount of money raised so far has already blown past $100 million. And, even though there are more than five months to go before the March 20 election, television ads have been airing for weeks in markets across the state. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who doled out tens of millions of dollars of his own money in 2014 and 2016 is ready to do it again. This cycle, his campaign has raised more than $72 million, which includes a $50 million contribution Rauner made this past December. Meanwhile, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, a businessman and wealthy heir to the Hyatt fortune, has devoted $28 million of his own money to the race so far. Both men face primaries, but at least in terms of the money they've raised they're easily outdistancing their rivals. If the two end up going head to head, some analysts are predicting record spending. "It's already pretty unprecedented," said Sarah Brune, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which tracks money in political races and pushes for reform. Big money in the 2018 election cycle isn't confined to the top of the ticket, either. Last year's elections saw 23 state legislative races top $1 million, with five going higher than $5 million, according to Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, who tracks campaign spending. Expect similar spending levels this cycle, experts say. Redfield points to the potential of a Pritzker candidacy and said, in part, the typical funding sources for Democrats are especially excited about the prospect of having more flexibility that would come with a self-funder at the top of the ticket. "That's what makes Pritzker so compelling is he can self-fund, then people that are funding the Democrats' legislative campaign are not forced to do triage," he said. Not all are fans, of course. A Pritzker rival in the primary, state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, has pointedly asked, "Are we going to have an election or an auction?" Pritzker's campaign has emphasized his experience and devotion to causes like early education. Still, some of his backers in the primary clearly like the idea that he can bring his own money to the fight. In 2016, Republicans broke the Democrats' super-majority in the House, with spending by the governor and a handful of allies fueling the cause. One of the seats the GOP won was in the 71st District, where Rep. Tony McCombie, a Savanna, Illinois, Republican, defeated Democrat Mike Smiddy. The contest cost about $3.6 million, Redfield said. This cycle, it's likely that the race for the seat held by state Sen. Neil Anderson, R-Andalusia, will be a prominent one in the state. Democrats, Redfield said, will most likely play defense outside of Chicago and its suburbs. But the race for the 36th District is likely to be the exception, he said. Anderson already has raised $422,000, according to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Gregg Johnson, a longtime union official and one of two Democrats who have announced candidacies for the seat, has raised about $18,000. Those figures will surely go much higher, as parties and labor unions dive in. "I think the Republicans will spend a lot of money defending Anderson," he said. Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield, also notes that there have been a number of Statehouse Republicans who have announced retirements, which opens up seats. That means even more spending down the ballot. "It's all there," he said. Lots of money at the top of the ticket is one thing, but Brune also said that campaigns down the ballot are getting more expensive, too. It's not just the money being shelled out for seats in the General Assembly, either. Local races this year also saw increased spending, notably in Aurora and Evanston, where mayors races were hotly contested. Brune said some contests saw spending between $100,000 and $500,000. "That's a lot of money for a local race," she said. In the last episode of the first season of "Daredevil," there's this great montage of arrests as the Kingpin's empire falls. The FBI swoops down, and you see all the crooked cops, corrupt politicians, and henchmen belonging to the New York City crime lord collected like garbage. It is, in the context of that Netflix superhero drama, a very satisfying moment. In the context of real life, it would be even more so. That's what accounts for the glee with which the likes of Keith Olbermann and Ava DuVernay began retweeting over the weekend a clip first posted to YouTube in August. In it, a talented someone calling themselves 1oneclone repurposes the "Daredevil" montage to devastating effect. In the new clip, it's Michael Flynn, not some mobster, hauling you-know-what with an army of FBI men in hot pursuit. Steve Bannon is led out with his hands cuffed behind him as James Comey gazes on in quiet satisfaction. Kellyanne Conway is still chattering as she is arrested. And there goes the big man himself, jaw jutting pugnaciously, as he is hauled away. The clip is -- no pun intended -- a marvel. And it neatly captured the mood on much of social media as people awaited Monday, when, according to CNN, the first fruits of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump administration would be unsealed. Folks dubbed it a spontaneous holiday: Indictment Day. Well, Indictment Day did not disappoint, bringing a 12-count bill of charges against former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Rick Gates, albeit for money laundering and other alleged crimes with no known connection to the failed president. More ominous for Trump, though, was news that an obscure adviser, George Papadopoulos, had earlier secretly pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts and was cooperating with the investigation. So Indictment Day may soon come around again. Not to kill the joy of that possibility, but a reminder seems prudent here. Even if Indictment Day comes a dozen times more, even if the man himself is felled, none of it changes what needs changing. In March of 2016, I wrote about what America should do "after Trump." Got much of it wrong, including downplaying the possibility of his election. But one thing said then holds up: Trump is a product of fear, intolerance, incoherence and ignorance. And those things would survive him. After all, they grew strong and bold in recent years as some of us made expedient decisions to which morality was a stranger. Exhibit A: the Republican Party's choice to embrace an ethos of chaos -- think tea party mobs and birth certificate lies -- because it was politically useful. And to ignore the damage this wrought. Now we're paying the price for that short-sightedness. And after Trump, assuming America isn't a nuclear wasteland or two countries by then -- possibilities that seem less remote than they once did -- confronting the forces that brought us here must be Job One for faith leaders, news media, activists and educators. Indeed, all people of conscience will have a simple mission: Drive fear, intolerance, incoherence and ignorance off the main stage of American politics. It is, yes, gratifying to see a video where all this president's men and women are carted away by the feds. It is even more gratifying to see them face the music in real life. What ails us, though, will be fixed not by indictments, but by engagement and education. It will take time. And truth is, "after Trump" is too long to wait. So, I hope you enjoyed Indictment Day. Now, let's get back to work. In considering the indictment of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate, I am reminded of former Bill Clinton aide and defender James Carville's line about the ability of a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich." Manafort and a longtime business partner, Rick Gates, pleaded not guilty to all 12 counts against them. Manafort is under house arrest after posting an outrageously high bond of $10 million. Gates' bond was set at $5 million. George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, has pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI about his foreign contacts with several top Russian officials. Predictably, the major media are celebrating this as the beginning of the end of the nascent Trump presidency. Within hours of the announced indictments, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof rushed into print with a column titled "Will Manafort Sing? If so, it may mark the beginning of the end of this presidency." Look for more of this wishful thinking that the establishment, the Democrats and all of the mainstream media have been hoping for since Trump won the election. What Manafort stands accused of has nothing to do with the 2016 election, or with Russian "collusion." No one, so far, has produced any evidence the Russians affected the election's outcome. This is all about overturning the results and keeping "the swamp" full for those who live in it and reject change. Real collusion might be in the significant share of U.S. uranium sold to the Russians during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state (she signed off on the deal), followed by a $500,000 fee paid to her husband for a speech in Moscow and the millions of dollars that subsequently flowed into the Clinton Foundation from uranium investors. Special counsel Robert Mueller and Congress should investigate that Russian connection, along with the role of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign (and the earlier Republican role) in creating an anti-Trump dossier that has been shown to be a fraud and yet was used to justify the appointment of Mueller. If the reason for Mueller's appointment is fraudulent, how can it be said that his investigation, which includes staff attorneys who made donations to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is not tainted? Among the many problems with this investigation is that it has no legal, subject or monetary limits. If Mueller and his associates are unable to prove collusion with the Russians, one can count on them coming up with something else. Far-left members of Congress, such as Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), openly state that their objective is to "take out" the president, and they don't mean to lunch. There is also the matter of leaks from the grand jury. Not surprisingly, the details of the indictments matched the leak to CNN. Unless that network employs mind readers and engages in paranormal activity, those leaks are felonies and the leakers should be prosecuted. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are firing up investigations of their own, including long-overdue looks into various questionable and possibly illegal activities by the Clintons. Congress is the proper avenue for such investigations, not special counsels, who can "go rogue" if they wish. These seemingly endless accusations and investigations are what so much of the country hates about Washington, the "D.C." that increasingly seems to stand for "dysfunctional city." No matter which party controls government, the other party does all it can, by whatever means, to undermine those elected. This behavior solves no problems. It is only about grabbing and holding onto power. Given the many moving parts in the Mueller probe and the loss of focus on the primary reason for it, the government may have a difficult time proving its case in court. But with unlimited funds and a staff of lawyers who have Democratic affiliations, you can bet they will try to make more than a ham sandwich out of it. Erma and Dick Albert spent the week quietly at home. The wind blew nearly every day. Dick had spent a few days spotting elk for a friend in the Black Hills and enjoyed the time. They had spotted a couple, but didnt get in range for a shot. Erma went to her chiropractors appointment on Wednesday and made another quick trip to Buffalo on Saturday. She can get phone service at Sky Ranch, and stopped to enjoy watching the deer and antelope as she talked on the phone. She has a great bread recipe that she made buns with at Sky Ranch when she was a cook there. She wishes she had the big mixer she used there. She tried a new recipe from the internet for buns and they turned out good, too. Donna Lewis went bowling on the last two Wednesdays. Last week she had gone on to Miles City and when she came back she learned that Tie Creek was closed and she couldnt get home. She stayed in Baker that night and went home on Friday after the road had been opened again. Luckily, she had most of her medicine with her. Last Saturday and Sunday Derek and Michelle Gorder were out to the ranch hunting. Their daughter Jacey got a nice buck and Michelle got hers, too. Dusty Gorder and Sarah came out hunting this weekend. The wind has been strong many days this week. Shirley and Junior Melum had interesting visitors. The hunters from Montana had recently been to Switzerland, Austria, and Germany and told about their visits to those countries. They came on Tuesday and by Thursday they had filled their tags. I got Carol Odells sisters names mixed. Nora Bergen had been here last week and now Donna Mattson is here visiting for a while. Dawn had seen Nora at the Camp Crook run and recognized her as a runner she had seen before at other races. Dawn has been to many races with her sisters, too. Many of the Paddens helped a crew at Justin Kerrs with preg-testing and conditioning on Tuesday. Dorothy Paddens cousins came from Phoenix, AZ. Romela and Eric Heddy, and Lester and Marti Oster visited at Dorothys and at Bryce and Dawn Paddens until Saturday. On Thursday, Charlie Odell came to inspect cattle and then the Paddens went to Belle Fourche for the cattle sale. That evening they all had supper in Camp Crook on their way home. On Saturday, Dorothy, Mary Brewer, and Lynn Gustafson rode with Dawn to the Fallon-Carter County Fall Extension Club Meeting in Ekalaka. Laurie Elmore, Tawni Cordell, Janet Odell, and Yvonne Yoder also went to the meeting from our area. Brandons family spent the day at the Olson family calf exchange in Buffalo. They all met at BJ and Michelles that evening to celebrate Kalas sixth birthday. On Sunday, they were busy moving cows home from Ekalaka. Last week Frank and Kathy Loeding visited at Charlie and Karen Odells, before going back to Sydney, MT. They took the scenic route back home and enjoyed some different scenery. On Monday, Charlie inspected yearlings for Bruce Gustafson and worked cows. Matt Teigen came out that afternoon to inspect calves for Charlie. Lonnie Koranda came on Wednesday, and he and Charlie each hauled a load of calves to Belle Fourche for the sale the next day. That evening Karen and Charlie went to Buffalo for the Pioneer Bank Elite Club Dinner at the Community Hall. They enjoyed music by Ren McCoid and got to visit with friends there. Karen went to physical therapy in Buffalo on Tuesday and Thursday. The wind was so strong that Karen had a hard time standing at the Cenex to fill the tank with gas. Charlie inspected calves for Paddens on Thursday. Karen played piano for the Methodist Church service in Camp Crook on Sunday and she and Charlie had lunch at the Over The Edge afterward. On the way home they stopped for a short visit at Carol and Gene Odells. It is fun seeing the kids get ready for Halloween. We sure would miss the internet and text messaging. We arent hooked on texting, yet, because our cell phones are such antiques that I can never get a comment typed before the next one comes in, but I do enjoy those sessions of wise advice and interesting comments that come from our four big kids when they all get involved in a discussion. What did grandparents do in the old days? The wind hasnt died down and on Sunday night the dogs came in the door with snow on their backs. WASHINGTON As the end of 2017 approaches, the Internal Revenue Service today encouraged taxpayers to consider a tax withholding checkup. Taking a closer look at the taxes being withheld now can help ensure the right amount is withheld, either for tax refund purposes or to avoid an unexpected tax bill next year. The withholding review takes on even more importance given a tax law change that started last year. This change requires the IRS to hold refunds a few weeks for some early filers claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit. In addition, the IRS and state tax administrators continue to strengthen identity theft and refund fraud protections, which means some tax returns could require additional review time next year to protect against fraud. "With only a few months left in the year, this is a good time to check on your withholding," said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. "How much you choose to withhold is a personal choice, but checking now can reduce the chance for a surprise tax bill when you file in 2018." By adjusting the Form W-4, Employees Withholding Allowance Certificate, taxpayers can ensure that the right amount is taken out of their pay throughout the year. Having the correct amount withheld from paychecks helps to ensure that taxpayers dont pay too much tax during the year and it also means taxpayers have money upfront rather than waiting for a bigger refund after filing their tax return. The IRS also cautions people to be careful and check to make sure they have enough withheld from their paychecks. Under-withholding can lead to a tax bill as well as an additional penalty. The IRS especially encourages people with a second job, such as those in the sharing economy, or with a major life change to check whether they are having enough withheld or if they are making the appropriate estimated tax payments. In many cases, a new Form W-4, Employees Withholding Allowance Certificate, is all that is needed to make an adjustment. Taxpayers submit it to their employer, and the employer uses the form to figure the amount of federal income tax to be withheld from pay. But remember it takes time for employers to process these payroll changes, so any adjustments should be made quickly so it can take affect during the final pay periods of 2017. The IRS offers several online resources to help taxpayers bring taxes paid closer to what is owed. They are available anytime on IRS.gov. They include: IRS Withholding Calculator Online tool helps determine the correct amount of tax to withhold. IRS Publication 505 Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax. Tax Withholding Complete information on withholding, estimated taxes, FAQs and more. Self-employed taxpayers, including those involved in the sharing or gig economy, can use the Form 1040-ES worksheet to correctly figure their estimated tax payments. If they also work for an employer, they can often forgo making these quarterly payments by instead having more tax taken out of their pay. People Working in the Sharing Economy The IRS encourages people in the sharing or gig economy who also have a job with an employer to take a close look at their withholding. Doing so can help avoid unexpected tax issues. Some Refunds Delayed in 2018 The IRS wants taxpayers to be aware of several factors that could affect the timing of their tax refunds next year. Due to a December 2015 law, the IRS cannot issue refunds on tax returns claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Additional Child Tax Credit before mid-February. Under the change required by Congress in the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, the IRS must hold the entire refund even the portion not associated with the EITC and ACTC. This law change, which went into effect in 2017, helps ensure that taxpayers get the refund they are owed by giving the IRS more time to help detect and prevent fraud. Stronger Security Filters and Tax Refund Processing As the IRS steps up its efforts to combat identity theft and tax refund fraud through its many processing filters, legitimate refund returns sometimes get delayed. While the IRS is working diligently to stop fraudulent refunds from being issued, it is also focused on releasing legitimate refunds as quickly as possible. The IRS, state tax agencies and the private sector tax industry continue to work together to fight fraud through their Security Summit partnership. Additional safeguards will be set in place for the 2018 filing season. A former Pine Ridge pediatrician accused of child sex crimes is asking the court to throw out evidence seized from his home because police allegedly used a defective search warrant. In February, law enforcement officers seized about 30 items from the Spearfish home of 68-year-old Stanley Patrick Weber, charged in federal court with aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse and sexual abuse of a minor. Prosecutors say Weber, who at one point became acting clinical director of the Indian Health Service hospital on Pine Ridge, molested Native American children between 1998 and 2011. Webers charging document lists four victims, including a child who allegedly had been assaulted while being treated for the flu. He pleaded not guilty to the charges. Weber was arrested the same day his home was searched, Feb. 28, then released on bond the next day. He is now challenging the validity of the police search warrant, stating in a June 19 court filing that the document didnt specify the items to be seized from his home. Weber said also that police took travel documents related to the crime of international sex travel, though the crime wasnt noted on the warrant; just on the attached affidavit. According to court records, the items taken from Weber included an iPhone, a MacBook Air, eight U.S. passports, thumb drives and pages of passwords. In a written response July 31, prosecutors said the warrant mentioned the affidavit, which laid out the items to be seized. They said the affidavit was also brought to the actual search. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Eric Kelderman and Sarah Collins asked the court to deny Webers request, arguing that police acted in good faith despite errors in drafting the warrant. At a Rapid City hearing Wednesday, the law enforcement officer who applied for the search warrant acknowledged that the document was missing critical information. Special Agent Curt Muller, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General, testified that he followed the same procedure used in applying for previous search warrants. He spent weeks putting together the affidavit, which ran more than 30 pages, Magistrate Judge Daneta Wollmann was told. Wollmann was the same judge who signed the Weber search warrant. Ultimately, it was the U.S. Attorneys Office that said the warrant itself was acceptable, said defense attorney Harvey Steinberg, Weber's lawyer from Denver. Beside him sat Weber, in a camel-colored jacket, and two of Webers other lawyers. The prosecutors, in their written response, had said information missing on the warrant is more akin to a typographical error than it is to a constitutional violation ... there was no flagrancy police misconduct, which the Court must consider in its determination." Judge Wollmann will issue a ruling on the matter, after about nine weeks, once the lawyers have submitted briefs. Webers trial date is pending. His most serious charges, five counts of aggravated sexual abuse, carry a sentence of 30 years to life in prison for each count. PIERRE | The South Dakota Supreme Court said Thursday that Christopher Martin knew he illegally possessed a controlled drug when a Rapid City police officer arrested Martin on Sept. 15, 2015, with 23 oxycodone pills in his pocket. The officer found an abandoned vehicle that Martin, of Rapid City, reported stolen. When Martin arrived at the vehicles location, the officer arrested Martin on an outstanding warrant. During the arrest search, officer Eric Holmquist found the opioids, as well as ten $100 bills and a combination of smaller denominations. The oxycodone tablets were wrapped in cigarette-pack cellophane. Martin later told a police detective that a woman he knew had dropped the drugs in a pickup truck he was driving and he picked them up without knowing what they were. The woman, however, said Martin rode a motorcycle to her house. She had a prescription for oxycodone. She was on probation for attempting to obtain more oxycodone by calling in a renewal. She denied giving or selling the oxycodone found on Martin. She had given Martin a key to her home. A Pennington County jury convicted Martin. Circuit Judge Wally Eklund denied Martins motions for acquittal. Martin acknowledged in his appeal that he possessed the drugs but argued the evidence wasnt sufficient to prove he knew he possessed oxycodone. The Supreme Courts five justices unanimously affirmed Martins conviction. When viewed cumulatively and taken in a light most favorable to the jurys verdict, there was sufficient evidence and inferences therefrom for a rational jury to have found that Martin knew the pills he possessed were a controlled substance, Justice Steven Zinter wrote. DANGEROUS DRUGS Police arrested Natalie Rich, 32, of Butte, at 10 a.m. Wednesday for possession of dangerous drugs, obstructing justice and an out-of-jurisdiction warrant, all felonies, and for one misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. Police were assisting parole and probation officers in the 1200 block of south Montana Street and during a search, said they found about 1.6 grams of methamphetamine and needles. When officers arrived, Rich gave a false name, according to police. MISDEMEANOR FORGERY Police arrested Tamara Forward, 27, of Butte, at about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday for forgery and criminal contempt, both misdemeanors. Forward allegedly tried to cash a check for $1,775 at Walmart. The check aroused suspicion because it reportedly had several erasures and alterations. When confronted, Forward fled the store but police found her at Front and Utah, they said. Police also found a warrant for her arrest for criminal contempt. AGGRAVATED DUI Police arrested Cody Keller, 20, of Butte, at 4:48 a.m. Thursday for two misdemeanors: aggravated DUI and careless driving. Keller allegedly struck a guard rail at Shields and Second and a Breathalyzer test indicated he was double the legal limit for alcohol. FIRST OFFENSE DUI Police arrested Key Klungland, 24, of Butte, at 2 a.m. Thursday at Park and Montana for DUI per se, which is a lesser count if the incident is a first offense, and also was stopped for failure to have lights on. Both are misdemeanors. Officers said they noticed Klungland driving without headlights on Park Street, pulled him over and gave him a Breathalyzer test. DRUG PARAPHERNALIA During a parole and probation search of Paul Giot, 39, of Butte, at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the 500 block of South Colorado Street for possession of drug paraphernalia because officers found a glass pipe, scales and syringes, they said. FOUND WITH SYRINGE Police booked Lindsey Kindt, 34, of Butte, for possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor, at about 7:40 p.m. Wednesday. Officers said they found Kindt sitting in her car stopped in the middle of Silver Bow Boulevard and Monroe. Police said they found a syringe on Kindt. The Daly Mansion will be filled with high-quality homemade and handcrafted goods this weekend during the annual Holly Jolly Craft Show and Sale. is Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Nov. 3-5The Mansion will be filled with high quality homemade and handcrafted goods featuring 38 crafters and artisans. The craft show and sale, which runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 3-5, features 38 crafters and artisans selected by a blind jury, according to April Westberry, mansion event coordinator. For the Holly Jolly, items have to be hand crafted, Westberry said. It cant be a direct sales company or something mass produced. Guests are supporting local artists and the items are more personal because they are unique. Westberry said this year has some new vendors. There is a vendor doing soaps and lotions she sent very nice samples, Westberry said. Another gal makes sticks for self-massage and Kimono table runners with beautiful oriental flowers. Vendors are selling jewelry, jams, The Art of Good Food, Ugly Bunny baked goods, quilting, knitting, wonderful creations and wooden toys. Those are very nice childrens toys like a tool set and a choo-choo train, Westberry said. The Holly Jolly is a fun start to the holiday season with mansion decorations - like the tall fir tree and banister along the curved stair case with copper themed decorations - to honor Copper King Marcus Daly. We have the Montana A Cappella Society from 1 to 2 p.m. on Saturday to spread some holiday cheer, Westberry said. Mansion volunteers are serving lunch and offering pasties, taco soup and chicken sandwiches, in Hatties Kitchen. They have produced crafts that will also be for sale in the volunteer boutique. Darlene Gould, executive director, said the Holly Jolly was started nearly 17 years ago and featured used goods. We held it in the basement and sold gently used Christmas decorations, Gould said. We have definitely grown bigger and better. We fill the whole house we do keep a few rooms out just so we have some place to put all the furniture. Westberry said 600 to 900 shoppers usually support the sale. Holly Jolly hours are noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $3 to enter the mansion and children 12 and younger are free. After Nov. 6, the Daly Mansion is open for tours by appointment with 24-hour advance notice. 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Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Chile 1978 - A father, and agent of Pinochets regime, forces his son to participate in the interrogation and torture of a political prisoner. Chile 2011 - Four women, sisters Andrea (Catalina Martin) and Camila (Macarena Carrere), their cousin Magdalena (Dominga Bofill) and Camilas girlfriend Julia (Ximena del Solar) head into the country to a family cabin for a couple days of drinks and sun. On their way they stop by a local drinking hole for directions. Eyes linger a little too long and some of the locals get too close when Juan (Daniel Antivilo), the local tyrant, intercedes. The women clear out and head up to the cottage. The drinks start flowing and Camila and Julia start fooling around with Magdalena when they discover that Juan is looking in on the party from the outside. He and his son, Mario (Felipe Rios), force their way into the cottage, then viciously terrorize and assault the women in a savage and deadly attack, raping and beating them to near death. The terror continues into the next day when the local constabulary get involved and Juan kidnaps a local child and takes her back to his trap ladened fortress. If you make it past the prologue (Chile 1978) then you may stand a chance of making it all the way through Lucio Rojas brutal and shattering horror film, Trauma. It fires an opening volley so fierce youre left soul searching only minutes into the picture. The connection is made fairly early on that Juan is the boy in the prologue, and that Juans father was no better to him than he was to his victims of the oppressive regime. Indoctrinated, brainwashed, forced to do heinous things, Juan carries on his fathers brutal legacy decades after the Pinochet regime has collapsed and has been terrorizing the locals in the area. We can see that he has been doing to same to his son, Mario, who looks to be following in his fathers footsteps now. The quickest comparison we can make to give you an idea of the brutal violence and explicit content that awaits viewers of Trauma is to say that it is on the same level as A Serbian Film. That film was also incredibly violent and graphic and tried to speak on a social level about Serbian culture. To what effect that the intended message came across is purely subjective to the viewer, if they could find it through all the brutal and sexual violence. Unlike ASF the condemnation message in Trauma is more overt. You know that Rojas is speaking of the history and effects of the military coup in Chile. He has it plastered on the walls along with the blood and brains. There is no denying that Rojas does not think much of the dictatorship that terrorized his country over those years. Juans link to his father and those time is presented many times throughout the film, news clippings in his fortress, flashbacks to Juan's indoctrination during the first years of the dictatorship, and goes as far as Juan singing an old military song in the climax as the survivors of his vicious assault attempt to rescue the local girl. Thematically we believe there are two things that viewers will pick up on. If you are familiar enough with the military dictatorship era in Chile and know of the Human Rights violations and atrocities that occurred over just longer than a quarter of a century you will relate to that. For the rest of us, boy oh boy, does it have something to say about the sins of the fathers to their sons. Then to their sons. Then to their sons. Trauma is easily one of the most brutal, graphic and disturbing horror films to have been made in recent memory. The physical and sexual assaults by Juan and Mario in the early goings are savage; Rojas does not hold back in his depiction of its brutality. During the Q&A following the screening the cast and Rojas revealed that the four leads insisted that Rojas go all in or not at all, lest the message in the film not get across. They filmed the assault/rape scene over three days. One of the actresses cried for the following two days. When the film is not near sexually explicit it is shockingly gory. Sometimes it is both at the same time. Yes, Trauma goes there. Martin leads the four actresses portraying strength and resilience. Carrere emulates her sisters strength by insisting they go after Juan, after being victimized and assaulted, and rescue the girl. Bohill is naive and fragile, giving us our the saddest and most heart breaking victim in many ways. Del Solar taps into her alt model career to provide enticement and an alluring target for Juan and Mario, the unintended spark to this raging inferno. Then there is Daniel Antivilo who perfectly portrays Juan, raised to be a vicious bastard and thinks that he does no wrong. A character who still believes that the principles of the regime must live on with his efforts. He must believe that he is truly untouchable. Antivilio was asked to play the devil and even the devil must tip his hat to this gentleman for giving us one of the most terrible villains of the year. I will admit that there is a point in the story, nearing the final act, when the let's-give-guns-to-everyone approach to detaining of, and retaliation against Juan comes across a bit silly. The first time this happens is just savage and brutal. I also understand that Rojas has to keep his primary quartet involved in the story and the action but you just sense that he is sending in his lambs to the slaughter. However, Rojas and Trauma may also be suggesting that everyone, no matter what state of readiness they find themselves, broken by or having lost someone to the brutality of the regime, they must still stand up to its legacy of tyranny. Trauma is without a doubt one of the most savage and brutal horror films to debut in the recent era. Complete with violence that is physical and sexual in nature in can hardly be dismissed as exploitative as director Lucio Rojas takes shot after shot at a military regime that devastated his homeland for more than a quarter of a century. I cannot say, due to the nature of the violence, that this is required viewing. I was quite surprised at the resilience of the audience during its world premiere as I only saw one walk out. Filmmakers before us have given us an idea what an oppressive regime is capable of committing against its own people. Few, like Lucio Rojas, have given us reason to fight back against them. Opioid Crisis Commission advocates expanded federal drug court programs and lots of other (mostly public health) stuff | Main | With notable advocates, former Gov Blagojevich bringing notable sentencing issue to SCOTUS November 2, 2017 Is Prez Trump making a capital prosecution for NYC terror killer harder with his death penalty tweets? The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new Guardian article, headlined "Trump's 'alarming' death penalty call threatens suspect's chance of fair trial, experts warn." And that article was prompted by this series of tweets by Prez Trump this morning: Prez Trump tweet around midnight on 11/2: "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Prez Trump tweets around 8am on 11/2: "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system... ...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" I welcome all sorts of comments from all sorts of litigators about whether and how they think these tweets might impact the federal prosecution of Sayfullo Saipov for mowing down people in NYC. Prior related posts: November 2, 2017 at 04:00 PM | Permalink Comments Well, at least he didn't toss in "mowing down" in that tweet. Posted by: Joe | Nov 2, 2017 4:16:28 PM How can there be anymore prejudice than from the demands of the terrorist for ISIS flags in his hospital room? How can it get worse than his only regret, that he could not kill more. And, you lawyer morons need to explain why there would not be a fast track to the death penalty? When one of yours got it, Abraham Lincoln, we had a fast to the death penalty, not just for the shooter, but for all his collaborators. They found and dead in a month. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 4:19:12 PM Behar, go back into your cave. Posted by: Emily | Nov 2, 2017 4:27:40 PM Trump is the chief law enforcement officer of the land (he takes an oath to "take care" that the laws are faithfully executed). In a series of statements, he would have a permanent resident taken to Gitmo (he has since changed his mind) he has called our criminal justice system a "laughing stock"; and he has repeatedly called for the death penalty to be imposed even before the defendant has been tried much less convicted. Trump's impulsive tweets have handed defense lawyers powerful arguments, one of which is that the potential jury pool is irreparably tainted. As a remedy, a federal judge (with life tenure) could well take the death penalty off the table, an ironic result indeed. Posted by: Michael R. Levine | Nov 2, 2017 4:31:45 PM @Professor Levine Well, a federal judge could take the DP off the table. He/she could also do 100 jumping jacks naked. The question is what is a federal judge likely to do and there is no reasonable basis for a federal judge to take the DP off the table for some idle tweets, even those coming from the POTUS. Trump has a right to his opinion. If a judge goes off their rocker because of a series of tweets the judiciary is the laughing stock Trump claims it is. What happened to the adage that "a kind word turns away wrath"? Sometimes Trump's critics go out of their way to prove that they are just as prone to irrational knee-jerk reactions as he is. Posted by: Daniel | Nov 2, 2017 4:50:57 PM @Doug You fail to link to the Guardian article you mention in the opening sentence of your post. Posted by: Daniel | Nov 2, 2017 4:53:21 PM As noted in a comment below in a related post, judges will take the death penalty off the table if the prosecutorial misconduct is sufficiently egregious. Having the chief law enforcement officer of the country calling our criminal justice system a "laughing stock" and repeatedly tweeting to 60 million folks or so that death should be imposed could do the trick. As noted below, in a case with entirely different facts, a judge did take the death penalty off the table. Judge Removes Death Penalty Option in Murder Case Because of Law Enforcement Cheating R. Scott Moxley | August 18, 2017 | 10:20am Saying it would be "unconscionable perhaps even cowardly" to ignore Orange County law enforcement's "chronic" corruption exposed during a controversial murder case, Superior Court Judge Thomas M. Goethals today removed the death penalty as a punishment option, prompting gasps in a packed Santa Ana courtroom. "This court finds that [Tony Rackauckas' Orange County District Attorney's office and Sandra Hutchens' sheriff department] are unwilling or unable to comply with lawfully issued orders," Goethals said during a 38-minute hearing in People v. Scott Dekraai where he repeatedly spoke about the importance of the rule of law in the criminal justice system. Related Stories Posted by: Ted | Nov 2, 2017 4:59:22 PM Hi, Micahel. As stated before, any judge misuse loppholes or lawyer gotchas must be impeached by the Congress, then run out of the country. Zero tolerance for disloyalty to our country, especially by Harvard Law School radicalized judges. I have, in the past, proposed a black list of lawyer traitors. All service and product providers would be required to deny that judge services. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 5:00:51 PM Until he does ... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/02/new-york-attack-suspect-death-penalty-trump Trump isn't some Joe-Smoe here. Trump is the chief law enforcement officer of the land. So, I'm not sure if the judiciary is going to take as much of a laissez faire attitude as Daniel desires. This is not just a matter of "should" but what the rules are deemed to be. Depending on the judge, unlike nudity, a special celebrity case like this, one where quite truthfully it is harder to guard against illegitimate bias as is, could decide such statements poisoned the well, at least in respect to capital sentencing. Anyway, local examples are out there for those in the business, I'm sure, and they can provide examples of how local judges handled something comparable. Posted by: Joe | Nov 2, 2017 5:02:09 PM British authorities ruling Palestine hanged several members of the underground Zionist Irgun organization in the 1940s following their conviction on charge of bombing and other violent attacks. Menachem Begin, former Irgun leader and later Prime Minister of Israel, reportedly told a former British Government minister that the executions had galvanized his group, which subsequently hanged several British soldier in retaliation. Menachem Begin said the hangings got us the recruits that we wanted, and made us more efficient and dedicated to the cause you were not sentencing our terrorists to death, you were sentencing a lot of your own people, and we decided how many Amnesty International When the State Kills, 1989 ACT 51/07/1989 p. 19 Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Nov 2, 2017 5:04:06 PM Hi, Emily. Are you a licensed lawyer? I am not going to get your URL, nor report you. I am just curious. You seem frustrated. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 5:09:06 PM Apologies for leaving out the link to the Guardian article when I had to scurry off to class. I have the link now, and I look forward to hearing continued perspective on what Trump's tweeting could mean. Posted by: Doug B. | Nov 2, 2017 5:52:53 PM "Trump isn't some Joe-Smoe here. Trump is the chief law enforcement officer of the land."he President, Well sure. He is also the President, he is also the commander and chief of the military, and about a dozens hats as well. "Elizabeth II, Dei Gratia Britanniarum Regnorumque Suorum Ceterorum Regina, Consortionis Populorum Princeps, Fidei Defensor" So on any given utterance which of these hats should we interpret the words of the Queen of England? The problem here isn't who Trump is or what role he fills. The problem is rather than exercising good will certain kinds of people put the worst possible construction of his remarks. Why? because these days everything is ammunition and so any hope of communal understanding goes out the window. Posted by: Daniel | Nov 2, 2017 6:48:40 PM Claudio. You make an excellent point. When it comes to the Middle East, people cannot be deterred. They can only be eradicated. That is why in the Bible, written by a bunch of Palestinian and Iraqi assholes, they kill everything in a conquered land, down to the last kitten. Why take a risk? The kitten might back later and carry out a thar (vendetta in Italian). Those assholes talked their way into plunging us into a 1000 years of the Dark Ages. It is the Romans who were the civilized good guys. They were on the verge of making the discoveries of the Renaissance, also led by Italians. Can you imagine if were 1000 years ahead today, because the Middle Eastern assholes had not fooled the Romans into accepting their bullshit. You may say, that was long ago. Hell, no. Those assholes are still radicalizing our Harvard Law students, making them accept their Middle Eastern bullshit, via the catechism. Those assholes still control the American legal system, 2000 years across time. This legal system is just about the very worst in the world. And the lawyers that radicalized this way have been made into the very stupidest people in our country, stupider than Life Skills students learning to eat w ith a spoon. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 8:36:34 PM "The problem is rather than exercising good will certain kinds of people put the worst possible construction of his remarks." Or, his remarks are objectively bad, so bad that even those who are allies have trouble defending them. And, since he has a special role, one he took an oath to uphold, Trump cannot just blithely vent. He doesn't, nor does your average prosecutor, just get to opine like someone at the corner bar or something about this defendant. Those are the rules in place. Weren't just invented recently or something. If you don't like them, it's fine. Posted by: Joe | Nov 2, 2017 8:51:01 PM Joe. That was really stupid, even for you. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 9:56:46 PM Those who really think that death penalty can stop terrorist attacks or make them decrease, are naive people or dreamers. Usual punishments, death penalty included, don't provoke any fear within terrorists or political criminals, who are ideologically motivated and devoted to sacrifice for love of their cause [...]. Besides, terrorist activities are dangerous and the terrorist faces letal risks every day, so he isn't frightened by immediate death. How could he be discouraged by the risk of being sentenced to death? Professor Ezzat A. Fattah, Simon Fraser University Canada Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Nov 3, 2017 10:00:29 AM Regardless of how bad Trump's comments are (which is almost a necessary precursor on any topic to any discussion of any of Trump's comments), the question is whether the comments preclude sitting a fair jury. I am not sure that any one politiican's comments on one occasion would meet that test. Some poetential jurors will be biased by those comments, but the majority will not. Posted by: tmm | Nov 3, 2017 10:46:21 AM "any one politician's comments" tmm's bottom line very well might be correct but this trivializes things. This isn't "one politician," as if some local congress person was involved. I would be interested to know what would happen if a local DA made such comments. This cannot be totally academic. It surely happened that some local DA made comments of this nature and defense attorneys claimed bias. Or, a local mayor or big picture, governor. Posted by: Joe | Nov 3, 2017 11:04:24 AM ETA: Mayor probably would be less on point, if they are not in charge of prosecutions. Posted by: Joe | Nov 3, 2017 11:05:37 AM I see that the military judge in the Bergdahl trial dishonorably discharged him, but gave him no prison time. I have no doubt that draft-dodger Trump's (and the other right wing, arm-chair warriors) repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor who should be executed played a part in this independent judge's thinking. So, President Trump keep up your inane tweeting. Posted by: Ted | Nov 3, 2017 12:58:10 PM I'm not sure how much of a part. An Army investigator early on recommended no prison time. Posted by: Joe | Nov 3, 2017 1:44:35 PM Post a comment Lots more impressive work in Teen Vogue's "Kids Incarcerated" series | Main | Is Prez Trump making a capital prosecution for NYC terror killer harder with his death penalty tweets? November 2, 2017 Opioid Crisis Commission advocates expanded federal drug court programs and lots of other (mostly public health) stuff Prez Trump's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis issued this big final report yesterday, and the heart of the report's themes and recommendations are usefully summarized in this extended letter to Prez Trump penned by Commission Chair Chris Christie. This article in The Hill, headlined "Trump opioid commission backs more drug courts, media blitz," provides this even tighter summary, including the one recommendation that may be of focused interest and concern for sentencing fans: President Trumps opioid commission laid out 56 recommendations for how the nation should combat the epidemic, including drug courts and a national media campaign, days after the crisis was declared a national public health emergency. Members voted to approve the report, which was due Nov. 1, at the end of a meeting on Wednesday. The commission didnt weigh in on the specific amount of money needed to combat the health crisis. President Trump's declaration of a public health emergency, which doesn't free up millions of dollars in extra cash, sparked calls for more funding by Democrats and advocacy groups. But the report calls on Congress to determine the funding required.... Advocacy groups argue a robust infusion of federal dollars is needed to combat the epidemic of prescription painkiller and heroin overdose deaths plaguing the nation. Without more money, they say, the emergency declaration wont make a significant dent in the crisis. The public health emergency fund doesnt have much left about $57,000. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who helms the commission, predicted Trump will initially ask for billions of dollars to deal with this.... Here are some of the commissions recommendations: A coordinated system: The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) should create a system to track all federally funded initiatives and invest only in effective programs. We are operating blindly today; ONDCP must establish a system of tracking and accountability, the report notes. A media campaign: The White House should fund and collaborate on a multiplatform media campaign, and the commission noted a similar one occurred during the AIDS public health crisis. It should address the hazards of substance use, the danger of opioids, and stigma. Opioid prescribing: The Department of Health and Human Services should develop a national curriculum and standard of care on prescribing prescription painkillers. It should supplement previous guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Improve prescription drug monitoring programs. The Department of Justice should fund and create a hub to share data on prescribing and dispensing. Fentanyl: The commission wants to enhance sentencing for trafficking of this potent synthetic opioid. November 2, 2017 at 03:44 PM | Permalink Comments I am going to first warn the DEA, then I want to go after it in the International Court, for their crime against humanity. If I am found all shot by cops, for taking out my wallet to show ID, with their mistaking it for a gun, you will know the reason why. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 5:12:22 PM The report demonstrates an extremely unsophisticated understanding of drug courts generally, and further, given that not a single one of the existing front-end federal drug courts has been evaluated, it seems premature to be recommending them for all districts. Posted by: Christine Scott-Hayward | Nov 2, 2017 11:04:37 PM As punishment has declined, and treatment has increased, the bodies have piled up. Thank the Harvard Law radicalized lawyer for the high pile of bodies. Alcohol use was punished in Vietnam. Opiates were overlooked. The rate of opiate addition was 15% among our soldiers. They return to the US, where opiate use is punished, alcohol use is advertised. The rare of opiate use drops 95%. The opiate users are very similar to non-military opiate users. Punishment is effective in addiction. So naturally the Harvard Law radicalized lawyer goes on a jihad against punishment. Posted by: David Behar | Nov 2, 2017 11:26:40 PM Post a comment We know you dont always watch the little news video reports we embed in these posts, but you really ought to watch the CBS 5 report above on homeowners scamming the system and renting out Below Market Rate housing units illegally. Get away! Get! Get! Get away! shouts one woman as she is busted at a residence other than the one she was granted by San Franciscos Below Market Rate (BMR) Ownership Program. Stop recording. Im going to call my attorney right now, says another, found in Redwood City though she rents out her BMR condo at the Embarcadero. The illegal renting of BMR units has long been a problem, and CBS 5s Susie Steimle does some fantastic journalist pounding of the pavement to find several homeowners whod been awarded low-cost BMR housing, but were advertising these units as rentals on Airbnb and Craigslist in violation of the law. The Get away! Get! Get! Get away! lady is Margarita Popova, whose BMR condo was advertised on Craigslist for $3,100 a month. But CBS 5 found her at her home in the avenues, at which neighbors confirmed shes lived for years. In the tony Redwood City suburb of Emerald Hills, they found Caroline Novak owner of a BMR condo at the Embarcadero. I am just staying here, for a couple days, Novak told CBS 5. Even the despised and sinking Millennium Tower pops up in this report! Not because a BMR on that property is being illegally rented (to our knowledge), but because Millennium Tower resident Amy Gussin has her BMR program-awarded condo on New Montgomery Street available on Airbnb for $149 a night. Gussin owns additional properties in New York, Beijing, and Los Angeles, so youve got to wonder how she qualified for this program. City Attorney Dennis Herrera is currently prosecuting three cases of BMR homes being illegally rented out, and served notices of complaint to the three named in CBS 5s reporting. The mayors Office of Housing and Community Development says they're investigating roughly of these 40 cases citywide. Perhaps the most notorious of these is the case of Greg Garver, who bought a BMR unit at the SOMA Grand for $221,698 in 2008. Hes alleged to have rented the place illegally for $2,400 a month, then attempted to increase the rent last year to $18,000 a month (!!!) before moving in himself, then moving back out and renting it again. In his prosecution of this case, Dennis Herrera also noted, Garvers dogs would lunge at other residents, and on at least two occasions, video footage captured Garver training the dogs in the hallway of the building to attack and bite an associate. CBS 5 notes that the only way most of these affordable housing scofflaws are caught is when neighbors report them. Maybe thats why Garver was training the dogs to attack. Related: Middle Class Screwed In Current S.F. Housing Market With the Northern California wildfires now 100% contained as of Tuesday, the investigation into how it began and how much damage it's caused has begun in earnest. According to a report from the AP, insurance claims for damages caused by the fires now total over $3.3 billion, a threefold increase from the original estimate of $1 billion. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued a statement on the claims, saying that they expect that total to rise in the coming weeks. He wrote: "As shocking as $3 billion in insured losses are, the number is sure to grow, as more claims are coming. The insured losses only tell part of the tragic story of the October fires. We must remember that 43 people lost their lives and behind every insurance claim is someone who has lost their home, their business, and their precious memories. It will take years for these communities to recover and rebuild." NBC Bay Area broke down the damage wrought by the six fires, reporting that over 8,000 structures were destroyed over the course of the past few weeks. 70% of those structures (or 6,190) were residential buildings and homes, with the rest being outbuildings such as detached garages and the like. The Tubbs fire alone destroyed over 4,600 residences, and ended up consuming over 36,800 acres of land. Cal Fire is also continuing its investigation into who or what is to blame for the fire, with their sights currently set on some downed PG&E power lines. The power company is also conducting its own internal investigation, and has already submitted numerous reports to the California Public Utilities Commission about the damages they've discovered as a part of that search. According to the Chron's breakdown of the reports, PG&E said they found that over 1,500 power poles were damaged or destroyed one week after the fires began. In at least two reports, they say that falling trees also took down a few power lines in Kenwood and near Grass Valley in Nevada County. Elsewhere, the pets who were left with and rescued by workers at pet shelters are still awaiting the return of their families. CBS reports that a few volunteers have set up a Facebook page to share pictures and listings of rescued animals. Monica Argenti, the Community Engagement Manager for Sonoma County Animal Services, said, "We still have quite a few animals that we are trying to get back to their families." You might also notice that many of the animals listed on the rescue page are cats. CBS spoke with a veterinarian, Dr. Kate McKencie, who told them that dogs tend to run towards their owners/families in times of crisis, whereas cats tend to run away. If you're still searching for your pet, definitely check the Sonoma & Napa Fires Missing and Found Pets Facebook group to see if your loved one is listed there. They also warn families to look very carefully, as these rescues could look a little different, given that they just survived a massive wildfire. Related: Amid Wildfire Tragedy, Tales Of Animal Resilience And Rescue Abound Accordingly, passengers who buy a ticket in economy class will save up to 30 percent on the second ticket; and get 50 percent off on the third ticket in the same class. The cheap fare must be for the same route departing from now until March 31, 2018. Vietnam Airlines has operated 1-2 flights on Vietnam-Malaysia route, 5 flights on Vietnam-Singapore route and 6 flights on Vietnam-Thailand everyday. By BICH QUYEN Translated by Kim Khanh ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa | A Spencer, Iowa, man has been arrested and charged with having sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl on at least three separate occasions. Lawrence Bauer, 28, was arrested Tuesday in Lyon County and faces nine counts of third-degree sexual abuse, three counts of indecent contact with a child and one count of enticing a minor. He remains in the Lyon County Jail on a $100,000 bond. The Lyon County Sheriff's Office received a report of sexual abuse on Aug. 31. According to court documents, the subsequent investigation revealed that Bauer talked with the girl for at least a month via cellular devices with applications such as Snapchat. Within a week or two, the conversations became sexual in nature. In July and August, Bauer met the girl three times. Each time, they went to a rural location where Bauer had sex with the girl and performed other sexual acts with her, court documents said. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Spencer Police Department assisted in the investigation. SIOUX CITY | Northwest Iowa's Sam Clovis, a former top official in Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been questioned in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 campaign, according to media reports. Clovis, who now is a White House aide to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified last week before a grand jury seated in Washington, D.C., NBC News first reported Wednesday. Clovis, a former Morningside College professor and Sioux City radio talk show host, was propelled into the middle of Mueller's high-stakes probe on Monday with the unsealing of court documents related a guilty pleading by George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos, who was secretly arrested in July for lying to the FYI and pleaded guilty last month to those charges, is cooperating with Mueller's investigation, according to the documents. As national campaign co-chair and senior policy advisor of the Trump campaign, Clovis was asked to form a national security advisory committee charged by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. The members included Papadopoulos, who was not approached by the campaign for consultation, other than one meeting he attended in March 2016, Victoria Toensing, the attorney for Clovis, said in a statement to the Journal. In his plea filing, Papadopolous admitted he told Trump and other top campaign national security officials during the March 31 meeting that he had contact with intermediaries for Russia who said they could set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos continued to email campaign officials about a possible meeting with individuals claiming to work for the Russian government who were offering "dirt" in the form of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In an August 2016 email, among the court documents uncovered Monday, Clovis urged Papadopoulos to "make the trip, if it is feasible." To Clovis' knowledge, Toensing said in the statement, all of Papadopoulos' communications with the campaign were "self-generated." Clovis never told Papadopoulos that "a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia," because that was not Clovis' view of Trump's foreign policies priorities, Toensing said. She added that Clovis "always vigorous opposed" any Russian trip for Trump or staff. If a volunteer made that suggestion, Clovis, "a polite gentleman from Iowa, would have expressed courtesy and appreciation," Toensing said. "There was a strict campaign rule that no one could travel abroad and claim to be representing or speaking on behalf of the campaign," the statement said. "If someone proposed foreign travel in a personal capacity, Dr. Clovis would have had no authority to prohibit such travel." Clovis, who taught economics at Morningside, has been nominated by Trump as the top scientist with the USDA, but his nomination has been vigorously opposed by many Democrats, environmental groups and some ag interests. Critics argue he does not have sufficient academic qualifications for the position and has made past statements that question whether climate change is man made. Clovis scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee on Nov. 9. In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the agriculture committee, said it's too early to know if Clovis' role in the Mueller investigation will affect his nomination to the USDA post. Grassley noted that Clovis also is cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee's own investigation into Russian interference in the election. Grassley said emails supplied by the Trump campaign show Papadopoulos offered to travel to several countries to meet with Russian officials but never to make a trip to Moscow, as some news organizations have reported, he said. Editor's note: Changes an earlier version of this story that misstated Clovis' reported interaction with Robert Mueller's investigation and grand jury. SIOUX CITY | Sioux City has named a current Siouxland Paramedics command officer as the future director of the city's EMS division. The announcement comes as the city is steeped in the process of hiring 27 full-time equivalent positions before the end of the year to form the brand-new division, which will take over in-town 911 services from Siouxland Paramedics beginning Jan. 1. Sioux City Fire Rescue Chief Tom Everett told the Journal the city has hired Jim Haden, a veteran with Siouxland Paramedics, to head the new city division. Siouxland Paramedics, a 37-year-old nonprofit ambulance service, informed the city in mid-August that it would no longer offer 911 services in Sioux City or North Sioux City after the year's end, prompting the City Council in mid-September to vote 3-1 to take over ambulance services in Sioux City limits as a civilian division under Sioux City Fire Rescue. Under current plans, the city will place ambulances staffed by two EMTs apiece at fire stations 1, 3 and 4 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and at stations 3 and 4 from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Backup ambulances will sit at stations 5, 7 and 8, The plan will mean approximately $600,000 in additional expenses for the city, according to estimates. There could also be additional start-up costs. Everett said various purchases for the new division will come before the City Council in coming weeks. Everett said 16 people applied from the top position. Haden brings 29 years of experience, including experience as an accreditation coordinator. "I understood that meant he was familiar with all the different aspects of their organization, but also the ambulance business in general," Everett said. Haden will begin Jan. 1 on a full-time basis and is currently assisting with the transition process. His salary will be $75,000. Everett said oral exams were held Tuesday for the second-in-command compliance officer, as well as for four lead medics, which will be in charge of each shift. Oral exams for other positions will come Wednesday and Thursday, Everett said. He said it will likely be December before the department has everyone fully in place. About 50 percent of the people applying for positions are current Siouxland Paramedics employees, Everett said. The City Council voted to prioritize those employees when staffing its EMS division. "I've held three or four employee update meetings with those employees over there, and my sense is that the majority of them that live within our 10-mile radius in Iowa are going through our process," Everett said. Siouxland Paramedics announced earlier this week it plans to retain about 15 to 20 of its paramedics to continue providing non-emergency transports between medical care facilities. Between the new city division and those retained jobs, Siouxland Paramedics leadership has said none of the 57 full- or part-time employees willing to make the transition should lose a job. Sioux City, which owns all of Siouxland Paramedics' current ambulances, will use those vehicles for the city's EMS division. Everett said his understanding is that Siouxland Paramedics will need to acquire its own ambulances to continue its operations. Everett said the goal of the transition team, comprised of Sioux City Fire Rescue and Siouxland Paramedics representatives, is that Sioux City residents will not notice a difference in service when the city takes over. He said while the transition has been fit into a tight window, it is progressing smoothly. "I actually feel that we're -- and I'm knocking on wood here -- but we're kind of one step in front of it," he said. "It seems like things are where they need to be, if not just a little bit ahead of where I thought they might be. That being said, we really can't afford any hiccups." September 1949: Clovis is born and later raised in Medora, Kansas. 1970s: Clovis was nominated to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado and became a fighter pilot. He retired from the Air Force after 25 years, as a colonel in 1996. 2005: He moved onto Morningside College in Sioux City, becoming chairman of the Business Administration and Economics Department in 2005. 2009: Clovis begins his Sioux City talk show, Impact with Sam Clovis, on KSCJ-AM. He lives in Hinton, Iowa, during this time. 2013: Clovis launches his first run for elective office, joining a wide field of Republicans running for the U.S. Senate seat. Summer 2014: Clovis does not win the Republican primary election for the U.S. Senate, but is nominated for the state treasurer post. November 2014: Clovis loses treasurer election. August 2015: Clovis shifts from being a paid staffer for Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry to working for Donald Trump. He becomes a national campaign co-chairman for Trump's team. January 2017: Trump is inaugurated as president, Clovis is appointed senior White House adviser to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Summer 2017: Clovis is nominated as undersecretary for the department's Research, Education and Economics division, a post considered the department's top scientist. Thursday: After reports Clovis has been questioned in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 campaign, he withdraws his nomination to the Department of Agriculture post. SIOUX CITY -- With the holiday's approaching, Bon-Ton Store Inc. are adding FAO Schwarz toy brands to its 186 department stores including Younkers in Sioux City. Established in 1862, FAO Schwarz is known for its unique whimsical toys, cuddly plush stuffed animals and fun imaginative games. Some of the toys that will be available include The Piano Mat made famous by Tom Hanks in the film "Big," a motorized train set, retro remote controlled bumper cars, a British bomber drone and more. To celebrate the launch, parents and kids can join in the fun at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Younkers store in Southern Hills Mall. The first 25 children at each location will receive a special gift and have the opportunity to participate in the official FAO Schwarz ribbon cutting and photo opportunity. Guests visiting the FAO Schwarz toy department can also participate in an Instagram photo contest by snapping a photo or selfie with their favorite FAO toy or stuffed animal and tagging the photo with #returntowonder and #bontonstyle. Photos posted between Oct. 26 through Dec. 9 will be entered for the chance to win one of three FAO Schwarz prize packages, including the grand prize package that includes an 8-foot oversized giraffe. As the growing conflict over mental health services in Woodbury County moves forward, we urge involved leaders to not lose sight of the fact individuals and families with consequential needs are caught in the middle of all the squabbling. The longer this drags on without a final solution, the more uncomfortable their positions become. As we have observed this dispute unfold over the last several months, we have been troubled by a gnawing feeling the dialogue is driven too much by contentious relationships between decision-makers and not enough by what's best for those affected by their decisions who seek these important services. The result, we fear, is a rush to an-as-yet-uncertain outcome from which there will be no going back. With that as a backdrop, we offer these thoughts on what, unfortunately, is a mess: - We want and we believe constituents should want members of the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors to ask questions about how county services are delivered, including mental health services, and how county tax dollars are spent. In our minds, vigilance to identification of opportunities for improvement, whatever the issue, is something all of us should expect of elected leaders. To these ends, we support a discussion of mental health services aimed at answering this question: Is Woodbury County providing such services in the most beneficial, cost-effective way possible? - We believe the 3-2 vote on Oct. 3 by the Board of Supervisors to withdraw Woodbury County from Sioux Rivers Regional Mental Health and Disability Services was premature because no replacement plan exists. Woodbury County should have had a replacement plan in place and should have made a convincing case to the public for the replacement plan before voting to pull out of Sioux Rivers. In our view, the Woodbury County board should reconsider - at least for the time being - its decision to withdraw from Sioux Rivers to allow more time for discussion of Sioux Rivers membership and, if necessary, study of alternatives. - Having said that, Woodbury County should be allowed to withdraw from Sioux Rivers if it wishes. On Monday, the Sioux Rivers board voted 2-1 to prevent Woodbury County from withdrawal, creating the potential for legal action by Woodbury County. On the other hand, it isn't clear to us why a majority of the Woodbury County board wants to dissolve Sioux Rivers altogether. Why is the future of Sioux Rivers a concern of Woodbury County supervisors if Woodbury County withdraws? We suggest a compromise: If Woodbury County insists on withdrawal, today or tomorrow, the Sioux Rivers board shouldn't stand in the way. In return, Woodbury County supervisors should abandon their push for dissolving Sioux Rivers. - Before this dispute reaches the point of no return (if it hasn't already), however, we urge those involved on all sides to put whatever happened in the past in the past, turn down the temperature of dialogue, refocus this conversation in more productive fashion and give the spirit of compromise every opportunity for success. We're not convinced that's happened to this point. Individuals and families in need deserve nothing less. As a resident of Sioux City for 60 years and a longtime neighbor of Doug Waples, I would like to tell the people of Sioux City who Doug Waples is. He is a responsible and honest man who is running for City Council. He also has two qualities I feel are very scarce today in our world - he is a good listener and he cares. The crowd of tourists had dispersed from the siapo making fale at the S.T.A. Cultural Village. However just a few hung around to admire the art form that is siapo. Dear Tourist met Fernando of Chile who was still undecided about which design he would buy, Although Fernando is a native of Chile he has been living in New Zealand for the last couple of years and had always wanted to visit Samoa. He had heard stories from his brother so when he got the opportunity he and some friends decided to come for a visit my brother and his girlfriend came here two years ago so they told me it was a beautiful place for a holiday and that I should come here. Fernando said, When I first arrived about 10 days ago, I thought it was very beautiful and the people were very warm very good people. He and his friends travelled around the whole of Upolu hitting all the hot spots and for him the beaches were his favourite and compared Samoa to one island off the coast of Chile. I went around the whole island and got to spend time on the beaches, and all of them were very beautiful. I hope that I can come back again to Samoa because I would like to. Its my first time to any Pacific Island, although I have been to Easter Island and even though its smaller, its very similar and its beautiful. Having spent most of his day at the Cultural village Fernando discovered so many interesting things about our culture that he will take back with him to New Zealand and he couldnt wait to tell his friends and family about his trip but for now the hardest part was choosing which siapo prints he would take back as souvenirs. 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. In less than one year, the Wells Fargo at Five Points has been robbed three times, including twice in the span of just one month 11/02/2016, 09/07/2017, and 10/09/2017. The latest robbery of the branch occurred on Oct. 9 at 2:21 p.m. According to a statement released by the FBI, The robber entered the bank and demanded money from a bank employee. There were no injuries. The amount of money taken will not be released at this time. Now, Wells Fargo is taking additional security measures. A Broward Sheriffs Office Deputy was stationed inside the branch and an employee said a deputy would be in the branch at least until a new bullet proof glass shield could be placed between the bank tellers and customers. If anyone has information as to the identity of the bank robber they are urged to call the FBI at 754-703-2000 or Crimestoppers at 954-493-8477. Crime Stoppers is offering a $3,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest. Here are the latest briefs from around Wilton Manors! City reduces permit fees Residents and business owners who sustained damage during Hurricane Irma can qualify for a reduction of 25 percent of the cost of permit fees. The fees are related to fencing, windows, doors, existing shed replacement, and re-roofs. Documentation of hurricane damage must be provided and the city will determine if a reduction is warranted. The reduction is valid until Jan. 31, 2018. Fees not eligible for the reduction are the Board of Rules & Appeals Fee, Educational Fee, Florida Building Permit Surcharge, Florida Building Code Administrators & Inspection Fund, and Technology Access Fee. Island City University Residents who would like to learn more about how city government and the police department work can join the Island City University Class of 2018. During this six-week course, students will learn about the various departments that help run the city. The nightly sessions will begin in late March. The deadline to apply is Jan. 29. For more information, call 954-390-2123 or 954-390-2128. Parking lot construction Construction of the citys newest parking lot is underway. Located at Northeast 11 Avenue and Northeast 23 Drive behind Bona Pizza, the lot was purchased by the city to create more parking. When finished in an estimated 90 to 120 days, the lot will have 23 spaces. Before construction began, the unpaved lot was already being used for parking. Alternative paid parking is available at the adjacent city lot at 2309 N. Dixie Hwy. daily from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. 5th Annual Hawai'i Festival Authentic hula performances, live island music, Polynesian vendors, aloha grill Hawaiian barbecue, games for children and more will be part of the 5th Annual Hawai'i Festival on Saturday, Nov. 4 from 3 to 7 p.m. at Mickel Park, 2675 NW 7 Ave., Wilton Manors. Attendees can bring lawn chairs and blankets. Additional parking will be available at St. Clement Church, 225 NW 29th St., with shuttle vans running every 15 minutes. Admission is free. Island City Painters The opening reception of The Island City Painters exhibit will be held on Saturday, Nov. 4 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Art Gallery 21, 600 NE 21 Ct., Wilton Manors. The free event will feature a chance to meet the artists: Rosemary Lisa Boyd, Monika Hurter, Barbara Pardon, Angie Riserbato, and Aviva Sasson. The exhibit will be open to the public until Nov. 25. Visit artgallery21.org for more information. Greenland NASA New maps of Greenlands coastal seafloor and bedrock beneath its massive ice sheet show that two to four times as many coastal glaciers are at risk of accelerated melting as previously thought. Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), NASA and 30 other institutions have published the most comprehensive, accurate and high-resolution relief maps ever made of Greenlands bedrock and coastal seafloor. Among the many data sources incorporated into the new maps are data from NASAs Ocean Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign. Lead author Mathieu Morlighem of UCI had demonstrated in an earlier paper that data from OMGs survey of the shape and depth, or bathymetry, of the seafloor in Greenlands fjords improved scientists understanding not only of the coastline, but of the inland bedrock beneath glaciers that flow into the ocean. Thats because the bathymetry where a glacier meets the ocean limits the possibilities for the shape of bedrock farther upstream. The nearer to the shoreline, the more valuable the bathymetry data are for understanding on-shore topography, Morlighem said. What made OMG unique compared to other campaigns is that they got right into the fjords, as close as possible to the glacier fronts. Thats a big help for bedrock mapping. Additionally, the OMG campaign surveyed large sections of the Greenland coast for the first time ever. In fjords for which there are no data, its difficult to estimate how deep the glaciers extend below sea level. The OMG data are only one of many datasets Morlighem and his team used in the ice sheet mapper, which is named BedMachine. Another comprehensive source is NASAs Operation IceBridge airborne surveys. IceBridge measures the ice sheet thickness directly along a planes flight path. This creates a set of long, narrow strips of data rather than a complete map of the ice sheet. Besides NASA, nearly 40 other international collaborators also contributed various types of survey data on different parts of Greenland. No survey, not even OMG, covers every glacier on Greenlands long, convoluted coastline. To infer the bed topography in sparsely studied areas, BedMachine averages between existing data points using physical principles such as the conservation of mass. The new maps reveal that two to four times more oceanfront glaciers extend deeper than 600 feet (200 meters) below sea level than earlier maps showed. Thats bad news, because the top 600 feet of water around Greenland comes from the Arctic and is relatively cold. The water below it comes from farther south and is 6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) warmer than the water above. Deeper-seated glaciers are exposed to this warmer water, which melts them more rapidly. Morlighems team used the maps to refine their estimate of Greenlands total volume of ice and its potential to add to global sea level rise, if the ice were to melt completely which is not expected to occur within the next few hundred years. The new estimate is higher by 2.76 inches (7 centimeters) for a total of 24.34 feet (7.42 meters). OMG Principal Investigator Josh Willis of JPL, who was not involved in producing the maps, said, These results suggest that Greenlands ice is more threatened by changing climate than we had anticipated. On Oct. 23, the five-year OMG campaign completed its second annual set of airborne surveys to measure, for the first time, the amount that warm water around the island is contributing to the loss of the Greenland ice sheet. Besides the one-time bathymetry survey, OMG is collecting annual measurements of the changing height of the ice sheet and the ocean temperature and salinity in more than 200 fjord locations. Morlighem looks forward to improving BedMachines maps with data from the airborne surveys. The maps and related research are in a paper titled BedMachine v3: Complete bed topography and ocean bathymetry mapping of Greenland from multi-beam echo sounding combined with mass conservation in Geophysical Research Letters. Extrasolar planet NASA Beneath an elegant office building with a Spanish-style red tiled roof in Pasadena, California, three timeworn storerooms safeguard more than a century of astronomy. Down the stairs and to the right is a basement of wonder. There are countless wooden drawers and boxes, stacked floor to ceiling, with telescope plates, sunspot drawings and other records. A faint ammonia-like smell, reminiscent of old film, fills the air. Guarding one storeroom is a short black door with a sign saying This door to be kept closed. Additional imagery Carnegie Observatories hosts 250,000 photographic plates taken at Mount Wilson, Palomar and Las Campanas observatories, spanning more than 100 years. In their heydays, the Mount Wilson 60-inch and 100-inch telescopes the bigger saw its first light on Nov. 1, 1917 were the most powerful instruments of their kind. Each indelibly changed humanitys understanding of our place in the cosmos. But these technological marvels were ahead of their time in one case, capturing signs of distant worlds that wouldnt be recognized for a century. Mount Wilson is the site where some of the key discoveries about our galaxy and universe were made in the early 20th century. This is where Edwin Hubble realized that the Milky Way cannot be the extent of our universe, because Andromeda (or M31) is farther away than the most distant reaches of our galaxy. The photographic plate from the 100-inch Hooker Telescope from 1923, which captured this monumental realization, is blown up as a huge poster outside the Carnegie storerooms. Hubble and Milton Humason, whose Mount Wilson career began as a janitor, worked together to explore the expanding nature of the universe. Using the legendary telescopes, as well as data from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, they recognized that clusters of galaxies are traveling away from each other and the more distant galaxies move away from each other at greater speeds. But there is a far lesser known, 100-year-old discovery from Mount Wilson, one that was unidentified and unappreciated until recently. Its actually: The first evidence of exoplanets. A detective story It started with Ben Zuckerman, professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was preparing a talk about the compositions of planets and smaller rocky bodies outside our solar system for a July 2014 symposium at the invitation of Jay Farihi, whom he had helped supervise when Farihi was a graduate student at UCLA. Farihi had suggested that Zuckerman talk about the pollution of white dwarfs, which are dim, dense remnants of stars similar to the Sun that have exhausted their nuclear fuel and blown off their outer layers. By pollution, astronomers mean heavy elements invading the photospheres the outer atmospheres of these stars. The thing is, all those extra elements shouldnt be there the strong gravity of the white dwarf should pull the elements into the stars interior, and out of sight. The first polluted white dwarf identified is called van Maanens Star (or van Maanen 2 in the scientific literature), after its discoverer Adriaan van Maanen. Van Maanen found this object in 1917 by spotting its subtle motion relative to other stars between 1914 and 1917. Astronomer Walter Sydney Adams, who would later become director of Mount Wilson, captured the spectrum a chemical fingerprint of van Maanens Star on a small glass plate using Mount Wilsons 60-inch telescope. Adams interpreted the spectrum to be of an F-type star, presumably based on the presence and strength of calcium and other heavy-element absorption features, with a temperature somewhat higher than our Sun. In 1919, van Maanen called it a very faint star. Today, we know that van Maanens Star, which is about 14 light-years away, is the closest white dwarf to Earth that is not part of a binary system. This star is an icon, Farihi said recently. It is the first of its type. Its really the proto-prototype. While preparing his talk, Zuckerman had what he later called a true eureka moment. Van Maanens Star, unbeknownst to the astronomers who studied it in 1917 and those who thought about it for decades after, must be the first observational evidence that exoplanets exist. What does this have to do with exoplanets? Heavy elements in the stars outermost layer could not have been produced inside the star, because they would immediately sink due to the white dwarfs intense gravitational field. As more white dwarfs with heavy elements in their photospheres were discovered in the 20th century, scientists came to believe that the exotic materials must have come from the interstellar medium in other words, elements floating in the space between the stars. But in 1987, more than 70 years after the Mount Wilson spectrum of van Maanens Star, Zuckerman and his colleague Eric Becklin reported an excess of infrared light around a white dwarf, which they thought might come from a faint failed star called a brown dwarf. This was, in 1990, interpreted to be a hot, dusty disk orbiting a white dwarf. By the early 2000s, a new theory of polluted white dwarfs had emerged: Exoplanets could push small rocky bodies toward the star, whose powerful gravity would pulverize them into dust. That dust, containing heavy elements from the torn-apart body, would then fall on the star. The bottom line is: if youre an asteroid or comet, you cant just change your address. You need something to move you, Farihi said. By far, the greatest candidates are planets to do that. NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope has been instrumental in expanding the field of polluted white dwarfs orbited by hot, dusty disks. Since launch in 2004, Spitzer has confirmed about 40 of these special stars. Another space telescope, NASAs Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, also detected a handful, bringing the total up to about four dozen known today. Because these objects are so faint, infrared light is crucial to identifying them. We cant measure the exact amount of infrared light coming from these objects using telescopes on the ground, Farihi said. Spitzer, specifically, just burst this wide open. Supporting the new dusty disk theory of polluted white dwarfs, in 2007, Zuckerman and colleagues published observations of a white dwarf atmosphere with 17 elements materials similar to those found in the Earth-Moon system. (The late UCLA professor Michael Jura, who made crucial contributions to the study of polluted white dwarfs, was part of this team.) This was further evidence that at least one small, rocky body or even a planet had been torn apart by the gravity of a white dwarf. Scientists now generally agree that a single white dwarf star with heavy elements in its spectrum likely has at least one rocky debris belt the remnants of bodies that collided violently and never formed planets and probably at least one major planet. So, heavy elements that happened to be floating in the interstellar medium could not account for the observations. About 90 years after van Maanens discovery, astronomers said, Whoa, this interstellar accretion model cant possibly be right,' Zuckerman said. Chasing the spectrum Inspired by Zuckerman, Farihi became enamored with the idea that someone had taken a spectrum with the first evidence of exoplanets in 1917, and that a record must exist of that observation. I got my teeth in the question and I wouldnt let go, he said. Farihi reached out to the Carnegie Observatories, which owns the Mount Wilson telescopes and safeguards their archives. Carnegie Director John Mulchaey put volunteer Dan Kohne on the case. Kohne dug through the archives and, two days later, Mulchaey sent Farihi an image of the spectrum. I cant say I was shocked, frankly, but I was pleasantly blown out of my seat to see that the signature was there, and could be seen even with the human eye, Farihi said. The spectrum of van Maanens Star that Farihi had requested is now located in a small archival sleeve, labeled with the handwritten date 1917 Oct 24 and a modern yellow sticky note: possibly 1st record of an exoplanet. Cynthia Hunt, an astronomer who serves as chair of Carnegies history committee, took the glass plate out of the envelope and placed it onto a viewer that lit it up. The spectrum itself just about 1/6th of an inch, or a bit over 0.4 centimeters. Though the plate seems unremarkable at first glance, Farihi saw two obvious fangs representing dips in the spectrum. To him, this was the smoking gun: Two absorption lines from the same calcium ion, meaning there were heavy elements in the photosphere of the white dwarf indicating it likely has at least one exoplanet. He wrote about it in 2016 in New Astronomy Reviews. Exoplanets and debris disks Scientists have long thought the gravity of giant planets could be keeping debris belts in place, especially in young planetary systems. A recent study in The Astrophysical Journal showed that young stars with disks of dust and debris are more likely to have giant planets orbiting at great distance from their parent star than those without disks. A white dwarf is not a young star on the contrary, it forms when a low-to-medium-mass star has already burned all of the fuel in its interior. But the principle is the same: The gravitational pull of giant exoplanets could throw small, rocky bodies into the white dwarfs. Our own Sun will become a red giant in about 5 billion years, expanding so much it may even swallow Earth before it blows off its outer layers and becomes a white dwarf. At that point, Jupiters large gravitational influence may be more disruptive to the asteroid belt, flinging objects toward our much-dimmer Sun. This kind of scenario could explain the heavy elements at van Maanens Star. Spitzers observations of van Maanens Star have not found any planets there so far. In fact, to date, no exoplanets have been confirmed orbiting white dwarfs, although one does have an object thought to be a massive planet. Other compelling evidence has emerged just in the last couple of years. Using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, scientists, including Zuckerman, recently announced that they had found evidence of a Kuiper-Belt-like object having been eaten by a white dwarf. Scientists are still exploring polluted white dwarfs and looking for the exoplanets they may host. About 30 percent of all white dwarfs we know about are polluted, but their debris disks are harder to spot. Jura put forward that with lots of asteroids coming in and colliding with debris, dust may be converted into gas, which would not have the same highly detectable infrared signal as dust. Farihi was thrilled about how his Mount Wilson archive detective work turned out. In 2016, he described the historical find in the context of a review paper about polluted white dwarfs, arguing that white dwarfs are compelling targets for exoplanetary system research. Who knows what other overlooked treasures await discovery in the archives of great observatories the sky-watching records of a cosmos rich in subtlety. Surely, other clues will be found by those motivated by curiosity who ask the right questions. Its personal interaction with data that can really spur us to get invested in the questions that were asking, Farihi said. Mars Closeup NASA Color-discerning capabilities that NASAs Curiosity rover has been using on Mars since 2012 are proving particularly helpful on a mountainside ridge the rover is now climbing. These capabilities go beyond the thousands of full-color images Curiosity takes every year: The rover can look at Mars with special filters helpful for identifying some minerals, and also with a spectrometer that sorts light into thousands of wavelengths, extending beyond visible-light colors into infrared and ultraviolet. These observations aid decisions about where to drive and investigations of chosen targets. One of these methods for discerning targets colors uses the Mast Camera (Mastcam); the other uses the Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam). Each of the Mastcams two eyes one telephoto and one wider angle has several science filters that can be changed from one image to the next to assess how brightly a rock reflects light of specific colors. By design, some of the filters are for diagnostic wavelengths that certain minerals absorb, rather than reflect. Hematite, one iron-oxide mineral detectable with Mastcams science filters, is a mineral of prime interest as the rover examines Vera Rubin Ridge. Were in an area where this capability of Curiosity has a chance to shine, said Abigail Fraeman of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who leads planning for the missions investigation of Vera Rubin Ridge. This ridge on lower Mount Sharp became a planned destination for Curiosity before the rover landed five years ago. Spectrometer observations from orbit revealed hematite here. Most hematite forms in the presence of water, and the mission focuses on clues about wet environments in Mars ancient past. It found evidence during the first year after landing that some ancient Martian environments offered conditions favorable for life. As the mission continues, it is studying how those conditions varied and changed. Curiositys ChemCam is best known for zapping rocks with a laser to identify chemical elements in them, but it also can examine targets near and far without use of the laser. It does this by measuring sunlight reflected by the targets in thousands of wavelengths. Some patterns in this spectral data can identify hematite or other minerals. The colors of the rocks on the ridge are more interesting and more variable than what we saw earlier in Curiositys traverse, said science team member Jeffrey Johnson of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. He uses both Mastcam and ChemCam data for analyzing rocks. Hematite occurs at sufficiently small grain sizes in rocks found at this part of Mars to preferentially absorb some wavelengths of green light. This gives it a purplish tint in standard color images from Curiosity, due to more reflection of redder and bluer light than reflection of the green wavelengths. The additional color-discerning capabilities of Mastcam and ChemCam show hematite even more clearly. Johnson said, Were using these multi-spectral and hyper-spectral capabilities for examining rocks right in front of the rover and also for reconnaissance looking ahead to help with choosing where to drive for closer inspection. For example, a false-color Sept. 12 panorama combining Mastcam images taken through three special filters provided a map of where hematite could be seen in a region a few days drive away. The hematite is most apparent in zones around fractured bedrock. The team drove Curiosity to a site in that scene to check the possible link between fracture zones and hematite. Investigation with Mastcam, ChemCam and other tools, including a camera and brush on the rovers arm, revealed that hematite is also in bedrock farther from the fractures once an obscuring layer of tan dust is brushed away. The dust doesnt coat the fractured rock as thoroughly. That finding suggests that dust and fractures cause the hematite to appear more patchy than it actually is. If the hematite is broadly distributed, its origin likely was early, rather than in a later period of fluids moving through fractures in the rock. As we approached the ridge and now as were climbing it, weve been trying to tie what was detected from orbit to what we can learn on the ground, said Curiosity science team member Danika Wellington of Arizona State University, Tempe. Its still very much a work in progress. The extent to which iron-bearing minerals here are oxidized relates to the history of interactions between water and rock. The U.S. Department of Energys Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES). Mastcam was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built the projects Curiosity rover. For more information about Curiosity, visit: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl We can't seem to find the page you are looking for. You may have typed the address incorrectly or you may have used an outdated link. Stop me if youve heard this one before. JAB Holding Company is rumored to have interest in buying a coffee company. Word on the street (the Grub Street) is that the privately owned Germany investment company is looking to acquire Dunkin Donuts. Thats right, the gajillionaires who own Peets, Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Keurig, Caribou, and a handful of European chains have their eyes set on what American Runs On. Who cares? Dunkins Donuts is a donut company, I hear you saying. Oh contraire, mon frere; the company has toyed with dropping the Donuts from their nameand has even done so at select locationsbecause donuts are only their second best selling item. Can you guess what the first is? If purchased, JAB would add 11,300 stores to their already robust list of breakfast-serving locations thanks to the previous acquisition of both Krispy Kreme and Einstein Bros Bagels. At this point, if youre at a chain in America that serves coffee and isnt Starbucks, theres a pretty good chance its owned by JAB. But who knows, maybe this consolidation of power will lend some good things. Maybe we could start seeing Stumptown or Intelligentsia show up at Dunkin. Im not opposed to a high elevation Yirg and a donut. Or maybe, you know, our new coffee overlords will put us all on strict rations. Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge. Theres a cafe scene in Cedric Klapischs cult coming-of-age film Le Peril Jeune where we see five high school friends hunkered around a table, razzing each other. At one point, the bartender shouts that theyd better order something or get out, to which Romain Duris character replies, Give us a coffee with five straws. We thought it was the perfect name, says Egemen Tavsanci, co-founder of 5 Pailles (Five Straws) cafe, which opened in January in Pariss 10th arrondissement. One cafe, five friends, he says, referring to Klapsichs movie and 5 Pailles origin story. He and friends Bengisu Gunes, Can Atalay, Caglar Alpertunga, and Ezgi Senturk, all perched high on corporate ladders, decided to drop everything a year and a half ago to open a cafe. We hated the coffee in Paris, so we thought, why dont we open our own coffee shop? he says. The transition was a big one, admits Tavsanci. We went from the top of corporate life to the bottom of the service industry. Currently, 5 Pailles sources 50 percent of its beans from Paris-based Lomi. We asked [them] to do tailored roasts for us. We prefer more fruity-tasting coffee as opposed to the dark roast Paris likes, Tavsanci explains. In addition to having a solid roasting partner year-round, 5 Pailles works with a variety of guest roasters to keep things fresh and interesting for customers. When I stopped in, Bonanzas Kenya Kainamui was being featured; it made for a great iced pour-over on an unbearably hot day in the city. While none of the original five straws had any experience in coffee, they knew someone who did: Ismet Emre Eralp, a Turkish barista who originally trained as a chemist. On my visit, he was taking advantage of a lull in traffic to work on his AeroPress process in view of the upcoming French competition. [My background as a chemist] helped me to understand extraction principles and to develop espresso products, he tells me, eyes riveted on an electronic scale. According to Emre Eralp, career options for young scientists in Turkey are limited; so instead of settling for what he describes as a copy-paste job, he decided to do something I love for the rest of my life. After stints at Cup of Joy and Kronotrop, he got the call to come to Paris. I needed to go forward for my own development. If a project inspires you, you should listen to yourself, he tells me. Part of what inspired Emre Eralp to join the 5 Pailles team is the enthusiasm of its founders for good coffee and service, as well as their desire to give the cafe a slightly different raison detre. 5 Pailles namesake movie has an undercurrent of rebellion, which Tavsanci and his peers identify with in more ways than one. You will never find a banana bread here, he says emphatically, gesturing to a pastry case full of moist cinnamon coffee buns, limoncello basil cake, and gingerbread with red fruits. And pastry mediocrity isnt the only thing the 5 Pailles team is rebelling against. A former marketing director for a major pharmaceutical company, Tavsanci has taken a hard line against waste, and is bursting with ideas to make his cafe as socially and environmentally responsible as possible. As we talk about whats next for the cafe, he lists a number of initiatives already or soon to be in place: sweet and savory fare is made fresh daily in the onsite kitchen, and nothing is thrown out; theres at least one vegan and gluten-free option daily; in addition to using minimal packagingsalads are served in liter canning jarsthe cafe also donates 10 cents of every coffee purchased to Eau Vive, an international organization focused on improving access to potable drinking water and supporting local development initiatives in African countries. Eyes bright, Tavsanci tells me about another idea to grow mushrooms using coffee grounds. We are responsible for this world, he says, excited at the hope 5 Pailles will serve as an inspiration for more cafes in Paris to join them in environmental stewardship. You have to be first, and others will follow. Kate Robinson (@KateOnTheLoose) is a freelance journalist based in Paris. Read more Kate Robinson on Sprudge. Voltina went from the agony of defeat to the thrill of victory in a short span in winning the $9,500 Fillies and Mares Open Pace at Batavia Downs on Wednesday (November 1). On a rain-soaked night over a deteriorating track, Voltina (Kevin Cummings) got away second behind Classy Lane Rose (Drew Monti), who shot to the front by the eighth pole. The abbreviated field of five then followed the leader to a pedestrian half of :59.2 before anyone made a move. Who Says That (Ray Fisher, Jr.) was the one to pull and challenge past the grandstand, but her attempt failed before three-quarters as Voltina upped the tempo to :28.3 and she faded out of the picture. When the race spiraled off the turn, Classy Lane Rose pulled out and paced alongside Voltina before getting a slight advantage just before the wire. But just as soon as she gained the lead, Classy Lane Rose took a bad step and Monti had to gather her up, and that split-second adjustment allowed Voltina to retake the front right at the finish line and win by a head in 1:56.3. The sixth win of the year for Voltina ($7.10), along with finishing in the money in 21 out of 39 starts this year, has put $58,146 in the bank for owner CHS Racing, LLC. Anthony Cummings trains the seven-year-old daughter of Allamerican Native. Larry Stalbaum, Ray Fisher, Jr. and Billy Davis, Jr. all had driving triples on Wednesdays card while North Americas leading percentage trainer Kim Asher sent three of her students to the winners enclosure. With the nights three wins, Stalbaum has now taken the lead in the Batavia Downs dash driving competition with 90 wins for the meet. Previous leader Drew Monti has now slipped to a second-place tie with Ray Fisher, Jr., both sporting 89 victories. The battle for steering supremacy will continue for 19 more nights of racing before a champion can be crowned. Racing resumes at Batavia Downs on Friday evening (November 3) with first post at 6:00 p.m. (Eastern). (Batavia Downs) Put up $100,000, says the sports leading trainer, Ron Burke, and youll get a lot of good horses. Such is the case with Sundays $100,000 Potomac Pace. The second running of historic Rosecrofts signature event drew many of the best aged pacers in North America Thursday including Burkes defending champion All Bets Off, Breeders Crown champion Split The House, Levy Series champion and Ben Franklin victor Keystone Velocity, and William Haughton Memorial winner Mach It So. If that wasnt enough, the Potomac will also bring together Mel Mara, Boston Red Rocks, Wakizashi Hanover, Dealt A Winner and Bit Of A Legend N. The Potomac boasts three of the top six aged earners this year and three of the first four finishers from last weekends Breeders Crown. The track record of 1:48.2 - set in 2007 by Nuclear Breeze and equaled last year when All Bets Off edged Split The House by a nose - could be in jeopardy. Its a speed-favouring track. You can be aggressive on that track, Burke said. Last year the track was lightning fast, said Rene Allard, trainer of last years fourth-place finisher Keystone Velocity, and I expect it will be the same this year. Keystone Velocity drew the rail for Sundays race, inside All Bets Off. Breeders Crown Aged Pacer winner Split The House has the nine post. The Potomac Pace was created just two years ago shortly after The Stronach Group, owners of Rosecroft, purchased the historic Standardbred track from Penn National Gaming. Were extremely excited about Sundays second running of the Potomac Pace, said Sal Sinatra, President and General Manager of the Maryland Jockey Club. To have the field of pacers we have in this race, a race in only its second season, is truly remarkable. Obviously, this race couldnt grow without the support of horsemen throughout North America and the great Standardbred breeders and owners in Maryland. Were committed to showcasing the best of Standardbred and Thoroughbred racing in Maryland and were thrilled to showcase some of the greatest pacers in the sport here Sunday evening. Racing secretary Peter Hanley has done a great job putting this race together and were looking forward to another great evening at Rosecroft. (with files from Rosecroft) It has been announced that the land in which a potential Quarter Horse racetrack in Kentucky would be situated on has been sold to the group that is heading the venture. News of the proposed raceway was first unveiled in September, as Churchill Downs Incorporated and Keeneland Association, Inc. announced a historic partnership to propose the construction of two new state-of-the-art racing facilities, one of which would be in Corbin. On Tuesday (October 31), Willow Creek Farms, LLC closed on the 149 acres of land that it had under option with the Tri-County Joint Industrial Development Authority, according to an article by The Outlook. Commenting on the closure of the deal, Keeneland Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Vince Gabbert stated, "We were able to close on our option. We have the option in place on the land for quite some time and we actually closed on the property. We're the proud owners of 149 acres in Corbin now." There are currently two racing licences available in the state, but neither has been earmarked for the proposed raceways as of yet. Churchill and Keeneland officials have been working with the commission in regard to securing the licences. "We've not gotten anything definitive from the Horse Racing Commission (regarding a racing licence), said Gabbert. We continue to work with them on a timeline, but don't have anything definitive from them." The Churchill and Keeneland officials got the property rezoned in October, much to the delight of Corbin Economic Development Agency Executive Director Bruce Carpenter. "We're very excited to see things continue to move forward, said Carpenter. This is a positive sign that we are close. (With files from The Outlook) Standardbred Canada President and CEO, Dan Gall, along with Board Director, Maurice Stewart, of Alberta, travelled to Parliament Hill to discuss issues of concern to Standardbred Canada members. At the CFA (Canadian Federation of Agriculture) Lobby Day, I think we had seven different meetings between the two of us, and 42 different meetings with 10 different groups (consisting of Canadian Federation of Agriculture board directors) from across the country, Gall said. We talked to government members, opposition members from both parties NDP and Conservatives and talked to some senators as well. It was a really good opportunity to spend time in front of the politicians. (Left to Right) Reint-Jan Dykstra (CFA Director), Ben Lobb (Member of Parliament, Huron and member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food), Dan Gall (President & CEO, SC) Many of the discussions revolved around proposed tax reforms. A lot of it was clarity on the tax reforms and the need for consistency as it relates to the classification of horses being deemed farm animals rather than companion animals, and we discussed Section 31 (of the Income Tax Act) restricted farm losses to enhance owner investment, said Gall. Overall, we are cautiously optimistic that the government heard our concerns and we were invited back by some of the politicians to provide further information as to the issue around the farm animal classification of the horse. I think they recognized the concerns about the proposed tax reforms and having all CFA directors sending the same message to government is important and needed to ensure our message was being heard. Standardbred Canada plans to meet with national horse associations in the future and work with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture on developing an ongoing strategy to continue to work with government. Terror in New York City: Billy Graham Rapid Response Team Chaplains Offer Comfort Following Deadly Attack Contact: Erik Ogren, 704-401-2117, eogren@bgea.org CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 2, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains are on the ground in New York City following Tuesday's terror attack that resulted in eight deaths and injured several others before the assailant was shot and apprehended by authorities. The attack is being called the deadliest in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. "When we see terror attacks and the murder of innocent people, the pain, fear and sorrow are deep. Mourners will work through many different emotions over the coming days as they seek answers to very difficult questions," said Jack Munday, international director of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. "Our chaplains will stand alongside them to listen and offer the hope and comfort of Jesus in these dark days." Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is asking for prayer. "Pray for those wounded and the eight families who have tragically lost loved ones in this act of terror." The deployment in New York City is the latest in a series of terror- and shooting-related deployments for the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team this year. Thus far they have offered the hope of Christ following attacks in Quebec, Canada; Manchester, England; London, England (multiple times); and Barcelona, Spain. The ministry just completed its efforts following the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, which killed 58 people. The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team continues to work in areas affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. Chaplains are also in Santa Rosa, Calif., in response to deadly wildfires. For more information on the ministry, including videos, photos, news articles and an interactive map of former and current deployments, visit www.billygraham.org/rrt. Updates can also be found at www.facebook.com/RRTChaplains. About the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team: The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team was developed by Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It has since grown into an international network of chaplains in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia who are specifically trained to deal with crisis situations. They have deployed to more than 270 disaster sites, including shootings, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. Evangelist Alveda King Continues King Legacy Series with New GG'S COOKBOOK Contact: Leslie Palma,732-757-9087ATLANTA, Nov. 2, 2017 / Standard Newswire / -- Why is Alveda King writing a cookbook? Who even knew she could cook? Does anybody care? In 2015 Evangelist King, prolife civil rights activist and Christian minister released KING RULES, her second print release in a series of "King Family Legacy" books. Her first legacy book SONS OF THUNDER: KING FAMILY LEGACY was written in the 1990s and was considered by some to be "controversial." In 2016, King released AMERICA RETURN TO GOD which continues with narratives of how her relationship to the bloodline of her famous uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ties in with her work in the 21st century.In 2017, the "creative evangelist" continues her "legacy assignment" with the soon to be released KING TRUTHS . Added to the series is something King considers to be "lighter fare" in the form of her new cookbook, GG'S HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS COOKBOOK which is currently available online as an e-book. Print copies should be available mid-November.Along with publishing books, King includes writing and singing original music and producing film contributions in her "arsenal." She also produces children's books and artistic projects for her "flock of millennial and post millennial mentees.""Having been born into the bloodline of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I take the role and responsibility of being a guardian to the King Family Legacy very seriously. My parents, Rev. A. D. King and Mrs. Naomi Ruth Barber King, assisted by my grandparents Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Mrs. Alberta Williams King instilled in me the importance of putting God, family and community first in my lifetime agenda," says King. "Here in 2017 the perfect opportunity to combine our family legacy of faith, hope, love and hospitality with solutions to the critical problems of our day just seemed too good to pass up." satisfied reader penned this review, "This cookbook makes you feel like you're in the kitchen with Alveda King (daughter of A.D. King and Naomi King and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and her family. I'm not much of a cook but I'm going to try some of these recipes. I enjoyed the QR codes (for videos) that allow you to get to know the King Family like never before. My granddaughter enjoyed the videos as much, if not more, than I did."King is Founder of Alveda King Ministries and Director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life. She uses her "God given gifts and talents to glorify God in the earth." In GG's Cookbook, her new culinary offerings are being served up during the holidays; "just in time to bring love and reconciliation to the tables around the world." Listen to the voices nobody wanted to hear. Read the words of those whose painstaking work as part of the 1919 King-Crane Commission, national treatises and general assemblies were shelved in dusty oblivion just after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference by which time the fate of the Middle East had already been determined, Arab public opinion notwithstanding. The Commission recognized that definite encouragement had been given to the the Zionists by the Allies in Mr. Balfours often quoted statement, in its approval by other representatives of the Allies (my italics). If, however, the strict terms of the Balfour Statement are adhered toit can hardly be doubted thatthe extreme Zionist Program must greatly be modified. For a national home for the Jewish people is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such a Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The fact came out repeatedly in the Commissions conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase. An American decision to send over a commission to determine public opinion in Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq and the Levant) was designed to have included Great Britain, France, and Italy. All three countries backed out, led by the British whose leadership like that of France had no intention of taking into consideration the will of the nations they had long since agreed to divvy up and colonize. The King Crane Commission was therefore deemed by some a fools mission as it set out to discover what the indigenous peoples of the Middle East actually desired. Indeed it was, for President Wilson, who authorized it, had already promised the American Jewish Committee that the Balfour Declaration was a fait accomplit. The four Allied powers of the First World War had already accepted, however informally, Lord Arthur Balfours Declaration of 1917. A great deal was learned, nevertheless, by Charles R Crane, a Chicago Businessman, and Henry Churchill King, former president of Oberlin College, both of whom along with their entourage had extensive knowledge of the Middle East. Their mission began in May and lasted until the end of July 1919, about the time the Paris Peace Conference was wrapping up. The recommendations of the commission, had they not been immediately shelved, might possibly have inspired less unjust futures for the newly liberated lands of the former Ottoman Empire. As it was, the King-Crane Commission played a role in stirring up nascent feelings of Arab nationalism throughout Syria which then included both Lebanon and Palestine. It did little to calm the fears of those who rightly suspected what the colonial powers had in store for them. [If] the wishes of Palestines population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine nearly nine-tenths of the whole are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine were more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violationof the peoples rights The King-Crane Commission might have brought to a Western audience concerns of Arab peoples long expressed by those people themselves had it not been immediately suppressed. Along with sermons read in mosques during Friday prayers, political and cultural associations and the headmen of villages and towns helped distribute nationalist flyers and leaflets demanding such radical ideas as freedom and independence. One such example appears below: Let no one mislead you into betraying the land of your grandfathers, or your children and grandchildren will curse you. Live free! Liberate yourself from the yoke of oppression. Seek your own benefit and make your demands These demands included independence without restriction for greater Syria and other Arab lands, no partition of the land, clear boundaries, no mandates (colonial trusteeships as set out in article 22 of the League of Nations) and no recognition of the claims by any state of historic or preponderant rights in our land. (from The Arabs, p. 159; E. Rogan) Later on, at the Syrian General Congress on July 2nd, 1919, only the demand for a united Syria and full independence from colonial powers had more support than the complete rejection of Zionism. The Balfour Declaration was unequivocally rejected for the Nth time by popular opinion. [Article 7] We reject the claims of Zionists for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in that part of southern Syria which is known as Palestine and we are opposed to Jewish immigration into any part of the country. We do not acknowledge that they have a title, and we regard their claims as a grave menace to our national, political and economic life. Our Jewish fellow-citizens shall continue to enjoy the rights and to bear the responsibilities which are ours in common. Importantly, during their three month stay, the commissioners collected 1350 petitions, not unlike petitions circulated today, in which 72% were directed against the Zionist program. These petitions, from present day Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, covered a range of topics unsolicited by the commissioners. In effect, the King-Crane commission was one of the first modern public opinion polls in which 3% of a widely represented population from notables, laborers, merchants, peasants, women and students participated. The strength of these sentiments caused many of those initially sympathetic to the Zionist cause to change their minds. It must be believed that the precise meaning of the complete Jewish occupation of Palestine has not been fully sensed by those who urge theZionist program. For it would intensify, with a certainly like fate, anti-Jewish feeling both in Palestine and in all other portions of the world which look to Palestine as The Holy Land. This would become true in the Islamic world, above all, where Israel came to be identified with the western colonial powers that created it. Its creation had been predicted and cautioned against as well, by the King-Cranes commissioners as they questioned both indigenous peoples and British soldiers stationed in the region. The peace conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force not less than fifty thousand soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine and Syria. For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a right to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered. Obviously, Balfour and many of his compatriots chose to think otherwise, never having bothered to seek the opinions of the peoples into whose lands their countries would soon be intruding in one way or another. His are words that exude imperial superiority; of a man who has never questioned his nations right to dominate other peoples lands: [I]n Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country The four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. Chaim Weizmann, a biochemist whose production of acetone benefitted the British during the First World War, was president of the Zionist Organization at the time of the King-Crane Commission. He was well connected to the British political elites yet was nonetheless eager to make a good impression on the Commissioners as well as on other groups of people at the time. On June 18th, 1919, Weizmann asked Balfour to pass a message along that would reach the American King-Crane Commission. He wanted this message to be presented with firmness, moderation, and dignity, much like the presentation he had given at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919. At the same time, Weizmann outlined an ambitious program for the development of the Jewish Program, with provision for immigration, settling of Jewish soldiers, and external assistance. Both Weizmann and Sir Herbert Samuel [became 1st High Commissioner in Palestine in 1920] complained of the attitude of British military authorities. This would not be the first time that Zionist activists were cautioned to tone down their vision for an-Arab free Palestine when coming into contact with people attempting to make more informed decisions. Were the findings of the King-Crane Commission a complete waste of time? Especially amid later rumors that outside powers, including the French, British, and Zionist Organization had moved to suppress its findings for a number of years? Given the latter point, the Commissions findings must have been considered a potential threat both to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, that initially carved up the Middle East into spheres of influence in a secret agreement in 1916 as well as to the Balfour Declaration, in which land not yet conquered by the British was promised to a people, for the most part, who didnt live there. Either way, neither the British general public nor its counterparts in other western nations ever had access to the commissions findings. It is therefore unlikely the King-Crane Commission ever posed a real threat to the politics of empire, not only because their actions so rarely take into account the best interests of their peoples. It is more likely the King-Crane Commission had no effect on the outcome of the Balfour Declaration because its contents were kept far away from public opinion at a time when a collective reaction might have made a difference. In view of all these considerations, and with a deep sense of sympathy for the Jewish cause, the Commissioners feel bound to recommend that only a greatly reduced Zionist program be attempted by the Peace Conference, and even that, only very gradually initiated. This would have to mean that Jewish immigration should be definitely limited, and that the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up. All footnotes will be made available upon request. Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans. US Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call. The Bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of its 2017 Lobbying Agenda is set to punish any individual or company that boycotts Israel for its violation of Palestinian human rights. The severe punishment could reach a million dollars in fines, and up to 20 years in jail. Although political boycott has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court , the Congress wants to make a boycott of Israel the exception, even it means the subversion of US democracy. Still, protests are largely muted. The mainstream US media is yet to take US lawmakers to task, as hundreds of those elected representatives have already endorsed the unacceptable initiative. Criticizing Israel is still a taboo in the US, where the Congress is beholden to lobby pressures and kickbacks, and where the medias script on the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine is even less critical than Israels own media. However, the infiltration of the US government is not new. It is only becoming more emboldened, due to the absence of enough critical voices that are capable of creating a semblance of balance or a serious debate on the issue. For years, ordinary US citizens have been far-removed from the entire discussion on Israel and Palestine. The subject felt alien, marred by Hollywood propaganda, religious misconception and the lack of any understanding of history. But in recent years, Israel has become an integral part of American life, even if most people do not spot the Israeli influence. In the aftermath of 9/11, Israel seized on its decades-long experience as an occupying force to brand itself as a world leader in counter-terrorism, reported Alice Speri in the Intercept. The successful branding has earned Israeli security firms billions of dollars. The massive payouts are the result of the exploitation of American fear of terrorism, while presenting Israel as a successful model of fighting terror. Groups like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs are, to various degrees, involved in turning the US police force into militarized units similar to the structure of the Israeli police. As an occupying power, Israel has blurred the lines between the police and the army. In areas like occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, both apparatus behave in a similar pattern. They shoot to kill as a result of the slightest provocation or suspicion. Sometimes, for no reason at all Alex Vitale, an author and a Brooklyn College professor of sociology, described the nature of the regular trips made by federal agents and police officers to Israel. A lot of the policing that folks are observing and being talked to about on these trips is policing that happens in a non-democratic context. This non-democratic context involves the policing, humiliating and often outright murdering of occupied Palestinians. Instead of pressuring Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinians, the US government is bringing Israeli expertise to its own cities. Indeed, the US military-like police phenomena has made local cops look more like an occupying force than individuals sworn to protect the public. Israel is exporting its occupation tactics to the US, with Israeli military contractors opening subsidiaries across the country, promoting their surveillance technologies, walls, border monitoring equipment and violent tactics. Americans should be worried, but most are oblivious to the disturbing pattern because the media rarely sheds a light on the growing Israeli military influence on American life. An Israeli company, Elta North America , (a subsidiary of the Israel Aerospace Industry) was one of eight companies awarded a massive sum to produce a prototype for the wall that the US intends to build along the US-Mexico border. The wall was one of the main pledges made by Trump during his campaign for the White House. Israel was the first country to rush in support of Trumps divisive words. President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israels southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea, tweeted Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the time. Although his support of Trump angered Mexico and many Americans, Netanyahu knew of the lucrative investments in the years ahead only too well. Indeed, US border security has been a major source of revenue for Israeli companies. One such generous contracts was the one granted by the Obama Administration to the Israeli company Elbit Systems. Valued at $145-million , the company provided surveillance equipment and built towers along the Arizona/Sonora US-Mexico border. Elbit also cashed in handsomely from Boeing in 2006 for its part in the DHS Strategic Border Initiative. Magal Security System , the Israeli firm that has helped the Israeli military in tightening the siege on Gaza, is actively involved in the burgeoning US security industry, and was one of the first companies to pitch building the wall to cut off Mexico from the US. Israels illegal tactics are now the model through which the US plans to police its cities, monitor its borders and define its relationship with its neighbors. But the fact is that Israeli walls are not meant for defense , but rather to annex Palestinian and Arab land, while feeding its own national phobias of threats lurking all around. While the US imprudent and violent response to September 11, 2001 attacks has contributed to existing American fears of the rest of the world, Trumps isolationist policies pave the perfect ground for further Israeli infiltration of American government and society. The evidence of all of this can now be found in major US cities, its various borders and the surveillance system that has the potential to monitor every US citizen. The defeat of the Kurds in Kirkuk is devastatingly complete. We used to be in control here and now we are not, says Aso Mamand, the Kurdish leader in the city, summing up the situation in a helpless and embittered tone as he describes the fall of Kirkuk and the nearby oilfields to the Iraqi government forces. He would like some new power-sharing arrangements and warns of dire consequences if this does not happen, but he does not sound very hopeful. Kirkuk used to be described as the powder keg of Iraq because of furiously contested rival claims to it by Kurdish nationalists and the Baghdad government. It was potentially even more explosive because its Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities make it a deeply divided place. But, despite these rancorous disputes and differences, when the final crisis came on 16 October, the switch from Kurdish to federal government control was surprisingly swift and peaceful. Mr Mamand says that there was no battle because the Kurds simply did not have the military strength to hold the city and he is dismissive of conspiracy theories about its betrayal. Asked if the advance of the Iraqi forces could have been resisted if the two main Kurdish parties his own Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by president Masoud Barzani had been united, he says: Of course not. The Iraqi forces had tanks and planes and we had no chance. Maybe we would have lasted a day if we had fought, but the only result would have been bloodshed. Many Kurds fled at the time and not all have returned, but there is no sign of damage from the fighting and shops and markets are open. A thunderstorm briefly emptied the streets when we were there, but otherwise traffic was heavy and there are few soldiers or checkpoints. Do you see anything out of the ordinary? asks the acting governor, Rakan Saeed Ali al-Jubouri, the Arab former deputy governor, whose office looks little changed from when it was occupied by the Kurdish governor Najmaldin Karim who was forced to flee to Irbil. Mr Jubouri says that the local police are the same and there are just two battalions of the counterterrorism forces in Kirkuk. Iraqi battalions are small so this probably means only a few hundred soldiers. Mr Mamand insists that things arent quite what they look like. He says that the government needs to do something to calm down the Kurdish street. He suggests the appointment of a Kurdish governor or some arrangement to share power. Asked if there had been any significant security incidents, he cited only some shots fired by a former KDP security police officer at an army checkpoint. But, around about the time he was speaking, there was in fact a savage murder in a town called Duquq just south of Kirkuk city, which might give substance to Mr Mamands fear that the potential for violence is just below the surface. The victim was Arkan Sharifi, 50, a Kurdish cameraman working for Kurdistan TV, who was knifed to death by four or five men who broke into his house and locked his wife and children in a separate room. When they got out five hours later, they found him lying in a pool of blood, his body mutilated and with a knife stuck in his mouth, evidence that he been killed because of something he had said or reported. His family says that the killers spoke the Turkmen language, suggesting that what happened may be the outcome of the ongoing feud between the Kurds and the Shia Turkmen that is particularly fierce south of Kirkuk. I drove through the area where the murder took place earlier in the day and there was no sign of violence there or anywhere else on the closely guarded road from Baghdad. But the murder is a reminder that at all times Iraq is a very violent country. I spoke to a Turkmen member of the Hashd al-Shaabi pro-government paramilitaries called Jawdat Assaf who explained that he came from a village called Tisin Khadim which had been destroyed by Saddam Hussein in 1980. I survived because I was under 15, but they killed 353 people everybody over that age including my father and two brothers, he recalled. They accused us of supporting the [Shia revolutionary] Dawa Party, though we had hardly heard of it. The murder of Arkan Sharifi is striking in its brutality, but no fewer than 465 Iraqi journalists have been killed in the last 14 years. Otherwise the takeover of Kirkuk was unexpectedly pacific. Though the KDP accuses the PUK, always the dominant Kurdish party in the city, of a treacherous Iranian-orchestrated deal with Baghdad, both parties simultaneously withdrew their Peshmerga without fighting. If the Iraqi forces had to fight their way into Kirkuk city they would have inevitably won, but it could have detonated a wider ethnic and sectarian conflict in the disputed territories. This long-predicted confrontation never took place, but the loss of Kirkuk is more than a crippling blow to Kurdish hopes of independence. With a divided leadership, no allies abroad and without a military option, the Kurds are losing the semi-independent status they had built up since Saddam Hussein was defeated in the Gulf War in 1991 and Iraqi government forces withdrew from the three Kurdish provinces. This process is now going sharply into reverse. Iraqi government troops on Tuesday set up a checkpoint at the most important border crossing at Ibrahim Khalil between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan. Vehicles crossing the border must now be checked three times by Turks, Iraqi forces and the Kurds. Habur border gate has been handed over to the central government as of this morning, said Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. With Turkey and Iran cooperating with Baghdad, the Iraqi Kurdish authorities are in no position to resist the central governments takeover of their main powers. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi made clear in an interview with The Independent that he expects the Iraqi state to control the main Peshmerga forces, oil production and exports as well as international flights and the issuing of visas. Yet the quiet takeover of Kirkuk could be a little deceptive. Weak though the Kurds may now be, political circumstances may not always be so wholly against them or in favour of the Iraqi state. The Kurds looked utterly defeated in 1975 when Saddam Hussein signed the Algiers Agreement with the Shah who abandoned his previous alliance with the Kurds. But the start of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 forced the withdrawal of much of the Iraqi army from Iraqi Kurdistan, which was then taken over by Kurdish nationalist forces. Defeated again through savage repression, Saddams overthrow by the US-led coalition in 1991 enabled the Kurds to start building a statelet, which became a powerful player when the US invaded in 2003. If the central government in Baghdad exploits its present superiority over the Kurds too greedily, then it could provoke a powerful communal counter-reaction by the Kurdish population. This approach is likely to be opposed by Mr Abadi, but approved by his predecessor as Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, in the run-up to the parliamentary elections next May. In Iraqi politics, almost everybody ends up by overplaying their hand. It's Election season and our editor's mailbox is overflowing. Who do your neighbors support? Read about it here. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray on Wednesday urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill designed to shore up the nations fragile health care exchanges on the same day they reopened for business. Washingtons open enrollment period when people can find and compare plans and sign up for coverage on the Washington Healthplanfinder website runs from Nov. 1 to Jan. 15. Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has blamed a 36.4 percent statewide premium rate increase on the Trump administrations decision to halt federal subsidies that previously helped control the cost of private insurance. Murrays legislation, coauthored by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), would guarantee the payments for two more years and give states additional flexibility to allow cheaper plans that cover fewer benefits. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated the package would trim $3.8 billion from the federal deficit over the next 10 years and stabilize out-of-pocket costs for consumers. The bill is co-sponsored by 24 senators, including 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans. More than 60 senators have said they would vote for the legislation. Murrays office announced Wednesday that the bill is also supported by more than 200 outside groups, including organizations that represent patients, doctors, hospitals, businesses, religious organizations and non-profits. In a floor speech Wednesday, Murray, a Washington Democrat, called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow his chamber to vote on the bill. There's absolutely no excuse for inaction, she said. McConnell has stated that the bills fate depends on support from President Donald Trump, who has not stated a position on the legislation. After repeated Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed this summer, Trump said its in his partys political interest to allow the exchanges created by the health law to implode due to rising costs and declining participation. Hes tried virtually everything he can do to make that implosion a reality, Murray said Wednesday. Its too early to gauge how uncertainty at the federal level will affect exchange signups in Cowlitz County. Nearly 2,100 people purchased individual health care plans on the exchange in 2017. Additionally, roughly 30,600 Cowlitz residents used the exchange to sign up for Apple Health, the states Medicaid program for low-income individuals. According to health plan data compiled by The Daily News, the average monthly premium payment for a 40-year-old non-smoker purchasing a low-cost silver plan in Cowlitz County will jump from $351.99 this year to $486.68 next year. If Congress funds the federal subsidies, the same average monthly premium payments would increase only to $423.40 next year, according to Kreidlers office. However, individuals earning between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for premium tax credits to offset the full cost of coverage. Tax credits are tied to the price of the cheapest silver plan by region. Three insurers will sell health plans in Cowlitz County in 2018: Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest, Premera BlueCross and Lifewise Health Plan of Washington. Leadership in Woodland is slated for a big shakeup this year, with four of seven City Council positions up for grabs this election. With only two incumbents seeking re-election, the council will get at least two new members. The new council will face challenges spurred by rapid growth, which is causing congestion and housing shortages and straining police and transportation systems. Police protection has emerged as a top issue, and all candidates have in incorporated public safety into their platforms, with some supporting Tuesdays property tax levy measure to hire two new police officers and a sergeant and buy new equipment. Only three races are contested because candidate Jeremy Heffernan dropped out of the race last month, leaving incumbent Benjamin Fredricks unchallenged. Position #1: Graham vs. Heffernan A desire to see more women in politics drove incumbent Jennifer Heffernan to run for council four years ago and seek re-election now. When I started attending council meetings as a citizen, just to listen and watch, what I didnt see is someone like me a mom of young kids still raising their family. And thats a perspective that I think is important, Heffernan said. Heffernan said she tries to give a voice to the varied viewpoints in the city, though she isnt afraid to be the voice of dissent. I will ruffle feathers, not because thats my intention, but because I just learned that when seven people agree on everything, that cant be a representative government, she said. Heffernan is fiscally conservative, although she voted to put the levy lid lift on the ballot to expand police staffing. But shed rather find funds within the existing city budget to do so. She voted against creating the city administrator position, arguing that money should be spent on police. Heffernans other priorities are easing traffic congestion and attracting more businesses. She wants the city to continue supporting efforts to make 426 acres in Woodland Bottoms shovel ready for future industrial developments. Heffernans opponent, Janice Graham, also wants to see the city improve its infrastructure to entice more economic development. As the city grows, Graham wants the city to encourage increasing the supply of affordable housing and reduce traffic jams by upgrading exit 21. Grahams late husband, Jim, had a 37-year career with the city, including time as mayor and police chief. Graham said her experience as an independent business owner taught her how to work well with people. She said she has a collaborative leadership approach. Everybody needs to come together and ... solve problems. Not one person can do it; you have to work together because everybody brings their own ideas and their own talents to the table, she said. Unlike Heffernan, Graham said she supports the city administrator position because the mayors role is part-time. If it wasnt for our city administrator right now, I dont know where we would be because I think weve grown enough that there has to be somebody there full time watching over all the departments and conducting city business, Graham said. Position No. 2: Rounds vs. Holland Two longtime Woodland residents are competing to replace Councilman Al Swindell, who resigned from his seat in September after seven years on the council. DeeAnna Holland is a social media savvy candidate. An advocate for government transparency, Holland live streams every Woodland City Council meeting from a cell phone and posts the recordings on Facebook. Holland first started attending city meetings to advocate for police after an officer-involved shooting two years ago. Shes attended every meeting since then, which she said gives her a deep understanding of the city despite the fact that she has no formal political experience. She continues to advocate for increased police funding and staffing as a major part of her platform. Holland said shes not afraid to speak her mind or challenge the dominant viewpoint. I question everything, and I think you should take more than half a minute to make a damn decision, she said. As a board member at the local food bank, Holland said she wants to see the city develop more solutions for fighting poverty and homelessness. I would like to actually see a policy response to emergency weather, like what Longview has done, Holland said, referring to the citys cold weather shelter policy. While Holland supports the levy lid lift for police funding, Rounds is hesitant to endorse the measure because it would raise property taxes. We definitely need more officers, but I havent really made up my mind whether Im for (the levy) or not. ... That will be up to the people to decide (whether to approve the tax hike), Rounds said. To ease the housing crunch, Rounds suggests the city annex more property so plots can be divided into smaller parcels to allow construction of more homes per acre. A retired banker, Rounds suggested the city waive impact fees for new housing structures or new businesses in Woodland to encourage development. She said she would work with the county and port to try to attract more industry. Im vested in Woodland because Ive worked here for so many years and I know the people so I think I would try to do the best I could for ... the whole city of Woodland, Rounds said. Im very much a team player. I work well with people. Position #3: Plaza v. Cook Candidates Dave Plaza and Nate Cook are vying to replace Marilee McCall, who did not seek re-election. A former police detective, Plazas seven-year tenure at the Woodland Police Department ended in his firing because of an alleged theft. He was exonerated and eventually filed a $5 million federal lawsuit against the city, alleging retaliation for filing work-related complaints. He received $200,000 in a settlement, reported The Columbian. His personnel file was scrubbed clean, and then he retired on his own accord in 2015. Now, the city has a new mayor and a new police chief, and Plaza said he has no ax to grind. I enjoy helping the community. Knowing how the city works and having been employed with the city give me some insight to hopefully bring the city in a positive direction, he said. Plaza wants police staffing expanded, but he said he would leave it to voters to decide whether to approve the property tax hike. There should be other ways of generating revenue other than slapping taxes on everybody, he said. Attracting more businesses is key to boosting revenue, he said. The revitalization of downtown and working with the businesses there in order to make Woodland appear business friendly, more open is key for bringing more revenue, Plaza said. Plazas opponent, Cook, has another idea to raise revenue: lifting the citys recreational pot ban to collect marijuana taxes. A fiscal conservative, Cook is reluctant to raise taxes in general, though. I hope to maintain the council living within their means, operating within their budget, Cook said. He opposes the citys proposed 0.2 percent sales tax increase to increase funding for roadwork, noting that voters already rejected a similar measure last year. The construction worker says the city can find ways to cut costs during road improvements. We have an aging infrastructure, so we must act efficiently, he said. He also wants the city to seek more grants for infrastructure projects. He said his experience as a former Toledo City Councilman would prepare him for the Woodland post. If voters chose him, Cook said theyll get somebody with experience. Theyll get somebody whose seasoned. I act in regard with my neighbors and constituents best interests in mind. Not many teenagers can master challenging works by the likes of Bach and Beethoven on the piano, but pianist Abriana Church is not a typical teenager. Church, 18, will be performing in Longview for the second time in two years this Sunday at St. Stephens Episcopal Church. Shell be performing works by Beethoven, Ravel, Schumann and others. Theyre all very exciting, they each have something different, Church said of the pieces shes performing. The Schumann (piece), I kind of wanted to do something that isnt as common. In the past, Ive done music thats really beautiful, but relatively common in classical music. I want to throw one in that nobody will have heard. Church said she hadnt planned on getting into piano, but fell in love with classical music as a young kid. When I was in first grade, my friend had a recital, and my mom thought, You should start piano too, she said. I started, and then I enjoyed it, and through the years, Ive enjoyed it more and more. I cant think of anything Id rather be doing. The young pianists performance is being organized by local piano instructor Martin Kauble, who has worked with pianists for 35 years. He worked with Church during her 2016 Longview performance as well. Kauble says Church is a one-of-a-kind talent for her age. Her musicality and her musical maturity and technique is so well-developed at such a young age, Kauble said of Church. Its something that you would expect to hear and/or see from someone performing who would be much older. Kauble also emphasized that Church is a diligent performer who works tirelessly to perfect her craft. Youve got this young person who performs with such depth and such maturity, but its not like you turn on a computer switch, he said. She works. She practices hard. As for her future, Church said she hopes to enter a conservatory after graduating high school this summer, particularly Julliard or Curtis. The young pianist, who lives currently in rural Idaho, said she wishes she could travel for performances more often, and loves coming to Longview. I really wish I could do more performances, because its such a great experience, Church said. Im really excited, because its just going to be great, I know. Its going to be better than last year, Im really looking forward to it. Kauble said anyone who loves classical piano would be crazy to skip out on Churchs performance Sunday. Maybe theres going to be a day where shes going to be performing in Portland or Seattle or Carnegie Hall, and maybe you just happen to see her and say, I remember when I saw her in Longview. Shes of that caliber, and if she keeps it up, shell be one of those names. SQLite is a self-contained, serverless SQL database. Dr. Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, first released the software on the 17th of August, 2000. Since then it has gone on to be the second most deployed piece of software in the world. It's used in systems as important as the Airbus A350 so it comes as no surprise the tests for SQLite 3 are aviation-grade. The software itself is very small, the amd64 Debian client and library package is 765 KB when compressed for distribution and 2.3 MB when fully installed. The software is licensed under a very promiscuous license: Public Domain. Installing the SQLite 3 Client Though there is no server software needed for SQLite 3, there is a client that allows you to have command line access to the underlying database library. The following installs the entirety of the SQLite 3 offering. I ran the following on a fresh install of Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS. $ sudo apt install sqlite3 Customising the Client You can change the default behaviour of the SQLite 3 CLI by editing the ~/.sqliterc files in your home directory. This is handy for saving settings you find yourself using most often. Here's an example where I turn on headers, set the display mode to column, shorten the prompt, attach a timer to every command and print a special character for NULL values. $ vi ~/.sqliterc .headers on .mode column .nullvalue .prompt "> " .timer on Importing CSV Data You can import CSV data into SQLite 3 via two commands. The first changes the client into CSV mode and the second will imports data from a CSV file. The default separator expected is a pipe so if you're using another character you can change that setting via the .separator command. If the destination table doesn't already exist the first row of the CSV files will be used for naming each of the columns. If the table does exist then all of the rows of data will be appended onto the existing table. As an example, I've put together a CSV file with both ASCII and Japanese characters listing the Airports in Wales in the UK. $ vi airports.csv ,IATA,ICAO, Aberporth,,EGFA,Aberporth Anglesey,,EGOQ,RAF Mona Anglesey,,EGOV,RAF Valley ,,EGCK, ,CWL,EGFF, ,,EGFC,Tremorfa ,CEG,EGNR,Hawarden Haverfordwest,HAW,EGFE,Haverfordwest Llanbedr,,EGOD,Llanbedr Pembrey,,EGFP,Pembrey St Athan,DGX,EGDX,RAF Saint Athan ,SWS,EGFH, ,,EGCW, I'll launch the SQLite 3 client with a name of a new database called airports.db . This database file doesn't yet exist so SQLite 3 will automatically create it for me. $ sqlite3 airports.db I'll switch the client to CSV mode, state that a comma is the separator and then import the airports.csv file. . mode csv . separator "," . import airports . csv airports I can then run the schema command on the new airports table and see two of the column names are in Japanese and two are written using ASCII characters. . schema airports CREATE TABLE airports ( "" TEXT , "IATA" TEXT , "ICAO" TEXT , "" TEXT ); I can execute queries mixing the Japanese and ASCII characters together without issue. $ echo "SELECT ICAO, FROM airports;" \ | sqlite3 airports.db EGFA|Aberporth EGOQ|RAF Mona EGOV|RAF Valley EGCK| EGFF| EGFC|Tremorfa EGNR|Hawarden EGFE|Haverfordwest EGOD|Llanbedr EGFP|Pembrey EGDX|RAF Saint Athan EGFH| EGCW| I can also dump the database to SQL using a single command. $ echo ".dump airports" \ | sqlite3 airports.db PRAGMA foreign_keys = OFF ; BEGIN TRANSACTION ; CREATE TABLE airports ( "" TEXT , "IATA" TEXT , "ICAO" TEXT , "" TEXT ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Aberporth' , '' , 'EGFA' , 'Aberporth ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Anglesey' , '' , 'EGOQ' , 'RAF Mona' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Anglesey' , '' , 'EGOV' , 'RAF Valley' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , '' , 'EGCK' , '' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , 'CWL' , 'EGFF' , '' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , '' , 'EGFC' , 'Tremorfa ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , 'CEG' , 'EGNR' , 'Hawarden ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Haverfordwest' , 'HAW' , 'EGFE' , 'Haverfordwest ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Llanbedr' , '' , 'EGOD' , 'Llanbedr ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'Pembrey' , '' , 'EGFP' , 'Pembrey ' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( 'St Athan' , 'DGX' , 'EGDX' , 'RAF Saint Athan' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , 'SWS' , 'EGFH' , '' ); INSERT INTO "airports" VALUES ( '' , '' , 'EGCW' , '' ); COMMIT ; Keep in mind the .db files created could be larger than the data in any of its original forms. While writing this blog I produced a million-row, 12-column CSV comprised mostly of integers, floats and one text field. The GZIP-compressed CSV file was 41 MB, the decompressed CSV was 142 MB and when imported into SQLite 3 the .db file was 165 MB. I was able to GZIP-compress the .db file down to 48 MB but the SQLite 3 client cannot open databases that are GZIP-compressed. Creating a Database in Memory Data locality can be greatly improved by storing a SQLite 3 database in memory instead of on disk; you have the speed benefits of an in-memory database with the ease of communicating with it using SQL. Below is an example where I calculate 10 Fibonacci values and store them in a SQLite 3 database residing in memory using Python 3. $ sudo apt install python3 $ python3 import sqlite3 def fib ( n ): a , b = 0 , 1 for _ in range ( n ): yield a a , b = b , a + b connection = sqlite3 . connect ( ':memory:' ) cursor = connection . cursor () with connection : cursor . execute ( '''CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS fib ( calculated_value INTEGER)''' ) cursor . executemany ( 'INSERT INTO fib VALUES (?)' , [( str ( x ),) for x in fib ( 10 )]) cursor . execute ( 'SELECT * FROM fib' ) print ( cursor . fetchall ()) connection . close () The above table creation and insert commands are executed within the context of the connection which has the benefit of wrapping the commands in a power-safe, atomic database transaction. User-Defined Functions You can create user-defined functions in Python that can be executed on data sitting inside a SQLite 3 database. Below I'll create a small SQLite 3 database: $ sqlite3 urls.db CREATE TABLE urls ( url STRING ); INSERT INTO urls VALUES ( 'https://packages.debian.org/stretch/sqlite3' ), ( 'https://docs.python.org/3/library/sqlite3.html' ), ( 'https://sqlite.org/about.html' ); Then I'll create a function in Python that extracts the hostname from a URL and execute it on all the records in the urls table in the database. $ python3 import sqlite3 from urllib.parse import urlsplit def hostname ( url ): return urlsplit ( url ) . netloc connection = sqlite3 . connect ( 'urls.db' ) connection . create_function ( 'hostname' , 1 , hostname ) cursor = connection . cursor () cursor . execute ( 'SELECT hostname(url) FROM urls' ) print ( cursor . fetchall ()) The following is the output of the fetchall call. [( u 'packages.debian.org' ,), ( u 'docs.python.org' ,), ( u 'sqlite.org' ,)] Working with multiple databases The SQLite 3 client is capable of working with multiple databases in a single session. Below I'll launch the client and then attach two databases to the session. $ sqlite3 ATTACH 'airports.db' AS airport ; ATTACH 'urls.db' AS urls ; Then I'll run the .databases command to output the names and locations of the databases attached to the session. . databases seq name file --- --------------- ----------------------- 0 main 2 airport /home/mark/airports.db 3 urls /home/mark/urls.db I can prefix the table names in my queries with the name I've assigned the database. SELECT COUNT ( * ) FROM urls . urls ; 3 Visualising Data with Jupyter Notebooks Jupyter Notebooks are a popular way to view data visualisations. Below I'll walk through the setup and a few minimalist examples of various visualisations run on an example dataset. First, I'll install a number of system dependencies. $ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install \ libgeos-dev \ python3-dev \ python3-pip \ python3-tk \ python3-venv Then I'll create a Python virtual environment so I can isolate my Python dependencies from other projects on my machine. This environment will be called .taxis . $ pyvenv .taxis $ source .taxis/bin/activate I'll upgrade the Python package manager "pip" from version 8.1.1, which comes from the installation command above, to version 9.0.1 in this virtual environment. $ pip install --upgrade pip I'll then install a number of popular data-related libraries written for Python. $ pip install \ https://github.com/matplotlib/basemap/archive/v1.1.0.tar.gz \ 'bokeh<0.12.4' \ gmaps \ 'holoviews[extras]' \ jupyter \ pandas \ Pillow Jupyter Notebooks will expose the working folder on my Linux machine via HTTP so I'll create an isolated working folder away from my other files. $ mkdir -p ~/jupyter-working $ cd ~/jupyter-working I'll then enable the gmaps extension and allow for Jupyter to use widgets. $ jupyter nbextension enable --py --sys-prefix gmaps $ jupyter nbextension enable --py widgetsnbextension Then I'll launch the Notebook server. Once launched, a URL will be given that contains a token parameter. Paste that entire URL into your web browser in order to bring up the Notebooks interface. $ jupyter notebook \ --ip = 0 .0.0.0 \ --NotebookApp.iopub_data_rate_limit = 100000000 ... Copy/paste this URL into your browser when you connect for the first time, to login with a token: http://0.0.0.0:8888/?token=123... Before opening the URL I'll create a SQLite 3 database from a CSV file. This dataset is made up of one million randomly-picked records from the 1.1 billion taxi ride dataset I produced in my Billion Taxi Rides in Redshift blog post. I used the following to export the one million record sampling from Hive. $ hive -e 'SET hive.cli.print.header=true; SELECT trip_id, cab_type, passenger_count, trip_distance, fare_amount, tip_amount, pickup_datetime, dropoff_datetime, pickup_longitude, pickup_latitude, dropoff_longitude, dropoff_latitude FROM trips WHERE RAND() <= 0.001 DISTRIBUTE BY RAND() SORT BY RAND() LIMIT 1000000' \ | sed 's/[\t]/,/g' \ | gzip \ > trips.csv.gz The Spark 2.2 & 3 Raspberry Pi 3 Model Bs blog post has the most concise instructions for importing the dataset into Hive. If you're using those instructions on anything other than Raspbian please note the packages names, such as the one for JDK, will probably differ. Note that exporting from CSV-stored data rather than ORC appears to complete 2-3x faster. Here are the first three lines of that CSV file. Note that the first line contains the column names. $ gunzip -c trips.csv.gz | head -n3 trip_id,cab_type,passenger_count,trip_distance,fare_amount,tip_amount,pickup_datetime,dropoff_datetime,pickup_longitude,pickup_latitude,dropoff_longitude,dropoff_latitude 745713518,yellow,1,5.600,20.50,1.00,2013-04-30 13:43:58,2013-04-30 14:04:49,-73.94273100000000,40.79017800000000,-74.00244499999999,40.76083900000000 788379509,yellow,1,1.200,6.00,0.00,2013-07-07 12:24:33,2013-07-07 12:28:52,-73.95807200000000,40.76124600000000,-73.94632400000000,40.77708900000000 I'll decompress the GZIP'ed file and launch SQLite 3. I've added trips.db as a parameter so it'll be created by SQLite 3. $ gunzip trips.csv.gz $ sqlite3 trips.db I'll then switch into CSV mode, make sure the separator is a comma and import the CSV file into the trips table. . mode csv . separator "," . import trips . csv trips With the data imported, I'll open the Notebook URL and create Python 3 Notebook in Jupyter's Web UI. I'll then paste the following requirements into the first cell and then hit shift and enter at the same time to "execute" the cell. import sqlite3 import pandas as pd import holoviews as hv hv . extension ( 'bokeh' ) connection = sqlite3 . connect ( 'trips.db' ) The above will import the Python library for SQLite 3, Pandas, a data manipulation library, Holoviews, a visualisation library and initialise the Bokeh extension for Holoviews. Finally, a connection to the SQLite 3 database with the taxi trips dataset will be established. In the following example, I'll paste in a code snippet that will produce a heat map showing a breakdown by weekday and hour of the number of taxi journeys in my taxi rides dataset. %% opts Points [ tools = [ 'hover' ]] ( size = 5 ) HeatMap [ tools = [ 'hover' ]] Histogram [ tools = [ 'hover' ]] Layout [ shared_axes = False ] sql = """SELECT strftime('%w', pickup_datetime) as weekday, strftime('%H', pickup_datetime) as hour, COUNT(*) as cnt FROM trips GROUP BY 1, 2;""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) hv . HeatMap ( df ) The following will produce a line chart showing the number of taxi trips by date in the dataset. % matplotlib inline sql = """SELECT date(pickup_datetime) as date, COUNT(*) as cnt FROM trips GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1;""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) df [ 'date' ] = df . date . astype ( 'datetime64[ns]' ) df . plot ( x = 'date' , y = 'cnt' ) For a stacked bar chart comparing yellow and green cab trip counts against one another by month of the year enter the following into a new cell. %% opts Bars [ stack_index = 1 xrotation = 90 legend_cols = 7 show_legend = False show_frame = False tools = [ 'hover' ]] hv . extension ( 'bokeh' , 'matplotlib' ) sql = """SELECT strftime('%m', pickup_datetime) as month, cab_type, COUNT(*) as cnt FROM trips GROUP BY 1, 2;""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) table = hv . Table ( df , kdims = [( 'month' , 'month' ), ( 'cab_type' , 'cab_type' )], vdims = [( 'cnt' , 'cnt' )]) table . to . bars ([ 'month' , 'cab_type' ], 'cnt' , []) The following will produce a pie chart showing the proportion of trips based on the hour of the day. % matplotlib inline sql = """SELECT round(strftime('%H', pickup_datetime)) as hour, count(*) as cnt FROM trips GROUP BY 1;""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) df . plot ( kind = 'pie' , y = 'cnt' , legend = False ) To produce a scatter plot matrix using four numeric fields paste in the following. Note, this could take a few minutes to render. You should see an array output early on followed by the plot much later on. % matplotlib inline sql = """SELECT round(strftime('%H', pickup_datetime)) as hour, round(trip_distance), round(fare_amount), round(tip_amount) FROM trips;""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) pd . plotting . scatter_matrix ( df , figsize = ( 15 , 15 )) I came across two ways of rendering geographic points on maps. The first is with Matplotlib and Basemap which will work offline and without any need for API keys. The following will plot the pickup points for the taxi journeys in the dataset. % matplotlib inline import matplotlib.pyplot as plt from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap sql = """SELECT ROUND(pickup_longitude, 3) as long, ROUND(pickup_latitude, 3) as lat, COUNT(*) as cnt FROM trips GROUP BY long, lat""" df = pd . read_sql_query ( sql , connection ) df = df [ pd . to_numeric ( df [ 'long' ], errors = 'coerce' ) . notnull ()] df = df [ pd . to_numeric ( df [ 'lat' ], errors = 'coerce' ) . notnull ()] df = df . dropna ( thresh = 1 ) df . long = df . long . astype ( float , errors = 'ignore' ) . fillna ( 0.0 ) df . lat = df . lat . astype ( float , errors = 'ignore' ) . fillna ( 0.0 ) plt . figure ( figsize = ( 20 , 20 )) map = Basemap ( projection = 'merc' , llcrnrlat = 40 , urcrnrlat = 42 , llcrnrlon =- 75 , urcrnrlon =- 72 , resolution = 'i' , area_thresh = 50 , lat_0 = 40.78 , lon_0 =- 73.96 ) map . drawcountries () map . drawcoastlines ( linewidth = 0.5 ) map . drawstates () map . bluemarble () lons = df [ 'long' ] . values lats = df [ 'lat' ] . values x , y = map ( lons , lats ) map . plot ( x , y , 'ro' , markersize = 4 ) plt . show () The above will look somewhat primitive and won't be interactive. The following will plot a heatmap on top of a Google Maps Widget. The upsides include the boilerplate code is significantly less than the above, the map itself looks great and comes with the various navigational controls. The downside is that you'll need to create an API key with Google in order to use this module and you'll need to be connected to the internet when you use it. The other issue is that if there are any latitude/longitude pairs that aren't valid you'll get an error message back rather than the erroneous pairs being ignored. It's rare that a dataset is in perfect condition so you may need to spend some time filtering out bad values. Note that in this simplistic example I haven't weighed the points based on the aggregated counts for each point. You will see hotspots over Manhattan and NYC's airports but this won't be a completely accurate picture of where all the hotspots are. import gmaps gmaps . configure ( api_key = "..." ) locations = [( float ( row [ 'lat' ]), float ( row [ 'long' ])) for index , row in df . iterrows () if - 80 < float ( row [ 'long' ]) < - 70 and 35 < float ( row [ 'lat' ]) < 45 ] fig = gmaps . Map () fig . add_layer ( gmaps . heatmap_layer ( locations )) fig The Python Data Visualisation landscape is very broad, diverse and fragmented at the moment. It's an area of Python I expect to consolidate and mature a lot in the next few years. Jake VanderPlas gave an excellent talk on the subject at PyCon 2017 in Portland, it's well worth 30 minutes of your time. Dumping Pandas DataFrames to SQLite Pandas DataFrames are great for creating derivative datasets with a minimal amount of code. To top that off, dumping Pandas DataFrames back to SQLite 3 is very straightforward. In this example, I'll populate a DataFrame with some CSV data, create a new SQLite 3 database and dump the DataFrame out to that file. import sqlite3 import pandas connection = sqlite3 . connect ( 'trips.db' ) df = pandas . read_csv ( 'trips.csv' , sep = ',' ) df . to_sql ( 'trips' , connection , if_exists = 'append' , index = False ) Myanmar twisting the issue Staff Reporter : Md. Reyad Hossain, the First Secretary of the Bangladesh Embassy in Yangon has said that the Myanmar's State Counselor Office was "ill-informed" about the repatriation process of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh. He made the comment in response to Myanmar's accusation that Bangladesh was delaying the repatriation process in order to get international aid money. On Tuesday, U Zaw Htay, the director-general of the State Counselor Office, told media that Myanmar was ready to begin the repatriation process any time, based on the criteria of the 1993 agreement with Bangladesh that covered the return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. "We are ready to start but the other side hasn't agreed yet, and the process has been delayed," he said, before linking the delay to hundreds of million dollars raised so far by the international community to help build refugee camps for the Rohingyas on the Bangladeshi side. "Currently they have got US$400 million. Over their receiving of this amount, we are now afraid of delays to the program of deporting the refugees," he told media on Tuesday. "They have got international subsidies. We are now afraid they would have another consideration as to repatriation," he said. "It appears that U Zaw Htay is ill informed of the process," Md. Reyad Hossain told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday. He explained that Bangladesh handed over a revised paper on the repatriation to the Minister for the State Counsellor Office U Kyaw Tint Swe in Dhaka on 2 October. Myanmar responded on 20 October to the draft, which Bangladesh is now examining, he said. In a meeting in Naypyitaw on Oct. 24, the countries' home ministers agreed that an arrangement to bring back the Rohingya to Myanmar would be finalised within the next few weeks, which would lead to a Joint Working Group preparing the Term of Reference (TOR) for taking back the refugees. "Hence, the process of consultation is on and it is wrong to blame any side at this stage," said Md. Reyad Hossain. Bangladesh had to seek international monetary assistance to meet the formidable humanitarian challenge created due to Myanmar's action in the Rakhine State, said the first secretary. He said Myanmar could expect this kind of monetary support and "much more" from the international community if it agreed to resettle and integrate the Rohingyas into Myanmar society. "This, however, depends upon Myanmar's sincerity to find durable and inclusive solutions," said the first secretary. More than 600,000 Muslims have fled northern Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmar's security forces launched clearance operations in the region. If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs. The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. I have received a lot of feedback since my State of the University address and the following open forum on revitalizing academic programs. It has included very thoughtful counter-proposals to the draft academic reorganization, constructive suggestions, excitement, praise and criticism. All of it has been welcome, especially feedback that offers additional ideas and alternatives. The draft proposal will look very different in its next iteration, and a final version is likely to be different still. That is exactly the point. When people start with something to react to, they can provide meaningful and immediate input that will create something better. While we cant meet every single suggestion, especially since many ideas contradict each other, we can and will take every comment seriously. Change is hard. Rapid change is even harder. At SIUC, change is necessary, and it must happen quickly if we are to address our downward spiral in enrollment and reclaim our status as the second jewel in the crown of Illinois higher education. A lot of people ask: How do you know this will work? I know that robust, current academic programs attract students. I know that investment in new programs attracts new students who pay tuition. I know that strong programs attract strong faculty and students under multiple organizational structures. I know that interdisciplinary collaboration yields stronger research and creative thinking. I know that more students and more external support create more revenue to invest and grow. I know that by centralizing aspects of academic administration, we will save money that we can reinvest in faculty, staff and programs. I know that faculty members want to teach and conduct research, and relieving them of some administrative responsibilities while ensuring that they retain ownership of their academic programs makes that possible. I know that if we always do what were doing, well always get the same results. In SIUs case, the results will get worse. Because I am an engineer, some people assume that I want SIUC to be all about science and engineering. But as I have stated repeatedly, we cannot fulfill our mission as a comprehensive university without strong offerings in the social sciences, humanities, arts and business, among others. We wouldnt be SIUC without them. As a doctoral research institution, we must also pay attention to graduate education, providing our graduate students opportunities to engage with our academic mission through assistantships, including teaching assistantships. We serve undergraduate as well as graduate students better when we ensure that graduate students in front of our classrooms have appropriate training and mentoring from experienced faculty members. We can grow our graduate enrollment overall with increased grant funding that provides opportunities for graduate students, but we must rely on multiple sources of funding to ensure that these opportunities are in all of our graduate-level programs. That has always been, and always will be, the case. It is also important that we focus our attention on the cultural competencies of all of our students. We must ensure not only that SIUC is a welcoming campus, but also that all of our graduates are prepared for the diverse world in which they will live and work. I strongly believe that the many people currently dedicated to multiculturalism across campus whether their focus is on Africana Studies; Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Latino and Latin American Studies; Native American studies; East Asian Language and Culture; American Studies; or International Studies share this commitment. But I believe we are touching too few students, that we are not as effective as we could be, and that our current model is not sustainable. I look forward to working with those who care about multicultural education to create an effective and sustainable model that reaches every single SIUC student. To keep our focus on this goal, and after hearing from our students, faculty and friends, I have deferred any decision about the Africana Studies major for a year to see if we can find a way forward to serve all students, as well as those who are specifically interested in the degree. Regardless, there is no question that our multicultural initiatives, most of which are already cross-disciplinary, add value and can add even greater value through a more concentrated effort. All of this is to say that change is necessary, speed is essential and input is valued. Our academic programs are the heart of our institution, and constructive debate over any change is expected and welcome. We must all be willing to be open to change, to give and to take, as we move forward toward a stronger, more vibrant Southern Illinois University. A Cordova man was arrested after deputies found him asleep inside a truck he allegedly stole from his friend, according to an Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office incident report. Jonathan Eric Vaughan, 32, has been charged with grand larceny. The owner discovered his truck was missing on Saturday night and called deputies. Deputies found the Ford F150 on Sunday morning at the Citgo gas station on Bamberg Highway. They say Vaughan was asleep in the truck. The Menefee Court mans arrest warrant alleges he confessed to taking the truck because he intended to sell it. He told deputies the keys were in the ignition of the truck when he took it, the warrant states. Vaughan said hes been friends with the owner of the truck for about 15 years. If Vaughan is convicted of grand larceny, he faces up to five years in prison and a court-imposed fine. Orangeburg Department of Public Safety A gunman robbed a fast-food restaurant at about 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. Employees at the Cookout on John C. Calhoun Drive reported that the gunman waited in line behind three customers. When his turn arrived, he ordered a double burger tray. He then shattered the glass of the walk-up window, pointed the gun at a cashier and demanded that she give him money. The manager handed an undetermined amount of cash over to the gunman, who then left the scene. The manager and the cashier described the gunman as a dark-skinned black male, standing about 5 feet 11 inches and weighing 200 pounds. He was wearing black pants, a black skull hat and a gray long-sleeved shirt with a neon green T-shirt underneath it. Call Crimestoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC if you have any information about the robbery. Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office An Orangeburg woman received stitches to the back of her head after her 13-year-old foster son allegedly assaulted her with a metal paper towel holder on Tuesday night, according to a sheriffs office incident report. Deputies responded to a Penn Road residence at 8:19 p.m. where they found the foster mother holding a blood-saturated towel on the back of her head. She told deputies that her foster son was upset with her due to an incident from a week ago when he allegedly removed her Dodge Durango without her permission, the report said. She punished him by taking away his cellphone. The 13-year-old became increasingly defiant toward her, she said. On Tuesday night, she asked him to take a bath, but he refused, the report said. She then turned her back to him and began to prepare dinner for him and another foster child when the 13-year-old allegedly picked up the paper towel holder and struck her in the back of her head. Deputies claim the teen told them, She was getting smart with me and I wanted to do that for a long time now. Medics transported the foster mother to the Regional Medical Center, where she received stitches for her injury. Deputies released the 13-year-old to the Department of Juvenile Justice. In other reports: A Muna Avenue woman called deputies at 7:22 a.m. Tuesday when she realized someone stole her 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier coupe, which she left running idle in front of her residence for 30 minutes. She said the vehicle is valued at $3,000. The owner of Bells Marina called law enforcement on Tuesday morning when he discovered money was missing from the bank deposit he made the previous afternoon, according to an incident report. He said a local bank reported that the amount of money he listed on a deposit slip didnt match the amount of money in the deposit bag. Nearly $1,200 was missing from the bag. He explained to deputies that he counted the money and completed the deposit form and left it in his office for about 20 minutes on Monday afternoon. He then returned to his office, grabbed the deposit bag and went to the bank. Once the bank notified him of the discrepancy, he reviewed video footage from the office. He told deputies the video showed someone went to his office during the 20 minutes he was away from it, the report said. Deputies said they watched the video and saw the person sitting at the owners desk and retrieving items nearby. After the person sat at the desk for a few minutes, they stood up, placed something in their pocket and left as the owner walked in, according to deputies. By Trend Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced hope that all issues on the Caspian Sea Status will be agreed upon in the near future. Vladimir Putin made the remark at a press conference following the results of a trilateral meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Iranian President Hassan Ruhani in Tehran Nov.1. "I hope that in the near future we will complete the coordination of all parameters of our agreements, which should be signed on the status of the Caspian Sea," the Russian president said. He also expressed satisfaction with the results of the joint work of Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan. "I hope that our work has not been in vain, we really discussed very important issues of the trilateral format. I am sure that working in this way, openly, kindly, with a mutual desire for a positive result, our work will benefit our countries, our states, our peoples," Putin said. The Caspian littoral states Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran signed the Framework Convention for Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November of 2003. Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use in July 1998. The two countries signed a protocol to the agreement in May 2002. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea and a protocol to it on Nov. 29, 2001 and Feb. 27, 2003, respectively. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003. Today most of the issues on the draft Convention have been agreed upon, negotiations are underway on the remaining issues. By Trend Armenias joining the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is possible only after the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told a joint press conference with his Montenegrin counterpart Srdjan Darmanovi? in Baku. Our condition remains unchanged. First and foremost, Armenia must withdraw its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, he said, adding after this, it will be possible to talk about cooperation and good neighborly relations with Armenia. The FM noted that a joint company for BTK operations will be set up in line with an agreement with the countries participating in the project. This company will control cargo transportation via BTK, he added. The official opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was held in Baku Oct.30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railways peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo. 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 Trend Armenian armed forces located on nameless heights of the Berd district opened fire at Garalar village of Azerbaijans Tovuz district at 12:30 (UTC+4) on November 2, said the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry in a message. The message says that Armenians were using heavy weapons. Immediate measures were taken by units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in order to prevent the expansion of scope of the provocation, said the ministry. By Trend Etibar Mammadov, who escaped from a train in Bilajari settlement during transportation to Baku on October 23, was killed in a shootout. The head of the press service of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor Generals Office, Eldar Sultanov, informed about this Trend on November 2. He said that the official information will soon be disseminated. Olympique Lyonnais vs Everton Wednesday, 1 November, 2017 Europa League Preview Will DCL lead the line again in Lyon? Will DCL lead the line again in Lyon? Everton travel to Lyon for their latest Europa League Group E fixture in what is effectively a win-or-bust scenario for the club. Having lost two of their first three group games, the Blues' chances of progressing to the knockout rounds largely rest on their ability to come up with a victory in what is, on paper, their toughest assignment of the competition thus far. For David Unsworth, it's a chance to demonstrate to the Everton board that he can do better in charge of the first team than was the case on Sunday at Leicester City where his side went down meekly to a 2-0 defeat. The 44-year-old former defender had only been in his caretaker role for six days at that point but now, with 11 days in the hot-seat, he will be hoping be in a better position to rally his troops into a better display. As Unsworth is no doubt discovering, the Everton job comes with a number of challenges, not least the lack of a recognised, experienced striker to provide a focal point up front but also age and a lack of pace at the back. Phil Jagielka, Ashley Williams and Leighton Baines's combined age of 100 was exposed at the King Power Stadium at the weekend and 18-year-old Morgan Feeney's promotion to the first team training this week was an indication that the stand-in boss has recognised the need for more youthful legs in defence and to give the older heads a break. Article continues below video content Whether Feeney will follow fellow teenager Beni Baningime in going straight into the starting line-up remains to be seen but Jagielka and Baines haven't travelled to France. Mason Holgate, 20, is also a candidate at centre-half but he was overlooked in that role for the past few weeks by Ronald Koeman who preferred to use him as a right back. Further forward, with Rooney also staying behind, some other frequent question marks remain: is Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Oumar Niasse or Sandro Ramirez a better option to lead the line; should Aaron Lennon's experience trump the energy and inventiveness of Nikola Vlasic or Ademola Lookman; and what of Kevin Mirallas, arguably the best attacking player in a grey shirt in the first half on Sunday but sacrificed at half-time for the manager's substitutions? With a vital game against Watford looming this coming Sunday and Everton a long shot to qualify from their Europa League group, Unsworth may feel he is on a hiding to nothing in this fixture. That could influence his team selection and might see his line-up skew younger, allowing some of those greener players to press their claims for more regular action. The scenario for the Blues is fairly simple: win, and they are right back in the qualification mix and with the additional factor of a morale-boosting win under the belts; lose or draw and it's more or less kiss goodbye to the Europa League and focus on the Premier League. Kick-off: 6pm, Thursday 2nd November, 2017 Note: the following content is not moderated or vetted by the site owners at the time of submission. Comments are the responsibility of the poster. Disclaimer About these ads Al Saraya Properties, a leading real estate brand in Bahrain, has signed an agreement with Al Baraka Bank to provide its customers a number of unique benefits including credit card facility with mortgage, a grace period of up to three months and and competitive insurance price with the option of accepting other insurance companies suggested by the customers. Al Saraya Properties was established in 1999, under the leadership of industry pioneer Saud Abdul Aziz Kanoo. With its signature motto we build your dreams, it has become one of the most trusted real estate brands in the kingdom and a pathbreaker in building ultramodern living spaces, ensuring luxury, elegance and convenience, said a statement from the company. Al Saraya boasts several prime properties at some of the most sought-after locations in Bahrain including Orca, Views Terrace, The Peak and Dragon villas on the prestigious Amwaj Islands, and Al Reem in scenic Saar, and many more are in the planning stage, it added. The group's objective is to ensure and elevate customer satisfaction beyond building the finest living spaces and this memorandum of understanding (MoU) is one such initiative, said Redha Mukhtar, the general manager of Al Saraya Properties, after signing the deal with Mohamed Isa Al Mutaweh, the chief executive and board member of Al Baraka Bank. On the partnership, Al Mutaweh said: Al Baraka Bank, being proactive, always tries to reach out to customers with custom-designed products and services." "Signing the agreement with Al Saraya Properties is an important step towards making the bank the preferred choice of its customers. We have designed a special package, making banking with us more flexible for Al Sarayas valued customers," he added. S Purushothaman, the director for finance at Al Saraya Properties, and Rashid Hasan Al Alaiwi, the deputy general manager, also attended the signing ceremony.-TradeArabia News Service The UAE recognises the importance of building and developing future cities, relying on innovative and creative ideas in line with its development over the past years and its reputation on the global map in the coming years, remarked Dr Abdullah bin Mohammed Belhaif Al Nuaimi, Minister of Infrastructure Development. He was giving his inaugural address on Monday at the Arab Future Cities Summit 2017 in Dubai, UAE. Organised by the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme in partnership with Expotrade Middle East, the event is being held over two days in Dubai, with the participation of pioneers and decision-makers in future cities, locally, regionally and internationally. More than 600 participants and 40 international experts are presenting over 20 specialised presentations during the event. ''We are committed not only to keeping pace with the latest developments but also to foresee challenges, develop and analyse visions concerning all vital sectors and design long-term plans that will achieve a qualitative leap at all levels,'' remarked Al Nauaimi, who is also the chairman of the Sheikh Zayed Housing Programme. This can only be achieved through the development of cities and infrastructure to cope with the latest current developments, he stated. The minister pointed out that building future cities with state-of-the-art facilities and renewable energy solutions will contribute to the development and sustainability of the future communities and as a result will lead to an economic growth based on a strong foundation that takes into consideration all dimensions of the community, most importantly making the citizens happy. The hosting of the Arab Future Cities Summit 2017 in the UAE, he stated, reflects its ambitious vision to promote the development of future cities that are capable of keeping pace with the rapid changes in the world. Al Nauaimi said the summit would offer a unique chance for the parties interested in the sector of the future cities and residences, to promote employment opportunities and gain an insight on the best international practices in the field by meeting worldwide pioneer leaders and decision-makers in this sector. On the opening day, the speakers discussed the development of smart cities, besides open city data as well as serial data, related to transport, e-government technology, digital transformation and the role of the future in achieving happiness and enhancing the integration system in supporting the cities of the future.-TradeArabia News Service MAG Property Development (MAG PD), a leading UAE-based real estate company, is set to showcase five of its key projects including the MAG Eye, a Dh4-billion ($1.06 billion) gated community project, and MAG 318, a mixed-use luxury tower, at the upcoming Dubai Property Show which kicks off tomorrow (November 3) in Mumbai, India. The three-day event will give developers the chance to meet buyers directly and introduce them to Dubais investment opportunities. CEO Talal Moafaq Al Gaddah said: "Dubai Property Show provides us with a valuable opportunity to reach out to Indian investors, who lead foreign real estate investments in Dubai." They made 10,628 transactions worth over Dh20.4 billion between January 2016 and the end of June 2017, which makes them a top priority for us at MAG PD," stated Al Gaddah, citing the Dubai Land Department data. "With our focus on meeting the needs of various customer segments, we are confident that our diverse portfolio of projects which range from luxury villas to mid-income apartments will satisfy Indian investors. During the event, we will be putting this to the test by showcasing our MAG Eye, MAG 230, MAG 318, MBL Residence and MAG 5 Dubai South projects," he added. MAG Eye is an exclusive private gated community in the heart of Mohammed bin Rashid City in Meydan Dubai, which provides tenants with 3,952 apartments and 537 townhouses. Given its full privacy, all-day security, open green spaces and wide range of leisure amenities, the project will offer residents an ideal environment for relaxation and tranquility, as well as a sound investment opportunity, thanks to high-end features that guarantee long-term value. It is due for completion in Q1 2022. MAG 230 is a prestigious residential landmark to be developed in the heart of Dubailand and completed by Q4 2019. In addition to being part of the masterplan for City of Arabia, it is designed to be an independent complex and will have access to the new metro system, providing prospective tenants with 595 luxury apartments. MAG 318 is a new mixed-use luxury residential tower in the Business Bay Downtown Dubai area that features 439 residential units including studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments with private balconies that overlook Dubai Water Canal and Downtown Dubai. MBL Residence tower is a 40-level residential tower located in Jumeirah Lakes Towers. The 758,875-sq-ft development features 472 high-end one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments of different sizes, and will be completed by Q4 2019. MAG 5 Dubai South falls within the fully-gated Dh800-million MAG 5 Boulevard residential community. It consists of 924 units spread across seven buildings, which will offer tenants the benefits of a 24-hour, walkable community that covers over 800,000 sq ft of land in the Dubai Greenbelt. It will be completed by Q2 2019. Al Gaddah said the Mumbai expo is an ideal platform for not only promoting its brand and projects, but also for enhancing the group's knowledge of the Indian market and the distinct needs of investors in this part of the world. "We are pleased to be going into the exhibition with a confidence-inspiring track record in committing to the meticulous completion of our projects, and we look forward to introducing visitors to MAG PDs vision for a modern, integrated and secure life in Dubai," he added.-TradeArabia News Service US-based KBR, a global provider of professional services and technologies, has been awarded a contract to provide Engineering Support Services for Operations for Abu Dhabi Gas Development Company (Al Hosn Gas). Al Hosn Gas is a 60/40 joint venture of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) and Occidental of Abu Dhabi Ltd. (Oxy). Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide personnel, equipment and resources to carry out engineering tasks and technical support on Al Hosn's Shah facilities in Abu Dhabi, UAE. "KBR is pleased to have the opportunity to provide our value added support services to Al Hosn Gas, and highlights Al Hosn Gas's confidence in KBR's capabilities to deliver in multiple engineering discipline areas across a variety of projects," said Jay Ibrahim, KBR's president for Europe, Middle East and Africa. The UAE remains a key market for KBR's global energy and hydrocarbons business and this award demonstrates KBR's ability to offer cost effective solutions to customers by combining global expertise and local presence. TradeArabia News Service Turkish Cargo said it has won the Qualified Envirotainer Provider (QEP) accreditation for two of its stations, Berlin (Germany) and Atlanta (US), in recognition of the quality of its pharmaceutical transportation service. Turkish Cargo delivers medical products that require cold chain transportation to the world's largest pharmaceutical companies in eight QEP accredited stations in Bombay, India; Frankfurt, Germany; Hyderabad, India; Seoul, South Korea; Istanbul, Turkey; Tel Aviv, Israel; Bruxelles; Atlanta, US, said a statement from the company. The accreditation was provided by Envirotainer, a company which offers active temperature-controlled containers for air cargo on a rent-it-when-you-need-it-basis, in an open-platform global network. The company looks to increase its current business potential, and as well as its quality of services for its customers, it said. Thanks to its special product it has created for the cargoes containing pharmaceutical and healthcare products, Turkish Cargo has been widening its services to over 300 points covered by its international network. Turkish Cargo has been using the Envirotainer containers since 2015 and bringing its shipment quality together with the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, it added. TradeArabia News Service Virgin Voyages, the cruise line arm of Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group, gave the world a peek into the first of the company's three ships which are expected to set sail in 2020. Branson and Virgin Voyages president and CEO Tom McAlpin recently hosted a Ship Tease, where key details were revealed about what sailors can expect on the ships. Live from Fincantieris shipyard in Genoa, Italy, they also celebrated the laying of the keel for the first ship, marking the commencement of construction. Branson and McAlpin arrived on stage via a 200-ft crane drop. They were joined by Bain Capital chairman Stephen Pagliuca and Fincantieris Alberto Maestrini to weld ceremonial coins into the keel for good luck and smooth sailing, said a statement from the company Branson said: This is a very big day for Virgin Voyages, as an exciting new holiday option for travellers starts to get ship shape. She will be the most recognisable ship sailing the seven seas, delivering an irresistible sailor experience. Were also committed to making sure our crew are the happiest at sea and will be proud to sail with us, he added. McAlpin said: The entire ship will be built with an attention to detail, reflecting the craftsmanship and materiality inspired by super yachts. Designed to feel more intimate and connected to the sea, 86 per cent of all cabins will feature a sea terrace and 93 per cent an ocean view. Virgin Voyages is creating a sophisticated ship and a transformational experience that offers our sailors a place where rejuvenating day-life meets exciting nightlife and everything in between, he said. McAlpin then gave details that the first ships experience will be Adult By Design meaning that sailors must be at least 18 or older to sail. The decision was driven by feedback from future sailors and travel professionals, who are looking for a more elevated and premium experience, with a few Virgin style surprises, said a statement. The world also got its first glimpse of the ships distinct livery, which will feature a sleek silvery-grey hull, with smoked glass, and distinctive touches of red. The livery was conceptualised by Ben Christie and David Azurdia from the multi-award-winning Magpie Studio in London. RWD from Beaulieu England, who are leaders in super yacht design, created the iconic red Virgin funnel of the vessel. Virgin Voyages first fleet will be known as the Lady Ships, a play on the term your ladyship, giving a nod to Virgins British heritage. "The spirit of our ship will be represented by a beautiful mermaid design that will adorn the bow. The mermaid is inspired by figureheads on historic vessels and was designed by London-based artist Toby Tinsley, who also designed the beautiful feminine motif on Virgin Galactic," explained McAlpin. Consistent with their commitment to have one of the cleanest fleets at sea, Virgin Voyages signed an agreement with Scanship, providers of advanced waste management systems. Together, they will explore the development of potentially game-changing technology that could one day significantly reduce ocean discharge by turning waste into energy.-TradeArabia News Service Eberhard & Co, a Swiss luxury watch company, has issued a special commemorative edition of its iconic Chrono 4 mechanical chronograph produced in a limited edition of 130 pieces to celebrate its 130th anniversary. Eberhard & Co, a Swiss luxury watch company, has issued a special commemorative edition of its iconic Chrono 4 mechanical chronograph, to celebrate its 130th anniversary. This very special iteration of the Chrono 4 is produced in a limited edition of 130 pieces, and is an emblematic model which embodies the very essence of the Maison and confirms its natural propensity for evolution and innovation, a statement said. The 42 mm steel case houses a skeleton dial, argente or black, which reveals the main plate and the wheels with DLC finishing, protected by an upper bridge in a special sapphire glass that is three-tenths of a millimetre thick, an element of highly complex construction. A rhodium plaque, secured to the main plate by two screws, shows the name of the model and the historic trademark of Eberhard & Co., as used for the first wrist chronograph in 1919. The sapphire glass caseback of the Chrono 4 130 provides a view of the circular oscillating weight, finished with Cotes de Geneve and customised with the number 130. Water-resistant to 50 m, this edition comes with a black rubberized alligator strap, waterproof, or with a Chene steel bracelet. The Chrono 4 presented a revolutionary take on the conventional wisdom behind chronograph displays. This iconic creation from Eberhard & Co., which was first introduced to the horological world in 2001, was the first timepiece to feature all its counters and indexes in a straight line, as compared to the conventional radial placements. The Chrono 4, with its innovative looks, made a big splash at its launch, as notable as the debuts of its predecessors, the spectacular Tazio Nuvolari chronograph (1992) and the 8 DAYS wrist-watch for a-week-and-a-day service without rewinding (1997). The advent of the Chrono 4 marked the appearance of a collection that revolutionized the chronograph category both technologically and aesthetically. For the first time in the history of watch-making, all counters of this chronograph and their pertinent indexes are arranged on the dial in one horizontal line rather than being spread radially over the conventional positions (viz. 3 o'clock, 6, 9 and 12). This innovation was not just a great exemplary achievement in the fields of research and technology; it also paved the way to a new "technique of reading the time". The innovation was also Eberhard & Co.'s own particular way of reiterating its tradition of updating chronographs worn on the wrist to usher in, as it were, this third millennium. The company's leading role was initiated as early as way back in 1919. Today, with said counters all lined up, read-offs are in fact obtained more readily seeing that it's all done in a natural progression, in that first we have the minutes elapsed since timing commenced, then we have the hours, all of it ensuing in a very spontaneous, logical linear succession without a need to sort out the counters on the dial and the tasks they're assigned to. TradeArabia News Service Expo 2020 Dubai has signed an agreement with United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) to jointly promote entrepreneurship and investment around the world to help realise the UNs Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These SDGs were agreed by the United Nations in 2015 and aim to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved by 2030, such as eradicating extreme poverty or reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third. In total, there are 17 SDGs and 169 targets, all of which form part of the UNs Sustainable Development Agenda. Organisations from across the international community, including governments, businesses and charities, are working with the United Nations to achieve the agenda. As per the MoU, both organisations will work together on some of the targets for 2030 by exploring initiatives such as sharing knowledge, thought leadership and co-hosting events, remarked Manal AlBayat, the senior VP of Business Development and Integration at Expo 2020 Dubai, after signing the deal with Hiroshi Kuniyoshi, the deputy to the Director General of Unido in the presence of Miroslav Lajcak, the president of the UN General Assembly. Expo 2020 Dubai is committed to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals, which are fully aligned with our own theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future as well as our subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability," stated AlBayat. So we welcome the chance to work with Unido. Together we can harness the global platform of Expo 2020 Dubai to bring countries, organisations, corporations and educational institutions together to tackle these pressing issues, she added. Unido, the specialised agency of the UN, promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalisation and environmental sustainability. It has three key areas of focus: creating shared prosperity, which includes empowering youth and supporting rural entrepreneurship; advancing economic competitiveness, such as supporting the growth of SMEs and driving innovation; and safeguarding the environment, including encouraging clean energy use. The organisations Good Will Ambassadors include influential business leaders and thought leaders from around the world. The UN body also hosts an annual event, the World Entrepreneurs Investment Forum, which has the goal of developing partnerships between entrepreneurs and sharing international best practices on entrepreneurship and innovation. This years forum took place in Manama, Bahrain, from 30 October to 2 November. Kuniyoshi said Unido was determined to help facilitate the success of the SDGs around the world. "Our mandate is to promote inclusive and sustainable industrial development to achieve shared prosperity and environmental sustainability around the world, a mission that is enshrined in SDG No.9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation," he stated. Expo 2020 Dubai is following a similar path as it looks to bring the world together to create a brighter future for all. This is why we are delighted to have signed this MoU and look forward to working closely together, added Kuniyosho. Lajcak said this partnership proves that the private sector can make significant contributions toward inclusive and sustainable development. I also welcome the parties intention to share knowledge around investment and entrepreneurship for development to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he added. More than 200 participants, including countries, multilateral organisations, corporations and educational institutions, are expected to take part in Expo 2020 Dubai. It will be a celebration for all, which will provide a platform to encourage creativity, innovation and collaboration. The Expo runs for six months from 20 October 2020 and is expected to attract 25 million visits, with 70 percent coming from outside of the UAE, an unprecedented proportion in the 166-year history of World Expos.-TradeArabia News Service The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has signed a joint venture with Emaar Properties to study the launch of autonomous vehicles using smart traffic signals as crossings between the Dubai Mall and Boulevard areas. The agreement was signed on the sidelines of International Road Federation (IRF) Mena The agreement was signed by Maitha bin Adai, CEO of Traffic and Roads Agency and Ahmed Thani Al Matrooshi, managing director of Emaar Properties, in the presence of scores of directors and staff members from both parties. "The self-driving vehicles had brought new challenges and perceptions to our road infrastructure, which warrants upgrading the existing technology in an innovative manner to mark the worlds first autonomous vehicles initiative, said Maitha bin Adai. The joint venture between RTA and Emaar is a fruitful outcome of the study of autonomous vehicles plying the Dubai Mall and the Boulevard areas using, in the initial phase, smart interactive systems between these vehicles and traffic signals on some intersections, controlled by signalized traffic lights. "This drive is expected to further boost Dubai's standing in the forefront of global cities in implementing clean transport solutions that contribute to achieving sustainable development. This is because innovation in the transportation sector & mobility solutions in the city is one of the key pillars of Dubai Smart Vision, launched by Dubai Government, bin Adai added. Al Matrooshi said: We offer our sincere thanks to RTA for supporting our plans aimed to introduce and use autonomous vehicles in downtown Dubai. The joint venture is another conclusive testament reflecting Dubais commitment to promoting sustainable transport patterns consistent with the objective of the Dubai 2021 Plan to build a smart city. Dubai is seeking to link the various landmarks Downtown Dubai, the world's most popular tourist and leisure destination, with autonomous vehicles to bring more comfort and convenience to the residents and visitors flocking to the stunning landmarks including Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall, Dubai Opera, Souq Al Bahar, in addition to the top-class hotels. We are poised to incorporate this clean and smart initiative into our future mega-project, Dubai Creek Port, in line with the Dubai's autonomous vehicles strategy launched recently, Al Matrooshi added.- TradeArabia News Service US-based Emerson, a global technology and engineering company, has announced an extension of its Plantweb digital ecosystem with the new Plantweb Insight Heat Exchanger application. The new app is an affordable, easy-to-use analytics and asset alert predictive intelligence tool, which provides maintenance staff real-time access to critical heat exchanger diagnostics anytime, anywhere to improve operations in chemical, oil and gas and refining operations, said a statement from the company. Providing quick return on investment through reduced slowdowns and shutdowns, Emersons Plantweb Insight apps leverage Emersons Pervasive Sensing Strategies to help users instantly make sense of plant data and drive overall enterprise profitability, it said. Emersons Plantweb Insight Heat Exchanger app joins the previously announced apps for pumps, steam traps and pressure gauges, it added. Michael Sowell, regional manager of energy distribution, Evonik, said: The web interface with Plantweb Insight is very intuitive. It is easy to get useful information about our steam traps without requiring a lot of user training. This makes it easy for operators and engineers to benefit from the system. The Plantweb Insight apps employ pre-built algorithms based on decades of process experience and industry-vetted analytics to deliver predictive diagnostics, enabling maintenance prioritisation. The easy to use interface allows maintenance and operations to take instant action within a browser from any laptop, tablet, smartphone or other device connected to the network, said a statement. Plantweb Insight monitors shell and tube heat exchangers to provide real-time status and alerts including fouling, heat duty and heat transfer coefficient. It does not require integration with the plants existing monitoring and control system. It can operate completely independent of existing or legacy control systems. The app can also leverage existing data points if desired, using OPC UA to collect data stored in the control system, historian or data base if access is available. Plantweb Insight apps paired with wireless instrumentation lower the cost to entry for customers looking to implement an Industrial IoT strategy. Emersons Plantweb digital ecosystem is a next-generation Industrial IoT portfolio that extends the power of automation beyond process control to the entire enterprise, it stated. TradeArabia News Service The international deal between Opec and other countries to cut oil output could be extended beyond March 2018 if needed, said a report citing Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak. Novak's comments came after his meeting with Saudi King Salman on Thursday, reported Reuters. The Russian minister said he had discussed the deal with King Salman and that the idea of a possible extension would be discussed at an Opec meeting in late November, though any decision could be taken later, the report added. UAE national airline Etihad Airways has announced plans to suspend its Abu DhabiDallas/Fort Worth (DFW) route early next year following American Airlines decision to terminate its codeshare deal with the Abu Dhabi carrier. Etihad Airways said the suspension will be effective from March 25, as it will become commercially unsustainable for the Emirati airline to run the DFW operations. Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways chief executive officer, said: The unfortunate decision by American Airlines to terminate a commercial relationship that benefited both carriers has left Etihad with no choice but to suspend flights between our Abu Dhabi home and Dallas/Fort Worth. We are open to American Airlines reversing its decision to cancel our codeshare agreement so that Etihad Airways can continue the route and together protect and support American national interests and global connectivity while driving commercial value for both airlines. Etihad Airways has invested heavily in the DFW route since its launch in December 2014. The route commenced with three flights a week and was upgraded to a daily service in February 2017, providing travellers in the US and across the airlines network with access to more US cities through American Airlines primary hub. More than 235,000 travellers have flown on the route since its launch. Almost half of Etihad Airways DFW customers connect on US codeshare flights operated by American Airlines. Baumgartner added: The cancellation of the Dallas route is one of several adjustments that we are making to our US network in 2018 in order to improve system profitability. Further changes are possible as we monitor the full impact of the American Airlines codeshare cancellation on summer 2018 bookings. Etihad Airways is grateful to the state of Texas, its authorities, including the Mayors offices in Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW International Airport, local businesses, the travel trade, and the travelling public for their partnership throughout the years of our operation. According to independent research by Oxford Economics, in 2016 Etihad Airways contributed $3.8 billion to the US economy, supported more than 30,000 American jobs, and brought 280,000 additional visitors to the US. These visitors, who travelled from growing markets historically ignored by US carriers and partners, contributed $1.9 billion to the US economy and supported an additional 22,000 American jobs. Etihad Airways is also a major customer of widebody aircraft built by the Boeing Company, with firm orders for 71 GE-powered Boeing 787s and 25 Boeing 777Xs, both of which will support the airlines fleet renewal programme. All of the airlines First Class seating, as well as The Residence on the Airbus A380, is built by US-based aircraft cabin interior manufacturer B/E Aerospace, now part of Rockwell Collins. In 2012, Etihad Airways also signed a deal valued at more than a billion US dollars with aviation computer technology provider Sabre Airline Solutions. Etihad Airways currently operates 42 non-stop flights a week to five US gateways Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Additionally, Etihad Cargo operates twice weekly Boeing 777F freighter services to and from Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, and Tucson, Arizona. - TradeArabia News Service Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village RIVERTON The Elks clubs in both Riverton and Lander were subjects of burglaries over the weekend, local law enforcement said Monday. The incidents may be connected to a larger string of break-ins in Wyoming and northeast Utah. Same day Riverton police responded at about 10 a.m. Sunday to reports that someone had broken into Elks Lodge No. 1693, 207 E. Main St., and taken thousands of dollars out of a safe. In Lander, officials say the burglary occurred between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. Sunday at Elks Lodge No. 2317, 492 Lincoln St. Police were dispatched to that location at about 8:40 a.m. Sunday. Forcible entry was made into the building, and cash was taken, LPD public information officer Duane Kaiser said in a press release. He believed thousands of dollars had been stolen from the Lander location, though an official amount still is being tallied. As of noon Tuesday, nothing other than cash had been reported stolen. Kaiser requested assistance from the community to help solve the crime. Anyone with information about suspicious activity in the area Sunday morning should contact Detective Sgt. Randy Lutterman at 332-3401. Two states Local officials said they would be working together to investigate both incidents, which resemble earlier events reported elsewhere. For example, news outlets in Laramie reported last month that local Eagles and Elks clubs had been burglarized, with cash stolen after forced entry was made into the buildings. That report indicated other similar organizations had been victimized in past months as well. This week, the LPD began handing flyers out to area businesses stating that more than 30 organizations -- including Elks and Eagles clubs and Veterans of Foreign Wars as well as restaurants, bars and veterinary offices -- have been burglarized throughout southwest Wyoming and northeast Utah since May. Safes and cash have been stolen in all these burglaries, the letter states. Law enforcement believes the same suspects are responsible for all the burglaries, (and) multiple suspects are involved. All of the incidents have taken place overnight or while buildings were vacant, the letter says, and doors have been pried open to gain access inside. The LPD recommended businesses not leave large amounts of cash at their establishments overnight or after hours, and any businesses with video surveillance systems should ensure their cameras are in working order. Second time This is the second time Landers Elks Lodge has been involved in a burglary this year: The LPD responded at about 11:10 a.m. June 26 to an incident involving a broken window and some missing alcohol there. Kaiser said it is unclear whether the incidents are related. Jackson philanthropist and investor Foster Friess confirmed that he is considering challenging Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso in the GOP primary next year, explaining his motivation in an email to the Star-Tribune. Friess said that he had not considered a Senate run until former top Trump administration adviser and right-wing media mogul Steve Bannon called him and encouraged him to consider it. It pays $174,000 and hey, I have been out of work since 2001, Friess, who is worth several hundred million dollars, quipped. Friess said that several recent incidents have moved him closer to entering the race, though emphasized he had yet to make a decision. The incidents are as follows: The United States failure to arm Kurdish forces within Iraq, which Friess referred to as a betrayal. The Iraqi Kurds joined with the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State but in October the Kurdish region in the countrys north attempted to declare independence, sparking a harsh backlash from the central government; The so-called Uranium One conspiracy, which claims that Hillary Clinton gave Russia 20 percent of the United States uranium supply while she was secretary of state; A general misuse of federal funds, which Friess ambiguously references as a recent revelation that some of the fines levied are being allocated to the Fish & Wildlife Commission. The email represents Friess first comments to Wyoming media and came in response to a series of questions sent from the Star-Tribune. Friess said that he was not interested in attacking Barrasso and that if he ran it would be to offer voters the pick of two elite options. Friess previously told the Washington Examiner that Barrasso was a hero of his and continued that praise in the email to the Star-Tribune, though he consistently misspelled the senators name. I am a huge fan of John Barrosso and if I do decide to run the people of Wyoming just need to decide if they would like to have Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers in the line up for them, figuratively speaking, Friess wrote. Friess added that while Barrasso said that he withdrew his name from consideration for Health and Human Services Secretary in the Trump administration, the lawmaker might still accept the post and leave the Senate. Friess acknowledged that he might face some opposition as a wealthy, Jackson-based candidate who was born outside of Wyoming. But he believed his upbringing might better resonate with the states electorate. He recounted his parents experience growing up on farms, noting that his mother dropped out of school to pick cotton and save the family farm. Most of Wyoming ... has a very negative attitude towards Jackson as it is considered sort of an elitist environment so whether or not my humble background will offset that needs to be assessed, Friess wrote. In addition to Friess, Bannon also reportedly recruited Erik Prince, the founder of private security contractor Blackwater, to run against Barrasso as part of a bid to unseat incumbent Republicans seen as too close to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. McConnell is seen by some on the populist right as too close to the Republican establishment and as standing in the way of President Donald Trumps agenda. However, Republicans in Congress have largely voted in lockstep with Trumps stated position on legislation. Friess has little connection to Wyoming politics, though has been active on the national stage. He was a major backer of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and has donated significant sums to conservative Christian causes. Prince, who lives in Virginia but was in Wyoming last month to explore ways to establish residency, has been viewed as a more serious prospective candidate than Friess. Jennifer Duffy, senior editor at The Cook Political Report, which forecasts Congressional races, said in an interview last week that she believed Friess may be floating a run as a way of making a political point in Washington. I think Friess is playing that game, Duffy said. I really do. Wyomings children, especially minorities, generally lag behind the well-being of children in the rest of the country, according to a new study. No child in Wyoming is meeting what we would want them to see, especially compared to the national average, said Samin Dadelahi, the chief operating officer of the Wyoming Community Foundation. All Wyoming children are falling a little bit below where we would want to see them. Children of color are doing less well than white children in Wyoming, which matches trends nationally. The Race for Results study, conducted by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, based the findings on 12 indicators, which were scored a scale of 1 to 1,000. The indicators included babies born at the normal birth weight; children ages 3 to 5 enrolled in school; and high school students graduating on time. The survey comes a few months after the foundation released its Kids Count results, which found that Wyoming was ranked last for overall childhood health. The state also had the highest teen death rate in the country. For Wyoming, Native American students had the lowest overall well-being score of 380, which was below the national average of 413. Wyomings white children, scoring 669, were the highest-scored ethnic group in the state. Still, the result was more than 40 points below the national average for white kids. Latino children in Wyoming fared the best compared to national figures, scoring 488 compared to U.S. average of 429. But that was well below white students, and on a scale that tops out at 1,000, a 488 shows there is room for significant improvement. There werent enough African-American or Asian and Pacific Islander kids in Wyoming to produce reliable scores, according to a press release from the Wyoming Community Foundation. Dadelahi said that there while its hard to pin down exactly why Wyomings numbers are generally lower than the national average, there are a few factors that officials can identify. For one, Wyomings small population can skew results. On top of that, the states unique socioeconomic culture can hurt its scores on some of the indicators. As an example, she noted, postsecondary education historically hasnt been required for Wyoming high school graduates to find work. Furthermore, even when researchers break down the results, answers can be hard to come by. For instance, Wyoming has consistently ranked low in the rate of babies born at a normal birth weight. But officials have had a hard time explaining why. She said it may have something to do with the states limited social infrastructure, like access to facilities and specialty services, which is a function of its rural nature. There are other explanations for the disparity between white children and their peers of color. Dadelahi said white families generally have a longer history here, and thus have more stability. That generational stability comes with a degree of economic security, she explained. But she noted that Wyomings Latino population also has deeper roots here, which may explain why those children are doing better than the national average. Still, that doesnt explain the low score for Native American kids, many of whom likely come from families with longstanding ties to Wyoming. Dadelahi said that Native childrens low scores may go up as economic conditions on the Wind River Indian Reservation improve. As the reservation becomes more economically stable, theres better things going on for our Native American population, then we would see that index rising, she continued. But we are lagging behind. On a broader level, the lower scores for minority children show that theres a disparity between those kids and their white peers, Dadelahi said, and that the state needs to have a conversation about the gap between those groups to insure that the state is as inclusive as possible as its population continues to become more diverse. For instance, she said that children of color are often raised in poverty and are also disproportionately affected by health disorders. Asked what policy moves if any can be made to close the gap, she said there first needs to be conversation about disparity. Are people asking the question, Do disparities exist? she said. If youre not asking the question, how are you aware of it? How many times are we looking at data around us to say, Do disparities exist? There will be no policy if nobody believes we have a problem. Theres some evidence those conversations are starting to take place, Dadelahi said. The University of Wyoming recently hired a chief diversity officer, for instance. She said that Wyomings population is changing, and thats a good thing, especially as the state works to build a young labor force to supplement the aging workers. There are 11,000 children in immigrant families in Wyoming, she said, noting that it was important to remember that most immigrant families arrived here legally. Elsewhere, the press release noted that the survey found: Seventy-eight percent of immigrant children were enrolled in preschool, compared to 51 percent of kids in U.S.-born families; Fifty-six percent of kids in Wyomings immigrant families live at or above 200 percent of the federal poverty line. Sixty-eight percent of children in U.S.-born families fall into that category. Both figures are higher than the national average; Wyomings scores were lower than the national average for young adults with an associates degree or higher. Thirty-one percent of children in immigrant families and 40 percent in U.S.-born families had such degrees. PJ Media published an article earlier this week discussing a recent Center for Disease Control report that warns of record high numbers of sexually transmitted diseases. Over two million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and primary and secondary syphilis were reported in 2016 the highest number ever with dramatic increases in each disease over the previous one-year period. While most of these new infections (1.6 million) were cases of chlamydia which continues to affect more women than men the most significant uptick in gonorrhea infection rates was in gay and bisexual men, as were most new syphilis cases. The CDC also reports that half of the men diagnosed with syphilis between 2015 and 2016 were already living with HIV. CDC physicians expressed particular concern about the health implications for babies born with STDs, and about newer, antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhea. Jonathan Mermin, M.D., MPH, Director of CDCs National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said, Increases in STDs are a clear warning of a growing threat. STDs are a persistent threat, growing in number, and outpacing our ability to respond. Unfortunately, this is not a new trend. We say we treat STDs as a public health crisis, but were not being completely honest. Its not that we havent thrown billions of dollars into research for cures; we have. (The National Institutes of Health estimates that research spending on sexually transmitted diseases will be $273 million in 2017 alone.) But our messaging is to say the least inconsistent. Lets compare other human behaviors that cause serious health problems. Take smoking, for example. We plow millions of dollars into research and treatments for emphysema, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But we dont just try to cure smoking-related illness, nor do we claim to be solving the problem by improving access to chemotherapy. We also tell people, stop smoking. Nor do we try to reduce alcoholism and drug abuse solely by improving the number and quality of rehab centers. We also tell people, dont abuse alcohol. Dont drink and drive. Dont take drugs recreationally or abuse prescription drugs. The same could be said for obesity. Most importantly for the most part were not glorifying smoking or obesity in movies, TV or advertising. The days of filmmakers portraying smoking as glamorous are long gone. Cigarette advertising has been banned on TV for decades. Media depictions of smoking are negative or nonexistent. Hundreds of statutes and ordinances have been passed that ban smoking in most public places. Neither Hollywood nor Madison Avenue is trying to pitch obesity to the average American. Do we take the same approach, as a culture, to irresponsible sexuality? No. To the contrary, the pervasive message in books, music, film and television is anything goes, as long as its consensual. (And the age of consent keeps getting younger.) OK, well, smoking, drinking, using drugs and overeating start out consensual as well. That doesnt stop us as a culture from discouraging them. (Its worth mentioning that two of Americas institutions that have done the most to promote irresponsible sexuality academia and Hollywood are suffering widespread consequences of that encouragement particularly sexual exploitation and assault. Why are they shocked?) No one wants to be the party pooper who says, stop sleeping around, despite the host of individual and societal ills this would alleviate. Not just the explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, but out-of-wedlock births (with their attendant problems and societal costs); divorce and broken families (caused by infidelity); anxiety, depression and other psychological disorders in sexually active youth; and abortion. If a private companys products, services or business practices were causing this much individual illness and social cost, wed demand they be shut down. But because our society has decided to worship sex, its untouchable. One problem is that sexual mores are frequently dismissed as a vestige of history, or tied to specific religious beliefs. Too few consider whether there might be social and scientific reasons for moral principles which until relatively recently were considered uncontroversial in this country. (No, that doesnt mean everyone followed them. Thats never the case.) A better way to look at sexual morality is like nutritional recommendations. No one screams, Prude! Freak! Buzzkill! at people who tell us we should reduce sugar intake, eat more vegetables, avoid processed foods and exercise more. We may ignore their admonitions, but we dont accuse them of trying to shove religion down our throats. Our current situation is absurd. Its anti-intellectual. Its anti-scientific. Its unevolved. Precisely because sex is a powerful human urge, it has the potential to be deeply damaging without reasonable, self-imposed controls supported by societal messaging. An advanced society shouldnt be afraid to acknowledge that some types of sexual behaviors are healthy and productive, and some are unhealthy and irresponsible. Instead, we let predators prey on women and children, we foster sexual assault and rape culture, we tolerate mental and emotional illness in our youth, and we wring our hands as diseases become avoidable epidemics. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments Nov. 16 on Tucson-based Asarcos appeal of a judgment requiring the company to pay copper-price bonuses to hundreds of miners. The oral arguments begin at 9:30 a.m. at the San Francisco-based appellate panels Pasadena, California, courthouse. A live webcast can be viewed at tucne.ws/9thcircuit, and an archived version can be viewed on the courts YouTube channel. The case stems from a 2014 ruling by a federal arbitrator that Asarco wrongly withheld bonuses based on copper prices to more than 700 employees. Asarcos unions, led by the United Steelworkers, have said the unpaid bonuses total more than $10 million, plus interest. The issue affects about 550 Asarco employees hired after June 30, 2011, and still employed as of March 2015, as well as 180 former hourly employees, court records show. In July 2016, a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix denied Asarcos motion to reconsider his earlier ruling that the arbitrator acted properly. Asarco appealed the ruling to the 9th Circuit, halting any moves to compel payment of the bonuses pending resolution by the appellate court. Every October for the past 30 years, a trio of bakers has stood around a table in the back of Tucson's La Estrella Bakery and made pan de muerto with their hands. They mix flour with sugar, cinnamon, salt and yeast to make a basic pan dulce sweet bread, with a little added citrus, whatever they have onhand at the time. When the dough is ready, they mold it into flat pucks that are decorated with strings of bumpy bones, symbolizing the deceased. They put a single sphere on top, a bone from the hand. "You need to work well with your hands," says Isabel Montano of the Franco family, which has owned the South Twelfth Avenue staple since Halloween of 1986. "You cannot have fear, because when you're tense it gets into the dough." The bakers Rafael Espinosa, Cecilio Montenegro and Isabel's uncle Guadalupe Franco then throw the bread into a large stone oven from the 1930s and leave it for about a half an hour. It emerges, brown and bubbly and crisp on the outsides, ready to be dusted with colorful sugars. La Estrella Bakery makes several hundred of these sturdy sweet breads every year during the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos today and tomorrow. Since the Francos are from Jalisco, theirs are slightly different and more colorful than the white Sonoran versions you might see elsewhere, but the tradition is the same. According to Isabel, pan de muerto shows the intersections between the indigenous origins of the holiday and the Catholic culture that has transformed it. In late October, Mexican families will use the bread in elaborate three-tiered altars in their homes, which are speckled with religious symbols and marigold flowers. The different levels symbolize the earth, limbo and the heavens. "It's believed that on The Day of the Dead, that soul will come back and have what they love to eat, play what they love to play, listen to what they like to listen to, and then they're gonna be thirsty, drink their water, and then they're going to celebrate," she said. The bread is also taken to the cemetery on Dia de los Muertos, where families will get together and talk about their loved ones while they play mariachi music and drink hot chocolate. The celebrations will even continue in the home later that night or the next day. Even if you're not celebrating Dia de los Muertos with family, it's still okay to purchase and enjoy the bread, she said. Many people will take smaller versions to All Souls Procession, because all that marching makes you hungry. "There's no real right or wrong, it's just hearing the knowledge of what it's meant to represent." La Estrella Bakery, 5266 S. 12th Ave., will sell its pan de muerto until about mid-November. But if they've already sold out for the day, try one of these three other Tucson bakeries. We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Nov. 2 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. Claudia Escobars first six months in Tucson were some of the loneliest she had ever experienced. She missed her family and friends back home in Chile, and with her husband working long hours on astronomy projects in Tucson, she was often left to her own devices in a new place. Until one day, when she overheard her daughter talking to another girl at the park. She was from Valparaiso, a seaport in Chile, the little girl said. Youre from Chile? Wheres your mom? Escobar asked the girl, who pointed out her mother. I went over and said hello, and she invited me to a party to meet more Chileans. It turned out a group of women from Chile, all here under similar situations, gather every week for morning breakfast of homemade cinnamon buns and coffee at area parks or in each others homes to talk about their experiences and laugh at their cultural mishaps. At times, the group consists of about 10 Chileans whose husbands astronomy-related work at the University of Arizona brought them to Tucson plus the occasional Brazilian or Argentinian. To find other Chileans here, is like finding family, said Raquel Salgado, for whom the move was especially difficult five years ago. Her teenage daughter stayed behind and due to the high cost of flying, she cant visit as often as she would like. In 2015, about 8,600 Chileans and their families were admitted to the U.S. under temporary visas, including 2,374 under H-4 visas, which are for college-educated people working in specialty or research occupations, according to data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tucson has an unusual link to Chile, said Stephen Pompea, spokesman for the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. They both have wide, clear and quiet skies, ideal conditions for astronomical observation. Astronomy is a very international topic, he said. Many of the Chilean scientists who come here with particular skills in engineering and software development, for example, collaborate with astronomers on a project funded by the National Science Foundation to build a massive survey telescope that will be located in Chile. But while the astronomers work, their spouses are often unable to hold a job due to visa restrictions, and so they find it harder to settle into routines and meet people. This is part of the reason the breakfast group is so important in their lives, said Daniela Droguett. We can really support the new people that come here, said Droguett, who has been in Tucson for two years. Because often you find yourself in situations you know nothing about. The differences in health-care systems is one of those things, and has been one of the biggest learning curves for the women. In Chile, government-run health care is cheap or free, unlike in the U.S., Droguett said. She found this out the hard way, nearly giving her husband a heart attack when he saw the bill from a recent emergency visit. Or cultural norms, everything from buying a bed, to going out for coffee, or to simply greeting an acquaintance, can make someone acutely aware that they are in foreign land, they said. The breakfast offers an invaluable outlet for both the mothers and their children to capture something of the family support they had in Chile people who will be there through the good and the bad, they said. During a recent club meeting, a mother talked about her 12-year-old son being bullied at school since they moved from Chile a year ago, which led to a conversation about diversity in different school districts. Since were all in the same situation, the friendships we make are stronger, said Drougett. Even when their husbands projects end and they return to their different hometowns, the women said they will stay friends and see each other at least once a year. Its like finding sisters. A fourth Marana police officer is being investigated by the department for his or her role in an incident that involved illegal use of the state's criminal database. Earlier this week, the Marana Police Department confirmed that one officer had been fired in October and another two had resigned in connection with the incident. Dionysius Cazares has 10 days from her termination date to file an appeal of her firing but until then, department officials are prohibited by state law from commenting further on the situation, said department spokesman, Sgt. Chriswell Scott. On Oct. 10, a Pima County grand jury indicted Cazares on two counts of computer tampering to obtain confidential information, stemming from a Sept. 17 incident during which she used the Arizona Criminal Justice Information System without a legitimate law enforcement purpose, according to superior court records. Two other former officers, Kyla Sylvia and Daniel Nicholas, are also no longer with the department as a result of the incident, having both resigned in October, Scott said. On Thursday, Scott confirmed that a 4th officer has been placed on imposed leave "stemming from the investigation" into the other three officers, he said. Scott was unable to release the officer's name. Cazares, 31, was booked and released without bond during her arraignment Oct. 17, court records show. She is being represented by the Pima County Public Defenders Office and is scheduled for a case management conference in front of Judge Richard Fields on Nov. 16, court records show. No additional details about the incident were available. Border Patrol agents apprehended an armed 29-year-old Tucson man at the Interstate 19 immigration checkpoint near Amado after finding three Mexican nationals hidden in the trunk of his car. On Wednesday, agents sent the man for a secondary inspection of his Dodge Dart after an agency dog alerted to an odor in the car, according to a news release from Customs and Border Protection. Agents discovered the illegal immigrants when they opened the vehicles trunk. Agents also found a loaded 9 mm pistol in the center console. Agents arrested the man on suspicion of human smuggling and seized his vehicle and gun. While eating may always be the primary reason for visiting a restaurant, there's a growing number of eateries that offer more than just a great menu, one website says. With several such spots scattered across the state, it's no surprise that two of these exciting eateries can be found in Tucson, according to Only in Your State. The first Tucson restaurant to earn a spot on the list is Cafe a la C'Art, which is located inside a historic home on the grounds of the Tucson Museum of Art. "The food here is delicious and the beautiful patio is the perfect place to enjoy your meal, but also make sure you stop by the museum as well," Only in Your State says. The next exciting Tucson eatery to make the list is The Gaslight Theatre's original location on Broadway. "Why bother going for dinner and then a show when you can catch both under the same roof?" Only in Your State says. "You can do just that at this dinner theater in Tucson where you can enjoy a meal with a live comedy melodrama." Check out the full list here and see what other Arizona eateries offer more than just food. Help India! By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net After a few weeks of silence and calmness, Aligarh Muslim University again saw protests last night after authorities at the university crossed the deadline to declare students union election dates. Support TwoCircles Earlier, the students of AMU had sat on a Dharna on September 19 demanding a declaration of union election dates. The protest ended after authorities promised the students to declare the election dates until November 1. But as the deadline passed, and there was still no announcement from the authorities, students surrounded the registrars office on Wednesday evening asking for the announcement. However, getting no word from the authorities, students closed all the gates of the university last night, and the condition has only got worse. Protesting students have started suspending classes, and AMU is currently looking at a complete lockdown situation. AMU administration has mentioned the municipal election which is announced in Uttar Pradesh as the reason behind its silence. But students are concerned that why the university is being interfered by the district administration. There are union elections happening in almost every college and university, we cannot understand why the administration does not wants election only in AMU, said AMU student Helal Khan. We wanted November 3 as the date of nomination. But we dont see that happening so we are protesting, he added. Apparently, AMU administration has given a tentative election date of December 3. But students are not agreeing to the same saying that most of the students will be busy preparing for the semester exams. No one will bother to come to the polling booth, said Khan. Most of the students in the university are sitting at the gates of the University and demanding a proper scheduling and announcement of union elections in the campus. When contacted for the comments, Pro-Vice Chancellor at AMU Tabassum Shahab informed that meeting for the election is under process and students, along with the media, will be informed very soon. Help India! New Delhi, (IANS): A forum of journalists from South Asia on Thursday urged governments and society to respect professional media, uphold the law, and resist the intimidation and censoring of journalists. The South Asia Media Defenders Network, on the occasion of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, paid tributes to journalists throughout the world who work tirelessly, courageously and professionally to report on and defend human rights and all those who work for substantive equality, a statement said. Support TwoCircles Journalists face a unique set of challenges while performing their duties and often run into specific risks of intimidation, harassment and violence. The alarming increase in violence against media defenders and violation of their rights demonstrates the importance of strengthening protection mechanism across the globe, it noted. According to the UN, more than 900 journalists have been killed in the last decade, while over 30 journalists have been targeted and killed in 2017, including the recent attacks on journalists in Kenya, Malta, India and Pakistan. It called on governments to ensure accountability through the conduct of impartial, speedy and effective investigations into cases of violence against journalists and media workers and to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice, and assure victims access to appropriate remedies. It urged media owners and publishers to protect staff and provide assistance cover in all situations, including the confiscation and destruction of equipment. It affirmed the importance of freedom of expression and of a free media in building inclusive knowledge societies and democracies to foster intercultural dialogue, peace and good governance. Ever since the EU abolished the death penalty for all crimes, gruesome crimes are continuing. Perhaps there is some correlation between the two. Some famous men do feel there is a link. A gruesome crime has now surfaced. Swedish inventor Peter Madsen took on board freelance Journalist named Kim Wall aged 30. The journalist was doing a story on the inventor when she was invited by Madsen, to accompany him in a submarine invented by him. The lady disappeared after she boarded the submarine on 10 August and was not traceable after that. Kim Wall was an adventurous lady, who had had earlier reported from Sri Lanka and North Korea. The disappearance of the journalist intrigued the police as the submarine in which the journalist had traveled had been sunk by the inventor. The inventor had claimed that Kim had died in an accident and he had sunk the sub to give her a sea burial reported the BBC. The killing The police did not buy the story of the inventor and were able to salvage the submarine. An examination of the submarine revealed blood stains which matched the DNA of the journalist. Later the body of Wall was recovered in a dismembered state. Her legs were cut off and the police also recovered a large knife used in the killing. It was apparent that the journalist was killed and her body dismembered. Madsen was arrested by the police and he kept changing his story. Finally, he has admitted to having dismembered her body. He claimed the death was accidental. The police also recovered a hard disc which contained videos of women being tortured and assaulted. The inventor has denied the hard disc belongs to him. The case was compounded by the discovery of a nude woman's body with 15 stab wounds from the bay, reported the Washington Post. Madsen has been arrested on a charge of manslaughter and will appear in court on 15 November. He had stated that Ms. Wall died when a heavy metal hatch fell on her head. The police have recovered the head and it has no injury.The public prosecutor claims he has evidence and will be able to prove the killing, as two people were on board the submarine and one disappeared. Last word The killing is both shocking and bizarre. Probably, the case would have gone undetected if the boyfriend of Kim Wall had not raised the alarm about his girlfriend being missing.The legs and body of the journalist have been recovered but the arms have not yet been found. The police have done a good job in solving what looked like a perfect crime. When the Provisional IRA disbanded their weapons in 2005, Father Alex Reid oversaw this historic occasion. He had been instrumental in 1988 in persuading the Social Democratic and Labour Party's (SDLP) then leader, John Hume, to talk to Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and begin the Northern Ireland Peace Process. It was only fitting the Catholic priest should have been there to witness something he started. This was the final step towards creating a power-sharing agreement between the nationalists and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). IRA disarmament split the original coalition between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. The DUP, having smashed the Ulster Unionists in the 2003 Assembly elections, were elected on a platform to ensure the IRA disbanded their weapons before they shared power with Sinn Fein. Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace since both of the province's largest nationalist and unionist parties formed an unlikely coalition in 2007. In 2009, loyalist paramilitary groups disbanded their weapons. In 2011, the Queen travelled to the Republic of Ireland and met Sinn Fein's deputy leader, Martin McGuinness, in 2012. These were monumental steps towards ensuring Ireland's future was not plagued with violence. Sinn Fein has not changed at all But the recent revelations from Unionist Voice prove that Sinn Fein has not changed at all. Their official disassociation with the IRA in 2005 was nothing more than a front. It now appears the IRA Council, controlled by former republican terrorists Bobby Storey, Martin Lynch and Sean Murray, possess a veto over any decisions the nationalists made during the recent talks process that collapsed. A report conducted by the Government in 2015 revealed the IRA Council still possesses substantial influence over Sinn Fein's strategy. This has now proven to be true. Publicly, the nationalists have attempted to persuade Northern Ireland's people they abandoned the IRA. They have lied. Sinn Fein will never be able to escape its violent past, but Unionist Voice's report shows they never closed their contacts with these terrorists. They have stitched up unionists across Stormont in a bid to gain power and achieve their aim of a united Ireland peacefully. It is a pity because of sectarian differences, these established parties always win, no matter what. If there was a time for a decent opposition to Sinn Fein, it is now. Considering the SDLP also collapsed in the 2003 Assembly elections, that seems unlikely, sadly. For those who remember the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the political marriage between Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness and the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) Ian Paisley seemed too good to be true. To be fair to them both, they made devolution work and behaved like a political match made in heaven. Since then, the former deputy first minister's relations with the unionists has deteriorated. There was no mutual love between Mr. McGuinness and Mr. Paisley's successors, like Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster. But at least they kept the power-sharing agreement alive. When things seem too good to be true, they often are. Britain's vote to leave the European Union last year has been used as a political weapon by Sinn Fein to speed up the process of a united Ireland. They have betrayed the Irish people by putting their own self-interest above Ulster's. The Irish Question following Brexit was always going to be complicated. Before both the UK and Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, an agreement existed between both countries that enabled the free movement of people between both sides of the border. After joining the EEC, the future settlement of the Irish border now lies with the EU. But for the nationalists, the answer is simple: a referendum on Irish unity. Sinn Fein want Irish unity at any cost There is no appetite in Northern Ireland for such a vote. A poll conducted by IPSOS-MORI showed 63 per cent of people wish to remain part of the UK. Only 22 per cent wanted to join the Republic. The DUP remains the largest party in the province, both in Stormont and Westminster. A referendum would fail for the nationalists. Sinn Fein want Irish unity at any cost. And if they are not blaming Brexit for the collapse in power-sharing, then it is the Conservatives' fault too for forming a supply-and-confidence agreement with the DUP. It seems to be everyone else's fault, except Gerry Adams'. Northern Ireland has come so far since the IRA abandoned their weapons in 2005. Even though the DUP-Sinn Fein coalition has made questionable decisions since 2007 and proved Ulster's people deserve better than sectarian politicians, at least both parties have made devolution work. When Ireland's own future in the EU seems far from certain, it is disappointing the nationalists are pursuing a separatist agenda to join a trading bloc whose collapse is imminent. Many people were shocked to see the DUP and Sinn Fein form a coalition in May 2007. It has prevailed much to critics' expectations. Anyone who has studied Northern Irish politics, though, knows it was always a matter of when, not if, this agreement would eventually fail. Brexit was only the catalyst. The U.S. Treasury Department slapped new Sanctions on a variety of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders and affiliates this Tuesday in a significant step towards holding the Iranian regime accountable for its support of terrorism and mistreatment of its people. U.S. Treasury Departments judgement The new sanctions are being applied under U.S. House Resolution 3364, or the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which was signed by President Trump in August. CAATSA included a section which applied sanctions on Iran, and the most recent sanctions were a result of the U.S. Treasury Departments judgement and determination the terrorist designation of the IRGC applied to a wider range of IRGC affiliates. The move is an expansion of President Donald Trumps decision to sanction the IRGC last month, with the most recent set of sanctions applying to several branches and individuals within the IRGC network. This list includes the IRGC commander in chief, Mohammed Ali Jafari, and four other senior officials. The regime has categorically denied the charges of exporting terrorism and human rights abuses which led to the expanded sanctions. NCRI welcomes decision The National Council of Resistance of iran (NCRI), the leading Iranian opposition coalition, welcomed this decision by the U.S. government and stated that these sanctions should be expanded even further to encompass all individuals and entities affiliated with the IRGC that are engaged in terrorism and domestic suppression. The NCRI also stated that the IRGC should be expelled from the region, and that These measures are prerequisite to ending the war and bloodshed and establishing peace in the region. Implementing the most recent sanctions is an important means of responding to the Iranian governments ongoing support of terrorism and recent ballistic missile proliferation. Not to mention the continuing suppression of its people. The United States should not allow the regime to continue these belligerent actions that threaten the region, a message which has now been sent loud and clear. Iran responds The impacts of this action have already been felt, as Iranian regime has responded to the expanded sanctions by cutting back their ballistic missile program. Mohamed Ali Jafari, one of the individuals impacted by the terrorist designation, stated on October 31 that our missile ranges are 2,000 kilometres This is enough for now. This signals a massive shift in the policy of the regime as a result of the Treasury Departments action, given that Ali Jafari had recently claimed that the power of our missile capabilitieswill continue without any hesitation. The expansion of the terrorism-related sanctions has clearly worried senior members of the regime. Admitting that the IRGC controls much of Irans economy, IRGC brigadier general Gholamreza Jalali said that These sanctions will pull us all in and Irans economy will be completely sanctioned. Jalali called the U.S. governments move a very dangerous threat to the IRGC and the regime as a whole. EU must join effort The NCRI noted that the IRGCs control of the Iranian economy meant that other organisations, such as the European Union, must join in the effort to sanction and condemn the regime. The opposition group asserted that deals with the IRGC are tantamount to fueling its belligerence, its terror and suppression machine, the expansion of its nuclear weapons program and the proliferation of ballistic missiles. Without a doubt, the U.S. governments latest action against the regime in Iran will have a sizable impact and contribute to mitigating the threat it poses to the region. It is a significant step on a long road to justice, one that will require unity in the face of violence and oppression. Three IRA terrorists have been exposed for threatening the ongoing Northern Ireland talks process at Stormont. Pro-British publication Unionist Voice has revealed the identities of three senior Irish republicans haunting the Northern Ireland Assembly's corridors and wielding a veto over the talks process. Their names are Bobby Storey, Martin Lynch and Sean Murray. The three terrorists were crucial during the IRA meeting in the Felons club where they urged Ulster's largest nationalist party, Sinn Fein, to adopt a tougher position ready for the talks. Because of this terrorist group's order, the IRA trio were appointed to guard Sinn Fein and have a veto on any decisions they made. The IRA Council influences Sinn Fein's direction The accuracy of a Government assessment conducted in 2015, which stated the IRA Council influenced Sinn Fein's direction, has been proven to be accurate as a result of their veto over the nationalist party's decisions. Mr. Storey was a member of an IRA gang that escaped from the Maze prison in 1983. In 2015, he was arrested following the IRA's murder of their former activist, Kevin McGuigan. Mr. Lynch is the IRA's Chief of Staff. He is a longstanding member of the IRA Council. Mr. Murray has been the middle man between Sinn Fein and the Army Council for numerous years. He conducted a sophisticated gun-smuggling operation during the original peace process. He occupied the position of Northern Commander when the IRA inflicted some of its worst terrorist attacks on Northern Ireland. The Government is flirting with the idea of reimposing direct rule on Ulster The news comes as the Government has decided to reimpose direct rule on Ulster for the first time since 2007, when the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness agreed to form a power-sharing coalition. Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said Westminster will impose a budget on Ulster after attempts to form a power-sharing agreement between Ulster's two largest parties collapsed. People in the province worry direct rule would threaten the political balance between the DUP and SInn Fein, which has already been affected by Brexit. Prime Minister Theresa May's minority administration is dependent on DUP votes to pass legislation. Any move to appease the nationalists could impact upon the Conservatives' ability to hold power. Sinn Fein pulled out of its ten-year coalition with the unionists in January, complaining his party was not being treated like an equal partner. Michelle O'Neill said she was disappointed the negotiations ended in failure The party's leader in the province, Michelle O'Neill, told journalists she was disappointed that the negotiations ended in failure. The DUP finally agreed to share power with Sinn Fein in 2007 as a result of Northern Ireland's largest unionist party pressuring both the British and Irish governments of the time to persuade the IRA to completely disband their weapons, which they did in 2005. The DUP overtook the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) as Northern Ireland's largest unionist party during the Assembly elections in 2003 and in Westminster during the 2005 General Election. This was because UUP leader David Trimble formed a power-sharing coalition with the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein in 1999 whilst the IRA were disbanding their weapons. Ian Paisley refused to enter into a coalition with any unionist or nationalist party due to the IRA's failure to disband all of their weapons before entering such an agreement. The original power-sharing agreement drawn up after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement collapsed in 2002 when Mr. Trimble pulled his party out of it. This was because Sinn Fein workers at Stormont were using the Assembly building to gather intelligence. Prime ministers Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern of Britain and Ireland respectively then helped draw up the St. Andrew's Agreement of 2006, which was seen as a revision of the terms laid out in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. This was after the IRA surrendered their weapons and the DUP became open to the idea of governing with the nationalists. Tragedy has struck #NewYork once again in a deadly Attack upon random citizens. News reports have displayed scenes of damaged vehicles, bodies covered by sheets, and police flooding the streets; but what do we know so far? What Happened? On #Halloween afternoon in New York, at around 3o clock (GMT-4), a rented white pick-up truck was seen to have mounted a cyclist pavement near the Hudson River, striking down multiple cyclists and pedestrians. This truck then carried on for another seventeen blocks until it smacked into a school bus full of children on Chambers Street - just four blocks away from the World Trade Centre Memorial. The carnage left bodies and devastation in its wake. It has now been confirmed that eight people were killed and a further eleven have been injured including five Argentinians tourists. According to eye-witnesses reports, a lone man jumped out of the wrecked vehicle dressed in all black, with an overgrown beard, carrying two guns. The suspect then fled on foot, before being surrounded by police; the suspect was shot in the stomach but has remained alive. Who is the Suspect? From the information the New York Police Department has released, the suspect from yesterday's terror attack appears to have been identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic, an immigrant from Uzbekistan. Sources close to the suspect have revealed Sayfullo is 29 years-old, and currently residing in Paterson, New Jersey with his family. Since the events unfolded, it has been confirmed by Chief of Police James ONeil, that this event was indeed a #terrorist attack. ONeil goes on to describe it as a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians. When the suspect exited the crashed truck, several witnesses have disclosed how they heard him shout "Allahu Akbar" - meaning "God is most great" in Arabic. There is also a proficient report stating that there was a letter left in the truck stating the suspect pledges his allegiance to Allah and the Islamic faith. This attack has been the biggest loss of life at the hands of terrorism in New York since 9/11. Something to remember As well as other attacks that have occurred throughout the UK, France, Spain and Germany, there is a need to recognise that this was not an attack by the Muslim faith or community. This is the doing of religious extremists, who have been brainwashed and synthesised into terrorists. Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob rightly stresses that terror does not have a religion or a skin colour!. In the wake of these acts of terror, there is a hope that society will unite to defy these tragic events and twisted ideologies - and focus wholly on remembering the eight loved individuals, who tragically lost their lives in a time of joy and happiness with their friends and loved ones. In the aftermath of the Islamic terrorist attack in New York City on Halloween, much of the media has covered the story based on their own political leanings. After a host on CNN made a controversial remark about the Islamic phrase "Allahu Akbar," Fox News caught heat for taking comments out of context. CNN vs Fox News On Tuesday afternoon in lower Manhattan, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov drove his rented Home Depot truck into a bicycle lane and struck dozens of innocent civilians. Saipov exited the vehicle shouting "Allahu Akbar," which translates to "Allah is the greatest," and is a common phrase used in the Muslim world, including those who carry out religious acts of terror. Unlike many other terrorists in recent history, Saipov was shot and taken into custody, where he currently resides in a hospital bed. Law enforcement have confirmed that they found ISIS-propaganda in the suspect's truck, with Saipov reportedly celebrating his attack while being in police custody. Since the incident took place, the story has been reported differently depending on the news outlet, with the liberal-leaning MSNBC often downplaying the religious aspect of the attack, with the conservative Fox News focusing on the suspect's background and religion. Over on CNN, host Jake Tapper responded to the report that Saipov shouted "Allahu Akbar," which triggered a reaction from Fox News. As reported by Mediaite on November 1, Tapper is speaking out. Hannity Doubles Down on Fox News' False Claim That Jake Tapper Said Allahu Akbar Was 'Beautiful' (VIDEO) https://t.co/tsmazUn6Hl pic.twitter.com/wXV9E6kEuE Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 2, 2017 "The Arabic chant, Allahu Akbar, 'God is great,' sometimes said under the most beautiful of circumstances, and too often we hear it being said in moments like this," Jake Tapper said in his reporting of the Islamic terrorist attack. Social media reactions poured in quickly, with many questioning why the host would attempt to praise an phrase commonly associated with groups like ISIS. On Fox News' social media accounts, the network tweeted the headline, "CNN's Jake Tapper Says 'Allahu Akbar' Is 'Beautiful' Right After NYC Terror Attack." Hannity is continuing Fox's lies and smears by attacking @jaketapper for saying "Allahu Akbar" is a prayer sometimes said at "beautiful moments" Hannity: "Maybe that's why you have low ratings" pic.twitter.com/JgsYIPU3R9 Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) November 2, 2017 Tapper responds Taking to his Twitter account on Wednesday night, Jake Tapper called out Fox News for taking his comments out of context. "Fox News is lying," Tapper said. "I said it can be said at beautiful moments (wedding, birth) and too often at times like this (horrific terrorist attack)," he added. .@FoxNews chooses instead to deliberately lie about what I said. Following the slime-coated path of @DailyCaller and @infowars. Disgusting. Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 1, 2017 Tapper and Hannity After Fox News took down the aforementioned tweet, host Sean Hannity doubled down on the network's attack on Jake Tapper. Hannity referred to Tapper as "fake news" and mocked him over his comments about "Allahu Akbar," while saying, "Tell your audience the truth." Hannity lying now. The @FoxNews tweet I was referring to has been deleted because it was false. https://t.co/WPQtgzNGuU Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 2, 2017 Within minutes of Sean Hannity's attack, Jake Tapper fired back on his own Twitter account. "Hannity lying now. The @FoxNews tweet I was referring to has been deleted because it was false," Tapper wrote. Hannity, of course, smeared the late Seth Rich while his parents were still in mourning, so why wouldn't he lie about this? Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) November 2, 2017 "Hannity, of course, smeared the late Seth Rich while his parents were still in mourning, so why wouldn't he lie about this?" Jake Tapper posted in a follow-up tweet. As of press time, neither Sean Hannity nor Fox News have issued an additional comment. Less than 24 hours after an Islamic terrorist carried out an attack on the streets of New York City, the White House has scrambled to come to a consensus on a united narrative. After Donald Trump responded to the news multiple times since the incident took place, Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the situation at the White House. Sanders on NYC attack During a Halloween day in New York City on Tuesday, Sayfullo Saipov, originally of Uzbekistan, drove his rented Home Depot truck onto a bicycle path in lower Manhattan, striking dozens of innocent people, leaving eight dead in the process. Once stopped, Saipov exited the truck while shouting "Allahu Akbar," a common Islamic phrase used by terrorists, before being shot and taken into custody by law enforcement. Since then, authorities have confirmed that the shooter was in possession of ISIS-related propaganda, and has been celebrating his actions and attack in his hospital bed. The reaction following the attack came quick and was predictably partisan. Donald Trump took to Twitter to call for "extreme vetting," due to Saipov coming to the United States in 2010 on a "diversity visa lottery program." The president deflected the blame on Democrats for promoting the program, with a special focus on Sen. Chuck Schumer. As reported by NBC News on November 1, Sarah Huckabee Sanders faced questions from the media during a press briefing at the White House. Sanders: Trump "does not blame Sen Schumer", "We do think there are policies that could be put in place that help protect American citizens" pic.twitter.com/oLh7Lyua0r NBC News (@NBCNews) November 1, 2017 While speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Donald Trump's reaction to the Islamic terrorist attack that took place on Tuesday. When asked why the president was quick to politicize the attack, Sanders replied, "This isn't a new argument. This isn't a new position." "The president has been talking about extreme vetting and the need for that for the purpose of protecting the citizens of the country since he was a candidate," Sanders said. Reporter to @PressSec: "How can the president make the case that we are annihilating ISIS when these attacks occur?" https://t.co/p0nIn9hKDu pic.twitter.com/RIKKSfL8DV CBS News (@CBSNews) November 1, 2017 When asked about Donald Trump's Twitter attack on Chuck Schumer of the visa lottery program, Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed back despite the president's clear explanation in his tweet. "The president has not blamed Senator Schumer, and doesn't feel that the senator is responsible for the attack," she claimed. Sanders was then asked about Trump's previous comments where he hinted that he would want to send the suspect to Gitmo, to which she answered, "He supports that but wasn't necessarily advocating for it." Asked about Pres. Trump's response to NYC attack vs. Las Vegas, Press Sec. says he wasn't "going the political route" with tweets at Schumer pic.twitter.com/RiLdNN60MU ABC News (@ABC) November 1, 2017 Twitter reacts Within minutes of her press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was met with massive backlash from those who oppose Donald Trump and the current administration. "The fact that we, as taxpayers, pay (SHS) to stand there and lie to us (badly) every day is so incredibly frustrating," one tweet read. Sarah Huckabee Sanders if you were an immigrant and would have to come into the criteria that you're putting forth you wouldn't be let in Ruben Baez Jr (@RubenBaezJr) November 1, 2017 Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Everybody wants to be here Not anymore thanks to you incompetent assholes. BOO Paper (@boozepaper) November 1, 2017 Sarah Huckabee Sanders just claimed that there's no vetting of the lottery immigration system. And then yells at reporters for pushing back. TC (@tchopstl_) November 1, 2017 Sarah Huckabee Sanders is such a hypocritically disingenuous & Im god damn sick of her lack of ability to tell the truth. She serves Trump Darlene Thatcher (@Dar_Thatcher) November 1, 2017 "(SHS) just claimed that there's no vetting of the lottery immigration system. And then yells at reporters for pushing back," another tweet stated. "(SHS) has crazy eyes," a Twitter user added. Why does Sarah Huckabee Sanders frequently have to say look before she proceeds with her answer. Jennifer (@jemag1) November 1, 2017 The fact that we, as taxpayers, pay Sarah Huckabee Sanders to stand there and lie to us (badly) every day is so incredibly frustrating. Sara Lang (@SaraLang) November 1, 2017 IDGAF. If I should ever see Sarah Huckabee Sanders in person, I will punch her in the mouth. California Girl (@FightingMad1) November 1, 2017 "(SHS) if you were an immigrant and would have to come into the criteria that you're putting forth you wouldn't be let in," a follow-up post noted. "Why does (SHS) frequently have to say 'look' before she proceeds with her answer," another tweet read. The negative response to Sarah Sanders continued, as the divide between those on the political left and right moved forward. Kenya Moore is reportedly being phased out of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" due to her husband Marc Daly's alleged refusal to appear on the show. While Bravo TV has not yet revealed any plans to get rid of Moore or have her role reduced, a new report claims that Eva Marcille has been brought to the show as Moore's husband remains unseen. Kenya didnt quit, but she is being disciplined and producers brought in Eva Marcille as a supporting cast member in her absence, an insider told Radar Online on October 3. According to the report, Bravo TV producers are paying Moore a massive salary to share her true life with her fans and followers. So, for Moore to tie the knot with Daly in a secret ceremony with cameras banned felt wrong. Although Kenya Moore hasn't quit or been fired from "The Real Housewives Of Atlanta," the insider told readers that the reality star and model would be "fined" by the network by not getting paid for the trip episodes of the show and noted that she was going to be "phased out" of the series. Kenya Moore's wedding reportedly caused tension on set According to the Radar Online report, Moore has been at odds with her "Real Housewives of Atlanta" co-stars and the crew of the show since saying "I do" in June in St. Lucia. As the insider explained, Moore and the producers have been unable to come to a resolution in regard to how they should proceed with Moore's role on the show. Immediately after tying the knot, Moore stayed quiet about her wedding. Then, weeks later, she confirmed that she and Daly had wed. Does Kenya Moore want more money from Bravo TV? Prior to the latest Radar Online report, a source told the outlet that Moore may be using her relationship with husband Marc Daly as a bargaining chip to re-negotiate her contract with the network. The network feels as though [Kenya Moore]s using this as a tactic to get her salary in the same ballpark as Nene, the source explained. Despite Moore's possible efforts to have her Bravo TV paycheck increased, there doesn't appear to be any plans for any such thing. Instead, rumors continue to swirl in regards to Moore's potentially impending exit from the long-running reality show, which she joined during its fifth season. For more about Kenya Moore and her co-stars, including Nene Leakes, Cynthia Bailey, Kandi Burruss, Porsha Williams, Sheree Whitfield, Kim Zolciak, and Eva Marcille, tune into the upcoming 10th season of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta," which premieres on November 5th at 8 p.m. on Bravo TV. Just when you thought that that the Duggar family couldnt get into any more drama, they somehow manage to stir up more controversy. This controversy is surrounding a rumour that Jill Duggars husband Derek Dillard has been cheating on her. A few fans think this is the case because if you have been following Dillards social media accounts, you would know that he has been posting Bible quotes about not giving into lust. Fans are taking these tweets as Dillard confessing his unfaithfulness to his wife and if you know about Dillards shady past then it may not surprise you that these rumours are swirling around. Controversies surrounding Derek Dillard This isnt the first time controversy has surrounded the Duggar in law Dillard as recently he threw some shots online at a 16-year-old member of the LGBT community Jazz Jennings. Jennings is a transgendered girl and is also featured on the TLC network like the Duggar family. The young girl stars on her own show "I Am Jazz," and when a promo for the show was released on Twitter, Dillard had a negative comment to say about Jennings herself. What an oxymoron... a "reality" show which follows a non-reality. "Transgender" is a myth. Gender is not fluid; it's ordained by God. https://t.co/YxzH5o5Ujx Derick Dillard (@derick4Him) August 3, 2017 This comment has apparently put Counting On on the chopping block at TLC. A source close to the Duggar family told Hollywood Life They're probably not too long for TLC. My feeling is that they'll probably get axed soon because of this Jazz situation. Well, if thats the case, maybe the best thing for the Duggar family to do is cut Dillard from the show to keep the show on the air. TLC did a similar thing when they cut Josh Duggar from the show after his issues with the law. The second controversy surrounding the Duggar in-law Derek Dillard would be the fact that he created a fundraiser for himself the day after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. This move caused many to criticize Dillard of cash grabbing from his fans, so in response, the fundraising website shut down his attempt of making a quick buck. Many think he needs the money, as it is believed by a few fans that he is unemployed and lives off Duggar's money from the show. The current state of the couples marriage As you read above, many speculate that Dillard has been unfaithful to his wife, Jill Duggar. However, Duggar recently posted a rather heartfelt message dedicated to her husband on Instagram. This post leaves us with so many questions. For example, why did Dillard post, so many Bible quotes about committing adultery out of nowhere if he wasnt unfaithful to his wife, Jill Duggar? Well, time will tell what happened between the couple, and until then you can catch up with the Duggar family on the TLC show Counting On which will hopefully be renewed for a new season. A lot of shocking accusations have come out of Hollywood lately, including Kathy Griffin claiming that Andy Cohen offered her cocaine before appearing on "Watch What Happens Live." Apparently, "LHHATL" star Joseline Hernandez heard about Griffin's claims and had a few shocking things to say herself. According to The Jasmine Brand, Joseline Hernandez saw Andy Cohen's tweet on FreddyO's Instagram page and naturally, they were seen and shared. FreddyO shared a copy of Andy Cohen's tweet where he denied Griffin's claims. In the comments section, Joseline wrote, "Why she act like this is new. All the reality shows give cast members drugs alcohol and they tell you who to beat up too." Then Joseline offered Kathy a piece of advice that, if she would take, might save her from losing every gig she's ever had. She said, "Girl, handle business behind closed doors." Then again, the Puerto Rican princess could stand to take a huge dose of her own advice. After all, it was Joseline Hernandez who has repeatedly put her business out there time and again. She has also repeatedly smeared Stevie J, Mona Scott-Young, and "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" on social media on multiple occasions. Joseline has been saying that reality TV is scripted It seems that Joseline Hernandez was taking the accusations against Andy Cohen and using them to her own benefit. She's long been arguing that "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" is scripted and that producers tell cast what to do and say. That goes all the way back to the feud with Althea Heart and Benzino in Season 3. The nastiness between the "LHHATL" cast went so far that Joseline ended up flipping out and attacking Althea, Tammy Rivera, and then Mimi Faust as she exited the stage. Althea Hart sued Joseline for the attack and ended up getting fired from the show. When Joseline Hernandez gave her deposition, she claimed that "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" was scripted and that she had been told by production to attack her co-star. Is Joseline coming back to 'LHHATL'? Things are so tense now between Joseline and the "LHHATL" production that there are questions about whether she'll even be returning to the show. As it stands, it's looking like the VH1 hit really may have moved on without her this time. Just don't forget that Joseline and Stevie were supposedly fired before and yet they were back again for Season 6. Joseline and Mona reportedly started sparring over money atter Stevie J's ex demanded way more money to keep appearing on the show. Things got even uglier when Joseline claimed that she was owed money and started posting Instagram Live videos about it back in May. Now there's no telling if Mona Scott-Young even wants Joseline Hernandez back on the show Just last month, she teased that she'd have no problem leaving "LHHATL" and basically said that the show needs her more than she needs them. See what she said in the Instagram video below. "The young and the restless" spoilers say that Billy Abbot (Jason Thompson) and his heroics on the Thursday episode of "Y&R" might save him from the wrath of Victoria Newman (Amelia Heinle) and Victor Newman (Eric Braeden). Billy saved Vikki's son Reed Hellstrom (Tristan Lake Leabu) from The Underground blaze, but he also burned Brash & Sassy to the ground with his sloppy business practices. Ashley Abbott (Eileen Davidson) discovered that manufacturing mistakes poisoned the masks and asked Billy who would do such a careless thing. She knows it was Billy and now he knows too. Vikki will found out soon enough. Billy's bad luck won't stop We know from "Young and the Restless" history that Billy Abbott has the worst luck. He got run over by a car, has been blown up, and was sabotaged by his brother Cane Ashby (Daniel Goddard). Once again, Billy's rotten luck put his reputation and life on the line. Billy had no idea when he rushed the factory to produce the Sassy masks that he was cutting corners and poisoning the product. It's a good thing the items weren't on the shelf already and only Vikki was using them heavily so she's the only one that was poisoned, but the damage to the B&S brand may be irreversible. Billy's bad luck tainted Brash & Sassy and ruined it. Now Billy's bad luck followed him to The Underground. While Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow) was playing with matches, it turns out he's not the one that burned the bar. Dina Mergeron (Marla Adams) wandered out of the Abbott mansion and set the fire while burning a photo of Brent Davis. "The Young and the Restless" spoilers hint that's not really Dina at all but is Myrna Bloodworth (Marcia Rodd) in disguise. The latest "Y&R" rumors hint that Graham Bloodworth (Max Shippee) is running one last scam to try and steal Dina's fortune and punish her for stealing his stepdad, Brent. And Billy's bad luck caught him up in that mess. Today on #YR, Billy is out for blood and Victor throws Victoria a lifeline. WATCH FULL EPISODE: https://t.co/fjjuMI1X4i pic.twitter.com/Vy5kyQNUm8 Young and Restless (@YandR_CBS) November 1, 2017 Billy forgiven because he saved Reed? "Y&R" spoilers from the soap magazines say that Victor will be furious when he finds out Billy ruined Victoria's business, but nothing matters more to The Mustache than family, and Billy did save Reed from the fire. Victoria, too, would rather have her son alive than worry about Brash & Sassy's success. Billy proved himself a real hero when he saved Reed and his brother's kids, Charlie Ashby (Noah Alexander Gerry) and Mattie Ashby (Lexie Stevenson). Too bad for Billy that his luck ran out and he was trapped in the collapse of the building when The Underground surrendered to the blaze. Will Cane rush in to try and save his brother? Or will it be Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman)? The preview for the "Y&R" Friday cliffhanger episode shows that Jack demands to be let into the fire zone to check on his brother. Since Jack is now scared Billy will die, and once he finds out his mom Dina caused the blaze, this could be the event that heals the Abbotts at long last and reunites Billy and Jack. Check back soon for more "The Young and the Restless" spoilers and news. A giant Indian Ichthyosaur fossil has been discovered in the Kachchh region of Gujarat, India. Researchers believe that this is an incredible discovery. It will help them better understand the diversity and evolution of these sea monsters in the Indo-Madagascan region of the former Gondwanaland. Ichthyosaurs were widespread The discovery will also throw light on the subcontinents biological connectivity with other Jurassic continents. This is the first Ichthyosaur record from India. Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist from the University of Edinburgh, told the National Geographic that this discovery proves how globally widespread these giant lizard fish were during the time of dinosaurs. When dinosaurs were ruling the land, these creatures were ruling the oceans all over the world. Lead researcher Guntupalli Prasad believes that Ichthyosaurs traversed a route linking South America, Madagascar, Europe, and modern day India. During the time the recently discovered Ichthyosaur lived, most of India was under a warm, tropical sea. The most complete discovery in India until now The Gondwanaland supercontinent was then slowly breaking up. Other Indian Ichthyosaur discoveries have mostly been teeth or scattered vertebra. Moreover, they are about 50 million years younger than the newly-discovered fossil. Ph.D. researcher Chloe Plet and Curtin University professor Kliti Grice, found traces of cholesterol, collagen and Red Blood Cells in such fossils. These scientists also looked into the fossilized cell structure of an Early Jurassic Ichthyosaur vertebra, around 183 million years old, from Germany. Their research has been published in Nature Scientific Reports. The red blood cells, collagen, and cholesterol have been preserved as the fossil formed under carbonate concretion. Small red blood cells helped them survive Carbonate concretion is a process where a dead creature is trapped in an environment rich in organic matter. Moreover, there is very low oxygen. The research has also revealed how Ichthyosaurs, who were lung-breathing creatures, survived in an Earths atmosphere having much less oxygen than found today. According to News.com.au, an analysis of a sample has revealed that the red blood cell structures in these Ichthyosaurs were almost five times smaller than in most modern organisms. These small cells helped the monsters with efficient oxygen diffusion and transport. The 150 million-year-old fishlike reptile fossil discovered in India is almost complete. Only a part of the skull and some of the tail bones are missing. The left fore-fin is incredibly well-preserved. It took 1,500 man hours of excavation to unearth the giant fossil. It was embedded in very hard sedimentary rock. This Ichthyosaur is closely related to Northern Hemisphere varieties and may belong to the Ophthalmosauridae family. Ichthyosaur fossils have mostly been discovered in Europe and North America, and some in Australia and South America. The details about this gigantic sea monster have been published in PLOS ONE. A complete interview of Dr. Prasad is available on PLOS Research News. Containers are seen at Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, Feb 13, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] Former US treasury secretary Henry Paulson said China and the United States, the two biggest economies, should not let trade tensions get out of hand because of their shared stake in global stability. Tensions won't benefit anyone, while the two countries will reap greater benefits if they can agree on big issues, said Paulson, chairman of the Washington-based Paulson Institute, a think tank. Paulson, often regarded as a go-between for Beijing and Washington thanks to his long experience with China, said easing tension takes time. He covered a range of issues related to Sino-US relations on Wednesday in an interview with China Daily. On Tuesday, the Ministry of Commerce called on the US to stop using the surrogate country approach to bilateral trade, which involves using a third country to calculate production costs. The move was in response to the US decision to impose anti-dumping duties on China's aluminum foil products. Government officials and trade experts from China and the US have since expressed strong dissatisfaction with a preliminary US decision against Chinese aluminum foil exporters, saying that abandoning global trade pacts leads to uncertainty and harms global growth. Yao Weiqun, vice-president of the Shanghai WTO Affairs Consultation Center, said Washington's neglect of World Trade Organization rules hurts global stability and confidence. Both China and the US have significant responsibility for global growth, and they should settle trade disputes through consultation and cooperation, Yao said. Paulson said the visit of US President Donald Trump next week is set to be positive. "I'm expecting momentum in trade and economic issues between China and the US," he said. "Hopefully, we can see some progress made to rebalance trade and commercial arrangements." Paulson said the tension won't be solved through just one visit because trade issues are increasingly difficult as the two countries become more competitive in trade. Paulson said there is no doubt that China's growth will slow, and it will be a good thing. "I don't focus on whether China is growing at 6 or 6.5 percent. I want it to be healthy and sustainable." US President Donald Trump's upcoming meeting with President Xi Jinping will be an important opportunity for the two leaders to continue the dialogue they started in April, Washington-based think tank researchers agreed. Some also expressed concern about the "lack of clarity on the US priorities" during Trump's Asia trip. Trump will visit Asia from Nov 5-14, with stops in Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. "I think that's a very important opportunity for the two leaders to continue the dialogue that they started at Mar-a-Lago," Christopher K. Johnson, senior adviser and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told a briefing on Wednesday. Johnson said that it was striking to hear Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the US, say on Monday that he expected to see movement on both North Korea and trade. At a news briefing on Monday, Cui said that Trump's first state visit to China, coming at a "historic moment" after a key Party congress in Beijing, will be a successful trip with significant outcomes on trade, the Korean Peninsula and other issues. Johnson said it wasn't clear from the US administration's signaling whether the US' economic effort at the summit is going to be focused on deal-signing or market-access issues. He said he got the sense that China is willing to sign trade deals, as reflected in Cui's comments in which he said trade deficits are bad for China's own economy in the long run. "So I think that's really the challenge we face, is just a lack of clarity in general on the US priorities going into this meeting," he said. "So I think China's approach will be to do enough on these critical issues of trade and North Korea to hopefully have this reset." Cui said that China is ready to buy more US products. "If the US side could lift some of the restrictions it has put (in place) so far, on exports to China, of high-tech products for civilian use, this could greatly increase exports and go a long way towards balancing bilateral trade between China and the United States," he said. The White House, in commenting on whether the US president is "prepared enough to talk about the imbalances in the trade relationships," said Trump is well prepared to discuss the issue. "We're quite prepared. We've analyzed this probably more than most administrations and have a very good understanding of some of the areas where we'd like to see improvement," a senior administration official said in a background briefing on Tuesday. Trump is expected to arrive in Beijing on Nov 8. Earlier that day, he is scheduled to speak at the National Assembly in Seoul, talking about the Korean Peninsula issue, according to the White House briefing. Michael Green, CSIS's enior vice-president for Asia, said one of the main purposes of Trump's trip is to put pressure on Pyongyang. "One big question is how will the president articulate this. Will he talk about preventive war? Will he keep it vague? But - and then the question is, he may say something that's prepared in the National Assembly speech in Korea, but then he may tweet something else,' Green said. huanxinzhao@chinadailyusa.com One of America's best known civil rights organizations has joined a lawsuit filed by a Chinese-American professor who is suing the US government over its dismissed prosecution of him for allegedly sharing sensitive technology with scientists in China. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP filed an amended complaint on Tuesday in federal District Court in Philadelphia to the lawsuit filed by Temple University professor Xi Xiaoxing. The complaint challenges the government's arrest and surveillance methods as well as its alleged discriminatory targeting of Chinese-American scientists like Xi. "Having the ACLU involvement is quite useful and especially on the electronic surveillance claims," wrote David Rudovsky, Xi's attorney, in an email. Xi's lawsuit was filed earlier this year claimed that an FBI agent involved falsified evidence and ignored warnings that he was innocent. In May 2015, FBI agents went into Xi's house with guns drawn and led him away in handcuffs in front of his wife and daughters. The government accused Xi of sharing information about a superconductor device known as a "pocket heater," relying on email exchanges between Xi and scientific colleagues in China. Later in 2015, the charges against Xi were dropped upon the prosecution's discovery that the emails he sent to China were unrelated to the pocket heater and were part of ordinary academic collaboration. As a result of the charges, Xi was placed on administrative leave, suspended from his position as the interim chair of the Temple physics department, denied access to his lab and the graduate students working under his supervision, and had to pay substantial legal fees to defend himself. The ACLU said Xi's case was one of three espionage-related prosecutions of Chinese-American scientists in a 10-month period in which the government abandoned the case before trial. The others include the dismissal of charges against Sherry Chen, a hydrologist with the US National Weather Service in Ohio in 2015, and Guoqing Cao and Shuyu Li, senior biologists at Eli Lilly & Co in 2014. paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com UNESCO postpones addition to to world register, draws questions Advocates urged UNESCO to include the history of "comfort women" in the Memory of the World Register program after the organization postponed its decision on Monday. The "comfort women" historical document is a reminder to adhere to the principle of UNESCO's constitution "to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedom which are affirmed for the people of the world without distinction of race, sex, language or religion", the Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) said. The coalition, which represents more than 35 international organizations from the US, Asia and Europe to fight for the justice of "comfort women" survivors, urged that Paris-based UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) recognize the "very important chapter in history whose significance in helping to eradicate world sex trafficking cannot be understated". It is the second time the Memory of the World Register program has postponed the applications of "comfort women" documents. In 2015, China submitted the applications of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and "comfort women" documents, but the "comfort women" application was rejected while the Nanjing Massacre documents were accepted. Last year, an international joint committee representing eight related countries and regions applied to have "comfort women" documents inscribed in the program. The International Advisory Committee (IAC) for the program, however, recommended setting a place and time convenient to the nominator and concerned parties for a dialogue, with a view toward reaching a joint nomination to encompass as far as possible all relevant documents on "comfort women". "The 'Comfort Women' documents met all the standards for integrity, truth in reporting and verifiable sources when (they were) initially accepted by UNESCO for consideration a year ago," Julie Tang, co-chair of CWJC, said in a letter to the IAC, which is composed of 14 experts. "We wonder what has changed, other than Japan's bullying the IAC and veiled threats to pull out of UNESCO," she continued. The activists are concerned that UNESCO may be yielding to the pressure of Japan, which withheld its 2016 funding to the organization over the listing of the Nanjing Massacre in the Memory of the World Register. "It's a shame that the perpetrator government of the largest case of sex trafficking in modern history can bully a trusted and reputable international organization such as UNESCO into silence with money," said Phyllis Kim, a "comfort women" advocate and executive director of the Korean American Forum of California. "By denying its practice of military sexual slavery, the Japanese government is depriving us the opportunity to properly remember and prevent the horrid violation of human rights from recurring, and this amounts to assaulting all women present and future," she said. Lillian Sing, co-chair of CWJC, said it was ironic that the IAC declined to accept the "comfort women" application, while on the other hand, UNESCO's Human Rights Committee has condemned Japan for its atrocities and has urged Japan to apologize. "Justice has no price. One cannot trade one set of justice over another," she said. "IAC is to be discredited for selling its soul and selling out the 'comfort women' and breaking these women's hearts once again." liazhu@chinadailyusa.cm The suspect in the fatal shooting of a Chinese overseas student has confessed to the slaying, which was the culmination of an interstate crime spree, according to University of Utah police. Austin Jeffrey Boutain, 24, admitted shooting Guo Chenwei, 23, of Beijing during a carjacking on Red Butte Canyon Road near the Utah campus late Monday night. Boutain fatally shot Guo and then tried to force a woman who was with him, a university student whose name was not released, up a canyon, according to police. The woman escaped when Boutain, who fired at her twice and missed, was distracted, police said. "Obviously, he had just killed somebody; he had an ill intent toward this young lady," University of Utah Police Chief Dale Brophy told reporters. After the shooting, Boutain made his way into downtown Salt Lake City, police said. He left a handgun, believed to be the weapon used to shoot Guo, at a homeless shelter where it was stolen, police said. Police are trying to find the weapon, which they believe was taken from the Colorado home of 63-year-old homicide victim Mitchell Bradford Ingle, whose body was found last week. Boutain was arrested on Tuesday at a library in Salt Lake City. On Wednesday, police from Golden, Colorado named Boutain and his wife the sole suspects in Ingle's slaying. On Tuesday, police found Ingle dead inside an RV trailer after Utah authorities contacted them in connection with Guo's shooting. The Boutains killed Ingle and then drove his pickup truck to Utah, where they gave it away, police said. Police said Austin Boutain admitted to stealing three guns from a home in Colorado, one of which was a rifle recovered by police. Investigators plan to recommend that Colorado prosecutors file charges against the Boutains including first-degree murder, robbery and motor-vehicle theft in Ingle's death. Kathleen Boutain was in custody in Utah on unrelated drug and theft charges. News outlets in Alabama and Ohio reported that Austin Boutain has a criminal history includes charges for public disturbances, theft, evading police, drugs and a sex offense. He is also accused of assaulting and injuring his wife with a firearm. On Monday about 8:15 p.m., Kathleen Boutain reported the assault to university police. As police were taking the report on the alleged domestic violence incident, they learned that Guo had been shot and killed, shortly before 9 pm. Guo arrived in the US in 2012 and would have turned 24 on Sunday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that the Chinese embassy in the United States has requested information from police. The embassy expressed sympathy and said it had provided assistance to Guo's family. "The Foreign Ministry and the embassy in the US will keep a close eye on the development of the case and offered necessary support for the family's visit to the US," she added. The Chenwei Guo Family Fund was set up by Guo's friend Elena Diane Jin with the permission of Guo's family on GoFundMe.com. Guo came to the US in 2012 and dreamed of owning a consulting company. Many in Provo, Utah, mourned Guo, as he served a mission for the LDS Church there. Lori McDonald, dean of students, described him as "extremely outgoing, charming, creative, smart". Guo was studying pre-computer science and was a peer adviser in the International Student and Scholar Services Office. Rachel Tam said Guo was a smart, bright and caring person who loved to tell jokes. Tam said Tuesday that Guo would speak powerfully about his beliefs. She said Guo loved to dance and wowed his friends on the dance floor at a church event for young, unmarried Chinese members of the church. Tam says Guo was at the center of the dance floor busting out hip-hop moves and was also a talented swing and ballroom dancer. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story. lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com China is actively promoting energy cooperation to help developing countries improve the penetration rate of modern, clean energy and reach the goal of sustainable development. Those were the words of Wu Haitao, deputy permanent representative of China to the United Nations. Wu spoke on Wednesday at the "High-level Symposium on Global Energy Interconnection: Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals". The symposium was organized by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs in collaboration with the Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organization at United Nations headquarters in New York. Wu called for that the international community to speed up the implementation of sustainable development goals in energy. He suggested that countries combine that implementation with their national development strategy. He said that China, which upholds an innovative, coordinative, green, open, shared development concept, has combined the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda with its 13th Five-Year Plan and national long-term development strategy. Wu called for the establishment of a more equitable and more balanced global partnership for development. "Developed countries should fulfill their commitment to official development assistance, particularly in the area of energy and increase support for developing countries, particularly for Africa and underdeveloped countries, in terms of funding, technology and capacity-building," he said. "At the same time, South-South cooperation should be further strengthened, and infrastructure and interconnection construction and international production cooperation should be strengthened to achieve complementary advantages," Wu added. Third, Wu suggested that international development include a balanced win-win and inclusive multilateral trade system to form a fair, transparent international economic and trade and investment system. He said that the creation and development of global energy interconnection would play a positive role in promoting transformation in global energy, energy allocation and energy consumption, and will contribute to the development of clean energy industries. "It would inject new impetus into the implementation of the 2030 agenda, to promote the global economy to achieve strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth," he added. United Nations Secretary-General Antnio Guterres said that a growing population and the increasing effects of climate change underline the need to transform the world's energy systems so they can fulfill needs without pollution. He said that the world is still far from achieving the vision of Sustainable Development Goal 7 of affordable and clean energy for all, with some 1 billion people still living without access to any electricity, and 3 billion people still cooking and heating their homes without clean fuels. xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. Under Article 19.3 of the 2015 Penal Code, a defense counsel will not be held criminally responsible for failure to denounce a crime when the following three conditions are fully met: (i) the crime which the defense counsel fails to denounce has been committed or jointly committed by the very person he defenses; (ii) the defense counsel acquires such information (on the commission of the crime by his client) while providing the defense; and (iii) the crime which the defense counsel fails to denounce is neither any of the crimes against national security nor another particularly serious crime. Law 12/2017/QH14 Amending a Number of Articles of the 2015 Penal Code narrows down the scope of defense counsels penal liability in case of failing to denounce crimes. Accordingly, in principle, a defense counsel will be exonerated from penal liability if failing to denounce a crime which is committed by his client and which he knows about while providing the defense. The only exception is the case of failure to denounce a crime against national security prescribed in Chapter XIII of the Penal Code or another particularly serious crime which is being prepared, being carried out or has been committed by the client, provided that the defense counsel well knows about such crime while providing the defense.- , , , On the occasion of the 72anniversary of the Traditional Day of Vietnamese lawyers (October 10, 1945-2017), lawyer Phan Trung Hoai, Vice President of the Vietnam Bar Association, shared his opinion on this issue with Phap Luat Thanh Pho Ho Chi Minh (Ho Chi Minh City Law newspaper).This can be regarded a spotlight among events related to the lawyers circle in the year. The divergent arguments about this issue still echo after the Law Amending a Number of Articles of the 2015 Penal Code was passed.According to the amendments to Clause 3, Article 19 of the 2015 Penal Code, a defense counsel will not be held criminally responsible for failure to denounce a crime which is being prepared, being carried out or has been completed by the person he defends and which he knows well about while providing the defense, unless such crime is related to national security or a particularly serious one.So far, many lawyers, myself included, have repeatedly expressed through research reports and writings our viewpoint on the exemption from criminal and civil liability for legal risks lawyers may face in the process of providing legal services. In fact, the Vietnam Bar Association and I, in my personal capacity, have never proposed the making of such a provision. As some of my colleagues already pointed out, the first eight draft versions of the 2015 Penal Code all exempted liability for lawyers, without forcing them to denounce the acts of violation which were, are being, or will be committed by their clients.Through the opinions voiced at the Parliament by three National Assembly deputies who are lawyers as well as other forums, lawyers and the general public have clearly understood the Vietnam Bar Associations viewpoint and attitude on this issue.In a nutshell, it can be said that its a legal as well as moral obligation of lawyers to keep confidential client information. However, according the laws on lawyers of Vietnam and many other countries, that obligation is not absolute because lawyers also have to perform their citizens duties.Lawyers practice their profession in accordance with law, hence, once the new regulation comes into force, I think every lawyer must strictly comply with it. The question now is how to get a deep understanding of the legal responsibility of lawyers and, at the same time, to properly apply such regulation in reality so as to strike a balance between lawyers responsibility to denounce crime and their moral duties.Over the past 30 years since the Ordinance on Lawyers Organization was enacted in 1987, thanks to the attention of the Party and State, the contingent of Vietnamese lawyers has been strongly developed. From a small number of just over 100 lawyers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, the country has now 11,607 licensed law practioners and more than 4,000 trainee lawyers.The role of lawyers in social life and judicial activities has been affirmed. Whenever an event occurs, the people, involved parties, the media agencies and social networking sites have turned to lawyers for opinion and help.Over the past years, many grand cases involving crimes in the banking sector and related to economic management order have been brought into trial. Many court hearings were conducted in a democratic manner, reflecting the strong spirit of judicial reform. Many court rulings were made based on the outcomes of the adversarial process at the hearings.The courts have also opened their doors more widely and the press have actively reported lawyers opinions and arguments to the public, contributing to clarifying the truths and nature of the cases.The lawyers correct arguments have served as a basis for the trial panels to give recommendations and orders for further investigation, especially those related to the overcoming of the causes and circumstanes of crime commission and to the management responsibility of competent agencies.I am glad to say that competent authorities in charge of legislative work have expressed their attention and asked the Vietnam Bar Association to bring into full play its role and responsibility and take a greater part in the lawmaking process.The Vietnam Bar Association has actually played an important role in and made effective contributions to the drafting of the 2013 Constitution, the 2012 Law on Lawyers, the 2015 Law on Organization of Investigation Bodies, the 2015 Law on Holding in Custody and Detention, the 2015 Penal Code. Especially, it designed a chapter of the 2015 Criminal Procedure Code on defense and protection of interests of involved parties.I think that the lawyers involvement in the lawmaking process not only contributes to improving the laws but also constitutes their own demand. Lawyers, above all others, are those who benefit most from an increasingly improved legal system.- British Prime Ministers Trade Envoy to Viet Nam, Edward Vaizey, tells Vietnam News Agencys Pham Diem Quynh in an exclusive interview that one of his top priorities is to make sure the British government realises how important it is to conclude a free trade agreement with Viet Nam because it is one of the fastest growing and most dynamic economies in Asia. As the Prime Ministers trade envoy to Viet Nam, what would you do to promote British-Viet Nam trade relations? Im looking forward to representing the British government and working with the Vietnamese Government to promote relations between our two countries. A lot of people have heard of Viet Nam in Britain, but I dont think they understand quite what a dynamic and amazing country it is. For example, very few British people realise how large Viet Nam is and how many people live there. Few people know of the leading industries in Viet Nam, from coffee through to technology, and I think there are great opportunities for our countries to work together. I would also like to promote tourism to Viet Nam. I think a lot of British tourists would really enjoy visiting the country. The World Bank recently said that Viet Nam would expand its economy at an average of 6.3 per cent in the next three years. What opportunities do you see for British business in term of trade and investment? We look at Viet Nam and see an incredible, dynamic economy growing quickly - and we are envious. Its impressive and gives Britain opportunities to work in this dynamic market. Vietnamese have a great deal of respect for the British education system and I hope that our universities can increase their presence in Viet Nam. British companies can work with a modern Vietnamese economy on technology and industrial issues, including new forms of energy and big construction and infrastructure projects. We have good engineering companies in Britain. Many British companies manufacture goods in Viet Nam because we have huge respect for the skill and craftsmanship of Vietnamese workers. We hope that we can work with the Vietnamese government on these kind of issues. As Britain leaves the European Union, how do you see the prospect of a British-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement? I hope we can conclude a free trade agreement with Viet Nam. I know that the European Union is also looking to conclude an agreement, and it may be easy simply to look at what the European Union has done with Viet Nam and for us to follow and conclude a similar free-trade agreement. One of my top priorities will be to promote trade between Viet Nam and Britain and to make sure the British government realises how important this is. I would like to see much closer links between our two countries. Viet Nam is preparing to host the APEC Summit. How do you see the event? Well, I think its very exciting that the APEC Summit is happening in Viet Nam. Twenty one member economies in Asia and the Pacific come together and look at how to increase trade. Our Prime Minister regrets the fact that the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but it is also clear that the region itself is so strong that it can take forward the Trans-Pacific Partnership and develop much closer trade links between these countries. And certainly I know Britain would want to have some involvement. We favour anything that removes trade barriers between countries and leads to much more choice for people living in those countries - much better goods and lower prices. What is your view on the importance of maritime security in Asia-Pacific? Maritime security is one of the issues regularly raised with me, and obviously it is important that we keep secure international waters and the ability for ships to move goods around the region. And obviously, Britain has a long history in maritime issues and its government will assist the region with any issues where they feel that our experience might bring some benefit.-- VNS HA NOI The Investment and Industrial Development Corporation (Becamex IDC) will float over 311.2 million shares, equivalent to 23.63 per cent of its charter capital, in its initial public offering (IPO) on December 1 on the HCM Stock Exchange. The initial price is set at VN31,000 (US$1.37) per share, the company has announced in a public statement. At this price, the company is valued at VN40.83 trillion ($1.8 billion) and expected to collect at least VN9.65 trillion from the share sale. This is the second-largest IPO of a State-owned enterprise in the past 10 years since the Vietcombanks IPO worth VN10.5 trillion on December 26, 2007. Established in 1976, Becamex IDC is one of the biggest real estate companies in Viet Nam, focusing on developing industrial, residential, urban and transportation infrastructure. Under the equitisation plan approved by the Prime Minister, the State will retain 51 per cent of the companys charter capital worth VN13.17 trillion. About 23.63 per cent will be offered in an auction to the public while 4.94 million shares, equivalent to 0.37 per cent, will be sold to its employees. The remaining shares (about 25 per cent) will be tendered to strategic investors after the IPO. The IPO is open to both domestic and foreign individuals and institutions. Becamex has 28 subsidiaries operating in securities, finance, insurance, banking and construction, as well real estate, telecommunication and information technology, besides concrete production, construction materials, mining, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and education. The company owns four major industrial parks, including My Phuoc Residential and Industrial Park, VietnamSingapore Industrial Park, Bau Bang Residential and Industrial Park, and Binh Duong New Township of Industry, Service and Residential. Rising foreign interest Recently, foreign investors have showed strong interest in shares of infrastructure development companies, via trades on both stock exchanges and public auctions. Foreign investors spent a net value of VN315 billion to purchase shares of Viglacera Corporation (VCG) and VN151 billion for shares of Tasco JSC (HUT) on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange in the first nine months. They also paid nearly VN2 trillion to purchase majority shares of these two companies in their public share auctions or private placements. In the IPO of Vietnam Urban and Industrial Zone Development Investment Corporation (IDICO) on October 5, foreign investors also picked up 41.3 million shares, equivalent to 74.8 per cent of its total offering, at the average winning price of VN23,940 per share, a 33.3 per cent higher than the initial price. Besides the expectation of business improvement of State-owned companies after equitisation, some analysts have said infrastructure development firms are usually large-scaled companies with stable operations, meeting the investment criteria of some foreign investment funds. VNS State-owned enterprises and local businesses should pay due attention to training workers for the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) so that they are not rendered redundant, experts say. Photo bnews.vn HCM CITY State-owned enterprises and local businesses should pay due attention to training workers for the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) so that they are not rendered redundant, experts say. With Industry 4.0 likely to replace people on production lines with machines to improve productivity, reduce labour costs as well as administrative cost, workers in all countries face a daunting challenge, economist Le ang Doanh said on the sidelines of the forum held last week on co-operation between Viet Nam and Japan for Asia-Pacific economic integration. He said many Vietnamese companies had already started investing in automation, dismissing hundreds of workers. About 86 per cent of Viet Nams apparel and footwear workers are expected to lose their jobs in the next 15 years, Doanh said. Le Tien Truong, General Director of Vietnam Textile and Garment Group, said the textile and garment industry was using a lot of basic-skills labour, so it would be greatly affected by the Industry 4.0. In the three main stages of the textile and garment industry, including making yarn, dyeing and garment-making, the yarn and dyeing stages are being automated and information technology used to increase productivity and reduce labour costs, he said. The footwear industry in Viet Nam is also facing a similar situation, said Nguyen uc Thuan, Chairman of Viet Nam Leather and Footwear Association. Therefore, companies should invest in new policies and train workers, he said. The problem is that Vietnamese workers have to change their mindset and learn to do new jobs and be willing to taken on other work when they lose a job, he said. Another Industry 4.0 challenge is that millions of workers losing their jobs need opportunities to learn, but at 35-40, it is not easy to acquire new knowledge and skills within the current educational system in the country, he added. Doanh said that the State should come up with solutions to provide training in new kills for workers and create more job opportunities for them, Doanh said. A representative of the Nguyen Tat Thanh University said that Industry 4.0 is posing many big challenges to Viet Nams educational system. Universities will have to revise their programmes to provide the skills and knowledge as also encourage innovative thinking and adaptability to changing work requirements, he said. VNS HCM CITY The European market has high demand for honey, offering great opportunities for Vietnamese honey producers to boost exports. But honey quality needs to improve if beekeepers who make honey want to expand markets, speakers at a seminar said on Wednesday in HCM City. Most of the Vietnamese honey output is exported and meets the EUs technical requirements on chemical residue in honey products, according to Le Thanh Hoa, deputy director of the Viet Nam Sanitary and Phytosanitary Notification Authority and Enquiry Point (SPS Viet Nam). In 2013, Viet Nam was allowed to export honey to the EU market, but Viet Nams honey exports to the market accounted for a modest ratio compared to the countrys total honey exports. Hoa said the seminar aimed to help local businesses understand more about EU market demand as well as quality and technical requirements. inh Quyet Tam, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Beekeepers Association, said Viet Nam produced 49,560 metric tonnes of honey last year. Of that amount, 40,174 metric tonnes were exported, with exports to the US accounting for more than 38,500 metric tonnes and the EU at only 1,330 metric tonnes. EU demand for honey is as high as that of the US, he said, adding that honey consumption is expected to remain high. Europe honey production is not self-sufficient and is dependent on honey imports from other countries because the European beekeeping sector has shrunk in size. This trend is expected to remain in the coming years, offering opportunities for Vietnamese honey exporters, Tam said. In addition, when the EU-Viet Nam Free Trade Agreement comes into effect, it will offer more favourable conditions for Vietnamese firms to export honey to the EU market. Compliance issues Speaking at the seminar, Nikolaus Bieger, an international expert with the EU-Mutrap project, said: European importers are keen to buy honey from Viet Nam, so this is good news for local exporters. Vietnamese honey exporters to the EU must comply with legally binding requirements, including those on food safety and traceability, hygiene and control, pesticide residue and genetically modified organisms, among others. The Vietnamese Government has established a legal basis to export Vietnamese honey into the EU, but Vietnamese honey faces enormous problems to be accepted in the EU market, according to Bieger. The problems include high glycerine and yeast content and acidity levels. All these parameters indicate unripe harvested honey, and consequently non-desired fermentation or stopped or stuck fermentation, he said. European consumers dont want fermented honey because it changes the odour and taste. So if you really want to export or to raise significantly your exports to Europe, you have to change something in production, he added. Besides these main issues, there are problems with feed residue found in honey produced by bees raised with soybeans. For us honey is a health product, so it should be something pure without contamination or any other changes, he said. The solution is to find resources which can provide protein to bees, which is now being replaced with soya. But this is difficult. The other solution would be to have more space for bees to have better separation from feed, pollen and honey by adding another section to the bee-breeding box, he said. Currently, bees are bred in a single box, so when honey is harvested, bee feed can easily mix with honey, he said. This means that producers must improve their methods of operating. Nguyen Viet Cuong, CEO of Dak Nguyen Hong Company, one of the largest honey exporters in the country, said besides the US market, Vietnamese honey exporters should promote exports to EU and other markets to diversify their markets and avoid risks. Local exporters should also focus more on improving product quality and building brands for their products. The seminar, which discussed expansion of Vietnamese honey exports to the EU market, was organised by SPS Viet Nam with the support of the EU-Mutrap project. VNS HCM CITY More than 200 titles of books featuring Russia and its people are on display at the HCM City Book Street on Nguyen Van Binh Street in District 1 as part of the Russian Culture Week launched by the city government on Monday. The event, Ky Uc Nuoc Nga (Memory of Russia), celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Great Russian Revolution of October. It displays books on history, literature, arts, science and technology. Books for children are also included. Many works, published in the 1970s and 80s, include reports on Russias culture and lifestyle. Some books by famous writers, such as Korney Chukovsky and L.A. Bunhin, and translated by Vietnamese authors, have left a strong impression on readers for two decades, said Tran Hoang Nhan, who visited the showcases opening ceremony on Wednesday. Nhan, a native of Ha Noi, was sent to study in Moscow in 1965. For Vietnamese who studied in Russia in the 1950s and 1960s, Russia and its people have been part of our lives. My friends and I visited the exhibition because it helps us remember Russia, our second homeland, he said. Nhan also participated in a book reading by primary school students from District 1s Cultural House for Children. The event featured Doctor Aybolit, one of Chukovskys most famous books, which was popular among Vietnamese readers of different generations. Three Vietnamese books about the Russian Revolution of October were also introduced. A photo exhibition on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street in District 1 is also being held. The exhibition displays more than 100 black-and-white and colour works related to the theme Tinh Than Cach Mang Thang 10 Nga Mai Mai Sang Ngoi (The Spirit of the Great Russian Revolution of October Is Still Alive). Many photos capture Russian landscapes, architecture and people in cultural activities and daily life. Organised by the citys Peoples Committee, in co-operation with its partners, the book exhibition will close on November 8, while the photo event runs through November 11. VNS by Le Huong Art lovers have been flocking to an annual art show in downtown Ha Noi. Many of them have been stunned at the dozens of paintings inspired by mountains and karst plateau of northern province of Ha Giang. Titled Son Luc (Viridity Peak) the exhibition showcases not only artworks by 25 painters from the Ha Noi Fine Arts College, who are taking part in a charity project named Ngoi Sao Mien Nui 2017 (Mountain Stars), but also works by children from Tung Vai, ong Ha and Can Ty communes in Quan Ba District, Ha Giang. The exhibition is the fourth held by art researcher Wei Kuo from Taiwan. The most special feature of this event is a set of paintings drawn on hand-woven linen cloth by children, Kuo said, This year, we have not only taught children to draw, use colours, judge beauty, but also guided them how to draw on linen cloth using water colour, acrylic, natural colours and wax. Some of the paintings on cloth are displayed at the exhibition, the rest have been sent to HCM city-based Huulala design house to be used on clothes and accessories. Most of the proceeds will be sent to the children and local comunity. We want the children and locals to understand that painting does not only provide spiritual values but also creates sustainable income for the community, Kuo said. Teacher: Researcher Wei Kuo poses for a photo at the exhibition Viridity Peak. VNS Photo Le Huong Since 2014, Kuo organised 50 young painters to make field trips to remote areas to teach local children to draw and help decorate their schools. The project has taught basic drawing to 600 children of six to ten years old in Ha Giang Province and Co To District in Quang Ninh Province. Explaining how he formed the project idea, Kuo said he has discovered a gap between the creative thought of contemporary artists with their audiences. Thats why many people find contemporary fine art works strange, he said. Its a challenge to the development of Vietnamese contemporary fine arts. In recent years, many Vietnamese artists want to socialise contemporary fine arts and we have discussed the matter a lot. I found out that nature and native culture in Ha Giang can help refresh artists, to make them get closer approach to ethnic groups and to get more inspirations. At the same time, they can be more aware of their duty to the community. The idea of the project was born from that thought. Joining in: Children join a drawing lesson by members of Mountain Star project in Ha Giang Province. Photo courtesy of Wei Kuo Before each trip, the artists gather and invite an expert to talk about traditional customs of the groups living in the destination. Then they draft out a plan to teach children simple shapes, structures, mixing colours based on traditional decorative patterns popular in that minority group, even tales of that group. We want to bring along knowledge and awareness of fine arts to the children, encourage them to preserve their identity, Kuo said, Ethnic groups in remote areas have kept valuable native traditions that have long been lost among modern society. At the end of each field trip, the painters display paintings at an exhibition in Ha Noi and then in Taiwan. Proceeds are spent on the next field trip, and spared for needy children and schools in the localities. Wei Kuo, who is now doing his PhD research on Vietnamese contemporary fine arts at Ha Noi National University, has a special reason to stick to Ha Giang for so long. After completing his BA in Colonial History in Britain, Kuo wanted to continue his fathers step as an art dealer, who has traded fine art works in Taiwan and collected some paintings by Vietnamese painters. He chose Viet Nam among other neighbouring countries as it possessed one of the most potentital markets of fine arts. In a field trip to Ha Giang in 2013, he met a woman of Bo Y minority group, who worked as a guide for his group to tour the karst plateau. He then fell in love with her and decided to stay longer with Ha Giang people by marrying her. My parents-in-law are both State staff so they act very well to me, he said. I found my wife as well as other Vietnamese women living in mountainous area have great characters. They take great care of their husbands and support their husband in careers. Photo time: Visitors at the Viridity Peak show (left) take photos of children from Ha Giang Province. Photo courtesy of Wei Kuo Though Viet Nam and Taiwan share a lot in common, such as influences from Confucianism and Buddhism, in big cities, industrial style of living has gradually changed traditional customs and tradition, he said. People no longer invite elders to meals, he said, But that custom is still preserved in many Vietnamese families. Thats why I have found warmth when visiting families here. Kuo said he keeps travelling between Ha Noi and Ha Giang, where his wife and three-year-old girl twins are living. I love Vietnamese food, especially tiet canh vit (blood jelly made from duck blood) in Ha Giang style, he said, Locals raise ducks on terrace rice field. The ducks eats unhusked rice, so their meat taste delicious and healthy. Kuo visits his family in Taiwan once or twice a year, while his father, an art collector, supports him in the project and sells most of the paintings. Kuo said he always admires Vietnamese fine arts with a special lacquer style created by painters at the Indochina Fine Arts College and the then French teachers although the art stemmed from China. Vietnamese lacquer is an art of the East, but it combines techniques of the West, he said, It gathers Eastern phylosophy of Yin and Yang inside. Painter Nguyen Truong Linh, head of Fine Arts Department, Ha Noi College of Art, who have co-ordinated with Kuo for five years, said Kuo led a modest life and was eager to know about Viet Nam. He inherits various good characteristics from his father, an art dealer, he said, Kuo holds a sharp understanding on people. His only weak point may be the fact that he loves Vietnamese people too much, Linh jokes. VNS Viet Nams National Assembly (NA) will work with the Vietnamese Government and Lao partners to carry out the Lao NA House project whose construction began in Vientiane yesterday, said a top legislator. VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc VIENTIANE Viet Nams National Assembly (NA) will work with the Vietnamese Government and Lao partners to carry out the Lao NA House project whose construction began in Vientiane yesterday, said a top legislator. NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan made the promise while visiting General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party and State President Bounnhang Volachith. Ngan went to Laos to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of the Lao NA House, a gift donated by the Communist Party of Viet Nam, State and people to the neighbouring country. She noted the fruitful development of ties and cooperation between the two countries, especially the success of the meeting between the two Politburos in January 2017 and the 39th meeting of the Viet Nam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee in February 2017, and the exchange of visits by senior leaders. Viet Nam is preparing for the upcoming visit by Party Secretary and State President Bounnhang Volachith to attend activities wrapping up the Viet Nam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017, she said. The Vietnamese legislature will also work with its Lao counterpart to encourage agencies to deploy agreements reached by senior leaders of the two countries and outcomes of the two aforementioned meetings, while preparing for the next meetings of the Politburos and the Inter-Governmental Committee in 2018, the top legislator said. The legislatures will also exchange legislative experiences, and team up with concerned agencies to increase supervision over joint projects to make co-operation more efficient, particularly in economy, trade and investment. Ngan called on Laos to create the best possible conditions for overseas Vietnamese to work and study in Laos, consider reducing fees for procedures and services, and taxes for Vietnamese, and employ more Vietnamese labourers in Vietnamese-invested or joint projects. For his part, Volachith thanked Viet Nam for its support to Laos during the countrys struggle for national liberation and the present cause of national construction and development. He lauded the valuable assistance of the Vietnamese Party, State and people to Laos in constructing the Lao NA House, a symbol of the special solidarity between the two Parties, Governments, legislatures and people. Later the same day, Ngan and her entourage left Laos, concluding her visit to the country. VNS General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong hosted a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for Song Tao, special envoy of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Xi Jinping. VNA/VNS Photo Tri Dung HA NOI General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong hosted a reception in Ha Noi yesterday for Song Tao, special envoy of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Xi Jinping. General Secretary Trong extended his congratulations on the success of the 19th CPC National Congress and highly praised the achievements of the Party, State and people of China during the cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party chief voiced his belief that under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee led by General Secretary Xi Jinping, the Chinese people would certainly complete the targets set at the 19th CPC National Congress. Viet Nam always attaches importance to its relations with China and sincerely wants to develop the traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership with the country for mutual benefit, he said. General Secretary Trong suggested the two sides work closely together to implement common perceptions reached by senior leaders of the two Parties and countries, and their signed agreements. He also stressed that Viet Nam is looking forward to the upcoming State-level visit to Viet Nam by Party General Secretary and President Xi Jinping as well as his attendance at the APEC Economic Leaders Week. Song Tao, who is also a member of the CPC Central Committee and head of the CPC Central Committees International Liaison Department, said the Chinese Party, Government and people always want and stand ready to collaborate with their Vietnamese counterparts to continuously elevate the traditional friendship and comprehensive strategic co-operative partnership to new heights. He briefed the Vietnamese Party leader on the outcomes of the 19th CPC National Congress as well as Chinas major development policies and orientations towards socialist modernisation. The Party, State and people of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping attach great importance to developing their friendship and co-operation with Viet Nam, and hope that the two sides will increase strategic exchange, mutual political trust and practical cooperation in different fields, thus bringing the bilateral relationship into a new period of stable development. Later the same day, Tran Quoc Vuong, Politburo member, permanent member of the CPV Central Committees Secretariat and head of the CPV Central Committees Inspection Commission, received Song Tao. The Chinese official proposed measures to promote the relationship between the two Parties and countries by increasing the exchange of delegations at all levels and upholding the achievements of their existing cooperation mechanisms. He expressed his hope that the two sides will enhance mutual political trust, and theoretical, strategic and friendly exchanges, in an effort to lift relations between the two Parties and nations to a new level. For his part, Vuong congratulated the CPC on the successful organisation of its 19th National Congress and expressed his hope that the CPC will lead the Chinese people to reap more achievements in the new period. He called on the two sides to make concerted efforts to effectively implement common perceptions and agreements reached by the two countries, and strengthen relations between the two Parties and countries in a stable manner. Also yesterday, Song Tao held talks with Hoang Binh Quan, member of the CPV Central Committee and head of the CPV Central Committees Commission for External Relations. VNS HA NOI The Viet Nam Road Administration will monitor the turnover of four Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) toll booths in November. The booths to be supervised are Km42+730 toll booth on National Highway No.6s Xuan Mai-Hoa Binh section, Km1148+1300 toll booth on National Highway No.1 in the north of central Binh inh Province, and T1 and T2 toll booths on Highway 1K in southern ong Nai Province. The supervision will last 10 days until November 20. It aims to assess real turnover at the toll booths and the toll collection system, especially technology, so that inspectors can make proposals to management agencies to deal with shortcomings and violations to promote transparency in road toll collection. The BOT investors and enterprises whose booths will be inspected are responsible for ensuring safety of the booths. At least three leaders and three employees must be present during supervision. Earlier, the Viet Nam Road Administration inspected and supervised turnover of toll booths such as Tan Phu booth on Highway 20, new Viet Tri Bridges booth and Phap Van-Cau Gie booth. HA NOI The Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, on Thursday, held an urgent meeting to prepare for storm no. 12, internationally known as Damrey. At the meeting, Hoang uc Cuong, director of the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting (NCHMF), said that the tropical depression in the southern provinces sea had weakened to a low pressure zone. On the other hand, the tropical depression on the East Sea (South China Sea) had strengthened to become storm No. 12 or the Damrey storm on Thursday morning. At present, the storm is at level 8 (of 18), however, when coming ashore, it can reach levels 10 to 13. Observatories in Hong Kong and Japan forecasted that the Damrey storm can reach levels 11 to 14 (of 18), posing severe weather threats. On Thursday, the storm will move fast at 10 to 15km per hour and reach the southern central provinces on Saturday, Cuong said. The storm circulation will affect a vast area, from Binh inh to Ninh Thuan provinces from Friday. The strong storm and air mass can cause downpours, with total rainfall of up to 1,000mm. Le Thanh Hai, deputy director of NCHMF, warned about the dangerous consequences caused by high tide and storm waves to the dyke system. Tran Quang Hoai, director of the General Department of Disaster Prevention, said that the Department of Irrigation had commanded three missions to the south for better reservoir management. The missions will now go to the southern central provinces to prepare for the Damrey storm. At present, the flood on Phu Yen Provinces Ba River and Nha Trang Citys Cai River is rising and is expected to reach its peak in the next 6 to 12 hours. Landslides and flooding are threatening provinces from Quang Nam to Khanh Hoa and the Northen Central Highland. Hoai said to proactively lower the water level in reservoirs and make proper flood discharge plans, preventing artificial floods. Binh Thuan prepares for tropical depression Binh Thuan Province Peoples Committee, on Wednesday, urged locals to prepare for the tropical depression, which can strengthen into a storm. The provincial authority also expressed worry about the shortage of storm shelters for vessels. We are carefully tracking the direction of the tropical depression, said Pham Van Nam, deputy head of the Binh Thuan Province Peoples Committee. Ta Minh Nhut, head of Binh Thuan Provinces Phu Quy District Peoples Committee, said that they were collaborating with border guards to record the number of operating vessels and persuading them to come ashore. According to him, there are about 1,300 fishing boats at sea. The district authority, on the other hand, asked the owners of more than 1,000 fish cages to reinforce their facilities or bring them to a safe place. We are trying to contact the operating vessels. Despite the shortage of storm shelters, we have a solution to arrange for the space, said Nhut. Binh Thuan Province Port Administration has notified vessels of the direction of the tropical depression and the upcoming storm, to avoid dangerous areas and readied urgent assistance in case of an emergency. The Phan Thiet - Phu Quy sea route is still open, although it will be shut when the tropical depression comes ashore. VNS HA NOI Ha Nois Peoples Committee has proposed 16 Build-Transfer (BT) projects with total investment of more than VN130 trillion (US$5.6 billion) to the Government. According to experts, the city should put up the projects for open bidding to select investors to avoid violations committed during the previous projects. Among 16 BT projects proposed by chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Nguyen uc Chung, there are 12 transport projects and four environment projects, including key projects worth trillions of ong. The city has suggested applying a specific mechanism, which means removing a series of procedures for investors. Some infrastructure projects that have huge impact on the citys socio-economic development and help solve traffic congestion must be implemented early. It takes a lot of time and the projects progress may fall behind schedule if investors are selected following Bidding Law and Governments decree, Chung said, adding there must be a specific mechanism for investor selection. Several construction experts said most contractors of BT projects executed in Ha Noi are appointed through a specific mechanism. However, Ha Noi has not followed an efficient investor selection process and has not fully assessed the capacity of some investors. Some incapable investors were, therefore, still being selected, leading to violations. The projects applying a specific mechanism were said to be urgent, however, local authorities did not show their urgency when appointing investors, a member of the Government Inspectorate (GI) told Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper. Dr Doan Minh Tam, former head of the Transport Communication and Science Technology Institute, said investors of BT and Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects must be selected through public bidding, although they will enjoy a specific mechanism. However, all seven BT projects implemented in Ha Noi in the past had their investors appointed and the State was finding it hard to select capable investors. This is the main reason leading to projects slow progress and cost overruns, as pointed out by the GI, Tam said. Nguyen Manh Quyen, director of Ha Nois Department of Planning and Investment, said public bidding will be held for the citys Public-Private Partnership projects, including BT and BOT projects in the future, except for urgent projects or those under specific order of the Prime Minister. In July this year, the GI released findings of egregious wrongdoing in the implementation of a number of BT and BOT infrastructure and environmental projects in Ha Noi. All BT projects were behind schedule and entailed significant cost overruns. GI said contractors were not sufficiently capable of mobilising capital and also blamed failure to disburse budget in accordance with set schedule. Seven BT projects that caused massive loss are construction of the Yen So wastewater treatment plant, the Le Van Luong Road extension, the southern main road of Ha Tay and a street connecting Le uc Tho, as well as new urban area Xuan Phuong, a road surrounding the Chu Van An memorial site and the Ha NoiHung Yen interprovincial road. VNS WASHINGTON President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed a battery of tough measures to curb immigration after a deadly terror attack in New York, but left the White House scrambling to figure out how to fulfil his promises. Looking to burnish his hardline image after what appeared to be the first major jihadist attack on the homeland during his administration, Trump pledged sweeping reform. Surrounded by the cabinet, Trump - who ran for the White House on a promise to end what he called "radical Islamic terrorism" - announced he was "starting the process of terminating" Americas green card lottery. "Diversity lottery. Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. Its not nice," he said. "Were so politically correct that were afraid to do anything." The programme was created 27 years ago and awards US permanent resident visas to around 50,000 applicants from around the world each year. According to Trump, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, identified by authorities as the man who plowed a rented truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a New York City bike path Tuesday, came to the country via the programme in 2010. Trump also floated deep changes to how terror suspects are prosecuted and said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention centre which holds suspected foreign jihadists in Cuba. "(We) have to come up with punishment thats far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now," Trump said. But the White House was forced to walk back some of his comments, stressing that he was not taking executive action but looking to Congress to change decades old laws. "Were going to continue pushing for and advocating for getting rid of this program," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the green card lottery. Sanders also ruled out executive action to introduce "quicker" and "greater" punishment for those guilty of terror offenses. "I believe he was voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this," Sanders said. And just hours after Trump and the White House suggested declaring Saipov an "enemy combatant" - opening the possibility of detention without charge and possible dispatch to Guantanamo, that idea was also undercut. Prosecutors in New York quickly announced two initial charges against Saipov: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organisation, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Saipov, 29, who was arrested after being shot by police, planned for weeks to undertake his attack in the name of Islamic State, following online instructions from the jihadist group, officials said. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was "radicalised domestically" only after he came to the country, "when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics." Closing doors to immigration Trump ran for election last year promising a crackdown on immigration, including building a wall on the Mexican border and banning Muslim immigrants. This year he has already slashed the countrys annual refugee intake by more than 50 per cent to 45,000, tightened visa issuance around the world and ordered a ban on travelers from 11 unnamed "high-risk" countries. Refugee experts say all but one have Muslim-majority populations; they do not include Uzbekistan. The officially titled Diversity Lottery Program aims to diversify the origins of people granted permanent residence - so-called green cards - in the United States. In 2015, lottery applications were received from more than 14 million people, of whom 49,377 won green cards, including 2,524 Uzbeks. Trump said he wants to move US immigration to a "merit-based system" and not allow immigrants to bring their extended families. Republicans in Congress have tried for several years to eliminate the visa lottery programme, but were stifled by Democratic resistance. Trump blamed the programme on Chuck Schumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, even though it was resoundingly supported by both parties and signed into law in 1990 by a Republican president, George HW Bush. Few US attacks by immigrants Tuesdays incident was the second time the lottery has been tied to a jihadist attack inside the United States. In July 2002, an Egyptian man whose wife entered the country on the green card programme shot two people dead at the ticket counter for El Al, the Israeli airline. AFP WATERLOO The new reconstructed Aldi Foods grocery store at 1918 Schukei Road near Crossroads Center is scheduled to have a grand opening Thursday, store officials said. Aldi will host a public ribbon-cutting ceremony at 8:25 a.m. The public is invited to attend, followed by the distribution of gift cards of varying amounts to the first 100 customers. Customers also can tour the store and enter an on-site sweepstakes to win a years supply of Aldi produce. After 21 years at this location, were excited to bring a new store to Waterloo to better serve the community, said Matt Lilla, Faribault, Minn., division vice president for Aldi. Were looking forward to showing the new look of ALDI to regular and new customers. Thanks to input from customers, the Waterloo store presents a new look. ALDI stores also will feature a modern design, open ceilings, natural lighting and environmentally friendly building materials such as recycled materials, energy-saving refrigeration and LED lighting. The new store is about 19,800 square feet, about 5,000 square feet larger than the old store. A building permit indicated the project cost $1.2 million, not including equipment and other improvements. The store has more aisle and selling space. Aldi has been in Waterloo-Cedar Falls since 1987. The reconstruction and expansion is believed to be the most extensive work for the Waterloo Aldi since it relocated from its original site on La Porte Road and built the current store in 1995. Aldi also has a store in Cedar Falls at 6322 University Ave. No information was immediately available as to whether a similar project is planned there. In February, Aldi announced plans to spend $1.6 billion to remodel or expand more than 1,300 stores across the U.S. by 2020, in addition to previously announced plans to open 650 new stores by 2020. WATERLOO Police said they identified a Waterloo man involved in the holdup of a liquor store in January with the help of a surveillance video at the shop. Trial for Marlon Derrell Harris Jr. continued Wednesday with police officers taking the stand to recount finding the counter area of Alis West Side Liquor, 919 W. Fifth St., in disarray when they arrived on Jan. 8. There appeared to be a fight or a tussle where most of the counter stuff was knocked over, said Officer Keaton Northrup of the Waterloo Police Department. The stores cash register was on the floor, and merchandise from shelves was scattered around, he said. Northrup said two store employees said two suspects had entered the store around 9:35 p.m. and made demands. One of the men had a handgun tucked into his waistband that he reached for a number of times but never drew. He took a bottle of liquor and cigarettes from the store. Court records indicate Harris is suspected of being the gunman. Prosecutors said after the suspects held up the store, they went to Kwik Star on West Ninth Street where they drove off in a pickup truck that was left running outside and then carried tools from the truck to an apartment on Wellington Street. Harris was arrested on Jan. 13 near the Wellington Street apartment building, and officers found a glass pipe in his jacket pocket that appeared to have methamphetamine residue. Harris, 28, is charged with first-degree robbery for the holdup, first-degree theft for removing tools from the truck and possession of meth for residue found in the pipe. He has waived his right to a jury trial, allowing Judge Brad Harris to render a verdict at the close of trial, which will continue today. The state also is seeking sentencing enhancements under habitual offender statues, which will be the subject of a separate trial. The other person arrested in the case, Daniel Joseph Buenneke, 25, pleaded guilty to first-degree theft, operating a vehicle without owners consent and a reduced charge of second-degree robbery, and in April he was sentenced to up to 30 years in prison with a seven-year mandatory minimum. WATERLOO A Waterloo couple has been arrested after authorities found bruises and other injuries on a toddler. Waterloo police arrested John Joseph Anthony Mercurio, 32, and Nevena Soknic, 29, both of 3615 Canterbury Court on Friday for misdemeanor child endangerment. Soknic was later released from jail, and Mercurios bond was set at $4,000. Officers were sent to the family home to check on the welfare of the children on Oct. 17 and found the 19-month-old boy with bruises on his face and body that were in different stages of healing, court records state. Two older children were also in the home, and they told Child Protection Center workers that the toddler was hit, court records state. All three children were removed, according to court records. WATERLOO The Black Hawk County Election Office is reminding voters about key dates and times related to next weeks municipal elections. Polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday in the cities of Cedar Falls, Dunkerton, Elk Run Heights, Evansdale, Gilbertville, Hudson, La Porte City, Raymond and Waterloo. Requests to have an absentee ballot mailed to you must be received by the election office by 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3. The return by mail of an absentee ballot must be postmarked by Monday, Nov. 6. Postmarks are not always affixed by the Post Office, so mail your absentee ballot early enough so it arrives by Election Day. Even if the ballot is postmarked on time, mailed ballots must be received in the Election Office by noon Nov. 9 for the runoff cities of Waterloo and Cedar Falls and by noon Nov. 13 for other cities. Absentee ballots are available at the Election Office in room 210 of the county courthouse. Ballots may be voted there from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Monday. Persons who are admitted to a health care facility within three days of an election Saturday, Sunday, Monday and election day may make a request by telephone to the Election Office and an absentee ballot will be delivered to them. On Election Day the telephone request must be made at least four hours before polls close. Election Day registration is allowed if a voter shows up at the polling place for the precinct in which they reside, fills out a voter registration application, makes a written oath and provides acceptable proof of both identity and residence. This includes voters who have a change of address within Black Hawk County. Questions may be directed to the Election Office at 833-3007 or election@co.black-hawk.ia.us. These websites can help find the correct polling place: www.co.black-hawk.ia.us and link to the real estate mapping home page. www.sos.iowa.gov and select the find my polling place option. Over the course of just three films, Greek weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos has established himself as todays premiere purveyor of absurdist cinema. In 2009s Dogtooth he introduced the world to a sadistic father raising his family in such isolation from the outside world that the children have started inventing their own language. For 2011s Alps Lanthimos imagined a business in which people impersonate the recently deceased in order to help clients through the grieving process. The Lobster, from 2015, was the writer-directors biggest splash, a loopy sci-fi parable about a near-future world in which people unable to find romantic partners are transmogrified into wild animals. Those with a taste for the arty and eccentric have found a patron saint in Lanthimos. A shame then that his latest outing, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, ends up as his most accessible andsadlyleast interesting film to date. The Killing of a Sacred Deer gets a lot of milage off its sheer mysteriousity. (Mysteriousness seems too ordinary a descriptor.) As a result, a straightforward description of its plot robs the film of what impact it does have. Also, its such a dishearteningly simple talecertainly compared to his previous headscratchersthat the plot feels rather barren when laid out, end to end. What can be said is that the film stars Colin Farrell (from The Lobster) as Steven Murphy, a noted heart surgeon in Cincinnati. Murphy would seem to have it all: a successful practice, a fellow doctor for a wife (Nicole Kidman) and two lovely children (Raffery Cassidy, Sunny Suljic). From the very get-go, the dialogue is awkward and stilted, with normally credible actors stumbling though endless, go-nowhere conversations about watch straps and household chores. Newcomers will wonder when Farrell became such a lousy actor. Those whove been down this road before will wait patiently for the threads of Lanthimos world to coalesce into something incomprehensibly bizarre. What we get, instead, is the introduction of a mysterious teenager named Martin (Barry Keoghan, recently of Dunkirk). Murphy meets with Martin on what seems like a regular basis. He gives the kid various presents. The two seem to have known each other for some time. But they appear uncomfortably mismatched, with nothing to talk about and nothing in common. What links them together? Are they related? Is there some kind of unseemly relationship going on? Is the kid blackmailing the doctor? Something about Martin definitely seems ... off. (Autism? Drugs? A love for the music of Insane Clown Posse?) Its hard to pin downmostly because everybody in this film speaks like a space alien trying to approximate human speech anyway. The first half of the film comes across like some sort of domestic thriller, with Dr. Murphy acting weird around his wife and kids and Martin basically stalking the upper-class family. Ominous whispers of Stanley Kubrick and Lars von Trier bounce off the films barren white walls. Eventually, however, the story takes a radical turn. We learn that our protagonist may or may not have an incident of medical malfeasance in his recent past. Martin is here to make sure that justice is servedwhich involves the good doctor having to make a gut-wrenching, Sophies Choice decision. The second half of this journey takes on a distinct, Stephen King-esque horror movie vibe. Languid pacing and queer atmosphere aside, Lanthimos plot traces straight back to the same 1950s EC horror comics that King has spent his career photocopying. It all boils down to a familiar formula: Rich and/or privileged person causes harm to another human being and is punished for it by vague supernatural forces. If youd prefer to be more literate about it, you could say its one of those classic Greek tragedies in which the hubris-filled hero is handed a quick downfall by the gods. (Yeah, yeah, the title is a direct reference to a myth involving King Agamemnon.) Given the amount of blood on display, however, EC seems more apt. Thats really about it for the film. Lanthimos never bothers to explain whats really happening, provides no kind of philosophical context to it and offers nothing in the way of moral wrap-up. Things happen. Until they dont. Its not a lack of skill that hamstrings The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It looks gorgeous in its own grim, spare way. And it definitely builds an air of tension and mystery (thanks in no small part to the films assaultive musical score, which sounds like an appliance store being beat up for lunch money). Sorely missed here is Lanthimos deadpan sense of humor. His previous films all worked, on a certain level, as bizarre black comedies. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, in marked contrast, is perilously po-faced. Lanthimos never lacks for confidence, and there are audience members who will respond to this films meticulously curated blend of existential unease and torture porn. By hewing so close to a well-established genre, however, a filmmaker normally associated with befuddling originality just feels pretentious and unprepared. SIOUX CITY -- Northwest Iowa's Sam Clovis, a former top official in Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been questioned in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 campaign, according to media reports. Clovis, who now is a White House aide to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified last week before a grand jury seated in Washington, D.C., NBC News first reported Wednesday. Clovis, a former Morningside College professor and Sioux City radio talk show host, was propelled into the middle of Mueller's high-stakes probe on Monday with the unsealing of court documents related a guilty pleading by George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos, who was secretly arrested in July for lying to the FYI and pleaded guilty last month to those charges, is cooperating with Mueller's investigation, according to the documents. As national campaign co-chair and senior policy advisor of the Trump campaign, Clovis was asked to form a national security advisory committee charged by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. The members included Papadopoulos, who was not approached by the campaign for consultation, other than one meeting he attended in March 2016, Victoria Toensing, the attorney for Clovis, said in a statement to the Journal. In his plea filing, Papadopolous admitted he told Trump and other top campaign national security officials during the March 31 meeting that he had contact with intermediaries for Russia who said they could set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos continued to email campaign officials about a possible meeting with individuals claiming to work for the Russian government who were offering "dirt" in the form of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In an August 2016 email, among the court documents uncovered Monday, Clovis urged Papadopoulos to "make the trip, if it is feasible." To Clovis' knowledge, Toensing said in the statement, all of Papadopoulos' communications with the campaign were "self-generated." Clovis never told Papadopoulos that "a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia," because that was not Clovis' view of Trump's foreign policies priorities, Toensing said. She added that Clovis "always vigorous opposed" any Russian trip for Trump or staff. If a volunteer made that suggestion, Clovis, "a polite gentleman from Iowa, would have expressed courtesy and appreciation," Toensing said. "There was a strict campaign rule that no one could travel abroad and claim to be representing or speaking on behalf of the campaign," the statement said. "If someone proposed foreign travel in a personal capacity, Dr. Clovis would have had no authority to prohibit such travel." Clovis, who taught economics at Morningside, has been nominated by Trump as the top scientist with the USDA, but his nomination has been vigorously opposed by many Democrats, environmental groups and some ag interests. Critics argue he does not have sufficient academic qualifications for the position and has made past statements that question whether climate change is man made. Clovis scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee on Nov. 9. In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the agriculture committee, said it's too early to know if Clovis' role in the Mueller investigation will affect his nomination to the USDA post. Grassley noted that Clovis also is cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee's own investigation into Russian interference in the election. Grassley said emails supplied by the Trump campaign show Papadopoulos offered to travel to several countries to meet with Russian officials but never to make a trip to Moscow, as some news organizations have reported, he said. Editor's note: Changes an earlier version of this story that misstated Clovis' reported interaction with Robert Mueller's investigation and grand jury. Beware the low-level volunteer. Virtually unheard of before Monday, when the FBI indicted two of President Trumps campaign staffers, George Papadopoulos is either the key to Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election or a lying low level volunteer, as the president tweeted early Tuesday. But contrary to Trumps dismissive, never-heard-of-him shrug, Papadopoulos also was known within the campaign as Trumps foreign affairs adviser. It was within the latter capacity Papadopoulos tried, unsuccessfully, to arrange meetings between the Trump campaign and Russians close to the Kremlin, ostensibly to learn dirt on Hillary Clinton. He may be the key to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation that led to Mondays indictments of the presidents former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and crimes against the United States. Papadopoulos himself was offered a pre-indictment plea bargain on charges he had lied to the FBI during an earlier point in the investigation. In response to the indictments, Trump has done everything but burn an effigy of Hillary Clinton as distraction or, well, what? In the swamp, one is never sure whether movements beneath the surface are gators or mere shadows. Trumps history has taught us, however, when hes under attack, Clinton will feel it. Like the Ghost of Election Past, she haunts Trumps dreamscape. But why arent Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus? he tweeted Monday soon after the news broke. Indeed, on Capitol Hill, some Republicans, whove been scurrying away from the indictment news as fast as their little mice feet can carry them, have moved to open an investigation into the Obama-era sale of Canada-based Uranium One, which had licenses to mine U.S. uranium, to a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned energy corporation. A committee composed of representatives from several U.S. government agencies, including the State Department at the time led by Clinton had to approve the sale, which transpired after the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from Uranium One investors. This would probably be a good time to grab a sheet of graph paper and a pencil. Youre going to need them to chart the many possible overlaps in this Venn diagram of Russian propaganda/possible collusion/corruption/sleaze/lies/more lies and wires. As of yet, we have seen no videotape, though its possible Papadopoulos has been wearing a wire in recent months. Also, keep your eraser handy. People have people, you know, and others get fired. Or pardoned. But speculation Trump would pardon Manafort and Gates is probably irrelevant. Manafort and Gates alleged federal crimes almost certainly could not have happened without committing state crimes. State attorneys general could build cases off of Muellers investigation and effectively neuter Trumps power. A president can only pardon federal crimes. The question now is: Whos next? And what bigger fish could Manafort or Gates offer up in a plea that would spare them potentially up to 80 years and 70 years, respectively, in prison? Former national security adviser Michael Flynns name keeps coming up, as does Wilbur Ross. The commerce secretary was vice chair and a major investor in the Bank of Cyprus, the largest bank in a nation known to be a haven for money launderers and tax evaders, especially Russians. According to Mondays indictments, some of Manaforts and Gates laundered money came from the Cypriot institution. None of this affirms or even bolsters a case Trumps campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election, especially given many of Manaforts relevant business dealings preceded his association with the campaign. All we know for certain is Russia did influence the election, thanks to astounding testimony by social media leaders Tuesday. Twitter identified 36,746 accounts associated with Russia that generated election-related content; Google found about 43 hours of election content in about 1,100 videos suspected to be of Russian origin; Facebook estimates about 126 million people were exposed to Russian-produced stories leading up to the election. If Trump benefited from these virtual incursions, theres no proof he knew about it. Then again, weve likely only seen the tip of the iceberg, which must loom large to swamp-dwellers. Plus, remember Chicago crime boss Al Capone was brought down not on murder or racketeering, but on tax evasion. Youth-only and Military/Veteran-only waterfowl hunts canceled this weekend at Ballard WMA; Fewer blinds available at Boatwright WMA Advertisement By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 02, 2017 | EVANSVILLE, IN By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 02, 2017 | 03:52 PM | EVANSVILLE, IN Authorities in Indiana are asking for the public's help finding a missing teen. Police say 15-year-old Grace Carr was last seen at her home in Evansville, IN on Oct. 22. Carr is white, and weighs 127 pounds. She is 5'2" tall and has brown eyes and long, brown hair. She has a piercing on the right side of her nose. Carr reportedly needs medication that she does not currently have with her. She has not had any contact with her family since she went missing. Anyone who knows where Carr might be is asked to call the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office at 812-421-6201, or the Bring our Missing Home, Inc. 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(17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1) The Ministry of Culture announces that the launch of the publication on guidelines for the architecture in Pogradec with the purpose of conserving the Region of Lake Ohrid is set to be ready in early 2018. The work on the traditional architecture of the region has been organized by the Ministry of Culture, since last autumn under the supervision of a team of Albanian architects and experts led by conservation architect Kliti Kalamata, and assisted by architect Amanda Cici. Image World Heritage Centre This publication serving as a manual, will be a valuable reference for all the interested and responsible parties in the Region of Pogradec such as local architects, engineers and artisans; and will promote the following: - the use of specifications and suitable methods for repairs and restorations - accepted professional methods for rehabilitation - integration of new systems of construction in historical buildings - optimization of the restoration process from the technical, social and economical pov. In particular, this documentation is set to emphasize the values and merits of local traditional architecture, clarifying and explaining incorrect interventions, and proposes solutions for rehabilitation, maintenance and improvements/adaptation of modern use. Through the assistance and guidance of international experts of ICOMOS Luisa De Marco and Christophe Graz, the work has been complemented with a series of similar documentations which have served as a basis for the preliminary analysis during 2016. The team has continued in the start of 2017 with site surveys, by photographing and archiving base drawings, as well as measuring and discussing with artisans. The group composed by Amanda Cici, Fotion Qirinxhi and Kliti Kalamata was joined by architects from the Institute of Monuments of Culture Olsi Bulku and Lorin Dvorani, with the addition of two volunteer architects Eniu Giu and Piro Karanxha. The survey phase served also as a training period for all the new practitioners, which learned firsthand by the architect in charge on the local typology and construction techniques. The publication is now undergoing the process of editing, graphic design and presentation of its physical and digital versions. This is part of the larger project, Protecting Lake Ohrid Region: Towards Strengthened Governance of the Shared Transboundary Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Lake Ohrid region. Two-thirds of the lake is located in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, inscribed on the World Heritage List as the property "Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ohrid Region." By extending the remaining one-third of Lake Ohrid in Albania, the integrity of this World Heritage property would be strengthened. The joint EU-UNESCO project, is funded by the European Union, with project partners: The Ministry of Environment and The ministry of Culture in Albania; The ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, CHPO (Ministry of Culture - Cultural Heritage Protection Office), ICCROM (International Center of the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). Watch below the video on the project: All images (except the second one) Protecting Lake Ohrid > via Protecting Lake Ohrid & World Heritage Centre Tomi Bannister, ARMA CEO, says, "I am proud and excited to be amongst such outstanding awardees and gratefully thank our staff, clients and partners for their dedication and commitment to ARMA." SILVER SPRING, MD, November 02, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council (CRMSDC) announced that Tomi Bannister, President/CEO of Automated Resource Management Associates, Inc. (ARMA), was named a 2017 Top 100 MBE award winner. This prestigious award, launched in 2007, recognizes owners whose entrepreneurial successes and innovations serve as an inspiration to MBEs nationally. The awards will be presented at the 36th Annual Leaders and Legends Awards Ceremony on November 2nd at the MGM National Harbor by CRMSDC's President/CEO, Sharon R. Pinder, and CRMSDC's Board Chair, Roland Jones. This event will recognize the achievements of the top minority-owned businesses and brings together elected officials and heads of government agencies. ARMA was founded in 1990, by Ms. Tomi Bannister, an experienced and dedicated facilities management support services executive with the passion to help customers maximize their technical operations performance metrics. Sharon R. Pinder, CRMSDC's President and CEO, says, "Our board of directors and our members congratulate the 2017 Top 100 MBEs on their stellar accomplishments." CRMSDC is celebrating its 45th anniversary as a not-for-profit economic development organization supporting growth in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia through programs and services that help corporations enhance the diversity and innovation of their supply chains. CRMSDC connects corporate and government members to well established, certified minority-owned business enterprises. This is accomplished through a rigorous process of certifying that MBE suppliers are at least 51% owned, controlled and operated by ethnic minorities; providing education and advice to certified businesses; and finally, creating strategic opportunities for corporate members and certified MBEs to connect for the purpose of doing business. Tomi Bannister, ARMA CEO, says, "I am proud and excited to be amongst such outstanding awardees and gratefully thank our staff, clients and partners for their dedication and commitment to ARMA. As a team we rise to new heights and celebrate our success." About Automated Resource Management Associates, Inc. (ARMA): ARMA, Inc. is a WBENC certified woman-owned professional services company with more than 27 years of experience supporting Federal and State agencies and private sector clients. We provide end-to-end solutions and talent with the ability to augment infrastructure work force requirements for different IT resource needs integrating people, processes, systems, data and technology. ARMA is an experienced partner you can trust to perform with hard work and integrity. ARMA has supported clients such as Verizon Federal, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Treasury, U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Transportation and State agencies such as the Maryland State Police and Maryland Judiciary and various other federal and state organizations. We are dedicated to the quality and value we drive to our customers. As President/CEO, my vision is to position ARMA as a strong Tier 1 contractor to our partners and strengthen alignment for enhanced teaming opportunities. For more information about ARMA visit: www.armainc.com Media Contact Tomi Bannister 301-587-7077 ARMA, Inc. Related Links www.armainc.com # # # MEMPHIS, TN, November 03, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Live performances featuring The Tennessee Mass Choir, The Arkansas Gospel Mass Choir, and the award-winning Mississippi Mass Choir will take place, alongside other exciting performances by special guests. The Music From The Masses concert event and movement is intended to convey a message of unity, love, hope and strength of community, and also pay tribute to the founder of The Tennessee Mass Choir, the late Fannie Cole Clark of Memphis, TN. Mrs. Clark, renowned educator, community activist, musician, and recording artist, led the choir to soaring heights, performing at numerous high-profile events, including the Titanic Exhibition and the Memphis Sunset Symphony. Now under leadership of her youngest son, Grammy nominated music producer, Jason Clark, The Tennessee Mass Choir continues to travel down a starlit path. "My mom would often express how she wanted our choir to do concerts with other mass choirs like Mississippi Mass, so a portion of this is definitely about honoring her legacy," says Clark. Following down the road paved by his mother, Jason Clark and The Tennessee Mass Choir have soared to even greater heights, performing in various genres of music with nationally acclaimed artists, such as country music star Martina McBride; soul band St. Paul and the Broken Bones; and legendary rock band Foreigner, allowing them to take their exuberance for ministry beyond the boundaries of Gospel music. "Our city, our country, and the world need to see more presentations of togetherness," says Clark. "We aspire and are inspired to do our part presenting that." Music From The Masses will feature special guests: BET Sunday Best Winner Joshua Rogers; Carla Tolbert-Taylor; Camillia Reed of Houston, TX; Josh Bracy and Power Anointed; and Everett McBee. The concert will be held at 7:00 PM, Saturday, November 18th at New Salem Baptist Church, 2237 South Parkway East in Memphis, TN. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door, and $25 VIP. For more information and details visit: www.MusicFromTheMasses.org High-energy vocals performed by a powerfully gifted, versatile and spirited group of individuals. The Tennessee Mass Choir has been recognized as one of the finest, most respected and talented Mass Choirs in the entire country. Under the leadership of award winning, GRAMMY nominated music producer Jason Clark, this choir has shared the stage and/or recorded with notable artists such as Fred Hammond, John P. Kee, Al Green, Jekalyn Carr, Martina McBride, Foreigner, St. Paul and The Broken Bones along with countless others. # # # Nov 1, 2017 | By Tess LifeTec Construction Group Inc., a Vancouver-based construction firm is aiming to bring 3D printed housing structures to the Canadian city in an effort to provide a faster, more efficient home-building process. Located on Canadas Pacific coast, Vancouver is a city known for many things: its stunning views, its fantastic seafood, and more recently, significant population growth. This, paired with an imminent housing crisis spurred on by international real estate investment, means that many people are searching for homes in the growing city, and affordable ones at that. Thats where LifeTec Construction Group is hoping to make a difference. Using a novel construction 3D printing process known as Framecad, the company says it is equipped to 3D print steel frames for homes in a faster and more efficient manner than traditional home-building processes, which rely on wood frames. The Framecad system was developed in New Zealand and has since been exported to Australia, Asia, parts of Europe, Africa, and South America. With LifeTecs use of the technology, Framecad has now landed in Canada. In short, the technology uses a laser-based 3D printing technology to construct bespoke and modular steel beams and panels. These steel parts, which can be optimized in terms of design for a given housing structure, are then shipped to the construction site and can be assembled almost immediately on the spot. LifeTec believes that the technology will offer a number of unprecedented benefits to the Vancouver construction industry. Firstly, the technology is capable of creating lightweight steel parts which are stronger and more durable than conventional building wood. Secondly, once the steel beams and parts are at the construction site, the team says it is only a matter of days before the housing frame is erected. If we can work with the developer early enough, we can show up right when the foundation is complete, and its three to five days from there to assemble the houseas opposed to three to five weeks for building it from wood, explained LifeTec COO Jesse Goldman. Third, and perhaps most significantly, the technology can help to fill a lack of labour in the construction field that is currently affecting Vancouver. This means that the construction of a house can be sped up significantly as it relies less on manual labour. Right now, on any construction project in the Lower Mainland, time is a huge factor, commented LifeTec founder and president Krishna Jolliffe. When you are dealing with a lack of labour, speeding up those time frames creates huge efficiencies for any builder. So I dont think well always be able to show people savings, because we aim to come in at the same cost as traditional methods, but on any project, well have a significant time advantage. Vancouver, Canada Currently, LifeTec is working on a number of smaller-scale private building projects, which include five detached homes for individual families. Eventually, it hopes to scale up its 3D printing capacity to build larger structures, such as multi-family complexes and mid-rise commercial and industrial buildings. The skys the limit, said Jolliffe. We can do anything that can be done with wood. The only construction we cant do is for high-rises, but we can still do all the infill framing. We can do that at the same cost of existing providers, but at three to four times the speed. So we can create efficiencies in practically every construction process going on in the market. The company currently has one Framecad 3D printer at its 8,000-square-foot facility in Vancouver, though it it aiming to invest in more 3D printing equipment to meet growing building requests. Jolliffe says that within the next two years, the goal is to move to a bigger facility and establish a more extensive steel frame manufacturing system, featuring three or four 3D printers. For more 3D printing construction-related projects, be sure to check out our top 3D printed homes and buildings. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Dr James Gardiner wrote at 11/2/2017 11:46:36 PM:This is not a 3D printing process by any definition, the editors and writers of 3ders should know the difference by now. This process is an automated sheet folding and cutting process, so it is more akin to a beam line machine in that the process for fabricating the elements goes through a number of stages in the processing of a sheet of metal into a studd, beam etc. The process is very limited in the geometries it can fabricate, this technology has been around for decades. Soon we will get brick layers calling their profession 3D printing!Ron wrote at 11/2/2017 1:34:43 PM:Can we see a photo of an actual building???MarcC wrote at 11/2/2017 9:11:27 AM:Agree with the above comment, article should be removed as 3ders.org have just been sucked into giving them publicity on a false pretense.Scottm wrote at 11/1/2017 10:58:18 PM:I don't think that bending sheet steel into a channel counts as 3D printing. Unless you want to include having gutters installed to. Nothing wrong with the idea, just not 3D printing. more like marketing fluff. Nov 2, 2017 | By Tess 3D printing in the military is really taking off, but its not all 3D printed drones and weaponry: the technology is also serving an important rehabilitative purpose for soldiers who are injured and lose limbs on the battlefield. Peter Liacouras, director of 3DMAC's At the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, for instance, medical engineers are working with additive manufacturing to create custom prosthetic solutions for returning war veterans. In fact, the center is even operating a 3D Medical Applications Center (3DMAC), where a team of dedicated engineers and 3D printing technicians are developing bespoke devices based off of veteran requests. 3DMAC receives requests from the DoD and the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop certain bespoke assistive devices for veterans. If no existing part or device exists on the market, the team takes it upon themselves to design and create the custom device. In one case, the team developed special 3D printed feet called shorty feet, which could be attached to a veterans leg stumps. The veteran in question asked for a set of prosthetics which would allow him to get around by the pool on his honeymoon without having to strap on his full leg prosthetics. 3D printed shorty feet prosthetics When confronted with the request, the 3DMAC team set about designing a pair of feet which could be easily attached to the veterans legs. As Peter Liacouras, the centers director of services and a biomedical engineer PhD, explained: Wearing full prosthetic legs can be cumbersome and also, the full prosthetics for pool wear are very expensive and not necessarily 100 per cent waterproof. The 3D printed shorty feet were first prototyped out of a plastic material and once the fit was confirmed they were additively manufacturing from a titanium alloy and given to the soldier. This was back in 2002. Since then, Liacouras said the 3D printing center has dispatched over 70 pairs of the shorty feet to vets who have lost their legs. He says the shorty feet are good alternatives to full leg prosthetics, especially for activities like getting out of bed to use the bathroom, or playing with children, for example. The shorty feet project was the centers first 3D printing-related assisted device endeavour, and it has since developed a number of other innovative devices to fit peoples needs. Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland Weve made more than 100 unique devices to enable activities that able-bodied people often take for granted, said Liacouras. These include more complex devices such as the shorty feet, as well as simpler items like a 3D printed cellphone or cup holder for a wheelchair. In addition to assistive devices, the 3D printing center is also tasked with researching and producing medical devices, such as surgical planning models, customized dental implants, skull plates, and more. One notable project that Liacouras highlights involves 3D scanning soldiers faces before they go to war. The 3D scans would be compiled in a database and if the unfortunate should occur and the soldiers face is disfigured or injured in a blast, his or her 3D scan can be used in the reconstruction process. The face is the most complicated region to reconstruct and, of course, its what everyone sees every day, Liacouras explained. Out of all the militarys uses for 3D printing, the work of 3DMAC is probably the most compelling. Whatever our wounded warriors need, well create, concluded Liacouras. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Nov 2, 2017 | By David 3D printing technology is gradually being implemented more and more in various sectors throughout the power industry, with nuclear energy being a key area of growth. Continuing this trend, the first 3D printed fuel component in a commercial nuclear reactor looks set to be installed by Fall 2018. Westinghouse is the company that will be achieving this 3D printing milestone, and it is currently in the process of researching various different additive manufacturing processes, with support from the U.S Department of Energy. Westinghouse is currently planning to install a thimble plugging device, made of AM 316L stainless steel and non-AM 304, in a commercial reactor. This breakthrough will follow the recent installation of a 3D printed component at the Krsko nuclear plant in Slovenia, where Siemens replaced an obsolete fire protection pump with an updated piece made using additive manufacturing technology. GE Hitachi has also been active on this front, leading a project to swap out older parts for 3D printed replacements in order to keep plants operational. Westinghouse is planning to use 3D printing not only to replace obsolete component designs, but also to produce prototypes and fuel parts for reactors in the next generation of nuclear plants. Currently, it is experimenting with the use of AM casting moulds to produce safety-related castings, including replacement large brackets and bearing housings for electric motors. The research should hopefully demonstrate that the 3D printing process can be used to reduce the cost and lead time of many cast parts, including valve bodies and piping sections and connections. The flexibility of the 3D printing approach also allows designers to create more complex castings, which would not be possible using traditional sand casting. The support of Westinghouse by the Department of Energy goes back to last year, when the DOE allocated Westinghouse $8 million towards several R&D projects focused on advancing innovative technologies, including a three-year effort focused on qualifying powder bed fusion additive manufacturing processes for nuclear components. In July 2017, the DOE then allocated Westinghouse a further $830,000 in federal funding to study the neutron radiation effects on zirconium alloys produced via the additive manufacturing process for light water reactors (LWRs). According to Clint Armstrong, Advanced Manufacturing Expert at Westinghouse , 3D printing technology could cut manufacturing costs for replacement reactor parts in half. These cost and lead time reduction estimates still look appropriate for certain replacement castings, using current cost estimates for AM casting moulds and the associated foundries/casting processes, he said. The main obstacle that prevents a more widespread implementation of AM is the lack of performance data for many of the materials used by these processes: The main challenge in qualifying AM materials is the variability of material properties and overall part quality based on the feedstock material, AM process parameters and part geometry... To combat this, most users are printing multiple parts for destructive testing, as well as multiple test specimens with production parts, he said. To hopefully speed things up a bit and allow the 3D printing revolution to gain some momentum in the nuclear industry, Westinghouse is currently collaborating on a project with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Oak Ridge National Laboratorys Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, the University of Tennessee and Rolls-Royce, to develop an in-process monitoring and integrated computational materials engineering process, to reduce the qualification process for AM. Officials from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also recently met with nuclear power AM proponents, from the industry as well as the research community, to discuss standardization procedures. A two-day workshop in Washington DC is planned for late November. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Alex Maxim wrote at 11/7/2017 6:30:02 PM:It is not clear from the article if the 3D is used to fabricate actual pump bodies and piping connections (which can be very challenging for pressure boundary components) or to produce casting molds for such components, which makes total sense and it is great idea. Daniel Evans Pritchard in the Kenyon Review: Theres an Armenian saying that goes, You are as many people as the languages you know. Its not an especially novel idea. In the eighth century, Charlemagne observed that to have another language is to possess a second soul. But it may be especially pertinent for speakers of Armenian, a language that occupies a distinct branch of the Indo-European linguistic tree and uses a unique script dating back to the fifth century AD. Armenia lies at a continental crossroad in the South Caucasus, bordering Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey. For centuries, empires have battled for regional dominance: Byzantine, Persian, Russian, Ottoman, Soviet. During the Armenian genocide (the Turkish government disputes that characterization), one and a half million Armenians were put to death by the Ottoman Empire, an event which prompted the vibrant diaspora that exists today, stretching from Tehran to my own neighborhood in Watertown, Massachusetts. Americans, for our part, are notorious monoglots. Back in 1887, Rear Admiral George Balch penned a version of the Pledge of Allegiance that specified one country, one language, one flag. It was rejected in favor of the now well-known rendition, but Balchs spirit survives in our current disputes over bilingual classrooms, translations of the national anthem, and an official language. To many Americans, multilingualism seems either an unpatriotic pretension or a sign of foreign allegiances. President Trump went so far as to refuse a translation headset during the G7 talks this spring, preferring to mime comprehension with all the awareness of a dog that has been trained to raise its paw. No such isolation for speakers of Armenian. The majority of Armenian citizens today speak Russian fluently, a consequence of long imperial rule. Many others speak French, Persian, or Greek. A large and growing number speak English too, influenced no doubt by the soft imperialism of global markets. More here. Ed Yong in The Atlantic: Joshua Plotkins dive into the evolution of language began with clarityand also a lack of it. Today, if you wanted to talk about something thats clear, youd say that it has clarity. But if you were around in 1890, you would almost certainly have talked about its clearness. Plotkin first noticed this linguistic change while playing with Googles Ngram Viewer, a search engine that charts the frequencies of words across millions of books. The viewer shows that a century ago, clearness dominated clarity. Now the opposite is true, which is strange because clarity isnt even a regular form. If you wanted to create a noun from clear, clearness would be a more obvious choice. Why would there be this big upswing in clarity?, Plotkin wondered. Is there a force promoting clarity in writing? It wasnt clear. But as an evolutionary biologist, Plotkin knew how to find out. The histories of linguistics and evolutionary biology have been braided together for as long as the latter has existed. Many of the earliest defenders of Darwinism were linguists who saw similarities between the evolution of languages and of species. Darwin himself wrote about these curious parallels in The Descent of Man. New words and grammatical rules are continually cropping up, fighting for existence against established forms, and sometimes driving those old forms extinct. The survival of certain favored words in the struggle for existence is natural selection, Darwin wrote. More here. Ramsey Baroud in AlterNet: Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans. US Senate Bill S.720 should have been a wake-up call. The bill, drafted by the Israel lobby group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as part of its 2017 Lobbying Agenda, is set to punish any individual or company that boycotts Israel for its violation of Palestinian human rights. The severe punishment could reach a million dollars in fines, and up to 20 years in jail. Although political boycott has been sanctioned by the US Supreme Court, the Congress wants to make a boycott of Israel the exception, even if it means the subversion of US democracy. Still, protests are largely muted. The mainstream US media is yet to take US lawmakers to task, as hundreds of those elected representatives have already endorsed the unacceptable initiative. Criticizing Israel is still a taboo in the US, where the Congress is beholden to lobby pressures and kickbacks, and where the medias script on the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine is even less critical than Israels own media. However, the infiltration of the US government is not new. It is only becoming more emboldened, due to the absence of enough critical voices that are capable of creating a semblance of balance or a serious debate on the issue. For years, ordinary US citizens have been far-removed from the entire discussion on Israel and Palestine. The subject felt alien, marred by Hollywood propaganda, religious misconception and the lack of any understanding of history. But in recent years, Israel has become an integral part of American life, even if most people do not spot the Israeli influence. In the aftermath of 9/11, Israel seized on its decades-long experience as an occupying force to brand itself as a world leader in counter-terrorism, reported Alice Speri in the Intercept. The successful branding has earned Israeli security firms billions of dollars. The massive payouts are the result of the exploitation of American fear of terrorism, while presenting Israel as a successful model of fighting terror. On November 2, 1915, San Francisco threw open its gates to a glorious world's fair. A reborn fog city hit the spotlight when the Panama-Pacific Exposition celebrated San Francisco Day. At around 348,472 attendees, the occasion brought in 70% of the city's population. As one of the largest events in SF history, the exposition was organized to commemorate the construction of the Panama Canal, as well as the city bouncing back after the 1906 earthquake. Attend this fantastical affair through vintage photos, drawings, and memorabilia. When you just want some good, old-fashioned pastries. With countless bakeries vying to produce the next trendy croissant-hybrid in San Francisco, sometimes it seems impossible to find your traditional pastry shop. But they do existyou just need to know where to look. Here are three delicious bakeries that have seen the city through its countless changes. La Victoria: 51 Years and Counting Gabriel Maldonado first opened La Victoria Bakery when the Mission was still a predominantly Italian and Irish neighborhood, choosing the location due to the proximity to St. Peters Church. Years later, La Victoria is still known for its delectable variety of pan dulce featured in its windows. San Franciscan native Warden Lawlor, who lives only a few blocks away, first discovered La Victoria upon smelling the baked goods when walking past the bakery. Having lived in the Mission for over twenty years, he has become a regular customer and loves the bakery's fresh-baked sourdough wheat. "I believe it to be one of the best sourdoughs in the city," he said. "If you're lucky enough to get it while it's fresh and warm, even better!" In 1992, Maldonado's son Jaime took over and La Victoria shifted to becoming more than just a simple Mexican bakery. While their most popular offerings are still their traditional Mexican sweets like conchas (shell-shaped sweet buns) and polvoran rosa (pink sugar cookies), Lawlor also loves their custard-filled beignets. Jaime has also transformed the shop into an innovative gathering space that hosts culinary events. Lawlor's favorite is La Victoria's baking class, especially when the students place their finished products out for anyone to sample for free. "On more than one occasion, I've brought home a fresh loaf of bread that anyone could swear was made by a professional," he said. Located at the heart of the Mission in the 24th Street corridor, Lawlor attests that La Victoria is "truly a Mission district gemit should not be missed." // 7:00am-7:30pm, 2937 24th St. (Mission), lavictoriabakery.com Eastern: 93 Years and Counting Having opened its doors in 1924, Eastern holds the title as the oldest bakery in Chinatown. "A lot of things have been changing [in San Francisco], but we are one of the few bakeries that are still around," Orlando Kuan, owner of Eastern, said. "We have customers who come in and say, 'Without you, it's not San Francisco anymore. Thank God you're still here!'" Mike C., born and raised San Franciscan native since the '60s, grew up with Eastern as his neighborhood bakery. "I grew up buying pastries like palmiers, lemon tarts, apple turnovers, and mooncakes during Moon Festival season," he said. Although the ownership of Eastern has changedKuan took over Eastern in 1985 from its original founders, the Lee familythe bakery is still a favorite amongst loyal customers. Kuan has always committed to maintaining the authenticity of the bakery's traditional recipes, especially the beloved coffee crunch cake: a sweet sponge cake lathered with mocha cream and toffee crumbles. According to Kuan, multiple customers come back to buy the slice of coffee crunch cake they had as children. Eastern is also known for their freshly-baked lotus mooncakes. "There was a time we didn't have any contact with China, especially with WWII. Because of that, we have to bake [our mooncakes] here," Kuan said. He explains that this is what keeps customers coming backmaking everything locally eliminates the need for preservatives and makes them taste better. They are so good, in fact, that even former president Bill Clinton himself couldn't resist dropping by to try one of Eastern's lotus mooncakes when he was in town in 1996. // 9:30am-8:30pm, 720 Grant Ave. (Chinatown), easternbakery.com Schubert's: 106 Years and Counting Tina Hsu, a Bay Area native, first stumbled upon Schubert's upon exploring Clement St. in college. Seeing the bakery's selection of her favoritefruit mousse cakesshe couldn't resist but walk in. What Hsu would discover, was that not only were the "cakes yummy, worth the price, and eye-catching," but the "the quality and taste of their cakes have remained consistent over the years." Hsu is just one of Schubert's many fans; the bakery has remained a local favorite since it first opened its doors in 1911. "A lot of people come back and ask for the same cake for their birthdays every yearthey get upset if we don't deliver," said Ralph Wenzel, owner of Schubert's. Alongside his brother Luz, the Wenzels are the fourth owners of the bakery. Hailing from Eastern Germany, the duo are fourth-generation bakers who had migrated to the States; fitting since Schubert's original founder, Oswald R. Schubert, was also a German immigrant. Since then, the Wenzels have produced the same pastries that first made the local shop popular. The Swedish princess cake, filled with raspberry and kirsch custard and topped with their signature marzipan icing, is certainly a favorite. Another is the opera cake, a rich hazelnut sponge cake filled with chocolate truffle and mocha-praline filling, topped with toasted almonds. The fact that Schubert's has continued to flourish in Richmond is certainly a testament to the bakery's high quality. Hsu, who lived near Clement St. ten years ago, notes the presence of trendier restaurants replacing mom-and-pop shops whenever she visits Schubert's. "I'm glad that my favorite shops are still holding down, but I really hope [the area] doesn't lose its original charm," she said. Whatever happens, Clement Street certainly won't be losing Schubert's anytime soon. As Wenzel is preparing for retirement, he is looking to pass down the bakery just as the previous owners once did. He said, "I hope [Schubert's] is going to be around for another 100 years." // 7am-6:30pm, 521 Clement St. (Inner Richmond), schuberts-bakery.com Impress your guests with an epic Thanksgiving meal bon vivant, without stepping foot in the kitchen. There are those select few cuisiniers who take pride in laboriously creating an extravagant meal from scratch, spending hours on end in the kitchen the entire week before Thanksgiving, and then there are the rest of us. For the latter, here's a little secret: there are a barrage of gourmet markets, six in fact, that will make your Thanksgiving effortless, and just as impressive. Just as you can, with the flurry of your fingers, order most things with an app, so can you make an entire turkey dinner appear; though you will need to order in advance. The delicious desserts with Bi-Rite Market's Thanksgiving meal Courtesy of Bi-Rite Market/Facebook Bi-Rite Market: Friendsgiving in a Box If you know anything about Bi-Rite, you know they take high-quality prepared foods very seriously. It should come as no surprise that their Thanksgiving feastFriendsgiving in a Boxoffers delightful versions of the classics chock full of organic ingredients. Friendsgiving can be ordered to fit tables of between four and 14 people ($150-$375) with turkey options that range from choice cuts to a large, fully cooked bird. If you plan to keep your Thanksgiving meat-free, Bi-Rite also offers a vegetarian Friendsgiving with stuffed squash as the star ($150 for 4-6 people). Most dishes, including holiday pies and pumpkin cheesecake ice cream, can also be ordered a la carte. They'll even provide you with a lovely holiday bouquet to decorate the table. Pre-orders are available now for in-store pick up beginning on November 17th. // 3639 18th St (Mission) and 550 Divisadero St (NoPa), shop.birite.com Gus's baked Beelers ham holiday feast Courtesy of Gus's Community Market Gus's Community Market: Choose Your Feasting Style At Gus's Community Market, it's up to you how much work you want to put in. Gus's offers three separate holiday feasts ($149.99-199.99) with your choice of a whole Diestel Ranch roasted turkey, turkey hindquarters only or baked Beelers ham, and 3-4 pounds of sides including roasted garlic mashed potatoes, candied yams and green bean almondine. Feasts feed between eight and 12 people. If you'd like to do some cooking but want to be able to join your guests when they arrive, you can also order Gus's main courses including turkey, New York strip loin and roasted leg of lamb, fixin's, and/or dessert a la carte. Add some Varda Vineyards red wine and a cheese platter and you've got yourself a holiday! All orders require 48 hours advance notice and can be picked up or delivered to your home for a $40 fee (additional charges apply for deliveries outside of San Francisco). Order online or via phone at 415-431-9300. // 2111 Harrison St. (Mission), gussmarket.com Take home Salumeria's snacks to accompany your pre-brined turkey dinner Courtesy of Salumeria/Yelp Salumeria: Dinner For the Connoisseur Though this artisan deli and larder hasn't yet made their traditional Thanksgiving dinner available for pre-order, they will, and when they do, you'll be ready. Everything but the pre-brined turkey in Salumeria's meal for 4-6 people is ready to serve, including buttermilk whipped potatoes, pretzel bread pudding, roasted carrots, turkey giblet gravy, and cranberry and quince chutney. For dessert, take home one of a selection of pies from Black Jet Bakery. The cut-off for pre-order will be sometime mid-month so keep an eye out for their Thanksgiving dinner online. All orders must be picked up on Thanksgiving day. // 3000 20th St (Mission), salumeriasf.com (Jake Ahles Photography) Belcampo Restaurant and Butcher Shop: Belcampo Luxegiving Belcampo Restaurant and Butcher Shop is serving up a glamorous prix fixe dinner for pick-up or delivery. With the Belcampo Luxegiving dinner, you and 13 guests will feast on roasted organic turkey, tart apple and butternut squash soup with roasted squash seeds, white truffle mashed potatoes, aged white cheddar mac and cheese with Belcampo ladrons and gruyere crust, apple caramel pie, a bottle of Taittinger Brut La Francaise champagne and more ($899). Orders must be booked by November 13 and are available for pick-up at Belcampo Larkspur or for delivery via DoorDash in select zip codes. If the Belcampo Luxegiving is a little more than you need, you can also order a raw organic turkey, smoked turkey or a holiday charcuterie platter from any of their Bay Area locations. // 1998 Polk St (Russian Hill), belcampo.com Prepared foods at Delessio Market and Falletti Foods Courtesy of Falletti Foods/Yelp Falletti Foods and Delessio Market and Bakery: Two-in-One Door Deal Family owned and operated since 1956, Falletti Foods is still a neighborhood go-to. But walk through their doors and you'll find not only the market's high-quality, responsibly raised whole ingredients but an open entrance to their neighbor Delessio Market and Bakery where prepared foods reign. Together, this two-for-one shop is the perfect spot for Thanksgiving preparations. While Falletti's uncooked turkeys may sell out and should be ordered in advance (in store or via phone at 415-626-4400), Delessio's has you covered for last minute sides, salads, pastries and other baked goods. // 308 Broderick St (NoPa), fallettifoods.com Hand cooked turkey dinners come with all the fixin's from Golden Gate Meat Company in the Ferry Building Courtesy of Golden Gate Meat Company/Yelp Golden Gate Meat Company: Organic Meats with the Fixin's Every Thanksgiving, Golden Gate Meat Company in the Ferry Building offers organic and natural Diestel heirloom turkeys and Bill Niman heritage turkeys for your holiday table. If you're thinking of trying something a little less traditional this year, they've also got tasty options like prime rib and turducken. Though you'll have to do the roasting or baking of the meat yourself, this butcher makes it worth your while by sending you off with their legendary house-made gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce. What you can't get at Golden Gate Meat Company you can grab from the Ferry Building's other gourmet merchants including Acme Bread Company, Cowgirl Creamery and Miette Patisserie. Turkeys sell out so order in advance via phone at (415) 983-7800. // Ferry Plaza Marketplace, Store #13 (Embarcadero), goldengatemeatcompany.com Israel Cards and Payments Industry WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Cards and Payments Industry in Israel Emerging Trends and Opportunities SUMMARY WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Cards and Payments Industry in Israel Emerging Trends and Opportunities. The Cards and Payments Industry in Israel Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020, report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Israeli cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including credit transfers, direct debit, check payments and payment cards during the review period (2012-2016). The report also analyzes various payment card markets 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 (2017-2020). It also offers information on the countrys competitive landscape, including the 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 details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure. The report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Israeli cards and payments industry, including Current and forecast values for each market in the Israeli cards and payments industry, including debit, credit and charge cards. Detailed insights into payment instruments including credit transfers, direct debit, checks and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the countrys key alternative payment instruments. E-commerce market analysis. Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Israeli 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 in Israels cards and payments industry. GET SAMPLE REPORT @ https://www.wiseguyreports.com/sample-request/1271559-the-cards-and-payments-industry-in-israel-emerging-trends-and-opportunities-to-2020 Key Highlights The emergence of digital only banks is likely to accelerate a shift towards electronic payments in Israel. The latest is the launch of mobile-only bank Pepper, by Bank Leumi, in February 2017 which offers savings and lending products. In January 2015, Bank Leumi launched a service enabling customers from all banks to open accounts via the internet or mobile apps, without visiting a bank branch. To increase competition in the Israeli merchant acquiring business, in April 2017 the central bank issued an acquirer license to Israel-based credit card processing company Tranzila Ltd. The central bank took numerous actions to remove barriers to entry in the merchant acquiring business. These include making the licensing process shorter and reducing the minimum capital requirement; a starting capital of US$259,620.9 (ILS1 million) is required for a new acquirer. To increase acceptance of debit cards among retailers in Israel, the central bank reduced the interchange fee from 0.7% to 0.3%. The new rate was implemented effective from April 1, 2016, and will be effective for one year. Other measures taken by the central bank include the removal of various charges associated with debit card transactions, and compulsory issuance of debit cards as a standalone product to both new and existing current accounts, free of charge. Scope This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Israeli cards and payments industry. It provides current values for the Israeli cards and payments industry for 2016, and forecast figures to 2020. It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting the Israeli cards and payments industry. It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry. It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions. Key points to buy Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Israeli cards and payments industry and each market within it. Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Israeli cards and payments industry. Assess the competitive dynamics in the Israeli cards and payments industry. Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Israel. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Israeli cards and payments industry Table of Contents 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 1.1. Market overview 2 1.2. Key facts 3 1.3. Top five industry events 4 2. PAYMENT INSTRUMENTS 10 2.1. Current payment environment 10 3. E-COMMERCE AND ALTERNATIVE PAYMENTS 12 3.1. E-Commerce market analysis 12 3.2. Alternative payment solutions 13 3.2.1. PayPal 13 3.2.2. MasterPass 13 3.2.3. Cal4U Wallet 13 3.2.4. Colu 13 3.2.5. Pelephone Digital Wallet 13 ..CONTINUED About Us Wise 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. For accessing accurate and deep understanding and to gain latest insights and key developments in the area of your interest, we also have a list of conferences in which you will be interested in, for more information, cordially check https://www.wiseguyreports.com/conferences For updating knowledge or for thoroughly understanding various terminologies, we also have vast list of seminars for your reference, for more information cordially check https://www.wiseguyreports.com/seminars Media Contact Company Name: Wiseguyreports.com Contact Person: Norah Trent Email: sales@wiseguyreports.com Phone: +1 646 845 9349, +44 208 133 9349 City: Pune State: Maharashtra Country: India Website: www.wiseguyreports.com TraderQ.com.au Transacting via ISXPay Australia Melbourne, Nov 2, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Australian Securities and Frankfurt Stock Exchange cross listed iSignthis Ltd ( ASX:ISX ) ( TA8:FRA ), the global leader in RegTech for identity verification and transactional banking/payments, is pleased to announce that it has completed integration of its services to Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) regulated TraderQ (http://www.traderq.com.au ) Highlights: - Australian CFD Trader, TraderQ, completes integration and is now transacting "live" with ISXPay(R) via Paydentity(TM) platform. - ISXPay(R) providing identity verification, payment processing, settlement and full payment facilitation services - TraderQ will contribute revenue in the current quarter iSignthis offers payment facilitation services in Australia (ISXPay(R)), via its integration with the National Australia Bank ( ASX:NAB ). The agreement with the NAB allows ISXPay(R) to offer full card acquiring payment facilitation services including processing, clearing and funds settlement to merchants, including TraderQ, of Visa and Mastercard transactions, in addition to BPAY payout facility to Australian cards. ISXPay(R) incorporates the Company's Paydentity(TM) technology delivered over our enhanced payments platform, which provides identity verification (IDV) services in addition to our patented payment instrument verification (PIV) and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). TraderQ is now processing live transactions via the ISXPay(R) service, and will contribute revenue in the current quarter. Services are progressively going live from today, commencing with payment facilitation. Paydentity(TM) services to be scaled in shortly. TraderQ's own forecast revenue and corresponding calculated ISXPay revenue contribution has been included on an aggregated basis with other merchants per the announcement dated 26/10/2017 November 2017. The Company has now contracted merchant customers for ISXPay(R) and Paydentity(TM) services across multiple sectors, including the trading/brokers, gaming, digital, fintech and retail sectors. The Company's agreement with the NAB will be leveraged to provide card acquiring services for further Australian and New Zealand online merchants. The A/NZ acquiring services complement the Company's European Monetary Financial Institution e-Money license (SWIFT BIC : ISEMCY21), its European partnership with Worldline ( EPA:WLN ) and the Company's own Principal Memberships of Visa Inc ( NYSE:V ), Mastercard Worldwide ( NYSE:MA ) and JCB International. Principal membership of card schemes allows the Company to independently offer both acquiring (i.e. fund processing & settlement) together with issuing of cards, including virtual, credit, debit & prepaid cards. iSignthis continues to build strong relationships with AML/CFT regulated merchants, including the also recently announced www.tradefinancial.com.au, enabling our merchants to meet the increasingly complex compliance requirements of AML regulations in Australia, the USA and Europe via its Paydentity(TM) and ISXPay(R) services. About iSignthis Ltd iSignthis Ltd (ASX:ISX) (FRA:TA8) is a hybrid monetary financial institution and also a RegTech leader in remote identity verification, payment authentication with deposit taking, transactional banking and payment processing capability. iSignthis provides an end-to-end on-boarding service for merchants, with a unified payment, electronic money and identity service via our Paydentity(TM) and ISXPay(R) solutions. By converging payments and identity, iSignthis delivers regulatory compliance to an enhanced customer due diligence standard, offering global reach to any of the world's 4.2Bn 'bank verified' card or account holders, that can be remotely on-boarded to meet the Customer Due Diligence requirements of AML regulated merchants in as little as 3 to 5 minutes. Paydentity(TM) has now onboarded and verified more than 1.5m persons to an AML KYC standard. iSignthis Paydentity(TM) service is the trusted back office solution for regulated entities, allowing merchants to stay ahead of the regulatory curve, and focus on growing their core business. iSignthis' subsidiary, iSignthis eMoney Ltd, trades as ISXPay(R), and is an EEA authorised eMoney Monetary Financial Institution, offering card acquiring in the EEA, and Australia. ISXPay(R) is a principal member of Mastercard Inc, Diners, Discover, (China) Union Pay International and JCB International, an American Express aggregator, and provides merchants with access to payments via alternative methods including SEPA, Poli Payments, Sofort, PRZ24 and others. Probanx Solutions Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of iSignthis Ltd, provides API based access to CORE Banking solutions, SEPA Core, SEPA Instant and SEPA business scheme, for neobanks, banks, credit unions and emoney institutions, and provides a bridge to the Eurosystem's Central Bank of Lithuania's CENTROLink service. Loch Lilly Drilling Results Sydney, Nov 2, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Argent Minerals Limited ( ASX:ARD ) (Argent, or the Company) is pleased to report the results of the Loch Lilly project maiden drilling programme. Highlights: - Both diamond holes intersected a series of porphyritic intrusives and alteration, with assays yielding positive copper-gold porphyry geochemical suite results, and Netley yielding elevated copper. - $141,966 rebate received for 75% of the direct per-metre drilling costs from the NSW Government - as awarded to the Loch Lilly project following the merit-based assessment by an independent panel of experts. - Argent to earn 51% interest immediately on satisfaction of its reporting obligations under the NSW Government Cooperative Drilling grant. - Right to earn up to 90% interest in the 1,447 km2 Loch Lilly project, which hosts mineralisation potential analogous to the Mount Read Volcanics of Western Tasmania. - Samples dispatched for petrographic study, whole-rock characterisation studies and pyrite laser-ablation studies. DRILLING RESULTS About the Netley target and the design of hole ALN001 Netley is one of four target areas defined in the Loch Lilly - Kars Belt JV area by the collaborative effort between Anglo American Exploration (Australia) Pty Ltd (AngloAmerican) and Dr. Anthony Crawford during 2014/15 before AngloAmerican exited the project as part of a global restructuring initiative. Argent designed the diamond hole ALN001 designed to test the coincident geophysical anomalies illustrated in Figure 1 and 2 (see link below). The Netley target was defined through 3D modelling performed by AngloAmerican on a dataset comprising a 400 station ground gravity survey, a magnetic survey, and historical drill core. Inversion modelling was conducted on available geophysical data to improve the resolution and depth expression of the magnetic response. The modelling revealed near-coincident magnetic high and gravity low anomalies reminiscent of the scale and detail of the Northparkes mineralised finger porphyries rising from a basal monzodiorite pluton, and that historic drilling failed to intersect the magnetic source body. At a 70deg dip toward the northwest (315deg azimuth), drillhole ALN001 was designed to intersect the discrete magnetic high feature illustrated in Figures 1a and 2a (see link below). This hole design also complements the test of the magnetics feature performed by drilling across the end of the gravity high ridge in the gravity low area (see Figure 2b in link below). About the Netley hole ALN001 drilling results Diamond hole ALN001 was drilled to 483.6 metres, intersecting a series of porphyritic intrusives (monzonites and diorites), strong propylitic to skarnoid alteration with lesser zones of potassic alteration (for further explanation refer to Figure 9 in Appendix 2-see link below), abundant pyrite and sparse, localised chalcopyrite (copper). More than 50% of the ALN001 drillcore was submitted for assay based on visual observations. The diorite-gabbro dykes in the lower portion of the hole yielded assay ranges typically up to 0.01 g/t Au, 0.11% Cu, 92 ppm Zn, 136 ppm Pb, 174 ppm As, and 65 ppm Mo. Of particular interest are the broad consistent low-level assays of the following interval: - 73.3 m @ 0.03% Cu from 355.7 m incl. 0.6 m @ 0.11% Cu from 393.8 m. The target magnetic and gravity anomalies illustrated in Figures 1 and 2 (see link below) cannot be fully explained by the intersected geology and magnetic susceptibility readings observed in the drill hole. The anomalous copper, together with elevated zinc to 282 ppm and molybdenum to 297 ppm could suggest that the hole intersected an outer halo of a mineralised porphyry copper system. Further investigation is warranted in order to determine the source of the gravity and magnetic anomalies and the source of the increased base metal concentrations. For further details refer to Appendix 2 (see link below). About the Eaglehawk target and the hole ALE001 design Figures 4a, b and c (see link below) illustrate the planned collar positioning and direction of drillhole ALE001 in relation to the three coincident geophysical anomalies identified within the same geographical area (the area is also indicated by the violet 'Target detail' rectangle at the Eaglehawk location in Figure 6-see link below). At a dip of 70deg in the 290deg azimuth direction, diamond hole ALE001 was designed primarily to test the most compelling magnetic induced polarisation (MIP) chargeability high anomaly (see Figure 4a in link below) that is also coincident with both a magnetic high ridge (see Figure 4b in link below) and a residual gravity high (see Figure 4c in link below). Hole ALE001 was designed to test the interpretation of the denser, more magnetic features of known basalt and andesite units and a possible interaction with a fertile porphyry intrusion that would be responsible for skarn mineralisation intersected by historical drillhole NBH004. About the Eaglehawk hole ALE001 results Designed for 500 metres, diamond hole ALE001 was drilled to 550.5 metres. The hole intersected a series of porphyritic intrusives, ranging from quartz monzonite, granodiorite and diorite in the upper section of the drillcore, to quartz monzonite, diorite and syenite in the deeper section of the drillcore. Each of the porphyritic intrusives exhibits weak domainal propylitic alteration, and the quartz diorite intrusive from 423.4 to 536.6 metres exhibits contact skarn alteration pervading up to 15 metres into the host turbidite units. The monzonite-diorite intrusives yielded assay ranges typically up to 0.04 g/t Au, 195 ppm Cu, 158 ppm Zn, 10 ppm Pb, 6 ppm As, and 3 ppm Mo. The granodiorite-syenite dykes typically yielded assay ranges up to 0.01 g/t Au, 24 ppm Cu, 92 ppm Zn, 15 ppm Pb, 0.4 ppm As, and 2 ppm Mo. The skarn alteration in the contact zone between the diorite and siliciclastic turbidites yielded assay ranges up to 0.04 g/t Au, 341 ppm Cu, 84 ppm Zn, 11 ppm Pb, 8 ppm As and 2 ppm Mo. Alteration in the area is generally weak and localised. The skarnoid alteration seen at the upper contact of a porphyritic diorite intrusive from 414.4 metres is strong in intensity and may be a localised feature to the intrusive. Whilst the residual gravity high anomaly in the area may be explained by the concentration of volcanic intrusives, pyrite levels were insufficient to adequately explain the MIP chargeability anomaly, to generate the conductivity reading of the magnitude observed. The drillcore petrophysical response was also insufficient to explain the magnetic high anomaly in the area. Elevated zinc to 158 ppm could potentially indicate a distal position to mineralisation. Given the elevated copper and gold in the context of the observed intrusives and alteration, further investigation is required to adequately test the MIP chargeability and magnetic high features. For further details please refer to Appendix 2 (see link below). 75% CASH REBATE RECEIVED FOR THE DIRECT DRILLING COSTS On 1 November 2017 the Company received bank advice that $141,966 has been transferred to Argent's account by the NSW Government Department of Environment and Planning. The payment is settlement of the Company's claim for 75% of the direct per-metre drilling costs for the Loch Lilly project under the NSW Cooperative Drilling funding deed. The Loch Lilly project drilling grant was awarded on the basis of merit in a highly competitive environment where applications were assessed by an independent expert panel for demonstrated prospectivity, sound financial planning and a proven technical base. As a testament to the quality of Argent's asset portfolio and its financial management, each of Argent's top three projects at Kempfield, West Wyalong and Loch Lilly have been awarded NSW Government Cooperative Drilling grants on the same basis and process. ARGENT 51% INTEREST IN 1,447 KM2 MOUNT READ VOLCANICS EQUIVALENT BELT Under the Loch Lilly Joint Venture Agreement, Argent will have earned a 51% interest in the project on satisfaction of its reporting obligations under the NSW Cooperative Drilling funding deed. At that point, which will be announced to the ASX, Argent will own a controlling interest in the 1,447 km2 tenement area of the Loch Lilly - Kars Belt for minimal initial outlay, and the continuing right to earn up to a 90% interest through further exploration. The Loch Lilly - Kars Belt, located in western NSW approximately 80 kilometres south of Broken Hill, hosts a polymetallic volcanic-hosted massive sulphide VHMS, copper-gold porphyry and nickel sulphide mineralisation potential analogous to the Mount Read Volcanics of Western Tasmania. NEXT STEPS Samples have been collected and dispatched for qualitative studies to be completed, for maximum extraction of information from the collected drillcore samples. Petrographic samples were obtained for key lithologies and alteration types in order to quantify the various compositions present in drillcore. Samples were collected and dispatched for complete characterisation assay and studies to be employed in ongoing pathfinder element suite work and compositional analysis for characterisation of the volcanic suites. Pyrite Laser Ablation ICP-MS work has been initiated on selected Netley samples to identify the pyrite growth phases at Netley and the associated element suites associated with each phase of growth. The combination of all of these studies will allow Argent to readily identify further potential for the Loch Lilly Project and guide the exploration strategy. To view tables and figures, please visit: http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/96639UG0 About Argent Minerals Limited Argent Minerals Limited ( ASX:ARD) is an Australian publicly listed company with a 100% interest in a silver/gold project at Kempfield NSW. Work is underway on the preparation of an EIS and a feasibility study for the first stage of the project which will involve heap leaching some 8.8 million tonnes of mainly oxide and transitional material to produce over 9.5 million ounces of silver and 15,000 ounces of gold over a 5 year mine life. Argent is also earning up to a 70% interest in two other NSW projects - gold at West Wyalong and base metals at Sunny Corner. The opposition in Eritrea has accused the regime of President Isaias Afwerki of the killing of at least 28 people in Tuesday demonstrations in capital Asmara. The Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization on its facebook account noted that 28 martyrs died while 100 were wounded in the rare demonstrations ever witnessed in the country known as Africas North Korea. The figures have been unconfirmed even though the US embassy issued warnings indicating gunfire and advised people to say way from Akhria neighborhood of the capital, the epicenter of the protests. Demonstrations erupted Tuesday after a group of students rallied to oppose government decision to take control of Al Diaa School; a private Islamic School founded by the late Ustaz Mohammed Beshir Ahmed in 1967. Government has detained Hajji Musa, an honorary President of the school sparking anger of the school students. Other protestors joined the students given momentum to the rally which spread across the streets of central Asmara. Security forces according to reports used brutal force to extinguish the protests. The government confirmed the capital was rocked by protests but denied that there were causalities. Small demonstration by one school in Asmara dispersed without [casualties] hardly breaking news, Yemane G Meskel, minister of information tweeted. The eastern African country locked between Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti is described as one of the worlds undemocratic countries where freedom of party, speech and human rights are confiscated by an authoritarian regime in place since 1993, since independence after decades and series of war with Ethiopia. A UN report in June detailed arbitrary arrests and incommunicado detention of human rights activists, forced national service system in form of enslavement. MVIRDC World Trade Centre in association with All India Association of Industries organised an interactive meeting with a high-level Brazilian business delegation representing Agro & Agro Processing Food Technology Industry. The objective of the meeting was to explore possibilities of increasing trade between both nations in food and agro products. We should look at ways to improve Brazil-India strategic partnership and jointly explore real possibilities to increase the existing trade basket between our countries by holding periodic discussions. There still exist big possibilities of supplying more agro products to India. So let us work together in creating a conducive environment toward increasing bilateral trade between our countries, said Mr. Marcelo Eduardo Luders, President, IBRAFE (Brazilian Institute of Beans and Pulses). Ms. Rosimar Da Silva Suzano, Consul General of Brazil in Mumbai said, India has a growing urban population and there is a growing need for food. Brazil can help ensure Indias food security in a sustainable manner through the exchange of latest food processing and agriculture technology. Since Brazil and India are signatories to the strategic partnership, we must share our expertise; improve quality standards and technological know-how. Earlier in his welcome address, Mr. Vijay Kalantri, President, All India Association of Industries said, Brazil can help India in acquiring the latest agri technology in order to increase its agro production. India can learn a lot from Brazil so that it could foster fruitful collaborations with the private sector in agriculture, which is currently only with the public sector. Forty per cent of the agriculture produce perishes even before it reaches the markets, Brazil can share its expertise in averting such post-harvest waste. Mr. Kalantri added that India-Brazil bilateral trade stands at $6.5 billion and trade is in Brazils favour which can be improved through cooperation in sectors such as IT, crude oil, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and auto components. Brazil can take advantage of the opportunities of Indias ambitious programmes such as Make in India, Digital India, Startup India etc. Actor Kamal Haasan has created a furore by alleging that terror has spread in right wing too. In the Tamil weekly, Ananda Vikatan, Haasan has mentioned that earlier Hindu right only used to involve in debates with other religious group. He added that once this approach started failing they have resorted to muscle power. According to him, extremism has spread among Hindus. Hindus are losing faith in satyameva jayate and instead subscribing to might is right, he further said. BJP has criticised Kamals remark and sought an apology from him. BJP spokesperson said that peace is prevailing in the country as Hindus are in majority. Of late Kamal Haasan has been grabbing headlines for his controversial comments. Haasans statements have come at a time when his fans and political parties are keenly awaiting an announcement to be made by him on November 7 which is his birthday. Earlier Kamal had stated that his ideologies are left and his colour is black. He had recently extended support to the crew of Tamil film Mersal, starring Vijay. BJP had raised objections to references being made in the film about Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Digital India. The party had demanded deletion of the scenes saying incorrect references had been made about the tax regime. Chetan Rajhans, spokesperson of Sanatan Sanstha said, If Kamal Haasan feels that Hindu terror is increasing then he must appeal to the state government and they will form a committee to investigate this matter. He should refrain from making controversial statements. Hinduism believes in equality and is tolerant towards other religions. Noorjehan Safia Niaz, founder Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan said, There are several groups that are working for promoting terrorism in the country. They are spreading terror in the name of religion. This issue is not concerned about religion and it is about an ideology. Some people are also spreading terror in the name of Christianity and the common people have to suffer due to this. The common man is already facing huge hardships. There should not be politics in the name of terrorism as nobody will benefit out of it. I dont know why Kamal Haasan has issued this statement as it his view. Eight members of the Turkish security forces were killed in clashes with Kurdish militants on Thursday in Turkeys restive southeast, the army said. Six soldiers and two military security guards died while two soldiers were wounded one heavily after fighting broke out in the Semdinli district of Hakkari province that borders Iraq, the armed forces said in a statement. The military reported it had killed five members of the separatist terror organisation, Turkeys official term for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). It was not possible to independently verify the toll. The armed forces said the militants were trying to benefit from the heavy fog and bad weather conditions to launch an attack. The military operations in the region continue, the army said. The PKK is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Since the PKK launched its insurgency in Turkey in 1984, over 40,000 people have been killed. Turkish military operations against the PKK intensified in the southeast after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015. Kamal Haasan is an actor, who has recently announced his wish to get in politics, sparked a controversy stating that the right-wing groups resort to violence. In his weekly column, Haasan wrote, In the past, Hindu, right-wing groups would not indulge in violence. They would hold a dialogue with opponents. But now they resort to violence. In reply to those claiming that Hindus cannot be found guilty in terror-related cases, right wing cannot challenge talk of Hindu terrorists because terror has spread into their camp as well. He also added that Hindus are losing faith in Satyameva Jayate and instead subscribing to might is right. Recently, he had asked fans to be ready for a big announcement on his birthday on November 7. However, the actor later clarified that he will not be launching his party on that day. He had met Arvind Kejriwal at his home in Chennai claiming that he had taken the Delhi Chief Ministers advice on crowd funding and recruiting young, fresh faces for his political party. He had met many political leaders of different party, he had very categorically cleared that his colour of choice is not saffron a tilted reference to the BJP and RSS. Anyways, Indian politicians have historically played this terrorism card well. These days Indian Muslims are at radar, they are called as ISI and its agents in India. Muslims pay the price for Indian qualms and Hindu chauvinism. This is what happened following the bomb explosion in Hyderabad on February 21, 2013, that killed 16 people. Scores of people were arrested; many of them are the same Muslim youth those were arrested after the Mecca Masjid blast in the city on May 18, 2007. After being tortured for months, they were all set free for complete lack of evidence. This is what happened in many such cases. I am not saying Muslims cannot be terrorists. The fact is that, all Muslims are not terrorists but many terrorists those who got caught or taken responsibilities for terror act are Muslims. Terrorists across the globe are Islamic terrorists. But that should not be the reason for denial that no other religion can get in terror act. Look at Burma, the most non-violent community following Buddhism has resorted to violence. The Rohingyas have been denied Burmese citizenship since the enactment of a 1982 citizenship law. The law created three categories of citizenship: citizenship, associate citizenship, and naturalised citizenship. In the recent past, they were butchered in Burma. Whenever things go extreme the violence takes birth, may it be anything or anyone. Terrorist may not have religion but terrorism has it. Most of the terror acts are religious attacks. India has series of religious extremism; Abhinav Bharat, Bajrang Dal, GFP Ramdir Sena, a militant Hindu nationalist group in Nepal. Nathuram Godse is an advocate of Hindu nationalism who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. 2008 attacks on Christians in southern Karnataka is the wave of attacks directed against Christian churches and prayer halls in Mangalore and the surrounding area of southern Karnataka by Sri Ram Sena. In January 2013, Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde accused Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party for setting up camps to train Hindu Terrorism. A chargesheet filed on 2006 Malegaon bombings in 2013 put the blame on the Hindu extremist group Abhinav Bharat. But later on everyone of these accused got acquitted due to lack of evidences. These are the groups born out of reaction to action. If every day you carry out bomb blast, kill people, one has to react. They keep nation ahead of any God, but in Islam is Allah above all? Since September 11, 2001, the worlds attention has properly been focused on the violence of Islamic extremism, but there are also major violent trends in Hindu extremism that have largely been ignored in the United States because those attacks are limited to India and the community here, they are not global maniac. Rather majorly Hindu is known across the globe for non-violence and patience. One reason for our lack of attention here is that India is not a religiously illiberal state like Saudi Arabia or Iran, and in fact faces its own threats from Islamist militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, as well as Islamist terrorist attacks throughout the country, most notably the dramatic storming of the Indian parliament in 2001 and the deadly bombing in Bombay that killed 52 people in August 2003. India is a strong ally in the war on terrorism and continues to have strong democratic traditions and institutions. It has developed friendlier relations with America and Israel. The Indian government has also slackened the previously heavily regulated economy to produce one of the highest growth rates in the world, and the Bombay stock market rose 50 per cent in 2003. Yet despite these strengths, there is a much factional hatred in India and it is expressed in frequent, sometimes violence. In the past decade, some selective extremist Hindus have increased their attacks on Christians, until there are now several hundred per year. The brutal violence visited on Muslims in Gujarat in February 2002 also brought the dangers of Hindu extremism to world attention. Between one and two thousand Muslims were massacred after Muslims reportedly set fire to a train carrying Hindu nationalists, killing several dozens of people. Again these attacks were reactions to action by other communities. Till how long one can really tolerate the atrocities? One has to retaliate and answer back. Since India is the worlds largest democracy, good relations with India are important to the U.S. It is also a growing trading partner, a possible geopolitical counterweight to China, and a strong U.S. ally in the war on terrorism. But the growth of often-violent Hindu nationalism threatens Indias tolerant traditions and pluralistic democracy. If religious extremism continues to grow, it will, as we have learned elsewhere, drag Indias democracy, economy, and foreign policy down with it. (Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to discuss the issue of illegal hawkers in Mumbai. The meeting comes a day after hawkers staged a protest at Azad Maidan demanding framing of a hawkers policy. On Wednesday, MNS and Congress workers had clashed in Dadar over the issue of hawkers. MNS leader Bala Nandgaonkar said his party has asked the BJP-led government in Maharashtra to implement the court orders on hawkers. If the government implements the court orders, we (MNS) wont have to resort to anti-hawker agitation, Nandgaonkar said. Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam had organised a morcha in Dadar in support of hawkers, who have been targeted by the Raj Thackeray-led party. MNS workers had arrived at the Sanman Morcha site in Dadar West before it began, leading to a confrontation between the activists of the two parties. The MNS workers hurled potatoes at the Congress workers and police took some Congress and MNS workers into custody. The MNS had blamed Nirupam for the assault on its Malad division chief Shashank Malavade by hawkers on Saturday. The party alleged that Nirupam had asked the hawkers to retaliate. MNS activists had also gathered near Nirupams residence in Andheri on Wednesday. Cracking the whip on illegal hawkers in the city, the Bombay High Court yesterday restricted hawking to designated zones only while banning the activity on foot and rail overbridges and within 150 metres of railway stations. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here, fuelling speculations in the political circles. The Sena chief, accompanied by son Aaditya Thackeray, paid a visit to Banerjee in the afternoon at a south Mumbai hotel where she is staying. Both Sena and Banerjees Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads with the BJP and the Narendra Modi government on a host of issues, including demonetisation. Banerjee, who is in the city since Tuesday and expected to return to Kolkata on Friday, met top industrialists and bankers as part of a roadshow, ahead of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in Kolkata in January. The Shiv Sena had last year teamed up with the TMC in a bid to take on the BJP over the issue of demonetisation. Thackeray had told mediapersons in November last year that if there was nothing wrong in Prime Minister Modi meeting (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar, then there was nothing wrong if the Sena held talks with Banerjee on a crucial issue. Airmen and soldiers work together in a command post during an exercise to learn joint task force headquarters functions. Photo: SSgt. Matthew Alford/US Army It is a truism to say the Air Force will not go to war alone. In all realistic scenarios, USAF will battle alongside Army, Navy, and Marine Corps forces. In war zones and on deployments, a joint environment is the norm. Organizationally, however, the Air Force sometimes operates as if the purple world were a mysterious parallel universe. In the worst-case scenarios, airmen arent educated about or trained for their joint assignments, the service is unprepared to lead multiservice teams, USAF doesnt know what to do with its joint experience, and airpower winds up marginalized. The Air Force is moving to fix this. Gen. David L. Goldfein, Chief of Staff, has made strengthening joint leaders and teams one of his three primary focus areas. This includes rebuilding USAFs ability to lead joint task forces (JTFs). If you look around the globe today you can see upwards of 20 JTFs, more if you count the combined joint task forces, Goldfein noted at AFAs Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. USAF typically does not lead these task forces. The Army, which has built JTF leadership into its organization, does. This leaves the National Command Authority with limited options when a crisis erupts. Historically, JTFs stand up within days or weeks of a crisis with little fanfare or warning, Goldfein noted in a 2016 paper on joint leadership. While intended to exist only for the duration of the crisis, they often become enduring. When the Army is the entity certified to lead a US response, well, the Army is going to lead the task force. Often this makes sense, but what if an emergency requires an airpower-intensive response? The Army will lead that, too. The Army keeps elements of its 82nd Airborne Division prepared to lead JTFs and is regularly called upon for that purpose. Goldfein has tasked 9th Air Force at Shaw AFB, S.C., with rebuilding the services JTF capabilities. Maj. Gen. Scott J. Zobrist, 9th Air Force commander, is working to organize, train, equip, and certify forces. In a little over a year, 9th Air Force should have a team ready to command and control a JTF or joint operation, he said in an interview, and handle any mission that is given to us. This is another arrow in the quiver of the joint force, Zobrist said. Given the importance air operations have played in all of the operations over the last 20 years, its helpful for the US military leadership to have a variety of organizational specialties and backgrounds do command and control. _You can read this story in our print issue: The goal is for planners to say, Ninth Air Force: I know them, they participated in all these exercises, theyre really good at what they do, they bring this unique capability. Were going to pick them, Zobrist explained. Running parallel with the JTF effort are several personnel management needs. USAF needs airmen ready for joint work at every stage of their careers; personnel trained for these assignments; and to reward them with logical follow-on assignments and promotions. For example, the Air Force should educate airmen on joint language and processes beginning in basic training, continuing throughout their careers, said Maj. Gen. Brian M. Killough, director of strategic plans on the Air Staff and head of Goldfeins joint leaders task force. The Air Forces culture and organizational stovepipes can penalize airmen who serve in purple assignments. In the past, there have been airmen who have gone out into these joint assignments, and their core function has forgotten about them or they have been disadvantaged when they came back, Killough explained in an interview. USAF will begin tracking joint duty more closely and planning lead-in training and follow-on assignments more carefully. Some joint assignments will even be considered equivalent to command positions at promotion time. Goldfein considers that joint assignment to be such a high priority that he has dedicated one of his top three efforts [to making sure] we train, educate, develop, reward folks for those assignments, Killough explained. This is a growth field. USAF has successful processes in place to prepare general officers for joint leadership positions. Majors and tech sergeants up for a joint posting in Djibouti or South Korea need to know the Air Force will have them ready for the deployment and that such a move will be good for their careers. The Chief has pledged to push this issue for all four years he is in office, which is good because it takes time for a culture shift to sink in. The Air Force needs to stick with this and strengthen joint leaders for the long haul. Auburn University will host next year's SEC Academic Conference, focusing on cyber security. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey announced the conference, "Cyber Security: A Shared Responsibility," scheduled for April 8 to 10, 2018. The conference will focus on computer and communication technology, economic and physical systems controlled by technology, as well as policies and laws governing and protecting information. The SEC Academic Conference is supported by the SEC under its SECU banner. SECU supports and advances the collaborative academic work of the SEC's member institutions. Sankey called the conference "a great opportunity for us to help enrich collaboration among SEC students, faculty and administrators in a critical area of national importance," said Greg Sankey, SEC Commissioner. The SEC Academic Conference is in its second year of showcasing SEC faculty and student research. It features keynote speakers as well as presentations from individuals representing each of the SEC's 14 member universities. This year's conference, "The Future of Water," took place at Mississippi State. Auburn University President Steven Leath said the conference's topic is timely and important. "The nation is facing more and more data breaches that affect all facets of daily life," he said. "Strategic partnerships among universities and industry are vital in developing the technology and policies to protect private information." Leading the conference's organizing committee is retired U.S. Army Lt. General Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. He currently serves as the senior counsel for national security programs, cyber programs and military affairs at Auburn. More information about the conference can be found here. Capstone Bank is now part of SmartFinancial. The parent company of SmartBank announced its acquisition of Capstone Bancshares, Inc., parent company of Capstone Bank, is complete. This extends the company's markets into Tuscaloosa, Washington and Clarke counties and as far south as Fairhope. SmartBank intends to operate the legacy Capstone Bank branch offices as a division of SmartBank until the middle of the first quarter of 2018, when branches are expected to adopt the SmartBank brand. More information will be released to clients in January. As of Sept. 30, the combined company has total assets of more than $1.6 billion, $1.3 billion in gross loans and $1.4 billion in deposits. "We believe the Alabama market ties in extremely well with our already existing footprint which currently extends from east Tennessee into the Florida Panhandle," said SmartBank's President and CEO, Billy Carroll. Capstone Bank's former President and CEO Robert Kuhn will be SmartBank's regional president for the Alabama and Florida markets. "Our clients will benefit from this partnership, as we enhance our ability to provide each of them with additional resources and the best banking options available," Kuhn said. Warby Parker at The Pizitz in Birmingham will begin accepting UnitedHealthcare employer-sponsored and individual vision plans in 2018. This is the first time the designer prescription eyewear retailer has accepted vision insurance. UnitedHealthcare vision insurance can be used at anyone of Warby Parker's 50 store and online, according to the company. Eyewear will be available at little or no out-of-pocket cost. "Warby Parker is constantly exploring new ways to provide people access to affordable, high-quality and fashionable eyewear," said Dave Gilboa, co-founder and co-CEO of Warby Parker. "We look forward to working with UnitedHealthcare, nationwide, to enable millions of Americans to purchase their eyewear at a fraction of the price they might pay through traditional channels." This new relationship is helping meet the eye-care needs of UnitedHealthcare Vision plan participants nationwide. "Warby Parker and UnitedHealthcare will help more Americans access designer eyewear at affordable prices to help meet the eye-care needs of the people we serve," said Tom Wiffler, CEO, UnitedHealthcare Specialty Benefits. "We are grateful Warby Parker selected UnitedHealthcare to be its first in-network vision plan." The New York City-based eyewear brand opened its first Alabama store at The Pizitz building at 1821 2nd Ave. N. in Birmingham in April. Warby Parker was drawn to the space because of the building's carefully preserved history and the proximity to the Food Hall, the company said in a press release. Birmingham's Alabama Theatre has won a $120,000 preservation grant that will enable the nearly 90-year-old theater to install a replica of a vintage sign that has been missing since 1950s. The theater was one of 11 winning sites in an online contest sponsored by American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Birmingham Landmarks Inc., which owns the Alabama, will use the grant money to help defray costs for a 60-foot, vertical "Alabama" sign above the double doors leading to the stage entrance of the theater on 18th Street North. The replica sign will match the iconic Alabama sign at the main entrance of the theater on Third Avenue North. The 18th Street sign will be unveiled and illuminated on the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31 during a New Year's Eve event that will commemorate the Alabama Theatre's 90th anniversary. The theater opened on Dec. 26, 1927. Tickets for a New Year's Eve/90th birthday celebration concert featuring Taylor Hicks and Sister Hazel will go on sale on the Alabama Theatre website in the coming weeks. The Alabama Theatre sign project was one of 25 finalists across the country in the Partners in Preservation: Main Streets campaign, during which the public voted for their favorite preservation projects. The contest ran from Sept. 25 through Oct. 31. The Alabama received about 54,000 votes out of the more than 900,000 votes that were cast online, good enough for seventh place out of the initial 25 nominees, Brant Beene, executive director of Birmingham Landmarks Inc. said. The top 11 finalists received grant money. "We just want to thank everybody in the Birmingham area, all of our Facebook friends and all of our customers who voted for us," Beene told AL.com today. "We couldn't have done it without them, without their help." In addition to the preservation grant, several local companies have stepped up to help pay for the sign, Beene said. "We are really excited about this (grant)," he said. "It's not enough to pay for the sign, but this will help us supplement the funds. "Quite a few local donors have put a lot into the sign," Beene added, listing Alabama Power, BBVA Compass, Regions Bank and the Junior Board of the Alabama and Lyric Theatres. "We love getting the grant, but we want to make sure to thank our local sponsors." Additional local donations for the sign came from Altec, Bradley Arant, Gray Construction, Cindy and Ken Rhoden, ServisFirst Bank, Southpace Properties, Wells Fargo and Wiggins Childs Pantazis Fisher & Goldfarb, according to REV Birmingham, which nominated the Alabama Theatre for the preservation grant. "We are honored to partner with Birmingham Landmarks on leveraging this opportunity to bring national grant funding to a project that will quite literally shine a new light in Birmingham," REV Birmingham CEO David Fleming said in a statement. "The volume of local votes and, of course, local donations show strong support for historic preservation in our beautiful city with no shortage of historic charm in need of preserving," Fleming added. "The Alabama Theatre has been a pillar of the city center throughout its seasons of change, and we look forward to seeing its exterior restoration projects return the theater to its fully original splendor." From 1927 until 1957, the Alabama Theatre had twin vertical signs on Third Avenue North and on 18th Street, according to theater historians. By 1957, both signs needed repair, and the one on Third Avenue North was partially dismantled and the one on 18th Street was taken down to be refurbished. The Third Avenue North sign was fully restored by 1960, but the other sign disappeared and was probably scrapped, according to Beene. Fravert Services, a Birmingham company that designed the outdoor sign for the reopening of the neighboring Lyric Theatre, will also re-create the Alabama Theatre's 18th Street sign, Beene said. UPDATED at 4:12 p.m. CDT on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, to add comments and more information from REV Birmingham. An Anniston policeman was shot and a suspect is dead following an officer-involved shooting on Wednesday. Anniston Police Chief Shane Denham said officers were about an hour into a homicide investigation of a woman who was killed on High Street in the Blue Mountain area when a man tried to walk onto the crime scene. When officers attempted to stop him, Denham said the man pulled out a gun and shot an officer in the abdomen. He said five officers returned fire and the man died at the scene. Denham said the injured officer was taken to the hospital, but he is expected to be released soon. "He is fine," Denham said. "Thank God it didn't hit any major organs or anything." As protocol, the Alabama Bureau of Investigations is handling the officer-involved shooting case. Anniston police are still on the scene investigating the homicide investigation of the female. It is unknown at this time how the woman was killed. Denham said information about the homicide will not be released until Thursday. Thursday 2 S.W.A.T. (KRQE-13 9pm) The 1974 action cop series (made into a movie in 2003) gets a reboot. Shemar Moore (The Young and the Restless, Criminal Minds) stars. Sure, hes got the abs, but hes no Steve Forrest. Friday 3 Alias Grace (Netflix streaming anytime) Author Margaret Atwood (hot off Amazons The Handmaids Tale) gets another TV adaptation with this drama about a 19th-century Canadian psychiatrist who weighs in on whether a murderous housekeeper should be pardoned due to insanity. Saturday 4 Christmas Festival of Ice (Hallmark 6pm) Heres a holiday rom-com in Hallmarks sub-sub-genre of ice-carving movies. (See also : Ice Sculpture Christmas.) In it, a hardworking lawyer tries to revive her hometowns ice-carving contest by recruiting a famous ice-sculptor. Spoiler alert: They fall in love. The Perfect Christmas Present (HMM 7pm) A guy whos built a business empire on finding the perfect Christmas gifts for clients is stymied when his best friend asks for help finding a present for his girlfriend. Spoiler alert: The more our gift buyer learns about the lady in question, the more he falls in love with her. Sunday 5 A Second Chance Christmas (UP 5pm) What up, UP? You wanna square off with Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries in the holiday movie sweepstakes? Youre gonna have to come harder than this. Miss Christmas (Hallmark 6pm) Tasked with finding the perfect tree for the Holiday Tree Lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C., a woman travels to a quaint New England town. Spoiler alert: She falls in love with a tree farmer. Christmas in the Air (HMM 7pm) A successful professional organizer is hired by a frazzled single father and inventor. Spoiler alert: They fall in love. ... You are falling seriously behind, UP. SMILF (Showtime 8pm) Frankie Shaw writes, directs and stars in this comedy (based on her award-winning short film) about a single mom trying to navigate life and love. Monday 6 Rolling Stone: Stories From the Edge (HBO 7pm) This documentary looks back at the last 50 years of pop cultural history as seen through the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Stove Tots (FYI 7pm) Thats a terrible name for a kids cooking show. The Healer (TLC 8:08pm) An energy healer from Australia helps people cure chronic ailments in this reality/health series, which likely contains little of either. Tuesday 7 Damnation (USA 8pm) From the producers of Longmire comes this 1930s-set drama about a man masquerading as a preacher who engages in a mythic conflict and bloody struggle with a professional strikebreaker. The Long Road Home (National Geographic 9pm) This eight-episode military dramabased on the book by Martha Raddatzchronicles the events of April 4, 2004, when a US platoon was ambushed in Sadr City, Baghdad. Wednesday 8 Meow Manor (UP 1pm) This animal reality show is described as a unique multi-screen experience that takes viewers inside the poshest kitty mansion this side of Beverly Hills. Think Big Brother, but with cats. Iron Chef: Where Are They Now (Food 6pm) Find out what happened to all the the culinary gods who have been granted legendary Iron Chef status over the decades. Al Jazeera breaks down the deadly attacks attributed to the rise in far-right violence in the United States. Over the past 16 years, the number of far-right attacks in the United States has grown to an average of 300 per year, according to a study by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Since the election of right-wing US President Donald Trump in November, researchers and activists say far-right groups have been emboldened to carry out more hate crimes. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an organisation that monitors hate groups, recorded an average of 87 hate incidents a day during the ten-day period after Trumps elections. This is five times the daily average of hate crimes recorded by the FBI in 2015. Many of those hate incidents targeted people of colour, Muslims, Jews, members of the LGBTQ community and others. The upsurge in racist violence has been punctuated by a handful of deadly attacks. Al Jazeera has broken down some of the most high-profile killings attributed to far-right violence in 2017. Charlottesvilles Unite the Right rally, August 2017 On August 12, 2017, hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis converged on Charlottesville, Virginia, for Unite the Right, the largest far-right rally to be held in the US in recent decades. {articleGUID} That rally was called by Jason Kessler, a former journalist and white supremacist activist, and was attended by several groups affiliated with the alt-right, a loosely knit coalition of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Unite the Right participants clashed with community members, anti-racists and anti-fascist activists throughout the city. By the end of the day, 20-year-old James Alex Fields allegedly ploughed his car into an anti-racist march and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a social worker and activist. At least 19 others were injured in the incident. Earlier in the day, Fields was photographed marching with Vanguard America, a neo-Nazi group. He was subsequently charged with second-degree murder and a slew of felonies. Islamophobic tirade ends with deadly stabbings, May 2017 Jeremy Christian, 35, stabbed three men for attempting to intervene when he hurled anti-Muslim insults at two teenage girls on a light rail train in Portland, Oregon. Christian had been photographed a week earlier performing Nazi salutes at a far-right rally a week before the attack. Two of the victims, 53-year-old Ricky John Best and 23-year-old Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, died. Micah Fletcher, who is now 21, survived the attack. {articleGUID} Upon entering the court room for a hearing following the killings, Christian bellowed: You call it terrorism; I call it patriotism. You hear me? Die. Death to the enemies of America. Leave this country if you hate our freedom. Fletcher later spoke to local media about the attack. The Muslim community, especially in Portland, needs to understand that there are a lot of us that are not going to stand by and let anybody whether they are from here or not scare you into thinking you cant be a part of this town, this city, this community or this country, he said. Stabbed to death while waiting for Uber, May 2017 Sean Christopher Urbanski, 22, was charged with first- and second-degree murder after allegedly stabbing to death 23-year-old Richard Collins III, an African American university student and lieutenant in the US army, as the victim and his friends waited for an Uber on the University of Marylands campus. Police did not charge Urbanski with a hate crime, but critics denounced the decision and pointed to his membership in a Facebook group called Alt-Reich: Nation. {articleGUID} Reich was ostensibly a reference to the German Nazi regime known as the Third Reich, and the group was full of anti-Semitic and racist content. Collins was only three days away from graduating from nearby Bowie State University at the time of his killing. At the time, Prince George Countys State Attorney Angela D Alsobrooks said prosecutors would need something probably more than just a Facebook posting to charge the assailant with a hate crime. Black man fatally stabbed with a sword, March 2017 James Harris Jackson, a 28-year-old white man from Baltimore, travelled to New York City in the hope of killing black people, according to investigators. Upon arriving in the city, Jackson used a sword to fatally stab 66-year-old Timothy Caughman, an African American. Investigators later stated that Jackson admitted that he went to New York City to kill African Americans because he believed it would get more media attention. Subsequent media profiles painted Jackson, an army veteran, as a man who harboured intense anti-black racism for most of his life. Indian immigrant shot dead, February 2017 Adam W Purinton, a 51-year-old white man, was kicked out of a bar in Kansas City after hurling racist slurs at Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani, two immigrants from India. Witnesses said Purinton later shouted get out of my country as he shot the two men, killing Kuchibhotla and injuring Madasani, both 32 years old. {articleGUID} The assailant was later charged with a hate crime, murder, attempted murder and weapons charges. Sunaina Dumala, Kuchibhotlas widow, told media outlets she was already concerned about anti-immigrant violence before the attack that left her husband dead. He did not deserve a death like this, Dumala, who was planning her first child with her husband, said at the time. It is a mistake to imagine that any potential war with North Korea will be like a gentlemanly game of chess, in which each side takes turns and the understandings for offence and defence are robust. This misperception is particularly evident in two areas. First, it is assumed that the missile defences currently bristling around South Korea and Japan will protect them from short, medium and long-range intercontinental missiles sent from North Korea. The hopes in this area are pinned on remarkable achievements of these systems tracking and destroying missiles. The well-touted examples in this area include the Aegis and Terminal High Altitude Defence (THAAD) systems against medium-range missiles, which have successful interception rates of 83 percent and 100 percent, respectively. The short-range missile defence systems, such as the Patriot, also appears to have improved greatly in recent times. Although these figures sound impressive, they are spoiled by a number of considerations. First, although the success rate for hitting short and medium-range missiles appears good, the success rate for destroying intercontinental missiles is only just about 50 percent. Second, most of the testing is conducted in near perfect conditions, in which one target is carefully tracked and destroyed. Third, the scale of the deployment is small. That is, with the American Ground-based Midcourse Defence system against intercontinental missiles, only 44 interceptors have been deployed. With the THAAD, only one battery (with 48 interceptor missiles) has been deployed in South Korea, although this has been supplemented with 16 batteries of Patriot missiles (each with 16 launchers). {articleGUID} Although supported by other anti-missile technologies, these ones will be the forefront of trying to stop, at best guess, 200 missile launchers and between 600 to 1000 short-range missiles and maybe 100 other medium and long-range missiles coming in from North Korea. It can be expected that North Korea would fire most of these with great speed, deception and strategy, to attack, overpower and trick the missile defences. This attack would be nothing like the near perfect field conditions that most missile testing is currently conducted. Norths chemical and biological weapon stockpile The second misperception is that although missiles may be the preferred delivery system for nuclear weapons, this is not the case for the other weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological weapons that North Korea may possess. The base problem here is that although the international community agreed to prohibit both chemical and biological weapons as methods of warfare in 1925 and then updated these prohibitions for bioweapons in 1972 and chemical weapons in 1993, it is not at all clear that North Korea considers itself bound by these considerations. That is, although North Korea signatory to the 1925 agreement, it is not a signatory to 1993 convention, and although it has adhered to the 1972 convention, it has fallen far behind the rudimentary expectations in this area. In short, be sceptical about what the missile defences can actually achieve, expect chemical weapons to be part of the mix and don't be surprised if bioweapons were also thrown in. by Of chemical weapons, the strongest evidence of what they possess is the assassination of Kim Jong-nam with VX gas in Malaysia. This proof followed decades of speculation that North Korea was manufacturing chemical weapons. Current South Korean estimates suggest that the North has an existing stockpile of between 2,500 and 5,000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons (pdf). Although chemical weapons can also be delivered by missile, plane or human hands, it is likely that the North Korean ones would be delivered by the 5,400 rocket launchers and 4,400 artillery pieces that they are believed to possess. {articleGUID} Although some analysts argue that Kim Jong-uns highly publicised official visits to seemingly unimportant pesticide factories and other laboratories in North Korea signal the existence of a covert bioweapons programme, our knowledge in this area is nothing more than guesswork. Although it appears likely that North Korea has been developing bioweapons since the 1960s (pdf), and probably has understanding of about 13 types of biological weapons (including plague, anthrax, cholera and smallpox), there is no unambiguous evidence suggesting a large scale, advanced and successful bioweapons programme and production in North Korea. There are currently black holes of knowledge with regards to whether North Korea have successfully weaponised biological material and passed the barriers that stopped others; whether they have effective delivery systems (which could be missiles, drones, planes and/or human agents) and whether they have defence measures to ensure that any pathogens do not backlash against their own population. However, this scarcity of information within a country shrouded in secrecy, which has continually surprised the international community with advances in nuclear and missile technology, should not, under any circumstances, be taken as proof that they do not possess effective bioweapons. In short, there arent fully effective defences established to protect South Korea, Japan or other countries in case North Korea decides to go to war. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. UK-based AIB recognises Steve Chaos documentary on Philippine leader Duterte and Tarek Bazleys report from Antarctica. Al Jazeera English has won two prizes at the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) Awards in London. Steve Chaos 101 East documentary, Duterte: A Presidents Report Card, won the Best Politics and Business category award, while Tarek Bazleys web special, Voyage to Antarctica, jointly produced with Digital Producer Alaa Batayneh, won the award for the Best Interactive category. {articleGUID} The documentary looked into the Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes first few months in office as he carried out his war on drugs and corruption. Duterte sat down for an exclusive interview with Al Jazeeras Chao to talk about his controversial domestic policy, as well as Manilas warming relations with China. The Philippine president defended his anti-drug war policy, which at the time of the interview had left more than 3,500 people dead. He also admitted that children and innocent people had been killed in the bloody crackdown, calling them collateral damage. The documentary was a follow-up on an earlier special report on the improbable presidential campaign of Duterte, then mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao. So honoured to have won an #AIB award for our coverage of the Philippine President. Kudos to the @AJ101East team. https://t.co/ZJDi2k38j4 pic.twitter.com/xFFgTI3nFz Steve Chao (@SteveChaoSC) November 1, 2017 Science Editor Tarek Bazleys report on Antarctica followed scientists as they looked into how warming weather in the region affected the wildlife and the rest of the world. From December 2016 to March 2017, Al Jazeera followed the Swiss Polar Institute as they circumnavigated the continent. The resulting report was the interactive and multi-media report, A Voyage to Antarctica. Commenting on the two awards, Giles Trendle, managing director of Al Jazeera English, said the awards are a testament to the quality of our journalism and the talent of our teams. They show Al Jazeera English is competing with, and beating, the very best in the news and current affairs market, he said. It is additionally gratifying to see our journalism receive such recognition from our peers in a world in which journalism is under attack. The AIB is a broadcasting industry association with members from around the world. From Ramallah to Pretoria, rallies held to condemn British document that set the stage for the occupation of Palestine. People in various parts of the world have staged protests on the centenary of Britains Balfour Declaration, which promised a homeland for the Jewish people and paved the way for the occupation of Palestine. Thousands gathered in Ramallah, administrative capital of the occupied Palestinian territories, on Thursday to march to the British cultural centre, according to official Palestinian media. A statement from the office of President Mahmoud Abbas called for an apology from Britain, recognition of Palestine and compensation for the Palestinian people in political, moral and material terms. Here in Ramallah, for Palestinians, this declaration is seen very much as the moment a hundred years of disposition, displacement and occupation began, Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Ramallah, said. Dozens of others gathered in a separate protest outside the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem. A hundred thousand signatures and hundreds of letters from Palestinian high school students were presented to the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, according to Sawsan Safadi, an official from the Palestinian Ministry of Education. The letters expressed the students feelings about the legacy of the declaration. {articleGUID} Khadija Khalaf, a 17-year-old Palestinian high school student from East Jerusalem, was among the protesters who carried the letters. We came here holding signatures of 100,000 students from the schools of Palestine protesting against the Balfour promise, Khalaf told Al Jazeera. After 100 years, we the Palestinians have not taken our rights. We hope that they hear our voices as children. Protesters shouted slogans such as Down with the Brits and Justice, power, freedom: Our state is Palestinian. In addition to admitting its mistake, it must assume responsibility for the damage that befell the Palestinians as a result of the Balfour Declaration and the policies that ensued, Zakaria Odeh, a 64-year-old protester, told Al Jazeera. Protest in Pretoria In Pretoria, South Africa, hundreds gathered outside the Israeli embassy in a protest against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, organised by the Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF). Protesters, dressed in the characteristic red T-shirts of the EFF, held placards with slogans calling for an end to Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and a halt to attacks on the Gaza Strip, as they danced and sang outside the heavily guarded embassy. Away with apartheid Israel, away, the crowd shouted. Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, urged the crowd to look beyond their own context and to consider the plight of the Palestinians. {articleGUID} He also called for a one-state solution where Jews and Palestinians could live in peace. Malema made an impassioned appeal to South Africans to stop working with Israel, even asking South Africans to stop travelling to the country in solidarity with Palestine. We asking all South Africans to stop doing business with Israel, to stop visiting Israel. We are returning the favour to the people of Palestine who stood with us, Malema said to loud cheers. We call for the release of Marwan Barghouti, who is in sitting in Israeli jail, in quite the same way that Nelson Mandela was in jail for all those years, Zaakirah Vadi, communications officer for the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, an anti-apartheid organisation, told the crowd. Roads around the embassy were closed off, and police had closed the entrance to the building. {articleGUID} Many South Africans see the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the policies applied there as similar to apartheid, the institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination implemented by the white minority in their country until 1991. In Ankara, the Turkish capital, dozens of members of the Anatolian Youth Association, a conservative organisation, marked the Balfour Declaration centenary with slogans and placards. At Sakarya University in northwest Turkey, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an aid group, led protesters in a rally. Azad Essa and Ibrahim Husseini contributed to this report Critics of Zionism within Judaism are trying to get fellow Jews to question the basis on which Israel was formed. Despite being born and raised in Londons Jewish community to a family of committed Zionists, Barnaby Raine will not be celebrating the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. The PhD student at New Yorks Columbia University is a practising Jew whose mother was part of socialist Zionist movements in her youth and later spent time on a kibbutz. However, that commitment to the Zionist cause was not shared by her son, who is now an ardent critic of Israel and the role Britain played in its creation. {articleGUID} I am now a firm anti-Zionist, Raine told Al Jazeera, explaining that his ideas developed as a teenager when he could not reconcile his Jewish beliefs with Zionist ones. We as Jews are religiously committed to tikkun olam, mending the world, and for centuries, Jews have stood at the forefront of struggles against oppression and exploitation, he said. In one corner of the planet in Palestine, we are asked to believe that Jewish values mean not fixing the world but smashing it, not fighting oppression but instilling it with gruesome violence. That betrayal of Judaism is hard to stomach. Empires policemen A student of history, Raine is critical of the British role in empowering the early Zionist movement, which he considers a result of colonial self-interest rather than genuine concern for the aspirations of the Jewish people. He argued that imperial powers, such as Britain, had a long-standing policy of using settlers from Europe in colonial territories to help administer their empires. The British did a similar thing in South Africa. Settler-colonists, whether Jewish or Boer, became empires policemen, Raine explained. Palestine is not the unfortunate meeting of two legitimate national movements ... the problem is, and always, was a single colonial nationalism, which can permit no equal place in the land for its indigenous inhabitants. by Barnaby Raine, PhD student at Columbia University British support for the Zionists was therefore not due to the legitimacy of their claim to Palestine, he continued. {articleGUID} Palestine is not the unfortunate meeting of two legitimate national movements the problem is, and always was, a single colonial nationalism, which can permit no equal place in the land for its indigenous inhabitants. The Declaration reserves full political rights for Jews alone, licensed by the British empire to serve as civilised administrators over the natives. The argument is backed by historical evidence. Some early Zionists actively encouraged the idea of Jewish settlers in Palestine serving as a vanguard of British interests in the Middle East. In a letter dated to 1914, the leader of the Zionist movement, Chaim Weizmann wrote: Should Palestine fall within the British sphere of influence, and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there, as a British dependency, we could have in 20 to 30 years a million Jews out there they would form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal. In the build-up to the centenary of the Declaration, Britain has faced calls from pro-Palestinian activists to apologise for its role in the dispossession of Palestinians, a demand it rejects outright. According to Raine, besides the futility of such an apology, there is little chance of the structures responsible for the continuation of Palestinian suffering going away. Balfour has been reproduced every day for 70 years. Apologising for Balfour would require dismantling that status quo, and few in power in the West would find that an appealing proposition. {articleGUID} Independent Jewish Voices Raine features in a short film alongside other Jewish critics of Israel titled, Independent Jewish Voices: 100 Years After Balfour, in which he sets out his criticisms of Zionism and the British role in creating Israel. Al Jazeera spoke to Adam Sutcliffe, a reader in European History at Kings College London and one of those involved in commissioning the film. Though born in London, Sutcliffes family come from South Africa and are of mostly Eastern Europe Jewish origin. Raised in a secular Jewish household, his parents opposition to apartheid helped him recognise the similar situation in Israel-Palestine. I by Adam had a significant amount of support, but many Jews, in many places including in Britain and the United States, were concerned about fitting in within the countries in which they lived] He told Al Jazeera that when the declaration was made, Zionism was a relatively minor ideological grouping within the worlds Jewish population. I dont think the Balfour Declaration attracted a great deal of attention at the time [Zionism] had a significant amount of support, but many Jews, in many places including in Britain and the United States, were concerned about fitting in within the countries in which they lived. {articleGUID} Sutcliffe explained that many Jews were concerned about being seen as unpatriotic in the countries they lived in and thought the establishment of a Jewish state could endanger their status as nationals where they lived. Many other Jews, particularly in Eastern Europe, were committed to internationalist struggles, such as socialism, he added. Together with other critics of Israels behaviour, Sutcliffe wants to return to a forgotten era when there was a greater diversity of thought regarding Israel among Jews. The academic is a signatory to Independent Jewish Voices, a diverse collection of Jewish academics, journalists, and professionals, who want to challenge the dominant narratives on Israel within the Jewish community. We think theres a particular power and a particular importance to us acting as Jews because so much of the mainstream Jewish community tries to claim the Jewish tradition and the Jewish community to support Israel uncritically, he said. Blip in Jewish history For Raine, Zionism represents a tribalist vision of what it means to be a Jew that conflicts with the Jewish ideal of opposing oppression. {articleGUID} Zionism is a strikingly recent blip in the course of Jewish history, less than 150 years old where universalists see oppression as a problem per se, tribalists object only, it shouldnt be me who is oppressed,' he said, adding: Zionism is one brand of tribalism, made for an era of nationalism and empire. It has always had to contend with universalist currents in Jewish politics. Before the Holocaust, those currents were stronger in most Jewish communities, and the sheer scale of Israeli violence now risks generating enough revulsion for universalism to make a comeback. Watch this space. Canadas government says it will attempt to boost the Canadian economy by welcoming nearly one million immigrants over the next three years. Thats a boost of more than 10 percent on current figures. Canadas government says it will attempt to boost the Canadian economy by welcoming nearly one million immigrants over the next three years. Thats a boost of more than 10 percent on current figures. The plan was announced by Canadian Minister of Immigration Ahmed Hussen, who was born in Somalia. Al Jazeeras Daniel Lak has more from Toronto. Order comes as Spain state prosecutor requests a European arrest warrant for ex-Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont. Barcelona, Spain A Spanish judge has ordered that eight dismissed Catalan ministers be jailed while they are investigated on potential charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. The order was issued on Thursday after state prosecutors, who are investigating the leaders over their involvement in the breakaway regions declaration of independence, requested the ministers be held. Mireia Boya Busquets, a Catalan MP from the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy party, tweeted the legitimate government is in prison. This is a fascist state. If we normalise it, we erase ourselves as a people. Among those jailed without bail are sacked Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, former spokesperson for the government of Catalonia, former Minister of the Workforce Dolors Bassa, and others. The only former minister who may be released is Santi Vila, the former head of the Ministry of Business, pending a 50,000 euro ($58,300) bail payment. Meanwhile, a state prosecutor requested that the National Court issue a European-wide arrest warrant on Thursday for removed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four other sacked ministers. Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, Puigdemonts Catalan lawyer, tweeted that it was a grand injustice and a sad day for democracy. The Belgian attorney general told Spanish news agency, Efe, that if his office receives a warrant for Puigdemont, the law will be applied. If we receive [the warrant], we wont be able to make more comments or conjectures, he said. Climate is not good in Madrid The order and request for the arrest warrant for Puigdemont come after a court appearance by several Catalan leaders in Madrid earlier on Thursday. The Catalan government was sacked last Saturday after they declared independence the previous day. The Spanish prosecutor submitted a complaint against Puigdemont and his government for their push for secession. {articleGUID} Puigdemont remains in Brussels along with four of his former ministers. The climate is not good [in Madrid], its better to keep a certain distance, Paul Bekaert, Puigdemonts lawyer in Belgium, told reporters earlier on Thursday. If they ask, [Puigdemont] will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian authorities, the lawyer added. Commentators had said that Puigdemonts choice to stay in Belgium might cause Spanish courts to hold the accused without bail. The same was done to Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, two pro-independence organisers held without bail on similar charges. We have eight more names to add Spontaneous protests took place across Barcelona late on Thursday. Thousands gathered in front of the Catalan parliament and palace of the government in Barcelonas Gothic Quarter. Hundreds more circled the Spanish Government delegation on Avenida Diagonal, stopping traffic and forcing public transportation to follow impromptu routes. The streets will always be ours! demonstrators chanted. Many bore posters and apparel with the images of Cuixart and Sanchez. Now we have to add eight more names, Maria, a protester who only gave her first name, told Al Jazeera. No one is above the law Earlier on Thursday, Jose Montilla, a Catalan politician from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and former president of the Catalan government, criticised Puigdemont and the four dismissed ministers who remained in Belgium. Enough of the tricks that have led us here, he said. Montilla told Catalan radio he hoped justice would be exercised with prudence, but reminded the sacked government that no one is above the law. Centre-left PSOE has joined with the nationalist, centre-right ruling Peoples Party in their opposition to Catalan independence. {articleGUID} The accused former government is required to deposit 6.7m euros ($7.2m) with the courts. If they are unable to do so, their property will be seized. The Catalan politicians could face up to 30 years in prison for the charges. The Spanish High Court has given the accused members of parliament a week to prepare their defence. They are expected to appear before the court on November 9. The CIA has released 470,000 files that were captured during the raid that killed al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, in May 2011. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that he authorised the release of the massive trove of documents in the interests of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qaeda and its former leader. Todays release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organisation, Pompeo said. (The) CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security. {articleGUID} A spokesperson for the intelligence agency told Al Jazeera that the release of the documents was not in response to any legal request. The files, which are almost entirely in Arabic, contained Bin Ladens personal journal and more than 18,000 files. The trove includes approximately 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, and audio correspondence. Among the more than 10,000 video files, are a video of Bin Ladens son Hamza as a young adult, home videos, draft statements by Bin Laden, and al-Qaeda promotional material. Some documents contained letters written by Bin Laden to his son Hamza instructing him to leave Afghanistan and travel to Pakistan after he obtains fake ID and other documents. Others discussed issues, such as the validity of suicide bombings in Islam, particularly against civilians in Iraq. Mergers between al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Libya, Yemen, North Africa, Egypt, and Central Asia, were also mentioned. The CIAs release of various records seized in the raid that killed Bin Laden will be of significant value to researchers and historians, said Washington, DC, lawyer Mark Zaid who specialises in national security and freedom of information requests. It also shows the value of congressional involvement in mandating declassification of records, as otherwise, it might have taken years before the public ever sees these documents he added. One document, labelled top secret, revealed correspondence between Bin Laden and several named Saudi clerics through intermediaries. Zarqawi and Maqdisi Another document compared the ideology of former al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his mentor, Abu Mohamad al-Maqdisi. The letter described al-Zarqawi as practical and reacting to the things on the ground sometimes without thinking of the consequences or long term. Al-Zarqawi was criticised for taking things personally and using violence without thinking of its impact on the greater cause of Muslims. Al-Maqdisi, on the other hand, was described as a strategic thinker who does not advocate the use of violence. Al-Qaeda in Iraq would later subsume other groups to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Al-Maqdisi told Al Jazeera that he was not surprised that bin Laden was reading his work. This information has long been known, so there are no surprises there, he said. These documents are indispensable, Bob Baer, a former CIA case officer and expert on al-Qaeda, told Al Jazeera from Colorado, US. We do it so infrequently, but anyone who understands national security understands it is absolutely crucial to understand your opponents grievances. Follow Ali Younes on Twitter @ali_reports Every year, Mexicans gather in cemeteries to remember their departed ones. Today Google celebrates the festivity. Every year, Mexicans gather in cemeteries to remember their departed family members. According to tradition, heaven opens on November 1 and 2 and the souls of the dead come back to earth. Today Google dedicates a doodle to this commemoration. A hybrid of Spanish Catholic and pre-Columbian traditions, Day of the Dead has become one of the most important celebrations, revealing what many believe to be a uniquely Mexican understanding of death. Relatives will offer food, drinks and even toys on altars to entice the souls on holiday. The living and the dead are believed to share the meals together. {articleGUID} In many parts of Mexico, familes will spend November 1 remembering the children, often referred to as angelitos (little angels), decorating their grave sites with toys and balloons, and on November 2, they will celebrate the All Souls day, dedicated to the adults who have died. During the celebration, families will decorate the graves; most will visit the cemeteries where their loved ones are and decorate them with ofrendas (altars). The place will also have the flowers of cempasuchil (Marigold), as these are believed to help lead spirits back from the cemetery to their family homes. At least death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience disdain or irony by Octavio Paz, mexican writer Some people enjoy writing short poems, also known as calaveras (skulls): mocking epitaphs of friends, describing interesting habits and attitudes or funny anecdotes. Newspapers use them to make fun of politicians and other people in the public scene. It is a way to laugh off the rich or powerful in an accepted way. This tradition started in the 18th or 19th century after a newspaper published a poem narrating a dream of a cemetery in the future. Another common symbol is the skull, which represents the cyclicality of life as we understand it. Foods such as sugar or chocolate skulls can be given as gifts to both the living and the dead. Pan de Muerto is also really popular, and is a bread made in different shapes, often decorated with white frosting to represent the image of twisted bones. {articleGUID} The festivity is a national holiday in Mexico, but it is also celebrated in Brazil, Spain, The Philippines and parts of the US. UNESCO declared the festivity a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Octavio Paz, one of Mexicos most famous writers, noted: The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates with it. He thinks of it as his favorite plaything and his most lasting love. At least death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony, he wrote. Several sacked Catalan leaders face charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement, as Puigdemont remains in Belgium. Barcelona, Spain Several dismissed Catalan leaders have appeared before the Spanish High Court and Court of National Audience (CNA) in Madrid on charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Dismissed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and 13 officials from his government were scheduled to appear before the CNA on Thursday, while six members of the Catalan parliament went before the Spanish High Court. Reports from Madrid said declarations before both courts were short. The Catalan government was sacked last Saturday after they declared independence the previous day. The Spanish prosecutor submitted a complaint against Puigdemont and his government for their push for secession. Puigdemont remains in Brussels along with four of his former ministers. The Spanish prosecutor may now issue a European Union-wide warrant for his arrest. {articleGUID} The climate is not good [in Madrid], its better to keep a certain distance, Paul Bekaert, Puigdemonts lawyer in Belgium, told reporters on Thursday. If they ask, [Puigdemont] will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian authorities, the lawyer added. It remains to be seen how Belgium will respond to the warrant. Many assume Puigdemont remains in Brussels to apply for political asylum, though he said in a press conference on Monday this was not his intention. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has reportedly implored his ministers not to speak on the issue of Catalonia. Commentators have said that Puigdemonts choice to stay in Belgium may cause Spanish courts to hold the accused without bail. The same was done to Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, two pro-independence organisers held without bail on similar charges. Jose Montilla, a Catalan politician from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and former president of the Catalan government, criticised Puigdemont and the four dismissed ministers who remained in Belgium: Enough of the tricks that have led us here, he said. Montilla told Catalan radio he hoped justice would be exercised with prudence, but reminded the sacked government that no one is above the law. Centre-left PSOE has joined with the nationalist, centre-right ruling Peoples Party in their opposition to Catalan independence. {articleGUID} The accused former government is required to deposit 6.7m euros ($7.2m) with the courts. If they are unable to do so, their property will be seized. The Catalan politicians could face up to 30 years in prison for the charges. The Spanish High Court has given the accused members of parliament a week to prepare their defence. They are expected to appear before the court on November 9. Thousands of students write 100,000 letters to British prime minister explaining why Balfour declaration was a disaster. Thousands of Palestinian students have written letters to British Prime Minister Theresa May decrying the Israeli occupation, on the occasion of the Balfour Declaration centenary. Their messages will be submitted at the British consulate in Jerusalem on Thursday, November 2, 2017, exactly 100 years after Britain promised help in creating a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The main goal is to give these high school students a chance to express themselves about the Balfour Declaration, Sadeq al-Khaddoor, Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education spokesman, told Al Jazeera. {articleGUID} We want to show that we are able to express our views in a peaceful way, despite the injustice that has happened to our people. In the correspondence, some children question why that injustice has persisted and say they cannot live in peace like other children across the world. Some ask why the UK does not recognise a Palestinian state, and demand answers as to why the UK will not go back on its Declaration. The students also express gratitude to Britons who have demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinian people. One girl from Tubas wrote that her dying grandfathers only wish was that Britain take back its promise. For supporters of the Zionist cause, the Declaration marked the first milestone leading to the creation of Israel in 1948. {articleGUID} 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 on there being 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. Theyre asking that their feelings are respected In the letters, some students said that if it were not for the Declaration, their lands today would not be stolen. Theyre asking for there not to be celebrations and that their feelings be respected, said Khaddoor. {articleGUID} Reports said that there are 100,000 letters in total. Meanwhile, PM May who leads the ruling Conservative Party will on Thursday join her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, at Londons Lancaster House for a dinner. The event is not being hosted by the government. In stark contrast, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong supporter of Palestinian rights, has reportedly declined the invite to the dinner with Netanyahu. Earlier in October, Palestinians celebrated Corbys refusal to attend a series of events in the UK celebrating the Balfour Declaration. US state department sends deal with Qatar involving design, training and maintenance to Congress for final approval. The US state department has approved a deal for the support programme of Qatars F-15 fighter aircraft at an estimated cost of $1.1bn. In June, Qatar and the US signed a $12bn agreement in which Doha bought 72 of the multi-role fighter jets. The Pentagon said it had informed Congress of the agreement involving design and construction work, including the development of cybersecurity, protection, support and other related services. Congress now has 30 days to sign off on the deal. In a statement, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Qatar is an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region, and pointed out the strength of its relations with the Qatari Emiri Air Force (QEAF). A robust construction, cybersecurity, and force protection infrastructure is vital to ensuring the QEAF partners can utilize the F-15QA aircraft to its full potential, the statement said. Qatar will have no difficulty absorbing this support into its armed forces. {articleGUID} The state departments approval came as the Gulf crisis between Qatar and four blockading countries Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt continues. Last month, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed the quartet for the impasse with Doha. In an interview with Bloomberg, the top diplomat stressed that the leaders of the Saudi-led blockading alliance would have to take part in a dialogue to resolve the Gulf crisis. Its up to the leadership of the quartet when they want to engage with Qatar because Qatar has been very clear theyre ready to engage, he said. The deal, which had been under negotiation since November 2016, was aimed at enabling Qatars technical capacity and enhance security cooperation between Washington and Doha. As Baghdad asserts its authority Kurds fear federal government is taking away the autonomy they enjoyed for years. For the best part of a week now, talks have been on going between Baghdad and Erbil, with the presence of the international coalition, to figure out how to apply the formers demands. They include the re-deployment of federal forces in all of the disputed territories, which has already largely happened, and the more complicated issue of handing over of border crossings that the (Kurdistan Regional Government) KRG has administered since 2003. In the late hours of Wednesday night, a strongly worded statement was issued by Iraqs joint operations command. {articleGUID} Baghdad accused Erbil of backtracking on its commitments and returning to square one. It also accused Peshmerga forces of building new defences and blocking the deployment of federal troops. The KRGs ministry of Peshmerga responded a few hours later condemning in the strongest terms baseless statement by Iraqs joint operations command. The Kurds do not want to give up the borders they control. Two of them are hot topics at the moment, Ibrahim Khalil, which is the crossing with Turkey and Feysh Khabur, the border crossing with Syria. In their statement, the Kurds spelt out their demands for Feysh Khabur: Deploying a joint force of Peshmerga, the Iraqi army and representatives of the US-led global coalition. But Baghdad has made it clear that only federal forces will administer these crossings, as is the case with the disputed territories. The Kurds want joint forces deployed there until the Iraqi constitution is implemented, meaning a referendum needs to be called. Baghdad has stated clearly, only federal forces will be present in those territories. We simply take orders It is hugely complicated, and the biggest reversal in fortunes for the Kurds in years. It also doesnt seem to be about finding a middle ground, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said that these are not negotiations, these are talks in order to prevent the bloodshed of innocent Iraqis. That Baghdad will re-assert federal authority over all borders, including international flights, is a fact. Al Jazeera has been told by many Kurds that they fear Baghdad is taking away the autonomy they enjoyed for years. The many Peshmerga we ask initially have a similar response: We are military men and we simply take orders. But sit with them off camera, and talk about whats going on, and you start to scratch the surface of their real emotions. They feel betrayed by the coalition, especially the Americans. They complain that the Hashd al-Shabi, or Shia militias are the ones spearheading the fight, with weapons that the US gave them to fight ISIL. We met one commander on Thursday morning. He tells us militias sent a whole battalion with heavy weaponry to Zummar on Wednesday night, this is around 30km south of Feysh Khabour. {articleGUID} We have no way of verifying that, but he says their intentions are clear. They want to control the Feysh Khabour border crossing in order to cut the link between the Kurds in Iraq, and the Kurds in what they call Rojava, in Syria. Its an interest in line with Turkey, and Iran. If they force you to leave your house he says, surely you would fight to defend it?. Al Jazeera asks him whether he thinks this will be resolved through the gun, or though dialogue. He paused for a moment. His men sit around him, listening as we talk. These are proud men battle hardened and practical. In the end, he tells us, for all the fighting that has happened, and could still happen it always ends up at the political table to be resolved. Police arrest suspect after two men and a woman were killed in the Denver suburb of Thornton. At least three people have been killed in a shooting near a Walmart store in the US state of Colorado, police sources said. The shooting in the Denver suburb of Thornton took place on Wednesday evening and left three people dead, including two men who were killed at the scene, and a woman who died later at a hospital after being transported away from the scene by emergency services. On Thursday, Thorton police said they had arrested a 47-year-old man who was suspected of carrying out the shooting. The suspect remained at large for several hours, police said. Investigators were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses, the department said on its Twitter page. Local news outlet, the Denver Post, reported that the sound of gunshots sent people running in fear for their lives at the Walmart store. It also said that witnesses saw someone being arrested, but it is not clear if that arrest was connected to the shooting. Gun crime is a regular occurrence in the US and on average 12,000 people die in homicides involving a firearm in the country each year. Wednesdays shooting comes nearly a month after Stephen Paddock allegedly shot and killed 58 people and injured hundreds more at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, renewing calls for stricter gun control in the US. American civilians own more guns per person than civilians in any other country in the world. Gun rights advocates argue that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the countrys Second Amendment. But many opponents see a need for universal background checks, tougher restrictions on the types of guns that can be bought and the tightening loopholes for gun ownership, among other reforms. Myanmars de-facto leader makes first visit to the region as US senators consider bill imposing sanctions over crisis. Myanmars de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has visited Rakhine state for the first time since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims began fleeing the country to escape a brutal military operation launched in late August. Al Jazeeras Florence Looi, reporting from Yangon, Myanmars largest city, said on Thursday that Rakhine state government spokesman said she was on the trip to show there is stability in the region. News of the Myanmar leaders visit comes as a group of US senators consider legislation targeting Myanmars military for sanctions over the Rohingya crisis. The Myanmar government, led by Aung San Suu Kyis party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has downplayed the deadly ethnic violence in Rakhine state despite reports of continued exodus of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh. {articleGUID} Reuters news agency reported that thousands of desperate Rohingya waded through shallows and narrow creeks between islands of the Naf river to reach Bangladesh on Wednesday evening. The government has been trying to push the narrative that peace and stability have been achieved in Rakhine state after two months of renewed military offensive that began on August 25, Looi said. The NLD organised an interfaith rally in Yangon on Wednesday to showcase Myanmars multiculturalism. But critics say it was more of a public relations exercise as the Rohingya crisis was not even mentioned at the event. More than a half million Rohingya have taken shelter in Bangladesh, fleeing arson, looting and gang rape allegedly being carried out by the military and Buddhist mobs. The military calls it a clearance operation planned against Rohingya armed groups who attacked an army base. The UN has called it textbook ethnic cleansing a charge the Myanmar government continues to deny. Aung San Suu Kyi has faced international condemnation for not speaking against the atrocities that the Rohingya have faced. Her government, since succeeding a military regime, has done little to address the plight of one of the most persecuted communities in the world. The ethnic community, the majority of whom are Muslims, has been denied citizenship, rendering it stateless. According to local media, Aung San Suu Kyi visited two villages in Rakhines Maungdaw district one of the worst affected by the anti-Rohingya violence. She apparently took questions from some Rohingya villagers and her advice to them was: When you encounter a problem you have to let the government know?, Al Jazeeras Looi said. Our correspondent said reports from Rohingya villagers tell a very different story. They say they are still planning to leave for Bangladesh, because many feel that they cannot live peacefully in Rakhine state. They fear for their lives and they know what happened to their neighbouring villages, she said. People are still stuck in the so-called buffer zones between Myanmar and Bangladesh. They are left in a very precarious situation. It also underscores the point how difficult the situation in Rakhine state is despite what the government might say. Official news agency says army units backed by other forces, captured three neighbourhoods from ISIL in eastern city. A Syrian military source has announced the recapture of three neighbourhoods of Deir Az Zor after eliminating the last remnants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group from the eastern city. The army units, in cooperation with supporting forces, simultaneously regained control over the citys al-Hamidya neighbourhood, the official SANA news agency said late on Thursday. The source said that army units continued their operations against ISIL, also known as ISIS, on the southwestern outskirts of Deir Az Zor, inflicting heavy losses on the ranks of the fighters and their equipment. SANA quoted the source as saying armys engineering units started sweeping operations to demine the newly secured neighbourhoods. Earlier, army units tightened encircled ISIL fighters in al-Hamidiya, Sheikh Yasin, al-Hawiqa and al-Rashida neighbourhoods in Deir Az Zor, amid a collapse in their ranks, a SANA reporter said. The reporter said the army units restored control over the Public Park, Nour Hospital after violent clashes with ISIL fighters. Assads campaign Backed by Russian air raids, the forces of Syrias President Bashar al-Assad have waged a sustained campaign to retake areas in Deir Az Zor province. Meanwhile, a US-led international coalition has provided air support to a Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), also fighting ISIL in Deir Az Zor. Thursdays developments came a day after the Syrian opposition attending the latest round of talks in Kazakhstan rejected Russias call for a conference in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, proposed by Moscow during the two-day talks in Astana, was expected to discuss the reconciliation between all of the warring parties, political reform and discuss the proposed new Syrian constitution. This is a Russian deception, said Fateh Hassoun who headed the Syrian opposition military delegation to the seventh round of Astana talks to end six-year-old Syria war. We dont trust the Russians because they are part of the war and they are fighting on behalf of the regime on the ground. Syria is the worlds most dangerous country for journalists. More than 200 media personnel have been killed since the start of the war, six years ago. The UN has marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists on Thursday. More than 800 journalists have been killed around the world over the past decade for just doing their jobs, the UN said. Only one in ten cases committed against media workers has led to a conviction. Syria has become the worlds most dangerous country for journalists. More than 200 media personnel have been killed since the start of the war, six years ago. Dozens are in prisons or have been kidnapped by armed groups, including ISIL, and many are still missing. According to senior UNESCO official, Frank La Rue, impunity had led to more abuses against journalists. UNESCO is concerned that impunity damages whole societies by covering up serious human rights abuses, corruption, and crime, he said. Governments, civil society, the media, and everyone concerned to uphold the rule of law are being asked to join in the global efforts to end impunity, he added. Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra reports from Gaziantep in Turkey, near the border with Syria, on the challenges journalists face as they risk their lives in covering the conflict. New Yorkers gather to show grief in the wake of deadly attack that has instilled fears in the Muslim community. New York City When an attack happens in the United States, the first thing that passes through Zaid Nagis mind is a prayer: Please, dont let them be Muslim. Nagi, the vice president of the Yemeni American Merchants Association in New York, says each time an attacker turns out to be a Muslim, he knows that his life and the lives of those in his community will only get harder. They look like us; they sound like us, Nagi said, but they do not represent us. {articleGUID} On Wednesday evening, Nagi joined around 200 other New Yorkers for an interfaith vigil to remember the eight people killed and 12 injured in Tuesdays attack. Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old man, originally from Uzbekistan, allegedly drove a rented pick-up truck into a busy bicycle path on the citys West Side Highway. Police said that Saipov, who had entered the US in 2010 and was a permanent resident, carried out the attack in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). Muslim immigrants, Nagi said, are doubly affected by such attacks, which serve as a reminder of the violence that drove many to leave their countries of origin, and also increase their own insecurity in the US. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo labelled the attacker a lone wolf, but Saipovs apparent sympathies with ISIL have many within the Muslim community fearing heightened Islamophobia. Extreme Vetting Procedures Some of these fears have been stoked by President Donald Trumps calls to end the Diversity Visa lottery programme, which he said helped get Saipov entrance to the US in 2010. Trump also tweeted on Thursday that The United States will be immediately implementing much tougher Extreme Vetting Procedures. All members of the Yemeni community in New York are directly affected by these threats, Nagi said. Many Yemenis, he said, rely on these programmes, and their families depend on remittances they send back to Yemen. In response to the attack, religious leaders from Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Hindu community organised Wednesdays interfaith Vigil for Peace. It was held in Foley Square, located between the African Burial Ground National Monument and New York County Supreme Court, and which served as a triage centre on September 11, 2001. The assembled crowd joined in prayer and song, and representatives from the city government and community nonprofits addressed the tragedy and grief after the attack and the importance of coming together in solidarity. Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in New York, said during her remarks at the vigil that by gathering, we defy the evil that thrives in discord and disunity. Show of communal grief Everyone, as persons of faith, compassion and morality, shares a basic belief that life is sacred, Nasher continued, and called to serve our fellow human beings with love. There have been several unforeseen consequences of Trumps victory and the apparent Muslim animus of Trumps administration, Harold Levine, a Jewish New Yorker, told Al Jazeera after the vigil. One such consequence is the opening up of channels of communication between New Yorks Muslims and the Jewish community. Last year, Levine did not have any Muslim friends. He did not know that Islam considers Moses, David and Solomon to be prophets. He did not know that both Jews and Muslims use non-secular calendars and traditionally pray multiple times a day. Today, he is involved with the Jewish-Muslim Outreach Initiative for Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, has volunteered to serve multiple Iftar meals and counts several Muslims including Dr Debbi Almontaser, one of the vigils key organisers among his closest friends. Recognising that Muslims in New York City are under tremendous pressure, Levine said that gatherings like Wednesdays vigil are vital, not only to show support for one another, and as a show of communal grief, but also to show that most New Yorkers do not feel that most Muslims are terrorists. Instead, as Almontaser said, they are integral to the New York community. And we have to show everyone that the fabric of this city cannot be torn. Carvell Wallace talks to Americans grappling with the state of the union while dealing with his own fractured history. Rich gulf countries are being warned that the future is bleak unless they diversify and become less reliant on oil. The International Monetary Fund has some advice for countries in the Gulf: Diversify, and diversify fast. The oil that made many Gulf countries extremely wealthy is not going to last forever. And the IMFs 2017 report is predicting the worst growth rate for the region since the global financial collapse several years ago. Economies in the region have been suffering since oil prices fell dramatically in 2014. Attempts to curb oil production have only slightly raised revenue. And the Gulf Cooperation Council diplomatic crisis that began in June has only made the situation worse. The IMF says Qatar and its blockading neighbours could have trouble finding investors if the crisis continues. So what are the alternatives? Presenter: Jane Dutton Guests: Jane Kinninmont, deputy head and senior research fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House Cornelia Meyer, oil-and-gas specialist Khaled Al Khater, specialist in monetary policy and political economy It is just 67 words long, but the Balfour Declaration has led to 100 years of suffering for the Palestinians. The Balfour Declaration was the work of British foreign secretary at the time, Arthur Balfour. On November 2, 1917, it declared the aim of establishing a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, but it forced out the Palestinian people. Those who remained in their homeland, and generations since, have been stripped of their rights under Israeli occupation. Millions of others are now living in refugee camps. A century on, will Britain apologise to the Palestinians? Presenter: Martine Dennis Guests: Simon Pia Lecturer and journalist and former adviser to the Scottish Labour Party Ghassan Khatib Lecturer at Birzeit University and former Director of the Palestinian Authority Government Media Centre Crispin Blunt British Conservative Party MP and former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Atop a makeshift altar with rosaries, photographs and cookies, Meriza Candia placed a photograph of her great grandfather Jose Audon Marquez, who died last year. Candia, the vice president of UFs Mexican American Student Association, planned Wednesdays Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebration for UF students to remember and celebrate the lives of their lost loved ones. Students celebrated the holiday from noon until 5 p.m. with Abuelita Mexican hot chocolate, sugar skulls and pan de dulce in the Reitz Union. My grandfather was like my best friend, Candia said. It makes me sad hes not going to see me graduate, but I have this picture up of him and his wife in my room because it makes me remember one of the reasons why I am doing this. Dia de los Muertos is a cultural and religious holiday in Mexican culture and is special to many students, said Candia, a 22-year-old UF political science senior. During the event, students cut their own papel picado, which are intricate designs cut into thin pieces of paper. About 150 people attended the celebration, Candia said. The Hispanic Student Association and UF Hispanic-Latino Affairs donated to the event to cover the cost of food, Candia said. The total cost was about $150. She said the altar used to honor the dead, where students put photos of their passed loved ones, will be up until Friday in the Hispanic-Latino Affairs suite. The Mexican American Student Association has hosted the celebration before for their club members but this year wanted it on a larger scale, Candia said. We wanted to make sure that people understood it is just not Halloween for us, she said. This is actually a big cultural and religious holiday for us. One of the main decorations for the holiday is the vibrant skulls and crosses, she said. In the Dia de los Muertos tradition the skulls are not supposed to be scary or spooky, she said. It is supposed to be the representation of the life of the persons that lived. Thats why a lot of the skulls that we have on display have the bright colors on them. Cristian Laureano, a 21-year-old UF criminology senior, came to celebrate the life of his older brother and his grandmother, who both passed away. Laureano placed his brothers wooden rosary and his grandmothers crystal rosary on the altar alongside the other decorations. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Laureano has celebrated Day of the Dead in Mexico and said it was a huge celebration with parades, music and people on stilts. It is nothing but music and dancing and food, he said. People carry the big baskets full of gifts that they are going to leave at the cemetery. It is really beautiful. Jose Audon Marquez, who died in April 2016, smiles with his wife. Meriza Candia, vice president of the Mexican American Student Association, put out the photo for the Day of the Dead, a religious holiday. To honor the lives of immigrants and their families, the Student Government Multicultural Affairs Cabinet and UF Chispas celebrated I Am An Immigrant day Wednesday. The event, held Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Turlington Plaza, brought more than 60 students together to write their favorite quotes about diversity, pose for photos and receive free Hyppo ice pops, said Shannon Pinzon, the Vice President of Internal Affairs at UF Chispas, an organization that advocates for UF immigrant students. The event was part of a national campaign. Pinzon, a UF economics and political science junior, said the event was important because of the current political climate and white supremacist Richard Spencers recent speech at UF on Oct. 19. Its important to remind everyone the diversity thats in UF and just celebrate that and recognize the sacrifices these people and their families have made at UF and in the country, the 20-year-old said. Pinzon said she felt close to the cause because her parents immigrated from Colombia. I love learning about new cultures, so I think that any type of event or day that aims to recognize different cultures and celebrate diversity is something that Im always going to be a part of, Pinzon said. Samantha Torres, a UF accounting freshman, said she wanted to support the events cause because both of her parents are immigrants from Peru. They came to the U.S. when they were both 17. This is actually my moms dream school, to come here, but she wasnt actually able to do it because she had me, so I kind of wanted to be able to come out and represent immigrants, she said. Torres said that she carries her moms struggle with her every day. I dont take it for granted, the 18-year-old said. With my mom and what she went through, I just try a little harder. Torres said she enjoys going to meetings with other students who understand her background, like Chispas and the Hispanic Student Association. I love coming to these things because I dont feel like Im alone here, she said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Students line up to write quotes about diversity and immigration that were later hung above the UF Chispas table and tent. After writing a quote, students took a photo and were given a free Hyppo ice pop. Linh Ngo, a UF art and technology sophomore hangs up a quote about immigration. The 19-year-old said the UF Chispas event interested her because her most of her family immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam. About 250 students joined together to sing Whom Shall I Fear? at the first Catholic Gators Mass on the Grass for All Saints Day. Catholic Gators, a student group from St. Augustine Church, hosts Mass on the Grass two to three times a year, but this was the first time they held the event for All Saints Day, said Campus Minister Sandy DeTeresa. All Saints Day is a holy day of obligation in the Catholic church to celebrate all Catholic saints. Father David Ruchinski, 48, a priest and the director of the Catholic Student Center, said the group decided to hold the event on campus to draw out more students and keep with the Popes wishes. It is a holy day of obligation, and so we would normally try to make Mass available for as many people as we can, Ruchinski said. Keeping with Pope Francis call to go out to meet people where they are, we thought having Mass on campus would be more effective. Ruchinski said he saw more students Wednesday than in past events for Mass on the Grassbecause the program as a whole is consistently growing. Kristy Minno, a 20-year-old UF health science junior, said she enjoyed celebrating the holiday and asked St. Francis of Assisi and St. Joseph of Cupertino to pray for her. People going to class do stare, which I think is great because they get to see a glimpse of the Catholic Church and the love that Christ has for all of us by becoming present to us in the mass, Minno said. St. Francis is Minnos patron saint, and St. Joseph is known to help with exams and tests, so she asks them for prayers often, she said. Just like we ask our friends on earth to pray for us, as Catholics we ask the saints in heaven to pray for us too, Minno said. During the Mass, Ruchinski talked about the joy of celebrating with everyone who is in heaven, both canonized and unnamed saints. The beautiful weather only enhanced the sense of celebration, Ruchinski said. As if all the saints in heaven were smiling down upon us. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now The U.S. Embassy has received reports of gunfire at several locations in Asmara due to protests. The Embassy advises U.S. citizens to avoid the downtown area where protests appear to be more prevalent. Streets in the downtown area may be closed, and police continue to maintain a significant presence. Even demonstrations intended to be peaceful []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... Shazam! The crack legal team of Herr Robert Mueller have pounced on a real crime (they say), and all the loudest voices in today's politics have agreed on this farce, just as if it were the real thing. Liberals around the country are getting chills up their spines as the official Master Sleuths close in on...whom, exactly? And why, exactly? And in obedience to what principle in the Constitution, or in common law, or in common sense, for that matter? The answer is that there is no legal, moral, or sane principle to be seen. None whatsoever. This is pure, emotional mob scapegoating under color of law but not any law that adheres to the U.S. Constitution. The American Founders were steeped in the Western Enlightenment of the 18th century, and they would chew up and spit out all the rationalizations of all the liberal witch hunts since Watergate. This is all made up legal fiction, in direct violation of the very basis of civilized legality. There is actually no sane or rational basis for the special prosecutor. Special prosecutors are really "special" they are magicked into being from some extra-constitutional fringe of the law, whenever the Democrats and the Monsters of the Deep feel threatened, as happened during the Stalin years (when the State Department featured Stalin agents); during the George W. years (when the Democrats first voted for the Iraq War, and then, when American troops were in the field, stabbed them in the back); and in last year's election, when Ms. Hillary was downed by a fiendish Electoral College, which (according to the Democrats) isn't even in the U.S. Constitution. (Actually, the electors are in there, but you have to look for them. DNC Chief Perez apparently lost his Cliff's Notes to the U.S. Constitution, because he can't find the electors Article I, Section 2, Clause 1-3, etc.) What do you expect from our lousy education system? So Mr. Mueller has indicted his ham sandwich, responding to the fierce outcry of The American Public (as shown in the New York Times op-ed pages and the WaPo). He is giving us a couple of victims to hang. There, that should make everybody happy. This is pure and simple mob justice, of the kind practiced throughout ancient history under the heading of scapegoating. Remember, in the Book of Leviticus, the scapegoat was an actual goat quite innocent of any crime that was driven off to its death in ancient Israel, to carry with it all the sins of the people. The act of scapegoating is not limited to Scripture. It is a human universal, and it belongs in the ancient gallery of emotional defenses against guilt and anxiety. Scapegoating was a favorite practice of European mobs in Poland and Russia, and in Germany and France, and anywhere else where an evil Other could be found. Africans practiced mob scapegoating in Rwanda, and Muslims have been doing it in Sudan for the last thirty years. In Europe, the Jews were convenient scapegoats much of the time, and Russian Orthodox priests scapegoated Polish Catholic priests and vice versa. Catholics did it to Lutherans, and Lutherans did it to Catholics. In Obama's childhood home of Jakarta, the Indonesian Army scapegoated the Communist Party and the Muslims, but then everybody scapegoated the Overseas Chinese, who were easy to recognize as an ethnic group, and they were rumored to be rich, besides. The Klan is the most notorious example of mob scapegoating and yes, murder, in recent American history. The late Robert Byrd could tell you all about that. Now we have the special counsel and his personal buds Comey, Brennan, and Clapper who could also explain it all, because they are the ones afraid of headline exposure of their actions during the Obama years. Everybody is afraid of indicting Hillary for crimes committed in plain view, because Hillary might bring down the whole house of cards. But Americans who bother to pay attention to politics have a pretty good idea about the Deepsters and the Democrats under Obama and Hilary. With any luck, the Mueller team will throw us a bone, too. But it won't be the chief perps, because they have protection. So here we are, after months of mighty efforts. Why, it's that old guilty-before-innocent master criminal Manafort and a couple of guys I forgot. Whatever it is, they are guilty, guilty, guilty! The so-called "special counsel" is sheer bureaucratic fiction. That office has no constitutional status at all. There are no "special counsels" in the U.S. Constitution, and the very concept of a officially appointed witch-hunter general to get the goods on an accused "criminal" with no specified crime violates English common law, the historical source of American law, including important parts of the U.S. Constitution. (See Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 of the USC for "ex post facto law" and "Bill of Attainder.") In Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany, doing or saying anything that offended the dictator was against the law, ex post facto. Just like Wellesley, Yale, and Harvard today. If you say something offensive to the LGBTX crowd, you're hung out to dry on our college campuses today. It's universal primitive mob logic, and it belongs in the concentration camps of North Korea, if anywhere. It certainly doesn't belong in any civilized, law-abiding nation. Outside a French bedroom farce, nobody believes this stuff. Mueller and his team are the most expensive script-writing and amateur acting team in human history, just like Shakespeare in the Park, which recently stabbed the duly elected president of the United States in effigy, in front of a roaring mob of stoned liberals, today's version of the old Klan rallies of the ante post-bellum South. Why, Kathy Griffin even cut a symbolic mask of Donald Trump "at the neck," as prescribed in the Holy Quran, and paraded the nasty thing in front of even more howling liberals. You can't make this stuff up. Is it even worth saying that real liberals, like Jack Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Ronald Reagan (an FDR liberal), would be puking at this sight? The liberals of 2017 have fallen back on the Stalinist past, before the AFL-CIO threw out the totalitarians. But that would take some history, and it's lost on today's Democrats. Still, the American people are watching. Judging by the last election, they are quietly watching this farce. They aren't laughing. Maybe now, Democratic liberals will see the folly of giving illegal aliens drivers licenses on the false premise that it makes us all safer. And maybe liberal judges from Hawaii will think again about the wisdom of Trumps travel ban and desire to switch to a merit-based immigration system. Sayfullo Saipov was not an illegal alien and his home country of Uzbekistan was not on the travel ban list of countries, but his presence here to kill and maim American citizens speaks to another idiotic immigration program -- the diversity visa lottery created by the same Sen. Chuck Schumer who cried about the cruelty of Trumps travel ban amidst a bevy of aliens from central casting. He is now free to shed a tear for the victims of his program: "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based," Trump tweeted. "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)." The DV program makes up to 50,000 immigrant visas available annually, "drawn from random selection among all entries to individuals who are from countries with low rates of immigration" to the U.S., according to the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website. Applicants must prove they have a clean criminal record, have a high school diploma or its equivalent, or have at least two years of work experience within the past five years in order to qualify. The program originated as part of a bill introduced in 1990 by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., then a member of the House. Schumers measure to make a set number of visas available to diversity immigrants from certain countries was absorbed into a larger House immigration bill, which was sponsored by Schumer and 31 others, including several Republicans. That President George H.W. Bush signed the package including Schumers program into law is being used by liberals to spread the blame. It still remains Schumers program. President George W. Bush is famous for saying compassion doesnt stop at the border, but neither does common sense. We need more security, not more diversity. Some say we shouldnt bar people based on their country of origin or even their religion. Yet there are not many Swedish Baptists driving trucks into pedestrian crowds. And what kind of immigration system uses a lottery to admit immigrants. Thats playing Russian roulette with the lives of American citizens. Schumer famously shed tears when he denounced President Trumps travel ban, saying it would makes us less safe. Schumer, standing alongside refugees, called on the Senate to vote on legislation blocking Trump's order. Choking back tears, Schumer called the order mean-spirited and un-American. These orders go against what America has always been about. The orders make us less humanitarian, less safe, less American, Schumer said. How he figured that remains a mystery: Trumps travel ban and other immigration proposals have been called cruel but what is more cruel than pedestrians and bicyclists being run down by someone who was admitted to this country through a lottery? Immigration is a privilege and not a right. Nobody has a constitutional right to be here and no matter what some liberal judge may say constitutional protections do not extend to noncitizens overseas. And certainly, admission to the United States should not be a prize won in a lottery. Time after time, terrorists have exploited our compassion to come here to kill us. In San Bernardino, one of the terrorists arrived using what is called a marriage visa to unite with her husband-to-be in a plot to commit murder, something which prompted some too call for a review of our visa programs: The suspect, Tashfeen Malik, came to the U.S. on a special K-1 visa last year, raising new questions about potential vulnerabilities in the immigration system. That special K-1 visa allows foreigners to come to America to marry a U.S. citizen In light of the renewed terrorist threat, we need to take a look at our entire visa program to enhance our national security. This incident highlights the very real security threat throughout the system, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.), the GOP Policy Committee chairman and a member of leadership, told The Hill on Friday. Experts in the field now say that terrorists recognize that passports, visas and immigration documents are now weapons in the war on terror. Indeed, they do. So did the Tsarnaev brothers, whose family came here under the guise of fleeing persecution and seeking political asylum: The Tsarnaev brothers reportedly were granted asylum by "derivative" status through their parents. After entering on short-term tourist visas, the mother and father (an ethnic Chechen Muslim) won asylum and acquired U.S. citizenship. Next, younger son Dzhokhar obtained U.S. citizenship. Older son Tamerlan, whose naturalization application was pending, traveled freely between the U.S. and the jihad recruitment zone of Dagestan, Russia, last year before the bombers' gunfight in Watertown, Mass., last week left the Muslim terrorist dead. Though they had convinced the U.S. that they faced deadly persecution, the Tsarnaevs' parents both returned to their native land and were there when their sons launched last week's terror rampage. Authorities will not reveal any details of the sob stories the Tsarnaevs originally spun to win asylum benefits for the entire family. Marriage visas, political asylum seekers, and lotteries sound good and compassionate, but they can let in killers and the terrorists who know how to game the system. Many of the holes in our politically correct but suicidal immigration system would be plugged by the Reforming Immigration For A Strong Economy or RAISE Act currently pending in Congress: In the wake of Tuesdays terror attack in New York City, U.S. Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) is touting the proposed RAISE Act that has garnered the support of President Donald Trump. The plan, authored by Perdue and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), would eliminate the diversity visa that granted entrance to Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who is suspected of killing killed eight people by plowing his rented truck into a bicycle path in Lower Manhattan Besides eliminating the visa lottery, Perdue and Cotton said the RAISE Act would: Replace the current permanent employment-visa system with a skills-based points system, akin to the systems used by Canada and Australia. The system would prioritize those immigrants who are best positioned to succeed in the United States and expand the economy. Applicants earn points based on education, English-language ability, high-paying job offers, age, record of extraordinary achievement, and entrepreneurial initiative. Retain immigration preferences for the spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents while eliminating preferences for certain categories of extended and adult family members. Eliminate the diversity visa lottery. Limit refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with a 13-year average. As President Ronald Reagan said, a country without borders is not a country. We are a nation of immigrants, but legal and invited immigrants who want to become Americans, not kill Americans. End Schumers diversity visa lottery, pass the RAISE Act, and hand Chuck Schumer a hankie to cry into. 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. The horrible act in New York on Tuesday reminds us once again we are in a war. A war with radical Islam. A war that our prior President and most of his party has tried to lose through their juvenile, silly version of Neville Chamberlain politics. They prevented anyone in their administration from using the term radical Islam, hoping that would make radical Muslims less angry. Sure, thatll work. They asked our media to follow. And for the most part, they did. Bleating all the way. They dismantled surveillance on the centers of Jihadism. They gutted many of the concrete methods we had to deal with this threat. They chided those who wanted to fight this ideology as Islamophobes, and racists. I hope everyone remembers where they were on 9/11. I sure do. I remember the Towers coming down, I remember being shocked at the lack of air traffic for a week, the stalling of business, the fear of the country as we regrouped, the rallying around the president as we responded. I went on with my life vowing to be unafraid as a gesture in the face of these terror merchants. And I did. It was a conscious decision most Americans took. Pamela Geller did that as well. I gather she did a lot more than that. While we were going on with our lives, she found a mission for hers. 9/11 wasnt just an event for her to pick herself up from. It was a seminal call for her to address a dark time and an evil in the world. She saw this ideology wasnt going away. She saw the hate that filled this ideology and pointed it out. She saw its narrow-minded side and spoke about it. She saw its destructiveness and warned us all. She began a blog[i] and publicized these things. She worked with Robert Spencer in trying to wake America and the world up. She works at it daily. And she did all this under the threat of death. She has been under a sentence of death since early in her days of working against radical Islam. Multiple times by multiple people who supposedly have the authority to do so. Thats called a Fatwa. Webster defines it thusly: a legal opinion or decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader. Sounds innocuous enough; after all, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus all have decrees and authorities as well. But this is unique. The decrees about her were that she deserved death, and that anyone who would be an instrument in that death would be given immediate paradise for eternity. Big deal, words shouldnt hurt her, right? Well, tell that to Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch artist slain in broad daylight in the Netherlands in 2004. And to the many others who have been killed for simply opposing this monstrous ideology. And there have been many. One of those who attempted to kill her in Texas was just sentenced for his bid to kill her. Pamela Geller has lived knowing there are people that want to kill her as an example, live in front of the world, for well over a decade. Yet she soldiers on. Every day she reports on the stories our cowardly media wont touch. Theyll squeal about Christians and Jews for any little thing, but allow the horrors of radical Islam to be just another thing on another day, ho hum. On her blog, and on her Facebook page, she bravely reports most every outrage, every killing, every slaughter, every maiming and injustice by this ugly ideology. And most days she reports multiple events that have happened worldwide. Because multiple events happen worldwide almost every day. And they are horrifying. What is happening in Europe is horrifying. She is trying to get us in America to come face to face with the truth. Barack Obama, and the Neville Chamberlains of the Democratic Party had eight years of failure, with not many to oppose them. They let things fester while she tried to warn us all. She did this under multiple sentences of death for well over a decade. She goes on shows to talk about these things, often having to debate the most obsequious and ill-informed people, the Chamberlains of our time, the race baiters, and those who simply dont have her courage. The courage to call a spade a spade. To call out what happened in New York. And she does so in spades. And has been doing so since 9/11 in an attempt to make us understand the war of civilizations that is underway. Thank God, Donald Trump is listening. He is close to destroying ISIS, is routing them worldwide that the previous administration wouldnt do and said couldnt be done. With help from the corrupt politicians in his own country, we might even find a way to stop things like the latest New York massacre from happening. I have read her sites for over a year now, having heard of her several years ago. I have not read her new book Fatwa. I intend to. I would encourage everyone to go to her site, and look at her Facebook Page. And read her new book. Its the cutting edge of a real war. She has real information that is vital for us to win it. We cant let random people gun down gays in a night club, and we cant allow them to slaughter us with trucks. As she said tonight on Hannity, we have to defeat the ideology in order to win. And she is a genuine heroine in our day. A Joan of Arc, a combination of Esther and Deborah, and we need more like her. And we need to join her in order to win. On November 2, 1917, exactly 100 years ago, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour sent a private letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the second Baron Rothschild. The letter was written not by Balfour, but by other ministers in Lloyd George's Cabinet Lord Alfred Milner and Leopold Amery. In history, this letter became known as the Balfour Declaration. Both Balfour and Milner were true Britons. Rothschild was proud of being a Jew. Amery was a Jew who carefully concealed his Jewish origins. What united this quartet? All of them were, of course, to some degree, Zionists, but only to the extent that such was in the interests of the British Empire. Otherwise, the Declaration would never have happened. The main thing is that they were all members of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. Lord Arthur Balfour became prime minister of Great Britain in 1902. And until 1911, he was the official leader of the Conservative Party. Balfour served as the first lord of the admiralty at the beginning of the First World War, and then as the minister of foreign affairs. He worked in the conservative government of Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, then as a representative of the conservative majority in the coalition government of Prime Minister Lloyd George, and later in the conservative government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Leopold Amery was a conservative member of Parliament from 1911 to 1945. It was he who proposed the idea of the creation of the Jewish Legion of volunteers in the British Army during the First World War to Vladimir Jabotinsky. His resume noted him the first lord of the admiralty, the holder of an uncompromising position on National Socialist Germany, and the all-round supporter of Winston Churchill. Lord Alfred Milner was one of the most influential Conservatives in the government of Lloyd George. He was one of the five members of the War Cabinet. For several decades, he played a decisive role in formulating the domestic and foreign policies of the British Empire. After his death in 1925, his place in world politics was taken by a Conservative of an even larger caliber: Winston Churchill. Lord Walter Rothschild descended from the famous family of Rothschild bankers. He was a Conservative member of the British Parliament from 1899 to 1910. Many years before receiving the letter from Balfour, Baron Rothschild withdrew from political and banking activities and became a famous zoologist. Nevertheless, he was the one chosen by the British government to disclose its decision to allocate part of the territory of the Ottoman Empire to the Jewish state. The decisive meeting of the Cabinet was held on October 31, 1917. Most Cabinet members supported the idea of the Declaration. The recognized world leader of the Zionists, future first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, was informed immediately after the vote as he waited for a decision in the lobby. But the Cabinet chose a very English method to publicize its historic decision in the form of a private letter to the leader of the British Jewish diaspora, Walter Rothschild. The leader of the opposition to the Declaration was Edwin Montagu one of the few Jews in the British government, and one of the most radical left-wing politicians in the United Kingdom. Montague did not take part in the meeting on October 31 because he was traveling to India to assume the post of secretary of state in the colonial administration. Perhaps Edwin Montagu is a founding father of a strange leftist cult of Jewish anti-Zionists, which exists in many countries to this day. Of course, the British government had no right to dispose of the lands of the Ottoman Empire in 1917. The war was still going on, and the official division of the territory of the Ottoman Empire had not yet occurred. But the British were in a hurry, and for a good reason. They forestalled a similar declaration from the German Cabinet by just a few months (hat tip: Daniel Kluger). Despite this, all the Allied countries supported the idea of creating a Jewish state on the territory where no one doubted the claims of the Jews to the land. The Balfour Declaration was approved by the Allies at a conference in San Remo (Article 4) in April 1920. Then, in August of the same year, it was included in the text of the Treaty of Sevres (Article 95) between the victorious Allies and the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Balfour Declaration received full international legal status after it was included in the text of the decision of the League of Nations on the British Mandate in 1922. Although the United States was not a member of the League of Nations at that time, the 67th U.S. Congress in 1922 adopted the Lodge-Fisch resolution (both Republicans) proclaiming support for the Balfour Declaration, and President Harding (also a Republican) signed it. The resolution was so popular that both the House of Representatives and the Senate adopted it by a simple voice vote. Republicans in the 67th Congress had a significant advantage: they occupied about two thirds of all the seats. In 1932, marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Republican President Herbert Hoover reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the principles of creating a national home for Jews in the Holy Land. What remains puzzling in this historical account is how this idea, proposed by the Zionists and backed for decades by right-wing politicians, led to the creation of the leftist and virtually socialist state of Israel in 1948. Dr. Gary Gindler, Ph.D. is a conservative Russian-American blogger at Gary Gindler Chronicles. After the 2011 tragic events in Libya, when NATO invaded and brought chaos and devastation, that same NATO has refused to settle the socio-political crisis. Having slain the national Libyan leader, Moammar Gaddafi, the U.S., under the pretext of promoting democratic values, initiated Libya's division among various tribes and groups. The National Transitional Council (NTC), created on 27 February, 2011, and its successor, the General National Congress (GNC), failed to unite the country under a viable government. When they were active, neither an effective government nor a lasting state foundation was created. In fact, the country plunged into anarchy. This freed the hands of various terror and radical groups like ISIS, AQIM, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others, which easily gained control over oil fields and drowned the country in blood and violence. Only in 2014, when Operation Dignity, led by the Libyan National Army (LNA)'s Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, started, was the real battle against terrorism begun. Haftar gathered his brothers in arms and their fellow tribesmen, uniting them for one goal: to defeat terrorism. Recently, the LNA has been successful in fighting the jihadists. In March 2017, the army liberated the strategically important Mediterranean town of Ras Lanuf and the port of Al-Sidr, the largest hubs of the Libyan oil export business. In July, the Haftar-led troops succeeded in securing the country's second major city: Benghazi. It is worth saying that the fight against terrorism initiated by the Libyan field marshal is an important milestone for a political settlement as well. This is also clear to the Libyan prime minister, Fayez Sarraj, who has failed to stabilize the situation while in office. Sarraj is not popular in Libya anymore. The decline of his approval ratings was caused by his inability to control the radical groups he collaborates with. Realizing the importance of increasing his popularity for the future of his political career, the prime minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA) decided to cooperate with Haftar. On July 25, the sides agreed upon a ceasefire and general elections in 2018. However, for the LNA commander, this step is about speeding up the battle against terrorists, while the acting prime minister is interested only in retaining his political position. A perfect example of this is the Sabratha battle. When the forces loyal to Sarraj and GNA captured the town with the assistance of Haftar's troops, they proudly announced that Sabratha had been liberated, taking all the credit. Recent events show that Haftar has become a national leader capable of uniting the Libyan people in the fight against terrorism. Today, more than half of the country's territory is under LNA control. Obviously, it is Field Marshal Haftar who can put an end to terrorism in Libya, starting its revival as a single state. Tens of thousands of documents seized during the raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad, Pakistan hideout in 2011, which resulted in the terrorist mastermind's death, were released by the CIA yesterday. The documents are a treasure trove of information about al-Qaeda and bin Laden's role in the terrorist group. The agency made the documents available earlier to the Long War Journal's Bill Roggio and Thomas Joscelyn, who summarized the contents: Al Qaeda has survived more than sixteen years of war. The group has failed to execute another 9/11-style attack inside the US, despite bin Laden's continued desire to bring mass terror to America's shores. Numerous plots have been thwarted by counterterrorism and intelligence professionals. And bin Laden's organization has suffered setbacks, including the loss of key leaders. But al Qaeda has adapted and in some ways grown, spreading its insurgency footprint in countries where it had little to no capacity for operations in 2001. The newly-released files help to explain how al Qaeda groomed supporters everywhere from West Africa to South Asia. Many of the talking points employed by the Obama administration about al-Qaeda proved, if not false, then certainly designed to give an inaccurate picture of the terrorist group. Far from being dead, AQ patiently built up numerous networks across the Middle East in the years following 9/11, and at the time of bin Laden's death, it was far larger than it was on 9/11. The Abbottabad repository confirms that bin Laden was anything but retired when U.S. forces knocked down his door. He was not a mere figurehead. During the final months of his life, Osama bin Laden was communicating with subordinates around the globe. Recovered memos discuss the various committees and lieutenants who helped bin Laden manage his sprawling empire of terror. In fact, al Qaeda's network was a great deal more cohesive than was widely suspected in May 2011. Groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Shabaab (in Somalia) regularly sought and received the al Qaeda master's direction. Other organizations, such as the Pakistani Taliban, are featured throughout the documents as well. And al Qaeda continued to maintain a significant footprint inside Afghanistan, relocating personnel to the country in 2010 and fighting alongside the Taliban. Bin Laden wasn't always pleased with the course his subordinates pursued and his men debated a variety of matters internally. The al Qaeda master sometimes instructed his followers to hide their allegiance to him, calculating that it would cause additional problems if their fealty was acknowledged. The al Qaeda founder also viewed the world through a conspiratorial lens, often misjudging his main adversary: America. Perhaps of most interest is AQ's relationship with Iran. One never-before-seen 19-page document contains a senior jihadist's assessment of the group's relationship with Iran. The author explains that Iran offered some "Saudi brothers" in al Qaeda "everything they needed," including "money, arms" and "training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf." Iranian intelligence facilitated the travel of some operatives with visas, while sheltering others. Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, an influential ideologue prior to 9/11, helped negotiate a safe haven for his jihadi comrades inside Iran. But the author of the file, who is clearly well-connected, indicates that al Qaeda's men violated the terms of the agreement and Iran eventually cracked down on the Sunni jihadists' network, detaining some personnel. Still, the author explains that al Qaeda is not at war with Iran and some of their "interests intersect," especially when it comes to being an "enemy of America." Bin Laden's files show the two sides have had heated disagreements. There has been hostility between the two. Al Qaeda even penned a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei demanding the release of family members held in Iranian custody. Other files show that al Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat to exchange for its men and women. Bin Laden himself considered plans to counter Iran's influence throughout the Middle East, which he viewed as pernicious. However, bin Laden urged caution when it came to threatening Iran. In a previously released letter, bin Laden described Iran as al Qaeda's "main artery for funds, personnel, and communication." And despite their differences, Iran continued to provide crucial support for al Qaeda's operations. The Obama administration knew that Iran was paying and training al-Qaeda operatives to strike "American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf" by any definition, an act of war and still agreed to a nuclear deal with the terrorist state. How many times have we been told since 9/11 that the Shiites in Iran would never work with al-Qaeda Sunnis? These documents make those who spouted that nonsense look like idiots. As Fox News points out, much of this information was uncovered by the 9/11 Commission: The unsigned 19-page report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 2007 and offers what appears to be a history of al-Qaida's relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al-Qaida fighters "money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia." This coincides with an account offered by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with al-Qaida leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said al-Qaida militants later received training in Lebanon from the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which Iran backs to this day. U.S. prosecutors also said al-Qaida had the backing of Iran and Hezbollah in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden following the al-Qaida truck bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Al-Qaida's apparent siding with Iran may seem surprising today, given the enmity Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group have for Shiites. But bin Laden had run out of options by 1991 the one-time fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan had fallen out with Saudi Arabia over his opposition to the ultraconservative kingdom hosting U.S. troops during the Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America's growing military expansion in the Mideast. "Osama is dead, and GM is alive" was a campaign slogan for President Obama during the 2012 contest. What his administration failed to mention was that Osama may have been killed, but the organization he left behind was bigger, and in many ways more deadly, than the terrorist group that struck America on 9/11. Oh, those crazy Muslim men! What will they say next? An Egyptian lawyer, appearing on a popular satellite news program, told a panel debating a new law on prostitution in Egypt that it is the "patriotic duty" of men to sexually harass and a "national duty" to rape women who wear revealing clothing. New York Post: An Egyptian lawyer has sparked outrage after saying women who wear ripped jeans deserve to be sexually harassed and raped. Nabih al-Wahsh, a prominent conservative in Egypt, said raping women who wear ripped jeans is a man's "national duty", adding that girls who show parts of their body by wearing such clothes are inviting men to harass them. His disgusting comments were made during a TV talk show called "Infrad" on satellite channel Al-Assema. The panel were debating a draft law on prostitution and "inciting debauchery" when Wahsh made the jaw-dropping comments. During the heated debate, Wahsh said: "Are you happy when you see a girl walking down the street with half of her behind showing?" He added: "I say that when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her." His controversial remarks prompted fury across the country and Egypt's National Council for Women announced it plans to file a complaint to the attorney general against Wahsh and the TV channel. The council said it had also filed a complaint to the Supreme Council for Media Regulation and urged media outlets not to invite controversial figures who make remarks that incite violence against women. The lawyer has apparently been paying attention to U.S. TV and how politicians shamelessly deny they said what they clearly said: Wahsh later said his comments were a call to demand stricter punishment for sexual harassment. He added: "Girls must respect themselves so others respect them. Protecting morals is more important than protecting borders." So urging men to sexually harass and rape women is actually a way to "demand stricter punishment for sexual harassment"? Sheesh. While the various women's groups and Westernized media heavily criticized the lawyer, what do you think the reaction to his words were in the suks and mosques across the rest of Egypt? Recall that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt received a majority of votes in the last relatively free election. So I think it safe to say the lawyer's sentiments would meet with the approval of a solid majority of Egyptian men, who view women little better than cattle and, in some ways, worse. Egypt's president, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has made it clear he wants to secularize the country. But after centuries of control by radical clergy, he faces an uphill battle to bring Egypt into the 21st century. In less than a week, Democrats will mark a gloomy anniversary: the election of Donald Trump and defeat of Hillary Clinton. Would it surprise you that Clinton's defeat is still being debated a year removed from the event? Are you aware that there is a civil war underway not only to explain Hillary's loss, but to decide which direction the Democrats will go to win in 2020? You can be excused if you missed all this. The press isn't covering it, preferring to chase Russians around Washington rather than concentrate on perhaps the most impactful story of the year. Left-wing Democrats are at war with radical left-wing Democrats. Upon the outcome will hinge how competitive the party will be in the 2018 midterms as well as the 2020 presidential election. The left wing blames Hillary's loss on her refusal to talk about the economy in the final days of the race and her lack of appeal to white working-class voters. The radical left blames her loss on not being...well, radical enough. The problem for Democrats is that the farther left Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren push the party, the farther away they get from appealing to the white working class who turned out in droves for Donald Trump and were decisive in several states. Stanley Greenberg, a Bill Clinton pollster from 1992 and longtime Democratic strategist, laid out the battle lines for the New Yorker: "The Democratic Party today is divided over whether it wants to focus on the economy or identity," Greenberg said when we talked. That is, as he pointed out, just what the Clinton campaign was fighting about a year ago. Greenberg and others who came out of the Bill Clinton eralike the former President himselfhad never really let go of the economy-first mantra that got them to the White House in a different time, and they felt that there was a generational conflict with the Obama operatives who held sway over Hillary Clinton's 2016 strategy. It was a fight that dogged the Clinton campaign all the way until its final days, when Greenberg and his allies inside the campaign pushed unsuccessfully to close with a focus on her plans for the economy. "The caricature of this debate is, Bill Clinton says you have a problem and the numbers people say you don't," Jake Sullivan, who served as Clinton's top policy adviser for the campaign after working with her closely at the Obama State Department, recalled. But it wasn't that Hillary Clinton's team disagreed over the problem, he insisted, just over what to do about it: "Everybody recognized we had a huge working-class, non-college white issue. The question was, How do you add up to victory? Do you attack it head-on or by compensating elsewhere? That was the fundamental strategic debate." And it still is. "Identity" is shorthand for all the wacky social issues near and dear to Democrat's hearts. The Clinton campaign chose to try to goose turnout from its core constituencies: the young, minorities, organized labor, etc. The campaign made a conscious decision to ignore the white working class in favor of blacks, Hispanics, single women, and gays, in numbers that matched the Obama coalition. Black turnout actually fell for the first time in 20 years, and, as usual, Hispanic turnout disappointed. The Clintonistas never came close to overcoming their antagonizing blue-collar whites. What's fascinating is that it looks as though the Democrats are going to make the same mistakes all over again. Instead of talking about improving the economy, they want to talk about opposing Trump. If they did it rationally and within reason, they might actually gain some ground. But their irrational, over-the-top, hysterically exaggerated reaction to Trump personally and his policies will almost certainly make a Trump victory in 2020 more probable. Millions of Americans do not view Trump the way that Democrats do and are getting angry about what they see as unjustified, unhinged criticism. The Democrats will easily have as many candidates in 2020 as the GOP did in 2016. But with the Warren-Sanders wing of the party holding sway in the primaries, it isn't likely that they will nominate someone who could defeat Trump. Some Democrats are waking up to that reality and sounding the alarm. But no one is listening. It took only a day for the cable news propagandists to find guests who would blame the truck attack on bicyclists in Lower Manhattan on the personal troubles of the perp. On MSNBC, as noticed by Justin Caruso of the Daily Caller, guest Mubin Shaikh, a "former Islamic extremist," told viewers: "They go online, they get most of their ideology, but, this is something that they've already decided to engage in. A person doesn't go online and read something and decide, 'Oh, I'm going to be oh, I believe this. I'm going to go and act on this.' They already have this going on inside them before they turn to the internet or somebody like in a real human network. "What we need to look into is why this person even feels they need to look that way. And one of the things is hatred is hatred, and alienation, and marginalization. Think about it this way when you tell a kid that he's dumb, he's stupid, he's going to amount to nothing, what do you think is going to happen with that kid? He's going to take that, internalize that, and externalize it by acting it out onto other people," he continued. Here's a news flash for Mr. Shaikh: teens and young adults go through all sorts of misery finding their place in the world. Everyone has frustrations, setbacks, and critical voices. The Quran and other scriptures teach such people that killing infidels is a way to solve all their problems by becoming a martyr and thereby gaining entrance to heaven with virgins available for their pleasure. Absent the enabling ideology of jihad, such young people work out their problems in a more constructive fashion, sometimes even by studying or working harder, and showing people they were wrong to denigrate them. Meanwhile, at CNN, in-house national security analyst Peter Bergen, who has written a book on jihadis, worries that some personal crisis triggered the attack: [D]id this guy lose a job? You know, was he having family problems? What was the kind of thing that produced a cognitive opening for him to embrace these ideas because it's not typical to embrace these ideas. Usually there is some kind of event in somebody's life that allows them to be open to these ideas. But Berger does at least concede that Saipov was following a recipe from ISIS: [S]ame thing we saw in the Orlando case, the same thing in the San Bernardino case. These guys, they follow what the NYPD calls a playbook and the playbook involves pledging your allegiance to ISIS in a public manner as you do the crime so that it's very clear why you're doing this. I cannot recall any instances of American media blaming personal trauma for German soldiers in World War II embracing Nazi doctrine. Or for North Koreans and Chinese soldiers embracing communism in the Korean Conflict. Facing these other doctrines premised on world domination as jihad is our media had the common sense to blame the doctrine itself. Today, they prefer to live with and propagate illusions. A Chinese real estate billionaire may be trying to hide behind U.S. immigration law to avoid prosecution for sex crimes. The case of Guo Wengui, a rogue Chinese billionaire seeking asylum, may prove a litmus test for the Trump administration's reform of immigration policy. The Trump administration ran on an agenda of immigration reform as well as promises to enforce existing law and was widely criticized for observing that among illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, there were rapists and other criminals. Voters responded to Trump's platform, both because of concerns about safety created by allowing unvetted immigrants to enter the country and because the current system allows unrestricted competition from illegal immigrants for low-wage Americans while protecting higher-salaried American professionals from competition. Court filings allege that a Chinese woman in her 20s was a victim of rape and other sexual crimes during a three-year period she was held virtually captive by Guo. The victim claims she was lured to New York with the promise of employment as Guo's personal assistant. Once in New York, she says her digital communications were closely monitored, her passport was taken from her, and she was not given keys to the apartment and claims she was forbidden to leave the residence. The woman eventually fled to the Chinese embassy in London to avoid further abuse. Earlier this year, she gave a written statement and provided evidence of her ordeal. This included underwear, pregnancy tests, and abortion pills, according to police documents. His accuser claims that he raped her while the two were in residence in Guo's $78-million apartment at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel, located near Central Park in Manhattan. Court documents describe in detail another assault that took place in London. "After this violence concluded, Defendant Kwok left Plaintiff ... bleeding in her bed," says a descriptive line in the documents submitted to the New York Supreme Court. Guo has been convicted of corruption charges in China. In April, China issued an Interpol "red" notice for his arrest. His accuser is seeking $140 million in damages. Guo has received sympathetic coverage in some liberal publications like the New York Times in recent weeks. In interviews and on social media, Guo has depicted himself as a Chinese dissident and whistleblower who had inside knowledge of corruption within the Communist Party. Just last week, Guo filed for asylum in the United States. However, if the allegations against him prove correct, he is exactly the sort of individual who should not be given asylum in the United States. The controversy over Guo comes as President Trump has put visa sanctions on four countries Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea, and Sierra Leone who refuse to take back in the citizens who were in the United States illegally. Illegal immigrants from Guinea and the asylum status of a Chinese rogue aren't hot-button issues that make the news cycle. Members of the Democratic Party establishment, like Hillary Clinton ally and Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, have a habit of selling visas and other considerations to Chinese billionaires. The Clinton Foundation also received large donations from Chinese billionaire Wang Wenliang while he was lobbying the American government. America needs immigrants, but it doesn't need those who come here illegally. The last thing it needs is another rapist. And the Trump administration needs to emphasize that the days of Democratic Party "pay to play" immigration policy is over. Bruce Majors is a fellow at the American Media Institute and has written for Reason, the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Federalist, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, the American Spectator, and other publications. The Islamist who killed pedestrians and cyclists on the bike path near the World Trade Center memorial on 31 October called out "Allahu akbar" before he was brought down by a policeman. "Shout 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers" were the final words written by Mohammed Atta before the 9-11 attacks in 2001. But multicultural apologists and progressives in and out of government have denied the obvious for sixteen years: the motivation of the worldwide Islamic movement to destroy Western culture is the original, authentic 7th-century Islam. It is time to face reality. CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood are wolves in sheep's clothing using an erosion strategy against the West. Islam needs to be reformed. Policymakers need to break away from political correctness to recognize Islamists as the enemy. They need to listen to the modern Muslims who want to change the ideology of Islam into a religion of Islam compatible with religion as understood by the Founders when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. Policymakers need to be guided by the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and its leader, Zuhdi Jasser. They need to pay attention to Wafa Sultan, Asra Normani, Irshad Manji, and Nonie Darwish. The foreign policy establishment should ignore anyone who supports an ideology that demands submission to the outer jihad as practiced by Muhammad; it should listen only to those who support a religion of freedom of conscience (liberty), personal responsibility for behavior, and personal salvation. Our government, the media, and our political elite have not been using terminology that matches reality. The terminology we use must reflect the following: (1) Islamists and Muslims are not the same. (2) The outer jihad differs from the inner jihad. (3) The ideology of Islam is not the same as the religion of Islam. Islamists practice the outer jihad (based on Muhammad's actions) and support the worldwide movement (the Third Jihad) to have everyone accept "the way of the Prophet." There are two kinds of Islamists. One is Islamist militants, who use, or support the use of, violence and terror. The others are Islamist "moderates" who want everyone to think Islam is a religion of peace, yet they do nothing to neutralize violence and terror and do whatever they can to weaken Western culture from within. The outer jihad seeks to copy Muhammad's actions to convert, cause to submit, or kill all non-believers. The inner jihad is a struggle within an individual to overcome the baser human instincts. Sixteen years of being on the wrong road must come to an end. America's future depends on a more realistic, and a less politically correct, view of the threat from the Third Jihad. Sam C. Holiday, Armiger Cromwell Center, LLC. Twenty-sixteen was a very violent year in Mexico. According to a new article at the N.Y. Times, the violence exploded when two things happened: The forces driving violence in Mexico, which is now on track for its worst year in decades, were first set in motion 20 years ago by two events that were, at the time, celebrated as triumphs. First, Colombia defeated its major drug cartels in the 1990s, driving the center of the drug trade from the country into Mexico. Then, in 2000, Mexico transitioned to a multiparty democracy. This meant that the drug trade moved to Mexico just as its politics and institutions were in flux, leaving them unable to address a problem they have often made worse. Since then, a series of bad breaks, missteps and self-imposed crises have led to an explosion of violence. Last year there were more than 20,000 killings. This year is on track to be worse, exceeding the 2011 record, which was thought to be the drug war's apex. Yes, there is no question that some of the Colombia cartels moved their operations to Mexico. Add to this the political turmoil, and you have a lot of problems. However, I would add a couple of factors. This is what I hear from my Mexican friends who are appalled at the violence in their country: First, Mexico's police are not ready. The police force needs to be rebuilt, retrained, and better paid. To be fair, Mexico has tried over the last few years, but it needs to try harder. We are living the legacy of decades of not respecting the police and expecting officers to feed their families by asking for bribes. It is not possible to fight cartels exclusively through the military. The armed forces have killed a lot of cartel leaders and arrested people like El Chapo. Unfortunately, they've left in office the corrupt local administrators and police, who are a huge part of the problem. As a Mexican businessman told me on the phone yesterday, it's nice we got Chapo, but what about the local corruption that protected him? Second, the justice system in Mexico, as my friends tell me, is uneven in how it enforces laws. There are still too many judges in the pockets of organized crime. What does Mexico do now? It's hard to find an easy answer because there aren't any. So get ready for more articles about violence in Mexico. PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter. Macedonia: 33 convicted over deadly militant attack Albanian terrorists killed 8 policemen in 2015 (ANSA) - TRIESTE - A court in Macedonia has convicted 33 people accused of being members of an ethnic Albanian militant group and planning terrorist attacks. The suspects were arrested following a deadly police raid in 2015. The raid and an ensuing gun battle near in the northern border town of Kumanovo left eight officers and 10 militants dead. Seven of the defendants were handed life sentences, and another 13 were sentenced to 40 years in prison. The others got prison sentences from 12 to 20 years. Some of the defendants were from neighboring Kosovo, while others were from Macedonia's own Albanian minority. Albanians are believed to make up around 30% of Macedonia's population, living mostly in the northwest near the borders with Kosovo and Albania. Macedonia has a large ethnic Albanian minority and fought a nine-month insurgency against militants from the minority in 2001. The so-called National Liberation Army (NLA) disbanded in 2002 and some of its former leaders entered the government. (ANSA). Copyright ANSA - Tutti i diritti riservati NEW YORK - The impact of the Syria crisis continues to be "profound" and humanitarian needs will be large for some time, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council on Monday. Overall, more than 13 million people inside Syria still need humanitarian assistance. 6.3 million of them are exceptionally vulnerable and in acute need because of displacement, hostilities, and limited access to basic goods and services, Lowcock said. "Today the UN and partners delivered food, nutrition and health assistance to 40,000 people (in eastern Ghouta)," he told the Council, warning however that an alarming number of child malnutrition cases have been recorded there. "Against this background, the UN and our partners continue to implement in Syria one of the largest humanitarian operations in the world," said Lowcock, recalling that in September, the World Food Programme (WFP) provided food assistance to more than 3.3 million people, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reached over 1.5 million people, and the World health Organization (WHO) reached over 800,000 people. The United Nations are also calling for immediate intervention "to save the lives of approximately 50,000 people" who have been displaced by fighting and are trapped with little food or water in a desert area between Syria and Jordan. "A long-term solution is needed to bring aid to the camp in Rukban" between southeast Syria and northern Jordan. "The best solution is to deliver the aid from Syria" and not from Jordan, which closed its stretch of border in 2016, Lowcock told pan-Arab TV networks. ROME - Rome prosecutors sent a formal petition to the British authorities last month to be able to question Giulio Regeni's Cambridge University tutor, Professor Maha Mahfouz Abdel Rahman, La Repubblica reported on Thursday. The Rome-based daily reported that the prosecutors also want to acquire the professor's mobile and fixed-line phone records from between January 2015 and February 28 2016 to reconstruct her network of relations. The move regards alleged ambiguity and omissions by the woman in relation to the probe into the torture and murder of the 28-year-old Italian post-graduate student in Egypt early last year, La Repubblica wrote in an article entitled 'The Lies of Cambridge'. It also reportedly relates to unease expressed by Regeni in two Skype conversations with his mother Paola. Rome prosecutors have also asked the British judicial authorities to identify all of the Cambridge University students working under Abdel Raman who were sent to Cairo between 2012 and 2015, sources said on Thursday. The petition requests that those students be questioned in the presence of Italian investigators. The investigators want to know whether there were other cases like Regeni's in which students were asked to research the independent unions in Egypt. The British authorities have until January 23 to respond to this new petition, formally called a European Investigation Order, after being notified on October 23. It is the third petition sent to the British authorities over the Regeni case. In relation to the first one in June 2016, Abdel Raman refused to be questioned by the judicial authorities and sent a email saying she only met Regeni briefly on the morning of January 7, 2016, in a Cairo bar. BEIRUT/TEL AVIV - An air raid, presumably by Israeli jets, last night struck a military position between Damascus and Homs in central Syria, according to UK-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The sources quoted by the NGO said the raid hit some installations in the industrial area of Hasiya south of Homs and along the highway for Damascus. Other Syrian press sources claimed that Israeli aircraft bombed an arms depot of Hezbollah and that Syrian anti-aircraft systems fired surface-to-air missiles against the jet, which according to Israeli media was not hit. Israeli air raids have been periodically carried out on Syria against military installations of the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Israel has not officially commented. ''We never comment this type of report'', military radio quoted a military spokesman as saying. Asked about the report from Lebanon, the spokesman said that ''no Israeli military jet was hit yesterday''. According to the website of Ynet, the target of the attack was an industrial area ''where intense Iranian activity is ongoing''. According to Ynet, joint projects carried out by Iranian and Syrian companies, both private and public, are based there as part of bilateral agreements. For its part the blog 'Intelli-Times' claimed that Hasiya could be an area of transit or production of Iranian missiles for Hezbollah. This annual ceremony at the Emirates Group is held in solidarity with HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice-President and Prime Minister and the Ruler of Dubais call to entities across the UAE to raise the flag to express their pride and allegiance to the country. Sheikh Majid Al Mualla said: UAE Flag Day is an opportunity for entities and individuals across the country to honour their commitment to the UAE. Emirates Group employees are proud of the countrys achievements, and we look forward to contributing to the countrys dynamic future under the UAEs visionary leaders. We are proud that staff of all different nationalities gathered today to participate in this occasion. Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways chief executive officer, said: The unfortunate decision by American Airlines to terminate a commercial relationship that benefited both carriers has left Etihad with no choice but to suspend flights between our Abu Dhabi home and Dallas/Fort Worth. We are open to American Airlines reversing its decision to cancel our codeshare agreement so that Etihad Airways can continue the route and together protect and support American national interests and global connectivity while driving commercial value for both airlines. Etihad Airways has invested heavily in the DFW route since its launch in December 2014. The route commenced with three flights a week and was upgraded to a daily service in February 2017, providing travellers in the US and across the airlines network with access to more US cities through American Airlines primary hub. More than 235,000 travellers have flown on the route since its launch. Almost half of Etihad Airways DFW customers connect on US codeshare flights operated by American Airlines. Baumgartner added, The cancellation of the Dallas route is one of several adjustments that we are making to our US network in 2018 in order to improve system profitability. Further changes are possible as we monitor the full impact of the American Airlines codeshare cancellation on summer 2018 bookings. Etihad Airways is grateful to the state of Texas, its authorities, including the Mayors offices in Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW International Airport, local businesses, the travel trade, and the travelling public for their partnership throughout the years of our operation. According to independent research by Oxford Economics, in 2016 Etihad Airways contributed US$3.8 billion to the US economy, supported more than 30,000 American jobs, and brought 280,000 additional visitors to the United States. These visitors, who travelled from growing markets historically ignored by US carriers and partners, contributed US$1.9 billion to the US economy and supported an additional 22,000 American jobs. Etihad Airways is also a major customer of widebody aircraft built by the Boeing Company, with firm orders for 71 GE-powered Boeing 787s and 25 Boeing 777Xs, both of which will support the airlines fleet renewal programme. All of the airlines First Class seating, as well as The Residence on the Airbus A380, is built by US based aircraft cabin interior manufacturer B/E Aerospace, now part of Rockwell Collins. In 2012, Etihad Airways also signed a deal valued at more than a billion US dollars with aviation computer technology provider Sabre Airline Solutions. Etihad Airways currently operates 42 non-stop flights a week to five US gateways Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Additionally, Etihad Cargo operates twice weekly Boeing 777F freighter services to and from Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, and Tucson, Arizona. When Fjord, one of the worlds leading design and innovation consultancies, grew out of its Helsinki premises, it needed a new space that would reflect the Fjord brand and feel like home to its employees from around the world. Having worked with the Helsinki-based Studio Joanna Laajisto before, Fjord knew that they had found a designer who could translate Fjord brand characteristics into interior design principles. Elegant, unconventional and human those were the starting points of our design process. This is an office primarily made for employees to feel at home, and the wow factor for outsiders comes from what the space feels like, not merely from its looks, says designer Joanna Laajisto who designed Fjords minimal and warm studio in central Helsinki. From Finland, naturally The 1000 m2 studio was furnished with natural materials of high quality: oak floors with sound-absorbing underlay, sisal carpets, and loads of plants. Light flows through the studios delicate, metallic room dividers, and linen curtains give privacy when needed. Instead of building a traditional office, the aim was to create an approachable, homelike workspace. Therefore, the studio includes several different kitchen and lounge spaces suitable for collaboration, creative work and casual hang-outs. Privacy can be found in comfortable phone booths lined with Kvadrats acoustic Soft Cell panels. We wanted the space to feel approachable and friendly: like coming to someones home. Therefore, although we work with technology, we dont want to be surrounded by it. In our office, technology is in the background, and it works you dont have to think about it, says service design lead Stephanie Del Rey from Fjord Helsinki. For Fjord Helsinki, it was important that most materials and pieces of furniture were of Finnish origin without being too explicit about it. Meeting rooms are furnished with Artek Rival chairs and living rooms large carpets are from Woodnotes, whereas Knolls Womb chairs were designed by Finnish designer Eero Saarinen. Living rooms large lamps are called PJ01, and they were designed by Joanna Laajisto and designer Pasi Karkkainen. The green kitchens blend in with the natural materials, and they were furnished with Ilmari Tapiovaaras Domus chairs as well as oak tables and benches from Nikari. An office for business and pleasure Our people are very proud of our new office space and they are constantly inviting people to come and see it, says Del Rey. When planning the space and its furniture, we wanted it to be very adaptive. Now we can use our space in various versatile ways: people even use it in their spare time for movie nights and casual hang-outs! For me, the best feedback was having Fjord employees volunteered to come to the studio to help me with a photoshoot on a Saturday afternoon, with their kids and dogs! We ordered pizza, drank some wine and everybody stayed longer then was needed. If people enjoy spending their free time at the office, we have truly succeeded in creating a homely work environment, Laajisto continues. A new atmospheric bar Jackie opened its doors in Helsinkis Iso Roobertinkatu at the end of April 2017. Studio Joanna Laajisto created the interior concept for the bar to resemble an atmosphere of a hotel lobby without the rooms upstairs. The bar is named after Scott Walker song - Jackie. "I was given a soundtrack of 60s and 70s Italian lounge music and 70s French Cosmic Disco by the owner, Antti Eerikainen, to understand the ambience he wanted in the space. Best brief I have ever received", says Joanna Laajisto, the lead designer of the project. Live djs play a big part of the bars ambience and a special attention was given to the dj booth. Made out of Sapele wood, it was designed to be a little sister to the bar counter. Marble tops as well as the low striped marble tables designed by Laajisto create contrast. The walnut Medici lounge chairs are by Konstantin Grcic for Mattiazzi. The dark green walls and ceiling with long tan leather sofas take you away, maybe to a bar in Milan in the 70s. The Pipistrello table lamp designed by Italian Gae Aulenti in 1965 reinforces the illusion. Along with drinks, North Italian style pizza slices by the renowned chef Antto Melasniemi are served from lunch time until late. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night. For as long as theyve been around, humans have been fascinated with the afterlife. And nowhere is that better illustrated than through the good old-fashioned ghost story. While mankinds interest in the supernatural predates literature, its influence can be seen in ancient cultures rituals regarding death, and ghosts and spirits are prevalent in folklore from every part of the globe. Today, one need only tune to channels like SyFy or Destination America to see interest in the paranormal is stronger than ever, thanks to shows like Ghost Hunters and its countless off-shoots, wherein viewers follow along as investigators attempt to document hauntings using a wide array of technology. Programs such as Haunted Towns and Ghosts of Shepherdstown also speak to the feeling in many cities around the world that alleged instances of paranormal activity are so prevalent the entire community seems haunted. Thats obviously not the case in Artesia. While the City of Champions has its share of old buildings, many others were lost over the years to progress, decay, or lack of preservation, and Artesia is without widely-accepted accounts of a haunting, such as The Lodge at Cloudcrofts Rebecca or the young boy whos said to wander the KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque. But that doesnt mean Artesians havent heard a tale or two. While no instance of paranormal activity has been documented at any of the following locations, theyve been mentioned over the years in casual conversation between thrill-seeking teens or when All Hallows Eve rolls around each year to make the topic more intriguing. And whether these ghost stories are based on actual experience or active imagination matters little as the gang from The Nightmare Before Christmas pointed out, lifes no fun without a good scare. OLD ARTESIA GENERAL HOSPITAL Up until last year, if the question Is there any place in Artesia you think MIGHT be haunted? were asked, there likely would have been a consensus answer: the old Artesia General Hospital building. The looming white structure on South Roselawn Avenue wasnt at all long-abandoned; built as a Works Progress Administration project in 1939, it officially ceased operations in 1981 upon the opening of the new hospital on North 13th Street. A few years later, it was sold with the provision that it be put to some sort of use for the good of the community. It briefly served as an assisted living facility for the elderly but soon closed its doors. Such a large building sitting empty couldnt help but take on an ominous air, and by the 1990s, teenagers were daring one another to pull through the slightly submerged lane on the facilitys north side that had serviced the emergency room. Reports of lights moving past the windows and strange noises naturally followed. Some whod claimed to have found their way inside spoke of an eerie chapel, and the hospital did house one; the original was added to the second floor in 1946, and in 1963, a new one was constructed. Other popular boasts, such as locating a secret tunnel that ran from the ER to a morgue, were unfounded, however, and the small structure in back of the hospital to the west did not serve as said morgue. Unfortunately, innocent curiosity had given way to vandalism in recent years, and the hospital was a frequent target. And in the summer of 2016, ground was broken on the Roselawn Manor affordable housing project; those whod hoped to see the old building one day renovated and preserved watched as the walls came down. Demolition was preceded by one more ghost story, though: The crew of geologists enlisted to examine the site before the building was leveled contacted the Daily Press to ask if any strange happenings had ever been reported at the facility. Theyd heard a few things, and they were sure theyd seen something out of the corner of their eye BASKIN BUILDING (THE WELLHEAD) With its artificial stone facade and second-story balcony, the Baskin Building (currently The Wellhead Restaurant & Brewpub) adds a quintessentially historical look to Artesias downtown district. The building, completed in 1905, was originally home to a hotel, tavern and restaurant. Over the years, it evolved into furniture, grocery and auto parts stores, as well as the Mansion Mall in the 1980s, which featured, among other things, sandwich, gift and antique shops, and an ice cream parlor. Often renting its upstairs portion separately for office space, the building also housed the local post office and the Bank of Artesia. Any spirits from the days of the buildings original tavern are likely quite comfortable with the revelry in The Wellhead, but past business owners and tenants have reported hearing voices and footsteps on the wooden floors, always just below or above them and ceasing when they rush to investigate. JOYCE-PRUIT BUILDING (SAGEBRUSH ANNIES) The space that appropriately houses an antique store today was once larger and with something of a colorful history. On the southwest corner of Second and Main streets, the Joyce-Pruit Building (currently Sagebrush Annies) began as a one-story branch of the Joyce-Pruit Company Store, which was established in the late-1880s in Carlsbad and had expanded to Roswell and parts of Texas. Artesias Joyce-Pruit opened its doors in 1905, and around 1912, the buildings second story was added. According to Artesia Historical Museum documents, manager Rex Wheatleys wife, Florence, described Artesias store as the heartbeat of the community, and as such, it survived for nine years after the chains 1931 liquidation. The Joyce-Pruit also survived a fire in 1934, which damaged both it and the connecting Hardwick Hotel building to the east, which by that year was housing the stores dry goods. While a friendly country store likely conjures no thoughts of a haunting, the Hardwick Hotel was a different sort of place entirely. Constructed between 1906 and 1910, the hotel had a rather infamous reputation for rowdiness, and some of those who experienced it reported to museum manager Nancy Dunn in the past that it was the sort of place where an individual seen slumped in the hallway could be either sleeping it off or shuffled off this mortal coil. Small surprise, then, that rumors of the sounds of shouting, raucous laughter, and even gunshots (with no one present to have made them) have been associated with the building. A portion of the Hotel was demolished in the early 1970s by Clyde Guy to make room for Guy Chevrolet, which stands today on the remainder of the site. ARTESIA HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM Whats a stage without a ghost? Fans of the Phantom of the Opera would argue not much, and despite being relatively new to the category of old buildings in Artesia, the AHS Auditorium has not been exempt from a few reported encounters. The auditorium was constructed around the same time as nearby Bulldog Bowl in the late 1960s and was built on a foundation that included a portion of the soil dug to form the Bowl. Its undergone a few renovations over the years, which some say has a tendency to stir up dormant activity. Clearly a pleasant place to be and home to many entertaining productions by the Artesia Public Schools and other entities, theres a good chance the auditoriums tales were a byproduct of the facilitys somewhat vintage-looking backstage and dressing room areas, as well as the shadowy mystique that accompanies all theatre spaces. Stories spread over the years of a young man sighted in the wings and the name Nathaniel, but should such a spectre be passing through, hed hail from elsewhere, due to the buildings lack of a corroborating history, and would likely be just another enthusiastic fan. ATOKA SCHOOL Over the past few years, the Atoka School has, somewhat amusingly, popped up on a number of internet lists claiming to rank the most haunted locales in New Mexico. But whereas other sites on those lists come with a bit more documented detail as to their hauntings, Atokas former education hub tends to be accompanied by the following descriptions: Its a popular place for teenagers to hang out and try to scare each other. The teenagers report having heard groans and snarls. The school closed mysteriously overnight with no warning, and several businesses located there over the years have done the same. That last statement is patently false. Atoka School, built in 1949 and consolidated with the school in Lakewood, was integrated into the Artesia Public Schools system in 1953 and closed with plenty of warning in 1970, at which time its students began being bused into Artesia. The abandoned school building is undoubtedly creepy, a side effect of age and decay. And its true teenagers have often driven the adjacent road at night, peering toward its horror-movie-quality, crumbling facade with interest. Some have undoubtedly sneaked in, although thats certainly discouraged, due not only to the site being private property but to structural issues and the likely presence of asbestos. Additionally, a group of teens who did visit the building in the late 1990s confirmed having heard groans and footsteps they turned out to belong to a goat. They also saw a white shape fly past them a barn owl. Atoka Schools haunt factor may not be as high as the internet alleges, but its simply the sort of place that looks as if it SHOULD be haunted. And sometimes thats enough, if only for an exhilarating drive-by scare. HOTEL ARTESIA Had Hotel Artesia survived, its ghost stories would, by this time, likely be too numerous to count. The place, much like the Atoka School, just looked the part. Constructed in 1929, the hotel was as large and modern as one would expect from a building of that era. Its rooftop lounge was a major attraction, with a wrap-around outdoor balcony that offered views of the entire Pecos Valley. Numerous events, including Artesia High School proms, were held there over the years. By the 1970s, however, the hotels owners were looking to sell, and they were finding no takers. At a time when progress meant tearing things down rather than maintaining them for future generations, the buildings fate was all but sealed. It had a rather incredible last hurrah, however, when, in 1975, several scenes for The Man Who Fell to Earth starring David Bowie were filmed there. Soon after, it was destroyed, and its unclear whether any ghost stories had come to charm its Roaring-Twenties-era halls. One persistent rumor that turned out to be false was that the hotel housed an underground tunnel that connected, among possible other destinations, to the former Bullocks Feed and Seed building to its south (now the site of IHOP). But while no definitive hauntings were reported while the hotel still existed, it seems a spirit or two may remain even now that its gone. Dunn says while there was no tunnel beneath Hotel Artesia, there WAS a basement, a fact that wasnt discovered until a few decades later when construction began on the sites new occupant: the Brewer Shell at First and Main streets. Not long after the convenience stores completion, the museum received a visit from a clerk at the station, inquiring about the history of the hotel. Dunn says the individual told museum staff workers had reported hearing old-time music late at night when they were in the process of closing and not only that, a man in old-fashioned clothing had been seen in the storage room. The clerk told Dunn the figure had walked across the floor before disappearing into it as if descending stairs into a basement. Is Donald Trump too scared to name George Bush Sr. and P2 Freemasons as Kennedy assassins? U.S. Corporation President Donald Trump last week announced he would release all records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living. In other words, it appears he is too scared to mention the involvement of George Bush (Scherf, Pecce) Sr. and the Vatican P2 Freemason lodge fascist New World Order faction. Pentagon officials, however, say, Trump muscled the CIA, Mossad, the FBI, and the Bush cabal to release ALL JFK files, since [then Israeli Prime Minister] Ben Gurion wanted JFK dead, and the same perps also did 9/11. These are the people who aim to create a world fascist government controlled by members of European royal families who claim descent from the Caesars and from King David, as revealed by forensic research over a period of many years. This research, including meetings with many members of this family group, has led us to the conclusion that these are the real elders of Zion. Thanks to the confessions of Benjamin Freedman http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm and others, John F. Kennedy became aware of a plot to start World War III, wipe out 90% of humanity, and turn the rest into slaves. The Zionists very nearly succeeded in accomplishing this by triggering all-out nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. That is why Kennedy decided to take away their main source of powerthe ability to create money out of thin air. George Bush Sr. (whose real family name goes back through Sherf and Pearce to the Roman aristocratic Pecce name) and the Zionists had Kennedy assassinated in order to prevent the nationalization of the Federal Reserve Board. These people are still in control of the creation of U.S. dollars, Euros, and Japanese yen out of thin air. Their main instrument of power in the U.S. these days is still the Bush/Clinton/Rockefeller Zionist Federal Reserve Board, truth researchers agree. A very interesting example of how these gangsters distribute their fiat money can be seen in the article at the link below that shows how the rise in Amazon share prices matches the rise in central bank money printing and moves in the opposite direction of actual Amazon results. There can be little doubt that Jeff Bezos is now the worlds richest man, because he has been selected as a premier distributor of fiat money. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-27/amazon Forensic research has shown that most (if not all) major listed corporations are controlled, via hedge funds like Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, Fidelity, etc., by this family group, known now to many as the Khazarian mafia. In Japan, this writer has identified the quislings used by the Khazarian mafia, thanks to testimony by assassins formerly in their employ here. These people are now vanishing one by one as their former hitmen turn on them, the assassins say. The quisling politician Seiji Maehara played a key role in the recent theft of the Japanese election by Khazarian mobsters led by Rothschild agent Michael Greenberg and Barbara Bush cousin Richard Armitage. Maehara is the son of the North Korean agent Son Tae Chuk, also known as Daisaku Ikeda. Ikeda for years was the absolute ruler of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist lay group and controller of the Komeito political party, whose duped members are crucial to maintaining Khazarian control of Japan. Ikeda has been in a vegetative state (probably dead) for several years, so Maehara is effectively in charge now, even though he ostensibly belongs to a different political grouping. White Dragon Society (WDS) sources in Japan say Maehara regularly walks into the U.S. embassy in Tokyo and is never asked to show any ID. The Khazarians stole the Japanese election because the Party of Hope led by Koike Yuriko was planning to nationalize the Bank of Japan, say sources close to the Japanese emperor. With U.S. President Donald Trump scheduled to visit Japan November 5-7, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS, the employer of Greenberg and Armitage) had big meetings this past weekend in Tokyo to discuss what agenda they were going to present to Trump. Prior to this gathering, the CSIS sent a top agent to meet with a representative of the White Dragon Society. At this meeting, the CSIS official, who personally does not approve of Armitage, said that he was sent by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to investigate the mysterious Dr. Michael Van de Meer, a.k.a. Dr. Michael Meiring, who had both his legs blown off by a bomb in Davao, Philippines when Duterte was mayor there. The official was told Van de Meer believed the bomb was set by Duterte, whom he believed was working for George Bush Sr. The CSIS official replied by saying Duterte denied any involvement in setting off the bomb. When asked what Van de Meer was doing in the Philippines, it was explained that he was looking for gold. Van de Meer was representing what he called the family and needed gold in order to stave off their bankruptcy. The family he was referring to was none other than the people claiming descent from King Davidi.e., the Khazarian mob. To understand the dire situation the Khazarian mob is now facing, take a look at the chart of world debt in the link below. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-28/visualizing-63-trillion-world-debt What this shows is that the Khazarian mob-controlled G7 nations account for 64% of the worlds debt. Japan and the United States Corporation alone owe 51% of the worlds debt. The mostly Asian creditors to the Khazarian nations are demanding payment in gold, something the Khazarians have run out of. The Khazarians bought time in 2001 by blowing up the World Trade Center and invading Iraq in order to steal oil to use to pay off their debts. This time the hysterical Khazarian Zionists are trying desperately to get out of their payment obligations by staging an Armageddon event using North Korea, which is why stealing the Japanese election was so important to them. That is why it is crucial that Donald Trump not be duped by a fake Khazarian North Korean threat story when he comes to Asia next week. Donald Trump has already been fooled by the story of North Korean kidnap victims. For example, the Khazarian mob is putting out a story that the 13-year-old Megumi Yokota was kidnapped by North Korea, and they regularly trot out her parents on TV to shed tears about their missing daughter. In fact, Megumi became the mother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and her parents have regular secret meetings with her and their grandson Kim Jong Un in Moscow and Ulan Bator, Mongolia, according to Japanese military intelligence, members of the Rothschild family, and others. The Japanese puppet regime, as soon as they stole the election, obediently began screaming about the North Korean threat, as ordered by their Khazarian slave masters. The Yamaguchi-gumi assassin Mr. K told this writer last week that his predictions of a natural disaster in Japan around election time were based on Khazarian threats to unleash earthquake weapons in order to ensure Japanese obedience to their rule. It was pointed out to Mr. K that earthquake weapons are not a one-way street and that a sudden swarm of earthquakes at La Palma, one of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, threatened a 100-meter tsunami against the U.S. East Coast and Southern Europe last week. That was the real reason why the Khazarians backed off on using their earthquake weapon, he was told. http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/canary-islands-volcano-eruption-tsunami-warning-cumbre-vieja-tenerife-a8018776.html As long as the situation in North Korea is kept under control, this time the world has a very real chance of bankrupting these Khazarian criminals once and for all. In a hint that may happen, a WDS source in Canada notes that, In the next eight days, Canada, Europe, Japan, America, and the UK will all host central bank meetings. Something is up for sure. This something could be an end to fiat banking, which is inevitable. As to exactly when that happens, though, we shall see. In any case, Khazarian mob control of the Middle East and thus of the petrodollar is crumbling. In Iraq, Mossad asset Massoud Barzani was removed from power as the Kurdish people turn against him for serving Israel, Pentagon sources note. Russia has now taken control of the Kurdish pipeline to the Mediterranean and may cut off oil to Israel, the sources add. Khazarian slave state Saudi Arabia is now trying desperately to show a moderate face and seek investors as its oil-money power continues to wane. But until the Saudis learn to actually work and not rely on foreign servants, they are not going to find much interest in their plans. In the U.S., too, the purge of Khazarians continues to unfold. This was seen last week as Donald Trump and Steven Bannon tightened their grip on the Republican Party with the exodus of anti-Trumper senators Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Luther Strange, who were backed by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOP establishment. Also, the purge of Khazarian corporate media continued last week with the firing of Mark Halperin from NBCs Washington Bureau on charges of sexual harassment. There will be a lot more of that going on as Hollywood and the corporate media conglomerates are taken out of Khazarian control, promise Pentagon and agency officials. Pentagon sources also had the following comment to make on the new government in China: [Anti-corruption tsar] Wang Qishan made lots of enemies and may have stepped down from the politburo standing committee so new guy Zhao Leji can crack down on corruption, but he is still Xis financial guy and a back channel for Trump because he owns so many USA properties. The new Chinese politburo standing committee has two representatives from the Shanghai faction of Jiang Zemin, two from the Guangdong faction of Hu Jintao, and three from the Northern faction of Xi Jinping. This means at least two of the main power centers must sign off on any major decisions and no single faction can exercise dictatorial control. This Chinese group will be discussing how to improve world governance, with Russian Orthodox Christian power symbolized by President Putin, and the U.S. nationalist stratocracy (military government) symbolized by Trump. If the world is lucky, many big and good decisions will be made when Trump visits Asia from November 3-14, 2017. Read Benjamin Fulfords reports at ..... https://benjaminfulford.net/ Dateline: Utah A judge in Utah served an eviction notice to an unborn child last week. According to reports, Kaylee Bays, a judicial assistant at the Fourth District Court in Provo went to the hospital earlier in the week thinking she was going into labor. It turned out to be only a false alarm, though, and she returned to work the following day. As a joke, she asked Judge Lynn Davis to serve the baby an eviction notice. Davis subsequently served a stamped notice to the unborn child notifying her that she had committed a nuisance because Mommy is uncomfortable and running out of room for you! The notice gave the baby three days to vacate the premises under threat of being served with a Summons and Complaint for unlawful detainer and the possibility of further fines. Within 12 hours of receiving the written notice, Bays did indeed go into labor and gave birth to a baby girl. No further legal actions were pursued. Dateline: Germany A judge has convinced a German couple not to name their newborn Lucifer. Two parents who had given birth to a son earlier this year in Kassel were told by an official at the local registry office that the name Lucifer could put the baby in danger. In Latin, lucifer means light-bearer, but the name is more often used in reference to the Christian Satana figure of evil. The official refused to approve the name and passed the matter on to a district court. Court spokesman Matthias Grund told Hessische Niedersachsische Allgemeine (HNA) that the couple was persuaded by a judge to give their child a different name during a private hearing. Instead of Lucifer, the baby was officially named Lucien. There are no official laws banning specific names in Germany, but registrars can have a case clarified by the court if they feel a name will put a child's welfare at risk. Dateline: Canada A driver in Montreal received a ticket for singing Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) in his car. Taoufik Moalla claims he was on his way to buy a bottle of water and was singing along to the C+C Music Factory '90s dance hit last week when a police vehicle pulled him over. Moalla says four officers surrounded his car, and asked him if he was screaming. He claims he told them he had only been singing. The officers then allegedly returned to their vehicle to check Moalla's license and registration. When they came back, they issued him a ticket for screaming in public. According to CTV News, a Montreal bylaw prohibits screaming because it violates peace and tranquility. Moella says he doesn't feel like he was being particularly loud, but seemed to hold no grudges against the officers, telling reporters that they were doing their job. He has contested the ticket, though, and is waiting for a court date to plead his case. Dateline: Madagascar Officials in Madagascar warn against the practice of dancing with the dead, saying it could spread the plague. Since August, the country has been suffering from an outbreak of the plague that has infected over 1,000 people and killed over 100. Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Humans usually are infected through the bite of a flea or rodent. Two-thirds of the cases identified in Madagascar have been identified as pneumonic plague, which spreads from person to person through coughing or sneezing. The harmful bacteria will stay active on the victim's body well after death, however, and the country's health officials are warning citizens that handling the corpses of loved ones can lead to infection. Their concern is in response to a local practice called famadihanaor the turning of the boneswhich involves exhuming deceased family members, wrapping them in a cloth and dancing with the remains before returning them to their graves. Dateline: Iowa The Iowa Department of Transportation released a reminder to the state's residents that deer can't read signs. In a Facebook post last week, the department published an image of a deer crossing sign along with the comment: We actually get this question on a pretty regular basis. Q. Why don't you put these signs where it is safer for the deer to cross? A. Deer can't read signs. Drivers can. This sign isn't intended to tell deer where to cross, it's for drivers to be alert that deer have been in this area in the past. The confusion is apparently felt in other areas of the nation as well. A 2012 viral YouTube video uploaded by the producers of a North Dakota radio show featured an audio interview with a woman who claimed to have sent a number of letters to various state agencies asking to move the signs. She says her pleas were ignored. These two books are really petit fours that will whet your appetite to know more, explore deeper. Padmasambhava, written by Neten Chokling Rimpoche, is the first of the two in an ongoing series on legendary Buddhist masters, many of whom are acknowledged today as seminal thinkers of acuity and sweeping intellectual and philosophical bandwidth. This book could not have come at a more opportune moment. At a time when the world is riven with divisions ever widening schisms that bode ill for the very survival of the human race its perhaps the wisdom of these Great Masters that will illumine our path, show us the way forward through the darkness that threatens to subsume us all. From Kashmir in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, theres archaeological evidence of Indias significant Buddhist past. But, who were the Great Buddhist Masters? Where did they come from? Where did they travel to spread their inspirational message? Significant journeys, these, that helped both the spread and the preservation of Buddhist teachings.Padmasambhavas story is narrated by Neten Chokling Rimpoche; an ordained monk and teacher, whos revered as the reincarnation of the 19th century Master, Chokgyur Lingpa a lineage that traces back to Trisong Detsen, the Tibetan king who first invited Padmasambhava to Tibet. It is this sage with whom some of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage sites like Samye in Tibet, the Maratika and Asura Caves and the Great Stupa at Boudhanath in Nepal, Swat in Pakistan, are associated The Rimpoche recounts the multiple myths, parables and allegorical tales surrounding the birth and life of Padmasambhava hagiographic narratives replete with evil spirits, conspiring witches, diabolical courtiers, that exalt him as paragon of virtue/slayer of demons/embodiment of all thats good and virtuous, but then thats the kind of myth-making that attends on most iconic historical/religious figures. What we do know for a fact is that Padmasambhava or the Great Indian Pandit as he was called in Tibet, arrived in the land from India in 810 AD, and left in 864 AD. In these forty eight years, he radically transformed the warring Tibetan people, converted them to a more compassionate way of life, spread the gospel of Vajrayana Buddhism in this land. This teacher, worshipped as the Lotus-born Master, whose birth (in Swat in modern day Pakistan) and subsequent arrival in Tibet was preordained, established Samye, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet and one of the most revered pilgrimage sites for Buddhists worldwide today imparted the teachings of the vital, erstwhile secret, Guhyagarbha Tantra that was translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by his closest disciples Yeshe Shunu and Ma Rinchen Chok as also the Instruction of Pointing the Staff. Pointing the Staff is one of the most profound meditations on the nature and meaning of Being. Through years of strife, war and fiercely-competing ideological battles these precious teachings or termas were fiercely-guarded to protect them from the ravages of time and keep them away from alterations. When the 11th century Indian scholar and Master Atisha Dipankara of Vikramshila university arrived in Tibet, he was stunned to discover Vajrayaana texts that had by then disappeared from India, meticulously preserved in Tibet. In its recounting of the Padmasmbhavas life and teachings, casting light on the contribution of this Great Indian Pandit to spreading Buddhas message of love, light and the path to nirvana, this book renders yeoman service. Series editor Aruna Vasudev deserves rich praise for not only editing these books, but also originating the concept, picking the thinkers needed to be written about as also identifying the authors. Impeccable choices each one of them. The second book in the series is Nagarjuna, written by Mohini Kent. Nagarjuna is the Buddhist philosopher/sage who was a scholar monk who headed Nalanda, the great Indian centre for Buddhist studies, in the late second century AD. A great debater, logician and thinker, his philosophy and writings fundamentally influenced Buddhism in the millennia that followed. His most famous work, the Mulamadhyamakakarika (Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way) introduced the concept of shunyata or emptiness. After Gautama Buddha, Nagarjuna remains the single-most important figure in Buddhist thought. In the Mahayana traditions hes referred to respectfully as the Second Buddha. His biographical details are hard to come by. Indian, Tibetan and Chinese accounts of his life were written many centuries after his death and much myth-making happened around purported events of his life, and indeed about the man himself. Together with his disciple Aryadeva, he is credited with founding the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism. What is it about the man that hes acknowledged as a compelling thinker even by contemporary philosophers? One cited by the likes of brilliant nuclear physicist Raja Ramanna as being inspirational because, in one of his writings, he found an account that accords with much of what quantum physics is saying today! It would be both reductive and foolhardy to try to summarise and explain his deeply-metaphysical ruminations on the knowledge and realisation of emptiness. One can, at best, offer a degustation menu to the hungry seeker. By the time Nagarjuna matured as a thinker/philosopher, the concept of zero had shaken up all existing metaphysical systems of philosophy. Nagarjuna took the new concept of emptiness and changed Buddhism forever. His argument, in a nutshell, is that all phenomena lack inherently-stable existence, they are empty and exist only because of interdependence. And therein lies the hope for transformation, because if each phenomena was fixed in its essence, how would it transmute into anything else? And in this knowledge lies the key to clarity, quietus and salvation. Through consciousness about how we live, what we do, how we interact with each other and with the Earth itself, we can hope to be aware, change and attain wisdom. Like the Buddha himself did. One reforms oneself. And then, the world. These two books are really petit fours that will whet your appetite to know more, explore deeper. Which is probably the idea behind this very commendable venture which offers lay readers a unique opportunity to learn a little more about the great minds who have shaped the way we view ourselves, the world around us, for millennia. The writer is a veteran journalist based in Delhi who specialises in the arts Carmichael has been delayed by court challenges from environmentalists and indigenous groups. Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia. (File Photo) Sydney: Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia, two sources with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday. Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.54 billion) in outside financing for its proposed A$4 billion Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland. However, Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project which environmentalists oppose because of concerns over the size of the mine and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef. CMEC is an engineering contractor that is majority-owned by Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Machinery Industry Corp Ltd, or Sinomach. CMEC would provide financing through the China Export Import Bank or China Construction Bank, or both, in return for winning the procurement and engineering contracts, for the project, according to a report issued earlier on Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA) an outspoken opponent of the project, citing unidentified sources. Chinese SOE backing raises the probability that Adani can secure a financial close for this long delayed project, the report said. In addition to the A$2 billion in financing, Adani has also applied for A$900 million in Australian government loans to build a railway to ship coal 400 km (250 miles) from the Carmichael site to a port on the Pacific Ocean for export. Carmichael has been delayed by court challenges from environmentalists and indigenous groups concerned about climate change, and the impact on native land and water supply, but those challenges have been rejected. Jeyakumar Janakaraj, chief executive of Adani Australia, told Reuters on October 3, it wants to tie up financing by March 2018 and would look to sell a minority stake in the project to help raise funds. Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael under the first stage of the project by March 2020. The pact was signed on October 5 during the state visit of the president of India to Ethiopia. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its ex-post facto approval to the trade agreement between India and Ethiopia. New Delhi: The government on Wednesday gave its ex- post facto approval to the trade agreement between India and Ethiopia to strengthen economic ties between the two countries, an official statement said. The decision was taken by the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. The trade agreement will replace the existing pact signed in 1982. The Cabinet "has given its ex-post facto approval for the trade agreement between India and Ethiopia for strengthening and promoting trade and economic co-operation", the statement read. The pact was signed on October 5 during the state visit of the president of India to Ethiopia. "The trade agreement will provide for all necessary measures to encourage trade, economic cooperation, investment and technical co-operation," it added. The bilateral trade between India and Ethiopia declined to USD 840.5 million in 2016-17, from USD 854.6 million in the previous fiscal. Subdued demand caused by GST is blamed for output stagnation. The Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 50.3 in October, from 51.2 in September, indicating a broad stagnation in the manufacturing sector. New Delhi: Manufacturing activity in India slackened in October as new orders stagnated in the wake of subdued demand conditions, largely due to negative impacts of GST, a survey said on Wednesday. The Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to 50.3 in October, from 51.2 in September, indicating a broad stagnation in the manufacturing sector. This is for the third consecutive month that the index has come in above 50 that separates expansion from contraction. The decline in manufacturing activity was mostly because of stagnation in new business as negative impacts of GST led to subdued demand conditions. Moreover, new export orders dropped at the fastest pace since September 2013. Indias manufacturing companies struggled somewhat as the recent recovery enjoyed by the sector lost impetus in October, said Aashna Dodhia, economist at IHS Markit and author of the report, adding that manufacturing production rose at the weakest pace in the current sequence of growth. Ms Dodhia further noted that inflows of new orders stagnated as the negative effects arising from implementation of GST continued to dampen demand levels. Furthermore, overseas demand for Indian goods dipped to the greatest extent since September 2013. The silver lining, however, is firms added to their payroll numbers at a similar pace to that of September in response to greater volumes of outstanding business. On the price front, input cost pressures rose at the fastest pace since May. Subsequently, firms reportedly raised their output prices to pass on greater cost burden to clients and protect their profit margins. Meanwhile, the level of business confidence eased to the weakest since February. Business confidence eased to the weakest since February as some firms expressed concerns over negative GST effects. However, those manufacturers that were optimistic forecast benefits of GST materialising over the next 12 months, Ms Dodhia added. The October manufacturing PMI data comes in sharp contrast to the robust show by India on World Banks Ease of Doing Business ranking. India jumped 30 notches to the 100th place in the latest compilation. The actor opened up about his views on his 'Taal' co-star in an interview wtih Karan Johar for their film 'Ittefaq.' Mumbai: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan celebrated her birthday on Wednesday and stories tracing her successful run in the industry and her beauty were rampant. The actress might have turned 44 on Wednesday, but the tag of Worlds Most Beautiful Woman which she was associated with after her famous Miss World title win in 1994, still refuses to leave her. While one of the newer lot of actors like Rajkummar Rao used the same term to express his excitement of working with the actress, even some of the senior actors, who has shared screen space with her years ago, are still fascinated by her. And when it comes from one of the most reserved and introverted actors in the industry, Akshaye Khanna, it definitely means something. Akshaye and Aishwarya worked in two films with opposite fates in the same year 1999. After the Rishi Kapoor directorial Aa Ab Laut Chalen flopped, the pair redeemed themselves with Subhash Ghai's successful Taal, where their chemistry was appreciated. Akshay was a part of an 'Interrogation with Karan Johar' along with Sidharth Malhotra and Sonakshi for the promotions of their next film Ittefaq. Akshaye was asked by Karan who he finds the sexiest woman in the industry, to which he replied,"I cant take my eyes off her every time I meet her. I have done two films with her. She might be used to be people looking at her. For me, it's embarrassing. I am not used to not being able to take my eyes off somebody. You just keep staring at her like a lunatic." Even Sonakshi echoed his views, "Not only guys. Even I am not able to take my eyes off her. She is damn stunning." With such admiration, there's no doubt Akshaye would love to reunite with Aishwarya on the big screen after 18 years. Watch the video here: Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have shared their unpleasant experiences with the actor. Kevin Spacey came out as gay and aplogised following allegations by Anthony Rapp.(Photo: AFP) Los Angeles: New allegations of sexual misconduct from a number of men have emerged against actor Kevin Spacey. Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have shared their stories of how Spacey allegedly made unwanted advances towards them. While Montana said he was left with PTSD for six months after he claims Spacey "forcefully" groped him, Cavazo, in a Facebook post, alleged that the actor made two advances on him, bordering on harassment, in London, where Cavazos appeared in various productions at The Old Vic theater. Spacey served as the theatre's artistic director from 2004 to 2015. Cavazos added that Spacey frequently targeted young actors, particularly those under 30. "It was so common that it became a local joke (in poor taste)," Cavazos wrote. The Old Vic has said no formal complaints were ever made against Spacey during his tenure, but the theatre said it was setting up a confidential email address for people to report experiences of harassment. The new accusations follow the explosive allegation by actor Anthony Rapp, who revealed that Spacey sexually assaulted him in the 1980s when he was just a 14-year-old. Production on the sixth and last season of Netflix's 'House of Cards,' in which Spacey plays the lead role of Frank Underwood, has since been suspended. The streaming service, which said it was "deeply troubled" by Rapp's allegation, is also behind 'Gore,' an upcoming biopic starring Spacey as the American writer Gore Vidal. Shooting on the project wrapped last month in Italy. Almost all Opposition parties have decided to organise separate protests on demonetisation anniversary on November 8. New Delhi: Despite having fielded candidates in Gujarat Assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is now joining the grand Opposition protest against demonetisation on November 8. The AAP will mark November 8, the day demonetisation was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016, as Dhokha Divas along with other Opposition parties that are holding Black Day and Akrosh Divas. Almost all Opposition parties have decided to organise separate protests on demonetisation anniversary on November 8. Sources told this newspaper that the AAP has been warming up to the idea of a joining a joint Opposition, but it was the Congress which was still distrustful of the other party and continued to call it the BJPs B-Team. However, senior leaders like Sharad Yadav were acting as a go-between for the two parties and efforts were on to induct the AAP into the joint Opposition fold after elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. The Congress, which is working hard to stitch together a mega alliance of all anti-BJP forces in Gujarat, however, seems to be jittery over the AAPs decision to contest 11 seats in the state. Congress sources said that the party suspects that the AAP was again working as a B-team of the BJP by contesting the seats where the BJP was on a weak wicket and was likely to help the ruling party emerge victorious in these places. Another factor which was playing on Congress minds was that the AAP is the chief Opposition in Punjab and was in a direct fight with it in Delhi, the sources added. The AAP, however, denied Congress charges. We are not BJPs B-team, AAP Gujarat coordinator Harshil Nayak said. It makes no sense to contest on all the seats and reduce the anti-BJP votes where the party does not have any stronghold. According to a BJP statement, more than 1 lakh party workers riding motorbikes are expected to attend a rally to be addressed by Amit Shah. BJP president Amit Shah will kick off the party's 79-day 'Karnataka Parivartan Yatra' in Bengaluru on Thursday, with the aim of returning to power in the southern state. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah will kick off the party's 79-day 'Karnataka Parivartan Yatra' in Bengaluru on Thursday, with the aim of returning to power in the southern state. According to a BJP statement, more than one lakh party workers riding motorbikes are expected to attend a rally to be addressed by Shah. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally on January 28 on the conclusion of the yatra to be led by the party's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa. Party workers from the state's 28,000 polling booths are expected to take part in Shah's rally. Top party leaders, including Union ministers and chief ministers, will attend the yatra, which will pass through the state's 224 Assembly seats, the statement said. The Congress is in power in the state and the BJP is making all-out efforts to oust it in the Assembly polls scheduled to be held early in 2018. The two ladies were nabbed by the Indian security agencies on smuggling charges. 'I want the Indian prisoners nabbed in Pakistan to return to their home as well. I thank lawyer Navjot ji and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and salute entire India for their help,' Fatima said. (Photo: ANI) Amritsar: Pakistani national Fatima, who had been lodged in the Amritsar Central Jail with her daughter Hinna and sister Mumtaaz on smuggling charges for over 10 years, has finally walked free. The two ladies were nabbed by the Indian security agencies on smuggling charges. Hinna was born and brought up in the prison. They are now set to reach their homeland, Pakistan, through the Attari border after a decade. "I want the Indian prisoners nabbed in Pakistan to return to their home as well. I thank lawyer Navjot ji and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and salute entire India for their help," Fatima said. Hinna, who has never been to her home, was also elated. "I am very happy that I will return to my home and meet my father," she said. Fatimas sister, Mumtaaz, said everyone, from police personnel to the government to PM Modi, helped them throughout the journey and that they were delighted to return home. Lawyer Navjot Kaur Chabha, who had been working on the case since October 2016, said she was happy her struggle didn't go in vain. "Hinna has been released after a very long struggle. She is the reason I took this stand because the little girl was suffering with no fault of hers. Today is my Diwali," the lawyer said. Chabha acknowledged Prime Minister Modi's help in the case. "I had written a letter to the prime minister on Hinna's behalf. This is a matter of extreme delight for us that the Indian Government intervened and released her. Hinna is very happy that she will go to her homeland now and meet her father and the rest of the family," she said. The government hopes to issue the final rules, drafted by the aviation regulator, by December 31 after consultations with stakeholders. Ashok Gajapathi Raju said his ministry was working for Ease of Doing Business in the drone industry. (Photo: AFP) New Delhi: Pizzas, medicines and mobile phones being delivered by drones at customers doorstep is now closer to becoming a reality in India. The government on Wednesday paved the way for drones to be at your service by announcing draft rules that permit commercial use of remotely-piloted aircraft systems. Commercial drones are proposed to be used within a flying zone of less than 200 metre height and only during daytime. Till now use of drones by civilians was banned and confined to security or other government agencies. Civil aviation minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju said, The drone industry could help Indias development in several sectors such as agriculture and oil and gas. Mr Raju said his ministry was working for Ease of Doing Business in the drone industry. Minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha said, We want to make India the worlds leader in the use of drones. He also indicated that with rapidly-evolving technology, there may come a time when even air-rickshaws ferrying passengers at reasonable fares becomes a reality. The government hopes to issue the final rules, drafted by the aviation regulator, by December 31 after consultations with stakeholders. The Directorate General of Civil Aviations draft regulations have classified drones based on their maximum take-off weight. Drones less than or equal to 250 gm have been classified as nano; those greater than 250 gm and less than or equal to 2 kg are classified as micro; greater than 2 kg and less than or equal to 25 kg have been classified as mini; drones that are greater than 25 kg and less than or equal to 150 kg will be termed small; while those greater than 150 kg will be large. Except for the nano category and those operated by government security agencies, all other commercial drones will be registered by the DGCA with a unique identification number (UIN) each. Mini and above categories will require Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP), said a government statement. Except for nano and micro category, remote pilot will have to undergo requisite training. All drones are proposed to be operated in visual line of sight during day time only and below 200 feet. Dropping of any substance, carriage of hazardous material or animal or human payload is not permitted, the government stated. Ministry officials said drones could be soon used for purposes including e-commerce, medical supplies, delivery of blood in emergency cases, inspection of oil pipelines and even for other activities such as wildlife photography. The government said security concerns were being taken seriously and it is working on technical solutions to neutralise rogue drones. In the draft rules, certain areas have been declared no drone zones. Area in a 5 km radius from Vijay Chowk in New Delhi, which houses Parliament and the Rashtrapati Bhawan, will be one such restricted zone. The no drone-zone will also include areas within 5 km radius from airports and within 50 km from the international border which includes areas near the Line of Control with Pakistan and the China border. Drones in the micro and more heavier categories will need safety equipment, including anti-collision lights. Sinha maintained that he was not challenging his party but 'showing mirror to it' in the BJP's and the nation's interest. Asked if he could join any other political party, the former cinestar Shatrugan Sinha responded with his signature dialogue- 'khamosh (keep quiet)'. (Photo: File | PTI) New Delhi: There is anger among people over Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation, and the writing on the wall is clear that the Gujarat Assembly election is not just a 'chunav' (poll) for the BJP but also a 'chunauti' (challenge), outspoken party MP Shatrughan Sinha said on Wednesday. Sharing dais with Congress leader Manish Tewari at a panel discussion on the latter's book 'Tidings of Troubled Times', Sinha also defended his comments on economic issues, saying "if a lawyer can talk about finances, if a TV actress can be the HRD minister and if a 'chaiwala' can be... then why I cannot talk about economy?" His remarks were an obvious reference to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani, who was earlier HRD minister, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, he did not name any of them. Sinha maintained that he was not challenging his party but "showing mirror to it" in the BJP's and the nation's interest. "From the writing on the wall and anger among people over GST, demonetisation, unemployment...seeing it, I don't want to say how many seats the BJP will get but certainly this election is going to be a special challenge," he said. However, the MP from Patna Sahib said the BJP can increase its seats by staying united and should not take the elections lightly. "I will only say the matter is serious and this is not chunav (election), but chunauti (challenge)," he said. Without naming anyone, Sinha said he is often told that he may lose ticket for the next general election. Asked if he could join any other political party, the former cinestar responded with his signature dialogue-"khamosh (keep quiet)". The government should seek suggestions from "experts and learned people from the opposition" like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and others in running the country, he said. The MP also hit out at Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over the latter's "job applicant at 80" barb directed at senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha. "He (Jaitley) may himself lose his job but is suggesting job for others," Sinha quipped. Sinha claimed "a very big" leader called him up one day and asked him why he was "speaking the language of opposition" on demonetisation and GST. The actor-turned-politician said he told that leader that what he said was in the national interest. Earlier, during his address, Sinha decribed BJP veteran L K Advani as the "silver lining in the political cloud", but lamented that the former deputy prime minister was denied any post and "cut to size". "Leave aside making him the president, he was not made even a minister. Despite having made and saved the careers of many, he finds himself in this condition today," he said, without naming anyone. Noting that the opposition will be observing a 'black day' and the ruling BJP 'anti-black money day' on November 8, the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the launch of demonetisation exercise last year, Sinha asked where the black money had gone. "I will only celebrate Advaniji's birthday on the day and seek his blessings and guidance," he added. The actor-turned-politician said the main opposition Congress had a "talent pool" and that he admired its chief Sonia Gandhi, its vice president Rahul Gandhi and NCP chief Sharad Pawar and some other opposition leaders. Sinha, who was reportedly pulled up by the BJP leadership for meeting Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar when the latter was not in the NDA, said the prime minister also meets opposition leaders. "What is right for Peter should be right for Paul too," he said. Sinha has often criticised the BJP and the Modi government's policies and decisions, including demonetisation and the GST. Fixing the next hearing on December 13, the court also sought an update from the Centre on the 1,581 cases. New Delhi: Aiming to weed out criminals from politics, the Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Centre to submit a plan next month to set up special courts for fast tracking trial of 1,581 lawmakers facing criminal cases since 2014. A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha asked the Centre to indicate how much money it was willing to allocate for setting up fast track courts for concluding the trial of MPs and MLAs facing criminal charges within a year. The bench noted that these special courts should exclusively deal with cases of politicians. Justice Gogoi said that the petition seeking swift trial of lawmakers has arisen because convictions are not taking place. In some cases it takes 20 years for a person to be convicted and by this time he serves four terms as a legislator, he said. Fixing the next hearing on December 13, the court also sought an update from the Centre on the 1,581 cases. Petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya had earlier told the apex court that 1,581 MPs and MLAs have criminal cases pending against them according to affidavits filed during the 2014 parliamentary and Assembly elections. The bench also wanted to know from the Centre the number of criminal cases registered afresh against politicians. The Election Commission joined the apex courts mission by supporting a petitioners suggestion to impose lifetime ban on convicted politicians from contesting elections. Senior counsel Meenakshi Arora, appearing for the EC, said the Commission supported the petitioner to the extent that there should be de-criminalisation of politics. She also favoured special courts to fast track pending criminal cases. The court also decided to examine whether a lifetime ban would violate the right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution, as such a disqualification has not been provided either in the Constitution or the Representation of People Act. A ban for a lifetime, as sought by the petitioner, could spell doom for politicians including Lalu Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar or AIADMKs V.K. Sasikala in Tamil Nadu. The existing law disqualifies politicians sentenced to a jail term of two years or more from contesting elections for six years from the date of release from prison. Additional solicitor general Atmaram Nadkarni, appearing for the Centre, said that the government was not averse to setting up special courts and added that it was a subject related to states. The bench said that the states will be involved after the Centre submits its scheme and the financial outlay for the courts. On the demand for a lifetime ban on convicted politicians from contesting elections, Mr Nadkarni said that the recommendations of the EC and Law Commission favouring such a ban were being considered by the government. He said that the government had not come across even a single case of a politician getting elected after conviction and disqualification. This was disputed by petitioners who pointed out the case of Phoolan Devi who became an MP from Mirzapur constituency in Uttar Pradesh in the late 1990s. 'There's no Hindu terrorist group. Haasan is a morally corrupt person' Subramanian Swamy says in response to actors claim. The Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus, Kamal Haasan said. (File photo) Chennai: Actor Kamal Haasan, who has been lately making headlines over his expected entry into politics, took on the right-wing groups on Thursday, saying that these outfits cannot deny the existence of Hindu terror. The Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus, Haasan wrote in a weekly column, titled One cannot say there is no Hindu terror anymore, in Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan. In the past the Hindu right used to engage only in intellectual debates with the other religious groups. Once this approach started failing they have resorted to muscle power. They too started indulging in violence, he wrote. Haasans column was in response to a question by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The Kerala chief minister had asked the actor to express his view on Hindutva forces and its attempt to dilute Tamil culture. BJP leadrer Subramanian Swamy responded to Haasans claim of Hindu terror and called him a morally corrupt person. If he has such an inclination, he should report it to the authorities. There is no Hindu terrorist organisation. Kamal Haasan is a morally corrupt person, he can do anything at any time; he cannot be taken seriously. The NIA should visit him and ask him if he has any proof, Swamy told Times Now. Haasan, who once commended the Centres move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and old 500 notes, had later, in a column, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept that his move was wrong. The film star is planning to launch his own political party. He recently asked his fans to be prepared for a big announcement on November 7, his birthday. The RJD chief, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, has been on the offensive against Mr Kumar and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi over the Srijan scam. The CBI recently registered 10 FIRs to probe the Srijan scam in which government funds worth about Rs 1,000 crore were allegedly diverted to the accounts of a non-government organisation. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: The CBI, probing the multi-crore Srijan scam in Bihar, has quizzed three former senior administrative officers who were posted in Bhagalpur district of Bihar when the scam took place. The agency, sources said, also examined two former senior district revenue officers of Bhagalpur, who had allegedly cleared cheques, worth several crores, in favour of the accused NGO Srijan. Sources said, Investigation by the CBI has revealed that several cheques issued by the banks were transferred to different accounts of Srijan Mahila Vikash Sahyog Samiti Limited (a NGO) by these administrative officials. They played a crucial role in diverting government funds to the accounts of Srijan, they added. The CBI recently registered 10 FIRs to probe the Srijan scam in which government funds worth about Rs 1,000 crore were allegedly diverted to the accounts of a non-government organisation. The agency booked Bhagalpur based-NGO Srijan Mahila Vikas Samiti in connection with the case. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had on August 18 recommended the CBI to probe into the Srijan scam, after RJD chief Lalu Prasad accused him of murdering democracy in Bihar. The RJD chief, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, has been on the offensive against Mr Kumar and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi over the Srijan scam. Sources said, Srijan is accused of embezzling crores of money from different accounts of district administration with the alleged connivance of government officials and bank staff on the pretext of several welfare schemes. Probe by the Bihar police revealed involvement of nationalised banks, government officials and employees in the fraudulent withdrawal of government funds in three districts of Bhagalpur, Banka and Saharsa, they said. Kapil Sibal to help end deadlock over Patidar quota. New Delhi: After some tough posturing, Patidar leader Hardik Patel on Thursday blinked and said that he would support the Congress in the coming Assembly polls in Gujarat. He said that he will support the Congress as the party is openly supporting Patidars. For days the 24-year-old quota activist has held out from publicly backing the states main Opposition party, demanding that it explain how it plans to meet the Patel or Patidar communitys demand for reservation in government jobs and colleges if it comes to power in Gujarat. Though the Congress hasnt met his demand on reservation yet, Mr Patel said that he has been telling members of his community that they have to vote the BJP out of power. Mr Patel, who cancelled his scheduled meeting with Mr Gandhi, has been having backroom discussions with Congress leaders over the last several days. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is on a three-day election tour of Gujarat. Questioned as to whether this means he will seek votes for the Congress, the Patidar leader said: People are intelligent. When I tell them to vote the BJP out, they know who to vote for. Rejecting allegations of a sell-out, he said those objecting are not real Patels, but have been propped up by the BJP. He accused the states ruling BJP the Patels party of choice for years of betraying the community by not acceding to its quota demand. At least six Patel organisations have accused Hardik of turning their reservation stir political for personal gains, and say its not certain that he will be able to deliver a big chunk of Patel support for the Congress. The Patidar leader is known for changing his stand and Congress sources say that he could still change his mind under pressure. Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal could visit Gujarat next week to negotiate with Mr Patel, possibly to find a legal way out on the reservation issue, they added. Under the existing reservation plan, OBCs, who are about 40 per cent of Gujarats population, have 27 per cent reservation. In addition to this, Scheduled Castes have seven per cent reservation and Scheduled Tribes 15 per cent. This means that Gujarat already has 49 per cent reservation, one per cent less than the maximum reservation the Supreme Court allows. The Congress is wooing young leaders like Mr Patel and Alpesh Thakore who represent communities that have been agitating against the BJP government in Gujarat. Dalit leader Jignesh Patel has declined the partys offer to join it. Elections to the Gujarat Assembly will be held on December 9 and December 14, and results will be announced on December 18. The BJP has been in power in the state for the last 22 years and has this time it has set a target of winning 150 of the states 182 Assembly seats. The Congress is hoping that anti-incumbency sentiment will help it sweep the state. Meanwhile, Mr Gandhi, continued to play the soft Hindutva card during his visit to the state. He visited a temple in Surat on Thursday, and when questioned about his frequent visits to temples in Gujarat, he said, Kya mujhe mandir jaana mana hai (Am I not allowed to visit temples?). On his three tours so far in Gujarat, Mr Gandhi has visited a series of temples, including the Dwarkadheesh and Chotila temples in Saurashtra. Critics allege that Mr Gandhi is indulging in soft Hindutva in a state seared by communal riots in 2002. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also in Gujarat. The Prime Minister has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident, said the PMO on Twitter. At least 100 people have suffered injuries after a boiler exploded at the National Thermal Power Corporation plant in Raebareli. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: In addition to the Rs 2 lakh compensation announced by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday night Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those killed in an explosion in the NTPCs Unchahar power plant in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli district. Also, a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh will be given to kins, union power minister R K Singh said on Thursday. Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex- gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. The Prime Minister has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident, said the PMO on Twitter. Rahul Gandhi met victims families in Rae Bareli on Thursday. Lucknow: The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast in Rae Bareli has escalated to 30 with more injured workers succumbing to burn injuries. The doctors have said that the toll was likely to rise further as more than a dozen contractual laborers were battling for life with more than 90 per cent burn wounds. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi was among the first politicians to reach Rae Bareli. Mr Gandhi visited the post mortem house where he met the victims families. Following this, he went to the district hospital where he met the injured persons and finally to the site of the incident. He was accompanied by senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and UPCC president Raj Babbar. This place is Mr Ghandis mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhis parliamentary constituency. Mr Gandhi said that he wanted a fair probe into the incident and government jobs for the kin of those who had lost their lives. Mr Azad said, It is an unfortunate incident and we do not wish to politicise it but there must be an independent probe into the lapses that led to the blast. A technical team from NTPC also arrived at the accident site on Thursday to probe the incident. A magisterial inquiry has also been ordered by the district magistrate Sanjay Khatri. Meanwhile, six of the 30 injured persons who were shifted to Lucknow after the incident on Wednesday evening, died during treatment in the small hours of Thursday, taking the death toll to 30. Three senior officials of NTPC Sanjeev Sharma, Prabhat Srivastava and Misri Ram who had been critically injured in the mishap, were flown to Delhi in air ambulances. Meanwhile, NTPC workers raised slogans against the management at the gate of the unit in Rae Bareli. Modi said that the countrys jawans have sacrificed their lives for Kashmir, yet a Congress leader says that Kashmirs demand for Azadi is valid. New Delhi/Kangra: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday called the Congress a sadi hui soch ka namuna (an example of a rotten thought process) and laughter club as he asked people of Himachal Pradesh to throw out the states ruling party forever. The Prime Minister asked the Congress to introspect why the entire country is turning away from it. The BJP recently named veteran leader P.K. Dhumal as its chief ministerial candidate against Congress nominee and current chief minister Virbhadra Singh for the November 9 polls. Addressing two campaign rallies in the poll-bound state, Mr Modi attacked the ruling party saying that it has promised zero tolerance on corruption in its manifesto when its own chief minister is facing allegations of graft added that the Congress has become a laughing club. The Prime Minister said that the time has come to rid Devbhoomi (land of the gods) of five danavs (monsters) mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia. He accused the Congress of allowing the growth of these danavs. PM Narendra Modi, with CM candidate P.K. Dhumal and senior leader Shanta Kumar, at a rally in Kangra. (Photo: PTI) Apparently referring to former home minister P. Chidambarams recent remarks supporting greater autonomy for Kashmir, Mr Modi said that the countrys jawans have sacrificed their lives for Kashmir, yet a Congress leader says that Kashmirs demand for Azadi is valid. The Congress and its leaders have no right to insult our martyrs. Targeting Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador during the stand-off in Doklam earlier this year, Mr Modi said, The leader whose father, grandmother and father of the grandmother were PMs of India, and who has born and brought up in the ruling family, is acting in an insulting way... Wasnt it insulting when these people held talks with Chinese leaders on Doklam instead of asking the elected government? Mr Modi also talked about Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru with reference to the Jan Sangh, which he said was created to counter the Congress with the efforts of leaders like Shanta Kumar, a former Himachal chief minister, and a BJP leader. Pandit Nehru said theyd uproot and throw away the Jan Sangh during its early years, Mr Modi said. From a party of Mahatma Gandhi and freedom fighters, the Congress has become a party of corruption and dynasty politics, he said. Yeh Congress party sadi hui soch ka namoona hai. Hum jab Congress mukt bharat kehte hain, hum is sadi hui soch se mukt Bharat chahte hai (The party is an example of a rotten thought process. When we ask for a Congress-free India, we want an India free of this thinking), said the Prime Minister. He added that people across the country are engaged in Swachhta abhiyan (cleanliness campaign) and are wiping out the old party whenever they get the opportunity through elections. Exhorting people to come out in large numbers on voting day, Mr Modi said, I know we will win I have worked in Himachal and know the pulse of the people of the hill state... You have the opportunity to dismiss those who looted the state by pushing the right button on November 9, he said. It is believed that the man swallowed the 8cm object while under the influence of drugs. This is only the third case in the medical literature of someone swallowing a lighter that then needed to be removed. (Representational Image/ Pixabay) In a bizarre incident, doctors dragged a lighter out of a mans stomach after her had swallowed it whole. The unidentified man, arrived at a hospital in Yangzhou hospital in the Jiangshu province, east of China. It is believed that he was under the influence of drugs when he gulped down the 8cm object. This is only the third case in the medical literature of someone swallowing a lighter that then needed to be removed, and it's the first time that it has happened in the US, according to the case report. In the two previous instances, doctors needed to remove the lighters because they had caused blockages in the bowel, but the new case was more urgent, because the lighter was leaking fluid. A video is doing the rounds which show a doctor dragging a lighter out of the mans oesophagus with a clamp. Occasionally, it looks like it might get stuck and the medic has to take his time in pulling it out. The footage was captured when doctors put a camera known as an endoscope down his throat to look into the man's stomach and digestive tract and locate the item. It is unclear whether the lighter caused any damage to his stomach or oesophagus. The news comes after MailOnline reported on the story of a Chinese student who swallowed a 14cm spoon whole in June this year. The president quoted WHO figures to state that India has one of the highest prevalence of mental illnesses globally. The president warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic (Photo: AFP) New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind today warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic and said over 90 per cent of those affected by mental health issues do not receive the required medical care. While inaugurating the World Congress of Mental Health here, the president quoted World Health Organisation (WHO) figures to state that India has one of the highest prevalence of mental illnesses globally. "Our National Mental Health Survey, 2016 found that close to 14 per cent of India's population required active mental health interventions. About two per cent suffered from severe mental disorders," Kovind said. Nearly two hundred thousand Indians take their own lives each year and if data for attempted suicide was included the number went up substantially, he added. The president warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic. "These are worrying statistics. It is also a fact that those living in metropolitan cities and those who were young whether in the productive age group, or children and teenagers are most vulnerable to mental illnesses, he said. In India, he said, both these factors were a cause for concern as India had a young population, with 65 per cent of people below the age of 35. "And our society is rapidly urbanising. This leaves us staring at a possible mental health epidemic," he said. Given the figures, the president said, it was "an irony that 90 per cent of Indians in need simply don't receive mental healthcare". "There are several reasons for this and I hope they will be addressed in this conference," he said. The president said these issues should be treated with a correct approach. "The biggest obstacle that mental health patients have to encounter is stigma and denial. This leads to the issue being ignored or simply not discussed. In some cases it leads to self-diagnosis that is unsuitable or could worsen the situation. It may even lead to other extreme steps," he said. Kovind added that as a society the country would have to fight this culture of stigma. "We need to talk about mental health issues and treat ailments such as depression and stress as diseases that can be cured-not as guilty secrets that must be pushed under the carpet," he said. Kovind also highlighted the "scarcity" of doctors and counsellors to treat such instances. "A second major gap in combating the mental health challenge is that of human resources. India is a country with 1.25 billion people but just seven hundred thousand doctors less than one million," he underlined. In the field of mental health, he said, the scarcity was even more acute. There are only about five thousand psychiatrists and less than two thousand clinical psychologists in the country, Kovind said. "We need to act," he said, adding that these numbers of doctors and mental health experts were extremely inadequate. "It is vital to tap into our wealth of traditional knowledge and link its learning to modern research on mental health. This will promote a holistic approach to mental healthcare, combining the best of different fields of practice," he said. The president said India's mental health challenge was like capturing a society in multiple transitions. "From traditional diseases, it is gradually non- communicable diseases that are emerging as a major threat to our people and their well being. This is part of a worldwide trend. And many non-communicable diseases are either rooted in or associated with mental health issues," he said. About a thousand delegates, including 300 from across the globe, are participating in the conference. The pontiff values his sleep and is tucked up in bed each night by 9pm. The pontiff values his sleep and is tucked up in bed each night by 9pm. (Photo: AFP) Pope Francis has confessed he sometimes nods off while praying and claims saints too have been known to grab some Holy shut-eye. "When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep," he said in an episode of a Catholic TV2000 television programme published Tuesday on Youtube. "Saint Therese did it too," he said in reference to a 19th-century French nun, adding that Christians were called to feel like children lying in their fathers' arms -- a place conducive to napping, he implies. The 80-year-old Argentine head of the Roman Catholic Church radiates energy and enthusiasm when he meets people, but his expression turns very grave when he prays, often bowing his head and closing his eyes for long periods. The pontiff values his sleep and is tucked up in bed each night by 9pm (2000 GMT) -- though he rises with the lark at 4am (0300 GMT). His fast-paced schedule is only possible because he gets his head down for a snooze after lunch, Vatican sources say. However, his confession led to a lot of people feeling at ease about their own sleep issues: Me too! I don't feel so bad now. Micksmurmurs (@Micksmurmurs) October 31, 2017 He's the coolest pope Sushma Earaiah (@sushma_e) October 31, 2017 Happens to everyone Sonia (@gakurusonia) October 31, 2017 Cites 2009 Supreme Court order and Elphinstone stampede. Mumbai: The Bombay high court has reiterated a 2009 Supreme Court (SC) order, restraining hawking activities within 150 meters of railway stations and 100 meters from educational and religious institutions. In the light of the Elphinstone Road foot-over-bridge (FOB) stampede that left 23 dead, the HC refused to give any relief to street vendors seeking permission to carrying out their business in areas not demarcated as hawking zones, particularly railway bridges and outside stations. A division bench of justices B.R. Gavai and M.S. Karnik was hearing a bunch of petitions filed by street vendors that contended that under the Street Vendors Act, municipal authorities could not evict them and they are permitted to peddle their wares anywhere. Referring to the Elphinstone Road railway station stampede, the HC said, There was commotion on the bridge, which led to loss of 23 precious human lives. The presence of large number of hawkers on the FOB is said to be one of the major contributing factors in the mishap. The police recovered Rs 1.98 lakh and a sophisticated pistol with four live cartridges, they added. New Delhi: A 28-year-old suspected aide of gangster Chhota Shakeel, carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 on his head, was arrested from Northeast Delhis Jafrabad on Wednesday. The accused, Naseem alias Rizwan, a sharpshooter and close aide of Shakeel, was in touch with the latter who was giving directions to him about eliminating Pakistan-born Canadian writer Tarek Fatah, they added. The police were on the lookout for Naseem, a robber and a contract killer, who is wanted in several cases. On Tuesday, the police learnt that he would come near a school in Jafrabad. A trap was laid and when he saw police personnel, he started running but was nabbed after a long chase, the police said. The police recovered Rs 1.98 lakh and a sophisticated pistol with four live cartridges, they added. During interrogation, it was revealed that Naseem was wanted by the Special Cell in connection with hatching a conspiracy to kill Fatah. He was carrying a reward of Rs 50,000. Delhi polices Special Cell had arrested one Junaid Chaudhary in June for his alleged involvement in the conspiracy to kill Fatah. Naseem was also wanted in that case. He was recently also involved in a robbery in which a cash collection agent of a businessman was robbed of Rs 10.6 lakh in October. Shyamvar Rai is currently being cross-examined by prime accused Indrani Mukerjea's lawyer Sudeep Passbola. Sheena Bora's murder came to light in August 2015 after Rai, arrested in another case, spilled the beans and the Mumbai Police arrested Indrani, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and Rai in the case. (Photo: Twitter | ANI) Mumbai: Shyamvar Rai, accused-turned-approver in the Sheena Bora murder case, on Wednesday denied before the trial court in Mumbai that he received Rs 5 lakh after the crime from the other accused. Rai is currently being cross-examined by prime accused Indrani Mukerjea's lawyer Sudeep Passbola. Passbola claimed that Rai received Rs 5 lakh after Sheena's murder in April 2012, and he bought a plot of land in Madhya Pradesh with the money. However, Rai denied that he received money. Rai also denied Passbola's allegation that he had not conducted any reconnaissance of the place (in Raigad district) where Sheena's body was burnt. The defence lawyer claimed that Rai's statement that he had conducted reconnaissance of the area at Indrani's behest, prior to the murder, was false. He already knew that area very well because he had travelled there many times, the lawyer argued. Sheena Bora's murder came to light in August 2015 after Rai, arrested in another case, spilled the beans and the Mumbai Police arrested Indrani, her former husband Sanjeev Khanna and Rai in the case. According to the CBI, Indrani and others hatched the conspiracy to kill Sheena, her daughter from an earlier relationship, over a financial dispute. The Navi Mumbai crime branch has circulated photographs of the six accused. Mumbai: A gang of robbers that robbed a Vashi businessman of Rs 2.09 crore last week had deployed a female robber as a worker to one of the victims close relatives house to gather information on him before striking. The woman, who was recently arrested, revealed that as per the plan she had visited the victims house once to conduct a reconnaissance, according to police sources. The woman accompanied the robbers and knocked on the door of the house to gain easy entry inside at a time when the victim was away and only female members of the family were present. The police has taken a few business rivals of the victim under the scanner as well to verify if the robbers were hired. The Vashi police has arrested a female who according to the police had started working as a maid with one of the relatives of the victim. A Vashi police officer said, During interrogation the accused woman said she has provided information about the rest of the people who have been accused. She didnt know all of them but few months ago she got into touch with two of the accused after which according to the plan, she started working at the house of one of the victims and started collecting information about victims house. Deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Navi Mumbai, Tushar Doshi, said, The Vashi police has arrested a woman who was involved in the heist. We have already sent two teams to different locations to nab the other accused who have played the main role in this. We are ascertaining several information about the rest of the accused. The Central Institute of Cotton Research (CISR) carried out a detailed study at the state governments behest and submitted its report on Thursday. Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has called for a CBI probe against five companies in connection with the death of 18 Yavatmal farmers in the state due to pesticides. The Central Institute of Cotton Research (CISR) carried out a detailed study at the state governments behest and submitted its report on Thursday. The report stated that herbicide tolerant genes were found in the BT cotton seeds of these companies. These seeds are not permissible under the provisions of the Environment Protection Act 1986. In a statement issued on Thursday, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said, A FIR has been registered against these five companies in Nagpur. But it is also found that such type of seeds are being produced in many other states too and due to such seriousness, the government of Maharashtra has sent a request to the the government of India for a detailed CBI inquiry into this, he said. According to the article (7) of the Environment Protection Act, 1986, no person shall import, export, transport, manufacture, process, use or sell any hazardous micro organisms or genetically engineered organisms/substances or cells except with the approval of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC). The herbicide tolerant genes found in BT cotton seeds of the said five companies were not approved by the GEAC. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had also taken the cognisance of the deaths and issued notices to the state and the Centre over it. It said that, Most of the farmers in the country are not adequately literate and are relying on government agencies for the safe use of the agricultural products and ancillary techniques. The victim farmers have fallen prey to the callous and negligent attitude of the government departments. It appears that due to the lack of proper awareness about such a complicated technology for spraying pesticides on cotton crops, the farmers right to life and livelihood has been grossly violated. Ms Banerjee, who is on a three-day trip of Mumbai, met Mr Thackeray at a private hotel as part of a courtesy call. Mumbai: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Thursday met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, sparking speculation about the reason behind the huddle between these two strong regional satraps. Ms Banerjee, who is on a three-day trip of Mumbai, met Mr Thackeray at a private hotel as part of a courtesy call. Mr Thackeray was accompanied by his son and Yuva Sena chief, Aditya Thackeray. Apart from Mr Thackeray, Ms Banerjee also met former Union minister and Congress leader Milind Deora. Ms Banerjee is in the city to invite business tycoons here to West Bengal governments ambitious Global Business Summit in January. The West Bengal government is organising the summit, currently in its third year, with a view to attracting domestic and international investment in the state. Buzz is that through these annual summits, Ms Banerjee is trying to project herself as a business-friendly leader. Sources also informed The Asian Age that Mr Aditya and Ms Banerjee's nephew and Trinamool Congress MP, Abhishek Banerjee, are good friends and exchange notes on a regular basis. The Thursday meeting between Ms Banerjee and Mr Thackeray had been planned and was in the nature of a courtesy visit. A senior Sena leader close to the development said, It is obvious that when two political leaders meet, they discuss politics. Both leaders have their own national appeal. They might have discussed issues concerning the nation but nothing concrete. Meanwhile, a source hinted that with Mr Thackeray, never losing a single opportunity to criticise the BJP and Ms Banerjee highly critical of PM Narendra Modis government as well, the duo might have exchanged thoughts on this line. Lenin arrived in Petrograd in April 1917 with a slogan on his lips: All power to the soviets. In retrospect, its all too easy and convenient to look at the events of a century ago in Russia and visualise the genesis of a monumental tragedy. A common corollary of this perception is the tendency to take for granted the October Revolution of 1917, construing it, and its aftermath, as somehow inevitable. The Bolshevik assumption of power 100 years ago also often tends to be viewed as a coup rather than a proper revolution, notwithstanding the fact that it proved considerably more transformative in any number of ways than the February Revolution earlier the same year. The overthrow of tsarism was undoubtedly a key moment in Russian history, but those who ascended to office thereafter had little idea about how to cope with the demands of a suddenly liberated populace, a major proportion of which envisaged the death of autocracy not just as a desirable end in itself but as the beginning of an era in which the depredations of the tsarist order would be reversed. The provisional government established following the overthrow of Nicholas II proved incapable of exercising power without the cooperation of the soviet that had simultaneously sprung up, representing workers and soldiers and eventually peasants, in an echo of the 1905 revolution. Initially, much of the Marxist left in Russia was inclined to cooperate with the provisional government, seeing it as a harbinger of the capitalist development that was, in the orthodox view, a necessary means of conveying the nation to a stage where socialism would emerge as the logical alternative. But Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, had other ideas. On his way home from European exile, he was livid about the conciliatory comments in Pravda, edited at the time by Lev Kamenev and Josef Stalin. Lenin arrived in Petrograd in April 1917 with a slogan on his lips: All power to the soviets. He had a tough time convincing his comrades. And when, a couple of months later, the Menshevik head of the Petrograd soviet proclaimed from the lectern that no political force in Russia was, at that point, willing to assume the responsibilities of power, a member of the audience rose up to contradict him: There is such a party, Lenin declared. There was some derisory laughter, but no one was grinning out of disdain when, after a few months, Lenin informed the second all-Russia congress of soviets: Now we shall begin to construct the new socialist order. Not long before, most of those who disagreed with the idea of assuming power had walked out of the soviet, their ears ringing with a livid denunciation by the head of the soviets military revolutionary committee, Leon Trotsky. Go where you belong, he shouted at them, to the dust heap of history thereby coining a phrase that polemicists of all stripes have deployed ever since. Trotsky was a recent convert to Bolshevism, and his surprising abilities as a military strategist were key not just to the political takeover of Nov. 7, but to the almost miraculous salvation of the revolutionary regime in the war that followed. The latter has gone down in history as a civil war, but world powers were actively involved in the concerted effort to, as Winston Churchill put it, strangle the Bolshevik beast in its infancy. The revolution survived the efforts to reverse it, even though a number of its initial achievements for example, the first instance anywhere in the world of the decriminalisation of homosexuality were subsequently crushed as Stalin consolidated his power, having defied Lenins attempts from his deathbed to disempower his undesignated successor. Once the civil war had been won, Lenin was keen to sharply reduce the levels of repression. He was always willing to change his mind when circumstances demanded it. He badgered his comrades when he thought they were wrong, but at worst they faced humiliation or expulsion rather than imprisonment or execution. Stalin took a different tack, and many of Lenins closest comrades met their death at his command. We know where this is going, China Mieville writes in October. Purges, gulags, starvation, mass murder. But, he adds: October is still ground zero for arguments about fundamental, radical social change. Its degradation was not a given, was not written in any stars. Indeed. It could have been otherwise. And, despite Stalin, the Soviet Union had its redeeming features. But, within 10 years of the revolution, Lenins Bolshevist ideals had little to do with what ensued. Lenin and Trotsky, despite their various disagreements, realised that the Russian revolution would not go far without complementary uprisings across Europe. Perhaps it took 70 odd years for them to be proved right. By arrangement with Dawn Around 81 trusts haven't updates their systems to secure software protection. An independent investigation has concluded that the debilitating cyber attack that crippled parts of Britain's National Health Service earlier this year could have been prevented with basic security measures. The National Audit Office probe found computers at 81 health trusts - or a third of such trusts across England - had not been updated to secure them against the WannaCry ransomware attack in May, which disrupted thousands of doctors' appointments and led to ambulances being diverted. Audit office head Amyas Morse urged the Health Department and public health officials to "get their act together" or risk suffering a more damaging attack from more sophisticated cyber threats in the future. North Korea has been blamed for the attack. Ransomware works by taking over a computer and demands a ransom payment. A master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence, Director at Cambridge University said. Researchers have been documenting the groups activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russias intelligence services. The Fancy Bear nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russias national symbol. (Photo: AP) Washington: The hackers who upended the US presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clintons campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, US defence contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe from the popes representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. Its a wish list of who youd want to target to further Russian interests, said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the APs findings. He said the data was a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence. The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had dirt on Clinton, including thousands of emails. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered unfounded. But the list provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. This is the Kremlin and the general staff, said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. I have no doubts. THE NEW EVIDENCE Secureworks list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russias Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the countrys diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, US Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defence contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and especially Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clintons inner circle. A handful of Republican targets were also found. Podesta, Powell, Breedlove and more than a dozen Democratic targets besides Podesta would soon find their private correspondence dumped to the web. The AP has determined that all had been targeted by Fancy Bear, most of them three to seven months before the leaks. They got two years of email, Powell recently said. He said that while he couldnt know for sure who was responsible, I always suspected some Russian connection. In Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding war against Russia-backed separatists, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. The list includes Serhiy Leshchenko, an opposition parliamentarian who helped uncover the off-the-books payments allegedly made to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort whose indictment was unsealed Monday in Washington. In Russia, Fancy Bear focused on government opponents and dozens of journalists. Among the targets were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in exile, and Pussy Riots Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants. Everything on this list fits, said Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst who was himself among the targets. He said Russian authorities would have been particularly interested in Navalny, one of the few opposition leaders with a national following. Many of the targets have little in common except that they would have been crossing the Kremlins radar: an environmental activist in the remote Russian port city of Murmansk; a small political magazine in Armenia; the Vaticans representative in Kiev; an adult education organization in Kazakhstan. Its simply hard to see how any other country would be particularly interested in their activities, said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. He was also on the list. If youre not Russia, he said, hacking these people is a colossal waste of time. WORKING 9 TO 6 MOSCOW TIME Allegations that Fancy Bear works for Russia arent new. But raw data has been hard to come by. Researchers have been documenting the groups activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russias intelligence services. The Fancy Bear nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russias national symbol. In the wake of the 2016 election, US intelligence agencies publicly endorsed the consensus view, saying what American spooks had long alleged privately: Fancy Bear is a creature of the Kremlin. But the US intelligence community provided little proof, and even media-friendly cybersecurity companies typically publish only summaries of their data. That makes the Secureworks database a key piece of public evidence all the more remarkable because its the result of a careless mistake. Secureworks effectively stumbled across it when a researcher began working backward from a server tied to one of Fancy Bears signature pieces of malicious software. He found a hyperactive Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to sneak thousands of malicious links past Googles spam filter. Because Fancy Bear forgot to set the account to private, Secureworks spent the next few months hovering over the groups shoulder, quietly copying down the details of the thousands of emails it was targeting. The data was obtained recently, boiling it down to 4,700 individual email addresses, and then connecting roughly half to account holders. The list was validated by running it against a sample of phishing emails obtained from people targeted and comparing it to similar rosters gathered independently by other cybersecurity companies, such as Tokyo-based Trend Micro and the Slovakian firm ESET. The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. The findings also track with a report that first brought Fancy Bear to the attention of American voters. In 2016, a cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike said the Democratic National Committee had been compromised by Russian hackers, including Fancy Bear. Secureworks roster shows Fancy Bear making aggressive attempts to hack into DNC technical staffers emails in early April 2016 exactly when CrowdStrike says the hackers broke in. And the raw data enabled speaking to the people who were targeted directly, many of whom pointed the finger at the Kremlin. We have no doubts about who is behind these attacks, said Artem Torchinskiy, a project coordinator with Navalnys Anti-Corruption Fund who was targeted three times in 2015. I am sure these are hackers controlled by Russian secret services. THE MYTH OF THE 400-POUND MAN Even if only a small fraction of the 4,700 Gmail accounts targeted by Fancy Bear were hacked successfully, the data drawn from them could run into terabytes easily rivalling the biggest known leaks in journalistic history. For the hackers to have made sense of that mountain of messages in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Arabic and many other languages they would have needed a substantial team of analysts and translators. Merely identifying and sorting the targets took six AP reporters eight weeks of work. This effort offers a little feel for how much labour went into this, said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies. He said the investigation should put to rest any theories like the one then-candidate Donald Trump floated last year that the hacks could be the work of someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds. The notion that its just a lone hacker somewhere is utterly absurd, Rid said. Officials said that it was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11. The FBI had released an alert saying they were seeking information about the second man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov. (Photo: ANI) New York: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Wednesday said that the investigators had found a second Uzbek man they had been seeking in connection with the truck attack this week in Lower Manhattan. On Tuesday, the 29-year-old terror suspect, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who deliberately drove into bicyclists and pedestrians on a bike path in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and injuring many, left a note behind in the rental truck, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Hours after the attack, the US President Donald Trump said that the United States must not let the ISIS "return to or enter" the country. Officials said that it was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11. Saipov came to the US from Uzbekistan. According to the New York Times the prosecutors filed federal charges against Saipov. The federal charges in civilian court, which detail how Saipov said he drew inspiration from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) videos that questioned the killing of Muslims in Iraq, contradicted calls from Trump to try Saipov in military court at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Read: Suspect in Manhattan attack an Uzbek migrant who drove for Uber The FBI had released an alert saying they were seeking information about the second man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, in connection with the attack. According to a criminal complaint, Saipov admitted that he carried out the Tuesday attack in Manhattan in the name of ISIS. The complaint also detailed how Saipov asked to hang an ISIS flag in his hospital room, where he was recovering Wednesday from a gunshot wound He told agents that he 'felt good about what he had done' Police officials said earlier on Wednesday that Saipov appeared to have connections to people who were the subjects of terrorism investigations. Meanwhile, the US President Trump said that he will ask the Congress to end an immigrant visa program, through which the New York City terror suspect entered the country. Read: ISIS behind Manhattan attack? Note on truck claims link with terror outfit "I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I'm going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program, said the US President speaking during a Cabinet meeting at White House. "Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it," he added. Trump called the suspect an "animal" and said that he should have not been allowed into the country. "My administration is coordinating closely between federal and local officials to investigate the attack and to further investigate this animal who did the attacking," Trump said. According to the media reports, Saipov may have gained entry through the diversity visa program. However, the federal government had not confirmed that is the case before Trump's remarks. Afterwards, the US Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying he did use the lottery to enter the US in 2010. The visa program allows the US State Department to issue as many as 50,000 visas per year to people from countries that have low rates of immigration to the US. Police did not immediately release any information about the circumstances of the shooting or who was responsible for it. In a Twitter post about 90 minutes after the shooting at a Walmart store in suburban Denver, police said investigators had confirmed that two men were dead and a woman was taken to a local hospital, but no further details were given. (Photo: AFP) Thornton: Two men and a woman were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart on Wednesday night that forced customers to either hide or flee. Thornton police reported multiple parties down and advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital. No arrests have been announced, and a call to the Thornton Police Department went unanswered. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didnt want to get killed, he said. Guadalupe Perez was inside the store with her young son when she heard what she thought was a balloon popping. A Walmart employee told her someone was shooting, and then Perez saw people running away yelling, Lets go. Lets go. Leave the groceries. You see all these things in the news and you go through it, its scary, she said. But thank God were OK and nothing happened to us. Investigators, who have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting, were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses to get a description of the shooter. Meanwhile, special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were helping police in the investigation. The Walmart about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Denver is in a busy shopping center that includes restaurants, a movie theater and several other stores. Ragan Dickens, a Walmart spokesman, said the company is working with investigators. He declined further comment. Nawaz Sharif will land in Pakistan todayon Thursday to attend the accountability courts proceedings. Islamabad: The ruling Sharif family has ostensibly settled the internal differences and decided that Shehbaz Sharif the incumbent Punjab chief minister will become the Premier if the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) wins the 2018 polls. The issue of succession after Nawaz Sharifs ouster as the Prime Minister in July has hit the family hard amid tussle between the second generation of the Sharifs. Before catching a flight back home, Nawaz Sharif held a meeting in London with younger brother Shehbaz Sharif and other party leaders this week to settle the issue. Sources said it was also decided in the meeting, attended by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi among others, that statements on party policy will now be given by the Sharif brothers and not their respective children Maryam Nawaz and Hamza Shehbaz. Federal Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique said Maryam and Hamza were not party leaders. They are our brother and sister, he said. During the London meeting, which lasted more than three hours and was held at Hasan Nawazs office on Monday, Shehbaz Sharif and the prime minister tried to convince Nawaz Sharif to avoid clashing with state institutions, especially so close to next years general elections. Agreeing with the proposal, sources said, Nawaz Sharif was of the opinion that one cannot be expected to stay quiet if an injustice has been meted out to him. Moreover, Mr Abbasi and Shehbaz Sharif were directed by Mr Sharif to improve relations with state institutions and also place the PML-Ns grievances before them. Earlier, Nawaz Sharif said that people of Pakistan and not any individual could decide about any minus or plus formulas. On the debate surrounding the minus-Nawaz Sharif formula for PML-N, he said it was the decision of the nation and not individuals. Nawaz Sharif will land in Pakistan today (Thursday) to attend the accountability courts proceedings on Friday. His wife, Kalsoom Nawaz, has been receiving treatment in London for throat cancer. Hyrbyair Marri also said both China and Pakistan were trying to annihilate the Baloch nation to strengthen their grip on its soil. He further stated that China was striving to become the economic centre of Asia, Europe and Africa through its ambitious 'One Belt, One Road' project. (Photo: Facebook) London: Pro-freedom Baloch leader and head of Free Balochistan Movement (FBM), Hyrbyair Marri on Wednesday, in a statement, said the recent abduction of women and children from different areas of Balochistan was part of Pakistan's ongoing campaign of enforced-disappearances in the restive province. "Pakistani intelligence agencies are afraid of Baloch liberation struggle and now they started abducting Baloch children. They fear that these children will grow up to resist China-Pakistan brutalities in Balochistan," he said. Marri also said both China and Pakistan were trying to annihilate the Baloch nation to strengthen their grip on its soil. Targeting the Pakistani intelligence agencies, the Baloch leader said they were violating Islamic principles for their own evil interests and for expansion of their religious extremist ideology in the world. "Similarly, China who claims to value socialist principles and socialism is deviating from the basic principles for the sake of its economic interests and expansionist designs in the world," he added. Marri further said that Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam to serve the interests of imperialist powers under leadership of Jinnah, has become cancer for entire world today as the country's military establishment and rulers were using Islam to achieve their own petty interest, besides providing safe sanctuaries to religious terrorists, including Taliban and other groups, which are a threat to world peace. "In this context, if the political scenario of the last few months in Pakistan are reviewed, it clearly emerges after the talk of changes in Islamic clauses that were included in the Pakistani constitution during the Zia era, Pakistan army and intelligence agencies created a new political party of Jihadist organisation - Jamaat-e-Daawa, to deceive America and rest of the world and to protect those Islamic clause in the constitution. Along with this the Deobandi, Brelwi and Jamaat-e-Islami also jumped on the bandwagon," he said. He also questioned Pakistan military establishment and religious organisations silence over China's brutalities against Uyghur Muslims. "On one hand, the Chinese rulers oppress Muslims of the Xinjiang provinces, and on the other hand, they veto the Indian resolution at UN to declare the Jaish-e-Mohammad as a terror outfit and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist," he said. He further stated that China was striving to become the economic centre of Asia, Europe and Africa through its ambitious 'One Belt, One Road' project. "China is setting up ports and shuttle networks on Maritime Silk Road in Africa and Europe and planning to connect its Southern Coast with the Central Asia, East Africa and the Mediterranean. Gwadar port is also a part of this Maritime Silk Road which is a clear illustration of the double standard of Chinese Socialism," Marri said. The Baloch leader also said that China was using socialism to maintain its expansionist and occupational designs in the region and using it [socialism] internationally for exploitation, from Latin American to Africa and Asia either directly or indirectly. Talking about Saudi Arabia's efforts to return toward moderate Islam, The Baloch leader said it was a positive step in the right direction. He also said that since Gulf States shared historic relations with Balcohistan, they should support the Baloch cause. "The Gulf countries should play their role and morally and diplomatically support the Baloch struggle in Iranian and Pakistani occupied Balochistan. Pakistan, Iran and China in the cloak of Islam and socialism are promoting their colonial ambitions. The socialism was introduced to counter exploitation, but as far as socialism is concerned, it is only for power and governance. Economically China is an imperialist country," he added. Talking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Marri said: "China like East India Company wants to take over Baloch land and Pakistan for its interests is giving Baloch land to China without the consultation of the Baloch nation which is unacceptable for Baloch people. Pakistan in nexus with China is committing gross human rights violations against the Baloch nation. Eight people were killed and 11 injured in Lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday when a truck driver hit people. Vatican City: Pope Francis has admitted that he sometimes nods off while praying, BBC reported on Wednesday. When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep, he said in an episode of a Catholic TV2000 television programme published on Youtube. Saint Theresa used to do it too, the 80-year-old pontiff said in reference to the 19th Century Catholic saint. But he said that falling asleep during prayer actually pleased God and that Christians were called to feel like children lying in their fathers arms. Reports say that the pontiff usually goes to sleep at about 21:00 local time (20:00 GMT), but wakes up at around 04:00 (03:00 GMT) every morning. The Argentine has been head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013, and has a busy schedule of international visits and public appearances. He has become known for some moderate reforms and openness in his papacy - in particular his use of simple, direct language. Meanwhile, Pope Francis condemned on Wednesday recent terror attacks around the world, including in New York where eight people were killed, saying he was saddened by events. I am saddened by the terrorist attacks in recent days in Somalia, Afghanistan and yesterday in New York, the pope said during his Angelus prayer in St Peters Square. He asked people to pray that God converts the hearts of terrorists and frees the world of hatred and murderous madness, which abuses the name of God to disseminate death, adding that he was praying for the victims and their families. Eight people were killed and 11 injured in Lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday when a truck driver hit people. A security official said a sticky bomb destroyed two tankers, setting off an explosion that engulfed the bus. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came a day after up to eight people were killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. (Photo: AFP) Charikar: At least 15 people were killed and 27 wounded when fuel tankers exploded in the town of Charikar, northwest of the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday, destroying a nearby bus, residents and officials said. A security official said a sticky bomb destroyed two tankers, setting off an explosion that engulfed the bus, burning many passengers to death. Waheeda Shahkar, a spokeswoman for the local governor, put the death toll at least 15, with 27 wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came a day after up to eight people were killed by a suicide bomber in Kabul. In 1917 Britains foreign secretary promised a "a national homeland for the Jews as long as the rights of non-Jewish communities were respected. Israels Netanyahu is in London for the anniversary, but for Palestinian President Abbas, the declaration was a "catastrophe". Now recognising Palestine as a state would compensate the suffering. For Netanyahu: the only tragedy is the refusal to accept the declaration. Jerusalem (AsiaNews/Agencies) A hundred years after Lord Balfour's declaration of support for a Jewish national home, which paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel, British Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to London for the centennial celebration of the pledge. Like every year, the commemoration of the Balfour Declaration is a source of tensions between Israelis who celebrate it and Palestinians who protests what they consider an historical injustice. On 2 November 1917, then Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, expressing the support of the United Kingdom for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, so long as it did not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities". The centenary has generated opposing feelings in Israel and Palestine. Among Palestinians and their supporters, protests and demonstrations are organised every year. Marches, each drawing about 1,000 demonstrators, were held in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nablus and in Gaza. In Bethlehem, a group of protesters southern to northern ends of the city until they reached Israels separation wall. Protesters set up an effigy of Arthur Balfour, the author of the declaration, beating and throwing shoes at the figure while burning a copy of the declaration. Israeli forces quickly suppressed the protest, using live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas. Todays commemoration in London will culminate in a dinner hosted by descendants of Balfour and Rothschild. For its part, the Israeli parliament plans a special commemorative session next week. In an attempt to strike a diplomatic balance, British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said that the spirit of the declaration had not been fully realised, referring to a clause in the document which said nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities, an aspect usually ignored by Israeli authorities. Balfour's letter was made public in 1920, when the United Kingdom was given a mandate over Palestine and Iraq. In the colonial context of the time, London had pledged support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland to secure Jewish support in the Middle East and safeguard its economic and trade interests in the Suez Canal. The statement is controversial because at the time it was made, the Jewish community in Palestine represented less than 10 per cent of the population. As Hungarian-Jewish writer Arthur Koestler put it, one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third. Balfour's pledge contradicted another made to the Arabs in 1915 of an independent state as a reward for their contribution in the defeat of the Ottomans during the First World War. Today, Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on the United Kingdom to recognise Palestine as a state to compensate for the suffering of the Palestinians caused by the letter, a "catastrophe" that began the process that resulted in the birth of Israel and the expulsion of 750,000 Arabs. For Benjamin Netanyahu, "The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy. What's been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later. The prayer gathering has been held for 21 years. The official reason for the ban is overcrowding and unfinished reconstruction. More than 4,000 monastic residences have been demolished in a year, forcing out more than 4,800 Tibetan monks and nuns. Beijing (AsiaNews/RFA) Authorities in Chinas southwestern Sichuan province have shut down preparations for a major prayer gathering at the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy. The ban was announced on 29 October, reversing an earlier decision to allow the festival, set to take place on 6 November. This is the second year in a row that the event has not been allowed. In the past, it was held 21 times. The academy brings together tens of thousands of young Tibetans and Chinese to deepen their faith and study the sacred texts of Tibetan Buddhism. The event has long been in the crosshair of the authorities. As part of an urban reconstruction plan, a year ago, they ordered the demolition of many monastic residences, which forced monks and nuns to leave,. This year the authorities cited overcrowding by festival participants and unfinished reconstruction work at Larung Gar as reasons for the ban. Sources told Radio Free Asia that in 2016 Chinese authorities have destroyed 4,725 monastic residences, more than 7,000 since 2001, when they began to reduce the presence of monks and nuns in the complex. Since last year, more than 4,825 monks and nuns have been expelled, with many forced back to their hometowns, deprived of the opportunity to pursue their religious studies. On 20 August, it was announced that the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy would be run by six Tibetan members of the Communist Party. Indian authorities have filed charges against the Islamic preacher. According to Bangladeshi investigators, there is a direct link between Naiks TV sermons and one of the Holey Artisan Bakery Cafe attackers. Activists call for the deportation of the Islamic televangelist. Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews/Agencies) The Government of Malaysia has granted permanent residency to Zakir Naik, the Indian Islamic preacher who is thought to have inspired the Dhaka massacre of 1st July 2016. Whilst Indian authorities have accused him of terrorism, and several Western countries (including Canada and the United Kingdom) have banned him from their territory, Naik has appeared in public in Malaysia, taking selfie with admirers and praying in the same mosque as Prime Minister Najib Razak. In the Southeast Asian country, the Indian preacher is very popular among Islamic radicals. Experts believe that if the government expels him, it would lose religious credibility among the population. This includes Prime Minister Razak. For years, Mr Razak has been trying to shore up his Malaysian Muslim base by increasing censorship and boycotting moderate Islamic texts for electoral purposes. Last week, Naik made a public appearance at the Putra mosque in the capital, accompanied by a bodyguard who struggled to keep admirers away. Other eyewitnesses have spotted him at different mosques, hospitals and restaurants in Kuala Lumpur. The Indian televangelist is one of the most famous supporters of radical Salafi Islam. After the bombing of a bar in Dhaka's Gulshan neighbourhood, Bangladeshi and Pakistani authorities blocked his TV channel from which he broadcasts sermons full of religious hatred. Bangladeshi investigators have found a direct link between Naik and Rohan Imtiaz, one of the terrorists involved in the bar massacre of foreigners. Later, the Indian government banned Naiks Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) for five years after audio-visual evidence shows the preacher advocating jihad and calling on all Muslims to become terrorists. Last June, the Maharashtra Education Ministry shut down a Mumbai's school linked to the foundation after the principal came under investigation. For his part, Naik has always rejected charges against him, blaming instead Indias Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi of being envious of his popularity. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who supports Naik, told parliament that the preacher was not given any preferential treatment. He added that the Malaysian government had not received any official request from India related to terrorism allegations involving him. Conversely, a group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to have Naik deported, saying that he is a threat to public peace in Malaysias multiracial society where about 40 per cent of the population is non-Muslim. Recently, Malaysias nine sultans, who take turns as ceremonial monarch and are the official guardians of Islam in the country, slammed intolerance in the name of Islam, and called for unity and national harmony. Francis addressed the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob who made covenant with man, forever, the God of each of the 335 men murdered. Rome (AsiaNews) Pope Francis today, the Feast of All Souls, prayed at the Ardeatine Caves Memorial, near Rome, site of thea massacre on 24 March 1944 of 335 men and boys at the hands of German soldiers. Before this, he visited the Nettuno US War Cemetery and Memorial (pictured). After returning to the Vatican, the pontiff he prayed at the grotto under St Peter's Basilica where many popes are buried. As he made his way into the Caves, Francis placed a rose on some of the graves. This was followed by a prayer in Hebrew by Romes Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, followed by Franciss address to the God of Abraham, of Isaac, Jacob. With this name, you presented Yourself to free Your people from the slavery of Egypt. You observed the misery of Your people, and said I know their sufferings. God of each of the 335 men murdered herein whose remains lie in these tombs. You know their faces and their names. You are not the God of the dead but of the living. Oh Lord, the pope said raising his voice, make sure that we remove the shackles of selfishness and indifference, and that through the burning bush of this mausoleum, we may listen to Your name. As he said in his last Angelus, the Holy Father asked the Lord to accompany me with prayer in these two stages of memory and suffrage for the victims of war and of violence. Wars produce nothing other than cemeteries and death: thats why I wished to give this sign in a moment where our humanity seems not to have learned the lesson or not wanting to learn it. Around 6 pm, Francis returned to the Vatican and prayed in private in the Grotto under the Basilica in remembrance of the popes buried therein and of all the deceased. It is the fourth attack by an Uzbek. Saipov followed Isis ideology online. In Uzbekistan he lived with the "secular" and "modern" family, and he did not attend the mosque. The forgotten generation of the Uzbeks, set out to seek their fortune and unprepared to the West. Tashkent supported the US in Afghanistan with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Tashkent (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was responsible for the terrorist attack that resulted in eight deaths and a dozen injuries last October 31 in Manhattan, was not "very religious" when he moved to the United States in 2010. Like others before him, Saipov embraced Islamic extremism through the internet. Uzbekistan - a country known for the harsh restrictions on religious freedom and only in the last year in the process of opening up - is for the fourth time the cradle of militants inspired by terrorist groups. On the night of October 31, Saipov drove a van into the Manhattan bicycle path, killing eight people and wounding 15. Saipov then shouted "Allah Akbar" and tried to escape. Wounded by a police officer, the assassin was questioned at the hospital where he admitted to acting on behalf of ISIS, following online videos, and of being happy with his actions. Until his departure for the US, Saipov lived in the Uzbek capital. A neighbour of his at that time reported to FerganaNews that the family with which the attacker grew up, including three sisters, was "modern" and "secular", and that the young man did not attend the mosque. At the time of immigration to the United States Saipov's criminal record was clean. He never returned to Uzbekistan and in 2010 won the permanent residence permit through the "lottery". In the early years in the US, Saipov lived in contact with the Uzbek community and rarely went to the mosque. In 2013 he married a fellow citizen with whom he had three children, and moved to Florida. According to some media, it is during this period that his radicalization began. In recent months, some of Saipov's acquaintances have seen a change of attitude in him, becoming more aggressive. Observers from the former Soviet republic argue that Saipov is part of the "forgotten generation" of those who left their country of origin in search of a better future without having religious education or the tools needed to live in the West. Mirrakhmat Muminov, a truck driver and activist of the Uzbek community in Stow, Ohio, tells that the attacker began his studies in the United States. For him, Saipov was satisfied with the religious freedom enjoyed in the US, after experiencing the limitations in Uzbekistan Islam is a very popular religion in the country with 32 million inhabitants. The government puts religions under close scrutiny, worried by radicalism. For two decades, Uzbekistan was led by Islam Karimov, leader of the communist party who died last year. The iron fist he used for religions has always been motivated by national security concerns. Some analysts argue that the threat has been "exaggerated" to allow authorities to make a living from quashing dissent. However, during the Karimov government, the country has faced a number of terrorist threats, particularly by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (Imu). Relations between the United States and Uzbekistan have been rooted in counter-terrorism for several years. In 2000, the US called the Imu a terrorist group and since the September 11th attack, Uzbekistan was an important partner in the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Taliban. Karimov has supported US-led Afghanistan intervention, providing the Uzbek Karshi-Khanabad base area and access to space for their operations. Uzbekistan shares a 137-km border with Afghanistan. Collaboration was halted following the American condemnation of the violent repression of protests in Andijan City in 2005 when the US State Department accused Uzbek forces of killing "at least 187 unarmed civilians". The American base was closed, but the US could continue to carry its equipment across the country. With the new president Shavkat Mirziyoyev coming to power at the end of 2016, authorities have taken a more tolerant approach to religions, freed activists and journalists, and also opened the country to economic reforms. In September, Mirziyoyev claimed to have removed 16,000 people from a blacklist of 17,000 potential religious extremists to "bring them back into society and educate them". Mirziyoyev has assured his government's full cooperation to investigate the "brutal" attack. It is the fourth attack by an Uzbek in recent months. A citizen of Uzbekistan was the mastermind of the attack in Istanbul on New Year's that led to the death of 39 people. In April, the St. Petersburg metro bomber was a Kyrgyz citizen of Uzbek ethnicity. In the same month, a citizen of Uzbekistan perpetrated the attack in Stockholm, killing four civilians in a van. According to the Soufan Center, more than 1,500 Uzbeks have joined the files of extremist groups in the Middle East. It is the highest number of all Central Asian countries. Nine human heads and 240 bones and body parts were found in his flat. The mass murderer approached his prey on Twitter, pretending to share their suicidal thoughts. The series of murders began in late August. About 500,000 yen (US$ 4,390) were taken from the victims. An unmarried couple were the first to be killed. The victims were in their early twenties or younger. Tokyo (AsiaNews/Agencies) Takahiro Shiraishi, the serial killer in Zama (Kanagawa Prefecture), contacted his victims, mostly 17 to 20 in age, via the Internet and killed them to fulfil their desire for suicide, Tokyo police said. The mass murderer (pictured) approached his victims on Twitter through various accounts including one called hangingpro. Through the social networking service, Shiraishi replied to women who expressed suicidal feelings online with messages such as "Let's die together", pretending to share the same suicidal thoughts. Police believe the 27-year-old man invited people who wished to die to his home in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, where killed most of them. Shiraishi moved to the flat at the end of August after which the series of murders began. He got rid of the personal effects of the victims but not their money, keeping about 500,000 yen (US$ 4,390). Last Tuesday, the police found nine human heads and 240 pieces of bones and other body parts in his flat inside seven refrigerators, along with knives and other material used in the crimes. Regarding the bodies, police quoted Shiraishi as telling them that he threw away parts (of them) after dismembering them in the bathroom. The nine victims were believed to be a man around 20 years of age and eight women. Shiraishi told police that out of the nine he killed, four were around 17 years old, four were aged around 20, and one was in the late 20s. He said he does not know the exact names and ages of the victims. In trying to identify the victims, police are believed to be working on matching their DNA with a database of the DNA of missing people that has been collected since April 2015. According to police, the first victims were an unmarried couple. In August, Shiraishi had a meal with the couple with whom he had become acquainted through Twitter. On a later day, he invited the woman to his apartment, where he killed her. The womans boyfriend, unable to contact her, asked Shiraishi if he knew where she was. Shiraishi also invited him to the flat and killed him, fearing he might report her disappearance to police Although declining, Japans suicide rate is the highest of the G7 countries, and remains a major social problem. A total of 21,897 people took their own lives in 2016, down seven per cent from the peak of 34,427 in 2003. Still, almost a quarter of all Japanese adults have seriously thought about suicide, this according to a survey whose findings were released last March by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The ratio of those who have thought about committing suicide was 23.6 per cent in 2016, up from 19.1 per cent in 2008 and 23.4 per cent in 2012. Since 2014, suicide remains the leading cause of death for Japanese aged from their late teens to early thirties. After that, the suicide rate remains stable. Religious services were stopped following complaints by Hindu extremist groups, who threaten to close another 20 places of worship. The police have gone along with the radicals. Christians have called on the States Internal Affairs Minister for help. Chennai (AsiaNews/Agencies) State authorities of Tamil Nadu have ordered ten Protestant churches in Coimbatore District to discontinue worship services, this according to Rev Johnson Sathyanathan, president of the local Synod Pentecostal Churches. The clergyman blames the interruption of prayers on Hindu extremist groups, who claim that Christian places of worship have not been authorised by the Collector's Office. Hindu radicals have also threatened to file charges against 20 other Protestant churches. If they too are closed, worship services for the local Christian community would cease entirely. This is a well-planned conspiracy against the Christian community, as the Hindu extremists know that it is not easy to approach the Collector's Office for permits," Rev Sathyanathan said. "The time to get such approvals can stretch from a year and a half to many years." The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary group, and Hanuman Sena, a recently created radical group, are behind the complaints. Indian Human rights groups have increasingly complained about growing restrictions on religious freedom since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014. Ten churches "have been affected in the last two months, Rev Sathyanathan said. However, people never had any trouble with these churches before. Their pastors have been ministering for many years now. The clergyman explained that last week a Christian delegation met with the minister of Internal Affairs of Tamil Nadu who called on the deputy superintendent of police and the local member of the Legislative Assembly for Sulur to look into the matter and take steps to ensure that worship services can resume. Six of the affected churches are located in the Sulur area. The seventh church, that of the Assemblies of God Church in Thennampalayam, was targeted by the RSS during the summer. The eighth church, located in Myleripalaya and led by Rev Solomon Raja, was closed by police after the Hanuman Sena filed a complaint. The ninth church, not an actual church but a small hall in Mathampalayam, was attacked on 15 October by some 25 RSS members. No religious services have been possible ever since. Lastly, the tenth church, in Kalampalayam, was attacked by 20 RSS nationalists, who ordered the local pastor, Rev Charles, to stop services until he got a permit from the Collectors Office. Local Christians have tried repeatedly to resolve the situation, Rev Sathyanathan said. On 11 October, they presented a memorandum to the police superintendent asking for protection and the reopening of churches, but he flatly refused any support or action. Instead, police said that they could do nothing about it, the head of the Pentecostal Synod said, blaming Christians for creating unnecessary trouble when we should go ahead and get legal permission for our churches. As Christians, he added, "We wanted to organise a day of silent protest on 21 October, but we were denied permission. Since then, Christians are still waiting for a response from Internal Affairs Ministry. By Anthony Wicht, Alliance 21 Fellow (Space) at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney usembassycanberra/flickr , CC BY-ND Senator Simon Birminghams September declaration that Australia would establish a space agency created a buzz across the space sector. The announcement was unexpected. Few anticipated any government commitment until after Dr Megan Clarks expert panel reported on Australias space industry capability in March 2018. Establishing an agency is a sensible decision and rightly has bipartisan support. But the hard work in determining the shape of the agency has only just begun. Read more: Yes, Australia will have a space agency. What does this mean? In forming the new agency, much has already been said about what it might do. But how the agency is set up will be just as important to success. My five steps to an effective agency are: include both new and old space, give the agency actual power, make the most of the space brain drain and work cooperatively with the Department of Defence. The new pathway to space The most startling recent evolution in space is that there is more money on the table. Venture capital funding for space projects in each of 2015 and 2016 exceeded the total of all venture capital investments in space since 2000. Australia has more than 43 small businesses focused on the space sector. This growth has been driven by a rapidly falling cost to participate in space activities. The cost and weight of satellites has plummeted as the technologies that deliver small, affordable smartphones found space applications. Innovation, competition and ride-sharing on launch vehicles think Elon Musks Space X and Auckland-based startup Rocket Lab have reduced per-kilo prices to space, and costs will likely fall further. In this rapidly changing environment, here are my five recommendations for space agency success. 1. Grow the new space market The new space market is characterised by projects focused on commercial return, particularly small satellites. This is a fast growing sector with existing companies that can deliver Australian technology jobs and export revenue. To make the most of this existing pool of potential, the agency should fund widely with small amounts, just enough to prove concepts or encourage commercial participation. It should draw on venture capital in assembling this portfolio, as the CSIRO and the UK Space Agency are doing. 2. Do not neglect old space Despite the hype around small satellites and commercial space, Australia should not neglect altogether the old space of large, reliable and expensive satellites. These are still the mainstay of the industry, and the training ground from which many startups spring. Precisely because the work proceeds more slowly, old space offers steady cash flow to complement the precarious financing arrangements of many of the new space businesses. New space companies that can also sell hardware or services to old space companies are particularly valuable. The path here is clear: the agency should work closely with existing trade programs to help the Australian space industry break into global supply chains, in particular helping business navigate restrictive foreign export and labour laws. NASA 3. Give the space agency teeth It is not enough for the agency to develop a paper vision for the Australian space sector; it needs the power to make it a reality. Historically, Australias civilian space strategy has been fragmented by a bureaucratic turf war across agencies including CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia and the Department of Industry. Now state and territory governments are joining the fray. South Australia recently launched a Space Industry Centre, and in October Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Barr visited SpaceX and other aerospace giants on the US West Coast to discuss opportunities. Australias agency needs the authority to impose national strategic discipline. The government could give the agency undisputed policy authority, for example, by making it a small group within Prime Minister and Cabinet. Or the agency could be given purse-string power by allocating the civilian federal space budget through it rather than the existing patchwork of agencies. Anything less will make the agency a contested and ineffective leader for the Australian space sector. 4. Bring back home-grown talent There is a wealth of Australians who have gone overseas to pursue space careers. Many were back home for Septembers International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, and were keen to contribute to the success of the agency. The federal government should be flexible enough to include these dynamic individuals and accelerate the first years of the agency. For example, somebody like Christopher Boshuizen, the Australian co-founder of space startup Planet on the path to unicorn US$1 billion valuation would be a great asset working on behalf of Australian space startups. Such talent would kick-start the late-blooming agency with world-class credibility and instant connections to global activity. 5. Work with Defence A civilian space agency needs to establish a relationship of mutual respect with the Department of Defence space sector, while each maintains primacy in its own sphere. Defence has substantial space experience, both directly and through Australias US alliance. And investments in national security space dwarf civilian spend. For example, Defence recently announced a decade-long program worth A$500 million to develop domestic satellite imagery capabilities. Read more: Collecting satellite data Australia wants: a new direction for Earth observation With the right relationship, Defence would increase access to the agility and innovation of the commercial sector and the civilian agency would benefit from the experience of Defence personnel. As Senator Birmingham announced Australias plans to the worlds largest civilian space conference (September 2017s International Astronautical Congress), he was speaking to many who have lived through Australias big talk on space. Weve experienced failed launch proposals on Christmas Island and Cape York, and the rise and fall of the Hawke governments Australian Space Office. Birmingham made an announcement on the biggest possible stage. The how will be as important as the what if we are to make good this time on high expectations. Anthony Wicht is affiliated with the Space Industry Association of Australia and the Centre for a New American Security. The Alliance 21 program receives funding from the Australian Government and industry. Originally published in The Conversation. (nitis.s/Shutterstock.com) (nitis.s/Shutterstock.com) Tourism is a success story in Australia where the industry is celebrating 50 years of promoting the country around the world as a place to visit, but it wants to attract more young people.During the last 50 years the tourism industry has grown to be worth $120 billion and employs almost one million people, including many students and backpackers from overseas spending time in Australia.But the country wants to attract more young people, including working holiday makers. 'These travellers are significant for Australia's tourism industry but over the past five years, the number of working holiday makers visiting Australia has been declining,' said Tourism Australia chairman Anthony South in the organisation's annual report.'To help reverse this decline, Tourism Australia was allocated an additional $10 million over three years to create a dedicated working holiday maker campaign. We launched the campaign in October 2016, providing travellers in the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and the Nordic region with the most comprehensive package of youth travel offers we've ever had in the market at one time,' he explained.'The campaign was extended to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in May 2017. We exceeded our targets on campaign site visits, and also received positive industry and partner feedback on promotional activities. We will use the lessons and activities from this campaign as the foundation for a broader global push in the youth market,' he added.When the Australian Tourist Commission (ATC) was created in 1967 as the Australian Government authority responsible for attracting international visitors to Australia there were just 222,000 overseas visitors spending $74 million while now more than eight million do so and spend more than $40 billion.Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo said that the industry has grown to become a major driver of the Australian economy. 'The strength of Australia's tourism industry is a testament to the many years of unwavering commitment and hard work from those across the industry,' he added at an event to mark the golden anniversary.The annual report shows that by the end of June 2017, overnight visitor expenditure reached $103.2 billion, up 7% on the previous year and it forecasts that overnight visitor spend will reach $131 billion by 2020.It explains how a competitive aviation environment is essential to achieving the Tourism 2020 goal to increase overnight expenditure to more than $115 billion by 2020 with the goals also including investment in quality accommodation.'Australia has what more and more international travellers want - natural beauty, a pristine environment, safety and security, friendly and welcoming people, modern cities and infrastructure, and world-class food and wine,' the report says.It also shows that visitors from Asia continue to represent the fastest growing sector of inbound tourism, with arrivals up 11.9% for 2016/2017. Asian visitors contributed 55% of total international visitor spend.Overall, most of Tourism Australia's target markets recorded growth in visitor spend over the 12 months, with strong growth from India of 29.5%, Japan up 14.7%, Malaysia up 11.2%, China up 9.8% and Hong Kong up 9.7%. Wysseier John Wysseier has returned to The CEI Group as president and chief executive officer more than a decade after he departed the collision management company, the company has announced. With the move, CEI founder Wayne Smolda moves into a new role as chairman of the board, where he will focus on growing the company's global business among other duties. Claudia Smolda, a co-founder, will remain in her role as chief of staff. Wysseier most recently served as managing director for Solera Holdings Business Process Outsourcing segment and president of LYNX Services, a third-party provider of claims management services in the property and casualty insurance segment. Before that, he served as executive vice president of the insurance and services division of Pittsburgh Glass Works, which was acquired by Solera in 2014. Wysseier spent five years with CEI, from 2001 to 2006. He initially led business development and operations. In 2004, he helped start a business unit in Barcelona as managing director of European operations. Wysseier will report to Jim Halliday, president and CEO of Element Fleet Management International. Element acquired CEI in December of 2016. Martinez Raymond Martinez, President Trumps nominee for Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said in Senate testimony that he will not delay implementation of the electronic logging device mandate that starts to kick in on Dec. 18, less than seven weeks from now. Replying to Sen. Ted Cruzs (R-TX) query as to whether FMCSA should delay the implementation of the mandate prior to Dec. 18 specifically in light of the cost estimated to implement it of $2 billion, Martinez said that while regulatory reform should be an ongoing process, it is legally required that the December deadline to implement the ELD mandate be met. In his Oct. 31 testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on his nomination to head FMCSA, Martinez went on to state that, if confirmed, he would look forward to working with industry and all stakeholders, safety advocates and particularly the impacted sectors of commerce. Ive heard that this rule could cause serious hardship to some small independent truckers, particularly those working in the agricultural sector, he explained, so, Id want to meet with those involved in those areas who oppose the rule to learn more about their concerns. The goal is to not cripple commerce. The goal is to make our roadways safer. That is our mission and thats in everything we approach through that lens of safety. So, first and foremost, Martinez added, [I would] abide by the law, but also have an open door policy and work with all the impacted stakeholders. Martinez is currently Chief Administrator of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. His previous experience includes serving as Chairman of the Governors Traffic Safety Committee in New York. In his opening statement, Martinez related his bona fides to lead the federal safety-enforcement agency. As the former motor vehicle commissioner and chairman of the Governors Traffic Safety Committee in New York State and the current chairman and chief administrator of the State of New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, I have been a partner with other state agencies as well as stakeholders to advance safety on our roads. "I have developed close working relationships with both FMCSA and [National Highway Traffice Safety Administration] as well as with safety advocates, including AAA, the National Safety Council, and MADD," he continued. "I believe that open communication and collaboration are very important and would continue this practice as FMCSA administrator. Martinez noted that while serving in both the New Jersey and New York agencies, he routinely engaged with thought leaders at some of the university research institutions in our region that continue to do great work in the area of traffic safety as well as the consortium of 19 universities that make up the University Transportation Research Center based at the City University of New York. He said having this open dialogue and cross pollination of ideas was essential to problem-solving. Implementation of laws and promulgating regulations should be done with the best information available, and must be viewed by stakeholders as reasonable, rational and fair. If confirmed as FMCSA administrator, I would continue to pursue data-driven policies. The committee has not yet taken a vote on whether Martinezs nominee is to be reported to the Senate favorably, unfavorably or without recommendation. Once they have voted, his nomination will come before the full Senate, which must confirm his nomination by a simple majority vote. VIDEO: Toyota's Two Vehicle Automation Modes Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has signed an agreement with GoMentum Station, a 5,000-acre autonomous vehicle testing facility in Concord, Calif., to evaluate the automakers self-driving vehicle technology. The partnership, managed by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA), enables TRI to expand closed-course testing of its two-prong approach to vehicle automation Guardian and Chauffeur. TRI recently demonstrated Platform 2.1, its new advanced safety research vehicle that allows for the testing of both Guardian and Chauffeur in a single vehicle. In the Guardian approach, the human driver maintains vehicle control. The automated driving system operates in the background, monitoring for potential crash situations. The system can intervene to protect vehicle occupants when needed. Chauffeur is TRIs version of full vehicle autonomy. All occupants are passengers since the car drives itself. Both approaches use the same technology stack of sensors and cameras. TRI will use GoMentum Station for further testing of Platform 2.1, which includes a new high-fidelity LiDAR system that provides a longer sensing range, a much denser point cloud to better detect positions of three-dimensional objects, and a field of view that is dynamically configurable. Near TRI research headquarters in Los Altos, Calif., GoMentum Station augments TRIs public road testing with testing of extreme driving events too risky to conduct on public roads. GoMentums varied terrain and real-life infrastructure including roads, bridges, tunnels, intersections and parking lots provides the environment needed to accelerate testing of the difficult miles needed to advance both Guardian and Chauffeur, Toyota said. The addition of GoMentum Station to TRIs arsenal of automated vehicle test locations allows us to create hazardous driving scenarios for advancing capabilities of both Guardian and Chauffeur and further develop our technology, said Ryan Eustice, TRI vice president of autonomous driving. Harold Pierce covers education and health for The Californian. He can be reached at 661-395-7404. Follow him on Twitter @RoldyPierce Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Newscity PED Accepts Science Standards Language Education Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski announced last week that the New Mexico Public Education Department would be adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in their entirety. The move comes somewhat as a surprise following weeks of public outcry over the department's suggestion that the NGSS be altered by removing mentions of a rise in global temperatures or evolution. Scientists and educators from across the country spoke out against the suggestion, even gathering at the state capitol to protest the changes during a public hearing on the subject. Ruszkowski's earlier responses to the scandal seemed to defend the department's proposed changes. In a public message dated Oct. 15, Ruszkowski said the changes would give teachers and families flexibility, allowing for more local control of science education. More recently, he spoke to the Albuquerque Journal, saying that PED's goal is to raise the bar for our kids, and that the debate was dragging the public away from tangible, meaningful outcomes. The PED's announcement that it will be accepting the NGSS without any alterations has been applauded by the state's scientists and educators. The NGSS is a set of educational science standards that were issued in 2013 by 26 states, the National Science Teachers Association and other science advocacy groups. Kirtland Officer Claims He was Disciplined For Same-Sex Marriage Beliefs A religious liberties group is calling for the reinstatement of a Kirtland Air Force colonel who was disciplined over his views on same-sex marriages. In May, Col. Leland Bohannon was relieved of command after an Equal Opportunity complaint was leveled against him. According to an appeal letter sent to the Secretary of the Air Force earlier this month by religious group First Liberty Institute, Col. Bohannon refused to issue a certificate of spouse appreciation to the same-sex spouse of a retiring Master Sergeant. The certificate is not an official document and is not legally required to be given. The group says that Col. Bohannon was exercising his religious beliefs when he refused to issue the certificate and was discriminated against by the Air Force. They say he was wrongfully relieved of command and should be reinstated. Their appeal asks for the full reversal of the complaint and the removal of unfavorable materials from Bohannon's record. They also ask that the Air Force train officers on how to deal with similar situations when they arise. It looks like Italy on the coast. "We wanted that Mediterranean feel, explained Christine Hatfield of the Inn on the Lakes. Yet, in the heart of Florida off U.S. 27, find well-appointed beds, suites with modern kitchenettes and a pool that feels like Tuscany. Its something Christine believes will be a surprise. "We're always trying to get to the next level of where everything is happening, although we're in Sebring, Christine admitted. Thats why shes hired a designer from New York to redo several suites at the boutique hotel. Some of the new rooms feature luxury bathrooms, complete with floor-to-ceiling shower glass panels, modern tile on the wall and faux wood floor tile on the floor. These suites dont just come with a mini-fridge, rather a wine cooler. And chances are there are more pillows on these beds, than the ones at your house. Also in Sebring, something you may not expect: The family dog. "I grew up with animals and horses in my life, and I feel they are great companions for people, Christine shared. The hotel owner is also an animal lover and the daughter of a Miami hotelier. From the very beginning, from jumping in the pool, to meeting guests, she recalled of growing up in the family business in Coral Gables. Today, she and her husband own the "Inn on the Lakes," a hotel her father created, that has made a name for itself by catering to travelers with pets. "We designed a feline and canine gourmet room service menu, she said of room service for your dog. One call does it all. Room service will arrive and bring dogs bottled water, along with gourmet chopped beef, salmon or chicken. The meal is served in special pet bowls. If you're wondering about the cleanliness of the room, Christine said you can relax. The pet cleaning fee of $100 will ensure theres no signs of your dog after you leave. "Afterwards, we go in and do a thorough cleaning of everything, she said. For the cat lovers? You can't miss the office cat named CP in the lobby. The feline menu has delights for traveling kitties. "We're hoping we can make this a destination resort, Christine said. Know Before You Go: Each room with a pet requires a $100 cleaning fee. Reservations can be found here. Tankful on Television: Catch Florida travel stories like the one above on TV four days a week across Central Florida. The award-winning Florida on a Tankful with Scott Fais airs on News 13 Thursday through Sunday. See new segments in the Tampa Bay area as well on Bay News 9. Stories air beginning at 6 a.m. on both channels as a Spectrum exclusive. Scott Fais on Twitter: For behind the scenes photos, production notes from the field and Florida travel tips, follow Scott on Twitter at: @ScottFaisTV A man was detained after police said he drove his truck through the front door of a Home Depot Thursday afternoon. Man drove truck through Home Depot, fled scene Group of individuals detained driver Paramedics said driver appeared mentally unstable Officials said the incident occurred around 1:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at 17601 Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. A man drove his truck through the front door of a Home Depot and fled the scene, Tampa Police said. A group of individuals detained the suspect at a nearby gas station as police responded. Paramedics said the driver appeared to be mentally unstable. Police said no injuries were reported at the Home Depot and the vehicle does not pose any additional threat to the area. Oregon Coast Warnings: Crabbing Closure, Sick Sea Lions May Affect Dogs Published 11/01/2017 at 5:17 PM PDT - Updated 11/02/2017 at 5:27 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Oregon Coast) Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has some bad news about crabbing on the southern Oregon coast and about sea lions with diseases on the northern half of the shoreline. The crabbing ban has been extended for the southernmost third of the state's waters, while sick sea lions are posing a health risk to pets in other areas. (Above: healthy sea lions lounging near Florence). Along the Oregon coast and the California coast, wildlife officials are running into an alarming number of stranded sea lions stricken with leptospirosis, a bacteria that can also sicken dogs, livestock, people and other creatures. It's caused ODFW to issue a warning about staying clear of sea lions you see on the beach. Jim Rice, an OSU Marine Mammal Institute researcher who works at the OSUs Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, said the agency has been receiving multiple calls every day for the last few months, but most of the cases have been on the northern half of the coast, in and around areas like Yachats, Lincoln City, Pacific City, Rockaway Beach, Seaside and Cannon Beach. There is a minor risk to humans, but dogs are much more at risk of becoming infected. Those walking with dogs should keep them on a leash: even coming into contact with sand that has fecal matter or urine from the sea lion can cause transmission to the pet. While leptospirosis occurs worldwide, outbreaks occur only sporadically in marine mammals, with the last Oregon outbreak seen in 2010. The disease can spread when an animal comes into contact with urine or other bodily fluids of an infected animal and can lead to kidney failure, fever, weakness, muscle pain, and other symptoms. In Oregon, young male sea lions are typically affected and usually show signs of dehydration, depression and reluctance to use their hind flippers. On the southern Oregon coast, ODFW and the Oregon Department of Agriculture have extended the closure of recreational and commercial crabbing due to elevated levels of domoic acid. Now closed is the stretch from the north jetty of Coos Bay, including the Coos Bay estuary, to the California border. This closure includes all crab harvested in bays and estuaries, and on beaches, docks, piers, and jetties. The recreational crabbing season in the ocean was closed along the entire Oregon coast on October 15. Crab harvesting from the north jetty of Coos Bay to the Columbia River remains open in bays and estuaries, and on beaches, docks, piers, and jetties. Despite the closure, crab and shellfish products sold in retail markets and restaurants remain safe for consumers. For more information, call ODAs shellfish safety information hotline at (800) 448-2474 or visit the ODA shellfish closures web page. --- Oregon Coast Hotels in these areas - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Jefferson County Sheriff's Office Show More Show Less 3 of 3 A Beaumont man was arrested today after Jefferson County Narcotics Detectives followed up on a narcotics complaint in the 4300 block of Houston Street. Willie Paul Rideaux, 38, of Beaumont, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance and felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. On November 2, 2017, these were the inmates imprisoned in the Jefferson County jail on charges of murder. Most are awaiting trial and have not been convicted. An Orange County man has been arrested for not providing aid after an October accident that left one woman dead, Vidor police said. On the night of Oct. 13, a woman was hit by a car on the 1700 block of Texas 12. Wanda Spoonmore, 71, of Beaumont was crossing the street with her grandchildren after leaving a Halloween party. The car, a light0-colored medium-sized SUV, then left the scene without stopping, according to a statement. Aerospace giant Bombardier, which employs around 4,000 people here, has announced a deal of a potential $5bn for up to 61 of its C Series planes, the wings of which are made in Belfast. Last month Bombardier announced a tie-in with rival Airbus for production of the jets. It confirmed today that a European customer had signed a letter of intent for up to 61 C Series including 31 firm aircraft and options for an additional 30 aircraft. The firm order is worth $2.4bn while the full order is worth $4.8bn if all options are exercised. It comes as the Canadian-owned firm revealed full-year earnings would be around $630m in its third-quarter results. President and chief executive Alain Bellemare said the results highlighted continued progress transforming the company. Last week the company confirmed another 280 job losses in Northern Ireland. DUP MP Gavin Robinson welcomes the letter of intent from a European customer. The east Belfast representative said: "With 31 firm orders and options for a further 30 jets this could mean and order valued up to $4.8billion for Bombardier if all 30 options are exercised. "It is a welcome piece of news for the company as a while and obviously for the Belfast plant. "The timing is too significant and is a vote of confidence in the joint venture between Bombardier and Airbus." The DUP MP added: "I hope this might be the first of many new orders for this ground-breaking aircraft." Northern Ireland pharmaceuticals company the Almac Group has bought a contract laboratory in the Republic as part of continued expansion. The firm is thought to have spent a multi-million pound sum on buying BioClin Laboratories in Athlone. It is the latest expansion for Almac Group in the Republic of Ireland after it bought Arran Chemical Company two years ago. The BioClin deal adds 35 people to the firms global workforce of just under 5,000. It employs nearly 3,000 people in Northern Ireland. Last year, the business announced the opening of a new site at the IDA Business Park in Dundalk as part of its Brexit planning in order to have access to the single market. But a spokeswoman insisted the latest deal had nothing to do with Brexit and was part of global expansion. BioClin is located around 10km from Arran, so the existing facilities and skills are there, she said, adding that the premises would fall under the analytic services section of Almac. BioClin carries out analytical services and data reporting to support drug development in Garrycastle. The firm has also expanded analytical facilities at its headquarters in Craigavon and opened a new laboratory. Arran Chemical Company manufactures products for pharmaceuticals, flavourings, fragrances and personal care. Stephen Barr, managing director of Almac Sciences, said: Adding BioClins highly complementary analytical capacity and technical expertise to our existing capabilities, along with investment in nearby Arran and the opening of our new lab in Craigavon, means that we can broaden our service offerings and address our global clients growing demands for a high-quality, integrated and efficient service. Almac also announced that its new drug-development and manufacturing sites in Loughborough in England had passed an inspection by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The facilities at Charnwood, which were acquired two years ago, provide services to the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors. Around 55 posts have already been filled, and it is expected that up to 200 people will be employed there by 2021. Almac said it had spent 16m on the premises at Charnwood, including building improvements and new technology, since the acquisition. The company discussed its investment in Dundalk at the House of Commons in February. Executive director Colin Hayburn told the NI Affairs Committee: If the border turns into something of further hindrance to our work, then we would have to consider more operations being done in Dundalk. But he added the firm would not be moving jobs from Craigavon, explaining: Its to protect those jobs in Craigavon that we need to find solutions for the EU, which is why we need this facility in Dundalk. This weekend will see a carnival of colour as the Festival of Racing at Down Royal takes place. Saturday will be especially bright as the traditional Ladies' Day will feature the Victoria Square Best Dressed Lady competition. The JNwine.com Ladies' Day offers an amazing prize of a trip to Rio de Janeiro for the lady voted the best dressed. It's a chance to show off the wild hats and fabulous dresses as judges mull over the entries of the biggest and boldest ensembles to crown the winner. And these stunning items from Victoria Square, Belfast, would be certain to turn heads. Rio is generally considered to be Brazil's liveliest location, a city where tropical rainforests and monolithic mountains collide to form one of the most spectacular landscapes in the world. The prize comprises of return flights from Dublin, a 10-night stay in a four-star hotel close to Copacabana Beach and guided tours taking in the city's most famous landmarks, including the Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf Mountain. Down Royal Festival of Racing takes place tomorrow and Saturday, when the National Hunt horse racing world descends upon Northern Ireland at the Co Down racecourse with over 1.5 million people tuning in to watch the action from the racetrack. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Jumpsuit, 129, Issa at House of Fraser Shoe, 225, LK Bennett Jacket, 49, Topshop Trousers, 30, Topshop Dress, 250, LK Bennett Shoe, 42, Topshop Fascinator, 59, Phase Eight Bag, 29, Issa at House of Fraser Jumpsuit, 159, Coast Shoe, 225, LK Bennett / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Jumpsuit, 129, Issa at House of Fraser Mike Todd, general manager of Down Royal Racecourse said: "Ladies' Day at Down Royal is as competitive as the horse racing on the track and I'm excited to welcome Victoria Square to the Festival of Racing once again. "There can only be one lucky winner of the Rio prize, which is out of this world, but we can definitely guarantee a great day out for everyone." Entries for the Victoria Square Best Dressed Lady title can be submitted in the Dark Horse Cafe and Wine bar in Hill Street and in the foyer of the Guinness suite this Saturday. Michelle Greeves, centre manager of Victoria Square, added: "We are really looking forward to witnessing the style and glamour at this year's Down Royal Festival of Racing and to judge the highlight of the festival, the Best Dressed Lady. My top tip is to look stylish but also seasonal - a jumpsuit and an amazing jacket or dress and coat never goes out of style." Gates to the racecourse open at 11am with the first race starting at approximately 12.50pm. Hospitality options are available from 60 or regular admission is priced at 12 for tomorrow, and 15 on JNwine.com Ladies' Day, Saturday. To find out more about Down Royal Festival of Racing go to www.downroyal.com Police deal with a suspect object in the Poleglass area of west Belfast A mortar bomb abandoned by dissident republicans in west Belfast could have killed indiscriminately, it was claimed last night. Ulster Unionist MLA and former soldier Doug Beattie warned that the horizontal rocket-type device found near Poleglass, which could pierce armour, could have caused untold carnage. "Anyone who knows anything about explosives knows that a horizontal rocket is a mortar designed to take out vehicles, it is an indiscriminate weapon," said Mr Beattie. "If it misses its target, it doesn't stop, it just keeps going so who knows what devastation this could have caused. "Whichever career terrorist planted this is an absolute disgrace, they could have killed men, women and children within their own community." The device was uncovered after a three-day security operation and PSNI Belfast district commander, Chief Superintendent Jonathan Roberts, said the device was designed to kill police officers. Detectives from Serious Crime Branch are investigating whether a new dissident terrorist group calling itself 'Arm na Poblachta' (Army of the Republic) are behind the attack after a coded call to a local media outlet claiming responsibility. He said: "Those responsible have shown callous disregard for the safety of members of the public and the police officers serving this community. "We are extremely fortunate that no one was killed or seriously injured but I can assure the local community that police officers will continue to go about their duty and this will not deflect us from doing our job." Families were forced to leave their homes as the significant security operation was launched on Monday afternoon. The police helicopter was deployed before a full clearance operation got under way, leading to the discovery of the device which was made safe by army bomb experts before being taken away for forensic examination. It is not known when exactly the "extremely dangerous" object was abandoned in the busy residential area, but Chief Supt Roberts has appealed for anyone who saw anything suspicious between Friday morning and Monday morning in the area of Pantridge Road and Brian's Well Road to come forward. He specifically urged witnesses who saw anyone in a public payphone at the junction of Bellsize Road and Skyline Drive in Lisburn between 11.10am and 11.15am on Monday to contact police. Mr Roberts said that, while the risk to police officers is ongoing, he does not believe there is a heightened threat and thanked the local community for their patience and support. Chairperson of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, Mark Lindsay, called for the "full co-operation" of the community in order to "root out" those responsible. "It's bad enough that we have dissident republicans still wedded to murdering police officers and causing untold misery for the local community," he said. "Just as bad is the number of people behind them who assembled the IED, know where parts were sourced and know who was responsible for it and where it was put together. "They're just as guilty as the murderous thugs who abandoned it in a busy area and they, too, should be made amenable and handed down meaningful prison sentences." Mr Lindsay urged the wider community to realise that the "faceless would-be attackers have nothing to offer people" and said their only "stock in trade is misery, disruption and fear". He added: "Only through concerted co-operation with the police will we be able to rid society of the scourge. "These people don't speak for the community which they subjected to days of upset and inconvenience. "Their outdated and warped view on life needs to be emphatically rejected and I would appeal to people to work with the police to bring those responsible to justice." Sinn Fein MLA Orlaithi Flynn also condemned those responsible and urged anyone with information to go to the police. "They have caused three days of disruption and shown no regard whatsoever for the local community," she said. "People are sick, sore and tired of being placed in danger by groups at war with the local community." Witnesses should contact detectives on 101 and quote reference 865 30/10/17. (File photo) The family of a Co Down pensioner has been asked to help organise their own care package. / Credit: PA The family of a Co Down pensioner has been asked to help organise their own care package. The BBC reports 78-year-old George Stewart suffered a brain haemorrhage at the start of this year. His family have been told by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust it would be reimbursed and the move was being taken to deal with insufficient staffing. Speaking about organising care, Mr Stewart's family said they did not feel qualified to deal with the management of workers from a private company. Mr Stewart's family said he had recovered to the point of wanting to return home, but had to remain in a care home for people with dementia due to difficulties around organising home care. Speaking to the BBC, Mr Stewart's son Mark said: "He's made a remarkable recovery and he is well enough to go home. "He doesn't need to be in a secure unit, but he's there because there isn't a suitable care package for him." In a statement, a spokesperson for the Belfast Trust said it "always works towards supporting people in their own home" and that it was "a source of real distress that this is not possible because of a lack of care workers". "The availability of staff on the ground is insufficient to meet the demand of an aging and increasingly frail population, a situation which is reflected across the UK," a spokesperson said. "We acknowledge that this shortfall needs to be addressed and are working closely with all the relevant agencies to establish a way forward." "We continue to work towards this patient receiving the best possible support in his own home as soon as is possible," they added. The Belfast Trust also said a review on the domicillary care workforce is being prepared by the Department of Health and initial findings had shown a shortfall in the workforce supply chain. A number of recommendations had been made about how to improve this. The Government wants to see business as usual in Northern Ireland once the UK leaves the EU, the Transport Secretary has said. On a visit to Wrightbus in Ballymena, Chris Grayling attempted to allay the uncertainty that exists within sections of the region's business community on the Brexit consequences for trade with the Irish Republic and continental Europe. "We are very committed to maintaining a free moving border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland," he said. "This is something that has existed for decades, we have had the Common Travel Area since 1923. The economies are so closely linked - all of us want to see close relations, want to see free flowing borders, business able to carry on what it does now." Wrightbus founder William Wright was a vocal supporter of Brexit in last year's referendum. Mr Grayling was asked if his visit to a factory in the DUP heartland of North Antrim was an outworking of the Government's confidence and supply agreement with the Northern Ireland party. "I am here to support Northern Ireland and here to support the United Kingdom," he replied. Mr Grayling was shown the low emission technology being used in hydrogen and electric powered buses being manufactured in the Ballymena plant. In the last two years the Government has provided more than 40 million under the Low Emission Bus Scheme (LEBS) to help buy over 450 low emission buses. Around 70 of Wrightbus's low emission buses are being produced with funding from LEBS. The Government has pledged more than 1 billion to fund ultra-low emission vehicles by 2020. Mr Grayling hailed the Ballymena business as a "UK success story". "Wrightbus is selling buses around the world," he said. "I go around the world selling UK transport capabilities and I want to be able to go out there and say we have a fantastic business here in Northern Ireland and we want to see Wrightbuses in cities all around the world." On his trip to Northern Ireland, Mr Grayling also visited Belfast International Airport and weapons manufacturer Thales UK. Lives have been put at risk after a special fire appliance designed to tackle high-rise blazes has now been left without a dedicated crew, a union has claimed. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS) will no longer have the dedicated fire crew to operate the specialist Aerial Ladder Platform (ALP) fire engine at Northland Road fire station in Londonderry. Firefighters covering the area will be responsible for an additional fire engine at the same time, meaning a crew is not guaranteed to be available to operate the ALP in the event of an emergency. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has warned the move could prove fatal. Jim Quinn, executive council member for Northern Ireland at FBU, criticised the decision - saying it will leave the public "less safe". He added: "We are deeply concerned that this move could have devastating consequences for the safety of the public. "We know that there are even more cuts planned in the near future that will make us all less safe. "If an ALP is needed urgently to perform a high-rise rescue and the formerly dedicated crew are responding to another emergency on a different fire engine, then clearly the high-rise rescue is going to be delayed. "Lives could be lost as a result and there will be more damage to homes, businesses, schools, communities, the economy and the environment. "These cuts are not linked to any change in the risk faced by firefighters or the public they serve. This is a purely financially driven decision following budget cuts to NIFRS by the Department of Health." The union representative also said the crew for a specialist rescue appliance at the second fire station in the city, at Crescent Link, will be reduced from four to two. A 27-year-old man charged with drug and immigration offences is due in Belfast Magistrates Court on Friday. A 27-year-old man charged with drug and immigration offences is due in Belfast Magistrates Court on Friday. This follows a joint operation between the PSNI and the Home Office. The man has been charged with a number of drug and immigration offences, including possession of a Class B drug, intent to supply, possession of criminal property and failing to leave the UK. As is standard practice, the charges will be reviewed by the PPS. Detective Inspector David Henderson of the Organised Crime Branch said: "This demonstrates our ongoing commitment to tackling the scourge of drugs in our society. "We would encourage anyone with information which may assist police in combating the sale and distribution of illegal drugs to contact police on 101. "Information can also be given anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111." Labour Shadow Secretary of State Owen Smith has hit out at Prime Minster Theresa May's hands-off approach to negotiations to restore devolution. Mr Smith said it was "deeply disappointing though not unexpected" that the negotiations had ended without agreement as Mr Brokenshire prepared to set a budget. But he suggested that the Government could have taken a more active role in the talks. "In particular, questions must be asked about the complete disengagement of the Prime Minister," he said. "While the hands-on involvement of Prime Ministers has not always led to progress in previous peace talks, other leaders have at least tried to use their personal influence to persuade or pressurise the parties into finding common ground." TUV leader Jim Allister said it was "good news" that efforts to resurrect the Executive failed. "I trust the latest chapter of failure will even bring the slowest of learners to this realisation. If we want Stormont rule it can only be on a different model than mandatory coalition," he said. "It is time for the DUP to shift focus away from chasing the moonbeam of mandatory coalition to either integrating us more closely into the UK or pursuing devolution that is workable, be it voluntary coalition, a corporate Assembly, or legislative devolution." Green Party leader Steven Agnew said that the Secretary of State and the DUP and Sinn Fein were dragging Northern Ireland on a "slow journey" to direct rule. "What we now need from the Secretary of State is a concerted effort to introduce transparency, creativity and inclusivity into negotiations, to end the black-out on what the sticking points are and to listen to alternative approaches. "Restricting the debate to two sets of vested interests and shutting the door on all other elected representatives is placing a stranglehold on an ailing democratic process," he said. Mr Agnew also suggested that Mr Brokenshire should consider cutting MLAs' pay by a third. A US State Department statement said it believed that the issues dividing the DUP and Sinn Fein could be "resolved in a spirit of shared political responsibility and pragmatism". It said: "Northern Ireland's future will be best served by the establishment and running of an effective, accountable, and responsive government. "This is especially true in light of the challenges that Brexit presents for the region. "We urge all parties to continue dialogue in order to reach a viable power-sharing deal and re-establish the Northern Ireland Executive as soon as possible." Secretary of State James Brokenshire is set to introduce a budget for Northern Ireland in 11 days after talks between Sinn Fein and the DUP ended in acrimony yesterday. Both parties blamed each other for the failure to reach a deal, with the DUP saying day-to-day services shouldn't be disrupted over the Irish language, and Sinn Fein pledging not to back down on the issue. Read More Mr Brokenshire stressed that if he didn't move on a budget, public services would begin running out of money at the end of the month. "No government could simply stand by and allow that to happen," he said. The Secretary of State insisted that it was not a return to direct rule and that he would withdraw his budget bill if a Stormont Executive was formed before December. While negotiations between the DUP and Sinn Fein are set to resume, the prospects for a deal didn't look good last night as the two parties attacked each other for the political deadlock. Talks insiders have said while they are at loggerheads on several issues, an Irish Language Act remains the greatest stumbling block to an agreement. DUP East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said: "Day-to-day services should not be disrupted because of the Irish Language. It already receives ample public funding for those who wish to speak it or learn it. It already is catered for in ways that no other minority language is. "We cannot and will not be party to an agreement that elevates the Irish language not only above all others, but above health, education and other vital public services." Mr Campbell accused Sinn Fein of preventing key decisions being taken about Northern Ireland's economy and health and education services. "For Sinn Fein to then complain about the speed of progress, is nothing short of rank hypocrisy," he said. "The DUP stands ready to form an Executive today. Arlene Foster has led our talks team and is rightly frustrated that government is being held back by a narrow political agenda." But Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader Michelle O'Neill countered: "The issue of rights is not going to go away. The DUP and British Government know this. These rights must be satisfactorily dealt with." Ms O'Neill said her party was disappointed that the talks had "ended in failure" as Sinn Fein "did our best to be flexible and were prepared to stretch ourselves in the common good". She stated that endless talks without conclusion were "not sustainable", and accused the DUP of blocking an equality agenda on the Irish language, equal marriage, a Bill of Rights, and legacy issues. "That has been compounded by the Tory-DUP pact. The British Secretary of State is wrong when he says it is only the parties themselves who can reach agreement - he and the Irish Government have obligations," she said. "I want to state explicitly that, in the context of agreement on delivery of these rights, Sinn Fein will re-enter government. In the absence of these rights, the Executive is not sustainable." Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann claimed Sinn Fein was guilty of an "abuse of power and an abuse of their mandate". He said: "Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein should be very clear that they will not be allowed to hold this country to ransom or to dictate the agenda. In all of the political posturing we must never forget that people - real people - are on waiting lists, in pain, in distress and in need of our help. People are coming to harm and this cannot be allowed to continue." SDLP leader Colum Eastwood claimed that any budget from Mr Brokenshire would represent direct rule. "A Tory-DUP government will do nothing for the rights of people in the north. It only strengthens the DUP's intransigence. It will do nothing for the rights of Irish language speakers, the LGBT community or victims," he added. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he hoped "an honourable compromise" was possible and stressed that London was acting reluctantly and delaying a budget as late as possible. "Both governments share the view that it is regrettable and deeply concerning that, eight months after the last Assembly election, a power-sharing Executive is not in place," he said. "The issues under discussion - particularly those on language and culture - go to the heart of the divisions in society here in Northern Ireland and so agreement on them was always going to be very challenging." Mr Brokenshire said the talks couldn't run indefinitely but were still worth continuing. "There is a huge amount of frustration out there in Northern Ireland, that people here want to see politics get on with the job and serving them," he said. "Yes, this has gone on for an extended period, but I still think it's right we use renewed efforts to find a resolution to see devolved government back on its feet again." He said he would take advice on the issue of MLAS continuing to receive their 49,000 salaries. A man has been given a conditional discharge at Londonderry Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to begging beside a bank machine A man has been given a conditional discharge at Londonderry Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to begging beside a bank machine. Douglas Duff (39), from Crawford Square in the city, admitted contravening the 1847 Vagrancy Ireland Act by placing himself in a public street to beg. A solicitor for the Public Prosecution Service said that at 2pm on April 18, a police officer in the Strand Road area of the city stopped to withdraw money from a Bank of Ireland ATM. The officer heard the defendant asking members of the public for money. The defendant, who appeared to have been drinking, told the officer he was trying to get money to get a taxi home. The police then arranged for a lift to bring him to his house. Defence solicitor Seamus Quigley said it was not aggressive street begging, but that Duff was simply asking for spare change. "In terms of legislation used to prosecute my client, in the midst of the Irish famine between 1847 and 1852, legislation was passed in 1847 called the Vagrancy Ireland Act to deal with poor families on the sides of the roads who were starving to death", he said. The DUP and Sinn Fein failed to meet Mr Brokenshire's Monday deadline to reach agreement to restore powersharing in the region Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire pictured speaking to the media at Stormont House in east Belfast after local parties failed to reach an agreement to get the Northern Ireland Assembly up-and-running. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com PACEMAKER BELFAST 01/11/2017: Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire pictured making a statement on the way forward to restore power-sharing at Stormont. Picture By; Arthur Allison/Pacemaker Press Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire pictured speaking to the media at Stormont House in east Belfast after local parties failed to reach an agreement to get the Northern Ireland Assembly up-and-running. Picture by Jonathan Porter/PressEye.com Theresa May remains committed to a 1 billion investment in Northern Ireland despite the continued deadlock in Stormont powersharing, a senior Downing Street source has said. The Government is understood to be standing by the controversial deal struck by the Tories in return for Democratic Unionist votes at Westminster, while making preparations to impose a budget on the region by the end of the month. Secretary of State James Brokenshire said public services in Northern Ireland would begin to run out of money by the end of November. And while the Prime Minister's official spokesman said the priority was getting the Stormont Assembly back up and running, another senior source in Downing Street insisted that the 1 billion investment still stands. "The money that has been promised as part of the confidence and supply deal is for the people of Northern Ireland and we are committed to delivering on that undertaking," the source said. The DUP and Sinn Fein failed to meet Mr Brokenshire's original Monday deadline for a powersharing deal, after Stormont had been effectively in limbo since January. Irish language rights and other cultural issues are the main sticking points. And the 10 month long crisis prompted renewed calls for MLAs' pay - 49,500 a year - to be cut. Steven Agnew, Green Party leader in Northern Ireland, said: " If an MLA is performing two-thirds of a job, they should be paid two-thirds of the wage." Sinn Fein's northern leader Michelle O'Neill said negotiations had been hampered by the Westminster votes deal. She said: "This has been compounded by the Tory-DUP pact. The British Secretary of State is wrong when he says that it is only the parties themselves who can reach agreement - he and the Irish Government also have obligations." DUP MP Gregory Campbell accused Sinn Fein of "rank hypocrisy" over the deadlock at Stormont and said his party was ready to form an executive. "We want devolution. Arlene Foster has led our talks team and is rightly frustrated that government is being held back by a narrow political agenda," he said. "We received an overwhelming mandate to ensure any deal was fair. That mandate has to be respected, just as we respect the mandate of others." SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the threatened budget was direct rule and warned that people in Northern Ireland were deeply worried. "A Tory/DUP Government will do nothing for the rights of people in the north. It only strengthens the DUP's intransigence," he said. "It will do nothing for the rights of Irish language speakers, the LGBT community or victims." Ulster Unionist Party leader Robin Swann said: "Northern Ireland is now coming slowly and deliberately to direct rule, at the hands of Sinn Fein and the DUP." Green Party leader Steven Agnew said there had been a blackout on what issues the Sinn Fein and the DUP cannot agree on. "What we now need from the Secretary of State is a concerted effort to introduce transparency, creativity and inclusivity into negotiations, to end the blackout on what the sticking points are and to listen to alternative approaches," he said. Mr Brokenshire said important progress has been made in the talks but it was unlikely the Stormont executive could be revived in time for Northern Ireland's politicians to determine the budget by the end of the month. "No Government could simply stand by and allow that to happen," he said. Mr Brokenshire said he was taking advice on the issue of pay for MLAs - a 49,500 salary with about 41,250 paid to the 90 MLAs in the months since Stormont has been shut. He said talks cannot run indefinitely but the latest deadline should not be seen as a reason to abandon them. "I think there is already a huge amount of frustration out there in Northern Ireland, that people here want to see politics here get on with the job and serving them," he said. "Yes, this has gone on for an extended period, but I still think it is right that we use renewed efforts to find a resolution to see devolved government get back on its feet again. "It's because it matters so much - that local accountability, local politicians serving here in Northern Ireland. But they can't merely continue forever and a day." Ireland's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who had been involved in the talks earlier this week, said London was acting reluctantly and delaying a threatened budget as late as possible. "Both Governments share the view that it is regrettable and deeply concerning that, eight months after the last Assembly election, a powersharing executive is not in place to make the necessary decisions, including on budgetary issues, for Northern Ireland," he said. In their statements, Mr Coveney and Mr Brokenshire also noted the importance of the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Coveney said the relationship between the parties was at the heart of the issue. "The issues under discussion - particularly those on language and culture - go to the heart of the divisions in society here in Northern Ireland and so agreement on them was always going to be very challenging," he said. "However, I have always believed that it is possible to reach an honourable compromise which reflects the core principles of the agreement - partnership, equality and mutual respect." Charlotte Murrays twin sister Denise (right) leaves Dungannon Magistrates Court with family yesterday after a failed bail application by John Patrick Miller Police believe the ex-boyfriend of a woman who vanished five years ago killed her after he learned she had been romantically linked to another man, a court has heard. John Patrick Miller is accused of murdering Charlotte Murray in 2012. The 46-year-old was yesterday refused bail at Dungannon Magistrates' Court, almost five years to the day Charlotte is believed to have gone missing. Miller, a chef from the town's Redford Park, who appeared via video-link from Maghaberry prison, denies murdering Charlotte sometime between October 31 and November 1, 2012. Originally from Omagh, but living in Moy, 34-year-old Charlotte was reported missing by her family in 2013. They sat quietly in the gallery of the court, which heard police believed the missing woman was murdered after Miller was sent explicit images of her with another man. A detective sergeant also claimed that "traces of Charlotte's blood were found in the bathroom of the Roxborough Heights house". The detective added: "It was around the waste water pipe and spatters were also located on the wall behind the toilet. "All we know is that it is Charlotte's blood. We cannot be sure what else happened in that bathroom. Searches are ongoing for her remains as we speak." It was also claimed that in the hours after he allegedly killed Charlotte, Miller went online looking for pawn dealers, attempting to sell off her engagement ring. Opposing bail, a sergeant said police feared Miller, who now knows the extent of the evidence against him, might abscond as he has associates in France. The detective added: "The defendant and Charlotte were in a relationship from around 2011, when they resided and worked on the island of Lusty Beg. The couple them moved to Roxborough Heights, Moy. "They became engaged in February 2012, but Miller would later claim the relationship began to decline shortly after. Charlotte was at this time seeking another job and was offered a position in Belfast just prior to her disappearance." The detective also told the court that at around 5.15am on November 1, a post appeared on Charlotte's Facebook account, saying, "I'm so p***** off with life. I have to go away for a while." While this was later found to have been posted from a different internet address, it was registered at the home the couple had shared. A text was also sent from Charlotte's mobile phone to her new employers to say she would not be coming in. Later that day a friend also received a text from the mobile, stating: "I'm going away for a while." Miller was to later claim that with the relationship over, Charlotte left for Belfast, taking only her computer with her. The sergeant told the court: "We believe we can prove what the defendant put forward as a statement in 2013 is lies. However, defence lawyer Peter Corrigan argued: "The presence of blood does not signify a murder occurred in that house. "Animal blood was also found there. There is no evidence a murder took place in the house." Further claiming the court "cannot even be sure there has been a murder," the solicitor said Miller's family were offering him accommodation and were willing to post a 20,000 bail bond. Rejecting the application, deputy District Judge Bonita Boyd said she was not satisfied any conditions would mitigate any risk of flight or interference with the investigation. Miller will appear in court again by video-link later this month. The two leaders spoke on the phone about the latest twist in the political deadlock at Stormont James Brokenshire has said there is still time to save powersharing in Stormont. The Northern Ireland Secretary of State said there are only a small number of differences between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists, mainly around Irish language rights, culture, identity and respect. But the DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson insisted that the Armed Forces Covenant, which aims to give ex-servicemen and women some priority medical treatment, housing assistance and school places for children, was integral to a deal. "There will be no outcome that will not see that Armed Forces Covenant providing for the servicemen and women and the veterans and their families from Northern Ireland who have served this country," he said. Mr Brokenshire said the Government wanted to see the ex-soldiers' benefits "touch" all parts of the UK. The DUP and Sinn Fein failed to meet Mr Brokenshire's original Monday deadline for a deal, after Stormont had been effectively in limbo since January. The crisis sparked a phone call between Prime Minister Theresa May and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Wednesday while he was on a trade mission to the US west coast. "They talked about the responsibility on parties to overcome their differences and the need for them to compromise on the outstanding issues for the benefit of all communities in Northern Ireland," Mrs May's official spokesman said. In his statement to the House of Commons, the Secretary of State said he was making plans to impose a budget to protect public services over the next year but added that he would not be making the spending decisions. He also said the Conservatives remained committed to the 1 billion investment, agreed in return for DUP votes in Westminster for Theresa May's minority Government. "This Government, we stand by our commitments, and as a party we stand by the agreement that has been reached with the DUP. Nothing I have said today changes that," he said. Mr Brokenshire warned that Northern Ireland will begin to run out of money in the coming weeks and said it is highly unlikely a new executive could be formed in time to pass a budget by the end of November. But he added: "Even now - however unlikely this may be - should the parties demonstrate that an executive could be formed in the immediate future I would clearly wish to proceed instead with legislation to allow that to happen." Mr Brokenshire said a last-minute powersharing deal would be conditional on a budget being agreed and passed by the end of November. He also said he will reflect carefully on MLAs' salaries - 49,500 a year - which cannot be stalled or docked without primary legislation in Westminster. Amid calls from the Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry and others for a mediator to support the talks, Mr Brokenshire said the Government was considering other interventions and other ways to broker a deal. But he added: "I think it still remains possible but it is certainly difficult. "We will continue to keep a range of options available to us to see how we can move this process forward." Mr Brokenshire told MPs he believed the best way forward for dealing with legacy allegations against former servicemen and women for incidents during the Troubles had been agreed at previous talks. He said: "I want to move forward with a consultation around the Stormont House Agreement which sets out new institutions, new bodies that are very firmly intended to be balanced, proportionate, transparent, fair and equitable and thereby ensuring that soldiers are not unfairly treated." Margaret Kennedy holds pictures of her mother Maura Meehan and aunt Dorothy Maguire who were shot dead in 1971 A former soldier says he is still haunted by his involvement in a shooting incident which resulted in the deaths of two Belfast sisters nearly half a century ago. Colin Rudkin, now 68, realised he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when a historical enquiries team interviewed him about the controversial killings of mother-of-three Maura Meehan (31) and her 19-year-old sister Dorothy Maguire in October 1971. The women - who were members of Cumann na mBan, the female wing of the IRA - were unarmed passengers in a car which was fired upon by soldiers in the lower Falls area. "They shot at us and we shot back," said Yorkshire-based Mr Rudkin, who has been receiving counselling and therapy for PTSD. "Unfortunately the people in the car that died were two girls, both sisters." But Maura Meehan's daughter Margaret Kennedy, who is taking legal action against the Ministry of Defence over the killings, told the Belfast Telegraph that Mr Rudkin and other soldiers should realise that victims' relatives are suffering similar trauma without getting specialist treatment. And she added that she is opposed to Conservative MP Richard Benyon's bid to introduce a statute of limitations for former soldiers accused of serious crime while on active duty. "There shouldn't be a law for them and another for everyone else," said Mrs Kennedy, who says she knows the identities of the three soldiers (Mr Rudkin isn't one of them) who killed her mother and aunt. "Nobody has any right to take anybody else's life and get away with it." She added: "I suffer from PTSD myself because of what happened but I'm not getting the special treatment he gets, or the sympathy. He might say his is more traumatic but he chose to join the Army. He wasn't forced into it." Mr Rudkin, a father of three and grandfather of four, joined the 1st Battalion the Royal Green Jackets in 1970 and was on his first full tour of Northern Ireland the following year when the sisters were shot dead. Some 40 years later PSNI detectives interviewed him in London about the incident and shortly afterwards he "imploded". "I just cracked," he told the Huddersfield Daily Examiner. "It was as if I was back in Northern Ireland and everybody knew it was me and they were coming for me. "It was the first indication that I'd had of suffering any symptoms of PTSD. I was cowering in a corner. People must have thought I was nuts." He added: "I don't have a clue how I got home on the train. I remember sitting on the train and holding my head in my hands. I was in a right state. It all came on at once. After that the nightmares started." Mr Rudkin said he then started suffering daily flashbacks and hallucinations such as his kitchen turning into a Northern Ireland street that felt "absolutely real". "I was on my back as if I'd been blown up," he said. "The bath was full of bits of babies. It was horrific. I was a gibbering mess." Meanwhile, Richard Benyon, a former Army lieutenant who also served with the Royal Green Jackets in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and who introduced his proposed new legislation in the Commons yesterday, says the aim is to have a ban on both criminal and civil action which is based on allegations that are more than 10 years old. "I think most people in Northern Ireland have moved on," said the MP for Newbury. "Everyone I talk to says it's crazy continuing to pursue old men to their graves. There is simply no way they can get justice this long after the incident." Mrs Kennedy, however, says her legal action against the MoD is ongoing, although the 55-year-old mother of five and grandmother of four says she is not seeking compensation and does not expect it to yield a satisfactory outcome. "Deep down, I know we'll never get the absolute truth, or any of the soldiers being reprimanded for what they have done," she said. "If we got the truth of what happened that night and the admission that the soldiers literally murdered my mammy and Dorothy, then we can let them rest in peace and we can get on with our lives." She added: "After it happened, my daddy was sent hate mail, bullets in the post and threatened in his job. They said Mammy was in the IRA but she was actually on the Clonard Women's Action Committee. At that time it was about rallying and banging bin lids." Tory MPs blast at retributive politics A Tory MP has accused extreme nationalist-leaning individuals in the Northern Ireland justice system of reigniting investigations into Army veterans who served during the Troubles. Richard Benyon said many feared the investigations were a form of retributive politics. He is introducing draft legislation that would introduce a statute of limitations, imposing a time limit where action could be brought against British troops for their conduct during combat. He suggested a 10-year time limit under his Armed Forces (Statute of Limitations) Bill. Artist's impression of the the Birmingham and Fazeley viaduct (HS2/PA) Five companies have been shortlisted to build 225mph trains for HS2. Rail minister Paul Maynard said the 2.75 billion contract will create thousands of skilled British jobs and apprenticeships. The companies vying for the right to design, build and maintain at least 54 new high-speed trains are Alstom Transport, Bombardier Transportation UK, Hitachi Rail Europe, Patentes Talgo and Siemens. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference The award of train-building contracts to foreign firms with overseas manufacturing plants has been criticised in recent years. In 2011, Germany-based Siemens was handed a 1.6 billion deal to build trains for Londons Thameslink, and last year Spanish company CAF won a 490 million contract to manufacture trains for Arriva Rail North. Some of the entries shortlisted by HS2 Ltd already have UK production lines. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference Hitachis manufacturing plant in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, is building more than 100 Intercity Express trains for the Great Western and East Coast lines over the next three years. Earlier this year Derbys Bombardier secured a multimillion-pound investment to build 90 new trains for South Western Railway services. Expand Close (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (PA Graphics) Alstom is developing its new train technology and manufacturing facility in Widnes, Cheshire. Spanish manufacturer Talgo last month unveiled a plan to build a factory in the UK and has already visited potential locations in Leeds and Liverpool. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference Phase 1 of the 55.7 billion high-speed railway will open between London and Birmingham in December 2026. The new trains will also serve destinations on conventional lines beyond the core HS2 network, including York, Newcastle, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. They will be expected to meet the highest international standards for noise reduction and environmental sustainability. Mr Maynard said: HS2 will see some of the worlds fastest trains connecting our great cities across the North and Midlands, creating an economy that works for everyone. But announcements like this show how the benefits of HS2 will resonate far beyond the opening of the new railway. HS2s legacy of jobs and skills is already being created. The contract is expected to be awarded in late 2019. File photo dated 09/02/11 of Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins, who has been suspended from the party "on the basis of allegations received". The former frontbencher, who represents Luton North, has had the whip withdrawn while an investigation into the claims is carried out. John Stilwell/PA Wire Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins has been suspended from the party on the basis of allegations received, a spokesman said. The former frontbencher, who represents Luton North, has had the whip withdrawn while an investigation into the claims is carried out. Labour said it takes complaints extremely seriously and has robust systems in place to deal with them. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference A spokesman said: On the basis of allegations received by the Labour Party today, Kelvin Hopkins has been suspended from party membership, and therefore the Labour whip, while an investigation takes place. The Labour Party takes all such complaints extremely seriously and has robust procedures in place to deal with them. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference Mr Hopkins, a former shadow culture secretary under Jeremy Corbyn, faces claims he sent suggestive texts and behaved inappropriately. Ava Etemadzadeh, 27, told the Telegraph she had invited the MP to speak at an event at Essex University in 2014 in her role as chairwoman of its Labour society. Ms Etemadzadeh informed the whips office at the time of the incident and said a local party member contacted the Leaders office last year to raise concerns about the allegations. It is understood that she made fresh allegations when she contacted the party today. Mr Hopkins employs his wife Patricia as a part-time constituency secretary. A woman at his home who said she was his wife said the MP was at a meeting in Luton this evening. Asked about the suspension, she said: I dont know anything about it. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference Mr Hopkins, 76, has been an MP for 20 years and has remained on the backbenches except for a four month stint as culture spokesman last year. On the left of the party, he has a long history of involvement in the trade union movement and was one of the 36 MPs to nominate Mr Corbyn when he stood for the Labour leadership in 2015. An Australian woman has been jailed for six years after pleading guilty to drug trafficking in a high-profile case that has shed light on the plight of foreign drug mules. Cassandra Sainsbury was accompanied by her family as the judge accepted the plea deal - a huge reduction from the 30 years in jail she faced had the case gone to trial. Her lawyer Orlando Herran said that, with good conduct, his client could be released from prison in as little as two years and placed under house arrest even before then. She must also pay a fine of nearly 100,000 US dollars (75,000). Sainsbury was arrested in April at Bogota's international airport in Colombia boarding a flight to London after an X-ray machine detected about 6 kilograms (13 pounds) of cocaine stashed in packages of headphones within her luggage. The 22-year-old said she had purchased the headphones to bring back to Australia for her wedding, but later changed her story several times, claiming she had been set up and threatened by people back in Sydney where she said she worked as a receptionist at a brothel. Prosecutors, in seeking leniency, were persuaded that her crimes were not so black and white, said Mr Herran. "She's lucky because the amount of the drugs was very big," he told journalists who travelled to Colombia after the closed-door hearing. Sainsbury's arrest garnered attention in Australia, where tabloids alternated between mocking the Adelaide native as "Cocaine Cassie" and expressing sympathy with the plight of Australia's highest-profile foreign prisoner. But the few Colombians who followed the case at all tended to be deeply offended by her family's early statement that she could not receive a fair trial in such a "corrupt country". Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine and its police among the best trained to detect and stop drug smuggling thanks in part to billions of dollars in US anti-narcotics aid that has strengthened law enforcement. Many families have sad tales of loved ones who have spent years behind bars in the US and elsewhere after being drawn by economic hardship into the lower rungs of the drug trade. As tourism to Colombia has boomed over the past decade, the country's drug cartels are increasingly recruiting foreigners to smuggle cocaine out of the country, with 67 suspected foreign drug mules arrested this year. AP US president Donald Trump's former campaign chairman - who is accused of multiple financial crimes - has attacked the strength of the evidence against him, saying the case is "embellished". Lawyers for Paul Manafort defended him in a court filing after a case was brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They said he was a "successful, international political consultant" who by nature of his work on behalf of foreign political parties was necessarily involved in international financial transactions. They said Mr Manafort, who led Mr Trump's campaign for several months last year, has done nothing wrong and does not pose a risk of fleeing the country. The filing was the first volley from his defence team, which seeks to undermine a 12-count indictment against him and long-term business associate Rick Gates. Both are scheduled to appear on Thursday afternoon in Washington's federal court. Mr Mueller announced the indictment on Monday charging the men with money laundering and other financial crimes related to their political consulting work for Ukraine's former ruling party. They were placed on home confinement during a court appearance earlier this week, and both were released on multimillion-dollar bond amounts. In addition to the indictment of Mr Manafort and Mr Gates, prosecutors revealed a guilty plea from a campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI about foreign contacts during the campaign. Prosecutors disclosed additional details about the wealth of Mr Manafort and Mr Gates in a court filing on Tuesday that sought to keep Mr Manafort confined to his house. In the filing, prosecutors note that he has provided differing accounts of his assets and has three different passports. In a response on Thursday, Mr Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downing, countered that the passports are in his client's name and noted that, though "it may be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one US passport". He also denied that Mr Manafort was involved in any criminal activity related to his Ukrainian work, saying that all funds that went through offshore bank accounts were from "legal sources". Mr Downing said that Mr Manafort was not trying to conceal his assets, noting that prosecutors say funds that originated in the Ukraine and went through Cyprus ultimately arrived in the United States. "Obviously, international funds entering the US banking system, or going to US vendors, are traceable and subject to US process," they said. "It goes without saying that in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States." The defence lawyers also challenged the inclusion in the indictment of allegations that Mr Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. The Justice Department, they said, has brought only six criminal prosecutions under that statute since 1966 and secured only one conviction during that period. AP Five friends from Argentina who were celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation were among those killed when a rental truck was driven into pedestrians and cyclists on a bicycle path in New York. The men were reportedly part of a group of 10 friends exploring Manhattan on bicycles when the truck struck in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday. In response to the atrocity - the deadliest terror attack to strike New York since the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, US President Donald Trump ordered the security services to "step up" vetting procedures. Eight people were killed and at least 11 others injured after a man drove the rented Home Depot truck on to the path on West Street at around 3pm. The driver, who has been identified by law enforcement officials as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov from Uzbekistan was shot by police after jumping out of the vehicle with what turned out to be two fake guns. He was taken to hospital and is in police custody. Officers said his injuries are not life-threatening. President Trump has said he will consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay jail in Cuba. Responding to a shouted question from a reporter at a Cabinet meeting, Mr Trump said: "I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo." Mr Trump's comments come after senator Lindsey Graham called on the president to treat the alleged attacker as an enemy combatant. Hours after the attack, the names of the first victims emerged as Argentina's foreign ministry said Hernan Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernan Ferruchi had died. The group were marking three decades since their graduation from Polytechnic College in Rosario city in central Argentina. A sixth Argentinian man with the group, Martin Ludovico Marro, was taken to the Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan. A Belgian national was also among the dead, the country's deputy prime minister said. On Tuesday night, police investigating the rampage were seen surrounding a white Toyota minivan with Florida number plates in the car park of Home Depot in Passaic, New Jersey. Saipov had allegedly rented the pick-up truck an hour before the rampage from the state before unleashing terror on the streets of New York. He reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar". New York mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack "a particularly cowardly act of terror" that was "aimed at innocent civilians going about their daily lives". The 29-year-old suspect was working as an Uber driver after passing a background check, according to a spokeswoman for the taxi driver app. In a statement, the firm added: "We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance." President Trump praised the actions of first responders. He said on Twitter that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to step up its already "extreme vetting" programme. The president added: "Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!" A number of other officials in both the US and Europe offered condolences on social media. Argentina's president Mauricio Macri tweeted: "Profoundly moved by the tragic deaths this afternoon in NY. We are at the disposal of the families of the Argentinian victims." The country's Foreign minister Jorge Faurie said that his heart was with the family and friends of those who had died "at this moment of deep and inexplicable pain". The governor of New York State Andrew Cuomo said it was a "lone wolf" attack, and that there was no evidence that it was part of a wider plot. Today marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration. This brief letter marked the first recognition by a major power of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, and that it would be in Palestine. This commitment came with two important caveats. First, that it should be achieved through peaceful co-existence with the communities there. Second, that the creation of such a homeland should not be used to justify anti-Jewish discrimination in other countries. In the following 40 years, neither of those proved achievable. As more and more Jews made Palestine their home tensions grew with riots, general strikes and ultimately an Arab uprising. Elsewhere, and in Europe in particular, anti-Jewish discrimination continued and intensified. Ultimately, it escalated to the Nazi attempt to systematically exterminate all Jews - killing millions of men, women and children. These two strands came together in the form of the then Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who fled Palestine because of his role in the Arab Uprising and ended up in Nazi Germany. He, with full knowledge of the 'Final Solution', actively lobbied against any Jews being allowed to escape death by emigrating to Palestine. He went so far as to lobby against 500 children being spared in this way. The revealing of the Holocaust to the world and the end of the Second World War brought the issues of Palestine and a Jewish homeland there to a head. Our Armed Forces tried to maintain law and order in the Palestine Mandate while the newly-established United Nations sought to put forward a political solution. However, Jewish impatience and Arab resistance combined into a pattern of sectarian and terrorist violence. From this turmoil and many subsequent attacks, grew the democratic state of Israel. Northern Ireland has three connections to this story. The Declaration may bear the name of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, but its real author was Leo Amery MP. Amery was always a staunch supporter of the Unionist cause. He was the author of the British Covenant - the sister document of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant - which some 2 million mainland supporters signed. The Royal Ulster Rifles were one of the Army units that tried to keep the peace, the first unit was transferred shortly after VE day. Israel's sixth president, Chaim Herzog, was born in Belfast. The son of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, he had successful military, legal, diplomatic and political careers. In 1975, when the United Nations adopted the General Resolution 3379 - Zionism is Racism, it was Herzog who spoke for Israel. His speech is considered one of the best political speeches of the 20th century. In it he declares: "I come here to denounce the two great evils which menace society in general and a society of nations in particular. These two evils are hatred and ignorance." Sadly, his memory fell victim to hatred and ignorance when the memorial plaque at his birthplace in north Belfast had to be removed following a series of incidents at the building. Our own local example of how in western democracies we see the growth in anti-Semitism as both the hard left and the far right tread that old, dark path. As the Ulster Covenant was the birth certificate of Northern Ireland so arguably was the Balfour Declaration the birth certificate of the state of Israel. As we mark this centenary, we should remind ourselves of the commitment to achieve peaceful co-existence there and to oppose anti-Semitism elsewhere in the world. The failure to achieve them in 100 years should not lead us to abandon them but to double our efforts to achieve them. The Protestant Reformation was one of the most important events in the history of Europe and, indeed, the world, and this year there have been many commemorations of it. Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther fixed his 95 theses to the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg, Germany. This was a seminal event. So how did BBC Northern Ireland mark this 500th anniversary? What television programmes did it commission? As far as I can see, the only television programme produced locally in Northern Ireland was Luther agus An Domhan Gaelach. This translates as Luther and the Gaelic World and was described as a documentary in which Dr Art Hughes (Reader in Irish at Ulster University) examines the impact of Martin Luther and his ideas on the Gaelic-speaking peoples of Scotland and Ireland. Yes, the only television programme produced locally was an Irish-language programme that looked at the Reformation through the prism of the Gaelic world. That is an indictment of BBC Northern Ireland, which has failed to meet its obligations on fairness, equity, diversity and inclusion. What about the impact of Luther on those Lowland Scots who were not Gaels and who were the forefathers of the Ulster-Scots? Moreover, since this programme was co-commissioned by BBC Gaeilge, which is part of BBC Northern Ireland, together with BBC Alba and RTE, and since it was supported by the Irish Language Broadcast Fund, which funds up to 75% of the production costs, the amount of money spent by BBC Northern Ireland on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation was minimal. I doubt if any other major religious event would be treated by BBC Northern Ireland in such a dismissive and thoughtless way. As regards the programme, which was broadcast with English subtitles, the first part, dealing with Martin Luther, was superficial. From there, as it moved on to Scotland, Ireland and Ulster, it was downhill all the way. The narrative and the historical content was deeply flawed. The message of Martin Luther reached Scotland through Patrick Hamilton, a Scottish convert who had visited Wittenberg and was later burned at the stake in St Andrews in 1528 for preaching the gospel. Yet Hamilton, generally regarded as the first Protestant martyr in Scotland, wasnt even mentioned. It was also disappointing to find one of the contributors stating that Lowland Scotland was English-speaking, when, in fact, the language of Lowland Scotland was Scots. By the early 16th century, Scots was the language of the people and the language of government in Scotland. Indeed, one of Hamiltons fellow converts, Alexander Allan, fled to Wittenberg and translated the Bible into Scots. Moving on to Ireland and Ulster, this part of the story was as flawed as the Scottish part. Dr Eamonn O Ciardha, an Irish-speaking academic from Ulster University, spoke about the strong link that existed between the Protestant religion and conquest and told viewers that the sword and the Bible came hand-in-hand. Then, just in case you missed it, the presenter linked the Bible and sword with oppressive colonialism. The final contributor was Dr Niall Comer, a lecturer in Irish language at Ulster University and current president of Conradh na Gaeilge. As such, he is better known as one of the promoters of an Irish Language Act, but here he provided viewers with an Irish nationalist view of the plantation. Meanwhile, Dr Hughes stated that in the 17th century, Protestants were firmly identified with British tyranny and land-grabs. This was political polemic that ignored the complexities and nuances of history and fell far below the standard we should expect from a public service broadcaster. Protestantism has been part of the Ulster story for centuries, and it would have been possible for the BBC hierarchy in Belfast to commission a balanced documentary programme about Martin Luther, the message of the Reformation, the influence of the Reformation and its impact in Ulster. But that was not to be. And that tells me there is something very wrong at the heart of the BBC. The latest potentially murderous attack on members of the PSNI in west Belfast is an indication yet again of what may lie ahead if our politicians at Stormont fail to reach an agreement, which seems to be a distinct possibility The latest potentially murderous attack on members of the PSNI in west Belfast is an indication yet again of what may lie ahead if our politicians at Stormont fail to reach an agreement, which seems to be a distinct possibility. Nature hates a vacuum and paramilitary dissidents are sure to do their utmost to fill a huge political vacuum if and when the latest attempt at power-sharing ends in abject failure. There are so many issues still unresolved at Stormont that the outcome hardly bears thinking about. As this paper has pointed out so often, the NHS here is in crisis, there is a shortage of funding for education and major infrastructure projects, as well as huge job losses in an economy which cannot afford any such developments. There are also the complex legacy issues which have still to be handled properly. The uncertainty about Brexit casts a dark shadow over everything, and at a time when Northern Ireland desperately needs its political leaders to represent us at the negotiations, not a single one of them has stepped up to the mark. It looks as if direct rule is the only option, and when that happens, the blame game between the DUP and Sinn Fein will begin in earnest. The politicians pay lip service to the people who elected them, but they obviously do not care about the protests from those who want a solution and are fed up with their representatives who continue to benefit from large salaries without working for them. Clearly these politicians have no sense of shame, and no concept of their public duty to represent the whole community. The patience of the public has worn thin to the point of being threadbare, and more and more people are resigning themselves to direct rule, if only because they believe that it would be better than the current deadlock and paralysis at Stormont. This is a country which is obsessed by the grievances of the past, which cannot deal properly with the present, and which is unable to look forward to any possibility of a shared future. Time and again we are mired down by issues of flags and emblems, by marches and counter-marches, and by the celebration of past victories which have nothing to do with the modern world. Equally depressing is our ability on both sides to nurse the grievances of the past, and to recreate them anew each day, with all the political poison and community sectarianism that this inevitably brings to the surface. There was a time, not so long ago in historical terms, when the people in both communities had some hope, after some four decades of murderous and bitter conflict. The Good Friday Agreement took an agonisingly long time to bear fruit, but the breakthrough engineered by Martin McGuinness and the Reverend Ian Paisley encouraged the majority of people to look to better times. Sadly, both men have died, and it now appears that the hope of a better future has died with them. In a land obsessed by anniversaries, sadly it is worth nothing that this month marks the first anniversary of the visionary Declaration of Intent by Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster. We are all entitled to ask, why have things gone so badly wrong in such a short time? This is a question which the historians may be best placed to answer, but in the meantime the ordinary people are left to pick up the pieces and to reflect sadly on what might have been. An Indian man takes a photograph while standing in front of a portrait of journalist Gauri Lankesh during a protest condemning her killing, Sept. 7, 2017. Bangladesh, the Philippines and India appear on the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) 10th annual list of nations where, the press freedom watchdog says, killers of reporters and writers are likely to go free from prosecution. CPJ released its Global Impunity Index on Wednesday to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, which falls on Nov. 2. The unchecked, unsolved murders of journalists is one of the greatest threats to press freedom, New York-based CPJ said. The Philippines ranks fifth on the list, while Bangladesh is 10th and India is 12th. The list includes 12 nations with at least five unsolved killings of journalists. The rankings are based on the number of such deaths over a 10-year period as a percentage of population. Not included in the report, which covered Sept. 1, 2007 to Aug. 31, 2017, were recent acts of violence in all three countries. On Oct. 24, Philippine radio broadcaster Christopher Iban Lozada, 29, was killed when gunmen in a van stopped his car in the city of Bislig on Mindanao island. Lozada had often lashed out against government corruption on his program. In Bangladesh on Oct. 28, several journalists who were traveling with opposition leader Khaleda Zia to Rohingya refugee camps in Coxs Bazar were injured when her motorcade was attacked. Since Oct. 10, Utpal Das, a senior correspondent for the online portal Purbo Pashchim has been missing. His father told reporters on Oct. 26 that Das could have been abducted. In India, independent journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot dead outside her home in Bangalore on Sept. 5. Lankesh had been identified as an outspoken critic of Hindutva politics, an ideology seeking to define Indian culture in terms of Hindu values, and Prime Minister Narendra Modis government. 42 deaths in the Philippines The CPJ report lists 42 such deaths in the Philippines, which ranked fourth in 2016, and notes that those targeted were local journalists covering politics, corruption, business and crime outside the capital. The report did credit President Rodrigo Duterte for forming the Presidential Task Force on Media Security in October 2016 that includes a team of investigators and prosecutors designated to investigate new cases of journalist killings. While the commission announced investigations into several murders, those investigations have not led to convictions. Meanwhile, two people including a former policeman claimed Duterte ordered the killing of radio broadcaster Jun Pala in 2003, when Duterte was mayor of Davao City. Duterte has denied any connection to the crime, the report states. The report also highlights the March 2017 shooting death of reporter Joaquin Briones and the lack of justice for 32 journalists and media workers killed in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre that left 58 people dead. Three (out of dozens) of suspects were acquitted in July this year on grounds of insufficient evidence. The regional appeals court also upheld petitions for bail by Datu Sajid, a principal suspect, CPJ stated. 7 deaths in Bangladesh The report states that seven secular bloggers and journalists reporting on drug trafficking were killed in Bangladesh while members of extremist and criminal groups were getting away with murder. Bangladesh, which ranked 11th in 2016, is credited for police arresting a member of militant group Ansarullah Bangla Team in November 2016, who confessed to being involved in the killings of secular writer Niloy Neel (also known as Niladri Chottopaddhya) and publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan. It also noted that several suspects had been detained since 2015 but in only one case, the 2013 killing of Ahmed Rajib Haider, had anyone been convicted. Mojurul Ahsan Bulbul, president of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists, said the report was spot on. This is true that trials for killing journalists are rare in Bangladesh. To improve in the CPJs Global Impunity Index, Bangladesh must mete out justice for the murder of the journalists, he told BenarNews. Bulbul said the photo of a press card belonging to Abdul Hakim Shimul, symbolized the global insecurity of the journalists. Shimul, a local journalist in Sirajganj district who worked for the Bengali language newspaper Daily Shamakal, was killed Feb. 3 in a gunfight between two factions of the ruling Awami League. The blood-stained identity card of Shimul is seen at every international seminar and symposium. This is not a good example. This is a matter of Bangladeshs image and image of Bangladeshs press freedom, Bulbul said. I would urge the government to try the killers of the journalists, he said. Reacting to the report, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasinas government was not responsible for hindering trials of journalist killers. He instead blamed previous governments for not being interested. If it is said that we are obstructing the justice, it will be unfair. We have been working to ensure trial of the killings of all journalists. The only exception is the Sagor-Runi murder case, he said. Journalists Sagor Sarowar and his wife, Meherun Runi, were stabbed to death in their Dhaka home in February 2012. On the fifth anniversary of their killings, former colleagues questioned why police had not revealed a motive or released an investigation report, even though six suspects had been in custody for at least four years without being charged. 13 killed in India India, which ranked 13th in the 2016 report, has seen 13 journalists killed in the last decade. CPJ blamed the killings on criminal and political groups and government officials. CPJ credited Indias Maharashtra state for passing legislation in April establishing stiffer penalties for incidents of violence against journalists and news outlets. It requires that high-ranking police officers investigate incidents of violence against journalists and designates such attacks a non-bailable offenses. But CPA also took a shot at India. All murders of journalists in India documented by CPJ have been carried out with complete impunity, the report states. Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report. Thai bomb experts inspect a pickup truck that was damaged after a bomb blast bomb killed four rangers in Pattanis Sai Buri district in the countrys Deep South, Sept. 22, 2017. Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET on 2017-11-02 Two-year-old negotiations with southern rebels will proceed despite reports suggesting that the peace process likely has stalled, Thailands chief negotiator said Wednesday. But an insurgent in the troubled Deep South told BenarNews that rebel attacks would go on anyhow, and in spite of talks aimed at implementing a limited ceasefire. Aksara Kerdpol, the governments chief negotiator, blamed local news media for causing public confusion after the delegation that he heads and representatives of MARA Patani, a panel representing insurgent groups in the Thai Deep South, failed in September to iron out disagreements on the creation of a safety zone, or an area for a limited ceasefire. I reaffirm that the peace is going on, no problem. The other side did not have any problem with it either, Aksara, a retired army general, told BenarNews in a phone interview. The media reports or analyses in recent weeks are based on outdated information. The retired army general leads a team that has represented the Thai junta in Malaysia-brokered peace talks with MARA since 2015, but both sides have yet to implement a ceasefire after many rounds of closed-door meetings in Kuala Lumpur. This has led some observers to question whether MARAs panelists have control over rebel forces operating in the Deep South, and whether they truly represent the rank-and-file of separatist groups such as Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), the most powerful of active rebel organizations. The talks have not stopped violence in the region. Other methods are just theater On Wednesday, a southern militant who identified himself only as Sulaiman, said his group had received orders to keep mounting attacks against security forces. We have the upper hand for our goal for independence. We receive orders to continue with attacks regardless of the attempt on safety zone, he told BenarNews in a phone interview. Sometimes nature disallows this, so we make a pause. There still are targets to attack. I personally think the armed struggle is the only effective method of fighting. Other methods are just theater, he said. There is no other way to make the government treat people humanely but violence. Responding to Aksaras latest comments, a MARA Patani spokesman based in Malaysia echoed that peace talks had not stalled. Although there is no [current] discussion together with the [Malaysian] facilitator, communication and discussion are still ongoing as we are preparing for the security zone, and the Thais have been busy with royal funerals, Abu Hafez Al-Hakim told BenarNews, referring to last weeks cremation in Bangkok of late Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej. In September, Abu Hafez had insisted in an interview with Benar that the BRN was involved in the current peace efforts. Awang Jabat is the MARA Patani chairman Sukree Haree is the chief of the dialogue team while Ahmad Chuwo is also on the dialogue team. All of them are BRN members, he said at the time. It will agree on safety zone In February, the government announced that it had reached a pact with MARA Patani. The agreement would involve a framework for setting up a safety zone or a ceasefire in one district of the Deep South. Local media reports questioned the viability of the peace process after the two sides failed to finalize the agreement during the peace talks held in Kuala Lumpur in September. Aksara told BenarNews on Wednesday that a Thai joint technical team had selected the district where a safety zone would be implemented. But he declined to identify the district or divulge the date of his next meeting with the insurgents. MARA Patani still talks to us and it will agree on safety zone, he said. Meanwhile, deadly violence in the predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking Deep South has simmered on. Between October 2016 and September 2017, as many as 233 soldiers, policemen and defense volunteers have been killed in roadside bombings and insurgent attacks in the Deep South, according to the regional office of Thailands Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC). The decades-old insurgency flared up again in 2004, when rebels began staging attacks to oppose Buddhist rule in Thailands far southern border region. During the past 13 years, almost 7,000 people have been killed in bombings and shooting incidents in the provinces that were part of a Malay Muslim sultanate before being annexed by Bangkok in 1909. Translations on this website are prepared by a third-party provider. Some portions may be incorrect. Some itemsincluding downloadable files or imagescannot be translated at all. No liability is assumed by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for any errors or omissions. Any user who relies on translated content does so at his/her own risk. Von: By VIKTORIA BRAUNER Eight people dead and eleven injured that is the tragic result of the latest terror attack in New York. On Tuesday, Sayfullo Saipov (29) drove a truck into pedestrians and cyclists, screaming Allahu Akbar. BILD spoke about the background of the attack with terrorism expert Professor Peter Neumann of Kings College in London. BILD: The culprit is apparently an Uzbek, just like a number of attackers before him. Is that a coincidence? Prof. Peter Neumann: No, for years now, Uzbekistan has been one of the major hot spots. Many of the terrorists behind the latest attacks those in Stockholm, Saint Petersburg, and Istanbul were ethnic Uzbeks, even though some of them held other citizenships. In the past, Salafist groups were active in the Fergana Valley, in particular, and tried to radicalize the population. Mosques were built and close ties to Afghanistan were nurtured. Moreover, the authoritarian governments of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have severely suppressed any form of Islam. In Tajikistan, it is still the case today that men under 40 must not have a beard or go to a mosque. This extreme suppression of Islam has led to a counter-movement in the region. I was travelling the region myself and saw the local conditions. The whole thing is more complicated than you might at first assume. Many Islamists from there were not radicalized in their home country, but abroad. Why is that? Neumann: The problem is that Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are economically very weak. People leave these countries as labour migrants, primarily going to Russia, but also to countries like the US, where they are often bitterly disappointed. They arrive there with the great hope of making lots of money and then mostly in Russia they find out that they can only do badly paid, unpopular jobs. They are rejected by society; they remain among themselves and radical group deliberately exploit this situation. Is ISIS trying to expand its influence in Central Asia? Neumann: Yes. For ISIS and also for al-Qaida people from Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics are an important target group for radicalization. Both terrorist groups are recruiting in Central Asia and deliberately address people from the region. For instance, ISIS has publications that are directly targeted at Uzbeks living abroad. Auch interessant Why has ISIS not yet admitted to being behind the attack? Neumann: For now, there wont be an admission by ISIS itself, since the culprit is still alive. The terrorist group if it is acting in accordance with its usual rules is probably holding back in order not to further complicate his situation under arrest. The degree to which Saipov was actually in contact with ISIS will be known as soon as his mobile phone and computer have been examined more closely. If it is not a terrorist cell, it could be that the culprit contacted members of ISIS in Syria via messenger services. In the past, it was repeatedly the case with attacks by lone wolves that individual attackers were encouraged and guided by a professional per messages on their mobile phone to carry out their attacks. It is now known that the culprit deliberately chose Halloween for his attack Neumann: That would fit with previous attacks by Islamist terrorists. The attack in Nice happened on the French national holiday. But sometimes it is less obvious. A vehicle races into a crowd of people and kills many pedestrians in Germany, this reminds us of the attack on Breitscheidplatz. The Christmas markets will open in a few weeks time. Has Germany made the markets safer? Neumann: Yes. Bollards have now been installed at the squares that are most frequented, making it impossible to drive past them. The vehicles can be stopped in the case of an attack. I would almost say: Germany has, as it were, become the other extreme. The squares are so obviously secured that this could unnecessarily worry the visitors. How high is the risk of a terror attack in Germany? Neumann: The weaker ISIS is in Syria and Iraq, the greater the risk of an attack in our country. By now, the terrorist group no longer asks its supporters to travel to the Caliphate, but to carry out attacks wherever they are. In Germany, in Europe, in the US Attacks with vehicles seem to have become increasingly popular. Neumann: Yes, that is the contagion effect. Even though ISIS has been promoting this method of carrying out attacks for years, initially it was rarely used. It has only become really popular in Jihadist circles after the attack in Nice. An attack with a car is relatively easy to plan, and it is difficult for the security authorities to prevent it. The New York attacker had a paintball gun and an air rifle with him. What was that about? Neumann: It is currently very much en vogue that the culprits carry imitation firearms or fake suicide belts with them. However, this is not because ISISs propaganda has changed strategically, but because the terrorists are simply copying each other. The reasons are simple: for one, it is not that easy to build a bomb on your own. In the past, this has gone wrong a number of times the terrorists have accidentally blown themselves up, like with the Ansbach attack. Also, they probably want to scare pedestrians and prevent anyone from bravely interfering and potentially stopping the attackers. At the same time, the attackers want to provoke a martyr situation. They want to look as threatening as possible so that the police will shoot them in the course of the attack. As we know, this hasnt worked in the case of the New York attacker. For Immediate Release, November 1, 2017 Contact: Randi Spivak, rspivak@biologicaldiversity.org, (310) 779-4894 House Passes Legislation Attacking National Forest Protections Bill Would Reduce Endangered Species Protections, Allow Widespread Logging WASHINGTON In a partisan vote, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation today that would devastate national forests by gutting endangered species protections and rubber-stamping huge logging projects. The final vote was 232 to 188. HR 2936, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), also limits public comment and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Under the guise of reducing forest fires, the bill would increase unfettered logging across national forests and public lands, increase fire risk and harm forest health, while doing nothing to protect communities. This bill is a dangerous bait-and-switch that rewards the timber industry. It puts the health of our forests and wildlife in grave danger and ignores real solutions, said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. It would green-light the worst forest management practices from decades ago, when reckless logging devastated wildlife, degraded rivers and ruined recreation opportunities for countless Americans. Westermans bill is a timber-industry wish list. Among other harmful provisions, it would allow rushed logging projects up to 30,000 acres 46 square miles without public notice or scientific assessment of potential harm to the environment as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The bill would render forest plans meaningless, roll back measures designed to protect old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, waive protections for waterways and water quality across the national forest system, promote harmful logging in otherwise protected roadless areas and force the Forest Service to ignore potential harm to thousands of imperiled species. It would also give private landowners with easements on public land full ownership of that land and allow herbicides to be sprayed without reviewing the harm to water, fish and wildlife. The knee-jerk response from Republicans is always to gut our environmental laws, no matter what the issue is, said Spivak. Theyre willing to sacrifice our wildlife, healthy streams and rivers, and vibrant public lands for private profit. In the first four months of the 115th Congress, Republicans have introduced more than 80 bills that attack public lands, weaken environmental safeguards on those lands or turn over control to states and local governments. These attacks go against the wishes of most Americans, since the vast majority of voters across political parties support protecting and maintaining forests, national parks, monuments and other public lands and waters. For Immediate Release, November 2, 2017 Contacts: Bonnie Gestring, Earthworks, (406) 546-8386, bgestring@earthworksaction.org Karen Knudsen, Clark Fork Coalition, (406) 542-0539, karen@clarkfork.org Mary Costello, Rock Creek Alliance, (208) 610-4896, maryrca@rockcreekalliance.org Jonathan Proctor, Defenders of Wildlife, (720) 943-0451, jproctor@defenders.org Andrea Santarsiere, Center for Biological Diversity, (303) 854-7748, asantarsiere@biologicaldiversity.org Forest Service Rescinds Approval for Rock Creek Mine Plan Legal Flaws, Uncertainties Plague Hecla's Proposal MISSOULA, Mont. The Forest Service has just announced that it will withhold a permit for full development of the proposed Rock Creek Mine, one of two copper/silver mines Coeur DAlene-based Hecla Mining Company is pursuing under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. Citing objections filed by a coalition of conservation groups, the Forest Service will only allow preliminary explorations of the site to proceed. A new decision will be required for any further activities. The decision reverses an earlier Forest Service Draft Record of Decision that approved the full mine plan. The Forest Service found that the proposal lacked sufficient information to evaluate environmental impacts on one of the nations original wilderness areas and the invaluable water and wildlife resources found there. Other concerns included the impacts on nearby domestic water supplies, potential seepage of toxic metals into groundwater and sediment pollution in important trout streams. This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the Rock Creek Mine. Last week the conservation coalition called on the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to suspend state permits for the Rock Creek Mine and Heclas proposed Montanore Mine, because Hecla is prohibited from mining in Montana pursuant to the states bad actor provisions. The bad actor provisions prohibit individuals whose former companies failed to complete required mine reclamation from undertaking new mining projects in the state unless they pay the state back, with interest, for reclamation carried out at public expense and rectify reclamation failures at their old mines. Hecla President and CEO Phillips S. Baker, Jr. previously served as a top officer of Pegasus Gold Incorporated, which went bankrupt in the 1990s and left the public on the hook for tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs at the companys infamous Zortman-Landusky, Basin Creek and Beal Mountain mines. All the evidence to date shows that these mines cannot be excavated under the Wilderness without lasting harm to the overlying streams and the fish and wildlife that find refuge there, said Bonnie Gestring, northwest program director for Earthworks, who welcomed the news that the Forest Service had reversed course. Thats something the agency simply cant ignore. Karen Knudsen, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition, said her group is encouraged by the Forest Services action. The last thing anyone wants to see on public lands is another mining mess causing irreversible harm and costing taxpayers millions of dollars to clean up. These wilderness streams provide important refuge for native bull trout, said David Brooks, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited. We dont want to see decades of recovery efforts in the Lower Clark Fork jeopardized by an ill-conceived mine plan. This mine would be a disaster for the small population of grizzly bears that inhabit the Cabinet Mountains, said Andrea Santarsiere, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. We are glad to hear that the Forest Service is taking a step back to consider the damage this mine may cause. While we are pleased that the Forest Service will not permit the full mine, allowing the first phase of the mine to proceed would needlessly jeopardize wilderness waters and threatened bull trout and grizzly bears for the development of a mine that the agency recognizes cannot meet federal and state laws, said Mary Costello, executive director of the Rock Creek Alliance. Our imperiled fish and wildlife depend on the clean water and intact habitat the Cabinet Mountains provide, said Jonathan Proctor, Rockies and Plains program director at Defenders of Wildlife. Bull trout and grizzly bears are simply too valuable to lose. This decision may give them a chance to remain. The tiny Cabinet grizzly bear population is hanging on by a thread, said Bonnie Rice, Northern Rockies senior representative for Sierra Clubs Our Wild America campaign. Were glad the Forest Service realized it needs to take a step back, but allowing any part of the mine to move forward poses too great a risk to this extremely vulnerable population as well as other threatened species and our public lands. For Immediate Release, November 2, 2017 Contacts: Patrick Donnelly, Center for Biological Diversity, (702) 483-0449, pdonnelly@biologicaldiversity.org Ginny Cramer, Sierra Club, (804)-519-8449, virginia.cramer@sierraclub.org Laura Cunningham, Basin and Range Watch, (775)-553-2806, bluerockiguana@gmail.com Nevadans Unite to Oppose Leasing in Ruby Mountains for Drilling, Fracking ELKO, Nev. Conservation groups filed comments today urging the U.S. Forest Service to halt plans to lease out 54,000 acres for drilling and fracking in the Ruby Mountains, one of Nevadas most scenic and popular recreation areas. This may be the most inappropriate place in all of Nevada to drill for oil, said Patrick Donnelly, Nevada state director of the Center for Biological Diversity. The Rubies are an iconic emblem of the Silver States wild heritage, and we cant let them be ruined for corporate profits. The Forest Service shouldnt let oil companies drill or frack a single acre of this incredible natural treasure. Todays comments note that the Ruby Mountains, in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest of northeast Nevada, are among the states crown jewels. Rising 7,000 feet above the floor of the Great Basin desert, the Rubies are a majestic sky island harboring robust populations of Nevadas most cherished wildlife. The largest mule deer herd in the state winters there. Streams are home to Nevadas state fish, the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout. Sagebrush-covered slopes provide priority habitat for the imperiled greater sage grouse. The Ruby Mountains lease auction is part of the Trump administrations broader move toward energy dominance. Under Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, the administration has violated environmental review and endangered species protection laws, jamming through oil and gas lease sales with no substantive analysis of how they may harm wildlife, water or the climate. U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) is among those opposing the lease auction, calling the Ruby Mountains stunning on Twitter and imploring Nevadans to make your voice heard if you dont want to see them sold off. The coalition of 11 conservation groups submitting comments today includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Nevada Conservation League, Sierra Club, Basin and Range Watch, The Wilderness Society, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Defenders of Wildlife, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, Western Watersheds Project, Wildlands Network and Great Basin Resource Watch. The Forest Service has received more than 11,000 comments, including from American Indian tribes and sportsmens groups. Nevadans and Americans from across the country have sent a resounding message to the Forest Service, said Emily Lande, Senior Campaign Representative for Sierra Clubs Our Wild America campaign. Drilling and fracking contaminate watersheds, drive down wildlife populations and cause permanent harm to our climate. We wont stand by while Trump ruins one of Nevadas most special places. G Adventures has rebranded its Yolo tours programme for young travellers to 18-to-Thirtysomethings - this to make it clear that these trips are designed for travellers between the ages of 18 and 39. Brian Young, managing director, G Adventures, says the new branding makes it more transparent to travellers what kind of trip they are looking to purchase. Weve had a lot of fun with the Yolo brand and being part of the zeitgeist, but as a customer-oriented organisation we want to make things easier for our travellers and our agent partners. 18-to-Thirtysomethings makes it clear what is being sold. Were also thrilled to expand our 18-to-Thirtysomethings offering in Asia, as it is the biggest market for our younger UK travellers. Thailand is still the number one place to go, followed by India, the USA and Vietnam, says Young. Travel is no longer a luxury for younger people, its a right. Youth market a growing segment The youth market is a growing segment of G Adventures business globally. Since its launch in 2012, the 18-39 age bracket has seen increased global passenger growth of more than 85%, outpacing the small-group tour operators eight other travel styles. Travel is no longer a luxury for younger people, its a right. They are factoring travel spend into their budgets. And just like they want to share experiences online, they want to share their travel experiences in real life, and want to do so in a meaningful way. A small-group tour gives them safety and flexibility, as well as the local and social connections they are looking for from their travel choices, says Young. Fun-filled and fast-paced travel portfolio All 185 tours in G Adventures refreshed 18-to-Thirtysomethings portfolio are affordable, are from less than one week to more than nine weeks long, and are designed to be fun-filled and fast-paced. Branded on-trip experiences such as a Big Night Out are included for travellers who want to party with people of a similar age after a full day of adventure. As with all G Adventures trips, tours provide locally-owned accommodation, authentic cultural experiences and a local chief experience officer (CEO). New 18-to-Thirtysomethings trips for 2018 include: Thailand Full Moon Party - An eight-day trip from Bangkok to Ko Pha Ngan where an all-night dance party takes place each month. Japan on a Shoestring A six-day tour offering a taste of both old and new Japan Islands of the Philippines on a Shoestring - 10-day trip from Manila to Boracay Island during which travellers can roam Bohols famous Chocolate Hills (not suitable for consumption), snorkel with massive whale sharks, chill out in laid-back Siquijor and more. Laos on a Shoestring - A nine-day tour starting in laid-back Vientiane and then heading south to Chiang Mai. Indonesia Adventure A 21-day trip from Jakarta to Gili Trawangan characterised by delicious food, welcoming people, and picturesque tropical islands. Business was tricky, budgets were lean, but the year's almost over, it's time to be seen, come as you are, dress up in Taboo, let loose for tonight, have a drink... or a few! AMASA invites you to a night of letting loose, unwinding, and enjoying yourself because you deserve it! Join us at Taboo Club, Sandton, in true Taboo style on 15 November, from 19:00pm till late. Book your spot now through Nutickets at amasa.nutickets.co.za. For sponsorships and VIP table packages, please contact Sean Press (CEO at Contact Media) - az.oc.aidemtcatnoc@namsserp. Shaheen Rajabally, the founding owner of Natura Sugars, was born in Mauritius into a family of sugarcane farmers. Rajabally launched Natura Sugars - the only range of truly unrefined sugars in South Africa and exclusively sourced from Mauritius - to educate South Africans on the importance of unrefined sugar and fair trade farming in Mauritius. Shaheen Rajabally Unlike normal table sugar, unrefined sugar has not been bleached, irradiated, nor decolourised by ion exchange. This preserves the natural molasses film that surrounds the sugar molecule, creating intense flavour and added health benefits. Natura Sugars is now being sold in Pick n Pay stores nationwide, all Shoprite Checkers stores across the Western Cape, selected Spar and Wellness Warehouse stores, Pick n Pay Online Shop and Faithful to Nature. We asked Rajabally to tell us the sweet story of Natura Sugars: How did it all start? I decided to start Natura Sugars when I noticed a gap in the market in the sugar category. Whilst popular on European supermarket shelves, truly unrefined sugar was not available to consumers in South Africa. What makes Natura Sugars unique? We are the only range of truly unrefined sugars which are strictly non-GM. There is no genetically modified cane in the sugarcane fields in Mauritius, hence sugar produced is not derived from or contaminated with transgenic (genetically modified) cane. What are the biggest challenges you faced as an entrepreneur and how did you approach and overcome these challenges? Creating awareness and educating the public that not all sugars are the same was vital with the launch of Natura Sugars. We have and continue to do this with a strong social media and media presence. I have a PR agency generating coverage as well as a social media team that assist me. What are the most significant challenges in the sugar industry itself? Sugar has had a bad rap recently but we are here to bring a breath of fresh air to this established industry and provide a different perspective on sugar. Indeed, a study recently conducted by the Mauritius Research Council at the University of Mauritius has revealed that Mauritian special sugars have antioxidant capacities, which brings health benefits to its consumers. Whats in your entrepreneurship toolbox? Good communication and transparency. What advice would you give other entrepreneurs in the industry? Always source the best quality product! What does the future hold for Natura Sugars? We are launching a selection of Natura Sugars in Clicks pharmacies, including our new Molasses Sugar and we look forward to building a strong relationship with Clicks health-savvy consumers. We are all excited to share the better side of the magic ingredient that unrefined sugar is. Now in its 25th year, South African decor, design and lifestyle exhibition Decorex SA has announced 'Rhythm of Life' as its 2018 theme. Co-sponsored by Plascon and Caesarstone, next year's edition will once again take place in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. When conceptualising this years theme, we focused on what influences trends within the industry, explained Sian Cullingworth, portfolio director: Design, Lifestyle and Retail Exhibitions. At the heart of it, its our lifestyles that push and dictate trends. Everything that happens in our daily lives impacts us in a number of subtle ways. The constant push and pull of work and play, the tension between our public image and private self. Our inner sense of health, prosperity and happinessall these are being put to the test. And the way we deal with this is by taking these outside influences, channelling them into something meaningful for us and expressing our rhythm of life in our own spaces. This allows for a harmonious life, which offers the self a sense of revival, replenishment and relief. The use of colour helps us to survive the busy city life, said Cullingworth, expanding on the theme. Colour is also an important determinant of trends, and a great visual way to show the convergence of our public and private lives in our own space. There is also the contrasting need to surround ourselves with nature within the urban environment, and the final desire to create a relaxed surrounding of slow living. We constantly create spaces around us that allow us to find this inner peace and escape the demands of our lives. Who we are, what we are, what we do all this forms our rhythm of life and this is unique to each of us. This years exhibition will assist visitors in discovering how nature, lighting, fabrics and decor can fuse perfectly in a myriad of different ways to create this individual rhythm." Event details Decorex Durban: 21 - 25 March 2018 Time: 21 - 24 March: 10am - 8pm | 25 March: 10am - 6pm Ticket prices: Adults: R95, Students/Pensioners: R 85, Children under 12: R20, Trade: R85, Exhibitor: R85 Trade-focused days: 22 and 23 March Venue: Durban Exhibition Centre Decorex Cape Town: 27 April - 1 May 2018 Time: 10am - 6pm daily Ticket prices: Adults: R110, Students/Pensioners: R95, Children under 12: R20, Trade: R95, Exhibitor: R95. Venue: Cape Town International Convention Centre Decorex Johannesburg: 8 - 12 August 2018 Time: 10am - 6pm daily Ticket prices: Adults: R120, Students/Pensioners: R100, Children under 12: R20 Trade: Register online for complimentary access. Venue: Gallagher Convention Centre One of the largest owners of South African shopping centres, Resilient Reit, told a Competition Commission inquiry on Tuesday, 31 October, that exclusivity clauses served no purpose for landlords or the general economy and should be outlawed in SA. Johann Kriek, executive director at Resilient Reit gave the submission to the commission, where he answered questions about how leases vary between anchor tenants and line stores as well as about how shopping centres supported retailers by bringing in foot traffic to towns. The commission is holding public hearings this week as part of the inquiry into the grocery retail sector. The inquiry began on 27 November 2015. The probe includes a study on exclusivity clauses. These are clauses where an anchor tenant, for example a national food retailer, signs a lease trade in a mall, with the condition that other national food retailers may not trade in that mall. Many landlords have stressed that these clauses are archaic and do not help smaller retailers to succeed. Kriek said exclusivity clauses inhibited retail trade in SA. "An exclusive trade arrangement would be an extremely inhibiting factor for all competing retailers. We must not support exclusive trade arrangements. The market must operate in the most natural manner possible, based on supply and demand," he said. He said Resilient would prefer to have various national retailers in the same mall competing with one another. By having large retailers, more shoppers would be attracted to the centre and this would make it more viable for small stores to operate in a mall. The main objective of the commissions inquiry has been to probe the effect of national supermarket chains on small and independent retailers in townships, peri-urban areas and rural areas, as well as the informal economy. Kriek said shopping malls did not necessarily negatively affect the operations of small formal and informal traders near them. Instead malls brought huge economic benefits to areas, especially the creation of jobs. The commission commended Kriek and said the group had been "more forthright than any other property developer had ever been in a submission" with respect to how leases were calculated and negotiated for anchor and ancillary tenants. Source: Business Day The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) has put Eskom on terms to install a new board by the end of November and is reviewing the basis on which it invests in all state-owned enterprises, says CE Dan Matjila. Dan Matjila, CEO: Public Investment Corporation. Photo: African Business Magazine Eskom, which has debt of R360bn, is acknowledged by the Treasury, ratings agencies and banks alike to be a systemic risk to the economy. Two international banks have called in their loans since June and domestic lenders have warned they will do the same if a new board is not appointed by November 30. The main client of the PIC, the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), holds R84bn in Eskom bonds and R1.5bn in short-term bills. Included in the first amount is a R20bn private placement by Eskom done in 2016 as part of a debt restructuring. Speaking to journalists at a joint media event by the PIC and the GEPF, Matjila said the asset manager was developing a framework to guide its investments. This would tackle the question of whether to exit state-owned enterprises or how to intervene more effectively to influence governance. It would also guide the PIC on how it should respond should Eskom's credit rating fall any further. Matjila said although the PIC was heavily exposed to Eskom - it held 23% of its total debt - it was well within the investment mandate provided by the GEPF. "Our mandate allows us to invest in bonds and goes further to say we can invest in state-owned companies. If that debt is guaranteed by government, we can subscribe to the full amount [on offer]. So we have taken advantage of the government guarantee and remain within our mandate," he said. Eskom debt is already rated subinvestment by all three main ratings agencies. A further sovereign rating could trigger another Eskom downgrade. Abel Sithole, principal officer of the GEPF, said the fund had placed limits on investments in state-owned companies based on their credit ratings. He did not specify what these were. "We do have limits of how low credit ratings can get. The limits differ, but if ratings were to go significantly into subinvestment, we would act," he said. Matjila said the private placement, which arose when Eskom had maturing bonds, was executed with the consent of the GEPF and on a commercial basis in which the risk had been priced in. "We are still within the mandate. But going forward, we are going to have to change course because we realise the systemic nature of this entity. The economy cannot afford for Eskom to fail. So we need to be more active and see how we can play a bigger role in fixing the governance of Eskom," he said. Sithole said the GEPF was also engaging with Eskom, although "we are not shouting from the parapets". Eskom being "too big to fail" is a notion gaining currency in government circles. RMB credit analyst Elena Ilkova said Eskom was too big to fail in two senses: the economy needed it to produce electricity, and a default on a debt repayment would be disastrous as the government could not afford to have the contingent liability of Eskom added directly to government debt. "Too big to fail raises the question of whether the company is structured correctly to carry on, and raised the debate about whether Eskom should be split up. It is such a humungous enterprise and very difficult to manage," she said. For many years experts have argued that Eskom's transmission and generation operations should be split up. This would also encourage the introduction of real competition in electricity generation. Grov Steyn, director at Meridian Economics, said the "domino effect" of an Eskom default could be terrible. "The state underwrites lots of Eskom debt and it also underwrites the pension money that is invested in Eskom debt," he said. Eskom needed to look for "a radical cost cut" such as shutting down parts of the business that are not needed to keep the lights on for the foreseeable future. Steyn, who made a presentation at Monday's public hearings on Eskom's tariff application, said the economics of decommissioning some of Eskom's older power stations and curtailing its capital expenditure programme, which could lead to a saving of R17bn, should be explored. There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. " Isaac Asimov, Newsweek (21 January 1980). Why was Gov. Martinez's veto of oversight of charter schools influenced by Scott Glasrud, who just pleaded guilty to embezzling millions of dollars? Steven Dapra wrote [ Alibi v26, i43] that the proposed changes to this failed states scientific standards have no merit? Even if the age of this glorious creation, the Planet Earth, is an (alleged) 4.6 billion years old, does the explosion of the human (anthropomorphic) population in just the last 65 years, also lack merit? Belief vs. Big Bang Dear Editor, Steven Dapras letter to the editor [v26, i43] begins by saying that the complaints about the proposed science standards for New Mexico education have no merit. He concludes by saying, all of the old Earth dating methods are based on assumptions that can not be proven. What good is a belief thats based on unprovable assumptions? I wonder how much proof Mr. Dapra would require. The age of the Earth is tied to and based upon the Big Bang Model. According to Sean Walston, Ph. D. Physics, who made the following points in 2006 while at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University, the Standard Big Bang Model is supported on theoretical grounds by Einsteins Theory of General Relativity. According to the biennial Review of Particle Physics put out by the Particle Data Group, the observed expansion of the Universe is a natural [almost inevitable] result of any homogeneous and isotropic cosmological model based on general relativity. The review goes on, according to Dr. Walston, to say that all present experimental tests [of gravitational theory] are compatible with the predictions of Einsteins General Relativity. Dr. Walston adds that the Review of Particle Physics also describes some of the empirical evidence that supports the Standard Big Bang Model. To wit: The cosmological redshift first observed by Hubble and more recently by looking at Cepheid variable stars and distant supernovae; the ages of objects in the universe as measured by radioactive decay and stellar evolution; the relative abundances of the isotopes of Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium in the universe; the number of neutrino species predicted therefrom in excellent agreement with the number of species observed in collider experiments [three in both cases]; and the cosmic microwave background radiation discovered by two scientists Penzias and Wilson [who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work]. He goes on to say that the observations of the variation in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation from one part of the sky to another had led to a stunning confirmation of the Standard Model of Cosmology, not to mention the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for Messrs. Mather and Smoot for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. These points amount to a great deal more than a belief. Dr. Walstons comments are from a letter published in the Wall Street Journal circa October 2006 responding to another writer critical of the Big Bang Model. The interested reader will find the book Kepler and the Universe by David K Love an easy to read guide that takes the reader to the edge of our current knowledge of the universe that includes the Big Bang Model. This book has footnotes and references, its not about belief, its about demonstrable science. We now know our solar system lies in a galaxy containing some 100,000,000,000 stars. And there are something like 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the observable Universe. Mankind has become rather insignificant in the cosmic scale. The Department of Tourism in collaboration with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), has introduced the Green Tourism Incentive Programme (GTIP), which supports the department's mandate of sustainable and inclusive tourism development. Following the recent handover of a solar photovoltaic mini-grid at Robben Island Museum by the minister of tourism, Tokozile Xasa; the programme was developed to encourage privately-owned tourism enterprises to move towards cleaner energy sources and more energy efficient operations. Responsible tourism operations Managed and administered by the IDC, the programme will provide grant funding on a sliding scale from 30% to 90% (capped at R1m) to qualifying small and micro tourism enterprises to implement interventions that will improve energy efficiency and reduce operational costs. Minister Xasa indicated that the programme will support several energy-saving solutions. Renewable energy generating systems should be more accessible to all within the sector. For this reason, we have introduced the Green Tourism Incentive Programme developed in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation. The aim of the programme is to encourage small and micro tourism enterprises through a cost-sharing grant to retrofit their facilities with energy efficiency systems. Responsible tourism is everyones business, with an immense potential to increase our countrys global competitiveness. I urge the industry to embrace the Green Tourism Incentive Programme, and help us build a sustainable and inclusive tourism sector, said Xasa. Transformation and ownership The department and IDC will work closely with the National Cleaner Production Centre of South Africa to conduct energy efficiency audits and determine the best possible solutions to be implemented. The IDCs head of development funds department, Christine Engelbrecht says one of the programmes fundamental criteria is transformation. Transformation and ownership is a critical dimension of IDCs mandate. Enterprises with high levels of compliance in terms of the Tourism B-BBEE Scorecard will be awarded a larger grant says Engelbrecht. She added that only exempt micro-enterprises with the total annual turnover of below R5m and qualifying small enterprises with the total annual revenue of between R5m and R45m respectively will be considered. The first two-month application window will be opened from 1 November 2017 to 31 December 2017 to call for prospective applicants to submit applications for the GTIP. Information, application forms and guidelines are obtainable on the IDC website. Uganda and Kenya are among eight African countries that will pilot a savannah cultivation programme that seeks to double agricultural production. The pilot phase of the programme dubbed "Transformation of the African Savannah Initiative" begins in November and targets some two million hectares of savannah. CT Cooper via Wikimedia Commons The programme will initially be rolled out in Ghana before it is replicated in the other countries - Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Zambia and Mozambique - including Kenya and Uganda. The land will be used to grow maize and soybean, and produce livestock. The African Development Bank (AfDB) has partnered with some of the largest agricultural research organisations from South America including Brazilian Research Corporation, the Agricultural Corporation of Brazil and the Argentine Association of Zero-tillage who will work closely with universities and national research systems on the initiative. Leveraging on the continent's savannahs AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina said the programme will leverage on the continent's savannahs which remain largely underutilised and "are better than Brazil's" where a similar programme has helped the country tap into its agricultural wealth. "The savannahs of Africa cover a mind-boggling 600 million hectares of which 400 million hectares are cultivable, but just 10 percent is utilised," said Adesina. "Africa must learn from experiences that have worked elsewhere. We must ensure that small, medium-scale and large-scale commercial farmers co-exist in a way that allows opportunities for all." Statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture noted that the value of Brazil's crops jumped by about 369 percent from $23bn to $108bn between 1996 and 2006, while its beef exports increased tenfold as the country adopted mass savannah cultivation. In less than 30 years, the country transformed itself from a net food importer into one of the world's largest food baskets. "In the 1970s, Brazil was suffering a lot, like Africa today. We imported two-thirds of what we consumed," said former Minister of Agriculture Dr Alysson Paulinelli. "Today, Brazil exports $100bn in food items." Rising food imports According to the AfDB, Africa's food imports stand at $35bn with the figure expected to rise to $110bn by 2025, if the continent fails to improve the productivity and global competitiveness of its agribusiness and agriculture sectors. At least 233 million people were estimated to be hungry or undernourished in sub-Saharan Africa - the second highest after Asia - as at 2014 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. Africa's food challenge is further compounded by the need to feed its rapidly growing population which is expected to double to 2.4bn by 2050. Favourably, the Africa Agriculture Status report 2017 by the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa notes that the continent's food market is growing rapidly with opportunities in the sector estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion every year by 2030, helping substitute food imports with high-value food made in Africa. LIBREVILLE, Gabon - Six countries in central and western Africa have breathed life into long-running plans to allow visa-free movement of people among their nations. At a summit in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena, the countries formally declared late Tuesday that the scheme had now been ratified by all members. Unsplash via pixabay The agreement gathers six francophone states - Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of Congo - in a bloc called the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). The association, set up in 2000, has a potential market of 30 million consumers, many of whom, however, live in poverty. The summit, in its statement, authorised a regional bank, the Development Bank of the Central African States (BDEAC), to allocate 1.7bn CFA francs (2.6m euros, $3.01m), "to support the application of the agreement." Negotiations on the deal began more than 15 years ago, culminating in a draft agreement in 2013 that awaited ratification by all its members. The process was hampered by fears by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon - oil-rich and relatively sparsely populated - that they would be swamped by an influx of job-seekers from poorer members. Those two countries, along with Congo and the Central African Republic (CAR), completed the ratification process late last month. Cameroon applies the principle of "reciprocity," meaning that it provides visa-free access to citizens from countries that also provide the same rights for Cameroonians. Three major elements to implementing the accord "There are genuine concerns about this agreement, but it's the duty of the states in the sub-region to overcome them," said Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze, the Gabonese government's spokesman. Implementing the accord, he said, requires "three major elements: introducing biometric (ID) technology, coordination between police and security services among states in the sub-region and respecting labour regulations." Visa-free access for workers will remove one of the many bureaucratic headaches for transport companies and other providers of cross-border services in the region. However, CEMAC gathers countries with widely ranging incomes and has a poor history of implementing major decisions touching on economic or monetary integration. Plans that remain on the shelf include the creation of a regional airline and a single passport. Source: AFP Introducing a one-of-a-kind learning experience with Digital Marketing Amplified, Red & Yellow's flagship Digital Marketing online course combined with eight live classroom sessions at their Cape Town campus or live-streamed to those who can't be there in person. Digital Marketing Live Recognising that most training providers force students to choose between online or face-to-face training, Red & Yellow are bringing their students the best of both worlds by giving their acclaimed and highly-respected Digital Marketing online course a human touch with Digital Marketing Live - eight live inspiration sessions produced and presented by eight phenomenal business pioneers. While the online course gives students the tools to plan, create and implement a digital marketing strategy, the Live Sessions give them 90 minutes each week to hear from the people who have been there and done that, and 30 minutes to pick their brains on how they got the t-shirt. We are so excited to combine the flexibility of online learning with the unbeatable impact of a face-to-face classroom experience. Both mediums are powerful in their own right and I believe the future of learning is how we bring them together, said Rob Stokes, digital marketing pioneer and Red & Yellow Chairman. Heavy-hitters such as Andrew Smith (Founder YuppieChef), Seth Rotherham (Founder 2OceansVibe), Lesley Waterkeyn (Founder Colourworks), Nic Smal (Derek Watts and the Sunday Blues) and more, will be sharing the lessons and insights theyve gained about digital marketing, and the role it has played in making their businesses so successful. Dont miss this opportunity to amplify your online learning and get access to relevant, real-world digital marketing case studies. Digital Marketing Amplified (online course and live sessions) starts 6 November Digital Marketing Live (live sessions only) starts 9 November Book your seat today! Or email az.oc.wolleydnader@ofni or call 0861 878 258 for more information. The Standard Bank Young Artist (SBYA) awards winners for 2018 have been announced. Now in its 36th year, the Standard Bank Young Artist (SBYA) awards are conferred by the National Arts Festival and Standard Bank on deserving young South African artists. These budding stars join a prestigious pantheon of award winning artists whove gone on to shape South Africas creative economy and art history. The winners are: Chuma Sopotela (Performance Art) (Performance Art) Guy Buttery (Music) (Music) Igshaan Adams (Visual Art) (Visual Art) Jemma Kahn (Theatre) (Theatre) Musa Hlatshwayo (Dance) (Dance) Thandi Ntuli (Jazz) National Arts Festival Executive Producer Ashraf Johaardien says: The Standard Bank Young Artist platform is about securing and investing in the future of the arts. The list of illustrious Awards alumni dating back to 1984 includes iconic creatives like William Kentridge, Mbongeni Ngema, Johnny Clegg, Sibongile Khumalo, Helen Sebidi, Mathinus Basson, Robyn Orlin, Darrell Roodt and others like them whose practice and artistic vision have helped shape the South African cultural landscape. Every year when we deliberate on the next crop of winners our purpose is to find the next generation of artists whose work holds the promise of that kind of impact. Having had the opportunity to engage with each of the 2018 winners and their current body of work, I am confident that the Artistic Advisory Committee have succeeded in doing just that. The award winners in the various artistic genres are selected by the National Arts Festival Committee, chaired by Brett Bailey. All decisions regarding winners are made jointly by the committee. The winners receive a cash incentive, and are given support to develop and premiere new works that will be featured on the Main Programme of the 2018 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown next year. The two suspects arrested for running an illegal abalone processing facility worth R5 million are expected in the Kuilsriver Magistrate's Court, Cape Town, this morning. The pair was arrested on Tuesday following a joint intelligence driven operation by members of the Hawks Marine group, Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and the Dog Unit. The Hawks said the team followed up on information about a suspicious vehicle allegedly transporting abalone near Brackenfell. The pursuit led them to an address along River Road, where an abalone processing facility was discovered, resulting in the arrest of the pair, and the subsequent seizure of over 40,000 units of abalone, weighing about 2233.5kg, which comprised of wet, dried and cooked units valued at just over R 5-million, spokesperson Captain Lloyd Ramovha said. The pair is expected to appear before the Kuilsriver Magistrates Court to face charges related to dealing in abalone. Also in Cape Town, the Hawks arrested a 26-year-old suspect in Wednesday, following the initial arrest of his brother, Edward Tambe Ayuk (37), for alleged rape and human trafficking charges. The pair reportedly ran a prostitution ring, and they would recruit vulnerable females to work as sex-workers at their house in Grobbelaar Street, in the Brooklyn area. Ramovha said they were arrested after a 16-year-old girl from Gugulethu reported being raped by the older brother during her brief stay at the said address. Preliminary investigations revealed that there was a second victim also allegedly raped in the house. Both victims apparently stated that they were being held at the premises against their will, Ramovha said. Ayuk subsequently appeared in the Cape Town Magistrates Court on 14 September, and the matter was postponed to 7 November. The younger brother is expected to make his first court appearance in court this Friday. Extreme weather caused some $129bn in economic losses last year, said a report on Tuesday, 31 October, that warned the bill will keep climbing as climate change boosts droughts, storms and floods. Climate_Change, Flickr, CIF Action There was a 46% increase in weather disasters from 2010 to 2016, with 797 "extreme" events recorded last year, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal. These "resulted in $129bn in overall economic losses" - a figure roughly matching the budget of Finland. Losses were counted as damage to physical assets and did not include the "economic value" of deaths, injury or disease caused by extreme events. An observed increase in weather disasters in recent years, the report said, cannot yet be unequivocally attributed to climate change. But the evidence "might plausibly be interpreted as showing how climate change is changing the frequency and severity of these events", the authors wrote. Climate scientists are loath to blame any particular weather event on global warming - a phenomenon that needs to be monitored over decades. But looking to the future, the authors are under no illusions that climate change will fuel the "frequency and severity" of tropical storms, droughts and flooding around the world. The finances of poor countries are disproportionately hard hit, said the report compiled by experts from 24 academic institutions and inter-governmental bodies including the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization. Their losses from freak weather events were more than three times higher in 2016 than in 2010, and as a proportion of GDP, much greater than in rich nations. In high-income countries, about half of economic losses were insured, compared to less than 1% in poor nations. The researchers calculated that rising temperatures caused a loss of about 5.3% in labour productivity in outdoor workers since 2000. Over the same period, the number of vulnerable people exposed to heatwaves - putting them at risk of heatstroke, heart failure or dehydration - increased by about 125-million. The rising mercury also caused a near 10% rise since 1950 in the disease-spreading "vectoral capacity" of a mosquito bearing the potentially deadly dengue virus. "Climate change is expected to have an impact on crop production, with a one-degree-Celsius rise in temperatures associated with a 6% decline in global wheat yields and a 10% decrease in rice grain yields," said a statement in The Lancet, warning of growing hunger. The world's nations have pledged to limit average global warming caused by humankind's emission of fossil fuel gases, to two degrees Celsius from pre-Industrial Revolution levels. We have already reached about 1 C. US President Donald Trump has pulled his country out of the pact, though the withdrawal can only become effective in about four years. On top of the risk to life, limb and property from heatwaves, floods and storms, as well as the spread of water-borne diseases and disease-bearing insects, climate change may also pose longer-term health dangers, the report said. "Indeed, emerging evidence is suggesting links between a rising incidence of chronic kidney disease, dehydration, and climate change," the authors wrote. Experts commenting on the report agreed more research is needed to clearly attribute health impacts to climate change. There was no doubt, however, of the link between temperature trends and human activities, nor about "the urgency of addressing the issues raised by this report", said Clare Goodess of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Source: AFP Motion Icon's escalator step branding offers unlimited creative visual opportunities for brands looking to a new advertising channel that delivers ROI and hyper proximity communication. 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... The Most Extensive and Reliable Source of Information Related to the Mexican Drugs Cartels. You will not find this level of coverage anywhere else, join us! WARNING: Posts may contain strong violent material, discretion is advised. COMMENTS: We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. President of Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) Advocate Duma Boko says the purported leadership of Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) is illegitimate. Advocate Boko revealed this on Wednesday indicating that BMD remains a member of UDC in good standing but the leadership that was elected at Matshekge Hill School in Bobonong led by Advocate Sidney Pilane is not legitimate and cannot be accepted. We have since written to the BMD and served them on Monday that they have to constitute an interim. The interim committee would then send four representatives who will sit in the UDC National Executive Committee. Then after that the BMD would hold fresh elective congress before January 31st 2018. The leadership that would have been elected at the congress would then replace the interim members, said Advocate Boko. Botswana Guardian however, has it on good authority that Advocate Pilane has accepted to comply with UDCs verdict and is ready and prepared to step down from the BMD presidency to allow for a fresh congress. Pilane, who was in South Africa on Wednesday, is said to be willing to sacrifice himself to prove that he has nothing against the leadership of Boko. He wants to make it clear that he genuinely believes in opposition unity. Impeccable sources say the only thing he would not accept was if the UDC had proposed to expel BMD from the coalition, which he had threatened he would fight to the bitter end. He is said to be happy to remain an ordinary member of the BMD and is ready to be deployed to any position should the party feel the need to. Boko told the Press that they have given this time line so that the BMD would be part of the UDC Constitutional Congress billed for February next year. He pointed out that the draft constitution would be discussed at the congress where all UDC members would have an input before the Constitution is adopted. It remains to be seen if the BMD, which is said to be skating on thin ice will now bow to pressure and listen to the UDC. Should the BMD disregard this order from UDC it could find itself outside the UDC. We are awaiting their response and we would act accordingly when they respond. We want a congress that is free, fair and credible. We will act in the best interest of the UDC, said Advocate Boko adding that through the powers he has as the UDC president he would act. The powers sometimes do not have to be in the constitution. There is a case of Botswana National Front when Botswana Congress Party was formed when court ruled that the president cannot just sit and watch while the organisation falls apart. A representational photo. JAMMU (PTI): Indian and Kazakh armies today began a 14-day joint exercise in Himachal Pradesh to strengthen bilateral relations and exchange skills and experience. This is second joint military exercise between the two countries. The first edition of "Prabal Dostyk" was held in Kazakhstan in 2016. "A 14-day joint training exercise 'Prabal Dostyk-2017' between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army commenced today with an opening ceremony at Bakloh in Himachal Pradesh," a defence spokesman said. The joint exercise is aimed at enhancing the military ties between the two countries and achieving interoperability between the two armies, he said. "The training contingents comprise a platoon strength from 3rd Battalion of the 11th Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army and a similar strength of the Kazakhstan Army," the spokesman said. Senior military observers of both the countries would also witness the validation phase of the joint exercise. He said the exercise sought to acquaint the forces with each other's operating procedures in the backdrop of counter- insurgency and counter-terrorism operations under the UN's mandate. "The overall aim is to enhance the existing military relationship between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army and achieve synergy for joint conduct of operations as and when the requirement arises," he added. Personnel of both contingents were hopeful of a fruitful learning experience and that the training would go a long way in enhancing ties between the people of the two countries. The Indian troops participating in the joint exercise underwent extensive training in counter-terrorism and low intensity conflict operations at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School, Vairengte, he added. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman with Navy chief Sunil Lanba and other officers during the Goa Maritime Conclave - 2017 at Dabolim on Wednesday. A PTI Photo. PANAJI (PTI): Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba has said undermining the maritime disputes resolution mechanisms and muscle-flexing is resulting in a fragile security situation at many places. He also said that to make mutually beneficial use of the seas, it would be ideal if the maritime environment was devoid of all types of threats. He was addressing the inaugural function of the Goa Maritime Conclave which aims to address the maritime challenges in the region. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was also present on the occasion on Wednesday. "In order to make mutually beneficial use of the seas, it would be ideal if the maritime environment was devoid of all types of threats--traditional or non traditional--both at sea and from the sea," Admiral Lanba said. This paradigm of maritime security is spread over a wide spectrum and involves safety and law enforcement in national maritime zones, and maintaining good order at sea, he said. "The maritime domain is witnessing increasing competition. In this environment, the traditional maritime security concerns primarily appear to rise out of certain trust deficit between countries," he said. "Although conflict resolution mechanisms have been established to address concerns between nations, undermining these institutions by unilateralism and maritime muscle flexing is resulting in fragile security situation at many places," Lanba said. This security situation is leading nations into seemingly unending vortex of action-reaction matrix, resulting in further rise in insecurities on all sides, he said. Without naming any country, Lanba said in the traditional domain, an expansionist behaviour by certain nations has historically been and continues to be the main cause of concern. "In addition to these non-traditional threats such as piracy and drug-trafficking, maritime terrorism has captured considerable attention of maritime security agencies," he said. Another emerging menace is illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and poaching. "This is leading to over-fishing as well as rapid deterioration of the endangered maritime species. We need to take a long term view on this," he said. Lanba said most of the security concerns in maritime domain have developed a distinct hybrid trans-national character. "The maritime nations are accordingly putting into place a process to deal with the changing nature of these threats," he said. The naval chief said no single nation can effectively counter the challenges rising in the maritime domain. "Therefore, nurturing resilient maritime security architecture will play a significant role in facilitating it," he added. NEW DELHI (PTI): Russia's partnership with India is "second to none" and cannot be compared with its relationship with Pakistan, Russian Ambassador Nikolay Kudashev has said. On a possible quadrilateral involving India, Japan, the US and Australia for deeper cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, the envoy said Russia favours a non-bloc open regional architecture with space for all stakeholders. Kudashev was on Wednesday replying to questions during a media briefing on the recently concluded tri-services exercise between India and Russia. Asked about Russia's two-week-long military drill with Pakistan last month near the Russian town of Minralney Vody, he said it was part of counter-terror cooperation, insisting there was no comparison between Moscow's ties with India and Pakistan. "I do not see any opportunity to equalise relations between Russia and India and Russia and Pakistan. Our partnership with India is second to none. It is a special strategic partnership," Kudashev said. He said Russia has a normal inter-state relationship with Pakistan. "The purpose of the drill was anti-terror cooperation and to support reasonable elements in the Pakistan government in fighting terror," he said. On the proposed quadrilateral among India, Japan, the US and Australia with a focus on cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, he said there should be "open cooperation" among all countries in the region. "We would welcome larger non-bloc open regional architectures which will have space for all," Kudashev said. The US has been pressing for strengthening Indo-US cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region. Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono said last week that Tokyo favours a dialogue between Japan, the US, India and Australia to further boost strategic partnership. Asked about China's indication that it may once again block the US, France and UK's bid to list Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, he evaded a direct reply. "We are members of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) where there is ample agenda to fight terrorism.... We need to fight common threats of terror, drugs and crime," he said. On North Korea's nuclear tests, he said Russia is for denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. The envoy also spoke about the tri-services exercise between India and Russia from October 19 to 29. 150 new jobs are on the way in Dublin at an aircraft maintenance firm. Dublin Aerospace's new roles will almost double their workforce in Ireland. The jobs will be across different levels of the company and will be filled over the next three years. CEO of the company Michael Tyrell says they're investing despite the threat posed by Brexit. He said: "I think the biggest issue will be currency, we will have to see what happens with the exchange rates. "It will be interesting to see whether or not it will effect the holiday industry in the UK, whether people can afford to go on holidays or not. "If they are not flying , the aircraft wont need to be maintained so we are starting to look else where and that is where enterprise Ireland help us, accessing new markets and achieving replacement business." There has been a 4% increase in the number of passengers who travelled through Cork Airport in October, compared to last year. Nearly 200,000 passengers used the airport despite disruptions from Storms Ophelia and Brian. Royal Dutch Shell has reported a large rise in third-quarter profits after the energy giant was boosted by higher oil prices and increased production. The firm said adjusted earnings rose 47% to $4.1bn in the period as chief executive Ben van Beurden hailed a "strong set of results". It comes as the price of crude rose above $60 per barrel this week, its highest price for five months. Shell said that it benefited from stronger refining and chemicals industry conditions, increased oil and gas prices and higher production from new fields. Total production rose 2% to 3.7 million barrels a day in the quarter. Shell's upstream oil and gas producing unit booked an increase in earnings from $4 million to $562 million while downstream profit grew from $2.1bn to $2.7bn. Mr van Beurden added: "Shell's three businesses all made resilient contributions to this strong set of results. "Upstream generated almost half of the $10 billion cash flow from operations excluding working capital this quarter, at an average Brent oil price of $52 per barrel, and this was complemented by good cash contributions from our growing Integrated Gas business and from Downstream. "This competitive performance is further evidence of Shell's growing momentum, and strengthens my firm belief that our strategy is working." Shell is also embarking on an ambitious cost-cutting drive and a $30bn divestment initiative. To this end, the oil major offloaded $187m of upstream and $1.15bn of downstream assets in the quarter, including a 50% share in SADAF, the petrochemicals joint venture in Saudi Arabia. Shell also announced this week that it has completed the sale of a package of North Sea assets for up to $3.8bn to smaller rival Chrysaor. Tim Martin, boss of cheap-and-cheerful pub chain JD Wetherspoon and an outspoken supporter of the UKs departure from the EU, has turned his attention from getting any Brexit to getting the right Brexit. Drinkers will be greeted by a hard-hitting message on Brexit when they look down at beer mats awaiting them in the chains 895 UK pubs, the company said. The message, printed on 500,000 mats, calls on the leaders of the UKs three main political parties to stop messing about and endorse the companys three-point manifesto. In the weeks leading up to the EU referendum last year, the chain distributed 200,000 beer mats making the case for Brexit. The new beer mats urge the UK government to take steps that would help Wetherspoon, including unilaterally granting citizenship rights to legal EU immigrants, probably because Wetherspoon employs 3,500 foreign workers. Wetherspoon wants to eliminate taxes on food imported from outside the EU, while ensuring that food imports from the EU into the UK also continue to be tax-free from 2019. The beer mats also want the UK to stop paying 200m (227) a week into EU coffers. Mr Martin previously backed the now infamous 350m-a-week figure that was paraded on the side of a Leave campaign bus. The UK government will be able to lower food prices at a stroke after exiting the EU, Mr Martin said, while taking a swipe at J Sainsbury chairman David Tyler, calling his estimates of higher food prices in the event of an EU exit without a deal highly misleading. Its important to provide the public with the truth, so that they are able to decide for themselves, Mr Martin said. Meanwhile, a UK manufacturing survey showed output strengthened in October but measures of prices and capacity indicated an inflationary buildup within the industry. IHS Markit said costs rose and firms increased selling prices at the fastest pace in six months. The Bank of England announces its latest policy decision later today, when its expected to increase interest rates from a record-low 0.25%. Bloomberg Although we celebrate 14 Bank Holidays a year in Ireland, every time one peers its head its like weve never been out in our lives. So much so, a group in Co Louth may have got overexcited and decided to pull up the flowers outside an Interior shop in Ardee in the early hours of Monday morning. There are calls for a large research project to be carried out into sexual abuse in Ireland. The last in-depth study, the SAVI report, was done 15 years ago but the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre says the country has changed a lost since then, with social media, more same sex couples, different cultures and a different economy. CEO Noeline Blackwell says theyve seen a rise in calls recently following a number of high profile campaigns and controversies. She says it was particularly noticeable after former Irish Times journalist Tom Humphries was sentenced for sexually abusing a teenage girl. The day after the Tom Humphries sentencing, the number of calls to our helpline doubled, said Blackwell. The me too (viral hashtag), the (case of Harvey) Weinstein, and before that other issues as well have all led to a situation where its like a sluice gate opening in a dam. The trouble is we have been trying to identify how best to combat sexual violence without modern data. Its not even that its not up to date; its just antiquated. The in-depth study would cost around 1million to carry out. Childrens Minister Katherine Zappone has already said shed support it and Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald has indicated the same. Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald The government will address this Im sure. We do need comprehensive research, said Fitzgerald. We see increasing levels of sexual violence, of harassment, of growth in pornography, and its important that we have an overall look from a research point of view of the kind of evidence thats out there. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre says until such a study is carried out, the Government is working off patchy and ineffective data. Results of the Census show that people are giving over 6.6 million hours of unpaid care a week. According to the latest figures, over 4% of the population are carers and 3,800 are under 15 years of age. The Finance Minister has blamed Sinn Fein for the delay in refunding water charges. The Government has failed to pass the necessary legislation in time, as it says it has had to deal with several amendments. It is now expected to go through before the end of the month, which will enable Irish Water to start issuing cheques but it's unlikely they'll all be sent before the Christmas deadline. Paschal Donohoe says Sinn Fein owes people an explanation. He said: "It is the Government's intention to repay back everybody who paid their water charges as soon as possible, we have the legislation in place to do that. "But due to the behaviour of Sinn Fein that might not be possibe and I hope Sinn Fein will be able to clarify to the country why their ammendents are now delaying the repayment process for everybody." Gardai in Dublin are still searching for a missing teenager believed to be armed with a riffle. 19-year-old Jack Dinan from Ennis, Co Clare left home on Tuesday and has not been seen since. The Senate is closing public submissions on the national anthem today. Members of the public have until 4pm today to make their views on Amhran na bhFiann known to the Senate Committee which is looking at how to protect the Irish National Anthem - which is now out of copywrite. Fianna Fail Senator Mark Daly said he is determined to hear as many views as possible. "This is not about changing the national anthem or looking for alternative national anthems. This is about Amhran na bhFiann as it is now," he said. "Because the copyright expired in 2012 I suggested we should bring in new guidelines, protocols, and possibly legislation in relation to the national anthem. We're looking for the publics view on what we should do in light of the fact the copy right has expired." Members of the public can make their submissions here. Leo Varadkar and Theresa May have said it is still possible to revive powersharing in Northern Ireland. The two leaders spoke on the phone about the latest twist in the political deadlock at Stormont as the UK Prime Minister's government makes preparations to impose a budget on the region by the end of the month. In a statement from the Taoiseach's office while he is on a trade mission to the US west coast, the leaders said the gap between the two sides is narrow. "Both leaders also expressed the view that it is still possible to form an executive which would be in the interests of all the people of Northern Ireland," an Irish Government spokesman said. Mr Varadkar told Mrs May there could be no return to direct rule like it was before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Have spoken with PM May re Northern Ireland. We both agreed it's still possible to form an Executive. Provisions of GFA must be honoured. Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) November 2, 2017 The Taoiseach's office said Mrs May made it clear she did not want to see a return to Westminster running all of Northern Ireland's affairs and that budget preparations were not the first step on that road. "Both leaders agreed that there is still time to reach an agreement," Mr Varadkar's office said. Northern Ireland Secretary of State James Brokenshire is to outline the state of powersharing talks when he addresses the House of Commons. The DUP and Sinn Fein failed to meet Mr Brokenshire's original Monday deadline for a deal, after Stormont had been effectively in limbo since January. Irish language rights and other cultural issues are the main sticking points. Despite the deadlock Mrs May is understood to remain committed to a 1 billion investment in Northern Ireland agreed as part of a voting pact between the Conservatives and the DUP at Westminster. Meanwhile, Fianna Fail's Brexit deputy has said a Northern Executive is vital to help prepare for Brexit. Deputy Stephen Donnelly said a Westminster Budget will not have the vision to prepare Northern Ireland for what lies ahead. He has joined others in calling on Sinn Fein and the DUP to find a way to end the current political impasse. "Brexit is, without a doubt, the biggest economic threat to Northern Ireland since The Troubles and it is completely devoid of political leadership," he said. "It beggars belief that the parties involved have essentially refused to find a compromise whereby they can put the Assembly together and put political direction in place so that the people of Northern Ireland know how they are meant to face the challenges that Brexit poses." Ousted Catalan government members and legislators have arrived at Spanish courts in Madrid to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence. Twenty regional politicians, including sacked regional government president Carles Puigdemont, were called to appear after the chief prosecutor demanded charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the Catalan parliament's declaration of secession on October 27. Spain took the unprecedented step of seizing control of Catalonia following the declaration and later sacked the cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called fresh regional elections for December 21. Mr Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium with some of his ex-cabinet members, will not appear, according to his lawyer, which could trigger a warrant for his arrest and an extradition petition. The group summoned includes Mr Puigdemont's 13-member former cabinet and six parliamentary board members. Puigdemont's number two, Oriol Junqueras, was the first to arrive at the National Court. He went in accompanied by lawyers, passing dozens of journalists and declining to answer questions. The alleged offences are punishable by up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. Mr Puigdemont said he and six ex-ministers went to Brussels some days ago for "freedom and safety". Two of the ex-ministers returned to Spain and were scheduled to be among an estimated 15 legislators expected to appear. Four ex-ministers have stayed with Mr Puigdemont. Besides the ex-cabinet members, six regional parliament members are to appear before the Supreme Court in a parallel probe. They include former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell, one of the leading figures of the pro-independence movement in Catalonia for many years. Update 9.00pm Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has described the imprisonment of several of his former Cabinet members in a probe over the region's push for independence as "a serious mistake". In a speech broadcast late on Thursday by Catalan public TV3, Mr Puigdemont called on Catalans to protest against the Spanish authorities "without violence, peacefully and with respect for everybody's opinions". Mr Puigdemont and several ousted Cabinet members remain in Brussels, where he said they are seeking "safety and freedom" while judges back in Spain investigate them for pushing Catalan secession. The prosecutor has asked the National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant against them. "The fury with which the Spanish government has attacked a beautiful European nation is outrageous and is threatening us all," Mr Puigdemont said, adding that Catalonia's independence is "no longer an internal affair" of Spain. The ousted leader reacted to the events at Spain's National Court in Madrid as thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest at the jailings. Eight of the nine were jailed without possibility of bail while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement following the regional parliament's declaration of secession from Spain last week. Bail of 50,000 was set for the ninth. Protests were called for this evening, and thousands gathered in Catalan towns including Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona. The jailed politicians called for all protests to be peaceful and for their supporters to avoid any show of violence. Mass protests in favour of independence in Catalonia have so far been peaceful. Under Spain's legal system, investigating judges can order the detention of suspects while a comprehensive probe, sometimes taking months, determines if charges should be brought. Lawyers said the defendants were serene and wanted the people of Catalonia to stay calm. Defence lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said the decision "lacked justification" and was "disproportionate". He is representing former regional vice president Oriol Junqueras and four other ousted members of the Catalan Cabinet. Van den Andreu, the lawyer defending other ex-members of the regional government, said whether his clients were jailed "was already predetermined" before they appeared in court. Both lawyers said they would appeal the judge's order. Mr Puigdemont reacted on Twitter to the jailing of nine members of his former Cabinet, posting that "the legitimate government of Catalonia has been jailed for its ideas". He tweeted the government's "furious clamour" had sent the officials to jail. "The serene clamour of the Catalans is of freedom," he wrote, posting a photo of protesters in Barcelona. Update 4.46pm: A Spanish judge has ordered nine ex-members of the government in Catalonia jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Investigative magistrate Carmen Lamela issued the ruling on Thursday at the request of prosecutors who are pursuing a criminal case stemming from the declaration of secession the Parliament of Catalonia made on Friday. The judge set bail for one of the nine former members of the Catalan Cabinet, saying he would be freed if he pays 50,000. Artur Mas, a former President of Catalonia, talks to journalists outside the national court in Madrid. AP Photo/Paul White Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear for questioning. The Spanish government invoked constitutional authority last week to take over running Catalonia following the region's declaration of independence. Madrid dismissed the Catalan Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for December 21. A prosecutor has also asked the National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant for ousted regional president Mr Puigdemont and four of his ex-ministers. Update 3.35pm: A Spanish prosecutor has asked a National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant for Catalonia's ousted regional president and four of his ex-ministers. The prosecutor made the petition to investigative magistrate Carmen Lamela on Thursday after ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont failed to appear in the Madrid court for questioning. It was part of a rebellion probe following the Catalan parliament's declaration of independence from Spain October 27. Carles Puigdemont Mr Puigdemont and several of his ministers went to Brussels after the secession declaration and said they would not heed the summons. Update 1.46pm: Spain's National Court has been questioning ousted Catalan government members in an investigation into possible rebellion charges for having declared the region's independence. A parallel Supreme Court session for six Catalan lawmakers was postponed for a week. Prosecutors called on the National Court in Madrid to jail all nine former members of the Catalan government who appeared for questioning. The request was for unconditional jail for eight of the politicians, while bail could be set for the remaining one. It was not immediately clear how the judge would rule on the request. Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Carles Puigdemont, were called to appear. It came after the chief prosecutor demanded they be charged with rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the Catalan parliament's declaration of secession October 27. The crimes are punishable by up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. The group summoned includes Mr Puigdemont's 13-member former Cabinet and six parliamentary board members. But Mr Puigdemont, who travelled to Belgium with some of his ex-Cabinet members, remained in Brussels along with four of his former ministers. It could trigger arrest warrants and an extradition petition. Mr Puigdemont's number two, Catalan ex-vice president Oriol Junqueras, was the first to arrive at the National Court. The National Court procedures began with the appearance of former Catalan regional government spokesman Jordi Turull, followed by Josep Rull, who had handled the region's territorial affairs. But a corresponding session in the Supreme Court for six regional parliament members was suspended until November 9 following a request by their lawyers for more time to prepare their defence. That group includes Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell, one of the leading figures of the pro-independence movement in Catalonia for many years. Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena granted the lawyers' request, and ordered the politicians to ensure they are reachable by the police on mobile phones until the hearing next week. All six left the Supreme Court building in Madrid. Mr Forcadell emerged first followed by the others, who were welcomed by supporters clapping and chanting "Freedom, freedom". Spain took the unprecedented step of triggering constitutional powers allowing it to take over the running of Catalonia following the region's declaration of independence. Madrid has sacked the regional Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for December 21. Mr Puigdemont said he and several of his former ministers went to Brussels earlier this week for "freedom and safety". Javier Melero, lawyer for some of the separatist lawmakers investigated in the Supreme Court, criticised Mr Puigdemont and other officials' decision to avoid the questioning. He said the move will be damaging for his clients, the three politicians who are also members of Mr Puigdemont's PDeCAT party. "Not being at the service of the judiciary when you are summoned is always damaging for the rest of those being investigated," he said. About two dozen politicians and elected officials from Catalan separatist parties gathered at the gates of the Supreme Court. "If the question is if in Spain you can trust the judicial system, my answer is no," said Artur Mas, a former president of the Catalan government. "From the personal point of view and also for my personal experience, I don't think that there are all the guarantees to have a fair trial." Earlier this year, Mr Mas was banned by a Barcelona court from holding public office for two years after he ignored a Constitutional Court ruling and went ahead with a mock vote on Catalonia's independence in 2014. Assumpcio Lailla, a former official with Catalonia's Democrats party, said she had travelled to Madrid joining around 100 other politicians and elected officials to show support to those investigated. "This is an unjust situation in which they are being investigated for facilitating democracy," she said. "I don't understand how Europe can look away from democracy." The supporters greeted some of the politicians who appeared at the Supreme Court cheering and shouting: "Freedom, Freedom" and "we are not afraid." Across the street, half a dozen protesters with Spanish flags were stopped by police. They shouted at the Catalan politicians, "cowards" and "to jail, to jail". In Barcelona, the Catalan regional capital, thousands of people rallied outside the regional presidential palace in Sant Jaume Square at noon to show their support, clapping and chanting slogans in favour of independence. AP Earlier story: Spanish prosecutors have asked the National Court to jail eight ex-members of the sacked Catalan government. The request came after nine ex-ministers were quizzed at the National Court on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. The case stems from the Catalan parliament's declaration of the region's independence from Spain on October 27. Carles Puigdemont The court said the prosecutor proposed that jailing the eight may be avoided by paying bail. The judge has yet to decide on the request. Sacked Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear on Thursday. Earlier, the Supreme Court suspended until next week the questioning of six Catalan legislators under investigation for rebellion following the declaration of independence. The six had been summonsed by two Madrid courts on Thursday and face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. They include regional parliament speaker and prominent pro-independence activist Carme Forcadell, and 14 ousted Catalan government ministers including Mr Puigdemont. The Supreme Court said the hearing of the six regional parliament board members was postponed until November 9 following a request by their lawyers. AP An Uzbek immigrant accused of a deadly truck attack on a New York cycle path has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Suspect Sayfullo Saipov was charged on Wednesday in a criminal complaint following the Tuesday afternoon attack that killed eight people near the World Trade Centre. He appeared in the New York federal courthouse in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, and was ordered to be detained. His lawyers said they were not seeking bail, and Saipov did not enter a plea. A judge set his next court date for November 15. Federal prosecutors say the man was "consumed by hate and a twisted ideology" when he attacked people on the cycle path on Tuesday. He is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State terrorist group. Prosecutors say he was stopped by a "brave" police officer, who shot and wounded him Tuesday. They say he had been planning the attack for months. The FBI had said earlier on Wednesday that another person was wanted for questioning over the attack that left at least 12 people injured. The bureau had issued a poster seeking the public's help with information about the man, but at a news conference later, FBI assistant director in charge Bill Sweeney said: "We've found him, and we'll leave it at that." He did not elaborate on why authorities were seeking the man, who was born in Uzbekistan. The authorities said Saipov watched Islamic State videos on his mobile phone and picked Halloween for the attack because he knew more people would be out on the streets. Afterwards, as he lay injured in hospital, he asked to display the IS flag in his room and "stated that he felt good about what he had done," prosecutors said in court papers. Saipov left behind knives and a note, handwritten in Arabic, that included Islamic religious references and said "it will endure" - a phrase that commonly refers to IS, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by IS videos and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, the agent said, and he even rented a truck on October 22 to practise making turns. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out". In the past few years, the Islamic State has exhorted followers online to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have all seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. A November 2016 issue of the group's online magazine detailed features that an attack truck or van should have, suggested renting such a vehicle and recommended targeting crowded streets and outdoor gatherings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a militant-monitoring agency. Carlos Batista, a neighbour of Saipov's in Paterson, New Jersey, said he had seen the suspect and two friends using the same model of rented truck several times in the past three weeks. It was not clear whether Saipov had been on the radar of the authorities. Mr Miller said he had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. In Tuesday's attack, Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along a cycle path, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus. He was shot in the stomach after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns, one in each hand, and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic. A man has been arrested on suspicion of walking into a suburban Walmart in Colorado in the US and opening fire with a handgun, killing two men and a woman. Thornton police said 47-year-old Scott Ostrem was arrested on Thursday morning, about 14 hours after he fled the Denver store in a car. Authorities used security video to help identify him. JUST IN: Suspect wanted for shooting that killed 3 at Colorado Walmart has been taken into custody, police say. https://t.co/czVESDox5Q pic.twitter.com/cMiZq8yB7G ABC News (@ABC) November 2, 2017 Police spokesman Victor Avila said on Wednesday night that the shooting appeared random and there are no indications it was an act of terror. Two men died inside the Walmart, which is about 10 miles (16km) north of Denver in a busy shopping centre. The woman died later at a hospital. The shooting forced customers to hide or flee and police reported "multiple parties down". They advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cars and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. Mr Avila said a man nonchalantly entered the store and fired a handgun into a group of people before fleeing in a car. "This is a very heinous act," he said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act." Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Guadalupe Perez was inside the store with her young son when she heard what she thought was a balloon popping. A Walmart employee told her someone was shooting, and then Ms Perez saw people running away yelling: "Let's go. Let's go. Leave the groceries." "You see all these things in the news and you go through it, it's scary," she said. "But thank God we're OK and nothing happened to us." Special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were helping police in the investigation. Ragan Dickens, a Walmart spokesman, said the company was working with investigators. AP The CIA's release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has again raised questions about Iran's support of the extremist network leading up to the September 11 terror attacks. US intelligence officials and prosecutors have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organisation from 1991 onwards, something noted in a 19-page report in Arabic that was included in the release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. Iran has long denied any involvement with al Qaida. However, the report shows how bin Laden, a Sunni extremist from Iran's arch-rival Saudi Arabia, could look across the Muslim world's religious divide to partner with the Shiite power to target his ultimate enemy, the United States. "Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric," the report reads. Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, has dismissed the CIA documents as "a project against Tehran". The Associated Press examined a copy of the report released by the Long War Journal, a publication backed by the Washington-based Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a think tank fiercely critical of Iran and sceptical of its nuclear deal with world powers. The release comes as US president Donald Trump has refused to recertify Iran's nuclear deal with world powers and faces domestic pressure over investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report included in the CIA release was available online on Wednesday. The CIA later issued a warning about the files on its website, saying that since the material "was seized from a terrorist organisation ... there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed". The CIA then took down the files early on Thursday, saying they were "temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue". "We are working to make the material available again as soon as possible," the CIA said. The unsigned report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 - 2007 - and offers what appears to be a history of al Qaida's relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al Qaida fighters "money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia". This coincides with an account offered by the US government's 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with al Qaida leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said al Qaida militants later received training in Lebanon from the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which Iran backs. US prosecutors also said al Qaida had the backing of Iran and Hezbollah in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden following the al Qaida truck bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Al Qaida's apparent siding with Iran may seem surprising today, given the enmity Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group have for Shiites. But bin Laden had run out of options by 1991 - the one-time fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan had fallen out with Saudi Arabia over his opposition to the ultraconservative kingdom hosting US troops during the Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America's growing military expansion in the Middle East. "The relationship between al-Qaida and Iran demonstrated that the Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations," the 9/11 Commission report would later say. Before the September 11 2001 attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington, Iran would allow al Qaida militants to pass through its borders without receiving stamps in their passports or with visas obtained ahead of time at its consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the report. That helped the organisation's Saudi members avoid suspicion. They also had contact with Iranian intelligence agents, according to the report. This also matches with US knowledge. Eight of the 10 so-called "muscle" hijackers on September 11 - those who kept passengers under control on the hijacked flights - passed through Iran before arriving in the United States, according to the 9/11 Commission. However, the commission "found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack". For its part, Iran has denied having any relationship with al Qaida since the 1998 attacks on the embassies. Iran quietly offered the US assistance after the September 11 attacks, though relations would sour following President George W Bush naming in his "axis of evil" in 2002. The report describes Iranians later putting al Qaida leaders and members under house arrest sometime after the September 11 attacks. It mentions the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, saying it put increasing pressure on Iran, especially with the rise of al Qaida in Iraq. "They decided to keep our brothers as a card," the report said. That would come true in in 2015 as Iran reportedly exchanged some al Qaida leaders for one of its diplomats held in Yemen by the terror group's local branch. While Yemen described it as a captive exchange, Tehran instead called it a "difficult and complicated" special operation to secure the Iranian diplomat's freedom from the "hands of terrorists". "The repercussions ... of the September 11 attacks were undoubtedly very large and perhaps above (our) imagination," the al Qaida report said. AP BBC Two Astronauts finalist Tim Gregory will join one of Europes top space exploration experts at a special event in memory of Colin Pillinger - the Bristol-born scientist best known for leading the Beagle 2 mission which landed on Mars. The third annual Colin Pillinger memorial talk entitled 'Once explorers, always explorers - Europe's role in space exploration' is organised by the University of Bristol and takes place on Friday 10 November in the Wills Memorial Building. This year's speaker is Dr David Parker, Director of Human and Robotic Exploration at the European Space Agency, who will give a personal and engaging insight into Europes role in the past, present and future of space exploration. Tim, a PhD student at the University of Bristol who reached the final three of the popular BBC series which concluded in October, will host a Q&A after the talk. Members of the public are being urged to submit questions for Dr David Parker on the booking form when they book their ticket. The best ones will be selected in advance and those asking will be invited to pose their question in person, as well as winning an exclusive goody bag provided by the European Space Agency. Dr Parker, who was previously Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, has worked on a number of pioneering missions such as the Rosetta comet chaser and advised a succession of ministers on space policy choices, including the UKs decision to join the European Space Agency's Programme for Human Spaceflight and Microgravity in 2012, which in turn facilitated Tim Peakes hugely successful 'Principia' mission to the International Space Station. Dr Parker, whose home is in Bristol and used to work with Colin, securing funding for the Beagle project, said: "It is a great honour to deliver the Pillinger lecture. My talk will explain what Europe is doing in space exploration today and why everything we do is through international cooperation. "It's also very rewarding that one of our team of astronauts, Tim Peake, has captured the imagination of a new generation in the UK. Maybe one of our young people will one day go to Mars." The lecture series was established by the Pillinger family in 2015 in memory of Colin, his career and his connection with the city of Bristol. Professor Colin Pillinger CBE FRS, who was born and educated in Kingswood, started his scientific career as part of the University of Bristol team analysing the Apollo lunar samples. Over the next four decades, his famed career found tantalising evidence of life on Mars while his bushy sideburns and westcountry accent became known worldwide. Colin's widow, Judith, said: "This year's talk will demonstrate how the legacy of the research that Colin was involved in lives on in an ever-expanding range of space exploration applications. It also shows that being involved in space science and technology can offer exciting career opportunities for many young people. "Colin loved to share his excitement of being involved in cutting-edge science with people who did not think of themselves as scientists, and we hope the talk will appeal to lots of people from different walks of life." Latest News On-time property sale settlements hit new heights Almost 90% finalised on first scheduled date, says PEXA Regional hotspots record sharp falls in value, new data shows Value declines have become more geographically broad-based over the three months to October Evolution, agility and culture are crucial ingredients behind the success of Smartmove, an award-winning Sydney-based brokerage which recently gained industry recognition.Simon Orbell, Smartmoves director of mortgage advice, talked to Australian Broker about why the company won the FBAA Broker of the Year Independent award at last Fridays Australian Mortgage Awards in Sydney.The firm was established in 2003 by managing director David Brell as an independent brokerage and has grown as a business that focuses on both customer and staff, Orbell said.The journey for us has really been about building as a business where the customer is at the centre of everything that we do and making sure that as an individual serving those customers that they have a career progression.Through a fun, enjoyable work environment, Smartmove retains staff much longer than a couple of years, he said.Like a mortgage, we want to look after people for 30 years.The business culture is created to appeal to team members and form an excellent customer experience. Smartmove currently has 52 employees. Of these, 19 are brokers while the rest are support staff, including a data entry team and a specialised care team which handles customers post-settlement.Were starting to build a para-broker team. ...We dont do that on an individual basis, so we dont have one support team member supporting one broker. We try and create teams to allow us to have a standardised approach across the business.The nature of an independent brokerage offers a degree of agility that allows it to evolve with changes in demand, compliance and more, Orbell said.As your reputation grows and people want to deal with you more and your referral network grows, you find that you get spread a little bit thin.Building scalable systems and processes and evolving the business over time allowed Smartmove to streamline its approach and retain the same levels of customer service as a result.We spent a lot of time and energy and invested a lot of money in our processes and in our continuous improvement methodology, he said.Being independent also gave the brokerage freedom to be run as management saw fit, he said, an ability which may not be found within a mortgage franchise.It feels to me like we can be a little bit more nimble in our approach to change processes that improve the customer experience without having to be dictated to from a head group or franchise group.This flexibility extended to creating the right type of culture for the team rather than having to mould the team to a culture set out by the head office, he said.This agility has been especially important in the past year which Orbell said was the most challenging hed seen by a country mile with the firms nimbleness complemented by the right mindset.Weve taken the opportunity to be a lot more positive about it. At the end of the day, the more complicated that the market gets, the more that a customer needs a brokers advice. Latest News On-time property sale settlements hit new heights Almost 90% finalised on first scheduled date, says PEXA Regional hotspots record sharp falls in value, new data shows Value declines have become more geographically broad-based over the three months to October Australian Capital Territory (+7.9%) Northern Territory (+6.5%) Tasmania (+4.5%) New South Wales (+3.4%) Western Australia (+2.0%) South Australia (+1.5%) Victoria (+0.7%) Queensland (-0.5%) The number of dwelling approvals rose by 1.8% during the month of September, the eighth concurrent month of increases, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).The latest ABS data released yesterday (2 November) showed approvals increasing in trend terms across all states and territories except Queensland:Approvals for private sector houses rose by 0.7% in trend terms over September. These rose in Queensland, SA, Victoria and NSW while falling in WA.In seasonally adjusted terms, total building approvals increased by 1.5% in September. Private housing approvals rose by 0.6% while approvals for private dwellings excluding houses increased by 2.6% during that same month.The value of total building approvals went up by 1.3% during September in trend terms, marking a nine month run of increases. Residential building values rose by 1.5% while non-residential building values rose 1.0%.The value of non-residential building approvals have risen for the past eight months, in trend terms, reaching a record high in September 2017, said Bill Becker, assistant director of construction statistics at the ABS.The strength in non-residential building has been driven by approvals in Victoria, where a number of office and education buildings have been approved in recent months. Shane Garrett , senior economist at the Housing Industry Association (HIA), said that these figures were quite favourable considering the wider trends over the quarter.Activity on the apartment side of the market has come under considerable pressure due to a number of obstacles being put in the way of foreign investors in residential property. Todays figures do indicate that home building is receiving some support from the strong pace of job creation in several key markets.He predicted that home building activity would trend downwards over the next year or so, eventually bottoming out in 2019. 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... So here is what we know so far on Designated Survivor: Patrick Lloyd is dead, yet before dying, he sent some information involving future potential bombsites to various locations. The First Mother-In-Law was subpoenaed for bribery after insurance papers were found from 1987 when she did what she thought was the right thing to do to save her husbands life. From this, we found out about a corrupt Washington D.C. area construction worker who is now deceased. There are new faces in the White House and Hannah kissed a boy. What will President Kirkman and his crew come up with next? There is a hideous storm brewing in the Persian Gulf where an explosion has just occurred on an American vessel, the U.S.S. Verona. Aaron informs Kirkman that it collided with wait for it a garbage barge. Thanks to some literal trash, 16 people have lost their lives. Of course, the nation of Kunami is not happy with the news of a U.S. ship in their waters. The captain of the ship is no more, so the highest in command, Lt. Will Griffin (Gregory Smith), who informs the President of the conditions. Kirkman assures him that they will do all they can as fast as they can. Designated Survivor Recap: Kirkman Slings Hope at Suckergate>>> Hannah Keeps Things Professional Hannah and Damian have taken a break from canoodling to speak with Ms. Peyton Lane, the same woman who gave the tip that led the duo to Darius Cray. They inform her that Crays wife moved an incredible number of Euros from her husbands account just after he was shot. She leaves to speak to the Prime Minister about the situation. This gives Damian an uncomfortable way to turn the conversation to their kiss. Are we going to talk about this? Nope. Hannah doesnt want to and she leaves before it can go any further. Shes all about business. Aaron speaks with the Kunami Ambassador who is visibly upset and presenting a wall to any possibility of a rescue mission for the victims on the Verona. He makes a pretty interesting point as Aaron pleads. If a Kunami ship were off the coast of New York City, there would be no thought of negotiations because it would already have been shot down to the bottom of the ocean long before the words of peace were spoken. Is this a reason to keep Kirkman from extracting those victims? Apparently so, because there is now a blockade surrounding the Verona, keeping them in and the entire world out. To switch gears, Kendra informs Kirkman about his mother-in-laws hearing. There is no stopping John, though and the longer this goes on, the more involved Mrs. Booker will have to become. Emilys Estranged Dad Returns Heres a little personal story on Emily, finally. After being absent for 23 years, she tells Seth that she has dinner plans with her father. She doesnt care to see him, but shes been putting it off for a while. Seth assures her the worries of the nation will still be around when she gets back. Sitting with her father, he looks to still be more focused on himself. His excuse (even though he says it isnt an excuse) for leaving is that he and her mother were not in love. A teary-eyed Emily brings up birthdays without receiving cards from him and his response is weak. I didnt know what to say. Her response? How about goodbye. He comes back with a beaten-up clipping of a young Emily who won the spelling bee when she was 13 years old. (Why didnt he lead-in with that?) Hannah and Damian sit across the table from Catherine Cray and her lawyer. She claims she has nothing to do with her husbands business. Yet Hannah lets her know quickly that the minute Darius takes the stand implicates that his wife had something to do with his crimes. Chuck enters the room and pulls Hannah and Damian out to show them that Peyton Lane has been taken hostage. If Darius isnt extradited to Malaysia, then she will lose her life. Catherine has a lot of explaining to do. S.O.S. Meanwhile, the Kunami Ambassador has taken to the press to announce that the U.S.S. Verona was an instrument of God, sent by America to spy on their peace-loving country. Yes, he said all of that. Needless to say, the Verona will need a little more than hope and a prayer to send its inhabitants back home to American soil. One thing is for sure, the war ship in exchange for a weapons program is definitely off the table. The diplomatic front is a slow one. There is the possibility of the ships coordinates proving they were not in Kunami waters before the monsoon, but that also fails to be a productive plan. The military is ready to take action and strike the blockade down, but Kirkman is a lover, not a fighter. While all this is happening, Emilys dad is wandering around the West Wing because shes been a little carried away with work. Hes been making quite the impression on the staff, though. Perhaps this will help him win his daughters love and affection. Hannah and Damian meet with Cornelius and they tell him of their beliefs that Catherine is behind the Thorn murder and the Lane kidnapping. Malaysia is out of the question, though, because if Cray finds his way there, all he will get for his crimes is a slap on the wrist or at best, a house arrest because he has major holdings in East Asia. Cornelius makes a call to the British Prime Minister while the duo set off to find Ms. Lane. Get on Board, Mrs. Booker Kendra sits with the First Mother-In-Law, telling her just how things have gone from bad to worse. While the subpoena is squashed, the hounds will come to find her if she does not sign a document saying that she had not had any contact with contractor Eric Little for at least three decades. Her husband (the one who got her in this mess) was a lawyer, so she knows how this can cause her to be surrounded by even more scrutiny, but Kendra assures her that she will be by her side with the best solution to the problem. Emilys father is having a conversation with Seth who, when the Press Secretary leaves the room, suggests just how attracted he is to his daughter. (I thought I smelled love triangle in the air earlier, but now I see it forming.) Will Emily choose Aaron or Seth? Senators have been assembled in the Roosevelt Room to discuss the program that can possibly bring the Verona home. They dont believe the regime has turned over a new leaf and reluctantly will take the topic to the Foreign Relations Committee. Lyor calls this a duck and cover strategy and Kirkman agrees that they wont be able to save the victims in time at this rate. Mike finds the two in the hallway, the Verona is sinking. Its now or never. Five or Six Hours Were taking on water faster than we can get rid of it, Lt. Griffon reports. They only have about five or six hours before the Verona sinks. Griffon and his men are proud of have served the country and are willing to give their lives for it, but Kirkman makes it known that this sort of sacrifice will not be made today. On the other hand, Congress has turned down the program and urges diplomatic efforts to press on to free the Verona. They need another option which prompts the President to ask for information on the recreation of the Veronas collision. Hannah and Damian stand with Chuck in front of his computer as they try to pinpoint Peyton Lanes location. Mike walks in with a package for Hannah. Its a mobile phone with a number to call: the kidnapper. Before she says too much, she looks over at Damian. (Do they already have an unsaid code that only they can understand? This love connection is already going too far!) One Epic Grudge The recreation of the Veronas collision is now up on screen in the Situation Room. Im sure we could have done this a long time ago, but it turns out that the garbage barge deliberately rammed the ship. Kirkman presents this to the Ambassador who sticks to his guns, saying that the U.S. was invading after turning his country into a pariah. This is much bigger than one war ship. This is a grudge that the country has against the American nation and hes threatening to bring in neighboring allies against America in the name of war. Kirkman makes a decision and tells the Admiral to deploy a rescue ship. Kunami can have the vessel but were bringing our people home. Oh, and he also adds a minor note: If they engage, take every ship theyve got. So Diplomatic Kirkman is now, All About Business Kirkman! Everyone sits in the Situation Room listening to the rescue mission and watching the satellite broadcast of the Verona. All casualties are accounted for and the rescue ship will be bringing those stranded back home. Kendra sits with Mrs. Booker again. More beans are being spilled from this woman. She claimed she had no contact with Little for 30 years, yet now reveals that he came over a few weeks ago for around two minutes, which I suppose she didnt find odd. This was such a small amount of time it just happened to slip her mind. This is not good at all. A Signal Before Dying Hannah, Damian and Chuck watch on as Peyton mentions her siblings. This cant be right, though, because shes an only child. No, Peyton has had training in these sorts of things and is signaling that shes been taken to an isolated area. Hannah and Damian run out of the office before Chuck can finish directions to her whereabouts. The FBI swarm the building and open gunfire on the kidnappers before I can even finish typing out this sentence. Peyton is safe. Emily has been warming up to the thought of her father being around again, but it hasnt been for the reasons shes been hoping for all these years. He simply wants the President to help him get his new fancy corkscrew up and running. Yes, he wants an endorsement of sorts, using Emily to, once again, think of himself. She walks out on him to get back to work. All of the Verona crew is accounted for on the Wykoff except for Lt. Griffin who assures the President that he is staying behind. He wishes to stay in order to see the VDR is destroyed, otherwise the Kunami will get their hands on some very important information. Kirkman tries his best with that soothing voice of his, bringing up home and family, but Griffin has made up his mind. Verona out, he says as the screen goes black. Hannah and Damian are back in the presence of Mrs. Cray and her lawyer. The kidnappers burner phone could be traced back to her hotel room. She may be guilty of kidnapping, but Charlotte Thorn was not her doing. I needed her, she says. She was obsessed with her husband and the attention he grabbed because it took all of it away from her. Catherine was able to operate without scrutiny. So then, who did kill Charlotte? Emily sits working and is visibly down in the dumps. Aaron passes by the open door with a smile and a salute. Lyor drops a drink on the table for her and leaves. Seth comes in with an impressive spread of food for all to enjoy. He is the one she confides in. You know what I meant to him? she says, a corkscrew. Like the funny guy he is, he lifts her spirits by saying, Youre the greatest thing since sliced bread. Simple, but just what she needed. In return, she gives him a kiss and a hug. (Looks like Seth wins!) Secretary Moss, A Killer? Hannah and Damian confirm that Catherine was telling the truth. Chuck pulls up the surveillance cameras outside Thorns hotel room and zooms in on a man who visited her that night before she died. Secretary Cornelius Moss! (Yeah, Im shocked too.) As Kirkman leaves the Oval Office to the First Familys residence, Kendra comes in with what she tells Mike is bad news. He suggests she wait until tomorrow because The Man has dealt with quite enough today. (Today? How about the last year?) Fans of this show have to admire the spirit it captures. When the world is in such a what-will-happen-next state, its nice to look at a show that mirrors some of our biggest issues and shows positive outcomes. Toss in some love stories and youve got a hit. Speaking of, what are your thoughts on Emily and Seth? And could Secretary Moss really have committed murder? Designated Survivor airs Wednesdays 10/9c on ABC. Want more? Like our Designated Survivor Facebook page. (Image courtesy of ABC) latest news October 31, 2022 Buddy TV In November, there are hundreds of new and returning TV showsit can be overwhelming to try and choose what to watch. That's why we've selected some of the best options... 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 is the first global company to get government's approval to sell food made and packaged in India directly to consumers. However, the firm's plan to launch the business segment during Diwali failed to take off as the government has asked it to keep the food and the marketplace businesses completely separate from each other with different offices, inventories, and accounting systems. Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia, two sources with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday. Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.54 billion) in outside financing for its proposed A$4 billion Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland. However, Australian and overseas banks have baulked at granting loans for the project which environmentalists oppose because of concerns over the size of the mine and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef. CMEC is an engineering contractor that is majority-owned by Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Machinery Industry Corp Ltd, or Sinomach. CMEC would provide financing through the China Export-Import Bank or China Construction Bank, or both, in return for winning the procurement and engineering contracts, for the project, according to a report issued earlier on Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA) an outspoken opponent of the project, citing unidentified sources. "Chinese SOE backing raises the probability that Adani can secure a financial close for this long-delayed project," the report said. In addition to the A$2 billion in financing, Adani has also applied for A$900 million in Australian government loans to build a railway to ship coal 400 km (250 miles) from the Carmichael site to a port on the Pacific Ocean for export. Carmichael has been delayed by court challenges from environmentalists and indigenous groups concerned about climate change, and the impact on native land and water supply, but those challenges have been rejected. Jeyakumar Janakaraj, chief executive of Adani Australia, told Reuters on Oct. 3, it wants to tie up financing by March 2018 and would look to sell a minority stake in the project to help raise funds. Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael under the first stage of the project by March 2020. ($1 = 1.2974 Australian dollars) With 4G service increasingly defining the mobile ecosystem across the country, telecom major Bharti is likely to bring down the curtains on its 3G service in the next 3-4 years. The company also raised its estimate of capital expenditure for FY18 to Rs 25,000 crore, from the earlier Rs 20,000 crore to expand and strengthen its 4G network. Besides that would also transfer the optical fibre business to its wholly-owned subsidiary Telesonic Networks for a valuation of up to Rs 5,650 crore, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app. Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006. Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more. Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them. 26 years of website archives. The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) on Wednesday said it sold approximately 10-acre plot to Swedish furniture maker for around Rs 842 crore in its single largest property auction till date. HUDA sold an approximately 10 acres of commercial land for a whopping Rs 842 crore in Sector 47 of Estate-II of HUDA Gurugram, an official said. The site was put for e-auction on October 6 this year and was bidded on October 31. "The site was successfully auctioned to IKEA, a multinational group, that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture..," J Ganesan, Chief Administrator HUDA, said here on Wednesday. "It will augment our efforts in ensuring steady revenue stream for HUDA. This is not a one-off deal as we have planned out auctions of other institutional and commercial properties across the city in the next few months. Gurugram has seen a reduced demand mainly due to rapidly changing investments scenario in real estate, especially in commercial sector. "However, we are hopeful to sell more properties and gather handsome revenue for HUDA from the Estates of Gurugram," an official release quoted Ganesan as saying here on Wednesday. With marking its arrival in Gurugram, it very well highlights the importance of this city and its position in the global marketplace as a business and investor friendly destination, he said. The site was put for e-auction three times earlier but had no takers until October 31 when the multinational finally participated and emerged successful. The cash-rich is in the race to buy controlling stakes in Binani Cement and Electrosteel Steels after their lenders asked Indias top conglomerates to bid for distressed assets that have been referred to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) following default on bank loans. is planning a threefold increase in the pace of opening stores by 2020. It plans to open 50 new stores by 2022 to take the total store count to 70. From face-off with Chinese troops at Doklam to being the only major country to boycott Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Forum in May this year, India appears to have significantly upped its risk appetite when it comes to its relations with Beijing. After a six per cent rise last year, total registrations for the - the entrance test for top B-schools led by Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) - have fallen again marginally by 0.59 per cent. As against total registrations of 232,436, CAT 2017, which will be conducted on November 26, has seen registrations being closed at 231,067. The total registrations, according to IIM Lucknow, which is convening the test this year, is after the extension of the deadline by five days which saw an additional 20,000 registrations. The Congress has promised interest-free loans to farmers in Himachal Pradesh. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on its part, has made fighting corruption and strengthening law and order its main poll planks for the Assembly elections. Four pharma firms face US price-fixing charge As many as four Indian drugmakers are facing allegations of a huge price-fixing conspiracy in the US aimed at keeping prices of generic drugs artificially high. The companies are Dr Reddys Laboratories (DRL), Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, and Emcure Pharmaceuticals. Read more In the backdrop of the tragedy unfolding at the NTPC power plant in Unchahar, Rae Bareli district on Wednesday, power engineers demanded safety audit of all thermal power plants in the country, including Uttar Pradesh on Thursday. The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast here in Uttar Pradesh rose to 26 on Thursday, with more injured workers succumbing to their burn injuries, officials said. Doctors warned that the toll was likely to rise further as more than a dozen contractual labourers were battling for life with more than 90 per cent burn wounds. District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told IANS that the number of injured in the Wednesday tragedy at the state-run Thermal Power Corp (NTPC) plant stood at 64. The massive explosion took place in a 500 MW boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when a fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. Khatri said the authorities were now focussing on providing the best possible treatment to the injured. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the dead, Rs 50,000 each to the critically injured and Rs 25,000 to those who suffered minor injuries. They will all get free treatment at government hospitals. Angry locals and family members of the injured alleged that there was a complete absence of medical facilities at the NTPC campus, which pushed up the number of casualties. On Thursday, contractual labourers at the plant raised slogans against the NTPC management. They claimed they had warned about an impending disaster at unit six as the temperature near the furnace had been steadily rising. The NTPC has launched a probe into the incident, which it said took place due to "access ash deposition" in the furnace. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited Rae Bareli after cutting short his Gujarat tout and met family members of the victims, party sources said. Rae Bareli is the Lok Sabha constituency of his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. She may not visit the constituency as she is reportedly unwell. Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Vadra is also scheduled to visit Rae Bareli. Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma also called on the injured at the district hospital. Three senior officials of the NTPC who suffered critical injuries are being flown in an air ambulance to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram near Delhi. The controversy over illegal registration of luxury cars in Puducherry by the non-residents of the State to evade tax has spurred as the Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi has ordered a probe against the evaders. A blast in an Uttar Pradesh thermal electricity plant operated by has so far claimed the lives of 30 people and injured more than 100, and the toll is expected to rise as many are still feared to be trapped inside the unit. Death toll in #NTPCExplosion raises to 30: Rajiv Kumar, Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh Trade bodies and sales tax lawyers have taken up with the Finance Ministry the problems they are facing on account of "glitches" in the GST (Goods and Services Tax) Network. A delegation of the Gujarat Sales Tax Bar Association (GSTBA), Ahmedabad, met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday. The delegation said it had met the FM on the "recommendations of the Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani". A package for the worth Rs 2,600 crore may be announced by the government soon in a move aimed at increasing employment and investments in the sector. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) employees and officers, including retirees, held rallies in all offices of the central bank on Thursday, demanding pensions be updated and a fresh option to join the pension scheme in lieu of the contributory provident fund (CPF) scheme. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a body that represents traders and small businesses, on Thursday demanded the Centre order a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry against companies entrusted with running the . The is a work in progress even four months after the roll-out of the new tax regime. It has caused mental torture to traders, CAIT Secretary-General Praveen Khandelwal said. The association of traders blamed Infosys for the glitches. The IT services firm has vehemently denied any negligence on its part. Soybean prices have fallen sharply to trade below the government's Minimum Support Price (MSP) in major wholesale markets across the country, due to a surge in arrivals during the ongoing peak harvesting season. Shashi Shanker, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd's (ONGC) CMD, in an exclusive interview to ANI, said that Prime Minister Modi has exhorted the to decrease imports by 10 per cent by 2022. "Our first priority is to increase domestic production in order to meet the goal set by Prime Minister Modi," Shanker said. He further informed that the roadmap to meet this goal is ready. "The production of was stagnant for the last few years, but production during 2016-17 and 2017-18 has increased. The production of crude oil, and gas has increased. This growth story shall keep on increasing. We have asked every company to increase energy efficiency and look for alternatives. Our first priority is to achieve this target and we have a roadmap ready to fulfill this target," Shanker said. He also said that the other challenge before the corporation is superannuation of staff. "Our, second priority is to deal with superannuation in ONGC, due to which the experienced hands are retiring. So, it is our priority to groom and make our younger workforce ready so that they are able to take up the responsibilities," he added. In September, Shashi Shanker was appointed CMD of India's biggest oil and gas producer, ONGC, till March 2021. Shanker is an industry veteran with over 30 years of experience in diverse E&P activities. He is a Petroleum Engineer from Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad. He also holds an MBA degree with specialisation in Finance. He has also received executive education from prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow and Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. In the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack in the country since 9/11, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed that he will terminate the popular green card lottery after an ISIS-inspired Uzbek man who entered the US under the programme killed eight people in New York. FM: India has pledged unequivocal commitment for furthering the cause of New and Renewable Energy; International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) sign Joint Financial Partnership Declaration to deepen the cooperation in support of Renewable Energy. The International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed here today the Joint Financial Partnership Declaration in the august presence of the Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Shri Arun Jaitley with an objective to deepen the cooperation in support of Renewable Energy. ISA and EBRD have joined hands for promotion of Solar Energy. From ISAs side, Shri Upendra Tripathy, the Interim Director General ISA and on behalf of EBRD Ms. Nandita Parshad, Managing Director EBRD for Energy and Natural Resources signed the declaration. During the signing ceremony Shri Anand Kumar Secretary, Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Government of India, H. E. Mr Alexandre Ziegler, Ambassador of France to India and Sir Suma Chakrabarti, EBRD President were also present. Speaking on the occasion, the Union Finance Minister, Shri Arun Jaitley said that India has been in the forefront of the 42 nation International Solar Alliance. He said that India under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has pledged unequivocal commitment for furthering the cause of New and Renewable Energy since the Paris COP21 UN Climate Change Conference. Shri Jaitley said that our energy requirements are huge and want to make optimal use of our New and Renewable Sources of energy. The Finance Minister congratulated both ISA and EBRD for partnering with an objective to deepen cooperation in support of renewable energy. Shri Jaitley said that ISA has taken a giant leap forward to mobilise international support for investment in Solar Sector. He added that ISA need to firm-up such financial partnership deals with more Multilateral and Bilateral Donor Agencies in order to meet its stated objectives of getting better Technology; aiding easier costing to improve affordability of Solar Energy. The Finance Minister Shri Jaitley urged both the signing parties to go in for innovation of New and Dynamic Mechanism for credit enhancement and risk mitigation in solar sector. Citing the first Financial Partnership collaboration of ISA with the World Bank, Shri Jaitley urged that more and more multilateral and development banks should come forward and join hands with ISA in help fulfilling the objectives of massive and affordable deployment of solar among 121 ISA member countries. Earlier, Shri Upendra Tripathy, the Interim Director General ISA informed that the ISA and EBRD have agreed to strengthen cooperation in pursuit of their shared goals of mobilising green energy financing. The collaboration will provide an opportunity to EBRD to support solar energy investment in the least developed countries especially in Africa. This will also help funding of solar projects both in African and other countries. He also stated that more such financial partnership deals shall be signed by the ISA in near future to achieve its mandate in a proper and effective manner. Speaking on the occasion, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, EBRD President stated that this is a very important agreement for the EBRD, which has always been eager to share its expertise with new partners and also to learn from them. He said that with the ISA, we share the vision of sustainable development and of green energy, which ultimately benefits the global economy. ISA is working for deployment of over 1000 GW of solar energy and mobilising more than US$ 1000 billion into solar energy by the year 2030. Similarly the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is keenly interested to increase its green financing portfolio to 40% of its annual business. To this effect the EBRD launched Green Economy Transition Approach in 2015. Till date, the EBRD has invested more than ?4 billion directly in renewable energy, supporting projects in over 20 countries and funding more than 6.5 GW of capacity. The International Solar Alliance is an initiative jointly launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and the President of France on 30th November 2015 at Paris, in the presence of the Secretary General of the UN, on the side lines of COP21 UN Climate Change Conference. The main objective of ISA is to undertake joint efforts required to reduce the cost of finance and the cost of technology, mobilize more than US $ 1000 billion of investments needed by 2030 for massive deployment of solar energy, and pave the way for future technologies adapted to the needs of 121 countries lying fully or partially between the Tropics. So far 43 countries have signed the Framework Agreement of the ISA, and out of which 14 have also submitted the Instrument of ratification to the depository i.e. Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. ISA will be the first international inter-governmental treaty based organization to be headquartered in India. India is committed to partner Bhutan in its socio-economic development: Vice President Calls on the King of Bhutan The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu has said that India is committed to partner Bhutan in its socio-economic development, and to support in its XII Five Year Plan. He was interacting with the King of Bhutan, His Majesty Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, here today. Senior officials from both India and Bhutan were present on the occasion. The Vice President said that India and Bhutan share exemplary bilateral relations and these are unique and special. He further said that our historical and cultural linkages make us natural friends and partners. He thanked the King for his warm letter of felicitation on his assumption of responsibilities as the Vice President of India earlier this year. The Vice President said that India is delighted to see the rapid progress which has been made in Bhutan while simultaneously preserving its very special culture as well as protecting the environment. He further said that the Government and people of India appreciate the vision of the Druk Gyalpos (Kings), which has guided relations between our two countries. With the wisdom and foresight of the Monarchs of Bhutan and Indian leadership, India-Bhutan relations have grown from strength to strength, he added. The Vice President said that India has been happy to share its knowledge, experience and resources with Bhutan and thus contribute to Bhutans socio-economic development. He further said that our development cooperation has been guided by the priorities set by the Government and people of Bhutan. India is committed to partner Bhutan in its socio-economic development, and to support in its XII Five Year Plan, he added. The Vice President said that India remains committed to consolidate existing hydro-power cooperation with Bhutan. Timely implementation of the ongoing hydro-power projects with minimum cost overrun, is important for both governments. This is the flagship area of our bilateral cooperation and has high visibility. We should do everything to make it a model of bilateral cooperation, which will be noted by others in the neighbourhood. The Vice President said that the security concerns of India and Bhutan are indivisible, intertwined and mutual. We look forward to continuing close cooperation with Bhutan on issues of mutual security concern, he added. The CIA's release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has again raised questions about Iran's support of the extremist network leading up to the Sept 11 terror attacks. US intelligence officials and prosecutors have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organization from 1991 on, something noted in a 19-page report in Arabic that was included in the release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. For its part, Iran has long denied any involvement with al-Qaida. However, the report included in the CIA document dump shows how bin Laden, a Sunni extremist from Iran's archrival Saudi Arabia, could look across the Muslim world's religious divide to partner with the Mideast's Shiite power to target his ultimate enemy, the United States. "Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric," the report reads. The Associated Press examined a copy of the report released by the Long War Journal, a publication backed by the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank fiercely critical of Iran and sceptical of its nuclear deal with world powers. The CIA gave the Long War Journal early access to the material. The material also included never-before-seen video of bin Laden's son Hamza, who may be groomed to take over al-Qaida, getting married. It offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden as an adult. Until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him. The release comes as President Donald Trump has refused to recertify Iran's nuclear deal with world powers and faces domestic pressure at home over investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The 19-page report included in the CIA release was available online on Wednesday. The CIA later issued a warning about the files on its website, saying that since the material "was seized from a terrorist organization ... there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed." The CIA then took down the files entirely early today, saying they were "temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue." "We are working to make the material available again as soon as possible," the CIA said. The unsigned 19-page report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 (2007) and offers what appears to be a history of al-Qaida's relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al-Qaida fighters "money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia." This coincides with an account offered by the US government's 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with al- Qaida leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said al-Qaida militants later received training in Lebanon from the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which Iran backs to this day. US prosecutors also said al-Qaida had the backing of Iran and Hezbollah in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden following the al-Qaida truck bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Al-Qaida's apparent siding with Iran may seem surprising today, given the enmity Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group have for Shiites. But bin Laden had run out of options by 1991 the one-time fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan had fallen out with Saudi Arabia over his opposition to the ultraconservative kingdom hosting US troops during the Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America's growing military expansion in the Mideast. "The relationship between al-Qaida and Iran demonstrated that the Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations," the 9/11 Commission report would later say. Before Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, Iran would allow al-Qaida militants to pass through its borders without receiving stamps in their passports or with visas gotten ahead of time at its consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the 19-page report. That helped the organization's Saudi members avoid suspicion. They also had contact with Iranian intelligence agents, according to the report. This also matches with US knowledge. Eight of the 10 so-called "muscle" hijackers on Sept. 11 those who kept passengers under control on the hijacked flights passed through Iran before arriving in the United States, according to the 9/11 Commission. However, the commission "found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack." For its part, Iran has denied having any relationship with al-Qaida since the 1998 attacks on the embassies. Iran quietly offered the US assistance after the Sept. 11 attacks, though relations would sour following President George W. Bush naming it to his "axis of evil" in 2002. On Thursday, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, dismissed the CIA documents as "a project against Tehran." The 19-page report describes Iranians later putting al- Qaida leaders and members under house arrest sometime after the Sept 11 attacks. It mentions the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, saying it put increasing pressure on Iran, especially with the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq. "They decided to keep our brothers as a card," the report said. That would come true in in 2015 as Iran reportedly exchanged some al-Qaida leaders for one of its diplomats held in Yemen by the terror group's local branch. While Yemen described it as a captive exchange, Tehran instead called it a "difficult and complicated" special operation to secure the Iranian diplomat's freedom from the "hands of terrorists." "The repercussions ... of the Sept 11 attacks were undoubtedly very large and perhaps above (our) imagination," the al-Qaida report said. US President Donald Trump today demanded death penalty for Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov after he killed eight people in a truck attack in New York. Trump has been vocal in condemning the yesterday's attack carried out by the 29-year-old ISIS-inspired man who ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path near the World Trade Centre, killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen . "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump said in a tweet, in reference to the FBI's statement that Saipov, a resident of New Jersey, was inspired by the ISIS and "requested to display ISIS's flag" in his hospital room. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Trump said yesterday that it was "another attack by a very sick and deranged person" while extending his "thoughts, condolences and prayers" to the victims. He also called for tougher "merit-based" immigration measures and vowed to do away with the diversity visa programme. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Programme'... I want merit based," he wrote on Twitter. Saipov was today charged with terrorism offences by US prosecutors who said he decided to carry out the attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians". The FBI and New York Police Department are jointly investigating the terrorist attack, the deadliest in New York post 9/11. Hours after the terrorist attack, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security for "extreme vetting". He has also supported the idea of sending the suspect to Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre in Cuba. Pakistan's ousted Prime Minister today returned home from London to face trial in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-NawazPML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on October 26 due to his non-appearance in two corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. State-run PTV footage showed Sharif stepping out of a Pakistan Airline plane after it landed at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Airport in Islamabad. He was received by senior leaders of ruling PML-N and held a brief consultation with the party leaders at the VIP lounge of the airport. Later, he left in his private vehicle for Punjab House in Islamabad, where he was received by supporters and party workers. He is expected to hold extensive consultations throughout the day about court cases, political situation and party matters. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face "bogus cases" when he should be with his wife. "These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them," he said. The court would resume the hearing tomorrow. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. Maryam and Safdar have already been indicted in corruption cases filed against them by the country's anti- corruption body National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the Supreme Court's instruction in the Panama Papers case. Earlier, Accountability Court issued bailable arrest warrant against Sharif after he failed to appear in the court in three corruption cases. Three cases were registered by NAB on September 8 against Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad, following a verdict by the Supreme Court. He was indicted in absence in three cases. Maryam and Safdar have been indicted in one case with him, while the court is proceeding separately against his two sons Husain and Hasan who are co-accused in three cases. The court during the hearing on October 9 decided to separate the trial of his sons from Sharif and his daughter and son-in-law. The cases are based on July 28 disqualification verdict of the Supreme Court and to launch three corruption cases against him, his family, and one case against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. If convicted, Sharif can be jailed. (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.) Aung San Suu Kyi made her first visit as Myanmar's leader on Thursday to the conflict-torn region where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence that has spiraled into Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades. Her visit to Rakhine state comes as Suu Kyi is under intense scrutiny for her response to the exodus, which the U.N. has called "ethnic cleansing," and as her government said it is working on a plan to repatriate those who fled to Bangladesh. Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital, Sittwe, in the morning and headed to restive northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there hasn't been much conflict. "The state counselor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials," said Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, using Suu Kyi's official title. Government spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyi's plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began what they called "clearance operations" in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by insurgents. The campaign has included the burning of Rohingya villages and alleged widespread rights violations. Fleeing Rohingya have described arson, rape and shootings by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs that left them no option but to make the dangerous and sometimes deadly journey through jungles and by sea to Bangladesh. The exodus has slowed at some points but has not stopped. Today morning, at least 2,000 terrified and starving Rohingya huddled in rice paddy fields near one border crossing on the Naf river. They had waited for more than 24 hours for permission to enter Bangladesh and spent the night in the muddy fields. The global image of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has been damaged by the crisis and she has come under intense criticism to do more to end the violence and condemn those responsible. Several fellow peace prize winners have publicly condemned Suu Kyi for what they see as her apparent indifference to the plight of the Rohingya. Though Suu Kyi has been the de facto head of Myanmar's civilian government since her party swept elections in 2015, the former political prisoner is limited in her control of the country by a constitution written by the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades. The military has effective veto power over all legislation and controls key ministries including those overseeing security and defense. The military is in charge of operations in northern Rakhine, and ending them is not up to Suu Kyi. Even when Suu Kyi has spoken on the issue, she has drawn criticism. In a September speech, her first public comments after the current crisis began, she asked for patience from the community and suggested the refugees were partly responsible, saying more than half of the Rohingya villages had not been destroyed by the violence. Suu Kyi faces a potential domestic backlash if she speaks on behalf of the Rohingya, who have been the target of anti- Muslim rhetoric. Many people agree with the official government stance that there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and that those in the country have illegally migrated from Bangladesh. Though Rohingya first arrived generations ago, they were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education. Myanmar's backers globally have also had to tread carefully, not wanting to undermine Suu Kyi's weak civilian government at a time when the country is just emerging from decades of authoritarian rule. Still, counties such as the U.S. have warned Myanmar about potential repercussions if it doesn't address the crisis, including the risk of attracting terrorists, scaring off investment, and ultimately stunting its transition to democracy. The government said Tuesday that it is ready to repatriate Rohingya who had fled, but blamed Bangladesh for slowing the process. "We are ready to accept the refugees and to start a verification and scrutiny process, but we have not reached an agreement with the Bangladeshi authorities for repatriation," said Zaw Htay, the government spokesman. He said those who could prove they were residents of Myanmar would be allowed to return. Many Rohingya have no identity documents. Ali Hossain, a top government administrator in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district, said yesterday that Bangladesh is doing "more than enough" to help the refugees, and placed the blame for delays in the repatriation process on Myanmar. "Myanmar is talking about repatriation but more and more people are still being forced to come to Bangladesh," he said. "There is a situation in Myanmar. We know that, the whole world knows that." "Bangladesh is not playing any tricks here. We are doing our best," he said. President Trump touched off a sharply partisan debate over some of the most divisive issues in American life on Wednesday as he cited this weeks terrorist attack in New York to advance his agenda on immigration and national security while assailing Democrats for endangering the country. The hackers who upended the US presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting Russian opposition figures, US defence contractors and others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe - from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. "It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence." The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm SecureWorks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of emails." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered "unfounded." But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. "This is the Kremlin and the general staff," said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. "I have no doubts." SecureWorks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, US Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defence contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and - especially - Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle. Shares of select public sector undertaking (PSU) companies were trading higher for the second straight day with Dredging Corporation of India (DCI) and State Trading Corporation of India (STC India) has rallied more than 30% in past two trading sessions on the BSE. Network Intelligence, a 400-employee cybersecurity consulting firm announced the appointment of Altaf Halde as the Cyber Security Global Head. Halde has more than 20 years of experience in cybersecurity with responsibilities that have included enterprise account management, channel management, critical infrastructure and government relations. Halde was instrumental in growing the Kaspersky Lab's product faster than competition (as pointed out by IDC in their Endpoint security survey, 2013-14). He was also responsible for launching and building the security services arm of Kaspersky Lab with offerings around threat Intelligence, cyber security trainings, penetration testing, SCADA security assessments, incident response and digital forensics. Prior to Kaspersky, Halde headed the for other cyber security MNCs such as Sophos PLC, Utimaco and Pointsec. Speaking on this development, the CEO of Network Intelligence, K. K. Mookhey, said, "As part of our strategy to become a strong global cyber security player, we are ramping up our sales and marketing teams. Altaf is a veteran in the cyber security space, and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the business development function." "Under his leadership, we are sure that the Network Intelligence brand will grow even more rapidly in reputation and size. His experience in growing Kaspersky Lab's business will be invaluable as we seek to grow not only our services business, but also our products - Firesec and Insight," added Mookhey. "I am delighted to join Network Intelligence. KK, an industry veteran and Network Intelligence have established a strong reputation in their existing markets as a committed and passionate services company. I have been impressed with the quality, skills, dedication of the team and the reputation it has with its customers. My goal is to help build this into a global brand with my expertise to win new account, setup new alliances and enter new markets," said Altaf Halde. "The key is to create value for our clients in cyber security initiatives. Without the right strategic approach, clients will not be making the right investments for the most effective cyber security initiatives. I am here to help them do so," Halde added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will participate in the inaugural session of international conference 'World Food India (WFI) 2017' on November 3 in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the three day international event 'World Food India-2017', being organized by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Government of India in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) from November 3-5, Chandrababu Naidu will participate in the inaugural session of the event. The event will be the largest gathering of investors, manufacturers, producers, food processors, policy makers, and organizations from the global food ecosystem. Andhra Pradesh being one of the partner states for the event will hold a special session on November 3 to showcase the potential and advantages of Food Processing sector in the state to the global community. It is noted that Andhra Pradesh is one of the leading agricultural states in India, popularly known as "Rice Bowl of India". Andhra Pradesh, under the leadership of Chandrababu Naidu is marching towards the goal that no citizen should have to face hunger by 2030. Recently, on World Food Day on October 16, Andhra Pradesh Government signed a record of 108 Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with food processing and agro companies to rope in an investment worth Rs. 855 Crores and create 9477 jobs. It also signed 23 Memorandum of Co-operations (MoCs) with premier government institutions in the country in post-harvest management to support Food Processing sector in the state for a period of five years. As another initiation of the Chief Minister, the state government is pursuing to setup a separate corporation for developing cold chain infrastructure in Andhra Pradesh. The guidelines are being formulated and the corporation is expected to be operational by January 2018 which will solve lack of cold storage facilities for farmers before taking their produce to markets. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The ongoing protest against the proposed Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) pipeline project turned violent in Kerala's Kozhikode on Thursday as protesters clashed with the police. The protesters attacked the workers and set their vehicles on fire. They also pelted stones at the policemen. The police had to resort to lathi-charge to control the mob. GAIL's ambitious Kochi-Koottanad-Bengaluru-Mangaluru natural gas pipeline project has met with protests in the state. 80-km of pipes are to be laid around Kozhikode district as part of the project. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pro-freedom Baloch leader and head of Free Balochistan Movement (FBM), Hyrbyair Marri on Wednesday, in a statement, said the recent abduction of women and children from different areas of Balochistan was part of Pakistan's ongoing campaign of enforced-disappearances in the restive province. "Pakistani intelligence agencies are afraid of Baloch liberation struggle and now they started abducting Baloch children. They fear that these children will grow up to resist China-Pakistan brutalities in Balochistan," he said. Marri also said both China and Pakistan were trying to annihilate the Baloch nation to strengthen their grip on its soil. Targeting the Pakistani intelligence agencies, the Baloch leader said they were violating Islamic principles for their own evil interests and for expansion of their religious extremist ideology in the . "Similarly, China who claims to value socialist principles and socialism is deviating from the basic principles for the sake of its economic interests and expansionist designs in the world," he added. Marri further said that Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam to serve the interests of imperialist powers under leadership of Jinnah, has become cancer for entire today as the country's military establishment and rulers were using Islam to achieve their own petty interest, besides providing safe sanctuaries to religious terrorists, including Taliban and other groups, which are a threat to peace. "In this context, if the political scenario of the last few months in Pakistan are reviewed, it clearly emerges after the talk of changes in Islamic clauses that were included in the Pakistani constitution during the Zia era, Pakistan army and intelligence agencies created a new political party of Jihadist organisation - Jamaat-e-Daawa, to deceive America and rest of the world and to protect those Islamic clauses in the constitution. Along with this the Deobandi, Brelwi and Jamaat-e-Islami also jumped on the bandwagon," he said. He also questioned Pakistan military establishment and religious organisations silence over China's brutalities against Uyghur Muslims. "On one hand, the Chinese rulers oppress Muslims of the Xinjiang provinces, and on the other hand, they VITO the Indian resolution at UN to declare the Jaish-e-Mohammad as a terror outfit and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist," he said. He further stated that China was striving to become the economic centre of Asia, Europe and Africa through its ambitious 'One Belt, One Road' project. "China is setting up ports and shuttle networks on Maritime Silk Road in Africa and Europe and planning to connect its Southern Coast with the Central Asia, East Africa and the Mediterranean. Gwadar port is also a part of this Maritime Silk Road which is a clear illustration of the double standard of Chinese Socialism," Marri said. The Baloch leader also said that China was using socialism to maintain its expansionist and occupational designs in the region and using it [socialism] internationally for exploitation, from Latin American to Africa and Asia either directly or indirectly. Talking about Saudi Arabia's efforts to return toward moderate Islam, The Baloch leader said it was a positive step in the right direction. He also said that since Gulf States shared historic relations with Balcohistan, they should support the Baloch cause. "The Gulf countries should play their role and morally and diplomatically support the Baloch struggle in Iranian and Pakistani occupied Balochistan. Pakistan, Iran and China in the cloak of Islam and socialism are promoting their colonial ambitions. The socialism was introduced to counter exploitation, but as far as socialism is concerned, it is only for power and governance. Economically China is an imperialist country," he added. Talking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Marri said: "China like East India Company wants to take over Baloch land and Pakistan for its interests is giving Baloch land to China without the consultation of the Baloch nation which unacceptable for Baloch people. Pakistan in nexus with China is committing gross human rights violations against the Baloch nation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday said that the statement of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on India's business ranking seemed to be coming from Pakistan. Rahul on Wednesday said India does not need a certificate from a foreign institution after India became the first ever country to record the highest jump in World Bank's ease of doing business ranking, Speaking to ANI, BJP leader GVL Narsimha Rao said, "When you hear statements of Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party about India doing well in the economy, and making it big into the world economy, the statement appears as if they are coming from Pakistan." He further said that the Congress vice president and his party feel pitiable when India is praised all over the world. "The whole world accepts that India is progressing but Pakistan can never accept the fact that India is doing well, more or less Rahul Gandhi and Congress Party are in the same position," he added. During a roadshow in the poll-bound Gujarat on Wednesday, Rahul also mocked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and said that he is living in an illusion to believe in foreign certification for India's growth. "Arun Jaitley ji is working on the basis of some foreign institution. India does not need a certificate from a foreign institution. Jaitley ji said ease of doing business has seen improvement in India. Is he living in a real or a dream world?" Rahul said. Rahul further downplayed the World Bank report and said, "India needs a certificate from the people of the country, and the people are saying Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley have failed." In accordance with the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business index', India had risen as much as 30 positions to rank 100th amongst 190 countries on Tuesday. As per the 2018 version of the Ease of Doing Business index issued by the World Bank, India has been amongst the world's top ten improvers worldwide and a leading regional reformer. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Thursday exercised veto against the United States-backed proposal at the United Nations Security Council to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, citing a lack of consensus. China had, earlier, indicated it would block India's request at the Security Council. Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a recent press conference, "As for the listing application by the relevant country [India], there are disagreements. China put the technical hold so as to allow for more time to deliberate on this matter. To our regret, the committee so far has yet to reach consensus." "China always maintains that on the listing matter, the 1267 Committee [Security Council Committee] shall uphold the principle of objectivity, impartiality and professionalism, and make its decisions by consensus among its members on the basis of solid evidence," Hua added. The "technical hold" could not be extended as it expired on Thursday, and hence, China was being expected to block the request permanently. Condemning China's statement, India's External Affairs Ministry, in a statement, had said, "This does not reflect well on the determination that the international community needs to display to decisively defeat the menace of terrorism." The Jaish-e-Muhammad is designated as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. State Department, while India accuses its leader of launching several terrorist attacks on its soil, including the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack. Following the attack, India had initiated the move to include Azhar on the U.N. terrorist list, subjecting him to a travel ban. All 15 members of the Security Council, except China, supported India's bid. China is one of the five veto-holding members in the United Nations. The other countries are United States, United Kingdom, Russia and France. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Thursday said that China continues to save Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar at the United Nations for narrow objectives. New Delhi's response came after Beijing once again blocked consensus on the listing of Masood Azhar as an internationally designated terrorist under the UNSCR 1267 Committee. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, ""We are deeply disappointed that once again, a single country has blocked international consensus on the designation of an acknowledged terrorist and leader of UN-designated terrorist organization, Masood Azhar." He hoped that China shall soon realize that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is a short-sighted approach. "India strongly believes that double standards and selective approaches will only undermine the international community's resolve to combat terrorist. We can only hope that there will be a realization that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is both short sighted and counter productive," Kumar asserted. The Jaish-e-Muhammad is designated as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. State Department, while India accuses its leader of launching several terrorist attacks on its soil, including the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack. India has initiated the move to include Azhar on the U.N. terrorist list, subjecting him to a travel ban. All 15 members of the Security Council, except China, support India's bid. China is one of the five veto-holding members in the United Nations. The other countries are United States, United Kingdom, Russia and France. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump, all set to commence his five-nation Asia tour on Friday, has confirmed a state visit to China at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump will meet Jinping during his visit to the Asian country from November 8-10. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang announced the visit on Thursday. "The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu Kang was quoted by a Chinese Daily. Lu further asserted that China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results from Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. From Nov 5 to Nov 14, Trump will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and Philippines in his first visit to Asia since taking office. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Thursday lashed out at senior Janata Dal (United) leader Uday Narayan Choudhary over his remark against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's policy for Dalits and questioned why he never spoke about the issues when he was in power. Manjhi's remark came after Choudhary said Nitish was "no longer focussed on Dalit welfare", and warned that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would continue to "ill-treat" him. "Why are they raising the issue now? Why did they never raise the issue when he was in power? That simply means even he was scared to lose the post," Manjhi told ANI. Backing Nitish, Manjhi said everybody had a specific way of performing a task and the Bihar chief minister was working according to his own way. "I believe when I was there or now when Nitish Kumar is there, we have always followed particular steps for the upliftment of the poor. The new steps will also be beneficial for the people. But I don't consider them a miracle. I know that the chief minister is very concerned about the Dalits," he said. Earlier on Monday, Choudhary and JD(U) general secretary Shyam Rajak opposed the demand for a review of the reservation policy in the state. They said that the Narendra Modi-led Government at the Centre wanted to do away with quota in promotions as well as introduce creamy layers for SCs and STs. The Bihar cabinet had, on Wednesday, given its nod to reservations in government services outsourced to private agencies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi on Thursday complained that the government launched a number of ambitious campaigns but none for the safety of women in this country. "Many movements have been initiated, like 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan', but the government has no campaign for women safety in its account. I urge the government and the administration to open their eyes, understand the grief of victim's family and contemplate the reason behind these so-called minor incidents," she said. Asha Devi said she wants the criminals to be hanged as soon as possible. "I waited for about five months, but was still clueless about the happenings in the case. Therefore, we complained, so that at least we can be aware of the proceedings. The commission issued a notice to police because no further action was taken till now. This December will be the fifth year of the incident. The Supreme Court has awarded death sentence to the four convicts and the judgment should be followed. I only want them to be hanged as soon as possible because the criminals are getting more powerful with each passing day," she said. The DCW on Tuesday issued a notice to the Tihar Jail Administration and DCP, South District, questioning the delay in the imposition of death penalty to the Nirbhaya case perpetrators. Nirbhaya's mother expressed amusement at the crass statements of the politicians, which encourages criminals to walk free in the nation. "The politicians keep promoting crime by making crass comments these days. I feel amused by these mindless statements of our representatives. They say these crimes happen because female leave their house at night. I just saw a leader on TV saying the rape of an old lady was a minor incident. Such incidents keep happening with little girls as well. I just want everyone to get justice and a strict action in the interest of women," Asha Devi said. Nirbhaya was brutally raped and killed by six men in a moving bus in the capital on December 16, 2012. One of the convicts committed suicide and the other walked free from the prison because he was juvenile at the time of the crime. The Supreme Court upheld death sentence for the rest of the four convicts months ago. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) On July 19, the Union Cabinet approved a plan to sell the government's 51 per cent stake in state-refiner HPCL to state-run explorer ONGC. Talking exclusively to ANI, Shanker said, "Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and the Ministry of Oil and Natural Gas have engaged their consultants. The DIPAM has been appointed transactional advisor and our ministry valuation advisor. The ONGC has also engaged the Citi group and SBI Capital as advisors and some legal consultants who are going to advise us on this deal. Yesterday, we received information of the memorandum from Dipam and we will study it. On that basis, we'll do due diligence and asses our valuation, and we intend to close the deal by March 2018." The HPCL-ONGC merger is a major step towards India's efforts to build a mega company that can compete with global majors. The newly appointed ONGC CMD also talked about his priorities and challenges. He said that the company's first priority is to meet the import decrease goal set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shanker said Prime Minister Modi has exhorted the ONGC to decrease imports by 10 percent by 2022 and a roadmap is ready to meet this goal. "The domestic production has been stagnant for quite a while. And, it was primarily because of the reasons that our major production comes from mature field. And, whatever discoveries we have made are relatively smaller in size. We have clustered all these discoveries and we have a common infrastructure through which we will be making productions. Now, the production has started showing an increase," the ONGC CMD said. Talking about the roadmap, Shanker said, "The oil production will be increased up to 27 million tonnes from current 22 million tonnes by 2022. And, gas production will touch 42 billion cubic meter in 2022, which was 22 billion cubic meter in 2016." He also said that another priority area is project delivery. "So, first priority will be to increase our domestic production. And, to make this happen, the ONGC has invested Rs 92000 crore and the projects are at different stages of implementation. So, project delivery on time will be another priority area. We have to monitor these projects so that they are delivered on time," Shanker said. He also said the other challenge before the corporation is superannuation of staff. "Ours is a knowledge based industry and all our experienced employees are superannuating, especially at the senior level. A vacuum is being created in this regard and the challenge will be to groom the young workforce and make them ready to take up higher responsibilities," Shanker said. The top ONGC boss spoke about India's improved ranking in the World Bank report on ease of doing business. India is one of the top improvers in the World Bank's 'Doing Business 2018' report and it ranks among the top 30 countries in three indicators. "India's ranking in World Bank report is not only good for our company but for whole country. For, these factors mean a lot for foreign companies that come to India for investment. Now, good companies will be interested not only in oil and gas sector but also in other sectors," Shanker said. Replying another question about the government's plan to give some of the ONGC fields to some private players, Shanker said, "I have learnt this only from the media and as of now there is no formal communication. But, yes some talks are going on to engage some service providers, who can invest and provide some technology in order to boost production. This is a good step but what modalities would be there and how we are going to take their services that we have to decide." On October 28, 2017, ONGC presented the quarterly results for the second quarter ended September 30, 2017 and recorded impressive production performance. Its gross revenue was Rs. 18,966 Crore, up 3 percent Q-o-Q (Quarter-over-Quarter). It posted net profit of Rs. 5,131 Crore, up 3 percent Q-o-Q. The state-run-explorer also recorded 8 percent increase in natural gas production; 1 percent increase in crude oil production and 10 percent increase in VAP (Value Added Production) production Q-o-Q; notified 9 discoveries so far in FY'18. The ONGC Board has also approved an interim dividend of 60 percent. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) People's Party leader Bhim Singh on Thursday asserted that imposing Governor Rule was the only solution to restore normalcy in Kashmir. "Go for Governor Rule in Kashmir, that is the solution," Singh said. The NPP leader's statement came after Jammu and Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma said that there can be no solution to Kashmir under the shadow of the gun. "This is what Gandhiji said as well and is a well-known established principle to attain world peace, international consolidation and cooperation," Bhim Singh told ANI. Singh also questioned as to what the government in Kashmir was doing to improve the situation. "They are just sitting silent. Government of India has created a government in Jammu and Kashmir, which does not function, and has no acceptance in democracy," Singh said. The newly appointed J-K interlocutor on Wednesday said he was positive about talks with all stakeholders over the Kashmir issue, even as Hurriyat Conference, one of the stakeholders, rejected dialogue on the same. "I will go to Kashmir and see who all will come for talks. I am still very positive about the talks," Sharma told ANI. Sharma also said that he will conduct talks with the youth and assured that "peace will turn in Kashmir very soon". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five jawans injured after terrorists attacked a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) vehicle at Lazibal Chowk in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district on Thursday. As per the information, the unidentified militants fired upon a bus belonging to 96 Batallion CRPF at around 8: 45 a.m. The injured have been admitted to District hospital Anantnang. The condition of all the injured are said to be stable. Search operations have been launched. Further update follows. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kottayam Superintendent of Police on Thursday submitted report to Kerala Women's Commission stating that Hadiya, in Kerala's alleged love jihad matter, is guarded by police and there is no physical torture from her father's side. The Police, on its report, also stated that she was not given any drugs. This comes after the State Women's Commission directed Kottayam SP to enquire and to submit report on the same. On October 31, the Supreme Court observed that the consent of the girl is prime in the Kerala 'love jihad' case, adding that she is a major. The top court also asked the father to produce Hadiya on November 27, the next date of hearing in the case. Earlier, the Kerala Government had told the apex court that the state police is effectively investigating the alleged 'love jihad' case of the state and hence, there is no need for the Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe it. In an affidavit, the state government informed the apex court that the state police is competent enough to investigate such crimes. Four months ago, the Kerala High Court had sent Hadiya with her parents, K.M. Asokan and Ponnamma, after annulling her marriage with Shafin Jahan. The case is under consideration of the Apex Court now, which had ordered the NIA investigation into it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Even as India's favourite comfort food 'Khichdi' made headlines with reports suggesting it would be soon declared as the ' Food', the Union Minister of Food Processing, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, clarified it was only selected for the World Food India event in a bid to popularise it. But before the clarification, what ensued on Twitter was nothing short of an unadulterated depiction of how Khichdi unifies the Indians across the country. Twitter simmered with reactions to preliminary reports and #Khichdi began trending. One user said, "Khichdi to be Dish. Why? Is the nation ill??" another joked, "In a world of #Biryani be someone's #khichdi Desi love ????" One of the users had a pertinent question to ask: "Do I have to stand up when I eat khichdi now that it is a dish?" Some had suggestions: "If Khichdi is being accorded the status of National Food, then Ghee, Dahi, Papad and Achaar should immediately be declared National Friends." Few loved it: "#Khichdi is the yummiest food." For the uninitiated, Badal's clarification came hours after 'Khichdi' began to trend on the social media. "Enough Khichdi cooked up on a fictitious 'National Dish'. It has only been put for a record entry in #WorldFoodIndia," Badal tweeted on Wednesday. "#WorldFoodIndia will proudly showcase India's culinary diversity...looks like today has been a slow news day! :)" Chef Sanjeev Kapoor will be attempting to create a World Record by cooking 800 kg of Khichdi on November 4 at the India Gate Lawns, on one of the days in a three day-long 'World Food India', organised by the Ministry of Food Processing Industries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As Fernando Alonso is set to make debut in the Daytona 24 Hours at the end of January 2018, McLaren chief Zak Brown has described the Spanish Formula One driver as 'racing monster' in his quest to become a glorious driver. "We've created a monster - a racing monster!" Brown was quoted, as saying by News.com.au. Alonso's confirmation for Daytona 24 Hours came soon after the news that he would be staying with McLaren for at least another season. The McLaren chief said, "We'd had some light conversations. We talked about different racing all the time, and I was with Fernando and Luis (Garcia Abad) his manager and he said, 'I want to do Daytona.'" "I'm kind of getting used to it after Indy! I turned around to Luis and said, 'He's serious isn't he?' And he said, 'Oh yeah' so I didn't have to ask twice," he added and called Alonso a racing monster. In what will be his second non-F1 event in the space of eight months, Alonso has signed up to race for Brown's United Autosports team in the Daytona International Speedway's famous endurance race. Alonso had earlier expressed that he wanted to be the best driver in the world and for that, he needed to go out of this small world of Formula 1. "Motorsport is more than Formula 1," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) When it comes to testing moms-to-be for the presence of Zika, a single negative result may not be enough. "We monitored a group of pregnant women with a confirmed diagnosis of Zika and tested their urine over a period of several months at intervals of about a week. In some of these women, the viral load in their urine disappeared and later returned," said principal investigator Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira from the FAMERP - Medical School of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Sao Paulo State. The patients included 13 women in different stages of pregnancy (4 weeks to 38 weeks) who were receiving treatment at the Children's & Maternity Hospital (HCM) of Sao Jose do Rio Preto. According to Nogueira, the virus was detected in one patient's urine for as long as seven months. In five women, the test was again positive for Zika virus after their viral load had disappeared in previous tests. In all cases, the virus vanished from the women shortly after they gave birth. "These results suggest the virus continues replicating during pregnancy, in the fetus or the placenta, which must serve as a reservoir for the pathogen," Nogueira said. "However, viral load in the mother's fluids is intermittent and very low, almost at the detection threshold." According to Nogueira, if the result of a molecular test is negative, it should ideally be repeated at least twice at intervals of no less than a week. "We typically test urine samples because they're easier to obtain and because the blood viral load is lower and disappears faster," he said. Three of the women monitored for the study had babies with complications that were probably caused by Zika: two displayed hearing loss and one was born with a brain cyst. The researchers were unable to establish a correlation between the number of times the virus was detected in the mother and the occurrence of an adverse outcome. "To do so, we will need to perform new studies with a larger number of participants," Nogueira said. The results are published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress Party on Thursday welcomed the Supreme Court's decision of expeditious disposal of pending cases against MPs and MLAs, however, said that the decision will be unfair to the people awaiting justice for longer period. Speaking to ANI, Congress leader KTS Tulsi said that the priority given to the cases against the MPs and the MLAs for the purpose of trial and appeal, will be at the expense of people sitting in jail for eight or ten years. "It's a welcome move. Everyone wants expeditious trial. It's good that the cases against the MPs and the MLAs will be given the top priority for the purpose of trial and appeal. But this is the constitutional right of every accused. Would this priority not at the expense of people sitting in jail for eight or ten years without knowing that they are guilty or innocent? Should those cases allowed to be neglected and delayed further? If you give one set of cases priority it is at the expense of someone else." He further said that the judiciary system should find a way to clear arrears. "Top priority should be given to dispensing criminal justice. Expediting criminal trials and appeals is the most laudable thing to be done, but not only in one category. The cases where people are confined in custody deserve even a higher priority than this," he added. Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit said that the decision is worth welcoming, but it will not improve the judiciary system. "Why the Supreme Court not taking a call on delay in pending cases. The Supreme Court should take a decision on this also," he added. The Apex Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to constitute special courts on lines of fast track courts for expeditious disposal of cases pending against parliamentarians and Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs). The top court also asked the Centre to apprise it as to how much amount would be spent on constituting the special courts. It gave its decision after the Election Commission asked the judicial body that there should be a life term ban on convicted parliamentarians and MLAs from contesting elections. The court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking debarring of convicts for life from contesting polls and stopping them from entering judiciary and the executive. Myanmar is working towards bringing amendment of the 1993 agreement with Bangladesh that allows repatriation of the Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, who fled to the neighbouring countries, in wake of clashes with the military. "The agreement was inked in 1993, and it is now 2017. A very long time has passed, and the situation has changed," the Dhaka Tribune quoted the permanent secretary of the Department of Immigration and Population, Myint Kyaing, as saying to a local media outlet on Tuesday. Kyaing informed that more points would be added to the agreement, in consultation with Bangladesh, while four major points would remain the same. He, however, did not clarify the points to be kept or to be added. "Identification forms will be delivered only after both countries sign the agreement, and people will have to fill them out, stating where they were born in the Rakhine state, in what year they were born, and what documentation they were holding when they lived in Rakhine," Kyaing said, adding that refugees would be accepted if a government-approved verification team approves their ID forms. Camps will be set up in Taung Pyo Let Wae and Nga Khu Ya villages in northern Rakhine's Maungdaw township for the repatriation process. "There is a bridge with checkpoints at each end in the Taung Pyo Let Wae village," Myint Kyaing said, adding, "If we see people coming in without approved forms, we can immediately send them back to the Bangladeshi border security team." Nearly half a million Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh due to violence in the Rakhine state. The Myanmar troops launched a crackdown in the state in response to attacks on three border posts last year that killed nine police officers. Since then, many Rohingya Muslims have tried to move into Bangladesh illegally. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The political parties in Nepal on Thursday filed nomination for the second phase of provincial and parliamentary election under the First-past-the-post (FPTP) election. The Nepali politicos went to the office of the election controllers in 45 districts of the country which will go for polls on December 7. The districts which went to the filing of nomination on Thursday have 128 parliamentary and 256 provincial constituencies, with an eligible population of 12.19 million. The Illam, Tehrathum, Dhankuta, Udaypur, Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari Districts of Province 1, Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Bara, Parsa and Rautahat of Province 2, Sindhuli, Makwanpur, Chitwan, Kavrepalanchowk, Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur Districts of Province 3, Tanahun, Kaski, Syangja, Parbat and East of Bardaghat Susta- Nawalparasi Districts of Province 4, Palpa, Arghakhanchi, Gulmi, Rupandehi, Kapilvastu, Dang, Pyuthan, Banke, Bardiya, West of Bardaghat Susta- Nawalparasi Districts of Province 5, Salyan, Surkheta and Dailekh Districts of Province 6 and Kailali, Kanchanpur, Dadeldhura, Accham and Doti Districts of Province 7 will head for polls on December 7. "I hope that the Nepali politics, after the election, will take a new direction and a new political environment is set to be carved in Nepali history," Rishi Ram Khatiwada, a voter told ANI. The alliance of the opposition Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Maoist Centre has jolted the Nepali politics. "The alliance will have a very good effect for the leftist because they had scored high votes in the local election, if the alliance really works and if they do not deceive each other, it will be a very good sign in Nepali politics," Govinda Prasad Acharya, opined, another voter, who is a teacher by profession. The parliamentary and the provincial election of Nepal will commence on November 26 in the high Himalayan districts bordering China and the second phase will be held on December 7. On October 22, candidates had filed their nomination papers for the first phase of polls scheduled to take place on November 26. As per the new constitution of Nepal local, province and parliament elections need to be completed by January 21 next year. Local elections have been successfully completed in September. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nine fishermen, four civilian prisoners and a minor child from Pakistan were repatriated on Thursday via the Attari (Indian side)- Wagah (Pakistan side) border, confirmed the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). MEA, in a statement, said that two Pakistani civilian prisoners were also released last month - on September 28. "India attaches high priority to addressing all humanitarian issues, including early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and prisoners in Pakistan's custody," the statement added. The release of 370 Indian prisoners, including 363 fishermen, has been secured in 2017, so far. On January 6, 2017, the Pakistan Government had released 219 Indian fishermen. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) United States President Donald Trump expressed his outrage over the recent terror attack in New York, and demanded a death penalty for the suspect. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump's tweet comes after reports emerged that the terror suspect, who has been admitted to a hospital after being shot by the police, said that he is pleased with his actions. After driving a rented truck onto a bike path near the site of the Trade Center memorial in Manhattan on Tuesday, 29-year-old terror suspect, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, left a note behind in the truck, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syriac (ISIS). He was later arrested by police and charged with providing material support to terrorists and violence and destruction of a motor vehicle causing death. Trump also voiced his outrage hours after the attack, and said that United States must not let the ISIS "return to or enter" the country. At least eight people have died and 15 others got injured in the attack. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistani Fatima, who had been lodged in the Amritsar Central Jail with her daughter Hinna and sister Mumtaaz on smuggling charges for over 10 years, has finally walked free. The two ladies were nabbed by the Indian security agencies on smuggling charges. Hinna was born and brought up in the prison. They are now set to reach their homeland, Pakistan, through the Attari border after a decade. "I want the Indian prisoners nabbed in Pakistan to return to their home as well. I thank lawyer Navjot ji and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and salute entire India for their help," Fatima said. Hinna, who has never been to her home, was also elated. "I am very happy that I will return to my home and meet my father," she said. Fatima sister's, Mumtaaz, said everyone, from police personnel to the government to PM Modi, helped them throughout the journey and that they were delighted to return home. Lawyer Navjot Kaur Chabha, who had been working on the case since October 2016, said she was happy her struggle didn't go in vain. "Hinna has been released after a very long struggle. She is the reason I took this stand because the little girl was suffering with no fault of hers. Today is my Diwali," the lawyer said. Chabha acknowledged Prime Minister Modi's help in the case. "I had written a letter to the prime minister on Hinna's behalf. This is a matter of extreme delight for us that the Indian Government intervened and released her. Hinna is very happy that she will go to her homeland now and meet her father and the rest of the family," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked Congress Vice-President over his July meeting with Chinese envoy over Doklam, saying it represented a lack of primary understanding. "During Doklam row, people said that Modi ji must not forget 1962. Isn't it insulting when these people held talks with Chinese leaders on Doklam instead of asking the elected government? This represents a lack of primary understanding," the Prime Minister said, while addressing a public rally here. The Prime Minister further said the country was aware how the government dealt with the Doklam issue, but the Congress even raised questions on that. Mod also said that the Congress had become a laughing stock and that they needed to introspect why people were turning away from them across the country. "I have worked extensively in Himachal Pradesh and I am very familiar with all cities. I know each and every street here. There are five monsters in Himachal Pradesh which we need to get rid off - mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia," Modi said. The state is set to go to polls on November 9. A school principal has been arrested for allegedly raping a 16-year-old student in Bhopal. "Yesterday a girl came with her parents and alleged that she was raped by her school principal in March," station house officer (SHO) Shikha Singh told ANI. She added that the girl, in her complaint, alleged that the principal called her to his house and committed the crime there. The SHO further said they have filed an FIR based on the girl's statement. "The principal threatened her of dire consequences if she would tell anyone. She didn't tell her parents and had stopped going to school. Now when she told them, they approached us," Singh said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In September 2017, Kaspersky Lab researchers identified a new series of targeted attacks against at least 10 financial organisations in multiple regions, including Russia, Armenia, and Malaysia. The hits are being performed by a new group called Silence. While stealing funds from its victims, Silence implements specific techniques similar to the infamous threat actor,Carbanak. The attacks are still ongoing. Silence joins the ranks of the most devastating and complex cyber-robbery operations likeMetel, GCMAN and Carbanak, whichhave succeeded in stealing millions of dollars from financial organisations. Most of these operations embrace the following technique: they gain persistent access to internal banking networks for a long period, monitor its day to day activity, examine the details of each separate bank network, and then when the time is right, they use that knowledge to steal as much money as possible. This is exactly the case with Silence Trojan - which compromises its victim's infrastructure via spear phishing emails. The malicious attachments to the emails are quite sophisticated. Once the victim opens them, it takes just one click to initiate a series of downloads and finally execute the dropper. This communicates with the command and control server, sends the ID of the infected machine, and downloads and executes malicious payloads, responsible for various tasks like screen recording, data uploading, the theft of credentials, remote control etc. Interestingly, the criminals exploit the infrastructure of already infected financial institutions for new attacks, by sending emails from real employee addresses to a new victim, along with a request to open a bank account. Using this trick, criminals make sure the recipient is unsuspicious of the infection vector. When cyber-criminals gain persistence in the network they start to examine it. The Silence group is capable of monitoring its victim's activities, including taking multiple screenshots of the victim's active screen, providing a real-time video stream of all the victim's activities, etc. All of the features serve one purpose: to understand the victim's day to day activity and obtain enough information to eventually steal money. This process and style strongly resembles the techniques of Carbanak. Based on language artifacts found during their research into the malicious components of this attack, Kaspersky Lab security researchers have concluded that the criminals behind the malicious Silence attacks speak Russian. "The Silence Trojan is a fresh example of cybercriminals shifting from attacks on users to direct attacks on banks. We have seen this trend growing recently, as more and more slick and professional APT-style cyber-robberies emerge and succeed. The most worrying thing here is that due to their in-the-shadow approach, these attacks may succeed regardless of the peculiarities of each bank's security architecture," notes Sergey Lozhkin, security expert at Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky Lab researchers adviseorganizations to take the following measures, in order to protect themselves from possible cyberattacks: Use a specialized solution against advanced threats that can detect all types of anomalies and scrutinize suspicious files at a deeper level to reveal, recognize and uncover complex attacks- like Kaspersky Anti Targeted Attack Platform. Eliminate security holes altogether, including those involving improper system configurations or errors in proprietary applications. For this, Kaspersky Penetration Testing and Application Security Assessment services are a convenient and highly effective solution, providing not only data on found vulnerabilities, but also advising users on how to fix it, further strengthening corporate security. Configure strict email processing rules and enable security solutions with dedicated functionality aimed at phishing, malicious attachments and spam - forexample, cloud-assisted anti-phishing and attachment-filtering in Kaspersky Endpoint Security and targeted security solutions for email protection. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Kerala Police on Thursday confirmed that six more youth from Kannur have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria. The police said these people were active workers of the Popular Front of India (PFI) in Kerala. On October 26, two men were arrested for their suspected links with Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. The arrests had been made after three people from Kannur, who were believed to have joined IS and left the country to undergo training in Syria, were arrested by the police. Earlier in July, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operative Shajahan Velluva Kandy, a resident of Kannur in Kerala, was arrested from the Indira Gandhi International airport on his deportation by the Turkish authorities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The district president of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth wing in Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir was killed by terrorists on Thursday. Earlier in the day, there were reports of a terrorist being killed, while two others were trapped in an encounter between terrorists and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district. Border Security Force (BSF) officer Tapan Mondal was killed after Pakistan Rangers initiated "unprovoked" firing on a patrol party in Samba division of the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The shooting at Colorado's Walmart Supercenter on Wednesday night has left three people dead so far. According to The New York Daily News, police reported that two men were killed and a woman later succumbed to her injuries at the hospital. Two more people sustained injuries during the evacuation process. Shots were fired at the shopping centre located in Grant Street, Thornton in the Colorado state of United States An hour after reports of shooting, Thornton Police Department reached Thorton's Town Center, and later stated that there was no longer an active shooter at the scene. Police continue to comb through surveillance cameras and interview witnesses, as the shooter has not been identified yet. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 33 member bikers' team of Assam Rifles (AR) troupes arrived in Tripura through Akhaura checkpoint from Bangladesh on Thursday. The bikers are conducting a Tri-Nation Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Unity and Heritage Motorcycle Expedition. They will be traveling in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar in a 7-day tour. The tour was flagged off by Meghalaya Governor Ganga Prasad from Shillong to Sylhet in Bangladesh on 30 October. The team met freedom fighter of 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War at various stopover points. Brigadier Ashwani Nayyar of Commander 21 Sector AR said, "It will foster friendship and greater bonhomie and coordination between our border guarding forces. Also, it will improve the contacts between two security forces and the two governments and foster friendship between the nations." The expedition team will pass through the six Northeastern states of Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura to enter Myanmar to complete the 2150 km long expedition tour. The team will also pay homage at various war memorials and graves of Indian martyrs during the Second World War on the foreign soil. The aim of the Expedition is to foster force to force connection with border guarding forces of Bangladesh, Myanmar and India, besides bringing bonhomie between the three nations as well as the role in ensuring the security and stability in the North East region. The entire expedition has been designed to spread the message of peace, harmony and integration across the states and the International border. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Trump administration is believed to have shared a list of 20 terrorist groups with Pakistani officials, in its efforts toward helping Islamabad eliminate terrorists. This comes after U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States is going to test Pakistan by giving them a chance to act against terrorism, according to the Dawn. Meanwhile, official sources have dismissed earlier speculations that the list, shared by Tillerson, contains 75 terrorists. While giving a rundown of his visit to Pakistan last week, Tillerson informed that Pakistan has indicated to act against terrorists, if given information regarding their whereabouts. The visit of the foreign secretary was aimed towards conveying President Trump's message to Pakistan that terrorists, who plan attacks on neighbouring Afghanistan, find safe haven in the country. In another briefing, Tillerson said the visit had led to a healthy exchange of information on terrorists between both the countries, adding that information shared was beyond just names of individuals. In reciprocation, U.S. expects Pakistan to share valuable information, useful in targeting militants, and hopes for future exchange of information to go beyond "specific location on any given day of where certain individuals or certain cells may be located." The list, shared by U.S., differentiates among three types of militants groups- those who launch attacks in Afghanistan, those who target attacks inside Pakistan, and those who are focused on Kashmir. The Haqqani network, a group that is claimed by U.S. to plan attacks in Afghanistan from Fata, tops the list. Pakistan has however denied the charge. Terrorist groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are listed as those that focus on Kashmir. Meanwhile, groups claimed to plan attacks in Pakistan are Lashkar-i-Jhanghvi, an offshoot of anti-Shia sectarian group Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, an umbrella organisation of various militant groups, relocated from Fata to Afghanistan. Harakatul Jihadi-i-Islami, Jamaatul Ahrar, Jamaatud Dawa al-Quran and Tariq Gidar Group, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Commander Nazir Group, Indian Mujahideen, Islamic Jihad Union, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan ISIS-Khorasan, Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent and the Turkistan Islamic Party Movement are also on the list. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon resigned from his position on Wednesday after he admitted that his behaviour towards women in the past had "fallen short". According to the Guardian Fallon has recently come under fire and apologised earlier this week for putting his hand on a journalist's knee in 2002. It was already reported that he would face no investigation for this as the woman in question laughed it off. However, it is unclear if any further allegations may have prompted his resignation. Fallon is the first politician to step down in a developing scandal at Westminster. A number of allegations have surfaced about Member of Parliament (MPs) in recent days. In his resignation letter to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, Fallon said, "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct." Adding, "Many of these have been false but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent." "I have reflected on my position and I am now resigning as defence secretary," Fallon said. In her response, May thanked him for his service. "I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others," she said. May is expected to appoint a replacement on Thursday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) convenor Hardik Patel on Thursday said that they will extend their support to the Congress in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections only if their demands are met. "If the Congress takes steps in support of our issue (reservation), we will directly or indirectly support the party... The andolan is still on," Patel told ANI. He informed that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi came to meet him on Diwali. When asked if he is going to join the Congress to pursue the reservation issue, the PAAS convenor said, "I am not going to join any political party for the next two and a half years. Rahul visited to wish me during Diwali like any other people who come to meet me," said Patel. On the six organisations' coming on the front foot against the Patidar leader's demand to include the Patels in the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category for reservation in education and jobs, Patel questioned if he was wrong then why had the people come to attend his rallies. "People in huge numbers come to attend the andolan. They know that the fight on reservation is right but the media does not show this," said irked Patel. Alleging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of spreading such news, he said, "But everybody is talking about this (organisations against the andolan). This is nothing but the BJP's propaganda." On the government's claim that they have accepted all the demands kept forward by Patel and the protests that he is leading now is not related to Patidar Community but is an individual ambition, Patel asked: "What demands have been met by the government?" "They rejected even the 1 percent reservation. The Aayog has still not been implemented," he added. On Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani calling him an "agent" of Congress, Patel affirmed that he instead considered himself as the agent of people. The six organisations that are opposing Patel's demand include Umiya Mata Sanstha from Unjh, Khodaldham Kagwad in Rajkot, Vishwa Umiya Foundation, Samast Patidar Samaj in Surat, Umiya Mataji Mandir in Sidsar and Sardar Dham in Ahmedabad. The leaders of these organisations alleged that Patel is misleading the society in the name of reservation. They also alleged that Patel is taking political advantage of this demand. Patel's reservation demand has come on the heels of the upcoming election here, wherein the Congress party is trying to woo the Patidar community. Earlier, Patel had met the Congress leaders to discuss the reservation demand and gave deadline to the party to clear its stance on his demand till November 7. The Congress party had, however, said that it will make a decision after consulting the matter with legal experts. The Congress is counting on the Patidar votes to sway the election results of Gujarat polls in their favour and uproot the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power since 1995 in the state. The polls will be conducted in Gujarat in two phases - December 9 and December 14. The counting of the votes will be held on December 18. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The leader and convener of the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, Jignesh Mevani, on Thursday said he would not join any political party in the upcoming Gujarat elections, including the Congress. Speaking to the media here, Mevani said, "I won't join any political party in the 2017 elections, including the Congress." He, however, added if Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi or any other party leader decides to hold talks with him to discuss the demands made by the Dalit group, he was ready to meet. "But it will not be to get a ticket to contest in the elections," Mevani said. Mevani further accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Government in Gujarat of being arrogant and ignoring the matters of the Dalit in the state in its 22-year-long rule. Meanwhile, the 14th legislative assembly elections in Gujarat are to be held by the end of 2017 as the term of 13th assembly ends on January 22, 2018. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is heading his party's poll campaign in Gujarat. The last Congress Government in Gujarat was led by Chhabildas Mehta from February 17, 1994 to March 13, 1995. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sales rise 11.47% to Rs 3418.01 crore Net profit of Apollo Tyres declined 45.98% to Rs 140.18 crore in the quarter ended September 2017 as against Rs 259.52 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2016. Sales rose 11.47% to Rs 3418.01 crore in the quarter ended September 2017 as against Rs 3066.36 crore during the previous quarter ended September 2016.3418.013066.3610.6614.30343.89454.38205.40348.61140.18259.52 Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) ICICI Bank was up 0.86% to Rs 315.90 at 9:37 IST on BSE after the bank's board scheduled a meeting on 6 November 2017, to consider domestic fund raising proposal. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 1 November 2017. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 5.88 points or 0.02% at 33,594.39. On the BSE, 1.64 lakh shares were traded on the counter so far as against average daily volumes of 18.90 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock had hit a high of Rs 318 and a low of Rs 311.70 so far during the day. ICICI Bank said that the committee of executive directors constituted by the board of the bank is scheduled to have a meeting on 6 November 2017 to consider domestic fund raising by way of issuance of senior unsecured long term bonds/Basel III compliant unsecured subordinated perpetual Additional Tier 1 bonds in single/multiple tranches on private placement basis. ICICI Bank's net profit fell 33.65% to Rs 2058.19 crore on 17.55% decline in total income to Rs 18763.29 crore in Q2 September 2017 over Q2 September 2016. ICICI Bank is one of the leading private sector banks in India. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Home Secretary Shri Rajiv Gauba chaired a meeting here yesterday to discuss various measures including technology upgradation, provision of modern equipment, additional space, professional manpower etc. for improving immigration services at Delhi Airport. Following decisions have been taken to improve the immigration services:- Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) will provide additional space for at least 10 more immigration counters at Departure area by November 15, 2017. BOI will provide manpower and other equipment like passport reading machines, computers, web cameras etc. to make these counters functional by November 20, 2017. Additional space will be provided by DIAL for providing 10 more additional immigration counters for facilitation of travelers in the 'Departure area'. These counters would be made functional by January, 2018. At least 10 e-Visa counters would be made functional for electronic Visa facility for foreigners by November 30, 2017. 25 more counters for electronic Visa facility will be made functional by January, 2018. This will facilitate foreigners availing electronic Visa which is becoming increasingly popular. Bureau of Immigration will provide additional manpower of 1,800 personnel for improving immigration services by filling up vacant posts, inducting personnel from Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and also some ex-servicemen. This will augment manpower strength at immigration counters to enable Immigration Officers to provide professional and courteous service to the travelers. The above decisions will substantially improve Immigration services at Delhi International Airport which will facilitate not only foreigners coming to India, but also Indian travelers visiting abroad. The meeting followed MHA taking cognizance of recent reports about long queues at Delhi International Airport during peak hours. Senior officers of MHA and Bureau of Immigration subsequently visited Delhi International Airport for on-the-spot assessment. Government has policy to encourage foreigners to come to India for tourism, medical tourism, business, studies etc. Several initiatives have been taken to improve Visa and immigration services to encourage foreigners to visit India and to provide them a pleasant experience. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Agriculture Minister, Shri Radha Mohan Singh today said that the Prime Minister has set a target before us to double the farmers' income by 2022. The Ministry is working towards achieving the goal. And to achieve this target, the Prime Minister has advocated a seven-point strategy: i. Special focus on irrigation with sufficient budget, with the aim of Per Drop More Crop. ii. Provision of quality seeds and nutrients based on soil health of each field. iii. Large investments in Warehousing and Cold Chains to prevent post-harvest crop losses. iv. Promotion of value addition through food processing. v. Creation of a National Farm Market, removing distortions and e-platform across 585 Stations. vi. Introduction of a New Crop Insurance Scheme to mitigate risks at an affordable cost. vii. Promotion of ancillary activities like poultry, beekeeping, and fisheries. Shri Radha Mohan Singh stated above mentioned seven-point strategy while chairing the Inter-Session meeting of the Consultative Committee meeting of the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare said that the Government has launched a number of schemes and programs to Double Farmers' Income. Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana, Soil Health Card, Neem-Coated Urea and e-NAM Schemes are few of our flagship programs that aim to improve the productivity and earnings of our farmers. Shri Singh said that the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation, and Farmers Welfare has also constituted a Committee under the Chairmanship of CEO, NRAA with members from all related departments and NITI Aayog to examine issues relating to doubling of farmers' income by the year 2022. As of now, six meetings of the Committee have been held. Agriculture Minister said that RKVY guidelines are being changed to include entrepreneur development. DAC&FW has prepared a roadmap for production of pulses to the tune of 24 million tonnes by 2017-18. A dedicated micro-irrigation fund with an initial corpus of Rs.5000 crore has been set up by NABARD to achieve Per Dop More Crop. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CBI has carried out searches at six places in Delhi and Kolkata in connection with its probe into the AgustaWestland chopper case and seized documents, cash and jewellery, an official said on Thursday. During searches,among others, at the premises of Om Metals Managing Director Sunil Kothari in Delhi, Abhinand Vanchiya Director N.K. Jain and Rajesh Kumar Jain in Kolkata on Wednesday, several documents and Rs 55.68 lakh in cash were seized from Kothari's residence and Rs 29 lakh from N.K. Jain's residence, the official told IANS. The agency also seized jewellery worth over Rs one crore from the lockers of N.K. Jain's wife and their daughter-in-law. Income Tax authorities had been informed about the seizure of cash, the official said. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has alleged that the accused had laundered the money of three alleged European middlemen -- Christian Michel, Guido Haschke, and Carlo Gerosa -- given to the former Indian Air Force chief, Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi, and his cousin Sanjeev alias Julie through shell companies. The CBI official said that a request for the extradition of Gerosa had been made to the Ministry of External Affairs for onward transmission to Italy's Ministry of Justice. The CBI action comes in a case registered on March 12, 2013, wherein the agency alleged that Tyagi took bribes of several crores of rupees through middlemen and a complex route of companies in several countries from AgustaWestland to change the specifications of the contract for the supply of 12 choppers for VVIP duties. The specifications were related to reducing operational flight ceiling from originally proposed 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres and bringing down the cabin height to 1.8 metres to enable the company win the contract. The CBI said the illegal gratification was accepted through different companies in the name of consultancy services. The agency filed a charge sheet on September 1 in the Rs 3,726 crore AgustaWestland chopper case against Tyagi, Sanjeev, then IAF Vice Chief J.S. Gujral, advocate Gautam Khaitan, Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica's former chief Giuseppe Orsi, former AgustaWestland CEO Bruno Spagnolini, and three alleged European middleman. --IANS aks/tsb/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Captain America" actor Anthony Mackie would love to be the next James Bond, but says he would prefer the character to be more "mellow" than in previous adaptations. At the Comic Con here, Mackie said: "I've thought about this a lot. My Bond would be cool, I mean smooth, milky smooth. No nonsense, no pretence. My James Bond would be a very, very mellow man with the ladies. He would be very aggressive in his fighting style. "And his Aston Martin would be a convertible with 20 inch rims and an 808 sound system in the trunk so you can hear him coming. That's my Bond." Currently, Daniel Craig is set to reprise his role as the 007 agent in the upcoming Bond 25 movie and already expressed it is to be his last outing as the womanising spy, reported femalefirst.co.uk. A number of celebrities have been rumoured to be taking over from Craig when he steps down, including James Norton, Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston, Aidan Turner, Tom Hardy and Damian Lewis. Meanwhile, Mackie will be reprising his role as the superhero in the upcoming "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers 4". --IANS dc/rb (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Assam Rifles, India's oldest central para-military force, is conducting a tri-nation motorcycle expedition involving India, Bangladesh and Myanmar to promote force-to-force and people-to-people relations as part of its 183rd Raising Day celebrations, an official said here. The 2,150-km 19-day expedition will cover Bangladesh and Myanmar besides India's six northeastern states -- Meghalaya, Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura. Officers and soldiers from Assam Rifles with 14 motorcycles and support vehicles are participating in the event. The 36-member team was flagged off from Meghalaya capital Shillong on October 30. It arrived in Agartala on Wednesday after covering several eastern districts of Bangladesh. On Thursday, the teams left Agartala for southern Assam. After touring Manipur and Nagaland, it will go to Myanmar via Mizoram and reach Shillong on November 17, an Assam Rifles official said. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who welcomed the expedition team at an event on Wednesday night, appreciated the efforts of Assam Rifles in bringing bonhomie between the three neighbours, and also for playing a significant role in ensuring security and stability in India's northeast. With support from the high commissions and embassies of the respective countries, various other activities are being held, including offering homage at war memorials and graves of Indian soldiers on foreign soil enroute. "They will also participate in cultural events and sightseeing in order to increase the interaction between the border guards of the three nations," the official added. The expedition, while moving through the country, will interact with ex-servicemen and "Veer Naris" (brave women) at various stopover points. They will interact with students and youths to motivate them to join the armed forces, he said. He said the route has been designed to spread the message of peace, harmony and national integration across the states and international border. --IANS sc/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As bank customers suffered by waiting in long queues to withdraw their money from November onwards last year, another group of people -- bank employees -- endured the hardship of extended work hours and customer anger. The employees, say bank unions, bore the major brunt of the sudden decision announced on November 8 last year by the Prime Minister. "Banking personnel were rigorously working towards recovery of bad loans before the announcement of demonetisation, but the entire drive of recovery got derailed after the announcement as employees had to work day and night for giving service to depositors," Sanjay Das, Assistant General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Confederation, told IANS. The bank unions said that of the more than 100 persons who lost their lives during the demonetisation chaos, over 10 were bank employees and officers. Das said that despite the enormous amount of extra work put in by the employees, very few were compensated. "Over 50 per cent of employees and officers are yet to get their compensation for the extra work they did during the demonetisation period," Das said. According to C.H. Venkatachalam, General Secretary of the All India Bank Employees' Association, the whole experience had left "a big scar in the minds of bankers". He said a million bank employees handling 1,000 million people coming to branches to deposit old notes was certainly a big task. He said the bankers were abused by the general public for not disbursing new notes and diverting the same to others. "The RBI made matters worse by saying that sufficient number of new notes were disbursed to banks," he added. He said the bank managements were not bothered about the problems faced by branch officials. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also asked bankers to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Officials in the branch were in office till late in the evening. Although some clerical staff, he said, were paid overtime, officers were left out. Pradip Biswas, General Secretary of the Bank Employees Federation of India, said that not only employees but even the banks had not been reimbursed by the government for the cost incurred on recalibration of ATMs. Criticising demonetisation, Biswas doubted that the whole exercise was done to unearth black money as claimed by the government. "The annual report of the RBI revealed that Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99 per cent of Rs 15.44 lakh crore of scrapped notes, came back into the system after demonetisation. Now the question arises: was the demonetisation scheme designed to convert black money into white?" Biswas wondered. He said the government had described it as a fight against black money, funding of terrorist outfits and counterfeit currency. "But all their claims have fallen flat," he said. "The scrapping of notes failed miserably in addressing its objective of striking a blow against the black economy. Instead, the side effect of the note ban has impacted the banking industry adversely," said Das, who is also the West Bengal State Secretary for the union. The massive inflows of bank notes put a strain on the banks' daily operations and banking personnel were not able to focus on credit disbursement, which resulted in potential loss of banks' income, Das said, adding that bank credit growth came down to about 5.1 per cent in 2016-17 from an average of 11.72 per cent in the previous five years. The apex bank too has mentioned that banks' preoccupation with exchange of notes and deposits was one the factors for low credit growth. "Credit growth touched a low in more than two decades on account of factors such as subdued state of economic activity, risk aversion of the banking sector... loan repayment by use of specified bank notes (old notes) and banks' pre-occupation with exchange of notes and deposits following demonetisation," said the RBI's latest annual report. D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers Confederation, said that, initially, they had welcomed the government's move. "But it turned out to be a nightmare for the bankers." He said people thought bankers were at fault for not disbursing the new notes, but "the RBI supplied new currencies only to private banks daily and not to government-owned banks". Dev said the government should probe whether new notes found their way into the hands of industrialists and businessmen directly from the currency printing presses. But some senior bank officers differ with the unions about the impact of demonetisation on the economy in the long run. "Right now people are complaining, but one thing is certain that (huge) money has come into circulation. Banks have accessed low-cost deposits and, subsequently, lenders have reduced the lending rates," said Punjab National Bank Executive Director Sanjiv Sharan. One year down the line, economic conditions would improve, and with the government's thrust on low-cost housing and infrastructure development, credit demand would grow, he added. "For the time being it may seem that demonetisation is disturbing the economy. But in the long run, it will help it," Sharan contended. (Bappaditya Chatterjee can be reached at bappaditya.c@ians.in and Venkatachari Jagannathan at v.jagannathan@ians.in) (Editors: The above article is part of a series of demonetisation stories leading up to November 8) --IANS bdc-vj/ssp/hs/sac/ky (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A BJP parliamentary team will visit Tripura on November 10 to get a feedback on the situation in the Left-ruled state, Assam Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Thursday. "The team will gather feedback on the situation prevailing in Tripura and raised the matter in Parliament's winter session," Sarma told the media here. "There is lawlessness in Tripura. CPI-M cadres are attacking BJP leaders and workers almost every day and police remain inactive on the government directions," the BJP leader claimed. He said the Bharatiya Janata Party wanted a CBI probe into the murder of Tripura's television journalist Shantanu Bhowmik on September 20 but the government had set up a Special Investigation Team which he claimed was a 'B' team of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist. Sarma, convener of the BJP-led anti-Congress North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), said BJP President Amit Shah will visit Tripura in December to boost the party's campaign ahead of assembly elections in February 2018. He said over 60,000 posts were lying vacant in Tripura government departments while lakhs of unemployed educated youths were seeking jobs. He said the six erstwhile Trinamool Congress MLAs who joined the BJP on August 7 would act as BJP MLAs in the assembly session beginning November 13 and that veteran tribal leader Diba Chandra Hrangkhwal had been chosen the party leader in the assembly. The Minister said the BJP had formulated a strategy to avoid splitting anti-Left votes to ensure the defeat of the Left Front in Tripura in Assembly polls. "Many problems, including the demand for a separate state by tribals, will be resolved automatically if the BJP came to power in Tripura as we demonstrated in Manipur," Sarma said. The Indigenous People's Front of Tripura has been demanding the new state which it wants to be carved out of areas falling under Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council. --IANS sc/tsb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has resigned on Wednesday night, becoming the first big political casualty of a "sex pest" scandal engulfing Westminster. Fallon wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May, telling her he was resigning from her front bench cabinet, Xinhua news agency reported. Downing Street confirmed the resignation, saying that May had written to the defence chief, accepting his resignation. May wrote to Fallon: "I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others." She praised the way he had championed Britain's armed forces during his three and a half years as Defence Secretary, and the way he had held the job during a time when Britain faced threats of terrorism. Political commentators said his resignation will come as a major blow to May, losing one of her most supportive and dependable ministers. The move came just hours after May told MPs in the House of Commons that she had called a meeting of the main party leaders next week to discuss how parliament should handle complaints about sexual harassment by politicians at Westminster. Earlier this week, Fallon admitted that he had put his hand on the knee of a radio presenter at a dinner 15 years ago at a Conservative Party conference. In his letter to the Prime Minister, Fallon said: "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct." "Many of these have been false but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces that I have the honour to represent. I have reflected on my position and I am therefore resigning as Defence Secretary." He added in a statement: "It has been a privilege to have served as Defence Secretary for the last three and half years, and I have nothing but admiration for the professionalism, bravery and service of those men and women who keep us safe." The broadcaster at the centre of the knee-touching incident, Julia Hartley-Brewer, had spoken about the incident, but she did not reveal his identity. "I have had no issues since with the man in question and do not regard the incident as anything but mildly amusing, which is why I have declined to name him." The Daily Telegraph said the resignation has come amid a growing sexual harassment scandal at Westminster, with some 40 Conservative MPs being named in a so-called "dirty dossier" compiled by party staff of politicians against whom accusations have been made. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Thursday blocked a US resolution seeking to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist. Due to lack of consensus at the UNSC committee, the application seeking a ban on Masood Azhar has been rejected, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official told IANS. This is the second time Beijing has vetoed the proposal which was first moved by India at the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council in March last year. China did the same to a US proposal backed by France and the UK. It first blocked it in January and then put a technical hold for three months in August. A new resolution will have to be moved now. China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the terrorist who is accused by India of plotting a deadly attack on an Indian airbase in January 2016. India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar as an international terrorist. The listing of Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India. In September, China agreed to include Azhar's outfit in a joint statement issued by BRICS members. --IANS gsh/rn (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China on Thursday said it hoped that US President Donald Trump's upcoming visit to Beijing would help boost bilateral relations. The Foreign Affairs Ministry formally announced Trump's visit next week, along with some details of his agenda, as part of the President's Asia tour from November 4 to 14. Trump will arrive in Beijing on November 8 and the following day he is expected to be a busy one in the Great Hall of the People, seat of the legislative and ceremonial activities of the Chinese government. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump will participate in a welcoming ceremony there, attend business and bilateral meetings and finally appear jointly before the press. The two leaders will discuss bilateral relations and international issues, said ministry spokesperson Lu Kang. He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results during Trump's visit in order to inject new and strong impetus into the development of bilateral ties. Trump's first official visit to China will conclude on November 10, after which he will travel to Vietnam to participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A court here on Thursday extended till November 9 the judicial custody of Sukesh Chandrashekhar, an aide of AIADMK's sacked Deputy General Secretary T.T.V. Dinakaran, in a bribery case related to poll symbol allocation by the Election Commission. Special Judge Poonam Chaudhary also asked the Investigating Officer to appear in court on the next hearing on November 9 to explain the status of supplementary chargesheet in the case. The Delhi Police charge-sheeted Chandrashekhar on July 14 for forgery, making a false document and criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Chandrashekhar was arrested on April 16. The police had said a separate investigation report would be filed against Dinakaran and other accused later. Dinakaran, accused of trying to bribe Election Commission officials to get the "two leaves" poll symbol for the AIADMK faction led by his now jailed aunt V.K. Sasikala, was arrested on April 25. He was granted bail on June 1. The police said a criminal conspiracy was hatched by Chandrashekhar, Dinakaran and others to bribe Election Commission officials. The money seized from Chandrashekhar was sent by Dinakaran through illegal channels with the help of others, the police alleged. Mallikarjuna, a long-time friend of Dinakaran, and Naresh Jain, a "hawala" operator from Delhi, are the other accused in the case. --IANS akk/tsb/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Collins English Dictionary has called the term "fake news", frequently used by US President Donald Trump, as 2017's Word of the Year due to its "ubiquitous presence", the media reported on Thursday. The Dictionary's lexicographers, who monitor the 4.5 billion-word Collins corpus, said that usage of the term had increased by 365 per cent since 2016, reports the Guardian. The phrase, often capitalised, is frequently a feature of Trump's rhetoric; in the last few days alone he has tweeted of how "the Fake News is working overtime" in relation to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. Trump has used the term frequently, and claimed last week to have invented it - "the media is really, the word, one of the greatest of all (the) terms I've come up with, is 'fake'... I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years, but I've never noticed it," he told an interviewer. This etymology was disputed by the dictionary. Collins said that "fake news" started being used in the noughties on US television to describe "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting". Its usage has climbed since 2015, according to the dictionary, and really took off this year, with its ubiquity to be acknowledged with a place in the next print edition of the Collins Dictionary. A number of other words related to and current affairs were also in its list of the words of the year, the Guardian reported. "Echo chamber", defined as "an environment, especially on a social media site, in which any statement of opinion is likely to be greeted with approval because it will only be read or heard by people who hold similar views", has seen a "steady increase" in usage over the last five years , while "antifa" saw its usage rise by almost 7,000 per cent following violent clashes between anti-fascist protesters and the far right, particularly in the US. Corbynmania, up by 310 per cent, was also on the list: Collins said the term for "fervent enthusiasm" for UK's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn "first emerged in 2015 and after a dip last year made a striking comeback in 2017 as the Labour leader impressed on the campaign trail". "Much of this year's list is definitely politically charged, but with a new president in the US and a snap election in the UK, it is perhaps no surprise that continues to electrify the language," said Collins's head of language content, Helen Newstead. --IANS ksk/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The All India Fishermen Congress on Thursday said it will observe a "protest week" from November 21 to 26 against "faulty" implementation of GST and to press for formation of a separate fisheries ministry at the Centre. The decision to observe protest week was taken in the first meeting of state presidents of the Fishermen Congress here on Thursday. "The GST (Goods and Services Tax) implemented by the central government has negatively impacted fisheries sector. The government is imposing higher tax slab for fishing equipment and various fish products under GST which has caused irreparable damage to the sector," said T.N. Prathapan, Chairman of Fishermen Congress, in a statement. This would destroy fishing sector across the country, he said. "All India Fishermen Congress will hold countrywide protest against ill thought out implementation of GST. As part of this 'protest week', fishermen will sit in protest in front of central government offices in various states," Prathapan said. The Fishermen Congress also underlined the need for a separate ministry for fisheries. "A separate fisheries ministry under an independent minister in central government is inevitable to ensure the overall socio-economic development of fishermen communities in the country," said the statement. "This is a long-pending demand of fishermen and allied workers in the country who comprise around 10 per cent of total population. Currently, fisheries is a separate department under Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer's Welfare causing lack of special care and attention," it said. --IANS sid/nir (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Arrested nearly 11 years ago and jailed for carrying drugs, two sisters from Pakistan were on Thursday released from the Amritsar Central Jail and allowed to return to Pakistan via the Attari-Wagah border. Sisters Fatima and Mumtaz entered Pakistan through the Attari border, about 30 km from here, on Thursday afternoon after all formalities for their release and repatriation were completed by authorities on both sides. They were accompanied back by Fatima's daughter, Heena, who was born during her imprisonment here. Although both sisters were happy to be returning to Pakistan, they had mixed feelings since their mother, Rashida Bibi, who was arrested with them in May 2006 passed away in the prison in 2008 due to illness. They were arrested by security agencies at the Attari Railway Station for carrying drugs as they alighted from the Samjhauta Express -- the peace train between India and Pakistan. The sisters and the mother, who were heading for Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh in 2006 to meet relatives, were tried by a court here and sentenced to 10 years in prison and imposed a penalty of Rs 4 lakh. They, however, claimed that they had been framed in the drugs case. Fatima, who is from Gujranwala and was pregnant at the time of her arrest, gave birth to Heena in jail in 2006. The newborn girl lived with her mother in the prison. Although their prison term ended in November 2015, they were lodged in the prison transit camp as they did not have the means to pay the penalty of Rs 4 lakh. The plight of the Pakistani sisters was taken up with the court and the union government by local lawyer Navjot Kaur. With the help of a Batala-based NGO, Sarbat Da Bhala Humanity Club, Kaur arranged the penalty money to be paid. Despite that it took almost seven months for their file in the union ministries of Home and External Affairs to move. The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi completed the formalities to confer Pakistani nationality on Heena. "We are happy to be returning to Pakistan," both sisters told the media before crossing over. --IANS js/nir/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In an apparent move to take on major travel services providers like Expedia and Orbitz, has announced that it will be cutting off developer access to a feed that automates data for airfare search engines. The move could potentially put third-party travel sites in a spot. "The QPX Express API service will end on April 10, 2018," said in a notice on the FAQ page of its site for software developers. The search giant also added that it would be ending new user registrations for the flight service. QPX Express is a simplified airfare search API that offers basic shopping capabilities. It allows easy access to air travel search via a single, standardised API. "If you are actively using the QPX Express API service, you may want to find an alternate solution before April 11, 2018," the notice said. Google is not providing any information on alternative API services, but some possibilities that software engineers could use include Fareportal, Skyscanner, and Skypicker, The Verge reported on Wednesday. Google is also building out its own consumer-facing Flights service, adding cost-saving features, such as flying on a different day, landing in a different airport, or checking to see how airfares vary over time on a graph, the report added. How Google's decision to shutdown its API service will specifically affect third-party travel sites is not fully clear. According to technology news website TechCrunch, customers of QPX include a lot of household names like Bing Travel, Cape Air, CheapTickets, Kayak.com, Orbitz, Alitalia, American, ANA, United Airlines, US Airways, and Virgin Atlantic. Google's move to cut off third-party access could require these services to build their own databases by going directly to the airlines. A 36 feet effigy of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein will be burnt to ashes at a bonfire night celebration in Kent near here. The Edenbridge Bonfire Society, which chooses a celebrity to go alongside the traditional effigy of failed plotter Guy Fawkes every year, said the Hollywood mogul was the "overwhelming choice" for 2017, reports telegraph.co.uk. The giant figure was unveiled on Wednesday in preparation for the annual event on Saturday. It is a yearly tradition for Britishers in memory of Guy Fawkes's 1605 failed plot to blow up Parliament. Weinstein is facing allegations ranging from sexual harassment to rape from several women. A spokesman for the charity described the choice was "lighthearted" and added that there was "nothing funny" about the accusations surrounding Weinstein, who is the subject of police investigations in both the UK and the US. "As with last year there were many strong contenders for this year's celebrity Guy, particularly in the political and cultural world," the spokesperson said. Other well-known figures whose effigy was burnt in past years include Cherie Blair, Katie Price, Gordon Brown and Russell Brand. --IANS sas/rb/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India and Kazakh troops started a joint exercise in Himachal Pradesh's Bakloh on Thursday, an official statement said. The exercise 'Prabal Dostyk' which means 'Robust Friendship' in Hindi and Kazakh and go on till November 15, is "aimed at enhancing the military ties between the two countries as also at achieving interoperability between the two armies", the statement said. The training contingents comprise of a platoon strength formation from Indian Army's 11th Gorkha Rifles and a similar strength from the Kazakh Army. --IANS ao/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bangladeshi filmmaker Mostafa Sarwar Farooki, who plans to make a film on the Rohingya persecution in Myanmar, says India should stand by his country, as also the embattled community, amid the ongoing crisis. Farooki, whose latest film "Doob: No Bed Of Roses", an Indo-Bangla joint venture, is set to embark on his next venture, the "Identity" trilogy, with the last film dealing about the Rohingyas' persecution in Myanmar, he revealed. Farooki, a leading name in Bangladesh's alternative cinema circuit, is one of the pioneers in introducing realism in the country's cinema. Plunging into a discussion on the issue at a time when the influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar continues despite the two countries signing an agreement to stop the exodus, Farooki opined it's a "dangerous world" that has been created. "During this time, India should really stand beside Rohingyas and Bangladesh. India has a legacy of democracy and secular . As a democracy it should stand by the Rohingyas and it should stand by Bangladesh because India counts Bangladesh as its friend," Farooki told IANS in an interview here. "In the last 10 years, Bangladesh has proved we did everything we could to ensure India's safety regarding extremism and everything. Bangladesh now deserves some love from India," he noted with optimism, literally doffing his cap, (Farooki's signature look), as a toast to the friendly relations between the neighbours. In its latest report, the UN Inter-Sector Coordination Group said that around 605,000 Rohingyas had arrived in Bangladesh since August 25, when the Myanmar Army launched a crackdown in Rakhine state. Farooki said the situation brings out the ongoing crisis of human identity: How a community or an individual's identity is linked to one's perception these days. "We are creating a dangerous world. It is so medieval. I don't know if the medieval age was so bad. You are hating a population because of who they are and not because of what they do." The front-runner of an avant-garde filmmakers' movement called "Chabial" (The Film Hawkers) in Bangladesh, Farooki said he is working on "Saturday Afternoon", the first film of the triology. This would be succeeded by "No Land's Man" which has got grants from India's Film Bazaar and the Asia Pacific Screen Academy-Motion Picture Association Film Fund. "And the third one will be on Rohingya persecution in Myanmar. We will shoot in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. I want to show the human conditions. We need not take sides. The film will not take sides. The audiences can come to their own conclusions." "Earlier, we used to love or hate a person because of what he or she did or does. But now it's who you are. That's a strange world we are actually in," he remarked in response to a query on the context of the trilogy. Acclaimed for films like "Television" (that closed the Busan festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and was Bangladesh's submission to 86th Academy Award foreign language category) and "Ant Story", Farooki's "Doob" has already bagged an independent jury award at the 39th Moscow International Film Festival. Addressing middle class angst, guilt, urban youth romance and redemption, his oeuvre is an exploration of complex cultural issues as well. Having served as jury member on various international film festivals, Farooki feels South Asian films are on the right path. "In the last five to seven years, we have been walking in the right direction. South Asian movies have got an identity because of Satyajit Ray. He put us on the map. After that there was a huge slump. Indian cinema is really growing in the last seven to ten years. A new wave is coming. You can see some independent filmmakers in Mumbai (Marathi, Hindi) and in Malayalam. Bangladesh is trying to catch up and Sri Lanka and Nepal too are trying to catch up. It will take some time but we are coming up," Farooki signed off. (Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in) --IANS sgh/ssp/vm/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) has condemned the deadly terrorist attack in New York which left eight dead and 13 injured. ISESCO on Wednesday said whoever carried out the attack is a terrorist, whose heinous act is criminalised by Islam as a major sin, Xinhua news agency reported. The Islamic organ reiterated its rejection and condemnation of under all its forms. On Tuesday, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant, drove a pickup truck down a busy bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight and injuring 13. He was shot by police and then sent to a hospital. According to reports, he shouted "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great" in Arabic. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kuwait has strongly condemned the terrorist attack in New York in which eight persons were killed, the media reported. "Kuwait firmly rejects all forms of violence and terrorism," Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) quoted a foreign ministry source as saying on Wednesday, according to Xinhua. "Kuwait reiterates its support to the US in its endeavour to preserve its security and stability, as well as stressing (Kuwait's) supportive stance of international efforts to eradicate terrorism," the source said, extending condolences to families of the victims and wishes of speedy recovery for the wounded. On Tuesday, a pickup truck drove into the people on a cycle path in Lower Manhattan in New York, killing eight people and injuring 13 others. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The world of music is largely untouched by racism, says five-time Grammy winning producer Jeff Bhasker, who has worked with celebrated artistes like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson to Katy Perry, Alicia Keys, Rihanna as well as India's very own Jasbir Jassi. Bhasker, whose father was born in India and had moved to the US in 1955, was at the MTV India Music Summit here. It's his first visit to India in 30 years, and he was buoyed by the hospitality and warmth which gave him a "crash course in Indian culture". Of late, diversity and racism have been two of the most discussed issues in Hollywood. How prevalent and relevant are they in the context of music in the US? "I have to say that maybe actually, it's not as prevalent as in many other areas, because we have music in common to bind us together. There's less of emphasis on race and more emphasis on talent and ideas. Like people go 'Wow, I love what you're doing, and I like what you're doing'... Your race doesn't matter as much," Bhasker told IANS during a tete-a-tete. He, however, said that while "it kind of seems to be less", but when it comes to genres like hip-hop, R&B and rap, "from the business side, there used to be huge racism and emphasis on separating people, whereas in reality, music should bring people together". Bhasker's Grammy credits include awards for the songs "Run this town" by Jay-Z, "All of the lights" by Kanye West, "We are young" by Fun, and "Uptown funk" by Mark Ronson. He received the 2016 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical for co-producing Ronson's album "Uptown Special" and producing Nate Ruess's album "Grand Romantic", among other records. It was in 2010 when Bhasker had collaborated with Jassi on the album "Jassi - Back with a Bang". He's up for more. "Yes, absolutely. Look out for that one," he said, adding that he finds doing fusion "very surface-level and a bit predictable". "You take a little Indian thing and put it in a track and it sounds kind of exotic on the nose... That does not appeal to me. But maybe, taking a rhythm or a scale and doing a little more undercover where people didn't think 'Oh, that's Indian'... The possibilities of helping a new scene emerging in Indian music, that's very exciting to me," said the talented artiste, who is also a songwriter, keyboardist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. He enjoys how young talents are changing the landscape of music globally. "They have grown up with different tools to create music. I think it's fantastic. There are so many new, supremely-talented youngsters out there. I think combining what they're doing on their own, and combining with some old-fashioned song-writing and craft and techniques, can be so exciting in creating new forms. "At the summit here, I heard a lot about a clash between traditionalism and the future, and independent music and Bollywood. But there, in the US, it doesn't have to be one or the other. There, it's about taking the best of things and the cream is going to rise. You cannot keep talent down. It's going to emerge," said Bhasker, who has worked very closely with Bruno Mars and Kanye West. Celebrities from America's popular culture have been very vocal in condemning the country's current political scenario under President Donald Trump. Commenting on that, Bhasker said: "I hate to be a party pooper, but a lot of people have been jumping on to the bandwagon of protest politics. "In the past, in the 1960s, there was this tradition of protest music, and even that was kind of trendy... to be a hippie and protest. I think music can be a force, but it's almost an easy way out. "As a citizen of the country or of the world, you really need to educate yourself and be aware of laws, ballot initiatives, judges... Politics in itself just gives you the responsibility to understand what goes on in the society, not to protest it. But to understand and participate in the process." (The writer's trip was at the invitation of the MTV India Music Summit organisers. Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in) --IANS rb/nn/vm/sac (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump vowed during a phone call to continue jointly fighting terrorism, according to the White House. Modi expressed condolences for the deaths caused by the terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday, the White House statement said on Wednesday. "Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families," it said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism." Eight people - six of them foreign tourists - were killed when a Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a van into bicyclists and pedestrians near the 9/11 memorial. The attack was linked to the Islamic State (IS) because of statements he made after his arrest, authorities said. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in) --IANS al/pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) North Korea is working on an advanced version of its existing KN-20 intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially reach Washington, a US official told CNN CNN. This newly assessed ICBM is just one part of an accelerated effort by Kim Jong-un's regime to improve every part of its missile and nuclear weapons attack capability as quickly as possible, the official said late Wednesday. Additional new improvements are underway to North Korea's nuclear fuel, missile launchers, guidance and targeting systems as well, he added. This development comes ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Asia, where North Korea's nuclear programme will be a major topic of discussion. North Korea also appears to have made critical progress in developing warheads that will be capable of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and reaching a target at intercontinental ranges, CNN reported. At least two recent ballistic missile tests demonstrated a dummy warhead successfully re-entering the atmosphere at least in a limited fashion, by not shattering. --IANS ksk (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump has called the Uzbek immigrant arrested in Tuesday's terror attack that killed eight persons an "enemy combatant". However, prosecutors filed terrorism charges against him in a civilian federal court here. Acting federal prosecutor Joon Kim announced the filing of the charges in the civilian federal court on Wednesday, hours after Trump said that he would be open to sending Sayfullo Saipov to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, where terrorists captured abroad are tried by military tribunals. At the start of a cabinet meeting, in reply to a reporter's question about the possibility of Saipov being sent to Guantanmo, Trump said: "Send him to Gitmo -- I would certainly consider that, yes." Sending Saipov, 29, a legal immigrant with a green card, to Guantanamo for a military trial may raise legal questions while labelling him an "enemy combatant" may open the way for this. Guantanamo, known as Gitmo for short, is a US military base in Cuba -- in territory under American control. Saipov mowed down pedestrians and bicyclists with a rented truck on Tuesday. The rampage ended when the truck hit a school bus. After he emerged from it brandishing two fake guns, a police officer shot and arrested him. Six of those killed were foreign tourists. Twelve people were injured. The initial charges filed against Saipov are only about providing support to a terrorist organisation, the Islamic State (IS), and operating a motor vehicle in a manner that caused a death. These charges were meant to hold him in custody. More serious charges about the killing of eight people and other actions were expected later. New York state does not have death penalty but because he is charged in a federal court and not a state court, Saipov can face capital punishment under federal laws. The court papers said Saipov told officials in hospital that he felt "good" about what he had done and asked them to put an IS flag in his hospital room. He told the officials that he was inspired by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and had planned the attack more than a year ago, choosing Halloween day because he thought he could do the maximum damage then. About a week before the attack, he told the officers, he had made a trial run of the area near the 9/11 memorial and had planned to continue his attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. But he could not because of the collision with the school bus. Officials said in the court document that on Saipov's cellphones they found about 90 IS videos with bomb-making instructions and showing beheading of prisoners and running them over with tanks. Earlier at a news conference, New York Police Counter-terrorism Deputy Commissioner John Miller said Saipov "appears to have followed almost to a 'T' the instructions that IS has put out" for carrying out vehicle attacks. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in) --IANS al/in/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has indirectly conceded that his ministry was not in authoritative control of the countrys foreign policy. Winding up discussion on US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's October visit to South Asia and the new American strategy on Afghanistan, Asif said the foreign policy was being shaped by different institutions and no single institution was in charge of foreign affairs, Dawn online reported on Thursday. But he said on Wednesday that the policy was framed in the light of recommendations of the National Security Committee and Parliament. Senator Farhatullah Babar had criticised Asif for advising the Americans to have an Afghan policy free from the influence of generals and asked him to apply the same in Pakistan. The Minister responded: "I agree that it should be so." Asif said he had not "unwittingly" criticised American generals for their failure in Afghanistan. He said the new US policy was ineffective because it was influenced by the generals who suffered defeat in Kabul. "The Americans have devised a framework for their policy for South Asia which is in fact focused on Afghanistan. It was devised by generals who have struggled in Afghanistan for the last 15 years. "I do not think any policy can be made by people with that baggage and mindset," he said. Asif said he had urged the State Department and other policy-making institutions in the US to have greater control of the American policy "instead of relying on President (Donald) Trump's rejected approach to this problem". The Minister reiterated that Pakistan wanted a regional solution to the Afghan problem. "The entire region has a role to play in the Afghan process and Pakistan wishes for a regional solution to the security challenges faced by the country." --IANS soni/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Following the appointment of its major business division heads, Samsung on Thursday announced the promotion of some of its key executives. Samsung said that while the three former business division heads will not be involved in business management, they will still "leverage their knowledge and insight" to advise the current managerial team, Yonhap news agency reported. It promoted Kwon Oh-hyun, former head of the chip division, to become the chairman of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Yoon Boo-keun, former head of the consumer electronics business, was also promoted to vice chairman for Samsung's corporate relations matters. Shin Jong-kyun, who headed the mobile arm of the tech giant, was appointed the vice chairman for the company's human resources development. "As previously stated, they will leave the Board of Directors as of March 2018," Samsung was quoted as saying. Earlier this week, Samsung named next generation leaders for its chip, mobile and consumer electronics divisions. The company named President Kim Ki-nam to head the device solutions division. President Kim Hyun-suk was named to head consumer electronics, while President Koh Dong-jin was tapped as the new head of the IT and mobile division. The reshuffle came amid a major leadership crisis after Lee Jae-yong, who had been the de facto chief of Samsung, was imprisoned in February for his connection to a scandal that led to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye. He was slapped with a five-year jail term in August. --IANS sku/na/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) St+art -- a foundation that organises art projects in public spaces is returning to the streets of Mumbai with its second edition of Urban Art Festival. The mural festival will bring together 40 artists from India and abroad with support from Asian Paints and in association with Mumbai Port Trust (MBPT), Western Railway, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Singapore Tourism Board, Bonjour India, Institut Francais and the JSW Group. Rooted around re-discovering the city through art and urban design interventions, St+art Mumbai is hosting five art projects between October 18 and December 30, 2017. This time, the murals will be drawn at some of the iconic places in the city like Churchgate Station, Mahim East, Sassoon Dock and Jindal Mansion. The aim is to connect these areas of modern Mumbai, which seem so distant from one another, yet are part of a shared history and explore how integral these spaces have been to the cultural history and development of the city. "Mumbai is a city of contrasts and several untold stories. Through the St+art Mumbai 2017 festival we hope to dig deeper into the fabric of the city and also reintroduce the people to some of its forgotten spaces," St+art India Foundation Co-Founder Akshat Nauriyal said in a statement. Amit Syngle, President-Sales, Marketing, Technology and Home Improvement, Asian Paints Ltd. said: "We want to take art to the masses and make it accessible to a wider range of spectators. The idea is to open spaces to dialogues, conversations and culture creation through the lens of the city." "The port has been a standing testimony of Mumbai's evolution and this initiative of wall painting and its exhibition is a step further in this direction. We welcome the artists, both international and Indian in their journey to revamp the Sassoon Dock with their murals and take it to global limelight," Sanjay Bhatia, Chairman, Mumbai Port Trust noted. Across the past three years, the foundation has organised six mural art festivals and numerous public art projects in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, creating iconic landmarks within the cities. --IANS som/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea on Thursday warned that Pyongyang might carry out new missile tests soon, after Seoul detected movements in North's military installations. NIS representatives told a parliamentary committee that they had seen an active movement of vehicles around a missile research facility in Pyongyang which could suggest a possible missile launch for the first time since September 15, Efe news reported. The warnings came just before US President Donald Trump begins a tour of Asia including visits to Japan, South Korea and China, centred on the North Korean crisis among other issues. Repeated weapon tests by North Korea, including a nuclear test on September 3, as well as strong war rhetoric from the Trump administration had escalated tensions to unprecedented levels since the Korean War in the 1950s. The NIS representatives said the North may carry out more nuclear tests and could push for developing miniature nuclear warheads, Yonhap reported. The NIS also said that tunnel 3 at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site was ready for a nuclear test at any moment although the facility could have suffered considerable damage after the powerful test on September 3. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is currently in South Korea on a two-day visit, on Thursday urged for a peaceful solution to the North Korean crisis. However, he insisted that NATO was ready for any scenario and had the capability to deter attacks. --IANS soni/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday said his party's 75-day, statewide rally in Karnataka was to oust the "corrupt" Congress government and bring in a "parivartan (change)" in the state. "The rally is to bring about 'parivartan' in Karnataka -- to change the situation of the farmers, youth and the justice system in the state and to remove the corrupt Congress government in the state," Shah said addressing the party gathering here to flag off the "Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra". Shah's visit to the state came four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was here on October 29, Shah was in the state capital to flag off the rally titled Quoting a media survey without naming any details, Shah said the Siddaramaiah government was at the top as the "most corrupt government" in the country. "The Narendra Modi government has been sending across funds to the state (which were) nearly 2.5 times more than it received during the time when the Congress ruled at the centre," Shah said, adding around Rs 2,90,500 crore was released and the Chief Minister must tell the people of the state where all this money has been spent. Criticising the government's decision to host Tipu Jayanti on the erstwhile Mysore ruler's birth anniversary on November 10, Shah said the state government was "not interested" in the state formation day's celebrations as it was in celebrating Tipu Sultan's birth anniversary. The state has had "no concern for security", the BJP chief lamented, adding that "Over 10 BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers were killed in the state and the stateAgovernment has had no answer."A "People must choose that government that is focused towards taking the state ahead," Shah said, reiterating that BJP's state unit president and the party's Chief Ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa is capable of bringing "development" to the state. Reacting to Shah's allegations of the Congress government being "corrupt", Siddaramaiah said it was "interesting" to see the "Parivartana" rally being led by Yeddyurappa and Shah, who both went to jail on criminal charges. "It is good that BJP is going on Parivartana Yatra. Their way of doing penance for the sins of their past," the Chief Minister tweeted.A "Interesting that Parivaratana Yatra should be led by Yeddyurappa and inaugurated by Amit Shah - both of whom went to jain on criminal charges," he said. BJP's 75-day rally will be held across the state in two phases, an official from the state unit said. "We are conducting the rally till January-end, covering all the 224 assembly segments to bring our party back to power in Karnataka," the official told IANS here. The rally will cover 17 districts in the first phase and 13 districts in the second phase, which will be flagged by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Hubballi on December 21, said the official. Modi will address the rally on its last day here on January 28. About three lakh cadres and supporters of the party will participate in the rally on motor bikes and four-wheelers, with Yeddyurappa at the forefront onboard a customised special bus. The assembly elections in the southern state are due in April-May, 2018. The BJP came to power on its own for the first time in 2008 but lost to the Congress in the May 2013 assembly election. --IANS bha/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bharatiya Janata Party's National President Amit Shah on Thursday flagged off the party's statewide 75-day rally in poll-bound Karnataka at a huge gathering of its leaders and cadres. Shah, who had landed at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited airport in the morning, was stranded in traffic for over an hour, after which he was flown in a chopper to the party workers' gathering at Bengaluru International Exhibition Centre on the city's outskirts. Thousands of party cadres on two-wheelers going to the meeting caused traffic snarls on several of the city's arterial roads leading to the venue. "We are conducting the rally till January-end, covering all the 224 assembly segments to bring our party back to power in Karnataka," an official of the party's state unit told IANS here. Nearly one lakh party workers and supporters from across the state gathered in the city to take part in the bike rally from here. The assembly elections are due in April-May, 2018. The BJP came to power on its own for the first time in 2008 but lost to the Congress in the May 2013 assembly election. Coming four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state on October 29, the rally titled "Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra" will criss-cross the state in two phases. "The rally will cover 17 districts in the first phase and 13 districts in the second phase, which will be flagged by our party leader and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Hubballi on December 21," said the official. Modi will address the rally on its last day here on January 28. About three lakh cadres and supporters of the party will participate in the twin-phase rally on motor bikes and four-wheelers, with state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa at the forefront onboard a customised special bus. Yeddyurappa, who was Chief Minister from 2008 to 11, is also a lawmaker in the Lok Sabha from Shivamogga in the state's Malnad region. "Besides party leaders in the state, several Union Ministers will participate in the rally and address the people on putting Karnataka back on development, as the Congress had failed to deliver on all fronts," said the official. Among the central ministers are D.V. Sadananada Gowda, Anantha Kumar, Ramesh Jigijinagi and A.K.Hegde who hail from the state and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha lawmaker from the state. The party's former Chief Minister in the state Jagadish Shettar, former Deputy Chief Ministers K. Eshwarappa, A.R. Ashok, former Minster and the party's lawmaker in the Lok Sabha from Chikkamagaluru Shobha Karandlaje will also be part of the rally. --IANS fb-bha/him/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Streamlining taxation along with healthy competition among states to attract domestic and global investors will help India break into the top 50 in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry C.R. Chaudhary said on Thursday. "We need to think about providing incentives to the industry and we have been simplifying the procedures," Chaudhary said here while inaugurating an Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) Ease Doing Business Summit. He said that it is due to the efforts of all the stakeholders that India leaped 30 spots to 100th rank in the World Bank's latest global rankings. "Our target is to come at 50th place and that will happen when we facilitate industrialists and investors. "Without encouraging the manufacturing sector and without foreign direct investment (FDI), we cannot develop and come in the category of developed countries," he added. He urged the industry to take steps to improve the quality of their products thereby adhering to "zero defect and zero effect" policy. "We need to maintain quality otherwise it will become very difficult for us to sustain in the international markets." In this regard, he referred to the European Union's ban on India's basmati rice exports because of certain "technical points". "We had sought time in our last meeting with representatives of France, President of Czech Republic as we need to spread awareness among farmers about not to sprinkle such pesticides. "It is a very positive thing for our private players and entrepreneurs who are now directly collaborating with foreign companies and getting investments in the country which has been facilitated through ease of doing business," Chaudhary said. Lauding the government's efforts in attracting a record $60 billion worth of FDI in a single year, he invited the domestic and global investors to reap dividends by investing in the infrastructure and logistics sector that provide huge scope. He also said that the government's main focus is on enhancing production of quality material, attracting domestic and foreign investments in large numbers, enhancing exports and creating more employment opportunities. --IANS mm/ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Swedish Government has set a new target for the number of annual army recruits, a media report said. The new target, announced on Thursday, follows on from a proposal presented last year as part of a government inquiry into expanding Sweden's military defence capabilities. "This is the first stage in a process where we are testing the possibility of increasing the size of the defence force," Minister for Defence, Peter Hultqvist, told Swedish Television, Xinhua news agency reported. He said the government move means that financial and organisational prerequisites for expanding the army will be reviewed. Sweden cancelled the draft in 2010 but decided to reintroduce a partial draft in March this year when the government announced that 13,000 young men and women would be called in for army enrolment. Out of those, a total 4,000 would be selected for basic training in 2018 and another 4,000 in 2019. The new target is to have 5,000 recruits per year from 2020. --IANS amit (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Syrian Army has captured a key neighbourhood in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour city following battles with the Islamic State (IS) group, a military officer said. The army and allied fighters on Thursday captured the Hamidiyeh neighborhood, where most of the IS command centres were located, Xinhua news agency quoted the officer as saying on condition of anonymity. He added that there are still areas under the IS control in Deir al-Zour city, denying reports of the full control of army over the city. --IANS amit (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US federal prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against the suspect of Tuesday's truck attack in New York which left eight dead and 13 others injured. Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon Kim announced the charges at a news conference in New York on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The suspect - Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, now in custody, faces two charges, namely, providing material support for a terrorist organization, specifically ISIS, and a federal charge of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle with willful disregard for human life. If convicted, he could face life imprisonment or death penalty, according to Kim. The suspect, an Uzbek immigrant, had been planning what is called the worst terror attack on New York City (NYC) since September 11, 2001, "for a number of weeks," John Miller, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said at a press conference. "He did this in the name of IS (Islamic State)," Miller said, citing some notes recovered at the scene. On Tuesday afternoon, Saipov drove a pickup truck down a busy bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing 8 and injuring 13. He was shot by police and then sent to a hospital. According to reports, he shouted "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great" in Arabic. "He appears to have followed almost exactly the instructions that IS has put out in its social media channels before... on how to carry out such an attack," Miller said. The investigation into the attack is "in its infancy," and investigators do not yet have all the answers, NYPD Commissioner James P. O'Neill told the press conference. Of the eight killed, five were from Argentina, one from Germany and the remaining two from the US, according to New York City Fire Department (FDNY) commissioner Daniel A. Nigro, who was also present at the press conference. Of those injured, three have been released from the hospital, and four are critically injured but stable, Nigro said, adding the others are seriously injured. The deadly attack seemed not to have daunted New Yorkers, evident in a large crowd showing up in all sorts of costumes in an annual Halloween parade in Manhattan. "We will not be cowed. We will not be thrown off by anything," NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the press conference. He added that Sunday's NYC marathon would go on as scheduled, which would be "well protected". --IANS pgh/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump has announced that semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom, currently based in Singapore, will move its main headquarters back to the US, a media report said. Trump made the announcement on Thursday during an Oval Office ceremony accompanied by Broadcom's President and CEO Hock Tan, Efe news reported. He emphasized that his administration is working every day to make the US the "most attractive place in the world to do business so that more and more companies like Broadcom come back to our shores, grow their businesses and create more and more American jobs". "And you see it happening on a daily basis." The White House said that Broadcom will transfer the legal domicile of its main HQ to Delaware, a move that will allow the US to benefit from the more than $20 billion in annual income earned by the firm. Broadcom, with a market value of some $100 billion, currently employed some 7,000 US workers in 24 states. --IANS amit (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has announced he will nominate Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the American central bank. He will replace Janet Yellen as Chair of the Federal Reserve. Powell, a lawyer and former US Treasury official, will be the first Fed chair in three decades without a Ph.D. in economics. The President had settled on Powell by October 28 and spoke with him on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency earlier quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying. Trump had recently concluded interviews of five candidates for the next Fed chair, including Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. --IANS amit (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to China from November 8-10 at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Thursday. The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said in a release, Xinhua news agency reported. He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results for Trump's visit and Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN has called for voluntary repatriation of thousands of Rohingya refugees that have fled to Bangladesh and also free access of humanitarian aid in Myanmar's Rakhine state. The UN Assistant High Commissioner (Protection), Volker Turk, issued the call on Wednesday as he met with members of the Myanmar government on a two-day visit to Nay Pyi Taw, reports Efe news. During the meetings, Turk urged the government "to ensure a safe environment and the protection of all communities in Rakhine State" and also asked them to provide unrestricted access to allow humanitarian organisations "to provide life-saving aid and build confidence among communities in need". Turk also reiterated the refugees' right to return and asked that they be assured a "safe, voluntary, and sustainable repatriation to their places of origin". The UN official applauded the Myanmar government's proposal to hold a joint workshop with the UN Refugee Agency "on the international standards guiding voluntary repatriation" and reiterated its support to the government. According to the UN, at least 603,000 refugees are currently living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing from the ongoing military operations launched after the attacks against police and military posts in Rakhine by Rohingya insurgents on August 25. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called the military campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority group, not recognised as citizens in Myanmar, as ethnic cleansing. --IANS ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Iranian Supreme Leader said on Thursday that resistance was the only way to face the US, which he considered to be Tehran's main enemy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was addressing thousands of school and university students to honour the National Day of the Fight Against Hegemony, which is to be celebrated on Saturday and commemorates the taking of the US embassy in Tehran by students in 1979. "The US is literally the nefarious and major enemy, and this has been established not through bias and pessimism, but through experience, the realization of issues and field facts," state-run IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. Khamenei said that the US had been taking measures in order to sabotage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In 2015, Tehran, P5+1 (the US, Russia, Briatin, France and China plus Germany) and the EU signed the JCPOA, which limits Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for easing the sanctions imposed on the Middle Eastern country. US President Donald Trump on October 13 threatened to cancel the deal if it was not modified, which Iran refused to do. Khamenei referred to Trump's remarks, such as calling Iran a terrorist nation, as an example of America's belligerent attitude towards the country. "These absurd words show that not only are the Americans an enemy of Iran's leader and government, but that they also hold a grudge against Iranian people who have tirelessly resisted against them," he added. --IANS ahm/vm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The White House retains a list of 20 terrorist groups that it claims are operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is believed to have shared this list with Islamabad, the media reported on Thursday. However, the list was not given to Pakistani authorities by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he visited Islamabad last week, diplomatic sources told Dawn news. The White House list includes three types of militant groups: those who launch attacks into Afghanistan, those who attack targets inside Pakistan and those who are focused on Kashmir. Top on the list is the Haqqani Network which, the US claims, has safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and uses them to launch attacks into Afghanistan. Pakistan strongly rejects the charge, saying that there were no such safe havens inside the country. The US also identified Lashkar-e-Taiba as one of the largest and most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. The other militant groups in the list include Harakatul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jundullah, Lashkar-i-Jhanghvi and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. --IANS ksk/bg (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Comedian David Walliams landed himself in cold water over social media. He was called racist for dressing up as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as he headed to a famous Halloween party. Walliams, 46, shared few photographs over Instagram on Tuesday alongside his celebrity friends, including Alan Carr, Michael McIntyre and John Bishop, reports mirror.co.uk. But one of his images -- a solo shot of him in his costume -- sparked a debate amongst his followers. "Happy Halloween from Kim Jong-un," he captioned the image. While some social media users found it was hilarious, some lashed out at him. "If you did not find any problem in here, you are all racists. Wearing yellow face and small eyes? What is wrong with you people? What will you say if someone put black face for Halloween? Bunch of racists. Pathetic," one follower wrote in the comment section. Another added: "You could have done without yellow-facing". --IANS sas/rb (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has said he will consider sending the suspect in Tuesday's terror attack in New York to the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Trump also said he would ask Congress to terminate the visa lottery program under which the suspect Sayfullo Saipova, a native of Uzbekistan, entered the country. During a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Wednesday, Trump told reporters the US government needed to be much tougher and smarter and less politically correct and accused previous administrations, particularly that of predecessor Barack Obama, of being overly soft on immigration and terrorism, Efe news reported. "Send him to Gitmo - I would certainly consider that," Trump, using a nickname for Guantanamo, said when asked about that possibility by one reporter. No one detained on US soil has ever been sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, located on a US military base in Cuba, and no suspected terrorists captured abroad have been transferred there since 2008. Obama vowed to close Guantanamo upon taking office in early 2009; although he did not keep that promise, he reduced its population from 242 inmates to 41 by transferring nearly 200 individuals to third countries. While awaiting fresh details about the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Efe news on Wednesday that Saipov had entered the country under the so-called Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which offers up to 50,000 visas per year to nations with a low rate of immigration to the US. Trump had been critical of that program prior to Tuesday's attack, but on Wednesday he went a step further. "I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program," Trump said. "We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit and we want to get rid of chain migration," Trump added, telling reporters that Saipov had been allowed to bring in 23 other people as a "primary point of contact." The Diversity Visa Lottery Program originated in a bill that was introduced in 1990 by US lawmaker Chuck Schumer (then a member of the US House of Representatives) and subsequently absorbed into a broader immigration bill that was passed with the votes of Democrats and Republicans and signed by then-President George H.W. Bush. Investigators say Saipov on Tuesday used a rented Home Depot pickup truck to run over several people on a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, killing eight and injuring 13 before smashing into a school bus. The suspect, who eyewitnesses say screamed "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," and waved a paintball gun and a pellet gun after stepping out of the vehicle, was shot at least once in the abdomen by police and is now hospitalized in critical but stable condition. Saipov had spent several weeks preparing the attack and precisely followed the online instructions of the Islamic State terror organization, authorities in New York said on Wednesday in a press conference. The Maharashtra governments decision to ask the Indian Army to build foot overbridges in Mumbai has sparked a debate. The Army has carried out similar tasks in the border areas and on dangerous terrain, where its expertise was required. But in the middle of the nations business capital? The recent surge in public sector banks (PSBs) has created a momentum play where they look more attractive to traders. The differences in valuations between private banks and PSBs have reduced. Most PSBs trade at low valuations, while many private banks trade at high valuations. That differential could reduce. Congress vice-president will visit Raebareli on Thursday following an explosion at the Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant that left 18 people dead. Rahul, who was in Gujarat on Wednesday for the election campaigning, took to Twitter and said, "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. I will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon." Rahul was in Gujarat as part of his three-day Navsarjan Yatra, ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in the state. Earlier on Wednesday, at least 18 people were killed and 100 others sustained injuries after an ash pipe exploded due to pressure at the NTPC plant in Unchahar area of Raebareli. The Congress vice-president also expressed his condolences over the deaths and tweeted, "I am deeply saddened with the incident at the Rae Bareli's NTPC plant. My heartfelt condolences are with the family of the deceased. I request the administration to help the injured immediately." Former Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta is set to lead a series of meetings across the state under the banner of Lokshahi Bachao Abhiyan, or the campaign to save democracy. Gujarat is scheduled to vote on December 9 and 14. Over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims from India today reached Pakistan to attend the 549th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev. Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Chairman Siddiqul Farooq welcomed the Sikh pilgrims at Wagah Railway Station. Soon after their arrival, the pilgrims left for Janum Asthan of Baba Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib, the Dawn reported. The birth anniversary celebrations of Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, will commence from November 2. The main function of the festival will be held at Nankana Sahib on November 4, where the pilgrims will perform sacred rituals. After that, the devotees will leave for Punja Sahib, Hassanabdal. They will return to Lahore on November 9. The pilgrims will leave for India on November 11. Farooq said that arrangements for the celebrations have been finalised by the board and assured that ETPB will provide foolproof security, transport, accommodation and other facilities to the visiting pilgrims. Speaking on the occasion, group leader Sardar Gurmeet Singh said Sikh pilgrims have come to Pakistan with the message of love, peace, friendship and harmony. "Pakistan is the land of Sikh Gurus and Sikhs love this land. We are always welcomed with love and it is a true example of Sikh-Muslim friendship," he maintained. Earlier in the day, Pakistan High Commission in Delhi issued visas to over 2,600 Indian Sikhs for the pilgrimage to Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal. The visas were issued "in line with the Pakistan government's efforts to promote religious tourism and people- to-people interactions," the foreign office said in a statement. Every year, devotees from all over the world gather at Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal to celebrate Baba Guru Nanak's birth anniversary. The celebrations last for more than a week during which sacred rituals are performed at the Gurdwara and sweets and langar are offered, irrespective of religious orientation. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An unidentified gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in the US state of Colorado today, killing three persons including a woman. Hundreds of emergency responders ringed the Thornton Town Centre shopping complex for hours after the shooting was reported around 5 am IST. The Walmart is part of the centre. "Multiple parties" were down, Thornton police said in a tweet. An hour later, the Thornton Police Department tweeted, "At this time this is not an active shooter". The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital. No arrests have been made. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line at the Walmart when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Investigators, who have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting, were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses to get a description of the shooter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Aminiature toy, kept in a snack pack to lure children into buying the packet, turned out to be fatal for a four-year-old boy who mistakenly swallowed it in Eluru town of Andhra Pradesh's West Godavari district. Meesala Nireekshan, who unsuspectingly chewed and swallowed the plastic toy along with tomato rings in the packet at his home in Eluru last evening, choked to death, a police official said today. The tiny toy was stuffed inside the snack pack and, after a few bites of the tomato rings, the boy consumed it as well mistaking it for an eatable, he said. "He then started vomiting and froth oozed out of his mouth when his mother saw him. Stuck in the throat, the toy caused the boy to choke as the efforts to pull it out failed," the official said. The boy was immediately rushed to the government hospital where he was declared brought dead, he said. The boy's parents later filed a police complaint with the Two Town Police against the snack manufacturer, he said. A case under relevant sections pertaining to unnatural death was registered in connection with the incident, the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nine people who received serious injuries in the NTPC boiler blast in Raebareli yesterday are likely to be flown in here for treatment at the AIIMS and Safdurjung hospitals, a senior health minister official said today. All necessary arrangements have been made at the AIIMS trauma centre and the Safdurjung hospital "as directed by the Union health minister", the official said. "About nine patients are likely to be shifted here today," he added. A Safdurjung Hospital source said they are likely to be flown in in a defence aircraft. Earlier in the day, the NTPC said in a statement the toll in the massive explosion in the boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant has reached 29, while 85 are being treated at hospitals in Raebareli and Lucknow. Union Health Minister J P Nadda is in regular contact with the state authorities, the health ministry official said. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad, had announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the family of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, besides Rs 25,000 for other injured workers. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. In a statement, the NTPC has said that at unit number 6 of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Ram Nath Kovind today warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic and said over 90 per cent of those affected by mental health issues do not receive the required medical care. While inaugurating the World Congress of Mental Health here, the president quoted World Health Organisation (WHO) figures to state that India has one of the highest prevalence of mental illnesses globally. "Our National Mental Health Survey, 2016 found that close to 14 per cent of India's population required active mental health interventions. About two per cent suffered from severe mental disorders," Kovind said. Nearly two hundred thousand Indians take their own lives each year and if data for attempted suicide was included the number went up substantially, he added. The president warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic. "These are worrying statistics. It is also a fact that those living in metropolitan cities and those who were young whether in the productive age group, or children and teenagers are most vulnerable to mental illnesses, he said. In India, he said, both these factors were a cause for concern as India had a young population, with 65 per cent of people below the age of 35. "And our society is rapidly urbanising. This leaves us staring at a possible mental health epidemic," he said. Given the figures, the president said, it was "an irony that 90 per cent of Indians in need simply don't receive mental healthcare". "There are several reasons for this and I hope they will be addressed in this conference," he said. The president said these issues should be treated with a correct approach. "The biggest obstacle that mental health patients have to encounter is stigma and denial. This leads to the issue being ignored or simply not discussed. In some cases it leads to self-diagnosis that is unsuitable or could worsen the situation. It may even lead to other extreme steps," he said. Kovind added that as a society the country would have to fight this culture of stigma. "We need to talk about mental health issues and treat ailments such as depression and stress as diseases that can be cured-not as guilty secrets that must be pushed under the carpet," he said. Kovind also highlighted the "scarcity" of doctors and counsellors to treat such instances. "A second major gap in combating the mental health challenge is that of human resources. India is a country with 1.25 billion people but just seven hundred thousand doctors less than one million," he underlined. In the field of mental health, he said, the scarcity was even more acute. There are only about five thousand psychiatrists and less than two thousand clinical psychologists in the country, Kovind said. "We need to act," he said, adding that these numbers of doctors and mental health experts were extremely inadequate. "It is vital to tap into our wealth of traditional knowledge and link its learning to modern research on mental health. This will promote a holistic approach to mental healthcare, combining the best of different fields of practice," he said. The president said India's mental health challenge was like capturing a society in multiple transitions. "From traditional diseases, it is gradually non- communicable diseases that are emerging as a major threat to our people and their well being. This is part of a worldwide trend. And many non-communicable diseases are either rooted in or associated with mental health issues," he said. About a thousand delegates, including 300 from across the globe, are participating in the conference. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Telecom major Bharti Airtel has opposed any removal of the upper limit on spectrum holding in a frequency band so that no service provider gains dominance in holding radiowaves, as per official sources. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led firm's stand comes amid speculations that Reliance Jio may acquire premium spectrum of Reliance Communications in the 800 Mhz band -- considered to be the most efficient frequency available at present for transmitting 4G signals. Mobile operators in the country use various spectrum bands to provide voice and data services -- 800 Mhz band, 900 Mhz, 1800 Mhz, 2100 Mhz, 2300 Mhz and 2500 Mhz. Government rules bar any company from holding more than 25 per cent spectrum allocated in a service area and above 50 per cent in a spectrum. RCom shares its spectrum holding in 800 Mhz band with Jio but there is no known announcement or development of either on trading spectrum. "Airtel is not in favour of removing spectrum band cap," an official source said on condition of anonymity. Email query sent to Airtel received no immediate comment on the matter. The submission of Airtel is learnt to have been made to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) which is holding limited consultation on revising spectrum cap. The Department of Telecom, based on suggestion of an inter-ministerial group (IMG) on measures to resolve financial crisis in the telecom sector, had asked Trai to give its views on spectrum cap before government takes any policy decision on the issue. The IMG had recommended revising spectrum cap limit which would facilitate exit route for loss making telecom companies. Bharti Airtel had presented similar stand in response to Trai's consultation paper on valuation and reserve price of spectrum in 2015, while Reliance Jio had favoured removing spectrum band cap. "Intra-band spectrum cap of 50 per cent should be continued for each band... Acceptance of any proposal to combine the spectrum bands for calculation of caps would lead to concentration of the spectrum in those bands, especially in 800 MHz and 2300 MHz band with one operator and therefore, will skew the market in favour of one operator," Airtel had said. It had justified the spectrum band cap saying that it has effectively served the interest of competition and the industry. "It not only avoids spectrum concentration in a particular band with a single operator but also enables others to acquire adequate/proportionate spectrum in every band," Airtel had said. Removal or raising of spectrum band cap will benefit Idea Cellular and Vodafone also as both the companies are in the process of merging their telecom business and the resultant entity will breach spectrum cap in some circles. The combined entity, as per a CLSA report, under present norms will breach spectrum cap in 900 Mhz band in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Kerala, Haryana and UP West and in 2500 Mhz band in Maharashtra and Gujarat, it said. CLSA estimated that the excess spectrum which would need to be surrendered or sold off is valued around Rs 5,400 crore. Besides, for the merger both the companies will have to shell out Rs 5,700 crore for liberalising radiowaves that they were allocated administratively. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tension gripped the religious town of Shukertal after a statue of BR Ambedkar was found damaged here, the police said today. Dalits under Bhopa police station had yesterday staged a protest after the statue outside an Ashram here was found damaged, SP (Rural) Ajay Sehdev said. A case against unidentified men was lodged, the police said. Security has been tightened with the deployment of extra police force, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Global direct selling major Amway today batted for reduction of GST rate on food supplements saying prevention of health issues must also be given similar importance as curatives. Set to complete 20 years of operations in India next year growing at a CAGR of 20 per cent, the company also said it could have grown much faster in the country but for the lack of legislation for direct selling industry. Amway, which expects its Indian operations to touch sales of USD 1 billion by 2025-26, will cross the Rs 2,000 crore turnover market next year with over half of its current sales coming from food supplements brand Nutrilite. "Today GST on pharmaceuticals is 12 per cent. If you strongly believe that prevention is better than cure, why should GST on supplements, which are preventive be more than double that on curative?" Amway Regional President- Europe, India & Africa Samir Behl told PTI. He said under the current GST structure, food supplements under which its brand Nutrilite brand falls, attract the top slab of 28 per cent. "It has gone from 14 per cent to 28 per cent for Nutrilite and has impacted our topline," Behl added. Commenting on Amway's journey in India, he said, "Next year we will complete 20 years...we have grown at a CAGR of 20 per cent." Behl further said: "We would have actually grown faster out here but the big challenge the industry faces is about lack of legislation. There is no law which governs the direct selling industry." In 2014, former Amway India MD and CEO William Scott Pinckney was arrested under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, (PCMCS) following a complaint alleging unethical circulation of money through its operations. The company had then termed the arrest an unwarranted act on frivolous charges that gave a misleading impression about its business. Putting the bitter experience behind, Behl said last year after working closely with the direct selling industry, the ministry of consumer affairs the ministry issued guidelines for the sector, "which is a step in the right direction". The industry is also working with the government so that Consumer Protection Act could be passed in Parliament, he said. "Once that can be converted into a law, that will make it that much stronger ... I think legislation combined with a more appropriate GST will add more to the growth momentum," Behl said. Stressing on the need to have a proper law to govern the direct selling industry, he said: "Once we have a legislation in place for the industry, which I feel is currently the single biggest impediment for growth, will certainly help a lot in streamlining and growing the industry faster. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress in Bihar today said it will observe the first anniversary of demonitisation on November 8 'kala divas' (black day) as per the direction of AICC, party sources said. A party release said here that BPCC acting president Kaukab Qadri has appointed observers in every district unit to ensure the success of the programme. "The Kala Diwas programme will include rallies and demonstrations at all district headquarters during the day followed by candle light marches in the evening in memory of those who lost their lives due to hardships suffered in the aftermath of demonetisation," it added. Several other opposition parties in the country, including the main opposition RJD in Bihar, have decided to hold rallies or stage protests against demonetisation on the day. However, the BJP has maintained that the drive had proved to be effective in curbing black money and announced that it would observe the day as "Kala Dhan VirodhI Diwas" (anti-black money day). (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior BJP leader C P Thakur today questioned the decision by the NDA government in Bihar to introduce reservation in outsourced services, saying this may lead to public resentment and a drop in investment in the state. "I think there was no need to introduce reservation in outsourced services. There is already scope for better implementation of the reservation system in sectors where the quota system is in place", Thakur, former Union minister and ex-Bihar BJP president, said expressing dissenting opinion. "What the government needs to do is to pay more attention to spread of education among the socially backward classes. Introducing reservations in a new sector may make a section of the society feel that the space available to it is shrinking. This may lead to public resentment that may become difficult to handle", Thakur, who is a BJP Rajya Sabha member, added. "The decision could send a rather unfavourable message outside Bihar. Investors from outside the state may get discouraged by this to put their money in Bihar", he said. Meanwhile, reacting to Thakur's comment, Janata Dal (United) state spokesman Neeraj Kumar said "if Thakur has strong views on the matter, he should raise his voice on his own party forum. The decision to introduce reservation in outsourced services was taken by the Nitish Kumar government, of which BJP is a part". Former Chief Minister and leader of the Hindustan Awam Morcha - an NDA constituent in Bihar - Jitan Ram Manjhi said "the views expressed by Thakur appear to be personal and not of the party to which he belongs. We need not pay much heed to it". At a meeting of the state cabinet chaired by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar yesterday, nod was given to introduce reservation in outsourced contractual appointment made by the state government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Boosting road infrastructure in the Himalayan region is important as it has security dimensions, Union minister Subhash Bhamre said today. Participating in a two-day seminar organised by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) here, the Minister of State for Defence said building road infrastructure was a vital activity for socio-economic development of an area and its integration with rest of the countries. "Road infrastructure in the Himalayan region is significant as in such areas having security concerns, a reliable and all-weather connectivity becomes all the more important," he said. The minister's remarks come in the wake of India-China stand-off in Dokalam near the Bhutan trijunction. The government has been focusing to boost infrastructure along the nearly 4,000 km long Sino-India border, including the areas of dispute, following the Dokalam episode. Bhamre said maintaining an all-weather road in the Upper Himalayan region was a serious concern for road construction agencies due to a difficult terrain, heavy snowfall, intense avalanches, sub-zero temperature, fragile geology and ecological concerns. "It not only has a major bearing on socio-economic and overall development of the area, but also the strategic needs of the region and its integration with rest of the world," he said. The Union minister said construction of tunnels was the only viable option to ensure all-weather connectivity and meeting ecological and environmental concerns. The seminar titled 'Challenges in Planning, Investigation, Design and Construction of Highway Tunnels in Himalayan Region' was also addressed by Director General of BRO Lt General S K Srivastava, Engineer in Chief and Senior Colonel Commandant Lt General Suresh Sharma, Delhi Metro MD Mangu Singh, and IIT Delhi director Prof V Ramgopal Rao. Rao offered expertise of his institution to the BRO for monitor and maintenance of the tunnel-like structures built by the latter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Enhancing trade ties and bolstering efforts to combat terrorism will be among the key issues that will be discussed during Belgian King Philippe's maiden state visit to India next week. India and Belgium are expected to ink 18 pacts in Delhi and nearly 23 agreements in Mumbai in the areas of trade, investment, smart cities, agro-food and animal husbandry during the Belgian King and Queen Mathilde's trip to India from November 5-11. The King will meet President Ram Nath Kovind and hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. The royal couple will also visit the iconic Taj Mahal and in the third and the last leg of their visit, the King and the Queen will be in Mumbai. During his stay in Mumbai, King Philippe will also meet Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar Rao. "The underlined theme of this state visit is one about Belgium and India (working) towards an innovative partnership in the 21st century," Jan Luykx, Belgian ambassador to India said, noting that the two nations are completing 70 years of diplomatic ties. Belgium was also among the first European countries to establish a diplomatic mission in India after independence. Luykx, while briefing reporters on the King and Queen's state visit to India, said the royal couple will also commemorate Indian soldiers' effort of defending Belgium during the First World War and lay a wreath at India Gate. The King will be accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Didier Reynders and other senior ministers and officials. As trade will be one of the key issues to be discussed, the Belgian King will also be accompanied by a business delegation of nearly 90 people comprising CEOs of Belgian companies. India is Belgium's second largest export destination and third largest trade partner outside the European Union. In 2016-17, the bilateral trade amounted to USD 13.28 billion of which exports from India to Belgium accounted for USD 5.65 billion while imports from Belgium accounted for USD 6.62 billion. Ramping up efforts to fight terror will also be one of the key issues to be discussed during the talks. In June this year, Belgium had witnessed an explosion in the Brussels Central train station. "I have no doubt that terrorism will be talked about," Luykx said. Queen Mathilde will also have interactive sessions with experts in the field of Sustainable Development Goals and academics. The couple has made several private visits to India. In 2010, Philippe, in capacity as the Crown Prince, had led a Belgian Trade Mission to India. The visit is significant as kings, monarchs pay only one state visit to any country unlike elected heads of the states. Philippe's father Albert II had visited India in 2008 and his grandfather Baudouin visited India in 1970. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Filmmaker Brett Ratner has filed a libel lawsuit against a woman who claims he raped her around 12 years ago. Melanie Kohler took to Facebook more than a week before a Los Angeles Times story broke accusing Ratner of sexual harassments of six women. According to the Ratner's lawsuit, Kohler's October 20 post stated that he "was a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago" and "preyed on me as a drunk girl (and) forced himself upon me." Ratner has filed his complaint against Kohler in Hawaii federal court via his attorney, Eric Seitz, denying Kohler's accusations and characterising the social media post as libel. The suit also claimed that Kohler published them maliciously. The suit seeks general, special and punitive damages for Ratner's alleged emotional distress, anger and anxiety, claiming his professional reputations have been ruined by the allegations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A BSF jawan was killed when Pakistani Rangers today attacked a patrol party of the force along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district. The BSF effectively retaliated. "Today, at about 0930 hours, Pakistani Rangers suddenly fired on a BSF patrol in Samba sector", a senior BSF officer told PTI. Constable Tapan Mondal of BSF succumbed to injuries sustained in the attack. On October 31, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by firing from small arms along the Line of Control in Karmara belt of Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district. On October 26, Pakistani troops fired using small and heavy weapons at Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of Kerni sector. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A BSF jawan was killed when Pakistan Rangers fired at a patrol party along the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district, drawing heavy retaliation from the Indian force in which three posts were damaged and two rangers injured. "Pak Rangers fired at the BSF patrol in Samba sector around 0930 hours today," a senior BSF officer told PTI. He said that due to the unprovoked firing, constable Tapan Mondal sustained serious injury and later died. "The BSF carried out calibrated retributive action against Rangers in Samba sector and caused serious damage to 2-3 Pak posts and grievous injuries to two Pak Rangers," he said, adding Pak Rangers violated ceasefire. "The retaliatory action continued till 1400 hours," the officer added. On October 31, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by firing from small arms along the Line of Control (LoC) in Karmara belt of Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district, resulting in injuries to a girl. There was another incident on October 26, when Pakistani troops fired at Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of Kerni sector but there was no casualty. On October 18, eight civilians, including a two-year-old child, were injured in heavy Pakistani shelling. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An association of traders has blamed Infosys for the glitches in the GST Network and demanded a CBI probe into its alleged negligences, a charge that India's second-largest IT services firm vehemently denied. Infosys in 2015 won a Rs 1,380-crore deal for developing and running Goods and Services Tax's (GST) backend, called GST-Network or GSTN. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) in a statement said it was "disgusted with the poor and dismal performance of GST portal" and held Infosys majorly responsible for it. The trader's body demanded a "CBI enquiry against Infosys and other companies who were assigned the work of creating, updating and maintenance of GST portal". Refuting the allegation, Infosys said they were "completely false". "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," it said in a statement. Infosys, however, said a transformative large project has to deal with changes in both policy and stakeholder usability and some of these modifications have resulted in rapid changes to the system like its integration with Aadhaar and heterogeneous IT ecosystems. "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," it added. CAIT said it needs to be investigated as to upon what conditions the work was awarded to Infosys and other companies and negligence in their part for non-performance of the contract. "Even after four months of GST implementation, the GST portal which was supposed to function properly from July 1 itself is still working like an experiment project causing much harassment and concern to traders," it said. CAIT said more than three years and Rs 1,400 crore has already been spent on the portal with "no results". "The failure of the portal could be gauged from the fact that date for filing of GST return for even July month is extended up to November 30," it said. On the other hand, Infosys said the network has seen 37 crore invoices being uploaded till date while the system is designed to handle 300 to 320 crore invoices every month. While 70 lakh tax payers have successfully migrated to the new system, 29 lakh new taxpayers have been registered. "Central and state level tax regimes have been integrated with all 29 States and 7 Union Territories successfully migrating onto this system," Infosys said adding the system has handled 1 lakh active users. The system saw peak loads during the last two days of filing, with 50 per cent of the filings done in that timeframe and 70 per cent of the collection achieved with just 25 per cent of server utilisation, demonstrating the system's ability to manage scale, it said. CAIT demanded a third party audit into technical and other issues related to the portal. It asked the government to release a White Paper on as on date status of GST portal. It claimed that the poor functioning of portal has brought bad name for a good taxation system like GST and utter frustration to the traders who are mostly unable to make GST compliance on account of mal-functioning of the Portal. A California couple and their two daughters who had been missing since Sunday when pirates attacked their boat in the Amazon River delta area have been found alive. Except for insect bites and scratches, Adam and Emily Harteau and their 3- and 7-year-old daughters were in good condition and will spend the night in a hospital in the small city of Breves, not far from where they were found, law enforcement officials in Brazil's northern jungle state of Para said today. The Harteaus were headed to Breves when gunmen boarded the boat they were on and forced it to go the city of Porto dos Dias, said Sergio Chene, a spokesman for Para's Public Safety Department. There crew and passengers were held hostage for several hours and stripped of their personal belongings before the pirates fled, Chene said. When police arrived there was no sign of the Harteaus. Police found the van the family had been using in their journey abandoned in the jungle. It's unclear how the family escaped the assailants. Colby Guillory, a Los Angeles resident acting as a family spokesman, said friends and relatives think the Harteaus decided to flee the boat to get away from the pirates and have been walking in the jungle since. "Me knowing Adam, he probably took it upon himself to save his family," Guillory said. "We just know that sometime between pirates overtaking the boat and leaving the boat, (the Harteaus) went missing. We think they jumped." When Guillory heard his good friends were safe he said he began "super excited ugly-crying." "We just can't wait to have them home," he said. Adam Harteau's brother, Keith Harteau, told The Associated Press earlier that the attack happened as the family was on its way to move back to California. They were set to arrive in Los Angeles on November 15. Keith Harteau said the couple wanted to be closer to home and for their girls to be near their family. "It was their time to get a little bit of foundation," he said. He said Emily Harteau grew up in Sacramento and Adam grew up in Juniper Hills in the San Gabriel Mountains just northeast of Los Angeles. The Harteaus had recently been living in the southern Brazil city of Florianopolis. They have been using a website to document their journey around South America, which began in 2012 as a plan to travel to Patagonia in their Volkswagen van and return to California one year later. But the Harteaus fell in love with South America and have been there since after they "decided to embrace a future unknown and the rewards of slow travel," according to their site, which says Adam is an artist and Emily a fashion designer. They wanted their site to "serve as a modern family portrait, as they shed their robes of comfort to re-examine the American Dream." "They hope to inspire others to create, eat well, spend quality time together, and adventure into their own great backyards," the site says. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Centre is playing "snakes and ladders" on the issue of increasing the number of police personnel in Delhi even though the metropolis is "clearly not safe", the Delhi High Court said today taking note of the rape of an 11-month girl recently. A bench of justices S Ravindra Bhat and Sanjeev Sachdeva were displeased with the Delhi Police for not recruiting till date even half of the 4227 personnel sanctioned for augmenting its strength and to separate crime investigation from law and order. The court also expressed displeasure over the central government not arriving at a decision on whether to sanction around 14,000 more police personnel for the city with the issue pending before the finance ministry since July 2015 after the home ministry cleared it. "It is like snakes and ladders. We are moving around in circles. Same orders are being passed again and again (by the court). We do not want the citizens to get lost in the logjam. "Clearly, Delhi is not a safe place. We cannot sit idle while minor girls are getting raped in the city," the bench said. The court said that at some point the consultative process has to end and asked Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain whether the ministers concerned could be requested to devise a mechanism to prevent the issue from remaining stuck in a "bureaucratic quagmire". "The court is of the opinion that the process of considering feasibility of sanctioning 14,753 personnel, later revised to 12,528 (approx), is currently bogged down in bureaucratic quagmire," the bench said. It was also of the "firm opinion" that a proper solution needs to be found to resolve such issues quickly so that the government can move on for recruitment of personnel. The bench asked the ASG to inform it on November 16 as to whether the ministers of the two ministries need to be involved in expediting the process. The court's directions and observations came during the hearing of a PIL initiated by it in 2012 after the December 16, 2012 gangrape of a young woman in a moving bus. The victim later succumbed to injuries inflicted on her by the rapists. The court has been from time to time issuing directions to the police, Delhi government and Centre on the issues of augmenting the police force, bettering forensic labs and expediting testing of samples besides ensuring compensation to victims of sexual offences. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China today for the fourth time blocked India, the US and other nations' bid to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying "there is no consensus" within the members of the sanctions committee. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UN's list of banned terror outfits. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. China at the United Nations officially blocked the long- pending move of the US, France and Britain to designate Azhar as a terrorist by the UN Security Council. The move came hours before the 3 PM deadline today at the UN headquarters in New York, wherein they informed the Security Council about its decision citing lack of unanimity. Notably, China was the only country opposing the designation of Azhar by the Security Council as a terrorist. All other 14 of the 15 members of the UN Security Council were supporting the move by the US and France. If they Chinese "did not have blocked" the proposal in this regard, "it would have been adopted", official sources said, adding that this is very similar to the process that Beijing previously adopted to the Indian proposal earlier to first delay it to the maximum possible time and then block it. "They killed the US proposal for now," the official said. The Permanent Mission of US to the UN did not immediately respond to a question in this regard. India and the US would now have to discuss about the next course of action. The two countries have a new process about highest level consultation between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump about designation of terrorists. India's Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin was not immediately available for comments. Previously, Akbaruddin had publicly said that "this process of unanimity and anonymity leads to impunity". Earlier today, sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI in Beijing that "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus". The comment came as the China's three-month-old technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist lapsed today. The official's comment indicated that China has vetoed the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. Like last year, China first blocked the US application backed by France and the UK, also veto wielding members, with a six-month technical hold followed by another three months as per the rules of the Committee. The application would now lapse as there is no consensus. Diplomatic sources say China's recurring veto preventing the UN ban on Azhar poses a major challenge for India, the US and other countries. It is significant that China has rejected US application ahead of US President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing next week during which his new South Asia policy under which Washington is pressuring Pakistan -- China's all weather ally -- to shutdown all safe havens for terrorists. China has been defending Pakistan, saying that the world should respect its sacrifices with regard to counter terrorism. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules and "the Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact". China continued its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhar's listing during the second term of Chinese President Xi Jinping. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China is ready to achieve important results during US President Donald Trump's maiden visit to the country next week which a senior Chinese diplomat said will inject strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. Trump will visit Beijing at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping from November 8 to 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement. The two heads of the state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said. He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results for Trump's visit and his meeting with Xi, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. The two countries have grappled to deal with deepening crisis over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes. China has faced mounting pressure from the Trump administration to rein in its close ally Pyongyang. Trump's visit to China will come after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Beijing last month. He conveyed Trump's greetings to the Chinese president, saying the US president was looking forward to his visit to China. The US has been accusing China of violating international rules and norms by laying claims on the disputed South and East China seas. China claims sovereignty on almost all of the South China Sea (SCS) which is disputed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China has also laid claims on the Senkaku islands under the control of Japan in East China Sea and resorted to aggressive patrols in the last two years. The US calls the dominance of China over the SCS a threat to national interest in freedom of navigation. Tillerson has said China's "provocative actions" challenge international law and norms. The US has also asked China to provide fair and reciprocal treatment to its firms and cease "predatory" trade and investment practices. Trump had asked his country's top trade official in August to probe into Chinese trade practices with focus on intellectual property (IP) and advanced technology. "I'm directing the United States Trade Representative to examine China's policies, practices, and actions with regard to the forced transfers of American technology and the theft of American intellectual property," Trump had said as he signed a memorandum in this regard. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The CISF has arrested two Indian Nationals for carrying USD 1,10,000 worth over Rs 72 lakh in Indian currency at the NSC Bose International Airport here. The entire amount was seized and the passengers were handed over to the airport customs, the CISF sources said today. Yesterday at about 11.05 PM, during Pre-Embarkation Security Check at the international security hold area of the NSCBI Airport, CISF Assistant Sub-Inspector Deepak Singh noticed suspicious image of laptop chargers from the hand baggages of two passengers Sajjad Ali and Mohan Basu. Sajjad Ali, aged about 24 yrs and Mohan Basu, aged about 51 yrs, were scheduled to travel to Singapore by flight No MI-487 at about 11.55 PM. During frisking of the baggages of both the passengers, the CISF jawans found the booty concealed in 11 AC Adopters. While USD 60,000 were found from the hand baggage of Mohan Basu, USD 50,000 were recovered from the hand baggage of Sajjad Ali. The matter was immediately informed to the senior officials of the CISF. Later, both the passengers along-with the seized foreign currency were handed over to the Customs officials for follow-up action. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) There is a clear bid to revive terrorism in Punjab, senior police and intelligence officials told Chief Minister Amarinder Singh who today reviewed the law and order situation in the state, according to an official statement. The officials also told Singh that in several cases handlers of those carrying out terror activities were found to be operating from abroad. "There is a clear bid to revive terrorism in the state, which could be traced to foreign handlers not just in Pakistan but also in other countries such as Canada, Germany, UAE, Belgium, South Africa, Portugal and Saudi Arabia," the chief minister was informed at the meeting according to the official release. The meeting was called to take stock of steps being taken to curb the spread of divisive and communal forces. Punjab DGP Suresh Arora told the chief minister that since March this year, seven terror modules had been busted and 43 terrorists, radical operatives arrested by the state police. The police has identified 16 foreign handlers affiliated to various militant outfits so far, and as many as 38 weapons, including those pushed into India by Pakistan's ISI, have been seized, he said, according to the release. The chief minister gave the security forces a free hand to tackle any threat to the state's peace and harmony, it said. The chief minister issued strict directions to the state police and intelligence agencies to go all out to counter the increasing misuse of social media to spread hate campaigns. He also ordered stern steps to break the nexus between terrorists and gangsters, as well as between gangsters and jail staff, to prevent use of prisons by gangsters to carry out their nefarious operations, the statement said. Taking serious note of reports about gangsters operating from prisons, as evident from the recovery of mobile phones and sim cards from jails, the chief minister ordered strict monitoring and directed the home department to take immediate steps to fill vacancies. There was need to instill in these gangsters, a fear of the law, to ensure that the state's peace and harmony is maintained at all costs, he said. Punjab ministers Manpreet Badal, Navjot Sidhu and Tripat Bajwa were also present at the meeting. Expressing concern over the recent killing of a Hindu outfit leader in Amritsar, the chief minister ordered the police to expedite the investigations in the case, which the security agencies said was not linked to the spate of the recent targeted killings in the state. The police officials assured the chief minister that the culprits, who had already been identified, would be caught soon, the statement said. The chief minister also instructed the security agencies to adopt overt and covert measures to effectively counter the online hate campaign by Pakistan's ISI and the communal tirade being launched by a section of hardliners belonging to different communities. According to the release the officials told Amarinder Singh that most of the gangsters, who had a free run under the previous regime, had either fled or were behind bars. Investigations showed that some of them were trying to disrupt the law and order either from outside Punjab's borders or from behind the bars, top police officials told the chief minister. The chief minister said that while the law and order situation in Punjab had seen a marked improvement in the past eight months, there was need to tighten the belt further to ensure that people in the state live in an atmosphere of peace, with fear of any kind. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Opposition Congress in Uttarakhand has opposed a decision to convene the state Assembly's winter session in Gairsain in December, saying the place would become extremely cold then. The state cabinet had last month cleared a proposal to have the session in the hill town in Chamoli district from December 7 to 13. "Temperatures drop drastically in Gairsain in December and holding the Assembly session there, in extreme cold conditions, will cause inconvenience to everyone," Leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh told reporters here yesterday. The Congress leader claimed that having the session in the town would also pose problems to employees who would have to make arrangements for it and journalists covering the proceedings. Hridayesh asked the state government to reconsider its decision. A section of people residing in the hills have been demanding that Gairsain, a town in the Garhwal Himalayas, be declared the permanent capital of Uttarakhand. The leader of the opposition also accused the BJP government in the state of lacking the will to fight corruption, saying that otherwise, it would have passed the Lokayukta Bill by now. "Why doesn't the BJP pass the Lokayukta Bill introduced by former chief minister Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri? It was widely acclaimed and even had the President's assent," she asked. "The BJP's much vaunted zero tolerance to corruption is just an eyewash. They have the numbers in the state assembly. Still, they referred the Bill to the empowered committee of the House," Hridayesh said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today attacked the Congress for promising "zero tolerance" on corruption when its own chief minister was facing allegations of graft and said the state's ruling party had become a "laughing club". Addressing a rally ahead of the November 9 assembly elections, Modi said it was time to rid "Devbhoomi", or the land of the gods as Himachal Pradesh is known, of monsters. Chief Minister Virabhadra Singh, Modi said, was "out on bail" on graft charges. "I feel the Congress has become a laughing club. The chief minister is himself out on bail... "And he is out on bail on what charges? That of corruption. He is facing serious allegations," Modi said. He asked the crowd whether it could digest the fact that such a chief minister had released the Congress manifesto promising to combat corruption. Even a small child from Himachal would not fall for it, he declared. Targeting Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador during the stand-off in Dokalam earlier this year, Modi said, The leader whose father, grandmother and father of the grandmotherwas PM of India, and who has born and brought up in the ruling family, is acting in an insulting way. Isnt it insulting when these peopleheld talks with Chinese leaders on Dokalam instead of asking the elected government? The prime minister also brought up India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a reference to the Jan Sangh, which he said was created to counter the Congress through the efforts of leaders like Shanta Kumar, a former chief minister of the state and a BJP candidate from the area. Pandit Nehru... said theyd uproot and throw away the Jan Sangh during its early years, Modi said. Continuing his attack, he said it was not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters but a party of corruption and dynasty politics. Yeh Congress party sadi hui soch ka namoona hai. Hum jab Congress mukt bharat kehte hain, hum iss sadi hui soch ke mukt bharat chahte hai (The party is an example of a rotten thought process. When we ask for a Congress-free India, we want an India free of this thinking)," he said. People across the country were engaged in Swachhta Abhiyan (cleanliness campaign) and were "wiping out" the old party whenever they got the opportunity through elections, Modi said. India would forgive those who work in public life with honesty and make mistakes but not those who do wrong and deceive people intentionally, he said. The Congress, he added, must introspect on why people were punishing it. "But one needs to have soul to introspect." Modi also accused the Congress of allowing the growth of "danavas" (monsters) in Devbhoomi. "It is time to save Himachal Pradesh from those who looted it...from the monsters," he added. There are, the prime minister said, five monsters in Himachal Pradesh that people need to get rid off - "mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia. Exhorting people to come out in large numbers, he said he wanted record polling this time. I know we will win anyway, because I have worked in Himachal and know the pulse of the people of this hill state... You have the opportunity to dismiss those who looted the state by pushing the right button on November 9," he said. Making a strong pitch for the BJP, Modi said people should remember Wazir Ram Singh Pathania, a local freedom fighter from the British era, when they cast their votes to bring the "right" party to power in the hill state. The BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal also addressed the rally. Kangra district has 15 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly. The prime minister is scheduled to address two more rallies in the district ahead of the elections. Virbhadra Singh is facing cases related to income tax returns, disproportionate assets and money laundering. The cases are being investigated by various probe agencies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress today demanded a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the sex CD row allegedly involving a Chhattisgarh minister. While making this demand, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary P L Punia also alleged that since the CBI is acting at the behest of the BJP-led government, there could be a no fair inquiry into the sex CD row. The Chhattisgarh government has recommended a CBI probe into the CD row. "The CBI is acting like a parrot of the BJP government (at the Centre). Therefore, it raises a doubt over a fair probe into the CD row. We demand that the alleged CD case should be probed by a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT)," Punia, who is also the party's in-charge for Chhattisgarh, said in a press conference here. He also rejected the BJP's allegations that the Congress was circulating the alleged sex CD. "Congress party has never indulged in such activities. The CD in question was already viral in the public domain. But, it is our responsibility as an opposition to expose the corrupt practices of the ruling party ministers before the people. It is our moral responsibility," he added. He also described the arrest of journalist Vinod Verma as an attack on the freedom of press. "The way journalist Verma was arrested, it seems that it was a well-planned conspiracy. It is an attack on the freedom of press and we condemn this act," he said. Meanwhile, he also accused ruling BJP of misusing funds to tune to crores in the name of Rajyotsav- statehood celebrations. Despite the farmers are bearing the brunt of drought in the state, the ruling BJP has been spending crore of rupees on performances by film artists during Rajyotsva celebrations which is very unfortunate, he said. A porn video CD allegedly featuring state's public works department minister Rajesh Munat has rocked the political circles in the state. The alleged CD surfaced in the media after the arrest of a Vinod Verma from Ghaziabad by Chhattisgarh Police last week. Verma, who is currently in Raipur jail on judicial remand, after his arrest had claimed that he has sex CD involving the minister. However, Munat had dubbed the CD as "fake", and an attempt to tarnish his image. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A top American lawmaker today called for "more vetting" of people coming in the US from Pakistan, blaming the country of having large terrorist presence. President Donald Trump yesterday vowed that he will terminate the popular green card lottery after an ISIS- inspired Uzbek man who entered the US under the programme killed eight people in New York in the deadliest terror attack in the country since 9/11. "If a person is coming from a country which has a strong terrorist presence, there should be more intense vetting and investigation than there would be from someone not coming from a country similar to that," Congressman Peter King told CNN in an interview. "Pakistan has a large terrorist presence. They have sent 800 people to Syria to fight alongside ISIS. In that case, there should be more vetting. How you define it is more than you do in the ordinary case," he said. "...The lottery system itself, to me, it's worked. It's gotten good people into this country. In my experience, in New York, they've gone on to become very productive people," he said. Igniting a political battle, Trump said the attacker Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path near the World Trade Centre, was allowed to enter the US on a State Department programme known as the "Diversity Lottery Programme". The Supreme Court today commenced hearing on a batch of pleas filed by the Delhi government against the high court verdict which had held that Delhi is not a state and the Lieutenant Governor (LG) is its administrative head. Senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for the Delhi government, initiated the argument before a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra. He told a bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan that their plea challenges the Delhi High Court order of August 4, last year, by which it has said that LG is the administrative head of Delhi, which is also a union territory. He said the challenge is to Article 239 AA by virtue of which special status is accorded to Delhi. The apex court had on February 15 referred to a Constitution Bench the pleas filed by the AAP government against the high court verdict which had held that Delhi is not a state and the LG is its administrative head. The city government had on February 2 told the apex court that it has exclusive executive powers in relation to matters falling within the purview of the Legislative Assembly and neither the Centre nor the President or the LG can encroach upon these. The apex court, however, had said that it is correct that the elected government should have some powers but whether it will be as per the Delhi High Court verdict or as it is being perceived by the Delhi government needed to be looked into. The Constitution has given a face and identity to a government in Delhi after inclusion of Article 239AA and the executive decisions taken and implemented by it cannot be reversed by the LG, it had contended. The apex court had on December 14, last year, observed that the Delhi government should have some powers otherwise it cannot function while hearing the appeals of the city government. On September 9, 2016, the apex court had refused to grant an interim stay on the verdict of the Delhi High Court of August 4 last year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A coordination meeting with the national and state nodal officers of telecom service providers (TSPs) operating in Haryana, Punjab and Delhi service areas was held today under the chairmanship of Inspector General of Police, CID, Anil Kumar Rao. It was decided in the meeting that all the TSPs would provide one dedicated phone number which would be attended to round the clock for providing requisite information to the law enforcement agencies, said a Haryana government press release. Rao said that it was the need of the hour that telecom operators and security agencies may work with simultaneous coordination as their support can play a vital role in apprehending various criminals and anti social elements. He stressed upon the TSPs to provide full cooperation for the security of the nation. All the representatives of TSPs assured that full cooperation will be extended to the Haryana Police in this direction. He also asked the participants to intimate any difficulty being faced by them while dealing with various police field units of Haryana. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Energy efficiency solutions provider Danfoss Industries today said it has partnered the United Nations to introduce District Energy System in India in association with state-run EESL. "As part of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All initiative, six cities including Thane, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Rajkot, Coimbatore and Bhopal have been chosen to explore District Energy Systems," Danfoss Industries said in a statement. It said Thane, also part of the Centre's Smart Cities Mission, will be the first city to be assessed for its potential for implementation of the system. With the global push to drive energy efficiency, cities are being encouraged to move towards the usage of district energy systems for heating and cooling purposes. Danfoss Global recently announced its partnership with the UN Sustainable Energy for All Initiative to help provide green and affordable cooling solutions for all. Danfoss India, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Danfoss Global, will be a technology partner in the initiative where the companys innovations will help deliver improved and low-cost heating or cooling solutions. These district energy systems are setting new norms for modern and smarter cities to integrate multiple sectors and incorporate large-scale renewables and unused heat. Proper utilisation of these systems can lower electricity demand for cooling by up to 50 per cent, shift the peak demand for electricity especially during summers and lower the heating and cooling cost for industries and individuals. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Economic Offences Wing of the Pune Police today carried out searches at the offices and residence of city-based developer D S Kulkarni, just days after he and his wife were booked in a cheating case. The case was registered on October 28 on a complaint by 65-year-old Jitendra Mulekar that he did not get back his investment from the real estate group. Besides cheating, D S Kulkarni or just DSK, as he is popularly known, and his wife were booked for criminal breach of trust, the police had said. "Following the first complaint by Jitendra Mulekar (65), we yesterday received complaints from nearly 300 depositors who claimed that they did not get back their money from the developer," a senior official of the Pune Police's EOW said today. Based on the complaints, searches were carried out at DSK's offices and residence in the city to scrutinise the documents, he said. Since there are approximately 300 complaints, the police would be able to know the total amount liable to be paid by the builder after going through the applications, the official added. According to some complainants, there are around 8,000 depositors who have invested with D S Kulkarni's group but they did not get their money back from the developer. For the past several months, all these investors, largely pensioners, have been queueing up at the DSK's office here. As many as 170 depositors who invested in the Fixed Deposit (FD) scheme of the DSK group, had approached the Pune Police a couple of months ago, demanding that a cheating case be registered against the firm. According to police, Mulekar claimed to have invested Rs 4,40,647 in the scheme. The investor alleged that he neither received the principal amount nor the interest since February 2017. A day after the case was registered, Kulkarni told PTI that since the matter was sub-judice, he would not like to comment but assured he will pay all the investors, employees and depositors. In a video released by DSK earlier this year on social media, the real estate developer had replied to all allegations and queries of deposit holders and investors. DSK had in September stepped down from the post of managing director of DS Kulkarni Developers Limited (DSKDL). His son Shirish Kulkarni succeeded him as the new managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A European Union delegation today expressed concern over Sri Lanka's failure to reform its anti-terror laws, a key condition for receiving tariff concessions to access the 28-member trading bloc. The concessions -- granted under a scheme to encourage developing nations to improve their human rights record -- were withdrawn in 2010 because the government then in power failed to meet its obligations. The EU agreed to restore them six months ago at the request of the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena, who came to power in 2015. But a statement from the delegation at the end of a three -day visit said the progress achieved had been "slower than originally hoped". Delegation head Jean Lambert said repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) had been a key condition of restoring duty free access. The PTA allows authorities to hold suspects for long periods without trial and gives police powers to use confessions obtained through torture. "The PTA is key," Lambert told reporters in Colombo. "Certainly, there has not been a single case of arrest under the PTA in the past year, but still people are being held under this law for long periods without trial." Sri Lanka is projected to reap a 300 million euro benefit annually from exporting to the EU, a key market for its goods. The island's exports to the EU amounted to roughly 2.6 billion euros last year despite the island nation not benefiting from the favourable tariff scheme. Sirisena agreed to address concerns identified by the international community when he came to power, but has been slow to deliver accountability for war-time atrocities under his predecessor Mahinda Rajapakse. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The European Union has given time to India till December 31 to meet the bloc's new norms on importing Basmati rice, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry CR Chaudhary said today. The new norms set by European Commission bring down the maximum residue limit (MRL) level for Tricyclazole (a fungicide) in Basmati rice to 0.01 mg per kg from next year. The norms are applicable on all rice-exporting countries. "The European Union has asked us not to send Basmati rice to them because of some plague or technical points. We requested them to at least give us time, we have to make the farmer aware not to use this pesticide. They have given us time till December 31, 2017. But we have to maintain our quality," Chaudhary said while addressing a conference organised by Assocham here. However, experts believe it may take two crop cycles for India to meet the new import norms. Two aromatic Basmati varieties - PB1 and 1401 - are maximum exported to the EU. The shipments of these varieties with Tricyclazole MRL at 0.03 mg per kg were accepted so far from India. According to industry experts, Pakistan stands to gain from the new norms as it does not use Tricyclazole on its crop and is looking at the opportunity to ship more from January 2018, even as India's Basmati exports to the bloc worth around Rs 1,700 crore are likely to be hit. India, the world's top rice exporter, shipped 3.5 lakh tonnes valuing Rs 1,744 crore of Basmati to the EU in 2016-17. The Basmati export to the bloc comprises 10 per cent of the total 40 lakh tonnes undertaken annually, as per the industry data. Besides, the minister exuded confidence that India will be among the top 50 nations in ease of doing business ranking in 2019 on the back of implementation of GST. "After the GST is factored in, we will certainly be in the top 50 when the World Bank releases its Doing Business report in 2019," Chaudhary said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A wide variety of animal species - including elephants, chimpanzees, ravens and lions - can engage in rational decision-making, a study suggests. These animals exhibit so-called "executive control" when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to achieve them before acting, according to researchers at the University of Houston in the US. Previous research has shown that animals can remember specific events, use tools and solve problems. However, exactly what that means - whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex - remains a matter of scientific dispute. Language is required for some sophisticated forms of metacognition, or thinking about thinking, said Cameron Buckner, assistant professor at the University of Houston. However, bolstered by a review of previously published research, Buckner concluded that a wide variety of animals - elephants, chimpanzees, ravens and lions, among others - engage in rational decision-making. "These data suggest that not only do some animals have a subjective take on the suitability of the option they are evaluating for their goal, they possess a subjective, internal signal regarding their confidence in this take that can be deployed to select amongst different options," he said. Language remains a key differentiator, and Buckner noted that serious attempts in the 1970s and '80s to teach animals human language found that although they were able to express simple ideas, they did not engage in complex thought and language structures. Ancient philosophers relied upon anecdotal evidence to study the issue, but today's researchers conduct sophisticated controlled experiments. In the new study published in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Buckner offers several examples to support his argument. Matriarchal elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park are able to determine the threat level of human intruders by differentiating ethnicity, gender and age, Buckner said. This suggests an understanding that adult Maasai tribesmen sometimes kill elephants in competition for grazing or in retaliation for attacks against humans, while Kamba tribesmen and women and children from both tribes do not pose a threat, he said. In another example, Buckner noted that giraffes are not generally considered prey by lions in Africa, due to the long-necked animals' ability to deliver skull-crushing kicks. However, lions in South Africa's Selous Game Reserve are reported to have learned that giraffes found in a sandy river bed can get stuck and even trip, making them suitable prey. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner lost a legal appeal against corruption charges, with a high court saying the prosecution's case against her can go ahead. The federal appeals court yesterday upheld a previous ruling that Kirchner, 64, answer charges of criminal association and fraud that stem from her 2007-2015 time in office, according to the Judicial Information Centre. A freeze on USD 565 million of her assets was also confirmed. Kirchner, however, enjoys parliamentary immunity from jail if convicted, having become a senator-elect in polls held last month. She has repeatedly slammed the charges against her as politically motivated. One of the principal accusations is that she handed over hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of public works contracts to a real estate developer, Lazaro Baez, close to her and her late husband Nestor Kirchner, who preceded her as president. Baez, detained since April 2016 on other charges, is to be prosecuted alongside her. Kirchner denies she was a friend or business partner of Baez. Her former planning minister, Julio de Video, was arrested two weeks ago after Congress stripped him of his parliamentary immunity. A former deputy public works minister, Jose Lopez, is also facing charges after being caught by police trying to hide USD 9 million in cash in a Buenos Aires convent earlier this year. On top of the corruption charges, Kirchner is under criminal investigation for suspected treason for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish centre that left 85 people dead. The federal prosecutor who had been handling that case, Alberto Nisman, was found dead with a bullet wound to his head in 2015, just hours before he was to testify to Congress on the matter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Fast bowler Steven Finn and all- rounder Moeen Ali will have scans to decide their availability for England's Ashes tour opener this week, team officials said today. Finn injured his left knee while batting at training, while Ali is troubled by a side strain and played no part in Thursday's session. Both players are to undergo precautionary scans tomorrow. England begin their tour with a two-day game against a West Australian XI from Saturday. It represents the first injury scare for the tourists, who play three warm-up games before facing Steve Smith's Australia in the first Test in Brisbane on November 23. Finn, who was a late call-up for suspended all-rounder Ben Stokes, was struck on the knee while batting in the WACA Ground nets. The bowler, who has played 36 Tests, starts the tour behind Jake Ball and Craig Overton in the running to replace Stokes in the final XI. But Ali, who has played 44 Tests, is a key player in a touring party that is lacking many hardened veterans. With Western Australia's best players on Sheffield Shield duties, England will face a second-string WA XI squad in the two-day match starting at the WACA Ground on Saturday. Only two players in the squad, captain Nathan Coulter- Nile and all-rounder Will Bosisto, have Shield experience. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Foreign companies and citizens are likely to be barred from directly operating drones for civilian use in India, according to draft rules prepared by aviation watchdog DGCA. Moving closer to permitting commercial use of drones, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has put out for public consultations the draft requirements for operation of Civil Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS). Coming out with stringent compliance framework, the regulator has proposed unique identification numbers (UINs) for drones apart from various flying restrictions. Granting of UINs would be subject to ownership of the drones. The number would be granted to an Indian citizen, central and state governments apart from state-owned and controlled companies, as per the draft norms. Corporates that are registered and have the principal place of business in India or those where the substantial ownership and effective control is vested in Indian nationals would be eligible to get UINs. A company wherein chairman and at least two-thirds of directors are Indian citizens would also fall in the eligible category. In the case of a company registered outside India, the DGCA has said they would get UIN provided such a firm has leased the drones to any organisation that falls within the ambit of eligible entities. These requirements imply that foreign entities would not be permitted to directly operate drones in the country. Nano drones, that weigh less than 250 grams, with an intent to fly up to 50 feet above ground level as well as drones owned and operated by government security agencies would not be required to get UIN. The movement of RPAs, commonly known as drones, would be monitored by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Indian Air Force. The DGCA has also proposed that drones should not "discharge or drop substances unless specially cleared and mentioned in UAOP (Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit)". On Wednesday, civil aviation secretary RN Choubey had said the regulations, once finalised, would permit commercial use of drones. "Model aircraft flown below 200 ft inside educational institution premises will not require UIN and/or UAOP. "Aeromodellers/recreational flyers under this category shall be fully responsible for its operation, safety and security. They shall inform the local police authorities before undertaking such activities even for indoor operation," as per the DGCA. Model aircraft are unmanned aircraft that weigh up to 2 kilograms without payload. In the case of unmanned aircraft, a payload is referred to all components of equipment on board that are not needed for the flight or its control. At present, aircraft rules do not cover the use of drones as well as their sale and purchase. DGCA had in October 2014 restricted the use of drones and unmanned aircraft system by civilians. A former deputy director of the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) has been awarded a three jail term by a special court here for taking bribe to grant environmental clearance to an Orissa-based power and steel company in 2013. 49-year old Neeraj Khatri was arrested in January 2013 for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 7 lakh for granting environmental clearance for the company -- Chariot Steel and Power Pvt Ltd. (CSPPL). Special CBI Judge N K Malhotra also sentenced the company's Managing Director Suresh Joshi to three years in jail, while handing down jail terms of two and one years to middlemen--Raisri Achutananda Srichandan and his son Raisri Chinmaya Srichandan respectively. The court also imposed varied amounts as fine on convicts and said that it was not a case warranting award of maximum sentence as there were mitigating circumstances in their favour. According to public prosecutor Shampa Tikait, Srichandans owned S S Environics, a Bhubaneswar-based consultant firm which lobbied for environment clearance (EC) for CSPPL's Raiboga limestone mine in Orissa. The plea for grant of EC was scheduled for consideration by the reconstituted Expert Appraisal Committee (Non-Coal Mining), headed by a joint secretary-level officer, a day after Khatri was arrested. Khatri was apprehended while accepting the bribe from co-accused Chinmaya outside a posh hotel at Mehrauli in south Delhi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gavin Williamson was today appointed as Britain's new defence minister to replace Michael Fallon who resigned over allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. Fallon, 65, stepped down as UK defence secretary saying his conduct may have fallen below the high standards expected amid revelations that he had made unwanted advances towards a journalist years ago. Prime Minister Theresa May promoted Williamson, her trusted chief whip, to the job of defence secretary to fill the role. The 41-year-old Williamson, the MP for South Staffordshire, has been responsible for exerting discipline over the prime ministers fractious parliamentary party since last year. Williamson was closely involved in negotiating the confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist party that secured the parliamentary support May needed to govern in the aftermath of June's general election. It was Williamson and Gavin Barwell, Mays chief of staff, who were called in by the prime minister last week as she discussed how to handle the growing sex harassment scandal. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A decade of slow progress towards better parity between the sexes has screeched to a halt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said today, warning the global gender gap was now widening. In recent years, women have made significant progress towards equality in a number of areas such as education and health, with the Nordic countries leading the fray. But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialise until 2234, WEF said in a report. "A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006," it said. The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracks the disparities between the sexes in four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment. A year ago WEF estimated that it would take 83 years to close the remaining gap. But since then women's steady advances in the areas of education, health and political representation have plateaued, and for the fourth year running, equality in the workplace has slipped further from view. Today's report said that at the current rate of progress, it would now take a full 100 years on average to achieve overall gender equality. The estimated time needed to ensure full equality in the workplace meanwhile has jumped from 80 years in 2014 to 170 years last year to 217 years now, according to the report. "In 2017, we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse," Saadia Zahidi, WEF head of education, gender and work, said in a statement. Even more than in the workplace, political participation stubbornly lagged behind, with women still accounting for just 23 percent of the world's decision makers, according to the report. But political representation is also the area where women have made the most advances in recent years, the report said, estimating it will take 99 years to fully rectify the situation. The picture is not all bleak: the march towards gender equality in education could reach the finish line within a mere 13 years, it said. And the situation varies greatly in different countries and regions. For instance, while Western European countries could close their gender gaps within 61 years, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will take 157 years, the report estimated. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress today accused the Modi government of carrying out a "surgical strike" on war veterans and ex-servicemen protesting at Jantar Mantar seeking implementation of 'one rank, one pension' (OROP) scheme, demanded that it apologise to them. Addressing a press conference, Congress spokespersons RPN Singh and Ajoy Kumar said the government had not left any place for peaceful protests in the national capital and that this was "not acceptable" in a democracy. "The government continues to trouble them even now, after removing them from Jantar Mantar," Singh said. In a statement later, the Congress leaders said, "The brutal crackdown on war veterans is an insult to India. The Modi government cannot digest the peaceful protests for OROP and Delhi Police has no powers to crackdown on war veterans, war widows and ex-servicemen." "The Modi government cannot silence the voices of war veterans on the pretext of 'noise pollution'. It is high time, that the Modi government apologise to the war veterans for this misbehavior and provide them with full version of 'one rank, one pension'," the statement added. Armed with an order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banning protests and dharnas around the historic Jantar Mantar here, the police and civic officials had on October 30 demolished tents and makeshift structures set up by the protesting ex-servicemen. The NGT, in its October 5 order, said protests and dharnas around the historic Jantar Mantar violated environmental laws. The Congress leaders said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrates Diwali with jawans, but his government does not listen to the "rightful demands" of the ex-servicemen. At the Congress briefing, chairman of the Indian Ex Servicemen Movement (IESM) Major General (retired) Satbir Singh alleged that the government carried out a "surgical strike" on them by removing them from Jantar Mantar. He said Delhi Police picked up some of their colleagues even today when they were merely sitting together near Patel Chowk. "Are we terrorists or militants that we are being treated like this. Are we criminals that we cannot even get together? "Is it a democracy? It seems we are being thrust into times even worse than Nazi dictatorship," the IESM leader said. He claimed that 12 ex-servicemen and war veterans were detained at Patel Chowk near Jantar Mantar. They were sitting at a bus stop, they had no banners, no placards and were not shouting slogans, but dozens of policemen lathicharged them and later detained them, he claimed. "Is this democracy under Shri Modi?" he asked, taking a dig at the prime minister. The Congress leaders said the "mask of nationalism peeled off yet again" when the Modi government used Delhi Police to forcibly evict peaceful ex-servicemen, war veterans and war widows from Jantar Mantar. The Modi government, which did nothing to fulfil the "valid demands" of the ex-servicemen, was now resorting to the use brute force against them, they alleged. IESM vice-chairman V K Gandhi said, "The way soldiers are beaten up is a matter of shame. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The White House said today it has not called for inclusion of Uzbekistan in the travel ban list, but did not rule this out altogether in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attack which was carried out by a legal immigrant from the Central Asian country. "That (travel ban) may be something that's looked at but that isn't something that we have called for at this time, but certainly haven't ruled it out," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters during her daily conference. Responding to a series of questions, Sanders defended the decision not to originally include Uzbekistan in the list of countries that are part of the travel ban. "We've outlined multiple times before, those were determinations made by several factors. In large part, Congress helped play a role in determining a lot of those factors, in placing specific priorities on different countries. And that would be the reason that they weren't a part of that," she said. "There are a lot of different criteria that the US uses to determine which country should be on there (in the list), and they haven't been determined as one of the countries yet. But I'm saying that hasn't been ruled out either, she added. In view of the terrorist attack by a legal immigrant who came to the United States through diversity visa, Sanders underscored the importance of extreme vetting. According to her, some of the specifics for extreme vetting may include enhancing the collection and review of biometric and biographical data and improving information sharing with partner nations and foreign law enforcement and intelligence services. Hours after the terrorist attack, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security for "extreme vetting". Trump also supported the idea of sending the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, to Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center. "He wasn't necessarily advocating for it, but he certainly would support it if he felt like that was the best move," Sanders said. But American Civil Liberties Union, opposed both extreme vetting and sending the terror suspect to Guantanamo. "Trump's reaction to the tragedy in New York represents a trifecta of unconstitutional and wrong-headed policies. His call for more 'extreme vetting' and an end to the diversity visa program which will unfairly target Muslim and African immigrants would double down on his Muslim ban and anti- immigrant policies," said ACLU executive director Anthony D Romero. "Sending Saipov to Guantanamo or treating him as an 'enemy combatant' would violate due process and the rule of law...Guantanamo was shown long ago to be an epic failure. It's a shame that Trump is using this attack as a platform for pushing his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda," he said. Several lawmakers are supporting Trump on the issue. Congressman Mike Rogers said no amount of political correctness from Democrats and the liberal media elite will stop violent Islamic terrorists from trying to kill Americans. "The attack in New York City yesterday is evidence that everything President Trump is advocating for is exactly right and needed. We must have extreme vetting. We must reform our broken immigration system especially by getting rid of the visa lottery program and chain immigration. And we must secure our borders and that starts with building the wall. Words and feelings won't keep us safe. Actions will," Rogers said. Congressman Scott DesJarlais, said shocking it is that the country continues to ignore threats of Islamic terror. "Federal authorities were aware of the attacker's terrorist connections, before he rammed his truck into a peaceful crowd," he said. "The Orlando and San Bernardino killers also displayed clear warning signs. But open-borders zealots and radical judges deny Americans our most basic right to security. Our refugee and immigration systems must reflect that priority. Extreme vetting and travel bans are common-sense, constitutional measures to protect the United States. Frequent attacks must not become a way of life," DesJarlais said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Punjab and Haryana High Court today heard the arguments on a petition seeking an independent probe into the lynching of 17-year-old Junaid Khan, who was stabbed to death on a train in June. The bench of Justice Rajan Gupta fixed November 7 as the next date of hearing in the case. Junaid's father Jalaluddin through his counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema had filed a petition on October 26, seeking a probe by an independent agency such as the CBI in the case. The petitioner had also demanded stay on the trial ongoing in a Faridabad court in the case. "The court today heard the arguments on a petition, seeking independent probe in the case," Cheema said. Junaid, on board a Mathura-bound train, was stabbed to death when he, along with his brothers, was returning home to Khandawli village after shopping for Eid in Delhi in June this year. His body was dumped close to Asaoti village in Faridabad and the trial is going on in a court in the district. The HC has allowed the examination of official witnesses in the case in the Faridabad court on Monday, Cheema said. After the plea of Junaid's father, the HC had issued a notice to the CBI and the Haryana government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court today directed the registry to place before the chief justice a batch of petitions, including those by the disqualified Tamil Nadu MLAs, for referring them to an appropriate bench. When the pleas came up for hearing, Justice K Ravichandra Baabu directed the registry to place them before Chief Justice Indira Banerjee. The interim orders passed on these petitions would continue till then, the judge said. The petitions include the ones challenging the privilege notices issued to 21 DMK MLAs and quo warranto pleas seeking to know under what authority O Panneerselvam and K Pandiarajan were continuing as deputy chief minister and minister respectively. DMK MLA K Pichandi had filed the petitions, contending that Panneerselvam and Pandiarajan had attracted disqualification for voting against the K Palaniswami-led AIADMK government in February. The Assembly Privileges Committee, headed by Deputy Speaker Pollachi V Jayaraman, had on August 28 issued notice to Leader of Opposition in the Assembly M K Stalin and 20 other DMK MLAs for bringing gutkha packets to the House in July. The court had, in September, restrained the committee from passing any order on the matter until further orders. Eighteen disqualified MLAs of the rebel AIADMK camp, headed by sidelined party leader T T V Dhinakaran, had challenged the speaker's action against them under the anti- defection law on September 18. On October 27, Justice Baabu had opined that it would be appropriate if a larger bench heard the batch of petitions because of the "constitutionality" involved in them. He had posted the petitions to today and said on this day, he would decide on referring the pleas to a larger bench. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Infrastructure major Hindustan Construction Company's standalone net profit nosedived by 49.74 per cent to Rs 11.60 crore for the quarter ended on September 30, 2017, compared to that of Rs 23.08 crore in the same quarter of last fiscal. Total income during the July-September quarter rose to Rs 1,031.93 crore, from Rs 972.01 crore in the year-ago period, , HCC said in a filing to the BSE. Total expenses too increased to Rs 1,014.43 crore in the quarter over Rs 939.35 crore in the year-ago period. HCC Group CFO Praveen Sood said, "Volatility in the banking sector had delayed the securing of limits for project working capital and CCEA receivables, which has impacted in the short term our ability to ramp up turnover and achieve material repayment of debt. "With most Lenders now having sanctioned support, we expect a pickup in project execution of our significant order backlog, faster receipt of arbitration award receivables and material reductions in finance cost in the coming quarters." The company said it currently has Rs 4,273 crore of arbitration awards in its favour, of which HCC has procured letters from government agencies for immediate release of Rs 1,930 crore (pursuant to the recent Cabinet order), of which Rs 1,097 crore has already been received. HCC secured two new orders worth Rs 1,574 crore in this quarter and was the lowest bidder in a project worth Rs 254 crore. The order book is at Rs 21,523 crore as of date, the company said. About the performance of its subsidiaries, HCC said Steiner AG achieved a revenue of CHF 196.7 million (Rs 1,306.9 crore) in the second quarter compared to CHF 212.2 million (Rs 1,464.1 crore) in the previous year. The net profit stood at CHF 2.9 million (Rs 19.3 crore) compared to CHF 2.0 million (Rs 13.8 crore) in the previous year, it said and added the subsidiary secured fresh orders worth CHF 136.5 million (Rs 924.9 crore). About HCC Concessions Ltd, the daily collections for Baharampore Farakka Highways Ltd and Farakka Raiganj Highways Ltd under it for Q2 FY 2017-18 have been Rs 34 lakh and Rs 33.2 lakh, respectively. "For Badarpur Faridabad Tollway Ltd (BFTL), a termination notice was issued by the Company to NHAI on September 1, 2017 along with a request for termination payment in lieu of the Supreme Court imposition of environmental charges, effectively preventing commercial vehicle traffic movement into Delhi, which constitutes a political force majeure event," the company said. About its arm Lavasa Corporation Ltd, the company said that the Joint Lenders Forum, as part of a comprehensive solution, has invoked Strategic Debt Restructuring (SDR) in Lavasa Corporation Limited and its wholly-owned subsidiaries Warasgaon Assets Maintenance Limited and Warasgaon Power Supply Limited. The SDR process will involve lowering of debt by converting a part of lenders loans into equity, the implementation of a fresh business plan and the induction of new investors into the project within the timelines prescribed by RBI in its notification, it said. "The lenders also noted that due to delay in implementation of the earlier JLF approved structure, the project remained stalled for two years and an additional interest of around Rs.1200 crore was accumulated, and hence release of working capital for the project needs to be resolved on priority," the company said. The shares of the company closed at Rs 39.40 on the BSE, down 0.76 per cent from the previous close. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Hindu chief of newly-launched Bangladesh Janata Party representing minority communities in the Muslim-majority country has gone missing, his family claimed. Mithun Chowdhury and another leader of the party, Ashik Gosh Asit, are missing since October 27 night, Chowdhury's wife Sumona claimed at a press conference yesterday. She alleged that the two were picked up by some men in civilian clothes who introduced them as members of a law enforcement agency from Dhaka citys Farashganj area at mid- night, Prothom Alo reported. She sought intervention of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the home minister in ensuring her husband's safe return. "I want my husband back. At the very least, I want to know where he is taken to, Sumana said. She alleged that the local police station did not register a general diary when she went to complain about abduction of her husband and the party leader. However, the office-in-charge of the Sutrapur police station, K M Ashraf Uddin, denied allegation that the police did not receive the complaint. None from the family came to us, he was quoted as saying by the daily. Chowdhury, 42, launched the Bangladesh Janata Party (BJP) on September 20 to represent non-Muslims in Bangladesh. Chowdhury, also president of Hindu-Buddhist-Christian- Adibasi Party, led the process of floating the party bringing 50 different organisations under the BJP banner. Bangladesh has seen a string of brutal attacks on minorities and secular activists by Islamists. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda today demanded a probe into funds spent by the Haryana government on the year-long Swarn Jayanti celebrations to mark 50 years of the state formation. He demanded that the probe be done either by a sitting high court judge or the CBI. "We demand a probe either by a sitting high court judge or CBI into how funds for the Swarn Jayanti celebrations were utilised. We believe that the funds have not been spent in a fair manner," Hooda told reporters here. The Manohar Lal Khattar-led state government had organised several functions as part of the Swarn Jayanti celebrations between November 1, 2016 and October 31, 2017. Describing the three-year tenure of the Khattar dispensation as "teen saal Haryana behaal", Hooda alleged that the government had spent Rs 1,600 crore of public money to propagate its "lies" during the Swarn Jayanti celebrations. The former chief minister also slammed the state government for making "false" poll promises and said they only did "event management" in the past three years. The Congress leader said contrary to Khattar's promise to provide 10 lakh jobs, less than 10,000 jobs had been given as of now. "They should come out with a white paper as to how many jobs have been given by them," he said. Hooda also blamed the BJP government for fiscal mismanagement. "As against a debt of Rs 70,931 crore in 2014-15, the debt of the state has risen to Rs 1,41,854 crore in 2017-18," he claimed. On being asked about alleged irregularities in acquisition of 1,400 acres of land in Gurugram by the previous Congress regime in 2009, Hooda maintained that "no irregularities were committed". "Our government never gave any land to any builder... everything was done as per the policy, no irregularities were committed," he clarified. The two-time chief minister also accused the present dispensation for "failing" to solve the issue of Satluj-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, Jat reservation, and violence by supporters of Dera Sacha Sauda and self-styled godman Rampal. "The wrong policies of the Khattar government has completely destroyed the state and has also failed to have the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal constructed. "The only credit which can be given to this regime is of targeting political opponents, slap false cases against them, change names of schemes which existed under Congress regime, as well as change names of cities and towns," Hooda added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bombay High Court today took a stern view of the "inaction" against the illegal pandals set up during Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri, and issued notices to commissioners of three civic bodies, asking them to explain why contempt action should not be initiated against them. A division bench of Justices A S Oka and A K Menon issued show cause notices to Ajoy Mehta--commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), N Ramaswamy-- commissioner of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC)--and P Velrasu--chief of Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC). The civic body chiefs would have to file their affidavits in response to the notices by November 30. The court, which was hearing a bunch of petitions on strict implementation of the Noise Pollution Rules and Regulations and illegal pandals during public speeches and festivals, was informed that despite its orders several pandals were illegally erected in several areas. The court was informed that in Mumbai 42 pandals were found to be illegal, in Navi Mumbai the number was 62 and in Kalyan Dombivli area there were 36 illegal pandals. "This is a clear breach of orders passed by us in the past. Unless we take some drastic steps we do not think the authorities would comply with our orders. Unless some municipal commissioner is sent to jail and put behind bars there would be no compliance," Justice Oka said. The civic bodies were resorting to all sorts of tactics to see to it that orders were not implemented, the court said. The court noted that from the charts submitted by the three corporations it seemed that no officer had gone on site to check if there were any illegal pandals. The court had, in its orders passed last year, directed municipal authorities to ensure that no pandal was erected without requisite permission and to ensure that pandals were not constructed in such a manner that they obstruct traffic. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India has joined the international community to back a UN resolution seeking the early withdrawal of the over five-decade long economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba by the United States. Except for the US and Israel, 191 of the 193-member countries of the United Nations yesterday voted in favour of a General Assembly resolution -- "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". At the height of the Cold War, the US had imposed the trade embargo on Cuba in 1959. It has remained in force and can only be lifted by the US Congress, which has steadfastly rejected such a move. Introducing the resolution, Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Eduardo Rodriguez Parrilla alleged the US new policy on Cuba was intended to take relations back to a past of confrontation. Notably, last year both the US and Israel had abstained from the vote for the first time since it was tabled in 1992. India continued with its position on Cuba. "As the world's largest democracy with abiding faith in multilateralism, India stands in solidarity with the international community in its unambiguous rejection of domestic laws having extraterritorial impact," said MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who addressed the General Assembly to represent India's position on the issue. Noting that the continued embargo would severely impact Cuba's ability to implement the comprehensive 2030 Agenda, he said the international community needs to step up its efforts to promote an environment free from sanctions and embargoes. "India hopes for the withdrawal of this embargo at the earliest," the member of parliament said as India voted in support of the resolution. It calls upon all States to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures, in line with their obligations under the UN Charter and international law, which, among other things, reaffirmed the freedom of trade and navigation. It also urged States that have and continue to apply such laws and measures to take the steps necessary to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible, he said. Parrilla also said that two-third of the US population, including Cuban immigrants living in America, were in favour of lifting the blockade. He said that action to the contrary meant that the US Government was acting in an undemocratic fashion. The Cuban Foreign Minister said on June 16, US President Donald Trump announced a series of measures intended to tighten the blockade in a hostile speech before an audience made up of staunch followers of the Batista regime, annexationists and terrorists. "President Trump does not have the least moral authority to question Cuba. He is heading a Government of millionaires destined to implement savage measures against lower-income families, poor people, minorities and immigrants," he alleged. Voting against this annual resolution for the 25th time in 26 years, the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said, the US opposes this resolution in continued solidarity with the Cuban people and in the hope that they will one day be free to choose their own destiny. "We might stand alone today. But when the day of freedom comes for the Cuban people and it will come we will rejoice with them as only a free people can," she said. "As long as we are members of the UN, we will stand for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms that the member States of this body have pledged to protect, even if we have to stand alone," she said. Speaking in support of the resolution, Bandyopadhyay said the issue of the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed five decades ago by the US against Cuba has now been considered annually by the General Assembly for more than two and a half decades. "The continued existence of this embargo, in contravention of world opinion, as expressed by this Assembly, undermines multilateralism and the credibility of the UN itself," he said. The Russian representative, Vassily A Nebenzia called the embargo a relic of the past and a glaring interference in the internal affairs of a State. The embargo was not just a discriminatory practice, unfair and pointless, it undermined the basis for regional and global stability by making sanctions a way of life, he said. Nebenzia said that while his country had welcomed the US abstaining from the vote last year, any expected normalisation of relations had been halted by the new administration in Washington DC. "What we are hearing today is hostile cold war rhetoric," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Indian and Kazakh armies today began a 14-day joint exercise in Himachal Pradesh to strengthen bilateral relations and exchange skills and experience. This is second joint military exercise between the two countries. The first edition of "Prabal Dostyk" was held in Kazakhstan in 2016. "A 14-day joint training exercise 'Prabal Dostyk-2017' between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army commenced today with an opening ceremony at Bakloh in Himachal Pradesh," a defence spokesman said. The joint exercise is aimed at enhancing the military ties between the two countries and achieving interoperability between the two armies, he said. "The training contingents comprise a platoon strength from 3rd Battalion of the 11th Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army and a similar strength of the Kazakhstan Army," the spokesman said. Senior military observers of both the countries would also witness the validation phase of the joint exercise. He said the exercise sought to acquaint the forces with each other's operating procedures in the backdrop of counter- insurgency and counter-terrorism operations under the UN's mandate. "The overall aim is to enhance the existing military relationship between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army and achieve synergy for joint conduct of operations as and when the requirement arises," he added. Personnel of both contingents were hopeful of a fruitful learning experience and that the training would go a long way in enhancing ties between the people of the two countries. The Indian troops participating in the joint exercise underwent extensive training in counter-terrorism and low intensity conflict operations at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School, Vairengte, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India today repatriated to Pakistan nine fishermen and four civilian prisoners along with a child, the external affairs ministry said. On its part, Pakistan issued visas to over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims to attend the birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev from today till November 11, a Pakistan High Commission release said here. All the prisoners crossed over to Pakistan through the land transit route of Attari-Wagah border on the basis of emergency travel certificates issued by the Pakistan High Commission, officials said. Asserting that it attaches high priority to addressing all humanitarian issues, including early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and prisoners in Pakistan's custody, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the release of 370 Indian prisoners, including 363 fishermen, has been secured in 2017, so far. "Nine fishermen and four civilian prisoners from Pakistan and a child were repatriated today via the Attari/Wagah border," an MEA statement said, adding that two Pakistani civilian prisoners were also released on September 28, 2017. Maintaining that visa to Sikh pilgrims were issued in line with Pakistan's efforts to promote religious tourism and people-to-people interactions, the Pakistan High Commission said the government was committed to protecting sacred religious places and providing all possible facilities for the visiting pilgrims of all faiths. It also said that visas issued by the high commission in New Delhi were in addition to the visas issued to Sikh pilgrims participating in the event from other countries. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Women with a history of infertility are at a significantly increased risk of early death, a study has warned. The study also showed that women with a history of infertility have a 20 per cent increased risk of cancer- related mortality. "While associations between infertility and overall health have been noted in the male population, until now, the relationship between a woman's fertility and her overall health has not been as robustly examined," said Natalie Stentz, from the University of Pennsylvania in the US. "Though we can't yet explain the association between infertility and mortality, it is possible that the condition may be an early indicator of either endocrine or inflammatory disruption that over time, leads to long term health issues such as malignancy or diabetes," said Stentz. Researchers examined data from the 78,214 women enrolled between 1992 and 2001, who were followed for 13 years, or until study withdrawal or death. They examined the effect of self-reported infertility - inability to conceive for one year or greater - on all causes of mortality and primary cause of death. Infertility was reported in 14.5 per cent of the study population. At the completion of follow up, infertile women were 10 per cent more likely to be deceased when compared to women who were able to get pregnant more easily. When examining reproductive cancers, researchers found that while patients with infertility were 44 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer, infertility was not associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer or death from ovarian or endometrial cancers. Additionally, individuals with infertility were 70 per cent more likely to die from diabetes, despite both groups of women having a comparable prevalence of diabetes. "The results raise significant questions over the long- term effects of infertility and whether it is infertility itself or an underlying condition that predisposes an individual to infertility that drives these increased risks," Stentz said. However, since infertility is diagnosed during a woman's reproductive years, typically many years before the end of life, a correlation between fertility and health can be challenging to study on a population level because of the amount of time that is needed to follow these patients. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen after he ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bicycle path in New York executed the act "in the name of ISIS" and planned it for weeks, police said. In the deadliest terror attack in New York post 9/11, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, on Wednesday mowed down pedestrians and cyclists at high speed down a bike path in lower Manhattan. Saipov, who came to the US legally in 2010, was shot in the stomach by a police officer before being arrested. Unabashed, he lies in the hospital bed, bragging about the attack, multiple media reports said yesterday. "He's talking. He's laughing. He's very happy with what he did. He feels accomplished," an unnamed source told New York Daily News. The New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism John Miller told reporters at a news conference that it appeared that Saipov had been planning this "for a number of weeks". Saipov did this "in the name of ISIS," he said. Bolstering his alleged ISIS-link are the handwritten notes in Arabic recovered from the scene. The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever, the officer said. "The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever," Miller said. Saipov also reportedly yelled "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest") during the attack. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a tee the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack," he said. Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. "What we are looking for is how has he touched the subjects of other investigations, what is his connectivity to those people. We are building out in concentric circles to try and document that. But it appears he will have some connectivity to individuals who were the subject of investigation though he himself was not," Miller said. Hundreds of FBI and police detectives are in New York, New Jersey and around the country to investigate the attack. William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI's New York field office, told reporters that the FBI-led investigation has been conducting multiple raids in the last 20 hours after the terrorist attacks. "We have been conducting searches throughout the night and into this morning. I expect those searches will continue and additional searches will develop as we generate additional information....," Sweeney said. Recovered in and around the vehicle were multiple knives, the two imitation pistols, one a paintball gun and the other a Crossman pellet gun -- all of these common weapons ISIS encourages its followers to use. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saipov appeared to have acted alone after becoming radicalised while in the US. Assailants in a number of other recent extremist attacks around the world were found to have been "lone wolves", inspired but not actually directed by the Islamic State. The attack killed five people from Argentina, one from Belgium and two Americans, authorities said. In addition to those killed, 12 people were injured. In recent times, the Islamic State terror group has evolved new tactics to carry out attacks. Indeed, the penchant to use vehicles as weapons has seen an upswing in such attacks encouraged by the ISIS. In fact, Saipov is also understood to have followed an ISIS magazine for instructions regarding attacks. An article titled "Just Terror Tactics" in a recent issue of Rumiyah, a magazine from the terror group, is said to have outlined ideal vehicles to use in terror attacks as well as ideal targets. Israel's air force bombed a weapons depot in Syria's Homs province, adding to a series of strikes in recent weeks, according to a monitoring group. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was still unclear whether the depot belonged to the Syrian government or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah. "Israeli planes fired rockets at an arms depot in the industrial zone of Hisyah, south of the city of Homs, the observatory's director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP yesterday. Syrian television reported "an aggression" by Israel in the region, adding that the national army had "responded". The Israeli army refused to comment on the report. Israel has acknowledged carrying out airstrikes in Syria since the outbreak of the bloody war in the country six years ago to stop arms deliveries to Hezbollah forces. The Syria observatory said Israel had also struck an arms depot near the Damascus airport on September 22, and this month targeted a jihadist faction linked to the Islamic State group in southern Syria, killing at least 10. Israel said last month it had attacked Syrian government artillery after fire from across the armistice line hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and warned it would step up such retaliation in the future. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An encounter broke out today between militants and security forces in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the Samboora village of Pampore area this evening following information about the presence of the militants there, an official said. As the security forces were conducting the searches, militants opened fire, he said adding that a gunbattle ensued as the forces retaliated. There were no reports of any casualties in either side so far, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Jamia Millia Islamia University students today vowed to expand their protest demanding reinstatement of a students' union, as they appealed to student leaders in other central varsities to hold demonstrations in their respective campuses. A section of students is on a hunger strike since October 25 seeking to push the administration to conduct elections for students' union, disbanded in 2006. Members of the Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), one of students bodies spearheading the protest, said the varsity administration was placing invalid reasons for not holding elections, despite they having a clear pathway for restoring the union. The Jamia students appealed to leaders of students unions in various central universities to hold protests in their respective campuses and requested individuals to take part in the protests on the JMI campus. Talking about the issue, vice-chancellor Talat Ahmad had earlier said that though he does not have any issue in reinstating the students union, he "cannot take a decision because the matter was sub-judice". "Instead of coming up with a solid solution for the students' demands, the administration was placing an invalid reason by saying 'the matter is sub-judice'," Afzal Khan, a student, said at a press conference today. "We appeal to all the supporters of democracy in the nation to support the struggle in JMI," he said. Jamia had in 2012 assured the Delhi High Court that there is no discomfort and objection to elections as well as an elected student body, the students said in a statement. "It also said that they would first conduct the students council election for the first two years and thereafter the JMI can hold the students union polls according to the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations," the statement said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Army has finally clarified that the junior commissioned officers (JCOs) are gazetted officers and cancelled a seven year-old note describing them as "non-gazetted" officers, a move that will benefit over 64,000 personnel. The decision by the Army two days back comes amid growing resentment among a large section of its officers over the controversial issue of rank-parity between them and their civilian counterparts in the service headquarters. In an official note, the Army headquarters has cancelled a communication issued in response to an RTI application in July 2011, which had categorised the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, according to documents accessed by PTI. Highly placed official sources said the Army committed a "major mistake" in 2011 while classifying the status of the JCOs and now the Army headquarters has removed the ambiguity, making it "abundantly clear" that JCOs are gazetted officers. The 2011 note had triggered widespread outrage among the JCOs, some of whom made a series of representations to the Army headquarters to withdraw it. The clarification will benefit over 64,000 JCOs who are ranked in three categories -- Naib Subedar, Subedar and Subedar Major. Asked how the Army headquarters made the "mistake" in 2011, classifying the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, a senior Army official said there are separate definitions of officers and the JCOs in the manual of military law and it could have been a case of misinterpretation of the rule book. The issuance of the letter is also seen as a message by the Army to the government to address grievances of a section of the Army personnel over what they call "disparity" in the current pay band. The controversial issue of status equivalence between military officers and those from the Armed Forces Headquarters-(AFHQ) cadre was discussed at the recently concluded Army Commanders' conference which favoured immediate removal of the alleged discrepancies. Defence Ministry sources had also said that it was examining the entire issue of rank-parity between military officials and civilian officers in the AFHQ cadre, asserting that "no false" equivalence will be allowed. When asked whether the Army headquarters will send a fresh communication to the RTI applicant who had filed the query about the status of the JCOs in 2011, Army Spokesperson Col. Aman Anand said, "The matter is being examined as per the RTI regulations in force." There has been growing resentment among the military officers who have been insisting that the current status equivalence was flawed and that the government must address their concerns. As per the current pay structure, the subedar majors and subedars are part of the pay band for gazetted officers but there has been discrepancies there as well, said an official. The Naib subedars whose number is around 55,000 get salary under non-gazetted category, he said. The matter is among the main issues being examined by the Army as part of anomalies in pay and allowances of its personnel. Last year, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had set up a high-level committee to look into the issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jharkhand government has given its approval for production of 20 films in the picturesque state which was blessed with abundance of natural beauty. The approval was given on the recommendation of members of the technical committee of the Jharkhand Film Development Corporation (JFDC), an official release said today. Of the 20 films approved for production in the state, it includes four Santali films, three films each in Nagpuri, Bhojpuri and Bangla, Khorta one and six Hindi films, it said. Majority of the shooting of these films would take place at various locations in the state. Begam Jaan, A death in the Gunj, Ranchi Diary and Ajab Singh ki Gajab Kahani, which were filmed at various locations in Jharkhand, have been released since the formation of JFDC in 2016, the release said. At present, six films produced in the state were on the floor. Santali Film "Rofa" was ready for release. The JFDC would be granting a sum of Rs 1 to 2 crores to films produced in Jharkhand. On the directive of Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das, a Jharkhand Film Policy was framed by Information and Public Relation Department under the guidance of his Principal Secretary Sanjay Kumar in 2015. The objective was to develop Jharkhand as a favorable film making destination as well as to attract maximum tourists through publicity of its natural beauty, tourists spots, culture, folk dances etc, Apart from providing a proper platform for artists and film producers, the aim was to attract investment through film industry and generate employment opportunities, the release added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Jammu and Kashmir government today suspended Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yousuf from his agriculture department job, 10 days after he was arrested by the NIA in a terror-funding case, officials said. Yousuf, 42, was posted as agricultural assistant in Budgam of central Kashmir when he was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on October 24. The officials termed the suspension as routine. Every government servant is deemed to be suspended within 48 hours of his or her arrest under the civil services conduct rules. However, in this case, the state government had sought some clarifications from the NIA before issuing the order. The order, which was issued today by Director of Agriculture Altaf Andrabi, said that Yousuf is deemed to have been suspended from the date of his arrest. Yousuf was arrested by the NIA in connection with a 2011 terror-funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father, who is currently based in Pakistan. The NIA alleged that Yousuf 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 NIA claimed 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 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 -- also named in the charge sheets are absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against them. Yousuf'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. Besides heading Hizbul Mujahideen, Salahuddin is the chairman of the United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of terrorist outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has replaced Paul Dano in thriller "7500". The "Looper" actor replaced Dano, who left due to scheduling conflicts. He will play the character of Tobias Ellis, according to the Empire magazine. The film is being helmed by Patrick Vollrath, who has also written the script. The story centres around a co-pilot whose trip from Berlin to Paris is interrupted by terrorists armed with glass bottles trying to take over the flight. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) may face action, including a ban under an anti- terror law, for its alleged links with subversive activities, a charge denied by the outfit. A government official said that action against PFI is likely after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) submitted a report on the group to the Union home ministry claiming that it has been involved in terror acts, including running terror camps and making bombs, and it was a fit case to be banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). However, a home ministry spokesperson remained non- committal over the possible action against the PFI saying the ministry would not like to comment on an individual organisation before taking any action. "Until criminality of any organisation is proved on the basis of available evidence, we cannot make any comment on any organisation," the spokesperson said. The cases which the NIA cited for PFI's alleged involvement in terror acts are: chopping of a professor's palm in Kerala's Idukki district and organising a training camp in Kannur from where the NIA allegedly seized swords, country- made bombs and ingredients for making IEDs. It also mentioned the murder of RSS leader Rudresh in Bengaluru and the alleged plans to carry out terror attacks in South India by involving another outfit, Islamic State Al- Hindi. The government official said that the PFI's alleged involvement in terror activities in South India has been documented and action against the outfit may include banning it under the UAPA. The NIA has prepared the report on the PFI after conducting a detailed probe. Earlier, PFI's national executive council member P Koya had strongly refuted the NIA claims, saying the agency had never approached the outfit to know about its activities, if there has been any investigation at all. "The activities of the PFI were not anti-national but more nationalistic. We have never run any terror camps nor involved in any terror act. There is no reason to call us a terror group unless you want to label us a terrorist organisation," he told PTI earlier. Koya said there have been just 10 cases against PFI in its 25 years of existence and it was "normal" for any organisation. He claimed that at least 100 people were killed in the clashes between the RSS and CPI(M) in Kerala in recent times yet the two groups were never called as anti-national. The PFI reportedly has presence in 23 states and the strongest in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kevin Spacey is taking time off from acting to seek evaluation and treatment following multiple sexual misconduct allegations. "Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time," his representative said in a statement to Variety. The comes less than a week after actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of making an unwanted sexual advance at him when he was 14-years-old. Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have also come forward with accounts of how Spacey allegedly made unwanted advances towards them. Production on the sixth and last season of Netflix's "House of Cards," in which Spacey plays the lead role of Frank Underwood, has since been suspended. The streaming service, which said it was "deeply troubled" by Rapp's allegation, is also behind "Gore," an upcoming biopic starring Spacey as the American writer Gore Vidal. Shooting on the project wrapped last month in Italy. MasterClass has also pulled the Oscar winner's USD 90 online class on acting from its service. Hit TV drama "This Is Us" has removed a reference to Spacey from one of its episodes following the allegations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 31-member team of Karnataka State Temperance Board today called on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to learn about state's total prohibition policy and its implementation. Led by the Board's Chairman H C Rudrappa, the team discussed with the Chief Minister various aspects related to the total ban on sale and consumption of alcohol in Bihar since April last year. Kumar told the visiting team that prohibition in the state has ushered into a "social movement". "Initially, we had thought of implementing liquor ban in a phased manner, starting from villages and moving on to small towns and big cities. But after the first phase of prohibition came into force on April 1, 2016, we started receiving complaints about liquor shops functioning in urban areas. So we announced a complete ban on April 5, 2016", Kumar was quoted as saying in an official release. "We may have lost about Rs 5000 crore a year in terms of revenue. But the people of the state, who were wasting around Rs 10,000 crore on alcohol, are now spending the money on more productive things", Kumar claimed. "There has been an improvement in people's standard of living and a drop in road accidents and crimes", he said counting virtues of alcohol ban. The visiting delegation from Karnataka, which praised the Chief Minister's "bold" initiative of liquor ban, also held talks with the state's top officials specially on the legal implications of bringing in such a policy. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Assam Finance Minister and Chairman of BJP-led North-East Democratic Alliance, Himanta Biswa Sarma today said law and order has collapsed in Tripura under the CPI(M) and a BJP parliamentary team would be visiting the state next week to take stock of the situation. Sarma, who was here to attend a booth-level training programme of BJP activists, claimed that his party would win two-thirds majority in the upcoming Assembly elections in Tripura. A parliamentary team of the BJP would visit different parts of the state on November 10 to take a stock of the deteriorating law and order condition, he said, adding that the panel would raise in Parliament issues of human rights violation there. "The CPI(M) would be washed away in the state elections in February. The party is a guest here for the next few months. The BJP would secure two-thirds majority in the 60- member Assembly," Sarma said. The minister alleged that the state government was not taking any initiative to fill up 60,000 sanctioned posts lying vacant in various departments. The Tripura unit of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, would soon launch a statewide movement demanding appointments to these posts, he said. "The volunteers and the leaders of the BJP would also contact people across Tripura to seek their support in the upcoming elections," the Assam finance minister said. Asked about an alliance with non-Left tribal party Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), which has been demanding a separate state for tribals, he said, "We want to bring all non-Left political forces under one umbrella to give a befitting reply to the CPI(M). "But an electoral alliance with any party that demands a separate state is not possible." The IPFT had recently said that it would go it alone in the Assembly polls if the Centre did not concede to its demand of a separate tribal state comprising two-thirds of Tripura's territory. Exuding confidence about his party's performance in state polls, Sarma said, "Many leaders, along with their followers from the ruling CPI(M) and the Congress, would be joining the BJP before the elections. The BJP would form the government with a thumping majority," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Supreme Court today commenced a crucial hearing to determine whether the elected government or the Lieutenant Governor enjoys supremacy in administration of the Union Territory of Delhi, observing that the constitutional scheme was prima facie tilted in favour of LG. The apex court said that Article 239AA of Constitution is unique with respect to Delhi and prima facie it appears that the LG is given more powers here, unlike in the other Union Territories. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra is hearing a batch of pleas filed by the Delhi government against the high court verdict, which had held that Delhi is not a state and the LG is its administrative head. AAP government told the apex court that its ministers have to bow down before the bureaucrats to get their opinions and, by virtue of proviso in Article 239AA, the babus do not acknowledge them as the heads of the departments. "Article 239AA is unique to Delhi. Prima facie it appears that it gives more power to Lieutenant Governor unlike other Union Territories. LG in Delhi has the primacy under the Constitution," the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said. It put several questions on Article 239AA to senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who led the arguments for the Delhi government. Subramanium said that LG was taking several executive decisions and a harmonious interpretation of Article 239AA is required to fulfil the constitutional mandate for a democratically elected government in Delhi. "More than 1.14 lakh vacancies are there, but I cannot fill it up and have to seek LG's permission. I can't take steps to stop deaths in sewers. This is hampering governance. The LG cannot use his power under Article 239AA proviso (4) to stultify the daily governance by sitting over the files," he said. Justice Chandrachud said that LG cannot stultify a scheme by sitting over the files instead he is bound to under Article 239AA to refer the matter to President in case of difference of opinion. Subramanium said the Delhi government accepts the supremacy of Parliament and its powers but motive behind incorporating Article 239AA in the Constitution by amendments was to give voice to the people by democratically elected government. He said that proviso (4) in Article 239AA cannot be used by the LG to frustrate the constitutional mandate of an elected government in Delhi. "Law is very clear at present that LG partially enjoys delegated powers of President and partially he has to work in aid and advice of council of ministers. If their is difference of opinion, then he may refer the matter to the President for early resolution," the bench said. Arvind Kejriwal government also blamed Centre for paralysing the executive functions of the demoratically elected government in Delhi through the LG. "I want proviso (4) of Article 239AA to be given a meaning which is consistent with the scheme by which both can co-exist, as was the motive behind the amendment in Constitution", Subramanium said. To this, the bench said there are three things -- executive action, difference of opinion and validity of such opinion, which needs to be deliberated. "Parliament's supremacy is not doubted but legislative existence needs to be accepted and both can co-exist. It is the synergy which is relevant with respect to Article 239AA," the senior advocate said. He said the Delhi High Court had said that LG will not be bound with the aid and advice of council of ministers and he is the administrative head. "I can show a series of orders of LG which are in excess of executive functions. Then why have a government when it can't exercise its duties," Subramanium said. The bench observed that when laws were already there, Delhi government is free to implement it and where there are no laws, the legislature can make it in concurrence with LG and if there is a difference of opinion, then LG's decision is binding. "This is a case where LG enjoys supreme power and is the ultimate authority where aid and advice of council of ministers is neutralised," Subramanium said, adding that the Delhi High Court had said that LG in Delhi has more powers than the President or the governor of any state. The apex court had on February 15 referred to the constitution bench the pleas filed by the AAP government against the high court verdict which had held that Delhi is not a state and the LG is its administrative head. On August 4, the High Court had ruled that Delhi continues to remain a union territory under the Constitution with the LG as its administrative head. It had said that the special constitutional provision Article 239AA dealing with Delhi does not "dilute" the effect of Article 239 which relates to the union territory and hence, the concurrence of the LG in administrative issues was "mandatory". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Libyan armed group holding the brother of the assailant in the deadly concert bombing in Manchester turned down today a British police request for his extradition. "No. Hashem Abedi will not be extradited," Ahmed Ben Salem, spokesman for the "Deterrence Force" which acts as the police of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, told AFP. Yesterday, British police investigating the May bombing that killed 22 people had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, in Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for Hashem Abedi. But Ben Salem said Libya had no extradition accord with Britain, and that "the Abadi affair is with the attorney general's office which is in charge of the investigation". According to the Deterrence Force, Hashem Abadi has admitted to having been in Britain at the time of preparations for the attack and that he was "fully aware of the details of the terrorist operation". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court today directed the police to provide security on Pondicherry University campus to prevent any untoward incident after a student expressed apprehension of violence by groups formed by teachers and students. Justice N Kirubakaran also directed the Puducherry police to file a report about the possible presence of any communal, religious, political or extremists group on the campus and their role in such clashes. He ordered personal appearance of Director General of Police, Puducherry, and Officer on Special Duty-cum- Superintendent of Police, Pondicherry University in the court on November 11. The judge passed the interim order on a plea moved by C Vinod Kumar, a student of the university. The student contended that the atmosphere in the campus was not conducive for education as there was always disturbance due to teachers and students forming groups and fighting each other. He referred to the large-scale violence that occurred in the campus in August 2015, during which properties of the university were damaged and students were restrained from attending classes by anti-social elements. "Though many complaints were lodged and FIRs registered, due to political pressure till now no one has been arrested or any action taken on the complaints," he alleged in the petition. Similarly, on September 29, the Vice Chancellor of the university was illegally detained in her chamber for several hours. Later, a group of teachers and students were arrested and FIRs were registered against both the Vice Chancellor and the group, he submitted. In continuation of the incident, the petitioner apprehended that a group of students and teachers would indulge in violence destabilising the peaceful atmosphere in the campus and had sought the court's intervention. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The National Green Tribunal has extended by a fortnight its order staying the work on a waste treatment plant being built in the catchment area of the Basai wetland at Gurugram in Haryana. A bench headed by Justice Jawad Rahim directed the authorities to maintain status quo on the site till November 16, the next date of hearing. "Having heard both the sides, we are not satisfied that the interim order granted on July 27 needs any further modification. We accede the request of the respondents that the hearing of the matter could be expedited," the bench said. On July 5, the NGT had ordered status quo after noting its adverse impact on the water body. The green panel had earlier said the applicant has made out a prima facie case for directing preservation of land in question till further order of this tribunal in this regard. The tribunal was earlier informed that the boundary wall of the plant, being developed by IL and FS Environmental Infrastructure and Services Ltd, was adjacent to the area known for rich biodiversity of bird species. The Haryana government had however said that the area was not a notified wetland. The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by NGO Delhi Bird Foundation seeking a stay on the project contending that the Basai wetland, though not declared as a wetland under the 2010 Wetland (Conservation & Management) Rules, was a valuable water body. "The construction and debris plant which is under process of establishment shall have an adverse impact on the water body due to various activities connected with the plant," the plea had said. The plant, according to the Gurugram municipal corporation, will be spread over 3.5 acres of land and process 500 tonnes of waste a day. The NGT had earlier issued notices to the the environment ministry, the Haryana government, the Gurugram municipal corporation and the IL and FS Environmental Infrastructure and Services Ltd after the NGO alleged that the Basai wetland was in a critical condition due to the project. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A major fire broke out in a mattress foam manufacturing factory at Taloja MIDC in Navi Mumbai around noon today, a fire brigade official said. There was no report of injury to anyone in the blaze, which was doused after over three hours, he added. "The fire broke out in a private foam manufacturing company near Padgha village in Taloja MIDC, Navi Mumbai around 12 noon. No casualty was reported in the incident," the official said. The police constables, who were deputed at police check post at Taloja MIDC, alerted fire brigade about the incident. The exact reason behind the fire is yet to be ascertained as the cooling operation is still underway. The the fire was major, the MIDC fire services sought the help of CIDCO Kalamboli fire brigade in Navi Mumbai and Ambernath fire brigade, the official said. "After more than three hours of firefighting, the blaze was doused by the fire brigade," Santosh Warik, Chief Fire Officer of MIDC said. Now the cooling process is going on. Police and fire brigade officials have started a probe to find out what triggered the fire, he said. "We will get to know how much losses the company suffered after a detailed investigation," the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Satya Nadella, the India-born CEO of tech giant Microsoft, will be in India next week on a two- day visit to promote his book 'Hit Refresh'. Nadella, who will be in India on November 6-7, will visit Hyderabad and Delhi and engage with government officials, industry leaders, students and academia among other stakeholders, a Microsoft spokesperson told PTI. "The two-day trip is focused on the book. His (Nadella) engagements include meetings with customers and industry leaders across sectors, union government and employees," the spokesperson added. The company has also lined up a public event on the book with a diverse audience comprising students, academia, startups and community influencers. Hyderabad-born Nadella, who took over as Microsoft CEO in February 2014, has chronicled his personal journey, the ongoing transformation at the Redmond-based company and the wave of technological changes in his book 'Hit Refresh' that was launched in September. The book carries a foreword by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It will also be available in three Indian languages -- Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil -- later this month. All proceeds from the book will go to Microsoft Philanthropies. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least five personnel were injured today in a militant attack on the vehicle of security forces in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. Militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 am, a police official said. He said three jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. A mob attacked a police station in Bihar's West Champaran district today and six persons, including a woman constable, were injured in it, a senior police officer said. District superintendent of police Vinay Kumar said a crowd had gathered before Gaunaha police station to protest against the alleged tardy investigation into the murder of a local trader in September and the failure to arrest any of the accused. The crowd turned violent when the station house officer Ranvir Jha allegedly fired in the air to disperse them. The mob went on the rampage and attacked the police station, vandalised it and threw stones. Six persons - five protestors and a woman constable were injured in the stone throwing, the SP said. Valmikinagar MP Satish Chandra Dubey and Zila Parishad chairman Shailendra Garhwal reached the spot and tried to pacify the crowd but they had to be taken inside the police station building and kept there for a few hours to ensure their safety, he said. The mob also forced a nearby market to down its shutters, the SP said adding that the situation was brought under control by the evening. No arrests have been made so far and investigation is on, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Chief Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala today dubbed the Modi government as "anti-hill states" and said it failed to fulfil its poll promises. Prime Minister Narendra Modi abolished the special category state status to Himachal Pradesh in 2015, he claimed. He said that the BJP, which was attacking the Congress on the issue of corruption, should explain how the turnover of BJP president Amit Shah son's business firm "increased phenomenally" after the Modi government assumed office. He alleged that cases were also pending against the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal and his son Anurag Thakur in the Supreme Court. Surjewala said that decisions on demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) were "undemocratic" and these moves hurt the economy. He claimed that the election was between the money power of the BJP and the dedicated workers of the Congress. He also alleged that the NDA government was "misusing" investigating agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to "hijack" the mandate in Himachal Pradesh. The state goes to polls on November 9. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister and US President Donald Trump have resolved to fight against the global scourge of terrorism together, the White House said after Modi offered his condolences to Trump over phone following the New York terror attack. Trump spoke with Modi and accepted his condolences following yesterday's terrorist attack in New York City that left eight people dead and about a dozen others injured, the White House said. Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, a readout of the call said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism," the White House said. Earlier in a tweet yesterday, Modi had condemned the attack seen as the deadliest in New York since 9/11. "Strongly condemn the terror attack in New York City. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured," he said. British Prime Minister Theresa May also spoke with Trump over phone, according to the White House. "President Trump and Prime Minister May agreed on the importance of closer counterterrorism coordination between the United States and the United Kingdom," the White House said. Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by Pakistan's Supreme Court in haste, the ousted prime minister's daughter and PML-N party leader Maryam Nawaz has said while maintaining that the ruling amounted to murder of justice. Sharif has been indicted by an anti-graft court in three cases of corruption related to his investments abroad and in other offshore companies. The cases were registered after the Supreme Court disqualified the 67-year-old as prime minister on July 28 in the Panama Papers scandal. Maryam, said to be groomed by Sharif as his political heir, told Geo that her father, who was re-elected recently as the President of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has been disqualified but not discredited, despite many attempts by their enemies. But 44-year-old said that she does not understand the dynamics of getting justice in the country. "If you criticise, then you won't get justice, but if you don't criticise then you will get justice? What is the standard of justice," she asked. "Our point of view is that there lies anger on the other side and the verdict [disqualification of Sharif] was announced in haste." Sharif, who returned to Pakistan from London today, is set to appear before an anti-graft court tomorrow in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Maryam and her husband Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have also been summoned by the Accountability Court. The Sharif family alleges that the cases are politically motivated. Maryam claimed that the Panama case was "not about corruption, money laundering or misuse of power." Sharif, three-time prime minister, was disqualified by the Supreme Court over hiding asset details in his nomination papers for the 2013 general elections. Just because the names appeared on the Panama Papers case it did not mean that those people were "necessarily involved in corruption or any wrongdoing," she said. Maryam said the case was being used to humiliate the Sharif family. "We were asked private questions such as 'why does daughter live with her father? Why did a father give gifts to his daughter? Why did a son give money to his father?" We were also openly labelled to be "don", "Sicilian mafia" and "Godfather". Everyone saw the murder of justice in the court, she added. On the options available to her father in the current political scenario, she said: "Mian sahab has all the options." When asked if Sharif has no fear of being jailed, she said: "We have been there and done that," recalling that her family members have been imprisoned as well as exiled in the past. "There is no allegation of any corruption or kickback against him [Sharif]," she said. "We are asked time and again where the money has come from? How did Hussain, Hassan [Nawaz's sons] become billionaires at such a young age," she said. "People don't realise that Hassan and Hussain are grandsons of a billionaire, who was one of one of richest people in Pakistan at one point," Maryam added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in an ISIS-inspired assault on the New York City, was today charged with terrorism offences by US prosecutors who said he decided to carry out the truck attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians". Saipov, 29, was charged with providing material support to the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Eight people were killed and 11 others injured as his truck carved a path of destruction through several blocks of Lower Manhattan yesterday. Saipov crashed the truck into a school bus, left the vehicle brandishing imitation firearms. He was shot by police. It was the the worst terrorist attack in on the city since 9/11. Saipov underwent a surgery in a New York hospital yesterday. He appeared in federal court today in a wheelchair and did not enter a plea. A 10-page complaint was filed by the FBI before a federal court in New York against him. The FBI said that Saipov, a resident of New Jersey, was inspired by the ISIS to carry out the terrorist attack. He "requested to display ISISs flag" in his hospital room and stated that he felt good about what he had done, the complaint said. Saipov told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State videos, in particular one showing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it said. The suspect decided to conduct a truck attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians" and that he specifically chose to strike on Halloween "because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the holiday," the complaint says. He began planning an attack a year ago and decided two months ago to use a truck, officials said. "In particular, Saipov was motivated to commit the attack after viewing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi... questioned what Muslims in the United States and elsewhere were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq," the complaint said. During a search operation, federal officials obtained two cell phones from his possession. One cellphone contained approximately 90 videos, many of which appear to be, ISIS- related propaganda. The cell phone also contained approximately 3,800 images, many of which appear to be ISIS propaganda. Internet search history of the second cell phone reflects, among other things, that Saipov searched for a store in Passaic in New jersey on October 4, searched for Halloween in New York on October 15, and searched for truck rentals on October 18, the complaint said. After Saipov rented the truck from Home Depot, he entered the New York City. In carrying out the attack, Saipov relied on the playbook laid out by ISIS in recent years, officials said. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a 'T' the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before, with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack," John Miller, New York Police Department commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at an earlier conference. A handwritten "document" found near the scene had both Arabic and English text, and included the message that the Islamic State would endure, the complaint said. In the vicinity of a place where Saipov was shot, he dropped the weapons, which appear to be a paintball gun and pellet gun, and a black bag. Inside the Bag, law enforcement officers recovered, among other things, three knives and a wallet. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The New York terrorist attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov would be considered as an enemy combatant, the White House said today, signalling a possible detention for him without access to normal rights. The 29-year-old suspect, a sympathiser of the Islamic State terror group, was shot in the stomach by a police officer before being arrested. "We would consider him to be an enemy combatant," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily conference, arguing that the action Saipov took "certainly justified" that. However, she said a final determination had not been made. "I don't believe that determination has been made. That's something we'll wait until we get a little further into the process," she said. The designation would mean Saipov could be denied access to a lawyer and detained indefinitely without charge. It could also open the door to military justice and transfer to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, very much in line with what President Donald Trump said he was willing to consider earlier yesterday. After the 9/11 attacks, the "enemy combatant" designation was used to detain hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and sites in the greater Middle East. Citing yesterday's ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in lower Manhattan, Sanders said it underscores that the terrorist threat is real. "As we defeat ISIS and affiliated groups abroad, we must be vigilant here in our country as they seek other ways to attack the homeland. Inspiring such attacks through hateful propaganda has always been part of the strategy of ISIS and other terrorists," she said. Sanders said that the attack underscored the need for the most careful vetting of who enters the United States. "There are hundreds of active law enforcement investigations into foreign nationals suspected of engaging in terrorism, and US must vet those seeking entry to the United States thoroughly, she said buttressing President Donald Trump's argument in this regard. Hours after the attack, a million New Yorkers, including families with their children, marched through the city for a Halloween parade, she said. "Their message was heard loud and clear: The American spirit will never be broken. Those who hope we will succumb to fear will never get what they want. And those who seek to divide us will only bring us closer together," the spokesperson said. Sanders heaped praises on officer Ryan Nash, who joined the NYPD in 2012, and was among the first to respond to the scene. He had fired the shot that stopped the attacker from continuing the violence. Nash, 28, who works in the New York Police Department's 1st precinct, shot and apprehended the suspect, who crashed a pickup truck into a school bus and hit cyclists and pedestrians, killing eight people and injuring 11 others. "He's a hero, but that doesn't come as a surprise to most of his colleagues. He's already received two awards during his young career -- one for Excellent Police Duty and another for other police action. Yesterday, he earned something that could never be properly displayed by a ribbon or medal; he earned the never-ending thanks of a grateful nation," she said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today assured diversified Hinduja Group that his government would not allow any monopoly in the cable business in the state and will provide a level-playing field for all. The assurance came at a meeting steered by Amarinder with the top management of the Hinduja Group, led by its chairman Ashok P Hinduja, in Mumbai this evening, said an official statement here. The chief minister, who was in Mumbai for the past two days to seek investor attention towards investments in Punjab, made it clear that his government would not, at any cost, allow anyone to browbeat cable operators opting for NXT Digital -- the HITS (Headend-in-The-Sky) digital services platform launched by the Hinduja two years ago. HITS is a satellite-based digital cable distribution platform, in which pay TV signals are beamed to cable operators using satellite transponders. The operator then transmits the TV signals to households through cable as part of this technology, in contrast to the direct-to-home. Amarinder, for whom this was the second meeting with Hinduja since taking over as the chief minister, assured him that Punjab would not allow its cable business to be monopolised, as had been done during the rule of the erstwhile SAD-BJP government. All players in the field would be treated equally and provided the same facilities, infrastructural support and incentives to invest and grow in the state, he promised. The chief minister urged the Hindujas to explore investment in Punjab in various areas, including electric vehicles. The Congress government, he said, was keen to go in for clean and green transportation, of which electric vehicles were an important aspect. Ashok Hinduja assured of all possible help on this through the Ashok Leyland company, owned by his group. He appreciated Amarinder's efforts to promote industry in the state, saying Punjab had never marketed itself in such a way earlier and the industry felt encouraged to come to the state now to make the most of its transformed environment. The chief minister was accompanied at the meeting by state Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal and Chief Principal Secretary to CM Suresh Kumar, besides CEO-cum-Invest Punjab & Secretary Industries, Commerce & IT Rakesh Kumar Verma. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan's foreign policy was being shaped by "different institutions", Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has said, indirectly acknowledging that his ministry was not the lone authority. It is often alleged that Pakistan's powerful military, which has in the past overthrown the elected government through coups, calls the shots on key issues in Pakistan. The foreign policy was being shaped by different institutions and no single institution was in charge of the foreign affairs, Asif said yesterday following a discussion on US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent visit to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, Pak Tribune reported. The minister, however, said that policies are being framed over recommendations of the National Security Committee and Parliament. Asif, while referring to the remarks made by Senator Farhatullah Babar who had criticised him for advising the US to have an Afghan policy free from the influence of generals and asked him to apply the same in Pakistan, said: "I agree that it should be so". He stressed that the foreign policy's 'sole charge' doesn't lie with one institution, Daily Times reported. Asif made it clear that he had not "unwittingly" criticised American generals for their failure in Afghanistan, saying the new US policy was ineffective because it was influenced by the generals who suffered defeat in Afghanistan. Asif said that he had urged the US State Department and other policy-making institutions to have greater control of the American policy "instead of relying on President (Donald) Trump's rejected approach to this problem". "If America frames its policy free from the influence (of army generals), it will be much more successful and effective. When they make Pakistan scapegoat, they are in fact covering up their own failures (in Afghanistan)," Asif said. The minister said that the concerns expressed and suggestions made by the lawmakers would serve as a guideline in framing the foreign policy. He also made it clear that the country's foreign policy would not be subservient to interests of external powers and would keep in view interests of the country. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani, who has been critical of the ruling BJP in the state, today said he has no plans as of now to join the Congress or any other party. At the same time, Mevani said he is ready to hold talks with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to know the party's stand on various demands of the Dalit community. "I want to make it clear that neither have I joined Congress nor I am going to do so in future. Not just Congress, I have no plans of joining any other party as of now," the young Dalit leader told reporters here. The remarks come even as the Congress and the BJP are making all efforts to win new block of voters and keep intact their traditional support base. The state goes to polls next month in two phases -- December 9 and 14. Mevani, who has been leading the Dalit agitation in Gujarat following the Una Dalit flogging incident last year, said he was ready to have talks with Rahul Gandhi to know the Congress's stand on 17 demands of the community. The demands include allotment of five acres of land to Dalits for farming, alternative employment to those who are involved in skinning of cattle and manual scavenging, and the release of a probe report into the firing on the community members at Thangadh in Surendranagar district in 2012. "Since the BJP government is not even ready to hold talks with us about these demands, it is very clear that they are anti-Dalit," Mevani said. "And that is why we are also anti-BJP. But, that does not mean that we are joining another party." "However, I am ready to meet Rahul Gandhi to know his party's stand on these demands. I want to know what they can do for our community if they come to power," he added. Meanwhile, Jan Adhikar Manch president Pravin Ram held a meeting in Surat with Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki and state party in-charge Ashok Gehlot. Formed by Ram, the Jan Adhikar Manch says it has been fighting for the unemployed youth, contractual workers, fixed-pay employees, aanganwadis workers (government-run women and childcare centres) and accredited social health activists (ASHA), as well as farmers. Ram claimed if the Congress assures them to fulfil their demands, mostly pertaining to higher wages, better job opportunities, and better minimum support prices, the Jan Adhikar Manch may extend its support to the party. "I have discussed issues concerning various sections of the society, such as unemployed youth, contractual workers and others. The Congress leaders sought two-days time to come up with their vision on these demands. If they give a positive response, we may definitely support the party," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Assam Director General of Police, Mukesh Sahay today said security will be provided to the National Register of Citizens Seva Kendras during the publication of the draft NRC due in December. "We are studying the situation and making plans to provide fixed security to the NRC Seva Kendras. We are trying to analyse the situation and sharing intelligence among the different security forces," Sahay said at a press conference here. Responding to queries about reports of possible socio-political conflagration in the run-up to the publication of the draft NRC, the DGP said, "It is an emerging dynamic situation and a strategy has been put in place for a quick response team. At this moment the situation is not sensitive". Asked if the anti-insurgency Unified Command Structure in operation in the state would play a greater role in providing security, he said, "law and order is exclusively a subject of state police. Police will have to marshal law and order, which is a clear mandate of state and state police and we will have to discharge our mandate". "But other foot prints are also important. The army can be asked to play a proactive role in the border areas. The unified commands structure is there. Many security forces are working under it.. . army, paramilitary forces and all sorts of Central forces are there", Sahay said. "A meeting of the Unified Command Structure was held here recently and everyone was sensitised. Everyone agreed to put their best foot forward for smooth NRC process". On requisitioning additional central forces for providing security at the NRC Seva Kendras, the DGP said, "we have sought support depending on our need. We will request more if the need arises. The forces needed is being worked out depending on exigencies". He also informed that a high level interactive meeting was held in Guwahati today on NRC updation process with the participation of the Registrar General and Census and Commissioner of India, both state and Central Government officials, NRC State Coordinator, political parties and 39 stake holders. Officials there assessed the situation and said the NRC process will take place as per law and no genuine Indian citizen needs to be apprehensive about being left out of the Register, Sahay said. "All Indian citizens will be helped for their parental verification to establish their Indian citizenship. These meetings are being held to prevent law and order situations. "Rumours are on to spread misinformation and mischief. Any effort to take law and order into one's hand by any quarter will not be allowed", he added. Sahay also informed that Additional Director General of Police Mukesh Agarwal has been appointed as the Nodal Officer for counter operations against social media and mainstream media reports on rumours. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The toll in the massive explosion in a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant here has risen to 26, a senior official said today. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has taken a break from his ongoing 'Navsarjan Yatra' in poll-bound Gujarat and is visiting Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh to meet the families of victims of the explosion. Raebareli is the parliamentary constitutency of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who has expressed shock at the "terrible tragedy". While Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is abroad, Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma will be visiting Rae Bareli today. UP Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar told reporters in Lucknow that the toll in the NTPC boiler blast has risen to 26. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. The chief minister had yesterday announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured. In a statement, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) has said that at unit number six of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3:30 yesterday afternoon. There was an opening in corner number two from which gases and steam "escaped" affecting the people working around the area, the central public sector undertaking said. It added that around 80 people were rushed to the NTPC Hospital, most of whom were discharged after first-aid. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that he was "deeply pained" by the accident at the power plant. Union Power Minister R K Singh, through social media posts, expressed deep anguish at the loss of lives and said that he had directed NTPC Chairman and Managing Director Gurdeep Singh to rush to the site. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi today met the workers injured in the boiler explosion at the NTPC plant here as his party demanded that a judicial inquiry be ordered into the incident that left 26 persons dead. Taking a break from his Gujarat election tour, the Congress vice president visited the Gandhi family pocket- borough Rae Bareli to meet those injured in the explosion and said his party will demand a probe into the incident. The office of Rahul Gandhi tweeted, "Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident." "I was sad to see the pain of victims of the NTPC incident. Their families should get better compensation and government jobs, while the injured should get all possible help," he said. The Congress vice president was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress state president Raj Babbar. "How many workers were working there?" he was heard asking officers at the Unchahar unit of NTPC. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," he told reporters. The Congress vice president also came face to face with Union Power minister R K Singh during his visit to the site. The toll in the massive explosion in the boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant today rose to 26 with six more persons succumbing to injuries. Azad demanded that a judicial inquiry be constituted. "Those who are injured have received severe burn injuries. They are more than 100 in number and they must be adequately compensated. This incident must be probed. A judicial inquiry must be constituted," Azad said. He charged that in the event of a government inquiry, facts could be concealed. "Local residents are complaining that the project was being commissioned in haste. We can see that construction is yet to be completed. Whether this (plant unit) should have been commissioned or not, whether it should had been brought on trial and during trial no labourers should had been present on the site...all these points will be clear in the judicial inquiry," he said. Azad also said, "There have been lacunae...Be it in the context of coal or in hasty completion of the work. The unit was to be commissioned after six months...Local people have pointed out various shortcomings. There has been big negligence, for which the guilty should be punished." He said the matter should not be politicised. Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma tweeted, "The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the accident. The committee headed by executive director of NTPC will submit its report in 30 days. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The toll in the explosion at NTPC's Unchahar plant climbed to 29, with nine more deaths reported today, even as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders descended on the accident site and demanded a judicial probe. Union Power Minister R K Singh also arrived at the site to oversee relief measures in what is one of the worst tragedies at a power plant in recent history and even came face to face with Rahul Gandhi at one point. Singh announced Rs 20 lakh ex-gratia for the next of kin of those killed in the accident. The Centre also ordered a probe by the NTPC's executive director into the incident while the state administration ordered a magisterial probe. "Twenty nine persons have succumbed to injuries and 85 were being treated at hospitals in Rae Bareli and Lucknow," the NTPC said in an official release. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, took a break from campaigning in Gujarat and met the victims and their families. The Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat is represented by his mother, Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. His office tweeted, "Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident". I was sad to see the pain of victims of the NTPC incident and their families should get better compensation and government jobs, while the injured should get all possible help, the Congress vice president said. Rahul Gandhi was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and UP Congress chief Raj Babbar. Azad claimed that a judicial inquiry was important as in the case of a government probe, facts could be concealed. Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma tweeted, "The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the accident. The committee headed by executive director of NTPC will submit its report in 30 days." During his visit to the site, Rahul Gandhi was heard making enquiries about the number of workers deputed at the plant. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," he said while speaking to reporters. Meanwhile, Union Power minister Singh announced a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of those killed observing that the earlier ex-gratia was not enough. "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," he told reporters. This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime minister's office said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad on an official tour, has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded a probe by a retired high court judge into the boiler explosion. The families of the deceased should be given a Rs 50 lakh compensation, while those injured should get Rs 10 lakh, senior SP leader Ahmed Hasan said. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, said, "Our priority at this point in time is that proper treatment should be ensured to the injured persons. We stand by the families of those dead in their hour of grief. Teams of NTPC and NDRF have already arrived here." Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government over the blast. Expressing concern, the commission in a statement said that a "high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident, which involves the right to life". It said there was need to ensure that such tragedies do not recur. A detailed report is expected from the government within six weeks, the rights panel said. The NTPC in an official release said that Unit No. 6 (500 MW) of the plant was under shutdown after the accident. However, five other units of 1,050 MW capacity were operating normally. Meanwhile, arrangements were made to for nine persons who received serious injuries in the blast in Rae Bareli yesterday to be brought to AIIMS and Safdurjung hospitals in New Delhi, a senior health ministry official said. All necessary arrangements have been made at the AIIMS trauma centre and the Safdurjung hospital "as directed by the Union health minister", the official said. "About nine patients are likely to be shifted here today," he added. Union Health Minister J P Nadda is in regular touch with the state authorities, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in an ISIS-inspired assault here, was today charged with terrorism offences as authorities said he plotted the attack for months and chose to strike on Halloween to "inflict maximum damage against civilians". Saipov, 29, was charged with providing material support to the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. He is so devoted to the ISIS that he wanted to display the terror group's flag in his hospital room, a 10-page complaint filed by the FBI before a federal court here against him shows. Eight people were killed and 11 others injured as his truck carved a path of destruction through several blocks of Lower Manhattan yesterday. Saipov crashed the truck into a school bus, left the vehicle brandishing imitation firearms. He was shot by police. It was the the worst terrorist attack in on the city since 9/11. Saipov underwent a surgery in a New York hospital yesterday. He appeared in federal court today in a wheelchair and did not enter a plea. The FBI said that Saipov, a resident of New Jersey, was inspired by the ISIS to carry out the terrorist attack. He "requested to display ISIS's flag" in his hospital room and stated that he felt good about what he had done, the complaint said. Saipov told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State videos, in particular one showing ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it said. The suspect decided to conduct a truck attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians" and that he specifically chose to strike on Halloween "because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the holiday," it said. He began planning an attack a year ago and decided two months ago to use a truck, officials said. He planned to use the truck to hit pedestrians in the area where he carried out the attack and "then proceed to the Brooklyn Bridge to continue to strike pedestrians," the complaint said. "Saipov wanted to kill as many people as he could," it said. "In particular, Saipov was motivated to commit the attack after viewing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi... questioned what Muslims in the US and elsewhere were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq," it said. The details painted a picture of a man who allegedly planned more carnage, US media reports said. During a search operation, federal officials obtained two cell phones from his possession. One cellphone contained approximately 90 videos, many of which appear to be, ISIS- related propaganda. The cell phone also contained approximately 3,800 images, many of which appear to be ISIS propaganda. Internet search history of the second cell phone reflects, among other things, that Saipov searched for a store in Passaic in New jersey on October 4, searched for Halloween in New York on October 15, and searched for truck rentals on October 18, the complaint said. After Saipov rented the truck from Home Depot, he entered the New York City. In carrying out the attack, Saipov relied on the playbook laid out by ISIS in recent years, officials said. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a 'T' the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before, with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack," John Miller, New York Police Department commissioner for intelligence and counter- terrorism, said at an earlier conference. A handwritten "document" found near the scene had both Arabic and English text, and included the message that the Islamic State would endure, the complaint said. In the vicinity of a place where Saipov was shot, he dropped the weapons, which appear to be a paintball gun and pellet gun, and a black bag. Inside the Bag, law enforcement officers recovered, among other things, three knives and a wallet. Hours after Saipov's court appearance, President Donald Trump said he should be executed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) With farmers in different parts of the state setting fire to their fields after failing to control pests, Odisha government today asked the collectors of eight districts to submit report within two days on the quantum of crop loss due to the insect attacks, officials said. The direction was issued by the Revenue and Disaster Management Department after a farmer in Baragarh district allegedly committed suicide yesterday for crop loss due to pest attack. Besides, the state government has received reports from Bargarh, Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Rayagada and Ganjam districts that farmers have set afire their fields after failing to save their crop from pests. "The government is prepared to provide assistance to the affected farmers under State Disaster Fund," Agriculture Minister Damodar Rout said. The state government asked the collectors of Bargarh, Bolangir, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Koraput, Nuapada, Sambalpur and Sonepur to submit reports on the quantum of crop loss due to the pest attack, the officials said. In a letter to them, Additional Relief Commissioner Mihir Chand Mallick asked the district authorities to conduct joint field verification through the field functionaries of revenue and disaster management, agriculture and farmers empowerment departments. The collectors were asked to furnish their reports along with detailed information about the area under crop loss to the extent of 33 per cent and above to the department within two days, an official said. The letter said that senior officers of the district should supervise the exercise and verify the report to ensure that correct data reaches to the government, he added. Meanwhile, Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has asked the district collector of Bargarh and secretaries of agriculture and revenue departments to submit their reports on suicides by farmers within three weeks. It issued the notice based on a petition filed by Samajwadi Party state president Rabi Behera on the alleged suicide by a farmer from Kalapani village in Bargarh district. On the allegation of fake pesticides being provided to farmers, Agriculture Secretary Sourav Garg said that teams have been engaged to verify the pesticides available in the markets of Bargarh district. "Stringent action will be taken if duplicate pesticide are sold to farmers," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) She is a noted musician and is taking forward the legacy of her father sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar but Anoushka Shankar says one does not have to hold fast to traditions as culture is inherent. The 36-year-old musician says one has to learn to be secure about it. In an interview with PTI, Anoushka says, "In the last few years in particular, I've found that it's okay to let go of culture rather than hold on to it. And by letting go, you kind of realise that it's there anyway. "It is kind of in you - you've been brought up a certain way so it's there. You have to have a little confidence in your culture." The sitarist believes if traditions are forced upon people, the greater idea of moving forward together fails. "I think we are all individuals at the end of the day. There's nothing about culture that can prescribe who you're meant to be. "But when culture becomes a baggage, things don't work. What is good about anything that feels like a baggage? I think we should let go when it feels like a burden. Hold on to the things you love. Then it will be a natural process." Anoushka has given the background score for the 1928 silent film, "Shiraz: a Romance of India", which was resurrected by BFI London. The Franz Osten-directed movie, with Himanshu Rai and Seeta Devi, is the first film for which she has composed music. Anoushka says, "It is a huge honour for me. 'Shiraz' is an important part of our filmmaking and cultural history. I figured that they asked me to do this because I work with the kind of music that is simultaneously of an older era and equally modern... And also music that very much belongs to Indian culture and is also multicultural. "From the beginning, I wanted to work in a soundscape that is both old and new. That gave me a broad canvas to paint with." Anoushka says she was conscious about her role as a composer and often kept the instrumentalist in her in control. But that affected the background score of "Shiraz" initially. "I was so aware that the music should not just be about the sitar, so I ended up putting really little portions of it. When my husband (filmmaker Joe Wright) heard the score, he said he could barely hear the sitar. So I went back and added some sitar to it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 2008 Mumbai attack case, according to documents seized from a Pakistani compound where the al-Qaeda founder was killed in a US raid in 2011. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) yesterday released 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden. The files include Laden's son's wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born militant. The documents revealed that Laden closely followed related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications. An Indian Express article titled 'Omar Sheikhs Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handledHeadley' was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated November 16, 2009. An article 'Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK' published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Ladens computer. A Press Trust of India story headlined 'Al-Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pakistan Government: Gates', dated February 9, 2010, was also found on Laden's computer. Another article found on his computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad- al-Islami (HuJI) links. The was published by The Time of India on November 15, 2009. Laden also saved on his computer another PTI article, titled: 'India to send magistrate to US to record Headley's statement'. Laden highlighted in yellow some portion of the article titled 'Pak Major handled Headley's India recce', published on March 16, 2010. The highlighted portion reads, "The dossiers also sought the custody of Pakistani terrorist, Ilyas Kashmiri." The documents also revealed that Laden was interested in related to Kashmir and several terrorists. An Economic Times story 'US asks Pakistan to find Iyas Kashmiri' dated January 7, 2010 was among the saved documents on Ladens computer. A February 2009 article about 'Pakistani Kashmiri militants now fighting NATO forces' was also found. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of the terrorist organisation. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the CIA put online 470,000 additional files. However, the CIA withheld release of nearly two dozen videos, including the one titled 'The Story of India' stating that they were copyrighted videos. The 'Story of India' is a BBC documentary series about the history of India. The documents also include Laden's personal journal, over 18,000 document files and 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence and imagery gathered or generated by al-Qaeda for a variety of purposes. "The CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security," he said. "The materials are posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited," the CIA said. The CIA said these materials provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between al-Qaeda and the ISIS, as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al-Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that the terror group faced at the time of Laden's death. Other themes in the materials include al-Qaedas preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the groups attempts to promulgate its message through western media. The documents also provide insight into al-Qaedas efforts to exploit the Arab awakening for its benefit and that of the global jihad, Ladens efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine and the terror group's efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals. The CIA said the information remaining in the Abbottabad collection that has not been released publicly includes materials that are sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; materials protected by copyright; pornography; malware and blank, corrupted and duplicate file. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Western Railway (WR) has rubbished reports that 40 per cent seats on all the trains in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad section go vacant and claimed that the occupancy was over 100 per cent in these trains. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal also tweeted saying, "Contrary to media reports, Mumbai-Ahmedabad train section running at above 100% occupancy and will benefit immensely from Bullet train (sic)." The WR, in a statement, said it would like to clarify that reports regarding 40 per cent seats being vacant in the trains running or passing between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and that the WR had incurred losses of Rs 30 crore in the sector over the last three months were not factually correct, as in fact, there was over a 100 per cent occupancy in the section. Goyal also posted the WR statement on Twitter. WR's Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Ravinder Bhakar said, "Contrary to the reports, the Western Railway's total earnings during the said three months from this sector were Rs 233 crore." Earlier, city-based Right to Information (RTI) activist Anil Galgali had claimed to have found through a query that there was a difference of Rs 29 crore in the WR's actual earnings and earning potential, because the trains running in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad section had 40 per cent vacant seats. Galgali had also raised a concern over the bullet train project, saying it was "not a viable option" financially as well as from the point of view of the common man. The activist had claimed that the WR's Chief Commercial Manager, Manjeet Singh, provided him the information for the period between July 1 and September 30, 2017, giving details about 32 mail and express trains running or passing between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. Bhakar said the reply to the RTI query was against a specific question regarding the number of passengers travelling from Mumbai Central to Ahmedabad and from Ahmedabad to Mumbai Central -- only these two stations. He added that the reply did not include information about the en route traffic -- the number of passengers travelling from the originating station to intermediate stations, intermediate to intermediate stations and intermediate stations to the destination station -- thereby showing a lower occupancy. "It is pertinent to mention that despite the period from July to September, 2017 being a lean season, the occupancy was above 100 per cent and the figure (of occupancy) for the period from October, 2016 to September, 2017 for 34 trains was 124.72 per cent," the CPRO said. Rail activist Rajiv Singal also said, "I am a frequent traveller on this route and I have always found wait-listed tickets on these trains." The MumbaiAhmedabad section is one of the busiest routes of the Indian Railways. Nine direct trains run between the two cities and around 25 more travel to forward destinations via Ahmedabad, the WR statement said. The section also has important en route stations and industrial towns such as Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Vapi and Valsad, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Paddington 2" will hit theatres in India on January 12 next year. Directed by Paul King, the film features Ben Whishaw, who voices Paddington and Imelda Staunton as Aunt Lucy. They are joined by actors Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Madeleine Harris and Samuel Joslin. The second installment, also featuring actors Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson and Sanjeev Bhaskar as voice cast, follows the young bear, who devotes himself to buying a present for his Aunt Lucy's 100th birthday and in the ensuing chaos, winds up in prison. "We had a lot of ideas that never made their way into the first film because they always felt like they belonged in a sequel, rather than an origin story. "It always felt like it would be fun to see 'Paddington' at work and he's such a decent character that it felt it could be emotionally satisfying to see him fall prey to an injustice," King said in a statement. "Paddington 2", is the sequel to the 2014 movie of the same name, which was based on the best-selling book by British author Michael Bond. The film will be distributed by PVR Pictures in India. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in protest across the West Bank today marking a century since the Balfour Declaration, Britain's promise to Zionists to create a Jewish home in what is now Israel. In Ramallah, some 3,000 protesters marched from the city center to the British Consulate, with many waving black flags and banners with slogans such as "100 years of dispossession." Smaller demonstrations took place in east Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank. Rawada Odeh, a demonstrator in Jerusalem, said she was protesting because Balfour promised a home to the Zionists while neglecting that there is a "Palestinian population here in our land." "The land does not belong to Balfour," she said. "We are Palestinians, and we are living here and we are following our issue till we succeed." The 1917 declaration served as the basis for the British Mandate of Palestine, which was approved in 1920 by the League of Nations. The following decades saw a spike in the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine as Zionist state institutions took root. With that came increased friction with the Arab population. Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish people's desire to return to its historic homeland. It sees Britain as having played a supporting role in a narrative dominated by the determination, heroism and pioneering spirit of the early settlers who fought to build the state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu marks the anniversary in London today at a dinner attended by Prime Minister Theresa May. The Palestinians see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their "nakba," or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. That refugee crisis reverberates across the region today, and the Palestinians have cast Israel, through the declaration and its imperialist British patrons, as a colonial enterprise. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Paper industry has sought government's support to check the flow of cheap imports, especially from Asean countries, so as to protect the domestic players. "One of the challenges faced by the paper industry is cheaper imports. Paper industry through our industry body Indian Paper Manufacturers Association (IPMA) has made representations to the government to curb paper imports or to put anti-dumping duty," Century Pulp & Paper CEO J P Narain told PTI on the sidelines of 'Paperex' event here. Narain said cheaper imports force domestic companies to bring down their prices, hurting their margins and profitability. Trident Technical Adviser R C Johari said paper imports are cheaper by Rs 4-5 per kg and it is the biggest challenge faced by domestic paper manufacturers. Yesterday, Union Minister C R Choudhary urged the paper industry to upgrade technology to compete in the global markets and boost export of quality products. Inaugurating Paperex (November 1-4), the minister of state for commerce and industry also suggested to use recycled inputs to bridge shortage of raw material in the sector. International Trade and Exhibitions India (ITEI) Director Gagan Sahni said the country's consumption of paper will go up substantially in the medium term despite the digital buzz. "Currently, per capita consumption of paper is 9.8 kg as compared to 350 kg in the US and global average of 58 kg. There is huge scope and opportunity for growth of paper industry in India," he added. Over 30,000 visitors and participants from 55 countries are expected to attend Paperex. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Security agencies have launched an investigation after a photograph showing a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist brandishing a US-made AR-15 M4 rifle in an orchard in Kashmir went viral on social media. An intelligence officer said prime facie it looked like a "morphed" picture but "we are investigating the matter". This is the first time a terrorist in Kashmir has been spotted with an AR-15 M4 rifle, widely used by the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The militants operating in Kashmir have mostly been using AK assault rifles -- both Chinese and Russian made. A senior police official said there was nothing surprising about a Hizbul terrorist being spotted with a US rifle in the valley as weapons of all kinds are freely available in Pakistan's FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) region. "You can buy any rifle there. What is the big deal? We have been taking on the terrorists and we will continue to do so. The change in weaponry hardly matters," the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A passenger plane-sized "void" has been discovered in the middle of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, where it has lain secret and untouched for 4,500 years, scientists revealed today. The space is one of four cavities, along with the king and queen's chambers and "Grand Gallery", now known to exist inside the giant monument constructed under pharaoh Khufu of ancient Egypt. "It is big," said co-discoverer Mehdi Tayoubi of the ScanPyramids project, which has been exploring Khufu's pyramid since October 2015 with non-invasive technology using subatomic particle scans. "It's the size of a 200-seater airplane, in the heart of the pyramid," Tayoubi told AFP of the discovery, published in science journal Nature. Towering over the Giza complex on Cairo's outskirts alongside smaller pyramids for kings Menkaure and Khafre and the Great Sphinx, the Khufu's pyramid is the oldest and only surviving construction among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and one of the largest buildings ever erected on Earth. The cavity is the first major structure found inside the Great Pyramid since the 19th century, the research team said. "There have been many theories about the existence of secret chambers inside the pyramid," said Tayoubi. "But none have predicted anything this big." The exact shape and size of the void is fuzzy -- its purpose and possible contents a mystery. But it is thought to be at least 30 metres long, and located above the "Grand Gallery" -- a sloped corridor almost 50 m long and 9 m high which links Khufu's burial chamber at the pyramid's centre to a tunnel leading outside. The monument -- 139 metres high today, and 230 metres wide -- was erected as a tomb for Khufu, also known as Cheops. To this day, nobody knows quite how it was built. The void, said co-author Kunihiro Morishima from the Nagoya University in Japan, "was not known by anyone until now, from when the pyramid was built 4,500 years ago". "The big void is completely closed," he added, which means anything inside it would not have been "touched by anyone after the pyramid (was) built". The pharaohs of ancient Egypt built these monumental tombs for themselves, complete with sarcophagus to hold their embalmed mummies, and stocked with everything they could require for the afterlife -- food, clothing and jewellery. Khufu's pyramid was plundered long before it was visited by modern archaeologists, and no relics remain from any of the known chambers. For this reason, the new cavity may be "very exciting," said Morishima, though it is not known if it contains anything at all. The team used a technique called "cosmic-ray muon radiography", which allowed them to visualise "known and potentially unknown" voids in the pyramid without having to touch a single stone. Muons are charged, heavy particles formed from the interactions of cosmic rays with atoms in the upper atmosphere. Similar to X-rays which can penetrate the human body and allow bone imaging, these particles can follow a mostly straight line through several hundreds of metres of stone before decaying or being absorbed, the team said. By recording the position and direction of each muon as it travels through the pyramid, muon detectors can distinguish cavities from stone. "We will continue to conduct muon imaging for revealing the detail" of the void, said Morishima -- including its dimensions and inclination, and whether it consists of a single, large cavity or a complex of several. "Our muon imaging technology can't confirm (whether) there are some artifacts or not," he added. Anything inside would be "too small for muon imaging." The team is already turning its attention to new technology for the next step -- possibly a miniature robot that can travel through tiny holes to examine the inside of the void without disturbing anything. The discovery, named simply "Big Void", has been confirmed using three different muon technologies and three independent analyses, verifying its existence with "high confidence," the authors said. "While there is currently no information about the role of this void, these findings show how modern particle physics can shed new light on the world's archaeological heritage," the authors wrote in Nature. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pregnant women should be tested for the Zika virus more than once, say scientists who found that a single negative test result may not be enough to rule out the possibility of the infection. Molecular tests to detect Zika virus, which enable identification of the pathogen's genetic material in body fluids, such as blood, urine, semen and saliva during the acute phase of infection, have been used routinely in prenatal checkups for pregnant women with symptoms of the disease. "We monitored a group of pregnant women with a confirmed diagnosis of Zika and tested their urine over a period of several months at intervals of about a week. In some of these women, the viral load in their urine disappeared and later returned," said Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, a professor at Medical School of Sao Jose do Rio Preto (FAMERP) in Brazil. The patients included 13 women in different stages of pregnancy who were receiving treatment at the Children's and Maternity Hospital (HCM) of Sao Jose do Rio Preto. According to Nogueira, the virus was detected in one patient's urine for as long as seven months. In five women, the test was again positive for Zika virus after their viral load had disappeared in previous tests. In all cases, the virus vanished from the women shortly after they gave birth. "These results suggest the virus continues replicating during pregnancy, in the fetus or the placenta, which must serve as a reservoir for the pathogen," Nogueira said. "However, viral load in the mother's fluids is intermittent and very low, almost at the detection threshold," he said. If the result of a molecular test is negative, it should ideally be repeated at least twice at intervals of no less than a week. Three of the women monitored for the study had babies with complications that were probably caused by Zika: two displayed hearing loss and one was born with a brain cyst. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US developed a rapid test that identifies Zika virus in blood samples as well as all four serotypes of dengue virus during the acute phase of infection. The method is low-cost and entails no risk of a cross- reaction, unlike other tests, according to the study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. It consists of a dipstick strip with antibodies that change colour in the presence of a viral protein known as NS1. "We validated it in tests on blood samples from patients with a confirmed diagnosis of both Zika and dengue attending the Sao Jose do Rio Preto general hospital for treatment," Nogueira said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Spanish prosecutors have asked that eight former members of Catalonia's deposed separatist government be jailed pending further investigation, the National Court where they are being heard said today. They also asked that a ninth former minister be freed and ordered to pay a bond. Deposed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four other ministers, however, refused to show up in Madrid as summoned and remain in Belgium. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Theresa May and Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu were preparing today to celebrate the centenary of a British declaration that ultimately led to the foundation of the state of Israel. "We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel," May will say at a dinner in London to mark the date alongside Netanyahu, according to extracts released by her office. May will also warn about a "pernicious form of anti- Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist." On the second day of his five-day visit to Britain, Netanyahu was set to meet with May in her Downing Street office and hold talks with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, including on the Iran nuclear agreement. The dinner will be attended by dignitaries including a descendant of the Balfour Declaration's author, then foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour who called for "a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration is seen as a precursor to Israel's creation in 1948 and the anniversary is a joyous occasion for Israelis but is contentious for many Palestinians who say it led to hundreds of thousands fleeing or being forced from their homes. Speaking ahead of his departure for London, Netanyahu said: "The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy. "What's been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later. I hope they change their mind, because if they do they can move forward finally to making peace between our two peoples," he said. At the dinner, May is also set to call for "a renewed resolve to support a lasting peace that is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians -- and in the interests of us all. "A peace deal that must be based on a two-state solution, with a secure and prosperous Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state." Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour main opposition, will not attend the dinner due to "other engagements" and is sending foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry instead, the party said. Labour has been embroiled in a number of rows over anti- Semitism under his leadership, and Corbyn himself has in the past come under fire for meeting representatives of Hezbollah and Hamas. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladesh-based champion of microfinance, says he sees no reason for his Grameen Bank to set up operations here as India has several successful microcredit organisations and many of these are modelled after the bank he founded. He also says that he has been proposing to Indian policy makers to create a separate banking law to allow setting up of specialised banks for the poor. "In the mean time I suggested (them) to give limited banking licence to successful MFIs (microfinance institutions) so that they can take deposits to become financially self- reliant, and expand their operation at a faster speed," he says. "The Reserve Bank of India has issued licences to convert 10 leading MFIs into specialised banks. I see no reason for Grameen Bank to set up its own operation in India while the newly created microfinance banks are doing commendable jobs," Yunus told PTI in an interview. He was responding to a question on whether there is any plan by his Grameen Bank to set up and expand its presence in India. Yunus has come out with a new book "A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions", published by Hachette India, in which he sets out a vision for a new economic system that tackles these three problems together. The book is dedicated to highlighting the impending danger of exponential rise of wealth concentration globally and nationally, he says, adding it argues that wealth concentration is a ticking time bomb, it can explode politically and socially any time. "We need to address that. The book presents four mega powers which can slow down, and even reverse, the process of wealth concentration. These are: power of youth, power of social business, power of technology, and power of good governance. Not only can they reverse the flow of wealth from upwards to downwards, they can lay the foundation of a new civilisation based on human values, moving out of a civilisation based on greed," he says. Besides being the founder of Grameen Bank and the father of microcredit, Yunus is also the creator of social business, which has had huge impact on the grass-roots economy across the Indian subcontinent and in emerging economies across the world. He and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006 "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below". Asked how relevant microfinance is to India and Bangladesh today when there has been a huge expansion of commercial banking networks in remote rural areas, Yunus says it was born to point out the failure of conventional banking in reaching out to the bottom half of global population. "As long as loan sharks, pawn shops, and informal lending exist, we know that banking system remains incomplete. It is not about how many people banking system has reached with their new initiatives, it is about how many people are left out from the system. "As long as it leaves people unaddressed microfinance should be there to remind the banking system that this can be done, there is no room to relax with the sense of accomplishment," he says. In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank and MFIs are still the prime institutions to address the financial need of millions of poor families in the country, he says, adding "We don't see any sign of commercial banks taking over these responsibilities. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A 32-year-old make-up artist associated with the Punjabi film industry was shot dead allegedly by a cameraman who owed her money, police said today. The accused was arrested hours after the body of Geet Brar with bullet injuries in head and neck was found dumped at Rajpura near here late last night, Patiala Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) S Boopathi said. He said 38-year-old cameraman Manjeet Singh Thind owed money to Brar, which became the motive of the killing. The SSP said Brar was shot thrice from a close range. Examination of the crime scene revealed that she had been fired upon at the spot where the body was found, he said. Police collected empty cartridges from the spot, he said. Brar, who hailed from Moga, was living in a rented accommodation in Chandigarh. Associates of Brar told police that they had seen her leaving the Chandigarh residence with the cameraman, a resident of Rajpura, police said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray today met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to discuss the issue of illegal hawkers in Mumbai. The meeting comes a day after hawkers staged a protest at Azad Maidan demanding framing of a hawkers' policy. Yesterday, MNS and Congress workers had clashed in Dadar over the issue of hawkers. MNS leader Bala Nandgaonkar said his party has asked the BJP-led government in Maharashtra to implement the court orders on hawkers. "If the government implements the court orders, we (MNS) won't have to resort to anti-hawker agitation," Nandgaonkar said. Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam had organised a morcha in Dadar in support of hawkers, who have been targeted by the Raj Thackeray-led party. MNS workers had arrived at the 'Sanman Morcha' site in Dadar West before it began, leading to a confrontation between the activists of the two parties. The MNS workers hurled potatoes at the Congress workers and police took some Congress and MNS workers into custody. The MNS had blamed Nirupam for the assault on its Malad division chief Shashank Malavade by hawkers on Saturday. The party alleged that Nirupam had asked the hawkers to retaliate. MNS activists had also gathered near Nirupam's residence in Andheri yesterday. Cracking the whip on illegal hawkers in the city, the Bombay High Court yesterday restricted hawking to designated zones only while banning the activity on foot and rail overbridges and within 150 metres of railway stations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced a resolution in the US Congress which seeks treatment of Tibetans as an important factor in America's ties with China, ahead of President Donald Trump's visit there during his maiden Asia trip. The resolution encourages China to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives leading to a negotiated agreement with respect to Tibet. It also calls for immediate and unconditional release of all those imprisoned for expressing their political or religious views in the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas. Besides, it seeks establishment of an office in Lhasa to assist visiting US citizens and to monitor political, economic, and cultural developments in Tibet. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman Emeritus of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Congressman Eliot Engel, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Congressmen Ted Yoho and Brad Sherman jointly introduced the resolution , the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. "China's repression of the Tibetan people represents a serious threat to the region's stability and must be a higher priority in US foreign policy," Ros-Lehtinen said. "With President Trump travelling to China next week, this resolution sets a clear blueprint for Tibet policy in US-China relations, outlining where the United States needs to take a stronger hand and stand up to Beijing's bullying," she said. "As we mark the 10-year anniversary of his holiness the Dalai Lama receiving the Congressional Gold medal, US policy must work to reverse China's dangerous behaviour and finally achieve a negotiated solution that includes meaningful autonomy for the Tibetan people," she added. Engel said China's systematic oppression of the Tibetan people is increasing in "intensity and cruelty". "So when the President travels to China in the coming days, I hope he makes it clear that human rights and democratic values are central components of American foreign policy," he said. As the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has inspired the world for decades with principled and peaceful leadership, a stark contrast to a regime in Beijing bent on consolidating economic and political power, Engel said. "Congress has long supported the cause of the Tibetan people, from the Tibetan Policy Act to awarding the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal. This resolution calls on the Trump Administration to continue America's principled support of Tibetan people's right to preserve their own distinct cultural identity," he said. International Campaign for Tibet has welcomed the resolution. Its President Matteo Mecacci said the resolution reflects decades-long and broad bipartisan support that exists for the Dalai Lama and Tibet among the American public. "The US Congress has been at the forefront in shaping US policy on Tibet and its strong call on the Trump administration is a timely reminder to Chinese leaders and the Chinese Communist Party that the international community will continue to hold them accountable for the violation of the Tibetan people's rights," Mecacci said. Trump embarks on a 12-day trip later this week to visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and Philippines. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The sun came out and dispelled dark clouds over the city and surrounding regions today, bringing relief to the people after two days of heavy rain that flooded many low-lying areas. The weather office here forecast moderate to heavy rainfall in parts of Tamil Nadu over the next two days and said a low pressure had formed over the southwest bay of the Sri Lanka coast. The let up in the downpour in Chennai and the neighbouring districts of Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram came as a respite to the residents as heavy rain had thrown life out of gear, leading to flooded areas and traffic snarls. However, the government has ordered that schools remain closed in these three districts. S Balachandran, Director, Area Cyclone Warning Centre, said the heaviest rainfall was in Palayamkottai (Tirunelveli district), which recorded 13 cm of rainfall in the last 24 hours till 8.30 am today, according to statistics provided by the Regional Meteorological Centre. Tiruchendur in Thoothukudi district recorded 9 cm of rain, while Chennai received 4 cm of rain, he told reporters. "A low pressure has formed over the southwest Bay of Sri Lanka coast. During the last 24 hours, fairly widespread rainfall occurred over Tamil Nadu," he said. In the next two days, moderate rainfall was expected in many places in South Tamil Nadu and a few areas in the north coastal parts of the state, he said. Heavy rainfall was also expected at one or two places over south Tamil Nadu and delta districts, Balachandran said, and advised fishermen in the coastal areas of the regions to be "cautious". As far as Chennai was concerned, some light spells of rain were expected in the next two days, he said. The relentless rain in and around Chennai also resulted in an increase in the storage levels of reservoirs supplying drinking water to the city. The combined storage of four reservoirs feeding Chennai-- Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills and Chembarambakkam -- stood at 1925 mcft (million cubic feet), as against the full combined capacity of 11057 mcft, according to data made available by the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board. The combined storage on November 2, 2016, stood at 1270 mcft, it said. The storage is likely to go up following the forecast of more rain, and with the ongoing north east monsoon scheduled to last till December. Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar today condoled the death of two children who were electrocuted in the Kodungaiyur area yesterday. He expressed his condolences to the families of Yuvasri and Bhavana, who died after coming in contact with a live wire submerged in stagnant water in that locality. The minister told reporters the government would not tolerate any "laxity" on such issues and pointed out that eight officials of TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited) had been suspended in connection with the incident for failing to take precautionary measures. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The next of kin of those killed in a boiler explosion at NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rai Bareli district yesterday will get a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh, Union Power minister R K Singh said today. Meanwhile, the state administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. A massive explosion had ripped a boiler at the NTPC's Unchahar plant and the death toll in the incident had risen up to 26, officials said. "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," he told reporters in Unchahar. This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime minister's office said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, termed the incident as gory and saddening. "Our priority at this point in time is that proper treatment should be ensured to the injured persons. We stand by the families of those dead in their hour of grief. Teams of NTPC and NDRF have already arrived here," he said. Sharma said a magisterial inquiry has been ordered by the district magistrate. The NTPC too has ordered a probe, officials said. Meanwhile, UP Chief Secretary Rajive Kumar said in Lucknow that a number of patients who have come to the state capital were "substantially burnt" and doctors and medical staff were giving them the best possible treatment. He said the state government will ensure that there is no shortage of medicines at the hospitals. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Allahabad High Court today granted bail to Chandrashekhar, the chief of dalit outfit Bhim Army who was arrested on June 8 in connection with Thakur- Dalit clash in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district. Justice Mukhtar Ahmed allowed the bail plea of accused Chandrashekhar alias Ravan, accepting the argument of his counsel that neither any specific role had been assigned to the applicant in the FIR nor it was alleged that he was possessing any weapon at the time of riot. Appearing on behalf of the accused, advocate I M Khan pleaded that his client has been falsely implicated in the case. He alleged that the members of Pratap Sena outfit entered into a locality of families belonging to scheduled castes in Saharanpur and burned down houses and properties for which an FIR was lodged on May 6, 2017. As a counter, an FIR was lodged after three days, on May 9, 2017, at police station Saharanpur Dehat against the applicant and 250 unknown person alleging loot, assault, causing injurys to public servants, provocation of public to cause riot and attempt to murder. The court accepted the argument that the FIR was lodged after a delay of three days as a counter, Khan said. After hearing the counsel for the applicant and the state government, the court granted relief to Chandrashekhar, a lawyer by profession. He was arrested on June 8 by the Uttar Pradesh task force from Himachal Pradesh's Dalhousie in connection with his alleged role in the Thakur-Dalit clash in Saharanpur. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sidelined AIADMK leaders V K Sasikala and TTV Dhinakaran have filed a civil suit in the Madras High Court against their removal from party posts and sought a direction to restrict rival leaders from operating party bank accounts. When the suit came up for hearing today, Justice C V Karthikeyan ordered notice to O Panneerselvam and E Palaniswami, currently the coordinator and joint coordinator respectively of the unified AIADMK, and other senior leaders in their camp E Madhusudhanan, S Semmalai, and Dindigul C Sreenivasan, returnable byNovember 29. The court directed AIADMK headquarters manager P Mahalingam to submit by November 10 the details of bank accounts maintained by the party and persons authorised to operate them. Sasikala and Dhinakaran, removed as general secretary and deputy general secretary respectively at a general council meeting of AIADMK held on September 12 here, sought to restrain Palaniswami and Panneerselvam led (EPS-OPS) group from holding organisational posts in the party. They prayed the court to declare as illegal and void the resolutions passed in theSeptember 12general council meeting removing them from the party posts. Pressing for an interim injunction against the EPS-OPS group from operating the bank accounts of the AIADMK, the plaintiffs claimed that only M Rangasamy, MLA, who was 'appointed' as the party treasurer by Sasikala in September was entitled to operate the accounts. The suit also made the branch managers of Karur Vysya Bank, Mylapore, Indian Bank, Abhiramapuram, and Bank of India, Cathedral Road, as defendants. The plaintiffs also sought the court to restrain the EPS-OPS group from conducting general council meeting of the party and not to interfere in their rights from functioning as the general secretary and deputy general secretary and discharge their day-to-day duties. The Sasikala-Dhinakaran group is locked in a battle with the EPS-OPS group for supremacy in the party and government. Eighteen MLAs loyal to Dhinakaran had been disqualified by the Assembly Speaker under the anti-defection law for alleged anti-party activities. Petitions challenging their disqualification is pending in the high court. Incidentally, on a plea by one of the disqualified MLAs seeking a stay on the holding of the general council meeting, the high court had said decisions taken at the meet would be subject to the final outcome of the petition. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sri Lanka's Supreme Court today annulled the parliamentary seat of Geetha Kumarsinghe, an actress-turned-politician and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's loyalist, for holding dual citizenship. Kumarsinghe, who holds the citizenship of Sri Lanka and Switzerland, had moved the apex court against a lower court's ruling which had disqualified her in May. The 61-year-old United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Member of Parliament was elected from southern district of Galle in 2015 general elections. She was also a member of Rajapaksa's joint opposition group which challenged President Maithripala Sirisena's leadership in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The SLFP and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesimnghe's United National Party (UNP) are coalition partners in the present unity government. The Rajapaksa backers had been demanding Sirisena to fire Wickremesinghe to form their own SLFP government. The Sri Lankan apex court upheld the decision of the Courts of Appeal, which on May 3 had ruled that she was not entitled to hold the post of an MP as she had contested the polls while being a dual citizen, which is against the 19th Amendment of the Constitution. The 19th Amendment, which became law just a few months ahead of parliamentary elections, bars a person holding dual nationality from being a candidate. Kumarsinghe was allowed to contest the elections by returning officers under the 1981 Parliamentary Elections Act. Holding that the provisions of 19th Amendment was applicable in the elections, the Court of Appeal overturned the returning officer's decision and unseated Kumarasinghe on the ground that she was an unsuitable candidate at the time of nomination. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Security cooperation was strengthened during the India-EU Summit, Belgian envoy to India Jan Luykx said today, but admitted that no real progress was made on the free trade agreement. Luykx said he considers the India-EU Summit, held here last month, a "success" barring the the much-delayed free trade pact (FTA). He also indicated that Belgium was in favour of the India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA), as the proposed FTA is known. "In the field of trade negotiations, the Summit has not really led to any results. On the other hand, as far as I am concerned, the Summit did mark progress between India and the EU in several important fields, especially in the area of security cooperation," Luykx said. During the India-EU Summit held in early September, both sides adopted a declaration to counter terrorism and discussed ways to strengthen their cooperation in the key areas of trade and security. However, there was no major headway on the free trade pact. Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, had said that "only when the conditions are right we resume (talks)". Luykx said the Summit had a broad agenda and FTA was one of the main issues. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Shiv Sena leader compiled a booklet titled "Ghotalebaaz BJP" listing "scams" of BJP ministers and distributed it among the party leaders yesterday. The development could further strain the already frosty relations being shared by the two uncomfortable allies even though a Sena leader today clarified that the booklet was not compiled officially by the Uddhav Thackeray-led party. A Sena leader today said the booklet was distributed after the meeting got over last evening and Thackeray had already left the place by then. The 56-page booklet lists 20 "national scams" of the "transparent BJP" from the time it came to power at the Centre and also the "scams" that were allegedly "committed by the party leaders, besides the quantum of scams during the BJP's tenure from 1999 to 2004". On the proceedings of the meeting, Sena MLC Neelam Gorhe said Thackeray asked the cadres to further increase the organisational strength upto the booth level and ensure that the loan waiver scheme, announced under the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji maharaj, is implemented without any hiccups. Interestingly, Sena had recently hit out at the BJP-led state government over "hasty" implementation of the Rs 34022 crore loan waiver scheme for farmers. The BJP-led government in Maharashtra, of which Sena is also a part, recently completed three years in office. Though Sena seems attempting a damage control by stating that the booklet was not an official compilation, the opposition NCP latched onto it to attack the BJP. "The BJP, which always talks about transparency and high morals, has been bared by its own ally. If the BJP still shares power with the Sena after it has laid bare all the facts about corruption of its ministers. There will be none other than the BJP which will be perceived as being so helpless for power," Malik told reporters. The Sena has stepped up its attack against its senior ally after the BJP inducted Congress renegade and ex-Shivsainik Narayan Rane's outfit in the NDA fold. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had earlier confirmed the reports that Rane, who recently left the Congress to float Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, would be inducted into the government in the next Cabinet expansion, expected to take place before the Winter session of Maharashtra Legislature in December. Fadnavis had said that people may not like Sena playing a "double role" in politics, a dig aimed at the frequent attacks by the Sena on the BJP while continuing to be in government. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Sexual offences are worst than murder and other heinous crimes as the assault in such cases is not just on the body but on the soul of the victim, a Delhi court has said while sending a man to jail for 14 years for raping a minor. "Physical wounds heal up with the passage of time and medication but wounds on the mind and soul are of a persistent and nagging nature, which remain alive for years together, making the victim shudder with pain, time and again, eclipsing all pleasant memories," Additional Sessions Judge Seema Maini said. The judge made the observation while convicting 27-year- old north Delhi resident Santhosh Kumar for raping a 10-year- old girl in 2015. The court awarded a compensation of Rs two lakh to the victim under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, noting that she lost her childhood, her carefree attitude and the pleasant and joyous approach towards life. "The victim of such an offence when happens to be a child of tender years i.e. 10 years of age, the pain and the trauma, which such an offence qua her, at the hands of the convict, would have brought into her life, can never be expressed in words," it said. The judge did not mince words when the counsel appearing for the convict sought leniency citing his family circumstances. "Such sexual offences, in my opinion, are worse than murder/culpable homicide, since the assault in such cases is not just on the body of the victim but also on the soul, mind as well as the whole persona of the victim. "Such an offence, having been committed with the child, makes it imperative that the offender is dealt with a firm hand and the mitigating circumstances of the convict cannot be given precedence over the pain, suffering and trauma of the victim child," the judge said. According to the police, Kumar lured the minor neighbour into his room and raped her in 2015. The convict, however, denied the allegations in the court and claimed that he was falsely implicated in the case. The judge said that the convict has been held liable to be punished under various provisions of the POCSO Act and the Indian Penal Code, for commiting penetrative sexual assault upon the victim. "...the convict is being awarded punishment under IPC... rigorous imprisonment for a period of 14 years, along with a fine of Rs 50,000," it said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BJP chief Amit Shah today launched a scathing attack on the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government in Karnataka, accusing it of having broken "all records" in corruption. Kickstarting the BJP state unit's "Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra" at a rally here, he claimed that a survey had found that the state government was the "most corrupt" in the country. Shah described state BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa, who is spearheading the yatra, as the prospective chief minister and claimed that the 'yatra" would lead to the ouster of the Siddaramaiah government. Shah alleged that the funds released by the central government to the state were not reaching the people they were intended to benefit. The BJP chief also slammed the state government for celebrating the birth anniversary of 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan as "Tipu Jayanti" on November 10 and claimed that it was "votebank politics". "The government is more interested in celebrating November 10 as Tipu Jayanti rather than celebrating Kannada Rajyotsava (state formation day which fell yesterday) with grandeur," he claimed. The BJP has been opposing the event as it sees Tipu Sultan as a "religious bigot" and a "brutal killer". The 75-day yatra, launched at the Bangalore International Exhibition Centre grounds off Tumakuru road, is aimed at "exposing" the alleged misdeeds of the Congress government. It will criss-cross all the 224 assembly constituencies in the state. A galaxy of national leaders, including Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, are expected to take part in the yatra at different places. During the yatra, BJP leaders will hold public meetings in each assembly constituency, and present an alternative agenda for development. The BJP is eyeing to capture power in the assembly polls in Karnataka due early next year. The party had installed its first-ever government in the South in 2008. The rally will culminate in Bengaluru on January 28 and it will be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today dubbed BJP's statewide yatra against his government as a "yatra of remorse" and said the saffron party cannot succeed in the state as its people are "politically mature". He also hit out at BJP national president Amit Shah and state president Yeddyurappa by pointing out that both of them had been to jail. The chief minister also defended the state government's decision to celebrate the birth anniversary of 18th century Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan. Siddaramaiah's reaction came after Shah kicked off the 75-day "Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthane Yatra", led by Yeddyurappa to "expose misdeeds" of the Congress government in the 224 assembly constituencies of the state. Launching the yatra, Shah had accused the Karnataka government of breaking "all records" in corruption. "The people of Karnataka are very mature, it is not like UP or any other state. In south India, our people are not emotional, they are politically mature and believe in secular principles..." Siddaramaiah told reporters. Roots of secular principles are strong here, he said. "Their (BJP) wish of doing something here cannot happen. Nothing will happen even if they bring Prime Minister or Shah or Adityanath. Polarisation of votes through Hindutva and instigation will not happen here," the senior Congress leader said. Defending his government, Siddaramaiah said, "There is no corruption or scandal...in fact (they) had gone to jail on corruption charges. How many of them had gone?.." Listing out the BJP leaders who had gone to jail including Yeddyurappa, the chief minister asked, "Did they go to jail simply?...they have to go before the people and tell-- we have gone to jail and come back, now we are coming in front of you (people)." Siddaramaiah said people of Karnataka are satisfied by his government's programmes during the last five years and have decided to bless the Congress again. "We will 100 per cent come back to power in 2018 Assembly elections. So any number of such yatras by them (BJP) will have no influence," he said. "I do not know who named it 'Parivarthane'...it is not parivarthane, it is 'teertha yatra' (pilgrimage)....it is yatre of remorse. It is they who have to change from being communal to secular," he asserted. The chief minister also chaired a meeting of senior police officials in the state after Neelamani N Raju took charge as first woman Director General of Police of Karnataka, and reviewed the law and order situation in the state. "Law and order situation is good after we came to power. Our police officials have done their duty, but the BJP is repeatedly trying to disturb the communal harmony," Siddaramaiah said. "In the backdrop of Parivarthana Yatre and Tipu Jayanti, we have discussed things related to it also," he said. BJP and few other organisations have been opposing the Tipu Jayanti celebrations as they see Tipu Sultan as a "religious bigot" and a "brutal killer". Pointing out that this was the third year the government will be celebrating Tipu Jayanti, Siddaramaiah said last year it went off smoothly and only in the first year, there was violence due to "instigation" by RSS and Bajarang Dal. "By and large Karnatka's people have accepted Tipu Jayanti. Tipu was a freedom lover, patriot. As claimed by them (RSS, BJP), he was never anti-Hindu or anti-Kannada or any other community," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pesticides industry body CCFI today said the Maharasthra government should ensure that SIT investigations into deaths of farmers in Yavatmal district are more scientific and look into all etiological factors. The state government had recently appointed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe deaths of cotton farmers allegedly due to pesticides. The Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) said in a representation to the government that the terms of references (ToR) assigned to the SIT are "narrow" and confined to the use of pesticides and do not cover all possible etiological factors. "The investigations by the members of the SIT need to be scientific and evidence based regarding the etiology of the alleged deaths," CCFI President Rajju Shroff said in a letter written to the Maharasthra Agriculture Minister. Recently, 21 farmers from Yavatmal died allegedly after inhaling pesticides while spraying them in their cotton fields. Last month, in a separate incident, seven farmers in Solapur district were hospitalised as they complained of uneasiness after coming in contact with chemicals used in vineyards. Stating the CCFI certainly shares the public concern about the loss of lives of farmers, Shroff said "But this does not warrant a priori assumption that exposure to pesticide spray drift caused the death. There are strong scientific reasons against such a priori assumption." There was no causal link between exposure to spray drift of pesticides, if any, and the deaths reported from Yavatmal district, he said. CCFI also demanded the state government to widen the ToR and include an expert member from the CCFI in the SIT to facilitate a science-based investigation. Meanwhile, the Union Agriculture Ministry has asked Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to study the matter and submit a report at the earliest. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bombay High Court today issued fresh notices to IPS officers D G Vanzara (retired), Rajkumar Pandiyan, and Dinesh M N seeking their response to pleas challenging their discharge in the alleged fake encounter case of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati. Justice A M Badar, who was hearing a plea filed by Sohrabuddin's brother Rubabuddin, also directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to provide to Rubabuddin, the residential and official addresses of the three officials mentioned above to ensure that notices are served to them immediately. Justice Badar was hearing revision applications filed by Rubabuddin challenging the trial court orders issued between August 2016 and August 2017, discharging the three officials from the case. While Rubabuddin had also sought that the trial in the case against the remaining accused be stayed until his revision pleas were decided upon by High Court, Justice Badar today refused to stay the trial saying that the same would cause prejudice to the remaining accused. He, however, said that the High Court will expedite the hearing on Rubabuddin's revision pleas as soon as the notices to three officials were served. The special CBI court in Mumbai that has been hearing the fake encounter case after the Supreme Court ordered for the trial in the case to be transferred out of Gujarat, had discharged the above three officials on the ground that the CBI had failed to get prior sanction or the special permission to prosecute them and hence, they could not be prosecuted. Of the 38 people accused in the case, 15 have been discharged by the special court. Fourteen of the 15 people discharged are IPS officers. The CBI has only challenged the discharge of one of these 14 officers -- N K Amin, one of the key accused in the fake encounter cases of Sohrabuddin, his wife Kauser Bi, and also that of Ishrat Jahan. On the last hearing on Rubabuddin's revision pleas in the High Court on September 29 this year, another bench of the High Court had asked the CBI why it had not challenged the trial court orders discharging senior IPS officials in the case. Justice Revati Mohite-Dere had said that the CBI should have been as aggrieved as Rubabuddin was, with the trial court's discharge order. She had hence, asked the probe agency whether it was planning to challenge the trial court orders discharging IPS officers Rajkumar Pandiyan, Dinesh M N, and retired IPS officer D G Vanzara. On September 29, Justice Mohite-Dere had also suggested that perhaps the CBI should ask the special court to temporarily refrain from framing the charges against any accused persons in the case. On October 24 this year, however, the special court framed charges against 16 persons accused of murder, criminal conspiracy, and destruction of evidence in the case. The CBI is also yet to inform High Court of whether or not it intends to challenge the discharge of the above three officials. Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausar Bi were allegedly abducted by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad from Hyderabad on their way to Sangli in Maharashtra. Sheikh was killed in an alleged fake encounter near Gandhinagar in November 2005, after which his wife disappeared. Prajapati, an aide of Sheikh and an eyewitness to the encounter, was allegedly killed by police in Chapri village in Gujarat's Banaskantha district in December 2006. Vanzara, who was heading the ATS at the time, was charged by the CBI for having conspired with the other accused officials to kill Sheikh and the other victims and pass the incident off as an encounter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Spain is set for another day of high drama in the Catalonia crisis today with a judge in Madrid to grill the deposed leaders of the region's separatist government. Notable by his likely absence, however, will be the dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and according to his lawyer refusing to come. "He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium," Paul Bekaert told Spain's TV3 television yesterday. The hearing at the National Court in Madrid, which deals with major criminal cases, was to start at 9:00 am (local time) and to continue tomorrow. The judge wants to question Puigdemont and 13 others over their efforts to spearhead Catalonia's independence drive, which has plunged Spain into its biggest crisis in decades. An independence referendum on October 1 - that heavy- handed Spanish police tried and failed to stop - was followed by a declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament last Friday. Later that day Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government dismissed the regional government and moved to impose direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region. On Monday, Spain's chief prosecutor said he was seeking charges of rebellion - punishable by up to 30 years behind bars - sedition and misuse of public funds against the 14. The speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, and five parliamentary deputies will also be grilled over the same alleged offences, but by a judge at the Supreme Court. It was unclear how many of them will show up. Puigdemont, 54, has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and on Tuesday said he would remain in Brussels until he had guarantees that any proceedings would be impartial. In a statement, he said there was a concerted effort to divide his government. Some will go before a national audience "to denounce the drive of Spanish justice to pursue political ideas," while others "will stay in Brussels to decry this political process to the international community," he wrote. Puigdemont has retained the support of many in Catalonia, whose people are fiercely proud of their language and culture. Maria Angels Selgas, a 60-year-old sales manager in Barcelona, said that for her, Puigdemont was still the Catalan president. "If they humiliate him then they humiliate also the more than two million Catalans who voted 'yes' in the referendum," she told AFP. Yesterday several hundred separatist supporters accompanied some of those due to appear in the Madrid court to Barcelona's main train station, chanting "liberty" and "you are not alone". But Catalans remain deeply divided about independence, polls indicate. The international community has swung firmly behind Rajoy, and uncertainty about Catalonia's future has prompted companies to move their legal headquarters outside the region in droves. In addition, there are signs of growing divisions in the separatist camp, with many unhappy with Puigdemont and his handling of the situation. Joan Josep Nuet, a Catalan parliamentary deputy due to go before the Supreme Court, said yesterday that a now-show by Puigdemont raised the risk that those that do come will be put in preventive custody. "The attitude of the (Catalan) president and the government in recent days has been really absurd, managing only to create yet more bewilderment," Nuet told Catalunya Radio. Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist in Madrid, said he believed that Puigdemont, a former journalist, "is more interested in obtaining media attention than escaping justice." "It's a media war. The aim of (the Catalan executive) has been to try and present the Spanish state as an oppressor state and Puigdemont needs to feed this narrative," he said. Rajoy has called snap elections for December 21 to replace the Catalan parliament. Puigdemont said he would "respect" the result - and appealed to Madrid to do the same. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An unidentified gunman today walked into a Walmart store in Colorado and opened indiscriminate fire, killing three persons including a woman before fleeing in a car, police said. The incident, which took place inside the supermarket store in the US state of Colorado's Denver suburb, sent policemen into a tizzy as it happened hours after an-ISIS inspired Uzbek national killed eight people in New York. Authorities were looking for a man who, according to the police, entered the store and randomly fired a handgun near the cash register, striking three people, CNN reported. "The shooting happened inside the store. We believe as of right now that the shooting was random," Thornton Police Officer Victor Avila said. The two men died inside the store while the woman died later at a nearby hospital. Hundreds of emergency responders ringed the Thornton Town Centre shopping complex for hours after the shooting was reported around 5 AM (IST). The Walmart is part of the centre. "Multiple parties" were down, Thornton police said in a tweet. An hour later, the Thornton Police Department tweeted, "At this time this is not an active shooter". US media reported that the gunman fled the scene in a car after the incident. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line at the Walmart when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Investigators, who have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting, were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses to get a description of the shooter. US President Donald Trump has called for an immediate implementation of tougher "extreme vetting" procedures after the New York terror incident near the World Trade Centre. Eight people were killed and 11 others injured as the truck driven by Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov carved a path of destruction through several blocks of Lower Manhattan. Saipov, before being shot at by the police, crashed the truck into a school bus and left the vehicle brandishing imitation firearms. It was the the worst terror attack on the city since 9/11. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will make his maiden trip to Myanmar this month to discuss the Rohingya crisis. Tillerson will travel to Naypyidaw on November 15 to hold talks with senior officials on the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State and US support for Myanmar's democratic transition, the State Department said today. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh following a security crackdown in Rakhine, drawing allegations of ethnic cleansing and overshadowing Myanmar's US-backed transition to democracy. Tillerson will also accompany President Donald Trump on his five-nation trip to Asia that starts this weekend. Trump is travelling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Secretary will also make an additional stop in Burma, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said. "Tillersons six-country visit demonstrates the Trump administrations commitment to our alliances and partnerships in the Asia Pacific and highlights our ongoing engagement in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) on regional issues of mutual interest and concern," she said. Giving a detailed itinerary of Tillersons Asia trip, Nauert said he will first travel to Tokyo for Trump's meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that starts Sunday. Tillerson will also join the president for summits with the leaders of South Korea and China, and for regional summits of Asia-Pacific leaders in Vietnam and the Philippines. In Japan, he will also engage with Japanese and American business leaders and meet with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime. "He will support the presidents focus on bolstering the US-Japan Alliance, strengthening our shared resolve on North Korea, and pressing for more balanced trade that fosters strong domestic demand-driven growth and free and fair trade practices," the spokesperson said. In Seoul, he will join Trump in meeting with senior Korean officials to discuss the US-South Korea alliance and their shared global priorities, including coordinated response to the threat posed by North Korea. On November 8-10, the Secretary will visit Beijing and will participate in Trumps summit meeting with President Xi Jinping. He will have discussions with Chinese officials on bilateral, regional, and global issues that affect both countries. At the top of the agenda will be North Korea and the economic relationship between the United States and China. The US seeks a constructive and results-oriented relationship with China, Nauert said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Criticising US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's visit to India, CPI(M) today alleged that it was aimed at harnessing India to fulfil the US's goals vis-a-vis China and Iran. It also expressed scepticism over Tillerson's assurances regarding putting pressure on Pakistan to act against the terrorist groups operating from the country. Former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of party organ 'People's Democracy", called the visit "another step in the US gambit to draw India fully into a strategic-military alliance in what is called the Indo-Pacific region". Karat pointed out that before his visit to India, Tillerson in his speech at a think-tank in Washington had said that "the United States and India are increasingly global partners with growing strategic convergence". He said that Tillerson's speech, titled 'defining our relationship with India for the next century', had made it clear that the United States wishes to harness India in its efforts to contain China in the Asia-Pacific region. "He accused China of 'undermining the international rules-based order' even while praising India's role. Tillerson underlined the fact that the foundation of the strategic alliance is the military relationship," Karat said. The Left leader alleged that "Tillerson made it clear that the United States wishes to harness India in its efforts to contain China in the Asia-Pacific region.... "He accused China of 'undermining the international rules-based order' even while praising Indias role." On Tillerson's assurances regarding putting pressure on Pakistan to act against terror groups, Karat reminded that the top US official arrived in Delhi after visiting Islamabad and that the Trump administration has always acknowledged Pakistan's importance in resolving the conflict in Afghanistan. "Tillerson made the rhetorical assurances that the US is putting pressure on the Pakistani establishment to act against the terrorist groups operating from the country. "This was done, as usual, to allay India's concerns, but the reality is that the Trump administration cannot dispense with the Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy," the Left leader wrote. He cautioned that Tillerson's visit was also aimed to get India on board for its sanctions and hostile manoeuvres against Iran as Trump administration "is determined to scuttle the nuclear agreement arrived at with Iran by the Obama administration". "Going along with the US sanctions on Iran would be harmful to Indias vital interests in the energy and economic spheres, but given past experience, the Modi government may give in to US pressure," Karat observed in the editorial. Karat has cited that "earlier dialogue between the foreign and commerce ministers of both the countries are now replaced by dialogue involving the foreign and defence ministers highlighting the military strategic nature of the relationship". Along with selling more weaponry worth billions of dollars to India, US administration has also put pressure to sign other foundational military agreements like the CISMOA, he claimed. Tillerson arrived in India on October 24 on his maiden visit. During his three day stay, he held talks with the Indian leadership on further strengthening the Indo-US strategic partnership. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Trinamool Congress (TMC) today said it would observe the anniversary of demonetisation on November 8 as "black day" and also protest the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on that day. "We will observe black day on November 8. Our party workers will take to the streets throughout West Bengal to protest against demonetisation and the implementation of the GST, which have caused immense sufferings to the people," TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee told reporters here. Alleging that the Centre's policies were weakening the economy, he said, "We are protesting against it. The people are realising that (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi's 'achhe din' slogan has turned out to be disastrous for them." Chatterjee alleged that a few lakhs of people had lost jobs in the country due to the Centre's decision to scrap high-value currency notes. The GST had added more miseries to the lives of the people, he alleged. The decision to scrap the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bank notes was announced by the BJP-led central government on November 8 last year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami today appointed Ministers to oversee rain relief work here and in neighbouring Kancheepuram with showers resuming in this metropolis and adjoining districts as well. After chairing a review meet at the Secretariat here, Palaniswami named Ministers to coordinate and take up relief work "on a war footing," in affected areas in all 15 zones of Greater Chennai Corporation and Kancheepuram district. Days after naming senior bureaucrats as co-ordinators to all 15 zones of the corporation here to monitor relief work, the State government, in an official release, said IAS officials have been deputed for all districts as well. The Ministers named to monitor relief work here include those holding portfolios of Revenue (R B Udhayakumar), Electricity (P Thangamani), Food (R Kamaraj), Law (C Ve Shanmugam), Fisheries (D Jayakumar). Also, Minsiters for Forest (Dindigul C Sreenivasan), Information Technology, (M Manikandan), Transport (M R Vijayabhaskar) and Higher Education (K P Anbalagan) will be monitoring the relief work in this metropolis. Anbalagan will also take care of Kancheepuram district. In all other rain affected districts too, senior bureaucrats would work with Minsiters hailing from those respective districts for relief work, the government said. A day after two children were electrocuted here, the Chief Minister ordered officials to ensure that 'pillar boxes' (distributing electricity) in streets should be placed at a safe height to avoid its inundation. A leaky wire from the pillar box which was covered in rain water had led to the electrocution. The review meet took stock of steps already being taken and measures needed to be followed for rain relief work. The Chief Minister directed officials to use additional motor pumps to quickly bail out water from inundated areas. He told officials to hold health camps in affected areas to avoid endemic. Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, State Ministers and government officials, including secretaries, to various departments participated in the review meet. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu government today launched an online portal for single window clearance facility for investors planning to invest in the state. Chief Minister K Palaniswami formally launched the portal "www.easybusiness.tn.gov.in" at the secretariat, that would enable investors get 37 government services without human interface, an official release said. The portal would serve as a single point for accepting and electronically distributing applications to the respective competent authorities, receiving electronic payment of fees from enterprises,ensuring submission of supporting documents. It would also address the queries raised by the investors and also monitor the status of the applications. The website gives access to portals of other government agencies -- Director of Town and Country Planning, Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health, State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT), Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Service, Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board, Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation. According to the portal, the Tamil Nadu Industrial Guidance and Export Promotion Bureau has been designated as the single window agency that would help to attract major investment proposals in the state. "Since inception in 1992, the Bureau has successfully attracted more than 300 major investment proposals with an aggregate investment exceeding Rs three lakh crore", the online portal said. Investors through the portal would be able to file applications, pay the necessary fees and can also download the final approval of the project from the portal. "Through this facility, the industrial growth in the state would further strengthen", the release said. A high-level committee was also formed to address queries raised by the investors so that the investment proposals are cleared in a specific time frame, it said. The portal, besides giving details to prospective investors,shares pictures of late AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa speaking at the maiden Global Investors Meet held in 2015. It also carries the slogan "Tamil Nadu, The Investors Paradise" and also has pictures of top officials from various companies interacting with Chief Minister K Palaniswami. Industries Minister M C Sampath,Rural Industries Minister P Benjamin, Chief Secretary Girija Vaidyanathan, Industries department Principal Secretary, Atulya Mishra and senior government officials participated in the launch of the online portal, the release added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tamil Nadu was a preferred destination for starting new ventures and establishment of French Consulate branch here would spur more business and economic activity, a French envoy said today. This was stated by Consul General of France in Puducherry Catherine Suard when she called on Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit at the Raj Bhavan here. A Raj Bhavan release quoted Suard, who assumed charge as the Consul General in July last, as saying that France and India shared close and friendly relations for centuries together. "Trade, commerce, industry, education, science and technology have been the main areas in which both the countries share wide range of co-operation... several French Companies like Michelin, Renault-Nissan (and) Saint Gobain have set their units in Chennai," she said. Following the establishment of the French Consulate branch in Chennai, there will be more business and economic activity, besides promotion of academic and cultural cooperation between the two countries, she was further quoted as saying. "Tamil Nadu is a preferred destination for starting new ventures and the number of Frenchmen visiting Chennai has increased in the last five years," she added. Ambassador of France to India Alexandre Ziegler had inaugurated the branch of French Consulate here on October 10. Purohit said Tamil Nadu was known for its friendly industrial policies, rich culture, tradition, and had a conducive environment for new investments. He was also quoted as saying that the state welcomed more and more French investors and that India and France were for further boosting ties in defence and security and in combating terrorism. On the occasion, the Governor noted that the mission of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to develop skilled manpower through Skill India, promote Make in India and startups. "The joint exercise to counter terrorism, promoting industrial and technological partnerships under Make in India initiative will further strengthen the bilateral relations between both the countries," he was quoted as saying by the release. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Donald Trump today called for the death penalty for an Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in an ISIS-inspired assault in New York, the worst terrorist attack in the city since 9/11. Trump has been vocal in condemning the yesterday's attack carried out by the 29-year-old ISIS-inspired man who ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path near the World Trade Centre, killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen others. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Trump tweeted, in reference to the FBI's statement that the attacker Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov was inspired by the ISIS and "requested to display ISIS's flag" in his hospital room. In another tweet, Trump said, "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system. There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Trump had yesterday supported the idea of sending the suspect to Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre in Cuba. Presidents typically do not comment on pending criminal cases because of the potential impact their statements can have, the CNN commented. Trump said yesterday that it was "another attack by a very sick and deranged person" while extending his "thoughts, condolences and prayers" to the victims. He also called for tougher "merit-based" immigration measures and vowed to do away with the diversity visa programme. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Programme'... I want merit based," he wrote on Twitter. Saipov was today charged with terrorism offences by US prosecutors who said he decided to carry out the attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians". The FBI and New York Police Department are jointly investigating the terrorist attack, the deadliest in New York post 9/11. Hours after the terrorist attack, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security for "extreme vetting". (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump today called for an immediate implementation of tougher "extreme vetting" procedures after an-ISIS inspired Uzbek man killed eight people in New York, with several lawmakers backing him over the issue. Trump, who has been vocal in condemning the yesterday's attack carried out by the 29-year-old man near the World Trade Centre, also called for sending the attack suspect to Guantanamo Bay. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, an Uzbek immigrant was today charged with terrorism offences in connection with the attack. "The United States will be immediately implementing much tougher extreme vetting procedures. The safety of our citizens comes first!" Trump tweeted. The White House Press Secretary, Sarah Sanders, said some of the specifics for extreme vetting would be enhancing the collection and review of biometric and biographical data, improving intelligence streams, improved documentation requirements and verification, improving information sharing with partner nations. It will also include an overall heightened scrutiny and more thorough review procedures for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other agencies that would play a role in that process. The ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, she said underscores the need for the most careful vetting of who enters the United States. Several lawmakers came out in support of Trump on the issue. Congressman Mike Rogers said no amount of political correctness from Democrats and the liberal media elite would stop violent Islamic terrorists from trying to kill Americans. "The attack in New York City yesterday is evidence that everything President Trump is advocating for is exactly right and needed. We must have extreme vetting. We must reform our broken immigration system especially by getting rid of the visa lottery program and chain immigration." Congressman Scott DesJarlais said that it was shocking that the country continued to ignore threats of Islamic terror. "Federal authorities were aware of the attackers terrorist connections, before he rammed his truck into a peaceful crowd," he said. But, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposed Trump's extreme vetting plans. "Trump's reaction to the tragedy in New York represents a trifecta of unconstitutional and wrong-headed policies. His call for more 'extreme vetting' and an end to the diversity visa programme which will unfairly target Muslim and African immigrants would double down on his Muslim ban and anti- immigrant policies," said ACLU executive director Anthony D Romero. "Sending Saipov to Guantanamo or treating him as an 'enemy combatant' would violate due process and the rule of law. The FBI and our federal court system are more than capable of dealing with terrorism cases, and Guantanamo was shown long ago to be an epic failure. It's a shame that Trump is using this attack as a platform for pushing his anti- immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Television writer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis is the second woman to come forward with claims of sexual harassment against veteran Hollywood star Dustin Hoffman. Riss Gatsiounis told Variety that the actor sexually harassed her in 1991 when she was in talks with Hoffman and "Tootsie" screenwriter Murray Schisgal to adapt her play "A Darker Purpose" for the big screen. During their second meeting, Hoffman allegedly did not seem interested in discussing work. Riss Gatsiounis claims that Hoffman, who is nearly 30 years her senior, asked her, "'Wendy have you ever been intimate with a man over 40?' She added, "I'll never forget he moves back, he opens his arms, and he says, 'It would be a whole new body to explore'." The writer alleges that Hoffman then requested she go clothes shopping with him at a nearby hotel, and that Schisgal, who was also present, urged her to go with the actor. Riss Gatsiounis is the second woman to come forward with allegations against Hoffman. Earlier, Anna Graham Hunter, a former production assistant, claimed that Hoffman sexually harassed her on the set of 1985's "Death of a Salesman". She was 17 at that time. A spokesperson for Hoffman declined to comment to Variety while Schisgal said he had no recollection of the meeting described Gatsiounis. "Dustin Hoffman and I took many meetings with writers and playwrights over many years. I have no recollection of this meeting or of any of the behaviour or actions described," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two labourers suffered serious burns injuries today at the Anpara thermal power plant of the UP Utpadan Nigam in this district. Pervez (30) and Pramod (25) received serious burns when red-hot pieces of burning coal fell on them while they were mixing the fuel in a machine in the Anpara unit, police said. Both were rushed to the Anpara hospital from where they were referred to Varanasi, they said. A major tragedy was averted as most of the labourers were working on the other side when the accident took place, they said. The incident comes just a day after an explosion at NTPC's Unchahar power plant in the Rae Bareli district of Uttar Pradesh claimed atleast 29 lives. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray today met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here, fuelling speculations in the political circles. The Sena chief, accompanied by son Aaditya Thackeray, paid a visit to Banerjee in the afternoon at a south Mumbai hotel where she is staying. Both Sena and Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads with the BJP and the Narendra Modi government on a host of issues, including demonetisation. Banerjee, who is in the city since Tuesday and expected to return to Kolkata tomorrow, met top industrialists and bankers here yesterday as part of a roadshow, ahead of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in Kolkata in January. The Shiv Sena had last year teamed up with the TMC in a bid to take on the BJP over the issue of demonetisation. Thackeray had told mediapersons in November last year that if there was nothing wrong in Prime Minister Modi meeting (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar, then there was nothing wrong if the Sena held talks with Banerjee on a crucial issue. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said today they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Britain has asked Libya to extradite the 20-year-old brother of a suicide bomber who killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has put in a formal request for extradition of Hashem Abedi, the younger brother of Salman Abedi, who also died in the explosion at Manchester Arena. Hashem is wanted by authorities for the murder of 22 people and the attempted murder of over 500 others, who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said in a statement. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful to the Libyan authorities for considering this request," GMP Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson said. He said that the police force has been working with "considerable speed" with officers drawn from across UK policing to support it. The police now have a clear understanding of Salman Abebi's movements but believe until they are able to interview Hashem, the details remain incomplete. He was held in Tripoli by members of the Rada Special Deterrence Force a day after the attack on May 22 and the Libyan authorities are believed to be aware he was still alive. "This investigation is still running at a very fast pace. We are incredibly grateful for the support of the hundreds of people affected by this horrible attack and our officers are constantly moved by their stories and by their accounts," Jackson added. Those who were injured suffered both physical and psychological injuries, GMP said. A total of 112 people needed hospital treatment after the attack, with 64 suffering "very serious" injuries. Physical injuries include paralysis, loss of limbs, internal injuries and very serious facial injuries. Many have had complicated plastic surgery. Two people remain in hospital more than five months later. Salman Abedi was 16 when he first visited Libya, the country his parents fled in 1993 to escape persecution under Colonel Gaddafi. Manchester police is examining more than 16,000 hours of CCTV footage and working through 8 million lines of telephone communications data. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gavin Williamson, a close aide of Prime Minister Theresa May, was today appointed as Britain's new defence secretary after his predecessor Michael Fellon resigned amid a deepening sexual harassment scandal engulfing UK parliamentarians. Fallon,65, resigned as defence secretary saying his conduct may have fallen below the high standards expected amid revelations that he had made unwanted advances towards a journalist years ago. He was replaced by 41-year-old Williamson, the MP for South Staffordshire, who has been responsible for exerting discipline over the prime minister's fractious parliamentary party since last year. Williamson was closely involved in negotiating the confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist party that secured the parliamentary support May needed to govern in the aftermath of June's general election. "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false, but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," Fallon said in his resignation letter to May. It remains unclear if it was the particular revelation of Fallonrepeatedly placing his hand on the kneeof journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer that triggered his decision to step down or there were other incidents involving an abuse of power that may have precipitated his departure. Hartley-Brewer, at the centre of the allegations that came to light earlier this week, has stressed that she did not see herself as a victim and that the incidenthad not "remotely upset or distressed" anyone. "If this is over kneegate, him touching my knee 15 years ago and me not having any issue with it today, this is the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a Cabinet minister ever,"she said. The British Prime Minister in her response to Fallon's resignation letter praised his "diligent service" and welcomed the "particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others". Fallon, described as a Conservative party heavyweight and even tipped as a future Prime Minister, becomes the first victim of a deepening scandal over sexual misconduct in the corridors of political power in the UK. Williamson has been running the Tory whips' office since being appointed chief whip by Theresa May in 2016. He has been replaced by Julian Smith, Tory MP for Skipton and Ripon, as chief whip of the Conservative party. While May moved quickly to appoint a new defence minister without the need for a very wide reshuffle, the position of another of her senior ministers, First Secretary of State Damian Green, remains precarious after disclosures by an academic and Conservative party activist Kate Maltby. He has categorically denied making unwanted sexual advances towards Maltby but remains under investigation by Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood on the orders of May. There are growing fears that Fallon's surprise resignation could trigger a freefall within government ranks and lead to more shake-ups. "Parliament now has to look at itself and the Prime Minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment,"Fallon said soon after his resignation. His name had appeared on an unverified list of sexual misconduct, a so-called dirty dossier, circulating in Westminster. It has attracted a mixed response because it implicates MPs who have had consensual affairs with colleagues in the same space as more serious accusations of sexual abuse. The Prime Minister is struggling to contain the crisis and opened parliamentary proceedings yesterday with a statement on the issue, stressing that she had been holding a series of meetings toset up a "common, transparent, independent" grievance procedure. Indian-origin Opposition Labour MP Lisa Nandy challenged her in the House of Commons over her failure to act over sexual abuse cover-up she had informed her about three years ago when May was the UK home secretary. "On three occasions, I asked her [Theresa May] to act and on three occasions she did not," Nandy claimed. May assured the House that she was determined to take firm action and is set to hold a meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn early next week to address the issue across party lines. She has reportedly read the "riot act" to her Cabinet, warning them to ensure exemplary behaviour. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The UN climate change conference, which begins next week in Bonn under the shadow of the recent US pullout from the Paris pact, should be seen as an "opportunity" and "call for greater action", a green body said today. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said countries, including India, must work towards preparing a "fair, strong, ambitious and effective" rule book of the Paris Agreement. The 23rd meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is scheduled to begin in Bonn from November 6. "Over the past 25 years, the US has been an obstruction to an ambitious climate deal. Today, we are in a state of climate crisis, with the world reeling from a series of climate change-induced extreme weather events," the Delhi-based body said. "The US withdrawal should be taken as an opportunity and a call for greater and more ambitious action, and not a call for inaction," said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of CSE and head of its climate change programme. The upcoming climate summit also marks the 25th year of the signing of UNFCCC. "Bonn meeting is the first climate meeting post the United States pullout. Parties, including India, must work towards preparing a fair, strong, ambitious and effective rule book of the Paris Agreement," the CSE said. The US had recently announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries. "It is crucial to ensure that the US does not continue to keep the world hostage to its inaction. The rest of the world must come together to make sure the US does not obstruct or dilute the agreement any further," Bhushan said. At Bonn, parties would negotiate the rules and guidelines for provisions under the Paris Agreement, namely transparency framework, New Market Mechanism, facilitative dialogue (FD) and global stocktake (GST). Other key agenda includes finance which has always been a bone of contention between developed and developing countries. The rich nations are often accused of failing to fulfil their mandate of providing finance and technology to the developing world to address climate change. The Green Climate Fund (GCF), constituted to support developing countries, needs to fulfil the mandate of USD 100 billion by 2020, CSE said. At the end of the summit, parties must come up with a draft rule book to be finalised by 2018, as per the mandate, it said According to a research published in 2016, CO2 concentration in the earth's atmosphere was 403 parts per million (ppm), the highest ever. 2016 was also the warmest year on record with the developing world been the worst hit. Among the top 10 countries representing the global vulnerability index, nine were from the developing world, indicating their limited capability and capacity to withstand climate fury, CSE said. This year, India had a below-normal monsoon, with central India facing severe droughts, it added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The US has shared with Pakistan a list 20 like the LeT, JeM and HUM that Washington believes are operating from its soil to target India and Afghanistan, a media report said on Thursday. Top on the list is the Haqqani network which, the US says has safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northwestern Pakistan and uses them to launch attacks into Afghanistan, Dawn reported. The list includes three types of militants groups: those who launch attacks into Afghanistan, those who attack targets inside Pakistan and those who are focused on Kashmir, the newspaper quoted diplomatic sources as saying. India-specific terror groups like Harakatul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are also on the list. Harakatul Mujahideen is a Pakistan-based militant group operating primarily in Kashmir. The US says that group had links to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well, the report said. JeM operates mainly in Kashmir. The United States identified LeT as one of the largest and most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. Founded in 1987 by Hafiz Saeed, Abdullah Azzam and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan, the group had its headquarters in Muridke in Punjab province. It too is focused on Kashmir, the report said. Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the 2001 Indian parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The US blames this group for committing hundreds of target killings and dozens of mass attacks inside Pakistan. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella organisation of various militant groups, was based in FATA, but has now relocated to Afghanistan. The US says that the group wants to enforce its own interpretation of Sharia and plans to unite against Nato-led forces in Afghanistan. It has conducted hundreds of terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. Other groups on the list are: Harakatul Jihadi-i-Islami, Jamaatul Ahrar, Jamaatud Dawa al-Quran and Tariq Gidar Group, which is one of 13 TTP affiliates. The Tariq Gidar Group has been behind some of the deadliest attacks inside Pakistan, including the Dec 16, 2014, massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar that left 132 schoolchildren and nine staffers dead. The sources, however, rejected as incorrect the suggestion that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a list of 75 terrorists to Pakistani officials when he visited Islamabad last week. Tillerson told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday that Pakistan was willing to target terrorists if provided specific information about their whereabouts and Washington plans to give Islamabad the opportunity to do so. He said the information that the US delegation gave Pakistan went "beyond just names of individuals" and also expected "to receive information" from Pakistan that would be useful in targeting militants. Tillerson said that it was in the interest of Pakistan to change its "long-standing" relationship with terrorist organisations. "The conversation with the Pakistani government is for them to recognise that they will be one of the greatest beneficiaries of a successful peace process in Afghanistan, Tillerson told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing on Monday. Tillerson, who also visited Afghanistan and India last week, responded to questions on Pakistan's co-operation in the fight against terrorism in the aftermath of US President Donald Trump's South Asia Policy. "Pakistan lives with two very unstable borders, one with Afghanistan, one with India and our message to them is -- You have to begin to create greater stability inside your country and that means denying safe haven to any of these organisations that launch attacks from your territory," Tillerson said. China on Thursday reacted cautiously to President Ram Nath Kovind appreciating Bhutan's support during the Dokalam standoff, saying it wants to see New Delhi and Thimphu developing "normal relations". Reacting to Bhutan Kings Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck's visit to India, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that both India and Bhutan are Chinas close neighbours. "We are committed to develop friendly relations with these two countries and also we would like to see India and Bhutan developing normal relations," she said. About Kovind appreciating Bhutan's support in resolving the Dokalam incident, Hua said, "You mentioned about the Indian border troops trespassing incident from June to August. We have talked about our position many times before. I believe we are also clear about that". "We believe that China and India had properly settled this issue through diplomatic means. Consistent with our common interest, we hope India could follow the historical conventions and work with China to ensure the peace tranquillity of the border area," she said. In his meeting with King Wangchuck, Kovind expressed his deep appreciation for Bhutan's support in resolving the recent stand-off with China at Dokalam. The manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in Dokalam "is a clear testimony to our friendship", a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said. India and China were locked in a 73-day stand-off in Dokalam, a tri-junction between the Sino-India and Bhutanese border near Sikkim, from June 16 this year after Indian Army personnel stopped the Chinese Army from building a road in the area. The standoff ended on August 28 after both sides reached an understanding on a quick "disengagement" of border personnel. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi today said it expects 30 per cent of its sales in India to come through offline stores by this year-end. The company, which forayed into the Indian market by selling its handsets online only, has been gradually ramping up its offline presence through partners. "Offline is growing at a fast pace for us...In July- August (this year), about 20 per cent of our sales was coming through offline channels. We hope this will increase to 30 per cent by end of the year or early next year," Xiaomi India Head Manu Kumar Jain told reporters here. Xiaomi sells its products through offline channels like large format stores, multi-brand outlets and its own Mi Homes. "Apart from a few thousand retail points, we are also well on track with the expansion of our Mi Homes. We had said we will have 100 of those in 2 years and nine are already in place," Jain said. Xiaomi, which competes with the likes of Samsung, Lenovo, vivo and Oppo in India, had earlier in the year said it expects to clock revenues in excess of USD 2 billion (Rs 12,867 crore) from its India operations this year, doubling its topline over 2016. Xiaomi today launched a new smartphone series with two devices -- Redmi Y1 and Redmi Y1 Lite -- aimed at selfie enthusiasts. The devices will compete with those from the stables of Oppo and vivo and are priced at Rs 6,999 onwards. Besides, it has also unveiled the global version of its operating system MIUI 9 that includes new features designed for India. "Redmi Y1 is our first phone in India which boasts a Selfie-light. This, paired with a 16 MP front facing camera, ensures selfies come out bright and clear even in challenging conditions," Jain said. Redmi Y1 Lite features 5.5-inch display, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage (expandable upto 128GB), 13MP rear and 5MP front camera, and 3,080mAh battery. It is priced at Rs 6,999. The Redmi Y1 features 13MP rear and 16MP front camera. The 3GB RAM/32GB storage variant is priced at Rs 8,999, while 4GB/64GB variant will be available for Rs 10,999. The devices will be available from November 8 across Amazon.in, Mi.com, Mi Home stores, and Xiaomi's offline partners. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) BEIJING (Reuters) - China will lower tariffs and step up bank financing to support more imports as the country's massive trade surplus has a negative impact on its citizens, commerce ministry officials said on Thursday. China runs a vast trade surplus and has been accused by other countries including the United States of protecting domestic firms through unfair trade practices including high import tariffs. U.S. President Donald Trump is set to visit China next week, with the trade relationship expected to be a major topic of discussion. "A trade surplus that is too large has a negative impact on Chinese people's enjoyment of national wealth. Only by reducing the trade surplus can Chinese people feel a greater sense of gratification," said Ministry of Commerce Vice Minister Fu Ziying told reporters. China will lower import tariffs on consumer products, encourage banks to expand import financing, and increase imports of advanced technological equipment and key components, said Wang Bingnan, another vice commerce minister. "The Ministry of Commerce and other departments will further improve and refine policies, and work to create an environment that is fair, law-based, international and simplified business environment, to promote the healthy and stable development of foreign trade," said Wang. Details were not provided on what kind of products would be affected. Trump on Wednesday called the U.S. trade deficit with China "embarrassing" and "horrible" ahead of a trip to Asia starting Friday that includes visits to five countries, including China. Asked about Trump's comments, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying at a briefing on Thursday reiterated that China does not intentionally seek a trade surplus with the United States. Separately, commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said China would speed up the pace of talks over the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and strive to reach a conclusion as soon as possible, according to state media. Trump's withdrawal in January from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, to which China was not a party, gave the Beijing-backed RCEP new impetus. The partnership would create a free-trade area of more than 3.5 billion people, bringing together China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand as well as Southeast Asian nations. The commerce ministry also said that China's trade with countries involved in its "Belt and Road" initiative rose 15 percent in the first nine months of the year from a year earlier to $785.9 billion, reflecting the effectiveness of the ambitious trade initiative. First mentioned during a speech President Xi Jinping gave to university students in Kazakhstan in 2013, the initiative is a vehicle for China to take a greater role on the international stage by funding and building global transport and trade links in more than 60 countries. Direct investment from Chinese firms in "Belt and Road" countries totalled $9.6 billion in January-September, the ministry said. That was down 13.8 percent from the same period a year earlier, a calculation based on government data showed. China's non-financial outbound direct investment plummeted 41.9 percent in the period from a year earlier to $78.03 billion, as tight capital flow controls continued to bite. (Reporting by Yawen Chen, Ben Blanchard and Beijing Monitoring Desk, additional reporting by Joyce Zhou; Writing by Elias Glenn and Christian Shepherd; Editing by Kim Coghill and Gopakumar Warrier) (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.) By Joshua Franklin ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse on Thursday reported 244 million Swiss francs ($244.2 million) in third-quarter net income, the first time Switzerland's second-biggest bank has posted three consecutive profitable quarters under Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam. The results come amid calls from activist investor RBR Capital Advisors, a boutique Swiss hedge fund, to split up Credit Suisse into three parts. Net income attributable to shareholders for the three months to end-September was up 495 percent year on year but was slighly behind the median forecast in a poll of six analysts for 264 million francs. Credit Suisse's own consensus report forecast net profit of 184 million francs. Credit Suisse's common equity tier 1 capital ratio, an important measure of balance sheet strength which Thiam has looked to improve in the past two years, dipped to 13.2 percent from 13.3 percent in the second quarter. ($1 = 0.9992 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Joshua Franklin) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's ONGC Videsh has turned its focus to buying stakes in overseas oil and gas assets to meet output targets after a delay by Iran in awarding development rights for a gas field, its managing director said on Thursday. Indian firms led by ONGC Videsh, the foreign investment arm of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, have been negotiating with Iran for development rights of Farzad B gas field since its discovery in 2008. "We have been extremely flexible in our dealings with Iran and hoped that Farzad will add to our output target but the deal is not yet finalised. In the meantime, we are looking for producing assets elsewhere to boost our output," NK Verma told Reuters. ONGC Videsh is targeting production of 60 million tonnes of oil and gas by 2030 from 12.80 million tonnes in 2016/17. Verma listed Africa, Central Asia and Latin America as preferred regions for acquiring producing assets. India was hoping to get rights to develop Farzad B as the South Asian nation was one of the handful countries that continued to deal with Tehran despite sanctions. But since the end of some sanctions last year, Iran has sought other investors and media reports suggest that Tehran has agreed to award the field to Russia's Gazprom. Verma said India modified its bid several times to match Tehran's expectations and terms to get the development rights. "We wanted to do only upstream but Iran asked us to include downstream so we revised and raised our bid to $11 billion and linked gas prices to international benchmarks," he said. ONGC had previously submitted a $5 billion deal. Iran has modified its petroleum contract model, ending a decades-old buy-back system that barred foreign firms from booking reserves or taking equity stakes. Under new terms Iran wants India to operate the field for 20 years and commit to buying gas for 25 years at prices higher than those proposed by ONGC, he said. Iran's previous contracts gave investors an assured return of 18 percent. "Our calculations show that under new rules we would be getting returns in low single digit and do not justify taking investment and production risk," Verma said. The Farzad B field lies on the border of Iran and Saudi Arabia, which has already begun gas production from its side of the project called Hisbah. India, the world's third-biggest oil consumer, has told state oil firms to acquire assets overseas to improve energy security. India imports about 80 per cent of its crude needs. "We are still keen to develop the fields if Iran offers us good returns as our main aim is to book reserves for our country," Verma said. By Katie Paul RIYADH (Reuters) - Russia is working closely with Saudi Arabia to facilitate bilateral investment in the energy sector and Russian companies are interested in the kingdom's planned new NEOM business zone, energy minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday. Novak, who was at an investment event in Riyadh held by the two oil producers, said Russian companies were looking at various Saudi sectors such as solar, healthcare, education, artificial intelligence and port infrastructure, according to the Russian energy ministry's Twitter account. He said that Moscow was working with the Saudi energy ministry to encourage Russian investment in the kingdom's energy sector and vice versa, without giving details. Last week the chief executive of The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) told reporters that it plans to participate in building NEOM, a new $500 billion mega-city, in ventures worth several billion dollars in total. The RDIF and Saudi Arabia's main sovereign wealth fund PIF have already invested $1 billion in nine joint projects, according to Russia's energy ministry. There are around 25 more projects worth $10 billion under consideration as part of the strategic partnership, the ministry wrote on Twitter, adding that Russian exports to the kingdom have almost doubled this year. "Cooperation on the 'peaceful atom' could be key," Novak is quoted as saying, referring to nuclear energy. Saudi Arabia plans to award a construction contract for its first two nuclear reactors in 2018. [L8N1ML608] Novak was part of a Russian delegation including executives from companies such as Gazprom, SIBUR, Lukoil, Sinara, KAMAZ, TMK, United Heavy Machinery Plants, Russian Railways, and Nevsky Machine, according to an RDIF release. The trip follows a visit by Saudi King Salman to Russia last month in talks which cemented a relationship that is pivotal for world oil prices and could decide the outcome of the conflict in Syria. (Reporting by Katie Paul in Riyadh and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Andrew Torchia and Emelia Sithole-Matarise) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) By Koustav Samanta BENGALURU (Reuters) - Rice prices were relatively stable in Thailand this week as the country aims to attract more foreign buyers to boost exports, while prices in India slipped amid increasing supplies from the new season's crop. Thailand's benchmark 5-percent broken rice was quoted at $382-$386 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Bangkok, which compared with $375-$388 a tonne last week. The country has exported 8.23 million tonnes of rice since January to September this year, according to Thailand's Ministry of Commerce, who have a target to reach 11 million tonnes in exports by the end of the year. The Ministry of Commerce aims to host an event that would bring more than 200 foreign buyers to negotiate with 100 Thai entrepreneurs. The ministry expects that after the event 586 million baht worth of rice will be ordered immediately and orders worth another 30 billion baht will follow within a year. "I think 8.23 million tonnes is already a success as every year it is around this much," said a Bangkok-based rice trader. "The ministry is trying to boost exports in the final quarter of the year. However, personally, I don't think it's possible." Meanwhile India's 5 percent broken parboiled rice prices fell by $2 per tonne to $400-$403 per tonne as supplies from a new season crop were starting to pick up in some spot markets. "We are getting inquiries from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh but they are quoting low prices," said an exporter based in Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Bangladesh, which has become a major importer this year after floods hit its crops, has imported more than 1.4 million tonnes of rice in the July-October period, the country's food ministry data showed. Traders and officials in Bangladesh expect more imports in the coming months as domestic rice prices are still high, which poses a problem for the government. India's rice exports during April-August rose 7.4 percent from a year earlier, to 5.13 million tonnes, as shipments of non-basmati rice surged. The country mainly exports non-basmati rice to African countries and premier basmati rice to the Middle East. Iran's state grains buyer GTC has issued an international invitation to tender to buy 30,000 tonnes of rice to be sourced from India for shipment in early 2018, European traders said on Wednesday. In Vietnam drying rice stockpiles kept the price for the benchmark 5-percent broken rice unchanged from last week at as high as $405 per tonne, FOB Saigon, discouraging buyers from clinching new deals. "We couldn't sell much because our prices are around $20-30 higher than Thailand. Importers came to negotiate with us but in the end no new contracts were made," a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said. Rice traders expected that the market would stay quiet on thin trading until January, despite new supply from the upcoming harvest of autumn-winter crops. A monthly government report last Sunday showed Vietnam would have shipped an estimated 400,000 tonnes of rice in October, down from 516,000 tonnes in September. (Reporting by Suphanida Thakral in Bangkok, Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai, Mi Nguyen in Hanoi and Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by Greg Mahlich) (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As part of the Lokshahi Bachao Abhiyan, or the campaign to save democracy, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha will address public meetings in Gujarat in mid-November. Swedish home furnishings company IKEA has bought 10-acre of commercial land from the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) for around Rs 842 crore. This land is in Sector 47 of Estate-II of HUDA Gurugram. HUDA Chief Administrator on Wednesday said the site was put for e-auction on October 6 and was bidded on October 31. "It will augment our efforts in ensuring steady revenue stream for HUDA. This is not a one-off deal as we have planned out auctions of other institutional and commercial properties across the city in the next few months," J Ganesan said. IKEA is a multinational group, that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture. The furnishings company has already set up two stores in Hyderabad and Mumbai. Recently, Swedish home company IKEA had acquired a 14-acre site in Bengaluru to open its third store in the country. The land was acquired from Bangalore Metro Rail Corp Ltd. The furnishings company's first store in India is expected to open early next year in Hyderabad. This year in August, IKEA in a statement said: "We will open our first store in India at Hyderabad followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. We can't say exact date of launching the store, but hopefully it will be before April 2018. Works are in progress." IKEA India CEO Juvencio Maeztu last year said that IKEA's Hyderabad store will be about 400,000 sq. ft. in size and capable of hosting 5 to 6 million customers every year. The store will feature nearly 7,500 well designed beautiful home furnishing products and an exhibition of home furnishing ideas, a supervised children's play area for visitors, a day-care center for the children of the employees, parking facility and a 1,000-seat restaurants that would serve Swedish as well as Indian dishes. IKEA has already bought land in Navi Mumbai for its store in Mumbai and was similarly working for a store each in Delhi-NCR region and Bengalore. Last year in 2016, IKEA had inked a memorandum of understanding with Haryana government to open its stores in the state. In a statement, the Swedish firm said: "IKEA will invest an estimated Rs 2,000 crore for its retail expansion in Haryana, will employ about 1,000 coworkers directly and engage around 3,000 more for providing services such as furniture assembly, delivery services among others." This agreement came a year after IKEA signed MoUs with Karnataka, Telengana, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to set up stores. The company plans to open 25 stores by 2025 in nine Indian cities. Cryptocurrency dealers might have to face closure in days to come. A government panel has reportedly recommended shutting down cryptocurrency dealers operating in the country to put an end to use of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. On the other hand, market experts believe that closing down cryptocurrency dealers or exchnages is not the way to stop use of cryptocurrencies. Government will have to put a stop on buying and selling of crptocurrencies in cash. In the event of their closure, buyers can always head out to foreign exchanges, experts told The Economic Times. The development comes at a time when Bitcoin, the oldest and most popular cryptocurrency in the world, is on a roll. The cryptocurrency has seen its value skyrocketing with respect to every major currency on positive global signs. Coming to India though, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has refused to accept cryptocurrency citing security reasons. Bitcoin gold rush in the US Meanwhile, Bitcoin raced past the $7000 milestone for the first time ever riding on back of positive cues today. The most popular cryptocurrency went as high as $7,066.44 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange on Thursday. With this jump, Bitcoin has grown seven times since the start off this year. Bitcoin has grown leaps and bounds in terms of value in recent months, with 200 per cent growth during the course of past seveen weeks alone. In terms of India Rupee, one unit of Bitcoin now equals more than Rs 4.54 lakhs as of today. Only three months ago, Bitcoin was valued at Rs 1.79 lakh. This latest spike in value takes bitcoin's aggregate value, or "market cap" -- its price multiplied by the number of bitcoins released into circulation -- to more than $117 billion, a Reuters report quoted industry website Coinmarketcap. This forms a substantial part the aggregate value of all cryptocurrencies, which is now at a record high of over $190 billion according to website. Globally, things have been quite favourable for the cryptocurrency, driving its lucrative growth. The latest rally came after the announcement by world's largest derivatives exchange operator CME Group earlier this week that it is going to launch bitcoin futures. This move will open avenues for the cryptocurrency to enter mainstream markets. (With Reuters input) Also Watch: IIM Calcutta has recorded 100 per cent placements for the 2017-2019 batch within a span of over two days. Government's top planning body Niti Aayog selected five students of IIM Calcutta in course of its talent hunt in the famed management institution this year. A total number of 180 firms across diverse sectors had come to IIM Calcutta for the summer placements. National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog visited the campus for the first time and made five offers during the summer placement this year, an IIM Calcutta press release said. IIM Calcutta registered 100 per cent placement again with big companies such as Goldman Sachs, Coke and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) enrolling talented students of the business school. A total of 188 offers amounting to 41 per cent of the total batch were from finance and consulting sectors, the release said. While Goldman Sachs made the highest number of offers in finance, the Boston Consulting Group was the top recruiter in consulting in terms of hiring number of students, it said. Students also got placements in other major sectors like marketing, general management, e-commerce, operations and product management, the release added. Coke, Uber and Aditya Birla Group were the top recruiters in Marketing, Operations and General Management respectively, it added. Students also got placements in other major sectors like marketing, general management, e-commerce, operations and product management, it said. Coke, Uber and Aditya Birla Group were the top job givers in marketing, operations and general management respectively, the release added. A total number of 180 firms across diverse sectors had come to the institute for the summer placements, which recorded 100 per cent placement in two days last week, the press release said. Altogether 188 offers amounting to 41 per cent of the total batch were from finance and consulting sectors, the release added. IIM Calcutta is the first triple crowned management school of the country and it retained its crown as five private equity firms and seven investment banking firms participated in the process and doled out offers to the students. Triple crown is the accreditation awarded to business schools worldwide by three major international accreditation bodies for business schools such as AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), AMBA (Association of MBAs) and EQUIS. The accreditation was awarded to 77 business schools across the globe till October 2017. A decade after India introduced a single nationwide law - the Food Safety and Standards Act - to maintain uniform standards for food items in the country, the authority that implements the law, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has come out with a comprehensive plan to make it work, in letter and spirit. It has developed a uniform operational manual for its field official, launched an IT platform to do digital inspections and a nationwide network of all food testing labs on a single technology platform, Indian Food Laboratory Network (InFoLNet), in Delhi. While the single nationwide manual for Food Safety Officers (FSOs) is expected to help them follow uniform practices and procedures across the country, the leverage of digital and smart technologies is meant to bring an end to arbitrariness and adhocism in inspections and sampling. The new digital platform, Food Safety Compliance through Regular Inspections and Sampling (FoSCoRIS), replaces manual inspections with digital inspections. It uses simple mobile devices with dashboards to monitor, on real-time basis, at the district, state and national level. For consistency, standard matrices have been developed for inspection of various kinds of food businesses. FoSCoRIS is to ensure a consistent experience to food businesses across States and UTs, thereby building their confidence in the regulatory environment, an FSSAI statement said. For credible and efficient food testing for food businesses, a nationwide network of all food testing labs on a single technology platform, Indian Food Laboratory Network (InFoLNet), has also been launched. This would bring in much desired standardisation in food testing, that is 'one food product, one set of parameters and one parameter one test method', the agency said. Several measures towards trade facilitation, including a single window clearance fully integrated with Custom Authorities and risk-based inspection, have been adopted. To ensure hassle free imports, a 'Manual for Food Imports' has also been developed. All these tools are part of the Food Regulatory Portal, a full service, business-friendly portal for food businesses that focuses on six key areas viz. food standards; consistent enforcement; hassle free food imports; credible food testing; codified food safety practices; and training and capacity building. "This would prove to be a game changer by addressing food business concerns across the spectrum by ensuring ease of entry; reduced burden of compliance and facilitating trade", FSSAI says. To ensure consistency and predictability of business environment, a nationwide uniform law, the Food Safety and Standards Act was enacted in 2006. While this law had envisioned a single reference point for laws on food across the nation, its implementation across the States & UTs has not always been uniform due to legacy issues, leading to business uncertainties. Further, even at the national level, a few specific issues continue to be looked after by different ministries / agencies such as legal metrology, customs, plant and animal quarantine, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and AGMARK. The launch of the Food Regulatory Portal is thus a major development, as it creates a robust environment for uniform implementation of the law across States / UTs and coordinated approach across central agencies, leading to a transparent and enabling business environment, FSSAI states. While FSSAI is the principal regulatory body for food, six other agencies are also involved for specific purposes. To ensure a single point of references for all food related business compliances, the Food Regulatory Portal also has compiled related information and links to other national agencies in the food safety ecosystem such as Legal Metrology, Customs, Plant and Animal Quarantine, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and AGMARK. An institutional mechanism for interagency coordination and cooperation and integrated grievance redressal is also on the anvil, the statement said. The aviation ministry hopes to frame rules on the usage of drones by the end of December in India. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will place the draft rules on its website and seek feedback from the public. Civil Aviation Secretary, RN Choubey said that once the rules are finalised, it would permit commercial use of drones in the country. Choubey also mentioned that they are making the rules very user-friendly. The ministry also said, "All drones are proposed to be operated in visual line of sight, during day time only and below 200 feet". Government agencies would be able to use drones according to their own guidelines. Keeping safety and security in mind, DGCA has proposed some rules, including identifying numbers for the drones, no-fly zones and the 5 types of drones. The 5 types of drones According to DGCA, the kinds of drones are: nano drones that weigh 250 gm and under, micro drones, that weigh 250 gm to 2 kg, mini drones that are from 2 kg to 25 kg in weight, small drones that weigh something between 25 kg to 150 kg and finally the large drones that weigh 150 kg or above. Types of permission Nano drones are not capable of flying more than 50 ft from the ground and would need no permission. Drones up to 2 kg that cannot fly more than 200 ft would need police permission, while anything more than 2 kg will need to apply for permission, a licence and a flight plan. Reports also mention that drones would be issed unique identification numbers and the ones that fall in the mini category would need to comply with remote pilot approval requirement. Drones should also have return-to-home option and anti-collision lights, except for nano drones. No-drone zone Drones would be barred from use within 5 km of an airport, restricted from being flown within 50 km of an international border and 500 m into sea along the coastline. Drones would also not be allowed within 5 km radius of Vijay Chowk, along with mobile platforms such as a moving vehicle, ship and aircraft and over eco-sensitive zones such as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. Flying a drone over a densely populated area or areas where emergency operations are underway would also not be allowed, reports mention. Commercial purposes Reports mention that RN Choubey believes that drones can be used for commercial purposes. "These rules allow companies to deliver goods at doorstep provided they follow the rules prescribed under the rules. Both the aviation ministers wanted it to be open for all to use, including businesses," a Times of India report quotes Choubey. Once the final rules are formulated, drones could be used for tasks like wildlife photography, delivering medical supplies, e-commerce deliveries, inspection of pipelines, and even passenger transport, reports quote Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha. (With agency inputs) In an attempt to build ties with India the government of South Australia is going to organise its third annual India Business Mission between November 5 and 11. As part of the mission 50 delegates will visit Mumbai, Jaipur and Bengaluru with a primary goal to deepen trade and investment relations between India and South Australia. Minister for Investment and Trade Martin Hamilton-Smith will lead the India Business Mission. He will be accompanied by Governor of South Australia Hieu Van Le AC, who will be visiting India for the first time. A release issued by the government of South Australia states that the focus of the 2017 mission will primarily be on strengthening opportunities across key sectors of growth and mutual benefit. It includes higher education and skills training, premium food, wine and beverages, defence and advanced manufacturing, water and environment management, culture, tourism and arts, health and investment. The South Australian delegation is expected to meet with dignitaries from the state governments of Maharashtra and Rajasthan and various market leaders within the automotive, defence, aviation and information technology sectors. A number of Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) are expected to be signed aimed at building stronger economic and cultural ties. Hamilton-Smith will also launch a two-year wine education program in Mumbai and Delhi to boost exposure of South Australia's premium wines, wine regions and winemaking expertise in India. The India Business Mission was established to drive growth and deepen business relations across a range of industries. In 2015, South Australia signed a sister-state agreement with Rajasthan during the India Business Mission. While linking Aadhaar with mobile SIM has been made compulsory, you shouldn't worry if you haven't done it so. You don't need to visit the store of your service provider in order to do so. The whole process of linking 12-digit Unique Identity Number or UID with the mobile SIM has been made simpler by the government. The Department of Telecom has introduced three new methods to link the registered mobile number with Aadhaar - OTP based, app-based and IVRS facility. Subscribers can verify or re-verify their mobile numbers from anywhere in the country irrespective of which service area their mobile connection belongs to. As far as senior citizens are concerned, telecom operators are directed to offer verification facility to subscribers at their doorsteps for the convenience of those with disability, illness or old age. They are further directed to build an online mechanism - which can be through the website or any other means - to request such service. Here's the process of linking Aadhaar and mobile number using a one-time password You need to message Aadhaar number from their registered mobile numbers at a number provided by their service providers. The service providers will then do a demographic verification of the number. After the verification process, the service provider will send OTP request to UIDAI. UIDAI will send the OTP on the mobile number The user will send this OTP to the registered mobile number The e-KYC verification process gets complete with this Aadhaar-based e-KYC is essential for subscribers going for new SIMs. Further, the government has asked mobile operators to re-verify existing prepaid and postpaid customers, with the help of the 12-digit unique identity number. The re-verification exercise is scheduled to be completed by early 2018. The Indian telecom market with subscriber base of over a billion is second-largest in the world after China. Until two years ago, start-up advisors, indeed many angel investors, had a word of caution for fresh entrepreneurs eyeing the consumer Internet market. "Don't show a B2B revenue plan in the investor deck," they often said. "The valuation is zero." Times have changed. Nearly 50 per cent of the 1000 start-ups India added in 2017 were in the B2B segment, up from 34 per cent last year, a new NASSCOM-Zinnov report on the 'Indian Start-up Ecosystem - Traversing the maturity cycle', found. The average funding for B2B start-ups in 2017 saw an increase of 5 per cent, while B2C average funding saw a decline of 10 per cent. The report buttresses the fact that the world of venture investing in India has gone from irrational exuberance in the consumer Internet industry to a sense of normalcy. For example, in 2015, many food-tech companies got funded by some form of institutional investment. That is unlikely this year, or even in 2018. At a seed level, investors are looking at fairly differentiated and defendable Intellectual Property (IP)-driven play. Which is why B2B is in fashion - the NASSCOM-Zinnov report says that "growth of B2B start-ups are being driven by Fin-tech, Health-tech, and B2B enterprise products and the rising focus on advanced technologies such as Analytics, AI, IoT, AR/VR, Blockchain, among others". In the first half of 2017, the flowing tap of easy money was down to a trickle. Venture Capital investments slid 32 per cent to 162 deals worth $624 million during the first six months compared to the same period in 2016, data from research company Venture Intelligence stated. The first half of 2016 had 238 investments worth $693 million. Compare this to the hay days of 2015 and a correction period emerges: 253 deals were struck in the first half of 2015, worth nearly a billion dollars. In the last six months of the year, 283 investments totalled over a billion dollars again. Investments by angel networks and super angels subsequently declined nearly 50 per cent to 57 deals in the first six months of 2017 compared 106 in the same year-ago. Seed investments dropped 53 per cent, Series A by 7.5 per cent while Series B slid 43 per cent. There was always plentiful of capital available in the system. Now that the dust has settled on the Consumer Internet front, newer themes such as Health-tech and deep-tech have emerged stronger. The total base of advanced tech-startups is pegged at over 700 in India and it is growing at 25- 30 per cent, the NASSCOM-Zinnov report found. Little surprise that Artificial Intelligence is the fastest growing - at 75 per cent. Chennai based Trivitron, promoted by serial healthcare entrepreneur GSK Velu, is the largest Indian medical devices manufacturer, mainly imaging diagnostics and operation theatre products. Until 2010, the company was mainly a trader for overseas brands, besides limited manufacturing. Then the company had revenues in excess of Rs 350 crore. Soon almost of all of its trading partners deserted Trivitron and started selling directly in the market, without even bothering to pay a compensation. With no other option, Trivitron invested over Rs 500 crore in the last seven years to create nine factories, including two overseas. Though a Rs600 crore plus company now, majority of its small profits are from overseas markets. Capacity utilization at its factories are a dismal 5-10 percent. "We should have been a Rs 1000-1500 crore company the way we were growing as a trader. Fortunately we could survive and now we are focusing on overseas markets to increase the capacity utilization to at least 50 percent", says Velu, chairman and managing director. That sums up the state of affairs with local medical devices makers who are facing a tough run, as lack of regulations, government support, tax structure and price control are squeezing their margins and growth, besides competition from MNCs who control a lion's share of the industry. According to rough industry estimates, the medical devices manufacturing market in the country is estimated to be worth Rs 40,000 crore and 80 percent of this belongs to large MNCs from abroad who sell high-end technology products. The remaining 20 percent or Rs 8,000 crore is shared between several unorganised Indian companies who make very-low end to medium tech products, ranging from hospital beds to cotton buds or gloves. Only two Indian companies have a turnover of above Rs500 crore - Trivitron and Transasia Biomedical. Another 10 companies have a turnover ranging from Rs 200 crore to Rs 250 crore and another 25 companies have turnover of above Rs 100 crore. Earlier, corporates like Rallis India, Birla Medical Technology, Dr Reddy's, Lupin, Wipro, HCL etc had tried to enter medical equipment business in a large way, but most of them exited the business as they failed to capture dynamics of the market. Domestic manufacturers lament lack of government support to promote the industry is the biggest issue, as they lack own technology and financial muscle to compete with the MNCs. As against this, China has a rigid system in place for decades to promote local manufacturing, despite liberal incentives for starting a unit in China. Apart from tariff barriers, there are trade protection provisions in China like 3-5 year period for registering a new product from overseas manufacturers. In India it is more liberal and a new product can be registered in three to eight months. India is yet to implement a proper medical devices policy as the proposed National Medical Device Policy (NMDP) is yet to take off. After the implementation of GST, confusion has set in as product to product GST varies in different slabs starting from 5 to 28 per cent. Another major problem for Indian manufacturers is lack of branding and acceptance among local hospitals. Industry associations say that imports of products which can be developed and manufactured in India should be discouraged. Further, apart from promoting FDI in the sector, the government should also incentivise research and development by Indian firms to boost the sector. Sounds sensible, for a country grappling with severe shortage of healthcare infrastructure. Xiaomi started rolling out MIUI 9 for Redmi Note 4 and Mi Max 2 last week. The users of these devices can download the update via OTA or flash the stable update by downloading it from the company's forum. The company has claimed that the rest of the devices that qualified for the MIUI 9 update will start receiving it by the end of this month. Earlier this month, the company confirmed the devices that will receive MIUI 9 update. It is suggested that users keep a back up for all their data before beginning the boot-process. The new software was launched alongside the Xiaomi Redmi Y1 and Redmi Y1 Lite, which will also recieve the update by mid-november. Considering that these new low-specked devices will get the update early, most other Xiaomi devices might also recieve the update within this month. During the launch event the company compared the MIUI 9 with Samsung's TouchWiz on J7 Max. The MIUI 9 was able to open and close 34 apps in comparison to Touch Wiz's 16. Samsung J7 Max was also compared to measure lag-times in between switching apps. Xioami claims the Samsung device takes 45 per cent higher time than the Redmi Note 4 that was operating on MIUI 9. The company even claimed to be as fast as Android stock version. The MIUI 9 makes changes in the notifications shade. The user will have multiple styles of notifications. The notifications will also be bundled in accordance with the application. The user will be able to interact with updates within the notification shade. The split screen can be initiated by using the open applications page. Icon animations have been integrated to the new MIUI 9. Features like Smart Photo editing will let the user edit background distractions within images without much hassle. MIUI 9 also has a shortcut page on the left of the home page. Similar to the Google Now launcher, the user will just have to swipe right to open the shortcuts. Mi Video App now supports popular video formats and also facilitates automatic grouping of videos. Xiaomi has also introduced various India-centric features in the new MIUI 9. IRCTC text messages with ticket details will be received in a card format. Indian festivals have also been included on the Mi Calendar application. The company has also launched stickers specially made for India along with a new Limitless theme. These are the devices that will receive the new MIUI 9: 2017 MI Mix 2, Mi Note 3, Mi 6, Mi Max 2, Redmi Note 4, Redmi Note 4X, Redmi Note 5A, Redmi 4, Redmi Y1, Redmi Y1s 2016 Mi Mix. Mi Note 2, Mi 5, Mi 5s, MI 5s Plus, Mi Max, Mi Max Prime, Redmi Note 3, Redmi 3, Redmi 3s, Redmi 4, Redmi 4A 2015 Mi Note, Mi 4i, Redmi 2, Redmi 2 Prime, Redmi Note 4G, Redmi Note 2 2014 Mi 4, Redmi Note 4G 2013 Mi 3 2012 Mi 2 Tech giant Google on Wednesday said it has started retailing its flagship smartphone, Pixel 2 in the Indian market, priced at Rs 61,000. Google had launched the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL in October this year. The devices, which compete in the premium segment with gadgets like Apple's iPhone 8 and X as well as Samsung's Note 8, will be available in markets like the US, the UK and Australia apart from India. Pixel 2 will be available in India on Flipkart (online) and through offline partners like Reliance Digital, Croma, Poorvika, Sangeetha Mobiles, Vijay Sales and others for Rs 61,000 (64GB) and Rs 70,000 (128GB), Google said in a statement. The second edition of Pixel features 5-inch display, 4GB RAM, 12MP rear and 8MP front camera, and 2,700mAH battery. Google will bring its Pixel 2 XL (6-inch display) into the Indian market from November 15 onwards. In a separate statement, Google said its first Cloud Region has gone live in Mumbai, a move that will help the tech giant offer cloud platform services to developers and enterprise customers in India. The India region offers several services including compute, Big Data, storage and networking, Google said. "The new region will help customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area," Dave Stiver, Product Manager at Google Cloud Platform, said. He added that hosting applications in the new region can improve latency for end users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru compared to hosting them in the other closest region, Singapore. Google, however, did not disclose the investments made. The new Mumbai region joins cities like Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in Asia Pacific that house a similar infrastructure. Xiaomi is set launch a whole new series of smartphone at a launch event tomorrow. While there is a dearth of details about the new smartphone line-up, previous tweets from the Chinese tech player indicates towards a selfie-centered device. The company will also launch MIUI 9's stable update for India and is expected to start rolling out within a few days. The update will make the device faster and introduce nifty features like split screen and AI based functions within the operating system. The skin will be based on Andoid Nougat 7.1.1. The official Twitter handle of the MIUI 9 hints towards various clues about features that extensively use artificial intelligence. The launch event will be broadcasted live tomorrow at Xiaomi's website. Details of the launched items will be shared at Xiaomi India's Fcebook and Twitter handles too. The company is expected to launch a budget-friendly selfie camera. This line-up will make its debut in India and will hopefully go on sale in India before China. The upcoming series from Xiaomi stables is going to be the third line-up form the company in a span of three months. Tweets from Xiaomi's India head Manu Kumar Jain a few days ago indicate towards multiple launches to be seen during the launch event tomorrow. Suprisingly, the rumour mills have been completely silent about this new series by Xiaomi. Nither a leak, nor a render of the device has shown up. Multiple surprises planned for the launch of the BEST selfie smartphone. Hints on this table ?? ?? Any guess? ??#YourBestSelfie pic.twitter.com/HshUnpRe9N - Manu Kumar Jain (@manukumarjain) October 26, 2017 This new series will be first launched in India which exhibits the company's confidence in this market. Xiaomi has been performing consistently in the market, especially with the Redmi series. Going by the invite this new device will tap into the growing trend of selfie cameras. Xiaomi devices are mostly adept at handling anything you throw at them but the devices struggle when it front cameras. Xiaomi might set that right with this new series. Other than the selfie camera teaser, one poster shows a fast charging symbol. This signifies that the device will also come equipped with fast charging. The company declared in October that it has sold over four million smartphones in the Indian market within a period of just one month. The festive season sales led to the sharp rise in sales. According to Xiaomi, they were the number one smartphone brand on Flipkart's Big Billion Day sale and Amazon Great Indian Festival. Earlier this month there were various leaks that suggested that Xiaomi is working on the next Redmi Note phone. The Redmi Note 5 is expected to feature an edge to edge display and a dual camera lens on the back panel of the device. Xiaomi will be launching a new smartphone series which will be centered on the selfie-camera. Along with the launch, the company will be releasing Global MIUI 9 in India. The update should start rolling-out to current generation Xiaomi devices within a few days of launch. The Chinese company announced the decision on its official Twitter handle. Xiaomi has also been using two hashtag trends which signals that the company is planning to launch new smartphones as well. We listened to your requests. Global MIUI 9 is coming to India on 2nd Nov. Are you excited? #LightningFast 500 RT & we'll reveal more. pic.twitter.com/FCdpM286Zv - MIUI India (@MIUI_India) October 27, 2017 Earlier, we reported that the company is planning to launch a selfie-centric smartphone. Xioami India's chief Manu Kumar Jain even launched a #YourBestSelfie campaign for the alleged new series of smartphones. MIUI 9 will be an incremental update which will bring few of Android Nougat's trademark features to Xiaomi devices. The update will bring features like split screen mode and Xiaomi's other AI specific features. The company has, so far, launched the AI based features in China due to the nuances of changing the language. These are the devices that are expected to receive the update in time: Police in Idaho have arrested a Willard City man, accused of killing a man at his home and then fleeing the area. Chay L. Blair was taken into custody Wednesday morning in Idaho. Box Elder County Sheriff Chief Deputy Dale Ward said officers responded to Blairs home at 435 S. Main around 9 a.m., after receiving a 911 call stating there was a deceased individual there. Officers responded and found Cody D. Henderson dead at the scene. The 27-year-old Ohio man is believed to have died earlier in the morning from blunt force trauma. Officers quickly named Blair a person of interest in the case. The 25-year-old man was arrested without incident. Ward said police originally thought Henderson was in Utah for work. It was later determined that he became acquainted with people while in the state for work and had returned on personal business. It is unknown if that was for recreation, to go hunting or exactly why. Blair is expected to be extradited back to Utah. Charges are pending the completion of the investigation.

will@cvradio.com Hundreds of children and families snaked their way around new and used cars as they filled their bags with candies and goodies on Saturday. The Young Automotive Group in Logan hosted their annual Trunk-or-Treat and also celebrated the ribbon cutting of their recently-remodeled Toyota dealership at 1945 North Main. {{tncms-asset app=editorial id=91c0d918-bf6d-11e7-b786-531ae39019d6}} Not only were there hundreds of costumed children on display, but so were hundreds of colored Halloween pages from students in the Cache and Logan school districts. The Young Automotive Group committed to donate money directly to classrooms in both districts for every coloring page that got turned in. When you walk around the store you can see coloring pages from kids in grade school, said General Sales Manager Jake Talbot. The Young Auto Group will write a $10,000 check to local schools for these kids coloring these pictures. It illustrates their commitment to the community and the communitys commitment to the Youngs. We are so appreciative for the support that we receive, exclaimed Teri Lewis, Executive Director of the Cache Education Foundation. Every year they support the foundation in all our fundraisers in all the things that we do. The resources that we receive with moneys like this go for non-consumable resources that are used in the classroom for years to come that will really enhance education. We really could not do what we do without your support. {{tncms-asset app=editorial id=c64d88b6-bf6d-11e7-a696-e71902bed3df}} Shana Longhurst, Executive Director of the Logan Schools Foundation, echoed a similar sentiment. We are very grateful and appreciative to the team at Young Automotive for their support of our students and our schools, she said. This money will help them participate in programs and have things in their classrooms that we would not normally have. In addition to celebrating the donations to local schools, Saturdays event also signified the completion of the remodel and rebranding of the building at 1945 North Main. The Young Auto Group separated the Toyota and Honda brands by building a new dealership solely for Honda just to the south of their existing location. The Toyota dealership now has a larger showroom, a modern facade, more offices and a larger customer service area. {{tncms-asset app=editorial id=9d2f2854-bf6d-11e7-911f-277e80e1dba2}} The expansion and addition of the new Honda dealership required cooperation and coordination of Logan, North Logan and the Cache School District. Spencer Young, President of Young Automotive Group, said it was a challenge to get the pieces of property to come together, but he was thankful for the efforts displayed by the various parties who came together. Were really excited to make a bigger investment in Logan, in this community, Young exclaimed, and this community has welcomed us here. Logan City Mayor Craig Petersen explained that one of the first things he did upon being elected as mayor four years ago, was to work on coordinating the expansion and remodel plans of the Young Auto Group. We met on a number of occasions, we had some challenges, Petersen explained. None of them involved the Young family, they involved various political entities. We worked through those. {{tncms-asset app=editorial id=b768407a-bf6d-11e7-94ea-673e2686e0a1}} When I met with the Youngs one of the things I was impressed with was their commitment to community. Mike Capron, the general manager of the Logan dealerships, said the Young commitment to community is displayed not only in helping the local school districts, but also in how they handle themselves and work with customers. He explained that is all embodied in their YAG (Young Automotive Group) commitment: Trust and Loyalty, Engage and Support, Work Together, Rise Together, Gratitude and Value. Whenever we start a meeting we discuss the YAG commitment, Capron explained. We not only memorize these points, but in our meetings we think its important to point out people who are actually using these points in their daily businesses to make decisions, guide employees, whatever it is. {{tncms-asset app=editorial id=98688b3a-bf6d-11e7-b76d-fb007ac25150}} Work on the Honda dealership is winding down and grand opening ribbon cutting should be taking place within the next few months. | BY Ricki Green | Optus has released the next installment in its iPhone Excitement campaign featuring Oscar winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr via Emotive. In this video, Gooding Jr. takes his excitement to the next level as he arrives at the Optus store to pick up the latest iPhone X phone. Says Gooding Jr: I really enjoyed working with Optus to shoot this series. Optus gave me the creative freedom to really own the characters and create some fun content. | BY Ricki Green | Today, M&C Saatchi has announced the appointment of Andy Cairns to the managing director role of the Melbourne agency. Cairns brings to the role over 20 years of international agency and brand experience. Says Russell Hopson, group MD: Ive watched Andys career with admiration for many years. He has a proven track record of galvanising agencies into doing great work for clients. And he does it with a sense of fun and decency thats contagious. I couldnt be happier that hes joining the M&C Saatchi family. Says Cairns: The momentum behind M&C Saatchi at the moment is massive. Hires like Cam and Russell are game changers. The opportunity to return to my home town and drive that agenda here makes this the dream job for me. Cairns began his advertising career in Melbourne in 1994 and since then it has taken him around the world and back. He had a significant stint in London working for major agencies including TBWA, CHI and BBH. Before returning home in September of this year, Cairns was global brands director for Havas, responsible for the companys largest client Reckitt Benckiser, as well as the Huawei account. At BBH, he was responsible for the Barclays Retail banking business. While there, he led the major re-positioning of the Bank in the wake of the global financial crisis. Cairns was also responsible for leading the Virgin Media account and driving multiple integrated campaigns in a highly competitive category. Prior to this, Cairns held the role of managing director at Inferno and helped build it into one of Londons most successful independents. He also spent a few years in New York heading up hot shop Taxi. Cairns will head up the agency alongside executive creative director, Paul Taylor. He will report into Russell Hopson. | BY Ricki Green | Following a detailed audit of agency performance and client relationship management, RAC (Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia) has reappointed Initiative Perth to manage its media communications portfolio for a period of up to four years. RAC first appointed Initiative Perth in August 2013 after a competitive tender. With one year remaining on the contract between RAC and Initiative, RAC engaged Ebiquity and Trinity P3 to benchmark and audit key aspects of the agency client relationship and the performance of the contract. Initiative will be responsible for fully-integrated media planning and buying, including, digital, search and activation for RAC. We had an option to review our partnership with Initiative and we are delighted to continue this partnership into the future, said Peter Williams, General Manager of Brand at RAC. Initiative Perth is a proactive and effective local business partner and we look forward to continuing our relationship. Managing Director of Initiative Perth, Clive Bingwa (pictured), said that the partnership with RAC in the past four years had grown considerably. With RAC being such an admired and relevant brand to Western Australians, we can plan clearly to support peoples affinity with RAC using our cultural connections platform. It is a great vote of confidence for Initiative. Trump files paperwork for 2024 presidential run as GOP debates future Donald Trump announced he will run for the White House, even as weak midterm showings prompt debate about whether the GOP should move past him. Under Labor's parliamentary agreement with the Greens, the Greens cannot side with the Liberals on motions of no confidence against the government "except in instances of proven corruption, gross negligence or significant non-adherence" to the deal. A "no confidence motion" is a motion usually brought by the Opposition against the Chief Minister, which if backed by an absolute majority of MLAs, immediately removes the Chief Minister from the top job. It must be brought a week before debate can be held on the motion. "This community will not accept the risk that these documented and acknowledged failures in NSW could come here. And our examination of greyhound racing in the ACT showed conclusively that if we allow the industry to continue, we will be taking that risk," Mr Ramsay said. After the High Court declared her invalid, Nash issued a statement about how she had put in "12 years of hard work" and was "really proud of the things I've been able to achieve". Nowhere in the detailed list of her achievements did she give the slightest snippet of regret that she sat in the Senate for more than a decade when she was not entitled to be there. Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact. Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. Subaru just dusted off a nameplate they havent used in a while: the Rex. This time though, its not being attached to a sub-compact mini or... Want the fastest crossover on the market? Look no further, because the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio has officially gone on sale. The performance version of Alfas debut crossover packs a 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6. With 510 horsepower on tap, it will rocket from 0-62 in just 3.8 seconds and top out at 176 miles per hour. Perhaps even more telling, however, is that it will lap the Nurburgring in a scant 7:51.7 the fastest time ever set by an SUV, though were sure that Alfa Romeos rivals at Porsche and Jaguar Land Rover (among others) will have something to say about that in due course. The Italian automaker officially opened the order books today Thursday, November 2, 2017 in certain markets, at least. The announcement was made for Europe, with customers in the UK to begin receiving theirs (with the steering wheel on the other side) next summer. Last we heard, the Stelvio Quadrifoglio was set to arrive in North American showrooms early in the new year, so hopefully we wont have to wait much longer. Photo Gallery Aston Martin says it is encouraged by proposed 2021 regulation changes to F1 engines. Yesterday, the FIA presented a proposal to retain the 1.6-liter V6 turbo hybrid engines in use, while increasing the rev limit by 3,000 rpm and ditching the expensive and complex MGU-H heat energy recovery system. Speaking to Motorsport after a meeting with F1 teams, the FIA, the sports commercial rights holder, and other potential new manufacturers in Paris, Aston Martin boss Andy Palmer said the British firm was encouraged by the changes. Aston Martin attended the recent FIA meeting and has been deeply involved through its submissions on potential solutions. We are encouraged by the directions being taken and continue to study a potential Aston Martin solution for 2021. The key will be how development costs are controlled to make participation by independent engine suppliers a viable possibility, Palmer said. Due to Aston Martins current tie-up with Red Bull Racing, it could be possible that the successful racing team would use Aston Martin engines if the carmaker decides to enter the sport. PHOTO GALLERY Three Dodge Challenger Demons have been burnt to a crisp after a delivery truck caught fire in Michigan. The story first emerged in a now-deleted thread on the Hellcat forums and initially, an alleged employee of Reliable Carriers, the transport company involved in the delivery process, said an electrical issue with one of the Demons sparked the inferno. However, Reliable Carriers has since asserted this person has never worked for them. Either way, images from the scene show that all three muscle cars have been left devastated by the blaze. Taking to the aforementioned forum, a member states that he was contacted directly by Dodge chief executive Tim Kuniskis to inform him that his Demon was one of the three destroyed. Fortunately, Kuniskis confirmed that three new models will be built, each with a lower VIN number than originally allocated. Contrary to claims that one of the Demons sparked the fire, Kuniskis said that it was an issue with the car transporter that initiated the blaze. PHOTO GALLERY Photo: Darren Handschuh Police search Silver Creek property. As police continue an exhaustive search of a Silver Creek property in the Shuswap, one local leader wants more discussion on violence against women. For the past two weeks, RCMP have been searching a farm on Salmon River Road where human remains were found. Police have not identified the victim, but there is widespread speculation they could be from one or more of five women who have gone missing in the area. Three of those women have Indigenous heritage. Okanagan Indian Band Chief Byron Louis said Wednesday that violence against women must be brought to the forefront in an effort to stop it. It seems the only time we actually talk about it is situations like this, said Louis. There needs to be ongoing dialogue. Communities need to come together to talk about this. While there is currently a national inquiry into murdered or missing First Nation women, Louis said violence against women knows no borders and takes place in all communities and all walks of life. Louis would like to see a declaration encouraging communities to address the issue. The most obvious witnesses to this (are) children, said Louis. It happens behind closed doors. It happens in every demographic, and something needs to be done. What are we going to do start making changes? Bringing the problem out of the shadows is the first step, he said, and all levels of government need to be involved, as do schools, and parents need to talk to their children. Louis said children who have witnessed violence against women need to be taught it is neither normal nor acceptable. Photo: Flickr University of Fraser Valley campus in Abbotsford. The personal information of more than two dozen students attending the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia has potentially been breached online. Spokesman Dave Pinton says the Abbotsford-based university and police are investigating suspicious email related to the disclosure of "limited personal information" of 29 students. The information involves names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, grade point average and in one case, limited financial information. Pinton says the university temporarily suspended access to some student and staff web systems and is working with the students and investigators. Abbotsford police say they were contacted by the university on Monday about demands for money that were received involving the students' information. Const. Ian MacDonald says the incident has been deemed an extortion attempt and computer forensic experts within the department's major crime unit are involved. He says the case appears similar to phone or email scams where fraudsters pretend to be police or government officials and demand the victim pay a fine or face detention. Photo: The Canadian Press Immigration to Canada is set to increase over the next three years to 340,000 people a year by 2020 under the federal Liberal government's new multi-year approach to admissions planning. The immigration plan released Wednesday will see immigration levels climb from 300,000 people a year this year to 310,000 in 2018 and 330,000 in 2019. The increases will bring immigration to Canada to nearly one per cent of the population a figure that many have cited as necessary for the Canadian economy to remain competitive as it confronts the realities of an aging workforce and declining birth rate. On the other hand, however, it stops well short of setting a path towards 450,000 newcomers a year as recommended by the government's influential economic advisory council in a report last year. Hussen said he believes the mix and targets are the right one for Canada, right now. "Bringing a newcomer to Canada is half of the job; we have to make sure people are being given the tools they need to succeed once they get here," Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen told a news conference. "We have to make sure we have the absorptive capacity, we have to make sure that our partners on the ground with the settlement and integration processes that they engage in every day have the tools necessary so they can plan ahead, so they can adjust to the numbers." The switch to a longer-term planning approach marks a major pivot for the federal government, which has for decades relied on setting annual targets each year. Hussen said the change comes after listening to people who complained that the system doesn't work properly as it is currently structured. "Provinces, municipalities, service providers, employers, everyone in Canada has been saying we need multi-year we can't keep doing immigration on a one-year basis," he said. "We need long-term planning, we need predictability, we need stability and we need to plan ahead." The biggest increase in newcomers will be in programs designed to lure skilled labour to Canada. This year, the target had been to admit 172,500 people in the economic program. That number will jump to 195,800 by 2020. The high benchmark for refugee resettlement set in 2016 by the Liberals Syrian program nearly 60,000 refugees and protected persons were admitted that year isn't being repeated. Instead, by 2020, admissions in that category will rise from a planned 40,000 this year to 48,700. Photo: The Canadian Press A southern Alberta landlord is hoping the courts will help him with a squatter living in a small shack sitting on a trailer in the driveway of the man's rental property. "What can you do? Our hands are tied and nobody's prepared to help," said Ivan Negrych, who is attempting to remove Bob Cox from the property in the town of Cardston, about 235 kilometres southeast of Calgary. "It's kind of turning into a nightmare." Negrych said he had been renting the five-bedroom home to Cox's former common-law wife. The woman and two daughters allowed him to move in after he was injured in a car accident about 18 months ago. She moved out Sept. 30 and Negrych rented out the property to another person within days. "He moved in and now he's refusing to move out," said Negrych. He said Cox, who wasn't reachable by phone, is perfectly happy living in the small wooden, windowless shack still parked in the driveway. "It's roughly 12 feet by 8 (feet) and it's on a little channel-frame trailer with little wheels on it. It has no brakes. No electricity. He's pulling electricity from the house from an extension cord." Cox says he has squatter's rights. He told CTV News he hopes to move soon, but isn't ready to do so yet. I dont want to be in Ivans way, he told CTV. The problem, said Negrych, is Alberta's Residential Tenancies Act. "Once (tenants are) in, you can't get them out. It takes several months, because the process is so long ... to get a judgment and eviction court order," Negrych said. He's working on getting that order now, he added. Negrych said he asked the RCMP for assistance but was told it's a civil matter. "They can't touch him and, in fact, the police asked me to leave the property because I was trespassing and hadn't given him a 24-hour written notice, which is part of the ... act." A court date has been set for Nov. 7. Negrych said he has given Cox an eviction notice and watched him roll it up and throw it in the garbage. Even if the judge does grant a removal order, it could be between four weeks and four months before Cox can be legally removed, he said. Photo: The Canadian Press Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi scrums with the media in the Queens Park Legislature in Toronto after tabling the province's Marijuana legislation on Wednesday. Businesses that illegally sell recreational marijuana after the government of Ontario sets up its own shops could be fined up to $1 million under legislation tabled Wednesday. One of the main aspects of the proposed law, which would take effect once the federal government makes the drug legal in July 2018, is to crack down on the array of illegal dispensaries, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi said. "We are going to work very hard towards that," he said. "We have put very strict penalties in that regards....We feel very comfortable that the regime that we will put in place will be a significant deterrent for these illegal businesses." The bill also contains new penalties for people that are convicted of illegally selling or distributing cannabis, including fines of up to $250,000 and/or jail of up to two years less a day. For every day those people or businesses continue to sell marijuana after being convicted the first time, they will be subject to further fines of up to $100,000 and $500,000, respectively. The law would also allow police to immediately close premises they suspect are being used for the illegal sale or distribution of marijuana. Ontario was the first province to announce its detailed marijuana plan last month, which includes the sale of the drug in up to 150 stores run by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. They are known in the legislation as the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp., though Naqvi admitted the name might be jazzed up a little. "That is the legal name of that company," he said. "There will be branding that we'll do, so that's to come, and sort of a visual logo." Those stores will only sell to people 19 and older, a minimum age that would also apply to possession, home growing and use of marijuana. People under 19 caught using, growing or possessing weed could be fined up to $200, or a court could refer them instead to an educational or prevention program. "I want to be very clear that there will be no criminal record, it's under a provincial offence...our purpose is not to punish our youth but to educate our youth," he said. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said ahead of the bill's introduction that an important part of the Liberal government's plan is shutting down the current dispensaries. "I think that there needs to be a regulation of cannabis and we have a history in this province of regulation of alcohol and I think that doing this in a safe, responsible way means that we put some parameters around the distribution of this substance," she said. "As resources are identified to deal with enforcement and education we recognize that municipalities need to have a substantial share of that because they are actually on the ground going to be doing enforcement." Chantelle Deacon Most Canadians will be setting their clocks back Sunday morning with daylight saving time coming to an end, but many feel it is time to get rid of the time change altogether. Many clocks will make the change automatically falling back an hour on Nov. 5, but some are asking why we still bother. Castanet hit the streets of Penticton to ask is it time to ditch daylight saving time? "It causes you to adapt to something that your body is not used to and then you have to go through all those changes," said one woman. "I don't think it's really healthy." "I don't think we should change it at all," said a man. "Just have one time." "It's a waste of time," said another resident. "It screws with your mind, it screws with your productivity, one day it's the right time and the next day it's not." While the majority of the people Castanet spoke with disagreed with daylight saving time, there was still a handful who want to leave it how it is. "I'm used to the Daylight Saving time, I like it for my work shifts," said a man. "I guess because I have lived it all my life, it's what I know," said a woman. "I like the darkness in the winter and I like it when we spring forward." "I like the longer days," said a man. Saskatchewan and some parts of B.C., Quebec, and Ontario do not participate in daylight saving time. Photo: Bottleneck Drive Association Summerland's Bottleneck Drive members will light up the vines for a seventh straight year later this month. The annual 'Light up the Vines' event takes place from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Nov. 18, 25 and 26, at the 23 member wineries, cideries and brewery. Visitors can enjoy tastings, refreshments and music during the event, on self-guided tours or tour packages offered by operators. Guests can also enter to win a prize package worth more than $500 when they collect stamps from five Bottleneck Drive member locations. Bottleneck Drive members will also provide tastings on Nov. 24 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., during Summerland's Festival of Lights. For more information, you can visit bottleneckdrive.com or contact [email protected] Photo: Google Street View The Okanagan Skaha School District is lobbying the province to build a sidewalk in front of Kaleden Elementary. The Board voted Monday to write a letter to the Ministry of Transportation, asking for the crucial safety upgrade in support of the Kaleden PAC. "We are going to write in support of their proposal because we feel exactly the same, it's a pretty unsafe situation for those kids, SD 67 Chair Linda Van Alphen said. The likelihood of the sidewalk being built is high, she added. "It's something that we find we are able to do," she said, pointing to similar successes at Parkway and Giants Head Elementary Schools. Kaleden Elementary sits at the corner of Linden and Cypress Avenues. The sidewalk will hopefully run along both roads. "We're really happy to support it," Van Alphen said. "I think the more people who get behind it, the higher probability it will happen." UPDATE: 7:30 p.m. RCMP have now confirmed the human remains located on a Silver Creek farm were those of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux and said her death is being treated as suspicious. No charges have been laid in connection with Genereaux's death and an autopsy has been completed, but the results are not being released. "Now that the identification has been confirmed, the RCMP are once again seeking the public's assistance in any information that can help advance the investigation into the disappearance and death of Traci Genereaux," said Cpl Dan Moskaluk. The family was notified today along with all other families that have been publicly linked to the on-going investigation. "Given the size of the 24 acre property, the number of out buildings and various items at this location, additional resources and equipment have been brought in order to conduct a thorough search of this property in the most efficient manner," said Moskaluk. Genereaux was last heard from in Vernon and RCMP are asking people with information about her activities leading up May 29 to contact them at 1-877-987-8477. Police said Genereaux was four-foot-11, 95 lbs, had brown hair and blue eyes. ORIGINAL: 4 p.m. Family members have confirmed remains found on a farm near Silver Creek are those of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux. Genereaux was last heard from on May 29. Two weeks ago, police descended on a farm on Salmon River Road with dozens of officers and two mobile command trucks. Police began searching the 24-acre property and soon focused on one corner of the farm, setting up large white tents and bringing in a forensics team. Several days later, police confirmed human remains had been found. The farm is associated with Curtis Wayne Sagmoen, who has been charged with six offences stemming from an Aug. 27 incident near Falkland. The charges include intentionally discharging a firearm and uttering threats to a sex trade worker. Last week, police contacted Darcy Genereaux, Traci's father, and her mother, Laurie Nixon, to obtain a DNA sample. They got hold of us and said they needed DNA to send to the coroner to check against the remains found at Silver Creek to see if my baby girl has been found or not, he said, his voice cracking. Last December, the teenager broke her back in a car accident and went to her parents, telling them it was time to change her life. She had had enough of that garbage, Genereaux said. She was clean from December until the day she left. Police are also investigating the disappearance of four other missing women from the same area in the Shuswap. Photo: Contributed Two people have died and 14 people were injured when two vehicles on their way home from trick-or-treating crashed on a slippery road northeast of Edmonton. RCMP Cpl. Ron Bumbry says two vans one with six people and the other with 10 people, collided about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, about 165 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. Bumbry says a 42-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman, both of Saddle Lake, who were in the northbound van were pronounced dead at the scene. The other 14, which included a one-year-old and a two-year-old, were taken to area hospitals with serious, non life-threatening injuries. Bumbry says people in both vehicles had been trick-or-treating in St. Paul, a town about 30 kilometres east of Saddle Lake, and were returning to their homes when the crash happened. He says it was snowing and roads were slippery at the time, but it's too early to say if those were the cause of the crash. "It's very tragic and our thoughts are with the family of the deceased and the community of Saddle Lake Cree Nation," Bumbry said. Police are not releasing the names of the dead, nor their relationship. Photo: Laurie Williams (L-R) Ted Fitchett, IPE president, Ken Brandel, Legion Br. 35 president, Yvonne Paulson, IPE GM, Bill Tames, Legion Br. 35 With Remembrance Day approaching, it seems a fitting time to pay tribute to a local Legion. Armstrong's Royal Canadian Legion Branch 35 has been presented with a cheque for $5,046 from Interior Provincial Exhibition president Ted Fitchett and general manager Yvonne Paulson. Paulson said the legion would also receive a cheque from the 4H auction held at the fair. "We are looking forward to selecting a new charity of choice for the fair next year," said Paulson. "We are accepting letters now and will make a decision in February." Interested non-profit groups can submit a letter of interest to Yvonne Paulson, Box 490, Armstrong, BC V0E 1B0. The theme for the 2018 IPE is 'Sheep Thrills'. Photo: dopesmokers.com Although the finance minister and his assets not held in a blind trust, leaving a potential conflict of interest investigation looming, remains an active in Ottawa, it will not be the topic of this weeks report. Instead, I would like to solicit your thoughts on the pending legalization of marijuana. In the last election, the Liberals openly campaigned on the legalization of marijuana. I raise that point as I believe the Liberals received a democratic mandate from voters to move ahead with marijuana legalization. The intent of my column is not to wade into ideological discussion on this topic but rather to hear concerns that in turn can be passed on in Ottawa. Some of the concerns I have heard are quite varied. From landlords, I have heard that insurance will not cover rental units where marijuana is present. From potentially approved and legally licensed growers, I have heard concerns that they might be illegally undercut by those selling marijuana with a higher THC content under the table tax free. More recently, I have heard concerns from food vendors that their products at a wholesale level might be contaminated with marijuana and resold as edible marijuana potentially creating a liability concern. From a law enforcement standpoint, I have heard that it might be difficult if not impossible to determine the point of origin between legal and illegal marijuana. Locally, NDP member of Parliament Richard Cannings (South Okanagan West Kootenay) has raised another concern that chronic users of marijuana may have higher THC levels in their blood that could subject a user to to potentially unfair criminal charges if operating a vehicle. Those who frequently cross the border have questioned what impact legal marijuana use in Canada would have on someone crossing into the United States. Local governments have asked about who will pay for potentially higher policing costs while ultimately provinces will be responsible for setting policy. At this point, there are no answers to any of these concerns that have been raised, but given that the Liberal government has promised to implement legalization in less than a year, the answers will need to be found relatively soon. The above is only a small sampling of concerns that I have heard and do not include comments around secondary smoke and smoking marijuana in public places. I have also heard many questions from educators on how to restrict marijuana from teenagers given scientific evidence has shown potential harm for brain development among youth if using marijuana. My question this week: What concerns do you have, if any, on the legalization of marijuana? This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: Contributed The Silver Star community is split over a proposed resort association. It was downhill all the way for many of the Silver Star Mountain residents who packed a meeting of regional politicians considering a proposal to form a resort association at Vernon's ski hill. Deep divisions were evident at the almost five hour meeting held by the North Okanagan Regional District's board of directors, as speaker after speaker put their point across. Resort competiton is increasing, Tim Dekker, co-chair the Silver Star marketing task force, told the meeting. SilverStar must be able to compete. According to statistics supplied by the task force, SilverStar Mountain Resort has attracted 400,000 visitors and added $62 million to the regional economy. While Dekker admited to some passionate opposition to the resort association plan and its bylaws, he added that public stakeholder engagement had been extensive. He pointed to news letters sent out, three open houses held, along with workshops and other measures. As well, Dekker said stakehold input led to 20 changes to the proposed bylaws, including restricting the power of the board, the requirement for an auditor's report, added functions to advocate for the resort community and limiting borrowing power. We request approval of the resort promotion area and Silver Star resort association bylaws, Dekker asked the directors. But many others opposed his stand. The whole board composition is designed to favour commercial interests over the community, insisted Mike Lindsay of the Concerned Citizens of Silver Star group. Under the proposed bylaws, privately owned residences would have to pay an annual fee to the association to help market the mountain. A number of people at the meeting expressed their opposition to that plan. I'm mad, said resident Mark Dahlie. This is pure corporate greed. Dahlie complained of the uninvited stress over the last 16 months in order to protect his property rights. You are elected officials, you need to stand firm so that this corporate endeavour will not impinge on our rights. Electoral Area C director Mike Macnabb agreed there was a significant impasse. I see here a polarization that is tearing the community apart, Macnabb told the meeting. Why wasn't there more weight given to trying to speak to those people and find some common ground? he asked the task force members. But resident Denys Lawrence, who resigned from the task force some time ago, accused Macnabb of underrepresenting the Silver Star community. I lost faith in the director who never bothered to come and talk to the task force, Lawrence said. Mike Waberski, a resident who also favours a resort association warned: This is the 60th anniversary of Silver Star Mountain this year. Sears Canada was 65 years old when its failure to adapt led to its demise. Near the end of the lengthy meeting, Ken Derpak, SilverStar Mountain Resort's managing director, apologized to the group. I don't think it has to be divisive and if it is, I apologize. That was not my intent, he said, turning to the audience. Derpak denied the process had been flawed and stated the resort operators wanted a quality product. The biggest change here, the largest paradigm shift, is the mountain. We're going to lose control," he said, pointing out the resort would have only two positions on the proposed 11 member board. Meanwhile, the regional district board decided to review the bylaws and other legal documents at another meeting before approving or rejected the resort association proposal. Photo: The Canadian Press Secretary General of the OECD, Jose Angel Gurria. To an international diplomat, the irony is painful the country that promised action on climate change is falling behind while the country that has spurned a major treaty on the issue is making progress. That's Canada and the United States, Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said Wednesday. "It's a bit of a paradox, here," Gurria told The Canadian Press. "In Canada, you have a situation where you have a very strong political will to reduce, but effectively it has not gone on the planned road. "In the United States, you have a government that has pulled out of the (Paris) agreement, but in the United States you are having a reduction in emissions." "You have here a very proactive and decisive leadership moving in the direction of reduction of emissions, and a very active participant in the Paris agreement and a very active participant in the whole of the world's move," said Gurria, who was in Toronto to speak at the Munk School at the University of Toronto. "While at the same time, the local situation is showing that speed of reduction is not as fast as one would have wanted." Gurria said Canada's international promises suggest that by this time, emissions should have fallen by 17 per cent from 2005 levels. Instead, the drop has been more like two per cent. Photo: CTV Two Calgary men have been apprehended by police in Montreal in the shooting death of a 23-year-old man in a home in southeast Calgary on the weekend. The body of Mvemba Eriq Afonso was found Saturday and police identified a stolen black Dodge truck that was seen fleeing the neighbourhood. On Tuesday, members of the Quebec provincial police stopped the suspect vehicle at an undisclosed location in Montreal and notified the Calgary police. Mourad Gasmi, 21, and Shannoh Jabet, 22, face second-degree murder charges in Afonsos death. Two Calgary police officers travelled to Montreal to conduct interviews. The killing is believed to be part of a drug crime, adding that Afonso and the two accused were known to each other. Photo: The Canadian Press Scientists have found a hidden chamber in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza, the first such discovery in the structure since the 19th century and one likely to spark a new surge of interest in the pharaohs. In an article published in the journal Nature on Thursday, an international team said the 30-metre void deep within the pyramid is situated above the structure's Grand Gallery, and has a similar cross-section. The purpose of the chamber is unclear, and it's not yet known whether it was built with a function in mind. The scientists made the discovery using cosmic-ray imaging, recording the behaviour of subatomic particles called muons that penetrate the rock similar to X-rays, only much deeper. Their paper was peer-reviewed before appearing in Nature, an international, interdisciplinary journal of science. The pyramid is also known as Khufu's Pyramid for its builder, a 4th Dynasty pharaoh who reigned from 2509 to 2483 B.C. Visitors to the pyramid, on the outskirts of Cairo, can walk, hunched over, up a long tunnel to reach the Grand Gallery. The newly discovered chamber does not appear to be connected to any known internal passages. Scientists involved in the scanning called the find a "breakthrough" that highlighted the usefulness of modern particle physics in archaeology. "This is a premier," said Mehdi Tayoubi, a co-founder of the ScanPyramids project and president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute. "It could be composed of one or several structures... maybe it could be another Grand Gallery. It could be a chamber, it could be a lot of things." "It was hidden, I think, since the construction of the pyramid," he added. The Giza pyramids, the last surviving wonder of the ancient world, have captivated visitors since they were built as royal burial chambers some 4,500 years ago. Photo: The Canadian Press The suspect in the deadly New York City truck rampage was inspired by the Islamic State group's online videos and plotted his attack for two months, renting a truck ahead of time to practice turning it, federal authorities said in bringing terrorism charges against the Uzbek immigrant. President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Sayfullo Saipov "SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Saipov chose Halloween for the attack because he figured there would be more people on the streets, according to the criminal complaint. And after his trail of terror was halted by a police bullet, he asked to display the Islamic State flag in his hospital room, saying "he felt good about what he had done," authorities said. Brought to court in a wheelchair, Saipov was held without bail on charges that could bring the death penalty. Separately, the FBI was questioning people who might have information about his actions before the attack, including a second Uzbek man. The charges against Saipov, 29, came just a day after the attack near the World Trade Center killed eight people. Investigators in multiple states raced to retrace Saipov's steps and understand his motivations, which they said were illuminated by a note he left by the truck: "Islamic Supplication. It will endure." The phrase "it will endure" commonly refers to the Islamic State group, and Saipov had a cellphone loaded with the group's propaganda, an FBI agent said in the criminal complaint. Handcuffed and with his legs shackled, Saipov nodded his head as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter. A married father of three and former commercial truck and ride-hailing driver, Saipov began planning an attack a year ago and settled on a truck assault a couple of months ago, according to the criminal complaint. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and rented a truck to practice turns. He chose a route along a lower Manhattan highway and initially hoped to continue to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, the complaint said. Ultimately, Saipov sped down a bike path on a riverfront esplanade in a rented truck for nearly a mile Tuesday, running down cyclists and pedestrians, before crashing into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic, they said. Knives were found in a bag he was carrying. A stun gun was found inside the truck. Madison Erhardt Let's face it, puppies are difficult and require lots of work. But there's a way to get your dog fix without owning one. Brian Smith, Pacific Assistance Dogs Society Okanagan development co-ordinator, says residents can be a part of puppy training for months at a time. "Pacific Assistance Dogs Society, breeds, raises, trains and supports certified assistance dogs, partnering them with people living with disabilities, and with community care professionals," Smith said. PADS is more than 90 per cent volunteer-driven. "It takes 20 to 24 months to train a dog. There is a class in Lake Country once a week," Smith added. If you'd like to raise a puppy, click here. Photo: Madison Erhardt A Halloween haunted house on Grenfell Road helped out the Central Okanagan Community Food Bank in a big way. Homeowner Paul Coxe reports the spooky fundraiser brought in $2,401 and 4,500 pounds of food. A total of 3,048 people toured through the haunted house leading up to and including Halloween night. Coxe thanked everyone who came out and donated. "See you next year," he said. Photo: Thinkstock.com British Columbia's government has announced an expert task force to advise the province on how to eliminate medical premiums within four years. The task force will be chaired by a University of Victoria professor who is an expert in applied economic research and policy analysis. Paul Ramsey, a former NDP cabinet minister for health, environment and education, has also been appointed to the task force along with a law professor from the University of B.C. Finance Minister Carole James says in a news release that Medical Services Plan premiums are unfair and place a significant burden on families. The NDP already announced in its budget plans this fall that it aims to cut premiums by 50 per cent as of Jan. 1, which would annually save individuals up to $450 and families up to $900. The task force is expected to deliver a final report to the government by March 31. Photo: The Canadian Press Six of the BC Liberals leadership candidates, Andrew Wilkinson, Dianne Watts, Sam Sullivan, Michael Lee and Todd Stone (from left to right). Eight BC Liberals leadership hopefuls are expected to battle it out in Kelowna in the beginning of December, at the party's fourth leadership debate. The former governing party of the province is on the hunt for a new leader, after former premier and MLA of Kelowna West, Christy Clark, stepped down in July. Leadership candidates include Todd Stone, Sam Sullivan, Mike Lee, Andrew Wilkinson, Gurmant Grewal, Dianne Watts, Lucy Sager and Mike de Jong. The debate will take place at the Coast Capri Hotel on Dec. 2, beginning at 10:30 a.m. Photo: The Canadian Press Kwakwaka'wakw nations and supporters stand against fish farms at the B.C. legislature in Victoria Thursday. Protesters opposed to salmon farms on Vancouver Island lit a sacred fire today near the front steps of British Columbia's legislature. Hereditary Chief Ernest Alfred told about 200 people gathered outside the legislature the crackling fire represents the sounds of his Indigenous ancestors. The traditional leader has been calling for the removal of several long-term Atlantic salmon fish farms located near Alert Bay, just off northern Vancouver Island. Chief Willie Moon of Kingcome Inlet told the placard-waving protesters salmon farms have been in his territories for 30 years and he's seen drastic declines in wild salmon stocks. Protesters occupied salmon farms operated by Marine Harvest Canada on northern Vancouver Island earlier this fall. Premier John Horgan says the health of B.C.'s wild salmon stocks is one of his government's top priorities. Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. Tesla was supposed to have delivered thousands of Model 3s by now, but only 260 have been built. (Russ Mitchell / Los Angeles Times) Reporting from San Francisco For months, Tesla forecast a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 electric sedans a week by the end of this December. Never mind. Advertisement The company said Wednesday that milestone is being kicked ahead an additional three months, to the end of the first quarter of 2018. Tesla is facing serious problems not only at its Fremont, Calif., assembly plant, but also at the Gigafactory, the battery plant in Nevada that supplies the battery packs that drive the Model 3. Advertisement How serious? In The Inferno, Dante described nine levels of hell. In a call with analysts Wednesday, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said production hell at the Gigafactory reached the ninth level several weeks ago, and is at level eight at present. Now I can see a clear path to sunshine, Musk said. I feel optimistic right now. Software from a supplier, which controls part of a battery module assembly process, had to be totally rewritten by Tesla, Musk said. Musk literally camped out on the Gigafactory roof while supervising the fix, complete with a campfire and marshmallows. He said he didnt want to waste precious time commuting to and from a hotel. Tesla buried the production-delay news in an investor letter it posted online after the New York stock markets closed. Also buried: a massive loss of $671.1 million in the third quarter, bringing its loss through the first nine months of 2017 to $1.66 billion. Sales in the quarter were up 7%, to $2.98 billion. Elon Musk and colleagues camping on the roof of the Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada last week. Musk said he didn't want to waste time traveling back and forth to a Reno hotel as he grapples with "production hell." (Instagram) Thousands of Model 3s were supposed to have been sold by now. So far, the company has reported that only 260 have been produced. Reports that many of those cars were returned to fix battery problems were not disputed by Tesla. Teslas stock closed Wednesday at $321.08, down 3.15%, and had lost an additional 1.5% in after-hours trading by the time the earnings call ended. The Model 3 is considered crucial to Teslas future. Growth is slow for its luxury Model S and Model X, which the company says will reach combined sales of 100,000 vehicles by the end of the year. Advertisement Musk had forecast that Model 3s would be manufactured at a rate of 5,000 a week by the end of December and that the company would make a total of more than 500,000 cars by the end of 2018. On Wednesday, Tesla conceded the 5,000-a-week rate will not be met for months and that the company will need to clarify its forecasts for 2018. Musk told analysts that thousands of Model 3s a week will be in production by the end of December, but said he couldnt be more specific. Tesla has promised to best competing automakers with dramatic advances in factory automation, introduced with Silicon Valley-style speed. But it said Wednesday that bringing this level of automation online is simply challenging in the early stages of the ramp. We continue to make progress resolving early bottlenecks, the company said. There remain no fundamental problems with our supply chain or any of our production processes. Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Autotrader, said, Tesla is learning what traditional automakers have long known mass vehicle assembly is complicated and expensive. Musk sought to underline Teslas progress in the face of bad news. The company has delivered more than 250,000 cars since its founding, up from 2,500 just five years ago, he said. Advertisement For the skeptics out there, which one of you would have predicted Tesla would go from 2,500 deliveries to 250,000 now? Musk said. He added that a delay of several months in Model 3 production will prove immaterial. Some analysts who have seen Teslas stock rise more than 75% over the last year were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. The delay is understandable given the complexity, said John Murphy, stock analyst at Bank of America. We don't think Tesla has derailed, instead it is just delayed, said Efraim Levy, stock analyst at CFRA. The third quarter was not a make or break period, in our view. Still, he reiterated his sell recommendation on the stock. Tesla said the number of would-be Model 3 owners who have put down $1,000 refundable deposits had grown beyond the 4,000 the company announced over the summer. But he offered no new number. Jessica Caldwell, an industry analyst at Edmunds, doesnt see the latest news causing problems among the Tesla faithful. Advertisement "Car buyers have always looked at Tesla through rose-colored glasses, she said. Tesla has managed to build a unique mystique around their brand that consumers want to be a part of, so these production issues likely won't ruffle too many feathers among the company's loyal buyer base." Asked about plans to build a new assembly plant in China, Musk said he expects production to begin within three years, serving the China market and perhaps other Asian countries. The plant will build the Model 3 and the upcoming Model Y compact SUV, he said. A top executive is out at Oak Brook-based TreeHouse Foods, which reported slumping sales Thursday and saw its stock plunge to its lowest point in more than six years. Robert Aiken, president and chief operating officer, resigned Sunday, the company announced. Aiken, 54, had just joined the private label food company in July. Advertisement Aiken could not be reached for comment Thursday morning. A TreeHouse spokesman didnt immediately respond to requests for comment on the timing of or reason for Aikens departure. Bob left of his own choosing, TreeHouse Foods spokesman Brian Pitts said in a statement. While we are disappointed by his departure, what matters most is that we have a strong and experienced leadership team to guide this company going forward. Advertisement TreeHouse Chairman and CEO Sam Reed will assume the role of president while the company initiates a search for a new CEO. Previously, Aiken served as president and CEO for both Deerfield-based Essendant and Rosemont-based US Foods. He was also previously CEO of Chicago-based Feeding America. TreeHouse reported adjusted earnings per share of 67 cents, down from 70 cents in the third quarter of last year. Net sales for the quarter were $1.5 billion, down 2.4 percent from $1.6 billion in the same period last year. TreeHouse lowered full-year guidance Thursday for the second time this year and also announced a $400 million share repurchase program. Shares of TreeHouse stock closed at $43.03 Thursday, down $23.33, or 35 percent. gtrotter@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @GregTrotterTrib David Wichlinski, who with his firm Hyperion Consulting created the Valpolies.com website, has acknowledged in court documents that certain statements he published about Valparaiso businessman Chuck Williams on the site and affiliated social media were untrue. He also said he "regrets and expresses his apology to Williams and his family for any harm he caused by publishing the untrue statements," according to the document. Advertisement The rest of the settlement, filed in Porter Circuit Court Friday, is confidential, but Williams said Wednesday it was unfortunate he had to file a defamation lawsuit to shut the site down. According to court documents, Valpolies.com was taken down early this year. "Something had to be done," Williams said, adding local businesspeople, politicians and other community leaders also were targets of the site. "They were the targets of vitriol and most of it was rooted in flat-out lies and things that weren't remotely true. It wasn't right." Advertisement Thomas Kimbrough, one of the attorneys representing Wichlinski, had no comment on the settlement. Williams filed the suit against Wichlinski and Hyperion Consulting in December 2015. The lawsuit, which sought damages and injunctive relief, noted that the website repeatedly accused Williams and others of engaging in acts of public corruption and violating state laws. Williams, the principal in Pavilion Partners, which has plans for a banquet center and renovating the pavilion at Indiana Dunes State Park, claimed in the lawsuit that allegations made on Valpolies.com and its affiliated Facebook page and Twitter feed irreparably damaged his reputation and business ventures, including his public-private partnership with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources for the project at the state park in Chesterton. His suit accused Wichlinski and others of engaging in false attacks to affect local political races. The site went up in June 2014, and Williams said in the suit that the attacks began after he declined to endorse Russell "Chet" Barone for the District 3 seat on the Porter County Council in the May primary. His campaign website was managed by Wichlinski and Hyperion Consulting, which has since been dissolved. Williams said he is one of many people in the community glad the site is down, and he and his family agreed to a settlement in part because Wichlinski was willing to apologize for publishing untrue statements. Attorneys for Wichlinski asked in court documents filed in February 2016 that the suit be dismissed because the things he posted about Williams on Valpolies.com "were substantially true," and noted that Williams is a public figure, given local and state posts he held for the Republican Party, and Pavilion Partners "was engaged or attempting to engage in public work." Going forward, Williams said he hopes people will think before they post things online, and when they read them. "I hope it gives people pause before they just put things out, and I hope it gives people pause before they spread things they see on the internet thinking it's true, because a lot of times, it's not," he said. Advertisement What's on the internet needs to be verified, he added, regardless of whether it's national news or closer to home. "This was local and you knew these people," he said. Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. American consumers throw away 27 million tons of food each year, according to the food waste coalition ReFED, clogging landfills, generating greenhouse gasses, and costing the economy an estimated $144 billion. The solution, however, could be simple: get people to eat leftovers again. Once the mainstay of weekday lunchboxes and thrifty home cooks, leftovers today constitute the single largest source of edible food waste in U.S. homes, according to a new study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. The finding defies conventional wisdom about the sorts of foods consumers waste - and represents a major obstacle for environmentalists and anti-food-waste campaigns. While past efforts have focused on improving consumers' food literacy and kitchen skills, converting them to leftovers will involve changing deep-seated food preferences. "I don't think this is just about education," said Dana Gunders, a senior scientist in NRDC's Food and Agriculture Program. "It's a cultural shift that needs to happen." In the report, published last week, NRDC sought to measure how much food Americans waste and what types of foods they tend to waste most. The study analyzed the food-waste habits of more than 1,151 households in Nashville, Denver and New York, who agreed to keep diaries of the items they tossed and allow researchers to check their trash cans afterward. What researchers found was staggering: The average person wasted 3.5 pounds of food per week. Of that, only a third consisted of inedible parts, such as chicken bones or banana peels. And of the remaining, edible trashed food, bin digs found that 23 percent consisted of prepared leftovers, from any source - followed by fruits and vegetables, baked goods, and liquids and oils. Gunders said that many consumers appear to stash Tupperware containers in their fridge and then forget to excavate them before the food goes bad. Other times, consumers grow bored of eating the same food on multiple occasions. "There were two big reasons people threw out edible food," Gunders said. "They thought it had spoiled, or they just didn't like leftovers." This is not a new feeling in the American psyche, although it has come under scrutiny with increased attention to food waste. The food historian Helen Veit has observed that regard for leftovers plummeted in the 1960s, when refrigeration and cheap food became plentiful. Although saving food had been patriotic during the World Wars, and economically necessary in the century before them, rising incomes and agricultural productivity pushed thrift out of favor. "I'm not saying all Americans did this recklessly, but by the 1960s, people were able to say, 'I'd rather not eat that leftover pot roast,' " Veit said. "They could say, 'Let's drive to a restaurant or go to the grocery store or get something out of the freezer.' " Shifting Americans back to that old way of thinking could be tricky. Gunders said the effort could include public-service campaigns, aimed at getting people to "love their leftovers." NRDC is also emphasizing education around portion size and meal-planning to encourage home cooks to make only what they'll consume. Apart from that, environmentalists and anti-food-waste campaigners are holding out for a shift in American eating culture. Gunders is hopeful that cultural influencers, led by the food media, can help convince people that it's cool to eat leftovers. Some have already tried: Ted Allen, the host of the popular Food Network show "Chopped," declared that leftovers were not "a dirty word" during one of the show's three episodes on the subject. But if Americans are truly to embrace the doggy bag, they may need a stronger push, Veit said. After all, it has never been so cheap, from a purely monetary perspective, to ditch yesterday's takeout for lunch elsewhere. Veit sees one possible model in the government propaganda campaigns that got Americans to embrace leftovers during World War I and World War II. "They succeeded," she said, "by pushing this idea that it was morally wrong to waste food." Goose Island will have all six variants of this year's Bourbon County lineup available at the tasting and tapping. (Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune) What pairs well with a gleaming new taproom? If youre Goose Island, the answer, of course, is its Bourbon County family of beers. Advertisement The brewery said Thursday that it will again host a series of events for its annual Black Friday Bourbon County release, including five brewer-led tastings and tappings throughout the day. It will be the first time the tappings and tastings are held in Goose Islands dramatically renovated taproom, which re-opened last week as the Goose Island Brewhouse after a 10-month gut job. Advertisement Tickets costing $100 (plus taxes and fees) will go on sale Monday for the brewer-led 3-ounce tastings of this years crop: Bourbon County Brand Stout, Bourbon County Brand Barleywine, Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout, Bourbon County Brand Northwoods Stout, Proprietors Bourbon County Brand Stout and Bourbon County Reserve Brand Stout. (We got a sneak peak a couple weeks back.) Sessions, all on Nov. 24, will be at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Along with a tasting, ticket holders will get to take home a bottle of one of this years variants the brewery said which one will be decided closer to the event plus small bites and a Bourbon County snifter. Bourbon County bottles will not be for sale at the pub, Goose Island says, but they will be released in stores in Chicago and nationally. All the Bourbon County beers will also be tapped at the Brewhouse throughout the day at the following times: Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > 9 a.m.: Bourbon County Brand Stout (2016 and 2017 versions) and Bourbon County Barleywine (2016 and 2017 versions) 11 a.m.: Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout 1 p.m.: Bourbon County Brand Northwoods Stout 3 p.m.: Bourbon County Reserve Brand Stout Advertisement 5 p.m.: Proprietors Bourbon County Brand Stout jbnoel@chicagotribune.com Twitter @hopnotes Based on the 1996 novel by Margaret Atwood, who is already having a major small-screen triumph thanks to Hulus The Handmaids Tale, the six-part Netflix series Alias Grace gives viewers a starkly compelling reason to forget about 21st-century gender nightmares for a while, and to focus instead on the worst the 19th century had to offer women. The limited series comes from many hands, but especially those of Toronto-born producer and screenwriter Sarah Polley, who has done a first-rate job with the 1843-set story of Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), convicted for the murders of her employer and his mistress. By probing Marks subliminated dreams and memories, an idealistic young doctor (Edward Holcroft) specializing in the newfangled realm of mental illness treatment conducts a series of interviews. Flashbacks to Marks earlier years as an Irish immigrant new to Canada reveal the travails of Grace, and the conspiring details of a society no fairer to women than the one in the retro-futurist Handmaids Tale. Directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho, The Moth Diaries) and based on true events, Alias Grace is the Handmaids bookend. The future, both of Atwoods novels argue, came from somewhere. Advertisement Best known as an actress, Polley has made three directorial features to date, two fiction (Away From Her and Take This Waltz) and one remarkable personal documentary (Stories We Tell). These point to a long, hardy career ahead, building on everything Polley learned as a versatile and respected actress. But that word respected carries an asterisk for Polley, as it does with virtually everybody who is not white and male in the film and TV industries. Last month Polley published a New York Times op-ed on her own experiences with producer Harvey Weinstein, The disgraced mogul, she wrote, may be the central-casting version of a Hollywood predator, but he was just one festering pustule in a diseased industry. The only thing that shocked most people in the film industry about the Harvey Weinstein story was that suddenly, for some reason, people seemed to care. That knowledge alone allowed a lot of us to breathe for the first time in ages. Advertisement Below, some excerpts from a recent phone interview, with Polley on the line from Toronto. Adaptation: Originally Polley conceived of a conventional two-hour screen version of Alias Grace. That wouldve taken out most of the historical context, and almost all the political context and the real texture of Graces world. When I first started writing this and realized it could and should be a miniseries, I remember talking to my agents, and they said: If this were an ongoing series, wed have, like, 80 places to pitch it. But people arent making limited series right now. Its not a thing. And I thought, Ill just write it that way anyway. And within a year, when wed started trying to raise money, suddenly everyone was making limited series. The late-Weinstein era: My last couple of acting experiences, a few years ago now, were marked by extreme insensitivity either on the part of the producer or the director. And I remember saying to myself: Im going to come back to this when Im 50, when nobody cares anymore about me being a sexual object. But of course there are no parts for women in their 50s Its not just the film industry. Women are dealing with harassment or worse every day, in every aspect of their lives. This is so ingrained in our culture. Whats new is people are having conversations about it, and they seem to care. Theyre not as dismissive of these women. I remember when I was a kid, the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas conversation was everywhere, and the conversation around me as a child was that this lady was a wingnut, and sexual harassment was not a real thing. That was the first instance of sexual harassment Id heard talked about openly, and it was with such derision. So now, to be living in a time where people are actually accepting the term, and believe that its legitimate to complain about it this is a very big change. I hope it filters into other industries. And I hope it filters into other things besides gender. We have the same old blind spots when it comes to racism and classism. I hope it creates a larger conversation about all the things weve been willing to accept that are totally unacceptable. Aesthetics: In a recent Toronto interview, Polley said: I think Im done trying to make elegant films that subtly talk about something. This isnt the time for that. I asked her to elaborate. Thats how Im feeling in the world right now, she said. I care less right now about trying to be an aesthetically sophisticated filmmaker than about saying what needs to be said. Some of my favorite filmmakers manage to do both: People like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are able to make films that have a political context and are still great films. So its possible. But for me right now, the prioritys elsewhere, and everyones films are entering a world going through a very, very tumultuous time. Our American president: I dont think this whole Harvey Weinstein thing wouldve happened without Trump. People are so frustrated and furious and feel so much injustice (about) living under this man who bragged about sexual assault. The shock and rage are so deep that people now are doing what they can, where they can, to combat their sense of powerlessness and fear. Theres an awakening among a lot of people on these issues, and Im not sure it wouldve happened without the president you have. Alias Grace premieres Friday on Netflix. Advertisement Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic. mjphillips@chicagotribune.com Twitter @phillipstribune [ RELATED: Harvey Weinstein: When dinosaurs ruled the earth ] [ Actress Sarah Gadon on the world of "Alias Grace" ] [ Review of Sarah Polley's inspired documentary "Stories We Tell" ] Although Chicago holds "Second City" as a nickname, it has never been a city that needed outsider validation. Creatives are constantly carving out their own spaces personally and artistically to showcase work and what they know their Chicago to sound and feel like. It's being noticed, with publications from The Fader to The New York Times citing the city's overarching influence (usually alongside its most recognized son, Chance the Rapper). Advertisement In that respect, it makes sense for Red Bull Sound Select to bring its "30 Days" concert series here. Announced in August, the monthlong takeover provides daily live music, art and tech experiences across the city throughout November with plans to keep the series in Chicago for the next year or two. The series kicked off Wednesday. Born in 2012, Red Bull Sound Select aimed to break buzz bands and upcoming artists with the help of local tastemakers from cities national and international, in search of what's "next" to resonate globally. 2014 saw the first iteration of "30 Days," set in Los Angeles where the newly discovered would play with household names in hopes of building a larger following. Advertisement To Red Bull, Chicago encompasses this. The city's musical and cultural exports are in high demand, from rapper Saba's lyrics gracing the side of Apple's new Michigan Avenue flagship store to the SaveMoney crew's year of endless festival appearances. The definitive "new Chicago sound," a post-drill blend of gospel, smooth steppin' music and R&B-flavored beats, has given way to curated playlists for streaming services such as Apple Music. "We have definitely seen a unique drive within the artists native to Chicago to maximize their talent and expose their message to large audiences around the world," said Marcus Heisser, Sound Select's senior manager of global product development and artist relations. "There's a mentality and work ethic certainly rooted in the fast-paced, progressive environment of the city." Citing Chicago artists' more outspoken nature and desire to create waves on the business side of the industry, as well as through social activism, politics and education, Heisser added, "I think there's a huge opportunity to spark conversation through song and expression. I think all of those things are exemplified in the artists we're working with and they're getting people's attention, making them feel something emotionally and react." To date, RBSS has hosted 49 events here; attendees often wrapped around venues like Thalia Hall or Concord Music Hall for blocks waiting to get in. Locals Mick Jenkins, Smino and Joey Purp have all performed under the subset's moniker, and this time around others like Noname and Ravyn Lenae and rockers Whitney and Ne-Hi will have the chance. Since its initial launch, Red Bull Sound Select has been partnered with Fake Shore Drive's Andrew Barber, as well as Do312, Empty Bottle Presents and others. Barber was one of the first to tap into the Midwest's unrepresented music scenes and the first to host a RBSS show in Chicago. Advertisement In 2007 he founded the popular hip-hop blog Fake Shore Drive ultimately creating a hype platform for artists he believed in to get recognition without having to migrate to New York to LA. Helping shine a light on young voices like Chief Keef, Vic Mensa and Tink, Barber became the go-to connection for artists on the rise and those looking to elevate them. "When I started FSD, that was always the thing: How are there only four known rappers from this city and this is the third-largest city in the United States? It's a huge market," Barber said of Chicago and the Midwest's lack of recognition early on. "A lot of times, people on the coasts or in offices, the industry people, just thought it was fly-over territory. They'd say, 'Yeah, you'll have a flash in the pan every now and again, like a Kanye or Nelly or Eminem, but they're just consumers they don't drive culture. They don't create it.' That's wrong," he continued. "Now what you see is these kids finally getting through the door. The younger generation understands, they knew how to do it and they don't have to deal with those gatekeepers. There's more of a blue-collar vibe here than a coastal, elite city. It's more inclusive. They've harnessed what they need through social media and their energetic, young fan bases." A decade later, FSD's 10th anniversary show which boasts a lineup of the reunited Big Tymers, Detroit native Tee Grizzley and some "Friends of Fake Shore Drive" including GLC, G Herbo, King Louie, Femdot, Twista and Cool Kids among other surprises is part of "30 Days in Chicago's" programming. Heisser echoed Barber's sentiment. "The fact that Chicago has taken over in popular culture without having that industry oversight is really a testament to the messages getting out and the creativity just flowing," he said. Advertisement Neither believes Chicago will ever become as saturated as New York or LA, or that artists based here will stop, based on the ebb and flow of music trends. They agree the movement is bigger than that. If anything, Barber believes RBSS hosting "30 Days in Chicago" shows respect for a market that's redefining what it means to be supportive of your local scene by taking it worldwide. jroti@chicagotribune.com Twitter @jessitaylorro When: Through November 30 (no event on Thanksgiving) Where: Various locations Advertisement Tickets: $15 with free registration; www.30days.redbullsoundselect.com/2017/Chicago RELATED: Red Bull Sound Select's '30 Days' concert series coming to Chicago Rapper Saba's lyrics get a big show on new Apple flagship Meet the go-to designer for the biggest names in Chicago hip-hop Typically, movie directors film their story, then bring in a composer to craft the music. But Chicagoan Rob Christopher has flipped the order, enlisting Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz to create and record the score first. Advertisement With Adasiewicz's shimmering music in the can, Christopher is ready to forge ahead with a most unconventional documentary, "Roy's World." Inspired by "The Roy Stories" of author Barry Gifford whose novel "Wild at Heart" became a well-known David Lynch film the doc-in-the-making seeks to conjure the mood and atmosphere of Chicago in the late 1940s to the early 1960s. That's the era of Roy, a character whose youth Gifford has been chronicling in his fiction for decades. Advertisement Gifford will read from his latest Roy collection, "The Cuban Club: Stories," on Saturday night at Constellation, with Adasiewicz riffing alongside him from the vibraphone and in conversation. So this evening should give listeners a hint of what filmmaker Christopher is pursuing via Gifford's words and Adasiewicz's music. "When I started working on the film, I knew that music was going to be a really important part of it, because Barry's stories are very musical," says Christopher. "And rather than relying on a bunch of music from the period, which I couldn't really afford anyway, I thought it would be a lot more interesting to get original music. And I've been a fan of Jason's stuff for a long time." For good reason: Adasiewicz stands among the most innovative and creative vibraphonists playing today, as various recordings with his Sun Rooms band and other ensembles attest. But Adasiewicz's music for "Roy's World" stands apart from his other work, as an early listen to a private recording of his score shows. This is Adasiewicz at his most lyrical, his ethereal vibraphone solos intertwining with music from Josh Berman's cornet, Jonathan Doyle's reeds, Joshua Abrams' bass and Hamid Drake's percussion. These musicians recorded Adasiewicz's tunes in February, giving Christopher a soundtrack to work with. The approach is unorthodox, but so is the film-in-the-making, for "Roy's World" will have no live action footage or talking heads, says Christopher. Instead, he's gathering historic archival footage of Chicago, which he'll pair with Adasiewicz's score and readings from Gifford's "Roy Stories." "There's a great movie by Terence Davies, 'Of Time and the City,' and it's ostensibly a personal recollection of Liverpool in the '50s," explains Christopher, in citing an inspiration for his own film. Advertisement "It sort of has the mood of a documentary, but it's a lot more impressionistic, because it's not really about so-and-so was born in this year. It's more of just kind of drifting through the memories of time and place. "So in one way, 'Roy's World' will be a documentary, because it's going to document what Chicago was like in that period. But it's not going to be a historical timeline of events." Adasiewicz's score reflects the impressionistic quality Christopher describes, the tintinnabulation of his vibraphone echoed in silvery streaks of melody from Berman's cornet and washes of sound from Drake's percussion. Though Adasiewicz was familiar with "Wild at Heart" and "Lost Highway," which Lynch directed and co-wrote with Gifford, the musician didn't become conversant with Gifford's writings until Christopher sent him some of "The Roy Stories" while Adasiewicz was on tour. "I sat down on the airplane and started reading it's like all Chicago," says Adasiewicz. "You feel like you're in Chicago reading these stories. The imagery is so vivid." But Adasiewicz didn't try to conjure the sounds of 1950s-style Chicago jazz, or any other specific framework. Advertisement "I can't think like that," he says. Instead, he responded to more general thoughts from Christopher. "Rob gave me some imagery, like: 'a really smoky blues,' " says Adasiewicz. "The (music) was definitely influenced by this new mindset and being immersed in these stories." Lest this sound like a visual and sonic blur, it's important to note what Christopher will be using for narration: readings of Gifford's stories by no less than actors Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor. "We recorded those last year in the spring," says Christopher. "All the actors love Barry's work and basically agreed to do it for free. So it was me flying out to New York with my digital recorder and meeting them with my microphone and them performing the stories for me." In addition, Christopher has conducted about eight hours of interviews with Gifford, "which will function as connective tissue between the stories and the visuals." Advertisement The assignment from Christopher was well-timed for Adasiewicz, who had stopped touring in May 2016 "because I was just kind of done spending my life in a suitcase for 90 days out of the year," he says. With two kids at home, Adasiewicz felt that's where he needed and wanted to be. "This was the first project that I worked on with that new frame of mind," he adds. The combination of Adasiewicz's new life, and the influence of Gifford's stories, obviously has been transformative for his music. "Lyrical is definitely the right word," says Adasiewicz, whose earlier work often involved angular lines and fierce instrumental attacks. "It's singable," adds Adasiewicz. "For once in my writing career." Advertisement Howard Reich is a Tribune critic. hreich@chicagotribune.com Twitter @howardreich When: 8:30 p.m. Saturday Where: Constellation, 3111 N. Western Ave. Tickets: $10; www.constellation-chicago.com Advertisement RELATED: Striking new work from Jason Adasiewicz Jason Adasiewicz makes beautiful vibes Best jazz recordings Watch the latest movie trailers. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox) Matthew Weiner is best known as the creator of Mad Men and a writer and producer of many episodes of The Sopranos, series beloved for their complex, warm, often humorous portrayals of flawed, charismatic men. His first novel, Heather, the Totality, can best be described as a simplistic, cold portrayal of flawed, repellent people. Any reader picking up the book in the hopes of finding Weiners gorgeous portraits of human frailty will be disappointed, but grateful the story runs just 144 pages. Advertisement Heather, the Totality revolves around four characters wealthy Manhattanites Mark and Karen Breakstone and their daughter Heather, plus a violent sociopath named Bobby. Mark, Karen and Bobby are truly repulsive characters. Heather is almost hilariously unbelievable, written as if Christ had come to earth in the form of Claudia Schiffer. Over the course of the novel, the Breakstones and Bobbys paths cross. Violence ensues. We are told from the start that Karen only married Mark because of his potential to be rich. Mark marries Karen because he thinks shes a 10. Mark makes a ton of money in finance in New York City. They live a life of private schools, luxury vacations and $1,200 Italian coffeemakers. Advertisement Meanwhile, we meet Bobby, born in Newark to a heroin addict. Weiner creates a cartoonish vision of Bobbys childhood, explaining that the child had eaten cigarette butts and drunk beer before he was ten and that he had helped her boyfriends and friends shoot up when they were too sick. In case we start to feel bad for Bobby, we are told he likes to torture animals. Eventually he murders his mother, gets away with it and winds up working Manhattan construction jobs, where he spies Heather, and like everyone who has the luck to be in her presence, becomes obsessed with her. Heather is presented as a blonde, blue-eyed, godlike creature possessing unworldly beauty, wisdom, empathy and intelligence. Weiner makes it seem like she arrives by supernatural means. She was so beautiful, Weiner writes, that when she would inevitably become the center of attention in a park or a store, her newly won friends would look at Karen, or Mark and Karen together, and be unable to hide their surprise that this child belonged to these people. But there is more to Heather than her staggering beauty, Weiner tells us. As Heather grew into a little girl her beauty became more pronounced but somehow secondary to her charm and intelligence, and, most notably, a complex empathy that could be profound. People become infatuated with Heather, including her parents, who fire babysitters to spend more time around her and compete with each other for her attention. There is the kernel of a good idea in this idea of parents becoming fanatically obsessed with their children, but Weiner spoils it with the general awfulness of Mark and Karen and the side story of Bobby, who, predictably, begins to obsess about Heather in an unhealthy way. Could this story be a satire of upper-middle-class parents tendency to place their children on pedestals? The answer is no, because the story ends with the predictable clash between the Breakstones and Bobby, and because Bobby is a sexual predator, it is clear who is supposed to win. Hint: Its not Bobby, so the message is, it seems, that the Breakstones are altogether right to do anything to protect their precious daughter from a man planning to rape her and then kill her. So what is this story about, if it is not a satire? Its unclear. What made Mad Men such a brilliant series is how complex and real the characters felt, and how warmly they were presented onscreen. Don Draper, the series main character, was, on paper, a terrible person who had stolen another mans identity, consistently cheated on his wives, neglected his duties as a father and lied to everyone in his life. And yet, he was irresistible and troubled, as complex as all of us. He was human. He felt real. That care and complexity is missing from Heather, the Totality. Its too bad, because Weiner is capable of creating masterpieces. Fans of his filmed work would be better off waiting for his next project, The Romanoffs, which is scheduled to air next year on Amazon. Advertisement Trine Tsouderos is a freelancer. Heather, the Totality By Matthew Weiner, Little, Brown, 144 pages, $25 Solving Chicago's rat problem with wild cats, as one alderman suggested, gnaws at Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton's fear of felines. (Don Bartletti / MCT) I dread winters in Chicago, and the snow has nothing to do with it. Its those Norwegian rats that make my life miserable. Advertisement Last month, pest control company Orkin ranked Chicago No. 1 among the most rat-infested cities in America. Weve held that title for three years in a row. Though rats usually are more active in the summer, they seem to get bolder as winter approaches. They might prefer to live outside, but they are smart little creatures that know a harsh winter could wipe out much of their population. And they are determined not to let that happen. Advertisement As the temperature drops, those often not-so-little beady-eyed monsters start creeping around in alleys en masse looking for food and shelter. They love to flock to diverse neighborhoods like mine where the menu is not limited to McDonalds and Subway. Here, they get to gorge on discarded leftovers from an array of ethnic restaurants, feasting on kebabs and naan one night and Thai noodles the next. With their bellies full, they wobble across the street in search of structural cracks no bigger than a quarter, where they can contract their furry, fatty bodies tight enough to squeeze into our homes. The 100-year-old apartment buildings in my neighborhood, with all their vintage allure, seem to roll out the red carpet for them. The rodents chew holes through the cracking baseboards, push their way through the floor and build their nests between the boxes of junk piled up in our basements. It is often there that females give birth to the next generation of pesky devils. A rat only lives on average six to 12 months. But by the time they are 2 or 3 months old, the female can produce four to seven litters a year, each one of them containing eight to 12 babies. If were not careful, these curious offspring will find their way into our kitchens. Thankfully, weve taken steps to alleviate the problem in my apartment building, so thats not my biggest concern this year. Im more worried about the abatement measures that might eventually take place outside my back door. Every year around this time, the city has to try and figure out what to do with the growing rat problem. Aldermens phones are ringing off the hook with angry residents complaining that rats are taking over the neighborhood. Advertisement At a budget hearing recently, Ald. Carrie Austin asked the question ailurophobes like me fear the most. She wanted to know if the Streets and Sanitation Department had discussed enlisting feral cats to fight the rodent problem. In other words, she wanted to know if the city had considered releasing an army of wild cats into our neighborhoods. For people who suffer from the fear of cats, thats just as horrifying as turning on the light and seeing a rat scurrying across the kitchen floor. Thank goodness, more sensible heads prevailed. Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Charles Williams pointed out that while the feral cats might be effective in getting rid of the rats, we would then be stuck with a bunch of feral cats roaming the neighborhoods. He didnt mention that some people are downright scared to death of cats. But thats OK because most people dont understand ailurophobia anyway. Thats why we lie and say were allergic when we turn down dinner invitations to a cat-lovers home. Advertisement Williams, instead, gave an excuse that everyone can relate to. The feral cats can be somewhat aggressive, he said. I wouldnt want the city to be associated with putting an aggressive animal on the street that could end up hurting someones child. Austin responded with one of the scariest lines Id ever heard. Some of (the rats) are bigger than the cats, she said. We ailurophobes may have dodged the bullet this year, but it could be just a matter of time before the city starts looking seriously at flooding our alleys with cats. Chicago is home to the crafty Norwegian rat, which like most vermin will eat anything from plants to dog poop. They prefer to live underground, but in Chicago, they have been known to build colonies in light posts and even in the trunk of a tree. Advertisement With the city unable to get a grip on the problem, some residents are seeking help elsewhere. The Tree House Humane Society runs a program that has placed about 800 feral cats in neighborhoods at the residents request. The cats are sterilized, vaccinated and microchipped before they are placed on patrol. They even have a clipped ear to indicate that they are working cats. The cats have been used in several North Side neighborhoods, as well as in the suburbs, according to company officials. At one point, there were 50 cats roaming Lincoln Park. Company officials claim the effort is 100 percent effective. So far, though, the city hasnt expressed any interest in hiring cats to patrol our alleys. Officials believe they can bring the problem under control with bait, dry ice and poisons that keep rats from reproducing. Those remedies might sound inhumane. But I guarantee its a more pleasant death than being eaten alive by a cat. Nothing will work, though, unless residents do our part. Lets bundle up our garbage, place it in trash bins and close the lids tight. Advertisement And the next time your dog poops in the alley, make sure you take a moment to clean it up. A rat that has just had a hearty serving of dog poop is going to turn up its nose and walk away from poison pellets. dglanton@chicagotribune.com Twitter @dahleeng RELATED [ Alderman: Enlist cats to fight Chicago rats? ] [ Feral cats weapon of choice for some residents facing influx of rats ] [ Glanton: My irrational fear of cats and how they sniff it out ] New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, right, stands with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio while speaking at a news conference on Nov. 1, 2017, concerning the previous day's attack along a bike path in lower Manhattan that is being called a terrorist incident. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) The critical thing about confronting evil is to call it by its rightful name. But New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo decided to call alleged truck terrorist Sayfullo Saipov a lone wolf. All the evidence we have suggests that he was acting alone," said Cuomo. "The so-called 'Lone Wolf syndrome.' Advertisement Lone wolf? Thats a dangerous rhetorical mistake, made by a worried politician trying to avoid reality. Saipov allegedly used rental truck as a weapon of mass destruction on Halloween, and when it was done there were eight dead and a dozen seriously injured. He planned the attack for several weeks, said John Miller, the New York Police Departments deputy commissioner for counterterrorism . Advertisement He seemed to have followed almost to a T the instructions ISIS had put out on how to execute a truck attack, Miller said Wednesday. Whether it happens again in New York or Chicago or some other city, it will happen. Saying it will happen isnt willing it to happen. ISIS terror has found its weapon, rented trucks, and there have been many similar murderous truck attacks in Europe and elsewhere. Only a fool would think that weve come to the end of these attacks. Saipov may have acted alone. But Cuomo is wrong in saying hes a lone wolf. A lone wolf is an outlier, a random creature, solitary, often a madman. Saipov may have worked independently, but he wasnt autonomous. Hes part of a pack, the ISIS pack of sharia supremacists. And ISIS is Sapiovs family. So hes not alone Their political ideology is that Islamic law must be imposed upon the world. And so it is this ideologynot Islamthat ultimately leads the radicalized, like Saipov, to mass murder. Yes, Saipov is an immigrant and yes, he is Muslim, but heres what worries me: We dont need less immigrant Muslim assimilation in America, we need more. And we dont need more isolation, as has happened in Europe. This encourages the Saipovs in America to cleave to sharia supremacism. It leads to more Saipovs committing mass murder. Advertisement Americans are not willing to accept radical Islamic terror attacks on our streets as the new normal. But is there a way forward? Perhaps. If we change the way we think about the problem. I cover politics, and for years in Chicago that has meant watching ham-fisted men use government to exert control on others, to win power and wealth. And Ive long been interested in the use of symbolism in politics, how words are forged into weapons, or goads, to herd voters along. The right craftsmen can hammer sentences into fences, and prevent rogue thoughts from entering and weakening partisan arguments. So could it just be that our politics, or at least our rhetoric, prevents us from seeing a way forward here, to realize our fight is with sharia supremacism, not Islam? Advertisement It will be difficult to convince the Democrats. They belong to the open borders party, always pushing for more immigration, not less. Democrats loathe even mentioning Islamic terrorism. Theyre dogmatically compelled to denounce as a hateful racist anyone whod use acts of Islamic terrorism to shape immigration policy restrictions. It will also be difficult to convince Republicans. They want border control and believe American citizens should decide who enters this country and who doesnt. And many in the GOP probably wouldnt mind if all Muslim immigration was stopped cold. Each side insists the other is insane. And then comes Sayfullo Saipov, in that rented truck in New York, shouting Allahu akbar, and dedicating his kills to ISIS. [ NYC truck attack suspect is charged with terrorism offenses; 2nd person sought ] [ Horror of New York truck attack unfolded in 5 nightmarish minutes ] [ Trump demands tougher immigration law after attack, calls U.S. justice system 'a joke' ] In response, President Trump has now ordered the end of the so-called Diversity Visa Program that reportedly brought Saipov to the U.S. He blamed Democrats for the policy, but it actually began under Republican President George H.W. Bush, years before the 9-11 terror attacks, and received bi-partisan support. What Trump also wants is extreme vetting of Muslim immigrants. He tweets that We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!. The problem isnt ISIS, says Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor in New York who handled terrorism cases including the 1995 World Trade Center bombing. The problem is bombast, and language, and tribalism shaping our thinking and our policy outcomes. Advertisement It is not ISIS, McCarthy writes in the National Review. Jihadist organizations are a symptom. The pathology is sharia supremacism. If you dont vet for it, youre going to keep having attacks... Sharia supremacism is not a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology with a religious veneer. This is the critical distinction ideology, not religion. If we cannot vet for sharia supremacism because the political establishment decides it is not a political ideology but an Islamic religion entitled to all First Amendment protections, then we cannot protect the country. Period. But how can the terms of a debate be changed, when Washington isnt interested in changing those terms or in distinguishing between Islam and sharia supremicism? Im reminded of an interview that I had a while back with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Shes the American Muslim activist campaigning against the hideous practice of female genital mutilation of children in America. The dirty political secret is that Democrats would not engage FGM for fear of being condemned as Islamophobes by liberal peers. Advertisement I find this silence extremely painful," Ali told me. "It's been inculcated into them (the left) not to engageThey are afraid of being shunned. They're afraid of being put into a basket of deplorables. So they're silent. But we cant afford that kind of silence any longer, can we? Listen to "The Chicago Way" podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin at http://wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway. jskass@chicagotribune.com Twitter @John_Kass A car belonging to the FBI was broken into early Thursday on the Near West Side, but officials said no weapons or anything else of value was taken. An FBI agent went out to the car in the 1000 block of West Adams Street and discovered a window had been broken, according to a statement from the agency. A law enforcement source said nothing of value appeared to have been taken. Advertisement The incident was reported to Chicago police, which would not comment on the incident. The break-in occurred about a block from where an FBI-issued SUV was stolen last July when an agent left it running at a gas station. Advertisement The white 2014 Chevrolet Equinox, containing several firearms and tactical gear such as a bulletproof vest, was stolen in the 300 block of South Morgan Street, the agency said at the time. It was found later in the day, about two miles away, after a parking ticket was issued to it. Anyone with information can contact the FBI at 312-421-6700. Chicago police have issued an alert about a crew of at least four people who have been stealing cars at gunpoint in the Grand Crossing area on the South Side in the last three weeks. The first carjacking happened shortly after 4:30 a.m. Oct. 9 in the 6900 block of South Vernon Avenue. The group then struck four more times: Advertisement About 4:15 p.m. Oct. 15 in the 6700 block of South Ridgeland Avenue. About 4:45 p.m. Oct. 25 in the 6900 block of South King Drive. About 2:15 p.m. Oct. 28 in the 7200 block of South King. About midnight Oct. 31 in the 6700 block of South Clyde Avenue. The carjackers were described by police as three black men and one woman with dreadlocks. They are 19 to 30 years old, between 5-foot-7 and 6-foot tall, and 130 to 150 pounds, police said. They have been seen driving a white SUV. Advertisement Anyone with information can contact detectives at 312-747-8380. 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. Kathy Kean and her daughter Courtney Cusentino leave the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago on Nov. 2, 2017, and will return on Dec. 1 when Chicago police Officer Erin Mowry decides whether to take a plea agreement. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) The Chicago police officer accused of drunkenly crashing into a pedestrian while off-duty would be sentenced to community service if he decides to plead guilty, a Cook County judge said Thursday, granting the victim and her mothers unusual wish that he avoid prison time. Kathy Kean, 48, has told authorities that she didnt want Erin Mowry, 42, to go behind bars if he is convicted of the aggravated DUI charges he faces. Advertisement Instead, she suggested that Mowry do community service work with brain injury patients to see up close the kind of pain she and her daughter, Courtney Cusentino, went through. The mothers request was unusual, Judge Timothy Joyce said in court Thursday, noting that someone whose life was so affected might want an appreciably greater pound of flesh. Advertisement If Ms. Cusentino and her mother had a contrary perspective on this it would not be surprising, Joyce said. The fact that they desire this speaks volumes about them. If Mowry decides to change his plea to guilty, Joyce said he would recommend a sentence of 30 months of probation and 480 hours of community service, the sentence that prosecutors, defense attorneys and Cusentinos family agreed upon. In addition, Joyce said, he would recommend six months of time in the Cook County Jail --- but that part of the sentence would be satisfied by the time Mowry has already spent on electronic monitoring. Attorneys also noted in court that Mowry would lose his job as a Chicago police officer if convicted of a felony. Mowry was stripped of his police powers and has been on desk duty since the crash. Kean, who wiped away a tear outside the courtroom, said she was happy with the judges recommendation. The judge was really fair, she told the Tribune later that day. He totally understood both sides of the coin I was really pleased at what I heard. Cusentino, now 23, was crossing the street in July 2015 when Mowry, allegedly drunk, hit her with his Mercedes, prosecutors have said. She was tossed into the air and landed on her head, Kean said, suffering brain injuries so traumatic that she was not initially expected to live. Advertisement But after months in the hospital and rehab facilities and extensive physical therapy, Cusentino can speak, bathe, dress herself and walk with the aid of a walker. She recently got a job, something her family once thought would be impossible. Mowry was not administered a Breathalyzer test until more than four hours after the crash, and still registered a 0.092, above the legal limit. Kean said she suspects Mowry, as a police officer, was given preferential treatment. Under the law, Joyce could have recommended a sentence of up to 12 years in prison. Given the horrible, horrific, and horrid injuries Cusentino suffered in the crash, Joyce said that a substantial prison sentence would not be out of line. But Joyce said he considered the familys point of view, as well as Mowrys lack of criminal history, and the fact that he did not intend to hurt anyone. Its probably horrifying for everybody in this room, what happened, Joyce said. Advertisement While community service is considered by some to be a slap on the wrist, Joyce said he didnt believe that to be the case. A sentence of 480 hours of service would be a substantial amount of time, he said, and most people dont complete their requirements. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Mowrys attorney is expected to announce early next month whether the officer chooses to plead guilty under Joyces proposed sentence. If he does not, the case will likely go to trial. Kean is hoping for a quick resolution to the case and, eventually, an apology from Mowry. My hopeful thought is that he looks at Courtney one day and says hes sorry to her or maybe does something good in her name or for her, Kean said. mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com Advertisement Twitter @crepeau RELATED [ Mother of crash victim pleads for off-duty cop to be given community service ] [ Woman struck by allegedly drunken off-duty cop relearns how to function ] Elaine Zene, pictured at right with her daughter Michele Caruso, was shot to death in Plainfield on Saturday. (Photo courtesy of Michele Caruso) Michele Caruso had a bad feeling about her mothers boyfriend right away so much so that, after the couple married, Caruso and her mother didnt speak for a time. You just know some people are not good people. I knew immediately, Caruso recalled. I could tell he was very controlling. He was very intimidating. Advertisement On Saturday, Carusos mother, Elaine Zene, and Zenes estranged husband, Raymond Zene, were both shot to death. Elaine Zene was found bleeding in a Plainfield parking lot, while her husband shot himself in his nearby garage as police arrived to check on him, authorities said. Plainfield police said Wednesday they were still investigating the shootings but were treating it as a murder-suicide. Advertisement Raymond Zene, 72, was a Chicago police officer for three decades and then worked for several years for the Cook County sheriffs office, officials confirmed. The couple were in the midst of a contentious divorce, and years ago Elaine Zene, 65, in seeking an order of protection against her husband, said in a court filing that she was very afraid of him. RELATED: Man suspected of killing wife, self was longtime Chicago police officer Caruso, 44, said it was only after her mother recently separated from Zene and moved into an apartment in Woodridge that she was able to see her regularly. I will miss her. We did everything together. She was my best friend, Caruso said, adding her mother had many close friends and relatives. Caruso said her mother and stepfathers relationship was contentious from the beginning. She recalled overhearing them argue early on, including just before they showed up at a family holiday gathering in Pittsburgh with Elaine wearing a wedding ring. She announced to everyone that they had gotten married, Caruso recalled. Im pretty sure I walked out. Later that day, she said, Raymond took her aside and apologized for the abrupt nuptials without the presence of family. Caruso told him she was against the marriage. From then on, she barely spoke to him. Caruso said Raymond Zene sought to control his wife, encouraging her to quit her jobs. When she talked of leaving him, Raymond would tell her that she would not be able to make it on her own. Advertisement He made her depend on him, and he would say stuff like, If you leave me, youll fall flat on your face. Youll beg me to take you back just ridiculous things he put in her mind that she believed, Caruso said. She also said Raymond Zene used his status as a police officer to suggest no one would believe Elaine if she made accusations about him. She definitely had that in her mind ... that she wasnt going to win because he was a policeman, Caruso said. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The couple argued about money, too, Caruso said. Court records show that Elaine had recently filed papers seeking to nullify a part of their prenuptial agreement that said she could not have access to any of his police pensions in their divorce. That was apparently the final sticking point in working out a financial agreement in their divorce. They had been scheduled to appear in court Tuesday to finalize the settlement, just three days after their deaths. Caruso said Raymond Zene had previously told her mother that the only way she would receive any maintenance payments from him would be over his dead body. Advertisement Im sure he got a copy of the final paperwork of what he was going to have to pay her and he just wasnt going to do it, she said. Police said witnesses described the person who shot Elaine Zene as an older man who fled in a silver car with out-of-state plates. Authorities said Zene shot himself in a car of the same description when authorities arrived at his home a couple of miles from where Elaine Zene was killed. Authorities said theyre awaiting the results of forensic testing and still have a few witnesses to interview before they complete the investigation. But Plainfield police Chief John Konopek said Wednesday he is "100 percent confident" that no one else was involved in the incident. Alice Fabbre is a freelance reporter. Amanda Presslak, front, a fourth-grade teacher at Passages Charter School, and other teachers, protest in front of the school May 24, 2017. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) A monthslong campaign to consolidate a labor group representing Chicago charter school teachers with the Chicago Teachers Union is on hold, for now. Unionized teachers at 32 Chicago charter schools voted to merge with the CTU this summer. CTU officials planned to have their members take up the unification next month. Advertisement But not enough members of the CTUs House of Delegates were on hand Wednesday to vote on proposed constitutional amendments that include provisions for the consolidation with union charters, a CTU spokeswoman said. The delegates were expected to move the matter on to a vote by CTU's full membership. We cannot conduct this business without a full quorum, so despite the fact that we had a very robust dialogue with very strong support for the merger, without that quorum we simply cannot move forward to a formal vote, CTU spokeswoman Christine Geovanis said. Advertisement Geovanis blamed CPS grading deadlines for the lack of participation in what would have been a vote to make considerable changes to the unions constitution. The union was about a dozen delegates short of a quorum, she said. Its not clear when CTUs delegates will make another effort to put the merger before its members. Delegates have a regularly scheduled meeting set for next month, though officials could call for an emergency session. Unionized charter teachers in the city are collectively represented by the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, a branch of the American Federation of Teachers and a statewide affiliate of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. If the merger is ultimately approved, teachers with each unionized charter network would still operate under separate contracts negotiated with each charter operator, separate from the contract that governs the CTU's relations with the Chicago Board of Education. Charter union President Chris Baehrend said the failure of the CTUs delegates to take up the matter was a temporary setback to merging with CTU. "My optimism about this happening, my confidence, is undiminished," he said. "The reasons our members voted so overwhelmingly for (the merger), and the reason I expect their members will vote overwhelmingly for it is because all teachers in Chicago should speak with one voice." Months of preparation preceded Wednesdays CTU delegate meeting. Delegates approved a timetable in September to take on the constitutional changes. In October, top union leaders gave delegates final proposals for the constitutional amendments. A vote on those amendments, which a union spokeswoman declined to outline this week, was set for Wednesday. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Because the delegates did not move the matter forward, CTU members may not get an opportunity to vote on the charter merger in December as union leaders had planned. Our members struggle, among other things, with very significant paperwork demands imposed by both CPS and individual principals, Geovanis said. The reality is that while our schedule is plotted out well in advance, in this case it ran smack into the requirement for all members to file their grades by (Thursday), Geovanis said. A merger would have formalized existing agreements between CTU and the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff, which subsidize contract negotiating prowess and other staff support for charter teachers as they've protested their working conditions and made recurring threats to walk off the job. But the plan would also alter the politics of the city's education system by pulling the independently operated schools under the direct influence of a powerful labor group that has sought to limit charter expansion. jjperez@chicagotribune.com Advertisement RELATED [ Chicago is epicenter of charter school teacher contract disputes ] [ Commentary: Union merger would strengthen CTU and undermine the charter movement ] Courtney Cusentino, left, remembers getting off the CTA bus, texting her boyfriend and walking across the street toward the home on Chicagos Northwest Side where her mom, right, was waiting up. After that, its all a black hole. She doesn't recall being hit by a car. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune) Kathy Kean has spent more than two grueling years assisting her daughter's slow recovery from a near-fatal car crash, helping her relearn how to walk and speak. Kean's daughter suffered a severe brain injury when Erin Mowry, an off-duty Chicago cop who was allegedly driving drunk, plowed his car into her moments after she stepped into a street on Chicago's Northwest Side. Advertisement While Kean remains frustrated over the favoritism she believes police showed one of their own a Breathalyzer test wasn't administered for hours she sees no value in jailing Mowry if he ends up pleading guilty to an aggravated DUI charge. Instead, she is proposing something unique that Mowry be given a community-service sentence requiring he work with brain-injury patients so he learns firsthand the damage his alleged actions caused. Advertisement This way, she said, he can realize the struggle that Kean's daughter, Courtney Cusentino, endured to learn again to sit up, swallow or stand. "Sending this guy to jail for this particular crime is not going to get anybody help," Kean told the Chicago Tribune this week. "It's not going to help him at all." "I want him to witness the day-to-day living activity of when your life goes upside down," said Kean, a 911 dispatcher for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communication. "For him to see true struggles." On Thursday, Cook County Judge Timothy Joyce is expected to announce the sentence he would impose if Mowry, who has pleaded not guilty, chooses to change his plea to guilty. If Mowry is dissatisfied with the judge's recommendation, he could instead go to trial. If convicted, Mowry could be sentenced to anywhere from probation to 12 years in prison. Mowry's attorney could not be reached for comment. Andrew Holmes, a community activist who has spent years working closely with the families of crime victims, said Kean's stance is highly unusual. Many families seek a harsh punishment understandably, he said. "They'd totally be upset because (the defendant) just destroyed a future," Holmes said. "They're looking at them to face some jail time." Advertisement Chicago police Officer Erin J. Mowry was charged with aggravated DUI with great bodily harm in a 2015 off-duty crash. (Chicago Police Department) Kean, 48, said her faith in God has helped her through the ordeal, but her views on Mowry's punishment are more about common sense than religious belief. "The punishment needs to fit the crime," Kean said. "He didn't purposely go out of his way to find Courtney and run her down on purpose. It wasn't that kind of crime." She views prison as counterproductive. "Doing jail time, sitting in a cell ... is only going to make him more hateful," she said. "I feel sorry for the guy, in a way. We all make mistakes. His mistake that night was being selfish and getting behind the wheel." Prosecutors allege Mowry was driving drunk the night in July 2015 when his Mercedes slammed into Cusentino as she crossed the street at Belmont and Olcott avenues at about 1:20 a.m. Cusentino was thrown into the air and landed on her head, Kean said, causing brain injuries so traumatic that doctors could not assess the extent of the damage for weeks. Advertisement If Mowry works with brain-injury patients, Kean said, he will get a glimpse at the ordeal she and her daughter lived for months: watching her relearn basic skills like swallowing and sitting, massaging her body to try to fend off muscle atrophy, celebrating every tiny milestone. A copy of a family photo of Courtney Cusentino in the hospital after the 2015 accident left her with a traumatic brain injury. Courtney was struck by an off-duty Chicago police officer who was allegedly driving drunk. (Family photo / Chicago Tribune ) A copy of a family photo of Courtney Cusentino at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where she spent months relearning basic skills. (Family photo / Chicago Tribune ) They also regularly witnessed heartbreaking scenes of patients who must leave full-time care because of little or no progress in their recoveries, Kean said. "Their room is cleaned out the next day," she said. Witnessing that kind of pain up close would be a far more appropriate consequence for Mowry than sitting in a prison cell, she said. Kean stressed that her daughter's ordeal was different from that of many victims of violent crime some of whom, understandably, want the stiffest punishment for their offenders. If Mowry had deliberately sought to hurt Cusentino or posed further risk to the family, Kean said, she might feel differently. This wasnt some heinous, vindictive, mean man going out of his way to hurt us, Kean said. This is a guy whos making a really poor decision. And her daughter, now 23, agrees with her philosophy, Kean said. "You can't take back what happened," she said. "We just have to move forward now, and she understands that. She always says she just wants to get better." Advertisement Kean, though, remains frustrated and angry that Mowry was not given a Breathalyzer test until more than four hours after the crash. Even then, his blood alcohol content still measured 0.092 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08, according to prosecutors. Kean suspects that Mowry would have been treated differently if he wasnt a police officer. "From the things I've seen, there was favoritism from the beginning," she said. That angers Kean, especially given the fraught relationship between the community and law enforcement. "The police right now have so many things against them," she said. "But I know a lot of good cops too." Kean blames arrogance for Mowrys alleged actions. "To think 'I'm a cop, and I'm going to get away with this. I'm going to get special treatment'?" she said. "But you're held to a higher standard in the public (view)." Mowry, now 42, was stripped of his police powers and has been on paid desk duty since the crash. "It sucks for him right now," Kean said. "You're going to lose your job but guess what, you got a second chance at life with an able body." Luckily, her daughter, whom doctors didnt initially expect to survive, has earned a second chance at life too. She no longer needs speech therapy, her mother said. She recently got a job taking tickets at a movie theater. She can dress herself, bathe herself and clean her room. She retains knowledge and has a sense of humor. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > She walked into the Leighton Criminal Court Building for a hearing last week using a walker and just one leg brace, a new development, Kean noted with a smile. And she can do her own makeup a big step for the aspiring cosmetologist. She appeared in court last week with flawless winged eyeliner. mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com Twitter @crepeau RELATED: Woman struck by allegedly drunken off-duty cop relearns how to function Advertisement Off-duty cop charged with DUI in crash that badly injured pedestrian Maintenance crews service parked Amtrak rail cars in preparation for passenger service at the rail yard near Roosevelt Road and Clark Street in Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) The federal governments proposal to slash subsidies for long-distance Amtrak routes will overwhelmingly hurt travelers and commuters in cities across the nation, Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson told hundreds of railroad industry stakeholders Thursday in Chicago. The real purpose of the national network is to connect small cities and inland cities to provide the most utility to the most Americans across the country, Anderson said, addressing the National Association of Railroad Passengers conference at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel. Only 6 percent of the long-distance customers travel from the beginning point to the end point along the route. Advertisement The rest, he said, principally use the lines for travel between metropolitan areas. But that option could soon disappear if Congress adopts President Donald Trumps proposed 2018 budget. The administrations proposal would slash transportation spending, including money for long-distance or national network Amtrak routes. Advertisement Members of Congress also have filed amendments that would cut Amtrak funding, association spokesman Sean Jeans-Gail said in an email, ranging from eliminating all $1.4 billion in funding for Amtrak to eliminating a single route for a cost savings of a few hundred million dollars. However, Jeans-Gail said, I would certainly characterize the Trump administration proposal as on the aggressive end of the spectrum. Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson speaks to attendees at the National Association of Railway Passengers during a conference in Chicago, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune) The proposed budget has not yet moved through the Senate. Anderson maintains that Amtrak, which serves millions each year, will continue to work closely with the Trump administration. The current focus, he said, is running a good railroad, improving Amtrak customer experience and developing a long-term strategy for the national rail network. eolumhense@chicagotribune.com Twitter @essayolumhense [ Amtrak's Chicago-Indianapolis train struggles to be on time ] [ New trains to shave hour off Amtrak's Chicago-to-St. Louis trip: state ] Chicago police are searching for 24-year-old Julian Grange, who was last seen at Holy Cross Hospital on Oct. 16, 2017. (Chicago Police Department) Chicago police have safely located a 24-year-old man who was reported missing for more than two weeks. Julian Grange, who goes by "J," had last been seen Oct. 16 leaving Holy Cross Hospital, at 2701 W. 68th St. in the Southwest Side's Marquette Park neighborhood, according to an alert from police. Advertisement Police sent out a new alert Wednesday morning saying he had been found. Beat 1134 Paramedics draped a white sheet over a man they had lifted onto the gurney and wheeled him through a vacant lot to an ambulance on Congress Parkway. Across the street near Homan Avenue, Ishmael Abdullah played a mellophone and Isaac Allen played a b-flat trumpet. They play church music, old R&B and some newer songs here sometimes for tips, at the top of the exit ramp from the Eisenhower Expressway where Congress crosses Homan. Abdullah and Allen have been playing here for six years and have seen shootings, so the violence didn't surprise them. "We've seen shootings here but they show us love," Allen said. "Never been robbed, we get the most love from the community. (From guys who say) 'Y'all ain't out here doing what we're doing.' " The paramedics had jumped off Truck 36 after it careened around parked squad cars and found Steven Wheeler, 24, lying face up in the lot. While they worked on him, police searched Van Buren Avenue a block north for a crime scene. They focused their efforts on a maroon van, its front passenger-side door hanging off the frame. Abdullah and Allen kept playing. After paramedics slammed the back door of the ambulance shut and pulled away, their music and the din of the traffic below were the only sounds on the block. Wheeler was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital at 2:52 p.m., the medical examiner said. Alberta Tally said she was on the phone with a friend when she heard the shots about 2:20 p.m Monday. They sounded like gunshots, but she thought they might be the boys playing music down the street. Sometimes Abdullah and Allen have a full drum line on the corner (The group learned to play up the street at a program that has since been closed after the state cut its funding, Abdullah said). Tally poked her head out her front door and saw Abdullah and Allen down the street. But when she went to the back of her house, she saw a young man running through the alley, hobbling like he had been hurt. Police were already swarming her block by the time she made it from the front of her house to the back. The 71-year-old from a small town named Midnight in the Mississippi Delta moved here when she was 18. The town was a "little bitty hop and a step," she said, so small that you'd miss it if you didn't see the sign. Her husband found work here because he was tired of picking cotton. Everyone was, she said. She's lived on the West Side since she's been in Chicago and doesn't recall the neighborhood being so violent. "I've seen a lot," she said, "but never seen it like this. So many kids killing up each other. I didn't see that when I came here. I don't like to see it now." Tally was never a "street girl," she said. She had kids and a husband. But she remembers a time when the violence felt more controlled. An hour later -- before police had really begun processing the scene on Congress and Van Buren for evidence -- a dispatcher started reading out calls of shots fired in the same police district and the district to the south. Less than a mile away, police found a 20-year-old man bleeding from a wound to his buttocks in the 1200 block of South Lawndale Avenue. At least 18 shell casings were scattered across the pavement, and four closely grouped holes were in the driver's side of a car's windshield. In June, two teen boys were shot to death here by someone who fired toward them with a rifle before jumping back into a car. A crowd of mostly young people gathered on 13th Street before it started raining, trading stories about what they did when they heard the shots. Some ran, some ducked, all had returned here thinking the victim was still in the car. A sergeant walked back to the crime tape where they had gathered and told them the young man would be likely be OK. He was up and talking, he wasn't still in the car and the ambulance was just backing up Lawndale toward Roosevelt Road. Police said he was taken to Mount Sinai in good condition but was not cooperating with investigators. Lesha Grandberry came home from the grocery store and set her groceries down just before the shooting. She planned to walk up Lawndale to a liquor store around the corner but decided to wait a few minutes. It was in those few minutes the shooting happened. She heard the gunfire and came downstairs to see what had happened. Police were there, along with the crowd, and evidence markers had been set next to spent shell casings. She heard the rifle fire in the spring, too, and found the older of the two boys shot, 16-year-old Corey Hill, leaning against a tree, taking deep breaths. The other boy, 15-year-old Jacquez Mack, was on the ground, not moving. "He was just laying there, gasping," she said. "Trying to breathe." On Wednesday, the rain dispersed the crowd. Except for police standing at the crime scene, kids walking home from school in winter coats under shared umbrellas were the only people outside. South Side Ald. Willie Cochran collapsed in City Council chambers Thursday and was taken away by paramedics after fellow aldermen performed CPR on him. Cochran was on hand for the Chicago Police Department budget hearing when he collapsed in a chair shortly before noon, appearing to lose consciousness. Advertisement Budget Committee Chairman Ald. Carrie Austin shouted Code! and City Council personnel crowded around Cochran, who was lowered to the floor where his colleagues and council staff worked on him before the chambers were cleared of onlookers and reporters. A few minutes later, a round of applause was heard from aldermen in the chamber, and shortly thereafter, Cochran was led out of chambers on a stretcher by paramedics. He was sitting up on the stretcher, holding one hand to his face. Advertisement Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who was on hand to testify at the hearing, told reporters outside chamber that Cochran was responsive. Afterward, North Side Ald. Pat OConnor, 40th, said he and others performed CPR on Cochran. He was kind of contorted, so we just checked for a pulse, opened an airway and gave him some compressions because we werent feeling a real good pulse, OConnor said. A police officer was involved as well, and he came back, which was great. Im happy, and its over, hopefully. OConnor said instincts from his days as a Chicago Park District lifeguard took over. Now, its terrifying, he said. At the time, you just do it because thats what it actually goes back to being a lifeguard. I was a lifeguard. You learn CPR, you learn how to do those things. He was kind of embarrassed of all the attention, and he didnt want to go out on the gurney, OConnor said of Cochran. And we just told him hes going on the gurney, because if something were to happen on the way to the hospital, hed sue us, and then wed have to pay him, and we didnt want to do that. Cochran pleaded not guilty in December to federal charges he shook down a liquor store manager in exchange for his support and stole tens of thousands of dollars from a charitable ward fund intended to help seniors and children in his impoverished community. The indictment says he used the money to gamble and pay for part of his daughter's college tuition. A former Chicago police sergeant, Cochran is in his third term representing a South Side ward that includes parts of Englewood, Back of the Yards, Washington Park and Woodlawn. RELATED: [ Ex-con, former Ald. Carothers says he has no stake in city-backed 'Ike's Place' ] [ Court records in Ald. Cochran case detail alleged kickbacks, spending spree with ward charity cash ] Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield. Subscribe here. Topspin Former Chicago Ald. Bob Fioretti has filed the state paperwork required to start raising money for a potential Democratic primary challenge to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. Advertisement Fioretti, a onetime mayoral candidate, said he has yet to decide whether to run. Setting up the "Bob for Cook County" campaign fund is "part of the process of making the decision," he said. Now, he's waiting to see how many signatures he can get on petitions he would need to get on the ballot and what kind of financial commitments he can line up to take on the two-term incumbent, he added. Advertisement As recently as a few months ago, Preckwinkle was expected to skate into a third term without opposition, but she's viewed in some quarters as vulnerable because of the public outcry over the county's controversial soda pop tax. During the pop tax debate, Fioretti weighed in by setting up a website calling for repeal of the penny-an-ounce tax on sugar- and artificially sweetened beverages. The County Board later voted 15-2 to end the tax, effective Dec. 1. Commissioners now are trying to figure out how to cut $200 million in planned 2018 spending in time to pass a budget before the Dec. 1 start of the fiscal year. After being zoned out of the 2nd Ward in the once-a-decade City Council redistricting, Fioretti was among four challengers to Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011. He placed fourth with 7.4 percent of the vote, then endorsed Emanuel in the runoff contest over county Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia. Scott Kastrup, Preckwinkle's political spokesman, did not comment directly on the potential challenge from Fioretti. Instead, he gave a potential hint of Preckwinkle's re-election platform. "President Preckwinkle is focused on navigating the county through tough economic circumstances and leading on behalf of the people of Cook County," Kastrup said in a prepared statement. "Her strong record of reforming county government, improving access to health care, protecting public safety services and standing up to special interests are why she has broad support across the county and why she's in strong position to win-re-election next year." (Hal Dardick) What's on tap *Mayor Rahm Emanuel has no public events scheduled. *Gov. Bruce Rauner is on a trade mission to Israel. Advertisement *City budget hearings continue, with the Chicago Police Department up. *Cook County budget hearings also continue. Up for review: The capital budget, Bureau of Asset Management, Land Bank Authority and Bureau of Economic Development. *The Illinois House Revenue and Finance Committee will meet in the Bilandic Building. *Democratic candidate for governor J.B. Pritzker will give a speech on criminal justice reform at the DuSable Museum. *City Department of Buildings Commissioner Judy Frydland will speak to the City Club of Chicago. *City Department of Water Management Commissioner Randy Conner will have a news conference about new meters. Advertisement *The Chicago Teachers Union will hold a Day of the Dead event at the union's headquarters to try to draw attention to closed schools. From the notebook *Ives petition drive begins with an oops: Just hours after state Rep. Jeanne Ives appeared on WTTW Ch.-11 to talk about circulating petitions to mount a primary challenge to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, she acknowledged there was a problem. "Unfortunately, a transposition of numbers was just discovered on our petition. We are asking all supporters to download this new petition and use it exclusively for getting all signatures," Ives told her followers on Facebook late Tuesday night. "If you have distributed the old petition form to anyone, please ask them to throw it away. I am so grateful for the support you have already shown. Thank you," she wrote. Ives began circulating her candidacy petitions on Saturday, already acknowledging that she was facing time pressures to gather the minimum 5,000 valid voter signatures needed to gain access to the March 20 GOP primary ballot. Those weekend signatures are now no good. The inauspicious beginning was due to a typo for the home address of her running mate, former one-term state Rep. Rich Morthland of Cordova, a Rock Island County Board member. On the original petition, Morthland's address was listed as 256th Street. He actually lives on 265th Street. (Rick Pearson) Advertisement *Rauner's calls to action appear dated: Gov. Rauner's campaign website contains a section called an "action center" that contains pre-written petitions which also can be used to provide the campaign with a list of potential volunteers. But the two predominant issues seeking a call to action appear dated. The site's "top priority" is a petition against imposing a sweetened beverage tax in Kane County similar to one that is being repealed in Cook County. The petition drive says "tax-and-spend politicians have already imposed an illegal tax on soda purchases in Cook County, taking residents' hard-earned money so the politicians can tax their way out of the mess they've created." Regardless of the statement, the tax was found to be legal. But it was also highly unpopular, and the Cook County Board to voted to end it. A similar petition exists for DuPage County even though there's no evidence that anyone there is floating a beverage tax. The website also includes a petition to lawmakers accusing them of "putting politics before students by holding up the school funding reform bill" and seeking a "a fair funding plan that sends money towards the classrooms -- not towards paying off Chicago's pension debt." Advertisement A recap: Lawmakers approved a new school funding formula that Rauner vetoed and ridiculed as a "bailout" to Chicago Public Schools. Rauner later signed a revised measure that included even more money for CPS than the original bill he criticized. Rauner has been running ads lauding the new school funding formula, making it clear he considers it a major accomplishment, despite having vetoed the earlier version. (Rick Pearson) *City Council free lunch: For budget lunch Wednesday, Ald. Nick Sposato, 36th, turned to Nottoli & Son, a jewel of the strong Far Northwest Side sammich scene. Subs of the Italian, ham and American cheese, turkey and swiss and veggie varieties were joined by pasta salad and potato salad. (John Byrne) What we're writing *Amid harassment allegation, Illinois senator loses leadership spot and a scramble to fill investigator's job. *Joe Biden in Chicago: Trump a "charlatan" who needs to "stop tweeting." *Aldermen question funding for new Chicago police oversight agency. Advertisement *"Babies Before Bezos": Union protests $2 billion for Amazon bid amid child care cuts. *Michelle Obama: "Hope is right in this room" at Chicago leadership summit. *Kane County state's attorney won't run for attorney general, backs Republican Erika Harold. What we're reading *Better Government Association story calls Emanuel's City Colleges of Chicago numbers a "crash course in data manipulation." *European company sues New Mexico brewery over Route 66 beer. *Fun Size offers a candy bar in a beer. Advertisement Follow the money *Former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor Jason Plummer reported giving $10,000 to his campaign for Illinois Senate. *Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here. Beyond Chicago *Driver in NYC terror attack charged. *Trump says of attacker: "send him to Gitmo." *Nancy Pelosi wants to avoid Trump impeachment talk. Advertisement *CIA releases files from bin Laden raid. The UN General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution calling for an end to the US economic embargo on Cuba, Reuters reported. November 2, 2017, 09:22 UN calls again for end of US embargo on Cuba STEPANAKERT, NOVEMBER 2, ARTSAKHPRESS: The non-binding resolution urges the United States to repeal the embargo on Cuba as soon as possible. The U.N. vote can carry political weight, but only the U.S. Congress can lift the full embargo, put in place more than 50 years ago. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called the plenary meeting on this subject political theater. The Cuban regime is sending the warped message to the world that the sad state of its economy, the oppression of its people, and the export of its destructive ideology is not its fault, Haley told the General Assembly. Cubas Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Haley and the United States lack the slightest moral authority to criticize Cuba, calling her remarks disrespectful against Cuba and its government. U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier this month he believed Havana was responsible for a series of alleged incidents that Washington says harmed 24 of its diplomats, while Cuban officials said last week talk of acoustic strikes was science fiction. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman attacked an indictment accusing him of money laundering and other financial crimes, dismissing as "embellished" a criminal case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators. Attorneys for Paul Manafort defended him in a court filing Thursday as a "successful, international political consultant" who, by nature of his work on behalf of foreign political parties, was necessarily involved in international financial transactions. They argued that Manafort, who led Trump's campaign for several months last year, had done nothing wrong and did not pose a risk of fleeing the country. Advertisement The filing was the first volley from Manafort's defense team seeking to undermine a 12-count indictment charging him and longtime business associate Rick Gates in connection with their political consulting work for Ukraine's former ruling party. The charges were the first announced by Mueller, the former FBI director appointed as special counsel in May to run the Justice Department's investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. They were placed on house arrest earlier this week, released on multimillion-dollar bonds meant to guarantee their appearances for future court dates. Both men appeared Thursday in federal court in Washington, where a judge determined that they would remain on home confinement and electronic monitoring at least through the weekend. Advertisement Attorneys for Manafort, 68, and Gates, 45, are asking U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to lift the conditions of their home confinement and say the bonds are enough to ensure they show up for court. The judge said she would take up the matter again at a hearing on Monday, but in the meantime, directed attorneys on both sides to not comment publicly on the case. Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, had issued a statement to reporters outside the courthouse on Monday. "I expect counsel to do their talking in the courtroom and in their pleadings, and not on the courthouse steps," Jackson said. Besides the indictment of Manafort and Gates, prosecutors revealed a guilty plea from a campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI about foreign contacts during the campaign. Prosecutors disclosed additional details about the wealth and international connections of Manafort and Gates in a court filing earlier this week that sought to keep them confined to their houses. The prosecutors note that Manafort has provided widely differing accounts of his assets in the past few years. In 2016 alone, he provided six different figures, ranging from $25 million to $136 million. Manafort also has three passports. And prosecutors say that in March, he registered a phone and an email account using an alias. He then used that phone to travel to China, Mexico and Ecuador, according to the filings, which do not say what alias he used. In a response Thursday, Downing countered that the passports are in his client's name and noted that, though "it may be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one U.S. passport." He dismissed the allegation that Manafort was a flight risk, saying his client has traveled abroad and returned to the U.S., all while being well aware that he was under federal investigation and faced a possible criminal indictment. Downing also denied that Manafort was involved in any criminal activity related to his Ukrainian work. All funds that went through offshore bank accounts were from "legal sources," he said. Manafort was not trying to conceal his assets, his attorney said, noting that funds originating in Ukraine and going through Cyprus ultimately arrived in the United States. Advertisement "Obviously, international funds entering the U.S. banking system, or going to U.S. vendors, are traceable and subject to U.S. process," Downing said. "It goes without saying that in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States." The defense lawyers also challenged the inclusion in the indictment of allegations that Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. The Justice Department, they said, has brought only six criminal prosecutions under that statute since 1966 and secured only one conviction during that period. Attorney General Jeff Sessions finishes a speech about domestic security in New York on Nov. 2, 2017 in New York City. Democrats are asking why Sessions did not disclose a March 2016 gathering at which George Papadopoulos offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images) Senate Democrats have demanded that Attorney General Jeff Sessions explain why he did not disclose a March 2016 gathering with then-candidate Donald Trump and members of his campaign team at which an adviser offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sessions's participation in the gathering was detailed in court documents released Monday by special counsel Robert Mueller III. The adviser who offered to set up the meeting was George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to the documents. Advertisement Sessions had not previously disclosed the meeting, despite being asked over multiple appearances on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians. "This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation's top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump team's contacts with agents of Russia," Senate Judiciary Committee member Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote Thursday in a letter to Sessions. Advertisement Senate Republicans have not rushed to Sessions's defense but were less ruffled about his participation in the Papadopoulos meeting. "If anybody's got any concerns about his meeting, write him a letter and see what he says," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. A Sessions spokeswoman declined to comment this week on the March 31 meeting with Trump and campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos. But on Thursday, a person familiar with Sessions' recollections said that "people who remember the conversation" believed that Papadopoulos was proposing an idea of using his Russian contacts to try to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, "which was immediately rejected by then-Senator Sessions." "Papadopoulos was some 29-year-old that nobody had ever heard of and who struck people in the room as someone who didn't have a lot of credibility," the person said. "As far as Sessions seemed to be concerned, when he shut down this idea of Papadopoulos engaging with Russia, that was the end of it and he moved the meeting along to other issues." "The March 31 comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression," the person said. "The attorney general immediately dismissed it and moved on." J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump adviser who attended the meeting, also recalled that Sessions "shut him down" when Papadopoulos announced that he could introduce Trump to Putin. "It was a bad idea and the Senator didn't want people to speak about it again," he said. The Washington Post also reported earlier this week that Papadopoulos sat next to Sessions during a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention, according to another person who attended. At the time of that article, a spokeswoman for Sessions declined to comment. But on Thursday, the person familiar with Sessions' recollections said, "the attorney general has no clear recollection of this person. He may have been at future Trump events that Sessions attended - including a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club with some members of the foreign policy committee over the summer - but Sessions doesn't recall any further interactions with him, including any phone calls or emails." Advertisement Gordon said that he did not fault Sessions for not recalling things that Papadopoulos said in private settings, noting that thousands of people approached the campaign, "including many, many true volunteers." This is not the first time lawmakers have accused Sessions of withholding information from congressional testimony about interactions with or about Russians while working with the Trump campaign. During his January confirmation hearing to become attorney general, Sessions told the Judiciary Committee that he had had no communication with Russian officials, only to have The Post reveal in March that he had spoken twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Following the Post report, Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department's Russia probes - an action that infuriated Trump. Last month, Sessions told the same committee he was not aware of any Trump surrogates having contacts with Russian officials. Democrats on the committee, including Franken, are now arguing that statement may have been false, too. "He needs to clarify his testimony before our committee," said Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "There were questions that elicited exactly the kind of information that the Papadopoulos plea agreement made." Advertisement "The attorney general needs to explain to our committee what are the obvious implications of his presence at that meeting, and how he can square that with his testimony to our committee," said Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., another member of the Judiciary Committee. The person familiar with Sessions' interactions with Papadopoulos said that Sessions had been "entirely truthful and consistent on this matter" and that "he had no knowledge of any conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign with any Russian or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States." Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also looking into allegations of collusion and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, also want a reckoning from Sessions. "I think there are many more questions for Jeff Sessions," said Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a member of the panel. "He should be honest and disclose all truths, especially when he is under oath or testifying before the United States Congress." The Washington Post's Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. George W. Bush recently offered a powerful critique of Trumpian populism, arguing that in America today "bigotry seems emboldened" and "our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication." The former president bemoaned the rise of nativism and isolationism, and the "casual cruelty" in our public discourse. These are familiar arguments, of course, but hearing them from Bush whose dignified retreat from public life during the Barack Obama years was widely admired resonated. More than that, though, the reason his speech has lingered in my mind for the last two weeks is his belief that this current populist moment can be temporary. "It is the great advantage of free societies that we creatively adapt to challenges, without the direction of some central authority," the former president argued. "Self-correction is the secret strength of freedom." What is needed for this self-correction to take place? Time, leadership and a recovery of our national story. In a recent paper, economists Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch studied more than 800 elections across 20 advanced countries (including the U.S.) between 1870 and 2014. They documented that far-right and right-wing populist parties saw an increase in their parliamentary vote shares of about 30 percent in the five years after a financial crisis. The 2007-2008 global financial crisis fit the pattern. In its aftermath, far-right and populist parties more than doubled their vote share in France, the U.K., Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Japan, according to the paper. The effect of financial crises on support for populism is powerful, but it is not persistent. The paper finds that political upheaval has mostly dissipated 10 years after a crisis evidence consistent with the self-correction Bush described. Applying its results to the U.S. today suggests that we will return to normal at some point in the next few years. Maybe. Academic research can be informative about events to come, but it is seldom dispositive. Facts on the ground always matter, and the fact is that the global financial crisis was very severe, suggesting that its effects could last longer than we might expect. In addition, the Republican Party is well on its way to having populist ethnonationalism as its core ethos. Putting that genie back in the bottle will be difficult, especially in a two-party system like America's. This is why we shouldn't count on a steadily improving economy or more distance from the traumatic financial crisis alone to normalize our politics. "To renew our country," Bush argued in his speech, "we only need to remember our values." Nothing will help us to remember them as well as good leaders. The current populist moment may seem inevitable in hindsight: Years of slow-burning economic trends new technology and globalization displacing many workers and pushing employment away from middle-class, middle-wage occupations created wrenching change for millions of Americans, and government policy did too little to help. Over the same period, the decline of marriage, religious attachment and other cultural institutions led to a sense of hopelessness and loneliness among too many. This toxic brew collided with the financial crisis and the Great Recession. How could politics not have been thrown far out of whack? But the success of populism wasn't inevitable. Stronger and better leadership among public figures, important institutions, politicians and political parties might have created a different outcome. And today, we need leaders who can present a compelling vision of the true American story. I was reminded of how powerful our national story is by the U.K.'s Rabbi Jonathan Sacks at a dinner last week hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (where I work). Reflecting on the Declaration of Independence's proclamation of the "self-evident" truths that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," Rabbi Sacks said: "Listen to the sentence. See how odd it might sound to anyone but an American." He went on to explain: "Those truths are anything but self-evident. They would have been unintelligible to Plato, to Aristotle, or to every hierarchical society the world has ever known." The equal dignity of all people. Patriotism, but not nationalism. Confidence in the future. Openness to the world. The understanding that we are a creedal nation, not an ethnic one, advancing together toward a common future. In the hands of the right leaders, this story this moral vision provides a compelling counter to the zero-sum narrative of ethnic and class conflict animating the populist right. And this story will be more persuasive in a stronger economy further from the financial crisis. This is reason for hope, but not complacency. Plenty could go wrong. President Bush correctly argued that "We are a nation with a history of resilience and a genius for renewal." For that genius to be realized, we have to work for renewal. And that begins with wanting it. Bloomberg View columnist Michael Strain is director of economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The diversity visa program was established in 1990. Each year since, 55,000 people (now reduced to 50,000) have entered the United States through this program. Thats over a million people. On Oct. 31, one of these visa recipients killed eight people and injured many more. More than a million visa recipients did not kill anyone, threaten to kill anyone, or even harm anyone. To the contrary, many of them have made significant contributions to the United States by becoming doctors, starting businesses that employed Americans, etc. Yet the president has called for the visa program to be shut down and for more extreme vetting. A white male recently killed and injured many dozens of people in Las Vegas. He had dozens of guns. Yet the president did not call for more extreme vetting of white male Americans who buy guns. Advertisement White nationalists threatened the people of Charlottesville, Va., and killed one. Yet the president did not call for extreme vetting of white nationalists who wish to hold racist rallies. Several of the presidents cabinet members have resigned in disgrace, and a few of his advisers have been charged with and pleaded guilty to crimes. His advisers constantly revise their security clearance forms to add information they forgot. Yet the president has not called for extreme vetting of these people with whom he surrounds himself, many of whom have high-level security clearance and whose actions affect the lives of more than 300 million Americans. Advertisement Are we safer when only those who look like us are allowed free rein to kill us? Nancy Vizer, Glenview The Dunham Fund in May presented a check for $550,000 to East Aurora School District 131 for its Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) curriculum. In 2016, The Dunham Fund gave out more than $4.2 million. (Denise Crosby / The Beacon-News ) At the Aurora-area philanthropic foundation Dunham Fund, Executive Director Bob Vaughan and other employees' salaries are covered by a private company that contracts with the nonprofit. The officers at the private company, Management Solutions of Illinois, are Vaughan and his family members, he confirmed. Advertisement A contract between MSI and the Dunham Fund has existed at least as long as Vaughan has run the foundation, at first covering just Vaughan and eventually growing to cover all of the organization's employees, he said. Vaughan, a former public employee, was approached by the fund and asked to be executive director, he said. "I said fine, this is how I operate," Vaughan said. "I operate through MSI." Advertisement The Dunham Fund, established by Aurora businessman and philanthropist John C. Dunham and funded according to his trust, touts itself as "the largest private foundation in the Aurora area." It gave out more than $4.2 million in 2016 to organizations including the city of Aurora's public-private economic development partnership, public school district foundations, Aurora-area food pantries, the Paramount Arts Centre, and other education and community development groups, according to the most recently available federal tax filings. Since 2008, the Dunham Fund has paid nearly $1.97 million to MSI, according to tax filings. The company in turn covers the cost of Dunham Fund employees' salaries, benefits, various types of insurance coverage, Social Security contributions and other expenses, Vaughan said. The setup is not unusual. In a 2012 Chicago Tribune article, a former chairman of the Illinois CPA society said the use of private companies to manage nonprofits had grown more common. Among the advantages of the setups were that they allowed for more progressive employee benefit plans and centralized control of management and operations, he said. However, the relationship between MSI and the Dunham Fund has the potential to be a conflict of interest, said Maryam Judar, executive director and community lawyer at the Elmhurst-based Citizen Advocacy Center. That doesn't mean the contract can't ethically exist, but there should be a discussion about it, she said. She said the board should be aware that there could be a conflict of interest and should discuss and document their discussions whether MSI was cheaper than alternative options. She questioned the way the setup between Vaughan, the Dunham Fund and MSI came about. "It seems to me like if that's the only way he operates, it begs the question, what's he getting out of this," she said. Dunham Fund board chairwoman Wendy Hirsch referred questions to the fund's trustee at First Midwest Bank, saying the board would not approve anything without the trustee's approval. The trustee could not be reached for comment. "There's nothing being done inappropriately, I can tell you that," Hirsch said. "We're just doing what we're directed to do." Advertisement Vaughan declined to release minutes of the Dunham Fund's board meetings, saying they were private. He also declined to release a copy of the fund's contract with MSI, saying the trustee recommended he not release documents related to the operation of the Dunham Fund. Vaughan declined to say who owned MSI or whether he received money from MSI outside of his Dunham Fund executive director compensation, saying MSI is a private company. He said he did not own the private company. Vaughan was executive director and a longtime employee of the Fox Valley Park District, and currently receives an annual pension of nearly $197,600, according to a spokeswoman for the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund. After his retirement from the park district, he was hired by the city through a move that allowed him to keep collecting his pension, sparking controversy at the time. He served as chief of staff to then-mayor Tom Weisner for nearly two years. Vaughan said he is the treasurer and has worked for MSI since 2005, one year after MSI was formed. He also confirmed the company's officers were his family members. Vaughan was the only Dunham Fund employee covered under the contract with MSI for years, before the fund decided to cover all employees under the contract, he said. The company charges a fee of an average of about 16 percent of an employee's salary for its services, Vaughan said. "At the end of the day we want to make sure we're not enriching anybody at the expense of being able to give grants to nonprofits," Vaughan said. Advertisement The Dunham Fund is more efficient than other, comparable nonprofits, Vaughan said. The fund checks MSI's fees against other similar companies roughly every three to four years, he said. He said it would not be possible to have more money to give out in grants if the fund did not contract with MSI. "I would like somebody to show me a foundation of our size that gives away the amount of money that we give away that has operating expenses less than ours," he said. sfreishtat@tribpub.com Twitter @srfreish An investigator's resignation from the Kane County Child Advocacy Center is complicating legal proceedings involving his work, including at least one case scheduled for trial this month. In at least two cases, court filings indicate the investigator may have shredded documents related to his investigation. In one of the cases, involving a former priest from Aurora charged with sexually abusing girls at their church, prosecutors were going to call him as a witness but now say they aren't planning to, according to court filings. Advertisement The other case potentially affected by destroyed documents involved a Batavia man, Joel Becerril, who was convicted in an August bench trial of sexually assaulting a young child he knew. In an October hearing in the case of former priest Alfredo Pedraza Arias, Kane County Circuit Judge Linda Abrahamson said the trial may be affected by whether lawyers have access to the man who investigated the case. Advertisement It is unclear exactly how many cases may be affected by the investigator's departure. The Kane County state's attorney's office has stated it doesn't comment on personnel matters. Prosecutors on Wednesday filed a motion set to be heard Friday, asking the judge to quash Arias' lawyers subpoena for the investigator. To their understanding, the subpoena is for information from the investigator "concerning shredded documents that are at issue," according to the motion, submitted by Assistant State's Attorney Reagan Pittman. "Witnesses cannot be coerced to come to court with a subpoena for discovery purposes," prosecutors wrote. In another filing, the defense is asking a judge to order prosecutors and witnesses to disclose more 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 what led to the investigator's resignation. In a Sept. 18 letter to Kane County State's Attorney Joseph McMahon, the investigator wrote one sentence stating his resignation was effective that day. McMahon accepted the resignation effective immediately in a letter telling the investigator to return various county property and that the office would pack his personal belongings and have them delivered to him. "This letter confirms our discussion today that I have accepted your resignation," McMahon wrote. Advertisement Before the Kane County state's attorney hired him in 2002, the investigator had been a Chicago police officer since December 2000, according to records in his personnel file. In similar motions, a lawyer for both Arias and Becerril asked for copies of any documents or other records referencing the internal investigation of the investigator, along with any social media communication referencing the prosecution of the case or investigation of the man. The lawyer is asking the judge to direct the state's attorney's office to explain the assertion that there may have been notes related to the Arias investigation or prosecution that were destroyed, and when that destruction would have occurred. The motions also ask the state to say whether any entries were made in the investigator's computers in addition to notes previously disclosed, and to describe any efforts made to forensically obtain any deleted information on the devices. Attorney David Camic also asked for the judge to make prosecutors disclose whether they'd reviewed a cellphone the investigator used and, if they had, to share what they'd found; to identify any forensic tools used on his devices; and to give him access to any devices that hadn't already been investigated forensically. Camic also asked the judge to order the state's attorney to say whether the investigator will be prosecuted for any criminal offense arising out of his actions and whether they know of any other agency investigating the man's actions, and to disclose any agreement between the state's attorney's office and the investigator related to his employment or the termination of his employment. Filings also seek to find out how the state's attorney's office "became aware of the need to recover shredded documents," whether the investigator destroyed any other paper or electronic documents or entries, and the timeline of the prosecution's discoveries. Advertisement hleone@tribpub.com Twitter @hannahmleone Simultaneously unfolding was another harrowing incident of sorcery related violence in a settlement in PNGs other major urban centre, Lae in Morobe Province. One woman narrowly escaped death when the police intervened while another woman was found dead the following morning in what police believe might be a related incident. On October 14, a prominent journalist, the late Rosalyn Albaniel Evara, passed away in Port Moresby. At her funeral last week allegations emerged that she had been subjected to domestic violence. Norms are so entrenched that without thinking many people become silenced, largely because of the despair that it so difficult to change anything. CANBERRA - It was a shocking week, even in what seems to be the norm of gendered violence in Papua New Guinea. All three incidents, along with other stories depicting the kinds of stress that the police in PNG face, can be seen in the first 15 minutes of this report. Why is this week any different? This week marks a pivotal moment in media coverage of gender violence in Papua New Guinea. It is a point when the stark realities facing PNG journalists were foregrounded, leading many in the industry to reflect critically on the ethics of the media in reporting gender based violence. But importantly, the fact this happened at the same moment that the sorcery related violence in Lae occurred also opens up other questions about the role of the media and the powers we can unintentionally or intentionally exercise in our individual and collective silences. During her funeral, the late Rosalyns bereaved aunt broke the silence, publically alleging that Rosalyn had been the victim of domestic violence and expressing remorse that she had not done more to help. In doing so, with images of the deceaseds bruised body, she cast a powerful spotlight onto the journalists life; from being a journalist who told others stories to the other whose important story needed to be known. This triggered a series of debates and outrage, including calls for an investigation; reflecting on their own ethics in journalism; and interventions by numerous people including colleagues and friends. One news article reported that the national minister for Religion, Youth, and Community Development called for a proper investigation into her death, and that the Governor of Port Moresby had intervened to ask for a post mortem to be undertaken. In another report the media council of PNG also called for an investigation. People soul-searched. Why did they not do more to help? What was the duty of care in reporting her story by her colleagues in the media? Regardless of what the post mortem results are and the outcome of the ensuing investigation, the late Rosalyn Albaniel Evaras story exemplifies the sad irony for many educated, employed, empowered Papua New Guinean women women who are often expected to be strong and presumed to be in a position to leave. The fact is many suffer long periods of violence and abuse. It is difficult to speak out when everyone around you your family, your colleagues, your friends relies on you for strength and for support. Women fear being labelled weak, not coping or being stigmatised for being a burden to others. We feel that it is better to keep suffering in silence and being loved for being a strong person, than to threaten the fabric in which we are a thread that keeps the social net together. This week, news also began emerging on Facebook of a sorcery related violence incident, and police responded, saving the life of a woman. In the process, police urged people to refrain from posting on social media and instead contact the police, but the following day another woman was found dead at the same location. Yet, as Lae based reporter Scott Waide notes in this report, social media has come to play a strong role in giving voice to the marginalised and to bringing such cases to the attention of the police, authorities and general public. The media also needs adequate resources to report difficult cases, including cases that occur in remote places. But for Scott Waide, these incidents may never have made it into mainstream media. Overall, the response from national leaders and influential actors to recent sorcery cases has been subdued. No public calls for investigations. No public outcry for inquiry and action. In 2013, a woman accused of sorcery was burnt in Mt Hagen, prompting a national and international outcry and the haus krai movement. But this time, perhaps it was over shadowed by the medias focus on their colleague. The contrasting responses to these events point to the challenges of sustaining media coverage on these issues, and to the need to give voice to all women who face the threat or often the reality of violence. They also highlight the vulnerability of journalists working in this space as victims of violence as well as from ongoing exposure and pressure to report on these issues to the public. In recognition of the importance of gender based violence, the government of PNG and its development partners have formulated the National Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender Based Violence and the Sorcery National Action Plan. In view of the challenges faced by journalist consideration must be given to allocating some funding to the media industry to support timely, accurate and independent reporting on these issues in ways that also support journalists Hong Lei, who is consul general of the Peoples Republic of China in Chicago, talks with students during his tour of Station Middle School in Barrington. (Brian O'Mahoney / Pioneer Press ) Students at Station Middle School eagerly showed their cultural understanding of China, greeting a Chinese diplomat who recently visited the Barrington school with Chinese welcome songs and the reciting of history lessons in Mandarin. In return, Hong Lei, who is consul general of the People's Republic of China in Chicago, and the rest of his delegation presented students, teachers and Barrington School District 220 administrators with a traditional vase. Advertisement The show of unity between both groups set the tone for Lei's visit Nov. 1 to Station Middle School, where some students learn Mandarin and try to gain a better understanding of Chinese culture as part of an expanding Chinese immersion program at District 220. Along with Station Middle School, Lei and his delegation toured two other schools to learn more about the immersion program and interact with Barrington students firsthand. Advertisement "China and the United States are two great nations," Lei said. "We need this understanding between two world nations." School district officials started the Chinese immersion program in the 2011-12 school year, when 90 students in kindergarten and the first grade enrolled in the program that teaches the kids to learn the Mandarin language, officials said. Since then, district officials have expanded the program to other grade levels as the initial group of kindergarteners and first graders advanced through District 220. District 220 Superintendent Brian Harris said officials now are preparing to expand the immersion program to Barrington High School by fall 2019, when this year's class of seventh graders become freshmen. During the recent visit, both Harris and Lei stressed the importance of teaching young students how to better understand different cultures a key element to the immersion program, Harris said. "You'll be the first class, so stay with it," Harris told seventh graders during the visit to Station Middle School. The Chinese immersion program now enrolls about 40 students in each grade level, from kindergarten through the seventh grade, said Becky Wiegel, director of language programs for District 220. Although any student in kindergarten or first grade can enroll in Chinese language classes affiliated with the program, students beyond those grade levels must test in based on their level of understanding of the Mandarin language, Wiegel said. Advertisement "The language curriculum mimics monolingual classes, except 50 percent of the instructional delivery is in Mandarin, which is the target language," she said. At the middle school levels, students in the program are taught history lessons entirely in Mandarin, while they learn more about Mandarin in language classes, Wiegel said. To expand the program further, district officials are considering the idea of starting a student foreign exchange program between the two countries, especially as they enter high school, as well as starting a new business course at the high school that would be taught in Mandarin, she said. Although funds have not been budgeted yet for the expansion ideas, Harris said the need exists to create more opportunities for students to become bilingual, noting how officials plan to use the lessons they learned when the district started its Spanish dual-language program in 2004 as a guide. "When (seventh graders) get in as freshmen, they're already fluent," Harris said of expanding the program to the high school by fall 2019. "We will be meeting with Chinese educators and officials on developing our program." During Lei's visit to Station Middle School, seventh-grader Leo Lai and his classmates recited in Mandarin an oral history of the American Revolutionary War based on lessons they learned in the program. Advertisement Lei and other members of his delegation frequently clapped during the students' presentation. "I like all of it," Leo said of the Chinese immersion program. "The classes are interesting and they teach you things." tshields@pioneerlocal.com Twitter @tshields19 A Chicago man pleaded guilty Thursday to driving under the influence when his car collided with a motorcyclist on Interstate 55 in DuPage County, killing its rider. Fawzi Ottman, 45, of the 4900 block of West Potomac Avenue, entered a guilty plea to one count of aggravated DUI involving a death in exchange for DuPage County prosecutors agreeing to drop other counts. Ottman faces a prison sentence of three to 14 years and is not eligible for probation, prosecutors said. Advertisement As part of the negotiated plea, prosecutors agreed to not ask for a sentence higher than 12 years, Assistant States Attorney Joe Lindt said Thursday, though Judge George Bakalis will not be bound by that recommendation. Ottman is due back in front of Bakalis for a Dec. 14 hearing, and a sentencing date could be set then. Advertisement Ottman was charged after the fatal collision April 17, 2015, in which Daniel Dacanay, of Chicago, was killed. The crash happened on a stretch of the interstate south of County Line Road in the Burr Ridge area. According to authorities, Ottman, who was southbound on I-55 about 5 p.m. that day, was seen driving his 1994 Chevrolet Impala erratically before hitting Dacanays motorcycle. The force shoved Dacanay into the rear end of an SUV that was also southbound on I-55. Police say Ottman was under the influence of drugs at the time of the fatal accident. Clifford Ward is a freelance reporter. RELATED [ Chicago man charged with DUI in crash that killed motorcyclist on I-55 ] A person is in Illinois State Police protective custody after threatening to blow up a Chicago-bound charter bus traveling in Grundy County, officials said Thursday. Police did not release the name, age or gender of the person, who they say is in protective custody and was evaluated at a hospital shortly after the incident about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday. Advertisement The charter bus was traveling east on Interstate 80 near Ridge Road in Minooka when it was pulled over after a passenger threatened to blow up the bus and police were notified, police said. Officers searched the bus and determined there were no weapons or explosive devices, police said. After the passenger was taken into custody, the bus continued to its destination. Advertisement Police continue to investigate, and no further details were available. kthayer@chicagotribune.com Twitter @knthayer A registered sex offender was sentenced to 33 years in prison Tuesday after admitting he molested one young boy and attempted to molest another in separate incidents in Elk Grove Village and Bartlett last year. Ryan French, 36, of Elk Grove Village, pleaded guilty to predatory criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual abuse and attempted aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with the incidents. One of the victims was 9 and the other was 13. Advertisement Assistant States Attorney Jaclyn Lantz said French approached the 13-year-old at a playground in Elk Grove Village last November and tried to lure the boy to an isolated area. The teen became wary and called his father, officials said. French was a registered sex offender and registered child predator at the time, Lantz said. A day later, French lured the 9-year-old into a secluded stairwell at a Bartlett playground and molested him, Lantz said. A surveillance camera recorded him luring the boy, authorities said. Advertisement French, of the 1200 block of Diane Lane, was convicted in 2008 of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and was sentenced to three years in prison. French will have to serve 85 percent of his current sentence, Lantz said. George Houde is a freelance reporter. RELATED [ New child molestation charges against registered sex offender ] Supporters call it a win-win, but it first needs approval from New York voters. A proposal on the Nov. 7 election ballot would balance protections for the state forest preserve and the need to make local infrastructure repairs. It's one of three questions voters will be asked on Election Day. The most notable of these proposals is the constitutional convention question, which is asked every 20 years. What is Proposal 3? The amendment, if approved by voters, would create a 250-acre land bank that municipalities within Adirondack and Catskill parks could utilize if there is "no viable alternative to using forest preserve land to address specific public health and safety concerns." The land bank would be offset by the addition of 250 acres to the forest preserve. The amendment would allow municipalities to install bicycle trails and utility lines near highways that pass through the forest preserve as long as the projects minimize the removal of trees and other vegetation. Why is it needed? The state constitution contains a "Forever Wild" clause which has stringent protections in place for the forest preserve. Because of the provision, municipalities are required to seek state approval an amendment to the constitution for infrastructure projects within the forest preserve. This is usually a lengthy process. Before an amendment is considered by voters, it must be approved by two successive state Legislatures. This requires municipalities to wait years before they're allowed to proceed with certain infrastructure projects. Proposal 3 would help municipalities address infrastructure needs while ensuring the forest preserve is maintained. William Farber, chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Supervisors, recalled what happened in the town of Fine, St. Lawrence County, when the municipality advanced a water system project. Because part of the water system ran through the forest preserve, they were unable to replace that section of piping. "This is just what happens when there's a forest preserve overlay that overlays the road," he said. Another example Farber highlighted is the Middleton Bridge in Warren County. The bridge is closed because it's in need of repairs. The project is delayed because the bridge crosses land in the forest preserve. The bridge is a "significant safety hazard," Farber noted. But the construction work can't advance until Proposal 3 is approved. The amendment is important, Farber said, because of extreme weather events that can damage bridges, culverts and roads. Any damage to critical infrastructure would require emergency repairs. These are situations when the local municipalities can't wait for the state Legislature to change the constitution. Who supports it? There are several organizations that support a "yes" vote on Proposal 3. Many environmental groups have endorsed the amendment. The New York State Association of Counties and the North Country Chamber of Commerce are among the supporters. Jessica Ottney Mahar, policy director for The Nature Conservancy, called the ballot proposal a "triple win" for the communities within the forest preserve and the state. Not only will it maintain the forest preserve, but it will not require any new taxes or fees. "What this proposal will do is really make it much more cost effective for the state of New York and these communities to deal with issues when there's no alternative," Ottney Mahar said. She added, "It will make sure that our Adirondacks and Catskills parks are places that are sustainable both for the environment and for people into the future." The New York League of Conservation Voters is one of the environmental groups that are urging voters to support the proposal. Jordan Levine, communications director for the New York League of Conservation Voters, lauded the amendment as a way of balancing the infrastructure needs of communities and protecting the forest preserve. "This would be a great way to protect the park in the long term," he said. Who opposes it? The only indication of any opposition to Proposal 3 can be found in a Siena College poll released Wednesday. According to the poll, 46 percent of likely voters surveyed said they will support the proposal. More than one-third of respondents (35 percent) said they would vote "no." Another 18 percent of voters said they don't know or have no opinion on the proposed amendment. Farber isn't aware of any organized campaign against the proposal. He has met individuals in person or online who were hesitant to support the amendment. But after explaining to them what it would do and how it would impact the forest preserve, they usually express their support for the proposal. One concern: the 'ConCon' Farber and others that voters who oppose the constitutional convention will vote no on Proposal 3. There is concern that voters will mistakenly vote no on the two other ballot questions because of the anti-constitutional convention's movement successful "Vote No" campaign. The concern is legitimate. The Siena poll released this week found 57 percent of voters oppose a constitutional convention. "One of our real challenges is sort of breaking out from under the cloud of the 'ConCon' and really making voters aware of the fact that there are three separate, distinct ballot proposals," Farber said. In addition to the constitutional convention and Proposal 3, voters will be asked whether state officials convicted of public corruption should forfeit their pensions. (There is strong support for that amendment, according to the Siena poll.) Farber views Proposal 3 as an example of how the state constitution can be amended without needing to hold a convention. It's for that reason he hopes those who vote "no" on the constitutional convention question will cast a "yes" vote for the forest preserve amendment. "We really think we've got a winning proposal here if we are successful in getting the word out," he said. How to vote Like the constitutional convention, Proposal 3 will appear on the back of the ballot. When you go to your polling place on Tuesday, Nov. 7, you will need to flip the ballot over and bubble in "yes" or "no." The Cato-Meridian Central School District has narrowed its pool of potential superintendents to two. Superintendent Noel Patterson's retirement, effective Jan. 2, was approved at a board meeting Monday, and school board president Michael Lees said the board is planning to select a superintendent by early December. Selected candidates for the superintendent spot met with the board in interviews Oct. 3 and 4. The top three candidates then met with three separate committees made up of district administrators, parents and other community members and teachers, staff and other district employees, respectively, on Oct. 10. The board ultimately chooses the superintendent. William Speck, former superintendent of Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES, was chosen as the hiring consultant for the search through BOCES at a cost of $8,500. Speck is operating under interim BOCES supervisor Chris Todd. Lees said Speck vetted the qualifications of all applicants who applied. Speck either knew many of the candidates himself "or knew someone who knew them," Lees said. Patterson said one of the hopefuls, Barbara Case, has since accepted a position at another district. The final two, Dr. Terry Ward and Shawn Bisetta, are meeting with the board this week. Bisetta has been the superintendent for Oxford Academy and Central School District since January 2015 and served as superintendent for the Mount Markham Central School District before that. He is no stranger to Cayuga County, having served as a principal in the Port Byron Central School District from 2002 to 2013. Before that, he was the assistant middle school principal in Phoenix, N.Y. and had been an alternative education teacher for Cayuga Onondaga BOCES. Bisetta has a certificate of advanced studies from SUNY Cortland; a master of science in social studies education; and a bachelor of arts in history with a minor in physical education, all from Syracuse University. Ward is the assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and pupil personnel at the Cazenovia Central School District and was previously the district's director of special education. He was once an employee of the Central New York Regional Information Center. Ward had also been an elementary principal at Fulton City School District and an assistant elementary principal at the Phoenix Central School District. The educator also has a doctorate in executive leadership from St. John Fisher College. Ward also holds a master of science in special education from Syracuse University; a certificate in advanced study from SUNY Oswego; a bachelor of arts degree in history from SUNY Cortland; and an associate of applied science degree from SUNY Canton. Patterson who announced his plan to retire in May isn't involved in the selection process. He said he realized he had a finite number of board meetings left, so he figured he should turn in his letter of retirement. "It sort of makes it final, doesn't it?" Patterson said. He said the situation is bittersweet, but that he is proud of his 39-year education career. The first thing he is going to do when he retires, he said, is take some time to reflect on his career and what he wants to do next. The superintendent, who has been with the district since 2009, said when one reaches the end of their career "you say 'OK, what have you done?'" He is proud of the district's improved academic rigors, its boosted graduation rate and its after-school programs, among other accomplishments. He feels comfortable leaving now, confident that the next superintendent is well positioned to lead the district to "new and exciting heights." "I'm going to miss being a part of such a supportive and positive school district," Patterson said. "I will consider my years spent at Cato to be some of the most satisfying of my career." All votes in the CO-3 election won't be counted until the end of this week AUBURN This summer, Corey Papusha was sentenced to shock probation for breaking into a building and stealing a large jug of change. But now, the 24-year-old is heading to prison for violating his probation roughly two months after he was sentenced. Papusha, of 10 Grove St., pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary in May. At the time, he admitted to burglarizing a building on Rockefeller Road. Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelmann said Papusha and multiple co-defendants stole a water-cooler-sized jug of change last fall. It was worth nearly $5,000. On Thursday, Papusha reappeared in Cayuga County Court before Judge Thomas Leone and admitting to violating the terms and conditions of probation. Specifically, he said he had been arrested for drunk driving in Moravia; he pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated there last month. "He didn't make it very long on probation," Papusha's defense attorney, Timothy Brennan, said. "That's actually kind of an understatement." However, Brennan asked the court to impose a "Willard sentence," which would allow Papusha to receive intensive substance abuse treatment while serving the majority of his sentence as parole. The district attorney opposed Willard, requesting shock camp instead. According to Budelmann, Willard incarcerates people for approximately three months before releasing them to a halfway house for treatment while shock camp keeps inmates for six months in a boot camp style setting. "He's had a very long history ... and he has a very severe substance abuse problem," Budelmann said, noting that Papusha was 14 years old when he was convicted of his first DWI. "I think he needs a longer, more structured program." But the judge disagreed. Leone ultimately sentenced Papusha to two to six years in prison to be served as parole supervision at Willard. He noted that the Cayuga County Probation Department also recommended Willard for intensive treatment for Papusha's addiction. Also in court: A 40-year-old man will serve an additional two to four years in prison for possessing drugs and weapons at Auburn Correctional Facility. In September, Angel Umpierre pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree promoting prison contraband, a class D felony. During his plea, Umpierre said he possessed Suboxone and a cutting weapon while he was incarcerated at Auburn prison last year. Leone sentenced Umpierre to two to four years in prison to be served consecutively to any other time he owes to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Umpierre is currently being held at Elmira Correctional Facility. By Alexander Chipman Koty and Zhou Qian Chinese President Xi Jinping hinted at a new direction for tax reform during the 19th Party Congress, which ended last week in Beijing. Although the statements made during Xis speech were broad, and had little in the way of specifics, the speech could signal a new direction of reforms for Chinas tax system. Law-based taxation Xi stressed the importance of law-based governance throughout his speech, and this extends to taxation. Xi said, We must exercise Party leadership at every point in the process and over every dimension of law-based governance, and be fully committed to promoting socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics. The strengthening of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics applies to reinforcing the implementation of tax laws. This would see local tax authorities following more strictly the written law, ensuring businesses and individuals follow relevant tax laws, and giving them recourse in the event that tax laws have been wrongly enforced. More opportunities for businesses and individuals to defend their tax benefits would likely increase the importance of enlisting qualified China tax lawyers. RELATED: How Chinas VAT System Skews Financial Reporting More equitable taxation In his speech, Xi altered Chinas longstanding principal contradiction to suit Chinas new era. Xi said, As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved. Xi elaborated, What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the peoples ever-growing needs for a better life. Xi has placed increasing importance on bridging income and quality of life disparities between Chinas wealthy coastal regions and its less developed inland. The government could use tax redistribution possibly through adjusting individual income tax and property taxes and the implementation of regional tax incentives to promote the development of areas left behind during Chinas economic development. Tax incentives in inland China will increase their attractiveness as FDI locations for foreign investors. If their wealth also increases to levels closer to coastal areas, inland China will become a vital market for goods and services. Tax neutral principle Xi sent mixed messages on the development of the market economy in China, reiterating his commitment to promoting the private economy but also making clear the importance of the Party and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the economy. In terms of taxation, Xi emphasized the tax neutral principle that levying tax should not interfere in market mechanisms in determining resource allocation. Xi stated, We will introduce a negative list for market access nationwide, sort through and do away with regulations and practices that impede the development of a unified market and fair competition, support the growth of private businesses, and stimulate the vitality of various market entities. The need for administrative approval in many sectors has historically impeded the development of tax neutrality in China. However, the implementation of the national Negative List and other business-friendly reforms such as moving from pre-approval to record-filing for establishing new investments in many industries has aided Chinas development in this regard. Efforts such as these can be expected to continue as China grows closer to tax neutrality. Tax Compliance Services from Dezan Shira & Associates Local reforms and implementation Xi emphasized the need for the Party to maintain a strong influence in the economy because of discrepancies between state-level policy and local on-the-ground implementation. Oftentimes, however, Chinese legislation is intentionally vague, granting leeway to regional authorities to implement according to local conditions. Xi appears to be aiming to increase communication between state and local governments to ensure laws are enforced more consistently. Xi said, We will expedite the creation of a modern public finance system, and establish a fiscal relationship between the central and local governments built upon clearly defined powers and responsibilities, appropriate financial resource allocation, and greater balance between regions. Xi continued, We will deepen reform of the taxation system, and improve the local tax system. The creation of a modern finance system and a stronger relationship between state and local governments hinges in part on the digitization of Chinas bureaucracy and tax system. Greater digitization will increase transparency and facilitate communication and information sharing. Chinas tax system going forward China underwent a comprehensive VAT reform in 2016, and 2017 saw tax authorities continue to implement and optimize the reform. Since China is just coming off a period of substantial tax reform, another round of ambitious reforms seems unlikely for 2018. Many of the areas relating to taxation that Xi highlighted in his speech also relate to governance and the application of laws more generally. As such, greater enforcement of tax laws will likely appear in tandem with greater enforcement of other laws, such as environmental regulations and visa regulations. Xi did not lay out concrete details for the future of Chinas tax system. Nevertheless, it appears that the tax system will follow other trends in China, such as the increased enforcement to the letter of the law. More concrete legislative updates to Chinas tax system if any will likely be announced at the next Two Sessions meetings in Spring 2018. About Us China Briefing is published by Asia Briefing, a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. We produce material for foreign investors throughout Asia, including ASEAN, India, Indonesia, Russia, the Silk Road, and Vietnam. For editorial matters please contact us here, and for a complimentary subscription to our products, please click here. Dezan Shira & Associates is a full service practice in China, providing business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax, IT, HR, payroll, and advisory services throughout the China and Asian region. For assistance with China business issues or investments into China, please contact us at china@dezshira.com or visit us at www.dezshira.com Dezan Shira & Associates Brochure Dezan Shira & Associates is a pan-Asia, multi-disciplinary professional services firm, providing legal, tax and operational advisory to international corporate investors. Operational throughout China, ASEAN and India, our mission is to guide foreign companies through Asias complex regulatory environment and assist them with all aspects of establishing, maintaining and growing their business operations in the region. This brochure provides an overview of the services and expertise Dezan Shira & Associates can provide. An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2017 This Dezan Shira & Associates 2017 China guide provides a comprehensive background and details of all aspects of setting up and operating an American business in China, including due diligence and compliance issues, IP protection, corporate establishment options, calculating tax liabilities, as well as discussing on-going operational issues such as managing bookkeeping, accounts, banking, HR, Payroll, annual license renewals, audit, FCPA compliance and consolidation with US standards and Head Office reporting. Chinas Investment Landscape: Identifying New Opportunities Chinas foreign investment landscape has experienced pivotal changes this year. In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we examine how foreign investors can capitalize on Chinas latest FDI reforms. First, we outline new industry liberalizations in both Chinas FTZs and the country at large. We then consider when an FTZ makes sense as an investment location, and what businesses should consider when entering one. Finally, we give an overview of Chinas latest pro-business reforms that streamline a wide range of administrative and regulatory measures. Dezan Shira & Associates You are here: Home A freight train loaded with car engines produced in China left Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, bound for Dourges in France Thursday. The 3,432 engines made by China's Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Company were ordered by French car manufacturer, Groupe PSA. The engines were transported via the new direct China-Europe freight train route opened on Oct. 28. The train will pass through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, reducing the transport time to France by nearly 20 days compared with ocean shipping. The journey will take about 18 days. The freight train is scheduled to send the engines to France every week until March 2018. About 16 Wuhan-Europe freight routes have been launched since 2012, linking Wuhan with more than 60 cities in Europe, Central Asia and West Asia. As of Oct. 20, 277 trains carrying a total of 25,000 containers had travelled the route this year. More than 260 foreign diplomats from nearly 150 countries attended a thematic briefing on the 19th National Congress of the CPC in Beijing on Nov. 1, 2017. More than 260 foreign diplomats from nearly 150 countries attend a thematic briefing on the 19th National Congress of the CPC on Monday morning in Beijing. [Photo by Sun Tao/China.org.cn] The briefing was hosted by the International Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee (IDCPC). Guo Yezhou, vice minister of the IDCPC, briefed the diplomats about the recently concluded 19th National Congress of the CPC and explained some key words such as new thought, new era and new achievement. He said that the 19th National Congress of the CPC was a significant meeting in the time of building a moderately prosperous society and striving for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era. He also said that the CPC has always committed to strengthening friendship and cooperation with other countries and to forging a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. At the briefing, Guo took questions from foreign diplomats after the introduction segment. In the report of the 19th National Congress of the CPC, China's economy is described to be transitioning from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development. Bakhtiyor Saidov, Uzbekistans ambassador to China, asked whether China would change its economic plan. Guo said China would pay more attention to the quality of economic development in the period of the new normal. Mbelwa Kairuki, the Tanzanian ambassador to China, said he paid close attention to the report of the 19th National Congress of the CPC and asked whether China would change its policies concerning Africa in Chinas new era. Guo responded that China will follow the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration, and that no matter whether the countries are big or small, China will make all-round efforts in the pursuit of major country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics and build a community of shared destiny for mankind. Francesco Maringio, a member of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party, said after the briefing that he took special notice on two points of the report. The first was China updating what it considered its principal social contradictions to be addressed in its development. In the new era, China faces a contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. The second was Chinas international diplomatic policies, especially the Belt and Road Initiative. He said Italy and other European countries could benefit from this initiative. Edward Boateng, the Ghanaian ambassador to China, said he thought the CPC was a strong leader for the Chinese people, and that he had learned a lot about the report of the 19th National Congress of CPC, especially the peoples development. Boateng said he will bring the report back to his country to help improve the lives of Ghanaians. Qu Long, a former business partner of Guo Wengui - one of China's most-wanted fugitives who is still at large in the United States - accused Guo on Wednesday during a small news conference of committing fraud and bribery that he said amounted to more than 1 billion yuan ($150 million). Qu said he is preparing materials and working closely with his legal team to have Guo criminally prosecuted in a Chinese court. He said he will offer solid evidence to judicial authorities in the US. "I will take the chance of exposing his crimes to the media and the public in case other innocent people might be cheated by him, and I hope US law enforcement officers will repatriate him back to China to face trial as soon as possible," Qu said during the news conference at a Beijing hotel, which was attended by domestic and foreign media. Qu made the accusation 50 days after being declared innocent and set free after having served six years in prison. In 2012, he said, he was framed by Guo and convicted of fraud and embezzlement, and then sentenced to 15 years in prison. He said he was tortured by Guo's accomplices in judicial departments. Guo and Qu became business partners after Guo asked Qu in 2006 to serve as executive director of Beijing Zhengquan, one of the companies Guo controlled in Beijing. Qu said Guo had also boasted about having close relationships with high-ranking government officials. In 2010, Qu claimed that Guo had colluded with Ma Jian, vice-minister of the Ministry of State Security, to abuse power, persecute business owners and unlawfully plunder enterprises' assets, and that huge bribes were involved. He communicated his charge to the Ministry of State Security and the top anti-graft watchdog. Qu also claimed that Ma had acted as the protective umbrella and helped Guo illegally acquire national securities and embezzle an enormous amount of State-owned assets. Qu said he had sent a letter to anti-graft authorities but Ma managed to intercept it. To keep Qu quiet, Guo bribed Ma to ask the police in Hebei to criminally detain and investigate Qu on made-up charges. Ma then contacted Zhang Yue, former head of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of Hebei, to interfere in the case, Qu alleged. In 2015, Ma was investigated on suspicion of graft. An investigation into Zhang Yue was launched in 2016. In April, Qu's wife appealed to the Hebei High People's Court for a retrial, and in September the court overturned the conviction because of lack of evidence. The court also said the Hebei police had no authority to investigate the case. You are here: Home China's AV500 unmanned helicopter climbed to an altitude of 5,006 meters during a test trial, the maximum achieved by a domestically-made unmanned helicopter. China's AV500 unmanned helicopter. [Photo: chinanews.com] The aircraft, developed by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China helicopter institute, was tested at Xiahe airport at an altitude of 3,189 meters in northwest China's Gansu Province. In 2015, the helicopter made a test flight in Alxa, 1,600 meters above sea level, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and will face another test at an altitude of 4,600 meters. Flash Premier of Greenland Kim Kielsen and three ministers in his cabinet introduced their country on the Greenland Day session held at the Danish Embassy in Beijing, Oct. 31, 2017. [Photo by Zhang Liying/China.org.cn] Greenland Premier Kim Kielsen issued a warm welcome to Chinese tourists to enjoy a brand new experience of the islands unique natural and human environment. He was speaking at a Greenland Day session held at the Danish Embassy in Beijing on Oct. 31, 2017. The premier was on his first visit to China, accompanied by three cabinet ministers and representatives from major enterprises in Greenland. Through vivid presentations, they offered a comprehensive picture of the autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark. In Greenland, a pure and peaceful country where the environment offers contrasts from north to south and from east to west, one can take a breath of cool air, drink fresh, pure water and explore the Big Arctic Five (dog sledding, northern lights, ice&snow, pioneering people and whales), according to Ms. Tanny Por, the international relations manager of Visit Greenland. The worlds largest island is becoming increasingly available to Chinese tourists as some new international airports are on the drawing board and port facilities are being improved to provide more effective disembarkation for cruise liners. With a coastline of 44,087 kilometers, Greenland also boasts abundant fish resources. Fishing is Greenlands most important industry, accounting for over 90 percent of the countrys export value. The Greenland government attaches great importance to fishing-related business cooperation with China, carefully monitoring fish resources to ensure stable exports to a potentially large market. Sealskin products are another symbol of Greenland. The Inuit people native to the island hunt seals for their meat, and their fur is gathered to produce sealskin garments and accessories. An exclusive show was held during Tuesdays event to showcase this unique Greenland fashion. Flash Two 14 year old schoolboys arrested by counter terrorism cops in northern England were both charged Wednesday night with conspiracy to murder. The boys, from the small market town of Northallerton in North Yorkshire, were arrested last Saturday as part of an intelligence led investigation, supported by North Yorkshire Police. Following an investigation by detectives from Counter Terrorism Policing North East, the two teens have been charged with conspiracy to murder. One of the boys has also been charged with aggravated burglary. They have been held in custody and will appear Thursday before magistrates in Leeds. The names of the boys have not been released because of their age. The mayor of Northallerton has called for security to be reviewed at the town's largest public annual event in the wake of the two arrests. Thousands of townsfolk are expected at an annual "Guy Fawkes" fireworks event this weekend. Mayor John Forrest told local media he had been stunned by last weekend's intense police activity in the town, which saw the North-East Counter Terrorism Unit take two 14-year-olds into custody "on suspicion of preparing for an act of terrorism". Forrest issued a call for residents to unite and "show spirit" ahead of the town celebrating its 50th fireworks display on Sunday. The mayor said: "It is unbelievable that this sort of thing has happened and is putting Northallerton on the map for all the wrong reasons. The danger is people letting it get them down. "I would like to see the residents of Northallerton just carry on and to keep their chins up. Deputy Chief Constable Lisa Winward of North Yorkshire Police, said: "We wholeheartedly understand the concerns shared by the communities in Northallerton and the wider area of North Yorkshire. "However we would like to reassure the public that local officers are committed to ensuring the public remain safe, and are working hard to reassure those communities who have been affected." Stuart Carlton, Director of Children and Young People's Services at North Yorkshire County Council, said; "We fully recognise that there are concerns as a result of this investigation. We are working with the police to provide reassurance to the local community, and in particular to the young people, parents and staff connected with this case and we will continue to provide support with our partners." Flash China and Russia signed nearly 20 deals Wednesday in areas including investment, energy and space exploration. The deals came after the 22nd regular meeting between the heads of government of China and Russia held in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (right) and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev meet the press after the 22nd regular meeting between the heads of government of China and Russia in Beijing, on Nov. 1, 2017. [Photo: Xinhua] During the meeting, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev that as each other's biggest neighbor, China and Russia have witnessed robust development of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination. Li said for China, the biggest developing country in the world, development is the solution to all problems. Both China and Russia view each other's development as an important opportunity, therefore there is a broad prospect for both countries to synergize development strategies and further advance all-round cooperation, said Li. He said closer bilateral cooperation will contribute more to the peace and development in both countries, the region and the world. Li briefed Medvedev on the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) which was held from Oct. 18 to 24 in Beijing. He said that the CPC National Congress had just elected a new CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core, established Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guiding spirit of the CPC and mapped out China's future goals of development. Medvedev, the first head of government to visit China after the congress, congratulated the CPC on the success of the congress and hoped the Chinese people would achieve their goals at an early date. He said current Russia-China relations are at the apex of history with frequent high-level visits, efficient cooperation on key projects and rapid trade and investment growth. Russia is willing to enhance traditional cooperation with China in areas such as energy, infrastructure construction and aviation, to expand to new areas including e-commerce and financial investment, and to advance cooperation on cultural and people-to-people exchanges, he said. China is willing to cooperate with Russia on the basis of mutual respect, equality and common development and promote the building of a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation, Li said. After the meeting, Li and Medvedev signed a joint communique and met the press. On Wednesday afternoon, Li and Medvedev attended the closing ceremony of the China-Russia Media Exchange Year. Together with more than 600 representatives from China and Russia, Li and Medvedev watched a video reviewing activities from the past two years, praising the results. Media exchange year, launched by President Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, has shown that China and Russia enjoy a high degree of political mutual trust and mutual understanding in culture, said Li. Activities, covering the areas of politics, economy, culture and people's daily life, have increased understanding between the two peoples, said Li. Medvedev said the two countries have held more than 250 activities during the media exchange year, reflecting the deep friendship between the two peoples and the significance of bilateral relations. Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong also attended the closing ceremony. Also on Wednesday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Premier Wang Yang and Vice Premier Liu Yandong received a Russian state award, the Order of Friendship, from Medvedev. The Order of Friendship is a state decoration of the Russian Federation to reward foreign nationals who have made significant contributions to strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and mutual understanding among nations. Flash Three people were killed Wednesday evening in a shooting inside a Walmart supermarket in Thornton, a Denver suburb in the U.S. state of Colorado, according to local media reports. Police were called to the Thornton Walmart store around 6:00 p.m. (2400 GMT), according to KMGH TV. The store was evacuated after police arrived at the scene. Thornton Police Department initially announced around 6:30 p.m. (0030 GMT, Thursday) that "multiple parties" were down in the shooting. An hour later, they tweeted "at this time this is not an active shooter" and confirmed two adult men were dead and another women was injured in the fatal incident. In a video clip posted online, an employee of the Walmart told local TV that he heard probably five or six shots at least. "Everyone got down, everyone started screaming, it was crazy!" he said. Denver 7 news channel cited a Homeland Security official as saying that it is yet to know any terrorism links at this time. So far, there is no suspect in custody, the official said. The shooting incident triggered a new wave of advocate for gun control on social media. A user named NyxSea tweeted "this is how mass shootings have become normal in the US. When I read that there was 1 death #ThorntonWalmartShooting I said thank God." "Thanks to @NRA lobbyists and lawmakers beholden to them, THIS is what America looks like. THIS is every city, every day," tweeted Shanon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grassroots organization working to end gun violence. The state of Colorado witnessed a mass shooting in July 2012. Twelve people were killed and 59 others injured in Aurora, a suburb 10 miles (16 km) east of Denver, where a heavily armed gunman burst into a packed theater and sprayed the audience with bullets. According to the non-profit organization Gun Violence Archive, there have been 299 mass shooting incidents so far this year in the United States. Also on Wednesday, two people were shot dead near a college in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Donald Trump's first visit to Asia as US president, which will take him to Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, comes at a critical moment, as the missile and nuclear programs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea have cast a shadow over the region. The issue is expected to feature prominently in Trump's talks. Trump needs to reassure his hosts that the United States will play a constructive role in pursuing a peaceful resolution to the Korean Peninsula issue, and it recognizes dialogue and consultation are the only feasible means to address this and other issues in the region. Much of the speculation ahead of Trump's visit to Asia, which began on Friday, stems from the conflicting messages that have previously been given by his administration. A clear, consistent and positive message showing a willingness to cooperate and contribute constructively to resolving regional issues would go a long way toward making his trip a success. On the regional level, Trump needs to recognize that much has changed in the region since his predecessor instigated a rebalancing to Asia strategy to reinforce the US' leadership role in the Asia-Pacific. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are poised to formally adopt the framework for a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea during a summit meeting in the Philippines later this month. Any attempt to derail this process would be unwelcome and likely trigger a backlash. As a country that is not directly involved in the maritime disputes, and one claiming to have a stake in the peace and stability of the region and seeking to benefit from its vitality, the US should heed the wise advice that has been offered that it would be best served by seeking to facilitate this constructive process. On a nation-to-nation level, Trump's upcoming visit to China, which will make him the first foreign head of state to visit the country after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, offers the opportunity for China and the US to iron out their differences and inject fresh vigor into their bilateral cooperation, the momentum of which should not be stalled due to their frictions over trade and other issues. There is no reason why, meeting face-to-face, Trump and President Xi Jinping cannot recapture the rapport of their earlier "very good dialogue". Doing so would enable the two sides to send a positive signal that they are capable of properly handling their differences and are willing and able to work together for the good of themselves, the region and the world. People stand outside a McDonald's restaurant in Beijing.AFP What's in a name? Plentyand the bard, if he were alive and in China, may well agree, looking at foreign companies in the mainland. There was a time when they would adopt posh-sounding Chinese equivalents of their names to make a deep impression on the Chinese consumer mind. That was key to their mystique, pull, image and the perception that they were exalted, different. Maybe not anymore. Take McDonald's. Known for its iconic golden arches, the company recently changed its corporate name (which appears in legal documents) to Jin Gong Men. That may sound like a transliteration of golden arches, if a bit unfashionable (in the eyes of millions of Chinese netizens). In August, McDonald's announced the completion of a strategic partnership with CITIC Ltd, CITIC Capital Partners and The Carlyle Group. CITIC and CITIC Capital will hold a majority stake in the new company. "The change of its license name could be the Chinese shareholders' decision to reflect the Chinese ownership," said Amanda Liu, vice-president and creative director of Labbrand, a brand consultancy. Labbrand has rolled out popular Chinese brand names for companies such as Walt Disney Co's Marvel and LinkedIn. For example, BelVita, the healthy biscuit brand, calls itself Bei Lang (meaning Baking A Bright Day) in Chinese. Professional networking site LinkedIn goes by the moniker Ling Ying (Leading Elite); Marvel is Man Wei (Comic Power). A good Chinese name means the efforts and change adapted by the brand for the Chinese market, said Liu. "A Chinese brand name shows respect and forges closer emotional connections with consumers," she said. But it is not absolutely essential for foreign companies to have a Chinese brand name. For example, IBM, Zara and H&M have made a big impression in China despite using their English names. "The name has to be simple and easy to pronounce," said Liu. A Chinese name could also go south. For example, two years after Airbnb launched its business in China, the hospitality firm adopted its Chinese name Ai Bi Ying, which means welcome each other with love. The name was considered largely by netizens as hard to pronounce and understand. Some have even questioned the company's localization level in China. A cruise ship docks in Zhoushan Port, Zhejiang province, for repairs.XINHUA Foreign cruise operators are making a beeline for China, the world's second largest market for cruise passengers after the US, with a flurry of office openings and launching of tailor-made vessels for local customers to cash in on the growing demand. Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, the world's largest leisure travel company, launched a project on Wednesday to build a cruise ship specially for the China market named "Costa Venezia", which means Coast of Venice in Italian. The vessel will be built by Fincantieri S.p.A., the world's largest cruise ship building company, and is scheduled to make its maiden voyage in 2019 from Trieste, Italy. It will follow the itinerary of great Italian explorer Marco Polo before arriving in Shanghai, its future home port. The cruise ship is also one of the two ships that have been tailor-made for the China market by Costa Cruises in 2019 and 2020. Both Carnival and Fincantieri will participate in China's domestically manufactured cruise liner project and the first vessel will be delivered in 2023, followed by one vessel every year from 2024 to 2028. As the brand that brought cruising into China in 2006 and the leader in the Chinese cruise market, Costa Cruises has served over two million Chinese to date. China has in the past decade become the growth engine of the global cruise industry, said Michael Thamm, CEO of Costa Group and Carnival Asia. Meanwhile, Switzerland-based cruise company Viking Cruises opened its Chinese office in Shanghai on Wednesday, indicating its resolve to fully tap the market in the country. Viking Cruises entered the China market in 2016 by introducing tailor-made cruises for Chinese customers on the Rhine and Danube rivers. According to Torstein Hagen, founder of Viking Cruises, China is one of the most important markets for the company and the Shanghai office is a key component of its strategic plans in the country. "We have full confidence in the Chinese market," he said. "We will continue to invest here and optimize our products and services so that Chinese consumers can experience the essence of European culture." The 2016-2017 China Cruise Industry Development Report published recently said China's 11 major cruise ports served as home ports for 927 cruise ships, representing a year-on-year growth of 72 percent. According to Cruise Line International Association, the number of cruise passengers in China has been growing at about 76 percent year-on-year for the past four years to reach 2.1 million in 2016. "International players are realizing the potential of the cruise market in China although they will have to cater to the relatively younger customer groups to succeed in the market," said Pascal Martin, partner of global market research firm OC&C Strategy Consultants. Shanghai has outperformed other port cities in attracting passengers. In 2016, Shanghai was the busiest in Asia and welcomed 509 cruise ships and conducted 2.89 million passenger trips, said Zhang Lin, deputy director of Shanghai Transportation Commission during Costa's new ship launch. Shoppers look at rice cookers during a promotional event at a supermarket in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province.CHINA NEWS SERVICE A culinary makeover is going on at the heart of the global rice cooker capital. In the coastal city of Zhanjiang in South China's Guangdong province, an array of companies turn out 60 percent of one of the world's favorite kitchen appliances. But in a move to increase high-end manufacturing, many have rolled out brand-building campaigns as they shift upmarket with a host of new products on a traditional theme. "We sold more than one million sets of intelligent (digital) rice cookers to Russia last year," said Gu Chuanping, export manager at Guangdong Zhanjiang Household Electric Appliances Industrial Co. "Rice is not the staple food in Russia, so we have made multi-functional cookers for that market, which can make bread or soup, and even make cakes," Gu added. Household Electric Appliances is one of the largest rice cooker manufacturers in the city, as well as in China, and its ability to innovate is paying off. Although costs are slightly higher for this new range of established products, sales figures have been impressive. "They have gone up by about 25 percent this year," Gu said, without disclosing further detailed financial figures. Set up in 1976, Household Electric Appliances now employs about 2,000 workers in factories across China and its Triangle brand is one of the most popular in the country. Key overseas markets for its rice cookers are Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States and South America, according to the company's website. In Brazil, its market share is more than 30 percent. "The goal in the next five years is to further explore markets in the Belt and Road economies, especially high-end markets," said Gu. Last year, Zhanjiang exported electric rice cookers worth 2.26 billion yuan ($340 million). Annual output was around 100 million models. Southeast Asia has always been a traditional overseas market. But now sales are increasing in Europe and the United States for high-end products. This in turn has brought challenges for Household Electric Appliances and other Chinese companies as they grapple with upgrading products, while trying to cut production costs at the same time. Even so, a blueprint to support the industry is gradually taking shape. "The government plans to transform the sector by promoting the intelligent (high-tech) production line, establishing a platform for design and research, and organizing more marketing events in Europe and the US," said Zhi Haisen, deputy director of Zhanjiang's economic and information bureau. The local authorities have also pledged to provide manufacturers with subsidies worth 4 million yuan for modernizing production lines. In addition, European designers and exhibitors plan to promote Zhanjiang's small household appliances, including rice cookers, electric boilers and induction cookers. During the summer, the city organized trips for companies to Russia and Belarus. In June, Russian buyers signed contracts worth more than $80 million, an increase of 10 percent compared to 2016. Belarus companies also entered into initial agreements to purchase Zhanjiang products worth up to $20 million. Still, one of the key problems facing the city is low brand recognition in the home appliances market. "Only 30 percent of the products exported are under our own brand names," Gu said. Most are made for major global companies such as Panasonic Corp of Japan, Tatung Co of the US, Tefal of France and Redmond of Russia. Deputy Director Zhi pointed out that there are only eight Zhanjiang local brands, including Triangle, Heng Guang, Weking and Hallsmart, while the rest are rolled out for overseas groups. In a move to change this, the government plans to open up investment from other major domestic household appliances companies. In July, China's Gree Electric Appliances announced that it would invest 2.2 billion yuan in Zhanjiang. "In the future, the Zhanjiang (local) government will provide good services for investors so that we can all share the fruit of the city's progress," Zhanjiang Party chief Zheng Renhao told China Daily at the time. Residents from the city of Kherson took to the streets to celebrate Russia's retreat, scientists may have discovered why they keep finding mum A consortium of investors led by the Russia-China Investment Fund and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund will acquire a 16.1 percent stake in Russian oilfield services firm Eurasia Drilling Company in a sign of deepening cooperation between the two countries. The Russia-China Investment Fund is a joint fund established by sovereign wealth funds China Investment Corp of China and Russian Direct Investment Fund of Russia. The China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund, backed by the Export and Import Bank of China, is an important equity investment vehicle set up by China to realize the strategic goals of the Belt and Road Initiative. The two funds inked the investment deal on Wednesday during Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's state visit to China. Other participants in the deal include leading investment funds from the Middle East. "We are happy to reach an agreement with the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund to expand the network of key partners in China, which will enable us to implement bilateral projects," said Kirill Dmitriev, co-CEO of the Russia-China Investment Fund and CEO of Russian Direct Investment Fund. Dmitriev said the collaboration of the RCIF, RDIF and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund will open up additional opportunities for the companies in China and Russia and strengthen the integration processes of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt. Lin Gang, CEO of the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund, said the two sides would jointly enhance practical cooperation between China and Russia and promote the connectivity and implementation of bilateral projects. The Russia-China Investment Fund also said on Wednesday that it would invest in United Transport Concession Holding, being established by the RDIF and Russia's Leader Management Company, to finance the construction and operation of roads, railways, urban transport and public-private partnership projects in Russia. They will cooperate in three infrastructure projectsthe operation of part of the Northern Bypass Odintsovo toll road in Moscow; the design, construction and operation of an alternate route at Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow; and the construction and operation of a light rail transport grid in St Petersburg, Russia. Dmitriev said the Russia-China Investment Fund has invested in 19 projects worth about $1 billion, and more than 20 projects worth over $2 billion are in the pipeline. The RCIF is paying attention to sectors such as infrastructure, forestry, consumer goods, financial services and information technology. PHNOM PENH -- Cambodian Minister of Tourism Thong Khon said on Wednesday that China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will greatly contribute to the development of tourism for all participating countries. The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, known as the Belt and Road Initiative, was proposed by China in 2013 with the aim of building a trade, investment, and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes. "The Belt and Road Initiative will enhance connectivity, which is a great addition to the development of tourism," he said in a speech during the closing ceremony of the second national tourism forum on "China Ready" in Phnom Penh. "We support the initiative because we regard it as a win-win policy for all." "Through the initiative, Cambodia's cooperation with China and other countries along the Silk Road would become closer, especially in economics, trade, investment, tourism and culture," he said. Thong Khon said Cambodia needs to invest more in infrastructure such as roads, tourism ports, and airports in certain tourist destinations in order to attract more international tourists. "I hope that the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund will become major sources of capital for Cambodia and other countries in the development of tourism," he said. Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo said tourism is among the priority cooperation sectors between China and Cambodia under the Belt and Road Initiative. "Under the initiative, I believe that more Chinese enterprises will come to invest in Cambodia's tourism industry," he said during the forum's closing ceremony. Xiong said China will continue to support Cambodia's tourism development and will open a new consulate in northwestern Siem Reap province, the home of Angkor world heritage site, in the near future. An artist's impression shows Formula, a concept flying car developed by Russian drone company Hoversurf, flying in the sky. [Photo/IC] A 3D printed 5-seater vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) flying car called Formula is expected to hit the sky in 2018, according to its creater. Hoversurf, the Russian drone company that has created the electric-powered drone-like hoverbike named Scorpion 3 that has been flown by the Dubai police department, unveiled the Formula project on its website. "Imagine you're leaving the supermarket with tons of bags and your children, Formula detects your key and opens without you having to press a buttonFrom the doors to the interior, Formula is like a car - everything is in its place," the company said. Using 52 Venturi electric turbine propulsion units, the flying car, which can simultaneously operate as both a copter and an airplane, has a range of 450 kilometers and a speed of 320 kilometers per hour, according to the company. Its standard car size and foldaway wings enable it to fit in a single car space, which makes it possible for it to work on the streets and parking spaces currently available. In addition, cutting-edge technologies such as carbon fiber 3D printing, metal 3d printing and hybrid chemistry battery are used in the flying car. The company said all calculations on the flying car are finished and it is ready to make the prototype. The Formula will be priced at around $97,000, according to the company. Russia's leading payment platform Qiwi Wallet, Russian government-owned development bank Vnesheconombank and venture capital firm Starta Capital have invested in the company. SYDNEY -- A major Australian producer of abalone, which forms one of the country's top premium seafood exports to China, opened a new processing plant in South Australia's state capital Adelaide on Thursday. The facility of Yumbah Aquaculture, touted as the largest abalone producer in the southern hemisphere, cost 1 million Australian dollars ($771,368) and is expected to process more than 600 tons of abalone a year, the company said in a media release. High-quality seafood is an important part of the state's plan to capitalize on the increasing global demand for premium products, South Australia's Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Minister Leon Bignell, who opened the plant, was quoted as saying. Australian's seafood exports to China totaled A$85 million in 2016, with premium abalone products worth A$32 million, figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade showed. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in December 2015, is also set to eliminate the 10 to 14 percent tariff on abalone by Jan 1, 2019. "The aquaculture industry in South Australia is one of the largest in economic value in Australia and the most diverse in the country," Bignell said. "To have Yumbah's central processing facility here in South Australia -- receiving abalone from across the country and exporting it to the world -- is great for the State's economy and employment." Packaged sales of abalone from the new plant are estimated to be more than A$26 million next year alone, the company said. Abbott Diagnostics executives and Professor Pan Baishen attend the grand opening ceremony of Abbott Customer Experience Center. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Be it an individual waiting to get his annual health check-up, or a patient wanting to receive the right diagnosis and treatment; fast, accurate and reliable diagnostic testing is required for the right clinical care to be administered. To help laboratories and hospitals better address current rising challenges in today's healthcare industry, Abbott, a global leader in in-vitro diagnostics, announced the launch of first of its kind customer experience center worldwide in Shanghai. The 5,000 square meter Abbott Customer Experience Center is situated next to Abbott's recently established China R&D Center, aiming to promote quality and standard of diagnostics in hospitals and laboratories across China and the rest of Asia-Pacific by offering comprehensive functions and services including training and education, customer support, and showcasing innovative diagnostics solutions and best practices. Abbott Customer Experience Center is situated in Caohejing Hi-tech Park of Shanghai.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] "Better healthcare depends on better diagnostics. Abbott is working to delivering breakthrough technologies and solutions to help healthcare systems and labs improve their operations in ways that help patients live longer, healthier lives," said Brian Blaser, executive vice-president, Abbott Diagnostics Products. The new Abbott Customer Experience Center will help propel the innovation of China's diagnostics industry and enable hospitals and laboratories to achieve better healthcare performance. The four-storey Center possesses interactive and state of the art technology to immerse its audience into a personalized journey of best practice discovery: Interactive lab with innovative 3-D technology to allow hospitals and laboratories to be their own architects and design their own laboratory floor plan and layout. This provides laboratories the valuable opportunity to optimize space and build the most efficient workflow possible to provide better healthcare services. Virtual lab offering virtual reality experience a completely immersive and real-time experience to visualizing how the Alinity family of instruments would appear and perform in a real laboratory setting. Kinect monitors providing the audience with a self-directed and customized approach to gaining the latest information on Abbott's products and solutions. Having close to 30 scientific and technical experts, as well as a professional service team under one roof, the Center is designed to provide all-rounded service for customers and partners. Its Customer Support Center offers laboratories in China instant and real-time technical support through WeChat and hotline. This not only makes it more convenient for laboratories to access technical support when needed, it also provides distant technical support to hospitals and laboratories located in remote cities in China, significantly shortens the downtime of the laboratory service to minimize its impact on patients. The Smart Center monitors and processes data to predict potential issues and instrument downtime. It employs data science and analytics to forecast, three days in advance, technical problems that could occur with the existing instruments and solutions, enabling Abbott to proactive help laboratories manage their operations and services. The center is equipped with comprehensive functions including training, customer support and customer experience and workshop.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] In addition to helping laboratories solve their current problems, the Center also provides training to support pathologists and laboratory staff on their daily work. Partnering with academic institutions, the Center is committed to contributing to academic research, providing data and technology support to pathologists for their research and publication efforts. The Center will consolidate first-hand feedback from hospitals and laboratories. Its strong data management capability will enable Abbott to obtain in-depth insights into China's healthcare challenges and provide healthcare providers with value-added solutions to build a healthy China. About 60-70 percent of critical clinical decisions are influenced by diagnostic test results and the need for fast, accurate diagnostic tests has never been greater. Global testing volumes are rising due to an aging population, the growing management of chronic diseases and increased access to care. At the same time, health systems are facing pressures to perform testing as efficiently as possible with limited staff and space while also reducing costs. As institutions serve more patients and try to improve service levels with fewer qualified technicians, they are looking for new technologies and solutions that can help maximize testing efficiencies and help better manage resources. "China's evolving healthcare landscape demands hospitals and labs to do more for less. As such, more innovative diagnostics solutions are needed. The launch of Abbott's Customer Experience Center does not only help laboratory physicians gain access to the most advanced testing instruments, it also improves the skill sets through continuous trainings. So eventually patients can get better diagnostic service and treatment", said Mr Pan Baishen, president of Chinese Society of Laboratory Medicine; Director of Laboratory Medicine and Researcher of Zhongshan Hospital, affiliated to Fudan University. Abbott has been pushing the boundaries of innovation to provide hospitals, laboratories, and physician offices a broad portfolio of breakthrough diagnostics tests, instruments, and informatics solutions, spanning the areas of immunoassay, clinical chemistry, hematology, blood screening, molecular and point of care. For example, the company's Alinity diagnostics systems, soon to be launched in China, offer hospitals and laboratories a harmonized experience across all critical diagnostic disciplines including clinical chemistry, immunoassay, hematology, transfusion, molecular, point of care, and informatics, delivering better efficiency and flexibility to help standardize processes and reduce costs. "What our customers need from us today and in the future is very different from what we have done in the past. With the establishment of the Abbott Customer Experience Center, we have created a new way to support our customers and their changing needs", said Jerry Tu, vice-president, Abbott Diagnostics China. "By consistently bringing new and innovative products and technologies to the world, we help more people live life fuller at all stages of life." It is common for companies to outsource part of their business process to other companies based elsewhere to cut costs. India has been the top destination for years due to its English language advantage, according to A.T. Kearney's 2017 Global Services Location Index released in September. China, ranking second on the list, is also attractive to international companies, as testified by Apple, which set up research and development centers in both Beijing and Shenzhen in 2016. Let's take a look at the ranking. No 10 Colombia An intelligent manufacturing headquarter for new energy vehicles is to be laid in Xi'an High-Tech Industries Development Zone, according to an agreement signed on Oct 30. Thanks to the combined efforts of the Xi'an municipal government and the Skywell New Energy Vehicle Group, a total investment of 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) will be used to establish a manufacturing base that will have a profound influence across northwestern China. Liang Gui, vice-governor of Shaanxi province, extended congratulations to the successful signing of the project, noting that the new energy vehicle industry is a typical sunrise industry which will likely spur the development of the real economy and bring unprecedented prosperity to the city. The partnership with the leading commercial automobile manufacturer is bound to further upgrade the new energy car industry chain and enhance core competence. Liang urged the government departments to actively support the construction of the base, and create a favorable environment to achieve a win-win result. Chairman of the Skywell Huang Hongsheng appreciated the help from the authority and gave recognition to Xi'an's strategic role in the development of West China. The company will exert its edge in research and production, boost related industries to settle in Xi'an and contribute to the economic and social progress. An employee fits a rear axle to a Tesla Model S automobile on the driving unit assembly line at the Tesla Inc factory in Tilburg, the Netherlands. BLOOMBERG Electric carmaker Tesla Inc expects to start manufacturing cars in China in about three years, according to CEO Elon Musk. The billionaire entrepreneur said Tesla is about three years away from starting production in China and will not make any significant capital expenditure until 2019, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Musk added that the three-year wait period is a rough estimate. "Don't set your watch by this," he said. Tesla confirmed in late October to China Daily that it was in talks with the Shanghai city government to build a plant in the region and said its localization efforts would become clearer by the end of 2017. Musk said the China plant will make cars for China and other parts of Asia, essentially the smaller and cheaper Model 3 sedan and the upcoming Model Y crossover. It will not make its more expensive Model S sedan or Model X sport utility vehicle in China. Musk made the remarks on Wednesday during the company's third-quarter earnings conference. By the end of September, Tesla's accumulated global sales had reached 250,000 cars, and China is fast becoming one of its most important markets. The company delivered 13,500 cars to China in the first nine months of 2017, more than double from a year earlier, according to statistics from the China Passenger Car Association. Cui Dongshu, the association's secretary-general, said Tesla's decision to make cars in China is a win-win move as it will not only boost sales but also set a good example in quality for new energy carmakers in the country. Imported cars in China are subject to a 25 percent import tax and hence a local plant would make Tesla vehicles more affordable. When localized Tesla cars arrive in China by 2020, the company could face more competition with a host of firms revving up efforts to get a slice of China's new energy car market. For instance, Chinese startup Nio is to launch its electric SUV next month. Future Mobility Corp, co-founded in 2016 by former BMW and Infiniti executives, will start making a mid-sized electric SUV in 2019, with a sedan to follow in 2021. Both carmakers are targeting the premium car sector. China is the world's largest new energy car market, with 1 million such cars running on its roads by the end of 2016. It has set a goal to sell 2 million new energy cars a year by 2020, according to a government blueprint released in April. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft CHINA DAILY Microsoft Corp will triple its cloud capacity in China within six months to meet the stronger-than-expected demand from local companies, its CEO Satya Nadella said in Beijing on Wednesday. Microsoft told China Daily in June it plans to double its cloud capacity in China to be able to serve nearly 200,000 enterprise customers locally in 2018. Microsoft's updated plan appears to indicate a stronger growth momentum in China, one of the world's largest IT markets. "China is one of the most dynamic markets, where enterprises are aggressively pushing forward digital transformation, creating abundant growth opportunities," Nadella said at a forum, without disclosing specific investment figures. At the Microsoft Tech Summit, Nadella also announced Azure Stack hybrid cloud solutions developed in collaboration with hardware makers such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Lenovo Group Ltd will be unveiled in the first half of 2018. The new cloud service is designed to meet enterprises' growing demand for local data centers with more flexible computing capability. Microsoft said earlier it is aiming for triple-digit growth in Azure cloud services in China this year as well. It posted triple-digit growth in 2016. The company's local cloud customers include startups such as bike-sharing company Mobike Technology Co Ltd and big companies such as Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co Ltd. Although locked in an intense race with Amazon.com Inc in the booming cloud computing sector, the Redmond, Washington-based company managed rapid growth not only in China but globally. In the July-September quarter, Microsoft beat profit estimates on gains from cloud services, which pushed its market valuation above the $600-billion mark for the first time since the dotcom boom in January, 2000. According to market research company Gartner, Microsoft had about 7 percent market share in the public cloud service segment in 2016, a distant second to Amazon that had more than 44 percent market share. But still, Microsoft leads other competitors even as it faces rising pressure from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in China. The country's cloud computing industry is forecast to be worth 430 billion yuan ($63.3 billion) in 2019, up from 150 billion yuan in 2015, according to Ministry of Industry and Information Technology data. Charlie Dai, head analyst at Forrester Research Inc, said China's cloud market is get-ting increasingly crowded, with domestic and foreign companies slugging it out. David Ku, corporate vice-president for AI Core group at Microsoft, said the company is working hard to integrate artificial intelligence technology into its products. SEOUL Samsung Electronics, South Korea's tech behemoth, on Thursday announced new senior executives for the country's biggest family-controlled conglomerate, where Chairman Lee Kun-hee was hospitalized for long and Vice-Chairman Lee Jae-yong was behind bars over corruption charges. Samsung said in a statement that former heads of Samsung's three divisions were promoted in recognition of their contribution to the company's success. Kwon Oh-hyun, a former vice-chairman and head of the device solutions (DS) division, was named chairman of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, the company's primary research center of components and materials, for his expertise. Yoon Boo-keun, a former president and head of the consumer electronics (CE) unit, was appointed as vice-chairman responsible for external corporate relations. Shin Jong-kyun, a former president and head of the IT & mobile communications (IM) division, was promoted to vice-chairman responsible for nurturing Samsung's future leaders. The promotion came amid worry about the leadership vacuum, caused by Chairman Lee who has been hospitalized for about three and a half years and Vice-Chairman Lee, the chairman's only son and heir apparent, who was in jail over his involvement in a corruption scandal embroiling impeached President Park Geun-hye. Kim Ki-nam, a newly appointed head of the DS division, will additionally serve as chief executive of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, according to the statement. President Kim Hyun-suk, a new head of the CE division, will lead the digital appliance business as well as Samsung Research, which was created by combining the company's main hardware and software research centers. It marked the first time a chief executive directly oversees the research center, Samsung said. Koh Dong-jin, a new head of the IM unit, will continue to lead the mobile communications business, which makes smartphones, Samsung said. In addition, seven executive vice-presidents were promoted to presidents to shift the leadership generation. As of Monday, the Communist Party of China had received more than 1,340 congratulatory telegrams and letters from more than 450 major political parties in 165 countries on the occasion of the 19th CPC National Congress, a senior Party official said on Wednesday. Guo Yezhou, deputy head of the CPC International Department, made the remarks at a forum the department held for senior diplomats and representatives of international organizations to inform them of the highlights of the meeting. The briefing attracted more than 260 senior diplomats from more than 150 countries, including more than 90 ambassadors and charges d'affaires, as well as more than 140 representatives from international organizations, foreign chambers of commerce and transnational companies. Guo said "after 2020, we will use 15 years, namely 2021 to 2035, to basically realize socialist modernization. That will be 15 years earlier than our original target of 2050". "We will use the 15 years saved, namely 2036 to 2050, to build our country into a modern and strong socialist country that is prosperous, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful." "You are based in China and must know that the CPC is good at two things - to make a long-term strategic plan, and to strive for the target generation after generation until finally realizing it." "We hope that the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics will provide a reference for other developing countries that are on the path toward modernization. We wish to offer more choices for countries and nations that want to accelerate development and at the same time keep independent," he said. Maringio Francesco, a member of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party, said since the 18th CPC National Congress, which was held in 2012, he had been deeply impressed by the construction of the CPC, including anti-corruption efforts and strict Party governance. "It was marvelous!" he said. "And there are two things in the report to the 19th CPC National Congress that impressed me most - one is the change of China's 'principal contradiction', and the other is the Belt and Road Initiative. ... The initiative has become an international move, which I believe is a very good chance for Europe, including Italy." Paul Chikawa, Zimbabwe's ambassador to China, said he cast special attention on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which was enshrined in the Party's Constitution at the congress. "According to my understanding, what President Xi Jinping is telling us is that development is evolutionary. If yesterday was good, today must be better, and then tomorrow must be best." Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli (second left), Wang Yang (second right), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and vice-premier, and Vice-Premier Liu Yandong (left) are awarded the Order of Friendship medal by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday.[Photo by Feng Yongbin/China Daily] Medvedev says events helped to enhance bilateral relations The China-Russia Media Exchange Year has helped China and Russia to deeply enhance friendship and offer a window for media from both sides to learn from each other, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday. Li made the remark when he was addressing the closing ceremony of the China-Russia Media Exchange Year (2016-17) at the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday, together with visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, after the two held their 22nd regular meeting in Beijing on Wednesday morning. "I noticed that many of you here are sitting there with a cellphone in your hand taking pictures. And I believe this shows the advanced development of the media of both countries," Li said to the media representatives, as well as university students from China and Russia. President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced 2016-17 as the China-Russia Media Exchange Year on May 8, 2015. During the past two years, media from both countries carried out exchanges and cooperation in many fields, taking cultural cooperation between both nations to a higher level. Li said the event shows that China and Russia, as comprehensive strategic partners, share sound political trust and have a friendly and objective attitude toward each other. He said the past two years have seen numerous highlights in media exchanges between both countries, covering a wide range of sectors including economic affairs and culture. "Today's closing ceremony of the China-Russia Media Exchange Year should not be seen as the end, but rather it marks a starting point for media exchange and cooperation between China and Russia, passing on the friendship to future generations," Li said. Medvedev, who also addressed the ceremony, said that with more than 250 events being held since 2015, the China-Russia Media Exchange Year has brought opportunities to add new meaning to bilateral ties. Konstantin Shepin, a Russian journalist working at the Russian language department of China Radio International, said the remarks of both premiers further encouraged him in his work. "I've participated in a great number of events under the China-Russia Media Exchange Year framework, such as visiting the Silk Road with journalist from both countries, such as RT TV Station and TASS News, traveling to Gansu province and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. I believe these events have helped Russian journalists immensely in understanding China, including myself," he said. "For example, in Russian media reports of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the content was much richer compared with five years ago." Five districts and counties of the Tibet autonomous region have been lifted successfully out of poverty, with the poverty rate falling below 3 percent, Norbu Dondrub, vice-chairman of the region, announced at a news conference on Wednesday. The five districts and counties are Chengguan district, Dromo county, Nedong district, Dragyib district and Kharub district. The five were on a list of 26 counties named on Wednesday by the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development as having risen above the official poverty line. "Nearly 2,000 households - 5,323 people - have shaken off poverty in Nedong," said Zhang Wei, head of the district. "The average income per capita has increased by 104 percent from 2,300 yuan ($348) to more than 4,600." Zhang said the people in Nedong are encouraged to get involved in industries such as raising pigs or producing concrete - or take advantage of natural resources by bottling natural mineral water. "We won our first battle against poverty thanks to government assistance," said Norbu Dondrub. "The success we have achieved is the result of preferential policies released by the Party and the unprecedented efforts made by our people." Regarded as one of the areas of extreme poverty in China, Tibet has attracted great attention from the central government. More than 1,300 poverty alleviation projects have been launched. About 4.29 billion yuan granted by the central government and enterprises has been invested in the region over the past year. Education is also a priority in Tibet's poverty alleviation work, with 67,800 people having received vocational college courses during the year. "We still have great challenges ahead. Tibet is an impoverished region with more than 400,000 poor people still in deep poverty," said Norbu Dondrub. "There are 69 districts and counties in the region that have yet to be relieved." He said 147,000 residents in the region have been lifted out of poverty in 2016, and the region has been recognized as one of the top eight regional success stories in China. A worker for Shenzhen Customs in Guangdong province shows the plastic waste that was seized in June last year.[Photo by Mao Siqian/Xinhua] Effort to stop smuggling of imported 'foreign garbage' gets new emphasis Flexing its muscle against pollution, China has imposed tougher controls on solid waste imports. More than 800 smuggling suspects have been detained since 2013, according to a report submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the nation's top legislative body, and read on Wednesday. From June to August, it sent five teams - one of which was led by Zhang Dejiang, the Standing Committee's chairman - to inspect the state of law enforcement in 10 provincial regions and push governments to be more aggressive against illegal solid waste. The report was based on those inspections. Customs officers nationwide have investigated around 400 cases of solid waste smuggling since 2013. A total of 1.7 million metric tons of the waste has been found and 800 suspects have been detained, according to the report. It elaborated China's increasingly tough efforts to combat importation of the waste - sometimes referred to as "foreign garbage" - Zhang said while delivering the report. For example, more than 350 police officers from Shenzhen Customs in Guangdong province found 15,000 tons of smuggled plastic waste on Sept 21, a large part of which was destined to become dining ware, according to Guangdong Daily. Twenty suspects were detained. In an inspection conducted by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in July, 1,792 processors of imported waste were checked, and 60 percent were found to be in violation of pollution standards. Imported solid waste was found contaminating the environment and creating a high risk of harm to people's health, the ministry added in a briefing about an action plan to control solid waste imports. By the end of this year, China plans to ban 24 types of solid waste, including plastics, textiles and unsorted paper. The list of items banned from import is expected to grow longer by 2019 in categories that can be replaced by domestic sources, according to the action plan. Along with the foreign garbage, other types of solid waste were listed as targets in the national campaign to control pollution because of their large volume and the hazards posed to the environment and public health. They include materials generated from industrial production, breeding farms and hospitals. China generates considerable amounts of domestic solid waste annually - 4 billion tons of waste from livestock and poultry, 3.3 billion tons from plants and 1.35 million tons from hospitals. Moreover, the country has accumulated around 60 to 70 billion tons of solid waste, a figure that continues to grow and exacerbate environmental problems. Mining is a particular source of concern. "Of 8,345 tailing ponds, 90 percent are small scale but with high risks of environmental contamination," Zhang said, warning governments to take more precautions. China has expanded its solidwaste processing capacity and has issued measures to control pollution in recent years. In 2015, 65 percent, or 1.99 billion tons, of solid waste from industrial production was processed and recycled - 13 percentage points more than in 2001. But Zhang advocated additional measures, including revising related laws, improving management and carrying out stronger enforcement to reduce solid waste pollution. The result would be a better environment and improved public health, he said. Customers eat lunch at the Lancet Barbecue, which gives discounts to people who have had papers published in academic journals.Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily A barbecue outlet in Beijing has become a favorite dining place for the capital's scientific fraternity, as Li Hongyang reports. When Feng Shangqing published a paper in a scientific journal, she was simply hoping it would prove beneficial to her medical career. She certainly didn't imagine that the article would provide her with a discounted treat at a barbecue restaurant in Beijing. The physician, who graduated from Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, was given a discount of 84 yuan ($12.67) at a barbecue restaurant that is popular with medical professionals as a result of the paper's "impact factor" - a measure of the frequency with which articles are cited in a particular year. The 84 yuan discount was a multiple of the paper's impact factor of 8.4, which is considered a good score. Under the rules of the restaurant, scientists, medical professionals and social scientists are eligible for a discount if they have recently published papers in journals that are included on internet databases such as the Science Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index. The paper's impact factor is multiplied by 10 to determine the discount, which can account for as much as 30 percent of the bill. Paper promotion "I love barbecue, and often ate it with my classmates while at medical school. It was very enjoyable to share our joys and troubles while eating barbecue and drinking beer. There were many barbecue stalls on the streets outside our school and we used what is known as the lu chuan method (a way of eating kebabs straight from the skewer)," Feng said. "As soon as I saw the restaurant's promotional material on WeChat, I decided to visit and use my paper to try the food." Since the promotion began on September 21, hundreds of customers have visited the eatery - called Liuyedao, the Chinese name of The Lancet, one of the world's leading general medical journals - near Beijing Jiaotong University in Haidian district. The restaurant covers just 90 square meters, so there is only room for 12 tables. Because there are no windows, the room is illuminated by warm yellow lights and decorated with bright green plastic plants. During the "rush hour", customers often wait for an hour to be seated and served, and one out of every four diners is likely to have had a paper published in the world's top academic journals. Top Chinese experts in pediatric medicine converged on Shanghai this week to start work on compiling national guidelines aimed at standardizing the diagnosis and treatment of children's illnesses and other health issues. The panel, which includes hospital presidents, surgeons and academics, met for the first time at Fudan University Children's Hospital on Tuesday and chose the first four topics for advisories to be shared with doctors nationwide. Guidelines on inflammatory bowel disease, pediatric gastroscopy procedures, nutritional support for critically ill children and general physical activity are expected to be released by the end of 2018, according to Zhang Chongfan, editorial director of the Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Pediatrics and a member of the 41-strong panel. Huang Guoying, president of the hospital, said a lack of national guidelines has led to inconsistent quality of treatment in China. "It's often the case that 10 doctors will give 10 different ideas about the diagnosis and treatment of a sick child, which confuses the patient, parents and even the doctors," he said. "The guidelines are intended to ensure that children receive the same treatment at all hospitals, and that medical mistakes can be avoided as much as possible." The medical journal, which is influential with the country's pediatricians, is based at the hospital and has previously seen some success in standardizing doctors' behavior. Over the past seven years, it has published guidelines on treating fevers in children under age 5 and helping newborns with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, or HIE, a condition that occurs when the brain doesn't get sufficient oxygen. "Before, one hospital might have a guideline about a certain disease, but another hospital might disagree. Now we're trying to look for universal conclusions based on the nationwide data that has not been obtained before," Huang said. For example, he said, if a child with pneumonia goes to see the doctor, the guidelines will make clear which tests should be used for diagnosis, and, if the child shows certain complications, which additional tests should be done to find out why the child is sick. "In the guideline for HIE among newborns, we stipulated that doctors must reduce the use of some medicines, which are unnecessary and could result in the patient's parents having to pay higher medical bills," said Yuan Lin, director of the Fudan hospital's administrative office. "Doctors always want to see the best results from their treatment and the best outcomes for the patients, but this can sometimes mean they prescribe unnecessary medicines." Zhang said the national guidelines will be compiled from analyses of articles in the journal that received the best feedback, research from hospitals nationwide and international advisories. The expert panel was convened by the National Children's Medical Center following a request from the National Health and Family Planning Commission in April. Huang, the hospital president, said the goal is to eventually have guidelines covering more than 300 childhood diseases and conditions, with the initial target being to release five per year. Cao Junming, a 10-year-old boy with brain tumor in Benxi, Liaoning province, said his only wish before he died was to donate his body to help those in need. He urged his father to sign the donation form when he lost the ability to see and hear due to the disease. He died on Oct 29. Cao was diagnosed with brain tumor in May 2013 and experienced a relapse at the end of 2016. The boy's parents decided to respect his choice and signed the registration form on his behalf on March 14, a tough choice for them. According to Cao's mother, the decision was made by the boy himself, motivated by the kindness of a man who once helped Cao find his parents when he got lost. Cao took the man as a model to do good deeds since then. Cao's body was sent to the General Hospital of Shenyang Military for medical research according to his will, making him the youngest body donor in Benxi. Twin sisters Sun Yutong and Sun Yumeng attend a program hosted by CCTV. [Photo from Official Sina Weibo account of CCTV News] Sun Yumeng and Sun Yutong, 23-year-old twin sisters who gained internet fame for being both intelligent and beautiful, are now buzzing again on social media for landing jobs at China Central Television (CCTV). The twins finished their undergraduate studies at Fudan University last year, and graduated in Education from Harvard University in May. The annual Research Fronts report, which tracks the hottest and emerging topics in frontier science, has ranked China No 2 in the world for cutting-edge innovation. China, second only to the United States, leads the world in 25 of 143 topics in frontier natural and social science, according to the 2017 report released on Thursday. Frontier science refers to cutting-edge data, hypotheses and models that have not been widely tested or accepted. The report, now in its fourth year, is compiled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Clarivate Analytics, a global analytics firm, and is based on citation analysis of papers published from 2011 to 2016. Frontier research topics which are divided into 10 broad categories reflect global interests and scientific development trends, said Bai Chunli, president of the CAS. Topics can range from nanomaterial assembly and smog formation to superconductors for computers. "China's scientific development has entered a new era, with emphasis on making breakthroughs in fundamental scientific research," Bai said, adding that the Chinese government may support many of the identified areas over the next decade. "These breakthroughs might change the future pattern of the world." Six countries the US, China, Britain, Germany, France and Canada made the greatest contributions in the 143 research topics, according to the report. Of the 10 major scientific categories, the US leads in eight categories, ranging from physics to biology. China leads in two: material science and computer engineering. China has entered the second tier of global science innovation and research, but there is still a significant gap with the US, the report said. China's environmental authorities have agreed in principle to pilot a cross-regional agency on air pollution in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and neighboring areas, 21st Century Business Herald reported Thursday. Liu Youbin, an official with the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), said Tuesday at a news conference that relevant work is underway, the newspaper reported. Liu said the agreement was reached at a meeting of the ministry in September. Though Liu did not specify when such an agency will be set up, an expert with the ministry said it will likely be established within this year, according to the newspaper. The idea to set up an integrated air management mechanism was first put forward in August, when 10 ministries and commissions including MEP and six province-level regions (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and Henan) jointly issued an action plan to address air pollution in areas around Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei for autumn and winter from 2017 to 2018. According to the action plan, the preparation for the establishment of the air administration should be preliminarily completed and it should be put into test run by the end of Sept, aiming to improve cross-regional coordination, management and supervision in controlling air pollution and achieve integrated pollution prevention and control. The air administration was part of the efforts made by the MEP to improve air quality and prevent smog. According to Liu, the average density of PM2.5 in 28 cities in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and nearby areas went down 4.6 percent year on year to 62 micrograms per cubic meter from Oct 1 to Oct 27. The MEP said it will continue to step up measures to control air pollution to reach the targets set for this winter. Shanghai (Gasgoo)-The all-new Hongqi D-class sedan coded N501 was spied undisguised for the first time recently. As a D-class sedan under Hongqi L series, the new model is positioned below the Hongqi L5, and is likely to be named the Hongqi L3. In terms of the exterior, the new model retains Hongqi's iconic design language, featuring an intake grille with a straight waterfall shape, decent and elegant-looking oblong and round headlamps, and eye-catching standing emblem on its engine hood. It looks decent with its waist lines stretched from headlamps to rear end. It deploys hollow-square-shaped LED taillights, boasting a high recognition for Hongqi's family. Moreover, the new model employs one exhaust pipe on each side and a 4.0T V8 turbocharged engine. On Oct. 28, FAW-Hongqi released an advertisement on their official WeChat account to recruit dealers in 308 cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, aiming to expand its dealership network across China. In fact, early in this April, Hongqi held a signing ceremony for its first batch of 4S stores in Shanghai. During the ten-day recruitment, Hongqi received 48 applications from a variety of investors nationwide. After a strict selection, 21 dealers with rich operating experience of luxury vehicle brands were chosen to sell Hongqi models in 18 provinces, cities and municipalities across China. According to Hongqi's 4S store recruitment plan, there are 7 levels for 4S stores ranging from A to C3. The 4S store with highest level needs to cover an area of 5,000 square meters and an investment of RMB 21.5 million, which meet the standard of a luxury vehicle brand. The 4S with lowest level still needs to cover an area of 1,200 square meters and a total investment of RMB 4.8 million. On one hand, Hongqi is expanding its dealership network to absorb private consumers, and on the other hand, the position and design of its SUVs, EVs and connected cars began to face the private cart market. Hongqi is sparing no effort to enhance its brand awareness in the market, and is ambitious to set the first high-end independent vehicle brand in China. Women in Hong Kong are facing months of delay in getting vaccinated against human papilloma virus, or HPV, because of a drug shortage, and authorities are receiving a flood of complaints. The virus has been linked to cervical cancer. Private clinics in the city have been canceling appointments and blocking new patients looking to get vaccinated, some since April. The shortage has triggered a raft of complaints to the Hong Kong Department of Health and the Consumer Council, the city's consumer rights watchdog, mostly from residents of the Chinese mainland who have traveled to the city only to find they can no longer get an injection. As of Oct 18, the Consumer Council had recorded 281 complaints about vaccine services, 11 times more than last year. Most were related to the HPV vaccines. The vaccines - Cervarix and Gardasil - are administered in a series of three shots, and manufacturers recommend that a full course be completed within six months. However, the shortage means many women will have to wait much longer. Xu Cen, 30, from Shenzhen, Guangdong province, got her first injection in Hong Kong in May, but when she returned for her second in July she was told it had been postponed until mid-October. "Many people are waiting to get vaccinated," she said. "It's impossible to get fully vaccinated within the time frame suggested by the pharmaceutical companies." She has been told she will not be able to receive her third and final shot until March, about 10 months after her first injection. Although HPV vaccines are available on the mainland, some women prefer to travel to Hong Kong to receive Gardasil-9, a second-generation product from Merck Sharp & Dohme that protects against nine strains of HPV, which combined are responsible for an estimated 90 percent of cervical cancer cases. Gardasil-9 is not approved for the mainland market. Xu booked her appointment via WeChat with MJ Life, a private clinic, and was asked to pay in full after her first shot. However, she received a notice on Oct 10 saying the clinic would be unable to administer any more Gardasil-9 vaccines until Dec 1. Patients were advised to either delay their bookings, fly to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia at extra expense to get the shot or switch to Gardasil, the first-generation product that protects against only two major HPV strains. According to media reports, the shortage of Gardasil-9 was caused by a cyberattack on the pharmaceutical company that affected production. The company has not responded to those reports. Kun Ka-Yan, a doctor specializing in obstetrics, said delaying the second or third shots for more than a month could lower the effectiveness of the vaccine. However, he added, no HPV vaccine offers 100 percent protection against cancer, so women should ensure they receive regular cervical screenings. According to the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, cervical cancer was the city's eighth-deadliest cancer in 2015, causing 169 deaths. Contact the writer at stushadow@chinadailyhk.com BEIJING -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) will launch a major campaign on the study, promotion and implementation of the "spirit of the 19th CPC National Congress." The campaign will be the prime political task for the Party and for the country, according to a decision of the CPC Central Committee released Thursday. The document summarized the essence of congress and made detailed requirements for Party members and organizations during the campaign. The Central Committee requires full training for Party members, as well as courses specifically for Party officials. Textbooks will also be compiled, said the document, dated Wednesday. A series of publicity projects targeting non-Party members, netizens and overseas audience will help them understand the spirit of the Party congress. The use of new media and online video streaming services were highlighted. The campaign should be integrated with efforts to improve the Party's leadership and self-governance, as well as the ongoing reform and development, said the decision. Xi Jinping (center), chairman of the Central Military Commission, poses for a group photo with Zhang Shengmin (first left), chief of the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission, after a promotion ceremony in Beijing on Thursday. The CMC promoted Zhang to the rank of general on Thursday.LI GANG / XINHUA Zhang Shengmin, the top anti-corruption official in China's armed forces, was promoted to the rank of general on Thursday. Xi Jinping, chairman of the Central Military Commission, presented a promotion certificate to Zhang, 59, at the CMC headquarters in Beijing. This made Zhang the last uniformed member in the CMC, China's highest military authority, to become a general, which together with admiral is the most senior rank for an officer. He was recently named chief of the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission and deputy chief of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China at the First Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in late October. Along with Zhang, the commission has five uniformed members Xu Qiliang, Zhang Youxia, Wei Fenghe, Li Zuocheng and Miao Hua. Zhang Shengmin's early career in the People's Liberation Army remains undisclosed. Chinese media reports say that he spent more than 10 years in the PLA Rocket Force, formerly called the PLA Second Artillery Corps, in posts ranging from political commissar of a missile base and a command college to head of the political wing at the force's headquarters in Beijing. Around the end of last year, Zhang was named political commissar of the CMC Logistic Support Department, he was then named head of the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission around this February. After Xi become General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the CMC in late 2012, he launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign within the armed forces. So far, at least 100 senior officers at the rank of major general or higher including Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, former vice-chairmen of the CMC have been convicted or punished for corruption or other misconduct, according to PLA Daily. At a top-level military meeting on Oct 26, one day after Xi was re-elected Party general secretary and CMC chairman, he told officers that they must work hard to enforce discipline in the armed forces. President Xi Jinping greets visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Wednesday. Medvedev is on a three-day official visit.XIE HUANCHI / XINHUA President supports nation's joint development of Arctic with Russia China and Russia should jointly develop and cooperate on the use of the North Polar sea route and build a Silk Road on the ice, President Xi Jinping told visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday. Close to 20 bilateral cooperative documents were signed on Wednesday in fields such as investment, energy, aerospace and finance. Russia is China's largest neighbor, and China's clear goals and firm determination to develop and deepen China-Russia relations will not change, Xi said. Medvedev is on an official visit to China from Tuesday to Thursday and co-chaired with Premier Li Keqiang the 22nd China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting on Wednesday. He arrived in Beijing only a week after the conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which saw the election of the Party's new leadership. Medvedev gave his congratulations on the successful conclusion of the Party congress as well as Xi's re-election as general secretary of the CPC Central Committee. Russia is satisfied with the bilateral cooperation carried out since Xi's visit to Russia in July and is ready to reinforce the exchange of views and cooperation regarding international and regional affairs, he said. Xi said the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, which is at a new starting point, will grasp new opportunities and achieve new results. Both countries should ensure the good synergy of the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union, and better implement projects such as a coastal international transport corridor, Xi said. On Wednesday, Premier Li Keqiang said at a joint news conference after meeting with Medvedev that Russia's Far East, like central and western China, has huge potential for development and growth. China and Russia's strengthening cooperation in developing the Far East will introduce new opportunities for cooperation and prove mutually beneficial, Li said. Feng Yujun, a professor of Russian studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, noted that the recent frequency of high-level contacts between the two countries, including Xi's phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, shows Russia's lasting focus and need for China and its market and capital. Since the world's efforts in developing Arctic shipping routes are at an initial stage, China and Russia are showing long-term vision in developing the Silk Road on the ice, Feng said. Both countries share the need to diversify routes for shipping globally, and Russia, next to the Arctic Ocean, has some natural advantages in exploring the polar region, Feng said. Contact the writers at zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn Related Editorial: Good China-Russia ties benefit world stability SYDNEY - Hundreds of fearful refugees were urged to leave an Australian detention camp in Papua New Guinea on Wednesday as conditions worsened, with power and water cut off in a tense impasse. Canberra agreed to close its Manus Island facility by the end of October after the PNG Supreme Court ruled that holding people there was unconstitutional. It was due to be handed over to local authorities on Tuesday, with some 600 men inside told to move to transition centers in the nearby town of Lorengau. But many have locked themselves in, fearing they will not be safe outside where some in the local community do not want them. Last week, there were reports that asylum-seekers faced "unchecked violence" and that they "have been getting stabbed, beaten, and robbed" ahead of the Oct 31 deadline. Staff have abandoned the camp, with electricity and water supplies cut, refugee advocates said. There have been reports of looting. Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who has lodged an affidavit in PNG's Supreme Court trying to prevent the camp's closure, said everyone was afraid after a restless night. "There is not water, power and food. Even the toilets do not work," he tweeted on Wednesday. "People gathering in stress. Any time we expect that someone will attack us." Asylum-seekers who try to reach Australia by boat are sent to two remote Pacific processing centers - PNG's Manus Island and Nauru. They are barred from settling in Australia, even if found to be genuine refugees. They have the option of returning home, moving to the Nauru camp, applying to be resettled in a third country like Cambodia or the United States, or make a life for themselves in PNG. Australian Greens senator Nick McKim was on Manus Island and said the transition facilities were not ready, sparking a furious rebuke from Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, who accused him of spreading false information. McKim returned fire, telling broadcaster ABC, "I'm actually the one here on the ground". Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop urged those refusing to leave to do so, saying it made "no sense" for them to stay. "The alternative accommodation ... is providing all the essential services, including food and water and electricity and medical supplies," she told Sky News. She added that the PNG government "was in charge of law and order and security and I understand they have this matter in hand". PNG Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas moved to dispel fears that those refusing to leave would be removed forcibly. "We are not going to move the refugees by force, it's going to be a voluntary movement by refugees and non-refugees out of Manus Regional Processing Centre," he told the Post-Courier newspaper on Tuesday. Agence France-presse (China Daily 11/02/2017 page11) A model walks the runway with a new creation of Chu Yan during the China Fashion Week in Beijing, on Oct 31, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Chu Yan, the chief costume designer for leaders of the 2014 APEC meeting, released her new creations during the China Fashion Week in Beijing on Tuesday night. A total of 45 outfits graced the runway at Beijing Hotel, featuring both traditional Chinese styles and creations with exotic twists, presenting the celebrated designer's endeavor to revive traditional Chinese clothes and to bridge Eastern and Western tastes in the international fashion scene. The 12th EU-China Business and Technology Cooperation Fair was held from Oct 29 to 31 in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province, in a bid to promote deeper business ties and uncover potential investment opportunities. The 12th EU-China Business and Technology Cooperation Fair opens in grand style on Oct 30 in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo by Zhu Ying/ qingdaonews.com] Nearly 600 political and business elites from China and Europe took part in the event, including Liu Jianjun, deputy mayor of Qingdao, Laurent Bochereau, head of the Science, Technology and Environment Section at the Delegation of the European Union to China, Francois Cuillandre, mayor of the French city of Brest, and representatives of the Regione Siciliana's industry ministry. Organized by the Qingdao municipal government, the event featured a series of forums, matching conferences and exhibitions focusing on the marine industry, scientific research and innovations, environmental technology, new energy applications, and intelligent manufacturing. Nearly 600 political and business elites from China and Europe take part in the fair, which focuses on marine industry, scientific research and innovations, and intelligent manufacturing, among other fields. [Photo by Zhu Ying/ qingdaonews.com] Having been successfully held 11 times, this was the third consecutive year that the event was in Qingdao. A total of 25 EU countries took part, including the UK, France, and Germany. With more than 190 European enterprises negotiating partnerships with about 300 Qingdao-based companies, the fair was an important platform for EU member countries and China to forge an ever-closer relationship and discuss further opportunities for cooperation. Express-delivery tricycles with eight-digit registration numbers are seen in Beijing on Dec 2, 2016. [Photo/China Daily] Editor's note: Before the "Double Eleven" (Nov 11) annual e-shopping carnival, some courier service providers have adopted measures to protect customers' information. To protect customers' privacy, the courier service providers have decided to hide part of the customers' information; and only a deliveryman using a special device fitted with QR code can scan the hidden part to get the address, cellphone number and name of the recipient. Will the move help better protect customers' information? Two experts share their views with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang: More steps needed to prevent leaks It's good that some express delivery companies have started hiding part of their customers' information from the cover of their parcels. But the problem is that "outsiders" who get access to customers' database, not discarded parcel boxes, are responsible for the majority of the leaks. Unscrupulous traders can get customers' information either by purchasing e-information from certain insiders in the courier service industry, or by hiring hackers to break into the database of a delivery company. The illegal selling of customers' information is so fierce that it has led to the establishment of a big profit chain. On Aug 26 last year, a former staff member of the Hunan branch of SF Express faced trial in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, because he had made 360,000 yuan ($54,250) by selling customers' information. Therefore, to prevent information leaks, express delivery companies need to take more measures than just hiding part of the customers' information. They need to strengthen in-house regulation so as to prevent insiders from leaking customers' information to make extra money, and upgrade their software security to make their database safer. Only in this way the courier service providers can curb the leak of customers' information. Zhao Xiaomin, CEO of G.shuo Management & Capital, specializing in logistics A welcome trend in the industry Some people say the move will help better protect customers' information. But it is better news for the delivery companies than for the customers, because the leak of customers' information from an express delivery company can threaten its market value. Therefore, the privacy rule may better protect both the customers and the companies and help the entire industry to grow in a healthier way. It is too early, however, to say the move will solve the customers' information leak problem, because many unscrupulous traders are eyeing the customers' information databank that express delivery companies have access to. In fact, the information that people give to express delivery companies is more "valuable" than those they give to banks or real estate developers, because crooked traders can extract a lot of information from a customer's address, name, cellphone number and, especially, consumption habits, and use it to make money. That's why in the underground market, immoral traders are always looking to buy such information. Law enforcement officers need to take harsher measures to eliminate these profit chains in order to root out the illegal trade in personal information. That express delivery companies have adopted the privacy rule self-willingly, and not to meet the requirement of any regulation, shows they are competing with each other to improve their services and, in the process, have vowed to protect customers' information. This is a positive trend in the industry. And if this trend continues, the express delivery industry will graduate from the old style of development to a new, customer-oriented development sooner rather than later. Yao Jianfang, a Hangzhou-based e-commerce analyst Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party, DPP, Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen speaks during a press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, April 15, 2015. [Photo/IC] By resorting to the old, tricky game of "private and unofficial" transit through United States territory, Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen has made her previous "stance" to seek better ties with the Chinese mainland quite doubtful. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang had urged the US not to allow Tsai to transit through Hawaii and Guam on Saturday on her way to some Pacific countries, because it would violate the one-China principle, which not only Washington but also the international community has acceded to. Tsai's transit through the US on Saturday is her second this year. In January, she stopped over in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America. Although the US insists there is no change in its one-China policy, Tsai would do good to avoid such severe provocations if she really wants to improve cross-Straits ties, which have deteriorated since she assumed the role of Taiwan leader in May last year. On Oct 26, before Tsai embarked on the provocative trip, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, reiterated that the 1992 Consensus holds the key to the peaceful development of relations between the two sides of the Straits. His remarks came in response to a speech given that day by Tsai, who reiterated her "stance" to improve cross-Straits ties while trying to beautify the role her ruling Democratic Progressive Party has played in past cross-Straits exchanges. She delivered the speech at a forum celebrating the 30th anniversary of the resumption of exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan. Such actions and remarks have brought her approval rating down. In fact, polls do not bode well for Tsai, as a recent survey shows more than 50 percent of Taiwan residents are not satisfied with her performance and policymaking, particularly her failure to fully recognize the 1992 Consensus. With too much at stake, she had kept close eye on the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the report delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the opening session on Oct 18, which stressed that the one-China principle is the political foundation of cross-Straits ties. "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," Xi said. The central leadership's resolve to fight separatist forces on the island is in contrast to Tsai's ambiguous stance on cross-Straits ties, which led to the suspension of official communication channels between the political parties on the two sides last year. Equivocation on the one-China principle will also put extra pressure on Tsai's cross-Straits approach as the mainland steps up its efforts to fight the secessionist forces. The resumption of contacts between the political parties on both sides, as Tsai said in her latest address, is indeed key to better cross-Straits ties. But that would be possible only when Tsai and the DPP stop the play of words and offer a clear answer to whether or not they accept the one-China principle. Tsai's "ultimate goodwill", if there is any, appears to have sabotaged the political foundation of the eight-year peaceful interaction when her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou was in office. Tsai knows full well that the attempt to seek "constitutional independence" of the island, as former Taiwan leader Chen Shuibian did between 2000 and 2008, is doomed to fail again. And her plan to gradually consolidate the secessionist forces on the island while putting on a show of "maintaining the status quo" is not a smart move. Tsai's ambiguous stance on the 1992 Consensus faces a moment of truth. With the opposition Kuomintang on the ropes, Washington's tacit approval of the so-called de-sinicization campaigns on the island may embolden Tsai and the DPP to go against the wishes of most Taiwan compatriots and, instead, take measures that could further deteriorate cross-Straits relations. However, the strong tone in Xi's report made it clear that the mainland will resort to even stronger countermeasures if Tsai takes risky moves. The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Taiwan Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. President Xi Jinping greets visiting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Nov 1. Medvedev is on a three-day official visit. XIE HUANCHI / XINHUA Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's visit to China has further cemented the all-round strategic partnership between the two countries, which was already nothing short of substantial, thanks to their cooperation and exchanges in a wide range of areas. The meeting between Medvedev and Premier Li Keqiang on Tuesday and their holding of the 22nd China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting on Wednesday, the first after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, showcased the closeness of ties that have been forged through frequent high-level talks. Over the past five years, for instance, President Xi Jinping has been to Russia six times, either for state visits or to participate in international activities, and Xi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have talked frequently on the sidelines of different multilateral meetings, which has laid a solid foundation for the countries' increasingly good relations. And as Xi said in his meeting with Medvedev in Beijing on Wednesday, China's clear objective of advancing and deepening ties with Russia, and its steadfast resolve to do so, will not change. The economies of both countries are complementary to each other. China's capital, market, infrastructure construction and manufacturing capacity can meet the needs of Russia's development while Russia's advanced technology and resources of both raw material and talent are what China needs for the upgrading of its economy. Russia's development strategy dovetails with China's, which finds expression in the converging of China's development of its northeast region with Russia's development of its far east. That explains why Russia has supported China's Belt and Road Initiative from the very beginning. The economic cooperation between the two countries will be further promoted. The good bilateral ties have made it easy for both to reach consensuses on a wide range of international issues, which has a bearing on the overall global situation and hot spot issues. Both are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, members of the G20, BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and their joint efforts play a key role in maintaining the world's political stability. Healthy relations between the world's major countries make a huge difference to global stability and the building of a community of shared future for all mankind. The good bilateral China-Russia relations have set a good example and will continue to contribute to these. China and Russia will further promote their political mutual trust and substantiate their strategic partnership, which will not just be in their own interests but also the interests of the world. Sedan sales in China slightly recovered again in September. However the total volume for the first nine months of the year was still down from the previous year. According to statistics from Gasgoo.com (Chinese), a total 1.16 million sedans were sold in the country in September, up 4.7% year-on-year. Sedan sales accounted for 50.7% of all passenger automobiles sold in the country over the course of the month, up 0.6 percentage points. Own brand automobiles ranked third in overall sedan sales, surpassing American brand sedan sales. As before, German sedan sales topped the charts, totaling 399,185 units, up 14.5% year-on-year. German brands accounted for just over a third of all sedans sold in the country. Japanese brand sales totaled 243,449 units, increasing 8.9% year-on-year. Meanwhile own brand and American sedan sales totaled 207,847 units and 195,771 units, representing year-on-year growth rates of 0.7% and 4.9%, respectively. Meanwhile Korean and French sedan sales continued to fall, respectively decreasing 37.7% and 16.4% year-on-year. The A-class segment accounted for the majority of sedan sales in September at 64.3%; however, there was almost no growth from last year, with sales this month totaling 749,924 units. A0-class sedan sales totaled 133,791 units, increasing 7.8% year-on-year, while B- and C-class sedan sales grew around 10% each, totaling 197,508 units and 54,240 units respectively. A00-class sedan sales over doubled, but still remain very low at just under 31,000 units. FAW Volkswagen sold the most sedans in September, with its monthly sales totaling 185,073 units, up 15.9% year-on-year. It was followed by Shanghai VW, Shanghai GM, Dongfeng Nissan, Changan Ford, Beijing Hyundai, Geely, FAW Toyota, Guangqi Honda and Guangqi Toyota. Shanghai VWs sales increased 12%, surpassing Shanghai GM with a total of 166,503 units. Shanghai GMs sales increased 8.6% year-on-year, totaling 132,105 units. Dongfeng Nissan followed behind the big three, with its sales totaling 70,203 units, up 6.9% year-on-year. Following behind the JV was Changan Ford, whose sales totaled 63,666 units, down 2.1% year-on-year. Geely once again ranked as the months best-performing own brand seller of sedans, selling a total of 52,519 units, representing year-on-year growth of 18.9%. Geely was surpassed by Beijing Hyundai, whose sales totaled 57,138 units, 14.9% less than the amount sold a year ago. The VW Lavida was the months best-selling sedan model; it was followed by the Nissan Bluebird Sylphy, VW Sagitar, Buick New Excelle, Ford Escort, VW Jetta, Toyota Corolla, VW New Santana, VW Bora and SAIC-GM-Wuling Baojun 310. The VW Lavidas sales totaled 53,520 units, up 34.7% year-on-year. In second place with 39,789 units was the Nissan Bluebird Sylphy, up 5.7% year-on-year. In third place was the VW Sagitar, sales of which totaled 39,358 units, up 15.3% year-on-year. In fourth was the Buick New Excelle, whose sales totaled 36,045 units. The best-selling own brand sedan of the month was the SAIC-GM-Wuling Baojun 310, whose sales totaled 21,705 units, over tripling from last year. The Baojun 310 surpassed the previous best-selling Geely Emgrand EC7, whose sales totaled 21,138 units. A national flag raising ceremony is held in Great Hinggan Mountains, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, on Jan 2, 2016. [Photo/VCG] According to a draft amendment to the Criminal Law that was submitted to the top legislature for review on Tuesday, anyone who disrespects the national anthem faces imprisonment of up to three years. To be specific, those who maliciously modify the lyrics, or play or sing the national anthem in a distorted or derogative way in public, or with other serious disrespectful behavior, will be held criminally accountable and punished. China's Constitution grants its national anthem the same status as the national flag and emblem and extends to it the same legal protection. The laws covering the national flag and emblem were passed and came into force in 1990 and 1991, respectively. However, a national anthem law remained conspicuous by its absence until one was approved by the top legislature on Sept 1. The National Anthem Law is a necessary supplement to the Criminal Law, which lacks any rules on punishing those who mock or insult the nation's anthem. It means the national anthem joins the national flag and emblem in being protected by the law. Legislation on disrespecting the national anthem should also be a priority for the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions. Despite the national flag and emblem laws being applicable to the two SARs according to their basic laws, practical and viable legal clauses to bring those insulting the national anthem to account are not in place and need to be introduced as a matter of urgency to protect the dignity and unity of the nation. China's national anthem, March of the Volunteers, was once viewed as a clarion call for the liberation of the Chinese nation and is still regarded as rousing the patriotism of the Chinese people. Any disrespect shown to the nation's anthem is equivalent to insulting the nation and should be punished according to the law. --BEIJING YOUTH DAILY [Photo/Xinhua] A RECENT ESSAY published in Science Translational Medicine, a sub-journal of Science, concludes that herbal medicines that contain aristolochic acid are a main cause of liver cancer in Asia. Beijing News comments: This is not the first time that aristolochic acid has been blamed for liver cancer. As early as the 1990s, overseas researchers found that aristolochic acid might harm human health. In 2001, the World Health Organization issued warnings about aristolochic acid because research results showed it might harm human kidneys. This time, the China Food and Drug Administration responded in a timely manner, saying that there is no direct data in support of the claim. Its spokesperson said that aristolochic acid has already proved harmful to human kidneys, yet there is no proof that it harms the human liver. However, the CFDA promised to support deeper research into the effects of aristolochic acid on the liver, which shows its openness. Some worry that if aristolochic acid, which is found in herbs widely used in traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions, is found harmful to human liver that it will ruin people's trust in TCM. That concern is unnecessary. Like Western medicine, TCM should make constant progress and adapt to new findings. The more patients it heals, the more public trust it will gain. TCM practitioners should take the dispute over aristolochic acid as an opportunity to modernize. It is time that TCM practitioners and drug supervisors at all levels conducted deeper scientific research into the effects of the different herbs used in TCM, so as to reassure patients of their safety. The central leadership has already highlighted the importance of developing TCM, and TCM practitioners should heed that call by constantly improving themselves. The CFDA has taken the right path by allowing researchers to do their research. A draft revision of the Rural Land Contract Law was recently submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, for review. The revised law aims to further safeguard farmers' interests and rights to use contracted land. If the draft is passed by the country's top legislature, the current round of rural land contracts will be extended for another 30 years. This will provide farmers with stable expectations for the future. General Secretary Xi Jinping said in the report he delivered to the opening session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, that the government will consolidate and improve the basic rural land management system, advance reform of the rural land system, and improve the system by separating ownership rights, contract rights, and management rights for contracted rural land. The changes incorporated in the draft law consider the long term actual situation of agriculture, the countryside and farmers, and are in accordance with the changing times. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev and Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili attend the inauguration ceremony of Baku - Tbilisi - Kars railway in Alyat, Azerbaijan, October 30, 2017.[Photo/Xinhua] The South Caucasus region, a land bridge during the ancient Silk Road, is once again eager to play a crucial role connecting China and Europe by heavily investing in a railway which runs between Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. The region's strategically important location was highlighted during the recent inauguration ceremony of the aforementioned railway. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars track, also dubbed the "Iron Silk Road", was inaugurated on November 30, 2017, in Alyat, 70 kilometers southwest of Baku, Azerbaijan. The presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan; the prime ministers of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the ministers of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan attended the ceremony to mark the historic day. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project, which has a price tag of $1 billion, was initiated in 2005 and the construction began in 2007. The line will initially be used to transport 1 million passengers and 6.5 million tons of freight a year. In the long term, its capacity is set to reach 17 million tons per year. Apart from constituting the backbone of the economic corridor between Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway will also increase connectivity across Eurasia and reduce the transport time from China to Western Europe to 15 days from well over a month. Trains coming from China will enter into Kazakhstan through the Khorgos Gateway, before crossing the Caspian Sea by ferry to reach Azeri capital Baku. From Baku, trains will go through Georgian capital Tbilisi, pass through gauge-changing facilities in the Georgian town of Akhalkalaki and reach Turkish city Kars. Turkey plans to build another high-speed railway line in collaboration with China between Kars and Sivas. Building Kars-Sivas line would enable trains to reach Istanbul and feed into the broader European rail system. This route from China to Europe is called the Middle Corridor, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is designed to become a crucial part of the Middle Corridor Initiative which is an essential component of the Belt and Road Initiative. Integration of the Middle Corridor Initiative into the Belt and Road Initiative is the spirit of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2015 between Turkey and China on aligning the Belt and Road Initiative and Middle Corridor Initiative. Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of Turkey, during his visit to Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum this May, pledged that as an indispensable participant, Turkey is providing a strong support to the Belt and Road Initiative. To that end, as an important step in the Middle Corridor Initiative, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line is an integral part of the Belt and Road Initiative. The first test drive on the first half of the Middle Corridor was carried out from Shihezi in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region of China. The train, which traveled 3,500 km, reached Baku on August 3, 2015, after a five-day trip. The first freight train that ran on the second part of the Middle Corridor, which is Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway to Europe, has recently departed from Kostanay region of Kazakhstan. The train followed Baku-Tbilisi-Kars route to reach Mersin Port in Turkey. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said at the inauguration ceremony of the BTK that the 826-kilometer railroad is the "shortest and most reliable link between Asia and Europe. The operation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway encourages other states to invest in their railway infrastructure projects to get connected to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line which would pave the way to building a more efficient web of transportation in the region. According to Onur Uysal, a Turkish railway consultant, Kazakhstan has just completed a west-east rail connection which may enhance connectivity between Turkey and China via the Caspian Sea. Iran is willing to build a new line to reach Azerbaijan, Georgian Government has stated that it may re-open Sukhumi-Tbilisi railway and Afghanistan has also announced its interest in this project. The European Union applauded the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars stating that it is "a major step in transport interconnections linking the European Union, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia. According to experts, the importance of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is difficult to underestimate. First, The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is believed to provide an economic boost to the strategically important South Caucasus region, and it will also be one of the critical parts of the Belt and Road in the wider region of Eurasia. Second, the railway project will enable the countries in South Caucasus to extend their reach to Europe, Central Asia, and China. Third, the region's enhanced connectivity may lead to increased manufacturing capacity. Increasing number of Chinese firms may get interested in using the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line to transport their products to Europe. And the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway might also serve as a new incentive for Turkey and China to cooperate in building the Sivas-Kars railway line which would enable direct connection to Istanbul and feed into the broader European rail network. The author is a PhD Candidate at the School of International Studies, Peking University. China, ROK plan to put ties back on track By Zhang Yunbi | China Daily | Updated: 2017-11-01 07:11 Beijing and Seoul have agreed to put exchanges and cooperation back on the track of normal development at an early date following their recent diplomatic communications, according to a Foreign Ministry news release on Tuesday. The two countries agreed that they will communicate on issues regarding the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system through military channels, the release said. Experts called the fresh progress part of their joint efforts to move closer to each other, repair two-way ties and avoid a nuclear arms race that would further complicate Northeast Asia's complicated security landscape. Their diplomatic ties, strengthened a quarter-century ago, have undergone a chill in recent years partly because the United States' THAAD system, installed in the southern ROK, has radar with the capability of covering part of China. China has continuously reiterated that it opposes the deployment. The Tuesday release said the ROK has acknowledged China's position and concerns on the THAAD issue. Seoul told Beijing that THAAD was deployed in the ROK in accordance with its original purpose, and it does not target a third country. When asked if there is any change in China's position on THAAD, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday that China's position in this regard is clear, consistent and "there is no change" in it. Hua mentioned recent pledges made by Seoul and its officials, including that the ROK is not considering any additional deployment of THAAD, that it won't participate in US-led missile defense networks, and that US-Japan-ROK trilateral security cooperation won't extend to a military alliance. It is hoped Seoul will translate these words into actions, Hua said. Properly tackling the THAAD issue and eliminating stumbling blocks for bilateral ties is a common aspiration of both countries, she said at a regular news conference in Beijing. China also stated its positions and concerns on the topics in the release on Tuesday, with Seoul once again reiterating its stance. Su Xiaohui, an international strategy researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said the release displays the shared will of both sides to keep THAAD from further damaging their overall ties, showing the two sides "are in the process of meeting halfway". "Seoul has known that its own security could never be ensured at the cost of others', and it needs cooperation with Beijing over issues including those involving the peninsula," Su said. Ruan Zongze, vice-president of CIIS, said the improving bilateral ties could get a boost if Seoul fulfills its latest pledges on anti-missile issues, which is key to ending the strain between them. On the Korean Peninsula situation, the release said the two sides reiterated their commitment to resolving the nuclear issue through all diplomatic means and said they will enhance strategic communication and cooperation in this regard. zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 11/01/2017 page1) President Xi Jinping, right, and his US counterpart Donald Trump take a walk to further discuss bilateral cooperation issues in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the United States, April 7, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING - At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, US President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to China from Nov 8 to 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a press release on Thursday morning. The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said. He said China stands ready to work with the United States to achieve important results for Trump's visit and Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. The University of Utah has released the name of Chinese student Guo Chenwei, 23, who was shot and killed in an attempted carjacking near the campus on Monday night. Classes were canceled on Tuesday but the campus remains open and a secure-in-place order has been lifted. After hours of searching by the police and FBI, the suspected gunman, Austin Jeffrey Boutain, 24, was taken into custody at Salt Lake City's main library on Tuesday afternoon. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday that the Chinese embassy in the United States has requested information from the authorities, urging the police to solve the case as soon as possible. The embassy also expressed sympathy and said it had provided assistance to Guo's family, she said. "The Foreign Ministry and the embassy in the US will keep a close eye on the development of the case, and offered necessary support for the family's visit to the US," she added. The official Twitter account of the University of Utah posted a recent picture of Guo. It said in a statement that everyone at the university was heartbroken by the loss of Guo. "He was extraordinarily outgoing, creative, smart and extremely engaged." University of Utah President David Pershing said in a statement sent to students: "We have canceled classes today in respect for Chenwei and the impact this violent event has had on our campus community. Chenwei was a pre-computer science major with a promising future and worked as a peer adviser in our International Student and Scholar Services Office." Guo was born in Beijing. He arrived in the US in 2012 and would have turned 24 on Sunday. Police believe Boutain shot Guo while attempting to steal his car. Additional details about the incident have yet to be released. Pershing said the university is working to bring Guo's family to Utah from China. Contact the writers at lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com (China Daily 11/02/2017 page3) British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon arrives at the National Cyber Security Center in London, Britain, Feb 14, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] LONDON - British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon was the latest British politician on Wednesday to be named in a sexual harassment scandal that has erupted in the Houses of Parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May has called for urgent action after a catalog of complaints of inappropriate behavior by MPs and ministers toward women. International Trade Minister Mark Garnier is already being investigated after it was revealed he asked his secretary to go to a shop in London's "sex" quarter of Soho to buy two sex toys. Fallon's name has now been drawn into the debate after national newspapers told how he had touched the knee of a well-known female broadcaster and columnist. The "victim" of that incident, Julia Hartley-Brewer, responded on social media, saying: "This 'incident' happened in 2002. No one was remotely upset or distressed by it. My knees remain intact." Hartley-Brewer said she did not consider herself a victim after the incident which happened over dinner at a Conservative Party conference. The journalist said of the incident: "After the minister kept putting his hand on my knee, I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would punch him in the face. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter." But the tabloid Sun made Fallon the subject of its front page splash story on Tuesday, with the headline - "Fallon: I felt radio host's knee". The papers sub-heading read: "Shock confession as sex pest dossier implicates six cabinet members". A spokesman for Fallon said he had apologized when it happened in 2002, adding: "He apologized when the incident happened 15 years ago and both Julia and he now considered the matter closed." But the harassment debate, dubbed "Pestminster" by the newspaper, has continued to dominate the world of politics. The London-based Times reports that government ministers face being fired in "sex pest crackdown". In a debate in the House of Commons on Monday, Speaker John Bercow said there must be zero-tolerance toward harassment and bullying on the Palace of Westminster estate. 'Dirty dossier' The Leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, has called for action over the issue within days rather than weeks. In its online platform on Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph claims a Conservative Minister and an MP have been accused of paying women to be silent in a so-called "dirty dossier" being shared by party staff. The newspaper said the new disclosures come amid a growing sexual harassment scandal at Westminster, with some 40 Conservative MPs being named in the "dossier". In the list obtained by The Telegraph, seven Cabinet ministers, eight former ministers and 15 other members of the Government are named. The Telegraph said of the MPs named in the list, 25 are alleged to have behaved inappropriately. Thirteen MPs are named over consensual relationships or personal sexual preferences, while two others are alleged to have made women pregnant. Xinhua A giant panda on a 10-year loan from China is seen during a welcoming ceremony at Soekarno Hatta airport in Tangerang, Indonesia, Sept 28, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] BOGOR, Indonesia - Giant panda Cai Tao was asleep for much of his debut before media Wednesday in the Indonesian city of Bogor, but occasionally perked up to eat bamboo. Cai Tao and a much more active female, Hu Chun, were shown in their specially built enclosure to reporters as part of preparations for allowing the public to visit them at Taman Safari zoo starting later this month. The pair arrived in Indonesia in late Sept from Chengdu in China and were quarantined at the zoo in Bogor, just outside the capital, Jakarta. The zoo hopes the 7-year-olds will mate and add to the giant panda population. It's built a special enclosure and facilities that cost about 60 billion rupiah ($4.5 million). Zoo director Jansen Manansang said he's "very optimistic they can breed here next year or the year after." In an outdoor play area, Hu Chun walked around the green landscape, climbed rocks and contentedly munched on bamboo. The living quarters for Cai Tao and Hu Chun, built to resemble a Chinese temple, are equipped with an elevator, sleeping area, medical facilities and indoor and outdoor play areas. Manansang said the "palace" will be the pair's home for about 10 years under a breeding loan agreement between Indonesia and China. Any offspring would be given to China, he said. There are fewer than 1,900 giant pandas in their only wild habitats in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. AP Patrick Carnes is evacuated in a Walmart cart by SWAT medics from the scene of a shooting at a Walmart where Carnes was shopping in Thornton, Colorado Nov 1, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] THORNTON, Colo - At least three people were killed in a shooting inside a Walmart store on Wednesday in suburban Denver, where police said they had not yet taken anyone into custody. Police in Thornton, Colorado, did not immediately release any information about the circumstances of the shooting or who was responsible for the gunfire. Two men were killed in the shooting. A women, who was injured in the shooting, was taken to a hospital where she later died, Thornton Police Department said on Twitter. "Detectives currently reviewing security footage & witnesses being interviewed for assistance with suspect(s)," police said on Twitter. No one had been taken into custody, police said. The situation appeared potentially ominous from authorities' initial reports. "We've got multiple parties down, we're still trying to ascertain what their conditions are," Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters by telephone not long after police arrived on the scene. About an hour after the initial alert, police said on Twitter that the threat of gunfire had ended at the store, which was surrounded by police and fire crews. "At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available," the police department said in that tweet. Confirmation of the two fatalities came about 20 minutes later. Thornton is city of about 120,000 people roughly 10 miles (16 km) northeast of downtown Denver. Avila said police were called to the store at about 6:30 pm Mountain time (8:30 pm ET) and that the gunshots had ceased by the time the first officers arrived at the scene. A Walmart customer, Aaron Stephens, 44, of Thorton, told Reuters he was inside paying for groceries at a self-checkout stand when he heard gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets. "The employees started screaming and the customers started screaming" as people began to flee the store, he recounted. "I ran out, too, because I didn't want to get shot." Stephens said he did not see where the shooting had come from and did not see anyone struck by bullets. Local NBC television affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in the Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is situated in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to US Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Reuters Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Toyota said on October 30 that it will begin related tests of its fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) MIRAI in China. Meanwhile, the first hydrogen station for FCEV of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing (China) Co., Ltd. has been completed. Toyota said in the announcement that China is trying to promote the application and industrialization of FCEV with more infrastructure. As the first mass producer of FCEV across the world, Toyota wants to make contribution to Chinas FCEV development. According to the Japanese carmakers plan, in the future 3 to 5 years, Toyota will make researches on vehicle driving in the Chinese environment, on the quality of hydrogen fuel and other tests on quality durability. Toyota wants to explore the cooperation possibility with the government and the auto industry to build a hydrogen society. The FCEV MIRAI has an outstanding environment-friendly property. The vehicle only emits water from its tail pipe and boasts a range of 500 kilometers (Toyotas NEDC test data) with only three-minute hydrogen fueling. It is as convenient as traditional fuel-powered vehicle in range and refueling. Up to now, there are a total of six hydrogen stations in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Toyotas first hydrogen station is located in Changshu, Jiangsu province. US President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to China from Nov 8 to 10 next week at the invitation of President Xi Jinping, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang said on Thursday. During the visit, leaders of the two countries will have an in-depth exchange of views on bilateral relations and major international and regional issues of mutual concern, Lu said. China stands ready to work with the US side to secure important outcomes for Trump's visit and the meeting between the two heads of state, so as to inject fresh and strong impetus into the bilateral relations, he added. He Zhenwei, secretary-general of China Overseas Development Association, delivers a speech at the press conference held on Oct 31. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] The 2017 International Industrial Capacity Cooperation Forum and the 9th China Overseas Investment Fair aims to pursue the Belt and Road Initiative and promote international cooperation on production capacity. He Zhenwei, secretary-general of China Overseas Development Association (CODA), a national non-profit social organization, announced on Tuesday that the fair will be held in Beijing from Nov 21 to Nov 22. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) emphasizes the importance of promoting international cooperation on production capacity and opening up on all fronts. As the report General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered at 19th National Congress of the CPC points out, "openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind. China will not close its door to the world; we will only become more and more open." "General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out at the report that we should pursue the Belt and Road Initiative as a priority to promote international cooperation on production capacity and build up our strengths for international economic cooperation and competition, which highly correspond to the theme of our Fair," He said. "The efficiency of Chinese economy obviously has improved a lot, which can support the international production capacity cooperation and higher-level mutual investment," he added. Dong Bin, chairman of Sino-European Entrepreneurs Summit Committee, said China has become a global investment center and the international capital market shows unprecedented concern and interest to China, which indicates great potential of China's economic and social development. The fair has been successfully held annually for past eight years. He Zhenwei said the fair this year will invite senior officials, business tycoons and professionals all over the world to present and they will interpret the new trend of Chinese economy, and pursue further cooperation on production capacity, including mega projects. Representatives from more than 100 countries and regions, who specialize in key areas, such as equipment manufacturing, infrastructure construction, agriculture, e-commerce, telecommunication and new energy, will also be present. MADRID - The Spanish government delegate in Catalonia said on Thursday that he was "convinced" that new elections in the region would put an end to the ongoing crisis. Spain's rich Catalonia autonomous region held a referendum on self-determination on Oct 1, which was declared illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court. Following the declaration of independence by the former Catalan regional government on Friday, the Spanish government stripped the region of its autonomy, sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his government and decided to hold new elections in the region on Dec 21. Speaking on the day that several former members of the Catalan government appeared in court in Madrid facing charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds, Spanish government delegate Enric Millo said he looked ahead to the end of the crisis. Millo said he hopes the new Catalan regional government will "develop its ideas, whatever, their colors, within the current legal framework." He said the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which suspends the autonomy of Catalonia and hands control of key Catalan institutions to Madrid, will end once the Catalans choose their parliament and this in turn will elect the next president of the region. "We hope that the new (Catalan) government develops legitimate ideas and objectives, whatever they are, but that they do so within the law," he said. Each year, on Nov 5, Britain's skies are lit up with fireworks and its people gather around bonfires to burn effigies, known as a "guy". It is a fun festival and one that is especially aimed at children but the light-hearted amusement belies the brutal and controversial history behind Nov 5. The festival commemorates the capture of Guido Fawkes in 1605 as he prepared to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London in an attempt to kill King James I and his ministers. It was no idle plot. Fawkes had smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into the cellars of Parliament that were ready to be ignited when the king opened Parliament on Nov 5. In the years following the reign of King Henry VIII, the Church of England had become increasingly estranged from the Catholic Church in Rome. Henrys daughter, Elizabeth, had confirmed that the state religion in England was Protestant. It was a time when England's Catholics had little choice but to follow their faith in secret. When King James I ascended to the throne of England, there was no sign that he would end the persecution of English Catholics, and a group of Catholic activists, led by Robert Catesby, began a conspiracy to assassinate James and his ministers. Fawkes fought abroad for the King of Spain, who was the leader of Europe's Catholics in their fight against Protestant regimes. When Fawkes returned to England, he was determined to restore Catholicism as the national religion. Fawkes was discovered by a search party before he could detonate the explosives after the authorities had received information about the plot. He was tortured until he confessed. The next year, he was dragged by horse through the streets of London, and was slated to have been hung by the neck, but fell off the platform and broke his neck. He thus avoided the worst part of his sentence, which was to have been disembowelment while still conscious. The day of the discovery of the plot, Parliament called upon Londoners to light bonfires to celebrate the kings health and the country's continuation as a Protestant nation. The festival has continued ever since. Often,these days, the guy is modeled on a reviled figure from current affairs. Zhang Yangfei contributed to this story. US president's trip to include signing of major business deals US President Donald Trump's first state visit to China, which will start on Wednesday, is expected to yield positive results for bilateral ties, with a number of major business deals due to be signed, said officials and analysts. It will also be the first visit by a foreign head of state to China since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which ended in Beijing last week, at which the new CPC Central Committee was elected. In a phone conversation on Thursday, State Councilor Yang Jiechi and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exchanged their views on the preprations for Trump's visit. They agreed to enhance communication and coordinate closely to ensure the visit yields positive results. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Trump's state visit to China, from Wednesday to Friday, was at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will lead a business delegation during Trump's visit, and the two sides will sign a number of deals, said Fu Ziying, China's international trade representative and vice-minister of commerce. "We expect that through President Trump's visit, the two sides will achieve positive, pragmatic, mutually beneficial and balanced results," Fu said at a news conference on Thursday. The trade imbalance between China and the US, the world's two largest economies, is largely caused by US curbs on exports of many high-tech products to China, he said, adding that Sino-US trade is completely determined by the markets and consumers of the two sides. According to the Ministry of Commerce, US exports to China grew by an average of 11 percent over the past decade, much higher than the overall growth of 4 percent in US exports during the same period. During Trump's visit, the leaders of the two countries will "have an in-depth exchange of views on bilateral relations and major international and regional issues of mutual concern", added Lu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman. China stands ready to work with the US side to secure important outcomes in order to inject fresh and strong impetus into bilateral relations, he added. Ruan Zongze, executive vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that as China has entered a new era, Trump's visit will bring more opportunities for China-US relations. "Through the form of a 'state visit plus', the two sides will have in-depth and candid exchanges to boost mutual understanding and control disputes," he said. Jin Yong, deputy head of the School of International Studies at the Communication University of China, said that through the visit, the two sides are expected to reach greater consensus on issues related to trade and the Korean Peninsula. Editor's Note: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up his three-day China trip on Nov 2 with nearly 20 deals in investment, energy and space exploration and agreed with Premier Li to advance pragmatic cooperation between the two countries. With current Sino-Russian relations in the best period of history, Medvedev said Russia is willing to enhance traditional cooperation with China in areas such as energy, infrastructure construction and aviation, and to expand to new areas including e-commerce and financial investment. Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev shake hands before the 22nd China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on Nov 1, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua] Let's look back on some highlights of the China-Russia economic ties. Shanghai (Gasgoo)-With the phase out of political subsidies, OEMs require power battery companies to reduce battery prices largely. From the beginning of this year, mainstream power battery companies decreased their battery prices between 20% and 30% compared with last year. The related segments like battery material, manufacturing equipment of battery, battery parts and BMS are affected by the strong cost management of the power battery companies. On one hand, these companies suffered net profit declines and their overall profitability is also weakened. On the other hand, price competition spurred chaos to some extent, and meanwhile the prolonged account payment lead the capital chain to face industrial risks. Power battery companies cut costs quickly On Oct. 26, Hefei Guoxuan High-tech Energy Power released financial report for the third quarter, posting a year-on-year revenue growth of 9.7% to RMB 0.3755 billion, and net profit attributable to shareholders of listed company reached RMB 640 million, down 13.27% compared with the same period with last year. According to Hefei Guoxuan High-tech Energy Power, the nationwide price reduction of NEV batteries in 2017 caused sharp net profit decrease of their battery products, and thus affected their whole profitability. On Oct.20, China Aviation Lithium Battery Co., Ltd.'s parent company, Sichuan Chengfei Integration Technology Co., Ltd disclosed at a roadshow promotion that the price reduction of battery products would be over 20% or even more this year. Shenzhen BAK Battery Co., Ltd also released at a meeting that their product prices had decreased 30% compared with last year. Other two battery companies also said that they had cut their costs. It is learned that the battery companies reduce their cost via the following approaches: first, they manage to negotiate with suppliers to lower the materials and equipment prices and prolong the account payment; second, they promote the cost management in product design and manufacture; third, release of production capacity and scale effect enable them to cut costs; fourth, they lower their net profit to meet the reducing trends of battery price. Material, equipment and BMS suppliers were affected deeply Facing the compelling bargain from the power battery companies, battery separator and electrolytes have suffered gross profit reduction. The battery separator was once deemed as the most high-tech key material for lithium battery with high gross profit, but with the development of technologies, heavy investment of capital and release of production capacity, the gross profit for battery separator decreased over 10% year on year. In October, Nepal criminalized Christian conversion and evangelism. The law criminalizes sharing ones faith and threatens would-be lawbreakers with fines of more than $700 and up to five years in prison. Read CTs report. Support for anti-conversion laws isnt limited to Nepals secular government. CTs coverage of Nepals decision was shared by Hindu nationalist activists hoping to convince the Indian government to make the same decision. Anti-conversion laws already exist in nearby Sri Lanka, and the State Department has previously flagged them and blasphemy laws as some of its biggest concerns for religious freedom globally. These laws are a result of the fallen human condition, says Chris Seiple, the president emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement, a religious freedom advocacy group. Its a rare thing when you dont have immaturity and insecurity among the majority, said Seiple. To have that type of security and accept other faiths and to allow for free competition of ideas and beliefs as good for the country is not the norm. Seiple suggests that the story of Jesus talking to the woman at the well is a model for those who do wish to share their faith in countries hostile to religious freedom. If we can be in conversations, we can be a position to evangelize, not proselytize, when weve earned the right to speak into a relationship, he said. Seiple joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss if theres ever an upside to anti-conversion laws, how politics and culture enable or discourage these measures, and how to change a governments mind on religious freedom. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Subscribe to Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Facebook and Twitter Follow our host on Twitter: Morgan Lee Follow our guest on Twitter: Chris Seiple Subscribe to Marks newsletter: The Galli Report Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee, Richard Clark, and Cray Allred I had the privilege or reading a pre-release version of "God Shines Forth: How the Nature of God Shapes and Drives the Mission of the Church." Here are 20 quotes from the book, which you should pick up. | Image: Zalal Life Displaced Christians receive food aid in Iraqi Kurdistan. Ashty Bahro was one of the first to the scene in al-Qosh, traveling 25 miles over mountainous roads from his base in Iraqi Kurdistan to the town where 850 Iraqi Christian families had been newly displaced. Only weeks earlier, the families had relocated to Teleskof in the Nineveh Plain, following its liberation from ISIS. But the Kurdish independence referendum sparked a new crisis in the region. The Iraqi government moved quickly to reclaim lands controlled by the Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Shia militias linked with Iran also threatened the Christian areas, forcing families to flee once more. They are very tired. They just rebuilt their homes, said Bahro, head of Zalal Life Civil Society Foundation and former director of the Evangelical Alliance of Kurdistan. Now they are scared to remain in government-held cities. Zalal Life distributed 300 food baskets and bottles of water. The government of Hungary donated $2 million in aid for reconstruction. The United Nations wasnt there. People are not happy with the UN; they are using money for administration, said Bahro. The help is coming from churches and Christian organizations. The Iraqi Christian leader praised charities like Voice of the Martyrs, Tear Fund, Operation Mercy, and World Vision. And he welcomed American vice president Mike Pences statement that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will start to fund Christian groups in the region directly. They are here in the area, they know whats happening, and they go immediately to help, Bahro said. Maan Bitar, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Hama, Syria, confirmed concerns that UN aid was not reaching Christians in the Middle East. Christians receive only a trickle of the aid and other programs set for IDPs [internally displaced persons] inside Syria, he said. In the camps and on the Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan refugee lists, they are virtually non-existent. Image: Zalal Life Melkite Archbishop Issam Darwish of Zahle, Lebanon, has tried to fill in the gap. Two years ago he opened a free restaurant for refugees in his diocese that serves 1,000 hot meals a dayto Muslims and Christians equally. If the US can help Christian organizations directly, it will be goodif it can be done without discrimination, he said. They must serve Muslims and other minorities also. We live together, and want to remain together in our communities. Working with Christian organizations isnt enough to ensure the money will be spent well, according to one Egyptian Christian leader who asked CT for anonymity. Often in churches there is an attitude that the money is for God, and the leadership can spend it as it will, he said. Without the same level of due diligence and transparent accounting as in NGOs, there may be sincere misappropriation of funds. The UN has not always been the best steward either, said Botros Mansour, general director of the Baptist School in Nazareth, Israel. Critical of both the Obama and Trump administrations, he has a different administrative concern: politics. Having the US transfer funds directly to persecuted Christians could be a good thing, but American politics will surely mingle in, the Israeli Arab Christian said. They will want to brag about the aid to show their success, and to prove to the Christian Right that [President Donald Trump] delivers on his promises. The long-term consequences, however, could be disastrous, warns Mansour. Suppose a church is destroyed and US money comes in to fix it. He believes the radicals would come back again, stronger. The fuel will be the high-profile appearance of US aid, bringing opposition and resentment, Mansour said. American politics and the good of Christians do not necessarily overlap. Many Muslims will misinterpret it as proselytization, warns the Egyptian leader. It is very dangerous for churches to receive money from governments. It is dynamite, he said. I am unequivocally against it. For Martin Accad, chief academic officer of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, it is the lack of current clarity that gives him pause. The questions are endless and the concerns are many, he said. Depending on how this initiative is presented, churches and Christian groups may be wise to turn down this kindness. Image: Zalal Life Farouk Hammo, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Baghdad, agreed. The bottom line is that we do not recommend direct aid from the States to Christians, he said. It will agitate our Muslim brothers negatively against the Christian community. Archbishop Darwish downplays this threat, though conditionally. His church in the Beqaa Valley has received more than 6,000 refugees, assisted by Aid to the Church in Need. Saudi Arabia is here in Lebanon helping the Muslims, so what is the problem? he said. Some will make propaganda. But if Christians in the Middle East are open to Muslims, it will be fine. Even so, this understanding may not extend as easily to evangelicals, said Brother Khalaf, whose Jordanian ministry, Raja Al Aumam, engages in church planting and reconciliation with Messianic Jews. Many Jordanians consider local evangelicals to be an American church. It could backfire, he said. People already say we are not Arabs, that we are aligned with the Americans against our own people. But the Jordanian leader respects Trump and is cautiously in support of the USAID policy change if done well, as it will empower the church to do the ministry. Maybe we will be targeted more, he said. But in some countries, it cant get worse. Similarly, Rafic Greiche, priest and spokesman for the Catholic community in Egypt, welcomes US aid to Christian groups if done in a transparent manner with the government. But projects must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Helping Christians displaced from the Sinai by ISIS aggression? Probably. A sectarian mob attack in an Upper Egyptian village? Maybe. There is a danger that some will speak of the West, of Crusades, and try to make trouble, said Greiche. It depends on what is funded. If it is a real projectlike educationit should work. This has been Bitars hope with the UN, now frustrated for three years. His Syrian church has petitioned the UN to help reopen the New Generations School in Hama, closed since the 1960s. Jaded by the political agendas of most Western nations, Bitar is suspicious also of their aid. They want to bring you a basket of food and a blanket to cover yourself, he said. But not to help you live in dignity. It is the minimum to live, not to make a strong nation. If USAID offered to help, Bitar would accept itif it is not conditioned on any political agenda. He has little fear of local reaction. Muslims will be happy, he said. They like to send their children to schools run by Christians. Bahro hails Kurdistan as an example of foreign aid working well. The extremists among both Sunni and Shia will never be happy, he said, no matter who serves the Christians. But the churches here are helping all, especially the evangelical churches, he said. We have good relationships with everyonepastors, priests, and mullahs. Amid conflicting Christian reactions and unknown Muslim response, the policy change represents a new approach. Will it make things better or worse? Here in our area, the Kurdish Muslims trust Christians, Bahro said. In Arab areas, I dont know. Jayson Casper is a Cairo-based Middle East correspondent for Christianity Today. home World Police arrest Catholics protesting Reformation event in Belgium Belgian police arrested a group of youths who were praying the rosary to protest a service celebrating the Protestant Reformation at a Catholic cathedral in Brussels. Pastor Steven Fuite, president of the United Protestant Church of Belgium (UPCB), was leading the ecumenical service held at the Catholic Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula when a group of 10 men and one woman disrupted the ceremony. The group knelt together on the floor behind a row of pews, locked arms, and began to pray the rosary out loud, preventing Fuite from beginning the sermon. A video of the incident showed that a few middle-aged folks tried to prevent the group from praying by talking to them and nudging them. The organist played and the choir sang to pass the time and drown out the prayers until the police arrived. The police eventually led the protesters away and placed them under administrative arrest, allowing the service to proceed. The UPCB was hosting the event at the cathedral to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the day when Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle, an action that led to the monk's eventual schism from the Catholic Church. Prior to the arrest, the protesters had distributed flyers denouncing the service as a "profanation." "Our cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula is a Catholic edifice built by our fathers to be the House of God, for the celebration of the holy Mass, for the praise of God and of the saints. The occupation of our cathedral by the Protestants to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reform is therefore a profanation," the flyer read, as reported by Life Site News. The protesters contended that the Protestant Reformation was really a "revolt" on the pretext of combating against the abuses of the Catholic Church. They argued that Luther had denied many of the Church's teachings, including the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, as well as the "necessity of good works and the practice of Christian virtues." "This terrible revolution was a great drama for Christian society and for the salvation of souls. And the Lutheran errors are still heresies today because the Truth is eternal," the flyer continued. Life Site News noted that the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula was the subject of attacks in the 16th century when Protestants entered the building to break its stained glass windows and steal the relics of the saints. During the service, a collection was reportedly made to raise money for two Protestant organizations. In his sermon, Fuite emphasized the importance of respecting differences. "Our unity essentially derives from respecting differences. Without the other who is different, who thinks otherwise, who does otherwise, I do not exist, I am nothing. Differences are an inherent part of unity," he said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For days, Glenn Schmidt put in extra hours at his job so he could make the Fort Bend County Fair. "I don't miss those things with my daughter," said Schmidt, a financial adviser at Edward Jones Investments in Needville. "We have a lot of flexibility in setting our own schedule." That's one reason St. Louis-based financial services firm Edward Jones Investments came in at No. 4 this year on the Top Workplaces ranking of midsize companies, put together for the Houston Chronicle by Energage. The company, which helps clients prepare for retirement, among other financial services, has 495 employees scattered across 218 branches in the Houston area, the largest number of workers and locations among the 50 local midsize companies that made the list. Last year, the company had 229 branches with 513 employees and came in at No. 3 on the ranking of large local companies. Each branch typically has one financial adviser and one or two assistants, and dozens of surveyed employees said they can set their own schedules to balance their work schedules and personal lives. "I am my own boss," one employee said. "I have the flexibility I want in a career." Among the reasons employees applauded the company were high compensation levels for the time they put in advising clients on personalized financial plans and that they feel empowered to run their own branches like their own personal businesses. "It's fulfilling to work with clients on a day-to-day basis," said Schmidt, who is the regional leader of the Houston area at Edward Jones. "We help them achieve their goals, and we partner with them to make sure they stay on track and up to date." Cornerstone Home Lending became one of the largest mortgage lenders in the U.S. by focusing on its employees. The Houston-based company started in 1988 with five employees in one small office. Today, the company has 1,800 employees and 180 offices in 24 states. Each year, Cornerstone funds about $8.5 billion in home loans, averaging $257,000. "We are all here to accomplish a common goal: to be the best lender in the country," CEO Marc Laird said. "Everyone is in line with that mission." Aligning its employees toward a common objective has helped Cornerstone earn its No. 2 ranking among large businesses in this year's Top Workplaces list, based on an employee survey conducted for the Chronicle by Energage. Every new hire at Cornerstone is given a welcome package and a 25-minute video of Laird explaining the company's mission: to help customers achieve a piece of the American dream. "People will work hard and be passionate about their work if they know they'll make a positive difference," Laird said. Laird tries to make a difference in employees' lives, too. For nearly 30 years, he has personally sent a birthday card or email to every employee. Cornerstone also gives longtime employees anniversary presents for their service, company raffles for gift cards and year-end bonuses. Employees have won $1,250 gift cards and $1,500 bracelets over the years. Last year, all 1,800 employees received a $1,000 bonus, which cost the company $2 million. "It's important for us to recognize employee service and tenure," Laird said. "A lot of companies don't do that. It's not about the money, but the fact that the CEO of the company is taking the time to let people know he values what they do here." Since 1994, Cornerstone has managed the Cornerstone Cares fund, which collects donations from employees to help fellow co-workers in need. During Hurricane Harvey, 36 Cornerstone employees had their cars or houses flooded. The company fund has paid out more than $250,000 this year. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate At the contracting and equipment giant IES Holdings, don't expect a lot of hand-holding. Employees at the almost 2-decade-old company, which counts 4,000 employees nationwide and about 600 in the Houston area, are expected to be able to figure out how to complete their work with minimal management, President Robert Lewey said. "We promote what I call a high-trust environment," he said. "We want people when we give them a task, we know they can get it done without us having to constantly check on them." With that hands-off approach come discernible benefits for employees, whose response to a workplace survey landed the company at No. 4 among large companies in the Houston area. Lewey said IES doesn't track employees' vacation time or when they arrive at or leave the office, preferring to judge employees by the quality of their work. "Some people like to work early and some late. We expect them to perform at a high level, but we give them some latitude," he said. "We know they have other things in their lives." But it's not for everyone. While Lewey says the approach is great for self-starters, some employees have abused the company's time-off policy. "If a person takes advantage of our situation, we don't change the process. We might change the person," he said. What Lewey likes to describe as his laissez-faire approach has been in place since he ascended to the top ranks of IES six years ago. Since then, he said he's seen discernible improvement in productivity and employee retention. But the approach also reflects the personal belief system of Lewey himself, a former accountant and University of Houston graduate. "One of the things that bothers me is that most of the rules and regulations we have is because of a few people who need that rule," he said. "Most of us would get along fine without them." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Newmark Homes has been named one of Houston's top places to work for the sixth year in a row. The Houston homebuilder ranked No. 5 among small companies on this year's Top Workplaces list, based on an employee survey conducted for the Chronicle by Energage. The key to Newmark Homes' continued success on the list was cultivating a culture of communication and caring among employees, according to CEO Mike Moody. Newmark executives communicate the company's objectives on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis, and track how employees are progressing toward those goals. However, the homebuilder believes communication is most crucial during crises. Before Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Newmark Homes created a phone tree and assigned managers to check in on every employee twice daily to ensure they were safe. "Creating an environment of success is important, but more important, we try to regularly demonstrate that we care about each team member and their families," Moody said. Newmark relaunched during the financial crisis in 2009 with 59 employees and 154 home starts. Today, the builder has 73 employees and breaks ground on 350 to 375 homes a year. Newmark's average home price is about $430,000, with houses ranging from the $240,000s to more than $1.5 million. The builder has 16 model homes in master-planned communities on the west side of the Houston area. Newmark is moving its corporate office and design center to Interstate 10 and the Grand Parkway, closer to the company's model homes and where employees live. Newmark offers its employees several benefits, including health care coverage, a 4 percent 401(k) match and an employee assistance program. By taking care of employees, Newmark Homes believes it can better take care of customers, Moody said. Newmark has a referral rate of 35 percent, he added. "We believe team members who know they work for a company who cares deeply for them and their family will care for the company's customers in the same manner," Moody said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The real estate business is notorious for high turnover, but Realty One Group Lone Star bucks the trend, broker/owner Chance Brown said. Although the residential brokerage has grown 30-fold in the past three years, it has maintained a 97 percent employee retention rate, Brown said. The Houston residential brokerage - part of the national Realty One Group franchise based in Irvine, Calif. - launched in 2014 with four agents. Today, the company employs more than 100 agents. "We lose agents just like everyone else, but we have a high retention rate," Brown said. "I think a lot of that has to do with our focus on putting our agents first." That employee focus has helped Realty One Group Lone Star earn a No. 3 ranking among small businesses in this year's Top Workplaces list, based on an employee survey conducted for the Chronicle by Energage. The company moved up one spot from last year's list. Brown said he believes happy, productive agents translate to happier clients. That's why the company holds its monthly sales meetings over barbecue and beers, and hosts company retreats at a laser tag park or the Golden Nugget resort in Lake Charles, La. Each quarter, the company also gives back to the community, volunteering at the Houston Food Bank or helping with blood drives. "We try to have a good time while working hard," Brown said. Brown is also a big believer in transparency and accountability. The former salesman for David Weekley Homes shares his personal cellphone number with his employees, encouraging them to call or text anytime. The company also operates a closed Facebook group where agents can ask questions in an informal setting. Employees responding to the survey commended their firm's open-door policy and flexibility. The brokerage offers its agents online tools that helps them manage transactions, search for listings and market themselves. The company operates offices in Tomball and Sugar Land. "We want to create a brokerage where our agents can do more than just hang their license," Brown said. "We want to make our agents' lives easier and enhance our clients' lives." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate China's President Xi Jinping is running a great protection racket and U.S. businesses are paying the price. President Donald Trump's obsession with North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile capabilities has given Xi the perfect opening to continue unfair trade practices and sap U.S. companies of their secrets. Trump talked tough about China's illegal trade practices during the campaign, but once elected, the president said China could catch a break if it helped control North Korea. The Trump administration has slow-pedaled investigations into trade violations ever since. Steelworkers feel particularly betrayed. Trump had promised to stop Chinese companies from illegally dumping steel in the U.S., and the administration launched an investigation into whether imported Chinese steel endangers national security. After all, if America becomes too dependent on foreign steel, the country can't build weapons to defend itself. But while the investigation was underway, Trump asked Xi to reduce purchases from North Korea. Xi complied, and Chinese steel imports have risen 20 percent since Trump took office. U.S. steel companies have had to shut down plants and lay off hundreds of workers. Five dozen members of the bipartisan Congressional Steel Caucus wrote Trump last week demanding that he release the national security investigation's conclusions. "Each day that passes is another day that the domestic steel industry faces an onslaught of imports and the deeply harmful effects of unfair trade practices, which is why we believe the investigation must be completed as soon as possible," the letter said. More importantly, though, the Trump administration has called off plans to investigate how the Chinese government requires U.S. companies to surrender valuable intellectual property and critical data in return for operating in China. Trump was scheduled to announce on Aug. 4 that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was opening an investigation into these unfair trade practices, but the White House abruptly canceled the event on Aug. 3. Then on Aug. 5, China voted with the United States in the U.N. Security Council to impose punitive sanctions on North Korea. North Korea has since quieted down, but that's likely because China held its Communist Party Congress last month. The party holds the congress every five years to elect leaders and establish policy. Xi and his supporters wanted perfect diplomatic and economic harmony so that no one would question his leadership. Xi persuaded the party not to appoint an heir apparent to the ruling Politburo, clearing the way for him to violate the 20-year-old tradition of leaders serving only two terms. The U.S. should expect China to adopt a more aggressive foreign policy going forward. Yet if Lighthizer were investigating how China violates free trade rules and intellectual property theft, he need go no further than the Chinese Constitution's new chapter: "Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era." Xi's philosophy contradicts the basic premises of free market capitalism. Instead of corporations serving the interest of shareholders, Xi demands that Chinese corporations serve the state and the Communist Party. Xi's socialism with Chinese characteristics uses global markets to make China the greatest economic and military power in the world by 2050. Xi has imposed new rules that require foreign corporations to share all of their trade secrets and patents with Chinese partners. The government also bars companies from using encrypted communications to protect email or proprietary data. And once a Chinese company no longer needs a foreign partner, the government drives them out. Most experts agree China is violating World Trade Organization rules, but without U.S. protest, no one can stop these practices. Xi knows that Trump cares far more about North Korea than fair trade, so don't expect China to end the nuclear crisis anytime soon. Instead, China will keep the crisis at a low boil for as long as possible so that Trump never gets around to protecting American businesses and jobs. The smart money is on North Korea launching at least one missile after Trump arrives in Asia on Friday for a 12-day trip to distract from Trump's calls for fairer trade. When looking at the big picture, Xi's manipulation of global trade to supplant the United States as a superpower is a far greater threat than North Korea's weapons. While Kim will only use his nuclear weapons to deter regime change, Xi is using trade to diminish U.S. power and authority. Closer to Houston, hundreds of Texas companies do business with Chinese companies, including thousands of joint ventures in the energy industry where China is obtaining our drilling technology. Every U.S. company currently faces a tough choice: Either give up trade secrets or sacrifice working in the world's second largest economy. Xi expects Chinese firms to steal intellectual property for the good of his nation. Trump must do more to protect ours. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hewlett Packard Enterprise will move its manufacturing operations and 290 related jobs out of northwest Houston after Hurricane Harvey "irreparably damaged" facilities there. HPE will also move more than 3,000 non-manufacturing employees to a new site in the greater Houston area. Its current campus is located next to Cypress Creek, which has flooded two years in a row. The changes were announced publicly and to employees on Wednesday. HPE President Antonio Neri emphasized the company's "long history" here and its commitment to the region. "We look forward to many more years as part of the community in a new Houston-area campus, purpose-built for our company," he said in a statement. HPE is relocating its manufacturing operations to its site in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and to HPE's supply chain partner Flex in Austin. The company will attempt to relocate or find other roles within HPE for as many manufacturing employees as possible. Most HPE employees, including sales, business unit, supply chain, legal and human resources teams, will remain in the current campus until a new Houston location has been identified and built, according to the news release. It's not the first local business to cite devastating impacts from the hurricane in forcing a dislocation. Telecheck Services, a 53-year-old check-guarantee company, said it is closing its Sugar Land headquarters and laying off 406 workers. First Data Corp., the Atlanta-based parent company of Telecheck, informed the Texas Workforce Commission of its plans last month. Those employees can relocate to other First Data facilities across the country or accept a severance from the company. Yet Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership, said Wednesday that he doesn't expect Hurricane Harvey to halt business growth in Houston. He said it could change how the city is developed, and it could prompt businesses to do some retrofitting or mitigation work to prevent similar damage in the future. But he doesn't expect to see a mass exodus. "Harvey will affect how people do business and where they do business, but it's not going to prevent them from doing business," Jankowski said. Jankowski added that Hurricane Harvey primarily affected residential communities and small businesses. Flooding didn't affect a large portion of Houston's industrial community. "It's a concern whenever we lose any manufacturer. It's a concern whenever we lose any employer," he said. "This is most likely an isolated incident. It's not a tide of things to come." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The employees at Shell Federal Credit Union gather before staff meetings to play a game. Upbeat music energizes the room as they bop balls in the air to each other, often diving or kicking to keep them from touching the ground. The goal is to have fun and create positive energy among the staff, president and CEO Jose Rodriguez said. Shell Federal Credit Union has a tight-knit group of employees who throw each other birthday celebrations and baby showers. That's one of the reasons it snagged the No. 2 spot among midsize companies on this year's Top Workplaces list compiled for the Chronicle by Energage. "We're very much a family type of business here, even though we've had tremendous success and a lot of growth," Rodriguez said. The financial institution is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. When Rodriguez joined the bank as a part-time teller in 1993, it had one location, fewer than 50 employees and about $100 million in assets. It has since grown to nine branches - with plans to open a 10th next year - and 267 employees. The credit union has more than $900 million in assets and expects to hit the $1 billion milestone within the next year. In the Energage survey, employees cited appreciation from management, opportunities to advance their careers and the family atmosphere for reasons they love their jobs. "I feel the credit union actually cares about me as a person, not just an employee," one survey respondent said. "I love the people I work with." And when roughly 30 employees were affected by Hurricane Harvey, the credit union's other employees donated items to expedite their recovery. Management provided additional time off, and the Cornerstone Credit Union Foundation has grants to help with financial needs. This sense of family isn't limited to employees. Rodriguez said it's extended to customers, too. Employees take pride in being able to assist customers and make a difference in their financial lives. "You can get good service when you go somewhere as a consumer, but still feel like you're a customer getting service," Rodriguez said. "And here, we want to take that further. We want them to feel like they're not just a customer, but they're the reason why we're here." More than 84,000 Houston-area employees put fingers to keyboards - or in some cases, pen to paper - to weigh in on how they feel about their jobs for this year's Top Workplaces section. They rated their companies in areas such as potential for advancement, flexibility of work schedules, pay and benefits, and leadership. Energage, a Philadelphia-based research and consulting firm that recently changed its name from WorkplaceDynamics, invited 2,318 local companies to participate and surveyed 262 of them, then tallied the results. Anyone, such as an employee or a customer, could nominate a workplace for consideration. The Chronicle ran articles and ads about the contest earlier this year. The surveys were done over a three-month period beginning in mid-April. The Chronicle is one of 46 media partnersfor which Energage compiles workplace rankings. In 2016, the company surveyed 2.8million employees at nearly 7,000 organizations to generate the Top Workplaces lists. The local list, which made its debut in 2010 with 100 companies, was expanded to 150 companies in 2012. In total, 14 employers have earned spots on the list all eight years. This year, 30 companies are new to the list. The local survey participants employ 137,798 people in the area; 137,615 of the employees received surveys, and 84,112 responded. The organizations on the list included public and private entities and nonprofit groups. Energage reached out to companies with at least 50 employees. Included in the Houston Top Workplaces rankings: A Top 30 Large (out of 41 participants with 500 or more employees in the region) A Top 50 Midsize (out of 81 participants with 150-499 employees in the region) A Top 70 Small (out of 140 participants with 50-149 employees in the region) NOTES ABOUT THE SURVEY: Energage required a response rate of at least 35 percent for employers based in the area. For employers with 85 or fewer employees, at least 30 responders were required. For larger employers, surveys could be sent to employees in a random sample. For those with 2,500 or fewer employees, surveys were sent to at least 500 employees. For employers with more than 2,500 but fewer than 5,000 employees, surveys were sent to at least 20 percent. For employers with 5,000 or more, at least 1,000 surveys were sent. Employers are ranked by size bands because smaller employers tend to score higher than midsize employers, which in turn tend to score higher than large employers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Ellen DeGeneres surprised a San Antonio military mom and her young daughter on national TV today with a video reunion. Vanessa Villegas and daughter Ellie, 5, were invited on Ellen after a moving video of a the little girl opening a birthday present from her dad, U.S. Army Pvt. David Villegas, went viral. During todays guest shot, the two were both thrilled and tearful when DeGeneres stunned them with a reunion via a live shot of Villegas, who is undergoing basic training in South Carolina. Baby I love you so much, he told his family in the video. The big TV moment followed another heartwarming video that showed Ellie receiving a Build-A-Bear from her dad, whos been away from the two for several months in Fort Jackson, S.C. The bear was dressed in army fatigues with a recorded message inside for her birthday. DeGeneres also surprised the family with a check for $25,000 to help with finances, courtesy of Shutterfly, as well as American Girl dolls and accessories for Ellie. Ellen airs at 3 p.m. weekdays on KENS-TV. jjakle@express-news.net A Houston man has pleaded guilty to possessing, distributing and receiving more than 200 images and videos depicting child pornography. Samier Patrick Clark, 28, faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in court Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas said in a statement. Campus liberalism critic David Horowitz will speak at the University of Houston at 7 p.m. Thursday. A student group Young Americans for Freedom is hosting the event, called The Terror Network on American Campuses. Horowitz will discuss Israel and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to end international support for Israel. He has called the BDS movement genocidal against Israel. Horowitz, who once compared college political culture to a gulag, created the Horowitz Freedom Center, which aims to fight the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values. He has called college campuses the place where a leftist offensive is most obvious. In 2006, Horowitz wrote a book listing the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America that was seen as the precursor to last years college faculty watch list, which aggregated reports of professors expressing a liberal bias. He will speak in UHs Science and Engineering Building. The Woodlands' water company Layne Christensen is partnering with the state to drill more than 100 wells in West Texas to sell water to oil companies in the booming Permian Basin. The new deal with the Texas General Land Office headed by George P. Bush is the first known partnership with a public company to sell state-owned water across multiple counties to the energy sector. The agreement is for Layne to develop 88,000 acres in Reeves and Culberson counties in the active Delaware Basin portion of the Permian Basin. Layne will drill the wells, build the pipelines, construct the storage ponds and sell the water to the oil companies to use in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process that shoots water, sand and chemicals in underground shale rock formations to release the oil and gas. Layne and the state General Land Office will split the revenues. "This is kind of a gold mine in the making," said Layne Chief Financial Officer Michael Anderson, referencing both the state and the company. Layne isn't releasing the profit-sharing details for now. "We think it's a very fair split. I think both parties are going to be really happy." RELATED: Woodlands company sees profit in mixing water and oil Layne often does water projects to serve municipalities and government agencies, but not typically when the water is intended for the oil sector. This is the largest agreement of its kind, according to Layne. That's why Anderson emphasized that only brackish, non-potable water will be produced. They're not stealing anyone's drinking water, he said, and they're not going to Balmorhea State Park acreage. Layne already is building pipelines and wells to directly serve oil companies, and now its partnering with the state to tap into much larger swaths of acreage. The company counts oil companies actively working 58 drilling rigs in the two counties, and they could need about 500 million barrels of water a year for all of their fracking needs. Modern oil wells are being drilled deeper with much longer horizontal laterals. The different fracking stages are being spaced closer together, requiring more water and sand. The best water wells might produce 12 million barrels or so of water a year, said Byron Bevers, Layne's business development engineer, so upwards of 100 wells likely will be needed. And these are wells that might cost more to drill, but they will produce water for years or even decades, he said. Layne's new deal with the state is for five years with renewal options, and Layne plans to quickly get to work this month. The goal is to start turning a profit in the spring. Layne is currently working with hydrogeologists from Austin-based Wet Rock Groundwater Services to identify they best well locations. Two Trump administration officials are scheduled to speak at a conference in Houston next week hosted by one of the country's leading think tanks questioning climate change. The Heartland Institute lists both Vincent DeVito, counselor for energy policy at the Interior Department, and Richard W. Westerdale II, a senior adviser at the State Department, as speaking at its America First Energy Conference on Nov. 9. Heartland, which calls itself "the world's most prominent think tank supporting skepticism about man-made climate change," describes the conference as dedicated to examining the progress President Donald Trump has made in implementing his plans to expand U.S. energy production. Among those also scheduled to speak is Myron Ebell, the prominent climate change skeptic who advised Trump during his transition into the White house, and Steve Milloy, founder of the website JunkScience.com. RELATED: Trump faces next climate hurdle The attendance of Trump administration officials is drawing protest from environmental groups who say the White House is giving a platform to what is a fringe group of skeptics. For instance, NASA describes a more than 95 percent probability that human activity is behind the warming trend that began in the mid-2oth century and is"proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia." "Most [of the] speakers are the same Heartland climate denial crowd at every one of their meetings," said Kert Davies, with the non-profit Climate Investigations Center. DeVito, a former official in the Department of Energy, was a partner at the Boston law firm Bowditch & Dewey, LLP before joining the Trump administration. Westerdale is a former staffer at Exxon Mobil, who advised senior executives during the period Secretary of State Rex Tillerson served as CEO of the oil giant, according to his LinkedIn profile. Westerdale joined the State Department in 2011, initially working out of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. David Bernhardt, deputy secretary of the Interior Department, was originally scheduled to speak at the conference. But a spokesman for Heartland said Thursday Bernhardt had cancelled. "His reason is quite valid nothing to do with politics or any kind of controversy," the spokesman said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Even as the rain started to pour, cars continued filling the old H-E-B parking lot at the northwest corner of W. Lake Houston Parkway and Kingwood Drive, and costumed families emerged, equipped with empty bags and buckets. People traveled from all around the Lake Houston area to attend the Lake Houston Trunk or Treat event in Kingwood on Halloween night, Tuesday, Oct. 31. "It wasn't raining when we left the house, but we decided we were already out and may as well go for it," said Tabitha McGee, Woodland Hills resident who was there with her two children. People's determination to enjoy a night of family fun, despite the rain, reflected a post-hurricane community undeterred - fortified by resilience. "We're not afraid of a little water," McGee said. "We've had so much of it." Amanda Pence is a Kingwood resident of three years and mother of two young children. She was wearing Belle's provincial dress from Beauty and the Beast, and standing amidst a throng of costumed trunk-or-treaters, food trucks and activity booths. It was the first community event she has coordinated. The Lake Houston area suffered massive damage from Hurricane Harvey. Although Pence's home did not flood, she recognized that many neighborhoods have not yet recovered, leaving families with nowhere to trick-or-treat. "That's how this all started," Pence said. "This is for Humble, Kingwood, Atascocita, Huffman, Crosby, Porter - wherever people flooded and have nowhere to go - this is all for them." She said from the Facebook response alone, close to 1,000 people were expected to attend. Pence was surprised by the magnitude of the event's attendance and pleased with the way the event came together. Volunteers from the community, and donations from people and organizations like the Salvation Army, Scholastic Books, H-E-B and Walgreens, made the free, family-friendly Halloween a success. Attending the event with her children was Martha Pineda, a Porter resident. Pineda's home received about three feet of water from flooding during Hurricane Harvey. She felt the Trunk-or-Treat event would be an easier, safer alternative to door-to-door trick-or-treating, and it would provide a wider range of activities for her children. After everything her family has been through, she said an event like this can take some weight off of her shoulders. "It's one less thing to stress about, especially because it's free - that's enough right there," Pineda said. "It's free, safe, and it's just good to have that opportunity." Kingwood area resident Victoria Brown held her little girl, who was dressed as Minnie Mouse. Her family was not flooded out of their home, although most of her neighbors were. "So, there's no kids around the neighborhood and not really much to do," Brown said. "We thought we'd go somewhere fun that had music and everything." A few yards away, a dog masquerading as royalty sat in the parking lot surrounded by his family, which included Kingwood area resident Karla Rodriguez. Rodriguez's home did not take on water, but she knows that many homes around hers did. Rodriguez saw the Trunk-or-Treat event as a way for affected communities to get some emotional relief after such a stressful experience. "I think it allows everyone to clear their minds after what happened - a little bit of fun for the kids, and a chance to relax after a tragedy like that," Rodriguez said. "It's something that can help the kids, because they are the ones that get affected the most. It will help ease their mind a little bit." The Lake Houston Trunk-or-Treat filled a need for families affected by Harvey, but it also appealed to parents who were already seeking a local event specifically like the Trunk-or-Treat. Eric and Celeste Brumley and their young son recently moved to Atascocita from Lubbock. It was their son's first time trick-or-treating. The Lake Houston Trunk-or-Treat was one of the only nearby alternatives to door-to-door trick-or-treating that Celeste Brumley found. "It's pretty close to where we live, and honestly, back home, we did the Trunk-or-Treat just because it was safe," Eric Brumley said. The Lake Houston Trunk-or-Treat was intended as a one-time event, although Pence seemed open to the possibility of it becoming an annual event. "This is just for today," Pence said. "If it becomes a yearly thing, great. As far as I know, it's not, but we haven't gotten that far yet." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Nearly 20 years after the murder of college student Melissa Trotter rocked Montgomery County, dive teams are out searching for more evidence in the county's only death row case. The renewed search efforts come weeks after word of an abandoned confession plot between Larry Swearingen - who was convicted in Trotter's slaying - and Houston serial killer Anthony Shore threatened to cloud the case and pointed to the possibility of more evidence. "We're trying to be thorough and check off all the boxes," said Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon. "We don't anticipate finding anything 20 years later." Search efforts led by Montgomery County Precinct 1 Constable Philip Cash, at Ligon's request, kicked off on Monday at an undisclosed location. So far, investigators did not indicate finding any new evidence but the hunt was still ongoing Thursday morning. "We were hopeful something could be found but we weren't really expecting anything," Ligon said. After years of slow-burning appeals and quiet courtroom wrangling, Swearingen's case rocketed back into the limelight last month after a flurry of unexpected developments. First, the confession plot with Shore. Then, a filing snafu and a cancelled execution. Next, a DNA testing agreement and a lake-bottom search. Through it all, Trotter's family has yearned for justice. "I'm frustrated," said Sandy Trotter, the slain teen's mother. "But I am convinced this is all in God's timing." On the day of Melissa Trotter's appearance in December 1998, she and Swearingen were spotted together in Montgomery College library. Afterward, a biology teacher saw the 19-year-old leaving the school with a man. Hair and fiber evidence later showed that she'd been in Swearingen's car and home the day she vanished. The killer's wife testified that she came home that evening to find the place in disarray - and in the middle of it all were Trotter's lighter and cigarettes. That afternoon, Swearingen placed a call routed through a cell tower near FM 1097 in Willis - a spot he would have passed while heading from his house to the Sam Houston National Forest where Trotter's decomposing body was found 25 days later. Swearingen was convicted and sentenced to death in 2000, but since then has repeatedly evaded the state's harshest punishment through a series of dogged appeals, many focusing on efforts to insure DNA testing. Both he and Shore had execution dates set for this fall, but judges called them off not long after news emerged of the pair's alleged confession scheme. Hours before he was scheduled to die on Oct. 18, Shore won a 90-day stay after prosecutors said the four-time killer admitted to an abandoned plan to confess to Swearingen's crime. Over the years, Swearingen has consistently professed his innocence. 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. Officials first found out about the possibility of a last-minute confession attempt back in July, when a death row cell search uncovered materials relating to Trotter's killing - including a hand-drawn map marking the supposed location of more evidence - stashed in Shore's cell. The day before his scheduled execution, Shore told investigators he'd only considered confessing to get his friend off, and not because he'd actually committed the additional crime. The multiple murderer also agreed to answer questions about other cases, and a judge greenlit pushing back his first scheduled execution date. At the time, Swearingen also had a death date on the calendar - for Nov. 16 - but that has since been called off as the result of a filing error after the Montgomery County District Clerk sent notice of the execution to the wrong office. And while prosecutors in Harris County reset an execution date for Shore, Montgomery County prosecutors have not filed for a new date in the Swearingen case. Instead, they've agreed to more DNA testing in a final effort to clear the water in the two-decade-old case. Earlier this week, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was widely rebuked by historians after he blamed the Civil War on "the lack of an ability to compromise." Texas is all too familiar with aspects of its history being portrayed incorrectly or revised. Most notably, a 2015 geography textbook referred to slaves as "workers." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Sugar Land man identified as a major Kush manufacturer has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges that he supplied millions of dollars worth of synthetic cannabinoids to dealers in the Houston area. Muhammad Shariq Siddiqi, 48, employed a team of workers who produced the products in cement mixers at a farm near Huntsville, according to court testimony. As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Siddiqi pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of conspiracy to possess multiple formulations of synthetic cannabinoids. Standing in court in shackles and a orange jail uniform, he agreed to cooperate with the government and not to appeal his conviction or contest forfeiture of seized assets. U.S. District Judge Gray Miller set sentencing for May 24. FIGHTING KUSH: "City takes aim at stubborn new drug problem" Siddiqi, a father of seven originally from Pakistan, owned three gas stations, two smoke shops, multiple cars and had purchased six new properties worth $3 million in a two-year span. When federal drug agents searched his house, they found $700,000 in cash and checks. There was so much money raised during the criminal enterprise that police were summoned to his son's school because the boy was handing out $20 and $100 bills to classmates. Siddiqi was arrested along with a University of Houston-Victoria professor and more than a dozen others in a massive sting on synthetic cannabinoid operators in the Houston area. He was the third of the first defendants from that massive takedown to plead guilty. Several others residents nabbed in narcotics string have scheduled re-arraignment hearings in the coming weeks where they will have the opportunity to change their pleas to guilty. The first to confess was Omar Maher Alnasser, a popular assistant professor of finance at UH-Victoria, who admitted in December to running an unlicensed business that wired more than $200,000 of drug proceeds to accounts in Jordan. Alnasser, 37, was sentenced to a year in federal custody. If convicted on the most serious allegations, others in the group face significantly steeper prison terms. Another defendant, Khalil Munier Khalil, 42, of Houston, pleaded guilty Oct. 26 to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute the drug. The government will presumably dismiss three other charges. The April 2016 raid by federal agents targeted several independent players believed to manufacturing, distributing or aiding in transactions related to the smokable street drug known as K2 or kush--a leafy substance that's soaked in a chemical mixture that mimics the effect of marijuana. A cornerstone of The John Cooper School's mission was put into action on Oct. 31-helping give back to the community by way of several service projects. Upper school students provided service to others on a rainy Halloween through a variety of projects including packaging toiletries for members of the military, building animal shelters, visiting retirement homes to meet with residents and play music and more. Both on and off campus, teenagers gave back to the local community and helped to make a global impact. The event is called Cooper Cares Day, and Gillian Crane, assistant head of upper school and dean, said it was created to provide the students with the opportunity to give back to others. Each student was able to participate in one of ten projects that was their first, second or third choice. Crane helped mastermind the program that the school plans to implement every four years so each group of high school classes can experience such an event. "I decided that running Cooper Cares Day was important for us to give back, and for the students to really get connected with their compassion," Crane said. Ram Desabhotla, a senior who is also the chair of the school's Student Government Services Committee, helped brainstorm various projects to do for Cooper Cares Day and organized the speeches. He also helped organize getting pictures to create a video of the service projects. "At Cooper, we're all about creating citizens who are aware of the issues that other people have and we want to use our privilege to try to give back to our community," Desabhotla said. "We know that we're very fortunate to be able to come to an institution like Cooper, but on the other hand there are also people who need help and as part of developing global citizens with open-mindedness, we want to teach values like giving back and make it a habit." One of the big projects on campus was Operation Military Embrace where participants wrote letters and assembled packages of essential items to send to military personnel overseas. Sophomore Callum Burton was originally part of a different project, but said he felt that he could make a larger impact in the Operation Military Embrace. "I've had many family in the military, and I kind of felt like I could make a better connection," Burton said. "People need help, and help's always a good feeling to have." Heather Scotti, a senior, also comes from a military family and said she believes it is important to help others who may not have many privileges. "We, especially at our school, we have such a privileged life, and it's just nice to help those that maybe don't have the things that we do," Scotti said. Jenny Glenn, upper school science department chair, helped head Operation Military Embrace because her father was in the Air Force so it is a cause close to her heart. She said community service is an important part of developing responsible citizens. "Cooper is all about exposing students to the community and we're looking at the full picture in terms of raising responsible people and citizens. And giving back is part of that and we want to instill that in the children," Glenn said. The Rise Against Hunger Project had the largest amount of participants with about 25 percent of the upper school students playing a role. About 100 teenagers created 20,088 ready-made meals for international areas where there is an undernourished population. Lauren Sands, a senior and secretary for the Interact Club, which is the Rotary Club service of Cooper, chaired the Rise Against Hunger project. She explained that the students were measuring soy and rice into plastic bags to send to those in need across the world. Other projects included Compassion United, which provided education on the homeless, and Animal Shelter Building, where students made dog houses and are working on a marketing plan to sell them. All proceeds will benefit Habitat for Humanity. Off campus projects included a assisting Meals on Wheels, Mission Depot, and the Texas Wolfdog Project and Shelter in Montgomery. Students also visited with residents at Silverado Memory Care and Autumn Grove Cottage as well as performed music at Conservatory and Brookdale Place senior living residences. In the afternoon, the Cooper Upper School community gathered to listen keynote speaker Bob Harris, a micro financier who is trying to change the world "one small loan at a time." Harris helps entrepreneurs around the world by giving micro loans through kiva.org, a web site where people can give small loans to anyone and get repaid. He has followed his money to places such as Peru and Cambodia to see the impact it has on the recipient. "I met unbelievable kindness everywhere I went," Harris said. "So every myth about anti-Americanism, about a world that's full of rage and conflict that you get from the evening news. I've been to 81 countries now and except for a vanishingly small percentage of the world that I wouldn't go near, most of the world is actually unbelievably friendly. And that's another part of what I want people to know." For more information on Bob Harris go to wolfmanproductions.com/bob-harris. To learn more about The John Cooper School and its mission to give back, visit www.johncooper.org. A new online tool will allow parents to apply to five Houston-area charter school networks at once, including KIPP Houston and YES Prep Public Schools. The website applyhouston,org, which debuts Wednesday, uses one standard application for parents seeking to enter their children into lotteries for the KIPP, YES Prep, Promise Community Schools, A+ Unlimited Potential and Etoile Academy charter networks. The site was created by Families Empowered, a local nonprofit that connects parents with school choice options in the Houston area. Northern Arizona University is part of a team that received $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Commerce to help the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe diversify their economic bases in the face of the closure of the coal-fired Navajo Generating Station and the nearby Kayenta Coal Mine. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In the two months since Hurricane Harvey pummelled the Houston area, more than 1,000 people have sued the federal government seeking more than $100 million in damages over the controlled releases from the Addicks, Barker and other reservoirs. Tens of thousands more could join the legal fight in the coming years, lawyers told federal judges Wednesday in a Houston courtroom. As of Wednesday, 80 federal and two state lawsuits had been filed on behalf of 1,001 homeowners and businesses damaged by floodwaters, according to a Houston Chronicle review of federal and state court dockets. And seven new cases hit the docket in the past two days alone, representing 237 flood victims. CLICK HERE FOR THE CHRONICLE'S COVERAGE OF HURRICANE HARVEY With that steady influx in mind, two top federal judges jointly presided Wednesday over a standing-room crowd of marquee lawyers vying for leadership spots over large groups of clients who suffered flooding loss after the hurricane. Three lawyers from the Justice Department also attended the hearing as well as one attorney for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Jay Edelson, a Chicago lawyer who was the first of several Wednesday to present his leadership proposal to the judges, said afterward that the nearly five-hour session stood out in terms of productivity. The vetting hearings are usually spent with lawyers touting their credentials, but in this instance he said the court cut to the chase. "The court was laser-focused on trying to evaluate how the attorneys would litigate the cases, testing their fluency on class actions, takings cases and large and diverse groups of clients," he said. The judges also nudged the Justice Department to show its hand. At one point, Jacqueline Brown, an attorney from the government's environment and natural resources division, said that it's vital from her vantage point that the cases be consolidated. "I think it's important for plaintiffs to sort out what they are alleging so we know what we are responding to," she told the court. The bulk of the lawsuits are before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a specialized federal court in Washington, D.C. that handles damage claims against government entities. The chief judge of that court recruited local help to vet the lawyers who will oversee the cases for clients in various subgroups. She said she anticipates making trips to Houston monthly to set a course for the Harvey suits. The dam release lawsuits target the same government entities for choosing to release the water: The 80 federal suits allege the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for damages, while two suits filed in state civil court contend the Harris County Flood Control District is responsible; one suit also includes the City of Houston as a defendant. As of Wednesday, twelve lawsuits in federal court are class actions and the rest are individual or multi-party cases. The array of surnames of property owners who have sued Khoury, Ludwidsen, Reyes, Nguyen, Hollis, Pagnotto, Mumba reflects the vast cultural diversity of the Houston region as well as the breadth of the flood damage. Enough cases have been filed to prompt the court clerk to create a new Hurricane Harvey drop-down menu in the court's electronic search menu. The aim of the Wednesday hearing at the Houston courthouse was to begin to sort the cases into sub-groups and assigning lead attorneys. Among the 80-plus lawyers in the room were litigators from Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Louisiana, but the bulk were from Houston. That included Brian Beckcom, a trial lawyer in Memorial who represents 200 clients including his wife's uncle who has been living in a tent in his driveway since his home was inundated. Chief Judge Susan Braden of the federal claims court in Washington, who recently ruled in favor of a group of New Orleans flood victims in a post-Katrina lawsuit, is managing all of the post-Harvey cases at this early phase. Braden enlisted Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal whom she identified at a previous hearing as an old family friend to help evaluate the attorneys angling for leading roles. Partway through the tryout, attorney Jeff Raizner told the judges, "I think we're starting to get a sense of the magnitude and complexity of this and many of us are sitting on a sizable group of cases that are not yet filed." Rosenthal, known to inject levity into intense legal proceedings, likened herself to a boa constrictor trying to gain control of an elephant but indicated the herculean task was doable. The lineup of attorneys on Wednesday variously suggested Braden and Rosenthal appoint one, two, three or four lead lawyers, depending on how they determine the sub-groups of claimants. One possibility is dividing the claims into damage from reservoir overflow upstream of the dams and damage caused downstream by the controlled release of floodwater, under the premise that the facts are different and clients interests may be diametrically opposed. Attorney Larry Dunbar, who is also an engineer, told the judges the downstream clients need to know when and why the floodgates were opened and the potential impact to property. But those facts, he said, "Are irrelevant to upstream folks." Another way to proceed is to have lead lawyers for class actions and individual cases both upstream and downstream. The Justice Department and at least one law firm back the idea of having one overarching counsel for all the plaintiffs. The so-called "takings" lawsuits under the Fifth Amendment argue that the government knew that releasing water from -- or letting is accumulate in -- the swollen reservoirs would flood homes and businesses and they made the choice to temporarily "take" people's property as a floodway. In addition to the Addicks and Barker dam cases, lawsuits are lining up over post-Harvey releases from another flooded waterway. Attorney Cade Bernsen filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of 137 residents of a neighborhood in Vidor, near Beaumont, whose homes were flooded by the Army Corps' controlled releases from Steinhagen Lake. And four civil suits in state court seek relief for 65 parties who say the government "took" property when it began releasing water from the Lake Conroe dam into the West Fork of the San Jacinto River. The Conroe claims seek damages from the San Jacinto River Authority. The Lone Star state notched up some bad marks in a newly released analysis of pretrial justice across the country. The findings, issued Wednesday by the Pretrial Justice Institute, saddled Texas with a D grade, one of 13 states with the just-above-failing mark. Seventeen states got F grades, while only one state - New Jersey - took home an A. The Maryland-based organization graded states on three primary measures: the rate of unconvicted people in local jails, the percent of state residents living in an area that uses evidence-based pretrial assessments, and the percent of the state living in an area that has eliminated cash bail. In Texas, the pretrial detention rate is 18 per 10,000 residents. While that's still much higher than Vermont's 7 per 10,000 rate and New York's 9.1 per 10,000 rate, it was still low enough to count as a point in the state's favor. Just 16.5 percent of the state's residents live in an area where pretrial release decisions are informed by a validated assessment, and zero percent of the state lives in an area that has effectively eliminated cash bail. Notably, Harris County has been at the center of one of the country's most-watched challenges to money bail, with an ongoing federal lawsuit over the pretrial jailing of poor, low-level offenders. But with its bad marks overall, the findings still flagged the Lone Star State as one to watch. "Despite its reputation for 'lock 'em up' criminal justice, Texas is home to bi-partisan efforts to emphasize legally-backed bail practices," the report notes. "Groups on both sides of the political spectrum - such as the conservative Right on Crime initiative and liberal Texas Criminal Justice Coalition - have found common ground on issues such as bail reform as a mean to reducing jail populations and spending public resources prudently." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After years of legal wrangling and a high-profile Supreme Court case that shook up how Texas doles out capital punishment, Harris County death row inmate Bobby Moore could end up with a life sentence. Prosecutors on Wednesday asked that the 58-year-old be resentenced to life in prison for the 1980 slaying of elderly store clerk James McCarble. "I'm doing what I believe the law requires," District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. "The nation's highest court has ruled that intellectually disabled persons can't be subject to the deathpenalty." Moore's three-decade legal saga landed in the national spotlight after a Supreme Court decision in March, when a 5-3 ruling determined that Texas did not properly consider whether the former carpenter was too intellectually disabled to face execution. The ruling set off waves of requests from inmates wanting their death sentences overturned in exchange for life behind bars. At least 10 condemned killers from across the state - including six others from Harris County - are pursuing lesser punishments. And in Moore's case, if a court agrees to the lower sentence, the longtime inmate could soon be a free man, out on parole after serving 37 years. The convicted killer was one of three men involved in the April 25, 1980 botched robbery of Birdsall Super Market near Memorial Park. The trio targeted the store because two of the employees were elderly and the cashier was pregnant Triggerman Willie Albert Koonce turned himself in afterward, confessing to the crime and outlining his accomplices' roles. Moore was collared in Louisiana 10 days after the slaying, and later sentenced to death at trial. More than two decades after that, Moore's lawyers presented evidence that his IQ hovered around 70. As a young teen, he still didn't understand days of the week or months of the year, and he dropped out of school after failing every subject in ninth grade. The new evidence came on the heels of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court abolishing capital punishment for the intellectually disabled. But under a dated measure of intellectual disability using so-called Briseno factors - Texas determined Moore hadn't proved he fit that description. Named after plaintiff Jose Briseno, the test relied on seven questions to determine intellectual disability in a 2004 ruling that referenced "Of Mice and Men" character Lennie as someone most Texans would agree should be exempt from the death penalty. In theory, the Briseno test would help courts figure out whether a defendant showed "adaptive behavior" suggesting they were not intellectually disabled. It was that measure a test the Supreme Court called "nonclinical" and an "unacceptable method" that the Texas appeals court relied on in part when rejecting a lower court's decision to deem Moore intellectually disabled. When Moore's lawyers appealed, the nation's highest court took up the case and ruled that the Briseno factors were "an invention" of the Texas court and not up to the "medical community's current standard." Following the March decision, the issue bounced back to the Court of Criminal Appeals. "A review of the Supreme Court's decision and the record before this Court supports but a single conclusion: Bobby James Moore is intellectually disabled under current medical standards and ineligible for execution," defense lawyers wrote in a brief filed Thursday in the CCA. "Accordingly, Mr. Moore respectfully requests that this Court rule that he is intellectually disabled and reform his death sentence to a term of life imprisonment." Prosecutors, in a brief dated the same day, agreed, also asking that the Court of Criminal Appeals use established diagnostic criterion as the new legal standard for intellectual disability in capital sentencing. Now, the CCA can commute the sentence to life, request more briefing or argument, or send it back to trial court. It's not clear how quickly the court would act, especially in light of another similar case before the state's highest appeals court. In the meantime, Moore will wait on death row as the legal system continues hashing out his fate. One in 10 families residing in Houston Housing Authority properties more than 900 received Harvey-related damage to their homes, according to a news release issued Wednesday by the agency. HHA, which faces court-ordered repair mandates to the 2100 Memorial senior high-rise amid sharp criticism from its residents, also confirmed Wednesday that efforts to comply with a temporary injunction were in progress. "HHA has received the judge's order and is making every effort to comply with the order. HHA remains committed to providing affordable housing and seeking support to repair throughout the City of Houston and at 2100 Memorial. For legal purposes, HHA is not at liberty to discuss specifics due to ongoing litigation," a statement said. The basement and first floor of 2100 Memorial flooded in the late-August storm, but residents never lost power and had water service was restored after a few days. On Sept. 18, tenants received five-day notices of lease terminations and the authority offered to pay moving costs. The surprise announcement caused panic among the residents, who showed up by the dozens at a city council meeting the next day. Mayor Sylvester Turner said HHA officials mishandled the situation. Later that week, HHA CEO Tory Gunsolley told residents that the building's compromised electrical system was too dangerous for them to remain. More than a dozen residents sued on Sept. 26 to prevent the lease terminations and to require the housing authority to repair the building. They won a temporary injunction last week. In his Oct. 27 order, Harris County Judge Daryl Moore gave HHA 10 days to determine whether flooded transformers "pose an actual or potential safety threat to warrant repair or replacement." If so, they must be fixed within 45 days of the order. The authority also has a 45-day deadline to fix deficiencies to the fire protection and sprinkler system identified in a Houston Fire Department inspection report dated Sept. 8. The order also restrained HHA from terminating 2100 Memorial leases or treating the contracts as if they had been ended unless the authority can establish grounds for lease terminations under the state law for landlord casualty loss. Moore also offered a scathing commentary about the HHA CEO's testimony, calling him "incredible" after a lengthy hearing last week. The court found that Gunsolley's assertion that 2100 Memorial was "totally unusable" was a "subjective determination" that was used to justify the forced removal of residents. About 185 low-income seniors live at 2100 Memorial. Hundreds more families in public housing were displaced by the storm. "During Hurricane Harvey, seven HHA properties incurred significant damage, impacting over 950 families," the authority's statement said. "With one in 10 families receiving damage to their public housing unit, HHA's focus is to provide both short and long-term solutions to fulfill its mission of improving live[s] by providing quality, affordable housing option[s]." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The reward for information leading to the capture of a wanted MS-13 gang member accused of murder and aggravated kidnapping has been increased to $10,000. Carlos Alberto Gonzalez-Barahona, 26, allegedly shot and killed his estranged girlfriend at their apartment in northwest Houston on June 18, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The victim was not identified by the agency. CAUGHT: MS-13 gang member extradited to Houston on two murder charges He is also accused of kidnapping a pickup truck driver at gunpoint and later abandoning the truck on June 20, off of Highway 59 in Wharton County. Representatives with the agency did not immediately know what became of the the driver. The Texas Department of Public Safety reports Gonzalez-Barahona may have fled to Mexico. Gonzalez-Barahona is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs approximately 170 pounds. He has numerous tattoos, including a star on his left elbow; "Houston" on the back of his left arm; "Texas" on the back of his right arm; "Gonzalez" on his upper back; "281" on his left arm; "713" on his right arm. Police say he also has tattoos on his abdomen, back, chest, legs, arms, both wrists and right ear. Crime Stoppers of Houston is also offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to his arrest. To report information about Gonzalez-Barahona, call the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-252-8477. All tips remain anonymous and can also be sent by text to 274637. Scroll through the gallery above to learn more about the MS-13 gang. Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter. WASHINGTON (AP) House Republicans, straining to make last-minute changes to their far-reaching tax proposal, on Tuesday delayed the rollout by a day after they failed to finalize the details. The plan pushed by President Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress is a top legislative priority. The details originally were to be unveiled on Wednesday, but that was delayed until Thursday, said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. The committee had worked throughout the day and evening to produce a plan for the first overhaul of the nation's tax code in three decades. "We are making excellent progress. We are very close," Brady told reporters late Tuesday night. "A lot of work remains with the drafters, they are continuing to work through the night. We are moving forward." At the White House, an official said Trump looked forward to seeing legislation this week, adding the administration was confident the delay wouldn't affect the ultimate timing of the bill. Brady said his panel plans to vote on the bill next week. Although they had settled on some key details such as a cut in the corporate tax rate to 20 percent and maintaining the top personal income tax rate for the wealthy of 39.6 percent other elements still had to be resolved, including the income levels for the tax brackets. Trump has intensified his lobbying for the nearly $6 trillion tax overhaul plan, seeking a major legislative achievement after the collapse of the health care repeal. Republicans see taxes as a political imperative that will decide whether they keep their congressional majorities in next year's midterm elections. The president set an ambitious timetable and predicted a grand signing ceremony before Christmas at "the biggest tax event in the history of our country." Late Tuesday, Trump renewed his cheerleading on Twitter. "The Republican House members are working hard (and late) toward the Massive Tax Cuts that they know you deserve. These will be biggest ever!" The plan originally unveiled by Trump and congressional Republicans called for shrinking the number of tax brackets from seven to three, with respective tax rates of 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent. That plan drew immediate criticism from Democrats, who complained it was too favorable to the wealthy and undermined Trump's rhetoric about it benefiting the middle class. The current Republican plan calls for nearly doubling the standard deduction used by most average Americans to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for families, and increasing the per-child tax credit. In addition to slashing the corporate tax rate, it also seeks to repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates, a big break for the wealthy. Brady did not answer directly when he was asked while leaving House Speaker Paul Ryan's suite Tuesday whether the drop in the corporate tax rate would happen immediately. But, he said: "I want as much growth right from Day One as I can." Trump intensified his lobbying for the tax overhaul plan even as its shape was still under negotiation by the Republicans on Capitol Hill. "The process is complicated but the end result will not be that complicated. It's going to be: People are going to pay less tax by a lot, companies are going to pay less tax by a lot - that's a big difference and companies are going to start rebuilding and they're going to stay here," Trump said in the Roosevelt Room, where he was joined by the heads of more than a dozen business and trade allies. Trump said he's directing Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn and other administration officials to stay behind when he heads for Asia on Friday so they can help sell the tax proposal. The White House said Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and adviser, had canceled plans to accompany the president to China and South Korea to help push the package. The president said he was hopeful the House will approve the tax bill by Thanksgiving. But his overly optimistic timetable didn't address the concerns of lawmakers from states such as New York and New Jersey who have opposed a proposal to eliminate the federal deduction for state and local taxes, arguing it would hurt their constituents and subject them to being taxed twice. A battle continues over contributions to 401(k) retirements accounts. The financial industry and some Republican lawmakers insist that the GOP plan not change the tax benefits of the popular savings vehicles, as has been floated by GOP leaders. __ Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Marcy Gordon, Erica Werner and Jill Colvin contributed to this report. AUSTIN Texas abortion providers argued in court Thursday that it is not medically necessary to require women to undergo injections or other procedures in order to comply with a new state law restricting the most common second-trimester abortion procedure. Earlier this year the Republican-led Legislature passed Senate Bill 8, a set of comprehensive abortion regulations that banned dilation and evacuation a medical procedure used to remove a fetus using surgical tools unless the fetus is deceased. It is the most common method used to perform an abortion in the second trimester. Whole Woman's Health, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers sued the state because they believe it will further limit access to abortions. During a dilation and evacuation procedure, doctors use surgical instruments to remove fetal tissue. Proponents of the law have called this method inhumane and refer to it as "dismemberment abortion." In the first day of the trial before U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, two doctors testified on behalf of the Texas abortion providers, saying they do not normally demise a fetus when performing a dilation and evacuation procedure because it is not necessary. Another said she only demises the fetus beginning at 20 weeks gestation. Attorney General Ken Paxton was present for at least two hours of the trial. After the hearing, he read a statement to reporters saying the state is defending a law that prohibits "the live dismemberment of babies." "SB8 recognizes that innocent, unborn children should at least have the same rights as prisoners being executed for heinous crimes, and even animals, who would never be torn apart," Paxton said. Dr. Mark Nichols, an Oregon-based doctor, called the dilation and evacuation procedure the safest method to perform a second-trimester abortion. Nichols argued the three most common procedures used to kill the fetus before performing the abortion are often complicated to perform, require extra training and are not always effective. He also believes they are not medically necessary. "There is a real failure rate in the procedures we described," he said. If a similar law to SB8 existed in Oregon, Nichols said he would hesitate to perform the dilation and evacuation procedure out of fear that the fetus may still be alive, and he would then violate the law. Under SB8, doctors would face criminal charges for violating the ban, except in a case of a medical emergency. The law was set to go into effect Sept. 1, but Yeakel blocked its implementation with a temporary restraining order which remains in effect. Nichols said doctors may end up having to experiment on patients "to figure out how not to violate the law." According to 2015 data, the latest available, the procedure was used 4,386 times to terminate a pregnancy. In total, 55,287 abortions were performed that year, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Darren McCarty, an attorney for the state, pressed Nichols on his lack of experience with abortions in Texas. In court documents, Attorney General Ken Paxton and his legal team argue that causing fetal demise prior to performing the procedure is "less gruesome." They argue the methods used to end the fetus' life are "very safe and highly effective." Dr. Bhavik Kumar, the medical director for Whole Woman's Health in Texas, said he did not receive any training in the methods needed to demise a fetus before performing the evacuation procedure. His clinics only perform abortions for patients who have been pregnant for less than 18 weeks. "We don't need to do that," he said of demising the fetus. "Without knowing any added benefit, it's not something I would recommend." The trial is expected to last several days, and a ruling is expected by the end of the month. Alejandra Matos covers politics, education and immigration policy. Follow her on Twitter. Send her tips at alejandra.matos@chron.com. Both the sister and ex-girlfriend of a man killed by police after a shootout in a Flagstaff Walmart parking lot on Oct. 12 described the circumstances of his death as unbelievable and out of character. Sean D. Brady, 29, was shot and killed by police after a noise dispute in a parking lot on East Huntington Drive resulted in Brady firing his handgun at police. The responding officers shot and killed Brady in the ensuing firefight. Bradys sister, Sheri Brady-Parent, expressed shock and dismay at the fact that her brother would fire his weapon at law enforcement officers. Brady-Parent did not agree to an extensive interview about her brother but said that the man who shot at police was not the brother she grew up with. That was not Sean, Brady-Parent wrote to the Arizona Daily Sun. Bradys ex-girlfriend, Laura Ashley Blaylock, said she was still in shock two weeks after her mother told her Brady was dead. I still cant believe it. It is not like him, Blaylock said. He was so sweet, kind and gentle. I just dont understand why this would happen -- he was never violent. I never even heard him raise his voice while we were dating. Bradys non-existent criminal record seems to back up Blaylocks account of him. No criminal records were found in Arizona regarding Brady. There was also no criminal record of Brady in Lodi, Calif., where Brady once lived, according to San Joaquin County court records. He was living in Flagstaff with his sister at the time of his death, according to Blaylock. Blaylock also had an explanation for the two rifles, handgun and boxes of ammunition found in Bradys truck after the shooting. He loved to shoot and was out shooting earlier that day, Blaylock said a mutual friend told her. Blaylock described Brady as a mellow guy and dedicated father who never griped about anything. He never complained about much and did everything he could to take care of his son, Blaylock said. His boy was his entire world so I dont understand why he would do this. Brady was working at a winery in Lodi the last time Blaylock saw him. Blaylock speculated that the anniversary of his fathers death, which occurred a few days before the shootout, may have negatively affected Brady. His dad died a few years back and that was always a difficult time for him, Blaylock said. But I still cant believe that would be a reason for him to shoot at police. The three officers involved in the shooting, Pat Condon, Dustin Hemp and Ryan Sherif, have been placed on administrative leave following the shooting in accordance with Flagstaff Police protocol. No officers were hurt in the shootout with Brady. One of the officers involved was in field training with one of the other officers. The other two have been with the department for "many years," Runge said. The Multi-Agency Officer-Involved Shooting Team was called to investigate the shooting, and the Coconino County Sheriffs Office has been identified as the lead agency in the investigation. Coconino County Sheriffs Spokeswoman Erika Wiltenmuth said her department was not releasing any reports pertaining to the investigation of the shooting until the Coconino County Attorneys Office makes a determination on charging any of the officers involved. 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. ABC RadioNext Wednesday night in Nashville, Garth Brooks defends his title as the current CMA Entertainer of the Year. While its not surprising that hes also secured a coveted performance slot on the show, even Garth himself is pleased about WHAT hell get to sing. It's pretty cool, he tells ABC Radio. They came to me and said, 'Hey look, we want to treat Garth Brooks like a current artist.' I said, 'What does that mean?' He goes, 'We want you to play the current single.' I said, 'Are you kidding me?' I can't remember the last time I got to play the current single on an awards show. Its really kind of a no-brainer, since Garth happens to have a #7 hit right now with Ask Me How I Know. That makes it his biggest success since More than a Memory went to #1 in 2007. Man, it feels good, he says. Radio has been sweet. They're the reason for the tour being the way it is too. So radio has been a real partner to me. I thought over the years that, you know, it might not be the same as it was. But they have been constant through it all. So I've got to thank God and country radio, in that order, he laughs. You can catch Garths performance Wednesday night starting at 8 p.m. ET, when the 51st Annual CMA Awards air live on ABC. On Tuesday, the Oklahoma native announced hell bring the North American leg of his World Tour to a close next month in Nashville. To mark the occasion, the Bridgestone Arena unveiled a permanent banner that will hang in the venue, marking Garths nine shows there that raised money to help the community after the devastating flood of 2010. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova AKRON, Ohio -- An 18-year-old man is charged after being accused of forcing his way into a home with two other men, robbing a 17-year-old boy and shooting him, police say. The incident happened about 10 p.m. Tuesday night at a home on Larkin Avenue near Newton Street, Akron police Lt. Rick Edwards said. The boy suffered a gunshot wound to in his shoulder. Nathan Scott Hendrix is facing charges of aggravated burglary, felonious assault and carrying a concealed weapon, Edwards said. He is being held in Summit County Jail. Hendrix and two other men forced themselves in the home and robbed the boy of $100. The boy was shot after they took the money, police said. Police went to the home of Hendrix's grandmother on Olalla Avenue near Eastland Avenue after they identified him as the suspect, according to a police report. They found a gun in an upstairs bedroom during a search, the report says. If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Wednesday's crime and courts comments section. AKRON, Ohio -- The city of Akron is asking voters to approve an income tax increase Nov. 7 to pay for street repaving and police and fire services. But Akron isn't the only Summit County municipality asking for more money. Lakemore voters are also being asked for an income-tax increase. And residents of Bath Township, Sagamore Hills Township and Springfield Township will decide whether to raise property taxes for various uses. In addition, Cuyahoga Falls, Hudson, Highland and Norton and Woodridge schools are asking voters to approve tax increases. Here are the details on the various issues: MUNICIPAL TAX INCREASES Village of Lakemore: Income tax Lakemore voters rejected a 0.25-percent income tax increase in May. The new ballot measure is also a 0.25-percent income tax increase. It would cost someone who makes $50,000 a year about $125 annually. The increase would pay for street maintenance and improvements. The increase would start Jan. 1, 2018. Bath Township: Property tax Bath is asking residents for a replacement of a 1-mill existing property and a .75-mill increase to pay for fire and emergency medical services. The money would pay for capital expenditures, wages, benefits, operations and maintenance at the Bath Township Fire and EMS Department. The increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $26.25 annually. The increase would start in 2018. Sagamore Hills Township: Property tax Sagamore Hills is asking for a .75-mill increase to pay for its fire and EMS services. That would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $26.25 per year. The tax would be first due in 2018. Springfield Township: Property tax Springfield Township is asking for a five-year 1.3-mill additional tax. The money would pay for parks and recreation. The increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $45.50 annually. SCHOOLS Cuyahoga Falls City schools Cuyahoga Falls City schools is asking for a 4.95-mill tax increase. The money would pay for capital improvements, operating costs, technology and educational support, curriculum and human resources. The increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $173.25 annually. Hudson City schools: Bond Issue Hudson City School District is asking voters to approve 4.97-million bond issue to build a new middle school and for improvements on other buildings. The bond issue of $81.6 million would include the costs of furnishing and equipping the new school as well as other renovations and expansions to other school buildings. It would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $173.95 annually. Highland Local schools: Property tax Highland Local schools is looking for voters to approve a $63-million bond issue. The district wants to build new elementary schools and make other improvements to district buildings. The tax would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $136.50 annually. The repayment would have a maximum period of 37 years. Norton City schools: Property tax Norton City School District is asking for 2.9 mills to pay for "current expenses." The school district passed a renewal in May, but failed to pass a 1.9-mill property tax in November 2016, which was to maintain existing programs. The tax would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $101.50. Woodridge Local schools Woodridge schools is asking for an 8.71-mill tax increase. The money would be used for operating expenses, including salaries, benefits, supplies, transportation and utilities. The increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $304.50 annually. See a complete list of issues on the ballot in Summit County below. Mobile users, click HERE to see the issues list on your phone or tablet. AKRON, Ohio -- The University of Akron Culinary Arts Club will host a Graduate Chefs dinner for the public Saturday, Nov. 4, at 5:30 p.m. Food will be prepared by seven University of Akron alumni who are currently working as professional chefs. Dinner will be served in the Crystal Room Bistro, located at 360 Grant St., inside the university's Gallucci Hall. The menu will include a chorizo bites appetizer by Claudia Diaz de Machado, who works as chef manager at AVI Food Systems. Dinner will consist of Vietnamese baked chicken and coconut green curry bamboo rice by Aaron Hervey, executive chef and owner of Crave, and butternut squash sorbet by One Eleven Bistro Co-Owner and Executive Chef Anthony Scolaro. Taylor May, cake designer at West Side Bakery, will prepare a dessert of cheesecake with caramel graham topping and fresh blackberry sauce. University of Akron alumni who will also participate in the Graduate Chefs dinner include: Brian West, executive chef and director of culinary and nutritional services at Ohio Living Rockynol, who will prepare beef tenderloin stuffed with bacon, roasted peppers and spinach and topped with dijon cream. Dan Johnson, executive chef at Westin Hotels and Resorts in Southfield, Mich., who will serve beet cured salmon. Brad Smith, visiting professor and technical adviser of the university's Culinary Artists Club, whose crawfish bisque will be on the menu. Dinner will be served at 6 p.m. The evening will conclude around 8 p.m. A cash bar will be available. Dinner is $50 per person, and proceeds will benefit student education visits. Call the Culinary Artists Club at 330-972-6615 to reserve a spot. Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. The Islamic militant group Hamas on Wednesday handed over control of Gaza's border crossings with Israel and Egypt to the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, taking the first tangible step toward implementing a reconciliation deal with the rival Fatah movement. After a decade of Hamas rule, the group's security forces and border control agents were seen pulling away from the crossings that facilitate the movement of cargo and people in and out of Gaza. Representatives of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority quickly took up positions. "From now on, we have no relationship with crossings and our employees are not present inside them," Mohammed Abu Zaid, the Hamas-appointed director of crossing points, told reporters. Hamas seized control from the Fatah-led forces of the Palestinian Authority in 2007. But after a decade of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, Hamas's new leadership says the group is no longer interesting in governing Gaza. The blockade has hit Gaza's economy hard, with over 40 per cent unemployment and chronic power outages. Under Egyptian mediation, the two rivals last month announced a preliminary reconciliation deal, but many issues remain unresolved. The sides are to meet in Cairo on Nov. 21 to continue talks on two of the thorniest issues, the fate of 40,000 employees hired by the Hamas government and control of Hamas' vast arsenal of rockets, mortars and explosives. Hamas' military wing has said it will not give up its weapons. Still, Wednesday's handover marked an important step forward. Officials hope that the handover will lead to an easing of the blockade. Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, and Egypt say the blockade was needed to prevent the flow of weapons and militants in and out of Gaza. "We finished the first phase of the reconciliation with excellence," Hamas's top leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said during a seminar in Gaza City. "We are going to [discuss] big issues." In Israel, Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who heads COGAT, the defence body responsible for Palestinian civilian matters, instructed senior officers to meet with Palestinian Authority representatives to discuss the changes at the border crossings. "The meeting will define the joint working processes, the Israeli security demands and criteria for the crossings with an emphasis on having no presence of any Hamas official and anyone on its behalf operating the crossings or be adjacent to them," his office said. Even so, changes on the ground were quickly visible. Just outside the Erez crossing at the Israeli border, a large Hamas checkpoint, where people were inspected and interrogated when travelling in and out of Israel, was closed. Hamas officers loaded the furniture and equipment onto pickup trucks that rolled away. Other Hamas workers dismantled trailers used as offices. A member of the Palestinian security forces is greeted at Rafah border crossing with Egypt in southern Gaza on Wednesday. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters) Palestinian Authority representatives quickly moved into the area. Make your birthday special - by brewing a beer originally made on that date. For a mere 25 euros, I'll create a bespoke recipe for any day of the year you like. As well as the recipe, there's a few hundred words of text describing the beer and its historical context and an image of the original brewing record. Just click on the button below. The city of Beatrice and an area company were recognized for their achievements by the Nebraska Diplomats on Thursday, Nov. 2. The group held its Southeast Regional Economic Development Celebration in Seward on Thursday, where Beatrice was named its community of the year for being a leader in community growth and business partnerships. Beatrice was selected by the Nebraska Diplomats because the city leads by example, with key projects from businesses including Landmark Snacks, Rare Earth Salts, Duonix Biodiesel, Hybrid Turkeys and Worldlawn Power Equipment, to name a few. Beatrice has made deliberate investments in the community, its people and its infrastructure, Mayor Stan Wirth said in a press release. These investments have led to business and community growth and this recognition verifies we are on a path to success. The Nebraska Diplomats is a group that travels the globe representing Nebraska, its people and businesses, and the group helps foster the growth of Nebraska. It is a non-profit corporation and is the largest economic development organization in the state, with a membership of more than 286 business executives and community leaders. Walker Zulkoski, director of the NGage economic development group, said the regional awards were presented in four categories, and for Beatrice to claim two of them was a major achievement. Theyre looking at the entire area of southeast Nebraska, and to get community of the year is a pretty big thing, he said. To be recognized from the Diplomats, who are some of the most key people in the state, who pick companies individuals and communities, is great. Additional factors leading to the award for Beatrice included the recent addition of new playground equipment, a skate park renovation, trail system improvements, and more than 40 new housing permit applications. The focus is on economic development, so jobs and investment, Zulkoski said. We truly had a year of being unmatched, even going beyond southeast Nebraska. They consider what we are investing in the community, and housing is a huge issue. A lot of communities are struggling to get any housing built. One of the businesses mentioned in support of Beatrices award, Rare Earth Salts, received its own honor and was presented with the Innovator of the Year award. We are honored to receive this award and are grateful to The Nebraska Diplomats, Cameron Davies, CEO of Rare Earth Salts, said in a press release. It is a testament to the passion and commitment that our founder, Dr. Joseph Brewer, and his team has shown in developing and commercializing our disruptive rare earth separation technology. Rare Earth Salts is a leading materials technology company and producer of rare earth oxides, according to the press release. Rare Earth Salts has developed an innovative, high value, low cost and environmentally-friendly way to capture and refine all 16 rare earth elements to high purity. This year, the company has signed multiple global commercial agreements, started commercial production of its innovative technology, and recently started a project for the United States Department of Energys National Energy Technology Laboratory to recover High Purity Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from coal ash. Rare Earth Salts has worked with partners to bring the technical expertise and capital necessary to compete in a global market place, according to a press release. A big thank you to all the redistricting reformers! Together, we can slay the gerrymander. Its been busy! Ohioans have been collecting signatures at Halloween parties, concerts and at Early Vote. On Wednesday, November 1, the Congressional Redistricting Working Group held its second public hearing. The hearing room was packed and twenty people testified. Three people from Mercer County testified from about the importance of fair districts. Each of them were from a different congressional district! Michael Li from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University testified that Ohio is one of the six of the worst gerrymandered states in the entire country. Professor Ned Hill of the Glenn School of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University drew laughs from the crowd describing congressional districts and also testified about the problem with uncompetitive general elections: Drawing a set of packed and gerrymandered legislative districts has resulted in functional disenfranchisement of unaffiliated voters and here is the looming Constitutional crisis. What has occurred in Ohio in both congressional and state-level electoral contests is a shift in political power from general election to primaries. Today, primaries are where political contests are being decided in Ohio. Left without their voices and choices are unaffiliated voters. Mosie Welch shared her experiences on the sidewalks of Medina County collecting signatures. Stark County and Licking County also were well represented. Rita Kipp of the League of Women Voters of Licking County described gerrymandering as taking the wind out of the sails of democracy. Catherine Turcer of Common Cause Ohio called on the Working Group to listen to the voters and support congressional redistricting reform the way they did state legislative reform: Some of Ohios leading newspapers have suggested that this working group could be a ruse an effort to convince the hard-working volunteers to stop collecting signatures and when they do, you will put forth a partisan replacement that does little to restore democracy. I urge you to prove those skeptics wrong. Ohioans should get the opportunity to vote on a proposal that would truly reform our system of designing congressional districts. Life-long Republican Don Thompson of Hilliard was even more pointed: It is my view that the legislative inaction the severe lack of responsibility from within the Ohio General Assembly has resulted in forcing many many thousands of volunteer hours to be spent collecting signatures to provide an opportunity for voters to insist on responsible congressional redistricting reform. Cleveland.com has more on the hearing: Ohio Legislators Say Gerrymandering Needs to be Fixed but Will They Act?, November 2, 2017 Watch the hearing on the Ohio Channel. Election Day is the perfect day to collect signatures! We need signatures of registered voters. What better place to find voters than at the polls? Sign up to collect signatures for a few hours on Election Day. Dont forget that we need to stay 100 feet from the polls. This is a buffer to protect voters. It is usually marked by flags. If the line to enter the polling location goes beyond the 100 feet then the buffer is extended an additional 100 feet. Questions? Send us an email at ohiofairdistricts@gmail.com. CORNWALL, Ontario The Cornwall Community Police Service is asking the public to come forward if they know the whereabouts of 32-year-old Paul Grant. Paul was last seen in Cornwall on November 1st, 2017 wearing a green coat with a fur trim and may have made his way to Montreal .Police are looking to speak with Paul as the family is concerned for his wellbeing. Anyone with any information that might assist CCPS in locating Paul Grant is asked to call Cst. Wilson at 613-933-5000 ext 2455 or dispatch at ext 2404. To view a photo of Paul Grant, please visit our Facebook page or Twitter account. It's a work of art. Why he's scrubbed this title from his bibliography, we will never understand. Copies of the out-of-print guide regularly go for up to $250 , and it's easy to see why. It's written exactly the way you'd expect Martin Amis to write a video game guide, and it's delightful. Here's his philosophical rumination on the age-old debate of risk versus reward in Pac-Man : Do I take risks in order to gobble up the fruit symbol in the middle of the screen? I do not, and neither should you. Like the fat and harmless saucer in Missile Command (q.v.), the fruit symbol is there simply to tempt you into hubristic sorties. Bag it. 1 Ian Fleming's Tacit Endorsement Of Rape If you haven't seen The Spy Who Loved Me, you're not qualified to be reading this website, and you need to go watch it before the authorities find you. Sure, it had a cheesy villain named Jaws whose teeth were made of metal, but that's an Oscar-nominated film you're talking about. But you might be surprised to learn the book version was slightly different from the film. And by "slightly different," we mean that the main character wasn't even Bond, but a Canadian woman named Vivienne Michel. Bond himself only makes a brief appearance at the very end. But there is a reason the movie version only took the title. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Female protagonists are great and all, but in the wrong hands, it can go very badly. If you want to see how little a man understands what's like to be a woman, ask him to write a female character. Vivienne describes herself as "an attractive rat making headway in the rat-race," and insists that every woman is hankering for "semi-rape," that "they love to be taken," musing that "it was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful." Considering that James Bond himself commits a whole lot of rape, "semi" and not, it feels like there might be an ulterior motive here. Signet Books The original title was Dr. "No" Means "Yes". Continue Reading Below Advertisement At least Fleming had the decency to regret it. He was so embarrassed by the novel's reception that he asked his publisher to never reprint it. In a letter to said publisher, Fleming explained that his attempt "to write a cautionary tale about Bond" -- whom he insists should not be regarded as a hero -- had "obviously gone very much awry." That probably should have been clear to him the moment he wrote the term "semi-rape," but hindsight is 20/20. Abraham is lawyer living in Mexico. You can say hi to him on Twitter here, or visit his DeviantArt here. If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Or sign up for our Subscription Service for exclusive content, an ad-free experience, and more. For more, check out 20 Stupid Roles That Still Haunt The World's Biggest Stars and The 5 Most Embarrassing Movies Made By Famous Musicians. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out 4 Embarrassing Attempts to Cash In On Famous Viral Videos, and watch other videos you won't see on the site! Also follow us on Facebook. We're worth it. Channel programs News Youngest NYC Terrorist Victim Was A Promising Software Engineer Joseph F. Kovar Share this The IT channel lost a promising software developer in Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York City. One of the victims, Nicholas Cleves, was a software engineer and analyst at Unified Digital Group, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based solution provider specializing in enterprise-scale software development. Eight were killed on October 31 when Sayfullo Saipov allegedly drove a rented truck into a bicycle path in Manhattan near the World Trade Center. Police said Saipov's vehicle entered West Side Highway bicycle path at Houston Street and began driving southbound, striking a number of pedestrians and bicyclists along the route. Cleves, 23, was the only Manhattan resident and the youngest of the victims. [Related: Solution Provider Global Account Exec Killed In Las Vegas Mass Shooting] As a 2016 graduate of Skidmore College with a major in computer science and minor in physics, Cleves was hired in January 2016 by Unified Digital Group as a software engineering intern. After five months, he became a full-time employee of the solution provider. Alex Silverstein, president of Unified Digital Group, on Wednesday posted a blog on the company website in which he called Cleves a "light of his generation: a brilliant, humble, compassionate young professional." Silverstein wrote that Cleves was "immersed in the technological zeitgeist of our era," and was at ease with advanced computer science topics "from A.I. to game theory, cryptography and Bitcoin, programming patterns and the latest engineering happening at Tesla." Cleves learned new skills quickly and was willing to take on new challenges, and at the same time had wonderful people skills, with a "rare capacity for emotional IQ in an often-stoic professional milieu," he wrote. "He was composed, accepting, and open to all," Silverstein wrote. "It pains me greatly to reflect that we can no longer experience his unique gifts. A growing light has been senselessly extinguished. Yet these recollections, and the positive influence they continue to bear, remind me that I was truly blessed to call Nicholas Cleves my colleague and friend." Unified Digital Group was unable to respond to a request for comment by press time. Data center News HPE Is Selling Palo Alto Building; Aruba's State-Of-The-Art Facility Will Be HPE's New Headquarters Steven Burke Share this Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is in the midst of its massive 'Next' restructuring aimed at saving $1.5 billion over a three year period, is selling its Palo Alto, Calif. facility and moving its headquarters to a state-of-the-art Santa Clara facility that is currently the home of its Aruba mobile, "cloud first" networking business. The 233,000 square feet Aruba facility (pictured), which the company moved into on Jan. 1, was built as a showcase for Aruba's mobile cloud first and intelligent edge offerings. It includes all of the latest Aruba product offerings with smart connectivity through the six-story building including location-based services powered by a campus app. [Related: HPE Reduces Internal Comp Plans From 400 To 25 As Part Of Sweeping 'Next' Overhaul] HPE said it plans to relocate the under 1,000 employees at the current Palo Alto headquarters to three facilities: the Aruba headquarters, an HPE facility in Milpitas and a San Jose facility that came with the acquisition of Nimble earlier this year. HPE Thursday said it expects to complete the move by the end of 2018. The Palo Alto real estate sale comes with HPE's successful spin merger earlier this year of its $20 billion Enterprise Services business with 110,000 employees moving to DXC technology and the spin in merger of HPE's software assets to Micro Focus. The $28 billion HPE officially split from $55 billion HP two years ago. HPE said even with the sale of the Palo Alto facility it will continue to jointly support with HP Inc. the Founder's Office of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, as well as the nearby Hewlett-Packard Garage, where Hewlett-Packard was founded. Michael Haley, president of Edge Solutions, an Alpharetta, Ga., solution provider, No. 333 on the 2017 CRN Solution Provider 500, said the sale of the Palo Alto headquarters demonstrates how far HPE has come as a leaner and more agile independent company. "Everything HPE is doing is making the company easier to do business with for both customers and partners," he said. "Complexity equals cost." Haley said the Aruba product portfolio is gaining momentum in accounts of all sizes and shapes. "No matter what account we go into from a midmarket to an enterprise, they have a business need that can be met by leveraging the Aruba products," he said. "I am looking forward to bringing customers to that Aruba facility for briefings and demos." Security News Arrest Made In FireEye Corporate Network Hacking Attempt Michael Novinson Share this The person who attacked the personal online accounts of a FireEye employee several months ago was arrested and taken into custody Thursday by international law enforcement, FireEye said Thursday. The Milpitas, Calif.-based company worked with law enforcement and spent hundreds of hours investigating a hacker's July claim that he had breached FireEye's corporate network, according to CEO Kevin Mandia. But these attackers rarely, if ever, get caught, Mandia said. "Over my career, I have found it frustrating how little risk or repercussions exist for the attackers, who hide behind the anonymity of the internet to cause harm to good, well-intentioned people," Mandia told Wall Street analysts Wednesday. "Therefore, I am pleased that, in this case, we were able to impose repercussions for the attacker and achieve a small victory for the good guys." [Related: FireEye Mandiant Analyst Reportedly Hacked, Attackers Claim Further Leaks Possible] FireEye announced in August that the hacker didn't breach, compromise or access the company's corporate network, despite multiple failed attempts to do so. Instead, the attacker used credentials for the victim's social media and email accounts exposed in publicly-disclosed third-party breaches to access the employee's personal online accounts. The attacker publicly released three FireEye corporate documents obtained from the victim's personal online accounts, according to an Aug. 7 blog post from FireEye Chief Security Officer Steven Booth. Two customer names were identified in the employee's personal email and disclosed by the hacker. Customers or prospects concerned about the attack were able to sit down with Mandia or FireEye's CISO and talk through what happened, according to CFO and Chief Accounting Officer Frank Verdecanna. Although it took some time to get through those discussions, Verdecanna told CRN that he doesn't believe the incident had a significantly negative impact on FireEye's performance in the quarter. At the same time, though, Mandia told CRN that FireEye had to sink a "tremendous" amount of time and effort into investigating the hacker's claims. That efforts a lot of direct, real costs on the company, according to Mandia. "I don't want to underestimate the unfairness of the situation of an anonymous person making false claims," Mandia told CRN. "You have to prove the negative, which is really annoying." All told, Verdecanna said the negative impact of the attack was primarily centered around the time it took FireEye to get to the bottom of what happened and convincing customers that the company wasn't breached. "Had we been breached, that would have been a whole different ballgame," Verdecanna told CRN. "The fact is that we were able to prove that we weren't breached." FireEye's sales for the quarter ended Sept. 30 climbed to $189.6 million, up 1.7 percent from $186.4 million the year prior. That edged out Seeking Alpha projections of $186.2 million. The company recorded a net loss of $72.9 million, or $0.41 per share, improved from a net loss of $123.4 million, or $0.75 per share, last year. On a non-GAAP basis, net income came in at $6.5 million, or $0.04 per share, better than a net loss of $29.4 million, or $0.18 per share, the year before. This beat Seeking Alpha projections of a net loss of $0.07 per share. FireEye's stock fell $1.99 (12.16%) to $14.38 in after-hours trading. Earnings were released after the market closed Wednesday. For the coming quarter, FireEye expects to break even or report a net loss of as much as $0.03 a share on sales of between $190 million and $196 million. Analysts had been expecting a net loss of $0.01 on earnings of $195.9 million, according to Seeking Alpha. Storage News Pivot3 Signs With Arrow To Bring Its Hyper-Converged Infrastructure To Partners Joseph F. Kovar Share this Hyper-converged infrastructure technology provider Pivot3 has signed a distribution agreement with Arrow to bring its technology to channel partners. The appliances distributed as part of the deal will either be branded as Pivot3 or Lenovo. Pivot3 develops hyper-converged infrastructure software based on its Acuity platform, the latest version of which provides priority-aware and policy-based capabilities with NVMe PCIe flash performance. The company also offers a version for video surveillance based on its vSTAC operating system. The Pivot3 hyper-converged appliances are available configured with either Dell or Lenovo server hardware, depending on the preference of the customer, said Mark Maisano, vice president of global channels for the Austin, Texas-based company. [Related: The 11 Coolest Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Products Of 2017 (So Far)] Pivot3 has been distributing its Pivot3-branded appliances via Ingram Micro's Promark business with the Dell or Lenovo servers, Maisano told CRN. Now, channel partners will also be able to purchase the appliances via Arrow Enterprise Computing Solutions, he said. Partners looking for a Lenovo-branded version, however, can go through Arrow Intelligent Systems, the integration arm of Arrow. "Arrow brings configuration capabilities and integration capabilities that are unmatched," he said. "They drive a complete solution." Pivot3's new Arrow relationship will probably help streamline the purchasing process, said Dave Clipp, principal at Atom Creek, a Centennial, Colo.-based solution provider and channel partner to both Pivot3 and Lenovo. Atom Creek had been purchasing the Lenovo hardware-based Pivot3 appliances from other sources, but the purchasing process was "cloudy," Clipp told CRN. "With the new program, we know Arrow will take the Lenovo hardware and do the integration," he said. "We don't have to worry about how the sausage is made." The Pivot3 hyper-converged infrastructure works well, but doesn't have the brand recognition of some of its peers making it important to work with a vendor like Lenovo and a distributor like Arrow, said Eric Collins, chief technology officer at PCPC Direct, a Houston-based solution provider and channel partner to Pivot3 and Lenovo. "Pivot3 scales to up to 30 to 60 nodes easily," Collins told CRN. "In that range, you can put a lot of work on it. You put four nodes on the rack, run a script, and it's ready. We just have to give customers about four hours of training." Arrow will make it easier to bring the Lenovo-branded version to the channel, Collins said. "With Lenovo, we get a Tier 1 manufacturer's warranty and service," he said. "All the comforts of the kind of blanket only a top vendor can provide and Arrow gives us the value-added services of a top-notch distributor, including financing and marketing dollars." I've bootstrapped businesses from scratch with personal capital and I've also raised millions from a PowerPoint presentation and then launched a business (which, hint, can be a terrible way to do it -- but that's a different story for another time). Related: 5 Components of Bootstrapping a Business Not all startups can be bootstrapped, but if your business has low capital needs at the beginning then bootstrapping might be your best option. But, why bootstrap? Isn't it better to raise external funding first so you have a nice-sized war chest to back up your business? Don't 82 percent of businesses fail because of cash flow problems? Running a business is difficult, and choosing to self-finance instead of finding investors does ramp up the difficulty. Although going lean is tough, it teaches you valuable lessons that you'll carry with you across your next ventures. When you succeed at bootstrapping, you'll feel unstoppable. Learning to be self-reliant is a good idea. With venture capital funding for tech startups going into a global decline, venture capital might not always be an option. What are the lessons you'll learn? 1. You will think very carefully about scarce resources. Whether your company is made up of five people or 500, internet businesses will always have scarce resources. You will never have enough money, engineers, time or talent. I've never met an internet company executive that complained about having too many talented engineers. Learning how to do more with less is one of the most important skills of an entrepreneur. Every decision will come with the sacrifice of something else, so you'll need to fully understand your financial state at any given moment. Hiring, especially early on, will feel like the biggest decision of your life. Related: I Started My Business on a Spreadsheet -- Here's Why All Bootstrapped Companies Need to Start Lean 2. You will be forced to try to validate your assumptions quickly in front of the customer. This is what I call scrappy validation of assumptions -- a process of continuous learning. It's a focus on rapid iteration and a nimbleness that you should never lose as your business grows. When you have an idea you want to test out, don't throw time and money at it and turn something around six months later to show a customer. This is where the scrappiness comes in. I say instead of six months, show me how you can validate this idea in three weeks. That could be calling 20 customers or putting the prototype idea in a PowerPoint and doing a roadshow to get feedback and validate the customer need quickly. Related: 3 Companies You Should Emulate If You Want to Bootstrap Your Business 3. You don't own your company until the first dollar of profitability. The most important thing bootstrapping taught me is that if I can't make payroll in six to 12 months, I don't own my company. I'm going to get crammed down and potentially kicked out, and there's nothing I can do about it. When you're profitable, you don't have to raise money. That's when you own your company. It's not a percentage. It's when you're not beholden to someone else for capital. That's a lesson also born of living through two downturns of the internet -- and it's why I focus so much on profitability. Bootstrapping makes you appreciate your business more because you have so much personally invested. It creates a culture where exceptional performance becomes the norm and team members are fully accountable to each other to meet this goal. Lean times may be rough, but it will make each success that much more rewarding. Related Video: Embrace Being Broke. Build Up Your Business By Bootstrapping. Related: 3 Big Reasons to Bootstrap Your Business This Entrepreneur Has Introduced Water ATMs in India How This Entrepreneur is Dishing out Fresh Food to Households in South India Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com On Sept. 28, I joined fellow members of the clergy to stand in unity on the front steps of the State Supreme Court before oral arguments in the appeal of the historic CCJEF v. Rell case. Together, we called for the court to uphold Superior Court Judge Moukwashers decision to treat all students fairly, no matter what school they choose to attend. In listening to the hearing, one thing was clear: The state attorney generals office failed to put students and their families first. The states attorney suggested Connecticut should be applauded for the effort it puts into its education system, regardless of how well that system actually serves students. I firmly disagree. I know we can do better. We must do better. While some of our students are stuck in failing schools, others receive the quality education every child deserves. The difference in access usually comes down to arbitrary factors like race, ZIP code, or family income. Knowingly depriving children of a quality education is not anything to praise. Over the last six years, the number of students in Norwalk eligible for free or reduced-price lunch has steadily increased and now accounts for half of all of our students. Overall student enrollment has also gone up. Student needs have increased, and yet education aid remains essentially stagnant. The result is persistent achievement gaps where our low-income and minority students are falling behind their peers in Connecticuts better-funded suburban neighborhoods. It is evident that the current way our state funds our public schools is irrational, unfair, and treats students differently based on the schools they choose to attend. My daughter attends a magnet school in Norwalk, where she is thriving and receiving a great education. Like thousands of other parents of children who attend public schools of choice, I worry every year that her school will lose funding. Public education is not supposed to work this way. Access to a great education is all about equity and justice. Over a year ago, Judge Moukawsher called out our current system as an injustice that needs remedied. Our children cannot wait any longer for a rational formula. I encourage the Supreme Court to uphold Judge Moukawshers ruling to develop a fair, rational, and predictable school funding formula. Its time for the courts and our state leaders to take the bold steps needed to ensure that all students get the education they need and deserve. The futures of our children and our state depend on it. Pastor Lenore Jordan is the lead pastor of the New Place of Worship Church in Norwalk. 01 Kasm 2017 Carsamba, 19:56 The court bench ruled in its interim decision that our four colleagues remain in detention and the next session will be held on 25-26 December. Members of parliament, representatives of press professional organisations and citizens convened for a press statement in front of Istanbul Judicial Complex in Caglayan prior to the fourth hearing of the trial in which our columnists and managers, who were arrested and detained in an operation staged one year ago today, are being prosecuted. CHP Istanbul MP Bars Yarkadas made the press statement on behalf of the group. The fourth hearing of the trial in which 19 defendants are being prosecuted, of whom Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu, Executive Board Chair Akn Atalay, reporter Ahmet Sk and accounting employee Emre Iper along with Ahmet Kemal Aydogdu, alleged to be the holder of the Jeansbiri account, are in detention, was held at Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 27. The presiding judge announced the interim decision. The court bench ruled that all defendants detention continue. It was decided in the interim ruling for Can Dundar and Ilan Tanr to be apprehended and for Mehmet Farac, Leyla Tavsanoglu and Dogan Satms to be heard as witnesses. The next hearing of the trial in which it was decided to await the experts report into Emre Iper will be held on 25 and 26 December. Prior to the hearing CHP parliamentarians Sezgin Tanrkulu, Bars Yarkadas, Muharrem Erkek and Hlmi Yarayc together with a large numer of foreign press members including International Press Institute Chair John Yearwood, German journalist and writer Gunter Wallraff and Sarah Clarke of PEN International convened in front of the judicial complex to give support to the Cumhuriyet staffers. THEY ARE BEING PROSECUTED PURELY FOR HAVING CONDUCTED JOURNALISM Following the chanting of the slogans, Dont be silent and shout - journalism is a right and Freedom right now, Canan Yldz made a press statement on behalf of Journalists on the Outside. Yldz, recalling that the Cumhuriyet Newspaper and Ozgur Gundem Newspaper trials in which journalists are being prosecuted would be heard that day at Caglayan judicial complex, said, We wish for the immediated release of our hostage colleagues Ahmet Sk, Murat Sabuncu, Akn Atalay, Emre Iper, Inan Kzlkaya and Kemal Sancl. Because, as we have said countless times, our colleagues who have been detained in the trials brought against the Cumhuriyet and Ozgur Gundem newspapers are being prosecuted purely and simply for having conducted journalism. REPRESENTATIVES OF FOREIGN PRESS ORGANISATIONS ALSO MADE STATEMENTS International Press Institute Chair John Yearwood, stating that he has followed this trial from the outset, commented, I hope this will be the last hearing I will observe. German journalist and writer Gunter Wallraff, stating that he had come here many times in solidarity with detained journalists, said, My friend Aziz Nesin once said, The most correct place for a journalist to be in such times is jail. Sarah Clarke of PEN International, noting that PEN International had been monitoring this trial from its outset, said, PEN regards the Cumhuriyet trial as being the greatest infraction against the freedom of expression in Turkey. CHP YARKADAS: THIS BUILDING HAVING JUSTICE IN ITS NAME BUT HAVING NO JUSTICE INSIDE CHP MP Bars Yarkadas proclaimed, Welcome to our ordinary Tuesday meeting today. Why do I say, ordinary Tuesday meeting? Because every Tuesday we gather in front of a building having justice in its name but having no justice inside for our detained journalist colleagues. Unfortunately, the AKP regime seemingly does not change our fate. There are currently 182 journalists behind iron bars and they are paying a heavy price for what they have written, drawn and said, for the tweets they have posted and comments they have made. LIVE BLOG 09.08 It was announced that the hearing, slated to start at 09:30, would commence at 10:05. 09.15 Certain relatives of the defendants were not admitted to the courtroom on the grounds that their names were not on the list. 11.10 Our Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu, Executive Board Chair Akn Atalay, reporter Ahmet Sk and accounting employee Emre Iper were admitted to the courtroom having been brought from prison. 11.20 Following the commencement of the hearing, the presiding judge made a brief explanation: He said that there were more absent documents than ones that had arrived. 11.25 - The presiding judge announced that the Dogan Satms interview had entered the file. 11.30 The presiding judge announced which of the requested experts reports had arrived. 11.35 It was announced that Mehmet Farac, expected as a witness at the last two hearings, was also not in attendance at the latest hearing. 11.40 Aydn Engins attorney objected to admission of the Dogan Satms interview into the file. The attorney said, Satms expressed his own view as to whether the intelligence agency report fell within journalism and tried to create a perception. The Dogan Satms interview cannot be used as evidence. It must be removed from the file. 11.45 Tora Pekin, Attorney-at-Law: I draw the courts attention to the consistent non-appearance in court of witness Mehmet Farac. Mehmet Farac is essentially not impartial. There is a further dimension to Faracs partiality: competition between Aydnlk and Cumhuriyet. 11.55 - Tora Pekin, Attorney-at-Law: We apply for Tunacy Besikci to be heard as a witness in relation to Emre Iper. 12.00 - Tora Pekin, Attorney-at-Law: There is not one single technical explanation in the file as to ByLock being on Emre Ipers phone, just input that he was included on the intelligence agencys list. It is possible to drown in neswpaper reports over the injustices committed in that list. The expert has not submitted a report to the effect that ByLock is present. No report will ever arrive to the file to the effect that ByLock is present. 12.10 An additional defence is being taken regarding accusations that Ahmet Kemal Aydogdu had ByLock with reference to documents that had arrived. 12.40 The prosecutor has expressed an opinion that the application for Judicial Communications Expert Tuncay Besikci to be heard should be dismissed. The prosecutor also sought the dismissal of the applications for the removal from the evidence of the Dogan Satms interview that had entered the file and for Mehment Farac not to be heard as a witness. 12.41 A recess was taken in the hearing for a decision to be announced on the applications. 13.47 The trial restarted and the decision taken on the applications was announced. The court ruled that the expert be heard in the courtroom and the Dogan Satms interview be placed in the file as evidence. As to Mehmet Farac, whose removal from the list of witnesses had been sought, the decision was taken that, There are no gounds for dispensing with his testimony. EXPERT HEARD AS WITNESS: I SAW NO TIE WITH FETO 13.50 The hearing continues with testimony from Judicial Comminucations Expert Tuncay Besikci. Besikci: I have 19 years experience of communications. I have worked alongside the prosecution in many FETO-connected trials and we have submitted opinions. The examined phone belonging to the suspect was used on 9 November 2013. The phone has never been formatted since it was first used. It lends itself very well to examination because we are able to recover deleted files retroactively. It is an advantage that it is an Android and we may not be able to break the codes on Apples and Blackberries. I made a search of the content. I created keywords relating to FETO and was unable to see any FETO ties as a result. Whatsapp has been used most on the phone. It has been backed up. I searched for ByLock using all known methods. I encountered absolutely no indication of ByLock. I just saw that he follows the Fuat Avni account. Actually, I follow it, too. I looked into how a phone on which ByLock had not been used was routed to the ByLock server. This could only have been done with another application. There is code included in a music program that was downloaded on 3 June 2014. Someone who downloads the Freezy or Mecca direction ap is routed unwittingly to the Bylock IP. That code routes every visitor to that page to the ByLock server. With you wanting to listen to music you are instantly routed to the ByLock server. ORGANISATION MEMBERS DEVELOPED THIS PROGRAM Suspect Emre Iper downloaded this program onto his phone on 22 June. Three days later ByLock makes its advertising on this program and, then, one day later it is routed to ByLock.Then it eliminates the program. Some Mecca direction finding progams have also been routed to this server. ByLock was developed and used by the organisation. The accused never used ByLock. The Freezy program was downloaded onto the accuseds phone. This program was developed by organisation members. There may be many people in the accuseds position. People wishing to perform prayer may have been routed to this server. It is easy to ascertain this and it is ascertainable from just one line of code. Real ByLock users can easily be differentiated from those who were routed to the server. Presiding Judge: Is it possible for the Freezy program to route to the server in Lithuania? Besikci: It is technically very possible. I did this in the system. I entered some code and routed to this server. Consequently, everyone who visited my site was also routed to ByLock. Presiding Judge: Does the failure to detect a trace of ByLock on a persons phone constitute evidence that they were not a ByLock user? Because they may have been connected through another phone. We have seen in other examples that it is used through routing. Besikci: It is hard to determine this on Apples and Blackberries but I examined this. If you request records from all operators between 26 August 13 September you can actually see if they are ByLock users or were routed. 14.43 Presiding Judge Abdurrahman Orkun Dag announced that the mobile phone examination record as part of the Osman Kavala investigation had entered the file. He read a message chain between Kavala and Aydn Engin. I CALL THIS A CONSPIRACY Fikret Ilkiz, Attorney-at-Law took the floor and said, The correspondence that has arrived vindicates us in prodecural matters. If we wait, more documents will come, too. Kavalas interrogation is being conducted today at the police. This means that Kavala will be detained. Given that he has sent such a document to the Press Prosecution, we will wait like in a case in which the debtor is ordered to deposit funds and, with secrecy applying to the investigation into a defendant, does sending this correspondence not breach secrecy? I make no application, but this is how things stand. The prosecution sends information relating to the investigation into Kavala and we are defendants at the hearing. Ergin Cinmen, Attorney-at-Law: The terrorist prosection draws a connection with the media in a curious manner. This is an abuse of position. I call this a conspiracy from now on. Ahmet Sk: I have said for two sessions that I am making a criminal complaint, but you have evaded making a decision. A document bearing the hearing prosecutors name circulates in a newspaper close to the ruling party, but you do not file a criminal complaint. You search for an organisation in our headlines. But, I have told you where the organisation is located. The organisation is in this judicial complex building, in the guise of judges and prosecutors, and their collaborators are the media. Presiding Judge: We were not contemplating prolonging this trial and wanted to end it, but experts reports are absent. Mehmet Farac will come and be heard at the session. THE PROSECUTOR ANNOUNCED HIS OPINION THAT THE DETENTIONS SHOULD CONTINUE The Republic Prosecutor, making known his opinion with regard to the appliations, voiced the opinion that the defendants detentions should continue. 14.58 MURAT SABUNCU: THE PROSECUTOR HAS MADE US EXPERIENCE THE SAME DEJA VU Murat Sabuncu: The interim decision is the same, the prosecutors opinion is the same, the documents delivered to you at the last moment are the same one year has passed, and everything is the same! One year has passed since we lost our freedom. The learned prosecutor has made us experience the same deja vu. Cumhuriyet takes orders from no-one. The person who gives orders to those on Cumhuriyet has yet to born by their mother. Are we to learn journalism from prosecutors? Is an expert whose age is equivalent to the time I have spent as a journalist to teach us journalism? 15:15 AKIN ATALAY: TWISTED TO AID THE PROSECUTOR WHO WAS UNABLE TO FIND A CRIME COMMITTED ON BEHALF OF THE ORGANISATION For the period of some five months that passed until the indictment was presented to your court, the charge filed against us in rulings ordering the continutaion of detention by various penal judgeships of the peace was cited to be committing crime on behalf of an organisation while not being an organisation member having a counterpart in the Turkish Penal Code (Article 220/6 of the Turkish Penal Code). In line with the opinion on each occasion of the prosecutor pursuing the investigation seeking continuation of detention for this offence, decisions were also passed by duty penal judges of the peace ordering the continuation of detention. The prosecution, unable to unearth a crime committed on behalf of the organisation, now amended the charge in the indictment it drafted to aiding terrorist organisations. Over the seven-month period that has passed from that date until now, your bench has actually ordered the continuation of detention on this new amended charge. In fact, I did not wish to touch on the grounds you include in the decisions ordering the continuation of detention and make an assessment of these grounds, because, were it necessary to speak frankly and sincerely, our detention ever since the start of the proceedings has not been based on legal or statutory grounds and has been based on a political plan and decision; I thought that the statements and wording contained by way of grounds in orders for detention to continue were much more of an excuse and an endeavour to find a legal pretext than grounds; I still think so. I hope that so thinking and expressing this thought of mine is subsumed under the right to defence. IF I CAME A HUNDRED TIMES INTO THIS WORLD, I WOULD PREFER TO BE ON THE DEFENCE IN THIS TRIAL EVERY TIME So as to determine who is prosecuting whom on contemplating the charges and defences in these proceedings, outer form and formal appearance must not be sufficed with. If I came a hundred times into this world, I would prefer to be on the defence in this trial every time, because lining up with the values of justice, freedom and democracy is honour. For, my conscience is clear and I am at peace. Your bench will most certainly pass the first ruling in this trial. But, this will not be the final decision and the situation we can all foresee is that this trial will not end with this ruling. Hence, the ruling that your bench passes over me neither worries nor frightens me. I have no doubt that these proceedings will end in our vindication and, conversely, in the bringers of the charges and causers of the injustice being proved wrong and put to shame. I wish to say to everyone who has retained a sense of justice, fariness, compassion and conscience: have no worries, have no doubts it is not those who appear strong today but those who are in the right who will prevail. My final words in relation to our detention are that we are here as representatives of one of Turkeys oldest, most venerable and respected newspapers. Those who represent this newspaper have, like the newspaper itself, frequently passed through and been tested by such calamities and tough times. It has passed through these tests on each occasion with its good name and honour intact. It has at all times refused to be the palace servant of the holders of power, to conceal or emasculate the truth or defile journalism. It has begged for mercy or asked for pity from no-one. In the face of the reality surrounding journalism and the judiciary in the period in which we find ourselves, let no-one expect of us that we will engage in a request or supplication over which our newspaper will in the future feel shame and hang its head. Under circumstances in which, with regard to trials like ours, Islamic social complexes and not the judiciary are indicated to be the venue for the demand and quest for justice, we have absolutely no matter that we will pursue in Islamic social complexes and over which we will raise requests there. We would deem this to be pointless from both our own and our newspapers point of view, and, at the same time, we would consider this to be grave disrepect towards the law and judiciary. Consequently, under these circumstances I see no need for further comment on ending detention. 16.28 Duygun Yarsuvat, Attorney-at-Law, took the floor: It is a very rare situation for the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights to apply to intervene at the European Court of Human Rights and the court has admitted this. The Turkish government has requested a six-week extension and this period will end on 7 November for some of the defendants in this trial and on 15 November for one of them. The commissioner has forwarded his views in his submission and has stated that there is regression in Turkey with regard to press freedom. He said that freedom of expression has regressed in the wake of the proclamation of the state of emergency. There is no evidence in the file. The releasing of the Cumhuriyet staffers will bing comfort to both your court and Turkey. 16.59 WE WANT INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTS TO BE SENT Fikret Ilkiz, Attorney-at-Law: We made application on 26 December 2016 to the Constitutional Court on behalf of all the detained defendants. The Constitutional Court replied to our application with the correspondence it drafted following 62 days. Meanwhile, they joined Cumhuriyet reporter Ahmet Sk with this case. We also applied on Sks behalf to the Constitutional Court on 30 January 2017. We wrote to the Chief Prosecution saying that we were going to obtain a principle decision and there was an application by both Turhan Gunay and Ahmet Sk and we wish for information about the investigation. We said we wanted information and documents to be sent. We submitted an opinion to the Constitutional Court on 22 May. We also applied on behalf of the Cumhuriyet managers to the European Court of Human Rights on 2 March 2017. The government asked for an extension to the reply deadline and asked for a deadline of 24 October due to the complexity of the case and the final date is 7 November 2017. They will reply to us on that date. The government or Justice Ministry have not replied to the court for nine months because it has held up the individual applications. When you use one of your powers contrary to its purpose you are deemed to have violated Article 18 of the Convention. A reply is sought from the government about this. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights and thirteen organisations have made applications to intervene and the European Court of Human Rights has also admitted these. On the one hand, the ministry is forever requesting extra time of the European Court of Human Rights due to the complex case, and, on the other, there is the Constitutional Court that is not repsonding to our opinion, and we and you are stuck in the middle. What kind of reason do you have not to implement the principle of personal freedom? One person may say We do not recognise it but this is of no concern to us. 17.50 - Fikret Ilkiz, Attorney-at-Law: The law does not deserve to be applied just because it is the law. Judges may resist laws that lack just content, do not secure justice, cause severe breaches of human rights and breach the principle of equality. The restriction of the expression in word or writing of beliefs and thoughts in the manner you have seen in the objection runs counter to rights that the constitution guarantees. Fettering certain opinions and thoughts through narrow interpretations prevents the development of recognition of the right of a variety of currents to exist. Judges are responsible for applying the law, but they are not hostages of the law. They are not machines that apply the law. True judges, in applying soulless and lifeless laws, give life to laws with their consciences and sense of justice. Please grant us our truths and undo their handcuffs so as to prevent them from drinking water handcuffed from now on. 18.02 Following Fikret Ilkiz, Attorney-at-Laws address, Kemal Aydogdus attorney Adnan Yldz took the floor and applied for release. Yldz said that his client has asserted as of the first day that he is not, as the prosecution says, the holder of the account jeansbiri. 18.09 A recess was taken in the hearing until 19.00. 19.10 The defendants and spectators were admitted to the courtroom for the interim decision to be announced. The court bench is awaited. 19.26 The court bench has entered the courtroom. 19.28 The court bench announces the interim decision: Can Dundar and Ilhan Tanrs apprehension is awaited. Mehmet Farac, Leyla Tavsanoglu and Dogan Satms will be heard as witnesses. The experts report into Emre Iper is awaited. The next hearing of the trial will be held on 25 and 26 December. The continuation of all defendants detention was ordered. Five hundred years ago this week, a German theologian nailed a sheet of 95 statements, or theses, to a church door in Saxony in hopes of starting a debate to reform the church he loved. But Martin Luthers hammer didnt spur debate; it sparked a wildfire that changed the world. Thats the thing about reformers; once they get events rolling, events take over. Sometimes reform follows, other times revolution. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would be wise to take note of this difference because it is smack in the middle of what it calls a broader on-going review of the Department based on the Presidents Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Executive Branch. That effort, and a 2014 farm bill mandate for USDA to establish an Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, will deliver a department, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue promises, that maximizes customer satisfaction and will be an unapologetic advocate for U.S. ag exports. The plan hit a pothole Oct. 19 when Senate Ag Committee leaders asked Perdue not to swear in a newly-approved Under Secretary becausewell, gosh, this is embarrassingthe office he was to fill under the USDA reform plan does not actually exist. Not yet, anyway. Glitches like that should have been expected because fewin fact, no one that I could findhas seen an actual copy of USDAs reform plan. To one Capitol Hill old-timer that means only one thing: There really isnt a plan. If that sounds crazy, welcome to our post-truth world. USDA is in the middle of what appears to be its biggest reorganization in history and there is no formal, public document listing any of the announced (or to-be-announced) reforms, their costs or benefits, and what it means to taxpayers and farmers both here and abroad. So what do we know? On May 11, just two weeks after unpacking his socks in Washington, D.C., Perdue announced changes within USDA. The two most sweeping were the creation of the Under Secretary for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs (per the 2014 Farm Bill) and the elimination of the Under Secretary for Rural Development, an office that manages a $216 billion rural loan portfolio. Its not known if Perdue arrived at USDA with the reform plan or he if was handed it upon arrival. Nor is it known who wrote itUSDA staff or outsidersand who paid for the work, taxpayers or special interests. (Capitol Hill rumors strongly assert it was non-USDA outsiders backed by a large farm lobbying group.) The plans author is important because their view shaped the plans overall theme: what you see in American agriculture today is what youll see for decades to comeincreasingly large, export-driven, biofuel-centered commodity production with ever fewer suppliers, farmers and ranchers competing for lower prices and more taxpayer subsidies. What the author got wrong, however, is that American agriculture wont be the same a generation or even 10 years from now. It will be different because its always different, never static. In the last generation alone, U.S. farmers have adopted GMOs, drones, and GPS. Its anyones guess what the next generation will bring. But it wont be more of the same. Electric vehicles will dentmaybe even run overthe ethanol industry, climate change will continue to move production and markets to levels and places once unimaginable, and technology will continue to remove people from both farms and rural communities. And yet the unpublished, unseen USDA reform plan doesnt account for any of these highly likely events. Instead it looks backward 40 years, not forward even 10. As such, its more an obituary than a reform plan. While discussing the removal of confederate monuments John Kelly, the White Houses chief of staff, said the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. In an interview Monday night with Laura Ingraham, host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Kelly said Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate States, was a loyal and honorable man, and the people at the time were loyal to their state before their country. Men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand, Kelly said in the interview. Monday night, Kelly said the removal of plaques in a Virginia church of former President George Washington and Confederate General Robert E. Lee would be a lack of appreciation for history. Well, historys history, Kelly said in the interview. There are certain things in history that were not so good and other things that were very, very good. Kelly said taking the morals and values of today and applying them to hundreds of years ago is wrong. I think we make a mistake, though, and as a society, and certainly as individuals, when we take what is today accepted as right and wrong and go back 100, 200, 300 years or more and say what Christopher Columbus did was wrong, Kelly said in the interview. Five hundred years later, its inconceivable to me that you would take what we think now and apply it back then. Daniel Sutherland, president of The Society of Civil War Historians and history professor at the University of Arkansas, said he agreed with Kellys statement, but also said it was referring to expansion, not slavery. Politicians were able to find middle ground on the issue for at least a generation, Sutherland said. But a series of unbridgeable divides between North and South arose in the 1850s. Sutherland said he believed the rise of the Republican Party led to the end of a practical approach in politics and was a reason for the Civil War. Susan ODonovan, a history professor at the University of Memphis, said protecting slavery was a top priority for secessionists. Historians are generally in agreement these days that slavery is the issue that led to the Civil War, ODonovan said. One only need read the Mississippi Declaration of Secession to know that the preservation of slavery was foremost on secessionists minds. She said Kellys remark dismissed the entirety of the slave population who would not be satisfied until slavery was gone. Any compromise that left any part of slavery intact was the last thing they wanted, ODonovan said. They wanted immediate and unconditional freedom. ODonovan said the idea of compromising would be simplifying the situation, and she believed Kelly should be cautious with making remarks such as that. To claim that the Civil War happened because of a failure to compromise is an example of reductive reasoning that, furthermore, assumes that compromise was a viable solution, ODonovan said. ODonovan said the war and secession marked the end of an effort to reach compromise. Sometimes, compromise simply will not work, ODonovan said. He was spotted with a shaved head while filming for his new role as famed artist Pablo Picasso on Sunday. But Antonio Banderas donned a thick grey wig a day later, as he filmed scenes on the beach in the painter's native Malaga, Spain, for the second series of Genius. The actor, 57, looked unrecognisable with his dyed locks as he chatted away happily to the crew between takes. Scroll down for video Hair today, gone tomorrow: Antonio Banderas donned a thick grey wig to play Pablo Picasso as he filmed scenes on the beach in Malaga, Spain, for the second series of Genius The actor looked ready for a day at the beach in a breezy white linen shirt and white and black striped swimming shorts. While Pablo, who died aged 91 in 1973, is better known for his balding white hair, Antonio's fuller grey hair hinted he was portraying the cubist painter at an earlier stage of his life. Smiling as he chatted to crew and cast members during filming, The Skin I Live In actor appeared to be in relaxed spirits. Transformation: The actor, 57, looked unrecognisable with his dyed locks as he chatted away happily to the crew between takes. Pictured left, Pablo in Paris in the 1920s Relaxed look: The actor looked ready for a day at the beach in a breezy white linen shirt and white and black striped swimming shorts Loving life: Smiling as he chatted to crew and cast members during filming, The Skin I Live In actor appeared to be in relaxed spirits National Geographic's first series explored the discoveries, the loves, the relationships and the genius of Albert Einstein. But no longer looking into the science sphere, the second series will transport viewers back to the 20th Century art world as it charts the story of Pablo Picasso. It was no surprise Antonio was a natural choice for the part of Picasso as he was born in the Cubist's native hometown. Of the part, the actor said: 'The life story of Pablo Picasso has long since fascinated me and I have so much respect for this man who also comes from my birthplace. Is that you, Antonio? The costume and hair ensured the actor looked worlds apart from his usual appearance Exploration: The second series of Genius will transport viewers back to the 20th Century art world as it charts the story of Pablo Picasso 'I am thrilled to work with National Geographic and the rest of the Genius team to tell an authentic story of one of the most innovative painters in the world.' Banderas is no stranger to playing real-life figures, having previously portrayed Pancho Villa and Che Guevara. 'Antonio was the natural choice,' executive producer Ron Howard said of his role in Genius. 'He, like Picasso, has a no-holds-barred approach to life that will add to the genuineness that we're looking for. 'He has such tremendous range as an actor, who I know will bring this brilliant and unconventional artist to life.' Close to the role: It was no surprise Antonio was a natural choice for the part of Picasso as he was born in the Cubist's native hometown Inspired: Of the part, the actor said: 'The life story of Pablo Picasso has long since fascinated me and I have so much respect for this man who also comes from my birthplace' Elsewhere Antonio's ex-wife Melanie Griffith discussed how she started suffering from seizures towards the end of their marriage in an interview in October 2017. The 60-year-old actress told The Hollywood Reporter she was diagnosed with epilepsy brought on by stress. The couple were married in a romantic ceremony in May 1996 in London and they share 21-year-old daughter Stella del Carmen Banderas. A different time: While Pablo, who died aged 91 in 1973, is better known for his balding white hair, Antonio's fuller grey hair hinted he was portraying the cubist painter at an earlier stage of his life Critically acclaimed: Banderas is no stranger to playing real-life figures, having previously portrayed Pancho Villa and Che Guevara. Pictured, Pablo in 1937 They decided to part ways for good when they filed for divorce in 2014 and it became official in 2015. 'Every seizure that I had was at a point when I was extremely stressed,' the Working Girl star recounted. 'The last two that I had I was on a boat outside of Cannes on a big yacht and I was extremely stressed out. 'I had this major grand mal seizure, and they took me to the hospital in Cannes and then brought me back to the boat. And then I had another seizure and I went back. They did the EEG and started to look at it seriously.' Parents everywhere know the struggle of getting their children ready for school. So spare a thought for Clive and Louise Andrews, from Lincolnshire, who face a daily battle to get their 10 children out the door in the morning. The couple, who have three girls and seven boys aged between five months and 17, need so much space that they live in two connected three-bedroom homes in Lincolnshire - and have so many clothes they use an entire bedroom as a wardrobe. Part-time cleaner Louise, 34, and stay-at-home dad Clive, 50, opened up about what it takes to keep their busy household running in last night's episode of Big Family Values: More Kids than Cash. They have to forgo family holidays in order to afford their 1,000-a-month food bill and need two cars to go on any day out. But despite the financial demands - and the accompanying stress - the couple insist they still want to try for baby number 11. It's not clear whether the family claim state benefits, but Clive and Louise would be eligible to claim Child Tax Credit for at least nine out of their 10 children, as they are 16 or younger. Super-sized family: Clive and Louise Andrews, from Lincolnshire, have 10 children aged between 17 (Bradley, far right) and five months (Kegan, in his mothers' arms) Living large: The Andrews family need so much space they live in two conjoined three-bedroom homes in Lincolnshire, pictured. They also need two cars for any family day out Walk-in wardrobe: Louise and Clive have sacrificed one of their six bedrooms and transformed it into a walk-in wardrobe, pictured, with each of their 10 children's clothes on a separate rack Stocking up: Just some of the bags that are dropped off by a delivery driver at the Lincolnshire home. The family spend 1,000-a-month on food, more than twice the national average Weekly shop: Mother Louise shows the camera just part of her weekly shop, which includes 12 loaves of bread (some pictured), 15 pints of milk, 10kgs of potatoes and 15 boxes of cereal The Andrews are one of three families featured on the first episode of the Channel 5 series, which offers insight into the lives of parents bringing up large broods. Clive, who ran his own flooring business until quitting work three months ago, said he was delighted with his super-sized family. 1,000 monthly shop The Andrews spend more than twice as much on groceries as the average family. Their weekly shop includes: 15 boxes of cereal 10 kgs potatoes 15 pints of milk 10-12 loaves of bread Advertisement 'Having 10 children is an absolute blessing,' he said. 'It's 24/7 around the clock but I enjoy it.' While the average British family spends roughly 400 a month on food, the Andrews splash out more than twice as much. Their weekly shop includes 15 boxes of cereal, 10kg potatoes, 15 pints of milk and up to 12 loaves of bread to make enough sandwiches for the school lunchboxes. Clive said: 'We don't go out and spend thousands of pounds on holidays. 'Instead of spending thousands of pounds on holidays and living it up in the sun we live it up at the supermarket and make sure the kids are fed.' Space saving: Three single beds are squeezed into this bedroom in the large family home Teamwork: Clive, right, is seen cleaning while Louise feeds half of her children a snack Bulk buying: Just some of what the family-of-twelve will consume in a single week Louise added: 'We don't need holidays. Love is stronger than having to go sun yourself on a beach all day.' Revealed: How to dress 10 children (and it takes 100 pairs of pants) The children own roughly: 100 pairs of socks 100 pairs of pants 40 pairs of shoes The clothes alone cost Clive and Louise hundreds of pounds a year. To find space, the couple transformed one of their six bedrooms into a walk-in wardrobe for the family, with rails and individually labelled storage boxes. The amount of clothes also means the washing machine is almost never off - they do 35 loads of washing a week, or more than 1,800 a year. Advertisement The 300-a-week Louise earns from working as a cleaner also goes towards covering the cost of running the household. Many parents might feel like their washing machine is constantly whirring, but the Andrews have to do 35 loads of laundry every week to keep their children in clean clothes. This works out as more than 1,800 loads a year. This amount of clothes - some 100 pairs of socks, 100 pairs of pants and 40 pairs of shoes for the children alone - also means a standard bedroom wardrobe is not going to be enough. Instead Louise and Clive have sacrificed one of their six bedrooms and transformed it into a walk-in wardrobe, with each child's clothes on a separate rack and their underwear in individually labelled plastic storage boxes. Keeping both houses clean means Louise is often up at dawn dusting, vacuuming and tidying up before getting the children ready for the day. Daddy day care: Clive gave up work three months ago to care full-time for his children Organised: Just some of the racks in the large bedroom that serves as a walk-in wardrobe Well dressed: The children have 100 pairs of socks, 100 pairs of pants and 40 pairs of shoes She estimated that the kitchen table alone might be wiped down 20 times a day. To save money the family often take a packed lunch to the park for a day out. But on the programme they are also seen making the trip to Skegness as a special treat. Up until recently the Andrews travelled in their own mini bus but had to send the vehicle to be scrapped. They now need two cars to go anywhere as a family. On the day out the family had to carefully budget to make sure costs didn't spiral. Upkeep: Mother-of-ten Louise is up at dawn to clean the house before the children wake up Spotless: The hard work means Louise is able to keep her home neat and tidy, pictured A McDonald's lunch for the family-of-twelve came to roughly 40. While Louise works full-time as a cleaner, Clive cares full-time for his children - and said he only wishes he had done it sooner. 'I worked five, six days a week, every week,' he said. 'Especially with the older two I look back and I think, "I don't even remember you as children". 'It's daddy day care for me now and daddy day care was something wish I had done quite a long time ago.' Louise suffered complications with her last pregnancy but the couple want to try for another baby once she gets the all-clear. Clive said: 'I would say 100% I would have more.' Military operation: The family need a people carrier and family car to travel anywhere Treat: The family went to Skegness, pictured, where they spent 40 on a McDonald's lunch The Kellys: Six children under 10 Plenty of space: Patrick and Grainne Kelly live with their six children (all pictured) in a five-bedroom house on the family farm in Northern Ireland. The couple have monthly outgoings of roughly 4,000, including their mortgage and utility bills The show also looks at the lives of Patrick and Grainne Kelly, who live with their six children in a five-bedroom house on the family farm in Northern Ireland. The couple, who have five sons and a daughter under the age of 10, have plenty of space for their brood but that doesn't mean they don't have other demands. Cardiology nurse Grainne, 36, is on maternity leave after giving birth to their youngest child just five months ago. Patrick works on his father's farm. Spacious: One of the bedrooms features two double beds for two of the boys Open plan: The living area, pictured, gives the children plenty of room to run around The couple have monthly outgoings of roughly 4,000, including their mortgage and bills and the size of their family places their finances under strain. While the family usually go camping for their annual holiday, the show sees them jet-off for a four-star break in Salou, Spain. The trip set the family back a total of 3,000, including flights, transfers, a half-board hotel and spending money. Despite the cost, Grainne said the holiday was worth every penny. 'You're creating your memories by going on holidays with your kids,' she said. 'And your kids will always remember it.' Advertisement Big Family Values: More Kids Than Cash airs on Wednesday at 9pm on Channel 5 A man who defied a court order not to contact his ex-girlfriend has been issued a unique kind of fine by a Hawaii judge. Daren Young, 30, was ordered on Friday to write 144 'nice' things about his ex after repeatedly violating a protection order by contacting her. The special punishment was issued by 2nd Circuit Judge Rhonda Loo, who informed the young man that he would also be barred from using 'repeating words' in his written compliments. Sentenced: Daren Young, 30, of Kahului, Hawaii, was ordered to write 144 compliments to his ex-girlfriend by a judge after violating a protection order and contacting her (stock image) 'For every nasty thing you said about her, you're going to say a nice thing,' the judge informed him. Back in February this year, the Kahului, Hawaii, man was ordered by the court to stop contacting his ex-girlfriend. Just two months after the order went though, on May 22, Young went on to call her and text her a total of 144 times in the span of just three hours. Police subsequently arrested Young at his residence in Kahului and he was thrown in jail for 157 days. Young's lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Zach Raidmae, tried to convince the judge that he had learned his lesson, Maui News reported. 'One hundred and fifty-seven days is a long time to think about what tasteless things were said and the importance of abiding by protective orders,' Raidmae said. 'The reality of this case is no texts, no problem,' he added. 'He's experienced the sting of not abiding by this.' Young himself also apologized in court for his actions, insisting: 'I'm ready to move forward with my life.' In addition to the sentence of 144 compliments, Young was also given time served with two years probation and ordered to pay $2,400 in fines and perform 200 hours of community service. 'It's so childish to think a grown man can be so thumb-happy,' Loo responded after the sentencing. 'I hope you don't have a phone anymore and, if you do, I hope you don't have her number anymore.' An ambitious couple took their Star Wars costumes to another level when they built a recreation of the flying speeder bike stolen by Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi. YouTube stars Jesse Wellens and Carmella Rose dressed up as Luke and Leia to zip around New York City in their custom-made bike by Lithium Cycles, which was created to look like it is levitating when ridden through the streets. Their wild ride through the Big Apple was captured on video by fellow YouTuber Casey Neistat, who has teamed up with Jesse for Halloween pranks in the past. Scroll down for video Winning Halloween! YouTuber stars Jesse Wellens and Carmella Rose built a speeder bike to go along with their Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia costumes Iconic vehicle: Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia stole a speeder bike while being chased through the woods in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi There they go: Fellow YouTuber Casey Neistat filmed them zipping around New York City on the speeder bike The nearly three-minute video sees the duo riding along taxis and cars on the busy Manhattan streets. And while it takes a lot to impress a New Yorker, they earned themselves plenty of attention from onlookers who weren't exactly sure what they were looking at. Although the speeder bike doesn't actually fly, it gives the illusion of being airborne thanks to a set of mirrors used to camouflage its wheels. The ride elicited cheers from a group of people eating outside, and that was only the start of it. Magical: Although the speeder bike doesn't actually fly, it gives the illusion of being airborne thanks to a set of mirrors used to camouflage its wheels Hard to ignore: People couldn't help but stare at the couple as they road by on the speeder Coming for you: Casey also chased them through the streets on a matching speeder bike while dressed as a Stormtrooper Success: The video has been viewed more than 2.6 million times since it was posted on Monday One man carrying a yoga mat broke into an ear-to-ear grin when they whizzed past him. Another guy actually jumped over the speeder on his bicycle, but Jesse and Carmella got the last laugh when they sped past him a few seconds later. To add to the action of the video, they also had Casey chase them through the streets on a matching speeder bike while dressed as a Stormtrooper. A group of kids went wild and jumped up and down as they watched the scene go down. Plenty of onlookers took photos, and one guy called his friend to tell him about what was going down. Busted: The comical clip ended with them getting pulled over by someone dressed as a cop See ya! Casey managed to get away on the speeder while yelling: 'Happy Halloween!' 'They got Star Wars speeders out here,' he said. 'Yo it's kickass. Yo, it's original. First time I've seen something like this since I've seen the movies.' 'Twenty points for originality,' he told Jesse and Carmella. The comical clip ends with them getting pulled over by a someone dressed as a cop, but Casey manages to get away on the speeder while yelling: 'Happy Halloween!' The video has been viewed more than 2.6 million times since it was posted on Monday, and plenty of people took to the comments section to compliment the couple on their efforts. 'Best Star Trek props I've seen!' one person wrote, while another added: 'I love the force theme in this video.' Advertisement A young couple have travelled 1,600 kilometres on foot in 102 days with their one-year-old daughter in tow. Adventurous parents Justin, 34, and Lauren Jones, 37, from Sydney's Bondi, embarked on the epic trek with baby Morgan in the Australian Outback - setting off in Alice Springs, Northern Territory, in July. The pair, otherwise known as 'The Jonesys', have walked across some of the country's most rugged and remote locations - all while pulling along their little girl in her own custom-built cart. Fast forward three months, the family have completed their journey after they arrived in South Australia's Port Augusta on Wednesday - before boarding their flight back home on Thursday. Scroll down for video Adventurous parents Justin and Lauren Jones, from Sydney's Bondi, embarked on the epic trek with baby girl Morgan in tow The littlest traveller who used up to 700 nappies on her trek - even learned how to walk - and run in the bush 'It's been the trip of a lifetime,' Mr Jones said. 'Lauren and I spent our twenties chasing our love of travel and adventure. When we were starting our family, 'settling down' in the traditional sense of the word just didn't appeal to us. 'We value experiences over possessions, have a love of travel and enjoy being outside.' And the adventurous couple certainly made the most of their maternity leave after strapping their daughter on their backs as they explored the natural surroundings. Mrs Jones, originally from Seattle, Washington, said she wanted to fulfil her dream of raising her daughter up with a love of the outdoors and learning from the school of life. Bath time! Little Morgan taking a shower in a tiny tub as she embraces the Australian Outback with her doting parents The 34-year-old father playing with his loving daughter as they take a break from their gruelling 1,600km trek The pair walked across the rugged and remote locations - all while pulling along their girl in her own custom-built cart Heavy travellers: The family getting ready to embark on their epic three-month adventure in the Australian Outback in July 'One of the biggest reasons we decided to do this expedition as a family is because we wanted to help build curiosity, resilience, strength and kindness in our daughter,' she said. 'And if we are honest, we wanted to boost these traits in ourselves as parents too.' From learning how to walk in the bush to sleeping for a fifth of her life in the Outback, the littlest traveller - who used 700 nappies on her journey - have encountered parts of Australia. Happy travellers: The family have completed their journey after they arrived in South Australia's Port Augusta on Wednesday Happy campers! The adventurous family embarked on a trip on the road after swapping the city life for the Outback The family walked through the picturesque and historic landmarks - and it wasn't an easy feat after stumbling across snakes, lizards, emu, camels, brumbies, dingoes and countless flies The family walked through the picturesque and historic landmarks - and it wasn't an easy feat after stumbling across snakes, lizards, emu, camels, brumbies, dingoes and countless flies. Her husband was the first person to kayak from Australia to New Zealand and traverse Antarctica from the coast to the pole and back aged in his 20s both unsupported. The professional adventurer said he wanted to do a trip closer to home - but he didn't want to miss out on seeing his daughter grow. The couple have walked across some of the country's most rugged and remote locations - all while pulling along their bub The littlest traveller - who used 700 nappies on her journey - have encountered parts of Australia Learning to cook: Little Morgan watching her doting father roll up dough to prepare for their meals And so the family of three decided to take swap the city life for an adventurous Outback. 'The purpose of this expedition is to merge a family life and an adventurous life,' Ms Jones said. 'We are attempting to settle down differently and break free of the traditional confines, safety and security that often go hand-in-hand with having children, at least for a period of time. 'We want to take ourselves out of some of the trappings and the hustle and bustle of our normal city life to create space and time for what really matters - and learn to let go of what doesn't.' Adorable traveller: The one-year-old girl learnt how to walk in the bush and slept for a fifth of her life in the Outback The Jonesys' from Sydney have also drawn attention to sustainable living and humans' impact on the world around them Living in the Outback! Little Morgan protecting herself from countless flies by wearing a net over her head (right) Trekking through dirt, the family taking a break to enjoy their meal before they set off again on their incredible journey The young father managed to haul his family's supplies through sizzling temperatures soaring above 41 degrees in the heat of the day, and sinking to -2 overnight. He even shed 25 kilos along the way, with the heaviest cartload he's pulled weighing in at 270kg. 'I've eaten over 100 flies, accidentally, so far,' Justin said. Following months of preparation, working out how to carry enough supplies to survive and thrive in the Aussie Outback, and how to cut back on food - and nappy - waste, the Jonesys' have also drawn attention to sustainable living and humans' impact on the world around them. The pair, otherwise known as ' The Jonesys ', have walked across some of the country's most rugged and remote locations - all while pulling along their little girl in her own custom-built cart 'We can't think of a better early life experience than being surrounded by nature 24/7 and learning from the school of life' The couple said they believed parents shouldn't have to choose between the family life and an adventurous lifestyle The couple said they believed parents shouldn't have to choose between the family life and an adventurous lifestyle. They want to challenge traditional conventions and prove that becoming a grown-up can still be fun. And the pair said it has been rewarding to watch their daughter learn from the natural environment as they build fond memories together. 'Morgan just started walking one week before we left Sydney and headed out to the bush on our expedition,' Mr Jones said. 'To see her not only learn to walk but run in the Outback, and adapt and thrive in one of the most unique, beautiful but also harshest and most remote areas in the world, is amazing. It has been rewarding to watch their daughter learn from the natural environment as they build fond memories together Trekking over rocks: The couple walked across some of the country's most rugged and remote locations with daughter in tow The adventurous couple certainly made the most of their maternity leave after taking their daughter along on their trip 'We can't think of a better early life experience than being surrounded by nature 24/7 and learning from the school of life. 'She waves good morning to trees, says "night night" to the sun, has learned fire safety and helps us collect wood for the campfire. 'She knows what stars, the moon, trees, birds, sky, sun, sand, dirt and rocks are. She knows what sound an Emu makes. She's petted baby cows, ridden a pony and slept under a million stars. 'The most dangerous things we have to look out for, for us and probably more keenly for our daughter, are snakes. It's a fine balance between letting her walk around and explore and making sure you have a keen eye out for snakes hiding in the brush, grass or bushes.' The couple said they believed parents shouldn't have to choose between the family life and an adventurous lifestyle The family hand washed all their clothing before hanging up their garments to dry in the sizzling Outback weather They prepared for their big adventure on the road by packing meals into plastic containers and bags - as well as baby clothes The family began their trek in the remote Indigenous community in the Northern Territory before ending in South Australia Their trek has seen them walk the soaring rock domes of Kata Tjuta, the sandstone monolith Uluru, and salt lakes Lake Eyre and Lake Torrens. The family began their trek in the remote Indigenous community of Kaltukatjara in the Northern Territory, before walking to Docker River, Yulara, Kulgera and Aputula, then onto Oodnadatta, William Creek, Marree, Beltana and Parachilna in South Australia. The expedition was supported in part by outdoor apparel and equipment company The North Face, who have had a long-standing partnership with Mr Jones. 'We value Justin and his family's commitment to exploration, sustainability and to "settling down differently",' The North Face communications manager Lil Mercanti said. 'We're proud to support him in his expeditions that embody the spirit of exploration and inspire others and their children to get outdoors.' To follow the Jonesys' adventures, please visit their Instagram and website. Messina has a dairy-licious surprise for Australia, and it's sure not to be an udder failure. The beloved gelato shop is giving Sydney a chance to taste Messina Milk, and this opportunity may only happen once. A pop-up milk bar will arrive in the city's CBD on Friday to give 1,000 Sydneysiders a chance to get a taste of milk from Messina's new dairy farm. Our favourite gelato shop is giving Australia one chance - for now - to taste their exclusive Messina Milk, made from the company's brand new dairy farm And this won't be just your average every day milk. The lucky thousand will get to flavour their Messina Milk with salted caramel, strawberry, chocolate, malted vanilla, or iced coffee. Messina is serving up their milk in old-school bottles - the kind once dropped off your doorstep by milkmen - to give the day an extra touch of fun. It is the first chance for Australians to get a taste of the milk made in Messina's first-ever dairy farm. Milk made at the dairy farm will now be used to help create the creamy gelato Messina has become internationally famous for Messina recently bought the Erindale Farm in Victoria so that it could ensure the milk used to make its famously creamy gelato was as fresh as possible. 'At Messina we are obsessed with the quality of our product - we make everything from scratch, and use fresh milk for any dairy based flavours,' Sian Bishop, Messina's content manager, told Daily Mail Australia. 'Being able to supply our own milk was the next logical step in producing the best gelato we possibly can.' Now 270 jersey cows are pumping out 10,000L of milk required to make the 60,000 scoops of gelato that Messina serves every single week. 'Our herd of cows are jersey cows, chosen as their milk produces the best flavour and creamiest taste for gelato. We wanted to give Sydney a taste of one of the most essential ingredients we use,' Sian added. Messina revealed its taking the Sydney milk bar to the next level by making it immersive with the Infinity Field installation. Milk fans will get the chance to go through the interactive infinity mirrored cube, where they'll find an endless field of milk bottle dandelions. Advertisement Every woman has a precious dress that can transport them back to an unforgettable evening when they felt a million dollars. Charlotte Smith - who is originally from America but based in Australia - owns thousands. The curator of the Darnell Fashion Collection inherited a vintage clothing collection of more than 3,000 pieces from her godmother, Doris Darnell, around 15 years ago - and since then, she has been working tirelessly to create an incomparable wardrobe of close to 9,000 originals - it is valued at more than AUD $6 million. Ms Smith - whose collection was recently heralded as one of the ten most significant fashion archives in the world - shared her incredible story with FEMAIL, which includes stints in London, Paris and New York, before she finally settled in Australia, where the entire Darnell Collection is now housed. 'Clothing and dressing spectacularly has a huge impact,' Ms Smith, 57, told Daily Mail Australia. 'Fashion is about so much more than what you wear. I call myself a fashion anthropologist as it's all linked - fashion, social history, religion and customs.' The curator of the Darnell Fashion Collection, Charlotte Smith, inherited a vintage clothing collection of more than 3,000 pieces from her godmother, Doris Darnell, around 15 years ago - it comprises hundreds of designer items (pictured) Ms Smith (pictured left in Anne Fogarty) - whose collection was recently heralded as one of the ten most significant fashion archives in the world - shared her incredible story with FEMAIL; she has now taken the collection to over 9,000 pieces Her latest book, One Enchanted Evening, features sketches of some of the items she owns - including this show-stopping Oscar de la Renta gown (left) and the Balmain number (right) The collection in total has not been valued, but is estimated to be around AUD $6 million; more than this - it comprises socially and historically significant pieces, including this bodice from the 1860s) Ms Smith shared her life story with FEMAIL, as well as how she has managed to amass such incredible fashion (pictured: the 'After Five' exhibition at Newcastle Art Gallery, foreground is a black Balmain dress and red dress is Adolfo) Speaking about her life story, Ms Smith confessed she had always been surrounded by clothes and beautiful things. 'My godmother, Doris Darnell, had all of these beautiful, eye-catching outfits. She was a fashion collector,' Ms Smith explained. Everything she gave me was precious and an out-of-the-blue treasure 'As a child, I spent lots of time with her. Even when we went shopping to the convenience store, she would dress for impact - perhaps in a colourful feather boa or something - and people would stop her on the street and say she looked fantastic. 'She used to always send me pieces in the post - little trinkets and gifts, they always had incredible stories attached to them. I remember for my thirteenth birthday, she sent me a black lace silk skirt from the Edwardian era. 'Everything she gave me was precious and an out-of-the-blue treasure.' Ms Smith initially got into fashion curation when her godmother, Doris Darnell, left her with her entire collection of clothing (pictured left: Lanvin shirt and YSL harem pants; pictured right: Pagane dress) When Ms Smith grew up, and found herself living in Paris, London and New York - where she worked in an art gallery - she was later told by a mutual friend of hers and Doris's that her godmother wanted to bequeath her impressive fashion collection to Ms Smith: 'She had told the mutual friend because she was too nervous to tell me,' Ms Smith said. 'She was nervous, I suppose, because there was no money attached to the collection, just 3,000-odd amazing pieces. 'I guess I was also under pressure to do something morally with it - to develop it and curate it, rather than just sell it on.' The talented curator moved the impressive collection to Australia, where she still lives, it took ten days to get through customs and months to unpack (pictured left: some items from the collection and pictured right: Ms Smith) When Ms Smith (pictured left) said she first started unpacking all of the various pieces (right), it was like being 'hit with little snippets of history' - she calls herself a 'fashion anthropologist' as she loves looking into society as well as the history of fashion Thankfully, the Quaker woman, Doris, had found the right sort of person to gift in Ms Smith, and she gave it to Ms Smith while Doris was still alive in 2003. Meanwhile, Ms Smith had since moved to Australia with a partner and the father of her daughter - and so she had to fly the originals to Australia, in cardboard boxes: 'It took nearly a year to get it all over,' Ms Smith said. 'About 1,200 kilograms inside cardboard boxes, which landed in Botany in 2007. It was an absolute nightmare to get lots of the things through Australian customs - a grizzly bear coat, whole birds of paradise and ivory fans. It took ten days to get through quarantine!'. When she eventually did sort it all out, Ms Smith confessed she felt 'daunted' and wasn't quite sure what to do: 'Between the Gucci, Chanel and YSL, alongside everything else, at first I was too scared to open the boxes. When I did, the first two dresses I pulled out were incredible. One was this cream chiffon number from the 1920s with panels of glass and reflective prisms. 'It was like being hit with little snippets of history.' These days, Ms Smith is either gifted with dresses and pieces from well wishers - or she bids for them anonymously in auctions around the world (pictured left: Rodarte Starry Night dress and right: YSL dress) 'Doris had so much from the early 1700s, the 1920s and 30s and 50s, but her collection kind of stopped around the 1960s. I wanted to fill the holes and have made a point of adding things from the catwalks of yesterday,' Ms Smith (pictured) explained The collection is wide and varied, comprising this Ann Pakradooni dress (pictured left) and Leonard of Paris frock (pictured right) The 57-year-old eventually moved everything into a garage, and spent three months unpacking it. 'It took me two years to start collecting anything of my own, because I wanted to get to grips with everything Doris had given to me and its history and significance,' Ms smith said. Today, the collection has more than tripled in size - with people gifting her significant items and Ms Smith bidding for other pieces anonymously in auctions around the world. 'Doris had so much from the early 1700s, the 1920s and 30s and 50s, but her collection kind of stopped around the 1960s. I wanted to fill the holes and have made a point of adding things from the catwalks of just yesterday,' she explained. Among her visions for the future, Ms Smith said she wants to establish a fashion museum in the Blue Mountains to display the collection (pictured left: a George Stavropoulos dress and right: a photoshoot with Olivia de Govrik, Olivia Gillespie and Neil Grigg in Sydney) Among her Dior, Chanel, Prada, Pucci and Akira, Ms Smith has a few favourite pieces - including one Edwardian bodice and a full-length skirt from the 1900s: 'It has a train and comes in lime green silk,' she said. 'The details are black velvet. It was around this time that people were able to make colours unnaturally for the first time, so you started seeing more magentas and bright greens - rather than shades which were created via natural resources. 'Doris left a tag on this one with the story on it, and it's just stuck with me. It belonged to a Quaker woman who would never wear something that was seen as the "latest look". Instead of wearing the lime green outfit, she just hung it in her wardrobe - as something precious to look at. A little luxury. 'It's such an incredible story about social history, fashion and religion.' Among the things that Ms Smith would love to own is something by Victoria Beckham, as well as a Fortuny pleated gown or a Charles James "clover" dress (pictured: Claudia Chan Shaw wearing Pucci at Dress for Success Sydney Gala) Ms Smith has countless visions for the future, both philanthropic and fashion-related. She wants to establish a fashion museum in the Blue Mountains to display the collection, and create hubs all over Australia to inspire students and curators. She also would love to get her hands on some more pieces, including something by Victoria Beckham, who she said she admires because she has 'taken what she likes to wear and made a business out of it'. Ms Smith would also love to buy a Fortuny pleated gown from the early 1900s, or a Charles James "clover" dress, which she estimates could fetch up to AUD $1.29 million. Charlotte Smith has released a new book, One Enchanted Evening, about her collection; it is out now (pictured) 'I love collecting items now,' she said, confessing to owning a Bill Blass dress from the film, American Hustle, two gowns owned by Lady Lucille Duff-Gorton, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, and potentially a dress worn by a woman to a birthday party attended by Princess Grace. 'I even had a Paco Rabanne dress looked at recently, which I had thought was from the 80s. An expert said it's likely older and from 1968-71. The textiles expert, Karen Augusta, even said it could have been worn by Jane Fonda in Barbarella.' Lastly, the 'fashion anthropologist' shared her advice for those interested in fashion collecting, curating and design. 'You've got to be unafraid,' she said. 'You may have a vision, but you need to be prepared to move laterally if you can't go directly. You might have to go another way.' Ms Smith also said you need to ask for help. 'You'll reach out to people, and they will help,' she argued - saying you can't do it all alone. On the design side, the 57-year-old recommended that if you can afford the best-quality materials, you should go for them. 'They are the ones that last,' she said. 'Everything I own from history was likely cut from the best materials.' Charlotte Smith has released a new book, One Enchanted Evening, A Wardrobe Full of Memories, in collaboration with the fashion illustrator, Grant Cowan, about her collection which spans over 300 years. The book is available from all good bookstores now. Several years ago someone I knew, a dynamic family man, lost his father. I remember, because I was shocked that he seemed to give himself all of a few hours to grieve, before flinging himself back into his work. Oh, hes fine, said his wife. His way of coping. Yet, six months later, a slipped disc in his back immobilised him, and one operation after the other just seemed to make it worse. The third procedure left him practically paralysed for months: his work inevitably suffered, and his business empire eventually collapsed. He was forced to sell the house, his son went off the rails and broke off all contact, and he quarrelled bitterly with his daughter. His wife eventually left him and he became a veritable wreck. To this day, I wonder if this downward spiral could have been averted, had he been allowed to mourn? I was reminded of this salutary tale when I read recently that one in four of us doesnt take leave to grieve. Jeannette Kupfermann says we need to take time to mourn, after discovering that one in four of us doesnt take leave to grieve A survey of 2,000 workers who had experienced a death in the family found that 25 per cent didnt take a single day off work to mourn. A further 10 per cent took just one day. Job worries or too much to do were among the reasons cited. Yet around a third said employees should be entitled to at least three weeks off for the death of a partner or child. Does no one have the luxury of the important human emotions we all used to recognise? Like many people, I have suffered loss. In my mid-40s, I lost Jacques, my husband of 24 years, then my father, eight other relatives and my two closest friends all within a few years. During this time, I descended to the greatest depths, feeling desolation, dread, rage, yearning and a profound loss of confidence as I struggled to rebuild myself. So I know first-hand that you cannot simply carry on as if nothing has happened. I also know from observing friends and family that those who do tend to pay a huge price later on, just like the man I knew. Attempting to stifle such huge emotions means they only bubble up elsewhere. Yet we live in a time-starved, work-obsessed society one increasingly in denial about mortality. But has it become taboo to admit feelings of loss? To say: I cant go on at the moment? Given this strange culture of emotional shutdown, is it a coincidence that post-traumatic stress disorder seems to be so common? And that when the subterranean grief finally erupts, it does so in a virtual tsunami? Increasingly, we are an impatient, over-stimulated, fast forward-prone society that leaps from one experience to the next whether relationships or consumer goods with few pauses for contemplation. Jeanette lost her husband of 24 years, Jacques, (pictured on their wedding day) in her mid-40s. She lost her father, eight other relatives and her two closest friends within a few years Moving on and getting on with it are two commonly heard mantras. We are so obsessed with outward appearances that inner life appears to have lost its importance. And nothing forces you to come to terms with your emotions and mortality like bereavement perhaps thats why were so keen to turn the other way. I suppose I shouldnt be so shocked by people returning to work so soon after loss, as many other life events have gone the same way: birth and even illness. Many mothers take decreasing amounts of leave after a baby, while a recent poll showed one in four workers even if feeling extremely ill from the flu would have to be hospitalised before they took a day off sick. Im sure many will see this as a virtue, much like our reluctance to tear ourselves away from our iPhones is praised as dedication. But is our determination to be switched on 24/7 exacting too great a price? Its no secret that unacknowledged trauma can throw a life off track. You need only look at the biographies and case files of practically every major criminal to see that there was a significant loss, often at an early age, that was largely unacknowledged at the time: a bereavement, parental divorce (often interpreted as a death by a child), or other loss (home, job, status). One of the most helpful things said to me at the time I was widowed in 1987 was: Sometimes, all we can do is crawl around at the bottom of the jar. She says that wallowing in grief is part of life and essential for a healthy recovery (file photo) That pearl of wisdom came from my bereavement counsellor and it neatly encapsulated how I felt at that time: life was on pause, whether I liked it or not. A friend also said: If I were you, all Id want to do would be to pull the duvet over my head and stay in bed for about three years. It came as a relief, since mainly the only good mourners were those back to normal within the shortest possible time. I was fortunate to have both the resilience and support to help me through those times. I suffered depression, panic attacks, insomnia, anxiety and all the other things many bereaved typically experience but I also managed to find a route through to the other side. Being Jewish, the community somehow lifted me up through shiva, (seven days of deep mourning sitting on stools with torn clothing, more or less isolating the mourner while the community visit, prepare all meals and talk endlessly about the departed), followed by daily prayers. I cannot pretend that I avoided all work: as a journalist, writing about my experiences was cathartic. I even wrote a book about being widowed, called When The Cryings Done. It was far from a smooth journey, with lots of bumps along the way (allergies, palpitations). Grappling with my grief, struggling to get my life back on track took longer than anyone acknowledged sometimes weeks of just staring at the walls all of which I couldnt have done had I returned to an office the day after the funerals. I am reminded of an attractive, unmarried fortysomething female friend who was especially attached to her mother and totally invested in her job in PR. I suffered depression, panic attacks, insomnia, anxiety and all the other things many bereaved typically experience but I also managed to find a route through to the other side When her mother died suddenly, she almost pretended it hadnt happened, returning to work immediately (putting on a bright smile, higher heels and ever more revealing clothes). But a year down the line, she was suffering hair loss and an eating disorder alcoholism followed and a stint in The Priory. Therapy revealed a troubled childhood with separation anxiety caused by the loss of her father at an early age. She had learned to cling to her mother and her work, fearing she couldnt survive without either. But in the end, work couldnt offer her the comfort she needed. Not reacting to grief at the time of loss may be a survival mechanism. Studies of concentration camp victims witnessing death all around them showed they often reacted with very little emotion to a friends or relatives death, but would explode over a morsel of food or minor argument with fellow inmates. However, after liberation, many succumbed to mental breakdown, or spent years racked by survival guilt. Anyone who has suffered a massive loss knows the sense of internal desolation and low self-esteem that goes with it. Then theres the difficulty of forging a new identity. Never have we been so insecure about our sense of self, because we havent been left with much to identify with. All the old totems (religion, nationality, class, even gender in our gender-neutral times) are gone, fast going or considered reprehensible in some way. Perhaps work is the only permitted marker left. A job has become our security blanket. Sadly, its also a distraction that can stop us reaching into ourselves or out to the rest of the world. Far better to detach, to pause, to take stock however painful that might initially seem. Wallowing in grief is part of life and essential for a healthy recovery. Death needs to be acknowledged and a loss mourned. Its so much better for us all in the long run. Once, sprinkling sea salt crystals over your dinner instead of table salt was regarded as fancy. But suddenly, well-heeled cooks are upping the ante: displaying huge, sculptural lumps of salt in their homes, cooking on polished slabs of it and even bathing in it. Why? Well, the latest fashion is for Himalayan salt, which is rumoured to be healthy and perhaps more importantly is a pretty shade of delicate pink. It is found in mountain caves in Pakistan, where layers formed 250 million years ago from a pollution-free sea. The latest fashion is for Himalayan salt, which is rumoured to be healthy and is a pretty shade of delicate pink Although it is around 98 per cent sodium chloride (regular salt), it gets its colour and healthy reputation from minerals it contains, such as magnesium, iron and calcium. The current craze started with lamps made from rough cut Himalayan salt crystals, but now there are pink salt cooking slabs, kitchen tools, body scrubs . . . the list goes on. The only catch? It retails at up to 45 a kilo, compared to 45p a kilo for table salt. So, is it really better than ordinary salt and which new gadgets are no more than a gimmick? SALT GRATER Rivsalt Salt Rock and Grater, 20, yumbles.com WHAT IS IT? A chunk of natural Himalayan pink salt with a super-sharp Japanese steel grater and an oak stand. Just grate the salt over your food. DOES IT WORK? Its high quality, but smaller than I imagined. The pink salt creates a white dust, rather than pink flakes, when you grate it. A chunk of natural Himalayan pink salt can be grated over your food. Many people are choosing pink salt because it contains minerals such as magnesium, iron and calcium Many people are choosing pink salt because it contains minerals such as magnesium, iron and calcium, and so has the reputation of being healthier, says nutritional therapist Antonia Magor. But those extra minerals are actually only there in very small amounts. This will make a chic gift. But its really just a fiddly alternative to a salt mill. 3/5 ADD FLAVOUR Salt House Himalayan Rock Salt Cooking Block, 36.99, lakeland.co.uk WHAT IS IT? An eight-inch square, two-inch thick block of pink salt. You heat it up on your hob or the oven, then use it to cook food, which should end up seasoned with just the right amount of flavour, says the manufacturer. DOES IT WORK? This beautiful, marbled slab has to be tempered before you use it which meant 45 minutes warming it slowly on my hob. Finally, I placed some unseasoned chicken and red pepper on the hot salt. Both cooked quickly and evenly. Scallops, too, browned beautifully and were seasoned perfectly. But wetter foods, such as tomatoes and thicker meat that needed longer, absorbed too much salt. The slab takes an epic three hours to cool, but then requires only a scrub with a damp sponge and a pat dry, as salt has natural anti-bacterial qualities, says the manufacturer. However, Antonia Magor warns: It doesnt give you any control over the amount of salt youre adding to food. 3/5 CLEAR AIRWAYS Himalayan Salt Inhaler, 7.99, amazon.co.uk This Himalayan salt inhaler claims to provide a natural way to alleviate respiratory and sinus problems WHAT IS IT? A ceramic pot of pink salt crystals with a spout that provides a natural way to alleviate respiratory and sinus problems. You put the spout in your mouth, then breathe deeply for 20-30 minutes to let microscopic salt particles get into your lungs and nasal passages, where they are said to loosen phlegm and help clear airways. DOES IT WORK? I filled the pot with crystals, then started deep breathing (theres an internal filter to stop you inhaling salt). After ten minutes, though, I felt so ridiculous that I gave up. I was left with a dry, salty taste on my tongue, but my airways did feel clear. Doctors do sometimes use saline (salt dissolved in water) in a nebuliser to thin mucus, says GP Dr Clare Morrison. But it definitely should not be considered a replacement for proven treatments. 2/5 PESTLE AND MORTAR Himalayan Rock Salt Pestle And Mortar, 29.99, lakeland.co.uk WHAT IS IT? A pestle and mortar carved from pink salt. Throw herbs and spices into the bowl and grind to add tiny amounts of salt. The kit will gradually wear down, at which point you can grate the leftover bits. DOES IT WORK? I tried making pesto. Unfortunately, the combination of salty cheese and salt from the pestle and mortar made the result inedibly saline. The dry, spicy rub for steak I made next, however, was excellent. A wipe with a damp cloth cleans it. Dont soak it, as it will dissolve! 4/5 A table lamp made of pink salt is supposed to boost your general wellbeing WARM GLOW Himalayan Pink Salt Lamp, 19.99, saltify.com WHAT IS IT? A table lamp made from a large, hollowed-out Himalayan salt crystal. The manufacturer claims that, as the bulb heats the salt crystal, moisture in it starts to evaporate, sending healthy negative ions into the atmosphere. These cancel anxiety-inducing positive ions emitted by electrical gadgets and boost your general wellbeing. DOES IT WORK? These lamps kick-started the craze for pink salt but the health claims dont stand up to scientific scrutiny. But I dont mind if they are being optimistic. The glow will lift anyones spirits as the nights start to draw in. 4/5 BATHE IN SALT Spa Find Pink Himalayan Hot Salt Rocks, 9.95, shopforspa.com WHAT IS IT? Two smooth pebbles of Himalayan salt. Use them as massage tools, or place in a warm bath, where they will slowly start to dissolve, adding relaxing salt and minerals to the water. DOES IT WORK? Youre supposed to warm them for a massage, so I put them in a plastic bag then dunked it in hot water for 20 minutes. These two smooth pebbles of Himalayan salt can be used as massage tools, or placed in a warm bath When used warm, they do feel soothing and loosen tight muscles. You will also get about four baths out of each pack, leaving the water feeling softer and silkier. GP Clare Morrison says: Himalayan salt does contain trace amounts of magnesium, which is known to help soothe strained muscles and encourage a good nights sleep. However they are only there in tiny amounts. Minute doses of minerals or not, I definitely felt more relaxed, and my sore knee was eased a little after my bath. 3/5 She's in the midst of a hectic 11-day tour of south-east Asia and India involving almost 50 engagements, so it's no wonder the Duchess of Cornwall is longing for a chance to put her feet up. During a meeting with The Raja Isteri, wife of the Sultan of Brunei the Duchess, 70, admitted the pace is taking its toll. The royal couple, on an official tour of Asia on behalf of the Queen, flew into Brunei for a whirlwind meeting with the country's monarch, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah - worth an estimated $20 billion - and tea with his family. Charles and Camilla are spending just a few hours in the kingdom of one of the wealthiest men in the world between visiting Singapore and Malaysia. As The Raja Isteri sympathised about the gruelling schedule, asking if she found it tiring, the Duchess, who is 70, replied cheerfully: 'Very tiring. Every day, we're non stop. It's more tiring as you get older.' She joked: 'I keep trying to tell everybody that I'm not as young as I used to be, and have to slow down.' Scroll down for video Camilla, 70, today joked that she's not as young as she used to be during a hectic 11-day tour of south east Asia and India The Duchess, who looked a little fatigued, admitted the hectic schedule of the tour was wearing her out The couple are making a quick stop in Brunei for just a few hours in the midst of their 11-day autumn tour of Asia No rest for these royals! Several hours after meeting the Sultan of Brunei, the couple arrived in Kuala Lumpur for their visit to Malaysia Camilla is said to have enjoyed a productive 45-minute conversation with the wife of the Sultan of Brunei Charles and Camilla, who are travelling in the government's official Voyager jet, were met at the international airport after flying in from Singapore by British High Commissioner Richard Lindsay. The princes sweltered in a lounge suit while the Duchess looked cool in the 84F heat in a loose Anna Valentine tunic and trousers. Mr Lindsay introduced them to the Sultan's heir, Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah and his wife, the beautiful Princess Sarah, who was a 17-year-old student when she married her husband, then 30, in 2004. She is pregnant with their fourth child. Prince Charles attends an engagement with the Royal Gurkha Rifles at Edinburgh Palace in Brunei Prince Charles and the Sultan of Brunei at Istana Nurul Iman The Duchess enjoys a Gurkha Reception at the Edinburgh Palace in Bandar Seri Begawan Charles and Camilla were later festooned with garlands when they visited a Gurkha Battalion based in the Brunei The Duchess chats to Crown Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah during afternoon tea with the Brunei royal family The royal party walked along a red carpet, through a Bruneian Guard of Honour, as they were introduced to dignitaries and military officials. The prince and his wife were then whisked by convoy to the Sultan's official residence, the Istana Nurul Inman, for the afternoon. The Sultan's official residence is vast - with 1,788 rooms, 257 bathrooms, and a floor area of 2,152,782 square feet. Brunei's 71-year-old ruler is an absolute monarch but is largely revered by his people for a long reign characterised by peace and prosperity. Camilla enjoyed catching up with Her Majesty Raja Isteri of Brunei The royal couple enjoyed tea with the Sultan's family in a gilded room bedecked priceless masterpieces on the walls The Prince of Wales, followed by the Duchess of Cornwall, walk with the Sultan of Brunei as they attend a high tea at the Palace in Bandar Seri Begawan The Duchess kept her cool in an elegant blue-green tunic and white trousers during the visit Camilla looked in great form during a Ghurka reception at Edinburgh Palace Charles and Camilla last visited Brunei in 2008 during an earlier tour of South East Asia. Their current visit is taking place at the request of the Queen, who has a long and warm relationship with the Sandhurst-educated Sultan, the longest serving monarch in the world after herself. While the Queen has been on the throne for 65 years, the Sultan of Brunei is currently celebrating his Golden Jubilee. He was crowned ruler of the oil and gas-rich state on August 1 1968. Charles is undertaking the visit on behalf of his mother who enjoys a warm relationship with the Sultan - the second longest serving monarch after herself Charles' mother the Queen has a long and warm relationship with the Sandhurst-educated Sultan Camilla joked with Her Majesty Raja Isteri about the hectic schedule of the royal tour The official celebrations took place last month and were attended by the Queen's youngest son, the Earl of Wessex, and his wife, Sophie, the Countess. The festivities saw the Sultan carried through the streets of the capital on a golden throne. Charles and Camilla were later festooned with garlands when they visited a Gurkha Battalion based in the Brunei. They were welcomed by the renown Nepalese servicemen with the traditional greeting as they made a brief stop to the Commonwealth country during their south-east Asia tour. Charles inspects the Royal Gurkha Rifles at Edinburgh Palace in Brunei The Duchess looked cool in the 84F heat in a loose Anna Valentine tunic and trousers Camilla was presented with a very colourful garland to go with her blue tunic And when the heir to the throne, Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Gurkha Rifles for 40 years, had a chance to chat to the famous fighting force at a reception his questions had a parental tone. 'Are you able to find the things you need?' he asked one group, then made them laugh when he said: 'Can you get enough goat?' The servicemen are known to use the meat to make curries. The Royal Gurkha Rifles have a jungle role Battalion permanently based in Brunei. The Royal Gurkha Rifles are inspected by their Colonel-in-Chief of the of 40 years Charles looked in excellent spirits despite the pressure of the hectic royal tour schedule The soldiers, drawn from Nepal, are famed for their bravery and fierce fighting skills typified by their renowned kukri knives they wield in battle. Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Murray, Commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles hosted the royal couple during the reception at a Brunei royal family residence called Edinburgh Palace. Later the Duchess was all smiles as she met with Her Majesty The Raja Isteri for a private audience. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah is worth an estimated $20 billion, making him one of the richest men in the world Camilla and er Majesty Raja Isteri after enjoying a 45 minutes private conversation The royals were treated to a special tea featuring delicacies such as lobster dumpling, glutinous rice with beef floss, crispy egg wrap and bean curd Prince Charles and his royal counterpart attend a high tea at the Sultan of Brunei's Palace The women spoke warmly as they posed for photographs, discussing the Duchess' Commonwealth tour schedule. As the press were ushered out, the two women embarked on 45 minutes of private conversation, before joining their husbands the Prince of Wales and Sultan of Brunei for tea. Reunited with the Prince for tea, the Duchess said they had a lot to talk about in the 'very enjoyable' meeting. Prince Charles attends a Gurkha Reception at the Edinburgh Palace on November Always on the go! Camilla looked in great spirits despite joking about feeling tired The royal couple enjoyed tea with the Sultan's family in a gilded room bedecked priceless masterpieces on the walls. Around 60 people feasted on lobster dumpling, glutinous rice with beef floss, crispy egg wrap and bean curd. Other offerings on the menu were Chicken Kolo Mee, steamed grained rice in palm sugar, pancake role with coconut filling, fried sesame Ball with red bean paste. For desert there was layered Malay cake and banana in sweet coconut cream with tea and coffee. A mother-of-two has defended her decision to still breastfeed her five-year-old daughter, and says it benefits her own mental health. Sophie Mei Lan, 29, from Wakefield, who is mother to Jasmine, five, and Ariana, two, revealed during an appearance on ITV's This Morning on Thursday that she 'tandem' breastfeeds both of her daughters at the same time. The mother, who goes to bed every night with her children, explained that Ariana can feed up to ten times in 24 hours, with Jasmine typically feeding at night, and said her solution of tandem feeding has proved difficult because it wasn't 'part of the plan'. 'Once I had Ariana I thought I would stop feeding Jasmine, but as soon as I'd had Ariana, Jasmine wanted to latch on. 'So as I always do with parenting, I just went with the flow with what the girls want and what their needs are,' the parenting blogger explained to presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. In addition, she said, the process 'anchors' her and makes her feel closer to her children, but while some watching at home commended her approach, others said the children were too old to be nursing, branding it 'gross'. Sophie Mei Lan, 29, claims breastfeeding makes her closer to her child and she is supported by her husband Chris Hale, 30 on This Morning She feeds her daughters whenever they want and the young mother sleeps every night with her children so they can feed then fall back to sleep Sophie and Chris's two daughters - Jasmine, five, right, and Ariana, two, left, are both still breastfed Viewers watching the This Morning segment were divided over the controversial decision with some saying they found it 'inappropriate' while others praised Sophie's decision Sophie was joined by her husband Chris Hale, 30, on the daytime show who said he feels that women are too quickly 'judged' for the decisions they make as mothers. After making a joke with presenter Phillip Schofield that he didn't know his wife's surname when she fell pregnant just three months after they met, Chris explained how he was in full support of Sophie's decision. Even though he admitted he liked having the extra space in bed at night because the couple went to sleep in separate bedrooms, he said he was more than happy for her to breastfeed. 'My take on it is I feel sorry for mothers whatever choice they make - whether you choose to breastfeed from birth or not to whatever age, they are judged either way. 'Its a battle they cant win. My perspective is you do whats right for your family and everyone is involved. 'You do what is best for everyone you care about. It doesnt matter what anybody else thinks.' Sophie's controversial decision to breastfeed her daughters well into their childhood caused a mixed reaction among viewers watching at home. Some were horrified that the mother-of-two was catering to her daughters' every need. Sophie explained how she found herself feeding both her daughters at the same time, and she even goes to sleep with them every night in a separate room from her husband It stirred up a debate on Twitter as viewers struggled to understand why Sophie was still feeding her five-year-old daughter 'Sorry breastfeeding a 5 year old is inappropriate and unnecessary!' said one. '#ThisMorning gross sorry. I think the lady has issues . Not needed at that age so its for her not her children #weird sorry,' added another. 'I actually cant deal with the thought of breastfeeding a FIVE YEAR OLD... wtf?!!! Theyre at school? Jesus Christ,' said a third. Others, however, were more empathetic saying that it was 'her body, her choice'. 'Good for her! Great attitude! The lady is doing what she feels is right for her kids. I admire that!' said one. 'Her body, her kids, her choice. They're only breasts guys, relax,' said another. Presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby questioned Sophie on her decisions and how it affected their marriage Sophie said that her decision to breastfeed her daughters benefited her mental health and helped to 'anchor' her Despite insisting that her decision to nurse her children was for their needs, she explained that it helped her to feel closer to her children and 'anchor' her. 'When I am feeding my baby, or now my children, it actually anchors me a lot more and I can have quality time with them and focus on them. The blogger added: 'It's definitely for them. At the moment I get so tired with all my work, I wanted just a bit of time to prepare to come [to the studio] but instead Ariana is grabbing at my top. 'A lot of people have said "oh you're doing this for yourself", but as a lot of mothers who breastfeed or formula feed, we are doing what is best for our babies and kids and go along with whatever. Sophie said she found it 'bizarre' that people were quick to consume cow's milk instead of continuing to drink breast milk which 'we just accept the societal norm'. Miss Lan, of Wakefield, said that people do stare at her when she feeds Jasmine in public. She will allow her daughters to feed when they want The married pair have had arguments over the breastfeeding, but Chris defended any suggestion he didn't support his wife Most mothers stop breastfeeding after six months, and Sophie previously said that people do stare at her when she feeds Jasmine in public, which can make her feel awkward. But new research this week claimed women who breastfeed for longer will become increasingly attentive mothers throughout their child's first ten years. The decade-long study by the American Psychological Association is the first to suggest nursing could have prolonged benefits on a woman's mental health. Breastfeeding has long been associated with positive outcomes for children, such as higher intelligence, better gut health, and stronger immune systems. This Morning airs weekdays on ITV at 10.30am Dynamo has revealed how a painful childhood memory inspired his famous 2011 walking on water trick. The magician, 34, from Bradford, explained during an appearance on ITV's This Morning how he was repeatedly dunked in a dam near his home by school bullies. The illusionist, whose real name is Steven Frayne, didn't learn to swim until he was 14, and told presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield how he used to wish he could walk on water while he was being tormented by his classmates as a 'loner' schoolboy. Fast-forward to 2011, and Dynamo made his childhood dream come true, as he stunned onlookers gathered on Westminster Bridge by 'walking' on the River Thames in front of the Houses of Parliament. . 'When I used to get thrown into the dam, I was just panicking and gasping for air and I just wished I could have walked on water back then,' he explained on the show. 'It stuck in my mind.' Magician Dynamo revealed how a childhood bullying incident inspired his famous walk on water Back in 2011 the illusionist stunned onlookers when he appeared to walk on the River Thames outside Westminster He also mentioned he had since seen one of his childhood bullies who told him he was now a fan of his work. Dynamo - who has performed for the likes of Jay Z, Beyonce, Pharrell Williams, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell - said that discovering magic from his grandfather helped him beat his bullies and build his confidence. The magician said school was not an enjoyable experience because he was 'beaten up everyday for weeks'. 'I was a loner, a weirdo, people didn't really like me. 'But when I found magic people started to look at me, not as this weirdo but [as if] I was different, I was interesting, I had found my own identity.' Dynamo - whose real name is Steven Frayne - said that magic helped to build his confidence and beat the bullies Dynamo, who didn't learn to swim until he was 14, appeared to stand on water in the middle of the Thames while looking at Big Ben The star who has performed for Jay Z, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, said that he used to wish he could walk on water as a child The illusionist, who has released a new book of magic secrets, is hoping to inspire other youngsters struggling by using magic as a way to build up confidence 'When I was younger I was really shy, I didn't really have that much confidence. 'But when I got into magic from my grandpa it was the first time that I built the confidence to socialise with people because I knew I had learned something amazing. I was eager to show someone.' This Morning airs weekdays on ITV at 10.30am Advertisement It's the iconic store that tourists from all over the world jet into to snap up their Christmas goods so it's hardly surprising that Harrods called in the big guns when it came to decorating the store for the festive period. The Knightsbridge store enlisted Italian design duo Dolce & Gabbana, who are beloved by the Duchess of Cambridge, to dress the store in time for Christmas - and they brought their Italian flair to London. A-list favourites Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana created 14 magnificent themes in the windows and dressed Sicilian puppets, glamorous dressing gown-donning mannequins and Italian influencers. Harrods has unveiled its luxurious Christmas window display designed by Dolce & Gabbana as shoppers rush to spend their money at the iconic store over the festive period The Knightsbridge store enlisted Italian design duo Dolce & Gabbana to dress the store and it's fast become a must-visit attraction for tourists The walls have been adorned with retro wallpaper, Smeg fridges and traditional Italian fayre and food. There's plenty of colourful streamers, neon lights and champagne-sipping mannequins lining the windows. The designers have also curated a wall full of cuckoo clocks. Speaking to the Evening Standard about the new display, Harrods Chief Merchant, Helen David, said: 'Domenico and Stefano take us through their festive Italian Christmas via the exciting window displays that they have created for Harrods. 'Our windows this Christmas will be alight with tradition, the love of family, and an all-around celebration of this special time of year with a hefty dose of fun and Italian spirit.' The walls have been adorned with retro wallpaper and a mini fun fayre has been mustered up in the store's windows The designers' names hang in the windows where plush toy models dance on a neon and glittery dancefloor The designers, who are beloved by the likes of the Duchess of Cambridge, have also curated a wall full of cuckoo clocks It was this month revealed that shoppers spent 2.1bn at Harrods during its last financial year as the pounds fall triggered a stampede of foreign buyers seeking luxury goods. Total transactions for the 12 months to January 28 were up 23.3 per cent on the previous period. Sterlings drop after the Brexit vote was a giant price cut for the rich foreigners drawn to London. The city racked up 19.1m visits from overseas last year and the Harrods department store, founded in 1849, is a top attraction. It made a profit of 233.2m, up 38.8 per cent. There's plenty of colourful streamers, neon lights and champagne-sipping mannequins lining the windows The design duo created a very stylish lounge featuring a traditional Santa and ornate fireplace in the store window Shoppers spent 2.1bn at Harrods during its last financial year as the pounds fall triggered a stampede of foreign buyers seeking luxury goods Harrods, which is owned by Qatars sovereign wealth fund, paid out 110m in dividends and handed 3.6m to its directors. It paid 6.9m of UK corporation tax, down from 19.2m a year earlier. The firm said performance was particularly boosted by tourists from China. Finance chief John Edgar said: Every year seems to be a record year for us at the moment and long may it last. The firm said: While the business witnessed a robust start to the year, there was a substantial positive impact seen in demand from its overseas customers after the weakening of the British currency. Her scathing critiques on the judging panel in the last few weeks have earned her a reputation as Strictly's answer to Simon Cowell. But Shirley Ballas showed off her softer side today as she joined seriously ill children at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London to launch its annual Christmas Stocking Fundraising Appeal. The dancer was joined by six-year-old George Washtell to launch the campaign, which encourages the public to donate to the hospital and send messages to sick children who won't be able to spend Christmas at home with their families. Shirley, 57, ditched her usual ballroom dancer glamour for a more casual ensemble, sporting a light green leather bomber jacket and black trousers. Strictly head judge Shirley Ballas, 57, joined George Washtell, six, to launch Great Ormond Street Hospital's annual Christmas Stocking Fundraising Appeal The Strictly head judge has been accused of over-marking some couples and being too harsh on others, but she insists the criticism doesn't bother her The newest Strictly judge has certainly been shaking things up since joining the panel for the latest season. After being accused of 'over-marking' some couples by fans on social media she hit back, saying she does not care about what viewers think of her judging, replying, 'they're not ballroom dancers.' Speaking at the Pride of Britain awards, the champion dancer told The Sun: 'I have been an adjudicator all my life. People are judged against themselves and not against each other. Every journey is a different one. 'In some ways I love the viewers but they're not ballroom dancers. Some of them are and they have great constructive criticism. The former ballroom pro dressed down for the occasion in a light green leather jacket and black trousers Strictly Come Dancing's Shirley Ballas brought some ballroom sparkle to seriously ill children at Great Ormond Street Hospital 'But it doesn't matter if you like one thing because someone is always going to like the opposite of what you like and that's OK, it's what makes the world go round.' It follows yet more criticism this week for scolding host Claudia while trying to demonstrate posture. The head judge had been discussing Alexandra Burke's core strength when she made the comment about the presenter slouching - leading fans to brand her as 'rude' and 'patronising' on Twitter. To make a donation and send your message of hope and support to the children of Great Ormond Street Hospital, visit gosh.org/stockingappeal today Shirley hit back at her critics when she appeared at the Pride Of Britain Awards earlier this week Ivanka Trump landed in Japan on Thursday ahead of her speech on female entrepreneurship, waving at the group of photographers who had gathered at the bottom of her escalator to capture her arrival. The first daughter, 36, touched down in Narita, east of Tokyo, where she is due to speak about women's role in the economy during Friday's World Assembly for Women 2017. She made sure a member of her entourage filmed her glamorous arrival as she made her way down the escalator, and later shared the footage with her 3.9 million followers on her Instagram Story. Travels: Ivanka Trump landed in Japan on Thursday ahead of her speech on female entrepreneurship, which she is due to give on Friday in Tokyo Arrival: The first daughter, 36, touched down in Narita, east of Tokyo, where she is due to speak about women's role in the economy during Friday's World Assembly for Women 2017 Long journey: Ivanka kept her sunglasses on inside the airport, shielding her eyes after her 14-hour flight from Washington, DC Greetings: She smiled at the cameras as she passed the photographers and continued her exit The clip shows Ivanka arriving to Narita International Airport, then focuses on the many photographers taking her picture, before focusing on the first daughter again. Ivanka kept her sunglasses on inside the airport, shielding her eyes after her 14-hour flight from Washington, DC. She smiled at the cameras as she passed the photographers and continued her exit. The senior White House adviser, who is traveling at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, donned a thigh-length, light blue coat white a white, black-rimmed collar. Ivanka paired the statement jacket with black tailored pants and black flats with a prominent black bow on top. She finished off her outfit with pearl earrings and a large black purse. Documenting: She made sure a member of her entourage filmed her glamorous arrival and later shared the footage with her 3.9 million followers on her Instagram Story VIP: The clip shows Ivanka arriving to Narita International Airport, then focuses on the many photographers taking her picture, before focusing on the first daughter again Saying hello: Ivanka can be seen in the video pausing to let photographers take her picture, then continuing on her way out Sharing: The first daughter also posted this photo on her Instagram account to document her visit to Japan Snaps: Another photo shared by Ivanka on Instagram shows her waving at photographers gathered behind a barrier to capture her arrival Fine dining: Right after her landing, Ivanka went to enjoy a traditional kaiseki meal, a refined, meticulously prepared multi-course dinner Mementos: Ivanka shared photos of herself enjoying her meal on Instagram. She can be seen bringing a bowl to her lips and interacting with their hosts Hospitality: Kaiseki meals, such as the one Ivanka enjoyed, are among the finest cuisine in the world, and are served on individual trays to each guest Right after her landing, Ivanka went to enjoy a traditional kaiseki meal, a refined, meticulously prepared multi-course dinner. Kaiseki meals, which are among the finest cuisine in the world, are served on individual trays to each guest. They can vary in composition, but typically include an appetizer served with sake, sashimi, a simmered dish, grilled food, rice, and dessert. Ivanka shared photos of herself enjoying her meal on Instagram. She can be seen bringing a bowl to her lips and interacting with their hosts, whom she thanked for their hospitality in the caption. The first daughter was initially supposed to travel with her father after her speech, during President Donald Trump's 12-day trip around Asia, which is his first official visit to the continent as commander in chief. But she is now due to return to the US right after her speech on Friday, in order to continue pushing for her father's proposed tax reform. Axios wrote on Tuesday that Ivanka, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn, will hold tax reform events in the US instead, laying the public opinion groundwork with voters while President Trump is away visiting Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. A trip to China for Ivanka could also be bad for optics, as her Chinese clothing factories have attracted negative headlines in recent months. Axios reported that Ivanka had canceled meetings in both China and South Korea that she had previously booked. Both Ivanka and Jared Kusher, her husband and fellow White House adviser, accompanied the president on his two previous foreign trips, though they broke off to spend a date night in Rome in May, before peeling off and heading back to the United States. Sartorial: The senior White House adviser, who is traveling at the invitation of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, donned a thigh-length, light blue coat white a white collar Details: Ivanka paired the statement jacket with black tailored pants and black flats with a prominent black bow on top. Accessories: The first daughter finished off her outfit with pearl earrings and a black purse Joyful: Ivanka appeared to be in high spirits after touching down in Japan for the official visit Before she left, Ivanka shared her excitement over her trip to Japan, even as she admitted that she will miss her three children while she is away. The 36-year-old was pictured leaving her Washington, DC home on Wednesday morning to head out for her flight. On that same morning, Ivanka shared a cuddly photo of herself with her three children Arabella, six, Joseph, four, and Theodore, one, just before she set off. 'Im looking forward to visiting Japan, but sure will miss these three!' Ivanka wrote on Instagram at around 9 am Wednesday morning. The photo, which appears to have been taken at bedtime the night before, shows Ivanka sitting in a large white bed surrounded by her children. The first daughter is dressed comfortably in leggings, a black sweater, and socks, and appears to have washed her make-up off for the night. She is holding a picture book, with Arabella sitting to her right in red and white pajamas, her hair freshly washed. Off she goes! She was spotted leaving her home for her trip to Japan on Wednesday morning A little help: A team loaded Ivanka's luggage into the car before she left Last hugs: Before leaving, the 36-year-old shared a photo of herself with her three kids, which appears to have been taken the night before while reading a bedtime story Set up: On Halloween, she and Jared Kushner left buckets of candy out for trick-or-treaters, with what looks like beer for parents Trick or treat! Families stopped by their home to pick out candy on the spooky occasion Shortly after sharing the snap of her kids, Ivanka was pictured leaving her DC home to catch her flight. Dressed for the cooler November weather, she wore a heavy-looking black skirt with a small slit up one leg, layered with a $60 chunky gray sweater from Zara, which was covered in pearl-like embellishments. She accessorized with a pair of gray suede heels but didn't carry a purse as she walked out to a waiting SUV. Her luggage was carried to the car for her and loaded into the trunk by various staff members. The first daughter managed to find time to pack despite a busy schedule this week, which included celebrating her birthday on Monday and Halloween on Tuesdayand though neither she nor Jared stayed home to greet trick-or-treaters, they did leave a bowl of candy and a pitcher of what looked like beer for parents outside. A teenager who was left paralyzed from the waist down after a serious motorcycle crash is now learning to walk again, one year after the ordeal. Wyatt Tidwell, 19, was riding his motorcycle in October last year, when the vehicle failed to decelerate. He was ejected into the air at 84 miles-per-hour, and his body smashed into two guard rails. The teen, from Gilbert, Arizona, survived the crash with a broken back, a punctured lung, as well as a broken femur, collarbone, shoulder and more, prompting doctors to doubt whether he would survive the accident. Ordeal: Wyatt Tidwell, 19, was riding his motorcycle in October last year, when the vehicle failed to decelerate. Doctors weren't sure he would survive the crash Recovery: The teenager, from Gilbert, Arizona, has made a stunning recovery and took to Twitter yesterday to share this video of himself walking with leg braces Milestone: Wyatt managed to go down a hallway and seemed ready to take more steps when the camera stopped recording Wyatt, however, survived several surgeries to put his pelvis back in place. Doctors told him he was paralyzed from the waist down, and that he would never walk again. The teenager proved their predictions wrong when, just six months after the crash, he was able to stand up again. That milestone came after Wyatt spent hours in physical therapy, building his strength back up, and also working on his mobility in a pool. Now, the boy, who usually gets around in a wheelchair, has taken another important step in his recovery by taking several steps. He took to Twitter on Wednesday to share a clip of himself walking thanks to motorized leg braces, which help him stay in an upright position and bend his legs. Wyatt also leaned against crutches, while another person provided additional support by holding onto a belt wrapped around his waist. Injuries: After the crash a year ago, Wyatt emerged with a broken back, a punctured lung, as well as a broken femur, collarbone, shoulder and more Resilience: The boy has been spending hours doing physical therapy and pool therapy to regain his mobility and build his strength back up Update: Wyatt has been working for months to be able to walk again, thanks to the help of his treatment team and the support of his loved ones The teenager, who shared the video on Twitter with the words 'Call me Robocop', managed to go down a hallway and seemed ready to take more steps when the camera stopped recording. Wyatt plans to take on more challenges in the future, including wakeboarding, surfing and skydiving. He is also due to being college soon. He previously recounted the terrifying crash, telling Caters News: 'I remember trying to turn down the throttle but the motorcycle wouldn't slow down and instead it sped up. 'I vividly remember being ejected; when I looked down and saw the speedometer it had hit 84 miles per hour as the bike passed between my legs. 'It launched me quite a distance, I was flying through the air like Superman until I hit the guard rails.' He further detailed his injuries, adding: 'During the accident, I snapped my femur in half, my foot was up by my head, I broke a few ribs, my and nose, punctured my lungs and damaged my spinal cord. Challenge: The boy previously explained that after being told he would never walk again, he became 'determined to beat everyone's predictions' Hurt: Wyatt's left arm was also badly injured in the accident, and the boy underwent stem cell treatment to help his arm regain movement 'I was a very high-risk patient, because my lungs were so badly damaged doctors didn't think I was going to make it. It was a miracle I survived.' Wyatt explained that after being told he would never walk again, he became 'determined to beat everyone's predictions'. 'I spent hours and hours, in a rehab facility and therapy learning how to get around without using my legs, using a power wheelchair because my left arm was so badly injured,' he said. 'When I was first able to stand it was a proud moment, because I don't have any motor function from the bellybutton down it was like walking on stilts. 'But when I saw the look on people's face, all six-foot-three of me was proud, I was able to do it because of my stubbornness and determination to walk as much as I can.' After being rushed to hospital, Wyatt was put into a medically induced coma to help his body heal from the trauma and shock. But remarkably,he woke up several days earlier than he was supposedsetting an early precedent for his recovery to come. 'Doctors were trying to keep my body under sedation due to the shock it went through, the spinal cord damage and all the difficulties my body suffered,' Wyatt said. 'When I woke up, I was very calm but knew something was wrong because my whole family were surrounding me, all I knew was that I was very thankful to be alive.' The teenager said he takes responsibility for the accident. 'When I heard I would never walk again, I know the "Wyatt before the accident" would have been upset and blaming somebody else but I caused the damage to myself,' he said. 'I was the one who put myself on the motorcycle, got into the accident and put myself in that situation. I'll be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life but it won't stop me.' Adventurous: The teen, who now uses a wheelchair to get around, plans to take on more challenges in the future, including wakeboarding, surfing and skydiving Plans: Wyatt (pictured before the crash) is due to start college soon and wants to drive again Wyatt underwent stem cell treatment to help his arm regain movement after the limb was severely damaged from the accident. He then progressed to strength training, electrical stimulation and physical therapy, all of which would become pivotal during his mission to walk again. 'The first surgery opened my bicep to make sure the nerve was intact and to fix it, then they made stem cell injections,' he said. 'It was like training a toddler from ground zero. To strengthen my left hand I had to do everything I could with it from brushing my teeth to grabbing things. 'I still go to rehab now, spending hours and hours relearning everything from squeezing a ball to bicep and hand weights, then more pool therapy too.' Since being able to stand for the first time in April, Wyatt has used that achievement to motivate him and challenge himself even more. Wyatt said his determination to defy the odds stem from the encouragement of his loving family and the inspiration from his friend McKindree Patton, who has battled bone marrow failure. 'My family have been one of my biggest motivations, they were there for me and have 100 per cent supported me, I wouldn't be here without them,' he added. 'Another person is one of my best friends McKrindee Patton who is battling sickness, I look up to her as an inspiration, she kicks butt and has a smile on her face. 'I use both of these sources of inspiration as fuel to keep me going, even though my legs don't work I will do as much as I can. 'I don't think there's anything I can't do, as well as all the sporting activities I have planned, I'm working on driving again, I'll get a job, get married and have kids someday too.' Wyatt's family are fundraising on Go Fund Me to help pay his medical bills, and so far have raised $11,205 of their $50,000 goal. Prince Harry appeared to have captured quite a few hearts while discussing the merits of deep dish versus thin crust pizza with a group of students in Chicago this week. The 33-year-old British royal found himself with quite the fan club when he and former First Lady Michelle Obama surprised students at Hyde Park Academy in the city's South Side on Tuesday, as evidenced in a fun video, taken during their visit and shared by his office and Kensington Palace on Thursday afternoon. Unsurprisingly, a number of the teenage girls quickly flocked to Harry, with one female student in particular urging him to indulge in the city's famous Chicago-style pizza while he was in town. Fan club! Prince Harry chatted with students about pizza while visiting Hyde Park Academy in Chicago with former First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday Popular: Some of the teenage girls flocked to Harry, with one female student urging him to indulge in the city's famous Chicago-style pizza while he was in town A tasty treat: 'I had pizza last night. I dont even eat pizza anymore, but I had pizza last night,' he told the girls 'When Prince Harrys here, he eats Chicago make sure he has a pizza,' she says in the clip. 'I had pizza last night. I dont even eat pizza anymore, but I had pizza last night,' he replies, prompting one of the girls to then ask if he had deep dish Chicago's own famous style of pizza. 'We had deep dish, and we had thin crust,' he says. 'I promise you, I will make sure I eat Chicago.' Prince Harry's charming response to the great pizza debate elicited a fair few giggles from the young ladies, and he appeared to be at ease while chatting with the students. The philanthropist looked dapper in a blazer, trousers, and a button-down shirt that he left open at the collar, and he casually leaned on a bookshelf with one hand on his hip during their conversation. Prince Harry's charming response to the great pizza debate elicited a few giggles Mrs. Obama was seen giving one teen a big hug while she and Harry mingled with the students Mrs. Obama doled out a few hugs while speaking to them individually After sharing a quick hug, Mrs. Obama and one female student shared a high-five and clasped each other's hands Prince Harry's girlfriend Meghan Markle also has ties to Chicago. Although she grew up in Los Angeles, she is a 2003 graduate of Northwestern University, which is near the city. It is not known whether Harry plans to travel to Toronto to pay a visit to Meghan when he leaves Chicago, however it is believed that his TV star girlfriend did not join him on this particular trip, despite being by his side during the Invictus Games back in September. But Harry wasn't the only one with a fan club at the school: the former First Lady also proved herself to be quite the popular visitor among students as well. Hyde Park Academy is located across the street from the future site of the Obama Presidential Center, and the former first lady reminded the students that she grew up in the same neighborhood. 'All of you kids, you are me. I was you,' she is seen telling them in the video. 'I grew up in the same neighborhood, so I know what you are capable of. Because when you look at me, you should see yourselves.' Mrs. Obama looked as stylish as ever in a cowl-neck blouse and plaid dress pants, which she paired with teal suede pumps. Mrs. Obama donned a cowl-neck blouse and plaid dress pants, which she paired with teal suede pumps Earlier in the visit, Prince Harry and Mrs. Obama sat in a circle while speaking with about 20 students from the school The two were all smiles as they walked through the school's hallway into the library Mrs. Obama reminded the students that she grew up in the same neighborhood 'When you look at me, you should see yourselves,' the former first lady told them Mrs. Obama let out a laugh while Harry pointed at something from across the room While she and Harry mingled with the students, Mrs. Obama gave one female student a high-five before holding her hands. She also doled out a few hugs, and she was seen leaning over to give one lucky teen a warm embrace one of the same young girls who was also seen eagerly chatting away to Prince Harry about his pizza preferences. When they first walked into the library, the students were sitting in a circle and many of them threw their hands over their mouths in shock. However, they immediately put them at ease. 'The warm and wide-ranging conversation, lasting over an hour, covered how the Obama Presidential Center will showcase the South Side of Chicago for a global audience, the importance of young people staying inspired and hopeful, and the transformative power of students using their voices to change the world,' Caroline Adler Morales, Mrs. Obama's communications director,' said in a statement. Prince Harry spoke at the first Obama Foundation Summit later that night The prince stated that the younger generation has turned him into an optimist, and he insisted that they can cure some of the world's biggest problems Former President Barack Obama and his wife took the stage during the Obama Foundation Summit's first session on Tuesday Prince Harry was photographed sitting in the audience a few hours before his own session at the high-profile event Later that day, Prince Harry sat in the audience at the first Obama Foundation Summit before joining businesswoman Mellody Hobson on stage to hold a conversation about the ways young people can help drive community engagement. While he addressed the roughly 500 young civic leaders and community activists chosen from 20,000 applicants from around the world, Prince Harry stated that the younger generation has turned him into an optimist. 'We have to listen to the younger generation because they are the cure of some of the world's biggest problems,' he explained. Harry also spoke of his late mother, Princess Diana, and weighed in on why he thought she was referred to as the 'People's Princess.' 'I think she had a lot in common with everybody but also she certainly listened in a very, very short space of time,' he said. The two-day summit ended on Wednesday, and the next day Obama was in New York City The 56-year-old was photographed leaving the Mandarin Oriental Hotel flanked by a Secret Service convoy Obama carried coffee in one hand and had what looked like an iPad under his arm as he made his way to the silver SUV waiting at the curb The former president was photographed sitting in the back seat of the vehicle while waiting in traffic 'In society we suffer from this illusion or this reality where some problems get so big that nobody wants to get involved. She was the one that changed that.' He added: 'I will always look up to her as being my ideal role model.' The two-day summit ended on Wednesday, and the next day former President Barack Obama was in New York City. The 56-year-old was photographed leaving the Mandarin Oriental Hotel flanked by a Secret Service convoy. While heading out, Obama stopped to greet onlookers who stopped to see who was coming out of the hotel. The former president was wearing a navy suit with a blue striped tie, and he smiled when someone stopped to take his photo. Obama eventually made his way to a silver SUV and was seen sitting in the back seat while waiting in traffic. You can tell Christmas is on the way when Starbucks cups turn red. But this year, the coffee shop giant has released cups decorated with Christmas emblems that are mostly white for what is thought to be the first time in the chain's history. The 'colour-it-in-yourself' design has divided fans, some of whom are mourning the loss of colour from the iconic festive cups. The cups launched today in the United Kingdom, and yesterday in the US and Canada. Starbucks launched its Christmas cups today in the UK and yesterday in the US and Canada - but some fans aren't happy that they are not red The design features splashes of red and green amid doodles of presents, snowflakes and a Christmas tree with star on top. The design is the same across both continents. The idea is that customers should colour in their cups themselves using any shade they wish. The cups feature festive doodles and Starbucks is encouraging customers to colour cups in themselves, but not everyone thinks it's a good idea Several fans have complained on Twitter about the new design, bemoaning the lack of colour But while some love the creative design, others are baffled by Starbucks breaking with a new Christmas tradition to turn its cups red for the holiday season. One customer asked: 'Who has time to sit and colour in a cup?' Another said that Costa Coffee's Christmas takeaway cups, which launched yesterday, were much better. The Starbucks Christmas cups cause controversy almost every year, usually due to complaints that the cups are decorated with enough Christmas symbols. A plainer red cup from 2015 spurred an outcry from critics upset that it lacked snowflakes, reindeer or specific symbols of Christmas. Some fans say Costa Coffee's range of holiday cups are much better than Starbucks' this year But other fans love the new cups and can't wait to get their hands on one of them Even President Donald Trump, who was a candidate at the time, suggested boycotting the chain. That complaint won't stand this year however as the cups are absolutely covered in festive doodles. But now some fans are instead in uproar at the loss of colour. 'We hope they'll color it in to represent what the holidays means to them,' said Leanne Fremar, a creative director at the company. Last year, Starbucks released about a dozen holiday cups that were designed by its customers. The holiday cups have been released since 1997. The Christmas range of drinks at Starbucks in the UK includes returning favourites: the Gingerbread Latte, Toffee Nut Latte, Eggnog Latte and Fudge Hot Chocolate. The chain is also launching a new Festive Cold Brew, combining a classic cold brew blend with subtle Christmas-spiced notes which is then finished with orange and cranberry pieces. A SIMPLE blood test could help predict someone's risk of Alzheimer's disease in their forties. Scientists have discovered a warning sign for the devastating condition which appears decades before any memory loss. This is extreme inflammation an overreaction of the immune system often triggered in middle age by weight gain, high blood pressure or diabetes. Scientists have discovered that extreme inflammation - an overreaction of the immune system - can be a sign of Alzheimers disease decades before any memory loss When more than 1,600 people were given blood tests for five signs of inflammation, those with three or more later showed clear signs of Alzheimer's disease. In old age, their brains had shrunk five per cent smaller in areas linked to dementia, including the hippocampus or 'memory centre'. When given a memory test to remember 10 words, they showed signs of that brain damage, remembering only five. People with no signs of inflammation in middle age were able to remember 5.5 words on average. The study, led by Johns Hopkins University in the US, offers hopes of an early test for Alzheimer's disease, as 850,000 people in Britain are forced to live with dementia. Lead author Dr Keenan Walker said: 'These results suggest that inflammation in mid-life may be an early contributor to the brain changes that are associated with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. 'Because the processes that lead to brain cell loss begin decades before people start showing any symptoms, it is vital that we figure out how these processes that happen in middle age affect people many years later.' Experts suspect inflammation affects the brain because dementia patients who suffer inflammatory episodes from chest or urine infections see their memory loss speed up. But inflammation is the body's normal response to injury or infection, until pushed to the extreme by middle-aged conditions like diabetes. At this point it is feared to worsen in the brain, where it changes the structure and signals of brain cells and kills them off. This may be the way in which it leads to Alzheimer's disease in later life. When more than 1,600 people were given blood tests for five signs of inflammation, those with three or more later showed clear signs of Alzheimers disease The US researchers took blood tests from 1,633 people aged 45 to 65 before scanning their brains and testing their memories an average of 24 years later. Dr Joe Butchart, honorary clinical senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, who was not involved in the research, said: 'This is an important study which lends support to the hypothesis that the immune system plays a role in the development of dementias such as Alzheimer's disease. 'Previous research has shown that anti-inflammatory medications, taken for other reasons, may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease.' The study tested for five 'biomarkers' of inflammation in middle age, including white blood cell count, which the authors hope could be used to assess dementia risk in the future. Compared to people with normal readings for all five, those with high readings for three or more had a five per cent lower brain volume in areas linked to Alzheimer's on average and a nine per cent lower score in the memory test. Those with inflammation at a younger age in midlife appeared to suffer more brain shrinkage, according to the study in the journal Neurology. Dr Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, said: 'This large, well-conducted study suggests a link between inflammation and brain changes related to Alzheimer's, but it didn't investigate whether participants actually went on to develop the disease.' However, Sir Peter Lachmann, Emeritus professor of immunology at the University of Cambridge, said: 'The present findings would support the views that anti-inflammatory medicines such as aspirin and avoidance of smoking might delay the onset of dementia.' This year's deadly airborne plague outbreak in Madagascar is the 'worst to strike the country in 50 years', experts have today revealed. Aid workers have also warned annual celebrations to honour the dead earlier this week will trigger a spike in cases in the coming days as people will have came into close contact with each other. Plague season hits Madagascar each year and still has six months to run, however at least 1,800 people have been infected so far - three times the expected amount. Reports state 127 deaths have been recorded, with most caused by the airborne pneumonic plague, which is spread through coughing, sneezing or spitting and can kill within 24 hours if untreated. Professor Jimmy Whitworth, an international public health scientist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, revealed the rapid spread could continue as the airborne disease has reached heavily populated cities. He told MailOnline: 'Madagascar is the most plague endemic country in the world and has outbreaks every year at about this time, this outbreak though is the worst for 50 years or more. Panu Saaristo, the International Federation of Red Cross' team leader for health in Madagascar, warned it is likely the plague will have spread after crowds gathered to celebrate the dead for All Saints Day on Wednesday. 'In that type of situation, it may be easy to forget about respiratory etiquettes,' he told MailOnline. If bubonic plague which is transmitted by flea bites and killed around 100 million people during the 'Black Death' in the 14th century - is left untreated, it can turn into pneumonic - described as the 'deadliest and most rapid form of plague'. The 'truly unprecedented' outbreak has prompted warnings in nine nearby countries which are now on high alert - South Africa, Seychelles, La Reunion, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Comoros and Mauritius. Earlier this week MailOnline revealed the 'Godzilla' El Nino has been blamed for the severity of this year's outbreak in Madagascar. More than 1,300 cases have now been reported in Madagascar, health chiefs have revealed, as nearby nations have been placed on high alert Figures show that at least 1,300 cases of the plague have been reported so far in this year's outbreak, with 93 official deaths recorded. However, UN estimates state the toll could be in excess of 120 Officials in Madagascar have warned residents not to exhume bodies of dead loved ones and dance with them because the bizarre ritual can cause outbreaks of plague In Madagascar, a sacred ritual sees families exhume the remains of dead relatives, rewrap them in fresh cloth and dance with the corpses THE OPENING OF THE RED CROSS' FIRST MAKESHIFT PLAGUE CLINIC Concerned humanitarians have opened a clinic attached to a major hospital in the country's capital in a desperate attempt to contain the plague outbreak. The International Federation of Red Cross has set-up a makeshift treatment clinic at the Andouhatapenaka Hospital in Antananarivo. Twenty beds are available to be used in the clinic, but it is unsure how many patients are currently being treated at the makeshift centre. Aid workers stress it will be able to offer 24/7 treatment to those infected, as officials continue their attempts to clamp down on cases. An international team of doctors are also providing supervision and training on plague treatment The International Federation of Red Cross has set-up a makeshift treatment clinic at the Andouhatapenaka Hospital in Antananarivo Advertisement People carry a body wrapped in a sheet after taking it out from a crypt, as they take part in a funerary tradition called the Famadihana People dance, sing and play music as they carry the bodies of their ancestors during a funerary tradition called the Famadihana All Saints Day, otherwise known as the 'Day of the Dead', is a public holiday in Madagascar that happens on November 1 each year. People of Malagasy descent have traditional views based around their deep respect for their ancestors, and common activities on the day include family gatherings at local cemeteries, reports state. It has been reported that 50 aid workers are among those infected. Concerned health officials have also warned an ancient ritual, called Famadihana, where relatives dig up the corpses of their loved ones, may be fueling the spread. To limit the danger of Famadihana, rules enforced at the beginning of the outbreak dictate plague victims cannot be buried in a tomb that can be reopened. WHAT IS THE FAMADIHANA RITUAL? The unique custom, originating among communities that live in Madagascar's high plateaux, draws crowds every winter to honour the dead and to honour their mortal wishes. 'It's one of Madagascar's most widespread rituals,' historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP at a festival in Ambohijafy, a village outside the capital Antananarivo. 'It's necessary to assure cosmic harmony... it satisfies our desire to respect and honour the ancestors so that they can be blessed and one day return.' Relatives invite all their fellow villagers to attend the ceremony and to take part in the procession as well as musical and food festivities, but the wrapping of the body is a purely family affair. The dead may be 'turned' more than once but only every five, seven or nine years, and can be wrapped in several shrouds if different parts of the family or loved ones want to honour them. The customary ritual, rather than a religious rite, can be shocking for some, but for those taking part, it is an intense celebration accompanied by music, dancing and singing, fuelled by alcoholic drinks. As soon as the ritual is over, the mats on which the bodies are laid were pulled up. Many participants store them under their mattresses in the belief it will bring them good luck, harboring bacteria. Advertisement Instead, their remains must be held in an anonymous mausoleum. But the local media has reported several cases of bodies being exhumed covertly. Despite the serious risks publicised by the authorities, few in Madagascar question the turning ceremonies and dismiss the advice. Participant Josephine Ralisiarisoa insisted the plague risk had been exaggerated. 'I have participated in at least 15 Famadihana ceremonies in my life,' she said. 'And I've never caught the plague.' 'I don't want to imagine the dead like forgotten objects. They gave us life,' said Helene Raveloharisoa, a regular at the ritual. 'I will always practise the turning of the bones of my ancestors - plague or no plague. The plague is a lie.' 'It's one of Madagascar's most widespread rituals,' historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP at a festival in Ambohijafy, a village outside the capital Antananarivo. At the head of the procession, 18-year-old Andry Nirina Andriatsitohaina eagerly awaited the big moment as a uniformed band played on loud trumpets. 'I am extremely proud to go to rewrap the bones of my grandmother and all of our ancestors. I will ask them for blessings and success in my school leavers' exams,' he said. In front of the family mausoleum, the assembled men dug into the earth and opened the tomb's door as women and children looked on. One by one, the wrapped remains were carried out into the open and carefully placed on a mat where they were re-wrapped, or 'turned' in the new shrouds. Oly Ralalarisoa, 45, was overcome with emotion. 'I am so happy to be able to exhume my great-great-great-grandfather. It means that their descendants can ask for blessings for the next nine years.' WHY DID THE 'GODZILA' EL NINO TRIGGER THE WORST PLAGUE IN 50 YEARS? Experts also believe last year's natural phenomenon El Nino - dubbed 'Godzilla', triggered an increase in rat populations in rural areas, sparking the beginning of the epidemic which has so far infected at least 1,300 people. Forest fires have also driven the rats and their plague-carrying fleas towards areas inhabited by humans, local reports state as a reason behind the surge in cases recorded this year. But Professor Matthew Bayliss, from Liverpool University's Institute of Infection and Global Health, suggested floods and heavy rains triggered by Cyclone Enawo, may also be to blame. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, he warned the particularly aggressive El Nino of 2016 may be behind the aggressive start of this year's outbreak, which has seen it hit two heavily populated cities for the first time, including the capital Antananarivo. '2016 was the strongest El Nino on record, and was nicknamed by some "Godzilla",' he said. Some have suggested the growing burden of climate change was to blame. 'It is a change to the movements of water in the Pacific Ocean which then has an effect on climate in many parts of the world, including east and southern Africa. 'Our own research suggests that El Nino played a role of the Zika outbreak, but it is also possible that the conditions have facilitated this large scale plague outbreak.' Experts believe the natural phenomenon dubbed 'Godzilla' triggered an increase in rat populations in rural areas of Madagascar, sparking the beginning of the epidemic which has so far infected at least 1,300 people Professor Bayliss, alongside colleagues including climatologist Dr Cyril Caminade, were behind a 2014 study that found outbreaks of plague in Madagascar are linked to the naturally occurring climate event in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found large outbreaks tend to coincide with the fluctuation of air pressure and sea surface temperature, partly driven by El Nino. It was based on 48 years worth of data. They were also behind another study, released in the same journal in December last year, which found El Nino fuelled the Zika outbreak in South America. It went on to strike more than 70 countries and caused a surge in the number of babies born with abnormally small heads. What is El Nino? El Nino, along with its little sister La Nina, are part of a recurring shift in climate that occurs as warm water shifts from one side of the Pacific to the other. It is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator. Usually the wind blows strongly from east to west, due to the rotation of the Earth, causing water to pile up in the western part of the Pacific. This pulls up colder water from the deep ocean in the eastern Pacific. However, in an El Nino, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back towards the east. This causes the eastern Pacific to get warmer. But as the ocean temperature is linked to the wind currents, this causes the winds to grow weaker still and so the ocean grows warmer, meaning the El Nino grows. This change in air and ocean currents around the equator can have a major impact on the weather patterns around the globe by creating pressure anomalies in the atmosphere. Advertisement People in Madagascar believe the ritual honours their dead relatives, who can be 'turned' every five, seven or nine years Municipal officers clear the ground which blocks the entrance of a family vault during the funerary tradition 'It's one of Madagascar's most widespread rituals,' historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP at a festival in Ambohijafy, a village outside the capital Antananarivo One by one, the wrapped remains were carried out into the open and carefully placed on a mat where they were rewrapped, or 'turned' in the new shrouds AID WORKER ON THE GROUND REVEALS SCALE OF THE PROBLEM A senior aid worker on the ground in Madagascar has provided MailOnline with an exclusive snapshot of what is happening on the island. Panu Saaristo, the International Federation of Red Cross' team leader, has revealed thousands of infected adults are unwilling to seek help because they are scared of hospitals. Mr Saaristo said the cultural stigma associated with seeking medical help was masking the true scale of the problem as it means many of those who are infected are failing to be diagnosed. At the same time there is also a growing shortage of life-saving tests which can provide a rapid diagnosis. Speaking about the decline in plague cases reported today by Madagascan health officials, Mr Saaristo said he feared this is not really the case and that the true scale of the problem growing. He told MailOnline: 'No-one is happier than us, if that is indeed the case'. Malagasy Red Cross volunteers wait for the emergency evacuation of an infant plague suspect at a hospital 'Fear of the fact if they get diagnosed with the infection and the long time they would have to spend in hospital' could be a factor in many not seeking treatment because they connect 'hospitals to death', he added. 'People start avoiding healthcare that may lead to a situation where people start dying.' He warned this year's outbreak has been 'truly unprecedented', and is 'not the plague as usual'. Figures show that at least 1,300 cases of the plague have been reported so far in this year's outbreak, with 93 official deaths recorded. However, UN estimates state the toll could be in excess of 120. Mr Saaristo warned more deaths are expected unless the urgent shortage of rapid diagnostic tests is immediately addressed, as the majority of plague cases spreading through Madagascar can prove fatal in just 24 hours. Advertisement For Madagascans, the famadihana ceremony is an intense celebration accompanied by music, dancing and singing, fuelled by alcoholic drinks Two women sit on the ground and hold the body of one of their ancestors as they take part in a funerary tradition The plague outbreak in Madagascar tends to begin in September and ends in April. Tarik Jasarevic of the World Health Organization confirmed it would be no different this year. He said: 'After concerted efforts of the Ministry of Health and partners, we are beginning to see a decline in reported cases but there are still people being admitted to hospital. 'At this time we cannot say with certainty that the epidemic has subsided. We are about three months into the epidemic season, which goes on until April 2018. 'Even if the recent declining trend is confirmed, we cannot rule out the possibility of further spikes in transmission between now and April 2018.' This outbreak is the first time the disease has affected the Indian Ocean island's two biggest cities, Antananarivo and Toamasina, officials said. It is estimated that around 1.6 million people live in either city. Professor Whitworth added: 'The reason is that there are more cases than usually seen, more of them that are pneumonic cases and its gone into urban areas where its not normally seen.' Fears have been raised that the plague epidemic could spread through air travel and sea trade. However, experts stress the risk of this is low because of the screening protocols that have been implemented to curb the outbreak. A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'There is currently an outbreak of pneumonic and bubonic plague in Madagascar. Outbreaks of plague tend to be seasonal and occur mainly during the rainy season, with around 500 cases reported annually.' The first death this year occurred on August 28 when a passenger died in a public taxi en route to a town on the east coast. Two others who came into contact with the passenger also died. Isabel Malala Razafindrakoto carries the wrapped body of her son, who died aged just three years old The unique custom, originating among communities that live in Madagascar's high plateaux, draws crowds every winter to honour the dead and to honour their mortal wishes HOW DID THIS YEAR'S OUTBREAK BEGIN? Health officials are unsure how this year's outbreak began. However, some believe it could be caused by the bubonic plague, which is endemic in the remote highlands of Madagascar. If left untreated, it can lead to the pneumonic form, which is responsible for two thirds of the cases recorded so far in this year's outbreak. Rats carry the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the plague, which is then passed onto their fleas. Forest fires drive rats towards rural communities, which means residents are at risk of being bitten and infected. Local media reports suggest there has been an increase in the number of blazes in the woodlands. Without antibiotics, the bubonic strain can spread to the lungs - where it becomes the more virulent pneumonic form. Pneumonic, which can kill within 24 hours, can then be passed on through coughing, sneezing or spitting. However, it can also be treated with antibiotics if caught in time. Madagascar sees regular outbreaks of plague, which tend to start in September, with around 600 cases being reported each year on the island. However, this year's outbreak has seen it reach the Indian Ocean island's two biggest cities, Antananarivo and Toamasina. Experts warn the disease spreads quicker in heavily populated areas. Advertisement As part of the tradition, festivalgoers leave the bodies of their ancestors on a straw carpet The ceremony sees the wrapped remains carried out into the open and carefully placed on a mat where they are rewrapped, or 'turned' in the new shrouds This year's outbreak is expected to dwarf previous ones as it has struck early, and British aid workers believe it will continue on its rampage. Olivier Le Guillou, of Action Against Hunger, previously said: 'The epidemic is ahead of us, we have not yet reached the peak.' However, amid widespread fears it could reach Europe, the WHO has stressed the overall global risk of an epidemic is low. WILL IT TRAVEL ON PLANES AND BOATS? Fears have been raised that the plague epidemic which has quickly blighted Madagascar could spread through air travel and sea trade. However, experts stress the risk of this is low because of the screening protocols that have been implemented to curb the outbreak. But, some are concerned frequent flights and ferries between the island and the mainland of Africa could cause the disease to spread. Dr Ashok Chopra, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas, said the crisis in Madagascar had yet to peak. He told The Sun: If they are travelling shorter distances and they're still in the incubation period, and they have the pneumonic (form) then they could spread it to other places. 'We don't want to have a situation where the disease spreads so fast it sort of gets out of control.' Advertisement A WHO official added: 'The risk of the disease spreading is high at national level because it is present in several towns and this is just the start of the outbreak.' International agencies have so far sent more than one million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar. Nearly 20,000 respiratory masks have also been donated. However, the WHO advises against travel or trade restrictions. It has previously asked for $5.5 million (4.2m) to support the plague response. Despite its guidance, Air Seychelles, one of Madagascar's biggest airlines, stopped flying temporarily earlier in the month to try and curb the spread. Schools and universities have been shut in a desperate attempt to contain the respiratory disease, with children known to come into contact with each other more than adults, and the buildings have been sprayed to eradicate any fleas that may carry the plague. The first death this year occurred on August 28 when a passenger died in a public taxi en route to a town on the east coast. Two others who came into contact with the passenger also died. Experts have long observed that plague season coincides with the period when Famadihana ceremonies are held from July to October. Willy Randriamarotia, the Madagascan health ministry's chief of staff, said: 'If a person dies of pneumonic plague and is then interred in a tomb that is subsequently opened for a Famadihana, the bacteria can still be transmitted and contaminate whoever handles the body.' Dilys Morgan, head of emerging infections and zoonoses at Public Health England, said: 'The risk to people in UK is very low, but the risk for international travellers to and those working in Madagascar is higher. 'It is important that travellers to Madagascar seek advice before travelling and are aware of the measures they can take to reduce the risk of infection. The UK has robust systems in place for assessing illness in persons returning from travel or work overseas. 'Plague is no longer the threat to humans that it was centuries ago, as antibiotics work well if treatment is started early.' Schools and universities have been shut in a desperate attempt to contain the respiratory disease, with children known to come into contact with each other more than adults, and the buildings have been sprayed to eradicate any fleas that may carry the plague International agencies have so far sent more than one million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar. Nearly 20,000 respiratory masks have also been donated Men with a bent penis have a significantly increased risk from several cancers, according to a new study. It found that it brought a higher risk of testicular cancer by 40 percent, melanoma by 29 percent and stomach cancer by 40 percent. Researchers from Texas suggest a gene that may trigger crooked penises could also be linked to the development of tumors. The condition, known as Peyronie's disease, which is estimated to affect up to seven percent of males. The findings were presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, after a review of patient data of more than 1.5 million by Baylor College in Houston. Experts from Texas suggest a gene that may trigger crooked penises could also be linked to the development of tumors (stock photo) WHAT CAUSES PEYRONIE'S DISEASE? The cause of Peyronie's disease isn't completely understood, but a number of factors appear to be involved. It's thought it generally results from repeated injury to the penis. For example, the penis might be damaged during sex, athletic activity or as the result of an accident. However, most often, no specific trauma to the penis is recalled. During the healing process, scar tissue forms in a disorganized manner, which might then lead to a nodule that you can feel or development of curvature. In Peyronie's disease, when the penis becomes erect, the region with the scar tissue doesn't stretch, and the penis bends or becomes disfigured and possibly painful. In some men, Peyronie's comes on gradually and doesn't seem to be related to an injury. Researchers are investigating whether the disease might be linked to an inherited trait or certain health conditions. Source: Mayo Clinic Advertisement The team behind the research said men with Peyronie's should be closely monitored for cancer in a bid to catch any development early. But British said further research was needed to justify wide-scale routine screening. Dr Alexander Pastuszak, who led the study, said: 'While theyre significant in the sexual and reproductive life-cycles of these patients, linking them to other disorders suggest that these men should be monitored for development of these disorders disproportionately in contrast to the rest of the population. 'Nobody has made these associations before.' Genetic links The researchers carried out further genetic analysis of a father and son both suffering from Peyronies. They discovered they shared a set of genes understood to predispose people to urological cancers. 'We found mutations in this father and son couplet in these types of genes specifically in melanoma, testis, and prostate cancer,' said Dr Pastuszak. Dr Pastuszak said the condition share some similarities with Dupuytrens disease, a condition in which one or more fingers become permanently bent in a flexed position. They also found links with Ledderhose disease, a thickening of tissue on the feet. 'While we still need to validate some of these findings and translate them from the lab to the clinical population, these data do provide a strong link both clinically and at the genetic level between PD and Dupuytren's these fibrosing conditions and malignancies in men,' he added. According to researchers from the University of Istanbul, Peyronie's is believed to affect between 3.7 percent and 7.1 percent of men, 'but the actual prevalence of the disease may be higher because of patients' reluctance to report this embarrassing condition to their physicians'. A spokesperson from Cancer Research UK, said: 'Its not yet fully understood what causes Peyronies disease and its possible it shares some similar risk factors to cancer. 'Screening for cancer isnt always beneficial and comes with harms, so its essential screening programmes are backed by robust evidence.' A mother covered in thousands of bubble-like tumours on her body revealed she has learnt to love her appearance and is now 'proud' to wear a swimsuit on the beach. Sandra De Santos has had benign lumps growing on her face and body since she was a teenager. However she says when she met her husband-to-be, Jose, he 'fell in love' with her lumps. The 53-year-old, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has neurofibromatosis type-1 (NF1), a genetic condition that affects the nervous system and skin. It is relatively common, currently occurring in about one-in-three thousand births, but in differing degrees of severity. The tumours cover Sandra's body from top to toe, and has been passed on to three of her four children. Sadly, it killed her son when he was aged just six. She said: 'There are moments when I feel sad to see myself in the mirror, or to notice people staring at me on the street, but my family has always supported me.' Scroll down for video Sandra De Santos has had lumps growing on face and body since she hit puberty She has now learnt to love her appearance and is 'proud' to wear a swimsuit on the beach Neurofibromatosis is a genetic condition that causes tumours to grow along nerves I'm an example to my children Sandra's son, her second child, had neurofibroma that had turned cancerous, which is now known to occur in up to 10 percent of sufferers who have the type-1 version of the disease. Sandra said: 'I always asked the doctors if it was due to my condition, they said it wasn't related to it. But when he died I read on his death certificate: "sarcoma due to neurofibromatosis". 'I became quite sad for a long time. I have three kids, two have the condition. But they look to me as an example, so I keep going.' The 53-year-old, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, says she is an example to her children She said: 'There are moments when I feel sad to see myself in the mirror' but she understands self-acceptance is important Married 27 years Sandra and her parents had no idea that she had any health problems until she reached puberty. Signs of the condition can appear at birth, and include the skin having several pale, coffee colour patches called cafe au lait spots, or the appearance of benign lumps known as neurofibromers. When Sandra was diagnosed in the 1970's, very little was known about the condition. Sandra pictured with her husband Jose who she says 'realised I was really unique and decided to go for it' The disease causes coffee-coloured patches and non-cancerous lumps on or under the skin NEUROFIBROMATOSIS FACTS Neurofibromatosis is a genetic condition that causes tumours to grow along nerves. Type 1 affects one in 3,000 births. Symptoms and severity vary but it typically causes coffee-coloured patches and non-cancerous lumps on or under the skin. Type 2 affects one in around 33,000 births. As well as causing benign tumours, it can also lead to gradual hearing loss, tinnitus and poor balance. Both types are often associated with learning difficulties. There is no cure, but surgery can remove the bumps. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement She said: 'Everyday I woke up, I'd notice a new lump. I saw myself as being different. 'Despite this, nothings stopped me from doing things. I always dated. I started dating at 17, and I dated a lot. I kissed a lot. I went to the balls a lot.' By her mid twenties, Sandra's torso was covered in small tumours, and they had started to grow on her arms and face. It was then she met Jose. Sandra said: 'He fell in love with my lumps. He realised I was really unique and decided to go for it. He stayed with me. We've been together ever since. We dated, got engaged, then married, it's been 27 years.' The children's struggles Sandra and Jose's 21-year-old son Sandro is still coming to terms with his increasing number of tumours. Their youngest, 16-year-old Luana, has several cafe au lait spots but as of yet, no tumours have developed. Luana said: 'I have the same disease my mother does, but it never gets in my way. Mum taught me not to care, to see it as something normal. If I become like her, I wont care.' There is no cure, but surgery can remove the bumps which Sandra has had but they grow back NF1 is a condition you're born with, although some symptoms develop gradually over many years In many cases, careful monitoring and treatment can help people with NF1 live a full life Currently, there is no cure for NF1. The only treatment Sandra has received is tumour removal. Dermatologist Professor David Azulay said: 'The most important thing for Sandra is to live her life as normally as possible. With hundreds of tumours it's hard to remove them all. But when she gets bothered by one, she has surgery.' Sandra's tumours aren't painful but they're made of a complex mass of nerve fibres, connective tissue and tiny blood vessels, so it hurts to have them dug out. Surgery is performed using local anaesthetic. As neurofibromatosis type-1 is such a complex genetic condition, research into finding a cure is still in the early stages. Sandra said: 'Of course I want to find a cure. Maybe not for me, but for my children.' If you're a gym bunny, it's likely that you give most of your muscles a fair bit of attention. But there's one group of muscles that don't get talked about enough and certainly don't get enough TLC. Our pelvic floor muscles are crucial, not only for supporting our organs from the bladder to the anus (and everything in between) but they also have a big impact on our sex lives. Reports suggest that one-third of adult women in the UK are affected by pelvic floor disorders which can leave them with a whole host of problems including incontinence and an unwillingness to have sex due to pain, lack of feeling or simply embarrassment. Intimate health brand Intimina found that only half of women asked feel confident in their pelvic floor muscles. And on top of that, only 35 percent of them admitted to performing Kegel exercises only sometimes and a further 19 percent revealed they performed them almost never. We spoke to three women's physiotherapists about why it's so important to keep on top of those muscles and the different ways we can exercise to strengthen our pelvic floor and improve our sex lives in the process. Pelvic floor muscles are key for agility, control and endurance during sex. Three physiotherapists explain why they are so essential - and how to control your sexual prowess with these moves How will training my pelvic floor improve my sex life? So how can this muscle help improve sex? Physiotherapist, physiopilates instructor and spokesperson for the Professional Network of Pelvic, Obstetric and Gynaecological Physiotherapists Amanda Savage, puts it simply 'Vaginal sensation is felt with pressure and deep touch more than light sensations. Sexual pleasure comes from the movement and build-up of friction against the vaginal walls. 'The vaginal walls are layered with the pelvic floor muscles. Pelvic floor muscle exercises tone and strengthen these muscles, improving blood supply and nerve activity, all leading to greater pleasure. Many women report they are able to reach orgasm more easily, and that their orgasms are more powerful, after focusing on pelvic floor muscle exercises.' These muscles are big players when it comes to penetrative sex and like other muscles, when we build them up, they get stronger and bulkier. Physiotherapist and PhD student, Kate Lough describes how improving the strength of this muscle can spice up your sex life. 'If you go to the gym for six months you'll see a difference, your shoulders and hamstrings might get more muscular it's the same with your pelvic floor. You will get a bulkier pelvic floor that is going to take up more room and it will mean that the space available for a penis or whatever you're using will be smaller and you may be more aware of what's going in and out.' And it isn't just physical, Lough explains that it's psychological too, 'If you've got a fantastic pelvic floor and you feel that it's worthy of some really great sex, the chances are you're going to have some really great sex. If you feel as though your pelvic floor muscles are weak and your partner says 'It's not the same since you had the kids' the loss of confidence can be just as big a factor as the possibility of weaker muscles for less satisfactory sex. Knowing that your pelvic floor muscles can improve can help you build your self-confidence.' We spoke to three women's health physio experts about the different ways to exercise our pelvic floor and spice our sex life up in the process. First, the basics. How to contract your pelvic floor 'The simplest, easiest, cheapest way to do pelvic floor exercises (and the way that's been around for thousands of years) is to tighten and release your muscles' says Savage. So how exactly is that done? Lough explains it in a way that might leave you blushing but makes the technicalities of the movement very clear. 'I always tell people to think about their back passage and imagine they're going to slide a poo back up the tube. If you can't go to the toilet for some reason, you have to slide it back up the storage cupboard tighten up your back passage as much as you can and draw right in.' Pelvic floor muscles support our organs from the bladder to the anus (and everything in between) but they also have a big impact on our sex lives And if that doesn't make much sense to you? 'If that doesn't work you can think about where your labia are and try and close them together tight or try to tuck your wee hole under the bone at the front. You can sit on your hands so that your bum bones are on your hands and then try and slide your bum bones together without clenching your buttocks,' (don't forget to breathe!) Got it? Right, the next step is to try and hold the muscle contraction and then release. To build endurance: squeeze and hold Much like a bicep, Savage explains that there is only one type of contraction that you can do with your pelvic floor. 'Your bicep muscle has one action it folds your hand towards your arm. Your pelvic floor has its own special action, drawing in and sucking it's the movement you do when you're trying to hold your wee or stop yourself from passing wind.' The amount of time you're able to hold for will vary from woman to woman but if you have no dysfunction, the experts say you should aim to hold for around 10 seconds. Christien Bird, women's health physio and owner of the White Hart Clinic suggests doing this hold 10 times and then doing that twice a day to see the best results. To build speed: short, powerful squeezes Building up your pelvic floor muscle is not only going to make you feel more confident in the bedroom but if you suffer from a weaker pelvic floor this exercise also has the power to make a huge difference to your day-to-day life. Pelvic floor muscles kick in when we sneeze, pass wind or feel that our bladder might leak. By practising short, powerful squeezes we can improve their capabilities and learn to squeeze them in time to cough, keeping our wee in our bladder. Using the technique that you learned in exercise one Savage explains, 'Like all muscles in the body the pelvic floor muscles can perform in different ways. Practice short, powerful squeezes (10-15 in a row).' Draw your muscles in quickly and release, repeating this in short bursts. Practice short, powerful squeezes (10-15 in a row), physiotherapist Amanda Savage says For mid-sex pleasure: hold while he's inside you Now it's time to put that endurance building squeeze and hold into practice. As Lough says, 'It's good to know where those muscles are and then when it comes to your sex life you can decide to have a bit of fun with it. During sex, you can squeeze and try and get your partner to feel it. Use those muscles for some effect, for some fun.' The more firmed and toned you are, the more you'll feel yourself and your partner during sex and according to the professionals, this will help to improve your orgasms. To reduce muscle tension: don't forget to release Bird explains that one thing that is incredibly important to remember is that releasing those muscles is just as essential as tightening them up. Like some women are unable to tighten those muscles, other women may find it difficult to let them go. 'It's like if you lift your arm and hold it with a weight to strengthen it you don't leave your arm up there, you bring it down again. It's very easy to store a lot of tension in your pelvic floor and you can get pains and your muscles can go into spasms.' It can be the result of urinary tract infections, bouts of cystitis or even stress and anxiety that causes your muscles to tense but one thing is for certain, it can have a huge impact on intimacy. 'There's a group of women we see that have pain during sex and that can be due to an overactive pelvic floor.' While suffering from this may mean having to see a professional, there are ways that you can work on this in the privacy of your own home. 'On your own, you can practice releasing your pelvic floor. Try and tighten up your pelvic floor and if you don't feel much movement there, you may already be tensing. Release your tummy and let that space between your bum bones open out it's really about feeling your tummy go really floppy if you're struggling with this, it may be useful to go and see a physio.' For a multi-purpose exercise: squat From building strength to burning calories, we've all heard about the benefits of squatting. But there may just be one more. 'When you squat, you contract your glutes your big bottom muscles. If you do that and you're lucky enough to be someone that has an automated co-contraction of your pelvic floor then without you doing anything else you can just squat and your pelvic floor muscles will kick in,' explains Bird. While this is a great way for many women to exercise the pelvic floor, it doesn't work for everyone. And in some rare cases such as prolapse, it can even be damaging which is why the experts insist it's important for you not to feel embarrassed about any problems you may have. Lough says 'Some women have real issues around prolapse they join a gym and are too embarrassed to tell the instructor about their problem and then they get inappropriate exercises which are loaded with too much pressure and their pelvic floors are too weak to cope with them.' As a rule, the experts say if any exercise starts to make your problem worse go and see an expert. For a confidence boost: Pilates If you've got the squeezing and tensing down, Pilates can really help with pelvic floor training. Savage explains: 'All Pilates exercises aim to work your core muscles together as a group. 'The core muscles used are your abdominals, your pelvic floor, your back muscles and your diaphragm. 'You first focus on learning to use each one separately (the basic pelvic floor, the basic abdominals, the basic breath) but then the goal of Pilates is to use them all in balance together. Pilates exercises aim to work your core muscles together as a group 'Once you are certain that you are definitely using your pelvic floor correctly you will include your pelvic floor in all your pilates exercises too. You will be practising using your pelvic floor muscles not just in isolation but as part of all movements. This is a great progression from the basic pelvic floor exercises as in real life all our muscles have to work together and we have to do lots of complex movements.' While Pilates has been heralded as helping with pelvic floor training, the experts fall on two sides. Lough believes that Pilates can be very useful for many women hoping to train their pelvic floor but adds, 'some women will tell me how they used to leak and since doing a Pilates DVD for six months they feel better and they'll say it's all because of those exercises. It may be because of those exercises but it might also be because they've taken the time to look after themselves properly for the first time and if they'd done any other exercise they may have seen the same results.' The pelvic floor specialist admits there can be a hugely positive psychosexual impact. 'If you're doing things that make you feel good, you generally have more confidence and you'll feel that things are better.' In turn, this newfound confidence will spice things up in the bedroom. While there are no magic Pilates moves that you can specifically do to target your pelvic floor, Savage suggests paying extra attention to your pelvic floor while exercising to ensure you're engaging the muscles. 'If you have a problem with your pelvic floor muscles (clues are incontinence or vaginal prolapse) it is important not to rush up to the advanced levels of Pilates too quickly. 'You and your instructor need to keep checking that your abdominal wall is not bulging and that you don't feel pressure below in the vagina with any of the tasks. If you do feel pressure below you need to go back down a pilates level. Not all Pilates instructors will emphasise the pelvic floor.' The digital fix: pelvic floor toning apps In the age of all answers coming from the internet, is it any wonder that there's an app for pelvic floor training too? Multiple apps in fact. Physiotherapist Bird is a fan of one created by the NHS called the Squeezy app, 'it gives you notifications to remind you to train. If you know how to do an effective contraction and how long you can hold for you can individualise your training (although you may need an assessment for this) and it gives you really simple instructions on how to do your exercises. It costs a couple of pounds but it has a visual aid that goes up and down as you squeeze and you have to keep up with it that will help you train your speed.' For a bit of help: pelvic floor trainers And if you're really struggling to do it on your own, there are plenty of gadgets you can invest in. There are a whole host of pelvic floor trainers that work in a variety of ways. The experts say that if you're struggling to train your pelvic floor simply by following instructions to squeeze and you aren't able to see a professional, a gadget might be the thing for you. Trainers like Elvie can be inserted into your vagina and then tracked and used from your phone and others such as the Intimina use vibrations to help you squeeze and a sensor to help you progress by moving you up a level depending on your performance. With the Elvie being handed out at goodie bags in this year's Emmy's, this once taboo trend is turning over a stylish leaf (if it's good enough for the red carpet, it's good enough for us). This article was originally published by Healthista The deadly airborne plague spreading rapidly across Madagascar is now at 'crisis' point as cases have rocketed by 37 per cent in just five days, official figures reveal. The outbreak, the 'worst in 50 years', is being fueled by a strain more lethal than the one which usually strikes the country off the coast of Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) now states there are 1,801 suspected cases - significantly higher than the 1,309 it reported last Thursday. Academics have revealed such a jump in cases over the period of five days is concerning and have predicted it could get worse. The most recent statistics show there have been 127 deaths. Professor Robin May, an infectious diseases expert at Birmingham University, told MailOnline that 'whichever way you look' at the outbreak, its 'concerning definitely'. Analysis of figures by MailOnline show the epidemic could strike a further 20,000 people in just a matter of weeks, if current trends continue. It could be made worse by crowds gathering for an annual celebration to honour the dead earlier this week. The 'truly unprecedented' outbreak has prompted warnings in nine nearby countries - South Africa, Seychelles, La Reunion, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Comoros and Mauritius. Two thirds of this year's cases have been caused by the airborne pneumonic plague and means it is spread through coughing, sneezing or spitting. It is different to the traditional bubonic form that strikes the country each year. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Professor Johnjoe McFadden, an expert in molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, said: 'Its a crisis at the moment and we dont know how bad its going to get.' Professor Jimmy Whitworth, an international public health scientist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told MailOnline earlier today: 'This outbreak though is the worst for 50 years or more.' Analysis of figures by MailOnline show the plague epidemic in Madagascar could strike a further 20,000 people in just a matter of weeks, if current trends continue More than 1,300 cases have now been reported in Madagascar, health chiefs have revealed, as nearby nations have been placed on high alert Figures show that at least 1,300 cases of the plague have been reported so far in this year's outbreak, with 93 official deaths recorded. However, UN estimates state the toll could be in excess of 120 Officials in Madagascar have warned residents not to exhume bodies of dead loved ones and dance with them because the bizarre ritual can cause outbreaks of plague Plague season hits Madagascar each year and still has six months to run, however, this years outbreak has seen triple the amount of cases that was expected. This year's outbreak has started earlier as forest fires have driven rats into rural communities, which has then spread into cities for the first time, local reports state. It comes amid warnings annual celebrations to honour the dead saw large crowds gather in cities, increasing the risk of infection. HOW QUICKLY WILL IT SPREAD? DATE OF REPORT 26TH OCT 31ST OCT 5TH NOV 10TH NOV 15TH NOV 20TH NOV 25TH NOV 30TH NOV 5TH DEC 10TH DEC CASES 1,309 1,801 2,478 3,409 4,690 6,453 8,879 12,217 16,809 23,128 These figures in italics are MailOnlines analysis of what would happen if the current 37 per cent increase continued in five-day gaps. Actual figures in upcoming reports issued by the WHO completely depend on intervention by international aid agencies, and could paint a much different picture. Advertisement All Saints Day, otherwise known as the 'Day of the Dead', is a public holiday which takes place on November 1 each year, sees families often gathering at local cemeteries. 'In that type of situation, it may be easy to forget about respiratory etiquettes,' Panu Saaristo, the International Federation of Red Cross' team leader for health in Madagascar, told MailOnline. And earlier this week MailOnline revealed the 'Godzilla' El Nino has been blamed for the severity of this year's outbreak by causing freak weather conditions. Commenting on the WHO figures, Professor May told MailOnline: It sounds like a very big increase in five days. Its a serious outbreak and needs careful monitoring. Depending on what position of the curve youre at, youre either going to see a lot more cases or itll hit the peak and drop down. The figures dispute claims by Dr Manitra Rakotoarivony, Madagascar's director of health promotion, that the epidemic is on a downward spiral. On the same day WHO released its latest situation report, he told local radio: There is an improvement in the fight against the spread of the plague, which means that there are fewer patients in hospitals. In Madagascar, a sacred ritual sees families exhume the remains of dead relatives, rewrap them in fresh cloth and dance with the corpses THE OPENING OF THE RED CROSS' FIRST MAKESHIFT PLAGUE CLINIC Concerned humanitarians have opened a clinic attached to a major hospital in the country's capital in a desperate attempt to contain the plague outbreak. The International Federation of Red Cross has set-up a makeshift treatment clinic at the Andouhatapenaka Hospital in Antananarivo. Twenty beds are available to be used in the clinic, but it is unsure how many patients are currently being treated at the makeshift centre. Aid workers stress it will be able to offer 24/7 treatment to those infected, as officials continue their attempts to clamp down on cases. An international team of doctors are also providing supervision and training on plague treatment The International Federation of Red Cross has set-up a makeshift treatment clinic at the Andouhatapenaka Hospital in Antananarivo Advertisement People carry a body wrapped in a sheet after taking it out from a crypt, as they take part in a funerary tradition called the Famadihana People dance, sing and play music as they carry the bodies of their ancestors during a funerary tradition called the Famadihana The WHO also remains adamant that cases are on the decline in all active areas across the country. It said on its website: In the past two weeks, 12 previously affected districts reported no new confirmed or probable cases of pulmonary (pneumonic) plague. Bubonic plague, which is transmitted by flea bites and was responsible for the Black Death in the 14th century, which killed 100 million people. If left untreated, the Yersinia pestis bacteria can reach the lungs. This is where it turns pneumonic described as the deadliest and most rapid form of plague. Pneumonic, which is much more serious, is spread through coughing, sneezing or spitting and can kill within 24 hours if untreated. Health officials are unsure how this year's outbreak began, but local media report that forest fires have driven rats towards rural communities. This is believed to have been the start of the bubonic outbreak, which then develops into the more virulent pneumonic form which spreads rapidly without treatment. WHY DID THE 'GODZILA' EL NINO TRIGGER THE WORST PLAGUE IN 50 YEARS? Experts also believe last year's natural phenomenon El Nino - dubbed 'Godzilla', triggered an increase in rat populations in rural areas, sparking the beginning of the epidemic which has so far infected at least 1,300 people. Forest fires have also driven the rats and their plague-carrying fleas towards areas inhabited by humans, local reports state as a reason behind the surge in cases recorded this year. But Professor Matthew Bayliss, from Liverpool University's Institute of Infection and Global Health, suggested floods and heavy rains triggered by Cyclone Enawo, may also be to blame. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, he warned the particularly aggressive El Nino of 2016 may be behind the aggressive start of this year's outbreak, which has seen it hit two heavily populated cities for the first time, including the capital Antananarivo. '2016 was the strongest El Nino on record, and was nicknamed by some "Godzilla",' he said. Some have suggested the growing burden of climate change was to blame. 'It is a change to the movements of water in the Pacific Ocean which then has an effect on climate in many parts of the world, including east and southern Africa. 'Our own research suggests that El Nino played a role of the Zika outbreak, but it is also possible that the conditions have facilitated this large scale plague outbreak.' Experts believe the natural phenomenon dubbed 'Godzilla' triggered an increase in rat populations in rural areas of Madagascar, sparking the beginning of the epidemic which has so far infected at least 1,300 people Professor Bayliss, alongside colleagues including climatologist Dr Cyril Caminade, were behind a 2014 study that found outbreaks of plague in Madagascar are linked to the naturally occurring climate event in the tropical Pacific Ocean. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they found large outbreaks tend to coincide with the fluctuation of air pressure and sea surface temperature, partly driven by El Nino. It was based on 48 years worth of data. They were also behind another study, released in the same journal in December last year, which found El Nino fuelled the Zika outbreak in South America. It went on to strike more than 70 countries and caused a surge in the number of babies born with abnormally small heads. What is El Nino? El Nino, along with its little sister La Nina, are part of a recurring shift in climate that occurs as warm water shifts from one side of the Pacific to the other. It is caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator. Usually the wind blows strongly from east to west, due to the rotation of the Earth, causing water to pile up in the western part of the Pacific. This pulls up colder water from the deep ocean in the eastern Pacific. However, in an El Nino, the winds pushing the water get weaker and cause the warmer water to shift back towards the east. This causes the eastern Pacific to get warmer. But as the ocean temperature is linked to the wind currents, this causes the winds to grow weaker still and so the ocean grows warmer, meaning the El Nino grows. This change in air and ocean currents around the equator can have a major impact on the weather patterns around the globe by creating pressure anomalies in the atmosphere. Advertisement People in Madagascar believe the ritual honours their dead relatives, who can be 'turned' every five, seven or nine years Municipal officers clear the ground which blocks the entrance of a family vault during the funerary tradition Concerned health officials have also warned an ancient ritual, called Famadihana, where relatives dig up the corpses of their loved ones, may be fueling the spread. To limit the danger of Famadihana, rules enforced at the beginning of the outbreak dictate plague victims cannot be buried in a tomb that can be reopened. Instead, their remains must be held in an anonymous mausoleum. But the local media has reported several cases of bodies being exhumed covertly. Despite the serious risks publicised by the authorities, few in Madagascar question the turning ceremonies and dismiss the advice. The plague outbreak in Madagascar tends to begin in September and ends in April. Tarik Jasarevic of the World Health Organization confirmed it would be no different this year. 'It's one of Madagascar's most widespread rituals,' historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP at a festival in Ambohijafy, a village outside the capital Antananarivo The unique custom, originating among communities that live in Madagascar's high plateaux, draws crowds every winter to honour the dead and to honour their mortal wishes AID WORKER ON THE GROUND REVEALS SCALE OF THE PROBLEM A senior aid worker on the ground in Madagascar has provided MailOnline with an exclusive snapshot of what is happening on the island. Panu Saaristo, the International Federation of Red Cross' team leader, has revealed thousands of infected adults are unwilling to seek help because they are scared of hospitals. Mr Saaristo said the cultural stigma associated with seeking medical help was masking the true scale of the problem as it means many of those who are infected are failing to be diagnosed. At the same time there is also a growing shortage of life-saving tests which can provide a rapid diagnosis. Speaking about the decline in plague cases reported today by Madagascan health officials, Mr Saaristo said he feared this is not really the case and that the true scale of the problem growing. He told MailOnline: 'No-one is happier than us, if that is indeed the case'. Malagasy Red Cross volunteers wait for the emergency evacuation of an infant plague suspect at a hospital 'Fear of the fact if they get diagnosed with the infection and the long time they would have to spend in hospital' could be a factor in many not seeking treatment because they connect 'hospitals to death', he added. 'People start avoiding healthcare that may lead to a situation where people start dying.' He warned this year's outbreak has been 'truly unprecedented', and is 'not the plague as usual'. Figures show that at least 1,300 cases of the plague have been reported so far in this year's outbreak, with 93 official deaths recorded. However, UN estimates state the toll could be in excess of 120. Mr Saaristo warned more deaths are expected unless the urgent shortage of rapid diagnostic tests is immediately addressed, as the majority of plague cases spreading through Madagascar can prove fatal in just 24 hours. Advertisement One by one, the wrapped remains were carried out into the open and carefully placed on a mat where they were rewrapped, or 'turned' in the new shrouds For Madagascans, the famadihana ceremony is an intense celebration accompanied by music, dancing and singing, fuelled by alcoholic drinks He said: 'After concerted efforts of the Ministry of Health and partners, we are beginning to see a decline in reported cases but there are still people being admitted to hospital. WILL IT TRAVEL ON PLANES AND BOATS? Fears have been raised that the plague epidemic which has quickly blighted Madagascar could spread through air travel and sea trade. However, experts stress the risk of this is low because of the screening protocols that have been implemented to curb the outbreak. But, some are concerned frequent flights and ferries between the island and the mainland of Africa could cause the disease to spread. Dr Ashok Chopra, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas, said the crisis in Madagascar had yet to peak. He told The Sun: If they are travelling shorter distances and they're still in the incubation period, and they have the pneumonic (form) then they could spread it to other places. 'We don't want to have a situation where the disease spreads so fast it sort of gets out of control.' Advertisement 'At this time we cannot say with certainty that the epidemic has subsided. We are about three months into the epidemic season, which goes on until April 2018. 'Even if the recent declining trend is confirmed, we cannot rule out the possibility of further spikes in transmission between now and April 2018.' However, this year's worrying outbreak has seen it reach the Indian Ocean islands two biggest cities, Antananarivo and Toamasina. Experts warn the disease spreads quicker in heavily populated areas. It is estimated that around 1.6 million people live in either city. The first death this year occurred on August 28 when a passenger died in a public taxi en route to a town on the east coast. Two others who came into contact with the passenger also died. This year's outbreak is expected to dwarf previous ones as it has struck early, and British aid workers believe it will continue on its rampage. Olivier Le Guillou, of Action Against Hunger, previously said: 'The epidemic is ahead of us, we have not yet reached the peak.' As part of the tradition, festivalgoers leave the bodies of their ancestors on a straw carpet Isabel Malala Razafindrakoto carries the wrapped body of her son, who died aged just three years old HOW DID THIS YEAR'S OUTBREAK BEGIN? Health officials are unsure how this year's outbreak began. However, some believe it could be caused by the bubonic plague, which is endemic in the remote highlands of Madagascar. If left untreated, it can lead to the pneumonic form, which is responsible for two thirds of the cases recorded so far in this year's outbreak. Rats carry the Yersinia pestis bacteria that causes the plague, which is then passed onto their fleas. Forest fires drive rats towards rural communities, which means residents are at risk of being bitten and infected. Local media reports suggest there has been an increase in the number of blazes in the woodlands. Without antibiotics, the bubonic strain can spread to the lungs - where it becomes the more virulent pneumonic form. Pneumonic, which can kill within 24 hours, can then be passed on through coughing, sneezing or spitting. However, it can also be treated with antibiotics if caught in time. Madagascar sees regular outbreaks of plague, which tend to start in September, with around 600 cases being reported each year on the island. However, this year's outbreak has seen it reach the Indian Ocean island's two biggest cities, Antananarivo and Toamasina. Experts warn the disease spreads quicker in heavily populated areas. Advertisement The ceremony sees the wrapped remains carried out into the open and carefully placed on a mat where they are rewrapped, or 'turned' in the new shrouds Two women sit on the ground and hold the body of one of their ancestors as they take part in a funerary tradition WHAT IS THE FAMADIHANA RITUAL? The unique custom, originating among communities that live in Madagascar's high plateaux, draws crowds every winter to honour the dead and to honour their mortal wishes. 'It's one of Madagascar's most widespread rituals,' historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP at a festival in Ambohijafy, a village outside the capital Antananarivo. Relatives invite all their fellow villagers to attend the ceremony and to take part in the procession as well as musical and food festivities, but the wrapping of the body is a purely family affair. The dead may be 'turned' more than once but only every five, seven or nine years, and can be wrapped in several shrouds if different parts of the family or loved ones want to honour them. The customary ritual, rather than a religious rite, can be shocking for some, but for those taking part, it is an intense celebration accompanied by music, dancing and singing, fuelled by alcoholic drinks. As soon as the ritual is over, the mats on which the bodies are laid were pulled up. Many participants store them under their mattresses in the belief it will bring them good luck, harboring bacteria. Advertisement A WHO official added: 'The risk of the disease spreading is high at national level because it is present in several towns and this is just the start of the outbreak.' International agencies have so far sent more than one million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar. Nearly 20,000 respiratory masks have also been donated. However, the WHO advises against travel or trade restrictions. It has previously asked for $5.5 million (4.2m) to support the plague response. Despite its guidance, Air Seychelles, one of Madagascar's biggest airlines, stopped flying temporarily earlier in the month to try and curb the spread. Schools and universities have been shut in a desperate attempt to contain the respiratory disease, with children known to come into contact with each other more than adults, and the buildings have been sprayed to eradicate any fleas that may carry the plague. Experts have long observed that plague season coincides with the period when Famadihana ceremonies are held from July to October. Willy Randriamarotia, the Madagascan health ministry's chief of staff, said: 'If a person dies of pneumonic plague and is then interred in a tomb that is subsequently opened for a Famadihana, the bacteria can still be transmitted and contaminate whoever handles the body.' Schools and universities have been shut in a desperate attempt to contain the respiratory disease, with children known to come into contact with each other more than adults, and the buildings have been sprayed to eradicate any fleas that may carry the plague International agencies have so far sent more than one million doses of antibiotics to Madagascar. Nearly 20,000 respiratory masks have also been donated It may be a waste of time to undergo a heart procedure for angina, a study suggests. Around two million people in the UK and 10 million in the US have angina, which causes chest pain following physical activity because of restricted blood flow to the heart. Many have a small metal tube called a stent put in to widen their arteries. But the procedure, which can damage the arteries or cause excessive bleeding, has been found to have no significant benefit for patients' symptoms or quality of life. Researchers from Imperial College London looked at 200 patients who either received a heart stent or a sham procedure. A study by Imperial College London found the operation has a huge risk of damaging the arteries but does not improve quality of life Doctors widely believe the stent 'unquestionably improves angina', according to the researchers. But when the effect on patients' ability to exercise was examined, the stent group showed little difference. Lead author Dr Rasha Al-Lamee, from Imperial's National Heart and Lung Institute, said: 'It seems that the link between opening a narrowing coronary artery and improving symptoms is not as simple as everyone had hoped.' She added: 'Surprisingly, even though the stents improved blood supply, they didn't provide more relief of symptoms compared to drug treatments - at least in this patient group.' The results add to growing evidence that procedures including keyhole knee surgery and arthritis operations do not work in themselves but only because of a 'placebo effect'. In Britain, more than 94,000 people a year receive a Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) to put a stent into their artery. It is done for people who have had a heart attack, as well as the nearly one in seven men and one in 12 women with angina because of hardened arteries or fatty plaques in their blood vessels. The study of 200 patients in London and the south of England measured the effect of a stent on how long people could exercise after the procedure before needing to stop. They found the average increase in overall exercise time was 284 seconds for patients who had the PCI procedure. Those given a sham version of the procedure, getting an angiogram using a catheter to examine their arteries but no stent, managed 11.8 seconds. The authors say this is not 'statistically significant' so could be due to the stent or to chance. Importantly those given a stent and the group denied it reported no significant difference in their symptoms, despite stents being shown to improve blood supply to the heart. The study, published in the Lancet, said any benefits from the procedure may therefore be down to the placebo effect - where something works simply because patients and cardiologists believe it will. Dr Al-Lamee, who is also an interventional cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: 'While these findings are interesting and deserve more attention, they do not mean that patients should never undergo the procedure for stable angina. 'It may be that some patients opt to have an invasive procedure over taking long-term medication to control their symptoms.' The patients in the study all had stable angina, which is reliably triggered by exercise or stress. Many patients manage the condition with drugs such as beta-blockers or nitro-glycerine, which were also used during the six-week trial. BONFIRE By Krysten Ritter (Hutchinson 12.99) BONFIRE By Krysten Ritter (Hutchinson 12.99) Having left Barrens, Indiana, ten years earlier, Abby Williams, now an environmental lawyer, returns to her home town to follow up complaints against a big local plastics firm. The company has considerable influence in the town, so litigation will be a challenge. Investigating whether the firm is polluting the land, Abby recalls the rash of illnesses that infected her classmates years earlier. Is there a connection? Key to finding the truth is tracking down her one-time friend Kaycee Mitchell, one of the sufferers, who has disappeared. As Abby digs deeper, she is forced to confront her own ghosts. The plot is packed with suspense and moves at a cracking pace. This portrait of small-town life by Breaking Bad and Jessica Jones actress Ritter is spot on. Abby makes a terrific, kickass heroine who youll root for all the way. RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next DEBUTS DEBUTS Share this article Share HEATHER, THE TOTALITY by Matthew Weiner (Canongate 14.99) HEATHER, THE TOTALITY by Matthew Weiner (Canongate 14.99) Boy falls for girl, boy pursues girl. How will it end? There are just four characters in this economically told tale by the originator of TV series Mad Men: pretty A-student Heather, her wealthy, unhappily married, neurotically protective parents, and labourer Bobby. Bobby spots Heather when working on renovations to the Manhattan apartment where she lives. Which is fine, except that he also happens to be a psychopath. In most such plots, this would be a reveal at the end of act two. But here, we know from the start that Bobby has killed his own mother without a scintilla of remorse and that he decides to murder Heather at the very moment he sets eyes on her. How will it end? That remains a compelling question all the way through this skilfully structured novella. THE BOY MADE OF SNOW by Chloe Mayer (W&N 14.99) THE BOY MADE OF SNOW by Chloe Mayer (W&N 14.99) Its 1944. Nine-year-old Daniel and his mother Annabel live in a quiet English village, while his father is away fighting in the war. Without friends, the boy populates his world with the stuff of the classic fairy tales he loves, frequently blurring the lines between fact and fantasy. The arrival of a group of German PoWs, brought to work at a nearby farm, changes everything. For Annabel, one of them, Hans, offers an awakening from the tedium of her existence. For Daniel, hes a character from his magic world brought to life. But Hans has his own agenda, propelling them towards tragedy. If Daniels voice didnt always ring quite true to me, the novel wins through on both the evocation of the period and the setting, brilliantly capturing the isolation of mother and son, making the awful inevitability of what follows extra affecting. BOOK OF THE WEEK FREUD: THE MAKING OF AN ILLUSION By Frederick Crews (Profile 30) Gimmicky, perhaps, that the E in FREUD on the jacket of this book has been crossed out and replaced with a scrawled A. But its apt. Freud = Fraud sums up the message. Anyone who enjoys reading the systematic dismantling of a reputation will relish this riveting expose. Its written not by a scientist or psychologist, but by an eloquent American Emeritus professor of English, Frederick Crews. Over 650 pages, he builds up a portrait of Freud as the most vile, medically useless, misogynistic, snobbish, petulant, jealous, crazy, sex-obsessed creep you could ever hope not to look up at from a couch and a man whose treatment you wouldnt wish on your worst enemy. Professor Frederick Crews portrays Freud as a vile sex-obsessed creep in his new book Freud: The Making Of An Illusion Lock up your daughters! I wanted to scream, when yet another innocent young Viennese woman with a cough or an aching leg got sent to Freud for treatment at todays equivalent of 230 an hour, and came out a few months later totally traumatised and much more ill than she had been when she started. Not once in this account does Freud do or say a single kind or unselfish thing. Though a doctor, he had no Hippocratic sense that each human being deserved respectful treatment. He once remarked in a letter: I have found little that is good about human beings . . . In my experience, most of them are trash. But this is such a damningly one-sided portrait that I did sometimes wonder: What is your problem, Crews? His accusation that Freud wrenched his patients histories into alignment with his theory could be levelled at the author, who wrenches every detail of Freuds doings and writings into alignment with his theory of Sigmund as an incompetent monster. Its all highly convincing, though. The rot seems to have set in during Freuds childhood, when the family moved to a lower-class Jewish enclave in Vienna, instilling in him a ruthless determination to distance himself from his origins and an unquenchable thirst for wealth and fame. Crews deduces that while his parents were away and he was left in charge of his younger siblings, the teenage Freud sexually abused his younger sister. He was in love with his mother, admitting later to his friend, Wilhelm Fliess: I have found, in my own case, the phenomenon of being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I now consider it a universal event in early childhood. After Freud and his wife Martha's (picture left, with Freud) sex life ceased, he had a clandestine affair with her sister, Minna, who came to live with them when she was widowed His friends (well, ex-friends) eventual damning verdict on Freud was that the reader of thoughts merely reads his own thoughts into other people. An early adopter and promoter of cocaine as a medical drug, Freud was a lifelong cocaine addict himself, and this, Crews thinks, must have marred his ability to think straight. Freud liked to diagnose his patients with whichever ailment was currently preoccupying him. So, when a young woman, Emma Eckstein, came to see him with an aching leg and bad period pains, he forced her story into line with his current theory that a misconstrued erotic incident, having befallen a virgin prior to the onset of sexual awareness, gets suppressed and thereby becomes a cause of hysteria, but only when a second such incident reawakens that memory and renders it horrifying. If a patient didnt come up with a nice pre-pubescent erotic incident, he or she was being resistant. After many hours of probing, Freud eventually managed to get Emma to admit that a shopkeeper had once tried to grab her genitals when she was a child. At the same time, Freud had latched on to the theory that the nose was the control centre for other organs and their maladies. He diagnosed Emma with a double-syndrome, hystero-neurasthenia, the neurosis-part brought on by masturbation (Freuds pet-hate). The treatment? The surgical removal of a bone from the poor girls nose. Emma haemorrhaged blood. A month later, she was still bleeding profusely. Freud worked out that her bleeding came from sexual longing expressing her desires through spurts of blood. Freud performed pressure treatment on womens foreheads and bodies in his darkened consulting room, telling them to remove any tight clothing and then searching their bodies This was typical. Freud went through a phase of doing pressure treatment on womens foreheads and bodies in his darkened consulting room, telling them to remove any tight clothing and then searching their bodies for their hystereogenic zones, while coercing them to tell him details of their sexual history. As you read this book, it becomes ever-clearer that the real problem was inside Freuds own head what Crews calls his interior house of horrors. Not only did he think all boys were in love with their mothers and wanted to murder their fathers, in accordance with his own Oedipus complex, he also had a weird theory that women all women were sinister creatures whose vagina threatened to castrate any male who crossed its threshold. He divined that the secret ambition of every female was to acquire the envied penis by severing it. His mind, Crews tells us, conjoined illogic and bizarre ideas with misogyny, prurience and cruelty. What Freud did have was a gift for gripping writing, using lots of literary references to heighten his prose. His written accounts of his so-called solved cases became popular because they were a satisfying mixture of detective stories (Freud saw himself as the Sherlock Holmes of the unconscious) and soft porn. Tell me one thing, he would write, recalling a case. What part of his body was it that you felt that night? Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews (Profile 30) His disciples were titillated, and they lapped up these accounts of the thrilling tension between the wise analyst and his resistant patient. Those cases, Crews writes, belong not to the genre of clinical report, but of detective fiction. A genius at self-promotion, who bribed his way to a professorship at Vienna University, Freud parasitically latched on to the theories of his peers and then later condemned those whose theories had given him a leg-up. In The Interpretation Of Dreams, he reinvented himself as a uniquely sagacious authority, finding examples from literature and history to prove that all human behaviour had always been Freudian. Pity Freuds wife. Martha Bernays was a sweet, playful, ardent, young woman whose personality Freud slowly extinguished. In Die Brautbriefe the whinging, self-obsessed letters he wrote to Martha during their four year-long engagement when he was frantically seeking success there are frequent signs of what we would now call coercive control. He cut her off from her own family and friends and made her renounce her Orthodox Jewish faith. If I have become unbearable recently, he wrote to her threateningly, just ask yourself what made me so. After giving birth to six children, Martha lost her figure and Sigmund saw her as a used-up woman who belonged in the nursery. Their sex life ceased, and Freud had a clandestine affair with her sister, Minna, who came to live with them when she was widowed. How unfair it seems that many of the great physicians who worked alongside Freud are now forgotten, while Freud is a household name. This devastating book might kickstart the long-awaited process of his downfall from grace. Two recent opinion polls on the Gujarat election gave the BJP, on average, around 120 seats in the 182-seat assembly. That's five more than the party won in the 2012 assembly election. The Congress was projected to win around 55 seats, six fewer than in 2012. A closer look reveals interesting nuggets. A watchmaker, Navsari, Gujarat: BJP should win 120 seats of the 182-seat assembly One of the opinion polls concluded that if Patidar leader Hardik Patel enters into a seat arrangement with the Congress, the BJP would lose up to seven seats, bringing its tally down to around the level of the last assembly election. But with the fiery Patidar leader threatening to cut into Congress votes if it does not extend reservations to all OBCs and not just EBCs (as the Congress has declared), the BJP could gain from vote cannibalisation. Chances The Congress knows it is unlikely to win Gujarat in 2017 but seeks to chip away at the BJP's majority. With opinion polls showing a BJP sweep in Himachal Pradesh, the Congress is girding itself for bad news on December 18 when counting takes place. Keeping the BJP to below 110 seats in Gujarat would be a balm. It will also be a good omen for Rahul Gandhi's incipient elevation as president of the party. What are the Congress' chances of restricting the BJP to below 110 seats? Slim. The Congress lays great store by its 'rainbow coalition' of Dalits, Patidars, OBCs and Muslims (DPOM). The Congress knows it is unlikely to win Gujarat in 2017 but seeks to chip away at the BJP's majority (file pic) Together these groups comprise over 60 per cent of the Gujarat electorate. But there are already fissures among the Patidars. Several mid-level Patel leaders have joined the BJP. Aplesh Thakor's OBCs (who make up 40 per cent of Gujarat's population) could pose a bigger problem for the BJP though Prime Minister Narendra Modi's own OBC status will be deployed during the campaigning to stem the flow of OBC votes to the Congress. Dalits, while only 7 per cent of Gujarat's electorate, could also cause problems for the BJP. There have been frequent atrocities against Dalits in the state in recent months. Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani may turn of to be a wild card in the elections. The BJP has to deal with yet another factor: rising anger among the trading community over GST. Traders are the BJP's bread-and-butter voters and the Congress hopes to wean enough of them away over the flawed implementation of GST. The sops offered by the BJP including the self-serving decision to reduce tax on khakra, a Gujarati snack staple will not assuage the anger. A cow shares the street with cyclists and pedestrians in Ahmedabad As one Gujarati computer peripherals trader told me: 'We hate GST, especially the cumbersome online filing and complicated tax slabs on different components in a single product like a computer printer.' So will he vote for the Congress in December? A look of resignation crosses his face. 'No, despite all this I will still vote for Narendrabhai.' Setback That encapsulates the mood of voters across Gujarat. They dislike GST, were hit by demonetisation and suffered during the floods. Farmers are in distress, Dalits angry and Patidars resentful. But when it comes to the crunch, they will vote for Gujarati pride which means Modi. On a visit to Surat and Vadodara, this sentiment was starkly evident: 'It's the first assembly election since Narendrabhai became Prime Minister and we will stand by him,' was the common refrain. Warning bells though are sounding across the state. Farmer distress is real; so is Dalit alienation. Rahul Gandhi's aggressive swing through the state has rattled the BJP enough to target him continuously In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP rode a Modi wave and swept all 26 parliamentary seats in the state with 59.10 per cent vote share. That was a sharp rise over the 47.90 per cent vote share it received in the 2012 assembly poll. The Congress won 38.90 per cent vote share. It has been unable to reduce the 8-10 per cent vote share gap that the BJP has enjoyed since 1995. It is unlikely to do so in 2017, though the BJP is taking no chances. Modi will campaign extensively across the state. So will party leader Amit Shah and for the first time a phalanx of senior non-Gujarati ministers like Sushma Swaraj. Hairdressing salon, Porbandar, Gujarat, India Mistakes Rahul Gandhi's aggressive swing through the state has rattled the BJP enough to target him continuously. That could be a tactical mistake. The more the BJP targets Rahul individually, the more he gains in stature. With a sassy new IT and social media head, Rahul's Gabbar Singh Tax (GST) barb and other bon mots are gaining traction. Alas for the Congress, the average Gujarati remains unmoved by social media one-liners. Gujaratis are a pragmatic people. They want development. The shower of new projects, including the Narmada dam's raised height, power plants and the ferry service linking Saurashtra to South Gujarat are what matter to them. Women are the other invisible ace up the BJP's sleeve. When he was CM, Modi assiduously wooed women voters with a slew of women-oriented schemes. One of the most popular is the law that exempts women from property registration charges if the property is in their name. Other schemes for girl students have over the years built up a formidable women's constituency for the BJP, a factor largely overlooked by most observers of state politics. This December, while the Congress focuses on disenchanted Dalits, Patidars, OBCs and Muslims, the women of Gujarat could be the Y factor that tips the election decisively in the BJP's favour. If the Election Commission has its way before the Supreme Court, convicted politicians like RJD supremo Lalu Yadav and VK Sasikala could face a life ban from electoral politics. Supporting a PIL filed by a Supreme Court advocate and Delhi BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya seeking life-time ban on convicted politicians, the EC said such a ban was necessary for de-criminalisation of politics. Significantly, the Centre has also in principle supported the idea saying it could help in cleaning up politics. Former Bihar chief minister and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav arrives to appear at a special CBI Court in connection with the multi-crore fodder scam case The existing rule under Representation of Peoples Act only disqualifies politicians sentenced to a jail term of two years or more from contesting elections for six years from the date of release from prison. While Lalu was sentenced to five years in prison in October 3, 2013 in a case related to fodder scam, Sasikala was awarded a four-year jail term by the Supreme Court on February 14, 2017 in a disproportionate assets case. Many other politicians of various parties also undergoing trial in cases like A Raja and Kanimozhi of the DMK (2G scam) and Congress leader Suresh Kalmadi (CWG scam). Their fate could also get sealed if they are convicted and the apex court endorses the stand of the EC. Meanwhile, the SC directed the Centre to create special courts to expedite trials of politicians. The bench said the trials against MPs and MLAs must be mandatorily concluded within a year and 'this is in the interest of the nation'. The SC told the government to finalise a plan and inform the court by December 13. SC wants to ensure that the corrupt politicians should not succeed in prolonging the trial by using their offices. Sasikala was awarded a four-year jail term by the Supreme Court on February 14, 2017 in a disproportionate assets case The bench also directed the Centre to place before it details regarding 1,581 cases involving MPs and MLAs, as declared by politicians at the time of filing their nominations during the 2014 general elections. The apex court asked the government to appraise it as to how many of these 1,581 cases have been disposed of within one year and how many have ended either in conviction or acquittal of the accused. Upadhyaya has contended that letting politicians fight polls again was violative of the right to equality under the Constitution. He pointed out in the executive and judiciary, when a person is convicted for any criminal offence, he is suspended automatically and debarred from his services for life. 'However, this rule is applied differently in case of convicted person in a legislature. Even after conviction and undergoing sentence, a convicted person can form his own political party and is eligible to become the office bearer of any political party. In addition, a convicted person is eligible to contest the election and eligible to become a Member of Legislature and even minister after expiry of six year period from the date of conviction,' stated the PIL. A sting operation by India Today TV that exposed the Popular Front of Indias alleged conversion-through-marriage tactics, and plans to turn the country into an Islamic state, has sent ripples through Kerala. The chief ministers office, which was the first to step in, called for a detailed copy of the findings. Following this, state police chief Loknath Behera directed top officials to probe the allegations. The department has confirmed that six people who are currently in ISIS camps are alleged to have a connection back to to the PFI. Under the scanner: Abdul Khayyoom (left) and Safwan (right) Police say that 22 people who went missing from Kerala have joined ISIS On Tuesday, India Today TV aired the explosive sting report which laid bare a 'nexus' between Islamic extremist groups and Popular Front of India. Ahmed Shareef, a senior PFI leader and associate editor of group mouthpiece Gulf Thejas was the first to be caught on camera. He claimed before undercover reporters that a key aim of PFI was to create an Islamic state in India and later spread it to the rest of the world. He also revealed the method of using of illegal fund transactions from the Gulf to Kerala. Abdul Manaf (left) and Shabeer (right) Shareef said that Sathya Sarani in Malappuram, which is considered an Islamic education institution, received a lot of money through hawala. AS Zainaba, president of the AFIs womens wing, said on hidden camera Sathya Sarani is a conversion factory masquerading as an educational organisation. Hours after the India Today TV report, Kerala police released the names and photographs of half a dozen youngsters from the state who are currently with ISIS in Syria. The six, including a woman, have been identified as Abdul Ghayoom, Abdul Manaf, Shabeer, Safwan, Suhail and his wife Rizwana, all hailing from Kannur district. All the men were active PFI workers in Kannur. The police gathered the evidence from an ISIS module busted in Kannur last week. The team included three people who were deported from Turkey after they were caught trying to sneak into Syria. Two others were Islamic State handlers in Kerala. Hamsa from Thalasserry is believed to be the kingpin of ISIS recruitment from the state. He had been on the radar of the state police for quite some time. Police also say that Hamsa has been in touch with some PFI leaders in the state. Further investigation about this module led to the discovery that many people who went missing from Kerala and are believed to have joined ISIS have received help from PFI. Some of them travelled abroad with fake passports. The state police have been tracking the movement of suspected ISIS sympathisers for over a year. Though the state government is yet to give an official response on the sting, sources say chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has taken up the issue seriously. According to the police sources, 22 people who went missing from Kerala have joined ISIS so far. Five of them have been confirmed dead by their families and cops. Though the NIA has taken up the investigation in these cases, state police have been carrying out a parallel probe and are keeping a close eye on over 50 people who are suspected ISIS sympathisers. The controversy around Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati movie shows no sign of abating with pressure mounting on the director's team from ambitious politicians and noisy right-wing groups. Gujarat BJP spokesperson I K Jadeja announced that the party has written to the Election Commission (EC) stating that the film should not be released as it distorts history. The party has also sent a letter to the censor board urging the CBFC to re-examine the film. Jadeja, who informed the party had received several representations from the Kshatriya community about distortion of historical facts in the film, said: 'EC should arrange for pre-release screening of the movie for select Kshatriya representatives to provide them a fair opportunity to prevent unnecessary tension ahead of Gujarat polls,' adding that a representation has been made to the poll panel to not allow the release of the film before that. The film has been accused to trying to re-write history for entertainment Padmavati: The story of sacrifice will be out on December 1st The BJP leaders also claimed 'Padmavati and Khilji had never met in real life.' Maharashtra Tourism minister Jaykumar Rawal demanded a ban on the film as the movie could hurt the sentiments of the Rajput community and cause unrest in the state. The historic drama based on Rani Padmavati and Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji's ransack of Chittor is set for a December 1st release. Before and After: Deepika took to social media to tweet how it was 'absolutely heart breaking to see the recent attack on artist Karan (left) and his artwork' Padmini and her companions committed 'Jauhar' (self-immolation) to avoid being taken by the invading forces Hindu right-wing organisations are angry about an alleged romantic scene begin filmed between Padmavati and Allauddin Khilji Gujarat is going to polls on December 9 and 14. BJP's official stand on Padmavati comes just days after their leader Shankersingh Vaghela wanted to see the film before its official release. Vaghela, an influential Kshatriya leader and former chief minister of the state, had also warned that if it was released without the community's approval, there could be violence. This is not the first brush with controversy for Padmavati as the Karni Sena, a Rajput organisation, raised objections to an alleged romantic angle between Padmavati and Khilji that they suspect could be shown in the movie. Deepika Padukone was upset by the attack on artist Karan and his artwork However, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and the cast of the film have maintained throughout that the film does not portray any such relationship between the two lead characters. Deepika Padukone who plays queen Padmavati spoke with the media at the 3D trailer launch of the film in Mumbai recently and said, 'Nothing, and no one can stop this film,' hinting that the film will be released as scheduled. Bhansali has not as yet commented on the latest developments in what one can call a cautious move considering he was roughed up on the sets of Padmavati in Rajasthan by members of the Karni Sena. At 3 hours and 13 minutes Padmavati is Bhansali's longest film till date. Meanwhile, the Congress said the ruling party was doing politics and trying to turn the film into a poll issue. 'Now that the elections are round the corner, you are writing to the EC asking it not to allow release of the movie. This is an attempt by the BJP to make it a poll issue,' Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said. Apple shares roared in after-hours trading last night after bosses predicted the new iPhone would trigger a 67bn sales bonanza. The worlds most valuable company soared 3.4 per cent on the back of fourth-quarter results pushing its market capitalisation beyond the $900bn mark (689bn). In figures that smashed Wall Street expectations, Apple revealed sales of 40.3bn for the three months to September 30. This was 12 per cent up on the same period last year. On the up: The worlds most valuable company soared 3.4 per cent on the back of fourth-quarter results It sold 46.7m iPhones more than 500,000 a day and also made more money per phone than previously. And business in China looked to have finally turned around, with sales up 12 per cent after six quarters of decline. Most significantly, it said the new iPhone X was set to propel it to record quarterly earnings. From October to January, Apple said it expected to rake in between 64.3bn and 66.7bn overall. Tim Cook, the tech giants chief executive, said: Were happy to report a very strong finish to a great fiscal 2017, with record fourth-quarter revenue, year-over-year growth for all our product categories, and our best quarter ever for services. With fantastic new products joining our line-up, were looking forward to a great holiday season, and with the launch of iPhone X getting under way right now, we couldnt be more excited as we begin to deliver our vision for the future. Apples forward guidance was being watched more closely than ever because of the unusual release of its latest handsets. Products usually debut in September and are released soon after, giving analysts a chance to gauge sales from the first weeks. This time, Apple announced the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X together, but only the iPhone 8 was available within weeks. The X, set to cost 999, is due for release today. Analysts predicted many gadget-lovers would hold out for the iPhone X because of its superior features, with mobile operators in the US and Canada reporting slow uptake of the iPhone 8. Whereas the former includes only incremental improvements, such as a faster chip, wireless charging and more storage, the latter has upgrades such as an improved screen and camera, and facial recognition. Demand is likely to outstrip supply, with Apple saying some deliveries would take five or six weeks. It has also launched other new products, including a new Apple Watch which can be used to make phone calls, a thinner and lighter MacBook and the Apple TV 4K, which it hopes can compete with Googles Chromecast and Amazons Fire TV. It came as the US firm faced a fresh salvo in its long-running series of legal disputes with chipmaker Qualcomm. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Qualcomm alleged Apple used its commercial leverage to demand unprecedented access to the chipmakers confidential software, including source code. Apple started using Intels broadband modem chips in the iPhone 7. It was reported this week that Apple could drop Qualcomms chips from its iPhones and iPads next year. The Astros player who generated racial controversy with a rude gesture at Yu Darvish has tipped his batting helmet to the Japanese pitcher. Yuli Gurriel made the gesture of conciliation in his first at bat in Game 7 of the World Series in Los Angeles on Wednesday, but it did not stop Dodgers fans from loudly booing him. Gurriel flied out to right in a 13-pitch at-bat to end the first inning, with Houston leading 2-0. The Astros went on to win the decisive game of the series 5-1. Gurriel landed in hot water in Game 3, when Darvish last started on the mound, after he appeared to make the 'slant eyes' gesture at the Osaka native from the Astros dugout. The Cuban first baseman later apologized, which Darvish accepted in good faith. Yuli Gurriel tips his helmet towards Yu Darvish before his at-bat. pic.twitter.com/IotpfddcrY Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee) November 2, 2017 Houston Astros' first baseman Yuli Gurriel tips his hat as he gestures to Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Yu Darvish during the first inning of World Series Game 7 on Wednesday Yuli Gurriel made the gesture of conciliation in his first at bat in Game 7 of the World Series in Los Angeles, but it did not stop Dodgers fans from loudly booing him Darvish, a native of Osaka, Japan, said he was 'not that mad' and forgave Cuban native Gurriel for making the 'slant eyes' gesture from the dugout in Game 3 Gurriel was hit with a five-game suspension in the incident, to be served next season. Dodgers fans, irate over the race row, heaped abuse on Gurriel in both Game 6 and 7, after the series swung back to Los Angeles. The Cuban-born Gurriel pulled on the corners of his eyes after homering off Darvish during Houston's 5-3 win Friday night In Game 6, Dodgers lefthander Rich Hill purposely stepped off the pitcher's rubber while the fans were booing Gurriel at home plate, allowing the negative crescendo to last longer. Hill described it as his 'silent gesture' to condemn Gurriel's racist gesture toward Darvish after homering off the hurler last Friday. 'This is a very close group, and for him to acknowledge that moment on behalf of Yu, I'm sure that Yu appreciated that,' Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said before Game 7. 'The fans obviously got to voice their displeasure.' After getting an earful from the crowd, Gurriel went one for four in the Astros' 3-1 loss in Game 6 on Tuesday. 'That was as loud and as long a boo as I've heard in my time in sports,' Houston manager A.J. Hinch said Wednesday. Gurriel flied out to right in a 13-pitch at-bat to end the first inning, with Houston leading 2-0. The Astros went on to win the decisive game of the series 5-1 'I don't think the Dodger fans will let him get past it until, maybe never. I think people have long memories in situations like this.' On Wednesday, Darvish was pitching in front of his home fans in his first start since Gurriel pulled on the corners of his eyes and used a derogatory Spanish term in reference to Darvish. Darvish said Tuesday that he didn't think it was necessary to meet with Gurriel, who contacted the Dodgers and offered to meet with the pitcher in person and apologize. 'I'm not that mad,' said Darvish, saying a personal apology wasn't necessary. Gurriel will lose $322,581 of his $12 million salary next year, which the Astros will donate to charitable causes. He also will be required to undergo sensitivity training during the offseason. Two corpses were left behind at a New York airport instead of being flown to Lahore, Pakistan's national airline said, apologizing Wednesday for the latest embarrassing mishap to hit the troubled carrier. The oversight occurred on Saturday at New York's JFK airport as the airline prepared for its final flight from the US city to Lahore via Manchester, with the route since suspended due to financial losses. Following the mix-up, the corpse of Pakistani man Nasir Ali was delivered to Lahore Wednesday on a Etihad Airways flight, while the family of another man Nauman Badar has now decided to bury him in Maryland instead. PIA has been plagued by myriad controversies in recent years. Two corpses were left behind at JFK instead of being flown to Lahore Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Chairman Musharraf Rasool Cyan has ordered an inquiry into the oversight, a company spokesman told AFP. PIA 'regrets the inconvenience caused due to negligence... and expresses its sympathies with the family members of the deceased persons,' a spokesman for the airline said in a statement. PIA was once considered a global leader in commercial aviation until the 1970s but has since been plagued by myriad controversies in recent years and saddled by billions of dollars of debt with a potential government bailout looming. Domestic flights are often delayed for VIPs while flight employees have been caught smuggling goods ranging from iPhones to narcotics. Last year two airline employees were killed at Karachi airport during a nine-day strike spurred by plans to privatize the national carrier. In 2013 one of its pilots was jailed for nine months in Britain for being drunk before he was due to fly from Leeds to Islamabad with 156 people on board. On Wednesday afternoon, President Trump gave an everything-is-awesome interview to the New York Times. 'I'm not under investigation, you know,' the president said at one point to White House reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker. 'Im actually not angry at anybody,' he said at another. And at another, he told the reporters, 'I'm really enjoying it,' about how, nine months in, he's taken to the job, expressing excitement about his end-of-the-week trip to Asia. EVERYTHING IS AWESOME: President Trump called up the New York Times on Wednesday telling reporters that he's not under investigation by the special counsel and everything is going great President Trump saw his former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort (left) indicted on Monday, along with Manafort's deputy Rick Gates (right). He reportedly watched the action on television from his White House residence Also swept up by the Mueller probe was George Papadopoulos, who was an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign Trump's assurances run counter to the narratives that have come from unnamed sources close to the White House in recent days. A Republican close to the White House told CNN that Trump was 'seething' as he watched his former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort get indicted on Monday. Manafort's deputy Rick Gates and an unpaid foreign policy adviser, George Papadopolous, were swept up by the Russia probe too. The Washington Post reported that Trump spent the morning in the residence watching the news pour in on his TV. His tardiness to the Oval had left aides worried, the Post said. Not the case, Trump said today. 'Im in the office early and leave late; its very smooth,' he said. He called attention to some poll numbers he said were delivered to him by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel. 'I just got fantastic poll numbers,' he told the journalistic duo, though didn't reveal any of the numbers. Earlier this week, Trump had hit new lows in both the NBC News/Wall Street Journal and Gallup surveys. Around the same time Trump gave the New York Times interview, a Vanity Fair story came out suggesting that the president has been recently annoyed with the advice given to him by son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump reportedly told ex-White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon that he blames Kushner for suggesting her fire former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and FBI Director James Comey, the latter of which led directly to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The president also didn't disagree when longtime adviser Roger Stone also pointed a finger at Kushner. Another former Trump aide, Sam Nunberg, who has worked under Stone, said the same thing, but on the record. 'Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,' Nunberg told Vanity Fair. 'I'm only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.' To the Times, Trump tried acting like he was unperturbed by the Russia probe. 'And even if you look at that, there's not even a mention of Trump in there,' he said of the Manafort indictment. 'It has nothing to do with us,' Trump said, protesting the idea that he, personally, was being investigated. However, Chief of Staff John Kelly said Monday during an interview with Fox News Channel's Laura Ingraham on Monday that 'it is very distracting to the president, as it would be to any citizen, to be investigated for something.' 'While at the same time trying to carry the weight of being what president of the United States means on his shoulders,' Kelly added. Kelly was off-message compared to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a longtime Trump ally, who appeared on the Sunday shows a day before the indictments. 'I think the good news from the president's perspective is he's not under investigation,' Christie told CNN's Jake Tapper. In return, the newsman asked how Christie could be so sure that Trump isn't one of the individuals being pursued in Mueller's Russia probe. 'The last news that we've received, Jake, publicly, is that the president was told that he is not under investigation,' Christie said. It's been derided by the American president and accused of influencing elections. But 'fake news' is today valid news after being named Collins dictionary's Word of the Year 2017. Usage of the term, which is defined as 'false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting', has risen by 365 per cent since 2016 and will be added to the next print edition of Collins Dictionary. 'Fake news' is today valid news after being named Collins dictionary's Word of the Year 2017 While 'fake news' will be added to the print edition, other words that will be added to the Collins Dictionary website include 'gender-fluid', 'cuffing season' and 'Insta'. In his first 11 months as leader of the free world, Donald Trump has regularly claimed that news stories in the media are 'fake news' He even suggested he invented the word 'fake' last month during an interview. He told Christian channel Trinity Broadcasting: 'I think one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with is 'fake.' 'I guess other people have used it, perhaps, over the years, but I've never noticed it.' Helen Newstead, Collins' head of language content, said: 'Much of this year's list is definitely politically charged, but with a new president in the US and a snap election in the UK it is perhaps no surprise that politics continues to electrify the language. 'Fake news', either as a statement of fact or as an accusation, has been inescapable this year, contributing to the undermining of society's trust in news reporting', she added. Lexicographers, the people who compile dictionaries, also included 'gender- fluid' on their list of words of the year. The term 'Insta', to describe things relating to the photo-sharing app Instagram, was also among the popular words added to the Collins Dictionary website The phrase was defined as 'not identifying exclusively with one gender rather than another' and has been frequently referred to over recent months. Its increasing popularity has been reflected by stores such as John Lewis and Mothercare who have created clothing ranges which are not labelled as specifically for 'girls' or 'boys'. 'Echo chamber', which refers to sharing opinions in places like social media where only people with similar views will see them, also made it onto the list. Among the most regularly used new words was 'cuffing season', which is the habit of single people seeking a partner for the winter months but not necessarily for a longer period. 'Gig economy', which describes an economy built around temporary or freelance workers and 'Insta', to describe things relating to the photo-sharing app Instagram, were also popular words this year. Last year also saw a political phrase named word of the year - 'Brexit' was chosen by Collins following the 2016 EU referendum. All of the new words and meanings will be added to the Collins Dictionary website and will be considered for inclusion in future print editions. A Perth woman is considered to be one of the world's 100 most powerful women by influential American business magazine Forbes. However, this baby boomer isn't a politician, so that counts out Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop, who also lives in Perth, and Australia's first female PM Julia Gillard. And being 63, it certainly isn't 2004 Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, who is also a successful property mogul in her own right. Like Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop, this woman on the Forbes power list hails from Perth And like Australia's first female prime minister Julia Gillard, this woman is also a baby boomer Being 63, the Australian woman on the list of powerful women isn't Jennifer Hawkins, 33 So can you guess the Perth woman on the Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women? If you guessed media-shy billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, you're certainly on the money. Australia's richest woman, who has an estimated net worth of $21.4 billion, or $US16.5 billion, came in at number 45 on the prestigious Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women. The iron ore queen was well ahead of defeated U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who came in at 65, and pop stars Taylor Swift (number 85) and Beyonce (number 50). Forbes praised Ms Rinehart's business acumen, since she inherited her late father Lang Hancock's mining empire in 1992. Billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart is considered the world's 45th most powerful woman The Perth-based businesswoman is on the list along with several female world leaders The media-shy iron ore queen was regarded as more influential than even Hillary Clinton 'The daughter of high profile iron-ore explorer Lang Hancock, Rinehart took her late father's bankrupted estate and rebuilt it into something much larger,' the judges said. Forbes mentioned her Hope Downs iron ore mine in Western Australia's remote Pilbara region, which she owns with Rio Tinto, and her status as Australia's third-largest cattle producer. However, Ms Rinehart was beaten by New Zealand's new 37-year-old Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who made it at number 38. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 37, was 38th on the list, ahead of Gina Rinehart However, the Forbes graphic oddly forget to include the nation of the New Zealand PM Oddly, she was the only entry to be missing a national listing, despite being a world leader. World leaders topped the list, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel holding the top spot, just ahead of British Prime Minister Theresa May. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was number 15, one place ahead of her Chilean counterpart Michelle Bachelet. Donald Trump's daughter and presidential adviser Ivanka Trump, at 19, and billionaire talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, who held the 21st spot, were both ahead of the Queen, who made the list at 26. They also beat a range of world leaders including Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi (33), Polish Prime Minister Beata Maria Szydlowas (31), Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed (30), Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, (39), her Estonian counterpart Kersti Kaljulaid, (78), and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, (46). German Chancellor Angela Merkel held the top spot on the Forbes list of powerful women Billionaire talk show queen Oprah Winfrey took the 21st spot in the Forbes list of top women Defeated U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was 65, well behind Australia's only entry Kate Maltby believes that Westminster has become a far more unpleasant place Kate Maltby believes that, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, Westminster has become a far more unpleasant place. She is not wrong there, only she fails to realise that she is part of the poison, and not the fearless and glorious solution to the problem, as she so fondly imagines. For the journalist, political activist and self-styled outspoken feminist is the latest young woman to step forward and accuse a senior politician of making sexual advances towards her. A man who is, incidentally, a close family friend of hers, and who tried to help the ambitious Maltby with her nascent career as a political writer. In an article published in The Times, Miss Maltby claims that in 2015, current Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green almost put his hand on her leg. Almost! I felt a fleeting hand against my knee so brief it was almost deniable, writes Miss Maltby, in rampant pearl-clutching mode. Damian, she wails in retrospect, you probably have no idea of how awkward, embarrassed and professionally compromised you made me feel. She goes on to describe how Green passed on some Westminster gossip and explained that his wife was very understanding. From this, she deduced he was attempting to misuse his position and authority for sexual purposes. Well, maybe he was. And maybe he wasnt. Yet if this was the case, Green was remarkably nonchalant about his desire. Maltby did not hear from him for over a year. He was, it seems, spurred into action by seeing a newspaper photograph of her in a corset to illustrate a scholarly article on Victorian underwear. When Green sent a cheery text suggesting a drink her assumptions about his actions were clear. Miss Maltby claims that in 2015, current Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green almost put his hand on her leg Clearly driven mad with lust by the sight of the 31-year-old in a lace-up bodice and lumpy leggings, Green had only one thing on his mind. The brute! So she actively ignored him until this June, when he was suddenly promoted to Deputy PM in Theresa Mays new government. The fact that Green was suddenly hugely important did not escape the single-minded Miss Maltby, who put the trauma of what had happened behind her and began texting him again. I look forward to seeing what you achieve in government, she chirped, which seems to make a mockery of her previous angst. She explains away her hypocrisy by writing that its crucial to understand that most of us have to maintain relationships with such men in order to thrive professionally. Is that so? And all this, more or less, is the absolute crux of Maltbys allegations against the 61-year-old married father of two. Yet in the febrile atmosphere now engulfing Westminster, this is all it takes to potentially bring down a career. This very public humiliation has left Green fighting for his political life, but when one analyses Maltbys disingenuous article, exactly what is it that Damian Green stands accused of? Nothing that would hold water in court. Maltbys timid allegations are little barbs couched in screeds of the velvety self-justification of someone who appears to be just as guilty of assiduously using Green for her own ends. She casts herself as the victim, bravely asking bold new questions about the abuse of power for sexual gratification, but all she provides to back up her case are nudges and winks. In her article, she writes that on the Night of the Knee, Green, a university contemporary of her mother, offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested. The fact that Green was suddenly hugely important did not escape the single-minded Miss Maltby, who put the trauma of what had happened behind her and began texting him again Really? Do go on. Yet she doesnt tell us what he said or did that was so desperately, explicitly suggestive and in the circumstances, dont you think she should? Neither does she provide any evidence that he pestered or pursued her over the years, because he so clearly did not. Yet the way she enthusiastically smears the minister without really making the case against him is contemptible. She even asks herself at one point, did I imagine this? Well, Kate did you? In describing their past relationship, she calls Green avuncular. Certainly, he seems to have been nothing but kind and helpful over the years; agreeing to be interviewed for her school magazine, helping with her career, giving her advice when called upon. She felt angry that his so-called assault ruined their developing meaningful political relationship which seems to be a rather deluded estimation of her own value to a government minister. Perhaps Green is not entirely innocent. Perhaps he did have a clumsy, misplaced interest in this young woman, but does he deserve such a fate, splashed across the front page of a newspaper, blared on television bulletins? Maltby serves up death by innuendo, the repeated stiletto insinuations of an accuser who is protected by the kryptonite shield of feminism. In this brave new world, every man is a predator, every woman is a victim and every clumsy pass or wandering hand is conflated with serious sexual assault and even rape. In her article, she writes that on the Night of the Knee, Green, a university contemporary of her mother, offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested Is it really that simple? Maltby is an intelligent young woman who is not afraid to use all her charms to get herself noticed. She once wrote that she loved wrap dresses because they were the right armour to take on the world, and also that she uses her good curves to distract from the bad ones. No sin in that, but it suggests the kind of sophisticated woman who has an acute understanding of sexual politics and appearances. Two years ago, she went to Jordan to interview oppressed Syrian women who live in fear in refugee camps there; women she reported who are called sluts, forced to marry and scared to go to the loo for fear of being raped. One might have hoped meeting these survivors of major trauma could have given her some perspective and context on real female suffering. Yet for young women like Maltby, it appears the inviolability and sanctity of self overrides everything, even common sense. Was it that same self-entitlement that enabled her to text the man she claims once molested her, embarrassed her, made her feel awful about herself? How else to explain all this? All SENSIBLE people feel strongly that sex abusers should be called to account, in Westminster or elsewhere. Yet I dont believe that the current ferment is helping matters. Yes, the alleged rape of a young activist at a Labour event she said her attacker was a senior party official is deeply disturbing. But elsewhere, many young women, just like Maltby, are making a big fuss about nothing very much. The drive to shame men at all costs makes them sound a little too excited, more pleased with the exhilarating sound of their own daring me, too contribution to this furore than serious consideration of the issues at stake. It conflates real abuse with gropers, real victims with modish, self- seeking opportunists, it condemns clammy opportunism and demi-creeps with the kind of fervour that should be reserved for rapists and serial sex offenders. Most revolutionary statement of the week came from Tory backbencher Richard Benyon: It is time for this House to reflect the mood of the vast majority of people in society. Mr Benyon probably knows, in his heart, that this demand will never be met. The System would never stand for it. He was proposing that soldiers, such as those who served in Northern Ireland decades ago, should not be chased in the courts for long-distant allegations. Mr Benyon (Con, Newbury) himself served in Ulster in the early 1980s as an officer with the Green Jackets but he was not speaking out of self-interest. Former soldier Richard Benyon MP, pictured has proposed a new law to put a time limit on investigations into historical cases involving soldiers who killed people in Northern Ireland Colonel Bob Stewart MP, was in the House of Commons to hear Mr Benyon's proposal Mr Benyon raised the case of former warrant officer Dennis Hutchings, now 76, who shot dead someone while on patrol in 1974 and told a year later that he would face no action, however, he is now facing a new criminal investigation described by Mr Benyon as 'retributive politics' He described how former warrant officer Dennis Hutchings, now 76, is facing charges including attempted murder 43 years ago. Mr Benyon wanted a time limit placed on such cases. Mr Hutchings was, said Mr Benyon, an exemplary soldier who in 1974 was leading a patrol in Northern Ireland at a time of intense terrorist activity. The patrol fired on someone who died. In 1975 Mr Hutchings was told no action would be taken against him, a decision confirmed years later by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Officialdom has now changed its mind and Mr Hutchings, who is frail, is up before the beak. No new evidence is being laid before the courts, Mr Benyon told the Commons yesterday lunchtime. In fact there is less evidence, as two of the three witnesses are dead and the firearms, casings and original file have been lost. Many fear we are seeing a form of retributive politics. Extreme nationalists-leaning individuals in the Northern Ireland justice system have decided to reignite such investigations. Consider that accusation, ladies and gentlemen in the court of public opinion. Here was a senior backbencher and former minister, one of the sanest and most civilised men at Westminster saying, in all seriousness, that justice in part of our country has been politicised. This surely demands wider attention. It is, dare one suggest, more electrifying a matter than any of this stuff about oglings and gropings in or around the Palace of Westminster. Mr Benyon was speaking to the House just after an uneventful PMQs. For those who like to know about such things, Theresa May held her own without much difficulty. But now the House was emptier. Around Mr Benyon sat a few like-minded Tory MPs among them the likes of Colonel Bob Stewart, defence select committee chairman Julian Lewis and Sir Nicholas Soames. Mr Benyons Ten Minute Rule Bill (it is a parliamentary device which almost never becomes law) was co-signed by Labours Kevan Jones and Madeleine Moon and by the DUPs Emma Little Pengelly and Jim Shannon, along with several Tories. Of the 3,600 deaths in the Troubles, said Mr Benyon, 90 per cent were at the hands of terrorists. They went out with the express intention of killing and maiming whereas the security forces went out with the express intention of saving lives. Yet septuagenarian ex-soldiers are pursued while former terrorists are given an effective pardon with on-the-run letters. This was a grotesque charade, said Mr Benyon. Can we imagine any other country in the world doing this to its veterans? Do we really want to see people who should be appreciated even revered for what they did, being taken from their homes, questioned and prosecuted for action they took on our behalf many decades ago in one of the most impossible campaigns of modern times? And it was then that he said it was time for this House to reflect the mood of the vast majority of people in society. Parliamentary democracy is meant, within reason, to do just that. But we have reached a point where it thwarts the common will (need we mention Brexit?). The obstruction in the case of the unfortunate Dennis Hutchings? It is, you may not be surprised to hear, the Human Rights Act, plaything of a technocratic, legalistic elite that has lost sight of Parliaments very purpose. 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'. Sayfullo Saipov mowed down more than a dozen innocent people on a New York City bike path on Tuesday The 29-year-old terrorist who killed eight and injured 12 in lower Manhattan was a transient stranger who did not socialize with fellow worshippers at the Ohio mosque he attended for around two years. Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, worshipper Assam Haque said Sayfulloh Saipov simply said his prayers at the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, and did not engage in the community. He said: We have prayers five times a day, we have social activities, monthly dinners but we never saw him there. He did not raise red flags to us because he was in and out but if he was somebody involved in the community then we would have perhaps wondered, What is this? Haque pointed to the fact that Saipov, who mowed down people on a bike bath in New York City on Tuesday, was a truck driver as a contributing factor to his estrangement from the community. Public records show that Saipov came to the States in 2010 and registered two transport companies in Ohio in 2011 and 2013. Scroll down for video The President of The Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, Faheem Shaikh speaks at a press conference. He expressed his profound shock and sadness at the attack perpetrated by Saipov on Tuesday afternoon Board member of The Islamic Society of Akron and Kent, Ihsan Ul Haque (right) speaks at a press conference. He said: I can place him [Saipov]. But thats all. I dont remember him as an outstanding person who ever came and asked questions Sayfulloh Saipov was a worshipper at the Islamic Society of Akron and Kent (pictured) for about two years The first was in the Cincinnati area where he lived with friends of his father as he found his footing in America. The second was in Cuyahoga Falls, near Cleveland. A marriage certificate obtained by DailyMail.com shows that on 12 April 2013 Sayfulloh married his wife, Nozima Odilova, then 19, at the Cuyahoga Falls apartment complex in which he was then living. The complex is just three minutes drive from the Islamic Society of Akron and Kents mosque. Saipov lists his profession as truck driver and both he and his bride gave their hometown as Tashkant, Uzbekistan. According to Haque: We have a few Uzbeks here but he was not really close to anybody. 'He would come and leave and not really be very sociable. Haque believed he had once seen Saipov with a child but never with his wife. He was, Mr Haque said, more of a transient stranger than a firm part of the community. Saipov (seen being taken into custody on Tuesday) immigrated to the U.S. from his native Uzbekistan in March 2010 TERRORIST'S ACTIVITIES SINCE MOVING TO THE U.S. March 2010: Immigrates to the U.S. from Uzbekistan. Stays with the Abdusamatov family in a Cincinnati suburb for his first two weeks. April 2011: Gets a traffic violation in Hartford County, Maryland and lists an address in Fort Myers, Florida May 2011: Starts Sayf Motors Inc., registering the business to the Abdumastov's home address April 12, 2013: Marries Nozima Odilova in Ohio August 2012: Gets a ticket in Pennsylvania and lists a Paterson, New Jersey address Sometime in 2012: Meets friend Kobiljon Matkarov in Florida, is allegedly living there at the time. Matkarov says Saipov lived in Fort Myers until 2014 August 2013: Starts Bright Auto LLC in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio March 2015: Gets ticket in Pennsylvania and gives officers a Paterson, New Jersey address April 2016: Gets a traffic violation in Missouri and gives cops an address for Tampa, Florida Late 2016 - Early 2017: Saipov's mother visits him for about two months Around April 2017: Starts working for Uber in NJ September 2017: Saipov tells a friend that he's thinking of moving back to Uzbekistan Advertisement Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Islamic Society President Faheem Shaikh, expressed his profound shock and sadness at the attack perpetrated by Saipov on Tuesday afternoon. He condemned it in the strongest possible terms as an act of savage murder and mayhem. He added: 'The perpetrator, like any other criminal extremist deserves to be brought to justice. He confirmed that Saipov had been a worshipper at the center for a couple of years though admitted that he had no personal interactions with or knowledge of him. He explained: The mosque has an open door policy and we dont require that you register to pray here. Mosque Board Member Ihsan Ul Haque added his own horror and admitted that whenever news of such atrocities breaks he has one prayer, Oh God let it not be a Muslim. We are Americans, he said, We are freedom loving people like anybody else. Ul Haque said that he recognized Saipov but that his beard was more straggly than in todays images. I can place him, he said, But thats all. I dont remember him as an outstanding person who ever came and asked questions. He added: In small communities and subset communities there are people like this person who isolate themselves. They dont come out and preach their hatred in an open forum. But Haque admitted, It is conceivable that there may be other people he may have confided to. Did that information ever get to law enforcement or leadership? No it did not. Society leaders said that they were co-operating fully with the FBI and police in their investigations. Saipov drove nearly a mile down the Hudson River bike path before his rampage came to an end when he smashed into a school bus Saipov entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. He wore a gray shirt and was surrounded by five guards while in his wheelchair inside a New York federal courthouse after he was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles. His lawyers said Wednesday they were not seeking bail and a judge ordered him to be held in federal jail. Saipov did not enter a plea to terrorism charges and a judge set his next court date for November 15. A man has been arrested near Wollongong over the murder of a well-known greyhound racing bookie who was found dead in his Sydney garage 28 years ago. The body of Charles Skarratt, 72, was discovered in the garage of his home in the harbourside suburb of Woolwich on December 22, 1989. After returning home from the Dapto greyhound Racing Club he was bound, assaulted, stabbed, and robbed of a large amount of money. A man has been arrested near Wollongong over the murder of Charles Skarratt (pictured) Mr Skarratt was well known in the greyhound industry and found with tape across his head and legs. Following the re-examination and re-testing of exhibits by specialist forensic officers, a 58-year-old man was arrested at a Berkeley home on Thursday morning. He's been taken to Oak Flats Police Station, where he will be charged with murder, police say. In October 2016, detectives from the Homicide Squads Unsolved Homicide Team established Strike Force Hildebrand to re-investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr Skarratts death. More details are expected as police hold a press conference at NSW Police Headquarters at 11:30am. A third of young people will refuse to wear a poppy this year or have doubts about doing so, researchers said yesterday. While four out of five people will join in remembering the war dead, allegiance to the tradition appears to be lessening among the young. More than one in five of 18 to 24-year-olds say they will not wear a poppy and a further one in ten are unsure if they will. A third of young people will refuse to wear a poppy this year or have doubts about doing so. Pictured left to right: Angus Robertson, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May (front) and David Cameron, Tony Clair, Liam Fox and Sir John Major (rear) at last year's Remembrance Service A majority of the young people who reject the poppy say they think wearing one glorifies war, or they object to the current actions of British armed forces. Around half also believe they are rebelling against being forced to wear one. The reaction against the poppy among a generation of students and people in their first years at work appears a fresh reflection of the wave of youthful support for Jeremy Corbyn at the election and afterwards. It also mirrors the increasing influence of radicalism and the safe space movement in universities. Support for the white poppy promoted by pacifists is tiny, the poll suggested, with only one in ten of those who reject the red poppy prepared to wear the politically-charged alternative The survey, carried out by market research company Consumer Intelligence, found that, overall, four-fifths of the population will wear either a paper poppy or a metal badge. Only 11 per cent say they will not wear one, and a further 9 per cent are unsure. Support for the white poppy promoted by pacifists is tiny, the poll suggested, with only one in ten of those who reject the red poppy prepared to wear the politically-charged alternative. Nearly three-quarters of those who will not wear a poppy had reservations on the grounds that they believed people were being compelled to have one. There was evidence that groups and individuals hostile to the remembrance tradition are singling out some of those who wear poppies for abuse. One in 12 people who wear poppies said they had experienced hostility because of it, or had seen someone else targeted. Some parents around one in 20 would not want their children to wear a poppy in case they were picked on. Notably, the numbers who had seen or experienced abuse rose to more than one in five, 21 per cent, among the under-24s. The evidence of falling support for the poppy among the young provoked concern among senior Conservatives. Former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said: The poppy commemorates those who made sacrifices so that those who hold dissenting views have the right to express them. As for the idea that the poppy glorifies war or current military operations, Parliament has always been strongly behind the idea that whatever the arguments about military action, all members support the Armed Forces. Only a few politicians, unfortunately including Mr Corbyn and one or two others, think differently. Former SAS Territorial officer Sir Julian Brazier also a former defence minister said: It is good that such a high proportion of people will be wearing a poppy. But it is important that we pass on the value of gratitude to those who made sacrifices to the next generation. I am glad that so few people think the poppy glorifies war. Support for remembrance in the population as a whole remains high, a finding that runs contrary to the assumption held by many Whitehall officials and influential figures a few years ago that observance would fade as the last survivors of the two world wars died. Three quarters of people say the two-minute silence at 11am on November 11 the moment that marks the end of the First World War 99 years ago will be observed in their office, workplace or college. Seven out of ten of those who will be at home or working on their own said they will observe the silence. Some 29 per cent of people believe that wearing a poppy should be compulsory. A spokesman for the Royal British Legion, which runs the poppy appeal, said the decision to wear a poppy must be a personal one, adding: If the poppy became compulsory it would lose its meaning and significance. We are thankful for every poppy worn and we ask that those who wear a poppy have that choice respected. The survey was carried out by Consumer Intelligence among 1,066 people last month. Britain's spies are wary of sharing information with Boris Johnson because they do not trust the Foreign Secretary, it was claimed last night. Officials at the Foreign Office are also unhappy with Mr Johnsons style and behaviour, according to the political journal New Statesman. Yesterday the Foreign Secretary was forced to defend his approach to humour, hitting back at suggestions his jokes were damaging Britains relationships with other countries. Officials at the Foreign Office are also unhappy with Mr Johnsons style and behaviour, according to the political journal New Statesman He told MPs: Telling jokes is often a very effective way of getting a diplomatic message across. It came after Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, warned Mr Johnson that it was really, really hard to do cross-cultural humour. Mr Johnson was criticised last month for saying that the Libyan town of Sirte a former Islamic State stronghold could be the next Dubai once they clear the dead bodies away. Last night the Left-wing New Statesman revealed a string of diplomats had little confidence in the Foreign Secretarys style. Mr Johnson was criticised last month for saying that the Libyan town of Sirte a former Islamic State stronghold could be the next Dubai once they clear the dead bodies away The article said: Even his ministerial team at the Foreign Office is said to be unhappy. The intelligence services are believed to be wary of sharing sensitive information with him, and on occasion relations with his instinctively Europhile civil servants have been strained. It quotes one source as saying: There are moments when he says, Come on, weve got to make this work. Stop being gloom-mongers. Former Hong Kong governor Lord Patten said: He seems unable to pursue a serious argument without resorting to mop-headed witticisms. If you were concerned about the principles and vision and long-term interests of Britain, you would not regard him as your pin-up. This is an office once held by people like Carrington, Hurd, Douglas-Home, Callaghan and Bevin. What on Earth has become of us? Former Tory MP Lord Patten also accused Mr Johnson of spreading fake news when he was The Daily Telegraphs Brussels correspondent. As a journalist in Brussels, he was one of the greatest exponents of fake journalism, he said. A former British ambassador called him the least deserving and least qualified foreign secretary of modern times, who has successfully lived down to all expectations. Another said: Churchill would have thought he was a second-rate chancer. A senior European diplomat said Mr Johnson was not taken seriously as a foreign policy actor and was damaging British interests while many of his European counterparts positively dislike him. Sir Nigel Sheinwald, a former ambassador to the US and the European Union, said: His style gets in the way of handling foreign relations in a serious, responsible way at a time of real difficulty for this country. I dont think hes been at all helpful to the UK national interest, and I think thats very regrettable indeed. Mr Johnson appeared before Mr Tugendhats committee yesterday, where he said it was a little bit condescending to think those in other countries did not have a sense of humour. Sometimes actually people greatly appreciate you are talking to them in an informal way while subtly getting the point across, Mr Johnson said. Almost two-thirds of Australians don't support the decision to ban climbing Uluru. Although visitors are still welcome, they will be barred from climbing Uluru from October 2019 following a decision by its traditional owners this week. Indigenous leaders say Uluru is not a theme park and a ban on climbing the sacred rock is righting an historic wrong that's long overdue. The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board imposed the restriction on Wednesday because of Uluru's cultural significance. Scroll down for video Almost two-thirds of Australians don't support the decision to ban climbing Uluru The Central Land Council said the board was to be congratulated for its move and said 'nobody will miss the climb'. 'This decision has been a very long time coming and our thoughts are with the elders who have longed for this day but are no longer with us to celebrate it,' land council director David Ross said. Poll Do you support the ban on climbing Uluru? Yes No Do you support the ban on climbing Uluru? Yes 149 votes No 281 votes Now share your opinion 'The CLC congratulates the board on righting an historic wrong.' However, a poll by the NT News found that 63 per cent of respondents don't agree with the ban. The NT Government and tourism bosses are confident the decision won't affect visitors to the region. Tourism Central Australia chief executive Stephen Schwer told the NT News that most complaints came from overseas visitors opposed to the fact the climb was offered. 'For a number of years, they've said 'how dare you keep the climb open', while domestically, it's a different message,' he said. '(Australians) have an emotional connection to Uluru, and some people feel it's their right to climb. But there are so many other ways to experience the rock.' Visitors will be barred from climbing Uluru from October 2019 following a decision by its traditional owners this week The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board imposed the restriction on Wednesday because of Uluru's cultural significance Mr Schwer added that visitors will still be able to experience Uluru a number of other ways, including treks, scenic flights, Segway tours and buses. The last day of climbing will be October 26, 2019. Council executive member and park chairman Sammy Wilson said the board had been considering a ban for some time. 'It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland. We want you to come, hear us and learn,' Mr Wilson said. 'Over the years (traditional owners) Anangu have felt a sense of intimidation as if someone is holding a gun to our heads to keep it open. 'Please don't hold us to ransom. This decision is for both Anangu and non-Anangu to feel proud about.' Council executive member and park chairman Sammy Wilson (pictured) said the board had been considering a ban for some time The ban will be imposed under the terms of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Management Plan. The plan includes a provision to stop visitors scaling the rock if the proportion who chose to make the trek fell below 20 per cent. Figures from Parks Australia indicated only 16 per cent of visitors to the park made the climb between 2011 and 2015, down from about 74 per cent in the 1990s. Federal Indigenous Affairs minister Nigel Scullion said he was comfortable with any decision by the traditional landowners and was not worried about losing tourism in the area. 'They are very thoughtful about these matters and know a great deal about the economics around the rock,' he told Sky News. 'They are very focused on ensuring this cultural decision is a good decision for them culturally and the impact on employment.' Uluru has around 300,000 visitors each year with Australian tourists the most likely to climb the rock followed by the Japanese, according to the park's figures. An attentive tiger at an Indiana zoo was eager to cuddle the baby bump of a pregnant visitor who was standing outside its enclosure. In a video that recently went viral on the internet, Natasha, who was 27-weeks at the time, is shown snapping pictures with the tiger in the background while on a day trip with friends to the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend. Her friend, Brittany Smith-Osborne, recorded the adorable moment on her phone. Right off the bat, the tiger appeared to take a liking toward Natasha - as it first attempted to reach out and gently pat her through the safety glass. A tiger at an the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana took a liking toward a 27-weeks pregnant woman, Natasha (pictured above) The tiger was captured nuzzling into her pregnant belly and appeared to give her bump kisses from inside the enclosure Natasha then stood up to face the tiger, and it began gently nuzzling into her pregnant belly to give her bump kisses from inside the enclosure. A group of girl friends can be heard in the background reacting to the sweet moment, and saying 'Show your belly, show your belly!' One of the women said further about the cute gesture: 'I don't know whether to laugh or be scared. That is so crazy... I want to pet him.' Smith-Osborne shared details to her Facebook page about the heartwarming event that took place over the summer. Natasha's friends can be heard in the background reacting the the sweet moment 'We all realized that the tiger was very interested in her baby bump,' Smith-Osborne said in the social media post. 'I am so excited that I was able to capture that sweet moment,' she added, when speaking about her first-ever zoo visit. A spokesperson for the zoo later commented on the video, adding: 'This is why the zoo is here, to help make connections to nature!' South Bend's popular Potawatomi Zoo is the oldest in the state of Indiana, according to its official website. The zoo first started out as a 'modest duck pond in Leeper Park' in the spring of 1902. The wildlife park now exhibits as many as 400 animals across 23 acres, and has seen a drastic increase in visitors over the course of the past decade. Laura Kuenssberg yesterday spoke out against the trolls who have threatened and abused her online. The BBC political editor said the critics were trying to silence her, but insisted their campaign against her would never work. Miss Kuenssberg has always kept her composure despite being subjected to abuse from critics on all sides of the political spectrum. Miss Kuenssberg has always kept her composure despite being subjected to abuse from critics on all sides of the political spectrum The BBC was forced to hire a bodyguard to protect her while she covered the Labour Party conference in September after a barrage of threats. She was also given protection at the Tory conference shortly afterwards, although it was claimed this was so the broadcaster could maintain political balance. Miss Kuenssberg spoke about the difficulties of her job and the campaign of abuse against her for the first time yesterday. She told guests at a Jewish Care business lunch in central London: I didnt aspire to have the finger pointed at me. What they are trying to do is silence me. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg with her bodyguard at the Labour Party Conference Interviewed by her boss, James Harding, director of BBC News, the political editor said she would not allow the campaign by trolls to work. No matter how unpleasant and personal it might be, it is not as bad as what other journalists face around the world in much more difficult circumstances, she said. In a wide-ranging interview, Miss Kuenssberg, who is not Jewish, said she could see Mrs May remaining in Downing Street until 2019, the Jewish Chronicle reported. She suggested previous Tory Governments would not have been as forgiving of their leader, adding: In another time shed have been gone on June 9 [after the general election]. The journalist said a member of Theresa Mays Cabinet had joked about the Government being weak and stable. Asked whether the party leaders are different when the cameras are turned off, Miss Kuenssberg said Jeremy Corbyn and Mrs May were more themselves than previous leaders. The camera is not always fair. Corbyn says what he thinks much of the time and is always one step away from tying what he is saying into his world view, she said. May is much warmer in private and relaxed. Miss Kuenssberg said she had worked to convince Bex Bailey, a Labour activist, to waive her anonymity and tell her story of being raped at a Labour event when she was 19. She said: It is hard to tell where it is going to end up. There has been a stopper on the bottle for a long time. Referring to the claims about questionable behaviour by Ministers and other MPs, she said there was a very clear generational divide in how people were responding. It is important for people to get a handle on the seriousness of what is happening. We need people to feel they can come forward, she said. Last night, after Miss Kuensberg tweeted about Miss Baileys rape allegations, she was sent a series of abusive messages on Twitter. Many accused her of failing to report on the Westminster sex list containing claims about Tory MPs, despite the story being covered prominently on the BBC. One internet user criticised her for allegedly making it all about Labour, while another accused her of shocking bias, as usual. The hero NYPD officer who took down the Uzbeck truck terrorist on Halloween has spoken out for the first time following the incident. Officer Ryan Nash, 28, said he was just doing his job when he responded to the hectic scene in Lower Manhattan Tuesday where he shot Sayfullo Saipov, 29, once in the stomach. 'I feel we were just doing our job like thousands of officers do every day,' Nash said at a police station on Long Island near his home Wednesday afternoon. 'I understand the importance of yesterday's events and the role we played and I am grateful for the recognition we have received.' Scroll down for video Hero: NYPD Officer Ryan Nash (above on Wednesday), 28, is being credited with stopping Tuesday's attack from becoming worse by shooting Sayfello Saipov Nash said on Wednesday that he was just doing his job and thanked his family and friends for their support The 28-year-old officer has been commended by the NYPD and other officials for his efforts to stop Saipov. 'I just want to thank my family and friends for their support and all the responding officers who assisted me,' Nash added about the experience. 'However, due to the nature of the pending criminal case, I cannot make any further public statements about the incident at this time.' Nash was taken to a hospital for tinnitus after the attack that left eight people dead and several others injured when they were hit by a Home Depot truck driven by Saipov down a bike path on the West Side Highway. He added: 'However, due to the nature of the pending criminal case, I cannot make any further public statements about the incident at this time' The Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan (above in court sketches) accused of carrying on Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York The officer has been recovering at his home in Patchogue since the incident. Saipov did not enter a plea to terrorism charges and a judge set his next court date for November 15 On Wednesday, Saipov, a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan accused of carrying on Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan, entered court in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Saipov, 29, wore a gray shirt and was surrounded by five guards while in his wheelchair inside a New York federal courthouse after he was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles. His lawyers said Wednesday they were not seeking bail and a judge ordered him to be held in federal jail. Saipov did not enter a plea to terrorism charges and a judge set his next court date for November 15. Authorities say the Uzbek national watched ISIS videos on his cellphone and picked Halloween for the attack on a bike lane in lower Manhattan because he knew more people would be out on the streets. Prosecutors said in court papers that Saipov asked to display the ISIS flag in his hospital room where he was recovering from being shot in the stomach by police. Saipov 'stated that he felt good about what he had done,' court papers stated. The 29-year-old left behind knives and a note, handwritten in Arabic, that included Islamic religious references and said 'it will endure' a phrase that commonly refers to ISIS, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. The complaint says Saipov told authorities he started planning the attack about a year ago. It says he rented a truck about a week before the attack to practice turns and chose Halloween for the attack because he thought there would be more civilians nearby. Damian Green is preparing to release a cache of 'friendly' text messages from a Tory activist in a bid to disprove career-threatening claims that he made inappropriate advances towards her. Theresa May's deputy has vowed to clear his name after Kate Maltby accused him of touching her knee and sending her a 'suggestive' text message. The Prime Minister ordered a Cabinet Office inquiry into the claims against her close ally, which could result in disciplinary action. Mr Green was spotted carrying suitcases at his London home this morning. It is understood he is heading for his Ashford constituency after working in Westminster. Today a top QC piled more pressure on Mr Green by saying Kate Maltby told her a year ago she felt Mr Green made her uncomfortable and is willing to give evidence in court to back her up. Damian Green was spotted carrying suitcases at his London home this morning. He is understood to be heading for his Ashford constituency later after working in Westminster Aides last night said Mr Green had instructed libel lawyers to assess the possibility of a defamation claim against Miss Maltby, whose parents are family friends. Baroness Helena Kennedy told the Evening Standard: 'She explained how miserable she was in a world where she was expected to put up with these things. 'This was not after-dinner story telling. She was confiding in me about how miserable it had made her feel. She said it was affecting any decision she would make about going into politics. 'So when I heard she was going to be sued for libel, I contacted her to say that if anyone said she had made it up recently, I could recall that she said it a year ago.' Mr Green, 61, has flatly denied the allegation he had made sexual advances towards Miss Maltby, a Tory activist and journalist who is 30 years his junior, saying the claim was 'untrue (and) deeply hurtful'. He has told the Cabinet Office he is willing to hand over a string of 'friendly' text messages sent to him by Miss Maltby following the alleged incident in 2015 when she claims he touched her knee in a London pub. A source claimed the text exchanges, which date back to his return to Cabinet in June last year, were 'all initiated by her' and had 'the tone of messages between two friends'. The first secretary of state was accused of making advances towards Kate Maltby, 31 (right) Theresa May was flanked by female ministers at PMQs yesterday, with Mr Green further down the benches. She said she was inviting leaders of other parties to talks next week on a new grievance procedure for MPs' staff Damian Green was last night preparing to release a cache of 'friendly' text messages from a Tory activist. He is pictured with his wife Alicia A former female aide to Mr Green also came forward to say she 'did not recognise the allegations of inappropriate behaviour' levelled at him. Amy Selman, who worked for Mr Green for five years, described him as a 'professional and constructive boss', adding: 'At no time did I feel uncomfortable working for him'. The fightback came after Miss Maltby, 31, used an article in The Times to accuse him of behaviour that left her feeling 'awkward, embarrassed and professionally compromised'. Miss Maltby (pictured) said Mr Green sent her a text after seeing a photo of her in a corset She said Mr Green was an old friend of her parents who she had approached for advice after becoming involved in Tory activism. When they met for drinks, she said he suggested he could help her start a political career, before turning the conversation to the subject of affairs at Westminster. Miss Maltby said he mentioned that his wife was 'very understanding' and she then 'felt a fleeting hand against my knee so brief it was almost deniable'. She added: 'He was a university contemporary of my mother. He offered me career advice and in the same breath made it clear he was sexually interested. It was not acceptable to me at the time and it should not be acceptable behaviour in Westminster in the future.' Miss Maltby said she severed contact with Mr Green following the incident and did not hear from him again until May last year when she appeared in a corset in a photo shoot for The Times. He is said to have sent her a text message saying: 'Long time, no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid, I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink any time?' She said she ignored the message but contacted him six weeks later congratulating him on his appointment to the Cabinet, adding: 'As an aspirant political writer it seemed impossible to avoid him professionally.' Mr Green said yesterday: 'It is absolutely and completely untrue that I've ever made any sexual advances on Ms Maltby. 'I have known Ms Maltby since she contacted me as board member of Bright Blue, the Conservative think-tank, in 2014, and we have had a drink as friends twice-yearly. 'The text I sent after she appeared in a newspaper article was sent in that spirit as two friends agreeing to meet for a regular catch-up and nothing more. 'This untrue allegation has come as a complete shock and is deeply hurtful, especially from someone I considered a personal friend.' Former Tory minister Anna Soubry yesterday called for Mr Green to be suspended while the Cabinet Office investigation took place. She told Sky News: 'The allegation against Damian Green has been reported to the Cabinet Office and there will be an investigation... in normal circumstances, that person would be suspended. 'Is he placed in a difficult position? Yes, he is. Personally, I would say there is an investigation, by some mechanism you stand down, you remove yourself from this position until the conclusion of that investigation.' However, Margot James, the minister for small business, told BBC Radio 5 that Mr Green should not step aside. She said: 'No, certainly I don't think so, but that is obviously up to the Prime Minister, but I certainly don't think so, no. I've read the article in The Times today, and I certainly don't think that it warrants anyone's resignation, temporary or otherwise, in my opinion.' The allegation against Mr Green is potentially damaging at a time when Westminster has been rocked by claims it is a hotbed of sexual harassment. Trade minister Mark Garnier is already being investigated by the Cabinet Office for a potential breach of the ministerial code after admitting referring to a female assistant as 'sugar t*ts' and asking her to buy sex toys for him. A Downing Street spokesperson said the Prime Minister had referred the allegations to the Cabinet Secretary to 'establish the facts and report back as soon as possible' Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said ministers could face the sack if they were found guilty of behaviour that made junior staff 'feel uncomfortable'. Labour said it was unacceptable for Mr Green to be investigated by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and called for an independent probe. A Downing Street spokesman said Mrs May had asked Sir Jeremy to 'establish the facts and report back as soon as possible'. Six firefighters in Miami have been fired after a noose was hung over a black firefighter's family photo and lewd pictures drawn on it. The City of Miami Fire Rescue Department said the men were dismissed for 'sexually explicit and racially offensive conduct' at a fire station following an investigation. Someone created a noose out of twine, and several of the lieutenant's family photos were defaced with 'phallic renderings', the Miami Herald reported. The City of Miami has identified the fired firefighters as Captain. William Bryson, Lieutenant Alejandro Sese, Kevin Meizoso, Justin Rumbaugh, David Rivera and Harold Santana. The incident took place at a Miami station and resulted in six firefighters being dismissed for 'sexually explicit and racially offensive conduct' They deny the allegations and under the city's civil service procedures they can challenge their firings. Miami City manager Daniel Alfonso said in the statement: 'It is the policy of the City of Miami to provide a workplace for all employees that is free from intimidation, threats or violent acts. 'We cannot and will not tolerate behavior that is disrespectful, hurtful and compromises the integrity of the department and the City of Miami.' The incident took place at Miami Fire Station on September 9 and targeted Lt. Robert Webster, though he has yet to speak about what happened. Miami International Association of Firefighters President Freddy Delgado says the union is aware of the incident but 'remains unclear about the facts'. He said his organization has 'not yet been provided with all the information that the city relied upon in making the decisions it did today'. 'We expect all of our members to be provided a safe, comfortable workplace and also to have a fair and complete investigation and just discipline when it's warranted. 'We are very disturbed by the allegations and look forward to the opportunity to review all the facts.' One of Britains leading scientists has suffered a fierce backlash from trans activists after warning of the horrendous consequences of gender reassignment for some patients. Robert Winston claimed complications occurred for a significant proportion of those who have had surgery and added that some also suffer fertility problems from hormone treatments. He said that in his work he has dealt with people who were very unhappy and felt quite badly damaged by having treatment when they were younger. Lord Winston, pictured, has been criticised for his warning over gender operations Prof Winston, pictured, has been abused by trans rights supporters on Twitter Lord Winston, who is professor of science and society and emeritus professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, said it was very important to think about the long-term effects of treatment for transgender people. But yesterday his comments attracted anger from activists on Twitter, who called him a terrible c*** and said he was not qualified to talk about the issue. It comes amid a mounting debate over whether children and teenagers who believe they have been born with the wrong body should have medical intervention. A record 50 children a week are now being referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the UKs largest clinic of its kind, hosted by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London. Around 40 per cent of referrals are given hormone blockers from the age of 11 to delay puberty, which buys time until the child is old enough to decide on further treatment. From the age of 16, oestrogen or testosterone can then be taken, which may cause changes such as growth of breast tissue or hair growth. Later on, as adults they can also opt for gender reassignment surgery on their genitals and other body parts. Lord Winston said more people needed to be aware of the long-term risks of medical intervention particularly in young people. He told BBC Radio 4s Today Programme: There is a real risk in doing this, because if you look at the results of gender reassignment, the results are horrendous in such a big proportion of cases. For example, with vaginal reconstruction, there are probably 40 per cent of people who have that have some complication, [and] often need further surgery. Male reconstruction is very difficult. When you start taking off breasts, a large number, probably 23 per cent according to a recent paper, feel uncomfortable with what theyve done. Then of course, what I have been seeing in a fertility clinic, are the long-term results, of often very unhappy people who now feel quite badly damaged. He added these factors were an important warning sign for doctors who wanted to consider the long term effects of treatment. He also spoke about a young woman called Kate, who had previously told the BBC she injected herself with male hormones but later changed her mind and stopped. He added: All she had done was take hormones, but it resulted in excessive hair growth, and it is something she is still trying to cope with, and of course the long term effects of that are really to affect reproductive function. Lord Winston also said he had a fundamental concern that scientists had not yet discovered what causes people to feel uneasy with their gender. There is increasing evidence that hormonal influences before birth, perhaps very early a time of conception, can alter cognitive function, can alter the way people feel about themselves afterwards, he said. But he added: Until we define the problem, and thats always difficult with cognitive issues, I think were going to have a very blunderbuss problem, which we try to sort out, but without understanding the fundamentals underneath the cause. His radio appearance provoked anger online, with trans comedian Bethany Black writing on Twitter: Lord Winston says the results of trans surgeries are horrific. He should know every time he looks in the mirror he sees a terrible c***. Trans woman and BBC employee Rachel Evans said: Disappointed that my employer has, once again, apparently just broadcast an inaccurate, misleading attack on trans kids. PLEASE DO BETTER. Transgender KIDS. An area in which Lord Winston seems to have no particular expertise. His area is fertility! One critic called Catherine who described herself as a trans woman with an engineering PhD said: Robert Winston talking bulls*** about trans surgery. Robert Winston is in no f****** way qualified to talk about trans people, he is a fertility doctor. Trans author and doctoral student CN Lester wrote: Radio 4 this morning having Robert Winston call the majority of trans surgery results horrendous. Cheers, mate. Cheers. Another critic said: Exactly HOW many post-op trans women has Lord Winston seen naked? Societal attitudes to gender have transformed in the last ten years, and the Office for National Statistics recently revealed it is considering making declaring gender optional in the next census to help trans people. In the summer, the government announced it was considering plans to make the process of changing legal gender easier. Currently, people must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition where a persons biological sex and identity does not match. But Justine Greening said she wanted to reform the 2004 Gender Recognition Act to make the process less intrusive. A Belgian backpacker died after collapsing from suspected heatstroke while working on a fruit farm. The 27-year-old was picking watermelons on a farm near Ayr in Queensland when he collapsed on Tuesday, the Townsville Bulletin reports. He was taken to Ayr Hospital before being transferred to Townsville Hospital, where he died in the early hours of Wednesday morning. A Belgian backpacker died after collapsing from suspected heatstroke while working on a fruit farm. File photo Detective Inspector Leonie Steyger said the man's family have been contacted. An autopsy will need to be performed, but authorities suspect the man died from heat stroke, she told the Bulletin. The temperature in Ayr on Tuesday reached a high of 31.3C, according to Weatherzone. Thousands of backpackers in Australia head to the north of Queensland to work on farms. The 27-year-old was picking watermelons on a farm near Ayr in Queensland when he collapsed on Tuesday. File photo He was taken to Ayr Hospital (above, file photo) before being transferred to Townsville Hospital, where he died in the early hours of Wednesday morning Fruit pickers need to be aware of the danger of the heat, Inspector Steyger said. 'We encourage people to really take care of themselves and their mates, stay hydrated and be sun smart,' she said. Workers should drink up to eight litres of water a day to avoid dehydration, wear sunscreen, hats and long-sleeve shirts. A top executive from motoring giant BMW has given a vote of confidence in post-Brexit Britain. The senior director from the German manufacturer, whose brands also include Mini and Rolls Royce, suggested its British-based operations would remain crucial after our split with the EU, as will its trade with us. The firm currently sells more than a quarter of a million cars a year in the UK and a relationship with one of its most lucrative markets will continue long after it has left the European Union, said BMW's global sales and marketing director Dr Ian Robertson. Scroll down for video BMW's global sales and marketing director Dr Ian Robertson, pictured, said the company would continue to build the Mini and BMW petrol engines in the UK after Brexit Dr Robertson said he did not think Brexit would force the closure of BMW's three UK plants Building the Mini and BMW petrol engines in the UK would also continue to make commercial and strategic sense because it followed the firm's philsophy of manufacturing vehicles close to where they are sold, he added. Dr Robertson said he was now 'optimistic' a deal would be done over Brexit. 'The fact that we sold 250,000 cars here last year means we have a strong desire to be part of that,' he said. 'The UK is the fourth largest market in the world for the premium cars. Is that going to change? I don't think so.' Dr Robertson said he did not see Brexit posing a threat to BMW's three manufacturing bases in the UK the Mini plant in Oxford, the Rolls-Royce 'boutique' factory in Chichester, Sussex, and the Hams Hall engine plant in the Midlands. 'The strategic tenet is that investment will follow sales,' he said. 'The longer term perspective of BMW means that's likely to remain a very strong tenet.' AT A GLANCE: BMW GROUP IN BRITAIN UK sales 2016: BMW 182,593 MINI 68,984 Total: 251,577* * Record UK BMW and MINI sales in 2016 UK market share: BMW 6.78% MINI 2.56% TOTAL: 9.34% (One in 10 cars sold in the UK are from the BMW Group) The UK is BMW Groups fourth largest sales market in the world after China, USA and Germany. Top countries for BMW Group sales (2016): 1. China 516,785 2. USA 366,493 3. Germany 298,928 4. UK 251,577 BMW Group UK manufacturing figures (2016): MINI, Oxford: 210,973 Engines, Hams Hall: 256,661 Rolls-Royce, Goodwood: 4,179 BMW Group UK jobs: Total: 8,000+ Including dealerships: 24,000+ Total supported jobs: 50,000+ Jobs by factory: Oxford (MINI) : 4,500 Hams Hall (engines): 800 Swindon (pressings): 800 Goodwood (Rolls-Royce): 1,700+ BMW Group has invested 2billion in the UK since 2000 Its activities contribute 1.2 billion each year to UK GDP 80 per cent of MINIs and 90 per cent of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars are exported More than 3 million MINIs have been produced at the Oxford plant since 2001 with more than 2 million exported to over 110 markets In total, BMW Group exports 2.4 billion worth of cars and engines from the UK each year MINI Plant Oxford produced 12.6% of all UK cars in 2016 - 210,973 in total making it the third largest UK vehicle manufacturer after Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan. Advertisement The executive describes himself as 'proudly British' has sat as the only Brit on the main BMW board in Munich. He said the time for arguing over what 'could or should' have happened in the Brexit referendum was over and the focus should be on 'getting on with it' and making it work. Dr Robertson believed a Brexit deal would be done between the UK and the EU. He said: 'By nature I'm an optimist. At the end of the day I think there are things which can solve a lot of the issues.' Dr Robertson's message was in stark contrast to the dire warnings issued by BMW during the referendum campaign when it wrote to employees urging them to vote to stay in. He said the Brexit vote was 'part of a democratic process' and had to be respected. There was no appetite for another vote, he said, adding: 'We are where we are.' Brexit would be 'an extra challenge' but not an insurmountable one, he added. Ahead of a meeting with PM Theresa May and Business Secretary Greg Clarke yesterday (WED) he said his message to the Government would be: 'The one thing we desire is clarity. Tell us what the objective is to 2025 and we'll get on with it. 'What we don't like is uncertainty. It's not helpful.' Dr Robertson is to step down from his top post in December when he turns 60, the official retirement age for BMW main board members. However, he is to remain with the company for a further six months as an 'ambassador' for the car-maker and its operations in the UK. He is also a non executive director of Dyson which announced recently it is to develop its own electric car. Dr Robertson, who has homes in the UK, Munich and Portugal, said he was 'abolutely passionate and proud' about the UK car industry which had undergone a transformation since the troubled days when he joined it in 1979. 'I'm proudly British and always have been. This nation punches above its weight. This industry is in much better shape than it was 40 years ago,' he said. With moves towards autonomous cars and electric power there are 'great opportunities' for the UK, he said. In a recent vote of confidence, BMW recently announced production of a electric version of the Mini would be built in Oxford, and not on the Continent. Dr Robertson believed that over time Mini production would go increasingly towards electric power as cities cracked down on pollution and emissions. He said 'mavericks' like Tesla electric car boss Elon Musk had shaken up the car market but said mainstream car-makers like BMW would remain dominant because they knew the business and were flexible. He also believed that while cars would increasingly have more autonomous features, Government would 'shy away' from fully self-driving vehicles when it came to them making 'life and death' decisions. Kind-hearted Daily Mail readers have helped smash the 100,000 barrier in less than three weeks to make dreams come true for seriously ill children. A huge 117,000 has been raised for our Christmas appeal for the Make-A-Wish UK charity, which arranges magical experiences for youngsters who are bravely fighting cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Tens of thousands of old 1 coins have been handed into branches of Nationwide Building Society as part of our Quids for Kids campaign. A huge 117,000 has been raised for The Daily Mail's Christmas appeal for the Make-A-Wish UK charity, which arranges experiences for youngsters fighting life-threatening conditions Our generous readers have also donated thousands more directly to Make-A-Wish. And there is still plenty more time to donate to the appeal which will help some of the 20,000 young people who are facing gruelling treatment and long periods spent in hospital over Christmas. The old round pound coins went out of circulation last month but they can still be exchanged at banks and post offices. However, we are asking readers to instead donate any leftover 1 coins to the charity at any branch of Nationwide. Just hand them to the cashier, stating that you wish to give them to the Mails Quids for Kids Make-A-Wish Foundation UK appeal. Nationwide will take old 1 coins until December 20 and has kindly agreed to match all donations to the appeal at the building society up to 50,000. You can also donate directly to Make-A-Wish by cheque. A string of celebrities have already backed the brilliant campaign, including Simon Cowell, Britains Got Talent judge Amanda Holden and Strictly Come Dancings Shirley Ballas. Tens of thousands of old 1 coins have been handed into branches of Nationwide Building Society as part of our Quids for Kids campaign Make-A-Wish makes around 2,000 dreams a year come true for seriously ill children, including arranging for them to swim with dolphins, drive trains and even become ninja princesses for the day. Extra donations can be made in branches of Nationwide. Jason Suckley, chief executive of Make-A-Wish, said: On behalf of Make-A-Wish UK and the children whose wishes we grant, Id like to say a huge thank you to the readers of the Daily Mail. We are overwhelmed by your generosity! This is an incredible amount of money after just a few weeks of the Quids for Kids campaign. Almost 2,000 children facing a life-threatening condition will turn to us for a wish in 2017, many more than we have the resources to grant. We want to reach every child. The money being raised through this campaign is a big step towards making this possible. Your support is making a huge difference to childrens lives. For that we are extremely grateful. For more details, visit: www.dailymail.co.uk/quidsforkids Police have arrested the suspect who allegedly opened fire at random inside a Walmart on Wednesday night and killed three people. Scott Ostrem, 47, was captured and taken into custody 10 hours after he 'nonchalantly' walked into the store in Thornton near Denver, Colorado, on Wednesday night and started firing at shoppers near the cash registers, according to cops. Video taken at 8am on Thursday morning shows him being led into a police SUV wearing handcuffs after his car was spotted. The three victims, two men and a woman, were all in the same area near the front of the store at the time of the shooting, Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila said. The gunman did not say anything as he sprayed his bullets across the store. He then walked back out and fled the scene in a red, four-door Mitsubishi Mirage. Police do not believe the shooting is related to terrorism, but they have not ruled anything out. A motive is not known and little information about Ostrem has been released. Scroll down for video Scott Ostrem, 47, (above) 'nonchalantly. walked into the store in Thornton, Colorado, on Wednesday night and started firing at random, according to cops . He was arrested and taken into custody 10 hours after the horror attack Ostrem was captured and arrested 10 hours after the attack when his car was spotted five miles away from the scene He put into the back of a police van in handcuffs by heavily-armed officers. Police have not yet released a motive and have not ruled out terrorism The gunman did not say anything during the shooting and walked back out and fled the scene in a red, four-door Mitsubishi Mirage (above). He only got five miles before he was tracked down Officers with the Thornton Police Department first responded to the store location on Grant Street, which is south of 102nd Street in the town that's located just 12 miles outside of Denver, around 6:10pm MT after receiving several 911 calls about the shooting. Two adult men were first pronounced dead at the scene while an adult female was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. Hours later, police announced that the woman died at the hospital and that they did not have anyone in custody for the horrific shooting. Avila did not release the identity of the victims. He also said that it's unclear if the victims knew each other. Walmart have accounted for all of their staff. Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila said during a press conference that the three victims were all in the same area near the front of the store at the time of the shooting (scene above) He said the gunman walked into the south entrance of the Walmart 'nonchalantly' and began randomly shooting from a handgun at people inside (scene above) The shooting happened around 6pm local time inside the crowded retail store. Above employees and shoppers leave the scene No one else was injured in the shooting by the gunman besides those who died, Avila said. Above Patrick Carnes is evacuated on a mobility scooter by SWAT medics from the scene of a shooting at a Walmart No one else was injured in the shooting by the gunman besides those who died, Avila said. Ostrem was captured just five miles away from the scene at 8am local time on Thursday morning. According to court records, Ostrem declared bankruptcy in 2015, but does not have a lengthy criminal record. The records show that in 2013, he was arrested for driving while ability impaired. Police initially reported that 'multiple parties' were down in the shooting, but later clarified the number of injuries and deceased. At 10.17pm MT, Thornton police tweeted: 'UPDATE: There is currently NO one in custody. Unfortunately the female transported with injury has also passed away. (3) confirmed dead.' #Breaking Police confirm #WalmartShooting susp Scott Ostrem in custody-Raw vid of arrest at 72nd & Federal-We'll be live at 8:25 @CBSDenver pic.twitter.com/5CKs9Hwk5I Alan Gionet (@AlanGTV) November 2, 2017 Two adult men were first pronounced dead at the scene while an adult female was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. Above police guard the entrance at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton Hours later, police announced that the woman died at the hospital and that they did not have anyone in custody for the horrific shooting. Above Walmart employees walk to a police staging area at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton Dozens of employees were interviewed by police about the shocking incident Walmart employees and shoppers hug at the scene of the deadly shooting in Thornton Walmart employees and customers that were inside the store wait to hear what to do from police as they stand behind police tape outside of the Walmart store At 12.17am ET, Thornton police tweeted: 'UPDATE: There is currently NO one in custody. Unfortunately the female transported with injury has also passed away. (3) confirmed dead.' Hours after the shooting, the crime scene was still active with dozens of police vehicles still present. Thornton police said investigators were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses inside the store for assistance with the suspect's description and information. Thornton police first tweeted: 'Shooting just occurred at Walmart, 9900 Grant St, multiple parties down. Please stay away from the area.' The police department later tweeted: 'At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available.' Police compare an image on a smartphone to a person they spotted in the crowd at the scene of a shooting Police closed the roads near the store and asked the public to avoid the area. The Walmart is located in the Thornton Town Center which includes multiple restaurants and stores. Dozens were seen rushing out of the Walmart when the shooting began and flooded the parking lot of the Golden Corral restaurant. Witness Aaron Stephen was inside the giant retail store when he heard a single shot fired first before more bursts of gunfire. 'Shooting just occurred at Walmart, 9900 Grant St, multiple parties down. Please stay away from the area.', the police department tweeted Darlene Jackson sits on an overturned shopping cart as she and fellow shoppers and employees gather outside after a gunman opened fire in Walmart in Thornton He told The Denver Post that he was in the self-checkout line at the time and that customers started screaming and running to get out. He heard a single shot fired, and then two more bursts of gunfire. 'I was scared,' Stephens, who has lived in Thornton for 20 years, said. 'I feared for my life.' Another witness, Guadalupe Perez, told CBS Denver: 'We were renting movies and we just heard this popping noise. Walmart customers and employees are held back while emergency crews and police work on the grounds of Walmart during the situation Emergency crews and police work at the scene in response to a shooting at Walmart in Thornton 'The Walmart girl said, "The balloons are popping." And I turn around and I just see all the people walking, falling down because they were really scared. 'I just told them "What's going on?" and they were like "They're shooting! They're shooting!"' The Walmart is located about 18 miles from the Century 16 movie theater that was the sight of the mass theater shooting in Aurora. Thornton is also about 23 miles from Columbine High School in Littleton, which is where the Columbine massacre happened. Anyone with information is asked to call Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867. A probe has been launched by Britain's election watchdog into claims that Russia meddled in last summer's Brexit referendum. The Election Commission will investigate whether or not Putin interfered in the EU vote after allegations that Russian cyber-spies influenced the US Presidential vote. As part of its probe, the body will also seek to investigate the influence of social media during political campaigns. The Election Commission will investigate whether or not Vladimir Putin (pictured) interfered in the EU vote after allegations that Russian cyber-spies influenced the US Presidential vote Speaking to The Times, the Commission's director of political finance, Bob Posner, said: 'We are asking questions of Facebook and Twitter and this work is ongoing.' It comes as ex-Ukip donor Arron Banks said claims he took Russian money to bankroll the Brexit campaign were 'b***ocks'. The Electoral Commission wants to establish whether Mr Banks and his company Better for the Country Limited was the 'true source' of millions in donations. The probe will examine whether an unknown 'agent' banned from donating to campaigns in Britain channelled money via Mr Banks or Better for the Country. Donations from foreign individuals and companies are banned under British electoral law and accepting them can be a criminal offence. Remain-supporting MPs have raised questions over Russian interference in the referendum campaign. Mr Banks hit back at the 'Remain Electoral Commission' for announcing its investigation today, claiming the watchdog was not 'up to the job'. Theresa May was challenged about Russian intervention in elections at PMQs today and insisted she took the allegations 'seriously' and would cooperate with international inquiries. A driver who was drink driving for the fourth time when she killed a teenage cyclist has been jailed for eight years. Shellen Wardle, 41, was almost three times over the limit when she drove into Jordan Seddon, 17, on Cargo Fleet Lane, Middlesbrough, Teesside. Mr Seddon, a charity worker, died in hospital shortly after he was knocked from his BMX by Ms Wardle's Fiat Punto. Shellen Wardle was nearly three times over the limit when she crashed her car into teenager Jordan Seddon as he was riding his bike Ms Wardle broke down in tears in court as she heard how the teenager's death had 'broken' his family. In a series of powerful victim personal statements, relatives told how they will never come to terms with his sudden death. They also revealed that Mr Seddon's decision - discussed just weeks before the tragedy - to donate his organs has saved six lives. Mr Seddon, a charity worker from Middlesborough, was planning for his 18th birthday when he was killed on his way home Ms Wardle, a warehouse assistant from Middlesborough, was said by her lawyer to be remorseful and full of regret. ' Not a day will go by in her life that she will not remember or reflect,' Andrew Turton, mitigating, told Teesside Crown Court. Ms Wardle admitted a charge of causing death by careless driving while over the legal alcohol limit at an earlier hearing. The mother-of-one was found to have 91 microgrammes of alcohol in 100ml of her breath - well above the legal limit of 35 microgrammes. The court heard it was the fourth time she had been prosecuted for being drunk at the wheel of a car in the last 13 years. Ms Wardle will have to serve a ten-year driving ban once she is freed from prison. 'You are a danger to to the public behind a car wheel. You will be off the roads for a very long time, indeed,' said Judge Sean Morris. An inquest into Mr Seddon's death opened last month, but was adjourned until after the criminal proceedings were completed. Mr Seddon was described by his family as 'not a typical 17-year-old with a heart of gold' who always put others first. In court, family members praised Mr Seddon's caring character as Ms Wardle wept in the dock. Just weeks before his death, Mr Seddon registered his organs for donation. Six other people's lives have been saved as a result He had ridden to a petrol station near his home, and was returning when he was hit from behind by Wardle's dark hatchback. Prosecutor Harry Hadfield told the court that the car veered into a cycle lane at the side of the A171 before the collision. Immediately after the crash, Wardle was heard by witnesses to say: 'He was swerving all over the road. I'm f***ing off.' Ms Wardle has been prosecuted three times previously for being drunk behind the wheel. As well as eight years in jail, Ms Wardle will serve a 10-year driving ban A police officer who had been called by passers-by tried to stop her leaving, and she pulled into a street nearby. Judge Morris rejected claims that she was in shock, and told Ms Wardle: 'You were doing your best to look after number one.' Jordan's family revealed that he worked in a charity shop, and had been planning for his 18th birthday, seven months ahead. His grandfather, Keith Seddon, who along with his wife brought Jordan up from the age of one, described him as 'my best mate'. Fighting back tears and turning to weeping Ms Wardle in the dock, he said: 'I feel so angry you have done this to us.' He added: 'Jordan had a big birthday coming up next year. He would have been 18. He had such big plans. It is sickening.' The teenager's mother, Ruth Crown, said: 'His smile and personality lit up the room. He would help anybody and had a heart of gold.' Alison Seddon, the wife of Jordan's dad, who was too upset to speak, described the teenager as their best friend. She said: 'He has left a massive hole in our hearts and our life. Jordan was an amazing boy, so kind-hearted and caring.' After the case, police described Ms Wardle as 'arrogant and ignorant' for trying to blame Jordan for the 12.20am crash. Lead investigator, Inspector Harry Simpson, from the Cleveland and Durham Specialist Operations Unit, said: 'I welcome today's sentence. Although I hope it may provide some comfort to Jordan's family, it will never bring him back and they have been left devastated by his loss. 'This was Shelleen Wardle's fourth conviction for a drink-driving related offence. She has shown arrogance and ignorance in continuing to offend in this way, which has tragically resulted in the death of a young boy who had his whole life ahead of him. 'This case is another example of the stark and sad reality of what can happen if a driver gets behind the wheel whilst intoxicated. 'Our thoughts remain with Jordan's family and friends at this difficult time.' 'Queen of Benefits' Cheryl Prudham paid for a holiday abroad with her nine children a day after her boyfriend had stolen cash from his bosses, a court heard. The mother, who rakes in 40,000 a year from the state, handed over 2,241 to a travel firm. A day earlier her then partner and father to six of her now 12 children, Robert Prudham, had stolen cash from car parking machines while on his collection rounds for Meteor Parking Ltd. Queen of Benefits Cheryl Prudham paid for a holiday for her family with money stolen by her husband Robert, pictured centre. The pair face sentencing at a later date In the space of a month, he stole 4,788 in coins and notes from car parks, mostly at train stations, across Kent and south east London. He even secreted cash he collected from parking machines at Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford, Kent. A court heard he resigned just four weeks after he acquired his job having lied about his criminal past - and on the day he pocketed his fourth and final theft of 2,000 from Fremlin Walk shopping centre in Maidstone, Kent. The next day Cheryl Prudham, who was pregnant with twins, paid the holiday instalment. Three months later they were seen with their family aged between 14 and one on the Spanish island of Menorca. Robert Prudham, pictured, lied about his previous convictions when he got a job collecting cash from parking meters Shortly before he quit his job, Prudham had told a colleague the holiday had cost 10,000. Details of the trip were revealed at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent during the trial of Prudham's colleague, Jacob Underdown. The pair had only been working together for a week when Prudham was said to have 'corrupted' him. Prosecutor Oliver Doherty said the trusted employees then 'acted together' to pocket cash from car park machines in the space of five days in February 2014. He said it was impossible for one to have stolen the money, often in coins, without the other knowing. A total of 2,000 in 1 coins would weigh 19kg, added Mr Doherty. But 28-year-old Underdown told the jury he knew nothing of Prudham's stealing, and could not explain how his colleague took the cash from the supposedly tamper-proof cashboxes. 'I wouldn't have a clue,' said the married, former sea cadet and welder. 'I had nothing to do with it, I didn't steal anything.' He also maintained he never heard 'a loud jingle' of money on Prudham. Underdown denied three charges of theft totalling 4,654 and was cleared by the jury in less than 45 minutes. During his two-day trial, the jury heard Robert Prudham, 32, from Maidstone, Kent, had admitted four offences of theft before Underdown's trial. Cheryl Prudham, 34, from Warrington, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods. Underdown, who has no previous convictions or cautions, had been employed by Meteor parent company Vinci Services since April 2013 as a cleaner. However, he was transferred to a full-time cash collector role on about February 3, 2014. He drove himself and Prudham on their rounds on February 5 and February 10, 2014. Prudham had started with the firm as an agency worker on January 12, having lied about his 26 previous convictions which include 12 for dishonesty. The money was meant to be transferred into cashboxes and then taken to a secure central location at Ashford Designer Outlet Centre in Kent to be counted. But money went missing inbetween collection and drop-off, said Mr Doherty. Prudham resigned from his job on February 10 - the day the final amount of money was stolen - and part-time carer Cheryl Prudham paid the travel firm the next day. The couple, who were living in Gravesend, Kent, at the time of the thefts, await sentence. The Kent-based car parks from where he stole cash were in Borough Green, Chatham, Hildenborough, Longfield, Maidstone East, Meopham, Rainham, Sevenoaks, Staplehurst, Orpington and Fremlin Walk, also in Maidstone. Those targeted in south east London were Bromley North, Eltham and Mottingham. Robert Prudham also admitted fraud between September 9 2013 and February 14 2014. He told Folkestone-based Red Eagle recruitment agency that he was of good character with no criminal convictions. At a previous hearing, the court heard Cheryl Prudham has previous convictions dating back to 2004 but the details were not revealed. During Underdown's trial, the court heard police searched his home in Emerald View, Warden Bay, Sheerness, Kent, and found just over 89 in coins organised into piles on a dressing table in the spare room. The money had been separated into 50p coins, 20p coins and 10p coins. The court heard he also made an 'unusual' cash deposit of 830 into a joint bank account on February 14 that year. However, Underdown, who had loan and credit card debts running into several thousands, told the jury all the money came from spare change he saved over a year. He denied when cross-examined by Mr Doherty that he 'saw an opportunity working with Prudham to make some easy money'. But recalling his colleague as looking 'pretty shifty' on one occasion, Underdown told police after his arrest: 'He said he was going on holiday in April and had 3,000 left to pay. 'He was going to Spain, full board because he has 10 (sic) kids. He said the full cost was 10,000. 'I was with him the whole time and don't recall him taking bags. If he has done it, I don't know how he has done it. 'I ain't done it, I wouldn't do it. That's my job at the end of the day,that's my livelihood.' The individual amounts he allegedly stole were 552.85 and 2,101.59 in coins, and 2,000 in notes. 'This is a case about the abuse of trust of employees charged with collecting money from parking meters,' said Mr Doherty at the start of Underdown's trial. 'Systems were put in place to ensure money wasn't stolen. It was collected and taken to a secure location to be counted. 'There were cashboxes and they should have been tamper-proof. It shouldn't have been possible to take money without being noticed but the tamper-proof system didn't work. 'It was possible for people to take money and the tamper seal to remain in place. 'The Crown say the money in this case went missing before it arrived at the central location.' Mr Doherty said it was 'likely' that Prudham corrupted his colleague because he had also admitted stealing from parking machines at Darent Valley Hospital on an earlier occasion before they started working together. The Prudhams will be sentenced on a date yet to be fixed. A hardline imam says Muslims shouldn't celebrate Christmas or even be associated with the festive season. Sheikh Zainadine Johnson, a former band member who now advocates Sharia law, says participating in the customs of other religions is against Allah. 'We have to reject them all except Allah,' he said in an October sermon. Sheikh Zainadine Johnson says Muslims must not only reject but dissociate from Christmas Sheikh Johnson told his followers at Logan, south of Brisbane, being part of the celebration of another religion undermined the Islamic concept of Tawheed, the Arabic term for oneness with Allah. 'You have to reject them and not only do you have to reject it but you have to disassociate yourself from it,' he said. 'Disassociate yourself from what they're worshiping. 'This is why we can't celebrate Christmas. Stay away from it. Don't be a part of it. This Islam convert says Muslims should cut themselves off from celebrating Christmas The sheikh posted a graph on Facebook calling on Muslims to dissociate from other religions 'It's not that we're nasty people or anything. No. But this is part of our belief. 'Is that terrorism to be disassociated from something? No.' The surfer turned religious teacher told the parable about the Prophet Ibrahim, who smashed statues because he was against the worshiping of other gods or idols. 'What did he do? He smashed up the statues,' he said, adding he destroyed a Hindu festival of lights known as diwali. The Sunshine Coast-bred Sunni imam in August declared he considered it sexual harassment to be forced to shake hands with a woman. The red-headed former bass guitarist with Brisbane rock band Grinder became an imam at the Logan Mosque in May after being sacked from his post on the Sunshine Coast when he described the Australian flag as a symbol of oppression. While speaking in an opening statement for the Obama Foundation Summit, the former President had one request for attendees: to refrain from asking for selfies. During the civic leadership conference in Chicago, Illinois, Obama spoke on the light matter for a second time this year, and said: 'One of the weird things about becoming president is I found that people were no longer looking me in the eye and shaking my hand.' He added Tuesday that the discussion 'may seem trivial, but it's not,' just months after mentioning during a keynote speech in the spring that he had grown tired of countless ungenuine interactions. Scroll down for video Former President Barack Obama poses for a hilarious selfie while holding 10-month-old Brooks Breitwieser at an event in Columbus, Ohio, November 1, 2016 Sanya Richards-Ross poses for a photo with Obama as Vice-President Joe Biden, center, looks on at a ceremony for the 2012 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams on September 14, 2012 Obama speaks during the first day of the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. October 31, 2017 After addressing more pressing issues like climate change and food waste at the conference - Obama joked that, since the end of his term, he's been asked to take 'selfies every two steps' he walks when out in public. He joked further: 'Now I'm only captive to selfies... which is almost as bad.' On Wednesday, the final day of the civic leader conference, Michelle Obama also discussed plans for the soon-to-be constructed Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. During his opening statement Tuesday (shown in photo above), he joked and asked attendees not to take selfies The former First Lady, who grew up in Chicago, said the library will be a sanctuary where 'art, music and creativity' are openly celebrated, according to the Chicago Tribune. She spoke further about her humble upbringing in the Windy City - where artistic values played an important role in her everyday life. 'When you think about how little public art there is on the South Side (that) is one of the things we hope to do with the Obama Presidential Center,' she said during the speech. Former First Lady Michelle Obama speaks at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago, Illinois, November 1, 2017. She discussed details on the soon-to-be constructed Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park The former First Lady, who grew up in the city, said the library will be a sanctuary where 'art, music and creativity' are openly celebrated 'There need to be places for public art outside. Just like downtown. Just like Picasso. Just like The Bean. There's nothing. 'Those pieces in communities are few and far in between. And they become the gathering places for a community, not just a place to see beauty and possibility.' Speakers came forward to discuss other positive changes that are being put into action while at the conference - which is said to be the 'foundations largest program of the year,' according to the Tribune. Other notable people in attendance at the meeting included Prince Harry and Chance the Rapper. As the weather gets warmer, Australians are more likely to encounter eight-legged visitors. Spiders are with us all year round, but as the weather gets warmer, they are entering our houses in higher numbers than usual, looking to get out of the hot sun or away from heavy rain. Daily Mail Australia spoke with Kane Christensen, Head of Spiders at the Australian Reptile Park, about which arachnids were worth screaming over and which are easily left alone. He says of all the spiders Australia might see this summer, only two were very dangerous. But do you know what they are? Scroll down for video As the weather gets warmer, spiders are increasingly gravitating inside. Can you pick the spiders that are worth getting frightened about? (Pictured: Daddy Long Legs - very safe) SYDNEY FUNNEL-WEB Of all the spiders in Australia, Mr Christensen says the Sydney funnel-web is the most dangerous. It is aggressive and its venom, especially coming from a male, can be deadly. The spider lives mostly underground, but comes out to search for a female mate when the weather gets warmer. 'Funnel-webs like warm weather, rainy afternoons - when the humidity is up, they can travel longer distances,' Mr Christensen said. The Sydney Funnel Web spider is one of the world's most dangerous spiders due to its poisonous venom. There has not been a recorded death since 1981 when the antivenom was produced The arachnid expert said the spiders were coming out earlier this year because of the unusually warm weather, but their numbers would peak around January. To keep safe from a nasty bite, Mr Christensen says floors should be cleared and shoes and towels left outside should be shaken before use. Another danger area for the Sydney funnel-web is the backyard swimming pool. The spider can often fall into swimming pools and will become stuck, as it is unable to climb smooth surfaces or jump. A funnel-web can survive up to 30 hours in the water, so don't assume the arachnid is dead if you come across it. Funnel-webs can be identified by their glossy and hairless fronts, and males have a large mating spur coming from the middle of their second pair of legs. To keep safe from a nasty bite, Mr Christensen says floors should be cleared and shoes and towels left outside should be shaken before use WOLF SPIDER The wolf spider can grow up to eight centimetres, and is found widely across Australia. When it is young, the spider is carried on its mother's back until they are ready to disperse by ballooning away using its web, or on the ground. Wolf spiders are often found in backyards, and Mr Christensen says a hole in the ground with webbing in it will be the entrance to the burrow of a wolf or trapdoor spider. The Wolf spider is often found burrowed underground in a back yard, and is common around Australia The arachnid will rarely set up a web to catch food, and will instead chase down its prey on the ground. Mr Christensen says the bite of a wolf spider will have no major effect on humans, but if the spider is large, it will hurt. Wolf spiders can be defined by their drab colouring, with most having multi-coloured patterns on their exterior, in brown and yellow, grey, black and white. Mr Christensen says the bite of a wolf spider will have no major effect on humans, but if the spider is large, it will hurt MOUSE SPIDER The Mouse spider looks similar to the funnel-web and can also be quite dangerous to humans. This arachnid is usually slower to move than the others, and can be identified by its red-tinged body, or if it's a female, jaws. Mouse spiders look similar to funnel-web spiders and their bite can be quite dangerous Mouse spider bites can be 'medically significant' to humans, Mr Christensen said, though a fatality has never been recorded. Victims of the creepy crawly have previously been administered funnel-web anti-venom and it has been effective in treating the bite. The mouse spider is most active during the day time, as opposed to many other arachnids which are night-time creatures. The spiders are most active during the day - as opposed to many other arachnids which are night-time creatures RED BACK SPIDER The redback spider's venomous bite can also be deadly to humans, with 16 recorded deaths. Mr Christensen said people are 'more likely to be bitten by a redback than any other Australian animal'. The female is typically more aggressive than the male and the arachnid prefers to be in dry and dark conditions - making them very fond of houses. The Redback spider is more likely to bite a human than any other Australian animal 'A redback hangs a line of web down to the ground, so they're often found underneath things,' he said. 'When you pick something up from the ground, that's how you get bitten.' Female redbacks are black, with a clear red stripe along their upper abdomen. The male is a light brown colour and has subtle white marks on its upper abdomen. Mr Christensen says Redbacks are often under things and the easiest way to get bitten is to grab something off the ground without looking WHITE TAIL SPIDER Contrary to popular belief, a white tail spider bite will not result in gaping holes in a person's flesh. The white tail spider has very powerful fangs, and Mr Christensen explained: 'it's not something you could sleep through'. He said he knew of 132 confirmed cases of a white tail spider bite, all of which caused pain and swelling, none of which resulted in missing flesh. Contrary to popular belief, a White Tail spider bite will not result in gaping holes in a person's flesh 'People who had the missing flesh ended up having diabetic ulcers, misdiagnosed skin cancers, or another medical condition,' he said. Summer and Autumn are the most likely seasons to find a white tail spider inside, but the arachnid is there to eat other spiders. The creature can be identified by a distinctive white marking on the tip of the abdomen, and two pairs of dots on the abdomen, which fade as the arachnid ages. Summer and Autumn are the most likely seasons to find a white tail spider inside, but the arachnid is mostly there to eat other spiders HUNTSMAN SPIDER The huntsman spider's size often leaves humans cowering in fear, but Mr Christensen says there is little to worry about. 'The huntsman is a venomous spider, but it's not dangerously venomous,' he said. 'Their venom in us is localised pain and swelling, and it will hurt - but the huntsman is usually reluctant to bite unless it is defending its eggs.' Huntsmen are often found in cars as well as houses, particularly behind sun visors, as well as hiding in rock walls or behind dead bark. They are identified by their flattened bodies, designed for living in crevices or behind dead bark. The huntsman spider may appear intimidating to humans, but its venom is not dangerous Huntsmen are often found hiding inside cars, behind the sun visor, but are also a fairly common sight inside houses HOW TO AVOID UNWELCOME ARACHNIDS IN YOUR HOME Kane Christensen, Head of Spiders at the Australian Reptile Park, says there are some easy ways to reduce the amount of eight-legged visitors you receive this summer. Check before you lift things up off the ground Visually inspect and shake out any shoes left outside Ensure your doors have good draft seals and there aren't large gaps between the floor and the bottom of the door Don't leave loose clothing hanging around on the floor - the first thing spiders look for is somewhere to hide Check the pool - Sydney Funnel-Webs often get caught in water, but are not necessarily dead Advertisement Abu Mohammad says he 'totally gets what he [Saipov] did' A worshipper who knew terror truck driver Sayfullo Saipov and attended the same mosque says he 'totally gets what he did'. Abu Mohammad, who stopped to talk to DailyMail.com after leaving afternoon prayer service at the Omar Mosque in Paterson, New Jersey, on Wednesday, said he last saw the suspect at the mosque about two months ago and first set eyes on him there two years back. 'I didn't know him by name, but I would see him there every two to three months,' the 46-year-old Pakistani national, said. A cement mixer by trade and living in the U.S. now for nearly three decades, Abu described the murder suspect as having a 'beautiful smile, was a nice guy, and someone who never cursed. He called me brother and I did the same back at him.' Abu railed against the U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly blaming the President Bush senior and son era for escalating tensions. 'I totally get what he did,' Abu said of the suspect. 'It's in response to Muslims dying every day as a result of this ongoing conflict. Why doesn't the media cover that? The U.S. needs to get out and let us run our own affairs. But as long as they meddle and interfere, these terrorist attacks will continue to happen.' A supporter of President Donald Trump and his immigration policies, Abu would later get into a scuffle at the mosque before a late afternoon prayer service and was booted out, with one worshiper branding him an ISIS sympathizer. 'They don't like me because I voted for Trump,' he said in a huff on the sidewalk out front. Saipov, an Uzbek native, was a Muslim who attended a 'suspicious' mosque in New Jersey and was allegedly radicalized sometime after moving to the U.S. seven years ago, it emerged on Wednesday. He killed eight and injured 12 in lower Manhattan on Halloween. According to NorthJersey.com, the NYPD has been studying the Omar Mosque in Paterson, near Saipov's home, as a possible location for 'budding terrorist conspiracies'. Sayfullo Saipov (seen left and right) killed eight and injured 12 in lower Manhattan on Tuesday Abu Mohammad stopped to talk to DailyMail.com after leaving afternoon prayer service at the Omar Mosque in Paterson (pictured), New Jersey, on Wednesday Ken (Khader) Abuassab, founder and director of the American Arab Civic Organization, an outreach program in the state of New Jersey and based in Paterson denounced the attack and said Saipov's actions do not reflect the beliefs of Muslim people. 'I am shocked by this violent act, condemn what this individual did and sympathize with our neighbors in New York City. Islam is not responsible for this foolish act. We are a peaceful people and wish to live in harmony with everyone, whether Christian or Jewish,' he told DailyMail.com. 'As a people, we respect the lives of others and it is not our intent to hurt or kill anyone. We have an open door policy at our mosques in New Jersey and welcome all to visit and pray.' When asked about the surveillance by law enforcement of the nearby Omar Mosque about a decade ago, he said nothing was found untoward and reiterated its open door policy. And despite the mosque's proximity to the suspect's home - just around the corner from his apartment - he insisted that he had no official affiliation. However, he did acknowledge that he could have prayed there on occasion. It holds prayer services five times daily. Carlos Batista, 23, who lives two doors away from Sayfullo Saipov in Paterson, New Jersey said the Uzbek immigrant had the Home Depot truck for about three weeks and would park it wherever they could find a spot 'We recovered after 9/11, and other incidents in the U.S., and we will heal from this one while continuing to make the point that we are about co-existing in peace and abhor all violent and extremist acts,' he added. On Wednesday, a neighbor of the 29-year-old terrorist revealed he recognized the suspect and saw him and his two male friends driving around in a Home Depot truck as recently as two days ago. Carlos Batista, 23, who lived two doors down from Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov in Paterson, New Jersey told DailyMail.com that the Uzbek immigrant had the vehicle for weeks before the attack, but never saw him load or unload anything from it. 'They had this Home Depot truck, like the one he used yesterday, for about three weeks and would park it wherever they could find a spot along Genessee [Avenue],' Carlos said in an exclusive interview. 'I found it odd and suspicious because never did I see [Saipov] or the other two move anything in or out of it, or were they ever in work clothes. 'I only saw them drive it around. It didn't seem like there was any reason for them to have a truck, since I never saw anything being moved. He added: 'Knowing what we know now, it's like they were making a test run or something. 'Every time I saw the suspect in the neighborhood he was dressed in traditional robes and wore a cap, while the others, I assume his friends, wore jeans and shirts. All three were about the same age and had beards. But the two guys he hung out with were stocky,' he said. The ISIS terrorist is reported to have rented a truck from a Home Depot in New Jersey which he used to plow through cyclists and runners on the bicycle path before slamming into a school bus on Chambers Street on Tuesday. Batista, who works in construction and has lived at his current address for the past year, also recalled getting into a altercation with two of the men this past summer. Batista, who works in construction and has lived at his current address for the past year, also recalled getting into a altercation with two of Saipov's friends this summer. Pictured above is Saipov's home 'I was riding my dirt bike up and down the street one night at around 7.30pm and revving the engine and going at a fast speed,' he said. 'This annoyed two of the guys. They told me in thick accents that I was making too much noise and that I should shut off my bike. That's when the suspect got involved and calmed the situation down.' Another Paterson local described the Uzbek immigrant as an 'a**hole' who was often seen driving off with his wife who was dressed in a burqa. Hilmi Hammad an employee at Excel, a knife supplier located across the street from Saipov's home, told DailyMail.com: 'A lot of times his white van would be parked in front of his apartment building. 'I would often see him come out with his wife, in full burqa - just the slits for eyes - and two girls, and drive off.' DailyMail.com also spoke to a neighbor who described the suspect and his family as 'quiet' and reserved. Altana Dimitrovska, 63, who lives a few doors down in the same modest brick apartment complex said: 'They were quiet people and kept to themselves.' 'I didn't have any problems with them. They went about their business, as did I. We would say hello and that was it. The mother wore a black robe and her face was covered. Police examine a van in the neighborhood where Sayfullo Saipov lived in Paterson, New Jersey Authorities stand near a damaged Home Depot truck after a motorist drove onto a bike path near the World Trade Center memorial, striking and killing several people on Halloween The crash area is just seven blocks from Ground Zero and is a stone's throw from City Hall 'They have three kids, two girls and a baby boy. The girls looked to be around ages four and six and the son maybe six months old. 'Around the time the son was born they were visited by a set of grandparents. But I'm not sure if they were on the husband or wife's side. They too dressed traditionally and stayed about a month.' Neighbors told DailyMail.com that Saipov's family were seen being whisked away earlier today with luggage and other personal possessions. He was shot in the stomach during the rampage, and underwent surgery at Bellevue Hospital. When he spoke with authorities at the hospital, he allegedly showed no remorse for the lives he had taken. One source told ABC News that he seemed 'proud' and said he was 'boasting'. In a press conference on Wednesday, NYPD confirmed Saipov had been planning the attack for weeks but did not give further details. However, they said that he followed 'exactly to a T' instructions the terrorist group had posted online about how to carry out a terrorist attack. An Australian Muslim leader who repeatedly warned the mayor of New York his city was a breeding ground for terrorists, claims he was completely ignored. Adelaide's Imam Mohammad Tawhidi sent two letters to Mayor Bill de Blasio warning him about the 'alarming rate of radicalisation' in his city but they went unanswered. Eight people were killed and 11 more injured when Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, allegedly pledged his allegiance to ISIS and mowed down innocent people on the streets of New York on Tuesday. 'I truly believe we could have prevented the terror attack in New York if the mayor gave me just 10 minutes of his time,' Imam Tawhidi told MailOnline on Thursday. 'I truly believe we could have prevented the terror attack in New York if the mayor gave me just 10 minutes of his time,' Imam Tawhidi told Daily Mail Australia In letters sent to Mayor De Blasio, Imam Tawhidi warned there were particular Islamic centres 'radicalising Muslim youth within your local government'. He told the mayor he was willing to give him a list of radical Muslims, and the materials and tactics they used to convert moderate Muslims in their community. 'I would have given him a list of radical Muslims coming into New York and marketing Sharia law in the streets, and lists of organisations getting funding from Iran and Saudi Arabia,' he said. MailOnline contacted Mayor de Blasio's office, but did not receive a response before publication. In letters sent to Mayor De Blasio, Imam Tawhidi warned there were particular Islamic centres 'radicalising Muslim youth within your local government' (2016 letter pictured) Eight people were killed and 11 more injured when Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, 29, (pictured) allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and mowed down innocent people on the streets of New York 'In 2016, I told Mayor de Blasio that I was in NYC and noticed some hot radical centres. I was willing to point out serious cases. Ignored!' Imam Tawhidi posted on Twitter Imam Tawhidi, who preaches messages of peace, said Muslim organisations sent money from overseas with the expectation recipients would carry out acts of terror. 'They're not just given free money, they all have an agenda, he said. Imam Tawhidi said he not only sent letters to Mayor De Blasio through the post and online, he also delivered his message through a friend, who was invited to dinner with the mayor. 'I never got a response back,' he said. During his trips to New York in 2013, 2015 and 2016, Imam Tawhidi said he noticed 'serious forms of radicalisation'. 'I found my own friend radicalised, now he's doing seven years prison for getting into a violent act,' he said. Imam Tawhidi said there was a particular focus on attracting youth and 'brainwashing them'. Imam Tawhidi has come under fire from radical Muslims for openly condemning Sharia law and radical Islam Imam Tawhidi said there was a particular focus on attracting youth and 'brainwashing them' 'About NYC terrorist attack, I personally sent letters to Mayor de Blasio online and in person about terrorist breeding in NYC. He did nothing,' Imam Tawhidi said 'In 2016 I walked into a radical mosque to see what they were doing, and the first thing I heard was a sermon quoting the chapter of Jihad.' Jihad, or the 'verse of violence', teaches 'the exerting of one's power in repelling the enemy', according to Islamic literature. In the years since Imam Tawhidi first alerted Mayor de Blasio about the threat of Islamic terror in New York, he said he was completely ignored. 'Two years is a long time, we could have banned dangerous preachers, books, we could have done lots of things,' he said. 'I really believe the mayor hasn't done anything to address Islamic extremism. 'I'm not offended, I just feel sorry for the New Yorkers and others who were killed as a result.' Imam Tawhidi claims New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (pictured) ignored his letters of warning about Islamic extremism Imam Tawhidi preaches messages of peace and has previously been forced into hiding due to threats of violence from radical Muslims 'Fact: In the last two years, De Blasio spent all his energy and resources in trying to bring down President Trump and not Islamic extremists,' Imam Tawhidi wrote on Twitter Imam Tawhidi said he was qualified to educate people about terrorism and how to prevent it, not just because he is an Imam, but because he was trained in a 'very extensive course'. The Australian imam, who emigrated from Iraq when he was 12, also said he knew first-hand 'how a radical thinks'. 'I was once almost radicalised, along with all Muslims that go to Muslim schools and attend mosques,' he said. 'I know their line of thinking.' The shocking moment that Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek citizen, was arrested after being shot in the abdomen in New York on Tuesday Imam Tawhidi sent letters to Mayor de Blasio asking to meet with him so he could warn him of 'hotspots' in New York where preachers were radicalising moderate Muslims The Adelaide based Imam has previously been targeted by hardline Muslims for condemning extremism and Sharia Law. Imam Tawhidi previously revealed to Daily Mail Australia he received death threats from extremists who wanted to behead him if they saw him on the street. He believed hardline Muslims wanted to silence him so he would stop speaking out against radicalism. The Muslim leader was forced into hiding in October when his home address was leaked. His home was targeted and his car was emblazoned with ISIS, the symbol for the Islamic State militant group. He has been in hiding since. A north Perth college is in lockdown after receiving a bomb threat 20 minutes before students were scheduled to take an exam. Parents were alerted to the threat at 9am after staff at Ashdale Secondary College in Darch sent a text message alert, according to WA Today. 'NOTIFICATION: Ashdale Secondary College have had a bomb threat. Police in attendance, more to follow. Ashdale Secondary College is close for today,' it read. Students were scheduled to take the English Western Australian Certificate of Education (WACE) exam at 9.20am. Ashdale Secondary College (pictured), in north Perth, is in lockdown after receiving a bomb threat 20 minutes before students were scheduled to take an exam WACE testing at the school began on Wednesday but parents were told to keep their children home on Thursday. Students that were already at the school were taken to Ashdale Primary School. Police remain at the school. Vile schoolgirl killer Sean Price gave a judge the middle finger and mimicked sex acts as she sentenced him to extra jail time for breaching a supervision order by raping a woman days after the murder. Price, 33, raped a woman in a Christian bookshop in Melbourne, shortly after killing 17-year-old schoolgirl Masa Vukotic by stabbing her 49 times in March 2015. He pleaded guilty to breaching a 10-year supervision order by committing the rape, and later told police he only chose to kill Ms Vukotic because she was talking to a bird 'like f***ing Snow White' Sean Price, 33, gave a judge the finger as she sentenced him to extra jail time for breaching a supervision order by committing a rape. He has already been sentenced for the random murder of schoolgirl Masa Vukotic in 2015 Ms Vukotic, 17, (pictured) was stabbed 49 times by Price because he heard her talking to a bird 'like f***ing Snow White' The sentence takes his total jail term to 41 years, and means he will be eligible for parole only once he's served 39 years and nine months at the age of 73. Price appeared in the County Court of Victoria on Thursday via video link to hear his sentence, but Judge Meryl Sexton cut him off when he began playing up and making rude gestures. She earlier refused his request to personally make a 'commentary' to the court, given he already had legal representation. Price admitted committing the rape purely for his own gratification because he knew he would be locked up for a long time for killing Ms Vukotic, Judge Sexton said. Price was jailed for life in 2016 for the rape and murder. He was on bail and subject to the supervision order - because he was already a registered sex offender - when he committed the rape. Price will be 73 years old when he is first eligible for bail after his jail sentence was brought up to 41 years Judge Meryl Sexton cut Price's video link feed off when he began playing up and making rude gestures in court on Thursday The father of murdered teen Masa Vukotic appears during an earlier court hearing in 2015 'I find there is no remorse,' Judge Sexton said. 'You are now and will remain a significant danger to the community for the immediate future.' Judge Sexton said society was paying for Price's disturbing childhood, including a head trauma at birth, family violence between his mother and her partners and sexual abuse from an early age at the hands of his carers. He had learning difficulties and was bullied at school and as a teen, began using amphetamines and marijuana. He showed psychotic symptoms but was not treated. He was jailed at 19, and since then has spent only 15 months in the community. During his hearings, Price showed an array of poor behaviour, gesturing wildly, laughing, interrupting and giving rude finger gestures. Before the killing Price's mental state was deteriorating rapidly and he was reported to have paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, the court was told. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was also a fan of cute viral videos on YouTube, it was learned on Wednesday. One video that bin Laden liked to watch is the famous Charlie Bit My Finger clip from 2007. The 55-second clip, which has been watched over 854 million times worldwide on the internet, shows two young boys, Harry, who was three years old at the time, and his then-one-year-old brother, Charlie. When Harry puts his arms around Charlie, Charlie bites one of his fingers. Harry finds this funny, so places his finger in Charlies mouth again. He obligingly bites down a second time - but hard. Osama bin Laden (above), the mastermind of terrorist attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was also a fan of cute viral videos on YouTube, it was learned on Wednesday The CIA released hundreds of thousands of files recovered from bin Laden's computer, which included audio and video files of movies. Bin Laden is seen watching himself on television in a still from a video released by the Department of Defense in 2011, several days after he died One video that bin Laden liked to watch is the famous Charlie bit my finger clip from 2007 The 55-second clip, which has been watched over 854 million times worldwide on the internet, shows two young boys, Harry, who was three years old at the time, and his then-one-year-old brother, Charlie Harrys face is a picture as the pain slowly registers, and indignant howls follow. He then announces crossly: Charlie bit me! As for Charlie - he just giggles. The clip was originally filmed by the boys father, Howard Davies-Carr. Davies-Carr, a resident of London, said he was stunned to learn that one of the clips viewers was an avowed enemy of Western civilization. The clip was originally filmed by the boys father, Howard Davies-Carr. Davies-Carr, a resident of London, said he was stunned to learn that one of the clips viewers was an avowed enemy of Western civilization I dont know how to react, he told Huffington Post. Its hard to take in. You never can tell who has a lighter side. Its hard to imagine hes planning terrible things one minute and then laughing with his family over this the next. Davies-Carr said his sons are too young to know about the September 11 terrorist attacks. He said his wife feared that bin Laden may have watched the clip to map out his next targets. The CIA released hundreds of thousands of files captured from the Al Qaeda leaders computer after the May 2011 special forces raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan which killed him. Davies-Carr (above) said his sons are too young to know about the September 11 terrorist attacks The trove of files released by the CIA consists of objects like bin Laden's journal as well as a number of American movies the terrorist had on hand, including the 2008 Morgan Spurlock documentary, 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?' and the Disney film, 'Cars.' Because of copyright issues, the CIA couldn't release some of the content found in the compound so instead released a list that included the many American films the terrorist kept on hand. Besides, the Spurlock documentary, bin Laden also had the Biography channel's film about himself along with 'CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted.' The latter film debuted in 2006 and featured the world's top three most-wanted terrorists: bin Laden, his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqaw, who was killed the same year. Another CNN film from 2006, 'In the Footsteps of bin Laden,' was also among the terrorist's trove. Bin Laden also had a number of kids' films including Antz, Batman Gotham Knight, Cars, Chicken Little, Marvel's Heroes of Tomorrow, Home on the Range, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Three Musketeers. Bin Laden's computer also had a number of kids' films including Antz (right), Batman Gotham Knight, Cars (right), Chicken Little, Marvel's Heroes of Tomorrow, Home on the Range, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Three Musketeers He had the video games Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil. And a copy of the Chinese animated film, Storm Rider Clash of the Evils. The terrorist, who couldn't leave the confines of his compound without putting his life in danger, had a number of films about other places, including Peru Civilization, The Kremlin from Inside and The Story of India. Bin Laden had a collection of National Geographic films too, along with a copy of the BBC's Great Wildlife Moments. The CIA said it also did not release any pornography found. Australia's population growth pace is more than double the world average and has been for the past decade. More than 230,000 new migrants call Australia home a year in a nation that already has 24.5 million residents. When it comes to the population expansion rate, Australia is growing at an annual pace of 1.6 per cent compared with 0.6 per cent for other wealthy nations. National Australia Bank released a graph on Thursday comparing Australia's population growth rate with 78 rich countries, as defined by the World Bank. This new NAB graph shows Australia's population growth is higher than other rich nations Australia's net annual migration rate has been close to 200,000 since 2008, building on a turbo-charged population growth push started by the Howard government in 2001. The last time Australia's population grew at a similar pace to the rest of the developed world was in 1993, when it expanded by an annual rate of 0.9 per cent compared with 0.8 per cent in other rich nations. It surged to two per cent a year in 2008, just before the global financial crisis hit, which was well above the world average of 0.8 per cent. But NAB's chief economist Alan Oster, a former federal Treasury official in Canberra, cautioned against the idea of cutting population growth in a bid to reduce Sydney and Melbourne's unaffordable house prices. 'We don't think the reason that house prices have gone up is because of population,' he told Daily Mail Australia. NAB chief economist Alan Oster says a migration slowdown won't making housing affordable NAB has released a series of graphs to argue that population growth is good for housing Mr Oster said that while population growth played a role in real estate values, the economy was more influential, pointing out that Perth's house prices fell sharply after the mining boom. He added a slowdown in immigration would do nothing to boost the supply of housing, and actually make affordability worse as there's a shallower pool of labour to build new homes. 'The story is not a simple, "Well, let's stop population growth" it's much more complicated than that,' he said. 'Housing costs might go down, maybe, but what will happen is the number of houses will go down, so activity levels will go down.' NAB's chief economist slammed Dick Smith (pictured) for calling for a slowdown in migration The former public servant also took aim at millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith's call to reduce Australia's annual net immigration rate to the 20th century average of 70,000 a year in a bid to make housing more affordable. 'As an economist, I think that's a really dumb argument,' Mr Oster said. Mr Oster said Australia's higher population growth, based equally on the birth rate and immigration, had helped boost the nation's income per capita ratio, which is below the United States but well ahead of Japan and South Korea. A mother with terminal cancer has written a heart-wrenching letter to her two young boys for when they grow up - but one of them may never live long enough to read it. Melbourne mother-of-two Sara Chivers, 34, was diagnosed with incurable brain cancer in March, eight years after bravely beating the deadly disease. But as she underwent surgery to shrink one of three aggressive tumours growing on her brain, the health of her 18-month-old son Alfie rapidly started deteriorating. When he lost mobility in one side of his body and started shaking, she rushed him to hospital, where a scan revealed the unthinkable: her baby boy had brain cancer too. Ms Chivers is now doing everything she can to save Alfie's life and create as many memories with her family as she can before her time runs out. Heartbreaking: Sara Chivers and her 18-month-old son Alfie have both been diagnosed with brain cancer The inspirational mother, who has terminal cancer, has written a heart-wrenching letter to Alfie, his older brother Hugh (right) and her loving husband Leigh In the moving letter supplied to the New Daily, Sara explains to Alfie and his older brother Hugh, three, what kind of woman she is and her hope for their futures. 'I won't be around to see you grow up. It's a hard thing to say and even harder to face,' her letter begins. 'I know your Dad, and our village of family and friends, will keep me alive for you as much as they can, but there are some things I want you to hear from me.' Sara goes on to explain that her favourite perfume is Michael Kors, favourite meal is spaghetti bolognese and favourite season is winter. 'Don't be afraid of expressing your emotions. I will never tire of hearing 'I love you' from Leigh, you boys, my family, friends,' she continues. 'Pay attention to study but know there is so much more to school life than textbooks. Play team sports. Try a musical instrument. Learn a language.' Sara is doing everything she can to save Alfie's life and create as many memories with her family as she can 'I won't be around to see you grow up. It's a hard thing to say and even harder to face': Sara writes in her powerful letter Alfie (pictured with Sara) was diagnosed with brain cancer just months after Sara found out the cancer she had beaten eight years ago had returned Sara then challenges her boys to 'love hard', be brave in their convictions and always fall back on their family when the going gets tough. 'Be kind to your Dad. It won't be easy for him raising you alone, but every decision he makes will be with your best interests at heart,' Sara writes. 'He is an exceptional father and role model. Don't let him doubt himself or the wonderful job he will do shaping you into the men I dream of you growing up to be. 'There will come a time when he wants to find happiness again with a new partner. Accept and embrace his choice, and know she will be a positive female influence in your lives too. 'I have absolute faith that he will make the right decision, for him and you both, and I hope she enriches your lives as much as you've all enriched mine.' Her emotional letter finishes with a few words to her loving husband Leigh, reading: 'He is my companion, my rock, my everything. It was always him. Always will be.' 'He is my companion, my rock, my everything. It was always him. Always will be,' Sara writes in the letter, describing her husband Leigh (pictured) 'I won't let him become a statistic': Sara (centre) is fighting to save the life of her sick son Alfie While Sara's chances for survival are slim, she is desperately fighting to save the life of Alfie, declaring: 'I won't let him become a statistic.' 'It's just devastation and a lot of grief,' Sara told ABC's 7.30. 'But also wanting to make the most of the time that we have.' Sara has undergone surgery on the largest tumour, which has helped with her mobility and will improve her quality of life as she fights for Alfie. The resilient toddler has had three separate surgeries to remove the fluid from his brain and give him a fighting chance at beating the devastating disease. Survival rates for brain cancer have not improved in the last three decades. Sara's sister Stephanie has set up a fundraising page for those hoping to help with the Chivers family's costly battle against cancer. For those wanting to financially support brain cancer research in Australia, Sara recommends donating to Cure Brain Cancer or Carries Beanies 4 Cancer. Russell Crowe has blasted Australia's handling of Manus Island refugees, calling it a 'nation's shame.' Around 600 asylum seekers and refugees have barricaded themselves inside the mothballed complex in Papua New Guinea. They are fearful they will be attacked if they venture outside the detention centre, which officially closed on Tuesday, and have warned of rapidly deteriorating conditions. 'Manus. A Nations shame. Lives held in limbo. Lives lived in fear & despair. It's fucking disgraceful,' the actor tweeted on Thursday. Russell Crowe took to Twitter to blast Australia's handling of Manus Island refugees 'Manus. A Nations shame. Lives held in limbo. Lives lived in fear & despair. It's fucking disgraceful,' the actor tweeted on Thursday And in response to a Twitter user who blasted the 'over-hyped leftist outcry as the only disgraceful part,' Crowe offered to support the refugees himself. 'I've thought about this,' he told the man, who said Crowe should put the refugees up himself. He added: 'I believe I could house and find jobs for 6. I'm sure there'd be other Australians who would do the same.' Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed an offer to take 150 refugees from Australia's offshore detention centres still stands. Ms Ardern will discuss the Manus Island stand-off with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull when they meet in Sydney on Sunday. And in response to a Twitter user who blasted the 'over-hyped leftist outcry as the only disgraceful part,' Crowe offered to support the refugees himself Detainees spent the night digging for water, while others kept watch to protect the camp in case of attack 'I think anyone would look at a situation like that and see the human face,' Ms Ardern said on Thursday. 'I am looking forward to having a conversation directly with the prime minister on Sunday about some of those issues, and New Zealand's role in and view on Manus Island in particular.' New Zealand's refugee resettlement offer was made by the Key government in 2013. It has been rejected, more than once, on the grounds that it would give refugees a backdoor into Australia and become a marketing opportunity for people smugglers. Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who is among those on Manus Island, says 'the place is like a war zone'. Detainees spent the night digging for water, while others kept watch to protect the camp in case of attack. Around 600 asylum seekers and refugees have barricaded themselves inside the mothballed complex in Papua New Guinea. File photo 'Last night the refugees were in a dark place. People were lying down on the floor and were struggling with serious hunger, having not eaten since Tuesday,' Mr Boochani told the AAP from Manus Island on Thursday. 'At the same time, they were struggling with tropical mosquitoes. Now, malaria is a new worry to add to the many other risks the refugees face.' Staff have abandoned the camp, power and running water has been cut off, and the last food packs were distributed on Sunday night. The United Nations refugee arm has two observers on the ground at Manus Island and says alternative accommodation arrangements are insufficient. It called on Australia to urgently put a stop to the unfolding crisis. Staff have abandoned the camp, power and running water has been cut off, and the last food packs were distributed on Sunday night. File photo Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is blaming advocates and the Greens for the ongoing Manus Island stand-off. 'The advocates who are here telling them not to move, they are not doing those people any favours,' he told the Nine Network on Thursday. 'I want to close Manus Island as quickly as possible. It doesn't help when you have got the Greens telling people not to engage and move. It makes a difficult situation even worse.' Human rights lawyers have lodged an injunction in the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court which would effectively force the centre to re-open. The case is expected to be heard on Thursday. The Lombrum centre was forced to close after the court ruled last year that Australia's detention of refugees and asylum seekers there was illegal and unconstitutional. Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14. A pub has been ordered to pay an anti-Islamic political party founder $2,500 compensation after they told her she wasn't welcome inside because of her views. Beach House Hotel and its general manager Paul Robins were found to have discriminated against Love Australia or Leave founder Kim Vuga on the basis of her political beliefs. Mr Robins initially showed discrimination against Ms Vuga when he told her he did not want anything to do with her political party, the day before she wanted to attend drinks there, the Courier Mail reported. Beach House Hotel and its general manager Paul Robins were found to have discriminated against Love Australia or Leave founder Kim Vuga (pictured) on the basis of political belief The hotel said in their defence the reasoning behind the decision to exclude her and her supporters was down to health and safety concerns Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal member Jeremy Gordon said in his decision the manager also discriminated against Ms Vuga and her supporters by saying they were not welcome at the hotel or the car-park. 'A substantial reason for these things happening was Ms Vuga's political belief,' he said. The hotel and Mr Robins claimed their exclusion was due to health and safety concerns, which Mr Gordon did not accept. A party representative had initially been informed two weeks before Ms Vuga planned to hold a meeting in Hervey Bay that the hotel was available for drinks only. Mr Robins then became concerned on August 8 when he saw a party flyer advertising a 'meet for drinks' and was worried people would be turning up for a meeting the next day. Mr Robins, the general manager, told Ms Vuga (pictured) that she and her supporters were not welcome at the bar He then said, in a phone conversation with Ms Vuga, that they could not meet at the hotel or in the carpark and said: 'Sorry, I don't want anything to do with your association'. In an email, the manager later told Ms Vuga: 'We do not want to get involved or have the name of our business associated with the party'. Ms Vuga's request for $25,000 was turned down as Mr Gordon didn't believe she had severely suffered from the incident. He also dismissed her application for the hotel to publish apologies or undergo anti-discrimination training. Ms Vuga believed from the start that she had a discrimination case which she thought was important to stand up for. A 17-year-old male has been arrested after a man was stabbed in the heart outside a busy western Sydney shopping centre. Emergency services were called to the intersection at Patrick and Main streets, Blacktown, in Sydney, shortly after 2pm on Thursday where a man was stabbed in the upper torso. The 18-year-old victim, John Kelly, was rushed to Westmead Hospital in a critical condition. Scroll down for video The 18-year-old victim was rushed to Westmead Hospital in a critical condition New South Wales police arrested a man at a home in Blacktown a short time later and took him back to the local police station Shocked witnesses could be seen crowding around the stabbing victim as he was loaded into the back of an ambulance. Paramedics arrived to find the teenager in a critical condition and losing a lot of blood. The Careflight helicopter, also tasked to the stabbing, had landed on the Prospect Highway to drop its emergency medical team. They jumped aboard the ambulance, which was rushing the teenager to Westmead Hospital, to stabilise him on the road. Surgeons and operating theatres were put on standby as the teenager began losing consciousness. He was rushed into surgery as soon as he arrived. 'Anyone who has sustained a penetrating injury anywhere around the heart is a concern,' Chief Inspector Parsell said. A confronting photo surfaced online soon after the incident, showing a man dressed in a black Adidas shirt and grey tracksuit pants, wielding a knife in his right hand Emergency services are seen loading the 18-year-old victim into an ambulance 'Cardiac penetrating injuries are extremely life-threatening and time is of the essence.' Officers from Blacktown Local Area Command established a large crime scene and commenced an investigation. A confronting photo surfaced online soon after the incident, showing a man dressed in a black Adidas shirt and grey tracksuit pants, wielding a knife in his right hand. New South Wales police arrested a 17-year-old at a home in Blacktown a short time later and took him back to the local police station. Sobering footage of the 18-year-old victim, John Kelly, emerged a short time after the attack. Shocked witnesses are seen crowding around the stabbing victim as he is loaded into the back of an ambulance following the 2.20pm attack in Blacktown The 18-year-old victim, John Kelly, was stabbed in the chest in Blacktown on Thursday Mr Kelly can be seen lying on a hospital bed, bleeding heavily as paramedics work to stabilise him. Dressed in black shorts, and a white t-shirt, Mr Kelly is seen with blood dripping down his left leg, and onto the ground beneath him. Police officers were also pictured in the far-right corner of the hospital room. The 17-year-old male was taken to Blacktown Police Station after being arrested and his helping police with their inquiries. Police say the incident was not terror related. New South Wales police have urged anyone with information in relation to the attack to phone Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Mr Kelly can be seen lying on a hospital bed, bleeding heavily as paramedics work on him The Russian hackers who got Hillary Clinton's emails targeted thousands of other individuals among the top echelons of the US's diplomatic and security services including then-Secretary of State John Kerry, Colin Powell, Wesley Clark and the manager of the Lockheed Martin's stealth fighter program. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe - from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. 'It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests,' said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. Russian hackers who got Hillary Cinton's (pictured in February 2016) emails targeted thousands of high profile individuals involved in the nation's defense Former Secretary of State John Kerry, pictured meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2015, was among the targets of the Russian hackaers He said the data was 'a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence.' The hackers not only targeted politicians, officials and defense services in the US, but hacked the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had 'dirt' on Clinton, including 'thousands of emails.' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered 'unfounded.' But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. 'This is the Kremlin and the general staff,' said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. 'I have no doubts.' Cybersecurity firm Secureworks stumbled upon the data after hacking group Fancy Bear (stock image) accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet - which revealed a direct link between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest This image shows a portion of a phishing email sent to a Hillary Clinton campaign official on March 25, 2016 THE NEW EVIDENCE Secureworks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and - especially - Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle. The AP also found a handful of Republican targets. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (left) and security expert Wesley Clark (right) were targeted in the hacks Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services, including workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin (pictured) Podesta, Powell, Breedlove and more than a dozen Democratic targets besides Podesta would soon find their private correspondence dumped to the web. The AP has determined that all had been targeted by Fancy Bear, most of them three to seven months before the leaks. 'They got two years of email,' Powell recently told AP. He said that while he couldn't know for sure who was responsible, 'I always suspected some Russian connection.' In Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding war against Russia-backed separatists, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. The list includes Serhiy Leshchenko, an opposition parliamentarian who helped uncover the off-the-books payments allegedly made to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort - whose indictment was unsealed Monday in Washington. In Russia, Fancy Bear focused on government opponents and dozens of journalists. Among the targets were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in exile, and Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants. 'Everything on this list fits,' said Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst who was himself among the targets. He said Russian authorities would have been particularly interested in Navalny, one of the few opposition leaders with a national following. Former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky (left) and Maria Alekhina of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot (right) Many of the targets have little in common except that they would have been crossing the Kremlin's radar: an environmental activist in the remote Russian port city of Murmansk; a small political magazine in Armenia; the Vatican's representative in Kiev; an adult education organization in Kazakhstan. 'It's simply hard to see how any other country would be particularly interested in their activities,' said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. He was also on the list. 'If you're not Russia,' he said, 'hacking these people is a colossal waste of time.' WORKING 9 TO 6 MOSCOW TIME Allegations that Fancy Bear works for Russia aren't new. But raw data has been hard to come by. Researchers have been documenting the group's activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russia's intelligence services. The 'Fancy Bear' nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russia's national symbol. In the wake of the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly endorsed the consensus view, saying what American spooks had long alleged privately: Fancy Bear is a creature of the Kremlin. But the U.S. intelligence community provided little proof, and even media-friendly cybersecurity companies typically publish only summaries of their data. That makes the Secureworks' database a key piece of public evidence - all the more remarkable because it's the result of a careless mistake. Secureworks effectively stumbled across it when a researcher began working backward from a server tied to one of Fancy Bear's signature pieces of malicious software. This image shows a portion of a phishing email sent to a Washington area-based military analyst in September 2017 Putin told reporters, Russian hackers might 'wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and, if they have patriotic leanings, they may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia' He found a hyperactive Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to sneak thousands of malicious links past Google's spam filter. Because Fancy Bear forgot to set the account to private, Secureworks spent the next few months hovering over the group's shoulder, quietly copying down the details of the thousands of emails it was targeting. The AP obtained the data recently, boiling it down to 4,700 individual email addresses, and then connecting roughly half to account holders. The AP validated the list by running it against a sample of phishing emails obtained from people targeted and comparing it to similar rosters gathered independently by other cybersecurity companies, such as Tokyo-based Trend Micro and the Slovakian firm ESET. The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours - between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. The AP's findings also track with a report that first brought Fancy Bear to the attention of American voters. In 2016, a cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike said the Democratic National Committee had been compromised by Russian hackers, including Fancy Bear. Secureworks' roster shows Fancy Bear making aggressive attempts to hack into DNC technical staffers' emails in early April 2016 - exactly when CrowdStrike says the hackers broke in. And the raw data enabled the AP to speak directly to the people who were targeted, many of whom pointed the finger at the Kremlin. 'We have no doubts about who is behind these attacks,' said Artem Torchinskiy, a project coordinator with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund who was targeted three times in 2015. 'I am sure these are hackers controlled by Russian secret services.' THE MYTH OF THE 400-POUND MAN Even if only a small fraction of the 4,700 Gmail accounts targeted by Fancy Bear were hacked successfully, the data drawn from them could run into terabytes - easily rivaling the biggest known leaks in journalistic history. For the hackers to have made sense of that mountain of messages - in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Arabic and many other languages - they would have needed a substantial team of analysts and translators. Merely identifying and sorting the targets took six AP reporters eight weeks of work. The AP's effort offers 'a little feel for how much labor went into this,' said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He said the investigation should put to rest any theories like the one then-candidate Donald Trump floated last year that the hacks could be the work of 'someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.' 'The notion that it's just a lone hacker somewhere is utterly absurd,' Rid said. The owner of a pizza parlor in Tampa, Florida received criticism after he banned children from his restaurant for being too rowdy. Manager at the Hampton Station beer and food joint, Troy Taylor, made the controversial decision last week when he plopped a straight-forward sign up on the front door which read: 'NO CHILDREN.' Local parents spoke out shortly after the notice was placed outside, expressing both distaste and approval for Taylor's new child-free environment. In one lengthy post shared to the Tampa Bay Moms Group on Facebook, one member said: 'Some parents are upset that a place near family neighborhoods, a place they say they've been before with their family to eat, is no longer admitting minors.' The owner of the Hampton Station Beer Garden, Troy Taylor, posted a sign to the front door last week which read: 'NO CHILDREN' Local parents spoke out shortly after the notice was placed outside, expressing both distaste and approval for Taylor's new child-free environment She added: 'If this place was once a family dining place it seems to now be catering to a more mature crowd. While it seems some may say this isn't fair or is some sort of discrimination or are simply upset about the change to the demographic they are looking to bring in. 'I'm thinking I'd like to have a date night or moms night out here... Am I the odd mom out?' she inquired. While the decision received negative reactions from some, other mothers who are members of the Facebook group expressed their understanding. One woman even blasted those who were offended by the decision, saying: 'Clearly they have changed their business model and want everyone to know they are officially a BAR! Don't take your kids to a bar - are you drinking and then getting in the car with them?!?!' In one post shared to the Tampa Bay Moms Group on Facebook, one member said: 'Some parents are upset' by the decision Despite the pizza parlor also operating as a watering hole, another social media user argued the ban could be considered as 'some type of discrimination.' She said: 'If a business had a sign stating they did not allow people of a certain age, sex, or ethnicity to enter their establishment it would be splashed all over the news, heavily fined, and probably shut down.' The bar's owner, Taylor, has since spoken out on his difficult decision this week in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times. He said the ban came after several incidents happened that involved disruptive children who were not made under the control by parents. The bar's owner said the decision came after several incidents took place inside the joint that likely could have led to a lawsuit Taylor said: 'A kid was in danger and could have seriously been hurt ... It's a liability and safety issue. After the incident, I thought, this can't happen again' Taylor, who opened the parlor just two years ago, said he was 'sure he would have been sued had the worst happened.' He said of one event: 'A kid was in danger and could have seriously been hurt... It's a liability and safety issue. After the incident, I thought, this can't happen again.' The owner revealed he's mostly steered clear of social media - adding the children ban at the bar was 'one of the toughest things' he's ever done. According to the newspaper, the federal law says businesses have the right to determine whether or not an environment is suitable for minors. 'Businesses are allowed to call their shots when it comes to kids,' the report said. 'The law forbids discrimination regarding race, religion and other categories, but theres not the same broad protection for children.' Nearly ten years ago, Victorian Labor MP Jaala Pulford voted against euthanasia. But after losing her 13-year-old daughter Sinead to cancer in December 2014 her views changed. On Thursday, Ms Pulford delivered an emotional speech about her daughter's untimely death during a debate on legalising euthanasia. '[I] learned more about death and dying than I ever cared to,' she said. Scroll down for video Ms Pulford is comforted by other MPs after speaking about the loss of her daughter during the Victorian parliament's debate on euthanasia She broke down in tears in parliament after giving an emotional speech Jaala Pulford said losing her 13-year-old daughter Sinead to cancer in December 2014 changed her views on euthanasia 'I don't know what it's like to be told you are dying but I know what it's like to be told your child is dying. 'Shock, disbelief, fear, anxiety, confusion, deep sadness, anger. Every stage of negotiation and denial. 'I now have intimate experience of advanced, aggressive terminal illness. 'When my beautiful, brilliant, vivacious, unicycle-mad daughter Sinead was diagnosed with cancer we were told they'd not seen anything like this before,' Ms Pulford said in her speech. 'Sinead's death was a good death, for the horror that it was. 'When Sinead died she was holding my hand and I was able to tell her how brave she'd been, how loved she was and how it was okay for her to go now.' '[I] learned more about death and dying than I ever cared to,' Ms Pulford said If the bill passes, people over the age of 18, who are terminally ill, in severe pain and with only a year to live will be able to access drugs to end their lives 'So I've changed my mind.' She said the bill currently being debated was different to the one she voted against in 2008. 'Its scope is narrower, its safeguards are robust. This time it is not difficult at all. 'Our parliament has an opportunity to demonstrate compassion for those with unendurable suffering. 'I don't know what it's like to be told you are dying but I know what it's like to be told your child is dying' Sinead had a 'good death', assisted by 'the best palliative care', Ms Pulford told The Age last month The Upper House of Victorian Parliament are currently debating the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017 Sinead had a 'good death', assisted by 'the best palliative care', Ms Pulford told The Age last month. The Upper House of Victorian Parliament are currently debating the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017. If the bill passes, people over the age of 18, who are terminally ill, in severe pain and with only a year to live will be able to access drugs to end their lives. Pictured is the Pulford family, from left: Hamish, Jaala, Sinead and Jeff 'When my beautiful, brilliant, vivacious, unicycle-mad daughter Sinead was diagnosed with cancer we were told they'd not seen anything like this before,' Ms Pulford said in her speech Suspected New York terrorist Sayfullo Saipov was radicalized in the United States, according to sources in his native Uzbekistan Suspected New York terrorist Sayfullo Saipov was radicalized in the United States, according to sources in his native Uzbekistan who were 'interrogating' his parents and sister overnight. They have established that the 29-year-old was from a relatively prosperous family in capital Tashkent and his mother and father - market traders - are 'shocked and shamed' by their son's alleged killing of eight people. 'They cannot understand how he came to do this terrible deed and they had no warning that this was coming,' said a source. 'They feel disgrace on their family,' said a neighbor, who described them as 'good people, Muslims yes of course, but not fanatics'. It was 'a deep shock and shaming'. Saipov's 52-year-old father, Habibullo Saipov, and 50-year-old mother, Muqaddas Saipova, sell clothes at the Bektopi bazaar in Tashkent. Uzbek security service SNB were working with the parents and Saipov's 17-year-old sister, and relaying their accounts to the FBI. The Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan (above in court sketches) accused of carrying on Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Saipov (seen being taken into custody on Tuesday) immigrated to the US from his native Uzbekistan in March 2010 They were focusing on the mother's trip to the US between December 2016 and February 2017 to see her newborn grandchild. But it also seemed clear that the suspected terrorist had not returned to his home Uzbekistan since leaving for the US in 2010. Nor did he have a criminal record before leaving his country after securing Green Card entry to America, according to the Uzbek government. 'His radicalization cannot have been here, but in the United States,' said a security source. The above image shows the house in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where Saipov's parents and his younger sister live now Sources say the Uzbek security services 'interrogated' Saipov's parents and sister. The above image shows the street where they live now Sources say the mother and father are 'shocked and shamed' by their son's alleged actions in New York. The above image shows a block of flats where Saipov lived in Tashkent until 2006 Saipov's 52-year-old father, Habibullo Saipov, and 50-year-old mother, Muqaddas Saipova, sell clothes at the Bektopi bazaar in Tashkent. The above image shows residents of the block of flats in Tashkent where Saipov once lived He is remembered as being 'friendly', and a man who wanted to 'better himself'. Another neighbor described them as 'an ordinary family. They are not very religious. 'They do not pray five times a day. But they are economically well-off. 'They have a Gentra [model] car. They get on with everyone in the neighbourhood. 'Their elder daughter got married and moved to the Huvaydo neighbourhood. 'Their younger daughter is a college student and lives with them.' Registration documents came to light showing that Saipov had an address in a Soviet-era block in the Shaykhantahur district, north-west Tashkent, said Ferghana. His parents later moved to a new address in the dusty central Asian city. Before leaving Tashkent, Saipov had worked as a bookkeeper at drab Sayohat Hotel in the city. Between 2005 to 2009, he studied at the Tashkent Financial Institute, a large university in the capital. Before leaving Tashkent, Saipov had worked as a bookkeeper at drab Sayohat Hotel in the city. The above document confirms Saipov's previous address in the Uzbek capital Between 2005 to 2009, he studied at the Tashkent Financial Institute, a large university in the capital Saipov's social media accounts suggest he had a network of friends in 2011-13 in Osh, in Kyrgyzstan, another ex-Soviet republic, and there were suggestions he had lived here at some point. The city has a large population of ethnic Uzbeks, and clashes between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz led to hundreds of deaths in the area in 2010. Ethnic Uzbek terrorist Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, from Osh, last year blew up a Metro train in Vladimir Putin's home city St Petersburg, Russia, killing 15 people. There are also unconfirmed reports that Saipov had spent time in Vologda in the north of Russia, but Muslim sources said there was no evidence for this claim. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan sent condolences to President Donald Trump and vowed to do all he could to aid the investigation. He condemned the 'ruthless and extremely cruel crime' in New York. His country would 'use all the forces and means available to assist in the investigation of this terrorist act'. An experienced hang-glider pilot has died after he crashed into a cliff in Newcastle Thursday afternoon. The 62-year-old man from Lake Macquarie collided heavily with a cliff face near Shepherds Hill about 1.45pm. He reportedly crashed about two metres below the edge of the cliff after losing control of his hang glider. Bystanders attended to the man before emergency services arrived, but he died at the scene, authorities say. A 62-year-old experienced hang glider pilot from Lake Macquarie collided heavily with a cliff face near Shepherds Hill (pictured) about 1.45pm Thursday About a dozen people were there as the tragedy unfolded, including the man's family who were standing nearby The man launched his non-motorised aircraft from Strzelecki Lookout, just 400 metres north from the scene of the crash. Newcastle City police Chief Inspector Gerard Lawson described the incident as 'very tragic'. 'A man has lost his life doing something that he loved,' Inspector Lawson told Newcastle Herald. About a dozen people were there as the tragedy unfolded, including the man's family who were standing nearby. Forensic police attended the scene and a report is being prepared for the coroner. Emergency services attended the scene but were unable to save the man's life A man who secretly photographed his naked flatmate has been fined after admitting his guilt. The Sydney man confessed to his crime when confronted by the distressed woman's boyfriend, Burwood Local Court heard. Jiarui Li, of Strathfield, was fined $3700 on Thursday after pleading guilty to taking an intimate image without consent. A man (pictured) who secretly photographed his naked flatmate has been fined after admitting his guilt The court heard the 22-year-old was confronted by the woman's boyfriend in September. Li took four nude photographs of his flatmate through a bathroom window opening to a balcony a month earlier. The woman had alerted her boyfriend when she thought she noticed a camera flash while standing in front of the bathroom mirror, according to a statement of facts tendered in court. Li, a Chinese resident in Australia on a student visa, told police he acted out of curiosity. Jiarui Li (pictured), of Strathfield, was fined $3700 on Thursday after pleading guilty to taking an intimate image without consent Jiarui Li (pictured) confessed to his crime when confronted by the distressed woman's boyfriend, Burwood Local Court heard His victim was severely affected by the incident and broke down while giving a statement to police, in which she shared her concern that the images could have been distributed to others. Li's solicitor, Jason Neo, on Thursday said his client had no malicious intent and cooperated with police from the beginning. Magistrate Suzanne Seagrave took this into consideration in sentencing but said Li had caused great distress by photographing his victim in a place where she was entitled to feel safe. She said his offence was not the most serious example of such a crime but she didn't regard it as trivial. Two SAS soldiers have been charged with negligence over the deaths of three soldiers who died on a training course in the Brecon Beacons in 2013. The pair, who were overseeing a 16-mile test march in searing temperatures, will go on trial accused of 'negligent performance of duty'. Cpl James Dunsby, Trooper Edward Maher and L/Cpl Craig Roberts collapsed in scorching temperatures while carrying heavy packs over a time trial mountain march mountain in a bid to join the world-famous Special Forces unit in July 2013. A coroner in 2015 ruled they died from neglect. Cpl James Dunsby (left) and (right) Trooper Edward Maher who collapsed during an SAS training exercise in July 2013 L/Cpl Craig Roberts also died after taking part in the military exercise in the Brecon Beacons L/Cpl Roberts, 24, from Penrhyn Bay, Conwy and L/Cpl Maher, 31 of Winchester died on the exercise, while Cpl Dunsby, 31, of Bath, was taken to hospital and died from multiple organ failure 17 days later. All had suffered from hyperthermia, where the body no longer controls core temperature. Known only as 1A and 1B, the SAS soldiers face two years' jail and dismissal from the forces if found guilty. The soldiers' inquest in 2015 heard a failure of basic medical care contributed to their deaths, and the Army said it accepted it did not carefully manage the risks involved in the exercise. Coroner Louise Hunt said parts of the planning and conduct of the march were inadequate or not fit for purpose. She said inadequate supplies of water also contributed to one of the deaths. Initially, the military's Service Prosecuting Authority had decided not to charge the two soldiers, who were the training officer and chief instructor during SAS reserves selection. Three SAS reservists suffered heat exhaustion on a time trial mountain march in the Brecon Beacons in July 2013 But relatives of the soldiers lodged a review with the SPA and its decision was reversed. The case will be heard in a military court and the maximum sentence is two years. An MOD spokesperson said: 'Any decision to prosecute any personnel, veteran or serving, is made by the Service Prosecution Authority (SPA), an independent body.' Lawyers who represented Cpl Dunsby's father David at the inquest, and provided evidence at a subsequent parliamentary inquiry into military training exercises, said the Ministry of Defence had refused to accept corporate responsibility for deaths in training, exercises and selection events. Hilary Meredith, chairwoman at Hilary Meredith Solicitors and a visiting professor of law and veterans' affairs at the University of Chester, said the MoD was 'ignoring the will of a parliamentary inquiry and flying in the face of public opinion in the process'. 'In any other corporate environment the employer, in this case the Ministry of Defence (MoD), would take corporate responsibility and face a manslaughter charge,' she said. Her colleague, director of the firm Clare Stevens, said it should be the MoD in the dock and accused it of 'looking for scapegoats'. North Korea could be on the verge of launching another missile as activity was spotted at one of Kim Jong-un's test sites. Movement has been spotted at Pyongyang's research facilities, South Korea's spy agency said on Thursday, amid fears the testing site in the northwestern town of Punggye-ri could be on the brink of collapse due to damage sustained during its sixth and largest nuclear test in September. It comes as US officials warned the hermit nation's dictator could be ready to fix miniaturised nuclear warheads on a rocket capable of reaching America within a matter of weeks. The North Korean tyrant is believed to be preparing for a 2018 breakthrough in work to mount mini nukes on to intercontinental ballistic missiles. Kim Jong-un (centre) could be ready to fix miniaturised nuclear warheads on a rocket capable of reaching America within weeks, US officials have warned With just weeks to go before the new year, US officials say the dictator appears to be accelerating moves to boost all aspects of his nuclear and missile defence capabilities. It comes as Kim Jong-un's regime insisted it needed a haul of nuclear weapons as a deterrent against 'invasion and plunder' by America. According to CNN, a US official has warned that North Korea is developing an advanced version of its KN-20 missile that may be able to reach America. This comes less than six months after Pyongyang launched its first ICBM, sparking international condemnation. The developments mean US defence officials are having to recalculate the timescale of the threat posed by the hermit state. Meanwhile, the country has unleashed another tirade of propaganda slamming the US. In a ranting statement, Pyongyang hit out at Donald Trump and warned it was ready to defend itself. The development comes less than six months after Pyongyang launched its first ICBM, sparking international condemnation It said: 'The nuclear force of the DPRK has become a strong deterrent for firmly protecting peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of Northeast Asia and creditably guaranteeing the sovereignty and the rights to existence and development of the Korean nation.' The statement also made the case for continuing its nuclear programme by pointing out the 'tragic situation of the war-torn non-nuclear countries which became the targets of invasion and plunder by the US.' The international community has been working to come up with a response to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missiles programmes that does not involve potentially catastrophic military action. North Korea this year conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation and has test-fired a volley of missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that, if perfected, could potentially reach the U.S. mainland. Ranny Yun, 27, was raped and murdered a year after she fled Cambodia for Melbourne where she carried out executions for the brutal Khmer Rouge. Ranny Yun fled Cambodia in 1986 for a new life in Australia after carrying out killings for Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Just a year later her sister and cousin found the 27-year-old woman raped and murdered in her Springvale, Melbourne, home on October 15, 1987. The case baffled detectives for 30 years and they had no leads despite offering a $50,000 reward - until they finally found a suspect across the country. Meth Mean, 49, was arrested in Perth on Thursday and charged with Ms Yun's murder after a review of the cold case identified him as a person of interest. The Cambodian man was in the Perth Magistrates Court on Thursday ordered to be extradited back to Melbourne to face court on Monday. Mean asked to speak to his wife but the magistrate told him that would be up to prison authorities. He also has at least one daughter and multiple grandchildren. Detectives at the time had several theories about why Ms Yun was killed, including her past in Cambodia coming back to haunt her. Meth Mean, 49, was arrested in Perth on Thursday and charged with Ms Yun's murder after a review of the cold case identified him as a person of interest Ms Yun may have been killed in revenge for her murders in Cambodia, or over her links to illegal gambling and loansharking in Melbourne Homicide squad Detective Senior Sergeant John Ashby back then said she was responsible for several executions for the Khmer Rouge. 'It could have been a payback murder and people may be fearful about coming forward with information because of possible reprisals,' he said. She could also have been killed because of her links to illegal gambling and loansharking in Melbourne. Ms Yun's husband moved to Western Australia after her death and regularly called homicide detectives desperate for updates on the case - but they had none. 'In many, many cases you get some idea as to the perpetrator in a crime of this type but in this case we have none at all,' Sergeant Ashby admitted in 1988. Police in Pakistan have arrested eight men for parading a 14-year-old through a village naked in connection with a dispute over family honour. The girl was abducted by the gang on October 27 before she was stripped down and forced to run through the streets of Garahmat village in Dera Ismail Khan. It is claimed the girl's brother had been having an affair. When the village council found out they ruled the scorned wife's family could hit back by punishing the alleged adulterer's sister. The girl was snatched by the gang on October 27 before she was stripped down and forced to run through the streets of Garahmat village in Dera Ismail Khan, pictured here in 2012 after a bomb exploded killing seven The girl was walking to fetch water from a pond on the morning of October 27 when she was abducted and stripped in Dera Ismail Khan The girl's family initially claimed the girl was taken to a house, beaten up and stripped by nine people, but later retracted the statement on Monday, according to DAWN. She was with three of her cousins on the morning of October 27 walking to a local pond to fetch water when she was snatched. Police are still hunting one suspect, but the other eight appeared before a judge on Wednesday. Family honor is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed by their relatives each year for violating conservative norms on love and marriage. Village councils have been accused of settling family disputes without involving the judicial system, leading to the abuse of vulnerable relatives. Just three months ago, members of a village council in Pakistan were arrested for ordering the revenge rape of a teenager because her brother had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in a field. A Pakistani villager poses as he points to a house where a teenage girl was raped in the neighbourhood of Raja Ram in Muzaffarabad, a suburb of the central city of Multan on July 26, 2017 This photograph taken on July 26, 2017, shows a view of a room where a Pakistani teenage girl was raped in the neighbourhood of Raja Ram in Muzaffarabad The arrests, which included the man who allegedly committed the 'revenge rape', brings the total number detained to 18, a police source confirmed. A jirga - or village council - in a suburb of the central city of Multan had ordered the rape of the 16-year-old girl as a punishment, after her brother sexually assaulted a 12-year-old. She was dragged to the meeting in Rajpur and the horrific retaliation was carried out in front of her parents and the 40 men on the council. Family member Muhammad Bilal, 25, said after they learned of the first rape - which was committed in July - they went to the 12-year-old's family to seek forgiveness. 'Their women started shouting and their men asked us to first bring Umar's sister (the 16-year-old) then they will talk about it,' he said. 'But when we came back with the girl, the men and the council decided that the same act would be done to the girl. What could we do, in our village disputes are settled like this.' Jirgas, or village councils formed of local elders, are a traditional means of settling disputes in Pakistan's rural areas, where courts and lawyers are not always accessible or trusted. Such councils are illegal and have been under fire for their controversial decisions, especially regarding women. 'What we did was wrong, but this is the way things are done here. We seek pardon and we promise not to do it again,' said Mohammad Amin, 45, a member of the jirga who is now in police custody. An aerial shot of a festival in Multan, where the council convened to dish out the sickening punishment to an innocent girl A jirga was involved in one of South Asia's most infamous cases of sexual violence against women when, in 2002, it ordered the gang rape of a woman called Mukhtar Mai after her brother was falsely accused of rape. Mai made the unusual decision to defy her rapists and take them to court. Her attackers walked free but she went on to become a high-profile women's rights activist. Her story inspired an opera, 'Thumbprint', which opened in New York in 2014 and premiered in Los Angeles last month. MPs let their hair down at a swanky dinner last night amid a growing storm over sexual misconduct in politics. Politicians partied at a five-star hotel as Sir Michael Fallon became the first ministerial head to roll in the Westminster sleaze scandal. Sir Michael, 65, quit after admitting his behaviour had 'fallen below the high standards we require of the armed forces'. But MPs put the growing sex scandal behind them as they enjoyed a glitzy awards ceremony at the Rosewood Hotel. Liz Truss (left) and Jacob Rees-Mogg (right) enjoyed the The Spectator's 31st Parliamentarian of the Year at the five-star Rosewood Hotel Michael Gove was called in as a last minute replacement to present the awards as Theresa May dealt with the resignation of Sir Michael Fallon The Environment Secretary embraces Rachel Johnson, who picked up the 'minister to watch' award on behalf of her brother, Boris Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss mingled with other eminent politicians and journalists during The Spectator magazine's Parliamentarian of the Year awards. Right-wing Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg, who won 'Insurgent of the Year' and leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson, who was presented with the 'Parliamentarian of the Year' award were also spotted at the bash. The awards were presented by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who stepped in for the Prime Minister at the last minute as she dealt with the storm brewing in her government. Mrs May will now have to appoint a new Defence Secretary and deprives her of one of her most experienced and trusted colleagues. Michael Gove, who presented the awards, and ex-Justice Secretary Liz Truss, enjoyed the bash at the Rosewood Hotel in High Holborn Jacob Rees Mogg, MP for North East Somerset, who was presented with the Insurgent of the Year award Home Secretary Amber Rudd, whose name was on a controversial sleaze dossier which began circulating in Westminster at the weekend, was in attendance at the Spectator awards Michael Gove presented the awards to 'Comeback of the Year' Sir Vince Cable, Ruth Davidson who won 'Parliamentarian of the Year' and Jacob Rees-Mogg, 'Insurgent of the Year' Sir Michael's surprise announcement came after it emerged he had repeatedly put his hand on a journalist's knee at a dinner in 2002. His name had also appeared on the unverified list of sexual misconduct allegations which has been circulating in Westminster. Sir Michael's resignation will fuel speculation that other ministers could also be forced out as a result of the scandal. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, watches the awards ceremony at the Rosewood Hotel Journalists Sarah Vine (left), Andrew Neil, Rachel Johnson and leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson at the bash Speaking as he left The Spectator magazine's Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable told the Press Association: 'I don't know what's behind it, it's obviously not as simple as that, the (Hartley-Brewer) incident was fairly minor, wasn't it? That's not a resignation so there must be more (to the resignation). 'It's unfortunate, he's obviously a very capable guy, we worked together in the coalition, it was comfortable, we came from opposite positions politically but we worked together very effectively. 'So I'm surprised and a bit saddened he's been forced out, none of us understand the underlying reasons.' Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who accepted the Politician of the Year award on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn, said she had 'no comment' on Mr Fallon, but added it was 'inevitable' that more allegations would emerge. 'I think the Government's in quite a precarious position,' she said. Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott collects the 'Politician of the Year' on behalf of Jeremy Corbyn last night Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has dismissed complaints the Westminster sexual misconduct row has got out of hand - saying it was essential to 'clean out the stables'. Ms Davidson spoke out warning that the 'dam has broken' and the row engulfing British politics would continue for 'some time to come'. She said the fact that there was a woman in charge of Downing Street did not mean that 'sexism and misogyny' had been 'somehow consigned to the dustbin of history'. Ms Davidson (pictured at the Spectator awards last night) spoke out today warning that the 'dam has broken' and the row engulfing British politics would continue for 'some time to come' Sir Michael Fallon has sensationally resigned as defence secretary amid a growing Westminster harassment scandal The comments came after Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon dramatically resigned in the wake of allegations about his behaviour. In a resignation statement, Sir Michael, 65, said his past conduct had 'fallen below the high standards we require of the Armed Forces'. He also admitted to the BBC last night: 'What might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now'. Sir Michael is thought to have been concerned there might be further revelations about his conduct with women as he was compared to 'Jekyll and Hyde' while drinking. One friend said: 'Alcohol is a power drug which turns some into a Jekyll and Hyde' and another said: 'Has there been flirtation that has been inappropriate? Yes, he will concede that.' His resignation came just 36 hours after it emerged he had repeatedly put his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at a lunch 15 years ago and she threatened to punch him in the face unless he stopped. Chief Whip Gavin Williamson is said to have warned the Theresa May there could be more allegations about Sir Michael, who has been the subject of Westminster gossip for years. People close to the MP acknowledged he had been braced for the possibility of more claims about his behaviour and three years ago he was accused of calling journalist Bryony Gordon a 'slut' at a party. This is the letter Sir Michael Fallon sent to the Prime Minister announcing his resignation Allegations have been swirling around all parties at Westminster, with a Tory 'dirty dossier' listing claims against 40 MPs. Meanwhile, Labour is scrambling to deal with allegations that a prominent activist was raped by a senior official. Ms Davidson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she believed the 'dam has broken' and it was time to 'clean out the stables'. 'As law makers and people who make decisions we have to hold ourselves to a high standard... the dam has broken on this now and these male dominated professions... where the boys' own, locker room conditions have taken hold have got to stop.' Speaking at the Spectator awards last night, Ms Davidson cautioned that it would be wrong to downplay the row. 'The tone of politics has changed markedly in the past few days, and I believe will continue in that vein for some time to come,' she said. 'Just because we have a woman in No. 10 at the top of the tree in Plaid Cymru, doesn't mean sexism and misogyny are somehow consigned to the dustbin of history when it comes to politics. 'Nor when we look at the house clearing that needs to go ahead is it going to be denied that we needed a pretty big shovel.' Russian cyber-spies are 'setting up shop' in Scotland to boost support for another independence referendum, a US senator has warned. Senator Angus King told a hearing in Washington that the Kremlin interference was part of an 'information war' aimed at the 'division of society' across Europe and Scotland is on its target list. His comments follow the opening of an alleged Russian propaganda agency in Edinburgh during the 2014 independence vote. Senator Angus King speaks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing to answer questions about Russian use of social media to influence US elections in Washington yesterday The agency was then accused of being part of a wider plot led by Russian president Vladimir Putin to support the break-up in an attempt to destabilise the UK. Speaking at the Senate intelligence committee yesterday, senator King said Russian agents using Twitter and other social media had also been involved in last month's 'illegal' Catalonian independence referendum. He said the same tactics had been used in a bid to influence this year's French and German elections. At a hearing set up to grill social media bosses about alleged Russian influence in last year's US presidential election, the senator said: 'A new type of war has emerged, information warfare. 'The warfare is the division of our society and it's not only us, it's the entire West. The Russians were involved in the French election, in the German elections. Senator King (pictured yesterday) said Russian agents using Twitter and other social media had also been involved in last month's 'illegal' Catalonian independence referendum 'We are now learning they were involved in the separation of Spain. And my understanding is that they have set up shop in Scotland, which is talking about an independence vote from Great Britain. 'This is a sophisticated worldwide strategy that applied here in 2016. It hasn't stopped and it won't stop. Their strategy is to take a crack in our society and turn it into a chasm.' His comments follow a debate on Tuesday in which a senior Tory MP demanded answers from Facebook on whether Russians were using the social network to cause discord north of the Border. Damian Collins, chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, said: 'We are interested in any political activity on Facebook in the UK driven by Russian-backed organisations. 'We will be asking Facebook about this as part of our inquiry into the power of fake news to disrupt our democracy.' Independence supporters stand outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in March Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told MPs he had seen no evidence of Russian interference in British elections or referendums so far. He told the foreign affairs select committee: 'I haven't seen any evidence of that.' Told that he seemed uncertain, Mr Johnson added: 'No, I haven't seen it. Not a sausage ... nyet, nyet, nyet [Russian for no, no, no].' Mr Johnson was then pushed on whether he thought Russia had played any role, or sought to play a role, in the UK's democracy and he replied: 'I don't know about sought to play, but as far as I know they have played no role.' We told in October 2016 how an offshoot of Pravda, a Russian broadsheet newspaper and formerly the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, announced plans to open in Edinburgh this year. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told the foreign affairs select committee (pictured yesterday) that he had seen no evidence of Russian interference in British elections or referendums so far Another Russian media outlet, RT (formerly Russia Today) is also understood to be interested in opening a branch in the city, raising fears of growing media support in Scotland for Mr Putin. Some also claim the Russian media incursion into Scotland is an attempt to influence the independence debate and prise the Union apart. Meanwhile an investigation has been launched by Britain's election watchdog into claims that Russia meddled in last summer's Brexit referendum. The Election Commission will look into whether Mr Putin interfered in the EU vote after allegations that Russian cyber-spies influenced the US Presidential vote. As part of its probe, the body will also seek to investigate the influence of social media during political campaigns. A Sydney teacher accused of sex offences against four young girls could face further charges with police contacted about another possible complaint following publicity around his arrest. Simon William Phillips, from Russell Lea, has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of aggravated indecent assault against the students on a number of occasions in 2017. The 51-year-old was granted bail at Burwood Local Court on Thursday under strict conditions, including that he effectively be kept under house arrest and provide a $200,000 surety. Crime Stoppers had received a call that morning about another possible complaint involving a student at a different school, the court heard. Simon William Phillips (pictured) has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of aggravated indecent assault against the students on a number of occasions in 2017 Crime Stoppers had received a call that morning about another possible complaint involving a student at a different school Police prosecutor Sergeant Ernest Chan had opposed the bail application, saying Phillips' alleged actions were 'nothing short of predatory', and there was a chance he could face further charges as police interviewed more witnesses. Phillips is accused of inappropriately touching four 11 and 12-year-old students at a Sydney school over a period of about eight months. The court on Thursday heard he 'absolutely denies' the allegations. Sgt Chan said the crown's case against Phillips was strong and the allegations extensive, with several complaints made very soon after the alleged incidents. Phillips is accused of inappropriately touching four 11 and 12-year-old students at a Sydney school over a period of about eight months A custodial sentence was likely if Phillips was convicted which raised concerns he would flee or fail to appear, the prosecutor said. However, Phillips' barrister, Grant Brady SC, said his client had no criminal history and had been teaching for 28 years with no allegations previously made against him. Complaints relating to three of the children alleged 'fleeting touches' that may be difficult to prove and wouldn't necessarily lead to full-time custody if he was convicted, Mr Brady said. The lawyer added his client wasn't a flight risk as his life, family and friends were in Sydney and he had significant health issues. The matter is next scheduled for mention on January 10. One of the country's only restaurants with three Michelin stars has banned diners from taking photographs of their meals. Celebrated French chef Michel Roux, who founded The Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire, said he was so upset with customers photographing their food, he has been forced to put a sign up. The temple to fine dining, where a six-course tasting menu costs 167.50, is a foodie favourite and one of five places in the UK to hold the three Michelin stars. Picture perfect: The Roux brothers have placed a sign asking customers not to photograph their food inside their restaurant 'No photos, please': Brothers Albert and Michel Roux (left and right) founded The Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire It was founded by French brothers Michel and Albert Roux in 1972 and gained its first star in 1974, shortly after the Michelin guide was created. Michel's son Alain is now the eatery's chef-patron after taking over from his father in 2002. But despite stepping down from the position, Michel is still a very active presence at the bistro and recently added a sign asking diners to refrain from photographing their food. He said: 'Im really getting so upset about people taking pictures. We put up a card at the door - "No photos, please."' Roux added: 'What are they doing? Maybe once during the meal you want to take a little photo of something because it's unusual. 'But what about the flavours? A picture on a phone cannot possibly capture the flavours. A quick search on Instagram reveals hundreds of clients have been sharing their images from The Waterside Inn online in recent months. 'I can't remember the name of this dish': Hundreds of people have shared their photographs of the cuisine at The Waterside Inn Captioning the image of one starter, one man admitted he 'couldn't remember the name' of the French dish as he posted the picture to Instagram. Making use of the multitude of filters offered on the social networking platform, many customers have been sharing their images before they have even enjoyed a mouthful. Roux said he feared this meant their culinary creations were getting cold. Since the launch of image hosting site in 2010, restaurateurs have been divided in their appreciation of the trend to photograph one's food. While the free publicity is greatly received, the Rouxs fear the dishes are being left unappreciated and are being devoured cold while diners fuss over filters. Our fav...#3michelinstars#watersideinnbray#london#truffle#souffle A post shared by @BKKhomeSweetHome (@patimaowatson) on Oct 1, 2017 at 9:50am PDT The Waterside Inn #yummy #daytrip #bray #thewatersideinn #3michelinstars #threemichelinstars #foodie #dessert #michaelroux #gorgeous A post shared by Emma Boyes (@theadventuresofemmaboyes) on Sep 24, 2017 at 8:21am PDT A TASTE FOR EXPENSIVE THINGS: MENU AT THE WATERSIDE INN With bottles of fine wine up to 390 and foie gras priced at 57, a meal at the Waterside Inn is no cheap date. But since its opening its door in 1971 it has developed a reputation as one of the best restaurants in the country and is just one of five in the UK to hold the coveted three Michelin stars. Counting Pippa Middleton among its celebrity clients, it is a favourite of foodies and famous folk alike with its Trip Advisor rating of 4.5 proving its popularity. Here are some of the top dishes on the menu: Escalopes de foie gras chaudes, dattes et citron confit, sauce au vin de banyuls et chocolat Pan-fried escalopes of foie gras with dates and confit lemon, chocolate scented banyuls wine sauce 57.00 Caneton challandais roti a la broche, poires caramelisees et puree dijonnaise, sauce au miel dhibiscus (pour 2 personnes) Spit-roasted Challandais duck, caramelized pears and potato puree with Dijon mustard, hibiscus honey sauce (for 2 people) 111.00 Tronconnettes de homard poelees minute au Porto blanc Pan fried lobster medallions with a white port sauce and ginger flavoured vegetable julienne 64.00 (as a main course 88.00) Pave de bar cloute aux truffes et cuit en papillote, topinambours et jeunes poireaux, sauce au madere Fillet of sea bass studded with truffle and cooked en papillote, Jerusalem artichokes and young leeks, Madeira sauce 62.50 Advertisement Research carried out by Waitrose last year found one n five people had taken a picture of their food in the past month. The rate is five times higher for under-34s than the over-55s. The Waterside Inn appears to be equally as popular among the generations with hundreds of reviews left in tribute to the restaurant on Trip Advisor from those celebrating their wedding anniversary to young couples getting engaged. It is the only establishment in the UK to have retained three coveted stars for over 30 years. Only four other restaurants in Britain hold the coveted three stars: Heston Blumenthals Fat Duck; Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester; Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea; and newcomer Araki, a London sushi restaurant with just nine seats. Michel's nephew, Michel Roux Jr, is chef-patron at the familys other culinary temple, Le Gavroche in London but is more relaxed about customers photographing the food. Last year he banned ringtones at the table but has been known himself to take pictures of meals. No such images appeared in his most recent book, however. He told The Times in October: 'It's a statement, isn't it? Does the Bible have pictures?' Osama bin Laden planned to kill Prince Harry and tracked his proposed movements in Iraq. The Islamic terror chief kept a dossier of news articles related to the royal's military plans on computers at his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They included stories with the headlines 'Prince Harry moves into the firing line' and 'Prince Harry in Iraq could raise troops' risk' and experts believe it points to a deliberate ploy by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to take out the prince. Osama bin Laden (pictured) planned to kill Prince Harry and tracked his proposed movements in Iraq. The Islamic terror chief kept a dossier of news articles related to the royal's military plans on computers at his home in Abbottabad, Pakistan Prince Harry is pictured making his early morning pre-flight checks at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, after plans to send him to Iraq were aborted at the eleventh hour, on December 12, 2012 Terrorism analyst Bill Roggio told Sun Online: 'Without a doubt it shows Prince Harry was a target for Al-Qaeda - they were gunning for him - and also when he was deployed to Afghanistan. 'The Taliban were gunning for him and Al-Qaeda were gunning for him.' Prince Harry was all set to be sent out to Iraq with his unit the Blues and Royals in May 2007 when the plan was pulled at the eleventh hour. Instead, he was covertly sent to Helmand Province in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden's dossier on Prince Harry was taken from a computer recovered in the 2011 US special forces operation that killed the terror chief. The hard drive contained a video collection that included kids cartoons, several Hollywood movies and three documentaries about himself. The list of the videos was included in the release on Wednesday by the CIA of nearly 470,000 files found on the computer seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on the Al Qaeda founders hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It is the fourth tranche of materials taken from the walled compound where bin Laden and his family lived to be made public by the US government since May 2015. Materials that still have not been released are being withheld because they could harm national security, are blank, corrupted or duplicate files, are pornographic or are protected by copyright, said a CIA statement. Astonishing videos of Osama bin Ladens family life in hiding have been revealed by the agency - showing his children and grandchildren playing in the open despite him being the worlds most wanted man. Astonishing videos of Osama bin Ladens family life in hiding have been revealed by the CIA; In one scene, an old man with a white beard, headdress, and a robe resembling Bin Laden is seen instructing two young boys on how to shoot what appears to be a toy gun Toddlers and infants are seen playing on swings in the courtyard while they are filmed This girl appears to not have a care in the world as she plays on a swing in the compound courtyard Most of the children are wearing traditional Pakistani garb while some are in regular T-shirts as they play indoors One video shows never-before-seen footage of bin Laden's son and potential successor, Hamza bin Laden, as an adult. The home videos were seized from his Abbottabad compound after Seal Team Six stormed it and killed the 9/11 mastermind. They were finally released six-and-a-half years after the dramatic raid which ended the mystery of where he was. The videos show an apparently normal and happy family and betray little of the fear they were supposed to be living in. Inevitably they will raise more questions over whether bin Laden had official help from some quarters of the Pakistani government to stay hidden from the CIA for almost a decade. One raw video shot inside the compound shows a sizable barn with animals including cows, chickens, and cats. The video starts with a shot of a baby calf being nursed by a mother cow. It then shows a scene of tranquility where hens and roosters wander about in the barnyard while a female cat cares for her litter of kittens in a tiny space behind two trash bins. There is even a cage full of rabbits and another pen reserved for chickens who are eating not the setting one would expect would be home to a notorious arch-terrorist. The CIA also released a video showing young children frolicking about at home. Toddlers and infants are seen playing on swings in the courtyard while they are filmed. A young boy who appears no older than seven years of age is seen reciting sentences in Arabic. Most of the children are wearing traditional Pakistani garb while some are in regular T-shirts as they play indoors. The CIA released a video showing young children being doted on and frolicking at home Another toddler is seen wearing a shirt with what appears to be a cartoon printed on it A young boy who appears no older than seven years of age is seen reciting sentences in Arabic The same boy is seen in the above up-close shot wearing a knitted hat while peering intently into the camera Although bin Laden declared war on the West, the inhabitants of the compound still used cell phones. A computer hard drive was seen in one of the rooms, and Western pop music can be heard playing in the background as a young boy (above) fiddles with a mobile device This young boy is seen in the playground of the compound in Abbottabad while looking straight into the camera The infant seemed to be enjoying himself as he plays with a relative inside the home In one scene, an old man with a white beard, headdress, and a robe is seen instructing two young boys on how to shoot what appears to be a toy gun. In the next scene, children are filmed as they play on a slide. The video also shows footage of a baby girl who appears no older than five months of age. The footage indicates that although bin Laden declared war on the West, the inhabitants of the compound still used cell phones. BIN LADEN'S COLLECTION INCLUDED DISNEY'S 'CARS' AND 'WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN' Among the videos found at the compound was the Morgan Spurlock documentary, 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden' The trove of files released by the CIA consists of objects like bin Laden's journal as well as a number of American movies the terrorist had on hand, including the 2008 Morgan Spurlock documentary, 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?' and the Disney film, 'Cars.' Because of copyright issues, the CIA couldn't release some of the content found in the compound so instead released a list that included the many American films the terrorist kept on hand. Besides, the Spurlock documentary, bin Laden also had the Biography channel's film about himself along with 'CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted.' The latter film debuted in 2006 and featured the world's top three most-wanted terrorists: bin Laden, his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqaw, who was killed the same year. Another CNN film from 2006, 'In the Footsteps of bin Laden,' was also among the terrorist's trove. Bin Laden also had a number of kids' films including Antz, Batman Gotham Knight, Cars, Chicken Little, Marvel's Heroes of Tomorrow, Home on the Range, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Three Musketeers. He had the video games Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil. And a copy of the Chinese animated film, Storm Rider Clash of the Evils. The terrorist, who couldn't leave the confines of his compound without putting his life in danger, had a number of films about other places, including Peru Civilization, The Kremlin from Inside and The Story of India. Bin Laden had a collection of National Geographic films too, along with a copy of the BBC's Great Wildlife Moments. The CIA said it also did not release any pornography found. Advertisement One segment shows snowfall accumulating at the compound, while another shot shows a rainbow emerging from the horizon outside the facilitys walls A computer hard drive was seen in one of the rooms, and Western pop music can be heard playing in the background as a young boy fiddles with a mobile device. Another clip released by the CIA shows footage of the surrounding areas of the compound during the different seasons. One segment shows snowfall accumulating at the compound, while another shot shows a rainbow emerging from the horizon outside the facilitys walls. Another video offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden as an adult. Until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him. In recent years, Al Qaeda has released audio messages from Hamza bin Laden. And to mark a recent anniversary of 9/11, Al Qaeda superimposed a childhood photo of him over a photo of the World Trade Center. He is expected to rise to prominence in the jihadist movement and is being closely watched as the rival Islamic State organization suffers setbacks in the Middle East. One hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men. A man chanting Koranic verses can be heard in the background. Another video offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, as an adult. Until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him In recent years, Al Qaeda has released audio messages from Hamza bin Laden, who was thought to be groomed by his father to succeed him as head of the jihadist terror network An hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men One of the videos shows a scene of tranquility where hens and roosters wander about in the barnyard Down on the farm: The video starts with a shot of a baby calf being nursed by a mother cow There is even a cage full of rabbits and another pen reserved for chickens who are eating not the setting one would expect would be home to a notorious arch-terrorist Sporting a traditional white headdress, he verbally accepts his marriage to his bride 'on the book of God and the example of the prophet. Peace be upon him.' 'Takbeer!' the others shout, marking his marriage with a kind of religious hooray. The copyright-protected materials include more than two dozen videos such as Antz, Cars and other animated films, the role-playing game Final Fantasy VII and Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and two other documentaries about the Al Qaeda leader, the CIA said. Bin Laden (seen above in 2001) was eventually killed by SEAL Team Six in 2011 after 10 years in hiding Todays release of recovered Al Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization, said CIA Director Mike Pompeo. CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security. The materials released on Wednesday are posted on line - here - in their original Arabic. They include bin Ladens personal journal and 18,000 document files, about 79,000 audio and image files and more than 10,000 video files, the CIA said. The CIA said that the materials, like those released in the past, provide insights into the origins of the differences between Al Qaeda and Islamic State, disagreements within Al Qaeda and its allies, and the problems Al Qaeda faced at the time of bin Ladens death. Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden began hating the West after visiting William Shakespeare's home and finding Britain 'decadent', a newly released journal shows. In a notebook written in March 2011 and published by the CIA after US special forces killed him and raided his compound in Pakistan, the 9/11 architect recounts a trip he made to the West at the age of 13. He explained he went there for 'treatment' during sixth grade, but gave no details. The journal - one of 470,000 documents taken from bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout - explains that the billionaire construction empire heir spent ten weeks studying in the UK. The journal - one of 470,000 documents taken from bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout - explains that the billionaire construction empire heir spent ten weeks studying in the UK. Circled: Bin Laden in Falun, Sweden in 1971, when he was about 14 years old. He went to the Scandinavian country with 22 members of the ultra-wealthy bin Laden family While bin Laden was in the West, he visited Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire (file photo) to see the birthplace of Shakespeare. He said: 'I was not impressed... they were a morally loose society' Bin Laden's trip to the UK persuaded him that the West was a 'decadent' place. Pictured on the far right: Bin Laden with his brothers and Spanish girls during a visit to Oxford in 1971 Bard v Barbarian: Bin Laden was taken to visit the home of the world's most famous playwright 'every Sunday' while he was in the UK to study, but he remained unimpressed While there, he visited Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire to see the birthplace of Shakespeare. He wrote: 'I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didn't allow me to form a complete picture of life there. 'We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeare's house. 'I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society.' But it appears the extremist's time in England was not all bad - the CIA also revealed he had a videos of Mr Bean and Wallace and Gromit on his computer, as well as dozens of clips about crochet. He bought the journal (pictured) from a popular bookshop in Pakistan not far from Abbottabad, where he lived for five years in hiding The trip to the Midlands did, however, persuade the savage Saudi Islamist that the West was a 'decadent' place. He bought the journal he wrote his notes in from a popular bookshop in Pakistan not far from Abbottabad, where he lived for five years in hiding. Some of the entries appear to have been made by the fanatic's son, Khalid, who was killed by US special forces alongside his father in May 2011. At one point the writings address a dream of seeing Muslim-dominated countries joining in alliance as a prelude to the apocalypse. Bin Laden was previously known to have visited England in 1971, taking an English-language course in Oxford. A Spanish woman published a photograph showing the future mass-murderer with her and another girl in a park. The BBC reported that the woman remembered bin Laden as being 'deep' and sounding educated for his age. She also said he did not seem too concerned with religion or politics. He apparently told the girl he was not interested in rock music or popular culture, and that he found foreigners in London to be 'crazy'. She also said bin Laden - who was with his three brothers - was sad that his mother was a concubine and that his siblings had different mothers. Bard's home: Stratford-upon-Avon Pictured: The home of Mary Arden, later Mary Shakespeare. She was the Bard's mother First settled by Saxons in the 7th century, Stratford - on the River Avon -became a market town in 1196. It is located in Warwickshire, about 22 miles southeast of Birmingham and 101 miles northwest of London. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, and the town is now strongly associated with its most famous son. He was educated in the town and, at the age of 18, married 26-year-old Anna Hathaway there. In 1592, he was working in London theaters - where he soon made his name as one of the greatest storytellers of all time. He then retired to Stratford and died there in 1616. The town is now packed with museums dedicated to Shakespeare, including his birthplace, his mother's home, Anne Hathaway's cottage and the church where he was both baptised and buried. Advertisement It has been claimed in the past that bin Laden went to see Arsenal Football Club at their stadium in Highbury, North London, when he visited the British capital in 1994. In the mid-1960s, bin Laden is believed to have been educated in Lebanon at the Brummana High School, which was established by Quakers. British comedian Dom Joly - also a student at the school - backed up the claim bin Laden spent time there on BBC show 'Would I Lie to You?'. Among the tranche of files released by the CIA are also astonishing videos of bin Laden's family life in hiding. Some show his children and grandchildren playing in the open despite him being the world's most wanted man. Some of the entries appear to have been made by the fanatic's son, Khalid, who was also killed by US special forces in May 2011. Pictured: The inside of the journal One video shows never-before-seen footage of bin Laden's son and potential successor, Hamza bin Laden, as an adult. The home videos were seized from his Abbottabad compound after Seal Team Six stormed it and killed the 9/11 mastermind. They were finally released six-and-a-half years after the dramatic raid. The videos show an apparently normal and happy family and betray little of the fear they were supposed to be living in. Inevitably they will raise more questions over whether bin Laden had official help from some quarters of the Pakistani government to stay hidden from the CIA for almost a decade. One raw video shot inside the compound shows a sizable barn with animals including cows, chickens, and cats. The video starts with a shot of a baby calf being nursed by a mother cow. It then shows a scene of tranquility where hens and roosters wander about in the barnyard while a female cat cares for her litter of kittens in a tiny space behind two trash bins. There is even a cage full of rabbits and another pen reserved for chickens who are eating not the setting one would expect would be home to a notorious arch-terrorist. Astonishing videos of Osama bin Laden's family life in hiding have been revealed by the CIA; In one scene, an old man with a white beard, headdress, and a robe resembling Bin Laden is seen instructing two young boys on how to shoot what appears to be a toy gun Toddlers and infants are seen playing on swings in the courtyard while they are filmed This girl appears to not have a care in the world as she plays on a swing in the compound courtyard Most of the children are wearing traditional Pakistani garb while some are in regular T-shirts as they play indoors The CIA also released a video showing young children frolicking about at home. Toddlers and infants are seen playing on swings in the courtyard while they are filmed. A young boy who appears no older than seven years of age is seen reciting sentences in Arabic. Most of the children are wearing traditional Pakistani garb while some are in regular T-shirts as they play indoors. The CIA released a video showing young children being doted on and frolicking at home Another toddler is seen wearing a shirt with what appears to be a cartoon printed on it A young boy who appears no older than seven years of age is seen reciting sentences in Arabic The same boy is seen in the above up-close shot wearing a knitted hat while peering intently into the camera Although bin Laden declared war on the West, the inhabitants of the compound still used cell phones. A computer hard drive was seen in one of the rooms, and Western pop music can be heard playing in the background as a young boy (above) fiddles with a mobile device This young boy is seen in the playground of the compound in Abbottabad while looking straight into the camera The infant seemed to be enjoying himself as he plays with a relative inside the home In one scene, an old man with a white beard, headdress, and a robe is seen instructing two young boys on how to shoot what appears to be a toy gun. In the next scene, children are filmed as they play on a slide. The video also shows footage of a baby girl who appears no older than five months of age. The footage indicates that although bin Laden declared war on the West, the inhabitants of the compound still used cell phones. BIN LADEN'S COLLECTION INCLUDED DISNEY'S 'CARS' AND 'WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN' Among the videos found at the compound was the Morgan Spurlock documentary, 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?' The trove of files released by the CIA consists of objects like bin Laden's journal as well as a number of American movies the terrorist had on hand, including the 2008 Morgan Spurlock documentary, 'Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?' and the Disney film, 'Cars.' Because of copyright issues, the CIA couldn't release some of the content found in the compound so instead released a list that included the many American films the terrorist kept on hand. Besides the Spurlock documentary, bin Laden also had the Biography channel's film about himself along with 'CNN Presents: World's Most Wanted.' The latter film debuted in 2006 and featured the world's top three most-wanted terrorists: bin Laden, his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri, and al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqaw, who was killed the same year. Another CNN film from 2006, 'In the Footsteps of bin Laden,' was also among the terrorist's trove. Bin Laden also had a number of kids' films including Antz, Batman Gotham Knight, Cars, Chicken Little, Marvel's Heroes of Tomorrow, Home on the Range, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and The Three Musketeers. He had the video games Final Fantasy VII and Resident Evil. And a copy of the Chinese animated film, Storm Rider Clash of the Evils. The terrorist, who couldn't leave the confines of his compound without putting his life in danger, had a number of films about other places, including Peru Civilization, The Kremlin from Inside and The Story of India. Bin Laden had a collection of National Geographic films too, along with a copy of the BBC's Great Wildlife Moments. The CIA said it also did not release any pornography found. It also appears Bin Laden was a fan of retro gaming as data recovered from his computer hard drive contained save files from a number of Nintendo video games in the Mario series. Save games from New Super Mario Bros, Yoshi Island and Mario and Luigi - Adventures In Time were all discovered. Save game files for several Nintendo titles in the Mario series were also found on Bin Laden's personal computer Advertisement One segment shows snowfall accumulating at the compound, while another shot shows a rainbow emerging from the horizon outside the facility's walls A computer hard drive was seen in one of the rooms, and Western pop music can be heard playing in the background as a young boy fiddles with a mobile device. Another clip released by the CIA shows footage of the surrounding areas of the compound during the different seasons. One segment shows snowfall accumulating at the compound, while another shot shows a rainbow emerging from the horizon outside the facility's walls. Another video offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden as an adult. Until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him. In recent years, Al Qaeda has released audio messages from Hamza bin Laden. And to mark a recent anniversary of 9/11, Al Qaeda superimposed a childhood photo of him over a photo of the World Trade Center. He is expected to rise to prominence in the jihadist movement and is being closely watched as the rival Islamic State organization suffers setbacks in the Middle East. One hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men. A man chanting Koranic verses can be heard in the background. Another video offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, as an adult. Until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him In recent years, Al Qaeda has released audio messages from Hamza bin Laden, who was thought to be groomed by his father to succeed him as head of the jihadist terror network An hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men Sporting a traditional white headdress, he verbally accepts his marriage to his bride 'on the book of God and the example of the prophet. Peace be upon him.' 'Takbeer!' the others shout, marking his marriage with a kind of religious hooray. The material was taken from a computer recovered in the 2011 US special forces operation that killed bin Laden. The hard drive contained a video collection that included kids' cartoons, several Hollywood movies and three documentaries about himself. The list of the videos was included in the release on Wednesday by the CIA of nearly 470,000 files found on the computer seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on the Al Qaeda founder's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. It is the fourth tranche of materials taken from the walled compound where bin Laden and his family lived to be made public by the US government since May 2015. One of the videos shows a scene of tranquility where hens and roosters wander about in the barnyard Down on the farm: The video starts with a shot of a baby calf being nursed by a mother cow There is even a cage full of rabbits and another pen reserved for chickens who are eating not the setting one would expect would be home to a notorious arch-terrorist Materials that still have not been released are being withheld because they could harm national security, are blank, corrupted or duplicate files, are pornographic or are protected by copyright, said a CIA statement. Bin Laden (seen above in 2001) was eventually killed by SEAL Team Six in 2011 after 10 years in hiding The copyright-protected materials include more than two dozen videos such as Antz, Cars and other animated films, the role-playing game Final Fantasy VII and Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and two other documentaries about the Al Qaeda leader, the CIA said. 'Today's release of recovered Al Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization,' said CIA Director Mike Pompeo. 'CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security.' The materials released on Wednesday are posted on line - here - in their original Arabic. They include bin Laden's personal journal and 18,000 document files, about 79,000 audio and image files and more than 10,000 video files, the CIA said. The CIA said that the materials, like those released in the past, provide insights into the origins of the differences between Al Qaeda and Islamic State, disagreements within Al Qaeda and its allies, and the problems Al Qaeda faced at the time of bin Laden's death. MARTINSDALE One day a year, visitors have access to the Bair family's private quarters during Upstairs, Downstairs Day at the Bair Family Home in Martinsdale. The Bair's formal dining room is set for the holidays and the colorful kitchen is ready for breakfast. Visitors can kick off the holiday season with a unique tour of the Bair Family Home. The special open house runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., on Saturday, Nov. 11. The open house provides an opportunity for a behind-the-scenes tour of both the downstairs home and the private quarters upstairs of one of Montanas greatest philanthropic families. The tour is $3 for adults and free for children 16 and under. Visitors will view some of Albertas elaborate hats, finely tailored clothing and other personal items laid out only for this event. The formal dining table will be set for holiday entertaining with silver, crystal and fine china. Visitors may purchase gifts for friends and family in the gift shop that offers museum memberships, books and memorabilia. Seasonal items will also be for sale, including hats, socks, mittens, gloves, Christmas ornaments, rugs and pillows. Some items are Montana-made, and some are made with some alpaca wool. The museum's eclectic collection blends the art and culture of Europe and Montana in a remodeled but quintessentially homestead setting. The Bair sisters decorated their home with French furniture, English silver and Chinese porcelain displayed alongside their parents collection of western paintings and Plains Indian beadwork. A collection of Paul Storr silver fills the formal dining room that also contains a Duncan Phyfe table, along with an 18th century British sideboard hunt table and Mrs. Bairs Minton China wedding set. Several of Mary Bairs hand-painted China pieces are also on display. Family heirlooms are showcased alongside Italian bronze statues in a pioneer environment that blends Bair family memories with antiques in a ranch setting along the Upper Musselshell River. Visitors can also stay for coffee and refreshments in the Bair barn. An Australian minister was left red-faced last night after tweeting about his meeting with Michael Fallon 10 minutes after the Defence Secretary sensationally resigned. Christopher Pyne had been keen to highlight the defence ties between Australia and Britain following his talks in London. The Defence Industry Minister posed for pictures with Sir Michael following their meeting yesterday and he said it was 'great to catch up' on 'many areas of collaboration'. But his tweet was not issued until 7.39pm - just 10 minutes after news broke Sir Michael was resigning his post in disgrace. Australian minister Christopher Pyne was left red-faced last night after tweeting about his meeting with Michael Fallon 10 minutes after the Defence Secretary sensationally resigned Mr Pyne has made no further reference to the unfortunate sequence of events. Prime Minister Theresa May pulled the plug on Sir Michael last night after he warned there could be further revelations about his conduct with women as he was compared to 'Jekyll and Hyde' while drinking. In a resignation statement, the Defence Secretary, 65, said his past behaviour had 'fallen below the high standards we require of the Armed Forces' He also admitted to the BBC last night: 'What might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now'. One friend said last night: 'Alcohol is a power drug which turns some into a Jekyll and Hyde' and another said: 'Has there been flirtation that has been inappropriate? Yes, he will concede that.' The Defence Industry Minister posed for pictures with Sir Michael following their meeting yesterday and he said it was 'great to catch up' on 'many areas of collaboration' Mr Pyne had been keen to highlight the defence ties between Australia and Britain following his talks in London His resignation came just 36 hours after it emerged he had repeatedly put his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at a lunch 15 years ago and she threatened to punch him in the face unless he stopped. Chief Whip Gavin Williamson is said to have warned the Prime Minister there could be further allegations about Sir Michael, who has been the subject of Westminster gossip for years. People close to the MP acknowledged he had been braced for the possibility of more claims about his behaviour. Prisoners are turning to Christianity in jail after discovering that pages from the Bible are suitable for rolling cigarettes, it has been claimed. Inmates are said to have found the texture is perfect for rolling cigarettes made of tobacco or mixtures of other substances such as tea leaves. The revelation comes amid fears that a smoking ban across 66 jails in England and Wales is driving record levels of self-harm and violence among prisoners. There are fears that a smoking ban across 66 jails in England and Wales is driving record levels of self-harm and violence among prisoners (file picture) Sheila Kimmins, chairwoman of the independent monitoring board at HMP Erlestoke, said the ban has been 'a good thing' - but tobacco is now selling at 150 an ounce. She told The Times: 'It has been a good thing but ironically tobacco has now become a source of currency. It has taken over from Spice as a currency.' Mrs Kimmins added that many prisoners were now becoming Christians because of the smoking ban, saying: 'Our chaplain had a big call on Bibles. 'He had had so many conversions because people want a Bible because it is very thin paper and perfect for roll-ups. He had to find Bibles made of reconstituted paper.' Inmates are said to have found the texture of pages in the Bible (file picture) is perfect for rolling cigarettes made of tobacco or mixtures of other substances such as tea leaves Inmates are being offered nicotine replacement therapy, access to e-cigarettes and behavioural support to assist them as the smoking ban comes in across prisons. In July, a two-day riot linked to a jump in supplies of spice took place at The Mount prison in Hertfordshire, as inmates lit fires and took over two wings. And a report on HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire said that an increase in violence 'may be a long-term reaction to the introduction of the no-smoking policy'. A Prison Service spokesman said: 'We have long been committed to a smoke-free prison estate and this is being phased in over a long period of time. The chairwoman of the independent monitoring board at HMP Erlestoke (pictured) in Wiltshire, said the ban has been 'a good thing' - but tobacco is now selling at 150 an ounce 'This phased introduction will reduce the risk to staff and prisoners of exposure to second-hand smoke and prisons will only become smoke-free when it is appropriate to do so.' Spice is claimed to be so rife in Britain's jails that prisoners are now twice as likely to be addicted to the drug when they leave than before they enter. Spiralling use of the drug a potent form of synthetic cannabis is said to be behind an explosion of violence in prisons, causing 'deaths, bullying and violence'. Urine tests carried out in ten prisons in England showed about 8 per cent of inmates tested positive for spice on arrival but 16 per cent were positive on release. In July, a two-day riot linked to a jump in supplies of spice took place at The Mount prison (pictured) in Hertfordshire, as inmates lit fires and took over two wings Spice is a group of similar chemicals known as synthetic cannabinoids designed to mimic the effects of cannabis. They were sold as legal highs but banned last year. Experts say newer versions are stronger and more unpredictable. The highly addictive drug can leave users in a 'zombie-like' state or trigger psychotic episodes. Spice is attractive to prisoners because it is cheap and was previously hard to detect with effective tests developed only recently. The Prison Officers' Association has been approached for comment by MailOnline. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop still hasn't called New Zealand's new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. A week has passed since New Zealand's youngest ever female leader was sworn in, but Ms Bishop is yet to pick up the phone. The icy reception from the acting prime minister stems from Ms Ardern's party's involvement in the Barnaby Joyce citizenship scandal. Scroll down for video Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop (pictured, left) still hasn't called New Zealand's new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern (pictured, right) In August a furious Ms Bishop accused New Zealand's Labour Party of 'treacherous behaviour' over their role in raising questions about Mr Joyce's citizenship status. 'Should there be a change of government, I would find it very hard to build trust with those involved in allegations designed to undermine the government of Australia,' she said at the time. Despite congratulating Ms Ardern in a media statement, Ms Bishop is yet to do so on the telephone, Nine News reported. Ms Ardern revealed in an interview she has spoken with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull several times, including the night she stepped into the prime ministership. A week has passed since New Zealand's youngest ever female leader (pictured) was sworn in, but Ms Bishop is yet to pick up the phone 'We spoke about things that were important to both countries,' she said in the interview on A Current Affair. In the same interview Ms Ardern objected to having her policies on immigration and home ownership by foreigners compared to those of US President Donald Trump. 'The comments likening the New Zealand government to the Trump regime are absolutely wrong,' she said. The icy reception from the acting prime minister stems from Ms Ardern's party's involvement in the Barnaby Joyce citizenship scandal (pictured is Ms Bishop) Ms Bishop stepped into the role of acting prime minister this week during Mr Turnbull's visit to Israel. Another Newspoll loss for Mr Turnbull raised speculation over Ms Bishop's leadership ambitions, becoming the bookie's favorite as replacement prime minister. Ms Bishop shrugged off questions on whether she is aiming for the top job on ABC's 7:30 and Nine's Today show. Buckingham Palace is said to be 'not happy' after Labour tried to drag the Queen into a bitter row over the publication of Brexit papers. The party last night deployed a rarely used parliamentary procedure known as the 'humble address' to force the Government to publish Brexit impact reports. The Commons passed the motion unanimously after the Tories refused to vote against it amid fears of a backbench rebellion. But the move has sparked a backlash in the Palace as by convention the Queen must respond to a humble address. This has sparked fears the monarch - who has always been fiercely non political - will be dragged into the Brexit row. Fears have been raised that the Queen (pictured in Hyde Park last week) could be dragged into the bitter row raging over Brexit after Labour used an arcane parliamentary procedure known as the humble address to force the Government to publish Brexit papers. The move by convention requires the Queen to respond A senior government source told The Telegraph: 'The Palace is not happy. 'It risks dragging the Crown into political issues.' A Palace spokesman said the Queen would not get involved in discussions on Brexit saying: 'Parliamentary procedures are a matter for Parliament.' The Government has insisted the 58 reports are sensitive and publication could damage negotiations in Brussels. While Parliament voted last night to publish the reports, it is expected ministers will only release redacted versions with much of the information blanked out. Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer told demanded that the full reports are published 'by the end of the week'. But Brexit minister Robin Walker simply said the Government would be 'responding to it' when it is ready. Labour last night passed a Commons motion calling for full publication of 58 reports on the economic impact of Brexit and drafted it in a way Speaker John Bercow (pictured in the Commons last night) said would 'traditionally' be seen as binding Junior Brexit minister Robin Walker (pictured during last night's debate) has hinted redacted summaries could eventually be published to satisfy the House of Commons resolution Last night's motion was the latest in a string of votes forced by Labour which the Tories have chosen not to oppose amid fears their wafer thin majority would not hold. Speaker John Bercow last night said the humble address vote would 'traditionally' be seen as binding. Mr Bercow confirmed Labour's motion was a 'different type' to normal opposition motions the Government routinely ignores but stopped short of calling for action against ministers. Tory MPs abstained when the Labour motion was put to the Commons tonight, meaning it passed unopposed. Tory whips expected to lose if they contested the motion. Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer (pictured in the Commons last night) led challenges to Speaker Bercow to declare whether ignoring the motion would be a 'contempt of the House' The Commons repeatedly descended into farcical procedural rows as furious MPs lashed the Government for defying the will of the House. Labour used an arcane procedure to format its motion as a 'humble address' to the Queen - meaning in theory the Palace is now supposed to order publication. Remain supporting MPs claimed defying the resolution would leave the Government in 'contempt' of Parliament. Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer led challenges to Speaker Bercow to declare whether ignoring the motion would be a 'contempt of the House'. A judge in Madrid has jailed eight former Catalan regional ministers behind the failed independence bid over fears they will attempt to flee the country. The Deputy First Minister and seven of his senior colleagues were taken to a jail on the outskirts of the capital Madrid after appearing before the Spanish High Court to answer charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds. The region's former leader Carles Puigdemont who fled to Brussels with four of his colleagues on Monday tweeted: 'A long and fierce repression awaits us'. A European arrest warrant was issued for Puigdemont along with the four others who failed to turn up in Madrid, newspaper La Vanguardia said. Puigdemont's lawyer said his client would fully co-operate with Belgian authorities and was expecting a drawn-out extradition fight. Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont (right) has been pictured drinking coffee in Brussels today Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear for questioning The Catalan ministers were sacked from their positions after the Spanish Government invoked Article 155 to seize control of the regional Government following an illegal referendum on independence. Those jailed overnight include the vice president Oriol Junqueras, Home Affairs Minister Joaquim Form, Foreign Affairs Minister Raul Romeva, Governance, Meritxell Borras, Presidency Jordi Tull, Social Affairs Minister Dolores Bassa, Justice Minister Carles Mundo and Terrotory Minister Josep Rull. Only Santi Vila, the former head of the Catalan business department, was granted bail and ordered to pay a bond of 50,000 to stay out of jail. Vila resigned the day before the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence from Spain last Friday. The jailed ministers were taken from the court to the Soto del Real penitentiary outside Madrid. Lawyers for the eight condemned the judge's decision and said it was premeditated. Jailed: Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras is among those who has been detained after appearing at court today After pro-independence supporters called for protests, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets. The eight ministers jailed were called 'political prisoners' with supporters accusing the court of facist tactics. The far-left anti-capitalist CUP party called for protests against the High Court judge's decision issuing a tweet that said 'Freedom for the ministers.' Protests were called for Thursday evening, and thousands gathered in Catalan towns including Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona. In jailing the former regional Government officials the judge said that the suspects' actions were 'premeditated and perfectly prepared and organised.' Judge Carmen Lamela said for the past two years they had systematically ignored decisions issued by the Constitutional Court in their push for independence. She said in their drive for independence from Spain the ministers had 'made use of the population, encourage acts of public insurrection, disobedience and collective resistance to the legitimate authority of the state, occupying to that effect highways, streets and public buildings and subjecting officers of the law to incessant harassment.' The Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau called the jailing of the ministers a black day for Catalonia. She called for a common front to obtain the release of the political prisoners and added: 'The government democratically chosen at the ballot boxes, is in jail.' Pro-independence parties have called for a mass demonstration on November 12th to protest against the Madrid courts decision. Nazi salutes and jeers greeted Catalan politicians as they arrived in Madrid to hand themselves in to police yesterday Demonstrators holding banners reading in Catalan "freedom for the political prisoners" gather outside the Catalonian Parliament to protest against the decision of a judge to jail ex-members of the Catalan government, in Barcelona People holds up placards reading "Freedom Political Prisoners" during a gathering in support of the members of the dismissed Catalan cabinet after a Spanish judge ordered the former Catalan leaders to be remanded in custody pending an investigation into Catalonia's independence push, in Tarragona Demonstrators hold up lights as they gather outside Catalonian Parliament in Barcelona on Thursday The far-left anti-capitalist CUP party called for protests against the High Court judge's decision issuing a tweet that said 'Freedom for the ministers' Protests were called for Thursday evening, and thousands gathered in Catalan towns including Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona The judge said they were a flight risk and pointed to the example of their leader Puigdemont who had fled the country for Brussels rather than face arrest. Mr Puigdemont had been given a deadline of Thursday to hand himself in to the authorities in Madrid, but was earlier today seen drinking coffee in Brussels. His lawyer says Puigdemont had remained in Belgium as the climate in Spain was 'not good', but that he would cooperate with the courts. He added that the former Catalan President intends to fight any extradition request but does not intend to file for asylum in Belgium. Mr Puigdemont and four of his closest ministers offered to be interviewed remotely from Brussels using videoconferencing software, claiming that they will not receive a fair trial in Spain. It comes after Nazi salutes and jeers greeted Catalan politicians as they arrived in Madrid to hand themselves in to police yesterday. The shocking scenes unfolded at the city's airport. An elderly woman was filmed repeatedly performing the Franco-era salute while police struggled to contain the angry crowd. Meanwhile, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Barcelona's Sant Jaume square today to protest against the legal action being taken against Catalan politicians. The boisterous pro-independence crowd waved Catalan flags and shouted 'freedom' and 'Puigdemont is our president'. They also chanted in support of the separatist activists Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, known as the 'two Jordis', who are currently in a Spanish prison on charges of sedition. The pair was arrested after organising a demonstration intended to hinder a police investigation in Barcelona in the run-up to the referendum on October 1. Artur Mas, a former President of Catalonia, talks to journalists outside the national court in Madrid, Spain. Ousted Catalan politicians began arriving at two Spanish courts in Madrid on Thursday to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence Fired Catalan Cabinet members arrive at the national court in Madrid, Spain. From left to right are, Joaquim Forn, Dolors Bassa i Coll, Raul Romeva, Carles Mundo, Jordi Turull, Meritxell Borras and Josep Rull. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe Tensions: A man holds up a Spanish flag outside the national court in Madrid, Spain this morning Artur Mas, a former President of Catalonia, walks outside the national court in Madrid, Spain this morning Protesters also gathered outside Catalan government buildings elsewhere in the city while cars sounded their horns in support. So far, unionists have not staged a counter-protest, a development that could spark violence. Just two police vans were seen in the square. The Catalan police continued to be undermined by Madrid in the aftermath of the declaration of independence, with national police taking over some of their high profile investigations. The Spanish government was alarmed by the Catalan police's reluctance to clamp down on the referendum on 1 October. The Spanish national court will be resorting to the Franco-era criminal code to prosecute the former Catlan politicians, as the crimes of sedition and rebellion are not established in the country's modern legislation. The 1973 code addresses 'crimes against the head of state, his deputy, high institutions of the nation and forms of government'. Overall, the Spanish government is seeking to prosecute 20 former Catalan officials, and is intending to imprison 19 of them on charges of rebellion, sedition, embezzlement and other crimes. A poll published yesterday, which was the first since Mr Puigdemont's abscondment to Brussels, suggested that pro-independence parties are on track to win a majority in the snap elections called by Madrid for 21 December, though its presence in the chamber would be reduced. Security: Police vans arrive at the national court in Madrid ahead of the appearance of ousted Catalan politicians A P-plater caught speeding at 150km/h with her three-year-old son in the back seat has been banned from driving for three years. Sally Arabi led police on an eight-minute car chase through the streets of southwest Sydney from about 10.30pm on June 22. The 23-year-old disqualified driver first dodged an random breath test then sped along the Hume Highway and other streets with officers in hot pursuit. Scroll down for video Sally Arabi, 23, led police on an eight-minute 150km/h car chase through the streets of Sydney with her three-year-old son in the back seat and was banned from driving for three years Arabi and her boyfriend Abudy 'Triigerhappy' Zraika extended their middle fingers at onlookers as they entered Bankstown Magistrates Court on Thursday She ran three red lights, darted through a petrol station, and drove on the wrong side of the road, forcing motorists to swerve to avoid head-on collisions. When police eventually pulled her over in Birrong they were shocked to find a three-year-old toddler in the car and her boyfriend. 'Any sort of reckless behaviour and especially evading police, but having a child in the car is just disgraceful,' Assistant Commissioner Michael Corboy said at the time. The repeat offender previously had her licence suspended three times and was disqualified for 12 months. Arabi and her boyfriend Abudy 'Triigerhappy' Zraika extended their middle fingers at onlookers as they entered Bankstown Magistrates Court on Thursday. She ran three red lights, darted through a petrol station, and drove on the wrong side of the road, forcing motorists to swerve to avoid head-on collisions The repeat offender previously had her licence suspended three times and was disqualified for 12 months The 23-year-old disqualified driver first dodged an random breath test then sped along the Hume Highway and other streets with officers in hot pursuit The mother-of-one said she fled police because she was unlicenced and didn't want to get arrested as she was out buying medicine for her child, according to 7 News. She was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and banned from driving for three years. 'She now understands that this type of behaviour can cause a catastrophe,' her lawyer Mahmoud Abbas said outside court. 'Hopefully she can rectify her driving behaviour moving forward.' Mr Zraika again flipped the bird over his shoulder as the pair walked away from the courthouse. Julia Hartley-Brewer today revealed she has texted Sir Michael Fallon since his resignation and he does not blame her for ending his ministerial career. The broadcaster, 49, had insisted the Sevenoaks MP, 65, should not face any action after he apologised for touching her knee at a boozy dinner at the Tory party conference in 2002. But last night he quit amid claims there could be more revelations about inappropriate behaviour with women. Ms Hartley-Brewer admitted that if the Defence Minister quit as a result of touching her knee then it was 'the most absurd resignation of a Cabinet minister ever in the history of the world'. Speaking to Good Morning Britain she said: 'I had a text message exchange with Sir Michael Fallon last night because I certainly didn't want anyone touching my knee 15 years ago to be career ending. But he's made it very clear to me that he does not hold me responsible, which suggests to me that there is something else.' Julia Hartley-Brewer today revealed she has texted Sir Michael Fallon since his resignation and does not blame her for ending his ministerial career Sir Michael Fallon (left yesterday) has sensationally resigned as defence secretary (rught with his wife Wendy) amid a growing Westminster harassment scandal Asked whether Fallon should have quit, she said: 'Based on my knee, absolutely not. I don't know what the other reasons are.' She added: 'It certainly wasn't an issue for me. He and I have stayed friends since. It was a badly judged pass in a busy restaurant. I threatened to punch him in the face. Not a nanosecond of sleep [was lost over it].' Theresa May pulled the plug on Sir Michael last night after he warned there could be further revelations about his conduct with women. In a resignation statement, the Defence Secretary, 65, said his past behaviour had fallen below the high standards we require of the Armed Forces. Chief Whip Gavin Williamson is said to have warned the Prime Minister there could be further allegations about Sir Michael, who has been the subject of Westminster gossip for years. One source claimed Mr Williamson had advised Mrs May to fire the veteran minister, although others insisted Sir Michael had resigned of his own accord following a face-to-face showdown in No 10. But friends of the MP acknowledged he had been braced for the possibility of more claims about his behaviour. Three years ago he was accused of calling journalist Bryony Gordon a slut at a party. One friend said: Has there been flirtation that has been inappropriate? Yes, he will concede that. Broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer, the journalist at the centre of the Fallon scandal, tweeted this photo on her Twitter The MP for Sevenoaks is pictured during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, sitting on the front bench for the final time The move came just 36 hours after it emerged he had repeatedly put his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at a lunch 15 years ago. Recalling the incident she claimed Sir Michael, then an MP - 'repeatedly put his hand on my knee during a party conference dinner.' 'I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would 'punch him in the face'. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter. 'I have had no issues since with the man in question and do not regard the incident as anything but mildly amusing, which is why I have declined to name him. She said she didn't recall the same minister making a remark about her breasts, as has been claimed. In a column for the Sunday Express in 2009 she described how the MP had propositioned her. She wrote 'He was, he told me, a firm believer in the long-standing Westminster rule of ... 'party conferences don't count'. 'I was, I told him, a firm believer in not going to bed with other women's husbands.' This is the moment a Scottish Labour politician attacked an ITV journalist for asking if she had ever been sexually harassed live on air. Labour MSP Monica Lennon accuses ITVs Andrew MacMahon of risking outing victims of serious assault live on air and tells him it is the 'worst question you can ask a woman'. She then accused bosses at the Scottish Parliament of tolerating a hostile culture towards women during the interview on ITV's Representing Border news programme. What makes journalists think it's OK to ask women, on TV, whether they've been the victim of sexual harassment or worse? @MonicaLennon7 pic.twitter.com/41MnDOJAIy John Reilly (@jmreilly68) November 1, 2017 Labour MSP Monica Lennon - pictured speaking alongside SNP MSP Christine Grahame on Tuesday - accused the reporter of trying to 'out' her as a victim of a serious assault and said it was the 'worst question you can ask a woman' The segment, which was filmed at Holyrood on Tuesday, has been circulated online as Westminster is engulfed by sexual assault and harassment allegations that have forced Sir Michael Fallon to resign as Defence Secretary. Ms Lennon was giving her comments on the issue alongside SNP MSP Christine Grahame. After Ms Grahame has finished speaking, the interviewer turned to Ms Lennon and asked, 'And what about you... have you ever been sexually harassed?' She replied, Ive been speaking to other women about this very question today and actually weve all agreed that its the worst question you could ask a woman. Because if a woman has been a victim of this we are speaking about a spectrum which could include very serious behaviour and assault. Would you out someone live on air? Journalist Peter MacMahon denied this was his intention, saying, No, Im not suggesting you do that. Ms Lennon then went on to attack other journalists for asking women 'along the corridor' if they have been assaulted. She also criticised the Scottish Parliament's business bureau - which runs the building - for being all male. The segment, which was filmed at Holyrood on Tuesday, discussed the sex assault scandal currently engulfing politicians both in Westminster and north of the border Its not about us as individuals, its about the culture that women face daily and thats why across the Parliament,' she said. 'I dont think its good enough to have an all-male body who decide how Parliament is run, an all-male business bureau so all the MSPs who have a place on that are men.' Ms Lennon, pictured speaking at Holyrood on August 14, also criticised the Scottish Parliament's business bureau - which runs the building - for being all male That has to change. If we are going to have policies that are designed to protect women, women need to have some input. Ms Lennon later tweeted the footage with the caption: 'Ive lost count of the number of times journalists have asked women this question. 'Please stop. Well speak out if and when we choose to.' MailOnline has contacted ITV for comment. It comes as the Scottish Parliament announced it was setting up a confidential telephone hot-line to report claims of sexual harassment. The scandal over alleged inappropriate behaviour by male politicians has also ravaged Westminster, where Defence Secretary Michael Fallon became the first minister to resign over his conduct with women. In a resignation statement, the Defence Secretary, 65, said his past behaviour had fallen below the high standards we require of the Armed Forces He also admitted to the BBC last night: 'What might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now'. The scandal over alleged inappropriate behaviour by male politicians has also ravaged Westminster, where Defence Secretary Michael Fallon became the first minister to resign over his conduct with women Sir Michael was one of the redacted names on a controversial sleaze dossier that has circulated in Westminster this week. Yesterday, sources close to him strenuously denied the claims in the document, which were described as libellous and untrue. Sir Michael declined to comment on the allegations. First came own-brand cornflakes and baked beans. Now Sainsbury's is selling its own vinyl albums. Two 20-track compilation records go on sale in 163 stores tomorrow with more titles due next year. Coming into Los Angeles (A Taste of West Coast) features classics including songs by Love, The Monkees and Buffalo Springfield. Hi Fidelity (A Taste Of Stereo Sound) features tracks by Roxy Music, John Martyn and Elton John. The supermarket has released two compilation albums in partnership with music producer Bob Stanley of indie band Saint Etienne The supermarket has made the move after vinyl sales in the UK increased by 53 per cent last year as hipsters and dance DJs lead a revival. Records now outsell CDs although are still dwarfed by downloads. Sainsburys began selling vinyl in March 2016 and has sold more than 120,000 vinyl albums in the year to date, accounting for 5 per cent of the total UK market. The records were put together by music producer Bob Stanley of indie band Saint Etienne. Pete Selby, Sainsbury's head of music and books said: 'The love for vinyl shows no sign of abating either within the market or with our customers it's no longer viewed as something on the fringes but as an established physical format that sits comfortably alongside the rest of our music proposition in store. 'As such, it feels like the perfect time to launch our own exclusive range, tailored specifically towards the inquisitive, cultured tastes of our customers. Sainsburys began selling vinyl in March 2016 and has sold more than 120,000 vinyl albums in the last year, accounting for 5 per cent of the total UK market. Pictured: A store selling records 'Having Bob on board to manage and compile the series has been a real coup. Across several disciplines, be it lauded music writing, releasing acclaimed pop records with Saint Etienne or curating fascinating compilation CDs, he has always combined unabashed populism with an eye for supporting artists and albums ripe for wider discovery. 'He brings an authority to any project he is involved in and yet, crucially, also recognises the importance of keeping vinyl accessible for as many people as possible.' 'Growing up, one thing I loved about the record shopping experience was the number of high street shops where you could buy new releases - not only Virgin or Our Price but Woolworths, Boots, WHSmiths. 'The opportunity to put new compilations in branches of Sainsburys was irresistible to me, especially given the companys history of beautiful design and packaging. Having access to the Sainsburys design archive to create the artwork was the cherry on the cake.' Two fatal crashes involving U.S. Navy warships and commercial vessels were caused by preventable errors by the sailors on board the ships, a new report has found. The accidents, in which 17 sailors were killed, raised questions about Navy training and the pace of operations, prompted a Congressional hearing and the removal of a number of officers. Speaking as the report was released, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said 'we must do better'. 'Both of these accidents were preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents,' he said. The guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald arrives at its mother port, Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, after colliding with a commercial vessel in June The report found that the crew of the Fitzgerald disregarded the International Rules of the Road for the high seas and only tried to get out of the way of the other ship at the last minute 'The report found that no single person could be blamed for the accidents, but broadly the crews were under-prepared, there was ineffective command and control, and a lack of training.' The guided missile destroyer Fitzgerald almost sank off the coast of Japan after colliding with a Philippine container ship in June. The bodies of seven U.S. sailors were found in a flooded berthing area after that collision. The Navy report found that there were a number of small errors that eventually led to the ship's crew not following standard naval procedures. According to the International Rules of the Road for high seas, USS Fitzgerald was in a crossing situation with cargo ship, Crystal, off to Fitzgerald's starboard side and was required manoeuvre but did not until it was too late. 'Fitzgerald's watch teams disregarded established norms of basic contact management and, more importantly, leadership failed to adhere to well-established protocols put in place to prevent collisions,' the report said. The damaged port aft hull of the USS John S. McCain, is visible while docked at Singapore's Changi naval base. Ten sailors drowned when the warship collided with an oil tanker off Singapore In a separate incident in August, 10 sailors were killed when the guided missile destroyer John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker. The incident was caused by 'complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance,' the report said. It found that a major factor in the collision was the sailors not having enough of an understanding about the ship's control console. There had been a loss of situational awareness by the crew and they failed to follow nautical procedures as well, the investigation found. With the loss of McCain and Fitzgerald, the Navy is currently without two warships capable of shooting down North Korean ballistic missiles. The Navy has dismissed a number of officers, including the commander of the Seventh Fleet, as a result of the collisions involving its warships in Asia. Navy officials say some changes have been made since the crashes. A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the review would call for a number of changes in the fleet, including training and safety protocols to deal with the systemic issues that have been highlighted by the crashes. A rancher, a forestry educator, a wilderness ranger, and a raptor conservationist and educator were honored on Oct. 17 at the annual awards dinner of the Missoula Conservation Roundtable. In addition, Travis Ross, an environmental health specialist in Missoula, became the first recipient of the emerging conservationist award. The Roundtable is a gathering of Missoula area conservationists who are past recipients of awards for their outstanding efforts to nurture and protect natural resources. The oldest award, created by late Montana conservationist Don Aldrich and now named after him, has been presented each year since 1972 to an individual for her or his service in the area of natural resource conservation or environmental protection over a long period. Jim Stone of Ovando was this years Aldrich award winner. Owner of the Rolling Stone Ranch, Stone was recognized for his outstanding achievements in promoting cooperative conservation in the Blackfoot Valley and throughout Montana, the Intermountain West and the nation. He is well known as a tireless volunteer in community organizations and is among the leaders of the Blackfoot Challenge. Dr. Diana Six of the University of Montana received the Arnold Bolle award, presented since 1995 in the name of the late UM forestry professor and leading figure in the Montana conservation movement before his death in 1994. Its presented to a professional who makes his or her living in the fields of natural resource management or environmental protection. Six is professor of forest entomology/pathology at UM and chairs the Department of Ecosystems and Conservation Sciences. She developed mentoring programs to increase roles for women in science and has worked to increase the number of Native American students entering graduate school for careers in environmental science. Her research focusing on forest insects and diseases is the subject of articles in publications such as National Geographic. Jack Ader, a wilderness ranger on the Bitterroot National Forest, West Fork Ranger District, received the Burk/Brandborg Award, named after conservation writer Dale Burk of Stevensville and the late forest conservationists Ruth and G.M. (Guy) Brandborg, whose efforts over several decades inspired individual activism on behalf of natural resources and the environment. The award was first presented in 1998. Ader has outstanding skills in working with people of all ages to encourage their understanding and interaction with wilderness, a press release said. Particularly notable is his mentoring of young people inspiring them to learn and appreciate the concept of wilderness as a national heritage. Kate Davis of Florence is the 2017 recipient of the Lifetime Conservation Award, given on a periodic basis since 2001. Davis was recognized for almost three decades of passionate and energetic work focused on conservation and education about raptors, the press release said. She has been a force of nature for raptor conservation and education, presenting more than 1,640 educational programs on raptors in 130 schools. Davis has also been an important contributor to basic science and international programs focused on raptor conservation, and has published a number of books featuring her exceptional photographs. The first Emerging Conservationist Award went to Ross, who in his work for the Missoula Valley Water Quality District has played a lead role in local projects aimed at protecting or improving Missoulas aquatic resources. Ross was feted for his ability to handle diverse topics ranging from hazardous wastes and industrial solvents to homeless camps and riparian areas, and for his solid technical and science background and passion for public education. Most importantly he has the communication and persuasion skills necessary to establish productive long-term relationships and partnerships in the community, according to the release. Travis is the kind of leader that people want to work with. David Cuthbertson, 68, perished when flames took hold of the family home in Powys, Wales The farmhouse inferno that killed a father and five of his children could have been caused by Halloween lights, it was claimed last night. David Cuthbertson, 68, and the youngsters aged between four and 11 died at their home in Llangammarch Wells, Mid Wales, on Monday. Neighbours claimed yesterday that the family had a tradition of carving pumpkins and lighting lots of candles around the house before Halloween. And it is feared that a candle was left alight when the family went to bed on Sunday evening, causing the blaze. One local resident told the Daily Mirror: 'People are saying it was the cause of the fire. There were apparently a lot of candles in the house.' Meanwhile it was also revealed yesterday that the son-in-law of Mr Cuthbertson was among the firefighters sent to tackle a blaze that destroyed their farmhouse. Firefighter David Price (right), 25, is married to David Cuthbertson's daughter Pia (left), 24 Mr Price (left, with Pia Cuthbertson) was called when flames took hold of the family farmhouse An aerial view shows the devastation following the blaze in Llangammarch Wells, Powys The rear of the farmhouse in Llangammarch Wells, Powys, which is still smouldering today The farmhouse has been completely gutted by the fire which took hold of it early on Monday Firefighters are still at the property today following the blaze in the early hours of Monday Three children, aged ten, 12 and 13, managed to escape from the blaze and run to a neighbour's house to raise the alarm. Mountain rescue teams and fire crews rushed to the scene in a bid to save the family after the blaze erupted on Sunday night. Yesterday it was revealed that one of the firefighters was Mr Cuthbertson's son-in-law, David Price, 25. Neighbour Mary Ann Gilchrist said: 'What I find so horrific is that one of those reponding was his own son-in-law, who is a retained fireman. Can you imagine? A teddy bear and a note saying 'I will miss my best friend' which were left at the scene today A woman arrives at the scene with floral tributes following the devastating farmhouse fire Flowers are left at the scene of the fire which is believed to have claimed the lives of six people It is still unclear how many people lost their lives in the tragedy in the early hours of Monday The home was reduced to a smouldering shell in just minutes, its roof completely removed Police said the blaze on Monday was so severe they are not yet sure how many people died 'David's children are all so intelligent and sweet. He should be very proud of them.' Mr Price is a self-employed carpenter and retained firemen with Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue, based in the nearby town of Llanwrtyd Wells. He married Mr Cuthbertson's daughter Pia, 24, in a ceremony in Greece last year, and was understood to be comforting his wife yesterday. Theresa May praised the 'bravery and professionalism' of the emergency services who responded to the blaze during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. Three children are believed to have escaped the fire, while another five are said to have died Flowers left close to the scene in Llangammarch Wells after six members of the family died Investigators comb through the wreckage of the farmhouse following the huge blaze The farmhouse (centre left) in Powys burnt down overnight while the family were sleeping Investigators are trying to work out what caused the fire and how it took hold of the property Forensic teams have been sifting through the remains of the property in Powys, Wales Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire Chris Davies spoke of the 'horrific farmhouse fire' and the 'devastating effect it had had on the family and the tight-knit community'. Expressing her condolences, Mrs May said: 'This was indeed a terrible tragedy that took place and as he said it isn't just the family themselves that have been affected by it but the local community. 'I know the emergency services did sterling work and I am also pleased to commend the work that they did and their bravery and professionalism in dealing with this issue.' Neighbours described Mr Cuthbertson as a 'doting' father. It was claimed he tried to save his children by dropping them out of a window. Specialist police officers at the scene of the fire where a father and five of his children died Relatives of the family have told of their shock at hearing about the devastating fire It is still unclear how many people lost their lives in the tragedy in rural Llangammarch Wells Police have spoken to the owners of the property in Wales, who rented it to the family Dyfed-Powys Police said five children aged between four and 11 were killed in the fire The fire was described as 'devastating news in such a close-knit community' by a politician Locals said: 'We've heard he managed to get three out by dropping them from a window. He loved those kids so much he would have been desperate to get them out. 'But it sounds as if he died in the heat and smoke before he could save the little ones.' Mr Cuthbertson, a retired builder, could have had up to 17 children from different marriages, it is understood. The father lived with his younger children after splitting from their mother, Seema, who suffered a stroke several years after they seperated. A woman looks at tributes to the members of the same family who died in Llangammarch Wells Crews of firefighters enter the torched shell of the family home in Llangammarch Wells Seven members of the same family are feared dead after a huge fire ripped through their farmhouse and burnt it to the ground while they were asleep The blaze ripped through the home in Llangammarch Wells, Powys, early on Monday A police car is pictured at the scene of the devastation in the Welsh village on Tuesday The surviving children are being supported by relatives and police officers, while a fundraising page to support the family has raised more than 13,000. Police are treating the cause of the fire as unexplained and were still present at the scene yesterday. A search dog van was also seen parked near the property to help investigators scour for clues. Police Superintendent Jon Cummins said: 'Due to the severity of damage at the scene we are unable at this stage to identify any of the deceased.' The Dubs amendment, named after the Labour peer Lord Dubs (pictured), was the scheme under which the Government took in child refugees, but it was closed earlier this year Campaigners have lost a High Court bid to try to force the Government to take in more child refugees. The charity Help Refugees wanted the Home Office to lift its cap of 480 children to be given sanctuary in Britain under the Dubs amendment. Their lawyers had argued the Home Office adopted a 'fundamentally flawed' consultation when deciding how many youngsters to take in. It had sought court orders to force Home Secretary Amber Rudd to abandon the cap and reopen the consultation process so consideration could be given to allowing more children in. But Government lawyers said there had been no illegality, and today the High Court sided with them. In a ruling given in London on Thursday, two judges dismissed an application for judicial review by the charity. The Dubs scheme is named after the Labour peer Lord Dubs - who fled the Nazis and on the Kindertransport and was given sanctuary in Britain. The scheme was drawn up at the height of the refugee crisis, when thousands of children were making the perilous journey from the Middle East and north Africa to try to claim refuge in Europe and Britain. Many were camped out in the refugee camp in Calais known as 'The Jungle', and were risking their lives to try to smuggle themselves into lorries and over the border. The camp was eventually cleared by the French authorities, with help from Britain, amid fears it was becoming a dangerous magnet for refugees and was a public health risk. The scheme was originally intended to give homes in Britain to 3,000 vulnerable children. But in February the Government announced in was closing the scheme having offered far fewer places. The decision was highly controversial and ministers have been accused of ignoring 1,600 offers by local councils to take in children. Lord Dubs and actress Juliet Stevenson were among those who backed the legal challenge. A Home Office spokesman said: 'This judgment has confirmed that the consultation conducted last year on the Dubs Amendment and its implementation was lawful. 'We remain committed to transferring 480 children from Europe to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act. Home Secretary Amber Rudd, pictured delivering a speech to police and crime commissioners yesterday, closed the Dubs Scheme earlier this year 'We have accepted further referrals this year and transfers are ongoing. We will continue to work closely with EU partners and local authorities to transfer eligible children here quickly and safely. 'In addition, our wider focus remains helping those in need of international protection in the region, which is why we have committed to resettle up to 23,000 refugees from the region almost 9,000 are already rebuilding their lives in the UK - and pledged 2.46bn to the humanitarian response to the Syria conflict.' Jonathan Bartley, co-leader of the Green Party, said: 'We will not give up on child refugees. 'This ruling is bitterly disappointing, but it does not stop the Government re-consulting with local authorities. 'We could still take in more child refugees who are at great risk of abuse and trafficking and I urge Ministers to do so immediately. 'The Government has won in the court of law on a technicality, but I believe they are losing in the court of public opinion. 'Help Refugees are fighting the cause of compassion and common sense and I believe we can make Britain a nation that welcomes, helps, and supports child refugees.' The CIA's release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has again raised questions about Iran's support of the extremist network leading up to the September 11 terror attacks. U.S. intelligence officials and prosecutors have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organization from 1991 on, something noted in a 19-page report in Arabic that was included in the release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. For its part, Iran has long denied any involvement with al-Qaeda. However, the report included in the CIA document dump shows how bin Laden, a Sunni extremist from Iran's archrival Saudi Arabia, could look across the Muslim world's religious divide to partner with the Mideast's Shiite power to target his ultimate enemy, the United States. Revelations: Among 47,000 files released by the CIA from the bin Laden raid is a 19-page document detailing links between the terrorist group and Iran 'Anyone who wants to strike America, Iran is ready to support him and help him with their frank and clear rhetoric,' the report reads. The release comes as President Donald Trump has refused to recertify Iran's nuclear deal with world powers. The 19-page report included in the CIA release was available online Wednesday. The CIA later issued a warning about the files on its website, saying that since the material 'was seized from a terrorist organization ... there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed.' The CIA then took down the files entirely early Thursday, saying they were 'temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue.' 'We are working to make the material available again as soon as possible,' the CIA said. The unsigned 19-page report is dated in the Islamic calendar year 1428 - 2007 - and offers what appears to be a history of al-Qaeda's relationship with Iran. It says Iran offered al-Qaeda fighters 'money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.' This coincides with an account offered by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission, which said Iranian officials met with al-Qaeda leaders in Sudan in either 1991 or early 1992. The commission said al-Qaeda militants later received training in Lebanon from the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which Iran backs to this day. U.S. prosecutors also said al-Qaeda had the backing of Iran and Hezbollah in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden following the al-Qaeda truck bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Lair: 47,000 new files have been released by the CIA detailing belongings and digital files uncovered in bin Laden's Pakistan compound A detailed image shows the objects around Osama Bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound in an image previously released by the CIA Al-Qaeda's apparent siding with Iran may seem surprising today, given the enmity Sunni extremists like those of the Islamic State group have for Shiites. But bin Laden had run out of options by 1991 - the one-time fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan had fallen out with Saudi Arabia over his opposition to the ultraconservative kingdom hosting U.S. troops during the Gulf War. Meanwhile, Iran had become increasingly nervous about America's growing military expansion in the Mideast. 'The relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that the Sunni-Shiite divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations,' the 9/11 Commission report would later say. Before the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, Iran would allow al-Qaeda militants to pass through its borders without receiving stamps in their passports or with visas gotten ahead of time at its consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the 19-page report. That helped the organization's Saudi members avoid suspicion. They also had contact with Iranian intelligence agents, according to the report. This also matches with U.S. knowledge. Eight of the 10 so-called "muscle" hijackers on Sept. 11 - those who kept passengers under control on the hijacked flights - passed through Iran before arriving in the United States, according to the 9/11 Commission. However, the commission 'found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack.' For its part, Iran has denied having any relationship with al-Qaeda since the 1998 attacks on the embassies. Iran quietly offered the U.S. assistance after the September 11 attacks, though relations would sour following President George W. Bush naming it to his "axis of evil" in 2002. On Thursday, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, dismissed the CIA documents as 'a project against Tehran'. The 19-page report describes Iranians later putting al-Qaeda leaders and members under house arrest sometime after the September 11 attacks. It mentions the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, saying it put increasing pressure on Iran, especially with the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq. 'They decided to keep our brothers as a card,' the report said. That would come true in in 2015 as Iran reportedly exchanged some al-Qaeda leaders for one of its diplomats held in Yemen by the terror group's local branch. While Yemen described it as a captive exchange, Tehran instead called it a 'difficult and complicated' special operation to secure the Iranian diplomat's freedom from the "hands of terrorists." 'The repercussions ... of the Sept. 11 attacks were undoubtedly very large and perhaps above (our) imagination,' the al-Qaeda report said. The heiress whose speeding Lexus smashed into a pavement killing five women and one man was taken back to the crash scene in handcuffs for a reenactment of the appalling tragedy. Glamorous oligarch's daughter Alyona Zaitseva, 20, was allowed one hand free as she showed her armed police entourage how she jumped a red light before hitting a VW Touareg then ploughing into the helpless people. She is held in detention in a crowded cell for two months along with suspected murderers after the accident in Kharkiv, Ukraine which led to worldwide shock after the release of CCTV videos. Ms Zaitseva, a sociology student, talked police through her route leading to the smash with one handcuff attached by a chain to a policeman. At one point she got into a Lexus similar to her own and was driven along her route of death. Scroll down for video Alyona Zaitseva has her left hand free and her right hand handcuffed to a police officer as she walks around the scene of the crash that killed six Alyona Zaitseva, 20, visits the scene of the crash to reenact the incident which killed six people A huge entourage of police officers surround a Lexus similar to the one driven by the Ukrainian heiress, who is in the middle handcuffed to an officer The Ukrainian energy company heiress ploughed her Lexus into another car at a crossing, causing the back-end to spin-out and hurtle into innocent bystanders Alyona Zaitseva is pictured here. She caused carnage when she ran a red light in Ukraine Reports say oligarch Vasily Zaitseva is ready to spend 1.1 million in compensation, hoping that by doing so he will reduce or negate any prison sentence for dangerous driving for his daughter, pictured here The road is closed down for the police reenactment of the horrific crash which killed six people Zaitseva can be seen in the black puffer jacket with her hood up surrounded by police officers She saw floral tributes on the pavement to victims of the carnage. Traffic was stopped at the city centre intersection as she took part in the reenactment of a crash for which she has asked families of the bereaved and five injured to forgive her. She could be jailed for up to ten years if convicted of dangerous driving but her multi-millionaire father Vasily Zaitsev has offered huge financial 'compensation' to families in the hope that any sentence for his adopted daughter will be reduced. And her mother Tatiana issued a new emotional appeal to victims to forgive her daughter. It has been revealed that the other driver 49 year old Gennady Dronov - who could not take part in the reenactment because he is still being treated for injuries - is under police guard in hospital. Police have not said why he is under armed guard, or if he is seen as under threat. He remains a witness in the case, and insisted that he moved his vehicle forward on a green light, when the Lexus driven by their wealthy heiress smashed into him. 'I drove to the junction on a clear green light, I remember exactly,' he said, saying his speed was around 15 mph. The Lexus is estimated to have been travelling at around 60 mph. 'I couldn't expect anyone driving at such speed on red light,' said Mr Dronov who suffered head and neck injuries. 'I didn't see her at all. 'If I only I could... I don't want to put myself in danger. 'It was very fast, it was an instant, really high speed.' Insisting he was innocent, he said: 'I couldn't expect anyone driving at such speed on red light.' She is now in a held in a crowded detention cell like the one picture here with nine other women, including those suspected of murder The aftermath of the horrendous crash in the Ukraine which killed six people Ms Zaitseva's mother Tatiana, 40, in a message to victims called the 18 October crash an 'horrific traffic accident' when 'the lives of perished and injured just stopped'. Reports in Ukraine said her husband could spend 1.1 million on compensation. 'It is a terrible tragedy for us, grief and horror,' she said. 'Immediately after the accident our family tried to provide some assistance to injured.' This was rebuffed but she renewed the offer. 'We are hoping that investigation and court will take a fair and just decision on this accident,' she said. 'We are asking families of perished and injured in this horrific accident for forgiveness once again.' Earlier her husband said: 'On our knees we are asking families of the perished and injured in this horrific road accident to forgive our daughter.' A relative emotionally leans over the coffin of Diana Berchenko, whose bridal gown can be seen Diana, pictured, was the sixth fatality from an appalling accident after 20-year-old glamorous heiress Alyona Zaitseva jumped a red light and collided with another car before mowing down the helpless crowd The heiress could be jailed for up to ten years if convicted of dangerous driving but her multi-millionaire father Vasily Zaitsev (bottom) has offered huge financial 'compensation' to families in the hope that any sentence for his adopted daughter will be reduced. And her mother Tatiana (top) issued a new emotional appeal to victims to forgive her daughter. Diana Berchenko, 22, buried in a bridal gown because she would never have a wedding day, furiously rejected the offer. 'Nobody will bring us back our Diana,' Igor Berchenko, 55. 'I can't say more than that. 'What do I need this compensation for? What should I buy with their money - shoes or trainers, or....? 'What kind of compensation are we talking about?' Another bereaved woman Lyudmila Farbis - who lost her daughter and granddaughter Alla and Anastasia Sokol aged 46 and 19 - refused to meet the heiress's mother. 'I did not want to meet her. 'We want nothing from them, no money can compensate the loss of both my girls.' A gunman has opened fire outside a German supermarket before fleeing and sparking a police manhunt. It is understood at least one person has been shot and that the attacker is on the run. The incident took place in the Gropelingen area of the north-western city of Bremen. Emergency services workers stand outside the Rewe supermarket after the gunman opened fire A police van blocks the entrance to the supermarket as police cordon it off to investigate Forensic officers in blue overalls and face masks stand outside the entrance talking to a police officer A gunman has opened fire outside a German supermarket before fleeing and sparking a police manhunt Police line up outside the supermarket where a gunman opened fire and shot a man today It happened in the entrance area of the Rewe supermarket following a loud row between two men. Witnesses saw one of the two men quickly draw his weapon and start shooting. The victim is said to be seriously injured, according to Bild, and his family members were at the store with him at the time. As the gunman fled the scene, several of the victim's relatives broke down in tears. There is no indication of a motive as of yet, but police have said there is no risk to the public, despite several shots being fired. Amanda Knox penned a moving essay on Wednesday to mark the 10-year anniversary of the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher who she calls 'her closest friend'. On November 1, 2007, Kercher was found beaten and stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy, where they were both studying abroad. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were initially convicted of Kercher's murder - in what was painted as a sex-game gone wrong. But they were acquitted and released from prison three years later when their defense team proved that there was never enough evidence connecting them to the crime. Another man, Rudy Guede, was also tried in a separate trial and found guilty of Kercher's murder. He remains imprisoned. In an essay for Westside Seattle, Knox recalled her fond memories of Kercher, saying she was never really able to mourn her because everyone thought she had something to do with it. Amanda Knox (left) penned a moving essay on Wednesday to mark the 10-year anniversary of the murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher (right) Today, a decade after the tragedy, Knox says she remembers the small pleasures she shared with Kercher in their few weeks living together in Italy - like grocery shopping, drinking espresso, and sunbathing on their terrace. 'I remember that I loved her accent. I remember the time I wanted to get dressed up and she happily loaned me a pair of her tights, like a big sister. And I remember the last time I saw her, ten years ago today, slinging her purse over her shoulder and waving goodbye to me on her way out to meet up with her British friends,' Knox wrote. On November 1, 2007, Kercher was found beaten and stabbed to death in the apartment she shared with Knox in Perugia, Italy, where they were both studying abroad Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito (pictured together above), were initially convicted of Kercher's murder - in what was painted as a sex-game gone wrong Knox and Sollecito were acquitted of murder three years later, when their defense team proved there wasn't enough evidence to link them to the crime. Above, Knox when she heard about the acquittal in 2011. Rudy Guede (right) was also tried in a separate trial and found guilty of Kercher's murder. He remains imprisoned These memories, Knox writes, are now tainted by the years of suffering that followed them when she was wrongly imprisoned of Kercher's murder. Among other things, Knox's memories of Kercher are 'buried beneath the horrific photos and crime scene footage I saw, the slurs I was called' and 'the death threats I received (and still receive)'. 'But despite all this, these memories still feel very close, in part because Meredith was my closest friend in a new and exciting time in our lives,' Knox says. Knox goes on to say that she's 'never been allowed to mourn' Kercher. 'There are some people who believe I have no right to mourn Meredith. They believe that I had something to do with her murder - I didnt - or that Meredith has been forgotten in the wake of my own struggle for justice - she hasnt. After her acquittal, Knox moved back to the U.S. and is now in a relationship with a writer (left and right) In her essay, Knox said has never forgotten her roommate and cherishes the memories she has of her 'Either way, they feel that Meredith and I are inextricably linked, so its simply not fair that I havent lost everything, as she has. They are wrong,' Knox writes. Most depressing of all is that Meredith isn't here, when she deserves to be. She is painfully missed by everyone who loved her. I miss her, and I'm grateful for the memories of our time together. Amanda Knox Knox says that the anniversary of Kercher's death 'belongs to everyone whose lives' she touched, including herself- though she admits there are many people who knew and loved Kercher more than she did. The anniversary of her death is also a reminder of another thing they share - the they both have become reminders that 'sometimes innocent people suffer, that their lives can be taken away from them in an instant'. 'I hate it that my memories of her are buried beneath the years of suffering Raffaele and I endured in the wake of her murder. And its depressing to know that mourning her comes at the price of being criticized for anything I say or dont say today. But most depressing of all is that Meredith isnt here, when she deserves to be. She is painfully missed by everyone who loved her. I miss her, and Im grateful for the memories of our time together,' Knox said. North Korea has denied reports that hundreds of people died after an accident at one of its nuclear test sites. Some 200 people are said to have been killed after a tunnel collapsed during the construction of a new underground facility at the Punggye-ri site in northeastern North Korea. This was first reported by a Japanese broadcaster, but North Korean state media has now hit back, saying this was a 'false report' intended to slander the country and its advances in nuclear development. The collapse is said to have taken place during the construction of a new underground facility at the Punggye-ri site (pictured) in northeastern North Korea, the report says At least 200 people have been killed at a nuclear test site in North Korea after a tunnel collapsed, Japanese media has claimed. Dictator Kim Jong-un is pictured According to Japan's TV Asahi, up to 100 people had been trapped in the tunnels and a further collapse happened during attempts to rescue them, raising the death toll to at least 200. The incident is believed to have happened on October 10, but another news agency, South Korea's Yonhap, said it was still unclear when the disaster took place. The network claimed the incident was the result of the weakening of the ground surrounding the site in the wake of North Korea's sixth nuclear test which was carried out at the same site. Earlier this week, Seoul warned that one more North Korean nuclear detonation could destroy its mountain test site and trigger a radiation leak. South Korea says any future nuclear test by Kim Jong-un risks collapsing the location set aside for launching missiles. The last five of Pyongyang's six nuclear tests have all been carried out at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site (pictured) under Mount Mantap, in the north-west of the country Overhead pictures taken in April show some of the facilities at North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test The launch of a Hwasong-12 missile on September 16, 2017. A launch like this at one North Korean test site could destroy it and trigger a radiation leak Seoul detected several earthquakes near the hermit nation's nuclear test site in the country's northeast after its sixth and most powerful bomb explosion in September. Experts say the quakes suggest the area is now too unstable to conduct more tests there. South Korea's weather agency chief Nam Jae-Cheol made the comments Monday during a parliament committee meeting. He was responding to a lawmaker's question about whether another North Korean test could lead to such an accident. Last month, US experts issued a similar warning, stating a second nuclear test site used by North Korea in the country's north west could cave in but that it won't be abandoned. Five of Pyongyang's recent tests have been carried out under Mount Mantap at the Punggye-ri military base, which is located in the north west of North Korea. But now the base is said to be suffering from 'Tired Mountain Syndrome' after three small earthquakes occurred nearby after the blasts. Advertisement Fascinating colourised photographs have shed new light on war machines used on the front line during the Second World War. Photos brought to life with colour show British, American and German tanks and their crew during conflicts across Europe and in northern Africa. One shows the British crew of an upended Sherman tank enjoying a drink while waiting for a recovery team in Italy. Others show German Afrika Korps soldiers surrendering to allied forces next to a tank with a swastika flag tied to the front in northern Africa. German tanks are also seen rumbling along dirt tracks in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge while US troops are seen marching towards the French town of Le Coudray, south west of Paris. Royston Leonard, a 55-year-old electrician from Wales, said he spent 60 hours adding colour to the black and white photos in the hope it would encourage younger generations to learn about the conflict. Fascinating colourised photographs have shed new light on the war machines on the front line during the Second World War. Pictured above, the British crew of an upended Sherman tank enjoy a drink while waiting for a recovery team along the Gothic Line - a German defensive line of the Italian Campaign - on September 13, 1944 Surrender: A captured German Afrika Korps soldier puts his hands up as allied troops surround his Nazi tank in northern Africa in December 1941 German troops drive a Sturmgeschutz tank- Germany's most-produced armoured fighting vehicle during World War II - down a dirt track in Ardennes, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 On the March: American troops are pictured walking past a US M5 Stuart tank on their way to the French town of Le Coudray, south west of Paris. it is not known exactly when the original photo was taken Photos also show American crew smiling as they pose in front of an M3 Tank holding shells at Souk el Arba in Tunisia on November 24, 1942 Three German soldiers inspect an M5 Stuart tank after capturing the armoured vehicle. It is not known exactly where or when the original photo was taken The colourised photos also show a German Heavy Tank Panzerkampfwagen Ausf.B, often referred to simply as Tiger II. The date and location of the photo is not known The photos also show this German Panzer VI Tiger I tank camouflaged in the undergrowth in Villers-Bocage, Normandy. The Battle of Villers-Bocage took place on June 13, 1944, one week after the Normandy Landings by the Western Allies that began the conquest of German-occupied France The rare collection of photos, brought to life with colour, show two tanks parked up next to the ruins of a building in Italy. Royston Leonard, a 55-year-old electrician from Wales, said he spent 60 hours adding colour to the black and white photos in the hope it would encourage younger generations to learn about the conflict A US soldier stands in front of a destroyed Panther tank outside Cologne Cathedral in Germany on April 4, 1945. A sign in front of him implores people not to stray into the warzone, adding: 'Beyond this point you draw fire on our fighting men. He risks his life 24 hours a day. Do you?' Advance: A Canadian Sherman tank trundles thought the streets in to the La Maladerie area of Caen in northern France in 1944 A US Harley-Davidson WLA motorcycle is parked up on the street in a town in Normandy while an M10 tank advances the background. The original image was captured in the summer of 1944 US troops move through the commune of Avranches in Normandy, northern France, on July 31, 1944 as residents watch on James Gordon and Private Rainwater inspect a deserted Panther tank formerly of the Panzer Division Das Reich near Grandmenil, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, at the end of 1944 Infantrymen and a tank of the 11th Armored Division, 3rd US, Army, advance through a smoke-filled street in Wernberg, Germany, in April 1945 An M4A3 Sherman tank of the 11th Armoured Division, 3rd US Army is seen advancing into the centre of the German town of Kronach on April 12, 1945 The incredible pictures were brought to life by colouriser Royston Leonard, 55, an electrician from Wales. Above, a Panzer division Mr Leonard said it has taken him more than 60 hours of work spread over weeks of evenings to complete the set. Above, the 9th SS Hohenstaufen in Normandy Two of the pictures are included among a similar collection of colourised images in author Michael D. Carrolls book, Retrographic: Historys Most Important Images Transformed into Living Colour, available on Amazon for 13.31. A knife-wielding schoolgirl had to be disarmed by four police officers after she threatened to kill a classmate. It is understood that the officers - three men and a woman - were needed to take the weapon from her at the 700-pupil Webster's High School in Kirriemuir, Angus. Police rushed to the scene after receiving a call from the school just before 9am on Thursday October 19. It comes almost two years to the day that 16-year-old pupil Bailey Gwynne was stabbed to death by Daniel Stroud at the Cults Academy in Aberdeen. The officers rushed to take the weapon from her at the 700-pupil Webster's High School in Kirriemuir, Angus Angus Council has refused to say whether the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been suspended from Webster's. A source spoke of concerns for the safety of the school's pupils in the wake of the incident, coming two years after a pupil was killed with a knife at Cults Academy in Aberdeen. The source said: 'Police were called just before 9am to disarm the girl, who was wielding a knife. 'She had made threats to kill a fellow third-year pupil. It took three policemen and one policewoman to disarm her. 'I don't want Webster's to be the next Cults Academy.' A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: 'Police Scotland can confirm that they were called to Webster's High School, Kirriemuir, on October 19 in response to a 13-year old-pupil being in possession of a knife. It comes almost two years to the day that 16-year-old pupil Bailey Gwynne (pictured) was stabbed to death 'The knife was handed over without incident and the girl is to be reported to the Children's Reporter for possession of a knife within a school, and for threatening and abusive behaviour.' Angus Council refused to reveal whether the pupil had been suspended and said: 'The matter is the subject of a police report and it would not be appropriate to comment.' In August last year a pupil from Montrose Academy was excluded from the school following an incident involving a knife. Parents were sent letters to inform them of a lunch-time confrontation between two 'older pupils' in which a knife was shown. A report into Bailey Gwynne's death in 2015 concluded that the incident was 'avoidable' and that consideration should be given to changing the law to 'improve the resilience of schools'. Last month Aberdeen City Council implemented a stronger policy to clamp down on weapons in schools. Former prosecutors and other notable attorneys expressed alarm on Wednesday and Thursday that President Donald Trump's insistence on the death penalty for accused terrorist Sayfullo Saipov could make it harder for the Department of Justice to convict him. 'Mr. President, we all know he should get the death penalty. But when *you* say it, it makes it harder for DOJ to make that happen,' former New York federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy wrote on Twitter. Saipov mowed down more than a dozen innocent people Tuesday on a New York City bike path, killing eight of them. But announcing a verdict and sentence ahead of time could be a legally problematic complication. 'NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!; Trump tweeted Wednesday night. 'Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system,' he added Thursday. 'There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!' SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEOS President Donald Trump has said he favors the death penalty for accused terrorist Sayfullo Saipov, leading some legal experts to worry that he may be hamstringing prosecutors Trump made his first mention of the death penalty for Saipov on Wednesday night as many Americans were watching the World Series wrap up Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted terror sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, chastised the president for making the Justice Department's job harder 'The jury pool is tainted,' warned former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, hinting that defense lawyers would have a field day with Trump's tweets Renato Mariotti, a former federal securities fraud prosecutor who is running for attorney general in Illinois as a Democrat, tweeted that 'Trump helped the terrorist' by prejudging his case. 'Now prosecutors will have to spend time dealing with motions that the jury pool is tainted.' Washington attorney Mark Zaid, who specializes in national security law, tweeted: 'This is called potentially tainting jury pool & could impact alleged perpetrator's ability to secure fair trial. SMH #Unpresidential' Presidents and governors seldom weigh in on pending criminal cases out of fear that it could prejudice and undermine an otherwise fair trial. National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster said Thursday that 'what the president wants is secure the American people from this threat, and from ... mass-murderers like this' 'Shake My Head': National security lawyer Mark Zaid called Trump's tweet 'unpresidential' The president in particular is in charge of the Justice Department, which is in control of Saipov's prosecution. National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster dodged a question during Thursday's White House press briefing, saying only that 'what the president wants is secure the American people from this threat, and from ... mass-murderers like this.' 'And so what he's asked for is options to take a look to assess if our tremendous law enforcement teams and our judicial system has all the tools they need to be able to combat this threat to the American people.' Other experts who weighed in included Wall Street Journal correspondent Jess Bravin, who covers the U.S. Supreme Court. 'Defense counsel [is] likely to cite such comments as prejudicial to fair trial or sentencing,' he wrote of Trump's tweets. Trump said Thursday morning for the second time that he wants suspected terrorist Sayfullo Saipov to face the death penalty Trump on Thursday also walked back his suggestion from a day earlier that Saipov might be sent to rot in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp The Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan (above in court sketches) accused of carrying on Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York But on 'Fox & Friends,' Trump's go-to morning TV choice, opinions were clear and monolithic on Thursday. 'When I hear people about, "Where are we going to send him? Should we send him to Gitmo?" I say we skip Gitmo and send him straight to hell where he belongs,' former U.S. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink said on the show. And Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, famous for surviving a gunman's attack this summer, said Trump was 'right' to suggest Guantanamo Bay. Scalise said the Justice Department should 'throw the book at him.' 'Whatever the harshest penalty that they can put forward is the right thing to do,' he said, adding that Saipov 'should absolutely be ... eligible and get the death penalty.' Rep. Steve Scalise, famous for surviving a shooting attack this summer, said on the Fox & Friends program that 'whatever the harshest penalty that they can put forward is the right thing to do' Former U.S. Navy SEAL Jocko Willink gave Trump some red meat to tweet about, saying of Saipov that the U.S. should 'skip Gitmo and send him straight to hell where he belongs' Trump had already seized on the deadly New York City truck attack to step up demands for stricter U.S. immigration laws, asking Congress to end a visa program that let the Uzbek suspect into the country. Former president Barack Obama had tried but failed to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. No detainee has been sent there since 2008. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Wednesday that Trump considers Saipov an 'enemy combatant,' a designation that would make the alleged New York killer ineligible for legal rights afforded to criminal suspects in U.S. courts. Among those rights, familiar to watchers of TV cop dramas, are the right to remain silent and the right to have an attorney present during questioning. 'I believe we would consider this person to be an enemy combatant, yes,' White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters during Wednesday's briefing, while cautioning that she wasn't sure how the federal government would 'process' him. People gathered for a candlelight vigil for victims of the attack at Foley Square in New York City on Wednesday The suspect, Saipov, was allegedly an adherent of ISIS and was said to be radicalized domestically Asked why the 'enemy combatant' label is appropriate, she replied: 'I think the actions that he took certainly justify that.' Trump had called the suspect 'this animal' and lambasted the U.S. justice system that he leads as 'a joke' and 'a laughing stock.' Since taking office in January, Trump has sought to increase deportations of illegal immigrants and limit legal immigration. The Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan accused of carrying out Tuesday's terror attack in Manhattan entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Saipov wore a gray shirt and was surrounded by five guards while in his wheelchair inside a New York federal courthouse after he was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Saipov drove nearly a mile down the Hudson River bike path before his rampage came to an end when he smashed into a school bus The above graphic shows how Saipov drove off the West Side Highway and onto the Hudson River bike path on Tuesday His lawyers said Wednesday they were not seeking bail and a judge ordered him to be held. Saipov did not enter a plea to terrorism charges and a judge set his next court date for November 15. Authorities say the Uzbek national watched ISIS videos on his cellphone and picked Halloween for the attack on a bike lane in lower Manhattan because he believed more people would be out on the streets. He also had plans to drive over the Brooklyn Bridge and kill pedestrians on the walking path over the NYC landmark. Prosecutors said in court papers that Saipov asked to display the ISIS flag in his hospital room where he was recovering from being shot by police. Saipov 'stated that he felt good about what he had done,' according to court papers. He left behind knives and a note, handwritten in Arabic, that included Islamic religious references and said 'it will endure' a phrase that commonly refers to ISIS, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. Leaving Montana was never an option for the newly appointed director of the state's Office of Outdoor Recreation. And now Rachel VandeVoort has a job to help promote some of the many industries in which she has worked. (Professors) said: We found jobs in Oklahoma and Nebraska, and I said: Im staying in Montana and leaving is absolutely not an option, she said. Born and raised The Whitefish native describes herself as a Montana girl for sure, a former dirt bag river and fishing guide, as well as a hunter and former competition shooter. She also worked for an organic produce importer and as sales manager for what is now Whitefish Mountain Resort before she and her husband had two sons and she scaled back. It was at a Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation banquet that she ran into some friends who worked for firearm manufacturer Kimber America, which has a satellite office in Kalispell. I really enjoy sales and educating people, and I thought, wait, I could sell guns, she said. VandeVoort, 38, started with Kimber eight years ago, becoming trade relations manager before learning about Gov. Steve Bullocks proposal to launch a new office. New office Citing the growth of the outdoor industry and tourism in Montana, last year Bullock announced his public lands agenda, which included creation of the Montana Office of Outdoor Recreation housed in the Governors Office of Economic Development. The announcement of the office came along with other initiatives aimed at improving access and freeing up access funding, as well as opposition to selling or transferring federal lands in the state. When the governor announced he was creating this role, I had so much appreciation for his forward-thinking nature because this portion is such a big portion of our economy, VandeVoort said. VandeVoort has been in her role as director of the office for nearly two months now, fostering relationships as a liaison between state government, private industry and interest groups. Montana is the fourth state to add an office of outdoor recreation, following Utah, Colorado and Washington. There may be as many as eight or 10 state offices in the near future, she said, with plans in Oregon, Wyoming, Vermont and North Carolina. VandeVoort wants to see Montana's office find its own identity. Its a huge movement, and were looking at how to best sculpt these offices to serve our state, but I want to really refrain from doing anything other states have done, she said. I dont want that to lead my thought process I want to determine what is best for Montana and then look at exchanging best practices with other states and those sorts of things. Big business Estimates from the national Outdoor Industry Association put outdoor recreation now as the largest sector of Montanas economy. The association says the economic impact is about $7 billion in consumer spending, $2 billion of which is wages for 70,000 direct jobs. Communities across Montana recognize that outdoor recreation supports, contributes to a high quality of life, and perhaps more importantly attracts and sustains employers and families, Bullock told the association trade show in July. "From the smallest rural towns to the most densely packed cities, outdoor recreation powers a vast economic engine that creates billions in spending and millions of good-paying American jobs. Outdoor recreation is the economy of the future, and we are fortunate to live in a nation of iconic beauty, inspiring landscapes and bountiful waters." Creation of the one-person office has not been without its detractors. Republicans have been critical of Bullock for moving forward with the office as the state faces a budget crisis and cuts to health and education programs. Its undeniable that Montanas outdoor recreation economy is growing, and with that, spurring job and business growth, Bullocks communication director Ronja Abel said in a statement. This is a small, but smart investment to ensure that we have the infrastructure needed for years to come to attract businesses, support industry growth, create even more good-paying jobs, and meet the growing demands of Montanas world-class outdoor recreation. Abel added that $200,000 for the program was existing funding and appropriated from the Department of Commerces Big Sky Trust Fund program. On the road VandeVoort is based in Whitefish but frequently travels the state. Before this interview she had just returned from a trip to Libby to meet with a manufacturer of campers and a town hall meeting in Troy to talk about issues in the Kootenai National Forest. Next week she has a trip planned to Glasgow to discuss opportunities to connect Eastern Montana with public lands and recreation opportunities. I am spending a ton of time meeting with folks because we have all these people out there doing these amazing things, she said. The governor wants to make sure that the state of Montana is doing everything it can for one of the biggest sectors of our economy. Looking through that lens, Im asking what the state can do to better that economy. Although still early in the job, VandeVoort sees one priority in linking private industry with programs for workforce training and education as well as developing apprenticeship and internship programs. Another emphasis will include connecting children through the school system with outdoor recreation opportunities in their backyards. Public land and water is the backbone with which this economy stands on, and we need to make sure that we have the infrastructure in place. Theres also a stewardship component to that and making sure were doing it right, she said. We are going to grow and have more visitors, but we have control over this, and we need to be sitting down and making sure were making responsible decisions that give back to the land. It has to be at the forefront of what were doing and, frankly, I love the fact that we have to have this conversation because it brings so many more people in. Advertisement It was a landmark battle that epitomized the tragic relationship between the United States and Native Americans, a bloodbath in what is now Montana that was forever immortalized as Custers Last Stand. Led by Sitting Bull, fighters from the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes overpowered US forces under the leadership of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer killing him and all of the men under his direct command. The Battle of the Little Bighorn marked the height of Native American power and victory and subsequently shocked and horrified white Americans. In its aftermath, US troops flooded the area, forcing the surrender of the Native Americans. Now, a fascinating series of photographs depicts the Cheyenne tribe, including pictures that show leaders visiting the White House years before the 1876 battle that has fascinated historians for a century and a half. The Cheyenne are thought to have originated in the Great Plains, an area of North America which includes the entirety of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota as well as parts of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming. It also includes the southern areas of the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Formed from the combination of two tribes, the So'taeo'o and the Tsetsehestahese, the Cheyenne have a checkered history with the United States government, dating back to the first treaty between the two in 1825. The amity of that treaty ended quickly; according to military historian and professor Gregory J.W. Urwin, the events leading up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn - known to the Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass - were typical of the irresolute and confusing policy of the US government toward Native Americans. The initial treaty between the Cheyenne and the US government set out the terms by which the tribe could live peacefully side-by-side with American settlers, but the agreement didn't last long. Western expansion by the United States, coupled with the Pike's Peak Gold Rush, led to several clashes between government forces and the Cheyenne and resulted in several deaths. This eventually led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana, during which 268 US cavalryman were killed. Pictured left: One of the last free Cheyenne leaders sits for a photograph before being forcibly exiled from his homeland, 1877. Right: A member of the tribe poses with a bow and arrow At the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Cheyenne joined up with the Lakota, Sioux and Arapaho tribes to defeat the US government in what has now become the legendary 'Custer's Last Stand'. Pictured: A young Cheyenne boy wearing full headdress and holding a rifle in 1907. Michael Carroll, author of Retrographic: History's Most Important Images Transformed into Living Colour, which contains some of the image, wrote about the aftermath of the battle: 'By 1877, however, the Cheyenne people had lost their last major fight with the US Army, the Dull Knife Fight or Battle on the Red Fork of November 25th 1876,' writes Michael Carroll' Carroll added: 'The Cheyenne force of about four hundred warriors, under Chief Dull Knife, was severely outnumbered by one thousand soldiers under General Crook. The native force were forced to abandon the Shoshone village of two hundred lodges, along with their seven hundred head of cattle. Despite a brave rear-guard action, this decisive defeat effectively ended the Cheyenne ability to resist the government by military means.' Pictured: Lt. Col. Custer (pictured front right) fighting for the Union army during the American Civil War in 1862 An Ojibwe Native American spearfishing in Minnesota. Carroll further explains the Cheyenne's fate: 'The Cheyenne split into two factions, the southern and northern Cheyenne. The southern group settled in the reservation the government had ordered them into, and the northern Cheyenne returned with Dull Knife, and his fellow Chief Little Wolf, to live within the Sioux territories of Wyoming. Colonel Mackenzie of the Forth Cavalry was assigned with the task of removing this group, which he did with brutal efficiency, defeating resistors, burning lodges and confiscating horses. Without food or shelter, by November 1876, the villagers had little option but to join the southern Cheyenne reservation' Although the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), in effect, had guaranteed to the Lakota and Dakota (Yankton) Sioux as well as the Arapaho Indians exclusive possession of the Dakota territory west of the Missouri River, white miners in search of gold were settling in lands sacred especially to the Lakota, Prof. Urwin writes for Britannica.com. Unwilling to remove the settlers and unable to persuade the Lakota to sell the territory, the US government issued an order to the Indian agencies that all the Indians return to the designated reservations by January 31, 1876, or be deemed hostile. The improbability of getting that message to the hunters, coupled with its rejection by many of the Plains Indians, made confrontation inevitable. The Native Americans Cheyenne and Arapaho and Lakota defiantly came together under the leadership of Sitting Bull, and by the spring of 1876 a significant camp of about 10,000 had been established at the Little Bighorn River. US Army troops were dispatched to quell the rebellious Native Americans. 'We must stand together or they will kill us separately,' Sitting Bull told those gathered at the camp. 'These soldiers have come shooting; they want war. All right, well give it to them.' On June 22, 1876 Colonel Custers 7th Cavalry was sent after Sitting Bull; the plan was to attack from the south to drive the Native Americans towards additional soldiers further upstream. But scouts spotted Custers men, and he assumed theyd warn the camp so he attacked immediately. On June 25, he split his regiment into three battalions, sending one straight into the village, one to the south to cut off escapees, and his own to attack from the north. That tactic proved to be disastrous, Prof Urwin writes. In fragmenting his regiment, Custer had left its three main components unable to provide each other support. But that wasnt the only problem. Army intelligence had vastly underestimated Sitting Bulls forces at 800 men; Custer encountered 2,000 among them legendary warrior Crazy Horse and many were far better armed than the US troops. Custer and his men were corralled onto a hilltop, where they were slaughtered to a man. A single surviving horse, named Comanche, reportedly escaped though badly wounded and would be paraded out for years, without a mount, during military displays. Within two days, the encampment at Little Bighorn had dispersed, and within five years, almost all of the Sioux and Cheyenne would be confined to reservations. While the Battle of the Little Bighorn marked such a resounding victory for the Native Americans, it can also be viewed as the beginning of the end of the Indian Wars - and has been called, in addition to Custer's Last Stand, the Indians' Last Stand. An Indian delegation in the White House Conservatory during the Civil War, with J.G. Nicolay, President Abraham Lincoln's secretary, standing in center back row and interpreter John Simpson Smith at back left, 1863 Left: Chief Wolf Robe (1838-1841 to 1910), the Southern Cheyenne chief sometimes believed to be the man whose profile was used on the Indian-head nickel. Here he is wearing a round silver Benjamin Harrison peace medal, which he received from the federal government in 1890 for assisting the Cherokee Commission in negotiations for disposal of land, 1904. Right: Porcupine, a Cheyenne man, in a head-and-shoulders portrait wearing a wreath of cottonwood leaves on his head, possibly to protect it from the sun during a Sun Dance, 1910 The Cheyenne are thought to have originated in the Great Plains, an area of North America which includes the entirety of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, parts of Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming. Pictured: Hunters on horseback in 1897 Three Cheyenne girls, of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, are photographed at play with their small tipi dollhouses and dolls in 1907 Pictured: A Cheyenne Indian, wearing an elaborate war bonnet headdress, on horseback at a pool of water in 1905 Cheyenne people gathered in open area for Sun Dance ceremony in 1910. Formed from the combination of two tribes, the So'taeo'o and the Tsetsehestahese, the Cheyenne have a chequered history with the United States government, dating back to 1825 and the first treaty between the two Right: Three Cheyenne dancers in ceremonial dress, bend towards water. Left: A man on horseback wades through shallow water Cheyenne warriors pose for a photograph in 1863, two years after the beginning of the American Civil War. After half a century of violent clashes the hostility between the tribe and the US government culminated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 - which led to the US Cavalry's defeat and the death of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer A members of the tribe dresses as a wolf for an animal dance. The Great Plains of North America - the Cheyenne's homeland - stretch across much of the United States and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan Men dress as clowns for an animal dance. There are now believed to be around 22,970 members of the Cheyenne tribe, with most living in Montana and Oklahoma Pictured: The Cheyenne perform a traditional Ghost Dance underneath the American flag in 1898. Nowadays there are 10,840 members of the Northern Cheyenne and 12,130 of the Southern Cheyenne Pictured: A religious ritual takes place in 1905. The earliest historical record of the Cheyenne comes from the mid-1600s when a group of the tribe's members visited a French fort in present-day Illinois Kevin Spacey 'is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment' after a string of men accused him of making unwanted sexual advances. Representatives for the actor announced his decision on Thursday, but did not say what kind of treatment he would be seeking or where. Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and Tony Montana, an American filmmaker, became the latest people to speak out against Spacey after Anthony Rapp accused him of laying on top of him in bed when he was 14. Scroll down for video Kevin Spacey 'is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment' amid allegations he made unwanted advances and groped a series of men, his representatives say Tony Montana (left) has accused Spacey of groping him in a Los Angeles bar in 2003, while Robert Cavazos (right) said he had 'a couple of unpleasant encounters' with the actor Montana said Spacey groped him while the pair were at a bar together in Los Angeles in 2003. He said Spacey 'put his arm around me' and tried to convince him to leave the bar, before forcefully grabbing his crotch. 'He grabbed my whole package,' Montana added. Meanwhile Cavazos wrote on Facebook that he had 'a couple of unpleasant encounters with Spacey that were on the edge of being called harassment' during Spacey's time as artistic director of The Old Vic theater in London. 'There are many of us who have a "Kevin Spacey story",' he added. 'It seems that it only took a male under 30 to make Mr. Spacey feel free to touch us. It was so common that it even became a local joke (in very bad taste).' Other sources from The Old Vic came forward anonymously to say Spacey had frequently groped men at the theater and they were asked to help cover it up. It comes after more than 80 women accused Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual abuse and harassment dating back decades A former employee told the Guardian: 'We were all involved in keeping it quiet. I witnessed him groping men many times in all sorts of different situations.' Meanwhile a former actress told MailOnline that Spacey had tried to curb his inappropriate behavior and had someone to keep an eye on him when he got drunk. 'In London I've heard he had a wrangler at the Old Vic - an assistant - who was in charge of making sure he went home after too many drinks which is when he got "handsy",' she said. Spacey had offered an apology after Rapp came forward to speak out, saying he 'didn't remember' the incident which had happened 'more than 30 years ago.' But he said if the incident had taken place, he was sorry for the trauma Rapp experienced. The allegations about Spacey emerged after more than 80 women accused Harvey Weinstein of rape, sexual assault and harassment dating back decades. Weinstein, who is also seeking treatment, has denied any claims of non-consensual activity with any of his accusers. Daryll Rowe, 27, (pictured last week) insisted alternative therapies were better to treat the virus rather than prescribed anti-retroviral drugs so downed urine every day A hairdresser accused of deliberately infecting a string of lovers with HIV thought he had cured himself by drinking his own urine throughout the day, a court heard today. Daryll Rowe, 27, insisted alternative therapies were better to treat the virus and read online that taking prescribed anti-retroviral treatment would stop his urine killing it. Rowe didn't like taking prescription drugs and was into health living and after being diagnosed with HIV read online about natural therapies that can help cure the virus, including drinking urine. Today he told Lewes Crown Court: 'I thought I'd cured myself. I felt a lot better than I did before.' He also told the jury he also used coconut nut oil, apple cider vinegar and olive leaf extract to treat genital warts and herpes. The 27-year-old, originally from Edinburgh, allegedly had sex with at least 10 men he met on the gay dating app Grindr after being diagnosed as HIV positive. He is on trial charged with deliberately infecting five men with HIV and attempting to infect a further five men with the virus. He denies the charges. Rowe told the court he had unprotected sex while in Brighton because he thought he had cured himself of the virus. Breaking down in tears, Rowe told the court he had unprotected sex while in Brighton because he thought he had cured himself. Fighting back tears he said he thought he had cured himself through natural therapies and denied purposefully trying to infect gay men he met on Grindr. Asked by Felicity Gerry QC, defending, whether he had intended to infect any of the alleged victims with HIV, he said: 'Never. Never. I never had it in my mind before, during or after the sex we had that I wanted to pass on HIV.' He said when he was living in Scotland he had suffered painful, swollen glands but they had gone down and he felt much healthier. Rowe told the court he was fostered as a child and came out as gay when he was 15 years old. He told the court he became vegetarian when he was 18 and became interested in health eating and when he was diagnosed with HIV in April 2015 he decided not to take anti-retroviral treatment. He told the court: 'Before I was diagnosed I was doing the urine therapy and had read up on the cure. When I got the diagnosis I thought I was going to cure myself.' He said the websites he was looking at had a section on how to cure to HIV with urine therapy. Rowe, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2015, is charged with infecting five men with HIV and attempting to infect a further five with the virus The hairdresser said it told you that taking anti-retrovirals could cause damage to your body because you were repeatedly taking medication and heard urine therapy was very beneficial to health. Felicity Gerry QC asked him why urine therapy was beneficial to the health of someone who is HIV positive. Rowe said: 'The main part is to drink your urine in the morning before anything else and it's supposed to have the most anti-bodies in and that sort of stuff. When I found out I was positive I went quite heavily into it. He said that after he moved from Edinburgh to Brighton he would drink his own urine throughout the day. Rowe said he looked into other natural anti-viral drugs and also took oregano oiI and olive leaf extract. He told the court he believed in star signs and was a strong Libran which indicated he was balanced and into relationships. On his Grindr profile he described himself as a 'vegan hippie' and believed in 'love, light and positivity.' The court heard that days after having sex with a number of men Rowe goaded them by telling them he had HIV Asked by Miss Gerry QC whether he had intended to infect alleged victims with HIV, Rowe said: 'No.' He said he preferred unprotected sex with partners but he denied deliberately tearing a condom. Rowe told the court none of the alleged victims asked if he was HIV negative or clean before they had sex. Earlier in the trial the jury was told Rowe had been diagnosed with HIV while he was still living in Edinburgh in April 2015 after a sexual health clinic contacted him to tell him a former partner was infected. Doctors found he was 'coping well' with his diagnosis but were concerned when he refused vaccination for common illnesses HIV positive patients are susceptible to, such as pneumonia. They were also worried when he refused anti-retroviral drugs to slow the development of the virus and make him less contagious, jurors heard. The court heard that the five men Rowe is accused of infecting with HIV all had very similar strains to the one Rowe was infected with, making it highly likely that he was the source of the virus. Under cross examination Rowe said he thought drinking his own urine was a viable therapy for HIV. Caroline Carberry QC , prosecuting, asked: 'You thought drinking your own urine had cured you of HIV?' Rowe replied: 'Yes.' Asked which doctor had tested him after his arrival in Brighton and confirmed he was clear of the virus. Rowe said: 'If you're talking about a test from a doctor there was no proof of that. In my mindset was I was cured.' Asked what tests had been carried out Rowe replied: 'No tests.' He said: 'I was very embarrassed about talking about drinking my own urine because it is quite taboo.' Miss Carberry said: 'It's rubbish isn't it Mr Rowe?' He replied: 'I didn't believe it was rubbish at the time.' Daryll Rowe arriving at Lewes Crown Court, where he is accused of deliberately infecting ten lovers with HIV Miss Carberry said natural therapies were not something he adhered to all the time because he had previously taken antibiotics to treat gonorrhoea just some months earlier. Asked why he didn't take prescription drugs for HIV just months after he was cured of venereal disease he said: 'I was looking at a cure. Urine therapy was going to cure it.' He said there was a lot online which said the anti-retroviral drugs 'made you worse and killed you quicker.' He replied: 'I trusted everything I read online. There were blogs and videos on Youtube.I thought: 'Why would people be doing this if there wasn't something to it?' He denied knowing that if he put other people at risk of contracting HIV then he could be prosecuted. The court heard after he was diagnosed Rowe visited, sexual health clinic the Chalmers Centre to Edinburgh. Rowe was asked why he didn't heed the advice of three medical practitioners he was in contact with. While there the jury was told he received expert advice on the virus and warned that if he put other people at risk of contracting HIV then he could be prosecuted. He said: 'I don't remember that. I don't remember the advice.' Asked why he did not tell doctors he didn't want to take anti-retroviral drugs because he was undertaking natural therapies. He said: 'Because I was too embarrassed to tell her about the urine therapy because I thought it was curing me and stopping transmission. I did not trust the doctors and what they were telling me.' He was asked whether he was angry at getting the HIV. 'I wasn't angry. I knew in my head I could cure it. I thought I was partly responsible as well.' Rowe denied being aggressive towards the first alleged victim after he declined to meet him again. But he admitted being 'nasty' by text message for telling him he was 'f**ked inthe head'. In one text message Rowe said: 'You may have the fever coz I have HIV, LOL.' He told the court: 'They are horrible, they are nasty but they don't reflect me as a person. They were sent in heat of the moment.' In another he said: 'Ugly f**k, you'll be alone forever. You've got a weird, creepy face anyways.' Later when the alleged victim tested positive he sent an earlier all-clear HIV test to Rowe. He said: 'I didn't want him to know what he had done to me.' But Rowe texted back said: 'Not even been 3 months. Don't break out the party just yet loser, Haha.' Miss Carberry said: 'This was the start of your campaign in Brighton.' She said the texts proved that he knew he was HIV positive but also that he was taking great delight in taunting his victim. The trial, which is due to last six weeks, continues. Carer Abosede Adeyinka has been jailed for attacking the 90-year-old widow of a man she had looked after before his death A carer who wore a lace disguise over her face as she tried to kill a 90-year-old widow and steal 30,000 was jailed for 21 years today. Abosede Adeyinka, 52, attacked Pamela Batten with a knife and a hammer after husband Ernest had hidden the cash in bags at their home in Yiewsley, west London. The frail pensioner was stabbed in the neck during the attack on April 27 this year and was only saved by emergency surgery by doctors at at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Adeyinka looked after Mrs Batten's husband Ernest from 2013 until his death in October last year, a court heard. Mrs Batten grew frustrated with Adeyinka's time keeping and often called her agency to find out where she was. After Ernest passed away, Adeyinka went to the widow's home and knocked her to the floor. Mrs Batten said: 'She tried to hit me with a hammer'. Asked if she thought the attack was financially motivated, the pensioner replied: 'Nobody suggested it but I did wonder myself - I still wonder why.' The attack on Mrs Batten is thought to have been motivated by a desire to get cash her husband Ernest had hidden in their home, the court heard Following a trial at Blackfriars Crown Court, a jury convicted Adeyinka of attempted murder. She was cleared of possessing a kitchen knife after jurors could not be sure she took the blade with her. Adeyinka shook her head in disbelief at the verdicts were given and wept loudly as Judge Peter Clarke, QC, said she had shown 'a complete lack of remorse'. She has convictions dating back to the 1990s for offences of assault, burglary and theft from an employer. Adeyinka, who disguised herself with lace, was pictured on CCTV on the day of the attack Prosecutor Kevin Barry told the court the widow 'was afraid to go home' following her discharge from hospital and now needs a zimmer-frame to walk. 'Before the attack she felt lonely because her husband had died but she was not afraid like she is now,' he said. 'The hammer blows to her head have affected the vision in her right eye which is now blurry. 'Mrs Batten feels that she has changed after the attack. Before it she was the sort of person who would try to make friends with anyone but now she is frightened if someone speaks to her.' Jailing Adeyinka for 21 years Judge Peter Clarke, QC, said: 'Pamela Batten was mentally sprightly and six months after his death she still had no idea that her husband had squirrelled away over 30,000 in cash around the house. 'From what you did on 27 April there is every reason to believe that you knew more about that money than Mrs Batten did. 'You visited her about three times after her husband's death and, although she had reservations about your motives, Mrs Batten was pleased to have the company even though her son religiously visited her every day.' Another CCTV image shows Adeyinka on the day of the horrific attack in April The judge added: 'Although you were wearing a lace disguise over your face I am satisfied on her evidence that she called you by name. 'It was at that moment that you resorted to your second plan. You bundled that 90-year-old woman into her front hall and took out a seven-inch hammer from your handbag, smashing that lady's skull with at least two blows.' Speaking after the court hearing, investigating officer DC James Harbour said: 'This was a vile and disgusting crime on a defenceless grandmother in her own home. 'There are so many factors that make this a wicked attack, including a victim who was 90 and the level of violence used. In view of the age of the victim and brutality of the attack I am truly thankful that the victim has been able to recover. 'It is a credit to her that she was able to attend the trial in person and tell the court what had happened to her. I wish to pay tribute to her courage, resolve and integrity; a stark contrast to the behaviour of the defendant, who is now facing a lengthy term in prison.' Women will have to wait 217 years before they earn as much as men and have equal representation in the workplace, research said, revealing the widest gap in almost a decade. Women are paid and achieve just over half as much as men in the workplace, the World Economic Forum said, reporting an economic gap of 58 per cent between the sexes. It is the second year in a row that the Swiss non-profit has recorded worsening economic inequality, which is calculated by measuring how many men and women participate in the labour force, their earned incomes and their job advancement. Women are paid and achieve just over half as much as men in the workplace, the World Economic Forum said, reporting an economic gap of 58 per cent between the sexes Last year, WEF said women would achieve economic equality in 170 years, down from 118 years in 2015. 'In 2017 we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse,' Saadia Zahidi, WEF's head of education, gender and work, told The Thomson Reuters Foundation. 'Gender equality is both a moral and economic imperative. Some countries understand this and they are now seeing dividends from the proactive measures they have taken to address their gender gaps.' No country has closed the pay gap, WEF said, using data from institutions such as the International Labour Organization, United Nations Development Programme and World Health Organization. It is the second year in a row that the Swiss non-profit has recorded worsening economic inequality, which is calculated by measuring how many men and women participate in the labour force, their earned incomes and their job advancement (file photo) The income gap between men and women appears to be getting bigger over time, according to the World Economic Forum Overall, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Rwanda and Sweden ranked highest among 144 nations measured on progress in equality in four areas: education, health and survival, economic opportunity and political empowerment. Yemen, then Pakistan, Syria, Chad and Iran, ranked lowest. Women fared much better in education, where equality could be reached within 13 years, WEF said, while closing the gap in political empowerment could take a further 99 years. 'Even though qualified women are coming out of the education system, many industries are failing to hire, retain and promote them, losing out on a wealth of capacity,' it said. The report estimated that closing the pay gap could add an extra $250 billion to the GDP of Britain, $1,750 billion to that of the US and $2.5 trillion to China's GDP. One man took his love for McDonald's too far. Police say they're looking for a man who pulled out a gun after being told by a McDonald's drive-thru worker there were no Egg McMuffin sandwiches available. The incident occurred shortly after 3.30am Wednesday at a McDonald's in Warren, Ohio about 60 miles southeast of Cleveland. A man pulled a gun on a McDonald's drive-thru employee on Parkman Road in Warren, Ohio, after he was told there were no Egg McMuffin sandwiches available The worker told police that two men inside the black Ford Taurus car appeared to be around 20 years old. She said the driver called her a vulgar name after pulling out the gun and then cursed at her again before driving away. Warren police hope to identify the men using surveillance video footage. The McDonald's is on Parkman Road. The woman said she had not seen the men before. Julian Aubrey, 55, was discovered with multiple knife wounds at his Earl's Court home on Monday afternoon. He was pronounced dead at the scene A counsellor who worked with victims of sexual abuse and was honoured by Princess Anne has been found stabbed to death in his west London flat. Julian Aubrey, 55, was discovered with multiple knife wounds at his Earl's Court home on Monday afternoon. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have launched a murder inquiry after neighbours reported hearing screams in the early hours. Residents said Mr Aubrey had been involved in several disputes with neighbours in recent months. Scotland Yard said three men have been arrested on suspicion of murder. Two men, aged 48 and 56, were held at the scene of the murder on Monday. A third man, aged 42, was arrested at nearby Longridge Road this morning. Mr Aubrey was formerly the chairman of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) liaison group. He worked with victims of sexual abuse and was honoured by Princess Anne during a meeting in 2014 at Kensington town hall. He lived above a Tesco store on the corner of Warwick Road and West Cromwell Road, in Earl's Court. His brother-in-law Nigel Turner said: 'Julian was a great guy. I can't come to terms with what happened. 'He had his problems but he had a lot of time for other people. He did a lot of counselling work. He was a good counsellor, he had great empathy, and I'm sure he helped a lot of people. He loved art, he loved people. It's all a bit raw.' Mr Aubrey worked with victims of sexual abuse and was honoured by Princess Anne during a meeting in 2014 at Kensington town hall Detective Chief Inspector Luke Marks, leading the murder inquiry, said: 'I am appealing for anyone who was recently in the area of Shaftesbury Place and who may have heard a disturbance coming from one of the flats to contact us. 'I would also like to hear from anyone who may know why Julian was targeted in his own home in such a violent way.' Anyone with information should call 020 8358 0200 or ring Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. An unemployed Romanian man who went to his village pub woke up face down 1,675 miles away in London after betting his friends that he could find work. Mihai Danciu said the last thing he remembers is going to the pub in Albesti, Romania, with his friends and telling them that he could get a job. He then woke up face down in the courtyard of a central London building covered in bruises and said he was stunned to hear everyone around him speaking English. Still recovering from a hangover, he was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital in London, where a Romanian nurse confirmed that he was indeed in London. Mihai Danciu (pictured) went for a drink with his friends his a Romanian village and woke up in London with know idea of how he got there He went drinking with his friends in Albesti (pictured on the map) and woke up 1,675 miles away in London The nurse, Adina Costache, then posted his story on a Facebook page for Romanians in the UK in a bid to help him try and work out how he had ended up in the capital. At this stage he had also been confused and they were not even sure who he was, but his identity was quickly confirmed once the image went online. She wrote: 'He was found drunk and it looks like he had been beaten up, he was in a courtyard. 'He was brought to our hospital, but he told me he doesn't know anyone in London and he was amazed to find he was no longer in Romania. 'He has no idea how we got to London. If someone knows him and wants to send me a private message I can pass it on to him. He is admitted to the department where I work.' Local media in Romania have now taken up the case and confirmed that he was last seen drinking with friends in Albesti and authorities confirmed the story was true. Neighbours told local TV that the man had lived with his partner and their children in her grandparents home at least until recently, and they knew he was saying he was going to get a job. But they added he had suddenly vanished over a week ago. Nurse Adina Costache (pictured) posted his story on a Facebook page for Romanians in the UK He was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital in London, (pictured) where a Romanian nurse confirmed that he was in London One neighbor said: 'He was a really nice guy, although of late he hasn't been himself because he drinks too much. 'The drink caused him memory loss in the past, so it's no wonder that he ended up like this.' Some have joked that the man had gone on a massive bender lasting more than a week, but it is unlikely he would have been allowed to board a plane while drunk, although a bus might have been possible. Local media said that the man is expected to be helped to get back to Romania by authorities. Ring the wedding bells! The View co-host Meghan McCain confirmed her engagement to the conservative writer and publisher Ben Domenech Thursday morning, flashing her large diamond ring to her fellow co-hosts and the audience members. The diamond matched her sparkling smile as she spoke publicly about her betrothed for the first time, revealing that they got engaged after her dad, 81-year-old senator John McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma at the Mayo Clinic over the summer. 'We were at the Mayo clinic and my father had his scan so we decided to celebrate life and celebrate being alive,' she told her co-hosts. The 33-year-old said she never expected that she would get married, and that now that she's engaged she would tell other single women to never settle. 'Wait for people who love strong women,' she said. 'The men who love strong, independent women, they're out there. Don't settle for anything else.' The View co-host Meghan McCain confirmed her engagement to the conservative writer and publisher Ben Domenech Thursday morning Her large diamond engagement ring matched her sparkling smile as she spoke publicly about her betrothed for the first time McCain said they got engaged after her dad, 81-year-old senator John McCain was diagnosed with glioblastoma at the Mayo Clinic over the summer She has previously described Domenech as 'the most conservative guy in the history of the world,' saying she thinks she's found her ultimate match when it comes to political views The news of McCain's engagement was first reported by US Weekly Wednesday - and her fiance's identity was then revealed by Page Six on Thursday morning. The excited groom-to-be and RedState Co-founder later confirmed their engagement on Twitter late Wednesday night, writing 'Love you bae. @Meghan McCain,' with a link to the Page Six article. The Senator's daughter is expected to announce her engagement to who she describes as 'the most conservative guy in the history of the world' on the show on Thursday morning. McCain - an outspoken conservative who frequently and vehemently disagrees with President Trump, said she thinks she's found her ultimate match when it comes to political views. She has previously described Domenech as 'the most conservative guy in the history of the world.' The 35-year-old is a former speechwriter and publisher of the political insider newsletter The Transom, and frequently appears on Fox News and CNN. McCain said on The View Thursday that she's been with Domenech for years, and that she wanted to be engaged and get married without anyone knowing, but that the news ultimately got leaked. But the excited groom-to-be and RedState Co-founder seems to have beaten her to the punch, confirming the engagement on Twitter late Wednesday night And McCain's father has given his stamp of approval, referring to his future son-in-law as a 'very fine man' She has previously alluded to having a boyfriend on her Instagram account, and has posted photos to say he is 'quite the cook.' McCain said Domenech is her ultimate match when it comes to political views. She's pictured on The View on October 9 The two also celebrated the New Year together in Bora Bora. And McCain's father has given his stamp of approval. The 81-year-old Arizona Senator joked on The View earlier this month: 'He's a jerk. 'Actually, he's a very fine man. I'm very proud and very happy that they're so happy together.' And celebrating her birthday earlier this month, McCain spoke about her betrothed glowingly. 'This one works in politics and has for a long time so he wasn't as intimidated and actually met my dad at my brother's wedding for the first time and ended up talking about health care of something very wonky,' she said. 'He's so conservative. He's funny in his own way. I ultimately seem to have landed with the most conservative guy in the history of the world.' Domenech has written a number of right-leaning articles, such as 'CNN's War on Trump is Going Swimmingly,' 'It's Completely Ridiculous to Claim Trump's Voters are No Good,' and How The Obama Years Stunted Millennial Growth.' McCain has not yet confirmed the engagement. Supermodel Gigi Hadid has lashed out at a far-right activist who accused veil-wearing Muslim women of rubbing the New York City terror attack in everyones face by walking around in hijabs. Hadid, 21, who is half-Palestinian spoke out after controversial blogger Laura Loomer posted a picture on twitter of two women crossing the road close to the scene of Mondays ISIS-inspired attack. The model wrote: Laura, I hate to give you attention, but I need to tell you Youre a f***ing moron. Hadid, who posed on the cover of the first edition of Vogue Arabia in a headscarf, spoke out after Loomer accused innocent Muslims of reveling in the Manhattan attack, that left eight dead and 12 injured. Loomer wrote on twitter: Muslims are out in full force at the scene of the NYC#ISIS attack today rubbing it everyones face. Aimlessly walking around in hijabs. Supermodel Gigi Hadid has lashed out at a far-right activist Laura Loomer who accused veil-wearing Muslim women of rubbing the New York City terror attack in everyones face by walking around in hijabs Hadid, 21, who is half-Palestinian spoke out after controversial blogger Laura Loomer posted a picture on twitter of two women crossing the road close to the scene of Mondays ISIS-inspired attack Hadid, who posed on the cover of the first edition of Vogue Arabia in a headscarf, spoke out after Loomer accused innocent Muslims of reveling in the Manhattan attack, that left eight dead and 12 injured Youd think theyd have the decency to not walk around in hijabs @ cross street of the attack. But they dont. I bet theyre loving this. The far-right blogger later acknowledged the huge offence she had caused by stating she had been received numerous complaints from every liberal in Hollywood and members of the main stream media. But she dismissed their criticism by saying she had not killed anyone. She wrote: Every liberal in Hollywood and MSM [main stream media] is tweeting at me today. I guess I really p***ed them off! Its not like I killed eight ppl [people]. Hadid, who has become increasingly outspoken in her support of Muslims, replied that Loomers response to the criticism only confirmed her plan to gain attention by spreading messages of hate. She wrote on twitter: alas.. your RT [retweet] only proves your classless desperation to spread hate for attention. The far-right blogger later acknowledged the huge offence she had caused by stating she had been received numerous complaints from every liberal in Hollywood for her tweet (above) Saipov, who mowed down people on a bike path in New York City on Tuesday, was a truck driver who came to the States in 2010 and registered two transport companies in Ohio in 2011 and 2013 Saipov entered court Wednesday evening in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, to face terrorism charges filed against him by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Fans and critics of both women have joined in the online argument. Supporters of Hadid wrote: I freaking love you. Thats why shes my idol ladies and gentlemen. Thats my girl. I also hate that shes [Loomer] getting attention, but your response was way too kind. People like Laura is whats wrong with this country. Laura Loomer is a racist piece of s***. However one fan of Loomer wrote: This religion with a Big I is spreading hate everywhere. Gigi Hadid, whose father is a Muslim, has increasingly spoken out on Muslim issues which culminated in her cover of Vogue Arabia in March this year. The model posed for the black and white cover image that covered half of her face on the reorienting perceptions issue of the landmark edition, which was shot by photographers Inez and Vinoodh. Following the shoot Hadid praised the magazine for sharing different cultures was a beautiful thing, and spoke of the fashion industrys desire to continue to accept, celebrate and incorporate all people and customs. Gigi Hadid, whose father is a Muslim, has increasingly spoken out on Muslim issues which culminated in her cover of Vogue Arabia in March this year Fans and critics of both women have joined in the online argument. Supporters of Hadid wrote: I freaking love you. Thats why shes my idol ladies and gentlemen', however one fan of Loomer wrote: This religion with a Big I is spreading hate everywhere She wrote on Instagram: I think the beautiful thing about their being international Vogues is that as a fashion community, we are able to celebrate, and share with the world, different cultures. Being half Palestinian, it means the world to me to be on the first-ever cover of @voguearabia, and I hope that this magazine will show another layer of the fashion industrys desire to continue to accept, celebrate, and incorporate all people and customs and make everyone feel like they have fashion images and moments they can relate to. And learn and grow in doing so. Vogue Arabias editor-in-chief said: Theres no better first face to lead the charge for Vogue Arabia than Gigi [Hadid]. But angry fans flocked to social media to accuse her of using the hijab as a fashion statement. One said: The hijbab is not cultural. Advertisement These are the striking images that reveal the African-American soldiers of the Great War - who faced racial discrimination even when they simply wanted to fight for their country When the First World War broke out there were just four 'colored' regiments in the American military, but by the end nearly 370,000 African Americans had served in some capacity - paving the way for future generations. Over one million African Americans responded to draft calls and the War Department had to stop accepting black volunteers because the quotas for African Americans were filled within a week of Woodrow Wilson's declaration. These images show crowds of black men lining up to enlist for service in Chicago in 1917 and Ike Sims from Atlanta whose eleven sons drafted for the army. Meanwhile other photos show African American troops arriving in France, carrying their good luck charms as they head to war and wounded black soldiers receiving chocolates and cigarettes from the Red Cross. Members of the 367th Regiment, the 'Buffaloes', are presented with colors in front of the Union League Club, New York City. Many black regiments had Buffalo as part of their nickname after the original Buffalo Soldiers who fought in the Indian Wars/ The Native Americans gave them the name for their courage and skill in battle Two members of the 505th Engineers show how they 'did it over there' during their return on the S.S. Roma in 1918. One man wears an Imperial German helmet while another points a rifle at him Men of the 369th Infantry during the Harlem Victor Parade in February 1919. While still segregated, the Army was far more progressive than other parts of the military - such as Marines, which banned blacks entirely Part of Squadron A, 351st Field Artillery, returning on the transport in Louisville in 1918. Most of these men were from Philadelphia. Despite making up just 10 per cent of the US population, black communities provided 13 per cent of draft volunteers during the First World War Hospital Corps Detachment prior to shipping out, circa 1917. While hundreds of thousands of African Americans were conscripted, no combat roles were given to black soldiers until this year. Instead they served in labour or support units African American troops arriving in France, circa 1917. These men would have been among the first black soldiers allowed to fight on the front lines after the creation of the first mostly-black combat units, the 92nd and 93rd infantry, in this year Privates Robinson Cleve of the 539th Engineers, and Daniel Nelson of the 372nd Infantry Regiment, both wounded in action, pose with war dogs Crown Prince and Kaiser Bill on their return to the US from the First World War Members of the 369th Regiment wearing French Adrian Helmets, taken in France, circa 1917. These men are likely from the 93rd Division, which was 'loaned' to the French Army because American units were still wary of African Americans being involved in combat Members of the 369th Regiment returning from France in March 1919, decorated with French War Crosses. African Americans volunteered in their droves for military service, having seen the status and praise achieved by those who had served in the Indian Wars and Spanish-American War before them Decorated soldiers of the 369th division return home with their French Croix de Guerre awards. Front Row (left to right) is Private Ed 'Eagle Eye' Williams, Corporal Herbert 'Lamp Light' Taylor, Private Leon Fraitor and Private Ralph 'Kid Hawk' Hawkins. Back Row (left to right) is Sergeant H.D. Prinas, Sergeant Dan Storms, Private Joe 'Kid Woney' Williams, Private Alfred 'Kid Buck' Hanley, and Corporal T.W. Taylor The 369th march passed the New York Public Library at 42nd St. and Fifth Ave. during the victory parade, 1919 Corporal Fred McIntyre, aka 'Devil's Man', carried this photo of Kaiser Wilhelm with him for good luck during the war (left). Major J.R. White, Lieutenant Colonel Otis B. Duncan - the highest ranking black officer in the war - and Lieutenant W.J. Warfield return home to the USA in February 1919 (right) Black troops play against their white counterparts in a game of baseball, Hyde Park, London, in July 1918 Soldiers from Philadelphia who were either wounded in combat or gassed return home on the Giuseppe Verdi, in 1919 Black officers of the 366th Regiment, 92nd Division on their return to the United States in February 1919. The creation of black combat units also saw the creation of the first black officers, as it was felt men were more likely to follow somebody of their own race into the fighting A group of black draftees from Galesburg, IL, circa 1917. More than a million black men volunteered for service in the war, and recruiters had to stop accepting applications because the roles had been filled Henry Johnson (left) and Neadham Roberts (right), both of the 369th, routed a numerically superior German raiding party in France. The two men earned the French Croix de Guerre for their actions, and Johnson, nicknamed 'Black Death', posthumously earned the Medal of Honour in 2015 Wounded men of the 369th division ride during the Harlem Parade following the end of the war in 1919 Members of the 93rd Division stand in front of the barracks in France, 1918 Black men line up to enlist for active service in the 8th Illinois Infantry Regiment in Chicago in 1917 African American men enlisting at the 'Colored' Y.M.C.A. for the 'Negro' Officers' Training Camp at Fort Des Moines American Red Cross workers distribute chocolate, cigarettes, and other items to wounded soldiers of the 93rd Division at the Red Cross Hospital No. 5 at Auteuil, France Ike Sims of Atlanta, GA, 87 years old, had eleven sons enlist in the service during the First World War. Here he holds placards with a star representing each of them Pictured: Garry Brand, who held a knife to the throat of his victim as he raped her, has been jailed for just 30 months A Muslim convert security guard who raped a woman while holding a knife to her throat said he hoped his victim would kill him in revenge. Garry Brand was jailed for just 30 months and placed on the sex offenders register for life after attempting to commit 'suicide by rape'. Brand - also known as Yusuf - was also made the subject of a non-harassment order for five years which bans him from having any contact with his victim. He was told he would have to find a new mosque to pray at when he is released as his current one is located close to his victim's home. Brand initially asked his victim - who he knew and lured to his home - to kill him but when she refused he abducted her and subjected her to a sickening sexual assault. Sheriff William Wood told him: 'This was an appalling way to behave. It was a disgraceful act. This must have been a dreadful experience. 'You invited her effectively to kill you. You wanted her to end your life and she refused to do that. For reasons only you can know you decided to act this way. 'You prevented her leaving, you presented a knife at her and detained her against her will. You pushed her onto a sofa and covered her mouth to prevent her crying.' Brand then forced the woman into the bedroom where he hauled off her clothes before carrying out the sex attack upon her. When he was told by the sheriff that his details would be on the Sex Offenders Register for life, Brand shouted: 'Life? That's a bit harsh.' Solicitor John McLaughlin, defending, said Brand had told a doctor he was feeling suicidal but felt that he had not been listened to or had the information acted upon. Mr McLaughlin said: 'He can only apologise to all concerned for what has happened. Looking back, he realises this was a huge mistake and entirely the wrong way to deal with the problem. 'He fully accepts his responsibility. He should never have put her through that ordeal. It will have a lasting effect on her and for that he is truly sorry.' Fiscal depute Michael Sweeney said Brand, 49, had known his 50-year-old victim for many years and had arranged to meet her after being told he was losing his job. She was too frightened to move. She did not know if he was still holding the knife. The accused warned her not to tell anyone what he had done 'Around 21 June he informed her by telephone that he had been speaking to his psychiatrist and told him that he wanted to rape her so that she would kill him and that way his problems would be over. 'She was concerned by what he had said but felt it was due to him being at a low point and being emotionally charged,' Mr Sweeney told the court. 'He attended her place of work and suggested she should visit him for a chat and a coffee. She still felt very uneasy about the conversation he had with her.' The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, turned up at his home and a short time later he told her he was unhappy with life and was in a financial mess. 'She told him she didn't know what she was supposed to do, and he said she should just kill him and it would all be over then. Due to his demeanour she stood up and said she wanted to leave.' But Brand produced a hunting knife, stopped her leaving, and told her to 'take it, do it' and imploring her to stab him. He then pushed her back on to a sofa and held the knife to her throat. 'She was shouting and screaming for help so he covered her mouth and told her to be quiet. He took her mobile phone and threw it onto a table,' the prosecutor said. Brand marched the woman to the bedroom with the knife at her neck, pushed her face down, and pulled down her jeans and underwear before carrying out a sex act upon her. Mr Sweeney said: 'She was too frightened to move. She did not know if he was still holding the knife. The accused warned her not to tell anyone what he had done.' Brand, from Perth, admitted abducting and assaulting the woman in a city centre flat on 26 June and holding a knife to her throat while preventing her from leaving. He also admitted sexually assaulting her. Nilesh Sheth, of Buckhurst Hill, Essex, used fake documents to set up the 'mule' accounts A Barclays banker was jailed for four years today after helping hackers launder 16million by setting up 400 fake accounts. Nilesh Sheth, 53, of Buckhurst Hill, Essex, used fake documents to set up the 'mule' accounts for a network of cyber bandits while he worked as a personal banking manager. He started the scam after criminals tempted him with wads of cash which he stuffed behind sofa cushions and under the kitchen sink at his 850,000 home. Sheth used his Barclays office to meet with fraudster Iurie Mereacre, 37, an illegal immigrant who has been thrown out of Britain five times, and his associates Ryingota Gincota, 28, Lurie Bivol, 36, and Serghei Bivol, 31. The gang moved money between the fake accounts to confuse investigators before it was transferred overseas. Sheth was spotted meeting up with the men in restaurants and car parks while he was being tracked by the National Crime Agency. When officers raided Sheth's Essex home, they found 16,000 in cash and nine mobile phones When officers raided his luxurious home on November 3 last year, they found 16,000 in cash and nine mobile phones. They searched Mereacre's home in Woodford Green on the same day and discovered a hand-written step-by-step guide to money laundering and banking documents. That enabled the group to access the 'mule' accounts. The gang siphoned more than 16million to hackers based in Eastern Europe between 2013 and 2016. Prosecutor Paul Cavin told the Old Bailey in London that their actions as a 'well organised, pre-meditated planned affair' over a 'sustained period of time.' 'The facts of this case reveal a wide-ranging and sophisticated system of money laundering,' he said. 'The system was designed to aggregate large sums of money accrued from fraud to store those funds in bank accounts. Sheth (left) was spotted meeting up with fraudster Iurie Mereacre (right), an illegal immigrant who has been thrown out of Britain five times, while he was being tracked 'They were specifically designed to receive the monies and then quickly, and efficiently, move the cash beyond the reach of the authorities.' The prosecutor said it was self-evident that an 'avowedly' criminal aim could not be achieved without the participation of a number of people. He said the 'consortium' of men were revealed by the evidence in the case who were experienced in the use of false documentation. 'To a highly professional degree,' he said. 'And who were assisted by an inside man in a well-known high street bank.' Sheth's basis of plea was that he started out in 'ignorance' but then became 'criminally involved', the court heard. Mr Cavin said: 'We do not accept, fundamentally, Mr Sheth's basis of plea that he disputes his involvement from an earlier stage.' Sheth *pictured) was spotted meeting up with the men in car parks the National Crime Agency On April 19, 2016 Sheth was observed having a meal with Mereacre, Bivol and Novac. 'Fragments of conversation were heard by officers indicating that this was not a purely social event,' the prosecutor added. Other surveillance picked him up in car parks being tracked by the NCA. Mereacre, 37, has been deported five times They were due to stand trial in September but admitted their involvement and are being sentenced today. Mereacre has previously been deported five times and the Bivols have also been kicked out, the court heard. Sheth admitted money laundering and possessing criminal property. Mereacre, of Woodford Green, admitted conspiracy to acquire criminal property and possession of articles for use in fraud. Lurie Bivol, of Woodford Green, admitted conspiracy to acquire criminal property and possession of articles for use in fraud. Gincota, of Woodford Green, admitted possession articles for use in fraud Serghei Bivol, of Woodford Green, and admitted conspiracy to acquire criminal property and possession of articles for use in fraud. The fraudsters were jailed for a total of 28 years and three months. Judge Christopher Moss QC said the fraud amounted to a 'wholesale attack' on the integrity of the banking system. 'You each accept that the individual destinations of the money was abroad and in countries where recovering the money would be almost impossible. I have to bear that in mind.' Ryingota Gincota (left) admitted possession articles for use in fraud, while Serghei Bivol (right) admitted conspiracy to acquire criminal property and possession of articles for use in fraud The judge said that he sentenced the men based on the sum of 6.9million traced in evidence. The court has previously heard that prosecutors say they laundered more than 16million. Each man sat quietly with their heads bowed flanked by five dock officers as the judge handed down the sentence in front of a packed public gallery. The judge told them to remain seated as he explained to the court each of their roles in the fraud. He said Romanian Mereacre accepted he was 'at the very centre' of the fraud giving orders to those him and that Sheth 'gravely' abused his position of trust. Sheth, 53, admitted money laundering and possessing criminal property The judge jailed Mereacre for ten years and Sheth for four years. He told Sheth: 'Although you cannot explain your involvement, I can only assume that you did so through greed.' Iurie Bivol, who is from Moldovia was jailed for seven years and Serghei Bivol was jailed for three-and-a-half years. Gincota was jailed for three years and eight months. The NCA said Barclays worked closely with them on the investigation. Mike Hulett, head of operations at the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, said criminals rely 'heavily on money launderers like Mereacre' to access their profits. 'Sheth abused his position of trust at the bank,' he said. 'Knowingly opening sham accounts for the network, providing a vital service which enabled them to launder 16 million worth of stolen cash.' Rose-Marie Franton, from the CPS International Justice and Organised Crime Division, said: 'These men deliberately and persistently set about transferring millions of pounds of stolen money out of the UK to eastern Europe. 'Working closely with NCA investigators, the CPS presented a strong case with the result that today all the defendants have admitted their guilt. 'The evidence we gathered showed how Nilesh Sheth abused his position as a bank employee for personal gain. 'By facilitating the laundering the criminal proceeds of an organised crime group both within the UK and across borders. A Barclays spokesman said it was a 'rare occasion' where an individual deliberately exploited their systems. They added: 'We have worked with and supported the NCA with this investigation and welcome the outcome of proceedings. 'Barclays will always support law enforcement in identifying criminal activity and bringing prosecutions.' Elizabeth Lee Herman, 56, was shot dead by her ex-boyfriend Vincent Verdi as she arrived at work in Manhattan on Wednesday morning A man who shot dead his ex-girlfriend while she was parking her CitiBike in Manhattan had been allegedly stalking her for months. Vincent Verdi, 62, shot 56-year-old Elizabeth Lee Herman in the stomach at Astor Place in the East Village on Wednesday morning, before shooting himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt. Verdi shot Herman after she had cycled from her home in the Upper East Side to her work at the Grace Church School, which is just across the street from the CitiBike docks. He had allegedly been following her to and from work, tailing her to appointments and even showed up when she was on a date after she ended their brief relationship in July. Verdi had also been emailing, calling and sending Herman flowers and chocolates. He was arrested on October 5 for stalking Herman, and authorities had granted her a protection order against him. Verdi, who spent seven days in prison, was ordered to turn over any guns he had, but his lawyers denied that he owned any. He was released on October 12 and was barred from having any contact with Herman. Vincent Verdi, 62, shot 56-year-old Elizabeth Lee Herman in the stomach at Astor Place in the East Village on Wednesday morning The gunman had allegedly been stalking Herman, a mother of two, for several months after she ended their brief relationship back in July Before she left for work on Wednesday, Herman had thanked her doorman for telling her that he had spotted Verdi in the area the day before, the New York Daily News reports. 'She said, "I don't understand why he keeps doing this when he knows I have an order of protection - we're going to be going to court pretty soon",' Ricardo Ramirez said. 'I said, "Obsession. He's obsessed".' The pair had met less than a year ago on dating website match.com. It is not clear if Verdi had tailed Herman all the way from her home to Astor Place on Wednesday morning. He confronted her as she docked her CitiBike before witnesses at the scene told DailyMail.com they heard at least three gunshots. Police said Herman was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries but she died after arriving. Verdi remains in hospital in a critical condition. A witness told DailyMail.com the woman was parking her CitiBike when the gunman shot her The Grace Church School, where Herman worked as an administrative assistant, issued a statement following her death TIMELINE TO MURDER July 7 Lee-Herman ended her relationship with Verdi July 7 He started to hassle her with calls, texts and emails July 30 Sent her chocolates and flowers Aug. 10 Appeared at her dentist appointment Aug. 14 Repeatedly called her at work Aug. 16 Appeared at a theater while she was on a date Aug. 17 Waited outside her school Aug. 23 Accosted her on the sidewalk as she returned home from work Aug. 31 Sent her six emails and a Match.com message Sept. 1-9 Sent her 10 emails Sept. 4 Sent her a gift certificate for three massages and a letter Nov. 1 Fatally shot her in the stomach Advertisement The Grace Church School, where Herman worked as an administrative assistant, issued a statement following her death. 'We are deeply saddened to announce the loss of a beloved colleague, Elizabeth Lee, to an unthinkable act of violence,' they said. 'Elizabeth was a dearly loved member of our community for 17 years, first as a Grace Parent, Parents' Association Chair and most recently the assistant to the Assistant Head of School. 'We are all heartbroken over this tragedy.' Multiple witnesses say they heard at least three gunshots before seeing both Herman and Verdi lying near each other on the ground with blood pooling around them. Verdi was spotted wearing a silver bike helmet before he opened fire. 'Definitely heard three clearly, the first one I heard right away,' one witness told DailyMail.com. 'I was standing in front of Kmart... I saw cops running and responding to the 'pops'.' Police were called to Astor Place in the East Village at about 7.50am on Wednesday where they found two people with gunshot wounds The woman was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries but she later died The gunman suffered self inflicted gunshot wounds. He was loaded into an ambulance (above) shortly after 8am on Wednesday Emergency crews simultaneously worked to stabilize the man and woman (above) who were lying near each other on the sidewalk Witnesses say the gunman, pictured above being treated, was wearing a silver bike helmet when he opened fire Dennis Santiago, 44, was on his way to work when he heard two gunshots. 'I came round the corner in my car, and I saw the third shot go right underneath,' he told the DailyMail.com, miming putting a gun under his chin, and pulling the trigger. 'I was coming round the corner in my car when I heard the first two shots and four seconds later I saw the third.' Santiago said he hadn't heard any arguing before the gunshots. He jumped out of his car and ran over to the scene. 'I put my foot on the gun, it seemed small, a 22. Calibre maybe,' he said. 'I put my foot on the gun so no-one would take it,' he added, saying he waited with his foot on the weapon until police arrived. A blood stain was spotted on the ground after the two people injured in the shooting were rushed to hospital The shooting happened right out the front of the Cooper Union Library in East Village The man and woman, who witnesses described as in their 40s, are currently in stable conditions in Bellevue hospital Several NYPD officers remained behind after the victims were rushed to hospital to examine the scene Pools of blood remained on the ground after the bodies of the two wounded were removed from the scene on Wednesday Nurul Zahangir, an MTA dispatch controller for the buses across the street, said he also heard three gunshots. 'I heard three 'pops'. We all started running. Lots of people started running towards the subway stop. When you hear a gunshot you run,' he said. 'When I walked over (the injured) were on the floor. I was very scared. I've never experienced anything like that before.' Edward Lopez, 27, was at his job at the New York Health and Raquete Club, opposite the shooting, when he heard the commotion outside. 'I walked around and saw two people lying there, and a little blood but cops were huddling round,' he said. 'It just sucks. You think after all that stuff (on Tuesday), things would start to be calming down. You don't want to walk outside and have to fear for your life. It's crazy.' Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has become the latest federal politician to become embroiled in the dual citizenship fiasco. Mr Frydenberg is reportedly seeking urgent advice as it is revealed he may hold Hungarian citizenship, according to The Australian. If the Liberal MP was found to be ineligible to sit in parliament it would threaten his party's thin majority. Six politicians have been forced to stand down after a High Court decision ruled them ineligible to sit in parliament. Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, his deputy Fiona Nash, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts and former Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters were found to have dual citizenship. Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has become the latest federal politician to become embroiled in the dual citizenship fiasco Mr Frydenberg released a form from when his mother entered Australia from Hungary describing her as 'stateless' Six politicians have been forced to stand down after a High Court decision ruled them ineligible to sit in parliament The latest casualty was Senate President Stephen Parry who resigned on Tuesday, who may hold U.K. citizenship by descent, despite being born in the Tasmanian town of Burnie. Mr Frydenberg has hired a consultant in Budapest to check if he is a citizen of Hungary through his mother. His mother Erica was born there in 1943 and fled to Australia during the Holocaust. Hungarian law states anyone born in the country between 1941 and 1945 is automatically a citizen, and a child of a citizen also becomes one upon their birth. Mr Frydenberg released a form from when his mother entered Australia from Hungary describing her as 'stateless'. He said he had never applied for Hungarian citizenship. 'As someone who was born in Australia with Hungarian ancestors who arrived in Australia after the Holocaust, I would be required to initiate and undertake a lengthy and formal application and interview procedure in order to be considered a Hungarian citizen,' he said. 'Neither I nor anyone on my behalf has ever made such an application or engaged in such a procedure.' Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce (pictured) was disqualified from Parliament last week If the Liberal MP was found to be ineligible to sit in parliament it would threaten Malcolm Turnbull's thin majority Last week's bombshell High Court ruling has triggered a by-election in Mr Barnaby's electorate of New England after it was decided he was a New Zealand citizen by descent of his father at the time of his nomination last year. However, it's expected Mr Joyce will hold onto his seat - which has an 8.5 per cent margin - as potential challenger, former New England MP Tony Windsor, saying he will not contest the seat. Mr Joyce's party room colleague Matt Canavan and crossbench senator Nick Xenophon were not disqualified. Cassie Sainsbury is working on a plan that could see her out from behind bars and living with her mum in under six months. The Adelaide drug mule would live with mother Lisa Evans and her partner in Bogota if they are able to sponsor her for home detention. Her lawyer Orlando Herran revealed Australian taxpayers footed $100,000 in legal fees for Sainsbury's defence, from her arrest in April until August 30. Mr Herran received the first round of taxpayer funds in the last two weeks to cover five months of work, Seven News reported. Sainsbury was sentenced to six years in a Colombian jail after a judge agreed to a plea deal on Thursday. Scroll down for video Adelaide drug mule Cassie Sainsbury (pictured) is working on a plan that could see her out from behind bars and living with her mum in under six months The Adelaide drug mule would live with mother Lisa Evans (pictured in Colombia in May) and her partner in Bogota if they are able to sponsor her for home detention Sainsbury was sentenced to six years in a Colombian jail after a judge agreed to a plea deal on Thursday (pictured is Khala Sainsbury) She has been locked up since April, meaning a home detention deal could be applied for in less than six months, The Herald Sun reported. The 22-year-old was initially sentenced to 30 years in prison for trying to smuggle 5.8kgs of cocaine out of the country. Home detention, common due to overcrowding in Bogota jails, was described as a real possibility by Sainsbury's lawyer. 'The mother would have to establish herself in Colombia. Her permanent residence would have to be here so she couldnt constantly be travelling,' said Mr Herran. 'Either rent or buy a flat. Cassie could then move in with her.' Schapelle Corby benefited from a similar deal, spending the final years of her prison sentence at her sister Mercedes' home in Bali. Sainsbury (pictured) is teaching English inside the prison and with time already served, plus her work in jail, she could be released in as little as three years The 22-year-old was initially sentenced to 30 years in prison for trying to smuggle 5.8kgs of cocaine (pictured) out of the country in April Sainsbury has been locked up since April, meaning a home detention deal could be applied for in five months time (pictured are her mother, right, and sister, left) Sainsbury is teaching English inside the prison and with time already served, plus her work in jail, she could be released in as little as three years, 9News reported. Despite the shorter sentence, it is understood Sainsbury could spend two years living in Colombia on parole after leaving the prison. Sainsbury was also ordered by the judge to pay a nearly $130,000 fine, Mr Herran said after the hearing on Thursday. The presiding judge agreed with Sainsbury's claim she committed the crime after a man named 'Angelo' threatened her and her family. Sainsbury was flanked by police as she walked into court on Thursday. Wearing a striped shirt, jeans and white shoes, the 22-year-old was expressionless as she was led through the crowd of media by an officer who gripped her wrist. The cocaine was discovered in 18 headphones in Sainsbury's (pictured) luggage after she was stopped at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport The presiding judge agreed with Sainsbury's (pictured) claim she committed the crime after a man named 'Angelo' threatened her and her family Sainsbury's family also attended the court hearing but left without commenting to media. Mr Herran spoke briefly after the hearing, telling the media Sainsbury was 'lucky'. 'The judge manifestly felt that people who undergo this process are victims,' he told News.com.au. 'The investigation has uncovered a larger operation and investigators suspect she was used as bait to distract the authorities whilst other people smuggled drugs out undetected.' Mr Herran said Sainsbury's story should serve as a warnings to others. Sainsbury has now spent seven months behind bars at Bogota Women's Prison (pictured) Despite the shorter sentence, it is understood Sainsbury (pictured) could spend two years living in Colombia on parole after leaving the prison 'She isn't a criminal. She made a mistake, she allowed herself to be tricked and she didn't use the means at her disposal by not asking authorities for help,' he said. Airport security found the cocaine in the packaging of 18 headphones in Sainsbury's luggage after she was stopped at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. She was caught following a tip-off from the the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. She has now spent seven months behind bars at Bogota Women's Prison. An earlier plea deal was rejected in August. A Bogota court heard in October that the deal had been agreed to by prosecution and defence, but an earlier plea deal for the Adelaide woman (pictured) fell through in August Sainsbury was also ordered by the judge to pay a nearly $130,000 fine, her lawyer Orlando Herran said after the hearing on Thursday (pictured is the seized cocaine) A Bogota Court was told last September that both the prosecution and defence had agreed to a deal to reduce her jail time. The court heard that the deal had been agreed to by prosecution and defence, with Sainsbury's lawyer saying they both agreed the man she claims to be behind the illegal operation, known as 'Angelo', does exist. The AFP reiterated it was liaising with Colombian authorities on the matter before the sentence was announced but wouldn't comment further on operational matters. Her family in Adelaide is thrilled by the news, with her sister Khala Sainsbury telling Seven News: 'It couldn't have gone any better. I believe she'll be okay, she's strong.' The judge hearing the case earlier granted a request from Mr Herran to close the hearing to all media. Resembling the first plea bargain - rejected after Sainsbury repeatedly changed her story - the six-year deal was presented on Friday in the Bogota Special Circuit Court. If time served is considered that will reduce the sentence again by a further six months - giving the South Australian local her freedom by 2020 Dave Lewis (pictured today) 'surprised and shocked' to learn the supermarket's profits had been misstated by almost 246million, a court heard today Tesco's boss was 'surprised and shocked' to learn the supermarket's profits had been misstated by almost 246million two weeks into his new job, a court heard today. The CEO of Britain's biggest retailer Dave Lewis, 52, said as soon as he learned of the black hole he launched an immediate investigation and chairman Sir Richard Broadbent flew back from holiday in Italy. Carl Rogberg, 50, Chris Bush, 51, and John Scouler, 49, are on trial for fraud by abuse of position and false accounting between February and September 2014. At the time, Bush earned 3million, Scouler 1.5million and Rogberg more than 1million while orchestrating the grocer's 'biggest kept secret', it is alleged. Mr Lewis told jurors at Southwark Crown Court that although he started his position on September 1 2014, despite numerous meetings with Bush and a meeting with Scouler, he had not been told of the issue until September 19. He said he was called into a meeting with Adrian Morris, Tesco's chief counsel, at around lunchtime that day, and presented with the Legacy Paper. Prosecutor Sasha Wass QC asked what his immediate reaction had been. Mr Lewis said: 'One of surprise and one of shock really. 'I think the thing that was unique to this paper was the indication that the numbers that had been declared had a potential misstatement within them.' The supermarket's former finance chief (left to right) Carl Rogberg, 50, managing director Christopher Bush, 51, and food commercial director John Scouler, 49, are alleged to have 'cooked the books' Former Tesco bosses Carl Rogberg, 50, and Chris Bush, 51, (pictured last month) are on trial over the supermarket's 250 million accounting black hole that rocked the supermarket and led to two staff quitting, their trial heard He added: 'What was new was the proposition here that 246 million of income had been included in the first half of the year that on that basis of this paper was deemed to be questionable.' Former Tesco UK commercial Director John Scouler, 49, (pictured last month) is also in the dock over the accounting scandal Asked what he concluded needed to be done, Mr Lewis said: 'I had never experienced anything like this before, but it was quite clear that having read the paper, and the manner in which it was served, I felt that it had to be taken very seriously.' Jurors heard that Mr Lewis called Tesco chairman Sir Richard Broadbent and told him what the document said, and that a team of internal and external auditors was assembled to work through the weekend. They were told Sir Richard flew back from his holiday in Italy and it was discovered by the end of the weekend that the actual amount of shortfall was 263 million. Ms Wass asked Mr Lewis what happened between Tesco's public announcement on September 22 stating profits had been over-estimated, and when the company was due to issue its interim results on October 23. He said: 'It was a very intensive amount of investigation of these numbers. 'It required a huge amount of review of paperwork, documentation between pretty much all of the suppliers to Tesco and the different categories in order to validate the number. 'So that was quite an extensive exercise.' Asked if he understood the Legacy Paper when he read it, Mr Lewis said: 'You don't need to be a lawyer or an accountant to know that the accusation in here of not recognising income and costs in the right period is a significant problem.' The 13-week trial continues. Former US diplomat Linda Howard (pictured) is facing deportation after he visa was cancelled under Australia's stringent new immigration laws A former U.S. diplomat who fled to Australia after being accused of the cruel slavery and sexual abuse of their African housekeepers is facing deportation under the country's stringent new immigration laws. Linda Howard and her husband Russell were ordered to pay $3 million in damages in 2007 after a Virginia jury agreed the pair had forced an Ethiopia-born maid into sexual slavery. Five years later the Howards paid $3.3 million to another Ethiopian maid for trafficking the woman. Mr Howard died the day the decision was handed down. Mrs Howard had fled to Melbourne four months earlier, without telling US courts, where she has been living and vehemently denying any and all rulings levelled against her in American courts. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled her visa on October 3 under new guidelines dictating people with criminal records can be deported. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton cancelled her visa on October 3 under new guidelines dictating people with criminal records can be deported Mrs Howard and her husband had been living in the US embassies in Yemen and Tokyo (pictured) when the alleged abuse of their two maids took place However, the lawyer for Mrs Howard believes the Immigration Department's decision was incorrect and has launched legal action. Con Kiatos claims Dutton made a 'jurisdictional error' in the cancellation of Mrs Howard's visa, because 'no crime was committed'. The appeal was lodged to the Federal Government in late October. Mrs Howard and her husband had been living in the US embassies in Yemen and Tokyo when the alleged abuse of their two maids took place. The housekeeper who was allegedly trafficked, identified only as Jane Doe, said Russell Howard repeatedly raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on at least 10 different occasions. Linda Howard first hired the woman, who was 31 at the time, when she was posted at the US Embassy in Yemen, according to court records. In the months the woman worked for Linda Howard in Yemen there was no abuse and in 2008 she agreed to move with her employer to Japan, where Mrs Howard had received a new posting. Con Kiatos claims Dutton made a 'jurisdictional error' in the cancellation of Mrs Howard's visa, because 'no crime was committed' Only weeks after the housekeeper moved to Japan, Russell Howard, who stayed at home during the day while his wife went to work, began demanding sex, the woman's lawsuit states. When she repeatedly refused he 'abused her brutally' and told her his previous housekeepers had also had sex with him - and fired those who had refused, according to court papers. After a few weeks, Russell Howard went into the woman's room and raped her as he 'used his right hand to choke and restrain' her, the original complaint states. Russell Howard would rape her three more times as well as 'force to perform oral sex', according to the lawsuit, even telling her the real reason she was brought to Japan was for 'sexual services'. The woman said she was repeatedly threatened with deportation and was also forced to work 80 hours a week, seven days a week, and rarely permitted to leave the house alone - isolating her from the outside world. Meanwhile, Linda Howard told the housekeeper she should make her husband happy and 'fulfill his needs', the complaint states. Russell Howard also told the woman Linda wanted them to have a threesome and, according to court papers, said the couple once had sex with another maid while she was 'drunk and passed out'. After living in a 'constant state of terror' for four months, the woman fled on foot in the middle of the night, wearing every piece of clothing she owned. Only weeks after the housekeeper moved to Japan, Russell Howard, who stayed at home during the day while his wife went to work, began demanding sex, the woman's lawsuit states She found a women's shelter in Tokyo, which reported the abuse to US Embassy officials in the capital. A few weeks later, Linda Howard was removed from her overseas position. Months later, as the State Department was investigating the woman's claims, Russell Howard flew to her home in Ethiopia and searched for her, court papers state. US judge Liam O'Grady ordered Linda Howard to pay the damages in 2012 after finding the couple liable of trafficking, sexual and forced labor, according to the Herald Sun. Speaking at the time, he said: 'Here, the crime, involving sexual assaults, forced labor, and trafficking is particularly depraved. 'The harm was physical, it involved the intentional disregard for the health and safety of Mrs Doe, it was repeated - involving approximately fourteen instances of forced sexual acts, and the harm was planned with forethought and intentionally inflicted on Mrs Doe.' Hillary Clinton's campaign seized control of the Democratic National Committee months before she won her party's nomination, diverted resources away from struggling state parties, and allowed the national party to accumulate a mountain of debt, writes former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Brazile has written a tell-all article about the dysfunction and mismanagement she uncovered at the organization she was brought in to run after hacked emails revealed efforts by party insiders to tilt the scales toward Clinton. Brazile, who was herself thrown into controversy when it was revealed she passed on debate questions to the Clinton camp, unloads on her predecessor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and discloses a smoking gun document in the form of a fundraising agreement that sent resources to the Clinton camp. Astonishingly, Elizabeth Warren - who campaigned with Clinton - said she believed Brazile. Asked on CNN by Jake Tapper: 'Do you agree with notion that it was rigged' she answered simply: 'Yes.' Former interim DNC chair Donna Brazile has written a scorching book about the Clinton camp's virtual takeover of the party before she got the Democratic nomination 'Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn't been very interested in controlling the partyshe let Clinton's headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn't have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was,' Brazile writes in an essay in Politico magazine. Brazile only learned of the party's financial troubles in July after she was named interim chair after Wasserman Schultz stepped down, in a call with CFO Gary Gensler. 'What?' I screamed. 'I am an officer of the party and they've been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems,' she writes that she told him. One culprit was President Obama, who failed to refill party coffers after his 2012 win. Hillary Clinton on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Credit: Comedy Central/The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile writes in a new book that Hillary Clinton virtually took overthe DNC just four months after she announced her run, before she even got the nomination 'Obama left the party $24 million in debt$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama's campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016,' Brazile writes. Clinton's fundraising took care of the remaining debt - then put the DNC, which is supposed to be neutral until there is a nominee, on 'an allowance.' Gensler laid out the state of affairs in a phone call. 'He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary's campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house,' according to Brazile. She says Wasserman Schultz ignored her board of directors, including on the bombshell development that Russia hacked the DNC's emails. 'She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post broke the news,' she writes. When the Hillary Victory Fund organized big donors fundraisers who cut checks that were to go to state parties, the funds came back to her won Brooklyn headquarters. Brazile says she called rival Bernie Sanders had told him she had discovered 'cancer' in the organization Brazile blasts Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who stepped down as chair during the campaign following the release of hacked emails 'Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn,' according to Brazile. States 'kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary's campaign was holding,' according to Brazile. The party was burning through up to $4 million each month. 'When I got back from a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America,' according to Brazile. In exchange for its fundraising, 'Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff,' according to Brazile. Brazile describes a joint fundraising agreement between Clinton and the DNC as a smoking gun She said she was searching for evidence of 'internal corruption' before she found the agreement. It wasn't illegal, 'but it sure looked unethical,' she writes. She writes that she called Sanders to tell him what she'd found. 'Hello, senator. I've completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,' she says she told him. 'But I will not kill the patient.' She says she urged Sanders to urge his supporters to back Clinton anyway, and says she told him she had concerns about Clinton holding together the Obama coalition. 'When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to,' she writes. A grandmother from Kentucky has been arrested for allegedly sneaking into a Louisville high school last month and scattering nude photos depicting her son's former girlfriend. Frances Joyce Bailey, 60, was taken into custody on Monday and charged with distribution of obscene matter, criminal trespassing and harassment. According to an arrest report, the incident took place on October 18 when allegedly Bailey made her way into Pleasure Ridge Park High School without permission by following two students who had been buzzed into the building. Grandma busted: Frances Bailey, 60 (pictured left in mugshot and right), has been arrested and charged with distribution of obscene matter, criminal trespassing and harassment Bailey is accused of sneaking into Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville, Kentucky (pictured), and scattering nude photos inside a women's bathroom Once inside, police say the 60-year-old suspect entered a women's restroom and threw photos of a naked woman on the floor. According to investigators with the Louisville Metro Police, the explicit images were later found by teenage girls, reported the station WDRB. The woman in the photos has a child who attends Pleasure Ridge Park High School, and Bailey's own granddaughter is also a student there. After exiting the building, Bailey was caught on surveillance video driving around the school's parking lot. The images depicted an ex-girlfriend of Bailey's son, Ronnie (mother and son pictured left), who had filed a criminal complaint against both mother and son. Ronnie Bailey is a retired US Marine (right) Bailey's granddaughter attends the same school as her son's ex-girlfriend's child Additional naked photos were later recovered from a grassy area surrounding the parking lot and were handed over to the assistant principal of Pleasure Ridge Park High. The arrest document states that Bailey had obtained the X-rated images from her son's phone. The mans ex-girlfriend had previously filed a criminal complaint against Bailey and her son, 35-year-old Ronnie Bailey. Following the October 18 incident, school administrators interviewed Bailey's granddaughter about the nude photos and the girl said she had nothing to do with their distribution. After learning of the interview, Bailey allegedly marched down to the school and confronted officials about speaking to her grandchild without her knowledge. Bailey (left and right) was jailed after she came by the school and staff recognized her from CCTV video from October 18 that allegedly showed her driving around the parking lot During her second visit to the school, staffers reportedly recognized Bailey from the October 18 surveillance video. The 60-year-old former home health aide was booked into the Jefferson County Jail after 5pm Monday, where she was being held on $2,500 bond pending her next court appearance on November 9. According to social media posts, Bailey's son is a retired US Marine who recently has been working for a ride-sharing service. A local group is hoping to start a needle exchange program in Billings, and theyve got both friends and foes. Jace Dyckman, co-chair of the statewide HIV Prevention Community Planning group, said some community members have been asking for the service for years, believing it will provide some safety for loved ones who are drug-addicted. A needle exchange offers clean needles for intravenous drug use and a safe place to dispose of dirty needles. Most programs also offer first aid supplies, information on how to reduce risk while injecting drugs, and referrals for health care and substance abuse treatment. Bozeman, Missoula and the Fort Peck Indian Reservation all have active needle exchanges. But Billings law enforcement and other city officials arent so enthused, arguing an exchange could encourage illegal activity. Possible benefits Dyckman says all Billings residents would benefit from a needle exchange, not just those using drugs. By providing a safe place to dispose of dirty needles, Dyckman believes, an exchange would help cut down on the number of dirty needles littering the city, especially at North and South parks. (A seasonal parks employee at North Park said that on most days this summer, he found used syringes in the park. Providing clean needles would help slow the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, bloodborne pathogens that are frequently spread when people share needles, Dyckman said. New needles can be difficult to obtain at a pharmacy without a diabetes-related prescription. And it would help establish trusting relationships between public health advocates and intravenous drug users, laying the foundation to get people into drug treatment more quickly, he believes. Dyckman used meth for 20 years and has been sober for 14. He said he knows what it takes to get clean, and a bridge to services through a trusted intermediary someone at the needle exchange would help. Before the city can address local drug addiction, Dyckman and other proponents believe, it needs to push the problem into the open. The community in general forgets that a drug addict was actually somebodys son or daughter that had a dream, Dyckman said, but turned to drugs to cope during a time of struggle. At some point that coping skill turned into an addiction. Now that addiction runs their life. Amnesty for drug users? Billings police Chief Rich St. John said he understands the potential health benefits of an exchange, but that turning a blind eye to drug use is counterintuitive for law enforcement. St. John said he has questions about how the programs have worked elsewhere, and would need to meet with the city and county attorney to discuss the issue locally, if the project gets that far. A law passed this spring by the Montana Legislature exempts people administering a needle exchange from drug paraphernalia laws. But questions remain about how police would interact with those visiting an exchange, St. John said. Steve Crawford, chief of police in Bozeman, said officers there have no agreement not to track people who visit the exchange, but that police also do not know when or where the exchange will take place. (Bozemans exchange is run from a mobile unit. The schedule is announced on a private Facebook page.) Crawford said Bozeman police have not yet had any problems with the exchange. But St. John remains concerned that such a program in Billings would provide amnesty for illicit behavior. At the end of the day, we are law enforcement, and it is against the law to do all of the stuff that we are talking about, St. John said. I dont want to endorse anything that is going to facilitate illegal activity. Next steps Dyckman said hes at the initial stage of planning for the proposed exchange. Hes made a pitch to a Southside Task Force meeting, handing out sharps containers to residents to encourage them to dispose of needles safely. The next, and biggest, steps, are to find a local organization willing to sponsor such an exchange and to secure funding. While Congress recently made it easier to use federal funds for needle exchanges, some restrictions remain, and Yellowstone County currently does not qualify. Thats essentially because the problem isnt growing quickly enough here, at least according to federal measures. In order to qualify for federal funds, a locality must demonstrate that it is experiencing or at risk of experiencing an increase in infectious disease rates that is clearly linked to IV drug use. Yellowstone County has had three new cases of HIV this year and three new cases in 2016. For Hepatitis C, there were 14 new cases last year and five so far this year. No state funding is used to support the existing needle exchanges in the state, according to the Department of Public Health and Human Services. Dyckman is currently researching other funding sources. Dodgy tummy tuckers and facelifters will no longer be allowed to call themselves cosmetic surgeons under a new government crackdown. Health ministers believe the 'wild, wild west' billion-dollar industry is riddled with shonky operators masquerading as surgeons without qualifications. Leaked talking points from Friday's health ministers meeting reveal the job description will be limited to those with specialist training. Dodgy tummy tuckers and facelifters will no longer be allowed to call themselves cosmetic surgeons under a new government crackdown Incidents included Enhance Clinic in Western Sydney (pictured) operating without a licence, and nurses administering Botox only supervised by doctors on Skype 'Use of the title cosmetic surgeon can create an impression that the practitioner holds specialist registration as a surgeon,' it read, according to the Daily Telegraph. Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and state ministers are expected to agree to the proposal and forward the directive to the Medical Board of Australia. The plan aims to stamp out frequent scandals, such as medical students calling themselves cosmetic surgeons after just a half-day training course in breast enhancements and Botox. Other incidents included Enhance Clinic in Western Sydney operating without a licence, and nurses administering Botox only supervised by doctors on Skype. Plan follows numerous incidents of unqualified doctors misleading patients or, like Dr Leslie Blackstock (pictured) operating without a licence Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt (pictured) and state ministers are expected to agree to the proposal and forward the directive to the Medical Board of Australia Some doctors who failed their GP exams even set themselves up as cosmetic surgeons with few qualifications. The ministers were also likely so support a proposal to investigate the industry to weed out unqualified doctors and illegally imported medicines. 'Cosmetic cowboys are rife throughout the cosmetic industry including in retail outlets in our shops and malls,' NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said. 'There are people with syringes and chemicals in their hands doing things to people, mostly women, who just dont understand the dangers.' A furious woman smashed up her former husband's car with a frying pan in a rage over their divorce. The 23-year-old, who has not been named, took revenge by destroying the car with the kitchen equipment in Novokuznetsk, south-central Russia. She claims her former husband, 37, gave the Toyota Camry to her as a gift during their marriage so wanted it in the divorce. The 23-year-old, who has not been named, took revenge by destroying the car with the kitchen equipment in Novokuznetsk, south-central Russia But the pair rowed over ownership so the 23-year-old smashed it up in revenge. In mobile phone footage filmed by an onlooker, she is seen hitting the side windows before moving onto the windscreen and then the bonnet. Police were called after her former husband complained to officers and are investigating. Sukhov Sergey wrote under a video of the incident, posted online: 'Bravo! Guys, stop arguing with women, this is shameful and expensive.' Another person commented: 'Do not give women cars as presents. Or hide frying pans if your ex comes to visit you.' These glorious photographs show how HMS Dragon returned to her home at Portsmouth Naval Base today. The Royal Navys Type 45 air defence destroyer returned to foggy Hampshire after an exercise in the Mediterranean. The 500ft destroyer had been on a routine port visit in Gibraltar last week, where local sea cadets were welcomed on board. And after leaving last Friday, HMS Dragon met the Navys future flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth on her way back to England. Five personnel from Lizzie spent several days on board HMS Dragon to finesse their skills in the operations room. HMS Dragon also worked with HMS Queen Elizabeth to help her test several of her systems as they sailed together. HMS Dragon had also undertaken exercises in Scotland and the South West, before returning to Portsmouth this afternoon. The destroyer has a displacement of 8,000 tonnes, beam of 69ft, complement of 190 and range of 7,000 nautical miles. HMS Dragon's commanding officer is Captain Wood, who joined the Navy in 1989 and took command of the ship in May 2016. A Chinese school has been accused of using shocking torture methods on teenagers to help them get rid of their addition to the internet. Teachers at the Yuzhang Shuyuan Institute beat 'troublesome' students with iron rulers, whip them with finger-thick steel cables for over 30 times and lock them up in tiny window-less cells for as long as a week, according to former students. The camp in south-east China's Nanchang city charges 30,000 yuan (3,450) for a six-month term and targets at parents who are desperate to put a stop to their child's obsession with the web. The local authority has vowed to fine the school after an investigation showed that some of the claims from the students were true. Yuzhang Shuyuan Institute has been accused of using cruel punishment on students to help them overcome their addiction to the internet. The school in Nanchang, China, is a historic brand. The picture was taken by a People's Daily journalist while visiting the school in 2013 In pictures taken by media, students in the school are seen reading classic literature, practising calligraphy in class and bowing to a Confucius statue. However, a former student who was sent to the school for her web-addiction has revealed shocking details in the school A self-described former student, who calls herself 'Shan Ni Ma Da Wang' (pictured), described her horrifying experience to a journalist from Beijing Times. She claimed she was beaten and locked up in a small cell for days after being taken to the school by force in 2014 Internet addiction is considered a clinical disorder in China, with an increasing number of young people choosing to ignore their studies, social lives and family to surf the web or play online games. Many parents use the so-called 'digital detox' rehab camps as a last resort to curbing their children's fixation on the digital world. On the promotional material of Yuzhang Shuyuan Institute, the school, a historic brand in China, bills itself as an vocational education centre that uses Confucius philosophy to give 'teenagers in crisis' a chance of a better life. Pictures posted by the school on its social media account show students dressed in traditional Chinese uniform. They are seen reading classic literature and practising calligraphy in class. However according to a self-described former student, who calls herself 'Shan Ni Ma Da Wang', the school's teaching methods were extremely cruel. A young Chinese internet addict receives an electroencephalogram check at the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital July 6, 2005, in Beijing. Many parents use the so-called 'digital detox' rehab camps as a last resort to curbing their children's fixation on the digital world Teenagers receive musicotherapy at a school in Jinan on August 22, 2010. Chinese authority has vowed to crack down on the physical abuse found at digital rehab camps in the country In a social media post, the girl claimed she was tricked into the institute in 2014 by her mother who had claimed to take her on a leisure trip to Nanchang. She said she was 14 years old at the time. She said as soon as she landed in Nanchang, she was brought to the school forcefully and in handcuffs by its staff who were waiting for her and her mother. She also wrote that the staff took away all sharp items and items with strings, including her bra, to prevent her from contemplating suicide. Then they sent her into a window-less cell for three days, which only had a dirty quilt, a bucket of water and an unwashed food bowl. During an interview with Beijing Times, the girl, 17 years old now, said she was once severely beaten in the hand for 13 times by a teacher using an iron ruler. In one extreme case, she said she witnessed a teaching whipping another girl, who had tried to escape, with a solid steel rod. She said she could still remember the girl's desperate scream when she was whipped in the buttocks. The girl, 17 years old now, also claimed that she had tried to suicide in order to get a chance to leave the school. Internet addiction is considered a clinical disorder in China, with an increasing number of young people choosing to ignore their studies, social lives and family to surf the web Some teenagers would spend days on end playing video games non-stop at internet cafes The accounts from 'Shan Ni Ma Da Wang' shocked the Chinese public and her post on October 28 was widely shared on Chinese social media. Public interest has led more former students at the institute to speak up, who confirmed to the media the horrifying physical and psychological abuse that existed in the school as well as it's prison-like environment. One former student, known as Zhou Yi, told Jiemian News that he was stripped naked and thrown into a bare cell after he arrived. He said it was hard to tell day from night and he lost track of time after about three days. When he was released he believed he had been kept there for seven or eight days. On October 30, the authority of Nanchang's Qinghu District, where the school is located, released a statement regarding the matter. The statement said an investigation confirmed that the Yuzhang Shuyuan Institute did carry out physical punishment on students, including forcing them to stand, hitting them with rulers and whipping them with bamboo rods. The statement also said the local educational bureau had been informed to fine the school and track down a person responsible for the matter. According to Beijing News, the headmaster of the Yuzhang Shuyuan Institute announced on social media today that the school would discontinue its operation as of November 2 and was making alternative arrangements for its current students. A beautiful and rare cloud waterfall has been caught on camera in a mountainous forest region of China. The clouds rolled spectacularly down a mountainside in Shennongjia Forest District in central China's Hubei Province. The weather phenomenon requires extremely stable air conditions followed by heavy rainfall over a plateau surrounded by mountains in order to take place. And Shennongjia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016, provided the ideal situation for the cloud waterfall to form. The stunning formations are also known as 'orographic clouds' and they develop when air is forced upwards by the earth's topography - as it is by mountains in this case. When stable air encounters a mountain, it is lifted upward and cools as it rises. Water vapor can then condense and becomes visible as a cloud. When it reaches the mountain top, the air is heavier than the environment and will sink down the other side, warming as it descends. But the air does not stop when it returns to its original height because it now has momentum pushing it down. She's a waterfall: The beautiful and rare cloud formation was caught on camera in a mountainous forest region of China, which is also known for rare, endangered species The clouds rolled spectacularly down a mountainside in Shennongjia Forest District in central China's Hubei Province. Shennongjia has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2016 The air becomes warmer than the surroundings as it descends and it begins to accelerate back up towards its original height which begins the cycle again. Chinese tourist authorities took the opportunity to film the scene and set it to some majestic choral music to promote the area, which also receives millions of visitors annually. Luckily the sight in China lasted for several hours, allowing plenty of time for filming. Shennongjia, which is also a nature reserve, is known for its trove of rare species, with the endangered golden snub-nosed monkey among them. The weather phenomenon requires extremely stable air conditions followed by heavy rainfall over a plateau surrounded by mountains in order to take place Chinese tourist authorities took the opportunity to film the scene and set it to some majestic choral music to promote the area, which also receives millions of visitors annually The tallest peak in the reserve is the 10,190-foot Mount Shennong, named in honour of a farming deity in local lore. The nature reserve is a '5A' scenic spot, which is the top of the China Tourism Administration's five-tier rating system. Other 5A attractions include such places as Beijing's Forbidden Palace, the Summer Palace, and the Badaling section of the Great Wall, while outside of the capital the Shanghai Wild Animal Park and the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum also made the cut. A teenager with a rare genetic disorder faces a race against time to find funding for life-saving treatment that only two surgeons in the world can perform. Ylena Green, from Sussex, has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which affects the connective tissue of the body, and she has not eaten in three years. Her stomach and intestines cannot digest food so she has to be fed via a line in to her heart, which pumps liquid nutrients in to her bloodstream. Ylena Green, 18, has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), which affects the connective tissue of the body She faces a race against time to find funding for life-saving treatment that only two surgeons in the world can perform So, when she had a Chinese takeaway to celebrate her 18th birthday in February, she could only taste her food by 'sham eating', which her father, Martin, 58, likened to wine-tasting. Ylena, from Haywards Heath, Sussex can enjoy the taste of her favourite dishes, like her mum's cheesecake, lasagne, and macaroni and cheese, by tasting but then needs to spit it out in to a napkin. She was diagnosed with EDS when she was 14, but her condition, which weakens the joints, worsened days after her birthday, when she dislocated the part of her skeleton for turning her head. Ylena when she was an active teenager who enjoyed swimming, gymnastics and ballet (left), and celebrating her 18th birthday with her parents (right), Martin and Letitia Her condition weakens the joints, worsened days after her birthday, when she dislocated the part of her skeleton for turning her head So her family, including her mother Letitia, also 58, are appealing for help to raise 90,000 for complex procedures not available in the UK. What is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome? Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) is a group of inherited disorders that affect the connective tissues. Most types of the genetic condition affect the production of collagen, which gives tissue strength and allows it to stretch. Collagen is found in tendons, ligaments, cartilage, skin, bone, blood vessels, the gut and the spine. It means joints are loose and unstable and prone to dislocating. Swelling, sprains and hyperextension are also common. Skin is soft and fragile and bruises easily. This leads to slow and poor wound healing. There is no known cure for EDS. Treatment may help to manage symptoms, such as surgery to repair muscle damage and medication for pain. Sufferers can wear joint braces, do physical therapy to strengthen joints, avoid very physical activities and wear sunscreen to reduce the risk of harm. Advertisement Only two surgeons in the world can perform the operations - one based in Barcelona and the other in Washington DC. Her father, a graphic designer, said: 'Our daughter was living a reasonable life until early this year. Now it's like she's in a prison. It's not a life for a teenager. 'Her mum and I are devastated for her, we're heart broken every day. She has good parts of the day and bad, and our job is just to keep her spirits up.' As a child Ylena did not show symptoms of EDS, which include loose, unstable joints that dislocate, skin that bruises easily, problems with internal organs, and dizziness after standing up. She enjoyed swimming, gymnastics and ballet, but as a teenager her knees and wrists began to dislocate, and in July 2014 she collapsed and was diagnosed with the condition. She and her family tried to maintain a normal life for her, as she went to college and enjoyed gigs. This has left leaving requiring round-the-clock care, and means that she can turn her head 110 degrees, but this would break her neck and could kill her. Ylena currently wears a neck brace, but her life is fragile and doctors have warned that without surgery she could die within one or two years as her condition deteriorates. She now only leaves the house now for essential hospital appointments, for which her father lifts her in to a motorised wheelchair. Ylena at a gig before her condition worsened. She now only leaves the house now for essential hospital appointments, for which her father lifts her in to a motorised wheelchair She also has a condition called craniocervical instability, which means the ligaments in her neck are too weak to support her head so the spine squashes the brain stem under the weight of the skull. Ylena with her grandfather. She needs funding for life-saving treatment She is now experiencing intermittent loss of feeling in her hands and legs. She suffers with extreme nerve pain, which has spread down her back, and has become so sensitive that Ylena says her back feels like it is 'on fire' to the slightest touch. The surgery has an 80 90 per cent success rate, but the family must raise 90,000, which includes this, plus the cost of an air ambulance if needed, accommodation, and to support them while Ylena recuperates. Mr Green said: 'Ylena has said it would be great if the surgery could happen around or before her next birthday in February 2018. 'It's not every teenager's birthday wish, but it would be the biggest present she could get. She is desperate to become mobile and independent again.' Police have released CCTV footage of a group of men leaving the apartment of a murdered Hells Angels bikie the night of his mysterious death. Kemel Barakat, 29, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds at his home in Sydney's inner-west on March 10. Mr Bakarat was killed execution-style, while his wife was on holiday in Thailand. The footage shows four men 'believed to be involved in the murder' enter the unit block at the same time the bikie was killed, and investigators are appealing for any information leading to the discovery of their identities. 'We are confident there are people who know what happened,' Homicide Squad's Detective Chief Inspector Mark Henney said. Police have released CCTV footage of a group of men leaving the apartment of a murdered Hells Angels bikie the night of his mysterious death Kemel Barakat (pictured) was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds at his home in Sydney's inner-west on March 10 The CCTV video captured the morning of the murder shows the men walk up a set of stairs wearing hoods to conceal their faces. They appear to be carrying large objects. Moments later the group can be seen running from the apartment block and back down the stairs towards the car park. A white Mercedes C63 wagon can be seen arriving at and leaving the vicinity prior to their appearance on the security footage. The car was stolen from a break-in in the nearby suburb of Newtown on June 30 last year. It was found burned out in Belmore the next morning. The CCTV video captured the morning of the murder shows the men walk up a set of stairs wearing hoods to conceal their faces. They appear to be carrying large objects A white Mercedes C63 wagon can be seen arriving at and leaving the vicinity prior to their appearance on the security footage. It was found burned out in Belmore the next morning Mr Bakarat (pictured) when he was killed execution-style, while his wife was on a holiday in Thailand 'The CCTV depicts the Mercedes driving in and out of the area, and another clip depicts four men, who we believe were involved in Mr Barakat's murder,' Det Ch Insp Henney said. 'We hope the CCTV may refresh, or trigger, someone's memory who may have noticed something suspicious near the building that morning.' Police believe these men know who is responsible for the death of the bikie in a highly sophisticated and calculated attack. 'Based on the information we've gathered, Mr Barakat's murder was calculated and carried out with a fair amount of precision, we are talking about sneaking into a man's home and executing him in bed. The offenders made their way into the complex through a fire door before finding their way inside Mr Bakarat's unit and shooting him. 'We hope the CCTV may refresh, or trigger, someone's memory who may have noticed something suspicious near the building that morning' Police believe these men know who is responsible for the death of the bikie in a highly sophisticated and calculated attack It is understood Mr Barakat's wife has dismissed claims he was with another woman as false, believing the she would have been shot or injured if she was laying next to him It is understood Mr Barakat's wife and partner of 12 years has dismissed claims he was with another woman as false, believing the she would have been shot or injured if she was laying next to him. 'He (Blackie) adored her,' a source told Daily Mail Australia. 'People who know him they know how they love each other.' 'He was her protector and I'm telling you at home he was not a bikie he was just her loving caring husband, Blackie'. Daily Mail Australia has learned Barakat had his body covered in tattoos bearing the name of his wife, Amanda. He had her name on his right pectoral and written across the inside of his wedding finger. 'Blackie' also had a capital A on his ring finger and a portrait of the happy couple together kissing etched into the left side of his chest. The couple were affectionately known as 'Amanda and Blackie' to loved ones and were considered inseparable. Family members have told police they believe the killing 'was a set up'. An Egyptian lawyer who said raping women who wear ripped jeans is a man's 'national duty' has been reported to the country's top prosecutor. Nabih al-Wahsh said that if a woman wore such trousers she deserved to be sexually assaulted and harassed. But Egypt's highest women's rights body has since reported the lawyer, who made the comments during a television appearance, for 'promoting sexual harassment'. Shocking: Lawyer Nabih al-Wahsh said that if a woman wore ripped jeans she deserved to be sexually assaulted and harassed Nada Draz of the state National Council for Women also said today that the comments 'explicitly promote rape'. Ripped jeans have been at the heart of controversy in recent weeks about their propriety, with some university colleges banning students from wearing them on campus. Egypt is a majority Muslim country of some 95 million that is a mostly patriarchal society where street harassment of women is endemic. Al-Wahsh appeared on the talk show where the invited guests were discussing laws on 'inciting debauchery'. He said if women wear jeans with rips that show any part of their legs, they are inviting men to harass them, Al-Arabiya reports. He added that raping women who wear ripped jeans is 'a national duty,' implying that this would not only be what the women deserved but a way for them to learn self-respect. He said: 'Girls must respect themselves so others respect them. Protecting morals is more important than protecting borders.' Outrageous: The lawyer also said that it is an Egyptian man's 'national duty' to rape any woman he sees who is wearing ripped jeans Al-Wahsh made the shocking comments while appeared on a talk show to discuss laws on 'inciting debauchery' This is not the first time Al-Wahsh has behaved outrageously in a television studio. Last year, he appeared on a talk show with an Australia-based imam who argued that wearing a hijab - a headscarf - is a choice and not a religious requirement for Muslim women. This infuriated Al-Wahsh, who took off his shoe and beat the imam round the head with it on live television. Sayfullo Saipov, 29, worked as a professional trucker living on-and-off in Tampa since 2011. It was revealed he had addresses in Florida, Ohio, and New Jersey, and ran his own truck sharing companies but had spent the last six months working as an Uber driver The Uzbek immigrant who mowed down eight people in a Home Depot truck in an act of terror on Tuesday once owned a much more lethal 60,000lb tractor-trailer, DailyMail.com can reveal. Records also show Sayfullo Saipov's car was photographed in the New York City area as recently as two months ago. After moving to the U.S. in 2010, Saipov, 29, worked as a professional trucker living on-and-off in Tampa since 2011. It was revealed he had addresses in Florida, Ohio, and New Jersey, and ran his own truck sharing companies but had spent the last six months working as an Uber driver. Saipov obtained a Florida driver's license in June 2015, according to state records. A month later he registered the license plate of a semi-trailer, a 2006 Freightliner Columbia truck worth about $15,000 with a license plate No. N9311U. Registration papers indicate Saipov bought the big rig with cash. However, by the end of that year, Saipov failed to renew the vehicle's registration, making it illegal for him to drive. It is unclear whether he sold the rig. Saipov obtained a Florida driver's license in 2015 and bought a $15,000 2006 Freightliner Columbia semi-trailer (stock photo left) in cash. In 2014 he had purchased a Great Dane (stock photo right) but sold it to a business in Florida two years later Records also show Saipov bought a Great Dane trailer for heavy hauling in 2014 in Ohio then sold it to a business in Loxahatchee, Florida, two years later. One of the owners of trucking business Mather Home Florida in Loxahatchee told DailyMail.com she couldn't recall if she ever met Saipov. 'I saw his face on the television,' Yamilet Sanchez Vizcay said, 'but I have no idea if he ever sold us anything. Don't know him.' Tractor-trailers similar in size and weight to Saipov's have been used in several terror incidents in Europe, including the 2016 Bastille attacks in Nice, France which killed 86 people and the attack on the German Christmas Market in Berlin on December 19, 2016, when 12 people were killed. On Wednesday it emerged that Saipov followed ISIS instructions for truck attacks that he found on social media. Records obtained by DailyMail.com show Saipov appeared to be driving his 2004 Toyota Sienna in the New York City area recently. Above is the vehicle when it was photographed by street surveillance cameras in Orange, NJ on Central Avenue near South Center Street about 7 p.m. August 17 The vehicle was spotted again, on Communipaw Avenue near John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, NJ - about 20 miles from his home in Paterson and just 10 miles away from Manhattan - at 8 p.m. on September 17 Saipov most recently lived in Paterson, NJ, but his Toyota Sienna was spotted various parts of New Jersey just weeks before he committed the deadly attack in NYC Additional records show he garnered at least six traffic tickets in the past six years on his job, mostly for not properly maintaining his truck and other equipment, and for keeping inaccurate on-duty and rest logs that long-haul drivers are required to maintain. He was cited for not keeping driving hours log up to day in April 21, 2011 in Harfod County, Maryland. A year later he was given the same citation in Pike, Pennsylvania and pleaded guilty for the offense. Saipov was pulled over again in Cumberland, Pennsylvania in March 2015, when he was given a ticket for driving with unsafe equipment and hauling a trailer that exceeded maximum length, and pleaded guilty to both. The following month he was cited again for failure to maintain required brake system in Lee's Summit, Missouri. According to records, Saipov had a valid Class A commercial driver's license necessary to operate trucks heavier than 20,000lbs. The suspect rented a Home Depot truck from Passaic, NJ before using it to mow eight people down in an act of terror on Halloween He currently owns a 2004 Toyota Sienna family minivan which he bough in Akron, Ohio in 2015 and used it to move to Tampa and registered it in Florida in November 2016. According to photos obtained by DailyMail.com, Saipov appeared to be driving the Sienna in the New York City area recently. It was photographed by street surveillance cameras twice in Orange, N.J., on Central Avenue near South Center Street about 7 p.m. August 17, and on Communipaw Avenue near John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City, NJ at 8 p.m. on September 17. Donald Trump's advisers launched an assault Thursday on the credibility of the foreign aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his dealings with Russia, telling DailyMail.com he went to 'great lengths' to hide what he was doing. A senior Trump campaign national security adviser said George Papadopolous, who tried to arrange meetings between the campaign and Russian officials, went to 'great lengths' to hide what he was doing from his supervisors, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions. J.D. Gordon, who served as director of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee, told DailyMail.com that he and Sessions, who chaired the committee, were deliberately kept in the dark about Papadopoulos's extensive efforts to set up meetings between campaign staff and Russian officials. Gordon was pictured sitting between Papadopoulos and Sessions at the meeting with Trump. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and veteran of several Republican presidential campaigns, also downplayed Papadopoulos's role in the Trump campaign, just days after federal prosecutors announced Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russian nationals. Under attack: George Papadopoulos has admitted lying to the FBI but now the Trump camp is trying to paint him as lacking in credibility amid fears he may do more damage Speaking out: J.D. Gordon was a Trump national security adviser and says Papadopolous went round both him and Jeff Sessions, who oversaw foreign policy for the Trump campaign Inner circle: Trump praised Papadopolous as an 'excellent guy' and he was part of a meeting about 'national security' at the same time as he was corresponding with the Russians. He used the meeting to directly ask Trump about meeting with Putin The response offers some insight into how Trump campaign officials plan to deal with the charges, as questions grow about whether Sessions had any knowledge of the contacts between Papadopoulos and Russia. It also underlines the mounting fear that Papadopoulos may have more damage to do to the Trump circle, and could even have been wearing a wire while he was a co-operating FBI witness. 'I was surprised to learn [on Monday] what George Papadopoulos was up to during the campaign,' Gordon told DailyMail.com. 'He obviously went to great lengths to go around me and Senator Sessions.' First scalp: Papadopoulos pleading guilty is the first conviction to result from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation Papadopoulos was a member of Trump's National Security Advisory Committee between March and November of 2016. Gordon served as director, and then-Senator Jeff Sessions was the committee chairman. Gordon said Sessions dismissed Papadopoulos's Russia idea when it was first proposed during a March 2016 meeting, and he assumed Papadopoulos dropped the issue after that. 'The Senator and I did not know that George continued to try and arrange such a meeting by reaching out to other senior members of the campaign who were not in his direct chain of command,' said Gordon. '[It's] very hard to know what every single person is doing, especially since some folks deliberately go around the chain of command or circumvent it,' he added. 'George Papadopoulos clearly represents an extreme case.' Questions have been raised this week about whether Sessions had knowledge of Papadopoulos's communication with Russian officials while serving as chairman of the advisory committee. Sessions testified to congress in January that he was not aware of 'any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government during the course of the campaign.' Gordon said Papadopoulos attended only two of the six meetings held by the committee, including one that Donald Trump also attended on March 31, 2016. Official: Ivan Timofeev was the Russian who corresponded with Papadopoulos - which the cmapaign aide then lied about. Another woman who Papadopoulos thought was Vladimir Putin's niece was also introduced to him. She was not Vladimir Putin's niece Meet the professor: Jospeh Mifsud (right) runs the London Academy of Diplomacy and helped introduce George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign aide, to a Russian official. He has other ties to Moscow: In July he was phtoographed with a Russian diplomat based at its London embassy, Ernest Chernukhin During that meeting, Papadopoulos raised the possibility of a sit-down with Russian officials. Gordon said Sessions quickly 'shut him down' and Papadopoulos did not bring up the idea to the committee again. At the time of the March meeting, Papadopoulos had just returned from a trip to London where he met with a Russian-connected British professor and a woman he believed was Vladimir Putin's niece to discuss the proposal. Papadopoulos pitched the Russia meetings to multiple senior campaign officials outside the advisory committee between April and June of 2016, including former campaign directors Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort, according emails revealed this week in court records. Lewandowski appears to have ignored Papadopoulos's emails. Manafort nixed the idea of Trump meeting with Russian officials, but suggested sending a low-level staffer after Papadopoulos volunteered to attend. The meeting did not take place. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about his Russian contacts to federal investigators working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, according charges that were unsealed on Monday. He was arrested in July. Mueller has been investigating potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the presidential election. According to prosecutors, Papadopoulos downplayed his interactions with Russian nationals and claimed his emails to them consisted of small talk such as 'Hi, how are you?' But emails indicate that Papadopoulos repeatedly tried to arrange meetings between Russian officials and the campaign including a sit-down between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin over a period of several months. Papadopoulos also told investigators these conversations occurred before he joined Trump's National Security Advisory Committee. In fact, records show many of them took place after he became an adviser. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal investigators in early October. Details about his case and separate indictments against former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Richard Gates were first unsealed on Monday. Trump campaign officials have been minimizing Papadopoulos's contributions to the campaign. 'He's an idiot, basically,' said one former campaign official. Trump himself has called Papadopoulos a 'liar' and 'low level' in the wake of the charges. 'Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar,' said Trump on Twitter this week. Stepping up the defense: Trump used Twitter to distance himself form Papadopoulos, who he praised as an 'excellent guy', claiming few people knew him. Papadopoulos's appointment as a national security adviser for Trump raised eyebrows long before the Mueller probe. Just one month after he joined the campaign, the Washington Post reported on several 'discrepancies' in his resume. Papadopoulos reportedly said he was a fellow for several years at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank known for its focus on foreign policy. However, Hudson's public affairs director told the Post that 'records indicate that Mr. Papadopoulos started here as an unpaid intern in 2011 and subsequently provided some contractual research assistance to one of our senior fellows.' He also said he was the U.S. representative to the Geneva International Model United Nations in 2012, but sources on the delegation that year said they did not recall him attending. Trump announced Papadopoulos's appointment to his advisory committee in March 2016, telling the Washington Post that Papadopoulos was an 'energy and oil consultant' and an 'excellent guy.' Shortly after joining the campaign, prosecutors say Papadopoulos reached out to a professor in London who he believed had high-level Russia connections The professor identified in press reports as Joseph Mifsud was a diplomacy expert and former Malta official who specializes in energy policy issues. Mifsud was recently listed as director at the London Centre of International Law Practice, but his biography page on the website was removed without explanation last weekend. Going on trial: Paul Manafort is under house arrest while he awaits a federal trial on money-laundering charges The biography described Mifsud as 'the founding father of the term 'Academic Diplomacy',' and said his research is focused on the European Union 'especially accession and enlargement.' Mifsud currently serves as honorary director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, a diplomatic training institute associated with the University of East Anglia and the University of Stirling. On March 24, 2016, Papadopoulos allegedly met with the professor in London to discuss setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin. The professor reportedly brought along a woman who Papadopoulos incorrectly believed was Vladimir Putin's niece. In the weeks that followed, Papadopoulos, the Russian woman, and the professor allegedly exchanged emails about arranging meetings with officials in Russia. 'As mentioned we are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced,' wrote the Russian woman in one email to Papadopoulos. Mifsud also reportedly introduced Papadopoulos over email to Ivan Timofeev, program director of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank in Moscow. The Russian International Affairs Council was established by the Russian government in 2010 and is funded by the ministry of foreign affairs. The Trump adviser and the MFA-linked Timofeev went on to have 'multiple conversations over Skype and email' about arranging meetings between the campaign and Russian officials, according to prosecutors. As the discussions continued, Papadopoulos pressed other Trump campaign officials to consider the proposed meeting between Trump and Putin. He told one senior campaign official by email that he wanted to 'to discuss Russia's interest in hosting Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.' Around the same time, Misfud allegedly passed on a tip to Papadopoulos about the Russian government tampering in the presidential election. During a breakfast meeting on April 26, 2016, the professor reportedly told Papadopoulis that 'They [the Russians] have dirt on [Clinton]'; and 'they have thousands of emails.' But Papadopoulos's diplomatic efforts seemed to draw little interest from others in the Trump campaign. Campaign director Corey Lewandowski simply ignored Papadopoulos's messages when he received them in early May. Lewandowski's successor, Paul Manafort, seemed more open to the idea but nixed the possibility of Trump attending a meeting with Russians. 'We need someone to communicate that [Trump] is not doing these trips,' Manafort wrote to another Trump aide in May. 'It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.' A Billings man has been arrested on suspicion of arson and criminal endangerment related to a fire in the basement of a residence early Wednesday morning on Terry Avenue that caused an estimated $150,000 in damage. Edward Michael Halvorson, 43, is being held in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on one count of arson and four counts of criminal endangerment, according to a press release issued by Lt. Neil Lawrence of the Billings Police Department. BPD and the Billings Fire Department responded to a structure fire on the 700 block of Terry at about 1:20 a.m. Wednesday. BPD detectives were later brought out to the scene and questioned Halvorson. "The investigation revealed that the fire was intentionally set," according to the release. "It was discovered that the gas line and the water heater had been cut and an ignition source was used to ignite the gas." Halvorson was arrested at about 3 p.m. Wednesday, Lawrence said. The building was occupied at the time of the fire but no one was injured, according to a press release from BFD Deputy Fire Marshal Jaime Fender. Heavy fire and smoke damage was observed where the fire burned but the building and its contents were insured, according to the release. Two white men accused of murdering a 23-year-old black man in 1983 dragged him behind a truck and stabbed him to death because he'd been socializing with a white woman, prosecutors have claimed. Frank Gebhert, 59, and William Moore Sr., 58, were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of murdering Timothy Coggins in Griffin, Georgia, in October 1983. Three others were arrested for obstruction of justice. At a bond hearing for Coggin's alleged killers on Wednesday, prosecutors told how Gebhert and Moore attacked Coggins in a race driven attack because he had been socializing with a white woman. They allegedly dragged him behind a truck on Minter Road and stabbed him excessively and aggressively to 'send a message'. The pair, who were known as a couple of 'bad guys', boasted about the killing openly for decades afterwards and threatened anyone who knew they were responsible that they too would be killed if they told police, according to police. William Moore Snr (left), 58, and Frank Gebhert (right), 57, are accused of murdering Timothy Coggins in 1983 because he was black and was socializing with a white woman 'The murder of Timothy Coggins was due to Coggins socializing with a white female,'prosecutor Ben Coker said. The men, one of whom is now in a wheelchair, were able to get away with the crime for so long because people in the local community were terrified of speaking out against them, Coker added. Timothy Coggins, 23, was brutally murdered and 'seriously disfigured' in 1983 They finally were arrested earlier this month when police began receiving tips from individuals in the county about the pair. Among them were acquaintances of the men who said they sometimes boasted about the killing. Gebhert allegedly spoke about it when he drank and threatened anyone who spoke about it that he would drag them down the same road and kill them like he did Coggins, one person told police. According to witnesses who spoke with police this year, the pair were known locally as a 'couple of bad guys' in the 1980s. He believes people chose to finally speak out because the men are now older and more frail. When witnesses began telling police what happened to Coggins, they remembered it vividly, he said. 'It was like they were reliving a movie. A lot of time when that happens, you just sit there. It was very powerful,' Sheriff Dix told AJC. Prosecutors did not reveal the woman Coggins was apparently killed over during the bond hearing. Neither Gebhert nor his co-defendant have yet entered pleas. Lamar Bunn, 32, and Gregory Huffman, 47, are both police officers. They have been charged with obstruction of justice and have been fired Sandra Bunn, 61, and her son, Lamar, 32, were charged with obstruction of justice as was Gregory Huffman, 47. Bunn's mother Sandra, who police believe had a relationship with one of the alleged killers, was also charged Huffman also faces an additional charge of violating his oath as a detention officer. All three were released on bond earlier this month after their initial arrest. Lamar Bunn and Huffman were both working as cops when they were arrested. It is thought Sandra and Gebherdt may have had a relationship. Police have not revealed what specific piece of information reignited their investigation in July. The case remained cold for decades until they received a 'new piece of information' this summer. Coggins family were in court for the hearing this week. They say the sudden rush of information is overwhelming after so many years of silence. 'It was very difficult hearing some of the things today, and seeing the defendants was very difficult as well,' Sandra Coggins, the man's niece, said. Police found Coggins mutilated body in a field to the side of this road in Griffin, Georgia, in 1983 These heartbreaking images show an unborn rhino calf who died after its mother and sibling were shot and killed by poachers. The rhino was heavily pregnant and roaming Pilanesberg National Park in Mogwase, north-west South Africa, with its calf when they were hunted down for their horns. Photos show the poachers began hacking off the mother's prized horn, but they were interrupted by park rangers and fled before they had time to remove it. No chance: An unborn rhino calf who died in its mother's womb after she and its sibling were shot dead by poachers in South Africa Heartbreaking: The markings around the mother's horn show that the poachers had made an attempt to cut it off, but fled the scene when park staff arrived When park staff tried to save the unborn calf, it was found to have died inside its mother's womb. Pilanesberg National Park wrote on its official Facebook page: 'There are no words. 'Mom and calf shot and killed by poachers. Horns are still on as the murderers fled the scene when they heard a game drive approach. Mom looks very pregnant as well. We are devastated.' Pilanesberg National Park added in the post that a reward will be issued for any information leading to an arrest and prosecution of the poachers. A spokesperson for the park told MailOnline that the mother rhino was aged eight and the calf just two years old. The unborn foetus would have been due in February next year. Killed: The heavily pregnant rhino and its calf lie by the roadside where they were shot 'We have lost 16 Rhino and 3 unborn calves so far 2017 - that we are aware of,' the spokesperson said. 'This loss is not due to lack of interest or effort from Park management, as this is a large park with many valleys and hills, which is a difficult territory to operate in.' Since 2007, more than 6,000 rhinos have been shot and butchered for their horns in South Africa alone. The majority of those have come in the last four years with around a thousand being killed every year since 2013. Sometimes the rhinos are shot dead, in other cases they are brought down with a tranquiliser gun before having their horn hacked off - leaving the rhino to wake up and bleed to death painfully and slowly. The province of KwaZulu-Natal, which has the greatest density of rhino in South Africa, has seen 139 slaughtered already this year. Despite countries such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia and even India believing rhino has medicinal values, repeated studies have not found any evidence to support the claims. Sad: Park rangers and guests have gathered at the heartbreaking scene in Pilanesberg Rhino horns are made from a protein called keratin, the same substance that human fingernails and hair are made of. The horn is essentially just a compacted mass of hairs that continues to grow throughout the animal's lifetime, just like human hair and nails. It is similar in structure to horses' hooves, turtle beaks, and cockatoo bills - however these animals are not hunted and slaughtered in the same way. Tragically tradition and cultural beliefs in some Asian countries mean the demand for rhino horn has not waned despite just some 20,000 white rhino being left in the wild. Poachers are now being supplied by international criminal gangs with sophisticated equipment to track and kill rhinos. A kilo of rhino horn is worth around $30,000 (23,000) making it more valuable than a kilo of gold at $25,000 (19,000). The world's most expensive shot of a '139-year-old' whisky sold to a Chinese millionaire for 7,900 has been revealed as a fake made in 1972. Zhang Wei, who was staying at at Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, paid 9,999 Swiss francs for a glass of Scotch believing it had been made in 1878 by the revered producer Macallan. It was thought to have been the only remaining unopened bottle of the celebrated vintage until Wei, a martial arts fantasy writer, ordered a measure of the precious contents in the hotel's Devil's Place Whisky Bar. However, doubts soon started to emerge about the authenticity of the drink after experts noticed discrepancies in the bottle's cork and label. The hotel, which served the two-centilitre drink in good faith believing it to be real, asked experts in Scotland to check the contents and it has now been revealed to be a fake. Manager Sandro Bernasconi flew to China to reimburse Wei after it emerged the bottle was made between 1970 and 1972 and that it was most likely a blended Scotch and not a single malt. Zhang Wei (centre), who was staying at at Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, paid 9,999 Swiss francs for a glass of Scotch believing it had been made in 1878 by the revered producer Macallan. Manager Sandro Bernasconi has since refunded him after tests revealed it was a fake The luxury Swiss hotel said in August it would carry out tests on one of its rare bottles of whisky amid claims it wa a fake after Wei paid 7,900 for just one shot (pictured) The guest at Waldhaus Hotel in St. Moritz (pictured) paid 9,999 Swiss francs for a glass of Scotch believing it had been made in 1878 by the revered producer Macallan According to the BBC, Bernasconi said Wei was not angry and 'thanked me very much for the hotel's honesty.' In August this year Bernasconi told the 20 Minuten newspaper the allegations that the drink was fake would be investigated in an attempt to determine whether they were true. The bottle had been purchased 25 years ago by his father for a five-digit sum and had been valued at 50,000 Swiss francs (40,000). At the time, the hotel said it would take legal action against whoever sold them the bottle if was found to be fake. The Devil's Place Whisky Bar has been honoured for its 2,500 bottle collection, including by the Guinness Book of World Records. Bernasconi had earlier told 20Minuten he never expected to open this particular treasure. After entering the bar with a group of people, the client expressed particular interest in the Macallans - the hotel has 47 options, ranging from seven to 10,000 Swiss francs After entering the bar with a group of people, Wei expressed particular interest in the Macallans - the hotel has 47 options, ranging from seven to 10,000 Swiss francs. 'I told the customer that the most expensive Macallan was not for sale', Bernasconi was quoted as saying by the website. The client persisted, so Bernasconi called his father, who had run the hotel for more than two decadess and never had a client order the 1878. The elder Bernasconi told his son to go for it, even if the customer was not going to pay in advance. 'I was nervous,' Bernasconi was quoted as saying, explaining that he was concerned the ancient cork would disintegrate. But everything went down smoothly, including the two-centilitre (0.66-fluid-ounce) measure, Bernasconi said. Before it was uncorked, the bottle had been valued at 50,000 Swiss francs, a relatively modest price compared to recent record sets by whisky bottles at auction. A special collector's blend of Macallan's sold at auction in Hong Kong for nearly $630,000 in 2014. Pictured: Charity worker Bernadette Briggs leaving court after admitting assault A mother of two beat up an air hostess and vowed to 'rip her ****ing head off' after downing almost an entire bottle of gin on a Thomas Cook flight to Egypt. Charity worker Bernadette Briggs, 39, was described as going 'completely crazy' after secretly bingeing on gin. As the plane packed with holidaymakers was due to start its descent from 30,000 feet, Briggs, from St Helens, Merseyside, suddenly stood up from her seat and began swearing and shouting. When air stewardess Madison Preece asked her to sit down, a swaying and slurring Briggs retorted: 'f**k off' and when told she was putting other passengers at risk she added: 'I'll rip your f*****g head off'. She then punched Miss Preece to her shoulder and began shouting, swearing and swinging out her arms. A passenger tried to intervene but Briggs began scratching him and then tried to bite the captain of the aircraft as he restrained her using a restraint kit. Egyptian Police called to the scene after the aircraft landed discovered an almost empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin under her seat which she had bought for the six hour flight. She was taken to an Egyptian hospital where psychiatrists said had a psychotic episode on board. Briggs was banned from flying back with Thomas Cook and had to find alternate travel back to Manchester. At the city's magistrates court, she sobbed as she admitted assault by beating, using threatening behaviour and being drunk on an aircraft. Prosecutor Alan Baker said the incident happened on Friday, June 23 after the plane took off from Manchester Airport at 2pm. Pictured: Air hostess Maddison Preece was attacked by Briggs on board a Thomas Cook flight to Egypt 'Disturbing': Miss Preece was left with bruises on her leg after being knocked to the ground by Briggs and was so upset by the incident, she considered handing in her notice Mr Baker said up until around 10 minutes from landing, the flight had been uneventful. He said: 'The defendant suddenly got to her feet and started shouting and swearing and moving about the aisle, so the other passengers told her to sit down. 'Cabin crew member Madison Preece noticed the defendant was out of her seat and asked her to sit in her seat, to which the defendant replied 'f**k off'. She was still being told to sit down by other passengers. 'She was still swearing and was showing threatening behaviour and refusing to sit down. The aircraft was beginning its landing.' Miss Preece described the defendant to be swaying about and slurring her words. A passenger tried to intervene but Briggs began scratching him and then tried to bite the captain of the aircraft as he restrained her using a restraint kit As the plane packed with holidaymakers was due to start its descent from 30,000 feet, Briggs, from St Helens, Merseyside, suddenly stood up from her seat and began swearing and shouting Senior Crew member Wendy Ford was called to the scene and questioned her on her disruptive behaviour. Briggs was then described as knocking the air hostess to the ground while shouting and swearing and 'violently swinging her arms out'. Passenger Noel Johnson physically stepped in and restrained Briggs but she began scratching at his arms and neck. Prosecutor Mr Baker said: 'Once they had landed the captain was made aware of the defendant and he had to walk to her seat using the rear steps as it was impossible to walk past the passengers. 'He waited until the other passengers disembarked the aircraft, then went to assess the situation. 'He described the defendant to be going crazy. He asked for her to be kept restrained. He made a call to the Egyptian police and brought out a restraint kit.' Briggs will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court later this month and was given bail Briggs then was trying to 'bite staff' as they attempted to restrain her. The captain decided to take footage on his phone and took photos. It took 30 minutes for the Egyptian police to arrive, delaying the captain's return flight back to the UK. Briggs was escorted from the aircraft by police and taken to hospital. The court heard how a bottle of Bombay Sapphire was found underneath her seat. Mr Baker said: 'They decided to fly the plane back to Manchester as it took so long to deal with the defendant, costing several hundred thousand pounds.' When Briggs was interviewed, Mr Baker said: 'Officers described the incident as an 'isolated psychotic episode' to which the defendant had no memory of.' In a statement Miss Preece said she suffered bruising to her leg and said she was 'traumatised and upset by the incident.' Pictured above, Briggs drinking a can of cider In a statement Miss Preece said she suffered bruising to her leg and said she was 'traumatised and upset by the incident.' She added: 'I wanted to continue working but my colleagues noticed that I wasn't my usual normal self and I was struggling so was told not to work the returning long haul flight back home.' She described the event as 'disturbing' and said it was 'the most disturbing experience of her entire career and she has considered handing her notice in.' She is also receiving counselling. Mr Johnson said the holiday was meant to be a 'second honeymoon' after his children had grown up, and added: 'I was really looking forward to it. This completely ruined the first part of my holiday for me. 'I still have scars from the incident and I was concerned she would be on the flight home but I was glad when I didn't see her.' 'Remorseful': Briggs' defence told the court she was upset and sorry to everyone on the flight that day The court heard divorcee Briggs suffered with depression and anxiety and takes medication. Her lawyer, David Abbott, said: 'She was going on holiday with her sister and she had too much to drink before the flight, and again drank on board the flight which was incredibly poor behaviour on her part. 'She is on medication for depression and anxiety, and no doubt that mixed with the drinking and the descent obviously affected her in some way. 'There's not a lot I can say about this incident. She had become abusive during the landing and became very difficult. 'She has never behaved in this way before. A psychiatrist told her that she suffered some sort of psychotic episode. Whilst she wasn't physically abusive whilst the aircraft was in the air, she was verbally abusive.' The court heard how after the flight landed, she was left for 24 hours in Egypt in the hotel she had booked and had to sort her own way home. Thomas Cook refused to fly her home. Her defence said: 'She works for a charity. She used to work for a secure unit. She now works for a residential school for boys. Her employers know of this incident and fully supports her. 'This is completely out of character for her. Her sister was also drunk on board the flight and didn't attempt to help her sister. I believe the medication, mixed with the alcohol and descent had some effect on her. 'She is completely remorseful and wants to apologise to everybody on board that flight for her actions that day.' Briggs will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court later this month and was given bail. JP Gillian Pearson told her: 'This incident is extremely serious and affected the safety of everybody on board that flight. This was disturbing for everybody. We believe our powers are insufficient to deal with this.' A Michigan State University student who tried to eat 100 McChicken sandwiches in a day but had to stop after 24 has become a cult hero at his college. Derek Metcalf, a senior studying chemical engineering, took on the challenge after seeing it posted on Snapchat. The only rules were that he had to eat all 100 within 24 hours and could not vomit. Derek Metcalf, a senior studying chemical engineering, took on the challenge after seeing it posted on Snapchat The only rules were that he had to eat all 100 within 24 hours - without vomiting. Pictured left and right: The eighth McChicken sandwich and the 23rd His reasoning, according to the Lansing State Journal, was: 'I'm a fan of the McChicken. I've always loved them.' He spent the weekend preparing for the extreme indulgence by working out and burning calories. That was shrewd given that a hundred McChicken sandwiches contain 35,000 calories, 1.5kg of fat and 4kg of carbohydrates. But there was one thing Metcalf didn't count on. He explained: 'Too much mayo makes a man weak. It was really hard to eat that amount of mayo.' He even chopped up and pan-fried (pictured) some to provide a bit of variety, and kept his supply in the oven on a low heat to ensure they were as palatable as possible After beginning at 4.30am on Sunday by picking up 10 sandwiches from McDonald's in East Lansing, he realized the mayo was going to cause problems. But he refused to order his next batch dry and instead bought another batch of five with mayo. He even chopped up and pan-fried some to provide a bit of variety, and kept his supply in the oven on a low heat to ensure they were as palatable as possible. Throughout the entire challenge, Metcalf published his hilarious travails on Snapchat to an audience of about 5,000 people. His conviction even led him to take a backpack full of the fried chicken burgers into class. He said he was given strange looks as he munched on them during a lecture. His tenacity won him the admiration of his friend, Andrew Seng, who said: 'Personally, I had him at 16 or 17.' But, after putting away 24 McChickens (8,400 calories), Metcalf decided enough was enough. He dodged MacDonald's the next day - but a day after, he said, he was ready to eat them again. Corey Feldman will sit down with Dr. Oz on Thursday to speak about the Hollywood pedophile ring he claims preyed on him and other young actors, including his late friend Corey Haim. This interview comes after Feldman told multiple media outlets that he named members of this ring back in 1993 during an interview with members of the Santa Barbara Police Department, with the 'Lost Boys' star claiming that officials did nothing with the information. That claim is now being disputed however by police, and in an exclusive clip from Thursday's episode Dr. Oz confronts Feldman with this information. 'I called the Santa Barbara Police, just got off the phone with them. As you were speaking I was speaking. You claim that you spoke to them about your abuse in 1993 just to be clear,' says Dr. Oz in an exclusive clip obtained by DailyMail.com. Feldman then interrupts him to state: 'It's on the record.' Dr Oz continues: 'And you named names. I listened to the recording and I did not hear you name names.' Feldman responds by claiming that police turned off the recording device when he shared the identity of his molesters, which Dr. Oz accepts as true. He then pleads with Feldman to reach out to authorities again, at which point the actor makes the decision to call the Los Angeles Police Department and name the two men who allegedly assaulted him and other minors. It is during this call that Feldman reveals one of the men is still posting photos of him and Haim on his social media accounts. Scroll down for videos Speaking out: Corey Feldman will appear on 'The Dr. Oz Show' Thursday (above) to discuss the Hollywood pedophile ring he claims preyed on him and other young stars Shock: During the episode, Dr. Oz reveals that Santa Barbara police deny Feldman's claim that he revealed the names of his molesters in a 1993 interview Moment of truth: Dr. Oz is then able to convince Feldman (above with his wife) to call LAPD and name the men he claims molested him and raped Corey Haim Dr. Oz also reads a statement from police disputing Feldman's claim during the interview. 'We are aware of the statements that Mr. Feldman is making regarding an investigation in 1993. Our records do not indicate that he named any suspects,' states Dr. Oz, reading from the official statement he was given by a spokesperson from the Santa Barbara Police Department. He then tells Feldman: 'They want you to reach out to them. Would you call them after the show?' Feldman responds by saying 'absolutely.' Dr. Oz then presses him on the question many have wondered, asking: 'Why havent you already called them and said, guys, I said this to you, how can you not at least acknowledge?!' Feldman replied by explaining: 'Because we havent acknowledged it until today and they are acknowledging it by saying they dont have any recollection.' The host looks a bit shocked when he hears this response, and Feldman goes on to say: 'Well, I think its the first day that I think anybody has gone to them for a comment... but its the first time Ive heard any recount from them at all.' DailyMail.com also went to the Santa Barbara Police Department for a comment, and received the same statement as Dr. Oz. The two men then head backstage to make the call, which can be seen in full on Thursday. Feldman stopped by 'Megyn Kelly Today' on Monday, where he spoke about telling police the names of these predators over two decades ago while being questioned about his friend Michael Jackson. 'In 1993, I told the Santa Barbara Police Department, when they came to interrogate me about Michael Jackson, when they came to convince me that he was a pedophile. And I said he's not,' said Feldman. 'And I said, "I've been molested." They said, "by who?" I said, "I can give you the names, here they are." And they said, "that's not our area. That's outside of our community."' Feldman also spoke about his fears for his safety in the wake of his announcement that he hopes to raise $10 million to produce a feature film that will reveal a number of powerful Hollywood pedophiles. A good deal of that money will go towards security said Feldman, a cost he justified by claiming he had almost been killed just the other day. Megyn also asked Feldman if he went to police in Los Angeles back in 1993, after the Santa Barbara officers allegedly dismissed his allegations. 'I didn't. When you're a kid, 18, 19, 20-year-old kid, you try telling the police, which is a very big thing to do. And especially, it wasn't my situation. I was just answering for a friend,' said Feldman, who has long claimed the sexual abuse and assaults endured by his best friend Haim were far worse than his own. 'The fact I had the courage to throw it in there and hopefully get some support, and then they were like, sorry. They just shut it down like it didn't matter. And this is when it was within the statute of limitation. It was within my ten years.' Back in the day: He believes this is because people want to silence him now that he is planning to reveal the pedophiles who assaulted him and actor Corey Haim as children (Feldman and Haim in the 1987 film 'Lost Boys') Money: Feldman (left with Haim in 1989, right in 2007) is hoping to raise $10 million to make a feature film outing his alleged attackers, despite protests from many who want him to just name the predators He had previously told Matt Lauer in an interview earlier that in the day: 'If I were to go to the police, I would be the one who's getting sued. Henceforth, I need a team of lawyers, I need a team of security to be around me at all times to keep me safe so I can get this message done. I vow I will release every single name that I have any knowledge of, period.' Feldman did provide some clues as to the identity of one of his alleged molesters on Monday, saying he used to run a club for children and now works for the Los Angeles Dodgers. 'You want to tell us who it is, since you're going to have 1,000 stories trying to run down the person with that history,' asked Megyn. The actor said he could not name the person until her had 'legal protection.' Feldman also blamed the media and the police for the lack of movement on outing these pedophiles, who he holds responsible for Haim's battles with drugs and alcohol, which led to his death. Haim was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s, with leading roles in films including 'Lucas,' 'Watchers' and the Oscar-nominated 'Murphy's Romance,' which he starred in alongside Sally Field and James Garner. Feldman also found early success in Hollywood thanks to his roles in two of the decade's most memorable films, 'Goonies' and 'Stand By Me.' The boys first worked together on the 1987 vampire flick 'The Lost Boys,' and paired up again in the films 'License to Drive' and 'Dream a Little Dream.' Haim was quite the ladies man too over the years, dating Alyssa Milano, Nicole Eggert, Holly Fields and even Victoria Beckham at one point. Feldman and Haim had a chance to share the screen once more in 2007 with their reality show 'The Two Coreys,' which was cancelled after two seasons. It was a little over a year after that last season aired that Haim died as a result of drug induced pneumonia. Life or death: Feldman (above) said that he was almost killed by two pickup trucks that came speeding at him 'the other day' while appearing on 'Megyn Kelly Today' Monday Naming names: Feldman, 46, also said that he identified some of the pedophiles he alleges molested him and raped Haim in a 1993 interview with Santa Barbara Police (Feldman and Kelly above) Feldman detailed Haim's struggles with drugs - as well as his own - in his 2013 memoir 'Coreyography.' In that book he revealed that the first time they tried cocaine was with two of the men who were abusing them. Feldman also wrote in the book about Haim having sex with adult men on the set of 'Lucas' and 'The Lost Boys,' sharing a story he claims Haim told him one of the first times they met. 'At some point during the filming [of Lucas], he explained an adult male convinced him that it was perfectly normal for older men and younger boys in the business to have sexual relations, that it was what all "guys do," wrote Feldman. 'So they walked off to a secluded area between two trailers, during a lunch break for the cast and crew, and Haim, innocent and ambitious as he was, allowed himself to be sodomized.' Feldman also wrote about Haim spending time with Martin Weiss, a well known manager of child actors, while they were filming 'The Lost Boys.' He claimed in the book that one day on set Haim, who was 15 during filming, was aroused and wanted to have sex. 'Martys gay? Why dont you ask him?' wrote Feldman. Feldman revealed many of these stories in his 2013 'Coreyography' 'The two walked, single file, into the adjoining room. ... I heard sounds, banging, thumping. I felt my stomach flip-flop. I felt sick.' Weiss was arrested in 2011 after one of his clients told police he had been sexually abused by the man starting when he was just 11-years-old, claiming the incidents happened 30 to 40 times over a roughly three years period. He eventually pleaded no contest to two counts of child molestation in 2012 and was sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation. Weiss was immediately released after entering his plea for time served. Feldman also detailed a night when he allegedly received oral sex from a man after he was fed a cocktail of drugs. The abuse at the hands of that man, who he called 'Ron' in the book, went on for years after that first incident. 'I dont know why I couldnt confront Ron, but I was consumed with guilt. I felt like the whole thing was my fault,' wrote Feldman. 'I desperately wanted him to stop, but I was afraid of losing my friend.' Feldman said in his book that he did at one point name some of the men who abused himself and Haim to authorities, but claimed that they chose to ignore the allegations and allowed the statue of limitations to run out without conducting an investigation or pressing any charges. He wrote that he eventually found shelter and solace in an unlikely place - with Michael Jackson. 'I was shattered, disgusted, devastated. I needed some normalcy in my life. So, I called Michael Jackson,' he wrote, explaining that the pair had been introduced by director Steven Spielberg. 'Michael Jackson's world, crazy as it sounds, had become my happy place. Being with Michael brought me back to my innocence. When I was with Michael, it was like being 10 years old again.' He insisted in the book that Jackson never abused him or tried to touch him sexually over the course of their friendship. Feldman made the decision to very publicly reveal that his late friend was raped at the age of 11 by a Hollywood producer back in 2016 in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The actor defended his decision to out Haim as a victim of sexual abuse by stating that their stories were so connected, it would be impossible to tell one without the other. 'Understand, that Haim n I shared 1 life 4 many decades! R stories R 1 n the same! There's no telling my story without mentioning him, and vice versa!' wrote Feldman in a Facebook post at the time. He also went after Haim's family in the post, and the fact that they have chosen to stay silent despite Feldman's belief that the sexual abuse Haim suffered as a child is directly responsible for his lifelong battle with drugs - and his eventual death. 'As far as his family, Y aren't they standing alongside me and doing something about it? Because they want it 2 just go away! So is that OK?' wrote Feldman. '2 stand in complete silence is worse than speaking in a political manner, 2 start a much needed wave of discussion! I can not stay silent.' The four American Green Berets who were killed in Niger last month weren't on a reconnaissance mission, as initially claimed by officials, but instead on a kill and capture mission, it has been revealed. Four senior Nigerian Officials told ABC News that the operation that lead to the soldiers' deaths was a kill or capture mission of a dangerous terrorist conducted without any additional support requested of Nigerian Forces. And a senior US intelligence official said that the mission was carried out despite misgivings expressed by an American team leader about the operation. Top Pentagon officials previously said the October 4 mission was for reconnaissance, but local Nigerian military commanders have now said that was not the case. Those commanders said the operation was intended to capture or kill one of the most dangerous terrorist leaders in the area - known locally as Dandou or by his American code name Naylor Road. The four American Green Berets who were killed in Niger last month weren't on a reconnaissance mission, as initially claimed by officials, but instead on a kill and capture mission, it has been revealed. Pictured are Sgt La David Johnson, left, and Sgt Dustin Wright, right, A senior US intelligence official said that the mission was carried out despite misgivings expressed by an American team leader about the operation. Pictured are Sgt Jeremiah Johnson, left, and Sgt Bryan C Black, right Those commanders said the operation was intended to capture or kill one of the most dangerous terrorist leaders in the area - known locally as Dandou or by his American code name Naylor Road, pictured Dandou is thought to be behind a number of attacks in Niger and is linked to ISIS and al-Qaeda, according to ABC News. Nigerian officials think he was involved in the ambush that resulted in the deaths of Sgt Bryan Black, Sgt Jeremiah Johnson, Sgt Dustin Wright and Sgt La David Johnson. Last week General Joseph Dunford, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to reporters that 12 American and 30 Nigerian Soldiers were on a reconnaissance mission near Tongo Tongo. He said that when they were headed back to camp they were ambushed by an estimated 50 ISIS-linked fighters, and four were killed. The general said the US was there to 'advise and assist' Nigerian forces - but now multiple sources have told ABC that the mission was American-led from the start. Two US intelligence sources told ABC that the team of soldiers initially went out to meet local leaders and that their mission changed while on their way back to the base. Sources explained that they were then told instead of coming back to base to kill or capture Naylor Road. They then conducted an overnight raid of the target's campsite - which meant they were away from base for more than 24 hours and at a greater risk. 'They should have been up and back in a day,' a senior intelligence official said to ABC News. The official said that because they were out so long, when the mission changed midway through they were 'spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit.' A Nigerian officer also told the network that the second phase of the mission brought the group to a dangerous area at the Niger-Mali border known by locals as the 'red zone.' According to the US State Department, 'terrorist organizations, armed groups and smugglers,' operate there. Last week General Dunford said leaders on the ground believed that enemy contact was unlikely during the mission. But a Nigerian officer claims he asked for more soldiers and weapons before going in but was rejected by Americans leaders. Additionally, a second team of American and Nigerian soldiers was reportedly supposed to join the mission but were unable to do so for reasons that have not been revealed. President Donald Trump was criticized for how he handled the condolence call to Sgt La David Johnson's wife Myeisha. She claims Trump told her 'he knew what he was getting into,' and that he repeatedly forgot her husband's name on the call House representative Frederica Johnson was on the call, and backed up those claims, saying that the phone interaction only left Myeisha worse off than she was beforehand One US official told ABC that weather prevented the team from joining the mission, and another said it was caused by miscommunication. A senior intelligence source said that even though the 12-member team and their Nigerian partners knew they needed more men they were told to proceed. The mission to find Naylor Road at his suspected camp reportedly failed, and when the team got there the camp was said to be empty. The team then burned all remains before heading back to their vehicles, where they then drove south towards Tongo Tongo to have breakfast. In the village they met with someone who they now think was trying to stall them, US intelligence sources claim. When they left they were almost immediately ambushed by a violent force. President Donald Trump was criticized for his reaction to the Nigerian ambush last month - with many pointing out how long it took him to reach out to the family members of the four soldiers who were killed. He was then criticized even more harshly for how he handled the condolence call to Sgt La David Johnson's wife Myeisha. She claims Trump told her 'he knew what he was getting into,' and that he repeatedly forgot her husband's name on the call. Congresswoman Maxine Johnson was on the call, and backed up those claims, saying that the phone interaction only left Myeisha worse off than she was beforehand. Deborah MacQueen was alleged to have failed to protect up to 11 vulnerable children who were groomed by nine sex offenders while working for Rochdale Borough Council A social worker accused of failing to safeguard young victims of the infamous Rochdale sex ring has been allowed to keep her job after the case against was ruled to be was not well founded. Deborah MacQueen was alleged to have failed to protect up to 11 vulnerable children who were groomed by nine sex offenders while working for Rochdale Borough Council. In a long-running disciplinary hearing, she faced allegations that from January 2005 to September 2010 she failed to protect the children who were in grave danger. Nine men in Rochdale were convicted and jailed for a total of 70 years in May 2012 for grooming children as young as 13 after they plied them with alcohol. The men - eight of Pakistani origin and one Afghani - also gave their victims drugs before passing them round for sex at two takeaway restaurants. Ringleader Shabir Daddy Ahmed, now 64, was given a 19-year sentence which was later upped to 22 years for repeatedly raping a girl. A subsequent investigation was carried out by the local authority to determine if social workers had followed proper procedures to protect the girls. MacQueen was employed as a manager within the councils social work team and admitted that she had signed off cases despite information they were at risk of harm. Representing herself throughout the hearing, she said she only did so because she was unaware of the full facts of cases and that she should have been more robust in making sure those below here were doing their due diligence. Shabir Ahmed (top left), Adil Khan (top right), Abdul Aziz (bottom left) and Qari Abdul Rauf (bottom right) were jailed for abusing children in Rochdale Giving evidence, she said she should have been clearer in ensuring instructions to other members of the social worker team. MacQueen said there was a culture at Rochdale for reinforcing stereotypes by not treating children as individuals. On October 30 the regulator found her guilty of one charge in that she did not ensure that an assessment was undertaken or recorded in relation to the risk posed by child 11s uncle and son, who they were living with at the time. Sheila Sutherland, who led the investigation on behalf of Rochdale Council, described her decisions as indefensible in relation to one child with a learning disability. A panel says Mrs MacQueen is not guilty of misconduct and allowed to keep her job She said the victims older brother was associated with a man convicted of paedophilia and she could not see a reason as to why the case should have been closed. Ms Sutherland said: I can find no basis or justification for the decision to close this case - I consider her practice wholly inadequate and very dangerous. When that was not successful for whatever reason I should have highlighted it to the senior managers, she said. The horrific scandal was brought to life when the BBC aired a three-part television series called Three Girls highlighting the scale of the abuse in May. A case review by the Rochdale Safeguarding Children Board described police and social services as demonstrating a shocking inability to protect the vulnerable. An inquiry into the history of sexual abuse in Rochdale was announced in 2015 and is estimated to take five years to complete. Katherine Boyd, chair of the panel, said: The panel has taken some time to make its findings - we have had to sift through a lot of documentation. It has therefore been an unusual forensic exercise and we are intending to keep the of the facts of the particulars private. In summary we have found the registrant failed to ensure an assessment was taken out for child 11. At the hearings conclusion, Ms Boyd said: The panel considered the registrants level of managerial responsibility, her years of experience and her practice as disclosed in these proceedings. The fact found proven does not represent a fair sample of her work to support a finding of lack of competence. In relation to the issue of whether the threshold has been reached to support misconduct, the panel took into account that this was an isolated failure on the part of the registrant. She continued: The registrant, in hindsight, has acknowledged that she should have checked the status of assessments undertaken by her supervise and ensure that details of these were recorded. However, the panel recognised that this would have been expecting a standard of perfection and concluded that to expect all of a supervisers actions to be captured in the supervision notes would not, in the specific circumstances, be achievable. The panel has therefore concluded that this isolated incident, in its judgement, does not amount to misconduct. Therefore, the panel concluded that the case was not well founded at the grounds stage. A member of the notorious Adams family, who hired a taxi firm to collect 250,000 worth of debts from gangsters in Manchester, has been jailed for seven years, it can be revealed. Undercover police bugged popular cafe Andrew's in Holborn, central London to catch Thomas 'Tommy' Adams, 59, discussing his criminal enterprise. Couriers were watched by police exchanging an M&S bag containing thousands of pounds in cash at Euston Station owed to Adams. Jurors found the convicted drug smuggler (pictured outside court) guilty of two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property He had helped run the 'Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate' with brother Terry, 62, and Patsy, 61, becoming one of the most powerful crime gangs in London in recent years. They have been linked to over 25 murders while turning over millions in the drugs trade, through security fraud and hijacking gold bullion shipments. Officers were investigating his money laundering operation, through which he collected cash owed to him for 'criminal activity' between 2012 and 2014. Jurors found the convicted drug smuggler guilty of two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property after a trial in August. His sentencing can now be reported after reporting restrictions were finally lifted today after a second trial involving Adams was abandoned due to his poor health. Tommy Adams, a member of the notorious crime family, has been jailed for seven years He had collapsed outside the Princess Alice Pub opposite Woolwich Crown Court, after a suspected heart attack, as jurors deliberated. Defending Adams, James Wood QC, said: 'While the jury was out in August, Mr Adams was in the pub, outside he collapsed, was polaxed on the pavement. 'An ambulance was called and for the next five says he was in hospital until he went to Pentonville after sentencing.' Jurors had heard how Adams shipped nearly a quarter of a million pounds using runners to move the dirty money from Manchester to London. Since 2000, the Adams family's influence has been declining, but Tommy carved out a niche from his money laundering enterprise. Co-defendant Christos Nicholas, 52, was caught with 99,000 as he drove through north London in convoy with Elias Antoniou, 53, on 10 October 2013. Nicholas was was convicted of transferring criminal property and jailed for two-and-a-half years, while Antoniou was given two years for the same crime Robert Winstanley, 77, was stopped with 10,000 cash wrapped in tin foil at Euston Station, central London, on 22 May 2013, and was Oakmere, Cheshire, was also convicted of transferring criminal property and handed a three-year term. Adams spent the money on extravagant purchases including a 32,000 car for his daughter Terri, 35. Other defendants include: His 'fixer', Haralambos Antoniades , 48, who was jailed for 63 months for two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one of conspiracy to conceal criminal property. , 48, who was jailed for 63 months for two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one of conspiracy to conceal criminal property. Steve Mardon , 58, who runs Camden Cab Company, received the same length of sentence for the same indicments. , 58, who runs Camden Cab Company, received the same length of sentence for the same indicments. Martin Dowd , 49, who planned a series of 'cash runs' from Manchester to pay off his debts to Adams, was also given five-and-a-half years. , 49, who planned a series of 'cash runs' from Manchester to pay off his debts to Adams, was also given five-and-a-half years. Richard Jones , 68, from Macclesfield, was convicted of transferring criminal property. He was handed a two-year prison term, suspended for two years. , 68, from Macclesfield, was convicted of transferring criminal property. He was handed a two-year prison term, suspended for two years. Martin Dowd , 49, was jailed for conspiracy for money launder planned a series of 'cash runs' from Manchester to pay off his debts to Adams. The gang had laughed and joked during their two month trial, sometimes play-sparring with each other in the dock. Tommy Adams' daughter Terri, and son Shaun, 32, were due to appear alongside him in his latest trial but Shaun admitted transferring criminal property today. Terri Adams denied fraud by false representation and transferring criminal property and the charges were ordered to lie on the file. Jailing the gang for a total of more than 30 years, Judge Alice Robinson said: 'You have all been convicted of money laundering offences which took place in 2013 and 2014 involving the transfer and concealment of large sums of cash. 'Although not found until the search of Mardon's home in February 2013, the Crown's case was evidenced by and neatly encapsulated in a ledger. 'The evidence demonstrated significant planning, contrivance and subterfuge.' The indictment detailed a series of offences involving 237,030 - but prosecutors claimed the charges 'do not tell the full story about what was going on'. Detectives compiled surveillance evidence including telephone data, covert recordings, and ledgers recording the criminal transactions. Adams was recorded chatting about the plot after officers bugged Andrew's Restaurant, a cafe in Grays Inn Road. Another 25,000 was seized from Antoniou's safe deposit box in Metro Bank on 25 February 2014. Adams collapsed in a pub opposite Woolwich Crown Court, after a suspected heart attack, as jurors deliberated on his case The following day officers discovered 133,000 in cash in a safe at Mardon's house in Clerkenwell - two further searches revealed a further 24,500 of alleged dirty money at the five-bedroom terraced house. 'Those cash seizures do not tell the full story about what was going on,' said Mr Brompton. He told jurors the cash runs 'were just two of many such runs' that took place in 2013. Tommy Adams has a string of previous convictions, most of which date back to the 1970s, before he was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for masterminding a huge drugs smuggling operation. He was also ordered to repay 1million as a result of his part in the 7million cannabis importation plot. An Oxford University scholar claimed today that he was discriminated against after rejecting the sexual advances of a male professor twice his age. Dr Matthew Levy, 32, said he 'thwarted' the unwanted advances of Professor Peter Norreys, 57, who was his project supervisor at Wolfson College. The physics researcher said he was the victim of sexual discrimination in which Mr Norreys bullied him and micro-managed his work, expenses and travelling. Dr Matthew Levy (left, pictured outside the tribunal in Reading today), 32, said he 'thwarted' the unwanted advances of Professor Peter Norreys (right), 57, who was his project supervisor Dr Levy was a member of the Newton Fellowship and became a fellow of Wolfson College after the Royal Society sponsored him for research that began in 2015. The employment tribunal heard that Dr Levy was suing the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford and Mr Norreys for sexual discrimination. American-born Dr Levy told the panel in Reading, Berkshire, that Mr Norreys had made a pass at him while they worked together on a project. The junior research fellow said he had shut down the older man's advances but that this had started a long campaign of bullying and sexual harassment. When he raised a grievance to the university, the claim was swiftly rejected. Dr Levy said that when he tried to appeal this decision, he was told he could not because the appeal procedure only applied to the university's staff and students. As he was a junior research fellow and had been a Royal Society and Newton International fellow at the time, he said he had been treated as a staff member in every respect in the past and had not signed a contract which stated differently. Dr Levy said: 'In September 2016 I was pursuant to the university's policy and procedure regarding harassment and bullying. Dr Levy is suing Mr Norreys (pictured) and Oxford University for sexual discrimination 'I raised a grievance against Professor Peter Norreys for unwanted sexual harassment and victimisation when I thwarted his advances.' In the months that followed, he said the professor's supervision 'went far beyond that which was required under the conditions'. Speaking on behalf of the Department of Physics, Malcolm Bradbury (pictured) said the university had never issued Dr Levy with any contract of employment He said: 'The conditions of my fellowship did not require the university or my supervisor to monitor my research and progress in such detail, or on such a regular basis as it occurred in reality. 'In an investigation meeting relating to my grievance, Professor Norreys stated that I "had a habit of not telling him" what I was doing. This is simply untrue. 'He referred in his investigation meeting to the fact that he wanted to be able to "interrogate" me about the progress of my work. 'In October he informed me in an email that my absences were having a detrimental effect on my productivity and they must stop immediately. 'The absences Professor Norreys was referring to related primarily to the invited presentations I gave in the name of the university and the department, which he needed to, and did, approve. Professor Norreys also approved my expenses and travel plan. 'Professor Norreys had ultimate control of the training I took as well as over the progress of my Newton Fellowship projects.' Following the rejection of his appeal bid, Dr Levy, who lives at Wolfson College, sued inertial fusion science professor Mr Norreys and Oxford University for sexual discrimination. The tribunal heard while Oxford University functioned as a host for Dr Levy's research project on laser physics, it was funded by the Royal Society, an independent scientific academy operating on a number of university institutions. Dr Levy became a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford (pictured) and claimed Mr Norreys had made a pass at him while they worked together on a project The funding for his project included 24,000 a year for his own expenses, 8,000-a-year for research expenses and 2,000 for the first year to accommodate relocation. Oxford University also receives a contribution from the Society to host the fellowship. But the tribunal heard that Dr Levy had received 15,614.04 in expenses. Speaking on behalf of the Department of Physics at Oxford University, Malcolm Bradbury said the university had never issued Dr Levy with any contract of employment and that this was not stipulated in the fellowship contract. He said: 'Dr Levy was not considered to be an employee of the university. Rather, the role of the university to provide Dr Levy with the necessary departmental and institutional support to complete his Fellowship successfully, including adequate office and laboratory space and access to essential equipment and facilities. 'In the conditions of award (which sets out the details of the Fellowship), it states that the Royal Society will not become an employer of the Fellow and in cases where support is provided for the employment of staff the host institution must issue a contract of employment. 'There is no master-servant relationship or relationship of the type that is classified as employment, nor do the individuals carry out any activity with a view to profit.' The hearing continues. Automotive students at City College will provide free winter vehicle checks this Saturday. The students, along with SkillsUSA Club members, will inspect vehicles for battery health, tire pressure and wear, fluid levels and belt and hose conditions. Those components help to ensure a reliable ride during cold winter weather. The clinic will take place Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at City College. City College students have provided the service for the past three years. City College staff will supervise the inspections. Donations are optional to benefit the SkillsUSA Club's travel to competitions. The organization is a trades and industry organization focusing on students. Paul Manafort is arguing he is not a flight risk - despite having three passports - as he claims his $10 million bail is enough to hold him, according to new court documents filed Thursday. The former Trump campaign chairman entered a not guilty plea on Monday, before being freed on a $10 million bond and agreed to be on 'home detention' as a condition of his release. A federal judge ordered him to wear an ankle bracelet while on house arrest so he can't flee the country, as it was revealed on Wednesday he was holding three passports. Now, Manafort's legal team is claiming evidence has been 'embellished' and argue that because of Manafort's 'strong family ties' he is not a flight risk and his hefty bail is enough to keep him put, according to documents obtained by DailyMail.com. Scroll down for video Paul Manafort is insisting he isn't a flight risk after the former Trump campaign chairman was charged on Monday, according to court documents filed on Thursday Along with his business partner Rick Gates (right), Manafort had the first charges from the probe of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A courtroom sketch shows Manafort (center) and his former protege Gates entering their not-guilty pleas Maanfort's lawyers also work to dismiss the outcry over Manafort having three passports, saying: 'Although it might be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one U.S. passport, as individuals who travel abroad extensively no doubt know.' This new motion rejects a court filing submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that said Manafort and his former business partner Rick Gates, 'pose a risk of flight based on the serious nature of the charges' against them, their substantial means and foreign connections. The official also said a some house arrest pretrial arrangements can come with allowances for leaving the house for work, school, church services and even grocery shopping. A bail memo Mueller's team submitted to the court justifying the pair's house arrests and electronic monitoring revealed additional details about conduct the special counsel's office found concerning, like the email address and phone that Manafort registered under an alias. The phone Manafort took to Mexico in June, and China and Ecuador in May. Manafort registered the alias email address in March, before the Department of Justice approved a special counsel investigation. Manafort had been under scrutiny long before that, though. He was sidelined and then ousted from Trump's campaign in August of 2016 when he was accused of accepting an off-the-books payment of $12 million from the ex-leader of the Ukrainian government for political consulting work he was known to have done. A judge ordered Manafort and Gates to wear an ankle bracelet while on house arrest so they can't flee the country, as it was revealed on Wednesday Manafort was holding three passports Now, Manafort's legal team is claiming evidence has been 'embellished' and argue that because of Manafort's 'strong family ties' he is not a flight risk and want his hefty bail is proof Manafort and his protege Gates were indicted on Monday on 12 charges that involve their foreign bank accounts and money laundering. According to the government, they had close to $75 million that mostly hid in overseas accounts. The pair entered not guilty pleas in a federal courtroom, telling a magistrate judge that they'll fight the Justice Department in court. Manafort lives in Alexandria, a close-in suburb of Washington. Gates resides in Richmond, more than 100 miles to the south. The charges against the men are the first from the probe of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election were unsealed. The indictment against Manafort, 68, and Gates, 45, includes 12 separate criminal counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Trump insisted via Twitter shortly after the indictments that there was 'NO COLLUSION' and Manafort's lawyer told reporters camped outside of the courthouse on Monday afternoon that the president 'was correct'. 'There is no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government,' Kevin Downing said. His lawyers tried to dismiss the outcry over Manafort having three passports, saying: 'Although it might be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one U.S. passport, as individuals who travel abroad extensively no doubt know' CIRCUS: Kevin Downing, attorney for Paul Manafort, spoke to reporters after the preliminary hearing on Monday White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said during a Monday press briefing that the 'announcement has nothing to do with the president, nothing to do with the president's campaign or campaign activity.' Sanders told DailyMail.com that Trump and Manafort 'haven't spoken in several months. The last known conversation was back all the way to February.' She said that 'there was some initial contact' with Gates 'after the president was sworn in, with him at meetings here at the White House but nothing directly with the president.' The government alleges that at least $75 million was moved by Manafort to offshore accounts without declaring the income to the government. From there Manafort allegedly withdrew $18 million to fund a lavish lifestyle, and Gates is accused of pulling out another $3 million. Monday afternoon's preliminary hearing was before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. Gates' spokesman Glenn Selig issued a strident defense of his client after his court appearance. He said the former Trump campaign hand 'welcomes the opportunity to confront these charges in court. He is not going to comment further until he has had a chance to review the lengthy indictment with his legal team,' he said. 'In the meanwhile, he would appreciate you respecting his and his family's privacy as they weather this unexpected and hasty proceeding designed to accommodate perhaps political and press considerations rather than his right to have counsel of his choice by his side during this most troubling and challenging day for him and his loved ones. This fight is just beginning.' Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has brought its first criminal charges and yielded three arrests including one low-level guilty plea Kevin Downing, the attorney for Paul Manafort, told reporters in a statement that 'there is no evidence that Mr. Manafort or the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government' White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told DailyMail.com during Monday's briefing that Trump and Manafort 'haven't spoken in several months. The last known conversation was back all the way to February' President Trump pounced on Monday, denying Manafort's alleged crimes predated his campaign and insisting that he never colluded with Russia to affect the 2016 election Manafort's attorney said the millionaire lobbyist would fight the charges. Downing said Manafort 'represented pro-European Union campaigns' for Ukraine and that he was 'seeking to further democracy and to help the Ukraine come closer to the United States and the EU.' 'Today, you see an indictment brought by an office of special counsel that is using a very novel theory to prosecute Mr. Manafort, regarding a FARA filing. The United States government has only used that offense six times since 1966, and only resulted in one conviction,' Downing declared. 'The second thing about this indictment that I myself find most ridiculous is a claim that maintaining offshore accounts to bring all your funds into the United States as a scheme to conceal from the United States government is ridiculous,' he said. Downing then walked away from a media stake-out site without taking any questions. The defendants' surrender to the FBI in the morning was followed by a dramatic announcement that one of Trump's campaign foreign policy advisers, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contact with Russians who promised 'dirt' on Hillary Clinton and access to 'thousands' of her emails. Papadopoulos secretly agreed to a plea bargain earlier this month, suggesting he may be cooperating with Mueller. Manafort was involved with the Trump campaign for nearly five months, in senior positions that gave him access to the day-to-day operations of the future president's political operation. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, said in September that Manafort has no information that could put the president in legal jeopardy, predicting that 'he's not going to lie.' The possible sentences, if found guilty, would be stiff: up to 80 years in prison for Manafort and 70 for Gates, plus millions of dollars in fines. More typical federal sentencing for the crimes charged would be 10 to 12.5 years for Gates and 12.5 to 15 for Manafort. Trump's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said Monday on CNN that regardless of Manafort's legal woes, 'there is not a formal investigation of the President of the United States' Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, shown at left during the Republican National Convention, faces charges along with Manafort and has also pleaded not guilty Guilty: George Papadopoulos is facing up to six months in prison. He was a foreign policy adviser to Trump who admits lying to the FBI about contact with Russians who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton and thousands of her emails HOW MANAFORT SPENT HIS MILLIONS Monday morning's indictment lists a host of lavish expenses that ate up millions from Paul Manafort's alleged offshore accounts, including: $5.43 million for home improvement in the Hamptons $1.31 million for home improvement in Florida for 'home automation, lighting and home entertainment' $934,000 at an antique rug store $849,000 at a men's clothing store in New York $819,000 for two landscapers in The Hamptons $623,000 on antiques in New York $520,000 at a Beverly Hills clothing sto re $163,700 for payments on three Range Rovers $62,000 on a Mercedes Benz $31,900 at a Florida art gallery $20,000 on New York housekeepers Advertisement The government alleges that at least $75 million was moved by Manafort to offshore accounts without declaring the income to the government. From there Manafort allegedly withdrew $18 million to fund a lavish lifestyle, and Gates pulled another $3 million out. A source close to the White House told CNN that 'today has zero to do with the White House.' Trump's defiant tweet, and his reference to Clinton who faces her own claims of receiving dirty Russian money, sets the stage for a showdown with Mueller which led on Monday morning to Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, calling for legislative moves to prevent the special counsel from being fired. The indictment is purely focused on alleged financial crimes and does not include any charges related to the broader question that formed the basis of Mueller's investigation whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia to swing the 2016 election in his favor. It describes criminal allegations that predate the Trump campaign; Trump's name is not mentioned in the 31-page document. The move to indict the two men represents a dramatic turn in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Manafort was seen leaving his home at 8:00 a.m. with his attorney and arrived at FBI headquarters less than 20 minutes later. A federal grand jury approved the indictments on Friday and a judge ordered them sealed. A White House official told DailyMail.com on Monday that the administration may not comment at all on the arrests. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama and confirmed in the Senate by a 97-0 vote. Among the expenses paid for by Manafort-controlled entities in Cyprus, according to the indictment, were $600,000 for antiques and $500,000 paid to a Beverly Hills tailor and $849,000 to a men's clothing store in New York. Other money went for premium automobiles and home renovations in Florida and the Hamptons. The Hamptons home alone had $5.4 million in renovations, the indictment said. Hand them over: The indictment demands that Manafort be stripped of two New York city properties, a SoHo loft (left) and Brooklyn brownstone (right), as well as a Hamptons home which he lavished more than $5 million on in renovations, and an Arlington, VA, condo Manafort also spent $934,350 at an antique rug store in Alexandria, Virginia. The indictment demands that four of his properties are seized, including a Brooklyn brownstone he bought to renovate, a loft in New York's trendy SoHo which he let out on Airbnb, a Hamptons home and his Arlington, Virginia condo. Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said in a statement that the indictment 'underscores the seriousness of the investigation into Donald Trumps ties to Russia. Its time for Republicans to commit to protecting this investigation and preserving the rule of law.' In a separate statement, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the charges demonstrated the necessity of keeping congressional investigations running alongside the Mueller probe. 'Even with an accelerating Special Counsel investigation inside the Justice Department, and investigations inside the Republican Congress, we still need an outside, fully independent investigation to expose Russias meddling in our election and the involvement of Trump officials,' she said. 'Defending the integrity of our democracy demands that Congress look forward to counter Russian aggression and prevent future meddling with our elections.' Manafort and Gates were the one-two punch responsible for keeping Republican National Convention delegates in line last year as the possibility emerged of a contentious floor fight over the presidential nomination. Then-candidate Donald Trump first Manafort after reports that he pocketed at least $12 million in undisclosed payments from Viktor Yanukovych (pictured), the pro-Russia former Ukrainian president. Manafort was fired shortly after the convention and replaced by pollster Kellyanne Conway, but Gates stayed on and was more recently working to help close out the financial books of Trump's inaugural committee. He had worked for Manaforts international firm, Davis Manafort Partners, from 2006 to 2007. The move to throw Manafort overboard came after reports that Manafort pocketed at least $12 million in undisclosed payments from Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia former Ukrainian president. Manafort and his firm, which Gates helped run, spent years as Yanukovych's political consultants. The Justice Department's indictment charges that Manafort and Gates 'generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work.' 'In order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts,' it continues. Mueller's probe focused on wire transfers Manafort made from Ukraine to private accounts and whether he paid taxes on that income. Kevin Downing, Manafort's lawyer, was formerly a prosecutor in the Justice Department's criminal tax division. In July the FBI in July executed a surprise search warrant with guns drawn at Manafort's home in Alexandria, Virginia, seizing financial and tax documents. Headed to a judge: Paul Manafort was driven by his lawyer on Monday morning to turn himself in to Mueller It's unclear if Manafort is the biggest fish in Mueller's sights, or if the former FBI director intends to squeeze him for information more directly related to the 2016 election and Russia's possible interference with it. The Russia investigation has cast a shadow over President Donald Trump's nine-month-old presidency and widened the partisan rift between Republicans and Democrats. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January that Russia interfered in the election to try to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton by hacking and releasing embarrassing emails and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her. Mueller is also investigating whether Trump campaign officials colluded with those Russian efforts. Trump tweeted Monday morning about a report that Barack Obama's campaign organization funneled nearly $1 million to the law firm that served as a pass-through last year between Democrats and an opposition research firm that produced the salacious and discredited 'dirty dossier' on the president. Manafort hid his face from reporters who were staking out his house in Alexandria, Virginia as he left to turn himself in at the FBI's headquarters 'Report out that Obama Campaign paid $972,000 to Fusion GPS. The firm also got $12,400,000 (really?) from DNC. Nobody knows who OK'd!' the president tweeted on Monday. That tweet came a half-hour before news broke that Manafort and Gates had been indicted. The White House hasn't yet commented on their surrender. Trump has denied the allegations of collusion with the Russians and called the probe 'a witch hunt.' The Kremlin also has denied the allegations. Mueller, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been looking into possible links between Trump aides and foreign governments, as well as potential money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes, according to sources familiar with the probe. He also is exploring whether Trump or his aides have tried to obstruct the investigation. Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation a week after Trump's May 9 firing of FBI Director James Comey, who was heading a federal probe into possible collusion with Russia. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn could also face charges later related to his contacts with Russian officials Master of distraction: A half-hour before Manafort's indictment was unsealed, President Trump tweeted about an alleged money-funnel between Democrats and the opposition research firm behind the discredit 'dirty dossier' about him Trump initially said he fired Comey because his leadership of the FBI was inadequate. In a later interview with NBC, he cited 'this Russia thing' as his reason. On Sunday, Trump tried to shift the focus back to Democrats and Clinton, tweeting that the Russia issue was being used to sidetrack the Republican push for tax reform and praising Republican 'anger and unity' on the need to look into whether Democrats and the Clinton campaign paid for a portion of a dossier that detailed accusations about Trump's ties to Russia. Special White House counsel Ty Cobb said the president's tweets were 'unrelated to the activities of the Special Counsel, with whom he continues to cooperate.' Investigators led by Mueller have interviewed former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former spokesman Sean Spicer and other current and former White House and campaign officials. In July, FBI agents raided Manafort's Virginia home; his financial and real estate dealings and prior work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine have been a focus of Mueller's team. A businessman who claimed he was 550,000 out of pocket after creating a board game, jigsaws and wristbands for Jedward has settled his legal dispute with them. Patrick Joseph Noonan sued the duo, whose real names are John and Edward Grimes, and their parents, Susanna Condron and John Grimes Snr. The twins from Lucan, Co. Dublin, arrived at the High Court in Dublin wearing matching maroon suit jackets with their parents and sat at the back of the court, closely watched by a group of female fans. The court was told the family was initially excited by Mr Noonans ideas when they visited his home in Limerick. John and Edward Grimes arrive at the High Court in Dublin for the hearing after they were sued by businessman The twins with their barrister Desmond Murphy S.C. They sat at the back of the court during the hearing The court heard the pair were initially interested in the board game but then began running about the house But the twins lost interest after about an hour and started running around the house, went to the fridge and began eating fruit. Mr Noonan wanted the return of around 555,000 and unspecified damages from the 26-year-old twins and their family for alleged breach of contract. His lawyers told the High Court how his board game idea had initially excited the Grimes family but it never came to fruition, so he wants 223,000 to compensate him for that loss of opportunity. Mr Noonan is claiming 86,000 for 40,000 wristbands that he ordered in, the court heard and a further 133,000 for tens of thousands of Jedsaw jigsaws that he says he paid for. The board game was ready to go as an idea and had been fully developed, the court heard. It is alleged the pair did not make their best efforts to promote the product, the court heard. The court heard Mr Noonan was assured the pair are 'proficient' at selling and he would get his cash back Mr Noonan claimed there was an 'oral agreement' that if he produced merchandise the twins would ensure it was sold on quickly Relations between Mr Noonan and the family began to sour from mid-2012 after the businessman found out that some wristbands had been sold by the family The parties in the case have now reached a confidential agreement to settle the dispute between them When Mr Noonan, a civil engineer, first met the twins and their parents in 2011, the duo were already contracted to a UK merchandising company and were not at liberty to enter into any other formal contracts, the court heard. It is claimed the family made an oral agreement with Mr Noonan that if he produced large amounts of personalised Jedward merchandise, the twins would ensure it was sold on quickly before reimbursing Mr Noonan personally. Mr Noonan says he was assured the Grimes twins were themselves very proficient at selling items and the items would be sold quickly and hed be paid back. Patrick F OReilly SC, for Mr Noonan, said most discussions were held with their parents, while the pop duo themselves were only present at occasional meetings and gave occasional instructions. However, its claimed that John Grimes Jnr at one point affirmed that PJ Noonan would be paid personally for the merchandise. Mr OReilly said his client spent over 350,000 in respect of merchandising for and on behalf of the twins and their parents. He said it was the express oral agreement Mr Noonan would get his cost back and paid back by Jedward, the defendants to him personally. Mr OReilly revealed the unsold jigsaws and wristbands are all in storage though at one point they were stored on the street. Relations between Mr Noonan and the family began to sour from mid-2012 after the businessman found out that some wristbands had been sold by the family but they had not at all accounted for the receipts from the sale of those wristbands, Mr OReilly said. Both parties held talks after the end of the session and Mr OReilly, told the court when it reconvened the following day: 'The matter has now been compromised between the parties on terms that are confidential between the parties.' TAX REFORM: WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU New tax brackets for every filer State and local income tax deduction ABOLISHED $10,000 state and local property tax deduction is allowed up to $10K Mortgage interest relief for new home buyers will only be on loans up to $500,000 Student loan interest exemption ABOLISHED Child tax credit up from $1,000 to $1,600 Alternative Minimum Tax ABOLISHED Estate tax exemption doubled from $5.49 million for single filers and $11 million for couples 401(k) allowances: No change Advertisement The new congressional tax reform plan faced quick criticism on Thursday from both Democrats and Republicans who object to changes in the way it would allow Americans to take deductions for the taxes they pay to state and local governments. Members of Congress from high-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York are preparing for a tense battle over the GOP's proposed reforms because their taxpayers get the greatest advantage from the existing rules. The final draft unveiled by House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady calls for a $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local property taxes. But income taxes paid to states will no longer be eligible for federal deductions. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told NBC's 'Meet The Press' on Sunday that he wants to get 'the federal government out of the business of subsidizing the states.' House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, took aim Thursday at the so-called 'SALT' (State And Local Taxes) proposal, slamming Republicans from her state in a bid to shame them into scuttling the tax bill. 'The Republicans from California have gone straight down the line like lemmings to the sea to vote against the interests of their constituents, against the interests of our states,' Pelosi said. 'Our colleagues have gone off this deep end. We want to pull them back,' she declared. The Republican tax plan will disallow deductions for income taxes paid to states, and lawmakers from heavily taxed states mostly run by Democrats are crying foul California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, blasted Republicans from her state for being 'lemmings' and costing their own constituents money President Donald Trump said he will 'deliver historic tax cuts and reforms,' while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (left) declared that he wants to get 'the federal government out of the business of subsidizing the states' It's unclear how many Republicans from heavily taxed states will balk at the idea of denying their voters a treasured perk. But more than half the total savings from the deduction goes to taxpayers in California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. Among those six states, only Texas is a reliable Republican bastion. Trump won Pennsylvania in the 2016 presidential election. The IRS says that for the 2015 tax year, the average U.S. taxpayer deducted about $3,600 from their gross income to account for state and local taxes. Bloomberg reports that in New York's 12th congressional district, on Manhattan's tony east side, the average was more than $31,000. In California's 18th district on the pricey San Francisco Bay, it was over $26,000. High-tax states' Republicans are already balking. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, where income taxes are among the nation's highest, complained that disallowing federal deductions for those taxes would 'destroy' the Empire State 'I view the elimination of the deduction as a geographic redistribution of wealth, picking winners and losers,' New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin said in a statement. 'I don't want my home state to be a loser, and that really shouldn't come as any surprise.' The change would only affect the 30 percent of tax filers who itemize their annual returns largely middle- and upper-middle-class earners. For the rest of Americans, including low-income families that take the standard deduction instead, the change will have no impact at all. Eliminating the SALT deduction could raise as much as $1.3 trillion for the U.S. Treasury over the next decade. Ryan said during a press conference on Capitol Hill that Republicans are 'leveling the playing field' with their proposal. He claimed that the average U.S. family of four would save $1,182 per year on their federal tax bill. 'That $1,182 more covers about a year's worth of gas for the car. ... It can help you pay down your debt faster. It can help you renovate your house faster,' he said. President Trump said in a statement that '[t]he special interests will distort the facts, the lobbyists will try to save their special deals, and some in the media will unfairly report on our efforts.' 'But my Administration will work tirelessly to make good on our promise to the working people who built our Nation and deliver historic tax cuts and reforms -- the rocket fuel our economy needs to soar higher than ever before.' David Cuthbertson, 68, perished when flames took hold of the family home in Powys, Wales Three children who escaped a devastating farmhouse fire which killed six members of their family have been released from hospital, police said today. David Cuthbertson, 68, and five of his children aged between four to 11 were killed when the blaze took hold of their family home on Sunday night. Three children, aged 13, 12, and ten, escaped the inferno in Llangammarch Wells, Powys, and ran to a neighbour's home where they raised the alarm. They were taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries and smoke inhalation but have since been released and are now being cared for by relatives. The deadly blaze at the farmhouse in is still being investigated by police and fire experts who have described the cause as so far 'unexplained'. It was claimed Mr Cuthbertson tried to save his children by dropping them out of a window at the property in Mid Wales. Firefighter David Price (right), 25, is married to David Cuthbertson's daughter Pia (left), 24 Mr Price (left, with Pia Cuthbertson) was called when flames took hold of the family farmhouse An aerial view shows the devastation following the blaze in Llangammarch Wells, Powys The rear of the farmhouse in Llangammarch Wells, Powys, which is still smouldering today An online fundraising page for the family had today raised more than 15,800 and collection buckets have also been receiving donations in the village. Detective Chief Inspector Martin Slevin said: 'The 13, 12 and ten-year-old children that managed to escape the fire have now been released from hospital and are being cared for by family. 'The family continue to be our priority, and we would reiterate their wish that their privacy is respected during this ordeal. 'They are grateful to all their friends and the local community for all the support, sympathies and kindness shown to them. The farmhouse has been completely gutted by the fire which took hold of it early on Monday Firefighters are still at the property today following the blaze in the early hours of Monday A teddy bear and a note saying 'I will miss my best friend' which were left at the scene today A woman arrives at the scene with floral tributes following the devastating farmhouse fire 'This continues to be an extremely difficult incident and investigation for our officers, and our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and all those affected.' Meanwhile neighbours claimed yesterday that the family had a tradition of carving pumpkins and lighting lots of candles around the house before Halloween. And it is feared that a candle was left alight when the family went to bed on Sunday evening, causing the blaze. One local resident told the Daily Mirror: 'People are saying it was the cause of the fire. There were apparently a lot of candles in the house.' Flowers are left at the scene of the fire which is believed to have claimed the lives of six people It is still unclear how many people lost their lives in the tragedy in the early hours of Monday The home was reduced to a smouldering shell in just minutes, its roof completely removed Police said the blaze on Monday was so severe they are not yet sure how many people died It was also revealed yesterday that the son-in-law of Mr Cuthbertson was among the firefighters sent to tackle a blaze that destroyed their farmhouse. Three children, aged ten, 12 and 13, managed to escape from the blaze and run to a neighbour's house to raise the alarm. Mountain rescue teams and fire crews rushed to the scene in a bid to save the family after the blaze erupted on Sunday night. Yesterday it emerged that one of the firefighters was Mr Cuthbertson's son-in-law, David Price, 25. Three children are believed to have escaped the fire, while another five are said to have died Flowers left close to the scene in Llangammarch Wells after six members of the family died Investigators comb through the wreckage of the farmhouse following the huge blaze The farmhouse (centre left) in Powys burnt down overnight while the family were sleeping Neighbour Mary Ann Gilchrist said: 'What I find so horrific is that one of those responding was his own son-in-law, who is a retained fireman. Can you imagine? 'David's children are all so intelligent and sweet. He should be very proud of them.' Mr Price is a self-employed carpenter and retained firemen with Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue, based in the nearby town of Llanwrtyd Wells. He married Mr Cuthbertson's daughter Pia, 24, in a ceremony in Greece last year, and was understood to be comforting his wife yesterday. Theresa May praised the 'bravery and professionalism' of the emergency services who responded to the blaze during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. Investigators are trying to work out what caused the fire and how it took hold of the property Forensic teams have been sifting through the remains of the property in Powys, Wales Specialist police officers at the scene of the fire where a father and five of his children died Relatives of the family have told of their shock at hearing about the devastating fire Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire Chris Davies spoke of the 'horrific farmhouse fire' and the 'devastating effect it had had on the family and the tight-knit community'. Expressing her condolences, Mrs May said: 'This was indeed a terrible tragedy that took place and as he said it isn't just the family themselves that have been affected by it but the local community. 'I know the emergency services did sterling work and I am also pleased to commend the work that they did and their bravery and professionalism in dealing with this issue.' Neighbours described Mr Cuthbertson as a 'doting' father. It was claimed he tried to save his children by dropping them out of a window. It is still unclear how many people lost their lives in the tragedy in rural Llangammarch Wells Police have spoken to the owners of the property in Wales, who rented it to the family Dyfed-Powys Police said five children aged between four and 11 were killed in the fire The fire was described as 'devastating news in such a close-knit community' by a politician Locals said: 'We've heard he managed to get three out by dropping them from a window. He loved those kids so much he would have been desperate to get them out. 'But it sounds as if he died in the heat and smoke before he could save the little ones.' Mr Cuthbertson, a retired builder, could have had up to 17 children from different marriages, it is understood. The father lived with his younger children after splitting from their mother, Seema, who suffered a stroke several years after they seperated. A woman looks at tributes to the members of the same family who died in Llangammarch Wells Crews of firefighters enter the torched shell of the family home in Llangammarch Wells Seven members of the same family are feared dead after a huge fire ripped through their farmhouse and burnt it to the ground while they were asleep The blaze ripped through the home in Llangammarch Wells, Powys, early on Monday A police car is pictured at the scene of the devastation in the Welsh village on Tuesday The surviving children are being supported by relatives and police officers, while a fundraising page to support the family has raised more than 13,000. Police are treating the cause of the fire as unexplained and were still present at the scene yesterday. A search dog van was also seen parked near the property to help investigators scour for clues. Police Superintendent Jon Cummins said: 'Due to the severity of damage at the scene we are unable at this stage to identify any of the deceased.' The actress Ellen Barkin scared off a would-be robber on Wednesday, when he broke into her New York City home. Barkin was sleeping in the bedroom of her Greenwich Village townhouse at 6:45am when she was woken up by sounds coming from the room above her. The 63-year-old went to go investigate the sounds, and found a burglar standing on her balcony, trying to open the door to get into the residence. Barkin rushed to lock the door, and saw the thief escape by jumping on to a neighboring fire escape. The actress Ellen Barkin (pictured) scared off a would-be robber on Wednesday, when he broke into her New York City home Barkin woke up to noises in the room above her. She went upstairs to investigate and found a thief outside the balcony door. He escaped to a fire escape on the neighboring building (her building pictured center in this picture) She does not believe he got away with any goods, but a bag of jewelry was found close to the door, indicating that he had gathered the precious items and was planning to make off with them. 'I guess he was fixing to leave with the stuff that he had collected,' a source told the New York Post. Barkin was not injured in the incident. She praised police on Twitter for getting cops to her home within 70 seconds. The suspect has been described as a Hispanic man between the ages of 20 and 30. At the time, he was wearing acid-washed denim clothes and carrying a book bag. The actress, who is originally from the Bronx, is known for her roles in This Boy's life, Sea of Love, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Ocean's 13. Barkin is twice divorced. She married fellow actor Gabriel Byrne in 1988 and divorced in 1999. In 2000, she married businessman Ronald Perelman and divorced him in 2006. She has two adult sons with her first husband - 28-year-old Jack Daniel and 25-year-old Romy Marion. Sam Clovis, a top adviser to President Donald Trump during his election campaign, on Thursday withdrew his candidacy for a senior administration post, just days after he was linked to another aide who pleaded guilty in the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. In a letter to Trump describing his decision, Clovis made no mention of the Russia controversy, but cited 'the political climate inside Washington.' 'The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day,' Clovis wrote in the letter, dated Wednesday. 'As I am focused on your success and the success of this Administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence.' Trump had nominated Clovis, his 2016 campaign's national co-chairman, to a top post as chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture. Clovis admitted in a letter to a Senate committee that he had no science training Sam Clovis, a top campaign adviser to President Donald Trump, withdrew from consideration for the top science position at the Agriculture Department after it was disclosed that he supervised a lower-level aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians President Trump is still letting Clovis work at the Ag department but won't risk putting him through a confirmation hearing for a plum position Clovis didn't mention the Russia controversy in his withdrawal letter but complained about 'the relentless assaults on you and your team [that] seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day' A source familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation identified Clovis as the unnamed campaign supervisor in a court filing who had discussions with former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos about efforts to improve U.S.-Russian relations and setting up meetings between senior Trump campaign and Russian officials. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents about his dealings with Russians. 'Mr. Clovis nomination was only withdrawn because that would certainly have been a topic during his upcoming testimony, under oath, before the Senate Agriculture Committee,' Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, a member of the committee, said. 'I know because I was going ask him all about it to get more facts on the record and before the American people.' Mueller's team is probing allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies and others that Russia interfered in the election to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Trump. Clovis was the unnamed campaign supervisor mentioned in a court filing who had discussions with former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos (pictured) about setting up meetings between senior Trump campaign and Russian officials The inquiry also will determine whether or not there was any coordination between Russians and associates of the Trump campaign. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied meddling and Trump has denied collusion between his associates and Russia, calling the investigations a witch hunt. Paul Manafort, who served briefly as Trump's election campaign manager, and business associate Rick Gates are expected to make their first appearances on Thursday before the U.S. judge overseeing a criminal case brought by Mueller. Manafort, 68, and Gates, 45, who also worked on Trump's campaign, pleaded not guilty on Monday to a 12-count indictment, ranging from conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. A conviction on conspiracy to launder money alone could carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Clovis admitted in answers to a Senate committee overseeing his confirmation that he had no genuine science credentials Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is probing allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies and others that Russia interfered in the election to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help Trump In a filing with the court on Thursday, Manafort's attorney Kevin Downing argued that the government's case against his client is flimsy and that the bail conditions should be softened because Manafort does not pose a flight risk. The 2 p.m. hearing is expected to focus on setting bail conditions. Manafort and Gates are under house arrest, released on bonds of $10 million and $5 million, respectively. Prosecutors have said there was a risk of flight. Manafort holds three U.S. passports and frequently travels abroad. The charges against the pair did not state any direct connections to the Trump campaign or allegations of collusion. The hearing will be the first in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama. A man has been charged with female genital mutilation in only the second case of its kind to be brought in Britain. The 49-year-old, who is of African descent, faces two charges under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and two alternative counts of wounding with intent. The alleged offences against a young girl are said to have happened between 2010 and 2013. A man has been charged with female genital mutilation in only the second case of his kind to be brought in Britain The defendant, from south London, has also been charged with three counts of child cruelty, the Crown Prosecution Service announced. The case, investigated by the Metropolitan Police, is only the second to come to court under the FGM Act. In 2014, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders announced the first FGM prosecution in the UK against a doctor. Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, 34, was accused of carrying out an illegal procedure when stitching a woman after she gave birth at the Whittington Hospital, north London, in 2012. In 2014, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders announced the first FGM prosecution in the UK against a doctor The NHS doctor was found not guilty of performing FGM and a second man, Hasan Mohamed, 43, of Holloway, north London, was cleared of aiding and abetting him. FGM is illegal in the UK and it is also illegal to take a female abroad for the purposes of FGM. The maximum jail term for carrying out or enabling FGM is 14 years. The defendant, who has not been identified, will appear before Woolwich Crown Court on Friday. Duncan McTier(pictured, outside Liverpool Crown Court earlier in his trial), admitted sexually assaulting three young female pupils A world renowned music teacher who groped students after telling them his wife 'didn't understand him' has been banned from the classroom. Duncan McTier, 62, who taught at the Royal Academy of Music, admitted sexually assaulting three young female pupils. Double-bassist McTier, admitted two charges of indecent assault and one of attempted indecent assault at Liverpool Crown Court in November 2014. But today, he was barred from teaching after a tribunal board disregarded a High Court Decision to waive a ban. McTier committed the offences while holding teaching sessions at his home with pupils from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and Hertfordshires Purcell school. The divorcee, from Isleworth in West London, told a 17-year-old girl his wife did not understand him before trying to fondle her breasts following a music lesson in 1985. He also molested two other students aged in their early 20s in 1988 and 1994. Following his guilty pleas, his most recent victim remarked that the relationship between a musician and her tutor is a very intimate one, which can be wonderful, but it is also open to abuse. He resigned from his professorship at the Royal Academy of Music after the allegations surfaced and was eventually handed a three-month suspended sentence. McTier was referred by the National College for Teaching & Leadership to a professional conduct panel who initially recommended he should be spared a teaching ban. McTier (pictured, outside Liverpool Crown Court earlier in his trial) told a 17-year-old girl his wife did not understand him before trying to fondle her breasts following a lesson in 1985 However, in July last year, the then education secretary, Nicky Morgan, disagreed with the panel and prohibited him from teaching in any school or sixth-form college indefinitely. But that decision was overturned on appeal by a High Court judge who commented that it was not clear that the original tribunal bore the ages of McTiers victims in mind when imposing the ban. Branding the prohibition more draconian than intended, Justice Kerr also remarked that it would have no practical effect as the musician only teaches privately. The judge subsequently determined the flawed and wrong decision to impose a punitive, rather than protective ban be again overturned. McTier resigned from his professorship at the Royal Academy of Music (pictured) after the allegations surfaced and was eventually handed a three-month suspended sentence But a reconvened NCTL panel decided to uphold the ban after concluding that impact on the profession was more important than the effect of a ban on the musician. I recognise that Mr McTier is a world-renowned music teacher, said panel chair John Elliott. I do not consider that his personal reputation should stand above the wider reputation of the teaching profession. The offences of which he was convicted have the potential to bring the reputation of the profession into serious disrepute. I do not consider that the panel has given that sufficient weight in this case. Double-bassist McTier, admitted two charges of indecent assault and one of attempted indecent assault at Liverpool Crown Court in November 2014 I have taken account of the testimonials provided on behalf of Mr McTier but have placed less weight on those than I have on the sexual behaviours that led to the convictions. On balance, I believe that the reputation of the profession is more important than the impact of a prohibition order on Mr McTier. In my view, this is especially the case when the behaviours involved sexual assault or attempted assault, on three separate occasions, even though those were some years ago and recognising that Mr McTier already has the impact of a conviction for them. McTier is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or childrens home in England. He may apply for the prohibition order to be set aside in 2021. A talk show host in Egypt has been jailed for three years after voicing support for single mothers. Duaa Sayed Salah was jailed for inciting infidelity and immorality after appearing on Egyptian television to discuss single mothers while wearing a fake baby bump. Salah titled her episode 'Buy a Man', in which she told viewers how to become single mothers if they want to. Duaa Sayed Salah was jailed for three years for inciting infidelity and immorality after appearing on Egyptian television to discuss single mothers while wearing a fake baby bump Salah titled her episode 'Buy a Man', in which she told viewers how to become single mothers if they want to She told viewers of the show, also called Salah, that women could become mother out of marriage and said they could make agreements with men for the purpose of getting pregnant. 'You simply need to have the money and then separate,' she said, Alarabiya reported. She focused on the story of Hadeer Makkawi, an Egyptian woman who gave birth out of wedlock. Lawyer Ashraf Naji failed a lawsuit against Salah after the episode aired, accusing her of incitement to immorality and committing dishonorable acts. Salah was jailed for three years and was forced to pay 10,000 Egyptian pounds (434) for bail and a temporary compensation. The network which aired Salah stopped airing the show and accused the host of 'crossing the line' and discussing topics that were in contrast to Egyptian society's family principles. The man police say shot three innocent people at a Walmart in Colorado on Wednesday night is a failed businessman with astronomical credit card debt and a bad reputation with his neighbors. Scott Ostrem, 47, was arrested on Thursday at 8am, ten hours after allegedly opening fire at the Walmart superstore in Thornton, Colorado. He was arrested near an apartment complex in Twin Lakes around seven miles south of the shooting by police who received a tip that the gunman lived there. The tipster recognized Ostrem from surveillance footage which showed him entering the store and which police released late on Wednesday as they tried to find him. On Thursday morning, officers were already at the apartment block when Ostrem drove past in his red, four-door Mitsubishi Mirage. They chased him for a mile and then arrested him by the side of the road. Neighbors have since described him as 'evil' and told how he walked around with a rifle bag slung over one shoulder. As details of his Ostrem's life emerged on Thursday, including his $58,000 credit card debt and failed business attempts, the three people who died in the shooting were identified. Scroll down for video Father-of-two Victor Vasquez was named and pictured by relatives as they raised money on social media to help his family. He was pronounced dead at the Walmart on Wednesday night Grandfather Carlos Moreno, 66, (left) and Pam Marques, 52, also died in the shooting They are father-of-two Victor Vasquez, 26, grandfather Carlos Moreno, 66, and Pamela Vasquez, 52. Friends of Vasquez, one of the victims, said the man had two young daughters and was expecting another child with his fiancee. He was killed at the store in Thornton, near Denver, as he shopped with his mother and sisters in preparation for an upcoming trip. They are raising money for his funeral on a GoFundMe page. Marques' niece set up another page to raise money for her funeral expenses and family. The woman has at least one daughter who her niece said was her 'best friend'. Suspect: Scott Ostrem, 47, was arrested on Thursday. He is pictured in his mugshot that was released on Thursday afternoon It was also revealed that Ostrem was working as a sheet metal fabricator for a local roofing company and that he walked off the job at 9am on Wednesday morning without giving bosses any explanation. Colleagues said he did not seem angry when he suddenly stopped working. Neighbors who lived near his Denver apartment have since told how he stared out the windows of his home in Arvada and cursed at him when they said hello. They described him as 'creepy' and 'paranoid'. A typical one-bedroom apartment in the building costs $800-a-month. In the past few years, Ostrem has bounced between jobs after a string of failed business ventures. They include Ostrem Installation LLC which he founded in 2012 but was which was defunct the following November. Ostrem was arrested at 8am on Thursday after a ten-hour manhunt (left) He was seen entering the Walmart in Thornton where the shooting occurred shortly before the first reports of the shooting at 6.10pm on Wednesday (right) He was arrested after his Mitsubishi Mirage (above) was spotted seven miles from the scene Police arrested Ostrem at this apartment complex in Twin Lakes, around seven miles from the Walmart store, on Thursday morning when he drove past in his car. They were already there after receiving a tip that the gunman lived there In June 2014, he founded MKA Electronics LLC but in late 2015, he filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy claim, saying he had just $140 to his name. He listed his assets as having a total value of $50,000 and his liabilities at between $50,000 and $100,000. The Denver Post spoke to neighbors who said he cursed at them when they said good morning, shouting: 'Eff you' whenever he was greeted. One said he made them 'nervous' and often carried a rifle bag. 'He made me nervous because he always had rifle in a case over his shoulder. I would know it was him. He was evil! Evil!' Teresa Muniz, one neighbor, said. Others described him as 'creepy' and 'paranoid' and said he often was seen staring out of his window. Ostrem's criminal past is non-violent. The first was in 1999 when he was arrested for resisting arrest. In 2013, he was arrested in the middle of the night for drunk driving after police saw him driving erratically. Ostrem was arrested in 2013 (left) for driving under the influence. At the time he said he was unemployed. In 2014, (right) he was arrested again in a motel after failing to appear for a court appearance for his 2013 DUI charge A police report obtained by DailyMail.com describes how he swayed 'from side to side' as he performed field sobriety tests. At the time, he said he was unemployed. The following year, he was arrested at a motel room for failing to appear in court to face the 2013 DUI charges. It is not known what that arrest was for or what it resulted in. On Wednesday morning, hours before the Walmart shooting, Ostrem walked off a job without giving bosses an explanation. 'Were bewildered,' boss David Heidt told Fox News Denver. Ostrem was arrested at 8am on Thursday morning, ten hours after allegedly opening fire. The gunman did not say anything as he sprayed his bullets across the store. He then walked back out and fled the scene in a red, four-door Mitsubishi Mirage. On Thursday, shoppers who abandoned their purchases on Wednesday night returned to the store. One woman was Marlena Fobb (pictured in orange pants) who hugged staff as she went back to buy a vacuum Police do not believe the shooting is related to terrorism, but they have not ruled anything out. On Thursday, shoppers who fled in fear of their lives as the shooting took place returned to the store to collect the personal items they had left behind. They included a family of four who were there to buy a vacuum on Wednesday night when the shots rang out. Marlena Fobb and her husband dropped to the ground when the shots began. They then crawled on the ground to an office nearby that was open and waited until police cleared the store. Marlena grabbed another person nearby and dragged them with her. A family with toddlers saw them entering the office and followed them. Many were pictured along with Walmart staff standing outside the store as emergency workers closed off the scene. A deal on fixing the states budget woes could materialize in coming days and a special session could follow shortly after, the governors budget director said Wednesday, however some Republicans are less certain something can be worked out. Over the last few weeks, Gov. Steve Bullocks office has worked with legislative leadership in an effort to lay the framework of a deal that would plug the $227 million hole in the states budget through a combination of budget cuts, temporary tax increases and moving funds around. A third of the money to fill the gap would come from about $75 million in temporary tax increases and revenue enhancements. Another third would come from adjustments such as fund transfers and making cuts to budgets not under the governor's control. And the final third would come from cuts the governor would make to state agencies under a law that allows him to reduce agency spending by up to 10 percent. Dan Villa, the budget director, said lawmakers have made clear they would only raise taxes temporarily to pay for the states firefighting costs, which have reached $74.2 million after more than a million acres burned across the state this summer. Villa said a deal could be struck this week and a special session to implement changes would follow. He said the hope is for a special session to conclude before Thanksgiving. But Republican Sen. Llew Jones said at this point the cuts are only a "menu" of options and not all Republicans will support the proposals. Jones, of Conrad, was one of the key architects of the state budget. He said Wednesday breaking the problem down into thirds can help make it solvable, but stressed Republicans are only interested in using temporary tax increases to pay the fire bill. Jones believes there could be buy-in among the caucus for that third of the problem because of how widely felt the impact of fires was statewide. Montanans saw the smoke, they smelled the smoke, in some places you could bite the smoke, so there is some belief you could have a two-year potential mix of taxes to deal with the fire bill, he said. Montana is facing a shortfall after lawmakers adopted a revenue estimate that proved far too optimistic. For the end of the last fiscal year, revenues while still up over the prior year were $75 million less than expected. Updated revenue numbers from the governors office last week showed tax collections after an Oct. 15 deadline were still down from the estimate lawmakers adopted. Villa estimates growth at 4.3 percent, while the estimate the budget was built on assumed growth of 6.6 percent. To climb out of the $75 million hole the state started this biennium in, Villa said growth would need to reach 10 percent. The governors office has presented options totaling $297 million in temporary tax increases to pay for the fire bill. They include some familiar pitches from the last legislative session, including increasing the tax on beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes and other tobacco products such as rolling papers and e-cigarettes; creating a new income bracket for households that earn more than $1 million; ending the capital gains credit for income over $1 million, and increasing the tax on lodging. Other suggestions include delaying the enactment of laws passed last session, such as an exemption for small oil wells. Additional ideas include online gaming taxes, making the taxes on cellphone service more in line with those charged to traditional landlines and allowing and taxing recreational marijuana. Tax changes would take effect Jan. 1 and have the potential to carry into fiscal year 2020 before expiring. Jones said there are a wide range of options, but there will still be Republicans who will not get behind tax increases. "There will be Republicans, whether temporary or not, who will never vote for tax increases. ... There will be others who say, 'Look we got to pay our fire bill and it's the right thing to do.'" The governor's office did not provide a list of what cuts are or aren't on the table at this point to get to the $75-80 million for that third of the budget solution. At the start of October, state agencies proposed cuts of up to 10 percent that caused concern and outrage statewide. Cuts were most severe in the Department of Public Health and Human Services, Department of Corrections and the states university system. The reductions would have raised tuition at some colleges up to 19 percent; ended programs that helped the poor, disabled and elderly, and reduced staffing at the state prison, among other cuts. Villa said Wednesday the governors office would not produce a list of what it would end up cutting until a deal on tax increases and other budget adjustments is reached. Everything is on the table until these two lists take it off, Villa said. We need a general agreement around these frameworks Shy of those two things materializing, all $227 million in cuts must be realized. The last thing we want to do is tell provider X were good to go on your contract, but then something happens. The other piece of the puzzle includes cutting money from the legislative and judicial branches, as well as the Secretary of State and State Auditors office reductions the governor is not allowed to make. Money could also be swept from accounts like maintenance for the Capital complex and seed money to start a new sub-trust of the coal trust fund for schools. Other money could come from taking a two-month holiday on paying rates to the state employee health insurance plan and pensions for judges, which Villa said would still be adequately funded. The governors office proposed $95.4 million in these types of adjustments to choose from. One pitch calls for tightening the amount of time liquor stores and bars have to pay back the state for liquor from the state warehouse. Currently they have 60 days, but the proposal would cut that to 30, bringing in nearly $12 million. Another would charge all landowners who live in a wildland-urban interface a fire assessment, not just property owners on the western side of the state, as was dictated when the payments were first implemented. Property owners covered by a co-op agreement now pay $43.50 per parcel. Under the proposed change the number of property owners paying the assessment would expand to those on the eastern side of the state, but payments would drop. Jones said there is still tons of disagreement over the potential mix of temporary tax increases and other budget options. One of the biggest potential clogs in the process is a proposal to take roughly $30 million from an escrow fund the state has been paying into so it can one day buy the privately run prison in Shelby that the state now contracts with a company called CoreCivic to run. Villa said that isn't an option in the eyes of the governor's office, saying it would conflict with the goal of a series of bills passed during the last legislative session aimed at reducing the number of people in jail. We dont see the wisdom of ignoring all of the work done through justice reinvestment. We want fewer people in prison, we want to spend less on hard beds. Were not giving those a second to work but rather extending a contract for 10 years. There just isnt wisdom in that. Jones said hes glad the governor is putting forward options, but wants the prison money included on that list. Theres a strong belief some wont vote for anything that doesnt contain it, Jones said. He views that $30 million as reducing the amount of money lawmakers would have to come up with for their part of the solution. It is a real issue," Jones said, saying Bullock could negotiate a shorter contract extension and many Republicans don't see the need for Crossroads Correctional to go away any time soon. The community jails are overflowing, the public prison is overflowing, he said. TAX REFORM: WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU New tax brackets for every filer State and local income tax deduction ABOLISHED $10,000 state and local property tax deduction is allowed up to $10K Mortgage interest relief for new home buyers will only be on loans up to $500,000 Student loan interest exemption ABOLISHED Child tax credit up from $1,000 to $1,600 Alternative Minimum Tax ABOLISHED Estate tax exemption doubled from $5.49 million for single filers and $11 million for couples 401(k) allowances: No change Advertisement President Donald Trump said Thursday that he expects congressional Republicans to pass their tax plan by the Christmas holiday. 'We are working to give the American people a giant tax cut for Christmas,' Trump said. 'We are giving them a big, beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut.' Trump asserted that the GOP revisions to the tax code 'will be the biggest cut in the history of our country' and that their tax reform bill 'will create tremendous prosperity for our nation.' House Republicans finally unveiled their tax reform proposal at a morning press conference. The bill slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and puts the American public into five tax brackets, with a single filer getting the $12,000 of their income each year tax free. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, boasted that by implementing tax reform most Americans could fill out their taxes on a postcard. However, many of the deductions Americans use are gone. The bill kills the state and local tax deduction, called SALT, which allowed people to deduct what they paid to local municipalities and states from their federal income tax bill. This part of the proposal may be the most difficult to get passed, as it's causing some Republicans from high-tax states to fret. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he expects congressional Republicans to pass their tax plan by the Christmas holiday The Republicans tax proposal also kills the student loan interest deduction and the medical expense deduction. On Mortgages, now interest from the first $500,000 spent on a home can be deducted, unlike the $1 million where it previously stood. However, the bill would allow people to deduct the first $10,000 of local property tax from their federal tax bill. The proposal also phases out the estate tax, called the 'death' tax by Republicans, which hits people's inheritance. The legislation creates a new 'family credit' that bumps the child tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600. It also includes a $300 for parents and non-child dependents to help families with everyday expenses. In a statement to the press just after, Trump said, 'We will provide a massive tax cut for American families. We will make the tax code simpler and fairer. Its called simplification.' 'We will restore our competitive edge by reducing business taxes for the first time in more than 30 years. And we will bring back trillions and trillions of dollars that is now parked overseas so that money can be put to work rebuilding the united states of america as opposed to rebuilding other parts world,' he said. The bill faces hurdles in both chambers of Congress, but Trump said he was confident Thursday that the plan would ultimately pass. 'Thats gonna happen, and I really believe we will have it done before Christmas.I consider that to be one of the greatest Christmas presents,' he said. At a White House meeting later with House Republicans, including members of the House Ways and Means committee, which penned the bill, Trump made his timeline more apparent. 'I want to have a bill on my desk, hopefully, Kevin, by Thanksgiving, if possible,' he said, acknowledging House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was sitting at his side. 'And I want everybody in this room standing by me and we'll add some other as we sign,' he said. Advertisement Britain is set to enjoy clear skies this weekend as thousands of families head out for fireworks displays across the country. The majority of the UK will stay dry on Sunday, the day on which Bonfire Night falls on this year, with some isolated showers possible in the west on Friday and Saturday. Met Office forecaster Oli Claydon told MailOnline that a pulse of rain coming up from the South will bring rain into southern England on Saturday. But he added: 'By the time we get into the evening of Saturday, that rainfall will have moved out into the North Sea, leaving drier and brighter conditions for many in the South, particularly in the East.' He added that Sunday night would be broadly a much drier day, but it will be going into a much colder night with a widespread frost expected into Monday. Scroll down for video The majority of the UK will stay dry on Sunday (shown), the day on which Bonfire Night falls on this year, with some isolated showers possible in the west on Friday and Saturday Britain is set to enjoy clear skies this weekend as thousands of families head out for fireworks displays across the country (stock image) Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later. Tomorrow will see a good deal of cloud in the early part of the day, with spots of rain and drizzle in places but with a few bright or sunny intervals, particularly in the south. Patchy rain will push into western Scotland and during the evening across southern England and Wales. Winds will generally be light for the southern half of Britain, and moderate further north. On Saturday, rain will gradually clear across the south-eastern quarter of the UK. Elsewhere, it will be bright with sunny spells and a scattering of showers. On Sunday, it will be chilly with sunny spells but showers are expected for western areas and also near the east coast. A cyclist rides across Wimbledon Common in South West London engulfed in thick morning fog on a cold autumn day today A foggy start over the City of London and Canary Wharf this morning as the Met Office issued a weather warning Commuters make their way to work on a foggy Blackheath in South East London this morning A young man walks across Wimbledon Common in South West London as it is blanketed in thick morning fog today Skygazers will be able to see a moon brighter and larger than usual this weekend as it moves closer to Earth. The 'Beaver Moon' will appear around 14% larger in diameter and 30% brighter than usual. The second 'supermoon' of the year will be visible on Friday and Saturday night. In the Northern Hemisphere, November's full moon occurs at the time of year when hunters used to set traps before waters froze over to ensure a supply of warm furs for winter - hence the name Beaver Moon. 'It should be a really beautiful sight. It's worth noting that the best time to see any object in the sky is when it's as high it can be, so really around midnight,' said Tom Kerss, astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich. Met Office forecaster Emma Sharples said: 'There would have been some rain on the start of Saturday that clears away, and actually we get into much clearer skies as we go through Saturday evening and overnight, but there will be some showers in more northern and western areas. 'There is a good chance of catching a glimpse of it.' The moon has a slightly elliptical orbit - it does not move round the Earth in a perfect circle. At some points the moon is about 5% closer to Earth than average, known as perigee, and at others 5% further away, known as apogee. This month's full moon will be 226,182 miles from Earth, closer than its average 238,900 miles. It will reach the peak of its full phase at 5.23am on Saturday. The first supermoon of the year was visible on January 12, and the third will fall on December 3. Parts of Sussex were waking up to fog today, as motorists were advised to ensure their lights were on for better visibility Parts of southern England - including Dorset (pictured) - were enveloped in a blanket of fog this morning Commuters travel to work on a foggy Blackheath in South East London as driving conditions were described as hazardous This morning the Met Office issued a weather warning as visibility fell across parts of southern England, with forecasters warning motorists to take extra care on roads including the M3, M4, A30 and A303. Meteorologists said longer journey times and hazardous driving conditions were possible anywhere between London and Exeter, with visibility falling below 300ft in low lying areas and valleys. Temperatures are likely to make it up to 15C (59F) over the next few days, before falling at the weekend - when they will reach about 14C (57F) in London on Saturday, but more generally up to 13C (55F). Sunday will be a few degrees lower, with London potentially only getting to 11C (52F), and there is also expected to be a widespread frost on Sunday night, when temperatures could plunge to 0C (32F) in some areas. Today will be mostly dry with sunny intervals, especially in the North, but there will be plenty of cloud and some rain. Tomorrow will be dry for many with a bright spells but it will be cloudy with patchy rain in the South West. Meanwhile, last month Hurricane Ophelia helped give the UK the warmest October for more than a decade, with the average temperature 9.7C (49.4F) 1.8C above normal. The last time Britain had a 9.7C average was in 2006. The scene from a train near Wimbledon in South West London as parts of the capital faced foggy conditions this morning A cyclist rides through a foggy Blackheath in South East London around sunrise this morning Foggy conditions were also seen in Berkshire this morning as the Met Office issued a weather warning A social media user from Dorset captured these foggy conditions today as the country faced difficult driving conditions One social media user said she enjoyed hearing the fog horns of boats this morning in Portishead, Somerset Stunning autumnal colours are reflected in Derwentwater at Keswick in Cumbria this morning A frost covered landscape greets the day this morning as seen at the West Moors in Dorset The Met Office issued a weather warning for fog this morning (left), which swept across southern England (right) Some rural spots of Britain were close to freezing this morning at about 7am, but it was milder where there was thicker cloud The red shapes on this Met Office chart show where fog was thickest at about 8.45am this morning Met Office spokesman Emma Sharples said Britain had been 'spoilt' through October with temperatures often well above average last month, adding: 'There'll be some frost in areas over the next couple of nights.' She also said there could be some wet weather from tomorrow night into Saturday morning - and parts of the South East will have a wet start to the weekend, but it will be bright in the West. Yesterday the Met Office put out a weather warning for up to two inches (50mm) of rain to saturate higher ground of western Scotland, with many other areas facing an inch as intense downpours fell over three to six hours. Radee Labeeb Prince, 38 (pictured), allegedly walked into his former workplace and gathered his former colleagues around him before shooting, according to a witness In terrifying new 911 audio shots are fired in the background as another caller is hiding behind a dumpster during a deadly office park shooting in Maryland last month. The calls about the October 18 shooting at Advanced Granite Solutions were released Wednesday by Harford County. An employee of the business was among the 911 callers and said 'somebody just came in and started shooting,' as shots ring out in the background. Radee Prince, a former employee, is charged with shooting three co-workers to death and wounding two others. He's also charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting a man in Delaware shortly after the Maryland shooting. Prince fatally shot Enis Mrvoljak, 48; Bayarsaikhan Tudev, 53; and Jose Hidalgo Romero, 34. A witness to the deadly rampage inside a Maryland granite company said the suspect gathered a small group of his coworkers together by saying 'come with me, I want to say something to everybody' before opening fire. Radee Labeeb Prince, 38, arrived at his former workplace of Advanced Granite Solutions very angry, according to the man who worked at the countertop. Then he tried to talk individually to a few employees. Prince allegedly called the witness and a group of coworkers to come around him before he opened fire. Enis Mrvoljak (left), 48, and Jose Hidalgo Romero (right), 34, were killed in the shooting Bayarsaikhan Tudev (second from right), 53, was also killed. His widow (second from left) said her husband was so worried about Prince's temper that he prayed about him 'He talked to me first,' the man said on the condition of anonymity because he was afraid of retaliation and worried about his family's immigration status. 'Then I saw him talk to another friend. Nobody listened to him, because his reaction was to start a fight.' This telling of events comes on the heels of news that Prince's former boss tried to take out a restraining order because he was so afraid of him - but the judge wouldn't grant it. Prince of Elkton, Maryland, had a history of violence with coworkers, especially when he believed people were talking behind his back, according to court documents. Authorities have not released a motive, but the witness said Prince's aggressiveness had been escalating recently. Just before the shooting, Prince walked out to his SUV and put on a black jacket, the witness said. Then he walked back inside and stood near a machine where he called the man's name, and asked him and his colleagues to come toward him. 'I was nervous,' the witness said, adding that he believes he was the one Prince was trying to target. Authorities said he then drove to Wilmington, Delaware, and shot an acquaintance at a used car lot. He was captured after a 10-hour manhunt. Prince faces charges of murder, attempted murder, assault and use of a firearm to commit a felony. At his arraignment on Thursday in Delaware, he pleaded not guilty. According to an affidavit, officers found a .380-caliber semi-automatic they saw Prince throw away while running from them, and they found the same size shells at the Wilmington shooting scene. Police think it's the same gun he used in the Maryland shooting. Investigators say they are aware that employees had complained about Prince's behavior at Advanced Granite Solutions (pictured), as well as at prior workplaces Prince was arrested in Delaware (pictured) after a massive manhunt. He was fired from JPS Marble and Granite earlier this year after he punched a coworker and threatened other colleagues His former boss became so scared of Prince after he was fired that he tried to take out a restraining order on him. A judge didn't grant it (Pictured, Prince is taken into custody in Delaware) Tudev's widow told said her husband was so worried about Prince's temper that he prayed about him. 'He was always angry,' Gerelmaa Dolgorsuren said her husband told her about Prince. Ron Cherry, an attorney for the company, said he could not answer questions about what happened. But Cristie Kahler, a spokeswoman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office, confirmed that video surveillance footage at the company showed Prince seeming to call a meeting before the shooting. She could not provide further details. Kahler also said that investigators were aware that employees had complained about Prince's behavior at Advanced Granite Solutions, as well as at prior workplaces. He had at least two other violent run-ins with coworkers. In 2014, he put a colleague in a chokehold because he thought he was talking about Prince, a manager told police. Prince dragged the coworker outside and slammed him to the ground, causing him to lose consciousness. He was charged with offensive touching, but the case was dismissed last year. Earlier this year, Prince was fired from JPS Marble and Granite after he punched a coworker and threatened other colleagues, according to court documents. His former boss became so scared of Prince after he was fired that he tried to take out a restraining order on him. A judge didn't grant it. Prince of Elkton, Maryland, had a history of violence with coworkers (Pictured, workers from the Advanced Granite Solutions company consoled each other following the shooting) Prince had 43 arrests in Delaware. He has faced charges of being a felon in possession and was ordered to undergo drug and alcohol counseling in recent years (Pictured, unidentified bystanders embrace in Harford County, Maryland,) Authorities also identified the wounded in Maryland as Enoc Villegas Sosa, 38, and Jose Roberto Flores Gillen, 37. Police in Delaware have not updated the condition of the victim there, but have said he is expected to survive. Prince was accused last year of punching that man and trying to rob him, said Nicole Magnusson, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Justice. He was charged with robbery and offensive touching, but that case was also dismissed. Prince had 43 arrests in Delaware. He has faced charges of being a felon in possession of a gun, was habitually late paying his rent, was repeatedly cited for traffic violations, and was ordered to undergo drug and alcohol counseling in recent years. Jeremy Corbyn must 'clear out' MPs who have sexually harassed and assaulted aides, a leading female backbencher last night warned. Jess Phillips said the Westminster harassment scandal has cast a shadow over all political parties - not just the Government. And she said Labour must look at its own ranks and root out officials and MPs who have been behind harassment and attacks. Ms Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, said she expects the scandal to spread and claim more careers as fresh allegations surface. She told the BBC last night: 'I imagine there will be others who go. It feels like the beginning of a clear-out. 'This is cross party and not solely a government issue. Jess Phillips, pictured on the left last night with fellow Labour MP Stella Creasy, said Labour will also need to 'clear out' its ranks of anyone found to have sexually assaulted or harassed people 'Parliament matters to me and democracy maters to me so the clearing out if it needs to happen, needs to be swift and I hope we can come out with a better culture for everyone.' Her comments echo remarks made by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who used a speech at The Spectator awards party last night who said it is essential to 'clean out the stables'. Ms Davidson spoke out warning that the 'dam has broken' and the row engulfing British politics would continue for 'some time to come'. She said the fact that there was a woman in charge of Downing Street did not mean that 'sexism and misogyny' had been 'somehow consigned to the dustbin of history'. The scandal has so far focused on the Tory party after a dossier of 40 Tory MPs accused of sexual impropriety was circulated around Westminster. While the PM was today forced to carry out an emergency mini reshuffle following Sir Michael's resignation. Sir Michael Fallon (left yesterday) sensationally resigned as defence secretary (right with his wife Wendy) amid a growing Westminster harassment scandal But Labour has also been rocked by allegations - including that former NEC member Bex Bailey was raped by a senior official but told not to report it in case it harmed her career. Labour MP John Mann has warned that a slew of other allegations could emerge as more women come forward. Among the allegations which have been reported are claims an unnamed senior Labour MP has been reported to the Leader's Office for extremely serious abuse of a woman. A second Labour MP is being privately accused of sexual assault of a woman but they remain unnamed. A third senior Labour MP is accused of 'wandering hands' and being over-friendly at student discos. While The New Statesman reports other 'allegations of sexual misconduct that the party advised women to drop'. While Labour MP Chi Onwurah told the Commons she had raised complaints about MPs' behaviour to young staff in parliament's bars. A teacher at Newburyport High School in Massachusetts came under fire this week for giving students a math problem with a 9/11 theme. The algebra problem asked: 'Flight 175, one of 9/11 planes, was traveling at 586 miles per hour when it hit the World Trade Center. It had traveled a distance of 440 miles before impact. How many minutes was the plane in the air?' Flight 175 was the second plane to hit the World Trade Center in the tragedy. All 65 people on board - including the five hijackers - were killed when the plane struck the south tower, where abut 900 perished. When parents learned about the problem, they started complaining to the school's administration. Scroll down for video A teacher at a Massachusetts high school is under fire for giving students this 9/11-themed math problem Parents at Newburyport High School were outraged this week after learning about the math problem The algebra problem asked: 'Flight 175, one of 9/11 planes, was traveling at 586 miles per hour when it hit the World Trade Center. It had traveled a distance of 440 miles before impact. How many minutes was the plane in the air?' Flight 175 was the second plane to hit the World Trade Center in the tragedy (left) 'I thought it was inappropriate,' one parent, Paula Quill, told Boston 25 News. 'I disagree with that totally, wholeheartedly.' Grandmother Carol Bogard added: 'Thinking about something so sad with everything else going on in the world, I don't think it was the right thing to do.' Even more angry was Angela Wadleigh, whose brother Tom Pecorelli, a Newburyport High alumnus, died on American Airlines Flight 11 - the first plane to hit the Twin Towers. Hearing about the problem brought her back to the tragedy and she says the teacher, who has not been named, owes her and other 9/11 families an apology. One of the angry members of the community was Angela Wadleigh, whose brother Tom Pecorelli (pictured), a Newburyport High alumnus, died on American Airlines Flight 11 'It might have been 16 years ago to some people, but to some of us, it's 16 minutes ago. It's something you don't recover from ever, she said. On Tuesday, Superintendent Susan Viccaro released a statement saying that the question was handed out in 'poor judgement' but was not meant to be offensive. 'This assignment was not intended to be disrespectful to the thousands impacted by this horrible event. Rather this was an exercise of poor judgement by the educator who intended to use the historical event as a mechanism to engage students in a thoughtful discussion,' she said. It's unclear if the teacher will be punished for the mistake. Viccaro added that she is reminding the rest of the teachers at the school to use caution when including 9/11 and other similar tragedies in their lessons. 'In the future, we will work with our educators to find more respectful and mindful ways to continue the important and valuable discussions that should take place around these significant events without diminishing or otherwise disregarding the respect and reverence that is due,' the statement read. Billionaire Trump supporter Robert Mercer has made an extraordinary public break with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, saying he makes his 'own decisions' - and dumping his stake on controversial website Breitbart News. Mercer, 71, issued a statement where he said he was selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughter Rebekah and stepping back from his hedge fund. The move raises questions over the future of Breitbart, which has been hit by an advertising boycott over its often provocative contents. The website has kept its finances secret and Mercer's stake in it was only disclosed to a Congressional committee earlier this year. 'The press has also intimated that my politics marches in lockstep with Steve Bannon's,' Mercer said in a statement. 'I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically,' said billionaire Robert Mercer in a statement announcing a break with Steve Bannon Regret: Mercer also said that he had been cutting ties with Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right controversialist 'I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time, I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon's,' he said without offering further explanation. The statement was distributed on Twitter by Bloomberg Businessweek. Mercer also took a shot at right wing firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who he says he supported in the past. 'Without individuals thinking for themselves, society as a whole will struggle to distinguish the signal of truth from the correlated noise of conformity,' he said. Mercer continued: 'I supported Milo Yiannopoulos in the hope and expectation that his expressions of views contrary to the social mainstream and his spotlighting of the hypocrisy of those who would close down free speech in the name of political correctness would promote the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today.' Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer attend the 2017 TIME 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017. Mercer is selling his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters The Mercers were early backers of Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist and chairman of Breitbart News But Mercer said Yiannopoulos has 'caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate.' 'I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him,' he wrote. Mercer's lengthy statement to employees of Renaissance breaks with years of silence on politics. He told the Wall Street Journal in 2010: 'I'm happy going through my life without saying anything to anybody.' Since then Mercer has become deeply engaged thanks to his deep pockets in U.S. politics and in the UK, in Brexit, thanks to his part-ownership of Cambridge Analytica. The data-mining firm has been accused of being part of a dark arts program to tilt both the UK referendum on Brexit and the U.S. election in Mercer's preferred direction. His public giving has made clear his position. He and his wife donated $200,000 to the GOP's legal defense fund on precisely the day Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. It had provided critical support to Trump after he secured the nomination, with his daughter Rebekah chairing the then-president-elect's transition committee. Bannon is backing conservative challengers against Republican incumbents, and scored a win when Judge Roy Moore won a primary against appointed Sen. Luther Strange in Alabama. Mercer is selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters. Rebekah Mercer is close to Bannon and already named as one of its co-owners. But she has no known independent income and before becoming engaged in politics, ran a bakery in Manhattan. She is, however, already in charge of the Mercer Family Foundation which has donated close to $100 million to mostly conservative causes. Some of them are closely linked to Bannon too so Mercer's move to cut ties with Bannon will be watched carefully among organizations including Citizens United, the media Research Center, the Heartland Institute, the Government Accountability Institute and the Feeralist Society. The Mercers were early backers of Bannon, investing both in Breitbart as well as data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica is widely expected to be a focus of the special counsel probe led by Robert Mueller. It was revealed last month to have contacted Wikileaks asking for access to Hillary Clinton's hacked emails so they could be turned into a searchable database and used to boost a pro-Trump political action committee. CNN reported that the email was sent in summer 2016 - before Wikileaks made its dramatic release of the emails. It will be Breitbart however which gets the most scrutiny. Its current existence appears impossible to be based on advertising revenue alone, and the absence of a deep-pocketed owner could seriously hurt its future. The perception of an ugly feud between Bannon and his richest backers also has the potential to badly damage the brand to its core audience. Breitbart reported the sale by saying: 'Billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer announced Thursday that he will step down as co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies at the beginning of 2018 and intends to sell his stake in Breitbart News. 'Mercer said in a statement to his colleagues that recent press reports have falsely depicted him as a white supremacist and he has decided to speak up to correct the record, clarifying his political views and his relationship with Breitbarts executive chairman Steve Bannon' - then running his full statement. The Mercers did not start as Trump backers. Early in the campaign, they gave to a super PAC backing Ted Cruz that was then run by Kellyanne Conway, now a White House counselor to Trump. They then swung their support to Trump when he won the nomination. An 86-year-old army veteran's low-key fund-raising walk was transformed into a 110,000 Poppy Appeal spectacular, after comedian Jason Manford sent his story viral. Former paratrooper Jeffrey Long had hoped to raise 1,000 for the Royal British Legion by walking from the Thames Barrier in London to Caversham in Reading a mile for every year of his life. But a chance encounter at Windsor station as he collected money started a chain of events that has turned the old soldier into a modern-day hero and boosted his target by over 11,000 per cent. Mr Long, from Bingley, West Yorkshire, had raised just 80 when NHS worker Paula Modeste started chatting to him as he collected donations dressed in full combat gear. Fundraiser: An 86-year-old army veteran's low-key fund-raising walk was transformed into a 110,000 Poppy Appeal spectacular, after comedian Jason Manford sent his story viral Former paratrooper Mr Long, from Bingley, West Yorks, had raised just 80 when NHS worker Paula Modeste (pictured) chatted to him as he collected donations dressed in full combat gear However the former paratrooper's collection pot turned to gold when comedian Jason Manford highlighted his efforts on twitter after seeing Ms Modeste post on social media. Now 'Jeffrey's 86 Miles for 86 Years' collection has raised over 110,700 and the total is still rising. Last night comedian Jason Manford honoured Jeffrey for his outstanding fund-raising efforts. He told MailOnline: 'I just loved Jeffrey's story of just up and deciding to do is walk.' Ms Modeste, 46, from south London, said: 'When I saw he had just eight per cent of his target I was determined to try to help. 'I put it on Facebook and Twitter knowing that my friends are a good lot and I kept seeing more notifications.' She also posted a selfie picture with Jeffery dressed in his full combat gear. Kind-hearted gesture: Comedian Jason Manford posted about Mr Long's fundraising on Facebook and donations rocketed Ms Modeste wrote: 'I met this handsome chap on Saturday while plotted up at Windsor station. He is 86! 'He's walking 86 miles for his 86 years in aid of the poppy appeal. Doing it without a map or loads of publicity. 'He's doing it armed with a justgiving page, keen sense of direction and a massive heart. 'If you can drop him a few quid, please do. He's so deserving. 'He was only at 8 per cent of his target on Saturday night. 'How sad would it be if he didn't reach 1,000 or even smash it! 'His name is Jeffrey Long MBE and he is a legend.' Mr Long's collection had reach just 300 by the time comedian Jason found out about it. But the cash began to pour in after he highlighted the cause to his fans, and the appeal went viral. Jason Manford told MailOnline: 'I was only thinking if I could get his total to a grand [1,000] by lunch, as he already had 300 then that would be good. 'I have a million people on my Facebook fan page so asked if they could stick in 50p each that would be brilliant. 'I cracked on with my day, I was sorting Halloween stuff for the kids when I got a text off my mate saying brilliant work on the JustGiving page and when I looked it was at 25,000 and I couldn't believe it!' Jason added: 'It's amazing. There's so many negative aspects around social media but actually I see so many brilliant things happening all the time like this. Challenge: After Manford's plug on Facebook donations flooded in to Mr Long's JustGiving page and so far he has raised over 110,000 in just two days 'You forget that the 'social' bit is the bit in social media is what makes it so special and when it works it can be absolutely wonderful.' Meanwhile Mr Long, who is being treated for cancer, had no idea he had reached his target let alone blown it out of the water until he completed his 86-mile walk on Tuesday night. The flabbergasted old soldier said: 'I'm overwhelmed to be honest. 'It just shows you what can be done.' Mr Long was awarded the MBE for his years of service fundraising and volunteering for the British Legion. Pope Francis is considering plans to allow married men to ordain as Catholic priests in remote areas where there are chronic shortages of clergy. The pontiff is considering proposals raised by bishops in Brazil who complain some areas are only administered by a priest a couple of times a year. Under the proposals, married men of proven faith, known as 'viri probati' by the church, will be able to join the priesthood. Pope Francis, pictured is considering allowing married men to become ordained priests The pontiff believes married men of proven faith could fill as clergy in remote areas The plan being considered by the Vatican will not allow existing priests to marry, although some former clergy who left the priesthood to start a family may be allowed to return. Theologians believe the issue of married priests could be acceptable as celibacy is regarded as a matter of church discipline rather than dogma. Pope Francis does not believe removing the celibacy rule from existing priests will help solve the problem of shortages in clergy. Earlier this year, Pope Francis said: 'We must consider if viri probati is a possibility. Then we must determine what tasks they can perform, for example, in remote communities.' Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who is a friend of the pontiff wants to allow married men to minister in the Amazon, where there is only one priest for every 10,000 Catholics. The church allows some exceptions to the rule. Priests in the eastern rite Catholic Church are allowed to be married, as are married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism. President Donald Trump's has no plans to moderate his language on North Korea when he visits Seoul just because he's across the border from Kim Jong-un, the White House says. 'The president will use whatever language he wants to use, obviously,' Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said Thursday. McMaster denied that Trump had made 'inflammatory' comments about Kim in the past and that he his presence would 'ratchet up' North Korean aggression. 'The only thing that is ratcheting up the North Korean aggression is the North Korean regime itself,' he said. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO President Donald Trump's has no plans to moderate his language on North Korea when he visits Seoul just because he's across the border from Kim Jong-un, the White House says 'The president will use whatever language he wants to use, obviously,' Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said Thursday Trump has aimed to clarify in all his statements that 'North Korea is unable to threaten our allies and our partners, and certainly the United States,' McMaster asserted. 'I don't think the president really modulates his language,' he added with a laugh. 'Have you noticed him do that? He's been very clear, he's been very clear about it.' The 71-year-old U.S. president has repeatedly referred to his 33-year-old counterpart as 'Little Rocket Man.' He threatened Kim this summer with 'fire and fury' if North Korea continues its provocations. Sources with knowledge of the situation told DailyMail.com last week that Asian officials are apprehensive about the rhetoric Trump could use on his Pacific Rim visit. Government representatives in South Korea and Japan are fearful that Trump will taunt Kim from their doorsteps, regional experts are saying, and mire them in an intractable war. 'Seoul and Tokyo are more nervous about Washington than I have seen during my 24 years working [in] Asia,' Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Bruce Klingner told DailyMail.com from Tokyo. The Council on Foreign Relations' U.S.-Korea policy director Scott Snyder said officials in Seoul are 'praying that the worst doesn't transpire' during Trump's speech to South Korea's National Assembly and are approaching it with 'a lot of white knuckles.' Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump shake hands before a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in February. Asian officials are said to be apprehensive of the rhetoric Trump could use on his visit next week to the Pacific Rim Trump has rattled both governments with the threats and name-calling he's directed at Kim over the rogue regime's nuclear program. His administration's maybe-we-will, maybe-we-won't attitude toward preemptive strike on Pyongyang has also unnerved American allies in the region. 'I think they're confused, and I think they're a little bit shaken because they understand that they would be in the line of fire if there's any contact between the United States and North Korea in terms of a kinetic military operation,' Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the upper chamber's Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters this month as he returned from South Korea. Trump warned Kim during his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September that he would 'totally destroy' North Korea if it moves to strike the U.S. or its allies. Kim retorted that Trump is 'mentally deranged.' North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho claimed afterward that the U.S. had formally declared war on his country, and that it reserves the right to blast American bombers out of the sky even if they are flying outside of the communist nation's airspace. This undated photo provided on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017, by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, inspects products during a visit to a cosmetics factory in Pyongyang. Trump has repeatedly referred to the 33-year-old as 'Little Rocket Man' The Trump administration's oft-stated position is that 'all options are on the table' a line that has become U.S. officials' stock answer when they're asked publicly about the prospects for military intervention. Senior Trump administration officials have stressed that war is not the president's preference, however. Asian officials are confused by Trump's rhetoric on North Korea, which is often at odds with what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says 'He wants this solved diplomatically. He's not seeking to go to war,' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said earlier this month on CNN. The president had scolded Tillerson on Twitter before the secretary of state's comments, asserting that he is 'wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.' Tillerson argued after the fact Trump did not actually mean what he said. 'Those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops,' the chief U.S. diplomat explained. The episode generated confusion in the U.S. and abroad about Trump's position on diplomatic talks. The president's later insistence that 'only one thing will work' with Kim, and that Americans might be witnessing the 'calm before the storm,' led to more frayed nerves. South Korean President Moon Jae-In (R) shakes hands with US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis (L) during their meeting at the presidential Blue House in Seoul on Friday. Government representatives in South Korea are fearful that Trump will taunt Kim Jong-un from their doorsteps Klingner told DailyMail.com that 'Trump's inconsistent messaging' has the governments in Japan and South Korea concerned. 'They are looking for a consistent message, most notably on reassurance of US commitment and resolve to defend them. They also seek to be fully consulted and coordinated with on policy toward North Korea,' Klingner said. 'Seoul and Tokyo are simultaneously concerned about [the] U.S. entangling them in a war with North Korea, abandoning them once Pyongyang can threaten the continental U.S. with nuclear weapons, and that President Trump will cut a bilateral deal with North Korea.' A U.S. official said Tuesday that Trump's visit to Seoul 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.' The U.S- South Korea alliance 'is stronger than ever in the face of North Korea's aggression,' the official asserted. McMaster said Thursday that Trump would be asking the United States' allies to 'do more to hinder North Korea.' 'That has happened. But the president recognizes that we're running out of time and will ask all nations to do more,' he said. Trump departs Washington on Friday for a blitz through East and Southeast Asia that stretches over 12 days. He'll make stops in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, De Nang, Hanoi and Manila during his fourth foreign trip since taking office. A trip to the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula was off the table as of Tuesday, a U.S. official said. A visit to Camp Humphreys is on the schedule, instead. It is common for U.S. presidents to hold news conferences with their hosts when they are traveling abroad, but the White House has not said whether that will be the case when Trump meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. A U.S. official indicated to reporters last week during a press event that Trump would follow Moon's lead during his brief stay in Seoul. But that won't likely extend to giving the South Korean president advance notice of what he'll tell the nation's elected legislature. While the South Korean government would prefer to receive a copy of Trump's remarks to the National Assembly, 'it's really almost a fool's errand to try to manage that,' Snyder said. Regardless of what the U.S. president's advisers direct him to say about North Korea's illicit nuclear tests, the possibility remains that Trump will heckle his adversary from just across the border. As a result, South Korean officials are 'stuck holding their breath, and praying that the worst doesn't transpire,' Synder said. A would-be ISIS bomber who plotted an attack with a pharmacy student he met on SingleMuslim.com picked the wrong nail varnish remover while buying ingredients at Asda, a court heard. Munir Mohammed, 36, allegedly enlisted help of Rowaida El-Hassan, 33, a chemist he met on a dating website, in his plot to make a 'Mother of Satan' bomb or deadly ricin poison. The couple, both divorcees, were said to have had a 'rapidly-formed emotional attachment and a shared ideology', despite living in Derby and London. Prosecutors allege Munir Hassan Mohammed (pictured) visited to his local branch of Asda to buy ingredients for a 'Mother of Satan' bomb The Old Bailey heard Mohammed received instructions from co-accused Rowaida el-Hassan Mohammed also made contact with an ISIS commander and volunteered to carry out a terror attack in Britain, jurors at the Old Bailey heard. The court was shown footage of the defendant visiting an Asda store near his home in Derby, on December 1 last year. While there he spoke on the phone to El-Hassan who sent him a link via WhatsApp to a website advertising a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Prosecutor Anne Whyte QC had told jurors that his till receipt showed he had bought a bottle of Sally Hansen acetone-free nail polish remover. The prosecution say he saw the word 'acetone' and assumed he was buying a component of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosives, when in fact he had bought the wrong product. On December 8, Mohammed visited Ace Discounts in Derby and looked a pressure cookers, which can be used to contain explosives, Ms Whyte had said. Munir Hassan Mohammed, 36, right, and Rowaida El Hassan, 33, both deny terror offences When Counter-terrorism police raided his flat they found bomb-making ingredients hidden in a freezer and a drawer in a wardrobe, the jury was told. He had two of the three components required to create the high explosive TATP known as 'Mother of Satan' - and believed he had the third, prosecutors say. The explosive was said to be an 'extremely sensitive primary high explosive that can be easily detonated by friction, flame or impact.' Alison Morgan, prosecuting, told the jury it was 'too sensitive, both during manufacture and as the final explosive product, to have any commercial uses, apart from in solution as a laboratory standard.' A bottle of hydrogen peroxide solution found in the Derby flat of alleged bomb plotter, Mohammed Disposable face masks found in the home of alleged bomb plotter Rowaida El-Hassan El-Hassan had an unopened one-litre bottle of high percentage instant drain cleaner containing sulphuric acid, which can also be used to make explosives, as well as disposable face masks, jurors were told. Mohammed told police he was going to clean his car alloys with the hydrochloric acid and had been advised by El-Hassan to use hyrdogen peroxide to treat a burn. Mohammed, and El-Hassan, 33, from Willesden Lane, north-west London, deny preparing terrorist acts between November 2015 and December 2016. The trial continues. After sitting empty for nearly two years, the Two Rivers Detention Facility in Hardin is set to reopen under Bureau of Indian Affairs management by January, the bureaus director told a Senate committee recently. The BIA is finalizing a contract to begin operating the 464-bed facility within the next 90 days, Director of Indian Affairs Bryan Rice said during an Oct. 25 hearing before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Rices comments came in response to questioning by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who referenced complaints of overcrowding at a jail on the adjacent Northern Cheyenne Reservation outlined in a letter written by the Crow Tribes Chief Judge, Leroy Not Afraid. While the lease is being worked on, all of our folks that need that space are being sent to Lame Deer, Rice told the committee, of which both of Montanas senators are members. They're even being sent to other areas, so we see it as a critical thing that needs to get done. The lease is on its last review out of the bureau to be sent to (the Government Services Administration). There's an expectation that will be fast-tracked. Not Afraids May 8 letter to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke stated the bureau was detaining Crow members in illegally overcrowded detention centers in the state and Wyoming. He claimed that 26 inmates from the Crow Tribe and another 63 Northern Cheyenne tribal members were at the time being held in Lame Deers jail, which was designed with a 19-inmate capacity. Our complaints to the BIA have been ignored, and the BIA has failed and refused to make immediate and necessary changes to correct these problems, Not Afraid wrote in his letter, adding that the situation raised serious civil rights and constitutional issues. Hardin residents have been whispering about the jail's reopening for months, since the jail closed in April 2016 and the private operator, Emerald Correctional Management, cut ties soon after. A BIA spokeswoman said in February 2017 that a lease would be signed by April. The agency has been silent on the empty jail since. On Wednesday, Not Afraid said that at least six different jails from Cut Bank, Montana to Yankton, South Dakota, currently house inmates sentenced in the Crow Tribes courts. No jails exist on the 2.2 million-acre Crow Reservation, although tribal members had previously been detained at the Two Rivers facility before it closed to Montana tribes in 2015. First and foremost, its in the interest of justice that our tribal members are brought home in the preservation of their rights, he said. If someone has been found guilty by a judge or a jury and theyre serving out a sentence, what better (than) to have family, to have access and visitation for tribal members to assist in their recovery? Not Afraid is also concerned about potential liability for the tribe when it has to transport prisoners hundreds of miles to other jails, he added. Unlike the empty detention facility in Hardin, he said the jail in Lame Deer lacks the ability to allow inmates to appear for arraignments by video. Those appearances require detainees to be transported more than 40 miles each way to the courthouse in Crow Agency. For positive proof that double standards exist in politics, check out former Defence Minister Sir Michael Fallon, forced to step down following rumours of sexually inappropriate behaviour. After a female journalist confirmed he'd repeatedly touched her knee at a conference in 2002, Fallon's pathetic non-defence was that 'times have changed in the last 15 years'. Although his victim claimed the incident was inconsequential, it's rumoured Fallon resigned because similar examples of his over-enthusiastic behaviour might emerge. In 2010, he was accused of calling journalist Bryony Gordon, a 'slut'- although his aides were quick to claim he didn't use the exact word, but something equally derogatory. For positive proof that double standards exist in politics, check out former Defence Minister Sir Michael Fallon, forced to step down following rumours of sexually inappropriate behaviour He's a bloke who has strong opinions about women. Can this be the same Michael Fallon who just a few days ago, gave the head of the Royal Navy 'an absolute roasting' after it emerged that staff on one of Britain's nuclear submarines tested positive for drugs and were involved in 'inappropriate relationships'. Mr Fallon is said to drink a bottle of wine a night and enjoy the many bars in the Houses of Parliament. I can see exactly where his antediluvian mindset comes from - the bottom of a large glass of scotch or a carafe of fine claret. In the eyes of this 65-year-old creep, women have got more picky about being touched, whereas men like him haven't woken up to the fact that in 2017, equality means equality, not forcing yourself on someone less important as if it's a favour they're gagging for. Fallon's best pal is Colonel Bob Stewart MP, aged 68, the Tory MP for Beckenham, who described journalist Isabel Hardman as 'totty' to her face last year. Stewart has been moaning that 'we are soon going to be in a situation where people who work together can't say "can I take you out?"' The ever-growing list of allegedly predatory behaviour in Parliament describes Stewart as 'perpetually intoxicated and inappropriate with women'. He says 'I am not a sleazebag'. The allegations of groping and wandering hands sound familiar, mirroring the ghastly behaviour of Harvey Weinstein and now seemingly Kevin Spacey. Things weren't different ten or fifteen years ago, older men groping younger people wasn't OK then. Around that time, I edited a national newspaper and had lunches with Cabinet Ministers and MPs. I thought one party leader had Parkinson's disease as he shook so much, but after he had consumed three double gin and tonics and two bottles of wine at lunch, I realised he was an alcoholic. Fallon's best pal is Colonel Bob Stewart MP, aged 68, the Tory MP for Beckenham, who described journalist Isabel Hardman as 'totty' to her face last year Another Cabinet Minister demanded female journalists sat extremely close to him at lunch (claiming he was deaf) so he could grab their knees. Abuse, and predatory behaviour has always gone on, but young people were scared to speak out. We only woke up to Jimmy Savile and decades of child abuse, after he died in 2011. Then, MPs were quick to round on the BBC and criticise the organisation for not doing anything about the sleazy activities that were taking place on the premises. Harriet Harman said it had 'cast a stain on the Corporation'. Morality is not something that can be shifted around like a set of goalposts from one decade to the next. Men who hold responsible jobs hanging out in bars which are open until midnight with very junior staff half their age is always an unhealthy mix. Ironically, the only other place I have worked with so much subsidised booze readily available a few steps from the office, was the BBC. The Houses of Parliament has up to ten places where MPs and their staff can buy booze up to midnight, and that's without counting the bars reserved for the House of Lords. Parliament is where laws that govern every aspect of our lives are revised and debated, and yet members operate according to some Dickensian set of rules which have no place in modern Britain. MPs and Ministers are keen on framing legislation about equality in the workplace, outlawing sexually aggressive and controlling behaviour, reprimanding excessive drinking and the demonising the consumption of class A drugs. MPs have created loads of rules to apply to the rest of us, laws relating to employment and discrimination. We (the ordinary voters) have to treat workers with respect, advertise jobs, and don't harass the staff. The Houses of Parliament has up to ten places where MPs and their staff can buy booze up to midnight, and that's without counting the bars reserved for the House of Lords Yet in Westminster, MPs are self-policing - they can employ members of their own families without advertising. They use interns as cheap labour, trading off the ambitions of smart young people keen to get on in politics. The unequal power struggle starts right there. Four years ago, a survey discovered that one in three staff had been sexually harassed at work in the House of Commons. Nothing was done. When complaints were made to officials, victims were told that there was no mechanism in place to protect them, just the MPs. Ironically, in the light of Sir Michael Fallon and 'kneegate', the vast majority of the allegations concerned young men being propositioned by elderly male MPs out for a quick grope. Most of these sad characters will have wives at home, window-dressing for the constituents - having a partner and a couple of kids generally plays better at election time. Booze (subsidised by tax payers) just swills around Westminster, it's how journalists get stories and it's how MPs get sexual favours. Shut down the bars, and institute standard contracts for all workers. It's the only way for MPs to regain our respect. An endangered tiger obsessed with the bright lights of a city has escaped his Siberian exile and walked 450 miles to the place he loves. Last October, Vkadik - a rare Amur tiger - caused panic in the Russian Pacific capital of Vladivostok by prowling the sprawling naval port's streets. The predator, one of only 480 or so of the rare species left in their natural habitat, was caught after mothers expressed fears that it was too dangerous to walk their children to school. The large tiger was spotted in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok by worried onlookers The predator escaped from the incredibly remote Bilkin National Park in Siberia, pictured During the animal's epic journey motorists reported its location to police in Shamora The wild animal was sent to a 'rehabilitation centre' before being released in May into the wild in Bikin national park crammed with deer, seen as an ideal prey. The experts believed they had found the perfect home for him, and one predicted: 'He'll stay there.' They even made a video about his journey to his new fiefdom. But now, precisely a year to the day since his last appearance in Vladivostok, this striped adventurer has stunned Russian wildlife specialists by returning to the city after a 450 miles trek covering almost the full length of Primosky region. Wanderlust Vladik sustained himself on his epic journey by ambushing, killing and eating at least three black Himalayan bears and an unknown number of ungulates. On his way he crossed a major motorway and also the world famous Trans-Siberian railway line. Cheekily, he also skirted the fence of the same rehabilitation centre where he had been sent to cure his thirst for the city life. The tiger - fitted since his capture last year with a satellite navigation tracking system on a collar - was monitored with increasing incredulity by naturalists on his escape from exile as he headed relentlessly back to Vladivostok. After capturing the animal, wildlife experts examined the tiger before taking him home The tiger was airlifted back to Siberia before being reintroduced to the wild The tiger was returned to the remote Siberian park - this time with a radio transmitter fitted His trip culminated in a visit to Yasnoe village close to the airport in the city, population 610,000, reported The Siberian Times. When he was here last year, he was the first tiger for 40 years seen in the city environs even though the big cats are endemic to the Russian Far East. This time, however, he has carefully shunned people and stayed away from most busy roads - at least so far. Despite this, he allowed the wildlife specialists to fleetingly glimpse him before vanishing into the taiga once more. Instead of venturing towards the city centre, he now appears to have other travel plans with two countries seen as possible destinations. The most likely aim looks like China, but he could yet opt for North Korea -- which may not suit his free spirit. Shortly after his return to the national park, the tiger appeared to be hunting successfully Pavel Fomenko, head of WWF Russia in Amur region, said: 'The story of Vladik confirms that we still do not know much about tigers. 'We were all very worried about his fate, but now, most likely, he is where he was striving to get to. 'I really hope that he will find his home and everything will be fine.' Fomenko said: 'We took Vladik 700 kilometres away to the Bikin national park - truly the best place for tigers to dwell. 'But he went back to Vladivostok, crossed the Trans-Siberian railway, overcame our terrible roads, and eventually now seems to have chosen China, and is going there.' Observers don't rule our another twist to his tale. Tiger expert Sergey Aramilev director of the Far Eastern department of the Amur Tiger centre, said: 'Where the predator is still moving is a mystery to us, but time will tell.' The younger brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was arrested for possession of child pornography after he reportedly boasted of being related to the perpetrator of the October 1 massacre. As TMZ first reported on Thursday, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, the next day after the slaughter at the Route 91 Harvest Festival that killed 58 people and injured more than 500, Bruce Paddock, 58, boasted to fellow residents at a North Hollywood assisted living facility that Stephen was his brother. When a staff member at the retirement home checked Bruces paperwork, Stephen Paddock was listed as his emergency contact. Loose lips sink ships: Bruce Paddock, 58 (pictured), was arrested after reportedly bragging that he was the brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock The worker decided that investigators would be interested in interviewing the slain Las Vegas gunmans family member and contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. Acting on that tip, police and the FBI started looking into Bruce Paddock's background, which revealed that there was an active search warrant out for him in connection to a child pornography case from 2014. The younger Paddock had been on the lam for more than two years, frequently changing his appearance and using other tactics to avoid capture. Reportedly, Bruce would rig his various homes with booby traps - which included tying propane tanks to the doors and would use cameras to create a homemade surveillance system. The account is similar to how his brother, Stephen, had cameras set up in his Mandalay Bay hotel room to check if someone was coming as he fired on the music festival crowd from his window. Police found more than 600 child pornography images on Bruce's computer, which was left behind in a Sun Valley auto repair shop where he squatted in 2014. But after he was evicted he disappeared and police had been searching for him ever since. Allegedly, Bruce would rig his various homes with booby traps - which included tying propane tanks to the doors and would use cameras to create a homemade surveillance system. He entered a plea of not guilty to felony charges last Friday (pictured) After the shooting, police said they received got a tip about Bruce's whereabouts and tracked him down to an assisted living center, where he was awaiting surgery for spinal stenosis. Bruce entered a plea of not guilty to felony charges of possession of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a child last Friday. His public defender asked that he be released under ankle monitor surveillance back to the assisted living facility, citing his disabilities as the reason why. The judge denied the request and instead set up a bail review hearing on November 3. After the shooting, police said they received got a tip about Bruce's whereabouts and tracked him down to an assisted living center, where he was awaiting surgery for spinal stenosis (pictured) Police found more than 600 child pornography images on Bruce's computer, which was left behind in a Sun Valley auto repair shop where he squatted in 2014 According to the 20-page criminal complaint, Bruce faces one count of possession of more than 600 images of child pornography and 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a child. Police say the crimes happened between January 1, 2014 and August 30, 2014. The LAPD released Bruce's mugshot 'in case there may be victims of unreported incidents'. Bruce's older brother Stephen (pictured) committed suicide on October 1 after killing 58 people and injuring more than 400 from his sniper's nest in the Mandalay Bay hotel They say his arrest has nothing to do with the Las Vegas shooting. Bruce is being held on $60,000 bail. TMZ previously reported that Bruce lives a 'nomadic life' and has a long criminal history including convictions for petty theft and vandalism. Bruce also threatened to murder a property owner in 2014, while he was squatting at a home in the San Fernando Valley. The home owner, Hector Cruz, told KTLA that Bruce was a longtime friend and he was going through a hard time that year when he asked to come over to his auto shop to fix his car. Instead, he ended up squatting in the attic of the business and soon became a nuisance to workers. Cruz said that when he found out Bruce was tampering with machinery and equipmen, the man snapped. He said Bruce got into a fighting stance with clenched fists and told him 'If you keep f****** with me I am going to kill you and drop you in the desert.' On another occasion, he brought a gas canister up into the attic and threatened to set the auto shop on fire. 'He told me he was going to kill me,' Cruz said. Cruz described Bruce as a drug user, who sold meth and weed. Cruz was eventually able to get a retraining order and Bruce fled the shop, leaving his computer with the damning images behind. Investigators are still trying to determine a motive for the October 1 shooting Crime seems to run in the Paddock family. Bruce and Stephen's father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was a notorious bank robber who was on the FBI's most Wanted List for nearly a decade. Benjamin was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a series of bank robberies in the late 50s and early 60s. But in 1968, he broke out of jail and went on the run. He was put on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List form 1969 until 1977 - when he was caught at a bingo parlor he started in Oregon. He died in 1998 at a correctional facility in Texas at the age of 71. During his lifetime, he was diagnosed as being psychopathic. Stephen was the oldest of his four sons with Dolores Irene Hudson. The 64-year-old killed 58 people and injured more than 400 after opening fire from his sniper's nest in the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino on October 1. Stephen committed suicide as police stormed his room. Stephen and Bruce's father Benjamin was a notorious bank robber who was on the FBI's Most Wanted List for nearly a decade Stephen and Bruce have two other brothers. Youngest Eric, 57, lives in Florida near their 89-year-old grandmother and Patrick, 60, is an engineer in Tucson. Police continue to search for a motive in the Las Vegas shooting. Stephen's family have said that he didn't show any sign of mental illness and seemed to have his life together - after making millions from investing. 'My brother was the most boring one in the family,' Patrick Paddock told the New York Times. 'He was the least violent one in the family, over a 30-year history, so its like, who?' But investigators have since discovered that Stephen started to show signs of angst in his final years, when he began to build up a massive stockpile of weapons. Several people noted that he started to smell of alcohol often. He was also reportedly prescribed the anti-anxiety drug Valium, which he was taking in its highest dose by June 2017. The side effects of the drug - which include suicidal thoughts and unusual risk-taking behavior - can be magnified when mixed with alcohol. A man suspected of killing his fiancee's mother was a pallbearer at her funeral just three days before he was arrested and charged with her murder. Jeffrey Scullin Jr, 20, is accused of fatally stabbing and shooting 49-year-old Melinda Pleskovic in her Strongsville, Ohio home on October 24. Police say in the days after the alleged murder, Scullin was a pallbearer at the popular sixth grade teacher's funeral and had been due to marry her daughter Anna last Saturday. Scullin, who had been living with Pleskovic's family, was breathing heavily when he told a 911 dispatcher that he and the victim's husband Bruce had found her on the kitchen floor with blood all around. Scroll down for video Jeffrey Scullin Jr, 20, is accused of fatally stabbing and shooting 49-year-old Melinda Pleskovic in her Strongsville, Ohio home on October 24 She was found with stab wounds to her back and a medical examiner said she died of 'gunshot wounds and sharp force injuries'. Police released no information about a possible motive when they revealed on Tuesday that he had been charged with aggravated murder. During the 911 call, Scullin told authorities that he had taken his 18-month-old daughter and the victim's 18-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, out of the house after discovering her body. 'We just came home. She's on the kitchen floor. I took her son and my daughter outside. Her husband is inside with her now,' he told dispatchers. 'We found her in the kitchen. She's not moving. I took the kids and I walked outside... There's a lot of blood.' It's not clear yet whether Scullin, who is an HVAC worker, has an attorney. He was being held on a $1 million bond. Scullin was living with the victim's family at the time of the murder. He was engaged to marry her daughter Anna, who he shared a daughter with, and was a pallbearer at her funeral Melinda Pleskovic was found with stab wounds to her back and a medical examiner said she died of 'gunshot wounds and sharp force injuries' The victim's husband also spoke to 911 dispatchers telling them that people had been trying to break into their home 'all year' and 'now someone killed her'. Police have released little information and would not say whether the suspect was linked to a series of attempted break-ins and suspicious activities at the home in the months leading up to the killing. Pleskovic blasted Strongsville police for not investigating the strange incidents that were happening at the home. Just days before, police investigated a report that an unknown man tried to enter the home by forcing open the back door. Records show police investigated a report of a theft from a car in January, and they went to the house again in July to investigate a suspicious person. Officers also were called in September when Melinda Pleskovic told officers a set of car keys were missing and that she kept finding her car unlocked and the alarm kept going off. The victim's husband told 911 dispatchers that people had been trying to break into their home (pictured) 'all year' and blasted Strongsville police for not investigating the strange incidents Jailed: Romainian lorry driver Dorel Galan A Romanian lorry driver has been jailed for five years and three months after killing a 52-year-old and causing a six-vehicle crash - while on his mobile phone. Dorel Galan admitted causing the death of council worker Ian Newell by driving his Man TGX lorry dangerously at 55mph on March 9. The court heard Galan had 23 seconds to slow down as he approached a tailback on the northbound A1 near Newark, Nottinghamshire. Galan also made a video call while driving minutes before the crash. Mr Newell, of Grantham, Lincolnshire, was crushed by the body of another lorry, smashed into by Galan, and was pronounced dead at the scene. CCTV and dashcam footage at the moment of impact was played in court by prosecutor Mary Loram - shrowing a huge cloud of powder as Galan tried to sharply apply the brakes. The trucker, of London Road, Grays, Essex, also admitted two counts of using a false instrument after tampering with an hour-tracking device. He was also disqualified from driving for six years and eight months. Speaking about Mr Newell, Judge Timothy Spencer QC said: 'He was a fine man, he was a positive contributor to society, he was at the centre of a loving family and he was an excellent, husband, father, son and brother.' Sentencing Galan at Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Spencer told him: 'As I understand the evidence in this case, the complete weight (of the lorry) was something over 32 tonnes. 'It is a very, very dangerous weapon. 'You must have been able to see ahead had you been paying proper attention - the only explanation can be that you were not paying attention to the road ahead.' In a victim impact statement summarised by Ms Loram, Mr Newell's wife said her daughters 'struggled to focus in the shadow of their father's death'. Footage of the crash was captured on the dashcam of a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction Following proceedings through a Romanian interpreter, Galan tried to hold back tears as he was sentenced. Harry Bowyer, defending, said: 'The personal mitigation is his guilty plea this morning - he has expressed genuine remorse.' The family of Mr Newell took the decision not to attend court on Thursday. One of the lucky survivors of a suspicious Brisbane house fire has been identified as a bikini model accused of trafficking crystal methamphetamine and ecstasy. Kylie Gould was at the Mackenzie home on Wednesday night when a group of men smashed a window and poured accelerant inside before igniting it and escaping in a car, according to The Courier Mail. Gould, who is allegedly linked to Black Uhlans bikie associate Matthew Delander, is facing eight separate charges including the possession of a .22 Phoenix Arms rimfire pistol. One of the lucky survivors of a suspicious Brisbane house fire has been identified as Kylie Gould (pictured) - a bikini model accused of trafficking crystal methamphetamine and ecstasy Ms Gould (pictured with sex worker Cherie Mollica, 29) was at the Mackenzie home on Wednesday night when a group of men smashed a window and poured accelerant inside before igniting it and escaping in a car Gould, who is allegedly linked to Black Uhlans bikie associate Matthew Delander, is facing eight separate charges including the possession of a .22 Phoenix Arms rimfire pistol The model was initially arrested in April last year after police searched her home. The family inside the torched home on Wednesday are 'extremely lucky to be alive', Brisbane Inspector Steve Flori told 9News. A 33-year-old pregnant woman, a 44-year-old man, a 67-year-old woman and two children were inside at the time, police said. The man attempted to contain the fire a number of times before emergency services arrived and extinguished the blaze. 'He only stopped doing that when fire services arrived so he was very brave in his efforts to put that fire out,' Insp Flori said. The family inside the torched home (pictured) on Wednesday are 'extremely lucky to be alive', Brisbane Inspector Steve Flori said The model (pictured) was initially arrested in April last year after police searched her home The group set fire to the Mackenzie property before fleeing in a car, police say The 44-year-old man sustained serious but non-life threatening injuries and was transported to Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. The woman, who is 35 weeks pregnant, was transported to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The 67-year-old, 13-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy were not injured. Acting Inspector Tim Clark said fire services attended and extinguished the fire, which was contained to the front room of the house. 'Our crews have gone into action and rescued one occupant with burns from within the premise,' Acting Inspector Tim Clark said. 'All other occupants were lucky that working smoke alarms were working and notified the occupants and woke them up and they were able to exit the house.' Anyone with any information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. A 33-year-old pregnant woman, a 44-year-old man, a 67-year-old woman and two children were inside at the time, police said (pictured) Tokyo police have trained an all-female squad to protect First Lady Melania Trump when she arrives in Japan with President Donald Trump at the weekend. The police unit, which is made up of mostly riot squad officers, will also guard Ivanka Trump after she arrived in Tokyo on Thursday. The female officers, who will ditch riot gear for understated black suits, have been training out on the streets of Tokyo in the lead up to the arrival of Melania and Ivanka. Tokyo police have trained an all-female riot squad to protect Melania and Ivanka Trump from female admirers armed with gifts. The officers were spotted training in a mock scenario on Wednesday outside the Imperial Palace Their task is to protect the first lady and first daughter from 'female admirers' who may try to approach them with gifts and flowers, according to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. Police say they are expecting large numbers of eager admirers to gather in order catch a glimpse of them, particularly Ivanka who is seen as a fashion icon. Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department opted to create the all-women team in preparation for an increase of female VIP visitors in the lead up to the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. Melania and Ivanka will be their first official run as a squad. Their task is to protect the first lady and first daughter from 'female admirers' who may try to approach them with gifts and flowers. They are pictured above in a training exercise The female officers, who will ditch riot gear for understated black suits, have been training out on the streets of Tokyo in the lead up to the arrival of Melania and Ivanka Japanese police have planned for 10,000 officers, including the female squad (pictured above with male officers), to provide security when the Trumps arrive Police say they are expecting large numbers of eager admirers to gather in order catch a glimpse of them, particularly Ivanka who is seen as a fashion icon The women were spotted training in mock scenarios outside the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo on Wednesday. They were responding to people pretending to be admirers as they jumped out at the VIPs armed with gifts and bouquets. The officers were spotted pouncing on the admirer before she could approach the dignitary. Japanese police have planned for 10,000 officers, including the female squad, to provide security when the Trumps arrive. Ivanka Trump arrived in Narita, east of Tokyo, on Thursday. She is due to speak about women's role in the economy during Friday's World Assembly for Women 2017. The President and First Lady are due to arrive in Japan on Sunday ahead of a 12 day tour of Asia, including South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Travels: Ivanka Trump landed in Japan on Thursday ahead of her speech on female entrepreneurship, which she is due to give on Friday in Tokyo Fine dining: Right after her landing, Ivanka went to enjoy a traditional kaiseki meal, a refined, meticulously prepared multi-course dinner A married couple from Michigan has been arrested for allegedly molesting a child for nearly two years and forcing her to eat and smoke cigarettes. Kyle Roy, 33, and his wife Jennifer Roy, 46, of Thomas Township, were arraigned on Tuesday on eight felony counts stemming from the sexual and physical abuse that allegedly occurred from November 2014 until October 2016. Court documents allege that the Roys sexually abused the teenage victim and made her eat a half-pack of cigarette and smoke the rest. Newlyweds arrested: Kyle Roy (left), 33, and Jennifer Roy (right), 46, of Michigan, have been charged with criminal sexual conduct and child abuse Dark secret: The married couple are accused of molesting and beating a girl for nearly two years, and making her eat and smoke cigarettes According to a felony complaint cited by Mlive.com, the male suspect made the child disrobe and whipped her with a belt, punched and choked her. The husband and wife have both been charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and third-degree child abuse in that case. Kyle Roy also faces additional charges for allegedly engaging in a sexual relationship with another minor between May-December 2014. According to social media posts, Kyle and Jennifer, who goes by Jenni, got married in October 2016, around the time the last attack on the female victim allegedly took place. Police say the girl was 14 years old at the time, according to the station WNEM. What lies beneath: Police say the sexual and physical abuse occurred between November 2014 and October 2016 at the Roys' Thomas Township, Michigan, home (pictured) Kyle Roy, who married Jennifer in October 2016, faces additional charges for allegedly abusing another minor in 2014 That month, the girls relative contacted the Thomas Township Police Department to complain about the parents conduct, and in December 2016, the law enforcement agency forwarded the case to the Saginaw County Prosecutor's Office, reported ABC12. Prosecutors announced the charges against Kyle and Jennifer Roy last week. The husband's bond was set at $150,000, while the wife was being held in the Saginaw County Jail on $20,000 bond. Both are due back in court on November 14. If convicted of the most serious charge against them, the Roys could be looking at a life sentence. Jonathan Kane (pictured outside Truro Crown Court) hit Catherine Bailey with his Land Rover Discovery in Cornwall A businessman who killed a dog walker near his million-pound holiday home says he knew he hit something but did not stop as he had to catch a flight to Germany. Catherine Bailey, 45, was thrown nearly 60 feet into a ditch after the hit and run and died instantly from a fractured spine and 14 broken ribs. She was hit by a Land Rover driven by company director Jonathan Kane as he drove to catch a night sleeper from Cornwall back to London. The body of the mother-of-one was found in a ditch by her husband Alan who went to look for her when she failed to return to home. A court heard that Kane, 52, left the scene of the crash without reporting it because he was anxious to catch a flight to attend a business meeting in Germany. Father-of-three Kane, of Chelsea, London has admitted charges of causing death by careless driving, dangerous driving and driving without insurance. He denies the more serious charge of causing death by dangerous driving near his luxury second home near Polzeath, Cornwall. Kane told Truro Crown Court he had not driven since the accident one evening last July and had no plans to drive in the future. He said: 'I didn't see or hear anything, I wish I had. 'I knew I had hit something and I knew the vehicle was damaged but at the time the car felt fine to drive and I had a train to catch. 'It just didn't feel different, it's a pretty solid thing. Kane, of Chelsea, west London, had been at his second home nearby in Trebetherick before the incident 'At some point I heard and felt a bang. It was a forceful bang. I stopped the car as quickly as I felt it was safe to do so. 'I thought I had hit some thing and I did not know what I had hit. I could not see what I had hit so I could not know what I had hit.' Asked why he didn't wait at the scene, Kane replied: 'I wish I had, but the car felt safe to drive. I didn't know. I couldn't see what I had hit, therefore I carried on my journey.' Witnesses told police the Land Rover was badly damaged as Kane parked it at Plymouth railway station. Smoke was coming from part of the vehicle, the front nearside was severely damaged and the headlight was pointing at a skewed angle. Parts of the headlight mounting were found at the scene and a plastic wheel arch had become detached and was found later in the back of the car. The bonnet of the Land Rover was also severely dented by the impact. Catherine Bailey was hit by a car driven by 52-year-old Jonathan Kane, who fled the scene in north Cornwall Kane claimed he first learned that a woman had been killed when he was in Germany. He said: 'I saw a BBC website for the Cornwall region and it said some thing like 'hit and run' and showed a picture of that lane and I recognised that lane. 'I was very shocked, I went very cold and I felt very shocked. 'I was in Germany, I was coming back to England anyway and I realised that as soon as I could I would have to put myself in front of the police. 'I got back to London on the plane and booked the overnight train again so I could present myself to the police the following morning. 'The reconstruction shows that I should have seen her so a competent person would have seen her. 'If I had felt at any time that the vehicle was unsafe to drive I would not have driven it and I was not desperate to catch the train.' Kane fled the scene near St Minver, thinking he had only hit a wheelie bin, the court heard. Flowers were left at the scene following Mrs Bailey's death Stephen Mooney, prosecuting, said to Kane: 'No business meeting is more important than a life, is it? 'This is why Mrs Bailey died, because you thought it more important to make that train and you put that above the importance of other users of the road.' Kane denied being distracted at the time and said he was not using his phone. He added: 'I was driving the vehicle, I wasn't thinking of anything. 'I don't recall being distracted at the time. 'I'm sorry if I'm being stupid but I don't know how to answer that question.. If this was how it was and I didn't see her I must have been distracted. 'I wasn't on my phone, I simply did not see her, I don't know why.' Accident investigator Mike Lackey said Mrs Bailey was found in the ditch by the side of the road about 18 metres from the point of impact. Kane has admitted causing Mrs Bailey's death by careless driving and dangerous driving - but denies the more serious charge of causing death by dangerous driving He said evidence suggested Kane was driving between 29mph to 35mph, which was appropriate given the winding nature of the lane. Given a speed of 30mph, the court heard this worked out at three seconds before impact respectively. However, the court heard this assumed Mrs Bailey was standing upright and facing the oncoming vehicle. It was suggested by Kane's defence that she may have been bending down, perhaps to move her two dogs from the road, which would have reduced the visibility. The court was told Kane is married with three children, and runs a family business, making safety equipment that is sold worldwide, started by his father. They bought the second home in Cornwall around 1998, and had been visiting some friends on the night of the incident. Fired national security advisor Mike Flynn promoted multiple tweets now known to have been generated by Kremlin-backed Russian 'troll' accounts up until days before the election. Flynn, who President Donald Trump fired after he failed to disclose his Russia contacts to Vice President Mike Pence, followed five different accounts tied to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin backed 'troll factory.' House Intelligence Committee Democrats on Wednesday released the Twitter handles of 2,750 troll accounts that were active during the campaign. In addition to following five of them, Flynn was found have 'quote tweeted' several of them, adding his own statements to go with original tweets that have since been taken off Twitter, the Daily Beast reported. Former Trump National Security Advisor followed and forwarded tweets produced by the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency up until the eve of the election Flynn currently has 166,000 followers, and follows more than 9,000 accounts. The accounts he follwed carred the names Jenn_Abrams, LauraBaeley, Pamela_Moore13, SouthLoneStar, and Ten_GOP. Twitter shut down the The Ten_GOP account in August after reports it was being run out of Russia, despite purporting to be the official account of the Tennessee Republican Party and gaining an extensive following. The SouthLoneStar falsely claimed to be a 'Proud Texan and American Patriot,' while three others claimed to be female Trump supporters, according to the report. Among the thousands of people they fooled was Flynn, who retweeted inflammatory posts up until the eve of the election. '#ImVotingBecause @realdonaldtrump & @mike_pence will be our next POTUS & VPOTUS, Flynn wrote the day before the election, citing his son as well as Ten_GOP. 'Yup, this is a great ad...needs to be RT'd frequently,' Flynn commented on one Ten_GOP tweet, the substance of which didn't get preserved. Flynn followed five accounts now revealed to have been created at a Russian troll farm Among other things, TEN_GOP sent out tweets disputing Russian election interference, went after Hillary Clinton, and backed President Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey after the election. Flynn has already drawn the scrutiny of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators as they probe Russian interference in the election. He met during the transition with Russia's then ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. He also gave an infamous December 2015 speech in Moscow that was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn got paid more than $45,000 for the speech, when he attended the 10th anniversary gala for Russian TV network RT. Police have identified the four University of Idaho students who were found dead in a home near the Moscow, Idaho campus on Sunday. Scores of loyal Apple fans have lined up along Sydney's George Street in preparation for the release of the $1,829 iPhone X. The phone will be released worldwide on Friday, November 3, with fans in their thousands queuing outside the two-storey Apple store in Sydney in hopes of securing the first handset at 8am. The smartphone is currently the most expensive on the market and features a 3D face scanner, 5.8-inch screen, glass body, and improved cameras. Scroll down for video Daily Mail Australia spoke to the lucky few able to purchase the iPhone X, including Mazen Kourouche, 20, (pictured) who has lined up for the 6s, 7 and 8 handset releases previously 'I do it for the hype. I love the iPhone and I love the Apple atmosphere. I've also got a Youtube channel so I'll be heading over the Darling Harbour to record a review soon,' he said (pictured on the right) Joshua Yaccub (pictured centre) was first in the line of the general sales in Sydney this morning and told Daily Mail Australia he had been lining up for seven days Daily Mail Australia spoke to the lucky few able to purchase the iPhone X, including student Mazen Kourouche, 20, who has lined up for the 6s, 7 and 8 handset releases previously. He was the first in line for the presale today. 'I do it for the hype. I love the iPhone and I love the Apple atmosphere. I've also got a Youtube channel so I'll be heading over the Darling Harbour to record a review soon,' he said. 'I was the first here to get the iPhone X and I was first to get the iPhone 8 as well.' 'I do it for the hype. I love the iPhone and I love the Apple atmosphere. I've also got a Youtube channel so I'll be heading over the Darling Harbour to record a review soon,' he said They've finally got it! Ahmad Rassa was second in line at the general sale to purchase the iPhone X (pictured) Mr Kourouche (pictured) actually gave his iPhone 8 handset to his mother, who previously had an iPhone SE Mr Kourouche actually gave his iPhone 8 handset to his mother, who previously had an iPhone SE. 'I wanted the iPhone X and she had been complaining about her phone for awhile now,' he said. Joshua Yaccub was first in the line of the general sales in Sydney this morning and told Daily Mail Australia he had been lining up for seven days. 'We set up shifts so we could take it in turns sitting out the front,' he said. Here it is! Mr Kourouche unveils the latest iPhone offering by Apple (pictured) Excited fans play the with tenth anniversary phone in Sydney's Apple store (pictured) Last minute rush hour! Fans were ready and waiting to film themselves entering the Apple store (pictured) It was all smiles down at the Apple store in Sydney as excited fans geared up for a day of waiting (pictured) Ahmad Rassa managed to squeeze in at second place for the general sale line, and agreed that the main reason he was lining up was to 'be one of the first.' 'I just can't wait to set it up,' he said enthusiastically. Others spoke openly about how they had been in the extensive line for 'three days, 24 hours a day.' The men who were first in line commented that 'it's a beautiful phone and the camera quality looks great' on first glance. The men who were first in line commented that 'it's a beautiful phone and the camera quality looks great' on first glance The men who were first in line commented that 'it's a beautiful phone and the camera quality looks great' on first glance 'I'm pretty sure they've got a microphone inside the camera as well. I'm a fanatic, so I'll quickly set it up for you to see what's inside,' Mr Kourouche later told the awaiting media 'I'm pretty sure they've got a microphone inside the camera as well. I'm a fanatic, so I'll quickly set it up for you to see what's inside,' Mr Kourouche later told the awaiting media. He commented that this 'perfectly fits in the hand' unlike past models, which were exponentially larger, but still managed to have a 'full screen display.' But before he 'even exits the shop' he assured waiting fans that he'd be putting on a 'case and a screen protector.' One man commented he had an exam 'tomorrow' but wouldn't risk leaving the line to study. Legions of fans have been waiting for days to secure the first iPhone X in Australia The smartphone is currently the most expensive on the market at $1,829 (pictured outside the Apple store on Sydney's George Street) X marks the spot! Some fans have been waiting outside the Apple store for weeks and selling off their spots online (pictured) Pre-orders for the highly-anticipated device opened on October 27, and the iPhone X sold out within minutes. However, general sales for the device opened this morning at 8am so there is still hope if you want to get your hands on one. A post on the Apple website says: 'Stores in most countries will have iPhone X available for walk-in customers, who are encouraged to arrive early.' Pre-orders for the highly-anticipated device opened on 27 October, and the iPhone X sold out within minutes (outside Sydney's Apple store) However, general sales for the device opened this morning at 8am so there is still hope if you want to get your hands on one (outside Sydney's Apple store) Australia's surging population is set to hit 25 million next year, a staggering 34 years earlier than predicted by experts thanks to a massive influx of migrants. An Australian Bureau of Statistics forecast written in 1998 projected the population's growth would hit between 23.5 and 26.4 million by the year 2051. The prediction incorrectly assumed fertility rates would decline, and underestimated the amount of migrants that would flood to Australia over the next two decades. More than 230,000 new migrants call Australia home each year - compared to the conservative 70,000 the ABS predicted would arrive every 12 months. Australia's surging population is set to hit 25 million next year, a staggering 34 years earlier than predicted by experts (crowded Bondi Beach, Sydney, pictured) A 1998 ABS forecast grossly underestimated the amount of migrants that would flood in to Australia over the next two decades (stock image, Sydney's Lakemba mosque) Australia's rapid population growth is the result of rising fertility rates, immigration and humans living longer. 'It's not to blame the bureau at all, they have some of the best minds and statisticians, it's just that we've changed what's going on here, policy has changed, the assumptions they were basing it on has changed,' social researcher Mack McCrindle told 3AW Radio. 'Back then they thought we'd have fewer babies, the fertility rate is dropping, it's actually going the other way and we are having larger families. 'They were predicting about 90,000 net arrivals from overseas per year we are exceeding 200,000 per year.' 'This forecast had Melbourne hitting a maximum of 4.5 million people in 2051, it broke that mid century forecast two years ago, 30 years ahead of schedule.' When it comes to the population expansion rate, Australia is growing at an annual pace of 1.6 per cent compared with 0.6 per cent for other wealthy nations. National Australia Bank released a graph on Thursday comparing Australia's population growth rate with 78 rich countries, as defined by the World Bank. Australia's rapid population growth is the result of rising fertility rates, immigration and humans living longer (Melbourne pictured) This new NAB graph shows Australia's population growth is higher than other rich nations Australia's net annual migration rate has been close to 200,000 since 2008, building on a turbo-charged population growth push started by the Howard government in 2001. The last time Australia's population grew at a similar pace to the rest of the developed world was in 1993, when it expanded by an annual rate of 0.9 per cent compared with 0.8 per cent in other rich nations. It surged to two per cent a year in 2008, just before the global financial crisis hit, which was well above the world average of 0.8 per cent. But NAB's chief economist Alan Oster, a former federal Treasury official in Canberra, cautioned against the idea of cutting population growth in a bid to reduce Sydney and Melbourne's unaffordable house prices. 'We don't think the reason that house prices have gone up is because of population,' he told Daily Mail Australia. NAB chief economist Alan Oster says a migration slowdown won't making housing affordable NAB has released a series of graphs to argue that population growth is good for housing NAB's chief economist slammed Dick Smith (pictured) for calling for a slowdown in migration Mr Oster said that while population growth played a role in real estate values, the economy was more influential, pointing out that Perth's house prices fell sharply after the mining boom. He added a slowdown in immigration would do nothing to boost the supply of housing, and actually make affordability worse as there's a shallower pool of labour to build new homes. 'The story is not a simple, 'Well, let's stop population growth' it's much more complicated than that,' he said. 'Housing costs might go down, maybe, but what will happen is the number of houses will go down, so activity levels will go down.' The former public servant also took aim at millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith's call to reduce Australia's annual net immigration rate to the 20th century average of 70,000 a year in a bid to make housing more affordable. 'As an economist, I think that's a really dumb argument,' Mr Oster said. Mr Oster said Australia's higher population growth, based equally on the birth rate and immigration, had helped boost the nation's income per capita ratio, which is below the United States but well ahead of Japan and South Korea. Jared Kushner has handed over documents to Robert Mueller's probe it was revealed Thursday - as the special counsel lasers in on the firing of James Comey. The president's son-in-law's move was revealed by CNN in the first sign of Trump's innermost circle being in the spotlight and in particular, Kushner's role in Comey's departure. Kushner, the husband of Ivanka Trump, has been widely reported to have pushed the president to fire Comey, setting off an explosive chain of events which led to Mueller's wide-ranging Russia probe. Sources inside the White House indicated that Kushner is not believed to be a target of the investigation. His attorneys have stated repeatedly that he intends to cooperate with Mueller's investigators. Spotlight: Robert Mueller has been given documents by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and one of his most senior and trusted advisers Kushner is of interest to investigators as one of the president's closest advisors, who before Trump took office had a portfolio that included multiple overseas contacts. Trump's son-in-law made multiple contacts with Russians and other foreign nationals that he did not initially disclose on forms when he joined the government. He was also reported to be among those insiders who encouraged the president to sack James Comey as head of the FBI. That action which Trump in an NBC interview said he took while the Russia probe was on his mind is considered central to any case that the president attempted to obstruct the federal investigation. One attorney said Kushner 'did not oppose' the firing. Kushner was among three top Trump campaign officials who attended an infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-backed lawyer. President Trump's former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, will be in the hot seat next week on Capitol Hill Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner,36, smiles as he leaves his Washington D.C. home on Thursday morning, November 2, 2017 The others were Donald Trump Jr. and former campaign chair Paul Manafort, who was indicted this week and is now subject to home confinement while wearing a GPS monitored ankle bracelet. He also oversaw the Trump campaign's data analytics operation, another area of interest for investigators pursuing the use of outside troll and fake social media accounts that got targeted to key states. Meanwhile President Trump's former bodyguard, Keith Schiller, will be in the hot seat next week on Capitol Hill on the firing of Comey. Schiller will talk to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, behind closed doors, as part of the panel's election meddling investigation, CNN reported. A longtime aide to Trump, Schiller was entrusted by the president in May to deliver a notice to the FBI that James Comey was being removed as its director. Congressional investigators are probing Comey's abrupt dismissal against allegations that Trump fired him to squash a Department of Justice investigation into his presidential campaign's connections to the Kremlin. A team of prosecutors who were brought into the Justice Department to takeover the election probe are also said to be looking at the possibility that the firing rises to the level of obstruction of justice. Schiller is one of several high-level witnesses the committee is calling next week as it goes into overdrive. House and Senate panels looking into claims of Russian collusion are trying to wrap up their work by the beginning of next year. Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy advisor, and Ike Kaveladze, a businessman who attended the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and the Russians, had dates with House intel on Thursday. A transcript of Page's conversation with lawmakers will be released in the next several days. Kaveladze's role in the Trump Tower meeting was allegedly to act as translator, even though the Russian lawyer who wanted the meeting brought her own. Both his and Schiller's discussions with lawmakers will take place in private. The White House says that Trump fired Comey came after the attorney general and deputy attorney general orally recommended it. He asked them put it in writing, and brought down the hammer when they did, according to his aides' version of events. Trump confused the narrative when he said had it in his mind what he would do and Russia was a part of it. It's not known who else Trump might have asked for advice, but, as Yahoo News pointed out at the time, his 6'4" personal bodyguard, Schiller, who's an ex-NYPD officer, was likely polled, as well. Schiller's official title was director of Oval Office operations until he left the White House this fall. He was Trump's courier on the day in question. The Trump confidant was seen entering the FBI's office in downtown Washington, six blocks down from the White House with a manila envelope on the evening that Comey was canned and leaving empty handed. Trump's personal bodyguard since the 1990s, Schiller followed his billionaire employer to the campaign trail, where he infamously removed Univision host Jorge Ramos from a press conference once, and into the Oval Office. Trump's personal bodyguard since the 1990s, Schiller followed his billionaire employer to the campaign trail, where he infamously removed Univision host Jorge Ramos from a press conference once, and into the Oval Office During Trump's presidential campaign, Schiller served as the liaison between Trump's team and the Secret Service. Later, as a deputy assistant to Trump at the White House he was known to wrangle press out of the president's work space when they'd stayed their welcome. It is unclear why Schiller was chosen to take the letter firing Comey to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Washington, D.C. office, other than the fact that he's a 20-year Trump associate and he was nearby. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in May as she briefed the press that the specifics of letter the president sent were above her pay grade. It is unclear why Schiller was chosen to take the letter firing Comey to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Washington, D.C. office, other than the fact that he's a 20-year Trump associate and he was nearby But she did not deny that it was Schiller who dropped off the letter when a reporter asked about the involvement of one of Trump's 'long-time security advisors.' 'He followed the proper protocol in that process, which is a handwritten notification,' Huckabee Sanders said of Trump's decision to write Comey instead of calling him. She added, 'No matter how you fire someone, its never an easy process, and so he felt like following protocol was the best thing to do.' Trump also sent Comey an email letting him know he'd been fired. He was in California at that time and learned of his sacking while he was addressing bureau employees at the FBI's Los Angeles Office. A man from Michigan who was convicted of the murder in the brutal stabbing death of his girlfriend has been sentenced to life in prison without parole. Joshua Salyers, 32, brutally killed Barbara Dailey, 22, last year slashing her throat while she was home alone. Salyers finally admitted to murdering the mother-of-three. After the couple had a massive argument, she broke up with him and kicked him out of their family home. Joshua Salyers, 32, was found guilty of the murder of Barbara Dailey, 22 and will now spend the rest of him life behind bars Joshua Salyers, 32, has been sentenced to life in jail without parole after mother-of-three Barbara Dailey, 22, (center) was brutally killed inside her Michigan home During the trial he protested his innocence claiming he was attempting to stop her from committing suicide by slashing her own throat. Dailey suffered severe blunt force trauma to her head, neck and upper back and four cuts on her neck. One of them was a 12-centimeter gash, deep enough to cut her jugular vein and trachea. She was also covered in bruises, evidence that she had been strangled along with cuts and abrasions which indicated to the medical examiner that she had been in a fight for her life. Dailey's (left) body was covered in bruises and had a cut across her throat. Initially, Salyers said his girlfriend had been attacked by someone else When police arrived, they found Dailey with cuts and a blunt force trauma to the head. Salyers was also at the scene Judge Timothy Hicks said the grisly murder was among the most 'vicious' he has seen in his time on the bench. 'I've been here about 21 years now, and only a couple of other times have I seen such a vicious injury as that you inflicted on Ms. Dailey,' Hicks said. 'The only way he will find peace is he accepts what he did. Salyers needs to the think about what Dailey's thoughts were in the last few moments of her life.' At the time of his arrest Salyers told that he saw someone else running from the murder scene which lead to police taking an innocent man into custody at gunpoint - he then later blamed Dailey for her own death. According to MLive Before Salyers was sentenced, four of Dailey's family members addressed the judge to give impact statements. 'I truly hope he can accept his crimes and accept his guilt,' Doug Carlson, a neighbor and family friend said. 'He stole the life of a beautiful mother, leaving three beautiful girls behind who will never feel her love again. Words can't describe the hurt and pain you've made everybody feel. 'I want you to feel pain every day for the rest of your life. I called you a friend and trusted you.' The New York truck terrorist asked a British tourist about jobs in the UK and how much he would be paid, it was claimed last night. Briton Damian Erskine said he flew in to Newark airport in New Jersey last Thursday and Sayfullo Saipov was the Uber driver who picked him up at the airport. As he spent an hour with him driving to a destination in New Jersey, it seemed that Saipov - who lived in the state - was interested in moving to Britain. Terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov may have been planning to move to London it has emerged The terror suspect who killed eight people in New York had earlier asked a British tourist how he could possibly get a job working for Uber in London, it has been revealed Investigators say that, since arriving in the US seven years ago, the Uzbek had struggled to find work. Mr Erskine told the BBC: He was asking about the UK, he was asking about jobs in the UK and he wanted to know how much an engineer would earn every month. I was like I dont know. I have no idea. Im not an engineer. He was very polite. He rushed to help with our bags at both ends and he said bye when he drove off. Saipov even recommended restaurants to visit, he said. He was talking about America and jobs he had here, he was talking about driving around doing big road trips around America, where I think he was transporting Range Rovers, in fact. Mr Erskine, who said he was helping the FBI with its enquiries, still has a record of the Uber trip on his mobile phone. It showed he paid $41.69 for the journey and rated Saipov five stars out of five. The terror suspect had an average rating of 4.76, the app showed, and in six months had been rated five stars more than 200 times. Damian Erskine, pictured, had paid Saipov $41.69 for an Uber ride and rated him five out of five Mr Erskine showed the BBC that Saipov had received 200 five star rating over six months He said he was stunned when police published a photo of Saipov soon after Tuesdays attack on Tuesday. When his photo came up, its a cliche but I just went cold, he said. I was like No, no, no - it does look familiar but no, surely not. It just makes you feel sick really. I shared this time with someone whos gone on to do something like that and was obviously planning to do something like that. It doesnt sound like it was a spur of the moment thing. It just makes you feel very dirty almost. Megyn Kelly got a delightful little surprise on Thursday, as her team at 'Today' managed to locate the host's junior prom photo. The throwback treat came towards the end of the program as Megyn aired a fashion segment that showed the different trends from each decade that were making a comeback. In the picture, a beaming Megyn smiles from ear-to-ear while clutching a bouquet of flowers at her waist and showcasing a still stylish off-the-shoulder dress in white lace with a sweetheart neckline. And to finish it off, Megyn was rocking some very big Jon Bon Jovi-hair, with the photo snapped in 1987, just one year after her favorite rocker shot to fame with the release of his band's third album, 'Slippery When Wet.' Scroll down for video Concern: Megyn Kelly got quite the surprise on Thursday when her staff rolled out some vintage photos of the 'Today' host (Kelly above) Slide me Bigger is better: One of the images showed the host before her junior prom, with a tight perm and impressive body wave Megyn was speaking about her love for Firenze v-neck sweaters and knotted pearl necklaces when she was alerted to the photo that was about to be flashed on the screen. 'Oh, no. I'm afraid,' exclaimed Megyn. 'Look at my perm. It was my body wave.' Sadly, the big hair trend is not one that is coming back this season, but the off-the-shoulder look is, which seemed to please Megyn. 'I was ahead of my time, deadpanned the host. Earlier in the program she also showed a baby picture of herself during the seventies segment, saying of her blunt bangs that her mother said it looked as though she had 'chewed them' She then joked: 'The only reason I ever looked nice is because my sister put me in a nice outfit. My mother never did. I love her. You'll meet her later and understand more.' Who wore it better: 'Oh, no. I'm afraid. Look at my perm. It was my body wave,' exclaimed Megyn (left i 1987, right in 2017) Throw way back: Megyn also shared a photo of herself from the earlier seventies on the program (above) Megyn welcomed former 'Dynasty' star Catherine Oxenberg on the program on Thursday, who spoke about her daughter India's involvement with the controversial self-help group NXIVM. On Friday she will have Ireland Baldwin on the program to speak about body positivity. Becky Steenhoek, the young woman who has filed lawsuit claiming she was sexually harassed on the set of 'The Bachelor' will also appear on the program. She spoke with DailyMailTV on Thursday of the multiple incidents she allegedly endured when producers on he program asked the young female employee questions such as: 'Is your vagina shaved?' and 'Have you ever fondled [testicles] before?' Russell Crowe has faced questions by the Department of Immigration after he offered to house and employ six refugees from the now-closed Manus Island detention centre. The actor blasted Australia's handling of the centre this week, calling it a 'nation's shame'. And on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton asked The Australian how the actor expected to carry out his offer, considering current immigration policies. 'How does he anticipate he will resettle refugees without the necessary visas?' she said. Russell Crowe blasted Australia's handling of the Manus Island detention centre this week, calling it a 'nation's shame' In a series of tweets, Crowe called out the government's handling of Manus Island after the detention centre was officially closed on Tuesday. 'Manus. A Nations shame. Lives held in limbo. Lives lived in fear & despair. It's f***ing disgraceful,' the actor tweeted. Around 600 asylum seekers and refugees barricaded themselves inside the complex in Papua New Guinea. In a response to a Twitter user who responded to the actor by writing 'maybe you could put them up somewhere if you're so ashamed,' Crowe offered to support the refugees himself. In a series of tweets, Crowe called out the government's handling of Manus Island after the detention centre was officially closed on Tuesday Russell Crowe took to Twitter to blast Australia's handling of Manus Island refugees 'I've thought about this,' he told the man. He added: 'I believe I could house and find jobs for 6. I'm sure there'd be other Australians who would do the same.' Meanwhile, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed an offer to take 150 refugees from Australia's offshore detention centres still stands. Ms Ardern will discuss the Manus Island stand-off with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull when they meet in Sydney on Sunday. In a response to a Twitter user who asked why the actor 'maybe you could put them up somewhere if you're so ashamed,' Crowe offered to support the refugees himself 'I think anyone would look at a situation like that and see the human face,' Ms Ardern said on Thursday. 'I am looking forward to having a conversation directly with the prime minister on Sunday about some of those issues, and New Zealand's role in and view on Manus Island in particular.' New Zealand's refugee resettlement offer was made by the Key government in 2013. Detainees spent the night digging for water, while others kept watch to protect the camp in case of attack It has been rejected several times on the grounds that it would give refugees a backdoor into Australia and become a marketing opportunity for people smugglers. Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who is among those on Manus Island, says 'the place is like a war zone'. Detainees spent Wednesday night digging for water, while others kept watch to protect the camp in case of attack. Around 600 asylum seekers and refugees have barricaded themselves inside the mothballed complex in Papua New Guinea 'Last night the refugees were in a dark place. People were lying down on the floor and were struggling with serious hunger, having not eaten since Tuesday,' Mr Boochani told the AAP from Manus Island on Thursday. 'At the same time, they were struggling with tropical mosquitoes. Now, malaria is a new worry to add to the many other risks the refugees face.' Staff have abandoned the camp, power and running water has been cut off, and the last food packs were distributed on Sunday night. The United Nations refugee arm has two observers on the ground at Manus Island and says alternative accommodation arrangements are insufficient. It called on Australia to urgently put a stop to the unfolding crisis. Staff have abandoned the camp, power and running water has been cut off, and the last food packs were distributed on Sunday night Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is blaming advocates and the Greens for the ongoing Manus Island stand-off. 'The advocates who are here telling them not to move, they are not doing those people any favours,' he told the Nine Network on Thursday. 'I want to close Manus Island as quickly as possible. It doesn't help when you have got the Greens telling people not to engage and move. It makes a difficult situation even worse.' Human rights lawyers have lodged an injunction in the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court which would effectively force the centre to re-open. The case is expected to be heard on Thursday. The Lombrum centre was forced to close after the court ruled last year that Australia's detention of refugees and asylum seekers there was illegal and unconstitutional. The father of a baby fighting for her life after suffering the worst case of meningitis doctors had seen for decades has railed against the NHSs decision to stop vaccinations for 12-week-old children. Ten-month-old Kia Gott, could now lose all of her limbs, sight and hearing and suffer 90 per cent brain damage after being rushed to hospital with Meningitis C septicaemia four weeks ago. But she only contracted the infection because the health service last year increased the age for MenC vaccine to 12-months because there are so few cases among babies in the UK. Doctors said she could lose her hearing and sight and also be left 90 per cent brain damaged Kia Gott, from Wyke in West Yorkshire, has had one arm amputated and is soon to have a leg removed after she was struck down with meningitis C septicaemia The baby's parents, Vikki and Paul (pictured), took her to the GP four weeks ago with a temperature and vomiting but was to accident and emergency hours later Yesterday, Kias devastated father Paul Gott, 35, spoke out against the decision after starting a petition to have the rules reversed. Speaking to ITV News, he asked why it had to take my little girl to lose all four limbs for something to be done, adding: It makes me feel sick that they can just stop something that could save so many lives. Mr Gott described the terrifying descent in health of their once vibrant baby girl when they suddenly found an angry rash across her face, neck and chest. The self-employed window fitter said: Life was just life, normal life. Getting up going to work, the kids at home, getting ready for Christmas, Halloween. Kia had just started walking, she had just started saying ma-ma-ma, just a normal baby coming of age, really. And then its just all been taken away from me in a matter of hours. He continued: She was just not herself. Normally she was full of beans, trying to do everything. Screaming, shouting, just a normal energetic baby. She will lose all of her limbs, her sight and hearing and suffer 90 per cent brain damage in the worst case doctors have seen in 25 years (Kia Gott before her illness with sister Elsie, four) Kia Gott, before her illness, while enjoying a cuddle with her eight-year-old brother Kayden Friends of the family have now raised more than 9,000 to help them on a JustGiving page And she went from that to just nothing. She just lied there. She had a rash, she had a temperature. Paramedics arrived fast and drilled into Kias tiny shin to give her emergency drugs, because her veins had collapsed, and rushed her to hospital. Doctors at the Bradford Royal Infirmary, West Yorkshire, say it is the worst case of Meningitis C septicaemia they have seen in 25 years. It was then her parents Paul and Vikki Gott, 30, were told the devastating news that all four limbs would have to be removed. An MRI scan also showed signs she would be deaf, blind and have 90 per cent brain damage. Despite doctors shocking prognosis Kias parents are clinging on to hope she can still hear and see them and her older brother Kayden, eight, and sister Elsie, who is four. She is now off a ventilator and although still sedated she is breathing for herself. An eye specialist has given the family hope her eyes might still be healthy, although Kias drug intake is making it hard to do tests. Mr Gott aunt, Donna, said Kia's (pictured) mother has stayed at Leeds Infirmary during the baby's treatment and wants to warn other people to watch out for the symptoms The vaccine for Meningitis C for 12-week old babies was discontinued by the NHS from July 1 2016.This was because the success of the MenC vaccination programme meant there were almost no cases of MenC disease in British babies The family has set up a JustGiving fundraising page to raise money for adaptations for their home, which yesterday had reached more than 23,000. The NHS stopped giving the MenC vaccine to 12-week-old babies in July 2016 because there were so few cases of the disease in babies or young children in the UK. Babies still receive the vaccination for MenB, protecting against meningococcal group B bacteria, which are responsible for more than 90 per cent of meningococcal infections in young children, at 8 weeks, 16 weeks and one-year. Meningitis C septicaemia is caused by bacteria that lives in the back of throats of one in ten people, normally doing no harm. However, if it gets into the blood system it can trigger a potentially life-threatening infection. The symptoms of bacterial meningitis in young children, which can kill in hours, include fever, vomiting, headaches, joint or muscle pain. Parents are also advised to look out for cold hands, shivering, pale or mottled skin, a rash anywhere on the body, and a child who is sleepy, vacant or delirious. Shocking video has emerged showing three young women throwing wild punches at each other on a suburban street. Fence palings were among the weapons allegedly used in the brawl, which broke out in Ipswich in southern Queensland on Thursday afternoon. Footage shows two of the women fighting on the middle of a Leichhardt road as neighbours egged them on. Shocking video shows three young women throwing wild punches at each other on a suburban street They exchange blow after blow before falling to the ground on a nature strip outside a home. Another woman was heard screaming obscenities while holding what appeared to be a paling off a white picket fence. The video shows police rushing to the scene and restraining the three involved. A Queensland Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia the women were arrested and charges have been laid. Two of them, aged 26 and 27 will face court charged with public nuisance. The third, 36, has been charged with 'going armed to cause fear,' the police spokesman said. One woman was heard screaming obscenities while holding what appeared to be a paling off a white picket fence The brawl broke out in Ipswich in southern Queensland on Thursday afternoon, police said A vicar dubbed the 'randy reverend' has been defrocked for forging the Bishop of Durham's signature in an alleged insurance fraud. David Huntley, 54, was suspended for two years in 2016 after he had an affair with 28-year-old barmaid Charlene Goudie, a member of his congregation. He has now been sacked for faking a letter to insurers MMS in a false redundancy claim, a church court heard. He even used the bishop's official headed paper. St Lawrence the Martyr Vicar David Huntley David Huntley, 54, has been sacked for faking a letter to insurers MMS in a false redundancy claim, a church court heard. He even used the bishop's official headed paper The disciplinary tribunal described this as 'grave, indeed criminal, misconduct' in its ruling, adding: 'It fell very far short of the high standard of behaviour expected of clergy. The claim was fraudulent and in making it the respondent acted deliberately, deceitfully and dishonestly.' Mr Huntley 'was probably' guilty of fraud, contrary to the Fraud Act 2006, the panel added. The vicar caused scandal among his congregation at St Lawrence the Martyr Church in South Shields, South Tyneside, when he had an unplanned pregnancy with Miss Goudie. She and Mr Huntley were caught together late at night by the father of her two other children, Kevin Scott. He thumped the vicar and stormed out, leaving the new couple to sleep together for the first time, a church court was told. At the time Miss Goudie hit out at criticism, saying they were 'madly in love' and that it was 'what God intended'. Now more serious allegations have emerged of fraud relating to an income protection policy that Mr Huntley, who is divorced and has a grown-up child, took out in May 2015. Mr Huntley was previously suspended for two years in 2016 after he had an affair with 28-year-old barmaid Charlene Goudie, a member of his congregation. The vicar caused scandal among his congregation at St Lawrence the Martyr Church in South Shields, South Tyneside, when he had an unplanned pregnancy with Miss Goudie (the family is pictured above) After he was suspended for sex outside marriage, he was evicted from the vicarage and received a letter signed by the Bishop of Durham dated April 21, 2016, which made clear the terms of his suspension. But two months later Mr Huntley tried to claim from his insurers, saying he was unemployed due to 're-organisation leading to redundancy of post'. He lied because his insurance policy did not pay out if unemployment was caused by dismissal due to misconduct, the Bishop's Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Durham was told. In his claim Mr Huntley included a letter apparently from the bishop as evidence, which talked of the 'reorganisation of parishes'. It was written on the bishop's official headed notepaper and appeared to bear his personal signature. Four days later the insurers contacted the Diocese office to ask for more information, at which point Mr Huntley's deceit was uncovered. The tribunal, which sat for its final hearing last month in Mr Huntley's absence, considered the evidence 'overwhelming'. It said there was a 'high degree of deceit' and he had offered no explanation and no apology. The tribunal was unanimous in imposing prohibition for life, adding that there was 'little realistic possibility of his ever being able to resume the normal duties of ministry'. When the offences were reported to Durham Police they said it was a 'civil matter' and they would not be taking action, a decision which 'surprised' the church panel. Mr Huntley, who was ordained as a priest in 2008, and Miss Goudie had their child in October 2015 and it is believed they are still together. Last night Miss Goudie declined to comment, and Mr Huntley could not be reached. A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate Thursday is the sixth Congressional effort in the past two decades to ban the importation and sale of asbestos. Because of the legacy of asbestos-related disease in and around Libby, both Montana senators were lobbied intensely to sign on to the bill as co-sponsors. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, became a cosponsor shortly before the bill was introduced Thursday. Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican, ultimately decided against co-sponsoring the bill at this time, saying he would consider supporting it at a later date. "Asbestos has taken the lives of too many Montanans, and banning this harmful substance will prevent the future loss of life," Tester said Thursday. "Just ask the families in Libby and Troy, Montana. There's no place for asbestos in our communities." Daines said Thursday, "I support the ongoing regulatory review regarding the importation of certain products containing asbestos. It is paramount that we prioritize public health and avoid another tragedy like we saw in Libby, and I will carefully assess the need for this legislation when that regulatory review is complete." Anti-asbestos activists thought the Frank J. Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, which was signed into law in 2016, provided a road map for the eventual banning of asbestos particularly when the chemical was designated by the EPA as one of the first the agency would review under the new law. But that process has been slowed considerably by the Trump Administration. Internal rule changes mean that the risk assessments under the law for asbestos and other chemicals will be slower and more limited than previously envisioned. President Trump has called asbestos a "miracle" and has said its use should be legal. The EPA would be able to make the manufacture, processing, use, commercial distribution, and disposal of asbestos illegal within 18 months of the bill's passage, as opposed to the process in current law that could take seven years or more. Linda Reinstein, CEO of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, a group that has pushed Congress for more than two decades to ban the substance, said Thursday, "It's irresponsible to wait any longer to ban a chemical that's long been a known killer. Decades of evidence have led to the conclusion that all forms of asbestos are carcinogenic and there is no acceptable exposure level." She added, "The Montana delegation has seen firsthand the human cost of inaction on asbestos." Asbestos-related disease, including lung cancer, mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung, and asbestosis, is blamed for the deaths of 15,000 Americans each year. Cases of mesothelioma, which is thought to be solely caused by exposure to asbestos, are increasing despite the decline in asbestos use. One reason is the latency period. Asbestos-related disease sufferers often do not show symptoms for 30 years or more after exposure. Also, imports of asbestos into the United States have soared in recent years. The chlor-alkali industry, which makes chlorine, is the largest industrial user of asbestos, and the industry has a powerful lobby. Other ban attempts over the years have come up short. Globally, 55 countries have banned asbestos. Next year, Canada is poised to become the 56th, despite being an asbestos exporter for many years. "Don't get me started," said Dr. Raja Flores, a thoracic surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, Thursday. Flores, who often treats patients with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease, said, "Asbestos is a killer. The evidence is clear. This bill is a life-saving bill. It can save more lives than I can with my knife. Any politician who doesn't get that is protecting some group that would lose money if asbestos were banned." Flores, who has operated on patients from Libby, said the Montana town's experience is a perfect example. "Families have been wiped out by asbestos there," Flores said. He chairs a Libby-focused research group that has published multiple papers on the topic. Gayla Benefield, 74, of Libby has for more than 20 years been an activist on the issue of the town's asbestos exposure. She lost both of her parents to asbestosis, and she and four of her five children have also been diagnosed with asbestos-related disease. "A full ban is completely necessary. So many people have died here waiting for some legitimate effort on behalf of the federal government to stop what has happened to us," she said Thursday. The bill's primary sponsor is Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat of Oregon. Co-sponsors are Tester and Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "We are working on getting more co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle," Merkley said Thursday. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said Thursday, "We have a president who has routinely dismissed the risk of asbestos, and he has appointed a former chemical industry lobbyist and a scientific consultant for chemical companies as the top officials in charge of regulating toxic chemicals. We're way beyond the fox guarding the henhouse. We're talking about the fox being hired to do henhouse design/build, including the security system. "That's why it's so important that Senator Merkley, Senator Tester, and their colleagues are standing up, once again, to introduce a bill that would ban asbestos for once and for all." The bill is endorsed by a wide range of health organizations, including the American Public Health Association and Libby's Center for Asbestos Related Disease. The bill is named for Reinstein's husband, Alan, who died in 2006 of mesothelioma. A 25-year-old man who burned a baby in a scalding hot bath while he went for a cigarette will spend the next five years behind bars. Atare Tepania left a 10-month-old baby in a bath of running hot water, leaving the baby's skin peeling off his body in November 2015. The young man picked the baby up by one arm, dropped him on the floor then poured cold water over the child before making his mouth bleed from pressing the bottle too hard. Atare Tepania (pictured) who burned a baby in a scalding hot bath two years ago while he went for a cigarette will spend the next five years behind bars The 25-year-old left a 10-month-old baby (pictured) in a bath of running hot water, leaving the baby's skin peeling off his body with burns to 40 per cent of his body 'The accused repeatedly pushed the bottle with sufficient force to cause injuries to the inside of the victim's mouth,' the court documents stated. 'Upon doing so he saw blood coming from inside the victim's mouth.' Penrith District Court Judge Robert Sutherland said the baby was 'most vulnerable' and the burns, which were received to 40 per cent of his body, could have been fatal, The Daily Telegraph reported. Tepania 'embarked on an alcohol binge' with friends the afternoon before the offences and took tablets thought to be methamphetamine. The 25-year-old passed out and woke with a bad hangover the next afternoon where he found the 10-month-old covered in vomit and crying before he put him in the scalding hot bath. When the baby kept screaming Tepania struck him at least once causing injuries to his face and head, fractured an elbow and was hospitalised for 26 days. Judge Sutherland sentenced Tepania, (pictured) who pleaded guilty to recklessly causing grievous bodily harm and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, to five years in prison Police later observed skin on the shower floor and bathroom door and blood stains on a bed, towel and carpet, the court papers reveal. While the baby boy was not left with scarring and did not need skin grafts, his mother said the boy had nightmares and did not like baths. Tepania, who tested positive for methamphetamine, told officers at the time he was 'hungover ... really bad' and had 'f***ed up'. 'I don't know what I was thinking, I don't know ... not thinking straight today,' he said. Judge Sutherland sentenced Tepania, who pleaded guilty to recklessly causing grievous bodily harm and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, to five years in prison with a three-year non-parole period. The new Secretary of State for Defence was seen conducting an army band today amid claims he was involved in a plot to oust Sir Michael Fallon from his post. Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip, was seen laughing and joking as he pretended to conduct the Grenadier Guards at Waterloo Station in London this afternoon. The South Staffordshire MP, dubbed the 'baby-faced assassin' at Westminster, was also pictured chatting to a poppy seller. Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip, was seen laughing and joking as he pretended to conduct the Grenadier Guards at Waterloo Station in London this aftenoon He has been accused of encouraging the Prime Minister to oust Sir Michael Fallon after he admitted touching a journalist's knee The South Staffordshire MP was appointed to the role today after Sir Michael resigned last night Earlier today Mr Williamson, 41, was accused of 'knifing' Mr Fallon in the back by telling the Prime Minister to sack him. It comes as a dossier naming MPs and cabinet members of 'inappropriate' sexual behaviour continued to engulf Westminster. Sir Michael resigned from his cabinet post last night after admitting his actions fell 'below the high standards' when he repeatedly put his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at a lunch 15 years ago. A former minister told MailOnline Mr Williamson's behaviour towards Sir Michael appeared to have been 'quite sick' and would not 'go down well' with colleagues. 'I hear Gavin has ambitions to be leader,' they said, 'this is perhaps not the best way, to go around knifing people.' Earlier today Mr Williamson, 41, was accused of 'knifing' Mr Fallon in the back by telling the Prime Minister to sack him A former minister told MailOnline Mr Williamson's behaviour towards Sir Michael appeared to have been 'quite sick' and would not 'go down well' with colleagues But Mr Williamson denied a plot to be made defence secretary this afternoon, telling the Express & Star newspaper: 'I was absolutely flabbergasted when the prime minister brought me in and asked me to be the secretary of state for defence.' Several MPs voiced their concerns over the 'bizarre' appointment while Mr Williamson was also branded a 'self-serving c***' by one female MP. Health select committee chair, Sarah Wollaston, suggested other politicians would be 'more experienced and suited to the role' than Mr Williamson. Another minister said the move demonstrated Mrs May's weakness. Mr Williamson, dubbed the 'baby-faced assassin' at Westminster, was also pictured chatting to a poppy seller and helping collect cash for poppies However, other MPs were more supportive, with some branding the promotion 'brilliant' and praising Mr Williamson's work as chief whip. He is pictured with soldiers 'It's a bizarre appointment from somebody who's so shell-shocked she doesn't know which direction to turn in and so is listening to the person she just likes and trusts rather than having a view about it herself,' they said. The former head of the army, Lord Dannatt, also waded in by jibing that Mrs May was motivated by 'bolstering her position' rather than the good of the military. However, other MPs were more supportive, with some branding the promotion 'brilliant' and praising Mr Williamson's work as chief whip. In a statement following his installation at the Ministry of Defence offices on Whitehall, Mr Williamson said he was 'determined to ensure that the armed forces receive the recognition they deserve for the great work they do, including through the Armed Forces Covenant, and that they evolve both to meet the changing threats that we face and to ensure that they properly represent the modern society that they defend'. The news was not universally welcomed by senior Tories - with health select committee chair Sarah Wollaston tweeting pointedly as the announcement was made The Prime Minister is understood to be furious about the sex scandal threatening to engulf her government and refused to give Sir Michael her full public backing following revelations about his conduct this week. It is thought that she also made no effort to persuade him to stay when he informed her of his decision to quit yesterday morning. In a letter to Sir Michael last night, the Prime Minister thanked him for his service. She wrote: 'I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others.' A spokesman said: 'Gavin Williamson was an excellent and hardworking chief whip and the Prime Minister thinks he will make an excellent Defence Secretary.' A new man has come forward claiming he was sexually assaulted by Kevin Spacey. The anonymous victim alleged that the Oscar-winning actor tried to rape him in 1984 in an interview with Vulture, saying that the incident occurred just a few months after the two began a sexual relationship. Spacey was 24 when the pair had consensual sex for the first time according to the anonymous victim, who was just 14 at that time. He claims he was 15 when the alleged rape took place, and 12 when he first met Spacey at an New York acting camp. The anonymous victim also said that just before he and Spacey had sex for the first time in 1983 the actor professed his love for the youngster. 'He is a pedophile,' said the anonymous victim. 'Mr. Spacey absolutely denies the allegations,' said the actor's lawyer. Meanwhile, eight workers on the set of House of Cards tell CNN that Spacey sexually harassed them for years, and in one case assaulted a young man. Furthermore, CAA, Spacey's agent, and publicist Staci Wolfe, of Polaris PR, have both parted ways with the under fire actor, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Shocking allegations: A new man has come forward claiming that Kevin Spacey attempted to rape him when he was a teenager (Spacey above in 2008) Man: The anonymous victim claims that he was just 14 when he began having sex with Spacey in 1983, who was 24 at the time (Spacey above in the 1986 film 'Heartburn') Spacey allegedly attempted to rape the teenager during what was to be a 15 minute visit claims the anonymous victim, who said he planned to stop in briefly before he had to meet his parents for dinner in the city. 'I guess he must have come up behind me and yanked down my baggy jeans, and he goes to f*** me and Im like, "No, I dont want to,"' said the victim. 'And he pushes hard, and grabs me, and starts shoving up against my a**hole, and it hurts like a motherf*****. I again tell him no, and he tries again.' The victim continued: 'I am strong enough, thank God, both somewhere in my brain and in my body, to get him off of me. Im sturdy, thankfully. I throw him off of me and I run crying down the stairs and out into the street and then suck it all up and go have dinner.' The victim was then asked how he would classify the incident. 'I always have said, "He tried to rape me,"' he explained. 'I told him I didnt want that, he went again to do it, I told him no, he went again and pushed harder and grabbed me and pushed harder.' He then added: 'I dont know how I would see that as anything besides an attempted rape, which I was able to thwart.' This came three years after the pair first met when Spacey was the boy's teacher at an upstate New York theater camp. He was 12 at the time and said that nothing happened between the two, with their sexual relationship instead commencing after a chance encounter at Shakespeare in the Park. The victim said he was with his parents, so he and Spacey went off on a walk together through the park. 'He was kind of in high seduction mode and gave me his phone number and asked me to call him,' said the victim. 'He said, "I want to see you, and I want you to come to my apartment." He said hed always been really drawn to me at the acting classes, but had stayed away because I was 12.' The teen was in Spacey's bed within 24 hours of that run-in he claims, adding that he was of the impression that the actor was in a relationship with Jenifer Jason Leigh. 'I called him on the phone the next day, and he told me how he was in love with me and wanted to see me,' said the victim. 'I went and saw him at an apartment he was renting on the Upper West Side. He had a black Labrador named Snake. He mightve been walking that dog in Central Park when we bumped into him that night.' He then stated: 'We started a sexual relationship that first visit, which mostly involved me f***ing him.' La Vie Boheme: Anthony Rapp (above with Idina Menzel in the 2005 film version of 'Rent') shot to fame as a member of the original Broadway cast That very illegal and very illicit relationship was further complicated by the fact that the teen was also sleeping with his cousin, who was the same age as Spacey. That cousin had also sexually abused the victim's older brother. At the time however, the victim thought that he was living an adult life, which is an appealing existence to most young teens. He was also a working actor at the time. 'Of course I have a 24-year-old boyfriend and Im going out to punk clubs. Im lying to my parents about all of this,' said the victim. 'And Im "cheating" on my cousin/boyfriend to go see Kevin Spacey. Im very caught up in the drama.' It was around that time that the alleged near-assault took place, and the victim never again saw Spacey. He had planned to see the actor briefly a year later when the two were both in Williamstown for the famed summer stock of shows, but at the last minute decided against the meeting. It took him 10 years he said to truly understand the alleged relationship. 'I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator,' he said of Spacey. 'When I turned 25, I looked at every 14-year-old boy I could see, to try to understand what those men had seen, because I still on some level thought I had been a tiny adult. 'That whole year I was 25, I tried to just see the ones who were like six-foot-two, and 200 pounds they all looked like children. They all looked like somebody who was 10 years old four years ago. Nobody looks f***able. Nobody.' That ultimately changed his perspective on who he believes Spacey is, and what was allegedly done to him when he was just a minor. 'Up until then, I just thought about him as somebody who had really done me wrong and tried to rape me, but not as somebody who had functioned as a predator,' he said. 'And then, if youre interested in sexual predation, you start to read about it, and you realize all these patterns and techniques, and it all kind of falls within a set of practices.' End of the road: Netflix has revealed that the upcoming sixth season of 'House of Cards,' which is in production now, will be its last (Spacey and Robin Wright in House of Cards above) Boy: Rapp in 1986 at the age of 14 (top left), when the alleged incident occurred at Spacey's apartment Netflix announced earlier this week that they are cancelling Spacey's show 'House of Cards' after its sixth season, which is currently in production. That news came after Spacey made the decision to come out of the closet in a statement apologizing to actor Anthony Rapp, who said in an interview that the actor attempted to sexually assault him in 1986, an incident Spacey says he does not remember. Rapp was 14 at the time while Spacey was 26. Media Rights Capital, who produces House of Cards, and Netflix released a joint statement on Monday saying they 'are deeply troubled by last night's news concerning Kevin Spacey,' who 'as previously scheduled' is not currently working on set. 'In response to last night's revelations, executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore this afternoon to meet with our cast and crew to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported,' said the two companies. The show's creator Beau Willimon also weighed in, saying: 'Anthony Rapp's story is deeply troubling. During the time I worked with Kevin Spacey on House of Cards, I neither witnessed nor was aware of any inappropriate behavior on set or off.' He went on to state: 'That said, I take reports of such behavior seriously and this is no exception. I feel for Mr. Rapp and I support his courage.' There is also a chance that Spacey's character was never meant to be in the sixth season, with his character's health an issue throughout the five previous seasons of the show and the actor currently in the middle of shooting a Gore Vidal bio pic. The incident that spurred this all allegedly took place at Spacey's apartment in 1986 when the actor invited Rapp to a party while they were both appearing on Broadway. In an interview with Buzzfeed, Rapp said that he found himself alone in the apartment at the end of the night and that Spacey then began to make his move. 'He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don't, like, squirm away initially, because I'm like, 'What's going on?' And then he lays down on top of me,' said Rapp, who detailed being pressed up against the bed before being able to squirm away and ultimately leave the house without being assaulted by Spacey. At the time, Spacey was just at the start of his illustrious professional career, having been selected by Jack Lemmon personally to star alongside him in the Broadway run of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night.' That same year, he also scored his first big screen role with a cameo in the Nora Ephron comedy 'Heartburn.' His brief part was that of a subway thief, whose failed attempt to steal the purse of the film's leading lady, played by Meryl Streep, is one of the more memorable parts of the movie. He would go on to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1996 for 'The Usual Suspects' and the Best Actor trophy in 2000 for 'American Beauty.' There was talk of Spacey possibly scoring another nomination this year as well for his work in the beloved summer hit 'Baby Driver' or the upcoming Getty biopic 'All the Money In the World.' Spacey issued a statement soon after the Buzzfeed story was published on Sunday, which began with his claim that he did not recall this incident. 'But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,' wrote Spacey. 'This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are other stories out there about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy.' He then went on to state: 'I now choose to live as a gay man.' This was a shocking statement from Spacey, who in 2010 said that being forced to reveal his sexuality was akin to being a bullied teen in an interview with The Daily Beast. 'I think what we have seen in terms of gay teenagers committing suicide because of bullying is anguishing. I think young people, if they are feeling like they are confused, need to know that there are people to talk to and that there are places they can go and not feel alone,' said Spacey. 'But I feel that they have just as many rights as I do to not be bullied. And I don't understand people who say, "Well, this is a terrible thing that is happening to this young person whose life is being exposed," and then turn around and do it to another person. People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.' He then closed out his response by sating: 'It's just a line I've never crossed and never will.' Rapp said after the publication of his story: 'I came forward with my story, standing on the shoulders of the many courageous women and men who have been speaking out to shine a light and hopefully make a difference, as they have done for me. 'Everything I wanted to say about my experience is in that article, and I have no further comment about it at this time.' Sir Michael Fallon was forced to quit after Cabinet colleague Andrea Leadsom complained about his behaviour, it has emerged. Tory sources said Mrs Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, complained directly to Theresa May about vile language used by Sir Michael towards her at a parliamentary meeting six years ago. The former Defence Secretary is said to have told Mrs Leadsom, who had complained of cold hands: I know where you can put them to warm them up. Sir Michael is alleged to have been tactile and put his arm around Mrs Leadsom in what a source described as unwanted attention. However there was a backlash against Mrs Leadsom who was accused of speaking out to further her own career. One senior Tory raged: 'What the f*** does Leadsom think she is doing?' Scroll down for video Sir Michael Fallon (shown on Wednesday, left) was forced to quit following a complaint from Cabinet colleague Andrea Leadsom (right) about his behaviour towards her, it emerged The former Defence Secretary (left, in a photo from March) is said to have told Mrs Leadsom (right), who had complained of cold hands: I know where you can put them to warm them up' Sir Michael is also said to have made derogatory comments of a sexual nature about other MPs on the committee, as well as members of the public who had attended meetings. A source close to Sir Michael said: He categorically denies saying something as appalling as he knows where she could warm her hands. The revelations came as: Labour MP Kelvin Hopkins was suspended following claims he sent inappropriate text messages to a 24-year-old activist; Commons Speaker John Bercow called on party leaders to produce plans to tackle sexual harrassment; Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson called on Mrs May to clear the stables at the top of the party. Mrs Leadsoms complaint is said to be central to the Prime Ministers decision on Wednesday night that Sir Michael should resign. The sensational revelation that one Cabinet minister asked Mrs May to sack another will fuel fears that the Westminster sex scandal could tear the Government apart. Sir Michael is alleged to have been tactile and put his arm around Mrs Leadsom (shown leaving Downing Street on Tuesday) in what a source described as unwanted attention Sir Michael Fallon sensationally resigned as defence secretary (right with his wife Wendy) yesterday, before revelations about his conduct around Mrs Leadsom (left) surfaced This is the letter Sir Michael Fallon sent to the Prime Minister announcing his resignation The Prime Minister said she appreciated the 'characteristically serious manner' in which he had considered his position Mrs Leadsom made the allegation to Mrs May on Monday. Hours later, with the PM sat beside her in the Commons, she told MPs that ministers should face the sack if they were found guilty of behaviour that made women feel uncomfortable. Her intervention sparked a series of crisis meetings in which Mrs May, chief whip Gavin Williamson and Downing Street chief of staff Gavin Barwell tried to establish the truth and agree a way forward with Mrs Leadsom and Sir Michael. Mrs Leadsoms complaint is said to focus on comments made by Sir Michael at meetings of the Commons Treasury select committee. He is said to have made vile and inappropriate personal remarks to her as well as sexist remarks about other women. Mrs Leadsom declined to comment. Downing Street also refused to comment on the claims. Defence sources acknowledged that Sir Michael had made sexist references about other womens looks in Mrs Leadsoms hearing, but denied he made the specific remark attributed to him. But last night senior Tories were said to be furious at Mrs Leadsom for speaking out, accuising her of trying to further her own career. One source close to Sir Michael asked: 'If you're offended by something, why wait six years to say it? Is this her way of securing political survival?' And a Cabinet ally of Sir Michael fumed: 'He made mistakes in the past but what the f*** does Leadsom think she is doing? We're supposed to be a team. Does she want to bring down the whole f***ing Government?' Sir Michael, entering Downing Street yesterday morning hours before he resigned from his position The MP for Sevenoaks is pictured during Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, sitting on the front bench for the final time The deal brokered by Mrs May and Mr Williamson was supposed to remain a closely guarded secret to prevent it destabilising the Government. But several sources confirmed details of Mrs Leadsoms complaint. Sir Michael admitted on Monday evening that he had touched the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer at a boozy dinner at the 2002 Tory party conference. Miss Hartley-Brewer said she had not regarded the incident as anything but mildly amusing. Former Tory minister Anna Soubry yesterday said anyone with a brain knew that Kneegate was not the reason for Sir Michaels resignation. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith also urged Mrs May to get tough with any politicians whose personal conduct threatened the reputation of the Government, saying she needed to rule with a rod of iron to prevent the scandal spiralling out of control. He said: Im told reliably that Theresa May really does see this as a change moment and she wants to make sure of this. It is critical for Theresa May to rule this thing with a rod of iron over where we are right now. She has to give the lead on this now and say we wont tolerate this, nobody else should tolerate it. Defence sources tonight said Sir Michael had told the Prime Minister (pictured together in the Commons) he could not 'guarantee there wouldn't be more incidents like Julia Hartley-Brewer' This is time for us to say in any institution this kind of abuse of power cannot in future be tolerated. Speaking after a meeting with Mrs May, Miss Davidson said a clearout is going to (happen) and needs to happen in the next few weeks, months and years. She added that the PM was going to need some pretty big shovels for the Augean Stable a reference to the mythical task set for ancient Greek hero Hercules. But some Tories believe they could face a witch-hunt in which relatively minor indiscretions lead to career-ending sanctions. Boris Johnson was cornered by the BBC yesterday and asked whether his personal conduct had always met the standard expected of Cabinet ministers. He said: You bet. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling urged caution, saying: This is not about clearing out stables. Mr Grayling said the departure of Sir Michael was a great shame but said the priority now was to introduce procedures to make it easier for victims of sexual harassment and bullying in politics to come forward. During a radio interview Thursday, President Trump belly-ached that he could not pressure the Justice Department to investigate his former political rival Hillary Clinton, because that's part of being president. Trump was sitting down with WMAL's Larry O'Connor, who had wanted to pick the president's brain on why he couldn't fulfill his campaign promise to 'lock her up,' something he would encourage his supporters to shout about Clinton. 'But you know the saddest thing, because I'm the president of the United States I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved with the FBI,' he explained. 'I'm not supposed to be doing the kinds of things I would love to be doing and I'm very frustrated by it.' President Trump told WMAL's Larry O'Connor on Thursday that he was frustrated that he couldn't, as president, order the Justice Department to look into his former political rival, Hillary Clinton Conservative radio show host Larry O'Connor (left) had pledged his listeners that he would find out why President Trump couldn't 'lock her up,' a phrase used about Hillary Clinton (right) Trump didn't stop there. 'Why aren't they going after Hillary Clinton with her emails and with the dossier, and the kind of money?' Trump mused. 'I don't know, is it possible that they paid $12.4 million for the dossier? And how was it which is total phony, fake and how was it used?' he continued. Last week, a law firm used by Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee acknowledged its role in paying for a dossier filled with unsubstantiated opposition research about Trump's ties to Russia, gathered by a former British intelligence agent. The president has used this Clinton-Russia connection to muddy the waters as three of his own associates on Monday were indicted as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's expansive probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. O'Connor, a D.C.-based conservative radio host, told Trump that his listeners ask all the time why Clinton couldn't be more thoroughly investigated. In July 2016, then FBI head James Comey held a press conference and said that he wouldn't recommend charges to the Justice Department over Clinton's use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state, as there were legal concerns over her handling of classified information. The FBI briefly looked at Clinton's emails again in October, shortly before the presidential election, when more messages were found on disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner's computer, as part of another case. The messages belonged to his wife, the top Clinton aide, Huma Abedin. Since then there's been no indication that Clinton is under investigation, though two House committees are looking into the Uranium One deal, as Clinton as secretary of state was one of the decision-makers on a deal that gave the Russian 20 per cent of American uranium. Republicans have pointed to a speech Bill Clinton made in Moscow, and financed by a Kremlin-linked bank while the deal was going through, as evidence of pay-to-play. 'And you know, it's very discouraging to me, I'll be honest, I'm very unhappy with it, that the Justice Department isn't going,' Trump went on. 'Now, maybe they are, but as president, and I think you understand this, as a president you are not supposed to be involved in that process,' he continued. 'But hopefully they are doing something and at some point maybe we're all going to have it out,' Trump said. The eight people killed in a truck driver's rampage were honored by friends and strangers Thursday with a nighttime walk down the riverfront esplanade where the victims died as both investigators and terror-weary New Yorkers tried to make sense of the crime. Some of the marchers carried candles as city lights twinkled on the water. Others pushed bicycles in solidary with the victims, who were cut down on the long bike path that runs the length of Manhattan's Hudson River waterfront. The mourners included Harry Kassen, a student at the Manhattan school where one of the victims, Nicholas Cleves, 23, worked part-time. Scroll down for video People converge with candles for a vigil to walk along a bike path in Lower Manhattan after Tuesday's terror attack which left eight dead Cyclists passthrough concrete barricades on the bike path at Houston Street and the West Side Highway in Manhattan - they were installed after Tuesday's deadly attack 'You never think it is going to be someone you know,' said Kassen, 17. He said he'd just recently worked with Cleves on lighting and sound for a school performance. 'We were up in the tech booth, chatting. Then, two weeks later, here we are. And he's gone,' Kassen said. The march began near the spot where authorities say Sayfullo Saipov, 29, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, steered a rented truck onto a bike bath and sped south toward the World Trade Center, striking cyclists and pedestrians in his bath. He was shot by a police officer after crashing the truck into a school bus and arraigned Wednesday on terrorism charges. New York City officials identified 57 intersections where new barriers will go up to protect pedestrians and bicyclists on pathways along the West Side Highway where Tuesday's attack occurred. Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, 29, is accused of driving a rented Home Depot truck onto a bike path that abuts Manhattan's busy West Side Highway during an attack that left eight people dead and 12 injured. Workers began installing the barriers at 59th Street and moving south on Thursday. 'Our number one priority is keeping New Yorkers safe and secure,' said city hall spokesman Ben Sarle. Two days after a terror attack unfolded in lower Manhattan, concrete barriers are now being installed as small memorials have popped up to honor the victims. New York City officials identified 57 intersections where new barriers will go up to protect pedestrians and bicyclists on pathways along the West Side Highway where Tuesday's attack occurred Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, 29, is accused of driving a rented Home Depot truck onto a bike path that abuts Manhattan's busy West Side Highway during an attack that left eight people dead and 12 injured Workers began installing the barriers at 59th Street and moving south on Thursday The barriers are being positioned diagonally in a way so that bikes can still get through but cars and trucks will not fit. Also on Thursday, NYPD officers stood guard along the path as mourners placed flowers, flags, candles and other items to remember the victims. One person left a pumpkin with a hat that reads, 'NYC strong,' as one of the many symbols of resilience and strength. Dozens returned to the scene on Thursday evening for an emotional candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the terror attack. The vigil began at 6pm at Pier 40 at West Houston Street, which is where the deadly attack began on Tuesday. At 6.30pm, participants marched along the esplanade to Pier 25, which is just north of where the attack ended. Of the eight victims, two were Americans - 32-year-old Darren Drake and 23-year-old Nicholas Clevels, both from New York. 'Our number one priority is keeping New Yorkers safe and secure,' said city hall spokesman Ben Sarle Also on Thursday, NYPD officers stood guard along the path as mourners placed flowers and candles to remember the victims. A child looks at a makeshift memorial to remember the victims of the attack on Thursday Drake's father, Jimmy Drake, told reporters on Wednesday that his son was his only child. 'I'm not angry at all. I'm absolutely hurt,' the father said. Cleves was described in a statement from his employer, Unified Digital Group, as being a 'compassionate young professional.' 'Nicholas was wonderful with people. He was polite, funny, and, above all, considerate in action,' Alex Silverstein, president of Unified Digital Group, said. 'He was composed, accepting, and open to all. It pains me greatly to reflect that we can no longer experience his unique gifts. A growing light has been senselessly extinguished. 'I was truly blessed to call Nicholas Cleves my colleague and friend.' Dozens returned to the scene on Thursday evening for an emotional candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the terror attack. Above a woman cries during the vigil The vigil began at 6pm at Pier 40 at West Houston Street, which is where the deadly attack began on Tuesday At 6.30pm, participants marched along the esplanade to Pier 25, which is just north of where the attack ended Among the other victims were five Argentinians who were visiting New York City to celebrate their 30th anniversary from graduating high school. Hernan Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernan Ferruchi all tragically died. Ann-Laure Decadt, 31, is the eighth victim. She was a mother-of-two from Belgium, and her husband, Alexander Naessens said her death is heartbreaking. He said she was on a trip to the U.S. with her mother and two sisters. Prosecutors brought federal terrorism charges against Saipov on Wednesday. His attorney said it's important to let the judicial process play out. Following the attack, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, introduced a bill to authorize $50 million in spending to install traffic barriers nationwide. A man from Virginia killed himself with a chainsaw on Wednesday after attacking his wife with a hatchet. Fairfax County Police said they received a domestic abuse call around 3.30pm on the 7500 block of Springfield Hills Drive, Springfield. The call was placed after a family member arrived at the home and reported seeing her 70-year-old relative beating his 76-year-old wife with the blunt end of a hatchet. Police were summoned to a home in Springfield, Virginia following a distress call on Wednesday A relative told police that a family member was attacking his wife with a hatchet around 3.30pm 'The family member was able to rescue the victim, bring her outside,' Fairfax County Police Officer Reem Awad told FOX News 5. 'At which point, the male suspect did follow outside and a struggle ensued over that ax. 911 was called at that point and we responded.' That's when police say the senior citizen barricaded himself inside his home while police established a perimeter around the property. 'One officer was able to see inside the garage where the suspect was located on the floor,' said Awad. 'He appeared to have life-threatening injuries to the upper body. He has since died from those injuries. They appear to be caused by a chainsaw.' The cause of the incident and the identity of the couple has not been disclosed. Authorities added that the victim did not sustain life-threatening injuries. 'I could see that the lady was really confused and kind of like in shock, and her hands was probably injured, cut,' neighbor Zury Bradcovich told the broadcaster. 'Then I saw them finding the older gentlemen and brought him to the garage, put him on the ground and he was bleeding tremendously from this part of his body. He looked really bad and they worked on him for maybe 10 to 15 minutes, and then they took him away.' When police arrived, the man barricaded himself inside the garage of his home to avoid capture An Aboriginal leader has slammed the new $2 coin commemorating Remembrance Day, claiming it is racist because it doesn't pay respect to 'those killed by white Australia'. A new coin was unveiled on Wednesday to commemorate Australians killed in war conflict and other military operations. Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation's Michael Mansell branded the coin a national disgrace and a symbol for 'white supremacy'. 'The whole notion of white supremacy is the promotion of ideas that value one race as more important than another, and in this case, the coin represents the struggle of white Australia while ignoring the struggle of black Australia,' Mr Mansell told Daily Mail Australia. Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation's Michael Mansell branded the coin a national disgrace and a symbol for 'white supremacy' Mr Mansell, an Aboriginal rights activist, said the coin ignored Aboriginal people who fought in wars and aboriginal people who were killed in the white invasion of Australia. 'From the Government explanation, they say the coin is struck to honour all of those who lost their lives in defending their families and their values and their country,' he said. 'But when you look at the details, the green and gold represents Australian colours, and purple, Australian forces. 'There's nothing there that symbolically refers to Aboriginal people who lost their lives against white Australia.' Mr Mansell said the coin was 'deplorable' and felt the government was overlooking the sacrifices Aboriginal people made. 'What they mean is everybody who's defended white Australia, not those killed by it,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Mr Mansell said the colours of the coin, which featured purple flowers and green rosemary leaves, symbolised white Australian armies only. Mr Mansell said the colours of the coin, which featured purple flowers and green rosemary leaves, symbolised white Australian armies only 'The absence of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander colours makes clear this coin is to honour white Australia and that black deaths are irrelevant in the nation's memory,' Mr Mansell (pictured) said 'White Australia and its values and history is clearly more important and superior than the history of Aboriginal people,' he told Daily Mail Australia. When approached about the coin, a Royal Australian Mint spokeswoman said: 'This Remembrance Day coin is about remembering all Australians including indigenous Australians who have died in war conflict over the past 100 years'. 'Other themes have been taken into consideration for future releases,' the spokeswoman said. A Brooklyn man allegedly scrawled 'Go home, Uzbeks' on the wall of his apartment building hallway in response to the terrorist attack by Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov (above) A Brooklyn man who allegedly scrawled 'Go home, Uzbeks' on the wall of his apartment building hallway was arrested on Wednesday. Dmitriy Gekhman, a 28-year-old Ukrainian national, was taken into custody after he also allegedly scribbled 'F***ing Uzbeks, go home' one day after Tuesday's deadly car-ramming attack in Manhattan. Sayfullo Saipov, a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan, was arrested Tuesday after he ploughed a rented truck into a group of bikers riding on a bike path in Tribeca. Eight people died and 12 were injured in the attack, which authorities believe was inspired by ISIS propaganda. Police arrested Gekhman after watching surveillance video alleged to show him leaving his apartment and scrawling the messages Wednesday night. News of the arrest was first reported by the New York Daily News. Investigators questioned the building's superintendent, who identified the man seen in the video as Gekhman. Gekhman faces charges of criminal mischief as a hate crime and making graffiti. President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his call that Saipov should get the death penalty. Saipov, told investigators he was inspired by watching Islamic State videos and began planning Tuesday's attack a year ago, according to the criminal complaint filed in federal court against him on Wednesday. Saipov, a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan, was arrested Tuesday after he ploughed a rented truck into a group of bikers riding on a bike path in Tribeca Eight people died and 12 were injured in the attack, which authorities believe was inspired by ISIS propaganda. People are seen above placing flowers at a makeshift memorial at the scene of the attack Saipov, 29, said 'he felt good about what he had done' and asked for permission to display the flag of the militant group Islamic State in his hospital room, the complaint said. Trump had suggested on Wednesday sending Saipov to the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, where terrorism suspects apprehended overseas are held, but on Thursday he said doing so would be too complicated. 'Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system,' Trump said on Twitter. He added: 'There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!' One of the two charges Saipov faces, violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people, carries the death penalty if the government chooses to seek it, acting US Attorney Joon Kim said. Advertisement A long-hidden narrow void in the Great Pyramid of Giza has been found by scientists in a discovery that could finally reveal the secrets of the 4,500-year-old monument. The void stretches for at least 30 metres (100ft) above the Grand Gallery - an ascending corridor that links the Queens chamber to the Kings in the heart of the pyramid. It is not known why the void exists or if there are any valuable artefacts inside as it is not obviously accessible. But it has similar dimensions to the Gallery, which is 50 metres (164ft) long, eight metres (26ft) high and around a metre (3.2ft) wide. Researchers suggest it could be a 'construction gap' - part of a trench that allowed workers to access the Grand Gallery and King's Chamber while the rest of the pyramid was built. The discovery was made after physicists took images of the inside of the pyramid using particles fired to Earth from space. These cosmic particles penetrate the rock in a similar way to X-rays, only much deeper. The collaborative effort, between archaeologists, historians and physicists, has been hailed as the biggest discovery inside the Giza landmark since the 19th century. Scroll down for video The Great Pyramid of Giza has been shrouded in mystery for millennia, but now a long-held secret of its structure might be known thanks to particle physics. An apparent narrow void lying undiscovered deep within the ancient Wonder of the World has been found by scientists using cosmic-ray based imaging. An overview of the breakthrough is shown here WHAT COULD THE SPACE HAVE BEEN USED FOR? Because no one has physically seen inside the void, what it was built for remains a mystery. The researchers say the space has remained hidden since it was first constructed 4,500 years ago. It could be one big space, but may also be made up of several chambers or tunnels. The void could be on an incline, which means it could have been used to transport huge blocks into the centre of the pyramid and was then left. Researchers suggest it could also be a 'construction gap' - part of a trench that allowed workers to access the Grand Gallery and King's Chamber while the rest of the pyramid was built. More simply, the void may have simply been left there to relieve weight from the Grand Gallery below. Advertisement Made under the watch of the Pharaoh Khufu and completed in around 2550 BC, Egypt's Great Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Giza, served as the world's tallest man-made construction for thousands of years. The structure, also known as Khufu's Pyramid, is the sole survivor of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World. How it was built has long been a bone of academic contention and there is no universal agreement about its creation. Scientists say the latest discovery, published in the journal Nature, could help shed light on its construction. To find out more about the pyramid, researchers from countries including France and Japan began a project to scan the structure in October 2015. The scientists made the discovery using cosmic-ray imaging, recording the behaviour of subatomic particles called muons that penetrate the rock. Detectors were set up inside the pyramid, including in the so-called Queen's Chamber. This allowed the pyramid's insides to be seen without physically disturbing it, as the results showed empty space differently from rock. The presence of the space, dubbed the ScanPyramids Big Void, was confirmed using three different detection technologies over several months after first being spotted, the paper said. The results were then analysed three times. The ScanPyramids mission is made up of researchers from Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities, the University of Cario, and the non-profit organisation the Heritage Innovation Preservation (HIP) Institute. 'ScanPyramids Big Void is not a room or a chamber - we don't know if it is horizontal or inclined if it is composed by one or several successive structures, but it's big,' report author Mehdi Tayoubi, president and co-founder of the HIP Institute, told MailOnline. 'The Grand Gallery is an internal spectacular internal structure (47m long, 8m high) a kind of internal cathedral at the centre of the pyramid. Described as a 'deep void', it is at least about 100 feet long and up to 230 feet above ground, running over the Grand Gallery. It's function is unknown, and scientists are now hoping a flying robot could be sent in to uncover its secrets The internal structure (white dots in image) is located above the Grand Gallery - that links two of the pyramid's chambers - and traces a similar route for at least 30 metres (100ft), according to a study published in the journal Nature. It could either lie on a horizontal or inclined (pictured) plane, the scientists said MUON DETECTORS Muons are created when cosmic rays react with the upper atmosphere, producing a shower of particles (artist's impression), some of which decay into muons Muon detectors have previously been used to map out the inside of the Fukushima's nuclear reactor in Japan and it is hoped they can be used to explore other archaeological sites. The detectors work by using cosmic particles known as muons that have the power to penetrate deeply into most materials. The subatomic particles require only a few special instruments because they rain down naturally from the atmosphere above. Muons are created when the upper atmosphere reacts with cosmic rays, producing a shower of particles, some of which decay into muons. The elementary particles, which weigh around 200 times more than electrons, can very easily pass through any structure, even large and thick rocks like mountains. Researchers can use these tiny particles to measure the density of structures, just like X-rays pass through our bodies to visualise our skeleton. The detectors work by using cosmic particles known as muons that have the power to penetrate deeply into most materials. Researchers can use these tiny particles to measure the density of structures, just like X-rays pass through our bodies to visualise our skeleton. Pictured is the results of one of the team's muography scans on the pyramid, which helped to reveal the new structure (SP-BV) Advertisement 'This Big Void, with same size characteristics as the Grand Gallery, could be successive chambers, a tunnel. Many hypotheses are possible.' Despite the breakthrough, the newly discovered structure has yet to be reached in person by any researcher. Report author Mr Tayoubi said: 'This structure is not accessible, we don't see (that) people tried, if you look at the Grand Gallery, to access the void which is above. 'So this void was hidden, I think, since the construction of the pyramid, it was not accessible. To find out more about the pyramid, researchers from countries including France and Japan began a project to scan the structure in October 2015. Researchers placed detectors in two rooms within the pyramid to collect subatomic particles as they fell from the sky, revealing the structure of the building like an X-ray reveals bone WHAT THEY FOUND An apparent void lying undiscovered deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza has been discovered by scientists. The internal structure is located above the Grand Gallery - that links two of the pyramid's chambers. It traces a similar route for at least 30 metres (100ft). While the precise design and purpose of the space is unknown, it was hailed by the team of academics as the biggest discovery inside the Giza landmark since the 19th century. 'This was a study about physics, it was not about Egyptology - we are not claiming anything about interpretation for this void - we are just claiming that there is a void and that's all,' study author Mehdi Tayoubi said. Despite the breakthrough, the newly discovered structure has yet to be reached in person by any researcher. Advertisement The team employed by-products of the cosmic ray known as muons that are only partially absorbed by stone and take noticeably different trajectories through air 'We needed this technique - the right technique at the right time - to be able to identify it and discover it.' He added they were 'very confident' the results were correct. Because no one has physically seen inside the void, what it was built for remains a mystery. Researchers claim the space could be on an incline, which means it could have been used to transport huge blocks into the centre of the pyramid and was then left, experts said. 'This finding is very exciting, but I don't think it's likely to be some kind of secret chamber,' Dr Kate Spence, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study, told the Telegraph. HOW ARE SCIENTISTS PEERING INSIDE THE PYRAMIDS Over the course of their lengthy study, the team have used several techniques to scan Egyptian pyramids. Infrared thermography - Infrared detects infrared energy emitted from object, converts it to temperature, and displays an image of its temperature distribution to reveal objects that may be hidden. 3D scans with lasers - Lasers bounce narrow pulses of light off the interiors of a structure to map it in detail. Once the scanning is complete, the data can be combined into a highly detailed 3-D model. Cosmic-ray detectors - This detects muons that are created when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Muons pass harmlessly through people and buildings. Muons traveling through rock or other dense material will slow and eventually stop. The idea is to catch the muons after theyve passed through an pyramid and measure their energies and trajectories. Researchers can then compile a 3D image that reveals hidden chambers. Advertisement Detectors were set up inside the pyramid, including in the so-called Queen's Chamber. This allowed the pyramid's insides to be visualised without physically disturbing it, as the results showed empty space differently from rock Muons (artist's impression) are created when the upper atmosphere reacts with cosmic rays, producing a shower of particles, some of which decay into muons. The elementary particles, which weigh around 200 times more than electrons, can very easily pass through any structure, even large and thick rocks like mountains 'I think it is an inclined ramp that was used to transport huge blocks into the centre of the pyramid and then left. The orientation leads up to the huge granite roof struts at the top of the relieving chamber. Researchers from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities scientific committee suggest it could be a 'construction gap' - part of a trench that allowed workers to access the Grand Gallery and King's Chamber while the rest of the pyramid was built. More simply, the void may have simply been left there to relieve weight from the Grand Gallery below. The finding opens up the possibility that the void could be linked to other different and undiscovered structures within the pyramid, the study claimed. Crucially, the authors said, it could provide a method by which scientists can finally start to piece together how the pyramid was built. Muon detectors (artist's impression) placed in known rooms within the Great Pyramid picked up the subatomic particles as they passed through layers of stone, meaning the scientists could map the pyramid without breaking through its walls The presence of the void, dubbed the ScanPyramids Big Void, was confirmed using three different muon detection technologies over several months after first being spotted, the paper said. Pictured is the pyramid's descending main entrance hallway. The new structure is above this entrance-way THE SCANPYRAMIDS PROJECT After muon detectors detect voids within a pyramid, the team often use thermal imaging scans (pictured) to confirm their finds The team's finding has been a long time coming after months spent trying to find the elusive 'void'. The researchers began using muon technology, thermal scanning and 3D laser mapping to lay out the pyramid's internal structure in 2015. Scanners placed in the Great Pyramid's grand descending corridor, as well as a tunnel near the north facing entrance dug out by medieval explorers, found a small structure above the structure's entrance in 2016. Thermal imaging of the pyramid confirmed a human-height, corridor-shaped void that ran parallel but above to the descending corridor. Researchers realised this corridor, labelled the ScanPyramid Northfacing Corridor, must lead somewhere, and spent the following months using mapping technology to find where it led. This has now led the team to the new structure, which sits above the pyramid's Grand Gallery. Advertisement They added that the development 'show how modern particle physics can shed new light on the world's archaeological heritage'. 'This was a study about physics, it was not about Egyptology - we are not claiming anything about interpretation for this void - we are just claiming that there is a void and that's all,' Mr Tayoubi said. Muon detectors have previously been used to map out the inside of the Fukushima's nuclear reactor in Japan and it is hoped they can be used to explore other archaeological sites. The detectors work by using cosmic particles known as muons that have the power to penetrate deeply into most materials. Despite the breakthrough, the newly discovered structure has yet to be reached in person by any researcher. Experts used several types of muon detector, which reads subatomic particles as they rain down from the sky, for their study The finding opens up the possibility that the void could be linked to other different and undiscovered structures within the pyramid, the study claimed. Pictured is a virtual reality layout of what we know of the pyramid's internal structures so far, including the newly found structure, pictured as white dots next to the King's chamber THE PYRAMID OF GIZA The Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu's Pyramid, is the sole survivor of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World For more than 4,500 years, Egypt's pyramids have kept their secrets hidden deep within the labyrinth of passages and chambers that lie inside their towering stone structures. But the long-running row over whether the Great Pyramid of Giza is hiding a network of previously undiscovered tunnels behind its stone walls has now been answered. The researchers confirmed the find using cosmic particles known as muons to scan the Great Pyramid of Giza. They used the scans to create maps to reveal the internal structure of the 479 feet (146m) high pyramid. Last year thermal scanning identified a major anomaly in the Great Pyramid, the largest and oldest of the pyramids at Giza and one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Those scans identified three adjacent stones at its base which registered higher temperatures than others. Those scans identified three adjacent stones at its base which registered higher temperatures than others. This led to theories that they may be hiding a secret chamber that had yet to be discovered. A team of experts then set up the ScanPyramid's project to use muons, tiny subatomic particle that are typically produced by cosmic rays smash into atoms on Earth, to peer through the pyramid's huge stone blocks, some of which weight up to 15 tons. Dr Hawass has in the past been sceptical of the usefulness of conducting such scans. He recently clashed publicly with British Egyptologists over their theory that a secret burial chamber may be hidden behind the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb in his pyramid in the Valley of the Kings. Advertisement Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza has been shrouded in mystery for millennia, but now a long-held secret of its structure might be known thanks to particle physics The subatomic particles require only a few special instruments because they rain down naturally from the atmosphere above. Some archaeologists have pinned hopes on using the sophisticated technology to locate the burial place of the legendary queen Nefertiti (pictured) Muons are created when the upper atmosphere reacts with cosmic rays, producing a shower of particles, some of which decay into muons. The elementary particles, which weigh around 200 times more than electrons, can very easily pass through any structure, even large and thick rocks like mountains. Researchers can use these tiny particles to measure the density of structures, just like X-rays pass through our bodies to visualise our skeleton. The team's finding has been a long time coming after months spent trying to find the elusive 'void'. The researchers began using muon technology, thermal scanning and 3D laser mapping to lay out the pyramid's internal structure in 2015. Scanners placed in the Great Pyramid's grand descending corridor, as well as a tunnel near the north facing entrance dug out by medieval explorers, found a small structure above the structure's entrance in 2016. Thermal imaging of the pyramid confirmed a human-height, corridor-shaped void that ran parallel but above to the descending corridor. Researchers realised this corridor, labelled the ScanPyramid Northfacing Corridor, must lead somewhere, and spent the following months using mapping technology to find where it led. GREAT PYRAMID'S CURSED TOMB REOPENED Yesterday it was reported that archaeologists in Egypt have reopened a 'cursed tomb' containing the remains of the people who built the Great Pyramid of Giza to visitors. It is the first time it has been opened to the public since its discovery almost 30 years ago. The area dates back 4,500 years and is located in the 'tribal mountain' area, near the Pyramid of Giza. The Press Office of the Ministry of Antiquities shared the revelation on Instagram with a picture of the area, saying 'Opening the workers cemetery site at Giza Plateau to visit'. Yesterday it was reported that archaeologists in Egypt have reopened a 'cursed tomb' (pictured) containing the remains of the people who built the Great Pyramid of Giza to visitors The newly opened area contains a cemetery of workers along with the graves of the supervisor of the royal palace, the supervisor of the construction workers and a man of significance who was buried with the workers, accordingto Newsweek. The site has been closed off since 1990. Archaeologists from the Ministry of Antiquities believe the man who supervised the workers filled the cemetery with curses to protect the dead from thieves. Advertisement This has now led the team to find the new structure, which sits above the pyramid's Grand Gallery. Some archaeologists have pinned hopes on using the sophisticated technology to locate the burial place of the legendary queen Nefertiti. The wife of King Akhenaten, who initiated a monotheistic cult in ancient Egypt, queen Nefertiti remains an enigma, best known for a bust depicting her that is now on exhibition in Berlin's Neues Museum. A British Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves, believed her remains were hidden in a secret chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the southern Valley of the Kings. In 2015, archaeologists scanned the tomb with radar hoping to find clues. Both Reeves's theory and the inconclusive results have been dismissed by other Egyptologists. One of them, former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass, said that an adept of the sun god Aton would never have been allowed to be buried in the Valley of the Kings. A swarm of 22 earthquakes has rocked Tenerife in just four days sparking fears Mount Teide could be about to erupt. The tremors struck the popular tourist village of Vilaflor on the slopes of the 12,000ft volcano last week. They were relatively minor quakes, however. The most power was a tremor of magnitude 1.4 striking at 11.05am local time (11:05 GMT, 06:05 GMT) on Tuesday morning. Scroll down for video A seismic swarm of 22 earthquakes have rocked Tenerife in just four days sparking fears Mount Teide (pictured) could be about to erupt LINK BETWEEN EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES According to Oregon State University, most earthquakes directly beneath a volcano are caused by the movement of magma. The magma places pressure on the rocks until it cracks the rock. Magma then moves into the crack and begins building pressure again. Every time the rock cracks it makes a small earthquake. Advertisement Mount Teide's 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and a major tourist attraction with around three million tourists visiting every year. The seismic swarm, recorded at an average depth of six to eight kilometres below sea level, took place over four days from 28 October to 31 October. The Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan) have been trying to calm people. 'This swarm is similar to the other Seismic Swarms Recorded in Tenerife since last June 2017 and as always important to emphasise, it does not represent any kind of concern to the population', a representative wrote on their Facebook page. 'These types of swarms are common in active volcanoes', they wrote, explaining that it was caused by changes in the pressure in the hydro-thermal system. Lucan Duria, a physicist and volcano monitoring expert at Involcan told MailOnline there are normally two or three earthquakes every day near Mount Teide, so there was 'nothing special' about recent activity. The earthquakes in the past few days have been linked to hydrothermal systems connected to the volcano that produce fluids, water and steam. 'Most volcanoes have shallow hydrothermal systems and when there is an increase in the pressure, these fluids mean earthquakes happen more easily then they do in other places. A flurry of tremors struck the village of Vilaflor on the slopes of the 12,000ft mountain with one of magnitude 1.4 striking at 11.05am local time (11:05 GMT, 06:05 GMT) on Tuesday morning Experts from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) said residents in the vicinity of the volcano (pictured) had not felt recent movements 'Even a very small increase in pressure can cause earthquakes and remember these are very small earthquakes. 'For the volcano to erupt the magma needs to erupt to a shallow level, but there is no risk of this happening in Teide as it is far too low', he said. According to Oregon State University, most earthquakes directly beneath a volcano are caused by the movement of magma. The magma places pressure on the rocks until it cracks the rock. Magma then moves into the crack and begins building pressure again. Every time the rock cracks it makes a small earthquake. Teide last erupted in 1909 from the El Chinyero vent on the Santiago Ridge. The seismic swarm has been recorded at an average depth of six to eight kilometres below sea level. This flurry has been recorded over a period of three days from 28 October to 31 October Mount Teide's 3,718-metre summit is the highest point in Spain and a major tourist attraction with around three million tourists visiting every year Experts from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) said residents had not felt recent movements. Yesterday an expert warned that Tenerife is not the only island at risk of eruption at the moment and Iceland's biggest volcano could also be brewing. Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, says this shows that pressure in the volcanoes magma chamber is increasing. He warns that the tremors mean Bardarbunga is 'clearly preparing for its next eruption' in the next few years which could create an ash cloud that will cause travel chaos. The warning follows the 2010's explosive eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull, which threw thousands of tonnes of mineral ash into the air. Pall Einarsson, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, says this shows that pressure in the volcanoes magma chamber is increasing. Pictured is a plane flying over the Bardarbunga volcano in September 2014 The warning follows the 2010's explosive eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull, which threw thousands of tonnes of mineral ash into the air. An aerial photograph shows lava flowing out of the Bardarbunga volcano Most of this was fine particles that created an ash cloud. This caused travel chaos causing more than 10 million air passengers to be stranded as a result of its ash cloud and cost the European economy an estimated 4 billion ($4.9 billion). A similar scenario could take place if Bardarbunga were to erupt. Bardarbunga is one of the most active of Iceland's 130 volcanoes. The Canary holiday island of La Palma experienced more than 300 mini-earthquakes last month, scientists report. A majority of the tremors were so small they could not be located by scientists, let alone felt by any residents on La Palma. The latest mini-quakes followed the 40 tremors that were recorded in the weeks previously, taking the total to 352 in just ten days. Advertisement An astro-photographer has released stunning images of the Milky Way, having spent a year tracking our galaxy across his home county of Dorset. The rural county has no cities or motorways and is one of the best areas in the UK to see the Milky Way, due to the lack of light pollution. Some of his most jaw-dropping images include night-time scenes of Durdle Door, Mudeford, West Bay, Portland Bill and Kimmeridge. Scroll down for video An astro-photographer has released stunning images of the Milky Way, having spent a year tracking our galaxy across his home county of Dorset. Pictured is the Milky Way over Durdle Door HOW THE PICTURES WERE TAKEN Stephen Banks programmes the shutter on his digital SLR camera to stay open for up to four minutes at a time to allow as much light in as possible. The technique allows the camera to see the Milky Way and surrounding stars that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. He then later uses software on his laptop to 'stack' five or six images on top of each other to enhance the quality of the overall finished picture. Advertisement With detailed planning and a lack of sleep, Stephen Banks was able to secure some stunning celestial snaps showing the Milky Way in all its glory over famous local landmarks. Mr Banks, 28, has now compiled his best 12 for a new 2018 calendar which is expected to sell out. Mr Banks, from Bridport, Dorset, said: 'I captured these shots across the whole of the year. 'Each picture needed quite a lot of planning in order to know where the Milky Way was going to be and that the weather conditions were right. 'There has to be no moon present and complete darkness, with no cloud and low humidity.' He said the best time to capture the Milky Way was between 3am to 4am between spring and autumn. The rural county has no cities or motorways and is one of the best areas in the UK to see the Milky Way, due to the lack of light pollution. Pictured is the Milky Way over Mudeford, Dorset The Milky Way began forming around 12 billion years ago and is part of a group of about 50 galaxies called the Local Group. Shown here is the Milky Way over West Bay, Dorset Some of his most jaw-dropping images include night-time scenes of Durdle Door, Mudeford, West Bay, Portland Bill (pictured) and Kimmeridge Mr Banks added: 'Most of these landmarks have been photographed time and time again in the daytime but not often at night. 'Most of the locations have really dark skies because they are well away from light pollution. 'It is hard work because I have a full time job and it can be difficult to find the time. With detailed planning and a lack of sleep, Stephen Banks was able to secure some stunning celestial snaps showing the Milky Way in all its glory over famous local landmarks, including Mudeford, Dorset Mr Banks said the best time to capture the Milky Way was between 3am to 4am between spring and autumn. Pictured left is Knowlton Church in Cranborne, and pictured right is Sturminster Newton Mill 'But every time I go out in the middle of the night and get the images I want I get a buzz even though I have had just two hours sleep.' Mr Banks programmes the shutter on his digital SLR camera to stay open for up to four minutes at a time to allow as much light in as possible. The technique allows the camera to see the Milky Way and surrounding stars that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. Mr Banks programmes the shutter on his digital SLR camera to stay open for up to four minutes at a time to allow as much light in as possible. Pictured is Milton Abbas, Dorset The technique allows the camera to see the Milky Way and surrounding stars that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. Pictured is Abbotsbury Beacon, Dorset Mr Banks uses software on his laptop to 'stack' five or six images on top of each other to enhance the quality of the overall finished picture. Pictured left is Arish Mell on the Jurassic Coast, and pictured right is Kimmeridge Bay He then later uses software on his laptop to 'stack' five or six images on top of each other to enhance the quality of the overall finished picture. His calendar, called Dorset's Dark Skies 2018, is on sale for 10 ($13) through Stephen's website or from Bridport Post Office. US auto retailer AutoNation Inc announced a multi-year partnership on Thursday to support Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving car unit, including vehicle maintenance and repairs as the company adds new brands into its fleet, sending its shares up 13 percent to a high for the year. That news was accompanied by a better-than expected third-quarter profit as AutoNation performed well despite the impact of hurricanes during the quarter. There is fierce competition between large automakers to bring self-driving cars to market first. The pact between Waymo and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based AutoNation is the latest in a series of recent partnerships the self-driving unit has formed. Scroll down for video Google has revealed the self driving minivans it hopes could revolutionize the way we travel. At a closely guarded 'fake town' testing facility called The Castle located 120 miles southeast of San Francisco, it showed where its cars complete their equivalent of driver's education Fully self-driving vehicles are expected to hit the market in a limited form by around 2020, in vehicle fleets rather than owned by individuals until the price of the technology involved becomes more affordable for consumers. General Motors Co and rival Ford Motor Co have both said they aim to sell fully self-driving cars by 2021. AutoNation said its stores will maintain and repair Waymo's self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid vehicle fleet, plus additional brands as Waymo expands. 'The ambition is to grow with Waymo,' AutoNation Chief Executive Mike Jackson told Reuters. 'The only way to get a return on a truly autonomous system is on a shared vehicle, where there is an extended life cycle.' That requires service through the manufacturers warranty period and beyond, Jackson said. The Waymo passenger experience begins by with a screen welcoming people aboard the vehicle, and telling them to push a blue 'start ride' button on the ceiling of the car Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV is part of an alliance with Waymo to develop self-driving cars based on a test fleet of Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans in Phoenix, Arizona. In June, Waymo signed a multi-year agreement with Avis Budget Group Inc for the car rental firm to manage its growing autonomous vehicle fleet. Jackson said he was open to acquisitions, but not necessarily of new car dealerships. 'We are focused on building our USA' used-vehicle stores, he said. 'We are expanding our collision business.' 'CASTLE,' WAYMO'S FAKE 100-ACRE CITY Waymo built 'Castle,' a hidden mock city that can quickly be configured to test different scenarios. It's located north of the Merced metro area where the Castle Air Force Base used to be an has been rented by Google since 2014. As part of the initial two-year lease, the firm rented 80 acres from Merced Country for $456,000, being paid in $19,000 monthly installments. It has different driving environments including residential streets, expressway-style streets, cul-de-sacs, and parking lots. The Waymo test site is located north of the Merced metro area, where the Castle Air Force Base used to be At Castle, the roads are named after famous cars, such as DeLorean, Bullitt, Thunderbird, Fury, and Barbaro. For the structured testing, Waymo looks at how self-driving cars perform on real roads to determine how they need to practice - then they build what's required at Castle. The fake city has no buildings except one - a converted military dorm Waymo employees sleep in when they're too tired to make it back to San Francisco. It's hidden, and you need GPS coordinates to find it. Castle is located north of the Merced metro area where the Castle Air Force Base used to be, 2.5 hours from the company's headquarters. There, Waymo is testing several types of self-driving cars, including Chysler Pacificas minivans Advertisement Profit in the quarter was better than expected, as the impact of recent storms wasn't as bad as feared. The company said Hurricane Irma negatively impacted its aftertax earnings by 8 cents per share. Net income from continuing operations fell to $97.6 million or $1.00 per share in the quarter ended Sept. 30, from $107.8 million or $1.05 per share, a year earlier. Total revenue fell 2.4 percent to $5.43 billion. Analysts on average had expected third-quarter profit of 84 cents per share on revenue of $5.58 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In morning trading, AutoNation shares were up 13 percent at $53.81. (Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar and Bernadette Baum) Professor Stephen Hawking has issued a chilling warning about the imminent rise of artificial intelligence. During a new interview, Professor Hawking warned that AI will soon reach a level where it will be a 'new form of life that will outperform humans.' Professor Hawking even went so far as to say that AI may replace humans altogether, although he didn't specify a timeline for his predictions. Scroll down for video Professor Stephen Hawking has issued a chilling warning about the imminent rise of artificial intelligence. During a new interview, Professor Hawking warned that AI will soon reach a level where it will be a 'new form of life that will outperform humans' A ROBOT TAKEOVER? A recent report by PwC found that four in 10 jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots. The report also found that 38 per cent of US jobs will be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence by the early 2030s. The analysis revealed that 61 per cent of financial services jobs are at risk of a robot takeover. This is compared to 30 per cent of UK jobs, 35 per cent of Germany and 21 per cent in Japan. Advertisement Professor Hawking made the chilling comments during a recent interview with Wired. He said: 'I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. 'If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. 'This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.' During the interview, Professor Hawking also urged more people to take an interest in science, claiming that there would be 'serious consequences' if this didn't happen. He added that a new space programme should be developed, 'with a view to eventually colonising suitable planets for human habitation.' He said: 'I believe we have reached the point of no return. 'Our Earth is becoming too small for us, global population is increasing at an alarming rate and we are in danger of self-destructing.' This isn't the first time that Professor Hawking has expressed fears about the rise of AI. Professor Hawking said: 'I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans.' Pictured is a scene from The Terminator, in which robots threaten to take over Earth In October last year, Professor Hawking warned that artificial intelligence could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with that of humanity. It could herald dangers like powerful autonomous weapons and ways for the few to oppress the many, he said, as he called for more research in the area. He was speaking in Cambridge at the launch of The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, which will explore the implications of the rapid development of artificial intelligence. He said: 'I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. SHOULD KILLER ROBOTS BE BANNED? A report by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic calls for humans to remain in control over all weapons systems at a time of rapid technological advances. It says that requiring humans to remain in control of critical functions during combat, including the selection of targets, saves lives and ensures that fighters comply with international law. 'Machines have long served as instruments of war, but historically humans have directed how they are used,' said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. 'Now there is a real threat that humans would relinquish their control and delegate life-and-death decisions to machines.' Some have argued in favor of robots on the battlefield, saying their use could save lives. But last year, more than 1,000 technology and robotics experts including scientist Stephen Hawking, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak warned that such weapons could be developed within years, not decades. In an open letter, they argued that if any major military power pushes ahead with development of autonomous weapons, 'a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.' According to the London-based organization Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the United States, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and Britain are moving toward systems that would give machines greater combat autonomy. Advertisement 'It therefore follows that computers can, in theory, emulate human intelligence - and exceed it.' Artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly and there are 'enormous' levels of investment, Professor Hawking said. He said the potential benefits were great and the technological revolution could help undo some of the damage done to the natural world by industrialisation. 'In short, success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation,' said Professor Hawking. 'But it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks.' Opponents of a giant telescope planned for a Hawaii mountain are appealing the state land board's approval of the project's construction permit. Richard Wurdeman, an attorney representing some of the opponents, filed a notice of appeal with the state Supreme Court on Monday. The board in September approved a construction permit for Thirty Meter Telescope. Opponents of the $1.4 billion project say it will desecrate land sacred to Native Hawaiians while supporters say it will provide educational and economic opportunities. Scroll down for video This illustration provided by Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) shows the proposed giant telescope on Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island. A long-running effort to build one of the world's largest telescopes on the mountain sacred to Native Hawaiians is moving forward after a key approval The opponents appealed directly to the state Supreme Court because of a law that allows certain contested-case hearing decisions to bypass the Intermediate Court of Appeals. Kealoha Pisciotta, one of the leaders fighting the telescope, says other participants opposing the project are expected to also file appeals this week. In late September, the board approved the long-running effort to build one of the world's largest telescopes on a mountain sacred to Native Hawaiians. But, the move reopened divisions over a project that promises revolutionary views into the heavens but has drawn impassioned protests over the impact to a spiritual place. Hawaii's land board granted a construction permit for the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope atop the state's tallest mountain, called Mauna Kea, but it was expected that opponents would appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court. Protesters willing to be arrested were successful in blocking construction in the past. THE 30 METRE TELESCOPE The $1.1bn telescope would be able to observe planets that orbit stars other than the sun and enable astronomers to watch new planets and stars being formed. It should also help scientists see some 13 billion light years away for a glimpse into the early years of the universe. Its primary mirror will measure 30 metres in diameter and be made up of 492 individual segments Construction costs are expected to top $1 billion. The telescope's segmented primary mirror, which is nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, will give it nine times the collecting area of the largest optical telescopes in use today. Its images will also be three times sharper. But the telescope may not hold the world's largest title for long. A group of European countries plans to build the European Extremely Large Telescope, which will have a 138-foot (42-meter)-long mirror. The construction of the TMT will be a joint venture between universities in California and Canada with partners from China, India and Japan. The telescope's segmented primary mirror, which is nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, will give it nine times the collecting area of the largest optical telescopes in use today. Its primary mirror will measure 30 metres in diameter and be made up of 492 individual segments, enabling it to capture a phenomenal amount of information from the cosmos. When construction is complete, it is expected to be three-times wider than the largest existing visible-light telescope in the world, and will have nine times more area. Astronomers are hoping that the instrument will enable them to see into the early universe. The telescope could find planets around other stars in the 'habitable zone,' where liquid water is possible on a planet's surface, the project's website says. Advertisement 'For the Hawaiian people, I have a message: This is our time to rise as a people,' said Kahookahi Kanuha, a protest leader. 'This is our time to take back all of the things that we know are ours. All the things that were illegally taken from us.' Telescope officials don't have any immediate construction plans and will consider its next steps, said Scott Ishikawa, a project spokesman. Officials previously have said they want to resume building in 2018. 'In moving forward, we will listen respectfully to the community in order to realize the shared vision of Mauna Kea as a world center for Hawaiian culture, education and science,' TMT International Observatory Board Chairman Henry Yang said in a statement. Richard Ha, a Native Hawaiian farmer who supports the project, urged opponents to avoid confrontation. 'The possibility of getting the best telescope in the world ... I don't feel is the right battle to fight,' he said. 'It will hurt our own people.' While opponents say constructing the telescope will desecrate Mauna Kea, supporters tout the instrument's ability to provide long-term educational and economic opportunities. 'This was one of the most difficult decisions this board has ever made,' state Board of Land and Natural Resources Chairwoman Suzanne Case said in a statement about the 5-2 decision. Plans for the project date to 2009, when scientists selected Mauna Kea after a five-year around-the-world campaign to find the ideal site for what telescope officials said 'will likely revolutionize our understanding of the universe.' The project won a series of approvals from Hawaii, including a permit to build on conservation land in 2011. Protesters blocked attempts to start construction. The telescope could find planets around other stars in the 'habitable zone,' where liquid water is possible on a planet's surface, the project's website says. A PERFECT LOCATION Mauna Kea's peak already hosts about a dozen telescopes. The dormant volcano is popular with astronomers because its summit is well above the clouds at 13,796 feet, offering a clear view of the sky above for 300 days a year. The state's isolated location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean also means the area is relatively free of air pollution. Few cities on the Big Island mean there aren't a lot of man-made lights around to disrupt observations. Advertisement Then in 2015, the state Supreme Court invalidated the permit, saying the board's approval process was flawed, and ordered the project to go through the steps again. Protests disrupted a groundbreaking in 2014 and intensified after that. Construction stopped in 2015 after 31 demonstrators were arrested for blocking the work. A second attempt to restart construction a few months later ended with more arrests and crews retreating. Mehana Kihoi said being arrested while praying on the mountain was one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. She started going there to help heal from domestic violence, Kihoi told the land board earlier this month. 'For years, I carried grief and pain ... until I went to the mauna,' she said, using the Hawaiian word for mountain. Kanuha, a protest leader, dismissed the millions that telescope officials have paid toward educating youth on the Big Island in science, technology, engineering and math. So far, $3.5 million has been paid into the educational fund, even while the project's construction permit was invalid. That money isn't the answer to improving the lives of Native Hawaiian youth, Kanuha said. Revitalization of language and culture through Hawaiian-focused education is what's important, he said. A group of Native Hawaiian telescope supporters formed a group called Perpetuating Unique Educational Opportunities. Some members had been against the telescope in the past, said the group's attorney, Lincoln Ashida. 'We believe that with increased opportunities for children, that results in stronger families, which in turn benefits our community,' Ashida told the board. Telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island. PIctured, Kupono Mele-Ana-Kekua, 35, of Kaaaawa, Hawaii, blows a conch shell near the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island A group of universities in California and Canada make up the telescope company, with partners from China, India and Japan. The instrument's primary mirror would measure 98 feet (30 meters) in diameter. Compared with the largest existing visible-light telescope in the world, it would be three times as wide, with nine times more area. Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, has been the first choice, telescope officials said, calling it the best location in the world for astronomy. The base camp for protesters of the Thirty Meter Telescope project occupies a site near the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island. Its summit provides a clear view of the sky for 300 days a year, with little air and light pollution. They selected an alternate site in Spain's Canary Islands if the telescope couldn't be built in Hawaii. After 44 days of recent testimony before the state land board, a retired judge overseeing the hearing recommended granting the permit, with conditions that employees attend mandatory cultural and natural resources training and that employment opportunities be filled locally 'to the greatest extent possible.' Hackers could secretly hijack your iPhone and install malicious apps, according to researchers who have found a new Wi-Fi bug. Security experts showed this bug could install malicious apps without the owner being aware - similar to the Key Reinstallation Attacks or Krack that emerged last month. Uncovering the flaw won a security lab the top prize of $110,000 (760,000) at a hacking contest in Tokyo. The details of the hack have not been made public and Apple has not had time to patch the flaw. Scroll down for video Hackers could secretly hijack your iPhone and install malicious apps, according to researchers who have found a potentially lethal Wi-Fi bug (stock image) WI-FI BUG Security experts showed this bug could install malicious apps without the owner being aware - similar to the Key Reinstallation Attacks or Krack that emerged last month. This means the most sensitive information from your device such as banking information and passwords could be taken by hackers. It could be related to iOS 11.1 as that is what all the phones at the hacking event were running on, according to a tweet from Zero Day Initiative. The details of the hack have not been made public and Apple has not had time to patch the flaw. Advertisement At the global Pwn2Own hacking contest the Tencent Keen Security Lab showed how a Wi-Fi bug could get entry to iPhones. This means the most sensitive information such as banking information and passwords could be taken by hackers. 'Once we verify the research presented is a true 0-day exploit, we immediately disclose the vulnerability to the vendor, who then has 90 days to release a fix,' explains Zero Day Institute who ran the initiative. 'Representatives from Apple, Google, and Huawei are all here and able to ask questions of the researchers if needed.' It could be related to iOS 11.1 as that is what all the phones at the hacking event were running on, according to a tweet from Zero Day Initiative. Apple has not issued a statement but on its security webpage it says: 'Apple doesn't disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available.' 'Recent releases are listed on the Apple security updates page.' Just last month security experts warned we should be on high alert as our home networks could be vulnerable to attack by hackers from a similar Wi-Fi bug. It emerged encryption algorithms designed to protect people's privacy online had been cracked. It could be related to iOS 11.1 as that is what all the phones at the hacking event were running on, according to a tweet from Zero Day Initiative That means cyber criminals within physical range of any WPA2 protected wireless router - which includes almost all home users - can spy on your every move online. It could also provide them easy access to data from smart devices, including baby monitors and internet connected security cameras. News of the vulnerability, known as Krack, or Key Reinstallation Attacks, emerged this week after experts from the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Belgium, announced they would be releasing their findings to the public. Details of the exploit were published to the researchers' website shortly before this article was published. Krack uses a flaw in the Wi-fi Protected Access II protocol (WPA2), developed 13 years ago, which renders it useless. Depending on the network configuration, it is also possible hackers could inject and manipulate data. For example, an attacker might be able to inject ransomware or other malware into websites. Just last month security experts warned we should be on high alert as our home networks could be vulnerable to attack by hackers from a similar Wi-Fi bug (stock image) In a written statement, the researchers said: 'We discovered serious weaknesses in WPA2, a protocol that secures all modern protected WiFi networks. WHAT CAN USERS DO? Until ISPs and router manufacturers issue firmware update, users may continue to be vulnerable to the exploit. However, there are some ways people can protect their data. Traffic between HTTPS servers should remain secure, so it is best to check the URL for any page you are going to input sensitive data into. Unprotected sites begin with HTTP:// rather than HTTPS:// Anyone with smart devices should visit the manufacturer's website to check for the latest security updates. Be aware that any data sent in plain text across your home network, for example some email clients use plain text, may be visible. Advertisement 'An attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using key reinstallation attacks. 'Attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted. 'This can be abused to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, passwords, chat messages, emails, photos, and so on.' Krack is believed to target a process called a handshake, an automated negotiation that happens between devices on a network. Handshaking establishes rules for communication between a 'foreign' device and the router, whether that's a printer, server or smartphone. By agreeing to the rules established during the handshake, the foreign device is then able to establish a connection with the home network. WPA2 uses a four-way handshake to establish a key for encrypting traffic, to protect it from prying eyes. During the third stage, researchers discovered the key can be resent multiple times. Key generation, while seemingly random, is actually governed by a mathematical formula. Through this third stage, they are believed to have been able to crack the underlying formal used to generate keys through trial and error. The full findings of the KU Leuven team will be presented on November 1 at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Dallas. Scientists around the world are working to develop the first reactionless propulsion system a so-called impossible engine that could slash space-travel times and reduce the costs of future missions. But, many argue a theoretical EmDrive system that uses a microwave field to generate thrust defies the fundamental laws of physics, and could never be brought to life. New research over the last year, however, now suggests scientists may finally be getting closer to uncovering how the impossible engine could work, according to theoretical physicist Giulio Prisco. The most recent, published by scientists in Portugal, claims a type of pilot wave theory could explain the strange quantum-like behaviour seen in the experiments. Scroll down for video Scientists around the world are working to develop the first reactionless propulsion system a so-called impossible engine that could slash space-travel times and reduce the costs of future missions. A prototype is pictured THE EMDRIVE The concept of an EmDrive engine is relatively simple. It provides thrust to a spacecraft by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. Solar energy provides the electricity to power the microwaves, which means that no propellant is needed. The implications for this could be huge. For instance, current satellites could be half the size they are today without the need to carry fuel. Humans could also travel further into space, generating their own propulsion on the way. But when the concept was first proposed it was considered implausible because it went against the laws of physics. Its allegedly fuel-free nature also means the drive may directly contradict the law of conservation of momentum. It suggests it would produce a forward-facing force without an equal and opposite force acting in the other direction. Advertisement In the new study, led by researchers at the University of Lisbon, the team proposes an explanation designed to bridge the gap between quantum and macroscopic systems a current challenge in the feasibility of the EmDrive. By the pilot wave theory, bouncing fluid droplets on a vibrating fluid path create whats known as a pilot-wave field, Prisco explains in an article for Motherboard. This field then guides the motion of the droplets. This explanation relies on a nonlinear approach, the authors explain in the study, in which the thrust can be explained as a consequence of the field intensity as it interacts with the particles in the device. Under the right conditions, such as those in the proposed EmDrive device, the researchers argue that such a system can eschew Newtons third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Consequently, since we are in the nonlinear realm it may happen that, in general, action does not equal reaction, even taking into account the intermediary of fields, the authors argue. This means that in certain specific conditions a minor action may give rise to a huge reaction. Over the last few years, researchers have proposed several explanations for the impossible engine, with efforts ramping up after a NASA paper appeared to show scientist had successfully created a working EmDrive prototype. While some initially cited a quantum vacuum theory to explain the findings, others claim a phenomenon known as the Mach effect could be to blame. By this effect, which was first theorized in the 1990s by physicist Jim Woodward, some of the force applied to an accelerating body of mass is stored as potential energy in its body rather than generating kinetic energy, according to Motherboard. HAS CHINA CRACKED THE 'IMPOSSIBLE ENGINE'? A new propaganda video claims that scientists in China have created a working prototype of the 'impossible' fuel-free engine. The radical EmDrive has been hypothesised for years by Nasa, but the space agency has been unable to create a working version. If the physics-defying concept is brought to reality, it's said the engine could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks. The video was posted by CCTV.com, and is titled 'Propellantless propulsion: The Chinese EmDrive by CAST scientist Dr Chen Yue, China's Space Agency.' It claims that Chinese scientists have developed the EmDrive, and will soon put it into space - although it does not state any technical aspects of the device. The EmDrive is an engine that provides thrust without the need for fuel. Instead, it bounces microwaves - provided by solar energy - around in a closed container. With no fuel to eject, the EmDrive would violate Newton's third law, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This isn't the first time that China has claimed to have made a working EmDrive. Advertisement This causes fluctuations in the objects resting mass, and this effect could be harnessed to create the type of thrust seen in the experiments. Earlier this year, NASAs Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program funded a project based on this effect. And, this summer, a Chinese propaganda video claimed scientists in China have created a working prototype of the impossible fuel-free engine. Despite claims that the device would soon be put into space, the video did not reveal any technical aspects of the system. In recent tests, NASA scientists managed to generate powers of 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt (mN/Kw), a fraction of the current state of the art Hall ion thruster, which can achieve a massive 60 mN/Kw (illustrated) While the impossible engine remains controversial, experts say it has potential to revolutionize space travel if it is ever truly brought to life. If the reaction-free EmDrive works, it would open the door for reaction-free space missions, which could reach the planets in weeks instead of months, and at a much lower cost, writes It could ultimately open a path to the stars. Therefore, its not surprising that visionary engineers continue to pursue the experimental and theoretical EmDrive research, despite the controversial nature of the technology. Have you ever had some trouble going to the toilet when you're in a public restroom or traveling, only being able to go comfortably when you return home? If so, you're not the only one. Researchers suggests that this is a common occurrence caused by returning to home to a familiar environment, triggering the urge to go. When someone returns home after a trip, certain sensory inputs such as a familiar painting or smell can make them feel more comfortable, triggering a relaxation response WHY WE FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE POOPING AT HOME Some people have trouble pooping while traveling or using a public restroom, but when they return home, the familiar environment can trigger relaxation, allowing them to release the inhibitions that can lead to holding it in. Jack Gilbert, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and the university's Microbiome Center director, told The Atlantic that when returning home, your adrenaline pumping changes, as well as how much energy you burn and how much fat you deposit, amongst other changes. In addition, sleep patterns can change too, and all of these factors can influence the speed at which food moves through the gut. So, one's familiar home environment can help food move along the gut more normally, and it also 'triggers the relaxation response that allows you to release the inhibitions that led you to hold it in' while in unfamiliar surroundings,' said Gilbert. Advertisement In a report by The Atlantic, Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne and author of Psychology in the bathroom, said that this is 'a very familiar story.' 'Most people feel more comfortable going to the bathroom in familiar - and private - surroundings.' According to Haslam, this is the opposite effect of what some experience when they're on holiday: traveler's constipation. People in this situation experience constipation, usually because they're not comfortable pooping in unfamiliar environments or because they're eating foods that change the composition of their gut microbiomes: the various bacterial communities living their guts. However, eating a meal that doesn't agree with the gut could also trigger diarrhea instead. Indeed, a 2007 study found that among Mormon missionaries at the University of Utah who had just returned from travel, many had developed gastrointestinal symptoms during their travels. Of those who developed symptoms during travel, 68 per cent had developed persistent diarrhea and 50 per cent had persistent constipation. While the study does not explore why these conditions developed, it does conclude that these gastrointestinal problems are common among people traveling abroad. Some people experience traveler's constipation. This can arise when people are not comfortable pooping in unfamiliar environments or because they're eating foods that change the composition of their gut microbiomes: the various bacterial communities living their guts In contrast to traveler's diarrhea, when someone returns home after a trip, certain sensory inputs such as a familiar painting or smell can make you feel more comfortable. Jack Gilbert, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and the university's Microbiome Center director, told The Atlantic that when returning home, your adrenaline pumping changes, as well as how much energy you burn and how much fat you deposit, amongst other changes. In addition, sleep patterns can change too, and all of these factors can influence the speed at which food moves through the gut. So, one's familiar home environment can help food move along the gut more normally, and it also 'triggers the relaxation response that allows you to release the inhibitions that led you to hold it in' while in unfamiliar surroundings,' said Gilbert. Advertisement Singapore Airlines has unveiled new A380 cabins costing hundreds of millions of dollars and if these pictures are anything to go by, it was money very well spent. It was already a world-class airline, now its very special indeed. The carrier has splashed out $850million on the upgrade, which introduces double beds in the exclusive suites which cost from 9,500 - and in business class. Scroll down for video Singapore Airlines is introducing luxurious double beds in its swanky new A380 suites, pictured Each suite is furnished with a separate full-flat bed with adjustable recline and plush leather chair, enabling customers to lounge comfortably in the chair or rest in bed without the need to convert the bed from a sitting position Each aircraft has six suites tucked into the front cabin of the upper deck, and they are more akin to five-star hotel digs than airline seats. Singapore Airlines describes them as a personal oasis complete with lavish furnishing and finishes. Each suite is furnished with a separate full-flat bed with adjustable recline and plush leather chair, enabling customers to lounge comfortably in the chair or rest in bed without the need to convert the bed from a sitting position. Singapore Airlines, which was named as Best Airline in Asia at the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2017, said: The exclusivity of the suites cabin is further accentuated by its two stylishly-furnished lavatories, one of which has a sit-down vanity counter Singapore Airlines describes its new A380 suites, pictured, as a personal oasis complete with lavish furnishing and finishes Handbags and jewellery get their own home in the new Singapore Airlines A380 suites For couples travelling together, the beds in the first two suites of each aisle can be converted to form a double bed. When not in use, the bed can be stowed completely, creating even more personal space within each suite. Each seat is upholstered by world-renowned Poltrona Frau in fine leather, and is fully adjustable using an electronic control side panel which can accommodate a variety of sitting and lounging positions. The swivel capability of the chair (between 135 and 270 degrees) with recline up to 45 degrees provides added flexibility for dining and relaxation. Each suite also has a 32in full-HD monitor that can swivel for the different viewing angles in seat and bed modes, a full-sized personal wardrobe, customised handbag stowage compartment, amenity box lined with soft leather, specially designed carpet and a feature wall with mood lighting all exquisitely crafted to give a touch of luxury and intimacy. The airline, which was named as Best Airline in Asia at the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2017, added: The exclusivity of the suites cabin is further accentuated by its two stylishly-furnished lavatories, one of which has a sit-down vanity counter. The airline said: The interior of the business class cabin showcases a modern yet organic colour scheme featuring a selection of soothing and classy leather and fabrics, in addition to lightweight carbon composite materials Dreamy: The business class aisle seats can be configured to a double bed formation The new suites were designed by Pierrejean Design Studio and manufactured by Zodiac Seats UK. Business class isnt too shabby, either. The airline said: The interior of the business class cabin showcases a modern yet organic colour scheme featuring a selection of soothing and classy leather and fabrics, in addition to lightweight carbon composite materials. The seats in this class are 25 inches in width, with two side wings for support. They can be reclined into a 78in full-flat bed and customers may also stretch out fully in a sun deck position to watch movies on an 18in monitor. But the piece de resistance is the fact that the two central seats can be transformed into a double bed, because the centre divider can be lowered. It should be pointed out, though, that Qatar pipped Singapore Airlines to the post in this department, because it has already launched double beds in business on its London and Paris routes. But the double bed feature isn't all Singapore Airlines has to boast about regarding its new business class seating. It's also keen to point out that its new business class seats are carbon fibre and thinner than normal metal-based seats, which allows for better optimisation of the seat and creates more under-seat stowage space to accommodate a full-sized cabin bag and laptop bag or handbag. Premium economy passengers will be treated to active noise-cancelling headphones, leather seats and more stowage space for personal items Each A380 will house 44 premium economy seats, pictured, which have a width of 19.5 inches Other features include a business panel equipped with USB ports and in-seat power, reading lights with adjustable brightness level, mood lighting, enlarged dining table designed for flexibility in dining positions, as well as stowage space for personal amenities 'with a thoughtful design that puts everything within easy reach'. There are improvements, too, for those on a budget, with premium economy passengers treated to active noise-cancelling headphones, leather seats and more stowage space for personal items. Economy passengers, meanwhile, will sit in Recaro seats that offer more space and greater comfort through an improved design. Economy passengers will sit in Recaro seats that offer more space and greater comfort through an improved design Other features for economy passengers include a patented non-intrusive reading light installed underneath the seat-back screen, personal storage space for small personal items, a coat hook, in-seat power supply and ergonomically designed footrest with adjustable positions. Pictured is the new economy back-seat entertainment system THE NEW CABINS: FAST FACTS Suites Cabin/seats - 6 Seat pitch - n/a Seat width - 21 inches Screen size - 32 inches Business Class Cabin/seats - 78 Seat pitch - 50 inches Seat width - 25 inches Screen size - 18 inches Premium Economy Class Cabin/seats - 44 Seat pitch - 38 inches Seat width - 19.5 inches Screen size - 13.3 inches Economy Class Cabin/seats - 343 Seat pitch - 32 inches Seat width - 18.5 inches Screen size - 11.1 inches Advertisement Other features include a patented non-intrusive reading light installed underneath the seat-back screen, personal storage space for small personal items, a coat hook, in-seat power supply and ergonomically designed footrest with adjustable positions. The new cabin products were displayed for the first time today at a media launch in Singapore. They will enter service next month on the first of five new A380 aircraft entering the fleet. Retrofit work will also take place on 14 existing aircraft, to ensure product consistency across the Airlines entire A380 fleet. The new Singapore Airlines A380 will be configured with 471 seats in four classes, featuring six Singapore Airlines suites and 78 business class seats on the upper deck, as well as 44 premium economy class seats and 343 economy class seats on the main deck. The research, design, development and installation of the new products on 19 A380s represents an investment of about $850million, Singapore Airlines said. The new suites will only be available on selected flights on the Singapore-Sydney-Singapore section of the route from London to Sydney, and will cost from 9,500. They will be available from December 18. He will make his Marvel debut next year, in the sequel movie Deadpool 2. And Josh Brolin showcased his chiseled physique while grabbing a smoothie with his wife Kathryn Boyd at SunLife Organics in Malibu, California, on Wednesday. The actor, 49, looked like he was in the zone as the fit couple were seen leaving the beach-city shopping center. Muscle beach: Josh Brolin showcased his chiseled physique while grabbing a smoothie with his wife Kathryn Boyd at SunLife Organics in Malibu, California, on Wednesday Josh dressed for comfort as he sported jeans and a graphic black Radiohead tank-top. The Deadpool 2 actor paired his laid-back look with black flip-flop sandals. The ex-husband of Diane Lane styled his hair by slicking it back and adding aviator-sunglasses to shield his eyes from the California sun. Brolin's wife Kathryn followed his casual footsteps by wearing leather pants, a Johnny Cash T-shirt, and a pair of beige boots. On a stroll: Brolin's wife Kathryn followed his casual footsteps by wearing leather pants, a Johnny Cash T-shirt, and a pair of beige boots The model slash actress went out flaunting her make-up free face, while leaving her blonde tresses down around her shoulders. The former personal assistant of Josh accessorized her rocker-girl ensemble with a necklace and multiple rings. Kathryn was seen enjoying her green smoothie, as her hunky husband enjoyed his protein filled shake. Casual: Josh and Kathryn got engaged in April 2015, before they tied the knot in September 2016 in North Carolina Josh and Kathryn got engaged in April 2015, before they tied the knot in September 2016 in North Carolina. The couple met after Boyd was an executive assistant at Brolin Productions- owned by Josh. Rumors sparked that the couple were dating only a month after ex-wife Diane Lane and Josh finalized their divorce. As for Josh's movie career, the star has kept busy with multiple film productions including the Avengers Series. He will play the role of Cable alongside actor Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool 2, which is set to release June 2018. They debuted their newborn, Willow Wendy, on national TV. And on Thursday, The Bachelor's Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski, both 37, have cleared the air about where they believe they conceived their daughter on The Morning Show. Earlier in the year, the brunette beauty told the Kyle and Jackie O show that they joined the mile high club during a long flight back to Australia, hinting they may have conceived their baby en route. Scroll down for video 'Snez and her big mouth!' Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski cleared the air about where they believe they conceived their daughter after the brunette beauty told the Kyle and Jackie O show that they may have conceived on a flight back home to Australia During their chat, The Morning Show hosts Larry and Kylie pressed the fitness trainer about their intriguing conception story. 'Snez and her big mouth aye,' he joked. 'That was just a bit of fun and tongue and cheek joking with Kyle (Sandilands) we're not sure where she was conceived,' the fashionista said. But he went on to explain: 'We think she may have been conceived (when) we had a little trip to visit one of my 28 clients over in Edinburgh about nine months before she was born.' Re-calculating: However the fitness trainer explained to The Morning Show hosts, 'We think she may have been conceived (when) we had a little trip to visit one of my 28 clients over in Edinburgh about nine months before she was born' (pictured in Edinburgh) Happy parents: 'So doing the maths, it was a nice little romantic trip away - that may have been the case,' Sam said 'Yeah the dates kind of align,' Snezana chimed in. 'So doing the maths, it was a nice little romantic trip away - that may have been the case,' Sam said. The timing of their trip to Scottish capital also happened around the same time as the Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg's wedding to Audrey Griffen, of which Sam and Snezana were guests of. A week after the baby was born Osher claimed that the couple actually conceived the baby after at his Hunter Valley wedding in January on Stav, Abby & Matt with Osher. 'I want to claim the conception happened at my wedding!' The timing of their trip to Scottish capital also happened around the same time as the Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg's wedding to Audrey Griffen, of which Sam and Snezana were guests of 'So the kid was born sometime in October and you two were away from Eve around the time of my wedding. I want to claim the conception happened at my wedding,' the TV host said. Sam took his time before awkward laughing and half-heartedly denying it. The engaged couple welcomed their new arrival Willow on Sunday 8th October, weighing a healthy 3.5kg and measuring 48.5cm. Some of the material on The Apprentice was so unprecedented it put even Blue Planet IIs sensational revelations in the shade. Rare footage of Joanna smiling and actually laughing... A fish swallowing a bird whole had nothing on that. After painstakingly work by the BBC film crew the Mancunian marketing manager was caught on camera out of her usual protective (stroppy) shell LOOKING HAPPY after a joke by Lord Sugar to Charles (a candidate from Vitality) about chopping off a piece of doeskin from his manhood. (Charles manhood that is, not Lord Sugars although that didnt make the joke any funnier.) Scroll down the video Defeated: Ross was 'an official genius' and 'usually the smartest person in the room.' But his IQ wasn't big enough to beat Joanna or impress Lord Sugar Later we then saw Joanna crying tears of JOY when she led her team to victory: incredible for two reasons. Only one person could have relished this weeks show more than Joanna: Lord Sugar himself. In a previous episode the East End wheeler-dealer had already taken great delight in giving the finger to a lawyer (Elliot Van Emden): a virtual act of Class War you imagine after all the times theyve shafted him over the years. Later on: Some of the material on The Apprentice was so unprecedented it put even Blue Planet IIs sensational revelations in the shade. Rare footage of Joanna smiling and laughing He rarely misses the chance to take the Mick out of anyone posh or brainy but not even Lord Sugar gets many opportunities to fire an official genius - as Ross described himself in his CV. Statistically speaking, the CEO of pet training app Kibble explained to Sugar smugly, if you take an average room of people in the UK I am usually the smartest person in the room. I actually do have the IQ of an official genius which Im kind of proud of. Sugars response was probably not what he expected or exactly encouraging. Really?!! his Lordship scoffed, as if having a high IQ was something to be embarrassed about rather than impressed. Well, statistically speaking you have not really performed, Sugar quipped. Touche ! Back to his best: Only one person could have relished this weeks show more than Joanna: Lord Sugar himself. Not even Lord Sugar gets many opportunities to fire an official genius This is one of my favourite tasks! his Lordship told the candidates announcing the list round which this year hed given a twist. For once the nine items the teams had to locate and purchase shared a common theme: him. These nine items mark some of the milestones of my life and career, he explained modestly. They ranged from mundane targets like a Tottenham Hotspur scarf, an Amstrad computer, and a car aerial (the product that Sugar started his career as a salesman with as a 16 year-old) to more mysterious products labelled Scarlet Doeskin and Rugelach. This task is about sourcing, negotiating, and strategy skills, Karren Brady summed up, and would test their approach to logistics and initiative. Good luck with that! you thought. Task: This is one of my favourite tasks! his Lordship told the candidates announcing the list round which this year hed given a twist. For once the nine items the teams had to locate and purchase shared a common theme: him Sure enough, as usual with this round, what the task showed us about the candidates skills at sourcing, negotiating, and strategy was that they didnt have any. Contestants from big cities such as Nottingham and Sheffield were so dazzled by the bright lights of London they lost all basic understanding of navigation, and those that did live in the capital (like Vitalitys Project Manager Sajan and Graphenes sub-team leader Bushra) werent much better. Graphene randomly split up the items. They still dont know what two of them are. And have no real idea where theyre going ! carped Karren Brady. Apart from that it was a great plan though? Fuming: Over at Vitality, Claude Littner growled: to the extent that there ever really was a plan I dont believe Sajan is following it' Over at Vitality, Claude Littner growled: to the extent that there ever really was a plan I dont believe Sajan is following it. Once again Vitality gifted victory to Graphene by securing only six of the nine items and thus incurring three fines that guaranteed defeat. Being so clueless about logistics and planning as supposed business brains/entrepreneurs was bad enough, their inept performances suggested they hadnt actually seen The Apprentice before. Even though there was a prize of 250,000 investment for the winner they clearly hadnt studied previous series to learn from their predecessors mistakes (which on this task were myriad). Haven't learnt: Even though there was a prize of 250,000 investment for the winner they clearly hadnt studied previous series to learn from their predecessors mistakes Here are 12 of the dumbest moments in this weeks episode 1. Sajans kamikaze patter Lord Sugar the loquacious losing Project Manager began unprompted - after his colleague Ross had been fired, nearly digging not so much a hole for himself as a tunnel out of the show. 2. Elizabeths ecstatic celebration of the team spirit behind Graphenes victory There have been people in our team that have basically ridden along on other peoples coat tails. When the teams get mixed up with guys that are really strong theyre just going to get eaten up. And that was when they won! 3. Anisas hopeless optimism about Graphenes team spirit Hopefully we wont have as many arguments now! Anisa said after James had joined the girls. Joanna: Ive got a lot to think about like who to make sub team leader. Jade: Other people have been PM. Theyve had loads to think about and youve still chosen to interrupt them and make their lives difficult ! Joanna: Did I argue with you when you were PM?! Well dont make statements like that ! This was in the taxi, before the task had even started. Oops: Lord Sugar the loquacious losing Project Manager began unprompted - after his colleague Ross had been fired, nearly digging not so much a hole for himself as a tunnel out of the show 4. Joannas optimism about Jade and Elizabeth Elizabeth and Jade are used to undermining and loving their own voice, so as sub-team leader Bushra will be able to just kind of keep a lid on it. Bushras response: Elizabeth is an uncontrollable, unprofessional, cartoon character ! 5. Bushras logistics skills Were not forming a route to work on. Were just taking in all of London in one go ! protested Elizabeth. In my mind, the sub-team leader said confidently, I was thinking: we go down, we go round, we go back up. Brilliant! 6. Joannas struggle to grasp the theme of the list Is Lord Sugar even Jewish? she wondered when a colleague suggested Rugelach were Jewish pastries. Charles struggle to grasp the theme of the list: The Nazar Supermarket was clearly not a Jewish supermarket ! Charles is Jewish. He MUST know youre not going to get Jewish pastries in a Turkish supermarket ! thundered Claude Littner 7. Charles struggle to grasp the theme of the list The Nazar Supermarket was clearly not a Jewish supermarket ! Charles is Jewish. He MUST know youre not going to get Jewish pastries in a Turkish supermarket ! thundered Claude Littner. Evidently not. Do you do any Jewish food in this store? asked Charles. Lord Sugars response was, um, cutting. So what did you think the Scarlet Doeskin was? Something they cut off your w***y or what? Ouch. 8. Anisas embarrassment about their Spurs scarf What did you end up paying for this scarf? his Lordship wondered. Dont ! Just dont! Anisa gushed. Even the former Tottenham chairman baulked at 30 quid. 9. Ross channelling his genius to identify the same item Do you wear a doeskin thing when you get lorded? Not strictly speaking the technical term, but basically: yes. Unclear: Ross Ive got your CV here, Lord Sugar began ominously. You say: Im usually the smartest person in any room. But what do you mean by that? 10. Lord Sugars difficulty communicating with an official genius Ross Ive got your CV here, Lord Sugar began ominously. You say: Im usually the smartest person in any room. But what do you mean by that? He means hes usually the smartest person in any room. 11. Ross difficulty communicating with Lord Sugar Oh hello Ross. Were you on this task?! Lord Sugar mocked. I knew that you would ask me that Ross began, in the same patient patronising manner he had used in the previous show when he chastised his Lordship for interrupting. Did I buy anything in this task? No. 12. Ross kamikaze logic Sajan, I would actually love to know why you think Im responsible for the failure of this task! Ross accused when Vitalitys Project Manager brought him back into the boardroom. Because I cant even tie myself to the failure in any way. As Ross had thus alerted Lord Sugar, this was ultimately because he had not really done anything on the task the final confirmation to Sugar that he was right to fire him. Maybe he was not such a genius after all. She made minimal effort with her Halloween costume on Tuesday night. But Lottie Moss pulled out all the stops for the NastyGal party on Wednesday, when she turned out for the NastyGal UK pop-up launch in London. The blonde bombshell wore a blazer as a thigh-skimming dress and even co-ordinated with social butterfly Tallia Storm down to her pointed stilettos. Scroll down for video Quick flash: Lottie Moss flashed her nude lingerie as she arrived at the NastyGal pop-up launch in London on Wednesday Lottie was glamorously made up in striking red lipstick and a glitzy manicure, with her golden tresses blown out around her shoulders. With a deeply plunging neckline, the model accidentally flashed her nude lingerie as she posed for the cameras. Inside the event, she didn't hesitate to pick and choose from the rails as the US brand brought a pop-up store to London's Carnaby Street. Hanging out: Lottie was snapped talking to social butterfly Tallia Storm Leggy look: Lottie was dressed in a sophisticated blazer dress Sophisticated: The duo matched in black outfits and pointed heels Sophisticated: Lottie Moss was seen shopping for her own new garbs inside the store The previous evening, costume ideas hadn't come readily to model Lottie, who lack imagination when it came to her Halloween costume. Dressed in a fishnet dress with lingerie underneath, Lottie added fake blooded on her chin and decolletage for a spooky spin on an overtly sexy outfit. She was seen arriving for Fran Cutler's annual spook-tacular at Tramp nightclub in London. Turning heads! Lottie made the sidewalk her catwalk as she left the venue Simple: She slipped into a stylish blazer dress for the occasion Sizzling: Lottie Moss slipped into a spider-themed ensemble to party at Tape nightclub on Tuesday night as she celebrated Halloween with her friends An eye for style: Tallia picked out her favourite jacket from the collection Simply yet stylish: Lottie wore a blazer as a dress and added simple, patent court shoes For Tallia, Wednesday is a particularly busy night, as she stopped by two events in one evening. The budding musician was seen at the NastyGal bash in a military-style jacket and super-plunging jumpsuit, after attending a book launch. Tallia was among the guests at the Be Cool, Be Nice event, held at the House of Lords, to celebrate the positive power of social media. Hopping about town: Earlier in the evening, Tallia had attended the Be Cool, Be Nice launch She said farewell to Belle Taylor in 2009, when her character succumbed to cancer. And on Thursday's The Morning Show, Jessica Tovey recalled having second thoughts at the time, on leaving Home And Away. 'I said to the producer, "I'm starting to feel a bit nervous"' the 29-year-old told co-hosts Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies. Scroll down for video Headed back to Summer Bay? Jessica Tovey, 29, recalled on Thursday's The Morning Show, how she had second thoughts on leaving the Channel Seven soap 'I did actually (have second thoughts on leaving) a few weeks before I left,' Jessica admitted. 'I said to the producer, "I'm starting to feel a bit nervous about leaving and think I may have made the wrong decision." 'He said, "We can change it. We can bring you back. We'll find a way. People have died before in the show and have returned"' the actress went on to recall. However Jessica stated that after her chat with the producer, she became certain in her decision: 'No, no. I think it actually is time to leave.' Nerves: 'I did actually (have second thoughts on leaving) a few weeks before I left. I said to the producer, "I'm starting to feel a bit nervous about leaving and think I may have made the wrong decision,"' the Sydney-born star admitted Content: However Jessica stated that after her chat with the producer, she became certain in her decision: 'No, no. I think it actually is time to leave' Notoriety: The brunette landed her first acting job as cancer-stricken Belle Taylor in Home And Away Jessica landed her first acting job as cancer-stricken Belle Taylor in Home And Away. The brunette featured in more than 230 episodes, before going on to land roles in Underbelly, Dance Academy, and more recently Wonderland. However Jessica's first love is theatre, and has been relishing taking to the stage in Bell Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice. Household name: Jessica featured in more than 230 episodes, before going on to land roles in Underbelly, Dance Academy, and more recently Wonderland Passion for the stage: However Jessica's first love is theatre, and has been relishing taking to the stage in Bell Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice The Sydney-born entertainer told The Sunday Telegraph last month: 'I was a big theatre nerd as a kid. I went to a performing arts high school and I really didn't do any screen work until Home And Away. 'I was very theatre focused. I did lots of Shakespeare at high school and I just loved the language. I loved the drama of it,' Jessica continued. Keen to continue her pursuits on the stage, the Logie Award-nominated star will feature next year as Viola in Twelfth Night for the Queensland Theatre. She's the Cronulla-native, who rose to national stardom as a model after appearing in a 2006 Tourism Australia ad. And more than a decade later, Lara Worthington (nee Bingle) appears to have set her sights on Hollywood for the global expansion of her cosmetics brand, The Base. The ambitious beauty entrepreneur recently sparked rumours that she wants to become the next Gwyneth Paltrow, after recruiting former Goop Buying Director Patrick Devlin to help propel her brand to the next level. Scroll down for video Is Lara Bingle the next Gwyneth Paltrow? The 30-year-old (R) is said to have set her sights on Hollywood with hopes of taking her brand The Base to the next level after hiring former Goop boss Patrick Devlin 'I just wanted to create something that was exciting to be a part of and something that makes people feel good about themselves,' Lara previously told Vogue of her cosmetics brand The Base. 'I want to consolidate for the moment and get the right structures in place for global expansion. We've just signed Sephora in Australia and we will launch with them at the end of this month. She continued: 'We've also had huge interest from other key global retailers but I want to get the back-end of the business from production, manufacturing and a new product development strategy in place first. 'Slow and steady wins the race!' Global expansion in the works? The ambitious beauty entrepreneur recently sparked rumours that she wants to become the next Gwyneth (pictured), after recruiting former Goop Buying Director Patrick (Pictured) to help propel her brand to the next level Lara's decision to employ Patrick comes after she mutually severed ties with manager Annie Kelly in August. Since launching in 2008, Gwyneth's Goop has expanded from a newsletter and blog to a lifestyle company and Lara appears to be striving for similar success. The Base launched in 2014 and products include self-tanner, bronzer, skincare and makeup. 'I'd been the face of brands and been the gun for hire for so long, I wanted to create my own thing, something that was mine,' she told Whimn. Family first: Like Gwyneth, New York-based Lara, 30, is a businesswoman and mother-of-two with both spending much of their time in Los Angeles. Lara shares sons Racer and Rocket with her husband Sam Worthington Motherhood: Gwyneth shares two children, Apple and Moses, with her ex-husband Chris Martin 'It was really about taking control of my life and what I was doing. She added: 'I'm across all the ins and outs of my business. That's important to me. This is not just a passion project for me.' Like Gwyneth, New York-based Lara, 30, is a businesswoman and mother-of-two with both spending much of their time in Los Angeles. Active lifestyles: Both Lara and Gwyneth lead active lifestyles and enjoy doing workouts by celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson. Pictured (L) Tracy and Gwyneth in Los Angeles in 2014. Pictured (R) Lara's gushing Instagram post about Tracy's workouts While former reality star Lara's TV career pales compared to that of Academy award-winner Gwyneth, 45, the pair do share similarities in appearance, health-conscious lifestyle and driving ambition. The striking blondes both previously took breaks from the spotlight, to build their businesses. In 2010, Lara told Grazia magazine that she was seeking 'a much quieter life' following a nude picture scandal involving former AFL star Brendan Fevola. Time out: The striking blondes both previously took breaks from the spotlight, to build their thriving businesses Last year, Gwyneth told the Today show that she was stepping away from Hollywood to focus on her brand, Goop. 'We took some investment last year, so as soon as we had other people's money, I realized I really better focus on this completely,' the actress said. 'I'll return to acting probably, but probably not right now.' Both Lara and Gwyneth lead active lifestyles and enjoy doing workouts by celebrity fitness trainer Tracy Anderson. Earlier this year, Lara posted an Instagram snap of Tracy's workout DVD The Pregnancy Project and hailed it as 'the best pregnancy workout!' Health-conscious: Lara and Gwyneth also share similar eating habits, with both being fans of nutritious green juices It turns out Lara isn't the only fan, with Gwyneth having previously hired Tracy as her personal trainer and the pair later entered into a joint business venture in the form of a fitness studio in East Hampton. Lara and Gwyneth also share similar eating habits, with both being fans of nutritious green juices. Gwyneth once revealed her secret wellness drink recipe to be: kale, lemon, mint, ginger, apple and water and Lara enjoys a similar combination. '[My favourite is] Pear, kale, lemon, avocado, flaxseed oil, two scoops of all greens powder and coconut water,' Lara told Vogue magazine. Diane Kruger wore a plain monochrome outfit Wednesday while shopping in the trendy Melrose Avenue area of Los Angeles. The 41-year-old actress sported a white T-shirt tucked into high-waist black jeans with frayed cuffs. Diane completed her ensemble with flats and accessorized with black sunglasses and a necklace. Scroll down for video Monochrome outfit: Diane Kruger kept it simple Wednesday in a monochrome outfit while shopping in Los Angeles She added a pop of color with a red purse. The German-born beauty had her blonde hair pulled back into a small bun. Diane was enjoying a bit of retail therapy as she was spotted with a bag from Cotton Citizen store on Melrose Place in the trendy shopping area. The actress last month attended the Paris premiere of her new movie All That Divides Us. Retail therapy: The actress enjoyed some retail therapy at a shop on Melrose Place The movie follows a mother and daughter in their secluded bourgeois home when a disappearance suddenly occurs creating a blackmail scenario. French actress Catherine Deneuve, 74, also stars in the film by director Thierry Klifa. The film is set to be released on November 8. Flawless complexion: The German-born beauty showed her flawless complexion sans makeup Phone check: Diane checked her iPhone after shopping at a Cotton Citizen store Diane earlier this year went public with her romance with The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus, 48. They met while filming their 2015 film Sky. Diane last year split with Canadian actor Joshua Jackson, 39, after 10 years together. Shameless star Emmy Rossum let her natural beauty shine through while attending the Variety Inclusion Summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The 31-year-old Golden Globe nominee sported minimal make-up and wore a black motorcycle jacket, matching pumps, and a grey plaid-and-pleated maxi-skirt selected by stylist Thomas Carter Phillips. The Burt's Bees brand ambassador also curled her new 'lob' which hairstylist Arsen Gurgov cut 'inches off' of last week. Scroll down for video Out and about: Shameless star Emmy Rossum let her natural beauty shine through while attending the Variety Inclusion Summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday On October 21, Emmy (born Emmanuelle) wrapped her role as landlady Fiona Gallagher in the eighth season of Showtime's Shameless returning this Sunday. Rossum even helmed the upcoming December 31 episode - titled 'Frank's Northern Southern Express' - of the Chicago-shot series. Missing from the newlywed's side Wednesday was her second husband of five months, Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, who directed her in his 2013 romantic comedy Comet. 'My husband's favorite thing about my face is the blue vein under my eye, so I dont often wear under eye concealer in my everyday life because he likes to be able to see my actual face,' the native New Yorker told PeopleStyle last week. Statement skirt: The 31-year-old Golden Globe nominee sported minimal make-up and wore a grey plaid-and-pleated maxi-skirt selected by stylist Thomas Carter Phillips New hair, don't care! The Burt's Bees brand ambassador also curled her new 'lob' which hairstylist Arsen Gurgov cut 'inches off' of last week 'So I think it's the idea of being true to yourself and being the best version of yourself and not the best version of somebody else.' The Animal Kingdom actress - who boasts 5.4M followers - tweeted that she 'couldn't think of a better morning to go hear [sexual harassment trailblazer] Anita Hill speak.' 'Hearing [the 61-year-old attorney] was inspiring. Thank you, Chelsea [Handler], for a thoughtful interview,' Emmy gushed after the equality conference. 26 years ago, the law professor accused then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual misconduct before a televised, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee that still ended up confirming him. 'We Become What We ... Frank!' On October 21, Emmy (born Emmanuelle) wrapped her role as landlady Fiona Gallagher in the eighth season of Showtime's Shameless returning this Sunday Behind the camera: Rossum even helmed the upcoming December 31 episode - titled 'Frank's Northern Southern Express' - of the Chicago-shot series Newlyweds: Missing from Emmy's side Wednesday was her second husband of five months, Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail, who directed her in his 2013 romantic comedy Comet 'It was the right thing to do. I had a voice. I had an opportunity. No matter how difficult it has been, at the time and since then, I would do it again,' Hill told the 42-year-old presenter. Now that many have accused Harvey Weinstein and other powerful figures of sexual harassment, Anita said: 'We are making change. It's not instant and there won't be one tipping point, there will be many.' She added: 'One of the things that really is troubling to me. It still takes about 30 women to come forward before one woman is believed. Our word is as valuable as the word of our abusers.' The native New Yorker - who boasts 5.4M followers - tweeted that she 'couldn't think of a better morning to go hear [sexual harassment trailblazer] Anita Hill speak' The Animal Kingdom actress gushed: 'Hearing [the 61-year-old attorney, M] was inspiring. Thank you, Chelsea [Handler, R], for a thoughtful interview' Groundbreaker: 26 years ago, the law professor accused then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual misconduct before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee Hill told the 42-year-old presenter: 'It was the right thing to do. I had a voice. I had an opportunity. No matter how difficult it has been, at the time and since then, I would do it again' Now that many have accused Harvey Weinstein and other powerful figures of sexual harassment, Anita said: 'We are making change. It's not instant and there won't be one tipping point, there will be many' The Chelsea host - who tweeted October 18 that she's ending her Netflix talk show - donned a navy pencil skirt with a red striped top and brown booties selected by stylist Bre Fleming. Geena Davis bared her shoulders in a white floral Bardot top and matching bell bottoms to discuss her impressive Institute on Gender in Media. The Oscar winner and Olympic archeress easily defied her 61 years with minimal make-up and wore her ombre bob in curls. Ending her Netflix talk show: The Chelsea host donned a navy pencil skirt with a red striped top and brown booties selected by stylist Bre Fleming Statuesque: Geena Davis bared her shoulders in a white floral Bardot top and matching bell bottoms to discuss her impressive Institute on Gender in Media HBIC: The Oscar winner and Olympic archeress easily defied her 61 years with minimal make-up and wore her ombre bob in curls The Marjorie Prime actress explained to Variety's Malina Saval (L): 'You can write in the script, "A crowd gathers, which is "half female" for gender balance' 'In commercials, there were twice as many men who spoke four times as much as women on screen,' the Marjorie Prime actress explained to Variety's Malina Saval. 'We know we all have unconscious gender and racial bias, so let's do this together...You can write in the script, "A crowd gathers, which is "half female" for gender balance.' Also attending the Variety Inclusion Summit was 'Queen of Percussion' Sheila E. in a black blazer, white button-up, and red maxi-skirt. The 59-year-old former Prince muse joined Wonder Woman's Connie Nielsen as well as Paul Feig, Effie T. Brown, and Dawn Hudson on a panel about sexual harassment. Drum dame: Also attending the Variety Inclusion Summit was 'Queen of Percussion' Sheila E. in a black blazer, white button-up, and red maxi-skirt Hey girl! The 59-year-old former Prince muse joined Wonder Woman's Connie Nielsen (L) as well as Paul Feig, Effie T. Brown, and Dawn Hudson on a panel about sexual harassment Their romance came to a bitter end when he abandoned her at the altar on their wedding day last season. But Michelle Keegan and Luke Pasqualino's characters reunited in the explosive Our Girl finale on Tuesday night and indulged in a very passionate romp. Corporal Georgie Lane and hearthrob Elvis Harte stripped off for the steamy scene - which later led to him proposing. Scroll down for video Steamy: Michelle Keegan and Luke Pasqualino's characters reunited in the explosive Our Girl finale on Tuesday night and indulged in a very passionate romp Elvis admitted he had 'changed', and gave her a letter with an engagement ring attached - which she soon slipped on her finger, and flaunted to her fellow medics. But Our Girl viewers were left 'in bits' soon after, as Elvis was killed off in the heartbreaking finale. The character had been trying to escape an enemy attack in Kabul when a bomb detonated in front of him - minutes after his love Georgie had agreed to marry him. Viewers immediately took to Twitter to mourn the hunk's 'devastating' death, and praise Michelle's 'incredible' acting, after her character desperately attempted to revive him. In the heartbreaking scenes that followed, Elvis and the rest of 2 Section were ambushed by the enemy, and forced to flee back to Kabul. X-rated: Corporal Georgie Lane and hearthrob Elvis Harte stripped off for the steamy scene - which later led to him proposing Avert your eyes: Michelle stripped down to her bra while Luke was seen shirtless in the romp Pucker up: After weeks of chemistry, the two characters confessed their feelings In the chaos of the escape the special forces officer was seen venturing to the rooftop, where he came across a bomb - which was then detonated by a soldier inside the building. Georgie screamed in horror as her fiance was thrown from the building, and desperately attempted to resuscitate him, before he tragically died in her arms. Following the shock ending, actress Michelle shared a heartwarming selfie of herself and actor Luke with their arms wrapped around one another following the emotional scene, insisting that their characters love will continue despite Elvis' death. Happy news: Elvis admitted he had 'changed', and gave her a letter with an engagement ring attached - Sweet: Georgie soon slipped the ring on her finger, and flaunted it to her fellow medics She captioned the hugging snap: 'That's it... Season 1 finished! Thankyou so much for all your lovely comments!!! 'Thankyou to everyone who was involved in the making of the 4 eps! Feel very lucky to be part of such a great show. #elvisandgeorgieforever'. She also announced that the show will return in an explosive fashion next year. Heartbreak: Elvis, played by Luke Pasqualino, had been trying to escape an enemy when a bomb went off - minutes after his love Georgie (above) had agreed to marry him Never forget: Following the heartbreaking ending, Michelle shared an adorable snap of her and actor Luke Pasqualino hugging on Instagram Bad news: Elvis (above) and the rest of 2 Section were ambushed by the enemy, and forced to flee back to Kabul Rest assured! Michelle Keegan and the BBC have no doubt lifted spirits after announcing that the show will return in an explosive fashion next year Sharing the exciting news with a tantalising 'first look image', it looks like season four will see trouble spell for Corporal Georgie Lane. The still depicts the fierce protagonist with a fearful expression on her face as she is grappled by two rebels. 'FIRST LOOK IMAGE: Corporal Georgie Lane lands herself in jeopardy like never before in #OurGirl Nigeria Tour. Coming next year to @BBCOne,' the teaser reads. After the emotional scenes aired, viewers immediately took to Twitter to vent their devastation and frustration at the shock twist. Not fussed! Luke seems to have taken his Our Girl exit in his stride as he attended an intimate evening hosted by Paul Smith & The Gentleman's Journal to introduce the Paul Smith Bespoke By Appointment service Smouldering: The actor looked seriously dapper in a checked suit as he mingled inside the event Dangerous: In the chaos of the escape the special forces officer was seen venturing to the rooftop, where he came across a bomb Heartbreak: The bomb was then detonated by a soldier inside, and Georgie screamed in horror as her fiance was thrown from the building Emotional: She desperately attempted to resuscitate him, before he tragically died in her arms One kicked things off by writing: 'I CANT BELIEVE THEY'VE KILLED ELVIS I knew it would happen and I'm still so shocked' While another added: 'How can they let Georgie and Elvis finally be happy and then kill him off like that, literally heartbroken.' Further fans confessed they were distraught by the ending, adding: 'Thanks our girl for breaking my heart into a million pieces tonight' and 'This has actually broken my heart in two how dare they.' While another particularly passionate fan admitted: 'I think I need compassionate leave from work after that episode of #OurGirl. I'm devastated' RIP: After the emotional scenes aired, viewers immediately took to Twitter to vent their devastation 'Thanks for breaking my heart': Many claimed they hearts were 'broken' by his death while others vented their shock Not impressed: However, some fans were left furious by Elvis' death, and claimed the twist had ruined the otherwise entertaining show One viewer also reasoned the scenes were as realistic as they were heartbreaking, writing: 'What an emotional end to #OurGirl. Makes matters worse that things like that actually happen in real life. Really eye opening.' However, some fans were left furious by Elvis' death, and claimed the twist had ruined the otherwise entertaining show. While another particularly passionate fan admitted: 'I think I need compassionate One wrote: 'Never been so angry at the BBC how dare they kill Elvis' as another added angrily: 'Never f***ing watching Our Girl again, how could they think killing Elvis off is a good idea. Absolute joke.' Yet, a huge number of fans were quick to praise Michelle's portrayal of grief, and claim she is 'underrated' as an actress. Award-worthy: Yet, a huge number of fans were quick to praise Michelle's portrayal of grief 'She's a legend!': Viewers admitted she was underrated as an actress, after such a 'fantastic' performance in the finale One viewer said: 'Wow! How incredible @michkeegan is' as another added: 'Michelle Keegan is such an incredible actor, in bits after watching that.' Further fans claimed she does not get the praise she deserves, interjecting: '@michkeegan is a legend! She doesn't get enough recognition, she's smashed #OurGirl Roll on Nxt year, Well done to the cast & crew' And: 'Michelle Keegan was wasted in Coronation street. She's one of the best actresses on our televisions #OurGirl #tooemosh.' Elvis' death had been revealed as a shock twist earlier this week, with show creator Tony Grounds admitting it had been due to actor Luke's busy work schedule. Farewell: Elvis' death had been revealed as a shock twist earlier this week, with show creator Tony Grounds admitting it had been due to actor Luke's busy work schedule Speaking to the Radio Times, the writer explained the 27-year-old was unable to film the next series due to his contract with US series Snatch - and that death was the 'bravest' way for his character to go as an army officer. He said: 'Firstly in terms of honouring that story it felt like their relationship was brilliant and toxic at the same time and it was a great dramatic way to go with it.' 'We could have sent [Elvis] to prison or on holiday or just not seen him for five years but that seemed a bit daft so we thought let's take this brave way and he dies on the battlefield in Georgie Lane's arms. 'We were forced into that way of thinking because I love him and I would happily have had Elvis in forever.' The Victoria's Secret model returned home on Wednesday to host the Melbourne Cup carnival's AAMI Derby Day race day this weekend. And Shanina Shaik has been busy enjoying her time in Melbourne over the past two days, taking to Instagram ventured out in the city. The 26-year-old uploaded a blissful photo on Thursday, closing her eyes as she posed in cosy attire on a bridge. Scroll down for video Right at home! Victoria's Secret model Shanina Shaik steps out in Melbourne and enjoys fish and chips ahead of Melbourne Cup Carnival She simply captioned the shot 'Melbourne blues', with fans sad they had missed the opportunity to spot the stunner while out-and-about. The image appeared to have been taken the previous day, as she was wearing the same all-black ensemble as pictured in her previous Instagram Stories. Sporting dark jeans, a black jumper and beanie, and a YSL handbag, Shanina had enjoyed a meal of fish and chips in Melbourne the day earlier. She had also posted a short clip of a tram travelling through the city. Tucking in! Sporting dark jeans, a black jumper and beanie, Shanina had enjoyed a meal of fish and chips in Melbourne the day earlier Solo trip: It appears Shanina made her trip Down Under without fiance DJ Ruckus, who appeared to have performed in Atlanta on Wednesday night Sight seeing: She had also posted a short clip of a tram travelling through the city It appears Shanina made her trip Down Under without fiance DJ Ruckus, who appeared to have performed in Atlanta on Wednesday night. As one of Australia's hottest modelling exports, Shanina lives in New York and travels the world over for exciting shoots and catwalk shows. But this month, the brunette beauty was thrilled to be returning home to enjoy the race that stops the nation. Shanina will host the Maison Mumm marquee on AAMI Derby Day as part of her Mumm ambassador duties, adding: 'I'm so excited to be coming home to attend the Melbourne Cup Carnival. 'It's been a while since I've been back home in Melbourne': The star took to Instagram from within a plane in Los Angeles to announce her return Down Under in comfortable long-haul flight attire It's the first time the brand has flown over the International successful model especially for the race day event. 'I love Mumm champagne and I can't wait to enjoy their marquee on Derby Day I've heard it is the best party in the Birdcage!' Shanina said. Pernod Ricard Australia Managing Director Bryan Fry said there were 'excited to be working with Shanina Shaik as our 2017 ambassador. 'Shanina's fast-paced, high-energy lifestyle makes her the perfect partner for Mumm, an icon of celebration.' 'I'm so excited to be coming home!' Victoria's Secret model Shanina Shaik jets into Melbourne ahead of the race that stops the nation Rich Kids of Beverly Hills stars Morgan Stewart and Brendan Fitzpatrick will also attend the E! Lounge in the Maison Mumm marquee on November 4. Shanina took to Instagram on Wednesday to announce her return Down Under. Wearing red trackpants, a matching I.Am.Gia hoodie and crisp white sneakers, Shanina looked comfortable for her long-haul flight from Los Angeles. She captioned her photo: 'It's been a while since I've been back home in Melbourne. So happy to be coming home to Australia. See you at the RACES.' They were pictured seemingly in the midst of a heated argument in Feburary. But James Stewart, 42, and ex-fiancee Jessica Marais, 32, put their differences aside this week as they accompanied their five-year-old daughter Scout on her first day at school. The couple, who have co-parented Scout since their split in 2015, appeared in a rare happy snap together this Wednesday when James celebrated the milestone on Instagram. Scroll down for video James Stewart, 42, and ex-fiancee Jessica Marais, 32, put their differences aside to accompany their five-year-old daughter Scout on her first day at school on Wednesday Taking to his popular page, the proud father shared a photo of himself and Jessica beaming alongside their little girl, writing: 'First step into big school.. I think Jess and I are more nervous than Scout.. hah! Argh!' Fans showered the post with congratulatory messages, with one writing: 'Love this! Love that no matter what, you're there together for your beautiful daughters first day.' 'James & Jess you two are just what every parent should be!! There child is number one!! ALWAYS!! I hope Scout has an amazing 1st day!!' United front: Fans showered the post with congratulatory messages, with one writing: 'Love this! Love that no matter what, you're there together for your beautiful daughters first day' It comes months after the pair were spotted seemingly arguing as Jessica arrived at James' house to drop off Scout for a visit. Jessica was seen throwing her hands in the air and scowling, while James wore a vexed expression and turned his back on the blonde actress. It was previously claimed that Jessica has been struggling to spend enough time with Scout due to the 'toxic' nature of her relationship with James. 'She's tortured by the situation': It was previously claimed that Jessica has been struggling to spend enough time with Scout due to the 'toxic' nature of her relationship with James 'She's tortured by the situation, and feels she's powerless to fight James because she's scared some of her darkest secrets will be revealed,' a source told Woman's Day last year. The insider added: 'She wants to move forward with her life but because James appears to have a lot of control over her relationship with Scout, she feels like it's impossible.' And in an article with Sunday Life last year, James revealed his ex is too busy to look after their daughter. Public row: It comes months after the pair were spotted seemingly arguing as Jessica arrived at James' house to drop off Scout for a visit 'I am the full-time carer for Scout as Jess is busy working and travelling a lot,' James said. 'When Jess is back, Scout is shared 50/50,' the 40-year-old actor added. She welcomed her first child, a son called Henry, a week before her 46th birthday after a previously unsuccessful attempt with IVF. And in December's The Australian Women's Weekly, Emily Symons admitted that to this day, she still has moments where she can't believe she fell pregnant. 'I thought I missed my chance,' the 48-year-old Home And Away star told the publication. 'I thought I missed my chance': Home And Away's Emily Symons, 48, admitted in December's The Australian Women's Weekly, that she still can't believe she fell pregnant with son Henry, two, after an unsuccessful attempt with IVF 'I still have days where I can't believe I got pregnant. I still walk into Henry's nursery and I go, "Oh my God, there's a child in here",' Emily shared with a laugh. Having previously failed to fall pregnant, the actress said that at the time she had learned to move forward with her life. 'I think acceptance is a big part of moving forward. It helps you with grief, it helps you with jobs and it helps you with IVF,' she explained. Can't believe her luck: 'I still have days where I can't believe I got pregnant. I still walk into Henry's nursery and I go, "Oh my God, there's a child in here",' the actress shared with a laugh Acceptance: Having previously failed to fall pregnant, Emily said that at the time, she had learned to move forward with her life: 'I think acceptance is a big part of moving forward. It helps you with grief, it helps you with jobs and it helps you with IVF' So when Emily discovered she was expecting with her then-partner, radio executive Paul Jackson, she was understandably overjoyed. 'I hadn't taken any steps to ensure I would be able to have a baby later in life. I thought, that's it, I've missed my chance. I'll just move on,' she went on to say. The past year has been full of ups and downs for Emily, having split from Paul whom she had been dating for four years. The couple had previously struggled to conceive a child using IVF, with Emily calling the process 'soul destroying' in an interview withNew Idea. Grateful: So when Emily discovered she was expecting with her then-partner, radio executive Paul Jackson, she was understandably overjoyed Persevering, the pair eventually welcomed son Henry in 2015. Confirming their break-up Paul's representative stated at the time: 'They remain proud parents of Henry.' Emily debuted in 1989 as the bubbly blonde Marilyn Chambers in Channel Seven Soap Home And Away. After a stint on UK soap Emmerdale, the entertainer returned to Summer Bay in 2010. Oscar-winning couple Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones put on a united front at the Jubilee Gala in Manhattan Wednesday ahead of their 17th wedding anniversary happening November 18. At 73, the New Jersey-born silver fox is 25 years older than the glamorous Welshwoman, and the Traffic co-stars first met way back in 1996 at the Deauville Film Festival. Posing at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, the Feud actress bared her chest in a black cut-out gown, matching peep-toe heels, and statement jewelry. Scroll down for video Still going strong! Oscar-winning couple Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones put on a united front at the Jubilee Gala in Manhattan Wednesday ahead of their 17th wedding anniversary happening November 18 Catherine swept her raven locks into a romantic updo and she sported false lashes and glossy lips for the Actors Fund Career Transition for Dancers event. Meanwhile, Michael looked sharp in his navy pantsuit, white button-up, grey necktie, and patent leather dress shoes. The Hollywood power pair - who once split for six months in 2013 - also happen to share a September 25 birthday. 'No one really knows what goes on in my four walls,' Zeta-Jones told Vanity Fair in September. Still smitten: Catherine nuzzled her head into Michael as they put on an affectionate display inside the gala The look of love: At 73, the New Jersey-born silver fox is 25 years older than the glamorous Welshwoman, and the Traffic co-stars first met way back in 1996 at the Deauville Film Festival Diva: Posing at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, the Feud actress bared her chest in a black cut-out gown, matching peep-toe heels, and statement jewelry Nice earrings! Catherine swept her raven locks into a romantic updo and she sported false lashes and glossy lips for the Actors Fund Career Transition for Dancers event Loved-up: Catherine placed a tender hand on Michael's shoulder as they flaunted their love of the arts 'My husband and I have been in the public eye for many, many, many years. So, when we go out, we put the Michael Douglas-Catherine Zeta-Jones armor on every now and again. We are a very, very, very close family; we share everything.' Last week, Douglas treated their children - son Dylan, 17; and daughter Carys, 14 - to an Eagles concert where they got to meet guitarist Joe Walsh backstage. The Flatliners producer is excited to spend the holidays in New York with his very first grandchild from 38-year-old son Cameron (with ex-wife #1 Diandra Luker) and his girlfriend Viviane Thibes. According to USA Today, the Brazilian yoga instructor will welcome the baby in late November or early December following the ex-con's seven-year stint at the Pennsylvania Cumberland Federal Corrections Institute. Snap happy! The pair were keen to capture memories from the event as they took out their phones and snapped away Suited and booted: Meanwhile, Michael looked sharp in his navy pantsuit, white button-up, grey necktie, and patent leather dress shoes 'Ship shape!' The Hollywood power pair - who once split for six months in 2013 - also happen to share a September 25 birthday VIP treatment: Last week, Douglas treated their children - son Dylan (L), 17; and daughter Carys (2-R), 14 - to an Eagles concert where they got to meet guitarist Joe Walsh (2-L) backstage Cameron - who's penning a tell-all and planning an acting career - served hard time for possession of heroin as well as dealing cocaine and methamphetamine. On Tuesday, Catherine - who boasts 1.7M social media followers - shared a b&w video of her tap-dancing workout at home. The two-time Golden Globe nominee - who's starring in Lifetime's Cocaine Godmother next year - launched her home collection Casa Zeta-Jones on QVC in September. Also attending the Jubilee Gala was Live! host Kelly Ripa looking pretty in a pink and silver-sequinned cocktail creation, matching pumps, and a silver clutch. Baby shower: The Flatliners producer is excited to spend the holidays in New York with his very first grandchild from 38-year-old son Cameron (R) and his girlfriend Viviane Thibes (M) Ex-convict: According to USA Today, the Brazilian yoga instructor will welcome the baby in late November or early December Fancy footwork: On Tuesday, Catherine - who boasts 1.7M social media followers - shared a b&w video of her tap-dancing workout at home Branching out: The two-time Golden Globe nominee - who's starring in Lifetime's Cocaine Godmother next year - launched her home collection Casa Zeta-Jones on QVC in September The 47-year-old mother-of-three presented a CTFD Award to Dancing With the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba, who called Kelly her 'ride or die.' The 49-year-old Emmy nominee flaunted a hint of cleavage in a navy sparkly off-the-shoulder gown selected by stylist Rhonda Spies alongside her cancer-surviving mother Patricia. The former In Living Color Fly Girl - who's engaged to Home Again actor Robb Derringer - was humbled to be honored with the likes of Zeta-Jones for outstanding contribution to dance. Barbie shade: Also attending the Jubilee Gala was Live! host Kelly Ripa looking pretty in a pink and silver-sequinned cocktail creation, matching pumps, and a silver clutch 'I love you!' The 47-year-old mother-of-three presented a CTFD Award to Dancing With the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba (R), who called Kelly her 'ride or die' 'My mom was my date': The 49-year-old Emmy nominee flaunted a hint of cleavage in a navy sparkly off-the-shoulder gown selected by stylist Rhonda Spies alongside her mother Patricia Jeremy Piven was back at work Wednesday after 'unequivocally' denying sexual harassment and assault allegations. The 52-year-old actor was spotted filming his CBS drama Wisdom Of The Crowd in Los Angeles. Piven wore grey jeans, a black shirt, grey coat and glasses while apparently shooting an intense hostage scene. On set: Jeremy Piven was spotted on the Los Angeles set of his CBS drama Wisdom Of The Crowd on Wednesday after 'unequivocally' denying sexual harassment and assault allegations He was filming outdoor along with co-stars Richard T. Jones and Ion Overman. Piven was accused Monday via social media of sexual harassment and assault by 38-year-old actress Ariane Bellamar. The allegations came in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal that has rocked Hollywood. Bellamar tweeted Monday: 'Hey @jeremypiven! 'Member when you cornered me in your trailer on the #Entourage set? 'Member grabbing my boobies on the [couch emoji] without asking??'. New show: The 52-year-old actor portrays a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur who has developed a crowd-sourcing app to solve his daughter's murder Strong denial: The actor strongly denied claims of sexual misconduct made in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that has rocked Hollywood She later added: 'Member when I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the a**, looked at yourself in the mirror, & said what a 'beautiful couple' we made?' That was followed by Bellamar's claim that this happened multiple times. She wrote: 'Jeremy Piven, on two occasions, cornered me & forcefully fondled my breasts & bum. Once at the mansion & once on set.' Tense scene: Cameras filmed an apparent hostage scene for the CBS drama in Los Angeles The actor played the acerbic Hollywood agent Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage from 2004 to 2011 and in the widely panned 2015 movie. Piven released a statement Tuesday refuting Bellamar's claims. 'I unequivocally deny the appalling allegations being peddled about me. It did not happen,' the statement said. Groping claim: Ariane Bellamar took to Twitter on Monday to accuse Piven of sexual misconduct on the Entourage set 'It takes a great deal of courage for victims to come forward with their histories, and my hope is that the allegations about me that didn't happen, do not detract from stories that should be heard,' the statement added. CBS said in a statement Tuesday that it was aware of the media reports and was investigating the matter. Piven portrays Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur Jeffrey Tanner on the new CBS drama Wisdom Of The Crowd. New show: Piven, shown on Tuesday in New York City, issued a statement 'unequivocally' denying the claims made by Bellamar His character on the show creates a crowd-sourcing app to solve his daughter's murder. Wisdom Of The Crowd premiered on October 1 on CBS. Piven also played Harry Selfridge in the Mr Selfridge series from 2013 to 2016. She's the Neighbours star and red carpet regular. And Jodi Gordon looked suitably glamorous, as she attended the Melbourne Cup Carnival's Media Press Day, on Thursday. The 32-year-old highlighted her slender figure in a floral frock with subtle frill detailing. Blooming beauty! Jodi Gordon, 32, highlighted her slender frame in a floral frock at Melbourne Cup Carnival on Thursday Jodi showed off her curves as she posed for photos in a floral frock with grey and white striped detailing. The sleeveless design revealed her lithe arms while the drop flare, which sat from the thigh down, added a flirty touch. Elongating her frame with metallic strappy heels, the Channel Ten personality finished her outfit with a white box bag and an ornate floral headband. Jodi's brunette locks were styled in relaxed waves and her makeup consisted of a bronzed complexion, defined brows, subtle kohl-rimmed eyes, a set of false lashes and a matte pink lip. Svelte: The sleeveless design revealed her lithe arms while the drop flare, which sat from the thigh down, added a flirty touch Coordinating: Jodi accessorised with a beige box bag and an ornate floral headband The sighting comes following Jodi's revelation she dreams of one day becoming a fashion designer. Speaking to News Corp in August, Jodi explained: 'That would be my passion to get into a bit of design.' Tressed to perfection: The Neighbours actress styled her brunette locks in relaxed waves In profile: Jodi enhanced her striking facial features with a bronzed complexion, defined brows, a false set of lashes and a matte pink lip 'There's something I want to design...I'm not going to say what it is, but hopefully I will get to do that maybe after things finish on Neighbours,' Jodi added. Meanwhile, the Puma ambassador has her hands full at the moment as she balances her role on Neighbours with being a single mother to three-year-old daughter Aleeia. Jodi shares Aleeia with ex-husband Braith Anasta, who is currently expecting his second child with girlfriend Rachael Lee. Proud mother: The Puma ambassador has her hands full at the moment as she balances her role on Neighbours with being a single mother to three-year-old daughter Aleeia She's one of Australia's most in demand swimsuit and lingerie models. And Natalie Roser flaunted her enviable figure for a photo shoot with Bondi Sands, at Sydney's Coogee Beach on Thursday. The 27-year-old opted for a white T-shirt tucked into a pair of Daisy Dukes that revealed her lean legs. Scroll down for video Model behaviour! Natalie Roser, 27, flaunted her lean legs in Daisy Dukes, during a photo shoot at Sydney's Coogee Beach on Thursday Natalie kept it casual for the seaside event in a white T-shirt and lightwash mini shorts. The beauty teamed the look with a pair of Stan Smith sneakers and accessorised with matching white-rimmed sunglasses, delicate bracelets and earrings. Natalie also kept her makeup minimal with lashings of mascara, subtle kohl-rimmed eyes and a matte lipstick. Keeping it casual: Natalie was joined by Instagram star Steph Claire Smith who flaunted her washboard stomach in an orange plaid midriff and cropped beige trousers Having a blast: The pair were all smiles as they lounged on deck chairs for a series of playful snaps The future's bright: Natalie concealed her eyes behind a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses and raised her lithe arms in the air Instagram star Steph, exposed her toned tummy in an orange tartan midriff, teamed with a pair of beige capri pants that tapered at her shins. The lifestyle blogger also kept her accessories minimal with a chain link hanging from the belt holder. She wore her brunette tresses down for the event and also kept her beauty look simple with mascara, eyeliner and a peachy-pink toned lipstick. Having a little fun: Lifestyle blogger Steph kept her accessories minimal and opted for a minimal makeup palette Gal pals: Steph wore her brunette tresses down for the event and looked a picture of content Fan love: The models attended a Bondi Sands event alongside other social media influencers The models attended a Bondi Sands the event alongside other social media influencers, and promoting the various tanning products. Meanwhile earlier in the week, Natalie dressed up for Halloween festivities as Suicide Squad's Harley Quinn. Her boyfriend, actor Harley Bonner, coordinated with her character's partner in crime, the Joker in a nurses outfit. Her sister returned to Australia in May after serving almost a decade in Bali's Kerobokan Prison and three years on parole for trafficking drugs to Indonesia. And Mercedes Corby is now set to join Studio 10 as a panellist on Friday, where she will give her first television interview since Schapelle's dramatic homecoming five months ago. The news comes after another surprise announcement from Network Ten that former Bachelorette Georgia Love had been promoted to Ten News Melbourne anchor. Tune in! Mercedes Corby is set to join Studio 10 as a panellist on Friday, where she will give her first television interview since her sister Schapelle's dramatic homecoming five months ago Taking to Instagram on Thursday, Mercedes told 26,500 followers: 'Tomorrow morning I will be the fifth panelist on Studio 10. The show starts at 8.30am on Channel Ten.' The caption went alongside a photo of the regular Studio 10 presenters, including Sarah Harris, Jessica Rowe and Ita Buttrose. It is unclear if Mercedes's Studio 10 debut on Friday will lead to regular appearances on the popular breakfast TV program. However, Studio 10's executive producer Rob McKnight made clear she will be discussing an array of topics as a panellist, and won't simply be addressing the Schapelle saga. He said in a statement: 'From the moment Mercedes Corby was thrust into the spotlight, she has dedicated herself to protecting her sister. It's official! Mercedes made the announcement to Instagram on Thursday, sharing a photo of the regular Studio 10 presenters, including Sarah Harris, Jessica Rowe and Ita Buttrose 'Now that Schapelle is home, it will be interesting to find out who the real Mercedes Corby is when she's away from the intense media spotlight. 'As our fifth panellist on Friday, Mercedes will get to share her thoughts on a wide range of subjects and I think Australia will be surprised by the person they think they know, but have barely scratched the surface of.' Mercedes' sister Schapelle, 40, served nine years behind bars in Indonesia's notorious Kerobokan Prison - nicknamed 'Hotel K' - and was released on parole in February 2014. Headlines: Mercedes' sister Schapelle, 40, served nine years behind bars in Bali's notorious Kerobokan Prison - nicknamed 'Hotel K' - and was released on parole in February 2014 Convicted: Her life was forever changed the moment a customs officer lifted 4.2kg of top-quality marijuana from her boogie board bag the afternoon of October 8, 2004, in Indonesia After three years in Bali, she returned to Australia in May this year amid a media frenzy. The former beauty student's life was forever changed the moment a customs officer lifted 4.2kg of marijuana from her boogie board bag on the afternoon of October 8, 2004, in Indonesia. However, since her return to Australia, it appears Schapelle has put her criminal past behind her and established herself as a social media influencer. The former felon, who has 196,000 Instagram followers, has been pictured sipping champagne at her 40th birthday party and soaking up the sunshine in coastal locations. Back to everyday life: Since her return to Australia, it appears Schapelle has put her criminal past behind her and established herself as a social media influencer New gig: Mercedes's appointment as panellist follows news that former Bachelorette star Georgia Love (pictured) has been appointed a co-anchor for Ten News Melbourne Meanwhile Mercedes's appointment as panellist follows news that Georgia Love has been appointed a co-anchor for Ten News Melbourne. The former Bachelorette star has certainly come a long way from her years as a regional television journalist in Tasmania. Since leaving the WIN network to pursue reality TV fame, Georgia has found success as a panellist and media personality, appearing on Studio 10 and Channel Nine's Today show. She has just been publicly labelled a 'b****.' So it is perhaps understandable Sofia Vergara was looking a little subdued as she stepped out in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. The Latina lovely was looking far from her sparkling best as she loitered in a car park in the upmarket area of Los Angeles County. Quiet: Sofia Vergara looked pensive in Beverly Hills on Wednesday after being labelled a 'b****' The Modern Family favourite showcased her famously juicy behind in a pair of trendy tight jeans, which she paired with a black top and high heels. Her outing comes after famous felon Teresa Giudice, 45, aimed her acid tongue at the Latina lovely, claiming she acted like a 'b***h' as they got their photo taken following an appearance last week. The Real Housewives of New Jersey favourite claimed their encounter on Extra should have been far more pleasant as 'she's an immigrant'. Speaking at the Gettin Real With The Housewives event in Connecticut, the Bravo star opened up about her best and worst celebrity meetings when she recalled an incident with the Colombian actress and how she over took their selfie. Low key: The Latina lovely was looking far from her sparkling best Out and about: She seemed far from her usual jolly self as she loitered in a car park Rant: Teresa Giudice claimed Sofia Vergara acted like a 'b***h' as they got their photo taken In the video obtained by TMZ, the reality star insisted that she never wanted a photo with the Hollywood actress but was asked by her publicists to do so while in the green room. She began: 'We're in the green room and my publicist from Bravo say: "You're going to run into Sofia so we want you to take pictures together". I said: "Alright that's fine"...' Waiting for the photo, Teresa said she was taken aback by Sofia's less than friendly demeanour and has since been left anger by the encounter. 'Sofia was "Oh I can't stand her,"' she shared on stage. 'We were in the green room and I hate to say it because I'm Italian and she's Colombian. She's has an accent, more of an accent than me. Hitting out: The Bravo star made her claim when she opened up about her best and worst celebrity meetings Not impressed: The reality star insisted that she never wanted a photo with the Hollywood actress Awkward: Teresa said she was taken aback by Sofia's less than friendly demeanour 'You think she would be nice, you know she's an immigrant. No but I'm just saying, she should be nice.' Attracting gasps from the audience for her comments, Teresa continued to say how she felt about the experience and admitted she was left furious after Sofia stepped infront of her. She continued: 'So they take a picture and this is how she wanted to take a picture with me but she didn't want to take a picture. I'm here so I'm standing and she goes like this (stepping infront of me) to take a picture. 'And I didn't even do anything, I swear that's what she did. I was so mad at myself because I wanted to say: 'B***h I didn't want to take a picture with you'. Angered: Waiting for the photo, Teresa said she was taken aback by Sofia's less than friendly demeanour and has since been left angered by the encounter Speaking: She joined Danielle Staub, Siggy Flicker and Dolores Catania at the fan event on Sunday in Connecticut Hitting out: Teresa said: 'Sofia was "Oh I can't stand her"', she shared on stage. 'We were in the green room and I hate to say it because I'm Italian and she's Colombian' Following the awkward selfie, Teresa claimed that Sofia turned to her publicist and shared her dissatisfaction with the situation, something the Bravo star insisted her make-up artist Priscilla DiStasio also overheard. Teresa added: 'And this is what she said to her publicist: "Why did you make me take that picture with that woman?" just like that. 'Priscilla heard it and Priscilla was freaking out: "I can't believe that b***h said that. I can't stand her".' In the midst of her rant however, Teresa admitted that she's only ever asked for one photo with a celebrity and that was with Jennifer Lopez earlier this year at her Planet Hollywood show, adding that she 'loved her'. 'Nice': Teresa added: 'She's has an accent, more of an accent than me. You think she would be nice, you know she's an immigrant. No but I'm just saying, she should be nice' (Sofia pictured above) Gasps: Attracting gasps from the audience for her comments, Teresa continued to say how she felt about the experience and admitted she was left furious after Sofia stepped infront of her Talking head: She continued: 'So they take a picture and this is how she wanted to take a picture with me but she didn't want to take a picture. Acting out: She continued: I'm here so I'm standing and she goes like this (stepping infront of me) to take a picture' 'I never ask for a pictures because I'm so not like that, I don't care,' she said. 'If you look at my Instagram, you know who I did take a picture with but she was so sweet, was Jennifer Lopez. And she's on my Instagram and she's so sweet, I love her.' Her rant comes after Radar Online reported that she was 'flat broke' and didn't 'know how she's going to pay for college for' daughters Gia, 17; Gabriella, 13; Milania, 12; and Audriana, 8, earlier this month. 'She is pretty desperate,' a source close the ex-con told the site. 'No one attacked Teresa this season because she's so fragile. After her [mother Antonio Gorga passed away on March 3] and Joe being away they didn't want to victimize her anymore.' Claims: Following the awkward selfie, Teresa claimed that Sofia turned to her publicist and shared her dissatisfaction with the situation, something the Bravo star insisted her make-up artist Priscilla DiStasio also overheard Happy: In the midst of her rant however, Teresa admitted that she's only ever asked for one photo with a celebrity and that was with Jennifer Lopez earlier this year at her Planet Hollywood show, adding that she 'loved her' Reports: Her rant comes after Radar Online reported that she was 'flat broke' and didn't 'know how she's going to pay for college for' daughters Gia, 17; Gabriella, 13; Milania, 12; and Audriana, 8, earlier this month Meanwhile, Giudice's husband Joe has already 'lost 45lbs and got his GED' 21 months into his 36-month sentence at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution. 'We try to see Joe as much as we can and my girls are in contact with him constantly, through email, he calls every day,' the Berkeley College alum said on last week's TRHONJ. 'I have good days and I have bad days. I miss my mom tremendously. It's hard on the girls to have their dad away, but we've adapted the best that we can.' Family first: Meanwhile, Giudice's husband Joe has already 'lost 45lbs and got his GED' 21 months into his 36-month sentence at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution Upon release, Teresa's 45-year-old high school sweetheart (born Giuseppe) might face deportation because he is not a US citizen. The Italian-American duo were originally sentenced in October 2014 for bankruptcy fraud and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Giudice formerly known as FCI Danbury inmate No. 65703-050 completed her own 11-month sentence for 41 counts of fraud on December 23. She's become one of Australia's most popular figures to follow on Instagram after finishing her prison sentence for drug smuggling earlier this year. But Schapelle Corby's latest post left her followers scratching their heads as the former beautician bizarrely posted stock images of sliced bread. 'What's with the bread hun?' One fan asked after the boogie board enthusiast shared the images on Thursday. Best thing since sliced bread? Schapelle shared a throwback photo of her boogie boarding, writing in the caption that she was recovering 'slowly but surely Schapelle, who was convicted of smuggling four kilograms of cannabis into Indonesia in 2005, gave her followers an update on her recovery from surgery. The Gold Coast native underwent an operation on one of her knees in October after breaking a leg, ankle and knee in June. Schapelle shared a throwback photo of her boogie boarding and wrote in the caption that she was recovering 'slowly but surely.' Unusual addition: Also included in the post was two stock images of sliced bread, which puzzled several of her followers Confused: 'What's with the bread hun?' One asked, while another wrote: 'Can I ask why youve got two photos of bread in your post?' Caught on: However others caught Schapelle's clever if not obvious reference to boogie boarding being the 'best thing since sliced bread' She added: '3 weeks post knee op am now allowed to walk 15min per day ... Get out there people. Get active. Move your body. Live longer.' Also included in the post was two stock images of sliced bread, which puzzled several of her followers. 'What's with the bread hun?' One asked, while another wrote: 'Can I ask why youve got two photos of bread in your post?' Imprisoned: Schapelle rose to public notoriety in 2005, when she was busted smuggling more than four kilograms of cannabis concealed inside a boogie board case into Bali Locked up: Despite always maintaining her innocence, she was convicted of smuggling the drug, serving a nine year jail sentence and three year parole period in Bali However others caught Schapelle's clever if not obvious reference to boogie boarding being the 'best thing since sliced bread'. 'Amazing how many people don't get that WHAT EVER is the best thing since sliced bread!!!' One exasperated follower wrote. 'Really??? Must be as thick as a brick, not the sharpest pencil in the box or a sandwich short of a picnic!!' Social media maven: Schapelle is one of the most followed public figures in Australia Loves her water sports: Schapelle frequently shares updates about boogie boarding to Instagram Schapelle rose to public notoriety in 2005, when she was busted smuggling more than four kilograms of cannabis concealed inside a boogie board case into Bali from Australia. Despite always maintaining her innocence, she was convicted of smuggling the drug, serving a nine year jail sentence and three year parole period in Bali. Schapelle finally returned to Australia in May 2017, keeping a low profile on the Gold Coast apart from regular updates on Instagram. On Wednesday night's show, he rejected her advances in heartbreaking scenes. Yet TOWIE's Gemma Collins was not deterred following the episode's airing as she took to Instagram to share a series of snaps with ex-flame James 'Arg' Argent, in which she shared gushing captions about the end of their romance. The 36-year-old reality star's adoring comments seemed to go missed by her co-star as he took to the photo-sharing site at the same time - but merely paid homage to his beloved Nanny Brighton - ignoring Gemma's posts. Scroll down for video Way back when: TOWIE's Gemma Collins was not deterred following the episode's airing as she took to Instagram to share a series of snaps with ex-flame James 'Arg' Argent, in which she shared gushing captions about their romance In heartbreaking scenes, Gemma admitted that nothing would 'complete her life' more than a relationship with Arg - but while many viewers claimed she was 'too good' for him, others urged the pair to get back together. After the scenes aired, she took to Instagram to share a series of incredibly sweet snaps of the couple dating back six years, some of which they were seen kissing, sunbathing and cosying up during sun-drenched holidays. The stunning star has made no secret of her recent feelings for the hunk, who she dated on and off for seven years, yet she seemed content on the conclusion of the romance as she posted an array of lengthy captions. She penned: 'Guys we all have to shut the book in life just happy times reflecting on that you just have to say goodbye too but just happy memories... We all started out together 6 years ago and noone outside the Towie bubble will get it... Back then: The 36-year-old reality star's adoring comments seemed to go missed by her co-star as he took to the photo-sharing site at the same time - but merely paid homage to his beloved Nanny Brighton - ignoring Gemma's posts Hold on: In heartbreaking scenes, Gemma admitted that nothing would 'complete her life' more than a relationship with Arg - but while many viewers claimed she was 'too good' for him, others urged the pair to get back together Keeping quiet: Despite Gemma's gushing details, Arg decided to turn his back on her professions of love as he merely shared a nod to his Nan 'I do love Towie and my friends on the show always its been a journey we have all learnt and grown since the show stated our lives have changed sometimes you just cling on to memories... 'ps I am NOT LEAVING the show I want to get married on Towie and share it all with you... Happy times... It was nice whilst it lasted but a girls gotta move on Im just a hopeless romantic at heart always and I wont change... 'Happy memories... just wanted to share some memories tonight with you all but you do have to let go #newbeginingsahead... So young back then I was 30 in this picture but felt 15 life was just so different back then'. Happy days: 'I do love Towie and my friends on the show always its been a journey we have all learnt and grown since the show stated our lives have changed sometimes you just cling on to memories' Not going: 'ps I am NOT LEAVING the show I want to get married on Towie and share it all with you... Happy times... It was nice whilst it lasted but a girls gotta move on Im just a hopeless romantic at heart always and I wont change' Despite Gemma's gushing details, Arg decided to turn his back on her professions of love as he merely shared a nod to his Nan, as he wrote: 'I do love my Nanny Brighton so much! As each year goes on, She gets a bit crazier but I wouldn't change her for the world! X' On Wednesday, fans urged Gemma to move on from Arg , after he rejected her advances for a second time. At the start of the episode, Gemma's pal Bobby Norris asked if things had been awkward between the former lovers. While the bubbly blonde said no, she did admit she feels Arg is 'in denial' about his feelings - after the hunk himself confessed he 'missed' Gemma if he didn't see her for a few days. She said: 'I adore him, and he's very fond of me. But unfortunately Arg isn't confident enough in himself to own his feelings for me, he's in denial.' Sad times: She said: 'I adore him, and he's very fond of me. But unfortunately Arg isn't confident enough in himself to own his feelings for me, he's in denial' Sad times: Gemma was feeling nostalgic in her series of snaps Heartbroken: On Wednesday, fans urged Gemma Collins to move on from James 'Arg' Argent, after he rejected her advances for a second time. At the start of the episode, Gemma's pal Bobby Norris asked if things had been awkward between the former lovers Divided: However, while many viewers claimed she was 'too good' for Arg (above), others urged the pair to get back together Working through it: As Gemma began to break down, she added soothingly: 'Have some time out, and hopefully Arg will take on board that he's hurting you and you can move on' Admitting she needed some time away, Gemma then added: 'Arg doesn't know but I'm leaving for Tenerife tonight. I need to clear my head.' Later seeking advice from her close friend and resident relationship guru Chloe Sims, the straight-talking salon owner told her that she doesn't see Gemma and Arg continuing their friendship after their dalliances. She said: 'I just don't believe its natural to be as close as you two are, when you've had feelings and sex. I don't think it can ever work.' Help: Not wanting to hurt Gemma's feelings however, Arg decided to get her best friend Bobby Norris' take on the situation - who let slip her trip to Tenerife Emotional: With encouragement from Bobby, Arg decided to pay Gemma a visit at her shop ahead of her flight to the Canary Islands - but the encounter only made things worse As Gemma began to break down, she added soothingly: 'Have some time out, and hopefully Arg will take on board that he's hurting you and you can move on.' Not wanting to hurt Gemma's feelings however, Arg decided to get her best friend Bobby's take on the situation - who let slip her trip to Tenerife. With encouragement from Bobby, Arg later paid Gemma a visit at her shop ahead of her flight to the Canary Islands - but the encounter only made things worse. Confused: She explained: 'Since you've been back, it's been a massive head and heart spin for me. I just need to get out of Essex' Fighting feelings: Starting to cry, as Arg's face fell, she continued: 'I can't make you like me, I can't make you fall in love with me. But I don't know if you'll ever find this with someone else' Getaway: She then asked Arg if she would come to Tenerife with her - but the hunk soon refused, leaving both teary-eyed She explained: 'Since you've been back, it's been a massive head and heart spin for me. I just need to get out of Essex.' Starting to cry, as Arg's face fell, she continued: 'I can't make you like me, I can't make you fall in love with me. But I don't know if you'll ever find this with someone else. 'What we have is so special. You're the one person I keep caring for. I just wish one day you'll see sense and be with me. If there's one thing in life that would complete me, its being with you.' Honest: 'You know I love your company,' he said, trying to fight back his tears, 'but I can't come with you. It's not fair. I think going away will do some good' Time to go: Clearly heartbroken, the blonde then headed off into the night with her head in her hands Difficult: Arg was left stood on the street, disheartened She then asked Arg if she would come to Tenerife with her - but the hunk soon refused, leaving both teary-eyed. 'You know I love your company,' he said, trying to fight back his tears, 'but I can't come with you. It's not fair. I think going away will do some good.' Clearly heartbroken, the blonde then headed off into the night with her head in her hands, leaving Arg disheartened. However, viewers were left divided by the encounter - with some urging the pair to reconcile, while others encouraged Gemma to get over her feelings, as she was 'too good' for him. Confused: Viewers were left divided by the encounter - with some urging the pair to reconcile, while others encouraged Gemma to get over her feelings, as she was 'too good' for him Many were quick to express their wish for the couple, who dated on and off for seven years, to get back together, as they would be the perfect match. One kicked things off by writing: 'I wish they would just bang their heads together and get with each other!' While another added: 'Can gem and arg just get together already..the tooing and froing making me dizzy' Other fans soon chimed in with the same, writing: 'Slyly want Arg and Gemma to get together...', 'Seriously can arg and gemma get together already? ffs' and 'Can Arg and Gemma just get back together already!' Reunion: Many were quick to express their wish for the couple, who dated on and off for seven years, to get back together, as they would be the perfect match However, other viewers urged Gemma to move on for her 'own sanity', as she can do far better than Arg. One wrote furiously: 'OMG this is so painful to watch, how DARE a foolish man have GC putting her heart on a sleeve like that' While another added: 'Gemma is like a little girl when she talks to Arg. Bless. I really hope she gets over him for her own benefit and sanity.' Others blasted Arg for not reciprocating her feelings, writing: 'Seriously what makes Arg think that hes going to get better than Gemma?', 'Gem you're way to good for him' and 'Arg just let the best thing that could've happened to him go. What a fool.' Disagreement: However, a number of other viewers urged Gemma to move on for her 'own sanity' Furious: Others questioned why Arg felt he could 'do better' than the blonde Another fan pleaded with Gemma to move on, adding: 'I do feel sorry for Gemma but she needs to just forget about arg in that way and try find someone better.' While another wanted the drama to stop altogether, interjecting: 'So shocked at Gemma this Arg and Gemma thing needs to really stop asap someone is really going to get hurt.' However, another selection of viewers were more brutal in their advice - and scolded the blonde for being so 'desperate'. Get over it: However, another selection of viewers were more brutal in their advice - and scolded the blonde for being so 'desperate' One wrote: 'Omg I don't think Gemma can get any more desperate,' while another added: 'Gemma needs to get TF off and stop obsessing over a lil boy' A further fan firmly sided with Arg, writing: 'Gemma that was embarrassing so desperate. Well done Arg.' Gemma wasn't the only one struggling with affairs of the heart, as Georgia Kousoulou also revealed she was frightened about her future with long-time boyfriend Tommy Mallet. Next up: Gemma wasn't the only one struggling with affairs of the heart, as Georgia Kousoulou also revealed she was frightened about her future with long-time boyfriend Tommy Mallet Reflecting on her parents' divorce, Georgia broke down to Amber Dowding and Ruby Lacey about her changed outlook. She said through tears: 'I don't know what I'm doing with my life. A few years ago I had a shop, I had a lot going for me, then a lot changed with family stuff.' Becoming more emotional about her parents' divorce, she went on: 'I went from being looked after to having to look after everyone and I don't think I'm coping with it. Emotional: Reflecting on her parents' divorce, Georgia broke down to Amber Dowding and Ruby Lacey about her changed outlook Confused: She said through tears: 'I don't know what I'm doing with my life. A few years ago I had a shop, I had a lot going for me, then a lot changed with family stuff' 'I just don't know what I want and I get scared. I don't want Tommy to propose to me as I don't know if its for me.' Her doubts appeared to be worrying Tommy as he later poured his heart out to Nathan Massey and Liam 'Gatsby' Blackwell. He said: 'Georgia's got this thing about not knowing what she wants in terms of kids and engagement. She got upset about it.' Stressful: Becoming more emotional about her parents' divorce, she went on: 'I went from being looked after to having to look after everyone and I don't think I'm coping with it' Opening up: Before adding, as her friends became emotional too: 'I just don't know what I want and I get scared. I don't want Tommy to propose to me as I don't know if its for me' A little help from his friends: Georgia appeared to be worrying Tommy as he later poured his heart out to Nathan Massey and Liam 'Gatsby' Blackwell Venting his confusion, he said in frustration: 'This is one thing in life I just don't know what to tell her! What the f*** do I tell her?', at which his mates encouraged him to reassure her and state his own thoughts out loud. Tommy took Georgia for a romantic dinner in London to talk things through, resulting in the pair resolving their tensions. Addressing her worries about marriage, he told her: 'You don't have to anything. We can go at our own pace, there's no rush. We don't have to prove anything to anyone.' Before adding reassuringly: 'I will support you in whatever you want to do, 100%.' Loved-up: Tommy took Georgia for a romantic dinner in London to talk things through, resulting in the pair resolving their tensions No pressure: Addressing her worries about marriage, he told her: 'You don't have to anything. We can go at our own pace, there's no rush. We don't have to prove anything to anyone' However things were not as successful for Amber Turner and Dan Edgar, who agreed to cut contact completely. In a teary-eyed encounter at a bar, Amber admitted she was struggling to get over Dan after he cheated on her while on holiday, and urged him to stop talking to her. She said: 'When we're together its normal, so it's hard. We just need to cut each other off. Over for good: However things were not as successful for Amber Turner and Dan Edgar, who agreed to cut contact completely Hurting: In a teary-eyed encounter at a bar, Amber admitted she was struggling to get over Dan after he cheated on her while on holiday, and urged him to stop talking to her 'We can never be friends. It has to be all or nothing, and I think its best if its nothing.' Dan agreed that it was the right decision for 'your sake and mine', at which Amber fired back fiercely: 'Well more for my sake, as you don't give a s*** about me.' Taken aback, Dan explained of his actions: 'I do, I do, it's just not the right time.' Wanting to get away, Amber simply responded bluntly: 'The only way to move on from this weird situation is to cut each other off completely,' before storming off. Tense: Dan agreed that it was the right decision for 'your sake and mine', at which Amber fired back fiercely: 'Well more for my sake, as you don't give a s*** about me' She's been busy promoting The Long Road Home. And Kate Bosworth took rare time out of her busy schedule as she attended the PORTER Hosts Incredible Women Gala In Association With Estee Lauder at NeueHouse Los Angeles on Wednesday. The horse whisperer actress, 34, slipped into a Monet-inspired empire line dress for the occasion. Scroll down for video Driving them green with envy! Kate Bosworth took rare time out of her busy schedule as she attended the PORTER Hosts Incredible Women Gala In Association With Estee Lauder at NeueHouse Los Angeles on Wednesday Cinched in at the waist with a pearl-embellished black belt, the piece flowed elegantly over her slender hips and endless legs, elongated by a pair of satin heels. Featuring a delicate pattern of light and dark blue sequin-embellished flowers, the green piece accentuated her striking one green eye and one hazel eye, brought about by a condition called Heterochromia iridum. The Blue Crush star completed her look with a pearl embellished clutch and statement diamond earrings, sweeping her blonde locks off her naturally beautiful face as she took to the red carpet. What a woman! The horse whisperer actress, 34, slipped into a Monet-inspired empire line dress for the occasion She was joined by Editor-in-Chief of PORTER, Lucy Yeomans, Brie Larson, Chairman of Universal Pictures and Donna Langley, before posing alongside 21 Jump Street star Brie Larson. Kate has been busy promoting her latest flick The Long Road Home, which is an eight-episode miniseries that centres on the events of April 4, 2004, a day known in military circles as Black Sunday. On that day, a platoon from the 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas, was ambushed in Sadr City in Baghdad. The show is based on the New York Times best-selling book of the same name by Martha Raddatz and will debut on the National Geographic channel. Elegant: Cinched in at the waist with a pearl-embellished black belt, the piece flowed elegantly over her slender hips and endless legs, elongated with a pair of satin heels as she posed alongside Brie Larson Speaking about the flick, Kate recently touched on her love affair with producing. 'Producing was a quick fit for me; I think its just the way my brain compartmentalizes things,' she noted. The actress has previously spoken of her love of dressing up on the red carpet, but admitted it took some time for her to accept her 'boyish' body type. In demand: Kate has been busy promoting her latest flick The Long Road Home, which is an eight-episode miniseries that centres on the events of April 4, 2004, a day known in military circles as Black Sunday Speaking to Fashion magazine earlier this year, she said: 'Ill look at someone like Beyonce and say, "That dress is so amazing on her," but I know that my body type is completely different. 'I have more of a boyish figure, so anything thats too loose or shapeless isnt the most flattering for me. 'When it comes to dressing up, I dont have any anxiety at all - its actually something I really enjoy. 'Its the quickest way to communicate a feeling - culturally and individually, clothing can represent something about our time or what is going on inside us. 'Fashion is the most immediate way to see something evolve.' Rapper Meek Mill is reportedly looking at up to 20 months jail time after breaking probation in his drugs and weapons case. The 30-year-old star will attend a court hearing on Monday, after violating the terms of his probation, according to TMZ. The hip-hop artist - real name Robert Williams - has had a number of run-ins with law and was arrested for fighting at a St. Louis international airport in March, where he was said to have got into an altercation with a fan. Scroll down for video Bleak Mill! Rapper Meek Mill is reportedly looking at up to 20 months jail time after breaking probation in his drugs and weapons case In August, the ex-boyfriend of Nicki Minaj was apprehended for recklessly driving his motorcycle in Harlem, New York City. The 30-year-old had the misdemeanour charges thrown out on October 23, with Meek's lawyer, Joe Tacopina, telling TMZ that the charges would be dropped if the star performed the number of community service hours agreed in the deal. Meek completed his community service at the Veteran's Association in Philadelphia. Waiting on the verdict: The 30-year-old star will attend a court hearing on Monday, after violating the terms of his probation, according to TMZ Run-ins with the law: In August, the ex-boyfriend of Nicki Minaj was apprehended for recklessly driving his motorcycle in Harlem, New York City While the charges were dropped, they did breach the terms of his ongoing drug and weapons case. Meek is no stranger to feeling the long arm of the law, in 2015 he was put on house arrest after leaving Pennsylvania for a show without getting approval from the court. In the grand scheme of things, his recent arrests are for crimes far more severe than contravening a travel ban, meaning he is likely to endure a more severe punishment than house arrest. Making headlines: The hip-hop artist - real name Robert Williams - has had a number of run-ins with law and was arrested for fighting at a St. Louis international airport in March after an altercation with a fan MailOnline has contacted Meek's representative for comment. In August, Meek vehemently denied any involvement in a shooting which occurred outside of his Connecticut concert in December, which left two dead. The musician filed legal documents in response to the lawsuit, which was filed by the families of victims Travis Ward, 31, and Nathan Mitchell, 25, who were injured during the incident. Meek also refuted claims that his lyrics about killing incited the violence outside of the Oakdale Theatre on December 30. Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton has been seen for the first time since he confirmed that he was turned away from the U.S. at the airport for cocaine possession. The British actor, 23, looked to be in good spirits as he emerged from the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy his girlfriend Natalia Dyer - who also stars in the popular Netflix series - on Wednesday. This comes after Charlie's mother said her son had got cocaine on his wallet 'at a party' after sniffer dogs detected the substance, which ultimately sent him on the first plane back to the UK. Scroll down for video Emerging: Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton, 23, was seen for the first time in Italy on Wednesday after he confirmed that he was turned away from the U.S. at the airport over cocaine possession Troubles: Following the drug detection, Charlie was questioned before being sent back to England on a return flight, and was unable to attend the premiere for the second season of Stranger Things, in which he plays Jonathan Byers Charlie, who was also recently revealed to have a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, was seen smiling ear to ear as he emerged in the Italian city, dressed to shield himself from the chill with a chic coat and all-black ensemble. He followed his stunning girlfriend Natalia, who looked sensational in a printed dress and cropped biker jacket. The pair, who recently confirmed their romance by holding hands after months of rumours, were in a great mood as they headed to an awaiting car, surrounded by adoring fans. Charlie has seen some troubles recently, which involved his situation at the airport a week ago, where cocaine was detected on him. Together: The British actor looked to be in good spirits as he emerged from the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy his girlfriend Natalie Dyer - who also stars in the popular Netflix series - on Wednesday All is well: Charlie, who was also recently revealed to have a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, was seen smiling ear to ear as he emerged in the Italian city Team effort: Charlie and Natalia were also joined by their Stranger Things co-star, Joe Keery The refusal to enter the States caused Charlie to miss the eagerly-anticipated premiere for the second season of Netflix's breakout hit Stranger Things. With series three of the show being confirmed, it is unclear whether Charlie will be allowed to return to the States for future filming endeavours. MailOnline has contacted representatives for Charlie for further comment. In a carefully worded statement a week ago, Heaton said he was working to 'rectify' the situation, which is said to have occurred after sniffer dogs detected the cocaine on his person. 'My planned travel to the U.S. last week was affected by an issue at U.S. immigration, and I am working to rectify it as soon as possible,' the 23-year-old told People magazine. 'I do want to clarify that I was not arrested or charged with a crime, and cooperated fully with the U.S. officials at LAX.' On screen: While Charlie is Natalia's other half in real life, on the Netflix series Joe plays Natalia's beau 'I am working to rectify it': Charlie has confirmed he WAS turned away from U.S... as his mother claims he got cocaine on his wallet at a party 'I do want to clarify that I was not arrested or charged with a crime': In a carefully worded statement, Heaton said he was working to 'rectify' the situation, which is said to have occurred after sniffer dogs detected the cocaine on his person 'He's never done drugs in the past': The star's mother Michelle Lowe (left) and sister Kayleigh Heaton (right) say Heaton has never done drugs and the incident is merely a 'misunderstanding' Following the drug's detection, Charlie was questioned before being sent back to England on a return flight, and was unable to attend the premiere for the second season of Stranger Things. 'Im sorry to all the fans and my Stranger Things family for missing the premiere,' he said. 'We are all so proud of this season and I would never want this story to negatively impact the show.' Heaton's mother and sister previously said a small amount of cocaine found its way on to his wallet at a party two weeks earlier, or at a bar or at a shop without his knowledge. Family of the actor, who plays Jonathan Byers in the Netflix supernatural drama series, say he has never done drugs in the past and was not under the influence at the time he was stopped at LA airport. Heaton has since undergone tests, including a hair and urine sample, which have come back all clear, according to his family. In jeopardy? With series three of the show being confirmed, it is unclear whether Charlie will be allowed to return to the States for future filming endeavours They are now hoping the 'misunderstanding' blows over 'sooner rather than later' to allow the British star and continue filming for Stranger Things. But they have criticised how Charlie was treated by US officials, claiming he was interrogated for three hours and wasn't allowed to call anyone or ask for a lawyer. They blamed his treatment on his TV star status and claim he was used 'as a target'. Speaking at the family home in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, his mother Michelle Lowe, 50, said: 'All that rubbish, it's completely fabricated. I know that but that's all I'm allowed to say on it. 'He's never done drugs in the past. It's completely made up, that's what papers do. I'm not his agent, I'm just his mum so I can't really say too much. 'He is sort of between here, London and America. It would be awful if he wasn't allowed back to America to film but I don't see it shouldn't be. 'He has proven his innocence. It could happen to any of us, you go to a bar or a party. It's just unfortunate really. 'I know that's what has happened. I hope it blows over.' Daddy day care: The star was denied entry to America after it was revealed he has a secret love child with his former flame Former flame: Charlie shares the child with his ex, Akiko Matsuura History: Akiko fell pregnant while the pair were in the rock band Comanechi together, in May 2014 His sister Kaayleigh Heaton, 32, added: 'It could have come from anywhere. He wasn't carrying drugs, he wasn't high. He's had tests and they have come back clear. 'He not got it in his system or anything. He was at a party two weeks before and obviously when you're at a party anything can happen. 'You leave your things on the side when you're having a drink. It could be that he was at a shop, it be on a note. What they've done is wrong, they didn't give him a chance to call anybody. They didn't give him a chance to have a lawyer. 'They put him in a room for three hours and just interrogated him and interrogated him, so it wasn't done correctly. 'They didn't follow procedure. I think they saw him, they noticed him and they used him as a target. 'He wasn't carrying anything, he wasn't under the influence or any drugs. I think it's just a misunderstanding. Social media savvy: Heaton's ex-girlfriend has posted a number of heartwarming pictures of the actor and musician with his baby boy on social media Former couple: The pair are said to have 'fallen head over heels in love' before Heaton became a father at the age of 20 'He's been unfortunate where he's been to a party, somehow cocaine has got either on his wallet or on his cards, we're not sure. 'He didn't know anything about it, he went to the airport to fly, they checked and he is racking his brain about how this could happen. 'He hasn't done anything, he wasn't carrying anything. He's had tests that have come back clean. 'He has had hair sample, a blood test and urine sample which are absolutely clean. A Hair sample can last up to five months so that proves he hasn't taken anything. 'I think it will be fine because it's not like he has done anything.' Michelle could not say when she was due to see her son again as he splits his him between Bridlington, London and America. Heaton (right) is not believed to see his son regularly and the boy lives with his mother (left), in London Due to his demanding schedule filming hit-show Stranger Things in Los Angeles, Yorkshire-born Heaton is not believed to see his son regularly. The youngster lives with his mother, who performs in the band The Big Pink, in London. A source told the Sun: 'Charlie became a dad when he was just 20. He met Akiko when he was just a teen and fell head over heels in love. 'They're no longer together but they have an amicable relationship for the boy's sake. 'Right now Charlie's career is his priority but he hopes to see more of his son once filming commitments calm down.' It is now feared that Heaton could be barred from entering the US in future - meaning he could struggle to take part in filming for Stranger Things. This comes as it was revealed Charlie has a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, who fell pregnant in May 2014 while the pair were in the rock band Comanechi together. Just days before, she lashed out at claims her romance with Love Island alum Jonny Mitchell was a showmance. And Stephanie Pratt proved she will not let the haters get her down as she put on a dazzling display while heading out in her native LA on Wednesday - after her beau vowed to visit her in her native city. The 31-year-old former Hills star looked incredible in a deeply plunging black jumpsuit with a sizzling sheer and beaded top alongside a simple, plain bottom while she boosted her statuesque frame with staggering heels. Scroll down for video Dinner time: Stephanie Pratt proved she will not let the haters get her down as she put on a dazzling display while heading out in her native LA on Wednesday following the star-studded World Series baseball match Stephanie and Jonny were first spotted enjoying a cosy date together in August, no strangers to a turbulent love life, both slammed allegations of a showmance, claiming a faux relationship would not be taken as far as theirs has been. With the size of the smile on her face, the blonde beauty is clearly in the throes of love as she not only showed off her figure but also her enamoured glow. Oozing body confidence, the stunning star went braless beneath the plunging top to help show off as much as possible atop the sheer detail. Seemingly having treated herself to a shopping trip, she clutched a Chanel carrier bag while arriving at her dinner which was undoubtedly a super glamorous affair. Glamming it uoL The 31-year-old former Hills star looked incredible in a deeply plunging black jumpsuit with a sizzling sheer and beaded top alongside a simple, plain bottom while she boosted her statuesque frame with staggering heels Plunging: Stephanie and Jonny were first spotted enjoying a cosy date together in August, both no stranger to a turbulent love life, both slammed allegations of a showmance, claiming a faux relationship would not be taken as far as theirs has been Earlier in the week, the couple told OK! magazine that they do not listen to haters of their relationship, with Jonny hinting that he believed some of his Love Island couples were still playing the fauxmance game. Stephanie said: Everyone I date, they say its a showmance. But we dont care what people think its not a showmance. Her beau Jonny added: I feel like theres a cut off for that sort of thing, though. People in a showmance arent going to go to Bali together at least, I dont think they would. The 26-year-old hunk remained coy when asked whether he believed his former co-stars were engaged in false relationships, saying: 'No comment.' Glamming it up: Earlier in the week, the couple told OK! magazine that they do not listen to haters of their relationship, with Jonny hinting that he believed some of his Love Island couples were still playing the fauxmance game Real? Jonny defended his relationship with Stephanie, with the couple revealing Jonny had been introduced to Stephanie's friends and family The former The Hills star also revealed she has already began to introduce Jonny to her relatives, saying: 'Ill be bringing Jonny to LA to meet my family. Having starred on the same Hollywood-based MTV reality show, Stephanie's brother Spencer is also well-known. He is married to The Hills co-star Heidi Pratt, who starred alongside him in the January series of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK. For show? Jonny refused to comment when asked about those in relationships from his time on Love Island, which include winning couple Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies Former flame: Jonny was previously in a will they/won't they romance with Camilla Thurlow (above) with the pair calling it quits during their time in the villa Though the blonde beauty added that her friends were a surprisingly easy nut to crack when they were introduced to her beau. She said: 'My friends were obsessed with him, and theyre a tough crowd.' Each of the reality stars have become somewhat known for their turbulent love lives - with Steph known for dating Made In Chelsea bad boy Spencer Matthews, before going through a disastrous break-up with Josh Shepherd on the same show. Jonny was engaged in a will they/won't they romance with Camilla Thurlow during his time on Love Island, only for the couple to call it quits ahead of Jonny's dumping from the show. Anything could happen on live television. And Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway couldn't contain their giggles as a seemingly unaware producer was seen crawling along the floor to deliver a luxury hamper to the stage on Thursday's episode of Good Morning Britain. The woman assumed she was out of shot but was captured during the live broadcast dragging along an advent calendar across the floor - much to the delight of the hosts. Scroll down for video Hilarious: Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway couldn't contain their giggles as a seemingly unaware producer was seen crawling along the floor to deliver a luxury hamper to the stage on Thursday's episode of Good Morning Britain She's still in shot! The woman assumed she was out of shot but was captured during the live broadcast dragging along an advent calendar across the floor - much to the delight of the hosts Returning from the break, Ben burst out laughing as he pointed to the producer on the floor as she did her best to transport the parcel from one point to the other. Quickly realising the blunder, the woman got to her feet and began smiling herself - proving that she was making light of the situation. Clearly amused by the situation, Kate joked: 'She's nicking the advent calendar, Alex that's appalling, that's appalling!' This comes after GMB's Charlotte Hawkins' run on Strictly Come Dancing came to an end following a mixed response from judges and viewers alike with a series of stilted displays. Funny: Returning from the break, Ben burst out laughing as he pointed to the producer on the floor as she did her best to transport the parcel from one point to the other Oops! Quickly realising the blunder, the woman got to her feet and began smiling herself - proving that she was making light of the situation During the show she was paired with professional dancer, Brendan Cole, who was seen having a spat with the judges following a disagreement over their performance. The pair recently appeared on GMB recently, addressing circling rumours around Brendan's future on the show. After appearing to engage in a spat with head judge Shirley Ballas live on the show, fans began to wonder if the OG Strictly pro would no longer appear after this series. A source told The Sun: 'He loves being a part of the show, but his lack of promotion and clashes with judges this year have led top bosses to wonder how long hell stick around for. Axed: This comes after GMB's Charlotte Hawkins' run on Strictly Come Dancing came to an end following a mixed response from judges and viewers alike with a series of stilted displays 'They dont want him to leave. Deep down, Brendan doesnt want to either but options are being weighed up.' But Brendan appeared to silence the rumours, saying: 'Every year I have this argument with myself in my head. 'I love the show, I love being on it. I said at the time I'm going to miss this as I'm going to miss going into the studio with Charlotte. 'I said this is one of the best series I've ever had. It depends if the BBC wants me . Every year it's the same thing... if I'm ready and available and I want to do it and I'm inspired to do it, I will.' She's recently spoken about the importance of fitness - claiming that anyone can be healthy if they put their mind to it. And Joanna Krupa showed off her gym-honed figure as she attended David Foster's birthday bash at West Hollywood hotspot on Wednesday night. The 38-year-old reality star bared her flawless decolletage in a figure-hugging black jumpsuit. Scroll down for video Glamorous: Joanna Krupa, 38, showed off her gym-honed figure as she attended David Foster's birthday bash at West Hollywood hotspot on Wednesday night Joanna showed off her flair for fashion in the sensational one-piece, which showcased her ample assets. The garment went on to cinch in her tiny waist and flared over her enviable legs, which were boosted in hot pink pointed heels. The star looked to be every inch the blonde bombshell with her tresses swooped to one side - flattering her natural make-up look. The model donned an iconic look on Friday, as she dressed up as Sandy from the 1978 film Grease to attend the Casamigos Halloween Party in California. Enviable figure: The reality star bared her flawless decolletage in a figure-hugging black jumpsuit which showcased her ample assets Sensational: The garment went on to cinch in her tiny waist and flared over her enviable legs, which were boosted in hot pink pointed heels Joanna looked incredible in the ensemble, as she strutted into the bash with every bit of swagger Sandy shows at the end of the film. With a cigarette in hand, the Polish model stood out in the sea of Halloween party-goers. Joanna donned the signature tight-fitting black trousers for the party, as well as a black bandeau style top that showed off both her amazing abs and incredible cleavage. Finishing the look with a gold and black belt and red pointed toe pumps, Joanna looked as if she had been plucked from the film itself. The reality TV star also posed with producer Traci Szymanski, who was rocking an outlandish costume that included an enormous blonde afro wig. Grease lightning! The model rocked a sexy ensemble on Friday as she attended the Casamigos Halloween party as Sandy from Grease Smoking hot siren: Joanna rocked a sexy all-black ensemble in form-fitting black trousers and black bandeau top for the look made famous by the 1978 film Joanna kept her blonde locks styled in voluminous curls that are quintessential with look, and her makeup was equally dramatic. The small screen star had her eyes done in a dramatic winged eyeliner style, with cateye flicks both above and under the eye. The actress finished off her look with a simple pink lipgloss and pointed nails that added to the 'power dress' vibe of the look. Throwback: Joanna posed with producer Traci Szymanski, who rocked an enormous blonde afro wig Newly-divorced Joanna recently shared an impassioned post where she chided people who do not exercise. The Real Housewives Of Miami star explained that she puts effort into her fitness regime and other people can do it too if they are determined. 'There is absolutely no excuse in not staying fit and healthy at any age! Motivation and drive is the key 'Over the years during my career I heard so many comments ... 'she probably starves herself etc' I have always eaten anything I wanted.' Advertisement Promotional commitments on behalf of her latest swimwear range were momentarily set aside as Kimberley Garner let her hair down in Florida on Wednesday afternoon. The former Made in Chelsea star was joined by a group of friends as she soaked up the sun outside Soho House on picturesque Miami Beach, where she is currently enjoying an autumn break. Catching the eye in a canary yellow two-piece, Kimberley, 27, showed off her lithe physique while making her way towards a waiting sun lounger. Scroll down for video Looking good: Promotional commitments on behalf of her latest swimwear range were momentarily set aside as Kimberley Garner let her hair down in Florida on Wednesday afternoon Revealing her pert bottom, the London based designer proved to be an engaging sight as she made herself comfortable during her latest appearance in the idyllic go-to holiday destination. Taking advantage of soaring temperatures, Kimberley topped up her tan while relaxing close to the idyllic Atlantic coastline. Joined by an extended group of friends, the willowy blonde documented her stay with a series of snaps as she strolled close to the lapping surf. Good times: The former Made in Chelsea star soaked up the sun outside Soho House on picturesque Miami Beach, where she is currently enjoying an autumn break Striking sight: Catching the eye in a canary yellow two-piece, Kimberley, 27, showed off her lithe physique while making her way towards a waiting sun lounger Sporting a pair of heavily tinted sunglasses, Kimberley later wrapped herself in a blue and white striped towel before making her way back across the beach. Speaking to MailOnline, the designer admitted she was mixing business with pleasure during her first trip to the Floridian city. 'I am over in Miami on a girls holiday,' she said. 'It's been really fun and the first time I have been to Miami.I will be staying a little longer over here for work on Kimberley London Swimwear, but London is definitely still home.' In good company: Kimberley was joined by a group of friends for her latest outing Here she comes: The London based designer proved to be an engaging sight on Wednesday It's a bum deal: The designer's pert derriere was on full display as she made herself comfortable Covering up: Sporting a pair of heavily tinted sunglasses, Kimberley later wrapped herself in a blue and white striped towel before making her way back across the beach Busy girl: The willowy blonde is relaxing in Miami as she looks to expand her swimwear range All eyes on me: There was no missing the former Made In Chelsea star during her latest outing First time: Kimberley told MailOnline her current stay in the Floridian city is her first Leading the way: The blonde stayed refreshed with a fruity drink as she made her way across the beach Picture perfect: She documented her stay with a series of photos as she strolled close to the lapping surf Kimberley has fully thrown herself into herself into swimwear design over recent years, designing several swimwear lines since leaving Made in Chelsea in 2012. She previously revealed she has fully embraced the challenges that come with running a business, saying: 'I have some really cool new designs coming out over the next few months which I am excited about. They are still all made in London, which is really important to me. 'I love being a young female running a start up. Learning every section of what it take to run a company has been amazing and challenging but am really excited to see it grow and can't wait for next year's collections.' Stunning: The blonde's toned physique was hard to miss as she took a series of idyllic snaps New venture: Kimberley has fully thrown herself into herself into swimwear design over recent years, designing several swimwear lines since leaving Made in Chelsea in 2012 Excited: She previously revealed she has fully embraced the challenges that come with running a business Delight: 'I love being a young female running a start up. Learning every section of what it take to run a company has been amazing and challenging but am really excited to see it grow and can't wait for next year's collections,' she added Let's go: Kimberley was flanked by a brunette pal while strolling across the sand on Miami Beach Mellow yellow: Given her idyllic surroundings the star looked typically relaxed on Wednesday afternoon It's behind you: While the designer relaxed on the beach, another member of her group waded into the lapping surf A design for life: The lithe brunette sporting a bold spotted two-piece from Kimberley's latest collection Wading in: She enjoyed a refreshing dip in the ocean while Kimberley and the rest of her group idled on the sand Blooming lovely: Kimberley later covered up in a seasonal floral print summer dress Shapely: The form-fitting design ensured her slender frame was still highly noticeable She recently returned from a loved-up vacation in Bali with new girlfriend Maegan Luxa. And former Bachelor contestant Alex Nation appears to still be on a holiday high, cutting a radiant figure while out in Melbourne on Thursday night. The 26-year-old flashed her bra in a see-through crop top, as well as a megawatt smile for the cameras. Sheer delight! The Bachelor's Alex Nation flashes her bra in see-through top at Cirque du Soleil Alex cut a stylish figure on the blue carpet, wearing a fitted white pencil skirt which hugged her petite curves. She paired it with a mesh cropped top, which offered a glimpse of her bra and toned stomach. The single mother paired the look with rocker chick black ankle boots and statement earrings. Top of the crops! She paired it with a mesh cropped top, which offered a glimpse of her bra and toned stomach Stylish mama! Wearing her blonde styled in a chic wavy bob, Alex showcased her natural beauty by wearing little to no makeup Wearing her blonde styled in a chic wavy bob, Alex showcased her natural beauty by wearing little to no makeup. Alex appeared to go solo at the A-list Melbourne event, with her girlfriend Maegan not pictured in photos from the night out. The same sex couple recently returned from a romantic Bali holiday, the pair photographed getting amorous during their vacation. Where's Maegan? Alex appeared to go solo at the A-list Melbourne event, with her girlfriend not pictured in photos from the night out Kept quiet: Prior to that the blonde beauty had refused to address months-long speculation she had split from her Bachelor star boyfriend Richie Strahan Alex confirmed her new romance in August when she was pictured passionately kissing Maegan during a boozy night out. Prior to that the blonde beauty had refused to address months-long speculation she had split from her Bachelor star boyfriend Richie Strahan. The couple had met and fallen in love on the 2016 season of The Bachelor, with Richie controversially choosing Alex over fan favourite Nikki Gogan. Schoolies is traditionally celebrated on the Gold Coast. But thanks to a bit of sleight of hand from the Bachelorette's Apollo Jackson, Mooseheads in Canberra is where the real magic will happen this year. On Thursday, the nightclub announced that the professional magician would host an epic bash on November 18. HSC you there! Schoolies is traditionally celebrated on the Gold Coast, but thanks to a bit of sleight of hand from Apollo Jackson, Canberra is where the real magic will happen this year The establishment is clearly committed to its unexplained affinity to the deer family's biggest member, with 'Principal Moose of Mooseheads High,' announcing the news. 'Principal Moose of Mooseheads High has given everyone after-school detention once again!' they wrote on the event page. 'Make sure you are dressed up as a sexy student, naughty teacher, jock, nerd, cheer leader, just graduated or a geek!' Mooseheads gets the magic man! On Thursday, Mooseheads nightclub took to Facebook, announcing the professional magician as the host of an epic bash on November 18 Principal Moose continued: 'To help make the party even LARGER Mr.Moose has invited the one and only Apollo to come and party with us!' They then began listing-off the 24-year-old's talents, which include 'Extreme Athlete, Stuntman, Escape Artist, Music Artist, Reality TV Superstar and Humanitarian.' Given they went all out with their adjectives for his other talents, lovable Apollo may well be a tad hurt by 'music artist.' 'Good at dating,' also wasn't included on the list, which may be in part due to his now famous final date with Sophie Monk on The Bachelorette. Flex appeal! They wrote: 'To help make the party even LARGER Mr.Moose has invited the one and only Apollo to come and party with us! Talent! They then began listing-off the 24-year-old's talents, which include 'Extreme Athlete, Stuntman, Escape Artist, Music Artist, Reality TV Superstar and Humanitarian' He broke his silence on the incident last week, telling the Kyle and Jackie O Show he was 'super tired' when he reached for the hors d'oeuvres. 'I sort of did just want to sit there and chill with her and eat breadsticks,' he told Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson. During the episode, things turned awkward on Sophie and Apollo's date when the magician said he wouldn't be ready to settle down yet. Missing: 'Good at dating,' also wasn't included on the list, which may be in part due to his now infamous final date with Sophie Monk on The Bachelorette Back in 2003, the band Jet were huge and their debut record went eight times Platinum on the ARIA charts. But they faded into obscurity a few years later and never really offered an explanation as to why. On Friday, frontman Nic Chester released a new solo record and explained the six-year hiatus to The Daily Telegraph. He's back! On Friday, Jet frontman Nic Chester released a new solo record titled Sugar Rush, before finally breaking his silence on the reason behind his six-year hiatus 'It was a brand not a band and we were responsible for that too,' he explained. 'Rather than whinge about that, my mantra became about doing anything which was different, that was challenging.' Instead of announcing the band's breakup in a press release or Myspace post, Nic simply up-and-left for Berlin, alongside his now wife Pia. 'A brand not a band': Explaining why the 8x Platinum selling band called it quits, he said: 'It was a brand not a band and we were responsible for that too,' Fade away: Instead of announcing the band's breakup in a press release or Myspace post, Nic simply up-and-left for Berlin, alongside his now wife Pia He continued: 'I wanted a blank canvas, I wanted to be anonymous with no expectations and it ended up being the most fun and creative period of my life.' According to the publication, he booked the cheapest studio he could find and got to work on his new solo record, titled Sugar Rush. After several years, the album was released on Friday, with Nic staying true to his new under-the-radar persona by releasing it with little spectacle or fanfare. Blank canvas: He continued: 'I wanted a blank canvas, I wanted to be anonymous with no expectations and it ended up being the most fun and creative period of my life' He debuted the new tracks in small showcases in Sydney and Melbourne, with all reports from the performances indicating the musician is back to his best. His former band mates will get to benefit from that newfound passion, with Nic also revealing Jet have reunited to play shows. Fans will also be excited to know he also hasn't ruled-out returning to the studio with the once beloved group. She gave birth to her baby girl on Tuesday. And Jessica Michibata was clearly in the throes of new-mum love as she shared an adorable snap of her daughter suffering from the hiccups on Thursday. The Japanese-Argentinian ex-wife of F1 racing driver Jenson Button, 33, who has continued to keep the identity of the baby's father a mystery, also revealed she had turned her placenta into edible capsules. Scroll down for video Cutie! Jessica Michibata was clearly in the throes of new mum love as she shared an adorable snap of her daughter suffering from the hiccups on Thursday Wrapped in a white blanket, the little girl appeared surprised as she was hit with a bout of hiccups, while her model mum appeared enamoured. 'I love her hiccups', Jessica wrote alongside the Instagram story, adding heart emojis. She followed the snap with a picture of two jars, captioning them 'My placenta'. Who is papa? The Japanese-Argentinian ex-wife of F1 racing driver Jenson Button, 33, has continued to keep the identity of the baby's father a mystery Jessica is one in a string of celebrities who has had her placenta converted into edible capsules. Last year Kim Kardashian has revealed she has had newborn son Saint's placenta made into pills which she takes daily in a bid to ward off postpartum depression. Indeed, the reality star explained, she did the same after the birth of daughter North, and was thrilled with the results. 'So, I'm really not this holistic person or someone who would have ever considered eating my placenta,' admitted Kim on her website KimKardashianWest.com. Oops! Wrapped in a white blanket, the little girl appeared surprised as she was hit with a bout of hiccups, while her model mum appeared enamoured 'And when I say "eat my placenta," I mean that I'm having it freeze-dried and made into a pill formnot actually fry it like a steak and eat it (which some people do, BTW).' Jessica took to Instagram on Tuesday to reveal to her 264,000 followers that her bundle of joy arrived three weeks early, yet mother and baby were healthy, while also thanking her supporters. While she was candid about the arrival, the star, who was in a relationship with Jenson, 37, for seven years, has remained tight-lipped over the identity of her child's father, however confirmed the news and sex in August. Ensuring no post-natal depression: She also revealed she had turned her placenta into edible capsules Earlier this week Jessica took to Instagram to share an image, seemingly taken from her hospital bed in which she announced her daughter was born on Friday. She first added a caption in English reading: 'Words cannot describe how happy I feel and how much love I have for this beautiful soul...Welcome to the world Joy Thank you for choosing me as your mother, I will love you forever and ever and ever.' The stunner then posted in Japanese: 'Three weeks earlier than planned At 21:01 (Japan time 21st) on October 20th in Los Angeles time A healthy baby was born! 'The scheduled date was November 11, so I did not expect to be born on the same birthday, but both mothers and children are healthy Everyone who supported for childbirth, thank you very much. Good luck with your mothers who are giving birth!' Overjoyed: Jessica took to Instagram on Tuesday to reveal to her 264,000 followers that her bundle of joy arrived three weeks early, yet mother and baby were healthy, while also thanking her supporters Blooming: Despite her open and honest post about the baby's arrival, the identity of the father of Jessica's baby remains unknown Despite her open and honest post about the baby's arrival, the identity of the father of Jessica's baby remains unknown. Jessica and Jenson - who tied the knot in a lavish Hawaiian ceremony in December 2014 called time on their relationship just one year later but remain on good terms. A spokesperson for Jenson told MailOnline at the time: 'Jenson and Jessica have decided to go their separate ways and it is very amicable. There is no one else involved.' Jenson and Jessica first met in 2008 in a hotel bar in Tokyo and began dating eight months later. Their relationship experienced ups and downs and they split for a short time in 2011 before he proposed in 2014, with a ring worth 250,000, but the couple split in 2015 after just a year of marriage. Blooming: Jessica took to Instagram to share an image, seemingly taken from her hospital bed in which she announced her daughter was born on Friday Unlike conventional couples, Jenson revealed the pair did not live together throughout their marriage due to their careers.'We don't see each other any more than before we were married,' he admitted in an interview with the Mail in 2015. The TAG Heuer model shared a modest flat with her mother in Tokyo, while the sportsman's home is in tax haven Monaco. 'Jessie still works a lot in Japan,' he went on to explain. 'She enjoys her job, she models, she had a television show and has done a Japanese film. She enjoys working, which is great, but it means that we dont see each other very often.' Yay! The TAG Heuer model shared a modest flat with her mother in Tokyo, while the sportsman's home is in tax haven Monaco Happier times: Jessica and Jenson - who tied the knot in a lavish Hawaiian ceremony in December 2014 called time on their relationship just one year later but remain on good terms Jessica - born to an Argentinian father and a Japanese mother - had often been seen supporting her husband from the sidelines as he took part in the world's biggest races. Jenson has since gone on to find happiness with former Playboy model Brittny Ward, 27, who he started dating three months after the split. The star, who has formally retired from F1 racing, is currently enjoying a sunsoaked break on the Amalfi coast with his girlfriend, with the pair seen packing on the PDA as they smooched and hugged one another. The Bismarck Tribune welcomed a new publisher on Thursday. Gary Adkisson, formerly publisher of The Sentinel in Carlisle, Pa., was named by Lee Enterprises to lead the Bismarck newspaper. Gary has an impressive record of accomplishment and has excelled in every area of our business, said Julie Bechtel, a group publisher for Lee Enterprises, which owns the Bismarck Tribune. He has great passion for strong local news and outstanding service to readers and advertisers. Adkisson, who began his duties Thursday and spent the day meeting with employees, said he is looking forward to building relationships with business, civic and charitable organizations in Bismarck-Mandan. There is nothing I enjoy more than meeting our readers and advertisers, and that will be my priority in the upcoming weeks and months, he said. Adkisson, 60, joined Lee Enterprises in 2014 after serving as general manager of The Paducah Sun in Paducah, Ky., since 2007. He previously was regional publisher of three daily newspapers and 13 weekly publications at Brown Publishing in Delaware, Ohio. His career also includes positions as publisher at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in Bluefield, W.Va.; the Weatherford Democrat in Weatherford, Texas; and Livermore Publishing in Mineral Wells, Texas. A native of southeast Missouri, Adkisson began his career in 1977 as a circulation district manager at The Tennessean and Nashville Banner in Nashville while still a student at Welch College. Every place weve lived, weve really gotten involved in the community, Adkisson said Thursday. You just have to get involved, otherwise it never becomes home. Adkissons wife, Glenda, works as a registered nurse for an elementary school in Carlisle and will join him after finishing the semester. They have three adult children and six grandchildren. The couple are avid bicyclists, and enjoy riding together on a tandem bicycle. They also participate in road races for charity. If you see a yellow tandem on the road and people looking like theyre lost, thats probably us, Adkisson said. Although I dont know how hard core were going to be with winter weather. Adkisson succeeds Dave Braton, who retired as Bismarck Tribune publisher in August. Adkisson can be reached at 701-250-8299 or Gary.Adkisson@bismarcktribune.com. Filming has been well underway for his new mini-series, Melrose. And Benedict Cumberbatch was spotted on set in Glasgow's city centre - which has been transformed to look like 1980s New York - to film further scenes for the eagerly anticipated TV venture. The actor, 41, who is playing troubled playboy Patrick Melrose, a fictional infamous playboy based on the novel series by Edward St. Aubyn, drew the attention of adoring fans as they stopped to get a glimpse of him. Scroll down for video Star: Benedict Cumberbatch, 41, was spotted on set in Glasgow's city centre - which has been transformed to look like 1980s New York - to film further scenes for the eagerly anticipated TV venture Cumberb***ches! The actor, who is playing troubled playboy Patrick Melrose, a fictional infamous playboy based on the novel series by Edward St. Aubyn, drew the attention of adoring fans as they stopped to get a glimpse of him Benedict looked undeniably suave in a slick grey suit, baby blue shirt and a sensational tie - all teamed with a long black coat. Wearing an eye-patch on his face, the star looked in the zone as he filmed intense scenes which saw him sprinting dramatically across the streets. The street was littered with bright yellow New York cabs, to give the Scottish city an added American touch. His show-stopping presence drew the attention of lucky fans who couldn't resist whipping out their phones to capture the impressive scenes. Dapper: Benedict looked undeniably suave in a slick grey suit, baby blue shirt and a sensational tie - all teamed with a long black coat Filming: Wearing an eye-patch on his face, the star looked in the zone as he filmed intense scenes Run! He was seen sprinting dramatically across the streets The cast will be filming scenes for the slick drama until Friday November 3, on streets including Bothwell Street, West Campbell Street, Renfield Street and St Vincent Street. Playing the titular character Patrick Melrose, Benedict will tell the story of the infamous playboy based on the novel series by Edward St. Aubyn. Each book will follow one episode of the five-part series, about playboy Melrose and his deterioration into substance abuse after a difficult childhood. Glasgow turned Big Apple: The street was littered with bright yellow New York cabs, to give the Scottish city an added American touch Famous: His show-stopping presence drew the attention of lucky fans who couldn't resist whipping out their phones to capture the impressive scenes Bringing it to screens: Playing the titular character Patrick Melrose, Benedict will tell the story of the infamous playboy based on the novel series by Edward St. Aubyn Framed around several intense days in Melrose's life, the series will jump from 1960s South France to 1980s New York to early 2000s Britain. Benedict will executive produce the series as well as star, after revealing in a Reddit Q&A in 2013 if he could play any literary character ever it would be Patrick Melrose. Fellow big screen stars Hugo Weaving and Jennifer Jason Leigh will star in the series, though an air date has not yet been set. Plot: Framed around several intense days in Melrose's life, the series will jump from 1960s South France to 1980s New York to early 2000s Britain Talented; Benedict will executive produce the series as well as star, after revealing in a Reddit Q&A in 2013 if he could play any literary character ever it would be Patrick Melrose Fans will be surely be excited to see the star back on screen, though his most recent role has been delayed in light of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The Current War, in which the actor plays legendary inventor Thomas Edison, was scheduled for release in November, but the Weinstein Company picture has since been delayed to 2018. Girls star Alison Williams is also set to take on a guest role in the series, as a woman Melrose encounters during his playboy years in New York. Far from the Madding Crowd writer David Nicholls will pen all five episodes for the project, which is expected to air some time in 2018. Fellow big screen stars Hugo Weaving and Jennifer Jason Leigh will star in the series, though an air date has not yet been set As a Hollywood star at the top of her game she's used to filming in chilly locations. And Chloe Moretz' latest project had her standing out in the middle of a downpour as she filmed The Widow in Toronto on Thursday. The 20-year-old star looked cold as she stood on a sidewalk while a crew member sheltered her with her umbrella. Trying to keep dry: Chloe Moretz is pictured filming her movie The Widow in Toronto on Thursday in the middle of a downpour She bundled up in cropped trousers, a light blouse and warm winter jacket and covered her head in a dark beanie. The Widow follows the story of a waitress called Frances who embarks on an unlikely friendship with the much older widow Greta (Isabelle Huppert) - whose intentions soon turn out to be sinister. Things get dramatic once their seemingly happy and healthy relationship turns menacing, thanks to Greta's threatening actions. The 20-year-old star was assisted by a couple of crew members who wrapped her in a jacket and sheltered her with an umbrella The movie will also star Maika Monroe, Zawe Ashton, Colm Feore and Stephen Rea. Chloe is currently back on with on-off boyfriend Brooklyn Beckham, 18, the son of David and Victoria Beckham. The couple - who first started dating in 2014 - spent time in Ireland together last month when filming of Chloe's drama moved there. Loved up: The actress shared this photo of her beau Brooklyn Beckham, 18, last week. The couple got back together after splitting last year The Atlanta-born beauty first appeared to confirm the reunion with Brooklyn in August, commenting with a heart emoji under one of his Instagram posts. Luckily Brooklyn recently relocated to New York - where Chloe resides - to study photography so the couple will be back in the same city soon. The actress shared a sweet candid photo of her boyfriend on Instagram last week captioning it simply with the date it was taken '10.7.17'. She had starred in one series of The Only Way Is Essex back in 2014, alongside her BFF Fran Parman. And recalling her experience on the ITVBe reality series, Georgia Harrison, 22, has accused the show's female stars of 'ostricising and bullying' new cast additions - claiming they feel 'threatened' if they think a girl is 'prettier than them'. The Love Island star jumped to the defence of Megan McKenna after the reality beauty was accused of having 'no friends' on TOWIE by her co-star Chloe Sims. Scroll down for video Hitting out: Georgia Harrison, 22, has accused TOWIE's female stars of 'ostricising and bullying' new cast additions - claiming they feel 'threatened' if they think a girl is 'prettier than them' Megan McKenna has 'taken a step back' from filming for the show in her bid to pursue a career in country music and following her split with ex-beau Pete Wicks, that has since been plagued by claims she 'cheated' on the star with her former flame Harry Eden. Following news Megan will no longer be a regular cast-member on the show, Chloe Sims - who has clashed with the former Ex On The Beach star for the best part of this year - claimed she has left with 'no friends left' on the series. Georgia, however, has shown her support for Megan and claimed it is down to her co-stars for 'pushing her out', claiming to The Sun: 'There are certain girls that can really make you feel ostracised... they can make you feel almost bullied.' Clash: The Love Island star jumped to the defence of Megan McKenna after the reality beauty was accused of having 'no friends' on TOWIE by her co-star Chloe Sims She added: 'If the girls feel threatened and they feel like someone is prettier than them better than them, they'll try and refuse to film with or interact with you because they feel it will benefit their career.' Georgia explained that she felt the same happened to her best friend Fran - who previously dated James 'Diags' Bennewith for three years - and feels Megan has been 'put in a corner' and 'pushed out' of the show. 'It's not the producers, it's the [other] girls,' she said. MailOnline have contacted a representative for TOWIE, as well as representatives for Chloe and Megan. Megan will no longer be a regular cast-member on the show and Georgia has claimed it is down to her co-stars for 'pushing her out', telling The Sun: 'There are certain girls that can really make you feel ostracised... they can make you feel almost bullied' Georgia's comments come after Chloe Sims accused Megan of 'burning bridges' with her castmates before announcing her decision to step back from TOWIE. Taking to her column with Star magazine, Chloe penned: 'Megan has left TOWIE to focus on her singing, but she burnt a lot of bridges after splitting up with Pete and wasn't left with many friends on the cast. 'It's a cowardly thing to do because she should have seen the series out and tried to make amends, so she could leave on a more positive note.' She adding cuttingly: 'It's safe to say she won't be missed.' Ouch: Georgia's comments come after Chloe Sims accused Megan of 'burning bridges' with her castmates before announcing her decision to step back from TOWIE and having 'no friends left' on the show Fans have seen Megan and Chloe come to blows on numerous occasions, following Megan's split with Pete Wicks. They first became embroiled in a feud when Megan accused Chloe of getting close to Pete after photographs emerged that appeared to place the pair in an intimate position. Chloe has vehemently denied the claims, while tattooed hunk Pete insisted nothing romantic had been going on between himself and Chloe, as their friendship is strictly platonic. But, Megan had questioned why Chloe hadn't called her to give her a 'heads up' about the photos. Tension grew between the girls, prompting both of them to speak about each other behind one another's back, with Chloe branding Megan an attention-seeker. Fans have seen Megan and Chloe come to blows on numerous occasions, following Megan's split with Pete Wicks - they first became embroiled in a feud when Megan accused Chloe of getting close to Pete following supposed 'intimate' pictures of the pair Strain was then put on Chloe's relationship with Pete when he had urged her to apologise to Megan, but Chloe accused him of disregarding her feelings. She was forced to deal with a barrage of negative comments on Twitter because of her spat with Megan and Pete and as a result, Chloe has been avoiding the former flames to protect herself and her daughter Madison from the backlash she has received. Their fallout had dominated TOWIE's storyline last series and concluded with Chloe insisting she wouldn't be entertaining a friendship with Megan, but reached out to Pete and said she would be there for him, if he needed. Feud: Tension grew between the girls, prompting both of them to speak about each other behind one another's back, with Chloe branding Megan an attention-seeker and their fallout dominated the last series of TOWIE As the series wrapped, things seemed to worsen between the trio, as Chloe accused Megan of seeking 'air-time' when it came to her spectacular rows with Pete onscreen. She vented: 'Some people are really hungry and just want the airtime!' Having seen the scathing remarks made by her former friend, Megan took to social media at the time to express her anger at the situation. She wrote on the popular microblogging site Twitter: 'Yawnnnnnn to certain people on the show talking about me to press ONCE AGAIN. #Boreoff (sic)' Clearly rattled by the drama, the beauty ranted: 'I actually have a life unlike some people on the show still talking about me and my relationship dramas... (sic)' This series, Megan and Chloe have kept their distance and while the former was still dating Pete, Chloe had said she will 'never forgive' the Essex boy for the way he treated her while dating Megan. All over: Megan is now single again after splitting with Pete, despite the duo rekindling their romance in May earlier this year Drama: Their break up has played out oncreen amid rumours of infidelity - accusing Megan of 'cheating' - surfacing Megan, meanwhile, had come to blows with Georgia Kousoulou and Amber Dowding as she tried to reform her friendship with former BFF Chloe Meadows, with Georgia admitting that she 'doesn't like' Megan in their heated exchange. She is now single again after splitting with Pete, despite the duo rekindling their romance in May earlier this year. Their break up has played out oncreen amid rumours of infidelity - accusing Megan of 'cheating' - surfacing. Megan has denied being unfaithful to Pete with her ex-boyfriend Harry, but suggesting she has reconnected with Harry, the starlet was seen exiting her Essex home with her former beau, attempting to keep a low profile. The pair originally dated from 2012 to 2014. Michael Jackson's son Prince has been involved in a motorcycle crash. The college student got into an accident during heavy rain in Los Angeles on Thursday when heading to Loyola Marymount University near the Playa Vista neighborhood. The 20-year-old tweeted a photo from the ambulance with the caption, 'Well s***.' All that can be seen are his jeans and heavy black shoes. He suffered no serious injuries. Scroll down for video Oh no: Prince Jackson tweeted a photo from the ambulance with the caption, 'Well s***' after he crashed his motorcycle on Thursday in LA. He reportedly suffered no serious injuries Down: Michael Jackson's son seen here on his motorcycle with sister Paris this summer TMZ added more details about the accident. Prince was riding in the rain 'when he lost control of his bike.' It was added: 'He was banged up enough that an ambulance was called and he was taken to a nearby ER,' a source told the site. 'He had no broken bones, so after doctors checked him out he was released,' it was claimed. Dressed up: Here he is seen last week at Prince Jackson's Heal LA and TLK Fusion Present the 2nd Annual Costume for a Cause at Jackson Family Home His school: It was claimed by the source that after he left the hospital he 'went right to Loyola Marymount University and made it in time for class' It was also stated by the source that after he left the hospital he 'went right to Loyola Marymount University and made it in time for class.' A representative for Prince later told TMZ: 'He is now resting at home and thanks everyone for their well wishes.' Prince was last seen on October 27 at the Heal LA and TLK Fusion Present the 2nd Annual Costume for a Cause at Jackson Family Home. For the past several weeks the star has been posting videos taken while riding his motorcycle. Bad boy on his bike: For the past several weeks the star has been posting videos taken while riding his motorcycle In September he filmed his ride down Lincoln Boulevard in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles, even passing a police car. He also split lanes and did fast lane changes, but his speed seemed moderate. His caption read: 'If you're wondering what the video is about and why it's so long. It ain't bout nothin but me and the bike and this is the type of random conversations that I have with myself.' Family: Prince with Paris and dad Michael Jackson in 2005; the singer died in 2009 Prince, whose real name is Michael Joseph Jackson Jr, is pop star Michael's eldest child. His mother is Debbie Rowe. His sister is Paris, 19, and he also has a 15-year-old brother named Blanket, whose real name is Prince Michael Jackson II. Prince has already worked as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and has acted on TV's 90210. He has been enrolled at LMU since 2015. Advertisement It is one of the most highly-anticipated films of the year, featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood. And the stars of the new adaptation of Murder On The Orient Express descended on London on Thursday night, for the film's glamorous world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall. Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley and Penelope Cruz led the glamour as they posed on the red carpet with co-stars Olivia Colman, Judi Dench, Lucy Boynton and of course, director and Poirot himself, Kenneth Branagh, ahead of the film's big debut. Scroll down for video The ultimate whodunnit: The stars of the Murder On The Orient Express, including Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley and Penelope Cruz, descended on London on Thursday, for the film's glamorous world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall Scarface star Michelle, 59, looked truly stunning as she hit the carpet in an eye-catching silver gown, which featured striking soft sleeves, and softly clung to her slender frame all the way to the floor. Making the look sexy as well as sophisticated, the dress then plunged into a deep V neckline, to tease at her cleavage, and cut into a saucy knee-high split at the front, to display her leggy figure underneath. Adding simple drop earrings as her only accessory, Michelle then finished her look with a bouncy blonde blow dry and glowing, bronzed make-up - to draw attention to her enviably youthful and radiant complexion as she posed for cameras. Full steam ahead! The actors posed on the red carpet with co-stars Olivia Colman, Judi Dench, Lucy Boynton and of course, director and Poirot himself, Kenneth Branagh, ahead of the film's big debut Star-studded: The film stars some of the biggest names in Hollywood - Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Josh Gad, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, Daisy Ridley, Derek Jacobi, Penelope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Leslie Odom Jr and Olivia Colman (L-R) Commanding attention: The Scarface star looked truly stunning as she hit the carpet in an eye-catching silver gown, which featured striking soft sleeves, and softly clung to her slender frame all the way to the floor Taking the plunge: Making the look sexy as well as sophisticated however, the dress then plunged into a deep V neckline, to tease at her cleavage and display her decolletage underneath Say cheese! Michelle later posed with Kenneth on the carpet - who appeared slightly distracted by the actress' plunging dress The Love Field star later joined acting legend Kenneth on the carpet - who both directs the new flick and stars as famed detective Hercule Poirot. The famous thespian, 56, was typically slick and suave for the occasion in a double-breasted black suit jacket and tailored trousers, co-ordinated with a matching black tie. He first posed with his wife Lindsay Brunnock on the carpet, who was effortlessly stylish in a form-fitting black satin dress, complete with glittering embellished sleeves. Man of the hour: Michelle joined Kenneth Branagh (centre) on the carpet - who both directs and stars as famed detective Hercule Poirot in the new flick Smart: The famous thespian, 56, was typically slick and suave for the occasion in a double-breasted black suit jacket and tailored trousers, co-ordinated with a matching black tie as he posed with his wife Lindsay Brunnock Big night: Kenneth appeared in good spirits as he signed autographs for fans on the carpet Catching up: The director later joined his co-stars, including Michelle, for a few group shots - where he appeared slightly distracted by the actress' plunging gown as they posed Good friends: The pair were seen chatting and joking together further as they posed for cameras inside later on Centre of attention: Kenneth looked in awe of the premiere's reception as he posed with Michelle, Judi and Tom Bateman As the man of the hour however, the director later joined his co-stars, including Michelle, for a few group shots - where he appeared slightly distracted by the actress' plunging gown as they posed. Joining the duo on the carpet was Penelope Cruz, who truly dazzled in a black and navy gown completely embellished with sequins. The Spanish actress truly dazzled in the glittering number, which remained utterly sophisticated with a round scooped neckline and three-quarter length sleeves, before it cut into a daring thigh-high split at the skirt. Penelope accessorised with shimmering silver drop earrings from Atelier Swarovski for an added touch of glamour, and left her hair in loose, tousled waves to let her naturally stunning features shine through, as she posed fiercely on the carpet. Shimmering: Joining the duo on the carpet was Penelope Cruz, who truly dazzled in a black and navy gown completely embellished with sequins All eyes on her: The Spanish actress truly dazzled in the glittering number, which remained utterly sophisticated with a round scooped neckline and three-quarter length sleeves, before it cut into a daring thigh-high split at the skirt Stunning: Penelope accessorised with shimmering silver drop earrings from Atelier Swarovski for an added touch of glamour, and left her hair in loose, tousled waves to let her naturally stunning features shine through Strike a pose: Penelope commanded attention as she posed fiercely for cameras - and later turned away from the cameras to display the dress' dramatic plunging back Johnny Depp, 54, posed beside Penelope, leading the male members of the cast as the mysterious Mr Samuel Ratchett. The actor, who had headed out in London in costume on Wednesday night, opted for a more modern but equally suave look with a traditional black tux, with his bow tie stylishly left undone at his neck. Sporting a clean-cut hairstyle and a thin mustache, Johnny certainly alluded to his character on the carpet, as he cut a brooding figure for cameras. The actor appeared to be enjoying his time in the capital - attending the premiere 24 hours after he was spotted at infamous Soho club The Box, clad in full 1920s garb. Suited and booted: Johnny Depp, 54, posed beside Penelope, leading the male members of the cast as the mysterious Mr Samuel Ratchett Cool kid: The actor, who had headed out in London in costume on Wednesday night, opted for a more modern but equally suave look with a traditional black tux, with his bow tie stylishly left undone at his neck Man of mystery: Sporting a clean-cut hairstyle and a thin mustache (L), Johnny certainly alluded to his character (R) on the carpet, as he cut a brooding figure for cameras Let's do this: Johnny was accompanied by his team as he signed posters and photos for his adoring fans Daisy Ridley, who plays the fierce-minded governess Miss Mary Debenham in the hotly-tipped remake, looked resplendent as she next stormed the red carpet in a custom Vivienne Westwood gown elegant complete with a romantic pleated skirt. The brunette beauty, 25, ensured she took centre-stage in the showstopping emerald dress, which featured a floor-sweeping hem and a halter neckline. Cinching in her tiny waist thanks to a grey ribbon belt, the full ballgown-style skirt injected a dose of added drama - before she swept her glossy locks up into an elegant chignon, to draw attention to her striking features. She framed her dark eyes with lashings of mascara and completed the look with a slick of taupe lipstick as she posed playfully for cameras, with her thumbs up. Green with envy: Daisy Ridley, who plays the fierce-minded governess Miss Mary Debenham in the hotly-tipped remake, looked resplendent as she next stormed the red carpet in an elegant emerald gown with a romantic pleated skirt Say cheese! The brunette, 25, appeared to be in good spirits as she playfully posed with her thumbs up for cameras Radiant: She framed her dark eyes with lashings of mascara and completed the look with a slick of taupe lipstick as she posed playfully for cameras, with her thumbs up Effortless: Cinching in her tiny waist thanks to a grey ribbon belt, the full ballgown-style skirt injected a dose of added drama - before she swept her glossy locks up into an elegant chignon, to draw attention to her striking features Exciting: Daisy spent plenty of time on the carpet signing autographs for fans Green dream: Daisy's stunning emerald dress was hard to miss on the carpet Olivia Colman arrived next in a stunning black gown and a smattering of De Beers jewellery, as she prepared to see her role as Hildegarde Schmidt, the German lady's maid of Princess Dragomiroff, in the new flick. The 43-year-old was effortlessly classy in her slinky black floor-length gown, which fell into soft sheer sleeves, and flattered her slim figure with wrap-around ruching across the front. In an added touch of glamour, the dress was then adorned with patches of shimmering silver sequins across the shoulders, before the gown cascaded gracefully to the floor. The star, who was recently confirmed to be taking over from Claire Foy in The Crown, left her hair in loose, tousled waves, and added a slick of dark pink lipstick in a chic finishing touch, as she accesorised with De Beers jewellery. Lady in black: Olivia Colman arrived next in a stunning black gown and De Beers jewellery, as she prepared to see her role as Hildegarde Schmidt, the German lady's maid of Judi Dench's Princess Dragomiroff, in the new flick All that glitters: In an added touch of glamour, the dress was then adorned with patches of shimmering silver sequins across the shoulders, before the gown cascaded gracefully to the floor and wore De Beers jewellery Princess Dragomiroff herself - Judi Dench - arrived soon after in a typically stylish and sophisticated all black ensemble. The actress was the picture of elegance in a flowing black gown, layered beneath a matching sheer kimono jacket, and jazzed up by a string of dazzling diamonds across her neck. Adding minimal make-up to prove her glowing complexion at 82 years of age, Judi then finished her look with chunky ankle boots and a smattering of colourful bangles, in added trendy touches. All eyes on her: Princess Dragomiroff herself - Judi Dench - arrived soon after in a typically stylish and sophisticated all black ensemble Classy: The actress was the picture of elegance in a flowing black gown, layered beneath a matching sheer kimono jacket, and jazzed up by a string of dazzling diamonds across her neck Lucy Boynton, who plays the Hungarian Countess Andrenyi in the film arrived next - adding a splash of colour to the carpet in her quirky floral frock. The 23-year-old channeled a more vintage style in her lilac tea dress, which pulled into a high neck and cinched in tightly at her waist, before pouffing out into a striking cropped skirt. Only making the look more unique, the dress was adorned with a vibrant green ribbon on one shoulder, and Lucy teamed it with subtly clashing sandal heels, decorated with monochrome flowers. The Miss Potter star added plenty of volume to her trademark blonde bob, and added a dramatic purple smoky eye and quirky cross earrings to tie her striking look together. Flower power: Lucy Boynton, who plays the Hungarian Countess Andrenyi in the film arrived next - adding a splash of colour to the carpet in her quirky floral frock Bold: Only making the look more unique, the dress was adorned with a vibrant green ribbon on one shoulder, and Lucy teamed it with subtly clashing sandal heels, decorated with monochrome flowers Gorgeous: The Miss Potter star added plenty of volume to her trademark blonde bob, and added a dramatic purple smoky eye and quirky cross earrings to tie her striking look together Star-studded: Leslie Odom Jr, who plays soldier Colonel John Arbuthnot in the flick, arrived next in a slick double-breasted suit, and posed with his glamorous wife Nicolette Robinson Having Olaf! Frozen star Josh Gad was effortlessly cool in a grey checked suit and trendy glasses Joining the pack: Willem Dafoe, Tom Bateman and Derek Jacobi also posed on the carpet, ahead of the debut of their respective roles Gerhard Hardman, Bouc and Edward Masterman in the flick Don't mind if I do! Willem appeared to be in very high spirits as he signed autographs for admirers As one of the most hotly-tipped films of the year, it is no wonder a whole host of high-profile names also attended the premiere to see the film ahead of the crowds. Kelly Brook arrived in a dramatic black gown, which plunged into a scooped neck to display her famous cleavage to all, before expanding out into a full, sequin skirt. Keeping all eyes on her show-stopping ensemble, the beauty tied her look together with barely-there black heels, as well as a shimmering silver clutch bag and matching cuff bracelet. Proving her model prowess, Kelly playfully flipped her skirt on the carpet, before cosying up to beau Jeremy Parisi to pose for cameras. Model behaviour: As one of the most hotly-tipped films of the year, it is no wonder a whole host of high-profile names also attended - including model Kelly Brook High drama: Proving her model prowess, Kelly playfully flipped her skirt on the carpet, before cosying up to beau Jeremy Parisi (centre) to pose for cameras Reality TV to red carpet: Love Island stars Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt also attended - with human rights activist Camilla slipping her slender frame into a demure but chic floral gown of lace and tulle Going back to my roots: Former TOWIE star Mark Wright also jetted over from LA to attend the premiere Red hot! Meanwhile Carly Steel dazzled in a pleated red gown, complete with saucy sheer mesh top Here come the girls: Lilah Parsons stunned in a beaded ruffle gown, Lily Travers was trendy in velvet trousers and Camilla Kerslake dazzled in a Halfpenny London dress and a smattering of Links of London jewellery (L-R) That's the spirit: James McVey, Brad Simpson and Tristan Evans of The Vamps (L-R) all sported retro ensembles in the spirit of the film for the premiere Standing out: Zoe Hardman dazzled in a gold sequin midi dress (L), while Lara Mullen slipped into an old-school chic blue gown by Tory Burch and pointed court shoes (C) and Olivia Cox wore a sleek black semi-sheer dress (R) Love Island stars Camilla Thurlow and Jamie Jewitt also attended - with human rights activist Camilla slipping her slender frame into a demure but chic floral gown of lace and tulle. Former TOWIE star Mark Wright also jetted over from LA to attend the premiere, alongside Olivia Cox, Lilah Parsons, and television presenter Carly Steel. The new film is based on Agatha Christie's 1934 novel of the same name - and marks the fourth adaptation of the story so far. The story follows famed detective Hercule Poirot, who boards the famous Orient Express to enjoy some time off between cases. Atmospheric: London's Royal Albert Hall was chosen as the venue for the star-studded event, and added to drama of the film with an array of fire lanterns lining the red carpet Stars of the show: The new film (the leading ladies above) is based on Agatha Christie's 1934 novel of the same name - and marks the fourth adaptation of the story so far Murder mystery: The story follows famed detective Hercule Poirot, played by Kenneth (third left) who boards the famous Orient Express to enjoy some time off between cases Whodunnit? However, he is soon forced to investigate the weird and wonderful characters on board (including the above), when an oil tycoon is found stabbed to death Having a ball: Michelle and Judi could not help but giggle as they posed together once inside Catching up: Johnny and Penelope also joked with Kenneth as they posed for photos Animated: Kenneth and Willem later enjoyed a very animated conversation- clearly excited by the film's premiere Come here you! The cast put on a playful display once inside, proving to have formed a close bond during filming (Michelle and Willem above) Glam girls: Michelle and Penelope later shared a warm hug for cameras We did it! Judi was seen hugging Johnny as the film finally made its debut, after weeks of excitement However he immediately finds himself faced with a desperate oil tycoon, who begs him for personal protection, as he is fearing for his life on the famous transportation. Following the ominous encounter, the tycoon is then found stabbed to death the following day, and Poirot is forced to investigate the other weird and wonderful characters on board, to uncover the culprit. Johnny Depp joins a number of Oscar winners in the film's stellar cast, including Judi, 82, as the princess and Penelope, 43, as the missionary. In addition, Sergei Polunin, 27, takes on the role of the mysterious aristocrat Count Rudolph Andrenyi, while Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, 36, appears as Cuban charmer Biniamino Marquez. Finally, Leslie Odom Jr, 36, is soldier Colonel John Arbuthnot, Lucy Boynton, 23, appears as the countess, Josh Gad, 36, is Hector MacQueen, Mr Ratchetts secretary and Sir Derek Jacobi, 78, plays the murdered mans valet. The film is a remake of the 1974 classic, and hits UK theaters on November 3 and US theaters November 10. It's the fourth adaptation of Christie's novel - following Sidney Lumet's famous 1974 film, a 2001 CBS version, and a 2010 episode of ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot. Charlie Heaton was joined by his Stranger Things co-star and rumoured girlfriend Natalia Dyer at Paris Games Week in France on Thursday, shortly after he confirmed that he was turned away from the U.S. at the airport for cocaine possession. The 23-year-old British actor seemed in good spirits as he also joined Joe Keery at the convention, where the trio happily signed autographs for fans of the hit Netflix series. Laughing and joking as he promoted a virtual reality game based on the show, Charlie seemed chirpy on the outing, dressing down in a white T-shirt and jeans. Scroll down for video Two's company: Charlie Heaton was joined by his Stranger Things co-star and rumoured girlfriend Natalia Dyer at Paris Games Week in France on Thursday Natalia also looked effortlessly chic at the convention as she put on a leggy display in a cream floral dress with ruffled detailing and puffed sleeves. Boosting her petite frame, the pretty blonde donned a pair of scarlet lace-up heels whilst she swept her golden locks up into a chic chignon. Natalia and Charlie recently confirmed their romance by holding hands after months of rumours. Three's company: The British actor, 23, seemed in good spirits as he also joined Joe Keery at the convention, where the trio happily signed autographs for fans of the hit Netflix series Legs eleven! Natalia also looked effortlessly chic at the convention as she put on a leggy display in a cream floral dress with ruffled detailing and puffed sleeves Cheerful! Laughing and joking as he promoted a virtual reality game based on the show, Charlie seemed chirpy on the outing, dressing down in a white T-shirt and jeans The day before, the pair had appeared at the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy to promote Stranger Things. Charlie, who was also recently revealed to have a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, was seen smiling ear to ear as he emerged in the Italian city, dressed to shield himself from the chill with a chic coat and all-black ensemble. He followed his stunning girlfriend Natalia, who looked sensational in a printed dress and cropped biker jacket. Chatting away: The group were happy to sign autographs for fan and chat away together Chirpy: Charlie and Joe seemed in good spirits as they waved at fans from the stage Loving life: Charlie put on an animated display as he took to the stage at the convention Dancing through life: The group were seen skipping across the stage together Happy to help: Charlie stopped and signed memorabilia for his French fans Charlie has seen some troubles recently, which involved his situation at the airport a week ago, where cocaine was detected on him. The refusal to enter the States caused Charlie to miss the eagerly-anticipated premiere for the second season of Netflix's breakout hit Stranger Things. With series three of the show being confirmed, it is unclear whether Charlie will be allowed to return to the States for future filming endeavours. MailOnline has contacted representatives for Charlie for further comment. Emerging: The day before, the pair had appeared at the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy to promote Stranger Things. His first appearance since he was caught with cocaine Troubles: Following the drug detection, Charlie was questioned before being sent back to England on a return flight, and was unable to attend the premiere for the second season of Stranger Things, in which he plays Jonathan Byers Together: The British actor looked to be in good spirits as he emerged from the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy his girlfriend Natalie Dyer - who also stars in the popular Netflix series - on Wednesday All is well: Charlie, who was also recently revealed to have a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, was seen smiling ear to ear as he emerged in the Italian city In a carefully worded statement a week ago, Heaton said he was working to 'rectify' the situation, which is said to have occurred after sniffer dogs detected the cocaine on his person. 'My planned travel to the U.S. last week was affected by an issue at U.S. immigration, and I am working to rectify it as soon as possible,' the 23-year-old told People magazine. 'I do want to clarify that I was not arrested or charged with a crime, and cooperated fully with the U.S. officials at LAX.' Team effort: Charlie and Natalia were also joined by their Stranger Things co-star, Joe Keery On screen: While Charlie is Natalia's other half in real life, on the Netflix series Joe plays Natalia's beau Following the drug's detection, Charlie was questioned before being sent back to England on a return flight, and was unable to attend the premiere for the second season of Stranger Things. 'Im sorry to all the fans and my Stranger Things family for missing the premiere,' he said. 'We are all so proud of this season and I would never want this story to negatively impact the show.' Heaton's mother and sister previously said a small amount of cocaine found its way on to his wallet at a party two weeks earlier, or at a bar or at a shop without his knowledge. Family of the actor, who plays Jonathan Byers in the Netflix supernatural drama series, say he has never done drugs in the past and was not under the influence at the time he was stopped at LA airport. 'I am working to rectify it': Charlie has confirmed he WAS turned away from U.S... as his mother claims he got cocaine on his wallet at a party Heaton has since undergone tests, including a hair and urine sample, which have come back all clear, according to his family. They are now hoping the 'misunderstanding' blows over 'sooner rather than later' to allow the British star and continue filming for Stranger Things. But they have criticised how Charlie was treated by US officials, claiming he was interrogated for three hours and wasn't allowed to call anyone or ask for a lawyer. They blamed his treatment on his TV star status and claim he was used 'as a target'. 'I do want to clarify that I was not arrested or charged with a crime': In a carefully worded statement, Heaton said he was working to 'rectify' the situation, which is said to have occurred after sniffer dogs detected the cocaine on his person 'He's never done drugs in the past': The star's mother Michelle Lowe (left) and sister Kayleigh Heaton (right) say Heaton has never done drugs and the incident is merely a 'misunderstanding' Speaking at the family home in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, his mother Michelle Lowe, 50, said: 'All that rubbish, it's completely fabricated. I know that but that's all I'm allowed to say on it. 'He's never done drugs in the past. It's completely made up, that's what papers do. I'm not his agent, I'm just his mum so I can't really say too much. 'He is sort of between here, London and America. It would be awful if he wasn't allowed back to America to film but I don't see it shouldn't be. 'He has proven his innocence. It could happen to any of us, you go to a bar or a party. It's just unfortunate really. 'I know that's what has happened. I hope it blows over.' In jeopardy? With series three of the show being confirmed, it is unclear whether Charlie will be allowed to return to the States for future filming endeavours His sister Kaayleigh Heaton, 32, added: 'It could have come from anywhere. He wasn't carrying drugs, he wasn't high. He's had tests and they have come back clear. 'He not got it in his system or anything. He was at a party two weeks before and obviously when you're at a party anything can happen. 'You leave your things on the side when you're having a drink. It could be that he was at a shop, it be on a note. What they've done is wrong, they didn't give him a chance to call anybody. They didn't give him a chance to have a lawyer. Daddy day care: The star was denied entry to America after it was revealed he has a secret love child with his former flame Former flame: Charlie shares the child with his ex, Akiko Matsuura History: Akiko fell pregnant while the pair were in the rock band Comanechi together, in May 2014 'They put him in a room for three hours and just interrogated him and interrogated him, so it wasn't done correctly. 'They didn't follow procedure. I think they saw him, they noticed him and they used him as a target. 'He wasn't carrying anything, he wasn't under the influence or any drugs. I think it's just a misunderstanding. Social media savvy: Heaton's ex-girlfriend has posted a number of heartwarming pictures of the actor and musician with his baby boy on social media Former couple: The pair are said to have 'fallen head over heels in love' before Heaton became a father at the age of 20 'He's been unfortunate where he's been to a party, somehow cocaine has got either on his wallet or on his cards, we're not sure. 'He didn't know anything about it, he went to the airport to fly, they checked and he is racking his brain about how this could happen. 'He hasn't done anything, he wasn't carrying anything. He's had tests that have come back clean. 'He has had hair sample, a blood test and urine sample which are absolutely clean. A Hair sample can last up to five months so that proves he hasn't taken anything. 'I think it will be fine because it's not like he has done anything.' Michelle could not say when she was due to see her son again as he splits his him between Bridlington, London and America. Heaton (right) is not believed to see his son regularly and the boy lives with his mother (left), in London Due to his demanding schedule filming hit-show Stranger Things in Los Angeles, Yorkshire-born Heaton is not believed to see his son regularly. The youngster lives with his mother, who performs in the band The Big Pink, in London. A source told the Sun: 'Charlie became a dad when he was just 20. He met Akiko when he was just a teen and fell head over heels in love. 'They're no longer together but they have an amicable relationship for the boy's sake. 'Right now Charlie's career is his priority but he hopes to see more of his son once filming commitments calm down.' It is now feared that Heaton could be barred from entering the US in future - meaning he could struggle to take part in filming for Stranger Things. This comes as it was revealed Charlie has a secret love child with his ex-girlfriend Akiko Matsuura, who fell pregnant in May 2014 while the pair were in the rock band Comanechi together. She transformed into a ghoulish ballerina for a Halloween party at the weekend. But Kelly Brook was back to her glamorous best on Thursday night, as she attended the world premiere of Murder On The Orient Express at The Royal Albert Hall. The model and presenter, 37, struggled to contain her famously ample assets in a tight black sequin dress as she hit the red carpet at the star-studded London bash. Scroll down for video Looking good: Kelly Brook was back to her glamorous best on Thursday night, as she attended the world premiere of Murder On The Orient Express at The Royal Albert Hall Kelly looked every inch the red carpet siren in the beaded garment, which boasted a scoop neckline and a chic asymmetric skirt. She channeled Old Hollywood glamour in her styling, rocking Veronica Lake-style curls that tumbled past her shoulders. Injecting a dose of colour to the look, the brunette beauty plumped her pout with a slick of scarlet lipstick and framed her eyes with lashings of mascara. Not scrimping on acccesories, she carried a metallic silver box clutch and added height with some black barely there heels. Putting on quite a show: Kelly put on quite the show with her busty ensemble Ready for her close up: The presenter ensured all eyes were on her with her generous cleavage She's got a lot of front! The model and presenter, 37, struggled to contain her ample assets in a tight black sequin dress as she hit the red carpet at the star-studded London bash Chic: Kelly looked every inch the red carpet siren in the beaded garment, which boasted a scoop neckline and a chic asymmetric skirt Flashing those legs: Kelly has favoured a revealing sense of style since she shot to fame in the late Nineties. Pictured right in 2010 Known for her elaborate costumes each year, Kelly decided to channel Moira Shearer for the festivities - who played ballerina Victoria Page in the 1948 film. The model achieved the ethereal ballerina look in a classic white tulle skirt and satin corset, which displayed her famously ample assets to all. Making the look far more terrifying for Halloween, Kelly then added thick slicks of fake blood around her eyes, and soaked her pointe shoes in the same gruesome mixture. Clearly proud of her costume, Kelly shared a number of selfies to her Instagram, which she captioned: 'Halloween Party! #DeadBallerina #TheRedShoes #hanschristianandersen' Glamorous display: The former glamour model channeled 1950s glamour with her attire Double trouble: She was joined by her French personal trainer boyfriend Jeremy Parisi, who looked dapper in a black tuxedo Furry nice: She later wrapped up in a decadent white coat with a soft fur lining Hot couple: The pair looked preened to perfection as they hit the red carpet Mane attraction: She channeled Old Hollywood glamour in her styling, rocking Veronica Lake-style curls that tumbled past her shoulders Kelly is known for her elaborate Halloween costumes, having a shared a throwback to her Frida Kahlo costume from 2015 earlier this week. The model nailed the iconic features of the Mexican artist, by adding facial hair to her usually flawless visage - complete with a monobrow and moustache - as well as a floral crown and dripping jewels. It is no wonder Kelly celebrated the spooky holiday with boyfriend Jeremy Parisi this year, after admitting she would love to marry him on Celebrity Juice. Busting out: Kelly's scooped neckline dress did little to contain her generous cleavage Glam: Injecting a dose of colour to the look, the brunette beauty plumped her pout with a slick of scarlet lipstick and framed her eyes with lashings of mascara Stylish: Not scrimping on acccesories, she carried a metallic silver box clutch and added height with some black barely there heels Keeping abreast of things: The brunette beauty worked her angles in the figure-hugging gown Having a whale of a time: The model appeared to be in great spirits as she greeted fans Coming over all coy, the model, who has previously dated actor Billy Zane and rugby star Thom Evans, said of her beau on the show: 'We've been together for two and a half years now, it's flown!' Host Keith Lemon then teasingly pointed at his engagement finger, which led Kelly to confess: 'I'd like to get married, yeah.' The brunette has been dating Jeremy - an Italian television star who lives in France - for almost three years. The pair are often seen spending time together at Kelly's 1million country pile in Kent, complete with a 600-year-old apple farm where she grows her own vegetables. Impressive: It comes after Kelly dressed up as a ghoullish ballerina for Halloween, in a classic white tulle skirt and satin corset, which displayed her famously ample assets to all Snap! Clearly proud of her costume, Kelly shared a number of selfies with Jeremt to her Instagram Back in the day: Kelly was crowned FHM's Sexiest Woman In The World in 2005. Pictured in 2000 at the Snatch premiere Ferne McCann has given birth to her first child. The former TOWIE star, 27, shares the baby with her ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins, 25, who is currently on trial for his participation in an acid attack in a London club. Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the reality starlet revealed she had welcomed a daughter a week before her due date as she shared a first snap of the newborn. Scroll down for video Baby love: Ferne McCann revealed in an Instagram post on Thursday that she has welcomed her first child. She shares her baby girl with ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins Exes: The former TOWIE star, 27, shares the child with her ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins, who is currently on trial for his participation in an acid attack in a London club She wrote: 'Wellcome to the world my darling. Didnt expect to see you a week early. Im so in love & bursting with pride. Its a girl [sic].' Ferne first confirmed she was pregnant with Arthur's child in April, two days after he was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the acid attack. Arthur was arrested and charged with 14 counts of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and one count of throwing corrosive fluid on a person with intent to do grievous bodily harm. He is currently standing trial alongside Andre Phoenix, 21, for the alleged acid attack where more than a dozen people were injured at the Mangle E8 nightclub in Dalston, east London, on April 17. Bumping along: Ferne first confirmed she was pregnant with Arthur's child in April, two days after he was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the acid attack Arthur admits to throwing the acid but claims he had snatched the bottle out of another man's hand and threw it, believing he planned to spike someone else's drink. He was arrested several days after the incident hiding in an unfurnished flat in Northamptonshire. Arthur denies five counts of grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent and nine counts of actual bodily harm (ABH) against 14 people. Andre denies four counts of GBH and two counts of ABH. Tough times: Arthur was arrested and charged with 14 counts of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and one count of throwing corrosive fluid on a person with intent to do grievous bodily harm Ferne and Arthur dated over the summer of 2016 but split before rekindling their romance in March this year. The reality star called an end to their relationship a month later after learning of the acid attack, but just days before had admitted she wanted to marry him and revealed that they had already been discussing their future wedding. She previously revealed she was 'initially shocked' by her pregnancy, and was 'devastated' by the events that had unfolded with her former flame. Shocked: Ferne previously revealed that she was 'initially shocked' by her pregnancy, and admitted she was 'devastated' by the events that had unfolded with her former flame but vowed to do the best for her baby Congrats! Her former TOWIE co-star Gemma Collins rushed to send well wishes on social media Happy days: Her I'm A Celeb jungle pal Vicky Pattison also gushed over the baby, penning: 'his is the best news I've had in AGES!! My beautiful friend @fernemccann has had her baby girl!! My darlin, I am beyond happy for you! So much love gorgeous! Can't wait to meet the princess!' Speaking to OK! magazine, she divulged: 'Initially I was devastated. What I had planned and was getting excited about had disappeared in a matter of moments. 'It was so hard to deal with what happened, but then I realised it was not about me but about my child. Ill do my best for my baby. Admitting it had been a harrowing time for her, Ferne explained that her hormones had added to her emotional state, as she said: 'There are times I feel emotional. 'Not in a negative way, like I'm feeling really sad, but my hormones are all over the place. But I never feel lonely as I have my baby. 'I thoroughly intend to bring up my baby as a single mum like many other women have done in the past. And I will do my best for this baby as a single mum.' Independent: Ferne revealed that she does not want to be labelled a 'single mum' and explained that she was feeling stronger than ever in the lead up to the birth She later told the publication that she does not want to be labelled a 'single mum', however, as she explained that she was feeling stronger than ever in the lead up to the birth. Ferne declared: 'Im being strong because I have to think about my baby. The whole process of being pregnant has made me a much stronger person. 'They say what doesnt kill you makes you stronger and it really is true. I feel like Ive developed a new armour this year. 'I dont like the term single mum and I dont want to be addressed as that because I dont think you should be labelled. To me, Im going to be a mum like anyone else, but just in a different situation. It shouldnt define you. 'But yes, I have done this whole pregnancy on my own, but at the same time Im so not alone Ive got such a great support network with my mum, sister and friends Ive not felt alone or been alone once during this pregnancy. Split: Ferne and Arthur dated over the summer of 2016 but split before rekindling their romance in March this year. The reality star called an end to their relationship after learning of the acid attack When Ferne announced her pregnancy, two days after Arthur was arrested, she explained she was going to do all she could to have a 'healthy and happy child'. She told MailOnline: 'Ferne is in no way seeking sympathy for her situation and is determined to do all she can to have a happy and healthy child and face the challenges of being a single parent with all her energy,' her statement read. 'Her thoughts are with the victims of the horrific attack on Easter Monday.' Advertisement It's an event held to recognise this year's female high-fliers - and from actresses to fashionistas, the A-listers came out in force. Arriving at Claridge's Hotel on Thursday, model Ashley Graham lead the stylish stars along with fashion designer Victoria Beckham and Hollywood actress Kate Winslet at the Harper's Bazaar Woman Of The Year awards. Following a turbulent few months in Hollywood, the women united with actresses including Jodie Foster as well as British leading ladies Carey Mulligan, Gemma Arterton and Jenna Coleman at the glittering event. Scroll down for video Leading ladies: (From left) Ashley Graham lead a glittering turnout at the Harper's Bazaar Woman Of The Year awards on Thursday, with Victoria Beckham and Kate Winslet joining forces at Claridge's Hotel Joining the guestlist from across the pond, Kate looked demure, sticking to her trademark black look in a sophisticated belted dress and matching heels. The Titanic actress features in the December issue of the title, speaking about body image and how curves are celebrated. She said: 'We have celebrated curves more in the last five years. But I do worry about the extra pressure to be "perfect" on girls growing up now. Im obsessed about the misuse and potential perils of social media for our younger generation.' Suitably chic: Victoria wore lemon-coloured trousers and a white blouse with her hair pulled back into an elegant up-do Working it: Kate worked one of her trademark looks, all black everything, in an A-line dress and heels Showing her shape: Queen of curves Ashley left nothing to the imagination in a glittering see-through gown that she paired with Forevermark Diamond earrings Her finest hour! Victoria looked sensational mingled with Hollywood's elite Suited and booted: Victoria ensured all eyes would be on her as she sashayed past in her flared trousers and satin blouse Catching up: The mother-of-four, 43, looked completely at ease as she entertained the top actresses at the star-studded event Chatting away: Victoria was seen in deep conversation with the two BAFTA winners - clearly engrossed with her story while the pair listened on intently Acting talent: Carey and Kate spoke to each other with enthusiasm inside the party Quite the outfit! Seen beside Arizona Muse, Ashley was extremely bold in her outfit choice What a woman! Arizona showed off her long legs as she opted for a daring thigh split black dress for the event Legs eleven! Arizona styled her blonde locks into glamorous retro curls for the occasion She added: 'We need to be aware of how damaging to childrens self-esteem and the natural process of growing up certain aspects of this "sharing" are.' Celebrating her own curves on Thursday, was US model Ashley blew the British talent away with a suitably sexy ensemble on the red carpet. She drew attention to her best features in a dress that was completely sheer, and worn with only a matching black lingerie set and heels. The bold beauty complemented her ensemble, which featured silver beading across the neckline and waistband, with Forevermark Diamond drop earrings. HARPER'S BAZAAR - WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARDS Ashley Graham, winner of the Model of the Year award Victoria Beckham, winner of the British Brand of the Year award Charlotte Rampling, winner of the British Icon award Adwoa Aboah, winner of the Role Model award Maria Grazia Chiuri, winner of the Designer of the Year award Kate Winslet, winner of the British Actress of the Year award Carey Mulligan, winner of the Philanthropist Award Molly Goddard winner the Breakthrough Designer of the Year Award Jodie Foster, winner of the Inspiration award Advertisement Fangirl moment: Victoria came over a little starstruck when she met Doctor Foster star Suranne Woman of the hour: The fashion designer, 43, proudly scooped the British Brand of the Year gong on the night Double trouble: Victoria, who previously confessed watching BBC dramas is her 'guilty pleasure', looked ecstatic as she cosied up to the critically-acclaimed actress 'It was an uplifting evening': Suranne was quick to return the compliment and shared several snaps with Victoria, who she dubbed 'Wonderwoman' Model of the moment: Curvy catwalk star Ashley scooped the Model of the Year award Lapping it up: The 30-year-old model beamed as she collected the award from actress Gemma Arterton Loving life: Edgy model Adwoa Aboah was awarded the Role Model gong and celebrated the win with fellow catwalk star Georgia May Jagger Taking centre-stage: The 25-year-old model, who has also just been named the face of Marc Jacobs beauty, seemed to be relishing the accolade Legs eleven: Georgia looked worse-for-wear as she strutted out of the venue Strutting her stuff: She was looking bleary-eyed as she headed out of the bash in her scanty mini dress Off we pop: She headed into the cab after a night of revelry within the party Emotional moment: She gave Maria Grazia Chiuri, who won the Designer of the Year award, an affectionate hug It was quite the meeting of minds for leading women in their industries, with British designer and former pop star Victoria seen talking shop with Kate and Carey, inside the event. Suitably chic in lemon-coloured trousers and a white blouse, Victoria spoke to the two actresses, who have both worn her designs in the past. They chatted like old friends, in particular Carey with Kate, as she was seen clinging to the actresses forearms with enthusiasm. Carey welcomed her second child with husband Marcus Mumford this August and therefore no doubt had plenty to share with the Oscar winner. She's raked in the big win: Titanic starlet Kate was awarded the coveted British Actress of the Year gong Great minds: She posed alongside Hollywood megastar Jodie Foster, who was there to receive the Inspiration award Having a whale of a time! Kate, 42, appeared to be in high spirits post-awards as she celebrated with director Stephen Daldry Come here, you! Stephen wrapped Kate in a big hug as they joined forces on the red carpet after her win Check her out! The Great Gatsby actress Carey scooped the Philanthropist Award Icon: Screen legend Charlotte Rampling, 71, who has starred in everything from period flick The Duchess to crime drama Broadchurch, won the British Icon award Legend: Charlotte was an icon of the Swinging Sixties and shot to fame as a fashion model before establishing herself as an actress. Pictured with Sean Connery in the 1973 film Zardoz Impressive: Molly Goddard was crowned Breakthrough Designer of the Year. Pictured with model Edie Campbell, who wore one of her edgy designs Quite the accolade: Pioneering creative director of Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, picked up the Designer of the Year award Musician Sam Smith was among the men proudly celebrating the power of women on Thursday night and was also seen chatting to Carey. The singer - who unveiled his second album, The Thrill Of It All, on November 3 - looked in high spirits on the eve of his album release, smartly clad in a teal suit and a patterned black-and-white shirt. Meanwhile, former James Bond actress Gemma lead the best dressed, along with model Natasha Poly and stylish Jenna. TV and movie screen golden girl Gemma dazzled in a copper dress, which was elegantly offset by her sharp haircut, while Natasha wore a leggy bejewelled minidress and Victoria star Jenna was characteristically demure. Gemma shone in a figure-hugging garment that outlined her fabulous curves with a high neck and buttons stretching down the middle. Exuding elegance: (From left) Gemma, Natasha Poly and Jenna Coleman looked exquisite in colour co-ordinating outfits Stunning: Gemma opted for a bronze collar dress that was elegantly offset by her glamorous bob hairstyle Going for gold: Featuring a halter neckline with a shirt collar design, Gemma's stylish copper dress clung to her slender curves before flaring out to mid-calf length exposing a pair of platform peep toe heels It takes two: Gemma was joined by Ashley as the pair larked around behind the scenes at the awards bash Cosy: Gemma looked in high spirits as she partied with Dominic Cooper at the star-studded bash Gorgeous: The Victoria star was wearing a soft ivory colour with a jacquard effect and puffball sleeves Ethereal: She wore a cream dress that had a plunging neckline and an open back Putting her most stylish foot forward: Jenna sizzled as she headed into the event in her glamorous cream gown and heels It takes two: Jenna lead the way as he friend followed behind in a metallic shimmering pink gown She wore her hair parted on one side and left the front long to frame her pretty features, which were made up with subtle bronze shades. Russian model Natasha was more striking in her red carpet appearance, favouring a scarlet red lipstick with her platinum hair worn off her shoulders. It allowed her floral, Bardot-style garment to take centre-stage as it criss-crossed over her lithe figure to reveal a shorter underskirt. Oh mama: Carey welcomed her second child with husband Marcus Mumford in August VIPs: Carey rubbed shoulders with singer Sam as they sipped on champagne together at the table TV queen Jenna stayed faithful to her traditionally demure dress sense in a calf-length dress that was sexy in a subtle fashion. The ivory garment featured a plunge right down to her middle but covered her shoulders and legs in a soft and floaty beaded fabric. When Jenna turned on the red carpet, she revealed that the dress also had a keyhole cut out in the back, which was elegantly offset by her chignon hairstyle. Woman of the hour: Carey and Kate later posed with Justine Picardie, the magazine's editor-in-chief The only man in the room! Sam was invited to the event to celebrate the elite women in their industries Back on the red carpet: Dr Foster star Suranne stood out from the crowd in a vibrant jumpsuit Hollywood movie star Jodie Foster was there to receive the Inspiration award at the prestigious Harpers Bazaar Women of the Year Awards ceremony on 2 November. She features in the December 2017 issue of the British title, talking about Hollywood before the recent Harvey Weinstein scandal in the industry. The 54-year-old Taxi Driver and The Silence Of The Lambs actress confessed she had never made a film 'about women, made by women' despite her lengthy career. Hollywood royalty: Actress Jodie was there to receive the Inspiration award in a shimmering navy gown Speaking before the shocking Weinstein allegations broke, Jodie revealed that for a lengthy part of her career, all the scripts she was offered focused on female abuse - and confessed she had never made a film that was 'seen through women's eyes'. She explained: 'Even with the number of movies I've made, I've never made a movie that was about women, made by women, that was seen through women's eyes 'I was saying recently that there was a time in my life, for 15 or 20 years, during which every single script I read, the motivation for the female character was that they had been raped or abused as a child.' Leggy look: Georgia showed off her stunning looks as she joined the model army at the party Stunning: Runway favourite Natasha drew attention to her striking features in red lipstick Fancy in florals: Natasha looked sensational in her floral bardot dress that cinched in at her slender waist and flashed her legs Sheer she comes: Russian icon Elena Perminova showed off her sensational figure in a sheer full length gown Making an entrance: Jodie was seen gracefully leaving her car as she headed into the star-studded awards ceremony They have been together for 12 years and there was talk their tied the knot in 2007. But according to UsWeekly, Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet officially married several weeks ago at their home in Topanga, California, which is an hour drive from downtown Los Angeles. The two obtained their marriage license at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerks office on October 2. Introducing Mr and Mrs Momoa: Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet officially married several weeks ago at their home in Topanga, California, according to UsWeekly; seen in 2015 They met in 2005 and have two kids together: Lola, 10, and Nakoa-Wolf, age eight. 'Apparently they werent officially married until a few weeks ago,' a source shared. 'They said they "made it official."' The actor, 38, wore an 'unbuttoned white shirt and a lei. He styled his long locks into a man bun.' Guest: Zoe Kravitz, Lisa's daughter with ex-husband Lenny Kravitz, attended the wedding. Seen in 2011 His little lady: Bonet and Momoa attend the Cinema Society & DeLeon Tequila screening of The Skin I Live In in 2011 in New York City Alicia Vikander, who recently wed Michael Fassbender, was also there; here she is seen in late October in NYC Lisa, 49, 'looked beautiful,' the source added. Zoe Kravitz, Lisa's daughter with ex-husband Lenny Kravitz, attended the wedding. Also present were Alicia Vikander and her new husband Michael Fassbender. Rock climber Chris Sharma and several of Momoas former costars also made the event. 'He stays close with the people he works with on movies and is a really nice guy. It was a big party and people came from out of town to attend,' said the source. Momoa had a crush on Bonet when he saw her on The Cosby Show as a child. In 2014 he said: 'The first time [we met] I was like, "I want that one. I want her. Im going to get her." 'I didnt tell her until after we had our two children. But I told her "I kind of stalked you. I was going to find you."' Momoa can next be seen as Aquaman in Justice League, which opens in the US on November 17. Joanna Krupa has accused some of the women who have spoken out in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein expose of 'trying to get famous'. The model and former Real Housewives of Miami star, 38, said she believes it is the alleged victims who are the ones taking advantage, while defending actor Jeremy Piven, 52, after he was accused of sexual misconduct earlier this week. 'I think people are taking advantage of the whole situation with Weinstein, and theyre trying to make a living or theyre trying to get famous,' she declared outside Craig's restaurant on Wednesday night, according to The Blast. Scroll down for video 'Taking advantage': Joanna Krupa has accused some of the women who have spoken out in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein expose of 'trying to get famous' 'I love Jeremy Piven, like Ive known Jeremy Piven for a very long time. Hes like the nicest f***ing guy Ive ever met. 'Jeremy never did anything wrong to me. Hes always been an amazing friend to me, so I support him.' The former reality star then claimed to have known 'about Harvey Weinstein over 10 years ago'. 'Do I have any issues with him? No,' she stated. 'I will not say more, but come on now. I'll just shut up right now because I'll get me in trouble.' Attack: The model, 38, said she believes it is the alleged victims who are the ones taking advantage, while defending Jeremy Piven, 52, after he was accused of sexual misconduct Piven was accused on Monday via social media of sexual harassment and assault on the set of his hit show Entourage by actress Ariane Bellamar, 38. She tweeted: 'Hey @jeremypiven! 'Member when you cornered me in your trailer on the #Entourage set? 'Member grabbing my boobies on the [couch emoji] without asking??'. Bellamar later added: 'Member when I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the a**, looked at yourself in the mirror, & said what a 'beautiful couple' we made?' That was followed by Bellamar's claim that this happened multiple times. She wrote: 'Jeremy Piven, on two occasions, cornered me & forcefully fondled my breasts & bum. Once at the mansion & once on set.' 'I support him': The former Real Housewives Of Miami star (pictured with Piven in 2007) said she has known the actor for a 'very long time' and stands by him in the wake of the claims The actor played the acerbic Hollywood agent Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage from 2004 to 2011 and in the widely panned 2015 movie. Piven released a statement on Tuesday refuting Bellamar's claims, reading: 'I unequivocally deny the appalling allegations being peddled about me. It did not happen. 'It takes a great deal of courage for victims to come forward with their histories, and my hope is that the allegations about me that didn't happen, do not detract from stories that should be heard.' The string of allegations of sexual abuse in Hollywood started three weeks ago with disgraced movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, 65. First to fall: The string of allegations of sexual abuse in Hollywood started three weeks ago with disgraced movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein, 65 More than 80 women have now come forward to accuse the producer of sexual harassment, assault or rape. Allegations of sexual harassment were leveled by six women against filmmaker Brett Ratner earlier this week. There have been at least 20 prominent men who have been forced to defend or apologize for past actions. Amazon Studios chief Roy Price resigned after a television producer on one of Amazon's shows said he had sexually harassed her. Following allegations of sexual advances on an underage actor, Netflix halted production on Kevin Spacey's House of Cards this week. A Roman Polanski retrospective prompted protests in Paris. James Corden boasted about sleeping with women in a revealing interview released amid the backlash he received for making jokes about the Harvey Weinstein scandal. The 39-year-old late night chat show host was an open-book in a recently published '20 Questions' interview with the November/December 2017 Playboy magazine, where he was asked about his sex life during his stint on Broadway in 2006. He starred in The History Boys alongside Dominic Cooper and said the two would go out together in Hells Kitchen aka The Theater District in the Big Apple for their five month stint there. Opening up: James Corden - pictured last month in LA - was an open-book in a recently published '20 Questions' interview with Playboy magazine as he talked about his sex life Ill-timed: This comes just weeks after the 29-year-old comedian faced backlash for making a Harvey Weinstein joke at the amFAr gala in LA When asked about his sex life during his Broadway stint, Corden explained to the publication in an interview given prior to the Weinstein controversy: 'There's a high density of (a) dancers and (b) gay men. 'So if youre young, straight, English and in the hottest play in New York City, you're gonna get laid. Thats it! 'Id basically pick up the women Dominic didnt want, but I was more than happy with that.' The play ran from April to October 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre. It was met with much critical acclaim and even took home six Tony Awards that year including Best Play. Revealing: The funnyman boasted about bedding women during his 2006 stint on Broadway in The History Boys, as he is pictured at the time with castmates Russell Tovey (left) and Jamie Parker (middle) Budding friendship: He also starred alongside Dominic Cooper and said the two would go out together in Hells Kitchen aka The Theater District in the Big Apple for their five month stint there, as they are pictured together in LA back in January 2015 It was his good friend from the play, Dominic, who even introduced Corden to his now wife Julia Carey. James married Julia just six years after starring in The History Boys in September 2015. The two have two children together: six-year-old son Max and three-year-old daughter Carey and are expecting a third child at the end of the year. Cooper happens to be the godfather to Corden's eldest Max. Aww: It was his good friend from the play, Dominic, who even introduced Corden to his now wife Julia Carey (they are pictured together in LA last week) His latest interview comes during a difficult month for the English comedian, who averted a near-career crisis that struck weeks back stemming from his hosting gig at amfAR's Los Angeles Gala October 13. Corden came under fire after cracking a stream of off-colored jokes at the gala about producer Harvey Weinstein, who's been accused of sexual harassment, abuse and rape by more than 60 women as of Tuesday. Weinstein's rep has said repeatedly that 'any allegations of nonconsensual sex are unequivocally denied by' the producer. Close bond: Cooper happens to be the godfather to Corden's eldest child Max, as they are pictured together in June Love story: James and Julia married in September 2015 as they have two children together and another one on the way due at the end of the year, they are pictured in LA last month In his monologue at the glitzy event, Corden joked, 'Its so beautiful [tonight], Harvey Weinstein has already asked tonight up to his hotel to give him a massage,' to mild boos from the well-heeled audience. An undaunted Corden cracked, 'If you dont like that joke, you should probably leave now,' before rattling off a few more jokes on the uncomfortable topic. The backlash was quick, as a number of prominent names linked to the widespread scandal ripped the comic for his humorous take on the serious matter. Two women who have accused Weinstein of rape - actresses Rose McGowan and Asia Argento - were quick to condemn Corden with sharp jabs, as McGowan called Corden a 'MOTHERF***ING PIGLET' and 'a close friend of HWs;' while Argento wrote, 'Shame on this pig and everyone who grunted with him.' Inappropriate: Corden hosted the amFAR gala in Los Angeles last month and made multiple jokes about the sexual harassment allegations swirling around former movie mogul Weinstein Argento's boyfriend, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, also razzed the CBS host, writing, 'Mr. Corden is free to tell whatever jokes he likes. As he should be. I'm free to suggest he's a porcine, pandering tool.' A chastened Corden didn't wait long to apologize for the badly-received jokes, as he took to Twitter two days later to make amends. 'To be clear, sexual assault is no laughing matter,' he wrote October 15. 'I was not trying to make light of Harveys inexcusable behavior, but to shame him, the abuser, not his victims. I am truly sorry for anyone offended, that was never my intention.' She's had a few spills in her romantic life, but always lands on her feet. And Sandra Bullock used that experience to full effect as she was spotted on the set of her new project, Bird Box, in Los Angeles on Thursday. The actress, 53, took a dramatic tumble while filming an action scene for the post-apocalyptic thriller from Netflix. Scroll down for video Going, going, gone! Sandra Bullock suffered a dramatic tumble on the set of her new project, Bird Box, in Los Angeles on Thursday Tumbling: The actress, 53, took a huge fall while filming an action scene for the post-apocalyptic thriller from Netflix The Oscar-winner began the scene fully poised in a light blue overcoat, patterned blouse, and denim jeans. Sandra's trademark brunette tresses were kept straight and cropped short just above her shoulders. As the filming started, the Gravity star was seen among a crowd where the people began rushing down a street. Sandra was caught up in the melee as a bystander ran past her and caused her to lose her footing. Action hero: Sandra plays a woman on the run in the post-apocalyptic thriller from Netflix First position: The Oscar-winner began the scene fully poised in a light blue overcoat, patterned blouse, and denim jeans Movie star: Sandra was spotted on set of Bird Box in Los Angeles for the first time She began to stumble with a look of shock and dismay on her face. As her knees hit the ground, the Judge Dredd star threw out her arms to break her imminent fall. The Virginia native lay on the ground as several people stepped over her in an apparent panic. Judging by the expressions on the faces of her co-stars, the dramatic fall seemed to be part of the scene the group were filming. Watch out! Sandra was caught up in the melee as a bystander ran past her and caused her to lose her footing Rough start: Sandra seemed to be in the middle of a bad day, but luckily it seemed it was all just part of filming The consummate professional, Sandra was back on her feet, brushed herself off, and was ready for another take. The movie tells the story of a woman and a pair of children who are blindfolded as they make their way through a post-apocalyptic setting along a river. John Malkovich, Danielle Macdonald, Trevante Rhodes, Jacki Weaver, and Sarah Paulson round out the ensemble cast. Susanne Bier is directing the Netflix film from a script by Arrival writer Eric Heisserer with a debut set for next year. Faulty footing: She began to stumble with a look of shock and dismay on her face Painful: The star looked hurt on the way down as she crashed to the ground Dance move: Sandra looked like a professional dancer as she stumbled Sandra looks to be getting her romantic life back on track as she has been dating Bryan Randall for almost two years. She had married Monster Garage host Jesse James in 2005 and divorced him in 2010 amid claims of several affairs on his part. The Sidelined star adopted two children - son Louis, seven, and daughter Laila, five - since the cheating scandals. Sandra can be seen next in the all-female reboot of Ocean's Eleven arriving for the summer of 2018. Concrete plant: She took it in stride as she hit the concrete as part of the dramatic scene Down for the count: The Virginia native lay on the ground as several people stepped over her in an apparent panic Stop, drop, and roll: Sandra was quick to roll out of the way and get on with the scene Over it: And just like that, she was back up for another take She is a regular in gossip columns, known for her modelling career and relationship with a popular shock jock. But this Sydney personality offered a glimpse into her childhood on Thursday, sharing a throwback video of a primary school stage performance. In the social media clip, the young fashionista is shown dancing under the bright lights with her classmates to an African-style drum beat. Guess who! Imogen Anthony offered a glimpse into her childhood on Thursday, sharing a throwback video of a primary school stage performance 'My year two performance video was recovered,' she captioned the post. 'Apparently I've always been an attention seeker...or an epic dancer.' The person who shared the flashback video is none other than Imogen Anthony, the girlfriend of KIIS FM radio host Kyle Sandilands. In the video, Sydney Harbour served as the cardboard backdrop to the scene, as Imogen and the other kids performed for their parents. 'Apparently I've always been an attention seeker': The person who shared the flashback video is none other than Imogen Anthony, the girlfriend of KIIS FM radio host Kyle Sandilands Imogen wore a long dress as she danced on stage and her hair was styled into lengthy pigtails. The crowd cheered loudly for the children, with Imogen acknowledging her family members in the crowd with a not-so-subtle wave. Fast forward almost 20 years, and she is still showing off her moves. What a performance! Imogen wore a long dress as she danced on stage and her hair was styled into lengthy pigtails Imogen has grown a devoted following on Instagram, and is famous for her colourful outfits and cheeky videos. She recently shared a of a clip herself in a leopard print jumpsuit while Kyle circled her in a tractor. The video was a re-creation of Shania Twain's famous 'That Don't Impress Me Much' music video. Back in August she made the heartbreaking announcement that she had suffered a miscarriage while carrying twins. And now Vienna Girardi is sharing new details about the tragedy in a interview airing on The Doctors. The 31-year-old Bachelor star, who appeared on Jake Pavelka's season, broke down into tears while discussing the sad events. Scroll down for video Opening up: Now Vienna Girardi, 31, is sharing new heartbreaking details about the tragedy in a interview airing on The Doctors 'For the most part I try my hardest not to think about it,' she said in response to the question 'how have you dealt with it?' Even so, there are triggers in life that she has been unable to avoid. Sobbing, she shared 'Every day, you know, I get in the elevator and there's a lady in my building whos pregnant and I stare at her belly the entire elevator ride up.' 'Every time I hold my goddaughter or hold my niece I dont want to let them go,' she added. Emotional: The Bachelor star, who appeared on Jake Pavelka's season, broke down into tears while discussing the sad events Not holding back: Sobbing, she shared 'Every day, you know, I get in the elevator and there's a lady in my building whos pregnant and I stare at her belly the entire elevator ride up' Tissues all around: Her mother Tina also couldn't help but cry during the interview Back in August Vienna posted an emotional summary of what happened to Facebook. She wrote: 'This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write. My little angels went to Heaven on Aug 5th. I don't know why this happened and I pray the Lord gives me strength to understand why he needed my little girls.' 'Your mommy will never forget you and I loved you both with my entire heart.' The Florida-based reality star said that on August 3, an ultrasound revealed medical complications indicative of twin-to-twin transfusion, a condition in which 'one twin takes more nutrients than the other'. Hopeful: Early in the summer Vienna shared her exciting twin news on social media Vienna, who shot to fame of the fourteenth season of The Bachelor, said that while doctors initially said the situation was improving, her water later broke 'due to the amniotic sacs rupturing'. This led to a two-day stint in the hospital as medical personnel tried to save the unborn babies. She added that doctors warned her that her life was in danger if she didn't deliver the children, who had 'a very slim chance' of survival amid the problematic conditions. positive: Vienna couldn't wait to become a mother Vienna said she did 'everything to save them but their hearts stopped beating on day two which is also when [she] went into a septic shock with 104 fever'. The reality star said that after the babies passed away, she was rushed into surgery and spent four days in an Intensive Care Unit. She was subsequently 'donating [her] little girls to science' in hopes of sparing another woman the tragic experience she's had as result of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. They've been enjoying themselves in Miami as Matthew McConaughey continues filming his latest movie, The Beach Bum. And on Wednesday the actor's family enjoyed all the city had to offer as they hit the surf for some fun in the sun together. Matthew's wife Camila Alves, 35, took their three children, Levi, nine, Livingston, four, and Vida, seven, for a day on the shore alongside the actor's mother, Kay. Scroll down for video Fun in the sun! Matthew McConaughey's wife Camila Alves took their three children, Levi, Livingston, and Vida, for a day on the shore alongside the actor's mother, Kay Doting mom Camilla and grandmother Kay joined forces to keep an eye on the kids as they soaked up the sun and took in the stunning views. Camila looked gorgeous in a flowing white off-the-shoulder dress, a scarf in her hair, and long silver necklace. Kay kept it casual in black shorts and T-shirt as she walked barefoot alongside her grandchildren with her sandals in hand. The children looked to be having a blast as they ventured down the shore, playing with some seaweed and their mother. Making waves: The kids inspected the sand as Kaye checked out the crashing waves Heavenly style! Camila looked gorgeous in a flowing white off-the-shoulder dress, a scarf in her hair, and long silver necklace Life's a beach: The children looked to be having a blast as they ventured down the shore, playing with some seaweed and their mother The kids inspected the sand as Kaye checked out the crashing waves. Camila and her family have been in Miami lately as Matthew films the upcoming comedy romp, The Beach Bum. Directed by Harmony Korine, the movie also stars Isla Fisher and Chad Mountain. Child at heart! Alves goofed around with her children Follow the leader! The family strolled by the surf barefoot Doting mom: The 35-year-old mother couldn't have looked happier spending a day with her children In the upcoming comedy, Matthew plays the rebellious but lovable stoner Moondog. After filming Beach Bum in Miami, Matthew will head off to the Key West for another two weeks of filming. Matthew and his wife married in 2012 in Austin, Texas, six years after they first met. Hot metal! Alves stepped out in New York on Thursday in a bold silver jacket Murder On The Orient Express Verdict: Not enough steam Rating: For those of us who recall going to the cinema to see the last film version of Agatha Christies most celebrated whodunnit, it doesnt take much exercising of the little grey cells to work out that there are people now well into their 40s who werent yet born when it came out. Yet anyone who saw Sidney Lumets stylish, star-studded film at the pictures in 1974, or has watched it on telly since, should be warned that this one, directed by Kenneth Branagh, doesnt ever quite puff and chuff its way out of a very long shadow. Train travels most romantic age was much better evoked in Lumets film, too. The star quotient is almost as high, though. Branagh himself takes centre-stage as Belgiums world-famous sleuth and world-class pedant Hercule Poirot, with Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Derek Jacobi, Willem Dafoe, Olivia Colman and Daisy Ridley among those playing the trains enigmatic passengers. Kenneth Branagh takes centre-stage as Belgiums world-famous sleuth and world-class pedant Hercule Poirot But does this movie pump exciting new life into Christies story? Not really. Its main fresh twist is to Poirots moustache, which practically becomes a character in its own right. More of that magnificent beast later. There are a few other, more subtle changes. Screenwriter Michael Green has thrown in a couple of new characters, and there is a vague nod to a world beyond the Orient Express, with half-hearted references to Stalin. The acrid whiff of racism swirls around once or twice, and a touchy-feeliness develops that was certainly not present in 1974, still less 40-odd years before that, when Christie wrote her novel. Emotions dont just run high on this train; they are deconstructed in such a modern way that its almost a surprise not to find Poirot contemplating the savage slaughter of a shifty American called Mr Rachett (Depp) over a small soya latte. We even get an unprecedented glimpse into the great detectives sex life, as he moons over a photograph of a lost lover. But none of this is enough to explain why the Orient Express has been hauled out of the sidings after so many years. The action begins in 1934, in Palestine, where our hirsute hero is solving another crime. For much of the films first act, Branagh plays Poirot largely for laughs, which is disconcerting, despite the innate comedy value of the moustache, and an accent that recalls another lion of historical fiction, Rene the cafe-owner in Allo Allo. Johnny Depp as the shifty American Mr Rachett in the film Soon, Poirot is in Istanbul, boarding the Calais-bound Orient Express. At first, he has to share a cabin because every berth in all classes of accommodation has been booked, yet his legendary powers of detection somehow fail to resolve the question that nagged relentlessly at me: if the trains meant to be so blinking packed, how come there are only about 18 people on it? Branagh should have got Southern Rail to advise him; they know how to make a train look like it has half of all humanity crammed aboard. But maybe there was no budget left for extras, after theyd paid for the moustache. Yes, its time to consider the hairy phenomenon. Its not the only moustache in the film. In fact, there are so many others of all dimensions from bushy to bristly, pencil to toothbrush, that it is no surprise to find Murder On The Orient Express is in partnership with the Movember Foundation, which urges men to grow facial hair this month in aid of charity. Not that theres time to sprout a scene-stealing whopper like Poirots. I spent much of the film wondering what it reminded me of, and eventually pretty much at the moment that Poirot worked out who killed Mr Ratchett the penny dropped. It looks, in a certain light, curiously like a greying Dougal, the dog in The Magic Roundabout. In fairness, it is much truer to Christies original vision than most of those sported by others who have played Poirot including David Suchet on TV whose tache always looked to me as if he got it out of a Christmas cracker. The ultimate whodunnit: The stars of the Murder On The Orient Express, including Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley and Penelope Cruz, descended on London on Thursday, for the film's glamorous world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall So we should credit Branagh for that, and for assembling a fine cast. Dame Judi is predictably marvellous, swaddled in fur as the grandest of grandes dames, Russian Princess Natalia Dragomiroff. Colman does a fine job, too, as the put-upon German maid. And its nice to see Pfeiffer in a film more watchable than the execrable Mother!, switching between flightiness and cunning as the husband-hunting widow Mrs Hubbard. She has some knockout lines, too. If your eyes linger any longer Ill have to charge rent, she murmurs to Mr Ratchett. Whether you can remember the plot or not, this is no place to give it away. Suffice to say theres a connection to a cause celebre Christie borrowed from the notorious real-life kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, and that far from Poirot being stumped as to why anyone might bump off Mr Ratchett, there are motives coming out of his ears. But not, I might add, out of his nostrils. That bit of Poirot is reserved for only one thing, and what a thing it is. He's the Australian comedian that changed the lives of Block contestants Josh Barker and Elyse Knowles forever last Sunday. But now, Dave Hughes has revealed that his wife Holly was not impressed when it became public knowledge that he bought the couple's renovated home for $3.067 million. In an interview with Today on Tuesday, the 46-year-old funnyman was asked whether he got in trouble for his snap decision to buy the famed Elsternwick property, labelling it a 'smart investment.' 'I got into trouble for making it public!' Dave Hughes has revealed his wife Holly was not impressed after it became public knowledge that he purchased a property on The Block finale last Sunday 'I did but more for making it public,' he revealed. 'She wanted to keep it quiet, but yeah, it was on the front page of the Herald Sun on Monday morning.' Host Karl Stefanovic reassured Dave, claiming that the Melbourne-based publication's circulation had diminished in recent years and that no-one would have seen it anyway. 'I think it's down from 750,000 to 745,000, so no one saw it,' he said. 'I did but more for making it public': While Dave claimed his wife was supportive of the decision to buy the $3.067 million home in Elsternwick, she was 'mortified' when it ended up on the front page of the Herald Sun the next morning 'No one saw it anyway': Today host Karl Stefanovic reassured Dave, jokingly claiming that The Herald Sun's newspaper circulation had diminished in recent years Initially asking her husband to bid for the house privately through an advocate, Holly has since revealed that she was 'mortified' when Dave was unmasked as the mystery buyer, despite him reassuring her he would keep it to himself. Although he respected his wife's wishes and did hire an advocate to do his bidding, Block host Scott Cam broke the news on the show, which forced Dave to appear on camera. Busted! Holly asked Dave to go through an advocate for the bid, and although he respected her wishes, Block host Scott Cam revealed Dave was the mystery buyer on the show While the hype of the star's property purchase made national headlines, it didn't change the fact that he helped change a young couple's life forever. Purchasing the property for $447,000 over Josh and Elyse's reserve price of $2.62 million, the pair took out the show convincingly, receiving an extra $100,000 for winning and pocketing a cool $547,000 in total. In what was the highest ever bid in the show's history, it also helped propel Channel Nine into record-breaking ratings territory, with 2.2 million viewers tuning into watch the highly-anticipated final auction. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has called for the death penalty to return Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday called for the return of the death penalty, after more than 50 people applied for the vacant position of hangman. Capital punishment is on the statute book in Zimbabwe, but no one has been executed since 2005 when the country's last hangman retired. "I think let's restore the death penalty," Mugabe said in the capital Harare at the burial of a veteran of Zimbabwe's independence struggle. Mugabe, 93, said he had been shocked by the number of recent murders in Zimbabwe after receiving a crime report from the police chief, though he gave no further details. "People are playing with death by killing each other," he said. "Is this why we liberated this country? We want this country to be a peaceful and happy nation, not a country with people who kill each other." Rights groups including Amnesty International have often called on Zimbabwe, which has 92 inmates on death row, to permanently abolish capital punishment. The country's 2013 constitution exempts all women from the hangman's noose, as well as men under 18 and over 69 years old. Zimbabwe, which has an unemployment rate of more than 90 percent, announced last month that it received over 50 applications from people wanting to become hangman. Justice ministry secretary Virginia Mabhiza said at the time that the response had been "overwhelming". A US couple and their two young daughters have been found alive after going missing in Brazil's Amazon region for three days An American family missing for three days in northern Brazil was found alive Wednesday, after a drama in which they were robbed while on a boat trip. The public safety ministry in Para state released a photo showing Adam Harris Hateau, 39, his wife Emily, 37, and their two young daughters alongside a member of the police and others in the Furo Grande area where they went missing on Sunday. Authorities did not immediately give details on how the Americans were located or rescued. The family recently lived in the southern resort and university city of Florianapolis. They disappeared Sunday near the town of Breves in Para state, the public safety office statement said after assailants attacked their boat on the water. The family was making a boat trip from Belem to Macapa in the northeastern state. Police earlier said they responded to a call that the vessel and its tow cart were located in Porto dos Dias, but neither the family nor the suspects were there. The couple had been writing a travel blog since 2012, local media reported. It was the second case in recent months of tourists disappearing in Brazil's vast northern Amazon basin, a region of steamy jungles and endless tributaries. A British woman going down the Amazon by kayak was murdered in September. My 14-hour flight from New York to Seoul was just the beginning. The next morning, my CNN crew and I found ourselves strapped into the Navy's C-2 COD (carrier onboard delivery) aircraft. Only this plane doesn't exactly come with peanuts and a Coke. Instead, I was tethered to a metal seat by four seat belts and facing backwards, helmet on, with only two tiny windows in the entire cabin. Ninety minutes later, our Navy pilots lined us up with the USS Ronald Reagan, the aircraft carrier in the waters below. As the C-2 started its sharp descent, my heart started to pound. I knew I'd only have two hours to shoot our story and get it right. I also knew, having done this once before, the adrenaline rush that comes with the "catch." Because the carrier's runway is so short, our plane had a tail hook to catch one of the cable wires on the flight deck and keep us from skidding into the ocean. The pilot has to get it just right. In a successful catch you go from 150 knots to zero in five seconds. The sailors seated with us gave us the cue to brace ourselves, shouting "Let's go, let's go LET'S GO!" Then we heard a THUDDDDDD and a loud grinding of metal. I had no idea where we'd just landed I wasn't allowed to know our location but what I did know was that my journey in Korea had officially begun. The idea for my trip I remember sitting in my office in New York several months ago it was one of those weeks when the war of words between Washington and Pyongyang was particularly intense and saying to my producer: "I wonder what it's like to be an American in South Korea right now." My mind instantly went to our men and women in the military who are based precariously closely to North Korea. Could they feel the intensity that we were feeling back at home? And what about their families, many of whom moved with them to Korea? Are they afraid or anxious? In a worst case scenario, what would they do? I remember tornado drills at school as a kid and wondered, do these American kids in Korea hold nuclear drills? I wanted to know, and I thought CNN's viewers would want to know, too. The US Army offered rare access to several soldiers and their families. And the US Navy gave me access to sailors. Theirs are the voices I needed to tell this story. Proud of their daddy The Army portion of our journey included a road trip, a tour in Blackhawk helicopter and a step if only for a minute into North Korea. We visited Camp Casey, Yongsan Garrison, Camp Bonifas and the DMZ. I interviewed Lt. Col. Aaron Bright, who serves as commander of the 1st Battalion, 38th Field Artillery regiment. His battalion operates multiple rocket launchers and is part of the northernmost deployed brigade in South Korea, making them a first line of defense. I also spoke to his soldiers, who told me why they signed up to serve. And I interviewed Col. Bright's wife and their three daughters, who live an hour and a half away. They talked about the adjustment to life in South Korea and how normal it has become. And as they talked about how proud they are of their daddy, the tears started to fall. 'That there... is North Korea' Another day, I boarded a Black Hawk helicopter and flew over the countryside. Our CNN crew didn't fully appreciate until we'd arrived how picturesque Korea truly is. We arrived in the fall when the leaves in the hills had just started to turn at sunset, it looked as though we were flying over the Catskills. As I peered through my window, I saw villages and rice fields punctuated with Army bunkers and rocket test sites. It was this juxtaposition of normal life alongside endless uncertainty. And then I heard over my headset... "That there... is North Korea." Col. Jon Howerton was pointing to an imposing mountain range in the distance. I just stared. That was it this secretive country we know so little about. I talk so often about it from the comfort of my studio in Manhattan, but to be flying close enough to make out its towering flag was something I will never forget. Against a molten sunset, I thought of the grim gulags and the daily misery of North Korea's people. I thought of my interview with Otto Warmbier's parents and his inhuman suffering. I thought of the Americans still being held there today. And I was grateful to the men and women in the US military for protecting us. The DMZ I arrived at the DMZ -- along the 38th parallel which divides North and South Korea -- and was instructed not to point or wave at anyone. We were surrounded by armed guards and prying towers with cameras. Behind dark sunglasses, the South Korean soldiers hold a ready jiujitsu position. A concrete curb defines the line between the two nations. One visitor asked: "What would happen if someone ran towards the line?" A soldier responded: "You don't want to find out." No, we didn't. Our group was directed inside one of the blue UN buildings where negotiations are held. This building straddles the border, so for a brief moment inside, you're allowed to cross into North Korean territory. I did and got a photo. Nearby, I interviewed 19-year-old PFC Joshua Roberson from Florida. He joined the Army after graduating high school. He'd never left the US before, and now he's stationed a stone's throw from North Korea. Octopus, kimchi and fried chicken My journey to South Korea wouldn't be complete without spending time with Americans who choose to live here. So on a Saturday night in Seoul, over a dinner of octopus, kimchi and fried chicken, I talked to a group of expats who spoke about their love for Korea, what it's like living under constant nuclear threat and who worries them more -- North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un or President Trump. What's my takeaway from all of this? Americans in Korea, much like Koreans themselves, are just like us. They go to work every day, send their kids to school and try not to fixate on the threats that hang over them... threats that they acknowledge are on the rise. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande at the Manchester Arena in May British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said Wednesday they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. The global trend towards better parity between the sexes now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, says World Economic Forum report A decade of slow progress towards better parity between the sexes has screeched to a halt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said Thursday, warning the global gender gap was now widening. In recent years, women have made significant progress towards equality in a number of areas such as education and health, with the Nordic countries leading the fray. But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialise until 2234, WEF said in a report. "A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006," it said. The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracks the disparities between the sexes in four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment. A year ago WEF estimated that it would take 83 years to close the remaining gap. But since then women's steady advances in the areas of education, health and political representation have plateaued, and for the fourth year running, equality in the workplace has slipped further from view. Gender inequalities in the workplace Thursday's report said that at the current rate of progress, it would now take a full 100 years on average to achieve overall gender equality. The estimated time needed to ensure full equality in the workplace meanwhile has jumped from 80 years in 2014 to 170 years last year to 217 years now, according to the report. - 'Shift into reverse' - "In 2017, we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse," Saadia Zahidi, WEF head of education, gender and work, said in a statement. Even more than in the workplace, political participation stubbornly lagged behind, with women still accounting for just 23 percent of the world's decision makers, according to the report. But political representation is also the area where women have made the most advances in recent years, the report said, estimating it will take 99 years to fully rectify the situation. The picture is not all bleak: the march towards gender equality in education could reach the finish line within a mere 13 years, it said. And the situation varies greatly in different countries and regions. For instance, while Western European countries could close their gender gaps within 61 years, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will take 157 years, the report estimated. Overall, the Nordic countries once again dominated the top of the table: men and women were most equal in Iceland, followed by Norway and Finland. Rwanda came in fourth, with another Nordic country, Sweden, in fifth place. They were joined by Nicaragua, Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand and the Philippines in the top 10, with Syria, Pakistan and finally Yemen at the bottom of the rankings. Among the world's 20 leading economies, France fared the best, taking 11th place overall, up from 17th place last year and 70th place in 2006. France's rise is largely thanks to increasing numbers of women in politics, including complete parity among government ministers. The United States meanwhile dropped four spots to 49th place due to women's dwindling political representation, with a "significant decrease in gender parity in ministerial level positions," the report said. A worker arranges traditional Syrian delicacies at a shop in Damascus' Midan neighbourhood on September 11, 2017 Syria's grinding conflict has brought bitterness to producers of the country's renowned Middle Eastern sweets, but after years of struggle they say business is finally picking up again. At the "Daoud Brothers" sweet shop in the capital Damascus, 20 workers surround large metal platters, preparing hundreds of wafer-thin barazek, a famed Syrian biscuit dotted with pistachio pieces and coated in sesame seeds. Syria's Arabic sweets were once a leading export as well as a must-have souvenir for visiting tourists. But the war that erupted after March 2011 anti-government protests decimated the industry, with tourism disappearing and domestic consumption nosediving as the conflict ravaged the economy. Fighting cut routes that brought the finest ingredients from across the country to producers, and closed borders that once facilitated exports to the region and beyond. "With the war, exports were basically interrupted," said Radwan Daoud, the shop's export manager. "There was no demand, and we couldn't deliver on what orders there were because the workshops were in Damascus province," he said, referring to areas where clashes between Syria's army and rebels were frequent. "Getting through was difficult and dangerous, and the routes were often cut." Syria's grinding conflict has brought bitterness to producers of the country's renowned Middle Eastern sweets, but after years of struggle they say business is finally picking up again Parts of Damascus province outside the capital are some of the last remaining strongholds of Syria's rebel forces, but in recent months fighting has dropped off thanks to the implementation of a "de-escalation zone" in the region. Elsewhere in the country, Syria's regime has recovered territory, backed by ally Russia, restoring supply and export routes. Daoud said exports were back on the rise in the past few months as a result. "Primary materials and products can reach markets easily and quickly," he said. "Things have finally started to pick up again, and we've recovered about 15 percent of our activity." - Enticing smells, samples - There are no publicly available official figures contrasting sales and exports in the sweets sector before the war and at present. But Daoud Brothers once exported up to 40 tonnes of sweets a month, mostly to Canada, the United States, Europe and the Gulf. For the moment, sweets are exported either by boat from the ports of Latakia and Tartus, or taken by land into neighbouring Lebanon and flown from Beirut airport. But producers are eagerly awaiting the promised reopening of the Nassib border crossing between Syria and Jordan so they can once again export to the Gulf by land. Sweet shop owners are optimistic again about sales abroad, but less so about the domestic market in Syria where consumers struggle to buy what are now seen as luxuries in a country whose economy has been ravaged by more than six years of war Most of the capital's most famous sweet shops are clustered in the southern neighbourhood of Midan, where an enticing smell wafts from stores and owners offer passersby samples from their doorways in a bid to draw them in. Inside Abu Arab Haider, one of the city's most famous sweet shops, Abu Moataz carefully slices a tray of baklava, its delicate golden layers of flakey pastry sprinkled with vibrant green and purple pistachios. "We have been stopped for a long time, but the time has arrived to restart work," he told AFP. "Every ingredient comes from a different city. The pistachios are from Hama, the samna (fat) is from Deir Ezzor and Raqa, the flour comes from Houran," said Abu Moutaz, 45. "When a particular region was affected by the events in Syria, the taste of the sweets would be changed because we'd have to use alternative ingredients, which generally weren't of as high quality." Like all the sweet-makers in Midan, Abu Moutaz's shop closed its door for two weeks in the summer of 2012, when clashes between the regime and rebels reached the neighbourhood, which was briefly captured by opposition fighters. - 'Happy little girl' - In recent years, the store has opened branches abroad, four of them in Germany and a fifth in Jordan, which sell both sweets made locally and imported from Syria. "Syrians are everywhere abroad, particularly in Germany," said Abu Moutaz, referring to the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who have made their way there. Sitting behind his desk, shop supervisor Riyad Naama said he is optimistic after years of slow sales. "Today we're feeling good about the export market. We started preparing last year and now we're already exporting." Naama breaks away to attend to some Iraqi customers, who end up buying more than 50 kilos (110 pounds) of sweets for around $300. But even if exports are picking up, local consumption remains slow. Laila, 40, accepts a sample proffered by an employee as she admires the sweets displayed in the shop window. "Before, we would always have Arabic sweets at home, but because of the crisis I've had to do without them," she said. "A kilo of luxury sweets nowadays costs a quarter of my husband's monthly salary." In the end, she settles for buying just three pieces of the "mabrouma" desert, little cylinders of golden syrup-soaked vermicelli stuffed with a centre of pistachios. "One for my husband, one for my son, and one for me," she says, with a broad smile. "There's nothing to be happy about these days except sweets. I thought that the war had made us old, but I feel like a happy little girl with my dessert." Police spokesman Victor Avila said the suspect calmly walked into a Walmart store in Thornton, Colorado and 'nonchanantly' opened fire A man suspected of walking into a Walmart store in Colorado and "nonchalantly" shooting to death two men and a woman has been arrested, police said Thursday. The seemingly random shooting Wednesday in Thornton, Colorado comes a month after a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas, the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history. Police identified the suspect in the latest shooting as 47-year-old Scott Ostrem, and said on Twitter he had been taken into custody. Police spokesman Victor Avila said the suspect calmly walked into the Walmart store at 6:10 pm. "He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store," the Denver Post quoted Avila as saying. "From what we have right now it appears to be random. Its a crazy world we live in." Police said the fatalities were two men and a woman. The female victim died later at the hospital. More than 33,000 gun-related deaths occur annually in the United States, according to a study released this month. Moves to curb gun ownership have failed repeatedly to make it through the US Congress over the years, despite a lengthening string of violent episodes. Authorities were due to close the camp Tuesday after it was declared unconstitutional by the PNG Supreme Court The United Nations warned of an "unfolding humanitarian emergency" at an Australian detention centre in Papua New Guinea on Thursday, calling on Canberra to defuse a tense days-long stand-off between refugees and authorities. The Manus Island camp, set up to hold and process asylum-seekers under Australia's harsh immigration policy, was officially closed Tuesday after it was ruled unconstitutional by PNG's Supreme Court. But some 600 men have locked themselves inside despite water and electricity being cut and dwindling food supplies, saying they are fearful for their safety if they move to transition centres amid reports locals do not want them there. "UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, today reiterates its call to Australia to stop a humanitarian emergency unfolding on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea," the organisation said in a statement. Australia immigration detention Describing the situation as "increasingly tense and unstable", the agency said there was inadequate accommodation outside the camp for all of the men, with one centre still incomplete. Within the camp, they were storing water in garbage bins to sustain themselves, UNHCR said. One Manus detainee, an Iranian called Behrouz Boochani, tweeted Thursday that refugees were "digging into the ground to find water". "As the days go by where they have no water and no electricity, I think the tensions will just go up higher," UNHCR representative Lam Nai Jit told AFP from Manus Island, adding that the weather was "extremely hot and humid". He said unease between the refugees and local communities had grown due to a lack of consultation when the transition centres were being constructed. "The local population have not been prepared... that creates an environment of high risk for both sides," he said. Lam added that while he had been in contact with PNG authorities, who assured him the detainees would not be forcibly transferred, he had not heard from Australian officials, who had mostly left the area. - 'Disgraceful' - The men's plight has attracted the attention of Hollywood, with Australian star Russell Crowe describing the situation as "disgraceful". He added that he was willing to do his part, tweeting: "I've thought about this. I believe I could house and find jobs for 6. I'm sure there'd be other Australians who would do the same." The detainees were also terrified of being forced out after control of the camp officially transferred back to PNG's navy Wednesday, advocates said. But the PNG naval base's commanding officer Begsy Karaki insisted they "will not be forcefully removed". "There is no panic and those that have pre-conceived ideas developed by the asylum-seekers, I reiterate that there is no threat," he told PNG's Post-Courier newspaper Thursday. Australia's Immigration Minister Peter Dutton insisted the new facilities were "much better" than being at the camp and said he wanted "to close Manus as quickly as possible". Australian Greens senator Nick McKim visited the camp this week and on Thursday called on Dutton to end the impasse, saying the men were in an "impossible situation with danger everywhere they turn". Barred from moving to Australia, they have been offered transfers to another Pacific on facility on Nauru, but reportedly few have accepted. A third-country resettlement deal struck between Canberra and Washington has so far only seen 24 refugees flown to the United States. Resettlement in New Zealand -- raised in 2013 but never taken up by Canberra -- could be viable again after new leader Jacinda Ardern said Thursday she planned to raise the issue with her Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull. The pair are due to meet on Sunday in Sydney. Canberra has long defended its policy of denying asylum-seekers resettlement in Australia, saying it has prevented deaths at sea. Fujitsu has been struggling in the face of low-cost competition Japan's Fujitsu said on Thursday it had agreed to merge its struggling PC business with Lenovo, giving the Chinese computer giant a controlling share of the business. Tokyo-based Fujitsu said it had "decided to formally sign a deal" with Lenovo, the world's largest PC maker, and the government-backed Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) on a "strategic partnership" to develop and sell PCs. Lenovo will hold 51 percent of the shares in Fujitsu's PC subsidiary, while the DBJ will hold five percent, Fujitsu said in a statement. The deal should allow Fujitsu to pour more resources into its profitable IT services operations, while also pushing ahead with a sweeping restructuring programme that will see 3,200 job cuts. The decision came after Fujitsu said last month it was in talks with Lenovo over a potential deal, which pushed Fujitsu shares up by 7.8 percent. After the announcement however, Fujitsu shares were trading down 2.44 percent at 874.1 yen. The company had been in talks with Toshiba and Vaio to merge their once high-flying personal computer businesses, but those negotiations failed to result in a deal. Once-mighty Japanese firms have struggled in the face of stiff competition from lower-cost rivals overseas, including in China and South Korea. Earlier this year, Taiwan's Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn, took over struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp after it faced huge losses and mounting debts. Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un a rare message "out of politeness," Beijing said Thursday, in his first public communication with his wayward neighbour for more than a year. The note signalled a possible improvement in their strained relationship, which has soured over Pyongyang's growing weapons ambitions even though Beijing is its longtime ally and economic benefactor. Xi's message, dated Wednesday, was sent in response to congratulations from Kim last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party. "I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to the North's KCNA news agency, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman". In his earlier note, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed his belief that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries". Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular press briefing in Beijing Thursday that North Korea's message was just one among many others received. Xi had responded "out of politeness," she said. The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016. Analysts say that such exchanges have become extremely rare under the current leaders, even though Beijing and Pyongyang traditionally sent greetings and congratulations on each other's key anniversaries in the past. Their relationship was forged in the bloodshed of the Korean War, when Mao Zedong sent millions of "volunteers" to fight US-led United Nations forces to a standstill. Mao described the allies as close as "lips and teeth", and China has long been accused of failing to enforce United Nations sanctions against the North for its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, even after voting for them in the Security Council. But Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September. Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the public exchange of messages signalled a willingness on both sides to improve relations. "The fact that both sides are swiftly trading letters and announcing it carries a symbolic meaning," Yang told AFP. "If the message was more intimate, we could expect a faster thawing of ties," he added, "but for now, it shows that both sides agree on the need to improve their relations". The death toll from an explosion at a coal-fired power plant in northern India has risen to 26, the government said Thursday, as 10 more people died of their injuries The death toll from an explosion at a coal-fired power plant in northern India has risen to 29, the company said Thursday, as three more people died of their injuries. Dozens more are being treated for critical burn injuries sustained Wednesday when a boiler pipe burst at a plant run by India's largest state-owned power utility in Uttar Pradesh state. The government-run firm, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), said the death toll had risen to 29 by late Thursday. "Twenty nine persons have succumbed to injuries and 85 are being treated at hospitals," NTPC said in a statement. "NTPC family expresses deep grief, support and condolence for the deceased workers who contributed towards providing 24x7 power to all." One survivor described being engulfed by burning hot steam when the explosion occurred. The man lost consciousness and woke up in hospital covered in burns, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Workplace accidents are common in India, where poor safety standards and lax enforcement of regulations have led to horrific deaths. The 1,550-megawatt (MW) plant, which employs around 870 people and supplies electricity to nine neighbouring states, has shut down one of its units where the boiler exploded. Its owner the National Thermal Power Corporation has launched an inquiry into what caused the disaster. 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 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 opposition. It is the first time that Seoul has imposed limits on public gatherings since President Moon Jae-In, a former human rights lawyer, took power in May, according to the Yonhap news agency. Organisers of around 50 protests -- mostly anti-Trump rallies -- applied to hold the demonstrations across Seoul but police turned down most requests to gather near the presidential Blue House, citing security concerns, Yonhap said. Police granted two requests in the security area -- one of them a pro-US meeting to welcome Trump -- "to ensure freedom of assembly", it added. One of Moon's campaign promises was restoring freedom of expression and assembly seen to have eroded under his conservative predecessor, Park Geun-Hye, who was impeached over a corruption scandal. Heavy security is expected in the capital for Trump's November 7-8 trip, during which he will hold a summit with Moon -- whom he has accused of "appeasement" towards the nuclear-armed North -- and visit a US army base. The South is a key US ally and hosts 28,500 American troops, but many of Trump's critics in the country see him as a warmonger whose war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has escalated tensions. The North conducted a sixth nuclear test in September and has launched multiple missiles capable of reaching the US mainland. And the two leaders have traded threats and personal insults in recent months, heightening global alarm about potential conflict. Trump is also due to visit Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines during his first Asia tour since taking office in January, with all eyes on his message to the North and Kim. Police in Seoul did not immediately respond to requests for comment by AFP. Campaigners say Hong Kong lags on LGBT rights, as the city does not recognise gay marriage and only decriminalised homosexuality in 1991 LGBT rights campaigners have hit out at Hong Kong's government after it announced it would appeal a landmark decision granting a British lesbian the right to live and work in Hong Kong with her partner. The ruling by the Court of Appeal in September sparked hopes that hurdles for same-sex couples might be reduced in the socially conservative southern Chinese city. But the immigration department has announced it will seek to take the case to the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong's highest court. "Having studied the Court of Appeal's judgement and sought legal advice, the immigration department has filed an application for leave to appeal against the judgment," the department said in a statement emailed to AFP Thursday. The September decision granted the woman, referred to in court only as QT, the right to a dependant visa which she had been denied by immigration authorities, meaning she could only remain in the city on a visitor visa which did not allow her to work. The judgement ruled that authorities had "failed to justify the indirect discrimination on account of sexual orientation that QT suffers". Campaigner Gigi Chao said the current administration's focus on family values tended to exclude the LGBT community Campaigners described it as a crucial step for Hong Kong, which they say lags on LGBT rights. The city does not recognise gay marriage and only decriminalised homosexuality in 1991. Openly gay lawmaker Raymond Chan said if the immigration department won its case, it would "not benefit anybody". He also criticised the government for failing to openly support Hong Kong's successful bid to host the Gay Games in 2022, announced Tuesday, the first time the event will come to Asia. "The government would rather spend taxpayers' money to appeal a case which in my view does not contribute to society or benefit anybody if won, than to support a major international sports, culture, and tourism event such as the Gay Games," Chan told AFP. The government said it "noted" the successful Gay Games bid in a statement, adding that it was "committed to promoting equal opportunities". - 'Never included' - Campaigner Gigi Chao said the current administration's focus on family values tended to exclude the LGBT community. "They're never included and never discussed," she told AFP. Chao also disputed some critics' argument that the LGBT community is at odds with traditional Chinese values. "If you look at all the cultural references from historic Chinese opera and storytelling, a lot of stories have covered this topic," she told AFP. Chao made global headlines in 2012 when her Hong Kong tycoon father offered HK$500 million ($65 million) to any man that could convince his openly gay daughter to marry him. Hong Kong's Equal Opportunities Commission said it was "pleased" the government's policy agenda had said it would work on LGBT equality but added authorities were yet to follow its 2016 recommendation to start consulting on introducing "comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation" to cover sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status. Dennis Philipse, head of the Gay Games bid team -- which was backed by a raft of major businesses including Hong Kong's flag carrier Cathay Pacific and Credit Suisse Hong Kong -- said it had liaised with the city's tourism board and the home affairs bureau during the bidding process. The government told the team they would be able to book event venues "just like any other sports organisation", Philipse told AFP. He added he hoped the awarding of the games to Hong Kong would "strengthen the level" of government support for the event. No caption In a historic wooden house opening on to a serene courtyard in downtown Taipei, a dancer strips naked and re-enacts the self-immolation of an activist 28 years ago. The performance is inspired by Cheng Nan-jung, often referred to as Taiwan's "father of free speech". Cheng, the editor of a political magazine, burned himself to death in 1989 when police tried to arrest him on charges of sedition, before the island transitioned to democracy. The piece is the highlight this year of an annual festival organised by a company founded by the late Tsai Jui-yueh, regarded as the pioneer of modern dance on the island. Shows by the group often touch on political themes, from human rights to land issues. This year's four-day festival -- which starts Thursday -- ties in with the 70th anniversary of a massacre by nationalist Chinese troops known as the 228 Incident. No caption The tragedy marked the start of decades of bloody political purges in Taiwan, under which Tsai and her husband both suffered. The show comes as Taiwan reckons with its dark past. The current government has vowed to investigate the purges. Against ominous background music, three male performers leap and skid across the stage, wearing khaki caps similar to those worn by Taiwanese police officers in the past. In another scene, female dancers in peasant costumes gesture violently and cover their mouths, punctuating their movement with cries. Tsai died in 2005, and the company is now run by two of her former students, sisters Grace and Ondine Shiau. "Although there are scars, it is our history and everyone should be aware of what really happened," Ondine, who is also Tsai's daughter-in-law, told AFP. "Tableaux", the piece dedicated to Cheng, is being performed in Taiwan for the first time since 2004, when it was created by renowned Colombian-American choreographer Eleo Pomare at Ondine's request. Cheng was a fierce advocate of free speech and defied the Kuomintang government's censorship laws by drafting a constitution for a democratic Taiwan. No caption Ondine says Taiwanese dancers were hesitant to perform "Tableaux" in 2004 as it was still taboo then to openly discuss the island's past. But she believes Taiwan's residents are more politically aware now, especially after mass student-led protests against trade deals with mainland China in 2014, known as the Sunflower Movement. "The skies opened up for a lot of young people then. Dancers today won't be scared like before," she said. Another performance in this year's festival pays tribute to Taiwanese democracy activist Lee Ming-cheh, detained by Chinese police earlier this year and charged with "subverting state power". Lee pleaded guilty in a September court appearance and is awaiting sentencing. Tsai opened her dance school in 1946. She was sent to a concentration camp in 1949 for three years, and her husband expelled to China. She later emigrated to Australia where she lived until her death. Etihad Airways flights to Dallas are to be suspended, but operations to New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago are to remain unaffected Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways said Thursday it will suspend from next March flights to the US city of Dallas rendered unprofitable after American Airlines ended a codeshare deal with it. In July, American Airlines said it would no longer share flights with Etihad and Qatar Airways as part of its push against what it views as unfair government subsidies to Middle East carriers. "The unfortunate decision by American Airlines to terminate a commercial relationship that benefited both carriers has left Etihad with no choice but to suspend flights" between Abu Dhabi and Dallas, Etihad CEO Peter Baumgartner said. Etihad has operated daily flights to the Texas city since December 2014. The airline's other 35 flights each week to New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago will remain unaffected. After American Airline's July announcement, Etihad blasted the decision as "anti-competition and anti-consumer". Along with fellow US carriers Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, American Airlines has called for the White House to crack down on an alleged $50 billion in state subsidies to carriers in the Middle East. The US companies say the government financial backing allows the Gulf airlines to illegally compete in the American market, something which the Gulf carriers have strongly denied. In August, Qatar Airways dropped plans to buy a 10 percent stake in American Airlines. A dinner commemorating the centenary of the Balfour Declaration with visiting Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu Britain's Theresa May was to urge "renewed resolve to support a lasting peace" Prime Minister Theresa May told Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that Israel must end illegal settlements to achieve peace, as they celebrated the centenary of the British statement that helped lead to the Jewish state's creation. The two leaders attended a dinner celebrating the Balfour Declaration of 1917, a statement offering Britain's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". In a speech at the event, May said Britain was committed to a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state. "There will need to be compromises from each side if we are to have a realistic chance of achieving this goal -- including an end to the building of new settlements and an end to Palestinian incitement too," she said. The prime minister held talks in Downing Street earlier in the day with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said: "Israel is committed to peace, I'm committed to peace. "A hundred years after Balfour, the Palestinians should finally accept a Jewish national home and finally accept a Jewish state. And when they do, the road to peace will be infinitely closer. In my opinion peace will be achievable." - Palestinians protest - The Balfour declaration is seen as a precursor to Israel's creation in 1948, and the anniversary is a joyous occasion for Israelis. But many Palestinians say it led to hundreds of thousands fleeing or being forced from their homes, and thousands took to the streets of various cities on Thursday in protest. Effigies of May and Balfour were set ablaze in the West Bank city of Nablus, while in Hebron protesters burned a British flag. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas wrote in a newspaper opinion piece that "the creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another". May said she would "absolutely not" apologise for the Balfour Declaration, telling dinner guests: "We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel." But she also cautioned that one of the key caveats of the historic letter -- that the rights of non-Jewish communities shall be protected -- has not been realised. "Sadly, Balfour remains unfinished business -- as his fundamental vision of peaceful co-existence has not yet been fulfilled," she said. - Anti-Semitism warning - Netanyahu, who is on a five-day visit to London, also met British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Their discussions were expected to include US President Donald Trump's decision last month to refuse to certify the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Before their meeting, May emphasised Britain's commitment to the deal, while Netanyahu said: "The goal that I have in mind is not keeping or eliminating the deal, it is improving the deal and correcting its main flaws. "Those that want to keep the deal should co-operate on correcting the deal." Dignitaries at the dinner included a descendant of the Balfour Declaration's author, then foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour. In her speech, May was also warned against a "pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist." Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour party, was unable to attend but sent a colleague in his place. In September Pyongyang launched two missiles that passed over Japan, sending tensions rocketing Pyongyang may be preparing for another missile test, South Korea's spy agency said Thursday according to reports, just days before US President Donald Trump visits the divided peninsula. "There is a possibility that North Korea will launch a missile as active movements of vehicles have been detected at a missile research facility in Pyongyang," the National Intelligence Service told a closed-door parliamentary audit, the Yonhap news agency reported. In July Pyongyang launched two ICBMs apparently capable of reaching the US mainland - described by leader Kim Jong-Un as a gift to "American bastards" - and followed up with two missiles that passed over Japan and its sixth nuclear test, sending tensions rocketing. Trump and Kim have engaged in a heated war of words in recent months, trading threats and personal insults and heightening global alarm. The US president will arrive in Seoul on Tuesday as part of his Asia tour which also includes Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, with all eyes on his message to Kim and the North. Amid a flurry of diplomatic visitors to the region, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that Pyongyang's weapons ambitions have become a "global threat", with the US mainland and Europe coming within reach of its missiles. "I think we all understand that a war will be catastrophic and extremely dangerous not only for people living in this region but for global peace and security," Stoltenberg told reporters in Seoul. But the 29-nation defence alliance was "always ready to respond and to counter any attack from any direction", he added. "That's the way NATO has handled ballistic threats for decades." It was important not to dramatise the tensions and create a "more challenging situation", he said. Palestinians protest in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration, which helped lead to Israel's creation Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of various cities on Thursday to protest on the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration, which helped lead to Israel's creation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas used the occasion to denounce the declaration, writing in a newspaper opinion piece that "the creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another". Several Palestinian leaders have called on Britain to apologise for the 67-word declaration that said it viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Around 4,000 people gathered in the West Bank city of Nablus, where effigies supposed to represent British Prime Minister Theresa May and former British leader Arthur Balfour were set ablaze. A few thousand more gathered in Gaza and hundreds in Ramallah. Smaller rallies were held in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, where protesters burned a British flag. A Palestinian woman walks over a Union Jack flag in the West Bank during protests on the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration, which helped lead to Israel's creation Several dozen Palestinians also protested outside the British consulate in Jerusalem. In Nablus, marchers chanted "Oh the English colonisers, we want an apology from you." In Ramallah signs called Balfour "the promise of he who doesn't own to those who don't deserve" -- a common expression in Arabic for the Balfour Declaration. Some protesters held black flags calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed the right to return, as they marched from Ramallah's Arafat Square to a nearby British cultural office. "Balfour promised to establish the Israeli entity and its result is everything the Palestinian people still suffer from today, such as displacement, destruction and pain," said Abu Haitham Amro, 70, who was carrying a Palestinian flag. In Gaza, more than 3,000 people took part in a march from a square in Gaza City to the local United Nations headquarters. - Hopes for solution fade - A Palestinian demonstrator burns effigies of British Prime Minister Theresa May and former British leader Arthur Balfour in the West Bank city of Nablus on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration The Balfour Declaration is celebrated among Israelis, who see it as a major step toward the founding of their state in 1948 at a time when Jews were facing persecution elsewhere. But the war surrounding Israel's creation also led to some 750,000 Palestinians either fleeing or being expelled from their homes -- what they call the "Nakba", or catastrophe. Senior Palestinian official Mahmoud Al-Alul told AFP in Ramallah the British government should apologise. "It is unprecedented for criminals to celebrate their crime. That the British prime minister insists on celebrating this means they persist in the oppression of the Palestinian people." In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War. It has since annexed east Jerusalem and the occupation of the West Bank continues. Hopes for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are greatly diminishing. "The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday before departing for London, where he is marking the anniversary. "What's been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later. I hope they change their mind, because if they do they can move forward finally to making peace between our two peoples." Abbas wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper: "We have endorsed the two-state solution for the past 30 years, a solution that becomes increasingly impossible with every passing day. "As long as the state of Israel continues to be celebrated and rewarded, rather than held accountable to universal standards for its continued violations of international law, it will have no incentive to end the occupation," he added, referring in particular to Israeli settlement building. A Palestinian youth celebrates in front of his national flag in Gaza City on October 12, 2017 after rival factions Hamas and Fatah reached an agreement on ending a decade-long split Hamas has passed the first test of a reconciliation agreement by giving up control of the Gaza Strip's borders, but sterner challenges await in the bid to end its 10-year rift with rival Fatah. It was the first step in an Egyptian-brokered accord agreed last month, under which the Palestinian Authority is due to take control of the Gaza Strip by December 1. The West Bank-based PA, led by president Mahmud Abbas, welcomed Wednesday's handover but has not ended punitive measures against Gaza that have added to humanitarian suffering. Other issues left to resolve include the future of Hamas's 25,000-strong armed wing, with the Islamist movement so far refusing to disarm. Some analysts say Hamas, steered by new Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, has shifted position and is keen to hand over political, though not military, power. The fate of Hamas's armed wing is seen as non-negotiable, and could ultimately bring down the agreement. The Islamist movement has run Gaza since seizing it in a near civil war with Abbas's Fatah in 2007. - Stepping back - The exact terms of the border handover were ironed out in a meeting late Tuesday. Fighters from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian movement Hamas, march in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on July 20, 2017 Officials present, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hamas actually offered more than the PA had asked for, agreeing to withdraw all their staff from the borders. The handover will bring the PA a financial windfall from tax revenues collected at the borders. While multiple previous reconciliation pushes have failed, Hamas has never taken as big a step, said Jamal al-Fadi, professor of international relations at the Al-Azhar university in Gaza. "It is an important and bold step for Hamas and a clear sign that it is irreversibly pursuing reconciliation," he said. Hamas's calculation, said Mukaimer Abu Saada, a political analyst, is that such concessions can reduce the pressure on them over the humanitarian suffering in Gaza. Since Hamas took control a decade ago, the two million Gazans have seen living conditions worsen. The enclave suffers from desperate shortages of electricity, a lack of clean water and more than 40-percent unemployment. Three wars fought with Israel since 2008 have left devastation, while the Jewish state maintains a crippling blockade on the strip -- which it argues is necessary to isolate Hamas. In addition, this year the PA has imposed new sanctions, including reducing electricity payments. Egypt has also largely closed its border in recent years, though it could reopen if the reconciliation process continues, with talk of November 15 as a possible date. "This relieves Hamas of its responsibilities for the crisis in Gaza and gives it to president Abbas," Abu Saada said. The president, however, is wary of responsibility without real authority, Abu Saada added. In particular he rejects a situation akin to Lebanon, where Hezbollah maintains a military arsenal independent of the army. Portraits of Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas hang at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on November 1, 2017 Hamas has shown no willingness to disarm its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. On Monday, seven Gazan militants were killed when Israel blew up an attack tunnel stretching from the strip into its territory. "Hamas can show great flexibility on all issues except on the weapons of the Qassam Brigades, which it considers a red line," Abu Saada added. Hamas officials stress that Qassam's weapons were not discussed in the Egyptian negotiations last month, and the agreement signed on October 12 does not stipulate they disarm. So far Abbas has shown no willingness to remove punitive measures. Hugh Lovatt, Israel-Palestine analyst for the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Hamas would struggle to maintain support within its own ranks if Abbas does not take steps to remove the measures. "If there are no improvements on the ground it will be very difficult for Hamas to justify why they are making these concessions," he told AFP. - International concern - Israel and the United States have said Hamas must disarm and recognise Israel to be part of any future unity government. The United Nations welcomed Wednesday's withdrawal, but the United States did not immediately react. The Palestinian Authority is heavy reliant on US aid. Ofer Zalzberg, senior analyst for the Middle East for the International Crisis Group, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would prefer it if there were no deal. "They can live with this part of it (the border crossings), but they have clearly indicated their opposition to further steps." He said he believed that Netanyahu's office still thought the deal would collapse and that the United States does not support real reconciliation involving Hamas. The division between the Palestinian factions has helped Netanyahu justify why there was little movement with the peace process, Zalzberg said. But if Hamas were to become part of the PA government, Zalzberg said he believed Netanyahu would change tack and argue the government had endorsed violence. "The reason he can live with the return of the PA to Gaza is it helps him say that there is no longer a partner (for peace)." A total of 2,521 civilians were killed in Mosul in the fighting which ended in July, mostly by IS The Islamic State group executed 741 civilians in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, the UN said Thursday, accusing the jihadists of perpetrating "international crimes" during the nine-month military campaign. A total of 2,521 civilians were killed, mostly by IS attacks, during the fight between IS and the internationally-backed Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) that ended in July, the UN rights office said in a report. "Those responsible must answer for their heinous crimes", the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, said in a statement. Mosul, Iraq's second city, was captured by IS in 2014 and became the capital of the group's self-styled "caliphate" in the country. Following IS's defeat in the city, the rights office said it had compiled witness testimony documenting "mass abductions of civilians, the use of thousands as human shields, the intentional shelling of civilian residences, and indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to flee the city". More than 800,000 people were displaced by the fighting, the report said. The rights office also called for investigations into alleged violations committed by the ISF and their allies, including militia groups. The report "recorded 461 civilian deaths as a result of airstrikes during the most intensive phase of the ISF-led offensive from 19 February", the UN said in a statement, noting that it was impossible to establish responsibility for the strikes "in almost all cases". The rights office urged the Iraqi government to invite the International Criminal Court to investigate the country's situation "as an immediate step". "By prosecuting those responsible for 'international crimes' in Mosul the Iraqi authorities would be sending a message to the people of Iraq who have suffered, no matter when or where, that justice is eventually delivered," the rights office said. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said on Thursday that soaring sales fuelled a 132 percent increase in net profit in what it called an "outstanding" quarter, as the firm raised its expectations for full-year revenue growth Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said on Thursday that soaring sales fuelled a 132 percent increase in net profit in what it called an "outstanding" quarter, as the firm raised its expectations for full-year revenue growth. China's biggest e-commerce company said net profit for the three months ending September 30 reached 17.67 billion yuan, ($2.67 billion), up from 7.62 billion yuan in the same period of 2016. "We had an outstanding quarter," Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said in a statement. "This quarter we delivered excellent results, with overall revenue growth of 61 percent demonstrating the robust momentum in our core commerce business and across the Alibaba economy." Alibaba said revenue growth in the quarter was fuelled in large part by technological innovations including the app for its key Taobao online shopping, which it said has a growing capability to anticipate and suggest shopping options to its hundreds of millions of users. Revenues in the quarter, the second in Alibaba's fiscal year, came it at 55.1 billion yuan, topping an analyst estimate of 52 billion yuan compiled by Bloomberg News. The company was now raising its growth forecast for revenues in the full fiscal year to 49-53 percent, compared to a previous expectation of 45-49 percent growth, citing the expected beneficial impact of its plan to take control of logistics company Cainiao. Alibaba, which has made billionaire founder Jack Ma one of China's richest men and a global e-commerce icon, has been on a roll, regularly beating revenue estimates and watching as investors have driven its New York-listed shares up 110 percent since the start of the year. Investor optimism for the future has been a key ingredient in the rally, with Alibaba raising expectations as it continues to adapt to, and profit from, the Chinese e-commerce boom that it helped to ignite. Future dividends are expected from heavy investments in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, financial systems, logistics, the use of data to further home in on consumer habits, and Ma's vision of using e-commerce to revitalise traditional retail. Alibaba reported solid revenue growth across its core commerce, cloud computing, digital media, and other divisions. Sales growth in core commerce grew 63 percent to 46.5 billion yuan, which accounted for 72 percent of overall group revenue. The company is expecting a further shot in the arm in a week's time, when it holds its "11.11" shopping extravaganza on November 11. It said hundreds of millions of consumers are expected to participate in the annual festival of consumption. Alibaba thoroughly dominates e-commerce in China mainly through its Taobao platform, and its continued strong earnings performances have underlined the strength of the sector even as broader Chinese economic growth has slowed. The company said mobile monthly active users of its China retail marketplaces grew to 549 million in September, up 20 million from just three months earlier. Tunisian forensic police check the scene of an attack on two policemen in Tunis on November 1, 2017. One of the officers died later from his wounds. A Tunisian policeman died Thursday a day after he was stabbed by an Islamist extremist outside parliament in a bustling part of the capital Tunis, the authorities said. Commander Riadh Barrouta, who was knifed in the neck in Wednesday's attack, "has died", interior ministry spokesman Yasser Mesbah said. A second officer was lightly wounded in the forehead in the early morning assault before the attacker in his mid-20s was quickly arrested. After the attack, the interior ministry said the assailant had confessed to having adopted an "extremist" ideology three years ago. "Killing them (police), he believes, is a form of jihad," it said. Map of Tunis locating attack by 'Islamist extremist' who stabbed two policemen in front of parliament. Prosecutors on Thursday said the man -- an unemployed computer science graduate born in 1992 -- appeared to have acted alone and did not belong to any cell, but "intended to join terrorist groups" in neighbouring Libya. The attacker, who comes from a suburb of Tunis, would be taken before anti-terrorist prosecutors on Friday, said Sofiene Sliti, a spokesman for the prosecutors' office. The authorities also said they had launched a probe into the leaking online of a one-minute video of his interrogation. Since its 2011 revolution, which sparked the Arab Spring, Tunisia's security forces have faced a series of jihadist attacks that have claimed the lives of more than 100 soldiers and police. Wednesday's attack happened next door to the famed National Bardo Museum that was the site of a deadly Islamic State group attack in 2015 that killed 21 foreign tourists and a policeman. In June the same year, 38 foreign tourists, including 30 from Britain, lost their lives in an IS attack in the coastal holiday resort of Sousse. Tunisia has been under a state of emergency since November 2015, after another attack killed 12 presidential guards in the heart of the capital. The attack on the officers comes as Tunisia is debating a contentious proposed law on "protecting" police and soldiers that civil society groups have called "dangerous" for democracy. Unions representing the security forces have warned lawmakers of protests if they do not pass the bill. In the wake of the stabbing President Beji Caid Essebsi underscored the "necessity of giving absolute priority" to the legislation "to guarantee the rights" of the police and military. US President Donald Trump shows samples of the proposed new tax form during a meeting with House Republican leaders and Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee at the White House on November 2, 2017, as Republicans unveiled a sweeping tax bill US Republican leaders unveiled a sweeping tax bill Thursday that would dramatically slash corporate rates, but the measure was already under fire from within the party despite pressure from President Donald Trump. Simmering disagreements persisted over what should end up in the largest tax overhaul since Ronald Reagan's 1980s presidency, with at least one House Republican openly opposing the legislation. The effort, conducted largely in secret in recent months, is seen by many Republicans as a shot at political redemption after they and Trump failed in their high-stakes bid to repeal and replace Barack Obama's signature health care reforms. "This is it. This is a very important and special moment for our country," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in announcing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Ryan said a family of four would save an average of $1,182 a year under the plan, which he hailed as an overhaul that will "deliver real relief" for working Americans. "It will help you save for retirement," he said. "It will help you save for a rainy day." Trump applauded the bill as an "important step" towards tax relief, but he acknowledged the hurdles ahead in getting the controversial measure through Congress. Speaking in the Oval Office, the president said he expected to be able to lock in a "giant tax cut" for Americans before Christmas this year. The Republican Party is under intense pressure to score a major legislative victory in 2017, but it will likely need to do all the heavy lifting as Democrats have united against the legislation. - 'Half-baked' plan - US Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) speaks as (L-R) Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), and Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) listen during a news conference on the sweeping tax bill Republicans unveiled on November 2, 2017 Senate rules allow for the measure to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. But with the cuts expected to cost far more, tax-writers have scrambled to find other ways to boost revenues and cut spending to cover the costs. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi swiftly blasted the new plan as a "half-baked bill" that would "plunder the middle class" in order to further enrich the wealthy. The bill condenses the existing seven tax brackets to just four, plus an effective fifth bracket at zero percent. Critically, it keeps the top rate for wealthy tax-payers at 39.6 percent, rather than 35 percent as proposed in September under the White House tax outline. But it raises the threshold for the top bracket to $1 million for married couples, from the current $470,700 -- meaning a major tax break for earners within that window. The corporate tax rate would be permanently lowered to 20 percent from 35 percent, a move Republicans insist will provide rocket fuel for the US economy to take off. The bill roughly doubles the standard deduction that individuals and families can claim on their taxes, and expands the child tax credit, while eliminating a raft of deductions, including for alimony payments and some medical expenses. It also eliminates the estate tax, beginning in 2024, on money inherited by Americans through a parent's death, and repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax. The home interest deduction will be limited to loans up to $500,000, instead of the current $1 million. That move drew the ire of the National Association of Home Builders, which said limiting the deduction will hurt homebuyers in expensive markets. - Apprehension - With the release of the highly anticipated bill, the hard sell begins. Some rank-and-file members from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey had opposed plans to curb local tax deductions as a way to help cover the cost. A compromise was struck, so that homeowners can write off property taxes up to $10,000 while other state and local deductions are eliminated. But New York Republican congressman Lee Zeldin said there was "not enough progress" on the issue. "I'm a 'no' on this bill in its current form," he said in a statement. The sell might be even tougher in the Senate where Republicans, who hold a 52-48 majority, can afford only two defectors. A handful of GOP senators have already expressed reservations, including Bob Corker, a Trump critic who said he hopes the final bill "will not add to the deficit." Senate Republicans Marco Rubio and Mike Lee voiced disappointment that the child tax credit was not expanded more. MOORHEAD, Minn. A task force seeking consensus on the Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion found consensus on a couple of issues at its Wednesday meeting even as deep disagreements on other issues continued. The group agreed on the definition of the 100-year flood plain as a minimum level of protection the project should provide, but it couldnt agree what area ought to be protected. The group also agreed to form a team of technical experts to vet all the alternatives to replace the Red River diversion designed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that group members couldnt agree on. I thought it was a very good day, said Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, one of the task forces two chairmen. I would agree with what Gov. Dayton said, said North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, the other chairman. I thought we had another very productive meeting today. The task force members bring a diverse set of viewpoints but all collaborating towards an end goal. The 16-member task force includes both diversion supporters and opponents as well as those not directly affiliated with either side. And the viewpoints of the members continue to be far apart in many ways. While Burgum believes one of the task forces main goals is to avoid making big changes to the $2.2 billion project that would cause it to lose $450 million in federal funding, Clay County Commissioner Jenny Mongeau suggested the entire thing could be redesigned to achieve enough savings to make federal funds unnecessary. Flood plain agreement When the task force met previously on Oct. 23, one of the questions raised by task force members opposed to the diversion was whether the 100-year flood plain the corps used is realistic. The corps uses a flow rate different than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the 2015 flood plain map, the most recent, which determines the flood insurance rate area residents pay. Fear that rising flood risks will cause FEMA to change the map to require more property owners to pay much higher premiums is one of the drivers behind the diversion project. David Bascom, a FEMA engineering chief, told task force members that it used data from 1971 for its latest flood plain map, but for the next map it would use Corps data, which includes the record flood of 2009. This would increase the flow rate for a 100-year flood from 29,300 cubic feet per second to 33,000 cfs. Burgum said the group was able to reach consensus on 33,000 cfs because FEMA confirmed a project designed to handle that much water would keep homes out of the 100-year flood plain, and engineers confirmed Fargo-Moorhead would still have a chance at fighting a 500-year flood using emergency measures. Both are key features of the diversion project as designed by the corps. How much to protect Several task force members representing areas outside of Fargo-Moorhead wanted the project to protect a smaller area than it does now with a footprint stretching from north of Harwood to south of Horace and including many rural homes. The underlying concern among them, especially project opponents, is that the diversion would shift floodwater from not just the metro area but areas metro cities hope to eventually develop, on to rural areas that dont now flood. Curt Johannsen, mayor of Hendrum, Minn., which is downstream of the diversion, wondered if the diversion was designed to protect rural homes as a way to increase the cost-benefit of the project to win approval from the federal government. He said these homes should be moved or bought out if they cant easily be protected from flooding. Burgum said his understanding is that the route of the diversion channel and the dam wasnt meant to protect rural homes but to save money. The channel went north of Harwood he said, because it avoids crossing the Sheyenne River twice. Remember, the goal here is not to provide less flood protection for less people. We're trying to solve the upstream and the downstream problems, he said. Task force members had many alternatives they thought could be explored. Heidi Durand, a Moorhead City Council member opposed to the diversion project, asked if it is possible to build two diversion channels, one in North Dakota and one in Minnesota, to avoid retaining water behind the dam. Mark Anderson, treasurer for the Buffalo-Red River Watershed District, said hes pretty sure that would increase the flow of water affecting downstream communities. Other ideas included drain tiling, storing water on farmland throughout the basin, running more water through Fargo-Moorhead and storing more water within the area protected by the diversion. The last two were explored by a team of technical experts that formed prior to the task force to hammer out differences between the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority. The DNR shut it down before the team could reach a conclusion, but several task force members wanted to know more about what the team did achieve. Technical team With so many ideas out there, Burgum suggested forming another team of technical experts to offer advice to the task force. Tom Landwehr, who runs the DNR, suggested that, as a way to expedite the process, the team discard alternatives that were unrealistic and focus only on those that had merit. The DNR, which was represented at the meeting by Landwehr, Assistant Commissioner Barb Naramore and a handful of staff members, had a strong presence. As the agency denying a permit for the dam, it was the focus of much discussion. Attorney Tami Norgard asked DNR officials what kind of project they would allow, but officials couldnt offer a definitive answer even to a direct question of whether a dam was completely out of the question. Naramore explained that the agency looks at different project components as a package with all the tradeoffs involved so its difficult to say what can and cant be built. She promised though that DNR staff would work alongside the task force to offer advice. The task force has agreed to meet again Monday, Nov. 13, in Fargo. A 2016 booking photo from the St Charles County Department Corrections shows Sayfullo Saipov after he was arrested in Missouri for failing to pay a traffic ticket President Donald Trump called Thursday for the man charged over the New York truck attack to be executed, as the Islamic State jihadist group described him as one of its "soldiers." Trump had said he was considering sending Sayfullo Saipov, 29, to the military's notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center, but backed off the idea in a blast of tweets calling for the death penalty. "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system," he tweeted. "There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, is now in a detention facility on terrorism charges. He allegedly drove a rented pickup truck down a mile-long stretch of bike path in Manhattan, where children and their parents were preparing to celebrate Halloween on Tuesday. Eight people were killed, five of them friends from Argentina celebrating 30 years since their high school graduation. Twelve other people were wounded in the worst attack in New York since the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda hijackings. It ended when police shot Saipov in the abdomen. This combination of photos shows Argentine (L to R) Hernan Ferrucci, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij, Hernan Mendoza and Diego Angelini moments before travelling to New York on October 28, 2017. The five men were among eight killed in what US authorities called a terrorist attack Prosecutors have announced two federal charges so far: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. The second can be punishable by death, but a capital punishment case would be extremely rare in New York, which has abolished the death penalty at the state level. "I'm not someone who believes in the death penalty," said Mayor Bill de Blasio, reflecting the views of many New Yorkers. "I believe this is an individual who should rot in prison for the rest of his life." The charging document said the Uber driver and father-of-three, who emigrated in March 2010, confessed to acting in the name of the Islamic State (IS) group and "felt good about what he had done," even demanding to hang the jihadist organization's flag in his hospital room. - 'Violent temper' - Major deadly attacks using vehicles this year And IS has claimed him as one of its own, saying in its weekly newspaper that "one of the soldiers of the Islamic State attacked a number of crusaders on a street in New York City," according to the SITE Intelligence Group. Saipov had planned an attack for a year, settling two months ago on a vehicle strike and chose Halloween deliberately in a bid to kill as many people as possible, the complaint alleged. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a 'T' the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels," said John Miller, New York police deputy commissioner for intelligence and counter-terrorism, referring to IS. He was allegedly in possession of three knives and thousands of IS propaganda images and dozens of videos that showed IS fighters killing prisoners. The US president vowed to "get rid" of the lottery program that allowed Saipov to enter the country in 2010, seizing on the attack to further restrict immigration. British tourist Damian Erskine told the BBC that he gave Saipov "five stars on Uber" just a week before the attack. The suspect drove him an hour to his hotel, helped with his bags and "seemed absolutely normal," he said. But an increasingly detailed picture is emerging of a suspect who only radicalized after moving to the United States, his ambitions thwarted, growing out a thick beard and reportedly developing a violent temper. The New York Times reported that he was a university-educated accountant from a well-off family who won the green card lottery and moved to Ohio, with dreams of prospering, before eventually being forced to find work as a trucker. He married an Uzbek immigrant, but ran up multiple traffic violations, lost jobs and an imam worried that he increasingly misinterpreted Islam, the Times said. A cyclist in New York rides past flowers left on a bike path to pay tribute to victims of a truck attack that killed eight The West Side bike lane where the attack happened has since re-opened, allowing tourists and New Yorkers to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather, despite bouquets and an Argentinian football jersey in tribute to the victims. "You're hit in the face. What are you gonna do?" said Ted Wright, 43, en route to work. "We'll win by positivity. There's way more good people in the world than bad people." The Red Cross chief has warned some 600,000 Rohingya, who have fled to Bangladesh since late August, are at risk to cholera The threat of cholera is like a "ticking bomb" for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who have flooded into Bangladesh in recent weeks, the Red Cross chief warned. "We have every reason to fear that we can get into a situation that can lead to cholera outbreaks," Elhadj As Sy, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told AFP in an interview this week. "We are definitely sitting on a ticking bomb," he warned. In one of the worst refugee crises in decades, more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have crammed into makeshift camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district since fleeing an army crackdown in Myanmar's Rakhine state, which began August 25. Poor and overpopulated, Bangladesh has struggled to cope with the mass influx of people, more than half of them children, and many of whom arrive exhausted and malnourished after days and even weeks of travel. - 'Heartbreaking' - Sy, who spent three days in Cox's Bazar last week, said the conditions there were "difficult to describe" and "very heartbreaking". One of the biggest concerns is the poor sanitation and lack of hygiene facilities that has sparked growing fears over the emergence of cholera, which spreads through dirty water and can kill if untreated. The IFRC, which last month opened a field hospital near the camps, has treated numerous patients for acute diarrhoea. At the same time, the UN began a massive vaccination campaign in a bid to avoid a cholera epidemic, but while no cases have appeared so far, Sy warned unhygenic conditions could see the disease spread. "Much more must be done so that we don't get into that situation that we are all fearing today." Cholera is not the only threat. Sy said a surge in measles cases among children in the camps was also "quite worrisome", pointing out that five new cases were detected during a single day of his visit. So far, 67 cases of the highly contagious virus have been registered, but Bangladeshi authorities insist the situation is under control, with a mass-vaccination campaign underway. The IFRC field hospital has also treated thousands of people for a range of other ailments, including injuries suffered in Myanmar -- amid widespread accounts of murder, rape and arson -- and along the treacherous route to Bangladesh. - Bracing for long-term crisis - Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Rakhine state on November 2 amid international criticism for failing to speak up in defence of the Rohingya Sy urged the international community to "respond very urgently at the scale and magnitude that is required to alleviate the human suffering and also save lives." His comments came ahead of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's first visit Thursday to Rakhine since the crisis began. The Nobel peace prize laureate who leads Myanmar's pro-democracy party has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral authority to speak up in defence of the Rohingya. The Rohingya are loathed in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. The UN says the crackdown on them is likely tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home. But Sy said the IFRC was bracing for a drawn-out crisis. "We have definitely to project ourselves into a longer future, and it is very difficult to see how long that future will be, but definitely not six months, definitely not even one year," he said. A Syrian man cries over the body of a lifeless baby on November 2, 2017 at a makeshift clinic in Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus, where regime air strikes killed at least six civilians Syrian government air strikes killed at least six civilians, including a baby, in a rebel-held town outside the capital Damascus on Thursday, a monitor and local medics said. The strikes hit the town of Douma, which lies in the Eastern Ghouta region, where a "de-escalation zone" deal agreed by regime allies Iran and Russia and rebel backer Turkey has been in place since July. At a medical facility, an AFP photographer saw the bodies of at least two people killed in the strikes, as well as adults and children being treated for their wounds by harried medical staff. Despite the truce deal, there has been an uptick in government bombardment on Eastern Ghouta in recent days. Humanitarian groups have also warned of a malnutrition crisis in the area, which is under a tight government siege. "Regime planes fired rockets on several parts of Douma," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor. "Six civilians were killed, including a child," he said, adding that 21 others were wounded. At the medical facility, two bodies were lying on beds, each covered in a bright yellow sheet. Medics worked to treat the wounded, including 13-year-old Ziad, who suffered a head injury after being caught up in the strike on his way home. "I was coming back from school when the first strike hit and I hid in a doorway," he told AFP, sitting with his head bandaged and blood still coating the bridge of his nose. "The plane came back a second time and I tried to get down to the basement, but the force of the second strike knocked the door closed and it injured my head and nose." Syrian children sit at a makeshift clinic in Douma, which lies in the Eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus, following Syrian government air strikes on November 2, 2017 which killed at least six civilians, including a child. Behind him, a younger boy cried in terror, rubbing at his eyes with both his hands. - Blockade and malnourishment - Men lay on beds or stretchers, some shirtless and already being bandaged, others waiting to be treated and covered in blood. Five children, the youngest just a toddler, sat wide-eyed on a bench as medical staff tended to the wounded. Syrians stand amidst debris after government air strikes in Douma, a rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta region, where up to 400,000 people live under government siege since 2013 Up to 400,000 people are believed to live in Eastern Ghouta, which has been under government siege since 2013. The blockade has caused serious food and medicine shortages, and pushed the prices for what remains beyond the reach of impoverished residents. At least two children are reported to have died from malnourishment or related complications in recent weeks, and more than 1,100 other children are reportedly suffering acute malnutrition. On Monday, several dozen trucks carrying assistance for 40,000 people entered Eastern Ghouta as part of a United Nations-Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy. It was the first aid access since September, despite repeated requests from the UN and humanitarian actors for consistent access to besieged areas like Eastern Ghouta. On Tuesday, 11 people including six school children were killed in regime shelling on the town of Jisreen in Eastern Ghouta, the Observatory said. More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. Rohingya refugees who had been stranded in the 'no-man's land' between Myanmar and Bangladesh walk into Palongkhali in Bangladesh's Ukhia district The UN refugee chief told world powers on Thursday they were failing to come up with solutions to a myriad of conflicts causing mass exoduses of people, from Syria to Myanmar. In an address to the Security Council, Filippo Grandi said close to 66 million people have fled crises worldwide -- up from 42 million in 2009 -- with the wars in Syria and Iraq accounting for a quarter of all refugees. "The sharp rise in forced displacement reflects weaknesses in international cooperation, and declining capacity to prevent, contain and resolve conflicts," Grandi told the council. He pointedly asked: "Have we become unable to broker peace?". The remarks came as Western powers were again locked in a row with Russia over a plan to hold a peace conference to end Syria's six-year war that they say could sideline UN-led talks. The Security Council also appears deadlocked on how to respond to the refugee crisis in Myanmar after a military campaign forced more than 600,000 Muslim Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Grandi, who became the UN high commissioner for refugees last year, also listed worsening crises in Libya, Mali, Ukraine, Yemen and Africa's Lake Chad Basin. Fresh violence in Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic have triggered new outflows of refugees, he said. Grandi said proxy wars were being waged, leaving diplomacy at the wayside, and complained that "the focus is on short-term interests rather than long-term collective stability." The Security Council has a mandate under the charter to safeguard international peace and security, but its efforts in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, Libya and other trouble spots have fallen short. As refugee chief, Grandi said he bore witness to "the direct impact of these failures, every day, on the lives of tens of millions of people" who are hoping for a political solution the conflicts they have fled. "The uprooted people are counting on your leadership to help deliver those solutions," he told the council. Smoke rises from buildings following an air strike by Syrian government forces in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, on October 31, 2017, during an operation against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists Syrian government troops and allied fighters captured some of the last parts of Deir Ezzor city from the Islamic State group on Thursday, state media and a monitor said. Syria's army has been battling inside the city since September, when it broke a jihadist siege of nearly three years on government-held parts of the provincial capital. The jihadist group is facing the prospect of another major loss after a string of setbacks, including being ousted last month from its one-time de facto Syrian capital Raqa. Syrian state media said Thursday that the army and allied fighters had captured three neighbourhoods in the city, and "tightened the siege" on IS fighters in several remaining districts. State news agency SANA said IS fighters were using loudspeakers to urge remaining members of the group "not to run away from the fighting, and to kill any member who tried to escape or surrender". The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor also reported the regime advances in the city, provincial capital of Deir Ezzor, on Syria's eastern border with Iraq. The monitor said government forces were advancing as ally Russia carried out heavy air strikes in support of the offensive. "If the regime's forces succeed in continuing this offensive, they could bring an end to IS's presence (in the city) in hours or days," the Observatory said. On the ground, a journalist contributing to AFP saw widespread destruction during a tour of neighbourhoods recently recaptured by the army. Entire floors of buildings had crashed onto those beneath, while others had their facade completely blown away, revealing empty, destroyed interiors. Trenches dug by IS fighters were still visible, as were army minesweepers working to locate and defuse explosives laid by the jihadists. - 'Female suicide bomber' - On the outskirts of remaining IS-held territory, soldiers fired from tanks. A warplane roared overheard and carried out a strike that sent a large cloud of grey smoke above the city's skyline of damaged buildings. "The Syrian army controls more than 80 percent of the city," a military source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Daesh is scrambling to defend its last positions, which the army is continuing to advance on until they are eliminated completely," the source said, using the Arabic acronym for IS. He added that the jihadists were using vehicle bombs and snipers, and alleged they were "sending female suicide bombers" to target army positions. IS once held large sections of Deir Ezzor city, and for nearly three years laid siege to other parts of it that remained under government control. In early September, advancing government forces broke the siege, and they have been working since to expel the jihadists from the rest of the city. A local source said between 150-200 civilian families were estimated to remain in areas held by IS in the city. The military source said operations were slowed at times to allow searches for civilians and their evacuation. Oil-rich Deir Ezzor province was once an IS stronghold, but the jihadist group now faces twin assaults there, from the regime and the US-backed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces. The jihadists have already been expelled from neighbouring Raqa province, and are now confined to just a few pockets of territory in Deir Ezzor. More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefs the media on the recent military operations in Niger, at the Pentagon on October 23, 2017 in Arlington, VA The military operation that left four US commandos dead in Niger was actually a mission to capture or kill a jihadist leader, not a routine reconnaissance patrol as asserted by the Pentagon, ABC News reported Thursday. The target of the October 3-4 overnight operation was a jihadist leader -- known locally as Dandou -- linked to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, the network said, quoting senior Nigerien officials. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told reporters last week the operation was a reconnaissance mission. US intelligence sources told ABC the initial purpose of the operation was reconnaissance but it changed along the way, so the Americans stayed out longer -- more than 24 hours -- than originally planned for, ABC said. "They should have been up and back in a day," a senior US intelligence official told ABC. "But they were up there so long on a mission that morphed, they were spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit." The New York Times previously reported that the American troops on the reconnaissance mission were asked to back up a second clandestine operation by US, French and Nigerien commandos to capture or kill an Islamic State operative. That raid was scotched because of bad weather, however, and the reconnaissance team already on the ground was asked to search for further evidence of the Islamic State jihadist. Dunford said last week the unit of 12 American special forces soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops was returning from a village called Tongo Tongo when they were attacked by a group of some 50 fighters affiliated with the Islamic State group and equipped with small arms, grenades and trucks mounted with guns. The US special forces did not call for reinforcements for an hour, which suggested they thought their unit could handle the attackers, Dunford said. But a Nigerien official quoted by ABC said the Nigeriens asked for back up but the American side refused. Five soldiers from Niger also died in the fighting. The Pentagon declined comment on the ABC News report. "Conducting a thorough investigation of this unfortunate event is the number one priority of the Department of Defense," a spokeswoman said. "I will not comment further until we have a complete picture of what did or did not occur." US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Myanmar next week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will go to Myanmar next week, the State Department said, becoming the most senior US official to visit since the start of the Rohingya crisis. Tillerson's spokeswoman said he would visit Naypyidaw on November 15 for talks on the "humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State and US support for Burma's democratic transition." The secretary's visit will come after he accompanies President Donald Trump on a five-nation Asian tour that will include a stop in Beijing and at the US-ASEAN summit in Manila. Myanmar's Rakhine state was plunged into violence in August, when troops cracking down on a local insurgency embarked on the alleged slaughter and expulsion of the Rohingya minority. Since then, more than 600,000 people have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, bringing with them accounts of rape, torture and arson by the military and pro-government militia. United Nations officials say the crackdown is likely tantamount to ethnic cleansing and pressure has mounted on Myanmar to protect the Rohingya and allow people to return home. The United States, while condemning the violence, has been careful to say it holds the military responsible, not Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government. Tillerson has been pressing her to speak up, and for the powerful military to allow diplomatic observers and humanitarian workers to operate freely within northern Rakhine. Myanmar has been transitioning from rule by military junta to elected civilian leadership since elections were held under a new constitution in 2010. But the military still wields broad powers in security matters and crisis-hot regions, and as "state counsellor", a role akin to a prime minister, Suu Kyi's power is limited. Observers say Suu Kyi chose not to criticize the army in fear of a backlash from powerful generals and their rich friends. But there is little for the Nobel laureate to gain politically from supporting the Muslim Rohingya, who enjoy little sympathy among the broader Buddhist-majority population. Suu Kyi arrived in Rakhine's Sittwe and will make her first trip in office to the north of the state, which has seen some of the worst of the communal violence that has cut through the region since 2012 Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited conflict-wracked northern Rakhine for the first time Thursday, under mounting pressure to halt an army crackdown that has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee their homes. Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar's pro-democracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defence of the Rohingya Muslim minority. As she arrived in Rakhine State, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced a plan to visit Myanmar for talks next week, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees demanded that the Rohingya be allowed home as citizens. Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fled to Bangladesh since late August carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar's powerful army, after militant raids sparked a ferocious military retaliation. The UN says the army operation is likely tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home. Suu Kyi left via state capital Sittwe as evening fell on Thursday after a visit that also took in Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Rakhine. It was her first trip in office to the region, which has seen some of the worst communal violence to cut through the western state since 2012, severely damaging Myanmar's global reputation. "The Lady" -- as she is known -- met with the Rohingya community in Maungdaw town, according to local media, a first for a leader keen to convince observers inside the country and abroad that the crisis has abated and reconstruction can begin. Refugee camps in Bangladesh But it was not clear if Suu Kyi visited some of the hundreds of Rohingya villages torched by the army -- allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals. The Rohingya who remain in northern Rakhine are living in fear, surrounded by hostile neighbours, who refuse to let them farm or move freely. The UN on Thursday again called for unfettered humanitarian access to a zone still under army lockdown. And Filippo Frandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, declared that not only must the refugees be allowed to return but that they should be accorded full Myanmar citizenship. "These people cannot remain stateless because this statelessness exposes them to discrimination and abuse, as has been the case in the past," he told reporters at UN headquarters. Burned villages are seen from the air near Maungdaw, Rakhine state on September 27, 2017 On Thursday around 3,000 Rohingya arrived by land at the Bangladesh border, a sign hunger and fear is still driving people from their homes. "The army didn't attack us but made our life very difficult," Mohammad Zafar, 35, from a village in Buthidaung told AFP at the Bangladesh border. "We were not paid for any work and couldn't go to markets. How long is it possible to live like that?" - 'Here for generations' - Suu Kyi heads a committee charged with rebuilding Rakhine. She was joined on Thursday by businessman Zaw Zaw, one of a host of military "cronies" who thrived under junta rule and are now taking prominent roles in rebuilding the battered region. A volunteer measures the bodies of Myanmar Rohingya Muslim refugees killed in a boat accident while trying to reach Bangladesh There are fears a carve-up of contracts in Rakhine by big business will further divorce the Rohingya from their land. Suu Kyi says the Rohingya who have fled are now welcome back, if they meet contested "verification" criteria for re-entry to Myanmar. The Rohingya are loathed in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. Their legal status is at the crux of communal tensions, with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists adamant that Rohingya are foreign interlopers. A Rohingya resident who has remained in Maungdaw town appealed to Suu Kyi to reconsider foisting a controversial national verification card (NVC) on the minority. The card grants them limited rights of residence in Myanmar, but does not recognise them as an ethnic group with citizenship. The Rohingya say it is a bureaucratic attempt to erase their identity and force a shaky legal status onto them in a region where many claim generations of ancestry. "We cannot do anything with this NVC card, so we do not want to receive it," the resident said, requesting anonymity fearing reprisals. "We are not Bengalis from Bangladesh, we are Rohingya living here for generations." Observers say Suu Kyi has chosen not to criticise the army in fear of a backlash from a powerful institution that controls all security matters. The United States has also condemned the violence, but has been careful to say that it holds the military and not Suu Kyi's civilian administration responsible. Tillerson's spokeswoman Heather Nauert said he would visit Naypyidaw on November 15 for talks on the "humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State and US support for Burma's democratic transition." Aid groups say the risk of major outbreaks of disease is high, while they struggle to deliver food and basic supplies to the unprecedented number of refugees. Smoke rises from buildings following an air strike by Syrian government forces in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, on October 31, 2017, during an operation against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists Syria's army and allied fighters have retaken the city of Deir Ezzor from the Islamic State group in a Russian-backed operation, a monitor said on Thursday. There was no immediate confirmation from official sources, though state media earlier reported army advances in the city in the country's east. The recapture would mean IS has lost the last of the major cities it once held, after a string of defeats elsewhere in Syria and neighbouring Iraq. The jihadist group was last month driven from its one-time de facto Syrian capital Raqa, a highly symbolic blow that illustrated the way its self-proclaimed "caliphate" is crumbling. "Regime forces and allied fighters... with Russian air support have full control of Deir Ezzor city," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information. "Fighting has ended, now there are sweeping operations under way," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. There was no confirmation on Syria's state media, which had earlier reported that the army had recaptured three neighbourhoods from IS and "tightened the siege" on the jihadists remaining in the city. State news agency SANA said IS fighters were using loudspeakers to urge remaining members of the group "not to run away from the fighting, and to kill any member who tried to escape or surrender". Hours earlier, a military source had said the government only held around 80 percent of the city. "Daesh is scrambling to defend its last positions, which the army is continuing to advance on until they are eliminated completely," the source said, using the Arabic acronym for IS. He added that the jihadists were using vehicle bombs and snipers, and alleged they were "sending female suicide bombers" to target army positions. But the Observatory said government troops and allied fighters had advanced swiftly in a final push backed by heavy Russian air strikes. - Recaptured but destroyed - Moscow is a close ally of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and launched a military intervention in support of his government in September 2015. IS once held large sections of Deir Ezzor city, and for nearly three years laid siege to other parts of it that remained under government control. In September, Syria government troops finally entered the city, breaking the siege, and they have been battling since to restore control of the rest of it. On the ground in the city on Thursday, a journalist contributing to AFP saw widespread destruction in neighbourhoods recently recaptured by the army. Entire floors of buildings had crashed onto those beneath, while facades were completely blown away on others, revealing empty, destroyed interiors. Trenches dug by IS fighters were still visible, as were army minesweepers working to locate and defuse explosives laid by the jihadists. On the outskirts of remaining IS-held territory, soldiers fired from tanks. A warplane roared overhead and carried out a strike that sent a large cloud of grey smoke above the city's skyline of damaged buildings. A local source said between 150-200 civilian families were estimated to remain in areas held by IS in the city. The military source said operations were slowed at times to allow searches for civilians and their evacuation. Oil-rich Deir Ezzor province was once an IS stronghold, but the jihadist group is facing twin assaults there, from the regime and the US-backed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces. The jihadists have already been expelled from neighbouring Raqa province, and are now confined to just a few pockets of territory in Deir Ezzor. Their remaining positions are mostly along the border between Syria and Iraq, including the border town of Albu Kamal inside Syria. More than 330,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests, before spiralling into a complex, multi-front war that drew in international forces and jihadists. This handout photograph obtained courtesy of the St. Charles County Dept. of Corrections in the midwestern US state of Missouri on October 31, 2017 shows Sayfullo Saipov, the suspectecd driver who killed eight people in New York on October 31, 2017 When Sayfullo Saipov used a truck to mow people down on a New York street, ultimately killing eight according to terror charges, he guaranteed his former homeland Uzbekistan would receive the worst kind of headlines. People from ex-Soviet Central Asia have been at the heart of high-profile attacks this year in the United States, Russia, Sweden and Turkey. Yet Saipov, according to official accounts, came into contact with radical Islamic ideologies not in the country of his birth, but in the one he adopted seven years ago: the US. Saipov moved to America in 2010 under a visa programme -- President Donald Trump's response to Tuesday's attack was to announce tougher vetting for immigrants. "Most of these attackers come from rather secular backgrounds and tend to radicalise in their country of destination rather than origin," said Yan Matusevich, research officer at the Vienna-headquartered International Centre for Migration Policy Development. Thousands of former residents of the region's five countries known as the "stans" -- -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- have joined the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq since 2011. However incidents involving violent extremism at home have been relatively rare. - Global form of radicalisation - But if one single theme does link the Central Asia-born assailants of very different backgrounds accused of attacks this year in New York, Istanbul, Saint Petersburg and Stockholm, it is migration. Uzbek national Abdulgadir Masharipov, who killed 39 people in a January 1 attack on a nightclub in Istanbul had lived and trained as a militant in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Turkish authorities. Another Uzbek, Rakhmat Akilov, who ploughed a truck into a crowd of pedestrians in Stockholm in April, killing five, was a failed asylum seeker reportedly at risk of deportation. Akbarjon Djalilov, identified as the 22-year-old bomber behind the Saint Petersburg metro blast in April that killed 16 people including himself was born in Kyrgyzstan but left for Russia with his family aged 17. Cyclists ride past a makeshift memorial for the October 31 terror attack victims, in New York, on November 2, 2017 While the series of attacks appear to form a "Central Asian pattern" Matusevich argues they are part of "a broader, more global form of radicalisation" and the attackers' "actual life situations were quite diverse". Saipov worked as an Uber driver in New Jersey. Uzbekistan's government has said that there was nothing to indicate he was an extremist before leaving. Saipov was described by his former neighbours in the capital Tashkent "in very positive terms", said the government's statement on Wednesday. "His parents followed traditional Islam and were never seen in connection with any extremist branches," it added. - 'Adept at delivering message' - Looking for a common thread, analysts focus on exposure to online extremist content, particularly produced by the Islamic State group in whose name Saipov committed the attack, according to New York police. "The only thing we can say about commonalities between Saipov and (Istanbul attacker) Masharipov is that they were Uzbeks living outside the country with access to Islamic State propaganda material," said Deirdre Tynan, Central Asia Project Director for the International Crisis Group. While stressing it is "too early" to say if Saipov had direct contact with IS, Tynan says the organisation has been adept at delivering its message in Russian and Central Asian languages across a variety of platforms. Sleek IS propaganda appearing to target Central Asians gained international attention in 2015 when a child identifying as a Kazakh IS recruit was shown in a video executing an alleged Russian spy. Another video released months later featured a former special forces chief from Tajikistan who defected to IS. IS's sophisticated media strategy has been critical in helping recruit Central Asians, setting it apart from other radical organisations operating in the region, Tynan says. But rights monitors say the group's global prominence has also given former Soviet governments a pretext to intensify crackdowns on devout Muslims. Likewise in Russia, since the April bombing in Saint Petersburg, security services have visibly increased raids targeting Central Asian migrants, sometimes claiming to have foiled extremist plots. "You get the impression that some of these arrests have a political thrust, to identify (to the public) an enemy of sorts," Svetlana Gannushkina, a renowned Russian rights defender whose work focuses on migration, told AFP. "And who are Russia's enemies? Well, the external enemy is the United States, but the internal enemy is (Central Asian) migrants," Gannushkina said. U.S. Sen. John Thune set South Dakota history by winning his fourth Senate term. He became the second South Dakota senator to win four terms, defying what is known in local political circles as the Curse of Karl" because Sen. Karl Mundt was the only politician to accomplish the feat. But it's not clear whether Thune's party will hold the majority after a midterm election in which the GOP failed to meet expectations of a sweeping victory. Thune says he wants to stay focused on solutions, especially on inflation, rather than bombastic politics. He is also pressing for his party to look beyond former President Donald Trump's influence. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Bad Daddy's Burger Bar has renamed a breakfast it called the "Border Patrol Scramble" that was served at a North Carolina airport following criticism that the name for a dish featuring jalapeno peppers and salsa was racially offensive. The company told The Charlotte Observer that new menus calling the egg dish the "Spicy Morning Scramble," would be available starting Wednesday. Activist Andrea Pino spotted the scramble, which was only available at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport location, and objected to it on Twitter. More people criticized the name on Facebook, calling it "racist" and insensitive to immigrant families. The Charlotte-based chain posted responses to the complaints and issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for any perceived insensitivity. ___ Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotteobserver.com LUCKNOW, India (AP) - At least 16 people were killed and dozens more injured in an explosion Wednesday at a thermal power plant in northern India, officials said. Sanjay Khatri, the area's top administrative officer, said a pipe carrying ash from the burning coal exploded in the newly installed boiler at the power plant in Unchahar in Uttar Pradesh state. The explosion spewed hot ash over workers at the plant. The state's top administrative officer, Arvind Kumar, said 16 bodies had been recovered. An injured is carried on a stretcher to be treated at a hospital in Rae Bareilly, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Police say at least a dozen people have been killed and dozens others injured in an explosion at a thermal power plant in northern India. Sanjay Khatri, the area's top administrative officer, said a pipe carrying ash from the burning coal exploded in the newly installed boiler at the power plant in Unchahar in Uttar Pradesh state. The explosion spewed hot ash over workers at the plant. (AP Photo) Police said the death toll is likely to increase because at least a dozen other workers suffered severe burns. The 500-megawatt unit was operating on a trial basis. Khatri said the cause of the accident wasn't immediately known. It also wasn't clear how many workers were in the plant at the time. Witnesses described a massive explosion and thick smoke rising from the plant. A team of government rescue workers was sent to the site. Relatives of workers gathered outside the main gate of the power plant desperately seeking information, police officer Suresh Chandra said. Industrial accidents are not unusual in India, where safety measures are often flouted. NEW YORK (AP) - A permanent U.S. resident arrested in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo abandoned the United States in 2013 to join the Islamic State group and cheer on suicide bombers while recruiting and spreading propaganda on the internet, authorities said Wednesday. William F. Sweeney Jr., head of the New York FBI office, said Mirsad Kandic expressed a desire to travel overseas to kill or maim U.S. military forces long before he used fake documents to overcome a no-fly designation in December 2013 and travel to Turkey. From there, he joined the terrorist group, Sweeney said. The former Bronx and Brooklyn resident was extradited Tuesday from Bosnia and Herzegovina to face a six-count indictment including charges of conspiracy and providing and attempting to provide support to the Islamic State. He has been detained since his July arrest in Sarajevo. "Kandic is now back in New York, no longer living freely among us, but rather in federal custody to face justice," Sweeney said of charges that carry a potential for a life prison sentence. James Branden, a lawyer for Kandic, said he had no immediate comment. His client pleaded not guilty in Brooklyn and was detained without bail. Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde said Kandic recruited others to join the Islamic State group, "swelling their ranks and helping them commit terrorist acts such as suicide bombings." A government detention memo listed deadly attacks carried out by Islamic State supporters, including 2015 shootings in Garland, Texas, and San Bernardino, California, along with a June 2016 nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, and numerous attacks overseas, but there was no mention of a truck that swerved through a bike lane in Manhattan pn Tuesday, killing eight people. The government said Kandic began as early as 2005 to express a desire to travel to Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East to fight U.S. forces in martyrdom missions. "By late 2013, the defendant began trying to realize those objectives," prosecutors wrote. Authorities said Kandic recruited individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and elsewhere to travel to Syria and Iraq and join the group's battles. They said he told an associate online that he worked in Turkey in the Islamic State's border office as part of a team that conducted background checks of foreign fighters who wanted to go to Syria. In court filings unsealed Wednesday, prosecutors said Kandic's voice was captured in a recorded voice memo to an associate saying he had sent over 20,000 fighters to a region that included Syria. Sweeney said Kandic assisted Jake Bilardi, an 18-year-old Australian citizen who died in a suicide bomb attack west of Baghdad in March 2015. In court papers, prosecutors said Bilardi told Kandic through a Twitter message shortly before the attack that he "just went to look at my target today for my operation." "May Allah reward you immensely," Kandic was quoted as responding. Prosecutors said he later added: "May Allah make ... inner organs implode." Prosecutors said Kandic disseminated terrorism propaganda through over 100 Twitter accounts. ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) - A former Pennsylvania school bus driver who refused to be fingerprinted for a background check, believing it would leave the "mark of the devil" on her, is suing the company that fired her. A federal judge ruled Monday that Bonnie Kaite can move forward with a religious discrimination suit against Altoona Student Transportation Inc. The Altoona Mirror reports that Kaite worked for the company for 14 years before she was told in 2015 that a new law meant she would need to undergo fingerprinting. Kaite refused, saying the process could prevent her entry into heaven. The company says it was told by the school district and other officials that the background check couldn't be done without fingerprints. Kaite alleges that the company accommodated another employee whose fingerprints couldn't be read. ___ Information from: Altoona Mirror, http://www.altoonamirror.com WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Poles marked All Saints' Day on Wednesday with prayers and visits to cemeteries, lovingly adorning the graves of loved ones and national heroes with candles and flowers. The Nov. 1 holiday is a key holiday in the mostly Catholic country, a solemn day for remembering the dead and spending time with family that ranks in spiritual significance only after Christmas and Easter. Polish President Andrzej Duda placed flowers at the Krakow graves of former President Lech Kaczynski and first lady Maria Kaczynska, who together died in a plane crash in 2010. People stop in front of the graves of some of the Warsaw 1944 Uprising insurgents, at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) A hallowed feeling envelops the cemeteries, particularly at dusk, where thousands of candles flicker in small jars as large numbers of people file through. Sylwia Gadomska, a 21-year-old hairdresser, visited the Czerniakowski cemetery in a southern Warsaw neighborhood after dark, explaining that she considered the day very important. "This is a day to spend with loved ones and with those who have died, those who are now unfortunately missing in our lives," Gadomska said. She could not visit her own family cemetery in a distant Polish village, but still felt the need to visit a cemetery to experience the special atmosphere and at least pay homage to unknown soldiers. Polish media on Wednesday also celebrated prominent people who have died over the past year, including actor Roger Moore and Polish-American diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski. People stop in front of a grave at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day, as people honour the saints and their departed friends and family, in Christian tradition. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) People visit a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People visit a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People visit a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People visit a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People visit a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People buy flowers near a cemetery in Lomna near Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles iand flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) People light candles at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day, as people honour the saints and their departed friends and family, in Christian tradition.(AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) A man stands next to graves at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. Candles and flowers cover tombstones in graveyards across Poland on All Saints' Day, as people honour the saints and their departed friends and family, in Christian tradition.(AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Latest on a family from California who went missing in Brazil after pirates attacked their boat (all times local): 4:45 p.m. A spokesman for the family of two Americans and their young daughters who went missing in Brazil after pirates attacked their boat says they've been found alive. Colby Guillory of Los Angeles says the U.S. Embassy in Brazil told family members of Adam and Emily Harteau on Wednesday that a fisherman found the California couple and their 3- and 7-year-old daughters after they were in the jungle a few days. Law enforcement officials in Brazil's northern jungle state of Para reported shortly afterward that the family was safe. Spokesman Sergio Chene said that except for insect bites and scratches, the Harteaus were in good condition and would spend the night in a hospital. Officials say the family had been missing since Sunday, when pirates assaulted their boat in the Amazon River delta area. There was no immediate information on how the family escaped. ___ 3:20 p.m. State police in Brazil say a California couple and their two daughters who have been journeying through South America have been missing since Sunday, when river pirates assaulted the boat they were aboard in the Amazon River delta area. The Para state Public Safety Department says a search is underway. It said Wednesday that pirates forced the boat to dock and fled with stolen belongings. When police arrived the Americans were not on the boat. Authorities identified the missing family as Adam Harris Harteau, 39; Emily Faith Harteau, 37; and their daughters aged 3 and 7. The family had recently been living in the southern Brazil city of Florianopolis, officials said. They have been using a website to document their journey around South America. The U.S. Embassy had no immediate comment. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the family's name is Harteau and that authorities released statement Wednesday. CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) - Officials say the yacht Greenings is out of the Clipper Round the World Race after it was grounded off Cape Town shortly after the start of Leg 3. The yacht was partially submerged and listing to port on Wednesday, when officials determined it wouldn't be able to continue on. The yacht ran aground on Tuesday. The crew was safely evacuated and returned to Cape Town. No injuries were reported. There's still no word about how the accident happened. Underwriters have appointed a surveyor who will check the boat Thursday. A decision will then be made whether the boat will be salvaged. MOSCOW (AP) - Uzbekistan, an ex-Soviet and predominantly Sunni Muslim nation in Central Asia, is estimated to have produced hundreds and perhaps thousands of members for the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Like the 29-year-old suspect in the truck attack on a New York City bike path, some were accused of carrying out terror attacks. Some facts about Uzbekistan, its history and connections to acts of terror: Local residents stand outside the apartment block where the suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York lived between 1996-2006, according to police records, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. The window to the right on the ground floor is where Sayfullo Saipov lived. The president of Uzbekistan has sent his condolences to U.S. President Donald Trump and offered his country's assistance in investigating Tuesday's attack in New York by an Uzbek national. (AP Photo/Timur Karpov) ___ CENTRAL ASIAN POWERHOUSE Uzbekistan sits in the heart of Central Asia, and for millennia, it was a key conduit for trade along the ancient Silk Road that stretched from China to the Mediterranean. The territory that makes up Uzbekistan today was conquered and incorporated into the Russian Empire during the 19th century. Its rich natural resources made it a prize of the Soviet Union. Following the Soviet collapse, Uzbekistan has sought to balance ties with its former imperial master and the West. The nation of 32 million people is north of Afghanistan and the location made it an important supply hub for U.S. military operations in that country. ___ AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT Uzbekistan's last Communist boss, Islam Karimov, remained at the republic's helm after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The authoritarian Karimov ruled Uzbekistan for more than a quarter century, from 1989 until his death in 2016. During his rule, Uzbek troops killed hundreds of unarmed demonstrators during a 2005 uprising. Thousands of Karimov's political opponents were jailed and some were reportedly boiled to death. Karimov faced strong international criticism for his brutal crackdown on dissent. His successor as president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, was elected in December 2016 and has gradually moved the country toward liberalization, freeing some political prisoners and easing rigid state controls over the economy. Mirziyoyev sent his condolences to President Donald Trump and offered Uzbekistan's assistance in investigating Tuesday's attack. ___ RADICAL GROUPS Human rights groups say widespread poverty and the relentless suppression of dissent under Karimov fueled radical Islamic sentiment in Uzbekistan. The outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan has been active in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. The extremist group has a particularly strong presence in northern Afghanistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year cited intelligence data indicating that about 4,000 Russian residents and 5,000 citizens of Central Asian nations have joined IS and other extremist groups in Syria. ___ ETHNIC VIOLENCE According to some media reports, the New York bike path suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, lived for some time in Kyrgyzstan, another ex-Soviet nation that borders Uzbekistan and has a sizable ethnic Uzbek minority. In June 2010, the area near the city of Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan where Saipov reportedly lived saw violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that left at least 470 people dead. Nearly three-quarters of them were ethnic Uzbeks; the violence prompted an exodus of Uzbeks from Kyrgyzstan. ___ TERROR ATTACKS Uzbek immigrants have identified as suspects in other extremist attacks this year. A native of Uzbekistan, Rakhmat Akilov, drove a stolen beer truck on April 7 into a crowd of afternoon shoppers in downtown Stockholm, killing four people and injuring 15 others. A fifth victim later died of wounds from the attack. Akilov was known to have been sympathetic to the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations. An ethnic Uzbek from Kyrgyzstan, Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, blew himself up on a subway train in St. Petersburg, Russia on April 3, killing 15 passengers and injuring about another 50. Russian security agencies later arrested several accomplices. They also came from ex-Soviet Central Asian nations and had ties to the Islamic State group. This undated photo provided by the St. Charles County Department of Corrections in St. Charles, Mo., via KMOV shows Sayfullo Saipov. A man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along a busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, killing several. Officials who were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity identified the attacker as Saipov. (St. Charles County, Mo. Department of Corrections/KMOV via AP) A local resident walks outside the apartment block where the suspect in Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York lived between 1996-2006, according to police records, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. The window to the right on the ground floor is where Sayfullo Saipov lived. The president of Uzbekistan has sent his condolences to U.S. President Donald Trump and offered his country's assistance in investigating Tuesday's attack in New York by an Uzbek national. (AP Photo/Timur Karpov) TOKYO (AP) - The children, gathered in rows on a school field in Tokyo, crouch and then reach up in unison, waving red, white and blue banners to form a North Korean flag as the school band plays an emotional rendition of a song for their "motherland." They are third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans, including many who were forcibly taken from their homeland to labor in mines and factories during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until its 1945 defeat in World War II. Though many have become citizens of Japan or South Korea, the students' families remain loyal to their heritage, choosing to send their children to one of some 60 private schools that favor North Korea, teaching the culture and history. In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice flag cheering Routines at a Tokyo Korean junior and senior high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) Despite recent North Korean missile launches, including two that flew over Japan, students and graduates of the schools say they take pride in their community and view it as a haven from the discrimination they face in Japan. "We do things together, and we help each other," Ha Yong Na, a 16-year-old mix of giggles and poise, said as she demonstrated her Korean dance moves with a classmate. Here, portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on classroom walls. Teachers instruct in the language of their ancestry, and Japanese and English are offered as foreign languages. The cafeteria serves kimchee for lunch. About 450,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, and several thousand attend such schools. Schools like the North Korean Junior and Senior High School in Tokyo underline a deep divide in a country often portrayed as homogenous. North Korea's missile launches and nuclear weapons tests have deepened the complexity of the situation. Ha and her classmates said they cherish their shared heritage and friendships and are happy they don't have to worry about being picked on for not being Japanese. "We want graduates of our school to go out into Japanese society, and the world, with pride, as Koreans in Japan, and be able to confidently express themselves," said Kim Seng Fa, a graduate, teacher and academic affairs director at the 7-decade-old school. ___ In the U.S., being born there makes one an American. In Japan, citizenship must be acquired for immigrants through a government system. Some have complained the process forces people to give up their loyalties to the cultures of their origin. Many Koreans seek to avoid hassles by taking on Japanese names and blending in. But others like Myoung-joo Boo, a 45-year-old actor, prefer to embrace their ethnic heritage, although he stresses he never tries to get into an argument on cultural pride. "People who don't like Koreans don't have to come near me. And I will live with those who don't care about such things," said Boo, a graduate of the North Korean schools. "In America, people who may have been historically forcibly brought in see themselves as American. But for Koreans, I am born in Japan, but I see myself as Korean," Boo said. The schools, founded by the first generation of Koreans in Japan, are privately run and financed by tuition and donations. The graduates and students are fighting several court battles to get the schools recognized as private schools to win the same government subsidies. The rulings have varied depending on the courts, and the fight is expected to eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court. None of the schools now get such subsidies. Attendance has been shrinking with each generation because of Japan's overall declining birthrate, and more people choose to assimilate into Japanese society or take South Korean citizenship. ___ One of the worst atrocities against Koreans in Japan came after the Sept. 1, 1923, Great Kanto Earthquake, when thousands were lynched by vigilante mobs and police after false rumors spread that they were poisoning wells. Today, the antagonisms are less violent, but they remain. Koreans have been traditionally shunned by some mainstream employers. That's changing, partly because Japanese companies are becoming more global, and employment from multinationals is increasingly available. In the past, the stereotype jobs have been in restaurants and pachinko parlors, and in entertainment. This year, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike declined to send a customary annual eulogy message to the Korean victims of the 1923 earthquake, which left more than 140,000 people dead or missing in Tokyo and surrounding areas, angering civil rights advocates. She gave no reason, but Koike has won support from nationalist-leaning factions that question accounts of atrocities committed against Koreans and other Asians before and during World War II. Extremist groups sometimes take to Tokyo streets, waving militarist rising-sun flags and chanting anti-Korean slogans. Online hate speech remains rampant, with trolls stalking people known to have Korean ancestry, such as actress Kiko Mizuhara. Students of North Korean schools are sometimes harassed on commuter trains, and some have had their clothing slashed with knives. Hwaji Shin, a sociology professor at the University of San Francisco, who grew up as a third-generation Korean in Japan, believes the harassment has worsened, becoming more systematic and threatening as worries mount over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. Resentment toward immigrant communities and other minorities, apparent in many countries, also reflects insecurities over globalization and widening inequality, Shin said. "When people are increasingly competing over a smaller pie and when someone whispers in your ear, those are the people who are taking the slice of pie away from you. It is very easy to harbor hatred against that group," she said. The myth persists that Japan has no problem with discrimination, and the country's mainstream media rarely mention such issues, Shin said. ___ As in most immigrant experiences, successive generations of Koreans in Japan, including those at the North Korean schools, speak Japanese at home. Like their Japanese peers, they enjoy Japanese pop music and American rock, and watch local and American TV shows and Hollywood movies. Yet Yeong-I Park, a 42-year-old filmmaker who attended North Korean schools from kindergarten through college, still considers himself "a foreigner." He is married to a Korean born in Japan and his children attend North Korean schools. He has visited North Korea 17 times, and says the country is changing. Like others of his background, he empathizes with North Korea's historical view that it is their own country that suffered a brutal war of invasion by the U.S. - a narrative contrary to the Western view that North Korea was the aggressor in the 1950-53 Korean War. Park views North Koreans as misunderstood victims. "I feel news about North Korea is really exaggerated, especially in Japan," he said. "They depict it as though it's hell on Earth." Kum Son Gyun, 17, a student at a North Korean school, visited North Korea on a school trip this year and found the place anything but hellish. "It was a fantastic place," said Kum, whose father works as an editor of a publication for the North Korean community in Japan. "They had cows." When asked about the recent North Korean news dominating coverage in Japan - the missile and nuclear threat - his eyes started to brim with tears. "I want to believe my country is right, and I have believed in my country since I was a child, and that isn't going to waver," he said. "I believe my country is right." ___ Yuri Kageyama can be reached at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama Her work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/yuri%20kageyama In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students attend a Japanese language class at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017 photo, a student cleans the blackboard under the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hanging on the classroom wall at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, a student flag team practices a performance waving red, white and blue banners to form th North Korea national flag at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice a performance waving red, white and blue banners to form the North Korean national flag at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students eat their lunch in a classroom where the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on the wall at a senior high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice flag cheering routines at a Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students walk by a classroom where the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on the wall at a Tokyo Korean junior and senior high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. Families send children to private schools that favor North Korea and teach the language, culture and history of their ancestry. Despite recent North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests, students say they take pride and view their community as a haven from the discrimination they face from ethnic Japanese.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, a student stands near the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hanging on a classroom wall in a Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students line up for lunch at a dining hall in a Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students clean their classroom under portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at a Korean high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) In this Oct. 5, 2017 photo, Myoung-joo Boo, 45, an actor, a third-generation Korean in Japan and a graduate of the North Korean school, speaks during an interview in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans in Japan, brought in during the imperialist years leading to and during World War II, remain loyal to their roots. "In America, people who may have been historically forcibly brought in see themselves as American. But for Koreans, I am born in Japan, but I see myself as Korean," said Boo. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama) In this Oct. 5, 2017 photo, Yeong-I Park, a 42-year-old filmmaker who went to North Korean schools, from kindergarten through college, speaks during an interview in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans in Japan, brought in during the imperialist years leading to and during World War II, remain loyal to their roots. Park still considers himself "a foreigner." (AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama) MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) - Black students at Kansas State University voiced concerns about recent racist incidents at a meeting with top school officials on Wednesday night after a car was found near campus earlier in the day scrawled with racial slurs and threats. University spokesman Jeff Morris said the meeting discussed a range of concerns from security and safety on campus, to the need for a multicultural center and progress on hiring a chief diversity officer. The gathering with the Black Student Union was hastily convened after a car belonging to a black man who says he studied at the university was scrawled with graffiti off-campus early Wednesday. Photographs of the car showed it covered with racial slurs against blacks and messages that included "Go Home," ''Date your own kind," and "Die." The man told the Kansas City Star in an interview that the vandalism and resulting social media attention has made it impossible for him to go anywhere in Manhattan, the home of the university. He said that he does not want the attention, has withdrawn from the university and will return to his home in California. "I was not raised to discriminate," he said. He called the vandalism "sad, hurtful and disappointing." The Star did not name the man because of safety concerns. The Associated Press also is not identifying him. But Morris said the university does not have anyone enrolled at the university by the name that police say is the owner of the car. "We do not have a person enrolled currently or in the past by that name," Morris said. He said the university would continue to try to clear up the confusion on Thursday. Morris said university President Richard Myers, a former Air Force general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not attend the meeting with black students Wednesday because he was in Washington for a meeting on military matters. Myers posted a statement on the university's Facebook page that did not directly mention the latest incident but called for greater diversity and inclusion efforts. "I encourage all of us to come together with greater empathy, a greater concern for one another, and a greater understanding of how others see us," the statement says. Police are looking at whether the vandalism should be investigated as a hate crime, Hali Rowland, public information officer for Riley County Police, told The Star. The graffiti is the latest in a string of such incidents at the school. Last month, an anti-gay slur was found outside the university student union. In September, white supremacist fliers were found on campus. And in May, a noose was found hanging from a campus tree. President Donald Trump last week declared opioid abuse a national public health emergency and announced steps to fight what he called the worst drug crisis in U.S. history. Trumps action will let the government redirect resources in different ways and to expand access to medical services in rural areas. It wont automatically mean new funding to fight the drug problem. North Dakota has been part of this national problem for some time. There was a call for action more than 18 months ago after drug-related deaths were reported in eastern North Dakota and drug issues surfaced in Bismarck. The same drugs that torment New York City are present in Bismarck-Mandan. Opioids, which include some prescribed painkillers, heroin and synthetic drugs such as fentanyl, often are peddled on the nation's streets. They are used by all age groups and can be found among successful professionals all the way down to students. One of the things that make them so dangerous is how pervasive they have become. Bismarck police have responded to 10 heroin overdoses this year. Police recently used Narcan for the first time to treat an overdose. Narcan, a nasal form of Naloxone, reverses opioid overdoses. Police used it to save a 47-year-old woman who was unconscious and not breathing. She was revived and declined to go to a hospital. Other local emergency responders have used Narcan, but it was the first time for Bismarck police. One of the reasons opioid use has spread is because they are used as painkillers. The medical community has been reviewing how often they prescribe opioids and what alternatives are available. Sanford Health announced last week that it has reduced the number of prescriptions by 18 percent in the third quarter of 2017 compared to the first quarter of 2016, for a region covering North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. That amounted to 24 percent or about 1.25 million fewer pills prescribed. Its steps like this that will help get opioids out of society. While Trumps announcement last week drew some criticism for the lack of new funding, overall, the response was positive. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said the announcement will increase awareness about the problem. Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., feels it will "streamline and jump-start" programs aimed at preventing addiction and ensuring access to treatment. And Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said it will help expand the use of telemedicine, remote audio and video connections to health care providers for mental health and substance abuse disorders. Gov. Doug Burgum and his wife, Kathryn Helgaas Burgum, who recently held the Recovery Reinvented conference that looked at various addiction issues, were pleased by Trumps announcement. It will take efforts like Recovery Reinvented along with other community involvement to help stem the tide of drugs. Members of the community who encounter people dealing with drug issues can play a big role in helping them into recovery. We cant spend our way out of this drug crisis. However, funding will be needed for a variety of programs. That money may have to come from the state and local level where many programs may originate. This fight against drugs will take time and the commitment of many people. The road to recovery likely will be a long one. NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Jurors in the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez heard competing narratives during closing arguments Thursday, with the prosecution calling him the "personal senator" of a wealthy friend and defense attorneys accusing the government of misleading the jury with cherry-picked facts. "They are lying to you," Kirk Ogrosky, an attorney representing Menendez's friend, Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen told jurors. "They're making up a story and trying to get the evidence to fit their story." The day ended before Menendez's attorney, Abbe Lowell, had a chance to give his closing. He will do so on Monday, and will be followed by the government's rebuttal before jurors start deliberating. FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2017, file photo, Sen. Bob Menendez arrives to court for his federal corruption trial in Newark, N.J. The jury in the bribery trial of U.S. Sen. Menendez is set to hear closing arguments on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, after more than two months of testimony. The New Jersey Democrat is charged with accepting gifts from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen in exchange for using his political influence. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) The panel has sat through nine weeks of testimony and arguments, though neither defendant testified. They will be asked to determine whether Menendez's flights on Melgen's private jet and other gifts, as well as more than $600,000 in campaign contributions, were bribes, and whether the New Jersey Democrat's meetings and conversations with executive branch officials were official acts performed in return. Defense attorneys contend Menendez's meetings were to discuss policy issues and not to lobby on behalf of Melgen. If Menendez is convicted and steps down, or is voted out by a two-thirds majority before New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leaves office Jan. 18, the Republican could appoint a replacement. An indictment alleges Menendez pressured officials to try and resolve Melgen's $8.9 million Medicare billing dispute and a stalled contract for port screening equipment in the Dominican Republic for a company Melgen owned. Menendez also is charged with not reporting the gifts on Senate disclosure forms. "What was he so determined to hide? That he'd been bought by Dr. Melgen to serve as Dr. Melgen's personal senator," Justice Department prosecutor J.P. Cooney said during his closing. Cooney detailed the three primary areas in which Menendez allegedly helped Melgen in exchange for the gifts: the Medicare billing dispute, the port screening contract and visas for three of Melgen's reputed foreign girlfriends. By the time of a 2010 Paris trip in which Melgen paid for Menendez's stay at a $1,500-a-night hotel with his credit card points, Menendez already had helped Melgen with the visas and had alerted staffers to Melgen's Medicare problem, Cooney told jurors. Melgen gave $300,000 in June 2012 to a Democratic political action committee earmarked for New Jersey, around the same time Menendez met with the head of Medicare, and several weeks before he met with then-Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Cooney displayed an electronic copy of the check, which was handwritten. "Who pulls out their checkbook and hand-writes a $300,000 check?" he asked. "How about someone trying to send a message?" "Robert Menendez held himself out as putting New Jersey first, but Dr. Melgen came calling with a better offer," he concluded. Defense attorney Jonathan Cogan, also representing Melgen, criticized the government's case as a pastiche of flight logs, emails and meetings that don't amount to a coherent scheme. Menendez's visits to Melgen's home in the Dominican Republic on Melgen's plane were social visits, he told jurors as he showed pictures of the two men relaxing with friends and family. Two weeks after Melgen received an initial letter about the Medicare action against him, he said, Menendez paid his own way to attend Melgen's daughter's wedding and gave a $1,000 cash gift. Prosecutors contended the only reason Menendez didn't act after Melgen contributed another $300,000 in late 2012 was because details began leaking out and reporters began probing the relationship, Cogan said. But the indictment alleges a golf outing and dinner with Melgen in Florida three months later were bribes, he said. "They're telling you it's a bribe when it suits them," he told jurors. "What they're doing is taking a look at dates and emails and partial facts and they've said, 'We're just going to weave a story how we want the narrative to be.'" Menendez served in the U.S. House from 1993 until filling the. Senate seat vacated when Democrat Jon Corzine became New Jersey governor in 2006. The trial is the first major federal bribery trial since a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned the conviction of former Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and narrowed the definition of official bribery. FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) - Closing arguments about the punishment of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will come as soon as Thursday as a judge considers his sentence for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in Afghanistan. The defense rested its sentencing case Wednesday after calling its final witness to discuss Bergdahl's mental health. The prosecution could still call a rebuttal witness, but the judge told both sides to be ready to make their final cases for the appropriate punishment. Bergdahl could spend the rest of his life in prison after pleading guilty to the charges. The military judge also could sentence him to no prison time, given mitigating factors including the five years he endured as an enemy captive. The judge has wide discretion because Bergdahl didn't strike a plea agreement with prosecutors to limit his punishment. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, left, arrives at the Fort Bragg courtroom facility for a sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft /The Fayetteville Observer via AP) A psychiatrist testified Wednesday that Bergdahl's difficult childhood and his washout from Coast Guard boot camp stoked serious psychiatric disorders that helped spur him to walk off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. Dr. Charles Morgan said the soldier was already suffering from a schizophrenia-like condition and post-traumatic stress disorder when he disappeared in Afghanistan. The forensic psychiatrist said interviews with family and childhood friends, as well as a lengthy exam with Bergdahl, convinced him the soldier was suffering from schizotypal personality disorder when he disappeared in Afghanistan. He said he concurred with an Army Sanity Board document that previously made the diagnosis public. On the stand, Morgan went into greater detail than previously disclosed about Bergdahl's mental health. He said Bergdahl has an internal, self-critical commentary that he doesn't recognize as his own thoughts. Bergdahl, he said, engages in fantasy and has thoughts of self-castration to purify himself. Bergdahl and others with the disorder "have this experience of their own inner life as if it's not them," Morgan said. He said the internal commentary manifests in thoughts such as: "You're never going to be good enough." However, Morgan said the commentary isn't an auditory hallucination, and Bergdahl isn't psychotic. He said Bergdahl knew right from wrong when he walked off his post. Still, the disorder makes it difficult for Bergdahl to see the second- and third-order effects of his actions and how they will impact others, Morgan said. Morgan believes Bergdahl had post-traumatic stress disorder before his 2008 Army enlistment, largely because of growing up with a quick-tempered father. Symptoms of anxiety and tunnel vision, sometimes present when he interacted with his father, occurred the night Bergdahl had a 2006 panic attack that caused his Coast Guard discharge, Morgan said. Bergdahl's father believed in corporal punishment and punched holes in the walls when he was angry, Morgan said. Growing up, Bergdahl would sometimes hide when he heard his father's truck arriving at their house in Idaho. Morgan's testimony was part of defense efforts to mitigate potential punishment. Defense attorneys have made clear that Bergdahl is competent to answer the charges. The judge, Army Col. Jeffery Nance, also said Wednesday that evidence shows Bergdahl understood his Army enlistment contract in 2008. Bergdahl has said he left his Afghanistan post intending to reach a commander at another base and describe what he saw as problems with his unit. Morgan said the decision was consistent with schizotypal personality disorder. "I think he believes there are times that, if it's the morally right thing to do, you have to break the rules," he said. "There's not a thinking through of: 'Are there other ways to achieve this goal?'" The 31-year-old soldier from Hailey, Idaho, was brought home by President Barack Obama in 2014 in a swap for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Obama said at the time the U.S. does not leave its service members on the battlefield. Republicans roundly criticized Obama, and Donald Trump went further while campaigning for president, repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor who deserved serious punishment. Also Wednesday, the defense called a witness to testify that Bergdahl had helped deliver a colony of two-dozen feral cats to her animal sanctuary. The woman, who was allowed to testify without giving her name, said that Bergdahl had a rapport with even the most skittish cats, and that she would like to hire him when his case ends. "His personal responsibility for these cats was uncanny. The devotion he had - you don't see it a lot," she said. "He's almost like 'the cat whisperer.'" ___ Follow Drew at www.twitter.com/jonldrew Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, has pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP)/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) FILE - In this Jan. 12, 2016, file photo, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl arrives for a pretrial hearing at Fort Bragg, N.C. Former Navy SEAL James Hatch who testified this week at Bergdahl's sentencing hearing on charges he endangered comrades by leaving his post in Afghanistan in 2009, has had eight years to think about the nighttime raid that ended with insurgent AK-47 spray ripping through his leg. Hatch said he's still angry at Bergdahl but doesn't envy the military judge who must decide his punishment after sentencing resumes Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. (AP Photo/Ted Richardson, File) Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, left, leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for walking off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Andrew Craft) Defense witness Audry Ellingson leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after testifying at sentencing hearing for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for walking off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Andrew Craft) Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, right, leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for walking off his remote post in Afghanistan in 2009. (AP Photo/The Fayetteville Observer, Andrew Craft) Defense witness Curtis Aberle leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after testifying at a sentencing hearing for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, has pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's former squad leader, Greg Leatherman leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after testifying at a sentencing hearing for Bergdahl on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) Terrence Russell, of Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after testifying for the defense at a sentencing hearing for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) Intelligence analyst Amber Dach leaves the Fort Bragg courtroom facility after testifying for the defense at a sentencing hearing for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) Army judge Col. Jeffery Nance arrives at the Fort Bragg courtroom facility for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017, on Fort Bragg, N.C. Bergdahl, who walked off his base in Afghanistan in 2009 and was held by the Taliban for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer via AP) ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Security officials say police have detained 283 suspected Islamic State group militants in Turkey in the past 11 days. A security directorate statement released on Thursday also said police seized 66 improvised explosive devices during the anti-IS operations conducted in 25 provinces across Turkey. The statement said that of the alleged IS militants caught, 96 are Turkish citizens while 187 others are foreign nationals. It didn't provide information on their nationalities. IS has been blamed for several deadly attacks in Turkey that killed more than 300 people since 2015. Along with combatting the extremist group's cells inside its borders, Turkey launched a military operation in northern Syria in August 2016 to clear a border zone of IS members after a deadly suicide attack targeted a wedding party. Advertisement After years of public controversy and debate, work is finally set to begin on a massive memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower. A groundbreaking ceremony Thursday marked the start of the project, which has been plagued for years by a bitter fight over the memorial's design and aesthetics. Speakers at the ceremony included members of the Eisenhower family, architect Frank Gehry and Kansas Senator Pat Roberts. Gehry, who designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was commissioned to design the memorial. Plans call for a series of columns and multiple statues depicting the 34th president and World War II military commander at various stages of his life and career. An enormous woven metal tapestry would depict the French beach at Normandy, where Eisenhower's troops launched the D-Day invasion. Eisenhower, who was elected president in 1952 and served two terms, died in 1969. A groundbreaking ceremony Thursday marked the start of the $150million development of the Eisenhower memorial A bronze scultpure will show Eisenhower as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II inspired by a famous photograph with the 101st Airborne Division before their jump into France The view of the memorial approaching from Independence Avenue and the National Air and Space Museum Plans call for a series of columns and multiple statues depicting the 34th president and World War II military commander at various stages of his life and career But Gehry's original plan was strongly opposed by three of Eisenhower's grandchildren and the organizing commission was hit by multiple resignations. The Eisenhower Memorial Commission announced last year that Ike's relatives now support the memorial designed by Gehry after negotiations 'yielded a compromise on several design elements.' Former Secretary of State James Baker was involved in those negotiations. The modified design will place more emphasis on Eisenhower's home state of Kansas and will represent the site of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, as it exists today. Gehry's vision would transform a four-acre space on Independence Avenue directly in front of the Lyndon B. Johnson Department of Education Building. Gehry's original plans called for multiple metal tapestries and a heavier emphasis on Eisenhower's childhood in Abilene, Kansas. Eisenhower was born in 1890 and served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. He also served as a military commander during World War II and supervised invasions of France and Germany A bronze statue will show Eisenhower as the 34th President of the United States At the center of the park the area will widen and visitors will be able to experience views of the tapestry as well as views of the Memorial elements representing Eisenhower's achievements THE LIFE OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER Eisenhower was born in 1890 and served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 He also served as a military commander during World War II and supervised invasions of France and Germany Eisenhower was President for two terms and died in 1969 He was a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent Army troops to enforce federal court orders that integrated schools The memorial will depict various stages of his life and career Advertisement At one point, Gehry threatened to take his name off the project if too many alterations were made. Eventually, after Gehry made his own changes to the proposal, the Eisenhower family announced their support last year, enabling the project to go forward. Despite the approval of the Eisenhower family, strong criticism of Gehry's vision remains. A group called the National Civic Art Society remains deeply opposed, saying the Gehry design is out of step with the tone of Washington and its monuments. The conservative magazine the National Review has also been a vocal critic; a September article in the magazine called Gehry's design 'a repellent monstrosity.' Organizers had originally hoped to have the memorial ready by June 2019, the month that includes the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The new deadline goal is May 8, 2020, the 75th anniversary of VE Day. The project is estimated to cost up to $150 million, the majority of that from federal funding. When the memorial is completed, Eisenhower will join an elite club. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt have prominent memorials in the nation's capital. Renderings have been uploaded to the Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial website. A Navy sailor and member of an honor guard stands in front of a photograph of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during the groundbreaking at the site of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, in Washington, Thursday, November 2 An aerial view Eisenhower Memorial rendering model. The project is expected to be completed in May 2020 A group called the National Civic Art Society remains deeply opposed, saying the Gehry design is out of step with the tone of Washington and its monuments WASHINGTON (AP) - The deadly New York truck attack prompted President Donald Trump to go looking for someone to blame beyond the man accused of doing it. He settled, at least for a time, on Sen. Chuck Schumer. He said the assailant legally immigrated to the U.S. thanks to a visa lottery program he labeled "a Chuck Schumer beauty." The New York lawmaker indeed supported the program but Trump could have just as convincingly named it after Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch or the many other Republican senators who also supported it when it became law under a Republican president, George H.W. Bush. A look at Trump's rhetoric Wednesday: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) TRUMP tweets: - "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based." -'''Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems' said Col. Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends" THE FACTS: Schumer, then in the House, now a senator, joined in bipartisan support for a program begun in 1990, when legal immigration was less contentious. He also proposed eliminating it four years ago, Republican lawmakers said in an unusual defense of the Democratic leader. The Homeland Security Department confirmed after the tweets that the accused assailant immigrated under the diversity lottery program. He came to the United States in 2010. The program is for people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. It provides up to 50,000 visas annually by lottery. Applicants must have a high school diploma or meet work experience requirements. The program was created as part of a bipartisan immigration bill signed into law by Bush in 1990. Schumer indeed proposed a program for "diversity immigrants" that year. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Schumer was among a group of eight Republican and Democratic senators who proposed eliminating the program four years ago as part of a broader bipartisan bill to overhaul U.S. immigration laws. Flake, one of the eight, said: "I know. I was there." Another of the eight, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, similarly defended Schumer, saying he "supported legislation to do away with the lottery system." Like Flake, Graham said "I was there. I know." He said the bill died in the House in face of opposition from Republicans. Hours after the president's tweets about Schumer's supposed culpability, the White House backed down in a fashion. Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the president "has not blamed Senator Schumer and doesn't feel that the senator is responsible for the attack." Trump's reference to Europe's problems belies the fact that Uzbekistan is in Asia, not Europe. However, the State Department categorizes Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics under Europe in its lottery program. ___ TRUMP at a Cabinet meeting: "Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it." THE FACTS: He's been against it, but Republicans weren't at the start. Back in 1990, after a broader immigration bill containing the visa program passed the House, the legislation sailed through the Senate on an 89-8 vote. Several Republicans who are still in the Senate backed the measure. Among them: McConnell, Grassley and Hatch. The lottery is extended to citizens of most countries, except about 20. Among the excluded countries are many that already have high rates of emigration to the U.S., such as Mexico, Canada and India. In the most recent figures, the State Department selected more than 125,000 people in 2015 for the lottery program, accepting the first 50,000 who applied for visas. Among them, citizens of Cameroon, Liberia, Congo, Iran and Nepal led the list, with about 5,000 visa slots each. Citizens of Uzbekistan also figured prominently in the lottery, with 4,368 selected. Those numbers don't necessarily reflect who actually came because the number was capped at the first 50,000 who applied for visas after winning the lottery. Chances of winning one of the 50,000 visas are slim. In 2012, for example, nearly 15 million people applied for themselves and family members. ___ TRUMP tweet on merit-based immigration: -"We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)." THE FACTS: The president has taken steps to push for a merit-based immigration system but many of those efforts are still under development. In August, Trump embraced legislation that would dramatically reduce legal immigration and shift the nation toward a system that prioritizes merit and skills over family ties. The president promoted the bill, which would eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, at a White House event with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. But the legislation has yet to gain any significant traction and is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The White House has signaled that it may seek some of these changes in coming negotiations with Democrats over a legislative solution that would extend protections first granted under former President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump is phasing out DACA, but has given Congress time to act before recipients' work permits begin to expire. A set of immigration principles laid out by the administration last month included calls for a "merit-based" immigration system that would end so-called "chain migration" by limiting family-based green cards to include spouses and minor children. But it remains unclear if Trump will insist on these changes in the DACA talks. ___ Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report. __ Find AP Fact Checks at http://apne.ws/2kbx8bd A police officer stands guard next to bicycles Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, that lie on a bike path at the crime scene after a motorist Tuesday drove onto the path near the World Trade Center memorial, striking and killing several people, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) WASHINGTON (AP) - In three exhaustive hearings this week, executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google acknowledged that their platforms were used by Russia to try and create division over such disparate issues as immigration, gun control and politics. House investigators released a trove of Facebook and Twitter ads that showed just how extraordinary the cyber intrusion was. The companies' admissions and disclosures over the last several months have given congressional investigators one of their first real wins in the Russia probes. The committees have been frustrated by delays - and overshadowed by special counsel Robert Mueller - since they launched probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election earlier this year. Initially dismissive of Russia's threat, all three companies have pledged improvements since lawmakers ramped up pressure and called them to testify. It's unclear what next steps Congress will take. The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, has co-sponsored legislation that would bring political ad rules from TV, radio and print to the internet. Warner calls it "the lightest touch possible," but many Republicans have been lukewarm. Some of the Facebook ads linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues, released by members of the U.S. House Intelligence committee, are photographed in Washington, on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017. The ads, dozens of which were disclosed for the first time, were released as representatives of leading social media companies faced criticism on Capitol Hill about why they hadn't done more to combat Russian interference on their sites and prevent foreign agents from meddling in last year's election. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick) California Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said he thinks such advertising regulations for social media are "inevitable," but noted that many of the fixes will come down to the companies' own social responsibility. "Congress isn't going to prescribe an algorithm, so there are limits to what we can feasibly do," Schiff said after his committee's hearing Wednesday. The few dozen ads are a sampling from more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads Facebook had turned over to the committee. Seen by millions of people, they encouraged street demonstrations against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and fostered support and opposition to Bernie Sanders, Muslims, gays, blacks and the icons of the Civil Rights movement. The ads underscore how foreign agents sought to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics. U.S. intelligence services say the Russian use of social media was part of a broad effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. Mueller is investigating whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to influence the election. Many of the ads also show careful targeting, with messages geared toward particular audiences. One ad, aimed at those with interests in civil rights and their leaders, highlights a man who claims to be Bill Clinton's illegitimate son. Another video parodying Trump was targeted at blacks who also are interested in BlackNews.com, HuffPost Politics or HuffPost Black Voices. In preparation for hearings this week, Facebook disclosed that content generated by a Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users. Company executives said that going forward they would verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about who's behind them. But that did not prevent hours of questioning during two days of hearings, with lawmakers expressing exasperation at the seeming inability to thwart foreign intervention. At one point, Sen. Al Franken put his head in his hands after he couldn't get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with foreign currency. Several ads touting Facebook pages called "Back the Badge," ''Being Patriotic," ''Blacktivist," ''South United" and "Woke Blacks" were labeled as being paid for in rubles using Qiwi, a Moscow-based payment provider that aims to serve "the new generation in Russia" and former Russian republics, according to the company's website. "Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed," the Minnesota Democrat said. "You can't put together rubles with a political ad and go like, 'Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad?' " Besides the ads released by lawmakers on the House intelligence committee, Democrats on the panel also released four tweets from RT, a Russian state-sponsored television network, and nearly 3,000 Twitter handles active during the final months of the election. Taken together, they show how actual news events and stories helped shape surreptitious Russian messaging. One advertisement cited a real October 2016 news story - about a gunman's battle with Boston police officers - then used it to attack Hillary Clinton as "the main hardliner against cops" and to promote Trump as the candidate who can "defend the police from terrorists." Three of the tweets referenced Clinton, including one that linked to an RT story about the release of a batch of hacked emails from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. Some 34,000 Trump supporters were shown an ad calling for Clinton's removal from the ballot, citing "dynastic succession of the Clinton family" as a breach of core principles laid out by the Founding Fathers. Clicking on it took Facebook users to a petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Though U.S. intelligence officials believe the social media effort was aimed at aiding Trump, there are other indications it was intended to sow general divisions. One ad promoted a Nov. 12 anti-Trump rally in New York City, titled "Not My President." Large anti-Trump rallies actually did take place around the country that day in major American cities. That doesn't mean the Russian accounts planned the events, but rather that they were piggybacking on existing protests and promoting them to like-minded people. ___ Associated Press writers Chad Day in Alexandria, Virginia, Ryan Nakashima in Menlo Park, California, Barbara Ortutay in New York and Matt O'Brien in Cambridge, Massachusetts contributed to this report. Facebook's General Counsel Colin Stretch speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election activity and technology, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Google's Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kent Walker, right, speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election activity and technology, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. At left is Twitter's Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Twitter's Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election activity and technology, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) NEW YORK (AP) - Inside Trump Tower, some knew Rick Gates as "the walking dead." He had somehow survived the ouster of his closest campaign ally, chairman Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump himself had ordered Gates off the campaign more than once. Yet Gates, Manafort's longtime deputy, maintained a significant role in Trump's presidential campaign. He went on to manage Trump's $107 million inauguration fund. And he would soon become a regular visitor to the White House. In this Oct. 30, 2017, photo, Rick Gates leaves federal court in Washington, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. Inside Trump Tower, some knew Gates as "the walking dead." He had somehow survived the ouster of his closest campaign ally, chairman Paul Manafort, and Donald Trump himself had ordered Gates off the campaign more than once. Yet Gates, Manafort's longtime deputy, maintained a significant role in Trump's presidential campaign. He went on to manage Trump's $107-million inauguration fund. And he would soon become a regular visitor to the White House.(AP Photo/Susan Walsh) Gates' resilience is now Trump's headache. Both Manafort and Gates were indicted on a dozen damaging charges related to their consulting work, but it's Gates, the lesser known of the two, who brings the scandal into the White House. Few people had more intimate knowledge of the Trump campaign's day-to-day operations, its work with outside groups and the Republican National Committee and its transition to governing. Gates, like Manafort, faces charges of conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, acting as unregistered foreign agents and making false statements. Both have pleaded not guilty. Gates, a 45-year-old father of four, ages 6 to 14, would likely receive at least 10 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors wrote this week. He is expected to appear in court Thursday. "He is not going to comment further until he has had a chance to review the lengthy indictment with his legal team," said Gates' spokesman Glenn Selig. He added, "This fight is just beginning." Gates, respected by some and hated by others in Trump's orbit, was known as a no-nonsense detail-oriented executive. The son of an Army officer, he was born in Fort Lee, Virginia and spent parts of his childhood on military bases in Kentucky, North Carolina and Germany before his father retired back in Virginia, according to Selig. Gates and Manafort first crossed paths roughly three decades ago, when Gates served as an intern for Manafort's political consulting firm. The men, separated by 23 years, grew much closer in the mid-2000s, when Gates joined another Manafort-led firm that did work across Eastern Europe and Africa, and served such clients as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Federal court filings suggest that Manafort and Gates made millions of dollars working together for much of the next decade. "I've known him literally since he was out of college," said Charlie Black, a former Manafort partner who hired Gates after his internship. "Very smart. Very competent. Very fine person. He's had some responsibilities in different jobs where he proved his capability and professionalism. Give him a mission and he'd get it done." Manafort and Gates' specific client list over the years is unclear. Black said the pair worked together during the presidential nominating conventions of George W. Bush and Bob Dole. Gates' public profile for the company led by his father, Gates Group International, states only that he worked on "several presidential campaigns and has participated in many international political campaigns in Europe and Africa." Manafort was the strong personality who built relationships with clients. Gates was the lower-key doer. And in the Trump campaign, Gates was the survivor. He flashed his skills last summer in the days after Manafort was forced out of the campaign amid damaging reports that he had secretly accepted millions of dollars from a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine. Trump ordered that Gates be forced out as well, according to someone in Trump's circle at the time. Informed several weeks later that Gates was still on staff, Trump erupted, saying he wanted Gates out immediately. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. It's unclear how Gates was able to hang on. Perplexed by Gates' continued presence on Trump Tower's 14th floor, the heartbeat of the campaign, some staffers jokingly began to refer to him as "the Walking Dead." He took up regular residence in an office reserved for the campaign's digital director, Brad Parscale, according to two campaign staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss campaign operations. Gates continued to have his detractors within the campaign and some raised flags about his financial management. That June, the campaign began an internal review of certain spending authorized by Gates. After a tense meeting in which a Trump Organization official questioned the spending, Trump turned over control of the campaign checkbook to the chief operating officer, Arizona Treasurer Jeff Dewit, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke anonymously to avoid antagonizing former colleagues. Despite the concerns, Gates would stay on with the campaign before moving to a position at the Republican National Committee for the final months of the campaign, a position that gave him continued access to the campaign's daily operations. He also played a leading role on the team that coordinated Trump's transition to the White House. Much of Gates' work came during a period under intense scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of investigators. Gates would later take on a senior role for Trump's inauguration that gave him day-to-day authority over a $107 million budget. Some spending decisions came under scrutiny there as well, including a pre-inaugural Lincoln Memorial concert, which came with a $25 million price tag, according to an Associated Press report. Gates maintained close contact with Trump's world this year even though he didn't ultimately go to work in the White House. After a brief stint at a pro-Trump super PAC, he served as a Washington consultant for one of Trump's closest allies, inauguration chairman Tom Barrack, for much of the last six months, according to Barrack spokesman Owen Blicksilver. He said that Gates' contract was terminated on Monday, the same day of his indictment. Gates' continued prominence in Trump's new political world came even as the White House began trying to distance itself from Manafort. The two men have been linked for more than a decade, with Gates serving as the elder Manafort's right hand man. Federal prosecutors allege that the pair worked together between 2006 and 2015 as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine and the pro-Russian leader, Victor Yanukovych. They allege that Gates and Manafort hid millions of dollars in compensation and laundered money through several domestic and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts. The indictment alleges that Manafort used his hidden wealth "to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States," spending millions of dollars on luxury goods and services and multi-million dollar properties in multiple states. There is no such allegation against Gates, although he lives in a Richmond, Virginia home valued at $1.8 million with his two sons and two daughters. Gates' level of wealth is unclear. A federal filing reveals that while Manafort listed the value of his assets as $136 million in May 2016, Gates listed his and his wife's net worth as high as $30 million on a credit application in February of 2016, but as low as $2.6 million on a loan application the next month. Court records show he also is charged with moving $3 million through offshore accounts. Black described Gates as a man of "high character." "What's happened is tragic. I hope those guys are innocent," he said. "But I don't know. I have no idea what they actually did." ___ Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report. CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Authorities say a 9-year-old trick-or-treater has been shot with a BB gun just outside of a West Virginia elementary school on Halloween. Charleston Police chief of detectives Lt. Tony Hazelett told The Charleston Gazette-Mail that the girl was walking with an adult and two other children as shots came from a nearby car Tuesday night. The shooting happened just outside Piedmont Elementary School, and authorities say four men fled the area in a white sedan. The girl, who was wearing a ballerina costume, suffered two wounds under her arm. Authorities say she was treated at a hospital. Hazelett says police are looking for surveillance videos and suspects. Further details have not been released. ___ Information from: The Charleston Gazette-Mail, http://wvgazettemail.com. MADRID (AP) - The Latest on the Spain-Catalonia political crisis (all times local): 8:45 p.m. The spokeswoman for the Catalan republican left party ERC has reacted to a judge's decision to jail politicians, including ERC militant and ousted Vice President Oriol Junqueras, by calling on "democrats" to "come out and prevent this from happening in the midst of the 21st century." Demonstrators gather outside the Catalonian Parliament to protest against the decision of a judge to jail ex-members of the Catalan government, in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. A Spanish judge has ordered nine ex-members of the government in Catalonia jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Banners translate as 'Freedom for Political Prisoners'. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez) "We won't give up, we won't fail, we will fight till the end, till the end," Marta Rovira said in emotional remarks that brought tears to her eyes while speaking to reporters. "Because we have all the right in the world to live in a country with more justice, dignity and freedom." Marta Pascal, secretary general of ousted president Carles Puigdemont's PDeCAT party, criticized the judge's decision to jail a democratically chosen government "just because they wanted to offer a different future to their citizens." She appealed for Catalans to respond in a "serene, tranquil, peaceful but forthright way, to tell the Spanish government that it's shameful to intervene in our institutions and our government." ___ 8:10 p.m. The ousted president of Catalonia has reacted to the jailing of nine members of his former Cabinet, posting on Twitter that "the legitimate government of Catalonia has been jailed for its ideas." Carles Puigdemont, the leader of the separatist government that Spanish authorities removed from office last week, was in Belgium on Thursday when a judge in Madrid jailed his colleagues. He and four regional ministers ignored a summons to appear in court for questioning in a rebellion investigation stemming from Catalonia's declaration of independence. The nine officials who were jailed complied. One of the nine has been granted bail, but the payment has not been posted. Puigdemont tweeted the government's "furious clamor" had sent the officials to jail. "The serene clamor of the Catalans is of freedom," he wrote, posting a photo of protesters in Barcelona. ___ 7:40 p.m. Thousands of protesters are taking to the streets of Catalan towns to protest the jailing of nine former members of the regional government following an appearance at Spain's National Court for questioning in a probe over Catalonia's push for independence. Eight of the nine were jailed without possibility of bail while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement following the regional parliament's declaration of secession from Spain last week. Bail of 50,000 euros was set for the ninth. Protests were called for Thursday evening, and thousands were gathering in Catalan towns including Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona, footage from local media showed. The jailed politicians called through their lawyers and some through social media for all protests to be peaceful and for their supporters to avoid any show of violence. Mass protests in favor of independence in Catalonia have so far been peaceful. ___ 7:30 p.m. Hours after a judge sent eight former Catalan Cabinet members to jail without bail and ordered another to be held pending a bail payment, the suspects have been taken from a Madrid court in police vans with sirens wailing. The seven men and two women were reportedly being distributed among prisons in the Madrid area. Investigative Magistrate Carmen Lamela's ruling Thursday granted the request of prosecutors after the nine were questioned at the National Court in Madrid. Under Spain's legal system, investigating judges can order the detention of suspects while a comprehensive probe, sometimes taking months, determines if charges should be brought. The court's decision to jail most of the suspects, instead of allowing them bail, sparked outrage among Catalan independence supporters, who are planning street protests. ___ 6:15 p.m. A lawyer for ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont says his client will not be seeking asylum in Belgium and intends to cooperate with Belgian police and judicial authorities, if necessary. A Spanish prosecutor asked a judge in Madrid on Thursday to issue an international arrest warrant for Puigdemont, who flew to Brussels earlier this week after the Spanish government removed him and his 13-member Cabinet from office. His Belgian lawyer, Paul Bekaert, told The Associated Press that the idea of asking for asylum in Belgium "is now off the table." Bekaert said he was not aware of a European arrest warrant having been issued for his client, but said Puigdemont would turn himself in to Belgian authorities if one is. He said: "We will put in place everything we can in order to collaborate with the Belgian police. Puigdemont and four of his former ministers did not comply with a summons ordering them to appear in Spain's National Court on Thursday for questioning. They and nine other ex-members of the regional government are being investigated on potential charges of rebelling, sedition and embezzlement over efforts to break the region away from Spain. ___ 5:45 p.m. Lawyers for nine former members of the Catalan regional government ordered jailed say the defendants are serene and want the people of Catalonia to stay calm. Defense lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said the Spanish National Court judge's decision on Thursday "lacked justification" and was "disproportionate." Alonso-Cuevillas is representing former regional Vice President Oriol Junqueras and four other ousted members of the Catalan Cabinet. Van den Andreu, the lawyer defending other ex-members of the regional government, said whether his clients were jailed "was already predetermined" before they appeared in court for questioning. Both lawyers said they would appeal the judge's order. The nine are among 20 Catalan politicians who are being investigated by Spanish courts for possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement stemming from Catalonia's declaration of independence. ___ 4:55 p.m. A Spanish judge has ordered nine ex-members of the government in Catalonia jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Investigative magistrate Carmen Lamela issued the ruling on Thursday at the request of prosecutors who are pursuing a criminal case stemming from the declaration of secession the Parliament of Catalonia made Friday. The judge set bail for one of the nine former members of the Catalan Cabinet, saying he would be freed if he pays bail of 50,000 euros. Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear for questioning Thursday. The Spanish government invoked constitutional authority last week to take over running Catalonia following the region's declaration of independence. Madrid dismissed the Catalan Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for Dec. 21. ___ 2:50 p.m. A Spanish prosecutor has asked a National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant for Catalonia's ousted regional president and four of his ex-ministers. The prosecutor made the petition to investigative magistrate Carmen Lamela on Thursday after ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont failed to appear in the Madrid court for questioning in a rebellion probe following the Catalan parliament's declaration of independence from Spain Oct. 27. Puigdemont and several of his ministers went to Brussels after the secession declaration and said they wouldn't heed the summons. Earlier, the judge questioned nine other Catalan ex-ministers and prosecutors asked for eight to be jailed unconditionally and one given the chance to pay bail. ___ 1:50 p.m. Spain's central bank is warning of the economic costs of the Catalan political crisis, which it says could damage the country's growth. The Bank of Spain assesses the consequences of two possible scenarios. The first is a temporary period of uncertainty in the fourth quarter of 2017, which it predicts could shave 0.3 percentage points off forecast growth through the end of 2019. The second scenario is a "severe and prolonged" crisis, which would bring an accumulated decrease of 2.5 percentage points in Spanish GDP between the end of 2017 and 2019. That, the bank says, could spell a recession for the Catalan economy. The bank says in a technical report published Thursday that the forecasts are based on hypothetical simulations and should be treated with caution. Even so, it says the conclusions demonstrate the "significant risks and economic costs" resulting from Catalonia's independence bid. The Spanish government last month maintained its forecast for growth in 2017 at 3.1 percent, but revised its estimate for 2018 from 2.6 percent to 2.3 percent because of the crisis. ___ 1:20 p.m. Thousands of people are rallying outside the Catalan presidential palace in Barcelona in a show of support for ousted Catalan officials appearing in court in Madrid. The ex-officials are being questioned as part of an investigation into possible rebellion charges for having declared the region's independence from Spain. The crowd in Barcelona clapped, chanted slogans in favor of independence, and carried Catalan flags. Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Carles Puigdemont, have been summoned to court after the chief prosecutor demanded they be charged with rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the Catalan parliament's declaration of secession Oct. 27. Puigdemont and four of his former ministers didn't appear, after arriving in Belgium earlier this week. ___ 12:30 p.m. Spanish prosecutors have asked the National Court to jail nine ex-members of the sacked Catalan government but have requested the possibility of bail for one of them. The prosecutor's request came after the nine ex-ministers were quizzed at the National Court on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. The case stems from the Catalan parliament's declaration of the region's independence from Spain on Oct. 27. The court said the prosecutor proposed eight should be jailed immediately and that a ninth be allowed stay free if he pays bail of 50,000 euros. The eight include former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras. The judge has yet to decide on the request. Sacked Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and four other ex-Cabinet members are in Belgium and ignored court summonses to appear Thursday. --A previous version of this item has been corrected to show that prosecutors are asking for jail for all nine but bail possibility for one. ___ 10:50 a.m. Spain's Supreme Court has suspended until next week the questioning of six Catalan lawmakers who are under investigation for rebellion following the region's declaration of independence. The six, including regional parliament speaker and prominent pro-independence activist Carme Forcadell, and 14 ousted Catalan government ministers, including fired Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, had been summoned by two Madrid courts Thursday and face possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. The Supreme Court said the hearing of the six regional parliament board members was postponed until Nov. 9 following a request by their lawyers. The hearing of nine of Puigdemont's ousted Cabinet members continued at the nearby National Court. Puigdemont and four ex-ministers are in Brussels and have ignored the summonses. ___ 9:40 a.m. Ousted Catalan parliament speaker and prominent pro-independence activist Carme Forcadell has arrived at Spain's Supreme Court for questioning in a rebellion investigation. Forcadell is one of 20 former Catalan lawmakers that have been summoned by two courts following the regional parliament's declaration of independence Oct. 27. Forcadell is a former leader of the National Catalan Assembly, which has long been the driving civic group force behind the region's independence drive. Five of the 20, including sacked regional President Carles Puigdemont, traveled to Brussels following the declaration and are refusing to appear. This will likely trigger warrants for their arrest and petitions for their extradition. ___ 8:30 a.m. Ousted Catalan government members and lawmakers are beginning to appear before Spanish courts in Madrid to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence. Twenty regional politicians, including sacked regional government president Carles Puigdemont, were called to appear Thursday after the chief prosecutor demanded charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement be pressed. Puigdemont, who is in Belgium with four of his ex-Cabinet members, said he will ignore the summons, which could trigger a warrant for his arrest and an extradition petition. The group summoned includes his 13-member former Cabinet and six parliamentary board members. Puigdemont's No. 2, Oriol Junqueras, was the first to arrive at the National Court. The crimes being probed are punishable with up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. People hold up "esteladas", or Catalonia independence flag, outside the National Court in Madrid, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. A Spanish judge has ordered nine ex-members of the government in Catalonia jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) Spanish national police officers cordon off an area as vans of the Civil Guard leave the National Court in Madrid, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. The defense lawyers of nine former members of the Catalan regional government ordered jailed by a Spanish court says the defendants are "serene" and that they asked their lawyers to convey a call for calm to the people of Catalonia, and for any protests over the jailings to happen "without violence of any type." (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) An Independence flag is waved during a demonstration outside the regional presidential palace in Sant Jaume Square in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Thousands of people are rallying outside the Catalan presidential palace in Barcelona in a show of support for ousted Catalan cabinet members and lawmakers appearing in court in Madrid for questioning as part of an investigation into possible rebellion charges for having declared the region's independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez) Thousands of people rally outside the regional presidential palace in Sant Jaume Square to show their support for those appearing in court, in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Spain's National Court in Madrid was questioning ousted Catalan government members Thursday in an investigation into possible rebellion charges for having declared the region's independence, while a parallel Supreme Court session for six Catalan lawmakers was suspended for a week. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez) A man holds up a Spanish flag outside the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Ousted Catalan government members and lawmakers began arriving at two Spanish courts in Madrid on Thursday to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence. (AP Photo/Paul White) Ex-speaker of the Catalonia parliament Carme Forcadell arrives at the Spain's Supreme Court in Madrid, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Ousted Catalan government members and lawmakers began arriving at two Spanish courts in Madrid on Thursday to face possible charges of rebellion for having declared the region's independence. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco) Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras, center, arrives at the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras arrives at the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras, right, arrives at the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras arrives at the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Police officers check a manhole outside the national court in Madrid, Spain, early morning Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Fired Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras, right, arrives at the national court in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Spanish police vans arrive at the national court in Madrid, Spain, early morning Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Some of the 14-member ousted Catalan cabinet were expected to appear before a judge in Madrid on Thursday for questioning as part of a rebellion probe for pushing ahead with a declaration of independence from Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White) Former Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras arrives at the National Court for questioning by a National Court judge investigating possible rebellion charges, in Madrid, Spain, Thursday Nov. 2, 2017. A National Court judge has ordered nine ex-members of the sacked Catalan government to jail including Junqueras and set bail for one after quizzing them on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. (AP Photo/Paul White) COLUMBUS, Miss. (AP) - Authorities say a Mississippi teenager who was playing Russian Roulette has been shot and taken to a hospital in critical condition. Columbus police spokesman Joe Dillion told The Clarion-Ledger that responding officers found a 17-year-old boy in a bedroom with an apparent gunshot wound to the head on Tuesday. Three other males in the room told officers the teenager was discussing Russian Roulette as he took out a revolver and removed the bullets. Authorities say he put a bullet in the chamber, held the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't discharge. He later pulled the trigger for a second time and the weapon fired. A retaliation shooting happened several hours after the teenager was shot. No one was injured in that shooting. ___ Information from: The Clarion-Ledger, http://www.clarionledger.com Fueled by a mix of misguided cultural pressures and misaligned government laws and incentives, the path to educational and economic success has become increasingly cookie-cutter, consisting of a strict step-ladder from high school graduation to four-year college education. Rather than approaching each individual as a creative person with unique gifts and educational aspirations not to mention unique advantages and disadvantages our culture and policymaking continues to assume that one vocational or educational track ought to apply to all. For Bob Smith, founder of Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School, a trade school seeking to empower future farriers, resisting that path is beginning to prove costly. Early this year, the state of California threatened to shut the school down if Smith continues to accept a certain kind of student: namely, those who havent completed their high school education. The State of California requires that every student that I accept in my program either possess a high school diploma, a GED, or they pass a written exam thats been approved by the U.S. Department of Education, says Smith. You dont have to know algebra to be able to shoe a horse. You dont have to be able to read a novel to be able to shoe a horse. You dont have to be able to write a novel to shoe a horse. You dont have to possess any kind of degree in mathematics or English to shoe a horse. Horses dont speak English. Horses dont do math. Over 2,000 students have gone through Smiths program, and prior to the law, many had no high school diploma or GED. According to Smith, many, many, many of those students did exceptionally well, and theyre still shoeing horses today. But alas, when ranch-hand Esteban Narez recently applied for the schools eight-week course, hoping to improve his skills with horses while gaining a more stable profession, Smith was forced to deny Narezs application. If you havent finished high school, youre not even allowed to invest in yourself, Smith explains. And thats insane. In response, Smith and Narez are now suing the state for effectively criminalizing trade schools who seek an alternate path to education and worker empowerment. Indeed, the people who are most hurt by these laws are already economically and educationally disadvantaged by definition. A lot of these young folks who are coming to the school, theyre looking to better their lives because they have really low-end jobs, Smith explains. In order to support themselves and their families, theyre seven days a week, theyre working full time, and theyre hardly making it. Due to those disadvantages and constraints, completing high school is just another barrier to entry. Instead of seeking ways to connect these workers to the economy, the government is seeking ways to force them into the cookie-cutter mold, diminishing their opportunities by increasing their obstacles. Government is [Estebans] biggest obstacle to success, Smith says, and not because the government is protecting him, but they just arbitrarily decided that all schools are not allowed to take these kids unless they meet their requirements, regardless of what the training is. I cant believe that the State of California makes the decision that somebody is not worthy of investing in their own selves that they pick winners and losers based on an arbitrary of whos finished high school. We have plenty to do to fix that predicament and expand our economic imaginations, whether via policy, entrepreneurship, or a deeper social and spiritual shift in our attitudes and expectations when it comes to work, education, and vocation. One of the primary challenges of economic change is orienting ones goals, hopes, and dreams within the economic habitat of human needs. The disconnect we see here and elsewhere offers plenty of disorder when it comes to how we approach or view certain jobs or vocations, but it also indicates another dimension of disorder in how we approach the self in relation to God and man. Our culture already does enough to unjustly denigrate the trades and the creative capacity of those who diverge from the predominant paths to work and education. We dont need the government to join in on the party. Image: Used with permission from Institute for Justice DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syria's state TV says that Israeli warplanes launched an attack in central Syria overnight and that Syrian air defenses hit back. The TV report says that the attack late on Wednesday targeted the Hissya area in the countryside around the central city of Homs Thursday's report gave no further details. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, says loud explosions were heard south of Homs, from the location of a Syrian or a Hezbollah military base that is believed to manufacture rockets. The Observatory attributed the explosions to an Israeli airstrike. Homs is Syria's third-largest city. Hezbollah sees the area south of Homs as within its sphere of interest because it is close to the Lebanese border. There was no immediate comment from Israel. LONDON (AP) - British police are seeking the extradition from Libya of the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber on murder charges stemming from the attack. Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber, is in custody in Libya. Sky News said Thursday that the armed group holding him indicated it would cooperate with the request if the Libyan attorney general approved it. Police said Wednesday night that an extradition request was given to Libyan authorities earlier Wednesday. FILE - This is a Tuesday May 23, 2017 file photo of a couple as they embrace under a billboard in Manchester in England Tuesday May 23, 2017, the day after the suicide attack at an Ariana Grande concert that left more than 20 people dead. British police on Thursday Nov. 2, 2017 said that they are seeking the extradition of the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber on murder charges stemming from the attack. Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber, is in custody in Libya (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth/File) Hashem Abedi is the brother of Salman Abedi, who set off the bomb at the end of an Ariana Grande concert on May 22 that left 22 dead and hundreds wounded. Salman Abedi blew himself up in the attack. Police say the warrant for Hashem Abedi relates to the murder of 22 people and the attempted murder of others. Investigators have said they didn't believe there was a large group involved in the attack but that they believed others were involved in the planning. They named Hashem Abedi as a suspect. The warrant for his arrest was issued by a Westminster Magistrates' Court judge and approved by the home secretary. LONDON (AP) - Energy company Shell says its earnings rose more than expected in the third quarter as it benefited from higher market prices and an expansion into gas production. Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday that its net income jumped to $4.1 billion from $1.4 billion a year earlier. The figure is above analyst forecasts for $3.7 billion. Earnings calculated on a current cost of supplies basis, an industry-favored measure, rose to $4.1 billion from $2.8 billion. Shell has tried to boost its production of natural gas, a less polluting form of fossil fuel than crude oil, through the acquisition last year of BG Group. The results reflected that, with earnings up 40 percent in natural gas. CEO Ben Van Beurden said the figures are "further evidence of Shell's growing momentum." BERLIN (AP) - A 225-meter (738-foot) cargo ship was towed off a sandbank in the North Sea on Thursday more than three days after it got stranded during a storm, Germany's maritime rescue center said. The stranding of the Panama-flagged bulk carrier Glory Amsterdam off the island of Langeoog had caused concern because the ship was carrying 1,800 tons of fuel oil and 140 tons of diesel, but authorities said it appeared that no hazardous substances had leaked. The ship drifted onto the sandbank off the island in high winds on Sunday, with 22 crew members on board. Rescuers pumped 16,000 tons of ballast water out of the vessel and then used two tugboats with 1,500-meter (4,920-foot) tow lines to pull it free early Thursday. FILE - This Oct. 30, 2017 file photo shows the Panama-flagged bulk carrier Glory Amsterdam which ran aground off the shore of the German North Sea island of Langeoog, Germany's maritime rescue center says Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017 the 225-meter (738-foot) cargo ship has been towed off a sandbank in the North Sea more than three days after it got stranded in a storm. (Mohssen Assanimoghaddam/dpa via AP) Rescue experts who went aboard found no damage to the ship. The Glory Amsterdam was being towed to the port of Wilhelmshaven. BEIJING (AP) - Responding to remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump, a Chinese spokeswoman on Thursday said the country never intentionally sought a trade surplus with the United States and that some frictions are inevitable. Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit with China was "through the roof," calling it "so big and bad that it's embarrassing saying what the number is." Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China hopes to work out differences through negotiations to "ensure the sound and steady growth of bilateral trade and economic ties." "We have never intentionally pursued a trade surplus. The current pattern of China's trade cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., is determined by the market," Hua told reporters at a daily briefing. "In the process of rapid development of bilateral trade and economic relations, it is inevitable for us to encounter some frictions and differences." Trump arrives in Beijing on Tuesday for a visit as part of a 10-day swing through Asia. Trade and market access for U.S. products are expected to be high on the agenda. The U.S. ran up a $347 billion trade deficit with China last year. That was a decrease of 5.5 percent after hitting an all-time high of $367.2 billion in 2015, although it is still far and away the largest the U.S. has with any country. In an apparent nod to protocol, Trump on Wednesday appeared to shy away from direct confrontation over the issue, saying, "I don't want to embarrass anybody four days before I land in China, but it's horrible." NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Distraught Kenyan schoolgirls huddled against an alleyway wall, trapped between stone-throwing protesters and police wielding clubs and firing tear gas in an outbreak of violence following Kenya's disputed election that left national divisions more entrenched. The girls scrambled to safety in a scene that captured the anguish of a flawed democracy facing protracted pressures unless Kenya's rival camps can somehow accommodate. The question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society of this leading East African nation will respond is a bellwether for the continent, where democracy evolves in some places and authoritarianism takes root in others. "This is not just about Kenya," said Murithi Mutiga, a Nairobi-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. "It's about the idea of moving toward greater and greater political competition and freedom and against those that say, 'Let's privilege economic development and forget political liberalism for now.'" FILE - In this Monday, Oct. 30, 2017 file photo, school students run for safety between police and protestors during clashes in the Kawangware suburb of Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Will Swanson, File) Kenya is in a lull after a bruising election cycle in which an Aug. 8 vote was nullified by the Supreme Court because of flaws, and an Oct. 26 repeat vote was boycotted by opposition leader Raila Odinga. President Uhuru Kenyatta was declared the winner both times. While most of the country of 45 million was calm, some areas were hit by ethnic tensions, violent protests, sporadic arson and looting and deadly police gunfire during clashes. Police put the death toll at 19; human rights groups say it is more than 70. "We are tired of suffering in Kenya," a woman nicknamed Mama Wetu ("Our Mother" in Swahili) said after the clash Monday that ensnared the schoolgirls in Kawangware, a Nairobi slum of shacks and dirt paths. At one point, protesters positioned themselves behind some of the girls, using them as a shield, witnesses said. Such a scene gives the impression that Kenya is turning on itself, undermining its status as a regional economic hub, a popular tourist destination and an oasis of stability in the conflict-prone Horn of Africa region. Yet, despite the ethnic allegiances and patronage systems that handcuff Kenyan democracy, the country has avoided a repeat of the ethnic-fueled violence after the 2007 election that killed more than 1,000 people. That is partly thanks to a 2010 constitution whose human rights provisions are among the most progressive in the world, instilling some faith among Kenyans that institutions could peacefully resolve grievances. The Supreme Court, the constitution's guardian, scrapped the August presidential election after a petition from Odinga, and is likely to again consider complaints about alleged irregularities in last week's election. Yet the Oct. 24 shooting of the police driver of a Supreme Court judge, and the failure of the court to muster a quorum the next day to consider a petition to postpone the Oct. 26 election, suggest possible efforts to intimidate the judiciary so recently seen as willing to assert its independence from political pressure. The nullification of Kenya's August vote was the first time a court in Africa had overturned a presidential election. The effects are showing up elsewhere on the continent. On Wednesday, Liberia's Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to preparations for a runoff presidential election next week as it awaits a hearing on alleged voting irregularities. The possibility that Kenya's Supreme Court could nullify the second presidential election this year and order a third vote threatens a "Kafkaesque situation where we have elections for years and years," said Martin Kimani, a presidential envoy and head of a government task force on counter-terrorism. "We are testing our institutions" and learning about their strengths and weaknesses, Kimani said. One commentator wrote in The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper, that the constitution does not "cushion us against the tyranny" of large ethnic groups that form alliances, lord it over smaller groups and share the spoils of power with friends, family and other supporters. "In Kenya, it is a case of winner-takes-it-all," wrote Mohamed Guleid, a former county deputy governor in the opposition. He said the situation "can neither be resolved by an election nor by the courts, but by leaders who go beyond political affiliations to form an inclusive government." For now, neither side is reaching out to the other. The 56-year-old president, who by law cannot run for a third term, has denounced the "politics of darkness" in a slap at Odinga. The 72-year-old opposition leader has promised peaceful protests and wants a new election. Kenyatta, an ethnic Kikuyu, and Odinga, a Luo, also faced off in a disputed 2013 election. Their fathers were political allies and then rivals after Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963. "There's very little ideological daylight between them," said Mutiga, the International Crisis Group analyst. Once they exit the political scene, he said, Kenya's tensions might "dial down a bit." ___ Follow Christopher Torchia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/torchiachris FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017 file photo, opposition supporters throw stones flee as police fire tear gas during clashes in the Kawangware slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) FILE - In this Monday, Oct. 30, 2017 file photo, a Kenyan police officer carries a student to safety during clashes between protestors and police in the Kawangware suburb of Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Will Swanson, File) FILE - In this Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017 file photo, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta casts his vote in his hometown of Gatundu, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) FILE - In this Monday, Oct. 23, 2017 file photo, supporters of Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta ride around and cheer as they await his arrival as part of a campaign tour, in Githurai on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017 file photo, opposition supporters attempt to break the door of a shop with rocks in order to loot it, in the slum of Kawangware in Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic, File) FILE - In this Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017 file photo, opposition leader Raila Odinga greets his supporters after attending a church service in the slum of Kawangware in Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya's bruising election drama highlights challenges to a flawed democracy that faces protracted pressures unless rival camps can accommodate, while the question of how the democratic institutions and relatively open society will respond is a bellwether for the continent. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic, File) ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Authorities say they've arrested a Florida man at Orlando International Airport who they believe may have planned to shoot his wife. WFTV reports police officers in Atlanta tipped Orlando police that 49-year-old William Schultz was possibly planning to shoot his wife. The officer recognized Schultz Tuesday evening from a picture he had seen earlier that day. An arrest report says Schultz asked the officer about a parking garage and then walked away. The officer ordered him to stop. Schultz's wife was traveling out of state and told law enforcement he'd texted her threatening messages, adding that he would be at the airport when she landed. Police said she canceled her flight out of fear. Her daughter called authorities. He's charged with aggravated stalking with a firearm. Jail records don't list a lawyer. COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - A ship equipped with a sturdy crane has arrived in Arctic Norway and will attempt to raise a Russian helicopter that crashed off the Svalbard archipelago with eight people onboard. William J. Bertheussen of Norway's Accident Investigation Board said it was unclear when the Maersk Forza could raise the chopper. He said several factors including weather and darkness could hamper the operation. At this time of the year, it is dark for nearly 20 hours on Svalbard. So far, only one body has been recovered from the Mi-8 helicopter's wreckage, located at a depth of nearly 210 meters (about 685 feet.) The helicopter with five crew members and three members from Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute went down Thursday near the settlement of Barentsburg. CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - Authorities say a 19-year-old man has been charged after police say he shot a New Jersey officer in the thigh at point-blank range. Camden County police say the officer approached three people who were acting suspiciously just after 10 p.m. Wednesday in Camden when one ran away. Police Chief Scott Thomson says the officer caught the suspect, who pulled out a gun and fired during a struggle. The Camden County prosecutor's office said Lindenwold resident Delronn Mahan was charged Thursday with attempted murder, aggravated assault, weapons charges and resisting arrest. It wasn't immediately known if he had an attorney to comment on his behalf. Mahan was apprehended, and fellow officers applied a tourniquet to the wounded officer's leg. He was listed in stable condition. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the police chief's name is Scott Thomson, not Thompson. NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - The European Court of Human Rights has blocked Cypriot authorities from extraditing an Egyptian hijacker to his homeland until it can examine the case, the Cyprus Justice Ministry and the hijacker's lawyer said Thursday. Lawyer Nicoletta Charalambidou told The Associated Press that the European court stayed the extradition of Seif Eddin Mustafa so it could rule on whether doing so would violate one of its articles prohibiting the return of individuals to countries where they may face torture or inhuman treatment. Charalambidou had applied to the ECHR for the temporary halt to Mustafa's extradition. FILE - In this Tuesday, March 29, 2016 file photo, a pilot leaves the hijacked aircraft of Egyptair at Larnaca airport. Cyprus' Supreme Court on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, has rejected an Egyptian hijacker's appeal against his extradition, ruling that there are no legal reasons for the man not to return to his homeland to face justice. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias, File) The Justice Ministry said in a statement that it has issued instructions for the immediate suspension of extradition procedures until the ECHR comes down with its ruling. The ECHR decision came a few hours after Cyprus' Supreme Court rejected Mustafa's appeal against his extradition, ruling that there are no legal reasons for the man not to return to his homeland to face justice. Mustafa, 60, hijacked a domestic EgyptAir flight in March 2016 using a fake suicide belt and diverted it to Cyprus. A six-hour standoff with Cypriot authorities on the tarmac of Cyprus' Larnaca airport ended peacefully after all 72 passengers and crew were released and Mustafa was arrested. In a unanimous decision, the five-judge Cypriot panel upheld a lower court ruling which turned down Mustafa's defense that he may be tortured by Egyptian authorities or be subjected to an unfair trial if he's returned. The court in its 29-page ruling also dismissed the argument that Mustafa can't be extradited because his political asylum claim is still pending. Mustafa said he meant no harm to anyone, and that he was trying to expose what he called the "fascist regime" of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and to help secure the release of 63 female dissidents being held in Egyptian prisons. He also accused Egyptian authorities of torturing and killing Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni whom he claimed he saw in an Egyptian prison. Prosecutors said Mustafa admitted in a written statement to police that he only carried out the hijacking in order to reunite with his Cypriot family. Mustafa dismissed the written statement as "purposeful misinformation" by the Cypriot and Egyptian governments put out to discredit him. Cyprus and Egypt have a 1996 extradition treaty. FILE - In this Wednesday, March 30, 2016 file photo, Seif Eddin Mustafa flash the victory sign from inside a police car after leaving court for a remand hearing as authorities investigate him on charges including hijacking, illegal possession of explosives and abduction in the Cypriot coastal town of Larnaca. Cyprus' Supreme Court on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, has rejected an Egyptian hijacker's appeal against his extradition, ruling that there are no legal reasons for the man not to return to his homeland to face justice. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias, File) The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) at the University of California Berkeley is a collaborative partner in the Biodiversity Heritage Library Field Notes Project. The MVZ has committed to digitizing 1,500 of its historic field notes as part of this collaborative undertaking. The MVZs storied field notebook collection was a concept developed at the founding of the museum by Joseph Grinnell, the MVZs founding director. From its earliest moments, Grinnell and the museums benefactress Annie Alexander discussed methods and curatorial best practices for the specimen collections and research. These ideas and principles around the organization of data recorded around collecting events evolved into Grinnells methodology for recording field notes. Early letters between Alexander and Grinnell in the later months of 1907 document their thoughtfulness, excitement, and collegial concern for establishing a research museum which would document the land fauna in the Western United States. Grinnell recognized that field notes would be the lasting primary source material that would document the biodiversity of the rapidly changing environment of the west in the early 20th century and in the future. In 1910 Grinnell famously wrote: At this point I wish to emphasize what I believe will ultimately prove to be the greatest value of our museum. This value will not, however, be realized until the lapse of many years, possibly a century, assuming that our material is safely preserved. And this is that the student of the future will have access to the original record of faunal conditions in California and the west, wherever we now work. [1] The MVZs digitized field note book collection is a testament to Grinnells enduring legacy. From Grinnell himself, to the life works of Wilbur Mayhew, it is impossible to cover all of the amazing personalities represented but the following selections highlight some of my favorite individuals and collecting efforts from the first 300 books digitized. Arctic Research Laboratory Frank A. Pitelka was a UC Berkeley Professor and MVZ Curator of Birds whose prolific career included collaborative research projects at the Arctic Research Laboratory from 1955-1973. Along with his students, Prof. Pitelkas Barrow, Alaska field notes record distributional data, life histories and behavioral observations of shorebirds, brown lemmings, and other groups across the Alaskan North Slope Borough. Thomas Custer, Barrow Alaska, circa 1970. The MVZ Archives has received much interest around field notes from this area and are excited to be able to provide access to this important record of the biodiversity of the Barrow region. Resurvey efforts in Alaska will be greatly supported by the field notes of Richard T. Holmes and the other Pitelka students who participated in the Arctic Research Laboratory. JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Police in eastern Indonesia killed two suspected militants and arrested nine others believed to have been involved in the shooting of two law enforcement officers who had just taken their children to school, an official said Thursday. Police spokesman Setyo Warsito said the counterterrorism squad fatally shot Muhammad Amir and another man identified only as Yaman on Monday in Bima, a hilly district in East Nusa Tenggara province. He said the nine others were arrested in raids in the same area on Wednesday. He said Amir is believed to have shot and wounded a policeman on Sept. 11 outside a school in Bima where he had just dropped off his child, and that Yaman allegedly drove the motorbike on which Amir was riding. Warsito said one of the arrested men is believed to have wounded another police officer who had just delivered his child to another school. Warsito said the men are members of militant group named Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid, a splinter cell of the Southeast Asian network Jemaah Islamiyah. Police seized two handmade guns and ammunitions from them. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has been battling extremism since 2002, when militants linked to Jemaah Islamiyah began attacking Western nightclubs, restaurants and embassies. Attacks at nightclubs on the tourist island of Bali in 2002 killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. However, in recent years, smaller and less deadly strikes have targeted government authorities, mainly police and anti-terrorism forces which have led a crackdown in which hundreds of suspected militants have been jailed or killed. The arrests came a week after police arrested nine suspected militants on the islands of Sulawesi, Sumatra and Java, including an alleged bomb maker who had eluded capture for five years over a failed attempt to kill South Sulawesi's governor. BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Romania's president on Thursday accused the leftist government of mishandling the economy, slamming it for overspending and failing to attract investment. President Klaus Iohannis said that current annual economic growth of more than 5 percent was "not sustainable," as it was based on spending. He noted foreign and local investment had fallen by 20 percent in the last year. Iohannis said revenue from taxes had fallen to the equivalent of one fourth of GDP, less than the 35 percent forecast for the year. FILE - In this, Thursday, June 29, 2017, file picture Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose, left, poses with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis after he and his government were sworn in during a ceremony at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace, in Bucharest, Romania. Romania's president on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, accused the leftist government of mishandling the economy, slamming it for overspending and failing to attract investment. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) "The government is behaving like a person who earns more every month, but borrows more from the banks, leaving (its) debts to be paid by children and grandchildren," he said. Referring to government proposals to hike social welfare taxes for employees, Iohannis said there were concerns "in the business environment, in trade unions and among Romanians," that some wages would fall when the measure comes into effect next year. Thousands have demonstrated against the plans, which the government insists will not lead to wage cuts. Romania's largest trade union CNSLR-Fratia which represents 500,000 workers in the health, transport, communications and forestry sectors, threatened to stage a strike to protest the measures, which it said would lead to lower salaries and job losses. Prime Minister Mihai Tudose reiterated the government's position saying the measures would simplify the tax-paying process. Iohannis is a critic of the leftist government. Before becoming president in 2014, he was chairman of the center-right Liberal Party. THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A former member of a Marxist group that seized control of Ethiopia in the 1970s in a bloody purge known as the Red Terror apologized Thursday for the regime's many crimes but denied personal responsibility. In a dramatic confrontation with survivors in a Dutch courtroom, 63-year-old Eshetu Alemu accepted blame for the crimes of the Marxist rulers known as the Dergue nearly 40 years ago but insisted he did not carry out the crimes for which Dutch prosecutors hold him responsible. "I would apologize on my knees to these victims and, through them, to all of Ethiopia," Alemu said. Presiding Judge Renckens, center, opens the court session in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, in the case against a Dutch national of Ethiopian descent for alleged war crimes committed during the 1970's regime in Ethiopia. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) But, addressing allegations that he was responsible for the torture and murder of political prisoners in the western province of Gojam in 1978, he told judges: "I was not there." His emotional comments came in response to statements by survivors of his alleged crimes and people who lost family members. One survivor, Worku Damena Yifru, citing witnesses, told judges that Alemu personally ordered the summary execution of dozens of prisoners in a church inside the prison compound in August 1978 and told other prisoners to dump their bodies in a mass grave. He said Alemu checked the names of inmates summoned to the church before "special forces knocked down the prisoners and killed them by strangulation." Yifru said that as a survivor, "I feel I have a solemn duty to seek justice on behalf of all victims of that wanton, inhuman killing ordered by Mr. Alemu." Alemu, a longtime resident and citizen of the Netherlands, is charged with war crimes including involvement in torturing prisoners to death under the 1974-1991 Dergue regime. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted. He admitted being a member of the Dergue, the group led by former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since being driven from power. Mengistu was convicted in absentia in 2006 of genocide and later sentenced to death. Some experts say 150,000 university students, intellectuals and politicians were killed in a nationwide purge by Mengistu's regime, though no one knows for sure how many suspected opponents were killed. Human Rights Watch has described the 1977-78 Red Terror campaign as "one of the most systematic uses of mass murder by a state ever witnessed in Africa." Sebene Ademe, who now lives in Washington, D.C. , holds up photographs of her brother Belachew Ademe, a 32-year-old high school director who disappeared under the 1970s Red Terror regime of former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, outside the court room in The Hague Monday oct. 30, 2017. Belachew Ademe is listed as one of 75 prisoners ordered killed in 1978 by Eshetu Alemu, who went on trial Monday in The Hague charged with war crimes in the 1970s in Ethiopia. Alemu denies the charges. (AP Photo/Mike Corder) PIPPA PASSES, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky State Police say a trooper fatally shot a man who tried to hit him with a car. State police spokesman Jody Sims told WYMT-TV that Trooper Leo Slone and Knott County Sheriff's Deputy Robbie Slone were serving a warrant Wednesday night when they discovered Christopher Jacobs underneath a mobile home. Sims says Jacob headed to a nearby car and officers tried to get him out. Jacobs accelerated into the deputy's vehicle as Slone attempted to forcibly remove him from the car. Sims says the man put the vehicle into reverse and aimed it at the trooper, who then fired shots. The officers attempted to perform CPR, but Jacobs died of his injuries. Kentucky State Police are investigating the shooting. ___ Information from: WYMT-TV, http://www.wymt.com/ BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Police in Alabama say a city employee was shot to death as he rode a lawn mower in what they say was a targeted killing. Authorities say 51-year-old Grady Jenkins died in the shooting in Birmingham on Wednesday morning. Police found the man sitting atop the mower he was using when he was attacked. No one has been arrested. Police Sgt. Bryan Shelton says investigators don't believe the killing was related to Jenkins' job with the city's public works department. But he says they're also unsure of the motive. Authorities say it appears someone approached Jenkins while he was working and began shooting. Police say someone fled in a car, but they haven't released further details. Jenkins' daughter Nikita Mahone tells al.com her dad was a good father and role model. CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - A hunter in Canada killed one of three young bears that were relocated to northern New Hampshire after the governor stepped in to save their lives. The state's Fish and Game department had planned to euthanize the black bears and their mother in May after repeated problems with them feasting on trash and bird feeders culminated with two of them entering a home near Dartmouth College. Several children were in the home at the time, but no one was injured. Officials argued the plan was necessary because the animals were no longer afraid of humans, and would likely find new neighborhoods to frequent if moved. But Gov. Chris Sununu, a first-term Republican, instead ordered them relocated after public outcry. Andrew Timmins, the state's bear project leader, said he got a call from the hunter in Quebec on June 17, about three weeks after the three juvenile bears were trapped in Hanover, tagged and moved. He received confirmation from his Canadian counterpart on Wednesday that the bear had traveled into Canada and was killed as part of the country's spring bear hunt season. "I wasn't surprised in the least," Timmins told The Associated Press. The bear's death was first reported by the Valley News. Timmins said he also wouldn't be surprised if the other two yearlings meet the same fate, though that may never be known because some hunters engage in what he called "shoot, shovel, shut up" and don't report their take. "The fact that all three didn't immediately become issues somewhere suggest that moving them was at least worth the attempt, but I don't want people to automatically assume that not hearing anything means success," he said. "Quebec, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, all have fall bear seasons right now. They could get taken this fall, but maybe they integrated into the wild and it was worthwhile. Time will tell." New Hampshire has roughly 6,100 bears, and a record 898 were killed in last year's hunt. The problems with bears foraging for food in residential areas in Hanover are years in the making, Timmins said, but the situation has improved after town officials repeatedly visited problem properties and asked residents to secure their garbage and remove bird feeders that attract the animals. The mother bear wasn't trapped because she left Hanover to mate. But Timmins said she returned to the area in late August, and the state plans to trap and move her if she returns again with new cubs in the spring. "Our decision to destroy them wasn't because that's what we like to do. Some would say that's the easy way out, just destroy them," said Timmins. "But with some of these animals, you put them through less stress and hardship by making that decision ... We simply have not had a lot of luck moving bears we consider habituated." A spokesman for Sununu did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. The University of Missouri was forced to apologize this week after name-dropping the now-canceled Netflix show House of Cards while advertising an internship opportunity for students at the state Capitol. The email was sent out on Wednesday, just days after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced about House of Cards star Kevin Spacey. The message, which was also posted on the university's website, said: 'Experience the real life 'House of Cards!"' the Columbia Daily Tribune reported. Terrible timing: The University of Missouri had to apologize after referencing the Netflix show House of Cards while advertising an internship opportunity at the state Capitol (right) Oops! The email, which was also posted on the University of Missouri's website, said: 'Experience the real life 'House of Cards!"' The dark political drama, which premiered in 2013 and ran for five seasons, depicts corruption, sex and murder in politics in Washington DC. Democratic state Rep. Martha Stevens, of Columbia, said she found the apparent comparison to the goings-on at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City insulting. The reference was used in an attempt to make a pop-culture connection for students, said Christian Basi, a spokesman for the university's Office of Service Learning. Basi said the line was stricken from the school webpage but the email can't be recalled. 'We realize that this headline is in poor taste,' Basi said. 'The item has been removed from website and edited and won't appear again. And we have been in contact with several legislators to express our apology and explain.' The reference also recalls recent issues in the Missouri General Assembly. In 2015, Democratic Sen. Paul LeVota stepped down after allegations he sexually harassed interns and Republican House Speaker John Diehl left office after admitting he sent sexually suggestive texts to an intern. The Missouri House has since made changes to its harassment policy, such as including mandatory sexual harassment training for all members and staff each year. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood, Rent star Anthony Rapp alleged Spacey made sexual advances toward him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Spacey has said he doesn't remember the alleged encounter reported by BuzzFeed News last weekend but apologized if such 'drunken behavior' occurred. In the same statement, the Academy Award winner came out as gay. De javu: In 2015, Democratic state Sen. Paul LeVota (left) left after allegations he sexually harassed interns and Republican House Speaker John Diehl (right) left after admitting he sent sexually suggestive texts to an intern In recent days, eight workers on the set of House of Cards told CNN that Spacey sexually harassed them for years, and in one case assaulted a young man. On Thursday, a new accuser broke his silence to Vulture, anonymously claimingthat Spacey attempted to rape him in 1984. The Oscar winner's lawyer said Spacey denies the allegations. In light of the growing controversy surrounding Spacey, Netflix halted production of the sixth and final season of House of Cards, which was scheduled to premiere in 2018. HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A Connecticut State Police internal affairs investigator found no evidence that three troopers retaliated against a protester at a sobriety checkpoint by filing bogus charges against him in an encounter recorded on video, according to a newly released report. Lawyers for state police released the report Wednesday evening in response to public records laws complaints filed by The Associated Press and the Journal Inquirer newspaper after officials refused to provide the document earlier this year. The lawyers first agreed to hand over the report Tuesday just before a scheduled hearing before the state Freedom of Information Commission. The investigation centered on an encounter at a sobriety checkpoint in West Hartford on Sept. 11, 2015, between protester Michael Picard and the officers - Trooper John Barone, Master Sgt. Patrick Torneo and Sgt. John Jacobi. Picard, who believes such checkpoints violate people's rights, was holding a sign warning motorists. Barone seized Picard's camera and legally carried pistol after a frightened female driver told him there was a man waving a gun, the internal affairs report said. Barone gave the camera and gun back to Picard a short time later. Picard denies ever taking his gun out of his holster. According to a lawsuit filed by Picard against the troopers, the officers did not know his camera was still recording after Barone seized it, and the footage captured the officers fabricating charges against him. Picard alleges he was illegally detained and his camera and gun were illegally seized. The troopers are heard, but not seen, on Picard's recording calling a Hartford police officer to see if he or she had any "grudges" against Picard, initiating an investigation of him in a police database and discussing a previous protest Picard organized, the lawsuit says. After finding that Picard had a valid pistol permit, Barone tells the other troopers they have to "cover" themselves, and either Torneo or Jacobi says "let's give him something," the lawsuit says. Picard was given tickets for creating a public disturbance and illegal use of a highway by a pedestrian - charges that prosecutors later dropped. Capt. Stavros Mellekas, a state police internal affairs investigator, wrote in the report that the troopers were justified in issuing the infractions, citing reports about Picard waving a gun and evidence that he illegally stood on a highway on-ramp. He exonerated them of allegations that their detention of Picard was illegal and that their conduct reflected negatively on state police. Barone, who retired in September 2016, explained his comment about the troopers having to "cover" themselves in an interview with Mellekas. "Barone explains that he was always trained that after an interaction where you put your hands on someone, a report or documented action (infraction or summons) should exist." The report also reveals, for the first time, that Barone "almost" shot Picard, as he aimed his gun at Picard and ordered him to show his hands. All three troopers told Mellekas that Picard's video was not a complete and accurate depiction because it was edited. State police said in a statement Thursday that Picard "prolonged and impeded" the investigation by refusing to provide the unedited video. Picard's attorney, Joseph Sastre, declined to comment on the contents of the internal affairs report Thursday, citing the pending lawsuit. "That they concluded the investigation by exonerating themselves should surprise nobody," Sastre said. An album cover image posted to Snoop Dogg's Instagram account showing the rapper looking down on what appears to be the dead body of President Donald Trump has been removed from the platform. The cover of the "Make America Crip Again" EP shows the rapper looking on as a body covered with a U.S. flag lies on a gurney with a toe tag reading "TRUMP." The image is a play on the cover for Ice Cube's 1991 album "Death Certificate." The photo was shared by Snoop Dogg Tuesday and later removed. FILE - In this Wednesday, June 21, 2017, file photo, Snoop Dogg arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story" at the Writers Guild Theater on in Beverly Hills, Calif. An album cover image posted to Snoop Dogg's Instagram account on Oct. 31, 2017, showing the rapper looking down on what appears to be the dead body of President Donald Trump has been removed from the platform. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File) Snoop Dogg drew a rebuke from Trump on Twitter in March after releasing a music video in which he pointed a toy gun at a clown dressed like the president and pulled the trigger. TORONTO (AP) - The U.S. Department of Commerce issued its final finding Thursday on the softwood lumber duties Canadian producers must pay, escalating a trade dispute amid the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The department said most Canadian producers will pay a combined countervailing and anti-dumping rate of 20.83 percent, down from 26.75 percent in the preliminary determinations issued earlier this year. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the decision "defends American workers and businesses from unfair trade practices." FiLE - IN this April 25, 2017 file photo, softwood lumber is stacked at Murray Brothers Lumber Company woodlot in Madawaska, Ontario, Canada. The U.S. Department of Commerce issued its final finding Thursday, Nov. 2, on the softwood lumber duties Canadian producers must pay, escalating a trade dispute amid the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.(Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP, File) The department also said Canadian exporters sell softwood lumber at less than fair value and Canada provides unfair subsidies to producers. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called the duties "unfair, unwarranted and deeply troubling," saying they harm workers in Canada. "We urge the U.S. Administration to rescind these duties," Freeland said in a statement. "These duties are a tax on American middle class families too, whose homes, renovations and repairs will only be more expensive." Canada may take legal action through dispute settlement mechanisms under the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, but Freeland said officials continue to engage with their American counterparts about a negotiated settlement. A 2006 softwood-lumber agreement expired in 2015. The U.S. Lumber Coalition said they are pleased with the duties because it means the U.S. lumber industry "can compete on a level playing field." Susan Yurkovich, President of the British Columbia Lumber Trade Council, said the duties are driven by a protectionist U.S. lumber industry whose sole purpose is to constrain the imports of Canadian lumber and drive up prices for their own benefit. "Unfortunately it's the narrow interest of a few greedy lumber barons in the southern United States that has led to this impasse," British Columbia Premier John Horgan said. The U.S. and Canada typically enjoy a friendly trade relationship, but things have soured this year as U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded big changes to NAFTA, which is in its 23rd year. There are growing doubts that it will survive through its 24th. The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw from the agreement if it can't get what it wants in a renegotiation. But its demands - which range from requiring that more auto production be made in the U.S. to having more government contracts in the NAFTA bloc go to U.S. companies - will likely be unacceptable to the U.S.' two other NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico. WASHINGTON (AP) - Top U.S. diplomat Rex Tillerson will make his first trip to Myanmar this month to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State, the State Department said Thursday. Secretary of State Tillerson travels to the capital Naypyitaw on Nov. 15 to consult with senior leaders and officials after he accompanies President Donald Trump on his five-nation trip to Asia that starts this weekend. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh following a security crackdown in Rakhine, drawing allegations of ethnic cleansing and overshadowing Myanmar's U.S.-backed transition to democracy. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) A bipartisan group of senators on Thursday unveiled legislation to impose sanctions and travel restrictions on the senior military officials in Myanmar that the lawmakers say are responsible for atrocities and systematic human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims. The bill's backers are Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Ben Cardin, D-Md., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Todd Young, R-Ind. Their measure would restrict military cooperation between the U.S. and Myanmar until the State and Defense departments can certify that the violence has been halted. The bill also would authorize humanitarian assistance for Rohingya Mulsims, including refugees in neighboring Bangladesh. Tillerson travels first to Tokyo, for Trump's meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that starts Sunday. Tillerson will also join the president for summits with the leaders of South Korea and China, and for regional summits of Asia-Pacific leaders in Vietnam and the Philippines. In the Philippines, Trump will attend a summit of the U.S. and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. However, he will skip the East Asia Summit that follows it, where other regional powers like China, Russia and India also take part. Tillerson will represent the U.S. at that meeting. The man the FBI said it was seeking as a person of interest in the New York truck attack has condemned the plot and says it was "not from our religion." The man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, has not been detained or arrested. On Wednesday, the FBI released a poster saying it was looking for Kadirov, only to announce less than 90 minutes later that it had found him. A law enforcement official said Kadirov was a friend of suspect Sayfullo Saipov's and may not have any role in the case. Saipov didn't have many friends, said the official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. On Thursday, Kadirov released a statement to The Associated Press through a source in touch with his family. It reads: "It is so sad and unbelievable. This not from our religion. It is not acceptable. We as Muslims completely reject this kind of actions. No human being who has a heart can do this." Kadirov also quoted a passage from the Quran in his statement. The person in touch with Kadirov's family says the two men knew each other only from their days as fellow drivers for the ride-sharing app Uber and were not close friends. The person - who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation and its sensitive nature - said Kadirov called a community advocacy organization when he realized he knew Saipov. The person said that the group encouraged Kadirov to cooperate with authorities from his current home in New Jersey, and that the man has done so. ___ Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed from New York. NEW YORK (AP) - There were signs, some say telltale signs, of Russians using social media to meddle in last year's U.S. elections long before tech companies wised up to it. Red flags included payments in rubles for ads on hot-button, divisive issues targeted at Americans. It wasn't until late September, nearly a year after the elections, that Facebook disclosed that it found Russia-linked ads on its service. Twitter and Google followed. Could Facebook and other tech giants have caught the abuse earlier? FILE - In this Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, file photo, from left, Facebook's General Counsel Colin Stretch, Twitter's Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett, and Google's Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kent Walker, are sworn in for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election activity and technology, on Capitol Hill in Washington. There were signs, some say telltale signs, of Russians using social media to meddle in the U.S. elections long before tech companies wised up to it. Could Facebook, Google and Twitter have caught the abuse earlier? (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) Here's the case for and against: ___ IT TOOK TOO LONG These companies have very smart people working for them, all tasked not just with building new features but ensuring that existing ones work. Could Facebook, Google and Twitter really not foresee - and when it was actually happening, simply see - that Russian government-sponsored agents were posting from fake accounts and buying political ads using little-known payments providers? Could they have asked themselves why a legitimate advertiser from Russia would feel the need to target Americans on issues such as gun control and race? Or promote pro- and anti-Trump protests in American cities? Facebook has said that it focused on more traditional threats, such as hacking, early on. Then, its attention turned to fake news and propaganda, but not before CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed as "pretty crazy" the idea that false news on the company's service influenced the outcome of the elections. He later apologized, but the now-memorable quip shows the kind of self-assured attitude that often gets the company in trouble . This spring, Facebook disclosed that foreign nation-states and non-state actors were using its service for malicious activity related to the elections. It did not directly name Russia at the time, already five months since the elections. In a memorable, mostly one-sided exchange with top lawyers from the companies, Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota offered this exasperated point: "People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads. You put billions of data points together all the time, that's what I hear that these platforms do. They are the most sophisticated things invented by man, ever. Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can't put together rubles with a political ad and go like, 'Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad.'" Jonathan Albright, director of research at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said tech companies like Facebook "didn't act proactively." The company's business model is giving companies access to "real people. Albright added that Russians exploited the same "custom audiences" targeting tools that Facebook markets for political campaigns. Combine that with the yet-unregulated online political ads space, it's no wonder Russia sought to exploit it. ___ HINDSIGHT IS 20/20 Asked in a hearing this week whether they have found all evidence of Russian meddling, top lawyers for Facebook, Google and Twitter said investigations were ongoing. So, as a matter of speaking, that's "no." Facebook also wouldn't say with certainty that no other country had also misused its platforms. After all, with 5 million advertisers each month, and billions of pieces of non-paid content, how could Facebook comb through everything - especially when advertisers could mask their real identity? Facebook's general counsel, Colin Stretch, acknowledged that in hindsight the company should have had a "broader lens" about these issues. But ultimately, these internet giants' systems weren't set up to deal with this type of "social hacking." While each company has spent millions to combat software hacking, spam and nefarious content such as terrorist propaganda, the idea that Russia would use social media to influence the elections simply wasn't on the radar. Since the companies became aware, they have worked to tighten advertising rules, weed out fake news and accounts and share information with government investigators. "Being at the forefront of technology also means being at the forefront of new legal, security, and policy challenges," Stretch told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Our teams come to work every day to confront these challenges head on." It now seems easy to see the signs of Russia's interference on social media. But consider this: Try thinking of new ways foreign entities might try to meddle in the 2020 elections. Will it be using virtual reality? Robots? Snapchat? Stumped? Come back in three years. Hindsight is 20/20. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the case brought by special counsel Robert Mueller against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates (all times local): 2:30 p.m. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates are asking a federal judge to release them from home confinement while they await trial on several financial charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. Paul Manafort accompanied by his lawyer Kevin Downing, right, arrives at U.S. Federal Court, in Washington, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, and Manafort's business associate Rick Gates have pleaded not guilty to felony charges of conspiracy against the United States and other counts. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Manafort and Gates say in court filings that they don't pose a risk of fleeing the country and should be allowed to travel while they prepare their defenses to a 12-count indictment unsealed earlier this week. Both men say that multimillion-dollar bonds will be enough to make sure they show up for court appearances. The court papers were filed ahead of a hearing Thursday in federal court in Washington. The two men face charges of money laundering, lying about their foreign agent work for Ukrainian interests and other financial charges. ___ 3:30 a.m. The former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump is due back in court along with his business associate. Paul Manafort, who led the campaign for several months last year, will appear Thursday afternoon in Washington's federal court with co-defendant Rick Gates. Special counsel Robert Mueller announced an indictment Monday that charges the men with money laundering and other financial crimes. They were placed on home confinement during an initial court appearance. Prosecutors disclosed additional details about their wealth in a court filing Tuesday, saying Manafort has provided different accounts of his assets and that he has three different passports. Besides Manafort and Gates, prosecutors have revealed a guilty plea from a campaign adviser named George Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI about foreign contacts during the campaign. ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Police in North Carolina have captured an escaped inmate after they found him drinking a Gatorade while sitting outside a doctor's office. Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan told a news conference that 42-year-old Michael Lee Calloway was captured Thursday morning after being spotted in Biltmore Park in Asheville. Authorities say Calloway escaped custody on Wednesday while he was at a doctor's office for a medical appointment for what Duncan called "some sort of procedure." Officers had removed his shackles and restraints at the doctor's office. Investigators say Calloway grabbed an officer's head and tried to hit her head on the ground before fleeing. The sheriff says as many as 100 law enforcement officers were involved in the search. Calloway was originally in custody on various charges, including breaking and entering. BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - The builder of the Dakota Access oil pipeline and the federal agency that permitted the project are objecting to an effort by American Indian tribes to bolster protections for their water supply. Lawyers for Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and the Army Corps of Engineers argue separately in documents filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., that the proposals by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux are unnecessary or unwarranted. "Measures are already in place to achieve the objectives behind each proposed set of conditions," company attorneys wrote. The dispute centers around the $3.8 billion pipeline's crossing of the Missouri River's Lake Oahe reservoir in southern North Dakota. Both tribes get water from the lake and fear contamination should the pipeline leak. They are among four Dakotas tribes suing to shut down the pipeline that began moving North Dakota oil to a distribution point in Illinois on June 1. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is requiring the Corps to further review the project's impact on tribal interests, but he's allowing oil to continue flowing while that work is done over the next several months. In the meantime, the tribes are seeking increased public reporting of pipeline issues such as repairs, and implementation of an emergency spill response plan at the lake crossing with tribal input. The spill response plan will include equipment staging. ETP said it already has emergency equipment and personnel staged "near" the crossing and has also "taken steps to include the tribes in response planning." The company said it is willing to continue working with them on a voluntary basis. Corps attorneys argue that the tribal request is "unnecessary, duplicative and burdensome" and note that "the court has already upheld the Corps' conclusion that the risk of a spill is low." In a separate legal dispute in federal court in North Dakota, landowners who claim ETP deceived and defrauded them while acquiring land easements for the pipeline will appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in October sided with a subsidiary of ETP and the land acquisition consulting business Contract Land Staff. Both businesses disputed the claims of the 21 landowners who were seeking more than $4 million in damages. The landowners have filed a notice of appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorney Peter Zuger declined to discuss their argument until a formal appeal brief is filed in the next couple of months. ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado said the company does not comment on pending legal matters. ___ Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake The top developments Thursday in the New York City bike path truck attack, which killed eight people: Legal experts doubt that Donald Trump's tweets calling for the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, the man charged in rampage, will give defense attorneys grounds to argue that the president has ruined the jury pool. ___ A child looks at a makeshift memorial to remember the victims of the attack, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, near the crime scene in New York. A man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists along the busy bike path near the World Trade Center memorial on Tuesday, killing at least eight and seriously injuring others in what the mayor called "a particularly cowardly act of terror." (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki) New York officials have started putting up additional concrete barriers at intersections, including the one where truck entered the bike path. ___ Muslims in Paterson, New Jersey, are fearing another backlash , because Saipov lived in Paterson. Muslims there saw a surge in harassment after 9/11, and two mosques in the city already have received threats. ___ The man the FBI said it was seeking as a person of interest on Wednesday rebuked the plot and said it was "not from our religion." On Thursday, he released a statement to The Associated Press through a source in touch with his family. ___ Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressed confidence that the U.S. justice system can handle terror suspects like Saipov. He noted that more than 500 people have been convicted in criminal courts of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 and that enemy combatants remain held at Guantanamo Bay. BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts lawmakers have approved a ban on "bump stocks," devices that can increase the firing rate of a weapon. If signed by the governor, the state would be the first to ban bump stocks since the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Investigators say the gunman who opened fire Oct. 1 on a Las Vegas music festival, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds more, used the device that allows a semi-automatic firearm to mimic a fully automatic one. The House and Senate approved an $85 million budget bill Thursday that includes the ban. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker supports a ban. Lawmakers initially were considering banning any device that attaches to a rifle or shotgun to increase the discharge rate, which gun rights advocates opposed. They adopted narrower language specifically prohibiting bump stocks and trigger cranks. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - President Donald Trump plans to meet with the governors of Alaska and Hawaii and Pacific U.S. territories amid ongoing tensions with North Korea. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker told reporters that the meeting, scheduled for Friday in Hawaii, is expected to focus on Trump's upcoming trip to Asia and "Pacific theater issues" affecting the governors. Walker, who is politically unaffiliated, has raised concerns with North Korea weapon's tests and suggested the strategic importance of having a naval base in Alaska. The governors of the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands were invited to the meeting, Walker said. Walker plans to travel to Hawaii with Trump's team from Washington, D.C., where Walker testified before a U.S. Senate committee Thursday in support of opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. Walker said he then plans to travel separately from Trump to China. There, Walker and the head of the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., a state-supported corporation that has been courting Asian investors for a proposed mega-gas project in Alaska, will be part of a delegation expected to participate in events with Trump. Walker said he sees it as major opportunity to draw attention to the long hoped-for liquefied natural gas project, which has been marked by changes in direction and has seen interest by Alaska state legislators wax and wane. ___ Follow Becky Bohrer at https://twitter.com/beckybohrerap. HONOLULU (AP) - An American charged with murder in Tonga in connection with his wife's death has been released from prison in Hawaii after the U.S. State Department refused to extradite him because of concerns he would not have received a fair trial. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exercised his discretion in denying the Kingdom of Tonga's request to extradite Dean Jay Fletcher for trial in the South Pacific archipelago nation, according to a letter to U.S. prosecutors from the State Department. A U.S. judge in Hawaii on Wednesday ordered Fletcher's immediate release from the Honolulu Federal Detention Center, where he had been held for nearly a year. FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2016, file photo provided by the Samoa News, Dean Jay Fletcher, left, is escorted by a police officer after his initial appearance in the District Court of American Samoa in Pago Pago, American Samoa. A U.S. judge in Hawaii has ordered the release of U.S. citizen Fletcher, being held for extradition to Tonga, where he's accused of beating his wife to death, escaping police and sailing some 300 miles to American Samoa. (Ausage Fausia/SamoaNews via AP, File) Fletcher was indicted on murder and other charges in Tonga in the July 2016 death of his Canadian wife, Patricia Linne Kearney. Earlier this year, a U.S. judge in Honolulu ruled that Fletcher could be extradited. But a letter Tuesday from the State Department expressed concern that Fletcher would have faced a death sentence or life in prison and that he would not have received a defense attorney for free. If he had been convicted and sentenced to death, Fletcher would have been hanged and would have been the first person executed in Tonga since 1981. Fletcher's lawyer, Melinda Yamaga, declined comment on where Fletcher went following his release and said he did not want to speak with journalists about his case. Three diving operators saw Fletcher assaulting his wife on a dinghy after she picked him up at a Tonga port, according to provisional arrest documents filed in federal court in Honolulu. Fletcher kept kicking and punching Kearney as the couple arrived at another boat named the Sea Oak, Tonga officials told U.S. prosecutors. One witness reported seeing Fletcher grab his wife's head while she was in the dinghy, "slam his knee into her neck and punch her in the head," the documents said. The next day, Fletcher went to police to report his wife had died when she slipped and fell down stairs on their yacht. Fletcher allegedly told an acquaintance that his wife had a nerve disease and had been drunk. The person reported seeing a blood-stained bed sheet in the dinghy, and another person said Fletcher dropped the sheet into the sea, the documents said. While in police custody, Fletcher asked a detective for permission to use the toilet then ran out of a cell in a police station and was caught after a brief foot chase, authorities said. The records say officers could not catch him when he fled a police station cell again in September 2016 and was last seen sailing away in a boat. He traveled about 300 miles (480 kilometers) north to American Samoa, where he was arrested. U.S. marshals escorted him to Honolulu because American Samoa does not have a federal court. Tonga Acting Attorney General Aminiasi Kefu told The Associated Press Thursday the decision to free Fletcher was a disappointment. He said he told U.S. officials it would be very unlikely that the death penalty would have been imposed. No one in Tonga receives free legal representation, and the case against Fletcher was solid, he said. "We have very strong circumstantial evidence," he said. The charges against Fletcher remain active, and the country could seek Fletcher's extradition if he travels to other countries, Kefu said. "We believe he's committed a crime here in Tonga, and we won't stop until we're able to bring him to justice," he said. Yamaga declined to comment on the Tonga charges and said she had raised concerns with the State Department based on humanitarian issues, she said. Allen S. Weiner, the director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law, called the case "a little unusual" because the U.S. has an extradition treaty with Tonga. Countries usually avoid signing extradition treaties when they have doubts about legal systems, he said. Fletcher's case is also unusual because it is usually other countries that do not want to extradite their citizens to the United States when the death penalty is a possibility, Weiner said. American and Total Recall are two of the headline acts among 60 entries for the Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury on December 2. The Grade Three handicap formerly known as the Hennessy Gold Cup carries a total prize fund of 250,000, making it the second richest handicap chase in Britain after Grand National at Aintree. Harry Frys American is the 8-1 joint-favourite with the sponsors along with the Willie Mullins-trained Total Recall, who dominated his rivals on his first start for the champion trainer in the Munster National at Limerick. Harry Fry has an exciting prospect on his hands Fry said: We have been very happy with American and the Ladbrokes Trophy is very much his target. We are looking forward to December 2 as he looks to have the right sort of profile for the race. Second-season chasers have a good record in the Ladbrokes Trophy and he was a very good novice who did nothing wrong last season. They swerved Cheltenham and it was a good decision as American wins a shade cosily at @UttoxeterRaces: pic.twitter.com/OJKDIRh7jj At The Races (@AtTheRaces) March 18, 2017 The left-handed, galloping track at Newbury should suit him well and hopefully he gets the soft ground that he enjoys. He will have to graft to be ready first time out for a race like this, so he will be going away for a racecourse gallop in the build-up. As things stand, American is right on target. Bolted up! Total Recall wins the JT McNamara Ladbrokes Munster National at @LimerickRaces: pic.twitter.com/aHcUMzFxuM At The Races (@AtTheRaces) October 8, 2017 Total Recall is one of five entries for Mullins along with Acapella Bourgeois, Childrens List, Pleasant Company and Polidam. It is great that Ladbrokes have generously sponsored the two-day meeting in December at Newbury. There is good prize money on offer and we hope to be in the running for some of it, said Mullins. We have five horses entered in the Ladbrokes Trophy, including the Munster National winner Total Recall. An effigy of Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein will be burned at an annual bonfire celebration. The Edenbridge Bonfire Society revealed the identity of its celebrity Guy on Wednesday, ahead of the event in Kent on Saturday. The 11m (36ft) effigy is set to go up in flames alongside a traditional figurine of Guy Fawkes. Weinstein was picked by the society to be this years public figurine at the event after he became embroiled in a string of allegations of sexual assaults against female employees and movie stars. Bonfire society organisers said Weinstein was the obvious option this year after the accusations came to light. The giant figure is depicted holding a Hollywood star, a clapperboard emblazoned with the words final cut and standing on the base of an Oscar award inscribed with H Weinstein. A bonfire society spokeswoman added: As with last year there were many strong contenders for this years celebrity Guy, particularly in the political and cultural world. While the burning of the Guys is aimed as a light-hearted way to mark the traditional bonfire celebrations in the UK, there is of course nothing funny about (the allegations). Rumours of other names in the frame for this year included North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Last year, Donald Trump was the overwhelming choice. A Donald Trump effigy is set on fire in Edenbridge A steel-framed model of the then Republican US presidential candidate was made just days before he went head to head with Democrat Hillary Clinton and won the election. More than 10,000 people attend the annual event, with families visiting from London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent. Organised by a team of volunteers, the evening begins at 6.30pm with a torch-lit carnival procession through Edenbridge High Street. This is led by the Bishop of the Bonfire, his choirboys and the societys effigies as well as visiting societies from Sussex. The evening ends with a firework display before the effigies are burnt. Jonny May is set to miss Englands opening autumn international against Argentina on Saturday week after sustaining a hamstring injury during the squads training camp in Portugal. May pulled up in Tuesdays practice session in Vilamoura to further limit Eddie Jones wing options after Elliot Daly and Jack Nowell were ruled out of the majority of the Twickenham program due to respective knee and cheekbone problems. It leaves England with only three fit players in the position for the visit of the Pumas in Anthony Watson, Denny Solomona and Semesa Rokoduguni. Anthony Watson is one of only three fit wingers for England (Gareth Fuller/PA) There are minor concerns over Solomona and Rokoduguni, but the pair are expected to shake off an Achilles issue and dead leg respectively. Jones had hoped to rest Watson due to his involvement in the British and Irish Lions Test series against New Zealand during the summer, but he must now revise those plans and start him in a back three that will also include either Solomona or Rokoduguni. Fly-half Marcus Smith is to return home after spraining his foot and Joe Launchbury is nursing a knee problem that will prevent him from training until Friday. England were forced to adjust their training program on Wednesday to account for the number of injuries of varying severity and the decision to rest the Lions players, which meant 14 of the 33 who assembled in Portugal were unable to take part. Steve Borthwick Q&A | Updates on injuries, training & preparation for the Old Mutual Wealth Series opener: https://t.co/IFnK45JvUO pic.twitter.com/Rhuva91C6s England Rugby (@EnglandRugby) November 1, 2017 Losing May would be a significant blow as the 27-year-old has been in blistering form since swapping Bath for Leicester this season, crossing 10 times in nine matches for the Tigers. Englands wing injury crisis has been exacerbated by Marland Yardes fall from grace at Harlequins, who he left to join Sale on Wednesday morning. Yarde has missed three training sessions this season and finally the patience of director of rugby John Kingston snapped, resulting in the 25-year-old being told to find another club. Marland Yarde Jones had high hopes for Yarde, seeing in him potential that has yet to be realised for club or country, and he would have been involved against Argentina, Australia and Samoa but is unlikely to be summoned now. One of the reasons for Mays stunning form has been the vision of fly-half George Ford, who swapped Bath for Leicester over the summer and has flourished alongside England half-back partner Ben Youngs. Ford has been impressed by Mays predatory instincts. Jonnys been prolific. Hes one of the most professional players around, Ford said. He looks after himself and works harder than everyone to make sure he has the point of difference, which is his finishing and speed. We know at Leicester that if we do our bit on the inside and give him a bit of space on the outside, nine times out of 10 hell take the chance. I dont think Ive played with a quicker player, but hes strong as well as rapid. Once he gets going his leg power is such that he can bust through tackles. The Duchess of Cornwall has joked about growing older as she shared a quiet word with the Sultan of Bruneis wife. Camilla, who celebrated her 70th birthday in July, opened up to the Raja Isteri after the Sultans wife sympathised over her busy schedule with the Prince of Wales on their 11-day south-east Asia tour. The royal couple began Thursday in Singapore as their four-day visit to the island state came to an end, before flying to Brunei for a few hours then ending the day in Malaysia. His Majesty The Sultan and Her Majesty Raja Isteri welcome TRH to Istana Nurul Iman. #RoyalVisitBrunei pic.twitter.com/qv8YEW6EcM Clarence House (@ClarenceHouse) November 2, 2017 Gurkha troops stationed in Brunei welcomed the royal couple to the Commonwealth country with a large garland of red, black and green paper blooms before they chatted to the Nepalese soldiers and their families. The temperature in Brunei was around 30C and during the day the Duchess was photographed puffing out her cheeks as she stood in the humid conditions. Camilla is known to dislike the oppressive heat of tropical counties but wore a free-flowing Anna Valentine top and loose-fitting trousers. In #Brunei, TRH were greeted by a Gurkha battalion and festooned with garlands on their brief visit. #RoyalVisitBrunei pic.twitter.com/ij9QDnVpmR Clarence House (@ClarenceHouse) November 2, 2017 In the Sultans official residence, the Istana Nurul Iman, a vast complex of almost 1,800 rooms lavishly decorated with marble, plush carpets and sparkling chandeliers, Camilla and the foreign consort chatted. The Duchess told her: Every day, were non-stop. Its more tiring as you get older. She joked: I keep trying to tell everybody that Im not as young as I used to be, and have to slow down. Their Royal Highnesses arrive in Brunei where they are greeted by The Crown Prince and Princess Sarah. #RoyalVisitBrunei pic.twitter.com/MHssP2oitE Clarence House (@ClarenceHouse) November 2, 2017 On Wednesday the Duchess spoke out about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, saying she does yoga and pilates to keep supple. As the press were ushered out, the two royal women embarked on 45 minutes of private conversation, before joining their husbands for tea with more than a dozen members of the Brunei royal family. Among the guests was Prince Jefri, the brother of the Sultan of Brunei renowned for his reportedly lavish lifestyle. Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited the conflict-torn area of northern Rakhine state for the first time since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled the area. It comes as her government said a repatriation plan was under way for those who left to nearby Bangladesh when violence broke out. Ms Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital Sittwe and headed to northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. Rohingya Muslims who have fled persecution in Burma wait along the border (Bernat Armangue/AP) During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there has not been much conflict. The state counselor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials, said Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, using Suu Kyis official title. Spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyis plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. More than 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine state have fled to Bangladesh since August (Bernat Armangue/AP) More than 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when Burmese security forces began what they called a clearance operations in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by insurgents. The UN has said the response has been disproportionate and amounts to ethnic cleansing. Rohingya Muslims The campaign has included the burning of Rohingya villages and accusations of widespread rights violations. Fleeing Rohingya have described arson and rape and shootings by Burmese soldiers and Buddhist mobs. Ms Suu Kyi has come under intense criticism from the international community to do more to end the violence and condemn those responsible Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Sir Michael had a record to be extremely proud of as Defence Secretary. Mr Johnson told the Press Association: Ive known Michael for many years. He has been a great colleague and a great Defence Secretary. In his time as our Defence Secretary, he has helped to reduce Daesh in Syria and Iraq by about 90%, he is responsible for the production of, I think, the two biggest ships this country has ever built two great aircraft carriers and he created a situation in which the budget for defence will continue to rise over the next two years. Boris Johnson He has left our great armed services in very good shape as we go forward to build global Britain. I think he has got a record to be extremely proud of. US president Donald Trump has backed away from his threat to send the suspect in the New York bike path attack to Guantanamo Bay. He acknowledged in an early morning tweet that the military judicial process at the Cuban detention centre takes longer than the civilian federal court system. But Mr Trump called again for the man to be executed, which could complicate the case for prosecutors and give defence lawyers a chance to argue the presidents tweets hurt their clients right to a fair trial. (AP) Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that the case against Sayfullo Saipov, 29, should move fast. DEATH PENALTY. He had tweeted on Wednesday night: NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! His comments broke with longstanding tradition against presidents publicly commenting on criminal cases. Mr Trump on Wednesday, in seemingly off-the-cuff responses to reporters, said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo, a notion the White House later reinforced by saying it considered Saipov to be an enemy combatant. Authorities say Saipov was inspired by the Islamic State group when he veered into a city bike path in Manhattan on Tuesday, killing eight people. But just a few hours later, the government filed federal terrorism charges against the Uzbek immigrant, signaling an intent to prosecute him within the US. The one-two developments marked a sharp disconnect between the president and his administration. Mr Trump said he would love to see Saipov prosecuted at Guantanamo, but tweeted that there is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Boris Johnson has announced a 1 million fund to boost press freedom around the world. The Foreign Secretary said a free media underpins the universal human right to freedom of expression and criticised governments which try and shut down debate. The money will be available for press freedom projects in countries where journalists and their work are under pressure. "If you want prosperity and dynamism then you need a society that is free."@BorisJohnson announces 1m free speech funding.#EndImpunity pic.twitter.com/99EQjyyruM Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) November 2, 2017 Mr Johnson said: Freedom of expression is a universal human right and a free press underpins that right. As a former journalist I am alarmed that worldwide attacks on journalists are rife and increasing. Civil society is all about free people. Where governments fear freedom of expression they often try to shut down media and civil society, or clip their wings. This both violates human rights and crushes creativity. A free media is vital to creating a vibrant, informed and engaged population and helps to support a safer, more prosperous and progressive world. Pleased to announce new free speech funding. Vital we work to #EndImpunity for crimes against journalists: https://t.co/MTxUh2uoqU pic.twitter.com/uvEB3QBxAa Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 2, 2017 The Foreign Secretary spoke after meeting trainee journalists at the London College of Communication, as well as Syrian, Eritrean and Bahraini participants in its refugee journalism project to help exiles restart their careers in the UK, and Chevening scholars from Malaysia. His comments came on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. More than 900 journalists have been killed around the world over the past 11 years. (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Thomas Hughes, executive director at the Article 19 human rights group, said: The reality is that the impunity rate for these crimes remains staggeringly high, with 90% unresolved. For each journalist killed, attacked, threatened or detained, countless others are intimidated to self-censor, eroding press freedoms and resulting in entire societies being deprived of important information. The 1 million fund for the next year will go to projects which help journalists build international support networks to drive up standards and build their capacity to support and safeguard press freedom. It will also go towards those which lobby governments to relax laws that put pressure on the media, and projects which monitor human rights violations and trial long-term advocacy on targeted impunity cases. A French court has convicted a French-Algerian man of terrorism ties but found him not guilty of complicity in his brothers deadly attacks on a Jewish school and French paratroopers. Abdelkader Merah was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Paris court after a tense and emotional trial over his younger brother Mohammeds killings of three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in the Toulouse region in 2012. That marked the first of what became a wave of attacks in France by homegrown Islamic extremists. 7 hours after deliberation began, victims family members, lawyers and reporters return to wait for verdict in #Merah trial @France24_en pic.twitter.com/cMzKEgkP2b Claire Paccalin (@clairepaccalin) November 2, 2017 The trial was the only opportunity for families of victims to seek public justice because Mohammed Merah was killed by police. Abdelkader Merah, now 35, was accused of radicalising his younger brother but has always denied helping Mohammed prepare the deadly rampage. Earlier this week, public prosecutor Naima Rudloff requested the maximum sentence for Abdelkader Merah: life imprisonment with 22 years before any possible parole. He denied any wrongdoing over his brothers killing of three French paratroopers and a shooting in a Jewish school that left a rabbi and three children dead. Uber has been granted permission to operate in Brighton and Hove for another six months. The renewal was granted to allow time to monitor the outcome of Transport for Londons decision to strip the taxi app of its licence, Brighton and Hove City Council said. The local authority announced the decision on Thursday after councillors and officers deliberated behind closed doors earlier this week. (PA) Sign the petition to save your Uber in London and 40000 drivers livelihoods https://t.co/tKcbZNw9Wp #SaveYourUber pic.twitter.com/TJXcUTaICb Uber UK (@UberUK) September 22, 2017 It said it was satisfied the public were not being put at risk but there were a number of concerns which it was working with Uber to address. In a statement, the council said: The decision on the length of the extension was taken to allow the council to monitor the outcome of the Transport for London Uber decision, and consider whether any of the information arising from the case had direct implications for the operation in the city. It also allows the council more time to negotiate with Uber about a number of proposed conditions for operating in the city. While there was no evidence to suggest that public safety had been compromised, there are a number of concerns, and Uber are working with the council to address these and reassure residents and visitors about their safety. By Inna Lazareva N'Djamena, Nov 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Koutu Saimon's son, Wheener, was born almost four months premature and "as small as a mouse", friends and relatives in Chad turned to the new mother and, with sidelong glances and in hushed voices, whispered to her to get rid of the baby. "They told me: 'You need to take him to the river, do an exorcism ritual, leave him there. He's cursed, it's a snake child'," Saimon told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "They would kill a child like that," she added incredulously, looking at her son. Wheener, now a lively eight-year-old, squealed with delight upon seeing his teacher, Adoumkidjim Naiban, who founded Chad's only school for children with learning disabilities, the CESER Centre, almost 20 years ago. Children with disabilities are often neglected across central Africa, where many believe their condition is caused by curses, supernatural forces or as a punishment. The CESER Centre in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, only stays open by combining education with social entrepreneurship. Almost half of Chad's 14 million population live below the poverty line and more than 10 percent of children die before their fifth birthday, the charity Save the Children says. Sales from furniture and leather goods produced by the CESER Centre's 80-plus students, as well as vegetables, eggs and cattle from its farm on the city's outskirts, help keep it running. "Sometimes the pupils also take food they grow home to feed their families," said Naiban, who waives school fees of about 70,000 CFA francs ($125) a year for the poorest families. Chad, the world's third least-developed country, is also weighed down by drought and floods, conflict with the militant group Boko Haram and some 400,000 refugees fleeing the Lake Chad basin, Sudan and the Central African Republic. Government resources are hard-stretched and a domestic law which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities is not effectively enforced, experts say. Nor has Chad has ratified the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires governments to promote, protect and ensure human rights for disabled people. It falls mostly to charities to provide for those with special needs, who often lack basic equipment like corrective glasses or wheelchairs. 'SNAKE CHILDREN' Negative beliefs about disability are common in rural communities across the world. This is partly due to the low levels of education - in Chad, over 90 percent of people cannot read - and because information on the medical causes of disability is not widely available, experts say. In Chad and other countries in the region, children with disabilities are sometimes called 'snake children' because they often find movement difficult, meaning they crawl on the ground for longer than other children. Like snakes, they are regarded as troublesome, and often killed or abandoned in forests or near river-beds where they are believed to turn back into serpents. "If they don't throw them out, they hide them," said Naiban, who was inspired to start the school after seeing his young disabled niece suffering. "I wanted to do something to help her," he said, sitting among stacks of papers, books and musical instruments in his cramped office. When Naiban realised there was no trained teacher for mentally disabled children in the whole of Chad, he decided to train himself. A Swiss foundation catering to people with special needs, Les Perce-Neige, hosted him for three months and then provided money to buy land for the school. But running costs, including salaries for six of his 11 staff who are not paid by the government, proved a challenge. "Many centres of this type all over the world are forced to close because they run out of funding," said Koundja Mayoubila, Chad's programme manager for Reach for Change, a Swedish charity which provided entrepreneurial funding and training for Naiban. Pupils learn sewing, masonry, furniture production and farming in workshops inside the school and on its farm. After they graduate, they use their skills to earn money, often as tailors, carpenters and on construction sites. "One even plays in a local orchestra," said Naiban, who has also set up parents' groups supporting more than 2,000 children with learning difficulties across the vast central African country. "We explain to the community: 'No, it's a congenital malfunction, the cause is biological - it's malnutrition, maybe malaria, meningitis'," he said. "We explain that it's not evil spirits, they're not 'snake children'." For Saimon, the centre serves as a lifeline, enabling her to hold down a job in a restaurant while Wheener is at school. "It's not easy for us, the mothers especially," she said, adding that her husband left soon after their son was born. "But with this education, he has a chance to make something of his life." ($1 = 560.0000 CFA francs) (Reporting by Inna Lazareva, Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit www.trust.org) By Alex Dobuzinskis Nov 1 (Reuters) - A woman narrowly escaped from a 24-year-old drifter suspected of shooting and killing a University of Utah student from China during an attempted carjacking, police said on Wednesday. The shooting late on Monday near the Salt Lake City campus triggered an order for students to shelter in place and led the Chinese government to repeat its warning to its citizens to be wary of violence in the United States. Police believe suspect Austin Boutain tried to carjack ChenWei Guo, 23, and a woman in Guo's parked vehicle, University of Utah Police Sergeant Garth Smith said at a news conference. Boutain fatally shot Guo and then tried to force the woman, a university student whose name was not released, up a canyon, according to police. The woman escaped when Boutain, who fired at her twice and missed, was distracted, police said. "Obviously, he had just killed somebody; he had an ill intent toward this young lady," University of Utah Police Chief Dale Brophy told reporters. Boutain and his wife, Kathleen Boutain, 23, are both in jail in the Salt Lake City area and are wanted in an investigation into another homicide in Golden, Colorado, police said. Austin Boutain was booked on suspicion of murder and Kathleen Boutain is suspected of receiving stolen property and other crimes, Nick D'Alesandro, who manages the homicide unit of the Salt Lake County district attorney's office, said by phone. They have not been formally charged, he said. The Boutains are drifters who drove from Colorado, arriving in Salt Lake City on Saturday, Smith said. The Boutains could not be reached for comment. The Utah shooting occurred soon after the Boutains had a dispute while staying in a makeshift camp just outside the university, and she went to the campus to report she had been assaulted, Smith said. Austin Boutain, after the shooting, escaped on foot and eventually made his way into downtown Salt Lake City, police said. He left a handgun, believed to be the weapon used to shoot Guo, at a homeless shelter where it was stolen, police said. Police are trying to find the weapon, which they believe was taken from the Colorado home of 63-year-old homicide victim Mitchell Bradford Ingle, whose body was found last week. Boutain was arrested on Tuesday at a Salt Lake City library, police said. Kathleen Boutain was arrested on Monday. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Additional reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) By A. Ananthalakshmi KUALA LUMPUR, Nov. 2 (Reuters) - When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation back in his home country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia's administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been banned in the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naik's presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicised Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election - the ruling coalition's worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has aroused controversy with his puritan brand of Islam - recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. A Youtube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden "is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him". Last week, India's counter-terrorism agency prepared charges against Naik, saying he has been "promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures." Bangladesh suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naik's preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because "he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects," said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. "If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public." FACEBOOK PHOTOS At his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, a female Reuters reporter asked about the investigation in India. Naik would only say: "Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public." Naik did not respond to subsequent requests for comment from Reuters. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given "preferential treatment". "Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him," Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India "related to terrorism allegations involving him", he added. Zahid and the prime minister have both posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society - about 40 percent of Malaysia's population is non-Muslim. The group said it was unaware Naik had been going to the Putrajaya mosque - or where he might be in Malaysia. Officials at the Putra Mosque said Naik has been attending Friday prayers there for about a month. He has also been spotted in other mosques, hospitals and restaurants in the administrative capital in recent months, according to witnesses that Reuters spoke to. Naik has in the past denied India's allegations. In an interview with a Kuwaiti television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi because of his popularity. Malaysia's opposition Islamic Party (PAS), which has defended Naik in the past, last week urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, saying the allegations aim "to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community." NINE SULTANS Islamic groups have stoked controversy for trying to impose their ethos in a multi-cultural country. Malaysian authorities cancelled a planned beer festival last month, citing security concerns, and for some years now international pop stars who wish to make appearances in Malaysia face restrictions over clothing and dancing. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. The laws, however, are secular, though the country does have sharia courts for civil cases for Muslims. Malaysia's nine sultans, who take turns as the mostly ceremonial monarch and are the official guardians of Islam in Malaysia, last month called for unity and religious harmony after what they described as "excessive actions" in the name of Islam. One of them harshly condemned a Muslim-only launderette. "We are seeing this gravitation towards fundamentalism and a conservative idea of Islam because the current government doesn't want to be seen as secular anymore," said Ahmad Farouk Musa, founder of a moderate Islam think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF). To ensure Malay support, the government thinks it has "to have Islamic credentials just like PAS," Farouk told Reuters. said. "Islam sells." In September, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol was detained for giving "an unauthorised speech" in the Malaysian capital, in which he argued that governments shouldn't police religion or morality. Zahid, also the home minister, said Akyol's book "Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty" has been banned as it "contravened norms of the society in Malaysia". Farouk, who organised the speech, said he now faces charges for abetting Akyol. (Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi; Additional reporting by Ebrahim Harris and Joseph Sipalan in KUALA LUMPUR, Aditya Kalra in NEW DELHI; Editing by Bill Tarrant) By Amantha Perera COLOMBO, Nov 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Siri Hettige, a sociology professor at Colombo University, conducts surveys of young people across Sri Lanka, he never fails to ask one key question: Does anybody want to become a farmer? No, has been the overwhelmingly emphatic answer, he said. That is one indicator of the growing poverty plaguing many farmers in Sri Lanka, something that is driving increasing migration each year out of rural areas. "Farmers are moving (out of their villages) because there isnt enough money in agriculture," admitted M.W. Weerakoon, a Ministry of Agriculture additional secretary. A rice farmer needs two successful harvests a year on 2.6 acres (about one hectare) of land to earn the 17,760 rupees ($115) a month needed to keep a family of four above the countrys poverty line, he said. A maize farmer needs even more land - about 3.7 acres, he said. But most of the islands rice farmers own less than an acre of land, and large numbers are facing worsening debt, particularly as droughts, floods and other extreme weather linked to climate change hit harvests. In some cases, farmers have used their land as a guarantee for loans, and face losing it if harvests fail, Weerakoon said. All of those pressures are driving an increase in migration, largely to urban areas, Hettige, Weerakoon and others said. "If weather patterns bring more rain or less, a family member is placed in a city where such risks are moderated," said Bilesha Weeraratne, a researcher with the Institute of Policy Studies, a Colombo-based policy agency. "Vast numbers are moving due to climate risks," she said. ONE IN FIVE A MIGRANT Government data shows that about 4 million Sri Lankans - almost 20 percent of the islands people - are now internal migrants. But the move is not always permanent - about 35 percent of them remain in their new districts for less than five years, according to the Department of Census and Statistics. Many farmers who own land move back home once enough rain - or other conditions needed to get a harvest - return, Weerakoon said. But some migrants, particularly the young and those who do not own land, are reluctant to return. Most migrants head for urban areas, particularly Colombo, Gampaha and Kalurara districts in the Western Province. For the most part they come from the countrys agricultural Central, South, North Western and North Central provinces, according to Sri Lankas Department of Census and Statistics. In the two districts of Colombo and Gampaha, one in every four residents is now a migrant, department data shows. Most of the migrants end up in manual labour jobs in cities, including as office help or construction workers. Increasingly many are also driving three-wheeled taxis. Migrants say finding work is increasingly tough. "It is very difficult to get jobs because most of them are already taken. The only available jobs for someone like me is in the construction sites, which are looking for manual help," said Sangeeth Hettiarchchi, a 22-year-old originally from Moneragala District, in Sri Lankas southeast. He said he left his village last year as income from the familys banana plot dwindled, and now works as construction worker in Colombo. LOOKING FOR WORK Sri Lanka this year has faced what United Nations officials described as the worst drought in 40 years. Weerakoon said the drought has accelerated migration, with harvests expected to fall by as much as 50 percent this year and rice - the countrys staple - facing the worst harvest in a decade. In Puttalam, an area in North Western Province, tobacco and shrimp farms and construction sites have seen an influx of people from drought-hit rural areas looking for day labour. "We get a lot of people coming from the villages now because there is no work. For men we pay around Rs 800 ($5) per day and women around Rs 600," said Chamindha Samarwickrema, who manages a small tobacco plot. The drought, he said, is "good for us. We get cheap labour." Though its share is falling, agriculture still accounts for about 27 percent of Sri Lankas economy, and provides jobs for about 2.2 million people, according to Sri Lankas Central Bank. Experts say migration itself is not necessarily negative - and could be an effective strategy in some cases to cope with changing conditions - but that many of those flocking to cities end up in low-paid jobs. One way to make it possible for more farmers to stay in rural areas, said Weerakoon, the agriculture secretary, is to invest in facilities to process harvests and turn them into higher-value products. "Right now with agriculture it is a buyers market because its the raw product that is supplied. Farmers need to be innovative and think about value addition, off-season and multiple crops," he said. Weeraratne, of the policy institute, said remittances from migrants might be one source of funding for such facilities. Right now, very little of the money sent home ends up invested in improving job possibilities in rural areas or making farming more productive, she said. "Migrants get very little advice on how to manage their remittances," she said. For now the government is focused on helping farmers flattened by drought get back in the field. Weerakoon said the government was making rice seed available to farmers at half the usual price this season, hoping to see 800,000 acres of rice planted, up from 540,000 during the last drought season. "The key factor would be that we dont lose large tracks of the planted extent," he said. During the last harvesting season over 200,000 acres of the 540,000 planted were lost to drought and minor floods, according to Sri Lankas Department of Agriculture. (Reporting by Amantha Perera; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate change, resilience, women's rights, trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate) ISLAMABAD, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned home on Thursday to face trial in an anti-corruption case he calls political revenge but opposition leaders have termed as accountability for the rich and powerful. Sharif, who had been in London with his wife who is undergoing cancer treatment, is due to appear in court on Friday over allegations linked to London properties the family owns, charges that could see the former premier jailed. Allies of Sharif, who has served as prime minister twice and was toppled in a military coup in 1999, have called the proceedings a political vendetta and hinted at intervention by elements of the powerful army. Sharif, 67, denounced the process in an interview on Wednesday in London before flying home. "This case in the National Accountability Bureau is highly bogus and fake, which doesn't have links to corruption," he told Geo TV, comparing the process to charges laid against him after General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999. "There is no kickback or misappropriation of the national exchequer," he added. The country's Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from office in July over unreported source of annual income of about $10,000, a salary the former premier denies ever receiving. The high court also ordered the country's National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to investigate and conduct a trial over the Sharif family's wider finances, including the London properties. Sharif maintains control of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, which elected close ally Shahid Khaqi Abbasi as prime minister after Sharif was disqualified. Also facing trial before the NAB court is Sharif's daughter Maryam and her husband, Muhammad Safdar. They have all pleaded not guilty. The allegations against the family stem from the Panama Papers leaks in 2016 that appeared to show that Maryam and her two brothers owned offshore holding companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and used them to buy upscale flats in London. A Supreme Court-appointed investigatory panel deemed that the family's wealth did not match its income, and accused Maryam and her brothers of signing forged documents to obscure ownership of offshore companies used to buy the London flats. The panel's report was the basis for the Supreme Court ruling disqualifying Sharif and ordering the NAB investigation and a trial. The high court ordered the trial to be concluded within six months, which would likely bring a verdict before general elections due next year. (Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Michael Perry) DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Four members of Turkey's security forces and four Kurdish militants were killed in a clash early on Thursday near the border between northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, security and hospital sources said. They said Turkish forces launched a helicopter-backed operation in search of further Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, who sought to cross the border into Hakkari province's mountainous Semdinli district. Two Turkish soldiers and two members of the country's state-backed village guard militia were killed in the fighting, along with four PKK members, the sources said. The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union. (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan) Nov 2 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Thursday. PPI Romania's National Statistics Board to release September producer prices data at 0700 GMT. DEBT ISSUANCE Romanian debt managers aim to sell leu currency bills and bonds worth 3.03 billion lei ($766.66 million) in November, including 330 million lei at non-competitive rounds of auctions, they said on Wednesday, after low market liquidity led to six failed debt tenders in October. FX RESERVES The Romanian central bank's foreign exchange reserves, excluding 103.7 tonnes of gold, rose by 612 million euros on the month to 33.93 billion euros ($39.47 billion) at the end of October, the bank said on Wednesday. PATRIOT Romania's defence ministry said on Wednesday it will acquire a surface-to-air missile Patriot system from U.S. company Raytheon International Defence System RTN.N worth an estimated $764.8 million before VAT by the end of this year. FONDUL Romania's investment fund Fondul Proprietatea, managed by Franklin Templeton said it has sold on Wednesday all of its stakes in the subsidiaries of power utility Electrica for an overall 752.03 million lei ($190.60 million). CEE MARKETS The Czech crown led regional gains on Wednesday, boosted by stronger-than-expected manufacturing data depicting continuous economic growth, though trading was light with Polish and Hungarian markets closed for All Saints Day holiday. FISCAL CHANGES Representatives of Romania's largest local and foreign investors' associations criticised the government on Wednesday for repeated and sudden changes to tax and income policies without proper consultation and impact assessments. They said unpredictible fiscal policies and labour force shortages will put the Romanian economy at risk. For the long-term Romanian diary, click on For emerging markets economic events, click on For an index of all diaries, click on For other related news, double click on: --------------------------------------------------------------- Romanian equities RO-E E.Europe equities .CEE Romanian money RO-M Romanian debt RO-D Eastern Europe EEU All emerging markets EMRG Hot stocks HOT Stock markets STX Market debt news DBT Forex news FRX For real-time index quotes, double click on: Bucharest BETI Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX --------------------------------------------------------------- SOFIA, Nov 2 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. -- A total of 535 people have died in accidents on Bulgarias roads in the first 10 months of 2017, the interior ministry data showed. Bulgaria has the highest road death rate in the European Union as leading causes include speeding, overtaking where unsafe to do so, and drink-driving (Trud, Standart, Monitor) -- The Sofia municipality said it has reopened an 88 million levs ($52.47 million) tender for the procurement, integration and maintenance of an automated electronic system for fare collection in public transport. The procedure was temporarily suspended in June, as a number of companies submitted complaints to the countrys Commission for Protection of Competition (Standart, Monitor, Capital daily) -- Bulgaria is approaching the average European level of shopping through the Internet, Dimitar Margaritov, the chairman the commission for consumer protection said. About 30 percent of users in the Black Sea state are online oriented, compared to around 50 percent in Europe (Monitor, Telegraf) -- Bulgarian supermarket chain Fantastico said it has invested 11 million levs in its biggest store in capital Sofia, with a total floorage of 4,600 square metres. The investment will create 100 jobs (Standart, Monitor) -- Some 20 percent of adult Bulgarians and 30 percent of Bulgarian women have read at least five or more books last year, according to Eurostat's analysis of Europeans' cultural habits and in particular reading books. The Balkan country ranks 21st in the European Union by this indicator ($1 = 1.6773 leva) Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour): PMI Markit is due to release October manufacturing PMI index at 0800 GMT. JUDICIAL REFORM President Andrzej Duda and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party may agree on the shape of the reform of the Supreme Court and of the National Council of the Judiciary in the coming days, president's spokesman Krzysztof Lapinski told TVN24 broadcaster. PGNIG Polish gas company PGNiG said it has asked Russia's Gazprom to renegotiate the price paid for gas in its long-term delivery contract. The company is also in talks about acquiring new gas deposits in Norway and is making efforts to gain a new concession in Pakistan, PGNiG Chief Executive Piotr Wozniak told Puls Biznesu daily. GRUPA AZOTY Fertiliser producer Grupa Azoty will take a decision whether to build a polypropylene factory worth about 5.5 billion zlotys ($1.51 billion) in the coming weeks, the company's Deputy Chief Executive Pawel Lapinski told Rzeczpospolita daily. IDEA BANK Poland's sixth richest businessman Leszek Czarnecki is interested in selling his stake in the small Idea Bank, Parkiet daily said quoting unnamed sources. It is not clear, the daily said, whether Czarnecki is to sell the 16-percent stake he holds directly, or the entire one - 71 percent. ING BANK SLASKI Poland's sixth largest lender by assets ING Bank Slaski's third quarter net profit rose to 376 million zloty from 332 million zloty a year earlier, thanks to better interest income and fee and provisions results, it said on Thursday. EEW Germany's energy firm EEW is considering a project to build a garbage incinerator plant producing heat and energy in Poland's coastal city of Gdansk in the coming four years, a board member of the Polish unit of EEW, Frank Paasche, told Rzeczpospolita. GAS STORAGE Polish state gas pipeline operator Gaz-System is preparing to construct at least one new underground gas storage facility in the coming years, Rzeczpospolita reported. ****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** For other related news, double click on: Polish equities E.Europe equities Polish money Polish debt Eastern Europe All emerging markets Hot stocks Stock markets Market debt news Forex news For real-time index quotes, double click on: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX ($1 = 3.6306 zlotys) (Reporting by Warsaw Bureau) BEIJING, Nov 2 (Reuters) - China said on Thursday that it has not intentionally sought a trade surplus with the United States, after President Donald Trump called the U.S. trade deficit with the country "embarrassing" and "horrible". Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying made the comments at a regular briefing in Beijing. Trump will begin a trip to Asia on Friday, visiting five countries including China. He also told reporters on Wednesday that every trade deal the United States has is "disastrous". (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Kim Coghill) By Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa The Republicans much-anticipated legislation to change the federal tax system includes a victory for school choice advocates: It would allow families to use up to $10,000 in savings from 529 college savings plans for K-12 expenses, including private school tuition. Overall, the bill released Thursday would slash corporate and some individual tax rates, offsetting the cost by nixing other deductions. That includes a $250 deduction that teachers can use to cover classroom expenses, such as books, art supplies, and rewards for students. The bill would also eliminate the deduction for state and local income and sales taxes, a step advocates warn could pinch K-12 spending at the district and state level. More on that below. And the legislation would put an end to the so-called Coverdell Accounts, tax-free accounts which families currently can use to cover up to $2,000 of K-12 costs, including private school tuition, in favor of the 529 change. Families could also use 529s to cover the cost of apprenticeships and could open an account when a child is in utero or unborn. We previewed the possibility of a 529 benefit for K-12 back in August. It has strong support from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. 529s are a strong and proven tool to help make education more affordable for middle-class families, said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement. This is a good step forward, reflecting that education should be an investment in individual students, not systems. I look forward to continuing to work with Congressional leaders to ensure all families have equal access to the education that meets their childs unique needs. But advocates for public education are none too happy with the change. We are disappointed, but not surprised, that Republicans would incentivize wealthy Americans to set aside more resources for private school education in their bill, said the National Coalition for Public Education in a statement. By ending the Coverdell Education Savings Account program and allowing past and new savings to flow into 529 accountswhich eliminate donors income limitations and allow for higher contributionsthey are enabling parents to have a new option to grow their assets tax-free and redirect larger amounts of funding to private, religious schools. And Lily Eskelsen Garcia, the president of the National Education Association, argued that the plan would only benefit wealthy families who are able to put away money for private school. The inclusion of 529 plans for K-12 in the tax package represents the first tangible win in the Trump era for school choice, a huge priority for DeVos. But a tax credit for donations to fund private school scholarships, which some speculated would be a part of changes to the federal tax code, does not appear to be in the bill. Congress has also rejected the administrations budget proposals to create a federal voucher program and allow some money for disadvantaged students to follow children to the public school of their choice. The American Federation for Children, the school choice advocacy organization DeVos started, cheered the change, but said it will continue pushing for proposals that will expand K-12 options for poor children. Any effort to expand the ability of parents to choose the best education for their child is a good thing. We certainly support this for those families who have 529s, said Tommy Schultz, an AFC spokesman. However, we are also concerned about and focused on those families who do not have 529s, typically low-income families who arent able to put away those savings, who are looking for more and better educational options for their children. State and Local K-12 Impact The other big news for education in the proposed tax plan is that GOP lawmakers want to scrap the deduction for state and local income and sales taxesa move education advocates warn could end up depressing revenues for public schools. However, in something of a compromise, Republicans have agreed to keep the deduction for local property taxes in the federal tax code, up to $10,000, according to a summary of the legislation posted on the House Ways and Means Committee website. For much of this year, Congress has discussed getting rid of both state and local tax deductions known in Washington jargon as SALT or SALT-Das part of a broader plan to help offset various tax cuts. Not all taxpayers take these deductions. But many education advocates have been alarmed at the prospect. They say that without the federal deduction for those taxes, states would feel significant pressure to cut their own taxes, which would in turn strip out a lot of revenue for public schools. Groups like the American Federation of Teachers and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, are adamantly opposed to any changes to the state and local deductions. Noelle Ellerson Ng, AASAs associate executive director for policy and advocacy, said that keeping one deduction but tossing out the others should be something that is alarming, not a point of compromise. And she slammed lawmakers for apparently agreeing to move ahead with the proposal without seeing more data about its impact. It shows how much this conversation of tax reform is about making numbers add up and not making it work for the people they represent, particularly the people who rely on the state and local tax deduction, a lot of middle class people, and our nations public school system, Ellerson said. But some conservatives have supported the move to get rid of both deductions for a while now. In a 2013 article, Heritage Foundation Research Fellow Curtis Dubay wrote that the deductions essentially allowed state and local governments to shirk full responsibility for high taxes . Tax reform should eliminate the state and local tax deduction because it encourages state and local governments to raise their taxes higher than they would without it, Dubay wrote. Its not clear what the impact could be on K-12 funding if lawmakers keep the property tax deduction, but not the rest. A report by the Center on Education Policy from 2011 estimated that the loss of state and local tax deducation overall would deprive public schools of $17 billion , based on 2009 data. For perspective, thats bigger than Title I, the pot of money for disadvantaged students thats the single largest federal source of funding for public education. However, that number, as a representation of potential lost revenue for schools, could be a lot smaller if the local property tax deduction stays on the books. And even for that $17 billion figure, its still a relatively small percentage of overall funding for K-12 in the U.S , which stood at $634 billion in the 2013-14 school year. Americans Against Double Taxation, which opposes getting rid of the deductions and represents groups representing state and local governments among others, wasnt pleased by the compromise on tax deductions . The group said in a statement that the move would insert the heavy hand of Washington into state and local finance decisions, dictate winners and losers among states, and unfairly penalize taxpayers in states that rely significantly on income taxes. Deduction for Teachers Eliminated Teachers unions are unhappy about the elimination of the state and local tax deductionsbut also upset about the decision to scrap the tax deduction to help teachers furnish their classrooms. During the 2012-13 academic year, teachers spent a total of $1.6 billion out of their own pockets for classroom expenses, according to a survey by the National School Supply and Equipment Association. A separate survey conducted during the 2015-16 school year found that each teacher spent $600 on average of his or her own money on those supplies and material s every year. As educators spend more and more of their own funds each year to buy basic essentials, Republican leaders chose to ignore the sacrifice made by those who work in our nations public schools to make sure students have adequate books, pencils, paper and art supplies, Eskelsen Garcia said. Under the bill, the tax credit for those with dependent children would increase from $1,000 to $1,600. And the measure would eliminate deductions for higher education loan interest. See a summary of the bill here. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill before Thanksgiving, with the aim of passing it by the end of the year. Photo: House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, whose panel is charged with writing tax law, talks to reporters on Capitol Hill last week in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 (Reuters) - A Malaysian state's royal council on Thursday urged authorities to investigate former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for sedition over his alleged insult to those who trace descent from the southeast Asian region's ancient Bugis seafaring community. Over the past few weeks, Mahathir, 93, has been sharply criticised for comments at an opposition rally last month where he is reported to have described Prime Minister Najib Razak as a "Bugis pirate". Mahathir's remarks about his former protege came in the context of alleged mismanagement of billions of dollars by state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), in which Najib has denied all wrongdoing. "An investigation and legal action must be taken against Dr Mahathir under the Sedition Act, 1948, or any related laws," the royal council of the western state of Selangor said in a statement issued by its secretary, Hanafisah Jais. Mahathir's comments at the rally were "excessive", it added, and could spark hatred for those of Bugis ethnicity, besides which the speech "indirectly insults" the Bugis lineage of the sultanate of Selangor. Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah urged all parties, particularly politicians, to avoid use of racial issues for political capital as this could disrupt harmony and unity, the statement said. The police were not immediately available for comment. Mahathir's office did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment. The former prime minister last month said his criticism targeted only those of Bugis ancestry who stole the people's money, news reports have said. A body representing Malaysia's Bugis community demanded that Mahathir apologise and retract his statement, state news agency Bernama said last month. Thousands of Malaysians rallied on Oct. 14 in the finale of a two-month-long opposition roadshow aimed at convincing majority Malay Muslim voters in rural battleground areas that Malaysia has suffered from Najib's handling of 1MDB. Najib has so far been able to weather the scandal, consolidating power by clamping down on dissenters and curbing domestic media and activists, even as he faces a fierce challenge from Mahathir, who was prime minister for 22 years. But Najib's popularity took a hit from persistent bad press linked to 1MDB, especially after the U.S. Department of Justice filed civil suits to recover more than $1.7 billion alleged to have been misappropriated from the 1MDB fund. Originally seafarers who hailed from Indonesia, the Bugis community established sultanates on the Malaysian peninsula. Their Malaysian descendants are considered to be part of the Malay majority, that makes up more than half of Malaysia's population of nearly 33 million. (Reporting by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) NAIROBI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Kenya's chief justice said the national police chief had "enhanced" the security of Supreme Court judges after one of their bodyguards was shot, denying a Reuters report that a request for extra security had been turned down. The judges' safety was thrust into focus last week after the shooting, which occurred on Tuesday evening. The next day, five out of seven judges failed to come to court to issue a judgement on an election petition seeking to delay the next day's presidential poll, sparking widespread speculation of intimidation. A senior judicial source told Reuters earlier this week that after the shooting the judges, who are normally allocated one bodyguard, had requested another vehicle, known as a "chaser car", to follow or go ahead of them as they moved around the country. The source, who was not available to speak on Thursday, said this request was turned down. The source also said the judges were upset at the government's characterisation of the shooting as a crime rather than an attempt to intimidate judges who had recently annulled the August election victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta. The statement, issued by Chief Justice David Maraga's office late on Wednesday, said the story was wrong. "To the contrary, the Inspector General of Police has in fact enhanced the security of Supreme Court judges," it said. It did not give further details. Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu had been allocated six police to guard her after the shooting of her bodyguard, who is in hospital in stable condition. He declined to comment on whether any other judges had requested extra security, but noted that both the interior minister and chief of police had promised they could have whatever they requested. He said he was not able to give details of the extra security provided because "that in itself would be a breach of security protocols". Kenyatta won the repeat presidential poll on Oct. 26 with 98 percent of the vote after opposition leader Raila Odinga withdrew from the race, saying it would not be fair. The repeat election was ordered by the Supreme Court after it nullified the results of a poll on Aug. 8 due to procedural irregularities. The election board said Kenyatta won that election by 1.4 million votes. (Reporting by Katharine Houreld and Ed Cropley; Writing by Katharine Houreld, Editing by William Maclean) By Raquel Castillo and Rodrigo De Miguel MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - A Spanish judge ordered nine Catalan secessionist leaders to be held in custody on Thursday pending a potential trial over the region's independence push. The lawyer for ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont said a warrant had also been issued for his client's arrest - though the statement was dismissed by a senior official in Spain's High Court. The reason for the differing accounts was not immediately clear. In an short address broadcast by Catalan regional television TV3, Puigdemont called for the release of "the legitimate government of Catalonia", a call echoed by hundreds of people gathered outside the Catalan parliament. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked Puigdemont and his government last week, hours after the Catalan parliament made a unilateral declaration of independence - a vote boycotted by the opposition and declared illegal by Spanish courts. Puigdemont later travelled to Belgium with four associates and ignored an order to appear before the High Court to answer charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds relating to the region's secessionist drive. "Mr. Puigdemont will stay here. He has said that he will fully cooperate with Belgian authorities during the procedure," lawyer Paul Bekaert told Belgian state broadcaster VRT. He said Puigdemont had told him a European arrest warrant has been issued, though the court source said that would most likely happen on Friday. The detention of the secessionist leaders and Puigdemont's flight to Belgium make it difficult for leading figures from the independence movement to stand in a snap election in the wealthy region called by the Spanish government for Dec. 21. Puigdemont said on Tuesday he would go back to Spain only if given unspecified guarantees by the Spanish government. His flight appears to have cost some support for his cause at home. "President, enough is enough," the influential Catalan newspaper el Peridico, which has been sceptical of the case for independence, said on its front page on Wednesday. Ebelio Ramos, a pensioner from the pro-independence town of Berga said: "I don't know what they're thinking about but when someone does what he did and declares independence and then flees... A president has to fulfil the law and if he doesn't, it is better that he stays calm, because if he starts doing something outside the law, he is going to lose everything." "CAREFULLY DESIGNED SECESSIONIST PROCESS" Following a tumultuous month, attention is gradually turning to the December vote. Protests taking place in central Barcelona on Thursday to support secessionist leaders as they testified in Madrid failed to attract a big crowd. Several hundred people took part in another protest called after the nine leaders were ordered held in custody, many fewer than the hundreds of thousands who staged several demonstrations for independence over the last two months. Cracks have appeared within the pro-independence coalition of centre-right and far-left parties as well as inside Puigdemont's own PdeCat (Democratic Catalan Party) where some of his allies are now pushing for a negotiated solution with the central government. The struggle has divided Catalonia itself and caused deep resentment across the rest of Spain. In Madrid, 20 secessionist leaders had been summoned by two separate courts to testify over their role in holding a banned Oct. 1 referendum on secession and later proclaiming independence from Spain. With Puigdemont and four others in Belgium, only 15 turned up. All the members of the dismissed Catalan cabinet but one declined to answer questions from the state prosecutor and the High Court judge, who opened an investigation that could take several years before any potential trial. "The defendants have played an active role by propelling the carefully designed secessionist process and overcoming all kinds of obstacles that could make them deviate from their final objective," the judge said in the ruling that sent the defendants to jail. She said the defendants, who could face jail sentences of up to 50 years, must be held in custody because they were a flight risk and could destroy evidence. One of them, Santi Vila, who stepped down from the Catalan cabinet before a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday and has since then been pushing for a negotiated solution with the government, was granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,300). A lawyer for several of the jailed Catalan leaders said they would appeal against the judge's decision. "The decision to hold them in custody is absolutely disproportionate as we consider the charges of rebellion and sedition lack any ground, no matter how much the prosecution insists on affirming it," lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said. Five senior regional lawmakers and the speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, were summoned by the Supreme Court, which handles the cases of people who enjoy parliamentary immunity. The Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to give one more week to Forcadell and the Catalan lawmakers to prepare their defence and a new hearing will take place on Nov. 9. The courts have already told the Catalan secessionist leaders to deposit 6.2 million euros ($7.2 million) by Friday to cover potential liabilities. ($1 = 0.8578 euros) (Additional reporting by Jesus Aguado in Madrid and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Peter Graff and Andrew Heavens) PHNOM PENH, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Thousands of colourfully dressed rowers competed in dragon boat races in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on Thursday, the first day of the annual Water Festival marking the end of the monsoon season. The races on the Tonle Sap River involved more than 270 wooden dragon boats with rowers and spectators from across the Southeast Asian nation. "I hope to win and bring this victory to our village," said Sim Pov, 25, a rower from Kampong Cham more than 120 km north of Phnom Penh. Known in Khmer as Bon Om Touk, the festival dates back to the 12th century to commemorate the might of the Khmer navy during the ancient Khmer empire. The festival also marks the reversal of flow between the Tonle Sap and the Mekong River, signalling the end of the monsoon season. Presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni and Prime Minister Hun Sen, the boat race is a major showpiece of a three-day festival which includes concerts, fireworks and a lantern boat display. (Reporting by Chhorn Chansy, writing by Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Nick Macfie) By Nigel Hunt LONDON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Chicago soybeans rose for a third consecutive session on Thursday with the market hitting its highest in more than two weeks as expectations of lower U.S. yields and rising demand from China supported the market. U.S. wheat bounced back after declining for the last six sessions while corn prices also edged higher. The Chicago Board Of Trade most-active soybean contract rose 0.3 percent to $9.94-1/2 a bushel by 1147 GMT, after climbing earlier in the session to its highest since Oct. 16 at $9.98 a bushel. "Soybeans are holding very well as the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is expected to reduce yield estimate," said one India-based agricultural commodities analyst. "But U.S. exports have a lot to catch up and Brazilian weather has improved and we do not see any major issues with the Brazilian crop." The USDA last month lowered its forecast for the U.S. 2017 soybean yield to 49.5 bushels per acre. Some expect the government to trim its estimate again in its next monthly supply and demand reports on Nov. 9. Soybean prices were also supported by the prospect of rising demand from China. Chinese imports of oilseeds are forecast to grow to a record 99.8 million tonnes in 2017/18, up 1.3 million tonnes from the prior season, according to a report issued by the USDA's attache in China. "Soybean imports could increase from 93.5 million tonnes to 95 million while imports of other oilseeds slightly decline. This comes despite Chinese soybean production increasing 12 percent year-on-year to 14.4 million tonnes due to a 10.5 percent rise in acreage," ING said in a market note. CBOT's most active wheat contract gained 0.9 percent to $4.21-3/4 a bushel, having given up 4.6 percent in the previous six sessions. "Wheat prices are stabilizing after the significant decline observed in last days," analysts Agritel said, noting prices had fallen below production costs in many countries. Agritel said the fall in prices should encourage buyers to increase purchases with the approach of winter generating climatic risks "even if by now there are no major worries." December wheat futures in Paris rose 0.8 percent to 160.75 euros a tonne. Chicago corn futures also rose with the most active contract up 0.4 percent at $3.49-3/4 a bushel. (Additional reporting by Naveen Thukral; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and David Evans) By Lidia Kelly WARSAW, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Poland plans to bar Ukrainians with "anti-Polish views", its foreign minister said on Thursday, emphasising the nationalist credentials of his ruling party that often talks of the "historic wrongs" inflicted on Poles by their neighbours. Witold Waszczykowski said the policy was a reaction to disrespect shown at a Polish cemetery in the western city of Lviv, which was part of Poland before World War Two. The foreign ministry said lion sculptures at the cemetery's entrances that hold shields inscribed with the Polish phrases "Always faithful" and "To you, Poland" had been covered up with boxes. Waszczykowski said Ukrainians who express anti-Polish sentiments or make it difficult to maintain ageing Polish symbols in Ukraine would be refused visas. He did not say how the policy would be applied in practice. "At the moment, we are launching procedures that will not allow people with extremely anti-Polish views to come to Poland ... Those who demonstrate and use administrative instruments against Poland will also bear the consequences," Waszczykowski told state-run TVP1 television. Poland is home to between 1.5 million and 2 million Ukrainians who left their country seeking jobs after the 2014 Maidan uprising and conflict with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine plunged their economy into recession. Despite Poland's support for an independent Ukraine that can stand up to Russia, tensions over the countries' troubled shared history have risen since the Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Poland two years ago. Poland last year passed a resolution that declared the World War Two-era killing of tens of thousands of Poles by units in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) "genocide". Ukraine rejects that label, saying the killings were tragic and calling for reconciliation and forgiveness. Waszczykowski said Poland's sympathy for Ukraine's struggles with Russia must not push "historical issues" into the background. "It cannot be that geopolitics, that the Russian aggression will be an excuse and that for years we will not settle the issues that divide us," Waszczykowski said. (Additional reporting by Marcin Goettig; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) By Jussi Rosendahl HELSINKI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Nordic financial holding company Sampo will likely lift dividends after strong profits at its insurance business, its CEO said, adding that acquisition opportunities in the region's financial industry were hard to find. Sampo's holdings include the largest Nordic property and casualty insurer If, 21 percent of the region's biggest bank Nordea and close to half of Danish insurer Topdanmark . On Thursday, the firm lifted the outlook for If's underlying profitability and said the unit would pay Sampo an internal dividend of 6 billion Swedish crowns ($716 million), its highest payment so far. That payout would support the dividends Sampo could offer, Chief Executive Kari Stadigh told Reuters by telephone. "These internal dividends, of course, support our intention, and the dividend will likely grow moderately next spring," he said. Sampo has increased the payout every year since 2008. From 2016, it paid 2.30 euros per share and analysts in a Reuters poll have expected a 2017 dividend of 2.46 euros. Sampo, 12 percent owned by the state of Finland, has been sitting on cash from years of successful mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity. It sold its banking business to Danske Bank just before the financial crisis and then bought Nordea shares at low levels in 2008 and 2009. Some investors have been expecting another major move, but Stadigh said there were fewer opportunities in the Nordics, which he said was the region that would remain Sampo's focus. "There is no big M&A in sight at the moment in the sector, because companies have their hands full of work in their regular business operations. The sector is changing so rapidly," he said, referring to digitalisation and changes in the regulation. However, Sampo recently announced more modest plans to invest 265 million euros in Denmark's Saxo Bank and 230 million euros in payment firm Nets. "We are looking at further opportunities to invest in the Nordic financial sector. Those opportunities occur rarely," Stadigh said. He said that, while Saxo was a promising financial technology company, many firms in that field were too small for Sampo. Despite the recent rises in the equity market, Stadigh also said it remained the most attractive asset class. "It is very hard to find added value from the fixed income side... As we are waiting for that last peak, we still see the investment market's main earning potential in equities." ($1 = 8.3841 Swedish crowns) (Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by David Evans and Edmund Blair) By Dan Williams JERUSALEM, Nov 2 (Reuters) - An Israeli lawyer has shed light in a new book on the role the Mossad intelligence agency has played in U.S. litigation she pursues against the international financing of Israel's enemies. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Orthodox Jewish mother of six, heads the not-for-profit Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, which has named Palestinian authorities, Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and North Korea as defendants in lawsuits it has brought. Many of the cases were heard in U.S. courtrooms, either because victims of Palestinian shootings and bombings or Hezbollah rockets held American citizenship, or to target suspected militant funds held in banks in the United States. Titled "Harpoon" after the codename of the Mossad finance-tracking unit Darshan-Leitner worked with, the book lays out how Israel targets foes' bank accounts as well as arsenals. In the closest that the secretive Mossad can come to a public endorsement, its former director provided praise for the book on its cover. Darshan-Leitner, who mostly is engaged by private citizens, said that after her law centre began suing Palestinians over attacks during a revolt that they launched in 2000, she was invited to Mossad headquarters for a consultation. "I explained to them what we do, how and where lawsuits are filed, what evidence and jurisdiction is required, the general rules," she told Reuters. "Their response was: What do we have to do to file more lawsuits? What do you need?" That, Darshan-Leitner said, evolved into regular briefings, held in quiet cafes, where she would get tip-offs about suspect finances to focus on during the U.S. courts' discovery hearings. Her Harpoon interlocutors, she said, have never given her documents that might betray the sources of their information: "They recited all the data from memory. It was pretty amazing." At times, the materials were turned into formal affidavits, filed in the name of Israel's government, said Darshan-Leitner, adding that her role in Harpoon was as an unpaid volunteer. Among cases to which she credits the cooperation are a $655 million judgment in New York against Palestinian authorities in 2015 and the disbanding of a planned 2011 activist flotilla to Gaza, after insurers were warned that they could be criminally liable for the bid to challenge Israel's blockade. The former verdict was voided, in a decision now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the latter had no clear financial gain so no payout was sought. Darshan-Leitner said that around 10 percent of $2 billion worth of U.S judgments in her favour have been paid. That suggests that Israel also sees the litigation as a way to score points against its adversaries in the court of public opinion. "The struggle itself is very important, as it gives the victims a sense of vindication and puts pressure on the countries (being sued)," Darshan-Leitner said. "Harpoon" was submitted, in accordance with Israeli law, to military censors who, Darshan-Leitner said, cut a fifth of the text to suppress some details about intelligence methods and personnel. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alison Williams) REYKJAVIK, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Iceland's president asked the leader of the Left-Green Movement on Thursday to form a new government, although it came second in last Saturday's parliamentary election behind Prime Minister Bjarni Beneditksson's ruling Independence Party. The Independence Party, which has dominated Icelanic politics for decades, fell short of a parliamentary majority, while Katrin Jakobsdottir's Left-Green Movement can muster a narrow majority with the support of three other parties. She has said she may try to form a broad-based government. The Left-Greens want to reduce inequality and fund an increase in public health care, education and infrastructure spending by raising taxes for the wealthy and introducing a property tax. (Reporting by Elias Thorsson; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; editing by Gareth Jones) By Geert De Clercq PARIS, Nov 2 (Reuters) - State-owned Russian nuclear group Rosatom has sent initial proposals to Saudi Arabia for nuclear power generation and would bid if a tender was announced, the company said on Thursday. Saudi Arabia has sent a "request for information" to vendors to build two nuclear reactors in a first step towards a formal tender, sources told Reuters this week. "Rosatom has expressed its interest and sent its initial proposals to the Saudi Arabia nuclear authorities. We are looking forward to the tender and are ready to take part in such a great project," a Rosatom spokesman told Reuters. Saudi Arabia is considering building 17.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear capacity by 2032, the equivalent of about 17 reactors, making it one of the biggest prospects for an industry struggling after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan. Saudi Arabia - the world's biggest exporter of oil - wants to reduce the amount of crude it burns at home to generate electricity so it can sell more of it overseas. After Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak met Saudi King Salman in Riyadh to discuss global oil prices on Thursday, the Russian Energy Ministry's Twitter feed quoted Novak saying that "cooperation on the peaceful atom could be key". Rosatom said in September last year that it was "ready to build 16 nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia" at a cost of $100 billion under a 2015 intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the country. Rosatom has IGAs with dozens of countries and many do not lead to contracts, but following the financial troubles of French Areva and Toshiba-owned Westinghouse, it has become a dominant player in the global nuclear industry. Rosatom has built reactors in several former Soviet countries as well as in China and India. It also has contracts to build reactors in Finland, Turkey, Argentina, Bangladesh and other countries. Industry sources have told Reuters that Saudi Arabia has reached out to vendors from South Korea, China, France, Russia, Japan and the United States for its first two reactors. An executive at Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co (KHNP) told Reuters on Tuesday that South Korean firms would bid as a group for the Saudi nuclear project. A consortium led by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) is building four reactors in the United Arab Emirates, with the first due to start in 2018, making the UAE the first Gulf Arab state to use nuclear power. French EDF said last month it was in talks with Saudi Arabia about supplying reactors. Other potential vendors are Westinghouse and China's CGN. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Susan Fenton and Edmund Blair) A local school board election for a 68,000-student district outside of Denver has become the latest battleground in the national fight over school choice expansion, with out-of-state groups pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race. Two things are at stake: the pro-school choice majority on the Douglas County school board and the fate of a lawsuit over school vouchers that could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high-stakes outcome of the Nov. 7 election is underscored by the players getting involved in the race and the money theyre dropping: The American Federation for Teachers, a national teachers union that staunchly opposes school vouchers, has spent more than $300,000 on the race, while Americans for Prosperity, a group backed by the pro-voucher billionaire Koch brothers, has spent more than $100,000, according to local media reports. A High-Profile School Voucher Court Case What started out as a pilot program to give 500 students in Douglas County publicly funded vouchers to use toward tuition at private schools has morphed into a potential challenge to state constitutions across the country. The voucher program was created in 2011 by a school board populated with pro-school choice members after the 2009 election . But the program was found to be unconstitutional by the states supreme court a few years later because it funneled public money into private, religious schools. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that school vouchers do not violate the U.S. Constitution, many state constitutions have stricter language around state aid going to religious or private institutions. Those restrictions are often called Blaine Amendments or no-aid provisions and they have blocked the expansion of school vouchers in many states. Ed Week Explains: What Are School Vouchers and How do They Work? After exhausting its options in the state courts, the Douglas County school board asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case , and voucher advocates across the country had hoped this might settle the issue over Blaine Amendments once and for all . Instead, the Supreme Court ruled narrowly on a separate case out of Missouri, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo. v. Comer , over whether it was constitutional for a state to deny a grant to a church to make safety improvements to its playground simply because it was a religious institution (the justices ruled it wasnt). The High Court then sent the Douglas County voucher case back down to the Colorado Supreme Court to reconsider in light of the Trinity Lutheran decision. What happens next to the lawsuit depends on the outcome of the school board election. If the Douglas County board majority flips, the board will likely drop the lawsuit. A Growing Trend: Outside Money in Local School Board Races Douglas County is just the latest in a string of costly local school board races fueled by out-of-state actors, said Sarah Reckhow, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. Reckhow and her colleagues have tracked this growing trend in Denver, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. Earlier this year, the school board race in Los Angeles broke national records when it drew in more than $14.5 million in independent spending. Candidates backed by charter school advocates went on to win the majority of seats on the Los Angeles Unified School Board . All of those cities have a few important things in common, said Reckhow. If you look at the issues in these elections, choice, or charters, or in the case of Douglas County, vouchers, are very prominent issues, said Reckhow. Big spending from out-of-state groups, she continued, seems to be a feature [of elections] where local school boards can really have a say in these policies. Related stories: By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Chocolate makers' dependence on hazelnuts from a single major producer, Turkey, has sent Italy's Ferrero SpA searching for new suppliers to satisfy consumer cravings, from eastern Canada to Chile and Australia. The farmer recruitment efforts of Ferrero, one of the world's biggest hazelnut buyers for its Nutella spread, may loosen Turkey's grip on the $2.8 billion industry, which is prone to volatile prices and tight supplies. Turkey, at odds with the United States over a failed coup last year, produces 70 percent of the world's hazelnuts, leaving buyers such as Ferrero, Kraft Heinz Co, Mondelez International Inc, and Nestle SA vulnerable. Last month, Ottawa contributed nearly C$500,000 to a project testing tree varieties in the province of Ontario. Ferrero is helping fund the project and hopes to see farmers plant 25,000 acres of hazelnut trees by 2027, from about 400 currently. An Ontario farmer can earn 10 times more per acre from hazelnuts than corn, according to one estimate. Expansion efforts are also underway in Serbia, Chile, Australia, South Africa and the U.S. state of New Jersey, said Barb Yates, an agronomist with Ferrero in Canada. "Everyone is looking for new places to plant hazelnuts," said Jaime Armengolli, owner of Chilean grower and processor Agricola La Campana. "Yields are good. Costs are low. Growers are very optimistic." Chile's shelled hazelnut exports topped 6,500 tonnes in 2016, nearly five times the previous years exports, according to government statistics. Frost in 2014 damaged Turkey's crop and spiked prices, alarming buyers who use hazelnuts in chocolates, pralines and liqueur. Then this spring, the state-run Turkish Grain Board (TMO) bought large volumes to prop up sagging prices. "(Ferrero) realized having all their eggs in one basket was a danger," said Adam Johnston, who trades hazelnuts at Scotland-based Freeworld Trading. Ferrero's strategy is not driven by short-term events, and the company expects Turkey to remain a major producer, said Ferrero spokeswoman Francesca Fulcheri. But the global expansion has cast a chill over the Turkish industry, where farms are small, use costly manual labor and produce relatively small yields. "Turkey's hazelnut sector is already threatened and will deteriorate unless we are able to increase efficiency and decrease the cost," said Kadir Durak, a board member at Turkish processor Durak Hazelnuts. PROFIT POTENTIAL Hazelnut kernel prices can swing as much as 10 percent per week, and currently sell for about $5,600 per tonne, down from more than $17,000 in 2015, according to Freeworld. An Ontario farmer can net C$2,000 per acre growing hazelnuts, said Adam Dale, professor emeritus at University of Guelph. Corn by comparison might net about C$210 per acre, not including land costs, according to industry and government data. That profit potential and the assurance of selling to Ferrero's local plant will attract Ontario farmers, said Linda Grimo, who helps manage a tree nursery in the province. "Farmers are hesitant by nature. I think its taken awhile for people to recognize (Ferrero's) level of commitment." New hazelnut growers must wait for any windfall, however. Costs of starting an orchard may take a decade to recover, Dale said. With up to 270 trees planted per acre, Ferrero's Ontario target would require some 6.8 million trees, he added. In Australia, Agri Australis Pty Ltd, a Ferrero subsidiary, has planted 900,000 hazelnut trees in southwest New South Wales since 2014, a spokesman said. Ferrero is also active helping growers through research and development and with practical growing issues, said Trevor Ranford, spokesman for Hazelnut Growers of Australia. Commodity trader Olam International Ltd depends heavily on Turkey but started buying hazelnuts in nearby Georgia last year too, because "diversification is crucial," said Brijesh Krishnaswamy, Olam's senior vice president of edible nuts. Oregon growers produce hazelnuts mostly for the in-shell market, including China, but work by Ferrero agronomists has led to more plantings for the confectionery market, said Larry George, co-owner of two processors, George Packing Company and Northwest Hazelnut Company. "In the future we will sell huge volumes to them," he said. (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; additional reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul, Will Ziebell in Sydney and Dave Sherwood in Santiago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) By Matt Spetalnick and Prak Chan Thul WASHINGTON/PHNOM PENH, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Just days after the killing of a prominent Cambodian government critic last year during a crackdown by the country's longtime leader, President Barack Obama dispatched Washingtons chief human rights envoy to Phnom Penh to attend the activist's funeral. In meetings with Cambodian authorities, then-Assistant Secretary of State Tom Malinowski warned the military not to intervene in the political turmoil or else crucial U.S. ties would suffer, sending a clear message that America stood behind the opposition. It was one example of the kind of high-level, rapid-response U.S. diplomacy that President Donald Trump has so far avoided in Cambodia even as the Southeast Asian nation - together with many of its neighbors - has lurched increasingly away from the democratic path. As Trump prepares to depart on his first Asia tour, which will bring him face-to-face with a number of leaders with poor human rights records, his administration has been taking a more muted approach than his predecessor to such concerns, said current and former U.S. officials, rights activists and diplomats. In addition to the situation in Cambodia, they cite what they see as a slow, overly cautious response to Myanmars Rohingya crisis, Trump's failure to publicly call out autocratic leaders he meets over rights abuses, an eagerness to engage with the Philippines' controversial president, Rodrigo Duterte, and a less vocal approach to human rights in China. National security adviser H.R. McMaster pushed back against the notion that Trump would downplay human rights on his Nov. 3-14 trip, saying he would speak out "about the importance of promoting freedom and individual rights." When asked why Trump condemns U.S. adversaries such as Syria and Venezuela on human rights grounds but not the Philippines, Turkey and Russia, McMaster told reporters on Thursday: "How much does it help to yell about these problems? It hasn't really delivered in recent history anyway." "AMERICA FIRST" The dominant view within Trumps White House is that under his "America First" world-view human rights concerns related to allies and strategically important countries should be managed gently to avoid impeding job-creating business deals or undercutting security efforts such as isolating North Korea, several Trump aides said. Soft-pedaling human rights may also help Washington avoid alienating countries in Southeast Asia that it wants to keep from moving further into China's orbit, those aides said. Beijing puts little pressure on its neighbors over such issues. This approach, however, has sown frustration among some U.S. diplomats who deal with human rights and disappointed dissidents in several countries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen people involved in these matters in Washington and Asian capitals. The failure so far to fill several senior Asia and human rights posts at the State Department is a further handicap, they say. Obama's former top Asia adviser, Evan Medeiros, is one of those critical of what he sees as the Trump administration's lower-key approach to human rights. "Its a false dichotomy to say that somehow a focus on human rights detracts from American security or economic well-being," he said. Even under Obama, however, there were some in the human rights community who at times found fault with U.S. actions. While the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was praised for stressing human rights in Asia-Pacific trade negotiations, he faced criticism that he suspended sanctions on Myanmar prematurely and lifted a ban on the sale of lethal arms to Vietnam. "He spoke eloquently and sometimes delivered," said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "But he also didnt fully use the carrots and sticks of American power." Though Trump has said little on human rights beyond condemning adversaries such as North Korea and Venezuela, United Nations envoy Nikki Haley has been one of the few top aides who have spoken out more broadly. She visited sub-Saharan Africa and pressed leaders to tackle political and humanitarian problems. 'WE ARE NOT HERE TO LECTURE' Trump set the tone in Saudi Arabia in May when he told an audience that included monarchs and strongmen from the Muslim world: "We are not here to lecture." He has hosted several autocratic leaders - including Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who had been frozen out of White House visits since leading a 2014 military coup - but has steered clear of publicly criticizing their records on human rights. Such visits under Obama usually included addressing rights concerns, the Democratic president's former aides said. McMaster insisted that Trump preferred to deal with such issues "quietly in every relationship." One closely watched meeting will be with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. Trump praised him in a phone call in April for a bloody anti-drugs campaign. An administration official told reporters human rights would be part of their "frank and friendly discussions." But the government in Manila has been feeling less heat from the Trump administration about extrajudicial killings linked to drugs crackdown, according to a foreign ministry official. "Its a very different White House under President Donald Trump, not like under President Barack Obama, who pushed human rights hard during his term," the official told Reuters. "We are not hearing this from the White House." Another issue expected to be front and center is Myanmars Rohingya crisis. Trumps critics, including Democratic lawmakers, have chided the administration for what they have seen as a halting response. U.S. officials have been reluctant to label the situation as "ethnic cleansing" even though the United Nations has used the term. Myanmar rejects that accusation, saying action was needed to combat terrorism. Two months after an outbreak of violence that sent more than half a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing into Bangladesh, Washington has now sent a senior delegation, announced a planned visit by Tillerson on Nov. 15, and is threatening modest sanctions. CAMBODIA CRACKDOWN When Kem Ley, a popular Cambodian political commentator, was murdered by a gunman in July 2016, Malinowski, the State Department official, flew to Phnom Penh just days later and met top aides to Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled for more than three decades. Malinowskis stern words helped give local diplomats leverage to press rights concerns behind the scenes, said one U.S. official involved in Southeast Asia diplomacy. This year Hun Sen has intensified his crackdown, including the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha, while also stepping up rhetoric against Washington. The State Department has largely limited its response to statements of "deep concern." Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan said Cambodia had not felt pressure from Washington and Trump was clearly taking a different approach. In Vietnam, dissident Nguyen Quang A expressed pessimism about Trumps visit. Nguyen, who was detained by authorities on his way to meet Obama during a visit last year, said: "I don't think Trump will talk about human rights. Just look at his words and actions." The White House has not signaled that Trump plans to meet any dissidents during his Asia trip, something Obama frequently did in his foreign travels. In Beijing, some U.S. diplomats expressed frustration over what they see as botched messaging signaling a retreat on human rights. But the officials said the administration has supported work on behalf of Chinese dissidents. A Beijing-based diplomat from another Western country said, however, that U.S. participation in meetings between Western allies to coordinate strategy on human rights was much reduced, for example, when it came to putting out joint statements on issues of concern. China has been "relieved" to see Trump giving human rights less weight, according to a Chinese diplomat in Washington. But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said: "As for human rights, we are always willing to have constructive dialogue with countries of the world on the basis of mutual respect." (Additional reporting by by Jason Szep in Washington, Antoni Slodkowski in Yangon, Manuel Mogato and Karen Lema in Manila, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Matthew Tostevin in Bangkok; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Ross Colvin) By Riham Alkousaa BERLIN, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Some 250 art works from a huge trove hoarded by a collector during the Nazi era went on display in Germany for the first time on Thursday, as its curators pursue efforts to find the rightful owners of pieces identified as looted. German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt built up the collection after being enlisted by the Nazis to sell modern art they had seized from German museums and collectors and labelled "degenerate". His son Cornelius inherited the collection, which includes works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse as well as older masterpieces, and kept it in his Munich apartment for decades. Gurlitt bequeathed the 1,500 works to Switzerland's Kunstmuseum Bern, which inherited them after his death in May 2014. The collection is now being displayed simultaneously in Bern and in Germany's former capital Bonn, with part of the latter exhibition focusing on works stolen from individual collectors. The display at the German Federal Gallery includes works by Claude Monet, Max Beckmann, Albrecht Duerer and Pieter Brueghel, whose works are presented alongside biographies of people from whom the Nazis stole art. At least two works on display have been confirmed as looted and attempts to identify their original owners are ongoing. "In total, there are six which were clearly identified as looted art. Many works are still being investigated and they might also turn out to be looted," Rein Wolfs, the exhibition curator, told Reuters Television. Germany's Culture Minister Monika Guetters said the government had allocated 6.5 million euros ($7.6 million) to researching the original owners' identities. ($1 = 0.8578 euros) (Reporting By Riham Alkousaa and Reuters TV; editing by John Stonestreet) That is a loose translation of what the 12th century French theologian Alain de Lille said about the Eternal City. We, in current Sri Lanka, too have a similar sentiment but hundred and eighty degrees removed from what de Lille quoted. All roads lead to Rome was about medieval times. All woes lead to Diyawanna-Oya is strictly our own. Now let me add some meat to the matter, some spice too, just to make it more palatable to the reader who like me is totally dependent on the print and electronic media to gather what is happening in this beleaguered country of ours. It is all about how decisions are made and objections are raised when the rulers elected to rule meet, argue and run the country like no other from the powerhouse that is parliament. Lets start with the lead story of the tableau from parliament the mysterious and mind-boggling megabuck deal of the bond scam. Part one has been completed and the honourable gentlemen appointed by the president himself have concluded their fact finding. Tom, Dick and Harry were called to be interrogated. Tom and Harry came and Dick refused to honour the invitation sighting legalities coined by ultra-expensive legal eagles defending him. There by hangs a tale will be a fitting quip for this soap opera and we have to await God Father Part II to see how the wind will blow and who will be found guilty and who will be punished and who will be whistling Dixie and walking out scot-free. How justice would prevail will be the best yardstick to measure the validities of our governing system. We still have hope as it was the president who changed the tide and clipped the wings of those who would have flown away. It is interesting indeed to see how justice will prevail. Of course, the ruling powers seem to be submerged to their very necks in this bond debacle. If not, why would someone step down from his lofty ministerial pedestal and resign saying good bye to the pomp and pageantry simply because he didnt remember the rent he paid for a top-of-the-range luxury condominium? It will be interesting to see how the cookie crumbles when the bond scam returns for the second round and hits the headlines again. Knowing Diyawanna-Oya, there will be no surprises if they gather a few cans of weather-shield and whitewash the whole sorry story. It has been done before and that too, many a time by the political hierarchy of Diyawanna-Oya. Mind you, there is no one party that is guilty; it is a recurring embarrassment that has been practised by many who ruled the roost of power. Tragedy for the young Next on the agenda is the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) and Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) plus the university students who are caught in the middle of a muddle that is rooted deeply in Diyawanna-Oya. I am sure each party involved have their axes to grind and I do not know enough about this battle royal to point fingers. But one thing is sure as the day that dawns; the entire cabaret was orchestrated by various figureheads from parliament wrapped in all colours of politics. The direct damage in its entirety is suffered by the students, be they from local universities or from those attached to SAITM. But the broth had been brewed at Diyawanna-Oya and all political parties associated in the melee are guilty of their vociferous voices or their politically motivated silence. The net result of this scramble is a tragedy for the young. The local university students protest march and get water hosed and their SAITM counterparts rot in limbo, submerged bewildered in the hole they fell into due to no fault of theirs. Wonder whos to blame? A few days ago, I was at the Mattala airport to give an aviation talk to 27 graduate management trainees attached to the Civil Aviation Authority. It was a great interaction for an ancient pelican like me to teach young bright minds some things I knew of aviation. Here I was in Mattala and I did have a good look at the international airport four-lane highway leading to an impressive terminal building where four flights a week operate flown by Fly Dubai. That is the simplified sum-total of this hitherto underutilised facility. It is an old drum beat I am playing regarding the redundancy of this airport. The stupidity of it all is astounding, directly linked to Diyawanna-Oya in its creation. I have never seen such desolation in an airfield. Not a single aeroplane in the sky and not a single aeroplane on the ground. I only saw a mangy dog aimlessly wailing on the parking apron. He was the sole visible occupant of the international airport. This is a mortal sin committed by the previous regime. What about now? For more than two years Mattala has come under the current rulers and absolutely nothing has been done to initiate some form of activity to keep the airport functioning. It is more like the beggars open wound that is kept festering to advertise the plight. See what the previous lot did, the colossal mistake and we are inundated with the debts, another repeated drum beat that we hear often. Either way, it is the same Diyawanna-Oya that is singularly responsible for this merry-go-round of mistakes in aviation. I have not even touched on Mihin Air and SriLankan. Lets leave that to another day. I saw The Sunday Island reporting that Diyawanna-Oya has angrily woken up and wants to sack the chairman and board members running the national carrier. Not a bad idea if the Diyawanna-Oya sacked themselves and left the airline to manage its own affairs. Mega-battle of parliament Now we have the mega-battle of parliament about to explode the changing of the constitution. All the knights in shining armour are lined up on the banks of the Diyawanna-Oya to fight unto death in defending Junius Richards once upon a time Bahubootha Viyawasthawa as one ex-president scoffed it. Some want to kill the people who vote to change it and some want to bomb them and even juvenile J.R. Jayewardene has risen from the shadows and spoken defending his grandfathers not so grand legacy. Who am I to comment on this heavy-weight battle that is looming in the horizon? The stakes are high whichever way you look at it and those in power want a change and those in opposing benches want things to remain the same. That is the essence of the argument from the proletariat point of view. Of course, on the sidelines are various cheering squads with vested political interests casting votes more for safeguarding their piece of the parliamentary pie than the validity or invalidity of the countrys current constitution. That is Diyawanna-Oya for you 70 years of betraying the trust of the people of this beautiful land and dragging the entire country into a quagmire totally and solely created by politics and politicians. The election fever is crawling in like a weed-clogged wave. January is supposed to be the local government polls and that to be followed by the provincial version and whether it is parliamentary or presidential next is anybodys guess. Candidates are getting ready to fix their halos and tune their harps to fly in angelic fashion to their constituencies to make their mythological promises whilst canvassing for votes. Come 2020, we will elect a new president. Who that would be is a million-dollar question. Who governed best or who will govern best are scale-less measurements without valid answers. We hear names being mentioned but which candidate will represent which party is a hard call at this stage of the election game. Of course, the defending champion is sure to be there, wonder who his opponent or opponents would be? There will definitely be wild card entries too and they sure would take the contest to a different level. New faces, clean slates and the people may vote for a change like they did in 2015. All depend on what happens between now and the day of judgement in 2020. Will we see some positive changes in the interim? People are starved for justice. People plead, if not for total eradication, at lease a visible reduction of the unabated and wanton corruption. The majority hope for at least a semblance of change for the better at Diyawanna-Oya and its disgusting modus operandi that has frustrated the average Sri Lankan man and woman who have lost faith in political democracy. Apart from natural disasters such as floods and landslides, every other calamity the Lankan citizenry faces is firmly root-caused at Diyawanna-Oya. That is the covenant we have received from the day of independence. Isnt it time that something changed? (Capt. Elmo Jayawardena can be reached at Elmojay1@gmail.com) Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today congratulated President Maithripala Sirisena for the great reconciliation programme undertaken by the Sri Lankan government, the Presidents Media Division said. Mr. Turnbull said this when he held bilateral discussions with President Sirisena at the Presidential Secretariat in Colombo today. Australian Premier thanked the President for excellent cooperation extended to fight transnational crimes including human smuggling and drug trafficking. He assured assistance to further develop Sri Lankas counter-narcotic capabilities. Australia will also assist to setup a National Defence College (NDC) in Sri Lanka. Mr Turnbull said his government would depute a senior military officer for two years to provide administrative and curriculum expertise and to deliver select course modules to the NDC. President Sirisena thanked the Australian Prime Minister for continuous assistance provided to Sri Lankas development activities and support extended at international forums. He made a special mention about the field of drugs and narcotics and said that illegal drugs is a major problem for Sri Lanka. He pointed out that because Sri Lanka is an island, many international narcotic cartels use this country as a hub for smuggling activities. He thanked Australia for assisting Sri Lankas coastal security operations by providing fast naval patrol crafts in the last few years. President Sirisena thanked Premier Turnbull for paying this visit to Sri Lanka, though the visit was brief. Premier Turnbull said that he was glad he could visit Sri Lanka in this 70th anniversary year of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) this morning to mark the 70th anniversary of Australia-Sri Lanka bilateral relations. According to BIA sources he arrived at 7.10am by an Australian special flight with a deligation of 13 ministers. He is to meet President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today during his four hour visit and would discuss on strengthening economic links, defence engagement and on working together to combat trans-national crime particularly people-smuggling between the countries. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will leave for Austria at 10.15am. (T.K.G.Kapila) Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) Leader Rauf Hakeem said yesterday they were not against giving priority to Buddhism in the new Constitution but also highlighted the need to include provisions where other religions are treated with dignity and respect. "We are not against giving priority to Buddhism but provisions should be included in the constitution to ensure other religions are respected as well and include a ban to differentiate other religions," he said. Speaking during the debate in the constitutional assembly, he said some people were creating fear among the people about unitary state, the place given to Buddhism, amalgamation of the North and East and a federal State. "The Sri Lanka Bar Association (BASL) had raised several questions, including the unitary character of the State in the future. I am surprised to hear that a professional organisation like the BASL was posing such questions when it was clearly mentioned in the proposals. I suspect they were acting as a cat's paw to create a wrong opinion among the people," he said. He said the amalgamation of the North and East was just an alternative proposal of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and added that it does not mean that the proposals highlighted the need to do so. "The TNA has a right to make such a proposal. We have discussed the matter with the TNA. But Tamil leaders have said that they would not do so without seeking the opinion of the people in the East," he said. (Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera) Former President and Parliamentarian Mahinda Rajapaksa, who participated in the debate on the constitutional reforms proposals, said the creation of ethnic or religion based federal units with powers akin to sovereign states will place the minorities living in those federal units at a disadvantage. He said, in India, the vast majority of Indian Tamils live in Tamil Nadu whereas in Sri Lanka however, the majority of the Tamil people are permanently resident outside the North and East. Even though there is a significant concentration of Muslims in the East, the vast majority of the Muslims are permanently resident outside the East. The creation of ethnic or religion based federal units with powers akin to sovereign states, will place the minorities living in those federal units at a disadvantage.I request the government to give up this quest for a new constitution which serves only the interests of northern Tamil politicians and places virtually everyone else at a disadvantage and to concentrate instead on fulfilling the original constitutional pledges they gave the people at the 2015 presidential elections. For a start, the government should let the public know their collective decision on the abolition or otherwise of the executive presidency. The other important matter that needs the attention of this house is the reform of the elections system. The way the elections laws for the local government institutions and the provincial councils were changed was haphazard and arbitrary and this will pose a grave danger to the stability of the governing institutions of the country. He said the Yahapalana manipulation is glaringly obvious in this whole process of constitution-making . The views that our MPs expressed in the various sub-committees were dropped when the reports were published. Look at the manner in which the debate on this interim report has been conducted in the past three days. First a UNP minister speaks on behalf of the government. Then a TNA member speaks on behalf of the opposition. Once again an SLFP minister speaks on behalf of the government. Then a JVP member speaks on behalf of the opposition. All these parties are yahapalana stakeholders, they are all in the constitutional conspiracy together. The genuine opposition force which is the Joint Opposition gets only two or three opportunities to speak a day. In order to justify their quest for a new constitution, members of the government have been claiming that I too had pledged in my manifesto for the 2015 presidential election to bring in a new constitution. That is true, but the question here is that the present constitutional proposals seek to divide the country whereas what I had in mind was a constitution that would enhance the unity and togetherness of all the communities that live in this country, he said. The former President also said that all MPs should be allowed to vote according to their conscience when the voting is taken up on the new constitution Mr Rajapaksa who was speaking during the debate on the constitutional assembly said he is making this request especially from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. We have told the joint opposition MPs to vote in favour of the new constitution if they think the proposed new constitution is a good one. Likewise allow the ruling party members to do the same" he said while highlighting that there are 52 MPs in the joint opposition. Further he said SLFP members in the government who oppose the new constitution are welcome to join the joint opposition. Also he urged the government not to create unrest among ethnic and religious groups by pushing for a new constitution. There is an unprecedented unrest among the religious and ethnic groups which we have never been before. The Mahanayakas and even the Cardinal has expressed concern about this constitution" the former President claimed. Responding to repeated statements made by ruling party members that he also pledged to bring in a new constitution, Mr Rajapaksa said he did make that pledge. I did promise a new constitution and I did it with genuine intention. I always acted with honesty and tried to bring in reconciliation right from the time the war ended. We started development while working on reconciliation. Issues we face today would have ended if the then opposition supported us in this endeavor" he said. We are committed towards resolving the issues faced by the Tamils, therefore don't label us as extremists" he said. However he said joint opposition cannot support proposals that weaken the centre. Mr Rajapaksa was of the opinion that no one including the current MPs will be willing to contest a general election in the future if the legislature is weakened. He charged that there is a proposal to devolve all powers of the centre to provincial councils and to set a federal state by merging North and East. At this moment he asked Deputy Minister M L A M Hisbullah whether Muslims would welcome a merger. Mr Hisbullah replied saying they would not welcome it. Joint opposition MPs responded to this with loud cheers. (Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardane) By Chandeepa Wettasinghe The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between China and Sri Lanka under negotiation is not economically motivated, and therefore Sri Lanka should get major concessions during the first ten years of the agreement, a top economist opined this week. My sense of it is that it is a political agreement. Its not an economic agreement. You dont negotiate with China if youre a small country like we are, Lakshman Kadiragamar Institute (LKI) Global Economy Programme Chair Dr. Ganeshan Wignaraja said. However, the government has in the recent past sought to make the China-Sri Lanka FTA palatable to the public by stating it is economically advantageous for Sri Lanka to have access to China in return for Chinese investments in Sri Lanka to take advantage of the countrys proposed preferential trade access network. Speaking during an interactive session after delivering the lecture titled A Recovering Global Economy? The Dynamics of China and India in the Future of Global Growth, held at the LKI, Dr. Wignaraja said that Sri Lanka should enjoy an Everything But Arms status when entering Chinese markets under the proposed FTA for 10 years, during which China will not have preferential access to Sri Lanka. And I hope thats what is being discussed a lot of special and differential treatment plus trade adjustment, he said. Sri Lanka and China have been negotiating the FTA for over three years. Some trade economists argue that all trade agreements are political agreement, while others argue that trade agreements are protectionist agreements. For example, most trade between India and Sri Lanka takes place outside the Indo-Lanka FTA, although, most Sri Lankan exports to India take place in the FTA subjected to conditions, hinting at both protective and geo-political elements in the agreement. Even without preferential treatment, China is the largest importer to Sri Lanka with US$4.22 billion, or 21.7 percent of the total imports to the country, growing from US$ 3.71 billion in 2015. Exports to China fell to US$211 million from US$ 308 million in the same period. Sri Lankas exports to GDP had fallen over the last 16 years on account of complex bureaucratic processes, lack of export finance, and para tariffs that discourage global value chains, which researchers have advocated to fix before signing new FTAs, since these domestic barriers may render FTAs less effective. Meanwhile, Dr. Wignaraja said that signing an FTA first with China is preferred compared to a deal with India. Sri Lanka and India are negotiating economic and technology cooperation pact to deepen the existing FTA but reports had said that Indian officials had not viewed positively the attempts to correct weaknesses in the current FTA. If we can get an agreement with China, I think we can get an agreement with India rather quickly for obvious reasons, Dr. Wignaraja said. Economists have pointed out that balancing the two giants while getting the benefits from these relationships will be key for Sri Lankas economic growth. Carl Jung Charata Bhikkave, Charikan, Bahujana Hitaya, Bahujana Sukhaya Oh! Bhikkus, for the welfare and contentment of many, through sympathy and kindness to the folk, go forth, and spread Buddha Dhamma for the benefit of deities and human beings. Significance of Ill Poya The three Jatila brothers, Uruwela, Nadi and Gaya Kassapa, who lived in a hermitage on the banks of Neranja, entered the Buddhist Sasana by laying the foundation to construct the Thuparama Dagoba in Anuradhapura. Here lies the right canine tooth (The Dakunu Haku Datuwa) of the Enlightened One. Il or the month of October is also known as the Cheevara Masaya. The offering of Katina Cheevaraya (a monks robe) is considered as a highly meritorious act. This ceremony takes place during the month of Il. The Il Poya Day marks the end of the rainy season and the end of the retreat period also known as Vas. Buddhist Monks perform Pasuvas-the termination of the retreat period on Poya Day. Defining Cheevaradhariyek The recent comments directed at a famous Buddhist monk by Field Marshall Sarath Fonseka, calling him a Cheevaradhariyek, raised concerns among members of the Buddhist fraternity. A senior head priest said that the word Cheevaradhari was a term used in a harmless way to describe a bikkhu (priest) or a person attired in a cheevaraya (robe). Some politicians capitalise on racist elements that exist among the clergy to create myths. This is done to divert attention from thefts. Compassion, one of the basic tenants of Buddhism, is forgotten. We read reports of how Cheevaradharis paraded the streets arousing the ignorant to act against innocent refugee families causing harm and untold misery to women and kids. Could Jung have thought that intellectual carelessness was foreseeable in such a near-paradise? On his arrival in Colombo, Jung gave an unscheduled talk on the subject of imagining to the Rotherfield Psychological Society Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung (1875 1961) was a Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. His work has been influential not only in psychiatry, but also in philosophy, anthropology, literature, and religious studies. He captured the attention of Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The two of them exchanged correspondence and worked together on a common platform for years. Jung was also a craftsman, artist and a writer. He created some well-known psychological concepts, including archetypal phenomena, synchronicity, collective unconscious, and extraversion and introversion. In end 1937, Jung left Zurich on a tour of India and Sri Lanka where he felt himself under the influence of a foreign culture. Hindu and Buddhist philosophy became an important part in his understanding of the role of imagery and life. He admitted that the Western field of psychology wasnt competent in understanding the insight of the self. Richard Boyle recounts the strange affair of Carl Jungs journey to Ceylon. He experienced a near death experience a few years later. It was Jung who rediscovered the nature of myth and symbol and distracted psychology from the restrictions of Freuds teachings. He sailed to Ceylon, and here found the Buddhist paradise he had sought, says, McLynn in his book Carl Gustav Jung (1996), the first biography of the psychologist. He visited Sanchi, the most significant of his stay in India. Sanchi was special to Jung because for him Buddhism was the most attractive of all the religions. unsurprisingly Jung was drawn to Buddhism, states McLynn. He favored Buddhas mode of overcoming the world by reason to that of Christ by sacrifice. As McLynn believes, Jungs work is full of appreciation for Buddhism and The Buddha. In Calcutta University he became involved in a debate regarding the extinction of awareness with various Brahmins. He believed that it was impossible to gain the state of being Not-conscious [nibbana in this life] while alive and still be able to remember it, as Hindus maintained. Patiently he disagreed with the Brahmins that one could not get rid of sense of self even in the deepest samadhi, for the moments of continuation would have been non-existent. Jung had a last, and significant place to visit before departing for Europe, declares McLynn. He sailed to Ceylon, and there he found the Buddhist paradise he had sought. Sri Lanka right away struck Jung as being, no longer India. Could Jung have thought that intellectual carelessness was foreseeable in such a near-paradise? On his arrival in Colombo, Jung gave an unscheduled talk on the subject of imagining to the Rotherfield Psychological Society, which had been founded to instruct the public in matters of mental health and to encourage mental well-being. Jungs talk, delivered at Dr. Ratnavales residence in Colombo was the focus of an extensive report featured in the Daily News of February 2, 1938. Jung declared to the large congregation that, Dreams are not the product of conscious and intelligent thinking or conscious activity. They cant be directed, produced at will, or controlled. They are the expression of an autonomous functioning of our psyche. Jung swiftly left the heat of Colombo for the cooler climes of hills, where he was to observe and perfectly comprehend the pooja ritual at the Dalada Maligawa (Temple of the Tooth). Young people placed massive mounds of jasmines in front of the altars, at the same time singing a prayer or a mantra. I thought they were praying to Gautama Buddha, but the monk who was guiding me explained, No, Buddha is no more; He is in Nirvana. We cant pray to Him. They are singing. This life is temporary as the beauty of these flowers. May my deva the guardian angel share with me the merit of this offering. McLynn explains Jungs Dalada Maligawa experience as follows: Intoxicated by the drumming and the singing, Jung realised that it was Buddhism that had made Ceylon and the South come alive for him as Benares, Calcutta and Orissa never had. These temple ceremonies summed up the relationship between the Self as eternal and the Ego as bounded by space and time. In his Collected Volume Jung relates numerous incidents he witnessed in Sri Lanka that for him exemplified this living Buddhism. The first happened when he came across two carters who had met in a narrow track and could not go by. Jung said that in Switzerland this situation would always have ended up in a quarrel, however in Ceylon the two men just bowed courteously to each other and said Passing disturbances, no soul. On another instance Jung narrates how he saw two boys fighting. They had thrown punches, but the fists always stopped inches away from the faces. Jung spent most of his time in Sri Lanka in the hills, primarily at the Dalada Maligawa, a place which he felt emitted a special charm. He was fascinated in particular about its inspiring library, where he conversed with the bikkhus and studied the Buddhist canon. From Kandy he proceeded to Colombo, where he boarded a ship for Trivandrum. After a meeting with a disciple of Ramana, the guru, in Trivandrum, Jung returned to Colombo and embarked on the passage back to Europe. Aboard the ship Jung commenced work on a new alchemical synthesis, and became so engrossed that he didnt land in Bombay. He was convinced that religious desire was as deeply rooted in humans as sexual instinct and that no religion, apart from perhaps an ultra-sophisticated account of Buddhism, was capable of obscuring the other. The Indian and Sri Lankan experiences confirmed Jungs holistic hypothesis that in the end everything links up with everything else, which he felt was evidence for the continuation of a collective unconscious. He also thought that there was a credible parallel between mandalas and the circular symbols so frequently drawn by his patients. May all beings be happy Yet another instance of online charter mismanagement has come to light. This week, Chalkbeat published an investigation into the finances and quality of instruction at the Indiana Virtual School, one of the largest high schools in the state with just under 5,000 students. The charter only graduated 61 of its 900 seniors this past school year and received an F rating for the second year in a row. The schools founder, a businessman with no prior experience in K-12 education, had charged the school millions of dollars in management fees and rent through his for-profit company, Chalkbeat reported. Like other online charters in the state, Indiana Virtual School receives funding from the state on a per-pupil basis. But while the two other largest online schools in Indiana spent about two-thirds of their funding on instruction, Indiana Virtual spent only 10 percent. The vast majority of their spendingalmost 90 percentwent to support services, which Chalkbeat described as a catch-all category, and could include a wide variety of unspecified legal and administrative services. With very little money spent on teachers and staff, the student-teacher ration was 222:1. Students had no live interaction with teachers and were expected to work through coursework alone, motivating and pacing themselves. The school doesnt keep records on participationtheir 100 percent attendance rate measures whether students have signed up for courses, not whether students actually did the work . The school isnt facing consequences. In fact, theyre expanding, planning to open another school in Indiana and two more in Michigan and Texas. Most of the students slated to enroll in the new in-state charter are former students of Indiana Virtual. This move hints at a pattern: Last year, Education Week reported on another Indiana online charter, Hoosier Academies Virtual School , facing state-mandated closure. Hoosier Academies also split into two schools, directing the students who were most behind academically into the new charter. With only the highest-performers left, the state schools chief said, the original schools grade might rise and prevent closure. State education officials told Chalkbeat that they didnt have the power to intervene with Indiana Virtualthey are only mandated to take action once the school has four F grades in a row. Until then, its up to the brick-and-mortar school district that manages the charter to monitor the virtual school. But the small, rural district that authorizes Indiana Virtual doesnt have much of an incentive to punish the charterthey receive part of the e-schools funding from the state. Many of the problems plaguing Indiana Virtual School are endemic to the cyber-charter industry. Earlier this month, the Ohio education department found that nine e-schools had overstated their enrollment numbers, leading the department to attempt to recover disputed per-pupil funds. The largest online school in the state is now threatening mid-year closure , saying the states efforts will have a fatal impact on their operations. In Education Weeks own investigation into cyber charters, published last year, reporters Ben Herold and Arianna Prothero documented the tensions that grow from for-profit management and how the online educational model doesnt work for most students. Read the full report here . See more: His Excellency President Maithripala Sirisena addressing delegates at the International Pepper Conference in Kandy Maggi recently partnered the 45th International Pepper Conference as Silver Sponsor, as part of its commitment to use popular Sri Lankan spices in its products to naturally enhance flavour, and encourage the use of spices in home cooking. Locally sourced pepper is one of the many spices that add delicious flavour to Maggi and delivers its much loved spicy taste. The commitment is part of Maggis Simply Good initiative to offer consumers tastier and more nutritious choices, using ingredients typically found in the kitchen. The global event was held in the island for the first time in association with the Spice Council of Sri Lanka, and addressed topics of interest to the world pepper economy, relating to policy makers, traders, manufacturers, researchers and farmers. It was attended by key stakeholders locally and from across the world, including Sri Lankan President, His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena, and other high ranking officials. Said Priyadarshinie Karunaratne, Vice President - Food at Nestle: In response to local consumer preference for more natural and familiar ingredients, such as those typically found in their kitchen cupboards, we are using spices, vegetables and herbs to naturally enhance flavour in our products. We want to inspire and offer tastier and more nutritious choices, and encourage home cooking. We strongly believe goodness starts with homemade food and everyone should be able to enjoy it every day, with a little help from Maggi. We already have a good portfolio of products in Sri Lanka - ranging from coconut milk powder to noodles and seasoning - to encourage and support homemade food. Our range is now strengthened with the goodness of local spices. From left to right (standing): Nuwan Rathnayaka, Nestle Brand Manager Food; Madam W. Srima Shantini Koongahage; Priyadarshinie Karunaratne, Nestle Vice President Food; and Bandula Egodage, Nestle Vice President Corporate Affairs and Communications. (Sitting): Hon. Daya Gamage, Minister of Primary Industries at the Maggi stall Spices are popular ingredients in Sri Lankan meals owing to their flavour and aroma, and also their implied health benefits as a food high in anti-oxidants. Maggi products contain a mix of spices like black pepper, chilli, garlic, coriander, cardamom, turmeric, cumin, nutmeg, fenugreek and aniseed where relevant. It is pepper however that is popularly referred to as King of Spices; with a distinct flavour loved the world over and indispensable in the Sri Lankan kitchen. Interestingly, peppercorn comes from a plant native to Sri Lanka and South India, and Ceylon black pepper has a stronger taste and aroma than black pepper anywhere else in the world. Celebrated for their very local flavours and products in Sri Lanka, many of Maggis products contain Ceylon black pepper; including its Chicken Flavoured Noodles, Daiya Chicken Noodles, Spicy Blast Noodles and Soup Cubes. Said Shivani Hegde, Managing Director at Nestle: The world of food is changing. On the one hand, a new generation is reinventing the basics; playing with family recipes and exploring new tastes. On the other, cooking at home is becoming increasingly challenging to fit into daily life. We want to be a brand that responds to these new needs by showing consumers that homemade food can be easy, creative and tasty. At Nestle, we believe our purpose as a company is enhancing quality of life and contributing to a healthier future. Our Maggi brand brings this purpose to life by continuing to inspire and help people cook good food with fresh ingredients. Most Maggi noodle products contain pepper REUTERS, 1 November, 2017- A lawyer for dismissed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, due to appear in a Spanish court this week to answer charges relating to Catalonias push for independence, said he would not return to testify but could answer questions from Belgium. If Puigdemont fails to appear before the court, an arrest warrant could be issued that would in turn prevent him from standing in the snap regional election called by the Spanish government for Dec. 21. There was currently no arrest warrant out for Puigdemont, the lawyer told Associated Press. The result of all these experiences with left-wing politics was a long tract against left-wing politics by the ex-communists In colonial societies like ours, the rift in the left movement was between the base and the superstructure It was this culture of political complacency that was echoed in the reactions of the left to the JVP student insurrection of 1971 The first of four articles delving into the Left movement in Sri Lanka. Somewhere in the late forties and early fifties in the United States a group of intellectuals and artists who had earlier been members of the Communist Party publicly and willingly denounced communism. Some of them went further; they alleged that communists had infiltrated the Government and the movie industry and thus consciously started a witch-hunt against those who were felt to be too liberal, too soft, with respect to the Soviet Union. An irony, considering that the US War Propaganda Machine had covertly encouraged filmmakers (some of whom would side with the instigators of the witch-hunt) to depict the Soviets as a peace-loving people (this was during the Second World War incidentally, when the communists sided with the Free World against the Nazis). The result of all these experiences with left-wing politics was a long tract against left-wing politics by the ex-communists: The God That Failed. The title was interesting enough. October Revolution Isaac Deutscher, the Polish journalist, critic, and activist, whose biographies of Trotsky and Stalin are revered and acclaimed the world over even today, reviewed this book and began his review by quoting one of the writers, Ignazio Silone: The final struggle will be between the communists and the ex-communists. The names of the other writers were marketable enough: Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon), Andre Gide, Louis Fischer, Richard Wright, and Stephen Spender. There were other names involved, of course: Whittaker Chambers, who denounced Alger Hiss during the Red Scare years, and Max Eastman, who had been a close friend of John Reed, the American journalist who covered the October Revolution and was cremated after his death at the Kremlin. Deutscher spared no words; for him, inasmuch as the disillusionment felt by these six ex-communists would have been powerful and understandable, the route they had taken, from disenchantment to anger to downright fury, merely made them embrace a form of totalitarianism and paranoia that was no different to that which they had rejected. As legal scholars have pointed out, after all, the Hollywood Blacklist, in which suspected communists in Hollywood were disbarred from engaging in any work in the industry, had no proper legal basis: it was and it remains illegal because no crime was ever properly defined, the powers of the American Congress notwithstanding. In embracing that kind of irrational frenzy, therefore, the ex-communist was no different to the fervent Stalinist. The heretic, Deutscher observed, becomes a renegade. Pertinent. Its not difficult to imagine the ardent Stalinist cringing before the sight of intellectuals and thinkers being put to death But there were reasons for the change, not least of them Stalins Purges. In themselves these constituted a flagrant betrayal of the revolution because the liberal tradition that had preceded it, during the Lenin years, were all gone in a series of kangaroo trials. Its not difficult to imagine the ardent Stalinist or even Trotskyite cringing before the sight of intellectuals and thinkers being put to death, or before the cowardice of those who had to yield and betray friends. An irony, certainly, because in later years they would be willing organisers of a similar series of kangaroo trials in their own country that promoted witch-hunts on the one hand and betrayals on the other. But Im digressing here. The Left Movement in Sri Lanka This November marks a hundred years since the October Revolution. What it means for Sri Lanka, whether the left movement in this country (if there is such a movement) has survived, are questions best answered later. For now, what interests me is this; in a context where the left has been consistently vilified using all sorts of epithets, what place did it have here and elsewhere historically? In other words, has history been unkind? In colonial societies like ours, the rift in the left movement was between the base and the superstructure, or in other words the leadership and the membership. This translated to the rift between the vanguard and the laity, a rift that was necessitated in our societies because for the most it was the vanguard leadership who had access to Marxist literature. Obviously the membership, most of whom were barely conversant in English, did not have that access, a problem compounded by the fact that this was long before any proper Sinhala translation of those texts were made. What resulted was a curious contradiction, between the stated aims of a society of equals and the class orientation of the vanguard, most of whom, it must be said, came from the anglicised upper crust of their countries. This November marks a hundred years since the October Revolution. What it means for Sri Lanka, whether the left movement in this country (if there is such a movement) has survived, are questions best answered later Given this situation it wasnt too surprising that over the years the personal views of the leadership should clash and give way to rifts, splinters, and amalgamations within the parties based on ideological grounds; between the Stalinists and the Trotskyites, and later between the revolutionary and the gradualist wings of the Trotskyites. Sri Lanka unfortunately proved this to be more the case than the exception, unfortunate because, as the likes of Regie Siriwardena have observed, we did not have the kind of militantly nationalistic bourgeoisie who were agitating for independence in India. Consequently there was an opportunity for the Trotskyites, an opportunity that was not availed of. But this is not the only difference between colonial and postcolonial Sri Lanka (or between Ceylon and Sri Lanka) that proves vital to any assessment of our left movement. Culture of political complacency Commentators sometimes contend that what gave rise to the Stalinist excesses of the thirties and forties was the fact that the Communist Party, in Russia, was a vanguard entity, which is true to an extent. But the vanguard entity that spawned totalitarianism in that part of the world spawned apathy and complacency in ours: despite the best attempts by our most farsighted leftist leaders, N. M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena included, they could not resist yielding to ideological pressures brought about by populist politics. It was this culture of political complacency that was echoed in the reactions of the left to the JVP student insurrection of 1971. One by one, the revolutionists, who would all be rounded up and rehabilitated and then only released to their societies, were indicted as CIA-sponsored fascists fresh from their adventures in Jakarta (where the CIA had earlier taken part in the rise to power of General Suharto, who was by no means a leftist). 1956 had released a whole horde of idealists who would wallow in free education and a government they could consider as theirs. But not unlike the idealists of the forties in the United States, the children of 1956, or the children of those children, who had voted for change over the status quo and hence Bandaranaike over Senanayake, were fast becoming disillusioned by the leadership that had become the leaders of their movement, economically and socially. Needless to say it was during these years the Sirimavo years, when Sri Lanka attained self-sufficiency in food and tried to keep up with the rest of the industrialised postcolonial world which gave rise to two far-reaching issues: growing unemployment on the one hand and growing racial unrest on the other. The first would breed the insurrection; the second, a bloody, costly 30 year war. By this time, of course, the rift between the vanguard and the laity, and the laity and the fringe, had given way: because of free education along with translations of Marxist texts and literature from Russia, an entire bilingual and vernacular generation grew up to spurn the Old Left that had inspired the vanguard movement. The Old Left was exactly that, therefore: Old. This wasnt the time for swimming pool, armchair socialists who smoked and led extravagant lives that were manifestly at odds with the kind of the lifestyles they were promoting throughout the country. They had earned the enmity of the bourgeoisie before; now they were earning the enmity of the people, predominantly the middle class. So we all became renegades, but not before those among us who remained idealists took to the New Left. In the eighties the LSSP along with a bunch of other parties formed the United Socialist Alliance with Vijaya Kumaratunga to emulate the freewheeling, sahodhara-premaya rhetoric of the JVP. But it was to no avail: as I noted a few months back elsewhere, while the USA depended on Vijaya, Vijaya did not depend on the USA. When he was killed, consequently, the USA was finished, bringing about the third most significant political phenomenon since 1956 and 1971: the federalist-devolutionist discourse that continues in our political circles even today. But thats for another article. If the sixties and the seventies saw a dismantling of the vanguard structure in our left movement, then the new millennium saw a dismantling of the rift between the lay membership and the fringe, at the expense of the leadership. What I mean here, of course, is the empowerment of the student movement, and the fringe movement, both of which have proved to be more powerful, more credible, than the politburos of the New Left. The fringe movement was formerly the monopoly of the ivory tower academic, whose main role today is to apologise for the excesses of whatever government he or she is a part of (a sad contradiction, certainly): now, on the other hand, it has been transformed to an oppositional space occupied by ordinary folk, artists, civil rights activists, intellectuals not cut off from the general public. This particular phenomenon deserves separate treatment. I will get to it. Here. Next week. For now, however, I am done. Things will get worse for Sri Lanka especially in the international arena if the country fails to address the National question, Leader of Opposition R Sampnanthan told the Constitutional Assembly yesterday. "Sri Lanka knows very well that all the problems it has faced in the international arena, particularly since 2012, is because of its failure to manfully address the National question. Things can only get worse; they cannot get any better if the same attitude remains," Sampanthan said. "Sri Lanka was able to garner the support of all the important players including the US, European Union and India to defeat the LTTE. The LTTE was banned in all these countries as a result. You made it look to the world that the LTTE terrorists were an impediment to a finding a political solution for the country. You assured the world that an acceptable political solution would be found after the defeat of the LTTE. Ask yourselves whether you can abandon the said assurances and commitments you made to the world," he added. The Tamil people of the North-East have been absolutely clear in regard to the manner and mode of power sharing. They have advocated a federal arrangement within a united, undivided country in a united Tamil speaking North East region comprising the Northern and Eastern provinces" he added. (Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana) President Donald Trump, during a White House Cabinet meeting Wednesday, said he wants to terminate the Diversity Visa Lottery, a program that distributes around 50,000 visas to countries where there is a low rate of immigration to the US. "I am, today, starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program," Trump said, seated next to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. "I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program, diversity lottery, diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn't been good and we have been against it." He added: "We're going to quickly as possible get rid of chain migration and move to a merit-based system." Trump added that based on preliminary information, the attacker in New York "was the point of contact, the primary point of contact for, and this is preliminarily, 23 people, that came in or potentially came in with him and that is not acceptable." The comments follow Trump's tweets on Wednesday morning that blamed Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, for the program. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty," Trump tweeted. "I want merit based." Schumer was a key shaper of the 1990 legislation that created the program, but also played a lead part in the 2013 Gang of Eight bill that that passed the Senate on a bipartisan basis and included removing the diversity lottery program. The bill would have moved those visas elsewhere in the system and introduced a merit system that took into account multiple factors like family and work skills. The diversity visa has been a point of contention for years. The 50,000 visas, distributed by random selection among countries where there is a low rate of immigration to the US, were originally designed to diversify the pool of immigrants to the US. The visas offer immigrants green cards, permanent legal residence and a path to citizenship. Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue have introduced a bill, endorsed by Trump, that would eliminate the diversity lottery and certain categories of family-based green cards, and then would transform the remaining employment-based visas into a point system that favors heavily highly skilled, highly educated, English-speaking immigrants. But while there is consensus around needing to reform the process, limited support exists even within the GOP for Cotton and Perdue's bill. Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has been an ardent critic of Trump, noted in a tweet Wednesday that the Gang of Eight bill, had it been signed into law, would have done away with the diversity visa program. The Cotton-Perdue bill would roughly halve the number of green cards overall per year, a point of contention for many Democrats and Republicans alike, and wouldn't easily allow for low skilled immigrants to come to the US permanently, another sticking point for many. Trump also labeled the alleged attacker an "animal" to reporters Wednesday, and said the United States must "get much tougher" with terror suspects. Trump called for "quick justice" and "strong justice" for terror suspects. "What we have right now is a joke and it is a laughing stock and no wonder so much of this stuff takes place," Trump said. The President's initial Twitter response to the attack labeled the attacker a "very sick and deranged person" and offered his "thoughts, condolences and prayers to the victims and families of the New York City terrorist attack." Trump later tweeted that he was ordering his Department of Homeland Security to "step up our already Extreme Vetting Program." It was not clear what program the President was referring to. Reached Tuesday night, DHS referred all questions on the "vetting" order to the White House, which did not respond to questions. Soon after Trump tweeted Wednesday morning, Schumer responded with a tweet of his own: "I guess it's not too soon to politicize a tragedy." Schumer also accused the President of "politicizing and dividing America" and urged him to focus "on the real solution -- anti-terrorism funding -- which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget." New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, said at a Wednesday morning news conference that the President's tweets were "not helpful." "I don't think they were factual. I think they tend to point fingers and politicize the situation," he said. "You play into the hands of the terrorist to the extent that you disrupt, divide and frighten people in the society. The tone now should be the opposite -- on all levels." Trump's decision to address immigration policy hours after the terrorist attack is markedly different than the tack the White House took after a shooter in Las Vegas opened fire on a concert last month, killing 58. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, asked about gun control policy the day after the shooting in Las Vegas, dismissed the idea of talking about policy so soon after a shooting. "We haven't had the moment to have a deep dive on the policy part of that," Sanders said. We've been focused on the fact that we had a severe tragedy in our country. And this is a day of mourning, a time of bringing our country together, and that's been the focus of the administration this morning." Pressed on why Trump brought up the travel ban hours after shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino, Sanders added at the time, "I think there's a difference between being a candidate and being the President." Tuesday's terror attack in New York was the city's deadliest since 9/11. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a rented van down a bike path, law enforcement sources have said. The attack killed six victims instantly, while two others died later. New York politicians and officials quickly labeled the incident a terror attack. Right-wing blogs and publications began blaming Schumer's immigration policies on Tuesday night and Trump's comments track with much of what was written. "Blame Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer," read a post from the Gateway Pundit. Breitbart, the right-wing publication run by Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist, was leading with a story about the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, citing an ABC New York story that reported Saipov came to the United States through the program. Turning to immigration politics shortly after a terrorist attack has become a pattern for Trump. After a deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, then candidate-Trump called for the "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Trump ran on hard-line immigration policies in 2016, pledging to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, cut down the number of refugees coming into the United States and deporting undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. After stepping into the Oval Office in January, Trump proposed a sweeping travel ban that banned immigration from a series of countries. The ban, which has been repeatedly altered and fought in court, currently puts increased screening on nationals from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Venezuela and Yemen. Immigration from North Korea and Syria is suspended entirely. Democrats slammed Trump on Wednesday for quickly turning to immigration after the terror attack. "This has become the pattern for President Trump, dating back to the campaign," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, told MSNBC. "No matter where an attack happens around the world, whether it's in the United States, Europe, he immediately goes to questions about immigration." (CNN) Humanitarian and relief agency World Vision Lanka launched its campaign It takes a nation to end physical and sexual violence against children, on its 40th anniversary celebrations in Colombo. The campaign has a specific focus on ending child sexual abuse and combatting severe and humiliating punishment of children. Women and Child Affairs Minister Chandrani Bandara was a special Guest of Honour, State Minister for Finance Eran Wickramaratne delivered the keynote address and Ministers Anoma Gamage, Range Bandara and Vajira Abeywardena and current member of parliament A.H.M. Fowzie were present at the ceremonial opening. Coordinating Secretary to President Shiral Lakthilaka representing the Presidents office and World Vision Lanka Board Chair Anglican Bishop of Colombo Reverend Dhiloraj Kanagasabey also spoke at the event. Many past members of staff, communities and partners of World Vision Lanka were present at the programme. The organization celebrated its work serving the poor in Sri Lankan since 1977. World Vision has been actively involved in child well-being centered community development with interventions in Health and Nutrition, Water and Sanitation, and Education and Economic Development. With projects in 22 out of the 25 districts, World Vision has also been instrumental in providing humanitarian assistance in emergencies such as the tsunami, floods and drought as well as in the post conflict contexts. The organizations focus to join the global campaign to end violence against children comes at a time where there is a rise in reported cases of child abuse in Sri Lanka. The campaign was launched in the presence of Women and Child Affairs Minister Chandrani Bandara and South Asia Initiative to End Violence Against Children (SAIEVAC) Director General Dr. Rinchin Chophel. The aim of the campaign is to address violence against children, by raising public awareness on the subject and drawing attention to community vigilance and responsibility, as abuse in most cases are done by those known to the child. World Vision Lanka will also continue to be a strategic partner in the National Partnership to End Violence Against Children (NPEVAC). World Vision Sri Lanka National Director Dr. Dhanan Senathirajah speaking at the event said: Although the exact numbers of child abuse is actually not known, we know that it is a growing problem. In any given year the number of complaints the NCPA receives surpasses 10,000. The police reports are another pointer towards the scale of the situation. But I reiterate here, what goes unreported is our greatest concern. I call upon our partners, the faith community, corporates and donor community to join us in this endeavour. World Vision Lanka (WVL) has been working in the sphere of child protection for several decades. The organization works in over 30 locations in Sri Lanka and has access to nearly 2000 communities and more than 500 childrens societies. WVL has been strengthening protection of children in local communities through engaging with children, families and local authorities in poor, rural as well as in difficult urban areas. These interventions include prevention of child right violations and as well as supporting victims of child abuse. Meanwhile the special focus on street children has enabled many children to leave a life of danger and live a normal childhood. In 2017, WVL in its programmes has directly impacted more than 200,000 children and their families. World Vision Lankas campaign will draw its strength from the access the organization has to communities all over Sri Lanka. It will reach out to parents and duty bearers on child protection, scale up family based programmes targeting men to become better caregivers, facilitate awareness raising on the subject at school development societies, and use its direct access to producer groups, water consumer societies, mother groups, nutrition society members and savings clubs, in its awareness drive. Additionally, World Vision Lanka will also work with faith communities in their project areas. Those present at the programme pledged to help to end violence against children. A commemorative cover and stamp was also issued to mark the event. Philadelphia Mayor James Kenney is calling for the abolition of the citys School Reform Commissionthe state-controlled body that has overseen the school district since Pennsylvania officials wrested control in 2001 amid fiscal strife. In a speech on Thursday from the City Council chambers, Kenney presented the return to local control as one on which the future of the city itself and generations of Philadelphians depends, and one that would sustain the progress that both the city and district have made in recent years. Right now, we are leaving our citys fate largely in someone elses hands, he said. Missing from Kenneys speech was a definitive plan to fund a host of proposals he outlined to improve the system. With a return to local school governance, city residents will be able to hold him and future mayors accountable for the success or failure of schools, he said. You can hold me, and future mayors, accountable for the success or failure of our schools, he said. The buck will stop with us. Local control would allow the city to work under a unified vision; find ways to improve and share school facilities; review transportation routes and safe ways to get students to school; develop quality educational experiences for studentsincluding mentoring, job shadowing, and summer job experiences; and move away from the unhealthy debate over district and charter schools. Kenney proposed a return to the school board structure laid out in the city chartera nine-member board, recommended to the mayor by a nominating panel. The school board members would not be elected. The mayor pointed to districts, including New York City and the District of Columbia, which are under mayoral control and have seen improvements in student achievement in recent years. Joyce Wilkerson, the chairwoman of the School Reform Commission who noted that the body was created as a temporary form of governance, said the commission will consider a resolution to dissolve itself on Nov. 16. Since its creation, the school district has weathered multiple fiscal crises and leadership change, she said. The District now has a balanced budget, strong leadership in Dr. [William] Hite and is making real academic progress, Wilkerson said in a statement. As a result of this progress and stability, we have the opportunity to re-examine the governance structure including the restoration of local control. .... Strong public education is the most significant factor in the welfare of our city and the future of our children. It is time for Philadelphia to take ownership of that future. When the state takeover occurred in 2001 , it was the largest of its kind and it came with the approval of then-Democratic Mayor John F. Street. Edison Schools, a private company, first ran the school system before a five-member panel, appointed by the governor and mayor, took over the district. In the intervening years, the district has been buffeted by a host of issuesmany of them financial, which Kenney detailed in his speech. The district has had three superintendents under state control, with the current superintendent Hite serving the longest. The School Reform Commission has become increasingly unpopular in recent years. In 2013, against howls of protests by parents and residents, it voted to close nearly two dozen schools. Staff cuts of nearly 4,000, including teachers, counselors, and nurses, were deeply unpopular. A four-year contract dispute with the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers recently concluded with a new pact. Two years ago, Philadelphia voters overwhelming supported a non-binding ballot measure to abolish the commission and return the school system to local control. Superintendent Hite said in a statement that he will continue to advocate for the resources that will increase the successes, stability, and positive momentum we have been able to achieve as a school district. I am optimistic and excited about the future of the School District of Philadelphia and about our work to improve academic outcomes. Kenney made it clear that Philadelphians cannot depend on legislators in Harrisburg, the state capitol, to come to the districts financial rescue after years of failed efforts by local representatives and advocates for additional state funding. And Kenney said he was unwilling to sacrifice the hard-won progress in recent years or go back to the days of understaffed classrooms and schools without nurses. Failing to act now will relegate generations of Philadelphia families to poverty, he said. Kenney said his next budget will include proposals that will address the capital improvement needs of the school district; a 9th grade academy with academic support and counseling to help reduce dropout rates; expanding college access; additional Advanced Placement courses; and providing additional supports for teachers and other staff. He said there were no easy solutions to funding the proposals. We owe it to those kids and we will do this together, he said. Jerry Jordan, the president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that state control had not been successful in other places where its been attempted. Act 46, the legislation that created the SRC, also paved the way for privatization, exploding deficits, mass layoffs, school closings, and the (ultimately failed) attempt to cancel the PFT contract, he said. While todays announcement is significant and exciting, we also recognize that local control, by itself, is no solution for the deep poverty that creates obstacles for so many of our schoolchildren. It also does not address the chronic under-funding of our public schools. We must continue the fight for more resources from the state to combat the effects of poverty and provide our children with the programs and services they deserve. The PFT feels that a locally accountable school board will make a stronger ally in this fight. Then-Democratic candidate for Mayor James Kenney speaks during a 2015 debate at Temple University in Philadelphia. --Matt Rourke/AP-File The removal of FBI director James Comey by Donald Trump last May led to the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to investigate Russian influence in the US elections in the fear that the president would have tried to obstruct Justice. These are some of the key figures of Robert Mueller's research that tries to unmask the possible links between Trump's campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 elections. Jared Kushner the son-in-law and adviser to the president is part of those investigated for his meeting with the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, in December 2016, a month after the electoral victory. Kushner also met with Sergey Gorkov, head of a Russian bank that has received U.S. sanctions. And he came to propose a secret communication channel between Putin and Trump's team. During the campaign, the son-in-law, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, also met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, lobbyist of her government in the USA, under the promise of obtaining "incriminating information" from Hillary Clinton. Michael Flynn Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn was an advisor to Trump's campaign and national Security advisor for the administration during the first 24 days, when he was forced to resign after lying about his contacts with Russia. Flynn had concealed Vice President Mike Pence from meeting with Ambassador Kislyak. The general's history also includes collaborations and advice with the Turkish Government and has been a speaker for Russian companies, including the Russia Today, considered by the US as one of the means used by Russia to interfere in the elections. Sergei Kislyak the Russian Exambassador in Washington figures as one of the recurring people in Mueller's research. Kislyak, a key Putin man, met with Flynn, Kushner, the current attorney general, Jeff sessions, and other Trump's advisors as Carter Page. The diplomat also participated in events related to the now president's election campaign. Shortly before returning to Russia to continue his Senate career, the ambassador saw Trump in the Oval Office together with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Donald Trump Jr. The president's eldest son is also on the list of investigated by Mueller after knowing that he was the one who organized the meeting with Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya and other members of Trump's campaign. In his email exchanges, the firstborn claimed to be "delighted" to receive negative information about Clinton. For immigrant and refugee English-language learners who arrive in the United States as middle and high school students, the stakes are high. The newcomersmany of whom arrive with gaps in their formal educationare expected to grasp lessons in a new language and complete a high school diploma before they age out of the system, all while theyre adjusting to a new culture and country. Federal education laws have also ratcheted up the pressure on the schools that serve them. Schools and districts now bear more responsibility, and are evaluated on how effectively they bring those students up to speed in English and support their efforts to stick with their studies until graduation day. Drawing examples from school districts with sizable immigrant populations, a new report from the Migration Policy Institute examines the key challenges middle and high schools face in seeking to meet the needs, both instructional and social-emotional, of these youth. The report, Beyond Teaching English: Supporting High School Completion by Immigrant and Refugee Students , explores how schools in places such as Fairfax County, Va., Los Angeles and New York rely on local, state and federal resources to design programs, develop curriculum and hire more staff to work directly with English-learner students. The debate over how to best serve this student subgroup has emerged as a pressing national issue. A February report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine detailed how under-resourced schools and under-prepared educators can hinder efforts to help those students learn and master English . Education Week has reported on the struggles that immigrant newcomers often face in adjusting to school , the resources that educators should have at their disposal to ease the transition and what challenges the students face once they reach graduation day . Starting with the school registration process, the Migration Policy report takes a step-by-by approach to spelling out the services and accommodations that many immigrant and refugee students need to succeed in school. That list includes access to legal aid for students facing the threat of deportation or detention and mental health services for students who may be dealing with the trauma of violence from their home countries. The report also offers insight to educators serving newcomer students in schools with a small number of English-learners. Related Stories Teaching Americas English-Language Learners: A Special Report For Stalled ELL Students, Graduation Is Often an Elusive Goal Schools Are Falling Short for Many English-Learners Unaccompanied Minors Face New Milestone: Graduation Photo credit: Kenia, who came to the United States from Honduras, participates in a graduation award ceremony at her Charlotte, N.C., high school in 2016. -- Chris Keane for Education Week UPDATED What would it take for a state to ensure that students develop the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to be prepared for college and a career? Delaware is taking on that challenge. Under an initiative known as Delaware Pathways, 9,000 high school students are currently taking college classes, working as interns in real jobs, and earning genuine work credentials. Consider Joe Zecca. While at William Penn High School in New Castle, Delaware, he took classes in technology and engineering at Delaware Technical and Community College (Del Tech) and worked at a manufacturing company the summer before his senior year. By the time he graduated, he wanted to go into the workforce, and he had a lot of options: three companies wanted to hire him. He chose Astra Zeneca, the pharmaceutical company, because he liked the range of equipment they had and the opportunities that were available. There was one catch: Astra Zeneca did not have a job opening, but the company hired him as a consultant until one opened. They really wanted me, Joe told me. I met Joe during the year and a half I spent studying the Delaware initiative under the auspices of the Pathways to Prosperity network , a project organized by Jobs for the Future and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. My full report on Delaware Pathways is here . I came away impressed by the thoughtfulness and care state leaders from education, business, and government have taken in designing and implementing the initiative. They have some challenges, but they are well on their way of attaining their ambitious goal of having half the states high school students in career pathways by 2019--just five years after the initiative got under way. Delaware Pathways was developed to address a skills gap. State officials have projected that the state will need 143,593 new workers by 2024--about the size of the current school population--to replace retirees and meet growth needs. Yet while employers are looking for people to fill the higher-skilled jobs--particularly the so-called middle-skill jobs that require some post-secondary training but not a four-year degree--they are finding a shortage of candidates. Middle-skill jobs in Delaware offer an average salary of $44,960 a year, compared with low-skill jobs, which offer an average salary of $26,350 a year. There is no more frustrating conversation a governor could have than with an employer who wants to hire people, but cant find people with the right skills, former Governor Jack Markell, who launched Delaware Pathways, told me. There has never been a better time to be a person with the right skills, and no worse time to be somebody without the right skills. In response to that concern, Markell brought together leaders from the K-12 sector, higher education, and business to create a system of pathways that would ease the journey to middle-skill jobs in fast-growing, high-paying fields. They began with advanced manufacturing, the pathway Joe Zecca was on, because some groundwork had already been laid. Currently, there are 10 pathways, in fields like engineering, finance, teaching, energy, and health care. Under the initiative, educators work with employers to develop courses that would enable students to develop the skills they need to prepare for entry-level jobs, and design and implement work-based experiences, such as internships, to give students hands-on experiences in real workplaces. The United Way, a partner in the initiative, coordinates services to support low-income students to enable them to participate fully. In its short history, Delaware Pathways has moved quickly to put in a place an infrastructure to manage the project and expand it rapidly while keeping an eye on quality. Under an executive order signed by former Governor Markell, the state established a high-level steering committee to oversee the initiative, while a working group meets regularly to share ideas and keep the project moving. The initiative has also produced some ancillary benefits. Educators say it has accelerated high school reform, by encouraging local districts to develop their own pathways that make school more relevant to adolescents. The initiative has also fostered closer connections between schools, higher education, and businesses, and it has changed expectations for students. The Pathways work opened the door to rethinking how we think about careers and college, said Paul Herdman, the president of the Rodel Foundation, a local philanthropy. It could be a one- or two-year certificate program. Kids [who take that route] are doing just fine or better in terms of income and quality of life. For the 70 percent of people who didnt finish college, their life choice was validated. But the initiative faces challenges as well. While leaders have been successful in raising funds from federal and private sources, they have not yet been able to secure a steady stream of state funds, which are needed to keep it sustained over time. And leaders are finding that too few high school students have the knowledge and skills necessary for college coursework. They have created a program to accelerate learning in English language arts and plan a similar program in mathematics, but those are stopgaps, state officials concede. Still, Delaware Pathways has much to show the rest of the nation. The state might not yet be Switzerland, the gold standard for career and technical education , but the Diamond State is off to a promising start. An intervention that was originally designed for adults in clinical treatment settings is being pitched as a school-based solution to the opioid crisis. To determine which students are using drugs or at risk of using drugs, schools should ask them directly in confidential interviews. Thats the pitch made by the Presidents Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis , which released its final recommendations this week. The screening method is called SBIRT, which stands for Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment. Included in the task forces list of 56 recommendations for addressing the opioid crisis is a call for the U.S. Department of Education to promote SBIRT and similar screening programs for use in middle and high schools. The screenings do not involve drug tests, but rather a screener (school nurse or psychologist trained in conversations on drug use with youth) to determine through a conversation/questionnaire if the student is engaged in risky substance use, a report by the task force says. The intent is to identify students who need help and to try to motivate them into treatment. Students or parents can opt out of the screening and parents are not immediately notified of the screening results to protect students privacy. Parents are notified only in severe cases of addiction. How Does SBIRT work? The task force calls for having trained school employees administer the screening program privately and universally, exempting only the students whose parents opt them out. There are a variety of brief questionnaires that can be used to measure a students risk for drug use. One of the most commonly used is called the CRAFFT screen , which asks students if, in the past 12 months, they have had more than a few sips of alcohol or used drugs to get high. The screening also includes some questions to determine risk for students who are not using, including, Have you ever ridden in a CAR driven by someone (including yourself) who was high or had been using alcohol or drugs? Interviewers affirm positive choices for students who dont show risk for drug use. Students who score in a medium range are given a brief intervention during which the interviewer talks to them about the effects of their behavior and how to make healthy choices. Students whose answers show them to be most at risk may be referred to treatment after a phone conversation with their parents. A Massachusetts law that took effect in 2016 requires schools to adopt annual SBIRT screening for at least two grade levels and provides training and resources for school staff. This introductory video from a state SBIRT website shows a demonstration of a school-based screening. You can also see the states other training resources here . Will Students Really Be Honest About Their Drug Use? Studies of SBIRT in school-based settings have found some promising results . Some students may be hesitant to discuss their risky behaviors with adults at school, but some are open to sharing once they are given a safe space to do so, leaders of the School-Based Health Alliance said. The organization has piloted the use of the SBIRT screening in school-based health centers , which are on-site health clinics that treat a variety of primary care, mental health, and behavioral issues in schools.Those clinics bill for their services through Medicaid and traditional health insurance programs, and they sometimes receive private grant funding to help cover operating expenses. The advantage to screening in a health centeras opposed to asking general school staff to administer the interviewsis that health care providers have established relationships of patient confidentiality with students, who may already see them for issues ranging from sore throats to mental health concerns, said Seleena Moore, a program manager for the School-Based Health Alliance. The organizations pilot, funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, provided training in interviewing for school health center employees. Pilot sites also provide support, including individual and group counseling, for students who are identified as at-risk through the screening tool. The second phase of the pilot has involved efforts to change the culture around drug use in schools and to solicit more feedback from students about how to make the program effective. Schools administering screenings like SBIRT outside of the confidential settings of health centers may have to address some concerns, like confidentiality, said John Schlitt, the CEO of the School-Based Health Alliance. Thats especially true in schools with zero-tolerance policies against drug use. If [students] know they are admitting to something that could get them in trouble with the school, the school has to kind of reconcile that, he said. Why would students admit to something thats going to get them suspended? Schlitt and Moore said they will need to gather more information to determine if the screening is an effective way to counter the opioid epidemic. But, in the meantime, the interviews could be a safe place for students to admit their parents or family members are using or to address larger concerns, they said. Further reading on opioids and schools: Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox. Baby steps. I know, I know, its cliche, but its true. To make any change , to build any relationship, you have to go slowly. Unfortunately, going slowly is usually very hard for me and not the usual kind of hard, like almost painful hard. The expectations I set for myself are often far out of the stratosphere and when I cant meet them, it can often be defeating. Now I know that this isnt a productive way to think and intellectually, I understand not to have these expectations of others, but with myself I struggle. However, in the last week alone, I have been able to see some visible progress that has made a lot of my challenging choices worthwhile. First, a social studies teacher on our team agreed to let me help him and his co-teacher plan a project to try out project-based learning. We have been having conversations and now we have a date scheduled to sit down and plan. I know he wants to do it around the Civil War, so I put out a call to my PLN on Twitter for ideas and I started doing some research so that I can bring some ideas to the table. Of course, Im more eager to hear what their ideas are and how I can help them design a project that would incorporate choice and rigor, probably technology and even have them set the success criteria aligned with the standards. Building on that exciting turn of events, Ive noticed several of the teachers on our district team joining into some weekly Twitter chats and on #ecet2 when we discussed project-based learning , one of the Spanish teachers grew interested in student-designed rubrics . As I was walking through the middle school hallways, I noticed her sitting on duty and I shared how excited I was to see her on Twitter and that I love the ideas she has been sharing. It was then that she asked if I could help her design a lesson to get students to design the rubrics. Over the moon is an understatement for how I felt. She made my day. So we made a plan for her and I as well as another World Languages teacher to plan a lesson to help students design the success criteria for the upcoming project. Next week, we will sit down and they will share their project. Ive already provided them with a few resources that will help them wrap their brains around the concept and also have a few models for what it could look like. Even more exciting is the fact that I will also come in to help co-teach the lesson on the day it is rolled out and participate throughout the process. This is exactly what I have been waiting for; the breakthrough of teachers not just telling me they liked an idea I had, but actually inviting me in to help and then, even better, participate. This is one measure of success about the dynamic of relationship-building I have been working on. Teachers arent afraid to have me in their room or even anxious about it. They see me as an ally that can help them improve student learning, gradually letting go of control and putting the students in charge. When I took this job as a school leader , this is how I imagined it going. Real collaboration with teachers, getting to know students and helping more kids achieve success in multiple areas. And its happening. This week, I also had the pleasure of being invited in to watch an excellent research lesson in a 7th grade social studies class that taught kids about the necessity of validating the information they find online. Eager to learn and participate, I got to sit with Grace who willingly shared her chromebook with me and explained what was going on as we went. Grace is the first student Ive had the chance to get to know a little. When the bell rang, I was getting up to leave and Grace asked, Are you going to come back tomorrow? I wish I could have said yes, but I introduced myself and I thanked her for sharing her learning time with me. Ill be certain to visit with Grace and her classmates again soon. The social studies teacher, whose class I was watching has also been so amazing to work with. He has great ideas and Ive been working hard to make sure to support as much of them as possible. The bottom line is when you have good people, who are willing to take risks, you have to support them and hope that word spreads. Lastly, I sent out an email reminding staff that Im always available to come visit if they want to share something awesome happening in their spaces and another high school social studies teacher invited me in to watch some student presentations about campaign platforms. Im heading there soon. These events this week have been the moments that helped me see that change is happening. The relationships are being built and folks are seeing the possibilities. Im still working to stop saying things like, when I was in the classroom... and just listen to teachers and help them find what works for when they are in the classroom with our kids. What successes have you had this week that has made it all worth while? Please share Will Kevin Spacey Face Legal Consequences? In a roundabout statement that ended with him coming out as gay, Kevin Spacey conceded he may have made sexual advances on actor Anthony Rapp when Rapp was just 14 years old. The statement caused furor in LGBTQ communities, bolstered more accusers to come forward, and led to the end of Spacey's popular Netflix drama "House of Cards." While Spacey's reputation has certainly been damaged, will Rapp's allegations or Spacey's apology lead to any legal consequences for the actor? Criminal Charges Rapp told Buzzfeed that Spacey had him over to his New York apartment for a party in 1986, and at one point picked Rapp up, placed him on his bed, and climbed on top of him. While there is no statute of limitations on rape in New York, criminal charges or civil lawsuits involving attempted statutory rape must be filed within five years of the victim turning 18. So Spacey is unlikely to face any criminal charges relating to the incident. Civil Liability His statement in response to the allegations may have also kept him out of hot water in regards to a civil lawsuit as well: I have a lot of respect and admiration for Anthony Rapp as an actor. I'm beyond horrified to hear his story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years. This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are stories out there about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy. As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly that starts with examining my own behavior. Spacey is careful to both not admit knowledge of or guilt in regards to the accusation and also not deny the claim or call Rapp a liar. And as we've seen in the case of Bill Cosby, calling allegations "false and outlandish" or "a lie" can invite a defamation lawsuit. Although drunkenness would be no defense, civilly or criminally, given the statutes of limitation and Spacey's carefully worded statement, he is also unlikely to face a civil lawsuit, at least in regards to the incident with Rapp. That may not hold true if, as it seems will be the case, more accusers come forward. Related Resources: Utah Nurse Gets $500,000 for False Arrest The July confrontation in Utah made headlines nationwide: a University Hospital nurse standing off a Salt Lake City police officer, refusing to allow blood to be drawn from an unconscious patient involved in a car crash. Alex Wubbels correctly pointed out to Detective Jeff Payne the patient was not under arrest, Payne did not have a warrant to obtain the blood, and that he could not obtain consent from the unconscious man. Payne arrested Wubbels anyway, ostensibly for obstruction of justice, but the nurse was released less than an hour later and never charged. Today, Wubbels and her attorney announced they have reached a settlement with the city and the university that owns the hospital for $500,000. Civil Settlement "We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage and that's what happened in my case," Wubbels during a press conference. "No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience that I went through." The nurse announced she will use a portion of the settlement funds to help people get body camera footage of incidents involving themselves for free. Wubbels also said she will make a donation to the Utah Nurses Association and will help spearhead the #EndNurseAbuse campaign by the American Nurses Association. According to reports, the settlement bars future civil litigation over the matter. Criminal Matters Still, a criminal investigation into Wubbels' arrest remains ongoing, involving the Unified Police Department, the FBI, and the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office. In September, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski announced an internal affairs investigation had found Payne and his watch commander Lt. James Tracy violated several department policies during their interaction with Wubbels, and the city's independent Police Civilian Review Board determined both officers violated department policies. The Salt Lake Police Department fired Payne, and demoted Tracey to the rank of officer. The University of Utah is splitting the costs of the settlement with the city after reports found university officers failed to defuse the situation or defend Wubbels from arrest. Related Resources: Albemarle County Commonwealths Attorney Robert Tracci asked the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday to help fund a newly approved assistant commonwealths attorney position. In July, Tracci enjoined the Virginia Compensation Board to give his office the position to help offset its growing caseload. The board is a municipal entity charged with determining a budget for constitutional offices in Virginia. I recognized the burden already being borne by Albemarle taxpayers, and I thought it would be appropriate for Richmond to support the creation of a new full-time assistant commonwealths attorney position for Albemarle County, Tracci said. When I wrote to them, I pointed out that we are handling a lot of cases per capita. Other jurisdictions with far fewer people had far more assistant commonwealths attorneys. The board agreed to establish the position and fund it with $54,956 the first time a position like it had been created in the last 20 years, Tracci said. On Wednesday, Tracci asked the Albemarle supervisors for $53,605 to $68,605 in supplemental funding to bring the salary up to the level of the other assistant prosecutors in his office. He said he wants to be able to recruit and retain the high-quality legal representation the community expects from his office. With a recent spike in violent crimes (from one homicide in 2016 to five this year), Tracci said its imperative that his office hire a new prosecutor who can handle complicated violent felony cases. He also said his office has seen a change in the complexity of cases, particularly those that involve gang activity. Lets hope its just a blip and not something permanent, Tracci told the board. But I dont think we have the luxury to assume these trends are not going to continue. Tracci also emphasized some community issues his office is focusing on, including crimes against children, elder abuse, crime prevention and criminal justice reform. He said his office is committed to the expansion of the DNA database, crisis intervention and the implementation of a mental health therapeutic docket. Supervisor Ann H. Mallek said it was important that the prosecutors caseloads be manageable and that the supplemental money should be found sooner rather than later from an alternative source. If the board were to approve the money in the next fiscal budget, she said Tracci would have to wait to hire someone until July. I, for one, appreciate the fact that he has wrangled the approval from the state Compensation Board, she said. Supervisor Liz Palmer also voiced concern about waiting to add the funding to the budget and agreed that the money likely would need to come from a reserve source. Supervisor Rick Randolph said he would like more information about the caseloads of each attorney, as well as conviction statistics. He said he was inclined to support Traccis request, but that he would like some more empirical data some way to demonstrate on an annual basis to assess how the office is functioning. Apart from the commonwealths attorney, the office also employs six full-time assistant prosecutors (including the new open position), a part-time assistant prosecutor, a paralegal, three legal assistants and one office associate. The estimated salary for the new assistant prosecutor would be between $80,000 and $95,000 a year, plus $28,313 for benefits. Additional expenses for the position include $1,300 for training, $400 for books, $240 for parking and $500 for state bar dues, as well as one-time expenses for a phone, computer and printer. The board is expected to make a decision during its Nov. 8 meeting. Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia. (File Photo) Sydney: Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia, two sources with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday. Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.54 billion) in outside financing for its proposed A$4 billion Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland. However, Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project which environmentalists oppose because of concerns over the size of the mine and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef. CMEC is an engineering contractor that is majority-owned by Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Machinery Industry Corp Ltd, or Sinomach. CMEC would provide financing through the China Export Import Bank or China Construction Bank, or both, in return for winning the procurement and engineering contracts, for the project, according to a report issued earlier on Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA) an outspoken opponent of the project, citing unidentified sources. Chinese SOE backing raises the probability that Adani can secure a financial close for this long delayed project, the report said. In addition to the A$2 billion in financing, Adani has also applied for A$900 million in Australian government loans to build a railway to ship coal 400 km (250 miles) from the Carmichael site to a port on the Pacific Ocean for export. Carmichael has been delayed by court challenges from environmentalists and indigenous groups concerned about climate change, and the impact on native land and water supply, but those challenges have been rejected. Jeyakumar Janakaraj, chief executive of Adani Australia, told Reuters on October 3, it wants to tie up financing by March 2018 and would look to sell a minority stake in the project to help raise funds. Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael under the first stage of the project by March 2020. New Delhi: India's largest power producer NTPC Ltd on Thursday said it has shut a 500 MW unit at its Unchahar coal-fired power station in Rae Bareli after an explosion killed 26 people and injured several others. The 1,550-megawatt (MW) plant, which supplies electricity to nine states, had reported an explosion in the furnace beneath the boiler on Wednesday. "This is to inform that Unit-6 (500 MW) of Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, Rae Bareli, UP, is under shutdown after an accident in the evening of November 1. The other five units of the station are operating normally," NTPC said in a statement. NTPC had on Wednesday said it has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. At around 1530 hours on Wednesday, "there was sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation," it had said in a statement. "There was opening in corner No.2 from which hot flue gases and steam escaped affecting the people working around the area." Around 80 people were rushed to NTPC hospital, most of them were discharged after giving first-aid, it added. The plant employs around 870 people. "All possible measures are being taken to provide immediate relief to the families of affected people in close coordination with the district administration," NTPC said. New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley-headed ministerial panel on consolidation of PSU banks has been empowered to direct lenders to examine proposals for amalgamation. The Finance Minister headed Alternative Mechanism (AM) will receive inputs from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) before according in-principle approvals, the government said in a statement on Wednesday. "The proposals received from banks for in-principle approval to formulate schemes of amalgamation will be placed before the AM. A Report on the proposals cleared by AM will be sent to the Cabinet every three months," it said. "Alternative Mechanism may also direct banks to examine proposals for amalgamation," it added. It said the AM, which will receive inputs from the Reserve Bank before according in-principle approvals, may also direct banks to examine proposals for amalgamation. The other members of the AM panel are Minister of Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal and Minister of Defence Nirmala Sitharaman. The AM would devise its own procedure for appraisal of amalgamation proposals by banks, and be guided overall by the objectives of the Nationalisation Acts [Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) Acts, 1970 and 1980]. The statement further said that the "Final Schemes" formulated will be approved by the central government, and laid in both the Houses of Parliament. While announcing the unprecedented Rs 2.11 lakh crore capital infusion road map for the public sector banks last month, Jaitley had said, this will be accompanied by a series of banking reforms over the next few months. The constitution of AM is a movement in that direction. The Union Cabinet in August had decided to set up an Alternative Mechanism to fast track consolidation among public sector banks to create strong lenders. The move to create large banks aims at meeting the credit needs of the growing Indian economy and building capacity in the PSB space to raise resources without dependence on the state exchequer. The Department of Telecom and telecom operators are working on a process of SMS/IVRS and app-based verification. (File Photo) Mumbai: Amidst all the controversy surrounding linking of Aadhaar with SIM and the safety of submitting our biometric details to telecom operators, the Department of Telecom has decided to launch an app-based SIM-Aadhaar verification. The Department of Telecom and telecom operators are working on a process of SMS/IVRS and app-based verification, reported Economic Times. This will include linking your Aadhaar and mobile number using a one-time password or IVRS call. Service providers will facilitate an OTP-based verification process through SMS or voiced-based IVRS call or via a mobile app. This will be followed by a demographic verification of the number. The service provider will send an OTP request to the Aadhaar nodal agency UIDAI. UIDAI will then send the OTP on the mobile number. One can then send this OTP to the designated mobile number and e-KYC will be verified. This process will ensure a higher level of security and privacy for all those concerned about the safety of their data. It will also enable those who cannot physically go to telecom operators to complete the verification within minutes. New Delhi: Labour minister Santosh Gangwar on Tuesday said the government is "sincerely" working towards creating new avenues for jobs and self-employment in the country. Speaking about the government's focus on generating jobs, the minister mentioned the Mudra Yojana and highways construction and said such programmes have created a lot of employment opportunities. "The central government is sincerely working to create new avenues of employment and self-employment...," Gangwar said at the 65th Foundation Day celebration of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) here. He said that the Centre has recently "decided to construct 83,000 Kms of highways which will create 32 crore man-days in a span of 5 years". He further said that Mudra Yojana has created a lot of self-employment opportunities as 9.5 crore people have been given loans amounting to Rs 4 lakh crore. On the EPFO's long journey, Gangwar said the retirement fund body has taken a long jump since its inception in 1952. The EPFO has achieved various milestones in last 65 years and its journey began with 5.5 lakh beneficiaries and now it covers 4.5 crore employees, Gangwar said, adding that EFPO now covers more than 10 lakh establishments which initially was 1,267. The labour minister said the EPFO has started various new initiatives to accelerate the process of online registration of employers. The EPFO is spreading the coverage area of its schemes for workers from unorganised sector, he added. On this occasion, EPFO's Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy said the retirement fund body is committed to 'Digital India' initiative and expressed hope that it will become a totally digitalised and paperless office by August 15, 2018. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan presided over the function and lauded the EPFO's efforts to digitalise the services to accelerate the claims of its beneficiaries in Provident Fund, Pension and Insurance. She also inaugurated 1 MW solar power plant at various regional offices of the EPFO on this occasion. The Nifty jumped 105.20 points or 1.02 per cent to close at a new all-time high of 10,440.50. Mumbai: Equity markets soared to a record high on Wednesday rallying over 1 per cent as Asian stocks hit a 10-year high amidst an improvement in the global growth prospects. On the domestic side, Indias huge jump of 30 notches in World Banks ease of doing business rank also bolstered sentiments as it is likely to positively impact FDI inflows and economic growth. The Nifty jumped 105.20 points or 1.02 per cent to close at a new all-time high of 10,440.50. The Sensex rose 387.14 points or 1.17 per cent to end the day at 33,600.27. This jump in rank will spread positive vibes among investors around the world which will subsequently impact FDI inflows, GDP growth and spread on credit default swap (CDS), a possible proxy of the country risk. The 5-year CDS spread had shown a concomitant decline in many countries, which have witnessed an improvement in ease of doing business rank, noted Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic advisor, SBI. In the countries like Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia where rank has deteriorated in the last 5 years, there are visible signs of GDP slowdown and negative FDI inflows, he added. On Wednesday, the banking sector once again stole the limelight with SBI, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank posting robust gains of 4.58 per cent, 4.42 per cent and 2.56 per cent respectively. Bharti Airtel was the biggest gainer among the Sensex constituents up 8.19 per cent, after it reported better than expected numbers. Additionally, reports about private equity firm Bain Capital picking up a 10 per cent stake in Axis Bank led to a 2 per cent rise in its share prices while the governments approval to sell its entire stake in Dredging Corporation of India triggered a 20 per cent surge in its share prices. According to the provisional data released by the stock exchange, foreign portfolio investors bought shares worth `1,038.31 crore. Revelations related to sexual harassment against celebrities like Roberto Cavazos's against Kevin Spacey started following similar accusations against Harvey Weinstein.(Photo: Facebook/ AP) Los Angeles: New allegations of sexual misconduct from a number of men have emerged against actor Kevin Spacey. Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have shared their stories of how Spacey allegedly made unwanted advances towards them. While Montana said he was left with PTSD for six months after he claims Spacey "forcefully" groped him, Cavazo, in a Facebook post, alleged that the actor made two advances on him, bordering on harassment, in London, where Cavazos appeared in various productions at The Old Vic theater. Spacey served as the theatre's artistic director from 2004 to 2015. Cavazos added that Spacey frequently targeted young actors, particularly those under 30. "It was so common that it became a local joke (in poor taste)," Cavazos wrote. The Old Vic has said no formal complaints were ever made against Spacey during his tenure, but the theatre said it was setting up a confidential email address for people to report experiences of harassment. The new accusations follow the explosive allegation by actor Anthony Rapp, who revealed that Spacey sexually assaulted him in the 1980s when he was just a 14-year-old. Production on the sixth and last season of Netflix's 'House of Cards,' in which Spacey plays the lead role of Frank Underwood, has since been suspended. The streaming service, which said it was "deeply troubled" by Rapp's allegation, is also behind 'Gore,' an upcoming biopic starring Spacey as the American writer Gore Vidal. Shooting on the project wrapped last month in Italy. Actress Anaswara Kumar, who played an important role in Deekays super-hit film Yaamirukka Bayamey, is awaiting the release of her next flick, Pattinapakkam. The actress is over the moon, as she has been invited by the Korean foundation for the programme, 2017 Indian next generation leaders visit Korea, as a delegate from South India representing the art and cinema field. The event, to be held from November 5, will also see 10 other delegates from different walks of life hailing from other parts of the country. Speaking to DC, Anaswara excitedly says, I happened to watch the South Korean film Train to Busan after I heard everyone raving about. I was completely mesmerised and I would say that this was when my tryst with South Korea started. Weve had historical connections with Korea and even Bodhi Dharma had visited the country. His influences are still found in South Korea. This piqued my interest and I started learning the language. Im in the intermediate level now. As I started learning the language, I took part in several events hosted by them. One day, I happened to meet the Korean Council General and the Deputy Council General and spoke to them about how we can creatively take forward the culture of both the countries. They were also impressed and invited me to this festival. During this one week travel, Anaswara will also be speaking to the authorities of Busan International film festival. On interacting with Koreans, I understood that there is a common misconception that films in India are from Bollywood. I had to explain it to them that there are films from other languages too. They were surprised to know how cinema thrives despite having several languages and cultural practices. I feel that we (South Indians) are introvert in nature and we do not market ourselves properly. Its high time we get our spotlight, she shares. The talented actress will also be visiting several places in South Korea and will be learning about their culture as well. This way, I can come back to Chennai and educate people about South Koreans way of living. Theyre equally fond of movies and their pop-culture needs to be studied. We can exchange views and many collaborations can happen in the future. Anaswara also stresses on the fact that Indians need to dig up our history and know about our identity. Using the Framingham Risk Score, the researchers connected age of first birth to risk for cardiovascular disease. (Photo: Pexels) A new study now finds that teenage mums have a greater risk of heart disease later in life due to the stress childbirth places on the body. The study shows that women who became mums in their teens were at greater risks for heart disease and blood vessel disease. The study found that women who had a baby before the age of 20, scored significantly higher on the Framingham Risk Score - a measure used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk. Using the Framingham Risk Score, the researchers connected age of first birth to risk for cardiovascular disease. Lead author of the study Dr Catherine Pirkle, an assistant professor in the Officeof Public Health Studies at the University of Hawaii said that adolescent mothers may need to be more careful about lifestyle factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, including maintaining a healthy body weight and sufficient physical activity. She added that more intensive screening of cardiovascular-disease risk may be required of women reporting early childbirths. According to the researcher, this is due to the added strain put on a womans heart and overall body during childbirth. That type of stress is especially harmful to young women's body. Dr Pirkle said that women who had never given birth may have miscarried or terminated pregnancies would have had dramatically lower levels of pregnancy-related complications. The man has to write 144 compliments as he bombarded her with that many "nasty" messages in a three hour period and violated a court order. (Photo: Pixabay) When this scorned lover took out his frustration on his former lady love by sending her a flurry of nasty messages little did he know that he would have to shower her with an equal amount of compliments! Daren Young, 30 has been ordered by Judge Rhonda Loo in Hawaii to make up for the abusive messages that he sent to his ex-girlfriend by writing out just as many "nice" ones. The special punishment was issued by 2nd Circuit Judge Rhonda Loo, who informed the young man that he would also be barred from using 'repeating words' in his written compliments. Young has to write 144 compliments as he bombarded her with that many "nasty" messages in a three hour period and violated a court order that had been issued in February after the pair split up. According to the Daily Mail, Judge Loo said, "It's so childish to think a grown man can be so thumb-happy. I don't know whether I should cut off your fingers or take away your phone to get you to stop texting. "You probably shouldn't get a phone, period. I hope she changed her number." Young was ordered to $2,400 in fines and sentenced to 200 hours of community service. Although he did plead no contest to 16 counts of violating the existing order as he has already spent 157 days in jail. He has been given 144 days to write all the compliments for his ex-girlfriend. Hyderabad: The death toll in the ghastly collision between an autorickshaw and an RTC bus at Yadadri on Tuesday rose to seven on Wednesday, with the death of a 6-year-old LKG student, M. Akshay Kumar while undergoing treatment. Six of the nine passengers in the ill-fated auto had succumbed to their injuries on Tuesday. According to the police, the bus driver, Vijay Kumar, was driving at a high speed. The bus rammed the auto rickshaw, in which the boy was travelling with his mother.The injured persons were shifted to Gandhi Hospital where they are undergoing treatment. On October 26, two men were arrested for their suspected links with Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. (Representational Image) Kannur: The Kerala Police, on Thursday, confirmed that six more youth from Kannur have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Syria. The police said these people were active workers of the Popular Front of India (PFI) in Kerala. On October 26, two men were arrested for their suspected links with Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. The arrests had been made after three people from Kannur, who were believed to have joined IS, left the country to undergo training in Syria, were arrested by the police. Earlier in July, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operative Shajahan Velluva Kandy, a resident of Kannur in Kerala, was arrested from the Indira Gandhi International airport on his deportation by the Turkish authorities. It was not immediately known if the Pakistanis also suffered any casualties. (Representational Image) Srinagar: A Border Security Force (BSF) jawan was killed in Pakistani firing along the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmirs Samba district, on Thursday, officials said. They said that the unprovoked Pakistani firing was effectively retaliated to by the BSF and the clash continued for some time. It was not immediately known if the Pakistanis also suffered any casualties. The last incident of firing along the border was reported from Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of Kerni sector on October 26, but without causing any damage. Though the 210-km long IB which is called Working Boundary by Islamabad has by and large remained calm over the past few weeks, the facing armies have clashed frequently along the 745-km Line of Control (Loc) in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving scores of army personnel and civilians dead and wounded during the past six months. The latest incident took place in Karmara area of Poonch district on Tuesday. The officials said that the Pakistan Rangers attacked a BSF patrol party at the IB in Samba sector at 9.30 am, critically injured BSF constable Tapan Mondal. He was rushed to a nearby Army medical facility but he succumbed to his injuries. The BSF officials said that the attack was sudden if not unexpected. We retaliated to this sudden if not unexpected attack by Pakistan Rangers by using same calibre weapons, said a BSF spokesman in Jammu. Bengaluru: Last week, the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) had banned the use of diesel generator sets across Delhi until March 15, 2018, as a step towards bringing down air pollution. In Bengaluru, Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) Chairman Lakshman has expressed serious concerns over the use of such generators, which contributes to nearly 7% of the air pollution in the city. Since 1983 the pollution level is going above the permissible limits. These sets are often kept on footpath are a major nuisance, Lakshman said. According to the KSPCB, over 54 tonnes of fire dust is produced daily, which contributes to the rise of particulate matter 10. In the city, Domlur is one of the most affected by the use of such gensets by commercial establishment, he added. Mahesh Kashyap, a consultant with the Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD) said that diesel exhausts can lead to serious health ailments. The diesel exhaust contains class 1 carcinogen, which can cause cancer. The diesel engines emit particles less than 2.5mm in size, which can aggravate asthma. The generator sets are commonly used in City Market and Cottonpet. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) guidelines clearly say, Smoke of the gensets should be channelised in such a manner that it is not a nuisance in the neighbourhood. However, the residents staying near Manyata Tech Park complain that constant noise and smoke from the generators used at the tech park has turned their life into a nightmare. K.V. Manjunath, president of MS Ramaiah North City Layout Resident Welfare Associations told Deccan Chronicle that despite high courts initial hearing in July, the tech park promoters have not taken any substantive steps towards curbing the genset menace. Use of gensets doubles Associate Director of TERI Sumit Sharma said that in 2007, there were 5000 diesel generator sets, which have now doubled this year. What NGT guidelines say Gensets should be installed with stand-alone or isolated foundation with proper anti-vibration packing. Genset smoke should be channelized/emitted to avoid causing nuisance to the neighbourhood. The developer for market/malls, high rise building or a gated colony shall necessarily install a source of standby power back up, but installation of a genset by individuals should be prohibited. Developer shall necessarily install a system to harvest solar or wind energy, as applicable, as a source of electricity apart from solar geysers. The Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus, Kamal Haasan said. (File photo) Chennai: Actor Kamal Haasan, who has been lately making headlines over his expected entry into politics, took on the right-wing groups on Thursday, saying that these outfits cannot deny the existence of Hindu terror. The Hindus cannot challenge others to show extremists among them since extremism has spread to that extent even among the Hindus, Haasan wrote in a weekly column, titled One cannot say there is no Hindu terror anymore, in Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan. In the past the Hindu right used to engage only in intellectual debates with the other religious groups. Once this approach started failing they have resorted to muscle power. They too started indulging in violence, he wrote. Haasans column was in response to a question by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The Kerala chief minister had asked the actor to express his view on Hindutva forces and its attempt to dilute Tamil culture. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy responded to Haasans claim of Hindu terror and called him a morally corrupt person. If he has such an inclination, he should report it to the authorities. There is no Hindu terrorist organisation. Kamal Haasan is a morally corrupt person, he can do anything at any time; he cannot be taken seriously. The NIA should visit him and ask him if he has any proof, Swamy told Times Now. Haasan, who once commended the Centres move to demonetise Rs 1,000 and old 500 notes, had later, in a column, urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accept that his move was wrong. The film star is planning to launch his own political party. He recently asked his fans to be prepared for a big announcement on November 7, his birthday. News / National by Farai Shawn Matiashe in Harare President Robert Mugabe has castigated politicians who frequent self-styled prophets to consult on party positions after the 2018 elections saying they were putting themselves up for daylight robbery.President Mugabe was addressing people who thronged the National Heroes Acre for the burial of the late veteran nationalist Mr. Don Kwayedza Muvuti who passed on in Harare.Mr Muvuti was 89."Fortunately, in this era, most people are educated but surprisingly the same educated people and politicians are among those who pay money to prophets in form of tithes and offerings. Some politicians go to these prophets and ask them if their (politicians) positions are to change in the next year elections. They (politicians) are then asked to pay offerings."President Mugabe blamed prophets for fanning division in the party through fake prophecies."These prophets will then tell a certain politician that he or she is going to be a vice president in the near future and commence to celebrate thinking he or she is going to inherit high positions in Zanu-PF and this gives one the courage to threaten others, with even death, thus fuelling violence in the ruling party," said President Mugabe.He said most prophets pretend to be men of God and take unsuspecting people's hard earned cash."Our people claim they do not have money but I heard at some churches drums get filled with money during offering collections," he said.He said people are deceived by biblical scriptures which say, a day shall come when everyone will become rich despite one's background and he believe such are lies.President Mugabe also took a swipe at factionalism within his party, which he said, has resulted in plots to kill each other and urged people to be united and emulate the good work that was done by the late veteran nationalist Muvuti.President Mugabe described Muvuti as an education-oriented and hardworking man who was loyal to the party and who worked tirelessly for the Party in pre and post independence.He said the late Muvuti was instrumental in the revolutionary struggle and his writings contributed much in instilling ideologies of an independent Zimbabwe in people's minds."Cde Muvuti dedicated his life for the Party from the time he left school until his death. He was always busy as he wrote everyday about the history of the Party without anyone telling him what to write. We want his works, in its various publications, to be compiled and sent to the national library for archiving. We want his legacy preserved so it can be read by future generations," said President Mugabe.Muvuti, a former Zimpapers Group Board member and ZANU PF National Consultative Assembly (NCA) member, died at West End Hospital after battling illness for some time.By the time of his untimely death he was still a member of the ruling Zanu Pf party's Department of Information and Publicity and a proof-reader-cum writer at the Party's mouthpiece The People's Voice. He is survived by wife, Deliwe, eight children and 17 grandchildren. Bengaluru: The Karnataka flag rose high on Wednesday, as the state celebrated the 62nd Kannada Rajyotsava with fervour. The yellow and red flag was seen across the city and various government and cultural organizations hosted functions at various parts of the city. A cultural procession goes from Town Hall to SBM Circle, organised by the Karnataka Sangatanegala Okkuta. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah addressed a gathering at Kanteerava stadium and expressed displeasure against the Centres response towards making regional languages as medium of instruction in primary schools. He said, I would write to the Centre again and request them to grant the permission and protect the interest of the people from Karnataka. The President of Kannada Sahitya Parishath, Manu Baligar, hoisted the flag on the premises. In his address Baligar said, People who do not respect Kannada language and the state, are free to leave. We should learn to respect the culture and language of the state, we reside in. The migrant population is high in Karnataka and they should make an effort to learn Kannada, Baligar added. He also mentioned that Kannadigas themselves should use the language in their daily activities. There are several companies from foreign countries operating in the state and the government should bring in a law to provide job for the local people first. Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) also celebrated the Kannada Rajyotsava day. From now on, literary works of renowned Kannada poets and writers and famous proverbs and saying in Kannada should be displayed inside the buses. Transport Minister H.M. Revanna said, Our buses are the ambassadors to promote the language. From now on, literary works of renowned Kannada poets and writers and famous proverbs and saying in Kannada should be displayed inside the buses. These buses should spread a message creating awareness among the people about the Kannada language, the states culture and tradition. At the FKCCI office senior-vice president Sudhakar Shetty hoisted the flag and during his address he said, We should always be proud to converse in Kannada, but the irony is that there is a section of people who think its embarrassing to talk in Kannada." Several government offices, various organizations autorickhsaw and taxi drivers union carried out a rally and celebrated Rajyotsava by hoisting the Karnataka flag. CM Siddaramaiah, Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George, Culture Minister Umashree and Mayor Sampath Raj with this years Rajyotsava Awardees in Bengaluru on Wednesday. 2,040 m-long Karnataka flag bags limca record A 2,040 metre Karnataka flag was taken out for a procession by the members of Kannada Manusugala Vedike on the occasion of 62nd Kannada Rajyotsava on Wednesday. The flag is considered to be the longest and has entered the Limca Book of Records. The members of the Vedike said that it is for the first time such a huge flag is being carried out in a procession from Sangam Circle in Jayanagar. It is a proud moment to enter the Limca Book of Records. But we are even more proud to be Kannadiga and hail from a state which is well known across the world, they added. They also said, We always welcome people coming from different states for various reasons. We are known for our hospitality, but it does not mean they can say Kannada Gothilla for everything. They should make an effort to learn the language and converse in it. The police said that his corpse was found in Khilira village of Shopian on Thursday evening. (Photo: DC) Srinagar: A BJP youth leader was found murdered in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Shopian district on Thursday evening. The police said that his throat was slit and blamed the incident on separatist militants. The victim has been identified as Gowhar Ahmed Bhat, the BJPs youth district president for Shopian. The police said that his corpse was found in Khilira village of Shopian on Thursday evening. He was a resident of Shopians Bonagam area. Terrorists killed civilian Gowhar Ahmed in #Shopian.Investigation on.@JmuKmrPolice DIG OF POLICE SKR (@DigSkr) November 2, 2017 The police said that it has registered a case and launched investigation into the incident which appears to be murder by suspected militants. The body with slit throat was found in Khilira village. We have taken by investigations, said Shopians SSP Shri Ram. The J&K police later tweeted, Terrorists killed civilian Gowhar Ahmed in #Shopian. Investigations on. Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, condemned Bhat's killing and while sympathizing with the bereaved family said, "I appeal all sections of society to come forward to end this cycle of violence in the State". In a similar incident, a school teacher Aijaz Ahmed Lone was found dead with slit throat in Shopians Wathoo village on October 18. He was a resident of neighbouring Gatipora and the officials had suspect the militants belonging to Hizb-ul-Mujahedin were behind his killing. On October 31, the Supreme Court observed that the consent of the girl is prime in the Kerala 'love jihad' case, adding that she is a major. (Photo: File) Kottayam: Kottayam Superintendent of Police, on Thursday, submitted a report to Kerala Women's Commission stating that Hadiya, in Kerala's alleged love jihad matter, is guarded by police and there is no physical torture from her father's side. The police, in its report, also stated that she was not given any drugs. This comes after the State Women's Commission directed Kottayam SP to enquire and to submit a report on the same. On October 31, the Supreme Court observed that the consent of the girl is prime in the Kerala 'love jihad' case, adding that she is a major. The top court also asked the father to produce Hadiya on November 27, the next date of hearing in the case. Earlier, the Kerala Government had told the apex court that the state police is effectively investigating the alleged 'love jihad' case of the state and hence, there is no need for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe it. In an affidavit, the state government informed the apex court that the state police is competent enough to investigate such crimes. Four months ago, the Kerala High Court had sent Hadiya with her parents, K M Asokan and Ponnamma, after annulling her marriage with Shafin Jahan. The case is under consideration of the Apex Court now, which had ordered the NIA investigation into it. Chennai: DMK's RK Nagar by-election candidate has approached the Madras high court to restrain the Election Commission of India from notifying the by-election to the RK Nagar assembly constituency, which was cancelled earlier due to alleged large scale bribing of voters. Justice K.Ravinchandra Babu, before whom the petition filed by N.Maruthu Ganesh came up for hearing on Wednesday, referred the same to the First Bench headed by Chief Justice Indira Banerjee, as the bench had earlier expressed the hope that the ECI would complete the election process by December 2017. The judge also expressed his hope that the ECI would not precipitate the matter any further till the First Bench takes up the petition for hearing. In his petition, he also sought a compensation of Rs 5 lakh, which he spent during the cancelled by-election from the ECI and recover the same from persons by whose illegal activities the bye-election was rescinded. Senior counsel P.Wilson, appearing for the petitioner submitted that petrified at the prospect of the petitioner's impending victory, and in order to enable AIADMK (Amma) faction candidate TTV Dinakaran to win the elections, Chief Minister Edapaddi K.Palaniswami and all his cabinet ministers who supported Dinakaran then, had abused their official positions to spend `100 crore to bribe each voter in the said constituency. Based on reliable information, the Income Tax department conducted raid in 21 places in Chennai and 11 places outside Chennai belonging to health minister C.Vijaya Bhaskar and based on its report, the ECI had rescinded the election. On the basis of the ECI's letter, an FIR came to be registered only on April 27, 2017. No accused was named in the said FIR though the report of I-T department implicates several persons in bribing the voters, including the Chief Minister, Health Minister and his cabinet and party colleagues. If the report of the I-T department was taken to be true, as the ECI has done while rescinding the by-election, there was no reason as to why till today the ECI was not able to register a complaint against persons indicted by the I-T department. The ECI was now planning to announce the bye-election for the RK Nagar assembly constituency. If the by-election was notified again without taking any penal action against the offenders named by the I-T department and relied upon by the ECI to rescind the election, the very purpose of rescinding the election would be rendered otiose, Wilson added. Srinagar: At least, one militant and two Army jawan were killed in a fire fight raging in Samboora area of Jammu and Kashmirs southern Pulwama district since Thursday evening. The police and Army officials said that two more militants have been trapped inside a private house at Samboora outside the highway town of Pampore and about 20-km south of summer capital Srinagar. One soldier who was injured in the encounter has achieved martyrdom, said Director General of Police, Shesh Paul Vaid. He earlier tweeted, Encounter started in south Kashmir. Reportedly one terrorist killed & two engaged in exchange of fire. JKP & SF are on to complete the task. The reports said that the members of J&K polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) along with the Armys 50 Rashtriya Rifles and the CRPF laid siege to Samboora on Thursday evening after learning about the presence of three militants in a private house. As they zeroed in on the militant hideout, the holed up militants opened fire triggering the encounter, said the officials. The police sources said that a body, believed to be that of a militant, is lying in the house compound. A heavy exchange of fire is going on amid loud explosion, said a resident of Pampore over the phone. The mobile Internet services in entire Pulwama districy have been suspended by the authorities as a precautionary measure. The railways have been asked not to operate on the Srinagar-Anantnag route on Friday in view of heightening tensions in Pampore and its neighourhood, the official sources said. Earlier six CRPF jawans were injured when militants attacked their vehicle in southern Anantnag districts Lazibal area, using AK 47 assault rifles on Thursday morning. Officials said that three of the jawans on board received bullet injuries whereas the other three were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The police said that the gunmen belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) targeted a small convoy of the CRPFs 96 Battalion while it was passing through the area at 8.30 am. There were six buses carrying the CRPF jawans in the convoy which came under attack from two to three terrorists who had laid ambush for it at Lazibal. The convoy was on way to the CRPF 96 Battalions camp at Pahalgam, said a police spokesman. A report said that the CRPF convoy was attacked by two motorcycle-borne militants. The police spokesman said that one bus was hit but the jawans on board the other vehicles took positions and returned the fire. The exchange of fire continued for some time but the assailants managed to escape from the area. Our boys responded to the attack effectively, said CRPFs Inspector General Zulfikar Hussain. The injured jawans were rushed to a hospital at Mattan, the nearest town. Later they were shifted to Srinagars 92-Base Army hospital, the officials said. The LeT has while claiming responsibility for carrying out the attack said that four CRPF jawans were killed and seven others were wounded. The CRPF has denied any of its jawans was killed in the attack. The LeT also said, Our mujahedin who carried out the attack have since safely returned to their base. The police sources late Thursday said that another Army jawan who was injured during the encounter at Samboora, Pampore died in a military hospital,raising the toll to two. "The firing stopped at about 9.30 pm but the operation is still going on. The security forces are conducting searches in the area," said a police official on condition of anonymity. A report from Pampore said that a huge crowd assembled near the encounter site and tried to disrupt the operation against the militants by hurling rocks at the security personnel. The latter used force to push them away, said a witness. Hyderabad: Ms Katherine Hadda, United States consul general in Hyderabad, has said that the number of Indian students in the US was growing annually. Over 50 per cent of the Indian students are pursuing post-graduate studies in the US. Launching the US University Fair, organised by the US India Education Foundation (USIEF) and Education USA, in the city, she said 1.66 lakh international students are burning the midnight oil at 35 different institutions and universities in the US. Education is a prominent pillar of the US-India partnership. We are committed to provide Indian students the opportunity to pursue a world-class education in the US, she said. Ms Hadda expressed hope that more female students from India will opt for higher education in the US. As per my observation, not enough female students are applying for studies in United States. India and the world need more Indian female leaders. We would like to see a balanced gender figure in number of Indian students going to the United States, she added. About 35 US-based educational institutions and universities participated in the fair. Hyderabad: The Telangana government has sought intervention of the Union ministry of civil aviation to resolve the issue of alignment plans of the railways on airport connectivity in the MMTS phase II. The GMR Hyderabad international airport authorities are not agreeing to the alignment proposed by the railways up to a location near to the airport border. The officials are citing security issues. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently held a video conference with TS officials on MMTS phase II project under the Pragathi programme. The Central government has sent a note on the video conference. According to the note, land acquisition for MMTS phase II and funds to be given by TS to the railways were discussed. The state government has said that the alignment has been finalised up to a location near to the airport and an independent consultant has been appointed by the state government to study the alternate options. The railway officials said that this issue has been pursued with the state government and the airport authorities. CHENNAI: Stoking a major political controversy, Tamil film icon Kamal Hassan on Thursday said Hindu terror does exist. He went on to stir the pot some more in the lead-up to his much vaunted political plunge by saying that right-wing groups are resorting to using their "muscle power" to silence their opponents, dumping their old method of engaging them in dialogue. The comments made by Kamal in his weekly column in a Tamil magazine titled "You can no longer say there is no Hindu terror", sent ripples across the political spectrum Thursday with the RSS and BJP demanding that he immediately withdraw his statement and make an unconditional apology. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy went a step ahead calling Kamal "morally bankrupt" and said his comments were without any substance. "If he has any evidence, he should give it to the NIA, but he has not done that. This kind of remark will badly hurt him in Tamil Nadu", Swamy said. Kamal's controversial statement on "Hindu terror", which he said was not a new phenomenon, comes two months after he declared his colour, was "certainly not saffron" after his meeting with Kerala Chief Minister Pinnarayi Vijayan. Incidentally, today's comments on "Hindu terror" also came in reply to a question posed to him by the Communist veteran in the same magazine on what he thinks about the efforts by Hindutva forces to denigrate the Dravidian culture. The Hindu Makkal Katchi has demanded actor Kamal Haasan to tender an apology for remarking that Hindu extremism is alive and kicking. Taking a strong exception to the actors remark, Hindu Makkal Katchi president Arjun Sampath said, Kamal Haasan must take back his words. Hindu terrorism does not exist in Tamil Nadu. Already Kamal tasted how Muslims reacted against his film Vishwaroopam. That time, he bent before Muslim and said he would leave Tamil Nadu, Sampath said and added that Kamal has taken a new avatar. After his Dasavatharam (film), he is taking 11th avatar - the Left wing avatar. In his leftist view, he says Hindu terrorism exists. But it is not so, he said. BJP senior leader Dr. Subramanian Swamy responded to the actors claim of Hindu terror and called him a morally corrupt person. The NIA must visit him to seek evidence (for Hindu terorrism), he said. Police sources said that a look out notice was on his name as he was associated with the notorious criminal. Chennai: A special team of Kancheepuram police has detained dead don Sridhar Dhanapalans cook, Devendran for questioning on Wednesday. He was with Sridhar during his last days in Phnom Penh, Cambodia until he committed suicide on October 4 by consuming cyanide. Sridhar who moved to Dubai in 2013 held a reputation of making things happen over a phone call from Dubai to arm twist landowners and traders to sell property at the price he demands. The Enforcement Directorate in 2016 attached more than 124 properties belonging to him and his family members in connection with a money laundering case. Only his family members knew that he shifted base to Cambodia by the end of 2016, where Devendran assisted him. Sridhar trusted Devendran and used to eat food cooked only by him, a police officer said. Police sources said that a look out notice was on his name as he was associated with the notorious criminal. To avoid being apprehended by officials, Devendran did not fly to Chennai and instead flew to Bengaluru. He then travelled to Kancheepuram by road when a special team intercepted him and detained him. Police said that though he has not been named in any of the criminal cases involving Sridhar, he has been detained to find if he can shed light in any of the cases as he is a long time confidant of the deceased don, who had more than 30 cases including seven murders against him. Devendrans family members are likely to approach the court to file a Habeas Corpus petition, according to sources. At a few check posts, the staff claim that rats have damaged the camera cables. The IT Wing of the RTA is yet to replace these cables. Hyderabad: The closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras that were installed at border check posts in order to curb corruption among the Road Transport Authority (RTA) staff are either out of order or redundant due to improper placement. An official from the transport department says that the government has provided the necessary infrastructure, including CCTV cameras with a 30-day backup facility, to control corruption. After the Chief Ministers announcement of a toll-free number for the filing of complaints regarding corruption, tru-ck drivers began filing complaints against the department. And after the conduction of inquiries, the government sanctio-ned funds for the procurement of CCTV systems. We have set up four cameras at every major check post. However, we are unable to find back-ups from any check posts ex-cept Alampur, where regular VIP movement is witnessed, the official says. K. Yadaiah, a truck driver from Rajendranagar, says that though the department has installed CCTV cameras, they have been ineffective at controlling corruption because they have not been placed at the locations where RTA officials check vehicles. At the Zahirabad check post, the cameras are installed atop a high mast poll, but the RTA booths impede them from recording relevant footage. During the night, lights in the area dont work, which is another boon for the staff. Similar situations exist at the check posts in Vadapally, Koadad, Kha-mmam and Kamareddy. The RTA staff say that a majority of the cameras are not working, he says. Though cameras have been set up by the government, they are not being maintained. At a few check posts, the staff claim that rats have damaged the camera cables. The IT Wing of the RTA is yet to replace these cables. Similarly, power backup systems are under repair at a few check posts, because of which the cameras do not work all the time, says a source from the Transport Department. News / National by Staff reporter A Masvingo woman allegedly axed and seriously injured his brother-in-law's two beasts in an act of revenge after accusing him of being behind the gruesome injury of her cat.The woman, Raviro Mushava (28) of Mukusha Village, has since been dragged before a Masvingo Magistrates' Court facing charges of contravening the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Mushava was not asked to plead when she appeared before provincial magistrate Mr Langton Ndokera, who remanded her out of custody to November 14 for trial.In her defence, Mushava is arguing that she axed her brother-in-law's two cattle after he beat and left her "beloved'' cat for dead, forcing her to throw it into a toilet pit because of its near to none chances of survival. Mushava is arguing that the dead cat, besides being her pet, was very important in her life as it helped reduce the population of rodents that regularly preyed on her farm produce.Prosecutor Mr Edmond Mapope alleged that on October 28 this year, Mushava discovered that her cat had been severely injured. Mushava then allegedly concluded that her brother-in-law, Mr Brian Chakaonei, was behind the injuries to her pet. In a fit of rage, she allegedly sharpened an axe and proceeded to Mr Chakaonei's cattle pen where she axed two beasts on their thighs, leaving them with deep cuts and bleeding profusely. The source said another team would be deputed to investigate the role of the sub-contractors. Hyderabad: Income Tax department officials on Thursday conducted simultaneous raids at three locations in Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh to gather evidence against the directors of city-based infrastructure company GVPR Engineering Ltd. They found that the company had allegedly created benami sub-contracts in the names of the domestic helps, drivers and watchmen of the companys directors. An official source said three teams had conducted simultaneous raids in Hyderabad and at two locations in AP. The raids may continue on Friday and Saturday. So far our teams have been conducting searches for information about the company's directors, including G. Lakshmaiah and K. Venkat Ramana Rao, the source said. The source said another team would be deputed to investigate the role of the sub-contractors. Raids not related to deposits made during demonetisation GVPR Engineering Ltd has contracts for government and private projects in the areas of irrigation, roads and buildings, power and infrastructure. It has projects in Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka. We are looking into the bank accounts and ledgers of the company. Their bank lockers are yet to be opened. The company recently purchased a property in Jubilee Hills which has an estimated value of Rs 20 crore, the source an I-T source said. Another source said that the raids were unrelated to the companys activities and deposits made at the time of demonetisation. Based on credible information, we have been examining the activities of the company for the past two months. We have conducted raids based on the inputs and evidence that we have gathered. Our assessment teams are estimating the total value of the movable and immovable properties owned by the companies, as well as undisclosed amounts. It will take at least three days for this activity to be completed, the source said. The head office of GVPR Engineering Ltd. is located in Jubilee Hills. I-T cracks down on moneylenders The Income-Tax (I-T) department on Thursday cracked down on 50 illegal moneylenders in Bheemavaram by conducting simultaneous raids. Official sources said that the department was monitoring the activities of the moneylenders since demonetisation and had decided to conduct the raids after gathering evidence. Special teams were formed to conduct the raids. During the searches at the moneylenders houses and places of business, we found that a majority of the moneylenders had other businesses in the areas of aqua farming and real estate, a source said. The source said that the moneylenders had lent crores of rupees to people and demanded high rates of interest from them. We recommend that the ED book cases against the 50 moneylenders. We recommended that the local police look into loan-recovery gangs, the source said. The TS Assembly Speakers office has stated it has not received any letter of resignation from Mr Revanth Reddy. Hyderabad: The Congress does not appear to be serious on forcing a bypoll to the Kodangal Assembly seat represented by Mr A. Revanth Reddy, who joined the party from the Telugu Desam, fearing a TRS victory in the run-up to the 2019 elections. According to State Congress sources, the issue of Mr Revanth Reddy pressing for his resignation came up for discussion at an AICC meeting in Delhi recently, where it was opined that the party should not insist on the legislator meeting TS Speaker S. Madhusudhana Chary and tendering his resignation letter. Mr Revanth Reddy had only submitted the letter to the TD office secretary in Amaravati last week but has not followed the formalities of resigning from the Assembly. The TS Assembly Speakers office has stated it has not received any letter of resignation from Mr Revanth Reddy. No leader was willing to come on record on the matter, except senior Congress legislator D.K. Aruna who said in the Assembly lobbies on Wednesday that a bypoll at Kodangal may not come about. She too refrained from giving a valid reason for her statement. She only said that if there would a bypoll at Kodangal, the Speaker ensure that bypolls are also held in the other Assembly seats from where Congress, TD and YSRC legislators had defected to the TRS. TPCC sources said the TRS had chalked out plans to ensure a massive win from Kodangal to give an impression before the 2019 polls that it is unstoppable in the case. In case Mr Revanth Reddy, who had declared that he would contest from the seat forever, loses, it would adversely affect the fortunes of the Congress. Sources said that neither the Congress nor Mr Revanth Reddy would talk about the resignation episode. Bengaluru: The state BJP's much hyped Nava Karnataka Parivarthana Yatra will be flagged off by BJP National President Amit Shah on Tuesday at the International Exhibition Ground at Peenya. The party has made elaborate arrangements to make the 75-day Yatra a success. The BJPs Chief Ministerial candidate and party state president B.S.Yeddyurappa will lead the Yatra and will be accompanied by BJP state leaders, Union Ministers and CMs of BJP ruled states in the country. It was Mr Amit Shahs idea to to organize a mega election rally to bring awareness among the public about the misdeeds of the ruling Congress. He had also advised party state leaders to organize a bike rally. The state BJP has therefore instructed booth committee members to come to the rally on bikes. From each booth, six members will come on 3 bikes. For the Bengaluru rally, from 27,000 booths, over 1.50 lakh booth committee workers will arrive on 75,000 bikes. Mr Yeddyurappa said that the first leg of the rally will be attended by over 3 lakh people from 17 districts of which 1.50 lakh will be booth committee workers and the remaining from the general public and party workers from 17 South Karnataka districts. Party sources said that during the Yatra, the BJP will focus more on the failures of the Congress government in all sectors. Besides, the party will announce its vision for the next five years. According to sources, the BJP will highlight the Modi model of development in the country in the last three years. The Yatra will cover 7,500 km in 75 days, touching all 224 Assembly constituencies. The North Zone Yatra will be inaugurated at Hubballi on November 21. The BJP has requested the Prime Minister to inaugurate the Hubballi Yatra but the PM's office is yet to give confirmation to the state BJP, sources said. The BJP state president will be present in the Yatra for all 75 days. The party has formed a team of leaders who will attend rallies in the districts. For the Hubballi meeting, booth committee members will attend from 110 Assembly constituencies on 80,000 bikes, a party release said. The party has assigned its general secretaries the responsibility of organising the Yatra. For the Bengaluru meeting, the responsibility has been given to former Deputy CM R. Ashok. Indian industry celebrates the quantum jump in the countrys Ease of Doing Business ranking and felicitates Prime Minister Narendra Modis government for this huge improvement. It is indeed an impressive and major achievement, that shows India can deliver on reforms. Three years ago, the Prime Minister announced the ambitious aspiration of taking Indias rank in the World Banks Doing Business report to 50. In the latest report, India has shot up 30 places to 100th rank, bringing this target within reach. For Indian industry, that has for long been waiting for change in its operating environment, this turbocharged climb is a huge relief, generating optimism that the investment climate will improve further in the coming days. The latest ranking goes to show how far a committed, mission-mode approach driven by a determined leader and actioned by multiple ministries/departments can take the country. The World Bank looks at processes in 10 areas, and each of them requires strategies down the administrative chain to the last interface with industry. The impressive surge in Indias rank, the most by any nation in this years report, reflects aggressive and transformational policies that translated into real action on the ground. That different arms of the Centre as well as state governments can come together, pulling as one, is itself a cause of celebration. The World Bank report is the first touchpoint for investors who plan to do business in another country. Its rankings are closely examined and can determine the investment attractiveness of a country. Although its methodology has changed over the years, leading to shifts in ranking, Indias leap from 142nd position in 2015 to 100th this year will entice investors to examine the opportunities in the country more closely. Already, inflows of FDI are at a peak of $60 billion in 2016-17, and this can climb further upwards. The World Bank assessment includes a score showing the gap or distance to the perfect performance of 100. Indias score has been going up over the years, from 50.34 in 2014 to 56.05 in 2017 and 60.76 in 2018 report, which shows the highest score (86.55) for New Zealand. India has shown upward movement for nine of 10 indicators, and rose in rankings for six indicators with reforms noted in eight of 10 parameters. The highest improvement was in paying taxes, where the rank increased by 53 spots, while resolving insolvency went up by 15 ranks and getting credit by 15. In protecting minority investors, India emerged as somewhat of a global model, with 4th rank. In many areas, the government has prioritised reducing direct interface with enterprises by placing approvals and clearances on digital platforms. The electronic Simplified Proforma for Incorporating Companies Electronically (SPICe) makes it easier to start a business, and combines various identification details. For exports and imports, the single-window interface for facilitating trade (SWIFT) was rolled out to eliminate the need for physical submission of documents. Judicial processes for commercial disputes too have gone digital, with e-filing, e-payments and e-summons along with electronically-signed orders. The government has actually gone well beyond World Bank requirements, which essentially look at processes in just two cities: Mumbai and Delhi. The most critical aspect of the governments investment facilitation campaign is its effort to work with the states to address the business climate for tangible improvement at the grassroots. The department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), the nodal agency for Ease of Doing Business (EODB) reforms, has finalised a 98-point action plan in consultation with the states in December 2014, and assessed their performance in a report in September 2015. The states performance remained quite low in this report, but in 2016, with 340 actions identified by DIPP, remarkable progress was seen with 12 states achieving over 90 per cent of reforms. The current years action plan includes 376 reforms, across areas like regulations, labour returns and self-certification, resolution of commercial disputes, digitisation and online land systems. All these have translated into better results for businesses. With more processes going online, there is a visible difference in the way enterprises interact with government departments. There is more transparency and efficiency in the system, and lower human interface reduces the chances for corruption. Prospects for the future are promising. The landmark Goods and Services Tax was not included in this years reform list as it didnt meet the World Banks cut-off date. Some other key reforms Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, recapitalisation of banks, and public procurement for small enterprises also havent found a place in the report. Further, several reform areas like disinvestment or identification of stressed assets arent counted among the 10 parameters. With the Centre firm and consistent on the pace of reforms, and state governments competing to attract investments, we can only expect Indias position to rise further. Industry has been deeply involved in the entire EODB process, which has been consultative and proactive. The CII submitted inputs continuously on choke points for industry and worked with state governments in the reforms process. We found DIPP, government agencies and state governments to be responsive and forthcoming, keen to identify the issues and resolve them swiftly. This consultative partnership is an exemplary model for the future. There is, of course, a long way to go before all of India evolves a facilitative investment climate. Among the 10 parameters, the countrys rank declined in four last year. India remains among the low performers in dealing with construction permits and enforcing contracts. States too show wide variation in actioning reforms. However, the big ranking jump shows that achieving impressive results within a year is possible. With a whole-of-government approach, it is clear that ease of doing business is a high priority on the policy agenda. The latest rankings reward all the hard work of the past three years, and assure us that breaking into the top 50 rank is a dream that can be achieved soon. The FBI had released an alert saying they were seeking information about the second man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov. (Photo: ANI) New York: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Wednesday said that the investigators had found a second Uzbek man they had been seeking in connection with the truck attack this week in Lower Manhattan. On Tuesday, the 29-year-old terror suspect, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who deliberately drove into bicyclists and pedestrians on a bike path in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and injuring many, left a note behind in the rental truck, pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Hours after the attack, the US President Donald Trump said that the United States must not let the ISIS "return to or enter" the country. Officials said that it was the deadliest terrorist attack in New York City since 9/11. Saipov came to the US from Uzbekistan. According to the New York Times the prosecutors filed federal charges against Saipov. Read: Uzbek man planned attack year ago, says 'felt good' about what he did The federal charges in civilian court, which detail how Saipov said he drew inspiration from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) videos that questioned the killing of Muslims in Iraq, contradicted calls from Trump to try Saipov in military court at the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The FBI had released an alert saying they were seeking information about the second man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, in connection with the attack. According to a criminal complaint, Saipov admitted that he carried out the Tuesday attack in Manhattan in the name of ISIS. The complaint also detailed how Saipov asked to hang an ISIS flag in his hospital room, where he was recovering Wednesday from a gunshot wound He told agents that he 'felt good about what he had done' Police officials said earlier on Wednesday that Saipov appeared to have connections to people who were the subjects of terrorism investigations. Read: New York attack on behalf of ISIS, says note found in suspect's truck Meanwhile, the US President Trump said that he will ask the Congress to end an immigrant visa program, through which the New York City terror suspect entered the country. "I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I'm going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program, said the US President speaking during a Cabinet meeting at White House. "Sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it. So we want to immediately work with Congress on the Diversity Lottery Program, on terminating it, getting rid of it," he added. Trump called the suspect an "animal" and said that he should have not been allowed into the country. "My administration is coordinating closely between federal and local officials to investigate the attack and to further investigate this animal who did the attacking," Trump said. According to the media reports, Saipov may have gained entry through the diversity visa program. However, the federal government had not confirmed that is the case before Trump's remarks. Afterwards, the US Department of Homeland Security released a statement saying he did use the lottery to enter the US in 2010. The visa program allows the US State Department to issue as many as 50,000 visas per year to people from countries that have low rates of immigration to the US. The release provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization, said an official. (Photo: AFP) Washington: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Wednesday released a vast archive of intimate Al-Qaeda documents, including Osama bin Laden's handwritten diary, seized in the deadly 2011 raid on his Pakistani compound. The CNN news quoted CIA Director Mike Pompeo as saying that the release "provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization." According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Long War Journal, the release also contains other important items, including what it determined are the first-known adult images of Osama bin Laden's son Hamza bin Laden and documents about al Qaeda's relationship with Iran and its role in the Iraqi insurgency. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been pushing for the full release of the CIA's documents from the raid for months. In March, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said the release of the documents was essential. "Those documents need to get out, especially as you see the growth of al Qaeda and ISIS," Nunes said in March, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). "Those documents need to get out for historians to have those records so that we can begin to build a history of what al Qaeda was, what it is today, what they were thinking at the time." There are still materials that have not yet been released. The CIA said that this includes materials that are sensitive to national security - those protected by copyright; pornography; malware; and blank, corrupted and duplicate files. Not all the material, however, was of a serious nature. There was a video known as "Charlie bit my finger!" depicting a boy and his baby brother who bit his finger. There also were YouTube videos about crochet, including "How to Crochet a Flower." And bin Laden's video collection included "Antz," a 1990s animated adventure comedy about an ant colony, "Chicken Little" and "The Three Musketeers." Also in the collection were "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden" and several National Geographic programs: "Kung Fu Killers," ''Inside the Green Berets" and "World's Worst Venom." It is the fourth tranche of materials taken from the walled compound where bin Laden and his family lived to be made public by the US government since May 2015. Police in Thornton, Colorado, did not release any information on the number of victims. (Photo: AP/File) Thornton: Two men and a woman were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart on Wednesday night that forced customers to either hide or flee. Thornton police reported multiple parties down and advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital. No arrests have been announced, and a call to the Thornton Police Department went unanswered. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didnt want to get killed, he said. Guadalupe Perez was inside the store with her young son when she heard what she thought was a balloon popping. A Walmart employee told her someone was shooting, and then Perez saw people running away yelling, Lets go. Lets go. Leave the groceries. You see all these things in the news and you go through it, its scary, she said. But thank God were OK and nothing happened to us. Investigators, who have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting, were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses to get a description of the shooter. Meanwhile, special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were helping police in the investigation. The Walmart about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Denver is in a busy shopping center that includes restaurants, a movie theater and several other stores. Ragan Dickens, a Walmart spokesman, said the company is working with investigators. He declined further comment. He further stated that China was striving to become the economic centre of Asia, Europe and Africa through its ambitious 'One Belt, One Road' project. (Photo: Facebook) London: Pro-freedom Baloch leader and head of Free Balochistan Movement (FBM), Hyrbyair Marri on Wednesday, in a statement, said the recent abduction of women and children from different areas of Balochistan was part of Pakistan's ongoing campaign of enforced-disappearances in the restive province. "Pakistani intelligence agencies are afraid of Baloch liberation struggle and now they started abducting Baloch children. They fear that these children will grow up to resist China-Pakistan brutalities in Balochistan," he said. Marri also said both China and Pakistan were trying to annihilate the Baloch nation to strengthen their grip on its soil. Targeting the Pakistani intelligence agencies, the Baloch leader said they were violating Islamic principles for their own evil interests and for expansion of their religious extremist ideology in the world. "Similarly, China who claims to value socialist principles and socialism is deviating from the basic principles for the sake of its economic interests and expansionist designs in the world," he added. Marri further said that Pakistan, which was created in the name of Islam to serve the interests of imperialist powers under leadership of Jinnah, has become cancer for entire world today as the country's military establishment and rulers were using Islam to achieve their own petty interest, besides providing safe sanctuaries to religious terrorists, including Taliban and other groups, which are a threat to world peace. "In this context, if the political scenario of the last few months in Pakistan are reviewed, it clearly emerges after the talk of changes in Islamic clauses that were included in the Pakistani constitution during the Zia era, Pakistan army and intelligence agencies created a new political party of Jihadist organisation - Jamaat-e-Daawa, to deceive America and rest of the world and to protect those Islamic clause in the constitution. Along with this the Deobandi, Brelwi and Jamaat-e-Islami also jumped on the bandwagon," he said. He also questioned Pakistan military establishment and religious organisations silence over China's brutalities against Uyghur Muslims. "On one hand, the Chinese rulers oppress Muslims of the Xinjiang provinces, and on the other hand, they veto the Indian resolution at UN to declare the Jaish-e-Mohammad as a terror outfit and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar as a terrorist," he said. He further stated that China was striving to become the economic centre of Asia, Europe and Africa through its ambitious 'One Belt, One Road' project. "China is setting up ports and shuttle networks on Maritime Silk Road in Africa and Europe and planning to connect its Southern Coast with the Central Asia, East Africa and the Mediterranean. Gwadar port is also a part of this Maritime Silk Road which is a clear illustration of the double standard of Chinese Socialism," Marri said. The Baloch leader also said that China was using socialism to maintain its expansionist and occupational designs in the region and using it [socialism] internationally for exploitation, from Latin American to Africa and Asia either directly or indirectly. Talking about Saudi Arabia's efforts to return toward moderate Islam, The Baloch leader said it was a positive step in the right direction. He also said that since Gulf States shared historic relations with Balcohistan, they should support the Baloch cause. "The Gulf countries should play their role and morally and diplomatically support the Baloch struggle in Iranian and Pakistani occupied Balochistan. Pakistan, Iran and China in the cloak of Islam and socialism are promoting their colonial ambitions. The socialism was introduced to counter exploitation, but as far as socialism is concerned, it is only for power and governance. Economically China is an imperialist country," he added. Talking about the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Marri said: "China like East India Company wants to take over Baloch land and Pakistan for its interests is giving Baloch land to China without the consultation of the Baloch nation which is unacceptable for Baloch people. Pakistan in nexus with China is committing gross human rights violations against the Baloch nation. The United Nations, comparing the widespread massacre with ethnic cleansing, has said that the attacks against Rohingya have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic. (Photo: File) Naypyidaw (Myanmar): Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi made her first visit to the violence ridden northern Rakhine state on Thursday since violence broke out, as per media reports. In her unannounced one-day visit, Suu Kyi is expected to visit two of the epicentres of the violence. More than 500,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since the Myanmar security forces launched an operation against the minority community, in response to alleged attacks by militants on August 25 against 30 police posts and a regimental headquarters. #WATCH Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi visits northern Rakhine State. (Video Courtesy: MRTV) #Rohingyas pic.twitter.com/lmyq7ocO3h ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 The United Nations, comparing the widespread massacre with ethnic cleansing, has said that the attacks against Rohingya have been well-organised, coordinated and systematic, with the intent of not only driving the population out of Myanmar, but preventing them from returning to their homes. The Rakhine State is home to the Rohingya community of Myanmar, ethnic Muslims, who have long faced persecution in the Buddhist-majority country, especially from the country's Buddhist extremists. Amid the violence, Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was heavily criticised by the world leaders and various groups over her indifferent response to the violence. In September, Suu Kyi's portrait was removed from public display at the Oxford college. Suu Kyi heads a committee appointed towards rebuilding Rakhine and repatriating Rohingya from Bangladesh. The Rajagopala Nagar police arrested 45-year-old Nagaraja, a mechanic for allegedly killing his sister-in-law over trivial issue. Police said that the deceased Saroja was found dead with her throat slit on Tuesday. It is learnt that Nagaraja and Saroja had an illicit relationship after Saroja's husband died few years ago. Nagaraja, an alcoholic, had given Saroja some money. He used to quarrel with her everyday demanding his money back. On Tuesday, he picked up a heated argument with her doubting her fidelity, and slit her throat. Nagaraj escaped soon after the crime but he was arrested on Wednesday and confessed to the crime, police added. News / National by Staff reporter THE Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) is reviewing a draft contract received from India Export and Import Bank for the $87 million Bulawayo Thermal Power Station repowering project.Government secured the $87 million loan from India Export and Import Bank (India-EximBank) last year for the refurbishment of the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station, which was built 60 years ago. The ZPC/India-Exim Bank deal was clinched in 2015 following President Mugabe's official visit to that country.In May this year, Secretary for Energy and Power Development Mr Partson Mbiriri said the first quarter rehabilitation commencement deadline had been missed and at that stage the Government said it had no control of the procurement process.ZPC managing director, Engineer Noah Gwariro said tenders for the thermal power station project closed in August and a single bid was received."The draft contract, which was received from India Exim Bank is being reviewed," he said in a statement.About $30 million of the $87 million has since been extended towards the rehabilitation project but the project is yet to kick off.The tendering process to engage contractors to do the Bulawayo repowering project was done in New Delhi with the procurement processes for the project also expected to be done in India while ZPC would be involved in the process.The power station's refurbishment process includes among other activities; replacing old boilers with state-of- the-art boilers. The Bulawayo Power Station has an installed capacity of 120 megawatts and as of yesterday it was not producing anything.Meanwhile, Eng Gwariro said ZPC has missed its overall production target for the third quarter by 4.46 percent, generating 20229.88 Gigawatts per hour against the targeted 2124.59GWh. He said to date output stood at 5430.00GWh against the targeted 5886.01GWh, showing a negative variance of 7.75 percent. The ZPC boss attributed the below target performance in power generation to a number of factors."A number of factors affected our performance and these include the various forced outages that were faced at Hwange and the small thermal power stations. Hwange failed to meet their sent out target as a result of the delayed return to service of Unit 6 from major overhaul, numerous tube leaks as well as milling plant challenges," said Eng Gwariro.He said output at the country's small thermal power stations were constrained due to unavailability of coal."Coal suppliers fell short of their delivery targets for the quarter resulting in depleted stock levels at the thermal stations. This is due to the various challenges that are being faced by the coal miners, chief amongst them being delayed recapitalisation on the key mining equipment and cash flows."This challenge is therefore preventing most of the miners from processing enough coal required to meet their delivery targets to the stations," said Eng Gwariro.He said water levels at Lake Kariba dropped from 483.19 metres at the end of the second quarter to 481.99 metres at the end of September 2017 representing a 1.2 metres drop in lake level over the quarter. The lake is 46.89 percent full."The Kariba South Extension project progress increased from 89 percent at the beginning of the quarter to 92.2 percent by the end of the quarter against a target of 92.7 percent."The project is now being driven under the Office of the President and Cabinet's Rapid Results Initiative and the first 100 days under the initiative are running from August 28, 2017 to December 5, 2017," he said.On Hwange Thermal Power Station, Eng Gwariro said fund-raising was still in progress for Unit 7 and 8 expansion project with a team from Sinohydro team presently in Hwange preparing for pre-commencement activities. A third runway is in the agenda of the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), preparing well in advance to cater to an annual passenger turnout of 65 million in the future. Dubbed as the New North Parallel Runway (NNPR), this has been a critical part of the airport's original master plan. But there is a problem. Due to the prevalent airspace restrictions, the location recommended for NNPR is 1,500 metres north of the existing runway. The plot falls way outside the airport's boundary. The effort now is to ensure that Obstacles Limitation Surfaces (OLS) is safeguarded.Simply put, this means objects detrimental to aviation should not be located within the Obstacle Restriction Area of the airport. Only equipment and installations required for air navigation purposes, of minimum practicable mass and height, could be placed in the area. This is to reduce the hazard to aircraft to a minimum. High-rise buildings and other objects that could potentially impede aircraft landings and take-offs will not be permitted. Civil aviation experts see the third runway's remote location as an advantage. The 1,500-metre cushion will help unhindered air operations in the years to come. The state government had been urged to acquire a strip of land required just for the operation of the third runway. This was to be connected via a cross field taxiway system to the main terminal facilities. There are two villages at the proposed location, with large habitation, water bodies and forest land. Although acquiring a plot here was considered tough, in May this year, the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) had floated a Request For Proposal (RFQ) to conduct an Obstacle Limitations Surfaces Survey of the area. This will ensure that no high-rises or other obstacles come up in the vicinity of the area. The survey will also identify first obstacles in the take-off climb surfaces; lines of trees/pylons close to the aerodrome in the flight's approach/take-off surfaces; high ground that may affect the circuit height; obstacles such as chimneys and masts and large single objects. KIA is expected to operationalise a second runway by September 2019. Currently, the airport has a 4,000-metre runway with CAT-1 Instrument Landing System (ILS) capability. Dubbed the 'New South Parallel Runway (NSPR),' the second runway too will be 4,000 metres long, but with an enhanced CAT-III ILS. This will minimise fog-related flight disruptions that is the norm now. The order on mandatory use of Kannada in nameboards of shops and commercial complexes will be implemented strictly, said Bengaluru Development and Town Planning Minister K J George on Wednesday. He was speaking at the Rajyotsava celebrations organised by the Akhila Karnataka Kannada Chalavali Kendra here. "There has to be at least 60% of Kannada in nameboards of shops and commercial complexes. If this policy is not followed, we will cancel the trade licences of the shops," said BBMP commissioner N Manjunath Prasad at the Rajyotsava event in the BBMP office. "A circular has been issued about three months ago regarding the mandatory inclusion of Kannada in nameboards of shops and malls. We can push the deadline forward for another month," he said. The commissioner said trade licences will be issued for new shops only if they have implemented this rule. Mayor R Sampath Raj said, "We will see to it that this order is implemented effectively in the city." When asked about the expired deadline set by the Karnataka Development Authority to BBMP in this regard, George said, "The implementation of Kannada in nameboards should be strictly followed. We will hold a meeting again with the authorities and see to it that it is followed strictly." "People from other states who come and reside here should learn Kannada and teach the language to their children. This is a stand taken by the government and there shall be no compromise on this. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has clarified that no government school will be shut even if there is less number of students. We have taken measures to strengthen Kannada-medium schools," said George. When members of the Akhila Karnataka Chalavali Kendra requested that a road in the city be named after D G Narayan Kumar, who was active in the Kannada movement, the minister said a decision will be taken by the government. The Bagalagunte police arrested Sagar (21), custodian of Secure Well Security Service agency, on Wednesday in connection with robbing cash of Rs 18.5 lakh while replenishing cash in an ICICI ATM kiosk near Jalahalli Cross on Monday. Sagar's involvement was revealed after Malavalli Town Police arrested V Nitin and B Rakesh, while they were quarreling over the issue of sharing the stolen money in a drunken state in Malavalli in Mandya district on Tuesday. Police said Rakesh was earlier working in the same agency and quit the job recently. He came in contact with Sagar while working at the agency. Both made a plan to loot the money a month back and asked for Nitin's help. Nitin is Rakesh's friend. They hatched a plan rob the cash. Nitin who is a chain snatcher agreed to go with the plan. Sagar told the duo to come near the ICICI ATM in Jalahalli around 6.30 am on Monday. They snatched the bag from him and also attacked him to make it look like a robbery. Sagar (21) is from Honnavar, Nitin from Banaganahalli in Malavalli taluk, Rakesh is from Bochchikopplu in Nagamangala taluk. Nitin and Rakesh are both residents of Nandini Layout. Police added that, "The trio met in Nandini Layout on Monday at 4 am and decided to execute the 'robbery' the same day. Sagar went to office and the duo were waiting near Jalahalli Cross. When Sagar came to replenish the cash to ATM kiosk, the duo 'attacked' Sagar and 'robbed' the cash from him. Bagalagunte police said, "As Sagar was badly injured, we didn't suspect him at first. But later we checked the Call Record Details (CDR) for the same period. Malavalli police arrested Nitin and Rakesh. The details tallied and we confirmed Sagar's involvement in the crime. He will be produced before the court on Thursday." A city court convicted a 38-year-old man to life imprisonment for killing a 75-year-old woman and for trying to murder her two sisters in a bid to rob gold jewellery from their house in Jayanagar. The 69th Additional City Civil and Sessions court judge T P Ramalingegowda passed the order on a chargesheet filed by Jayanagar police. The incident occurred on February 22, 2013. The convict M Ramachndra had strangulated K Chandra and tried to kill her two sisters Sharadha and Venkatalakshmi. Later, he made away with Rs 8 lakh in gold ornaments and cash. Public prosecutor H R Satyavathi who argued the case, told DH that there was another accused in the case. However, he was a day short of his 18th birthday on the day of the crime. "He was declared as minor and sent to the state home for boys. Later, he was acquitted and released two years ago,'' he said. Ramachandra was a plumber and frequently visited the victim's house. The police arrested him based on a clue given by Venkatalakshmi who scribbled "Tap Ramu" on a piece of paper before slipping into coma. Chandra and her husband Narasimhan were former Public Works Department employees and Ramachandra got acquainted to the couple as he took up PWD contracts. He also took up repairs at their house and noticed the family owned gold jewellery. After Narasimhan's death a few years ago, Ramachandra took advantage of the fact that there were just four women in the house, including Chandra's daughter Dr Chaitra. He hatched a plan to kill them and steal the valuables. After Chaitra left for work, Ramachandra and his brother-in-law S Vasanth Kumar visited the house on the pretext of doing some plumbing work. They strangled Chandra and also attacked Venktalakshmi and Sharada. However, the sisters survived. Venkatalakshmi called Chaitra over phone and scrawled 'Tap Ramu' on a paper and fell into a coma. Later, based on a complaint, the police arrested Ramachandra. After a detailed hearing, the court convicted him to life imprisonment on Tuesday. The Ashok Nagar police detained nearly 30 members of a Kannada organisation when they tried to blacken English signboards and banners at the MG Road-Brigade Road junction on Wednesday morning. The activists said despite a government rule that 70% of the words on the signboards should be in Kannada, many shopkeepers had not implemented it. The protesters raised slogans and tried to blacken the signboards, but the police prevented them from doing so and detained them. The protesters had planned to blacken English signboards from MG Road up to Attibele. The police released the protesters later in the day. Kannada activists of another organisation staged a protest in front of a private school in JP Nagar, which remained open on the Rajyotsava Day, which is a government holiday. The protesters gathered near Image Public School and had an argument with the management for keeping the school open. The protesters forced the management to declare a holiday and send the children home. An unidentified gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in the US state of Colorado today, killing three persons including a woman. Hundreds of emergency responders ringed the Thornton Town Centre shopping complex for hours after the shooting was reported around 5 am IST. The Walmart is part of the centre. "Multiple parties" were down, Thornton police said in a tweet. An hour later, the Thornton Police Department tweeted, "At this time this is not an active shooter". The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital. No arrests have been made. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line at the Walmart when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Investigators, who have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting, were reviewing security footage and interviewing witnesses to get a description of the shooter. Six paramilitary CRPF personnel were injured when militants attacked their vehicle in south Kashmirs Anantnag district on Wednesday. A police official said militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion Central Reserve Police Force at Lazibal in Anantnag at 8.45 am. Two CRPF men received bullet wounds, while four others were injured after they were hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle, the official said. Inspector General, CRPF, Zulfikar Hassan said the jawans were returning to their camp near Pahalgam when their vehicle was attacked. According to reports, following the attack, the area was cordoned off by security forces and a search operation launched to nab the militants. News / National by Staff reporter PRESIDENT Mugabe has lashed out at politicians who waste money consulting prophets to advance their political ambitions.He said given the high level of literacy in the country, it was mind-boggling how educated people fell prey to tricks of the so-called prophets.The President made the remarks at the burial of Don Kwaedza Muvuti at the National Heroes' Acre yesterday."Some people are going to these prophets to find out whether they will remain in the same positions or they will be promoted to senior positions," he said."With the elections coming the prophets are already preparing. I don't know whether they will buy the buckets beforehand."People go there, and get false prophecies, . . .some go there and are told, you are going to be the next vice-president. Others go there and are told, you will be the next President. . ohoh" said Mugabe. What is that, you Christian, son of God, tell me."You beat your chest saying you will be the next leader of Zanu-PF, oooh, what kind of people are we? What does our education tell us?"Others will say, aah, who do you think you are, I will remove you from the top. Hardly a week will pass before you are removed from that position, you then shiver , I am dying, am I dying?"The President continued: "Most of the times we don't remember, we are reminded, those that go to church, the pastors remind us, they must be good Christians who love God, not those who use the church to get rich. To cheat people."I hear that in some churches buckets are always full. I then ask what is filling the buckets when our people are crying every day, they say they don't have money."But if a pastor comes to you and tells you no one among you knows when God is coming, no one is poor you are all going to be rich, even the rich ones, you believe him. They are lying to you."First make yourself rich, not to bring a bucket for the congregants to fill up. We are educated people who can read the Bible and interpret it on our own. We are educated but we fill those buckets with money."President Mugabe said Muvuti was a selfless cadre who worked tirelessly for the party since the liberation struggle."All of us who are here have come to pay our last respects to one of us, Don Muvuti," he said. "Most people didn't know him but some of us knew him as one of us who was working with us. He was not pompous. He did not have ambitions that other people have."They say where I come from, those are my people, some might be the party cadres, but they are not my people. Don Muvuti was not one of them. He would sit at the party headquarters quietly holding a pen, writing."We want to have everything that he was writing to be sent to the Department of Information and be kept at the Chitepo library to be read by future generations. A miniature toy, kept in a snack pack to lure children into buying the packet, turned out to be fatal for a four-year-old boy who mistakenly swallowed it in Eluru town of Andhra Pradesh's West Godavari district. Meesala Nireekshan, who unsuspectingly chewed and swallowed the plastic toy along with tomato rings in the packet at his home in Eluru last evening, choked to death, a police official said on Thursday. The tiny toy was stuffed inside the snack pack and, after a few bites of the tomato rings, the boy consumed it as well mistaking it for an eatable, he said. "He then started vomiting and froth oozed out of his mouth when his mother saw him. Stuck in the throat, the toy caused the boy to choke as the efforts to pull it out failed," the official said. The boy was immediately rushed to the government hospital where he was declared brought dead, he said. The boy's parents later filed a police complaint with the Two Town Police against the snack manufacturer, he said. A case under relevant sections pertaining to unnatural death was registered in connection with the incident, the official said. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Thursday called on Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at chief minister's residence in Malabar Hill, Mumbai. The meeting assumes significance in the wake of the recent attacks by alleged MNS workers on illegal hawkers outside railway stations in Mumbai Metropolitan Region. However, senior MNS leader and former minister Bala Nandgoankar said the meeting was related to issues vis-a-vis Kalyan-Dombivli suburbs. "Both are in the meeting now. There are other issues, however, they could even discuss this as well," Nandgaonkar told reporters. On Wednesday, the MNS workers had clashed with the Congress workers when the latter took out a pro-hawkers morcha. Pakistan's ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday returned home from London to face trial in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on October 26 due to his non-appearance in two corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. State-run PTV footage showed Sharif stepping out of a Pakistan International Airline plane after it landed at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. He was received by senior leaders of ruling PML-N and held a brief consultation with the party leaders at the VIP lounge of the airport. Later, he left in his private vehicle for Punjab House in Islamabad, where he was received by supporters and party workers. He is expected to hold extensive consultations throughout the day about court cases, political situation and party matters. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face "bogus cases" when he should be with his wife. "These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them," he said. The court would resume the hearing tomorrow. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. Maryam and Safdar have already been indicted in corruption cases filed against them by the country's anti-corruption body National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the Supreme Court's instruction in the Panama Papers case. Earlier, Accountability Court issued a bailable arrest warrant against Sharif after he failed to appear in the court in three corruption cases. Three cases were registered by NAB on September 8 against Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad, following a verdict by the Supreme Court. He was indicted in absence in three cases. BJP national president Amit Shah launched an all-out attack on Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, accusing him of engaging in "vote-bank politics" by celebrating the birth anniversary of the erstwhile Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan. "Karnataka celebrated statehood on November 1. The government did not celebrate it with the fervour it deserved, because Siddaramaiah is more interested in celebrating Tipu Jayanti on November 10," Shah said after launching the saffron party's 75-day poll campaign here. The Karnataka BJP, which is staunchly opposing the government celebrating Tipu Jayanti since it considers him as a tyrant and anti-Hindu, was left red-faced after President Ram Nath Kovind recently hailed Tipu Sultan as a hero. "Celebrating Tipu Jayanti is nothing but vote-bank politics and it will not do any good for people. I want to ask Siddaramaiah, more than 10 RSS workers have been murdered in your tenure. Do you have an answer for this?" Shah asked. Shah was in the city to launch the Nava Karnataka Nirman Parivartan Yatra, a statewide campaign that will be led by BJP state president and chief ministerial face B S Yeddyurappa. Using the corruption plank, Shah accused Siddaramaiah of shielding corrupt ministers while repeating his earlier claim that the Karnataka government was "the most corrupt government in India." "This is a government where ministers face allegations, where unaccounted for money and diaries are seized. But no resignation is sought. That's because Siddaramaiah is scared that if he demands their resignation, they will expose the truth," Shah said. "The Congress wanted to build a steel bridge in Bengaluru, it tried to denotify 1,500 lakes to benefit real estate players, it has weakened the Lokayukta. Siddaramaiah government has broken all records of corruption," he said. Shah went on to accuse the ruling Congress of eating into grants released by the Modi government at the Centre. "The UPA, under the 13th Finance Commission, gave Karnataka Rs 88,583 crore. The Modi government has given Karnataka Rs 2,19,506 crore. Where did all this money go? Has it reached villages? Siddaramaiah has to answer," Shah said. He went on to say that the Centre had given Karnataka Rs 39,000 crore under the Mudra scheme, Rs 960 crore for Smart Cities and Rs 4,900 crore for Amrut scheme. Modi has sent all this money to help the people of Karnataka, but it is not reaching them because of a corrupt government," Shah said. The BJP president mocked Siddaramaiah's credentials as a leader of the backward classes. "Modi brought a Bill to accord Constitutional status to the OBC commission. But his Congress party blocked it in the Rajya Sabha," Shah said. DH News Service The Dalit youth leader Jignesh Mevani on Thursday reiterated that he will not join any political party, including the Congress. "My name is being invoked respectfully by Congress vice president and I have been invited by several senior Congress leaders to join the party. But most probably I will not join any political party ahead of Assembly polls," Jignesh Mevani told mediapersons. "We have put forth a charter of 17 demands and only if the Congress assures us a favourable resolution, we shall make our stand clear on our support." However, he made it clear that he would oppose the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. "The BJP's anti-Dalit stance is pretty clear. They are not ready to even talk. Former chief minister Anandiben Patel had promised land and jobs to the family of Una public flogging victims, but nothing happened," he said. "They have been sitting on the report of Dalit killings in police firing at Thangadh for five years now. They have allotted land to Dalits on paper but not given physical possession for decades," Mevani said. Mevani came out on Thursday with rising chorus in media that he will join the Congress and has had meeting with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who was on a three-day roadshow in South Gujarat in this connection. However, he has denied this on social media platform saying that the news was "wrong". Senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot had on Wednesday claimed that all the three youth community leaders, Hardik Patel, Alpesh Thakore and Jignesh Mevani were with the Congress, are with the Congress and shall remain with the Congress. While Thakore has formally joined the Congress, Hardik and Jignesh are sending mixed signals towards the party. Con woos another youth leader In another related development, Pravin Ram, a 27-year-old leader of Jan Adhikar Manch, met Ashok Gehlot and state Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki in South Gujarat. He is also slated to meet Rahul Gandhi on Thursday or Friday. Ram has in the recent past been getting decent traction for his fight on the issues of government employees on fixed-pay and contracts, which he claims need to be abolished. Gujarat has around 4.5 lakh youngsters employed with the state government on a fixed-pay basis and another 10 lakh who are working on contractual basis. Pravin Ram has been spearheading the fight for them to be treated as government employees and extend benefits as salary hike under Seventh Pay Commission. "I have submitted a memorandum to the Congress and if they clarify their stand on our issues and get the public mandate, we can think of supporting it," Pravin Ram told mediapersons. The BJP is also trying to wean away Ram to its fold, but with Ram holding parleys with the Congress leadership, a shift by one more youth leader has definitely not come as a positive news for the ruling establishment. Opinion / Columnist JAH Prayzah's long-awaited album, Kutonga Kwaro, was finally released two weeks ago amid high expectations, particularly around the title track that is littered with political innuendo at face value.Neutral observers - and perhaps some fans - were wary that their idol was now wading into the murky waters of Zanu PF politics around factional wars after talk that the song was pointing to a near-future time when Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa would take over from President Robert Mugabe.In fact, some notorious individuals even did dummy sleeves with a bastardised title, Kutonga Kwaro Garwe, which were circulated on social media way before the album's official release. Mnangagwa is also known as Ngwena.The song was being regarded as some kind of follow up to the title track of the preceding album, Mdara Vachauya (at least for those who interpreted the song to mean the real leader is on his way to power). As a way of countering the narrative placing Mnangagwa at the centre, the song was now being played at Mugabe's rallies in a reconfigured trajectory, to affirm the party's one centre of power doctrine.Mdara Vachauya, however, turned out to be a love song in which a man in a faraway land, appeals to his woman to remain faithful in the face of temptations that distance is bound to bring.Long before the latest album's release, Jah Prayzah had already pre-empted the political interpretations of the title track."I think it [the album] talks about where I am right now. Most songs are love and party songs. There is a track titled Kutonga Kwaro that talks about who I am and where I came from," he said in August this year.There may not be a one-dimensional hearing of the title track, which opens the album, but cannot be what people had anticipated. The song speaks of the arrival on the scene of a familiar, but long-awaited hero expected to, among other things, make orphans happy, although he is also portrayed as a fearsome character before whom other men cringe in obeisance.Is it political or social? This is always going to be the point of conjecture. In fact, the power of music inherently lies in its polysemic nature and the song is going to attract as much debate as was the case with Mdara Vachauya.One notable thing on the album - which is likely to disappoint those fans who had been charmed by Jah Prayzah's earlier music - is the departure from his traditional beat as he seeks to reach out to a wider, heterogeneous international audience. One is reminded of tracks such as Machembere and Tiise Maoko, which spoke of a musician deeply entrenched in the traditions of his people.But having said this, it remains to be seen if the new experiments on the album will be able to stand the test of time, although some die-hard fans are already touting this album as one of Jah Prayzah's best.The drive to encompass a wider audience has seen the musician continuing to embrace other artistes such as Nigeria's Diamond Platnumz on Poporopipo, Davido on My Lilly and Yemi Alade on Nziyo Yerudo.Perhaps this will work in Jah Prayzah's favour because fans of these artistes will get a taste of the Jah Prayzah flavour when they listen to the tracks and perhaps embrace him as one of their music idols. These collaborations have given the Murewa-bred artiste a cutting edge over many locals as it makes his music multidimensional.Poporopipo is a sing-along love ballad in which the persona seeks to know a new girl who has struck his fancy, just like My Lilly, which carries the irresistible Davido magic that is likely to hold fans spellbound, especially with its thumping beat and the magical visuals. It's a gift to those keen on showing their fancy footwork on the dance floor.Nziyo Yerudo, featuring Nigeria's Yemi Alade, carries music that scintillates with Afro-centric imagery and has a video to match, with top notch visuals.Jah Prayzah has always come across as a poet, and this is like the watermark of his music, with deep, profound expressions that plumb the depths of human emotions using melodious wordplay. And this comes out strongly in the track, Chengetedza, in which the persona yearns for pure, uncorrupted love that has got nothing to do with money, status or appearance. In many of the songs Jah Prayzah runs true to form, injecting rhyming lines.Other tracks to look forward to include Chipo, Halla, Emerina, Pikoko and Hello Mama. There are also a number of tracks that can pass as self-praise songs and these include Masoja, Unondiziva, Chakanyanya and Ndini Ndamubata, a song in which the lanky musician reminds his fans that he is still their man. It is as if he is saying despite what the naysayers will say, I am still your man, Soja Rinoenda Kure, as he is affectionately known among his fans.Masoja is an ode to Third Generation. But this is personal. It's public record that Jah Prayzah dreamt of being a soldier during his childhood. In Unondiziva, he salutes his band members, walking a well-woven path earlier travelled by the late Tongai Moyo in Murozvi Mukuru.The song that wraps up the album Muchinjiko, deserves special mention. It is essentially a gospel track, but with a deeply traditional feel - perhaps the Christian version of Goto Rinehwema. It's a bitter-sweet track that chronicles Jesus' agony as he carried his cross to Golgotha. There is something surreal about the track, with its melodious percussions blending seamlessly into the guitar riffs.With a total of 14 tracks, in an industry where fellow artistes would feel content without even half as much, the album demonstrates Jah Prayzah's daredevil confidence.If you are one for love and party songs, then this is your album, although it will likely disappoint those who had felt that with Kutonga Kwaro, Jah Prayzah would go political. They have to wait another day - that is if it will ever come, which is most unlikely. As the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is set for a fresh round of questioning on allegations of forced conversions to Islam in Kerala, the Popular Front of India (PFI) maintained that it was being targeted as part of a "vilification campaign". The NIA is likely to question A S Zainaba, president of the National Women's Front - the PFI's women's wing - in the wake of fresh allegations on organised conversions to Islam. The move follows a television sting operation which had Zainaba "admitting" to have coordinated mass proselytism at Sathya Sarani, a Malappuram-based organisation registered as an educational and charitable trust. On Wednesday, state police chief Loknath Behera had directed the intelligence wing to collect details of the TV report and initiate follow-up action. A source in the Kochi unit of the NIA said the agency was preparing for the questioning. Zainaba, identified as a key figure in other cases of religious conversion, had earlier been questioned by the NIA in connection with the "love jihad" case involving the conversion of Hadiya (Akhila) to Islam and her now-annulled marriage with a Muslim man, Shafin Jahan. Zainaba said on Thursday that she had nothing to hide since the TV report discussed activities of Sathya Sarani that she had herself discussed openly with the media and investigation agencies including the NIA. "The figure they talk about (5,000 conversions in 10 years) is the number of students who completed the course in Islam from the centre. They include Muslims as well as converts," she told DH. The Sathya Sarani website lists "Propagation of Islam among non-Muslims" as an objective. Hadiya's father K M Ashokan contended in the Supreme Court that Zainaba, through Sathya Sarani, was actively involved in religious conversion/indoctrination of young women. She also arranged Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan which was annulled by the Kerala High Court in May this year. Zainaba said she had, during the NIA's first round of questioning, informed the agency about Sathya Sarani's activities and reiterated that Hadiya had converted to Islam before she met her. The Supreme Court has directed Ashokan to produce Hadiya for an open-court hearing on the case, on November 27. Following the fresh allegations, the BJP has targeted the CPM-led state government over its "soft" handling of the issue. BJP state president Kummanam Rajasekharan urged the government to close down Sathya Sarani. Keen on making giant strides in the food processing sector, India has simplified the regulatory mechanism for food products, globally benchmarked standards and speedier clearances for projects. The Centre is also launching a special portal Nivesh Bandhu to assist investors by providing information about government's policies, agro-producing clusters, infrastructure and potential areas of investment in the food processing sector. "All the information about production hubs, mega food parks, cold storage facilities will be geo-tagged so that the investor is aware of their exact location and plan accordingly," J P Meena, secretary, Department of Food Processing said here. Food Processing Minister Harsimarat Kaur Badal said the government has earmarked Rs 6,000 crore over the next three years to create infrastructure in the sector that will attract investments. She said only 10% of the food produced in India was processed and the aim was to increase it three-fold to 30%. The Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI), the food regulator, has come up with set standards that meet the global benchmarks that are simple and easy to understand. "We have also shifted from product-based approval to recipe-based approvals," FSSAI chief executive officer Pawan Kumar Agarwal said here. Badal said she had already received commitments of investments to the tune of 10 billion dollars from both domestic and foreign investors in the food processing sector that could lead to the creation of 10 lakh jobs. The minister said the three-day mega event World Food India, that starts on Friday in New Delhi, is expected to showcase the country's strengths in the food processing sector to global investors. More than 40 countries, 27 states governments are participating in the event. Germany, Denmark and Japan are the partner countries, while the Italy, the Netherlands are the focus countries of the event. China today said it has blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan- based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying "there is no consensus". A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. JeM has already been in its banned list. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. It appears that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. PTI KJV NSA CPS AKJ CPS The toll in Wednesdays blast at National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant in Uttar Pradeshs Raebareli district has gone up to 30 with ten more labourers succumbing to their injuries in hospitals. The Centre rejected assertions that the blast was the result of human error, while the Opposition Congress demanded a judicial probe. The toll could rise further as, according to the doctors, the condition of at least a dozen labourers continued to be critical with many of them being put on life support. About half a dozen labourers have sustained more than 90 % burn injuries.they have been put on ventilators.some others, who have suffered over 90 % burn injuries, are also in critical condition, said a doctor at the KG Medical University hospital here. Three critically injured NTPC officers were sent for specialised treatment at Delhi and Gurgaon by air ambulance, officials said. Politicians, including senior central and state ministers and Opposition leaders, made a beeline to the NTPC plant at Raebareli and various hospitals, where the injured were being treated. Union minister of state for power R K Singh announced an ex-gratia relief of Rs 20 lakh for the next of kin of each of the deceased. Singh rejected assertions that human error was the cause and said that the Unchahar unit was one of the best in the country. He also denied that there was any pressure on the officials to increase the generation. He said that an inquiry had already been ordered into the incident and a report would be submitted within 30 days. BHEL machinery The minister, however, asked the public sector Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), which supplied some machinery to the NTPC plant, to check if they were of good quality. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who cut short his Gujarat visit and reached Raebareli on Thursday visited the district hospital and also met the kin of the deceased and injured labourers. Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who also visited the site, said his party demanded a judicial probe to ascertain the true reason behind the blast. As many as 30 labourers were killed and over 100 others injured in the blast at the ash pipe of the 500 MW under-trial sixth unit at Unchahar. Women employees working in government departments can now lodge complaints of sexual harassment at work place online and can monitor action being taken on them too. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has recently written to all central government departments asking them to inform the women employees about many such features of Sexual Harassment electronic-Box or SHe-Box -- launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development on July 24. "Once a complaint is submitted to the SHe-Box, it will be directly sent to the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the concerned ministry, department, public sector undertakings, autonomous body, etc., having jurisdiction to inquire into the complaints," the DoPT said in a missive. The SHe-Box also provides an opportunity to both the complainant and nodal administrative authority to monitor the progress of inquiry conducted by the ICCs, it said. Any woman working or visiting any office of central government can file complaint related to sexual harassment at work place through this SHe-Box, the DoPT order issued yesterday said. The status of complaints can be viewed at any time by pressing the tab 'View Status of Your Complaints' within SHe- Box, it said, asking all the government organisations to inform all employees working under them about the various features of the SHe-Box. The SHe-Box portal can be accessed at www.shebox.nic.in/. PTI AKV DIP Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have a bilateral meeting with American President Donald Trump in Manila to review the progress in bilateral ties since they met in Washington DC in June this year. Both Modi and Trump will be in Manila on November 12 and 13 to attend the ASEAN-India and ASEAN-US summits, which will be hosted by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. Modi will also take part in the East Asia Summit, which Trump, however, will give a miss. The US President will also visit Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and China. Though the itinerary of his 12-day-tour in Asia does not include India, Trump is likely to have a meeting with Modi in Manila. As they will meet less than a fortnight after the terror attack in New York, India-US cooperation to combat terrorism is likely to figure prominently in Prime Minister's meeting with American President. Trump spoke to Modi over phone and accepted his condolences for the death of eight people in the terrorist attack at Manhattan in New York on Tuesday. Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, according to a statement issued by the White House. Modi and Trump resolved that India and the US would "continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism". Sources told the DH that Modi and Trump would discuss ways to step up counter-terrorism cooperation an issue, which figured prominently during the first meeting of the two leaders at the White House on June 27 too. It was on the top of the agenda during the visits of US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to New Delhi in September and October recently. Both Mattis and Tillerson endorsed New Delhi's view that Islamabad must deny the terrorists safe havens in Pakistan and stop allowing them to use bases in Pakistan to carry out terror attacks in Afghanistan and India.. The CBI has conducted searches at the premises of two businessmen in Delhi and Kolkata in connection with the multi-crore AgustaWestland scam. The premises of Sunil Kothari and Narendra Kumar Jain were searched following allegations that they laundered the bribe money in the case through shell companies. The CBI claimed that Kothari and Jain laundered the money brought in by former Air Force chief S P Tyagi's cousin Sanjeev and Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan. The searches were conducted at three places each in Delhi and Kolkata on October 31. These included Kothari's residence in south Delhi's Sainik Farms and M/s Om Metals Pvt Ltd in Delhi as well as Jain's residence in Kolkata and his office M/s Abhinandan Vanijya. A premise of Jain's associate Rajesh was also searched. A CBI spokesperson said the agency has recovered Rs 55.68 lakh from Kothari's premises and Rs 29 lakh from Jain's premises, respectively. The income tax department was informed about the cash recovery immediately. The CBI had filed a chargesheet in the case on September 1 and named Tyagi among others. The agency said there was an estimated loss of 398.21 million Euros (around Rs 2,666 crore) to the exchequer in the deal signed by the UPA government in February 2010 for supply of VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million Euros . The CBI has informed the court that it has been able to establish money trail worth 62 million Euros (around Rs 415.40 crore) from countries like Mauritius, Singapore, the UAE, Tunisia, the UK and the British Virgin Island. All India traders body (CAIT) on Thursday demanded a CBI probe against Infosys and other companies for the delay in fixing glitches in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) portal even after four months of its rollout. It has also sought for a white paper on the current status of GST portal from the government and a third party technical and another audit of the portal. "It construes as a betrayal of the nation," CAIT said. "Even after four months of GST implementation in the country, the GST portal which was supposed to function properly from July one itself is still working like an experimental project causing much harassment and mental distress to traders across the country," it said. Infosys was one of the companies assigned the work of creating, updating and maintenance of GST portal. Opinion / Columnist "Zimbabweans need to know that genuine veterans of Chimurenga Liberation War see no party or individual worth dying or killing for. The sacrifices made by sons and daughters of our nation during the armed struggle was a high enough price for us all to gain unfettered freedom of political choice," said ZNLWVA secretary for Education Wilbert Sadomba."Failure to respect uphold this value of liberation is tantamount to denigrating the ethos upon which this very nation is founded. Their sacrifices cannot be in vain and therefore we strongly denounce the perpetrators and especially their organizers."The ZNLWVA urged citizens to establish community groups that will hit back at political party thugs that unleash violence on citizens.This is highly commendable of the war veterans; however there are three important issues they must address/understand:1) Many of the war veterans from this group were actively involved in the reign of terror that rained on the people of Zimbabwe since independence to impose this Zanu PF dictatorship on the nation. These war veterans failed to "uphold the values of the liberation", they abrogated unto themselves the veto to decide who ruled the nation where everyone else had a vote - if any say at all.If the people of Zimbabwe are to believe that these war veterans have seen the errors of their past then they must publicly confess all their serious human rights violations and apologize to the nation.The people of Zimbabwe know the Zanu PF factional war is hotting up and the Mnangagwa faction is particularly keen to be seen as on the ordinary Zimbabwean side. The people will be very foolish to be sucked into the factional war only to remove one dictator for another, have the same war veterans reclaim their veto over who rules the country.2) Zimbabweans does not need vigilant groups to guarantee their freedoms and basic human rights all we need is the implementation of all the democratic reforms designed to restore the powers and independence of the Police, ZEC and all the other institutions tasked to maintain law and order, deliver free and fair elections, etc.So, instead of calling for "community groups that will hit back at political party thugs that unleash violence on citizens" ZNLWVA must support the call for all democratic reforms to be implemented BEFORE the next elections! Two army troopers and a militant were killed in an encounter in Pampore area of south Kashmir's Pulwama district on Thursday. A police officer said a joint team of the army's 50 Rashtriya Rifles, a special operations group of the state police and paramilitary CRPF, acting on a tip off, cordoned off Samboora area of Pampore. "As the team intensified the searches and fired some warning shots towards a suspected spot, the hiding militants, believed to be two to three in number, opened fire, triggering an encounter," he said. In the ensuing gunfight, a militant was killed and two armymen received injuries, he said. On Wednesday, six paramilitary CRPF personnel were injured when militants attacked their vehicle in south Kashmir's Anantnag district. A 31-year-old software engineer and his brother who were injured in a gas cylinder explosion in Kadugodi, succumbed to death on Wednesday. The condition of the techie's wife and his daughter is said to be critical. The deceased are Narendra Sharma, a software engineer in a private firm in ITPL, and Harendra (28). The injured are Shilpa (27), and her daughter Arya. The family hails from Agra in Uttar Pradesh. Grandparents of Arya have shifted her to a hospital in Delhi for further treatment. A senior police officer said that a family of four, including toddler, were severely injured after an explosion due to LPG leakage at their house at Veeraswamy Layout on Sunday. The enforcement of mandatory installation of speed governors for vehicles that were earlier exempted from the rule has raked up a host of questions, including the "exorbitant price" for the device and the enforcement of the rule itself. Various associations of taxi operators and owners have decided to lay siege to the Transport Commissioner's office on Tuesday (October 7) to protest against the pricing. "A speed governor in Karnataka costs Rs 15,000 whereas devices in other states can be obtained at Rs 2,500. Why did the government go for tender instead of allowing devices approved by ARi (Automotive Robotics inc)," asked Radhakrishna Holla, president of Bangalore Tourist Taxi Owners' Association. The Transport department has a huge task of ensuring about 4 lakh commercial vehicles have the speed limiting devices installed. "It will not happen anytime soon. We have to wait till the vehicle is brought for a fitness certificate (FC). Besides the challenge of ensuring supply of lakhs of devices, there is also the question of manpower and time needed in installing the devices," a senior official in the department said. The issue has come to the fore after the Transport department on September 26 issued a notification revoking exemption given to M1 category vehicles (below 3,500 kg weight) from installing the governors that limit the speed to 80 kmph. Holla, however, questioned the preparedness of the department. "What happens when a speed governor starts malfunctioning? We do not have authorised repair shops. After paying exorbitant price for the device, vehicle owners will have to suffer due to lack of preparedness," he said. He said the government should have argued in the court, which quashed the exemption, that commercial vehicles are responsible for only a fraction of total road accidents. "Private vehicles, which, contribute most of the accidents will run the same way," he noted. Installation a sham Rakesh, who owns a commercial vehicle, told DH that he bought the device about six months ago but the vendor did not install it. "I asked the vendor to fit the speed governor. He gave me a certificate and told me that I will get the FC by showing it to the vehicle inspector and there was no need to instal the device," he said. An RTO official, however, said vehicle inspectors have to physically verify the device and take down its serial number to generate an FC. IndiGo is adding new flights and increasing frequency of flights to its existing destinations from Bengaluru this December. Starting December 29, a daily flight to Madurai will depart from Kempegowda International Airport at 7.45 pm and reach Madurai at 8.45 pm. The return flight will leave Madurai at 9.15 pm and reach KIA at 10.20 pm. A seventh daily from KIA to Kochi will leave the Bengaluru airport at 6.30 am to reach Kochi at 7.35 am. The return flight will leave Kochi at 8.25 am and reach KIA at 9.30 am. This service will start on December 10. A fifth daily flight (except Tuesdays) to Thiruvananthapuram will leave KIA at 1.55 pm and reach the Kerala capital at 2.55 pm. The return flight will leave at 4.05 pm and reach Bengaluru at 5.20 pm. This service is also scheduled to start on December 10. Two daily flights from Bengaluru and Kozhikode will start on December 29. More daily flights are also on the IndiGo agenda between Bengaluru and Coimbatore and Dehradun from December 29. The Health Department in Karnataka has registered just 79 cases under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994, in the past 15 years. The cases include female foeticide and unregistered sonography centres. The conviction rate is even lower as the enquiry is still going on in several cases while the charges have been dropped in others for lack of evidence. In 2015-16, there were just 898 female live births for every 1,000 male live births in Karnataka, down from 917 female live births for every 1,000 male live births in 2014-2015. K S Vimala, the vice-president of Akhila Karnataka Janavadi Mahila Sanghatane, said the female sex ratio in districts like Udupi and Dakshina Kannada had come down drastically. An official in the department said on the condition of anonymity that it was very difficult for a doctor to file a case against another doctor. He added that complainants were threatened and there was no protection for them. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday directed Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to asphalt 500-km stretch of major roads, out of 1,400 km, in the city and complete the work by December-end. The directions were issued at a meeting chaired by him to discuss the ongoing projects in Bengaluru. The work involves asphalting of roads and laying footpaths, Bengaluru Development Minister K J George told reporters after the meeting. Strict deadlines have been set for all the projects that have to be completed by April-May next year, in view of the upcoming Assembly elections. After the heavy rain damaged roads badly and, potholes caused fatal accidents, Siddaramaiah had set directed the Palike to fill all the potholes by October 25. However, the civic body could not meet the deadline and, Mayor R Sampath Raj had asked for an extension till November 6. When asked about this, Siddaramaiah said, "We have granted them time until November 6, after which I am going to make surprise visits. If I find any pothole, the engineers concerned will be suspended." George said, "The works on some of these roads have already been started. We have also started the work of white-topping on 94 km stretch. This will be completed by April and all the roads in the city will be white-topped in phases." "There has been a delay in building signal free corridors due to difficulty in acquiring lands. We have now got approvals from the HAL. Under the emergency provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, we will be acquiring the land by paying Rs 58 crore. About 3,100 sq km will be used," the minister said. He said the Hennur flyover will be completed within two months. On Indira canteens, George said that mobile canteens will be launched wherever there is difficulty in setting up a canteen. "As many as 93.12 lakh people have been served in all the canteens until now. As many as 141 canteens are functioning and 16 are ready for inauguration. Mobile canteens will be opened in Okalipuram, Basaveshwaranagar, Bapujinagar, Yediyur and Girinagar among other areas." New look for 3 roads Three stretches including Old Airport Road, Ballari Road and Old Madras Road will be given a new look with new street lights, signages and bus bays. The chief minister has set a deadline to complete the work by December. The Income Tax officials conducted search and seizures on premises of real estate firm Brigade Group. The simultaneous raids were started on Thursday morning and would continue for another day, sources said. According to I-T sources, searches were being conducted at 25 premises and surveys at nine projects of the group. The searches are being conducted in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Chennai.The I-T sources said that the investigation was taken up some time ago for suspected evasion of tax. A spokesperson for the group confirmed the searches and said that the group is co-operating with the I-T department. Outpatient services in private hospitals across Karnataka will remain closed from 8 am on Friday to 8 am on Saturday. The hospitals are protesting against the Karnataka Private Medical Establishments (KPME) Bill which was tabled in the Assembly last June. The protest backed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) will see all private medical establishments sparing only the skeletal staff for emergency admissions. "We will be closing down all private medical establishments, including blood banks and small medical institutions. But the treatment will continue for patients who have already been admitted and for emergencies," said Dr Veeranna B, president of IMA, Karnataka. He said the government had gone ahead with the KPME Bill by "disregarding" the discussions with the joint select committee to make changes in it. "If there is no assurance even after the protest, we will wait for a few days and then will close down all our establishments permanently." The association wants certain amendments in the bill. "We want the government to consider some of our demands on the capping of charges, the imprisonment of doctors and the inclusion of government hospitals in the bill among others," Dr K H Jnanendrappa, president, IMA, Bengaluru branch, said. A PIL has been filed in the High Court of Karnataka, seeking directions to restrain the state government from celebrating Hajarath Tipu Sultan Jayanthi throughout the state. The petitioner, Manjunath K P, a resident of Kodagu district has also sought directions to restrain the celebrations in his home district as he contends that Tipu Sultan was responsible for the sharp decline of the Kodava race. The petition comes in the wake of recent controversy surrounding the celebration of Tipu Jayanthi as a government event on November 10. The petition has been filed as a response to the circular dated October 24 issued by the Director, Department of Kannada and Culture for celebrating Tipu Jayanthi throughout the state. The petitioner states that if an interim order of stay is not granted to stall the celebration of Tipu Jayanthi in Kodagu district and other parts of the state, it will result in communal disharmony. The petitioner has provided historical representations stating that Tipu Sultan's reign in Coorg resulted in the conversion of Kodavas and he had killed thousands of Kodavas as a retaliation to his defeat by them. He also states that there was large-scale communal violence when Tipu Jayanthi was celebrated in 2015. According to the petitioner, Tipu was an invader and a dictator and glorifying such a person is a matter of shame. He adds that it is an irony that the government wants to celebrate the birth anniversary of a person of this stature as he believed in the ethical cleansing of the Kodava community. The petition will be heard on Friday. Seventeen people were injured, two of them seriously, after a private bus crashed into a roadside tree at Byyappanahalli village near Dibburahalli in Shidlaghatta taluk, Chikkaballapur district, early on Thursday morning. The driver lost control of the bus and crashed it into the tree. Two of the injured have been admitted to a private hospital in Bengaluru while others were taken to a government hospital from where they were discharged after being given first aid. The Carmel Valley Community Planning board is responding to a recent San Diego Housing Commission report that proposed disbanding community planning groups and replacing them with a citywide board as one solution to streamline the approval process to get more homes built in the city. The report, titled Addressing the Housing Affordability Crisis was circulated by the housing commission on Sept. 9 and it includes solutions to meet a housing need in the city that could be up to twice as high as previously estimated. The report states that over the past decade, population growth has averaged 1.2 percent per year more than double the rate of housing growth at 0.5 percent per year. Housing affordability is also an issue for at least half of San Diegans 50 percent of San Diegans cant find market-rate rental housing they can afford, while 60 percent cannot afford home ownership. To help the city meet its housing needs, the commission proposed rezoning to increase density, redeveloping underutilized parcels of land, infilling vacant lots and utilizing accessary dwelling units. The report estimates that about 40 percent of potential housing capacity exists within the neighborhoods of Mira Mesa, Mission Valley, City Heights, North Park and Uptown. In the report, planning boards are cited as one of six challenges in the housing development cycle and major deterrents to production. They are saying that planning groups are an impediment to the developers and that because of the community input, theres a timing issue that we create, said CV Community Planning Board Co-Chair Barry Schultz at the boards Oct. 26 meeting. The report also states that Community planning groups may not include the full spectrum of community views or technical professions that could assist in evaluating the impacts of development on the neighborhood. One solution to the planning board challenge was a community planning group audit or performance review to track average review time and approval rates. In that scenario the current community planning framework would remain but there would be process improvements such as clear time frames to drive faster decision-making. The alternative that irked the board most was the proposal to replace planning groups with a more centralized body that captures a diversity of neighborhood voices and technical professions in the development process. San Diego could aspire to change its community input framework in favor of a single representative council or, alternatively, three to five commissions that are mapped along the basis of neighborhood and economic similarities the report stated. Schultz, who serves as the Carmel Valley representative on the citys Community Planners Committee, said these proposals were discussed at their recent meeting. Not only was there no support theres really some frustration that the way in which the community planning groups are portrayed is really unfair, Schultz said. From his perspective sitting on both the planning board and also from his time on the San Diego Planning Commission, planning groups have always been seen as advisory, providing the information and local input for the decision-makers on the commission and City Council. I dont know where the report is going but I want us to make it known that community input is important, Schultz said. When you look at this report, its all about creating units. We just had a discussion about what the quality of life is in a community when youre dealing with density. This report has no discussion about infrastructure to support that increased density, its all about making it easier for the developers to develop and not having a balance. Im not suggesting that we dont want development but weve got to think about the quality of life in our communities being equally important as providing economic incentives to developers. CV Planning Board Chair Frisco White said the Carmel Valley board has a reputation as a fair board and has very seldom denied a project. He said they are unique in their workability between the community, the board and developers, working to get the best possible project for the community, sometimes better than the original proposal. Im shocked and offended that the San Diego Housing Commission would even think about disbanding the planning boards, White said. Board members like Shreya Sasaki said it felt disengenous to say that planning boards are the ones holding back developments, without a review of the overall city planning processes. Theres no comment on the role of the developer themselves, echoed board member Steve Davison said, noting that in cases where they have had to revisit a project more than once, its because the developer has not come prepared. The report did propose one solution to increase the citys Development Services staffing to align with expedited permitting programs. Board member Laura Copic voiced concern that a centralized body or council representative of several communities could really create a disconnect as it takes control away from the neighborhoods that would be most impacted by projects. When you look at some of these communities, some will be absorbing 10,000 to 15,000 units over the next 10 years and doing that with no community input seems insane, said board member Ken Farinsky. If youre making that big of a change to the community you need to work with the community. The report does acknowledge that any community planning process reforms meant to stimulate development must create adequate opportunities for community voices and concerns around development plans to be considered. At the Oct. 26, the board approved sending a strong response to the SD Housing Commission and the mayor to state that they disagree with the analysis of community planning boards role in the housing crisis. Awash in backlash from homeowners demanding a wholesale rethink of two years work, Del Mar has changed course midstream in its plans to face the threats posed by rising oceans, narrowing beaches and increasingly severe floods. The citys committee on sea-level rise has radically rewritten its adaptation plan, a package of recommendations that will lay the groundwork for how Del Mar sets policies and initiates responses to the pressures of climate change, from beach and bluff erosion to offshore sand deposits to controlling the channel and shoreline of the San Dieguito River. Taken together, the changes mark a pronounced shift toward the primacy of private property, and away from environmental interests an abrupt about-face on some of the key tenets the committee had assumed when it started meeting in July 2015. Early on, the Sea-Level Rise Stakeholder-Technical Advisory Committee (STAC) focused on where and how much Del Mar will be vulnerable to rising seas and river flooding. In September 2016, the committees consultant produced a first draft of the adaptation plan, with the intent that the committee would mold it to fit Del Mar. After word spread from neighbor to neighbor that the plan included property removal as an option, enraged homeowners from Del Mars beach colony several hundred homes roughly between 15th and 29th streets flooded the committees August meeting, angrily denouncing the plans impact on the $1 billion neighborhood. The mere mention of property removal will devastate property values in Del Mars priciest enclave, they say. Their outrage widened at STACs September meeting when it became clear that committee members were not well-versed in Del Mars Beach Preservation Initiative, a hard-fought 1988 referendum that both limits and guarantees homeowners rights to build and maintain seawalls. In the face of that outcry, STAC chairwoman Terry Gaasterland conceded that the plan taking shape was deaf to the particulars of Del Mars history and topography. She and three other STAC members formed a subcommittee that spent hundreds of hours rewriting the plan to incorporate those concerns, culminating in the draft posted to the citys website on Oct. 11. Foremost among the changes is that strategies of planned retreat in which homes would be removed have been expunged altogether. The new draft acknowledges only the possibility of relocating city-owned infrastructure, such as the fire station and sewer pump station on San Dieguito Drive or sewer lines on the bluffs and even on that, the new draft is deliberately vague, Gaasterland said. The other momentous change: the new draft redoubles Del Mars commitment to seawalls. Throughout its two years of work, STAC made pains to avoid and de-emphasize seawalls as much as possible. The adaptation plan now embraces the seawalls that armor nearly every inch of oceanfront from Powerhouse Park to the river mouth as essential to Del Mars very existence. In few other Southern California communities do homes sit directly on the beach, level with the ocean. Meanwhile, a huge swath of the 30-block area behind the oceanfront sits lower than the first row of homes in some places by as much as six feet. Beach colony residents liken the predicament to Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana a metaphor in which Del Mars seawalls play the role of the dikes that had guarded New Orleans 9th Ward until Hurricane Katrina. Without the seawalls, residents say, the beach colony is one storm away from becoming a shallow lake. These seawalls have been here since the 80s and they have prevented extreme flooding events ever since the 1983 flood, Gaasterland said. The stand were taking now is that we have a 100-year-old community of over 300 houses in the northern part of Del Mar that is subject to flooding from both sea and river, and preserving that community for as long as we can is of the utmost importance. And whereas the previous draft was ambivalent toward the effectiveness of replenishing beaches and building reefs and groins to trap ocean sand, the new draft thrusts those strategies to the top of the citys priorities not in some abstract future but right away. We must preserve the beach starting now, Gaasterland said. Another new wrinkle is a call for Del Mar to immediately launch a wide-ranging program for annual monitoring of beach width, flood risk, the frequency of extreme weather events, wildlife loss and retreat in the San Dieguito Lagoon, and sediment levels in the river channel. Notably absent from the recommended monitoring: sea-level rise. The resident uproar also won changes to STACs composition. For its first two years, STAC consisted of five Del Mar residents, an official from the fairgrounds, an official from the California Coastal Commission, a Scripps scientist and an advocate from the Surfrider Foundation. The city council added two more residents to the committee earlier this month one from the beach colony and one from the bluffs. After the sweeping changes, the resident rancor had by STACs Oct. 26 meeting largely given way to gratitude. But although homeowners bandied about words like thankful and pleasantly shocked, dire concerns remain, especially over the need for in-depth economic and legal analysis of STACs recommendations. Oceanfront Avenue resident Heather Lindsey was perplexed that the city council could ask STAC to make such profoundly far-reaching recommendations without having a clear sense of their economic impacts. This issue is big. Its bigger than short-term rentals, its bigger than the police force, she said. This issue, if mismanaged, could cripple the city financially to the point where we could not be a city. It could flood out a third of the city. Thorough analyses would push STACs timeline far past its December target for finalizing the adaptation plan, so the committee settled on stipulating that further economic and legal analysis must occur before the city moves forward on any of the options. But as the new draft soothed homeowners, it has upset the Surfrider Foundation, which is closely following Del Mars planning. Surfrider members and staff have spoken out at recent STAC meetings about the long-term perils of seawalls and the need to balance property rights with state mandates to ensure coastal access for all Californians. Del Mars new direction throws that balance askew, said Julia Chunn-Heer, policy manager for Surfriders San Diego chapter. And, eliminating planned retreat will handcuff the citys ability to deal with the inevitable properties for which sand-replenishment will eventually prove inadequate, she said. Youll be faced with the decision of allowing homes to live in the shadow of a seawall and the beach has been entirely destroyed, she said. Those are the type of situations that we want to prevent, and to prevent that takes a long lead time. STAC member Kristen Brinner a Solana Beach resident who co-chairs San Diego Surfriders beach preservation committee was on the subcommittee that rewrote the adaptation plan. Throughout that process, she pushed back that planned retreat needs to remain an option, objections that she raised again on Oct. 26. No one wants homes to be removed. But we need to be realistic about what might be coming, she said. If were talking about the credibility of this report, we cant say that all options are on the table if weve removed an option. Several STAC members agreed that the plan ought to explain that planned retreat has been deliberately removed. STAC hopes to finalize its version of the adaptation plan at its Dec. 7 meeting. Google's first Indian Cloud platform goes operational in Mumbai Google today announced the opening of its first Indian Google Cloud Platform region in Mumbai, which will help customers build efficient applications on Cloud. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) offers several services including Compute, Big Data, Storage and Networking. With the India region going live, enterprises will be able to take advantage of the high speeds, low latency and performance benefits uniquely offered by GCP. Further, the Indian customers will now be able to buy these services in Indian currency. "We are delighted to announce the first GCP region in India. The new region will help customers build applications and store their data, and significantly improve latency for customers and end users in the area," said Dave Stiver, product manager, Google Cloud Platform. The launch of the Cloud region, which will have three zones, also opens up newer opportunities for several new partners who will benefit from building their services on Google Cloud, the company said. The Mumbai region joins Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in the Asia-Pacific. "Hosting applications in the new region can improve latency from 20-90 per cent for end-users in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and, of course, Mumbai, compared to hosting them in the other closest region, Singapore," Stiver said. Google Cloud Platform enables the developers to build, test and deploy applications on Google's highly scalable and reliable infrastructure. The new Mumbai region, joins Singapore, Taiwan, Sydney and Tokyo in Asia Pacific making it easier for customers to build highly available, performant applications using resources across those geographies. "GCP gave us a low latency network and the ability to optimise costs further with custom machine types. The new India region will help us bring our service even closer to Indian consumers," said Manish Verma, chief technology officer. China on Tuesday denied a story published in Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, widely picked up by Indian media, that it plans to build a 1,000-km tunnel the world's longest - to divert waters of the Brahmaputra from Tibet to its arid Xinjiang region. The denial came from the Chinese foreign ministry a day after SCMP said that Chinese engineers had submitted the plan to higher authorities in Beijing for approval, and were awaiting a nod. The report said that the project, which would also require environmental clearance, would cost $150 billion. "This is a false report," said foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a media briefing in Beijing. She added that China would hold talks on issues related to the river with countries downstream, which are India and Bangladesh. "China will continue to attach great importance for cooperation on trans-border water resources," she said. Meanwhile, a top Chinese engineer who is building China's longest water tunnel in Yunnan province has said he "has not heard of" any plans to build a 1,000 km water diversion tunnel for the Brahmaputra River. "There is no such direction from the central government, and I've never heard of any plan laid out for a Tibet-Xinjiang tunnel project," Zhao Shijie, chief engineer of the Dianzhong water diversion project in Yunnan, told the Global Times. India has reason to worry because China stopped providing it with hydrological data about the Brahmaputra river flow which it had supplied in 2014 to 2016. Although China has denied the diversion plan, the report helped alert the Indian public that Beijing has the power to drastically influence the flow of the Brahmaputra, observers said. New Delhi is usually reluctant to discuss dangers for downstream areas as China controls the river's flow. China had assured India in 2010 that it would not build large storage dams that could pose serious risks to India's northeast, and merely focus on constructing run-of-the-river dams for generating hydroelectricity. It has built a 510 mw dam at Zangmu area of Tibet and begun work on three more dams on the river. Environmentalists have often expressed concern that the dams can seriously hamper the river's ecosystem. The first half of 2017 saw a 123-per cent growth in the shipment of phones featuring dual-camera systems, according to new research. The start of 2017 saw Huawei (with its Honor 6X variants) Lenovo Phab 2 plus as also the LG G6 and V20 devices make their mark in the Indian smartphone market. ''2017 has been the year when dual-camera smartphones became mainstream, primarily pushed by Chinese smartphone vendors cutting across price bands,'' Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CyberMedia Research (CMR), said in a statement. ''The second quarter of 2017 saw Micromax, ZTE, OnePlus and Gionee, among others, shipping dual-camera smartphones to the India market. Clearly, there has been a shift in the smartphone vendor marketing narrative from pixel quality to dual-cameras,'' Ram added. ''On the back of a spate of dual-camera smartphone launches in Q2, India smartphone market witnessed a 107-per cent rise in dual-camera smartphone shipments ending Q2,'' the research said. While Q1 was driven mostly by Huawei, Q2 growth could be attributed to OnePlus 5 launch of their flagship offering OnePlus with dual-camera shipments now constituting over 1 per cent of the overall smartphone shipments. In the second quarter of 2017 Micromax, ZTE, OnePlus and Gionee, among others, started shipping dual-camera smartphones to the Indian market. Clearly, there has been a shift in the smartphone vendor marketing narrative from pixel quality to dual-cameras, Ram said. Only Huawei and LG, had focused on dual cameras as early as 2016. "It is interesting to see how Google with its Google Pixel 2 devices has avoided the dual-camera craze and focused on its single camera. The approach adopted by Oppo with its optical zoom periscope lens could also be the next big step in pushing the envelope forward," Ram said. Zakir Naik finds a home in Malaysia: report Zakir Naik, an Indian Islamic preacher and founder of Islamic Research Foundation, wanted by security agencies in India, is reported to have found refuge in Malaysia. A Reuters report said he made a public appearance accompanied by a bodyguard at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia's administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik has been wanted in India for ''promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures,'' and the national Investigation Agency (NIA) had last week prepared charges against him. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has been preaching death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. Bangladesh, another Muslim-majority nation, had suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naik's preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of the preacher (See: After Dhaka terror, Al-Qaeda calls for lone-wolf attacks in India). Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The government of Prime Minister Najib Razak has granted permanent residency to Naik, after the UK denied him a visa. Naik's presence in multi-cultural Malaysia with its substantial Christians, Hindu and Buddhist minorities is seen as a sign of top-level support for hardline Islam. Razak, especially after the ruling coalition's worst-ever electoral performance in the 2013 general election, has stared currying favour to a politicised Islam, undermining Malayia's long-projected moderate Islamic image. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. The Reuters report said Naik when asked by a female Reuters reporter about the investigation in India during his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, merely said, ''Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public.'' Malaysian deputy prime minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given ''preferential treatment''. ''Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him,'' Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India ''related to terrorism allegations involving him'', he added. Zahid and the prime minister posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia, according to the Reuters report. Meanwhile, a group of Malaysian activists has filed a suit in the High Court seeking to deport Naik, who they described as a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society where about 40 per cent of the population is non-Muslim. Naik has denied charges levelled against him by Indian agencies, claiming that he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi. Malaysia's opposition Islamic Party (PAS) has defended Naik and has urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, claiming the ''allegations'' aim ''to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community.'' Islamic groups have stoked controversy for trying to impose their ethos in a multi-cultural country. Malaysian authorities cancelled a planned beer festival last month, citing security concerns, and for some years now international pop stars who wish to make appearances in Malaysia face restrictions over clothing and dancing. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. The laws, however, are secular, though the country does have sharia courts for civil cases for Muslims. One of Donegal's most prominent and respected farmers has warned of a famine of fodder as a result of the inordinate amount of rain that has fallen in the North West in the past year. Neville Myles of Ballyshannon runs one of the top performing farms in the country and has beenrecognised as running one of the greenest of farms in the country by An Bord Bia. Speaking to the Democrat yesterday Neville said, I don't want to be seen as an alarmist but we are facing a very grave situation. It has been a vicious year with practically non stop rain. What has exacerbated the situation is that there has been no drying whatsoever with the result that the land is simply saturated. Even if we were to get a good spell of weather now, it would be hard to dry out. Ignore Donegal It's like everything else - if this situation existed in the south of the country or near Dublin there would be all sorts of emergency situations but the powers that be just continue to ignore Donegal. The worst affected areas include south Donegal, North Leitrim and North Sligo - we are at crisis level. Neville continued, We have a situation where the grass is still growing and we are still trying to cut silage. Suckler farmers are the worst affected and they need to take imediate steps that they have enough fodder. I would estimate that there are 500 acres of second cut to be cut in this area but the feed value of that silage and after grass will be poor. It seems to be raining with us when it's not raining with anyone else - the fun has gone out of farming for a lot of people. Neville warned, We are now banking on an early spring - if we get a late spring next year I'm afraid a lot of farmers could be looking at a very bleak situation. Cold spell I believe that forecasters are predicting a very cold spell within the next few weeks - that might do something to alleviate the situation but it will be minimal. As a result, the price of fodder coming into Donegal has now gone through the roof. A round bale of straw is now fetching 38/40 - this is totally unsustainable. The price of cattle is strong at the moment but given the present situation my advice is to sell off stock when the price is good. The winter is going to be a costly period for a lot of farmers. Concluding the Ballyshannon man said, The agri-sector has an effect on the total economy - when the farmers are doing well, everybody thrives but when there is a downturn everybody suffers. I would call on the government to come up with a strategy that will address the problems of the farmers in this area. Agriculture is extremely important to us - we cannot stop the rain but we can strive to minimise the effects. An Ozark woman has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her 9-month-old son in 2016. Breanna Farmer, 23, pleaded guilty to manslaughter Thursday in the death of Kodah Ellenburge, who died in Jan. 2016. Farmers sentencing date will be in January. She faces two to 20 years in prison. Police responded to a report of an unresponsive infant in Daleville on Jan. 11, 2016. When they arrived they found Ellenburge dead. A report from the Alabama Department of Forensic Services found substantial amounts of diphenhydramine (the main ingredient in Benadryl) in his system, as well as smaller amounts of amphetamine and methamphetamine. According to the report, 20 times the therapeutic dose of diphenhydramine was found in the childs system. When responding to the call, deputies discovered marijuana at the scene, according to police. A later search warrant resulted in the seizure of a marijuana grow operation. Farmer made a blind plea, meaning she received no assurance of a shorter sentence for her plea. Judge William Fillmore will sentence her after reviewing a sentencing report prepared by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles. TEN finalists from Louth have been selected to take part in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2018. St Vincent's Secondary School in Dundalk accounts for four of the ten finalists from Louth set to compete at the RDS, Dublin from January 10-13. The BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition has chosen three projects from Bush Post Primary, two projects from De La Salle Secondary School, and one project from Our Lady's College Drogheda. One team of students from St Vincent's Secondary School will showcase their investigation into 'two types of stretching and muscle temperature increases pre, during and post stretch and implications for sporting performance'. A second St Vincent's team will put forward their comparative study into the reported advantages and disadvantages of insulin pumps. A third St Vincent's project examines if there is a positive correlation between hand-eye co-ordination and peripheral vision in sport. The fourth St Vincent's team has tried to determine the effect of mindful meditation on stress levels and sleep patterns in adolescents. Meanwhile, Bush Post Primary students have studied the gender wage gap, fitness tracking, and have carried out an investigation into male and female attitudes towards abortion. De La Salle Secondary School students completed a project titled 'Dublin Dominance Where does it begin?' and 'Virtual Fitness'. Our Lady's College Drogheda is putting forward a project titled 'A Hele-Shaw cell experiment'. A jury has convicted retired surgeon Michael Shine of indecently assaulting two young male patients in a hospital in the mid-70s. Mr Shine (85) had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to eight charges of indecently assaulting six patients at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and at his private clinic, both in Drogheda, Co Louth, on dates between 1964 and 1991. On Wednesday the jury of four men and eight women acquitted him of a number of these charges. Just before midday today, having deliberated for just over six hours, the jury of four men and eight women returned majority guilty verdicts on the outstanding counts. These charges alleged that Shine assaulted two teenage patients on dates between 1974 and 1976. Shine admitted attending to these patients but denied that anything inappropriate was done during his medical examinations. One victim was aged around 15 or 16 in 1976 when he attended at the hospital with an in-growing toenail. He told the trial that Dr Shine strapped him down on a bed with rubber bungee restraints and a blanket and then slipped his hand under the blanket and started massaging his testicles. He said he knew what was happening was weird but didn't know if he could speak out because he was just a young boy. The second victim testified that during two follow up examinations for undescended testes at Shine's private clinic in Drogheda, Shine massaged the base of his penis. The victim, who was in his mid teens at the time, told the trial that he told himself for years that there was nothing improper about what the doctor did. Judge Cormac Quinn remanded Shine on continuing bail until December 1 for sentencing. The six complainants were all teenage boys at the time they allege Dr Shine touched them in their genital areas while treating them for injuries such as cuts to a knee, an injury to a finger and an injured toe. On Wednesday the jury found Shine not (NOT) guilty of four charges which cover alleged offences against three teenagers on dates in 1964, 1970 and and 1976. Shine has denied ever seeing these patients and there were no medicals records to confirm that he had seen them on the dates of the alleged assaults. During the 12 day trial Judge Quinn directed the jury to acquit Mr Shine of one count of indecently assaulting one of the complainants on a date between 1988 and 1991, after a defence application. A DUNDALK actress is returning to her hometown to perform a one woman monologue as part of The Abbey Theatre's touring show 'Me, Sara'. Juliette Crosby will take to the stage at An Tain Theatre this month after touring around Ireland for the past six weeks. 'Me, Sara' is based on the character of Sara Tansey from SyngesPlayboy of the Western World and has been created for 5th and 6th class pupils. The monologue explores the insight and frustrations of a young woman encountering adult hypocrisy, and her own limitations, for the first time. Juliette has been playing the role of Sara for nearly three months, as the project already toured around Dublin schools in June. It returned to Dublin for a short run in The Peacock Theatre at The Abbey last week. Juliette says she is honoured to be playing the role, bringing theatre to very remote areas of Ireland, and giving children, very often, their first experience of live theatre. She is also looking forward to returning to the stage where she began acting nearly 13 years ago. Me, Sara will play in An Tain Dundalk, on November 10 at 10am and 11.30am. For more information visit www.antain.ie. Girl Guides all around the country are selling 30,000 packets of cookies during November as part of the inaugural Irish Girl Guides National Cookie Month. Girls from age five-plus will hone their entrepreneurial skills by selling choc-chip cookies to their families, friends and neighbours. The Irish Girl Guides (IGG) believe that by deciding how many packets to order, how to go about selling the biscuits and how they will spend the proceeds of their sales, the girls will develop money management and business skills. Alison Cowzer of Dragons Den is partnering with IGG for the initiative and the choc-chip cookies are being made in the factory that she co-founded - East Coast Bakehouse, Drogheda, which is the biggest biscuit-making facility in Ireland. Ms Cowzer is delighted to lend her support, given that it could take centuries to achieve equality without serious efforts to bring women into male-dominated spheres such as business and politics. She said the #FutureCEOs initiative will help foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among Irish girls and young women. Members of Boyne Valley Brownies, Drogheda, and Dundalk Senior Branch (Brownies is the section of IGG for 7-10 year olds and Senior Branch is for 14-30 year olds) were lucky enough to visit East Coast Bakehouse on 1 November to see where the Girl Guide cookies were made. Ms Cowzer gave them entrepreneurial tips to help them sell cookies. You have to get out and talk to people about the cookies and give them a taste! she said. IGG Chief Commissioner Helen Concannon said, It is hoped that all girls who get involved will develop and strengthen teamwork, communication, money management and goal-setting skills. We want to change the imbalance of the number of women in decision-making positions across the various sectors of society such as business, communities, companies and board rooms all around Ireland and beyond. And this begins by giving girls confidence. Irish Girl Guides welcomes new members age 5+ and adult volunteers from age 18+ (no previous Guiding experience is necessary). For further info see www.irishgirlguides.ie or tel: 01-6683898. 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Telecommunications Webmasters Telecom General Wireless Television General Tobacco General Trade General Transportation General Travel General Utilities General Volunteer Volunteer Weather Weather Back in 2011, Maria Shriver filed for divorce from her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger after it was revealed that Arnold had a secret affair and child with the estranged couple's former housekeeper. Six years have gone by, while the couple is legally separated, it seems that they still aren't officially divorced. According to TMZ, Arnold is the apparent reason for the delay. The Terminator star isn't taking the necessary steps needed to end the marriage. Does this mean he's hopefully looking to reconcile with his estranged wife? The former couple recently reunited with their children: Katherine, Christina, and Patrick, at a red carpet event in Los Angeles, California. The family came together to support Patrick in the National Geographic film, The Long Road Home. Maria, 61, and Arnold, 70, were married for twenty-five years when Maria moved out of their Brentwood Mansion. Arnold had come clean to Maria about the affair he had with Mildred Patricia Baena, which led to him fathering a child with Baena, Christopher. "After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger said in a statement to The Times. Arnold alleges that he did not know he was the father of [Christopher] until he was eight years old but has taken care of the finances, 'from the beginning'. After this was announced, actress Bridgette Nielsen also claimed that she had an affair with Arnold, while he was in a relationship with Shriver. "Maybe I wouldn't have got into it if he said 'I'm going to marry Maria' and this is dead serious, but he didn't, and our affair carried on," Nielsen stated. Baena was also married while working for Shriver and Schwarzenegger, she and her husband divorced in 2008. Schwarzenegger is known for starring in numerous hit films, such as The Terminator series, True Lies, The Expendables, and End of Days. The former mayor and bodybuilder is scheduled to star in the next Expendables film, which will be released in 2018. Shriver is a member of the Kennedy family, as she is the only daughter of Eunice Kennedy, who was the late President John F. Kennedy's sister. Eunice died in 2009. Shriver and Schwarzenegger are also parents to their son, Christopher, who ironically shares the same name as his paternal half-brother. It has been reported that as of July 2015, Arnold has been in a relationship with Heather Milligan, who is 27 years younger than him. EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides is visiting Bangladesh to evaluate the situation on the ground and assess EU aid initiatives that are addressing the Rohingya refugee crisis. His visit comes a week after the EU member states promised more than 50% of the 344 million US$ total funding raised at the international conference of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis held in Geneva. Commissioner Stylianides is visiting the Kutupalong camp in the Coxs Bazar area, where an EU funded project is helping more than 100,000 refugees, mostly children and women, to get access to basic amenities. He will also be meeting with government officials and authorities to discuss the international communitys response to the crisis and Bangladeshs needs to deal with the influx of refugees across the border. Here in Bangladesh the scale of this emergency is painfully clear to see; this is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world. The EU has decisively stepped up its aid to Rohingya communities. The Rohingya people are not alone in these difficult times, Commissioner Stylianides said. He also added that the EU was insisting on full aid access in Myanmar and is working to address the situation in Northern Rakhine State. Beyond aid, it is crucial that every refugee is registered properly and that Myanmar takes all necessary steps to allow them a voluntary and dignified return in secure conditions, Mr. Stylianides said. The EU pledged 30 million in October, thus bringing the total support to the Rohingya and their host communities in Myanmar and Bangladesh to 51 million for 2017. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority in Myanmars Rakhine State, thought to number about 1 million people. Myanmar does not recognize them as citizens or one of the 135 recognized ethnic minorities and instead regards them as illegal immigrants. Human Rights Watch informed that Myanmars laws discriminate against the Rohingya, infringing on their education, employment and the freedom of movement. They are moreover denied property and ownership rights and the land on which they live can be taken away from them at any time. Hi Please someone suggest I wanna assess my Qualification of MCA i HAVE DONE B.A OF ARTS(Mathematics , Economics and music subjects). I have 2 and half years lecturer experience from overseas. Someone could suggest ACS can provide equivalent of this degree .As I am PR person don't wanna go for formal education once again. Please suggest some points to kick start my career in IT sector. Good day everyone! I applied for Fiance visa online oct 8 2017. Biometrics oct 18. Then documents sent to sheffield oct16 using fedex . But it took them 12 days to deliver my supporting documents to my Fiance. So thats 28 of oct. Then my fiance arrange the documents including his requirements. He posted it to sheffield using royal mail but since it was heavy they refer it to pArcelforce. But then after 2days he was been notified that they cannot dleiver with pobox. But since fiance had the documents insured for 2500 he told them they should deliver it or get a refund. So yesterday it was delivered and signed. The problem is the parcel box we had doenst have the gwf number. Will they still open it? Or what will be the best thing to do? Hoping for your help please Southwest Airlines will add two new daily nonstop routes from San Antonio International Airport to Oakland, California and Fort Lauderdale in July, officials said Thursday. Southwest Airlines will also restart a nonstop daily route to Cancun in June, airport and city officials announced Thursday at a press conference accompanied by a mariachi band at City Hall. The additional flights will give the San Antonio airport 43 nonstop routes by July 2018, said Aviation Director Russ Handy. City Manager Sheryl Sculley said more nonstop flights will come as the city grows its business base. As we work at economic development in the community, those flights will follow, Sculley said. Oakland and Fort Lauderdale were considered high priorities for San Antonio International Airport under the citys air service development plan, Handy said at the news conference. About 34 percent of business travelers out of San Antonio International Airport land in destinations on the West Coast, Handy said. Those travelers were clamoring for an option that gave them easy access to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, he said. We had not only numbers but real companies that were telling us that, Handy said. And Fort Lauderdale is a vital connecting market to Latin America and South America for leisure and business travel, Handy said. We dont just look at passengers terminating at Fort Lauderdale, Handy said. We look at the whole string we look at whos going to Latin America and whos going to the Caribbean. Nonstop flights to Oakland and Fort Lauderdale will be optimal for San Antonio-based data security firm Jungle Disk, said CEO Bret Piatt. The company is looking to expand into Latin America within the next year so connecting to Fort Lauderdale could be crucial, Piatt said. And flying into Oakland International Airport instead of San Francisco International Airport is actually more convenient for San Antonio techies who need access to Silicon Valley, Piatt said. You can be in downtown San Francisco faster from the Oakland airport via BART than you can to downtown San Francisco via BART from SFO, Piatt said. The San Antonio airport has added 20 flights in the past 18 months, including many nonstop routes. The airport recorded its 15th consecutive month of growing passenger numbers in September with more than 687,000 travelers that month, officials announced earlier this week. Southwest Airlines operates routes to 20 markets from San Antonio International Airport, said David Harvey, Southwest Airlines managing director of business development. Harvey said the airline plans to continue flying a one-stop direct route to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington D.C. jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFreports This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate To many, Luminaria is a bit like Brigadoon: It pops up for a few hours for an evening or two, and then all of the enchantment it contained vanishes until the following year. Thats not entirely the case, said Kathy Armstrong, executive director of the annual arts blowout. The November contemporary arts festival is an event not to be missed, but the artistic impact lives on for artists, audiences and San Antonio, Armstrong said via email. Perhaps it is with the murals (which began in 2014) that audiences most recognize the legacy of Luminarias contemporary arts festivals, and they are fabulous, but so are the many event-exclusive arts interactions and the arts that live on in other forms. Armstrong, who has been involved with the event since it began and has led it for the past three years, said theater pieces staged at Luminaria have been produced across the country, and literary works have been published in journals. In addition, she said, pieces created for the event add to artists portfolios and collaborations developed for the work strengthen the citys art scene. For the past few years, the evening also has been preserved in a catalog that is available for purchase. That will be the case this year, as well. More Information Luminaria What: Annual multidisciplinary arts blowout Info:luminariasa.org VIP package: $250, includes a preview from 8 to 9 p.m. Nov. 9; access to balconies where ticketholders can watch Luminaria from a distinctive vantage; and admission to the closing night party from 8-11 p.m. Nov. 11. Available at luminariasa.org. Merch: Luminaria merchandise includes T-shirts with a new logo marking the event's 10th anniversary ($20); backpacks ($5); and water bottles ($10). Nov. 10 activities When: 7 p.m. to midnight Nov. 10 at Hemisfair, 434 S. Alamo St. Food: Food booths will be available on site. Contest: Those who come are invited to turn up in artful and bright ensembles; prizes will be given for the best outfits. Getting there: VIA is extending the hours for its VIVA culture routes. Those who want to bike to the event will be able to leave their rides with bike valets from Pop-up Pedal. ArtQuest: The cultural scavenger hunt -in which families can get passports stamped for activities as they work their way through the event - returns this year. Admission: Free. Nov. 11 activities Brunches: "Hit the Street" - a discusion about street art with artists Reskate, Ruth Buentello and Gera Lozano - is at Freight, 1913 S. Flores St. "San Antonio Revealed" - a discussion of how the city is captured in art with Marisela Barrera and Frank Valdez - is at the Cevallos Lofts, 301 E. Cevallos St. "Hemisfair in Transition" - a discussion of the district's past and future - is at Southtown Flats, 111 Probandt. Each brunch starts at 11 a.m. and costs $35. Seating is limited. Reservations can be made at luminariasa.org. CD sales: Musicians who play for Luminaria will sell and sign their work. 1 to 3 p.m., Showdown Gallery, 1420 S. Alamo St., No. 103. Free. Literary readings: 2-4 p.m., Sandy Whitby Studio, 1906 S. Flores St., Suite C. Writers Joshua Robbins, Shelia Black, Assef Al-Jundi, Elizabeth Allen, Brian Chasnoff, Leslie Tolbert and Naomi Shihab Nye will read from their work. Free. Workshops: 1-3 p.m., 1906 S. Flores St. Miniature Curiosa will teach how to work with live video projection. And San Antonio Dance Fringe will teach the choreography for their piece "Atom." Free. Symposium: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mercury Projects, 538 Roosevelt Ave. The Land Heritage Institute presents its fifth annual Art-Sci Symposium, a discussion of topics in which art and science intersect. See More Collapse The 10th annual Luminaria which takes place Nov. 10, with community events in Southtown on Nov. 11 holds a few projects that will remain visible reminders of the festival. They include a glow-in-dark mural about the chili queens; La Monarca, billed as the worlds first solar mural; and artist-painted bicycles created for Bcycle. A less-visible for now example of Luminarias impact will be the skills taught by Luminaria artists Miniature Curiosa and San Antonio Dance Fringe in free workshops the day after the main event. Heres a look at those projects: Night and day Artists Maria Lopez and Javier de Riba who work with Reskate, a Barcelona-based studio are creating a glow-in-the-dark mural between the Sweeney and Hermann Schultz houses. It is a semi-permanent piece that will stay there for a few years, Armstrong said. The mural will look different depending upon when it is viewed. During daylight, the viewer gets an image, and at night a different image appears, the artists said via email. We like how this technique and special paint allows us to tell a story relating two illustrations in the same wall. Also the way people can interact with the mural in the darkness using their phone lights to paint on it is very interesting. Reskate has created glow-in-the-dark pieces in several cities in Europe, including Vienna, Austria, and Zaragoza, Spain. Lopez and de Riba researched the history of San Antonio when they were figuring out what they would paint for Luminaria. They were struck by what they learned about the Chili Queens, Mexican-American women who served food on Alamo Plaza for more than 50 years, beginning around the 1870s. We thought that it is really powerful and illustrative to represent one of these women during daylight and at night as a queen, said the Reskate artists. We intend to do just as the Chili Queens did, to gather diverse people at night to have a good time. La Monarca The piece a large loteria card depicting a monarch butterfly painted by Cruz Ortiz is visually striking. But theres more to it than its good looks. La Monarca is billed as the worlds first Solar Mural artwork. The image is printed on film from Sistine Solar that will absorb sunlight, passing it to the solar module beneath and generating energy. That energy will be stored and used to illuminate the mural after dark. The project is being spearheaded by Penelope Boyer as part of her work with the Land Heritage Institute. She has organized a series of Art-Sci symposiums exploring the intersection of art and science, and when she realized that the 2017 round fell during Luminaria, she reached out to Armstrong in hopes of it being included on the events calendar. Armstrong agreed, and also told Boyer that if she had an idea for an art project for the event, she should submit a proposal for that as well. Boyer has long been intrigued by the idea of public art that generates energy, and this seemed like a good time to make something like that happen. Doing so required a lot of organizations to come together. The mural is a collaboration between the Land Heritage Institute Art-Sci Projects, EPICenter, the Local Initiatives Support Corp. and the Land Art Generator Initiative, an international organization that is at the forefront of making renewable energy beautiful, Boyer said. OCI Solar Power, Mission Solar Energy, Sistine Solar and Sun Action Trackers worked to fabricate and provide technical support for the project. The mural can be found between the Juan OGorman and Carlos Merida murals on the Convention Center campus during Luminaria. Afterward, it will be relocated to EPICenter, the former Mission Road Power Plant that is being transformed into a center for clean energy innovation. Boyer is hoping that more solar murals pop up: My vision is to have a swarm of them all over the city, she said. Mobile paintings Bcycle, the bike share program, has been a part of Luminaria for a long time, providing access to bikes to artists who come in from out of town to help them get around during their stay. This year, though, the organization is getting involved in a very different way: It has commissioned five San Antonio artists to paint bike frames. The bikes will be unveiled during Luminaria. The participating artists are Cristina Sosa Noriega, Ruth Buentello, Resa Wohlrabe, Kathy Sosa and James Sedgwick. Information about their work will be affixed to the bikes on the baskets and rear tires in the spaces that are usually reserved for advertising. We really just want to be part of Luminaria, we want to be part of the arts community, and we want to liven up our bikes, said Angel Whitley, who oversees community engagement for Bcycle. The artists were given the bike frames minus the gears and other mechanics that might get in the way of their work. Bcycle staff will re-assemble the bikes before Luminaria, and they will be added to the regular fleet of 530 bicycles on Nov. 13. Plans are being made for social media contests calling on folks to seek out the flashy new bikes. Ideally, more artist-adorned bikes will be added in the future. Im hoping this is something we can do each year and maybe get the community involved, Whitley said. Do it yourself Luminaria attendees who want to try their hand at some of what they see can give it a go at a pair of free workshops Saturday. Miniature Curiosas Murphi Cook and Zach Dorn who will be presenting the live video projection/play The Clown Was Stung by Wasps will offer a session in live video projection. And San Antonio Dance Fringe will teach the choreography for Atom, a new piece that will debut at Luminaria. The two-hour workshops take place 1 p.m. Nov. 11 as part of a day of community programming in Southtown. Cook and Dorn often use live video projections to help create the fanciful worlds in their work. They will be using it at Luminaria for a piece that unfolds both inside a car and on a screen. They collaborated with drama students from Madison High School on the piece, which also involves puppets. It is sort of like theres a play inside of a car thats unfolding while we are live videoing a movie that the teens inside of the car are watching, said Cook. Its two shows happening at one time. Cook and Dorn are hoping those who participate in the workshop will take their newfound skills and use them to create their own tales. All the stuff were doing at Luminaria, we can teach you how to do that, Cook said. Ashley Mazzanti, director and co-founder of San Antonio Dance Fringe, also is hoping that the companys workshop will demonstrate that dance is accessible. Its an opportunity to kind of get the community involved and make dancing seem not too scary, Mazzanti said. Atom was choreographed by all four members of the dance company. It is broken into three sections, each a little faster than the last. What Im excited about is we can teach the people this movement that we did, but also let them know that it doesnt have to be exactlty the way we did it, Mazzanti said. Its open to interpretation. Thats kind of what life does, too it cant be a carbon copy of everyone elses. Every atom is a little bit different and unique. dlmartin@express-news.net | @DeborahMartinEN A Dolls House and All My Sons both go back a ways the plays premiered 138 and 70 years ago, respectively but they deal with issues that have a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House, which Classic Theatre is staging, deals with the power dynamics between men and women. Rehearsals have included discussions driven by recent revelations of sexual harassment by a slew of high-profile men, making the issues raised by the play all the more timely. I feel really blessed to be working on the play at this time, said director Kelly Roush. And Arthur Millers All My Sons, which is being staged by St. Philips College, deals with the military and with corporate responsibility, sparking a lot of discussion about some thorny ethical issues. Often, when students will pick up a play, Ill hear them say, Oh this is dated or this is historical or this is boring, said director Vincent Hardy, who teaches theater at St. Philips. I havent heard anybody react to this play like that. A Dolls House The play, which Roush is setting in the 1950s, takes a look at male/female dynamics through the prism of the marriage of Torvald (Nick Lawson) and Nora (Kacey Roye). He is the breadwinner, while she pours all of her energy into running the household and raising the children. Torvald treats her like one of those children admonishing her for indulging her sweet tooth and making clear that any big decisions will be made by him. Their seeming certainty in their place in the world not to mention the integrity of their marriage begins to crumble when he discovers a secret she has kept from him for years. His reaction reveals some things about him, forcing her to decide whether she can continue with things as they have been. It really is about knowing yourself and finding home and what society does in kind of ingraining some things, putting us in a game that we dont even realize were playing, said Roush, who also is Classics executive director. Some of the discussions that Roush and her cast had as they rehearsed the show have been about how far society has come in terms of gender roles and how far things have to go to reach equal footing. Working on this play while a national conversation around those issues is taking place is surreal, Roye said. How are we still here? Ibsen wrote this in the late 1800s, and I just cant believe that were still here. Roye has wanted to play Nora since she first read the play in college. Her view of Torvald has changed markedly since then. At first, I was like, What a horrible man! I cant believe hes treating her this way!, she recalled. Now, she said, she has more empathy for him. They are both a product of society, she said. And there is not necessarily an antagonist in this production. Everyone is just a product of where society has placed them, and they are in these little boxes that they dont know how to get out of. Ideally, Roush said, the play will spark discussion about gender roles and the potential cost of societys expectations for men and women. She has witnessed some of that talk first-hand. Her son Oliver plays the eldest of Nora and Torvalds three children in the play. On a recent visit to a drug store, he detected sexism in the imagery on some devotional cards butterflies for women and compasses for men. He shared his observation with his mother, who was delighted to talk through the issue with him. Those kinds of conversations are important, she said. If you dont shine a light on it, and you dont talk about it, then it doesnt change, she said. All My Sons Millers drama is set shortly after World War II. It revolves around the family of Joe Keller (Byrd Bonner), whose lives have been shadowed by scandal since the discovery that a part made by his manufacturing company for warplanes was defective, causing the deaths of several American servicemen. Joe went to prison for a time over what happened; his former partner remains in jail at the start of the play. One of Joes two sons died in the war, too, a loss that also hangs over the action. The familys efforts to put all of that in the past are extinguished with a revelation of culpability. The play explores a range of thorny ethical issues, including what responsibilities corporations have toward their customers. On that front, the actors cited a number of recent events that dealt with that issue, including the BP oil spill and the controversial increase in the cost of life-saving medications such as the EpiPen. Each of us in life dont - hopefully - come up with the kind of crisis situation that Joe and his partner face, Bonner said. But we all come up against version of that small, mundane, everyday versions of that when we have to make decisions. Even when someone is driven by altruism and believes they are doing the right thing, there may be unintended negative consequences, said Areli Noriega, who plays the daughter of Joes business partner. She pointed to a recent documentary about TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, whose company donates one pair of shoes for each pair sold. That, however, has had a big impact for some shoemakers. He thinks hes doing whats good and whats right, and people are losing jobs and cant support their families, Noriega said. The play opens on Veterans Day, which strikes Bonner as particularly apt. The dimensions of this play that are patriotic and military-focused are huge, he said. A few weeks ago, we talked a little about (the timeliness of the play), and one thing that came to my mind is whats going on right now with the families of veterans and persons who are killed in the line of duty and our presidents communication with those families. While we dont have that specific (situation) depicted in All My Sons, still, it looms large, and certainly we talk a lot about loss of life in the line of duty and the cause for that and whos responsible for it. Hardy hopes that audiences find a lot to talk about as they leave the theater. This play is not simplistic, he said. Its not like theres one answer. That is true for the problems facing the country right now, he said during a pre-rehearsal discussion of the issues raised by the play. They are not simplistic, and Americans love simplicity, he said. We want to be able to go, This is wrong and this is right. Life is grayer than that. George (W.) Bush said, Youre either with us or against us, but the answer is more complex. And thats what I like about theater, because look at what its doing its forcing us to engage, and I hope that audiences do that, too. It forces you to try to think through these things, and what would I do? What should corporations do? How should they behave? What is their reponsibility to us as human beings? I hope (audiences) grapple with some of these things. That would be wonderful. A Dolls House can be seen at 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 26 at Classic Theatre, 1924 Fredericksburg Road. Tickets range from $17 to $32 at classictheatre.org or by calling 210-589-8450. All My Sons opens Nov. 10. It can be seen at 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 19 in the Watson Fine Arts Center at St. Philips College, 1801 Martin Luther King. Tickets range from $5 to $10. There is a free performance for high school students at 10 a.m. Nov. 16; reservations are required for that show. Call 210-486-2838 or 210-486-2205 for reservations or more information. dlmartin@express-news.net | @DeborahMartinEN A South San Antonio Independent School District board member abruptly resigned Tuesday, surprising the districts staff and its state-appointed conservator. Linda Longorias resignation from the boards District 3 seat is effective immediately, district spokeswoman Jocelyn Durand said. Elected last November to the seat previously held by her son, Carlos Longoria, she had served less than a year of her term, which expires in November 2020. Longoria did not respond to requests for comment. Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra notified board members and district staff of the resignation in an email, but officials said they could not provide a copy of the resignation letter Wednesday because Saavedra was out of the office. Board President Angelina Osteguin would not release the letter, Durand said. Judy Castleberry, the districts state-appointed conservator, said Longorias letter did not specify a reason for her departure and came as a surprise to everyone. The Texas Education Agency assigned Castleberry in February 2016 to monitor finances and board governance at South San, stemming from an often-confrontational relationship between trustees and administrators. Longorias resignation came too late to be discussed at a board meeting set for Wednesday night, so trustees likely will consider how to fill the vacancy at their Nov. 15 meeting. lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba A Bexar County grand jury has returned its fifth murder indictment this year against a former San Antonio nurse convicted of killing a toddler in 1982, authorities said Tuesday. It alleges Genene Jones caused the death of 3-month-old Paul Villarreal by injecting him with the drug Heparin on Sept. 24, 1981 Jones, a former nurse at hospitals in San Antonio and Kerrville, was dubbed the Angel of Death. She was convicted of murder in 1984 in a Kerr County case and sentenced to 99 years for killing 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan in 1982 with a fatal overdose of muscle relaxers. Jones also was convicted in Bexar County of injury to a child/serious bodily injury and sentenced to 60 years in prison for giving an overdose to Rolando Santos in 1982. The infant, who was 4 weeks old, survived. The sentences are being served at the same time at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville. The indictments in cases involving other victims came this year because Jones was set to be released in March 2018 under a law designed to prevent prison overcrowding. These are your kids, too. These are San Antonio babies, McClellans mother, Petti McClellan-Wiese, said at a news conference Tuesday, a Bexar County district attorneys office release states. The grand jury recommended Jones bail be set at $1 million in the latest indictment. The Bexar County district attorney's office had announced in June three murder indictments against Jones in the deaths of Richard Ricky Nelson, 8 months, who died on July 3, 1981; Patrick Zavala, 4 months, who died on Jan. 17, 1982; and Rosemary Vega, 2 years old, who died on Sept. 16, 1981. In May, the grand jury returned a murder indictment against Jones in the death of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer on Dec. 12, 1981. ezavala@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate AUSTIN Sen. John Cornyn expressed fresh concerns Wednesday about the fate over a nearly $61 billion request to help Texas rebuild after Hurricane Harvey as Gov. Greg Abbott warned that approval might not come as fast as he expected. Also Wednesday, Abbott said he has talked with top Red Cross officials about concerns that hundreds of millions of dollars in Harvey aid wasnt getting to people who need it. Cornyn, Texas senior senator and the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, expressed new concerns about the road ahead for the states request for federal aid. He criticized the Trump administrations delay in funding the states full requests for aid, which he said could get caught in Congress year-end spending battles. As a result of the administration and the House, frankly, kicking the can down the road, and keep promising us the next time, the next time, the next time, its going to be a challenge to make sure we get what Texas needs and deserves, Cornyn told Texas reporters in Washington. Abbott, fresh out of meetings with top Washington officials, was more optimistic, but told reporters that he does not expect the entire request to be approved in a one-shot appropriation. Nonetheless, he seemed confident Texas will get a sizable chunk by the end of November. Abbott had been in Washington on Tuesday seeking $61 billion in additional aid for infrastructure repairs from top administration and congressional leaders. A vote on an earlier request for $18 billion in special aid for Texas has been put off until later in November. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is expected to forward a new request for hurricane relief around Nov. 15. But with Congress facing a Dec. 8 deadline to pass a new spending bill for the 2018 budget year, Cornyn said he fears that the storm aid could fall victim to host of unrelated issues, from health care to immigration. As a practical matter, I think now theyve pushed us back into that Dec. 8 negotiation, which will be for a funding bill for the rest of the year, and no doubt would include disaster aid, but also a number of other things that are fairly contentious, Cornyn said. At some point that omnibus bill gets so big that we risk that we wont be able to get the votes to pass it because either Republicans will not vote for it because they think the number is too big, or Democrats wont vote for it because they feel like it doesnt include some of their priority items. For his part, Abbott, who met Tuesday with Mulvaney, said he wants to get as much funding as possible for as many of these projects as possible as quickly as possible. Harvey struck as a Category 4 storm in August and is likely to become the costliest disaster cleanup in U.S. history. We demonstrated a need for speed, Abbott said Wednesday. Regardless, Cornyn suggested that the $61 billion request is unlikely to be considered all at once and would most likely come over time. Not all of that money would be spent in the next six weeks, or quarter even, and so I suspect this will start another conversation about how much money we need upfront now to start funding some Corps of Engineer projects that have been long-standing but have not been funded, but if built, would have mitigated a lot of the loss that we saw in Houston as a result of flooding, Cornyn said. A nearly $61 billion state plan to rebuild Houston and the Texas coast after Hurricane Harvey includes funding for three coastal spines to control flooding, new reservoirs and buyouts of thousands of properties. Texas has already received about $30 billion in federal aid for Harvey recovery. About 60 percent of the funding would go to future proof flood-prone areas and 33 percent would pay for buyouts and work to elevate buildings in low-lying regions stretching roughly from Rockport to the Beaumont area and parts of Southeast Texas where Harvey hit hardest. This is not a closed book, Abbott said. This (funding request) is a work in progress. In an effort to use congressional leverage over the administration, Cornyn has placed a hold on President Donald Trumps nomination for a deputy position for Mulvaney, pending the next administration funding request. But even if the White House comes through on its commitments to Abbott and members of the Texas congressional delegation for more Harvey aid, the funding request could trip up on Congress busy year-end calendar. Until now, Cornyn and others in Congress have said the next round of funding would come in November. But House and Senate debates on 2018 spending could push final passage into early December or later. If Congress is not able to resolve differences in a massive year-end spending bill, called an omnibus, the likely outcome is another temporary spending measure, or a continuing resolution, like the one that expires on Dec. 8. Then what youre left with is another continuing resolution, Cornyn said, which means that Texas and other disaster areas will not get the relief that weve been promised, even in that Dec. 8 omnibus bill. Its over my strenuous objection, and frankly inconsistent with what weve been promised both by the House and the White House, Cornyn added. But as a practical matter because of the congestion in the calendar, and the fact that they keep kicking the can down the road, theres just not going to be enough time between the time they actually make the request and when we have to deal with the end-of-the-year omnibus and expiring CR (continuing resolution). It means that its all going to be part of that big year-end financial negotiation. The final negotiations also could be clouded by calls from some members of the Texas delegation in a hurricane task force meeting Wednesday for Congress to make special appropriations for flood control projects on the Gulf Coast. Such special funding measures, sometimes known as earmarks, were banned by congressional Republicans years ago in response to criticism over pork-barrel spending. Regardless, Cornyn also suggested that Abbotts new $61 billion request is unlikely to be considered all at once. I think its the beginning of a negotiation that were going to have, he said. Despite his concerns, Cornyn said, the Texas delegation remains unified in pushing for the recovery money: Were sure going to give it everything weve got. Red Cross concerns As for the controversy over the delivery of Red Cross aid after Harvey, Abbott said he has talked with top Red Cross officials and expressed his concerns that the millions in aid, which he had promoted after Harvey, was being quickly and efficiently delivered to the storm victims and not delayed or diverted. The governors remarks are on top of complaints aired about the Red Cross from a long list of public officials in wake of this years hurricanes and other natural disasters. Houston and Harris County officials also previously raised questions about donors giving to the Red Cross after problems at emergency shelters. Abbott told reporters that he heard multiple concerns from local officials in the state about the flow of assistance from the Red Cross. He said he had had multiple conversations with Red Cross President Gail McGovern, most recently about a month ago. I know there was a lot of money as in hundreds of millions of dollars in money that was available for Texas that seemed not to be getting to Texas in either a timely fashion or in a well-organized, well-directed fashion, Abbott said. The Red Cross has raised $429 million in donations and pledges for Harvey, with more than half the total amount raised for storm relief in Texas, according to a tally of major groups by the Associated Press. We believe we have been transparent in our response to Hurricane Harvey, and Ms. McGovern will be reaching out to the Governors office to ensure that he has all the information he needs, Red Cross spokeswoman Elizabeth Penniman said. She said 91 cents of every dollar donated for Harvey will go to people affected by the storm and that the Red Cross has authorized payments of at least $400 to more than 573,000 households affected. NAFTA While in Washington, Abbott said he met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top White House officials to stress the importance of continuing the economic benefits to Texas of a continued North American Free Trade Agreement that will retain what has been beneficial. Texas is the nations largest exporting state and has benefited greatly from NAFTA, Abbott said in reiterating his earlier position on the agreement that President Donald Trump has demanded be renegotiated to ensure that the United States is not put at a trading disadvantage with either Mexico or Canada. The Associated Press contributed to this report. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Russian trolls tried to touch off a dangerous confrontation in downtown Houston as part of a wider effort to sew discord in American politics, according to new information released this week by Congress. In 2016, a rally that pitted people waving White Lives Matters signs across the street from the Islamic Dawah Center against people with bullhorns denouncing them was all staged by Russian-back social media groups that were trying to incite unrest, at least some members of Congress believe. What neither side could have known was that Russian trolls were encouraging both sides to battle in the streets and create division between real Americans, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in citing the confrontation as a prime example of how Russians were trying to meddle in U.S. politics through social media platforms. In the days before the May 21, 2016, rally, a Russian-linked group calling itself the Heart of Texas called on people in Houston to attend a rally to Stop the Islamification of Texas. It included encouragement for people to bring firearms. At the same time, another Russian-linked group promoted a counter rally at the same location at the same time urging people to Save Islamic Knowledge. It almost worked. About 10 people waving U.S., Confederate and Texas flags amassed out on the street while about 60 people amassed on the other side of the street near the Islamic Dawah Center. This is America. We have the right to speak out and protest, Ken Reed, who wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase White Lives Matter, told the Houston Chronicle while at the rally. We feel Texas, our great state and the United States is being threatened by the influx of Islam. The event grew raucous at times, but was mostly peaceful in the end. Houston police made one arrest after a protester did not move out the way of a police vehicle. Leaders of the Islamic Dawah Center praised Houston police for maintaining the peace in what could have been a dangerous confrontation. Executive director Amer Abuhalimeh said its unfortunate that the Russian-tied groups tried to target Houston and a place of spirituality and peace. The important thing is that we can learn from this, Abuhalimeh said. People need to be vigilant and smart and not fall for these traps. The fake site calling itself Heart of Texas group had been trying to develop a following using other ads as well. In one sponsored ad, they twist the Texas anti-litter campaign and declare Dont Mess With TX Border Patrol in a fake news feed that declares Thanks to Obamas and Hillarys policy, illegals come here because they wait for amnesty promised. In another, the group called for Texans to Get ready to secede! before the election. For months, talk of Russian-backed ads have been alleged, but on Wednesday, the ads released by the members of Congress were the first clear examples of ads and the names of the accounts that were used to try to manipulate American voters in 2015 and 2016. The ads were released on a day that both the U.S. House and the Senate held hearings to investigate how Facebook, Twitter and Google have been used by Russian operatives to try to influence politics in the United States. The public does need to know how your platforms operate, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the topic on Wednesday. In a hearing in the House, Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said the Russian ads showed a level of sophistication in understanding how social media could be used for their purposes. These people were not amateurs, Stretch said. And I think (that) underscores the threat were facing and why we are so focused on addressing it going forward. U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, said the fake social media campaigns are going to go down in history as the greatest covert action campaign in the history of mother Russia. He said it is clear they were working to drive a wedge in American politics and create distrust between the public and the press and the government. What the Russians are doing is bigger than an election, Hurd, a former CIA undercover officer, said in an interview. Hurd said the Russians are playing a long-term game intended to undermine democratic institutions and foment discord. Burr had a similar message, warning that what is happening is more than about who won last years elections. This is about the deliberative and multifaceted manipulation of the American people by agents of a hostile foreign power, Burr said. The social media companies have all pledged to improve security and crack down on the fake political ads, but particularly on those coming from people overseas. They should not have run on the site, Stretch said of the ads from Russian ad buyers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 2 1 of 2 /Courtesy photo Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Associated Press Show More Show Less The largest mosque in San Antonio denounced Tuesdays terror attack in New York City that killed eight people and injured 12. The Muslim Children Education and Civic Center condemns the attack in the strongest terms possible, Sakib Shaikh, the mosques director of public relations, said in a prepared statement Wednesday. The perpetrator does not represent a shred of Islamic or Muslim values. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate As San Antonio rolls toward its 300th birthday, a war of words is unfolding between the city and WOAI-TV over a critical story the news station broadcast about a partnership between competitor KSAT-TV and the Tricentennial Commission. On Tuesday afternoon, Jeff Coyle, San Antonios director of Government and Public Affairs and chief spokesman posted a video on the citys Facebook page disputing a Monday report, Irregularities discovered in Tricentennial contract with TV station, by WOAIs Jaie Avila. Its not often that the city responds to critical coverage in this manner. Usually, officials request corrections or follow-up stories if they feel the coverage wasnt accurate. But this isnt a typical situation, either. The WOAI story outlines how KSAT began negotiating to become the Tricentennial Commissions exclusive media partner in January 2016, well before the commission ultimately issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) seeking submissions from all local media outlets. The report came a day after the San Antonio Express-News wrote a lengthy front-page story on the same partnership. WOAI and Avila stand behind his reporting. Coyle thinks differently. I want to share with you five important facts that were left out of WOAI-TVs story about the Tricentennial media partnership, Coyle says in a video. Before airing his grievances with the story, Coyle noted that more than a decade ago, he worked at WOAI-TV, has many friends at the station and holds certainly nothing against the station. But when it comes to something as big as San Antonios 300th birthday celebration, it is important we deal in facts, Coyle said. Thats a point on which everyone would agree. At the top of his story, Avila suggests viewers need to know about the commissions contract with KSAT because it affects your tax money. Coyle refutes that in his fifth and final fact during his three-minute rebuttal video. No tax dollars are being spent on the media partnership, a slide on Coyles response reads. Thats true. The commission isnt paying its media partners KSAT and Univision for any of its coverage. And while the commission has agreed to give the San Antonio Parks Foundation $50,000 for taking away its authority to produce the upcoming New Years Eve celebration downtown (a move that nullified an existing contract between the foundation and WOAI to exclusively televise the festivities), those dollars arent from from taxpayer coffers. Coyles four other points include that the Tricentennial Commission isnt required to issue RFPs but did so in April 2016 after concerns were raised about the process, and that KSAT was the only TV station to come forward to partner with the commission when it sought community partners in January and February during media events and through news releases. On the citys Facebook video post, Avila struck back on Wednesday afternoon in a lengthy comment. As I pointed out in my story, the Tricentennial Commission issued RFP's for many other contracts, from Fundraising Manager to Event Manager, he wrote. They knew they had to do competitive bidding, but opted not to for the TV deal. The city isnt required by law to issue RFPs for discretionary contracts, and this particular deal a lucrative one for the winning TV station is muddied by the fact that the commission isnt paying for services. (Rather, the station sells advertising and sponsorship opportunities against its Tricentennial-branded coverage.) Avila continued to argue that the commission is a quasi-governmental entity held to the same standard as other city departments. As for the January 27 Press Release, it said nothing about needing a media partner but rather announced that the Commission had a website where residents can apply to become an official partner, he wrote. So vague was the announcement, NONE of the local media organizations responded to it by going to the website and filling out an application. Not KSAT, not KENS and not WOAI. KSAT only did so at the end of its exclusive negotiations when Tricentennial staff told them to do it as a formality before taking its proposal, and only its proposal, to the board for a vote. Internal emails show clearly it was not an open process from the beginning. Something caused (Tricentennial CEO) Ed Benavides and his staff to choose KSAT from the beginning and it wasnt the press release. When asked what brought the two sides together in the first place Benavides could not come up with an answer other than to say it WAS NOT the fact he has a brother working at the station in an executive role. The San Antonio Express News also reported on these facts and quoted the same emails. Ed Benavides brother Brandon is the executive producer of KSATs Good Morning San Antonio show. About four hours later, the city responded with a series of claims made by Avila and fact responses, along with a screen grab of an email that Coyle sent to WOAI several days before its segment aired. Unsurprisingly, others took sides on the thread. One user responded with merely Fake News, though it was unclear whether the comment was directed at Avila or Coyle. Both Avila and Coyle were commended for their report and rebuttal, respectively. And there appears to be no resolution to the matter. Avila said as much as he wrapped up his written response to the video. Mr. Coyle was present in the room when I interviewed Mr. Benavides and not once did he speak up or interject with any of these claims, Avila wrote. Only after watching the story and coming up with a damage control strategy did he decide to post this video, where his assertions cannot be challenged. More to come. jbaugh@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Authorities were days away from arresting Balcones Heights police officer Julian Pesina in May 2014 for selling drugs, but he was shot and killed before they could move in, a law enforcement officer testified Wednesday during the trial of two Texas Mexican Mafia associates charged in Pesinas slaying. Special agent Brian Vajdos with the Texas Department of Public Safety said his agency spent several months with the FBI developing a case against Pesina, 29, whose name and number surfaced in the cell phone of a drug dealer his agency arrested in September 2013. DPS used the dealer as an informant to try to buy drugs directly from Pesina, but Pesina changed the plans. Rather than meet with the informant for the exchange at his tattoo shop, Pesina left an ounce of meth for the informant in a potted plant outside the home of Pesinas then-girlfriend, Vajdos testified. Prosecutors wanted a hand-to-hand exchange, Vajdos said. The second attempt was scheduled for the second week in May (2014), but he was murdered on May 4, Vajdos testified. Vajdos said he learned of the killing from a colleague who read it in the newspaper the following morning, and DPS and the FBI called San Antonio police homicide investigators to share details of their investigation of Pesina. The ensuing homicide probe resulted in the arrests of Jesse Jay Santibanez and Alfredo Freddy Low Cardona, the two alleged Texas Mexican Mafia associates on trial. Also arrested was Jerry Spooks Idrogo, then a sergeant for the Mexican Mafia who has since pleaded guilty for Pesinas racketeering-related murder and is to testify against Santibanez and Cardona. Federal prosecutors allege Mexican Mafia leaders ordered Pesinas killing after learning he was a police officer posing as a member of their gang. During the homicide investigation, San Antonio police searched Pesinas apartment and found steroids, cocaine packaged in small baggies, baggies with traces of methamphetamine and a small scale, Vajdos said. Police also found caps denoting the letter M which members of the Mexican Mafia wear, Vajdos said. Vajdos also said DPS scoured Pesinas social media posts and that turned up images and videos showing Pesina with tattoos that members of the Texas Mexican Mafia normally have, such as a two-headed snake in the form of an M. He also was in photos with confirmed Mexican Mafia members, and in one, Pesina used his hands to flash the gangs trademark M, Vajdos said. Investigators also found he had phone contact with some members of the gang. There also were other indicators that Pesina, a Balcones cop since 2009, was straddling two worlds that dont mix, Vajdos said. For instance, Pesina contacted a Mexican Mafia member in federal prison to try to convince him that Pesina had been sponsored into the gangs membership by another member who had since died, Vajdos said. We were trying to figure out if he was playing a game, or if he was getting in too deep in something he shouldnt have, Vajdos testified. Vajdos also recalled a DPS investigation in 2012 in which a trio of Mexican Mafia members were pulled over in Balcones Heights with guns and drugs in their car. Pesina helped in the arrests. He downplayed the roles of the three Mexican Mafia members, including a general, Vajdos said. gcontreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland AUSTIN Texas abortion providers argued in court Thursday that it is not medically necessary to require women to undergo injections or other procedures in order to comply with a new state law restricting the most common second-trimester abortion procedure. Earlier this year, the Republican-led Legislature passed Senate Bill 8, a set of comprehensive abortion regulations that banned dilation and evacuation a medical procedure used to remove a fetus using surgical tools unless the fetus is deceased. It is the most common method used to perform an abortion in the second trimester. Whole Womans Health, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers sued the state because they believe it will further limit access to abortions. During a dilation and evacuation procedure, doctors use surgical instruments to remove fetal tissue. Proponents of the law have called this method inhumane and refer to it as dismemberment abortion. In the first day of the trial before U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, two doctors testified on behalf of the Texas abortion providers, saying they do not normally demise a fetus when performing a dilation and evacuation procedure because it is not necessary. Another said she only demises the fetus beginning at 20 weeks gestation. Attorney General Ken Paxton was present for at least two hours of the trial. After the hearing, he read a statement to reporters saying the state is defending a law that prohibits the live dismemberment of babies. SB 8 recognizes that innocent, unborn children should at least have the same rights as prisoners being executed for heinous crimes, and even animals, who would never be torn apart, Paxton said. Dr. Mark Nichols, an Oregon-based doctor, called the dilation and evacuation procedure the safest method to perform a second-trimester abortion. Nichols argued the three most common procedures used to kill the fetus before performing the abortion are often complicated to perform, require extra training and are not always effective. He also believes they are not medically necessary. There is a real failure rate in the procedures we described, he said. If a similar law to SB 8 existed in Oregon, Nichols said he would hesitate to perform the dilation and evacuation procedure out of fear that the fetus may still be alive, and he would then violate the law. Under SB 8, doctors would face criminal charges for violating the ban, except in a case of a medical emergency. The law was set to go into effect Sept. 1, but Yeakel blocked its implementation with a temporary restraining order that remains in effect. Nichols said doctors may end up having to experiment on patients to figure out how not to violate the law. According to 2015 data, the latest available, the procedure was used 4,386 times to terminate a pregnancy. In total, 55,287 abortions were performed that year, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Darren McCarty, an attorney for the state, pressed Nichols on his lack of experience with abortions in Texas. In court documents, Paxton and his legal team argue that causing fetal demise prior to performing the procedure is less gruesome. They argue the methods used to end the fetus life are very safe and highly effective. The trial is expected to last several days, and a ruling is expected by the end of the month. Texas next Wednesday is poised to execute a Mexican national accused 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 now is 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 as 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 were talking about Texas. To make matters worse, the condemned mans lawyer is alleging he didnt 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 theres no mechanism to hold the required review under Texas law. Theres no point, he said. This guy is guilty as sin. But its not claims of innocence that are the crux of Mexicos gripe over the case. Its a significant treaty violation, said Gregory Kuykendall, an Arizona attorney authorized to speak on behalf of Mexico. What separates us from anarchy is our commitment to due process and thats the processes of the laws that are in effect in both the United States as well as internationally, said Kuykendall, who directs the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, a program created by Mexican officials to fight death penalty cases for Mexican nationals in the U.S.. Our treaty commitments reign supreme. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has weighed in with a resolution recommending the U.S. vacate the death sentence, and the Mexican government has pleaded for an opportunity to be heard, court filings by defense counsel Maurie Levin show. Kuykendall stressed that Mexico is not seeking to change U.S. law, although there is no capital punishment in Mexico. Mexico considers the death penalty a cruel and inhuman sanction, and its opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances, Kuykendall said. It has reiterated its opposition both nationally and internationally in its effort to obtain the eventual abolition of the death penalty worldwide. The former security guard was arrested in 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. State Department 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 nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Rights concerns Authorities in Hidalgo County first collared Cardenas hours after the abduction, but didnt immediately notify him of his right to talk to his countrys consulate, court documents state 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 werent told of their consular rights are allowed a review to examine whether that oversight influenced the outcome of the criminal case. And for Cardenas, theres some chance that it could have. Hidalgo County never told Mexico about the arrest, Levin said. Instead, officials there 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, the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Medellin vs. Texas deemed it unenforceable, unless Congress takes legislative action and it hasnt. 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. Famously, the state put to death Jose Medellin the man behind the Supreme Court case in 2008, over protestations from Mexico. Even before the international legal saga, the case had gained notoriety for its sheer brutality. In 1993, Medellin and five other men raped and slaughtered two teens in a Houston park during a bloody gang initiation. The case netted five death sentences, though two later were commuted to life because of the defendants ages at the time of the slayings. Then three years ago, another Houston case drew sharp condemnation south of the border when the state executed cop-killer Edgar Tamayo, another Mexican national not informed of his consulary rights. 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. Levin filed papers Monday in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals seeking to reverse a lower courts refusal to allow testing of scrapings taken from beneath Mayras fingernails. His conviction and sentence of death were obtained through the use of unreliable, coerced and false evidence, and DNA testing that is meaningless by todays scientific standards, Levin wrote in the filing. Justice demands that Mr. Cardenas be given the opportunity to pursue the forensic testing that could exonerate him. At the same time, theres 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. 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. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Veteran San Antonio GOP Rep. Lamar Smith declared Thursday that he wont seek re-election after three decades in Congress. Smith cited the loss of his Science Committee chairmanship due to term limits and lamenting to supporters the humbling routine of sleeping in a Washington apartment four nights a week. Smith, 69, who rose high in the ranks to chair three House committees during a 30-year career, disclosed his intention to retire in a letter to supporters and said later he has no immediate favorite among Republicans who might seek their partys nomination. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus name was almost immediately raised as a potential successor, but supporters of the longtime legislator, who also unexpectedly announced hes not running for re-election, said its not likely he will make a bid for the seat. Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, also was mentioned; a spokesman said shes considering it. Robert Stovall, chairman of the Bexar County Republican Party, said hes considering it, too. Smith called his announcement a big decision, a tough decision, one I am relieved to have made in a way. Frankly, if I were able to continue as chairman of Science Committee, I would have not decided not to run for re-election, Smith said, referring to the GOPs self-imposed limit of three terms running a committee. The departure was the second by a powerful Texas committee chair this week. Jeb Hensarling, 60, the Dallas Republican who fought against strict regulations on Wall Street as chairman of House Financial Services, said Tuesday hes calling it quits after this term. Smith, whose fiercely political views belie unfailing optimism and courtesy, gained a national reputation as a leading skeptic of climate change and his been a staunch loyalist to President Donald Trump. Anemic fundraising in recent months offered a clue to his intentions. He was favored to win re-election in his 21st District which runs north from San Antonio and includes significant portions of Austin. The district has a 10 percent GOP advantage, according to the authoritative Cook Partisan Voting Index. Smith declined to say if he has a favorite to replace him as the Republican nominee, adding that he isnt concerned if their viewpoints on climate and other matters diverge from his own. There are going to be a number of good candidates, he said. I am sure nobody is going to agree with me on every issue; thats perfectly fine. San Antonio GOP consultant Kelton Morgan said he believed the GOP nomination would be Straus if he wants it. But a source close to the San Antonio Republican moderate, who announced last week that hes leaving the Texas House at the end of his current term, cast doubt on whether he would be interested. Straus was not immediately available to comment. The two biggest hurdles are time and money, Morgan said. Youve probably got to raise a couple million dollars. How many people are there with the ability to come up with that much money in that short a time? Straus is leaving office with $10 million in unspent campaign funds, a portion of which could be transferred to a congressional campaign. Smith announced his decision less than two weeks before the filing period opens for party primaries on March 6. Chairman Stovall said hes been encouraged to enter the race amid speculation that Smith wouldnt run again. I am still county chairman and its still my focus, said Stovall, who became party chair in 2012 and owns a floral business. I want to weigh everything. He added, I am a business guy and I love what Donald Trump is doing with the Republican Party and I think that what is going to happen in the next few years is you are going to see a spur of economic growth we havent see for sometime and it interests me a lot. Five Democrats already are competing for the nomination, among them Austin tech entrepreneur and Iraq War veteran Joseph Kopser. Kopsers $200,000 fundraising receipts he reported last week surpassed Smith for for the second straight quarter. Among the Democratic contestants, Derek Crowe, a former congressional staffer and business owner from Austin, called Smiths retirement good news for environmental advocates. Smiths retirement is a sign were winning the fight to retake our government from the alt-right, Crowe said in a statement. Speaking with reporters, Smith dismissed any notion that his departure is related to unrest among congressional Republicans or frustration with Trump. He noted a desire to spend time with a grandchild and another on the way and said he had absolutely no idea of what he might do when he leaves office. I do know Im not going to go to 100 percent retirement and I do know I plan to stay actively engaged in the politically arena in one form or the other, he said. Smith will have chaired the Judiciary, Ethics and Science committees in a body that rewards seniority, albeit not as much since imposing chairmanship term limits in the 1990s. Throughout his career, he has been regarded in the GOP caucuses as among the most ardent conservatives. He has used his Science Committee post to repeatedly cast doubt on scientific conclusions about the warming planet and to seek rollback of Environmental Protection Agency regulations. This week, he challenged the sources of a report by the Government Accountability Office about the economic threats from climate change and paid a visit to EPA headquarters to offer support for administrator Scott Pruitt. He was an early Trump supporter and an enthusiastic backer of the presidents hardened immigration policies as well as the White House campaign to rein in the EPA. I think theres a lot right about the way the country is going and I think the president deserves a lot of that credit, Smith said, noting the stock market rise and other positive economic news. Smith referred to his support of Congresss last balanced budget, in the 1990s, and his work on immigration reform in that decade as highlights of a career. Ive been able to shape policy involving ethics, immigration, crime, intellectual property, space, energy, the environment, the budget and high tech, he said in his letter to supporters. I am grateful for the trust voters have placed in me, the friendship constituents have shown me, and the opportunities that serving in Congress have given me, he wrote. Staff Writers Allie Morris and Gilbert Garcia contributed to this report. | blambrecht@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The first thing Gilad Katz did after being named consul general of Israel to the U.S. Southwest was look up the six-state region hed serve. Texas, he soon realized, is larger than France, and his region, consisting of Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, is bigger than Western Europe. Katz wasnt deterred. The quality of my staff can challenge the quantity of my region, he said. A key aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu until last August, Katz is a religious Zionist who speaks English and Hebrew and has roots in Israel and South Africa. A political appointee, not a career diplomat, this is his first posting abroad. Katz will be in San Antonio on Nov. 14 for One Table, Two Families, a private gathering of leaders of the local Jewish and Israeli community with Latino leaders, said Maria M. Suarez, director of Hispanic affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in Houston, where Katz is based. The event, sponsored by the consulate and the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of San Antonio, is a do-over. Its original date coincided with Hurricane Harveys landfall. The recently arrived diplomat and his family were evacuated to Dallas, which has one of the biggest Jewish populations in his region, along with Houston and Kansas City. The Katzes are coping with the overall transition and the storms aftermath, living in a rented home across the street from their house, which sustained major flooding and has yet to be renovated. His wife, Merav Katz, is a nurse. Their five children, from kindergarten to 11th grade, are struggling with a new language and culture shock. But Katz says the move was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them to live in the U.S. and learn English, which his wife is now studying at Rice University. Born in Israel, Katz spent his formative years in South Africa, his fathers native country. His parents were teachers in Johannesburg when he was a child. He was interested in politics, diplomacy and international affairs as a youth, but journalism put him in Netanyahus orbit. From 2001 to 2009, Katz worked as a reporter for the small, conservative newspaper Makor Rishon. He later became a political correspondent. During the tenures of Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, Katz covered their U.S. visits and wrote about the Jewish diaspora. Katz will visit to Kansas, Louisiana and New Mexico soon, he said. He was in San Antonio recently for Cornerstone Churchs annual A Night to Honor Israel. Netanyahu wasnt in power when they first met. He was in the opposition, Katz said, and like other opposition leaders had time for a lot of things, including interviews with reporters from small newspapers. At some point, I asked him when he eventually is in office and becomes prime minister, I would like to join his team, he said. Netanyahu was elected in 2009 and a year later called Katz. He asked if I remembered our conversation. I said, I havent stopped thinking about it. Katz said. He led the prime ministers Hebrew department, writing Netanyahus speeches in that language. I was his extended arm, then I became the head of public affairs and Hebrew department at the same time. In 2015, after Netanyahus re-election, Katz asked for a diplomatic post. He knows Im an observant Jew and an English speaker. I asked for a post in an English-speaking country, he said. Katz is particularly glad to be based in Houston, which he called the capital of the world for gas and oil and important to developing Israels natural gas discoveries in the Mediterranean. Katzs top priority in 2018 will be to facilitate as many Israeli delegations to his six-state region as possible to advance political, academic, cultural, religious and educational cooperation. Hurricane Harvey, in one way, brought the two countries closer together, he said. After seeing the catastrophic effects of the storm, Katz called the Israeli minister of the diaspora and asked that his nation open its heart and pocketbook. The state of Israel donated $1 million to the Jewish community of Houston, he said. Its an unprecedented decision in the history of the Israeli government to donate such a significant amount anywhere in the world. Its the first time ever that the government has donated any money to a Jewish community in North America. Katz said it will help the Jewish Community Center in Houston and a few synagogues that sustained damage. The One Table, Two Families event is part of Israels Hispanic outreach, for a mutual interest in strengthening his nations ties to the U.S. Latino population, he said. Katz recently met with the consul general of Mexico at a Dallas event. For a Hanukkah reception, hes planning to celebrate with Houstons leadership, and one of the most important communities is the Hispanic leadership, he said. eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala NRP Group, one of San Antonios most active multifamily builders, is under contract to buy 54 acres of vacant land near the Brooks economic hub where it plans to build apartments and retail shops. The project, at the crossing of Presa Street and Corpus Christi Highway, would be one of the largest investments made by a developer on the South Side in recent years. The construction of the Mission Reach trail and the redevelopment of the former Brooks Air Force Base have sparked a building boom of new apartments in the area. NRP plans to use 15 acres of the land for a 320-unit apartment complex, said Jay Johnson, a developer with the company. It is partnering with the citys San Antonio Housing Trust Finance Corporation on the $49 million complex, whose residents would be limited to those earning between 50 and 60 percent of Bexar Countys median income or, between $31,750 and $38,100 a year. All the stuff (built recently) has been market rate. So theres a need now for more affordable, for all the jobs that cant afford the new high bar of rent at Brooks, said Dan Markson, NRPs senior vice president of development. NRP, which is based in Cleveland but has a local office, would buy the 54-acre site from the Brooks Development Authority, the agency that operates Brooks, which bought it from the state of Texas in 2007. NRP and Brooks are still discussing the purchase price, Johnson said; the property was assessed at $2.8 million this year by the Bexar Appraisal District. If everything goes to plan, NRP will line up its financing in the second quarter of next year and complete the complexs first buildings by July 2019, Johnson said. The company is working with potential partners who could build retail on part of the site, Johnson said. He declined to name who the partners are. Theres enough land that a second phase of apartments could be built, he said. The site of the proposed complex benefits from being close to the Mission Reach trail and the employment hub at Brooks, and from being in an area with relatively little traffic congestion compared to the North Side, Markson said. He thinks the growth of Palo Alto College and Texas A&M Universitys South Side campus will bring more jobs to the area. New apartment complexes have transformed parts of the South Side in the last five years, causing concern among residents that they will clog the area with traffic or overwhelm the missions, which were declared World Heritage sites in 2015. Some residents are also worried that too many subsidized apartments are being clustered there compared to other parts of San Antonio, especially the North Side. I am concerned about the density of apartments. I think we have enough, but such is life, said Carroll Brown, a volunteer with Alliance for San Antonio Missions, a nonprofit set up to protect the missions. The more people you pack together, by definition, the worse it gets. For his part, Markson doesnt think theres a great risk of the South Side becoming as congested as the North Side, due to the large number of thoroughfares connecting it to downtown. Its a great place to live, with everything you want thats on the North Side, and no traffic, he said. Youve got 15 different ways in and out. At least five major apartment complexes have been built along the Mission Reach and at Brooks in the last few years, offering 1,510 living units, according to property records and news articles. Another six are either under construction or planned and are expected to bring another 1,534 units. Some complexes have run into neighborhood opposition, such as a plan by 210 Development to build a complex near Mission Concepcion and a 600-unit apartment complex being built on the former site of the Mission Trails mobile home park. NRP has led the way in building new apartments in the area. More than half of the 3,044 units that have been built or are in the works in the area are NRP projects. The company has built two complexes in the nearby Brooks economic hub, including the Kennedy, which opened earlier this year. Last year, it partnered with local developer James Lifshutz on The Flats at Big Tex, a 336-unit complex in Southtown. The company plans to build more complexes on the South Side, including a mixed-income one along the river and another near the Lone Star Brewery, even though the rehabilitation project there seems to have stalled. rwebner@express-news.net @rwebner But the real prize for first into production, and a possible consolation prize for second and maybe third, is a significant share of a growing global SoP market estimated by KLL to be 6mtpa or 10 per cent of the worlds potassium fertiliser market. Mr Curtis will ask What would it take to turn the production tide? in painting the picture of WAs sheep flock, which has declined from 40 million head in 1990 to less than 14m head today. Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper. A prostitute swallowed a client's condom in fear of being sent to prison. Prostitute swallows condom The 48-year-old woman, who was known as Dang, was caught destroying evidence during a police crackdown on sex workers. According to The Metro Online the woman was jailed for two months for lying to the court in Western Taiwan as she reportedly claimed she didn't have intercourse with her client. During the raid, police are believed to have walked in on Dang and her client halfway through a steamy sex session, before she consumed the latex object. Dang was later taken to hospital where a shadow was found on her chest, which police believed was the condom. Although arrested and jailed, Dang will not be punished for attempting to destroy the evidence because the form of protection was never found. A man and woman have been arrested after they were caught getting frisky on a plane. Woman gives stranger blow job The two are believed to have met each other on the Delta Flight from Los Angeles to Detroit and they hit it off immediately. Despite only having known each other for a short while, the female reportedly performed oral sex on the male in their seats, according to The Metro Online. The pair were due to board separate flights from Detroit to different locations, but were stopped in their tracks and taken into custody. The frisky duo now face charges from the FBI because the crime happened in the air so is a federal rather than a state matter. After sharing ten things with us last year- Sue Moorcroft has kindly decided to tell us a little bit more about herself to mark the release of her new book The Little Village Christmas. The Little Village Christmas I passed my bronze survival swimming qualification before I was six years old. We lived in Malta at the time so opportunities to swim were many. All the cool kids could swim well. My childhood dog was called Tammie. I named her after the comic Tammy then changed the spelling to pretend I hadnt. My current writing playlist is Green Day, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, The Offspring, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. I hardly ever know the song titles because I dont look just let them play. Ive always wanted to visit Australia but I dont fancy the long flight. When Ive written something Im particularly pleased with I give my computer screen a double thumbs-up. This is so cringingly sad that I even embarrass myself, and I wish I could stop. I like chocolate so much that Ive eaten dry drinking-chocolate powder from the sachets in hotel rooms. Its not bad, actually a bit like chocolate sherbert. Ive always wanted black, thick, straight, swishy hair. My parents were both in the army. I fully intended to join up when I was a young adult but somehow I got distracted. I love writers conferences and will even go to those about genres other than my own if friends will be there. One of my earliest ambitions was to be an author. I feel privileged every day to be living my dream. Prince William and Duchess Catherine are flouting tradition by bringing their children on royal tours with them. Prince William, Duchess Catherine, Prince George and Princess Charlotte The royal couple - who share four-year-old son Prince George and two-year-old daughter Princess Charlotte and are expecting their third child together - have had their son Prince George join them in New Zealand whilst both children were with their parents during a Royal Tour of Poland. Historian Robert Lacy, who served as an advisor for 'The Crown', said: "She [The Queen] had been brought up in that style herself, after all, with her parents leaving her at home and entrusting her entire schooling to a governess and home tutors." And Queen Elizabeth is a real family person, according to Lacy. He told Town and Country: "Today Elizabeth II enjoys life as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She clearly delights in the time she can spend with her family, and she seems to be anything but emotionally reserved. "Would she have mothered her children differently if she had the chance? As one of her close friends has said, the Queen was rather scared of parenting when she started out - she'd not been taught it by her own mother. But as she grew into the job, her successive children helped remove her fears." The Philippines has urged US firms to expand their production in the country to take advantage of the recent inclusion of travel goods, which include handbags, luggage, wallets and backpacks, in the US generalized system of preferences (GSP) program. Such goods from the country, which earlier invited a tariff of 6-20 per cent, can now enter the US duty-free.The invitation to US footwear and garment firms by department of trade and industry (DTI) secretary Ramon Lopez came at a recent regional gathering of key members of the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) and the Confederation of Wearables Exporters of the Philippines (CONWEP). The Philippines has urged US firms to expand their production in the country to take advantage of the recent inclusion of travel goods, which include handbags, luggage, wallets and backpacks, in the US generalized system of preferences (GSP) program. Such goods from the country, which earlier invited a tariff of 6-20 per cent, can now enter the US duty-free.# Easier market access to another country encourages producers and exporters to locate in the source-country, a newspaper report quoted Lopez as saying.These labour-intensive sectors can generate more jobs and create business opportunities for small and medium enterprise servicing the sector, such as producers of raw materials, indigenous woven products, accessories, and service and logistics providers, he said.The industry, which at present employs around 300,000, has the potential to bring it up to over 4 million, if the country attracts more locators to produce in the country, he added. (DS) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the UK and the US were the top 10 visitor countries and regions after mainland China at the Intertextile Shanghai which concluded on October 13. The fair affirmed its reputation as the most effective apparel fabrics and accessories trade event in terms of boosting sales and product sourcing.Knowing the fair covered an all-encompassing range of products that cater to all sourcing needs, 77,883 buyers travelled from 102 countries and regions (2016: 73,927, 90 countries and regions) to Shanghai to source. Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, the UK and the US were the top 10 visitor countries and regions after mainland China at the Intertextile Shanghai which concluded on October 13. The fair affirmed its reputation as the most effective apparel fabrics and accessories trade event in terms of boosting sales and product sourcing.# A total of 4,538 exhibitors from 32 countries and regions (2016: 4,553, 29 countries and regions) also enjoyed the surge of business potential brought by this large number of high-quality trade buyers. The strong line-up of exhibitors, including 10 country and region pavilions France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Milano Unica (Italy), Pakistan, Taiwan and Thailand as well as 10 Group Pavilions organised by foremost industry leaders like DuPont, Hyosung, INVISTA and Lenzing, presented a full-spectrum of innovative and fashion offerings.While the nature of textile trade fairs has evolved over recent years, exhibitors successful results at this years Intertextile Shanghai shows that it is still the industrys most effective order-writing and business development trade show because it remains the event where the global industry gathers to make purchasing decisions. As a result, many exhibitors see the fair as their business growth engine, and reported positive outlooks for sales after the fair.Erika Jimenez, development and purchasing department, Luca Cuccolini, Spain (SalonEurope), said, A few years ago we decided to explore the Chinese market. Knowing that Intertextile Shanghai is the most comprehensive fair of its kind in Asia, there was no doubt that this would be the fair to expose our brand. Throughout the years we have been satisfied with the visitor flow and business opportunities, especially this year. There has been a good flow of a diverse range of buyers visiting our booth, and weve already met with abundant potential buyers on the first day. Our objective is still to get our brand known to local buyers, and by looking at the progress in the first two days, we are even expecting to get orders later on.Jean Denerolle, general manager, Dormeuil, France, said, There has been lots of visitors coming to our booth on the first two days. Joining Intertextile Shanghai is an effective ways for us to develop the Chinese market. We are happy that the organiser referred a VIP buyer to us. Overall, we succeeded in receiving orders and promoting our brands, so I am pleased with the result this year.Max Deery, global director, Print Stories, (for Amanda Kelly), UK (Verve for Design),said, We are satisfied with the results this year. The Verve for Design zone is well organised, and its a busier year compared to last. After day one, weve already found more than 10 potential buyers, both old and new customers. Weve participated in other fairs in Europe as well, and I would say Intertextile Shanghai is in line with these shows, and busier than we expected.While the exhibitors highly valued the fairs ability in attracting quality, genuine buyers from around the world, buyers were pleased to find all categories of apparel fabrics and accessories products from the entire industry under one roof.Johnny Lau, head of material management, Quiksilver Asia Sourcing, Hong Kong, said,The strongest trait of Intertextile Shanghai is its scale and aptitude in gathering the entire industry in one place. I believe no matter which sector of the industry or market you belong to suiting, casual wear or ladieswear; high-end or fast fashion you are ensured to find the right suppliers here. The fair houses a full-spectrum of suppliers which ease the sourcing process for purchasing departments like us. To maintain brand competitiveness, it is getting more important for us nowadays to know about suppliers and manufacturers from around the world, so we were also impressed with the fairs internationalism and had unexpected returns from this trip.Luis Alfonso Yepes Londono, manager, Yetex SAS, Columbia, said, Among all trade shows, Intertextile Shanghai is the most influential one for my business, even compared to the European shows. Not only can I find local suppliers, but the fair literally puts brands from around the globe under one roof.Zhou Jie, general manager, Shenzhen New Look Fashion, China, said, Intertextile Shanghai is a comprehensive trade fair, and whats unique about this fair is its unparalleled ability in gathering both domestic and premium international apparel fabrics and accessories suppliers. Therefore, the sourcing options in this fair cater to all market demands. I can say Intertextile is a fair that all fashion brands cant miss as one can definitely find all kids of materials here. We sent over 10 colleagues from the sourcing and design departments to this years fair and sourced around 80 per cent of the fabrics we need for the next seasons collection from about eight exhibitors.The next Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics is the Spring Edition, to be held during March 14-16, 2018. (SV) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSSWIRE / November 1, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Rio Tinto plc ("Rio Tinto" or the "Company") (NYSE: RIO). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980. The investigation concerns whether Rio Tinto 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] In August 2011, Rio Tinto acquired certain Riversdale Mining Limited coal assets in Mozambique for approximately $3.7 billion. In or around December 2012, the Chairman of the Board of Rio Tinto ordered an investigation into the true value of these coal assets. In January 15, 2013, the Company's Board determined that the assets were severely impaired and should be written down to $611 million. On February 15, 2013, Rio Tinto disclosed the initial impact of the impairment to investors in a press release announcing the Company's financial and operating results for 2012. On this disclosure, Rio Tinto's American Depositary Receipt price fell sharply over the following trading sessions, damaging investors. After recording hundreds of millions of dollars in additional impairment charges, Rio Tinto ultimately sold the assets at issue for $50 million (less than two percent of the original $3.7 billion acquisition price). 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 SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 1, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Ford Motor Company ("Ford" or the "Company") (NYSE: F) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, for the Eastern District of Michigan, and docketed under 17-cv-13536, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Ford securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants' violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. If you are a shareholder who purchased Ford securities between February 18, 2014, and October 26, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until December 29, 2017, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. [Click here to join this class action] Ford Motor Company designs, manufactures, and services cars and trucks. The Company also provides vehicle-related financing, leasing, and insurance through its subsidiary. The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) flaws in the Company's manufacturing processes, supply chain, and/or quality control rendered at least 841,000 Ford vehicles unsafe to drive; (ii) the foregoing issues, when revealed, would foreseeably subject Ford to additional regulatory scrutiny and impact the Company's profitability; and (iii) as a result, Ford's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On October 27, 2017, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA") announced a preliminary investigation into 841,000 Ford vehicles, citing concerns that the vehicles' steering wheels could detach while the vehicles are in motion. NHTSA stated that it is specifically investigating 2014-2016 model Ford Fusion sedans. On this news, Ford's share price fell $0.21, or 1.71%, to close at $12.06 on October 27, 2017. 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 SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP SINGAPORE -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- The Talent, Rewards & Performance practice of Aon plc (NYSE: AON) has just released new data on projected 2018 salary budgets and hiring plans at technology sector companies across the Asia-Pacific region. Leveraging insights from Radford, the firm's dedicated technology and life sciences unit, the new data shows technology companies in the region are preparing to spend more in 2018 in the face of rising employee turnover and strong demand for critical talent. Outside of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, median annual voluntary turnover rates now exceed 10% in all major Asia-Pacific markets. Australia leads the region with a trailing 12-month voluntary turnover rate of 12.9%, followed by ASEAN 5 (includes Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia) at 12.8%, Singapore at 12.7%, China at 12.5%, India at 12.1%, and Hong Kong at 11.8%. Adding to the robust demand for talent, roughly two-thirds of technology sector companies in all major Asia-Pacific markets are currently pursuing normal or aggressive hiring plans. 6.4% of the companies in Singapore report aggressive hiring plans. India leads this trend at 16.3% followed by China at 9.1%. In response, projected 2018 salary budgets are flat or up in a majority of markets across Asia Pacific. Median Overall Salary Increase Budgets --------------------------------------------- Market 2017 Actual 2018 Planned Direction ------------------------------------------------------------ Australia 3.5% 3.4% Down ------------------------------------------------------------ China 8.0% 7.5% Down ------------------------------------------------------------ Hong Kong 4.2% 4.2% Flat ------------------------------------------------------------ India 10.6% 10.5% Down ------------------------------------------------------------ Indonesia 8.7% 8.9% Up ------------------------------------------------------------ Japan 2.8% 3.0% Up ------------------------------------------------------------ Malaysia 5.4% 5.5% Up ------------------------------------------------------------ Singapore 4.0% 4.1% Up ------------------------------------------------------------ South Korea 4.7% 4.8% Up ------------------------------------------------------------ Thailand 5.5% 5.5% Flat ------------------------------------------------------------ The open question is whether companies will do enough to differentiate between top and bottom performers to retain key talent. Alexander Krasavin, Partner and Radford Leader for Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa says: "To compete for talent in this region, a rewards strategy focused on compensation is no longer enough. Technology companies must differentiate themselves with an employee value proposition that is built on a strong foundation of career development, work life balance and a sense of purpose." Hot Jobs in Singapore Singapore is not immune to the larger talent and rewards trends observed across Asia-Pacific. Median voluntary turnover at technology firms in Singapore currently sits at 12.7%, above the 10% threshold where companies typically begin to consider special retention programs. It is therefore not a surprise that companies in Singapore are increasing salary budgets heading into 2018. The hot jobs at technology sector companies in Singapore, defined as those jobs that have seen the highest annual increases in market median base salaries over the past three years, include: IT Support Specialist, Software QA Engineer and Product Marketing Engineer. About Aon Aon plc (NYSE: AON) is a leading global professional services firm providing a broad range of risk, retirement and health solutions. Our 50,000 colleagues in 120 countries empower results for clients by using proprietary data and analytics to deliver insights that reduce volatility and improve performance. For further information, please visit aon.com. About Radford Radford delivers talent and rewards expertise to technology and life sciences companies. We empower the world's most innovative organizations -- at every stage of development -- to hire, retain and engage the amazing people they need to create amazing things. Today, our surveys provide in-depth rewards insights in 80-plus countries to more than 3,000 client organizations, and our consultants work with hundreds of firms annually to design talent and rewards programs for boards of directors, executives, employees and sales professionals. Radford is part of the Talent, Rewards & Performance practice at Aon plc (NYSE: AON). For more information, please visit radford.aon.com. About Radford Global Technology Survey The Radford Global Technology Survey provides human resources and compensation professionals with access to rewards insights covering more companies, incumbents and countries on a single survey platform than any other data provider. Today, our survey spans: 2,106 participating organizations, 6.5 million incumbents, 3,000+ unique jobs and 83 countries with reported results. For more information about Radford Global Technology Survey, click here to download our fact sheet. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3178320 Media Contact: Jini Pillai Aon Hewitt T: +65 6313 7111 M: +65 8133 8523 E: Email Contact BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (MIELF.PK, MIELY.PK) announced late Wednesday that it has reached a settlement with Pearl GmbH concerning the distribution of its hand dryers. Mitsubishi Electric had claimed that a specific PEARL hand dryer sold in Europe, the Sichler Handetrockner NX-5125, infringed its intellectual property rights, based on EU Registered Community Design No. 001811746-0001, which protects the appearance of hand dryers. In the settlement, Pearl agreed to discontinue the sale of the Sichler Handetrockner NX-5125 in Europe and to dispose of all remaining products in infringement. Mitsubishi Electric said it has also filed intellectual property right infringement lawsuits in China against Taizhou Dihour Electrical Appliances Co., Ltd., a hand dryer manufacturer, and its sales subsidiary, Shanghai Jiecheng Electrical Appliances Co., Ltd., demanding that they stop manufacturing and selling hand dryers alleged to be in infringement. Mitsubishi Electric's Jet Towel model, launched in 1993, was the first hand dryer in the world that blows jets of air on both sides of the hand, pushing the water off rather than evaporating it. 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. TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd. (AIM: ECO, TSX-V: EOG), is pleased to announce that it has received partnership approval to release its Public Notice for Environmental Clearance Certificate (ECC) for Drilling an Exploration Well within its Osprey Lead on its Offshore "Cooper" Block (PEL30) in the Walvis Oil Basin in North Central Namibia, a key clearance required ahead of potential drilling on the block. The Company will publish notice in all the applicable jurisdictions on 3 November 2017. The Osprey lead is on the Cooper Block (PEL 30), is in approximately 500 meters of water. Eco has completed the interpretation of several thousand kilometers of 2D seismic as well as completing a 1,100 kilometer 3D Survey, carried out by PGS Geophysical, across the lead. Eco Atlantic has also contracted Tullow's Exploration team, who have extensive expertise in these types of fan plays which are similar to the Jubilee Field in Ghana, to oversee processing and conduct the initial interpretation for the block partners. Additionally each of the partners, whose teams have evaluated the data, all concur that there is a highly justifiable lead and an exact drilling location is being defined. Eco has recently filed a NI51-101 Compliant report by Gustavson Associates that reported 882 Million Barrels (BOE) of Oil (Gross Prospective - Best) resources on the Block. The company intends to further define exact drilling location and to move the project ahead through to drilling. Colin Kinley, Eco's Chief Operating Officer commented: "We are confident in the detailed and conservative work carried out thus far on the Osprey lead on Cooper by our own team and that of our partners and we continue to advance our learnings in the region through the interpretation of our own four blocks and through our partnership ties to the other block holders in the Walvis Basin." Click on, or paste the following link into your web browser, to view the associated PDF document. http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/3342V_1-2017-11-1.pdf SOURCE: Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas Ltd. "Bitcoin Price Surging, Institutional Flow Setting Record Highs" VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / DIGATRADE FINANCIAL CORP (OTCQB: DIGAF) a digital-asset bitcoin exchange, blockchain development and fintech advisory services company today provides an update to shareholders regarding the previously announced integration of the Ethereum Coin "ETH" onto the Digatrade platform which is expected to be competed in November 2017. This will afford Digatrade customers and shareholders first access to register for the Digafund21 (D21) token release on the already established, safe and secure Digatrade platform. The ICO platform is currently under development and is expected to be live and offering the presale discounted token in Q1-2018. Further project disclosure announcements will include the crypto-analytics team, development team, regulatory compliance partnerships, white paper, token structure, use of proceeds and user guide registration for token activation among other items and requirements. The Company reports that it has completed US$320,000 in funding via convertible promissory notes ("Notes") during Q2 & Q3 and has ongoing discussions with additional funding sources with terms that meet the Company goal of minimizing dilution to existing and future shareholders. Digatrade, a British Columbia corporation, share structure has unlimited class "A" voting shares with 45,161,150 outstanding, 26,574,157 restricted and 18,586,994 in the float along with a total of 100,000 non-participating, non-voting class "B" shares. The Company also reports that its interim unaudited financial statements for period ended September 30, 2017 will be completed and filed on both Edgar in the United States and Sedar in Canada on or before November 29, 2017. Brad Moynes, CEO of Digatrade previously stated "We are very pleased to have executed a digital corporate finance LOI agreement with the ANX group who recently completed the OpenANX https://www.openanx.org/en/ token release with total token sales equivalent to US$18.5m". We are continuing to analyze the regulatory compliance landscape for ICO funding methods to best serve the Company and its shareholders along with a significant budget increase in marketing and advertising to open up a new audience for the DIGAF opportunity. Additional information will be provided as it materializes. ABOUT DIGATRADE: DIGATRADE is a global digital asset exchange and blockchain development services company located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The Company is owned and operated 100% by Digatrade Financial Corp which is publically listed on the OTC.QB under the trading symbol DIGAF. DIGAF is a reporting issuer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada with the British Columbia Securities Commission "BCSC" and in the United States with the Securities Exchange Commission "SEC". Digatrade operates as a registered Money Service Business "MSB" in Canada with FINTAC under Registration Number: M15954395. CORPORATE CONTACT INFORMATION: Digatrade Financial Corp 1500 West Georgia Street, 1300 Vancouver, BC V6G-2Z6 Canada Tel: +1(604) 200-0071 Fax: +1(604) 200-0072 www.digatrade.com INVESTOR RELATIONS: Black Ice Advisors LLC Jeffrey M. Dashefsky Email: jeff@blackiceadvisors.com Office: +1(858) 724-2440 Forward-Looking Information This press release contains certain "forward-looking information". All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or development that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future constitute forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects the current expectations or beliefs of the company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the possibility of unanticipated costs and expenses. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking information are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such information due to the inherent uncertainty therein. SOURCE: Digatrade Financial Corp. STOCKHOLM, Nov. 02, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sandvik has in line with previous communication now completed the divestments of Mining Systems. The Mining Systems conveyor components business, including the closely related specialist conveyor systems business in Hollola (Finland), has been divested to NEPEAN. The Mining Systems project business has been divested to FLSmidth, with the exception of the project business assets in South Africa which awaits merger control clearance. Clearence is expected during the first quarter 2018. Mining Systems has been reported in discontinued operations and the divested businesses will as of today be deconsolidated from Sandvik's financial statements. The projects to be finalized during 2017-2019 by Sandvik, through an operational agreement with FLSmidth, will however remain reported in discontinued operations. The closing of the transactions will have no impact on earnings per share. Sandvik AB For further information contact: Jessica Alm EVP and Head of Group Communications Sandvik Phone+46-8-456-1288 Ann-Sofie Nordh Vice President Investor Relations Sandvik Phone +46-8-456-1494 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/sandvik/r/sandvik-completes-the-mining-systems-divestment,c2381137 The following files are available for download: LONDON (dpa-AFX) - BT Group plc (BT_A.L, BT) reported Thursday that its second-quarter profit before tax decreased 1 percent to 666 million pounds from last year's 671 million pounds. Earnings per share declined 7 percent to 5.3 pence from 5.7 pence last year. Adjusted profit before tax was 789 million pounds, compared to 873 million pounds a year ago. Adjusted earnings per share were 6.4 pence, compared to 7.2 pence last year. Adjusted EBITDA declined 4 percent year-over-year to 1.81 billion pounds. Reported revenues for the quarter declined 1 percent to 5.95 billion pounds from 6.01 billion pounds last year. Adjusted revenues for the quarter decreased 2 percent. Underlying revenue excluding transit adjusted for the acquisition of EE declined 1.5 percent. Further, the company announced an interim dividend of 4.85 pence per share, flat with last year. However, the company noted that from next year the interim dividend per share will be fixed at 30 percent of the prior year's full year dividend. Gavin Patterson, Chief Executive, said, 'Our first half results are in line with our expectations as encouraging results in our consumer facing lines of business, notably EE, helped offset ongoing challenges in our enterprise divisions, in particular Global Services. Given our underlying business performance, we are maintaining our outlook for the year.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. VGI Global Media PCL Investor Relations Department Tel: +66 2273 8639; 0 2273 8623 E-mail: ir@vgi.co.th www.vgi.co.th Released for VGI Global Media PCL by Public Relations Department, MT Multimedia Co Ltd Orn-arong ("Fah") Pattaravejkul Tel: +66 2612 2081 #129 Mobile: +66 8 6884 4458 E-mail: orn_tabo@hotmail.com BANGKOK, Nov 2, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - VGI Global Media PCL (SET:VGI) has posted strong financial results in 2Q 2017/18 with record-high revenue of THB 978 million, up 24% YoY, and net profit of THB 228 million, up 10% YoY. The strong performance underscores the success of its new strategy in combining out-of-home platforms with measureable digital services while senior management is confident of hitting the THB 4,000 million revenue target for the full fiscal year 2017/18 supported by the strong economic recovery and election.Mr Nelson Leung, deputy chief executive officer (deputy CEO) of VGI, stated the company's 2Q 2017/18 (July-September) financial performance, which shows the record-breaking total revenue of THB 978 million, a 24% YoY rise. The outstanding growth rates of all segments reflect the success of VGI's new strategy of integrating online and offline media platforms which creates perfect synergy between the group's vast out-of-home (OOH) media outlets and its access to the Big Data from the Rabbit Group.Notably, for the Transit media (BTS) segment, revenue jumped 21% YoY to THB 576 million, driven by an expansion campaign conducted jointly with Rabbit Group through analysis of consumer profile and behavior data on Rabbit Group's database, which enhances communication effectiveness and facilitates the designing of offline-plus-online advertising solutions that satisfy customers' demands and, most significantly, the evaluation of campaigns.In the Office media segment, VGI has expanded its office building network faster than expected with the addition of eight new buildings in the first six months out of the full-year target of 10 new buildings. Management, therefore, is confident that the full-year target of 172 buildings will be reached while revenue from this segment rose 12% YoY to THB 83 million in this quarter.For the Outdoor media segment managed by MACO, the revenue reached a new high at THB 232 million, up 52% YoY, boosted by the conversion of static billboards to digital billboards as well as the expansion of the MACO's network through new investments in Multi Sign and COMASS, which raised MACO's total media capacity from THB 900 million to THB 1,400 million and, in turn, contributed positively to the the second quarter performances.For the digital services business managed by Rabbit Group, the revenue level stood at THB 87 million increased by 0.3% YoY. Currently, under offline payment channel, over 8.1mn Rabbit cards were issued with more than 133 brand partners and over 4,400 retail points of acceptance. Under online payment channel, Rabbit LinePay has over 2.4mn users."These quarterly results are our great achievements, as the revenue reached the highest level ever. It shows that our strategy is right and has enabled us to reap handsome revenue from all segments," said Mr Nelson Leung.The deputy CEO added that, thanks to the above results, the net profit for 2Q 2017/18 reached THB 228 million, up 10% YoY, amid the advertising platform industry's overall decline.This October is the period during which the funeral of His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej takes place. As an OOH media company, VGI has followed the advertising guidelines set by Media Agency Association of Thailand and Digital Advertising Association (Thailand) by applying greyish colour tone to its digital advertisements for the one month. However, the impact is expected to be minimal to the full-year performance.As for the advertising industry's outlook between now and the end of the company's fiscal year in March 2018, the company has projected stead increases in advance bookings and strong overall growth due to the better-than-expected economic recovery, the political stability and election. Therefore, management is confident of reaching the full-year revenue target of THB 4,000 million.About VGI Global Media PCLVGI Global Media PCL (SET:VGI; VGGMF:OTC) is Thailand's major provider of out-of-home media solutions, having more than 10,000 items of large still-image screens in the BTS skytrain network and large retail stores nationwide. It also has over 11,000 sq.m. of advertising space in the product display zones of large modern trade stores, as well as about 5,000 items of digital screens and media in the BTS platform and train areas, the Tesco Lotus, Big C, and Watson stores, and large office towers throughout Bangkok, and mega LED and outdoor led screens under its management. In addition, the company runs retail shops in 23 BTS stations and radio networks covering nearly 2,000 modern trade stores in Thailand. For more information, please see www.vgi.co.th.Source: VGI Global Media PCLContact:Copyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. (ASBRF.PK) Thursday reported that its net income attributable to owners of the company for the nine-month period surged 68.3 percent to 98.8 billion yen from last year's 58.7 billion yen. Earnings per share increased to 215.68 yen from 128.12 yen a year ago. Revenue for the period grew 24 percent to 1.52 trillion yen from 1.23 trillion yen in the prior year. Looking ahead to the fiscal year 2017, the company now forecast profit attributable to owners of the company of 110.00 billion yen, on revenue of 2.03 trillion yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. STUDIO CITY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Petroteq Energy Inc. (the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: PQE) (OTCQX: PQEFF) (FRANKFURT: MW4A), a company focused on the development and implementation of proprietary technologies for the environmentally safe extraction of heavy oils from oil sands, oil shale deposits and shallow oil deposits, today announced that its founder and CEO, Alex Blyumkin, has provided an interest-free unsecured non-convertible loan for up to US$2 million to fund the Company's operations and expansion plans, $200,000 of which has already been advanced. As part of the Company's growth strategy, the loan will allow for building a larger facility, which will expand the Company's operations and increase production capacity from 250 to 1,000 barrels per day. The Company anticipates having the new plant in full production by February 1st of 2018 with revenues from the production to be reported for the second quarter ending on February 28, 2018. Once the plant is in full production the company will deploy its global strategy to unlock heavy oil deposits worldwide by licensing its technology to oil producers owning reserves with similar geological profiles. "My personal investment demonstrates the confidence that I have in the future of the Company," said Blyumkin. "We restructured our operations and balance sheet to facilitate the growth of our business and we are executing accordingly. With the increase in capital, we will have the ability to accelerate our production capacity to create future revenues for our business once the plant is put into production. With lower production costs and our advanced technologies, we believe heavy oil investments can generate improved performance similar to tight oil when compared on a full-cycle basis." The Company launched its first extraction plant in the area known as Asphalt Ridge, just south of Vernal, Utah. The extraction plant has been moved to the Company's Temple Mountain Mine lease site in Asphalt Ridge that has an 87 million barrel oil contingent resource pursuant to an independent resource evaluation report dated January 16, 2015 prepared by Chapman Petroleum Engineering Ltd. in accordance with the Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation Handbook (COGEH). Asphalt Ridge is one of Utah's eight major oil sand deposits and alone is believed to hold approximately 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Utah holds an estimate of 55% (Department of Energy Estimate: 32 billion barrels) of the United States oil sands deposits. The loan provided by Mr. Blyumkin, an officer and director of the Company, is a "related party transaction" as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101"). The transaction is exempt from the formal valuation approval requirements of MI 61-101 as none of the securities of the Company are listed on a prescribed stock exchange. The transaction is exempt from the minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 as at the time the transaction was agreed to, neither the fair market value of the transaction, nor the fair market value of the consideration for, the transaction, insofar as it involves interested parties, exceeded 25% of the Company's market capitalization. About Petroteq Energy Inc. The Company is engaged in the development and implementation of its proprietary environmentally friendly heavy oil processing and extraction technologies. Our proprietary process produces zero greenhouse gas, zero waste and requires no high temperatures. Petroteq is currently focused on developing its oil sands resources and expanding production capacity at its Asphalt Ridge heavy oil extraction facility located near Vernal, Utah. The company also owns a minority stake in an exploration and production play located in southwest Texas held by Accord GR Energy Inc. Under a joint venture agreement with Recruiter.com and Oilprice.com, we anticipate that the website offering employment opportunities in the Energy sector will be launched in the month of November 2017. Petroteq is also developing technologies to optimize petrochemical industry workflow processes and will bring a team of professionals to expedite the process. For more information, visit www.PetroteqEnergy.com Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. and Canadian securities laws. Words such as "may", "would", "could", "should", "potential", "will", "seek", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions as they relate to the Company, including the balance of the loan being advanced, TSX Venture Exchange approval of the loan, and the Company successfully increasing production capacity of its extraction plant from 250 to 1,000 barrels per day, are intended to identify forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Such statements reflect the Company's current views and intentions with respect to future events, based on information available to the Company, and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Material factors or assumptions were applied in providing forward-looking information, including: the TSX Venture Exchange providing final approval of the loan; Mr. Blyumkin advancing the balance of the loan; and the Company having the funds necessary to complete the expansion of the production capacity from 250 to 1,000 barrels per day. While forward-looking statements are based on data, assumptions and analyses that the Company believes are reasonable under the circumstances, whether actual results, performance or developments will meet the Company's expectations and predictions depend on a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results, performance and financial condition of the Company to differ materially from its expectations. Certain of the "risk factors" that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation: the TSX Venture Exchange not providing final approval of the loan; Mr. Blyumkin not advancing the balance of the loan; changes in laws or regulations; the ability to implement business strategies or to pursue business opportunities, whether for economic or other reasons; status of the world oil markets, oil prices and price volatility; oil pricing; state of capital markets and ability by the Company to raise capital; litigation; the commercial and economic viability of the Company's oil sands hydrocarbon extraction technology, the SWEPT technology, the S-BRPT technology, and other proprietary technologies developed or licensed by the Company or by Accord which are of experimental nature and have not been used at full capacity for an extended period of time; reliance on suppliers, contractors, consultants and key personnel; the ability of the Company and Accord to maintain their respective mineral lease holdings; potential failure of the Company's business plans or model; the nature of oil and gas production and oil sands mining, extraction and production; uncertainties in exploration and drilling for oil, gas and other hydrocarbon-bearing substances; unanticipated costs and expenses, availability of financing and other capital; potential damage to or destruction of property, loss of life, and environmental damage; risks associated with compliance with environmental protection laws and regulations; uninsurable or uninsured risks; potential conflicts of interest of officers and directors; and other general economic, market and business conditions and factors, including the risk factors discussed or referred to in the Company's annual Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ending August 31, 2016, filed with the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com. Should any factor affect the Company in an unexpected manner, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, the actual results or events may differ materially from the results or events predicted. Any such forward-looking information is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Moreover, the Company does not assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information included in this press release is made as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable law. 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. The securities referred to in this news release have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons absent U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from the U.S. registration requirements. This news release does not constitute an offer for sale of securities, nor a solicitation for offers to buy any securities. Any public offering of securities in the United States must be made by means of a prospectus containing detailed information about the company and management, as well as financial statements. Contact: Petroteq Energy Inc. Alex Blyumkin Chief Executive Officer Tel: (800) 979-1897 IRTH Communications, LLC 866-976-IRTH (4784) Email Contact STOCKHOLM, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Electrolux Major Appliances North America has been informed by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) that it has set a preliminary and significantly increased tariff rate of 72.41% on washing machines manufactured in Mexico by Electrolux and imported into the U.S. between February 2016 and January 2017. Electrolux intends to contest this decision vigorously. If the preliminary tariff rate is determined as final, it could have a one-time cost to Electrolux of up to USD 70 million in 2018. "We believe this is completely unfounded and look forward to exposing the facts in court," said Alan Shaw, Head of Electrolux Major Appliances North America. Following an antidumping order and tariff rate imposed by the DOC in 2012, Electrolux has each year since requested a review of the rate in arrears based on actual data submitted by Electrolux and others for the period. Each review by the DOC determines the tariff to be imposed on the affected products. The most recent rate determined by the DOC, on the basis of actual data submitted, was 3.67% for the third period of review - February 2015 to January 2016. This indicated, as in previous periods, that any "dumping" as defined by the DOC standards has been minimal. In the fourth period of review, the DOC did not accept Electrolux's submission of actual data and has determined the tariff rate without regard to actual data. This preliminary tariff rate is significantly higher than it would have been if the DOC had considered actual data for the period. It is Electrolux's position that the DOC set this preliminary tariff rate by improperly citing, as the basis for this decision, a failure on behalf of Electrolux to submit the data in a timely manner. Electrolux has been advised that the DOC's decision in this regard lacks legal merit, because the DOC failed to provide Electrolux actual notice of the relevant documents or the necessary timeframe for response, as required by the World Trade Organization Anti-Dumping Agreement and the DOC's own internal guidelines. A decision on the final established rate is expected to be issued by March 1, 2018. Electrolux intends to vigorously contest any decision not based on actual data and, if necessary, to submit an appeal. For further information, please contact: Daniel Frykholm Electrolux Press Hotline +46-8-657-65-07. This information is information that AB Electrolux is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 0830 CET, November 2, 2017. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/electrolux/r/electrolux-to-contest-tariff-rate-set-in-antidumping-review-by-u-s--department-of-commerce,c2381140 The following files are available for download: BIRMINGHAM, England, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- 27% of Brits say Brexit will impact their future travel plans Two-thirds of the nation think they ' ll be less welcome by pro-EU people abroad 31% of Brits prefer a staycation from an overseas holiday With the nation deciding not to give Brexit the boot, it appears Brits are now realising the potential for a change of scenery when it comes to their well-deserved holidays. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/595486/CrossCountry_Trains_Survey_Staycations_Infographic.jpg ) According to new research out today from CrossCountry trains, nearly a third of the nation (27%) is already suggesting that Brexit will impact their future travel plans, with 50% of Brits believing that cutting ties with Europe will see additional costs passed down from travel operators to holidaymakers. With 67% also concerned about the impact on exchange rates, nearly half of the nation (46%) are worrying about the impact on visas, and more than a third (39%) of those surveyed believe Brits will be less welcome by pro-EU residents of the countries they visit. However, CrossCountry, which celebrates its 10th birthday this November, found that almost a third of the country (31%) actually prefer a staycation than a holiday abroad - must be the weather! Other than the nation's capital, Manchester (31%), Edinburgh (31%) and Birmingham (27%) are the most visited UK destinations, with Edinburgh (21%) also the favourite place for a frolic by train. An overwhelming 80% of respondents stated they'd prefer to ditch the car and take a train to their next staycation, with three in five Brits saying they are a fast and convenient method of travel around the UK. Catherine Terry, Head of Marketing at CrossCountry, said: "Following the decision on Brexit, the nation's attention has turned back towards Britain and staycations are on the up. With an incredible mixture of inspiring culture, beautiful landscapes and stimulating people, Britain has more to offer than most of us care to realise. At CrossCountry, we're proud to be celebrating 10 years of connecting Brits to all corners of the nation, and everywhere in between." Notes to editors: *This survey was conducted by Censuswide, with more than 2000 UK participants - October 2017. About CrossCountry CrossCountry Trains is the most extensive passenger rail network in Britain, stretching from Aberdeen to Penzance, Manchester to Bournemouth and from Stansted to Cardiff. Based in Birmingham, CrossCountry connects seven of the Britain's 10 largest cities with 298 passenger services each weekday calling at 118 stations. LINKOPING, Sweden, Nov. 02, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- International medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra (STO: SECT B) enters into a partnership with Medical One Corporation, a leading provider of medical equipment in the Philippines. Through this distribution agreement, the Philippines healthcare market will gain access to efficient and patient-centered care with Sectra's solutions. "Healthcare in the Philippines is expanding its ability to share and collaborate around medical images and patient information through consolidation and telemedicine initiatives," says Marie Ekstrom Tragardh, Executive Vice President of Sectra AB and President of Sectra Imaging IT Solutions. "This distribution agreement with Medical One will enable us to address these demands by combining their market-specific expertise with our extensive experience in delivering scalable solutions that cover multiple enterprises in large geographic areas-within teleradiology and telepathology specifically." The Philippines has approximately 400 regional and university hospitals that take care of more than 100 million habitants. 60 percent of the radiology medical specialty is now digital. Medical One has more than 340 customers, of which 40 are regional and university hospitals. The distribution agreement with Medical One includes Sectra's Enterprise Image Management solutions, comprising PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) for imaging-intense departments, VNA (Vendor Neutral Archive) and solutions for sharing and collaborating around medical images. Sectra Enterprise Image Management Sectra's complete enterprise imaging offering is modular and supports the most image-intense departments-radiology, pathology, cardiology and orthopaedics. Being built on the same technical platform, customers can easily extend a departmental solution to create a comprehensive VNA and enterprise image management solution without any major investment or replacement of existing components. Sectra's vendor-neutral approach enables customers to read images from virtually any modality and vendor in a single solution, and to integrate with any standards-based surrounding information system. Together with the solution's proven ability to support customers covering large geographic areas, sometimes with limited networks, the product portfolio is suitable for teleradiology and telepathology scenarios. About Medical One Corporation Medical One Corporation is one of the Philippines' largest medical equipment distributor companies dealing in the importation, distribution and servicing of medical equipment. With over 35 years of experience in ultrasound and diagnostic imaging systems, Medical One serves a wide range of medical equipment needs for hospitals and clinics with diagnostic imaging services. Experience the solutions at RSNA 2017 Meet Sectra at RSNA in booth #6113 where Sectra's solutions for radiology imaging will be showcased. Read more and book a meeting with Sectra at RSNA. For further information, please contact: Dr. Torbjorn Kronander CEO and President Sectra AB 46(0)705-23-52-27 Marie Ekstrom Tragardh Executive Vice President Sectra AB and President Sectra Imaging IT Solutions 46(0)708-23-56-10 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/sectra/r/sectra-enters-the-philippines-by-signing-medical-imaging-distribution-agreement-with-medical-one,c2380935 The following files are available for download: LONDON (dpa-AFX) - RSA Insurance Group Plc. (RSANY.PK, RSA.L, RSA) said that its year-to-date Group net written premiums of 5.08 billion pounds at the third quarter of 2017 rose 8 percent on a reported basis, and also increased 3 percent at constant currency rates, compared to the year-ago quarter. Volumes accounted for 1 percent growth in the quarter, with rate increases adding 2 percent. UK premiums of 2.02 billion pounds increased 5 percent as reported and also rose 4% at constant currency rates, with volume growth of 3 percent and rating increases adding 1 percent. Stephen Hester, RSA Group Chief Executive, said, 'The progress at RSA overall leaves Group profits ahead of the same period in 2016 though by less than we had targeted. We are continuing to drive business enhancements across the Group, whilst taking further underwriting action in some portfolios to improve performance for 2018.' RSA Insurance noted that insurance and financial market conditions are largely unchanged, with the exception of challenges in wholesale and international commercial markets from U.S. and Caribbean Cat activity. The company added that the impact on market pricing trends from these events is as yet unclear. The company noted that earnings per share year to date is ahead of 2016, though held back by third-quarter underwriting results. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Acacia Mining plc. (ACA.L) said that Brad Gordon, Chief Executive Officer, and Andrew Wray, Chief Financial Officer, have separately notified the Company of their intention to resign from their positions. Both Brad and Andrew will remain with the Company until the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition. The company noted that Brad will be returning to Australia for family reasons, while Andrew is pursuing an opportunity elsewhere. The company also announced the appointment of Peter Geleta, currently Acacia's Head of Organisational Effectiveness, as Interim Chief Executive Officer. Jaco Maritz, currently Acacia's General Manager, Finance, will be appointed Chief Financial Officer. Both appointments will be effective from 1 January 2018. Peter (54) has 35 years of mining industry experience in both operational and corporate leadership positions, primarily in Africa. Prior to joining Acacia, Peter held senior roles at AngloGold Ashanti (25 years) and Barrick Gold Corporation ('Barrick'). He joined Acacia in May 2012 as Vice President, Organisational Effectiveness. Since then, Peter has been a key member of the Executive Team of Acacia and an integral part of the Company's turnaround. Jaco (42) has been with Acacia and its predecessor companies since 2001 in a range of increasingly senior finance roles covering all aspects of the finance function. He was initially employed by Placer Dome, which was acquired by Barrick in 2006, and was part of Acacia at its inception. In addition to assuming the role of Interim CEO, Peter will also replace Brad on the Board of Directors at the end of the year. As a result, the Board will continue to consist of 7 Directors, with 1 Executive Director, 4 independent Non-Executive Directors and 2 Non-Executive Directors. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / Canadian Zeolite Corp. (the "Company") (TSX.V: CNZ) (OTCQB: CNZCF) (FSE: ZEON) is pleased to report it has formalized an agreement with CIH S.A. (Havana International Centre). CIH S.A. is a trading company offering professional services in the fields of consultancy, scientific and technical services and technology transfer. This agreement provides Canadian Zeolite with technical consultancy related to zeolite and new innovative technologies to expand the Company's market opportunities in Cuba, South America, and Canada. Canadian Zeolite has also achieved client status with the Commercial Department of MITSA S.A. in Cuba for the supply of Cuban zeolite. Cuban zeolite is among the best in the world with abundant reserves and plants for processing in Villa Clara, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba provinces. This will expand Canadian Zeolite's reach into many new markets not logistically viable from our Bromley Creek deposit in British Columbia. Mr. Ray Paquette CEO states, "I am very pleased to have completed this agreement in Cuba. The process time was lengthy as there is extensive due diligence required to do business in Cuba. Canadian Zeolite's agreement with CIH.SA is significant as it provides the Company advanced research experience, product development and the ability to create advanced zeolite technologies. Canadian Zeolite has been evaluated and is now included in the MITSA S.A. Customers Portfolio, providing the Company with a qualified and significant zeolite resource for our growth and development Internationally." Canadian Zeolite has established agreements and relationships with zeolite suppliers in the United States and now Cuba for supply and product development to grow the domestic and International zeolite markets. On behalf of the Board of Directors "Ray Paquette" President & CEO 604.684.3301 www.canadianzeolite.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Some statements in this news release contain forward-looking information. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to future expenditures. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include, among others, the ability to complete contemplated work programs and the timing and amount of expenditures. Canadian Zeolite does not assume the obligation to update any forward-looking statement. SOURCE: Canadian Zeolite Corp. Corporate venture fund invests EUR 4 million (USD 5 million) into Topas Financing to accelerate clinical trials in autoimmune diseases Detlev Mennerich, Ph.D., Investment Manager of BIVF, to join Topas' Board of Directors HAMBURG / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / Topas Therapeutics GmbH (Topas), a Hamburg, Germany-based private platform company leveraging the natural tolerance induction capabilities of the liver, today announced that the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) will join the Company's syndicate of strategic and financial investors which was established through a Series A financing round in 2016. BIVF will provide Topas with EUR 4 million (USD 5 million) to accelerate the Company's preparation and execution of clinical trials for autoimmune programs derived from its platform. Additionally, the Company announced that Detlev Mennerich, Ph.D., Investment Manager at BIVF, will join the Topas Supervisory Board. With this capital increase, Topas has raised a total of EUR 18 million (USD 21 million). Epidarex Capital (Lead), Gimv, EMBL Ventures and Evotec previously invested EUR 14 million (USD 16.5 million) in the Company. Timm Jessen, CEO of Topas Therapeutics, said: "We are delighted to have the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund as a new investor and to welcome Detlev Mennerich to the Board. BIVF has a great track record of successfully investing in biotech companies as a strategic, long-term investor. Their investment in Topas is a strong validation of our approach and we greatly value their support." Detlev Mennerich, Ph.D., Investment Manager at BIVF, added: "We are impressed by the science, the team and the investor base Topas has gathered so far. I am pleased to join the Supervisory Board and to support the clinical translation of the pioneering pre-clinical discoveries made by Topas. The unique, liver-based approach has the potential to become a game changer in various autoimmune conditions with known disease antigens." About Topas Therapeutics Topas Therapeutics GmbH is a private Hamburg, a Germany-based biotechnology company focused on developing products to address areas of major unmet needs, including autoimmune diseases, allergies, and anti-drug antibodies. Topas' technology platform induces antigen-specific immune tolerance by harnessing the liver's natural immunology capabilities. The Company has two programs preparing to enter the clinic during 2018 - one for multiple sclerosis and one for an orphan disease. Topas also has a research and option agreement with Eli Lilly and Company focused on immune tolerance and a co-development agreement with Evotec for a Type 1 diabetes program that is currently in pre-clinical testing. Topas' investors include: Epidarex Capital, Gimv, EMBL Ventures, Evotec and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund. For additional information, please visit: www.topas-therapeutics.com. About Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund Created in 2010, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund GmbH (BIVF) invests in groundbreaking therapeutics-focused biotechnology companies to drive innovation in biomedical research. BIVF is searching for significant enhancements in patient care through pioneering science and its clinical translation by building long-term relationships with scientists and entrepreneurs. BIVF's focus is to target unprecedented therapeutic concepts addressing high medical needs in immuno-oncology, in regenerative medicine or gene therapy. These may include novel platform technologies to address so far undruggable targets, new generation vaccines and/or new biological entities, such as oncolytic virotherapy. BIVF takes an active role with its portfolio companies - delivering significant added value through its own extensive drug discovery, scientific and managerial expertise. BIVF has EUR200 million under management and currently supervises a portfolio of more than 20 companies. For more information, please visit www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com. Contacts: Topas Therapeutics GmbH Dr. Timm-H. Jessen CEO / Managing Director Falkenried 88 20251 Hamburg Email jessen@topas-therapeutics.com Web www.topas-therapeutics.com Media Relations Europe MC Services AG Anne Hennecke Phone +49 211 529 252 22 Email anne.hennecke@mc-services.eu Media Relations U.S. Laurie Doyle Phone +1 339 832 0752 Email laurie.doyle@mc-services.eu Web www.mc-services.eu SOURCE: Topas Therapeutics GmbH JINAN, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 2, the "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance, initialized by Inspur and co-founded by Cisco, IBM, Diebold Nixdorf and Ericsson, was established in Jinan, China. The Alliance will integrate the world-class IT products, technologies and solutions of its members to accelerate the construction of digital silk road together with three Chinese national financial institutions, namely the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation. The launch of the "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance is the exploration and practice for Inspur to fulfill China's Belt and Road Initiative and develop the digital silk road, as well as the first Belt and Road integrated platform founded by global technology giants. The alliance not only provides a new wide platform to promote the construction of digital silk road and to deepen cooperations among its members, but also allows the cooperations in China among top technology companies to go global. The alliance adopts the cooperation mode of "1+4+3", which means that as the initiator, Inspur establishes the alliance together with four global technology giants, Cisco, IBM, Diebold Nixdorf and Ericsson, with support from three Chinese national policy-based financial institutions, the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation. The alliance will provide the world-class new datacenters, cloud services, smart finance, smart home, smart taxation, smart cities and other total technology solutions, and complete funding solutions for countries along the Belt and Road. The Alliance will firstly carry out projects in South Asian and African countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, build a series of sample projects, and then promote them in countries along the route. In the future, the alliance will attract more companies with top informatization products and technologies from all over the world, provide the most complete and advanced informatization total solutions for countries along the Belt and Road together with many financial institutions, and allow more people from those countries to enjoy benefits of the digital economy development. LONDON, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten years since its UK launch, Sofidel refreshes the Regina brand with a new positioning and tag line. The brand, well known for the Regina BLITZ paper towel and "Cleaning in a flash" which entered the hearts and homes of Brits and achieved pop icon status among consumer goods, is now embarking on a new phase of expansion and development in European markets including the UK, Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Regina is making its international-level debut with a single campaign, "Paper for People", a concept centered on emotion and the certainties that every individual needs in the place they feel most at ease: at home. The first campaign on air is focusing on the kitchen towel product line, specifically Regina Wish with its 'handy-sized sheets', helping consumers to waste less by using the right quantity for each task: http://www.sofidel.com/en/brands-products/consumer-brands/regina. The Regina update also involves a refresh of the historic logo and, starting from 2018, a new design for the packaging as well as a renewed emphasis on Sofidel's sustainability guarantee. The sustainability guarantee is particularly important for Sofidel, a company that has long put sustainability at the center of its business strategies. This can be evidenced by their work done limiting climate-changing emissions (including taking part in the WWF Climate Savers programme), managing water resources responsibly and procuring pulp certified by independent third parties with forestry certification schemes. Sofidel's progress on these fronts has been significant: by the end of 2016 Sofidel had reduced its direct CO 2 emissions by 19.1% (compared to 2009), could boast an average water use distinctly lower than that considered good practice for the sector (7.0l/kg vs. 15-25l/kg) and procures pulp solely with the following certifications: FSC, FSC Controlled Wood, SFI, PEFC'. Luigi Lazzareschi, CEO of the Sofidel Group comments on why now is the right time for this brand refresh and new campaign; "30 years after the launch into Europe, we've chosen to revisit the positioning of Regina, the brand that has played a leading role in enabling our growth to become the sixth global player and the second in Europe in the tissue sector. We've done so together with an extra step forward, lending it an unambiguous pan-European brand identity, since it's now a market leader with international recognition." LOS ANGELES, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Industry Experts, Inc. Industry Experts, Inc. unveiled the global market report on Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). The new report entitled "Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) - A Global Market Overview" reveals that Asia-Pacific is expected to the fastest growing market with a CAGR of 9.2% during the period 2017-2022 while North America is the largest market for PCR with 2017 market is estimated at US$3.5 billion. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a technology that has opened up new vistas for advances in life sciences research and molecular diagnostics due to its attributes, such as detection and quantification of DNA and RNA genetic materials. Advanced PCR techniques, such as digital PCR are employed by researchers in quantifying and analyzing rare alleles and point mutations. The existing crop of market participants is focusing on developing PCR systems offering improved capabilities, such as an extensive menu of tests and higher sensitivity and specificity. Global demand for PCR in Clinical Diagnostics Labs & Hospitals, among end use sectors, is slated to record the fastest CAGR of 8.6% and reach a projected US$3.5 billion by 2022. By Applications area, Life Sciences lead the global market for PCR, which is estimated at US$3.9 billion (45% share) in 2017 and is projected to reach US$5.5 billion by 2022 to reflect the slowest 2017-2022 CAGR of 7.3%. The report analyzes the market for PCR product segments including Instruments, Reagents & Consumables and Software & Services while key application areas comprise Clinical Diagnostics, Life Sciences and Others. The study also explores the global market for major end use sectors of PCR including Academic & Research Institutes, Clinical Diagnostics Labs & Hospitals, Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Sectors and Others in terms of value in USD for 2014-2022 analysis period in the global markets comprising North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of World. The market for Polymerase Chain Reaction is segmented into four major global regions namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of World. The regional markets further analyzed for 11 more independent countries across North America - the United States, Canada and Mexico; Europe - France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom; Asia-Pacific - China, India, Japan and South Korea. The market is analyzed in all of these major regions by key county, PCR product segment, application area and end-use sector in terms of value in US$. This 344 page global PCR market report includes 216 charts (includes a data table and graphical representation for each chart), supported with meaningful and easy to understand graphical presentation, of market numbers. The report profiles 14 key global players and 33 major players across North America - 19; Europe - 10; Asia-Pacific - 3; and Rest of World - 1. The study also provides the listing of the companies operating in the PCR industry. The global list of companies covers the address, contact numbers and the website addresses of 161 companies. California, USA based Industry Experts, Inc. is a multi-industry focused business information provider. For more details, please visit http://industry-experts.com/verticals/biotechnology/polymerase-chain-reaction-pcr-a-global-market-overview. Media Contact: Sharath Kumar +1-320-497-3787 media@industry-experts.com TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison" or the "Company") (TSX: DML)(NYSE American: DNN)(NYSE MKT: DNN) is pleased to report the extension of new high-grade unconformity-hosted uranium mineralization located up-dip and approximately 250 metres along strike to the northeast of the basement-hosted Gryphon deposit, on the Company's 60% owned Wheeler River project. Preliminary radiometric equivalent grades ("eU3O8") from drill hole WR-670D2 are highlighted by an interval of 4.3% eU3O8 over 4.3 metres, from mineralization occurring immediately above the sub-Athabasca unconformity. This result adds to previous unconformity mineralized intercepts that include 5.0% eU3O8 over 4.7 metres in drill hole WR-689D3 and 1.2% eU3O8 over 1.4 metres in drill hole WR-690D3 (see Denison's press release dated August 30, 2017). The new zone of "E series" unconformity mineralization now extends approximately 80 metres horizontally along the unconformity and remains open along strike to the northeast and southwest. To view the graphics associated with this release, please click on the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/DenisonGryphon.pdf In addition, after nearly six months of field activities, Denison is pleased to report that the summer 2017 drilling program at Wheeler River has now been concluded, following the completion of a further 30 drill holes totalling 12,466 metres. Preliminary radiometric grades for these results are reported herein and represent a strong finish, to an extended summer exploration program at Wheeler, with continued exploration success on multiple fronts. Importantly, these results also represent the final batch of drill holes to be completed ahead of the planned update to the Company's resource estimate for the Gryphon deposit and the Wheeler River project. Highlights from the final 30 drill holes include: -- Extension of the E series lenses: Additional mineralized intervals in the E series lenses were returned at the unconformity in drill hole WR- 670D2 (4.3% eU3O8 over 4.3 metres) and WR-657D3 (0.86% eU3O8 over 2.2 metres), as well as in the upper basement in drill hole WR-646D2 (4.6% eU3O8 over 1.5 metres) and WR-646D4 (1.1% eU3O8 over 7.6 metres). The E series lenses occur outside of the current resources estimated for the Gryphon deposit, remain open along strike to the northeast and southwest, and now have an unconformity and upper basement extent of 80 and 350 metres, respectively. -- Continued expansion of high-grade within the D series lenses: Intersections of 4.9% eU3O8 over 1.0 metre (drill hole WR-621D5), 1.6% eU3O8 over 2.5 metres (drill hole WR-657D2), and 2.0% eU3O8 over 1.3 metres (drill hole WR-657D3), have added to several previous high-grade results within the D series lenses. During the summer program, a significant lens of high-grade mineralization has been delineated amongst the D series lenses by infill drilling on an approximate 25 x 25 metres spacing. The high-grade lens measures up to 150 metres along strike, approximately 240 metres along dip, with interpreted true thicknesses between approximately 2 and 20 metres. All D series lens mineralization occurs outside of the current resources estimated for the Gryphon deposit. -- Continued expansion of the A and B series lenses: Drill holes located down-dip and up-dip of the extent of the A and B series lenses, as defined by the current resources estimated for the Gryphon deposit, returned highlight intersections of 4.0% eU3O8 over 3.1 metres (drill hole WR-681AD3) and 4.0% eU3O8 over 5.2 metres (drill hole WR-624D3). The holes were located approximately 25 metres from previous holes with the potential to add indicated resources to the Gryphon deposit. -- Completion of the definition drilling program: Definition drilling designed to upgrade the current inferred resources of the Gryphon deposit (A, B and C series lenses) to an indicated level of confidence has now been completed with the final four drill holes, of the 42 drill hole program, successfully reaching their respective targets. Results continue to show good consistency with the inferred grade model. Dale Verran, Denison's Vice President Exploration, commented, "The summer drilling program at Wheeler River has produced exceptional results with over 90% of the holes completed returning significant mineralization. The sheer number of high-grade and thick intersections, inside and outside the current Gryphon resource area, indicate potential to increase both the confidence and size of the Gryphon deposit. An updated independent resource estimate, in accordance with NI 43-101, is planned for later this year once the final batch of assay results is received. Looking ahead to 2018, our exploration team is excited to continue with exploration near Gryphon. The mineralizing system continues to impress as new zones continue to be added - most recently with the E series lenses. The deposit remains open in numerous areas with excellent prospects for further growth." Summer 2017 Drilling Program Completed The primary objectives of the summer 2017 exploration program were to increase the confidence of the Gryphon resource to an indicated level, and to expand the overall size of the estimated resources, ahead of an updated resource estimate, scheduled for later in the year, and the Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS"), scheduled for 2018. As a result, the summer program included a total of 64 drill holes (totalling 29,823 metres) targeted within and in the immediate vicinity of the Gryphon deposit. The large majority of drill holes (59) were completed as 'daughter' holes drilled from part way down 'parent holes', which were previously drilled from surface. Included in the final 30 drill holes is also a single shaft pilot hole, totalling 600 metres, which was completed near the Gryphon deposit as part of field activities related to the Wheeler River PFS. Illustrative Figures and Further Details A plan map of the Gryphon A, B, C, D and E series lenses is provided in Figure 1. The inset on Figure 1 shows a schematic cross section of the A, B, C, D and E series lenses and their respective inclined longitudinal section windows (as shaded rectangles). Figures 2 to 6 provide inclined longitudinal sections of the Gryphon A, B, C, D and E series lenses respectively. Figure 7 provides a plan map of the mineralization located at, or immediately above, the sub-Athabasca unconformity which forms part of the E series lenses. The modelled mineralized lenses shown in Figures 1 to 6 are defined using a 0.05% U3O8 grade shell and minimum thickness of two metres and have been updated following receipt of the winter 2017 assay results. There is no certainty that the modelled mineralized lenses shown will constitute future mineral resources and they may be subject to modifications as further drilling data becomes available. Further details regarding the Gryphon deposit and the current mineral resource estimates are provided in the NI 43-101 Technical Report for the Wheeler River project titled "Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Wheeler River Uranium Project, Saskatchewan, Canada" dated April 8, 2016 with an effective date of March 31, 2016. A copy of this report is available on Denison's website and under its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml. Detailed Radiometric Equivalent Probe Results The following tables provide the radiometric equivalent probe results from the final 30 drill holes completed during the summer 2017 exploration program at Wheeler River. Table 1: Radiometric equivalent probe results for drill holes targeting the Gryphon D and E series lenses Lens Section Drill Hole From (m) To (m)Length (m)(5) eU3O8(%)(1,2,4) Designation ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5125GP WR-646D1 557.9 558.9 1.0 0.33 E Series and 586.8 588.6 1.8 1.0 E Series including(3 ) 587.3 588.3 1.0 1.4 E Series and 686.5 687.5 1.0 0.36 D Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5150GP WR-621D4 No significant mineralization WR-621D5 750.7 751.7 1.0 0.11 D Series WR-646D2 584.7 586.2 1.5 4.6 E Series including(3 ) 584.9 586.0 1.1 6.2 E Series WR-646D3 Not probed WR-646D4 559.1 560.1 1.0 0.15 E Series and 578.5 579.5 1.0 0.10 E Series and 580.2 581.2 1.0 0.27 E Series and 585.7 593.3 7.6 1.1 E Series including(3 ) 585.8 586.8 1.0 3.4 E Series including(3 ) 590.0 591.5 1.5 2.1 E Series and 664.4 665.4 1.0 0.15 E Series and 697.0 698.1 1.1 4.4 D Series including(3 ) 697.1 698.1 1.0 4.9 D Series WR-646D5 578.7 579.9 1.2 0.97 E Series including(3 ) 578.7 579.7 1.0 1.1 E Series and 586.1 587.1 1.0 0.14 E Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5250GP WR-657D3 559.3 560.3 1.0 0.11 E Series and 561.4 562.4 1.0 0.23 E Series and 564.4 566.6 2.2 0.86 E Series including(3 ) 564.5 565.5 1.0 1.7 E Series and 664.5 665.5 1.0 0.24 E Series and 677.6 678.6 1.0 0.22 E Series and 693.4 694.4 1.0 0.92 D Series and 701.3 702.6 1.3 2.0 D Series including(3 ) 701.4 702.4 1.0 2.5 D Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5275GP WR-657D2 586.4 587.4 1.0 0.20 E Series and 624.3 625.3 1.0 0.11 E Series and 680.1 682.6 2.5 1.6 D Series including(3 ) 680.5 682.4 1.9 2.0 D Series and 700.4 701.4 1.0 0.12 D Series WR-670D2(3) 544.6 548.9 4.3 4.3 E Series and 553.6 555.3 1.7 0.13 E Series and 569.7 570.7 1.0 0.39 E Series and 681.3 682.3 1.0 0.18 D Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: (1) eU3O8 is radiometric equivalent U3O8 derived from a calibrated total gamma downhole probe. eU3O8 results are preliminary in nature and all mineralized intervals will be sampled and submitted for chemical U3O8 assay. (2) Intersection interval is composited above a cut-off grade of 0.1% eU3O8 unless otherwise indicated. (3) Intersection interval is composited above a cut-off grade of 1.0% eU3O8. (4) Composites are compiled using 1.0 metre minimum ore thickness and 2.0 metres maximum waste. (5) As the drill holes are oriented steeply toward the northwest the true thickness of both the basement and unconformity mineralization is expected to be approximately 75% of the intersection lengths (the basement mineralization is interpreted to dip moderately to the southeast and the unconformity mineralization is interpreted to be flat- lying). Table 2: Radiometric equivalent probe results for Gryphon deposit A, B, C definition and expansion drill holes Lens Section Drill Hole From (m) To (m)Length (m)(5) eU3O8(%)(1,2,4) Designation ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4775GP WR-679D1 No significant mineralization ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4800GP WR-584BD2 631.2 632.2 1.0 0.11 B Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4875GP WR-580D2 No significant mineralization ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4900GP WR-681AD1 No significant mineralization WR-580D1 613.2 614.6 1.4 0.16 A Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4925GP WR-681AD2 698.9 699.9 1.0 0.26 A Series and 718.3 719.9 1.6 1.3 A Series including(3 ) 718.6 719.6 1.0 1.9 A Series and 725.8 727.4 1.6 1.7 A Series including(3 ) 726.1 727.2 1.1 2.2 A Series and 785.1 786.1 1.0 0.54 C Series WR-673D1 612.6 615.5 2.9 1.1 A Series including(3 ) 614.5 615.5 1.0 2.8 A Series and 648.7 649.7 1.0 0.17 B Series and 680.9 681.9 1.0 0.15 C Series and 697.3 698.3 1.0 0.28 C Series and 699.6 700.6 1.0 0.15 C Series WR-681AD3 705.6 709.0 3.4 0.41 A Series and 714.1 717.2 3.1 4.0 A Series including(3 ) 715.3 717.0 1.7 6.9 A Series and 724.5 725.5 1.0 0.29 B Series and 781.8 782.8 1.0 0.29 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4950GP WR-572D4 641.7 642.7 1.0 0.78 A Series and 644.3 645.3 1.0 0.11 A Series and 657.5 658.5 1.0 0.38 B Series and 665.5 667.4 1.9 0.21 B Series and 706.7 707.7 1.0 0.19 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4975GP WR-572D3 643.3 644.4 1.1 0.23 A Series and 668.5 669.5 1.0 0.17 B Series and 685.1 686.1 1.0 0.13 B Series WR-624D2 632.9 633.9 1.0 0.32 A Series and 634.3 635.3 1.0 0.10 A Series and 636.5 637.5 1.0 0.19 A Series and 642.0 643.0 1.0 0.10 A Series and 647.7 651.1 3.4 1.1 A Series including(3 ) 649.8 650.8 1.0 2.7 A Series and 669.6 670.7 1.1 0.33 B Series and 677.5 678.7 1.2 0.46 B Series and 731.9 733.5 1.6 1.0 C Series including(3 ) 732.3 733.3 1.0 1.6 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5000GP WR-624D1 628.7 629.7 1.0 0.79 A Series and 635.2 636.2 1.0 0.11 A Series and 638.0 639.0 1.0 0.31 A Series and 653.2 654.2 1.0 0.83 A Series and 656.2 657.9 1.7 1.0 A Series including(3 ) 656.2 657.2 1.0 1.6 A Series and 662.2 666.3 4.1 0.57 A Series including(3 ) 663.4 664.4 1.0 1.3 A Series and 691.6 695.3 3.7 0.31 B Series and 737.5 742.0 4.5 0.56 C Series and 745.8 748.1 2.3 0.69 C Series and 797.2 799.3 2.1 0.23 C Series WR-578D1 707.4 708.4 1.00 0.59 A Series and 758.0 759.7 1.7 2.5 A Series including(3 ) 758.5 759.5 1.0 3.9 A Series and 766.8 768.0 1.2 0.42 B Series WR-624D3 631.1 632.1 1.0 0.20 A Series and 636.4 640.2 3.8 0.54 A Series including(3 ) 637.2 638.2 1.0 1.3 A Series and 660.9 666.1 5.2 4.0 B Series including(3 ) 663.8 665.9 2.1 9.3 B Series and 669.2 670.3 1.1 0.28 B Series and 720.9 721.9 1.0 0.40 C Series and 738.6 741.2 2.6 0.69 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5025GP WR-560D1 669.6 672.4 2.8 0.39 A Series and 675.2 676.2 1.0 0.24 A Series and 720.4 721.4 1.0 0.24 B Series and 759.2 760.4 1.2 3.8 C Series including(3 ) 759.3 760.3 1.0 4.5 C Series WR-560D2 675.0 676.0 1.0 0.38 B Series and 696.8 697.8 1.0 0.10 B Series and 729.2 730.5 1.3 0.13 C Series and 744.9 745.9 1.0 0.16 C Series and 747.8 754.7 6.9 0.76 C Series including(3 ) 747.9 748.9 1.0 1.0 C Series including(3 ) 750.4 751.4 1.0 2.0 C Series including(3 ) 752.0 753.0 1.0 1.2 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5075GP WR-568D3 687.9 690.2 2.3 0.18 A Series and 725.3 726.3 1.0 0.14 A Series and 753.0 754.3 1.3 0.54 C Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5125GP WR-600D2 723.3 725.2 1.9 0.35 A Series and 729.1 730.1 1.0 0.20 B Series and 732.2 733.4 1.2 0.12 B Series and 741.1 743.2 2.1 0.11 B Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5150GP WR-600D3 710.4 714.5 4.1 0.21 A Series and 720.8 721.8 1.0 0.21 A Series and 732.7 733.8 1.1 0.18 B Series and 738.2 739.2 1.0 0.16 B Series ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes: (1) eU3O8 is radiometric equivalent U3O8 derived from a calibrated total gamma downhole probe. eU3O8 results are preliminary in nature and all mineralized intervals will be sampled and submitted for chemical U3O8 assay. (2) Intersection interval is composited above a cut-off grade of 0.1% eU3O8 unless otherwise indicated. (3) Intersection interval is composited above a cut-off grade of 1.0% eU3O8. (4) Composites are compiled using 1.0 metre minimum ore thickness and 2.0 metres maximum waste. (5) As the drill holes are oriented steeply toward the northwest and the basement mineralization is interpreted to dip moderately to the southeast, the true thickness of the mineralization is expected to be approximately 75% of the intersection lengths. Qualified Persons and Data Quality Dale Verran, MSc, P.Geo, Pr.Sci.Nat., Denison's Vice President, Exploration, who is a Qualified Person in accordance with the requirements of NI 43-101 has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this release. The Company currently reports preliminary radiometric equivalent grades ("eU3O8"), derived from a calibrated downhole total gamma probe, during its exploration programs and subsequently reports definitive assay grades following sampling and chemical analysis of the mineralized drill core. Radiometric equivalent probe results are subject to verification procedures by qualified persons employed by Denison prior to disclosure. For further details on the total gamma downhole probe methods employed by Denison, QAQC procedures and data verification procedures please see Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 23, 2017 filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). About Wheeler River Wheeler River is the largest undeveloped high-grade uranium project in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region, in northern Saskatchewan. The project is a joint venture between Denison (60% and operator), Cameco Corp. ("Cameco") (30%), and JCU (Canada) Exploration Company Limited ("JCU") (10%), and is host to the high-grade Gryphon and Phoenix uranium deposits discovered by Denison in 2014 and 2008, respectively. The Gryphon deposit is hosted in basement rock and is currently estimated to contain inferred resources of 43.0 million pounds U3O8 (above a cut-off grade of 0.2% U3O8) based on 834,000 tonnes of mineralization at an average grade of 2.3% U3O8. The Phoenix unconformity deposit is located approximately 3 kilometres to the southeast of Gryphon and is estimated to include indicated resources of 70.2 million pounds U3O8 (above a cut-off grade of 0.8% U3O8) based on 166,000 tonnes of mineralization at an average grade of 19.1% U3O8, and is the highest grade undeveloped known uranium deposit in the world. On April 4th, 2016, Denison announced the results of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") for the Wheeler River Project, which considers the potential economic merit of co-developing the high-grade Gryphon and Phoenix deposits as a single underground mining operation. The PEA returned a base case pre-tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") of 20.4% based on the current long term contract price of uranium (US$44.00 per pound U3O8), and Denison's share of estimated initial capital expenditures ("CAPEX") of CAD$336M (CAD$560M on 100% ownership basis). Exploration results from the subsequent drilling programs have not been incorporated into the resource estimate or the PEA. The PEA is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. On July 19th, 2016 Denison announced the initiation of a Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") for the Wheeler River property and the complimentary commencement of an infill drilling program at the Gryphon deposit to bring the inferred resources to an indicated level of confidence. As previously announced on January 10, 2017, Denison has entered into an agreement with its Wheeler River Joint Venture partners, Cameco and JCU, to fund 75% of Joint Venture expenses in 2017 and 2018 (ordinarily 60%) in exchange for an increase in Denison's interest in the project to up to approximately 66%. Under the terms of the agreement, Cameco will fund 50% of its ordinary 30% share in 2017 and 2018, and JCU is expected to continue to fund its 10% interest in the project. About Denison Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan, Canada. In addition to its 60% owned Wheeler River project, which hosts the high-grade Phoenix and Gryphon uranium deposits, Denison's exploration portfolio consists of numerous projects covering approximately 347,000 hectares in the Athabasca Basin region, including 327,000 hectares in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin. Denison's interests in Saskatchewan also include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake joint venture ("MLJV"), which includes several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, which is currently processing ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement, plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest deposit and a 64.22% interest in the J Zone deposit on the Waterbury Lake property. Both the Midwest and J Zone deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill. Denison is also engaged in mine decommissioning and environmental services through its Denison Environmental Services division and is the manager of Uranium Participation Corp., a publicly traded company which invests in uranium oxide and uranium hexafluoride. Follow Denison on Twitter @DenisonMinesCo Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information contained in this press release constitutes "forward-looking information", within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and similar Canadian legislation concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Denison. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes", or the negatives and/or variations of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur", "be achieved" or "has the potential to". In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information pertaining to the following: exploration (including drilling) and evaluation activities, plans and objectives; potential mineralization of drill targets; the estimates of Denison's mineral resources and the results of its PEA; plans and objectives with respect to updating its resource estimates and preparing a PFS; and Denison's percentage in its properties and its plans and agreements with its joint venture partners, as applicable. Statements relating to "mineral reserves" or "mineral resources" are deemed to be forward-looking information, as they involve the implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions that the mineral reserves and mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future. Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made, and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Denison to be materially different from those expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Denison believes that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be accurate and may differ materially from those anticipated in this forward looking information. For a discussion in respect of risks and other factors that could influence forward-looking events, please refer to the factors discussed in Denison's Annual Information Form dated March 23, 2017 under the heading "Risk Factors". These factors are not, and should not be construed as being exhaustive. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Any forward-looking information and the assumptions made with respect thereto speaks only as of the date of this press release. Denison does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information after the date of this press release to conform such information to actual results or to changes in Denison's expectations except as otherwise required by applicable legislation. Cautionary Note to United States Investors Concerning Estimates of Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources: This press release may use the terms "measured", "indicated" and "inferred" mineral resources. United States investors are advised that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize them. "Inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of measured or indicated mineral resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource exists, or is economically or legally mineable. Contacts: Denison Mines Corp. David Cates President and Chief Executive Officer (416) 979-1991 ext. 362 Sophia Shane Investor Relations (604) 689-7842 MONTREAL, 2017-11-02 12:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALGOLD RESOURCES LTD. (TSXV:ALG) (the "Corporation") today announced results of expanded metallurgical tests results from drill core samples at the Tijirit project ("Tijirit") in Mauritania, and these tests continue to demonstrate Tijirit's exploration and mining potential. Following the positive testworks results completed in 2016 (see Press Release dated January 18, 2017), Algold conducted additional metallurgical work which consisted of grinding and cyanidation testing at SGS Lakefield. Metallurgical testing were carried out at SGS Lakefield Laboratory (Ontario) on 16 composites using diamond drill hole core samples collected from the Eleonore (South, Central, North), Sophie II, and Lily Zones. The Eleonore composite was characterized by quartz veins associated with meta-sediments, metavolcanics or porphyries units. The Sophie II composite was made up of quartz veins within banded iron formation ("BIF") and amphibolite and the Lily composite was made up of metasediments. Each composite weighted between 3 kg and 10 kg. Recovery of gold amenable to gravity separation followed by cyanidation of the gravity tailings was conducted with the following results. Those tesworks have been conducted based on the same optimum conditions which were determined during the first program (2016-2017). Sample CN Feed % Au Au Head, g/t Size Extraction / P80, m Recovery Zone Test Grav + CN No. Calculated Direct S10 ELEONORE_N 10 68 96,7 0,77 0,82 S11 11 69 95,2 3,66 4,36 Zone Average 69 96,0 2,22 2,59 S12 ELEONORE-S 12 70 97,4 1,16 0,12 S13 13 69 97,2 0,70 0,70 Zone Average 70 97,3 0,93 0,41 S14 14** 173 86,2 6,25 8,84 S15 ELEONORE-C 15 68 99,4 11,2 11,5 S16 16 82 98,8 2,16 0,18 108 99,1 * 6,54 6,84 Total Average 73 * 94,5 2,27 2,37 *without CN-14 ** CN-14 is being repeated. Sample CN Feed % Au Au Head, g/t Size Extraction / P80, m Recovery Zone Test Grav + CN No. Calculated Direct S1 1 75 91,4 3,50 4,15 S2 SOPHIE 2 64 96,2 0,65 1,66 S3 3 64 95,8 0,57 0,49 S4 4 88 91,2 0,72 0,43 Zone Average 73 93,7 1,36 1,68 S5 5 75 91,4 0,86 1,22 S6 6 75 93,1 1,00 1,16 S7 LiLy 7 61 92,5 0,66 0,50 S8 8 82 95,1 1,43 0,88 S9 9 78 93,9 1,07 0,95 Zone Average 74 93,2 1,00 0,94 "These expanded metallurgical tests are very encouraging and confirm and build on the tests completed in 2016-2017. The testworks wich were performed on a larger number of samples continue to show that gold is easily recoverable at Tijirit" said Francois Auclair, Algold's President and Chief Executive Officer. "These strong results, indicating 99% recovery along with the ongoing programs, should enable Algold to expand the metallurgical work, focusing on the process and recovery optimization in 2018, further advancing the Tijirit project". Head grades for each of the composites were as follow (Fire Assays): Composites Sample ID Hole ID Au g/t ELEONORE-N S10 974 T17DD003 0.82 S11 975 T17RD068 4.36 ELEONORE-S S12 981 T16RD041 0.12 S13 977 T16RD140 0.70 ELEONORE-C S14 986 T17DD011 8.84 S15 987 T17RD085B 11.50 S16 991 T17RD085B 0.18 SOPHIE S1 959 T16DD09 4.15 S2 962 SCD7 1.66 S3 964 SCD8/9 0.49 S4 960 SDC5 0.43 LILY S5 951 LCD2/3 1.22 S6 955 LCD4 1.16 S7 957 LCD5 0.50 S8 958 LCD5 0.88 S9 969 LCD6 0.95 Quality Assurance / Quality Control (QA/QC) Analytical work was carried pout at SGS Lakefield. an ISO/IEC 17025 Certified Laboratory. Analytical work for drill core and chips, geochemical samples and rock chip samples is carried out at the independent SGS Laboratories Ltd. in Bamako, Mali. The 50 g fire assay with ASS finish analytical services are accredited by SANAS and are carried out with a quality assurance protocol in line with ISO 17025:2005. Samples are stored at the Corporation's field camps and put into sealed bags until delivered by a geologist on behalf of Algold to the laboratory in Bamako, Mali, where samples are prepared and analyzed. Until the end of 2016, samples were analyzed at ALS's facility in Loughrea, Ireland. Beginning in 2017, samples are analyzed at SGS Laboratory, Bamako. Samples are logged in the tracking system, weighed, dried and finely crushed to better than 70%, passing a 2 mm (Tyler 9 mesh, US Std. No.10) screen. A split of up to 1,000 g is taken and pulverized to better than 85%, passing a 75-micron (Tyler 200 mesh) screen, and a 50-gram split is analyzed by fire assay with an AA finish. Anomalous samples greater than 5 g/t Au are re-analyzed by 50 g fire assay with gravimetric finish. Selected samples may be re-analyzed using a 1 kg cyanide leach (Bottle Roll) using "LeachWELL" or the 1 kg screen fire assay method. Blanks, duplicates and certified reference material (standards) are inserted to monitor laboratory performance during the analysis. This press release has been reviewed for accuracy and compliance under National Instrument 43-101 by Andre Ciesielski, DSc., PGeo., Algold Resources Ltd Lead Consulting Geologist and Qualified Person, and Alastair Gallaugher, C.Geo. (Chartered Geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London), BSc. Geology, Algold's Exploration Manager in Mauritania, Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Andre Ciesielski has further approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release. ABOUT ALGOLD Algold Resources Ltd is focused on the exploration and development of gold deposits in West Africa. The board of directors and management team are seasoned resource industry professionals with extensive experience in the exploration and development of world-class gold projects in Africa. FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION This press release contains and refers to forward-looking information based on current expectations. All other statements other than statements of historical fact included in this release are forward-looking statements (or forward-looking information). The Corporation's plans involve various estimates and assumptions and its business is subject to various risks and uncertainties. For more details on these estimates, assumptions, risks and uncertainties, see the Corporation's most recent Management Discussion and Analysis on file with the Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements that are included herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. 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. For further information. please contact: Algold Resources Ltd. 1320. boul. Graham. bureau 132. Mont-Royal. Quebec. H3P 3C8. www.algold.com Francois Auclair M.Sc.. PGeo President & Chief Executive Officer f.auclair@algold.com +1 (514) 889 5089 Alex Ball. MBA Executive VP Financial a.ball@algold.com +1 (647) 919 2227 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / ALLIANCE ONE INTERNATIONAL, INC. (NYSE: AOI) will be discussing their earnings results in their Q2 Earnings Call to be held on November 2, 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/697. 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 FORT WORTH, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- AppYea Inc. (OTC PINK: APYP) announced today that its subsidiary The Diagnostic Centers has signed its first new client, Pacific Pain & Regenerative Medicine, with locations in Los Angeles and Irvine, California and has started shipping PGx samples for testing. Under this new agreement, Pacific Pain & Regenerative Medicine guarantees a minimum of 20 PGx tests per month which will generate between $20,000 and $40,000 per month of revenue to the Company, depending on the test. Pharmacogenetic (PGx) testing is used for determining how an individual will respond to a particular medicine. Clinicians use PGx testing to provide personalized medicine rather than using the population-based or one size fits all approach. PGx testing may also improve medication adherence. PGx testing provides insight into a patient's metabolic pathways. Knowing which pathways are functioning normally or abnormally allows a physician to prescribe medications as intended by the drug manufacturer, select the most appropriate dose, and even the best drug for the patient. "This is the first step in signing up doctor groups and clinics. As we demonstrate successful and timely testing, it will allow us to add toxicology testing for their patents as well. Based on the number of samples per month we will see a significant change in the way we do business as a company," Douglas McKinnon, AppYea's CEO, stated. "If we manage 1000 tests per month for doctor groups we are looking at a completely different company." About AppYea Inc. AppYea Inc., founded in 2012, is engaged in mobile applications for iOS, Google Play, and Amazon platforms and marketing certain products and services to healthcare providers. The Company operates its own titles as well as provides strategic partnerships with promising mobile app developers. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, The Diagnostic Centers, Inc., AppYea markets comprehensive diagnostic testing services to physician offices, clinics, hospitals, long term care facilities, healthcare groups, and other healthcare providers. Visit website: http://appyea.com/about/ 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 Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations or forecasts of future events, can be affected by inaccurate assumptions, and are subject to various business risks and known and unknown uncertainties, a number of which are beyond the control of management. Therefore, actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Additional information respecting the factors that could materially affect the Company and its operations are contained in its annual report on Form 10K and Form 10-Q as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement. Contact information: AppYea Inc. Investor Relations Phone: (817) 887-8142 MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Pioneering Technology Corp. (TSX VENTURE: PTE)(OTC PINK: PTEFF), ("Pioneering"), North America's leader in cooking fire prevention technology and products is pleased to announce that Home Hardware has expanded its SmartBurner offering by adding a new product SKU to its current offering. This additional listing will help meet the increased consumer demand for this important cooking fire prevention product. The new SmartBurner SKU will now be available at Home Hardware's 1,100 retail stores and building centers across Canada. SmartBurner was originally listed with Home Hardware in November 2014. As awareness for this innovative, one of a kind solution, has increased so too has consumer demand resulting in significant sales growth and ordering patterns, which has prompted this expansion of Home Hardware's SmartBurner product offering. Pioneering CEO Kevin Callahan said of the announcement: "We are very happy with the SmartBurner's growing sales performance at Home Hardware and even happier to announce that with this expanded product offering we can better meet the growing demand from Canadian homeowners. By providing consumers with what they need, when they need it, we can really help people protect themselves and their property from the number one cause of home fires - cooking." Cooking is the leading cause of home fires and home-fire injuries. Pioneering's SmartBurner with its patented temperature limiting control (TLC) technology helps prevent cooking fires before they start. This technology has been installed on over 250,000 multi-residential stoves and cooktops throughout North America, and counting, without a single reported cooking fire. Callahan went on to say, "This is very good news and Home Hardware has been a great learning and proving ground as we now begin looking at future expansion to consumer retail in the United States". About Pioneering Technology Corp: Pioneering, based in Mississauga, Ontario is an "energy smart" technology company and North America's leader in innovative cooking fire prevention technologies and products. Our mission is simple: To help save lives and property from the number one cause of household fire - cooking fires. We do this by engineering and bringing to market energy-smart solutions that make consumer appliances safer, smarter, and more efficient. Our patented cooking-fire prevention products address the multi-billion-dollar problem of cooking fires. According to the National Fire Protection Association, stovetop cooking is the number one cause of household fire and fire injuries in North America. Pioneering's temperature limiting control (TLC) technology is now installed in over 250,000 multi-residential housing units across North America without a single cooking fire being reported, delivering peace of mind and a solid return on investment for its customers. Pioneering's proprietary cooking fire prevention solutions include Safe-T-element, SmartBurner, RangeMinder & Safe-T-sensor and are suitable for the majority of the more than 140 million stoves/ranges and over 140 million microwave ovens in use throughout North America. For more info, go to www.pioneeringtech.com. This news release contains certain forward-looking statements that reflect the current views and/or expectations of the Company with respect to its performance, business and future events. Such statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results and events may vary significantly. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release Contacts: Pioneering Technology Corp. Kevin Callahan, President & CEO 905-712-2061 ext.101 kcallahan@pioneeringtech.com For investor relations please contact: Contact Financial Corp. Rob Gamley 604-689-7422 rob@contactfinancial.com One of World's Most Trusted Digital Security Companies Unveils Latest Password Management Features NEW YORK, Nov.2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dashlane announces the release of Dashlane 5: the most secure, convenient, and universal password manager. Available on every device, browser, and platform, including Linux, Edge, and Chromebook, Dashlane 5 integrates right into the browsing experience, so anyone can manage their passwords and personal data - no matter what technology they use. Dashlane 5 takes the pain out of passwords. To download, visit: dashlane.com/features/password-manager Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/594936/Dashlane_Promo_Logo.jpg Photo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/594938/Dashlane_security_dashboard.jpg Users Spoke, We Listened Since the release of Dashlane 4 in 2015, the company has added 5 million users, and today enables 9 million users, and 7,000 businesses to get up and running with a password manager in just a few clicks. Valuable feedback from users influenced every new feature in Dashlane 5; from a more seamless browsing experience, to a Dashlane product that works on everyone's favorite platforms and browsers. The result is a brand-new webextension that works directly in browsers, so users no longer need a separate application to use Dashlane. The new streamlined experience is so simple that users of all levels can enjoy the frictionless security of using a world-class password manager. "The password problem affects everyone, and our mission is to provide a universal solution that works everywhere," said Alexis Fogel, Dashlane's Co-Founder and Head of Product. "With Dashlane 5, we continue to lead the industry in making a product with the best security features, that's simple enough to be used by everybody, regardless of their computer skills." Unmatched Innovation + Unrivaled Experience Dashlane 5 is smarter than ever. Backed by powerful DashIQ' machine learning technology, Dashlane has the most sophisticated and fastest autofill capabilities in the industry. It's further enhanced by Dashlane 5's self-correcting autofill and artificial intelligence testing, which improves accuracy across more websites globally. Dashlane 5 also brings this industry-leading autofill experience to mobile. "Demand for mobile account login and web checkout experiences is greater than ever," continued Fogel. "Users expect to be as productive on-the-go as they are on a desktop, which is why we invested time and resources to provide the same high-quality form filling experience on our mobile browsers." Full Suite of Features Dashlane 5 is filled with new features that improve security and make the online experience even smoother. These include support for Face ID and new iPhone features, seamless two-step authentication for important accounts, as well as Intel's new authentication technologies. Dashlane 5 is designed to work for every user's unique needs. All-New Web Extension Dashlane 5 brings Dashlane to Linux, on both Chrome and Firefox, and to Chromebook and Microsoft Edge for the first time. Now, it's even easier to get started with Dashlane; users can enjoy a feature-rich version without having to install the desktop app, so passwords will always be available wherever they go. The Dashlane web experience has been revamped with a modern and light design, consistent with the rest of Dashlane's brand. The new web elements are more discreet and are perfectly integrated into web browsing, making users' online experiences faster and more convenient Best-In-Class Autofill Driven by continual research and development, DashIQ' is better than ever, meaning autofill dependably logs you in (frustration free!) more often, on more devices, and for more accounts. Should a user ever come across a website or page that is not recognized, they only need to enter the fields once and from then on the autofill action will perform automatically. Superior Security Two-Step Authentication: Login to personal and shared accounts where two-step authentication is enabled by generating, storing, and displaying one-time passcodes inside Dashlane. Dashlane will generate a unique six-digit security code every 30 seconds for each credential created. Intel Authentication: Dashlane has collaborated with Intel to support both its Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and built-in Universal 2 nd Factor (U2F).Dashlane is the first and only password manager to support these innovative technologies, adding an additional layer of hardware-based security for Dashlane users. Factor (U2F).Dashlane is the first and only password manager to support these innovative technologies, adding an additional layer of hardware-based security for Dashlane users. HackerOne Dashlane now runs a public bug bounty program on HackerOne, a platform where thousands of ethical hackers can test Dashlane security and contribute to making our users safe. They work with Dashlane's team of world-class security experts to find any potentials risk in Dashlane and to ensure that no one can exploit it. Mobile Enhacements The Safari extension, as well as Dashlane's Android, iPhone, and iPad browsers, have been upgraded to include DashIQ', providing users with a simpler, yet more powerful experience. These platforms are now backed by the most accurate credential and password autofill capabilities in the industry. Read/Write Web Application With Dashlane 5, not only can web app users see their passwords and notes, but they can also add, edit, and/or remove them, as well as add credit cards, to the web app. Users can also create a Dashlane account and use the web app as a vault without any extension installed. Features for All Operating Systems Apple Devices: Dashlane users can take advantage of the new Face ID feature on the iPhone X to securely authenticate logins. They can also use the Drag and Drop feature to move login credentials between apps on iPad. Android O: The latest Android release allows for automatic in-app logins, so Dashlane users never need to worry about creating or manually typing strong passwords. Password Changer' Dashlane's exclusive Password Changer ' , which changes every password directly from the app or browser in a single click, now works with more than 500 websites, and continues to grow, powered by DashIQ'. , which changes every password directly from the app or browser in a single click, now works with more than 500 websites, and continues to grow, powered by DashIQ'. Languages Users will have access to fully native versions of Dashlane in four new languages: Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, and Korean. Dashlane is now compatible with 11 languages. Brand Redesign Dashlane 5 is marked by a newly refreshed brand, serving to align the Dashlane brand with its core values: Simplicity, Universality, Privacy. New Logo: Paired with a bespoke wordmark, a refined impala glyph is now encased within a shield to convey the trust and privacy that is core to all that we do. App Icons: Dashlane apps have been updated to include over 250,000 beautiful website icons, so that users can easily identify their favorite sites' logos when browsing and editing accounts. About Dashlane Dashlane, one of the world's most trusted digital security companies, takes the pain out of passwords with its password manager and secure digital wallet app. Dashlane allows users to securely manage passwords, credit cards, IDs, and other important information via advanced encryption and local storage. With so many devices, the line between home and work no longer exists. Thankfully, Dashlane works everywhere, for everyone. The company has helped 9 million consumers manage and secure their digital identity and enabled over $10 billion in e-commerce transactions. Dashlane Business is trusted by 7,000+ companies to create, enforce, and track effective access management, and features the only patented security architecture in the industry. The Dashlane app is available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, and has won critical acclaim by top publications includingThe Wall Street Journal,The New York Times,andUSA Today. Dashlane is free to use on your favorite device for life, and costs $39.99/year to sync between an unlimited number of devices. Dashlane was founded by Bernard Liautaud and co-founders Alexis Fogel, Guillaume Maron and Jean Guillou. The company has offices in New York City and Paris, and has received $52.5 million in funding from TransUnion, Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners. Learn more atDashlane.com. Logo -http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/594937/Dashlane_Logo.jpg NEW YORK and LONDON, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Periscope By McKinsey, a suite of Marketing and Sales solutions, today announced that it has forged a global alliance with Dynamic Yield , a leading personalization solution provider, currently personalizing content for more than 600 million monthly active users. The alliance will deliver an end-to-end solution that will enable CMOs and their marketing teams to drive enhanced personalization to consumers faster, increasing the number of relevant, individualized interactions (at scale) on a global level. As marketers continue to search for methods to increase the speed and precision of their messages and offers, consumers - likewise - are raising their expectations of how companies should engage them in more personalized ways. "This global alliance is going to offer our clients game-changing personalization offerings. Periscope Personalization Advisor will combine Dynamic Yield's best-in-class personalization technology with Periscope's analytics solutions and capability building programs to help companies stimulate consumer demand across channels and touch points. The new Agile Marketing capabilities we'll jointly deliver will transform the way our clients work," said Brian Elliott, Managing Partner of Periscope By McKinsey As a leader in the space, Dynamic Yield's advanced machine learning engines will make it easier to deliver truly individualized experiences across customer touchpoints and for marketers to gain the real-time intelligence about what is working and what is not. "Collaborating with Periscope By McKinsey is very exciting for us. The integration between Periscope's deep expertise in personalization and digital transformation, and our leading technology platform will give clients the ability and the know-how to completely transform their multichannel marketing programs, achieving even better results than before," noted Liad Agmon, CEO of Dynamic Yield. The alliance will enable both organizations to stay ahead of the curve by co-developing next-generation marketing capabilities. "The race to achieve true one-to-one marketing is only accelerating," says Julien Boudet, global leader of McKinsey's work in personalization. "To enable full, cross-channel communications at scale with increased collaboration between stakeholders and technologies, marketers need a more effective engine. This platform provides marketing teams with the tools needed to deliver against this challenge." About Dynamic Yield Dynamic Yield's personalization technology stack helps marketers increase revenue by automatically personalizing each customer interaction across the web, mobile web, mobile apps and email. The company's advanced customer segmentation engine uses machine learning to build actionable customer segments in real time, enabling marketers to take instant action via personalization, recommendations, automatic optimization & real-time messaging. Dynamic Yield personalizes the experiences of more than 600 million users globally and counts industry leaders like Under Armour, Urban Outfitters, Sephora & Ocado among its many customers. Headquartered in New York, the company has 6 offices across the world. About Periscope By McKinsey Founded in 2007, the Periscope By McKinsey platform combines world-leading intellectual property, prescriptive analytics and cloud based tools with expert support and training. It's a unique combination that drives revenue growth, both now and into the future. The platform offers a suite of Marketing & Sales solutions that accelerate and sustain commercial transformation for businesses. Periscope leverages its world-leading IP (especially from McKinsey but also other partners) and best-in-class technology to enable transparency into Big Data, actionable insights and new ways of working that drive lasting performance improvement, and a sustainable 2-7% increase in return on sales (ROS). With a truly global reach, the portfolio of solutions is comprised of: Insight Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Customer Experience Solutions, Category Solutions, Pricing Solutions, Performance Solutions and Sales Solutions. These are complemented by ongoing client service and custom capability building programs. To learn more about how Periscope's solutions and experts are helping businesses continually drive better performance, visit http://www.periscope-solutions.com/ For further information please contact: For Periscope: General information, Christian Koestler, christian.koestler@periscope-solutions.com , +43-1-5370-6342 MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Knight Therapeutics Inc. (TSX: GUD) ("Knight"), a leading Canadian specialty pharmaceutical company, will release its third quarter 2017 financial results on Thursday, November 9, 2017 prior to the market opening. Following the release, Knight will hold a conference call and audio webcast. Knight cordially invites all interested parties to participate in this call. Date: Thursday, November 9, 2017 Time: 8:30 a.m. EST Telephone: 1-877-223-4471 or 647-788-4922 Webcast: www.gudknight.com or http://bit.ly/2iG5Zgk This is a listen-only audio webcast. Media Player is required to listen to the broadcast. Replay: An archived replay will be available for 30 days at www.gudknight.com. About Knight Therapeutics Inc. Knight Therapeutics Inc., headquartered in Montreal, Canada, is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on acquiring or in-licensing innovative pharmaceutical products for the Canadian and select international markets. Knight Therapeutics Inc.'s shares trade on TSX under the symbol GUD. For more information about Knight Therapeutics Inc., please visit the company's web site at www.gudknight.com or www.sedar.com. Forward-Looking Statement This document contains forward-looking statements for Knight Therapeutics Inc. and its subsidiaries. These forward-looking statements, by their nature, necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Knight Therapeutics Inc. considers the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based to be reasonable at the time they were prepared, but cautions the reader that these assumptions regarding future events, many of which are beyond the control of Knight Therapeutics Inc. and its subsidiaries, may ultimately prove to be incorrect. Factors and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations are discussed in Knight Therapeutics Inc.'s Annual Report and in Knight Therapeutics Inc.'s Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2016. Knight Therapeutics Inc. disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information or future events, except as required by law. Contacts: Knight Therapeutics Inc. Samira Sakhia President and Chief Financial Officer 514-678-8930 514-481-4116 (FAX) info@gudknight.com www.gudknight.com OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - While reporting its third-quarter financial results, Gildan Activewear Inc.(GIL, GIL.TO) said it has increased the common share allotment of its current normal course issuer bid or NCIB program. Gildan said it received approval from the Toronto Stock Exchange or TSX to amend its current NCIB in order to increase the maximum number of common shares that may be repurchased from 11.51 million common shares, or 5 percent of the company's issued and outstanding common shares as at February 17, 2017, to 16.12 million common shares. This represents approximately 7.2 percent of the public float, or 7 percent of the company's issued and outstanding common shares as at February 17, 2017. No other terms of the NCIB have been amended. The NCIB, which began February 27, 2017, will end no later than February 26, 2018. Gildan also said that its board of directors has declared a cash dividend of US$0.0935 per share, payable on December 11, 2017 to shareholders of record on November 16, 2017. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The UK can learn from Israel ' s experiences of radical Islam Security ties between the UK and Israel should increase post-Brexit Speaking at a high-level Conference in the UK Houses of Parliament offices, IJC President Vladimir Sloutsker stated that the Balfour Declaration centenary provides an opportunity for Britain and Israel to strengthen relations. At the BICOM/Jewish News UK conference - in front of an audience of 200 senior British and Israeli politicians, Ambassadors, and businessmen - Mr Sloutsker said a shared sense of dynamism, innovation and creativity has seen Israel and the UK form irrevocably close ties since the Balfour declaration. As Britain prepares to leave the EU, Mr Sloutsker argued that closer business links and shared security capabilities with Israel are more pertinent now than ever before: "Though unimaginable just a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour would no doubt be incredibly proud at the closeness of ties between the UK and Israel today. Ties that are grounded in our shared values of freedom, democracy and human rights, and a common future underpinned by economic prosperity, innovation and a constant desire for peace. The UK has also become Israel's biggest trading partner in Europe, and we hope to see that relationship develop still further in this post-Brexit era." Mr Sloutsker also commented on the joint security agenda, arguing that the primary threat facing Western civilization is that posed by various extremist ideologies, including radical Islam. This threat has culminated in a campaign of terror against the very values of life, liberty, tolerance and democracy we hold so sacred. In this context, he states, Israel represents an important ally in the war against terror: "But the fact of the matter is, in a world marked by terror, upheaval and the continued threat of extremism and radical Islam, Israel remains an important bastion of freedom, democracy and stability. The Jewish state understands what it means be on the front line of defense in the war on terror. Just as we see ourselves as an important business partner, more importantly we see ourselves as an important ally in protecting democratic values globally." Notes: The Israeli Jewish Congress (IJC) is an independent Israeli-based organization devoted to promoting Israel as a Jewish state and strengthening Israeli-European ties Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - November 2, 2017) - Peak Positioning Technologies Inc. (CSE: PKK) ("Peak" or the "Company") today announced that it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Cubeler platform lender Jiu Dong Limited ("Jiu Dong") to create a financial services subsidiary to be named Asia Synergy Financial Capital ("ASFC"). ASFC would be established in the city of Wuxi and meet, among others, the minimum required registration capital of 100M RMB (about CAD$20M), as prescribed by the Wuxi Municipal Financial Affairs Office, in order to operate as a fully-licenced financial services company in all of China. ASFC's operations would focus primarily on providing financial services, such as loans and purchase order financing to registered platform users, on the Company's Cubeler and Gold River fintech platforms in China. The parties plan to enter into a formal agreement by December 31, 2017 to define the operational rules by which ASFC would be governed. Under the terms of the agreement between the parties, Jiu Dong is prepared to invest $9.8M directly into ASFC for a 49% equity stake, while Peak would invest $10.2M for a 51% stake in the financial services company. $10M of the $10.2M investment to be made by Peak would come primarily from existing Peak shareholders and from Jiu Dong. The Company plans to issue a debenture with the following terms to raise the capital required for the investment: An 8% annual interest rate 24-month maturity date 20 warrants* to purchase shares of the Company at a price of $0.05 per share for a 24-month period to be attached to each dollar of debenture *The warrants in question would not be new warrants issued from treasury, but rather warrants already in circulation. As part of its agreement with the Company, Jiu Dong is prepared to subscribe to $3M or more of the debenture and would receive at least 60M warrants. The Company plans to approach existing shareholders, including insiders of the Company, to have them subscribe to the remaining $7M or less of debenture for which they would be allocated a total of up to 140M warrants. The Company is aiming to close the debenture financing no later than December 15, 2017. The following summarizes the potential origin of the funds to be invested in ASFC as per the Company's plans: Investment to be made by Peak directly into ASFC From debenture subscription by existing shareholders: $7.0M From debenture subscription by Jiu Dong: $3.0M From working capital: $0.2M Total invested by Peak into ASFC: $10.2M Investment to be made by Jiu Dong directly into ASFC: $9.8M Total investment to be made by Peak and Jiu Dong into ASFC: $20.0M "Having ASFC would change everything for Peak", commented Johnson Joseph, President and CEO of Peak. "Once we close the financing and launch ASFC, transactions on our Cubeler and Gold River platforms would have the potential to deliver the revenues and profits we've all been waiting for. The shareholders we've approached so far about the debenture and warrants package financing welcomed the opportunity to help get us to the finish line. They're wagering that the warrants would be 'in the money' based on fundamentals since we should have filed several quarters' worth of strong financial results during that timeframe. Ideally, all the warrants attached to the debenture would be exercised thus eventually nullifying the debenture," concluded Mr. Joseph. Jiu Dong (www.chinajiudong.com) is one of China's fastest growing alternative lenders with branches in Shanghai, Wuxi and Changzhou, and plans to expand to Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing in 2018. In addition to potentially providing most of the funds required to create ASFC, Jiu Dong brings valuable experience in the Chinese lending industry and a substantial base of well-established repeat-business clients to the partnership. "As one of the early subscribers of Peak's service offerings, we have had a front-row seat to everything that the Company has been building and the potential impact of those services on the Chinese commercial lending industry", commented Mr. Kelong Cheng, Chairman and CEO of Jiu Dong. "We have had discussions with Peak about this potential partnership going back several months and we're really glad to have been able to solve the ownership structure to finally make it happen. We believe Peak's innovative approach to leveraging technology to make lending more efficient fits perfectly with our own vision. We look forward to this partnership, the creation of ASFC and having a positive impact on small business and consumer lending in the country", concluded Mr. Cheng. About the Cubeler Platform: Cubeler is a commercial lending platform that matches any business looking for credit with a variety of lenders. Cubeler periodically reads financial data coming from the registered businesses' accounting software, analyses several data points and calculates a series of financial ratios to determine how well the business is performing. Those data points and ratios are then compared to Cubeler's registered lenders' lending criterial and the resulting matches are shown to the lenders and the businesses, much like the way a dating website would show its members their compatible matches. About the Gold River Platform: Gold River is a product procurement platform for raw materials that go into the making of plastic products and for certain metals such as copper and aluminum. In addition to allowing them to place orders for metals and raw materials, Gold River allows the platform's registered users to have a portion of a purchase order or an entire purchase order placed on the platform financed. About Peak Positioning Technologies Inc.: Peak Positioning Technologies Inc. is an IT portfolio management company whose mission is to assemble, finance and manage a portfolio of high-growth-potential companies and assets in some of the fastest growing tech sectors in China, including Fintech, e-commerce and cloud-computing. Peak provides its shareholders with exceptional growth potential by giving them access to the fastest growing sectors of the world's fastest growing economy. For more information: http://www.peakpositioning.com Contact information: Cathy Hume CEO CHF Capital Markets Phone: 416-868-1079 ext.: 231 Email: cathy@chfir.com Or Johnson Joseph President and CEO Peak Positioning Technologies Inc. Phone: 514-340-7775 ext.: 501 Email: investors@peakpositioning.com Forward-Looking Statements / Information: This news release may include certain forward-looking information, including statements relating to business and operating strategies, plans and prospects for revenue growth, using words including "anticipate", "believe", "could", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "potential", "project", "seek", "should", "will", "would" and similar expressions, which are intended to identify a number of these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information reflects current views with respect to current events and is not a guarantee of future performance and is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as may be required by applicable laws, rules and regulations. Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating any forward-looking information. NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- NetworkNewsWire ("NNW"), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company, today announces the publication of an editorial featuring Medical Innovation Holdings, Inc. (OTC: MIHI), a client of NNW that owns and operates strategically aligned healthcare service and product companies focused on the delivery of patient care, management services for physician offices, lab services, and pharma; and non-pharma medicines and alternatives to patients and consumers. The publication, titled, "The Promise of Telemedicine for American Health Care," highlights several health care companies that provide operative solutions to the growing telemedicine market. To view the full publication, visit: https://www.networknewswire.com/promise-telemedicine-american-health-care/ "By partnering with rural doctors and Affordable Care Organizations (ACOs), Medical Innovation Holdings (MIHI) has turned the moribund telemedicine business model on its head to provide access to previously inaccessible specialty medical services. "Employing its unique business-to-business (B2B) and B2C models, MIHI connects virtual health specialty doctors with primary care physicians and their patients, reducing cost while enhancing quality of care. Upon partnership with primary care doctors, MIHI provides the necessary tools for expanded patient care and the opportunity for physicians to expand their businesses. MIHI gives the primary doctor a full tele-cart workstation with comprehensive peripherals. When a patient electronically interfaces with a specialist in the local doctor's office, the specialist has immediate access to multiple diagnostic tests and patient records in order to determine an appropriate course of action based on evidentiary findings. "MIHI doesn't charge a subscription fee like other telemedicine companies but rather readily accepts insurance, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Choice Program. The company's mission is being embraced by the medical community. As indication, MIHI recently engaged a new ACO in Florida, and another, in Georgia, is ready to come aboard, opening the door to over 1,000 new doctors." About Medical Innovation Holdings, Inc. Medical Innovation Holdings, Inc. owns and operates strategically aligned health care service companies focused on the delivery of clinical virtual medicine (health) to bring quality medical care to all areas of need, including rural and underdeveloped areas across the country. Through its wholly owned 3Point Care subsidiary, MIHI provides personalized high-tech telemedicine encounters pairing the company's virtual health specialty doctors and traditional primary doctors that utilize next-gen virtual health technologies to connect a patient with a multi-disciplinary specialty clinical health care practice. Through its other companies and partnerships, MIHI offers Affordable Care Organization (ACO) support, wellness and prevention, lab analysis and lab services, and remote diagnostic monitoring. The company serves a number of constituents and stakeholders interested in reducing the cost of care, enhancing the quality of care, promoting access to care, and maintaining the continuum of care. For more information, visit www.MedicalInnovationHoldings.com About NetworkNewsWire NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) NetworkNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge. For more information please visit https://www.NetworkNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. NNW Contact: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) New York, New York www.NetworkNewsWire.com 212.418.1217 Office Email Contact NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- NetworkNewsWire ("NNW"), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company, today announces the publication of an editorial featuring Zinc One Resources, Inc. (TSX VENTURE: Z) (OTC PINK: ZZZOF) (FRANKFURT: RH33), a client of NNW focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of prospective and advanced zinc projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions. The publication, titled, "Zinc Producers in Spotlight as Demand Powers Past Supply," highlights some key players prepared for a surge in the demand for zinc. To view the full publication, visit: https://www.networknewswire.com/zinc-producers-spotlight-demand-powers-past-supply/ "In 2016, Peru's zinc production was second only to China's output. At 25 million tons, the country's zinc reserves are the world's third highest, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodities Summary for January 2017 (http://nnw.fm/Uq2Kl). Peru is also where Zinc One Resources (OTC PINK: ZZZOF) (Z.CA) is focused on the exploration and development of prospective and advanced zinc projects with its key assets: the past-producing Bongara Zinc-Oxide Mine Project (Bongara) and the adjoining Charlotte Bongara Zinc Oxide concessions (Charlotte Bongara). The Bongara was in production from 2007 to 2008 but had to close due to declining zinc prices associated with the 2008 financial crisis. The Charlotte Bongara concessions is very prospective and has several at-surface high-grade drill intercepts providing numerous drill targets and great blue-sky exploration potential. "Historical data on the Bongara Zinc-Oxide project -- which spans a concession area of more than 19,768 acres -- shows, zinc grades above 20 percent and past metallurgical recoveries exceeding 90 percent, placing it in the highest percentile bracket of known zinc deposits. "In August 2017, Zinc One received approval to suspend the mine closure at the former Bongara Zinc-Oxide mine. This was undertaken by Zinc One in order to advance its exploration activity with plans to bring the project back into production (http://nnw.fm/8aEw4). The approval of the suspension by the Peru Ministry of Energy and Mines allowed Zinc One to utilize the current Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) attached to the project to shorten the timeline to obtain current and future permits for exploration." About Zinc One Resources, Inc. Zinc One is focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of prospective and advanced zinc projects in mining-friendly jurisdictions. Zinc One's key assets are the Bongara Mine and Charlotte-Bongara Zinc-Oxide Projects in north-central Peru. The Bongara Zinc-Oxide Mine Project was in production from 2007 to 2008, but shut down due to the global financial crisis and concurrent decrease in the zinc price. Past production included 20% zinc grades and recoveries over 90% from surface and near-surface nonsulfide zinc mineralization. High-grade nonsulfide zinc mineralization is known to outcrop between the mined area and the Charlotte-Bongara Zinc-Oxide Project, which is nearly six kilometers to the north-northwest and where past drilling intercepted various near-surface zones with high-grade zinc. Zinc One is managed by a proven team of exploration geologists and engineers who have previously constructed and operated successful mining operations. For more information, visit the company's website at www.ZincOne.com About NetworkNewsWire NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) NetworkNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge. For more information please visit https://www.NetworkNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. NNW Contact: NetworkNewsWire (NNW) New York, New York www.NetworkNewsWire.com 212.418.1217 Office Email Contact ALISO VIEJO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 --XsunX, Inc. (OTC PINK: XSNX), a leading solar and energy saving technologies provider, announced today that a much-anticipated recommendation by the USITC offers encouraging news for growth in US solar industry. With the potential for looming import duties on certain imported solar cells and assembled solar modules, XsunX has seen its access to a broad range of manufacturers and economically priced product narrow over the past several months. Now, with the USITC's member recommendations outlining a four-year plan with duties declining 5%/yr., and initiating far less than what the industry had feared, the Company sees access and costs to improve which bodes well for current and future projects. "After the trade commission's recommendations were released Tuesday, we reached out to some of our vendors who were elated by the news," stated Tom Djokovich, CEO of XsunX, Inc. "While the recommendations now need to be finalized by the current administration, we see the commission's opinion as a validation that the solar industry represents a diverse and large sector for job growth important to the US economy," continued Mr. Djokovich, CEO of XsunX, Inc. The request for the tariff was initially presented by two US based module manufacturers with foreign ties requesting import duties to be set that would establish significantly higher import cost for assembled solar modules. Under the USITC's average recommendation of a 30% duty, and assuming a current West Coast imported module cost of $0.38/watt, the application of a 30% duty would suggest a module cost at about $0.49/watt. "As recent as 2016, the Company's cost for modules on some projects exceeded where we anticipate module costs will be in 2018 under the proposal and we were still able to present economically advantageous solar investment proposals to clients," stated Tom Djokovich, CEO of XsunX, Inc. "At the same time, our balance of system costs have continued to decline and we anticipate continuing to offer exceptionally advantageous investment options to our customers," concluded Mr. Djokovich, CEO of XsunX, Inc. About XsunX: XsunX specializes in the sale, design, and installation of solar photovoltaic power generation (PV), and energy saving technologies to provide our clients long term savings, predictability, and control of their energy costs. Making solar energy a sound investment for our clients is our mission. For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.xsunx.com, or to learn more about the benefits of solar energy for your business or home schedule a free PV project assessment. Safe Harbor Statement: Matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release are forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "may," "intend," "expect" and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or to the Company's future financial performance, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Investors should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking statements since they involve known and unknown, uncertainties and other factors which are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control which could, and likely will, materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Any forward-looking statement reflects the Company's current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to operations, results of operations, growth strategy and liquidity. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could impact the Company and the forward-looking statements contained herein, are included in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future. Contact: Tom Djokovich President and CEO 888-797-4527 email: info@xsunx.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- WPC Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "WPC") (TSX VENTURE: WPQ) announces it has entered into a letter agreement (the "LOI") with Mandalay Resources Corporation ("Mandalay") under which the Company may acquire Mandalay's subsidiary, Lupin Mines Incorporated ("Lupin"), which owns the historic Lupin gold mine (the "Property"). The LOI replaces the Purchase Agreement with Mandalay dated October 31, 2016, and Amendment to Purchase Agreement, dated February 28, 2017, to acquire Lupin. (For additional information regarding the Purchase Agreement and Lupin Mines Incorporated please see the WPC's news releases dated November 1, 2016 and March 3, 2017, and the Company website - www.wpcresources.com.) The letter agreement calls for WPC and Mandalay to enter into a Lupin Option Agreement which will provide for WPC to acquire 100% ownership in Lupin, on or before December 31, 2018, WPC must satisfy the following requirements: a. Make a non-refundable payment of $400,000 to Mandalay for the use of the Lupin camp within 10 business days of execution of the definitive Lupin Option Agreement; b. Incur a minimum of $1,000,000 in direct exploration expenditures on the Property; c. Make a non-refundable payment of $2,600,000 to Mandalay prior to close; d. Grant to Mandalay a conditional aggregate cash payment equal to the equivalent of 10,000 ounces of refined gold, payable in 12 quarterly installments equal to the cash equivalent of 833 1/3 ounces of refined gold per quarter, based on the average gold price for each such quarter, beginning with the second quarter immediately following the full quarter after the commencement of commercial production on the Property; e. Grant to Mandalay, beginning in the quarter after the completion of payment of the aforementioned 12 quarterly instalments, a 1% NSR royalty on gold production from the Property; and f. Post any required Lupin reclamation security in excess of the $25.5 million pre-existing reclamation security; assume responsibility for all reclamation obligations associated with the Property and make any reclamation refund payment to Mandalay for reclamation work done by Mandalay prior to the transfer of Lupin to the Company. WPC's President and CEO, Stephen Wilkinson commented, "Based on our due diligence, we believe the Project offers an exciting mix of known mineralization and near surface exploration targets with a potential opportunity to leverage existing infrastructure to re-establish the Lupin mine." About the Lupin Gold Mine The Property is situated approximately 400 kilometres north of Yellowknife on the western side of Contwoyto Lake within the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut. The Property consists of five contiguous Mining Leases covering 6,758 hectares and is subject to a 1.0% net smelter return royalty payable to Kinross Gold Corporation. The on-site infrastructure includes a 2,300 ton per day gold mill, shops, warehouse, fuel farm, tailings facilities, residences, shaft and hoist, power generation, 1.6 km all-season air strip, and permits, including a Type "A" Water License. In 2011, Elgin Mining Inc. re-evaluated the Lupin database to prepare an updated Lupin resource estimate. Using 5 grams gold per tonne ("g/t ") over a minimum horizontal width of 2.5 metres as a lower cut-off, an inferred resource was estimated to contain 1,110,000 tonnes grading 11.32 g/t, containing 403,000 ounces of gold mainly within the "West Zone - South of Shaft". Note: WPC considers this to be an historic resource as estimated at December 31, 2011 in the technical report on the property entitled "NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Lupin Mine Property, Kitikmeot Region - Nunavut, for Elgin Mining Inc." by G. A. Harron, P.Geo. The technical report is available for viewing under Elgin's corporate profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. A qualified person on the behalf of WPC has not done sufficient work to classify this historic estimate as a current mineral resource and WPC does not treat it as a current mineral resource. About WPC Resources Inc. WPC is a Vancouver, based gold exploration company focused on mineral exploration and development. In 2014, the Company entered into an agreement to acquire Inukshuk Exploration Inc., the owner of a 100% interest in the 8,015 ha Hood River property located contiguous to the Ulu Gold Property. Recently, the Company signed a letter of intent to acquire a 100% interest in the advanced Ulu Gold Property from Mandalay Resources Corporation. On July 13, 2015, under a previous agreement with Mandalay, WPC filed an amended technical report on SEDAR, titled "Technical Report on the Ulu Gold Property, Nunavut, Canada" dated July 10, 2015. The Company's Ulu mineral resource was estimated by independent consultants using a 4 gram per tonne of gold cut-off value as Measured and Indicated Resources as 2.50 million tonnes with 605,000 gold ounces and an Inferred Resource of 1.26 M tonnes with 226,000 gold ounces. The Company has 98,900,304 shares issued and is listed on the TSX-V with the trading symbol: WPQ. 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. CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INFORMATION This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking information. All information included herein, other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Contacts: WPC Resources Inc. Stephen Wilkinson President (778) 379-1433 info@wpcresources.ca WPC Resources Inc. Wayne Moorhouse CFO & Secretary (778) 379-1433 info@wpcresources.ca Denver, Colorado--(Newsfile Corp. - November 2, 2017) - CannabisNewsWire ("CNW"), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company for the cannabis industry, today announces the publication of an editorial featuring SinglePoint, Inc. (OTC Pink: SING), a client of CNW focused on strengthening its position in the marijuana industry through the acquisition of, or investment in, small to mid-sized cannabis companies. The publication, titled, "As Bitcoin Boom Continues, Major Players are Validating Promising Forecasts for its Limitless Value Potential," highlights companies that are developing new cryptocurrency platforms as the demand for bitcoin continues to climb. To view the full publication, visit: https://www.cannabisnewswire.com/bitcoin-boom-continues-major-players-validating-promising-forecasts-limitless-value-potential/ "Some experts believe the value of bitcoin will spike much higher than this and that it has only just begun its climb in value. Investors have glommed onto bitcoin's rising star en masse this year, and many companies have been pursuing means of profitably utilizing this most popular of the cryptocurrencies. One standout company is employing bitcoin to serve the needs of another booming market: legalized marijuana. SinglePoint, Inc. (SING) (SING Profile) is very close to launching its own bitcoin exchange aimed at solving the current problems of unbankability for cannabis businesses in the United States. "The new bitcoin exchange being developed by SinglePoint will enable cannabis businesses to deploy a user-friendly method of accepting credit and debit card payments without the need for cooperation from banks or the FDIC. The company is developing an in-house solution that will allow cannabis consumers to obtain bitcoin at any point of sale and to instantly make bitcoin-powered purchases using debit and credit cards. SinglePoint is an early-mover in bringing such technology to the U.S., and its bitcoin application will be fully KYC-AML compliant. Users can create an account online or sign up in seconds at the point of sale." About SinglePoint, Inc. SinglePoint, Inc. (SING) has grown from a full-service mobile technology provider to a publicly traded holding company. Through diversification into horizontal markets, SinglePoint is building its portfolio by acquiring an interest in undervalued subsidiaries, thereby providing a rich, diversified holding base. Through its subsidiary SingleSeed, the company is providing products and services to the cannabis industry. Connect on social media at: https://www.facebook.com/SinglePointMobile, www.twitter.com/_SinglePoint_, www.linkedin.com/company/SinglePoint and www.youtube.com/user/SinglePointMobile For more information, visit www.SinglePoint.com or www.SingleSeed.com About CannabisNewsWire (CNW) CannabisNewsWire ("CNW") is a specialized information service that (1) aggregates cannabis news, (2) provides CannabisNewsBreaks that quickly updates investors in the space, (3) enhances corporate press releases, (4) helps companies with distribution and optimization of social media, and (5) delivers comprehensive corporate communication solutions. CNW is uniquely positioned in the cannabis market with a strong team of journalists and writers who can help private and public companies reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public through our ever-growing dissemination network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets. CNW is bringing unparalleled visibility, recognition and content to the cannabis industry. For more information please visit https://wwwCannabisNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://CNW.fm/Disclaimer Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. CNW Contact: CannabisNewsWire (CNW) Denver, Colorado www.CannabisNewsWire.com 303.498.7722 Office Editor@CannabisNewsWire.net VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Mundoro Capital Inc. (TSX VENTURE: MUN) (www.mundoro.com) ("Mundoro" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the Company is mobilizing for drilling at the East and West Zone on the Zeleznik license ("Zeleznik"). Zeleznik is one of the four licenses currently being sole funded by our joint venture partner Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation ("JOGMEC") as part of the JOGMEC-Mundoro joint venture announced in March 2016. Zeleznik is located at the northern end of the Timok Magmatic Complex in northeastern Serbia as shown in Figure 1: Location Map of Timok North Projects; the license is north of the Serbian state-owned Majdanpek copper-gold mine. Teo Dechev, CEO and President of Mundoro commented, "Following up on the Q4-2016 Phase II drilling program at Zeleznik, Mundoro and our partner JOGMEC are pleased to be mobilising for the Phase III fence drilling program with both delineation and step-out drilling at the West Zone and East Zone. The exploration program at Zeleznik has been advancing over the last three years to now reach Phase III drilling which will be used to determine initial volume and grade for the mineralized zones in this area of the license. Mundoro is also completing drilling at the JOGMEC-Mundoro joint venture project, Borsko, with 3,000 meters over four drill holes to further test the high sulphidation epithermal target identified earlier this year. Drill results are anticipated for mid-December 2017." ZELEZNIK EAST ZONE AND WEST ZONE TARGET AREAS The 2017 Phase III drill program is budgeted for 4120 meters of drilling in 16 holes as shown in Figure 2: Zeleznik Drill Plan Map to test the East Zone with seven holes and the West Zone with nine holes. The West Zone proposed drill holes are collared on three parallel sections at approximately 100 m between fences and 100 m between holes on each fence. The East Zone proposed drill holes are designed as fences to holes ZELDD06, ZELDD05 and ZELDD04 and proposed to further test the carbonate-replacement potential of the East Zone porphyry-marble contacts. This Phase III drill program for the East Zone and West Zone is designed to follow up on the previous two drilling campaigns which successfully intersected copper-gold mineralisation at both zones and expanded the extents of the mineralised envelopes (see press releases from November 4, 2016 and June 27, 2017). The focus of this Phase III drilling program is to locate and better define the higher-grade bearing porphyry intrusions and massive sulphides which would upgrade the lower grade bulk material to potentially minable material. The goal is to establish volume and grade through both delineation and step out drilling across the mineralized zones. At the West Zone target, one of the diorite porphyry dikes contains chalcopyrite stockwork veining returned 25.8 m @ 0.39% Cu, 0.076 g/t Au (0.43% CuEq) in drill hole ZELDD01. This result demonstrated that higher grade porphyry mineralisation exists at the West Zone which requires systematic drilling. At the East Zone target, drill hole ZELDD05 intersected 2.8 m @ 2.11% Cu; 1.50 g/t Au while drill hole ZELDD06 ended in mineralization of 4.9 m @ 0.8% Cu; 1.00 g/t Au at a depth of 142.3 m. The high grade mineralisation is carbonate-replacement on the porphyry dyke margins or, as in the Majdanpek deposit nearby, in marble contacts within the larger dykes. The drilling results to date suggest that carbonate-replacement bodies abutting (or within) the early porphyry dykes are likely to be better mineralized and potentially larger in size and require further drilling to test this potential. Southern Extension of copper-gold-molybdenum-in-soil anomaly In Q2-2017, Mundoro announced an extension of the copper-gold-molybdenum-in-soil anomaly for an additional 500 meters along strike, and towards the south, at the West Zone and East Zone (see Figure 2: Zeleznik Drill Plan Map). Mundoro has received permission for trenching along the southern extension area after which the aim is to drill test the copper and gold soil anomalies at the southern extension of the West Zone and East Zone in Q1-2018. On behalf of the Company, Teo Dechev, Chief Executive Officer, President and Director Sampling and Analysis All drill core samples are processed and assayed using 50-gram fire assay with atomic absorption finish and ME-MS61 by ALS Serbia and Romania. Quality Assurance and quality control procedures include the systematic insertion of standards and duplicates into the sample streams. Field duplicate samples are taken every 25 samples and standards and blanks are inserted after every 20th sample. All data collected in the field and assay results from the laboratories are routinely verified and entered in an Access database. Qualified Person Technical information contained in this Press Release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. G. Magaranov, P. Geo., Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Mundoro Capital Inc. Mundoro is a Canadian mineral exploration and development public company focused on building value for its shareholders through directly investing in mineral projects that have the ability to generate future returns for shareholders. The Company currently holds a diverse portfolio of projects in two European countries as well as an investment in a producing gold mine in Bulgaria and a feasibility stage gold project in China. The Company holds eight 100% owned projects in Serbia, the four Timok North Projects are in option to JOGMEC, and the four Timok South Projects are being advanced by Mundoro. Mundoro's common shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "MUN". Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This News Release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "will", "expect", "intend", "plan", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe" or "continue" or similar words or the negative thereof, and include the following: completion of the earn-in expenditures and options by JOGMEC; and completion of a definitive joint venture agreement by the parties. The material assumptions that were applied in making the forward looking statements in this News Release include expectations as to the mineral potential of the Timok North Properties, the Company's future strategy and business plan and execution of the Company's existing plans. We caution readers of this News Release not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements contained in this News Release, as there can be no assurance that they will occur and they are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include general economic and market conditions, exploration results, commodity prices, changes in law, regulatory processes, the status of Mundoro's assets and financial condition, actions of competitors and the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities. The forward-looking statements contained in this News Release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this News Release are made as of the date of this News Release and the Board undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Shareholders are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and for a more detailed discussion of such risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, refer to the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators available on www.sedar.com. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Contacts: Teo Dechev CEO, President and Director Mundoro Capital Inc. +1-604-669-8055 MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Today, Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada pediatric patients join the Upopolis network, an innovative social media platform that helps young patients safely and securely access youth-friendly medical content, and stay connected with other patients as well as their families and friends while undergoing care. Founded and created by Kids' Health Links Foundation (KHLF) and powered by TELUS Health, Upopolis.com is Canada's only private, secure and trusted online social network designed for kids and teens receiving medical care in hospitals and clinics. Upopolis differs from typical social networks by delivering therapeutic benefits for the youth who use it. These benefits include being able to access medical content written in youth-friendly language so patients can better understand their diagnosis and treatment plan; and enabling connections with other patients who share similar diagnoses through public and private discussion groups, which can lead to new friendships, shared experiences and new interests that form a broader support network for the patient. "Shriners Hospitals offer, family-centered supportive care to children and families," says Trudy Wong, Social Worker, "We aim to make it feel as much like home as possible for our young patients and adding a tool like Upopolis is another way we can help reduce the anxiety of a hospital stay and make it as normal and as positive an experience as possible. We wish to empower them to connect with other patients here in Montreal or anywhere across Canada, and learn more about their illness in a way they can easily understand." In addition to remaining securely and privately connected with networks outside of the hospital or treatment centre while undergoing care, Upopolis also provides patients with familiar features of social networking such as personal profiles, newsfeed, instant chat, photo uploading and creating spaces based on common interests and/or diagnoses. "Today, more than 2,500 youth in children's hospitals across Canada have been able to access Upopolis. This is made possible by the overwhelming support of TELUS as our technology partner, as well as our many individual and corporate supporters," said Basile Papaevangelou, chairman and founder of Kids' Health Links Foundation. "Having Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada join our Upopolis family brings us one step closer to our goal of making Upopolis available across the country in every medical treatment facility that serves children and youth. We are excited for the patients to benefit from what the platform offers, and for them to take advantage of the opportunities for connection, collaboration and leadership that Upopolis brings to their hospital experience." KHLF and TELUS Health launched the first Upopolis program in 2007 at McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton. Since then it has expanded to 27 additional hospitals and health organizations across Canada. The Upopolis team and TELUS Health also work together to adapt the program to meet the specific needs of each facility, whether adding French language capabilities or information specific to mental health. "For youth undergoing medical treatment, research shows us that the ability for them to stay connected with their support network, both inside and outside of the hospital, is a significant part of the healing process," said Paul Lepage, President, TELUS Health. "Through Upopolis and our extensive work using innovative technology to drive better health outcomes for Canadians, we are privileged to help youth stay connected to friends, family and others facing similar health challenges, as well as learn more about their health through access to online medical information in a safe and secure environment." About Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada Established in Montreal in 1925, Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada is the only Canadian establishment within the network of 22 Shriners hospitals. This bilingual, short-term, acute care hospital provides ultra-specialized orthopaedic care to children from coast to coast in Canada, the U.S. and around the world. The mission of the hospital is to promote health and provide treatment and rehabilitation to infants, children and young adults with orthopaedic and neuromuscular problems such as scoliosis, osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease), club feet, hip dysplasia, leg length discrepancies and cerebral palsy. The hospital is committed to excellence and innovation in clinical practice, research and education and to ensuring patients and their families are treated in a caring, family-friendly environment. Affiliated with McGill University, the hospital provides clinical experience and teaching for residents and allied professionals within its outstanding new facility on the Glen site. The hospital is present in communities across Canada, thanks to telemedicine, outreach clinics and satellite clinics. Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada has been helping kids reach their full potential for 90 years and counting. About TELUS Health TELUS Health is a leader in telehomecare, electronic medical and health records, consumer health, benefits management and pharmacy management. TELUS Health solutions give health authorities, providers, physicians, patients and consumers the power to turn information into better health outcomes. For more information about TELUS Health, please visit telushealth.com. About the Kids' Health Links Foundation The Kids' Health Links Foundation was founded by Basile Papaevangelou and his daughter Christina to foster initiatives focused on alleviating the stress, isolation and loneliness for kids and teens undergoing medical care so that they might be better able to overcome traumatic medical experiences. These initiatives include: Upopolis -- targeting healthy connections for pediatric patients; Upedia -- providing resources supporting child life specialists; and UMIND -- connecting professionals dedicated to child and youth mental health. For more information about the Kids' Health Links Foundation please visit: kidshealthlinks.org. Contacts: Krista Naugler Kids' Health Links Foundation 902-885-5002 krista@kidshealthlinks.org Marie-Christine Houle TELUS Social and Media Relations 514-702-0369 marie.houle@telus.com Laure Moureaux Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada 514-282-7222 lmoureaux@shrinenet.org WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - US President Donald Trump reacted furiously and repeatedly called for death penalty to the main accused in the deadly terrorist attack in New York City. 'NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. Death penalty,' Trump said on Twitter Wednesday about Sayfullo Saipov, who carried out the attack. And in an early morning tweet Thursday, the President said: 'Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system. There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. Death penalty!' New York state has banned capital punishment, but since the charges filed against Saipov are federal, the government can override it, reports say. Sayfullo Saipov was charged with terrorism offenses by US prosecutors, who said the Uzbek immigrant has been planning the attack since once year ago. The 29-year old Uzbek immigrant told investigators that he decided to carry out the truck attack to inflict maximum damage against civilians. He plowed through a busy bike path in Lower Manhattan Tuesday night, mowing down pedestrians and cyclists before hitting a school bus and shooting with an imitation gun. Eight people, including five Argentinians and a Belgian citizen, were killed and a dozen others injured in the ISIS-inspired assault. The White House said Saipov would be considered as an enemy combatant, signaling a possible detention for him without access to normal rights. 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. 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. TROY, MI -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Philip M. Seng, the recently retired president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) and an inaugural member of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame, will deliver the keynote address during the Hall of Fame's Class of 2017 Induction Ceremony and Dinner on the evening of January 29, 2018, at the Omni Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta. The 2018 induction ceremony precedes the opening day of the 2018 International Production and Processing Expo (IPPE), the largest gathering of the meat and poultry industries in North America. The 2018 IPPE is sponsored by the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, the American Feed Industry Association and the North American Meat Institute (NAMI). Mr. Seng managed USMEF operations worldwide, directing strategies and priorities in international programs, research, technical services, industry relations and global communications. He also served as the primary spokesman for USMEF and other exporting interests to government and private entities. He joined the USMEF staff as their Asian Director in 1982 and became the vice president of international programs in 1988. He was named president and chief executive officer in January 1990. Mr. Seng served four terms as the president of International Meat Secretariat and was the only American ever to serve in that capacity. He also was president of the Japan-American Society in Colorado, and has served on the President's Agricultural Policy Advisory Council in Washington. Mr. Seng, a leading voice and advocate for the international meat trade during the last 35 years, was inducted into the inaugural class of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame in 2009, and was recognized in 2016 by The National Provisioner as one of 25 icons who made a significant impact on industry since 1991. "The incoming Hall of Fame Class of 2017 is a reflection of the talented, innovative and dedicated leaders who have worked tirelessly to ensure the continued strength and growth of the meat and poultry industry," said NAMI president and CEO Barry Carpenter. "These individuals have set the highest standards of service, professionalism and ethics, and their work is an example that other industry professionals should seek to emulate." Tickets to attend the Meat Industry Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Dinner are $250 each. A special reserved table seating of eight is $2,000. They are available by contacting Meat Industry Hall of Fame president Chuck Jolley at (913) 205-3791 or Chuck@MeatIndustryHallofFame.com or with your IPPE registration. For further information, contact: Andy Hanacek Editor-in-Chief The National Provisioner Phone - (847) 405-4011 Email Contact TORONTO, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- ModiFace, the leading provider of Augmented Reality technology for the beauty industry, is today announcing the availability of a new edition of its popular web-based e-commerce try-on technology. This technology is first, launching in partnership with Bobbi Brown Cosmetics on their web and mobile web-ecommerce product pages. ModiFace's new web technology features several unique and patented capabilities including: 1 - Light Field Rendering which uniquely accounts for the level of light, texture, and shine in the photo or video and adjusts the makeup shades dynamically. 2 - ModiFace's latest advances in facial feature tracking and rendering, precisely map cosmetics at the right location on the face in live video. 3 - New multi-core optimized web makeup rendering enables smooth and ultra-fast performance across a wide range of computing devices and browsers, with most running above 30 frames-per-second with no noticeable latency. 4 - New intelligent lighting adaptation which adjusts the white balance and exposure of the video, resulting in well-lit and beautiful video and image rendering for each video frame. "ModiFace's Augmented Reality allows us to seamlessly bring the in-store experience of trying on a lipstick to our consumers -- whether they're shopping from their living rooms or on-the-go. It's a simple and fun way for women to effortlessly explore our wide shade and formula range in lipsticks before they purchase, allowing consumers to have fun with AR and make a decision with confidence," said Laurie Rifkin, Executive Director of Ecommerce at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. The Bobbi Brown e-commerce, AR integration, enables shoppers to preview some of the brand's most popular beauty products directly on the product pages where customers make purchasing decisions. It is expected that this integration will have a direct impact on e-commerce sales on the brand's web and mobile web sites. "Augmented Reality for trying on beauty products has evolved from a nice utility to a transformative technology that defines the brand-consumer relationship and becomes a significant driver of sales and engagement. We are extremely delighted by this first step in the partnership with Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and look forward to all the exciting advancements that we will jointly work together on in the coming months and years," said Parham Aarabi, Founder and CEO of ModiFace. About ModiFace ModiFace is the leading creator of intelligent augmented reality technology for the beauty industry, providing customizable AR try-on capability for web/ecommerce, mobile, in-store, and messaging. ModiFace's patented technology, which is based on over a decade of research at Stanford University, powers over 200 custom augmented reality apps for beauty brands such as Sephora, Estee Lauder, Allergan, L'Oreal, Unilever, and Coty. For more information, visit http://www.modiface.com. Regan Austin Email Contact Global technology investment firm Battery Ventures leads Series D funding round; General Partner Itzik Parnafes joins GetYourGuide Board of Directors BERLIN, 2017-11-02 15:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GetYourGuide, the largest online booking platform for travel activities, today announced it has closed a $75 million Series D funding round led by Battery Ventures, a global technology-focused investment firm. Battery Ventures is joined in the funding round by all of GetYourGuide's existing venture partners, including KKR, Spark Capital, Highland Europe, Sunstone Capital and Nokia Growth Partners (NGP). The new capital will be applied toward international expansion and technological development as GetYourGuide strengthens its position as the global market leader for tours, activities and attractions. The funding comes at a time of unprecedented momentum for GetYourGuide, which this summer crossed the threshold of 10 million tickets booked, with nearly half of those booked in 2017 alone. The in-destination activities segment of the global tourism industry, which now represents a $135 billion market and accounts for 10 percent of global leisure travel revenue, is growing at a similar clip: recent estimates project that the global market for tours and activities will reach $183 billion by 2020, and that online bookings within the segment will more than double from 2015 levels. 1 "We are experiencing explosive growth this year and have stepped up to become the largest online booking platform for travel activities," said Johannes Reck, CEO of GetYourGuide. "It's our goal to significantly disrupt the in-destination travel experience in the years ahead, and the financing we've raised from both new and existing investors represents a vote of confidence in our progress toward capturing the massive market opportunity before us." As part of Battery Ventures' lead investment in the funding round, GetYourGuide's Board of Directors has been strengthened with the addition of General Partner Itzik Parnafes. An Israeli-born entrepreneur and investor, Parnafes brings a decade of experience in advising technology-focused businesses across a diverse array of industries. "The company has already made significant progress in carving out a large and high-profile niche in the European travel market," said Parnafes. "I'm looking forward to working closely with the Board to support its efforts to capitalize on what I think is a very exciting segment of global tourism." GetYourGuide is the latest addition to Battery's portfolio of travel software, experience and marketplace companies, which it has built over the past decade and a half across the U.S. and Europe. About GetYourGuide As the largest online booking platform for travel activities, GetYourGuide powers access to more than 31,000 tours, activities and attractions in upwards of 7,300 destinations around the world. From Skip-the-Line tickets to the Eiffel Tower to shark diving in Cape Town, GetYourGuide offers things to do for every traveller, both on its own site and in partnership with premier travel brands worldwide. Headquartered in Berlin, GetYourGuide employs more than 400 people across its offices in 11 countries. For additional information about GetYourGuide, please visit the company's website at www.getyourguide.com. About Battery Ventures Battery strives to invest in cutting-edge, category-defining businesses in markets including software and services, Web infrastructure, consumer Internet, mobile and industrial technologies. Founded in 1983, the firm backs companies at stages ranging from seed to private equity and invests globally from offices in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Tel Aviv and London. Follow the firm on Twitter @BatteryVentures, visit www.battery.com and find a full list of Battery's portfolio companies here. Press Contact Will Gluckin GetYourGuide +49 176 7112 0875 will.gluckin@getyourguide.com ____________________________________ 1 Source: Phocuswright, "Tours & Activities Come of Age: The Global Travel Activities Marketplace 2014-2020" 2017 Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / In Ovations Holdings, Inc. (OTC PINK: INOH) announces a distribution agreement with Oregon Biochar for its line of premium biocharcoal and soil amendments. According to Mark Goldberg, Chief Executive Officer of INOH, "This is a great opportunity to partner with a terrific team of innovators focused on production of premium materials and products for the Cannabis Industry. Biochar enhances the fertility and stability of the soils and plowed directly into the ground. The cannabis industry is highly focused on biochar as a soil amendments. As legal cannabis becomes commoditized, growers are looking for competitive advantages in yield and quality. Premium biocharcoal and soil amendments will play an important role in the company's growth. We are very excited to add this relationship to our portfolio relationships." Grant Scheve, VP Sales for Oregon Biochar Solutions stated, "Our company has been very impressed by the ability of INOH to strategically form a team to address the growing needs of the cannabis/hemp arena. We are pleased to have a distribution agreement in place and start working with the advisory board of INOH. In the coming months, we are expanding our product line which will include an Organic line of Biochar and a very impressive biochar activator." In addition to producing biochar, Oregon Biochar Solutions also generates renewable energy in Southern Oregon. Grant also noted, "Our goal is to produce a product that is reliable, high quality and renewable. It really all boils down to biomass utilization. We undoubtedly believe renewable energy and biochar in a combined process is the best end use of our country's underutilized resource." Additional information on INOH's new customers and service partners in the Cannabis Industry will be made available as appropriate. UPDATE In addition, Gary Williams, Lead Advisor of our Cannabis and Hemp Division stated: "INOH is currently conducting cannabis grow trials in a state of the art 10,000 sq ft Oregon grow facility using standard Bio-Char to soil ratios to assess the effectiveness of the product in the cannabis/hemp environments. The test is in its third week and stats will be gathered at the one month point. So far the Bio-Char plants are showing a marked improvement in these early stages of growth over the non bio-char plants and further increases in size and overall yield of the plants is expected." ABOUT In Ovations Holdings, Inc. through its subsidiary, Electro Verde Inc., entered into a marketing distribution agreement with Seychelle Water Environmental Technologies, Inc. which manufactures and supplies revolutionary water filtration systems featuring breakthrough technology, most notably, Ionic Adsorption Micro Filtration. Seychelle is a prominent company in the fast-growing water filtration industry, who markets a complete line of top-quality portable water filtration products and brands in North America and worldwide. The company is a minority owner of Atmospheric Water Aquarius Brands) a company involved in water purification. The Company is also engaged in identifying and engaging in other business opportunities for purposes of diversification and revenue generation. Oregon Biochar Solutions manufactures biochar in Southern Oregon. This substance is suitable for the creation of biochar-based soil amendment products, and new research suggests that it is appropriate for certain water filtration and environmental remediation applications. The companies website can be viewed at Chardirect.com. Aquarius Brands is a group of companies specializing in water generation, conservation and education for aquaculture, homes, businesses, hotels, restaurants, schools, utility companies and more. Their products include AWS AquaBoy air to water generators, AquaSaver water processing equipment, Boomerang high-capacity compact bottling machines, Retrax solar solutions and DroughtBuster water saving devices. FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER 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 and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the statements made herein. In Ovations Holdings, Inc. does not grow, process, sell or distribute any products that are in violation of the United States Controlled Substances Act (US.CSA). In Ovations Holdings Email: inovationsholdingsinc@gmail.com Website: www.inovationsholdings.com Facebook: InOvationsHoldings Twitter: @inohotc Aquarius Brands The Conservation Company 12260 SW 53rd Street, Suite 603 Cooper City, Florida, 33330, USA Email: RGoldstein@AquariusBrands.org www.AquariusBrands.org www.AtmosphericWaterSolutions.com Seychelle Environmental Technologies, Inc. http://www.seychelle.com Dr. Kenneth Hughes ken@miltonhvac.com Gary Williams spydoctorgary@gmail.com SOURCE: In Ovations Holdings MUMBAI, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bharat Book Bureau announces the addition of the report "Africa E-Learning Market: Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022" to its offering. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130128/590935 ) E-learning is a system based on formalized teaching with the help of electronic resources. It can be termed as a network enabled transfer of skills and knowledge which offers the flexibility to fit in a large number of recipients at the same or different time schedules. It is gaining prominence in the African countries as classroom teaching is unable to meet the growing need to impart quality education. The African education system is underfunded with education institutes being situated in remote areas and lacking considerably qualified teaching staff. As a result of this, learners from different areas are encouraged towards adopting e-learning methods, such as K-12 sector, post-secondary, corporate and government learning, etc. View Africa E-Learning Market Report : https://www.bharatbook.com/request-sample/927843 From desktop computers to smartphones, e-learning spans the array of devices that are available for the consumers. It facilitates the learners to choose from a wide range of specially designed courses, along with accessing various learning tools, sharing content online, and engaging in interactive sessions from miles apart. E-learning also aids learners with different learning abilities to proceed through courses as per their convenience. As a result of its various advantages, the market for e-learning is further expected to reach a value of more than US$ 1,400 Million by 2022. The report has segmented the market on the basis of type as packaged content, services and platform. Currently, packaged content accounts for the majority of the total market share. The market is further segmented on the basis of technology, covering mobile learning, simulation based learning, game based learning, learning management system (LMS), etc. Amongst these, mobile learning holds the majority of the market share. On a regional-basis, South Africa, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Kenya emerge as countries where e-learning is gaining prominence rapidly. South Africa represents the largest region, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the African market. An analysis of the competitive landscape provides the details key players operative in the market. Some of the major players are Eneza Education, Via Afrika, Obami, Tutor.ng, and Dapt.io. This report provides a deep insight into the Africa e-learning industry covering all its essential aspects. This ranges from macro overview of the market to micro details of the industry performance, recent trends, key market drivers and challenges, SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces analysis, value chain analysis, etc. This report is a must-read for entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, consultants, business strategists, and all those who have any kind of stake or are planning to foray into the Africa e-learning industry in any manner. Key Aspects Analysed: Trends and dynamics in the e-learning market. Major product types and their current and future market potential. Major technology segments and their current and future market potential. Key drivers/restraints and their impact on the current and future market scenario. Examination of the competitive landscape. Major E-Learning Types Covered in This Report: Packaged Content Services Platforms Major Technologies Covered in This Report: Mobile Learning Simulation Based Learning Game Based Learning Learning Management System (LMS) Others Major Sectors Covered in This Report: K-12 Sector Post-Secondary Corporate and Government Learning Others Major Regions Covered in This Report: South Africa Morocco Nigeria Tunisia Kenya Others Focus of the Analysis: Overview Historical and current market scenario Market trends Market forecast Click to know more details about the report: https://www.bharatbook.com/technology-market-research-reports-927843/africa-e-learning.html About Bharat Book Bureau: Bharat Book Bureauis the leading market research information provider for market research reports, company profiles, industry analysis, country reports , business reports, newsletters and online databases Bharat Book Bureau provides over a million reports from more than 400 publishers around the globe. We cover sectors starting from Aeronautics to Zoology.In case the reports don't match your requirement then we can do a specialized Custom Research for you. Contact us: Bharat Book Bureau E: info@bharatbook.com P: +91-22-27810772 / 27810773 W: http://www.bharatbook.com LinkedIn :http://www.linkedin.com/company/bharat-book-bureau Twitter :https://twitter.com/researchbook Blog :https://www.bharatbook.com/blog/ TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- With Bill 148 poised to go to third reading, Ontario Federation of Labour President Chris Buckley will outline needed amendments to Bill 148 at Committee hearings today. He will also speak at a Queen's Park OPSEU rally for contract faculty who have been on strike for decent work since October 15. Bill 148 will amend the Labour Relations Act and the Employment Standards Act. This is the first review of those laws in over two decades and will set workplace standards in Ontario for all future workers in the province whether they are part of a union or not. "Bill 148 takes some important steps but it needs to go much further to safeguard decent work for generations to come," said Buckley. "Contract faculty in colleges are experiencing precarious work firsthand. These workers are at one of the frontlines of fighting against precarious work. When our government amends Bill 148, it needs to look around at what these workers and so many others face every day, including low wages and no job security, then make changes that support decent work." Chris Buckley will speak twice today: Queen's Park Rally to Support Decent Work and Striking College Faculty: When: Rally from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. Where: Queen's Park Speaker: Chris Buckley, President, Ontario Federation of Labour Queen's Park Committee Room: When: 2:30 p.m. Where: Queen's Park, Committee Room 151 Speaker: Chris Buckley, President, Ontario Federation of Labour The OFL's www.MakeItFair.ca campaign takes on issues of inequality in the workforce, and coincides with the province's "Changing Workplaces Review." The campaign gives voice to unions' demands for across-the-board changes to the Employment Standards Act and the Labour Relations Act that would improve standards for every worker and make it easier for them to join a union. The OFL represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario. For information, visit www.OFL.ca and follow @OFLabour on Facebook and Twitter. Contacts: Meagan Perry, Director of Communications Ontario Federation of Labour 416-894-3456 mperry@ofl.ca DUBLIN, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Amino Acids Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2017-2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The global amino acids market reached a volume of around 7.5 Million Tons in 2016. Rising health-consciousness among the consumers has increased the demand for nutrient-rich food products. This has prompted the manufacturers to introduce protein-rich foods and beverages in the market, leading to an increase in the demand for amino acids. Apart from this, amino acids are used for the manufacturing of supplements which are consumed by athletes as well as the aged population. Further, amino acids are also used in animal feed to supplement the protein requirement of the animals. The report has segmented the market on the basis of type, covering glutamic acid, lysine and methionine. Glutamic acids represent the leading type within this segment. Based on raw materials, plant-based amino acids dominate the market. On the basis of application, the animal feed industry leads the market, followed by food and healthcare industry. Region-wise, the report covers Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America and the Middle East. Currently, Asia-Pacific represents the largest region, accounting for the majority of the total global share. The Unites States is the leading importer whereas China is the largest exporter of amino acids. The report has also analysed the competitive landscape of the market with some of the key global players being Amino, Ajinomoto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and CJ CHeilJedang. The market is expected to reach a volume of more than 10 Million Tons in 2022, registering a CAGR of around 5%. Key Topics Covered: 1 Preface 2 Scope and Methodology 3 Executive Summary 4 Introduction 5 Global Amino Acids Market 6 Market Breakup by Type 7 Market Breakup by Raw Material 8 Market Breakup by Application 9 Market Breakup by Region 10 Imports and Exports 11 Amino Acid Manufacturing Process 12 Competitive Landscape Ajinomoto Amino Archer Daniels Midland Cargill CJ CheilJedang For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lzv3tt/amino_acids Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - CIA has released nearly 470,000 new files, some of which provide crucial data into links between Al-Qaeda and ISIS, that were recovered during the May 2011 US raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in which Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was killed. This is the fourth tranche of materials from the Abbottabad collection released by CIA's Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). CIA Director Pompeo said the release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization. 'CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security,' he added. The material contains audio, document, image, video and software operating system files. The material, posted in the original Arabic, includes Osama Bin Laden's personal journal and more than 18,000 document files; Approximately 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence, and imagery gathered or generated by al-Qa'ida for a variety of purposes; More than 10,000 video files, al-Qaeda 'home videos,' draft videos or statements by Laden, and jihadist propaganda. One of the videos shows a clip from the wedding of Laden's son Hamza, thought to be his favorite son and touted as his successor. CIA press release says these materials provide insights into the origins of strained relationship between al-Qaeda and ISIS; as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al-Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that the terrorist organization faced at the time of Bin Laden's death. Other themes in the materials include Al-Qaeda's preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the group's attempts to promulgate its message through Western media; Al-Qaeda's efforts to exploit the Arab Awakening for global jihad; Bin Laden's efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates, despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine; and Al-Qaeda's efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals. CIA said that some materials in the Abbottabad collection, which are sensitive, pornography or could damage the United States' security, have not been released. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de VALLETTA, Malta, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As reported in the Interim report for the third quarter 2017, the full value of the 2014 Performance Share Plan grant has vested and 179,568 share awards were exercised using 179,568 SDRs from the Kindred Group's Share buy-back programme. Following this exercise, 2,298,694 SDRs from the Share buy-back programmes continue to be held by Kindred Group. The total amount of issued shares in Kindred Group plc is 230,126,200 ordinary shares with a par value of GBP 0.000625. CONTACT: For more information: Inga Lundberg, Investor Relations, +44-788-799-6116 This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com http://news.cision.com/kindred-group/r/vesting-of-2014-performance-share-plan-in-kindred-group-plc,c2381552 The following files are available for download: LONDON, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As Part of a Pre-Packaged Deal, Market Leader Holiday Extras Steps in to Salvage Purple Parking's Online Airport Parking Business Holiday Extras, the UK's market leader of travel extras for the last 35 years, today announced the acquisition of Purple Parking's brand and website, http://www.purpleparking.com The deal has been successfully completed via a pre-packaged administration sale. It follows Purple Parking's inability to secure a buyer for the whole business. Duff and Phelps are now the appointed administrators. Matthew Pack, Holiday Extras, Group Chief Executive Officer, said: "Our acquisition of Purple Parking's online assets is focused on providing continuity of service for Purple Parking's customers, suppliers and distributors. "The 36 existing Purple Parking booking agency staff will transfer immediately to Holiday Extras under TUPE regulations. "Whilst the pre-pack purchase sees us responsible for new bookings made from 3rd November via the brand, we are also focussed on ensuring that every customer that had an existing booking with Purple Parking, has their parking arrangements honoured. We are in discussion with all car parks and are very pleased with the response so far. "Customers should travel as planned, Holiday Extras are here to answer any queries on 0800 083 9689 (freephone)." Matthew Pack concluded, "We intend to use our proven expertise to make the Purple Parking booking experience faster, easier to use, and an integral part of the Holiday Extras suite of services." Notes to editors Purple Parking is a well known airport parking brand, with over 300,000 regular holidaymakers and travellers accessing its services via its website. The needs of these customers will now be served by Holiday Extras through the Purple Parking website, http://www.purpleparking.com. Holiday Extras offers a wide choice of travel extras including UK airport hotels and parking, worldwide airport lounges, fast track security, airport transfers destination car hire and holiday insurance. Established in 1983, Holiday Extras helps to make travel better for over seven million travellers each year. The company has been listed eleven times in The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For and received a Best Companies' award for wellbeing in 2017. The Holiday Extras booking app is available to download now via a link at HolidayExtras.com. He Ha! The ultimate pocket trip planner app is now available on both the App Store and Google Play. DUBLIN, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Calcium Nitrate Market 2017-2021" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The global calcium nitrate market to grow at a CAGR of 5.40% during the period 2017-2021. Global Calcium Nitrate 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. According to the report, one driver in the market is growing need for wastewater treatment. Rapid industrialization has increased the use of chemicals on a large scale. The waste released from industries is dumped into the water, thereby, leading to a rise in toxic substances. The addition of calcium nitrate has proved effective to reduce hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide gas is the cause of odor emissions and is hazardous to health. Hence, the addition of chemical absorbents or chemical filters has been introduced to mitigate the hazards of hydrogen sulfide in the air. One trend in the market is increasing demand for conventional fertilizers. The use of conventional/synthetic fertilizers has improved the quality of crops. It provides necessary nutrients and the strength to grow. The preference of fertilizers depends on the kind of crops. The conventional fertilizers available in the market are in various forms to match requirements based on soil type, atmospheric conditions, and availability of water. Further, the report states that one challenge in the market is health hazards. Calcium nitrate is classified as hazard class 5.1 by regulatory bodies. Exposure to calcium nitrate causes short-term and long-term health hazards, such as dizziness; nausea; headaches; and redness in eyes. It causes inflammation, irritation, and rashes on the skin. It can lead to severe irritation and damage of eyes, leading to loss of vision. It also causes mouth ulcers, difficulty in breathing, and choking. Inhalation of calcium nitrate causes damage to lungs. Long-term exposure leads to genetic disorders and mutations. Key vendors ADOB Agrium GFS Chemicals Sterling Chemicals Yara International Other prominent vendors All-Chemie Barium & Chemicals Blue Line Calamco Magnesium Products Maryland Biochemical Mil-Spec Industries Mineral Research & Development Nicolia Ready Mix NOAH Technologies Prochem Spectrum Chemical Surepure Chemetals Key Topics Covered: Part 01: Executive Summary Part 02: Scope Of The Report Part 03: Introduction Part 04: Market Overview Part 05: Market Landscape Part 06: Market Segmentation By Application Part 07: Geographical Segmentation Part 08: Decision Framework Part 09: Drivers And Challenges Part 10: Market Trends Part 11: Vendor Landscape Part 12: Key Vendor Analysis Part 13: Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/vhwqxs/global_calcium Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Sparton Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE: SRI) ("Sparton" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that Pu Neng Energy has been awarded a contract for construction of a 12-megawatt hour vanadium flow battery as Phase 1 of a larger 40-megawatt hour energy storage project in Hubei Province, China. This is a major milestone for Pu Neng and represents significant value to the Company. Sparton's 89.8% owned subsidiary, VanSpar Mining Inc. holds a minority interest in Pu Neng. "We are delighted with Pu Neng's progress this year," stated Lee Barker, Sparton's CEO. "All of the staff are to be commended on achieving this milestone in Pu Neng's development as the Vanadium Redox Battery ('VRB') manufacturer of choice for the energy storage industry." The full Pu Neng News Release follows: "Pu Neng Wins Contract for the Largest Vanadium Flow Battery in China as the China National Development and Reform Commission Initiates a Major Push for Energy Storage in Support of Renewable Energy November 1, 2017, for immediate release Beijing, China and Vancouver, Canada Vanadium redox (flow) battery (VRB) systems are poised to transform the largest utility grid in the world with low-cost, long-life performance in support of significant growth in solar and wind energy Pu Neng, the leading provider of vanadium flow battery technology in the world, has been awarded a contract for a 3-megawatt (MW) 12-megawatt-hour (MWh) VRB as Phase 1 of the Hubei Zaoyang 10MW 40MWh Storage Integration Demonstration Project. This first phase will be installed in Zaoyang, Hubei to integrate a large solar photovoltaic system into the grid. Following this 10MW 40MWh project, there will be a larger 100MW 500MWh energy storage project that will be the cornerstone of a new smart energy grid in Hubei Province. This large project will serve as a critical peak power plant, delivering reliability and emissions reductions. This type of project is a glimpse of the future of the Chinese electricity grid as the country is halting construction of many coal- fired power plants and pushing the integration of renewable energy with energy storage. On September 22, 2017, the China National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released Document 1701, "Guidance on the Promotion of Energy Storage Technology and Industry Development" aimed at accelerating the deployment of energy storage. The policy calls for the launch of pilot projects, including deployment of multiple 100MW-scale vanadium flow batteries, by the end of 2020, with the aim of large-scale deployment over the ensuing five years. Pu Neng signed the Hubei Zaoyang project contract with Hubei Pingfan Vanadium Energy Storage Technology Company on October 18 at a signing ceremony attended by Zaoyang City Deputy Mayor Chen Dong. Pu Neng's President, Dr. Huang Mianyan commented, "We are delighted to work with Hubei Pingfan for the development of this leading-edge project which is a demonstration of their leadership in this sector." Chairman of Hubei Pingfan Xie Guangguo, said, "We selected a vanadium flow battery because they have superior safety, reliability and lifecycle economics compared to lithium-ion and other battery types. We selected Pu Neng because it is the leader in China with its VRB technology, and has a track record of performance with State Grid Corporation of China." The project will be located in Zaoyang, and installation of the VRB system will commence in November 2017. When Phase 1 is completed in early 2018, Pu Neng's VRB will be the largest flow battery installed in China. As part of the initial agreement, Pu Neng and Hubei Vanadium will jointly develop a vanadium electrolyte supply from local vanadium sources, helping revitalize the local industrial base to meet future demand for energy storage. Robert Friedland, Chairman of Pu Neng, commented, "China has the largest and highest-grade vanadium resources in the world and is poised to use this miracle metal to fundamentally transform its electricity grid. With massive amounts of renewable energy and storage coming online, China will create the most modern, clean and efficient grid in the world." Regarding this initial contract in Hubei, he added, "Earlier this year, Chairman Xie and I discussed the opportunity to utilize Hubei's abundant vanadium resources and Pu Neng's next generation technology to set a new benchmark for the global energy storage industry. This is just the first step of what will be many projects working together." On the newly released NDRC policy, he commented, "This new policy will result in vanadium flow batteries revolutionizing modern electricity grids in the way that lithium-ion batteries are enabling the global transition to electric vehicles." Flow batteries store energy in liquid electrolyte, which is held in tanks external to the cell stacks that contain the cathode (positive) and anode (negative) sides of the battery. When charging or discharging the battery, electrons are added into or drawn out of the electrolyte as it circulates across membranes inside the stacks. Unlike other types of batteries, vanadium flow batteries use the same electrolyte solution on both the positive and negative side of the battery, yielding a nearly infinitely repeatable electrochemical process. While lithium-based batteries are well suited to consumer electronics and electric vehicles, their lifetimes can be limited. Pu Neng's VRB technology can be fully drained over an almost unlimited number of charge and discharge cycles without wearing out. This is an important factor when matching the daily demands of utility-scale solar and wind power generation. About Pu Neng Pu Neng is a fast-growing, privately held clean technology innovator. The company has developed the most reliable, longest-lasting vanadium flow battery in the world, with more than 800,000 hours of demonstrated performance. The combination of Pu Neng's proprietary low-cost ion- exchange membrane, long-life electrolyte formulation and innovative flow cell design sets it apart from other providers. Pu Neng's vanadium redox battery (VRB) systems store energy in liquid electrolyte in a patented process based on the reduction and oxidation of ionic forms of the element vanadium. This is a nearly infinitely repeatable process that is safe, reliable, and non-toxic. Components can be nearly 100% recycled at end- of-life, dramatically improving lifecycle economics and environmental benefits compared to lead-acid, lithium-ion and other battery systems. Pu Neng is majority-owned by High Power Exploration (HPX), a metals-focused exploration company that also invests in minerals-dependent, high-growth emerging technologies. HPX is a subsidiary of l-Pulse, a global leader in developing innovative commercial applications for pulsed power technologies that convert small amounts of electrical energy into limitless power to address a broad and growing suite of applications across multiple industrial markets. I-Pulse is a private company based in San Francisco, California. Please visit our websites at www.punengenergy.com, www.hpxploration.com, and www.ipulse- group.com for further information. About Hubei Pingfan Hubei Pingfan is one of the leading enterprises in Hubei Province. Under the guidance of Chairman Xie Guangguo the company has assembled world- class mining and vertically integrated metals processing assets in support of the development of new high-tech industries. The company is focused on deploying innovative and environmentally friendly technology in the production of vanadium pentoxide and vanadium-nitrogen alloys at its facilities in Shiyan City and Zaoyang City in Hubei. The company is also entering into new energy areas based on vanadium resources. It holds mining reserves of more than one million tons of vanadium in Shiyan City, and was listed in China's 12th Five-Year Plan as national pilot enterprise for vanadium. Media Contact: Jim Stover iimstover@punenaenerav.com +1-604-648-3900 Charles Ge charlesae@punenaenerav.com +86 186 7010 7777" 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. Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release involves forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements contained herein include, but are not limited to, financings and transactions being pursued, and all such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation. Although the Company believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct and, accordingly, undue reliance should not be put on such forward-looking statements. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein. We Seek Safe Harbour. Contacts: Sparton Resources Inc. A. Lee Barker, M.A Sc., P. Eng., P.Geol. President and CEO Tel./Fax: 647-344-7734 or Mobile: 416-716-5762 info@spartonres.ca www.spartonres.ca WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Former co-chairman of President Donald Trump's campaign Sam Clovis has withdrawn his name from consideration to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist amid fallout from the investigation of Russian meddling in last year's election. Clovis reportedly supervised George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to Trump's campaign who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about interactions with Russian nationals. Reports have claimed Clovis is the campaign supervisor mentioned in court documents that encouraged Papadopoulos to pursue a meeting with Kremlin-linked contacts. In a letter to Trump, Clovis argued that the political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for him to receive balanced and fair consideration for the position. 'The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day,' Clovis wrote. He added, 'As I am focused on your success and the success of this administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence, particularly with so much important work left to do for the American people.' Clovis will reportedly continue to serve as the senior White House adviser to the Department of Agriculture. 'We respect Mr. Clovis's decision to withdraw his nomination,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a brief statement. A senior administration official told Politico that Clovis' nomination to be the USDA's undersecretary for research, education and economics was already in hot water due to scrutiny of his agriculture and science credentials. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, argued Clovis only withdrew because he knew his interactions with Papadopoulos would have been a topic during his confirmation hearing. 'Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration,' Leahy said. 'He is inarguably unqualified, and he is wrong on almost every major issue relevant to the chief scientist post to which he was nominated.' He added, 'But President Trump already knew that when he nominated Mr. Clovis, and that is not why his nomination was abruptly pulled today.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. IRVINE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- Cannabis Science, Inc. (OTC PINK: CBIS) a U.S. company specializing in the development of cannabinoid-based medicines, is proud to announce that its partner, American States University, has launched its updated website as an initiative to provide equal opportunity and education for everyone. The American States University Industrial Hemp Program is housed within its Department of Agriculture, the initial economic development plan was successfully launched in early 2017 in partnership with CBIS, FSO NAC, HRM Farms, and RCDU with the Native American community through the relationships of FSO NAC and others. To find out more information, please visit www.americanstatesuniversity.com The American States University offers a combined thirty-seven state approved certification and degree programs housed within five departments, including its Bachelor of Business Administration, Master of Business Administration, and Doctor of Business Administration programs. The American States University Department of Agriculture's Alternative Medicine program, with focus on cannabinoid drug development using proven extraction methodologies derived from the Industrial Hemp plant, is certainly attracting more attention in light of the recent federal action and recent shifts in public perception about cannabinoids in general -- particularly as medical applications become paramount to the general public who want 100% natural alternatives to manufactured drugs for an extensive list of critical ailments and palliative care needs. Working with cannabinoid drug development experts Cannabis Science and their Global Consortium of drug development initiatives and research collaborations, Cannabis Science has also had successful laboratory work using Nanoparticle Drones to target Lung cancer with radiosensitizers and cannabinoids as evidenced and recently published in the respected medical journal Frontiers in Oncology. To view the journal, click here. The American States University's Alternative Medicine program leverages Cannabis Science's expertise for its students' in-depth education and real market place exposure. The program provides students with experiential learning of cannabinoids derived from cannabinoids (and other materials derived from industrial hemp and other plants) focusing on research and development of all-natural pharmaceutical drugs for target ailments such as Cancer, Epilepsy, Chronic Pain, Parkinson's Disease, Arthritis, PTSD, HIV/AIDs and other industries such as Alternative Biofuels; Construction, Clothing and Automobile Materials; and Paper, Rope and Strings. Classes will adopt a hybrid structure of in-class, online, and field work training all housed within its Department of Agriculture Industrial Hemp Program. The University partners will provide vertically-integrated operations to provide jobs throughout each community in which the school resides, offer full or partial scholarship programs, and additionally-subsidized education packages to members of the Native American community that is participating in the Native American Initiative Program. The University is currently accepting applications for new students. To submit your application, please visit: http://www.americanstatesuniversity.com/index.php/apply-now American States University current programs: Department of Agriculture Alternative Medicine Alternative Biofuels (coming soon) Construction Materials (coming soon) Clothing Materials (coming soon) Automobile Materials (coming soon) Paper, Rope and Strings (coming soon) Department of Arts Acting Antique Appraisal Dance (Fine Arts) Drama Production English as a Second Language Film Camera Production Movie Production Multimedia Music Production Producer/Director Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Department of Business Bachelor of Business Administration Certificate of Business Administration Doctor of Business Administration Hotel Administration Master of Business Administration Tourism Development Executive Protection Procedures Department of Certified Professionals Bachelor of Business Administration (Professional Golf Management Concentration) Beauty Industry Management Certified Club Builder Certified Professional Golf Instructor Certified Professional Golfer Certified Retail Golf Operations Coaching Entertainment Management Golf Turf Management/Operations Fire Safety Protection and Management Health and Social Services Management Property Management Sports Agent Sports Management Executive Protection Martial Arts Department of Technology Computer 3D Animation Executive Protection Electronic Security PC Repair Technician PC Support Technician Web Page Designer About American States University American States University offers thirty-seven state-approved post secondary educational programs in the Departments of Agriculture, Arts, Business, Certified Professional, and Technology in a unique hybrid structure of online, in class, and in field education. Its primary purpose is to provide professional training in agricultural hemp research and development for pharmaceutical drugs targeting critical ailments such as Cancer, Epilepsy, Chronic Pain, Parkinson's Disease, Arthritis, PTSD, HIV/AIDs and other industries such as Alternate Biofuels, Construction, Clothing and Automobile Materials, business administration, and other numerous certifications. The University aims to provide affordable quality education to its students so as to achieve their career goals and excel in their chosen professions. American States University is committed to fulfilling these objectives with a dedicated, academically and professionally well-qualified faculty, administrators and staff to assist the students. About Cannabis Science, Inc. Cannabis Science, Inc. takes advantage of its unique understanding of metabolic processes to provide novel treatment approaches to a number of illnesses for which current treatments and understanding remain unsatisfactory. Cannabinoids have an extensive history dating back thousands of years, and currently, there are a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific publications that document the underlying biochemical pathways that cannabinoids modulate. The Company works with leading experts in drug development, medicinal characterization, and clinical research to develop, produce, and commercialize novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment for illnesses caused by infections as well as for age-related illness. Its initial focus is on cancers, HIV/AIDS, and neurological conditions. The Company is proceeding with the research and development of its proprietary drugs as a part of this initial focus: CS-S/BCC-1, CS-TATI-1, and CS-NEURO-1, respectively. Forward-Looking Statements This Press Release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. A statement containing words such as "anticipate," "seek," intend," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," or similar phrases may be deemed "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements may not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations regarding the use and development of cannabis-based drugs. Cannabis Science, Inc. does not undertake any duty nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements. Safe Harbor Statement. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a 'safe harbor' for forward-looking statements. Certain of the statements contained herein, which are not historical facts are forward looking statements with respect to events, the occurrence of which involved risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements may be impacted, either positively or negatively, by various factors. Information concerning potential factors that could affect the company is detailed from time to time in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CONTACT INFORMATION Cannabis Science, Inc. Dr. Allen Herman Chief Medical Officer (CMO) allen.herman@cannabisscience.com Tel: 1-888-263-0832 Cannabis Science, Inc. Mr. Raymond C. Dabney President & CEO, Co-Founder raymond.dabney@cannabisscience.com Tel: 1-888-263-0832 NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / New York real estate authority Jacob Frydman continues his support of the Chabad of Dutchess County and considers it as a great advocacy platform to foster traditional Judaic conceptions and values in New York youth through the center's powerfully designed project initiatives. The property developer spent most of his 30 year-career focusing on value-added investments, capitalizing on his superior proficiency in structuring, financing, and executing highly complex property transactions, along with his tireless efforts to contribute to his community. Located in Rhinebeck, NY, Chabad Dutchess and The Rhinebeck Jewish Center hosts many Jewish festive traditions such as Shabbat, applying Tefillin, keeping mitzvahs, and performing Kaddish. It is also a resource for the Jewish community with availability of counseling and guidance in parenting, health and wellness, relationships and a host of other services, all within the framework of religious life. "I first met Jacob seven years ago," explains Rabbi Hanoch Hecht, of Chabad of Dutchess County. "When you meet him, he gives off a very strong feel of a New York City professional. Each time he has ever his word, he has kept it 100 percent. He remains a dedicated member of the Rhinebeck Jewish community, and I truly appreciate his friendship, availability, and advice." In his active support for the NCFJE and Chabad of Dutchess County, Jacob Frydman has contributed time and capital to efforts that help feed the less-fortunate families during the Passover holiday. He has worked with the Toys for Hospitalized Children program; and has supported the Released Time program, which reaches out to Jewish youngsters in public schools and exposes them to the Jewish heritage and religion once a week for the last hour of school. His commitment and support of these initiatives are a reflection on Frydman's deep and caring involvement within his community and for his fellows. Having acquired over five million square feet of real estate throughout the east coast of the United States, Frydman has participated in billions of dollars in notable property transactions, including Two Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, an important property for foreign governments for their missions to the United Nations; the redevelopment of lower Manhattan's Aetna Building; the acquisition of the unfinished Global Crossing New York headquarters from Goldman Sachs; the purchase of NBC's New York television studios from General Electric; and the redevelopment of 500 Tenth Avenue in Manhattan into the DHL Center. A renowned expert on value added investments, Jacob Frydman has served as a long-standing member of the Board of Directors of the Bardavon Opera House, home of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Since his retirement as the CEO of a public Real Estate Investment Trust in September 2015, he continued on as the Chief Investment Officer of the First Capital Real Estate Trust and devotes much of his time to various philanthropic endeavors. Frydman is a respected contributor at numerous industry seminars and events, serving as a panelist and speaker to address matters related to property investment. He has appeared as guest lecturer at Columbia University, addressing real estate finance, and has participated in New York Law School's Master's Lecturer series. As a thought leader in his field, Frydman has often appeared on news television networks such as Bloomberg TV, FOX News, and CNBC, discussing trends in the commercial real estate. Jacob Frydman - Blog - JacobFrydmanNews.com: http://JacobFrydmanNews.com Jacob Frydman (@jacobfrydman) - Twitter: https://twitter.com/jacobfrydman Jacob Frydman -- Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/jacob-frydman Contact Information: JacobFrydmanNews.com contact@jacobfrydmannews.com www.JacobFrydmanNews.com SOURCE: Jacob Frydman Regulatory News: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006707/en/ Leonard A. Lauder (right) presents Nicolas Mirzayantz with the Fragrance Foundation's Circle of Champions Award. (Photo: Business Wire) International Flavors Fragrances Inc. (NYSE: IFF) (Euronext Paris: IFF), a leading innovator of sensory experiences that move the world, is pleased to announce its Group President, Fragrances, Nicolas Mirzayantz, was honored at the Fragrance Foundation's Circle of Champions event, held last night in New York City. The award recognizes individuals who have made notable contributions to the fragrance industry. "For nearly thirty years, Nicolas has shared his passion for the industry, innovation, and sustainability, creating meaningful and lasting value for both IFF and our customers," said IFF Chairman and CEO Andreas Fibig. "He exemplifies IFF at its best and it is fitting that he is honored by the very people whom he has long admired and from whom he has taken so much inspiration." "It was a fantastic celebration inducting Nicolas into The Fragrance Foundation's Circle of Champions," said Linda G. Levy, President of The Fragrance Foundation. "Nicolas is a true champion of the industry with a zest for life and creative passion for fragrance. His life of accomplishments deserves all the beautiful tributes shared by our friends and colleagues." Mr. Mirzayantz began his working life with the French Embassy in Nicaragua as a Trade Attache. Passionate about photography, he passed on an opportunity with National Geographic to join IFF's Paris office in 1988 as sales support for its Italian affiliate. He quickly moved to an Account Executive role, first in Paris, then in the Company's headquarters in New York, where he moved to roles of increasing responsibility. In 2006, he was named Group President, Fragrances, responsible for global strategy, commercial and creative execution, people development and profit and loss in the Fragrances Business Unit. In addition to his role as Group President, Mr. Mirzayantz serves as President of IFF's prestigious unit of natural products, Laboratoire Monique Remy in Grasse, France, considered the industry benchmark of naturals globally. The event brought together family, friends, colleagues, customers, and mentors in a moving series of speeches and tributes by Jerry Vittoria, Chairman, The Fragrance Foundation and President, Fine Fragrances Worldwide, Firmenich; Linda G. Levy, President, The Fragrance Foundation; Andreas Fibig, IFF CEO; Carlos Benaim, IFF Master Perfumer; Ann Gottlieb, President, Ann Gottlieb Associates; and Leonard A. Lauder, Chairman Emeritus, The Estee Lauder Companies. The Master of Ceremonies was John Demsey, Executive Group President, The Estee Lauder Companies. Mr. Mirzayantz accepted his award from Mr. Lauder and in his speech, commented, "In many businesses, we work in the shadows of our heroes. But in the beauty and fragrance industry, we walk among them every day. One of my life's greatest joys is to have worked with so many icons and rising talents in this field for the last 30 years, a number of whom are here tonight. You ARE my mentors, colleagues, customers, competitors but most importantly, my friends." Mr. Mirzayantz acknowledged the many people who have supported him through the years and called out the special role IFF played in his success -- "At IFF, we search for talent that looks at the world through a different lens and support them so that they can reach their full potential." Meet IFF International Flavors Fragrances Inc. (NYSE:IFF) (Euronext Paris: IFF) is a leading innovator of sensorial experiences that move the world. At the heart of our company, we are fueled by a sense of discovery, constantly asking "what if?". That passion for exploration drives us to co-create unique products that consumers taste, smell, or feel in fine fragrances and beauty, detergents and household goods, as well as beloved foods and beverages. Our 7,400 team members globally take advantage of leading consumer insights, research and development, creative expertise, and customer intimacy to develop differentiated offerings for consumer products. Learn more at www.iff.com, Twitter , Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006707/en/ Contacts: International Flavors Fragrances Inc. Michael DeVeau, 212.708.7164 VP, Corporate Strategy, Investor Relations Communications Michael.DeVeau@iff.com Regulatory News: Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (NA:PSH) today announces that it has purchased, through PSH's agent, Jefferies International Limited ("Jefferies"), the following number of PSH's ordinary shares of no par value (ISIN Code: GG00BPFJTF46) (the "Shares"): Date of purchase: 2 November 2017 Number of Shares purchased: 18,249 Shares Highest price paid per Share: 1,033 pence 13.50 USD Lowest price paid per Share: 1,021 pence 13.34 USD Average price paid per Share: 1,030.95 pence 13.47 USD PSH intends to cancel these Shares. The net asset value per Share related to this Share buyback is USD 17.55 GBP 13.21 which was calculated as of 31 October 2017. After giving effect to the above Share buyback, PSH has outstanding 237,194,428 Shares. The prices per share in USD were calculated by Jefferies. The number of PSH Management Shares and the 1 special voting share (held by PS Holdings Independent Voting Company Limited) has not been affected. About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd.: Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American companies. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006768/en/ Contacts: Maitland James Devas, +44 20 7379 5151 Media-pershingsquareholdings1@maitland.co.uk WESTMINSTER, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / TechPrecision Corporation (OTCQB: TPCS) ("TechPrecision" or "the Company"), an industry leading manufacturer of precision, large-scale fabricated and machined metal components and tested systems with customers in the defense, energy and precision industrial sectors, today announced it will release financial results for its 2018 fiscal second quarter on Monday, November 13, 2017. The Company will hold a conference call at 4:30 p.m. Eastern (U.S.) time on November 13, 2017. To participate in the live conference call, please dial 1-888-567-1602 five to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled conference call time. International callers should dial 1-404-267-0373. When prompted, reference TechPrecision. A replay will be available until December 13, 2017. To access the replay, dial 1-877-481-4010 or 1-919-882-2331. When prompted, enter Conference Passcode 22492. The call will also be available live by webcast at TechPrecision Corporation's website, www.techprecision.com, and will also be available over the Internet and accessible at http://www.investorcalendar.com/event/22492. About TechPrecision Corporation TechPrecision Corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, Ranor, Inc. and Wuxi Critical Mechanical Components Co., Ltd., manufactures large-scale, metal fabricated and machined precision components and equipment. These products are used in a variety of markets including: defense, aerospace, nuclear, industrial, and medical. TechPrecision's goal is to be an end-to-end service provider to its customers by furnishing customized solutions for completed products requiring custom fabrication and machining, assembly, inspection and testing. To learn more about the Company, please visit the corporate website at http://www.techprecision.com. Information on the Company's website or any other website does not constitute a part of this press release. Company Contact: Mr. Thomas Sammons Chief Financial Officer TechPrecision Corporation Tel: 978-883-5109 Email: sammonst@ranor.com www.techprecision.com Investor Relations Contact: Hayden IR Brett Maas Phone:646-536-7331 Email: brett@haydenir.com SOURCE: TechPrecision Corporation SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Starbucks (SBUX) announced a definitive agreement for Unilever to acquire the assets of the Tazo brand including its signature recipes, intellectual property and inventory for $384 million. Tazo is an iconic tea brand sold primarily in grocery, mass and convenience channels, offered in formats including packaged teas, K-Cup pods, and bottled ready-to-drink teas. Starbucks will drive a single tea brand strategy and focus with its super premium tea brand, Teavana. The Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.30 per share, an increase of 20%, payable on December 1, 2017, to shareholders of record as of November 16, 2017. The company also announced a new commitment of returning $15 billion to shareholders over the next 3 years through dividends and share repurchases. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - YRC Worldwide Inc. (YRCW) released earnings for third quarter that retreated from last year. The company said its profit fell to $3.0 million, or $0.09 per share. This was lower than $13.9 million, or $0.42 per share, in last year's third quarter. Analysts had expected the company to earn $0.28 per share, according figures compiled by Thomson Reuters. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items. The company said revenue for the quarter rose 2.5% to $1.25 billion. This was up from $1.22 billion last year. YRC Worldwide Inc. earnings at a glance: -Earnings (Q3): $3.0 Mln. vs. $13.9 Mln. last year. -Earnings Decline (Y-o-Y): -78.4% -EPS (Q3): $0.09 vs. $0.42 last year. -EPS Decline (Y-o-Y): -78.6% -Analysts Estimate: $0.28 -Revenue (Q3): $1.25 Bln vs. $1.22 Bln last year. -Revenue Change (Y-o-Y): 2.5% 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. Canadian Business Owners Hoping to Improve Their Diesel Engine Performance Have a Good Reason to Be Happy; Enginewerx Recently Announced Their Canadian Grand Opening Offering the ONBOARD Clean Oil Power Filtration System in the Country, Well Known for Helping Reduce Expenses Associated with Heavy Equipment Engines LUKAN, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 2, 2017 / Heavy equipment service can be a substantial drain on resources for a wide range of different Canadian industries. Enginewerx can help, recently releasing the ONBOARD Clean Oil Power Oil Filtration System to Canada, increasing fuel economy, extending engine life, and making servicing equipment much more manageable and affordable. Not surprisingly, the news has been met with enthusiasm. "After all of the success ONBOARD Clean Oil Power has seen in the United States, we knew it was only natural to introduce this remarkable product to the Canadian market," commented Wayne Killins, head of the company's Canadian Distribution Centre. "This first class oil filtration system is an absolute game changer in a number of remarkable ways. Especially when it comes to efficiency and reducing costs. If you are interested in the best Bypass Oil Filters - you are looking in the right place with ONBOARD Systems." According to the company, the special bypass oil filtration system has become a favorite in a number of spaces, including transportation and trucking, construction and trades, agriculture, and really any other industry where diesel engines are used on a regular basis. Not only is fuel efficiency improved, but it also reduces the need for diesel particulate filter cleaning, extends the time between oil changes, reduces heavy equipment's hydro-carbon footprint, and helps create a much cleaner burning engine. ONBOARD operates using a breakthrough two stage system that makes use of a particle filter first, followed up by a vacuum dehydration process that utilizes the engine itself to become a vital part of the refining process. Enginewerx is based out of London, Ontario, Canada, where they are happy to provide services to the extended area and are actively seeking dealers and installers to join their team nationwide. Feedback for the bypass oil filtration system has been extremely positive across the board. Kevin S. recently said in a five-star review, "It's impossible to miss how much clearer the oil is on my bus. I'm also seeing improved fuel economy. Enginewerx is the real deal, fully recommended!" For more information, be sure to visit www.enginewerx.ca. SOURCE: Enginewerx Canada WINNIPEG, MANITOBA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/02/17 -- IGM Financial Inc. (IGM) (TSX: IGM) today reported preliminary total investment fund net new money in October of $324.2 million as shown in Table 1. Total assets under management were $154.4 billion at October 31, 2017, compared with $150.0 billion at September 30, 2017 and $140.8 billion at October 31, 2016. Investment fund assets under management were $148.3 billion at October 31, 2017, compared with $144.1 billion at September 30, 2017 and $133.7 billion at October 31, 2016. Assets under management are shown in Table 2. Table 1 - Net New Money Month ended October 31, 2017 Investors IGM ($ millions) (unaudited) Group Mackenzie Counsel Financial(1) ------------------------------------------------- Mutual Funds Gross Sales $727.9 $775.0 $89.1 $1,592.0 Net New Money $118.1 $55.7 $37.4 $211.2 ETFs Net New Money $175.0 $121.9 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Consolidated Net New Money $118.1 $221.8(2) $37.4 $324.2 (1) Excludes $53.1 million in net new money of exchange traded funds ("ETF") by Investor Group's mutual fund investment in Mackenzie ETF's. (2) Excludes $8.9 million in net new money of ETF's by Mackenzie mutual funds. (i) Mutual Fund Net New Money is defined as Gross Sales less Gross Redemptions and is consistent with the terminology used by The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC). Total Net New Money includes ETF net creations. Table 2 - Assets under Management October September October % Change % Change ($ billions) (unaudited) 2017 2017 2016 Last Month YOY ---------------------------------------------------- Total Assets under Management(3) $154.43 $150.02 $140.77 2.9 9.7 Investment Funds(4) Assets under Management $148.33 $144.12 $133.71 2.9 10.9 Investors Group Mutual Funds $87.55 $85.23 $79.02 2.7 10.8 Sub-advisory, institutional and other $0.60 $0.54 $0.48 11.1 25.0 ---------------------------------------------------- Total Investors Group $88.15 $85.77 $79.50 2.8 10.9 ---------------------------------------------------- Mackenzie Mutual Funds $55.36 $53.75 $50.14 3.0 10.4 ETFs $1.10 $0.91 $0.08 20.9 N/M ---------------------------------------------------- Investment Funds(5) $56.12 $54.32 $50.22 3.3 11.7 Sub-advisory, institutional and other(6) $37.41 $14.92 $13.98 150.8 167.6 ---------------------------------------------------- Total Mackenzie $93.53 $69.24 $64.20 35.1 45.7 ---------------------------------------------------- Investment Planning Counsel(7) Mutual Funds $4.83 $4.68 $4.47 3.2 8.1 Sub-advisory, institutional and other $1.17 $1.10 $0.89 6.4 31.5 ---------------------------------------------------- Total Investment Planning Counsel(7) $5.36 $5.18 $4.85 3.5 10.5 ---------------------------------------------------- (3) Excludes assets managed by Mackenzie on behalf of Investors Group and Investment Planning Counsel. These assets had a value of $32.4 billion at October 31, 2017 ($10.2 billion at September 30, 2017 and $7.8 billion at October 31, 2016). (4) Excludes assets in accounts invested in Mackenzie Financial Corporation mutual funds held by Investors Group. These assets had a value of $112.5 million at October 31, 2017 ($108.8 million at September 30, 2017). Excludes assets in accounts invested in Mackenzie Financial Corporation ETF's held by Investors Group. These assets had a value of $53.4 million at October 31, 2017 (5) Mackenzie investment funds total assets under management exclude Mackenzie mutual fund investment in ETF's of $348.3 million as at October 31, 2017 ($332.9 million as at September 30, 2017). (6) In October 2017, investment management functions of Investors Group and Mackenzie Investments joined together to form a single global investment management organization resulting in an increase of approximately $22 billion in Mackenzie's sub-advisory assets under management. (7) IPC's sub-advisory, institutional and other is comprised of the IPC Private Wealth Program. IPC's total assets under management excludes the Private Wealth Program investment in Counsel mutual funds of $0.64 billion as at October 31, 2017 ($0.60 billion at September 30, 2017 and $0.51 billion at October 31, 2016). Preliminary average investment fund assets under management and average total assets under management for the quarter to date are set out in Table 3. Table 3 - Average Assets under Management(8) Quarter to ($ billions) (unaudited) Date ---------- Total Average Assets under Management(9) $151.53 Investment Funds Average Assets under Management(10) $145.53 Investors Group Mutual Funds $86.16 Sub-advisory, institutional and other $0.58 ---------- Total Investors Group $86.74 ---------- Mackenzie Mutual Funds $54.10 ETFs $1.01 ---------- Investment Funds(11) $54.77 Sub-advisory, institutional and other $21.56 ---------- Total Mackenzie $76.33 ---------- Investment Planning Counsel(12) Mutual Funds $4.75 Sub-advisory, institutional and other $1.11 ---------- Total Investment Planning Counsel(12) $5.24 ---------- (8) Based on daily average investment fund assets and month-end average institutional, sub-advisory and other assets. (9) Excludes average assets of $16.6 billion managed by Mackenzie on behalf of Investors Group and Investment Planning Counsel. (10) Excludes average assets of $110.6 million in accounts invested in Mackenzie Financial Corporation mutual funds held by Investors Group. Excludes average assets of $37.9 million in accounts invested in Mackenzie Financial Corporation ETF's held by Investors Group. (11) Mackenzie investment funds total assets under management exclude Mackenzie mutual fund investment in ETFs of $340.8 million as at October 31, 2017. (12) IPC's total assets under management excludes the Private Wealth Program investment in Counsel mutual funds of $0.62 billion. IGM Financial Inc. is one of Canada's premier personal financial services companies, and one of the country's largest managers and distributors of mutual funds and other managed asset products, with over $154 billion in total assets under management. Its activities are carried out principally through Investors Group, Mackenzie Investments and Investment Planning Counsel. A MEMBER OF THE POWER FINANCIAL CORPORATION GROUP OF COMPANIES. Contacts: Media Relations: Allan Hiebert 204-956-8535 media.relations@igmfinancial.com Investor Relations: Paul Hancock 204-956-8103 investor.relations@igmfinancial.com Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc. and Lundbeck Canada announce that Health Canada issued a Notice of Compliance for ABILIFY MAINTENA (aripiprazole for prolonged release injectable suspension), approving a new indication for the maintenance monotherapy treatment of bipolar I disorder in adult patients.1 ABILIFY MAINTENA is a once-monthly injectable formulation for intramuscular use created by Otsuka and co-developed and co-commercialized with Lundbeck. In a placebo-controlled phase 3 trial, ABILIFY MAINTENA significantly reduced the risk of recurrence of any mood episode over 52 weeks compared to placebo.1 "Abilify Maintena is a welcome and much needed option for treatment of patients with Bipolar 1 disorder. It addresses important concerns for patients and loved ones such as balancing efficacy, tolerability, and long term maintenance in an illness often characterized by recurrence, relapse and adherence", said Dr. Ruth Baruch, Medical Director of the Community Mental Health Programs, Department of Psychiatry, Michael Garron Hospital and a lecturer at the University of Toronto. About Bipolar I Disorder Bipolar I disorder is a recurrent and chronic mental illness characterized by episodes of mania (unusually high mood and energized/elated behavior) and depression (very sad, down, or hopeless periods).2 Bipolar disorder affects almost 30 million people worldwide, and the estimated lifetime prevalence of bipolar I disorder in Canada is 0.87%. 3,4 About ABILIFY MAINTENA (aripiprazole once-monthly) ABILIFY MAINTENA (aripiprazole for prolonged release injectable suspension) is an atypical antipsychotic for intramuscular use. It was created by Otsuka in Japan and has been co-developed and co-commercialized by the alliance between Otsuka and Lundbeck. ABILIFY MAINTENA was approved in Canada in 2014 for the treatment of adults with schizophrenia.1 ABILIFY MAINTENA is a sterile lyophilized powder that when reconstituted with sterile water for injection, forms a suspension that can be administered by injection once a month (the initial injection is accompanied by an overlapping 14-day dosing of oral antipsychotic treatment). Subsequent doses of ABILIFY MAINTENA provide uninterrupted medication coverage for up to 30 days.1 Elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis treated with atypical antipsychotic drugs are at increased risk of death compared to placebo. ABILIFY MAINTENA is not indicated for the treatment of elderly patients with dementia. ABILIFY MAINTENA safety and efficacy have not been established in patients <18 or =65 years of age. ABILIFY MAINTENA is contraindicated in patients with a known hypersensitivity reaction to aripiprazole. For more information about ABILIFY MAINTENA, please visit: http://otsukacanada.com/docs/default-source/default-document-library/product-monographs/abilify-maintena-approved-pm-e.pdf'sfvrsn=10 About Otsuka Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., is a global healthcare company with the corporate philosophy: "Otsuka people creating new products for better health worldwide." Otsuka researches, develops, manufactures and markets innovative and original products, with a focus on pharmaceutical products for the treatment of diseases and nutraceutical products for the maintenance of everyday health. Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc. (OCPI) is an innovative, fast-growing health care company that commercializes Otsuka medicines in Canada. OCPI aims to improve the quality of life and health of patients through its commitments to neuroscience, cardiovascular health, oncology and nephrology. OCPI was established in 2010, with headquarters in Saint-Laurent, Quebec. OCPI is part of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd., based in Tokyo, Japan. The Otsuka group of companies employed 45,000 people worldwide and had consolidated sales of approximately CAD 14.5 billion (USD 11 billion) in 2016. All Otsuka stories start by taking the road less travelled. Learn more about Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company on its global website at https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en. Learn more about Otsuka in Canada at www.otsukacanada.com About Lundbeck H. Lundbeck A/S (LUN.CO, LUN DC, HLUYY) is a global pharmaceutical company specialized in psychiatric and neurological disorders. For more than 70 years, we have been at the forefront of research within neuroscience. Our key areas of focus are Alzheimer's disease, depression, Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia. Our approximately 5,000 employees in 55 countries are engaged in the entire value chain throughout research, development, manufacturing, marketing and sales. Our pipeline consists of several late-stage development programs and our products are available in more than 100 countries. We have production facilities in Denmark, France and Italy. Lundbeck generated revenue of DKK 15.6 billion in 2016 (EUR 2.1 billion; USD 2.2 billion). A division of Denmark-based H. Lundbeck A/S, Lundbeck Canada Inc. has been a trusted source of innovative new treatments for Canadians since 1995 with headquarters in Montreal. Originally focused on providing products for the treatment of diseases such as depression, anxiety, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, Lundbeck Canada also offers new cancer therapies for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A patient-focused partner in Canadian health care, Lundbeck Canada's mission is to improve the quality of life for people living with brain diseases and cancer. References 1. ABILIFY MAINTENA (aripiprazole) 2017 full product monograph. 2. National Institute of Mental Health. Bipolar disorder. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml. 3. Grande I, Berk M, Birmaher B, Vieta E. Bipolar disorder. Lancet 2016;387(10027):1561-72. 4. McDonald KC, Bulloch AGM, Duffy A, Bresee L, Williams JVA, Lavorato DH, Patten SB. Prevalence of Bipolar I and II Disorder in Canada. Can J Psychiatry. 2015 Mar; 60(3): 151-156. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006599/en/ Contacts: Media Inquiries Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc. Allison Rosenthal, 514-332-3099 General Manager Allison.rosenthal@otsuka-ca.com or Lundbeck Canada Inc. Stella Antonaras, 514-554-1549 Corporate Communications Specialist stll@lundbeck.com Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 2, 2017) - American CuMo Mining Corporation (TSXV: MLY) (OTCQX: MLYCF) ("CuMoCo" or the "Company") announces that it will conduct a rights offering to raise gross proceeds of up to $5 million (the "Rights Offering"). The Company will issue rights (the "Rights") to existing shareholders in Canada and to eligible shareholders in the United States and in certain other jurisdictions at the close of business on the record date of November 10, 2017. Eligible shareholders will receive one (1) Right for each common share held. Two (2) Rights will entitle the holder to subscribe for one (1) common share of the Company upon payment of the subscription price of C$0.07 per share (the "Subscription Price"). For example, a holder of 1,000 common shares will be entitled to subscribe for 500 common shares for an aggregate subscription price of C$35.00. Shareholders who fully exercise their Rights will also be entitled to subscribe for additional shares in the Rights Offering, if available as a result of unexercised Rights prior to the Expiry Time, subject to certain limitations set out in CuMoCo's rights offering circular. The Rights will trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MLY.RT commencing on November 9, 2017 and until 9:00 a.m. (Vancouver time) on December 11, 2017. The Rights will expire at 2:00 p.m. (Vancouver time) on December 11, 2017 (the "Expiry Time"), after which time unexercised Rights will be void and of no value. No fractional shares will be issued. A rights offering notice and rights certificate will be mailed to each registered shareholder of CuMoCo resident in Canada and to each eligible shareholders in the United States as at the record date. Registered shareholders who wish to exercise their Rights must forward the completed rights certificate, together with the applicable funds, to the rights agent, Computershare Trust Company of Canada, on or before the Expiry Time. Shareholders who own their shares through an intermediary, such as a bank, trust company, securities dealer or broker, will receive materials and instructions from their intermediary. Further details of the Rights Offering are contained in the Company's rights offering circular, which has been filed on SEDAR under CuMoCo's profile at www.sedar.com. There are currently 143,214,988 common shares of the Company outstanding. If all of the Rights issued under the Rights Offering are validly exercised, an additional 71,607,494 common shares would be issued. The Company will apply the amounts raised from the Rights Offering and from other sources of funding it is currently pursuing towards the repayment of the secured convertible notes (the "IEMR Notes") due to International Energy & Mineral Resources Investment (Hong Kong) Company Limited ("IEMR HK") in the principal amounts of Cdn$1,000,000 (due with accrued interest on December 15, 2017) and US$1,500,000 (with US$597,500 (including US$97,500 of accrued interest) being due on November 25, 2017, and the remaining US$1,000,000 (with accrued interest) due on December 15, 2017), along with a penalty fee of US$300,000 (the "Penalty Fee") which IEMR HK has confirmed is due on December 15, 2017, and towards a pre-feasability study for the CuMo Project and general working capital purposes. There can be no assurance that the Company will be able to raise enough funds from the Rights Offering or from other sources of funding to repay the IEMR Notes and Penalty Fee in full prior to the due dates for payment. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of the Company. There shall be no offer or sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification of such securities under the laws of any such jurisdiction. About CuMoCo CuMoCo is focused on advancing its CuMo Project towards feasibility. CuMoCo is also advancing its newly-acquired Calida Gold project. For more information, please visit cumoco.com, idahocumo.com and cumoproject.com. For further information, please contact: American CuMo Mining Corporation Shaun Dykes, President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: (604) 689-7902 Email: info@cumoco.com Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information Certain disclosures in this release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by words such as the following: expects, plans, anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, projects, assumes, potential and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements also include reference to events or conditions that will, would, may, could or should occur, including, without limitation, details of the Rights Offering, the intended use of proceeds of the Rights Offering, and expected outcomes. In making the forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, including that the Company's permitting will proceed as expected; that the Rights Offering will be completed and will raise the expected proceeds; that the results of exploration and development activities are consistent with management's expectations and that the assumptions underlying mineral resource estimates are valid. However, the forward-looking statements in this news release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements, including without limitation: that the Rights Offering will otherwise not be completed or will raise less than the expected proceeds; uncertainties as to the costs to completion of the rights offering; the results of exploration and development activities will not be consistent with management's expectations, the risk of unexpected variations in mineral resources, grade or recovery rates, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required government or other regulatory approvals or financing, failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, the risk of accidents, labor disputes, inclement or hazardous weather conditions, unusual or unexpected geological conditions, ground control problems, earthquakes, flooding and all of the other risks generally associated with the development of mining facilities and the operation of a producing mine. 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. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this new release. ### Hello Soda, a Manchester, UK-based international big data and text analytics company, raised 5.5m in equity and debt funding. NVM Private Equity (NVM) made the investment alongside an additional 1.5m venture debt facility from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks Growth Finance team. The company intends to use the funds to continue its global growth plans and raise the profile of its tech offerings. Led by CEO James Blake, Hello Soda provides a global text and big data analytics platform to businesses in the ID verification, risk and personalisation verticals. The company, which also has offices in both the US and Thailand, provides advanced text analytics software solutions to customers across six continents, mainly across UK, USA, Mexico, Australia, Spain and South Africa. FinSMEs 01/11/2017 United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. MICHAEL BRADLEY WESTOVER, Defendant - Appellant. No. 17-8013 Decided: October 31, 2017 Before McKAY, MATHESON, and MORITZ, Circuit Judges. ORDER AND JUDGMENT* Michael Bradley Westover appeals from a district court order that dismissed his 28 U.S.C. 2255 motion to vacate the sentence he received under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. 924(e). Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1291 and 2253(a), we vacate the district court's decision and remand with directions that Mr. Westover's motion be denied rather than dismissed. I. BACKGROUND In May 2006, Mr. Westover pled guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1). A conviction for that offense carries a baseline statutory maximum sentence of 10 years. See id. 924(a)(2). But because Mr. Westover had three or more prior convictions for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, he was subject to the ACCA's 15-year minimum sentence. See id. 924(e)(1). When Mr. Westover was sentenced in 2006, the ACCA defined a violent felony as an offense that (1) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another (the elements clause); (2) is burglary, arson, or extortion, [or] involves use of explosives (the enumerated-offenses clause); or (3) otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another (the residual clause). 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(2)(B). The Probation Office's presentence report (PSR) identified six ACCA predicate convictions based on the following offenses: three Wyoming burglaries, one cocaine distribution, an escape, and an attempted escape. In his written objections to the PSR, Mr. Westover argued that some of his 1985 burglary convictions were not violent felonies under the ACCA because they did not involve a dwelling or a threat of violence. The Probation Office responded, stating that any generic burglary qualifies, and the analysis is not limited to burglaries of dwellings. See Taylor v. United States, 110 S. Ct. 2143 (1990). R., Vol. III at 19. At the July 2006 sentencing hearing, Mr. Westover's counsel did not mention his prior written objection to the PSR. Instead, he argued that although Mr. Westover qualifie[d] technically as an armed career offender under the Sentencing Guidelines, the ACCA was not appropriately applied in his case. R., Vol. II at 38. He argued for a lesser sentence based on Mr. Westover's mental-health issues, childhood trauma, drug use, and non-violent behavior. The district court noted that counsel had not addressed the subject of objections to the [PSR], and it then summarily overruled them. Id. at 42. After hearing allocution, the court sentenced Mr. Westover to the 15-year minimum required by the ACCA. Mr. Westover did not appeal. Almost ten years later, in May 2016, Mr. Westover filed the instant 2255 motion to vacate his ACCA sentence. He contended that his burglary convictions were too broad to fit under the ACCA's enumerated-offenses clause, so the district court must have determined they were residual clause offenses. He then pointed out that the Supreme Court has declared the ACCA residual clause to be unconstitutionally vague. See Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551, 2557 (2015) (holding that [i]ncreasing a defendant's sentence under the [residual] clause denies due process of law because the clause both denies fair notice to defendants and invites arbitrary enforcement by judges); Welch v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1257, 1268 (2016) (holding that Johnson applies retroactively in cases on collateral review). The district court rejected Mr. Westover's arguments, determining that (1) the sentencing court relied on the enumerated offenses clause and (2) at the time of [Mr. Westover's] sentencing in 2006, his prior [burglary] convictions properly counted under the ACCA's enumerated offenses clause. R., Vol. I at 187, 189. The court thus concluded that, without a sentence tied to the invalidated residual clause, Mr. Westover could not seek relief under Johnson. It further held that this conclusion rendered his 2255 motion untimely. See 28 U.S.C. 2255(f) (prescribing a one-year limitations period). The district court granted Mr. Westover a certificate of appealability. II. DISCUSSION Mr. Westover argues that a Johnson error occurred because the ACCA [gave] the sentencing court the option of applying the residual clause. Aplt. Opening Br. at 13. Similarly, he claims error because the residual clause potentially played a role in his sentencing in that [i]t is impossible to tell from the sentencing record whether the sentencing court found that his burglary predicates fell under the enumerated clause, the elements clause, or the residual clause. Id. at 9. A. Standard of Review and Legal Background [W]e review the district court's legal rulings on a 2255 motion de novo and its findings of fact for clear error. United States v. Miller, 868 F.3d 1182, 1186 (10th Cir. 2017) (internal quotation marks omitted). A court's determination that a defendant qualifies for an ACCA enhancement is a finding, albeit one that rests largely on legal conclusions. United States v. Snyder, 871 F.3d 1122, 1128-29 (10th Cir. 2017) (brackets and internal quotation marks omitted). In Snyder, this court recently articulated the framework to evaluate Johnson claims like Mr. Westover's: We examine both the record before the sentencing court and the relevant background legal environment at the time of sentencing to determine whether an ACCA sentence was based on the residual clause. Id. at 1128-29 (internal quotation marks omitted). B. Analysis We reject Mr. Westover's argument, as inconsistent with Johnson and Snyder, that the sentencing court's mere option of applying the ACCA's residual clause constitutes a Johnson error. First, Johnson involved an actual application of the residual clausethe imposition of an ACCA sentence based on a prior unlawful possession of a short-barreled shotgun. See Johnson, 135 S. Ct. at 2556. Second, Snyder calls for a record and legal review to determine whether the sentencing court relied on the residual clause for the ACCA sentence. We therefore turn to the Snyder analysis. 1. The Sentencing Record The record shows that the sentencing court relied on the enumerated offenses clause to find that Mr. Westover's burglary convictions were violent felonies and qualified as predicates for an ACCA sentencing enhancement. The PSR (1) noted the ACCA's applicability, R., Vol. III at 8; (2) detailed the circumstances of Mr. Westover's three burglary convictions, which involved a dwelling, a High School, and a building, id. at 10; and (3) rejected Mr. Westover's attempt to avoid the ACCA by objecting that some of his burglaries did not involve a dwelling or a threat of violence, id. at 18-19. The PSR considered the crimes as burglaries, not as whether they otherwise involve[d] conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another, 18 U.S.C. 924(e)(2)(B) (the residual clause). Indeed, the probation officer who prepared the PSR expressly characterized the crimes as generic burglar[ies]. R., Vol. III at 19. Further, at Mr. Westover's sentencing hearing, the court overruled Mr. Westover's objections to the PSR for [the] reasons stated by the probation officer. R., Vol. II at 42. Defense counsel disputed neither the probation officer's characterization of the crimes as generic burglaries nor the court's reliance on that characterization. Finally, no reference to the residual clause appears anywhere in the PSR or in the sentencing transcript. Nor is there any discussion as to whether the burglaries might qualify as ACCA predicate offenses because they posed a risk of physical injury to others. The record thus demonstrates that the sentencing court viewed Mr. Westover's burglary convictions as falling squarely in the ACCA's enumerated-offenses clausewhich specifically lists burglary as the first of four such offenses. 2. Legal Environment The relevant background legal environment at the time of sentencing likewise shows that Mr. Westover was sentenced under the enumerated-offenses clause. Taylor provided well-established Supreme Court precedent on burglary under the ACCA when Mr. Westover's sentencing proceeding occurred. Taylor addressed the meaning of burglary in the ACCA's enumerated-offenses clause, holding that it covers generic burglary; i.e., any unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime. 495 U.S. at 599. To determine whether an offense constitutes generic burglary, Taylor explained that a court should generally use a categorical approach, look[ing] only to the fact of conviction and the statutory definition of the prior offense. Id. at 602. Taylor provided for a modified categorical approach when the statute define[s] burglary more broadly, e.g., by including places, such as automobiles and vending machines, other than buildings. Id. at 599. This approach is relevant here, given that Wyoming's burglary statute included entry of occupied structure[s] or vehicle[s]. Wyo. Stat. Ann. 6-3-301(a) (emphasis added). In such cases, Taylor said a court may examine the indictment or information and jury instructions to ascertain whether the defendant was convicted of a generic burglary offense that would justify a sentence enhancement. Taylor, 495 U.S. at 602. When the defendant entered a guilty plea, that examination may include the terms of the charging document, the terms of a plea agreement or transcript of colloquy between judge and defendant in which the factual basis for the plea was confirmed by the defendant, or to some comparable judicial record of this information. Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 26 (2005) (plurality opinion). This legal background shows the sentencing court determined that Mr. Westover's burglary convictions were for generic burglaries, as the charging documents referenced entries of a dwelling, a high school building, and another building. R., Vol. I at 16, 20. The PSR detailed the contents of these documents, and Mr. Westover tendered no objection to their consideration. * * * * In light of Mr. Westover's sentencing record and the relevant legal background, we agree with the district court that Mr. Westover's sentence was enhanced based on the ACCA's enumerated-offenses clause, not the residual clause. The district court erred, however, in concluding that Mr. Westover's 2255 motion was untimely. His motion was timely because he asserted the right established by Johnson to be free from a sentence purportedly authorized by the unconstitutionally vague residual clausewithin one year of Johnson's release. Snyder, 871 F.3d at 1126; see also 28 U.S.C. 2255(f)(3) (prescribing a one-year limitations period, running from, as relevant here, the date on which the right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if that right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review). Specifically, the Supreme Court decided Johnson on June 26, 2015, and made it retroactive in Welch. Mr. Westover filed his 2255 motion asserting Johnson's applicability roughly eleven months after Johnson. His motion was therefore timely. III. CONCLUSION The district court's judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded with directions that Mr. Westover's motion be denied rather than dismissed. Entered for the Court FOOTNOTES . When Mr. Westover was sentenced, escape convictions were routinely held to fall within the ACCA's residual clause. See, e.g., United States v. Moudy, 132 F.3d 618, 620 (10th Cir. 1998). The Supreme Court later clarified that escape-related convictions do not automatically support an ACCA enhancement. See Chambers v. United States, 555 U.S. 122, 124 (2009). In deciding Mr. Westover's appeal, we do not consider whether his escape-related convictions could have counted toward his ACCA sentence. . The scope of his objection is unclear. It has not been included in the record. We assume that he objected to at least two of his burglary convictions because if his objection covered only one, his drug offense and remaining (unchallenged) two burglary convictions would have been sufficient to support an ACCA enhancement. . In Taylor, the Supreme Court held that the ACCA's sentencing enhancement applies to burglary convictions if [the defendant] is convicted of any crime, regardless of its exact definition or label, having the basic elements of unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or structure, with intent to commit a crime. 495 U.S. at 599. . Mr. Westover's reliance on In re Chance, 831 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2016), to argue he has no burden to show he was in fact sentenced under the ACCA's residual clause is misplaced. We must follow the analytical framework established in Snyder. . [T]he relevant background legal environment is, so to speak, a snapshot of what the controlling law was at the time of sentencing and does not take into account post-sentencing decisions that may have clarified or corrected pre-sentencing decisions. Snyder, 871 F.3d at 1129 (emphasis added). For instance, in Descamps v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2276 (2013), the Supreme Court clarified that the modified categorical approach can be used only when a statute is divisible, such that it defines the crime alternatively, with one statutory phrase corresponding to the generic crime and another not. Id. at 2284, 2286. And in Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243 (2016), the Supreme Court stressed that the modified approach servesand serves solelyas a tool to identify the elements of the crime of conviction when a statute's disjunctive phrasing renders one (or more) of them opaque, and that it is not a technique for discovering whether a defendant's prior conviction, even though for a too-broad crime, rested on facts (or otherwise said, involved means) that also could have satisfied the elements of a generic offense. Id. at 2253-54. Scott M. Matheson, Jr. Circuit Judge Lunar Wireless, a Detroit, MI-based mobile carrier that offers a data plan with no monthly fees, has launched nationwide with $4.1M in funding. The round was led by 8VC with participation from Betaworks Ventures, BLU Products, Fontinalis Partners (Ford Family), 1517 Fund, WNDRCO, Detroit Venture Partners, Core Innovation Capital, Abstract Ventures, Expansion VC, Social Starts, and a few angels. Co-founded by Thiel Fellows Hunter Rosenblume and Rohith Varanasi, Lunar Wireless is a mobile carrier offering a data plan with no monthly fees or counting gigabytes. In pilot for the past year, the company has been testing business models, pricing, and potential partnerships. The most significant has been the partnership with BLU Products, a Miami-based smartphone manufacturer. Together, they are announcing Lunars flagship phone the BLU S1, which touts a 5.2 HD Curved-Glass Display, 1.5Ghz Octa-Core processor, 13MP Main Shooter, and Encrypted Fingerprint Scanner for $99, shipping included. Lunar is only available on the BLU S1, Google Pixel and Nexus 6. Devices need to be purchased directly from Lunar at http://lunarwireless.com/shop. FinSMEs 02/11/2017 Optimus Ride, a Boston, MA-based MIT spinoff company developing self-driving technology, closed an $18m Series A funding. The round was led by Greycroft Partners with participation from Emerson Collective, Fraser McCombs Capital and director of MIT Media Lab Joi Ito. The company, which has raised a total of $23.25m through two rounds of financing, will use the capital to scale its current vehicle fleet and make strategic hires. Led by Ryan Chin, CEO, Optimus Ride leveragex advances in complex sensor fusion, mapping, computer vision and machine learning to deploy a new form of transportation system that enables sustainable and equitable mobility access. Earlier this year, the company Ride received approval from MassDOT to test automated vehicles in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In addition, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with MassDOT along with the City of Boston to enable testing of self-driving vehicles on roads and public property in the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, beginning in Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park. FinSMEs 02/11/2017 Shippo, a San Francisco, CA-based shipping platform for business, closed a $20m Series B round of financing. The round, which brings the companys total funding to $29m, was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Union Square Ventures, SoftTech VC, VersionOne Ventures, and 500 Startups. The company intends to use the funds to deliver innovative solutions and bottom-line growth to customers who want to ship both domestically and internationally. Led by Laura Behrens Wu, CEO and co-founder, Shippo provides a web app and multi-carrier API to enable merchants and platforms to get real-time rates, print labels, automate international paperwork, track packages and facilitate returns. The company has more than 15,000 customers including eBay, Tuft & Needle, GOAT, Ipsy, Loot Crate and Marley Spoon by Martha Stewart. FinSMEs 02/11/2017 Wiliot, a San Diego, CA-based fabless semiconductor startup, closed a $5m funding round. Backers included Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated, and M Ventures, the strategic, corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, a science and technology company. The company has raised a total of $19m in its first 10 months. Led by Tal Tamir, CEO and co-founder, Wiliot is advancing wireless technology that aims to eliminate reliance on batteries or wired power to accelerate the Internet of Things. The new technology, which powers itself by harvesting energy from radio waves, enables a sensor as small as a fingernail, as thin as a sheet of paper, and an order of magnitude reduction in price and cost of maintenance. Possible applications include wide-ranging in scope, including connected packaging and products such as apparel, more accurate indoor location and affordable Real Time Location Systems. Wiliot has its research and development arm is based in Israel. FinSMEs 02/11/2017 Kolkata/Chennai: As bank customers suffered by waiting in long queues to withdraw their money from November onwards last year, another group of people -- bank employees -- endured the hardship of extended work hours and customer anger. The employees, say bank unions, bore the major brunt of the sudden decision announced on 8 November last year by the prime minister. "Banking personnel were rigorously working towards recovery of bad loans before the announcement of demonetisation, but the entire drive of recovery got derailed after the announcement as employees had to work day and night for giving service to depositors," Sanjay Das, Assistant General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers' Confederation, told IANS. The bank unions said that of the more than 100 persons who lost their lives during the demonetisation chaos, over 10 were bank employees and officers. Das said that despite the enormous amount of extra work put in by the employees, very few were compensated. "Over 50 percent of the employees and officers are yet to get their compensation for the extra work they did during the demonetisation period," Das said. According to CH Venkatachalam, general secretary of the All India Bank Employees' Association, the whole experience had left "a big scar in the minds of bankers". He said a million bank employees handling 1,000 million people coming to branches to deposit old notes was certainly a big task. He said the bankers were abused by the general public for not disbursing new notes and diverting the same to others. "The RBI made matters worse by saying that sufficient number of new notes were disbursed to banks," he added. He said the bank managements were not bothered about the problems faced by branch officials. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also asked bankers to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Officials in the branch were in office till late in the evening. Although some clerical staff, he said, were paid overtime, officers were left out. Pradip Biswas, General Secretary of the Bank Employees Federation of India, said that not only employees but even the banks had not been reimbursed by the government for the cost incurred on recalibration of ATMs. Criticising demonetisation, Biswas doubted that the whole exercise was done to unearth black money as claimed by the government. "The annual report of the RBI revealed that Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99 percent of Rs 15.44 lakh crore of scrapped notes, came back into the system after demonetisation. Now the question arises: was the demonetisation scheme designed to convert black money into white?" Biswas wondered. He said the government had described it as a fight against black money, funding of terrorist outfits and counterfeit currency. "But all their claims have fallen flat," he said. "The scrapping of notes failed miserably in addressing its objective of striking a blow against the black economy. Instead, the side effect of the note ban has impacted the banking industry adversely," said Das, who is also the West Bengal State Secretary for the union. The massive inflows of bank notes put a strain on the banks' daily operations and banking personnel were not able to focus on credit disbursement, which resulted in potential loss of banks' income, Das said, adding that bank credit growth came down to about 5.1 percent in 2016-17 from an average of 11.72 percent in the previous five years. The apex bank too has mentioned that banks' preoccupation with exchange of notes and deposits was one the factors for low credit growth. "Credit growth touched a low in more than two decades on account of factors such as subdued state of economic activity, risk aversion of the banking sector... loan repayment by use of specified bank notes (old notes) and banks' pre-occupation with exchange of notes and deposits following demonetisation," said the RBI's latest annual report. D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers Confederation, said that, initially, they had welcomed the government's move. "But it turned out to be a nightmare for the bankers." He said people thought bankers were at fault for not disbursing the new notes, but "the RBI supplied new currencies only to private banks daily and not to government-owned banks". Dev said the government should probe whether new notes found their way into the hands of industrialists and businessmen directly from the currency printing presses. But some senior bank officers differ with the unions about the impact of demonetisation on the economy in the long run. "Right now people are complaining, but one thing is certain that (huge) money has come into circulation. Banks have accessed low-cost deposits and, subsequently, lenders have reduced the lending rates," said Punjab National Bank Executive Director Sanjiv Sharan. One year down the line, economic conditions would improve, and with the government's thrust on low-cost housing and infrastructure development, credit demand would grow, he added. "For the time being it may seem that demonetisation is disturbing the economy. But in the long run, it will help it," Sharan contended. Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center will host a special book-signing event with the authors of They Were Just Doing Their Duty on Saturday and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. The public is invited to meet the authors of a the new book, released earlier this month. They Were Just Doing Their Duty profiles the stories behind many of the veterans buried in the Chattanooga National Cemetery, including all seven Medal of Honor recipients. As host of the event, the Heritage Center will have copies of the book on hand for the public to purchase for $8.99 and have autographed by the authors: Brad Quinlin, Dick Ransom and Jason Rusk. The proceeds from the book will also benefit the Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center and its campaign to build a new Heritage Center in downtown Chattanooga at the Aquarium Plaza. For more information visit www.MOHM.org. The Charles H. Coolidge Medal of Honor Heritage Center is at 368 Northgate Mall Dr. Editor's Note: As BJP government's demonetisation drive completes a year, we take a look at how it has impacted different states in India. This article was originally published on 2 November, 2017. Manzoor Ahmad Bahadur, the white-bearded, short-haired owner of Noor Medical Hall, a chemist shop in Srinagar's posh Jawahar Nagar area, was reluctant to accept Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes from people in the weeks following last year's demonetisation announcement. He was afraid that depositing these notes at banks would invite legal trouble. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetised high value currency notes on 8 November last year, Kashmir was facing protests following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. All businesses, including shops and industries were shut, and only chemists and doctors were allowed to function. But Ahmad was fearful that accepting the demonetised notes may invite accusations of hoarding black money, especially since even dealers who supplied him with medicines had stopped accepting the notes. Unlike other parts of India, in Jawahar Nagar, as elsewhere in Kashmir, there were no queues outside ATMs, and even bank branches that were functioning didn't see much crowds. That was not only due to the shutdown, which had reduced the need for cash, but also because people would prefer keeping money in the banks rather than at home. "I used to accept Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes initially, but I stopped. I was afraid it would land me in trouble," Ahmad said. "My wife had some Rs 1,000 notes and I got them exchanged from the bank, but I wasn't going to accept more of these notes from customers." As per the Jammu and Kashmir government's 'Economic Survey Report 2016', people in the state had already been depositing money in the banks. "In general, cash is deposited in banks by people of the state, which has now become a habit as it had become a compulsion due to militancy," the report added. The PDP-led state government has credited itself for this. As per the Economic Survey report, there are more bank branches in Jammu and Kashmir than the rest of India. Of about 1,998 bank branches in the state, 934 are in Kashmir, 998 in Jammu and 65 in Ladakh. And with over 20 lakh households in the state, there is, on average, one bank branch for about 1,000 households. The national average is one branch per 1,800 households, the report added. Also, of the 2,260 ATMs in the state, 1,011 are in the Kashmir Valley. However, this large network of bank branches and ATMs has created a major security issue for financial institutions, especially since militants had begun targeting and robbing these banks. In a meeting convened by the Jammu and Kashmir State Level Bankers' Committee (SLBC) to discuss the security scenario in Kashmir, its impact on the functioning of bank branches and for chalking out necessary safety measures, it was emphasised by the different banks that there is "a need to revisit and upgrade the security mechanism in view of the emerging challenges in Jammu and Kashmir". In the meeting, Parvez Ahmad, convenor of JKSLBC and chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir bank, had noted that the security issue had been taken up with the state government. During the meeting, the different banks had noted that the security conditions "discourage banks from doing any expansion of their branches", which is "badly needed for deeper penetration in the state". In the meeting, officials of the State Bank of India (SBI) informed that the bank has a network of 26 ATMs in Kashmir, of which 10 were stolen by a "gang of miscreants". Vice-president of Jammu and Kashmir Bank, Rakesh Gandotra, said that the bank beefed up round-the-clock security after the robbery incidents. "Armed guards are being deployed at all times. They work in eight-hour shifts throughout the day and night to provide security at all bank branches. Earlier, security was only provided during the day," Gandotra said. Apart from the private security guards, he said, banks are also deploying police personnel for security at the branches now. The state's economy has been hit badly by demonetisation, they said. Mushtaq Ahmad, former president of the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI), said, "The economy has been badly hit. Nearly 60 percent business has been lost. There is a general slump in the market and exports have also taken a hit. The effect of demonetisation was not immediately felt, since markets and businesses were already shut when it was announced. It's only now that we are realising its impact. Together with Goods and Services Tax (GST), demonetisation has resulted in decline of the market by at least 40 percent," he said. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Monga accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "fooling the country", saying demonetisation has neither helped curb militancy nor has it helped reduction in black money. Ahmad said that the move by the government to scrap the old currency notes has also not helped fight corruption. "Corruption has not stopped. It's still there and it has become severe," he said. New Delhi: Drones for civilian use will require a unique identification number as well as radio frequency tags, according to the civil aviation ministry as it today unveiled draft norms for the unmanned aircraft systems. The regulations, once finalised, would permit commercial use of drones in the country, Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said. On whether companies can use drones to deliver goods, Choubey said the answer is "yes". Drones would require unique identification numbers while nano drones, those weighing below 250 grams, would be exempt from seeking one-time approval, including the unique number requirement, as per the final draft rules prepared by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). "We are making the rules very, very user friendly," Choubey told reporters here. Noting that the draft norms have been prepared after extensive consultations internally, he said the final and formal Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) for drones is expected to be in place by December-end. Various restrictions have been proposed to ensure that drones are used only for valid purposes and there would be no drone zones. "All drones are proposed to be operated in visual line of sight, during day time only and below 200 feet," the ministry said in a release. Drones have been classified into five categories, with those weighing up to 250 gram described as nano. Those weighing more than 250 gram and up to 2 kilogram would be classified as micro while mini would be those having weight of over 2 kilogram and less than or equal to 25 kilogram. Small drones would be those weighing up to 150 kilogram and above that threshold would be classified as large. Drones would be issued unique identification numbers and those falling in the mini category would need to comply with remote pilot approval requirement. Besides "RFID/SIM", drones should have return to home option and anti-collision lights, as per the draft rules. RFID (radio frequency identification) is used for the identification purpose electronically. Apart from barring these drones to be operated within 5 kilometre of an airport, they would be restricted from "within 50 kilometre from international border and beyond 500 metre (horizontal) into sea along the coastline". Drones would not be allowed within "5 kilometre radius from Vijay Chowk (in national capital)" and also from a mobile platform such as a moving vehicle, ship or aircraft. Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju expressed hope that the draft norms would encourage genuine and "discourage nefarious activities". About the draft norms, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said the ministry has opened the door for lot of experiments and innovations in India. Currently, aircraft rules do not cover use of drones as well as their sale and purchase. Aviation regulator DGCA had in October 2014 restricted the use of drones and unmanned aircraft system by civilians. The draft norms would be put up for public consultations for a month. In April 2016, the DGCA had issued guidelines for obtaining Unique Identification Number (UIN) & Operation of Civil Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). On how different the latest draft rules are from last years guidelines, a DGCA official said the latter was proposed as an air transport circular. The ministry is also working on technologies that can be used to neutralise rogue drones, Choubey said. When the country is getting ready to celebrate the first anniversary of the demonetisation day on 8 November, it is inevitable that the question will be asked: has the momentous decision confirmed Narendra Modis place in Indias history? After all, the paramount leader of the BJP does not want to be remembered merely as an also-ran Prime Minister. We must remember that Prime Minister Modi has an astounding sense of destiny and a fierce motivation to achieve it. His astonishing rise from the impecunious condition of a tea vendor to that of the most powerful position in the largest democracy of the world is a testament to his relentless drive to be at the centre-stage of history. All the high-decibel slogans and high-optics addresses to the nation are carefully calculated exercises to achieve that one goal to make a brand image of Modi as a Man of History. The demonetisation move was the biggest, and the most disruptive, exercise in pursuit of that glory. The prime ministers 8 November address last year de-legitimising the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes was a historic occasion; he promised the nation that he was taking this extraordinary step to make India free of black money and fake currency, to put an end to the twin menace of corruption and terrorism in one stroke. Possibly, Modi had taken a cue from his predecessor Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who had taken a similarly historic decision almost five decades ago by resorting to bank nationalisation with a vow to put an end to poverty. But there is a crucial difference between the bank nationalisation move and demonetisation move, in terms of both politics and economics. Politically, Indira Gandhi was still struggling to assert her authority over her party when she decided to nationalise banks, a policy, she thought, she would be able to sell to the people as pro-poor and dub the veterans in her party known as syndicate -- who opposed her as pro-rich. And that worked; Morarji Desai, the leader of the syndicate, was left with no option but to resign from the Union Cabinet as he had opposed this move and he was divested of the finance portfolio. He wrote to the Prime Minister: If you wanted a change in the Finance Ministry you could have discussed it with me But now, you have behaved towards me in a manner in which no one would behave even with a clerk. Prime Minister Gandhi went on to establish her authority over the party and went on to make bank nationalisation the biggest plank of her Garibi Hatao slogan. In a contrasting scenario, Modi had already become the unquestioned leader of both the party and the government when he embarked on the demonetisation exercise. The demonetisation move was only meant to secure his place in history as the paramount crusader against black money. However, it was not the first time that the demonetisation exercise was undertaken by a prime minister. Morarji Desai, by the turn of history when he became the prime minister, had also taken such a step to unearth public money. On 16 January 1978, the Morarji Desai government demonetised Rs 1,000, Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 currency notes. But, prior to that, the government had asked the RBI to draft an ordinance; and the draft ordinance was sent to the President N Sanjiva Reddy for ratification. It was only after the presidential assent that the ordinance was issued and the decision was announced through All India Radio news bulletin (there was no television then). Prime Minister Desai did not come on radio to make the announcement; probably because he had no illusion about projecting himself as a man of destiny. But fast forward to the present and see the contrast: at 5.30 pm on 8 November, the RBIs board, in an emergency meeting, cleared the advisory note of the government (as testified by the RBI governor before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament); at 6.30 pm the same day the cabinet had an emergency meeting to approve the note; and at 8 pm the prime minister went live on television. The procedural nicety of an ordinance was given a go-by (the ordinance came by end December when the problems mounted and the legal challenges were filed in the courts of law) The prime minister presented the demonetisation plan as the crowning effort in his crusade against the black money: he urged the poor to be ready to suffer temporary inconveniences if they want to see the enemies of the nation bite the dust. Kala Dhan Hatao became his buzzword just as Garibi Hatao was central to Indira Gandhis campaign. Slogans may have been similar, but the economic consequences were radically different. Bank nationalisation changed the economic contours for the underprivileged; banks were no more the handmaiden of the rich; they were made the tools to serve the poor. The bank branches opened in the rural, remote areas; they were made to lend to farmers and small businesses as the priority sectors. That made Indira Gandhi the darling of the masses, especially the rural poor. Riding on this, she went on to win the historic election in 1971. Narendra Modi did not possibly realise that, with the demonetisation, he was trying to do an Indira Gandhi but actually he was moving in the opposite direction that he was not benefitting the common men and women, the rural households. He was, in fact, putting them and their livelihood at risk. The reason is that the common men and women use cash in all their transactions; small businesses thrive on cash dealings. When 86 percent of the currency notes were suddenly withdrawn and the remonetisation policy was painfully slow (as the RBI had no buffer time to prepare for the contingency), the poor were the hardest hit. Without sufficient cash, the unorganised sector in which more than 90 percent people are engaged, were left twiddling their thumbs. Conversely, the rich, the black-money holders, had an easy ride. They know how to use every loophole in the system to tide over any government regulation. In complicity with the bank officials, they found ways to turn their black money into white. The RBI admitted as much when it said more than 99 percent of the demonetised currencies came back to the system (if the anecdotal evidence is to be believed, almost the entire banned currency notes have returned to the banks). Prime Minister Modi ought to have taken a cue from Morarji Desais experiment. When Morarji deliberated upon the demonetisation plan in 1978, his finance minister, H M Patel, has gone on record to have said that it would not serve the intended purpose of unearthing black money. He told the prime minister that there was no chance of ending black money until we destroy the conditions which encourage it. He wrote: Most people who have black money and who are involved in such operations rarely keep their ill-gotten gains in cash. They will have converted much of it into assets or even into white money. I G Patel, who was then governor of RBI, had also expressed his view on similar lines: Thinking that black money is stashed away under mattresses or suitcases is naive, he had told the prime minister as his autography tells us. But the prime minister was adamant and his wish was carried out. The exercise was a disaster. As regards the second demonetisation drive, all available indicators, as discussed above, tell us that this exercise, too, has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. It is ironic that Modi tried to do an Indira Gandhi , but he ended up being another Morarji Desai! New Delhi: Already Rs 65,000 crore private investment has been committed in the food processing sector and more is expected during the mega global food event to begin from 3 November, the government said on Wednesday. Of the total, more than 40 percent of the investment has been committed by domestic players like ITC, it said, adding that this would create more than 10 lakh jobs in the country. "Huge investment has been committed in the food processing sector because of transformation measures taken in the last three years and improvement in the ease of doing business," Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal told reporters. Already Rs 65,000 crore ($10 billion) has been committed ahead of the event to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and more investment is expected, she said. The minister was speaking at the curtain raiser event of the 'World Food India 2017' being organised along with industry body CII. Highlighting about investor-friendly measures, Badal said an online system is in place for faster processing of application and grant of funds. A portal 'Nivesh Bandhu' for the benefit of investors has been designed and will be unveiled by Modi at the event. A food regulatory portal will also be launched. Speaking at the event, Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSAI) CEO Pawan Kumar Agarwal said, "Over the last couple of years, we have put things together to enable more investment". Food standards are at par with global benchmark and now approvals are given for recipe-based also. Besides, a new system has been put in place for approval of new kinds of foods, if required, he added. "So in all, we have created an investor friendly environment and the regulatory burden has been reduced", Agarwal noted. The food event will provide global businesses a platform to explore Indian market across the value chain in food processing and food retail. The event will showcase the strength of India in food processing and allied sectors. It will also connect domestic and international businesses for possible partnerships and facilitate collaboration, investment flow and encourage sourcing from India. More than 40 countries, 27 states governments are participating in the event. Germany, Denmark and Japan are the partner countries, while the Italy, the Netherlands are the focus countries. New Delhi:The next of kin of those killed in a boiler explosion at NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district on Wednesday will get a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh, Union power minister RK Singh said on Thursday. Meanwhile, the state administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. The death toll in explosion had risen up to 29, while 85 people were being treated in hospitals, a press release from the NTPC said. "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," Singh told reporters. This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime minister's office said on Twitter. Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex- gratia of Rs. 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident. PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 2, 2017 Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. The 1,550-megawatt (MW) plant where the blast happened supplies electricity to nine states. "This is to inform that Unit-6 (500 MW) of Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, is under shutdown after an accident in the evening of 1 November. The other five units of the station are operating normally," NTPC said in a statement. NTPC had on Wednesday said it has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. At around 1530 hours on Wednesday, "there was sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation," it had said in a statement. "There was opening in corner No.2 from which hot flue gases and steam escaped affecting the people working around the area," the statement read. Around 80 people were rushed to NTPC hospital, most of them were discharged after giving first-aid, it added. The plant employs around 870 people. "All possible measures are being taken to provide immediate relief to the families of affected people in close coordination with the district administration," NTPC said. For more updates click here "We're absolutely talking about the tip of an iceberg." This is how the trailer of An Open Secret, Oscar-winning director Amy Berg's documentary on the dark underbelly of Hollywood where child sex abuse is apparently commonplace, ends. Although the documentary was released two years ago, it has found its way into discourse, once again. The documentary is just a window to Hollywood's dubious practice of child abuse and an environment that protects the offenders rather than bringing them to the book. Produced by Gabe Hoffman, the film had a small US release but was recently put up on Vimeo for everyone to watch. After the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment row, the producer told The Hollywood Reporter that the docu was free to stream for a period of 9 days "to commemorate serial predator Harvey Weinstein finally being exposed." The disgraced producer has been accused by multiple women of rape and sexual harassment. Interestingly, ever since the harassment allegations surfaced, people have been complaining about the producer's abusive tendencies being an 'open secret' in Hollywood. An Open Secret, too, depicts Hollywood debauchery at its best (or worst) and it's even more relevant now. The docu covers high-profile parties with free-flowing alcohol and drugs, which seemingly gives powerful old men the chance to intoxicating underage actors. Shedding light on starry-eyed kids who, often, don't realise what's happening to them, the documentary takes a strong stance about this not being their fault at all. An Open Secret shows what thrives behind the garb of talent managers, casting agents, directors etc. The kids, on the other hand, are really a bunch of really young teenagers who just want to be seen Disney's next show or to become the next Lizzie McGuire or Derek. The docu covers stories of actual offenders like Brian Peck, who continue to work in the business despite being charged for two acts involving sexual misconduct with a child. Another actor to feature in the documentary is Evan Henzi, who claims he was abused over 30-40 times by Marty Weiss, a youth-talent manager, for over a period of five years. Although the makers struggled to get distributors when they set out to release the documentary, they are still seeking distribution as they believe there's a huge market for them, especially now. Watch the trailer of the film here: A social thriller based on real life struggles of common people, Mulk has already created buzz across Bollywood. Be it Rishi Kapoors brand new avatar, the star cast or the shooting locations, everybody is eagerly waiting to see what the film has to offer. Mulk will also feature Taapsee Pannu, Prateik Babbar and Rajat Kapur. The shooting has already started in Varanasi and Lucknow, and the film is expected to hit the screens early next year. The experimental social thriller has been produced by Benaras Media Works. Screenplay writer-producer Mushtaq Shiekh will be the associate producer of Mulk. Anubhav Sinha will be directing this movie after his last directorial venture Tum Bin 2. The plot of the film will revolve around the story of a joint family in a small town in India who are fighting to reclaim their honour after being dragged into a controversy. The story seems to be exciting but there are more interesting parts. DNA reports the story is actually based on a real life instance where a father refused to accept the dead body of his son, who was allegedly a terrorist. Earlier this month, Rishi Kapoor shared his first look from the upcoming movie and everybody was surprised to see his new avatar. The veteran actor looked quite intriguing with a serious look on his face. With a full grown beard, the he had short hair as he looked at someone with anger. After experimenting with a commercial film like Judwaa 2, Taapsee Pannu has taken up a challenging role in this film. Taapsees character in Mulk will be helping a joint family reclaim their honour. She will be seen in a lawyers role to solve the mystery behind a death. Rishi Kapoor will be playing Taapsees father-in-law in the film while Neena Gupta will be her mother-in-law. As per TV reports, the Election Commission (EC) has refused to stall the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's upcoming period drama Padmavati following Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) Gujarat's letter to the EC requesting the ban on or postponement of the film's release. Instead, the EC has sought a report from the poll panel on the issues the Rajput representatives have with the depiction of their culture and history in Padmavati. Election Commission has sought a report from Gujarat poll panel on the ongoing row over Bhansalis movie Padmavati #PadmavatiForVotes pic.twitter.com/6FRcLkvGBM TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) November 3, 2017 The Times of India reports that the purpose of the pre-release screening was to "alleviate their raised tempers and provide fair opportunity to prevent unnecessary tension ahead of polls." The same report quotes BJP spokesman and Kshatriya leader I K Jadeja as saying, "The party would prefer that Padmavati is either banned or its release postponed in poll-bound Gujarat." While the film is slated to release on 1 December, the Gujarat polls will take place on 9 and 14 December. Meanwhile, the protests in Rajasthan continue. A bandh is being observed in Chittorgarh as a mark of protest against Padmavati's release. Shri Rajput Karni Sena has been protesting against the film's release throughout this year as they believe that the period drama distorts historical facts pertaining their community. In October, a group of miscreants even destroyed a huge Padmavati-inspired rangoli that a Surat artist created on the occasion of Diwali. The action was condemned by the lead actress of the film Deepika Padukone, who plays the titular role of Rani Padmini. Padmavati also stars Ranveer Singh and Shahid Kapoor as Sultan Alauddin Khilji and Maharawal Ratan Singh respectively. It also stars Jim Sarbh and Aditi Rao Hydari. It is co-produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Bhansali Productions. The Hollywood Reporter states that Paramount Pictures will distribute the film in the USA as well as globally, outside India. (Also read Padmavati: Will Sanjay Leela Bhansali's vision be adversely affected by 3D conversion?) Kollywood's ace thriller helmer Gautham Menon is all set to offer another gritty and rivetting experience with his upcoming film, Dhruva Natchathiram. Starring Vikram, Ritu Varma and Aishwarya Rajesh in lead roles, this film, like most of Menon's films, will be a high-action spy thriller. The film is reportedly going to be a part of a trilogy series, whose first installment is slated to release in April 2018. Film trade analyst Ramesh Bala tweeted saying that the first installment is reportedly going to be titled Ondraga. He posted: This movie is titled #Ondraga - Will be shot majorly in #USA - 4 college friends reunion after 10 years is the storyline.. https://t.co/2BeB9h1CWJ Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) November 2, 2017 The "storyline" that he mentions in the above tweet refers to another development around the film. It is reported that the upcoming film will revolve around 10 friends who take the onus to protect and safeguard the nation's security, for which they disguise themselves and sport different looks. Ondraga will reportedly chronicle the life of four friends who reunite after ten years. The film will be shot entirely in the US. Ondraga, slated to release in 2018, will feature four major stars from the four south Indian film industries (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada). It is reported that Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar has already been roped in for the film. Academy Award-winning music composer AR Rahman is most likely to compose music for the film. Bala tweets: #ChiyaanVikram - Dir @menongautham 's #DhruvaNatchathram is about 10 ppl who work in disguise to protect and safeguard the nation.. pic.twitter.com/gheSdXH9SO Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) November 2, 2017 Dir @menongautham 's new movie in 2018 will star 4 Big stars from the 4 South Inds.. #PuneethRajkumar is confirmed.. @arrahman to do music.. Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) November 2, 2017 The Indian Express' report suggests that Dhruva Natchathiram has been shot in places like Slovenia, Bulgaria, Abu Dhabi, Georgia and Turkey. The regular shooting of the film is being done in Coonoor. Dustin Hoffman is apologizing for the alleged sexual harassment of a 17-year-old intern in 1985, saying it is not reflective of who I am. Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleges that the now 80-year-old actor groped her on the set of TV movie Death of a Salesman and talked about sex to me and in front of me. She was left in tears, she wrote in a column on 1 November in The Hollywood Reporter. The Oscar-winner replied in a statement: I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am. Hoffman is the latest Hollywood name linked to a deluge of sexual harassment and assault allegations. The accusations began with multiple women accusing producer Harvey Weinstein of raping and sexually harassing them. The movement gained momentum with A-list celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie joining the accusers. Soon after, Kevin Spacey, the leading actor of Netflix's House of Cards, was accused of sexual misconduct by Anthony Rapp. Following Rapp's allegations, two more men accused Spacey of fondling them without their consent. With inputs from AP. Lee University Chamber Strings, an all-string student ensemble of Lees School of Music, will present its fall concert on Friday, Nov. 10, at 7:30 p.m. in Pangle Hall. The performance will feature selected pieces from the most popular movie soundtracks, from legendary to classic to todays top chart movies. The music selections will accommodate all of your occasions, said Xiaoqing Yu, director of Chamber Strings. Whether youre looking to entertain your significant other or please your long-time companion, this concert is a night not to be missed. The ensemble will perform Final Countdown by Joey Tempest, La La Land by Justin Hurwitz, I Wanna Be Like You by Richard Sherman, and I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton, among others. Chamber Strings is a dynamic ensemble comprising the universitys finest violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists providing innovative programming for venues on and off campus. Mr. Yu joined Lees School of Music in 2004 with worldwide performance experience. In addition to his role as an associate professor of violin, he serves as concertmaster of Greenville Symphony. He earned degrees from University of South Carolina, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. We promise you an exciting and sweet evening of beautiful music, just in time to ease your mind into the holiday season, said Professor Yu. The concert is free, non-ticketed, and open to the public. For more information about the event, contact Lees School of Music at 614-8240 or visit http://leeuniversity.edu/academics/music/. Hollywood is currently deluged with countless sexual harassment rows. From high-profile producers to celebrated actors, it has been a month of disappointment and obvious disgust especially for people who followed these celebrities, looked up to them or brought them up in ordinary discussions. Sexual harassment in showbiz is not an alien concept. It has been around, existing with help (voluntary or involuntary) from Hollywood's own. However, in the present context, it all began with a 5 October New York Times article, in which multiple women, including actors Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan came forward to level sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein. Here's a timeline of what ensued after Weinstein was named and shamed. The New York Times article on Harvey Weinstein The article also revealed a financial settlement that happened between McGowan and Weinstein which was not to be mistaken as "an admission by the producer, but to avoid litigation and buy peace. After a 10-month-investigation, The New Yorker publishes a report by Ronan Farrow, which includes 13 more women accusers. Italian actress Asia Argento, one of the accusers, alleges Weinstein sexually forced himself on her in 1997. The row intensifies with A-list actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow, Cara Delevingne and Angelina Jolie sharing their own sexual harassment encounters with the disgraced mogul. The consequences? Weinstein's wife announces she's leaving him. His BAFTA membership is revoked. In a twisted turn of events, McGowan alleges on Twitter that Weinstein raped her. After more and more women, including British actress Lysette Anthony, accuse him of rape, Weinstein's The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences membership is cancelled. More recently, he stands barred from the Producers Guild of America for life. Meanwhile, new allegations against him from several women surface almost every day. Ben Affleck denounces Weinstein; faces new allegations himself Affleck was called out by actress Rose McGowan. In a tweet, McGowan accused Affleck of lying after issuing a statement that he was saddened and angry about the Weinstein revelations. McGowan suggested Affleck knew decades ago about Weinsteins behavior. Actress Hilarie Burton renewed an earlier allegation that Affleck groped her during a visit to MTVs TRL, which she was hosting in 2003. Affleck on Wednesday tweeted an apology, I acted inappropriately toward Ms. Burton and I sincerely apologize. Roy Price resigns Amazon Studios head Roy Price quits following allegations that he sexually harassed Isa Hackett, a producer in Amazon series Man in the High Castle, in 2015. Price was also facing criticism for his close business ties with Weinstein. The senior Amazon executive had also been accused of ignoring actress Rose McGowan's claims that Weinstein raped her. James Toback faces allegations from 38 women After Price, Oscar-nominated writer-director James Toback is accused of sexually harassing at least 38 women stemming back to at least the 1980s, in a report by Los Angeles Times. Out of the 38, as many as 31 of the women spoke about it, and detailed various incidents in which Toback allegedly made lewd suggestions, steered conversations into sexually explicit territory, and rubbed against them until he ejaculated into his pants or on their bodies. According to a dw.com report, 200 more women have spoken up, levelling new allegations against Toback. Kevin Spacey accused; comes out as gay In another shocking revelation, Anthony Rapp speaks to BuzzFeed News, alleging that the House of Cards star made a sexual advance on him when the former was only 14 years old. Spacey offers and apology. However, Netflix quickly puts an end to its flagship show, announcing season six will be the final one. After Rapp, two more men actors Roberto Cavazos and Tony Montana accuse Spacey of sexual misconduct. Soon after these accusations, Netflix tweets that the production of House of Cards Season 6 has been suspended. Rush Hour director Brett Ratner accused Prominent film director Brett Ratner is accused of sexual misconduct by six women including actress Olivia Munn in a Los Angeles Times report on 1 November. As a result, Warner Bros. severs ties with the director, whose expired first-look deal with the studio will not be renewed anymore. Dustin Hoffman Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleges in a column for The Hollywood Reporter that the now 80-year-old actor groped her on the set of TV movie Death of a Salesman and talked about sex to me and in front of me. The incident left her in tears. Hoffman apologises saying it is not reflective of who I am. What is common between all these men is that they all enjoy a certain position of authority and power. As multiple men and women join the accusers everyday and more offenders are brought to the book, the question arises: how many more? Inputs from Agencies Director Vinoth, who made a sure-footed debut with the highly-entertaining con drama Sathuranga Vettai, is gearing up for the release of his sophomore outing Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, an action crime thriller starring Karthi and Rakul Preet in the lead roles. Talking about the film in the press meet held in Chennai, Vinoth said, "Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru will be entertaining, engaging and also educative. I wrote the script keeping these three things in mind. I wanted viewers to know the intricacies of a criminal case. I was initially apprehensive about writing a cop story. But, after I met some police officers, it gave me more confidence and my script took a completely different shape. The story happens from the year 1995 to 2005. So, it was quite challenging to scout locations, which are not globalised yet." Tamil actor Karthi, who was last seen in Mani Ratnam's Kaatru Veliyidai, showered praise on Vinoth's directorial skills and recalled how he signed the project. "When I signed Siruthai, where I played the role of a police officer for the first time, I interacted with a lot of higher officials to get an idea of how their mind works. A police officer narrated a fascinating crime case in one of my discussions then. When director Vinoth came to me to narrate the story of Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru, he started with the same real-life incident. Since the same story kept coming to me again and again, I told myself that I shouldn't miss this project. And, I also loved Vinoth's work in his debut film Sathuranga Vettai and wanted to collaborate with him," recalled Karthi. Karthi said Vinoth always views his work objectively and was always on his toes at the shooting spot. "As a filmmaker, it's essential not to be self-indulgent about your work. A distant perspective will elevate the quality of the film. Vinoth has excellent clarity and balance, which is very rare for a creator who is just directing his second project. He made everything easy for me with his exhaustive references and research work on various real-life accounts. In fact, a lot of real police officers, who investigated the case, have acted in the film. Vinoth has presented the film in a contemporary tone and youngsters will relate to the happenings in the story," said Karthi, adding that shooting the film was an entirely new experience for him. Karthi was all praise for Vinoth's incredible eye in choosing the right artist for a role: "I don't play a stylish English-speaking, city-bred police officer in the film. I essay the role of a small-time cop. Each character in the film has been meticulously chosen. A lot of detail has gone into each role. Last time, I witnessed such detailing in director Pa. Ranjith's Madras. Every character has a lot of shades. We have cast some exciting theatre actors from North India." Karthi said he has started to see police officers in a completely new way after working in the film, adding that he has learned a lot from them. "Theeran is not a raw film. It's a full-fledged commercial action thriller, but the treatment will be realistic. The limitations that come with a police officer's job have been depicted well. I've seen some sincere, dedicated cops through the course of the film. The story will also provide a lot of insightful information to the audiences." On his co-star Rakul Preet, Karthi said he had sent a lot of pictorial references of mid-town Tamil girls to help her prepare for the role. "Rakul took everything positively and delivered an authentic, natural performance. She brought a lot of energy to the sets. We filmed her portions after completing all the action sequences. So, the entire unit was in a happy mood during those portions. Theeran will definitely be a memorable role for her," said Karthi. Rakul Preet lauded Karthi as an amazing co-star and thanked Vinoth for believing in her potential. "There are few films that from the time you start shooting, there's some kind of positivity and a lot of passion you witness. I could feel that every single day on the sets of Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru. I'm thankful to director Vinoth for believing in me and giving me a character, which is so different from what I'm. My role is a domestic Tamizh ponnu. I really enjoyed shooting for this film. Vinoth has shot every single scene with a lot of realistic moments. During shooting, Karthi would remember half of my Tamil dialogues. Whenever I forget a line, he would tell me. He was very helpful," said Rakul Preet, who has also reportedly signed Suriya's next untitled project with director Selvaraghavan. Produced by SR Prabhu under the banner Dream Warrior Pictures, Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru is slated to hit screens worldwide on November 17th. Ghibran has composed the music for the film, which will also be released in Telugu as Khakee. The moment Thor Ragnarok opens with a close up of Thor suspended somewhere in a cage, staring directly at the camera and delivering a darkly funny monologue, you know youre in for a very different Thor movie. And the moment the camera pans to the left to reveal a fiery demon chilling on a makeshift throne arguing with Thor, youre sure that this is going to be an incredibly entertaining movie. Marvel and Disney have outdone themselves Thor Ragnarok is the best film of their superhero cannon to date, thanks to the weird genius of the director Taika Waititi. The Kiwi filmmaker brings a whole new layer of hilariously awkward comedy, self aware set pieces, eye poppingly splashy colours, 8-bit inspired music along with the MCUs ridiculously high bar for special effects. More importantly, Waititi also finds the right balance of heroism and humor in the Thor character, something the previous films had missed, turning him into a serious bore. If youve been following the sprawling timeline of the MCU, youll fit right into the story. The events in this film occur parallel to the stuff that happens in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Spider Man Homecoming and Civil War, and a few months after Doctor Strange. The fact that were able to follow such a complicated timeline so easily is a testament to how finely Marvel has built their storytelling machine. Anyway, we follow Thor who is stuck on a strange planet called Sakaar, which has odd colours and is ruled by an even weirder dude named Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) who organizes gladiator matches of sorts. This is a problem because the villain of the week Hela (Cate Blanchett) shows up in Thors home Asgaard with plans to rule the world. You can guess what happens next Thor must escape the bizarro planet and save his people (again). What you will not guess is how brilliantly Waititi executes the cliches in Thor: Ragnarok. Every time there is a potentially familiar setup, the filmmaker injects his trademark visual comedy to make it all seem fresh. The film also plays like it is made by an MCU fanboy suddenly given the power to control the ship. So the plot zooms from one awesome set piece to the other, feeding an imagination that has gone completely wild. Rocket ship blasters controlled by invisible gloves, scary looking but soft spoken aliens made of rocks, laugh out loud cameos by other superheroes, hyper kinetic action which culminates into an awesome slow motion final punch, and even the ultimate badass female sidekick called Valkyrie played by Tessa Thomspson. Since youve probably already seen the trailer you would know that The Hulk has a major presence in the film. But its not just a presence, its the best rendition of the character to date. The bakchodi between Thor and Hulk makes way for some of the most memorable film moments of the year. Even if you are wowed by the spectacular action, its the Thor-Hulk banter that makes the most impact. Placing these two inherently serious characters in a plot device reminiscent of buddy cop and road trip comedies is a brave decision that pays off handsomely. On the downside, despite Blanchetts fun performance, the film suffers from the same problem that every other MCU has to date a villain that shows great promise but disappears without making too much of an impact. With a scale this huge in these films, peppered with so many hero characters and even gray characters like Loki, its impossible to create a well-developed ultimate villain whose arc starts and ends in just one movie. You should watch Thor Ragnarok on the biggest screen in your town, and to be able to enjoy the pop fizzy colour palette you should head to a theater playing it in 2D. This is a new standard set for superhero movies, and I wonder how Marvel will top this with the Infinity War movies. Hollywoods widening sexual harassment crisis has ensnared a prominent film director after six women including actress Olivia Munn accused Brett Ratner of sexual misconduct in a Los Angeles Times report on 1 November. Playboy Enterprises quickly distanced itself from Ratner as his attorney denied the allegations and on 1 November Warner Bros. severed ties with the director, whose expired first-look deal with the studio will not be renewed, according to a person with knowledge of the decision who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Munn also complained about on-set behavior, alleging that while visiting the production of Ratners After the Sunset in 2004, he masturbated in front of her in his trailer. Munn described the incident, without naming Ratner, in a 2010 collection of essays. Ratners lawyer issued a statement in which he said the director vehemently denies the outrageous derogatory allegations and is confident that his name will be cleared once the current media frenzy dies down and people can objectively evaluate the nature of these claims. In the latest development, Brett Ratner has sued a woman named Melanie Kohler, who claims he raped her in Los Angeles over a decade ago. He says it's a lie. Ratner is suing Kohler for defamation, claiming unspecified damages, reports tmz.com. According to the lawsuit, Kohler claimed in an 20 October Facebook post, "Brett Ratner raped me". She even called him "a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago". Kohler said Ratner "preyed on me as a drunk girl (and) forced himself upon me". According to Ratner's lawyer, Kohler said she had met the filmmaker at a club here in either 2004 or 2005, and he took her to producer Robert Evans's home where Ratner was living at the time. She says he forced her to have sex. Ratner's lawyer threatened to sue her if she didn't take the post down immediately. She removed the post, but Kohler again started putting the same story out in various ways. Ratner directed the Rush Hour film series, Red Dragon, X-Men: The Last Stand and Tower Heist. Unchahar, Rae Bareli: "There is a pall of gloom in Unchahar today. The whole town must have been grieving yesterday," said Deep Chandra, a 25-year-old who works at the NTPC plant in Unchahar. Chandra had a day off on Wednesday, when a blast at the Rae Bareli power plant killed 26 people and injured more than a hundred. Many are those he calls friends. A resident of nearby Umra village, Chandra said many families would still not be aware that their loved ones had perished as most labourers from this unit were from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Chandra was milling around gate number 4 with a few other NTPC workers when they noticed ash-like material rising up. Chandra said they rushed to help, but were halted at the gate. Chandra used his pass to gain entry and began frantically searching for his uncle, who worked at the same unit. "Everyone was covered in ash," Chandra remembers. "They were lying on the ground, their clothes in tatters. I couldn't recognise them. I helped shift the injured to ambulances till 7 pm, but my uncle was nowhere to be found. Later, I got a call from a hospital. They told me my uncle had been admitted with burns on his face." A community grieves Ramesh (name changed to protect identity), a junior engineer who works at the NTPC plant, said nothing was cooked at his home last night. "We all sat in silence," he said. Ramesh echoed Chandra's sentiments, saying that the NTPC township and adjoining villages whose workers are employed at the plant were grieving. The fields where the children play in the afternoon remained empty. Most people stayed indoors and kept their doors shut," he said. He added that most of the women were in tears. Ramesh works night shifts at boiler 5, only 500 metres away from boiler 6, where the accident occurred. He said his relatives pleaded with him to skip work after the accident, but he chose to show up. He's been working there for 30 years. He still has faith in the system. He said that some people who live in the township are battling for their lives. Ramesh said three assistant general manager-level officers of the NTPC were undergoing treatment in Lucknow. Surendra Sharma, a junior rank officer deployed in the unit 5, said he was fortunate to have his day off on Wednesday. He was having tea in nearby Umra village when he heard the blast. He said initially, he didn't realise the magnitude of the incident. "There was ash all around the accident site," he said. "I saw workers lying prone. Their clothes were torn and covered in hot ash. I was unable to make sense of what was happening until the ambulances began to arrive and rescue operations began," he added. Sharma said he initially thought that at least 50 people had been killed and hundreds more would have been buried under the ash, which could be as hot as 250C. "Everyone in the township and nearby villages is traumatised," he said. Allegations of negligence RD Singh, Rae Bareli general secretary of Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh (BMS), blamed management for the accident. He said the unit was started in a hurry to impress the higher-ups. He said that instead of getting the work done by staff trained by permanent employees, unskilled labourers had been hired. He said this was an accident waiting to happen and added that the blast was heard up to 500 metres away. He said many bodies might still be buried under the ash and that the death toll might rise. The BMS leader, who has worked for some time at the NTPC, also alleged that the unit management was playing with the lives of labourers and had not provided them with proper safety equipment such as fire retardant clothes, gloves and other accessories. He said providing a helmet, an apron and a pair of safety shoes simply isn't enough. He said the government should take stern action and the compensation to the kin of dead should be increased to Rs 20 lakh. Saurabh Sharma is a Lucknow-based freelance reporter. He is a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters. New Delhi: The AIADMK's EK Palaniswami-O Panneerselvam (EPS-OPS) faction on Monday accused the Sasikala-Dhinakaran group of "deliberately delaying" a decision in the 'two-leaves' party symbol case. The fifth hearing in the case before the Election Commission on Monday also ended in a stalemate with the EPS-OPS group alleging that the other faction was "consuming most of the time on demanding cross-examination of some party members who had allegedly submitted fake affidavits". As the arguments remained inconclusive, the next hearing in the case is set for 6 November. EPS-OPS faction counsel Mukul Rohatgi told reporters after the hearing that Sasikala faction counsel was only interested in delaying the hearing. "We opposed it. Now, the last day given to the other side is Monday (6 November)," he said. When asked how long he thought the case would continue, Rohatgi said matter-of-factly, "On Tuesday, we will close the hearing". Meanwhile, the Sasikala-Dhinakaran faction defended before the poll body, the elevation of VK Sasikala as the party interim general secretary. "In 1989, Jayalalithaa was elevated as interim general secretary of AIADMK. The same procedure was followed during Sasikala's elevation. Senior leader E Madhusudhanan, who had signed the papers for Jayalalithaa, is trying to conceal this fact before the EC. Abhishek Singhvi would be putting forth stronger arguments on Monday," faction counsel Raja Senthoor Pandian said. The Dhinakaran camp also maintained that the deadline of 10 November, set by the Supreme Court for the poll panel to decide on the issue, was not binding in nature. Guwahati: An MLA of the ruling BJP in Assam on Wednesday said he received two phone calls from abroad, wherein unidentified callers threatened him with death for commenting on the Rohingyas and Bengali-speaking Muslims, after which he lodged an FIR. "I received two calls one from the United Kingdom, and the other from Philippines on Tuesday. The callers threatened me of dire consequences if I did not stop commenting on the influx of Rohingyas and on the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam," Hojai MLA Shiladitya Dev said. He said following the threat calls, he got registered the case with Hojai police. Dev had earlier alleged that the Rohingyas from Myanmar have been entering the Barak Valley in Assam through Tripura and that Tripura's Left Front government was pushing them into Assam for political mileage. The BJP leader had also questioned the demand of Bengali-speaking Muslims of Assam to be declared as original inhabitants of that state. He also courted controversy by saying that the 'char' (riverine sandbars) areas in Assam, inhabited by Bengali-speaking Muslims, have become a breeding ground for terrorism and that the government should stop funding for development of these areas. Jammu: A BSF jawan was killed when Pakistani Rangers on Thursday attacked a patrol party of the force along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district. The BSF retaliated effectively. "Today (Thursday), at about 0930 hours, Pakistani Rangers suddenly fired on a BSF patrol in Samba sector", a senior BSF officer told PTI. Constable Tapan Mondal of BSF succumbed to injuries sustained in the attack. On 31 October, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by firing from small arms along the Line of Control in Karmara belt of Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district. On 26 October, Pakistani troops fired using small and heavy weapons at Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of Kerni sector. India reacted sharply to China again blocking Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar's designation as a global terrorist by the UN, saying "accommodating with terrorism" for narrow objectives was both short-sighted and counterproductive, according to PTI. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, in a strongly-worded statement, said, "We are deeply disappointed that once again, a single country has blocked international consensus on the designation of an acknowledged terrorist and leader of UN-designated terrorist organisation, Masood Azhar." However, the statement did not name China. India strongly believes that "double standards" and "selective approaches" will only undermine the international community's resolve to combat terrorism, Kumar said. "We can only hope that there will be a realisation that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is both short-sighted and counterproductive," he asserted. China, for the fourth time, blocked the bid to list Pathankot terror attack mastermind Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying "there is no consensus" within the members of the sanctions committee. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India, the US and other nations' bid to put a ban on the JeM chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. Chinas foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said last month there were clear rules for listing a person or group as a terrorist, and that China has always believed the relevant UN committee should operate on the principles of objectivity, reported Reuters. The wrangling over Masood Azhar, a longtime Indian foe, has become a thorny issue in ties between China and India. India worries that China will stick by its all-weather friend, Indias arch-foe Pakistan. With inputs from agencies New Delhi: Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre's special representative for talks on Kashmir, will embark on a visit to the Valley from 6 November to hold talks with various stakeholders in the state, officials said on Thursday. During his visit, 61-year-old Sharma will talk to the political leadership in the state besides other organisations which step forward to meet him, they said. The former Intelligence Bureau chief has already listed that in his new role, he would like to counter false sloganeering and propaganda available online and ensure that the youth and students become a party in the peace process. "I am going to the Valley with no blinkers on. I am willing to meet every common person who has a genuine grievance," he had said. The 1979-batch IPS officer of the Kerala cadre who rose to the prestigious post of Director of Intelligence Bureau, was recently appointed as the Centre's representative for sustained dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir. Hailing from Bihar, Sharma has said that he has an emotional attachment with Kashmir as it was his first field posting way back in 1992. The Chattanooga Regional Manufacturers Associations Annual Meeting is scheduled for this Friday at 11:30 a.m. at the Chattanooga Convention Center. During the meeting, the CD Mitchell Award will be presented to an individual who has supported and promoted the efforts of manufacturing following the mission and vision of the Chattanooga Regional Manufacturers Association.Congressman Diane Black will provide the keynote address for the meeting. Congressman Black serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee. Mumbai: A major fire broke out in a mattress foam manufacturing factory at Taloja MIDC in Navi Mumbai around noon on Monday, a fire brigade official said. There was no report of injury to anyone in the blaze, which was doused after over three hours, he added. "The fire broke out in a private foam manufacturing company near Padgha village in Taloja MIDC, Navi Mumbai around 12 pm. No casualty was reported in the incident," the official said. The police constables, who were deputed at police check post at Taloja MIDC, alerted fire brigade about the incident. The exact reason behind the fire is yet to be ascertained as the cooling operation is still underway. The fire was major, the MIDC fire services sought the help of CIDCO Kalamboli fire brigade in Navi Mumbai and Ambernath fire brigade, the official said. "After more than three hours of firefighting, the blaze was doused by the fire brigade," Santosh Warik, Chief Fire Officer of MIDC said. Now the cooling process is going on. Police and fire brigade officials have started a probe to find out what triggered the fire, he said. "We will get to know how much losses the company suffered after a detailed investigation," the official said. Srinagar: At least five CRPF personnel were injured on Thursday in a militant attack on a vehicle of security forces in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. Militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion CRPF at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 am, a police official said. He said three CRPF jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. According to Hindustan Times, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) has claimed responsibility for the attack. A CRPF spokesperson told DNA that that the vehicle was coming from Jammu when the attack took place. On 9 September, in a similar incident, militants had attacked a police patrol near a bus stand in Anantnag killing a policeman and injuring two other cops. The attack had come on the backdrop of Rajnath Singh's four-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir. The incident took place about 500 yards from the venue of Singh's scheduled meet with state chief minister Mehbooba Mufti. The home minister had earlier said that the government would find a solution to the Kashmir conflict regarding Article 35A, apart from terrorism, Naxalism and insurgency in the northeastern region, before 2022, reported The Indian Express. With inputs from PTI Even as India slipped India slipped 21 places on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap index to a lowly 108, behind neighbours China and Bangladesh, primarily due to less participation of women in the economy and low wages, a report on gender vulnerability, conducted for the first time by Plan India and and released by Justice Madan Lokur of the Supreme Court, seems to offer a clearer picture as to just why that may have happened. The report compiled by studying 170 indicators, data for which is available across all the states in India, has put Goa as the safest place for women, whereas Bihar emerged as the worst performer. The study, which studied all the statistics in dimensions of protection, education, health, and poverty, however, has highlighted that a very high regional imbalance exists in the country. Firtstpost took a deeper look at the report across the five dimensions, here's what we found: Healthwise performance of Indian states Kerala tops the list when it comes to the healthy women in the gender vulnerability index, followed by Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Punjab and Manipur among the top 10. The report says that Kerala also has among the lowest rates of anaemia, including those among pregnant women. Among the best performing states, Kerala, Sikkim and Tamil Nadu perform well on most indicators of maternal health, including critical indicators, the study says. Surprisingly, Tamil Nadu, which is ranked third best in the list, has one of the lowest rates of breastfed newborns among all the 30 states studied. Sikkim, which performs exceptionally well on the critical indicators, its problem is conversely, that of overweight girls. Bihar is placed at the bottom ranking 30. Of the ten states in bottom 10, six are BJP-ruled (or with BJP part of the ruling coalition) states including Jharkhand, which was recently in the news for malnutrition deaths of children and Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP came to power earlier this year. There are four northeastern states in the list namely Nagaland, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, of which Arunachal Pradesh is under BJP rule while in Nagaland the party is part of the coalition. A comparison of the health indices on geographically, shows South India performing better than rest of India, with four southern states featuring in the top 10; the only exception being the newly formed Telangana, which is ranked 20 in terms of health. Out of five states ruled by Congress, three Punjab, Karnataka and Congress 1 feature among the top 10. Girls and women in Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand are among the most undernourished, the study points out. "As many as 40 percent girls are underweight and more than 60 percent of women are anaemic in these states," it says. Bihar performs poor across the board, but despite that mothers are breastfeeding their infants. State Poverty Protection Education Health GVI Goa 8 1 5 6 1 Kerala 12 10 8 1 2 Mizoram 2 7 13 9 3 Sikkim 18 6 2 3 4 Manipur 1 13 17 10 5 Himachal Pradesh 15 2 1 15 6 Karnataka 7 17 7 4 7 Punjab 22 4 3 8 8 Maharashtra 9 25 4 7 9 Tamil Nadu 3 12 22 2 10 Telangana 4 20 6 20 11 Andhra Pradesh 5 26 11 5 12 Uttarakhand 14 11 10 12 13 Nagaland 11 8 14 22 14 Chhattisgarh 13 19 16 11 15 Gujarat 10 24 15 16 16 Tripura 19 5 18 23 17 West Bengal 16 29 9 21 18 Haryana 17 21 12 26 19 Jammu and Kashmir 28 3 24 13 20 Meghalaya 6 9 27 29 21 Rajasthan 24 16 20 17 22 Odisha 23 23 21 19 23 Assam 27 15 23 18 24 Madhya Pradesh 25 22 26 14 25 Arunachal Pradesh 20 18 29 25 26 Jharkhand 26 14 28 28 27 Delhi 21 28 30 24 28 Uttar Pradesh 29 30 19 27 29 Bihar 30 27 25 30 30 "Although, 84 percent of married women in the country are participating in household decisions, collectively speaking, there are considerable state-wise disparities which imply that women in our country dont have an equal voice across," the study says. The study finds that land ownership is an important indicator of gender inequality, as it increases her participation in decision making. Poverty No surprise then that in Manipur, which is among the best-ranking states in terms of poverty, close to 70 percent women own land. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana (also among the best ranking states) display more female land ownership than the national average. Mizoram, where land ownership among women is far below the national average, surprisingly, also has the lowest poverty headcount ratio. Uttar Pradesh, which ranks 29, in the list, has low rates of female land ownership, and high poverty headcount. The proportion of women who are included in the financial systems is the lowest in Bihar, the worst performing state in the list. The state also showed women having the lowest household participation rates. Protection Safety of women has emerged as a real challenge across the country with cases of sexual assault often making the top headlines, and the states which perform the best in the dimension of protection are Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Tripura. However, violence against women (especially by their spouses) is still unacceptably high for both Punjab and Tripura and is a painful reality across all states. Though the state governments took no time to revel over the ranking in terms of protection for women, the study says that in Goa and Himachal Pradesh, younger girls are at higher risk for sexual abuse and rape. Delhi emerges as a clear outlier when it comes to crimes against women. The rate is also notably high in West Bengal. What emerges out clear from the study is that huge regional imbalances exist when it comes to protection of women. "The regional disparities for crimes against women are appallingly high, nationally the figure stands at 53.9 percent, in states like Assam and Delhi this rate crosses over 140 percent; child sex ratio is far below an acceptable standard; child marriages is over 40 percent in West Bengal, whereas its estimated to be less than 8 percent in Punjab. At the same time, the highest proportion of girls and women in the country who have ever experienced violence during a pregnancy are in Karnataka," it says. Education Along the four dimensions, education has the third highest score on the Gender Vulnerability Index with Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Punjab, Maharashtra, and Goa emerging as the best performing states in education. Poor educational outcomes and inputs have been regarded as both a cause and consequence of poverty and inequality, it comes as no surprise then that India scores similarly in both poverty and education, the report says. Collectively, India is moving in the right direction, however, the study says, there are stark differences across regions and years of schooling. "While Sikkim has five students per teacher at primary, and 15 at higher secondary; Uttar Pradesh has a ratio of 39 at primary and 97 at higher secondary level. Moreover, the percentage of girls with correct scores for mathematics and languages differ by state, by a maximum of 11.2 and 9.8 percentage points, respectively," the report says. Among the top five, although Himachal Pradesh, which is headed for Assembly election in a week's time, carries a strong foundation in education from the previous decades, it has sustained the achievements, the report says. "School participation rates were almost as high for girls, as they were for boys in 1996, even before the Millennium Development Goals were introduced," it added. In all the five states, dropouts at primary level are well below the national average, however, they are still considerably higher for Punjab. The state also has a poor gender ratio. The study points that the top-five states, however, fail miserably when it comes to providing toilets, a factor which also influences the health of the female students greatly. The study says that states like Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Meghalaya have some of the highest dropout rates for girls. New Delhi/Attari: India on Thursday repatriated to Pakistan nine fishermen and four civilian prisoners along with a child, the external affairs ministry said. On its part, Pakistan issued visas to over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims to attend the birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev from Wednesday till 11 November, a Pakistan High Commission release said here. All the prisoners crossed over to Pakistan through the land transit route of Attari-Wagah border on the basis of emergency travel certificates issued by the Pakistan High Commission, officials said. Asserting that it attaches high priority to addressing all humanitarian issues, including early release and repatriation of Indian fishermen and prisoners in Pakistan's custody, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) said the release of 370 Indian prisoners, including 363 fishermen, has been secured in 2017, so far. "Nine fishermen and four civilian prisoners from Pakistan and a child were repatriated today via the Attari/Wagah border," an MEA statement said, adding that two Pakistani civilian prisoners were also released on 28 September, 2017. Maintaining that visa to Sikh pilgrims were issued in line with Pakistan's efforts to promote religious tourism and people-to-people interactions, the Pakistan High Commission said the government was committed to protecting sacred religious places and providing all possible facilities for the visiting pilgrims of all faiths. It also said that visas issued by the high commission in New Delhi were in addition to the visas issued to Sikh pilgrims participating in the event from other countries. New Delhi: In a significant move that will benefit over 64,000 personnel, the army has said junior commissioned officers (JCOs) are gazetted officers, cancelling its earlier note that described them as "non-gazetted" officers. The decision by the army two days back comes amid growing resentment from a large section of its personnel over issues relating to pay-parity and ranking. In an official note, the army headquarters has cancelled a communication issued in response to an RTI application in 2011 which had stated that the JCOs are non-gazetted officers, according to documents accessed by PTI. Highly placed official sources said the army committed a "major mistake" in 2011 on the status of the JCOs and now the army headquarters has removed the ambiguity and made it clear that JCOs are gazetted officers. The clarification will benefit over 64,000 JCOs who are ranked in three categories: Naib Subedar, Subedar and Subedar Major. The 2011 note had triggered widespread outrage among the JCOs. Asked how the army headquarters made the "mistake" in 2011, classifying the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, a senior army official said there are separate definitions of officers and the JCOs in the manual of military law and it could have been a case of misinterpretation of the rule book. The issuance of the letter is also seen as a message by the army to the government to address grievances of a section of the army personnel over what they call "disparity" in the current pay band. The issue of status equivalence between military officers and their civilian counterparts was discussed at the recently concluded Army Commanders' conference. Asked whether the army headquarters will send a fresh communication to the RTI applicant who had filed the query about status of the JCOs in 2011, the Army refused to comment. Defence Ministry sources last week had said that it was seriously examining the long-standing issue relating to the status equivalence between military officers and their civilian counterparts. There has been growing resentment among the military officers who have been insisting that the current status equivalence was flawed and that government must address their concerns. As per the current pay structure, the subedar majors and subedars are part of the pay band for gazetted officers but there have been discrepancies there as well, said an official. The Naib subedars whose number of around 55,000 get salary under non-gazetted category, he said. The matter is among the main issues being examined as part of the pay and allowances anomaly. Last year, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had set up a high-level committee to look into the issue. New Delhi: Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) may face action, including a ban under an anti-terror law, for its alleged links with subversive activities, a charge denied by the outfit. A government official said that action against PFI is likely after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) submitted a report on the group to the Union home ministry claiming that it has been involved in terror acts, including running terror camps and making bombs, and it was a fit case to be banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). However, a home ministry spokesperson remained non-committal over the possible action against the PFI saying the ministry would not like to comment on an individual organisation before taking any action. "Until criminality of any organisation is proved on the basis of available evidence, we cannot make any comment on any organisation," the spokesperson said. The cases which the NIA cited for PFI's alleged involvement in terror acts are: chopping of a professor's palm in Kerala's Idukki district and organising a training camp in Kannur from where the NIA allegedly seized swords, country-made bombs and ingredients for making IEDs. It also mentioned the murder of RSS leader Rudresh in Bengaluru and the alleged plans to carry out terror attacks in South India by involving another outfit, Islamic State Al-Hindi. The government official said that the PFI's alleged involvement in terror activities in South India has been documented and action against the outfit may include banning it under the UAPA. The NIA has prepared the report on the PFI after conducting a detailed probe. Earlier, PFI's national executive council member P Koya had strongly refuted the NIA claims, saying the agency had never approached the outfit to know about its activities, if there has been any investigation at all. "The activities of the PFI were not anti-national but more nationalistic. We have never run any terror camps nor involved in any terror act. There is no reason to call us a terror group unless you want to label us a terrorist organisation," he told PTI earlier. Koya said there have been just 10 cases against PFI in its 25 years of existence and it was "normal" for any organisation. He claimed that at least 100 people were killed in the clashes between the RSS and CPI(M) in Kerala in recent times yet the two groups were never called as anti-national. The PFI reportedly has presence in 23 states and the strongest in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The Maharashtra farm loan waiver scheme has run into another controversy, with Swabhimani Shetkari Saghtana president and Lok Sabha MP Raju Shetti alleging that a private company was allotted the work of executing the scheme without tenders being called for. Shetti alleged that Principal Secretary (IT) Vijay Kumar Gautam and the officer on special duty (OSD) to the chief minister Kaustubh Dhavse allotted the work to Nagpur-based company Innowave IT Infrastructure Private Limited 'through the back door.' Raju Shetti, the MP from Hatkanangle, claimed that glitches in the loan waiver scheme such as non-disbursal of amounts and incorrect lists took place as the task of implementing the scheme was allocated to this 'inexperienced' company. He sought to know the number of people who are working on this scheme, and how many of these are experts in information technology. He even sought an assurance from the government that it would keep information about bank accounts of farmers and their Aadhaar numbers secured. Speaking to Firstpost, Shetti said that he will approach the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in this regard. The Nationalist Congress Party, too, hit out at the Maharashtra government, alleging that several welfare schemes are being implemented through digitisation, but their implementation leaves much to be desired. NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik accused the administration of 'digital dalali.' A statement from the chief minister's office, however, strongly denied the allegations made by Shetti, terming them as 'completely incorrect and based on half-baked information.' According to the statement, a request for proposal (RFP) in this regard was placed before a high-powered committee under the chief secretary. The committee received three tenders, out of which one was chosen, the statement said. Earlier reports by Firstpost had highlighted several shortcomings in the loan waiver scheme. For instance, documents accessed in this report showed multiple names were allocated against one Aadhaar number while on many occasions the same individual appeared more than once. Maharashtra received 56.59 lakh applications from farming families for its loan waiver scheme. But a senior Information and Technology Department official said only 20 lakh accounts were found operational and eligible and that the IT Department was finding it difficult to verify every bank account with the data they procured from the State Level Bankers Committee. Washington: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump have resolved to fight against the global scourge of terrorism together, the White House said after Modi offered his condolences to Trump over phone following the New York terror attack. Trump spoke with Modi and accepted his condolences following Wednesday's terrorist attack in New York City that left eight people dead and about a dozen others injured, the White House said. Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, a readout of the call said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism," the White House said. Earlier in a tweet on Wednesday, Modi had condemned the attack seen as the deadliest in New York since 9/11. "Strongly condemn the terror attack in New York City. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured," he said. British Prime Minister Theresa May also spoke with Trump over phone, according to the White House. "President Trump and Prime Minister May agreed on the importance of closer counter-terrorism coordination between the United States and the United Kingdom," the White House said. Auto refresh feeds During his visit to poll-bound Gujarat, Modi is expected to interact with religious figures of Bochasanwasi Shri Aksharpurushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), The Times of India reported. During his address, Modi said that Akshardham Temple should be a case study on how modern technology can be blended well with management in temples. "We have created such an atmosphere here that anyone who visits Akshardham Temple leaves as a bhakt," said the prime minister while addressing the gathering. While talking about Pramukh Swami, Modi said that he understood the importance of changing with time. He and his team brought about massive changes in the temple, the prime minister added. During his visit to poll-bound Gujarat, Modi is expected to interact with religious figures of Bochasanwasi Shri Aksharpurushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), The Times of India reported. During his address, Modi said that Akshardham Temple should be a case study on how modern technology can be blended well with management in temples. "We have created such an atmosphere here that anyone who visits Akshardham Temple leaves as a bhakt," said the prime minister while addressing the gathering. While talking about Pramukh Swami, Modi said that he understood the importance of changing with time. He and his team brought about massive changes in the temple, the prime minister added. Swaminarayan Family is always ready to serve humanity, whatever is needed, at whatever time and at any place: PM @narendramodi (2/2) Modi said that when food packets are needed during natural disasters, BAPS only ask 'what time' and not 'how much'. He further said that the Swaminarayan family is always ready to serve humanity . Modi lauds BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, says it is always ready to serve humanity After his visit to poll-bound Himachal Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday arrived in Ahmedabad, Gujarat to attend the silver jubilee celebrations of Akshardham temple in Ghandinagar. Gujarat is scheduled to go to polls on 9 and 14 December. With the Model Code of Conduct in place, the prime minister's visit would be looked at as another poll campaign. On his previous Gujarat visits, the prime minister had unveiled a host of development projects for his home state. Earlier in the day, Modi termed the Congress a "laughing club" in his election rally in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. "We all need to look at the Congress. We should appreciate them. Nothing is left for them and they have lost their hold from every part of the country," he said. He further said that Congress must introspect as to why the people of this country are turning from it and its leaders. "State after state, people across the nation have taken it upon themselves to eradicate the Congress which has put them through so much misery," he said. New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is likely to probe the killing of an RSS leader in Punjab following a recommendation by the state government, a home ministry official said. The home ministry is examining the recommendation of the Punjab government for investigation by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) the killing of RSS leader Ravinder Gosai in Ludhiana last month and a decision on it will be taken soon. The investigation is expected to be given to the NIA, the official said. Gosai was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants in Ludhiana on 17 October. He was the 'Sangh Pracharak' at the RSS Mohan Shakha in Ludhiana. Four unidentified assailants also shot dead the leader of a lesser known Hindu outfit 'Hindu Sangarash Sena' Vipina Sharma in Amritsar in broad day light on 30 October. Senior Punjab RSS leader Jagdish Gagneja was shot by unidentified motorcycle-borne youths in a busy area in Jalandhar on 6 August, 2016. However, so far, the Punjab government has recommended for an NIA probe only Gosai's killing. Baylor headmaster Scott Wilson has been elected to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Southern Association of Independent Schools in 2018. The SAIS, which includes over 375 independent K-12 schools and represents over 200,000 students, exists to strengthen member schools by providing high quality accreditation processes, comprehensive professional growth opportunities, and visionary leadership development programs. Headmaster Wilson, who is chairman of the board for the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools and twice served on the board of the Georgia Independent School Association, graduated from Baylor in 1975 and earned a B.A. from the University of Georgia and an M.Ed. from the University of South Carolina. He became Baylors ninth headmaster in 2009 after serving as head of Brookstone School and Valwood School. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the people who lost their lives in the NTPC boiler blast in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. Rs 50,000 was announced for each person injured in the state-run National Thermal Power Corp plant blast on Wednesday. The announcement was made by the Prime Minister's Office in a tweet. Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex- gratia of Rs. 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident. PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 2, 2017 The death toll in the blast rose to 22 on Thursday, with two more succumbing to their burn injuries. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe, while the NTPC has also launched a probe into the incident which it said took place due to "excess ash deposition" in the furnace. Rae Bareli District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told IANS that the number of injured stood at 64. The massive explosion took place in a 500 MW boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when the fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. Earlier, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also announced ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of dead and Rs 50,000 for the injured. Click here to get LIVE updates on the NTPC blast One jawan was killed and a terrorist gunned down in an encounter between terrorists and security forces in Pulwama's Samboora village on Thursday. The encounter is still underway. #UPDATE: One jawan injured in the encounter between terrorists & security forces in Pulwama's Samboora village, encounter underway. ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 Meanwhile, a BSF jawan was killed when Pakistan Rangers fired at a patrol party along the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district, drawing heavy retaliation from the Indian force in which three posts were damaged and two rangers injured. On Sunday, an encounter between militants and security forces had broken out in north Kashmir's Bandipora district where two militants had been killed, police said. Another unidentified militant was shot down in an encounter with security forces in Hajin area of Handwara in Jammu and Kashmir a day before. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the Samboora village of Pampore area on Thursday evening following information about the presence of the militants there, an official said. As the security forces were conducting the searches, militants opened fire, he said adding that a gunbattle ensued as the forces retaliated. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic and said over 90 percent of those affected by mental health issues do not receive the required medical care. While inaugurating the World Congress of Mental Health, the president quoted World Health Organisation (WHO) figures to state that India has one of the highest prevalence of mental illnesses globally. "Our National Mental Health Survey, 2016 found that close to 14 percent of India's population required active mental health interventions. About two percent suffered from severe mental disorders," Kovind said. Nearly two hundred thousand Indians take their own lives each year and if data for attempted suicide was included the number went up substantially, he added. The president warned that India was staring at a possible mental health epidemic. "These are worrying statistics. It is also a fact that those living in metropolitan cities and those who were young whether in the productive age group, or children and teenagers are most vulnerable to mental illnesses, he said. In India, he said, both these factors were a cause for concern as India had a young population, with 65 percent of people below the age of 35. "And our society is rapidly urbanising. This leaves us staring at a possible mental health epidemic," he said. Given the figures, the president said, it was "an irony that 90 percent of Indians in need simply don't receive mental healthcare". "There are several reasons for this and I hope they will be addressed in this conference," he said. The president said these issues should be treated with a correct approach. "The biggest obstacle that mental health patients have to encounter is stigma and denial. This leads to the issue being ignored or simply not discussed. In some cases, it leads to self-diagnosis that is unsuitable or could worsen the situation. It may even lead to other extreme steps," he said. Kovind added that as a society the country would have to fight this culture of stigma. "We need to talk about mental health issues and treat ailments such as depression and stress as diseases that can be cured-not as guilty secrets that must be pushed under the carpet," he said. Kovind also highlighted the "scarcity" of doctors and counsellors to treat such instances. "A second major gap in combating the mental health challenge is that of human resources. India is a country with 1.25 billion people but just seven hundred thousand doctors less than one million," he underlined. In the field of mental health, he said, the scarcity was even more acute. There are only about five thousand psychiatrists and less than two thousand clinical psychologists in the country, Kovind said. "We need to act," he said, adding that these numbers of doctors and mental health experts were extremely inadequate. "It is vital to tap into our wealth of traditional knowledge and link its learning to modern research on mental health. This will promote a holistic approach to mental healthcare, combining the best of different fields of practice," he said. The president said India's mental health challenge was like capturing a society in multiple transitions. "From traditional diseases, it is gradually non-communicable diseases that are emerging as a major threat to our people and their well being. This is part of a worldwide trend. And many non-communicable diseases are either rooted in or associated with mental health issues," he said. About a thousand delegates, including 300 from across the globe, are participating in the conference. Editor's note: The state of Punjab has been plagued by a series of political killings in recent times many of which remain unexplained and unsolved. The latest of these was the murder of Hindu Sangarsh Sena leader Vipan Sharma, who was shot dead in Amritsar last week. This is the first in a three-part series that seeks to shed some light on these mysterious killings that appear to share a very similar modus operandi. Chandigarh & Ludhiana: Although Punjab has seen 10 fatal attacks targeting members of non-Sikh religious groups since last year, investigating agencies don't have any concrete leads yet. These attacks have claimed 15 lives, the latest of them on 30 October in Amritsar when two men pumped a dozen bullets in the body of Hindu Sangharsh Sena's Amritsar district president Vipan Sharma. Thirteen days ago, a veteran Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activist Ravinder Gosain was killed outside his home in Ludhiana in a similar fashion. The other targets of these attacks include Hindu leaders, members of Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) and a pastor. (Full list at the end of the story) The probe of a few of these cases is with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while the rest are with Punjab police's Special Investigation Team (SIT). Gosain's murder case has been assigned to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Police have found the motorcycle on which Gosain's assailants fled and have identified one of the youths who fired at Sharma (Saraj Singh, alias Minti, 26, a proclaimed offender with a history of murder, robbery and kidnapping cases), but that's that. Investigations in none of the previous cases have achieved a breakthrough. Only, the similar nature of these attacks is apparent. Punjab DGP Suresh Arora said the footage obtained from about 1,500 CCTV cameras and the evidence collected by the forensic department indicate a common pattern in all these murders. He said all the assailants used 32 bore or nine-millimetre pistols, wore similar headgear, shot at the target from close proximity, brandished the gun in the air to instil fear and sped away on motorcycles. He informed that the assailants' appearance too seemed manipulated in a similar manner. He explained that they seem to be wearing padding on their upper body under their clothes to disguise their actual built and mislead the manhunt. Arora said there's a possibility that some terrorist organisation based in a foreign country is behind Gosain's murder, but no supporting evidence has been found yet. Member of Parliament from Ludhiana, Ravneet Singh Bittu, claimed in October-end that Gosain's murder was hatched by groups sitting in Pakistan and Canada. Former Punjab DGP Sarabjit Singh Virk told Firstpost these communal attacks seem to be the handiwork of some radical Sikh organisation(s) operating from the United Kingdom. He disapproved of the manner in which these attacks are being investigated. He highlighted that some cases are with the CBI while some are with Punjab police's SIT. He said this is not the ideal way to investigate high-profile cases of similar nature and asked how different teams will collate their findings to examine the common thread in these murders. He said if the current DGP is aware the attacks follow a similar pattern, their investigation too should be done by a single agency. Rupinder Pal Singh, a member of the SIT that's looking into the murder of the father-son duo of Dera followers, said they haven't made any breakthrough yet. He opined that different agencies investigating these murders was not a hindrance but a plus point since the involvement of multiple teams meant more scrutiny and increased chances of success. Victims' kin unhappy Sudesh Devi, the wife of RSS leader Jagdish Gagneja, who succumbed to the bullets of motorcycle-borne assailants in Jalandhar last August, said their case's investigating officer has changed thrice so far. She said the new officer met them last month and asked the same questions all over again. She said the family is not happy with the way the probe is being approached, adding that they don't have any hopes from it. This case is being investigated by the CBI. Devi shared that the family has been living in fear since the attack last year and they have been avoiding going out in the dark. Anuj Kumar, 31, a friend of Hindu leader Amit Sharma, who was shot dead in Ludhiana this January, informed that Sharma's family was so shaken after the incident that they have shifted to an undisclosed location. He said the bereaved family was constantly living in fear. Alluding to Sikh hardliners, he said everybody knew who orchestrated the attack but people don't talk about it openly since they are wary that these forces' informants might be lurking nearby. Gosain's son Amit Kumar said the police have been cooperating with them. He also expressed gratitude that the investigation of the case was transferred to the NIA. Easy targets All the victims of these recent communal attacks were like sitting ducks. Shravan Singh, 50, a management committee member of the DSS in Ludhiana, said the aforesaid father-son duo had no security cover. Gosain's son said his father had never received any threat and thus did not avail any security, adding that killing him was a cakewalk. Gagneja's wife said her husband too had not received any threat nor had any enmity. She said her husband would spend much of his waking time outdoors in social activities. In contrast, Hindu leaders who are on the hitlist of terrorists have been given a security cover. Shiv Sena leaders Pawan Gupta, Sanjeev Ghanoli, Harvinder Soni, Nishant Sharma and a few others have bulletproof cars and gunmen. Gupta and Soni move around in the protection of 25 gunmen while Ghanoli has 18. Hindu Suraksha Samiti chief Swami Panchanand Giri has 30 gunmen. Militants' arrest On 29 September, police in Ludhiana arrested seven youths associated with terrorist organisation Babbar Khalsa International and recovered three pistols and 33 bullets from them. One of them is a minor and the others are between 18 and 22 years old. All the seven hail from poor families but were in touch with the United Kingdom-based commander Surinder Singh Babbar through social media. The police believe they could have been involved in the recent communal attacks. DGP Arora said the youth confessed to having plans to create disturbance in the state and recruiting people. He said they wanted to teach a lesson to those who speak against Sikhism. To identify possible recruits, extremist groups share derogatory posts about Sikhism on social media platforms and zero in on youth who respond with passion and anguish. The recruiters try to brainwash these youth and convince them into joining their 'cause' of protecting and serving their religion. One of the conspiracy theories about Gosain's murder is that his speeches on Hindutva could have drawn the ire of extremist Sikh groups. Sources said these groups took exception to Sikh youth joining the RSS, deemed it a slight to their religion and held the Sangh responsible for brainwashing their young folk. Reportedly, these groups had expressed their beef with the RSS on social media multiple times, with the posts gaining much traction. With little to no progress in the investigation of these murders, conspiracy theories are all there is to it. Recent communal attacks on non-Sikh leaders in Punjab: January 2016: RSS volunteer Naresh Kumar fired at but escapes unhurt in Ludhiana. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. April 2016: Head of Namdhari sect Mata Chand Kaur, 88, killed outside the sect headquarters near Ludhiana. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. April 2016: Head of the labour wing of Shiv Sena's Punjab unit, Durga Prasad Gupta, shot dead in Khanna, Ludhiana. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. August 2016: RSS's second-in-command in Punjab, Brig (retd) Jagdish Gagneja killed in Jalandhar. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. January 2017: Publicity manager of Hindu outfit Sri Hindu Takht, Amit Sharma, gunned down in Ludhiana. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. January 2017: Twin bomb blasts in Bathinda targeting Congress candidate and DSS chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's relative Harminder Singh Jassi claim six lives, but Jassi barely escapes death. February 2017: DSS followers and father-son duo Satpal Kumar and Ramesh Kumar shot dead near Ludhiana. Attackers came by foot and pumped bullets into the victim's head from point-blank range. July 2017: Pastor of a local church, Sultan Masih, shot outside his house in Ludhiana. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. October 2017: Mukhya Shikshak of the RSS in Ludhiana Ravinder Gosain shot dead outside his house. Motorcycle-borne men behind the attack. October 2017: District president (Amritsar) of Hindu Sangharsh Sena Vipin Sharma shot dead at 2 pm in a market. Assailants flee on foot. (Sat Singh and Manoj Kumar are freelance writers based in Rohtak and Chandigarh respectively. Both are members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) Read Part 2: Fuelled by murders of non-Sikh leaders, religious fault lines re-emerge in state The mother of Jyoti Singh, the victim of the 16 December 2012 Delhi gangrape, has thanked Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for helping her son to became a commercial pilot, according to media reports. "My son is a pilot now because of Rahul Gandhi. He was the one who counselled him and motivated him to achieve something good in life to support the family", said Asha Devi, Jyoti's mother, according to India Today. The 23-year-old physiotherapy intern was raped and brutally sexually assaulted by six people, including a minor, in a moving bus in Delhi. The accused then threw the woman and her male companion out of the vehicle by the roadside on the cold December night. The woman died of grave intestinal injuries on 29 December, 2012 at a Singapore hospital, where she was airlifted for specialised treatment. According to News Nation, her brother was in trauma after the incident and it was Congress vice-president who helped him out of stress. His brother after completing his schooling in 2013, got admission in Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi in Rae Bareli, also the parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi, the report added. 'Rahul Gandhi was the one who counselled him and motivated him to achieve something good in life to support the family. After learning that he wanted to join the defence forces, Rahul asked him to pursue a pilot's training course after completing his school", said Asha, according to Daily Mail. During his 18-month pilot training course, Gandhi used to talk to him over the phone and taught him to adopt a 'never quit' attitude, Outlook reported. Not only Rahul, but his sister Priyanka Gandhi too used to call him over phone and used to inquire about his health, the report added. Jyoti Singh's brother is currently undergoing final training with a commercial airline in Gurugram. He will soon be flying a plane, Times Now reported. The Supreme Court, earlier this year, upheld the death penalty for four convicts Vinay Sharma (23), Akshay Thakur (31), Mukesh (29) and Pawan Gupta (22). Ram Singh, who was the prime accused, was found dead in his cell in Tihar Jail on 11 March 2013. The juvenile was directed to spend three years in a special home by the Juvenile Justice Board in 2013. The controversy around the Rajasthan government ordinance to protect bureaucrats and judges from being scrutinised for any on-duty action is far from over. While journalists and Opposition leaders have criticised the law as 'draconian', the latest to join in is Rajasthan Patrika editor-in-chief Gulab Kothari, who condemned the "Hitlershahi" (Hitler-like attitude) of the Vasundhara Raje government and compared the controversial bill to the Emergency. The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 amends the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973 and bars the media from naming the public servant under scrutiny till the Rajasthan government allows the case to be investigated. In an editorial published in the prominent regional daily, Kothari said the law was clearly aimed at gagging the press. He said the move seemed to be aimed at stifling publications that were undertaking efforts to expose corrupt officials and politicians. Kothari pledged his newspaper would boycott Raje and would not print anything relating to the chief minister, until she takes back the "black law." Revisiting 24 October Assembly proceedings in a strongly-worded editorial, Kothari claimed that the government was merely pretending to have put the ordinance on the back burner. "The government pretended to put the ordinance on back burner but it has merely been drugged into slumber. It will start kicking its targets as soon as it wakes up," Kothari wrote. He said the ordinance has been referred to a committee only on paper and it was still in effect in letter and spirit. Terming the move an eyewash, he dared journalists to test his argument by printing any corrupt officer's name. "You would find yourself in jail for at least two years," Kothari claimed. He said that the editorial team was undaunted by the government's dictatorial rule. He said that there was still a year before election and a lot could change. He ended by stating that the people would support the newspaper in its fight to protect the glory of democracy and the freedom of speech. The matter is listed in the Rajasthan High Court as senior lawyer AK Jain filed a petition questioning the legality of the ordinance, which he said "will be a license for criminals." Congress leader Sachin Pilot also moved the court, calling the ordinance illegal and unconstitutional, and demanding its withdrawal. Historian Ramachandra Guha delivered the 23rd Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture in New Delhis India International Centre on 1 November, which happens to be Karnataka Rajyotsava Day and the 61st anniversary of the founding of Karnataka. Here are the key points he made, where he elaborates on the model of constitutional patriotism and then explains the difference between jingoism and patriotism: Gandhi defined swaraj beautifully in 1921. He said, when swaraj comes, it will be like a bed or a table with four sturdy posts: these are non-violence, Hindu-Muslim harmony, the abolition of untouchability and economic self-reliance. Thirty years after Gandhi defined swaraj, the Indian Constitution came into being and then in a more detailed, elaborate way, those four pillars were encoded, established and given legislative and political sanction. So the four pillars of the constitution were democracy, the abolition of caste and gender distinctions, religious and linguistic pluralism and economic self-reliance. These were four of the central features of our Constitution and these are elaborations of the Indian model of the nationalism. This kind of nationalism based on a certain set of values. And the nation was sought to be united and given shape on the basis of these values. I call this model of nationalism constitutional patriotism. Im going to outline five fundamental features of what I define as constitutional patriotism. The first feature is the acknowledgement and appreciation of our inherited and shared diversity. Im going to give you a quote from a person in Tagores league, the great Kannada polymath Kota Shivaram, whose bust I have on my table. He wrote, when asked about whether we were an Aryan nation: It is impossible to talk of Indian culture as if it is a monolithic object. Those who speak of Aryan culture do not realise what transformations this Aryan culture has undergone after reaching India. Indian culture today is so varied as to be called cultures. The roots date back to ancient times and have developed through contact with many races and many peoples. Hence, among its many ingredients, its impossible to say surely what is native and what is alien, what is borrowed out of love and what has been imposed by force. If we view Indian culture, thus, we realize there is no place for chauvinism. No type of Indian is superior or special by language or fate. Indianness is defined by the allegiance to the values of the Constitution. The second founding feature is the recognition on the multiple levels on which patriotism can and must be practiced. Patriotism, like charity, begins at home, by how you treat your children, how you treat those who may work for you; it goes out into the street, the locality, city, the district, the province and the country. It operates at different levels and these levels are complimentary and they do not clash. I am a proud resident of Bengaluru, though I am not Kannada-speaking. My great grandfather, my grandfather and father lived, worked and died in Bengaluru and so will I. So Im a patriot of Bengaluru and Im also a patriot of my state. Today is the first of November. It is Karnataka Rajyotsava Day, the 61st anniversary of my states founding and on this day, youll find auto-rickshaw drivers flying the states flag. Its a yellow and red flag. Its not the elites who fly it, its ordinary Kannadigas. You can take pride in your street, locality, city, state and your country. These are perfectly complimentary. Although allegiance to a locality, a district and a province absolutely does not conflict with allegiance to a country, the notion of a world citizen is spurious and false. Ive got to give you a lovely quote on why I think you cannot be a world citizenthis quote comes from a very great Indian John Burdon Sanderson Haldanewho was born Scottish and spent the first 60 years of his life as a citizen of England. He migrated to India in 1956 for a variety of reasons. He was a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute and was one of the greatest biologists after Darwin. In 1960, there was a profile of Haldane in an American magazine where he was described as a citizen of the world. He took great offence to that and said No doubt Im in some sense a citizen of the world but I believe that Thomas Jefferson that one of the chief duties of a citizen is to be a nuisance to the government of a state. As there is no world state, I cannot do this. On the other hand, I can be a nuisance to the Government of India, which has the merit of permitting a good deal of criticism, although it reacts to it rather slowly. I also happen to be proud to be a citizen of India, which is a lot more diverse than Europe, USA, USSR and China and thus a better model for a possible world organisation. It may of course break up but it is a wonderful experiment so I want to be labelled as a citizen of India. Founding feature number three of the Indian model of constitutional patriotism is the recognition that no state, no nation, no religion is perfect or flawless. Hinduism is not flawless, Islam is not flawless, India is not flawless and our prime minister is not flawless, nor are our chief ministers who can sometimes be more authoritarian than our prime ministers can be. No state, no religion and no leader is flawless. Your country, your state and you yourself are not flawless and are in a continuous process of engagement and improvement, eliminating weaknesses. Feature number four is the ability to feel shame at the failures of our nation and state and the desire and will to correct them. Every true patriot feels shame at the failures of our society and the crimes committed by our State. This applies at multiple levels, from human rights violations by our police and occasionally by our army, corruption by public institutions and in everyday life, above all, by the persistence of caste and gender distinctions. French scholar Louis Dumont, many years ago, called us Indians Homo Hierarchicus. And certainly, both in scripture and social practice, we have historically discriminated against low castes and women. And that must bring shame to any honest, sensitive Indian patriot and must bring in him and her, the desire the will to correct and eliminate forms of exploitation and discrimination. Thats what animated the life and works of Justice Sunanda Bhandare. Dont be in denial that we are perfect. Feature number five of true patriotism, in my view, should have the ability to root yourself in your culture and country while being willing to learn from other cultures and countries. Im going to give you a Tagore quote from 1908 to illustrate this. Tagore was reacting to certain people in Bengal and India who glorified the past and believed that Hindus had invented everything in the world. To these romantic nostalgics for a great and glorious past that Hindus were enjoying, which meant of course that they had nothing to learn from anyone else, Tagore answered, If India had been deprived of touch with the West, she would have lacked an element essential for her attainment of perfection. Europe now has her lamp ablaze. We must light our torches at its wick and make a fresh start on the highway of time. That our forefathers 3,000 years ago had finished extracting all that of value from the universe is not a worthy thought. We are not so unfortunate, nor is the universe so poor. These remarks apply to other countries in the world. Americans think they are the chosen people, Im glad theyve adopted yoga. The British once thought they were chosen people. When they ruled us, they showed utter contempt for our food and our music. You can get decent food and music in London now. In another of his quotes, Tagore also says something like: We must glory in the illumination of a lamp lit anywhere in the world. This old model of constitutional patriotism is on the defensive, some would say its in tatters. Theres a new model of nationalism that is emerging, that is resurgent, that is ascendant and dominant. First, the privileging of a single religion: Hinduism. Second, the privileging of a single language: Hindi, the privileging of a common enemy: Pakistan. This completely mimics 19th century European nationalism that was reborn in Pakistan in the mid-20th Century and is being re-reborn in India in the early 21st Century. But, it also has a fourth feature, which is perhaps as and even more disturbing, which is the branding of all critics as anti-nationals. MS Golwalkar, the most influential leader of the RSS, wrote a book called Bunch of Thoughts, which is a kind of bible of the RSS. Some months ago, at the invitation of some senior RSS members in Karnataka (I am happy to meet anyone), they presented me the book the way a Christian missionary would present the Bible. It so happens that Ive read that book many times and Ive written about it. In that book, which was published 51 years ago and progressively handed out to people to convert them to a point of view, there are three chapters: Internal Threat 1: Muslims, Internal threat 2: Christians, Internal threat 3: Communists. Three forms of enemies of the nation. Im none of these but in the eyes of many people Im an enemy of the nation regardless. This is a paranoid and punitive form of nationalism. Theres a recent film called Newton and in that film is a lovely line that goes: Yeh desh danda aur jhanda se chalta hai. Not only is it parochial to identify nationalism as a single religion and a single language, it is paranoid about foreigners and punitive about those who seek to restore and rehabilitate older forms of patriotism. Should we call this patriotism or should we call this jingoism? The dictionary definition of a patriot is a person who loves his or her own country, one who is ready to support its freedoms and rights and defend it against its enemies or detractors. Consider the dictionary definition of jingoism. A jingoist is one who brags of his countrys preparedness to fight and advocates or favours a bellicose policy, a blustering or blatant chauvinism. In the words of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, writing in the 18th Century, a patriot is one who wishes for public prosperity and studies and endeavours to promote it. What is a jingoist? The Gentlemans Magazine 1881 defines jingoism as the aggregation of the bully. An individual may be a bully but in order to create jingoism, there must be a crowd. An individual may be a bully, that one neta addressing a crowd, or that one TV anchor is a bully. But those who appreciate him and clap with him, the aggregation of that crowd constitutes jingoism. Another definition of jingoism from the Pall Mall Gazette of 1885 is that the essential infamy of jingoism is its assertion that the first law in its being is that might is right. Patriotism is suffused with love and understanding and jingoism is motivated by hate and revenge. The features of jingoism are: The belief that ones nation, culture and leader are infallible, secondly, the demonising of all critics as anti-nationals, the violence and lumpenisation of the streets where these are sought to be enacted and imposed. Ive given you a perspective which will tell you which side Im on. I must try and understand why jingoism is ascending and why is patriotism on the retreat. Here are four reasons as what I defined as jingoism and why it is so influential, articulate and vocal today: The first is the hypocrisy of the Left. The Indian Left is in power in Tripura and Kerala. It has been in power in West Bengal in the past. It also has a great deal of influence in our intellectual life, in our cultural life, many of our finest writers, script writers, poets and social activists are Marxists. But the Indian Left has always loved another country more than ours. This goes back to the 20s, 30s and 40s. For a long time it was the Soviet Union. It used to be Russia, and then it became China. Later on it became Vietnam, and then it became Cuba. When I was a student at Delhi University, there was a professor who followed the Albanian model of Communism. Just had I had the collected works of Gandhi, he then had the collected works of Enver Hoxha. Still later it became Hugo Chavez, who was worshipped in parts of JNU. As I explained to you, you must love, appreciate and admire those features of other countries that can enable you to appreciate the best values of your own country. I would love Canadian public health, American universities, at the same time I would like to improve my own country. The problem with the American West was not just the worship of another country, the worship of the most brutal forms of dictatorship. For those of you who think Modi is authoritarian, and Im with you, Hugo Chavez was Narendra Modi on steroids and Stalin and Mao were two of the greatest mass murderers of the century. I have friends from the RSS and the CPM. I meet both of at Koshys parade cafe at different times, several months apart. But shortly after I met my friend from the RSS, I had coffee with a Marxist historian who is a member of the CPM and I asked him why in the conferences of the CPM, you have four portraits and none of them are Indian? There are two dead German philosophersMarx and Engels, and two dead Russian tyrantsLenin and Stalin. At least have Bhagat Singh? Hypocrisies of the Left are giving ammunition to the jingoists. The second reason for the ascendancy of jingoism is the corruptions of the Congress party. Yesterday was Patels birthday and as my colleague Gopal Gandhi says, the BJP has been able to disown Patel because the Gandhis' disowned Patel. It is shocking how the Congress of Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi name everything after their own family. Why couldnt the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link in Worli been named after a great Maharashtrian Congressmen or Congresswomen? There were choices like Tilak, Gokhale and Chavan. How is it that theyve ceded even Lal Bahadur Shastri to the jingoists? In this city, 42 years ago, when Pakistan invaded India, Lal Bahadur Shastri gave a speech at the Ramlila Maidan as prime minister. He said, On my right is Neel Mushtaq Ahmad, president of the Delhi Congress. On my right is Frank Anthony, who was a Member of Parliament and a member of the constitutional Assembly and this is what makes us different from Pakistan.' When Rahul Gandhi campaigned for the last Uttar Pradesh elections, was Shastri mentioned? Shastri was an extraordinary figure, he laid the foundations of the Green Revolution. A person of total and conspicuous integrity and he was a constitutional patriot. So, Intellectual and moral and not just financial corruptions of the Congress and particularly the reduction of a great party of our freedom struggle to the history and biography and personal interest of a single family gave ammunition to the jingoist. The third and fourth issues to seek to provisionally explain the rise of jingoism are not Indian but global. The third is because of whats happening in our neighbourhood, the rise of Islamist fundamentalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan started as a Muslim homeland and became an Islamic republic and became more and more fundamentalist. It started by persecuting Hindus and Christians, now they persecute Shias and Ahmadiyyas. Its a truly nasty place. Bangladesh is not there but it might get there. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and Bangladesh again gave ammunition to the rise of fundamentalism in India. Jingoism and fundamentalism feed off one another. The fourth factor is the global rise of paranoid and punitive nationalism: Brexit, Donald Trump, and right-wing movements in Austria, Hungary and Poland. The failures of the Left and the Congress party have opened up the space for jingoism. I would end with remarks about Hindutva, which, as I understand, is the philosophy of the ruling party and the kind of jingoism that it has enabled. It claims to be authentically Indian. Those of us who speak in the English language, I am a Macaulay-putra and many of you in this room are Macaulay-putris. Hindutva talks about being rooted in this country indigenously, and as a historian, Im going to tell you thats an utterly spurious claim. Hindutva is partly-European and partly Middle-Eastern, partly-Christian and partly Muslim. Im going to give to facts to document this. The model of nationalism it practices is totally 19th Century European in its imagination, that of one language, one religion and one enemy. The political and social system it wishes to impose comes from the medieval West Asia. In Medina, Muslim Spain, in Ottoman Turkey, Iraq, the political system was based on three kinds of citizens: First class citizens were certified Muslims, who went to mosques every Friday and who believed that the Quran was the word of the God. The second class of citizens were Jews and Christians, who were also people of the book, whose prophets the Muslims also revered: Except that they had their own and greater prophet. Jews and Christians were called dhimmis, which literally means protected persons, effectively a second class citizen who has been given certain rights but denied other rights and opportunities. A Jew or a Christian of medieval West Asia could practice his profession, raise a family and go to the synagogue but could not become king, general, adviser, vice-chancellor. This is clearly the model by which the jingoists of today want to impose on Christians and Muslims in India. The Muslims and Christians of India today will be like the Jews and Christians of medieval Islam. This ideology will damage us culturally and will also damage us economically. Excerpted from Ramachandra Guha's speech at the 23rd Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture on 1 November New Delhi: The Supreme Court is likely to commence hearing on Thursday on Delhi government's appeal challenging Delhi High Court verdict holding that the Lt Governor had the primacy over the elected government in the administration of the national capital. The constitution bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice AK Sikri, Justice AM Khanwilkar, Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Ashok Bhushan, said that the hearing on the Aam Aadmi Party government's plea on its powers would commence on Thursday. The court said this soon after it reserved order on the question whether the courts could look into and rely upon the report of the parliamentary committee for deciding an issue before them. Senior counsel P Chidambram, Gopal Subramanium and Indira Jaising will appear for AAP government in the matter. The bench of Justice Sikri and Justice RK Agrawal had on 15 February referred to the constitution bench a batch of petitions filed by the Delhi government over conflict with the Union government over the powers of the elected government to administer the national capital. While not framing the questions to be adjudicated by the Constitution Bench, the court had on 15 February asked both the Union government and the Arvind Kejriwal government to argue their respective cases before the larger bench. The Delhi government, through a batch of petitions, has challenged a Delhi High Court verdict that upheld the primacy of the Lt Governor in the governance of the national capital, contending that the elected government can't be treated subservient to an overriding authority of the Lt Governor. The hearing by the two judge bench on Delhi government's appeals had seen the court favouring a balance in the exercise of powers by the Delhi government and the Lt. Governor for good governance. Delhi was given an assembly and an elected government through Article 239 (AA) incorporated in the Constitution by the 69th amendment in 1991. Rameswaram: Thirteen Tamil Nadu fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan navy when they were allegedly fishing near Neduntheevu in the island nation waters on Thursday. The fishermen from Rameswaram and Pudukottai district were arrested on charges of poaching fish with banned fishing nets in the exclusive zone of Sri Lanka, assistant directors of fisheries department, Manikandan said. The naval personnel also seized three mechanised boats and took them to Kangesanthurai port there, he said. Tamil Nadu chief minister K Palaniswami had on 27 October urged the Centre to take steps without any delay to secure the release of 54 fishermen and 140 fishing boats from Sri Lanka. A massive explosion ripped a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district on Wednesday, killing at least 25 people and injuring nearly 100, officials said. The NTPC initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast, while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, they added. Among those injured are three additional general managers of the NTPC plant, who are undergoing treatment in Lucknow, according to sources. "Twenty deaths have been confirmed by the district administration. Twenty-two people with severe burns have been referred to Lucknow. Another 15 are admitted to a Rae Bareli hospital," Uttar Pradesh's ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said. He said that the number of casualties could rise. However, according to latest reports, only three victims are currently at the Rae Bareli district hospital while the others have been transferred to a Lucknow hospital, CMO DK Singh told Firstpost. Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar said that 90-100 people were injured in the blast. In a statement, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) said that at unit number six of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3.30 pm in the afternoon. There was an opening in corner number two from which hot flue gases and steam "escaped" affecting the people working around the area, the central public sector undertaking said. It added that around 80 people were rushed to NTPC hospital, most of whom were discharged after first-aid. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "deeply pained" by the accident at the power plant and added that the situation was being closely monitored. "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored: PM @narendramodi," the prime minister's office tweeted. Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 1, 2017 Union power minister RK Singh, through social media posts, expressed deep anguish at the loss of lives and said that he had directed NTPC chairman and managing director Gurdeep Singh to rush to the site. The Unchahar sub-division in Rae Bareli, which is represented by Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Parliament, is around 110 kilometres from the state capital. ADG Kumar said that all available ambulances were pressed into service, and the additional district magistrate and the additional superintendent of police were on the spot to supervise relief and rescue operations. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on a three-day official visit to Mauritius, ordered that necessary steps be taken for rescue and relief. The chief minister has taken cognisance of the Unchahar accident and has directed the principal secretary (home) to ensure that all steps were taken for rescue and relief, principal secretary (information) Awanish Awasthi, who is accompanying Adityanath, said. "The chief minister expressed his condolences over the deaths of workers in the Unchahar NTPC unit and announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the family of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, besides Rs 25,000 for other injured workers," Awasthi said. A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was also despatched to the explosion site from the state capital for relief and rescue operations, an official said. The explosion triggered panic among the employees who ran helter-skelter. Such explosions can generate searing heat, an official said. An injured employee undergoing treatment at a hospital said that a sudden gush of hot gas with contents of ash-like material engulfed him at the NTPC plant. The man said he was unable to understand what had happened and found himself on a hospital bed with his body scalded all over, when he regained consciousness. The plant area was cordoned off by the police to facilitate smooth running of ambulances. Two companies of the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) have been sent to the plant as reinforcement. Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressed shock and horror at the "terrible tragedy" in her Lok Sabha constituency. Conveying her deepest condolences to the families of the bereaved, Gandhi urged upon the authorities to provide immediate medical assistance to the injured. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will take a break from election campaign in Gujarat to visit Rae Bareli on Thursday to meet the families of the victims. "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning," he said on Twitter. District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told PTI that 40 ambulances were immediately pressed into service. Chief Medical Officer of Rae Bareli DK Singh, along with a team of 10 doctors, was deployed to carry out immediate treatment to the injured, the district magistrate said. He also said that arrangements have been made to bring the serious cases to KGMU Hospital and the Civil Hospital in Lucknow. Some of the injured were being sent to Rae Bareli, Khatri said. CMO Singh said that, if necessary, some of the critical cases could be referred to Delhi by air ambulance. With inputs from PTI For the most recent installment of Understanding Girls, GPS welcomed Katey McPherson, executive director of the Gurian Institute, to share her expertise on the Effects of Social Media on Girls. Her talks, part of a two-day visit to GPS, informed parents about how a girls developing brain can be impacted by the images and influences shes exposed to on social media. Ms. McPherson also talked with Upper and Middle School students as well as faculty from GPS and visiting schools. As adults were sometimes surprised by what seem like irrational actions that our kids make on their devices, Ms. McPherson says. However, their brains arent fully developed as teens and tweens. As students explore different roles and personastypical for this developmental stagetheyre likely to test those selves out online. The pressure to keep up with their social group, however, can be greatespecially for girls, she said. Ms. McPherson said Todays Girl World looks like this: Never alone and never lonely Dont stand out in the wrong way Loyalty = agreement even when you dont Never look clingy or desperate ... a selfie is chosen after 20-27 options Never admit when youre mad Be effortlessly perfect in everything Mr. McPherson encourages parents to have what she deems courageous conversations early onpreferably even before a child gets a phoneto discuss expectations and set boundaries for using devices. Ms. McPherson also promotes the use of a family technology contract that specifically outlines parental control over passwords and app downloads, what can be shared, and when privileges may be revoked. Its a constant, exhausting dance for parents of when phones should be taken away and when they can give them backand kids never get tired, Ms. McPherson says. Good communication and established expectations can set the groundwork for mutual respect and responsible digital citizenship. To watch Ms. McPherson's presentation to parents at GPS in its entirety, click here. New York Times best-selling author of Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood, Lisa Damour, PhD, comes to GPS for a free parenting education evening on March 15, 7 to 8:30 p.m., in Frierson Theatre. More takeaways from Ms. McPhersons presentation: If your daughter is using an app, so should you. You should have login information on her devices and her apps. Safety always comes first. Set boundaries and guidelines for your familys tech useand follow those rules together after signing a contract. Set up a central charging station in the home where all devices live at nighttime. No electronics should be in the bedroom. Teens need their sleep and screen-time at night triggers cortisol, which negates any studying theyve done because it interferes with short-term memory. You are really trying to achieve one goal with your child: Dignity. Encourage her to treat others that way and to post only photos and comments that keep her dignity intact. When you intervene on your childs behalf, her confidence goes down, not up. Guide her but dont control her to instill coping skills and resiliency. Teach your daughter to put the friend ahead of the friendship. Be willing to have courageous conversations with other parents without judgment. Image-based platforms such as Instagram promote comparing self with others, causing anxiety and depression. Be aware of Finsta (Fake + Instagram), where kids have additional profiles on their Instagram accounts that only select people can view. These profiles typically contain more nudity and underage drinking. Kids will post images to make themselves look cool and often mimic behaviors they dont necessarily do such as drinking and drug use. Kids are communicating through social media platforms (such as SnapChat) more than texting. Kids are not addicted to devices; theyre addicted to the dopamine highs they get when using them. If girls want to vent, let them vent. Dont dismiss their pain by labeling it as drama. Its unfair to call girls mean, even though they can be mean at times. Teens have one goal: to stay relevant. We give teens technology without teaching them how to use it at a time when their brains are only half-developedand then wonder why they make bad choices. Your childs social media connections might not be who they seem to be. A profile picture might seem innocuous but could be deceptive. Require their accounts are private and that they truly know who is following them. Teens have a drive to feel connected; let that connection be you. Empathy drives connection; sympathy drives disconnection. Dont be shocked if your teen says or posts things that dont align with your values and faith; most will say and do things to fit in. Teens are inundated with messages of sex, drugs, and alcohol use in all forms of media. Their underdeveloped brains will make bad choices. Encourage your student to use social media to create a platform that exhibits her best self. College recruiters will review online presence of incoming students to determine who will best represent their campus. Auto refresh feeds CNN-News 18 reported that the death toll has risen to 9 in the explosion at the NTPC power plant in Raebareli. India Today TV reported that many of those injured in the explosion are critically injured. The report added that the death toll is likely to go up as the rescue and relief operations progress. Uttar Pradesh Police tweets on tragedy, says all ambulances available pressed into service Officials figures on casualties say 4 dead, over 50 injured; toll likely to go up The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said that the government wil give Rs 50,000 to those critically injured in the explosion, while Rs 2 lakh will be given to the kin of those killed in the accident. Those with minor injuries will recieve an aide of Rs 25,000. UP government to bear expense of treatment for those injured Critical patients in Rae Bareli explosions will be shifted to Lucknow PGI: UP CM NDTV reported that there are two prominent hospitals near the plant, one being the NTPC hospital within the campus and another state-run district hospital. Some of the injured are being sent for treatment to the Jeevan Jyothi hospital in Rae Bareli, while the critically injured are being transferred to Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow. Some of the Injured patients being treated at Jeevan Jyothi hospital in Rae Bareli NTPC sets up enquiry panel to probe reason of explosion: Here's the official statement The Union Health Minister JP Nadda spoke the Uttar Pradesh health minister after the explosion. he also directed the Union Health Secretary to extend all possible help to the state government. Union Health Minister JP Nadda calls UP health minister, assures of Centre's help for relief ops Uttar Pradesh Labour Minister Swami Prasad Maurya has left for Unchahar plant after the explosion. The chief minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath is right now on an official tour to Mauritius. According to NDTV, the boiler plant unit where the explosion was opened just 7 months ago in March. The plant was built by BHEL and was still under trial. An incident involving a high pressure and high temperature area can have serious repercussions. This appears to be a very unusual incident because NTPC has a high record of safety. Let us wait for the investigation report, says Anil Razdan, Indias former power secretary, reported Hindustan Times . NTPC has high safety records, incident very unusual, says former Power Secy Seven patients were brought at the King George medical college in Lucknow, four people were taken to civil hospital and four others are recieveing treatment at Balram hospital. ANI UP quoted Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar as saying that the death toll in the NTPC explosion had risen to 26. NTPC on Thursday said it has shut a 500 MW unit at its Unchahar coal-fired power station in Rae Bareli after the explosion. "This is to inform that Unit-6 (500 MW) of Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, is under shutdown after an accident in the evening of 1 November. The other five units of the station are operating normally," NTPC said in a statement. -PTI A worker from Jharkhand told DNA that a couple of them had complained to the head of the boiler that something was choking the boiler and steam pipes. Workers also claimed to have submitted a written request asking to shut down the unit. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who accompanied Rahul Gandhi to the blast site, said that allegations by workers over safety standards should be probed. Protesting labourers and families claimed that several workers who were working inside the plant when the blast happened are still unaccounted for. The families of labourers working at NTPCs Unchahar plant have launched a protest outside the complex, alleging that many more bodies are buried under the ash and rubble inside the plant but the authorities are not doing anything to retrieve them, News18 reported. More bodies buried under rubble, allege workers protesting at the explosion site A worker from Jharkhand told DNA that a couple of them had complained to the head of the boiler that something was choking the boiler and steam pipes. Workers also claimed to have submitted a written request asking to shut down the unit. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who accompanied Rahul Gandhi to the blast site, said that allegations by workers over safety standards should be probed. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," the Congress vice-president told reporters. Committee formed for detailed probe to find out cause of blast & decide precautionary measures for future: Union Power Min #NTPCExplosion pic.twitter.com/8T9Ftfa90G After meeting the families of victims, Rahul Gandhi demanded better compensation and a government job for them. He further said that the workers that there should be a proper probe and the guilty should be punished. Protesting labourers and families claimed that several workers who were working inside the plant when the blast happened are still unaccounted for. The families of labourers working at NTPCs Unchahar plant have launched a protest outside the complex, alleging that many more bodies are buried under the ash and rubble inside the plant but the authorities are not doing anything to retrieve them, News18 reported. More bodies buried under rubble, allege workers protesting at the explosion site 4/4 #NTPCExplosion : Minister, @MinOfPower went to district hospital at Rai Barielly as well, to visit and know the welfare of the injured https://t.co/h5fSq9nsOV Power minister RK Singh went to the district hospital to visit injured State authorities have ordered an inquiry to determine within seven days the cause of a blast. Sanjay Kumar Khatri, a top government official of Raebareli district, told Reuters that a magisterial inquiry has been initiated. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will take a break from his ongoing 'Navsarjan Yatra' in poll-bound Gujarat to visit Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday to meet the families of victims of a massive explosion at an NTPC power plant. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a massive explosion ripped a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant. "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Raebareli on Thursday morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon," the Congress leader tweeted. Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday began his three-day campaign tour of south Gujarat, where Assembly poll will be held in December. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who represents Raebareli in the Lok Sabha, in her condolence message said she wanted to be with the families of the victims to share their pain in this hour of grief, but could not do so due to her indisposition. The NTPC initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast, while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured. Among those injured are three additional general managers of the NTPC plant, who are undergoing treatment in Lucknow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was "deeply pained" by the accident at the power plant and added that the situation was being closely monitored. ADG Kumar said that all available ambulances were pressed into service, and the additional district magistrate and the additional superintendent of police were on the spot to supervise relief and rescue operations. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on a three-day official visit to Mauritius, ordered that necessary steps be taken for rescue and relief. The chief minister has taken cognisance of the Unchahar accident and has directed the principal secretary (home) to ensure that all steps were taken for rescue and relief, principal secretary (information) Awanish Awasthi, who is accompanying Adityanath, said. A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was also despatched to the explosion site from the state capital for relief and rescue operations, an official said. The explosion triggered panic among the employees who ran helter-skelter. Such explosions can generate searing heat, an official said. An injured employee undergoing treatment at a hospital said that a sudden gush of hot gas with contents of ash-like material engulfed him at the NTPC plant. The man said he was unable to understand what had happened and found himself on a hospital bed with his body scalded all over, when he regained consciousness. The plant area was cordoned off by the police to facilitate smooth running of ambulances. Two companies of the Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) have been sent to the plant as reinforcement. With inputs from agencies Raipur: The Congress on Thursday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the sex CD row allegedly involving a Chhattisgarh minister. While making this demand, All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary PL Punia also alleged that since the CBI is acting at the behest of the BJP-led government, there could be a no fair inquiry into the sex CD row. The Chhattisgarh government has recommended a CBI probe into the CD row. "The CBI is acting like a parrot of the BJP government (at the Centre). Therefore, it raises a doubt over a fair probe into the CD row. We demand that the alleged CD case should be probed by a Supreme Court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT)," Punia, who is also the party's in-charge for Chhattisgarh, said in a press conference. He also rejected the BJP's allegations that the Congress was circulating the alleged sex CD. "Congress party has never indulged in such activities. The CD in question was already viral in the public domain. But, it is our responsibility as an Opposition to expose the corrupt practices of the ruling party ministers before the people. It is our moral responsibility," he added. He also described the arrest of journalist Vinod Verma as an attack on the freedom of the press. "The way journalist Verma was arrested, it seems that it was a well-planned conspiracy. It is an attack on the freedom of the press and we condemn this act," he said. Meanwhile, he also accused ruling BJP of misusing funds to tune to crores in the name of Rajyotsav, statehood celebrations. Despite the farmers are bearing the brunt of drought in the state, the ruling BJP has been spending crore of rupees on performances by film artists during Rajyotsva celebrations which is very unfortunate, he said. A porn video CD allegedly featuring state's public works department minister Rajesh Munat has rocked the political circles in the state. The alleged CD surfaced in the media after the arrest of a Vinod Verma from Ghaziabad by Chhattisgarh Police last week. Verma, who is currently in Raipur jail on judicial remand, after his arrest had claimed that he has sex CD involving the minister. However, Munat had dubbed the CD as "fake", and an attempt to tarnish his image. Maharashtra has sent a request to the Central government seeking an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the case of deaths allegedly due to pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal district. An FIR has also been registered against five companies in Nagpur, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. At least 18 people have died over the past three months in Yavatmal in eastern Maharashtra, allegedly owing to a toxic pesticide they were exposed to. The deaths had been covered in detail by Firstpost in a series of ground reports. In a series of tweets, Fadnavis said on Thursday that after the deaths, a detailed study was conducted by the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR). The study is said to have mentioned that herbicide-tolerant genes were found in the Bt Cotton seeds of five branded companies, which contravenes the provisions of the Environment Protection Act, 1986. However, the chief minister said that such seeds are being produced in other states as well. After the tragic incident of pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal district, a detailed study was done by Central Institute of Cotton Research (CISR) and the report is submitted to the State Government. CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) November 2, 2017 As mentioned in this report Herbicide tolerant genes are found in the BT Cotton seeds of 5 branded companies & it is not permissible under the provisions of Environment Protection Act 1986. CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) November 2, 2017 FIR has been registered against those 5 companies at Nagpur. But it is also found that such type of seeds are being produced in many other states too and due to such seriousness, Govt of Maharashtra has sent a request to Govt of India for a detailed CBI inquiry into this. CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) November 2, 2017 Earlier, the state government had ordered a probe by a Special Investigative Team (SIT) in the matter. Fadnavis had then assured that a case would be registered against the pesticide manufacturers and dealers. The state government has also announced an ex gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh for the families of the deceased. In 2016, Vidarbha reported the highest number of farmer suicides in the state. The pesticide poisoning further aggravates the crisis in the region. Kuala Lumpur: When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation back in his home country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysias administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been banned in the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naik's presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicised Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election, the ruling coalitions worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has aroused controversy with his puritan brand of Islam, recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. A Youtube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden is terrorising America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. Last week, Indias counter-terrorism agency prepared charges against Naik, saying he has been promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures. Bangladesh suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naiks preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects, said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public. Facebook Photos: At his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, a female Reuters reporter asked about the investigation in India. Naik would only say: Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public. Naik did not respond to subsequent requests for comment from Reuters. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given preferential treatment. Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him, Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India related to terrorism allegations involving him, he added. Zahid and the prime minister have both posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the high court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society - about 40 percent of Malaysias population is non-Muslim. The group said it was unaware Naik had been going to the Putrajaya mosque or where he might be in Malaysia. Officials at the Putra Mosque said Naik has been attending Friday prayers there for about a month. He has also been spotted in other mosques, hospitals, and restaurants in the administrative capital in recent months, according to witnesses that Reuters spoke to. Naik has in the past denied Indias allegations. In an interview with a Kuwaiti television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi because of his popularity. Malaysias opposition Islamic Party (PAS), which has defended Naik in the past, last week urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, saying the allegations aim to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community. Nine Sultan Islamic groups have stoked controversy for trying to impose their ethos in a multi-cultural country. Malaysian authorities cancelled a planned beer festival last month, citing security concerns, and for some years now international pop stars who wish to make appearances in Malaysia face restrictions over clothing and dancing. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. The laws, however, are secular, though the country does have sharia courts for civil cases for Muslims. Malaysias nine sultans, who take turns as the mostly ceremonial monarch and are the official guardians of Islam in Malaysia, last month called for unity and religious harmony after what they described as excessive actions in the name of Islam. One of them harshly condemned a Muslim-only launderette. We are seeing this gravitation towards fundamentalism and a conservative idea of Islam because the current government doesnt want to be seen as secular anymore, said Ahmad Farouk Musa, founder of a moderate Islam think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF). To ensure Malay support, the government thinks it has to have Islamic credentials just like PAS, Farouk told Reuters, said Islam sells In September, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol was detained for giving an unauthorised speech in the Malaysian capital, in which he argued that governments shouldnt police religion or morality. Zahid, also the home minister, said Akyols book Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty has been banned as it contravened norms of the society in Malaysia. Farouk, who organised the speech, said he now faces charges for abetting Akyol. Mumbai: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray on Thursday met Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to discuss the issue of illegal hawkers in Mumbai. The meeting comes a day after hawkers staged a protest at Azad Maidan demanding framing of a hawkers' policy.On Wednesday, MNS and Congress workers had clashed in Dadar over the issue of hawkers. MNS leader Bala Nandgaonkar said his party has asked the BJP-led government in Maharashtra to implement the court orders on hawkers. "If the government implements the court orders, we (MNS) won't have to resort to anti-hawker agitation," Nandgaonkar said. Mumbai Congress chief Sanjay Nirupam had organised a morcha in Dadar in support of hawkers, who have been targeted by the Raj Thackeray-led party. MNS workers had arrived at the 'Sanman Morcha' site in Dadar West before it began, leading to a confrontation between the activists of the two parties. The MNS workers hurled potatoes at the Congress workers and police took some Congress and MNS workers into custody. The MNS had blamed Nirupam for the assault on its Malad division chief Shashank Malavade by hawkers on Saturday. The party alleged that Nirupam had asked the hawkers to retaliate. MNS activists had also gathered near Nirupam's residence in Andheri on Wednesday. Cracking the whip on illegal hawkers in the city, the Bombay High Court on Wednesday restricted hawking to designated zones only while banning the activity on foot and rail overbridges and within 150 metres of railway stations. Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aditya met West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday who is on a visit to Mumbai to promote investment in her state. Mamata Banerjee is a very powerful and brave leader: Uddhav Thackeray after meeting WB CM Mamata Banerjee pic.twitter.com/eBpZE6CMHJ News18 (@CNNnews18) November 2, 2017 The meeting is likely to fuel speculations in the political circles with Shiv Sena and BJP's strained relations in Maharashtra politics, and Sena's increasingly vocal criticism of its ally in power at the state. The Sena chief paid a visit to Banerjee on Thursday afternoon at a south Mumbai hotel where she is staying during her visit to Mumbai, reported ANI. Shiv Sena has dubbed Thackeray's meeting with Banerjee as a courtesy call and rubbished reports on any political agenda behind the visit. The meeting at the Trident Hotel lasted for three hours and the two leaders discussed demonetisation and poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), reported CNN-News 18 Shiv Sena says, 'the meeting b/w Mamata Banerjee & Uddhav Thackery was just a courtesy call & there is no other meaning to it.' ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 After the meeting, Thackeray said they didn't discuss politics, but added that on issues such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation, both the leaders share same views. "This was my first meeting with her. There was no political discussion, but we have same views on issues such as demonetisation and GST. Both of us have been speaking on these issues. This was only the first meeting, let's see how the things shape up," Thackeray told reporters. The two also discussed possible joint 'sister cities' initiatives between the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Both Sena and Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads with the BJP, and the Narendra Modi government on a slew of issues, including demonetisation and on making Aadhaar mandatory for availing benefits of government welfare schemes. On the other hand, Sena recently launched a fresh attack on the state government by releasing a booklet titled Ghotalebaaz BJP (Scamster BJP). The booklet lists all the scams that have taken place under the Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra. Banerjee, who is in the city since Tuesday and expected to return to Kolkata on Friday, also met top industrialists and bankers on Wednesday as part of a roadshow, ahead of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in Kolkata in January, 2018. The Shiv Sena had last year teamed up with the TMC in a bid to take on the BJP over the issue of demonetisation. Thackeray had told media persons in November last year that if there was nothing wrong in Prime Minister Modi meeting (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar, then there was nothing wrong if the Sena held talks with Banerjee on a crucial issue. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah will kick off the party's 79-day 'Karnataka Parivartan Yatra' in Bengaluru on Thursday, with the aim of returning to power in the southern state. According to a BJP statement, more than one lakh party workers riding motorbikes are expected to attend a rally to be addressed by Shah. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally on 28 January on the conclusion of the yatra to be led by the party's chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa. Party workers from the state's 28,000 polling booths are expected to take part in Shah's rally. Top party leaders, including Union ministers and chief ministers, will attend the yatra, which will pass through the state's 224 Assembly seats, the statement said. The Congress is in power in the state and the BJP is making all-out efforts to oust it in the Assembly polls scheduled to be held in early 2018. Shimla: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a "jumla babu" as he is known for making "false promises" and discriminating with the hill states, including Himachal Pradesh, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said on Thursday. "The 'jumla babu' is here again with false promises. But he will not be able to fool the people of Himachal, who are prepared to give him a befitting reply in the polls," he told reporters. His remarks came on the day Modi held two public meetings in the poll-bound state to garner votes for the BJP. This was Modi's maiden visit since the pronouncement of the elections. "While he (Modi) snatched the special category status from the state in 2015 (while restoring it temporarily in 2017), he has not fulfilled his promise of raising import duty on apples or laying the railway line from Mandi to Leh," the Congress leader said. Regarding the launch of the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik' (UDAN) scheme between Shimla and Delhi, Surjewala said the central government's scheme has failed completely. He said the Modi government's policies have made the life of common people very tough, with rising prices. The hill state will go to polls for 68 assembly seats on 9 November. The votes will be counted on 18 December along with those in Gujarat. In Himachal Pradesh, Congress won 36 of the 68 seats in 2012 with a vote share of 42.81 percent, while the BJP bagged 26 seats with a 38.47 percent vote share. While the Doka La standoff between Indian and Chinese forces was underway, Prime Minister Narendra Modi restrained from speaking on the subject. He didn't say a word following the military disengagement (72 days into the standoff), ahead of his visit to China in the first week of September to attend the BRICS summit. Even when he was hailed by many for standing his ground in the extremely risky situation, eventually forcing China to diffuse the situation, he maintained a studied silence and let the issue be debated in the public domain by the academics, experts and political parties instead. But now, almost five months after the standoff started, Modi first mentioned Doka La in Bengaluru on Sunday and charged the Congress of spreading lies about the issue. But, it seems that he reserved his firepower on the issue for his visit to Kangra in Himachal Pradesh on Thursday. Speaking in the hill state also known as "veer bhumi" for the number of persons from the state serving the armed forces Modi thought it appropriate to bring up Doka La in detail and lash out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. What would have hurt the Congress most is the way Modi hit out at its scion, questioning his wisdom, his trust in official Indian structures and his concern for national interest, especially since he is a three-term MP and designated heir to the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. Modi said the Congress, which wants to rule the country, did not have faith in the country. The 72-day standoff was a test of bravery and patience of Indian soldiers, who were pitted in an eyeball to eyeball confrontation with Chinese troops under adverse climatic conditions. Anything could have happened then but we had confidence in our soldiers' skills and patience, Modi said. But a person (Rahul) who has been in Parliament for 12-15 years, who was born and brought up in a royal (political) family and whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather had been prime ministers, did not have trust in the countrys government and systems, Modi added. "He meets the Chinese ambassador to know what was happening in Doka La. By doing so, did he (Rahul) not shame the country, the armed forces? His intentions are questionable. Can the country trust a person who doesn't have any primary knowledge?" he quipped. Terming the Congress a "laughing club", Modi said the party was losing its hold in every corner of the country. The Grand Old Party, under its current dispensation, has degenerated into "Sadi hui soch" (rotten thought), he said. Congress workers are surely not going to take the jibes kindly. It remains to be seen how Rahul responds to that. Way back in 2009, in the run-up to Parliamentary polls, Modi had termed the Congress as having been reduced to a "125-year-old budhia (old woman)". Responding to his attack, Priyanka Gandhi, during her campaigning in Amethi had responded by saying, "Kya mein budhi dikhti hoon (Do I look old to you)? However, the Congress won those elections and the matter ended there. But the time has changed now. The Congress is ebbed, in Parliament, in states Assemblies and in local bodies across the nation. What is important to note here is that in recent months, this has been Modis sharpest attack on Rahul. This comes at a time when a number of so-called secularists, left-liberal writers and analysts have rediscovered immense virtues of the Congress vice-president and believe that he has come of age and acquired maturity and articulation to effectively take on Modi now and in the 2019 Parliamentary elections. Rahul now has a chance to respond to Modi by winning the Himachal Pradesh or Gujarat Assembly elections. But if he fails to win these two states, then Modi would have won decisively yet another battle. Modi knows that targeting an individual may not augur well so he tried to link it with the degeneration of main Opposition party from being an organisation which effectively ruled every inch of the country to a rotten thought, which is no longer a party which Mahatma Gandhi and other freedom fighters once nurtured to an organisation which was corrupt, dynastic, promoted communalism and casteism for electoral gains. Modi didn't spare former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru either. He said that when he talked of a Congress-mukt Bharat he was referring to getting rid of that degenerative thought, which the present-day Congress represents. He referred to former finance minister P Chidambaram's advocacy for Kashmirs autonomy, asking who gave him (Chidambaram) the right to insult jawans who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the integrity of the nation. Besides distancing from Chidambaram's remark, the Congress had not said anything on its leader's position. Interestingly, Rahul has been talking highly of Chidambaram in his public meetings while blasting Modi on demonetisation. The BJP leaders would be satisfied by the kind of response he evoked from the massive crowds gathered to hear his speech. Across Himachal Pradesh, workshops are conducted to spread awareness about the need for nyaya panchayats. People in the urban areas say the demand is rising because of the climbing crime graph in the state mostly against women but the older generation, that had been witness to the working of nyaya panchayats, say minor cases were handled at the local level for the well-being of society and also to maintain the izzat (respect) of the village. Marginalised sections demand the return of the old system, with elections being the right time to press for it. Similar demands for nyaya panchayats have also figured in other states. In 1959, the government of Maharashtra introduced nyaya panchayats for the administration of minor cases of civil and criminal disputes in a group of villages. These panchayats were abandoned in 1975. In 2011, the Congress-led Democratic Front government considered the revival of the nyaya panchayat system for speedy disposal of cases. It has Tanta Mukti Samitis now working for dispute resolution at the panchayat level, though members of this Samiti are nominated by the government. Similarly, Bihar experienced some success with Gram Kachaharis, that appoint a nyaya mitra, a law graduate or a paralegal who guides the nominated men and women of repute on issues of jurisprudence. In view of the recent spurt in minor litigations in villages, voters in Himachal Pradesh are also demanding a revival of nyaya panchayats. They have given a memorandum to both political parties the Congress and the BJP to enlist the formation of nyaya panchayats in their manifesto. While BJP has turned it down, Congress has promised to "look into the matter." The history In 2012, the Congress Party included a provision for nyaya panchayats in its election manifesto for the Assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh. After winning the elections, it 'forgot' to fulfil the promise. In 2015, responding to persistent demands by a cluster of NGOs, the state government accepted the demand for autonomous nyaya panchayats, but later went back on its word. There is no need for these bodies, stated the government with the existing justice delivery system and 3,243 elected panchayats in the state. Unofficially, people came to know, the government did not have the resources. Incidentally, the state had a provision for nyaya panchayats till 1978 (the state was carved out of Punjab in 1971). Few senior officials told Firstpost, on condition of anonymity, that a nyaya panchayat member had punished Shanta Kumar (former chief minister), to invite its closure. Others say all records of the nyaya panchayats were found burnt. Whatever be the truth, after a reorganisation of states, Punjab had done away with these panchayats, and Himachal followed suit. Why the need for revival Till 2005, a gram panchayat election in the state did not even require a pamphlet. Today, a candidate spends Rs four-five lakh for an electorate of 1,000 people. The focus has shifted to development work, with each panchayat receiving Rs 80-90 lakh per annum. "No one wants to lose votes by getting involved in petty disputes and antagonise one party. Compromise is all they ask for, more so from women and the marginalised. Justice of the courts is costly, its carried out in English... it is not meant for us" says Brijbala (Sharma, though she doesn't write her surname because her husband abandoned her), one of the coordinations spreading awareness on nyaya panchayats, from district Bilaspur. Dr SS Meenakshisundaram, former secretary of the Union Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department, who has monitored the working of panchayats believes, "It is easier to lie in a distant court where no one knows you than in a panchayat where everyone does; nyaya panchayats can deliver faster and cheaper justice." He avers that the Judiciary needs decentralisation too. Echoing his views, SR Sharma, retired deputy director, Panchayati Raj, Shimla, says,"Panchayati Raj Act is flawed." In his opinion, "by giving both executive and judicial powers, it has undermined the value of both. "When nyaya panchayats were active in Himachal Pradesh, people respected locally delivered judgments, but now for every little issue they have to run to the courts because they lack faith in the Panchayat." Added to this is a new kind of inequality bred in the rural life that segregates services into the government and the private sector. The poor and the disadvantaged find themselves at the mercy of the government machinery that controls their right to services for education and healthcare etc, tilted in favour of the rich. "Even BDOs ( block development officers) demand a report from sarpanchs only on how the funds are used... they want the paperwork to look good. The well being of the people, especially the disadvantaged, is nobodys concern," adds Brijbala. The road ahead Not willing to repeat a 2012, Networking NGO, a cluster of NGOs active in the state, has spearheaded an awareness campaign on the issue, with signatures of 20,938 panchayat members in their bag, both men and women. The volunteers are training even gran pradhans about the need for nyaya panchayats. The NGOs SRDA (society for rural development and action), Shraddha, EG (Energy Environment group), Ankur Welfare Association, Nishtha, Rural Health Education and Environment, Sarb Shakti Sangam, Federation of Women and ENSS are active in seven out of 12 districts of the state. "We need affordable, approachable justice," they clamour. They have worked out solutions for governments that, they accuse, hides behind the excuse of lack of resources. "The post of up-pradhan in a panchayat is useless, each up-pradhan gets an honorarium of Rs 2,200 per month, for 3,243 panchayats... the money wasted works out to be Rs 8,56,15,200 annually. this can be used to create nyaya panchayats, says Radha, a deserted wife from Sayahola panchayat of Bilaspur district, dedicated to the cause of reviving the nyaya panchayats. Ratan Manjari, president, Mahila Kalyan Parishad, Kinnaur, a strong supporter of the abolition of tribal laws that discriminate against women on property rights, has motivated 55 out of 68 panchayats in the district, mostly constituted of the hill tribes, to sign a memorandum demanding nyaya panchayats. "No woman likes going to thana0kachahari, village dispute shouldn't go out of the village. Tribes used to have their own system of justice, they abolished old systems, new systems don't deliver. Common problems are multiple marriages by men, domestic violence, property disputes... where do we go to get justice?" she asks. As the temperatures turn colder, the Tennessee Valley Authority staffed visitor centers at Norris, Fontana and Kentucky dams have closed after another successful season. These facilities will reopen in the spring of 2018. Visitor centers at the Raccoon Mountain Pumped Storage facility near Chattanooga, and at South Holston and Fort Patrick Henry dams in northeast Tennessee remain open year-round, as well as informative display panels at Wilson and Guntersville dams in Alabama. Each offers information about TVA history, how it operates its electric system and how it manages the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Visitor centers close for major holidays and during severe weather. Additional information on all of TVAs visitor centers can TVAs website. Chennai: Tamil movie actor Kamal Haasan, who is planning to jump into active politics, says there are "Hindu extremists" too. Writing in a Tamil magazine, Kamal said that earlier right-wing Hindus used to argue, but did so without indulging in violence. But as their "cunningness" started to fail, they began to resort to violence, he said. "Extremism has spread into their camp as well," the actor said. "This extremism is not a victory or progress to those who call themselves Hindus." He moaned that these days festivals had been commercialised. According to him, the older generation upper caste people, who get jittery on seeing equality in society, are now trying to impose Sanatana Dharma on the youth by coating it with honey. This is being done through festivals, culture and art, he said. The Shiv Sena has stepped up its attacks against alliance partner BJP, releasing a booklet titled Ghotalebaaz BJP (Scamster BJP), that lists all the scams that have taken place under the Devendra Fadnavis government in Maharashtra. The Sena, which has been increasingly vocal with its criticism against the BJP government in recent times, has detailed leveled serious corruption allegations against the BJP leaders, even mentioning several senior ministers by name and the total "value" of these scams. The 56-page booklet, of which Firstpost has a copy, was handed out to Shiv Sena party members during an organisational meeting at Sena Bhavan on Wednesday, and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray urged party members to distribute the booklet across the state, according to The Times of India. Thackeray also asked party members to "to be prepared for mid-term polls", the report added. The booklet chronicles various scams, ranging from the MIDC land scam in which Eknath Khadse was allegedly involved, to the tur scam allegations levelled against Girish Bapat. Irregularities in supply of fire extinguishers to local schools without calling for tenders has been blamed on education minister Vinod Tawde, while the loan waiver scam involving BJP leader Dilip Gandhi also features prominently, with the booklet asking if they should be spared. The booklet states that there has been a rise in corruption cases being filed by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). It also alleges that of the 40 BJP ministers heading departments in the state, 30 are facing corruption charges, with home and revenue departments topping the list. The Sena has also accused BJP of promoting and transferring senior police officers in state out of turn. And it's list of allegations and revelations doesn't stop with Maharashtra. It also lists scams which have surfaced in other BJP-ruled states, and those that took place under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Centre. Moreover, it has also listed allegations against BJP national president Amit Shah, and has accused BJP of not providing details about the "hoardes of cash" it received during the 1990 Ram Janmabhoomi agitation. The booklet ends by taking a dig at the Devendra Fadnavis government, asking "Kuthe neun thevlay Maharashtra maajha? (Where have you taken my Maharashtra?)," using the same line the BJP had earlier successfully used against the Congress ahead of the 2014 Assembly election. The booklet was distributed among party leaders on Wednesday, but was originally released during the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election in February this year. It was seen as retaliation to a series of jibes thrown by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at the Shiv Sena, according to The Asian Age. However, the Sena has denied publishing any such booklet. Talking to The Hindu, Harshal Pradhan, who looks after Thackeray's publicity, said, "We have neither published any such booklet, nor has Thackeray asked anyone to distribute it. Shiv Sena does not go for such dirty tricks." The Sena has upped the ante against the BJP, with several leaders, including Thackeray, speaking out against the senior ally. Just last week, the party had called BJP its "principal enemy" and said it was part of the Maharashtra government "just for the sake of it". Later, senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut also said the Narendra Modi wave had faded, and appreciated Rahul Gandhi. "Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is capable of leading the country," Raut had said. The Sena also slammed the Centre's key policy decisions like demonetisation and GST, and said people should start preparing to pay back the government for "playing with their feelings", asking them, "Where is the Diwali of achche din?" The parties had contested the Assembly and BMC elections separately in a bitter, no holds barred contest, but came together as coalition partners later. Responding to the Sena's taunts, Fadnavis had hit back last week, saying it cannot play the role of a ruling party and Opposition simultaneously. With inputs from agencies tech2 News Staff Eric Schmidt, the current chairman for Alphabet, the parent company of Google has issued a warning for the United States. While talking at a tech summit Schmidt pointed out that the United States is at risk of lagging behind in the development of artificial intelligence. He stated that the current leadership that the country enjoys will last for over the next five years before China takes over the lead. Schmidt elaborated that China will catch up quickly and will use the new technology for both, military as well as commercial objectives resulting in a number of consequences. According to a report by The Verge, Schmidt was referring to a policy document where China plans to become the global leader in AI and AI-related industry by 2030. The main reason for the caution was the fact that United States is not investing enough in the basic research for AI along with increasingly restrictive immigration policy inhibiting of talented individuals that could otherwise come to the country to research on Artificial Intelligence. To illustrate his point, Schmidt pointed out that Iran produces some of the top computer scientists in the world and he would want those scientists to work for Google and Alphabet in extension. He went on to add that DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary has a better shot at achieving a breakthrough while developing and inventing any general intelligence or AI with human-level or superior intelligence. To his credit, DeepMind is accredited with feats like beating the world Go champion, using AI to ensure more power efficient data centres with an improvement of about 15 percent in two weeks. The interesting thing to note here is that this 15 percent improvement is over the work of worlds best engineers. He added that the United States needs to get act together as a country to develop an AI strategy involving private as well as the government industry. Last but not the least, Schmidt pointed out that Trust me, these Chinese people are good. Google CEO talked about the regulation of AI also but he thought that it is a side issue because of the premature debate. PTI Infosec Foundation, a non-profit making platform dedicated to cyber security, will hold a conference on cyber security in the country on 3 November in Kolkata and will be participated by experts, policy makers and stakeholders, organisers said. Infosec Global 2017 would feature interaction with a host of eminent personalities such as Sanjay Bahl, the director general of Computer Emergency Response Team-India, West Bengal IT minister Bratya Basu, West Bengal IT secretary Debashis Sen, Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar and Col Inderjeet Singh, former director of military intelligence. Among those who will be attending the summit, majority will be the CIOs from corporate offices, banks and financial institutions, besides cyber security experts, cyber law experts, policy makers and start-ups, they said. Infosec Foundation is in talks with Kolkata Police to launch India's first cyber security helpline number to assist and provide safety to the citizens in the best possible way. The foundation is also working on developing a matrix on user awareness and susceptibility of users in internet and measure impact through their campaigns with various stakeholders in various areas of operation. Stressing the need for a secured reliable internet surfing as an immediate requirement, Infosec Foundation chairman Sushobhan Mukherjee said social media accounts for around 95 per cent of identity thefts in the virtual world. IANS Kaspersky Lab researchers have discovered "CryptoShuffler Trojan", a new malware that cybercriminals are using to steal cryptocurrencies from a user's wallet by replacing their address with its own in the devices. According to the Russia-based cybersecurity company, criminals are targeting popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, Dash, Monero and others to steal 23 BTC (nearly $100,000). "Cryptocurrency is not a far-off technology anymore. Lately, we have observed an increase in malware attacks targeting different types of cryptocurrencies and we expect this trend to continue," Sergey Yunakovsky, a malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, said in a statement. In addition, experts have noticed that criminals were starting to use less advanced techniques and were spending less time and resources in this area. Clipboard hijacking attacks have been known for years, redirecting users to malicious websites and targeting online payments systems. In most cryptocurrencies, if a user wants to transfer crypto coins to another user, they need to know the recipient's wallet ID -- a unique multi-digit number. Here the CryptoShuffler exploits the system's need to operate with these numbers. After initializing, the "CryptoShuffler Trojan" starts to monitor the device's clipboard, utilised by users when making a payment. This involves copying wallets' numbers and pasting them into the "destination address" line of the software that is used to carry out a transaction. The Trojan replaces the user's wallet with one owned by the malware creator, meaning when the user pastes the wallet ID to the destination address line, it is not the address they originally intended to send money to. As a result, the victim transfers his or her money directly to the criminals, unless an attentive user spots the sudden replacement. Reuters Alphabet Incs Google and Facebook Inc on Wednesday joined a legal challenge by more than 100 tech companies against a decision to end protection for so-called Dreamer immigrants, the companies told Reuters. A legal briefing was filed Wednesday afternoon on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects immigrants brought into the United States illegally as children from deportation and which the Trump administration has decided to scrap. Tech firms argue that such immigrants are vital to the US economy and that ending the program will hit growth. The filing is in support of a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in the Northern District of California, according to the filing. Tech companies signed on to the amicus brief - a supporting document in a case, submitted by interested parties - also included Airbnb, Microsoft Corp, Salesforce.com Inc, Lyft, Uber and Twitter Inc. Becerra filed an additional motion on Wednesday that seeks to put a block on the withdrawal of DACA. That was supported by iPhone maker Apple Inc. Apple will be harmed significantly if it can no longer benefit from the hard work, creativity, and intelligence of its employees with DACA status, said Deirdre OBrien, Apples vice president of people, in a filing supporting the motion. Apple employs more than 250 DACA recipients, the filing said. The lawsuit challenges Trumps September decision to rescind DACA, which was established by former President Barack Obama in 2012. It is set to expire in March. DACAs rescission will inflict serious harm on US companies, all workers, and the American economy as a whole, the filing reads, according to a draft of the amicus brief provided by one of the companies. A week ago, dozens of tech companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and others, formed The Coalition for the American Dream, a group calling for bipartisan legislation this year that would give illegal immigrants a path to permanent residency. Reuters was first to report that the coalition was being formed. About 900,000 immigrants have been shielded from deportation since the DACA program began. PTI Scientists, using data from NASA's Kepler telescope, have discovered 20 new potentially habitable exoplanets that may host alien life. The list includes several planets that orbit stars like our Sun. Some take a relatively long time to complete a single orbit, with the longest taking 395 Earth days. The fastest orbit is 18 Earth days. The exoplanet with a 395-day year is one of the most promising worlds for life on the list, said Jeff Coughlin, part of NASA's K2 Mission, the second phase of the planet hunting Kepler Mission. The planet, called KOI-7923.01, is 97 per cent the size of Earth. It is slightly colder than our planet due to its distance from its star and the fact that the star is slightly cooler than our Sun. This means it may be a little more like tundra regions on Earth, but is still warm enough to hold liquid water. The team is 70 to 80 per cent certain that these are solid candidates. They cannot be confirmed yet as more observations are needed, New Scientist reported. Ground-based observatories or the Hubble Space Telescope will have to take more observations over the coming years to double-check, Coughlin said. AP Just after Thanksgiving Day in 1983, James Downey dropped off his older brother, John, at a Houston bus station, then quickly turned away so neither the police nor a motorcycle gang affiliated with his brother could later demand details about where the bus was headed. For 34 years, he didnt hear a word about him. Then this spring Downey received a heart-breaking call, one that more than 200 families across the country have gotten in the last few months since the FBI began using new fingerprint technology to resolve identity cases dating back to the 1970s. Authorities reported that the remains of a man found beaten to death decades ago along a brushy path in Des Moines, 800 miles away, had been identified as his brother. We always figured something had happened to him, James Downey said from his home in Houston. We all assumed hed got killed somewhere or died in an accident. Since launching the new effort in February, the FBI and local medical examiner offices have identified 204 bodies found between 1975 and the late 1990s. The cases stretch across the country, with the largest number in Arizona, California, New York, Florida and Texas. We didnt know the actual potential success. We were hoping to identify a few cases, maybe five or 10, said Bryan Johnson, a manager in the FBIs Latent Fingerprint Support Unit who proposed the effort. Were really proud that we found another way of doing this. Under the new program, Johnson and eight others in the FBI unit ran fingerprints from about 1,500 bodies through a new computer algorithm that could make matches from low-quality prints or even a single finger or thumb. Previously, the standard algorithm typically needed quality prints from all 10 fingers to make a match. The unit is now urging local authorities to search through other old case files and send in smudged or partial prints that couldnt previously be matched. The FBIs newfound ability was key to the Des Moines case because by the time Downeys body was found in February 1984, it had been buried under snow and dirt for months and was severely decomposed. Authorities sought the publics help in identifying the body, including publishing drawings of distinctive tattoos in the local newspaper, but no one came forward. We know he was murdered and dumped in this area but Des Moines police never really developed any leads on it and basically forgot about the case, county Medical Examiner Greg Schmunk said. It was one of several cases that medical examiner investigators called shelf dwellers, referring to cremated remains that would sit for decades on storage shelves. But the fact that this was a homicide and the unusual tattoos, including a skeleton clad in Nazi garb and a cartoon figure wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette, prompted investigators to rummage through police archives and resubmit the single available thumbprint into the Missing and Unidentified Persons System, called NamUs. They were shocked months later when the FBIs Johnson called to confirm they had matched the thumbprint to prints of Downey taken after an earlier arrest in Texas. About 40 percent of the identifications through the FBIs new process have been cases in Arizona. Most are people who died while attempting to make the dangerous desert crossing from Mexico. Bruce Anderson, the forensic anthropologist for Pima County, Arizona, keeps more than 1,000 unidentified person charts filed along his office wall. If you can remove one of these charts, have one family reach out to you to confirm an identity, some of that weight on us is removed, Anderson said. In nearby Yuma County, Arizona, the FBI fingerprint initiative enabled authorities to finally identify a young woman whose body was found in 1999 near the Colorado River, where she was killed with a shotgun blast to her face. For Sgt. Ryland Croutch, the identification of the victim as 18-year-old Angel McAllister, through a match with an earlier smudged print, was a relief. Hed been assigned to the killing only a few years after starting his job with the Yuma County sheriffs office, and as the years passed had promised himself that hed discover her identity before retiring. She was such a pretty young girl, said Crouch, now 58. And it sounds like she was smart, but she had some demons, people she liked to hang out with who were dangerous. He said hes hopeful that investigators now can find leads to her killer. Aden Naka, assistant director for forensics investigation in New York City, said many of the new identifications there were of bodies found in water, with some dating back to the early 1990s. Once they had a match, Naka said, staffers tried to find relatives or aid a criminal investigation if one is open. This matters tremendously, Naka said. Everyone deserves a name. Reuters Renesas Electronics Corp said on Tuesday it will provide semiconductors for self-driving cars that Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp plans to bring to market in 2020. Automakers are racing to be the first to market with commercially viable self-driving vehicles. Renesas said it will provide a chip to Toyota - the R-Car system-on-chip - that will serve as an electronic brain or as advanced driver-assistance systems. The company will provide a separate chip for automotive control. The first chip will provide highly accurate intelligence on the vehicles position within its environment and will also make real-time decisions on vehicle control and active safety maneuvers based on sensor data, Renesas said. The second chip, called RH850, will control driving, steering, and braking functions based on the judgments made by the R-Car system-on-chip. Fully self-driving vehicles are expected to hit the market in a limited form by around 2020. US automakers General Motors Co and rival Ford Motor Co have both publicly stated that they aim to have fully self-driving cars on sale by 2021. Renesas chips will be used with an engine control unit that will be provided by Denso Corp, Toyotas largest supplier. We are partnering with Denso and Renesas, who bring superior technology and expertise to this project, with the aim to accelerate the development of autonomous-driving vehicles and encourage early adoption, Ken Koibuchi, Executive General Manager at Toyota Motor Corporation, said in a statement. tech2 News Staff A number of Samsung users on the Samsung forums are complaining of their Galaxy Note 8 devices freezing up and becoming unresponsive. The problem seems to be affecting devices across markets, including the dual SIM versions. The only way to recover functionality on the phone is to restart the device. The problem persists even after users clear the cache, reinstall applications or perform a factory reset. A number of posts point to the freezing occurring while using the contacts app, leading to speculation that there may be a conflict between Samsung's contacts app and the one that comes with Android. Users have pointed out that opening the contacts app freezes the phone, but it is possible to make a call through the numeric keypad. The freezes are triggered while using certain apps including Google Chrome or the Google app. Android Police has put up a list of known instances that trigger the freezing. Apart from the freezing up issue, users are also reporting that the phone just restarts on its own while using some apps. The freezing and restarting is pretty frequent, and many users have pointed out that they have to restart the device multiple times in a week. Hopefully, this is likely a software bug that Samsung can fix with an update. The Commons, an eight acre cultural and recreational center in Collegedale, will officially celebrate its grand opening and completion of phase one of construction on Sunday. This special event will also highlight the start of the holiday season with the ceremonial lighting of the towns Christmas tree. The achievement of phase one of The Commons involved the development of four of the centers eight acres. The completion offers a shaded market area on 30,000 square feet of paved surface and a new 2,500 square-foot covered pavilion. Future phases allow for a sound stage, community center and proposed 11,000 square-foot event hall all scheduled for completion by 2021. The Commons is a testament to the unity and passion of the people of Collegedale to provide a beautiful structure for their community to grow and flourish," said the event's guest speaker, Congressman Chuck Fleischmann. "The facility will be a place for families, friends, and neighbors to create memories for years to come. I applaud city leaders and the community for their commitment and hard work over the years, and congratulate the entire Collegedale community on this accomplishment. The grand opening program will begin at 5 p.m. Special music for the evening will be provided by Jordan McKee Otis and the Southern Adventist University Orchestra. Collegedale Mayor Katie Lamb, County Commissioner Sabrena Smedley, County Mayor Jim Coppinger, Rep. Mike Carter, Collegedale Tomorrow Foundation Chairwoman Jill Moon and Executive Director David Barto will join Congressman Fleischmann in participation of the program prior to the citys Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at 6:30 p.m. Sundays event is free and open to the public. Vendors and food trucks will be on site for the celebration. For more information, contact David Barto at 664-3022 or email david.barto@collegedale.foundation. Sheldon Pinto Bring up Samsung in a conversation and apart from the curvy Galaxy S8 and the mighty Note 8, the conversation will touch on the Note 7 debacle, one that will haunt the brand for the rest of its existence. But according to Counterpoints latest report, things could get competitive, if not worse. According to Counterpoints Research Market Monitor service, Samsung is not doing too well. This applies both to the premium segment and even when it comes to its smartphone market share as a whole. The report points out that performance from Chinese smartphone brands have remained strong and have contributed to more than half of the total smartphone shipments. Xiaomi, iTel, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus were the fastest growing smartphone brands during the quarter. Referring to the action-packed Q3 2017 quarter, that was pretty much loaded with new smartphone launches. While Xiaomi took up the mid end segment (Rs 10,000 Rs 15,000) in the last quarter, the premium segment saw quite a drastic change. In its report, which looks into smartphone shipment numbers, Counterpoint states that Samsung had lost its edge in the premium market, and dropped to not rank two, but rank three. Who stole rank 2? That would be Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus. OnePlus came out with a special buyback offer for the existing OnePlus users during OnePlus 5 launch and offered cashbacks on device exchange. So large number of previous generation OnePlus users upgraded to new phone. said Parv Sharma, research associate at Counterpoint. The device also tick marked all the boxes when it comes to high end specifications. Apart from this aggressive marketing campaign around OnePlus 5 and online channel push also helped to become top selling premium device within a quarter of its launch. he added when quizzed about what OnePlus did differently this year, that it managed to take down a behemoth like Samsung in one of the worlds fastest growing smartphone markets. It is wise to note that Counterpoint defines all smartphones start from Rs 30,000 and above as being part of the premium segment. So a Samsung Note 8, priced at Rs 67,900 and even an Apple iPhone X priced at Rs 89,000, fall in the same category, which may seem a wee bit odd to some, if not many. Looking at the overall picture, it looks good enough. Samsung and Xiaomi together contributed to almost 45 percent of the smartphone market. This is the first time since 2012, that the top two brands have reached this level of combined share, signalling that key brands are ramping up their presence in India. said Karn Chauhan, another research analyst in the release. Associate Director Tarun Pathak said that Xiaomis performance has been admirable. Xiaomi continues to post back to back record quarters in India and create new benchmarks. Three out of the top five bestselling smartphones in India were from Xiaomi alone. Xiaomi has been popular in the past for its value for money offerings, however, the popularity is now transitioning into performance compared to last year. This can be attributed to a streamlined supply chain effort by Xiaomi and relatively weaker offerings from competitors in the online channel. But one long look at Counterpoints figures and its clear that while Samsung is not losing its edge in the smartphone market share, it is however losing momentum in the fact that it hasnt grown from Q3 2016 to Q3 2017. On the other hand, Xiaomi has its goals set and it keeps hogging on the smartphone share from Lenovo and other local smartphone brands. In fact, Xiaomi even launched its first premium flagship the Mi Mix 2 that competes with OnePlus. However, the product still cannot be compared to premium (or as we at tech2 define as the ultra-premium) offerings from Samsung, HTC and obviously Apple. But Counterpoints Parv Sharma was of opinion that while Samsung still enjoys the wider distribution network compared to any other brand, the entry of new brands in India over the past few years, have lured customers into trying out spec-heavy alternative devices with a strong value proposition. The result? Samsung lost out in the sub $150 segment. Based on shipment data, Sharma said that on a volume basis, Samsung is not declining YoY in India, in fact, a major concern for Samsung is that it is not growing with the same pace as the market. Samsung needs to offer a compelling proposition in entry level segment vis-a-vis spec vs price. In entry level segment users normally end up comparing products at different levels before making a purchase decision. Samsung sales in sub $150 segment is still driven by its couple of year older SKUs like J2 and J7. Apart from this demand is also soft for Samsungs A and C series in mid and premium segment. Parv said that Samsung could easily leverage its profits from the premium segment and use it to offer a diverse set of models in the low-end segment, an area where the research analyst felt the Korean giant was lacking in India. Xiaomi too has challenges for itself despite jumping from 6 percent in Q3 2016, to a staggering 22 percent (just below Samsungs 23 percent) in overall smartphone market share. It remains to be seen how Xiaomi pivots its channel strategy. Building an offline distribution comes with huge investment and takes a lot of time. Understanding channels and expanding its foot-prints across India will require patience. For the transition from an online retail model to an omni channel retail model, Xiaomi must build teams which understand and maintain relationships with channel partners. So we estimate strong competition between Samsung and Xiaomi in coming quarters. said Sharma. With all of that said, Samsung SVP, mobile business, Samsung India, Asim Warsi had plenty to comment about. We are India's number one mobile phone manufacturer and the country's most trusted brand. We enjoy market leadership across segments. In the premium segment (Rs 30,000 and above), Samsung's market share by volume was 65.2 percent and 65.4 percent by value for the quarter ended September 2017 according to GfK. It is wise to note that Warsis comment is based on GfK data, which is based on end-sales, rather than shipment numbers, which is what Counterpoints data seems to be derived from. Is Samsung even bothered? For now, it does not seem like it. AP In three exhaustive hearings this week, executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google acknowledged that their platforms were used by Russia to try and create division over such disparate issues as immigration, gun control and politics. House investigators released a trove of Facebook and Twitter ads that showed just how extraordinary the cyber intrusion was. The companies admissions and disclosures gave congressional investigators one of their first real wins in the Russia probes. They have been frustrated by delays and overshadowed by special counsel Robert Mueller since they launched probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election earlier this year. Initially dismissive of Russias threat, all three companies have pledged improvements since lawmakers ramped up pressure and called them to testify. Its unclear what next steps Congress will take. The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, has co-sponsored legislation that would bring political ad rules from TV, radio and print to the internet. Warner calls it the lightest touch possible, but many Republicans have been lukewarm. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said he thinks such advertising regulations for social media are inevitable, but noted that many of the fixes will come down to the companies own social responsibility. Congress isnt going to prescribe an algorithm, so there are limits to what we can feasibly do, Schiff said after his committees hearing 1 November. The few dozen ads, seen by vast sums of people, encouraged street demonstrations against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and fostered support and opposition to Bernie Sanders, Muslims, gays, blacks and the icons of the Civil Rights movement. The ads underscore how foreign agents sought to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics. U.S. intelligence services say the Russian use of social media was part of a broad effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. Mueller is investigating whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to influence the election. Many of the ads also show careful targeting, with messages geared toward particular audiences. One ad, aimed at those with interests in civil rights and their leaders, highlights a man who claims to be Bill Clintons illegitimate son. Another video parodying Trump was targeted at blacks who also are interested in BlackNews.com, HuffPost Politics or HuffPost Black Voices. In preparation for hearings this week, Facebook disclosed that content generated by a Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users. Company executives said that going forward they would verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about whos behind them. But that did not prevent hours of questioning during two days of hearings, with lawmakers expressing exasperation at the seeming inability to thwart foreign intervention. At one point, Sen. Al Franken put his head in his hands after he couldnt get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with foreign currency. Several ads touting Facebook pages called Back the Badge, Being Patriotic, Blacktivist, South United and Woke Blacks were labeled as being paid for in rubles using Qiwi, a Moscow-based payment provider that aims to serve the new generation in Russia and former Russian republics, according to the companys website. Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed, the Minnesota Democrat said. You cant put together rubles with a political ad and go like, Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad? Besides the ads released by lawmakers on the House intelligence committee, Democrats on the panel also released four tweets from RT, a Russian state-sponsored television network, and nearly 3,000 Twitter handles active during the final months of the election. Taken together, they show how actual news events and stories helped shape surreptitious Russian messaging. One advertisement cited a real October 2016 news story about a gunmans battle with Boston police officers then used it to attack Hillary Clinton as the main hardliner against cops and to promote Trump as the candidate who can defend the police from terrorists. Three of the tweets referenced Clinton, including one that linked to an RT story about the release of a batch of hacked emails from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. Some 34,000 Trump supporters were shown an ad calling for Clintons removal from the ballot, citing dynastic succession of the Clinton family as a breach of core principles laid out by the Founding Fathers. Clicking on it took Facebook users to a petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Though U.S. intelligence officials believe the social media effort was aimed at aiding Trump, there are other indications it was intended to sow general divisions. One ad promoted a Nov. 12 anti-Trump rally in New York City, titled Not My President. Large anti-Trump rallies actually did take place around the country that day in major American cities. That doesnt mean the Russian accounts planned the events, but rather that they were piggybacking on existing protests and promoting them to like-minded people. tech2 News Staff US investigators have revealed that a number of Facebook ads that were purchased by Russians during the 2016 US Presidential Election, during the course of an investigation into Russian interference through ads purchased on Google, Facebook and Twitter. The ads are a portion of the 3,000 ads that Facebook had provided to congressional investigators. The advertisements are related to a number of divisive issues, including race, religion, gun laws and immigration. Some ads specifically address the candidates while others seem to be designed to just amplify the divisiveness, in some instances calling for people from opposite sides of a divisive issue for simultaneous rallies in the same location. As part of the opening statement during the hearing on Russian meddling through digital platforms, Intel Committee Ranking Member Schiff said, "Russia exploited real vulnerabilities that exist across online platforms and we must identify, expose, and defend ourselves against similar covert influence operations in the future. The companies here today must play a central role as we seek to better protect legitimate political expression, while preventing cyberspace from being misused by our adversaries." The sample of advertisements were served through groups that supported religious minorities, racial minorities and the LGBT community. There were also posts in groups that were antagonistic to religious minorities, immigration and changes in laws related to gun ownership. A few ads actually clearly denounce Trump and support Hillary. Increasing divisiveness in American society seems to be as much as an objective of the campaign as pushing Trump towards victory. Whether or not the Russian campaign and the Trump campaign were coordinated is unclear at this time and is a topic of the ongoing investigation. However, the foreign campaign advisor of the Trump campaign, George Papadopolous, has admitted to receiving offers from Russia to assist Trump with the campaign through hacked emails that contained dirt on Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks released 1,500 emails, after which Clinton accused WikiLeaks of taking the heat off Trump by colluding with Russia. The ads are believed to have been purchased by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA), a troll farm. Russia has denied any efforts to interfere with the elections. There is also the question of how influential these ads were and the proportion of ads originating in Russia as compared to locally created content. The total ad buys by IRA on Facebook amounted to about $46,000, while the Trump and Clinton campaigns together spent about $81 million on Facebook ads. Between June 2015 and August 2017, the IRA apparently purchased 3,393 ads on Facebook reaching 11.4 million American users, through 470 IRA associated accounts. IRA is in control of approximately 120 pages on Facebook and more than 80,000 posts were published by accounts linked to Russia over the course of the campaign. According to an assessment by the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) conducting the investigation, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him." While the ads have sparse targeting, there is a measure of auto-selection going on here. The ads target friends of the people who liked the groups that distributed the apps, so in a way, the users themselves participated in the propagation of the propaganda. Facebooks Custom Audience tool was also reportedly used for the distribution of the ads. FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe has said that the US Government should have anticipated Russian interference and that the intelligence agency was making the efforts necessary to make sure Moscow pays for its actions. Facebook has committed to be more transparent about political advertising on its platform, and has announced plans to introduce a publicly searchable database of political ads on Facebook. Reuters Former Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer and the current and former CEOs of Equifax Inc will testify before a US Senate panel on 8 November on two massive data breaches, the committee said Wednesday. Verizon Communications Inc, the largest US wireless operator, acquired most of Yahoo Incs assets in June. Yahoo disclosed in October that a 2013 data breach affected all 3 billion of its accounts, compared with an estimate of more than 1 billion disclosed in December. The Senate Commerce Committee said Mayer, interim Equifax CEO Paulino do Rego Barros Jr. and former Equifax CEO Richard Smith would testify, as well as Karen Zacharia, Verizons deputy general counsel and chief privacy officer. Verizon and Equifax did not immediately comment. Mayer plans to appear, a representative for the former CEO confirmed. Republican Senator John Thune, who chairs the committee, said Wednesday in a statement that after major breaches, urgent action is necessary to protect sensitive personal information. Equifax disclosed in September that the data breach affected as many as 145.5 million U.S. consumers, and Smith has testified on the issue before three committees. Equifax last week delayed scheduling its quarterly earnings announcement in the wake of the incident that has sparked several investigations. Verizon combined Yahoo with AOL, which it bought two years ago, to form a venture called Oath. Mayer, a former Google executive, said in June in a blog post that Yahoo had taken steps to bolster its security defences. Verizon in February lowered its original offer for Yahoo assets by $350 million in the wake of two massive cyber attacks at the internet company. The closing of the deal, which was announced in July 2016, was delayed as the companies assessed the fallout from data breaches Yahoo disclosed last year. The company paid $4.48 billion for Yahoos core business. Mayer became CEO of Yahoo in 2012. One of the earliest employees of Google, now known as Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), she was the internet search companys first female engineer and led various businesses at Google including the design of its flagship search engine. Her nearly five-year tenure drew mixed reviews and she earned $239 million in total compensation, according to calculations by Equilar, a provider executive compensation data. Washington: A bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced a resolution in the US Congress which seeks treatment of Tibetans as an important factor in America's ties with China, ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing during his maiden Asia trip. The resolution encourages China to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or his representatives leading to a negotiated agreement with respect to Tibet. It also calls for immediate and unconditional release of all those imprisoned for expressing their political or religious views in the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas. Besides, it seeks establishment of an office in Lhasa to assist visiting US citizens and to monitor political, economic, and cultural developments in Tibet. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman Emeritus of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Congressman Eliot Engel, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Congressmen Ted Yoho and Brad Sherman jointly introduced the resolution , the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. "China's repression of the Tibetan people represents a serious threat to the region's stability and must be a higher priority in US foreign policy," Ros-Lehtinen said. "With President Trump travelling to China next week, this resolution sets a clear blueprint for Tibet policy in US-China relations, outlining where the United States needs to take a stronger hand and stand up to Beijing's bullying," she said. "As we mark the 10-year anniversary of His Holiness the Dalai Lama receiving the Congressional Gold medal, US policy must work to reverse China's dangerous behaviour and finally achieve a negotiated solution that includes meaningful autonomy for the Tibetan people," she added. Engel said China's systematic oppression of the Tibetan people is increasing in "intensity and cruelty". "So when the president travels to China in the coming days, I hope he makes it clear that human rights and democratic values are central components of American foreign policy," he said. As the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has inspired the world for decades with principled and peaceful leadership, a stark contrast to a regime in Beijing bent on consolidating economic and political power, Engel said. "Congress has long supported the cause of the Tibetan people, from the Tibetan Policy Act to awarding the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal. This resolution calls on the Trump Administration to continue America's principled support of Tibetan people's right to preserve their own distinct cultural identity," he said. International Campaign for Tibet has welcomed the resolution. Its president Matteo Mecacci said the resolution reflects decades-long and broad bipartisan support that exists for the Dalai Lama and Tibet among the American public. "The US Congress has been at the forefront in shaping US policy on Tibet and its strong call on the Trump administration is a timely reminder to Chinese leaders and the Chinese Communist Party that the international community will continue to hold them accountable for the violation of the Tibetan people's rights," Mecacci said. Trump embarks on a 12-day trip later this week to visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and Philippines. Yangon: Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrived on her first visit to conflict-battered northern Rakhine state on Thursday, an official said, an unannounced trip to an area that has seen most of its Rohingya Muslim population forced out by an army campaign. Suu Kyi, a nobel laureate who leads Myanmar's pro-democracy party, has been hammered by the international community for failing to use her moral power to speak up in defence of the Rohinyga. Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fled to Bangladesh since late August carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of the Myanmar's army, after militant raids sparked a ferocious military crackdown. The UN says that crackdown is tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home. "The State Counsellor (Suu Kyi's official title) is now in Sittwe and will go to Maungdaw and Buthiduang too. It will be a day trip," government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP, mentioning two of the epicentres of the violence but without elaborating on her schedule. It is her first trip in office to northern Rakhine, which has hosted the worst of the communal violence that has cut through the western state since 2012, severely damaging Myanmar's global reputation. It was not clear if Suu Kyi would visit some of the hundreds of Rohinyga villages torched by the army allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals or if she would be taken to see remaining clusters of the Muslim group, who are living in fear and hunger surrounded by hostile neighbours. Thousands of others are believed to still be camped on a beach near Maungdaw awaiting boats to Bangladesh in increasingly parlous conditions. The Rohingya are hated in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and widely dismissed as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. Observers say Suu Kyi has chosen not to criticise the army in fear of a backlash from a powerful institution that controls all security matters. The plight of the Rohingya also garners little sympathy inside Myanmar, making any defence of the minority a politically unpopular cause amid surging Buddhist nationalist sentiment. Suu Kyi heads a committee charged with rebuilding Rakhine and repatriating Rohingya from Bangladesh who meet strict criteria for re-entry to Myanmar. On Wednesday, spokesman Zaw Htay accused Bangladesh of delaying the start of the repatriation process. Dhaka has yet to send an official list of the Rohingya who have fled since 25 August, he told AFP. The Rohingya have packed into makeshift camps on a poor, already overcrowded slip of border land inside Bangladesh. Aid groups say the risk of major outbreaks of disease is high while they struggle to deliver food and basic supplies to the unprecedented number of refugees. Australia has expressed its willingness to participate in the dialogue between four countries, according to several media reports. The Indian Express reported that Australia was the last of the four countries to comment on the "quadrilateral dialogue" with India, Japan and US, likely to take place on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Philippines on 13-14 November. The report also said that the Indian government has got the "necessary positive feedback" from its partners over the past week. "There is some level of enthusiasm to the dialogue all four sides will have to flesh out the details and arrange a meeting of the key interlocutors. We may start at official level and take it up the hierarchy ministerial-level, could even be at leaders' level (president/ prime ministers). Let's see how this plays out," the report quoted the source as saying. In the last week of October, the United States said it wanted a meeting soon aimed at reviving a four-way dialogue between itself, Japan, India and Australia to deepen security cooperation and coordinate alternatives for regional infrastructure financing to that offered by China. The so-called Quad to discuss and cooperate on security emerged briefly as an initiative a decade ago: Much to the annoyance of China, which saw it as an attempt by regional democracies to contain its advances. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono had proposed reviving the forum, which he said he had discussed with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Manila in August. According to Japan's Nikkei newspaper, the purpose would be to secure a peaceful maritime zone from Asia to Africa. It said Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe would officially propose the dialogue partnership to US president Donald Trump on 6 November, when the US leader visits Japan as part of an Asia tour that will also see him visit China. With inputs from Reuters Beijing: China on Thursday blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying it has rejected the move as "there is no consensus". A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UN's list of banned terror outfits. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese foreign ministry told PTI. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse on Thursday. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules. The committee is yet reach the consensus. "The Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact," Hua said. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist after having blocked the move in February this year at the UN. Hua's remarks indicate that China will continue its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhar's listing during the second term of Chinese president Xi Jinping, which began over a week ago. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding on Azhar's listing. In the last two years, China has stonewalled efforts by India to declare Azhar as a global terrorist. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15-nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. Beijing: China on Thursday reacted cautiously to President Ram Nath Kovind appreciating Bhutan's support during the Doka La standoff, saying it wants to see New Delhi and Thimphu developing "normal relations". Reacting to Bhutan Kings Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck's visit to India, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that both India and Bhutan are Chinas close neighbours. "We are committed to develop friendly relations with these two countries and also we would like to see India and Bhutan developing normal relations," she said. About Kovind appreciating Bhutan's support in resolving the Doka La incident, Hua said, "You mentioned about the Indian border troops trespassing incident from June to August. We have talked about our position many times before. I believe we are also clear about that". "We believe that China and India had properly settled this issue through diplomatic means. Consistent with our common interest, we hope India could follow the historical conventions and work with China to ensure the peace tranquillity of the border area," she said. In his meeting with King Wangchuck, Kovind expressed his deep appreciation for Bhutan's support in resolving the recent stand-off with China at Dokalam. The manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in Dokalam "is a clear testimony to our friendship", a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said. India and China were locked in a 73-day stand-off in Doka La, a tri-junction between the Sino-India and Bhutanese border near Sikkim, from June 16 this year after Indian Army personnel stopped the Chinese Army from building a road in the area. The standoff ended on 28 August after both sides reached an understanding on a quick "disengagement" of border personnel. The CIA has released a vast archive of intimate Al-Qaeda documents, including Osama bin Laden's handwritten diary, seized in the deadly 2011 raid when US Navy SEALs burst into his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan and shot dead the leader of Al-Qaeda's global extremist network. The huge trove featuring an additional 4.7 lakh files includes images of diary pages left by the Saudi-born global extremist leader and a wedding video that includes the first public images of his son Hamza as an adult. Controversially, scholars from a Washington think-tank who were given access to the now de-classified trove say the documents also shed new light on Al-Qaeda's murky relationship with Iran. "Today's release...provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organisation," said CIA director Mike Pompeo. According to Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, scholars from the Foundation for Defence of Democracies who were allowed to see the trove before it was made public, it provides new insights. "These documents will go a long way to help fill in some of the blanks we still have about Al-Qaeda's leadership," Roggio said. The inclusion of Hamza bin Laden's wedding video, for example, gives the world public the first image of Bin Laden's favourite son as an adult an image apparently shot in Iran. Previous document releases, including letters revealed by AFP in May 2015, show that bin Laden was grooming Hamza to succeed him as the leader of Al-Qaeda's global jihadist campaign. But plans for him to come to bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout seem to have been abandoned after the deadly US raid, and the young man now aged 27 or 28 is presumed to be in Iran. Disdain for the West Also among the documents was a journal written by bin Laden which said that he took a summer trip to the UK as a teenager and visited Stratford-upon-Avon (William Shakespeare's birthplace), according to The Guardian. This trip convinced him that the West was decadent "I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didnt allow me to form a complete picture of life there," he wrote. "We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeares house. I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society." Al-Qaeda's link to Iran According to Joscelyn and Roggio, writing in the FDD's Long War Journal, one of the newly released documents is a 19-page study of Al-Qaeda's links to Iran written by a bin Laden lieutenant. Last month, at a seminar hosted by the same FDD that had an advance look at the files, Pompeo had promised to release Abbottabad documents that would show Iran-Al Qaeda ties. "There have been relationships, there are connections. There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al-Qaeda," the US spy chief argued. "There have been connections where, at the very least, they have cut deals so as not to come after each other," he added. This raised alarm bells among critics of President Donald Trump's new strategy to counter Iranian influence, wary that hawks like Pompeo may be making a case for war. The full extent and true nature of the Al Qaeda-Iran relationship are unclear and a matter of dispute among scholars and policy-makers. On the one hand, Tehran and its largely Shiite proxy forces in the Middle East often fight against Sunni movements aligned with Al-Qaeda's deeply sectarian ideology. The Iranian backed Hezbollah, for example, is locked in conflict against Al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels. But the very fact that Hamza and other senior figures appear to be able to live under Iranian protection or custody, support the claims that Tehran and bin Laden had a working relationship. One document, Joscelyn and Roggio write, recounts how Iran offered training, money, and arms to some of Al-Qaeda's "Saudi brothers" on the condition that they attack US interests in the Gulf. But the files also show that Tehran and Al-Qaeda sometimes had stark disagreements, and bin Laden once wrote to Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to demand his relatives be released. "Other files show that Al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in order to force an exchange," Joscelyn writes. "Osama bin Laden's correspondence shows that he and his lieutenants were also concerned that the Iranians would track Hamza or other family members after they were released." Open conflict In addition, Roggio and Joscelyn say, "bin Laden himself considered plans to counter Iran's influence throughout the Middle East, which he viewed as pernicious." Nevertheless, they argue, analysis of the documents points to Al-Qaeda having been able to maintain a "core facilitation pipeline" on Iranian soil. Some in Washington are sceptical about the motives behind the release, coming after what the intelligence community had previously said was the last dump from the bin Laden files. Ned Price, a former CIA official who was seconded as a national security adviser to former president Barack Obama, said the new documents "don't tell us anything we didn't already know". Instead, he argued on Twitter, Pompeo may have released the files to bolster the case against Iran as a sponsor of terror, pushing the United States closer to open conflict with Tehran. "These moves suggest he's reverting to the Bush administration's playbook: Emphasise terrorist ties as a rationale for regime change," Price warned. Laden also had materials of non-serious nature Also included in the material is information about how Al-Qaeda planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the network's work to spread its message through Western media; the group's effort to exploit the Arab uprisings in 2011; bin Laden's quest to keep his organisation together amid disagreements over beliefs and operational tactics; and the organisation's work to burnish its image with fellow Muslims amid negative media. There are still materials that have not yet been released. The CIA said this includes materials that are sensitive to national security, those protected by copyright, pornography, malware, and blank, corrupted and duplicate files. Not all the material, however, was of a serious nature. There was a video known as "Charlie bit my finger!" depicting a boy and his baby brother who bit his finger. There also were YouTube videos about crochet, including "How to Crochet a Flower". And bin Laden's video collection included Antz, a 1990s animated adventure comedy about an ant colony, Chicken Little and The Three Musketeers. Also in the collection were Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and several National Geographic programs: Kung Fu Killers, Inside the Green Berets and World's Worst Venom. With inputs from agencies Greg WilliamsEd Sheeran and Elton John are sharing their favorite childhood music memories for a new charity campaign called End the Silence, which aims to help children in orphanages. Ed reveals the most memorable song from his childhood is Carrickfergus by Van Morrison and the Chieftans, which his parents would play on the long drive to London. In fact, he even name drops the song in Galway Girl. My parents would commute and Id be sat on the back seat and that was pretty much the only tape cassette they had -- that and The Beatles, he recalls. He adds, Its the one song I remember. It takes me back to that specific moment, much like songs from my teenage years take me back to being a teenager or songs from two years ago transport you back there. For Elton, his memorable song is The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away!) by Doris Day. He says he was given the record by his mother after a trip to the dentist. There's so many records from my childhood, but that one was so important because I was so frightened to go to the dentist so it was bribery and corruption on my part to get that record and I played it and I played it and I played it and I played it, Elton says. The campaign, launched by Hope and Homes for Children, encourages music fans to share their own music memories and to donate to the charity. The campaign's website says, "Together we can look forward to a day when every child grows up surrounded by love, family and music." Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Hamilton County 9-1-1 Emergency Communications District announces a partnership with ADS Security to implement technology designed to improve 9-1-1 call processing and response times to alarms for the residents of Hamilton County. The new technology is called Automated Secure Alarm Protocol, or more commonly referred to as ASAP to PSAP. A PSAP is a Public Safety Answering Point or 9-1-1 Center. It allows alarm companies like ADS Security to send their alarm reporting calls electronically to 9-1-1 operators, while bypassing the need to physically dial into the center and convey the information over the phone. This also saves the time spent by an operator who would have traditionally keyed the information into the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system in order to send the call to a dispatcher for response. Additional information is also sent to the 9-1-1 operator such as addresses, names and alarm information, as well as instant messaging to provide real-time dispatching updates between the PSAP and alarm company. "Implementation of the ASAP to PSAP system will help eliminate the potential for clerical errors, cut call volume to the 9-1-1 Center, and most importantly, reduces 9-1-1 call-processing times by as much as 2-3 minutes. This will help save lives, protect property, provide faster response times to in-progress events, and potentially help apprehend more criminals," officials said. The district is very appreciative of ADS Securitys support and work in helping us bring this new technology to our citizens, said John Stuermer, executive director for Hamilton County Emergency Communications District. ADS demonstrated great leadership and commitment to providing the highest level of alarm service response to their customers. "As a leader in the Public Safety Communications field, the district continuously looks forward to finding innovative and technology-driven ways to serve our citizens and client agencies who help protect the lives, homes and businesses in our community. With a recently upgraded CAD system through Tritech Software Systems, the District is able to take advantage of all the Next-Generation 9-1-1 features currently available as well as future enhancements," officials said. Hamilton County Emergency Communications District is the first agency in Tennessee to utilize the new ASAP to PSAP technology. Two men and a woman were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart on Wednesday night, forcing customers to either hide in the store or frantically run for the doors. Thornton police tweeted Wednesday night that they were responding to a shooting with "multiple parties down." They advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. In a Twitter post about 90 minutes after the shooting, police said investigators had confirmed that two men were dead and a woman was taken to a local hospital, but no further details were given. A while later, officials confirmed that the woman succumbed to her injuries and passed away. The situation appeared potentially ominous from authorities initial reports. About an hour after the initial alert, police said on Twitter that the threat of gunfire had ended at the store, which was surrounded by police and fire crews. The police is still looking for suspects and tweeted no one has been taken into custody so far. At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available, the police department said in that tweet. Confirmation of the two fatalities came about 20 minutes later. #ThorntonWalmartShooting At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime sceneWe will update as info becomes available. pic.twitter.com/EZgSOtb6yy Thornton Police Dept (@ThorntonPolice) November 2, 2017 Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by more bursts of gunfire, The Denver Post reported. He said customers started screaming and running for the exits. "I was scared. I feared for my life," said Stephens, who has lived in Thornton for 20 years. He did not see where the shooting had come from and did not see anyone struck by bullets. Meanwhile, Brandon Bonney said he received a call from his brother, who was inside the store. Bonney told his brother to silence his phone, stay calm and "just get somewhere and hide," The Post reported. Local NBC television affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in the Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is situated in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to US Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Investigators have not released any details about the circumstances of the shooting or the condition of the injured woman. Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters said police were called to the store at about 6.30 pm mountain time (8.30 pm ET) and that the gunshots had ceased by the time the first officers arrived at the scene. Special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were headed to the scene to help police. The Walmart about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Denver is in a busy shopping center that includes restaurants, a movie theater and several other shops. No other information was released. With inputs from AP and Reuters Madrid: Spain is set for another day of high drama in the Catalonia crisis on Thursday with a judge in Madrid to grill the deposed leaders of the region's separatist government. Notable by his likely absence, however, will be the dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and according to his lawyer refusing to come. "He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium," Paul Bekaert told Spain's TV3 television on Wednesday. The hearing at the National Court in Madrid, which deals with major criminal cases, was to start at 9 am (0800 GMT) and to continue on Friday. The judge wants to question Puigdemont and 13 others over their efforts to spearhead Catalonia's independence drive, which has plunged Spain into its biggest crisis in decades. An independence referendum on 1 October that heavy-handed Spanish police tried and failed to stop was followed by a declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament last Friday. Later that day Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy's government dismissed the regional government and moved to impose direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region. Rebellion and sedition On Monday, Spain's chief prosecutor said he was seeking charges of rebellion punishable by up to 30 years behind bars sedition and misuse of public funds against the 14. The speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, and five parliamentary deputies will also be grilled over the same alleged offences, but by a judge at the Supreme Court. It was unclear how many of them will show up. Puigdemont, 54, has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and on Tuesday said he would remain in Brussels until he had guarantees that any proceedings would be impartial. In a statement, he said there was a concerted effort to divide his government. Some will go before a national audience "to denounce the drive of Spanish justice to pursue political ideas," while others "will stay in Brussels to decry this political process to the international community," he wrote. Puigdemont has retained the support of many in Catalonia, whose people are fiercely proud of their language and culture. Maria Angels Selgas, a 60-year-old sales manager in Barcelona, said that for her, Puigdemont was still the Catalan president. "If they humiliate him then they humiliate also the more than two million Catalans who voted 'yes' in the referendum," she told AFP. On Wednesday several hundred separatist supporters accompanied some of those due to appear in the Madrid court to Barcelonas main train station, chanting "liberty" and "you are not alone". Spanish flags But Catalans remain deeply divided about independence, polls indicate. The international community has swung firmly behind Rajoy, and uncertainty about Catalonia's future has prompted companies to move their legal headquarters outside the region in droves. In addition, there are signs of growing divisions in the separatist camp, with many unhappy with Puigdemont and his handling of the situation. Joan Josep Nuet, a Catalan parliamentary deputy due to go before the Supreme Court, said Wednesday that a now-show by Puigdemont raised the risk that those that do come will be put in preventive custody. "The attitude of the (Catalan) president and the government in recent days has been really absurd, managing only to create yet more bewilderment," Nuet told Catalunya Radio. Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist in Madrid, said he believed that Puigdemont, a former journalist, "is more interested in obtaining media attention than escaping justice." "It's a media war. The aim of (the Catalan executive) has been to try and present the Spanish state as an oppressor state and Puigdemont needs to feed this narrative," he said. Rajoy has called snap elections for 21 December to replace the Catalan parliament. Puigdemont said he would "respect" the result - and appealed to Madrid to do the same. Washington: A North Korean defector has told the US Congress a domestic uprising could lead to the collapse of Kim Jong-Un's regime, as he warned against the consequences of military intervention. Thae Yong-Ho, one of the highest ranking officials to have defected in recent years, was testifying Wednesday before the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives at a time of soaring tensions between Pyongyang and the West over the regime's nuclear and missile tests. Much of his commentary focused on how his homeland had evolved since Kim came to power in 2011 following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il. "While on the surface Kim Jong-Un seems to have consolidated his power through this reign of terror, simultaneously there are great and unexpected changes taking place within North Korea," said the former deputy ambassador to Britain, who fled to South Korea in August 2016. "The free markets are flourishing," he said, adding: "As more and more people get used to free and capitalist style markets, the state-owned socialist economic system becomes increasingly forgotten about." Thae added that the country's welfare system has collapsed, and that "millions of civil servants, army officers and security forces are dependent on bribes and state assets' embezzlement for their survival." North Koreans "don't care about state propaganda but increasingly watch illegally imported South Korean movies and dramas," weakening the regime's hold. "These changes... make it increasingly possible to think about civilian uprising in North Korea as more and more people gradually become informed about the reality of their living conditions," Thae argued. "Today, Kim Jong-Un thinks that only nuclear weapons and ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) can help him avert the continuing disintegration of the North Korea system," he added. While arguing for more counter-narrative efforts inside North Korea, Thae cautioned against military conflict. President Donald Trump and Kim have traded threats of war and personal insults against each other in recent months, heightening worries about another conflict on the peninsula where the 1950-53 Korean War left millions dead. "Some people do not believe in soft power but only in military options," said Thae. "But it is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all non-military options before we decide that military action against North Korea is all that is left. "We have to see the human sacrifice from this military option." Washington: A visa program aimed at diversifying the US immigrant population came under attack from President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he learned that the man accused of killing eight people in New York City on Tuesday used it to enter the country. Sayfullo Saipov, who was charged in Tuesdays truck attack, immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010 after winning a lottery enabling him to obtain a so-called diversity visa, two government officials confirmed to Reuters. The program, established by Congress and coordinated by the State Department, has its roots in efforts to bring more Irish and Italian immigrants into the United States. Citizens of countries that send relatively few immigrants to the United States can enter a lottery that grants winners permanent US residency. Applicants must have at least a high school education or its equivalent, or relevant work experience. Just under 11.4 million applicants entered the 2016 lottery for 50,000 slots available to winners and their close family members, according to State Department figures. The visa program has succeeded in diversifying the mix of immigrants that come into the United States each year, but has also drawn criticism for being vulnerable to fraud and for posing national security risks. Trump said on Wednesday he would ask Congress to immediately initiate efforts to kill the program, and Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who has long called for an end to diversity visas, said in a statement that they pose a threat to the safety of our citizens. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer helped create the program in 1990 when he was a member of the House of Representatives. But he was also part of a group of lawmakers in 2013 who crafted a bipartisan immigration bill that would have done away with the program. That bill was passed by the Senate but was killed by the Republican-led House. Top congressional Democrats on Wednesday defended the program, saying it subjects all visa recipients to the same stringent vetting as all other immigrant visa programs. The only other known instance of a diversity visa beneficiary carrying out a deadly terrorist attack in the United States occurred in 2002. That year, an Egyptian man who had received a diversity visa through his wife years earlier shot and killed two people in a Los Angeles airport. The man had earlier sought asylum in the United States but was rejected. Ultimately, he was allowed to stay in the country after his wife won the lottery. As early as 2004, the State Departments then-deputy inspector general, Anne Patterson, told Congress her office believed the diversity program contains significant vulnerabilities to national security and that terrorists could attempt to use it to enter the United States as permanent residents. The agency watchdog recommended barring citizens of countries that sponsor terrorism from the program. A September 2013 State Department inspector general report found that organised fraud rings masquerading as travel agencies had hijacked the diversity visa program in Ukraine. Under the scheme, Ukrainians were entered in the lottery without their consent, and then held up for money in exchange for the chance to claim a visa or encouraged to enter into sham marriages if they won. Washington: US president Donald Trump called for the man charged with carrying out a New York City truck rampage that killed eight people to be put to death on Wednesday. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the Islamic State jihadist group. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 The president had earlier said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention center in Cuba that has been used to indefinitely hold suspected foreign jihadists, a practice that has drawn repeated criticism from rights groups. Investigators said on Wednesday that the man who mowed down cyclists and pedestrians in New York the day before had confessed to acting in the name of Islamic State and said that he "felt good" about the killings. Prosecutors have filed charges against Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant, who they said began planning the attack a year ago. The complaint against Saipov listed two counts: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. It was not immediately clear if he would face further charges. Miami: President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would consider sending the suspect in the New York bike path attack to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. But just a few hours later, the government filed federal terrorism charges against suspect Sayfullo Saipov, signaling an intent to prosecute him within the US. The one-two developments marked a sharp disconnect between the president and his administration. Trump had professed himself to be open to the idea of sending Saipov to Guantanamo in a seemingly off-the-cuff answer to questions from reporters. "I would certainly consider that, send him to Gitmo," Trump said, using the familiar shorthand for the detention centre. The White House later reinforced that idea by saying it considered Saipov to be an "enemy combatant." But with the filing of federal charges, there was little indication that the threat of Guantanamo was anything more than tough talk. No one held within the US has been sent to Guantanamo since the detention centre opened in January 2002 to hold suspected members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Still, elected officials routinely raise the prospect of doing so after attacks as a way to signal toughness in the fight against terrorism. Trump joined those ranks a day after a driver veered into a city bike path in Manhattan killing eight people. The president agreed that the US base in Cuba would be an option for Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who authorities say was inspired by the Islamic State. The US has to come up with a method of punishment that is "far quicker and far greater than the animals are getting right now," Trump said. It is an open question whether the administration could send Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, in part because courts have not ruled whether the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force which permits the government to detain enemy combatants for the duration of a military conflict applies to the Islamic State and its followers, said Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The Islamic State did not exist when the authorisation was passed. Vladeck noted that American criminal courts, which have secured hundreds of terrorism-related convictions since 11 September, have been more efficient than the military tribunal process at Guantanamo Bay. Just seven men have been convicted either by trial before military commission or through plea bargains, including four whose convictions were later overturned on appeal or invalidated. There are another seven held at Guantanamo still facing trial, including five men charged in the 9/11 attacks and another accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Those cases are bogged down in pretrial litigation and are likely years from resolution. "If the goal is to actually punish the perpetrator, then sending him to Guantanamo is just about the worst thing you can do," Vladeck said. The only advantage that Guantanamo might have is that men can be held there indefinitely without charge, said Bryan Broyles, the former chief defence counsel for the commissions, which combine elements of military and civilian court. "There is no other benefit to Guantanamo," Broyles said. "It's more expensive. It's harder to use. It's slower to use and it lacks the legitimacy in the international community." Amnesty International USA said it would be a "grave mistake" to send Saipov to Guantanamo. "He's a criminal suspect and should be treated as such by the US justice system," said Daphne Eviatar, director of the group's security with human rights program. Trump said during the campaign that he wanted to fill Guantanamo with "bad dudes." But the Justice Department last week opted to send a man accused of playing an instrumental role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks to federal court in Washington to face charges not Guantanamo. Similarly, the US on Wednesday indicted 36-year-old Mirsad Kandic in federal court in New York. Prosecutors say he recruited and facilitated the travel of foreign fighters to join the Islamic State and extradited him from Bosnia. In at least a physical sense, there are no practical reasons why the US couldn't hold someone at Guantanamo. The detention centre, which reached a maximum population of about 680 in the summer of 2003, is now down to just 41, and there is plenty of space for more. Asked if there were any plans to add anyone, a detention centre spokeswoman had no immediate comment. The Pentagon and a base spokeswoman referred questions to the Justice Department. Donald Trump isn't very good at crisis management. Unfortunately for him, his short presidency has already seen several of these including the North Korea nuclear missile threat, the Las Vegas shooting, Hurricane Harvey, etc. His response to them have usually been of the knee-jerk variety, causing many to raise fresh doubts about his capabilities as president. On Wednesday, after a man in a rented pickup truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists in Manhattan, killing eight and injuring 11, Trump announced a slew of measures addressing the issue. They are as following: Repeal of 'Diversity Visa' programme Trump urged the swift repeal of an immigration programme that brought many, including the New York attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov, to the US. Saipov had migrated to the US from Uzbekistan in 2010 after winning a lottery enabling him to do so. The programme, established by Congress and coordinated by the state department, has its roots in efforts to bring more Irish and Italian immigrants into the US. Citizens of countries that send relatively few immigrants to the US can enter a lottery that grants winners permanent US residency. Applicants must have at least a high school education or its equivalent, or relevant work experience. But on Wednesday, Trump said he would ask Congress to "immediately" initiate efforts to kill the programme, and the Republican House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, who has long called for an end to Diversity Visas', said in a statement that they pose "a threat to the safety of our citizens". The White House was forced to walk back some of his comments, stressing that he was not taking executive action but looking to Congress to change decades-old laws. "We're going to continue pushing for and advocating for getting rid of this programme," Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. Extreme vetting Trump also ordered tighter scrutiny checks for immigrants, even tougher than what currently exists as part of "extreme vetting". But the White House offered no indication of what new steps the president might be planning. "We have to get much tougher, much smarter, and less politically correct," Trump said. He also said the US justice system for dealing with such cases must be strengthened, declaring, "What we have right now is a joke and it's a laughing stock." Again, there was no elaboration from the White House. The extreme vetting process, as it stands today, took off from an executive order titled 'Protection Of The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States'. However, it did not stop with the initial ban (which was blocked by the courts) on travel of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia. Tourists from the UK and other countries visiting the US could also be forced to reveal mobile phone contacts, social media passwords and financial data under extreme vetting practices considered by the Trump administration, The Wall Street Journal reported. These tourists could also face questions over their ideology. The measures might include visitors from the 38 countries the UK, France, Australia and Japan, among them which participate in a visa waiver programme, which requires adherence to strict American standards in data sharing, passport control and other factors, the report quoted an official as saying. The aim is to "figure out who you are communicating with", a senior homeland security official was quoted as saying. "What you can get on the average person's phone can be invaluable." Guantanamo Bay Trump also said that he would consider sending the suspect to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. But just a few hours later, the government filed federal terrorism charges against him, signaling an intent to prosecute him within the US. The developments marked a sharp disconnect between the president and his administration. Trump had professed himself to be open to the idea of sending Saipov to Guantanamo in a seemingly off-the-cuff answer to questions from reporters. "I would certainly consider that, send him to Gitmo," Trump said, using the familiar shorthand for the detention centre. The White House later reinforced that idea by saying it considered Saipov to be an "enemy combatant". "(We) have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now," Trump said. But with the filing of federal charges, there was little indication that the threat of Guantanamo was anything more than tough talk. Sanders too ruled out executive action to introduce "quicker" and "greater" punishment for those guilty of terror offences. "I believe he was voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this," Sanders said. Death penalty Late on Wednesday, Trump tweeted that the suspect should get the death penalty. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 However, Trump's efforts would not have prevented most attacks. Tuesday's incident was the second time a Jihadist attack has been tied to the lottery inside the US. In July 2002, an Egyptian man whose wife entered the country on the green card programme shot two people dead at the ticket counter for Israeli airline El Al. But other than this, Trump's immigration crackdown would not have prevented any of the other deadly jihadist attacks inside the US. Most have been perpetrated by US-born and radicalised perpetrators. And most have family ties to countries not covered by Trump's travel bans Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, etc. With inputs from agencies Geneva: A decade of slow progress towards better parity between the sexes has screeched to a halt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) said on Wednesday, warning the global gender gap was now widening. In recent years, women have made significant progress towards equality in a number of areas such as education and health, with the Nordic countries leading the fray. But the global trend now seems to have made a U-turn, especially in workplaces, where full gender equality is not expected to materialise until 2234, WEF said in a report. "A decade of slow but steady progress on improving parity between the sexes came to a halt in 2017, with the global gender gap widening for the first time since the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report was first published in 2006," it said. The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracks the disparities between the sexes in four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment. A year ago, WEF estimated that it would take 83 years to close the remaining gap. But since then women's steady advances in the areas of education, health and political representation have plateaued, and for the fourth year running, equality in the workplace has slipped further from view. Today's report said that at the current rate of progress, it would now take a full 100 years on average to achieve overall gender equality. The estimated time needed to ensure full equality in the workplace meanwhile has jumped from 80 years in 2014 to 170 years last year to 217 years now, according to the report. "In 2017, we should not be seeing progress towards gender parity shift into reverse," Saadia Zahidi, WEF head of education, gender and work, said in a statement. Even more than in the workplace, political participation stubbornly lagged behind, with women still accounting for just 23 percent of the world's decision makers, according to the report. But political representation is also the area where women have made the most advances in recent years, the report said, estimating it will take 99 years to fully rectify the situation. The picture is not all bleak: the march towards gender equality in education could reach the finish line within a mere 13 years, it said. And the situation varies greatly in different countries and regions. For instance, while Western European countries could close their gender gaps within 61 years, countries in the Middle East and North Africa will take 157 years, the report estimated. Rafah: Hamas handed over control of the Gaza Strip's borders with Egypt and Israel to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday in the first key test of a landmark reconciliation accord agreed last month. The handover signalled that Islamist movement Hamas remained committed to a deal that would eventually see it give up full control of the Gaza Strip and bring an end to a 10- year rift with rivals Fatah. It not only handed over control of the crossings, but also completely dismantled its own checkpoint along the border with Israel, leaving only the one operated by the Palestinian Authority (PA) there, with trucks carting away furniture and material. A ceremony was held to formalise the handover at the Rafah border with Egypt. "There is no yellow and green. All our Palestinian people are under the Palestinian flag," said Mufeed al-Husayna, a PA minister, referring to the flag colours of the political parties that signed last month's reconciliation deal. Speaking at the Rafah ceremony, Husayna said: "We began today, under the directive of the prime minister (Rami Hamdallah), to exercise our duties by receiving all the crossings." Palestinian and Egyptian flags were flying at the Rafah ceremony, alongside large pictures of PA president Mahmud Abbas, who is also the leader of Fatah, and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. At a separate checkpoint with Israel, an AFP photographer saw Hamas installations being dismantled and carted away, as PA and Hamas officials oversaw the handover. Hisham Adwan, director of information for the Hamas crossings, told AFP that PA employees would have full control of the borders. Under an Egyptian-brokered deal agreed on 12 October, the PA is due to resume full control of the strip by 1 December, with the borders the first test. The agreement set 1 November as the deadline for handing over control of the borders. Many issues remain to be resolved, however, particularly the fate of Hamas's 25,000-strong armed wing. Israel, which has fought three wars with militants in Gaza since 2008, has said it will not deal with any Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas unless the Islamist movement disarms and recognises the country, among other demands. The United States has also called on Hamas to disarm and recognise Israel. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2007, when the Islamists seized control in a near civil war with Abbas's Fatah, based in the occupied West Bank. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza for a decade, citing the need to control Hamas and stop it from obtaining weapons or materials that could be used to make them. Egypt has largely closed its border as well. The Rafah crossing was not open Thursday despite the official handover. Azzam al-Ahmad, Fatah's chief negotiator, told Palestinian media that the Rafah crossing would be opened on 15 November, but there was no confirmation from Egypt. The Gaza Strip's two million residents suffer from worsening humanitarian conditions, with only a few hours of power a day and a lack of clean water. The reconciliation agreement has raised hopes that a more regular opening of the Egyptian border could ease humanitarian suffering. "The return of the crossings should facilitate the lifting of the closures, while addressing Israel's legitimate security concerns, and unlock increased international support for Gaza's reconstruction, growth, stability and prosperity," Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement. Israel's government had not responded, but a statement from the Israeli body responsible for affairs in the Palestinian territories said they would meet with PA officials in the coming days to discuss the new situation. Multiple previous pushes for reconciliation have collapsed and an incident this week threatened to undermine the latest attempt. On Monday, seven Palestinian militants were killed when Israel blew up a tunnel stretching from the Gaza Strip into its territory. Such tunnels have previously been used for attacks. The incident raised fears the timetable could be delayed, but both the PA and Hamas stressed they remained committed to the agreement. Officials from both factions accused Israel of trying to disrupt the deal, while the Israel's army said it was forced to act after its sovereignty was breached. In another step in the reconciliation process, all major Palestinian factions are due to meet in Cairo later this month to discuss the formation of a unity government. London: British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said Thursday they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the 22 May bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. Rep. Tom Graves, chairman of the House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee, released the following statement after joining President Trump yesterday for the signing ceremony of H.J.Res. 111, which stops the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus (CFPB) rule on Arbitration Agreements: This is a big win for consumers. The arbitration rule was another misguided regulation by the Obama administration that hurt the very people it intended to help. I believe the inevitable result of the rule was an explosion of lawsuits that would simply become a big payout for trial lawyers while doing nothing to help consumers. This is why the CFPB should be subject to routine congressional oversight, where its accountable to the American people. I included a CFPB oversight provision in my fiscal year 2018 Financial Services Appropriations bill, and I will continue working to make it law. The CFPBs rule on Arbitration Agreements attempted to push disputes between consumers and financial companies into the courts by banning these companies from including clauses in their contracts requiring settlement through arbitration. In a recent study, the Treasury Department found the average consumer gains little from class action lawsuits, while trial attorneys receive huge payouts. In fact, the average award for consumers in a class action lawsuit is only $32. At the same time, the average trial lawyer receives nearly $1 million. Washington: The New York terrorist attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov would be considered as an enemy combatant, the White House said on Thursday, signalling a possible detention for him without access to normal rights. The 29-year-old suspect, a sympathiser of the Islamic State terror group, was shot in the stomach by a police officer before being arrested. "We would consider him to be an enemy combatant," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at her daily news conference, arguing that the action Saipov took "certainly justified" that. However, she said a final determination had not been made. "I don't believe that determination has been made. That's something we'll wait until we get a little further into the process," she said. The designation would mean Saipov could be denied access to a lawyer and detained indefinitely without charge. It could also open the door to military justice and transfer to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, very much in line with what President Donald Trump said he was willing to consider earlier Wednesday. After the 9/11 attacks, the "enemy combatant" designation was used to detain hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and sites in the greater Middle East. Citing Wednesday's Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack in lower Manhattan, Sanders said it underscores that the terrorist threat is real. "As we defeat Islamic State and affiliated groups abroad, we must be vigilant here in our country as they seek other ways to attack the homeland. Inspiring such attacks through hateful propaganda has always been part of the strategy of Islamic State and other terrorists," she said. Sanders said that the attack underscored the need for the most careful vetting of who enters the United States. "There are hundreds of active law enforcement investigations into foreign nationals suspected of engaging in terrorism, and US must vet those seeking entry to the United States thoroughly, she said buttressing President Donald Trump's argument in this regard. Hours after the attack, a million New Yorkers, including families with their children, marched through the city for a Halloween parade, she said. "Their message was heard loud and clear: The American spirit will never be broken. Those who hope we will succumb to fear will never get what they want. And those who seek to divide us will only bring us closer together," the spokesperson said. Sanders heaped praises on officer Ryan Nash, who joined the NYPD in 2012, and was among the first to respond to the scene. He had fired the shot that stopped the attacker from continuing the violence. Nash, 28, who works in the New York Police Department's 1st precinct, shot and apprehended the suspect, who crashed a pickup truck into a school bus and hit cyclists and pedestrians, killing eight people and injuring 11 others. "He's a hero, but that doesn't come as a surprise to most of his colleagues. He's already received two awards during his young career - one for Excellent Police Duty and another for other police action. Yesterday, he earned something that could never be properly displayed by a ribbon or medal; he earned the never-ending thanks of a grateful nation," she said. Washington: Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks case, indicated the documents seized during the 2011 US raid on a Pakistani compound that killed the al-Qaeda founder. The Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday released 4,70,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden. The files include Laden's son's wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born militant. The documents revealed that Laden closely followed news related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications. An Indian Express article titled 'Omar Sheikhs Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handled Headley' was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated 16 November, 2009. An article 'Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK' published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Ladens computer. A PTI story, 'Al-Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pak Government: Gates', dated 9 February, 2010, was also found on Laden's computer. Another article found on Ladens computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) links. The news article was published by The Time of India on 15 November, 2009. Laden also saved on his computer another PTI article, titled: 'India to send magistrate to US to record Headley's statement'. Laden highlighted in yellow some portion of the article titled 'Pak Major handled Headleys India recce', published on 16 March, 2010. The highlighted portion reads, "The dossiers also sought the custody of Pakistani terrorist, Ilyas Kashmiri. Kashmiri is the chief of the 313 Brigade and acts as the military operations head of the Al- Qaeda. Intercepts reveal that Kashmiri told two attackers inside Nariman House, 'Keep fighting, Brigade 313 has been deployed'. The documents also revealed that Laden was interested in news related to Kashmir and several terrorists especially Ilyas Kashmiri. An Economic Times story 'US asks Pakistan to find Iyas Kashmiri dated 7 January, 2010 was found among the saved documents on Ladens computer. A February 2009 article Pakistani Kashmiri militants now fighting NATO forces was also found. Islamabad: Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday returned home from London to face trial in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on 28 July in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on 26 October due to his non-appearance in two corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. State-run PTV footage showed Sharif stepping out of a Pakistan International Airline plane after it landed at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. He was received by senior leaders of ruling PML-N and held a brief consultation with the party leaders at the VIP lounge of the airport. Later, he left in his private vehicle for Punjab House in Islamabad, where he was received by supporters and party workers. He is expected to hold extensive consultations throughout the day about court cases, political situation and party matters. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face "bogus cases" when he should be with his wife. "These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them," he said. The court would resume the hearing on Friday. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. Maryam and Safdar have already been indicted in corruption cases filed against them by the country's anti-corruption body National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the Supreme Court's instruction in the Panama Papers case. Earlier, the Accountability Court issued bailable arrest warrant against Sharif after he failed to appear in the court in three corruption cases. Three cases were registered by NAB on 8 September against Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad, following a verdict by the Supreme Court. He was indicted in absence in three cases. Maryam and Safdar have been indicted in one case with him, while the court is proceeding separately against his two sons Husain and Hasan who are co-accused in three cases. The court during the hearing on 9 October decided to separate the trial of his sons from Sharif and his daughter and son-in-law. The cases are based on 28 July's disqualification verdict of the Supreme Court and to launch three corruption cases against him, his family, and one case against finance minister Ishaq Dar. If convicted, Sharif can be jailed. Yangon: Aung San Suu Kyi made her first visit as Myanmar's leader on Thursday to the conflict-torn region where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence that has spiraled into Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades. Her visit to Rakhine state comes as Suu Kyi is under intense international scrutiny for her response to the exodus, which the U.N. has called "ethnic cleansing," and as her government said it is working on a plan to repatriate those who fled to Bangladesh. Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital, Sittwe, in the morning and headed to restive northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there hasn't been much conflict. "The state counselor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials," said Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, using Suu Kyi's official title. Government spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyi's plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since 25 August, when security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began what they called "clearance operations" in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by insurgents. The campaign has included the burning of Rohingya villages and alleged widespread rights violations. Fleeing Rohingya have described arson, rape and shootings by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs that left them no option but to make the dangerous and sometimes deadly journey through jungles and by sea to Bangladesh. The exodus has slowed at some points but has not stopped. On Thursday morning, at least 2,000 terrified and starving Rohingya huddled in rice paddy fields near one border crossing on the Naf river. They had waited for more than 24 hours for permission to enter Bangladesh and spent the night in the muddy fields. The global image of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has been damaged by the crisis and she has come under intense criticism to do more to end the violence and condemn those responsible. Several fellow peace prize winners have publicly condemned Suu Kyi for what they see as her apparent indifference to the plight of the Rohingya. Though Suu Kyi has been the de facto head of Myanmar's civilian government since her party swept elections in 2015, the former political prisoner is limited in her control of the country by a constitution written by the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades. The military has effective veto power over all legislation and controls key ministries including those overseeing security and defense. The military is in charge of operations in northern Rakhine, and ending them is not up to Suu Kyi. Even when Suu Kyi has spoken on the issue, she has drawn criticism. In a September speech, her first public comments after the current crisis began, she asked for patience from the international community and suggested the refugees were partly responsible, saying more than half of the Rohingya villages had not been destroyed by the violence. Suu Kyi faces a potential domestic backlash if she speaks on behalf of the Rohingya, who have been the target of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Many people agree with the official government stance that there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and that those in the country have illegally migrated from Bangladesh. Though the Rohingya first arrived generations ago, they were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education. Myanmar's backers globally have also had to tread carefully, not wanting to undermine Suu Kyi's weak civilian government at a time when the country is just emerging from decades of authoritarian rule. Still, countries such as the U.S. have warned Myanmar about potential repercussions if it doesn't address the crisis, including the risk of attracting international terrorists, scaring off investment, and ultimately stunting its transition to democracy. The government said Tuesday that it is ready to repatriate Rohingya who had fled, but blamed Bangladesh for slowing the process. "We are ready to accept the refugees and to start a verification and scrutiny process, but we have not reached an agreement with the Bangladeshi authorities for repatriation," said Zaw Htay, the government spokesman. He said those who could prove they were residents of Myanmar would be allowed to return. Many Rohingya have no identity documents. Ali Hossain, a top government administrator in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district, said on Wednesday that Bangladesh is doing "more than enough" to help the refugees, and placed the blame for delays in the repatriation process on Myanmar. "Myanmar is talking about repatriation but more and more people are still being forced to come to Bangladesh," he said. "There is a situation in Myanmar. We know that, the whole world knows that." "Bangladesh is not playing any tricks here. We are doing our best," he said. Ankara: Security officials say police have detained 283 suspected Islamic State group militants in Turkey in the past 11 days. A security directorate statement released on Thursday also said police seized 66 improvised explosive devices during the anti-Islamic State operations conducted in 25 provinces across Turkey. The statement said that of the alleged Islamic State militants caught, 96 are Turkish citizens while 187 others are foreign nationals. It didn't provide information on their nationalities. Islamic State has been blamed for several deadly attacks in Turkey that killed more than 300 people since 2015. Along with combatting the extremist group's cells inside its borders, Turkey launched a military operation in northern Syria in August 2016 to clear a border zone of Islamic State members after a deadly suicide attack targeted a wedding party. United Nations: The UN has called for voluntary repatriation of thousands of Rohingya refugees that have fled to Bangladesh and also free access of humanitarian aid in Myanmar's Rakhine state as conditions worsen for the stateless minority penned into squalid refugee camps. The UN Assistant High Commissioner (Protection), Volker Turk, issued the call on Wednesday as he met with members of the Myanmar government on a two-day visit to Nay Pyi Taw, reported Efe news. During the meetings, Turk urged the government "to ensure a safe environment and the protection of all communities in Rakhine State" and also asked them to provide unrestricted access to allow humanitarian organisations "to provide life-saving aid and build confidence among communities in need". Turk also reiterated the refugees' right to return and asked that they be assured a "safe, voluntary, and sustainable repatriation to their places of origin". The UN official applauded the Myanmar government's proposal to hold a joint workshop with the UN Refugee Agency "on the international standards guiding voluntary repatriation" and reiterated its support to the government. According to the UN, at least 603,000 refugees are currently living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing from the ongoing military operations launched after the attacks against police and military posts in Rakhine by Rohingya insurgents on 25 August. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called the military campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority group, not recognised as citizens in Myanmar, as ethnic cleansing. Washington: The United States government has approved a $1.1 billion deal to service Qatar's F-15 fighter jets despite the diplomatic stand-off between the Gulf emirate and its neighbours. Qatar, home to one of the largest US military bases in the Middle East, is locked in a bitter dispute with Washington's other Arab allies in the region, led by Saudi Arabia. US President Donald Trump took Riyadh's side in June when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has taken a more cautious line, attempting to broker an agreement to cool ties and build a regional front against Iranian influence and extremism. On Wednesday, the State Department announced it had approved a $1.1 billion contract to service Qatar's F-15QA jets and build them ground facilities and hardened bunkers. "Qatar is an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Persian Gulf region," the department said, in a note from its Defence Security Cooperation Agency. "Our mutual defence interests anchor our relationship and the Qatar Emiri Air Force plays a predominant role in Qatar's defence." The new maintenance and training facilities will also come with improved "cyber security services, mission critical computer resources, support services, force protection services." Tillerson visited both Riyadh and the Qatari capital Doha last month in an effort to curb Iran's influence in the region and urge the Arab monarchies to negotiate away their differences. Cassie De Pecol is the first documented woman to visit every sovereign nation. The 27-year-old traveller from Connecticut (United States) is also the fastest person to do so. De Pecol's journey around the world, which took 18 months and 26 days, smashed the previous record of three years and three months. While travelling, she spoke to over 16,000 university students in 40 countries, and acted as a peace ambassador for the International Institute of Peace Through Tourism. The trip around the world cost about $111,000 USD and was funded by sponsors that De Pecol found throughout the expedition. De Pecol documented her travels on her blog 'Expedition 196'. She also filmed her travels, and plans to make a documentary soon. After conquering Mount Everest, Philippine adventurer Carina Dayondon is set to sail to China aboard a wooden replica of an ancient boat in the hopes of boosting national pride in a forgotten maritime prowess. Dayondon is planning to sail from Manila to southern China early next year, recreating trade and migration voyages made before Spaniards colonised the Philippines in the 1500s. "People tell me I am crazy. They ask: 'Wow, why climb Mount Everest? Why go to China on this tiny thing,'" Dayondon said in Manila Bay aboard one of the two boats that will make the expected six-day sailing journey. "I'm excited because our team will be more inspired realising how good our forefathers were. We have to let people know we should be proud of being Filipino," the 39-year-old added. Dayondon, a petite but muscular coast guard officer, created history in 2007 when she and two other countrywomen became the first Filipinas to summit the world's highest mountain. Arturo Valdez, who led their Everest support team, is also heading the sailing mission and similarly sees the journey to China as a chance to inspire Filipinos. "Like Mount Everest, I want this to be symbolic of what our people can accomplish, of what can be possible out of the so-called impossible," the 69-year-old said. The vessels are a copy of a "balangay", which date back as far as 320 AD. "Early trade with China and Southeast Asia was made possible by watercraft," Ligaya Lacsina, researcher at the National Museum's maritime division, told AFP. "Europeans during the colonial period were effusive in their praise of Southeast Asian boat-building skill. But somehow we've paid very little attention to this." Tribal boat-builders from the southern Philippines, where the boats originated, have made the replicas of the balangay using skills passed on down the generations. The boats, 18 metres (60 feet) long by three metres (10 feet) wide, are made of hardwood planks, include two sails, two rudders and a roofed area. Their journey to the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou will be about 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), and the crew members are aiming to do it with as little modern technical help as possible. "We have no night-sailing capability so we can be run over by a super tanker. That's my fear. The greatest difficulty of replicating an ancient voyage is modernity because there are new port protocols," Valdez said. "This kind of boat is being treated as a maritime hazard." 'Spirit of a nation' Daily life aboard the boat is a struggle, according to Dayondon. "We sleep anywhere because we don't have quarters. We have no toilet. We just hold the rope and use a harness and do the proper position so we don't fall," she said. Nevertheless, a third boat with a motor will accompany the balangays otherwise they will not be allowed into Chinese ports. Their trip is planned to commemorate a journey made about 600 years ago by a sultan from the southern island of Sulu who went to China to pay tribute to Ming Dynasty rulers there but who but died of an illness on his way home. The voyage to China will be the team's second maritime quest following a 17-month journey that began in 2009 around Southeast Asia. One of the group's biggest challenges is off the water finding enough money to fund the adventure. The team members plan to open the vessels to the public for educational tours and even wedding shoots to raise money for their upkeep in Manila Bay. Valdez, who also shepherded the first Philippine men up Mount Everest in 2006, said he hoped the government would financially back such feats but they had not. "Filipinos love us when we climb Mount Everest, love us with our exploits but they are not willing to pay for that. And that makes us a poorer nation," he said. "Blazing a trail and going beyond what is normal, that is the spirit of a nation. That is how you build a nation, out of a dream." Seoul: Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un a rare message, Pyongyang's official news agency reported Thursday, in his first public communication with his wayward neighbour for more than a year. The note signalled a possible improvement in their strained relationships, which has soured over Pyongyang's growing weapons ambitions even though Beijing is its longtime ally and economic benefactor. Xi's message, dated Wednesday, was sent in response to congratulations from Kim last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party. "I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to the North's KCNA news agency said, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman". In his earlier note, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed his belief that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries". The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016. Analysts say that such exchanges have become extremely rare under the current leaders, even though Beijing and Pyongyang traditionally sent greetings and congratulations on each other's key anniversaries in the past. Their relationship was forged in the blood of the Korean War, when Mao Zedong sent millions of "volunteers" to fight US-led United Nations forces to a standstill. Mao described the allies as close as "lips and teeth", and China has long been accused of failing to enforce United Nations sanctions against the North for its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, even after voting for them in the Security Council. But Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September. Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the public exchange of messages signalled a willingness on both sides to improve relations. "The fact that both sides are swiftly trading letters and announcing it carries a symbolic meaning," Yang told AFP. "If the message was more intimate, we could expect a faster thawing of ties," he added, "but for now, it shows that both sides agree on the need to improve their relations". Causeway invites all of Chattanooga to the fourth annual 1TABLE, a community-wide Thanksgiving potluck in the middle of Martin Luther King Boulevard on Monday, Nov. 20, from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Due to construction in Miller Park this year, 1TABLE is moving down one block in front of the Bessie Smith Hall. Over the last three years, 1TABLE has grown from 700 attendees to nearly 1,500 in 2016, in addition to being covered by The Washington Post. This year, a predicted 2,000 Chattanoogans from all walks life will join together to give thanks and share a Thanksgiving meal in the middle of MLK Boulevard. Music from the CSAS Concert Choir and a Grand Piano provided by Summitt Pianos will fill the streets as residents, area employees, families and friends line up for a potluck lunch. Chattanoogans who otherwise may never have met, will break bread together to connect over food and conversation. I had lunch with a man who is African-American and blind and lives in Patten Towers, said one woman who attended 1TABLE in 2016. I am white, live in the suburbs and work in the corporate world. We simply never would have met each other any other way. It was inspiring and exciting and such a good thing for our city. Now in its fourth year, 1TABLE has been replicated in other regional cities. Were very excited to have community leaders in Huntsville working towards hosting 1TABLE for the second year, says Chelsea Conrad, director of Creative Engagement at Causeway. Citizens in Milan, Tn., and Florence, Al., are also hosting 1TABLE this year and a number of other cities have expressed interest in hosting their own. Causeway has launched a new website which showcases other participating cities and expresses the overall mission of the event. 1TABLE is an opportunity for everyone to come together no matter your socioeconomic background or race and connect," said Abby Garrison, Causeway's executive director. "This event is our attempt to remove barriers and bring people together from across Chattanooga to build understanding and friendship. Were looking forward to watching 1TABLE grow in other cities. 1TABLE is made possible through corporate and individual sponsors as well as partnerships with local restaurants. Local catering company, Dish T Pass will provide the turkey and dressing while restaurants like Niedlovs, Bitter Alibi, Main Street Meats, Tazikis, The Camp House, Community Pie, and 1885 will provide large side dishes to share. Attendees are also encouraged to bring a ready-to-serve dish to share, if they are able. To support Causeways community engagement work through 1TABLE, visit causeway.org/1table or donate to Causeways Buy Your Neighbors Lunch campaign. Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE) and Northside Neighborhood House (NNH) are partnering to host Mini-Money School, a one-day financial education event for area teenagers and adults on Nov. 18 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Red Bank High School. This event will bring together community members to hear from financial experts and learn the ins and outs of personal financing topics. This event will provide free financial education classes centered on helping both teenagers and adults gain financial knowledge and confidence for the future. Through classes taught throughout the morning, attendants will be educated on subjects including credit scores, homeownership, retirement, estate planning, budgeting, savings, and financial aid. Our goal is to provide useful information that helps those attending gain further financial knowledge and confidence, says Martina Guilfoil, CNEs president and CEO. We are excited to partner with Northside Neighborhood House to bring this important information to Red Bank and beyond. In 2015, NNH partnered with the Hamilton County Department of Education to pilot the first Community School in Hamilton County at Red Bank High School. The Hub at Red Bank High School launched this year, and Mini-Money School is just one of the many programs that NNH has brought to the high school. Listening to what our students and parents need has been integral to our work leading the first Community School in Hamilton County at Red Bank High School, said Rachel Gammon, CEO of NNH. Students and families are interested in how to be financially stable, and we are excited to partner with CNE who has expertise in this area. Admission is free and includes a light breakfast, coffee, and lunch. Red Bank High School is located at 640 Morrison Springs Road in Red Bank. Register for the event at www.moneyschoolcha.org. For more information, call (423) 756-6234 or visit www.moneyschoolcha.org. Razer today announced the most expected Razer Phone at an event in London, months after it acquired Nexbit. The phone packs a 5.72-inch Quad HD 120 Hz UltraMotion display delivering fastest refresh rates and smooth graphics suitable for gaming. UltraMotions adaptive refresh technology synchronizes the GPU and display to remove image tearing or lag while driving efficient power usage, says Razer. It is powered by Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform with 8GB of RAM and runs on Android 7.1.1 (Nougat), which will be upgraded to Android Oreo in spring 2018. It has dual rear cameras, one with 12-megapixel wide-angle (f/1.75 aperture) lens and the other with 13-megapixel telephoto lens (f/2.6 aperture) for 2x zoom. The company has partnered with Tencent, Square Enix and others to bring top games that take full advantage of the phone, optimized for its 120fps screen. It has stereo front-facing speakers and Dolby Atmos. It doesnt have a 3.5mm audio jack, but comes with THX-certified USB-C audio adapter with a 24-bit DAC. It has a 8mm slim aluminum body and packs a 4000mAh battery with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+. Razer Phone specifications 5.72-inch (25601440 pixels) Quad HD IGZO LCD UltraMotion display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection Octa-Core Snapdragon 835 Mobile Platform with Adreno 540 GPU 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB (UFS) storage, expandable memory up to 2TB with microSD Android 7.1.1 (Nougat), upgradable to Android Oreo 12MP camera with f/1.75 wide-angle lens and 13MP secondary camera with f/2.6 zoom lens, PDAF, dual-tone LED flash 8MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture Fingerprint sensor Stereo front-facing speakers, Dual amplifiers, Audio adapter with THX-certified DAC Dimensions: 158.5 x 77.7 x 8 mm; Weight: 197g 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/ GLONASS, USB Type-C, NFC 4000mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ The Razer Phone is priced at US$699.99 (Rs. 45,160 approx.) / 749.99 (Rs. 56,350 approx.) / 699.99 (Rs. 59,940 approx.) and will go on sale in North America and Europe from November 17th with pre-orders starting today. It is also offering 1,337 units of Razer Phone Special Edition with Razers iconic green triple-headed snake logo compared to chrome triple-headed snake logo. Google has announced that assistant support for Italian and Spanish will be rolled out in the coming weeks just as it had promised at the I/O 2017 event. Google said that Spanish both in Latin America and Spain would be available. Google assistant is already available in multiple languages around the world and is just one hot-key away from answering your queries. Two months ago, in August, Google had rolled out Assistant in Brazil with Brazilian-Portuguese. A Notification would arrive for all the supported devices with the Assistant now supporting. Spanish and Italian will now join English in Australia, Canada, U.S., and U.K.; Portuguese in Brazil; French in Canada and France; German in Germany; Japanese in Japan; and Korean in Korea in the list of language that Assistant supports. Google says that the rolling out will commence in the coming weeks and will be automatically available on eligible Android phones running Android 6.0 or higher with Google Play Services. Google assistant in Italian and Spanish for iPhone will be available before the end of the year. Commenting on the same, Google said, Our goal is for the Assistant to be available to help you get things done, no matter what language you speak, what device youre using or what question youre asking. Todays update is another step in that direction. Source Xiaomi just launched the Redmi Y1, the companys latest budget smartphone in the new Redmi Y series in India, as it had promised. As expected, it is the re-branded Redmi Note 5A smartphone that was introduced in China in August. It has a 5.5-inch HD screen, is powered by Snapdragon 435 Mobile Platform, runs on Android 7.1.1 (Nougat) with MIUI on top, packs a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 16-megapixel front-facing camera with LED flash for both. It has a brushed metal-like finish on the back with aluminium alloy frame, has a fingerprint sensor on the back that can unlock the phone in 0.3 seconds, comes with dedicated dual SIM and a microSD expansion slots arranged in a single tray and packs a 3080mAh battery. The company also announced Bollywood actor Katrina Kaif as brand ambassador for the series. Xiaomi Redmi Y1 specifications 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD 2.5D curved glass display, 450 nits brightness, 1000: 1 Contrast ratio, 70% NTSC color gamut, Corning Gorilla Glass protection 1.4GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 435 Mobile Platform with Adreno 505 GPU 3GB RAM with 32GB internal storage, 4GB RAM with 64GB storage, expandable memory up to 128GB with microSD Android 7.1.2 (Nougat) with MIUI 8, upgradable to MIUI 9 Dual SIM 13MP rear camera with LED Flash, f/2.2 aperture, PDAF 16MP front-facing camera with LED flash, OmniVision sensor, f/2.0 aperture, 76.4-degree wide-angle lens Fingerprint sensor, Infrared sensor Dimensions: 153 76.2 7.7mm; Weight: 153g 4G VoLTE, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS / GLOASS 3080mAh (typical) / 3000mAh (minimum) battery The Xiaomi Redmi Y1 comes in Gold and Dark Gray colors, is priced at Rs. 8,999 for the 3GB RAM with 32GB storage version and the 4GB RAM with 64GB storage version is priced at Rs. 10,999 and will be available exclusively on Amazon.in as well as Mi.com starting November 8th. TVA and Greater Chattanooga Robotics are co-sponsoring the fourth annual VEX Robotics Competition with Chattanooga States RC-NET (Regional Center for Nuclear Education Training) program. The competition is shaping up to be quite an exciting event on Friday, starting at 10 a.m. in the WACKER Institute inside the Center for Engineering, Technology, Arts & Sciences building. A total of 10 teams from East Hamilton, Ooltewah, Hixson, The Howard School, and Central high schools including an all-girls team from Central will come together to battle it out as the top VEX Robotics team. Each school has provided one or more teams this year. The competition is serious business between high school teams who aim to build the best robot that will get the job done and earn bragging rights along with the team trophy to take back to their school. VEX Robotics embraces explorative STEM learning. Student teams design and build a robot from parts that resemble erector set pieces. They play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. This competition challenges students to not only use critical thinking skills, but also to pay close attention to the laws of physics so that their robot moves quickly and easily, can carry weight and move without tipping, as well as function properly. The teams are judged on the design and maneuverability of their robots, the number of balls actually placed, and at what difficulty level they succeed. The day begins at 8 a.m., competition commences at 10 a.m., and the winning team is announced at 1 p.m. For more information, contact event coordinator Samantha Travis at 423-697-5514 or email her at samantha.travis@chattanoogastate.edu. As President Donald Trump prepares for a 12-day trip to Asia, Boeing (NYSE:BA) chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg told FOX Business the relationship between the U.S. and China is pivotal for the U.S. aerospace industry. Were looking forward to the presidents trip to China, we are very supportive to that. China is a very important growth market for us, Muilenburg told Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria. Boeing, the worlds largest plane maker, recently updated its market outlook, as it expects the world to need 41,000 new airplanes over the next 20 years, with more than 7,000 of those in China. When we look at the global aerospace market, it is a growing market, $7.5 trillion marketplace over the next 10 years, he said. Global traffic from around the world has resulted in ramping up production from around 750 commercial planes this to year to more than 900 airplanes a year by the end of the decade, he added. Passenger traffic is very robust. We are seeing 7% growth year-over-year, passenger traffic growth around the globe continues to outpace GDP growth, and as we connect the world, we are seeing more and more new passengers entering the traveling public. Just for instance, every year 100 million people travel for the first time by airplane in Asia alone. Christies and Swiss luxury jeweler de Grisogono have teamed up for an auction of one the most beautiful diamonds ever offered to the market, where a necklace hailed as the worlds most beautiful diamond, will be sold. De Grisogono USA President Lisa Klein told FOX Business Maria Bartiromo on Mornings with Maria, the piece, created from a 404.2 carat raw diamond found in Angola is the 27th largest rough diamond thats ever been discovered. According to Klein, it took the jewelry house nearly a year to design the diamond from the rough stone. After about 10 months of analyzing the stone and cutting the stone and polishing the stone we ended up with this extraordinary diamond, 163.41 carat D flawless emerald cut, Klein said. Everybodys familiar with the four Cs: cut, clarity, carat weight, color. D represents color, which means it is colorless. It is as pure and as white as a diamond could be. And then you have flawless, which means there are absolutely no imperfections on this stone. It is, quite literally, as good as it gets. Klein said the diamond is the largest D flawless ever to be brought to auction in the history of auctions, and could sell for more than $30 million, calling it a conservative figure. Nov 2 (Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Thursday its quarterly revenue climbed 61 percent, beating analysts' estimates, helped by growth in its core e-commerce business. The firm, headed by billionaire entrepreneur Jack Ma, posted 55.12 billion yuan ($8.34 billion) in revenue for the July-September quarter, above a 52.2 billion yuan forecast from analysts polled by Reuters. Net income more than doubled from a year ago to 17.41 billion yuan, growing at a faster clip than the previous two quarters. The second quarter is often slower for Alibaba as it prepares for the annual blockbuster Singles' Day event on Nov. 11, a sales bonanza that shifts more goods than the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales days in the United States combined. Alibaba said revenue from its core e-commerce business hit 46.46 billion yuan, representing a 63 percent rise from the same quarter a year earlier. ($1 = 6.6100 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Pei Li in Beijing and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) Here is the weekly road construction report for Hamilton County: I-24 East bridge repair over Chestnut Street at mile marker 178.6 near the U.S. 27 interchange and safety improvements on the bridges over the CSX Railroad and over U.S. 27: Work on this project is nearing completion. On Thursday night, from 8 p.m.-6 a.m. Friday, a temporary left lane closure will be in place for I-24 West from Williams Street to approximately MM 178.2 for removing the temporary attenuator and barrier rail from the left shoulder. On Saturday night, from 8 p.m.-9 a.m. Sunday, temporary lane closures will be in place for I 24 East from MM 176 to Williams Street for removing temporary striping, restriping, reworking signs, removing temporary barrier rail and an attenuator. On Saturday night, from 8 p.m.-6 a.m.Sunday, Exit 178 from I-24 East will be closed. Exit 178 traffic will be detoured from 1-24 East to the 4th Avenue exit and then back onto I 24 West. Exit 178 will be reopened to traffic at 6 a.m. on Sunday. During the course of the Saturday night, traffic shifts will be used to move traffic around so the work can be completed. Additionally, a temporary double left lane closure will be in place for I-24 West from approximately MM 180 to MM 179.4 for installing I-24 preformed shields. Beginning on Saturday night at 10 p.m.-9 a.m. Sunday, the U.S. 27 South exit ramp to I-24 East will be closed completely for removing temporary striping, restriping, reworking signs, and removing temporary barrier rail. Traffic wishing to continue to I-24 East from U.S. 27 South will be detoured onto I-24 West and travel to Exit 175 (Browns Ferry Rd.), where they can get back onto I-24 East. During this report period, the contractor also may have intermittent lane restrictions from 7 p.m.-6a .m. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is November. [Dement Construction Co., LLC/Pruett/CNR031] U.S. 27 (I-124) widening from I-24/U.S. 27 interchange to north of the Olgiati Bridge over the Tennessee River, including widening the Olgiati Bridge: Work on this project continues. The speed limit on U.S. 27 in the construction zone is 45 MPH. Weather permitting, the contractor may implement temporary lane/shoulder closures on weeknights between the hours of 7 p.m.-6 a.m. On Friday night, between 7 p.m.-6 a.m., a temporary left lane closure will be in place for southbound U.S. 27 from Manufacturers Road to I-24 for grading in the area of the MLK Blvd. ramp. During this closure the off-ramp from southbound U.S. 27 to eastbound MLK Blvd. will be closed. On Tuesday night and Wednesday night, between 7 p.m.-6 a.m., a temporary left lane closure will be in place for northbound U.S. 27 from I-24 to north of 12th Street for setting the Main Street bridge beams. During this work, Main Street will also be temporarily closed from Reggie White Blvd. / Carter Street to the southbound U.S. 27 on-ramp. Traffic will be detoured using Reggie White Blvd. and West 20th Street/Riverfront Parkway. At least one lane will remain open in each direction on U.S. 27. THP will assist with traffic control on the project as necessary. Estimated project completion date is July 2019. [Dement Construction Co., LLC/JM/CNP230] SR-320 (East Brainerd Road) grading, drainage, installation of signals, construction of seven retaining walls and paving from east of Graysville Road to east of Bel-Air Road: Work on this project continues. During this report period, the contractor may have intermittent lane closures between 9 a.m.-2 p.m. This work may affect either direction of East Brainerd Road or side streets from Graysville Road to Bel-Air Road. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is June 2018. [Jones Brothers Contractors, LLC /Pruett/CNN383] SR-153/SR-319 (Hixson Pike) bridge repair on Hixson Pike over SR-153: Work on this project continues. The contractor will be working on the inside lanes of the bridge. The outside lanes in both directions are open to traffic. This lane closure will be in place until late November. During this report period the contractor may have intermittent lane closures on SR-153 from 9 p.m.-6 a.m. to do work under the bridge. If there are any temporary closures needed on SR-153 as part of this project, they will take place at nighttime on Sundays through Thursdays between 9 p.m.-6 a.m. and on weekdays on SR-153 South between 9 a.m.-3 p.m. and on SR-153 North between 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Flaggers will assist with traffic control as necessary during these temporary closures. Estimated project completion date is May 2018. [Mid-State Construction Co. /Micka/CNQ941] U.S. 11 (SR-2/Brainerd Road) resurfacing from McCallie Tunnel (LM 11.83) to east of Moore Road (LM 13.85): Work on this project continues. During the project, the contractor will have intermittent lane closures between 9 p.m.-6 a.m. Sunday night thru Thursday night. The contractor will be milling, paving, and installing pavement markings. At least one travel lane will remain open to traffic at all times. This work may affect either direction of Brainerd Road or side streets from Moore Road to the McCallie Tunnel. Motorists should be alert for construction personnel and equipment. THP will assist with traffic control as needed. Estimated project completion date is November. [Talley Construction/Pruett/CNR218] The tunnel cleaning of the McCallie Tunnel on U.S. 11 (US 64, SR-2), the Stringers Ridge Tunnel on U.S. 127 (SR-8), and the Bachman Tubes on U.S. 41 (U.S. 76, SR-8): The nighttime cleaning operation of McCallie Tunnels, Stringers Ridge Tunnel, and Bachman Tubes occurs between 8 p.m.-6 a.m. Tunnels will be closed during cleaning, and detours will be marked accordingly as each tunnel is cleaned. Contract completion date is June 2018. [ETI Environmental, Inc./Micka/CNR223] The builder of the Dakota Access oil pipeline and the federal agency that permitted the project are objecting to an effort by American Indian tribes to bolster protections for their water supply. Lawyers for Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and the Army Corps of Engineers argue separately in documents filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., that the proposals by the Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux are unnecessary or unwarranted. "Measures are already in place to achieve the objectives behind each proposed set of conditions," company attorneys wrote. The dispute centers around the $3.8 billion pipeline's crossing of the Missouri River's Lake Oahe reservoir in southern North Dakota. Both tribes get water from the lake and fear contamination should the pipeline leak. They are among four Dakotas tribes suing to shut down the pipeline that began moving North Dakota oil to a distribution point in Illinois on June 1. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is requiring the Corps to further review the project's impact on tribal interests, but he's allowing oil to continue flowing while that work is done over the next several months. In the meantime, the tribes are seeking increased public reporting of pipeline issues such as repairs, and implementation of an emergency spill response plan at the lake crossing with tribal input. The spill response plan will include equipment staging. ETP said it already has emergency equipment and personnel staged "near" the crossing and has also "taken steps to include the tribes in response planning." The company said it is willing to continue working with them on a voluntary basis. Corps attorneys argue that the tribal request is "unnecessary, duplicative and burdensome" and note that "the court has already upheld the Corps' conclusion that the risk of a spill is low." In a separate legal dispute in federal court in North Dakota, landowners who claim ETP deceived and defrauded them while acquiring land easements for the pipeline will appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland in October sided with a subsidiary of ETP and the land acquisition consulting business Contract Land Staff. Both businesses disputed the claims of the 21 landowners who were seeking more than $4 million in damages. The landowners have filed a notice of appeal to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorney Peter Zuger declined to discuss their argument until a formal appeal brief is filed in the next couple of months. ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado said the company does not comment on pending legal matters. ___ Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake Nov 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice is considering seeking to block AT&T Inc's merger with Time Warner Inc as it continues talks with the two companies, the Wall StreetJournal reported on Thursday. The financial newspaper also said the DOJ might still consider approving the deal with certain conditions but that the two sides were not close to an agreement. http://on.wsj.com/2gW1l9O Shares of Time Warner were down 4.2 percent at $94.2, while AT&T's shares inched up. The U.S. wireless carrier is in the process of buying Time Warner for $85.4 billion in a deal that is expected to close by the end of the year. Neither company had any immediate comment. (Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham) The first new candy bar to carry the Hershey's name in more than two decades is set to hit shelves next month. The Hershey, Pennsylvania-based candy maker says Hershey's Gold will go on sale Dec. 1. It's described as a caramelized cream bar embedded with salty peanut and pretzel bits. Hershey's says the bar is a response to trends that it says show "the rising popularity of crunchy multi-textured candy." Hershey's Gold will be the fourth bar for the brand and the first new one since Hershey's Cookies 'n Creme was introduced in 1995. The original Hershey's bar was released in 1900 and was followed up by the special dark variety in 1939. Responding to remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump, a Chinese spokeswoman on Thursday said the country never intentionally sought a trade surplus with the United States and that some frictions are inevitable. Trump on Wednesday said the U.S. trade deficit with China was "through the roof," calling it "so big and bad that it's embarrassing saying what the number is." Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China hopes to work out differences through negotiations to "ensure the sound and steady growth of bilateral trade and economic ties." "We have never intentionally pursued a trade surplus. The current pattern of China's trade cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., is determined by the market," Hua told reporters at a daily briefing. "In the process of rapid development of bilateral trade and economic relations, it is inevitable for us to encounter some frictions and differences." Trump arrives in Beijing on Tuesday for a visit as part of a 10-day swing through Asia. Trade and market access for U.S. products are expected to be high on the agenda. The U.S. ran up a $347 billion trade deficit with China last year. That was a decrease of 5.5 percent after hitting an all-time high of $367.2 billion in 2015, although it is still far and away the largest the U.S. has with any country. In an apparent nod to protocol, Trump on Wednesday appeared to shy away from direct confrontation over the issue, saying, "I don't want to embarrass anybody four days before I land in China, but it's horrible." Semiconductor maker Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) said Thursday it will move its headquarters back to the U.S., a decision that President Donald Trump touted as a win for American workers. Broadcom, a Fortune 100 company with a market value of $103 billion, didnt identify the location of its new global headquarters. However, the company has U.S. offices in San Jose, California. The Singapore-based technology giant currently employs more than 7,000 people in 24 states. Were looking forward to seeing that number grow very substantially, Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office. Broadcom will mark its return to the U.S. by establishing a tax domicile in Delaware. The move will bring $20 billion in annual revenue back to the U.S., according to Tan. Broadcom was acquired by Avago Technologies last year in a $37 billion deal. Avago changed its name to Broadcom following the completion of the merger, but its tax home remained in Singapore. Broadcom was founded in 1991 by two UCLA professors. It became one of the worlds largest semiconductor companies. Broadcom also makes LED displays, networking processors and automotive electronics. Avago was founded in 1961 as a division of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ). The business was spun off by HP under Agilent Technologies in 1999. Agilent later sold it to private equity firms KKR and Silver Lake. A high yield doesn't necessarily make a dividend stock great. A truly winning proposition for an income investor is a high-yield stock that also offers strong dividend growth and capital appreciation potential. Such stocks can turn out to be gold mines for income investors in the long run, much like Brookfield Infrastructure Partners (NYSE: BIP), the infrastructure arm of alternative-asset manager Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM). Here are the three biggest reasons Brookfield Infrastructure is such an incredible dividend stock to own. A rock-solid business Brookfield stock has been a five-bagger since inception in 2008, but those returns would've looked much smaller if not for its dividends. These incredible returns weren't a fluke. Brookfield is one of the largest infrastructure asset companies in the world today, owning and operating assets across four broad sectors -- utilities, transport, energy, and communications -- in 15 countries. In fact, Brookfield Asset Management has several listed partnerships, but it's been diverting a major chunk of capital to Brookfield Infrastructure in recent years. Brookfield's business strategy is a simple yet powerful one: It acquires high-quality, distressed assets, turns them into cash-making machines, and resells them as they mature to reinvest the proceeds opportunistically. In the past eight years, Brookfield raised more than $2 billion in gross proceeds from the sale of 10 businesses. The two biggest advantages of Brookfield's business model are stability and diversity. Because Brookfield primarily invests in essential assets such as power transmission lines, railroads, telecom towers, toll roads, and gas pipelines, a major chunk of its revenue is regulated or contracted. While that eliminates volatility in its top line, exposure to diverse sectors mitigates risks further. On top of that, infrastructure assets make for a highly capital intensive business, which acts as a strong barrier to entry for the company. Not surprisingly, Brookfield has been able to grow its funds from operations at a tremendous pace in the past decade, and there's every chance it'll continue to do so. Investing in future trends and high-growth markets One of the biggest deals Brookfield struck this year was the $5.2 billion acquisition of natural gas transmission assets in Brazil from beleaguered oil major Petrobras (NYSE: PBR). For Petrobras, it was a desperate divestment move to revive its financial standing. It was a prized catch for Brookfield. The next big market that Brookfield is targeting is India, which just overtook the U.S. to become the second largest smartphone market in the world. Brookfield is striking while the iron is hot, having entered an agreement with a distressed telecom company to buy thousands of telecom towers in a deal that could be worth $1.6 billion. These are just examples of some of Brookfield's growth moves, and management is confident that its business strategy for the past 10 years is "well suited for the next decade." Brookfield foresees huge opportunities beyond traditional utilities and transportation and expects nearly 40%-45% of its business to come from data (telecom towers, fiber, data centers), water, and municipal infrastructure such as smart meters, transit systems, and LED lighting by 2028. Asia could bring in 25% of Brookfield's revenue over the next decade. Financial goals point at double-digit returns Brookfield's growth plans, backed by prudent asset churn and capital allocation, should drive its cash flows even higher. That should also mean fatter dividend paychecks for income investors, as has been the case so far. Infact, Brookfield has already set some financial goals for the long haul: to increase its dividend annually by 5%-9% and generate 12%-15% returns on equity. If the stock can sustain better than a 4% dividend yield, which is highly likely, you could end up with double-digit annual returns as an investor in Brookfield. The Foolish bottom line For an income investor, Brookfield Infrastructure packs a punch: It's a rapidly growing company backed by a strong management that's committed to shareholders. At only 9.7 times trailing funds from operations, Brookfield may just be a good fit for your dividend portfolio. 10 stocks we like better than Brookfield Infrastructure PartnersWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.* David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now... and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys. Click here to learn about these picks! *Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017 Neha Chamaria has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. On Tuesday, 29-year-old Uzbekistan native Sayfullo Saipov deliberately drove a truck down a bicycle path in New York City killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen. Former radical Jihadist Mubin Shaikh discussed Wednesday possible motives for the terrorist attack. Shaikh was once fascinated with the Taliban, but eventually abandoned his radical views and became an undercover agent for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Im going to look first for what kind of environment was he brought up in? I mean, he is from Uzbekistan, there is an Islamist, Jihadist scene there, theres the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan. Was he indoctrinated from childhood? Was there trauma in his life? What laid the foundation for his later actions? he told FOX Business Melissa Francis on After the Bell. Former Secret Service agent Dan Bondino believes that using physical surveillance will be the key to stopping these lone wolf attacks. Shaikh said the terrorist most likely communicated with other extremists online before executing the attack. Hes probably online engaging with other likeminded extremists consuming this material and deciding at some point that you know what hes going to act out. One of the things the FBI is going to be looking in and other agencies, the NYPD of course is his pre-attack surveillance. He probably was in the area looking to see where he could get onto the bike path, he said. A Washington D.C.-based firm paid an ex-British spy $168,000 for his work on the infamous and controversial Trump dossier. The opposition group Fusion GPS said in a statement the money had been paid to former MI6 officer Christopher Steel to collect compromising information about Trump and that the Kremlin was engaged in an active effort to assist his presidential campaign. In an interview with FOX Business Lou Dobbs, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are working to keep the American public in the dark regarding the Trump dossier controversy. [The FBI has] been telling us they cant confirm or deny whether the dossier even exist or not or documents about the payments related to the dossier exist, Fitton said. Fitton is questioning why some members of Congress were able to review the documents pertaining to the dossier payments behind closed doors, and whether the Obama-era federal agencies used the information as a political hit job against then-candidate Trump. If the FBI under the tutelage of Barack Obamas administration, his appointee were also doing this that is the scandal of the decade. That is the scandal of the last 50 years, he said. The House Ways and Means Committee released its long-awaited tax plan on Thursday, called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which adds a fourth tax bracket on high-income earners and leaves retirement plans largely untouched. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will deliver real relief for people in the middle [and] people who are also striving to get there, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said during a press conference. The GOP predicts that if its bill is enacted, the average middle-income family of four would receive a tax cut worth $1,182. While the legislation will be up for amendments before its voted on in both chambers of Congress, here are some of the official details set forth in documents released Thursday. Brackets The GOP wants to add in a fourth tax bracket, which had been floated as a possibility throughout the past couple of months, acting as a surtax on the countrys highest earners. The tax brackets will be set at 12%, 25%, 35% and 39.6%. The highest rate is in line with the current top tier tax rate, but kicks in at an income level of $1 million for married couples. Currently the top rate applies to those with incomes in excess of $470,700. For household income levels, the 0% rate applies to those with incomes up to $24,000, the 12% rate up to $90,000, 25% up to $260,000, 35% up to $1 million and the top rate at more than $1 million. For individuals, the 12% rate applies to incomes up to $45,000, the 25% rate up to $200,000, 35% up to $500,000 and the highest rate to incomes in excess of $500,000. SALT While initially the Trump administration called for a full repeal of the deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), the finalized bill indicates Republicans settled for a modification instead. The GOP plans to allow state and local property tax deductions up to $10,000. Other state and local deductions, including income and sales tax deductions for individuals, will be eliminated. Changes to SALT deductions have been a controversial topic across party lines for lawmakers representing high-tax states like New York and New Jersey. Some lawmakers have indicated their elimination would be a deal-breaker. 401(k) Plans Despite discussions to reduce the so-called catch up contribution for those over the age of 50 from $6,000 to $2,400, the tax plan released on Thursday did not change the retirement savings plans used by more than 50 million Americans. The president pledged via twitter on Oct. 23 to keep the popular middle class tax break intact in its current form. Estate Tax While President Trump initially called for a complete repeal of the estate tax, also known as the death tax, the details of the finalized version of its plan are a bit softer. The GOP wants to double the exemption on inherited assets in the near-term and completely eliminate it after six years. Corporate Tax Cut Implementation As expected, Republicans stuck with their aim of slashing the corporate tax rate by 15 percentage points to 20%, and they want to make it permanent, sources told FOX Business. It remains to be determined whether a reduction in the corporate tax rate would be gradually phased in over the course of a few years or whether it would be an immediate, one-time cut. FOX Business has also learned that the GOP aims to tax repatriated overseas profits at a rate of 5% for illiquid assets and 12% for cash, so long as the company brings back those profits within 8 years. The GOPs plan calls for a reduction in the pass-through rate on business income to 25%. Other The GOP's tax reform bill calls for an expansion of the child tax credit, an effort that has been championed by Ivanka Trump, from $1,000 to $1,600. The measure would also provide for a credit worth $300 for each parent and non-child dependent. Additionally, the home mortgage interest deduction for newly purchased homes would be maintained up to $500,000. This will not affect existing mortgages, but new ones moving forward. The cap on charitable deductions will increase to up to 60% of total income. A director launched an online petition to bar Casey Affleck from presenting the Best Actress award at next years Academy Awards due to the sexual harassment allegations against him. Filmmaker Cameron Bossert started the petition following a slew of sexual misconduct allegations against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who was booted from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences last month. Affleck has been accused of sexual harassment in the past. As of Thursday morning, Bossert's petition garnered more than 16,000 signatures. Affleck won the Academy Award for Best Actor last year for his role in Manchester by the Sea and as a result he is slated to present the Best Actress award at next years Oscars as part of a tradition. However, Bossert called for the Academy to ban Affleck from giving out the award. COUNTRY MUSICS TOP PUBLICIST ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ABUSE BY SINGER DENIES ALLEGATIONS Last year despite multiple sexual harassment claims against him, Casey Affleck won the Best Actor award for this role in Manchester by the Sea, Bossert wrote. He had been accused of sexual harassment by two women who worked with him on a 2010 documentary. Affleck faced intense public scrutiny when he won the award after two women filed sexual harassment lawsuits against the actor in 2010 while on the set of the documentary Im Still Here that he directed and co-wrote. Magdelena Gorka, who worked as a cinematographer on the documentary, alleged Affleck joked that she should engage in sexual relations with a camera assistant, The Wrap reported. She also alleged she woke up to find Affleck in bed next to her wearing just a shirt and underwear while caressing her back. Amanda White, a producer for the film, alleged Affleck verbally and sexually harassed her and Gorka while on the set, The Guardian reported. HARVEY WEINSTEIN EXPELLED FROM MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY Affleck denied all wrongdoing and counter-sued. The cases were settled for an undisclosed amount, The Wrap reported. With these credible accusations against him, the Academy should take action and rescind the privilege this year, Bossert said in his petition. Watch: Michelle Obama's Advice? Don't 'Tweet Every Thought' By Stephen Gossett in News on Nov 1, 2017 9:53PM Michelle Obama / Obama Foundation / YouTube / Screenshot When Michelle Obama sat down with poet Elizabeth Alexander at Day Two of the inaugural Obama global summit in Chicago, the two covered a wide terrain of topics, ranging from public-art deserts to how a child's gender influence parents' approach to childrearing. But in her long conversation, the former First Lady also got in a bit of advice about the importance of showing some social-media restrainta not altogether unfamiliar refrain in the era of President Trump, the audience clearly registered. Obama's pearl of wisdom came in the midst of a lengthy answer to Alexander's question about using one's voice and "how to be productive in disagreement." "This whole 'tell it like it is' business, that's nonsense" the former First Lady said in the midst of her reply, at the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. "You know, you don't just say what's on your mind. You don't tweet every thought," she said, drawing significant applause from the packed house. "Most of your first initial thoughts are not worthy of the light of day. And I'm not talking about anybody in particular," she then offered diplomatically, again to plenty of cheers. "I'm talking about us all, because everybody does that." "We are so not talking about anybody in particular," Alexander countered. Obama then steered the talk back to a more parental focus, noting that social media "is a powerful weapon that we just hand over to little kids," but as you can tell from the crowd's response, not before everybody in the room was all too happy to read between the political lines. You can watch the full conversation below, but the portion that's certainly not explicitly about Donald Trump's tweeting habits can be seen at around 1:06:00. President Trumps Justice Department is reportedly mulling an antitrust challenge to AT&Ts proposed $85 billion purchase of Time Warner, a move that could put Trump-bashing CNN boss Jeff Zucker on the hot seat. Time Warner has owned CNN, as well as HLN, TBS and other cable networks, since 1996. If approved, the Time Warner-AT&T deal would put AT&T in charge of a network that, under Zucker, has unabashedly pursued an anti-Trump agenda. Trump has fought back, calling CNN "fake news" and criticizing the network and its top news personalities in tweets and in person. The New York Post reported in June that AT&T was considering making changes regarding CNNs President Jeff Zucker if the deal went through. There was early talk about the way Zucker managed that wasnt a good fit for the new organization, a source told the Post. They were eyeing ways to neutralize him. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson delivered a mixed message about the future of CNN under potential new ownership. Were paying a premium to get Time Warner, and when you pay a big premium, the priority is to not screw it up CNNs doing quite well, and the priority is to keep management teams in place, Stephenson said last month at Vanity Fairs New Establishment Summit. There will invariably be changes, but the hope is to keep the team in place. President Trump said on the presidential campaign trail last year that he was against deal, which would make AT&T the largest media company in the U.S. Trump called the proposed merger "a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few." WSJ reported the Justice Departments antitrust division is preparing for a lawsuit and also discussing possible settlements to attach conditions to the deal that would garner it governmental approval. The newspaper reports things could go either way. The possibility of selling CNN off to gain approval has been dismissed by AT&T honchos, but WSJ reports that the traditional way for merging companies to address government antitrust concerns is to sell off assets. WSJ reported that it wasnt clear what assets might be sold off, or even if the Justice Department had any particular assets in mind. A spokesperson for the company told the paper, Vertical mergers like this one are routinely approved because they benefit consumers without removing any competitor from the market. While we wont comment on our discussions with DOJ, we can say that this transaction should be no exception. Its been three years since Joan Lunden was diagnosed with breast cancer but these days the former host of ABCs Good Morning America is feeling better than ever. Im doing fabulous because I am done with all of my treatment, the 67-year-old told Closer Weekly Wednesday. The silver lining of that very tough battle is that I got sent on a new mission. Lunden is relying on her father for inspiration to raise awareness on the importance of getting regular check-ups. Before Dr. Erie Blunden died in a plane crash when she was 13, the cancer surgeon believed his daughter would also pursue medicine. [Having cancer] definitely changes you, she explained. [But] I can be an advocate and carry on [my dads] legacy. Lunden also credited her family, husband Jeff Konigsberg and her seven children, for offering much-needed encouragement during her cancer battle. [Im] so appreciative of everyone who stood by me, she said. Quite honestly, you become appreciative of everything. Like every sunrise, every sunset even when the dog rolls over! Lunden currently uses her website to educate other women about early detection. I have considered it one of those odd gifts from above that you get an opportunity to help other people go through dire diagnoses. Lunden told Prevention Magazine in 2016. Maybe by telling my story, I make women more vigilant. I know that I was a person who paid lip service to self-exams but come on, lets be honest, I didnt do them. And I didnt think I needed to because I didnt have a family history. So breast cancer was someone elses worry. She added, Now that its happened to me, I guess I feel compelled to go out there and warn other women and make them more aware and make them more vigilant. And understand its not just about family history. Its about the lifestyle choices that we make: whether or not we exercise, what were consuming, our stress levels, our lack of sleep. And all of the other risk factors that can make us susceptible not only to breast cancer, but all the other cancers. Kevin Spacey is seeking evaluation and treatment after being accused of sexual misconduct by several people, the actor's representative said on Wednesday. Spaceys representative told The Hollywood Reporter that the 58-year-old actor was taking the time necessary to receive the help. Its unclear when or where the treatment will be done. "Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time, Spacey's representative said. The announcement comes mere days after actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of trying to seduce him when he was only 14 years old by jumping on top of him in a bed at a hotel. Spacey was 26 at the time of the alleged incident. Spacey issued the apology on Twitter hours after the BuzzFeed report came out, saying he was beyond horrified of the story and admitted he didnt remember it. He offered his sincerest apology and came out as gay in the statement. But within days, the actor suffered major backlash for the sexual harassment allegations and his apology. Two other men, Tony Montana and Roberto Cavazos, also accused him of sexual misconduct. Netflix announced it was halting production on the sixth and last season of House of Cards, in which Spacey plays main character Frank Underwood, to review the current situation and to address any concerns [from the] cast and crew. The International TV Academy also said on Monday it was revoking the Emmy Founders Award Spacey was supposed to receive. A man has come forward to allege that he and Kevin Spacey engaged in a sexual relationship when he was 14 and the actor was 24, but Spacey denies the claims. The news comes amid reports that the star has inappropriately harassed younger men throughout his career. Vulture posted an in-depth interview with a man, who chose to remain anonymous, that claims he and Spacey engaged in a sexual relationship that ended when the actor attempted to rape him. The outlet noted that it confirmed several details of the man's story to verify it. Representatives for Spacey told the outlet that he absolutely denies the allegations. The man, reportedly now a 48-year-old artist living on the East Coast, says he first met the House of Cards star when he was 12 years old and taking an acting class that Spacey taught in Westchester County in 1981. The two met again by chance, he said, while he was in line with his parents for Shakespeare in the Park in New York City when he was 14. While his parents waited in line, he says he and Spacey went for a walk, flirted and he eventually got the actors number. The next day, he called Spacey and they reportedly said they loved each other. The man says he was invited to the actors home where they had sex. The two went on to have several more encounters, which the man thought were consensual at the time, he says. With Spaceys star on the rise thanks to awards and attention his performances were receiving, he allegedly promised the man some work, but nothing professional ever came of their relationship. Things took a dark turn one day when he met with Spacey and found the actor to be too aggressive, he told Vulture. Despite the mans protests, Spacey allegedly tried to penetrate him, but the man was able to throw him off and run out of the apartment. The account from the anonymous accuser comes just days after Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in 1986. Since then, two more people have come forward with reports of their own experiences with Spacey including Tony Montana, who alleges that the star grabbed his crotch in public, and actor Roberto Cavazos, who claims Spacey abused his position as the artistic director of Londons Old Vic Theatre. Since the news broke, production of the 58-year-old stars Netflix series House of Cards has been suspended while he seeks treatment. Dozens of women in National Public Radios newsroom including some of the organizations best-known hosts and reporters - signed a petition on Wednesday in which they expressed their anger over the handling of the multiple sexual harassment complaints levelled against one of NPRs top executives. The newsroom petition came a day after both the Washington Post and NPR reported that NPRs vice president of news and editorial director Michael Oreskes, 63, had been accused of numerous incidents of sexual harassment and misconduct stretching back decades. "We are profoundly concerned by how NPR has handled sexual harassment reports and senior management's insufficient efforts to create a workplace environment free of harassment and one that ensures equal opportunity for all employees," the petition stated. Oreskes is accused of making inappropriate sexual advances toward two women during the time he headed the New York Times Washington D.C. bureau two decades ago and complaints that he started sexually oriented conversations with an assistant producer at NPR in 2015. NPR's chief executive, Jarl Mohn, and chief legal officer, Jonathan Hart, were both reportedly aware of all of the allegations against Oreskes, but only asked for his resignation after the Washington Post published its story. In an email to Fox News, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said that executives at the news organization were aware of the newsroom petition, but added that the version published in the Washington Post "was a draft of a petition that has not yet been sent." The women in the office are talking with one another about what should be done next NPR correspondent Susan Stamberg In a statement Wednesday Mohn denied that Oreskes was asked to resign only because of the published reports. "Some have asked me if it took published news reports for us to take action. The answer is that it did not, Mohn said. We have been acting. Some of the steps were visible and others weren't. We have a process in place, and we followed that process. Staff members at NPRs headquarters in Washington D.C. described the mood in the newsroom as stunned and upset as Oreskes became the most recent member of the media to be accused of sexual harassment in a surge of allegations that has embroiled organizations from NBC to Fox News over the last year and a half. The women in the office are talking with one another about what should be done next, Susan Stamberg, a special correspondent for NPR and former co-host of the radio show All Things Considered, told Fox News. Obviously I cant speak for everyone in the newsroom, but many people are stunned and upset. Oreskes' departure from NPR is also the latest example of the so-called Weinstein effect, which has shed light on sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace in the wake of a recent investigation into movie mogul Harvey Weinsteins sordid behavior. In the 1990s, Oreskes allegedly made two unwanted sexual advances toward journalists who were looking for jobs at the New York Times. In both incidents, the female reporters said that Oreskes unexpectedly kissed them during a career-oriented business meeting while he was the Times Washington bureau chief. Speaking about the misconduct, Jill Abramsom Oreskes deputy at the Times who went on to become the newspapers executive editor and now lectures at Harvard University said she knew about the harassment and regrets not confronting him about it. If I had to do it again, I would have told him to knock it off, Abramson told the Washington Post. I think I should have raised this with [the Times human resources department]. . . . Maybe confronting him would have somehow stopped him from doing it to another woman. Following the revelations about Oreskes behavior at the Times, NPR reported that 26-year-old Rebecca Hersher filed a complaint with the organizations human resources department in October 2015 after Oreskes purportedly "hijacked a career counseling session into a three-hour-long dinner that delved into deeply personal territory," including talking about sex with his former girlfriend. Hersher declined to comment for Fox News story and said in an email that she was not plugged into how other NPR employees were responding to the scandal. While NPR has covered sexual harassment scandals in the past - especially when attorney Anita Hill accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of harassment in 1991 - this is the first time that NPR has been the focal point of the claims itself. This is not, however, the first controversy to embroil the national media organization. NPR asked for the resignation and reprimanded a number of top executives after firing Juan Williams back in 2010. Williams, a current political analyst for Fox News, was working for NPR when he made a comment that he gets "nervous" when he sees people in "Muslim garb" boarding a plane. Ellen Weiss, who held the same job as Oreskes at NPR, resigned in the wake of an external review which expressed concern over the organizations handling of Williams' firing. NPRs board also stripped CEO Vivian Schiller of her bonus for 2010 for her involvement in the scandal. Schiller herself ultimately stepped down amid a controversy surrounding a former NPR fundraising executives comments deriding the "tea party" movement as a collection of "gun-toting" racists and "fundamentalist Christians" who have "hijacked" the Republican Party. A woman who visited a Waffle House in Georgia has filed a lawsuit against the restaurant chain, alleging they served her bleach. Atavian Moore said she visited a Waffle House restaurant in Lithonia two years ago, and was served a drink with bleach mixed in, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday. The drink was contaminated when the drink dispenser was cleaned, Moore said. Waffle House was served with a lawsuit from Moore, who says drinking the bleach caused her $50,000 in medical expenses. PENNSYLVANIA MAN ADMITS TO PUTTING BLEACH IN PREGNANT GIRLFRIEND'S WATER Since it is pending litigation we will have no further comment and will respond to the allegations through the legal system, a Waffle House spokesman told AJC. The safety of our customers is a responsibility that we take very seriously. Moores suit says she expects future medical bills after suffering damage to her esophagus, stomach and other internal areas of her body. Another Waffle House location near Atlanta recently made headlines when it scored only a 65 out of 100 on its health inspection, due to flies inside the building, a baby cockroach on a walk-in cooler, mold on kitchen surfaces and slime forming inside the ice machine. If the political turmoil in this country is driving you to drink, youre not alone a bar in Washington, D.C. is taking advantage of the current state of affairs by offering drink discounts based on what happens on Capitol Hill. RUSSIA RESTAURANT CANCELS DISCOUNT FOR BIG-BREASTED WOMEN AFTER BACKLASH On Wednesday, D.C. bar The Bird announced on Twitter that they'd be selling $5 Moscow Muellers every time special counsel Robert Mueller indicts an associate of President Donald Trump. Mueller is currently investigating potential links between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. The drinks name, a play on the popular Moscow Mule, is made of tumeric-infused Belle Isle Moonshine, lime, simple syrup and ginger beer, and served over ice. Not everyone on social media was excited about the discounted drink, however. While some thought it was clever, others accused the bar of stirring controversy. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS This isnt the first time The Bird has run a political discount on drinks. Back in August, the bar began selling $4 Youre Fired happy hour drinks every time Trump fired a White House official. The Associated Press contributed to this report A restaurant in Wichita, KS, was engulfed in flames in a two-alarm fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Owners Ranya Taha and Bashar Mahanweh were startled to learn that their restaurant, serving authentic Jordanian food, had been burned to the ground. But, even more disconcerting is that it is now being investigated as a potential hate crime. We were first asked if we had anyone who would want to hurt our business, and we said no, Taha told The Wichita Eagle. There was a small incident on a window awhile ago with graffiti, but we just covered it up and moved on. It was three months ago, and we didnt think bad of it. ARIZONA RESTAURANT CLOSES FOLLOWING BACKLASH FROM ITS PRO-TRUMP FACEBOOK POST Now, after the fire, the couple has discovered more graffiti on the outside wall of their restaurant a large spray painted go back. It was really upsetting, Taha said. It was two words that have a lot of hate in it. The graffiti was not there when the couple left the restaurant the night before the fire, they say. Taha said It looks like a hate crime, but we cant tell until the investigation is done. Fire investigators said the cause was not immediately known, but flames were found coming from near the HVAC units. A spokesman for the ATF told the Wichita Eagle that investigators are currently trying to determine how the fire started. Once they have the cause, it can be determined whether it was a hate crime. The FBI is aware of the fire, if the investigation would turn into a hate crime investigation, then they would become more involved, ATFs John Hamm said. The couple, who opened Petra in April, is devastated by their loss. We rebuilt the building for six months to clean it and rebuild and bring stuff from Turkey and Jordan to make it really be like Jordan when you enter, Taha said. The music and seating and food, the atmosphere and the decorations was like entering a different country. It took a long time to put together, she continued. Unfortunately, that is gone. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS The two have lived in Wichita a long time, and they have always experienced love and support from the community, Taha said. Were okay, she said. We are strong, we have to be strong. We have a family who looks up to us. It is going to make us stronger. Though they are unsure if they will rebuild their restaurant in the future. As of Thursday, Jill Bronaugh, spokeswoman for the Wichita fire marshal said, Investigators from the Office of the State Fire Marshal are still on the scene assisting with this investigation and the cause is still under investigation." After 13 years, 15 miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy, multiple failed surrogacy attempts and several efforts with adoption, Lindsay and Brian Vargas welcomed a daughter into their family via adoption on Oct. 15, and revealed that she will be joined by twin siblings via a surrogate in April. The couple, who began trying to start their family a year after they got married, had turned to a GoFundMe page to share their infertility story and help pay for a final attempt at surrogacy. Lindsay, 35, and Brian, 37, had cashed in their stock portfolios and retirement accounts to fund the more than $500,000 in medical bills that had accumulated over the years. In a video posted on the page, Lindsay shared that after they first sought help with fertility she experienced a health scare caused by medications she had been taking to help trigger ovulation. NURSE DELIVERS OWN BABY OUTSIDE OF HOSPITAL SHE WORKS IN My doctor kept increasing the dose beyond the recommended length of time and didnt monitor me, she told Yahoo Lifestyle. As a result, I developed a softball-sized cyst on my ovaries. They then attempted in vitro fertilization using her eggs and Brians sperm, but they suffered a miscarriage each time after eight weeks. A doctor would later diagnose Brian with a genetic condition that could often cause miscarriage, according to Yahoo Lifestyle. I longed for the experience of being excited about my pregnancy. And I became jealous of pregnant women in my life even those I saw at the grocery store, Lindsay said. When a doctor told her there was nothing further they could do, Lindsay said she entered a dark period and began withdrawing from friends and family. She eventually sought the help of a therapist, and her sister, Kelly OToole, volunteered to be a surrogate. BABY NAMED FRANKENSTEIN BORN ON HALLOWEEN During an ultrasound in preparation for the procedure, doctors discovered OToole had a grapefruit-sized benign tumor, and removed it along with one of her ovaries. They then attempted in vitro using donor sperm and OTooles own eggs, but four rounds failed. Brian had been working three jobs to help finance the procedures, and they were receiving help from family members. In the meantime, a woman contacted us through GoFundMe and asked if we could adopt her unborn baby and we went for it, Lindsay told Yahoo Lifestyle. They kept baby Henley a secret for months out of an abundance of caution, and traveled to California for her Oct. 15 birth. I cried like an absolute baby, Lindsay told WOWT. Absolutely sobbing. They then learned that OToole had become pregnant with the two remaining embryos, and is currently expecting a boy and a girl. I cant wait for them to have this complete family, OToole told WOWT. It makes me so happy. A nurse was barred from working at an Oklahoma jail after onlookers claimed she attempted to conduct an exorcism on an inmate instead of offering medical help during an incident. Amanda Freeman, 32, an inmate at the Oklahoma County jail, died a day after the alleged exorcism attempt from an acute coronary event due to methamphetamine use, FOXCAROLINA reported. The nurse, who was not identified by officers, was called to Freemans cell on Feb. 10 after she experienced seizure-like activity, The Oklahoman reported. The nurse told investigators that it was hard to get Freemans vitals due to her moving so much. NURSE DELIVERS OWN BABY OUTSIDE OF HOSPITAL SHE WORKS IN The jails detention officers said the nurse told Freeman, I revoke you demons, while the inmate thrashed around and screamed, The Oklahoman reported. A sheriffs lieutenant was able to stop the nurse and get the inmate help. The jail banned the nurse from working at the jail on Oct. 20, but could not fire her since she was employed by its medical provider, Armor Correctional Health Services. The company told FOXCAROLINA the nurse, who had been with the company for six years, was no longer an employee as of Oct. 27. The nurse denied performing the exorcism but said Freeman had supernatural strength. TRUMP DECLARES OPIOID EPIDEMIC PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY HERES WHAT THAT MEANS Freeman was admitted to the jail after she was arrested on Feb. 7 for a drug complaint. An officer said they allegedly saw the inmate jump from a moving car into an intersection where they found methamphetamine in her possession. Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater was slated to meet with a sheriffs investigator to discuss whether they would consider pressing criminal charges against the nurse. A new tobacco product thats already popular overseas could overtake e-cigarettes in the United States. New research from San Diego State University predicts that heat-not-burn tobacco products could soon be flooding American markets. The authors warn that policymakers, anti-tobacco advocates, and the health care community need to be prepared for action when the products arrive. Heat-not-burn tobacco products are the latest iteration of electronic smoking. Unlike e-cigarettes and vaporizers, they dont rely on a nicotine-infused liquid (e-juice). Instead, they use actual tobacco thats heated to roughly 570F (299C) using a battery-powered heating element. The tobacco is kept below the temperature of combustion, creating an inhalable aerosol. Heat-not-burn products are currently unavailable in the United States. They are for sale in a series of test markets in Europe and Asia. The most robust market is in Japan, where theyve been available since 2014. Product under study in the U.S. An evaluation of Philip Morris Internationals IQOS, a heat-not-burn technology, is currently under way by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. However, the product must undergo rigorous review because its being brought to market as a modified risk tobacco product. Modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) is a designation given by the FDA that refers to tobacco products that are sold or distributed for use to reduce harm or the risk of tobacco-related disease associated with commercially marketed tobacco products. To achieve this designation, an applicant must demonstrate that the product has the ability to significantly reduce harm and disease related to tobacco. It must also benefit overall health on a population level, accounting for individuals who dont use tobacco products. Whether or not the IQOS and other heat-not-burn products can meet this designation remains to be seen. The FDA will make their ruling on the product within the next two months. If approved, the IQOS would be the first device to carry an MRTP designation. Searching for answers Currently, theres a lack of information on heat-not-burn tobacco products. The study authors note that there are less than 30 studies in the medical literature on these devices. On account of this, they turned to nontraditional data, including Google search information to analyze growing interest in the product. [Google searches] are probably a stronger indicator of interest than if you just asked on a survey, John Ayers, a lead study author and a research professor at San Diego State, told Healthline. Here were observing people seeking out information on the product, potentially trying to buy the product. Ayers said looking at this kind of data before has previously been able to predict the rise of e-cigarettes, as well as other things such as movie and album sales. What theyve seen so far of heat-not-burn tobacco products gives every indication that they could be a phenomenon, dwarfing even e-cigarettes. According to the study, there are now about 6 to 7 million heat-not-burn Google searches in Japan each month. Two years ago, almost no one was searching for them online. That growth rate eclipses anything else weve ever seen for any other tobacco product, including electronic cigarettes, said Ayers. Researchers said that given these trends, the potential for massive growth both in the United States and around the globe is likely. Why the product is popular The appeal of the product is manifold. It offers a novel new form of nicotine consumption that could be of interest to e-cigarette smokers. It also offers a distinct throat-hit, a physical sensation of smoking cigarettes, thats sometimes lacking in other vaporizers or e-cigarette models. However, the health implications of heat-not-burn products are still not well understood. There are all these public health questions like Can it be a cessation device? We dont know, said Ayers. What are the harms of it? What are the harms of being exposed to the vapor? We dont know that. E-cigarettes, which have already been on the market for years, are still problematic. Researchers have yet to reach a conclusion on their overall effects on public health. While recent studies indicate that e-cigarettes are most likely a healthier option than traditional smoking, not all experts agree. The role of e-cigarettes as potential cessation devices is still debated. The allure of e-cigarettes for teens, especially on account of sweet, fruit, and candy flavored vaping liquids also remains particularly contentious. A call to action Instead of trying to answer the myriad of health questions surrounding heat-not-burn tobacco, Ayers instead says his study is a call to action. Let's start studying it now and creating infrastructure to respond now, said Ayers. If we dont, then Phillip Morris is going to be setting the agenda when it comes to this product. Advocacy groups in the United States do seem to be aware of the potentially imminent arrival of heat-not-burn tobacco. Erika Sward, a spokesperson for the American Lung Association, told Healthline that theyve been following the development of these products since they came on the market in Japan. We assumed it was a matter of time before Philip Morris International would want to introduce the product into the U.S., she said. While Sward wouldnt give a direct comment on the potential of the device (for harm or good), owing to a lack of research thus far, she says that theyre following the FDA review closely. We look forward to a very thorough review of the data that we have, that the public has, as well as FDA doing a very careful review of how this product may impact the public health and whether or not ultimately it is appropriate to allow the product to be sold here in the states, said Sward. This article first appeared on HealthLine.com. A Japanese teenager is suing her local government after her public high school forced her to dye her hair black, the student alleges. The teenager, whose name has not been released, was a student at the Kaifukan School in Habikino City, Japan. According to local media, the school has a policy that all students must have black hair to attend. GRANDMA OUTRAGED AT SCHOOL CALLING 11-YEAR-OLD'S DRESS 'DISTRACTING' Unfortunately, the 18-year-old had naturally brown hair. The suit says that the students mom reached out to the school before her enrollment, informing them of her daughters lighter hair color. Though she ensured her daughters hair color was natural some schools in Japan force lighter-haired students to prove their hair color by carrying photos of them as children the school still forced her to dye her hair black to conform to the rules. Now the teen is saying that the hair dye, which they forced her to do as often as every four days, left burns and rashes to her scalp. The dyeing damaged the health of the scalp and hair, the plaintiff claims. [Natural] physical features were negated and mental anguish resulted. The family is suing the Osaka Prefectural Government for 2.2 million yen (about $19,300) in damages she incurred from the hair dyeing and abuse. This comes after they tried to file a complaint with the school once the incidents occurred. The complaint was dismissed and the student did not return to school beginning September 2016. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS Masahiko Takahashi, the head of the school, declined to comment on the open case, but he did confirm that the school has strict rules about hair and dress code. He also said the school has a ban on bleached or lightened hair, but would not confirm if dyeing the hair black is allowed. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper writes that the schools force the students to have dark hair to protect them from being berated by school officials, since light hair is seen as abnormal in Japan. A New Hampshire college student's life could change due to a viral photo. Anok Yai, 19, of Manchester, NH, was attending a homecoming event on Oct. 21 at Howard University in Washington, D.C., when photographer Steven Hall asked to take her photo for his Instagram account. Hall, an alumnus of Howard who works at the school, told The Washington Post he photographs things he finds interesting. I wanted to do as many shoots as possible and to take as many photos of fashionable Howard students as I could, Hall told The Washington Post. My goal was to get 50 or 75 dope photos. Hall said he bumped into Yai and asked to take a few photos of her. WOMAN SUES SEPHORA, CLAIMS LIPSTICK SAMPLE GAVE HER HERPES Mysterious. Just a tall, dark-skinned and insanely beautiful person. I told her I dont know what youve been doing, but you should definitely be photographed and you should be modeling, Hall said. On Oct. 21, Hall uploaded Yais photo to his account with a caption stating: Saw her right at the end of Yardfest. Stunning. The photo had received more than 15,000 likes by Wednesday, and Yai said last week she's heard from three modeling agencies. I got an email from a modeling agency, Yai told The Post. They said they were interested in having me and they had me call them. And they just set up tons of interviews and it just went on from there. The Plymouth State University student said she was born in Egypt until she moved to the U.S. at age 2. She said her familys heritage is Sudanese. Yai said the outpouring she has received from the viral photo was overwhelming. STUDENT CLAIMS SHE WAS CALLED OUT FOR INAPPROPRIATE OUTFIT, UNSURE WHY There was one day where I had a bunch of classes, and I had done about three to four interviews, and my sister kept saying heres another one, and heres another one, she said. And I was nervous because I had just gone from being a random girl living in New Hampshire to an Instagram famous model. I wasnt sure if I could handle all the expectations. The biochemistry student told the Boston Globe she was considering modeling part-time. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS It was a dream that I always wanted, but I wasnt sure if it was going to happen, she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The horrifying attack in lower Manhattan that killed 8 people on Tuesday is a reminder that hardly a day goes by without an Islamic terror attack somewhere in the world. We are now familiar with the post-terror routine when a Western city is attacked. Government leaders note the need to shore up security and assure their people that every protective measure will be taken, TV commentators dutifully state that terrorisms roots are not in Islam but in some other phenomenon. Is it really true that these terrorist attacks have nothing to do with Islam? No. But neither is it true that most Muslims are terrorists or approve of terrorism. The relationship between Islam and terrorism is significantly more complicated than either of those extremes would allow. In order to better understand that relationship we must acknowledge at least three complicating factors: Islams texts, its varied cultural manifestations, and its humanity. The Koran is written in classical Arabic, which the majority of Muslims worldwide cannot read. Therefore, knowledge of Islam comes mostly from the Muslim community rather than directly from the Koran. First, Islam is a text-based religion. The Koran is the supreme Islamic text, and it is supplemented by the hadith which are official collections of reports about Muhammads words and deeds. Both the Koran and the hadith contain passages that can be used to support terrorism and those that can be used against it. One the one hand, there are passages that condone religious warfare (jihad). Although those passages concern conventional warfare rather than modern terrorism, these passages can be drawn upon to support terrorism against Christian nations. Koran 9:5 says, Fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them. Koran 9:111 promises paradise to those who slay and are slain for Allah. On the other hand, there are passages that encourage peaceful coexistence. In the Koran, we read passages such as 109:6, To you be your Way [religion] and to me mine. In another passage, we are told that Allah says, Let there be no compulsion in religion (Koran 2:256). So Islams texts contain both type of passages. To complicate matters further, the Koran is written in classical Arabic, which the majority of Muslims worldwide cannot read. (Muslims believe that the Koran cannot be translated into another language and still remain truly the Word of God.) Therefore, knowledge of Islam comes mostly from the Muslim community rather than directly from the Koran. Second, Islam takes many different shapes. Even though its texts serve as an enduring center point for Koran, the teachings of those texts are interpreted and applied in a wide variety of ways depending upon context. A given manifestation of Islam might be influenced by Western Christianity, Southeast Asian animism, or secular humanism. It will be affected by its adherents language, social and economic status, political situation, and educational level. These influencing factors might tilt a person towards approving of terrorism or away from such approval. Third, Islamic communities are composed of fellow humans. My experience in the Islamic world is one that causes me to believe that the vast majority of Muslims are not inclined to participate in terrorism or approve of it. I lived and worked in a Muslim republic for two years and have spent time in more than 20 other Muslim contexts in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Although in certain situations I have felt threatened, on the whole I have experienced Muslims as peaceful people of goodwill and extraordinary hospitality. How do these three factors help us evaluate and respond to terror attacks waged by Muslim organizations? First, it is inaccurate and dangerous to ignore that terror attacks have their roots in Islam or to minimize the danger represented by ISIS and other similar organizations who justify their warfare by direct appeals to Islams texts. Although we should avoid stigmatizing Muslims in general or alienating them to the point that they are more likely to radicalize, we would be wrong not to recognize ISISs rootedness in Islamic texts. Second, it is inaccurate, dangerous, and inhospitable to depict Muslim countries as being composed of teeming swarms of probable terrorists. To portray our more-than-two-billion Muslim neighbors in such a manner is inaccurate, but it is also a dangerous in that it alienates potential allies who are best equipped to fight back against terror-promoting versions of Islam. Third, it is undemocratic and un-American to try to shut down reasonable exercise of religious freedom. On the one hand, we should rebuke certain voices on the right who wish to provoke or harass Muslim Americans as they go to the mosque or wear their burkas. On the other hand, we should rebuke certain voices on the left who refuse to acknowledge terrorisms ties to Islam or who bristle when Christians extol Jesus to Muslims. As Nabeel Qureshi recently argued, sharing alternative worldviews with Muslims is one of the best methods to address the roots of terror. Islamic texts are problematic, but that doesnt mean my Muslim neighbor should be ostracized. What is true on the micro-level is also true on the macro-level. Terror organizations such as ISIS do in fact have their roots in Islamic texts and traditions. To deny that fact is to misunderstand our enemy. And yet, our public recognition of that fact should not be communicated in ways that misrepresent, disrespect, and provoke our two billion global neighbors who are Muslim. In considering the indictment of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate, I am reminded of former Bill Clinton aide and defender James Carvilles line about the ability of a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Manafort and a longtime business partner, Rick Gates, pleaded not guilty to all 12 counts against them. Manafort is under house arrest after posting an outrageously high bond of $10 million. Gates bond was set at $5 million. George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, has pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI about his foreign contacts with several top Russian officials. Predictably, the major media are celebrating this as the beginning of the end of the nascent Trump presidency. Within hours of the announced indictments, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof rushed into print with a column titled Will Manafort Sing? If so, it may mark the beginning of the end of this presidency. Look for more of this wishful thinking that the establishment, the Democrats and all of the mainstream media have been hoping for since Trump won the election. What Manafort stands accused of has nothing to do with the 2016 election, or with Russian collusion. No one, so far, has produced any evidence the Russians affected the elections outcome. This is all about overturning the results and keeping the swamp full for those who live in it and reject change. Real collusion might be in the significant share of U.S. uranium sold to the Russians during Hillary Clintons tenure as secretary of state (she signed off on the deal), followed by a $500,000 fee paid to her husband for a speech in Moscow and the millions of dollars that subsequently flowed into the Clinton Foundation from uranium investors. Special counsel Robert Mueller and Congress should investigate that Russian connection, along with the role of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign (and the earlier Republican role) in creating an anti-Trump dossier that has been shown to be a fraud and yet was used to justify the appointment of Mueller. If the reason for Muellers appointment is fraudulent, how can it be said that his investigation, which includes staff attorneys who made donations to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, is not tainted? Among the many problems with this investigation is that it has no legal, subject or monetary limits. If Mueller and his associates are unable to prove collusion with the Russians, one can count on them coming up with something else. Far-left members of Congress, such as Maxine Waters, D-Calif., openly state that their objective is to take out the president, and they dont mean to lunch. There is also the matter of leaks from the grand jury. Not surprisingly, the details of the indictments matched the leak to CNN. Unless that network employs mind readers and engages in paranormal activity, those leaks are felonies and the leakers should be prosecuted. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are firing up investigations of their own, including long-overdue looks into various questionable and possibly illegal activities by the Clintons. Congress is the proper avenue for such investigations, not special counsels, who can go rogue if they wish. These seemingly endless accusations and investigations are what so much of the country hates about Washington, the D.C. that increasingly seems to stand for dysfunctional city. No matter which party controls government, the other party does all it can, by whatever means, to undermine those elected. This behavior solves no problems. It is only about grabbing and holding onto power. Given the many moving parts in the Mueller probe and the loss of focus on the primary reason for it, the government may have a difficult time proving its case in court. But with unlimited funds and a staff of lawyers who have Democratic affiliations, you can bet they will try to make more than a ham sandwich out of it. With special counsel Bob Mueller filing charges against Trump associates Paul Manafort and Rick Gates this week, a divided country is quickly moving on from last weeks controversy of the Steele Dossier. The scandalou series of memos which contained allegations of treason and impropriety by then-candidate Trump and his campaign took on renewed life after it was confirmed that the document was little more than a political hit job paid for by both Democratic and Republican operatives. But while the headlines may shift, Muellers attention to a dossier-related scandal must not. Indeed, the dossier is almost certainly connected to the most audacious crime of the 2016 campaign. Americas senior law enforcement and intelligence officials were directly involved in the targeting of a democratically elected president for political assassination. Heres how. Recall that the dossier first gained widespread attention and credibility after then CIA Director John Brennan, DNI Director James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey briefed a summary of the document to a small group of D.C. leaders, including President Obama and then President-elect Trump. Knowledge of the classified briefing leaked in the press shortly thereafter. In the days that followed, the New York Times raised a critical question. By spreading the dossier throughout D.C.s political class, the nations spymasters virtually assured that the documents allegations would be leaked and given undue credibility. So why did they do it? The official response from Brennan, Clapper, and Comey was that they simply wanted to give policymakers the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security. After all, they added, Americas politicians may hear about it. Curiously, however, these spymasters also said that they gave the document no particular credence after having investigated its treasonous allegations. To any reasonable person, this makes absolutely no sense. Why brief a document about Trumps alleged treason, knowing it would leak to the press, when you had already investigated the accusations and found them to be without merit? Indeed, when President Obama was briefed on the dossier and the spymasters justification for doing so, his incredulous response captured the confusion perfectly. What does this have anything to do with anything? America is thus left with an important question first raised by the New York Times some 10 months ago but, conveniently enough, left unanswered. Why would our senior intelligence and law enforcement officials bother highlighting a debunked dossier when they knew it would leak to the press, thereby giving it a degree of credibility and life it wouldnt otherwise deserve? There are three possible answers. First, one or all of these spymasters may have been influenced by their profound dislike of Trump as a person. From the locker room comments to fights with Hollywood personalities, even Trump supporters often find his conduct unpresidential. A strategy of brief and leak would certainly be an effective revenge. A second possibility is that these officials and their political chiefs may have been spooked by known or suspected connections between Trumps campaign and Russian operatives. After all, they had heard months of Trumps allegedly soft views on Russia and its former spy president, Vladimir Putin. In short, Obama officials may have been fearful that a corrupted President Trump would shut down any collusion investigation before the facts were known. Putting aside whether theres any truth to these fears, it would still be wildly illegal for Americas spymasters to leak information to the media designed to damage a president. Officials working for the CIA and FBI are strictly regulated regarding their political activity, not to mention barred from disclosing classified or protected government information. And that suggests a third and much more likely motivation of the intentional leakers: politics. The Obama administration had every reason to believe that Trump and a Republican Congress would reverse Obamas legacy from the nuclear deal with Iran to health care reform. Republicans were also poised to add several conservative Supreme Court justices to the court, altering the direction of the country for decades to come. Its reasonable to believe, then, that leaking a dossier alleging treason might severely wound Trump and his agenda for the duration of his presidency. Which begs the question: which spymaster had the greatest motivation to try to bring down the president? And was he alone in his efforts? Heres what we know. On June 8, 2017, former FBI Director Comey acknowledged that he had a secret relationship with at least one newspaper with whom he shared classified or proprietary government information that advanced articles critical of the president. Subsequent analysis showed that the former director might have been engaged in this covert media operation for far longer and in many more press placements than he has acknowledged to date. We also know that Comey could manipulate D.C.s culture of leaks to accomplish his personal agenda. When asked whether he anticipated the leak of a letter to Congress on a separate matter, he replied, Of course. I know how Congress works. In sum, Comey admitted to having the motivation, access, and ability to conduct what would effectively be a covert influence operation designed to damage the president. But did he act alone? Reporting by the New York Times suggests not. According to the Grey Lady, there was a wholesale effort by the Obama administration to spread or disseminate classified information throughout the government and into the public domain that dealt with possible contacts between associates of Trump and the Russians. In short, there were others many others who were joining Comey in a similar brief to leak operation designed to throw sand in the gears of a Trump presidency. Regardless of who was involved or their precise motivation, one thing is certain: the spymasters decision to spread the dossiers accusations contributed to nearly a year of political chaos that has roiled the nation. Indeed, opponents of the president have repeatedly used the dossier as the foundation for their call for his impeachment. Democrats like chief investigator Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., highlight the document and its foreign author again and again to proclaim or suggest that Trump was either a secret Russian agent or had been blackmailed into doing Moscows bidding. The message was clear: Trump must go. Yet even if one agrees that Trump is not fit to serve, voters of all stripes should be outraged by the spymasters attempts to damage him. Indeed, one can disagree with Trumps agenda or find him personally distasteful but that does not give license to ignore unlawful behavior by Americas law enforcement and intelligence communities. Said differently, we cannot support an illicit political assassination simply because it brings about misfortune to those we oppose. Accordingly, its time for Mueller to investigate our national security community with the same ferocity that hes shown in his likely prosecution of Trump associates. Its time to investigate the scandal of Americas spymasters. By nominating Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve, President Trump is elevating a nominal Republican but also an Obama administration appointee to the chairmanship of our nations central bank. Many consider the chairmanship to be the second-most powerful position in the U.S. government. This is not the first time something similar has happened. In 2006 President George W. Bush appointed Ben Bernanke, also a nominal Republican at the time, who on leaving the Federal Reserve registered as a Democrat. No wonder that Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and John Kerry of Massachusetts publicly rejoiced when Bernanke was appointed. They correctly surmised that he was closer to them philosophically than to President Bush. Democrats should be equally pleased about the Powell nomination. This puts someone in charge of the Federal Reserve who is more aligned philosophically with Schumer than with President Trump. Ironically, it was mistaken judgments by Bush appointee Bernanke that brought on the Crash of 2008, which then ruined the economic record of the Bush presidency. Bernanke helped blow up the housing bubble with loose monetary policy and as late as 2007 refused to acknowledge any threats from the mortgage sector. The trigger for the Crash was the chairmans stubborn refusal to reconsider the imposition of mark to market accounting on U.S. banks. This form of accounting reflects the current market value of assets and liabilities. Steve Forbes accurately identified mark to market regulations as mark to make believe. They were guaranteed to make the entire banking system insolvent. When Bernanke finally relented and announced the termination of mark to market the stock market bottomed only a few days later and thereafter soared as more easy money was poured in. These policies, cheered on by the Democrats, represented true trickle-down economics. They helped those already rich, not the poor or the middle class. During the Crash, Bernanke devised a novel monetary policy that was remarkably unsupported either by economic evidence or theory. Federal Reserve economists acknowledged that they could not model it. The stated purpose was to protect Main Street, although it was obvious that Wall Street and not Main Street was being bailed out. What was not so obvious was that the real intention was to rescue a tottering federal government debt system. It is illegal for the federal government to sell its debt directly to the Federal Reserve. This prohibition has been circumvented by the device of first selling the debt to Wall Street, which then resells it to the Federal Reserve. The latter buys the debt with newly created money, so in effect the government has simply created new money and used it to finance itself. The system is so complicated that few people, even in Congress, understand how it works. Bernanke feared that the federal government would have too few buyers for its debt if Wall Street firms went under, so he moved to save them and at the same time guarantee a steady supply of buyers of U.S. Treasury debt. Some of Bernankes steps in 2009, in particular the buying of mortgages, violated the plain language of the Federal Reserve Act, but Congress obliged with legislative fixes after the fact. Bernanke was also trying to reassure foreign central banks, which were also buying U.S. bonds from Wall Street. Toward this end, many of the direct bank bailouts by the Federal Reserve went to foreign banks. Current Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen was a close ally and acolyte of Bernanke. She continued and protected the system that he had built, in particular by refusing to sell government and government-guaranteed bonds purchased during the Crash, even after the economy was gaining ground. This was further evidence that the Federal Reserves actions had not been about the economy, but rather about shoring up the shaky government debt market. Jerome Powell joined the Federal Reserve in 2012. Before that, he was a Wall Streeter even when based in Washington, and a prominent environmentalist. In his early career he was a protege of Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, who served under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Brady persuaded the first President Bush to make a deal with Democrats to raise taxes, despite the presidents read my lips pledge not to do so. This bad advice is generally thought to have led to President Bushs loss in his re-election bid. On the Federal Reserve, Powell has been a good soldier. He never voted against the wishes of either Bernanke or Yellen. He vigorously opposed legislation proposed by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to audit the Federal Reserve. The Paul legislation would have penetrated some of the secrecy of the Federal Reserve, which finances itself off-budget with newly created money, notwithstanding the Constitutions requirement that government spending be approved by Congress. Powell can be relied on to oppose any reform of the Federal Reserve or any reconsideration of the Bernanke system, despite the dismal record of the U.S. economy since the Crash. Powell was reportedly favored by current Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who earlier worked for Goldman Sachs and liberal financier and donor George Soros. Mnuchin made campaign contributions to President Obama, Hillary Clinton and even Kamala Harris, who is now a Democratic senator from California. He is widely perceived to represent the interests of Wall Street and of those with Democratic leanings in the Trump administration. Earlier this week, the government revealed that a grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C., indicted a former Trump presidential campaign chairman and his former deputy and business partner for numerous felonies. Both were accused of working as foreign agents and failing to report that status to the federal government, using shell corporations to launder income and obstruction of justice by lying to the federal government. The financial crimes are alleged to have occurred from 2008 to 2014, and the obstruction charges from 2014 to 2017. At the same time it announced the above, the government revealed that a low-level former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and become a government witness. Does any of this relate to President Donald Trump? Here is the back story. At the same time that Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were guiding the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, Russian agents were manipulating American social media sites so as to arouse chaos in general and animosity toward Hillary Clinton in particular. The Department of Justice appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as independent counsel to determine whether any Americans had criminally helped the Russians. The alleged crimes of Manafort and Gates appear to have nothing to do with Trump, nor have they any facial relationship to the Russians. So why were these two indicted by a grand jury hearing evidence about alleged American assistance to Russian interference with the 2016 presidential campaign? When prosecutors confront a complex series of potentially criminal events, they often do not know at the outset of their investigation where the evidence will lead them. Sometimes they come upon a person who they believe has knowledge of facts they seek and that person declines to speak with them. Such a refusal to speak to the government is perfectly lawful in America, yet it often triggers a prosecution of the potential witness so that prosecutors may squeeze him -- not literally, of course -- for evidence to which they believe he can lead them. The ultimate target of Muellers investigation is President Trump. It is standard operating procedure when prosecutors have a high-level target to charge those below the target with something just to get them to cooperate. Though the charges against Manafort and Gates need not be related to the Russians or to Trump, they must be real. It's clear they are, as each is facing more than 20 years in prison. Mueller believes that that prospect is enough to dispatch their lawyers to make deals with him. The danger of such a deal is that Manafort and Gates may offer to tell Mueller what they think he wants to hear -- even if it is not truthful -- so that they can have their prison exposure lessened. There is more danger in the seemingly smallest of this weeks Mueller-generated events. Papadopoulos was interviewed voluntarily by the FBI on Jan. 27. He was arrested on July 27 for lying to FBI agents during that interview. In a secret federal court proceeding on Oct. 5, he pleaded guilty. In a profound miscarriage of justice, federal law permits FBI agents to lie to us but makes it a crime for us to lie to them. Nevertheless, why was the Papadopoulos guilty plea kept secret? What was he doing between his arrest and his plea and between his plea and its revelation? Judges are very reluctant to close their courtroom doors in any criminal proceeding, even if both the prosecutors and the defense counsel request it. The public has a right to know whom the government is prosecuting and what deals or punishments it may be obtaining. Yet if prosecutors can convince a judge that public knowledge of the existence of a guilty plea might harm an ongoing criminal investigation, the judge can keep the plea secret. That is apparently what happened here. It appears that Papadopoulos was gathering evidence for Mueller, probably by talking to his former Trump campaign colleagues while wired -- a process that would have been fruitless if his guilty plea had become public. Because Papadopoulos admitted under oath that he lied to FBI agents, the courts will treat his guilt as certain. That gives Mueller great leverage with him. It also gives Papadopoulos great incentive to help Mueller -- truthfully or not -- because he knows he is going to federal prison. He also knows that if Mueller likes what he hears, a five-year prison term could be reduced to six months. Hence, Papadopoulos could be a treasure-trove for Mueller on the production of any evidence linking the Trump campaign and the Russians and any evidence of Trumps personal knowledge or acquiescence. Papadopoulos has already produced a wild tale about meetings with a Russian professor and a female Russian government agent in London that the FBI apparently believes. Is this any way to conduct a prosecution? I have argued for years that squeezing defendants and witnesses by threats and promises to get them to spill the beans is a form of extortion or bribery -- not much different from the extortion and bribery that the government regularly prosecutes. "You tell us what we want to hear and we will ask a judge to go easy on you. If not, you will suffer great losses." It is bad enough that the feds can legally lie to us and get away with it, but can they also legally threaten and bribe witnesses to testify against us and get away with it? Can they do this to the president? In a word, yes. My arguments have fallen on deaf ears. Squeezing witnesses and defendants is a way of life for federal prosecutors. For the president, it is the tip of a dangerous iceberg. Editor's note: The following column first appeared in The Washington Post. The indictment of Paul Manafort and his longtime business partner Rick Gates should have come as no surprise to anyone. Indeed, it was precisely because of news reports in the summer of 2016 on some of the same matters contained in the federal grand jurys indictment charges of illicit cash payments to Manafort by the party of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and Manaforts assistance with undisclosed foreign lobbying that Manafort was fired from Donald Trumps campaign (though somehow Gates managed to stay on). Special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs court filing tells a sordid tale of influence-peddling on behalf of Yanukovych, Vladimir Putins man in Kiev. But while Mondays revelations were in no way an indictment of Trump-Russia collusion, they were a searing indictment of Trumps judgment in bringing Manafort into his campaign in the first place. My first job in Washington, in 1989, was at Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, long before Manafort began working for Yanukovych. Trump was a client then and has known Manafort for decades. Did it not occur to Trump that, given Manaforts recent client roster, this was probably not the person he wanted running his presidential campaign or that hiring him might come back to haunt Trump as president one day? How was being a pro-Putin lobbyist not disqualifying for Trump? For his part, Manafort is a victim of his own hubris. He would probably not be in legal jeopardy today if he had not raised his head and become the public face of the Trump campaign. In Washington, you can line your pockets with work for Putin-backed clients, or you can be a public figure leading a presidential campaign, but you cant do both. Manafort reportedly tried. According to the indictment, he was engaged in money laundering of his Ukraine payments during his time on the Trump campaign and afterward. Similarly, the courts statement of the offense on George Papadopoulos for providing false statements to the FBI contains no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion but shows bad judgment on the part of Trumps campaign for bringing Papadopoulos aboard. Papadopoulos was such a junior foreign policy figure that his announcement as a member of Trumps foreign policy team in March 2016 was met with this mocking Post headline: One of Trumps foreign policy advisers is a 2009 college grad who lists Model UN as a credential. The statement goes into great detail about Papadopouloss efforts to court a Kremlin-connected professor, a niece of Putin (who was not actually his niece) and a Russian [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] connection. But Muellers court filing also shows that those contacts produced little. Papadopoulos was unable to set up the meeting between Trump and Putin in Moscow that the Russians desperately wanted. (A footnote in the plea deal quotes an email between campaign officials that said, We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips.) When it became clear the Putin meeting would not happen, Papadopoulos tried to pitch himself to travel to Moscow to represent the campaign, which also never happened. In other words, Papadopoulos was a peripheral figure whose failing efforts to impress the campaign with his Russian contacts seem to have come to naught. Still, why bring him on in the first place? We know that in early 2016 Trump was having trouble attracting talented foreign policy advisers, but this was ridiculous. A presidential front-runner doesnt bring people onto his foreign policy advisory team who still consider U.S. Representative at the 2012 Geneva International Model United Nations to be resume-worthy. This was a guy who would have a hard time landing a job as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill, and suddenly, hes conducting back-door diplomacy with Russian officials and doing interviews with the Russian press in the name of the Trump campaign? What could go wrong? Much has been made of the professor telling Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton and thousands of emails of Clinton. But the document does not indicate that anyone at the Trump campaign took Papadopoulos up on this. Moreover, WikiLeaks did not release emails of Clinton but Democratic National Committee emails so its not clear that the professors offer was any more truthful than his introduction to Putins niece. Because Papadopoulos has been a government informant since his arrest in July, perhaps there is more to come on this front. But as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy points out, the statement of offense seems to be more exculpatory than incriminating for Trump: If the Russians were offering Clinton emails through Papadopoulos, that would mean Trump and his campaign had nothing to do with the acquisition of the emails and thus had not committed a crime. Accepting dirt from Russian sources would have been unsavory if it happened. But thats arguably less unsavory than the Clinton campaign payingfor dirt on Trump from Russian sources. In other words, theres still no more public evidence of criminal collusion with Russia than there was before charges were brought. But there is plenty of evidence that the Trump campaign had catastrophically bad judgment in choosing its most senior and junior advisers and that Russias spy network sought to exploit that weakness. Former first lady Michelle Obama explained Wednesday at a summit in Chicago that she believes men are entitled, and that women protect them too much. Speaking at the first Obama Foundation international summit, Obama -- one of the events headliners -- said that men are essentially babied and protected by women, while women are raised to be strong. Its like the problem in the world today is we love our boys, and we raise our girls, Obama said. We raise them to be strong, and sometimes we take care not to hurt men -- and I think we pay for that a little bit. Yall should get you some friends, Obama joked. And talk to each other, because thats the other thing [women] do -- we straighten each other out on some things, our girlfriends. She continued: Its powerful to have strong men, but what does that strength mean? You know, does it mean respect? Does it mean responsibility? Does it mean compassion? Obama went on to question if women protect men to the point they feel entitled and self-righteous. Are we protecting our men too much so they feel a little entitled and self-righteous sometimes? But, thats kind of on us too as women and mothers, as we nurture men and push girls to be perfect," Obama said. Separate comments made by the former first lady came under fire early last month when she suggested that Republicans are essentially all men, all white. China's first oceangoing fishery survey ship, Song Hang, will be fully operational by mid-November and will finish its first survey mission by early December, a senior marine scientist said on Wednesday. Song Hang, China's first oceangoing fishery survey ship, sails toward Shanghai's Luchao Port on Monday. [Photo provided to China Daily] The Ministry of Agriculture and the Shanghai government invested about 250 million yuan ($37.7 million) to build the ship. After two years of construction, it arrived at Luchao Port in Shanghai on Monday, according to Shanghai Ocean University. The vessel is named after the university's first training ship, which was built in 1916 but sunk by Japan during World War II. It weighs 3,166 metric tons, is 85 meters long and has a top speed of 15 knots. It is capable of a 60-day voyage of 10,000 nautical miles (18,520 kilometers) with 59 crew members. Its primary mission is to survey fishery resources in the open sea far beyond the coastal region, said Chen Xinjun, the president of the university's College of Marine Sciences. The ship will operate in the northern and southeastern Pacific Ocean, as well as in the southwestern Atlantic and other seas, he said. It will search for tuna, squid, mackerel, Antarctic krill and other species. "The ship will improve our nation's control and management over its ocean fishery resources, collect more robust maritime scientific data and protect our maritime interests," he said. China's far-ocean fishing operations began three decades ago, but the production of related goods was only 1.3 percent of the world's total because of technological limitations, he added. "The new ship adds capabilities for distant sea operations," he said. "It has great significance in tapping into China's ocean fishery resources, protecting ocean ecology and transforming China into a maritime power." Song Hang is also equipped with five laboratories for maritime research ranging from maritime biodiversity to climate and water surveys. It can collect biological samples, survey the sea floor and monitor weather and hydrologic patterns, Chen said. "It will be a platform to train more highly talented people in fisheries," he said, and for Chinese and foreign scientists to conduct various maritime research. He said the ship will be managed entirely by the university. The vessel is now undergoing final setup of its fishing and research systems. It will complete a trial voyage and be fully operational by mid-November, Chen said. It is expected to begin its first ocean fishery resource survey mission - commissioned by the Shanghai government - around late November, and complete it by early December. Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo announced Tuesday that he'll seek the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado, in what's shaping up to be a crowded GOP primary field. Tancredo, who failed in previous gubernatorial bids in 2010 and 2014 after serving in Congress from 1999 to 2009, will test his luck for a third time. However, his entry into an already congested Republican field of eight candidates wont come without a fight, in what he predicted will be the ugliest campaign youll see. The other side has only one chance of beating me. And that is to turn me into the biggest devil who ever lived, a racist, a white supremacist, all that junk, Tancredo told the Denver Post. Tancredo's announcement, posted on Facebook, came just weeks after he reportedly met with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon in Colorado, where the two discussed Tancredo's potential run for governor, the Post reported. Bannon, who reclaimed his position at the helm of Breitbart News, has vowed to recruit candidates with the goal of defeating GOP incumbents who don't support the agenda of President Donald Trump. "Nobody's safe. We're coming after all of them," Bannon told Fox News in October. "And we're going to win." Tancredo, who mirrors Trumps tough stance on immigration, has drawn attention in the past for claiming that former President Barack Obama was a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda. He also accepted a speaking invitation earlier this year to an event hosted by the VDARE Foundation, deemed as a white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. However Tancredo, as well as the Colorado Republican Party, describes the group as a left-wing activist organization, according to the Post. Tancredo kicked off his campagin Wednesday with a series of events throughout the state. In the 2014 GOP primary race, Tancredo lost by 3 percentage points to Bob Beauprez. As the investigation into Russias involvement in the 2016 election continues, President Trumps former campaign adviser Carter Page has found himself at the center of the controversy. Page was asked last year by congressional investigators to turn over records from the past seven years pertaining to Russian contacts and communications. And Page also was the subject of a surveillance warrant obtained by the FBI and Department of Justice as part of their probe, according to a memo released by House Republicans earlier this month. Heres a look at who Page is and how hes connected to Trump and the Russia investigation. Who is Carter Page? Page, 46, is the founder and managing partner at Global Energy Capital LLC, an investment service company in New York. He was an investment banker for Merrill Lynch for seven years, having spent time in London and Moscow, in addition to New York, his biography on the companys website states. Much of Pages life is relatively unknown. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and has an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business. What is his connection to Trump? Page is a former foreign policy adviser to Trump. He left the campaign after only a few months, following questions about his connections to Russian officials. He also was mentioned in former British spy Christopher Steele's controversial dossier -- a 35-page document he compiled for opposition research firm Fusion GPS. White House officials have sought to downplay the role he played in the campaign. "I did nothing that could even possibly be viewed as helping them in any way," Page has told Fox News about his conversations with Russian officials. He also told Fox News he became a liability pretty quick on the campaign because of his Russian connections. What do we know about Page's connections to Russian officials? Page spent three years in Moscow, where he opened a Merrill Lynch office, according to his biography. Russian intelligence agents once unsuccessfully tried to recruit Page as a spy in 2013, Foreign Policy has reported. Page contended that any information he shared with Russians was nothing more than "the same energy documents that [he] sent [and] gave" to his students at NYU. In a 2013 letter, Page bragged that he was an informal adviser to the Kremlin, TIME reported. He was questioned about his Russian contacts by the FBI in 2013, as well, according to the magazine. Page testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he had contact with a high-level Russian official while on a trip to Russia in 2016, according to transcripts of the hearing. During the trip, Page said he briefly said hello to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Page also testified that he had alerted then-Sen. Jeff Sessions now the U.S. attorney general of the trip he took to Russia, contradicting previous testimony given by Sessions. Additionally, Page testified that he did not have information about Russian election interference. Why was Page under surveillance? According to the memo released by the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year, the infamous Trump dossier "formed an essential part" of applications by the FBI and DOJ to spy on Page. The dossier claimed Page met with Russian oil magnate Igor Sechin; Page told Fox News that hes never met the man. In requesting the surveillance warrant, investigators did not reveal the partisan nature of the dossier or that it was paid for, at least in part, by the Democratic National Committee and the campaign for Hillary Clinton, the memo alleged. Republicans have said the memo showed improper surveillance techniques used by the Justice Department and FBI; Trump said the document totally vindicates him in the Russia probe. But Democrats hope to release their own rebuttal memo soon that purportedly shows distortions and inaccuracies in the first documents. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The fix was in after all. Last year's presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was rigged by the Democratic National Committee - just as Sanders' supporters suspected - to hand the nomination to Clinton, according to a bombshell claim by Donna Brazile. The onetime Clinton confidante, CNN commentator and former interim party boss made the explosive claim Thursday while touting a new book that could sever her ties to Team Clinton for good. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clintons team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested, Brazile wrote in a piece for Politico Magazine. By Sept. 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart, Brazile said. The proof, according to Brazile, was a joint fundraising agreement document between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund and Hillary for America. It had been signed in August 2015, four months after Clinton announced her candidacy and a year before she officially secured the nomination over Sanders. HILLARY CLINTON SAID TRUMP'S REACTION TO NYC TRUCK RAMPAGE LACKED 'EMPATHY' The agreementsigned by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Eliasspecified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the partys finances, strategy, and all the money raised, Brazile wrote. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. Brazile took over as the interim DNC chairman in 2016 when Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out as chairman over the emails, which indicated the party organization unfairly favored Clinton over Sanders during the primary. The ardent supporters of Sanders, the Democratic socialist, have long accused the party establishment of actively taking steps to benefit Clinton during the primary. In a statement to Fox News, Wasserman Schultz didnt directly address Braziles claims, but defended her tenure leading the committee. "It was a tremendous honor to be asked by President Obama to serve as chair of the DNC, Wasserman Schultz said Thursday. I am proud of the work our team did to support Democrats up and down the ballot in the 2016 election and to re-elect the president in 2012. DNC spokesman Xochitl Hinojosa, who works under current DNC chairman Tom Perez, told Fox News the partys official policy is to not take sides during the primaries. The DNC must remain neutral in the presidential primary process, and there shouldnt even be a perception that the DNC is interfering in that process, Hinojosa said. She said joint fundraising committees were created between the DNC and the Clinton and Sanders campaigns during the 2016 cycle but Clinton was the only candidate who raised money for the party. The piece, titled Inside Hillary Clintons secret takeover of the DNC, is excerpted from Braziles forthcoming book, which is being published this month. After taking over, she said she went in search for evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary. I had been wondering why it was that I couldnt write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn, she wrote. Well, here was the answer. Its typical, she said, for candidates to make such arrangements with party organizations but after theyve won the nomination. Brazile said the arrangement does not appear to be illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead, she said. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the partys integrity. Sanders has not yet commented on Braziles story, but other progressives are expressing outrage. During an afternoon appearance on CNN, Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another favorite of the liberal base, said yes when asked if she thinks the primary was rigged. This is a real problem, she told anchor Jake Tapper. What weve got to do, as Democrats, now is weve got to hold this party accountable. Fox News' Brooke Singman and Dave Sweet contributed to this report. Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton blasted President Trump for his reaction to Tuesdays terror attack in New York City during an appearance on The Daily Show. Clinton, who was plugging her book What Happened on Wednesdays show, told host Trevor Noah that Trump lacked empathy when he publicly responded to the horrific attack. "What you want in a president, is [someone who will try] to bring a country together, talk about what happened with the event they're concerned about but not point fingers, not scapegoat and not try to set Americans against each other, Clinton told Noah. "He just doesn't have any empathy," she said. "You can disagree with someone over all kinds of partisan issues, but you want a president who can try to put himself into the shoes, the feelings of someone else, and he has not been able to do that." Trump came under fire for tweeting the suspect linked to Tuesdays terrorist attack that killed eight people entered the U.S. through a program called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. Trump called the program a Chuck Schumer beauty. SCHUMER HITS TRUMP FOR POLITICIZING NYC ATTACK BUT HE DID SAME THING AFTER LAS VEGAS Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, was part of a group of Republicans and Democrats who backed a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013 to end the program as part of a broader bipartisan bill to overhaul U.S. immigration laws. Schumer tweeted back: I guess its not too soon to politicize a tragedy. Following the attack, Trump has called for the suspect to be sent to Guantanamo Bay and be given the death penalty. Clinton was also asked by Noah if there was a difference between her group funding an anti-Trump dossier and Trumps campaign advisers allegedly colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Of course there is [a difference,] Clinton told Noah. I think most serious people understand that. "This was research started by a Republican donor during the Republican primary and then when Trump got the nomination for the Republican party the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer (Marc Elias) and said: 'Would you like us to continue it?' And he said yes. He's an experienced lawyer, he knows what the law is, he knows what opposition research is, Clinton explained. The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, confirmed last week it originally retained the political research firm Fusion GPS to scour then-candidate Trumps background for negative information. Later, reports revealed the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee continued funding Fusions work after the original GOP source lost interest. Trump called the revelation a disgrace. TRUMP CALLS FOR DEATH PENALTY FOR NYC TERRORIST IN WAKE OF HALLOWEEN ATTACK Clinton minimized the impact of the dossier during the interview with Noah, noting it was released following the election. "And what also didn't come out -- which I think is an even bigger problem as I write in the book -- is that the American people didn't even know that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign because of connections with Russia starting in the summer of 2016," she said. Clinton also alleged Trump had to know his team was contacting the Russian government for help in the election. I mean, he has to know -- we'll find out what he knew and how involved he was -- but he had to know that people were making outreach to Russians, to the highest levels of the Kremlin, in order to help him, to hurt me, but more importantly to sow this divisiveness," she added. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates fought in federal court Thursday to alleviate their GPS monitoring system, as well as the terms of their home confinement after both pleaded not guilty to 12 counts by a federal grand jury. Manafort and Gates appeared before Federal Judge Amy Jackson on Thursday afternoon, after being indicted as part of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign officials in the 2016 presidential election. Manafort appeared in court with his attorney Kevin Downing. Gates, who was previously represented by a public defender and just Wednesday brought on a team of white-collar attorneys Walter Mack and Shan Wu, appeared in court Thursday with Wu. Thursday is the first time Fox News has learned of a GPS monitoring system, which both Manafort and Gates have been wearing since being taken into custody on Monday. While unconfirmed, a GPS monitoring system is typically an ankle bracelet, or something similar. Both Manafort and Gates are working to alleviate the GPS tracker. Gates lawyer filed a motion Thursday, and Manaforts legal team is expected to do the same later Thursday. As a U.S. citizen, Mr. Manafort only has U.S. passports in his name. Although it might be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one U.S. passport, as individuals who travel abroad extensively no doubt know. Mr. Manafort has strong family and community ties and does not pose a serious risk of flight, Downing said. Gates attorney asked the judge for an exception this weekend so that he could attend his childrens sports activities. After the government had no objection, Jackson allowed the exception. But in an apparent reaction to Downings statements made outside the courthouse on Monday after the indictment, Jackson warned attorneys about talking to the media. This is a criminal trial, not a public relations campaign, Jackson said Thursday. I expect the lawyers in this case to do their talking in the courtroom, not on the courthouse steps. On Monday, Downing made a statement to the press saying that President Trump was correct. There is no evidence the Trump Campaign colluded with the Russian government, Downing said, referencing Trumps earlier tweets. A claim that maintaining offshore accounts to bring all your funds into the United States, as a scheme to conceal from the United States government, is ridiculous. Manafort and Gates are expected back in court on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. for a bond hearing. Currently, unsecured bond is set for Manafort at $10 million, and $5 million for Gates. But Judge Jackson said she is very concerned that an unsecured bond is not sufficient, alluding to the possibility that a traditional bond will be set during Mondays hearing. Manafort and Gates have both turned over their passports to the FBI. Manafort and Gates were the first charges in Muellers probe into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign officials in the 2016 presidential election. The special counsels office told Fox News that the counts include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading Foreign Agent Registration (FARA) statements, false statements and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign banks and financial accounts. According to the indictment, reviewed by Fox News, between at least 2006 and 2015, Manafort and Gates acted as unregistered agents of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions, a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was president from 2010 to 2014, and the Opposition Bloc. Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their work in Ukraine. The indictment says that Manafort and Gates laundered the money through scores of the United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts in order to hide Ukraine payments from U.S. authorities. More than $75 million flowed through offshore accounts. Manafort, alone, allegedly laundered more than $18 million which was used by the former Trump campaign chairman to buy property, goods, and services in the U.S. while concealing that income from the U.S. Treasury and the Justice Department. Manaforts legal team said that they would like the trial to begin in April 2018. Fox News' Jake Gibson and Allie Raffa contributed to this report. Sen. Bob Menendez will not face a new bribery and corruption trial after all, federal prosecutors said last month. The Department of Justice had announced earlier this year that it intended to retry the New Jersey Democrat after a federal judge declared a mistrial in the case in November, but ultimately walked away from the pursuit. Menendez was accused of accepting a plethora of donations and gifts from a wealthy friend in exchange for political influence. Both Menendez and the doctor, Salomon Melgen, maintained their innocence. From the very beginning, I never wavered in my innocence and my belief that justice would prevail. I am grateful that the Department of Justice has taken the time to reevaluate its case and come to the appropriate conclusion, Menendez said on social media following the announcement. Menendez is up for re-election this year. He was selected to replace former Gov. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., in the Senate in 2005. He rejoined the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee as its ranking member on Feb. 6, after stepping down from the post when he was indicted in 2015. Read on for a look at what Menendez was accused of and what happened in the trial. What was Menendez accused of? Menendez, 64, accepted an abundance of campaign donations, gifts and vacations from Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist, prosecutors alleged when Menendez faced trial in 2017. In return, prosecutors claimed, he used his position to lobby on behalf of Melgens business interests. Melgen allegedly directed more than $750,000 in campaign contributions to entities that supported Menendez, according to the indictment, which prosecutors said were inducements to get Menendez to use his influence on Melgen's behalf. Prosecutors have also accused Menendez of trying to hide the gifts. Melgen paid for Menendez and his girlfriend to stay for three nights at a Parisian hotel where rooms typically cost about $1,500 per night and allowed the senator the use of his private jet, according to prosecutors. Federal prosecutors said that Menendez sold his office for a lifestyle that he couldnt afford. The indictment also alleged that Menendez pressured State Department officials to give visas to three young women described as Melgen's girlfriends. What was the senators defense? Both Menendez and Melgen pleaded not guilty and Menendez has vehemently denied the accusations against him. Throughout the original trial, defense attorneys sought to prove that Menendez and Melgen have been friends since before the former became a senator, and the trips were nothing more than friends traveling together. Is there anything else to know about Salomon Melgen? Melgen, 63, was convicted of 67 counts of health care fraud in April 2017 in what the Palm Beach Post called one of the biggest Medicare fraud cases in the U.S. Melgen was sentenced to 17 years in prison on Feb. 22 for Medicare fraud, as he persuaded patients to undergo treatments they did not necessarily need. Aside from Menendez, Melgen has given significant amounts of money to a variety of Democratic lawmakers, according to public records. How did the trial end? After the jury again informed the judge they could not reach a decision, U.S. District Court Judge William H. Walls declared a mistrial, saying he found no alternative. The mistrial was declared on Nov. 16. The Associated Press contributed to this report. America First Policies, the pro-Trump non-profit that Rick Gates helped found, recently received a formal request from the office of the special counsel to retain its records for possible production to that office, Fox News has learned. Multiple sources confirmed that America First had received the special counsels instruction within the last ten days. Gates left the organization in March, two months after the presidents inauguration. At the time, AFP spokesperson Katrina Pierson denied that Gatess ties to Paul Manafort had anything to do with Gatess departure and stated: Rick volunteered to help set up the organization and build out the administrative tasks. Now that everything is up and running, he has decided to move on to his next project. We are appreciative of his work. The timing of the special counsels expression of interest in AFPs records is curious, as most legal analysts assessed that the indictment of Manafort and Gates, to which each has pleaded not guilty, had been completed prior to the last ten days. At the same time, a spokesman for Gates this week termed the indictment hasty and unexpected, to the point that Gates was represented at his arraignment not by his own attorney but by a public defender. The recent determination to acquire records from AFP could reflect a lack of confidence on the part of the special counsel in the the existing indictment of Gates, and a desire to secure additional evidence against him; an intention to signal to Gates that the special counsel is looking to file additional charges against him, as a way of compelling his cooperation; or a totally separate avenue of investigation being pursued the Mueller team. Contacted by Fox News, a spokesperson for AFP, Erin Montgomery, told Fox News: "As a matter of practice, America First Policies does not respond to specific questions about legal or other proceedings or investigative inquiries about persons or entities formerly associated with the organization, but is fully committed to complying with any reasonable request for information that might relate to such a proceeding. Nonetheless, we believe it is important to clarify that Rick Gates association with America First Policies was informal and limited, and, as noted in press reports, ended around March of this year. Rick Gates, a business associate of President Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty Friday to federal conspiracy and false-statement charges stemming from Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Like Manafort, Gates was hit with new charges on Feb. 22 that included allegations of tax evasion and bank fraud. Gates, 45, and Manafort, 68, were initially indicted in October, with the accusation of a multimillion-dollar money-laundering conspiracy tied to lobbying work for a Russia-friendly Ukrainian political party. But because of Gates' guilty plea agreement, Mueller has moved to drop the 22 tax and bank fraud charges against him. Heres a look at who Gates is and how he is tied to Trump and the Russia investigation. Who is Rick Gates? A reported protege of Manaforts, Gates, too, worked for the Trump campaign and outlasted Manafort. Like Manafort, Gates helped wrangle delegates at the high-stakes 2016 Republican National Convention. The onetime deputy campaign manager also helped start the nonprofit America First Policies (AFP), created to advance the White Houses agenda. But Gates eventually left the group, reportedly due to his ties to Manafort. Erin Montgomery, a spokesperson for AFP, distanced the nonprofit from Gates. "We believe it is important to clarify that Rick Gates' association with America First Policies was informal and limited, and, as noted in press reports, ended around March of this year," Montgomery told Fox News. But even after leaving the nonprofit, Gates still visited the White House multiple times, the Daily Beast reported. The publication alleged that Gates is disliked by Trump. How is he connected to the Russia investigation? During Manaforts work with Ukraine, Gates would fly to Moscow to take meetings with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, The New York Times reported. And Gates name has appeared on documents linked to companies that Manaforts firm has set up to receive payments in Eastern Europe, according to the newspaper. Everything was done legally and with the approval of our lawyers, Gates has told The Times. Nothing to my knowledge was ever done inappropriately. Gates was also named alongside Manafort in a 2011 Ukrainian racketeering lawsuit. What has he been charged with? A 32-count indictment, unrelated to allegations of misconduct during the Trump campaign, returned by a federal grand jury in February alleged that Gates and Manafort doctored financial documents, lied to tax preparers and defrauded banks using money they cycled through offshore accounts to spend lavishly, including on real estate, interior decorating and other luxury goods. Specifically, Gates was accused of 11 counts related to filing false income tax returns and three counts of failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts. Along with Manafort, he was accused of nine counts of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The indictment alleged Gates and Manafort fraudulently obtained more than $20 million from financial institutions in loans after their Ukrainian work subsided. The indictment also increased the amount of money Manafort, with the help of Gates, is accused of laundering to $30 million. Gates pleaded guilty to the charges on Feb. 23. After Gates' plea, Mueller moved to drop the 22 bank and tax fraud charges against him. The decision to drop the more expansive charges against Gates could suggest that the former Trump campaign official is cooperating and providing good information to Mueller's team. Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence, Manafort responded to Gates' guilty plea in a statement. I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. Gates has struggled with his lawyers. His initial representation withdrew after acknowledging irreconcilable differences with their client. Fox News' Jodie Curtis, Sam Chamberlain, Jake Gibson, James Rosen and Brooke Singman contributed to this report. The Associated Press also contributed to this report. The Trump administration is considering putting North Korea back on the United States' list of state sponsors of terrorism, national security adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters Thursday. That is an option that is under consideration, McMaster said at the White House briefing. And so the president's cabinet is looking at this as part of the overall strategy on North Korea. McMaster made the comments as President Trump prepares to embark on a foreign trip to five Asian countries over the next week, including South Korea, amid esclating nuclear tensions with North Korea. A regime who murders someone in a public airport using nerve agents and a despotic leader who murders his brother in that matter, thats clearly an act of terrorism that fits in with the range of other actions, he said. Speaking of the possibility of adding North Korea back to the list, McMaster said: This is something that is under consideration. And you will hear more about that soon, I think. TRUMP COMING AFTER CHINA UNLESS IT TAKES ON NORTH KOREA, OFFICIALS SAY Meanwhile, a senior congressional official and an administration official told Fox News that the State Department will miss its deadline this week to make that determination. If the State Department decides to add the country back on the list, additional sanctions would be applied against North Korea. The administration official indicated a decision would likely come after Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson travel to the region and after the president has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. North Korea was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States in 1988, in response to the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 the year before. The designation was rescinded in 2008 amid commitments to limit its nuclear program. But a bipartisan group of 12 senators sent a letter to Tillerson last month urging the administration to consider the totality of North Koreas actions including detainment, detention and treatment of American citizens and continued illicit relationships with unfriendly nations when determining whether to add it back to the list. The parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died after being imprisoned in North Korea, have encouraged lawmakers to advocate for the designation. They were removed from the list almost a decade ago with promises from the regime to limit their nuclear program, one of the lawmakers, Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, said in a statement. Added Portman: That clearly didnt happen, and their destabilizing actions around the world have only continued. This would be one more important step to exert peaceful pressure on the North Korean regime and has received broad, bipartisan support in Congress. Fox News Rich Edson contributed to this report. President Trump suggested sending the New York City terrorist to Guantanamo Bay early Thursday, but because he says the process takes much longer, Trump called for the DEATH PENALTY in the wake of the deadly attack in lower Manhattan this week. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system, Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Saipov was charged Wednesday with providing support to a terrorist organization. In addition to that charge, he faces eight murder and multiple attempted murder counts and one count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle a charge that could carry the death penalty. Investigators have uncovered several pieces of evidence linking Saipov to ISIS. Officials found notes left in the rented truck, containing a pledge of allegiance to ISIS. The notes were handwritten and had symbols and Arabic words on them stating: Islamic State would endure forever. Saipov entered the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan through the State Departments Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which Trump has vowed to end this week. We have to come up with a punishment that is much worse than what these animals are getting now, Trump said in a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, also suggesting Saipov move to Guantanamo. But sending Saipov to the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay would require, at a minimum, classifying him as an enemy combatant, something the White House said they consider him to be. I believe we would consider this person to be an enemy combatant, yes, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday. The legality of a move to GITMO is not clear, as Saipov was a lawful resident of the U.S. No terrorist has been sent to GITMO under such circumstances. The type of visa Saipov possessed also could have allowed dozens of his family members into the U.S. The State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News request for comment as to whether Saipovs family members currently reside in the U.S. We will take all of the necessary steps to take care of our communities and our country as a whole, Trump said Wednesday. What we have now is a joke and a laughingstock. Congressional Republicans, including Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., along with House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and other Republicans, have rallied around the presidents calls for reforming the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, and called for a merit-based system. Fox News' Katherine Lam, Joseph Weber and Alex Pappas contributed to this report. The ceremony to release the Survey Report on Chinese Peoples Understanding of Climate Change and Climate Change Communication is held at China Hall of Science and Technology, November 1st, 2017. [Photo by Zhang Liying / China.org.cn] A survey released on Nov.1 shows 94 percent of respondents support China's implementation of the Paris Agreement, while 96.8 percent agree the country should participate in international cooperation to tackle climate change. Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative for climate change, described the findings in Chinese People's Understanding of Climate Change and Climate Change Communication as highly encouraging approval of the country's efforts to deal with the threat. The survey was conducted by the Center for China Climate Change Communication, the first think tank dedicated to climate change communications research and practice in developing countries. Covering 4,025 ordinary people from China's 332 prefecture-level administrative units and four centrally-controlled municipalities, it provided a comprehensive picture of public understanding of climate change in terms of causes, influence, methods of response, government policies and communication effect, etc. More than 90 percent of the respondents support the central government's measures in mitigation and adaption, indicating Chinas commitment to addressing climate change is responding to public wishes. While America is looking at quick ways of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, China is intensifying efforts to contribute more to the global campaign. Taking a driving seat in the cooperative international response to climate change, China has become an important participant, contributor and torchbearer in the global endeavor for ecological civilization, according to the report delivered by President Xi Jinping at the 19th CPC National Congress. Seeing climate change as one of the unconventional security threats, China will continue to cooperate with other countries in tackling the problem to protect the planet for the sake of human survival. Confronted with America's slack attitude towards climate change, the world will expect much from China to meet the global challenge at the upcoming 2017 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn from Nov. 6 to 17. After declaring the nations opioid epidemic a public health emergency in October, President Trump revealed his plans to crack down on the health crisis. His plan, which he discussed in March, includes harsher penalties for drug traffickers and lowering the amount of drugs needed to trigger mandatory minimum sentences for dealers. These are terrible people and we have to get tough with those people, Trump said of traffickers and dealers. This isnt about committees ... this is about winning a very tough problem. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 115 Americans die daily from opioid-involved deaths. Opioids, including prescriptions and heroin, killed 42,000 people in the U.S. in 2016 the highest on record. Its important that the full weight of the federal government with each Cabinet department determining their role in the crisis is involved in tackling the epidemic, said Tom Coderre, a former official with the Obama administrations Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The opioid crisis is multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. Its not like there is a secret weapon out there, Coderre, recently hired as a senior adviser to Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to help combat the opioid crisis, told Fox News. Heres a look at what the Trump administration has proposed to deal with the crisis. Death penalty Trump has often mused that certain countries such as Singapore have fewer issues with drugs because of the harsh penalties dealers can face if caught. He has argued that a person in the U.S. can receive the death penalty or life in prison for shooting one person, but a drug dealer who potentially kills thousands spend little to no time in jail. When the president unveiled his plan to combat the epidemic, he brandished the death penalty as a fitting punishment for traffickers. Drug traffickers kill so many thousands of our citizens every year, Trump said. That's why my Department of Justice will be seeking so many tougher penalties than we've ever had and we'll be focusing on the penalties that I talked about previously for big pushers, the ones that are killing so many people, and that penalty is going to be the death penalty. He added, Other countries don't play games ... But the ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty. "The ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty." President Trump The Justice Department said the federal death penalty is already available for several limited drug-related offenses, including violations of the drug kingpin provisions of federal law. Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions issued guidance to all U.S. attorneys, urging them to "hold opioid manufacturers and distributors accountable for unlawful practices." "[T]his should also include the pursuit of capital punishment in appropriate cases," he said. "Congress has passed several statutes that provide the Department with the ability to seek capital punishment for certain drug-related crimes." Sessions added, "I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes, when appropriate, to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes in our nation." Mandatory minimum sentencing Trump has called on Congress to pass legislation which would lower the amount of drugs needed to trigger a mandatory minimum sentence for dealers who knowing distribute illicit opioids. Congress already has plans to weigh a range of bills targeted at curbing the epidemic. Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have put forth a bill that includes lowering the amount of fentanyl needed to invoke mandatory minimum sentences in certain distribution cases. Fentanyl is a high-risk type of opioid used by doctors to treat pain. Its past time the punishment matched the crime when it comes to opioid distribution and trafficking, Cotton said in a statement. Graham added, Increasing these mandatory minimums is well-justified. More research, less prescriptions Part of Trumps plan to attack the nationwide crisis is to increase research and development through public-private partnerships between the federal National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies. With the public health emergency declaration, officials are able to more easily deploy state and federal workers, secure grants for the unemployed and shift funding from certain programs such as HIV or AIDs programs to provide substance abuse treatment for certain individuals. Trump wants to see the number of opioid prescriptions cut by one-third within three years. He also called for expanding access to proven treatment and recovery efforts. Awareness campaign Trumps plan includes broadening education and awareness as well something he called for last fall when he declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency. This awareness campaign includes broadcasting great commercials to scare kids from dabbling in drugs. Trump also announced the creation of a new website, CrisisNextDoor.gov, where people can share their stories about addiction. Gary Mendell, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Shatterproof, said the crisis needs more attention and awareness, which the president can provide. An emergency declaration, he told Fox News, creates recognition ... and awareness around the country that this epidemic needs right now. Past declarations In October, Trump declared the crisis a national public health emergency, short of the national state of emergency sought by a presidential commission he put together to study the issue. It was renewed in January. HHS has issued public health emergency declarations in the wake of natural disasters as well as the spread of diseases. The agency issued its first declaration for the Zika virus in Puerto Rico in August 2016. It was last renewed in April 2017. Public health emergencies were also declared in New York following Hurricane Sandy in November 2012 and in Missouri following a series of storms and tornadoes in May 2011. Fox News' Elizabeth Llorente and The Associated Press contributed to this report. As family members and friends mourned Wednesday for those killed in Tuesdays terror attack in New York City, President Donald Trump was calling for severe punishment for the suspect being held in connection with the attack. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room, the president tweeted Wednesday evening. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Earlier Wednesday evening, about 200 people gathered for a candlelight vigil outside the high school in Argentina that five of Tuesdays attack victims attended decades ago. The former classmates were in New York City to mark the 30th anniversary of their graduation when tragedy struck. A suspect identified as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov was "consumed by hate and a twisted ideology" when he ran down dozens of people, killing at least eight, on a bike path near the World Trade Center, federal prosecutors said. He was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles and more were expected to be filed. At the vigil in Argentina, relatives and classmates of the victims, as well as other graduates of the Polytechnic School of Rosario, consoled one another and shared stories. 'Deserve to stay' Cesar Lagostino came to honor his friend, Hernan Diego Mendoza, who was one of those killed Tuesday. Lagostino said he remembered Mendoza as an honest and generous person, among those who deserve to stay in this world. Earlier in the day, the Argentine consul in New York said relatives of three of the victims would travel to New York on Thursday or Friday. Consul Mateo Estreme did not specify Wednesday whose relatives would be coming, but said the consulate was working to give families access to the morgue. He said he would work with families so the process of returning the bodies to Argentina would happens by weeks end. We would like that they return all together to Rosario, Estreme said, referring to the city where all the victims graduated from high school together. He said the survivors from Argentina were still in shock and were trying to deal with what happened. Also on Wednesday, President Trump called Argentine President Mauricio Macri to offer his condolences for the five Argentines killed in the attack. Trump tweeted later Wednesday that he spoke to Macri about the five proud and wonderful men who were killed. A statement from Macris office said that during the call, Macri reaffirmed his belief that governments must work together strongly against the "scourge of fundamentalist terrorism. Hoboken heartbroken Closer to the scene of the attack, a New Jersey university said It was mourning the death of one of its students, calling the Tuesday attack heartbreaking. Darren Drake was a project manager for Moody's Investors Service and was a master's degree student in the information systems program at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., just across the Hudson River from New York City. Drake had recently shed more than 90 pounds and was out for a bike ride between meetings Tuesday when the truck hit him. Stevens president Nariman Farvardin sent a message about Drake to the university community Wednesday. He said the thoughts and sympathies of the Stevens community were with Drake's family and friends, and that Drake's death was an enormous loss for the community. Only New Yorker The only New Yorker killed in the attack was 23-year-old Nicholas Cleves, a software engineer and web developer who lived in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Online profiles show he attended Elisabeth Irwin High School in New York City and graduated last year from Skidmore College with a degree in computer science. He had been working as a software engineer for the Unified Digital Group. Cleves described himself on his Facebook page as a "nerdy white boy." The most recent photo posted there showed him posing with some friends next to a Darth Vader figure at a Star Wars exhibit. Outlining his aspirations on LinkedIn, Cleves wrote that he was "searching for ways in which technology can be used to make positive impacts on our everyday lives." The Associated Press contributed to this story. There may be an important immigration debate to be had in the wake of what was undoubtedly a terrorist attack that killed eight people in Manhattan. It did not get off to a good start yesterday. Instead, hours after an Uzbek citizen allegedly used a truck to murder and injure pedestrians, there was sniping between President Trump and Chuck Schumer. I took heat from plenty of liberals for saying, after the Las Vegas massacre, that Hillary Clinton and some Democrats might have waited one day before slamming the GOP on gun control (not that we shouldnt have a vigorous debate, as some said in distorting my comments). Well, now I say the same thing on the other side. It was not helpful for President Trump to make this about New Yorks senior senator hours after the city was dealing with the casualties. The president tweeted yesterday: "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based. We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)." So the fact that Sayfullo Saipov is an Uber driver who came in legally under that program seven years ago becomes Schumers fault in the wake of the attack? The Senate minority leader hit back in a statement: "President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution antiterrorism funding which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget." The merit-based program was passed in 1990 with bipartisan support and signed into law by George H.W. Bush. Schumer, then a House member, was one of numerous co-sponsors. After the Las Vegas shooting, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that "today is a day for consoling of survivors and mourning those we lost," not debating gun control. Again, there may be a strong case for ending or tightening the diversity program. I think were all tired of people shouting "Allahu Akbar," as Saipov is said to have done, during acts of mass violence. On the other hand, its getting harder for law enforcement to detect people, as in Las Vegas and lower Manhattan, who have no previous criminal record. The president also tweeted that "being politically correct is fine, but not for this!" The PC mentality can hinder anti-terrorism efforts, but its not clear to me how it applies to this particular case. When he spoke to reporters yesterday, Trump said he would move immediately to get rid of the diversity program but did not mention Schumer. He did say this, which we can all agree with: "All of America is praying and grieving for the families who lost their precious loved ones. Horrible Act. Our hearts break for them and we pledge to renew our resolve in their memory." Sam Clovis, President Trumps pick for the U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA) chief scientist, withdrew his name for consideration Thursday. Clovis is entangled in the ongoing investigations into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 election. Clovis was reportedly questioned by Special Counsel Robert Muellers team of investigators last week, according to NBC News. Clovis has ties to a former Trump campaign aide who already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his own Russian connections. In a letter to Trump, Clovis said he does not want to be a distraction or a negative influence. He also mentioned relentless assaults on you and your team that "seem to be a blood sport." Who is Sam Clovis? Clovis, 68, has a full resume. He is a former Air Force officer, college professor, conservative radio host and defense contractor. From Iowa, Clovis unsuccessfully ran for Senate in his state in 2014, earning the endorsement of former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. While a candidate, Clovis said then-President Obamas race saved him from impeachment. TRUMP AND THE RUSSIA INVESTIGATION: WHAT TO KNOW Clovis was a business and economics professor at Morning Side College in Iowa. He attended the Air Force School in Colorado Springs, earned an MBA from Golden Gate University in California, studied national security at Georgetown University and earned a doctorate in public administration from the University of Alabama, according to the Omaha World-Herald. How is Clovis connected to Trump? Clovis was Trumps pick to be the USDAs chief scientist and he was a former policy adviser and co-chair for Trumps presidential campaign. Clovis was responsible for releasing the names of Trumps foreign policy advisers in March, which included George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts and efforts to set up meetings between Russian officials and members of the Trump campaign. Clovis lawyer confirmed that he brought Papadopoulos onto the campaign, according to the Associated Press. In court papers, an unnamed supervisor who Clovis lawyer confirmed was Clovis was said to have received some of Papadopoulos' email exchanges about his attempts to line up a meeting with the Russians, appearing to encourage the effort at one point by responding "Great work." He also later encouraged Papadopoulos to travel to Russia on his own. HOW PAUL MANAFORT IS CONNECTED TO THE TRUMP, RUSSIA INVESTIGATION? However, the lawyer said Clovis opposed any trip to Russia for Trumps campaign, including Trump. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said that Clovis is a fully cooperative witness in the Senates probe into potential Russian collusion, Politico reported. Clovis was expected to face a tough confirmation hearing in the Senate later this month. He withdrew his nomination Thursday as he said he did not want to be a distraction or a negative influence, in a letter to Trump. Fox News' Kaitlyn Schallhorn and The Associated Press contributed to this report. As lawmakers continue to investigate Russias role in the 2016 presidential election, major tech companies have sent representatives to Capitol Hill to reveal just how much Russian activity was found on their platforms. General counsels for Facebook, Google and Twitter testified in multiple hearings in 2017 as congressional probes into alleged Russian influence in the election continued. Delegates from the tech giants have also met privately with lawmakers on the Hill. Heres what you need to know about the tech companies involvement. How is Facebook involved in the investigation? Last year, Facebook revealed that it uncovered about $100,000 in ad purchases connected to inauthentic accounts that violated its policies. Another $50,000 was found to have been spent on potentially politically related ad spending that were in Russian. Facebooks Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos said the accounts were likely operated out of Russia. As lawmakers called for more information about the advertisements, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has promised to make its political advertising more transparent. Facebook also revealed that content from a Russian group called the Internet Research Agency (IRA) could have reached as many as 126 million users. President Trump accused Facebook of being always anti-Trump. But Zuckerberg hit back and said both sides of the political aisle were upset by content on Facebook proving what running a platform for all ideas looks like. What about Twitter? Twitter representatives told lawmakers that it suspended approximately two dozen accounts that were potentially linked to Russia and corresponded to Facebooks troublesome accounts. Additionally, it said it found 179 related accounts that violated their rules. Twitter also revealed in a blog post that Russia Today (RT), which it said has strong links to the Russian government, spent $274,000 in ads in 2016. The social media giant said it would use the money already spent on advertisements by RT for research around civic engagement and electoral misinformation. A Twitter representative told congressional committees that it shuttered nearly 3,000 accounts linked to Russias IRA which is known for spreading pro-Russian government propaganda. That number is nearly 14 times larger than the number of accounts Twitter said it handed over to congressional committees previously. Twitter was criticized by Rep. Mark Warner, D-Va., after representatives met with lawmakers in Sept. 2017. Warner said the information shared was frankly inadequate on almost every level. Warner, again, criticized the social media company in January 2018 after he said it neglected to meet a deadline to provide lawmakers with additional information regarding the Russia investigation, The Hill reported. Im disappointed. Ive been disappointed throughout this, Warner reportedly said. Twitter has been often times the slowest to respond The other companies met the deadline which was way over a month from when they testified. And Google? Russian operatives spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads on YouTube, Google Search products and Gmail regarding the 2016 election, Fox Business reported. However, the ads do not appear to be from the same source as those purchased on Facebook. Accounts connected with the Russian government spent $4,700 on search and display ads and $53,000 was spent on ads with political material that were purchased from either a Russian territory, Russian Internet address or with Russian currency, according to the Associated Press. "We are taking a deeper look to investigate attempts to abuse our systems, working with researchers and other companies, and will provide assistance to ongoing inquiries," Google said in a statement. Why does it matter? The issue over social medias involvement in the investigation largely stems from advertisements bought from the companies, not necessarily the content shared by users, Dr. Karen North, a clinical professor of communication at the University of Southern California, told Fox News. But the issue further boils down to what is wrong versus what is illegal. Spreading so-called fake news is wrong, but it might not be illegal, the social media expert explained. We as users of social media platforms do not want the platforms to be telling us what we can or cant say or even that we cant say falsehoods because people spin the story of their lives to present a public face to our friends and colleagues, North said. We dont want Facebook or Twitter to tell us we cant do that. North predicted that social media companies will begin to strengthen their regulations or dress codes for future advertisers. There are laws [to protect speech] and then there are rules of conduct, including dress codes at offices or schools, North said. Whether or not whats being done by the Russians or fake news or people lying about adventures in their life, are those illegal or in violation of dress codes? Shareholders in the major tech companies have also demanded more transparency regarding foreign involvement that could have interfered in the election. Like Congress and the American public, shareholders in these companies have serious questions and concerns about how these platforms were used and abused during the 2016 election, Michael Connor, executive director of the nonprofit Open MIC, said in a statement. Open MIC said shareholders with assets worth more than $25 billion have filed proposals asking Facebook, Google and Twitter to divulge more information about foreign involvement as well as disinformation and hate speech. The investors, through these filings, intend to play a critically important role in holding Facebook, Google and Twitter accountable for what happens on their platforms, Connor said. The Associated Press also contributed to this report. Members of the House Intelligence Committee released a number of Russian-sponsored Facebook and Instagram ads on Wednesday. The ads, which were seen by at least 10 million Americans, according to Facebook, are most likely associated with the Russian troll farm Internet Research Agency. The spots, which were allegedly intended to create political division in the country, exploit some of the countrys most sensitive issues, such as gun control, the Black Lives Matter movement, gay rights, immigration, and more. America, we have a problem, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who sits on the House committee, said Wednesday to a group of social media representatives. We basically have the brightest minds of our tech community here and Russia was able to weaponize your platforms to divide us, to dupe us and to discredit democracy. Speier also sits on the House committee. Check out some of the ads below: A post from a group called "LGBT United" sponsored an anti-Westboro Baptist Church counter protest. Westboro baptist church is planning to stand against tolerance in education near LG, the post reads. Target: Facebook users in Kansas, ages 14 and older Impressions: 4,798 users Clicks: 240 Ad spend: 3,136.68 rubles, or approximately $54.73 USD Ad run: May 11-22, 2016 A Facebook post sponsored by a group called BM shows a picture of Union Square in New York City with the words NOT MY PRESIDENT. A picture of Trumps face crossed out with a large red X is seen next to the phrase. The post appears to be advertising a protest against Trumps presidency. STOP TRUMP! STOP RACISM! JOIN THE PROTEST at Union Square Saturday 12 p.m, it reads. Target: Facebook users in New York, ages 18 and older Impressions: 188 users Clicks: 26 Ad spend: 113.19 rubles, or approximately $1.94 USD Ad run: Nov. 9- 12, 2016 A post sponsored by Facebook group "Williams&Kalvin" says that Danney Williams, 30, has been trying since at least 1999 to be acknowledged as the out-of-wedlock son of former President Bill Clinton and a black prostitute in Little Rock, Arkansas. Target: Facebook users in New York, ages 18 and older Impressions: 15,453 users Clicks: 1,471 Ad spend: 1,126.07 rubles, or approximately $19.30 USD Ad run: Oct. 18-19, 2016 A post sponsored by a group called Born Liberal cites an interview that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had with CNNs Jake Tapper about the Clinton Foundation. The post appears to criticize former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Hillary has no problem in accepting foreign money from the countries, like Saudi Arabia. Hillary has no remorse about taking money from countries that abuse the rights of women, while she has always had her own alleged feminist stance. She does not regain from receiving money from the countries that prosecute, torture and executive LGBT on the legal basis, although Hillary has always been a defender of the minorities, the post reads. So, why are so many people going to vote for her? Thats a secret for me. Whats your opinion on that point? the post asks its readers. Target: Facebook users in the U.S., ages 18 and older Impressions: 1,938 users Clicks: 222 Ad spend: 500 rubles, or approximately $8.57 USD Ad run: June 8-9, 2016 A post sponsored by the Facebook group "Heart of Texas" called for Texas to secede. Weve had enough of this cheap show on the screen, the post reads. Were ready to prove our commitment to liberty, low taxes and gun rights. Target: Facebook users in Texas, ages 18 and older Impressions: 16,168 users Clicks: 2,342 Ad spend: 3,200 rubles, or approximately $54.84 USD Ad run: Oct. 26, 2016- Nov. 3, 2016 A Facebook post sponsored by a group called Army of Jesus called Hillary Clinton Satan. The post reads: Today Americans are able to elect a president with godly moral principles. Hillary is Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is. And even though Donald Trump isnt a saint by any means, hes at least an honest man and he cares deeply for this country. My vote goes to him! Target: Facebook users in the U.S., ages 18 and older Impressions: 71 users Clicks: 14 Ad spend: 64 rubles, or approximately $1.10 USD Ad run: Oct. 19-20, 2016 A post sponsored by Facebook group Heart of Texas targeted those who wish for stricter immigration laws. The post claims that border patrol agents in southern Texas captured an illegal immigrant from Honduras who, the post claims, had previously been deported and convicted of Rape Second Degree. Thanks to Obamas and Hillarys policy, illegals come here because they wait for amnesty promised. The wrong course had been chosen by the American government, but all those politicians are too far from the border to see who actually sneaks through illegally. Target: Facebook users in Texas, ages 18 and older Impressions: 3,361 users Clicks: 808 Ad spend: 500 rubles, or approximately $8.57 USD Ad run: Aug. 4-5, 2016 Another post from LGBT United promoted a coloring book called Buff Bernie with a brightly colored caricature of Sanders posing in front of the White House. The author of this book said that she wanted people to stop taking this whole thing too serious, the post reads. The coloring is something that suits for all people. Target: Facebook users in the U.S., ages 18 and older Impressions: 848 users Clicks: 54 Ad spend: 111.49 rubles, or approximately $1.19 USD Ad run: March 24-25, 2016 A sponsored post from a group called the "United Muslims of America" promotes a post in favor of Sanders. The post cites various statistics about Muslims in America before advocating for the then-Democratic presidential candidate. So when Bernie Sanders acts like a human being and commits his prospective presidency (not to mention entire career) to combating racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia, it shouldnt come as a surprise to anyone that Muslim Americans overwhelmingly support his bid for the White House, the post reads. Target: Facebook users in the U.S., ages 18 and older Impressions: 11 users Clicks: 0 Ad spend: 5.92 rubles, or approximately $0.10 USD Ad run: March 17-18, 2016 In an Instagram post sponsored by a user called american.made, what appears to be a man and a young boy are seen pointing guns at an unknown object. This is the way our children have to be raised. Its not the promotion of violence. Its the promotion of confidence and the ability to defend yourself. Follow us if this video makes you proud. Target: Instagram users in the U.S., ages 13 and older Impressions: 108,433 users Clicks: 857 Ad spend: 17,306.95 rubles, or approximately $296.59 USD Ad run: April 22, 2016 Another post sponsored by the Instagram account "american.made" promotes Trump rallies in Florida. Florida goes Trump! Here are Florida cities participating: Daytona Beach, Tampa, Fort Myers, Miami, Orlando, Pensacola, Ft. Lauderdale, Sarasota, Clearwater, Oxford, West Palm Beach, Coral Springs. Go Tea Party! Pro-American, Pro-guns, Pro-Patriotic! the post also reads. Target: Instagram users in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, ages 18 and older Impressions: 9,244 users Clicks: 85 Ad spend: 3,178.16 rubles, or approximately $54.46 USD Ad run: Aug. 16, 2016 A post sponsored by an Instagram account called american.veterans shows a picture of a woman crying on top of a casket thats draped with the American flag. Killary Clinton will never understand what it feels like to lose the person you love for the sake of your country. Honoring the high cost paid by so many families to protect our freedom. The post then ask its followers to buy a t-shirt to support veterans. Target: Instagram users in the U.S., ages 18 and older Impressions: 17,654 users Clicks: 517 Ad spend: 3,083.95 rubles, or approximately $52.85 USD Ad run: Aug. 16, 2016 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was conspicuously absent at Wednesday's congressional hearing on how Russia exploited US social media to disrupt American society. But Zuckerberg said he's "dead serious" about fixing the problem. To prove it, Facebook will "invest so much in security" that the costs will cut into the company's profitability, Zuckerberg said in an earnings call. "I've expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," he said on Wednesday. "They used them to try to undermine our values. What they did is wrong and we're not going to stand for it." Zuckberg made the remarks after some US senators slammed the company for failing to stop Facebook from becoming a propaganda tool of the Russian government. At Wednesday's hearing, US senators showed examples of how the Kremlin allegedly used Facebook ads and posts to influence last year's presidential election and divide American society. Among them was a successful attempt to trick pro-Texas Facebook users and Muslims to clash outside an Islamic Center in Houston last year. However, only legal counsel from Facebook, Google and Twitter attended Wednesday's hearing, which disappointed some of the senators present. "You have a huge problem on your hands," said Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. "And you have to be the ones to do something about it -- or we will." A year ago, Facebook's CEO said it was "crazy" that fake news on Facebook influenced the presidential election. However, since then Zuckerberg has changed his tone. "We're bringing the same intensity to these security issues that we've brought to any adversary or challenge we've faced," he said on Wednesday. The company already has 10,000 staffers working on "safety and security" on Facebook, but plans on doubling that figure by next year, Zuckerberg added. "We're also building new AI to detect bad content and bad actors -- just like we've done with terrorist propaganda," he said. Facebook has also announced plans to make political ads on the platform more transparent by showing users who sponsored them. But whether any of these efforts will be enough to placate US lawmakers remains to be seen. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. This is a rush transcript from "Your World," November 2, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. NEIL CAVUTO, "YOUR WORLD" HOST: All right, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello has been criticizing the Army Corps of Engineers over the lack of action on the power grid. The Army Corps of Engineers, meanwhile, saying that local officials have not really accepted their help and actually tried to block that help. We thought we would get the read from the Puerto Rico governor himself. Ricardo Rossello is here. Good to see you, sir. GOV. RICARDO ROSSELLO, PUERTO RICO: Good to see you, Neil. Thank you for the opportunity. CAVUTO: The back and forth goes on. I don't know who to believe here. But you're saying what? ROSSELLO: Well, this is very simple. September 30, I signed a mission agreement with the Corps of Engineers. They had stipulated to us, with our legal counsel and our state coordinator, that they were going to be there immediately and that they were going to rebuild, pick up the grid within 45 days. It's been 35 days since we signed that agreement, Neil, and still no action has been taken. So that's why we say they're... (CROSSTALK) CAVUTO: But isn't that your fault? I mean, I'm not... (CROSSTALK) ROSSELLO: How is their our fault? CAVUTO: But how can the Corps of Engineers just come in and fix something that was in bad shape to begin with? ROSSELLO: Well, because that's the mission statement that they agreed upon. It's not fixing, putting it new. It's putting it back up. The question... CAVUTO: But it was in bad shape to begin with, they're saying, right? ROSSELLO: Sure. But the issue is, when are the boots going to be on the ground? We're talking about 35 days. Neil, can you imagine another jurisdiction in the United States where you sign an agreement, and 35 days afterwards, there still is not boots on the ground to pick up electricity? I challenge anybody to let me know. CAVUTO: Is the issue getting access there? Regardless of who and what is to blame for this, Governor, is -- I'm told that even for ships that want to get in and help out, just getting stuff off of those ships and to areas that need the help is infrastructurally impossible. Is that still the case? ROSSELLO: No, it's not infrastructurally impossible. And we already have some materials on land. It's true we still need to get more materials, but there's a lot of work to be done. And with the materials at hand, if we get those brigades, we can do a lot of progress. Look, it's a matter of execution. It's a matter of getting boots on the ground. And what we're asking is, very simply, number one, to increase the sense of urgency. And, number two, because I haven't seen that sense of urgency, I have spoken to both the governor of New York and the governor of Florida. And we're working mutual aid to get brigades into Puerto Rico, so that we can get our energy grid back up. CAVUTO: All right. I'm curious whether you are now beginning to share the same grief your mayor in San Juan has had. She's been very, very critical of the president and lately now of Republicans in general, that they don't care, that they're not really paying attention to Puerto Rico. What do you think? ROSSELLO: No. Well, I -- you know, in an event of a disaster, you need to keep politics aside. So, whenever I have seen things that are good -- and I have been on this program and I have said it -- I call them. And whenever I see things that are not working... CAVUTO: You call who? The president? ROSSELLO: No, I call it out. (CROSSTALK) ROSSELLO: So, I state -- if it's done well, I will say it's done well. And if it's done improperly, it's done improperly. So, for example, I have talked about the role that Department of Defense has played in Puerto Rico, which has been great. It's been phenomenal. However, the Corps of Engineers, by the same token, have failed up to this point in their mission. So, my role, as a governor, is, number one, keep politics aside from it. People that will criticize because of political context are -- it really doesn't help anybody. And, number two... CAVUTO: So, do you think the San Juan -- it did done more harm than good? Or what are your thoughts? ROSSELLO: Well, the San Juan mayor can do whatever she wants. I will do what I think is best for the people of Puerto Rico. CAVUTO: But you both have to be kind in synch, right? ROSSELLO: Well, she represents -- in terms of the response, yes, it's important for us to work together. And I have always had that open... CAVUTO: Do you work together? It seems like you're both at opposite ends. ROSSELLO: Well, unfortunately, the communication has not been the best. But, in our position, we have always been open to work with her, so that we can address our constituents. It's the same constituents. So, again, politics shouldn't be anywhere in the arena of disaster. CAVUTO: Governor, what is your relationship, and how do you think President Trump specifically has done? ROSSELLO: Well, I have said the president has responded to our petitions. We have been very clear with that. He has set historic meetings in the White House, so that we can move the agenda forward. But, at the same time-- so, he's responded to all of our petitions. However, this is a long haul forward. And my job, as governor, is to make sure that that commitment is evident, it continues on, and that, in this recovery process and rebuilding process, we get the full support. So, the president has stated that he will give support. We believe him on that as well, as other governors and congressmen and congresswomen that have stated the same. CAVUTO: Is it fair say that all that debt that you have, close to $80 billion, that's held back for a while? There's no way you can pay that. ROSSELLO: Well, listen, this is one of the main, major disasters in the history of the United States. I think we need to start talking about it in those contexts, about what we need to rebuild, about the reality change that occurred in Puerto Rico. So... CAVUTO: But I do remember the president, speaking extemporaneously, maybe a little bit too quickly, saying maybe the guys on Wall Street have to realize that just drop that, forget that. ROSSELLO: That's the president's observation. We're on a Title III... CAVUTO: Do you agree with that? ROSSELLO: Well, we're on a Title III process, which is a judicial proceeding right now, where there's negotiation, and the restructuring is ongoing. CAVUTO: Yes. ROSSELLO: So, I'm not commenting on that restructuring side of things. CAVUTO: All right, I know you have a very busy schedule. Governor, we very much appreciate your taking the time. ROSSELLO: Thank you. Thank you, Neil. CAVUTO: It's such a beautiful country. Hopefully, you will rebound. ROSSELLO: U.S. citizens. CAVUTO: I have a feeling -- indeed, you're right, U.S. citizens. ROSSELLO: U.S. citizens. CAVUTO: I love the rain forest, too. Climbed many a steps in that rain forest -- not well. All right. END 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. This is a rush transcript from "Your World," November 2, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. NEIL CAVUTO, "YOUR WORLD" HOST: Meanwhile, the guy in the middle of all of this getting an attaboy from no less than the president of the United States today, especially when he showed off something. Take a look. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Most Americans will be able to file taxes on a single sheet of paper. What do you think about that, Kevin? Are you still there? Or is it going to be a paper-and-a-half? (CROSSTALK) (LAUGHTER) TRUMP: Great job. Thank you very much. I didn't know I was going to be given a prop. (CROSSTALK) REP. PAUL RYAN, R-WIS., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: That is my only copy. TRUMP: Don't lose it. REP. KEVIN BRADY, R-TEXAS: No, it's yours. It's yours. (LAUGHTER) (END VIDEO CLIP) CAVUTO: All right. And right from the White House in his first media interview since all of this went down, the aforementioned House Ways and Means chairman, Kevin Brady, who joins me right now. Chairman, thank you very much. BRADY: No, Neil, thanks for having me. I'm -- I'm thrilled to do the first interview with you. CAVUTO: But we're flattered as well, sir. You know, you did bring that little prop to White House. What was that showing, that you could, most Americans could fill out taxes on that, on an index card? BRADY: Yes. The most dramatic change probably is to how we make -- how fair and simple we make this tax code for families. So, nine out of 10 Americans will be able to file using the simple postcard-style system. And we do that really by clearing out a lot of provisions for a few, so we can lower the rates on everybody. And I think that simplification, coupled with keeping more of what you earn, and, of course, because the job growth and paychecks increasing, look, this is a big win for families who have been there -- their paychecks have been stagnant for way too long. CAVUTO: You know, Chairman, you probably heard what Lee Zeldin, a Republican from New York, not a fan from this right now. Obviously, he's wincing a little bit at the fact that state and local taxes cannot be written off here. And that's a problem for high-tax states like New York. Do you worry about others who might bleed off their support? BRADY: Well, one, Congressman Zeldin has been terrific to work with. He just wants to make sure his constituents are better off after tax reform than before. And what we know is, because we lower the rates and we double the standard deduction, we have a new family tax credit that help Congressman Zeldin's families up to $230,000 of income get the credit they have never gotten before. So we know that we can drive tax relief to many of Congressman Zeldin's constituents, as we are, because, Neil, here's the deal. We want people to keep more of where they earn -- of what they earn -- excuse me -- regardless of where they live. And with this new tax reform, we do. So we're going to keep working with him and others. Let's see if we can't get this right for them. CAVUTO: All right. So, obviously, there's some negotiating room right here. I do notice as well, as we're sort of going through these rates and the brackets and where they kick in, et cetera, one thing that stands out is that the very rich, Congressman, are growing to still be paying at the very high rate, the existing rate of 39.6 percent. Some of them feel that since they pay most of the taxes, that is, the very rich, they're not getting bubkes from this. What do you tell them? BRADY: I think wait until they see everything that's been done underneath that rate. Sort of unlike the Reagan reforms, which were just rates were it, that was key, we do so much more under those rates. For example, you know, you know how the tax code works. It's sort of like an elevator. And each floor in your income, you have another tax cut. So, those who are at the 39.6 already enjoying a tax relief. Plus, we eliminate the AMT and a number of those provisions that have been damaging. But here's the real key. When look at how this is analyzed, you will see that there's tax relief at every level, because many of these families invest in their small business. They're involved in their corporations. We're cutting rates across the economic spectrum. So, you're going to see, I think, not just tax relief, but growth across the board. CAVUTO: Chairman, I know this was a frantic dash to get this out and to get the report out there as well. But are you surprised that Democrats, again, with all the allowances you made to make sure that the rich still pay at the 39.6 percent rate, some of these other provisions that took some of their benefits away, that the estate tax didn't immediately go away, that it is going to be around for a few more years, that they still call this sort of a boon to the rich? BRADY: Yes. CAVUTO: Were you surprised at that? BRADY: No, in the sense they have been saying it so long, I'm not sure they can say anything else. And the truth is, I think The Washington Post or one of the media called that claim, gave it four Pinocchios. It just isn't true, when you look at this tax reform. What I'm hopeful is that they -- look, there are moderate Democrats, centrist Democrats who, given time, I think will not defend the status quo. They're seeing the same jobs leave this country as we are. I believe that we can gain Democrat support. We will work to do that. But I know this. Man, I would hate to be standing there, saying, what we have for a tax code is just fine, because it's not. CAVUTO: You know, I just think of the hoops that you and your colleagues went through then, Chairman, to try to prove that this wouldn't be a boon to the rich or whatever the argument was for keeping some of these other provisions in there, on the understanding that maybe you would corral some Democratic votes. Now, that might still happen. It doesn't look likely. Do you think you wasted your time? BRADY: No, I don't. Look, this is time well-spent. Our Democrats have good ideas in tax reform. They stayed at the table to talk to us. So, I think it's early for them. We're going to keep the door open and keep discussing with them. But all I know is this. Look, this -- the growth we have had for 10 years, where we can't compete anymore around the world, where businesses aren't able to bring in -- back their dollars and reinvestment in America, it's got to stop. And I think defending Washington telling you what to do with your money vs. you having control of your money, I think Americans want control of their paychecks. We give it back to them. CAVUTO: All right, has the president expressed support for all the provisions that you outline, Chairman? And by that, I mean, is he or could he potentially say, you know, I don't like what you're doing on the local and state tax thing, I think that that is a problem for a lot of my friends in my home state of New York, et cetera? Or is he on board with this and backing you up every step of the way? BRADY: He's on board and all in. You can tell from his speeches around the country focusing on tax reform. We met again today. But we have been on the phone most days, if not several times, talking about this. He's all in on this. And I think he recognizes, look, there are people who will have concerns. We're looking to making improvements at every step in the way. And so he's essentially saying, look, go see Kevin. Talk about these issues. But we have to get tax reform to his desk by the end of the year. CAVUTO: All right, so you think that timetable is doable out of your committee? I guess they're going to start voting on things within the committee on November 6. BRADY: Yes. CAVUTO: But out of the committee by Thanksgiving and out of the House by then? BRADY: So, we will start on Monday for the first time in 31 years, pretty exciting, finish by the end of the week. And it will go to the House floor the week after that. So, yes, we stay on the timetable you describe. CAVUTO: All right, what I didn't understand -- and, of course, a lots depends how this works out -- but $1.5 trillion that's been allocated in the budget for lost tax revenues, cut revenues. But you have got about $5 trillion in there. BRADY: Yes. CAVUTO: Now, I understand some of the other rates, some of the things that are pushed off, all of that. But it still doesn't seem clear to me how it is -- how it is paid for. If someone comes back at you and says, no, no, this is going to leave more than a $1.5 trillion hole in future deficits in the next 10 years, you say what? BRADY: Yes, so, we know growth makes a difference. But -- but that will not be enough. We eliminate dozens and dozens and dozens of provisions in the tax code and use those dollars to lower the rates for families and for businesses. Families who don't itemize today, they can't take advantage of half the tax code. CAVUTO: Right. BRADY: Well, for once, they're treated right. Our local businesses, again, corporations have usually gotten the cuts. Now our local businesses get significant tax cuts. And so, Neil, we have to eliminate a lot of this underbrush to lower those rates and balance this in the budget over time. CAVUTO: All right, a number in the Senate, I know they have to concurrently come up with something. The Senate Finance Committee is working on it, I'm sure, in concert with you, Chairman. But one of the ideas I heard a number of senators express on the Republican side is upping that $10,000 mortgage write-off cap. Are you open to that? Is that something that you think would be negotiated, because a lot of people could end up paying higher taxes in those high-tax states without it? BRADY: Yes. The answer is yes. We're open to finding solutions again, because we want to help people save money in every -- no matter where they live. CAVUTO: All right. BRADY: One caution. You know, we're right at the budget number we have been given. So, any spending in one area will be have to offset somewhere else. CAVUTO: All right. BRADY: And so we just need to take a good balanced approach. CAVUTO: All right, well, whether people are for or against this, you were doing this when it wasn't -- when it wasn't even cool, Chairman, before Donald Trump was a candidate, before any of these guys got onto it. No one has worked harder for this day. BRADY: Thank you. CAVUTO: So, whether people agree or disagree with what you came up with, no one, I mean no one, on Capitol Hill did the sweat equity you did. BRADY: Thank you, sir. CAVUTO: So, we will see what happens, sir. BRADY: Yes, sir. CAVUTO: Chairman, thank you very, very much. END Content and Programming Copyright 2017 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2017 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content. A Pakistan-based airline is blaming workers at JFK International Airport for forgetting to load two coffins containing human remains onto a flight bound for Lahore. Pakistan International Airlines has reportedly filed an inquiry into the mishandling of the deceased, which were scheduled to be transported from New York to Pakistan on Oct. 28. Family members, meanwhile, are also blaming the airline itself, claiming that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has been unhelpful throughout the ordeal, according to the BBC. "The grieved family have been agonized," said Hasan Mubarak, of the deceaseds cousins, in a statement to Pakistan news outlet Dawn. RUNAWAY 7-YEAR-OLD BOARDS FLIGHT WITHOUT TICKET, GETS CAUGHT BY CREW According to Mubarak, his cousin Nauman Badar, 28, died on Oct. 25 while in the U.S., and was to be taken to Pakistan by his brother, Bilal, on Flight PK 712. But upon arriving at Lahore airport, Bilal learned that his brothers body had not been loaded onto the flight, and was instead replaced with luggage and catering items, Mubarak said. Bilal and his grieving family members, who were waiting to retrieve him and Badar at the airport, soon found out that another grieving family was dealing with the exact same issue a recently deceased member of their family was also not loaded onto the PIA flight. Mubarak said his family eventually located Badars coffin, which had been left unattended at JFK for 14 hours. The family contacted the funeral home that prepared Badars remains, and they arrived shortly thereafter to collect the body, Dawn reports. DELTA SEX COUPLE PROBABLY WON'T BE CHARGED FOR LEWD ACTS, FORMER PROSECUTOR SAYS Meanwhile, Bilal and his father booked themselves on another flight to America, arriving on Oct. 31. They plan to bury Badar in Maryland. PIA transported the other body back to Lahore via a different carrier, as PIA has since terminated its route between New York and Lahore. According to the Telegraph, the body of Nasir Ali was flown back to Pakistan on Emirates, although Dawn reports that Etihad was scheduled to transport the body. The airline has released a statement to Dawn in response to the mishap, writing that it regrets the inconvenience caused due to negligence on the part of airlines ground handling agency at New York Airport and expresses its sympathies with the family members of the deceased persons. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS The airline added that it would incur any costs associated with transporting the bodies, though Mubarak claims PIA had not contacted him as of Wednesday. Representatives for Pakistan International Airlines were not immediately available for comment. The road map drawn up by the 19th CPC National Congress to guide China's future development is equally valuable for other countries that seek a new way to develop. [China.org.cn] When the Communist Party of China (CPC) holds its national congress every five years, the most important issue is to answer three questions concerning where we come from, where we have been, and where we will go. The 19th CPC National Congress was no exception. These three questions involve a basic judgment, and a basic judgment is of the utmost importance. The Communist Party of China is, at heart, a party of mission. Only by making these basic judgments can it define new missions and shape future directions of its development. In 1949, the CPC, led by Mao Zedong, completed the most arduous modern task of establishing a new China. In the following 30 years, a basic national political system was established. After China entered the new period of reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping put forward the concept of a socialist market economy, an important part of the Deng Xiaoping Theory. The 13th CPC National Congress created the basic roadmap of the Party in the primary stage of socialism. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping's talk during his southern China tour again stressed that this would take a hundred years to complete. New era, new judgment, new mission. Now, China has moved into a new era. This is not a new term; however, it is new in the aspect of being a new basic judgment made by the CPC based on China's social-economic development level reaching a certain stage where the development is neither balanced nor adequate. The report delivered by Xi Jinping at the 19th CPC National Congress pointed out: "As socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has also evolved. What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing need for a better life." At the same time, the change of the principal socioeconomic contradiction does not change the judgment of the CPC in regard to the historical stage at which Chinese socialism now finds itself. The basic national situation, where China will remain in a primary stage of socialism for a long time, is not changed. China is the world's largest developing country and its international status has not changed in that regard. Although China has made great achievements in the development, winning much applause from the international community, China also clearly understands in what era it finds itself, as well as the internal and external environments. Socialism is not promoted by beating gongs and drums. The leadership of the CPC is very sober-minded. On the basis of fully affirming the achievements made so far by their own efforts, they face the fresh challenges and look to the future, with serious and calm thinking and judgments about the problems faced. Xi Jinping depicted the future blueprint in his 19th CPC National Congress report: The period between the 19th and the 20th CPC National Congress is the one in which the timeframes of two centenary goals converge. In this period, not only must we finish building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects to 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. The blueprint is based on the basic judgment. Economically speaking, China has reached the stage of achieving a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects. From the policy discussions over these past years, the focus has been how to avoid the "middle income trap," and take the country forward to an upgrade platform involving a high-income economy, which means, a rich society. China's current per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is more than US$8,000, and will reach US$12,000 by 2020, according to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020). More importantly, when Chinese people have enough food and clothing and achieve the goal of overall realization of a moderately prosperous society, then other needs, such as enjoying a beautiful environment, social equity and justice, will be given greater priority. This further indicates the unbalanced and inadequate development between China's economy and society, between economy and the environment, and between material and cultural and ethical dimensions. That is why the 19th CPC National Congress report proposed "to promote well-rounded human development and all-round social progress." However, the new judgment made by the CPC in the new era is not only about the development of China itself; it is also a brand-new option offered for the countries and peoples of the world who wish to accelerate development and maintain their independence. The author is the director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. The article was written in Chinese and translated by Zhang Rui. Authorities in California arrested a doctor on Wednesday after he reportedly sexually assaulted a patient during a physical. Narinder Singh Parhar, 64, was first investigated by Roseville police after a woman in her 60s reported him following her appointment on Aug. 14, according to the police department statement on Facebook. She alleged that he touched her inappropriately during a physical in areas not related to the patients medical issue. ELMO, MICKEY MOUSE IMPERSONATOR ACCUSED OF SEUALLY ABUSING YOUNG BOYS Parhar was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery, sexual penetration and elder abuse and taken to South Placer County Jail, the post said. Authorities are reportedly searching for any other potential victims. The "nonchalant" gunman who killed three inside a Denver-area Walmart Wednesday evening, sparking mass panic and an all-night manhunt, was nabbed during a raid on an apartment building just eight miles from the scene, police said. Scott Ostrem, 47, was taken into custody without incident after police stopped his red Mitsubishi Mirage at an intersection less than 10 miles away from the Walmart he had attacked, FOX31 Denver reported. Later Thursday, the coroners office identified the three victims killed as: Pamela Marques, 52, of Adams County, Carlos Moreno, 66, of Thornton and Victor Vasquez, 26, of Denver. Authorities descended on an apartment complex believed to be associated with Ostrem after they received an anonymous tip. When they arrived, he was nowhere to be seen, but Ostrem's distinct red car was spotted driving past the apartment complex just before 8 a.m. Officials issued a nationwide extradition homicide warrant earlier and called him "armed and dangerous." Police are still searching for a motive in the attack. Ostrem does not have an extensive criminal background. Ostrem allegedly walked into the Walmart in Thorton, a suburb north of Denver, with a handgun just after 6 p.m. Wednesday and nonchalantly opened fire at the crowd of shoppers, according to police. Employees dashed to the back room and hid there when shots rang out. They then ran out of the back door about five to 10 minutes later, FOX31 Denver said. I was just picking up my last item and about to head towards the checkout, a witness at the store told FOX31. Heard two slow pops that sounded like they were coming from the front checkout area and then started to run as about four more shots rang out a little faster. At that point everyone was just running and screaming. Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Twitter users posted videos of mass chaos around the Walmart as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. Guadalupe Perez was inside the store with her young son when she heard what she thought was a balloon popping. A Walmart employee told her someone was shooting, then Perez saw people running away yelling, "Let's go. Let's go. Leave the groceries." "You see all these things in the news and you go through it, it's scary," she said. "But thank God we're OK and nothing happened to us." Police said in a news conference on Thursday that it was "mass chaos" in the area and it took some time to be able to send a Walmart emplyee in to review surveillance video. Thorton police spokesman Victor Avila said the shooting appeared to be a random act and that there were no indications that it was an act of terror. "This is a very heinous act," Avila said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act." North Suburban Medical Center told Fox News "two bystanders [were admitted] in stable condition." It was not immediately clear whether those injuries were part of the official total. Two men died inside the Walmart. The woman died later at a hospital. Authorities did not immediately release any other information about the victims. Ragan Dickens, Walmart's director of national media relations, said in a statement to Fox News the company was "deeply saddened by this tragic event." "Our thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to the families who lost loved ones and to all who were impacted by what took place. We are assisting law enforcement however we can and are referring all requests for information to them," the statement read. Fox News' Alicia Acuna and the Associated Press contributed to this report. The Russian hackers who targeted Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign also attempted to breach several thousand email inboxes, including those of U.S. defense contractors, a papal representative, and a member of the punk band Pussy Riot. That's according to a digital hit list obtained by the Associated Press. The comprehensive list highlights not only the close relationship between the hacking group Fancy Bear and the Russian government, but also the wide variety of their targets --- including both Republicans and Democrats --- going back several years. The lengthy catalogue, which includes approximately 4,700 Gmail users worldwide, is a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence, Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center, told the AP. Hackers acquired "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence." Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center In the U.S., the hackers tried to access at least 570 inboxes, according to the AP. Workers for Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin were among the most targeted, as well as top U.S. officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark. Additionally, more than 130 political party workers inboxes were targeted, including several Democrats and some Republicans. Also accessed: The private correspondence of U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, in cyberattacks tied to Russian hackers. In Ukraine, the APs analysis showed that Fancy Bear tried to access at least 545 email accounts, including one belonging to President Petro Poroshenko. And the hackers actively sought to breach numerous accounts of domestic Russian dissidents, musicians and journalists. Targets there included the Vatican's representative in Kiev and feminist Pussy Riot member Maria Alekhina, who was detained in August for rallying for the release of a Ukrainian filmmaker outside his Siberian prison. The hit list was divined using data assembled by Secureworks, a cybersecurity firm. Secureworks obtained thousands of malicious links and emails after Fancy Bear accidentally revealed secretive information about its phishing operation. Fancy Bear is believed to be closely associated with the Russias military intelligence agency, the GRU. The APs findings provide further evidence of Fancy Bears collaboration with the Russian government. Fancy Bears work is not confined to hacking emails. In 2014, experts believe Fancy Bear created a malicious version of a mobile app and posted it to a Ukrainian military forum. The compromised app likely allowed the Russian military to view the locations of Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield, officials said. Security researchers believe Fancy Bear is using a sophisticated leaked National Security Agency hacking tool known as EternalBlue, the Hill reported. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Uber has banned a right-wing activist after she publicly questioned why the ride-sharing company hires Muslim drivers. Uber confirmed to Fox News Wednesday that Laura Loomer, formerly of Project Veritas, has been banned from the app, citing violation of its community guidelines. Loomer, a self-proclaimed investigative journalist, took to Twitter Wednesday to ask why Uber is hiring Islamic terrorists following Tuesdays terror attack in New York City. The suspect in that assault had worked as an Uber driver in New Jersey. Was this terrorist also an @Uber driver? Loomer tweeted after a taxi driver in London lost control and drove onto pavement. Why is uber hiring Islamic terrorists? #BoycottUber. NYC TERROR SUSPECT SAYFULLO SAIPOV: WHO IS HE? Following her ban from the app, Loomer tweeted: @Uber will literally hire an Islamic terrorist, but they will ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns. Throughout the day Wednesday, Loomer posted a series of anti-Muslim tweets. One particular post, which included an image of women walking in Hijabs, said: Youd think theyd have the decency to not walk around in hijabs @ cross street of the attack. But they dont. I bet theyre loving this. Loomer then shared a tweet from another user, who alleged she and Loomer were kicked out of an Uber ride mid-trip after the driver who she says was Muslim heard that they were Jewish. Loomer referred to Uber as a highly anti Semitic" company that endangers lives. FLORIDA UBER DRIVER ARRESTED FOR KIDNAPPING, RAPE Uber confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday night that Sayfullo Saipov, the suspected terrorist who killed at least eight people when he drove a truck onto a bike lane near the World Trade Center, drove for the company. The company said Saipov passed its required background check for drivers and was subsequently banned, but noted it has not found any safety reports concerning the suspect. The employer and neighbors of a 47-year-old man accused of killing three people inside a suburban Denver Walmart described him Thursday as a constantly angry man who had just quit his job. Scott Ostrem abruptly walked away from his roofing company job hours before the attack, his former boss said. Ostrem worked at a metal fabrication shop for the last three years without any problems, said David Heidt of B&M Roofing. He called Ostrem a quiet worker who was skilled at making metal flashing for roofs. But midmorning Wednesday, he left his work station without explanation. Two men and a woman were killed at the store that evening. Killed were Pamela Marques, 52, Carlos Moreno, 66, and Victor Vasquez, 26, the coroner said. None were Walmart employees, and all were Hispanic. Ostrem is white. Though quiet at work, Ostrems neighbors described him as a hostile loner who cursed at them and often carried a shotgun in and out of his third-floor unit. Police arrested Ostrem, 47, following a brief chase Thursday morning in the northern Denver suburb of Thornton, several blocks from his apartment building and about five miles from the Walmart. Ostrem was handcuffed at a crowded intersection about 14 hours after the shooting that sent dozens of shoppers and workers fleeing in panic from the busy store. Police spokesman Victor Avila declined to say whether Ostrem had a weapon. Ostrem was identified as a suspect after investigators reviewed surveillance video, police said, though they first had to rule out a few other people who drew weapons when the gunman opened fire. Avila said he didnt know if any of the people were security officers employed by Walmart. At the Samuel Park Apartments building where Ostrem lived, most tenants talk to each other, but renter Teresa Muniz said Ostrem never returned her greetings and swore at people for sitting on exterior stairways and leaving laundry in communal machines. He didnt seem to have anybody, she said. Being angry all the time. Thats what he seemed like, always angry. Muniz said she sometimes saw Ostrem carrying a shotgun or a bow and set of arrows to and from the building, which faces the back side of a liquor store, a dollar store and a cellphone store. Gerald Burnett, a 63-year-old retiree who lives in a first-floor unit, said he was sitting on the stairs drinking coffee one morning when Ostrem came down, told him to move and cursed at him. Dude had an attitude, big time, Burnett said. Hes the type of person if you said, Good morning, he wouldnt say nothing. If you greeted him, he wouldnt say anything back. I just learned not to even talk to the clown. Thornton is a mostly blue-collar community where about a third of its 136,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. Its about 10 miles north of downtown Denver. Ostrem had minor run-ins with police dating to the 1990s, including a December 1999 charge of resisting arrest in Denver that was dismissed the following year. In September 2015, Ostrem filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and listed his income for the previous year as $47,028.00. He estimated that he owed more than $85,000, including credit card debt. There was no evidence Ostrem ever had worked for Walmart, spokesman Ragan Dickens said. Witnesses said the shooter walked calmly into the store, opened fire and fled. Marlena and Jason Fobb said they were paying for a vacuum and contact lenses when a man at a nearby register was shot. We were all looking at each other like, Oh gosh, this is it, Marlena Fobb said. The couple and others hid in a small storage room, she said. When officers arrived, they told them to hurry and run and not look at bodies, she added. Ragan Dickens, Walmarts director of national media relations, said in a statement to Fox News the company was deeply saddened by this tragic event. Our thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to the families who lost loved ones and to all who were impacted by what took place. We are assisting law enforcement however we can and are referring all requests for information to them, the statement read. The Associated Press contributed to this report. A black man was brutally murdered in Georgia more than 34 years ago because was seen socializing with a white female, prosecutors said. New details in the 1983 slaying of Timothy Coggins were revealed during a court hearing Wednesday. Two white men face murder charges in his death. Griffin Judicial Circuit District Attorney Ben Coker said 23-year-old Coggins died after he was dragged behind a pickup truck through the woods. He was stabbed and suffered cuts on his neck, back and stomach. "The murder of Timothy Coggins was due to Coggins socializing with a white female and that Coggins had been stabbed multiple times and drug behind a truck by Franklin Gebhardt and William Moore Sr.," Coker said, according to WSB-TV. FIVE ARRESTED IN 1983 MURDER OF GEORGIA BLACK MAN Gebhardt, 59, and Moore, 58, were arrested and charged with murder last month after authorities reopened the cold case in Spalding County, about 40 miles south of Atlanta. Coggins was found dead along a road in the city of Sunny Side on Oct. 9, 1983. In March, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Spalding County Sheriffs Office reopened the case after getting new information. In July, Spalding County Sheriff Darrell Dix called it a horrible, torturous death. Defense attorneys for the two suspects asked a judge Wednesday to free them on bond, saying the men were too old and frail to pose a danger. The judge denied their request and ordered the men to remain jailed. "It was very difficult hearing some of the things today, and seeing the defendants was very difficult as well," said Heather Coggins, a niece of Timothy Coggins who sat in the courtroom. "It's the first time we've had a chance to see them up close and personal. She told News4Jax the worst is over. "Although it's been 34 years, we have always wanted justice, held out for justice and knew that one day we would have justice, she added. We are eternally grateful you guys didn't give up." Three others, who also are white, have been charged with obstruction in the case. One of them, Lamar Bunn, was a police officer in Milner, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Griffin, the capital of Spalding County. Another, Gregory Huffman, worked as a detention officer with the sheriff's office. Huffman was fired, while Bunn was suspended from duty pending the outcome of the case. The third person charged with obstruction is identified as Sandra Bunn. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The mayor of a Southern California beach town said an "epic" day of surfing last Friday turned into a nightmare for himself and others after they got violently ill from a sewage spill that originated in Mexico. Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina told FOX 5 San Diego the sewage spill occurred south of Tijuana on Oct. 26 and then flowed north, contaminating ocean water off the town. "What happens is a lot of times, sewage will be dumped at night and it washes up the coast and usually by the time we're out surfing, it washes through Imperial Beach," Dedina said. Several surfers, including Dedina, became sick after surfing in the polluted waters the next day, city officials said in a news release. Imperial Beach is 10 miles north of Tijuana. "Our beach stunk, people were getting sick and the response from Mexico was nothing happened," Dedina told FOX 5. A spokeswoman with the U.S. International Boundary Water Commission, which oversees the water quality and flood control in the border region, told The San Diego Union-Tribune there was no report of a spill last week from officials in Mexico. "Our beach stunk, people were getting sick and the response from Mexico was nothing happened," Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina The mayor is now asking the State Department for a federal investigation into the matter, and is placing blame on officials in Mexico who are supposed to report additional incidents after a massive spill in February described as the tsunami of sewage spills. MEXICAN SEWAGE ROUTINELY FOULING SAN DIEGO BEACHES, OCEAN WATERS In that incident, more than 140 million gallons of sewage spilled into the Tijuana River in Mexico and ended up flowing into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side of the border. The spill, which spanned from Feb. 4 to Feb. 23, occurred during repairs to a major sewer pipe, the International Boundary and Water Commission said. No Mexican official at the time disclosed the potential health and environmental hazards. About 15 million gallons of treated sewage are discharged into the Tijuana River every day, but technical issues sometimes send raw waste off California waters, Dedina told Fox News in March. There is a diverter pipe in the Tijuana River operated in Mexico just before the border that in theory should be turned on all the time but if there is an electrical outage or it breaks down, which happens frequently, then the Tijuana River flows into the U.S. and can pollute our beaches, Dedina said. MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF MEXICAN WASTE THREATEN US BORDER PATROL AGENTS The brew of toxic chemicals and raw sewage along the Tijuana River are also affecting border patrol agents. In August, documentation provided to Fox News by the U.S. Border Patrol Local 1613 Union showed 59 Border Patrol agents reported getting sick in a three-month period after exposure to pollutants while at work along the border. In regards to the spill last week, Dedina said Wednesday he wants officials across the border to be transparent and report the spills as they happen. "People in Tijuana and the state agency for public services are trashing us by basically allowing us to surf in raw sewage," he told FOX 5. Fox News' Malia Zimmerman contributed to this report. College Republicans are now under investigation by the Student Conduct Office at Columbia University after the student government voted Sunday night to report them for discrimination and harassment. The matter in dispute is a series of talks organized by the group, Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR), which according to some includes speakers who promote hatred against people of color and other minorities. The Columbia University Black Students Organization (BSO) targeted the Republican group with a petition, demanding they be defunded and derecognized as a legitimate organization and that their funding is redistributed to student groups "who are targets of this hateful ideology" they cite self-identified Muslim, women and trans groups, among others. BSO claimed recent speakers Mike Cernovich and Tommy Robinson pose a literal threat to them. Instead of defunding, the Columbia College Student Council passed a resolution to file a discrimination and harassment report against CUCR, citing the groups invitation of Cernovich and Robinson. College Republicans president Aristotle Boosalis told Campus Reform it was like being investigated for a thought crime, adding its a direct attack on our existence because we think differently. Its unclear where the investigation stands, but Boosalis believes the claims will be dropped like previous ones have because no rule has been violated. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY REPUBLICAN LEADERS 'DOXED,' HARASSED BY ANTIFA GROUP These students have to realize that if theyre going to limit someone elses freedom of speech, they have to be willing to limit their own, Boosalis told Fox News. News of the investigation came as the Columbia Daily Spectator reported that Columbia Executive VP for University Life, Suzanne Goldberg, allegedly dropped investigations against students who disrupted Robinsons Skyped-in speech weeks before. Nineteen students had been placed under investigation for violating university rules of conduct and were banned from all CUCR events. On Monday, however, Goldberg allegedly sent an email informing the students of her decision to informally resolve the complaint and lifting the ban from CUCR events. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter this week condemning the administrations disciplinary approach to students right to protest. A university spokesperson told Fox News the disciplinary action is confidential and could not comment. The College Republicans event organizer believes the universitys alleged actions could lead to mob rule. I think its really important for the university to uphold their rules, no matter what has occurred, and no matter who is the perpetrator, said CUCR president Boosalis. Why shouldnt I cheat on a test? What do the rules of conduct mean? I think its dangerous for the president to let them go scot free at the end of the day because youre showing that youre not enforcing the rules, he said. Aside from a few profane interruptions and an alleged harassment of a female reporter outside the venue, CUCRs Cernovich event went on as planned on Oct. 30. ANTIFA, STUDENTS PROTEST CERNOVICH, REPORTEDLY HARASS FEMALE REPORTER AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CUCR plans to continue hosting weekly speakers, including an upcoming talk by Dennis Prager, to challenge the status quo on campus. The College Republicans told Fox News they plan to invite White House and ex-White House officials next semester, which is sure to bring more protests and free speech debate on campus. The Columbia University Black Students Organization and the Columbia College Student Council did not immediately respond to request for comment. Flash The Blue House Cluster in Wanchai of China's Hong Kong has won the Award of Excellence in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government said in a press release on Wednesday. It is the first time a built heritage conservation project in Hong Kong has received this award. "The award not only recognizes our efforts in heritage conservation, but also proves that our adaptive re-use of government-owned historic buildings is up to international standards," said a spokesman for the Commissioner for Heritage's Office of the Development Bureau of the HKSAR government. The Blue House Cluster comprises three tenement buildings constructed from the 1920s to the 1950s - the Blue House, the Yellow House and the Orange House. The compound has been revitalized into Viva Blue House, a multifunctional complex providing residential accommodation and community services. The jury of the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation selected Blue House Cluster as the winner of the Award of Excellence from 43 submissions. Launched in 2000, the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation aim to recognize and encourage conservation and restoration projects under private initiatives and public-private partnership in the Asia-Pacific region. A month and a half after Dallas rushed to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, its City Council opted to put the brakes on implementing the 13 recommendations put forward by the mayors task force on Confederate monuments. The Dallas News reports that the council was set to vote on the recommendations on Nov. 8. The task force has recommended removing of the Confederate War Memorial outside the citys convention center, renaming streets, parks and cemeteries that honor Confederate soldiers, adding new signs to various Confederate medallions and installing a marker to memorialize the mob lynching of Allen Brooks at the Elks Arch in 1910. However, the citys leadership indicated theres much work to be done before it officially votes on accepting some or all of the task forces recommendations. Histories must be gathered and costs must be tallied, for example, they said. The task force, which began meeting at the end of August, includes historians, attorneys, preservationists, artists and religious leaders. WHICH CONFEDERATE STATUES WERE REMOVED? A RUNNING LIST According to the Dallas News, Mayor Mike Rawlings said those efforts will be led by City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who must figure out the total cost and how to implement the recommendations. The costs could certainly add up. Jennifer Scripps, head of the Office of Cultural Affairs, reportedly told the council that it will likely cost over $1 million to remove the 1896 war memorial next door to Dallas City Hall. I think the process has been complete and inclusive, said Rawlings, reports the Dallas News. After the violence in Charlottesville, Rawlings said, this city was in a precarious situation, defending how quickly Dallas worked to remove Lees statue. Meanwhile, a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit involving the removal of a Confederate monument in San Antonio spoke out about feeling excluded from that citys process. Robin Terrazas, president of the Albert Sidney Johnston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, told KENS 5 that her organization was not given enough time to challenge the citys vote and that the statues removal was a violation of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. We were given an ordinance in 1899 that gave us use of the land and it was voted unanimously by the city council at this time. We own the statue, we have a right to have it in Travis Park." Full details about the UDC's lawsuit can be read here. A memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower is set to break ground Thursday after years of public controversy and debate over its design and aesthetics. Famed architect Frank Gehry, who designed iconic buildings such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is behind the project dedicated to the 34th president which finally received approval from the Eisenhower family last year, after Gehry's initial plan was strongly opposed. The memorial will have a series of columns and multiple statues depicting Eisenhower throughout his life, along with an enormous woven metal tapestry that will illustrate where Eisenhowers troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, launching the D-Day invasion. Gehrys plans would transform a four-acre space on Independence Avenue directly in front of the Lyndon B. Johnson Department of Education Building. The architects original vision for the memorial wanted to put more of a focus on the former presidents childhood in Abilene, Kansas and incorporate additional metal tapestries. During the approval process, Gehry threatened to remove himself from the project if too many alterations were made to his original idea. Despite getting the go-ahead, criticism for the memorial still remains as a group called the National Civic Art Society claims the design doesnt fit the tone of Washington or its monuments. The National Review, a conservative magazine also expressed its discontent, calling Gehry's design "a repellent monstrosity." The majority of the estimated $150 million price tag for the memorial will come from federal funding, and organizers plan to have it completed by June 2019 -- the same month that will mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Upon its completion, Eisenhower will join the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to have a prominent memorial in the nation's capital. Eisenhower was elected president in 1952 and served two terms. He died in 1969. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Parents were outraged after students at a Georgia high school reported that a pornographic video was shown on the schools cafeteria television on Wednesday. Daphne Raines, a mother of a student enrolled at Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Ga., told WSB-TV her daughter texted her with an X-rated picture of what she saw on the schools television. She was like, Momma, look what was playing when we was eating. Came on the TV. And I just happened to look at it. And I had to just open it up and look at it real good. And I'm like, Oh, my God, Raines told WSB-TV. GEORGIA PRISONS: 2 INMATES APPARENTLY KILLED THEMSELVES Raines said the photo her 10th-grade daughter sent her made her mouth drop due to the context. It was ridiculous. It was just horrible because. This is horrible because somebody had to have control of that situation, Raines said. The video was reportedly shown for more than a minute before the schools principal, Melvin Blocker, ran into the cafeteria and turned it off, AJC reported. TEACHER, 36, AT CHRISTIAN SCHOOL ARRESTED FOR CHEST RUBBING, KISSING AND SEXY TALK' WITH TEEN BOY STUDENT A Clayton School District official told AJC a student was responsible for the video and would be disciplined. The official said the incident was being investigated. We don't know how that's going to affect her or the other kids at school, Raines said. The students parents and guardians will receive a letter detailing the incident. Fox News' request for a comment from the school was not immediately answered. The Marine Corps general in charge of war court defense teams at Guantanamo Bay was found guilty of contempt Wednesday for disobeying a judge, marking the first time anyone has faced the charge during the military commissions. The military judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, sentenced Brig. Gen. John Baker to 21 days of confinement at his living quarters on the base and fined him $1,000. Pentagon spokesman Ben Sakrisson told Fox News that as in any state, federal, or military court, the judge "has the obligation and power to enforce decorum in the courtroom. As part of the guidelines for military commissions at Guantanamo, Rule 801 outlines that the military judge is responsible for ensuring that military commission proceedings are conducted in a fair and orderly manner, without unnecessary delay or waste of time or resources." Under another section in the guidelines, Rule 809, those found in contempt in military commissions can be sentenced up to 30 days of confinement and no more than a $1,000 fine. The decision came after Baker released three civilian defense attorneys from the death-penalty case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of attacking the USS Cole in 2000, according to the Miami Herald, who first reported the incident. The three non-military defense attorneys quit the case for ethical reasons "related to secret government eavesdropping on their communications," according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Spath declared Baker's decision null and void, and ordered the three civilian attorneys -- identified by the Miami Herald as Rick Kammen, Rosa Eliades, and Mary Spears -- to participate in a hearing on Friday. The contempt conviction of an American official was the first handed down since military commissions began at Guantanamo Bay in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Baker is permitted to have internet and phone communications while in his confinement, according to the Herald. Under Rule 809, the "Convening Authority designates the place of confinement for those found in contempt, according to Sakrisson. "The military judge yesterday ordered General Baker to be confined to his quarters at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Sakrisson told Fox News on Thursday. The convening authority will determine whether to affirm, defer, suspend or disapprove the sentence in the next few days." The decision drew outrage from civil liberties groups that have long complained about military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, saying the decision "needs to be reversed." The contempt finding and confinement of General Baker is unlawful and an outrage, Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions National Security Project said in a statement. General Baker was continuing the honorable military defense counsel tradition of trying to act ethically, despite being part of a system rigged against the rule of law. The military judges unprecedented contempt ruling against General Baker shows just how difficult that is. Nashiri, who has been in U.S. custody for 15 years, is accused of orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing by Al Qaeda of the USS Cole off Yemen that killed 17 sailors. Prosecutors presented the weapon and demonstrated how it could have been hidden in the suspect's clothing on Thursday in the Kate Steinle murder trial, a point they have long used to disprove the defense's argument that the homeless illegal immigrant charged in the murder found the gun. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, has been accused of fatally shooting Steinle on Pier 14 in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. The jury heard continued questioning of San Francisco Police Department Officer Anthony Ravano. Ravano was the lead homicide inspector in Steinles murder. Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia asked the bailiff to bring out evidence, including the semi-automatic weapon used to kill Steinle, as well as the clothes the suspect was wearing at the time. STEINLE MURDER SUSPECTS CONFESSION PLAYED FOR JURORS Ravano was then asked to place the weapon in both the pants pocket and the jacket pocket, ultimately demonstrating that it could have been concealed. While Garcia did not overemphasize the point, the prosecutions argument has revolved around the notion that Zarate did not find the gun on the pier that day but rather brought it with him and hid it in his clothing. Upon cross examination, defense attorney Matt Gonzalez asked why the suspects clothing had never been tested for gunshot residue, to which Ravano said that authorities knew the shot was fired from outside the pocket. Upon a re-direct question, prosecutors asked Ravano, and because Garcia Zarate threw it in the Bay? Ravono replied, yes. KATE STEINLE TRIAL: POLICE TESTIFY BULLET RICOCHETED, KILLED WOMAN IN SAN FRANCISCO Ravano also admitted that in questioning Zarate after the shooting, investigators lied to him in order to motivate him to be more forthcoming in answering their questions. The defense argued that the tactic elicited false responses from the suspect and that he didnt fully comprehend what he was saying. After Zarate answered questions and would agree with police, hed often be unable to repeat the question hed been asked saying, I dont know. Ravano said that despite Zarates answers being inconsistent, he was not concerned with their validity. But some of the lies, such as telling Zarate that the gun had been recovered, were ultimately proved to be true, Garcia later argued. The prosecution brought out their final witness for the day, Dr. Michael Hunter, who is San Francisco's chief medical examiner and performed the autopsy on Steinle. He showed the court two pictures of Steinle's wound and said it was "atypical," indicating that the bullet hit an "intermediary target" before hitting Steinle. The bullet was passed around to the jury to examine. None of the members of the Steinle family were present in court. Previous days in court have included testimony from witnesses on the scene and responding officers who handled evidence and investigation. COURTROOM GASPS AS VIDEO OF KATE STEINLES SHOOTING IS PLAYED FOR JURY Prosecutors have charged Zarate with murder, alleging he intended to point and shoot the gun at pedestrians on the pier. Zarate has admitted to shooting Steinle, but says it was an accident. Prosecutors and Gonzalez said the case boils down to whether Zarate pointed and fired the gun intentionally or the weapon accidentally discharged. While Zarates 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. Steinles death 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. San Francisco is a sanctuary city, with local law enforcement officials barred from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. President Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to cities with similar immigration policies. Fox News Claudia Cowan and the Associated Press contributed to this report. Stephen Paddocks girlfriend may be hiding something from investigators who are trying to piece together the motive behind the Las Vegas massacre, the citys sheriff suggested in a wide-ranging interview with a local television station. Marilou Danley, who is still a person of interest in the case, has told authorities that she never knew the attack was coming. Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, in his first TV appearance in nearly three weeks, told KLAS that investigators hes spoken to believe this assessment is accurate. But he added that something appears to be off about the manner in which Paddock amassed his arsenal of weapons. There is a lot of people that have hundreds and hundreds of guns, but for this individual to do it at a certain point in time and to do it all with such robust action, you would think that Ms. Danley would have some information associated with that, he said. But currently we havent been able to pull that out of her, if its in her. Lombardo added that Danley will be interviewed again this week and he suggested she could have prevented the massacre, which left 58 dead and hundreds injured. It could have been prevented on many levels, Lombardo told KLAS George Knapp. Marilou Danley, his brother, anybody that may have had some modicum of information that would have presented this individuals state of mind, but apparently right now we dont know that. NEWS ORGANIZATIONS FILE LAWSUITS ALLEGING LAS VEGAS OFFICIALS ARE VIOLATING PUBLIC RECORDS LAW Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack and Paddock wired $100,000 to an account in the country days earlier, according to past reports. No motive for the Oct. 1 shooting has been revealed yet, but Lombardo said that since September 2015, Paddock a high-rolling gambler had lost a significant amount of wealth. I think that might have a determining factor on what he determined to do, Lombardo said. The sheriff said Paddock was narcissistic, had some bouts of depression and was very status-driven, based on how he liked to be recognized in the casinos and by his family and friends, which was starting to decline. Paddock fired off more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and had access to over 4,000 more, Lombardo told KLAS. The shooting spree stopped after, according to Lombardos belief, Paddock realized the authorities were closing in. I believe the suspect believed the wolf was at the door and took his own life, Lombardo said. A hard drive that was missing from one of Paddocks laptops found in the room after police entered has still not been recovered. The hard drive was not located in the room, Lombardo said. We may never know where that hard drive is. It could have been removed years ago. FULL COVERAGE OF LAS VEGAS SHOOTING Security footage obtained by police from Mandalay Bay is still being investigated and Paddock was not seen in the presence of any other individuals while moving around the property, Lombardo added. The sheriff also said conspiracy theories and thinking that we are trying to hide stuff or are conspiring together to hide stuff is ridiculous. He also blasted Internet trolls accusing the victims and their families of faking the injuries and deaths. Im amazed at peoples mental state to post the stuff that they post, Lombardo told KLAS. I probably shouldnt tell you this, but I wish I could locate some of these individuals or have them present themselves to me personally and Ill show them what happened out there. A man charged with fatally stabbing and shooting a popular Ohio middle school teacher was engaged to her daughter and a pallbearer at her funeral, officials said Tuesday. Jeffrey Scullin Jr., 20, was charged with aggravated murder and is being held at the Cuyahoga County Jail on $1 million bond, FOX 8 reported. Scullin had been living in the home where 49-year-old Melinda Pleskovic was found dead on Oct. 24 with stab wounds to her back, according to Strongsville Police Chief Mark Fender. A medical examiner said she died of "gunshot wounds and sharp force injuries." Scullin and the victim's daughter were supposed to be married last Saturday, four days after the killing, according to an online registry. Officials have so far not given a possible motive in the killing, but released 911 calls Tuesday made by Scullin and the victim's husband after her body was discovered. "Mel Pleskovic was attacked," Scullin told a dispatcher in the call obtained by FOX 8, who then asked if the 20-year-old knew who the attacker was. "No. We just came home. She's on the kitchen floor." The victim's husband told 911 dispatchers after finding Pleskovic's body that people had been trying to break into their home "all year." "I just got in the door with my new son-in-law," Bruce Pleskovic told a dispatcher. Just days before, police investigated a report that an unknown man tried to enter the home by forcing open the back door. Records obtained by the Associated Press show police investigated a report of a theft from a car in January, and they went to the house again in July to investigate a suspicious person. Officers also were called in September when Melinda Pleskovic told officers a set of car keys was missing, and that she kept finding her car unlocked and the alarm kept going off. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Newburyport school administrators apologized Thursday for homework students were given containing a math problem about the September 11th tragedy. Parents of Newburyport High School students were outraged after an algebra problem asked students to determine how long one of the planes was in the air before it hit the World Trade Center in 2001. I thought it was inappropriate, parent Paula Quill told Boston 25 News. I disagree with that totally, wholeheartedly. Parents say theres simply no excuse for how the question was worded. Thinking about something so sad, with everything else going on in the world, I dont think it was the right thing to do, grandparent Carol Bogard told Boston 25 news. But parents say whats worse is the schools personal connection to the tragedy. Tom Pecorelli, a Newburyport High School alumnus, was killed on Flight 11. Its very disrespectful, thats one of the first things that comes to mind, its really disrespectful, Pecorellis sister Angela Wadleigh told Boston 25 News over the phone Wednesday. Wadleigh says when she heard the question, it immediately took her back to the worst day of her life. Out of thousands of examples you could use in math, this is not one you could use, she said. In a statement, Superintendent Susan Viccaro told us, this was assignment was not intended to be disrespectful...this was an exercise of poor judgment by the educator who intended to use the historical event as a mechanics to engage students in a thoughtful discussion. Read more from Fox 25 Boston. Editor's note: Located in eastern China's Anhui Province, Mount Huangshan is often described as the "loveliest mountain in China" and was listed on both the world cultural and natural heritage lists in 1990. In September 2013, Lonely Planet included Mount Huangshan in its top 10 list of "The World's Best Places to See Autumn Colors." Some tourists even say that one can never know just how beautiful autumn is without seeing the fall scenery at Mount Mount Huangshan. Let China.org.cn be your guide to enjoy the rich, colorful and awe-inspiring landscape of the mountain in autumn. At the Jade Screen Scenic Area, tourists will find such renowned scenic spots as the Three Islands of Peng Lai, the 100-step Scaling Ladder, the Thread of the Sky and the New Thread of the Sky running all the way up to the top of the mountain. [China.org.cn] Less than 24 hours after a driver plowed into a crowd Tuesday on the streets of New York City, NBC News faced mockery and criticism for posting a story about American Muslims that critics said was unfounded. The NBC story suggested that Muslim Americans were fearing a potential backlash against their community because the suspect identified by authorities as Sayfullo Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan shared their faith. But critics posting on social media derided the network for focusing on an unsubstantiated idea rather than on those killed or injured in the attack. Maybe we should focus on those who were brutally murdered than a backlash you hope manifests, NRA spokeswoman and author Dana Loesch wrote on Twitter. Police say 29-year-old Saipov, who was living in New Jersey after relocating from Florida, mowed down people near the World Trade Center with a rented truck, leaving eight people dead and a dozen injured. He reportedly yelled Allahu akbar ("God is great") after he exited the vehicle and pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the wake of Tuesday's attack, some Muslim Americans and community leaders expressed concerns over how their religion would be perceived and whether Muslims would become targets of violence, NBC wrote in an article titled, "Muslim Americans Again Brace for Backlash After New York Attack." "My initial reaction was, obviously, concern and shock over what happened," Umer Ahmad, a Muslim-American physician from New Jersey, told the network. "My biggest concern is that he's readily identified as a Muslim and then that is extrapolated out to my own faith. But that opinion wasn't shared by others who read the article. Instead of the story being the barbaric murder of innocents, the media wants the story to be imagined backlash. Disgusting, said Christopher Barron, president of Right Turn Strategies, a conservative consulting firm, and co-founder of GOProud, an organization for gay and lesbian conservatives. Said one Twitter commenter: NBC immediately rushes to accuse Americans of being Islamophobic bigots after a terror attack that killed eight people. Another Twitter use wrote:NBCs priority in reporting is about backlash to Muslim Americans, not that eight people were killed. Saipov remained detained Wednesday after being apprehended following the attack. Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that the suspect was motivated by hate and a twisted ideology, as he possessed multiple gruesome ISIS-related videos and photos, including pictures of people being beheaded, Fox News reported. He was charged with providing material support to a terror group and committing violence in Tuesdays attack. President Donald Trump called for the death penalty Wednesday night amid reports that Saipov asked for an ISIS flag for his hospital room. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!, the president tweeted. Three weeks after the deadliest attempted prison breakout in North Carolina history, prison and law enforcement officials still can't quantify the scope of the violence that correctional officers at the understaffed prison had been confronting daily. A fourth Pasquotank Correctional Institution worker injured in the failed Oct. 12 breakout died Thursday. State prison officials say they don't yet know how many employees or inmates at Pasquotank have been injured by violence in the past year. Nor are they able to say how many prison workers have been assaulted at other prisons across the state since the escape attempt. At least one correctional officer was injured when she was attacked last week by an inmate at North Carolina's primary women's prison in Raleigh. Records of on-the-job injuries suffered by prison workers aren't tracked by wardens of individual lockups and are instead kept in a central database, state prisons spokesman Jerry Higgins said Thursday. "The request has been made to our data people here for these numbers, for this information. It's kept in a central location, not at the prisons," Higgins said. "We are still waiting to receive the information from our data people. No one's dragging their feet." The public has a right to know more about attacks on prison workers, Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday. "It has been appalling what has happened to these fine correction officers. Their safety needs to be a priority for us," Cooper said after an appearance in Raleigh. "The public does have a right to know what's happening in our prisons and we're going to work to have a reform process in place that is responsive and that solves the problem." Meanwhile, the Pasquotank County Sheriff's Office, which is investigating crimes committed during last month's failed breakout, has been unable to say how many cases of violent assault detectives have investigated in the past year. Investigators charged one inmate with stabbing another in April. The Associated Press requested the data from the sheriff and state prison authorities the day after the Elizabeth City prison's failed escape, in which two correctional officers, vocational instructor Veronica Darden and maintenance worker Geoffrey Howe died. Four inmates are charged with murder after they were accused of setting a fire as a diversion, attacking the workers and scrambling to scale the prison's fence. An internal Correction Department report says the attempted escape lasted 43 minutes from the time two inmates attacked Darden until the last inmate surrendered upon making it over a series of obstacles to the outermost fence. Justin Smith, the correctional officer guarding the sewing shop where the inmates worked, died after being battered with a claw hammer, said the report, which was first acquired by Charlotte TV station WBTV. Correctional Officer Wendy Shannon died Monday. She and a guard who survived were attacked in a loading dock by the inmates tugging carts of "tools and supplies needed for their escape attempt," the report said. Smith was the only correctional officer supervising more than 30 inmates in the prison's sewing plant, ground zero for the attack, where inmates worked with cutting sheers and screwdrivers, State Employees Association of North Carolina President Stanley Drewery said. The Pasquotank case is the worst example of troubling staffing conditions in North Carolina, said Drewery, the head of the 55,000-member public employee union. He says a prison employee is assaulted every eight hours, on average, in the state. Correctional officials have not disputed the statistic. An attack "could happen at any given prison at any given time, even fully staffed. But when you're understaffed, that makes it more hazardous," said Drewery, himself a former prison officer who retired in 2012. Across the statewide prison system, about one out of seven of the correctional officer jobs were unfilled in September, based on Correction Department records provided to SEANC. But finding enough correctional officers to meet security needs is harder for prisons in rural areas like Pasquotank and nearby Bertie Correctional Institution, where a guard was beaten to death in April. Pasquotank was 28 percent short of its full complement of 266 correctional officers around the time of last month's attack, according to Correction Department figures. Bertie had a 26 percent vacancy rate for correctional officer spots. Hyde Correctional Institution, also in the state's rural northeast corner, was missing 38 percent of its assigned staffing level for guards. ___ Follow Emery P. Dalesio on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio. His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/emery%20dalesio ___ Associated Press writer Gary Robertson contributed to this report. In the late afternoon on Oct. 31, Sayfullo Saipov, 29, from Uzbekistan, allegedly drove a rented truck down a path filled with pedestrians and cyclists, killing eight people and injuring at least 12 others. The incident, which occurred around 3 p.m. near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, has been called a cowardly act of terror by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. As more information regarding the tragic incident comes to light, heres a look at how it unfolded: 2010 Saipov moved from Uzbekistan to the United States in 2010, according to The New York Times. He first lived in Tampa, Fla., and then in Paterson, N.J., where he worked as an Uber driver. Uber confirmed to Fox News that Saipov passed the companys background check, but added that he is now banned. He had no rider complaints. Oct. 31 2 p.m. ET The suspect reportedly rented a truck from a Home Depot in Passaic, N.J. 3:05 p.m. The suspect reportedly drove the truck into a crowd of pedestrians and cyclists who were on a bike path near the West Side Highway in New York City, killing eight people and injuring at least 12. According to officials, five of the victims were Argentinian tourists. The truck then crashed into a school bus, injuring two adults and two children. After the crash, the suspect reportedly got out of his vehicle and yelled Allahu akbar, which means God is great in Arabic. He also was holding two weapons which were later determined to be a pellet gun and a paintball gun, according to officials. NYC TERROR SUSPECT SAYFULLO SAIPOV: WHO IS HE? The suspect was then shot in the abdomen by a police officer and was arrested. Officials identified the police officer as 28-year-old Ryan Nash, who has been on the force for five years. The suspect later underwent surgery for his shotgun wound. Police later found two handwritten notes, written in Arabic, that pledged loyalty to ISIS. According to William Sweeney, FBI assistant director-in-charge, there were also knives found at the scene. 4:34 p.m. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted about the event, thanking the New York City Police Department for rapidly responding to the tragic situation downtown. 4:40 p.m. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that President Donald Trump was briefed on the attack by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected, she added. 4:57 p.m. First Lady Melania Trump tweeted about the incident. 5:23 p.m. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio held a press briefing along with Gov. Andrew Cuomo. De Blasio called it an act of terror while the governor assured it was a lone wolf attack, emphasizing that there was no evidence to suggest the attack was part of a wider plot. 5:30 p.m. Trump tweeted about the attack, saying it looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. He later tweeted, We must not allow ISIS to return, or enter, our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough! 5:34 p.m. The suspect is officially identified as Sayfullo Saipov, from Uzbekistan with a green card, Fox News confirmed. 6:49 p.m. Didier Reynders, the deputy prime minister of Belgium, said on Twitter that he was "deeply saddened" to learn that one of the victims who died in the attack was Belgian. 6:57 p.m. Trump expressed his condolences to all those who were impacted by the attack. 7 p.m. The annual Village Halloween Parade in Manhattan went on as scheduled despite the attack. De Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo both attended to show their support. Nov. 1 10:20 a.m. Pope Francis said he was profoundly saddened by the terror attack. 11:03 a.m. In a press conference on Wednesday morning, James ONeill, the commissioner for the New York City Police Department, called the incident the worst terror attack in New York City since Sept. 11. What happened yesterday was not ok, he said. We will never accept it as inevitable-- and were working hard to get to the bottom, and working tirelessly so its not repeated. NYC TERROR ATTACK SUSPECT, SAYFULLO SAIPOV, ENTERED US THROUGH DIVERSITY VISA PROGRAM Daniel Nigro, the commissioner for the New York City Fire Department, confirmed that there were eight deaths and 12 injuries. One victim, he said, underwent a bilateral amputation following the attack. He said others had severe head and neck injuries. De Blasio said the incident was an attack on New York City and America adding that it was the definition of terrorism. The mayor added that one million New Yorkers showed up at the Halloween parade on Tuesday evening following the attack. [New Yorkers] show the whole world right now that we will not be moved by terror, de Blasio said. There are no additional threats, de Blasio assured -- but encouraged New Yorkers to be part of the solution. Cuomo called Nash, the young NYPD officer who shot Saipov, a hero. The attack was the action of a depraved coward, he added. Police forces in the city will be doubled, he said. Officials said that searches were conducted throughout the night and into the morning. The suspect planned the attack for a number a weeks before it occurred, William Sweeney, FBI assistant director-in-charge, said. He confirmed the attack was carried out in the name of ISIS. The suspect has never been the subject of a NYPD or FBI investigation, Sweeney added, but he may have connections to those who are subjects of an investigation. 4:58 p.m. Federal prosecutors filed holding charges against Saipov, accusing him of providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles in the attack. More charges are expected to be filed. A source told Fox News that Saipov was interviewed by authorities while he was in the hospital and was described as cooperative but showed no remorse for his actions in the deadly attack. Saipov also requested to display the ISIS flag in his hospital room. 8:43 p.m. Trump tweets that Saipov should receive the death penalty for his actions. 9:00 p.m. Federal prosecutors brought terrorism charges against Saipov, which could bring the death penalty. Nov. 2 4:50 a.m. Trump tweets about Saipov, this time saying he would "love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system." 4:54 a.m. Trump tweets again, re-emphasizing his desire to see Saipov face the death penalty. 9:30 a.m. Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference in which he addressed the attack. The perpetrator will be brought to justice, he said, adding that the incident was another reminder of the dangers we face from the threat of radical terrorism. He expressed his condolences to the families impacted by the attack, as well as to the people of New York. He also called NYPD officer Nash a hero not just in New York but across America. Sessions said it has been the Department of Justices goal since 9/11 to fight terrorists. Terrorists diminish our freedom and threaten our lifestyle, he said. Sessions also addressed some of Trumps recent executive orders, like the much debated travel ban. The president was right to issue his order [the travel ban], he said. He has a legal right to take this action. 12:49 p.m. In addition to the people he attacked near the World Trade Center, the suspect told investigators that he also had plans to strike pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, according to a criminal complaint as reported by FOX 13. Nov. 3 Officials said Saipov called his friend, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, just before the attack. What was said during the call is currently unknown, and Kadirov is not being called a suspect. Nov. 6 New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, held a joint press conference on Nov. 6 to honor the victims of the attack. Five of the eight victims were from the South American country. Nov. 28 Saipov is scheduled for arraignment in Manhattan federal court. 3 p.m. Saipov pleaded not guilty in federal court on Tuesday. Authorities say two teenagers have been charged in connection with a street-racing wreck in Georgia that killed another teenager. Gainesville police Sgt. Kevin Holbrook told news outlets that 18-year-old Brandon Eduardo Sanchez and a 17-year-old were racing Monday around 11:45 p.m. when Sanchez lost control of the vehicle, crossed the median and hit a tree. Sanchez's passenger, another 17-year-old boy, died in the wreck and was pronounced dead at the scene. A Hall County Schools news release says the victim was a student at West Hall High School. Authorities learned Sanchez only had a learner's permit. He was charged with first-degree vehicular homicide. The teenage driver of the other vehicle was charged with being a party to first-degree vehicular homicide. It's unclear if the two have lawyers. A police officer in Camden, N.J.,, suffered a gunshot wound Wednesday night, but managed to take the weapon away from his assailant, authorities said. The Camden County police officer suffered a "significant wound" to one of his legs, but was expected to survive, the Courier-Post reported. Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson told the newspaper that the officer "lost a lot of blood," but was aided by a tourniquet applied by other officers. The injured officer joined the department a litle more than a year ago, but the chief would not identify the officer. The shooting occurred around 10:30 p.m., NJ.com reported. The alleged assailant was taken into custody, and was being charged with attempted murder of a police officer and other crimes, the chief told the Courier-Post. A Southern California man was arrested Thursday on a charge of killing his mother for financial gain in 1994. Newport Beach police arrested 70-year-old John Henry Van Uden III of Dana Point as he got off his boat, the Orange County district attorney's office said. Prosecutors allege he struck his mother, 76-year-old Frances Marjorie Van Uden, with a blunt object on March 3, 1994. Concerned neighbors who hadn't seen her in two days called police, who found her dead in the living room of her home in the Corona del Mar section of Newport Beach. The district attorney's office described the victim as a mother of three who enjoyed spending time with her grandchildren. Her son John was identified as a possible suspect early on. But the investigation went on for years. "Law enforcement did not forget this case. He might have thought he'd gotten away with it, but he had not," District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said at a news conference after the arrest. Van Uden III was scheduled for arraignment Monday in Santa Ana. It wasn't immediately known if he had an attorney. Police had continued to follow leads and collect evidence over the years, reviewing and expanding the case file when there was time to delve into cold cases. In 2016, the Newport Beach City Council hired two part-time, retired homicide detectives to help with the police department's cold case investigations. On Oct. 26, county prosecutors charged Van Uden III with one felony count of murder with a special circumstances enhancement of murder for financial gain. An arrest warrant was issued. Donald Trump promised he would fill the military prison at Guantanamo Bay with "bad dudes" and slammed the Obama administration for prosecuting terrorists in U.S. courts. But so far, Trump has treated terror suspects just as President Barack Obama did, passing on Guantanamo in favor of having his own Justice Department lawyers try them in federal court. The strongest sign yet that he is retreating from his earlier promise came Thursday, when Trump conceded that the civilian courts offer a swifter way to bring terror suspects to justice in the communities they attacked. A day after he assailed the U.S. criminal justice system as a "joke" and a "laughingstock," Trump backed off his threat to send the suspect in Tuesday's New York bike path rampage to the troubled military commission system at Guantanamo. "Statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system," Trump said in an early morning tweet, adding that there is "also something appropriate" about keeping him "in the home of the horrible crime he committed." It was legally questionable whether the Trump administration could have sent 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov to Guantanamo, in part because the courts have not ruled whether the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force which permits the government to detain enemy combatants for the duration of a military conflict applies to the Islamic State and its followers. And no one held within the U.S. has been sent to Guantanamo since the detention center opened in January 2002 to hold suspected members of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Trump has passed on other chances to send suspects there, including earlier this week, when the Justice Department said a militant captured in Libya and accused of playing an instrumental role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks would be prosecuted in federal court in Washington, where a trial for the alleged mastermind is already under way. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced that a man arrested in Bosnia had been brought to New York to face charges that he abandoned the United States in 2013 to join the Islamic State group. And the administration this summer sent an al-Qaida suspect linked to a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist from Spain to Philadelphia to face terrorism charges in federal court, another break from Trump's tough-on-terror talk. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has long argued that terror suspects should be prosecuted at the military prison, expressed confidence Thursday that the U.S. justice system can handle terror suspects like Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who authorities say was inspired by the Islamic State. Sessions said the administration would "use all lawful tools at our disposal" in the fight against terror, leaving open the possibility of sending suspects to Guantanamo, but touting for the first time the hundreds of terrorism-related convictions the Justice Department has secured since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Trump's early record is a far cry from the rhetoric of his fellow Republicans who for years demanded terror suspects be held as enemy combatants. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Thursday he was "dumbfounded as to why the Trump administration still follows the Obama playbook when it comes to dealing with terror suspects." Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona made a similar call for Saipov to be interrogated as an enemy combatant, without some of the protections afforded under the American legal system. Trump's argument that Saipov should be tried in the same place where he committed his attack closely resembles the one Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder made in trying to move the five men accused in the Sept. 11 attacks from Guantanamo to New York for trial in a civilian court. That effort that was derailed by political opposition. The men remain at Guantanamo and have yet to be tried. Their cases are likely years from resolution. Holder expressed vindication after Trump changed course Thursday, writing on Twitter: "Those who criticized my decision to try 9/11 plotters in federal system take note. I was right. 16 years-no justice. Use courts-not Gitmo." Just seven men have been convicted at Guantanamo either by trial before military commission or through plea bargains, including four whose convictions were later overturned on appeal or invalidated. Mary McCord, who oversaw the Justice Department's National Security Division before her departure in April, said she hoped Trump and Sessions were beginning to recognize the long and successful track record of federal terrorism prosecutors. "It's a good sign that the president and the attorney general are listening to the advice of counterterrorism prosecutors, career professionals who have a lot to offer" when it comes making decisions about where to try such suspects. But the Justice Department said only that such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and wouldn't say whether the recent cases are a sign of any formal policy. It remains to be seen how the administration will handle a U.S. citizen picked up on the Syrian battlefield in September for allegedly fighting with Islamic State militants. In at least a physical sense, there are no practical reasons why the U.S. couldn't hold someone at Guantanamo. The detention center, which reached a maximum population of about 680 in the summer of 2003, is now down to just 41. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi is visiting conflict-torn northern Rakhine state for the first time and her government says a repatriation plan for the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees who've fled violence is underway. She arrived in the state capital Sittwe on Thursday morning and headed to restive northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there hasn't been much conflict. Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, said: "The state counselor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials." State counselor is her official title. Suu Kyi spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyi's plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. As he prepares to embark Friday on a major 12-day foreign policy trip to five Asian countries, President Donald Trump is finalizing plans to secure Chinas involvement in curbing the threat posed by North Korea, officials say. Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping next Wednesday in Beijing, a day after a planned stop in South Korea. Senior administration officials have said Trump will have specific demands for his Chinese counterpart --- and will be prepared to threaten consequences if China does not abide them. Trump is expected to request that Xi impose limits on oil exports and coal imports with the rogue dictatorship, as well as broader limits on financial transactions with the regime, Reuters reported. China is responsible for more than 90 percent of all trade with North Korea. Behind the scenes, Trump may also insist that the Chinese work to convince the North Korean government in Pyongyang to open nuclear disarmament discussions with Washington. But a former U.S. intelligence official who is informally advising the White House on Asia policy told the Washington Times that the administration is not entirely sure what it can accomplish during the presidents visit to Beijing. Experts say it is likely that, even if Trump's goals are uncertain of being achieved, the president will rely on various pressure points during his discussion with Xi. One indirect tool at Trumps disposal, U.S. officials told Reuters, is the threat of imposing further economic sanctions on North Korea. The move could destabilize the already fragile North Korean economy and lead to a surge of poor refugees from North Korea into China, creating a logistical headache and a potential humanitarian crisis for Beijing. The president could also cause problems for Xi by formally investigating Chinese entities who administration officials say strong-arm U.S. companies into divulging proprietary intellectual property. The Washington Times reported that Trump, who first raised the issue with Xi during an August phone call, is prepared to renew the threat during next week's meeting. And Trump, who has previously threatened to reduce Chinas access to U.S. markets if it does not take a harder line on North Korea, will likely target the trade imbalance between the U.S. and China. China has the largest bilateral trade surplus with the U.S. of any country, by a significant margin. Trump will probably tell the Chinese president, "Im coming after you on trade, Christopher Johnson, a China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Times. But Xi has sent signals that he may not be receptive to the White Houses position. After North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un sent Xi a congratulatory message for recently winning a second term as Chinas Communist Party leader, Xi called for stable relations between the two countries. I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the [North Korean] side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development, Xi wrote, according to North Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency. Xi added that China and North Korea should focus on defending regional peace and stability and common prosperity. A Spanish prosecutor has sought an international arrest warrant for ousted Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont after he failed to appear in a Madrid court for questioning. The prosecutor asked a National Court judge to issue an arrest warrant for four of Puigdemonts ex-ministers, who also failed to show up to answer questions in a rebellion probe following Catalonias regional parliaments declaration of independence from Spain on Oct. 27. The ex-Catalan leader defied a court order to appear in Madrid and instead sought refuge in Belgium earlier this week. A Belgian lawyer representing the sacked Catalan president said Wednesday he was seeking to have Puigdemont questioned in Belgium. "He is not going to Madrid, and I suggested that they question him here in Belgium," the lawyer, Paul Bekaert, told The Associated Press. After his no-show, the president of the Spanish Supreme Court said the court would seek a European arrest warrant. Meanwhile, a judge has ordered nine ex-members jailed while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement. Investigative magistrate Carmen Lamela issued the ruling on Thursday at the request of prosecutors. The judge set bail for one of the nine former members of the Catalan Cabinet, saying he would be freed if he pays bail of 50,000 euros. Six Catalan lawmakers appeared Thursday for a parallel session in the Spain Supreme Court. They were given a week to prepare their defenses and instructed to return for questioning on Nov. 9. In all, 20 regional politicians are being investigated on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement for declaration of secession the Parliament of Catalonia made on Oct. 27. The crimes are punishable by up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. Spain took the unprecedented step of triggering constitutional powers, allowing it to take over running Catalonia following the region's declaration of independence. Madrid dismissed the Catalan Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for Dec. 21. Javier Melero, a lawyer representing some of the separatist lawmakers investigated in the Supreme Court, criticized Puigdemont and the four ministers who skipped court. He said their actions would be damaging for his clients, three lawmakers who are members of Puigdemont's PDeCAT party. "Not being at the service of the judiciary when you are summoned is always damaging for the rest of those being investigated," Melero said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. You are here: Home Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday stressed China's commitment to developing and deepening relations with Russia during a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Xi said China is ready to work with Russia to expand cooperation in various fields, maintain close coordination in international affairs and promote the building of a community of shared future. The president said he believed the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia would generate new opportunities and achieve new results. Xi pointed out China and Russia should give full play to the prime ministers' regular meetings and enhance cooperation on energy, equipment manufacturing, agriculture and aerospace. He called on both sides to increase the content of technological innovation in their cooperation and integrate the Belt and Road Initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union. China and Russia should cooperate in the development and utilization of the Arctic navigation channels to create a "Silk Road on the Ice," Xi said. On people-to-people exchanges, Xi said China and Russia have achieved many results in education, tourism, and media cooperation, which consolidated the public support for bilateral ties. For his part, Medvedev conveyed sincere greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin to President Xi. He congratulated Xi on the success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and his re-election as the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee. The congress charted a blueprint for China's future development and carries great significance to both China and the world, said Medvedev. Since President Xi visited Russia this July, the two countries have made progress in cooperation on economy, energy, investment, innovation, people-to-people exchanges and other fields, he said. Chinese top legislator Zhang Dejiang also met with Medvedev on Wednesday afternoon, and both sides agreed to strengthen cooperation on legislation and supervision. A Belgian mayor is banning Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders and Belgian anti-immigrant politician Filip Dewinter from holding a rally in the Molenbeek, a Muslim-majority Brussels neighborhood. Francoise Schepmans said the two men had described their planned visit on Friday to Molenbeek as an "Islam Safari" in the "Jihadi capital of Europe." She said the rally cannot take place "to avoid any predictable threat to order and public peace." Some of the extremists linked to the Paris massacres in November 2015 and the suicide bomb attacks on the Brussels airport and metro in March 2016 lived in or transited through Molenbeek. Belgium police and the army have been on high alert for almost two years. Catalonian separatists won a razor-thin majority on Thursday, with the three separatist parties winning a total of 70 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament. But the snap regional election failed to clarify the way forward, as parties seeking Catalonia's independence will be a majority in the new parliament but a pro-union party got the most votes. Still, ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont celebrated the results from Belgium on Thursday -- the same country he sought refuge in after Spain issued European arrest warrants for him and other separatists in November. Puigdemont also said that he's ready to meet with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in any location but Spain, because that's where he's facing arrest. In addition, Puigdemont also said he wants guarantees to return to Catalonia and be reinstated as the region's leader. In response, Rajoy said he expects a "new era based on dialogue" will begin in Catalonia following the snap election, adding that he will talk with the region's new leaders as long as they don't violate Spain's Constitution. The election comes after the Spanish government took control of Catalonia when separatist lawmakers, led by Puigdemont, declared independence in October. Spain invoked its never-before used constitutional amendment to take control of the region, giving it the ability to sack Puigdemont and his cabinet as well as authorize the government to curtail the regions parliamentary powers. Spain's Constitutional Court officially annulled the Catalan parliaments independence vote in November. European neighbors including Italy, France and Germany have condemned the independence declaration and rallied behind Spain. In light of the election, here's what you need to know. What is Catalonia? Located in the northeast region of Spain, Catalonia is largely independent with its own culture and language. Its one of the richest and most industrialized areas of the country with a heavy emphasis on manufacturing, according to the BBC. The region, which includes Barcelona, is home to about 7.5 million people. Valuing its autonomy, Catalonia has its own parliament and executive, called Generalitat in its language. Why do they want independence? Because of its own cultural identity, those in favor of Catalan independence have pushed for the region to become separate from Spain. Supporters also believe that they have given more to the Spanish government than they have gotten back. The push for independence raises questions of the future of democracy and democratic rule, Pamela Radcliff, a University of California, San Diego professor and modern Spain historian, told Fox News. Whats being contested between Spain and Catalonia, one of the things is different visions of what defending democracy looks like. SOME SEPARATIST-MINDED CATALANS URGE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Radcliff said that its very possible that neither side has much incentive to compromise. The region held a referendum on Oct. 1. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets of Barcelona around the Catalan regional government palace to celebrate the independence vote. They chanted for the Spanish flag to be removed as live music played. The regions parliament voted to establish an independent Catalonia with 70 votes in favor of independence, 10 votes against and two blank ballots. Opposition leaders had left the chambers in protest before the vote. How did the Oct. 1 vote go? Catalonias parliament voted for independence after an Oct. 1 referendum with about 90 percent of the 2.3 million people who voted choosing independence, according to Catalan officials. However, fewer than half of the eligible voters participated in the highly contested referendum. About 900 people were treated for injuries after voting turned violent when Catalan civilians and Spanish police clashed. Andrew Dowling, an expert in Catalan history at Cardiff University in Wales, said that an independence declaration by the Catalan parliament is symbolic without border and institutional control and no international support. PRO-INDEPENDENCE CATALANS: 'I'VE NEVER FELT SPANISH' The declaration "will see the fracture between hardliners and the pragmatic people in Catalonia who are already seeing an economic fallout," Dowling told The Associated Press. But Spains Constitutional Court officially annulled the Catalan independence vote on Nov. 8. What has been Spains response? Spain's top court declared the Oct. 1 independence referendum illegal, and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had warned that the governments first move will be to remove Puigdemont from power when the Senate granted him the special powers under Article 155. Rajoy said what is happening in Catalonia is a clear violation of the laws, of democracy, of the rights of all, and that has consequences. Hundreds of thousands of anti-independence protesters demonstrated in the streets of Barcelona and called for the Catalonia region to remain a part of Spain. Rajoy reportedly refused help from outside civil-society groups and lawyers to mediate negotiations between the two factions. He has also declined to engage in talks with Catalan leaders. There is no possible mediation between democratic law and disobedience and unlawfulness, Rajoy said. What is Article 155? Spain invoked a clause of its constitution after Catalonia forged ahead with its plans to secede from the country that would take away the regions autonomy. Catalonia's refusal to backtrack from its independence threats triggered Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, the government said, which allows central authorities to take over control of any of the countrys 17 regions. Its a provision that hasnt been used in the four decades since democracy was restored in the European nation. OUSTED CATALAN LEADER SAYS HE IS NOT SEEKING POLITICAL ASYLUM, SUPPORTS SNAP ELECTION An English translation of the constitution states that if an autonomous community breaks the law or disregards the constitution, the Spanish government can after following certain procedures take the measures necessary in order to compel the [community] forcibly to meet said obligations, or in order to protect [Spains] general interests. Rajoy's cabinet met in a special meeting to approve measures to take direct control of the Catalan region under Article 155. The Senate gave him the power to do so. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The number of Afghan trainees who have disappeared while traveling in the United States more than doubled last year, according to the latest Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) Quarterly Report released to Congress this week. More than half are unaccounted for, the report says. A prominent portion of the report was dedicated to discussing the increasing number of Afghan security personnel going AWOL while training in the United States. Of the 320 foreign military trainees that went AWOL since 2005 while in the U.S, almost half 152 hailed from Afghanistan. About 83 of those Afghanis remain unaccounted for. We found that the increasing instances of AWOL since 2015 may have had a negative impact on operational readiness of Afghan Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) units and the morale of fellow trainees and home units, as posed security risks to the United States, the report states. The revelations come at a time when the U.S is upping its troop numbers in an effort to try and reverse the deteriorating security situation in the war-embattled nation, in which the Afghan governments district and population control has declined to its lowest levels in years and armed clashes inside the country are at an all-time high, as reported by the United Nations. Since 2001, the U.S. has sought to promote a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, with a considerable goal in reconstruction efforts through training their armed forces. In July of this year, Congress appropriated a further $68.27 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) to train and equip the ANDSF. As part of this mission, the U.S government sponsors numerous military training programs including an Aviation Leadership Program, Regional Defense Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program and a Counter-Drug Training Program inside the U.S. Our analysis showed that between 2005 and 2017 253,977 foreign trainees came to the United States for training. 2,537 were from Afghanistan. During this time, 320 foreign trainees went AWOL, SIGAR noted. Of the 320, 152 47.5 percent were from Afghanistan. This overall figure represents about 6 percent of all Afghans who received U.S-based training, while only 0.07 percent of trainees from other countries went AWOL. But the Afghan trainee problem is on the uptick last year, the percentage of Afghan trainees who disappeared doubled from the historical average of 6 to 7 percent to 13 percent. Trainees had gone AWOL from 23 different locations across the country and 103 of the 152 were of the rank of lieutenant or captain. ALMOST ALL AMERICAN ISIS FIGHTERS UNACCOUNTED FOR, SPARKING FEARS THEY COULD SLIP THROUGH CRACKS AND RETURN GETTING TOUGH ON THE TALIBAN: TRUMP ADMIN SAID TO BE URGING CLOSURE OF THE MILITANT GROUP'S QATAR OFFICE INSIDE DEADLIEST TALIBAN ATTACK AGAINST AFGHAN TROOPS The reasons cited by the Afghans who were previously documented as having been AWOL, centered on personal/family safety matters and concerns over job security. For example, one female claimed that after she departed Afghanistan the Taliban threatened her family because of her U.S. association, while another trainee expressed concern that he expected not to have a job upon return to his home country as many others were able to pay bribes and thus fill the employment allotments. The lack of job security is compounded by Afghan government policy that requires Afghan trainees that are in training longer than one year (many U.S.-based trainings are longer than one year) be taken off active duty and moved to reserve status, the report stated. While in reserve status, trainees pay is cut in half and various benefits are forfeited. However, the issue of AWOL trainees which takes place when a visiting trainee does not show up at scheduled activities without prior permission for more than 24 hours is hardly new. A Fox News exclusive back in 2010 exposed the fact that 17 Afghan military men had defected from an Air Force Base in Texas alone, while a further 46 members of the Afghan military had walked away from the Defense Language Institutes English Language Center. ANDSF trainees who go AWOL while training in the United States cost the U.S. government millions of dollars in cancelled course and per diem costs, while wasting training opportunities that could have gone to other students, the Commander of the Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan (CSTC-A) said last year. In response, the CSTC-A rescinded several slots for trainee courses slated for 2017, but SIGAR contends that more needs to be done to combat the rising problem. SIGAR urges more stringent monitoring measures be put in place, suggesting that the Department of Defense (DOD) mentors in Afghanistan work closely with the Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of Interior (MOI) in Kabul to develop processes and procedures. The report also indicated that there needs to be an improvement in coordination between U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help prevent AWOL trainees who may pose a national security threat. Although the United States and Afghan governments have established processes for selecting and vetting ANDSF personnel for training, these processes appear flawed, the report concluded. A court in Macedonia has convicted 33 people accused of being members of an ethnic Albanian militant group and planning terrorist attacks. The suspects were arrested following a deadly police raid in 2015. The raid and an ensuing gun battle near in the northern border town of Kumanovo left eight officers and 10 militants dead. Seven of the defendants were handed life sentences Thursday, and another 13 were sentenced to 40 years in prison. The others got prison sentences from 12 to 20 years. Macedonia has a large ethnic Albanian minority and fought a nine-month insurgency against militants from the minority in 2001. North Korea slammed a Japanese TV stations report on Thursday that claimed hundreds of people were crushed to death when tunnels collapsed at its unstable nuclear test site. The statement comes as a South Korean spy agency renewed fears that the Hermit Kingdom is planning a missile test. North Koreas state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a statement that the Tuesday report by Japanese broadcaster Asahi TV was false and merely misinformation, Reuters reported. It accused the Japanese station of trying to slander the rogue regimes nuclear weapons program. The Japanese TV station reported on Tuesday that 200 are feared dead after an underground tunnel collapsed at the Punggye-ri test site on Oct. 10. The workers were in the tunnel during the initial cave-in, the station reported, citing a North Korean source. Another 100 people were crushed when the tunnels gave way on top of rescuers. The station also blamed the countrys sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 for destabilizing the area and causing the tunnels to crumble. Despite North Koreas rebuke of the report, experts have previously said the test site could be on the verge of collapse more than a month after the powerful blast. Pyongyang said it detonated a hydrogen bomb, calling it a perfect success that was reportedly 10 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Three small tremors have been detected from the area since the test triggered a 6.3-magnitude earthquake. Satellite images obtained by 38 North, which specializes in North Korea issues, showed a possible collapsed chimney crater at Mount Mantap, where the tests are reportedly being conducted underground. On Thursday, the National Intelligence Service, South Koreas spy agency, reported detecting active movement at a Pyongyang missile research facility that indicated Kim Jong Uns regime was possibly planning a new missile test, according to Yonhap News Agency. Punggye-ri test sites tunnel 3 was also reportedly ready to conduct another nuclear test at any time, the agency claimed. "The North will carry out additional nuclear tests and continue to push for the development of miniaturized, diversified nuclear warheads," the South Korean spy agency said. President Trump is set to leave for his five-nation Asia tour on Friday, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and Philippines his first trip in the region since taking office. He is expected to stop in South Korea next Tuesday. North Korea carried out its last intermediate-range missile test in September that flew over northern Japan before splashing into the Pacific Ocean. Officials feared another launch was imminent when North Korea celebrated two holidays the anniversaries of its first nuclear test and the foundation of the ruling Workers Party of Korea in early October. Celebrations remained mostly peaceful with no rocket or nuclear test. Gods eyes never close but the popes sure do. Pope Francis admitted that he sometimes falls asleep while praying but claims saints have also been known to nod off. When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep, he admitted Tuesday during an appearance on a series called Our Father hosted on the Vatican television station TV2000. Saint Teresina of the Baby Jesus also did so. She used to say that the Lord, God, the Father, likes it when somebody falls asleep, he added about the 19-century French nun, according to the Telegraph. The 80-year-old Argentinian pontiff also pointed to the Bible while discussing his Holy sleep habits, which include going to bed at 9 p.m. and waking up at around 4 a.m. There is psalm 129 that says that I am before God like a child in the arms of his father, he said. This is one of the many ways in which the name of God becomes sanctified feeling like a child in his arms. The pope gets through his busy day by napping after lunch, according to Vatican sources. Egypt has been one of the worst places for Christian persecution in recent months. A series of attacks targeting Christians and forced closure of churches have caused Egypts Christian population to call on authorities for help. The Minya Coptic Orthodox Diocese said authorities sealed off two churches in the southern province, citing harassment and attacks by extremists. A third was closed because of fear of attacks. The statement was issued late Saturday. It said clashes broke out Friday when ultraconservative Muslims tried to attack one of the churches, adding that a Coptic woman was wounded. Later that day, the mob attacked Christian homes, the statement said. We have kept quiet for two weeks ... but the situation has worsened. It seems as if prayer is a crime the Copts should be punished for, the statement said, referring to the repeated closure of the churches. The diocese urged authorities to end discrimination against Christians and not to succumb to the fundamentalists. Minya Governor Essam Badawi denied the churches were closed for security reasons, saying they were unlicensed houses that lacked the documentation needed to perform religious rites. However, he confirmed there were two attacks on the houses of worship and that 15 people were arrested. He said police are searching for 11 other suspects. He said 21 churches in Minya are still open for services. According to the International Christian Concern, a separate clash broke out on October 27, when a Muslim mob formed in the village of Exbat, following noontime prayer services and attacked St. Georges Church and other buildings owned by Christians. Security officials responded, thereby, closing the church. Following the Friday prayer, many Muslims gathered into a mob and began to attack us, Sobhi, a Christian resident in Ezbat Zakaria, said in a statement to ICC, which was provided to Fox News. They threw stones at our homes resulting in breaking the doors and windows of some houses, injuring a Coptic woman ... they set three stables owned by Copts on fire. They then headed to the church (the building services) and tried to attack it, but the security guards who were assigned confronted them and prevented them from approaching the church. Egypts Coptic Christians, who make up around 10 percent of the population, long have been a target of Islamic extremists. Attacks on churches by Muslim mobs increased since the 2013 military coup that ousted an Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. Christians overwhelmingly supported the army chief-turned-president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, and extremists have used such support as a pretext to increase attacks against them. The recent closures of the churches underscore the recent problems the Coptic Christian community has faced. Historically, most attacks on the Coptic community occurred in northern parts of the country, including the Sinai Peninsula. Once again, Christians in Egypt are suffering for no other reason than their faith. As this event illustrates, Egypts Christians are not safe whether they are at home or at church, Claire Evans, regional manager for ICC said in a statement provided to Fox News. Closing the church does nothing to protect Christians. In fact, the mob wanted to close the church and deny the Christians the ability to exercise their right to religious practice. Christians in northern Sinai have been fleeing in droves in recent years because of the militant threats, and the community that before 2011 numbered up to 5,000 now has dwindled to less than 1,000, according to The Associated Press. There are no official statistics on the number of Christians in cities or across the country. The displacement underscores what many human rights activists have said about the failure of the Egyptian government in providing the minimum level of security to the Christians in this volatile region of northern Sinai, where the military has been battling for years against militants. Also, local authorities often have refused to permit the construction of churches, fearing blowback from ultraconservative Muslims. That has led Christians to set up unauthorized houses of worship, which are sometimes attacked by Muslim mobs. Last August, parliament passed a law that for the first time spelled out rules on building churches, a step many Christians had hoped would speed construction. But critics fear that only the restrictions will be implemented. The Associated Press contributed to this article. Authorities in the United Kingdom are seeking the extradition of the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber who is currently in custody in Libya. Police said Wednesday night that the extradition request for Hashem Abedi, the brother of the bomber, was given to Libyan authorities earlier in the day. The extradition is on murder charges stemming from the attack. I can now say that the following a review of the evidence by the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], we have applied for and been granted a warrant for the arrest of Hashem Abedi, a spokesperson for the Greater Manchester Police said, according to Sky News. The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. Abedi is the brother of Salman Abedi, who set off a bomb during an Ariana Grande concert on May 22, killing 22 and wounding hundreds. Salman Abedi blew himself up in the attack. The warrant was issued by a Westminster Magistrates' Court judge and approved by the Home Secretary. The Associated Press contributed to this report. U.S. fighter jets intercepted Russian nuclear bombers approaching the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan off the coast of North Korea on Sunday. Multiple U.S Navy F/A-18 jets were dispatched on Sunday to escort two Russian TU-95 bombers away from the ship currently stationed near North Korea and operating in the Sea of Japan, according to Navy officials who spoke with Military.com. The Russian bombers, capable of executing a nuclear strike, were intercepted merely 80 miles away from the ship, said Navy officials. Lt. Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman described the incident with the Russian air force on Sunday as safe and professional, according to Military.com. The Russian Ministry of Defense acknowledged the situation on Monday, claiming the U.S. and Japanese aircrafts escorted their missile-carrying Tupolev-95MS strategic bombers during their flights over international waters of the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean, according to TASS news agency. Two strategic bombers Tupolev-95MS of Russias Aerospace Force have carried out routine flights over international waters of the Sea of Japan and the western part of the Pacific Ocean, Russian officials said. At certain sections of the route the Tupolev-95MS crews were accompanied by a pair of F-18 fighters (of the U.S. Air Force), and a pair of F-15, F-4 and F-2A fighters (of the Japanese Air Force). Both Russia and the U.S. have sent their nuclear bomber near North Korea amid increasing tension between the rogue North Korean regime and the U.S. and its allies in the region. Last weekend, an U.S. B-2 stealth bomber equipped with nuclear strike capabilities flew over undisclosed parts of the Pacific region ahead of President Trumps visit to Japan and South Korea. The bomber made rounds to familiarize aircrew with air bases and operations in different geographic combatant commands, enabling them to maintain a high state of readiness and proficiency and meant to show the commitment to our allies and enhancing regional security, according to a U.S. military statement. Most incidents involving interception cause little trouble to the forces, but occasionally such incidents can be deemed confrontational. Last June, a Russian jet came dangerously close to a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft, with U.S. officials slamming the encounter as provocative in its maneuvers and accused the Russian jet flying erratically. Flash China and Russia signed nearly 20 deals Wednesday in areas including investment, energy and space exploration. The deals came after the 22nd regular meeting between the heads of government of China and Russia held in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. During the meeting, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev that as each other's biggest neighbor, China and Russia have witnessed robust development of the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination. Li said for China, the biggest developing country in the world, development is the solution to all problems. Both China and Russia view each other's development as an important opportunity, therefore there is a broad prospect for both countries to synergize development strategies and further advance all-round cooperation, said Li. He said closer bilateral cooperation will contribute more to the peace and development in both countries, the region and the world. Li briefed Medvedev on the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) which was held from Oct. 18 to 24 in Beijing. He said that the CPC National Congress had just elected a new CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core, established Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guiding spirit of the CPC and mapped out China's future goals of development. Medvedev, the first head of government to visit China after the congress, congratulated the CPC on the success of the congress and hoped the Chinese people would achieve their goals at an early date. He said current Russia-China relations are at the apex of history with frequent high-level visits, efficient cooperation on key projects and rapid trade and investment growth. Russia is willing to enhance traditional cooperation with China in areas such as energy, infrastructure construction and aviation, to expand to new areas including e-commerce and financial investment, and to advance cooperation on cultural and people-to-people exchanges, he said. China is willing to cooperate with Russia on the basis of mutual respect, equality and common development and promote the building of a new type of international relations featuring win-win cooperation, Li said. After the meeting, Li and Medvedev signed a joint communique and met the press. On Wednesday afternoon, Li and Medvedev attended the closing ceremony of the China-Russia Media Exchange Year. Together with more than 600 representatives from China and Russia, Li and Medvedev watched a video reviewing activities from the past two years, praising the results. Media exchange year, launched by President Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, has shown that China and Russia enjoy a high degree of political mutual trust and mutual understanding in culture, said Li. Activities, covering the areas of politics, economy, culture and people's daily life, have increased understanding between the two peoples, said Li. Medvedev said the two countries have held more than 250 activities during the media exchange year, reflecting the deep friendship between the two peoples and the significance of bilateral relations. Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong also attended the closing ceremony. Also on Wednesday, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, Vice Premier Wang Yang and Vice Premier Liu Yandong received a Russian state award, the Order of Friendship, from Medvedev. The Order of Friendship is a state decoration of the Russian Federation to reward foreign nationals who have made significant contributions to strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and mutual understanding among nations. The October 4 attack in Niger that claimed the lives of four U.S soldiers as well as their interpreter and four Nigeriens remains under official investigation amid a firestorm of controversy and confusion. While the Pentagon has yet to point explicit blame, the Defense Intelligence Agency suspects the perpretators were ISIS in the Greater Sahel (ISGS) which references a span of desert from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and is a group that pledged allegiance to ISIS last year. ISGS is headed by prominent jihadist figure, Adnan Abu Waleed al-Sahrawi. So who is the apparent chieftain behind the death of the Americans? Sahrawi was groomed in al-Qaeda ideology. AQ and ISIS share the goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate, Steven Cohen, communications director for the Counter Extremism Project a non-partisan international policy organization that endeavors to combat extremist ideologies told Fox News. Sahrawi came out of this anti-Western ideology, which sees the West as the enemy to establishing its caliphate. Veryan Khan the Editorial Director of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) which has been following Sahrawis moves for years said that he was born in 1978 or 79 in Laayoune, a city in the disputed areas of the Western Sahara which is governed by Morocco under UN peacekeeping supervision. Sahrawi, she noted, grew up in the Tindouf camps an Algerian sprawling commune with military installments and also studied in the country. Sahrawi is a pedigreed jihadist, Khan said, given that he was a spokesperson for several local jihadist groups with AQ affiliations. For most of the 21st century, outfits with Al Qaeda (AQ) ties dominated the region, which is also known for its criminal elements and smuggling routes. The main group was known as Al-Murabitoun, helmed by Sahrawi and former one-eyed Algerian AQ commander, Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Founded in 2013, the AQ-linked group continues to operate in Algeria, southwestern Libya, Mali and Niger with the goal of implementing sharia law, although Sahrawi broke away about two years ago after internal leadership squabbles and developed his own ISIS-aspiring branch, ISGS. ISIS in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) primarily operates along the Mali-Niger border in Malis Menaka region, but its reach may extend as far as Niamey, Niger, Samantha Reho, a spokesperson for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) told Fox News. BABIES BURNED ALIVE AND WOMEN RAPED 150 TIMES: WHY NIKKI HALEY IS PRIORITIZING THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO ALMOST ALL AMERICAN ISIS FIGHTERS UNACCOUNTED FOR, SPARKING FEARS THEY COULD SLIP THROUGH CRACKS AND RETURN Multiple intelligence sources told Fox News that the group is relatively small likely between 100 and 300 members in total. Heni Nsaibia, intelligence analyst at MENASTREAM, a Middle East and North Africa Research & Risk Consultancy, notes that while France and US had given even smaller estimates, between 40-60, their assessment was that the group had grown since to around 100 fighters. ISGS is predominantly self-funded through kidnapping ransoms, localized robberies and the smuggling of items such as cigarettes and drugs. Most of the groups economic activities appears to be related to illicit trade, hence protecting and taxing smuggling transports and the same for cattle breeders by taxing them in exchange for protection of their herds, Nsaibia said, adding that there is no clear indication that it receives external funding. Furthermore, the extent of its ISIS link is inconclusive. Last May, Sahrawi officially announced his allegiance to self-designated ISIS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015, but ISIS never formerly accepted the groups pledge and never disseminated its news through their propaganda streams. An Arabic Telegram message on October 30, 2016 made loose acknowledgement of the group by ISIS leadership. And no organization, including ISIS, has claimed responsibility for the deadly October encounter. No pro-ISIS media propaganda channels have lauded the attack, and there has been no effort for ISIS leaders to desperately exploit the attacks on social media as their caliphate crumbles in Iraq and Syria. ISGS has yet to demonstrate the ability to possess heavy weapons or develop vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, which according to some experts, may be a key reason as to why ISIS is yet to integrate them into the fold as a key state member over fears of appearing weak. This attack was most likely an independent operation with no ISIS planning or coordination, with Sahwaris group attacking Nigerien forces and not realizing U.S. forces were embedded, a U.S military source said. Sahrawi himself most likely didnt take responsibility, because he doesnt want the U.S coming after him. But thats going to happen, regardless. Sahrawi and his group have, however, carried out numerous lethal attacks over the past year, including attacks in 2016 on a customs outpost and later a military position in Burkina Faso. The ISIS aspirations demonstrated by Sahrawi and his followers have raised concerns that his outfit could eventually function as a facilitator for ISIS affiliates across West Africa and in Libya and function as a recruitment destination. This would pose a direct threat to the U.S homeland due its global ideology, according to a recent Critical Threats report. If ISGS can continue to successfully launch operations, especially on a larger scale, they may be recognized by ISIS leadership, Khan concurred. A Saharan branch for ISIS would eventually fill a void. As Islamic State in Libya loses and regains territory in Libya, ISIS may well look for a Saharan arm. Nonetheless, AFRICOMs Reho stated that to-date, they have no indication the group is planning to target the U.S. homeland and it has not made any public declarations of its intent to target the U.S. Nsaibia, too, highlighted that assessments so far do not show any significant threat to the West, but it poses a prominent localized threat to the forces of Niger a key U.S. counterterrorism partner. It is of foremost importance to view ISGS outside the context of the Global War on Terror, the group has a hyper-localized agenda. It operates in an environment with strong local dynamics and where conflict is fueled by the usage of pastureland, control of illicit trade routes and so forth, he said. We will definitely see more attacks, this is an ongoing conflict and insurgency that shows no signs of subsiding. The October attack has put a spotlight on the West African country and this week the U.S. pledged a further $60 million toward helping the region develop a new counterterrorism force. As it stands, there are around 800 U.S troops stationed in Niger and 6000 within 53 countries across the continent. A British woman was euphoric to have ticked off an item from her bucket list murder, prosecutors said. Jemma Lilley was convicted Wednesday of killing autistic 18-year-old Aaron Pajich in Western Australia in June of last year, fulfilling her sick obsession to kill someone before her 25th birthday, the Independent reported. Pajich was strangled, stabbed to death and then buried in a shallow grave covered with concrete and tiles. Lilley, 26, who was found guilty along with her 43-year-old pal Trudi Lenon, was so full of herself and euphoric afterward, she bragged to a work colleague about the killing, prosecutors said. The disturbed woman, who moved to Australia from Stamford in Lincolnshire, England, six years ago, also had a fascination with serial killers. Read more at the NY Post. New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone. Attorneys for accused murderer Christopher Michael Ellis are expected to wrap up his defense Thursday with more testimony from mental health professionals. Ellis, 40, is charged with first-degree murder and other offenses in connection with the Dec. 11, 2015, slaying of his mother, 67-year-old Elizabeth Betsey Ellis at their home on Fagan Drive in southern Stafford. Christopher Ellis has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. On Wednesday, the fourth day of a scheduled nine-day trial, attorneys Sharon Fitzgerald and Joshua Parrett continued their quest to prove that Ellis was legally insane at the time of the brutal slaying. No one has disputed that Ellis has serious mental health issues, but prosecutors Tara Mooney and Sandra Park contend that he knew right from wrong when he beat and mangled his mother with his fists, feet and a hammer. Among the witnesses to testify Wednesday was Ellis therapist, Robin Rutsky, who counseled him regularly from September 2012 until a few days before Betsey Ellis was killed. The evidence shows that Ellis, a University of Virginia graduate, had his first psychiatric breakdown in 2002 while studying in the Netherlands and has been on medication and receiving treatment ever since. Rutsky said Ellis was often preoccupied with religious thinking during their sessions and spoke often about his relationship with his mother. He was often upset with her about money and was especially upset about an inheritance that she controlled. It makes me a little annoyed not to have money to waste, he reportedly told the therapist. Ellis also expressed anger about not being included in his mothers will. But Rutsky said at other times he expressed love for his mother. Under cross-examination from Mooney, Rutsky said she was concerned about Ellis during their last session three days before the slaying. But she said she did not think there was any imminent danger. None of Wednesdays witnesses declared Ellis legally insane at the time of the offense, but that is expected to change Thursday. Once the defense rests its case, prosecutors are expected to put on rebuttal witnesses to counter any claims regarding Ellis legal sanity. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam said Wednesday that he would sign a bill to ban so-called sanctuary cities if a Virginia locality tries to become one in the future. Republican nominee Ed Gillespie has pushed the issue of sanctuary cities to the forefront of the governors race. The term is loosely defined but generally understood as a locality that will not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. No Virginia city or county has tried to adopt policies to impede such cooperation. Northam, Virginias sitting lieutenant governor, has insisted he opposes sanctuary cities while also accusing Gillespie of fabricating the issue for political advantage. But in an interview Wednesday with the Norfolk TV station WAVY, Northam said for the first time that, under certain circumstances, he would sign a bill similar to the one he voted against this year, a vote that spawned a wave of ominous ads from the Gillespie campaign linking Northam to the Latino gang MS-13. If that bill comes to by desk ... I sure will. Ive always been opposed to sanctuary cities. He knows that, Northam said of Gillespie, whose MS-13-themed ads have been blasted by critics as racially tinged. Northam elaborated Wednesday night in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, saying he stands by his vote against a bill that was nothing more than a political game meant to promote fearmongering. I dont go to Richmond to play games, Northam said. During a debate last month in Southwest Virginia, Gillespie asked Northam if he would sign legislation to ban sanctuary cities if one appeared in the future. Northam reiterated his opposition to sanctuary cities, but didnt give a direct response on whether hed sign a bill. During the legislative session in February, Republicans maneuvered Northam into the position of having to cast a tiebreaking vote on a sanctuary cities ban that was ultimately vetoed by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, orchestrated the move by initially voting with Democrats to create the 20-20 tie requiring Northams vote. Norment then changed his vote so the bill could pass. The Gillespie campaign sent out a news release almost immediately, an early sign of the immigration-themed campaign ads to come. Northam said if he wins the Nov. 7 election and Republicans send him the same bill to pre-emptively ban sanctuary cities that dont exist, hed veto it just as McAuliffe did. But if a locality does try to declare itself a sanctuary city and legislation to stop it lands on his desk, hed sign it, Northam said. The Gillespie campaign seized on Northams comments in the TV interview, saying Northam had promised to sign legislation like the very bill he has bragged about voting against. I sincerely hope that this change of heart is real, Gillespie said in a statement. That Ralph Northam recognizes MS-13 is a real issue, and a serious threat, and that allowing for the creation of sanctuary cities here would only make things worse. Given his track record on this issue, Im not sure where the lieutenant governor stands. Flash The United States on Wednesday voted against a UN General Assembly draft resolution that calls for the lifting of the U.S. economic and trade embargo on Cuba. The draft resolution was approved 191-2, with the United States and Israel being the only countries that voted against it. In a hawkish speech to the General Assembly prior to the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blamed Havana for the embargo. "For the 25th time in 26 years, the United States will vote against this resolution," Haley told the assembly. She accused Havana of using the General Assembly vote every year "as a shiny object to distract the world's attention from the destruction it has inflicted on its own people and on others in the Western Hemisphere." "As long as the Cuban people continue to be deprived of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, as long as the proceeds from trade with Cuba go to prop up the dictatorial regime responsible for denying those rights, the United States does not fear isolation in this chamber (of the General Assembly) or anywhere else." Haley said the General Assembly has no power to end the decades-old embargo. It is based in U.S. law, which only the U.S. Congress can change, she said. Haley scorned the General Assembly vote as "political theater" and a waste of time. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla fought back, saying the U.S. blockade is "a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans" and qualifies as "an act of genocide." "The human damage caused by the implementation of this policy are incalculable. There is not a single Cuban family or social service that has not suffered the deprivations and consequences resulting from the blockade," he told the assembly prior to the vote. When explaining the "no" vote after the adoption of the resolution, Haley's deputy said that the Cuban government is to blame for the country's economic failure. "Even if the U.S. Congress lifted the embargo today, Cubans would not be able to realize their potential without significant political, economic, and social reforms by their own government," said Michele Sison. "This resolution is a distraction from the real problems facing the Cuban people. Therefore, the United States strongly opposes it." The United States abstained last year in a similar vote at the General Assembly. Haley explained that the about-face is because the election of Donald Trump as new president and herself as new UN ambassador. "To those who are confused as to where the United States stands, let me be clear: as is their right under our constitution, the American people have spoken. They have chosen a new president, and he has chosen a new ambassador to the United Nations." The Group of 77 (G77) of developing countries regretted the new policy of Trump aimed at strengthening the embargo against Cuba. "The group believes this is a setback in the process of achieving normalized relations between the two countries," said Diego Morejon Pazmino, the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United Nations, on behalf of the G77 and China. The G77 and China expressed their deep concern about the prolonged negative effects that the economic sanctions and travel restrictions have had on Cuba and its people. From April 2016 to June this year, the impact of the U.S. embargo on Cuba's foreign trade amounts to more than 4 billion U.S. dollars. Limited foreign investment and difficult access to development credits translate directly into economic hardship and humanitarian impacts for the people of Cuba, the Ecuadorian ambassador told the General Assembly. If these economic sanctions continue, Cuba's development potential will be unfairly undermined and it would be impossible for Cuba to successfully embark on the path toward sustainable development, he warned. China regretted that previous General Assembly resolutions on the issue were not implemented. The blockade violates the purpose and principles of the UN Charter and causes enormous economic losses to Cuba, said Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of the Chinese mission to the United Nations. "China has always advocated respect for a country to independently choose its own system and path of development, and opposed unilateral sanctions against other states by military, political, economic and other means," Wu told the assembly prior to the vote. The world is undergoing transformation and peace and win-win cooperation have become a trend, he said. Exchanges and cooperation on equal footing among countries are part of this trend; dialogue on equal footing and friendly consultations represent the best way to resolve differences, he said. He asked the United States and Cuba to continue the path of normalization of relations, which, he said, is in the interests of both countries. He asked the United States to lift its embargo on Cuba. Free Freightnet Membership List your company in the Freightnet directory. It's Free, it's Easy and your company can be displayed in front of potential freight buyers within 24 hours. British farmers can still produce competitively priced food even if they face higher animal welfare standards and environmental measures, Defra secretary Michael Gove has insisted. Higher production standards did not necessarily mean higher costs for farmers, Mr Gove told peers investigating the impact of Brexit on food, farming and the environment. In fact, food producers, consumers and the environment could all benefit, he said. Mr Goves comments are likely to fuel concern among some farmers that the government is prioritising the environment at the expense of food production as it devises new policies for agriculture in preparation for the UK to leave the European Union. See also: Gove says productive farming still part of his vision But Mr Gove said: As we reform the system of agricultural support we have at the moment, we can have a system that incentivises both better care for the environment and also better innovation in food productivity. As an example, Mr Gove said encouraging farmers to adopt techniques such as minimum tillage could improve soil health bringing a variety of environmental benefits while reducing the spend on farm inputs such as diesel and reducing reliance on agrochemicals. Direct payments Mr Gove said it remained his belief there should be a limit on the amount of direct payments farmers should receive post Brexit. Instead, money should be directed towards environmental measures and encouraging innovation. No-till techniques were just as productive in terms of output but more productive in terms of profitability because input expenditure was reduced. Mr Gove added: We have, in effect, more efficient food production and higher environmental standards. Mr Gove also suggested that the government would encourage farmers to adopt higher animal welfare standards even though UK standards are already considered by many in the livestock sector to be among the highest in the world. Strong brand UK farmers can never and should not try to compete on the basis of producing the worlds cheapest food, he said. British food and farming was a strong brand and best marketed on the basis of quality and provenance, he added. Crossbench peer Lord Krebs said he was intrigued that Mr Gove believed it was possible to increase food production while at the same time enhancing the environment. You cant have it both ways there is a choice there, he said. Former Defra minister Lord Rooker suggested higher welfare standards would make food more expensive. This could leave British farmers exposed to cheap imports of lower-standard food. He said: People will buy on price it is irritating but they do. Mr Gove said his ideas would be the subject of a public consultation. The government is expected to confirm and formalise its plans in an agriculture Bill due to be presented to parliament next year. You can bet the Breeders Cup Classic online from Indiana in the comfort of your home at any one of the internationally licensed racebooks, none of which will ever require a social security number. There are two major horse racing tracks in Indiana including Hoosier Park, located in Anderson, about an hour northeast of Indianapolis and Indiana Downs just outside Indianapolis in Shelbyville. Hoosier Park was expected to host a Breeders Cup simulcast party. There are advantages to betting at either internationally licensed online racebooks or US-based racebooks that we review below. BetDSI Racebook vs. TwinSpires BETDSI.COM TWINSPIRES.COM 8 Percent Cash Back No Cash Back Up to $300 Free Cash Signup Bonus $100 Signup Bonus Does Not Require Social Security # Must Provide Social Security # Encourages Tax Declaration of Winnings Reports Tax Info to Government Offers Betting on Hundreds More Events Limited to Horse Betting Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks You can bet the Breeders Cup Classic online from Michigan in the comfort of your home at any one of the internationally licensed racebooks, none of which will ever require a social security number. If you are able to swing on by to Hazel Park, do so as they will be hosting a simulcast Breeders Cup party. 1st Del Mar race on Friday is 2:25pm ET. First Breeders' Cup race Friday is race 6 at 5:25pm. Del Mar race on Saturday is at 1:10pm. First Breeders' Cup race on Saturday is race 4 at 3:00pm. We are having a buffet special both days ($15.95). Call 248-398-1000 (ext 236) to reserve your table in the dining room or the Bridge Bar. Advance wagering for Saturday Del Mar races will be available on Friday. There are advantages to betting at either internationally licensed online racebooks or US-based racebooks that we review below. BetDSI Racebook vs. TwinSpires BETDSI.COM TWINSPIRES.COM 8 Percent Cash Back No Cash Back Up to $300 Free Cash Signup Bonus $100 Signup Bonus Does Not Require Social Security # Must Provide Social Security # Encourages Tax Declaration of Winnings Reports Tax Info to Government Offers Betting on Hundreds More Events Limited to Horse Betting Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks BetDSI.com is one of a handful of reputable online racebooks where you will be able to bet this years Breeders Cup Classic from the great state of New Mexico. While websites such as Xpressbet and TwinSpires.com allow betting from the Land of Enchantment, be prepared to offer up your social security number. This is NOT something you need to provide with sites like BetDSI.com. Hundreds of thousands of bets on Saturdays race will be placed with the few dozen offshore racebooks that do accept customers from states like New Mexico. There are advantages to betting at either internationally licensed online racebooks or US-based racebooks that we review below. BETDSI.COM TWINSPIRES.COM 8 Percent Cash Back No Cash Back Up to $300 Free Cash Signup Bonus $100 Signup Bonus Does Not Require Social Security # Must Provide Social Security # Encourages Tax Declaration of Winnings Reports Tax Info to Government Offers Betting on Hundreds More Events Limited to Horse Betting Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks Betting on Over 50 Race Tracks A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now? This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department, the Benton County Sheriffs Office and the Oregon State Police. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise. Corvallis Police Department TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31 MENACING: 7:25 p.m., 800 block of Southwest 11th Street, Corvallis. Police responded after a woman reported her sister, identified as Amber Jolyn Mowdy, 35, of Corvallis, was threatening her with a knife. Officers found the alleged victim had barricaded herself in her bedroom. Mowdy reportedly admitted to chasing her sister and telling her she was going to stab her. Police arrested Mowdy for menacing. BIKE VERSUS CAR CRASH: 8:15 p.m., Southwest Third Street and Southwest Washington Avenue, Corvallis. A driver said he was traveling westbound on Washington Avenue when he clipped the back tire of a bicycle. He said he did not see the cyclist because the cyclist did not have a light on his bike. The cyclist, who had been riding south on Third Street, was not injured. No citations were issued. BURGLARY: 8:37 p.m., 300 block of Northwest Ninth Street, Corvallis. Two people reported a man they did not know attempted to gain entry to their property. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1 DUII: 3:43 a.m., Northwest Ninth Street and Northwest Spruce Avenue, Corvallis. An officer stopped a car after it allegedly made an unsignaled turn. The officer arrested the driver, Derrick Ogawa-Staples, for driving under the influence of intoxicants. Ogawa-Staples reportedly had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent. What kind of workload will the Oregon Legislature be facing during its 2018 session, scheduled to start in just about three months? Voters will answer part of that question during a Jan. 23 special election on whether to partially overturn health care taxes approved earlier this year by the Legislature. You may be trying to put this out of your mind right now after all, the Christmas shopping season begins today but you'll have to make a decision soon enough on this issue, Measure 101. The taxes on health insurance and hospital services are part of a $550 million plan to plug a budget shortfall that at one point was estimated at $1.6 billion. This particular influx of money is meant to balance the state's Medicaid budget (known here as the Oregon Health Plan) and to stabilize the individual insurance market. Portions of the tax plan were challenged by Republican legislators, who gathered enough signatures to refer the issue to voters. Two of those legislators say their intent is to fund the Oregon Health Plan through other tax sources and budget cuts in other areas, including public employee health insurance. We'll have more to say about Measure 101 in the weeks to come. In the meantime, you should know that a "yes" vote is a vote to preserve the tax plan; a "no" vote is a vote to reject it. If voters do reject the tax plan, the Legislature in February will be facing the task of filling a substantial hole in the state budget: The Legislative Fiscal Office has estimated that if voters reject the plan, the state will bring in $210 million less than anticipated in the current two-year budget. That gap would become the No. 1 agenda item for the 2018 short session, which starts Feb. 5 and is scheduled to end March 9. The chance that voters will reject the tax plan is one good reason why legislators should keep the workload as light as possible during the 2018 session. Here are additional reasons why legislators would be wise to do that: Gov. Kate Brown recently appointed two longtime state senators, Richard Devlin of Lake Oswego and Ted Ferrioli of John Day, to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the organization that develops and maintains a regional power plan and related efforts to manage fish and wildlife. The appointments mean those two veterans will not be around during the February session. Devlin is one of the Legislature's top budget writers. Ferrioli has been the leader of Senate Republicans for more than a decade. The House of Representatives is losing members as well, with Ann Lininger of Lake Oswego, Mark Johnson of Hood River and John Huffman of The Dalles all moving onto other positions. All told, it adds up to a considerable loss of institutional memory. These short sessions the Legislature holds in even-numbered years never were intended for heavy lifting. When Oregon voters approved annual sessions, the idea was that major policy decisions would be reserved for legislative sessions held in odd-numbered years; these longer sessions offer more of an opportunity for big ideas to get proper vetting and public input. The shorter sessions were meant to tweak budgets as necessary and to tie up loose ends. Even so, major issues have been pushed through during short sessions on contentious subjects such as energy policy and the minimum wage. There is talk that the 2018 session could be faced with a bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions and charge some of the state's largest companies for their carbon output. Regardless of the merits of the carbon proposal, it's too complex for a short session, especially the 2018 session. It's time for our short sessions to get back to basics. (mm) Halloween night : Large police units called to incidents in Cologne and Essen COLOGNE/ESSEN A strong police presence was needed to respond to Halloween night incidents in Cologne and Essen. Three sex offenses were reported in Cologne and in Essen, the main train station had to be temporarily closed. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Large police units were called out on Halloween night in Cologne and Essen. Cologne police reported on Wednesday that some groups of heavily intoxicated and aggressive men from Arabic and North African countries were gathered in front of the Cologne Cathedral at around 8 pm on Tuesday night. 100 police officers were called in for reinforcement. Police checked the identification of several hundred persons, and a large number were ordered to leave. The police said that early intervention resulted in the heated mood being calmed down. Another focal point for police was the Cologne Ring Road. Waiting lines in front of local bars and restaurants led to fistfights and police had to intervene. Three sex offenses were reported in the city, in which women charged they had been touched indecently. In two of the cases, police were able to detain the suspects on the scene. Clashes between police and individual groups led to a short-term closing of the Essen train station. Police said there was a Zombie walk on Tuesday evening at 8 pm and there were groups of men who argued repeatedly with travelers and amongst themselves. At 11 pm, the closures were lifted. Federal police have initiated criminal proceedings for assault, dangerous bodily harm and narcotics violations. On Wednesday, police disputed reports on social media that the incidences had been on par with New Years Eve in Cologne a couple years ago. So far, there had been no complaints of sexual harassment in those incidents in Essen and there been no complaints of pickpocketing. Police reported that the participants from the Zombie walk were not a part of the groups involved in the clashes. Traffic information during COP 23 in Bonn : What you need to know about getting around during the conference BONN From this weekend, up to 25.000 guests are expected for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. City administration and police are confident that it will not lead to a two-week traffic jam. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Now its a matter of counting down the hours until the United Nations Climate Change Conference begins in Bonn. This Saturday, the first of several demonstrations will take place in the city, and A Train to Bonn delegation will be led by German Environmental Minister Barbara Hendricks. Officials in Bonn are optimistic that traffic impairments will be minimal. But on certain days, there will be areas of the city that might be clogged. For example, demonstrations make temporary closures inevitable. Between November 6 and 17, 25.000 conference participants are expected in Bonn. The main action will take place in the government quarters at the World Conference Center Bonn (WCCB) and in a part of the Rheinaue Park. Not all participants will be staying in Bonn so they will need to be transported to their accommodations outside of the host city. Arrival and departure Basically, the organizers assume that only a small part of the delegates will travel to Bonn with their own car but they cant rule out that additional participants might use private transport. "For this reason, especially on the main arrival days from Friday, November 3, to Sunday, November 5, as well as on the main departure days Friday and Saturday, November 17/18, increased traffic is to be expected," says Thomas Fricke, head of the department responsible for traffic control. Demonstrations As of Wednesday, it was still not clear if 1.000 bicyclists would be permitted to protest by riding on the A 555 autobahn from Cologne to Bonn. Police Director Helmut Pfau said they could not allow the demonstration in light of the overall traffic situation. The organizers had said they would appeal the decision if necessary. On Saturday, November 4 there will be a large demonstration with up to 15.000 people starting out with a rally at Munsterplatz in Bonn inner city. It begins at 2 pm and will go down the Adenauer Allee (B9) towards the WCCB. The following Saturday on November 11 will also be an especially crowded day in the city. This is the official start of the carnival season and it just happens to coincide with the weekend - which could mean many people pouring in to the city to celebrate. At the same time, there are two separate groups demonstrating on the city ring road, Bonner Talweg and Reuterstrae. Around 10.000 people are expected to participate in those. Street closures The good news is that the only permanent road closures will be directly in the conference area. People who live and work in those areas will be directly affected. They will be able to access the area from Welckerstrae, Heussallee, Kurt-Schumacher-Strae and Fritz-Erler-Strae. Apart from short term closures for demonstrations, the inner city should not be affected by road closings. Entrances to the parking garages of Deutsche Welle, Deutsche Post DHL and the United Narions will remain open to employees. Johanniter Hospital will also remain accessible but the underground parking at the hospital will be temporarily closed. Heussallee (from the junction with Winston-Churchill-Strae) and Kurt-Schumacher-Strae (at Heinrich-Bruning-Strae) will be completely closed - only residents may enter. Important for all drivers coming from the Reuter Bridge: At Bundeskanzlerplatz, the lane in the direction of Heussallee will be open to local traffic only. Cyclists Charles-de-Gaulle-Strae has already been closed for some time. But the paths at the Rhine River bank and through the Rheinaue Park should remain open. Riders should be aware that electric buses will also be commuting here. Police controls Police will be traveling around the WCCB and the Rheinaue with uniformed and civilian patrols. Some vehicles and passengers may be checked for identity so people should carry vehicle registration and identification. No stopping zones In the vicinity of the venue, the city will set up no stopping zones - for example, on a section of Kennedyallee as there will be shuttle buses running there. Rail traffic More passengers will be on board public transport as conference participants will be using public transportation. Delays should be expected especially between Cologne and Bonn. People are advised to allow more time for their travel and to try to avoid peak travel periods. New UN Campus stop Organizers have high hopes for the new UN Campus stop, which is expected to be used by a large number of summit participants. During the conference, lines RE 5 (DB Regio NRW), RB 26 (Transregio), RB 48 (National Express) and RB 30 (DB Regio NRW) will arrive at the new station from both directions. There, shuttle buses are waiting for the conference participants. Also, there will be three bus lines going to special destinations such as the airport. Police hotline Police have set up a special resident hotline during this time: 02 28/15 30 30. 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. Article Protecting the worlds oceans an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs. NOTICE OF ANNUAL MEETING TOMAH LAKE PROTECTION AND REHABILITATION DISTRICT NOTICE is hereby given pursuant to Section 33.30 of the Wisconsin Statutes that the Tomah Lake Protection and Rehabilitation District will hold their annual meeting in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 819 Superior Avenue, Tomah, at 5:45 p.m. on Monday, November 20, 2017. The agenda is as follows: 1. Approval of Minutes November 15, 2016 Meeting 2. Approve a Budget for 2018. 3. Establish a tax levy upon all taxable property within the District for the cost of operation for the coming year. 4. Approve or disapprove all proposed projects by the District in excess of $10,000. 5. Set the 2018 annual meeting for sometime in November. (November 13, 2018 is regular Council Meeting date, or possibly November 20, 2018) 6. To consider any other such business as may come before the meeting. 7. Adjourn. The detailed proposed budget is available for inspection in the City Clerk's office, 819 Superior Avenue, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. PROPOSED LAKE DISTRICT 2018 BUDGET SUMMARY 2016 ACTUAL 2017 BUDGET 2017 PROJECTION 2018 LAKE COMM PROPOSED PERCENT INCREASE OR DECREASE Expenditures: Lake District Fund #2 34,388 79,455 77,464 39,646 -50.10% Revenue Lake District Fund #2 649 503 972 454 -9.74% Lake District Tax Levy 43,750 58,952 58,952 39,192 -33.52% 593,176,320 600,503,585 600,503,585 652,619,450 0.07375 0.09817 0.09817 0.060053 Assessed Value Tax Rate per $1,000 Total Lake District Indebtedness as of 12/31/17 is 0.00. 12/31/2016 Fund Balance Revenue 12/31/2016 133,582 60,275 Expenses (34,387) Estimated FB 159,470 11/03, 11/10 30586352 WNAXLP -38.83% xspraise at 2-11-2017 10:08 AM (5 years ago) (m) President Muhammadu Buhari has given the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, the order to go after another $321 million laundered by former Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha. Malami, who may likely sign a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with Switzerland by December this year, got the approval to go after looted funds and other assets at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari. President Muhammadu Buhari has given the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, the order to go after another $321 million laundered by former Head of State, Gen Sani Abacha.Malami, who may likely sign a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with Switzerland by December this year, got the approval to go after looted funds and other assets at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari. Recall that at a consultative meeting on assets recovery in Abuja, recently, Malami, who has been in the eye of the storm over his involvement in the recall process of Abdulrasheed Maina, a former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force, announced that efforts to recovery most of the looted funds were gaining momentum. Malami who addressed State House reporters, on Wednesday recalled the recent recovery of $85 million from the United Kingdom on Malabu scandal. According to him, signing the agreement would empower him to recover the fund on behalf of Nigeria, explaining that representatives of both countries would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for repatriation of the fund at the Global Forum on Asset Recovery scheduled to take place in the United States in December. As you are aware, the Federal Government has been making efforts to recover stolen funds, loot, assets and the efforts have indeed been yielding fruits particularly as it relates to local recoveries. A memo had been presented to council this afternoon by the Office of the Attorney General, which is intended to shift focus to international recovery. Before going into the memo, I think it is important to bring to your attention that recently, about a week ago, we succeeded in recovering $85million dollars relating to Malabu issues from the UK. Now, there exists a forum, that is, Global Assets Recovery Forum taking place in December, in the US and we are looking towards that. We are in agreement substantially with Swiss [government] for the recovery of additional sum of $321 million. That memorandum of understanding has been substantially agreed (sic) between Nigeria and Swiss. We intend to now execute or sign off the agreement during the global forum on assets recovery coming up in December. The intention of the memo, one, is (sic) to seek the approval of the council to allow the Attorney General to sign the agreement on behalf of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria. Two, is to develop an instrument of ratification, which will now give the Attorney General, the powers to ensure the repatriation of the funds. It is collectively agreed upon between Nigeria and Swiss [government] that we on our own part should seek the approval of council to ratify the MoU as agreed, and they, on their own part too, should procure the instrument of ratification that will now give the respective officers of the two countries the desired power and effect to now sign off the agreement. The memo has accordingly been agreed (sic) and approved by the council, the implication of which is that the MoU as negotiated between Nigeria and Swiss [government] has been agreed (sic) and ratified by council and then the Attorney General has been mandated to execute the agreement that will see to the repatriation of the $321 million and added to it, to develop the instrument of ratification that will be expected from both sides of the divides which will constitute the basis for the signing of the agreement in December in US during the Global Forum on Asset Recovery, Malami stated. Recall that at a consultative meeting on assets recovery in Abuja, recently, Malami, who has been in the eye of the storm over his involvement in the recall process of Abdulrasheed Maina, a former Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Force, announced that efforts to recovery most of the looted funds were gaining momentum.Malami who addressed State House reporters, on Wednesday recalled the recent recovery of $85 million from the United Kingdom on Malabu scandal.According to him, signing the agreement would empower him to recover the fund on behalf of Nigeria, explaining that representatives of both countries would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for repatriation of the fund at the Global Forum on Asset Recovery scheduled to take place in the United States in December.As you are aware, the Federal Government has been making efforts to recover stolen funds, loot, assets and the efforts have indeed been yielding fruits particularly as it relates to local recoveries. A memo had been presented to council this afternoon by the Office of the Attorney General, which is intended to shift focus to international recovery.Before going into the memo, I think it is important to bring to your attention that recently, about a week ago, we succeeded in recovering $85million dollars relating to Malabu issues from the UK. Now, there exists a forum, that is, Global Assets Recovery Forum taking place in December, in the US and we are looking towards that. We are in agreement substantially with Swiss [government] for the recovery of additional sum of $321 million. That memorandum of understanding has been substantially agreed (sic) between Nigeria and Swiss.We intend to now execute or sign off the agreement during the global forum on assets recovery coming up in December. The intention of the memo, one, is (sic) to seek the approval of the council to allow the Attorney General to sign the agreement on behalf of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria. Two, is to develop an instrument of ratification, which will now give the Attorney General, the powers to ensure the repatriation of the funds.It is collectively agreed upon between Nigeria and Swiss [government] that we on our own part should seek the approval of council to ratify the MoU as agreed, and they, on their own part too, should procure the instrument of ratification that will now give the respective officers of the two countries the desired power and effect to now sign off the agreement.The memo has accordingly been agreed (sic) and approved by the council, the implication of which is that the MoU as negotiated between Nigeria and Swiss [government] has been agreed (sic) and ratified by council and then the Attorney General has been mandated to execute the agreement that will see to the repatriation of the $321 million and added to it, to develop the instrument of ratification that will be expected from both sides of the divides which will constitute the basis for the signing of the agreement in December in US during the Global Forum on Asset Recovery, Malami stated. Post Reply I am Victor, I write reportage on sport news and latest metro happenings in Nigeria. Posted: at 2-11-2017 10:08 AM (5 years ago) | Hero felicilin at 2-11-2017 10:51 AM (5 years ago) (f) Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora matters, yesterday said Nigerian youths now migrate to European countries via sea, to seek greener pastures. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora matters, yesterday said Nigerian youths now migrate to European countries via sea, to seek greener pastures. This is even as she rallied youths support for President Muhammadu Buharis anti-corruption crusade. she spoke at the maiden edition of African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council Nigeria (ECOSOCC) held at the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja. She decried a situation where youths who are well educated and could add value to their country would risk their lives on the sea and desert to cross to another country. According to her, a large amount of deaths have been recorded as a result of this, hence, the need for youths to rise to their responsibilities as leaders of tomorrow. Her words: This is even as she rallied youths support for President Muhammadu Buharis anti-corruption crusade.she spoke at the maiden edition of African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council Nigeria (ECOSOCC) held at the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja.She decried a situation where youths who are well educated and could add value to their country would risk their lives on the sea and desert to cross to another country.According to her, a large amount of deaths have been recorded as a result of this, hence, the need for youths to rise to their responsibilities as leaders of tomorrow.Her words: Quote Nothing is stopping you but yourself. You have young educated graduates drowning at sea trying to cross over from Africa to Europe. I have come across graduate, these are not poor people, these are people who have gone to schools and then you decide that you can only get life by seeking hope in hopelessness by going through the desert, Niger, Chad, half of them die before they get to Libya anyway, some get to Libya many times and even get killed as black immigrants all because you want to get to Europe and then you find that one is a challenge and failure of leadership in Africa. I was coming from Addis Ababa and I said I want a situation where Europe will be migrating to Africa not Africa migrating to Europe but it calls into question of leadership, we just have to get it right all over Africa and that challenge goes back to the Nigerian youths. We brought back a guy from Lybia, he was locked up and was about to be killed by Gaddafi, we brought him back with 24 others, Dabiri-Erewa said. While also canvassing support for the President Buharis anti-corruption fight, she said the Presidents integrity is such that cannot be questioned. This is the time to ensure we save ourselves, I will say that we have a President whose integrity cannot be questioned, who is fighting corruption, you need to support him. We have to support President Buharis fight against corruption, corruption will destroy our future. In fact, it has destroyed a lot of things, lets save our country now. There is no compassion in governance anymore if there is compassion you will know that pension money is not meant to be stolen anymore, but why are people stealing anyhow because there are no sanctions, there is so much corruption, not because Nigerians are poor, not because Nigerians are greedy but because there are no sanctions. Now, we have a President that says there must be sanctions, it is going to take a while because the justice system is slow but we have to support him to ensure that those who stole your money go to jail, she said. Earlier, former Lagos Youth Commissioner, Michael Bamidele, stressed the importance of youths to the development of a nation. He state that any government that attempts to ignore the youth or fails to harness their potentials and talents to impact positively on the priorities of that governance is actually doing so at a very grave cost. In Nigeria, not fewer that 60 million Nigerian youths are presently unemployed, roaming about the streets and battling with starvation, social neglect, elite exploitation, extreme penury, stagnation and squalor of the highest order, he said. He explained that these prevailing circumstances have none-the-less crippled the potentials of Nigerian youths for maximum expression, truncating their dreams and vision for a greater future. To this end, he urged government at all levels to own up to the responsibility of defending the rights of the youths and also children. she said.Earlier, former Lagos Youth Commissioner, Michael Bamidele, stressed the importance of youths to the development of a nation.He state that any government that attempts to ignore the youth or fails to harness their potentials and talents to impact positively on the priorities of that governance is actually doing so at a very grave cost.he said.He explained that these prevailing circumstances have none-the-less crippled the potentials of Nigerian youths for maximum expression, truncating their dreams and vision for a greater future.To this end, he urged government at all levels to own up to the responsibility of defending the rights of the youths and also children. Post Reply Posted: at 2-11-2017 10:51 AM (5 years ago) | Hero clarajancita at 2-11-2017 11:15 AM (5 years ago) (f) A court in Lagos has sent a 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat to jail for trafficking cocaine. A Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday convicted and sentenced a mother of four to 10 years imprisonment for trafficking in cocaine. The court convicted and sentenced the 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat, to the jail term, after she pleaded guilty to one count charge preferred against her by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). A court in Lagos has sent a 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat to jail for trafficking cocaine. A Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday convicted and sentenced a mother of four to 10 years imprisonment for trafficking in cocaine. The court convicted and sentenced the 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat, to the jail term, after she pleaded guilty to one count charge preferred against her by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). The convict had earlier pleaded guilty when she was first arraigned before the court, and maintained her plea when the matter came up today. In urging the court to convict the mother of four, the NDLEA prosecutor, while reviewing the fact of the case, tendered the convicts harmonized ECOWAS passport with number: 1808098653, an E-ticket and boarding pass as evidence. Other evidence tendered by the prosecutor includes: three written statements of the convict, two request of scientific aid form, a drug analysing report, two evidence pouches, two transparent pouches containing bulk of the drug, two scientific report of the drug, and a sealed brown envelope with reference number:DEA/17/MM/013, which were admitted as exhibits After tendering the evidence, coupled with the plea of the mother of four, the prosecutor urged the court to convict and sentence her accordingly. Consequently, the presiding Judge, Justice Rilwan Aikawa, pronounced the convict guilty as charged. The convict, in her plea for leniency through her lawyer, Morenike Ogunleye, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing her. Ogunleye said: The convict had earlier pleaded guilty when she was first arraigned before the court, and maintained her plea when the matter came up today. In urging the court to convict the mother of four, the NDLEA prosecutor, while reviewing the fact of the case, tendered the convicts harmonized ECOWAS passport with number: 1808098653, an E-ticket and boarding pass as evidence.Other evidence tendered by the prosecutor includes: three written statements of the convict, two request of scientific aid form, a drug analysing report, two evidence pouches, two transparent pouches containing bulk of the drug, two scientific report of the drug, and a sealed brown envelope with reference number:DEA/17/MM/013, which were admitted as exhibitsAfter tendering the evidence, coupled with the plea of the mother of four, the prosecutor urged the court to convict and sentence her accordingly. Consequently, the presiding Judge, Justice Rilwan Aikawa, pronounced the convict guilty as charged.The convict, in her plea for leniency through her lawyer, Morenike Ogunleye, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing her. Ogunleye said: Quote My Lord, the convict is a first time offender, and she is sober of her action. She is a mother of four children, who single-handedly taking care of them, as she has separated from her husband. In sentencing her, I urged my lord to consider section 416(2)(b)(d) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015. In sentencing the convict, the judge asked the prosecutor, for the punishment for the crime committed as stipulated by the NDLEA Act, and the prosecutor said it is life imprisonment. Justice Aikawa pronounced: In sentencing the convict, the judge asked the prosecutor, for the punishment for the crime committed as stipulated by the NDLEA Act, and the prosecutor said it is life imprisonment.Justice Aikawa pronounced: Quote I have listened to the plea made on her behalf by the counsel, and also listened to the prosecutor that she has no record of crime. Im balancing, I have to consider both her plea and the what the law says about the crime. Consequently, I hereby sentence her to 10 years imprisonment, starting from the day of her arrest. In the charge marked FHC/L/301c/17, The convict was arrested on May 19, 2017, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, during outward clearance of Qatar Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, with 330 grammes of Cocaine, a narcotic drug. The offence,committed by the convict is contrary to and punishable under section 11(b) of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Act, Cap. N30, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. In the charge marked FHC/L/301c/17, The convict was arrested on May 19, 2017, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, during outward clearance of Qatar Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, with 330 grammes of Cocaine, a narcotic drug. The offence,committed by the convict is contrary to and punishable under section 11(b) of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Act, Cap. N30, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. Post Reply I am a metro reporter on Gistmania, I have been publishing news materials for over 5 years Posted: at 2-11-2017 11:15 AM (5 years ago) | Hero kacylee at 2-11-2017 07:50 PM (5 years ago) (f) Zambia has refused to renew the immigration papers of a Nigerian cleric residing in the country as he has been given some two days to vacate their territory. The Government of Zambia has given a Nigerian pastor, Pastor Augustine Oso Ebosele of Omega Fire Ministries in Lusaka 48 hours notice to leave the country. Zambia has refused to renew the immigration papers of a Nigerian cleric residing in the country as he has been given some two days to vacate their territory. The Government of Zambia has given a Nigerian pastor, Pastor Augustine Oso Ebosele of Omega Fire Ministries in Lusaka 48 hours notice to leave the country. The country said it decided not to renew the employment permit of the cleric because his conduct has divided the Omega Fire Ministries into two parties. OFM was founded by Apostle Johnson Suleman. Chief Government Spokesperson Kampamba Mulenga made this announcement in Lusaka, the Zambia capital. Ms Mulenga said it was feared that with the Pastors continued stay in the country, the acrimony in Omega Fire Ministries could result into the breakdown and law and order. She said Pastor Obesele was given 48 hours to leave the country, in accordance with the Immigration and Deportation Act number 18 of 2010. She added that contrary to speculations, the Government has not closed Omega Fire Ministries and was not against Nigerian Pastors. She added, Omega Fire Ministries Headquartered in Nigeria is free to send a senior pastor to come and help reconcile the membership in Lusaka. Members of the church should avoid speculation and remain calm as matters are being dealt with the Church authority. The country said it decided not to renew the employment permit of the cleric because his conduct has divided the Omega Fire Ministries into two parties. OFM was founded by Apostle Johnson Suleman.Chief Government Spokesperson Kampamba Mulenga made this announcement in Lusaka, the Zambia capital.Ms Mulenga said it was feared that with the Pastors continued stay in the country, the acrimony in Omega Fire Ministries could result into the breakdown and law and order.She said Pastor Obesele was given 48 hours to leave the country, in accordance with the Immigration and Deportation Act number 18 of 2010.She added that contrary to speculations, the Government has not closed Omega Fire Ministries and was not against Nigerian Pastors.She added, 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 2-11-2017 07:50 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero TORONTO, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V:MON) (Montero) has completed an initial grab sampling program on its Soris Lithium Project in central Namibia. On October 24, 2017, Montero announced entering 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 De Rust pegmatite field in Namibia (the Property). Montero is currently in a 3-month legal and technical due diligence period. 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. Nico Scholtz Pr.Sci.Nat., an expert on pegmatite geology, carried out the sampling program for Montero. A total of 16 grab samples were submitted for full chemical analysis and 3 mineralogical samples for investigation at SGS Laboratories in Johannesburg, South Africa. The chemical assay results have been reported to Montero while the 3 mineralogical samples remain outstanding. The 16 grab samples were collected along approximately 2.4km strike of the known pegmatite intrusions. The samples vary in Li 2 O content from 0.07 % Li 2 O to 5.32 % Li 2 O. The samples retrieved also contain anomalous tin and tantalum values and are provided in Table 1 below. The samples are selective and not necessarily representative of the mineralization hosted in the pegmatites on the property. Further confirmatory work including mineralogical investigations, geological mapping, channel sampling and lithium analysis on RC chips from a previous drill program is planned as part of the due diligence program. Table 1: Concentrations of lithium (Li 2 O), tantalum (Ta 2 O 5 ) and tin (SnO 2 ) Component Average Concentration Range of Concentrations Median Values Lithium as Li 2 O a. 1.37 % 0.07% to 5.32% 0.6 % Tantalum as Ta2O5 b. 809 ppm 15 ppm to 10,831 ppm 124 ppm Tin as SnO 2 c. 1,766 ppm 105 ppm to 8,798 ppm 615 ppm a. Li 2 O obtained by conversion factor of 2.153 b. Ta 2 O 5 obtained by conversion factor of 1.2211 c. SnO 2 obtained by conversion factor of 1.2696 Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Montero commented, Montero has identified lithium bearing spodumene mineralization in pegmatites over a 2.4km strike length from the Soris Lithium Project where our most recent sampling program returned values of up to 5.32% Li 2 O Lithium Oxide. Tantalum and tin values are also anomalous. Further due diligence is underway to include channel sampling and analysis of RC chips from a previous drill program where lithium was not analyzed. Montero is looking to confirm tantalum and tin values and establishing the lithium content of the pegmatites. The Soris Lithium Project is in central Namibia, north west of the town Uis which is 220km north of Walvis Bay, Namibias largest commercial deep-water port. The project is in the Erongo Region and is connected by dirt and asphalt road to the port of Walvis Bay. The De Rust pegmatite field is hosted in the metasedimentary units of the Damara Mobile Belt of the Pan African Damara Orogen in Namibia. The zoned pegmatites at the Soris Lithium Project belong to a group of highly fractionated, tantalite-cassiterite, lithium-rich rare metal pegmatites known as Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum (LCT) 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 spodumene crystals of up to 80cm long are observed. The Soris Lithium Project pegmatites encompass several outcrops, varying in length between 100m up to 470m over 2.4km and measured in places to be more than 30m wide. The pegmatites were previously mined on a small scale for tin and tantalum (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 sampled or assayed for lithium. 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., 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 Lithium, Tantalum and Tin in Namibia, 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. For more information, contact: Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer E-mail: ir@monteromining.com Tel: +1 416 840 9197 | Fax: +1 866 688 4671 www.monteromining.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates with respect to the Share Consolidation. 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. Such information is based on information currently available to Montero and Montero provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of Montero to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Monteros mineral properties, and financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Monteros activities; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Monteros forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Montero does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. AMERSFOORT, The Netherlands, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Dutch Ministry of Defense, has chosen Rainmaker Worldwide, working in collaboration with its partner, Bredenoord to provide water purification systems on military bases in the field. Bredenoord and Rainmaker were invited to join an innovative development program called Fieldlab Smartbase 1.0, which resulted in choosing the MD Water Power unit for Mission-Critical Military Base Water Supply. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/9a12ded4-ea2d-4b05-8077-3e87fe371371 The Dutch military participates in multiple UN missions and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is currently active in a UN peacekeeping mission in Mali to fight local terrorist insurgents. In these missions, the military learned that it is essential to minimize supply lines and any local dependencies to increase troop safety and maximize operational efficiency. The MD Water Power Unit a purpose-built solution to military specifications Rainmakers core Water-to-Water technology will be combined with Bredenoords state-of-the-art military-grade generators in a purpose-built containerized solution, built by Bredenoord. Key specification criteria of the MD Water Power Unit, include low energy and maintenance requirements, reduced cost of water, fast deployment, mobility and operational efficiency. Replacing current reverse osmosis systems The ultimate objective is to replace the current reverse osmosis systems with Rainmaker-Bredenoord units. Each unit can provide up to 25 m3 (25,000 liters) of pure drinking water and 35 kW of electricity daily under all conditions without any power grid connection. This self-contained, low-maintenance solution is designed to be suitable for global military deployments, NGOs and disaster relief situations. One of 16 companies chosen out of 800 submissions The Dutch Ministry of Defence collaborated with various industry and knowledge institutes under the Smart Industry Fieldlabs program to invite companies to propose ideas that meet specific objectives in the areas of energy, water, logistics and waste, and support and services. Over 800 companies submitted proposals. Just 16 were contracted to participate. Smart Industry Chairman, Ineke Dezentje Hamming said, "The innovations we develop together are of great value to all people who work in crisis situations or with large groups where safety and deployability are vital. Michael OConnor, President and CEO of Rainmaker Worldwide said, We are exceptionally pleased to have been chosen for this critical application of Rainmakers Water-to-Water technology. We look forward to collaborating closely with the teams at Bredenoord and the Dutch military. We believe that meeting these stringent specifications will open the door for further opportunities working with both military and relief organizations where fast deployment is necessary in dealing with the effects of catastrophes such as hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Maarten van den Heuvel, Divisional Manager Sales and Service at Bredenoord said, This product offers proven technology for sustainable energy and water supply. About Rainmaker Worldwide Inc. Rainmaker Worldwide Inc. (OTC:RAKR) is headquartered in Peterborough, Canada, with an innovation and manufacturing center in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Our patented water technology provides economical drinking water at scale wherever its needed. Rainmaker builds two types of energy-efficient, fresh water-producing technologies: 1. Air-to-Water, which harvests fresh water from the air 2. Water-to-Water, which transforms seawater or polluted water into drinking water Our technology is both wind and solar powered, is deployable anywhere, and leaves no carbon traces. We also offer options for hybrid, grid and diesel-powered models. Air-to-Water units are available in three standard sizes, producing 5,000, 10,000 or 20,000 liters of drinking water per day. Water-to-Water units are also available in three standard sizes producing 37,500, 75,000 or 150,000 liters per day. This makes each unit suitable for communities of 200 to 30,000 people, depending on number of units deployed. Our goal is to become a global leader in solving the worldwide water crisis. Simply put, were creating safe, drinking water where little or none exists. Interested parties can access additional information about Rainmaker on the Companys website located at http://www.rainmakerww.com. About Bredenoord Bredenoord is a family-owned business based in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, with 80 years experience in the engineering, production, sale and rental of smart energy solutions. Nowadays, the company focuses on the development of more efficient and environmentally friendly power generators. Based on its Clear Concept philosophy, solutions are brought forward based on new fuels, new conversion technologies, increased efficiency and emissions reduction. In addition to the market in the Netherlands, Bredenoord operates in markets throughout Europe via offices in Germany, Denmark and Belgium. Bredenoord originally developed the Water Power Unit in 2015. This knowledge together with our focus to bring reliable power in its most efficient way was the basis for this joint development with Rainmaker Worldwide. For more information, please visit www.bredenoord.com. Forward-looking Statements Certain matters discussed in this announcement contain statements, estimates and projections about the growth of Rainmakers business, potential distribution partnerships and/or clients, and related business strategy. Such statements, estimates and projections may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time-to-time. Rainmakers undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The recipient of this information is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. For more information please contact: Rainmaker Worldwide Inc. Michael O'Connor info@rainmakerww.com +1-877-334-3820 Bredenoord Maarten van den Heuvel m.heuvel@bredenoord.com 0031 (0)6 19 351617 Chippewa County veterans organizations will spend the week of Nov. 6-10 raising awareness of Veterans Day and celebrating the accomplishments of area veterans. On Tuesday, Nov. 7, the Wisconsin Veterans Home at 2175 E. Park Avenue in Chippewa Falls will hold a Veterans Ball from 4:30-6:30 p.m., said Leroy Jansky, secretary-treasurer of the VFW Post 1038 in Chippewa Falls. The ball is invitation-only attendance. On Thursday, Nov. 9, Chippewa Manor at 222 Chapman Road is holding a free breakfast for veterans from 8-9 a.m., followed by a program from 9-10 a.m. Several celebrations will be held Friday, Nov. 10. A group of area veterans will visit several Chippewa County schools, raise a flag, present a short speech, fire three rifle volleys and play Taps, Jansky said. The group will visit the following schools Friday: Jim Falls Elementary at 8 a.m. Hillcrest Elementary at 9 a.m. McDonell Central Catholic High School at 10:15 a.m. This ceremony is open to the public. Holy Ghost Elementary School at 11:30 a.m. Flagpole in front of Chippewa County Courthouse at 711 N. Bridge Street at 12:15 p.m. Parkview Elementary at 1:30 p.m. NOTE: An early version of this story incorrectly stated that a Veterans Day celebration would be held at Chippewa Falls Senior High School on the morning of Friday, Nov. 10. No Veterans Day ceremony will be held at Chi-Hi; instead, a ceremony will be held at McDonell Central Catholic High School at 10:15 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 10. The Little Theatre of Danville will be presenting Tennessee Williams classic play The Glass Menagerie, on Nov. 10-11 at the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. The play centers on the Wingfield family, whose family fortunes took a serious hit during the Great Depression when the father of the family abandoned them. The mother, Amanda Wingfield, is a faded Southern belle and former debutante living in poverty in St. Louis with her son, Tom, and daughter, Laura. While Amanda tried to give her children direction, her efforts are ineffective and often irritating. Tom reacts by seeking the escape from her he cannot find, and turns to alcohol and the world of movies. He is the narrator of the play, which is all based on his memories of events. Laura, who is crippled, is beset by a mother who is anxious to see her married, and lives a reclusive life surrounded by her collection of small, glass creatures her glass menagerie. Tom invites an acquaintance from work, Jim OConnor, to dinner with the family who is regarded by Amanda as a potential gentleman caller and husband for Laura. When dinner is over, illusions have been shattered and Tom leaves home. The play is directed by Michelle Cahill and the cast is: Madalyn Mohamed as Amanda Wingfield; Douglas Adams as Tom Wingfield; Kris Dodds Williams as Laura Wingfield; and David Hammack as Jim OConnor. Williams, who is making her acting debut with the Little Theatre of Danville, said she is enjoying playing the role of Laura. Laura is unequipped to deal with the real world around her, Williams said. She retreats into her own world of her glass figurines, her menagerie they are full of symbolism, of how she feels she has gone from being cherished to broken. Adams said he has always wanted to play Tom. The best part about playing Tom is the complexity of Tom and the challenge for the actor playing him, Adams said. The whole play is based on his memories, and he also struggles with leaving his sister behind. Cahill said the play is a classic, with many of the emotions it engenders as fitting today and they were when it was written in the 1940s. The whole family is beautifully dysfunctional, Cahill said. Amanda does want whats best for her children she has good intentions, but lives in a fantasy world. Tickets are $15 and are available at the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, 975 Main St., and at Karens Hallmark, in Danville Mall. Tickets can also be purchased at the door for each performance. State Sen. Leah Vukmir is calling on her Republican U.S. Senate primary opponent, Kevin Nicholson, to apologize for saying U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan has a light footprint in our state and that Ryans perceived lukewarm support for Trump is a problem. Nicholson is declining to do so, telling the Wisconsin State Journal that he has no beef with Ryan. The man is Speaker of the House. Hes got a lot of things to do and a lot of different priorities, and I completely understand that, Nicholson said. At the end of the day, hes doing what he can to pass the presidents agenda, and I appreciate that. Nicholson, a Delafield businessman, political newcomer and Iraq War veteran, and Vukmir, the Assistant Majority Leader of the state Senate from Brookfield, are seeking the GOP nod to oppose Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2018. In the recording first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nicholson is responding to GOP activists at a recent Jefferson County event who criticized Ryan, with one calling him a closet Democrat and saying his office staffers were too busy to answer his phone call. One of the activists slams Ryan in the recording for saying, late in the 2016 presidential campaign, that he would not defend or campaign with Trump. The Trump issue is a problem, I agree, Nicholson responded. He later added that Ryan has a light footprint in our state. Nicholson, a former Democrat, also defends Ryan to some extent in the recording, saying he was upfront about never wanting the speakers post and give him credit for that. Vukmir, in a statement, called Ryan a friend of mine and said he has never forgotten where he came from or what matters to the people of (Wisconsins) 1st Congressional District, which Ryan represents. Anyone who has spent any time in Janesville knows that Paul Ryan is home all the time and is 100 percent Wisconsin. Who will (Nicholson) attack next, Governor Walker? Vukmir spokeswoman Jess Ward said in the statement. Ryans campaign director, Kevin Seifert, said in a statement that Ryans commitment to Wisconsin is unwavering. He works tirelessly to represent his employers in the 1st Congressional District when in Wisconsin and in Washington, DC, Seifert said. Nicholson has touted the support given to him by a super PAC aligned with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. After leaving the White House to return as chairman of the conservative online news site Breitbart, Bannon declared war on Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for, in Bannons view, not sufficiently supporting Trumps agenda. - PWM-17-08: 1.94 % Li2O and 323.75 ppm Ta over 26.0 m - PWM-17-09: 1.23 % Li2O and 148.0 ppm Ta over 16.0 m - PWM-17-10: 1.74 % Li2O and 245.96 ppm Ta over 15.06 m VANCOUVER, November 2, 2017 / MGX Minerals Inc. ("MGX" or the "Company") (CSE: XMG / FKT: 1MG / OTCQB: MGXMF) is pleased to report that joint venture partner Power Metals Corp. ("Power Metals") has received initial assay results from drilling at the Case Lake property near Cochrane, Ontario. As reported by Power Metals, drilling has intersected three wide high-grade lithium (Li) and tantalum (Ta) mineralized intervals including: Lithium grades are up to 3.29 % Li2O over 1.0 m in PWM-17-08 in the quartz core with coarse-grained pale green spodumene. Drill hole collar locations are given in Power Metals press release dated Sept. 21, 2017. Assay highlights for assays > 0.9 % Li2O holes PWM-17-01 to 12 are given in Table 1. While the focus of Power Metals exploration team is lithium mineralization in the form of spodumene, Case Lake pegmatites contain additional tantalum mineralization in the form of Ta-oxide minerals. PWM-17-08 has 2.50 % Li2O and 1770.0 ppm Ta over 1.0 m. The lithium and tantalum mineralization in the Main Dyke is present in the intermediate zones and quartz core with coarse-grained pale green spodumene (Figures 1 and 2). Tantalum metal is used in the manufacture of electrolytic capacitors for the electronics industry and is used in mobile phones, personal computers, video game systems and automotive electronics. Click Image To View Full Size Click Image To View Full Size Table 1 Assay highlights for PWM-17-01 to PWM-17-12 Drill Hole No. From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Li2O (%) Ta (ppm) PWM-17-01 21.95 22.90 0.95 2.52 89.40 PWM-17-01 25.50 26.50 1.00 2.50 154.00 PWM-17-01 44.00 44.70 0.70 2.27 242.00 PWM-17-01 47.00 47.80 0.80 1.06 119.00 PWM-17-02 assays pending PWM-17-03 assays pending PWM-17-04 105.82 107.00 1.18 1.97 211.00 PWM-17-05 assays pending PWM-17-06 assays pending PWM-17-07 assays pending PWM-17-08 20.00 46.00 26.00 1.94 323.75 including 21.00 23.00 2.00 2.80 39.05 and 26.00 27.00 1.00 1.83 738.00 and 39.00 40.00 1.00 2.50 1770.00 and 41.00 42.00 1.00 3.29 73.70 PWM-17-09 29.00 45.00 16.00 1.23 148.40 including 30.00 33.00 3.00 2.73 34.37 and 33.00 40.00 7.00 1.09 274.14 and 38.00 39.00 1.00 2.73 98.30 PWM-17-10 6.26 7.00 0.74 0.94 39.40 PWM-17-10 35.00 50.06 15.06 1.74 245.96 including 35.00 36.00 1.00 3.07 28.20 and 38.00 39.00 1.00 3.11 158.00 and 44.00 46.00 2.00 2.41 711.50 PWM-17-10 55.00 58.00 3.00 1.39 147.77 PWM-17-10 74.72 75.61 0.89 0.92 324.00 PWM-17-11 assays pending PWM-17-12 assays pending Drill holes intersected the pegmatite dykes at almost 90 degrees, so intervals are close to true widths. Power Metals has completed 35 drill holes of a 5000 m drill program to date on the Main, North and South Dykes. The purpose of the drill program is to extend the lithium mineralization in the Main and North Dykes along strike and down dip. Power Metals' 2017 drill program has extended the Main Dyke spodumene pegmatite zone 250 m to the west of the historic drill holes. The Main Dyke Zone is typically 32-35 m wide close to surface and consists of multiple spodumene pegmatite dykes. Last week, Power Metals completed drill hole PWM-17-35 which is 30 m west along strike from PWM-17-10. Both holes intersected spodumene in the North Dyke and the Main Dyke. In PWM-17-35, the North Dyke is 6.7 m wide with 10-15% spodumene overall and the Main Dyke Zone is 29.4 m wide and is composed of multiple pegmatite dykes. One of the pegmatite dykes within the Main Dyke Zone has 7.5 m of 25 % spodumene. In comparison, the North Dyke is 7.6 m wide and Main Dyke Zone is 28.22 m wide in PWM-17-10. Visual estimates of spodumene do not necessarily equate to lithium grade in assays. Assays are pending for PWM-17-35. Dr. Selway, VP of Exploration stated "We are impressed by the widths and grades of the lithium mineralization in the Main Dyke. The tantalum mineralization is a nice extra bonus to the lithium mineralization. We are eager to see the assay results from PWM-17-35, as the drill core is similar to that of PWM-17-10." Johnathan More, Chairman of Power Metals stated "We are thrilled from this first batch of assays. This represents a very small portion of holes drilled to date and we are eager to see more results as we receive them from the lab. The high-grade Tantalum is a huge bonus to PWM as we remain focused on the high-grade Lithium." Quality Control The drill core was sampled so that 1 m of the Case Batholith tonalite host rock was sampled followed by 1 m long samples of the pegmatite dyke and 1 m of the Case Batholith. The sampling followed lithology boundaries so that only one lithology unit is within a sample, except for the < 20 cm pegmatite veins in tonalite which were merged into one sample. The drill core samples were delivered to Actlabs preparation lab in Timmins by Power Metals' geologists. The core was crushed and pulverized in Timmins and then shipped to Actlabs analytical lab in Ancaster which has ISO 17025 certification. Every 20 samples included one external quartz blank, one external lithium standard and one core duplicate. The ore grade Li2O% was prepared by sodium peroxide fusion with analysis by ICP-OES with a detection limit of 0.01 % Li2O. Case Lake Case Lake Property is located in Steele and Case townships, 80 km east of Cochrane, NE Ontario close to the Ontario-Quebec border. The Case Lake pegmatite swarm consists of five dykes: North, Main, South, East and Northeast Dykes. The Northeast Dyke contains very coarse-grained spodumene. MGX currently has a 20% working interest in Case Lake with the right to acquire an additional 15%. The Company holds an option to acquire 10,000,000 shares of Power Metals at $0.65 (see press release dated August 2, 2017). Qualified Persons Julie Selway, Ph.D., P.Geo. supervised the preparation of the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release. Dr. Selway is the VP of Exploration for Power Metals and the Qualified Person ("QP") as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Dr. Selway is supervising the exploration program at Case Lake. Dr. Selway completed a Ph.D. on granitic pegmatites in 1999 and worked for about 3 years as a pegmatite geoscientist for the Ontario Geological Survey. Dr. Selway also has twenty-three scientific journal articles on pegmatites. A National Instrument 43-101 report has been prepared on Case Lake Property and filed on July 18, 2017. The technical portions of this press release were reviewed by Andris Kikauka (P. Geo.), Vice President of Exploration for MGX Minerals. Mr. Kikauka is a non-independent Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards. About MGX Minerals MGX Minerals is a diversified Canadian resource and technology company with interests in lithium, magnesium and silicon assets throughout North America. Learn more at www.mgxminerals.com. Contact Information Jared Lazerson President and CEO Telephone: 1.604.681.7735 Web: www.mgxminerals.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Copyright (c) 2017 TheNewswire - All rights reserved. LAKEWOOD, CO, Nov. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Energy Fuels Inc. (NYSE American: UUUU; TSX: EFR) ("Energy Fuels" or the "Company"), a leading producer of uranium in the United States, is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement to sell certain non-core uranium properties in Wyoming to Uranium Energy Corp. ("UEC") for $5.39 million, including $2.94 million of cash and $2.45 million of shares in UEC that will be priced upon the closing of the transaction. The disposed properties are adjacent to the Reno Creek Project, recently acquired by UEC. The Company considers these properties to be non-core to its current and future uranium recovery operations. As a standalone project, these properties would require extensive permitting and licensing work, and significant time and capital, for Energy Fuels to bring them into commercial operation in the future. Therefore, they are much better suited to be combined with UEC's Reno Creek Project. In addition, the Company holds significant low cost ISR uranium assets that are currently producing or that can be brought into production in Wyoming much sooner, including the operating and fully-permitted Nichols Ranch ISR Project, and the fully-permitted Jane Dough and Hank properties. The Company also holds significant low cost ISR uranium resources and assets at the fully-constructed, licensed and permitted Alta Mesa ISR Project in South Texas. The disposed properties are estimated to contain 3.8 million tons of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.06% eU 3 O 8 containing approximately 4.3 million pounds of uranium. This sale will not impact Energy Fuels' higher grade Nichols Ranch, Jane Dough, Hank, West North Butte, North Rolling Pin, and the Arkose Mining Venture ISR properties. In aggregate those properties hold 4.6 million tons of Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.12% eU 3 O 8 containing approximately 10.7 million pounds of uranium, along with an additional 3.4 million tons of Inferred Mineral Resources with an average grade of 0.10% eU 3 O 8 containing 7.1 million pounds of uranium. Stephen P. Antony, CEO of Energy Fuels stated: "At a time when companies are experiencing weak uranium markets, we are pleased to realize significant value from non-core uranium properties that are not a part of Energy Fuels' long-term business plan. The proceeds from the sale will significantly enhance our working capital position, and we look forward to closing this transaction. " About Energy Fuels: Energy Fuels is a leading integrated US-based uranium mining company, supplying U 3 O 8 to major nuclear utilities. Energy Fuels holds three of America's key uranium production centers, the White Mesa Mill in Utah, the Nichols Ranch Processing Facility in Wyoming, and the Alta Mesa Project in Texas. The White Mesa Mill is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the U.S. today and has a licensed capacity of over 8 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. The Nichols Ranch Processing Facility is an ISR production center with a licensed capacity of 2 million pounds of U 3 O 8 per year. Alta Mesa is an ISR production center currently on care and maintenance. Energy Fuels also has the largest NI 43-101 compliant uranium resource portfolio in the U.S. among producers, and uranium mining projects located in a number of Western U.S. states, including one producing ISR project, mines on standby, and mineral properties in various stages of permitting and development. The Company also produces vanadium as a co-product of its uranium production from certain of its mines on the Colorado Plateau, as market conditions warrant. The Company's common shares are listed on the NYSE MKT under the trading symbol "UUUU", and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol "EFR". Stephen P. Antony, P.E., President & CEO of Energy Fuels, is a Qualified Person as defined by Canadian National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain information contained in this news release, including any information relating to: the Company being a leading producer of uranium in the U.S.; the expected time to complete the transaction; the Company's expectations regarding permitting and construction of uranium recovery operations on the disposed properties; the Company's belief that the Nichols Ranch and Alta Mesa ISR Projects are low cost; the resource estimates on the disposed and retained properties; and any other statements regarding Energy Fuels' future expectations, beliefs, goals or prospects; constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements in this news release that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words "expects", "does not expect", "plans", "anticipates", "does not anticipate", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential", "scheduled", "forecast", "budget" and similar expressions) should be considered forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements are subject to important risk factors and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Energy Fuels' ability to control or predict. A number of important factors could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such forward-looking statements, including without limitation factors relating to: the Company being a leading producer of uranium in the U.S.; the expected time to complete the transaction; the Company's expectations regarding permitting and construction of uranium recovery operations on the disposed properties; the Company's belief that the Nichols Ranch and Alta Mesa ISR Projects are low cost; the resource estimates on the disposed and retained properties; and other risk factors as described in Energy Fuels' most recent annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly financial reports. Energy Fuels assumes no obligation to update the information in this communication, except as otherwise required by law. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in Energy Fuels' filings with the various securities commissions which are available online at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about the current expectations, beliefs and plans of the management of Energy Fuels relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. Readers are also cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, that speak only as of the date hereof. Cautionary note to United States investors concerning estimates of measured, indicated and inferred resources. This news release contains certain disclosure that has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of Canadian securities laws, which differ from the requirements of U.S. securities laws. Unless otherwise indicated, all reserve and resource estimates included in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 and the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") classification system. Canadian standards, including NI 43-101, differ significantly from the requirements of U.S. securities laws, and reserve and resource information contained in this news release may not be comparable to similar information disclosed by companies reporting only under U.S. standards. In particular, the term "resource" does not equate to the term "reserve" under SEC Industry Guide 7. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any of Measured or Indicated Mineral Resources will ever be converted into mineral reserves. Investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an "Inferred Mineral Resource" exists or is economically or legally minable. Energy Fuels does not hold any Reserves as that term is defined by SEC Industry Guide 7. Please refer to the section entitled "Cautionary Note to United States Investors Concerning Disclosure of Mineral Resources" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K dated March 15, 2016 for further details. SOURCE Energy Fuels Inc. One in three women and one in four men in the United States have been physically abused by an intimate partner, and intimate-partner homicides account for 40 to 50 percent of femicides. Violence against women ranks among the top calls for service to police departments nationwide, yet over half of these types of crimes -- including four-fifths of rapes -- go unreported to law enforcement.There is no mystery as to why this is the case. The trauma that victims experience from intimate-partner violence (IPV) can make them particularly reluctant to engage with the criminal justice system. They fear being re-traumatized by the system's response, or that there will be no response at all. Indeed, the majority of IPV victims cite a belief that the police will not or cannot do anything to protect them.Yet this belief, this lack of trust in the criminal justice system, further endangers victims -- not only by discouraging them from accessing available public-safety resources but also by leading them to withhold crucial information from law enforcement. That undermines the ability of the criminal-justice system to properly investigate, prosecute and deter these crimes.There is a well-documented solution to this crisis of trust. A growing body of research shows that "procedural justice" -- an approach grounded in the concept that law enforcement's interactions with the public shape the public's view of and willingness to reach out to police -- can make significant strides in reconciling these trust gaps.Procedural justice focuses on transforming interactions between community members and all practitioners in the criminal-justice system, with the goal of improving individuals' perceptions of law enforcement, their willingness to obey the law, and their desire to collaborate in crime-solving and ultimately reducing crime. These goals are achieved through five critical tenets:giving members of the community an opportunity to be heard and empowering them to speak up.demonstrating neutrality toward community members while addressing implicit biases.clearly explaining law-enforcement actions and why they are being taken.treating community members with dignity and courtesy.expressing a genuine interest in individuals' needs and personal situations, while connecting them with available resources.Every partner in the criminal-justice system -- from an officer responding to a domestic-disturbance call to a prosecutor conducting interviews with a victim to a judge presiding over a criminal-court case -- is in a position to send a message to IPV victims that the system is trustworthy, fair and a place to seek help. But while procedural-justice training can dramatically improve effectiveness in this effort, there are many small steps that can be taken immediately to achieve a powerful impact. It can be as simple as a police officer listening empathetically to a victim, offering information about services available, connecting the victim with a counselor, consistently enforcing protective orders, or clearly communicating to a sexual-assault victim what happens after a rape kit is completed and who will follow up about the case.Research strongly supports the connection, regardless of the case outcome, between enhanced procedural justice and improvements in a victim's experience and long-term recovery. When victims perceive fairness, respect and a sincere offer of help, they are more likely to engage meaningfully with police, prosecutors and the court system. By integrating procedural-justice practices into law enforcement's response to IPV, criminal-justice practitioners create the opportunity to re-frame how these crimes are handled, enhance victim safety, improve case outcomes and repair a vulnerable community's trust in the system.Furthermore, this trust could provide the foundation for a new vision of public safety: safer communities that are empowered by positive, ongoing and successful cooperation with law enforcement. Increased confidence in criminal-justice practitioners improves victim participation and offender accountability, and it provides law enforcement with the resources it needs to address and ultimately reduce these violent crimes. Procedural justice enables law enforcement to better help not only IPV victims but also communities as a whole. California violates freedom of speech by requiring antiabortion "crisis pregnancy centers" to tell patients that the state makes abortions available at little or no cost, a Riverside County judge has ruled, reopening debate over a law that federal courts had upheld.The law, sponsored by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, took effect last year. It requires all state-licensed reproductive health centers to post notices listing low-cost or free reproductive services available under state law, including abortion. The notices must also include the phone number of the county social service center.A federal appeals court upheld the law in October 2016, saying it merely required the clinics to provide health care information that patients have a right to receive. Abortion foes have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that ruling, but they also filed another suit in state court on behalf of a clinic in Riverside County, and won the first round this week.By requiring a pregnancy clinic to tell its patients how they can contact an abortion provider, the state "forces the clinic to point the way to the abortion clinic and can leave patients with the belief they were referred to an abortion provider by that clinic," Superior Court Judge Gloria Trask said Monday.The law "interferes both with the right of the clinician to speak and with the right of the patient to hear what the clinician would say in the absence of state censorship," Trask said. "The state inserts itself into the private and sensitive relationship between a woman and her physician."Her ruling bars enforcement of the law against only one clinic, Go Mobile for Life, run by the Scharpen Foundation in the city of Temecula. A statewide ruling will follow once higher courts take up an appeal by Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who is defending the law."Information is power, and all women should have access to the information they need when making personal health-care decisions," Becerra said in a statement announcing the appeal.Scott Scharpen, president of the Scharpen Foundation, said that "being compelled to share information with our patients about abortion availability, which is contrary to our mission and purpose, is fundamentally wrong. Lives will be saved because of this ruling."The lawsuit drew financial support from Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a conservative religious nonprofit. It relied on free-speech guarantees in the California Constitution, arguing that those rights were stronger than U.S. constitutional protections invoked in the federal court cases.Crisis pregnancy centers offer free counseling and services, including pregnancy tests and ultrasound examinations, to pregnant women. The centers steer patients away from abortions, and have been known to advise women that abortion is physically and psychologically harmful.According to a legislative staff analysis of Chiu's bill in 2015, there were at the time about 2,500 such clinics nationwide and at least 228 in California.In her ruling, Trask said the state was entitled to tell people about the availability of abortion but must do so on its own, with television ads, billboards or sex education classes."This statute compels the clinic to speak words with which it profoundly disagrees when the state has numerous alternative methods of publishing its message," the judge said. Governors Legislatures Mayors State Ballot Measures Health Care Pensions Pollution Lawsuits Crime Victim's Rights Home Equity Loans Constitutional Convention Local Ballot Measures It was largely a sleepy Election Day this year at the state and local level. There were only two races for governor, a dozen or so for big-city mayors and a near-record low number of statewide ballot measures. Last time this few measures appeared on state ballots was 1947. Nevertheless, there were still some important races and ballot measures that we've been tracking. Without further ado, here's a rundown of Tuesday's results (some of which are still to come).Nationwide, Republicans hold 34 governor's offices, a near-record high majority. After election night, they will soon hold 33. In New Jersey, Democrats flipped the seat, which is now held by term-limited GOP Gov. Chris Christie. The Democratic candidate, former Goldman Sachs executive Phil Murphy, defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.In Virginia, the only other state with a gubernatorial election this year, Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie with an unexpectedly comfortable margin.But the question remains: What does that mean for the 2018 midterms?At the legislative level, Democrats had a better election night than they could have dared to hope for, picking up seats in special elections from Georgia to Washington state.In Washington state, a Democratic win in a Seattle-area Senate seat gave Democrats a one-seat majority in the chamber and, with it, control of all the political branches of government. Coupled with their victory in the New Jersey governor's race, Democrats now have full control of nine states.In Virginia, Democrats gained more House seats than they have in any single cycle dating back to the 19th century.Elsewhere, Democrats' imminent takeover of a Georgia Senate district -- both candidates who are moving to a runoff are Democrats -- means the GOP will lose its supermajority in that chamber. Democrats picked up two other seats in Georgia, as well as seats in Michigan and New Hampshire. And in New Jersey, Democrats added modestly to their majorities, picking up a seat or two in either chamber.More than a dozen big cities held mayoral elections on Tuesday. In most of them -- Boston, Buffalo, N.Y.; Cincinnati, New York City, Pittsburgh and St. Petersburg, Fla. -- the incumbent mayors won.But in several midsized cities -- Atlantic City, N.J.; Annapolis, Md.; Fayetteville, N.C.; and Manchester, N.H. -- Republican mayors were defeated by Democrats.Even mayors under ethical clouds won. Flint, Mich., Mayor Karen Weaver, for instance, turned back a recall attempt. Although the recall was launched in response to a garbage contract, attention turned during the campaign to the city's water crisis. Nonetheless, Weaver won easily.Meanwhile, Charlotte, N.C., voters elected their seventh mayor in eight years after ousting the current mayor who led the city's battle against the state over transgender bathrooms. The new mayor, Vi Lyles, will be the first black woman to lead city hall in Charlotte. (Tuesday was a historic night in many places for women. Here's a rundown of where female candidates scored big victories. And Seattle elected its first female mayor since the 1920s. Jenny Durkan will be one of the nation's only current big-city mayors who is openly lesbian.The Minneapolis mayor's race was still too close to call, and Atlanta is set for a runoff between two members of the city council.The most closely watched ballot measure on Tuesday was likely Maine's vote on Medicaid expansion, which is a central provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare.The state became the first to expand Medicaid by popular vote and the 33rd to expand Medicaid in general.The vote signals support for the ACA at a time when President Trump is taking major steps to undo the law.Also on the health-care front, Ohio voters rejected what would have been a first-of-its-kind state law to reduce drug prices. Californians rejected a similar measure last November.The pharmaceutical industry spent big in 2016 to fight it and did the same in Ohio.The measure would have let state health agencies pay the same for prescription drugs as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which gets a 24 percent discount off drug manufacturers' prices.In almost half the states, there's no law that keeps public officials convicted of job-related felonies from cashing their pensions once they resign or get fired. New York has a so-called pension forfeiture law, but it has loopholes that still let the practice occur.On Tuesday, though, voters closed some of those loopholes.The approved ballot measure would have affected Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos -- two powerful New York lawmakers who were sentenced to prison for corruption in recent years -- but both recently had their convictions overturned.Gas companies -- including BP, Exxon, Shell and Sunoco -- are about to pay millions of dollars to the state of New Jersey for the pollution they've caused. While the lawyers work out those settlements, the state's voters have decided how the money will be spent.A measure on Tuesday's ballot ensures that the money will go toward environmental projects -- such as building parks and building dams. In the past, critics complained that environmental settlements have "gone to general funds to make up for budget shortfalls and bad fiscal decisions."The question invoked a debate that's happening around the country. As governments become more transparent about how tax dollars and other sources of money are spent, lawmakers and taxpayers are pushing for them to be used more wisely or fairly.In recent years, several states have voted to expand crime victims' constitutional rights, including the rights to refuse to turn over evidence or be interviewed by a defendant's attorney. This year, Ohio joined the trend.Most of the new rights are actually already law in Ohio. The new initiative merely enshrines them in the constitution. Eventually, supporters hope to amend the U.S. constitution with the same added protections.Despite overwhelming opposition from the legal community -- public defenders, prosecutors, even victim advocates, in some cases -- voters almost always approve these measures.When the housing bubble burst in the late 2000s, no state was spared. Some, however, fared better than others. One such state was Texas.But on Tuesday, voters approved a ballot measure that loosens some of the restrictions credited with helping the state escape much of the foreclosure crisis.Once every 20 years, under the New York Constitution, citizens are asked if theyd like to call a constitutional convention and re-examine the fundamentals of the government process.This time around, they decided against the idea.Voters were in a mood to spend money on Tuesday -- that is, in the few places where they had the chance to decide tax and bonding questions.Projects totaling roughly $1 billion in each city won approval in Dallas, Denver and Kansas City, Mo.On the other side of Missouri, voters in St. Louis approved a half-cent increase in the sales tax to fund raises for police and firefighters. And in Grand Forks, N.D., voters approved a half-cent increase in the local sales tax, in their case to fund road and water projects.But not every local spending measure was approved on Tuesday.In Tucson, Ariz., voters rejected plans to raise the city sales tax to pay for early childhood education and to fund improvements at the zoo. Former Gov. Roy Barnes' law firm will represent Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in a lawsuit that a national election transparency advocacy group filed to force the state to overhaul its election system.The Department of Administrative Services has replaced Attorney General Christopher Carr with Barnes Law Group to represent Kemp, the state Election Board and others named in the case, Kemp spokeswoman Candice Broce said.The Charlotte-based Coalition for Good Governance, led by Executive Director Marilyn Marks, has said that reported security lapses show the state's system is "vulnerable and unreliable" and should not have been used for the 6th Congressional District runoff race in June -- nor should it be used in next week's election.Kennesaw State University runs the Center for Elections Systems and is also a defendant in the lawsuit.Carr's office would not comment on the move.The Attorney General's Office often hires outside counsel to represent state agencies when there's a conflict of interest, such as a situation where the Law Department would have to represent both the Secretary of State's Office and KSU in the same legal matter."I definitely don't see eye to eye with Governor Barnes on a lot of issues, but I think anyone would tell you he's a damn good lawyer," said Kemp, a Republican candidate for governor.Kemp said he looks forward to working with Barnes, a Democrat, despite their differing political views."He will be a zealous advocate for the state Election Board and the secretary of state to show that these claims are baseless," he said.Kemp's office has maintained that the voting system is safe, saying steps were taken after being informed in March about potential security weaknesses.The move comes less than a week after it was revealed that the KSU center erased a server containing voting information.The data wipe was revealed in an email sent by a state prosecutor to lawyers representing the Coalition for Good Governance, who filed the lawsuit on July 3 questioning the security and accuracy of Georgia's election infrastructure.The documents show the destruction of the data occurred July 7 at the KSU center, which runs the state's election system.KSU said the server that had been examined by the FBI was wiped so it could be repurposed, and that the FBI had a copy of the data that were on the server.Broce pointed to a Fulton County Superior Court judge's finding in June that there was no evidence that Georgia's voting systems were "unsafe, inaccurate, and impracticable." The pending case addresses the same issues from the coalition and other Georgia voters, but Kemp's office said it expects the same outcome."This far-fetched conjecture erodes public confidence in our elections without good cause," said John Salter, an attorney with Barnes Law Group. "Putting plaintiffs' proof to test will confirm Secretary Kemp and the state Election Board executed the election laws of our state reasonably and fairly."Marks stood by her accusations against the state's voting system."The far-fetched conjecture here is that they were operating according to the law when they destroyed the records," Marks said. "A responsible election official does not ... run an election on a system that they know to be compromised."Barnes drew some heat from fellow Democrats at his decision to represent Kemp in the legal matter.Kemp has long been at odds with former House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, a top Democratic gubernatorial contender. Barnes has endorsed another Democrat, former state Rep. Stacey Evans, in the race."I was dumbfounded that Roy Barnes would defend the secretary of state in such a case," said state Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, who was long Abrams' top deputy in the Georgia House. Fallout from the sexual harassment scandal at the Illinois Capitol continued Wednesday, as a state senator lost his leadership position and top Democrats scrambled to find a leader for the agency tasked with investigating such complaints after letting the job remain vacant for years.Democratic Sen. Ira Silverstein of Chicago "will no longer serve" as Senate Democratic majority caucus chair, according to Senate President John Cullerton. The move came a day after Denise Rotheimer, an activist for victims of violent crime, told lawmakers at a public hearing that Silverstein made unwanted comments about her appearance, sent her hundreds of Facebook messages and placed midnight phone calls as she was working with him to pass legislation for nearly 18 months.Silverstein has disputed the allegations and said he apologized "if I made her uncomfortable." Losing his leadership spot will cost him an $20,649 annual stipend on top of the $67,836 base salary lawmakers get for what's considered a part-time job. Reached by phone Wednesday evening, Silverstein said he was in the middle of grocery shopping at Mariano's and would have to call back.Cullerton, the Senate president, was largely silent Tuesday, but on Wednesday responded to the growing scandal by announcing that lawmakers will be required to take a sexual harassment awareness training seminar when they return to the Capitol next week.Cullerton also said he "anticipates" an interim legislative inspector general will be named as soon as next week.That announcement came as a Republican senator questioned why no one has acted on more than two dozen ethics complaints filed at the legislative inspector general's office since 2015. Sen. Karen McConnaughay, who sits on the panel of lawmakers that oversees such complaints, also wanted to know why she was only just now learning that those unresolved complaints existed.Democratic lawmakers cited two technical reasons. One is that there's no legislative inspector general, so there's no one with the power to turn complaints of any nature into an actual investigation. The other is that sexual harassment is not currently included as a specific violation of the state's ethics act, meaning that the Legislative Ethics Commission can't hold a hearing or issue punishments on such complaints.The General Assembly has been without a permanent chief watchdog for more than three years. Three of the four legislative leaders have to agree on a nominee before the commission can consider installing the person in the role, said Democratic Sen. Terry Link, who is chairman of the legislative ethics panel.Cullerton attempted to assign blame to himself on Wednesday. "It's our duty to fill that post. I take responsibility for my role in that lapse, and I apologize for it," he said in a statement.But legislative leaders have failed to hire a permanent legislative inspector general since Tom Homer left at the end of June 2014. The following week, the Chicago Tribune published details of a secret report put together by Homer in the wake of a 2013 Metra scandal that offered new insight into how Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan navigated the intersection of public business and ward-style patronage through his Southwest Side office and Illinois Capitol suite.The report contained an account of Metra's chairwoman entering Madigan's Capitol office to talk about state issues and leaving with a yellow Post-it note bearing the names of two workers the speaker wanted to see promoted. In another meeting, a Metra lobbyist who was a longtime Madigan aide was spotted leaving the speaker's office with two resumes. Another time, Madigan simply called the cellphone of one of his "better" precinct captains to tell him about a state job, according to the report.A copy of the unreleased report also gave a rare glimpse into Madigan's thoughts on getting people government jobs and raises. In an interview with Homer, Madigan is quoted as speaking highly of both the work-related credentials and the political experience of one 13th Ward operative the speaker backed for a raise."You can understand that there are many people that are involved with me and campaigns and community service," Madigan said, according to the report. "Among these many people, some are better than others. (He) happens to be one of those who is better than others."At the time, Madigan's spokesman issued a statement saying the speaker asked for the investigation and cooperated fully with it and noted that the legislative inspector general had "found no violation of any law."At Tuesday's public hearing, Madigan was asked if he would commit to finally appointing an inspector general. "I don't make the appointment. The appointment's made by a vote of the House and the Senate," Madigan said.Illinois law tasks the Legislative Ethics Commission to "diligently search out qualified candidates" and make recommendations to the General Assembly. It's then up to the House and Senate to agree on a joint resolution, which requires a three-fifths vote.When Madigan was again asked later at the hearing if he would commit to filling the post, he answered, "yes."It was at that same Tuesday hearing that Rotheimer, the victim rights advocate, leveled her accusations at Silverstein. Cullerton's office said "it is our understanding there is an open investigation."That caught the attention of McConnaughay, the Republican senator from St. Charles. She said that she and other legislative ethics oversight commission members routinely were told by staff that there were no pending cases.Confused by the discrepancy, McConnaughay contacted the legislative commission's executive director, Randy Erford. McConnaughay said it was explained to her that there's a distinction between what is considered a complaint versus a case. McConnaughay said she was told that complaints like Rotheimer's ended up in a binder but were not listed as cases in reports to the commission because the legislative inspector general is required to open a case. That's the job that's long gone unfilled."It's all caught up on a technicality," said McConnaughay, who said she was told there were 27 complaints filed between 2015 and now. Erford did not respond to requests for comment.The senator said she planned to push for an outside attorney to be appointed as a special investigator to handle the backlog of cases, as well as legislation to overhaul the complaint process."The General Assembly is clearly incapable of policing itself," McConnaughay said.Link, the Waukegan Democrat who chairs the legislative ethics commission, would not confirm the number of pending complaints."But they're not cases because until the inspector general, which we hope we have somebody very quickly, investigates, then it either becomes a case or it's dismissed, one of the two," Link said.Link said he's called a Nov. 9 ethics commission meeting and expects that a nominee to fill the role will be voted on.Madigan, testifying Tuesday in Chicago in support of his bill to require sexual harassment training for legislative employees and lobbyists, said the vacancy at the inspector general's office was "regrettable" but had not prevented the ethics commission from functioning.In 2017, Erford had three complaints that he "took directly" to Link, the commission chairman, Madigan said. In 2016, there were eight complaints, and in 2015 there were 15 complaints, Madigan said."So the commission has been functioning," Madigan said. "Any complaint is brought to the attention of the chairman."But there's an important distinction between the inspector general and the ethics commission.Sexual harassment is not currently included as a specific violation of the state's ethics act, so the Legislative Ethics Commission has no power to hold a hearing on a sexual harassment complaint or punish someone who's been accused of sexual harassment, according to Heather Wier Vaught, Madigan's top lawyer and a former ethics officer for the House Democratic Caucus.The inspector general (that's the job that's vacant), however, does have the ability to investigate a sexual harassment complaint. Once an investigation is complete, though, the Ethics Commission can't do much with it other than release it to the public. And accusers are typically uncomfortable with going public with their accusations out of fear of retribution.The legislation proposed by Madigan would add a prohibition against sexual harassment to the state's ethics act, making it possible for the ethics commission to punish those who've been found in violation, Wier Vaught said. Embroiled in a criminal case over her legal residency, state Rep. Daisy Baez resigned from the Florida Legislature on Wednesday, the first step in a deal with prosecutors that will also require her to plead guilty to perjury.Investigators believe Baez, a Coral Gables Democrat, lied when she filled out a voter-registration form changing her address days before the November 2016 election. She claimed to live in her district, but investigators concluded she never paid rent or slept in the apartment.Facing a potential third-degree felony for lying on an official form, Baez agreed to plead guilty to a similar misdemeanor charge and resign.She lasted less than a year in the Florida Legislature.Baez sent House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O'Lakes, a one-sentence resignation letter Wednesday morning: "Effective immediately, I am resigning my office as a member of the Florida House of Representatives, HD 114."She is the third lawmaker to resign in scandal in just over six months. Democratic Sen. Jeff Clemens of Atlantis, the incoming Senate Democratic leader, quit last Friday after Politico reported on his affair with a lobbyist. Republican Sen. Frank Artiles of Miami stepped down in April after the Herald revealed he used a slur in front of two black lawmakers and hired "political consultants" who were former Hooters calendar models.The Herald revealed in May that Baez still did not appear to live in her district, as required by the Florida Constitution.Under the terms of her pending plea agreement with Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office, Baez will also pay a $1,000 fine, take an ethics course and serve one year of probation, during which she'll be banned from seeking public office."I want to thank the residents of Florida, Miami-Dade County and District 114 for giving me the opportunity to serve, it's been a great honor," Baez said in a statement late Tuesday to the Miami Herald. "When I began my service as a Representative last year, I vowed to serve the public interest to the best of my ability and I am confident I have done so. As I return to my life as a private citizen, I pledge to continue fighting for universal healthcare, empowering our teachers, and improving the quality of life for the youngest, most vulnerable Floridians."Baez's resignation leaves House Democrats with only 40 members in the 120-member chamber. That leaves Republicans on the verge of a super majority going into the annual legislative session that begins Jan. 9. Republican Gov. Rick Scott must call a special election to fill Baez's swing seat, and he's under no obligation to do so before session."Daisy did what was right for herself, her family and the community, in her view," House Democratic Leader Kionne McGhee of Miami said. "The only thing we can do us support her in whatever decision she made."On May 16, Baez told the Herald, "I have two residences."She produced a lease that had her living in District 114 from Oct. 1-April 30. But investigators concluded Baez lived in the home she owns in District 112 -- and did not lease a third rental property in District 114 until May 26, nine days after the Herald published its story.Baez voted by mail in District 112 in October 2016 before changing her voter address ahead of Election Day.The controversy forced Baez to drop out of a high-profile race for state Senate District 40. She had been tapped by top Florida Democrats, who considered her a rising party star, even though she was a freshman representative with only one legislative session under her belt. Last November, she defeated Republican John Couriel by 2 percentage points -- a difference of 1,336 votes out of 67,268 cast.Prosecutors questioned Baez earlier this month, shortly after a House committee found probable cause to investigate a citizen complaint in June over Baez's residency. That investigation could have resulted in Baez's expulsion from the chamber; the committee issued subpoenas last week to depose witnesses in the case, though the depositions were pushed back after the death of Baez's mother.Following Baez's resignation, the House investigation will now be moot. Virginia has been swamped by fearful images as Tuesday's state election nears: heavily tattooed and handcuffed Latinos staring balefully at the television camera, a mug shot of a convicted pedophile set loose on the state.Versions of those ads may be headed to other states in the 2018 elections as Republicans seek to maximize the turnout of the burgeoning Trump wing of the party with themes known to appeal to them.The strategy in Virginia by GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie has played heavily on themes of race and crime _ itself an issue that has historically conjured racial stereotypes _ in the style President Donald Trump employed last year.The outcome likely will turn on which candidate _ Gillespie or Democrat Ralph Northam _ can best deploy their base voters on Nov. 7. Democrats, who have won statewide in elections since 2009, are counting on Trump's unpopularity to draw their voters to the polls. Republicans have sought to energize their voters with issues including gangs, sanctuary cities and Confederate monuments."The specifics obviously might be different in different places," said Quentin Kidd, director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. "The Republican base is ... mobilized around these core issues that are largely social and cultural."Gillespie's ads are not the only fearful appeals being made to voters. A Latino group supporting Northam is running an ad showing terrified minority children being chased by a truck flying a Confederate flag and bearing a Gillespie sticker.But racially charged messages have been more prominent on the Republican side, starting at the top.Trump has weighed in on the race on Twitter. Three of his four tweets about the Virginia race have mentioned crime, "killer gangs," sanctuary cities or monuments to Confederate heroes. The racial component also was fanned by his statement in August that the crowd of white nationalists at a violent protest in Charlottesville included some "very fine people."On Monday, Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, asserted that the Civil War could have been prevented by "compromise" _ an argument used by some sympathetic to the Southern cause. Kelly also mocked a Virginia church's decision to remove plaques honoring George Washington and Robert E. Lee, the leader of the Confederate Army, whom Kelly described as "honorable."For Republicans, the strategies in place in the Virginia race, as well as the 2016 presidential contest, mark a reversal of the direction the party had been headed as recently as 2015. That year, Nikki Haley, then the governor of South Carolina and now ambassador to the United Nations, engineered the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state's Capitol. She acted shortly after the racially inspired killings of nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, S.C.Republicans spoke then of a newly inclusive party. Trump's 2016 campaign, however, focused on fears of crime and terrorism and often targeted nonwhite Americans for criticism. His victory has changed calculations about the political impact of racial appeals.In Virginia, the desire to appeal to voters attracted by such arguments is especially freighted, given the state's history. It was the headquarters of the Confederacy and for decades afterward paid homage to Southern heritage.In recent years, however, those who were raised on stories of the Lost Cause have been outnumbered by newcomers who have added diversity to the state and exacerbated tensions that are at once geographical, generational and cultural _ and nearly always racial. The state resembles in some ways the California of the 1990s, when a collision between whites and a growing number of Latino residents helped spur divisive fights over illegal immigration and affirmative action."Tension in Virginia's whiter areas, rural areas, versus more multicultural areas _ those are very old tensions," said Grace Elizabeth Hale, a University of Virginia historian. The Trump campaign and this year's protests in Charlottesville and elsewhere "have put those things in front in a way that they hadn't been before," she said.For Gillespie, the aftermath of the Charlottesville protest provided an opening when Northam said Confederate statues should be taken down. (He earlier suggested local officials should make the call.)Gillespie seized on the issue because it was that rare topic that put him in line with most of the state's voters, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington."Voters are with the Democrats on Medicaid expansion. Voters are with the Democrats in opposition to Trump," he said. "What the monument issue does is give Republicans an issue where they can be with the majority of voters."A recent Hampton University poll showed two-thirds of the state's voters opposed removing the statues; other polls have shown clear majority sentiment to keep them, sometimes with additional historic context."For governor there's a clear choice. Ralph Northam wants to take down Virginia's Civil War monuments," a narrator in one of Gillespie's ads says. "Ralph Northam will take our statues down. Ed Gillespie will preserve them."Other Gillespie ads are on more conventional ground, but employ tactics that critics say are designed to play on racial fears. In one, a woman targets Northam's support for a program by the current Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, to restore rights to criminals who have served their terms. More than half the disenfranchised voters in the state were African-Americans, although the convict cited in the ad, who committed sexual crimes involving children, is white.Northam replied with a biting ad citing his service as a military doctor and pediatric neurologist."I'm a pediatrician, and for Ed Gillespie to say I would tolerate anyone hurting a child is despicable," Northam says in his ad.Gillespie's ads are aimed at the more rural conservative base, but his campaign also hopes to make inroads among exurban and suburban voters.Analysts debate the number of voters who will be moved by such appeals."I think that the base voters on both sides will vote with this issue in mind, but my hunch is that most voters are either apathetic about it or will not have their ballot decided by it," said Jonathan W. White, an associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University.Increasingly, however, in Virginia and elsewhere, base voters are the ones on whom campaigns focus most, as the once vibrant political center gives way to sharply partisan voters.Kidd said this governor's race is more racially freighted than any since 1990, when Douglas Wilder became the first African-American governor elected in the nation's history.Kidd blames a confluence of demography and change that is "ultimately rooted in Donald Trump's presidency." Any state with similar tensions may soon see the same sort of campaign, he suggested."The larger forces that shaped it go beyond Virginia," he said. NEW YORK CITY Despite some existential dread about artificial intelligence (AI), Serge Leontiev thinks the technology is pretty safe for the time being. In fact, the public sector innovation lead at Oracle thinks humanity is at the monkey-smashing-things-with-a-stick stage of AI.At this point we are just starting our evolution and were trying to find out more what the technology can deliver, Leontiev said.But at the New York City Technology Forum, Leontiev said government is figuring out some early ways to pull value out of AI . Namely, it can allow government to pull value out of its troves of data, it can allow for better service delivery and it might even be able to replace the functionality of apps.At the state and local government level, many IT officials and vendors have started working with AI as a way to power chatbots conversational user interfaces that can automate specific customer service functions and help citizens navigate the government architecture.An example: Many cities have mobile applications where users can do various things like access transit information or apply for services. But not everybody will be familiar with that citys workings, or have the app installed.Im not going to install a mobile application for each and every city that Im visiting, Leontiev said at the Tech Forum. Im not going to install a mobile application for each and every airport Im passing by. But I would love to have a way to communicate with the government, report dirty platforms or get updates on traffic, or get information on services nearby.A chatbot set up the right way can get around those issues. If a person wants to report graffiti, for example, they might be able to do so using what they already have on their smartphone, rather than downloading an app or going to a website. Facebook, for example, allows for chatbots that can help governments interact with citizens.With Facebook messenger I can use all my device features, and I can snap a picture of the graffiti with my phone, and I can upload my geolocation, he said. So, at this point Ive given enough information for the maintenance team to remove that graffiti.It might not be so simple for everything a government does. In many places, applying for a business license means going to several agencies within the city, handing over the same information time and time again, and then repeating at the county and state levels.A chatbot can help guide a person through that process in a way more customized to the individual.It will ask you all these questions, and based on your answers will ask additional questions to create an outcome that will match with your actual requirements, Leontiev said. It will provide links to all these agencies that you have to contact and get information that will help you open a business license.Leontiev thinks AI might also help government become more proactive with helping citizens. Though government agencies hold a lot of data about individual people, they dont necessarily use that data for what its worth.Theyre just sitting on piles of data and hoping to do some business analytics and stuff, but theyre not thinking from the different point of view that you can use that data and machine learning techniques to figure out personal preferences for this particular individual, he said.Its not just in the government that Leontiev thinks AI is at an early stage its everywhere. Its at a low adoption rate because people are just starting to figure out the potential of the technology.But if one wants to get a glimpse of what AI looks like when its widely used across the public and private sectors, Leontiev has some advice: Look east.Its very interesting, if you take a look at the Asian market, they are using chatbots every single day for everything from banking to city services, he said. We are in the very beginning stages of using that they are reaching out so that an application can connect with any agency. (TNS) -- LAKE FOREST Residents now have a hyper-local source to check for unclaimed property with the citys new webpage on its website that provides an interactive map with information based on name and address.The State Controllers website shows a total of $5.2 million in unclaimed property to 31,519 different Lake Forest businesses and residents, said Brett Channing, the citys director of management services.Common types of unclaimed property include bank accounts, stocks, bonds, uncashed checks, insurance benefits, wages and safe deposit box contents.Californias Unclaimed Property Law requires banks, insurance companies, corporations and other entities to report and submit their customers property to the State Controllers Office when there has been no activity for a period of time, state officials said.Normally, in order to find unclaimed property, residents must visit the State Controllers website and fill out forms just to see if unclaimed property is tied to their address.Channing said the webpage will make the process easier for residents and business owners.We were able to contact the State Controllers website and get the data for Lake Forest unclaimed property and use it for our website, he said.The idea to make the information available on the citys website was introduced by Councilman Andrew Hamilton and approved by the council in April 2016.The webpage allows residents to type in their name or address to see if they have unclaimed property. Residents can bypass the search bar and start with the map for their home. If they find unclaimed property, they can click the link to the form on the State Controllers website to start the claim process, Channing said.We just want to make it easier for individuals to access and make people aware that its out there, he said. Some have no idea that this information existed before and hopefully it will bring further awareness.Access the interactive map at lakeforestca.gov.836/Unclaimed-Property (TNS) - In the two months since Hurricane Harvey pummelled the Houston area, more than 1,000 people have sued the federal government seeking more than $100 million in damages over the controlled releases from the Addicks, Barker and other reservoirs.Tens of thousands more could join the legal fight in the coming years, lawyers told federal judges Wednesday in a Houston courtroom.As of Wednesday, 80 federal and two state lawsuits had been filed on behalf of 1,001 homeowners and businesses damaged by floodwaters, according to a Houston Chronicle review of federal and state court dockets. And seven new cases hit the docket in the past two days alone, representing 237 flood victims.With that steady influx in mind, two top federal judges jointly presided Wednesday over a standing-room crowd of marquee lawyers vying for leadership spots over large groups of clients who suffered flooding loss after the hurricane. Three lawyers from the Justice Department also attended the hearing as well as one attorney for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.Jay Edelson, a Chicago lawyer who was the first of several Wednesday to present his leadership proposal to the judges, said afterward that the nearly five-hour session stood out in terms of productivity. The vetting hearings are usually spent with lawyers touting their credentials, but in this instance he said the court cut to the chase."The court was laser-focused on trying to evaluate how the attorneys would litigate the cases, testing their fluency on class actions, takings cases and large and diverse groups of clients," he said.The judges also nudged the Justice Department to show its hand.At one point, Jacqueline Brown, an attorney from the government's environment and natural resources division, said that it's vital from her vantage point that the cases be consolidated. "I think it's important for plaintiffs to sort out what they are alleging so we know what we are responding to," she told the court.The bulk of the lawsuits are before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, a specialized federal court in Washington, D.C. that handles damage claims against government entities. The chief judge of that court recruited local help to vet the lawyers who will oversee the cases for clients in various subgroups. She said she anticipates making trips to Houston monthly to set a course for the Harvey suits.The dam release lawsuits target the same government entities for choosing to release the water: The 80 federal suits allege the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for damages, while two suits filed in state civil court contend the Harris County Flood Control District is responsible; one suit also includes the City of Houston as a defendant. As of Wednesday, twelve lawsuits in federal court are class actions and the rest are individual or multi-party cases.The array of surnames of property owners who have sued Khoury, Ludwidsen, Reyes, Nguyen, Hollis, Pagnotto, Mumba reflects the vast cultural diversity of the Houston region as well as the breadth of the flood damage. Enough cases have been filed to prompt the court clerk to create a new Hurricane Harvey drop-down menu in the court's electronic search menu.The aim of the Wednesday hearing at the Houston courthouse was to begin to sort the cases into sub-groups and assigning lead attorneys.Among the 80-plus lawyers in the room were litigators from Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Louisiana, but the bulk were from Houston. That included Brian Beckcom, a trial lawyer in Memorial who represents 200 clients including his wife's uncle who has been living in a tent in his driveway since his home was inundated.Chief Judge Susan Braden of the federal claims court in Washington, who recently ruled in favor of a group of New Orleans flood victims in a post-Katrina lawsuit, is managing all of the post-Harvey cases at this early phase. Braden enlisted Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal whom she identified at a previous hearing as an old family friend to help evaluate the attorneys angling for leading roles.Partway through the tryout, attorney Jeff Raizner told the judges, "I think we're starting to get a sense of the magnitude and complexity of this and many of us are sitting on a sizable group of cases that are not yet filed."Rosenthal, known to inject levity into intense legal proceedings, likened herself to a boa constrictor trying to gain control of an elephant but indicated the herculean task was doable.The lineup of attorneys on Wednesday variously suggested Braden and Rosenthal appoint one, two, three or four lead lawyers, depending on how they determine the sub-groups of claimants. One possibility is dividing the claims into damage from reservoir overflow upstream of the dams and damage caused downstream by the controlled release of floodwater, under the premise that the facts are different and clients interests may be diametrically opposed.Attorney Larry Dunbar, who is also an engineer, told the judges the downstream clients need to know when and why the floodgates were opened and the potential impact to property.But those facts, he said, "Are irrelevant to upstream folks."Another way to proceed is to have lead lawyers for class actions and individual cases both upstream and downstream. The Justice Department and at least one law firm back the idea of having one overarching counsel for all the plaintiffs.The so-called "takings" lawsuits under the Fifth Amendment argue that the government knew that releasing water from -- or letting is accumulate in -- the swollen reservoirs would flood homes and businesses and they made the choice to temporarily "take" people's property as a floodway.In addition to the Addicks and Barker dam cases, lawsuits are lining up over post-Harvey releases from another flooded waterway.Attorney Cade Bernsen filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of 137 residents of a neighborhood in Vidor, near Beaumont, whose homes were flooded by the Army Corps' controlled releases from Steinhagen Lake.And four civil suits in state court seek relief for 65 parties who say the government "took" property when it began releasing water from the Lake Conroe dam into the West Fork of the San Jacinto River. The Conroe claims seek damages from the San Jacinto River Authority.2017 the Houston ChronicleVisit the Houston Chronicle at www.chron.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. (TNS) -- Louisiana this summer became the first state to roll out body cameras to all 700 of its state troopers.Col. Tyree Blocker, Pennsylvania's state police commissioner, wants cameras for his troopers, but funding needs to be in place for the cameras and the software to store footage, state police spokesman Cpl. Adam Reed said.Pennsylvania has nearly 4,300 troopers that would be wearing body cams, Reed said more than six times the number in Louisiana.A Pennsylvania law that took effect in September allows audio and video to be recorded inside homes with the body cameras, removing previous limitations on where police could record, Reed said. Since then, the state police have been taking steps to get the cameras.In July, the state police announced plans to launch a body camera pilot program using a $52,000 federal grant.About 30 troopers are scheduled to start wearing the cameras by March, Reed said.Once Pennsylvania troopers get body cameras, the new state law allows them to treat the footage the same as dash cam footage and withhold it from the public, even when the investigation closes, said Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania News Media Association.One of the main purposes for gathering incident video is that there's an impartial record of what actually happened, Melewsky said. If they are not made public, it defeats the purpose of gathering them in the first place.The only way to get the footage is if it is presented in court as evidence, but that's only possible if there is a trial and usually there is a plea bargain instead, Melewsky said.Scholars estimate about 90 to 95 percent of federal and state court cases are resolved through plea bargaining, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics The only way to appeal denial of the police footage is to file a lawsuit, instead of the normal process of filing an appeal to the Office of Open Records, Melewsky said. (TNS) -- NEW HAVEN Around 30 police officers, clad in navy blue uniforms, sat in a classroom-type setting Wednesday morning, being quizzed. Those men and women were the first officers to receive training for the recently approved body-worn cameras.Chief Anthony Campbell said he believes both the community and the members of the police department will have greater safety, accountability and transparency, thanks to the body-worn cameras, describing Wednesday as the day where both sides can claim victory.We believe our officers are doing the right thing, but [the cameras] are going to help with transparency, Assistant Chief Racheal Cain added. We are a community-based agency, and its important for the public to be able to see exactly what the officers are doing, and this will help with that.However, a recent study involving Metropolitan Police Department officers in Washington, D.C. found that body-worn cameras had no measurable effect on police discretion, fueling renewed skepticism about whether the equipment is actually fostering accountability and transparency in law enforcement.Despite any uncertainty, about one-third of the nations 18,000 police agencies have embraced or are testing body cameras, and many neighboring departments in Connecticut have employed them for years. Branford was one of the first departments in the state to use body cameras, buying them as inexpensive alternatives to dashboard cameras about 10 years ago. The department has since equipped its fleet with dashboard cameras that sync with the body cameras, creating a visual and audio account of every encounter.While the Hartford Police Department did purchase body cameras for its officers in 2012, the program was taken offline after only several weeks due to a labor dispute with the police union. The equipment now resides in storage.Following the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Jayson Negron by a Bridgeport police officer in May, there was a push by some for the department to outfit its officers with body and dashboard cameras after cell phone video of the incident surfaced. Despite the city obtaining the money to buy the equipment, it lacked the funding to securely store the footage.Mayor Toni Harp said the idea came several years ago when public discussion turned to the use of body cameras and police transparency and community trust.What appeared to be an increasing number of controversial police actions across the nation begged a better sense of what really transpired and the ability to reconstruct what really happened in these cases, Harp said. So at that time, we arranged for New Haven to host a pilot program to evaluate the potential for body cameras in Connecticut.After several years of trying to get the program off the ground, the Board of Police Commissioners unanimously voted Oct. 17 to approve the use of body cameras after the police department received a grant in May to purchase 800 body-worn cameras. However, union president Craig Miller said he believes members of the board approved the policy without having adequate time to review it.So everything got pushed on and off, and so in the meantime, were still negotiating, and then it came to the point where they said, we have a deadline, and were just [going to] present it to Board of Police Commissioners, who received it like the same night, 30 minutes prior to the meeting, and approved it, he said.Cain responded by explaining that the department followed the model created by the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which was later adopted into state law. She added that the day before the meeting, the members of the Board of Police Commissioners received a copy of the draft policy, which was identical to the policy presented at the meeting.The cost for the entire program, which includes the Axon cameras along with unlimited data storage during the five-year contract, was initially lower, but she said the department added some necessary features, bringing the total up to $779,000 for the first year, for which the state will reimburse the department. For each subsequent year, she said it would cost the city approximately $350,000 for unlimited cloud-based storage.Sgt. Rose Dell said the department currently has more than enough cameras to outfit an entire shift plus extra-duty and overtime officers. During the first launch, Dell explained that each officer will be assigned two cameras: a hot camera that officers will wear while on patrol and a cold camera that will be in the docks charging and uploading video.After an officer shoots video, he or she will then place the hot camera in the docking station, where the footage will be uploaded to a secure cloud-based storage system. Depending on the type of incident, the footage is stored for at least 90 days. Chief Anthony Campbell added that the footage will be reviewed periodically unless there is some sort of high-profile incident.While only the police headquarters currently has a docking station, they will eventually be available at substations. Cain said the goal is to have the officers be able to upload the footage without taking them out of the field.When an officer is on-duty and interacting with public, as part of their law enforcement function, the camera will be recording [both audio and video], Cain said. Of course, there are certain times where the law says we can shut the camera off such as interviewing a victim in a hospital setting or if a person does not want to give us information while the camera is on. Obviously, getting the information is more important than having the camera rolling, so in those situations we would be able to shut the camera off.Officer Reginald McGlotten, who was part of the pilot program and one of the first officers to receive training on the new equipment, described the initial experience as weird and challenging, explaining that he had to remember to actually turn the camera on. While he had to get used to wearing the body camera during his regular police duties, he said he eventually got used to it.Most importantly, these body cameras are a visual for a more collaborative and interactive community model of community police, Campbell concluded. (TNS) -- There's never been a better time to be in the cybersecurity, former CIA director David Petraeus told a crowd gathered for the inaugural National Cyber Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Nov. 1.Petraeus kicked off the two-day event that aims to solidify the city's position as a leader in battling hackers. It's a business Colorado Springs and Colorado are investing in, with the National Cybersecurity Center growing on North Nevada Avenue."The building blocks are here and it is very, very impressive," said Petraeus, who drew a crowd of more than 400.The center and the symposium are aimed at helping local governments and small to mid-sized businesses navigate the world of cybersecurity. It's hoped that focus fills a gap in the cyberbusiness that's not covered by places like Seattle and Silicon Valley, which gravitate to individual consumers or huge contracts.That's an area that National Cybersecurity Center boss Vance Brown said is ripe for growth."There really is a cybersecurity crisis going on," Brown said.The issue of hacking isn't going away, Petraeus said."Look, remember, I was in the breaking and entering business as the director of the CIA," Petraeus said."You obviously want to make it as difficult as you can."The cybereffort in Colorado Springs has some big boosters. Mayor John Suthers and Gov. John Hickenlooper are set to speak during the symposium and both played a big role in getting the center formed.Suthers said the cybereffort could equal the city's famed ties to the U.S. Olympic Committee."Colorado Springs is already one of the top cities for cybersecurity jobs," Suthers said.Another speaker is University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Chancellor Venkat Reddy, who told the crowd how the school is working to beef up its computer security training.Colorado Springs has long been a hub for military cyberoperations. Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base runs that service's computer network. U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs runs the Joint Cyber Center, which aims to protect the continent from cyberattack while helping local authorities deal with the consequences of internet warfare.Hickenlooper said the military presence in Colorado Springs, combined with its colleges, makes it the perfect place to be a national leader in cybersecurity."If you really create this ecosystem, Colorado Springs is perfect for it," Hickenlooper said.Petraeus said cybersecurity is a business that's going to require agility."This is changing so rapidly, we can't even keep up with it conceptually," he said.The retired general, who led the American effort in Iraq and Afghanistan is worried that terror groups could build malware that could be used as a weapon, hitting power grids, factories, airplanes and subways."What's to stop them from hitting the send key?" he said.Efforts like the one in Colorado Springs could spur solutions to those threats. But slow growth isn't going to work, Petraeus warned."We really, really need to move more rapidly," he said. (TNS) -- CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa Maintaining the integrity of the election process is a bit like an arms race, according to a cybersecurity professional who reviewed Linn Countys voter registration system.Cybersecurity is an ever-present challenge, Aaron Warner, CEO of ProCircular in Coralville, said during an election cybersecurity webinar Tuesday with Linn County Auditor Joel Miller. Whatever steps Miller and other election officials take to maintain the security of election systems, Warner warned that bad actors who attempted to hack United States voting system in November are trying to stay one step ahead.We believe weve never been hacked, that weve never had any issues occur that would affect the integrity of our elections, Miller said, but he acknowledged that Iowas voter website was the target of would-be hackers.Not only were we a target of hacking, but we can expect to be a target of hacking in every congressional election from this day forward, Miller said. And not just by Russians, but maybe by the North Koreans or whoever else who has something against our country.The November election was a wake-up call for many election officials, Miller said. Immediately following the election, all reports were favorable. Later, it was learned that hackers, presumably Russians, had scanned the Iowa Secretary of States public-facing website which is not connected to the voter information system.I think us in the election community, at least from what Ive seen, were pretty surprised by the efforts that were made, Miller said. I dont think any of us had any idea in November that we were even a target of being hacked. So, yeah, I think they are ahead of us in that respect.I think we are astounded by that and now were playing catch-up, Miller said.Warner talked about how some of his staff participated in the Voting Machine Hacking Village at Def Con 25, an annual gathering of people involved in cybersecurity, including many government agencies, as well as hackers. It took convention participants 90 minutes to begin penetrating the voting machine security.In one case, a default password for a voting machine was found by Googling it. Warner said. In another, hackers found that a machine had not been decommissioned properly, leaving information on more than 650,000 voters, including Social Security numbers, exposed.Many of the 25 machines tested by convention participants had parts made in China, which Warner also saw as a vulnerability.In the wake of the election and an accidental release of some voter information in Linn County, Miller had ProCircular conduct a review of cybersecurity procedures in his office. Thats left him in a bit of a quandary because Miller wants to share what he learned with other election officials, but not with the public, which would include potential hackers.Our desire is to be open and transparent, Miller said. Yet if I, for example, am open and transparent with the results of my recent cybersecurity study Ive just given them the blueprint to defeat the system.He had the Board of Supervisors adopt a resolution making details of the election infrastructure confidential. That allows him to share information with colleagues, but not make the report available for public inspection. Iowa law allows that in cases of public records that relate to safety and security.We still want people to get out and vote, Miller said. We want you to engage in the process, become an informed voter and vote, and bring your friends and relatives to the polling places as well. (TNS) -- Online anonymity and tech companies inability to discern real corporations from shell firms funded by Russian money prevented Facebook, Google and Twitter from identifying Russian interference in the 2016 election, company representatives said Tuesday during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.Though it was a rare opportunity for lawmakers to grill tech firms on their practices and policies, senators seemed frustrated by the companies refusal to back regulation of political ads online and open up about their efforts to root out terrorism and foreign meddling.How did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and transform them into personal connections for its users, somehow not make the connection that electoral ads paid for in rubles were coming from Russia? asked Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn.Twitters Sean Edgett later became the sole tech company representative to commit to not accepting political ads that are paid for in a foreign currency.Facebooks general counsel, Colin Stretch, declined to go as far as making a promise under oath. Googles representative, Richard Salgado, said he needed to check to make sure its a good signal.As many as 126 million Facebook users may have been exposed to content that originated from the Russian operation, Stretch said.Thats a big jump from the previous estimate of 11.4 million users that the social networking giant said probably saw paid advertisements by Russian operatives, in part because it includes propaganda posts that spread through shares and likes, without a boost from ads. Facebook had never before disclosed the impact such content had on its social network.Twitter in its prepared remarks reported that it found 2,752 accounts linked to Russian-backed operations and more than 36,000 bots promoting similar propaganda. Those accounts, according to Edgett, the companys acting general counsel, tweeted about last years election about 1.4 million times and generated 288 million impressions, a measure of how much a tweet is viewed.Salgado, Googles director of law enforcement and information security, said the company had found two main accounts on its advertising service that appeared to be backed by the Russian government. Those accounts spent roughly $4,700 on search and display ads during the U.S. presidential election, Salgado said.On YouTube, Googles video-sharing service, 18 channels with about 1,100 videos were uploaded by individuals who we suspect are associated with this effort and that contained political content, according to Salgados prepared remarks.Each companys representative was quick to point out how low those numbers were in the grand scheme of things: More than 1.3 billion people visit Facebook daily; Twitter sees about 330 million users monthly; and Google, which earns more than $75 billion a year in ad revenue, said people watch more than a billion hours of YouTube video daily, with 400 hours of video uploaded every minute.But senators quickly grew irritated with attempts at minimizing the problem.Why has it taken Facebook 11 months to come forward and help us understand the scope of this problem? asked Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.I hear a lot of Johnny-come-latelies, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who implied the companies could have done more to investigate these advertisements and noted how much money they made from them.Federal investigators have said they believe there are probably many more accounts on Twitter that went undiscovered because they were not linked to the accounts that had already been shut down. Facebooks lawyer said its likely that they were not able to find every Russian-linked account, as the company is limited in its ability to see behind the company running an advertising account. If a firm is a shell corporation ultimately backed by Russian money, Stretch said, it would be difficult for Facebook to tell.Facebook announced that it would double its security and safety staff, which tracks extremism and other forms of abuse on its network, to 20,000 by the end of next year. Twitter said it has hundreds of workers tackling the issue, and Google said there are thousands of its employees dedicated to tracking misuse of its services.Though the hearing was focused on Russian use of social media to disseminate false or divisive political narratives, senators brought up a wide range of issues, including fake news, shell corporations, free speech, the power of Silicon Valley, tech employees own political leanings and whether tech firms should be considered media companies.The prospect of Silicon Valley companies actively censoring speech or the news content is troubling to anyone who cared about a democratic process with a robust First Amendment, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. It is disconcerting if those political positions (of tech employees) become a lens through which American consumers consume news.Company lawyers will testify again before the Senate and House intelligence committees on Wednesday, widely considered the main event in this weeks congressional probe of tech companies.None of the companies high-profile CEOs Googles Sundar Pichai, Twitters Jack Dorsey or Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg attended Tuesdays hearing. Terror in New York City: Billy Graham Rapid Response Team Chaplains Offer Comfort Following Deadly Attack Contact: Erik Ogren, 704-401-2117, eogren@bgea.org CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 2, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplains are on the ground in New York City following Tuesday's terror attack that resulted in eight deaths and injured several others before the assailant was shot and apprehended by authorities. The attack is being called the deadliest in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. "When we see terror attacks and the murder of innocent people, the pain, fear and sorrow are deep. Mourners will work through many different emotions over the coming days as they seek answers to very difficult questions," said Jack Munday, international director of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team. "Our chaplains will stand alongside them to listen and offer the hope and comfort of Jesus in these dark days." Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is asking for prayer. "Pray for those wounded and the eight families who have tragically lost loved ones in this act of terror." The deployment in New York City is the latest in a series of terror- and shooting-related deployments for the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team this year. Thus far they have offered the hope of Christ following attacks in Quebec, Canada; Manchester, England; London, England (multiple times); and Barcelona, Spain. The ministry just completed its efforts following the mass shooting at a concert in Las Vegas, which killed 58 people. The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team continues to work in areas affected by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. Chaplains are also in Santa Rosa, Calif., in response to deadly wildfires. For more information on the ministry, including videos, photos, news articles and an interactive map of former and current deployments, visit www.billygraham.org/rrt. Updates can also be found at www.facebook.com/RRTChaplains. About the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team: The Billy Graham Rapid Response Team was developed by Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It has since grown into an international network of chaplains in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia who are specifically trained to deal with crisis situations. They have deployed to more than 270 disaster sites, including shootings, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. Share Tweet Evangelist Alveda King Continues King Legacy Series with New GG'S COOKBOOK Contact: Leslie Palma, 732-757-9087 ATLANTA, Nov. 2, 2017 / In 2017, the "creative evangelist" continues her "legacy assignment" with the soon to be released Along with publishing books, King includes writing and singing original music and producing film contributions in her "arsenal." She also produces children's books and artistic projects for her "flock of millennial and post millennial mentees." "Having been born into the bloodline of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I take the role and responsibility of being a guardian to the King Family Legacy very seriously. My parents, Rev. A. D. King and Mrs. Naomi Ruth Barber King, assisted by my grandparents Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Mrs. Alberta Williams King instilled in me the importance of putting God, family and community first in my lifetime agenda," says King. "Here in 2017 the perfect opportunity to combine our family legacy of faith, hope, love and hospitality with solutions to the critical problems of our day just seemed too good to pass up." A King is Founder of Share Tweet Contact: Leslie Palma,732-757-9087ATLANTA, Nov. 2, 2017 / Christian Newswire / -- Why is Alveda King writing a cookbook? Who even knew she could cook? Does anybody care? In 2015 Evangelist King, prolife civil rights activist and Christian minister released KING RULES, her second print release in a series of "King Family Legacy" books. Her first legacy book SONS OF THUNDER: KING FAMILY LEGACY was written in the 1990s and was considered by some to be "controversial." In 2016, King released AMERICA RETURN TO GOD which continues with narratives of how her relationship to the bloodline of her famous uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ties in with her work in the 21st century.In 2017, the "creative evangelist" continues her "legacy assignment" with the soon to be released KING TRUTHS . Added to the series is something King considers to be "lighter fare" in the form of her new cookbook, GG'S HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS COOKBOOK which is currently available online as an e-book. Print copies should be available mid-November.Along with publishing books, King includes writing and singing original music and producing film contributions in her "arsenal." She also produces children's books and artistic projects for her "flock of millennial and post millennial mentees.""Having been born into the bloodline of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., I take the role and responsibility of being a guardian to the King Family Legacy very seriously. My parents, Rev. A. D. King and Mrs. Naomi Ruth Barber King, assisted by my grandparents Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr. and Mrs. Alberta Williams King instilled in me the importance of putting God, family and community first in my lifetime agenda," says King. "Here in 2017 the perfect opportunity to combine our family legacy of faith, hope, love and hospitality with solutions to the critical problems of our day just seemed too good to pass up." satisfied reader penned this review, "This cookbook makes you feel like you're in the kitchen with Alveda King (daughter of A.D. King and Naomi King and niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) and her family. I'm not much of a cook but I'm going to try some of these recipes. I enjoyed the QR codes (for videos) that allow you to get to know the King Family like never before. My granddaughter enjoyed the videos as much, if not more, than I did."King is Founder of Alveda King Ministries and Director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life. She uses her "God given gifts and talents to glorify God in the earth." In GG's Cookbook, her new culinary offerings are being served up during the holidays; "just in time to bring love and reconciliation to the tables around the world." 2 more GR businesses hit The Green River Police Department is investigating several burglaries occurring within the city during the past several weeks. Burglaries recently occurred at Castle Rock Veterinary Center and Club 86, both of which were reported Oct. 25. The Green River Fraternal Order of Eagles, American Legion, The Hitching Post and the Embassy Tavern have all been burglarized during the past few months. Similar burglaries have been reported in Kemmerer, Evanston and Laramie, as well as other locations across the state and have targeted fraternal organizations and bars. A warning issued to the Green Ri... Two days have been set aside for the sentencing of a man who pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the death of a 2-year-old boy. Jacob Anglesey, 35, will appear in the Third District Court of Judge Richard Lavery, Tuesday, Nov. 28 at 9 a.m. for a sentencing hearing to the felony charge. Anglesey, a GRPD officer at the time, was originally charged with first-degree murder, but three days before his trial was set to begin, he changed his plea on a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter. Anglesey is facing a maximum prison sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,... Julius Robert (Bob) Gasperetti, 87, a life-long resident of Rock Springs, died peacefully in his home Oct. 28, 2017, surrounded by his loving family. He was born Aug. 19, 1930, in Starkville, Colo., and moved to Rock Springs when he was 12 years old. He attended junior high and high school in Rock Springs and graduated high school in 1948. He went to Heber City, Utah, for work and married Nancy Joan Kohler in 1950. They were later divorced in 1966. Through this union two children were born; a son, Gerald Robert and a daughter, Sheila Ann. In 1952, he went to Saudi Arabia to work for the Ara... Fake news, as a concept, has been around at least as long as weve had politicians. But we used to call it something else: propaganda. That our President was able to harness the term and continue to ride its wave, is disconcerting to people in the business of reporting news because it is so often an attack on media outlets which pride themselves on unbiased reporting. But the Presidents attacks are not groundless which is why they resonate with so many Americans. Journalism schools have evolved over the past generation, in an attempt to equip young people with the tools they need to su... In the past few weeks, there have been several changes in Washington that will directly benefit people across Wyoming. These include Wyomings energy workers, families who need affordable health care, and those concerned with preventing wildfires. Ending the Clean Power Plan On Oct. 10, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took steps to repeal the so-called Clean Power Plan rule. The EPA is supposed to issue reasonable regulations to protect Americas air. However, the unreasonable and unlawful Clean Power Plan would have hurt energy workers in Wyoming while harming our... Karlene Atkinson of Rock Springs and Kyle Gilmore of Green River recently announced their engagement and upcoming marriage. The couple got engaged June 1, while on vacation in Victoria, Canada. The bride elect is the daughter of Willene and Lewis Atkinson of Rock Springs and is currently employed as a surface electrician at Ciner. She graduated from Rock Springs High School in 2011. Graduated from Western Wyoming Community College in 2014 with an associates degree in Electrical Instrumentation and Technology. The prospective groom is the son of Micki and Richard Gilmore of Green River and... This domain was recently registered at Namecheap.com. Please check back later! Three federal judges brushed aside objections from North Carolina legislators Wednesday and appointed a special master to redraw gerrymandered districts statewide, including at least two in Guilford County. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles entered the order without responding in depth to complaints by leaders in the Republican-led General Assembly that such an adviser was not needed and that the judicial panels previously announced choice for the job might be biased against the legislature. Instead, the panel formally appointed Stanford University law professor Nathaniel Persily to submit a report and proposed plans to remedy the unconstitutional racial gerrymander of 2011 in maps of the offending N.C. House and Senate districts statewide. As to the legislative protests, Eagles order said simply, The court has considered those objections and overrules them. The case began more than two years ago when 31 voters from throughout North Carolina filed complaints alleging that the General Assembly had gerrymandered numerous state House and Senate districts along racial lines. Attorneys for the voters argued that legislators had packed certain districts with Democrat-leaning black voters so that Republican candidates could prevail elsewhere in a larger number of districts. The judicial panel agreed, ultimately sending legislators back to the drawing board this past summer to produce new maps, but those did not completely satisfy the court. Constitutionally adequate districts must be in place in time for the 2018 election, and the court finds it appropriate to appoint a special master to assist the court in drawing such districts, should the court ultimately determine they are necessary, Eagles wrote in the panels order Wednesday. The ruling directly affects nine gerrymandered districts statewide, including those in Guilford currently represented by state Sen. Gladys Robinson (D-High Point) and state Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro). In submitting suggestions for redrawing Harrisons District 57, the judges also directed Persily to be careful that racial disparities from the 2011 plan did not recur in abutting House districts 58 and 60, seats currently held by Democratic state Reps. Amos Quick of Greensboro and Cecil Brockman of High Point. Besides Eagles, the judicial panel includes Judge James Wynn Jr. of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder who, like Eagles, presides in the North Carolina Middle District based in Greensboro. Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford and a nationally respected expert in election law who has served as a special master for other states involved in redistricting controversies. A special master is an outside expert who helps a court carry out its orders in situations where extra scrutiny or professional expertise is required. But in representing the Republican legislators, Raleigh attorney Phillip Strach objected last week to Persilys pending appointment, saying a special master was not needed. Strach argued that it was still early enough in the 2018 election cycle that legislators could fix any remaining problems with the 2011 maps on their own. And he contended that Persily has made public statements critical of North Carolinas redistricting process that raise concerns about his objectivity. The judicial panel gave those protests short shrift in Wednesdays order. But the judges did go into detail about how Persily should go about his work, saying among other things that he can hire research assistants or other professionals to assist him and that he should draw new districts as closely as possible to one-person, one-vote ratios. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Not much has changed over the years at Portobello Restaurant & Pizza. It is still a quaint Italian restaurant in the Four Corners area of Brookfield, Kenny is still making pizzas and other fresh menu items, its still BYOB and still does not accept credit cards. On Friday, the restaurant will mark its 20th anniversary in business, proving that sometimes the status quo is the best path to success. Our customers want us to stay small. This is how they feel comfortable, Ilir Alka said. They dont want us to expand or move or get really big. Ilir Junior Alka, 30, is taking over ownership from his father, Kenny Alka, who founded the restaurant in 1997 at 782 Federal Road after moving his family from New Jersey to Connecticut to be closer to family. Ilir was 10 years old at the time and recalls being put to work washing dishes and, later, taking orders over the phone. He was 13 or 14 when he started making pizzas, he said. Thats how everyone starts, Ilir said of washing dishes. Kenny will continue to be the head chef as his son takes over the business. Traditional pizzas and gourmet pizzas such as Margherita, eggplant Fiorentino, clams casino and cordon bleu, are available for take-out, dining in and by the slice. People are getting more creative with their pizzas, Ilir said. Were keeping up with what they want. Kenny is quick to point out the menu also includes freshly made seafood, veal, chicken and pasta dishes. He doesnt want to leave. He loves it, Ilir said of his father. Hell still be here. Hes the chef. Portobello does not sell alcoholic beverages, but does allow customers to bring their own drink selections. It does not charge a corking fee and has wine and beer glasses for customers to use. It does not accept credit cards, but has an onsite ATM. The Internet was not a global force 20 years ago, but it is now proving to be helpful to the business that likes to stick to tradition. The restaurant has its own website -- www.portobelloct.com - and Facebook page, and reviewers on Yelp generally rave about the service and food. Its overall rating on Yelp is 4.5 out of 5 stars, and the online business rating site sent Portobello a congratulatory card in 2016 for receiving positive ratings and reviews. The Alkas are also excited about the improvements being done at the Four Corners in Brookfield. A new mixed-used development is being built and the state is currently improving the sidewalks and streetscape in the area. The popular Still River Greenway Trail will be extended across Federal Road, bringing more foot traffic past the restaurant. The completion of the Route 7 bypass in 2011 changed the business patterns for the restaurant, Kenny Alka said. Now that many of the cars that used to travel down Federal Road are using the new highway, the lunch crowd has dwindled, but the dinner business has picked up. Rush hour traffic used to be so heavy that customers could not make a left-hand turn into or out of the plaza. Kenny Alka said he has owned the business so long that many customers who are now young adults have been coming there since they were toddlers. Now they are coming in with their boyfriends or girlfriends, Kenny said. Brookfield has been amazing and theyve supported us from day one. The friendly atmosphere that exists at the restaurant is what Kenny Alka envisioned when he opened Portobello 20 years ago. For him, the word Portobello represents more than a mushroom variety. Its a big, round mushroom, which is like our dining area, Kenny said, gesturing to the restaurants 35-seat main room. We want to have everyone gathered around us like family. Our customers are like a family to us. Portobello may be reached at (203) 775-4400. The writer may be reached at cbosak@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3338 Blue Ribbon signatures: raw-bar selections, a pupu platter, and bone marrow with oxtail marmalade. Photo: Liz Clayman On Tuesday, November 3, 1992, two momentous events took place: Bill Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States and the original Blue Ribbon Brasserie opened at 97 Sullivan Street. Chefs and owners (and brothers) Bruce and Eric Bromberg vowed to stay open until 4 a.m. and serve an eclectic menu of the food they wanted to eat: oysters, bone marrow, pupu platters, and fried chicken were all available. At the time, this simple idea was revolutionary and the restaurant cultivated a clientele of regulars that included celebrities like Mariah Carey and Jerry Seinfeld, as well as the chefs who were, at that time, redefining restaurants in New York: Tom Colicchio, Mario Batali, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Jonathan Waxman, and more. There are now more than 20 Blue Ribbon restaurants scattered around the country, but that original location is still on Sullivan Street, and it remains almost entirely unchanged. On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, Grub Street talked to the people who were there, and who helped turn Blue Ribbon into one of the most successful restaurants of all time. Bruce Bromberg, co-founder of Blue Ribbon Restaurants: We opened the Crystal Room in May 1992, and it was clubby and fancy. The color scheme was mauve and green, and it had a Grecian mural on the wall. The window was painted, so you couldnt see in. Literally, there were golden arches, like McDonalds, except more Grecian in style. David Brown, manager, Blue Ribbon Federal Grill: It was in the exact same space, but it was an entirely different concept than Blue Ribbon. It had a more precious quality about it, with chandeliers and murals. The food was great, but it was a little fancier. And nobody would come in. James Shrum, bartender and partner, Blue Ribbon Brasserie: The Crystal Room was a grand failure. It lasted around four months. What we all learned is that its never just the food. Eric said he felt that he gave up the idea of what he and Bruce would like and conceded the front of the house to his partner. Kristopher Polak, partner, Blue Ribbon Restaurants: The best night of the Crystal Room was the closing night. We took care of everything. We fed everybody. We played whatever music we wanted to play. Everybody let their hair down and had a good time. That was pretty much when we decided that, yeah, this is what we need to do. We need to make a place thats fun, and where people will want to come seven days a week. Ellen Bromberg, co-founder of Blue Ribbon Restaurants: Eric and Bruce had this crazy idea to have this really big menu. We couldnt explain what kind of restaurant it was, because they just wanted to make dishes that they wanted to eat, that they remembered from their childhood. Bruce Bromberg: As kids, we went to this terrible Chinese restaurant in Morris County, New Jersey, called Oriental Yum Yum. They had a pupu platter, which wed never heard of or seen before. We lived in a strict household, and no one messed around at the dinner table. So to be able to go to a restaurant and play with fire and cook your own food was mesmerizing. Polak: When we were working on the menu, we went out to eat at a diner. It was one of those giant menus that had six pages in it, with 200 items. Eric was like, I bet they cant make everything on this menu. And I was like, Thats a bet thats gonna hurt everybody! Lets see what they can do. Everything we ordered, they made, and there was never a strange look. It wasnt exactly the inspiration for Blue Ribbons menu, but it was a part of it. Ellen Bromberg: When Eric was working in other restaurant kitchens, he would be done around 11:30 p.m., and we would constantly want to meet up and have a date, spend some time together. There wasnt any place you could go to eat after 11 that was a full-service restaurant. There were several ethnic places you could go that were fun. Lucky Strike had a late-night bar menu, but it wasnt fine dining. Back then, the mafia was known for shaking down local businesses I had to have a sit-down with the main guy. Ellen Bromberg Drew Nieporent: There was the hot restaurant in the Meatpacking District, Florent, but you couldnt get in. They were catering to a fashionista crowd. Wolfgang Puck: It was hard to find a restaurant in the city where you could get great late-night food. There were, of course, all the city staples, but they were all closing their doors by 11 p.m.! Bruce Bromberg: So we decided to stay open until 4 a.m. It was: Stop listening to everyone elses rules. It was not having our parents say its time to go to bed. It was a jump off the deep end. Nieporent: I grew up in New York City, and that neighborhood was desolate. My father would take us to an Italian restaurant one block around the corner. I remember thinking to myself, Who knows that this street exists in New York City? Ellen Bromberg: Our block was really part of Little Italy, and there was an actual social club with mafia people on our block, who fortunately seemed to respect us and saw us working hard, and for the most part left us alone. But we had a few run-ins. Back then, the mafia was known for shaking down local businesses. But we didnt have anything to offer them. I had to have a sit-down with the main guy. We had an espresso at the club. But it was okay. Shrum: Whomever Ellen sat down with and whatever was said, it worked. Ellen Bromberg: We were open from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. from the beginning, and it took at least eight months, if not longer, until anybody came in after 11 oclock. Every single night we sat there. I remember complaining, Ugh, its so cold out. Im so tired. No ones coming. Cant we go home? And Eric was like, No. Never. Not one time are we closing before 4. If one person comes, then we blew it. I had never seen anyone order the whole menu before, but thought it was a sign of greatness. Mario Batali Brown: I distinctly remember twiddling my thumbs at three in the morning. That first year, theres no doubt we were sitting in the back with our legs crossed, going, Hmm. Bruce Bromberg: One night it was snowing and no one had walked in since 9:30. We decided we would close at 2:30 or 3 a.m. if no one showed up. I went downstairs to print a closed sign, and as I came upstairs and was about to put it on the window, a van pulled up. Out of the van poured 14 people, including Charlie Trotter. Hed done something at the James Beard House. Charlie said, Drew told us we should come check you out. Can you do a special dinner for us? He ordered one of everything on the menu without looking at it, and they didnt realize how many items were on the menu. They were the only people in the restaurant and partied until five or six in the morning. Mario Batali: I had never seen anyone order the whole menu before, but thought it was a sign of greatness. Bruce Bromberg: That was the turning point, where the word started to get out to all the chefs. David Burke: The ongoing joke was that Mario and I put a couple of Blue Ribbon kids through college, because we were there a lot. Back before that, we didnt meet other chefs. There wasnt a place to go, unless you were invited to an exclusive event. So there was energy and excitement about going in there and hoping to see somebody. The people that went to Blue Ribbon were the fun chefs. It was like an adult tree house. It was like a playground. It was like a clubhouse. It was also a place to recruit. Anita Lo: I was really young at that time, and they were sweet to me. I was kind of a nobody I was just a cook at Chanterelle, which was a great restaurant, but they just were really nice guys. Batali: The first time I went to Blue Ribbon, I saw Alonso shucking oysters and the beer sign, and I knew I had to go in. Nieporent: That guy, by the way, was one of the greatest oyster shuckers Ive ever seen in my entire life. He is a legend. Ellen Bromberg: Drew Nieporent spread the word pretty quickly. He was telling everybody to come. Nieporent: I told everybody, because, I joke, I was the mayor of Tribeca. I liberally recommended Blue Ribbon, especially if they were out-of-town chefs doing events, because it was the place to go after midnight. I vaguely remember either referring or bringing Gael Greene or Ruth Reichl. It was probably maybe more of a referral, because they consider us the enemy, so they dont necessarily want to go out with us. Bruce Bromberg: Chefs were welcomed and cared for. This was their club. It was an inner sanctum of chefs, because there werent a ton of us in 1992. Its not like today where there are thousands of people pouring into the industry. We had Jean-Georges and Tom Colicchio. Jonathan Waxman sitting at the bar all night. We were basically the clubhouse for the James Beard House. Everyone who did an event there would come straight to us. The whole dining room would be interacting, with people passing food around. It was interesting, because it was before the rock-and-roll celebrity-chef world that was coming. When youre out until three in the morning, shit happens. David Burke Ellen Bromberg: They werent the celebrities they are now, because they were just guys working in their own kitchens, trying to make their own way. Bruce: One of the first times my brother had left me in charge of the restaurant, we had an unruly, drunk table that was harassing Ellen. They were local guys from the social club down the street. I came upstairs and asked them to leave, and one of the guys pulled out a gun and pointed it at my head and told me he was going to blow my head off. It was an intense moment. Mario Batali and David Burke were sitting at the table behind where this was going on and sensed there was a problem. Burke: From my recollection, we probably said, Listen, lets all have a drink. Calm down. There must be some miscommunication. Its only food. I dont know what this guys beef was, but we looked at Brombergs face and could tell something had changed quickly. Im sure I was scared, but the adrenaline kicked in, and youve got to do something. When youre out until three in the morning, shit happens. Daniel Boulud: The place was like a social club for chefs. After midnight, you could see the entire industry there. My first visit there was in 1992, and every time I went there, it was always because there was a party, either before or after going to a club like Palladium or Danceteria. You almost felt like Blue Ribbon was created for chefs after work. Jonathan Waxman: You realized it was sort of the Brombergs den of iniquity. They welcomed you to their party and what was going on. Jean-Georges Vongerichten: I was going there probably once a week, especially the first six months. Youd always see somebody goofing around with Daniel Boulud. He was the life of the party. You know, chefs, after a couple glasses of wine, they like to do funny things. Bruce Bromberg: Mario Batali had just arrived from Seattle and was there literally every night of the week, hanging at the oyster bar or down in the kitchen. He would bring me some special beverage from the bar; hed come downstairs with a brown paper bag and open it up, and wed create dishes in a certain way and Id send em up. We also had oyster-eating contests at the bar with Mario and Tom Valenti. Everyone would bring wine, and we would sit there and drink it. Batali: I definitely ate my share of oysters, but I dont remember eating them competitively. I think I was just a champion oyster-eater, in general. Puck: Whenever I had a friend in from out of town, I often took them to Blue Ribbon even the most famous chefs of the time like Roger Verge. Bruce Bromberg: Wolfgang Puck brought in Roger Verge. I sent them a veal chop, but I forgot to take the piece of string off of the chop. Just the string came back to the kitchen. Wolfgang said, Excellent meal, but you might want to remove the string. Batali: It was the beginning of the Food Network. Its where all the cooks and chef became famous. Oddly, there were groupies that hung out there because it was a chef hangout. Vongerichten: One night I drove there in my car, and there were ten people at the door waiting for tables at one oclock in the morning. It was 15 degrees outside. They told me it was going to be 40 minutes. I wasnt going to wait in the cold, so I waved at Alonso over by the oysters and clams, then went back in my car and put the heat on. Ten minutes after, Alonso comes out with a full tray of seafood! Oysters, clams, shrimp. And I ate it in my car while I was waiting. Then they came to get me, and I said, You know what, Im going to finish my meal in the car. Can you get me the fried chicken and bone marrow? So I had my Blue Ribbon meal in my car. It was the ultimate pampering. The (very) early days. Photo: Courtesy of Blue Ribbon Restaurants Ellen Bromberg: When we got busy, which was almost a year into it, everybody wanted to come at seven or eight oclock. Back then, people were notorious for making several dinner reservations and then deciding where they wanted to go. So I thought, What if we just dont take any reservations? It seemed so diplomatic. In my mind, we had to be full or we were not going to make it. We had to have paying customers, as much as we could. So I felt like if there was an empty seat, you can have it. If theres not, you can wait. Or not. I didnt think people would wait. And then it got crazy, with people waiting hours. Polak: There was definitely the art of how to let people know it was an hour-and-a-half wait without being rude about it. Nieporent: Robin Williams was my partner in San Francisco at a restaurant called Rubicon, and he and his wife wanted to go out to eat somewhere in New York last-minute. I call Blue Ribbon there, and I go, Listen, I got Robin Williams who wants to go out tonight. Im recommending he go to your restaurant. Keep in mind, this was at a moment in time when Robin Williams was at the height of his career. And theres like a pregnant pause, and they go, Well, we dont take reservations. Im like, Of course, thats why Im calling you, because its Saturday and you can fit him in. He wants to come in at eight oclock. And they go, No, I dont think I can do it. I go, Are you crazy? This is Robin Williams! And he says, Hold on one second. He comes back to the phone and goes, All right, weve figured this out. Were going to seat some friends of ours at the table until 7:45. Now, he might have to wait at the bar for a little bit of time, but well work him in. I said, Listen. Hes a recovering alcoholic. Youre not going to put him at the bar for a little bit of time. Either you want to take Robin Williams or not. And, of course, they took him. Shrum: One day, at two oclock in the morning, the manager gets a call from Mariah Careys driver, and he says, Ive got Mariah Carey, Jerry Seinfeld, and Warren Beatty in the car with me and they want to come in. The manager says, Okay, great. Wed love to have them. It will be a 45-minute wait. Mariah used to come in all the time. You could actually call her a late-night regular. Shes sweet and it was terrific, but that was the deal. The driver says, Did you hear the names I told you? And the manager says, I heard the names you told me. It will be a 45-minute wait. And so they came, and they waited in the car for 45 minutes because there was no space. Polak: Mike Myers used to come in right when we opened and have fried chicken and hang out. That was a big deal for a lot of us. Shrum: Denzel Washington was sitting there once and a woman didnt recognize him he had a hat on. She thought he worked there or something. And she was like, Can you tell me where the bathroom is? And he laughed and pointed to the bathroom. It was only later that she realized she had had a nice little chat with Denzel, and she was like, What? Im talking to Denzel Washington?! Polak: Quentin Tarantino got into it with a customer who was staring at him. It was late, and they were the only tables in there. Hes like, What are you staring at me for?! And I walked over to him, and I was like, Hes staring at you because youre Quentin Tarantino. So maybe tone it down a little. I think the customer was more shocked than anything else. At that time of night, you never know what peoples days have been like or what state of mind theyre in. Dan Fleming, manager, Blue Ribbon Brasserie: The phrase I heard daily from Eric and Bruce was, Is everyone happy? They wanted to create a space to forget about the stresses of the day, to turn around a bad day, to elevate an already great day. Now Im meeting the children of the early customers who are now coming in on their own. Waxman: They were a bunch of friends that opened a restaurant together. Some of them were brothers and some of them werent. But they all had this passion for this kind of environment and this kind of food. They wanted a place that was like their loft or apartment where friends came to hang out. They didnt care how long you stayed and when you went home, as long as you were happy and had a drink in your hand. That was their philosophy. They wanted it to be incredibly personal, and for it to be like their living room. And their living room was open until the wee hours. Bruce Bromberg: Theres a fine line between throwing the party and being the party. Whether weve gotten that right, I dont know, but its always been a good party. The Secretary of State deplores the repetition of police officers killings Following the assassination on Tuesday at Croix-des-Bouquets by unidentified individuals on motorbikes, of the woman police officer Alshama Toussaint, a member of the Motorized Intervention Brigade (BIM) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22577-haiti-news-zapping.html Ronsard Saint-Cyr Secretary of State for Public Security in a note "[...] deplores the repetition of these acts that sow grief in the ranks of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) and takes the opportunity to draw the attention of the sectors concerned on the urgent need to regularize the operation of taxis-motorcycles. Ronsard Saint-Cyr, while presenting his sympathies to the relatives, friends and colleagues of the police, reiterates his determination to work for the establishment of a climate of peace in the country" Moreover Michel-Ange Gedeon, the Director General of the PNH reacting to this murder (the 6th police officers killed in one month) said speaking to the police of the country "There is no country where the risk Zero risk exists for police officers. But it's not normal that our police officers die at this rate. The time is for vigilance. Police officersso be brave, lively, alert, intelligent while remaining compassionate, sensitive to the cause of this population that you protect and who pays you. Avoid your number one enemy who is the routine, be vigilant." See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22577-haiti-news-zapping.html HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... NOTICE : Carrying weapons On the occasion of the 1st and 2nd of November, the Office of the Secretary of State for Public Security wishes everyone a happy holiday and takes the opportunity to bring to the attention of the VIP and Security Officer that it is not recommended to carry handguns or long-range inside the enclosures where the festive activities or any other social activities open to the public take place. This recommendation follows up on serial complaints received from various restaurant owners and nightclubs who bears the responsibility of securing their space. A camp for displaced becomes a village... An urban development project made it possible to transform an IDP camp in Tabarre into a village where life is good. The land securing of the site at parcel level allows 220 families including 169 women heads of families to settle legally in the long term. A good example of coordination of the international community: a project funded by Canada, implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in collaboration with the Canadian Red Cross, French and Haitian. The project was completed thanks to the great involvement of the Town Hall of Tabarre and the frank collaboration with the Unit of Construction of Housing and Public Buildings. Interview with the UNESCO Number 2 As part of the 39th session of UNESCO's General Conference in Paris (30 October to 14 November 2017), Pierre Josue Agenor Cadet, Minister of Education, met with Qiang Tang, the Deputy Director-General for Education for UNESCO. Qiang Tang said he was sensitive to the Haitian situation and promised to continue to support Haiti. The cooperation files between Unesco and the Ministry of Education of Haiti was at the center of the exchanges. The Minister of Health on tour Marie Greta Roy Clement, the Minister of Public Health embarked this week on a tour of community reference hospitals in the West Department. Camps : the Government must make an extra effort Between October 2016 and September 2017, 1,845 households in 28 sites were able to return to their home communities thanks to the intervention of Government partners. 1,570 households were assisted in Grand'Anse and 275 in the Southern Department. 36 displacement sites remain open in both departments while the hurricane season is underway. Of the sites open, 25 sites (hosting approximately 450 households) remain untargeted by partners for return assistance. An additional effort by the Government is needed to support the return of these families to their areas of origin. Installation of the new Protector of Citizens Tuesday, Max Rudolph Saint Albin the Minister of the Interior and Territorial Communities, proceeded to the installation of the new Protector of the Citizen, Me Renan Hedouville. In his speech of circumstance, Hedouville promised to carry out a campaign of proximity for the popularization of the notion of "Human Rights". HL/ HaitiLibre The data indicate that the largest corporate tax payer in Finland in 2016 was Kahon 3, a holding company established by Softbank to carry out the sale of a majority stake in Supercell to Tencent in mid-2016 for roughly 7.6 billion euros. Supercell has become a substantial source of tax income for Finland, according to the annual trove of tax data released by the Finnish Tax Administration on Wednesday. Kahon 3 paid almost 700 million euros in corporate taxes on the sale proceeds in Finland. Supercell itself, meanwhile, was the second largest corporate tax payer with a total tax bill of 181 million euros. The massively successful game studio also produced seven of the ten largest income tax payers in the country, who paid over 123,500,000 euros in income taxes and other contributions in 2016. Supercell thus generated almost one billion euros in tax revenues for Finland, provided that no appeals are filed against the tax decision for Kahon 3. Its tax contributions have already prompted experts to describe it as the long-awaited new Nokia. At this point, Supercell is our new Nokia, Teemu Lehtinen, the chairperson of the Taxpayers Association of Finland (TAF), stated in an interview on YLE Areena on Wednesday. Lehtinen drew attention to the one-off nature of the corporate tax payments of Kahon 3, but also expressed his confidence that revenues from the corporate tax will continue to increase in the years to come due to the decision to lower the corporate tax rate from 24.5 to 20 per cent in 2014. A reasonable corporate tax rate, he viewed, will ultimately generate higher revenues for Finland. He also reminded that a number of countries around the world are about to lower their corporate tax rates closer to 20 per cent, possibly forcing Finland to reduce its tax rate further to 18 per cent, for example. Its likely that itll have to be lowered at least a bit more before long, he told YLE. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Roni Rekomaa Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi One of Dublin's most feared criminals was behind bars last night - but is expected to be back on the streets on bail within days. Jason 'Buda' Molyneaux (26) - who has 122 previous convictions - was yesterday handed a nine-month jail sentence after he was caught driving without insurance as well as possessing alprazolam tablets. Expand Close A heavy Garda presence as the remains of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy. Photo: Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A heavy Garda presence as the remains of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy. Photo: Collins Molyneaux is an associate of the Hutch mob and has previously been quizzed by gardai investigating the gruesome killing of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy in Tallaght in 2014 but was released without charge. Prison officers surrounded Molyneaux yesterday in Dublin's Criminal Courts of Justice, where he pleaded guilty in separate cases in both the circuit and district courts. Threats Sources said this precaution was taken because of major threats against the well-known criminal as well as fears of Molyneaux himself. Molyneaux yesterday asked District Court Judge Anthony Halpin to sentence him as he has been on remand in Cloverhill and "has concerns about being on remand in that prison". Expand Close Molyneaux was quizzed over the killing of Mad Mickey Devoy and released without charge. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Molyneaux was quizzed over the killing of Mad Mickey Devoy and released without charge. It is understood that these are about threats that he has faced from gangland rivals since he was locked up last week. At Dublin District Court, Judge Halpin set recognisances for an appeal. This means that Molyneaux is expected to be released in the coming days once a cash bond has been raised. Molyneaux pleaded guilty before Dublin District Court to driving without insurance on Buckingham Street Lower, Dublin 1, on July 14 last year. He also admitted possession of alprazolam tablets, worth 300, after he was taken to Store Street Garda Station and searched. Molyneaux, of North William Street, North Strand, Dublin 1, further admitted careless driving and handling stolen property in Liberty Park, Dublin 1, on December 20, 2016. In that incident, the court heard Molyneaux was riding a push bike on the footpath. Gardai spoke to him, telling him it was an offence, but Molyneaux took off at speed, nearly colliding with a female pedestrian, who was forced to jump out of the way. When he was stopped by gardai in Foley Street, Molyneaux admitted the bike did not belong to him and he did not know who owned it. Earlier yesterday, in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Molyneaux received a two-year sentence suspended for two years after he admitted possession of a screwdriver for use in a theft and being a passenger on a stolen motorbike. Joke The incident took place at East Wall Road, Dublin 1, on May 9, 2016. The college student, whose motorbike was stolen on April Fool's Day, initially thought it had been taken as a joke, the court heard. Molyneaux was arrested after a supermarket security guard contacted gardai about two suspicious men who were riding around a car park. The loss of the bike for owner Matthew Leonard was an enormous inconvenience, the court heard, and a journey to college that had taken him 30 minutes by motorbike took him two hours by bus. The victim, who was in the final year of a masters at the time, also believed that the loss of his bike impacted on his studies, and was partly why he had to repeat the last semester of his masters. Judge Karen O'Connor described the offence as "particularly horrible". The judge ordered Molyneaux to pay 1,000 compensation to Mr Leonard and imposed a two-year sentence, which she suspended for two years. His co-accused, William Baker (34), was sentenced earlier this month and received a two-year suspended sentence. He was ordered to pay 2,000 compensation to Mr Leonard. Baker, like 'Buda', is also a well-known associate of the Hutch gang, who have been involved in a deadly feud with the Kinahan cartel for over two years. Mitigation evidence in Molyneaux's favour was heard at yesterday's sentencing hearing. Defence counsel Dean Kelly said the defendant picked up the bulk of his previous convictions in his late teens, when he had "difficulties at the lower end of drug experimentation". Mr Kelly said Molyneaux's last conviction was a public order matter in 2016 and he had "improved greatly in recent years". He said the defendant's father worked as a lorry driver and died in 2012. His mother previously worked as a cleaner, and Molyneaux lived at home with her and his sister. He also has a young son with an ex-partner, the lawyer said. Drogheda should be given city status, according to a study submitted to the Government. The report - which was commissioned by the Drogheda City Status group - has pointed to the large growth in the population thanks to its rapidly-expanding satellite communities. Dr Brian Hughes, a chartered planning and development expert, said in his report that the latest census figures point to a population of more than 83,000 in the Greater Drogheda Area. Future Vincent Hoey, the chairman of the Drogheda City Status group, said: "We are living in an urban conglomeration of over 80,000. "But we have no effective joined-up thinking to plan sensibly for the future because our local government is divided between Co Meath and Co Louth. "Drogheda lost its town council, and we urgently need to be given city status so that we can have a city council that can best plan for the sustainable future growth of the region, provide housing, create jobs and nurture business. "This is not some kind of a county land grab. Co Louth will remain Louth and Co Meath remains Meath, but an urban density this size requires a city administration to make the place work." The area earmarked for city status includes the borough of Drogheda and the rapidly-expanding towns of Laytown, Bettystown and Mornington in the east of Meath. A copy of the report has been submitted for inclusion in the Government's national planning framework Meanwhile, the report's author, Dr Hughes, pointed out that the Belfast-Dublin economic corridor is growing at a major pace. "Drogheda, thanks to its air, motorway, sea and rail links, is growing faster than anywhere else along this corridor," he said. He added that the Government has the evidence in the report to act on the issue. The children of a criminal shot dead in his home told how a gunman in a balaclava walked into their kitchen and shot their father dead. Andy Connors' wife, Ann Connors, four of his six children and a niece were in the house at the time. Connors was later buried in a gold-plated coffin. Expand Close Andrew Connors. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Andrew Connors. One of his daughters told how she was pushed to the ground by the gunman, who entered the house through the back door into the kitchen shortly before 11pm that night. Balaclava "A man came to the door wearing a black balaclava, bullet- proof vest and black gloves. He walked in the door. He grabbed me and pushed me to the ground. He had a gun in his right hand," the child said in her deposition, read out at Dublin Coroner's Court. Family members wept as the details of Mr Connors' violent killing on August 19, 2014 were recounted. "Daddy didn't make it to the hall, he shot him. Then he walked out of the house and drove off. I went down the hall and saw mammy holding daddy," said Miss Connors. Mr Connors (46) had been "in good form" earlier that evening, said neighbour Keith Brennan. "He was 100pc flying and in good humour. He didn't mention any threats," said Mr Brennan. The pair had a few drinks at a pub before returning to Connors' home at about 10pm. Detective Garda Con Harrison said access to the "substantial dormer bungalow house" was through "substantial" gates. Another daughter said she was playing in her bedroom when she heard a scream from the kitchen. She described the gunman holding what she thought was a Mac-10 machine gun in his right hand. "He shot my daddy six or seven times. My daddy fell back onto my mammy. The man walked out," she said. A 999 call was made at 10.55pm. Mr Connors - of the Old Pound, Boherboy Road, Saggart, Co Dublin - was unresponsive when gardai and paramedics arrived at 11.09pm. He was rushed to Tallaght Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11.58pm. The cause of death was gunshot wounds to the chest, according to State pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy. Ms Connors asked the coroner if there was anything the family could have done to save him. Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said Mr Connors suffered direct injuries to his heart and died within seconds. "There was nothing you could have done," she said. Detective Inspector John Walshe, of Tallaght Garda Station, said gardai had explored 299 lines of inquiry, taken 161 witness statements and arrested one person as part of a substantial investigation into the death. A file was sent to the DPP but there has been no prosecution in relation to the killing. The investigation remained open. The jury at the inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing by person or persons unknown. Connors was a major player in a gang of thugs who spread a campaign of terror during hundreds of organised burglaries. An Irish-American police officer who shot the New York terror suspect after he allegedly ploughed a truck into civilians has been hailed a hero for bringing the attack to an end. Ryan Nash, of the New York Police Department, was responding to a report of a suicidal teenager at a high school in Lower Manhattan when he heard reports that a vehicle had hit people nearby. Officer Nash confronted Sayfullo Saipov after a rented truck was driven down a bike lane and into a school bus. Eight people were killed and 11 were injured, including children, the New York Daily News reported. The officer shot the 29-year-old suspect and wounded him when he refused to drop a pair of realistic-looking weapons, later identified as paintball and pellet guns. Speaking at a press conference afterwards, NYPD commissioner James O'Neill said: "I want to commend the response of our NYPD officer that was on post near the location who stopped the carnage moments after it began." The 28-year-old officer went to Stuyvesant High School at 2.35pm in response to a call reporting a suicidal 17-year-old girl there. Around 30 minutes later, the truck hit cyclists and pedestrians on Chambers Street, near the school. Officer Nash rushed to the scene, where he saw Saipov brandishing the guns. Police said Saipov did not obey orders to drop the weapons and, as a result, Officer Nash opened fire, hitting him in the abdomen. The cop, of Long Island, is an Irish-American and a member of the Emerald Society, which represents the Irish community within the city police force. Proud It is understood that he was also taken to hospital after the incident and received treatment for tinnitus. A spokesperson for the Police Emerald Society, of Nassau County, New York, said: "We are also very proud of his actions, which saved countless more lives." It is understood that Officer Nash joined the NYPD in 2012. Since then, he was won two prestigious awards, one for Excellent Police Duty and one for Meritorious Police Duty. Saipov remained in hospital yesterday as the attack was being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. It is the worst terror atrocity in the city since the 9/11 attack in 2001. Shannon Jordan who claimed her actions were in self-defence had left her victim with a fractured eye socket. A young woman who stabbed another teenager with a stiletto heel during a drunken row after a school graduation ceremony has been told that she faces jail if she fails to co-operate with the Probation Service. Judge Gerald Keys gave the warning to Shannon Jordan (19), of Lios Anama, Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, when she appeared at Ennis Circuit Court. Natasha Griffin McMahon, who was 17 at the time, suffered a fractured eye socket and laceration when Jordan used the pointed heel of her shoe to strike her in the face. Jordan had pleaded guilty to committing the serious assault in August 2015. Shocking In her victim impact statement, Ms Griffin McMahon said she came close to being blinded. The deepest cut from the stiletto "was millimetres below my eye", she said. "If it had been even slightly higher I would have lost my eye completely or at best my sight," she added. "It terrifies me to think of how much my life would have been affected." Ms Griffin McMahon underwent surgery and it was only after four to five months that she began to regain feeling and movement in the side of her face. "It is shocking how quickly a weapon was introduced to this altercation and how dangerous it proved to be," she said. "Every time I met with the doctor, they advised me of how fortunate I had been." The incident happened in Shannon town centre as a group of teenagers returned from a school graduation ceremony in Limerick in the early hours. It is accepted that Jordan did not remove her shoe for the purpose of attacking Ms Griffin McMahon. Jordan has been paying compensation to Ms Griffin McMahon at a rate of 50 a week since February and her solicitor had 1,700 in court yesterday. In all, Jordan is to pay 5,000 in compensation. Detective Sergeant Kevin O'Hagan previously told the court that there was a high level of intoxication among the group. The court heard that, when the bus arrived at Shannon at 3am, an argument erupted between Ms Griffin McMahon and Jordan's then-boyfriend. Det Sgt O'Hagan said Ms Griffin McMahon pushed Jordan, who was carrying her shoes. Jordan then used the shoe to strike her in the face. Yesterday Jordan's counsel, Patrick Whyms, said a probation report in court was "not entirely glowing" for his client. Pushed He said it appeared that her engagement with the service had not been totally satisfactory. Addressing Jordan, Judge Keys told her to engage with the Probation Service, "otherwise you are facing a custodial sentence". Det Sgt O'Hagan said Jordan attended Shannon Garda Station after the attack, made admissions and indicated her actions were in self-defence. Jordan has no previous convictions and works in the bar trade. Det Sgt O'Hagan said there was a "very minimal" risk of her reoffending. Mr Whyms said it was never his client's intention to cause injury to Ms Griffin McMahon's eye. He said it was an "excessive reaction" to being pushed. Judge Keys adjourned sentencing to December 18 and remanded Jordan on bail. An Uzbek immigrant, who is accused of killing eight people in New York by driving a rental truck down a bike path, became interested in religion after emigrating to the US, a fellow Uzbek who spoke to him two months ago said. The accused has been identified by a source close to the investigation as Sayfullo Saipov (29). He had emigrated to the US in 2010 and CNN said he had left a note saying he carried out the attack in the name of Islamic State (IS) and had shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest" in Arabic) after the violence. "He became religious on the spur of the moment," said Mirrakhmat Muminov, a truck driver and Uzbek community activist who lives in Stow, Ohio. He added that Saipov had previously lived in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. "He started studying religion in the United States," said Mr Muminov, adding that Saipov "couldn't get enough" of the religious freedoms enjoyed in the US after living in the strict confines of Uzbekistan. Controlled In Uzbekistan, an authoritarian, predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia ruled by Moscow until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the practice of Islam is tightly controlled by a government wary of radicalism. Tuesday's attack shines an uncomfortable light on Islamist militancy in Central Asia, which has supplied IS with thousands of fighters. If the attacker's identity is confirmed, it would be at least the fourth deadly attack by an Uzbek national or ethnic Uzbek in the current year. Muminov said Saipov had lived in Stow two or three years ago, they had met through the local Uzbek community, and that Saipov had also worked there as a truck driver. "He was withdrawn, nervous, sometimes aggressive. Because of that he was lonely, he lived in his own world. He was not very popular," he added. In a letter of condolence to President Donald Trump yesterday, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said Uzbekistan was ready to use "all its resources" to help investigate the attack. ABINGDON, Va. -- Kmart has announced it will close its Abingdon, Virginia location in late January, the company announced late Thursday afternoon. The store located at 300 Towne Centre Drive off Interstate 81's Exit 17 is among more than 40 locations closing its doors, according to a company issued news release. Its important to note that these stores will remain open to serve members during the holiday season. Eligible associates impacted by these store closures will receive severance and will have the opportunity to apply for open positions at area Kmart or Sears stores," the news release stated. The planned Abingdon closure follows last year's closing of the Bristol, Tennessee location on West State Street and Sears, which was located at the Bristol Mall in Bristol, Virginia -- all of which are owned by Sears Holding Corp. This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/ The power sector across the globe is going through a transition to reduce its carbon footprint. Environmentalists have targeted coal as one of the chief villains of global warming. It is true that coal is the dirtiest fuel with the highest carbon emission coefficient, but it presently plays a vital role in electricity generation worldwide. Coal-fired power plants currently produce 41% of global electricity and are responsible for 46% of the worlds carbon emissions. India is the third largest carbon emitter in the world after US and China. The government of India has an ambitious plan to add 175 GW of power from renewable energy sources out of which 100 GW is expected to come from solar by 2022. However, a new possibility emerges when one considers the fact that Indian coal-fired power plants are some of the most inefficient and polluting ones in the world. This is because around 80% of these plants are still using obsolete subcritical technology. Experts and policy-makers have suggested that the environmental harm caused by burning coal can be minimised by adopting high efficiency low emission (HELE) technologies such as supercritical and ultra-supercritical combustion technologies. To address this issue in a scientific manner, we have attempted to calculate the CO2 avoidance cost (CAC) of ultra-supercritical and solar photovoltaic (SPV) power plants. The cost of CO2 avoided reflects the cost of reducing CO2 emissions while producing the same amount of power from a reference plant. The cost of CO2 avoided is expressed as Rs/tonne of CO2 not emitted (avoided) with respect to the reference process. Analysis shows that it costs Rs. 875 to reduce a tonne of CO2 emission when power is generated by ultra-supercritical power plants instead of subcritical plants while it costs Rs. 2,624 to reduce a tonne of CO2 emission when power is generated by SPV plants instead of subcritical plants. Thus, an ultra supercritical power plant has a CO2 avoidance cost which is almost Rs. 1,748 per tonne of CO2 cheaper than an SPV plant. The divergence would have been even greater had we incorporated the mammoth hidden costs for SPV of land acquisition, keeping coal-based power plants idle during sunny days, construction of green corridors for evacuation of solar power, grid instability and e-waste disposal. According to the data released by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), in the year 2014 2015, total CO2 emission by power plants was 805.4 million tones and it is increasing by approx 7% on year to year basis. To reduce CO2 emissions substantially, 50% of existing subcritical plants can be replaced by highly efficient ultra- supercritical plants. By doing this, the government can save up to Rs. 25,000 crores as compared to the equivalent reduction of CO2 emission by SPV power plants. This calculation also supports the views of Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser to the government, who has categorically asserted that the social cost of renewables is far greater than that of thermal power for India he has even called for a global alliance to promote clean coal. Minister Piyush Goyal at the FICCI summit on climate change also agreed that it makes more sense to invest in supercritical and ultra-supercritical technology and replace old coal-based subcritical thermal plants in Indias pursuit of its Paris commitments on climate change. Further, Indias solar programme is heavily dependent on imports. In 2015-16, India imported $2.34 billion worth of solar cells, out of which 83.61% were from China. India also lacks a robust manufacturing base for solar cells and associated components. Moreover, India does not have any infrastructure for raw material production and the bulk of the SPV industry is dependent on the import of critical raw materials. Domestic solar cells are 10-15% costlier than their Chinese counterparts as solar manufacturers in China enjoy cheap capital, subsidised power, land and other export incentives to keep prices artificially low. Due to the price differentials, Indian solar manufacturers have less than 10% market share and are struggling to survive. It is important to note that increased reliance on thin film solar technologies has augmented the dependence on specific metals mined in only a few geographic locations. Since China controls approximately 97% of the worlds rare earth market, it has market power to manipulate the price of thin film solar cells. Solar power, apart from failing to provide the least cost option for carbon emission reduction, also enhances import dependence and, thereby, jeopardises Indias energy security. We suggest that coal-based ultra-supercritical technology and not SPV is the preferable option to reduce carbon emissions. The government needs to review its capacity addition target based on large scale solar plants; and emphasis should be given to roof-top solar power and decentralised applications of renewable energy resources, which can complement coal-based power generation. Vrishab Prakash is pursuing an executive MBA at the Management Development Institute (MDI) Sajal Ghosh is associate professor at MDI The views expressed are personal From November 15, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is hosting an exceptional exhibition dedicated to Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The show will feature 43 of the artists compositions created over six decades, including 16 self-portraits and works that have never before been seen in the United States. Edvard Munch, At the Deathbed, 1895. (AFP) Munch (1863-1944) believed that his artistic breakthrough occurred around 1913 at the age of 50. Throughout his career, the Norwegian painter regularly revisited subjects from his earlier years. Self Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, painted between 1940 and 1943, was one of his final works and can be used to put the artists other works into perspective. The painting depicts the artists bedroom, with a door opening to the studio beyond, and Munch, emotionless, between the grandfather clock and the bed. In total, the show will feature 43 works, created over 60 years of his career, including 16 self-portraits and works that have never before been seen in the United States, these are: Lady in Black (1891); Puberty (1894); Jealousy (1907); Death Struggle (1915); Man with Bronchitis(1920); Self-Portrait with Hands in Pockets (1925-26) and Ashes (1925). The paintings span the artists career, from his early days to his later years. Edvard Munch, self-portrait. Between the Clock and the bed, 1940-43. (AFP) Born and raised in Norway, Munch was one of the most celebrated and controversial artists of his generation. With only brief formal training in painting, he was largely self-taught. He was a prolific artist, creating around 1,750 paintings, 18,000 prints, and 4,500 watercolours, as well as sculpture, graphic art, theatre design and film. Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed runs November 15, 2017, to February 4, 2018, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more Shah Rukh Khan needs absolutely no introduction. An actor whose popularity transcends all boundaries, hes been ruling Bollywood ever since his biggest film till date, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge (DDLJ) released on October 20, 1995. Such is the appeal of the film, that it has broken records by running in Mumbais Maratha Mandir theatre for almost 20 years. While some tag him as the king of romance, hes dabbled with genres like comedy and action with equal ease. His image as the quintessential lover boy is still prevalent in everyones minds, and his dimples make any woman go weak in the knees. Despite being one of the busiest stars in the country, hes never let his choc-a-block schedule come in the way of fulfilling his duties as a loving husband to Gauri Khan, and a doting dad to sons Aryan, AbRam and daughter Suhana. Here are 10 pictures which prove just that: B!rthday by #SRK A post shared by Muhzin (@its_moo_zz_) on Nov 1, 2017 at 10:38pm PDT #srkfamily# A post shared by bollywood (@jbollywood123) on Oct 16, 2017 at 10:08pm PDT #Srkians #srkfamily A post shared by Shah Rukh Khan (@srkhanclub) on Oct 10, 2017 at 12:39am PDT Follow @htshowbiz for more Challenging weather conditions in Austria during the shoot of Tiger Zinda Hai led to a health issue for actor Salman Khan, says director Ali Abbas Zafar. Talking about shooting for the film in the locales of Austria, Zafar said in a statement, Shooting here meant dealing with unexpected situations. Literally a lot of pain had gone behind this sequence. Salman developed a health issue, but he still trained to film here and delivered on a tough action sequence. Since the shoot here was scheduled during winter, temperatures at minus 22 degrees celsius brought tough challenges. Katrina and Salman on the sets of Tiger Zinda Hai in Austria. What we see onscreen might look a lot easier than it actually is. Sometimes, sequences like the ones shot in Austria can be difficult to achieve. For a significant chapter in Tiger Zinda Hai, we had to film in a place that had a certain amount of aloofness and isolation. We found that spot in the mountains of Austria, a place where time seemed to stand still and frozen, he added. The team shot a song there. We had expertise on our side, since we worked with an international crew that has worked on the latest James Bond film Spectre. In the end, as a team, we are fairly satisfied that we managed to film here successfully, he added. Tiger Zinda Hai, which also stars Katrina Kaif, is a sequel to Ek Tha Tiger. It is slated to release on December 22, and has been shot across five countries. Follow @htshowbiz for more Pakistans state oil and gas regulator said on Thursday it would investigate a complaint that fuel suppliers including local units of Shell and Total as well as Pakistan State Oil (PSO) had added manganese to their gasoline. Honda Motor Cos Pakistan subsidiary, Honda Atlas Cars (Pakistan) Ltd., filed the complaint, saying the additive appeared to be damaging engines in its vehicles. Manganese can be added to fuel to make it appear to be of a higher quality but it can reduce fuel economy and potentially harm public health due to emissions. Hondas complaint states Pakistani suppliers used the additive to elevate the Research Octane Number (RON) used to grade petroleum and lower quality fuel up to the RON 92 grade required by regulatory standards. We have received a complaint from Honda, and the relevant department will look into the issue, said Imran Ghaznavi, a spokesman for the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA). The Honda complaint, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, said tests found dangerous levels of manganese in fuel samples from Shell Pakistan Ltd, Total Parco Pakistan Ltd and Pakistan State Oil Company Ltd. The tests showed levels of manganese of up to 53 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), while the additive is deemed at a danger level at 24 mg/kg, the Honda complaint said. Officials from Shell in Pakistan and PSO had no immediate comment. Total officials could not immediately be reached. Ilyas Fazil, head of Pakistans Oil Companies Advisory Council, said on Thursday he had not heard of manganese additives being a problem in the industry. Other refineries are producing 90 RON, which is slightly lower than 92...pure 92 RON, that is imported, he said. Pakistans petroleum sales have spiked in the past two years, rising 10% between 2015 and 2017 and continued growth is expected as Chinese-backed development projects spur the transportation and automotive sectors. A senior industry official said Toyota Pakistan had not experienced the same issues with their engines but said the company was concerned about high manganese levels in petroleum. Now that Honda has formally complained they may also follow suit, the official who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Haryanas additional advocate general has resigned after he was charged with helping a lawyer representing the main accused in the murder of a Muslim man on board a train earlier this year, the states top legal officer said. Naveen Kaushik put in his papers on Wednesday but denied the allegations, advocate general Baldev Raj Mahajan told reporters. Junaid Khan, 17, was stabbed to death on a train when he was returning to his village Khandawli in Haryana after shopping for Eid in Delhi along with his brothers and cousins. The accused had allegedly directed communal slurs on the Muslim group and assaulted them when Junaid was stabbed. The incident had sparked countrywide outrage with opposition parties citing it as one among several instances of targeted attack on the Muslim community. Faridabads additional district and sessions judge, YS Rathore, in an interim order on October 25, had reportedly said that Kaushik was assisting the counsel of the main accused, Naresh Kumar, during cross-examination of witnesses. Kaushik, however, told HT he was in Faridabad on a private visit and was called by the government counsel to the district court for help in translation of some case material. Mahajan quoted Kaushik as saying that he had met the counsel only to hand over documents related to use of Hindi language in court proceedings. Reports said Kaushik is the organising secretary of Bharatiya Bhasa Abhijan, a lawyers body promoting use of Indian languages in court. Since he (Kaushik) admitted that he went to the (Faridabad) court and supplied documents to the counsel, I told him that it is a case in which the state is a party and he must tender his resignation, the AG added. Mahajan said he has asked the government to accept the resignation. The opposition Congress in Uttarakhand has opposed a decision to convene the Assemblys winter session in Gairsain in December, saying the place would become extremely cold then. The state cabinet had last month cleared a proposal to have the session in the hill town in Chamoli district from December 7 to 13. Temperatures drop drastically in Gairsain in December and holding the Assembly session there, in extreme cold conditions, will cause inconvenience to everyone, Leader of Opposition Indira Hridayesh told reporters on Wednesday. The Congress leader claimed that having the session in the town would also pose problems to employees who would have to make arrangements for it and journalists covering the proceedings. Hridayesh asked the state government to reconsider its decision. A section of people residing in the hills have been demanding that Gairsain, a town in the Garhwal Himalayas, be declared the permanent capital of Uttarakhand. The leader of the opposition also accused the BJP government of lacking the will to fight corruption, saying that otherwise, it would have passed the Lokayukta Bill by now. Why doesnt the BJP pass the Lokayukta Bill introduced by former chief minister Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri? It was widely acclaimed and even had the Presidents assent, she asked. The BJPs much vaunted zero tolerance to corruption is just an eyewash. They have the numbers in the state assembly. Still, they referred the Bill to the empowered committee of the House, Hridayesh said. Chinks within the ruling BJP seem to have started surfacing with veteran party leader BC Khanduri publically terming the Lokayukta Bill - likely to be passed by the state assembly in its Gairsain session starting from December 7 - as superfluous, weak and ineffective. The Lokayukta Bill is a highly watered down version of the anti-graft law that was enacted by my government, he said referring to his second tenure as the chief minister that began just months before the 2012 assembly poll in the hill state. Speaking to HT on Thursday, Khanduri suggested that if passed, the weak Lokayukta Bill would fail to curb corruption. It will fail to check corruption because it has been rendered toothless, Khanduri said, adding the Lokayukta law that was enacted during his rule was stronger in comparison. I had brought even myself (chief minister) within the ambit of the anti-graft law besides all public servants, including ministers and bureaucrats he said. Conversely, the Lokayukta Bill tabled by the (Trivendra Singh) Rawat government in the last budget session is a weak law in comparison, said Khanduri, a former army officer. Khanduri also described the proposed law as superfluous. It (proposed law) is redundant because the Lokayukta Bill we brought in had been unanimously passed in the assembly, said Khanduri, a Lok Sabha member from Pauri. It (law passed by the then assembly) was also the only Lokayukta law in the country that was signed and approved by the President of India after being ratified by the Centre. The proposed Lokayukta law was referred to the select committee during the assembly session held weeks after the BJPs win in the state polls. Later, the Rawat government tabled it during the budget session. Khanduri also questioned the state governments move to refer the Lokayukta Bill to the panel in question. Where was the need to refer that Bill to the select committee? Is that panel above the President who had long back signed the Lokayukta Act after it was ratified by the Centre? the BJP leader asked. Khanduri alleged that the then Congress-led UPA government at the Centre examined the anti-graft law for several months and ratified it after failing to find any loopholes. It was later sent to the Congress government in the state, he said, alleging that what was amazing that then chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, instead of enforcing the anti-graft law, put it in abeyance. Bahuguna joined the BJP just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. All our (BJP) government needed to do was to enforce the duly passed Lokayukta law, Khanduri said, adding that he felt immensely pained that it (BJP) chose to propose a fresh anti-graft law. The BJP veteran said he had written to the incumbent chief minister to enforce the duly enacted Lokayukta law soon after he took over. I am yet to receive a reply, a miffed Khanduri said. Darshan Singh Rawat, the chief ministers media coordinator, said the Lokayukta Bill had yet not been enacted. It will be debated in the assembly and suggestions made by legislators will be incorporated in the proposed law before it will be passed, he said. Recently, the opposition Congress also criticised the state government for introducing a diluted Lokayukta Bill. It is a weak anti-graft law because it doesnt permit prosecution of the chief minister, ministers or bureaucrats in graft cases until approval comes from the 2/3rd members of the five-member Lokayukta bench, Congress legislator Quazi Nizammuddin had told HT. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON An 18-month-old girl was abducted and raped by her 33-year-old neighbour in outer Delhis Aman Vihar locality, police said on Thursday. The girl had to undergo an emergency operation for injuries suffered during the assault and, police said, there was no danger to her life. A printing press employee, Rakesh, was arrested for the crime. According to the police, he confessed during interrogation. The incident took place at around 9am on Wednesday, when the girl had stepped out of the house to play with the other children in the locality. An investigating officer said the girls mother found her outside about an hour later with her clothes dishevelled, bleeding and complaining of pain. The mother rushed her to a hospital, where doctors informed the police. We zeroed in on Rakesh after making enquiries in the locality. We also learnt he was missing from his house, said deputy commissioner of police, outer Delhi, MN Tiwari. Based on the medical report and a statement from her family members, we registered a case of rape under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he added. If found guilty, Rakesh faces a minimum of seven years in prison, going up to a life sentence. Aman Vihar is one of the most unsafe places for women in the city, according to police data. In 2016, there were 60 rape cases registered at the local police station the highest in Delhi. This could be the knockdown version of the Corleone family, minus the godfather. A woman and her six sons are in Tihar jail for committing a range of crimes in the Capital from bootlegging to theft, and from extortion to murder. The 62-year-old homemaker and her sons, aged between 15 and 38, accumulated 100 criminal cases between them since she began selling bootlegged alcohol in early 2000, after the family migrated to Delhis Sangam Vihar locality from Dholpur in Rajasthan. The seventh son was arrested this June for theft and sent to a juvenile detention home. At the top of this criminal family tree is Basiran, a mother of 11 who is imprisoned for extortion. But her husband Malkan Singh is clean. As are the couples four daughters. The familys home in Sangam Vihar, one of the citys largest unauthorised colonies, was padlocked when Hindustan Times tried to contact the father and daughters. Neighbours said Singh, 64, rears goats and spends the day in the nearby woods. Two of his daughters were married and live with their husbands. The other two were not at home. We dont interact with them much, a neighbour said. Basiran was drafted into crime selling illicit liquor to augment the family income. Her husband earned little as a freelancing electrician to feed his large brood of growing kids. The liquor business was ripe. Most local criminals bought liquor from her. The sons, Shamim and Shakeel, were lured by these criminals. They quit school. It was downhill from that day, said a neighbour who asked not to be named. Basiran and her sons gradually advanced from selling moonshine to petty crimes such as snatching and stealing. Till their arrest over the past 10 months, they ran an organised syndicate, specialising in stealing cars, running a water supply mafia, and brewing and selling illicit liquor, police said. Records show members of the family were charged with serious crimes such as extortion, keeping illegal arms, and murder between 2004 and 2017. Basiran has three criminal cases against her. The latest was from June 2016 when she was allegedly charged with extorting Rs 20,000 from a man at gunpoint. In police records, all of Basirans sons are bad characters a term used by cops for people they need to keep an eye on. If Wakil is facing 10 charges of robbery and rioting, Shakeel has 15 cases against him, and Shamim alias Gunga, the gang leader in moms absence, has 61. Wakil was first arrested for bootlegging in 2002. A fourth son, 26-year-old Sunny, has four cases and Faizal, aged 21, has three. Brother Rahul, who is 19, was charged with murder just after his 18th birthday. The family was involved in all sorts of illegal activities here ... We put pressure on some of Basirans sons to come out of hiding and got them arrested, said Upender Singh, the Sangam Vihar police station in-charge. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday alleged that despite being in power, the Delhi government has been rendered powerless due to constant interference by the Central government. The comments came on a day when the Supreme Court of India said Delhis lieutenant governor (L-G) cannot scuttle an executive decision by sitting on a file. We tried to curb corruption in our 49-day stint and the anti-corruption branch (ACB) sent 35-40 officials to jail creating fear among officials. We won with 67 seats in the next elections but still they (the Centre) are trying to hamper our work through L-G, who sits on our files. My government is so powerless that I cant even get my peon appointed, said Kejriwal, also Aam Aadmi Partys national convener, at the national council meet held in Alipur on the outskirts of Delhi. AAP has maintained that if an elected government did not get control over ACB, it cannot live up to its anti-graft stand or deliver on its promise made to Delhis electorate. Soon after the AAP government came to power in 2015, a joint-commissioner-level officer was made the ACB chief by the then L-G, a move that AAP government alleges took away its control of ACB. Kerjiwal also cited the L-Gs approval of Mohalla clinics for which he claimed, his lawmakers had to stage a demonstration outside the L-Gs house to get the bill passed. He also raised the issue of Jan Lok Pal bill, which was passed by the Delhi Assembly but returned by the Centre. Despite all the hurdles, our governments work is being recognised worldwide while people are disappointed with the BJP. After nearly three years in Delhi, all sections student, traders, common people are happy with the AAP government. Imagine if we had all the powers. We will not give up and continue to work with passion, he said. Earlier, during the day-long national council meet discussed a wide array of issues including the worsening economy, farmers predicament, Jan Lokpal, interference of Delhis lieutenant governor in the governments functioning and the recent attacks on journalists. India is being known at the world stage due to the Delhi model of governance. The ease of business ranking of India took a giant leap from 130 to 100 due to two cities- Delhi and Mumbai, said deputy CM Manish Sisodia, who presided over the meeting. Apart from Sisodia, senior party leader Sanjay Singh addressed the members on the economy, Ashutosh on social media and Gopal Rai on how to strengthen the organisation. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON At least 10 passengers were injured when the Himalayan Queen express train driver applied emergency brakes. Leading it to make a sudden halt in Haryana, railway officials said here on Thursday. The train was moving at a high speed on Wednesday night, when the station master raised an alarm. The driver then suddenly applied the brakes. The train stopped near Gharaunda for some time. The injured were given first aid. Passengers on board protested the sudden application of brakes. The Delhi Sarai Rohilla Kalka Himalyan Queen Express is an express train of the Northern Railway zone that connects Chandigarh with New Delhi. The chaos around Metro stations and bus terminals can ease if the number of e-rickshaws plying in the city is capped, an expert panel has suggested. The 12-member committee, set up at the directive of Delhi High Court to frame an e-rickshaw policy, has recommended limiting the number of battery operated three-wheelers in the city to a certain number, like auto-rickshaws. According to rules, only 1 lakh auto-rickshaws can ply in the city at present. At present there is no cap on the number of registered e-rickshaws. The committee opines, considering the road space and availability of other modes of transport, the number of e-rickshaw should be limited, the report said. It further states that the number of e-rickshaws in the Capital has long crossed the one lakh mark, of which, only around 34,000 were registered with the transport department as on June 30. The number rose to 37,500 by October 28 this year. Making permanent license mandatory On Sunday, Hindustan Times had reported that 27% of the registered e-rickshaws are running only on learners license. The committee, which had officials from the transport department, civic agencies, urban development department, traffic police and power distribution companies, has suggested that the government stops handing out learners licences, without a test. Since, the issue of public safety is involved, it is recommended that the present system of granting registration on the basis of learning license should be discontinued. The committee recommends that the e-rickshaw should be registered only after the applicant obtains a permanent driving license, read the report. Badge and uniform The committee has recommended that drivers must wear a uniform and should have a Public Service Vehicle (PSV) badge. The badge would be issued by the licensing authority after police verification. Besides, it prohibits the driver from accommodating any passenger on the front seat with him/her. Parking of e-rickshaws would not be allowed on right of way, it suggested. Replace cycle rickshaws The committee suggested that cycle rickshaws should completely be replaced with smaller e-rickshaws. The e-rickshaws approved by the ministry of road transport and highways, have maximum width of 1 metre and maximum length of 2.8 meters and are permitted to carry four passengers. However, the panel has recommended designing smaller e-rickshaws too with maximum passenger capacity of two. Charging and buying of e-ricks The report has asked the MCDs, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the discoms to collaborate for arranging charging points at authorised parking lots. For disposal of the lead-acid batteries of the e-rickshaws, it asked the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to prepare guidelines. In October, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) had legalised charging of e-rickshaws using domestic connections. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and one of the founder members of the party on Thursday alleged that many people within his party were afraid of his voice. The poet-politician was irked over not being included among the key speakers at the sixth council meet of the party that was held in Delhi on Thursday. Till today, I thought only Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party were afraid of me speaking the truth. But now, after I was not given a slot among the key speakers, it looks like party people (who drew the list of speakers for Thursdays meeting), dont want me to speak as well, Vishwas said soon after leaving the nearly seven-hour long meeting at a resort owned by a party lawmaker in the citys outskirts. Vishwas has been unhappy after suspended MLA Amanatullah Khan was reinstated in the party earlier this week. Khan, an MLA from Okhla, was suspended in May for his tirade against Vishwas. Though, AAP leaders denied any differences with Vishwas, the poet-politician comments about the party proved otherwise. On Thursday, before Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia could begin his speech, a group of workers, stood up and raised the issue of not including Vishwas among the key speakers. After a group of national council members objected, party leader Gopal Rai asked me to speak. I said that I had been the voice of the movement since its inception, but I will not want to speak if my name is not included in the formal list of speakers, said Vishwas, who had convened the partys last five meetings. Apart from Sisodia, senior party leaders Sanjay Singh, Ashutosh, Gopal Rai and national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal were the key speakers at the meeting. Partys spokesperson Sanjay Singh, while playing down the rift, said Vishwas spoke about Rajasthan where he is the partys election in-charge. There is absolutely no rift within the party. He (Kumar Vishwas) like other state in-charges spoke about the partys preparation in Rajasthan. The rumour of a rift further received credence when the supporters of both Vishwas and Khan shouted zindabad (long live) slogans in favour of their respective leaders and both the leaders cars ended up blocking each others ways as they came out of the venue. Vishwas had earlier alleged that some people in the party are thwarting his political career by stopping his entry into the Rajya Sabha. The revoking of Amanatullah Khans suspension is a clear indication that they do not want me to enter Rajya Sabha, Vishwas said. Three Rajya Sabha seats in Delhi will fall vacant after the Congress nominees Karan Singh, Janardhan Dwivedi and Pervez Hashmi complete their six-year term in January 2018. All the seats will go to the AAP as it has an overwhelming majority in the Delhi Assembly. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Launching action against malls and hospitals for illegally charging parking fees from visitors, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation on Thursday sealed the underground parking of TDI mall in Lajpat Nagar. During the special drive, the civic agency ordered a fine on Moolchand hospital for charging for surface parking. The malls and hospitals were allowed additional floor area ratio with a rider that they will provide free parking in their underground slots. They availed of additional floor area ratio but charged parking fees, which is illegal, said senior SDMC official. During the inspection, we noticed violations in the underground parking at TDI mall. The parking was used as the service centre of a car showroom. Equipment was kept in the storerooms, said standing committee chairman Bhupendra Gupta. Though there was a free parking board at the entrance, not even a single vehicle of visitors or customers was allowed to park vehicles, said Gupta. The mall authorities couldnt be contacted despite calls on the landline listed on the companys official website. The team inspected Moolchand hospital. Parking attendants were openly charging R 30 for six hours at the surface parking. This is illegal. We asked officials to challan them as per the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, said Gupta. Moolchand hospitals manager (operations) Satish Kumar denied any knowledge of SDMCs visit. The next round of the drive will be carried on Monday. The civic agency has decided to put free parking boards outside malls and private hospitals, said Gupta.. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON It is a significant step in the fight against corruption. The Supreme Court has suggested the creation of special courts to deal with criminal cases against politicians. According to an analysis conducted by the Association for Democratic Reform, based on self-sworn affidavits obtained from the Election Commission of India website, of the 542 winners analysed after the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, 158 members (34%) declared criminal charges against them; and 112 (21%) had serious criminal cases against them. Ten of these were murder cases. In the upcoming Himachal Pradesh elections, of the 338 candidates analysed, 18% face criminal cases, and 9% currently face serious criminal charges. The rationale behind the apex courts move is that the longer political functionaries with charges against them stay in office, the more chance they have to manipulate the system. The only way to tackle this, since political parties are not averse to giving tickets to those against whom charges have not been proven, is to lessen the judicial delays in concluding cases. As it stands, a member of parliament or a state assembly found guilty of a criminal offence punishable with two years or more in jail immediately loses the membership of the house. The courts 2013 judgment also bars a convicted politician from contesting elections for six years from the date the sentence ends. Banning convicted politicians from contesting elections forever is not the solution to the problem. In a reformative justice system, a conviction means that adequate punishment has been meted out; people who have fulfilled the punishment must be considered to have paid their debt to society. Once that debt is paid, the individual in question must be considered fit and ready to rejoin society. And if convicted politicians are able to win the trust of their electorate after their stipulated punishment, their candidature must not be invalidated. If the resolution of cases were swifter, those guilty of corruption or other criminal charges could be taken out of the political system, albeit temporarily. This would be a positive step towards cleansing it. A special court to hear and complete cases involving elected representatives would also act as a deterrent to corrupt politicians who rely on the slowness of the judicial system to get away with subverting the law. This also emboldens them to convey the message that they are somehow floating above the fray on account of their power and privilege unlike the average Joe. The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has approved research projects centered around regional Hindu dynasties. Senior officials told HT that such a move has been necessitated by the fact that Indian historians have ignored such research and have given primacy to the Mughal period. This is not entirely untrue. It is a fact that several dynasties, in various parts of India including the North East and South India, have not been studied as much as they should have been. Still, history writing has always been political and the political messaging of these projects will be difficult to miss, especially because the National Democratic Alliance has made it clear that it wants to focus on Indias glorious Hindu past, be it in science or the humanities that it claims has largely been ignored by researchers. The list of projects cleared by ICHR includes one on the Ahom dynasty, which ruled Assam from the 13th to the early 19th century; another on the history of Indian science and technology; and a third on the Karkota dynasty of Kashmir, especially King Lalitaditya Muktapida. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There is no harm in writing more about regional powers; history writing today is far more vibrant and will only become richer with new information and scholarship. Historians have always called for scrutiny of the Vedic corpus, the epics, the Buddhist canon and monastic chronicles, inscriptions, regional accounts and royal biographies as new genres of history to understand the past. In India, national history --- what we have read till now --- has been a product of a consensus, even though it was acknowledged that regions are the soul of India. There is no problem in going out of this national history framework as it exists in our minds. Still, such studies should not stoke latent regionalism which is a real threat at least in some parts of the country. It is also important to ensure that such studies should not come at the cost of, say, research into Mughal history. It cannot be an either or situation: Mughal history or colonial history can, should, and does coexist with regional history. A balanced approach to historical research will provide a greater understanding of Indias eclectic traditions and varied historical strands of thought. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has extended by a fortnight its order staying the work on a construction and debris (C&D) plant being built in the catchment area of the Basai wetland at Gurgaon. A bench headed by Justice Jawad Rahim directed the authorities to maintain the status quo at the site till November 16, the next date of hearing. The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by NGO Delhi Bird Foundation seeking a stay on the project contending that the Basai wetland, though not declared as a wetland under the 2010 Wetland (Conservation & Management) Rules, was a valuable water body. Having heard both sides, we are not satisfied that the interim order granted on July 27 needs any further modification. We accede the request of the respondents that the hearing of the matter could be expedited, the bench said. On July 5, the NGT had ordered a status quo after noting the adverse impact of the upcoming C&D plant on the water body. The green panel had earlier said the applicant has made out a prima facie case for directing preservation of the land in question until a further order from the tribunal. The tribunal was earlier informed that the boundary wall of the plant, being developed by IL&FS Environmental Infrastructure and Services Ltd, was adjacent to the area known for its rich biodiversity and bird species. The Haryana government had said the area was not a notified wetland. The construction and debris plant which is under process of establishment shall have an adverse impact on the water body due to various activities connected with the plant, the plea had said. The plant, according to the Gurugram Municipal Corporation, will be spread over 3.5 acres and process 500 tonnes of waste a day. The NGT had earlier issued notices to the environment ministry, the Haryana government, the Gurugram Municipal Corporation and the IL&FS Environmental Infrastructure and Services Ltd after the NGO alleged that the Basai wetland was in a critical condition due to the project. The Gurgaon police arrested the main accused of a three-member gang which allegedly robbed people on the highway after taking lifts from them. The gang was involved in more than a dozen of cases and had robbed people of their mobile phones, gold and took out cash using their ATM cards after holding them at gunpoint. Police claimed that in one of the cases reported in August, the accused sodomised one of the victims. The accused was identified as Parveen Kumar alias Fokee, a resident of Jhajjar. One of the gang members is already lodged in Bhondsi jail and another is still at large, said Ravinder Kumar, public relations officer, Gurgaon police. According to the police, the gang targeted people at Iffco Chowk and Shankar Chowk. After soliciting rides to Dwarka and Bijwasan, Delhi, they used to assault the drivers and force them to reveal their ATM passwords before robbing them of their belongings, including mobile phones and laptops. The accused lived in Palam Vihar in a rented house. On August 21, the three-member gang took the lift from Iffco Chowk from a Haridwar(Uttarakhand ) resident who worked in a private company in Gurgaon and lived in Dwarka. The executive had left his office late, around 9:30pm, and when he crossed Iffco Chowk, he saw three people requesting a ride. The executive let them in and when they reached Dwarka, Delhi, the gang took him at gunpoint and assaulted him. They snatched his ATM card and withdrew 62,000 from his bank account. They robbed him of his gold chain and mobile phone, Kumar said. Before dumping him at an isolated location in Bijwasan, the gang tied his hands and legs and covered his eyes. They also allegedly sexually assaulted him, police claimed. A case was registered under Section 365 (kidnapping ), 377 (unnatural sex), 201(causing disappearance of evidence) and 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) of the Indian Penal Code and under the Arms Act at Sector 18 police station, Kumar said. Police have recovered the stolen mobile phone of the victim, cash withdrawn from the ATM and a countrymade pistol which was used in the crime. Police are further probing the case to know if there are more victims. In another case, the anti-vehicle theft squad of Gurgaon police busted a vehicle lifting gang and recovered four motorcycles and one scooter from them. The crime branch of Sector 39 arrested a man from Badshahpur on Wednesday. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Councillors will choose Gurgaons mayor, senior deputy mayor, and deputy mayor on Friday after 17 months. Even as senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders fight over their pick of candidates for the post of mayor and her deputies, BJP state president Subhash Barala held a meeting on Thursday evening to ensure unanimous voting today. Differences within the party are unlikely to affect Fridays election for the three positions, all of which are expected to be filled by BJP councillors. The BJP enjoys the support of more than two-third councillors in the House. In the September 24 elections to the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), BJP won 14 of the 35 seats up for grabs. However, it later garnered support from 12 of the 20 independent councillors and added them to the partys ranks. In the 2011 elections, Congress won the three seats unopposed as nine councillors from INLD and BJP had boycotted the mayoral elections. Now, with the Congress not contesting the 2017 elections and only one INLD councillor in the House, a boycott may be inconsequential to the final outcome. Among the front runners for the top post are Madhu Azad and Sheetal Bagri; for this term, the post of the mayor has been reserved for a woman candidate from the Scheduled Caste (SC). According to sources in the BJP, Azad has the support of party members; they see her as a strong leader who has risen through the ranks, strengthening her position as a candidate from the party. Azad is the councillor of Ward 7. Sheetal Bagri, the councillor from Ward 10, enjoys support from a faction within the party. She is viewed as a rebel by many since she contested as an independent candidate after being ousted from the party prior to the elections. It is likely that Sunita Yadav, councillor from Ward 33, will be elected as the senior deputy mayor as BJP wants to elect a member from the Yadav community to the post. A councillor from the Bania (trading) community may be elected as the deputy mayor. A meeting to administer the oath to all councillors will take place at John Hall in Civil Lines at 11am and the mayor and her deputies will also be elected, D Suresh, divisional commissioner announced on Tuesday. Residents look up to the mayor with hope that she will voice the citizens concerns to the MCG officials for pushing projects or completing tasks that have been neglected. While residents dont vote in the (mayoral) elections, I look forward to the final result, Civil Lines resident Anshul Saxena said. The first and the only MCG election, so far, was held in May 2011, three years after the inception of the municipality. The second MCG polls were delayed by more than 16 months, and finally conducted this year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Filmmaker Brett Ratner has sued a woman named Melanie Kohler, who claims he raped her in Los Angeles over a decade ago. He says its a lie. Six women, including Natasha Henstridge and Oliva Munn, claimed Ratner sexually harassed them in a Los Angeles Times report on Wednesday. Ratner is suing Kohler for defamation, claiming unspecified damages, reports TMZ. According to the lawsuit, Kohler claimed in an October 20 Facebook post, Brett Ratner raped me. She even called him a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago. Kohler said Ratner preyed on me as a drunk girl (and) forced himself upon me. According to Ratners lawyer, Kohler said she had met the filmmaker at a club here in either 2004 or 2005, and he took her to producer Robert Evanss home where Ratner was living at the time. She says he forced her to have sex. Ratners lawyer threatened to sue her if she didnt take the post down immediately. She removed the post, but Kohler again started putting the same story out in various ways. Follow @htshowbiz for more Police in Tripura are in a fix after 18 Muslim men of suspected nationality allegedly sneaked in from Bangladesh armed with Aadhaar cards, saying they were from Murshidabad in West Bengal. Residents of Adamnagar village in Sepahijala district bordering Bangladesh caught the 18 people on Sunday and handed them over to police. A 9-km stretch of Tripuras 856 km border with Bangladesh in the district is unfenced. The 18 were thought to be Rohingya at first, but they produced Aadhaar cards to claim to be Indians. Police are trying to establish if the Aadhaar cards are genuine and how the 18 reached Tripura from West Bengal via Bangladesh. Sepahijala superintendent of police Sudipta Das said they were yet to get permission to interrogate the youths who are in judicial custody till November 6. We are trying to find their identity through UIDAI and whether or not they are Bangladeshi nationals, Das said. Another police officer said that soon after their arrest, the 18 claimed they entered Bangladesh and stayed there for an unspecified number of days before straying into Tripura. We are not ruling out the possibility of their connection with terror groups, he said. Officials in the states mobile task force said this was the first time that infiltrators claiming to be Indians have entered Tripura illegally from Bangladesh. Apart from Bangladeshis, an average seven Nigerians enter Tripura from across the border every year. The state has deported several foreign nationals in recent years, including 1,679 till September this year. Rajbir Singh has no memories of his father and grandfather, except stories that have been passed on to him by his family. One of the stories about their deaths, is violent and gory but that is the one etched in his memory. Rajbir was told that he was 11 months old in 1984, when a mob burnt his grandfather Kirpal Singh alive on the hand-drawn cart he used to hawk peanuts for a living. When his disabled grandmother limped out to pull the body, lying in a heap of other bodies, the mob pushed her away. Then they dumped the bodies on a truck. Aaj bhi rongte khade ho jaate hain un kahaniyon se. (The hair-raising stories evoke horror even today), says Rajbir, now 33, as he recalls the gruesome stories from the days when violence against Sikhs swept through Delhi and other parts of the country after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. Log bacchon ko raja-rani ki kahani sunate hain, humein yeh sab kahaniyan sunayi jati thi. (People tell stories of kings and queens to their children but we were told these stories), he adds. He was given detailed accounts of how his father, Modhu Singh, was the next to be killed. The mob armed with iron rods, petrol cans and wooden sticks entered the house and dragged out his father. They doused him with petrol and burnt him alive. Rajbirs terrified mother dressed Rajbir and his elder brother in his sisters clothes to save them. He recalls his grandmother telling him the chilling slogan used by the mob during the attack Saanp toh maar diye, saanpolon ko bhi maar do (Kill the children of the snakes as well). He is one of the thousands of orphans of the carnage; the youngest of four siblings, all under the age of 10 at that time. While he was too young to remember the horrors of the violence, he has spent his lifetime in its shadow. Read more | 1984 anti-Sikh riots: Time doesnt heal the pain. Ask Attar Kaur The family resided in Trilokpuris block 32 where almost 400 people were killed. Rajbirs father was a porter at the Nizamuddin railway station, his earnings too meagre to send the children to school. Hum bahut chhote varg ke log the, par mere pita bahut bahadur the, ek sache Sikh ki tarah. (We were from a very poor background but my father was very brave like a real Sikh), he says. Rajbir Singh with his son at his shop in Tilak Vihar, New Delhi. (Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO) On the night of October 31, 1984, when violence first spread, Rajbirs father did not come home, spending the night at the station. The next day he returned but by then the mob had reached his doorstep. Rajbirs mother begged her husband to cut his hair but he refused to part with an integral part of his faith. He told his wife, Bach gaya toh tumhara, mar gaya toh Wahe Guru ka. (If I survive, then I am yours, if I die then Im Wahe Gurus). Rajbir now runs a cramped grocery and mobile recharge shop in a Tilak Vihar resettlement colony, in West Delhi. Picking up a photograph of his father from a shelf he says, Look, he is so cute. All that he has left of his father are memories of the massacre, two photographs and a Rs 5 note. That was his last earning which he gave my mother on the day he was killed. We have saved it carefully, he says. NEVER-ENDING PROBE PANELS 1984 NOVEMBER MARWAH COMMISSION Later asked to wind up as the Misra Commission had been appointed 1985 MAY MISRA COMMISSION Recommended setting up 3 committees to investigate the role of the police, to look into allegations of grave offences, and to find out the exact death toll 1985 NOVEMBER DHILLON COMMITTEE Recommended insurance companies should pay claims even though riots not covered. It was not implemented 1987 FEBRUARY KAPOOR-MITTAL COMMITTEE Indicted 72 police officers for connivance or negligence and recommended the dismissal of 30 JAIN-BANERJEE COMMITTEE Recommended case against Sajjan Kumar AHUJA COMMITTEE Said the death toll in Delhi was 2,733 1990 MARCH POTTI ROSHA COMMITTEE Recommended cases against Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler DECEMBER JAIN-AGARWAL COMMITTEE Recommended cases against HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler. It was never implemented 1993 DECEMBER NARULA COMMITTEE Recommend cases against HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler 2000 MAY NANAVATI COMMISSION Found credible evidence against Jagdish Tytler Later asked to wind up as the Misra Commission had been appointedRecommended setting up 3 committees to investigate the role of the police, to look into allegations of grave offences, and to find out the exact death tollRecommended insurance companies should pay claims even though riots not covered. It was not implementedIndicted 72 police officers for connivance or negligence and recommended the dismissal of 30Recommended case against Sajjan KumarSaid the death toll in Delhi was 2,733Recommended cases against Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish TytlerRecommended cases against HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler. It was never implementedRecommend cases against HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish TytlerFound credible evidence against Jagdish Tytler It was in 1986, after his mother got a grade IV government job that the children first went to school. But as they grew up, her earnings were not enough. He dropped out of school after class 10 to support the family. For several years, he worked as a mechanic, doing odd jobs. During this time, Rajbir lost several friends when drug addiction spread among the young children of riot survivors. Hum sab ke gwale chhin gaye the. Bahut log nahi sambhal paayein aur nashe mein pad gaye. Maine khud na jaane kitni laashein uthayi hain. (All our protectors were snatched away. Lots of young men could not deal with it and took to drugs. I have shouldered so many dead bodies). His marriage in 2005 and subsequent fatherhood made him less bitter, he says. In 2010, he opened the shop which he has been running since then. At one point, Rajbirs three-year-old son walks in, asking for a packet of crisps. Losing his father meant that Rajbir can never say no to his children. His elder daughter is 10. Though painful, he wants his children to know everything that happened to their family. What still rankles him though is the absence of accountability of those responsible. Cases against many accused including three Congress leaders Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler and HKL Bhagat have dragged on for years. Bhagat died in 2005. Just like Indira Gandhis death caused trauma to her family, the Sikh community suffered the loss of their sons. As a Sikh, I too am saddened by her killing. But if her killers could be given death penalty, then why were Congress leaders responsible for killing innocent Sikhs not punished? he asks. For the adult survivors, there are memories of husbands and fathers to live by, but Rajbir doesnt have those. For the witnesses, there are legal battles to be fought for justice, but for a child who never knew his father, closure is never really an option. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court said on Thursday that the Constitution prima facie gives primacy to the lieutenant governor in the affairs of Delhi, but observed that the L-G cannot sit on files sent for approval by an elected government. A five-judge Constitution bench is hearing a clutch of petitions by the Delhi government against a high court decision that declared the L-G, who reports to the Centre, the administrative head of the national capital. The apex court seemed to agree with this view and said that land, police, and public order are not under the purview of the Delhi government. Still, the L-G cannot stultify an executive decision by sitting over a file. He must exercise his power in a reasonable time, the bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra observed. In case of differences with the ministers, he should refer the matter to the President and must spell out the reasons, it said. The L-Gs office declined comment, saying the matter was in court. At the Aam Aadmi Partys (AAP) national council meeting on Thursday afternoon, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accused the Centre of trying to hamper the working of his government through the L-G. I cant even get my peon appointed. But we will not give up. We will continue the fight, the AAP leader said, adding the Centre had left his government powerless. Routing of the files is one of the many flashpoints between the Kejriwal government and the BJP-led Centre. Ever since the AAP came to power in 2015, the two sides have disagreed on almost everything power tariffs, transfers, corruption probes and appointments. The power struggle is rooted in Delhis unique position as a union territory functioning as the Capital, with the state government having no say in matters of police, public order and land, which are under the control of the L-G. Leading a panel of lawyers representing the Kejriwal government, senior advocate Gopal Subramanium said the Centre -- through L-G Anil Baijal -- had paralysed its executive functions. The L-G had created a situation where no bureaucrat was obeying directions of Kejriwal and his ministers, he said. Ministers have to literally fall on the feet of bureaucrats to get the work done. This is not what was intended under Article 239 (AA), the former solicitor general said. Included in the Constitution in 1991, the article gave Delhi an assembly and an elected government and its unique status. Land, police and public order isnt under you, the bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra told the Delhi governments counsel. Prima facie it appears that it [Article 239 (AA)] gives more power to lieutenant governor unlike other union territories. The L-G in Delhi has the primacy under the Constitution. Subramanium pointed out that files on teachers appointments, repair of potholes and empanelment of lawyers were awaiting L-Gs clearance even though they were well within the purview of the state government. He said an elected government was entitled to make schemes to execute its responsibilities. But can an executive function effectively if in day-to-day executive functioning the L-G says your decisions cannot be implemented unless I concur? he asked. The hearing in the case will continue on November 7. The court is yet to hear the Centres arguments. The Supreme Court had on February 15 referred to the Constitution bench the pleas filed by the AAP government against the high court verdict that held that Delhi was not a state and the LG was its administrative head. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The body of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth leader was found with his throat slit in south Kashmirs Shopian on Thursday, with police hinting at the involvement of militants. Police said the body of Gowhar Hussain Bhat, the 30-year-old BJP president of Shopian district, was found in Kiloora area. The incident comes more than two weeks after suspected militants shot dead a worker of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the same district. BJP president Amit Shah said terrorists must realise that they cannot stop the youth of the valley from choosing a better future for themselves. BJP stands firmly with the family of martyr Gowhar Ahmed in this moment of immense grief. Amit Shah (@AmitShah) November 2, 2017 BJPs Ram Madhav said this was the price we pay in our fight against terrorism, offering his condolences. 1/1Tragedy strikes at BJP. Gowhar Bhat district youth president, shopian in Kashmir killed by terrorists. Met me just 3 days ago in Srinagar Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) November 2, 2017 2/1Body found with throat slit.Price we pay in our fight against terrorism.Deep condolences.These sacrifices make our determination stronger Ram Madhav (@rammadhavbjp) November 2, 2017 A police official said the body was recovered from a field. We are trying to ascertain what happened...Such types of killings...are done by militants, he added. Senior Kashmir BJP leader Altaf Thakur said Bhat was abducted by militants from his house around 6pm in the evening. His body was later found just a kilometre away, he added. He was very active in the party. His role in organising a BJP youth convention recently in Srinagar was also highly appreciated, Thakur said. The killing is the latest strike by militants in the border state after the Centre relaunched the dialogue process. On October 16, militants had shot dead PDP worker and former sarpanch, Mohammad Ramzan Sheikh, 50. As the family of Sheikh resisted, one of the militants also died in the incident. The government picked former Intelligence Bureau chief, Dineshwar Sharma, on October 23 to talk to all stakeholders to find a solution to the 30-year-old Kashmir insurgency. Sharma is expected in Kashmir in the coming days. In the past, militants have targeted member of the Peoples Democratic Party, the BJPs senior alliance partner in the state. Restive region Shopian district in south Kashmir is strategically located en-route to the historical Mughal road and can provide free access to militants to cross over to Doda, Kishtawar and Poonch area of Jammu, said a PTI report in October. More than 37 young men have left their homes in Shopian and believed to have joined militant groups security forces killed Burhan Wani, a leader of the Hizbul Mujahideen group, in July 2016. Three militants, including Wanis successor, were killed in an overnight gunfight that also left two soldiers dead in Shopian in August 2017. Kashmir has seen a surge in street protests and gunfights between security forces and militants after Wani was killed. The former Congress-led UPA regime has been knocked by one of its own -- MP Shashi Tharoor. The former Union minister believes that the previous government and the one led by Narendra Modi have ignored the all-important sector of tourism. The MP from Thiruvananthapuram said India was not investing money in building the infrastructure needed to draw tourists. I am taken aback by the fact that both my own government and the present one seem oblivious of the fact that theres a whole series of studies that says a thousand dollars invested in tourism will employ eight times as many people as the same amount invested in manufacturing, Tharoor said at the literary festival Penguin Fever 2017. At a panel discussion on The Rise of the Elephant where the other speakers included principal economic advisor Sanjeev Sanyal and author Gurcharan Das, Tharoor asserted that investment in the tourism sector would help the elephant -- a metaphor for India -- rise. Dubai and Singapore gets more people visiting them in a day than we get in terms of foreign tourists in a year. Very clearly this has been a missed opportunity for a very long time, he said. The Congress MP also wondered what there was to celebrate in the recently out World Bank Doing Business 2018 report which showed that Indias rank on the ease of doing business index had improved from the 130th position last year to 100th out of a list of 190 countries. Modi promised to us that we will be in the first 50 positions within two years of his government and the fact is that after four years we are at number 100. When the Prime Minister of India announces a target and fails spectacularly... its worth pointing that out before we start celebrating too much on this, he noted. A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper was killed on Thursday after Pakistan violated the ceasefire across the international border in Samba area of Jammu and Kashmir. The trooper was identified as constable Tapan Mondal. A senior BSF officer said the Pakistan Rangers suddenly fired on the border forces patrol in Samba sector at about 9.30am. Due to this unprovoked fire, constable Tapan Mondal of the BSF sustained serious injury. The BSF retaliated the fire, he added. The incident happened near Manguchak post, which is manned by the 173 battalion. The 25-year-old Mondal hailed from Murshidabad district in West Bengal. He is survived by his mother. The BSF said in October that Pakistan Rangers have violated the November 2003 ceasefire 105 times along the international border in Jammu and Kashmir in the first nine months of the year. There have been nearly 12,000 ceasefire violations by Pakistan since 2002, which have resulted in the killing of 313 people, including 144 security forces personnel. The highest number of such violations took place in 2002 when 8376 incidents were reported and 2045 incidents were reported in 2003. India told Pakistan on Monday the support provided by its army to infiltrators was unacceptable and the Indian side will continue its retaliatory measures along the Line of Control (LoC) against unabated support given to terrorists seeking to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir. (With PTI inputs) Two paramilitary troopers suffered minor injuries when militants fired at a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Thursday morning in south Kashmirs Anantnag district, police said. The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) claimed responsibility for the attack in Lazibal area of Anantnag. A convoy of the 96th Battalion of the CRPF with six buses was on its way back to Mattan, when it was attacked by militants. The attack was repulsed by the personnel. Two jawans suffered minor injuries in the attack and the militants escaped, a senior police officer in Anantnag told HT. A cordon and search operation was launched in the area to nab the attackers, he added. In north Goas picturesque Parra village, morning meals have for months been missing its most important ingredient and an eternal favourite: The red-spicy coated Bangar (Mackerel). The fish prices have doubled- tripled in the last three years. A single mackerel would which we brought for 5 rupees now costs 20-25 rupees, said Sandhya Gawde, a housewife from Anjuna village in the region. It is ironical that people come to Goa for sea food while the locals cannot afford it. Gawde and other Goans are missing their staple fish from meals as supplies have crashed in recent months because of overfishing and water pollution, sending prices skyrocketing. The crisis has reached such proportions that Goas fisheries minister Vinod Paliencar on Monday promised a ban on fish exports. We are looking to ban exports. Goans do not get much fish to eat here. There is a need for a ban, said Palienkar. His statement has sparked a debate in the state that derives much of its revenues from the six million tourists who make a beeline for its scenic beaches and seafood-based cuisine. Exporters are worried over the loss of revenues and local fishermen say they back the move but demand cold storage to store the additional fish. Goa exported fish worth around Rs 600 crore last year. Such a move will have a detrimental impact on the states and countrys economy, said Maulana Ibrahim, Goa president, Seafood Exporters Association of India, and added that the 40 tonnes of fish exported in a day cannot be dumped in the local market. The fishing community blames exporters and middlemen for their woes. There is absolutely no structure at all from which the local fishermen can benefit from, said Olencio Simoes vice-chairperson, National Fishworkers Forum (NFF). But for all sections, the real worry is the fast-declining catch of fish. The state fisheries department reports a three-fold decline in Mackerel catch between 2013 and 2016. Similarly, the catch of sardines has fallen from 80,849 tonnes in 2014 to less than 7,000 tonnes in 2016. Other species of such as cuttle fish and silver belly have also shown a sharp drop in haul. Marine biologists blame overfishing and excessive use of sophisticated trawlers, especially by exporters, and marine pollution leading to a dip in the oxygen levels. Pollution levels have increased across the coastline, said Baban Ingole, a senior marine biologist at the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa. The situation of fish famine is a problem being faced by almost all the states on the coastline including Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka due to the increased levels of pollutions. In a 2010 research paper, Ingole, Goas leading marine biologist, had warned the government of a fish famine situation. He had also added that the local favourite Mackerel would be the first to leave the Goan waters of the Arabian Sea. A decline has happened and that is why we are working on getting the fish to the locals first. We will set up corporations and stalls with subsidised fish. A proposal has already been sent by me to the chief minister on this, added Paliencar. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Sixty-eight Gujarat fishermen released by Pakistan will reach Vadodara on Thursday night, four days after the country freed the men it alleged had violated its territorial waters. According to an agreement signed in May 2008, India and Pakistan share lists of nationals lodged in each others jails twice every year on January 1 and July 1. In July, Indias ministry of external affairs said it remains committed to addressing on priority all humanitarian matters with Pakistan, including those pertaining to prisoners and fishermen. In this context, we await from Pakistan confirmation of nationality of those in Indias custody who are otherwise eligible for release and repatriation. How many Indians in Pakistani jails? At least 546 Indian nationals, including nearly 500 fishermen, were languishing in Pakistani jails, according to a list Pakistan handed over to India in July. Pakistans foreign office said the Indian prisoners included 52 civilians and 494 fishermen. The foreign office said 219 Indian fishermen were released on January 6 this year. The external affairs ministry said in July: India again requested Pakistan to grant full and early consular access to the Indian nationals lodged in the custody of Pakistan, including Hamid Nehal Ansari and Kulbhushan Jadav. Apart from Jadhav and Ansari, there are 13 others lodged in Pakistan jails on charges of spying. Jadhav, a former Indian Navy officer, has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court for alleged involvement in espionage and subversive activities. His execution was stayed after India took the matter to the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Pakistan has also refused consular access to Ansari, a 27-year-old management teacher from Mumbai, who went to Pakistan in search of a woman he fell in love on Facebook. He disappeared after reaching Kohat near Peshawar. Later, during a court hearing in Pakistan, it transpired Ansari is in the custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in 2014 that generally treated as enemy, these prisoners aroused no sympathy from either the prison authorities or their fellow prisoners. Indian deaths in Pakistan jails India said last year it sought a thorough investigation into the deaths of 13 Indians who died in Pakistani jails in the previous three-and-a-half years. Kirpal was in a Pakistani jail for over 24 years on spying charges. He had allegedly crossed over to Pakistan through the Wagah border in 1992 and was arrested. He was subsequently sentenced to death in a serial bomb blasts case at Faisalabad in Pakistans Punjab province. Kirpals nephew Ashwani Kumar suspects Kirpal was assaulted in Pakistani custody. There are injury marks on the face and blood clots in the nose. We are certain that he was murdered by fellow prisoners in the jail. He was also a witness to another Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singhs murder in the jail and the Pakistan authorities feared that after Kirpals release, they will be exposed. Pakistan said Kirpal died of a heart attack. The death brought back memories of Sarabjits killing. Sarabjit was arrested in Pakistan in 1991 and sentenced to death for spying and carrying out bomb blasts. His family said he was an innocent farmer who was arrested after wandering over the border. He died after being hospitalised with a head injury in early 2013 as two fellow prisoners attacked him in jail in Lahore. Pakistan said he went into coma following injuries sustained during a scuffle. Pakistani prisoners in India Of the Pakistani nationals facing trial or undergoing sentence on the charges of spying in India, many have served their sentence but cant be deported as Pakistan refuses to accept them as its citizens. Sajeed Muneer, for instance, spent about 12 years in Indian jail for espionage before being released on June 5, 2016. Pakistan does not acknowledge him as its national and hasnt responded to Indias request to take him back. For the past 10 months, Bhopal police are taking care of him at a safe location. Masood Akhtar, another Pakistani national accused of being an ISI agent, was sentenced to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment in 2003. He was due for release but is still lodged in Ambala central jail. Jail officials say till the time they dont get communication for his deportation from the ministry of foreign affairs, he will not be released. With inputs from agencies Bodies of four members of a Dalit family, including a woman and her three children, were recovered from the septic tank of their house in Mangrol town in Junagadh district of Gujarat on Thursday, police said. Police suspect a sharp weapon could have been used in the crime. The deceased were identified as Shardaben Gohel (35), her son Rutvik (13), and two daughters Doli (12) and Neha (7), a police official said, adding that the mother used to work as a farm labourer along with her husband, who had gone to work in the morning. Bodies of Shardaben Gohel, Rutvik, Doli, and Neha were found in a septic tank of a house allotted to them by the owner of the farm, Mangrol police station sub-inspector H V Rathod said. Prima facie, the four were attacked by a sharp and solid object, the officer said. Police have registered a case of murder and further investigation is on. The Bangladeshi tag is off Kismati Alis forehead. Its now time for his elder brother Yusuf to prove he is Indian. The Alis are from Chhatia village in Uttar Pradeshs Deoria district. But after more than two years in captivity and thousands of rupees spent on a legal fight to erase his D-voter status, Kismat now wishes their father Mukhtar hadnt come to Assam in the early 1950s to be a truck driver. A D-voter in Assam is a voter whose citizenship is in doubt. Mukhtar, 40, was marked as a D-voter by the Election Commission allegedly without investigation in 2006, the year he cast his first vote. He was served a notice, but failure to turn up for a hearing saw him being declared a foreigner via an ex-parte or one-sided the state, in this case judgment. On August 12, 2015, he was sent to a detention camp in Goalpara near the Bangladesh border, about 260 km west of his No 1 Sonaghuli village on the Bhutan border, in Udalguri district. Assam, now ruled by a BJP-led coalition, is the only state with a police force dedicated to stopping illegal influx; the force was the result of an agreement signed between the Centre, state and the All Assam Students Union (AASU), which led a six-year-old movement against illegal migration, mainly from Bangladesh. Illegal migration is both a sensitive and controversial issue in Assam as many fear that large-scale migration of Bangladeshis is posing a threat to the identity of the indigenous communities. Congress balanced the fear of the indigenous groups with that of migrants fear of being driven out to rule for 15 years before the BJP worked up sentiments against the infiltrators. Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran a successful election campaign promising to drive out Bangladeshi migrants. Kismat walked to freedom on October 30 after spending two years two months and 17 days in the detention camp, one of six in Assam housing about 1,100 foreigners. Par iske liye bahot kuchh khona para (But I had to lose everything I had for this freedom), Kismat told HT from his village, about 160 km north-east of Guwahati. His brother Yusuf, who deals in scrap, sustained his family that includes an elder widowed sister. Yusuf has also been served a D-voter notice. But he feels the worst is over for him as his younger brother has served my share of captivity. Kismat, the youngest of four siblings, said they were lucky as their father, Mukhtar, regularly went to his ancestral village in UP to cast his vote before settling down in Assam permanently. His name was in the UP voters list published after the 1962 assembly election and he obtained his driving licence in Assam in 1956, Kismat said. Those papers made Kismat an Indian again, but it came at a price. He approached the Supreme Court after the Gauhati high court dismissed his petition. The apex court ordered a probe by the CBI, which established he was originally from UP. Theres nothing wrong in the system. But the problem lies in the so-called investigation by EC and Border Police that have to appease the collective conscience of the majority and the government, who believe there are millions of Bangladeshis in Assam, said Aman Wadud, the lawyer for Kismat and Ashraf. Hence if they dont find Bangladeshis, they accuse genuine Indian citizens of being Bangladeshis, grossly violating citizenship rights and making mockery of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, he added. Assam police chief Mukesh Sahay denied the charge. Our force takes care that no genuine Indian citizens are harassed, but action is taken according to inputs gathered from various sources, he added. Few perhaps know it better than Mohammed Azmal Haque, 49, a retired Indian soldier who was served a notice a few weeks ago to prove his citizenship. It was a case of mistaken identity, Assams director general of police Mukesh Sahay said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON You have come to the right place if you are fed up with liberals and the establishment GOP ruining our country, and are looking for a place ... When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation back in his home country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysias administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been banned in the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naiks presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicised Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election the ruling coalitions worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has triggered controversy with his puritan brand of Islam recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. A YouTube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him. Last week, Indias counter-terrorism agency prepared charges against Naik, saying he has been promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures. Bangladesh suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naiks preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects, said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public. Facebook Photos At his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, a female Reuters reporter asked about the investigation in India. Naik would only say: Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public. Naik did not respond to subsequent requests for comment from Reuters. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given preferential treatment. Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him, Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India related to terrorism allegations involving him, he added. Zahid and the prime minister have both posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society about 40% of Malaysias population is non-Muslim. The group said it was unaware Naik had been going to the Putrajaya mosque or where he might be in Malaysia. Officials at the Putra Mosque said Naik has been attending Friday prayers there for about a month. He has also been spotted in other mosques, hospitals and restaurants in the administrative capital in recent months, according to witnesses that Reuters spoke to. Naik has in the past denied Indias allegations. In an interview with a Kuwaiti television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi because of his popularity. Malaysias opposition Islamic Party (PAS), which has defended Naik in the past, last week urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, saying the allegations aim to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community. Nine sultans Islamic groups have stoked controversy for trying to impose their ethos in a multi-cultural country. Malaysian authorities cancelled a planned beer festival last month, citing security concerns, and for some years now international pop stars who wish to make appearances in Malaysia face restrictions over clothing and dancing. Islam is the official religion in Malaysia. The laws, however, are secular, though the country does have sharia courts for civil cases for Muslims. Malaysias nine sultans, who take turns as the mostly ceremonial monarch and are the official guardians of Islam in Malaysia, last month called for unity and religious harmony after what they described as excessive actions in the name of Islam. One of them harshly condemned a Muslim-only launderette. We are seeing this gravitation towards fundamentalism and a conservative idea of Islam because the current government doesnt want to be seen as secular anymore, said Ahmad Farouk Musa, founder of a moderate Islam think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF). To ensure Malay support, the government thinks it has to have Islamic credentials just like PAS, Farouk told Reuters. said. Islam sells. In September, Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol was detained for giving an unauthorised speech in the Malaysian capital, in which he argued that governments shouldnt police religion or morality. Zahid, also the home minister, said Akyols book Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty has been banned as it contravened norms of the society in Malaysia. Farouk, who organised the speech, said he now faces charges for abetting Akyol. The Gujarat High Court on Thursday issued a notice to BJP president Amit Shahs son, Jay Shah, on a petition filed by online news portal The Wire challenging a gag order passed by a lower court. Justice Paresh Upadhyay issued the notice, seeking a reply within two weeks. The websites lawyer, senior advocate Dushyant Dave, argued that the lower courts order prohibiting it from publishing any article related to Jay Shah was a curtailment of the Constitutional freedom of speech and expression. Its readers have the right to know, said the petition, while maintaining that there was nothing defamatory in its article about Jay Shahs firm. A local court recently issued a gag order against The Wire in response to a civil defamation suit of Rs 100 crore filed by Jay Shah against the reporters, editors and the company over an article which claimed that his companys turnover rose 16,000 times in one year after the NDA came to power. The company saw a huge rise in its turnover following Narendra Modi becoming prime minister in 2014, and its revenue rose from Rs 50,000 to over Rs 80 crore in one year, the article said. It triggered a political firestorm, with the Congress demanding inquiry into the matter and while the BJP calling it slanderous. Jay Shah has also filed a criminal defamation suit against author of the article Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddharth Varadarajan, Siddharth Bhatia and MK Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism, the non-profit company that runs The Wire. In his suit, Shah termed the article as scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libelous and consisting of several defamatory statements. In the criminal defamation suit case, the metropolitan magistrate has summoned all the respondents on November 13. Hindu extremism is alive and kicking in Tamil Nadu, actor Kamal Haasan said in a news column on Thursday, giving yet another indication of the direction his impending political journey was likely to take. In a write-up featured in Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan, Haasan alleged that Hindu outfits were increasingly turning state festivals into public displays of muscle power and violence. There is Hindu extremism in Tamil Nadu, and you cannot say there is no Hindu terror, he said. The piece was met with widespread condemnation from right-wing groups. Haasan was answering a query from Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the increasing influence of the Hindu right on Tamil Nadu politics. Responding in the positive, the actor predicted that Tamil Nadu would reject the path of extremism and once again turn into a glowing example of social justice. In the past, Hindu right-wing groups never indulged in violence. Instead, they engaged with opposing parties in a dialogue. But, as this approach proved unsuccessful, Hindu groups began using muscle power to clamp down on detractors, Haasan said, adding that Kerala has shown the country how such forms of extremism can be contained. The BJP, which is trying to expand its footprint in the state, criticised the article and dared Haasan to produce proof to back his irresponsible, malicious and false propaganda. A superstar like Kamal Haasan should speak with some degree of responsibility. What proof does he have to make such a sweeping comment? party spokesperson Narayanan Tirupati told Hindustan Times. Tirupati went on to say that Haasan should speak on corruption in the film industry, instead of making outlandish claims. He must either provide proof or apologise for his irresponsible blabbering, he said, pointing out that it was minority groups who stalled the release of his film Viswaroopam in Tamil Nadu until five scenes were censored. Indian and Kazakh armies on Thursday began a 14-day joint exercise in Himachal Pradesh to strengthen bilateral relations and exchange skills and experience. This is second joint military exercise between the two countries. The first edition of Prabal Dostyk was held in Kazakhstan in 2016. A 14-day joint training exercise Prabal Dostyk-2017 between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army commenced today with an opening ceremony at Bakloh in Himachal Pradesh, a defence spokesman said. The joint exercise is aimed at enhancing the military ties between the two countries and achieving interoperability between the two armies, he said. The training contingents comprise a platoon strength from 3rd Battalion of the 11th Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army and a similar strength of the Kazakhstan Army, the spokesman said. Senior military observers of both the countries would also witness the validation phase of the joint exercise. He said the exercise sought to acquaint the forces with each others operating procedures in the backdrop of counter- insurgency and counter-terrorism operations under the UNs mandate. The overall aim is to enhance the existing military relationship between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army and achieve synergy for joint conduct of operations as and when the requirement arises, he added. Personnel of both contingents were hopeful of a fruitful learning experience and that the training would go a long way in enhancing ties between the people of the two countries. The Indian troops participating in the joint exercise underwent extensive training in counter-terrorism and low intensity conflict operations at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School, Vairengte, he added. Indias first atomic energy venture abroad will take off on November 30 with the first pouring of concrete for the Rooppur Nuclear Plant in Bangladesh. The highpoint of Bangladeshs first nuclear energy project is Indias collaboration with Russia to help build the plant. Once the project is completed, Bangladesh will become the third Asian country after India and Pakistan to harness energy from atomic fission. Dhaka informed New Delhi about its plan to hold the ceremony on the last day of this month in Rooppur on the eastern banks of the Ganga in Pabna district, 169 km from Bangladeshs capital. New Delhi will have role in training of personnel and consultancy in the initial phase and all equipment will be provided by the Russians, officials privy to the developments said. This is in line with a civil nuclear cooperation deal India signed along with two other agreements with Bangladesh. Roppur power park will have two Water-Water Energetic Reactor (pressurised water reactor units) of 1200 MW each, built by Russian company Rosatom. Russia will also provide major financial assistance as well as the fuel for the two reactors that are expected to go critical in 2022 and 2023. But subsequently, the plan is for India and Russia to collaborate for joint ventures in equipment manufacturing in accordance with their strategic vision for strengthening cooperation in peaceful uses of atomic energy agreed upon in December 2014. The agreement provided opportunities for sourcing materials, equipment and services from Indian industry for the construction of the Russian- designed nuclear power plants in third countries. In the initial phase, India will train professionals for various aspects of the plant, provide technical cooperation, besides sharing information in the field of nuclear safety and radiation protection in consonance with three nuclear energy related agreements that India and the Bangladesh signed in April 2015, explained an official. Dhaka adopted a national Nuclear Power Action Plan and in 2005 it signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with China, an agreement did not go any further. Experts are of the view that India should ensure a major aspect of bilateral ties, which is nuclear cooperation, survives change in governments. Nuclear energy is sustainable, clean and cost-effective. But India should ensure that an important cooperation such as this continues irrespective of the change in government in countries, with whom it want to have nuclear deal. That is very important for this partnership to grow and flourish, said Prof Sachin Chaturvedi, director general of New Delhi-based think tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A week after Kerala police arrested five people, including an alleged key recruiter for the Islamic State, they have released details of five others believed to be fighting for the terror group in Syria. Police said all the suspects, aged between 25 and 32 years, belonged to north Kerala and had gone missing from their workplace in the Middle East two years ago. The information was acquired through the interrogation of Hamza Thalasserry, the Islamic State recruiter taken into custody. The missing people have been identified as Abdul Gayoom, Abdul Manaf, Muhamed Shabeer, Suhail and Saffan. While Gayoom hails from Thechikulam and Saffan from Pappinasserry, the remaining three are residents of Valapattanam in Kannur district. We have information that these youth are currently operating in trouble-torn areas of Syria. Hamza identified some of them during interrogation. However, we are yet to understand how they reached Syria, and who funded them, said Kannur deputy superintendent of police PP Sadanandan. The recent arrest of five deportees from Turkey has reaffirmed the Kerala polices suspicion that several people numbering between 100 and 150 employed in west Asian countries have joined the Islamic State. However, no mechanism exists to monitor their movements abroad. Police said 52-year-old Hamza (also known as Hamsa Taliban) allegedly enjoys close links with senior members of the Islamic State. He has reportedly confessed to having sent at least 40 youngsters to Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan and 15 of them are now dead. Hamza said his funders were based in Saudi Arabia and Oman. At least 18 lakh people from Kerala are working in various Gulf countries. Last week, police released photographs of five persons who were reportedly killed in Syria. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya on Thursday slammed West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for meeting industrialist Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai at a time when her state is in the grip of dengue. You are in Mumbai to meet Mukesh Ambani. A 21-year-old youth died in Kolkatas alleys due to lack of treatment. You dont care for him but you care for Mukesh Ambani because he is a crorepati and he will give you funds for elections. Thousands of people are dying in the state from dengue. But shameless government and shameless CM is saying its not dengue but something else... , he said here. Banerjee on Tuesday met Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and requested him to invest in her state. The chief minister had a one and half hour meeting with Ambani soon after reaching the countrys financial capital where she is scheduled to attend a business conclave on Wednesday. Banerjee later told reporters that Ambani would attend the Bengal Global Business Summit organised by her government in January 16-17 in Kolkata. Vijayvargiya also took potshots at the higher education system in the state. Calcutta University is at the 800th position among 1000 varsities. You are downgrading the level of education in the state. Its has gone down so much that now CU is giving D.Litt to Mamata. Where one time CU had given D.Litt to Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, now its Mamata. Where is Raja Bhoj, where is Gangu Teli? he mocked. With voting day a week away in Himachal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday targeted Congress as a laughing club that had come to symbolise corruption, communalism and a rotten thinking. Modi addressed two rallies in the hill state that will vote for a new 68-member assembly on November 9 and made corruption the central theme, urging people to teach a lesson to the Congress in whose rule five demons had thrived. Mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia are the five demons robbing the next generation of their future, Modi said at a well-attended rally in Rehan in Fatehpur assembly segment of Kangra district. Press the right button and kill the demon. You have a chance to say goodbye to those who looted you, Modi said, promising a magnificent, divine Himachal under the BJP rule. The BJP though has its task cut out as it battles factionalism that saw the party chief Amit Shah name Prem Kumar Dhumal the chief ministerial candidate two days ago. The party had earlier decided against naming a CM candidate. For the last many elections, the hill state has not given two successive terms to a party, with voters altering between the Congress and the BJP. Though its chief minister was out on bail in a corruption case, the Congress had the audacity to talk about zero-tolerance for corruption in its manifesto, Modi said, referring to graft charges against Virbhadra Singh. Everyday a soldier from Himachal lays down life in the service of nation in Kashmir and a Congress leader endorses greater autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, Modi said in a veiled attack on former finance minister P Chidambram. The PMs comments were seen as targeted at a sizable numbe of serving and retried soldiers in Kangra district. There is not a single leader in this laughing club who has the courage to criticise this leader, he said. Modi also took on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, saying a person whose great grandfather, grandmother and father served as prime ministers had little faith in the people, army and the government of India. Instead of talking to the government, he secretly met the Chinese envoy during a standoff between the two countries in Doklam. The BJPs Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India) was a mass awareness campaign to uproot the rotten thinking the party had come to symbolise, he said. At his rally in Nahans Dhaulakuan in Sirmaur district, Modi attacked the Congress for questioning surgical strikes. The army had in September 2016 crossed the line of control and hit terror launch pads in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. The Congress had lost touch with people. The Congress has a PhD in lying and cheating people... teach them a lesson, Modi said. He also defended his governments demonetisation decision, saying it aimed at ending corruption. The Congress has accused the government of destroying the economy by scrapping high-value notes and shoddy implementation of the goods and services tax. Reaching out to the states 2.4 million women voters, Modi said if they wanted to secure their childrens future, they should ensure at least 5% higher turnout then men. Ensure a record breaking victory to BJP and punish the Congress, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attended the silver jubilee function of the Akshardham temple of the Bochasanwasi Shri Aksharpurushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) here which has many followers in the Patidar community in Gujarat. Modi did not speak much about politics but made a reference to the agitation by the Patels for quotas, while recalling his long association with the seers of the Swaminarayan sect, apparently seeking to strike a chord with the Patidar community. This Swaminaryan sect has a very large following among the Patel community members. Patel community has traditionally been with the BJP, but a section of the community has turned against the party due to recent agitation for reservation, he said. The Congress is trying to wean away Patidar voters, who have been the bedrock of the BJPs support base in the state, apart from the upper castes and the Vaishya community, from the saffron party. Led by Hardik Patel, a sizeable section of the Patidars has been demanding reservation in government jobs and educational institutions under the OBC quota. In his address, Modi praised late Pramukh Swami Maharaj for bringing in modern management in BAPS while keeping the Indian tradition followed by seers alive. Pramukh Swami Maharaj constructed around 1200 temples in his life time. They are not just brick-and-stone structures, but centres of cultural and spiritual enlightenment. He brought modern management to the sect and used to complete all the projects on time, the prime minister said. In April this year, Modi had paid an emotional tribute to Pramukh Swami who died at the sects temple in Sarangpur in Botad district. When I was the chief minister of Gujarat, I had invited saints of the sect to give lectures to our bureaucrats on how to complete projects in time. The governments are known to delay projects and Narmada dam is a glaring example, Modi said. He was referring to the Sardar Sarovar Project on river Narmada, the foundation stone for which was laid in 1961 by then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but was competed this year. Hailing Pramukh Swami Maharaj for his out-of-the-box thinking, Modi said the seer had built a 3D theatre at the Akshardham temple in Delhi, and also a stadium at the sects shrine in the UK. A saint can think of such things and implement them is a good sign, he said. This sect has around 1100 saints which should be the highest in number for any sect after the Ramkrishna Mission, Modi said, adding that in this materialistic age, it is very difficult to attract youth to give up worldly things. The prime minister also recalled his personal encounter with the Swami. When I was chief minister, Maharaj called me one day and asked for audio recordings of my public speeches. I sent them to him. After a few days he called me again, asking me to meet him. When I met him he had prepared detailed notes after listening to each and every speech delivered by me and available in audio recordings. He then instructed me what not to speak and what to speak. He directly told me that you cannot speak certain things in your speech. This shows that he used to take interest in my progress, Modi reminisced. Modi also remembered the Swami called him six times to find out if he was safe after he had gone to Srinagar to unfurl the national flag during the Ekta Yatra led by BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi in 1992. The sect also has a large following among the backward classes in the poll-bound state. Thousands of devotees were present during the grand celebrations marking the silver jubilee of the temple today. The present head of BAPS sect Mahant Swami praised Modi, calling him a hardworking prime minister, and hoped that the work he had started for the country would get completed in time. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina will flag off a new Indo-Bangla train next week, strengthening bilateral ties and communication. The commercial service between Kolkata and Khulna, the third-largest city of Bangladesh, will roll out after Modi and Hasina flags it off through a special video conference on November 9. The second passenger service after Kolkata-Dhaka Maitri Express between the two neighbours was announced during Hasinas last Delhi visit in April. Modi, Hasina and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had launched the opening of the route, but the actual passenger service was planned for a later date. Sources in the South Block told HT that a programme has been planned to run the passenger train on November 9. The two countries are keen to expand their communications and several other aspects of their bilateral ties despite little movement on the Teesta accord due to resistance from West Bengal government. New Delhi and Dhaka also want to reopen some of the old, British-era road and rail communication links that were once vital for undivided India but were snapped after partition and the 1965 war against Pakistan. While there are two roads and rail links between Dhaka and Kolkata, tenders have been floated to connect Agartala with Akhaura, giving the landlocked northeast easier access to ports of Bangladesh. Rail link between Dhaka and Agartala will also significantly cut down travel time. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The toll in the massive explosion in a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPCs Unchahar plant here has risen to 26, a senior official said Thursday. (Highlights) Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has taken a break from his ongoing Navsarjan Yatra in poll-bound Gujarat and is visiting Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh to meet the families of victims of the explosion. Rae Bareli is the parliamentary constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who has expressed shock at the terrible tragedy. #WATCH Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi reaches Rae Bareli district hospital to meet those injured in #NTPCExplosion. pic.twitter.com/9hiEjpmkwr ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 2, 2017 While chief minister Yogi Adityanath is abroad, deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma will be visiting Rae Bareli in the afternoon. UP principal secretary (home) Arvind Kumar said the toll in the NTPC boiler blast has risen to 26. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. Contractual labourers raised slogans on Thursday against the NTPC management. They claimed they had forewarned about the impending disaster at the unit-six as the temperature near the furnace was steadily rising. The chief minister announced on Wednesday Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured. In a statement, the NTPC has said at unit number six of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3:30 Wednesday afternoon. There was an opening in corner number two from which gases and steam escaped affecting the people working around the area, the central public sector undertaking said. It added that around 80 people were rushed to the NTPC hospital, most of whom were discharged after first-aid. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said he was deeply pained by the accident at the power plant. Union power minister RK Singh, through social media posts, expressed deep anguish at the loss of lives and said that he had directed NTPC chairman and managing director Gurdeep Singh to rush to the site. The next of kin of those killed in a boiler explosion at NTPCs Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli district on Wednesday will get a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh, Union power minister RK Singh said on Thursday. The state administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident, while the Centre has also constituted a probe team headed by the NTPC executive director, amid demands for a judicial probe. A day after a massive explosion ripped a boiler pipe at NTPCs Unchahar plant, chief secretary Rajive Kumar confirmed 30 deaths. I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh, power minister Singh told reporters in Unchahar. This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the incident. The NTPC executive director will head the probe committee and submit report within 30 days, minister for energy Shrikant Sharma, who visited the site along with Singh. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased, the PMO said on Twitter.. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the UP government and sought a detailed report within six weeks. The commission observed that a high level probe was required to ascertain negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident so that such tragedies did not recur in future. The state government was directed to take utmost care to see that the families of the deceased were suitably compensated without any delay and that best treatment was provided to the injured persons. Deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, termed the incident gory and saddening. Our priority at this point in time is that proper treatment should be ensured to the injured persons. We stand by the families of those dead in their hour of grief, he said. Several political leaders visited the site, including Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who cut short his election campaigning in Gujarat. A judicial inquiry should be conducted into the incident. This is the demand of labourers. Forensic experts should also visit the site to collect samples and guilty should be punished, Gandhi said after meeting kin of those killed. Rae Bareli is the Lok Sabha constituency of Gandhis mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who is reportedly unwell and cannot make it here. He visited two private hospitals and the mortuary, apart from the accident site. Two NTPC executives were on Thursday airlifted to Delhi for treatment. About 50 workers with more than 70% burns have already been shifted to different hospitals in Lucknow. Workers protest Colleagues of the mishap victims continued to stage a protest at the NTPC gate, even though district magistrate Sanjay Khatri tried to pacify the largely contract labourers. A contract labour, Sohan Lal, realled the incident: I had a spade in my hand and was working near the blast site. Suddenly a very loud sound shook the plant, which soon got covered with a cloud of fumes. All I remember is bodies and body parts scattered all around. Another workers claimed, There was no proper channel for exit of ash and authorities forced completion of work in two years instead of four years to get promotion. (With agency inputs) US president Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday evening resolved their two countries will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism, according to a statement on their phone conversation by the White House. Trump called Modi in response to latters condolences on the Tuesday terrorist attack in Manhattan that killed eight people and injured 12. The White House said in the statement Prime Minister Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families It added: The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism. Earlier in a tweet on Wednesday, Modi had condemned the attack. Strongly condemn the terror attack in New York City. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 1, 2017 Kashmirs home-grown militant outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen, is trying to lure police personnel to fill its dwindling ranks and armoury after a string of reverses since last year, officials told HT said quoting intelligence reports. Out of three police deserters this year, at last two are known to have joined the Hizb with their official arms and ammunition, the officials added. The latest intelligence inputs were shared with security forces operating in Kashmir in October. Top police officials, however, said the issue was not a major concern yet but admitted that the trend could be reflective of a strong pro-militant sentiments among a section of Kashmiris. The society is bound to have an effect on an individual. Police have a great reputation in terms of performing their professional duties and fighting off militancy bravely and that will continue but they are not completely impervious to changes within the society, said SP Vaid, the Jammu and Kashmir director general of police. As of now, this is not a major concern but it is still a thing to be cautious about, Vaid said, adding the incidents were not a trend or phenomenon. Kashmir has seen a groundswell of civilian anger since last July when then Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was killed by security forces. The killing sparked months of violent street protests that left nearly 100 people dead, most of them in retaliation by security forces. The government responded with the muscular response, stepping up counter-insurgency operations that have led to the killing of at least 170 militants in the valley this year. Hizbul Mujahideen is one of the most affected outfits, losing several top leaders and many cadres in encounters with security forces. Officials said, killing of militants also means loss of weapons for the outfits and hence the ploy to lure police personnel with arms and ammunition. In May, constable Syed Naveed Mushtaq deserted the force with four INSAS rifles, including his own, and joined the HM. A couple of months later, one personnel of the Territorial Army also joined militancy. In October, another police constable, Ishfaq Ahmed Dar, announced on social media he has joined the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based outfit active in Kashmir. Police said they were yet to ascertain the claim of the missing constable. Intelligence officials said the HM was also trying to procure arms from Pakistan and Afghanistan through their handlers based across the border. While some in the police force termed HMs plans as wishful thinking, Ajai Sahni, executive director of South Asia Terrorism Portal and Institute for Conflict Management, said desertions and defections from security forces is neither a new development nor is it limited to Kashmir. He cited Meghalayas Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) which was formed by a former deputy superintendent of police (DSP) named Pakchara R Sangma, more popularly known as Champion Sangma. We have to understand thta police is part of the population and it is that part which has laid faith in the state. There were always be a small section of police officers with ambivalent impulses and loyalties, Sahni said. But the same can be said about other professionals like bureaucrats. In Kashmir, a lot of bureaucrats after retiring take separatist positions, Sahni added. Kashmir expert and columnist Professor Shiekh Showkat Hussain views the desertions as well conceived responses. There was a major rebellion by local police in early years of militancy but that was spontaneous. Today, the reaction is well conceived. The police officers are part of the Kashmiri society and they share the same sentiments as their neighbours, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Iddu Mian, 42, the man who allegedly pushed off his four daughters from a moving train in Sitapur on the night of October 23, has so far managed to outsmart the Uttar Pradeshs Government Railway Police, which is tracing him for ten days now. The accused has managed to dodge the police multiple times by changing his location. What is also helping Iddu Mian is his faceless identity. Nobody in the police team can identify Iddu Mian properly as only an old and faded passport size photograph of his is available. As per the description from the family members and relatives, his appearance has changed a lot in past few years, said a member of GRP team tasked to arrest him. There is a possibility the team may have missed him in Jammu where his location was tracked till October 29, he said. The only way to track Iddu Mian is by putting his mobile phone under constant electronic surveillance. But, the suspect is not using his phone often, either. It is very difficult to track a faceless person even if his location gets tracked in a particular area, the GRP officer said. Through electronic surveillance, the team had managed to locate a rented room in Jammu where Iddu Mian had lived for several years. The team reached there on October 30 but locals informed he had left the day before, the officer said. Read more: Four sisters thrown off train in UP: I paid a price for giving birth to girls, says mother Police said Iddu Mian spoke with one of his relatives after reaching Jammu on October 24 but did not share his location. We are trying to get some of his recent photographs and contacting every person in his family to get an idea about his appearance, said Ashish Kumar Verma, station officer of GRP (Lakhmipur Kheri), who is investigating the case. Iddu Mian, who worked as a labourer in Jammu in the past, had pushed off four of his five minor daughters at various locations in Sitapur from the moving Kamakhya-Katra express train while travelling with his wife, Afreena Khatoon, 36, from Bettiah in Bihar to Jammu. He reportedly threw them while the childrens mother was sleeping. The three daughters, Rabina, 12, Algun, 9, and Shamina, 4, were found injured lying along the tracks. They are undergoing treatment in hospitals at Sitapur and Lucknow. The fourth daughter, Muniya, 7, succumbed to her injuries while the fifth, Sehjadi, 2, was saved as the mother woke up in time to stop the accused. After a tussle over canal water with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh has stopped releasing water from Gandhi Sagar (GS) dam and said that they made the move as Rajasthan has been releasing less canal water to MP. Chief engineer of command area development (CAD), Rajasthan, Chauthmal Chaudhary reached Kota and met the district collector, who is holding additional charge as Kotas CAD commissioner after Madhya Pradesh stopped releasing water. Chief engineer, water resource department, Gwalior (MP), NP Kori said that after releasing water from Gandhi Sagar Dam in the first week of October, MP has been demanding that Rajasthan release around 3900 cubic feet per seconds (cusecs) from its RPS Dam. However, Rajasthan is releasing only 2300 cusecs of canal water, he added. Farmers in MP need water for Rabi crops but Rajasthan is not releasing sufficient water, so MP has stopped releasing water from Gandhi Sagar Dam from October 28, said Kori. Chambal canal water irrigates Bhind, Murena, Gwalior and Shyopur districts in MP and Kota and Baran districts in Rajasthan. Talking about releasing less canal water for MP, Jitendra Luharia, superintendent engineer, right main canal, water resource department, Kota, said that at present demand for irrigation water is at its highest in Kota as the Rabi crop season is on, so more canal water is being provided to Rajasthan than MP but Rajasthan will increase discharge of canal water to MP in a couple of days. He said that around 6200 cusecs of canal water are being released from the Kota Barrage, out of which, after seepage loss, around 3500 cusecs of water is being supplied to Rajasthan while around 2500 cusecs are being provided to MP. Talking about the issue, secretary of Rajasthan MP Inter State Control Board of irrigation department, Hemant Kumar Jain said, MP has stopped releasing water from last four days. The board is making efforts to solve the standoff between both the states. Giving insight into the distribution system of water from Chambal between MP and Rajasthan, Jain said that Chambal river water is equally shared by both the states according to an inter-state water sharing agreement. State BJP chief Ashok Parnami on Thursday said candidates for the by-elections for the assembly constituencies in Ajmer and Mandalgah will be decided after feedback from party workers and a survey by chief minister Vasundhara Raje. Parnami chaired a meeting to discuss strategy for the by-polls that was attended by party legislators, district presidents, organization in-charges, and minister in-charge ministers of the nine assembly constituencies in Ajmer. Briefing the media, Parnami said the party strategy for winning the by-polls was discussed in the meeting. The meeting for the Alwar by-elections will be held later, he said. On distribution of tickets, he said the party will consult the booth and district level workers before finalizing the name of the candidates. In the last assembly and Lok Sabha elections, tickets were decided on the basis of discussions with party workers and a survey done by chief minister Vasundhara Raje, he said. The same process is being adopted here and after feedback from workers and the survey report, we will decide on a suitable candidate. Parliamentary affairs minister Rajendra Rathore said the BJP legislature partys meet has been called on November 6 in the assembly. KJ Alphons is likely to file his nomination on November 6. We expect that he will be elected unanimously. The BJP has nominated Alphons from Rajasthan after Venkaiah Naidus elevation as vice president of India. On opposition allegations of disregarding assembly rules by home minister Gulab Chand Kataria while referring the controversial gag bill to a select committee, Rathore said the speaker under Assembly Rules 307, has residual power to suspend the business of the house. The speaker gave permission to the home minister under the rule. Rathore brushed aside Congress president Sachin Pilots criticism of CM Vasundhara Raje meeting different castes leaders in the constituencies going to polls. This is an example of social interaction, he said, adding that the Congress should put its house in order first. The Congress is divided into groups and has no unanimous leader... On BJP legislator Ghanshyam Tiwaris announcement to float a new party, Parnami said he is free to do so but then he would no longer remain a BJP MLA. Rathore said the government amended the rules for MLA local area development funds to allow legislators to use the money for improving facilities at religious places after a number of requests from them. Parnami said BJP will celebrate anniversary of demonetization on November 8. Demonetisation was a historic decision. It was a step towards ridding the country of corruption and has benefitted the nation. A middle-aged couple died while two women were injured due to electric shocks apparently triggered by a fault in a transformer in the Malarna Dungarpur police station area in Rajasthans Sawai Madhopur district, officials said Thursday. The deaths come barely two days after a transformer blast had killed 14 persons in the Shahpura town of Jaipur district, according to officials. Soon after the incident in Malarna Dungarpur, the Jaipur Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited (JVVNL) announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh the next of kin of each of the deceased. Prima facie the incident occurred due to a fault in the transformer. More details will come when a thorough investigation is conducted, Swai Madhopur Superintendent Engineer, Moolchand Chaudhary. According to the police, Hanuman Meena (55) and his wife Jagni Meena (53) were electrocuted when they were preparing butter milk using an electric appliance at their home. The bodies of the couple were recovered today morning while the incident occurred late yesterday night, they said. An official said that it appeared that due to a fault in the transformer unregulated electric supply flowed into around five houses in the area killing the couple and injuring two women in separate houses. The bodies were handed over to family members whereas the injured were undergoing treatment, SHO Malarna Dungar Brijendra Singh said. He said that the matter was registered under CrPc section 174 on the basis of a complaint filed by a member of the deceased couples family. Earlier, a transformer explosion claimed 14 lives and left several others injured in the Khatulai village of Shahpura town in Jaipur district of the state. Thor: Ragnarok Director - Taika Waititi Cast - Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Karl Urban, Anthony Hopkins Rating - 4.5/5 It is astounding, frankly, that Thor: Ragnarok got made. Its astounding that presumably thousands of people saw bits and pieces of it during the two odd years they spent in production, and didnt slip into a full-blown, shrieking panic. It is astounding that at no point did the bosses get a bout of cold feet, and hurriedly pull the plug before too many people noticed. And it is astounding, but more encouraging really, that somehow Marvel a studio notorious for the rigidity of its ways found both the will and the freedom to pay heed to what their audiences had to say, and decide that it is finally time to let their hair down. So Thor, the stoic hero weve grown to admire (but crucially, not love) over the course of a half-a-dozen movies, looked himself square in the mirror, sheared away his long locks, smeared his face with some bright war paint, performed a quick wink at his own reflection and strutted into what appears to be an 80s discotheque. There, he successfully managed to drown his sorrows in colourful cocktails, and regaled anyone within earshot with tales of adventures past. This image released by Marvel Studios shows the Hulk, from left, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Tom Hiddleston as Loki in a scene from, Thor: Ragnarok. (AP) And while these adventures have seen deliriously stratospheric highs, the lows have as lows tend to be been hellish, like an involuntary chinwag with fire demon Surtur. Its no secret that even among Marvel apologists Thor: The Dark World is the series, and the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universes weakest film. Even its director, Alan Taylor, has since come out and publicly voiced his dissatisfaction with the final film he didnt own up to it, but instead pointed the blame squarely in Marvels direction, accusing them of redressing his film beyond recognition. But with Ragnarok, not only has Marvel learnt its lesson, but in a fit of underdog ambition, theyve produced a movie that eclipses some of this iconic franchises best works. Everything from the font used in the titles, to the synth-infused rock opera score by Mark Mothersbaugh, to the gloriously retro set design and visuals clearly inspired by the art of Jack Kirby, there is no Marvel movie quite like it, and there is no Marvel superhero who has starred in such a disconnected, and seemingly spontaneous series of films. Each of his solo outings Kenneth Branaghs Shakespearean first movie, Alan Taylors blatant Game of Thrones ripoff, and the live-action cartoon that is Ragnarok feels like it is aggressively distancing itself from the others, like a brother scorned. It is my theory supported by much smarter minds that the best Marvel movies are the ones in which the directors are (mostly) left to their own devises. Which is why to this day, Iron Man 3, the two Guardians of the Galaxy films, and the first Avengers stand proudly apart from the rest - which has, unfortunately, congealed into one giant spandex mess. With a great bellow (and a cheeky nudge), Thor: Ragnarok earns its place among those movies, and maybe even a notch or two above them. This image released by Marvel Studios shows Cate Blanchett as Hela in a scene from, Thor: Ragnarok. (AP) And to express our eternal gratitude, we can all kneel at the feet of director Taika Waititi and pledge our undying allegiance to his genius. As charming as Chris Hemsworth is in the title role, a scoundrel cousin to the versions of Thor hes played before, and as venomously over-the-top Cate Blanchett is as Hela, the Goddess of Death; Taika Waititi is the star of the show. Hes the man who brought this almost cartoonish, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe vision to a series desperately in need of retooling, and hes the man who had the courage to see it through. Its heartwarming to see the darling of New Zealands indie scene take on such an immense behemoth and emerge victorious. You will notice that Ive been rather cagey about revealing too much about the plot. Theres a reason: The surprises are truly marvellous, and Waititi keeps them coming at surprising regularity. Experiencing them for the first time is, as youd expect, a special feeling. So youre better off not knowing. Chris Hemsworth, left, and the Hulk in a scene from, Thor: Ragnarok. (AP) We can, however, come to an agreement of sorts. For instance, theres no harm in knowing that Thor: Ragnarok answers all your questions about Thor and Hulks absence in Captain America: Civil War. Knowing that its a quirky cosmic road-trip comedy (emphasis on the comedy) featuring an entourage of colourful supporting characters like Tessa Thompsons Valkyrie, Mark Ruffalos The Incredible Hulk, and Tom Hiddlestons Loki because Of course it was Loki, as Neil Gaiman once wrote, Its always Loki wont affect your viewing experience in the least. And it would probably be best if you were to prepare yourself in advance for a couple of scene-stealing performances: Jeff Goldblum at his most Jeff Goldblumiest as the Grandmaster, and Taika Waititi (hes everywhere) as a mild-mannered rock monster prone to stating the obvious. But thats about as much as you need to know. I loved Thor: Ragnarok. Loved, loved, loved it. Loved every glittery moment of it, loved that big, goofy smile permanently plastered on its face, loved every dumb joke it insisted on making, and loved the unabashed sense of joy it left behind. End times might well be headed our way, and as always, we turn to the movies for escape. Thor: Ragnarok is our saviour. Because thats what a hero does. Watch the Thor: Ragnarok trailer here Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop The Bombay high court on Thursday issued contempt notices to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) chief Ajoy Mehta and also commissioners of Navi Mumbai and Kalyan-Dombivli civic bodies for failing to act against illegal Ganpati pandals in Mumbai. What annoyed the judges more than the inaction was the fact that instead of demolishing the illegal pandals, civic officials regularised them without bothering to check if they obstructed free flow of traffic on roads and movement of pedestrians along footpaths or not. Time has come to send somebody behind bars and the message will not reach the concerned unless action is taken against some municipal commissioner, said the bench of Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Anil Menon while issuing notices asking the three civic chiefs to explain why action for contempt of courts should not be taken against them. The judges were irked to note that civic officials had regularised several illegal pandals despite there being specific directions to remove them. Affidavits filed by municipal corporations revealed that in Navi Mumbai 62 such illegal pandals were regularised. The number of such pandals in Mumbai and Kalyan was 42 and 36. The bench felt that civic officials had no business regularising the illegal pandals, which were built without any permits. These pandals should have been immediately removed, said the bench. You have completely frustrated the judgment, it said referring to its own detailed order directing revenue officials to personally inspect temporary Ganpati and Navratri pandals and intimate civic bodies about pandals put up without permission. The civic bodies, in turn, have been directed to remove such pandals. The court was also upset with the fact that all sorts of excuses were being given to avoid implementation of the order, which also deals with compliance over noise pollution rules during public celebration of religious festivals. All sorts of tactics are being put to use to see that the judgment is not complied with, said the bench while expressing anguish over non-compliance. It has now posted the matter for further hearing on November 30. The central crime detection unit, Thane, arrested four people with demonetised currency worth Rs1.98 crore in Dombivli on Tuesday. The incident took place at Palava city in Manpada, Dombivli. The central crime detection unit received a tip-off that four people were coming in a car to exchange old currency notes. We formed a team and rushed to the spot and nabbed the four accused, said D Gheware from the unit. The four accused have been identified as Ajit Surve, 57, Ravindra Choudhary, 34, Padamsingsh Bisht ,27, and Prakash Patil, 34. The exchange rate for demonetised notes was 20-25% of the original amount, the officer said. We are questioning the accused to know more about their reserve of banned notes and are also keeping our networks alert about such cases.We have registered a case at Manpada police station. In a similar case, a 28-year-old man was arrested by the Thane crime branch on Tuesday for carrying Rs1.4 crore in demonetised notes. Police said they are now searching for three of his accomplices. Investigation revealed that the exchange rate for demonetised notes in the black market was 20% of the original amount. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit (MMCU), under the state mangrove cell, began their citywide post-monsoon drive to demolish encroachments on Wednesday. Between 10am and 4pm, officials destroyed 15 shanties and seized eight four-wheelers, 15 two-wheelers and 25 rickshaws from a three-hectare mangrove patch, which had been converted into a parking lot along Lagoon Road, Malwani, Malad (West). The MMCU arrested Alam Suber Kareshi, 50, who was running the parking lot illegally. He will be presented before the Borivli magistrate court on Friday. Mangroves are salt-tolerant plants, trees, shrubs or ground fern of tropical and subtropical intertidal regions of the world. Currently, Mumbai has 5,800 hectares (ha) of mangrove cover 4,000 ha on government-owned land and 1,800 ha in private areas. On October 10, HT had reported that encroachments on mangroves the size of nine Wankhede Stadiums would be cleared from November to May. The cell will raze shanties and illegal structures on a 13.5-hectare plot of mangroves in areas such as Malwani, Kannamwar Nagar in Vikhroli, Kamraj Nagar in Ghatkopar, Chitta Camp, Mankhurd, Charkop, Borivli, Gorai, Wadala and Cuffe Parade. This was the first-large scale encroachment removal drive from the citys mangroves after the monsoon, said N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. After clearing the vehicles and structures, we will begin restoration of the plot from Thursday. We will dig channels to ensure water supply. Once the land is ready, we will begin planting saplings. Mangrove cell officials said citizens can claim their seized vehicles after paying a fine for parking them illegally. Those who own four-wheelers will be fined Rs25,000, auto rickshaws Rs10,000, and two-wheelers Rs 5,000. We confiscated the vehicles, but plan to return them as citizens were unaware that this was protected forest land. However, the accused running the parking lot illegally will be prosecuted under sections of the Indian Forest Act, 1926, said Makarand Ghodke, assistant conservator of forest, MMCU. He said CCTV cameras will be installed at the site soon and the construction of a compound wall to fence off the area will begin in December. Areas with encroachments Malwani: 3 hectares (carried out on Wednesday) Kannamwar Nagar : 1 ha Kamraj Nagar : 1 ha Cheetah camp: 2 ha Mankhurd: 0.5 ha Charkop: 1 ha Borivli and Gorai : 2 ha Wadala: 2ha Cuffe Parade : 1 ha TOTAL: 13.5 ha (Source: State Mangrove Cell) Why should you care? * Mangroves are salt-tolerant plants, a common natural feature along the Mumbai coast. Apart from playing a role in stabilising coastlines, mangrove trees act as carbon sinks, capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing them in the vegetation. This process is called carbon sequestration, and helps control global warming by reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. * Mangrove ecosystem establishes and grows at the interface of soil and water bodies like sea, creeks, estuaries, bays and lagoons. They are commonly found in inter-tidal areas area between the high tide and the low tide. * In Maharashtra, mangroves cover almost 222 sq km of the coastline, covering 53 creeks and seashore. * Close to 150 hectares of mangrove forests have already been sanctioned to be lost for various development projects in Mumbai, including the proposed Navi Mumbai International airport and the civic bodys Coastal Road Project. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Get ready to dine under the stars as the civic chief on Wednesday approved the long-pending rooftop restaurant policy. Now, malls and residential hotels will be able to use their terraces for restaurants, and existing rooftop eateries, unregulated so far, will come under the civic bodys review. This permission, however, is conditional the restaurants cannot disturb the surrounding neighbourhood. The policy also sidesteps the issue of allowing such restaurants to serve liquor it only mentions serving food. Earlier, the policy allowed serving liquor on hotel terraces with permission from the excise department, stating only that the applicant will be held responsible for any untoward incident. Also, to ensure safety, the civic body has only allowed the serving of food on the terrace, not cooking. The policy was announced five years ago, but was caught in a tiff between the saffron allies. After the BJPs demand, the civic chief added a rider, approving such restaurants only in areas that dont have residential structures within a 10-metre radius of the edge of the rooftop. The BJP had demanded a 30-metre radius, which is impossible in a dense city such as Mumbai. The policy also gives residents a redressal mechanism. It states that complaints from residents can lead to suspension or cancellation of the restaurants licence. The nod to this policy is seen as the first step for the 24x7 Mumbai proposal, being pushed by Sena youth leader Aaditya Thackeray. The state Assembly has already passed an amendment to the Shops and Establishment Bill this monsoon session, allowing pubs and restaurants to stay open 24x7. However, the units will require police permissions, which will be given on an individual basis. While many rooftop restaurants already operate across the city in places such as Khar, Bandra, Kala Ghoda, Nariman Point, Bandra-Kurla Complex and Mulund, a civic official, on condition of anonymity, said: This policy will get all such restaurants under the legal ambit. They will have to pay a licence fee to the civic body and adhere to norms. There has been competition between the Sena and the BJP over the rooftop policy. While Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray has been pushing for its approval, the BJP had opposed it, calling the policy immoral and contending that it will disrupt the citys culture and peace. The BJP softened its stance only after Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis pitched for nightlife zones in Mumbai. Aaditya had met both the civic chief and Fadnavis to discuss the policy. The BMC has also restricted restaurants from canopying the area; no monsoon sheds/umbrella/ tarpaulin cover will be permitted. It is also mandatory for restaurants to keep the terrace open to the sky at all times. In addition, establishments will be allowed to only construct or increase the height of defence wall up to 1.5m using grills. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A 37-year-old mechanic allegedly stripped and sexually assaulted a six-year-old girl who had gone to his shop to get her cycle repaired at Santacruz. The girl went back home crying and alerted her family members, who beat up the accused and then handed him over to the local police. He has been booked for rape. According to the police, the incident took place around 8am on October 27. When the girl spotted the man seated inside a rickshaw, he asked her to come next to him in the rickshaw. He then stripped and sexually assaulted her. The accused then threatened to beat her up if she told anyone about the incident. The girl went home crying and informed her aunt, who alerted her mother. The aunt, along with other family members, took the girl to the spot. When the girl identified the accused, he tried to flee the spot. However, one of them caught hold of him and the group then thrashed him in public, and then handed him to the police. The accused lives alone in Mumbai, while his wife and three children live in their village in Bihar. A First Information Report (FIR) has been registered under section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for rape and under section 4 (Penetrative Sexual Assault), 8 (Sexual Assault Sexual Harassment of the Child) and 12 (Sexual Harassment of the Child) of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. The accused was produced before a Sessions court and remanded to police custody. Almost a year after it reopened, Charni Roads Royal Opera House has been awarded the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation. The building was closed to the public in 1993, and sat crumbling for years, before a restoration project was undertaken eight years ago to replicate the heritage structure. It was originally inaugurated by Britains King George V in 1911 and completed in 1916. Honorary director of the heritage site, Ashish Doshi, said they had taken up a challenge when they decided to restore the place, but pictures taken by an Australian journalist in 1914 helped them replicate the structure in toto. The award will help us strengthen the vision we have for Mumbai and achieve our goals faster. We want to make the Royal Opera House the citys cultural hub, Doshi said. While restoring the building, architect Abha Narain Lambah ensured that while history was being revived, she also had to provide facilities such as modern acoustics, sound, lighting and air conditioning to visitors. Lambah said the award is a testament of the faith that the Maharaja of Gondal, who owns the building, had in the restoration process. In a city like Mumbai, there are many heritage sites, but not enough government funding to conserve them. The owners of this place didnt want to compromise on quality and maintain the cultural heritage as well. The award is a validation of their faith, Lambah said. Maharani Kumud Kumari of Gondal thanked Lambahs team and said it was their efforts that yielded results. The Royal Family of Gondal has always been a great patron of art, culture and education. We are extremely pleased with the outcome and are equally ecstatic that UNESCO has recognised the effort, she said. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -Shiv Sena tussle has now reached the banking sector. The Mumbai District Central Cooperative Bank Limited is once again embroiled in controversy after it approved a loan worth Rs68 crore to an irrigation firm that is under the scanner in the multi-crore irrigation scam. Former Shiv Sena corporator Abhishek Ghosalkar, one of the directors of the bank, has accused Pravin Darekar, the BJP member of legislative council (MLC) who is also the chairman of the bank, of passing the proposal for clearing the loan to Srinivasa Constructions Corporation Limited despite objections. Darekar and other BJP members used their majority to approve the loan despite objections from various quarters. The firm did not fulfil several conditions, yet the loan was sanctioned and partly disbursed in record time, said Ghosalkar. He said that loan was sanctioned on October 24, and Rs5 crore was disbursed the very next day. How can we sanction a loan to a firm involved in the irrigation scam? This is very risky and we will lose this amount, he added. He said the norms violated included non-compliance conditions like no proper collateral, non-submission of documents and bank statements, and negative remark from the consultant. Avinash Joshi, spokesperson, Srinivasa Construction Corporation Limited, said, It is a legal proposal and we have submitted all the relevant documents for the loan. It is taken for our business and was scrutinised thoroughly. He said that being named in the scam does not disqualify the firm for taking a loan. The inquiry on the irrigation scam is ongoing and there is still no charge sheet in the matter till date. We have also filed a writ petition against the First Information Report (FIR) in the Nagpur High Court, he added. Ghosalkar and other Sena members like Abhijeet Adsul have written a letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), pointing to the violations in the approval. Darekar, who was previously with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), dismissed all the allegations as politically motivated. The Shiv Sena just wants to score political points through these allegations and spoil the reputation of our bank. They did not raise objections in the board meeting and are raising their voice through the media, said Darekar. He also disclaimed any negative remarks and said that the firm has offered a collateral guarantee of 125 % of the loan amount. There are periodic inspections by both RBI and NABARD, and it is our imperative to follow all the rules as specified by them, he added. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON For a long time I believed fatwas were something I read as interesting, sometimes perplexing judgments pronounced about distant happenings. But last week I discovered how they can come knocking at my door. My good friend Acharya Pramod Krishan has a passion for building a Kalki Dham for the last avataar of Lord Vishnu near Sambhal. For some inexplicable reason, the previous government, as indeed the present one of Yogi Adityanath, has refused to allow the garbh grah (sanctum sanctorum) to be established. Clearly matters of aastha are relegated to impervious office files unless there is some political advantage. A mandir without votes is after all not of much use and it is worse if it gets built and the votes go to some other camp. A few weeks ago, when I appeared before the Allahabad High Court to challenge the district administrations decision prohibiting the construction of the temple on land belonging to Acharya Pramod, the Bench directed the respondents to give a speaking order within four weeks. Six weeks have gone by with no word from the administration. The reason cited for refusing permission for a mandir is law and order. Yet that does not seem to stand in the path of granting permission to hold the Kalki Mahotsava every year in October. Like every year over the past decade, this year too permission was granted and the three day celebration took place in great style. Acharya Pramod invited me to participate in the inaugural that was attended by Jagat Guru Shankaracharya Narendra Swaraswati Maharaj, Swamy Chakrapani, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha and Shivpal Singh Yadav, former PWD Minister of UP. We all made appropriately well meaning speeches and were then invited to join the aarti for Bhagwan Ram. Acharya Pramod did politely ask me if I was fine with that. Not only did I say it was fine but indeed that I was delighted. We made sure that the aarti was filmed and put up on social media. I am told that the faithful present that evening were pleased by the multi-faith participation. There was little and insipid response on social media, as indeed there is when something good happens. But then came a TV channel statement of one obscure Mufti Tariq Kashmi from Deoband saying that a Muslim performing aarti would be excluded from Islam. Clearly some hungry reporter was looking for an easy meal and the so-called mufti offered himself as one. Then began a churning of social media: ghar wapsi, halala, na ghar ka na ghat ka, mulla ki daurh mandir tak, etc as though I had hurt Hindu sentiment even more than obscure Muslim sense. In all this, I see a clear intent to shun and discourage anything that brings Muslims and Hindus together. But what is more, there is a startling ignorance about issues such as what is aarti, the prohibition on idol worship, a fatwa and the Deoband, leave aside Indias unique national ethos. For a Muslim, it is a basic tenet that there is but one God Allah and Hazrat Mohammed is His Prophet. Someone who believes that cannot be told by a mufti or anyone else that he is not a Muslim. Participating in any ritual ( for a variety of reasons) cannot be equated with worship unless it involves allegiance to another God. The aarti is but a manner of showing respect and honour. A fatwa can be given by a high authority for interpreting Islam and is not necessarily binding on a person not seeking it. Of course it has weight when it comes from a place like Darul Uloom, Deoband; but then every mufti who lives in the city does not represent the Darul Iftah that is authorised to pronounce fatwas. Last but not the least, faith in Islam is between a person and his Allah and no mufti can part them. India is a land of harmony and the respect we traditionally show to each others faith is invaluable. It fortifies our respective faiths and does not undermine them. How feeble must a faith be if it withers by showing respect to another? Does anyone remember Lakum dinakum waliya din? To you your religion, to me mine. Co-existence is as much a part of the idea of India as Islam. Salman Khurshid is a senior advocate and former Cabinet Minister of the Ministry of External Affairs The views expressed are personal Former Bihar assembly speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary on Thursday tried to make amends for his statement questioning state governments intent on quota policy for Dalits, saying, the benefits for the marginalized classes were shrinking because of the wrong policies of the Centre. It is the Centre and not Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who is ignoring the claims of marginalized sections in ensuring proper quota for their adequate representation in the system, Choudhary said, in an apparent bid to douse the fire set of by his earlier outburst. His U-turn on the issue came a day after state JD (U) leadership took a strong note of his and party general secretary Shyam Rajaks remark that the chief minister was no longer focused on Dalit welfare and warned the BJP would continue to ill-treat him, while opposing the demand for a review of the reservation policy in the state. Party sources allege that the two leaders were feeling sidelined and had chosen the Dalit issuea cause dear to Nitish Kumarfor venting their ire on the sensitive issue to corner the leadership into taking cognizance of their presence. In an unexpected turn of events, former chief minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha-Secular chief Jitan Ram Manjhi came out in full support of Kumar, saying, he is a real benefactor of Dalits and has done everything to ensure their honour, dignity and participation in the development process. Manjhi was also scathing in his attack on the duo, who, he said, had only used Dalits for their political survival. Terming them as principal conspirators in his (Manjhis) removal from chief ministers chair (in February 2015), he said, Choudhary seems to be put off by my growing proximity with Kumar. The signs of a thaw in the bitter and acrimonious relationship between Kumar and Manjhi, were in full play when the chief minister shared dais with the HAM-S chief at his native village at Mahkar and launched various development schemes. Manjhi, on his part, acknowledged Nitishs role for his elevation to the top post. Manjhi was made CM when Nitish resigned following his JD (U)s defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha poll. Laters the two leaders fell out and a reluctant Manjhi had to resign in February 2015 after realising he did not have the numbers to win a confidence vote ordered by the Governor. Choudhary and Rajak had questioned the silence of the state government over the alleged move of the centre to tweak admission policy in technical institutions wherein Dalit and OBC students could be admitted only under their respective categories. Earlier, meritorious among them found their way in general category. As the heat mounted, Choudhary, while talking to news agency ANI, said, the question was never about Kumar as he is not responsible for increasing or decreasing the quota. He is our leader, and will be our leader. But what can he do when reservation in promotion, though a big setback for Dalits, tribals and OBC, is being scrapped? It is for the Central government to pass a bill in this regard. Choudhary said the NDA government was trying to drag public attention away from the major issues like the upliftment of the poor, rights of backward classes, malnutrition and is busy with in cow vigilantism and Ram Temple, stoking speculations that a section of the JD (U) was not comfortable with the developments. But Manjhi seemed unimpressed. Why are they raising the issue now and not when they were in power? Does that mean that post was more important than issues or is it the other way round, asked the wily politician, whose many cabinet decisions were later regularized when Kumar was back at the helm. The storm is unlikely to settle down soon as Wednesdays cabinet decision to implement quota policy in the recruitment of outsourced manpower for government work, by private agencies, has been opposed by senior BJP leader CP Thakur. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In order to recognise the real heroes defending the country, chief of army staff, General Bipin Rawat, on Thursday, announced that they will be introducing a book in CBSE schools enlisting the bravery of Indian military personnel. He was speaking at a felicitation programme organised by BN Srivastava Foundation on November 2, at Dhanwantri Auditorium, AFMC, Pune. To honour our martyrs, we have approached the ministry of human resource development (HRD) to ensure that stories of their bravery and sacrifice are taught in schools . We have come out with a book this year, which was published last month, highlighting the actions of all our highest gallantry award winners. The HRD minister has promised us that the book will become a part of the CBSE syllabus from next year, said General Rawat. To further the drive, he informed about their efforts to display sketches and prints of award winning soldiers with their bio-data and record of their achievements, at all universities and colleges throughout India. For now, we have been able to reach out to 200 colleges and universities, but our aim is to ensure that we have a gallery of these soldiers in all colleges and universities of India in one or two years, he added. At the programme, chief guest General Rawat felicitated principals and teachers from various schools in the city who had been involved in the preparation and distribution of greeting cards for soldiers of the armed forces. This year was the 10th anniversary of the drive which extends civilian support to the defence personnels by means of hand-painted greeting cards and rakhis. A total of 14 schools and two art institutes of Maharashtra were presented with awards for excellence and support to the foundation. A running trophy in memory of Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was also presented to Jayshree Venkatraman, the former principal of DAV School, Pune, for creating a record of sending 7,000 greeting cards to the armed forces. Lieutenant Colonel Ardesir Trophy was presented to Viva Institute of Applied Art Mumbai for excellence in the field of art. B N Srivastava Foundation, a registered non-profit trust motivates students of schools and arts colleges of India to organise greeting cards and rakhi-making workshops during their art classes, which are then presented to Armed Forces and Indian Satellite Organisation personnel. Lauding the initiative, General Rawat made a request to the students to send vernacular cards as well. You have been making cards in English and Hindu. I would request you to also make cards in vernacular languages because as a secular army, our troops come from all regions of the country and therefore understand and appreciate all languages spoken throughout the country, he concluded. The fate of two maternal uncles who were held guilty for rape of their 10-year-old niece will be decided by a fast track court in Chandigarh on Thursday. The court will pronounce the quantum of sentence shortly. The case shook the nation after the Supreme Court dismissed the victims abortion plea and she went on to give birth to a baby girl on August 17. The baby is up for adoption. The case that underwent several twists and turns turned the police investigation upside down when the DNA samples of the elder uncle, who was arrested first, didnt match with the baby of the victim. This led to the arrest of the younger uncle, the main accused, whose DNA sample tested positive. This trial lasted three-and-a-half months. Here are five fast-track trials that Chandigarh has seen: 1) In March 2013, a Chandigarh court held the father of three daughters guilty under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act. The evidence was recorded in an hour and the accused, Bir Bahadur, 37, of Kajehri was sentenced to five years in jail just 14 days after the incident was reported on March 2. Police filed the chargesheet for attempt to rape a minor in five days. 2) In April 2013, the court awarded three-year jail to a Colony Number 5 resident, Guddu, for kidnapping a 12-year-old girl on the pretext of marrying her. Guddu was booked in October 2012 after the victims brother informed the police. The accused took the victim to Uttar Pradesh from where she was found. The girl refused to undergo medical examination and police arrested Guddu. 3) In April 2013, fast-tracking another case of crime against a woman, an additional district and sessions judge convicted a jilted lover for stabbing a girl for turning down his marriage proposal within 10 months of the date of the incident. After four hearings, the court pronounced Sonu Chauhan, 27, of Maloya guilty of stabbing Sonia, 22, and attacking her father, Yashpal, of Butrela village in Sector 41, Chandigarh. He was booked for attempt to murder. 4) October 2012: A local court sentenced Jeet Singh, 38, to eight months in jail for attempting to kidnap a nine-year-old in Mauli Jagran. The evidence was recorded in a day, making it a rare instance. The case was registered in April 2012. 5) February 2012: Two men, Amarpal and Suresh, were convicted for kidnapping two-year-old Prince from Bapu Dham Colony for Rs 5 lakh ransom. The trial began in October 2011 and the prosecution evidence was recorded in four hearings. Pakistan-origin Hena (11), who has been behind bars along with mother Fatima Bibi and aunt Mumtaz in Amritsar central jail for the past 11 years, was released on Thursday. Mumtaz (38) and her elder sister Fatima Bibi (42) were arrested from the Samjhauta Express in May 2006 for carrying drugs and were lodged in the Amritsar Central Jail after they were given a 10-year jail sentence. Fatima was pregnant at the time of arrest and she gave birth to Hena in jail. After they served their jail term an NGO , Sarbat Da Bhala Humanity Club, Batala, paid their Rs 2 lakh fine for them, and subsequently the Centre gave its nod to release them. Police officials handed them over to Pakistan Rangers at the Attari international border. At the time of filing of this report, the trio was yet to cross over to Pakistan. The officials are fulfilling certain formalities at border, before handing over. In 2006, the two, who were going to meet their maternal uncles in Uttar Pradeshs Muzaffarnagar, were nabbed at the Attari railway station in 2006. The two were to undergo two-year extra imprisonment in case they did not pay Rs. 4 lakh fine the court imposed on them. Fatima belongs to Gujranwala, while Mumtaz, who is unmarried, is a resident of Sikandarabad. Fatima had argued in the court that the 400-gram smack seized from their compartment belonged to a fellow traveller. A Sikh pilgrim group (jatha) of 2,500 left for Pakistan to celebrate the 548th birth anniversary on November 4 of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of Sikh religion, at his birth place Nankana Sahib there, on Thursday. Pilgrims will visit Gurdwara Panja Sahib (Hassan Abdal), Gurdwara Dehra Sahib (Lahore), Gurdwara Rori Sahib (Eminabad) and Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib (Narowal), before returning on November 11. Three special trains come to Attari railway station from across the border to ferry the chosen ones. However, the pilgrims were hassled as the trains were late, with the Samjhauta Express also arriving at about the same time. Twice previously, Centre did not give clearance On two previous occasions the martyrdom anniversary of Guru Arjan Dev and the death anniversary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in June the MEA did not give its clearance for the pilgrimage amid tension on the border. This time, 3,000 pilgrims applied for special pilgrim visas through different organizations such as Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC), Bhai Mardana Yadgari Kirtan Society (Ferozpur) and Khalra Mission Committee etc. Through the SGPC, 880 people had applied for visas, but the plea of 34 was rejected due to multiple reasons, said Roop Singh, secretary of the SGPC. On previous two occasions, the MEA citing security concerns told Sikh jathas (groups of pilgrims) that they could visit Pakistan at their own risk on ordinary visa. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) that sends the biggest Sikh jatha to Pakistan on special occasions, chose not to send any pilgrim in June. Adirindhi, the Telugu version of Mersal, was postponed due to not being censored on time. On November 2, the Telugu dubbed version of Vijays Mersal received U/A certificate from the censor board. Mersal has already joined the Rs 200 crore club. The film has reportedly collected Rs $11 million overseas, and with the release of Adirindhi, the tally is likely to go up by several crore. Initially, the Vijay-starrer was expected to release on October 27, but it was postponed. The decision was taken because the BJP had taken offence to the GST scene in the film, and some fans had attacked the censor board for siding with the political party. Prasoon Joshi, the current chief of censor board had even said to ANI, I am surprised with the accusations on the CBFC for the delay. Its a usual process which is getting unfairly and unnecessarily sensationalised. The film will get its certificate by the CBFC as fairly as it got for its Tamil version. Though the filmmakers have received the certificate, the release date of the film is yet to be announced. Expectations, though, are for the film to release on November 9. The film directed by Atlee, stars Samantha Akkineni, Kajal Aggarwal and Nithya Menon in leading roles. Vadivelu and Kovai Sarala play pivotal roles in the film produced by Sri Thenandal Studios. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Amala Paul, Fahadh Faasil have been accused of evading tax by purchasing luxury cars from Puducherry. From cars to alcohol to fuel, many consumer products come cheaper when bought in a Union Territory. Amala, by buying an S class Benz priced at Rs 1.12 crore in Puducherry, paid a only Rs 1.75 lakh as tax. If she had bought the car in Kerala, she would have had to pay Rs 20 lakh. Mathrubhumi investigation, VIP Frauds has also discovered that Amala registered her car under the address of an engineering student who did not have any idea about it. About this accusation, Amala has released a press statement, in which she states, I feel I have the right to speak against these unwanted speculations and harassment caused to me and my family, despite paying taxes of more than a crore this year alone. And especially now, even when the respective authorities have found no unlawful act on my part. She continued, I am an Indian citizen and assumed that I have every right to work and own any asset through out our nation freely. But now this self proclaimed socio-reformist newspaper, who has somewhere lost the meaning of its own name Motherland and its own history, has resorted to play the divisive regionalist propaganda, by making the innocent local readers believe that their state is separate from the nation at large. She questions why she cannot own assets in any part of the country as its citizen and also slammed the accusers of trying to separate people from their country. Amala also wrote, Even when the government has succeeded in bringing the country under one unified tax regime, I humbly request them to stop dividing and isolating the sentiments of our people. I sincerely hope a day will come when our future generations, will not be Keralites, Tamilians or Punjabis or Gujaratis but be just Indians and working together for the growth of our great nation. Lets fight the real fight, the fight against poverty, corruption, illiteracy, injustice and not resort to lynching law abiding citizens for short-sighted gains. Similarly, actor Fahadh Faasil was also accused of buying his Benz E Class worth Rs 70 lakh in Puducherry to evade tax worth Rs 14 lakh. Fahadh has not shared any statement yet. Other than the two actors, Koduvally municipality councillor Karat Faisal was also served with a notice by the motor vehicle department for tax evasion. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop We had already reported that filmmaker Gautham Menon is planning to make a multi-starrer with four leading stars from southern industries. The project was supposed to take off this year but as is the case with most of his films, it was delayed for various reasons. Reportedly, the film is about the lives of four friends who meet at a wedding after many years and decide to take a fun trip. Tipped to be made in four languages, Gautham had confirmed earlier confirmed that Anushka Shetty and Tamannaah Bhatia have been signed, and that this project will be a Dil Chahta Hai meets Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara kind of film. While Gautham plans to produce in Tamil and Malayalam versions of the film, hes on the lookout for a producer who can bankroll the project in Telugu and Kannada. The latest update from Gauthams camp is that the project will finally take off next year. Malayalam actor Prithviraj is also part of the cast and he had said earlier this year in an interview to The New Indian Express that he has already been paid advance. This project requires primary stars from all the four southern industries. Hence, its taking time to materialize. Ive already been paid and Im on board, he had said. The other two actors are rumoured to be Simbu and Sai Dharam Tej, who are yet to officially sign the dotted line and come on board. Currently busy wrapping up spy thriller Dhruva Natchathiram, which features Vikram in the lead, it is rumoured that Gautham is hell bent on getting this project made next year. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Social media on Tuesday was abuzz with rumours that Geetha Arts, the popular production house behind films such as Magadheera and Ghajini, had acquired the Telugu remake rights of Vijays Mersal which is due for release soon in Telugu as Adhirindi. The reports were quickly quashed by Sri Thenandal Studios, the makers of Mersal, who confirmed that the Telugu dubbed version of the film will release soon. Although Adhirindi was supposed to release with Mersal; it was postponed after there was a delay in getting the film certified. Mersal, meanwhile, is having a golden run at the box-office after recently storming into Rs 200 crore club worldwide. The film has set new records in many markets. In Kerala, with Rs 19 crore gross and counting, the film is all set to become the biggest non-Malayalam grosser in the state. In Malaysia, having earned 17 crore gross in 12 days since its release, the film is the third biggest grosser in the country after Dilwale and Kabali. Outside India, the film has so far grossed over a whopping $11 million (Rs 71 crore) and has become the third biggest overseas grosser this year after Baahubali 2 and Raees. With Mersal, Vijay has expanded his base outside Tamil Nadu with highly impressive numbers. All eyes are on Vijays next with A.R Murugadoss as they team up for the third time after Thuppakki and Kaththi. Fans are hoping to see another blockbuster and it has to be seen if Murugadoss can deliver after the failure of Spyder. Vijay might also reunite with director Atlee, following the runaway success of Mersal. However, this project might only happen in the second half of next year. Atlee, meanwhile, is rumoured to team up with Sivakarthikeyan for a new project. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop Scrambling up the symbol of the Outback, also known as Ayers Rock, is seen by many tourists as a must-do on their visit to Australia. But they do so against the wishes of the traditional Aboriginal owners, the Anangu, to whom the site is sacred. At a meeting of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park Board, made up of traditional owners and National Park representatives, a unanimous decision was made to ban the activity. It will come into force in October 2019. This decision is for both Anangu and non-Anangu together to feel proud about; to realise, of course its the right thing to close it, board chairman Sammy Wilson said. Speaking to state broadcaster ABC after the decision, he added that the site was not a theme park. Some people in tourism and government for example might have been saying we need to keep it open but its not their law that lies in this land, he said. It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland. The rocks traditional Aboriginal owners connection to the site dates back tens of thousands of years and it has great spiritual and cultural significance to them. Wilson urged tourists to respect the ruling. If I travel to another country and there is a sacred site, an area of restricted access, I dont enter or climb it, I respect it, he said in the statement. It is the same here for Anangu. We welcome tourists here. We are not stopping tourism, just this activity. Park authorities have long looked to close the climb permanently. It is currently left up to visitors to decide whether to tackle the sandstone monolith, which soars 348 metres (1,148 feet). About 300,000 people visit each year and, while there are no official figures on how many climb, their numbers are reported to have declined significantly. Tackling Ulurus sandstone slopes is not an easy exercise and there have been numerous deaths over the years on the rock, where summer temperatures often hit 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit). Follow @htlifeandstyle for more Deep in the Amazon rainforest, its that time again -- beer oclock. Members of the tiny, remote Waiapi tribe in Brazils eastern Amazon raise calabash gourds to their painted faces and quaff the homemade brew they call caxiri. Draining the salad-bowl-sized gourd, usually in one go, they send for a refill, which is scooped from an enormous hollowed-out log resembling a canoe, only brimming with beer. The tribesmen of Manilha village, dressed in red loincloths, black-and-red body art, and sashes made of bright beads, soon get merrily drunk. The party, which kicks off after lunch and continues late into the star-filled night, was called in honour of the Waiapi river spirit, a giant anaconda-like serpent called Sucuri who demands constant appeasement. But the Waiapi need little excuse to organize drinking sessions, preferably with a sing-song. When you drink, your vision changes. You lose shame. Happiness comes and your feet start moving, says Japarupi Waiapi, a 45-year-old chief visiting from a neighbouring community. As the caxiri flows, the music picks up. Half a dozen men play bamboo flutes, others sing, and everyone takes turns to blow on a giant flute made from an embauba, or trumpet tree, about three yards (meters) long. We play the flutes so that Sucuri is happy and doesnt snatch people when they swim, Japarupi Waiapi says. The river is very important. We use it to fish, to wash, to play in. Wiping his mouth after a deep drink of caxiri, the Waiapi chief thinks of another, entirely logical reason why the river spirit deserves honouring. If there were no river, thered be no party. Behind the scenes Eriana Waiapi smiles on her way to harvest maniocs to prepare Caxiri, a craft beer made with Manioc, imbibed daily by men, women and children when is not yet sour yet, at the Waiapi indigenous reserve in Amapa state in Brazil on October 13, 2017. (AFP Photo) The Waiapi are self-sufficient, able to do without electricity, phones, cars, most clothes or even money. But while everything they need for survival can be found in the forest, daily life as hunters and subsistence farmers can be grueling. Caxiri is their one luxury. Sometimes the tribesmen start in the morning for a casual sitdown and couple pints. Sometimes its an elaborate affair, a full-blown party, with other villages invited and going on all night. These caxiri bouts were mentioned by numerous travellers in French Guiana in the 1800s. There is no doubt that getting drunk was an important Wayapi tradition, wrote anthropologist Alan Tormaid Campbell, who lived with the Waiapi in the 1970s, learned their language, and wrote a 2002 book Getting to know Waiwai. Behind the scenes, though, it takes back-breaking work to make the tradition happen. And women, who drink caxiri in lesser quantities, are responsible. Caxiri is brewed from cassava or yams, with beige or purple versions, coming in varying degrees of potency. The cassava, also used to make tapioca, is harvested from a small plantation in a patch of cleared forest outside Manilha, where, lacking tree cover, the sun pounds ferociously. Women get there by crossing a river, then hiking with tall backpacks woven from palm leaves, which they fill with tubers, before returning under the staggering weight. Then in the village, the laborious process of grating, boiling, straining, wringing, baking, fermenting and otherwise transforming the cassava begins. The resulting beverage looks closer to soup than beer. Eriana Waiampi, 48, who like the other women on the expedition was topless and carried a machete, shrugged off the idea that this might not be worth the trouble. We are women. We are warriors to carry cassava, she said. No beer, no future Within hours, the revellers at Manilhas party had drunk their way through the entire canoe of beer. Fortunately, a second canoe load awaited at the other end of the village. The increasingly enthusiastic musicians, huddling together and holding on to each other, played the same two notes over and over in a tireless, hypnotic rhythm. Dancing in a bobbing motion, they shuffled through the village like mad pipers. First they visited Manilhas elderly chief who reclined in his hammock, singing along. Next, they visited the women, who drank in a rather less frenzied way. Waiapi men drinking Caxiri, a craft beer made with Manioc, imbibed daily by men, women and children when is not yet sour yet, at the indigenous reserve Waiapi on the Manilha village in Amapa state in Brazil on October 14, 2017. (AFP Photo) At sundown, darkness swallowed the entire village, leaving only scattered points of firelight. But the party went on. The musicians kept dancing and blowing, while men and women laughed and told stories around a central fire. One rather tipsy tribesman, covered in traditional Waiapi ink designs, reenacted a hunting scene, extending his arms to demonstrate the size of some recent prize. Akaupotye Waiapi, 43 and eldest son of the chief, looked content. Caxiri isnt just a way to get drunk, he said. Its a way to bind Waiapi to their ancient ways and to keep the young from straying to the temptations of Brazilian towns. If we dont keep our culture through caxiri, the young will go there to drink non-Indian drinks, he said. Lose caxiri and we lose our culture. As the stars thickened over the rainforest and the night frogs chorused, guests began to drift off to their hammocks. A few risked waking up to headaches, but no worry, Japarupi Waiapi said. The tribe has its own cure, a concoction of cassava, a cassava extract called tucupi and pepper. Drink that, he said, and no hangover. A summer trip to the UK as a teenager and visits to Shakespeares birthplace convinced Osama bin Laden that the west was decadent, the late leader of al-Qaida and architect of the 9/11 attacks wrote in his personal journal shortly before he was killed by US special forces in 2011. The journal is among 470,000 documents collected from the house where Bin Laden died that were released by the CIA on Wednesday . The agency said it had released the treasure trove in the interest of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qaida and [bin Laden]. Though there have been previous reports that Bin Laden travelled to the west, this is the first confirmation. An entry in the nondescript school notebook describes how Bin Laden first travelled to the west for an unspecified treatment when he was in sixth grade and 13 years old. The following year the teenager, the wealthy son of a billionaire Saudi construction tycoon, spent 10 weeks in Britain studying. Bin Laden gives no further details, but he has previously been reported to have taken an English language course at Oxford . In the journal, Bin Laden briefly describes visiting the home of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon but says he was not impressed by British society and culture during his time in the UK. I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didnt allow me to form a complete picture of life there, he wrote. We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeares house. I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society. The journal was bought in a well-known bookshop in Pakistan a few hours drive from the garrison town of Abbottabad, where Bin Laden spent five years with his family before his death. The journal appears to be partially written by Bin Ladens son, Khalid, who was also killed in the Navy Seal raid, and sometimes takes the form of a question and answer session between father and son. The journal entries are at times apocalyptic, describing the two mens dreams and visions, including a scenario in which Muslim countries unite after the revolutions and peace is established with the west a prelude to the end times in some branches of Islamic theology. At other times, Bin Laden appears more practical, discussing recommendations for al-Qaidas messaging in the aftermath of the revolutions to better capitalize on rising Islamist sentiments and to take advantage of the wave of popular unrest. Bin Ladens mention of his feelings towards the west after his time in Britain will interest experts. Most accounts of his life say he was radicalised as a student and later when he became engaged as a volunteer organiser for Arab foreign fighters taking part in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan from around 1981. The US government has released hundreds of documents over recent years, though this is the largest such release. The US-based website, The Long War Journal, received some material in advance and reported that the documents give new details of al-Qaidas relationship with Iran . Ties with Iran One 19-page document contains a senior militants assessment of the groups relationship with Iran, which describes an offer by Iran to provide some unidentified Saudi brothers with money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. It is not known if the offer was accepted if it was made at all and the inclusion of the document will raise suspicion that one motive for the release of the new hoard was to place material that casts Iran in a bad light in the public domain. Mike Pompeo, the Trump-appointed director of the CIA, has a reputation for an aggressively hawkish stance on Iran. It has been known for some time that scores of senior al-Qaida officials and their families were held in Iran after fleeing there in the aftermath of 2011. However, the relationship between the detained militants and their captors was tense, and no solid evidence of active cooperation on terrorist operations has yet emerged. Among the material released by the CIA was some which suggested Bin Ladens time in the UK may have had a deeper influence than he may have admitted. Loaded on one computer was video of the Rowan Atkinson comedy Mr Bean dubbed in Pashtu, the local language in western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, and episodes of the animated programme Wallace and Gromit. There were also more than 30 videos on crocheting. The head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the British parliament urged the British government on Thursday to institute direct rule of Northern Ireland in the very near future, saying otherwise its economy would be left to drift. The British government took a step towards imposing direct rule for the first time in a decade on Wednesday by announcing preparations to set Northern Irelands budget from London after talks on forming a regional executive collapsed. While Prime Minister Theresa May is reluctant to impose full direct rule for fear of antagonising the Irish government and Northern Irelands large Irish nationalist minority, her government is dependent on the DUPs 10 votes in parliament to remain in power. And many fear a move to direct rule for the first time since 2007 would further disturb a political balance between pro-British unionists and Irish nationalists, already upset by Britains vote to leave the European Union. A move to direct rule would sideline the DUPs main rival Sinn Fein, which seeks a united Ireland with no British governing role in the north. The party does not take up its seats in the London parliament. People look at a mural showing solidarity with the Spanish region of Catalonia (L) and a Republican mural (R) on a wall in Belfast, northern Ireland, on October 25, 2017. (AFP) At some point in the very near future we will need to have ministers, and if they are not Northern Ireland executive ministers ... then it would have to be ministers from here, Nigel Dodds told the British parliament. And they will have to take decisions because we cannot allow the economy to drift and we cannot allow Northern Ireland to drift, he said. The DUP, he said, had been urging the British government to impose a budget. Direct rule would likely create a conflict with Dublin, which says Northern Irelands Good Friday peace deal gives it the right to a role in the running of Northern Ireland in the event of direct rule. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told May in a phone call overnight there could be no return to direct rule as it existed prior to the Good Friday Agreement, his office said. Mays office did not mention the demand in a statement about the call. Irish Nationalists Sinn Fein and the pro-British DUP have shared power in Northern Ireland for a decade under the terms of the 1998 peace agreement, which ended three decades of violence that killed 3,600 people. But Sinn Fein pulled out in January, complaining it was not being treated as an equal partner, and on Wednesday blamed the DUP for the collapse of talks on forming a new executive. Dodds said Sinn Fein was to blame for introducing a series of unacceptable preconditions that were not included in a deal between the parties last year. British Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to appoint a new defence minister on Thursday after her loyal ally Michael Fallon quit in a sexual harassment scandal that has prompted calls for an end to the locker room culture in parliament. Just hours after Fallon resigned over past behaviour he said had fallen below the high standards we require of the armed forces, May appointed Gavin Williamson, 41, a rising star in her ruling Conservative Party. Weakened after losing her partys parliamentary majority in a June election, May had to move swiftly to plug the hole in her divided cabinet. Fallons departure was another blow for her as she has struggled to hold the cabinet together since the vote, which many Conservative Party members blamed on her. The growing harassment scandal could damage May if further allegations against members of her Conservative Party, including against her deputy Damian Green, force more resignations. The Queen has been pleased to approve the appointment of Rt Hon Gavin Williamson as Secretary of State for Defence, Mays spokesman said. Williamson has risen quickly up the ranks of the Conservatives and is loyal to May after she selected him last year as the partys chief whip in parliament - a role in which he is tasked with maintaining voting discipline on legislation. But he has no former experience of the armed forces, according to his online profile, and Howard Wheeldon, a defence analyst, said he was bound to worry about the depth of experience in such a vital area as defence. As chief whip, Williamson was renowned for his toughness and for introducing lawmakers to his pet tarantula called Cronus. He told Conservative members at the partys annual conference earlier this year: I dont very much believe in the stick, but its amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot. SCANDAL Williamson said nothing as he arrived at the Ministry of Defence on Thursday, taking on the role at a difficult time for May, who since Junes election is dependent on the support of a small Northern Irish party for a majority in parliament. Fallons resignation was yet another blow. Described by Conservative sources as a political Rottweiler, Fallon was a trusted minister able to robustly face down criticism of the government. But sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have prompted hundreds of thousands of women and men to share stories about improper behaviour and Britains parliament has been no exception. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, said it was time to break with a culture in politics where powerful people use positions of power to demand things from others. The dam has broken on this now, and these male-dominated professions where the boys-own locker room culture has prevailed and its all been a bit of a laugh, have got to stop, she told the BBC. Allegations of sexual abuse have ranged from a charge of rape by an activist in the opposition Labour Party by a senior party member, to unconfirmed details of serial sex pests on a list reportedly drafted by aides and researchers in parliament. May has ordered investigations into a report that one of her ministers asked a female secretary to buy sex toys and an allegation that her deputy, Green, made an inappropriate sexual advance on a young woman - something he denies. The prime minister, who has long championed the careers of female lawmakers, said on Wednesday that action would be taken when there were allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct. China on Thursday said it stood for normal ties between India and Bhutan, a day after President Ram Nath Kovind praised visiting the Bhutanese king in New Delhi for the kingdoms support during the Doklam standoff. In the context of the standoff, Chinas foreign ministry reminded India to follow historical conventions and maintain peace along the border. Reacting to the visit of Bhutan king Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and his family to India, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said: We are committed to developing good neighbourly relations with these two countries and we would like to see India and Bhutan developing normal relations. China and Bhutan have no diplomatic ties and are locked in territorial and border disputes in areas close to Indias borders. The Bhutanese royal couple had called on Kovind on Wednesday, when the Indian president appreciated the kings personal involvement and Bhutans support in addressing the recent India-China border row in Doklam area that lasted for more than 70 days. The Doklam (Donglang) region is under Chinas control but claimed by Bhutan, and Indian troops intervened when Chinese forces began constructing a road in the area. Kovind told the Bhutanese king that the manner in which both countries stood together to address the situation in Doklam was clear testimony to the bilateral friendship. During her response to the Bhutanese kings visit to India, Hua brought in the Doklam standoff and reiterated Beijings stand, which is that Indian troops had trespassed into Chinese territory. On the incident of the Indian troops trespassing the border, we have stated our position many times before. We believe that China and India properly settled this issue through diplomatic means consistent with our common interests, she said. We hope India can follow historical conventions and work with China to ensure peace and tranquillity of the border area. Canadian provinces have sent several delegations to India in recent times to attract business and investment, and Indian states have now started reciprocating, with a series of visits to Canada to market themselves. The latest in these delegations from India was from Assam, which was in Toronto, the commercial capital of Canada, to promote the northeastern state ahead of its Advantage Assam Global Investors Summit in February. That individual states are getting marketing savvy instead of being dependent on the central government, was underscored by the reality that this is perhaps the first time Assam has stepped out for an international roadshow, one that commenced in Canada in the last days of October and continued on to the US and the United Kingdom. What we have, if I dont speak, how do you know? We have to speak, said Chandra Mohan Patowary, Assams minister for industries and commerce, who led the six-member delegation. The whole aim of this roadshow is to give one exposure to Assam, that Assam is a place of potential, he said, while selling the state as a gateway to Southeast Asia. Other states that have attempted to woo Canadian investors in recent times include Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal and Gujarat, which has been a pioneer in this area. It is good to see exchanges of provincial level delegations to enhance economic ties, to promote trade and attract investment, Indias consul general in Toronto, Dinesh Bhatia, said. Among the groups that the Assam delegation interacted with was the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC). You need to go out to get the investors. Same thing from here, all the provinces are going outside, Kanwar Dhanjal, the chambers president, pointed out, referring to the multiple Canadian provinces, including Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, that have sent delegations within the last couple of years to attract Indian investors. ICCCs vice president Devika Penekelapati is convinced that states need to hard sell themselves, as she said: They are the better advocates to pitch the incentives and also the opportunities in the state. Union delegations can only highlight the major industries and not the micro-industries, where the niche market is. A localised delegation at the state-level would highlight those untapped opportunities. While the US has always been a favoured destination, states are gradually realising Canada also has its advantages. Assam, for instance, is already exploring the possibility of a partnership with the Canadian province of Alberta. ICCC will send a trade mission to India in January and visit half a dozen states in an effort to further strengthen this bi-directional momentum. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the Manhattan truck attack, has appeared in court in a wheelchair to face federal terror charges, including providing material support to the Islamic State and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. After mowing down eight people in a bicycle lane with a pickup truck, the 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan left handwritten notes in English and Arabic near his vehicle pledging allegiance to the terror network headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Here are things we know about Saipov from the complaint filed against him by the US department of justice in a court in New York: 1. Saipov began planning the attack about one year ago after being inspired by IS videos he had watched on his mobile phone. In particular, he was motivated by a video that featured al-Baghdadi questioning what Muslims in the United States and elsewhere were doing to respond to the killings of Muslims in Iraq. This video was apparently released by IS exactly a year ago. 2. The justice department complaint states that the attack carried out by Saipov was exactly like the acts of violence the IS has counselled followers to commit. The complaint also referred to the instructions given by IS in the November 2016 issue of its magazine Rumiyah for truck attacks. 3. The IS magazine had instructed potential attackers to obtain a secondary weapon like a gun or a knife to maximise the kill count. Though Saipov was found carrying a pellet gun and a paintball gun, he also had a bag with three knives, which he was unable to reach while exiting the truck, and a stun gun. 4. Saipov hired a truck on October 22 so that he could practice for the attack, especially in making turns with the vehicle. The complaint said he chose Halloween to carry out the attack because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the holiday. 5. Saipov wanted to display IS flags in the front and back of the truck for the attack, but decided against it because he did not want to draw attention to himself. 6. While being questioned by law enforcement officials after he was shot and captured, Saipov requested to display ISISs flag in his hospital room and stated that he felt good about what he had done. 7. One of Saipovs mobile phone contained about 90 IS propaganda videos, including videos of the execution of prisoners and one on how to make an IED, and 3,800 propaganda images. North Korea may be preparing for another missile test, South Koreas spy agency said on Thursday according to reports, just days before US President Donald Trump visits the divided peninsula. There is a possibility that North Korea will launch a missile as active movements of vehicles have been detected at a missile research facility in Pyongyang, the National Intelligence Service told a closed-door parliamentary audit, the Yonhap news agency reported. In July Pyongyang launched two ICBMs apparently capable of reaching the US mainland - described by leader Kim Jong-Un as a gift to American bastards - and followed up with two missiles that passed over Japan and its sixth nuclear test, sending tensions rocketing. Trump and Kim have engaged in a heated war of words in recent months, trading threats and personal insults and heightening global alarm. The US president will arrive in Seoul on Tuesday as part of his Asia tour which also includes Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, with all eyes on his message to Kim and the North. Amid a flurry of diplomatic visitors to the region, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday that Pyongyangs weapons ambitions have become a global threat, with the US mainland and Europe coming within reach of its missiles. I think we all understand that a war will be catastrophic and extremely dangerous not only for people living in this region but for global peace and security, Stoltenberg told reporters in Seoul. But the 29-nation defence alliance was always ready to respond and to counter any attack from any direction, he added. Thats the way NATO has handled ballistic threats for decades. It was important not to dramatise the tensions and create a more challenging situation, he said. Police in Colorado on Thursday captured a man who they had said calmly walked into a suburban Denver Walmart and fatally shot three people before driving away. The Thornton Police Department said on Twitter that Scott Ostrem, 47, had been taken into custody. It did not immediately give details. UPDATE: Walmart homicide suspect Scott Ostrem has been taken into custody pic.twitter.com/q9EPq5f4ZH Thornton Police Dept (@ThorntonPolice) November 2, 2017 Authorities had earlier released a surveillance camera photograph of a middle-aged white man wearing a black jacket and blue jeans. They also published a photo of the red four-door hatchback he is believed to have fled in. Ostrem nonchalantly entered the store in Thornton, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of downtown Denver, and opened fire on shoppers and employees a little after 6 p.m. time, police said, citing witness accounts. Two men were killed in the shooting and a woman who was shot was taken to a hospital where she died, according to police. Canadas opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), now led by Jagmeet Singh, has asked the government to recognise the 1984 riots in India following the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi as genocide. Making a statement in the House of Commons to mark the 33rd anniversary of the outbreak of violence in Delhi and other parts of India, NDPs parliamentary leader Guy Caron, said: Both the Delhi Assembly and the Ontario Legislature have recognised these atrocities as genocide. I stand in this place in hopes that someday soon, the House of Commons and this government will do the same. Since he became head of the NDP, one of Canadas three main political parties, the 38-year-old Singh has courted controversy in India and Canada by refusing to speak out against the veneration of Talwinder Singh Parmar, the mastermind of the 1985 terrorist bombing of Air India flight 182 as a martyr by some Canadian gurdwaras. Caron, an MP from Quebec, was among the major rivals to Singh for the leadership of the NDP and was appointed to head the partys parliamentary caucus by Singh after his victory a month ago. Singh tweeted his support for Carons statement: Today our Parl leader @GuyCaronNPDjoined the Delhi Assembly and ON Leg in recognizing the #SikhGenocide & called on the Govt to do the same. Today our Parl Leader @GuyCaronNPD joined the Delhi Assembly and ON Leg in recognizing the #SikhGenocide & called on the Govt to do the same pic.twitter.com/iiC4v3pRUZ Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) November 1, 2017 Caron started out by quoting a comment attributed to Indias home minister Rajnath Singh: It was not riot, it was genocide. Rajnath Singh had used the Hindi term nar sanhar, which does not necessarily translate directly to genocide. Caron added, Today and for the next three days, Sikh Canadians and human rights advocates will mark the 33rd anniversary of the 1984 Sikh Genocide. Sikh men were burned alive. Women were subject to unthinkable sexual violence and children were murdered in gruesome fashion. I am reminded that thousands of Canadians live with this pain as survivors and bearers of intergenerational trauma. The NDPs statement was welcomed by hardline groups, including the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) Canada (SADA Canada). Its Canada East unit president Sukhminder Singh Hansra said they echo what Caron said in the House and demanded the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recognise the massacre of Sikhs on Nov 1, 1984 as a genocide. The group also held a candlelight vigil in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, to mark the anniversary and among those in attendance was the towns mayor Linda Jeffrey. Hansra said he hoped that provinces beyond Ontario would pass resolutions to describe the 1984 riots as genocide, adding his group is seeking similar motions in cities such as Brampton to put pressure on the federal government to formally ascribe that term to those tragic events. During his campaign for leadership of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh had raised this issue, particularly on the anniversary of Operation Bluestar when he stated: It was on this the day that the government of India initiated a genocidal campaign against the Sikh minority beginning with a military invasion of the Golden Temple. The Indian military killed thousands of innocent people in just one day. This genocide continued for the next 20 years. Across Punjab, Sikh youth disappeared, torture was rampant, and Sikhs endured relentless state-sanctioned terrorism, he had said in a statement issued on June 6. With Singh, who was denied a visa by India in 2013, as the national leader of the party, this 1984 riots now appear to be at the forefront of the NDPs agenda. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Libyan armed group holding the brother of the assailant in the deadly concert bombing in Manchester turned down Thursday a British police request for his extradition. No. Hashem Abedi will not be extradited, Ahmed Ben Salem, spokesman for the Deterrence Force which acts as the police of the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, told AFP. On Wednesday, British police investigating the May bombing that killed 22 people had requested the extradition of the attackers brother from Libya. Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, in Britains worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for Hashem Abedi. But Ben Salem said Libya had no extradition accord with Britain, and that the Abadi affair is with the attorney generals office which is in charge of the investigation. According to the Deterrence Force, Hashem Abadi has admitted to having been in Britain at the time of preparations for the attack and that he was fully aware of the details of the terrorist operation. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday the Uzbek immigrant accused in a New York terror attack that killed eight people was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room, calling for him to be put to death. In Tuesdays attack, Sayfullo Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along a bike path near the World Trade Center, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot in the abdomen after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns, one in each hand, and yelling God is great! in Arabic, they said. Trump has said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention centre in Cuba that has been used to indefinitely hold suspected foreign jihadis, a practice that has drawn repeated criticism from rights groups. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Investigators said Wednesday that the man who mowed down cyclists and pedestrians in New York the day before had confessed to acting in the name of IS and said that he felt good about the killings. Prosecutors said the 29-year-old suspect began planning the attack a year ago. They said Saipov had 90 videos and 3,800 photos on one of his two cellphones, many of them ISIS-related pieces of propaganda, including images of prisoners being beheaded, shot or run over by a tank. Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, that included Islamic religious references and said, Islamic Supplication. It will endure, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. It will endure commonly refers to ISIS, Tyree said. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by ISIS videos, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, Tyree said. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals, the agent said. Saipov even rented a truck on October 22 to practice making turns, and he initially hoped to get from the bike path across lower Manhattan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, Tyree said. He even considered displaying ISIS flags on the truck during the attack but decided it would draw too much attention, authorities said. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out. Defence secretary Michael Fallon resigned on Wednesday night as allegations of sexual misconduct continued to swirl in the United Kingdoms corridors of power, threatening political careers and forcing Prime Minister Theresa May to initiate action against those mixing power-politics with sex. A raft of allegations has been made by interns working for MPs and other employees in the palaces of Westminster. Tabloids have gone to town calling it Pestminster, while a spreadsheet with a sleaze list containing the names of 40 MPs and ministers is said to be doing the rounds. Conservative Party chief whip Gavin Williamson was named as the new defence secretary on Thursday. Fallon, who visited India in April, apologised earlier this week for an incident 15 years ago in which he made unwanted advances on journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer. He accepted on Wednesday that his conduct may have fallen short of the standards expected of the British military and resigned. He told BBC that what might have been acceptable 15-10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now. Fallon wrote in his resignation letter to May: A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent. I have reflected on my position, and I am now resigning as defence secretary. Responding to Fallons letter, May said: I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others. Among the leading lights facing the charges is Damian Green, a close ally of May considered the deputy prime minister in his role as first secretary of state. He has strenuously denied making unwanted sexual advances towards Kate Maltby, an academic involved in Conservative politics. The latest account to emerge was that of James Greenhalgh, a former parliamentary intern who told the BBC that he was approached outside one of the bars in the House of Commons by a former MP in 2011. Greenhalgh, without naming the MP, said: He literally put his arm around me, very close, stinking of alcohol, I remember, and pointing out different things on the canvas (painting). I was interested to hear what he had to say, but I was thinking, This is very, this is very touchy-feely here whats he doing? And suddenly his arm slipped down towards my buttocks, and he had a good feel-around there, and then went a bit further in between my legs. It wasnt very pleasant at all. I just didnt know what to do, I didnt know what to do at all. Similar allegations have also surfaced in the Labour party. May has invited other party leaders to a meeting next week to discuss how to improve the system for dealing with sexual allegations. Dawn Butler, shadow women and equalities secretary, blamed the overwhelmingly male makeup of parliament for the prevalence of sexual misconduct. What is it about this place, with 650 MPs, 500-odd of them being male, and a lot of them having gone to private school and with a lot of people thinking that they are Gods gift in more ways than one? I dont know, she said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The British judge dealing with Indias request to extradite controversial businessman Vijay Mallya has rejected the extradition of another individual and his wife wanted for bank fraud, and rapped the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for its handling of the case. The persons sought were Jatinder Kumar Angurala and his wife Asha Rani Angurala, for alleged fraud of about 24,000 between 1990 and 1993. At the time, Angurala was manager of a branch of the Bank of India in Jalandhar. Their extradition proceedings began in April 2015. Emma Arbuthnot, chief magistrate in the Westminster magistrates court, who is also hearing Mallyas case, turned down the extradition request by reason of passage of time on October 12 and expressed surprise at the CBIs actions in the case, according to the detailed judgement available now. As manager of the bank's Malri branch in Nakodar, Jalandhar, Angurala was accused of cheating the bank with his wife and others, fraudulently sanctioning and paying out loans to himself, his wife and co-conspirators between October 1990 and April 1993. Angurala later admitted the irregularities and promised to repay the bank. He deposited money in several accounts but did not repay the full amount. He was suspended in April 1993 and travelled to Britain in August the same year. He later took British citizenship. The judgement called Angurala a man of good character and noted that he sent British postal orders to the bank in Jalandhar to repay some staff loans. It recalled that an Indian judge had noted in 2001 that even when his postal orders were received, the bank or the CBI made no effort to nab him. During the two or three years leading up to 2001, the trial of the co-defendants is taking place (in India). They are blaming Mr Angurala in particular for the fraud and the focus inevitably must have been on his whereabouts. The CBI must have been all too aware at that point, that he was not before the court as the others were. Noting that the Indian judge had criticised the CBI and the bank for not trying to nab Angurala even after he sent the postal orders, Arbuthnot said: I do not accept the CBI would not have known about this criticism, in 2001 it was in possession of the RPs (requested persons) address and this was the time that this court would have expected them to obtain warrants of arrest from the CBI court which would have led to a request. In my view there was no valid reason for this not being done until 2014. Although the CBI received more information on the RPs addressesin my view it had sufficient information before then for an attempt to be made to arrest the RPs in London. The judge noted that Angurala had used his name throughout, sent his London addresses to the bank, and the CBI knew the bank had his addresses. (After) the nudge from the Indian judge it is really surprising that they did not follow this up...In this case, the CBI, if they had asked the Bank of India for the RPs address, they would have been able to instigate a search in this country, they should have started with a search in London, which would have led to the identification and detention of Mr Angurala. I find I am not sure he is a fugitive and his extradition is barred by reason of passage of time as I find it would be unjust and oppressive to him by reason of the quarter century that has passed since the alleged offence, Arbuthnot added. The next case management hearing in Mallyas extradition case before Arbuthnot is on November 20, with the full extradition trial set to begin on December 4. The Indian side is said to have taken more care in terms of paperwork in Mallyas case, since most previous extradition cases did not succeed due to patchy preparation and the quality of documents. There are currently seven Indian extradition requests pending with Britain: Rajesh Kapoor, Tiger Hanif, Atul Singh, Raj Kumar Patel, Sanjeev Kumar Chawla, Shaik Sadiq, and Mallya. There has been only one successful extradition to India since a treaty was signed between India and Britain in 1992: Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in a case related to the 2002 Gujarat riots who was extradited in October 2016. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A far-right activist, Laura Loomer, has been banned from ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft after her anti-Muslim tweets following the New York City attack that killed eight people. Loomer released numerous posts on Twitter about Muslims on Tuesday and Wednesday, accusing passersby in hijabs of enjoying the attack in New York and complaining that taxi and ride-sharing companies hired extremists. Someone needs to create a non-Islamic form of @uber or @lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver, tweeted Loomer, who briefly worked for the right-wing news site Rebel Media. Read: Trump says New York terror attack suspect happy as he asked for ISIS flag in hospital, should get death Loomer also posted a photo of women in hijabs, adding: Muslims are out in full force at the scene of the NYC #ISIS attack today rubbing it in everyones face. Aimlessly walking around in hijabs. Muslims are out in full force at the scene of the NYC #ISIS attack today rubbing it in everyone's face. Aimlessly walking around in hijabs. pic.twitter.com/UV0DOikmJy Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 1, 2017 She also posted a video of what she said was a New York Times reporter who was Muslim. Muslim @nytimes reporter dressed in a hijab laughs and refuses to disavow Islamic terror when asked by Laura Loomer. I work for NY Times. Im late to the NYPD press conference because I couldnt find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min! she wrote in another Twitter post, referring to a Wednesday news conference about the attack in New York. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant suspected of plowing a truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path, had been a driver for Uber, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Saipov was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting on behalf of the militant group Islamic State. Loomers comments about Muslims and Muslim drivers caused an uproar on the social media service. By Wednesday evening, Uber, which Loomer had previously criticized as anti-Semitic, said she would not be able to use the service. Ms. Loomer was banned for violating our Community Guidelines, Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman said in an email. Her Lyft account was also deactivated, said Scott Coriell, a spokesman for that ride-sharing service. Loomer was quick to respond, again using the Twitter platform to say that Uber was trying to ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns. She did not respond immediately to a request for further comment submitted through her Facebook page. In June, Loomer disrupted a performance of Shakespeares Julius Caesar because the character of the assassinated Roman dictator was costumed to resemble US President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, after Loomer posted her tweets, she faced criticism from many users on Twitter. Laura, I hate to give you the attention, but I need to tell you- You're a f**king moron. https://t.co/fCezijj2Ao Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) November 1, 2017 hi @twitter this clearly constitutes hate speech. why does @LauraLoomer have an account, much less a verified one? pic.twitter.com/KVUFzNUW9a Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) November 1, 2017 Ive just reported @LauraLoomer for hate speech for the below hateful tweet. https://t.co/WBdY9rtyBB Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) November 1, 2017 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. In need of some new reality TV heat to keep you warm this summer? Then get set for the return of T-shirt time. The spiritual sequel to the drive-by colonoscopy drama-filled viewing experience that was Jersey Shore, MTV is rolling out the next shore thing with its new series, Floribama Shore. It has everything that you loved (or hated) about the original, a brand-new cast of colorful characters and, based on the trailer, at least one Jesus candle. Take a peek at the teaser below. According to the MTV webpage dedicated to the series, episodes will detail the story eight young adults who come to spend the summer in the hottest beach town on the Gulf Coast. That beach is Panama City Beach, a sun-soaked world of emotions, libido and body shots that is oh so close to Alabama. The description of the show continues by saying that each [individual] is armed with incredible life experiences and standing at a crossroads, whether its ending a relationship, tasting independence for the first time, or trying to escape the past. This coming of age story captures the very real thrill and angst of being young and trying to figure out the future with a group of people youll come to call family. No one asked for more Shore, but apparently well be getting a healthy dose of some when the first episode premieres of November 27th. Set your DVRs to self-destruct. Airing for six seasons and a combined 71 episodes between 2009 and 2012, the original Jersey Shore was both a ratings generator for MTV, as well as a controversial program because of its use of the words Guido and Guidette. Overall, the show was criticized for its portrayal of Italian-American youth; in fact, some of the cast members, including Jenni J-WOWW Farley, werent even of Italian descent. Theres no word on whether or not MTV will continue to exploit the perpetuation of certain stereotypes on this new incarnation in the Shore universe, but chances are it will be just as divisive, potentially for different reasons, as the original one was. Making celebrities out of some of the Jersey cast members, theres no doubt that well be seeing a lot of the Floribama crew this winter. Jersey Shore Cillian Murphy is one of those unique beasts; an attractive actor who has been in both critically acclaimed indie films and huge box-office successes but is still definitely an actor, not a movie star. Some of this distinction comes from his commitment to maintaining a career in theatre, but much of it arises from his publicity-shy personality. Murphy, now 40, is rarely seen at awards shows and does a minimal amount of interviews, never appearing truly comfortable with the camera being on him unless hes in character. He has previously commented on how much he dislikes the increasingly dumbed-down nature of press interviews, saying that the reductive nature nowadays of most journalism is very frustrating. Its an understandable complaint in an era where most interviews are between four and 15 minutes, its difficult to explore any issue in-depth. But it also seems that Murphy appreciates the brevity, as it allows him to maintain his privacy. When asked about his views on politics, fatherhood or even just his current passions, he can neatly avoid giving too much away by claiming oh, theres too much to say in such a short time. Unless Sigue Sigue Sputnik popped in for a swift half during the 80s, I doubt if Mulligans of Poolbeg Street has ever been frequented by such extravagantly coiffed and attired young gentleman as HMLTD. Beloved of UK style bibles, the South London-based outfit are a heady mix of New York Dolls gutter punk, Blitz Kids glamour, goth, psychobilly, Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtracks and David Bowies best bits. In other words, theyre the anti-Ed Sheeran. Blandness is great because it gives you something to kick against, proffers frontman Henry Spychalski from beneath his trademark military cap. If no ones making music or other forms of art that excite you, you have to create it yourself. Ive nothing in particular against Ed Sheeran but most music nowadays is so unambitious. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A former Apache Corp. employee has agreed to pay more than $400,000 to settle insider trading charges that allege he bought Apache shares and options just prior to the company's announcement of a major oil and gas discovery in West Texas, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday. In its complaint, the SEC said Christopher J. Lollar, a petroleum engineer, bought almost 1,000 Apache shares and options in the days before the Houston oil company announced Alpine High, a field estimated to hold some 15 billion barrels of oil and gas in the desert around the small town of Balmorhea. A few days after the announcement, Lollar sold all the shares and options, pocketing more than $214,000 in profits, the SEC said. The SEC said Lollar has agreed to pay $435,000, including the return of the profits, plus interest and penalties. Lollar, who could not be reached for comment, did not admit guilt in settling the case. His attorney, Toby Galloway of Fort Worth's Kelly Hart & Hallman, did not return phone calls seeking comment. Apache said in a statement that it cooperated with the SEC investigation and has "zero tolerance" for insider trading. It fired Lollar in May, after theSECinvestigation ended. Lollar started at Apache, based in Houston, as an intern in 2012, according to the complaint. He took a full-time job in January 2014 in Apache's San Antonio office, where a team was secretly developing the Alpine High oil and gas field. On Sept. 7 last year, Apache announced the find: 350,000 acres along a southern strip of Reeves County near the Davis Mountains, in the prolific Permian Basin's western lobe. Apache geologists estimated it held more than 3 billion barrels of oil and 75 trillion cubic feet of natural gas - one of the biggest finds of the decade. It was a game-changing discovery for Apache, which had struggled during Texas' shale revolution to keep up with competitors. And Lollar knew that, the SEC alleged. He worked with the engineers and geologists developing the play. He had also signed Apache conduct codes prohibiting him from disclosing confidential information, using such information for his own gain, and trading on nonpublic information learned through his work there,according to the SEC Still, in the days prior to Apache's announcement, Lollar liquidated at least one personal securities account and emptied a second, using almost all of the proceeds to buy 461 shares of Apache stock and 490 options, the SEC said. Apache announced Alpine High at 7:40 a.m., before the markets opened. The company's stock value jumped, trading as high as $58.99 per share before closing at $55.13 - an increase of $3.46, or about 7 percent. That day, Lollar sold all 490 options, making almost $212,000, the SEC complaint alleged. The next day, OptionsHouse, the company that executedLollar's options sale, opened an internal fraud investigation into the trades. On Sept. 9, Lollar sold the stock, netting about $2,300 in profit, according to the SEC. The SEC's investigation was conducted in the Fort Worth office by Tamara F. McCreary, Ty S. Martinez and Christopher Davis. The case was supervised by Jessica B. Magee, associate director for enforcement in Fort Worth. The settlement is subject to court approval. Apache shares closed at $42.23 in New York on Wednesday, up 86 cents or 2 percent. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Let's just say it hasn't been a banner week for worker productivity in Houston. With Astros games stretching toward midnight almost every day this week, exhausting fans with nail-biting pitchers' duels and topsy-turvy slugfests, employees and bosses came to work groggy, sluggish and bleary-eyed, their minds on post-game analysis, the next day's pitching match-ups and, finally, the victory parade. Come Thursday, Richard Lizcano, a Houston handyman, had left it all on the field, unable to sleep from excitement after the team's historic World Series win on Wednesday night. "I work for myself," Lizcano said, "so I called myself and let myself know I wasn't coming in." OUR STORIES, YOUR INBOX: Get the Morning Report, a free email newsletter sent every weekday with top news from Houston, Texans and beyond. Check it out. Lizcano was among the thousands of Houston workers still recovering from champagne- and beer-soaked celebrations of the Astros' first triumph at the World Series. On the day after, workers across the city ignored their alarm clocks. Astros banter dominated meetings. And companies deployed their personnel to buy hats, T-shirts and bobble-heads for the office. In other words, not a lot of work got done. Wes Dickason, who works for a local litigation support services firm, didn't get home until 3:30 a.m., after the champagne showers and blaring horns on Main Street. His clients didn't show up to a scheduled breakfast on Thursday morning. "Nobody's at work yet," Dickason said. "I had to get some eye drops just so I didn't look so hungover." Drivers miss work Frank Polanco, owner ofLonestar Delivery, said five of his truck drivers missed work on Thursday. Stephen Green, who manages imports and exports of oil field equipment, said his business will slow for a few days - he took more congratulatory calls than sales calls. "We're pretty much done for the week," Green said. No one is expecting anything to change Friday, when the Astros will be celebrated in a parade through downtown, ending at City Hall. The Houston Independent School District canceled classes for that day, and many of the city's businesses - particularly those along the parade route - will shut down for at least a few hours. The Houston law firm AZA will close at noon so its lawyers and support staff can go to the parade. On Thursday, the firm, hosted a fajitas and barbecue lunch to celebrate the championship, with the normally buttoned-down crowd ditching business suits for Astros gear. "There is a so much euphoria in Houston," said partner John Zavitsanos, "that even Ebenezer Scrooge would be wearing an Astros cap right now." Jay Kohn works as a service adviser at a Mercedes Benz dealership. He'll also be getting time off to head downtown Friday afternoon. "The bosses all get it. They're supportive," he said. "They're letting us go to the parade, if we just promise to come back sober." Sure, said local economist Patrick Jankowski, Houston's productivity is down this week. But the World Series victory could spur a flurry of sales - not only of hats, shirts and other merchandise, but also of pricey engagement rings and weddings, after Carlos Correa's dramatic proposal to his girlfriend Daniella Rodriguez following the team's 5-1 win Wednesday night. And, soon enough, he speculated, it might bring film crews to make a movie starring Tom Hanks as Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch. "I don't think any employee or manager begrudges their employees of coming in a little late or spending extra time in the coffee bar," he said. "This is an event that people will be talking about for years." Vows malfunction State District Judge Mike Engelhart said he had no doubt that he and the six employees who work in his courtroom suite were not operating at peak efficency in recent days. Englehart, who stayed up until 1 a.m. tweeting and facebooking after the Astros' big win, admitted that he missed a line in a wedding ceremony, and had to start over. "It was a sentence or two before the kiss," he said, "so they had to kiss again." While people were celebrating into the wee hours Thursday morning, Scott Lewis was working for Pop-a-Lock, negotiating crowds of chanting revelers as he helped stranded motorists who locked keys in their cars or got flats. A few hours later, he was standing in a long line at Academy Sports & Outdoors. "Forget work," he said. "I can't do it. I've got Astros fever." John Stewart, human-resources payroll director at Houston Methodist, had a presentation to give at work on Thursday. But not long before he was scheduled to talk to new managers about compliance issues, he, too, was standing in line for Astros merchandise. "I'm sure the Astros will come up in that presentation," Stewart said. "You can rest assured." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate MetroNational and Meritage Homes have demonstrated a complete disregard for reality, and their contempt for Houstonians. Two months after Hurricane Harvey wiped out West Houston neighborhoods built in flood zones, these two companies tried to move forward Wednesday with plans to build 800 more homes in a flood plain. Statements issued by both companies said they would make sure the homes were above the 500-year flood level, even if the streets were not. They touted their storm water detention plans. Who are they trying to fool? RELATED: System rigged against homeowners when it comes to floods These executives know the existing flood maps are a joke. They know that they shouldn't rely on the 100-year and 500-year flood criteria for building a community in an existing flood plain. And hydrologists have publicly declared that Brickhouse Gully, which runs through the development, is far more dangerous than is officially recognized. These developers, who claim to be invested in the community, also know that the Harris Flood Control District needs to reexamine all of its flood maps following three consecutive years of supposedly 500-year flood events. But MetroNational and Meritage Homes want their project approved now, before that can happen. The only logical explanation is that MetroNational and Meritage Homes want to cash out of their investment before scientists reveal the foolhardiness of their plans to out 800 families at risk. They might get away with it. Matt Zeve, director of operations for the Flood Control District, told my colleague Mike Morris that by law public works officials must evaluate developments based on existing rules and data. And the 151-acre project, called Spring Brook Village, meets all of the present requirements. The fact that scientists have warned that this so-called Spring Brook, aka Brickhouse Gully, could wipe out the Village they plan to build, means nothing until new flood data is analyzed and adopted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Promulgating new maps, though, takes years. RELATED: Don't prepare for the last hurricane - worry about the next one If MetroNational and Meritage Homes were truly responsible, they would wait for experts to analyze the reams of flood data collected over the last three years and adjust their project accordingly. They might even support organizations like Rice University's Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters Center, sounded the alarm. Instead, they pushed forward, issuing a bland and empty statement about how wonderful their project will turn out. Knowing full well that after the last house is sold, they'll pocket huge profits and leave the government to clean up the mess when the neighborhood floods. City and county bureaucrats rightfully say it is not their job to apply personal judgement or unofficial information in evaluating developments. They are paid to implement rules adopted by elected officials. That leaves City Council to act, because as elected officials, they are paid to use their personal judgement. After public outrage, the Council unanimously voted on Wednesday to refer the proposed development back to the city administration for further evaluation. Now comes the true test for MetroNational and Meritage Homes. Will they sue the city for failing to act based on current regulations? Will they support a new analysis of the Brickhouse Gully flood plain and adjust their plans? Or will they abandon the project? RELATED: Time for Houston to plan for warmer water And how many other companies will try to push through new developments before the city, county and federal authorities can rewrite flood control maps and regulations? Will Mayor Sylvester Turner allow similar developments to come this close to a council vote in the future? We'll soon find out exactly how much developers are truly invested in building a better Houston, and how many are only committed to capturing profits, no matter the consequences. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Insperity, Camden Property Trust and Medology top the Houston Chronicle's eighth annual Top Workplaces rankings and celebrated the honors Wednesday night at the Royal Sonesta in the Galleria area. They'll also be featured in a special section that the Chronicle will publish Sunday showcasing the top 150 Houston-area workplaces. The rankings are based on employee surveys conducted for the newspaper by Philadelphia-based Energage, formerly known as WorkplaceDynamics. More than 84,000 local employees weighed in with opinions of their employers. Perks, like Ping-Pong tables in the break room or Starbucks coffee machines in office kitchens, weren't a guarantee of workplace happiness. Instead, company direction, employee appreciation and career potential are the characteristics of a top workplace, according to Energage, which has surveyed more than 16 million employees around the country. Insperity topped the large company category for companies with 500 or more employees. The Kingwood-based human resources company allows employees to bank 19 days of paid time off for vacations, illness or other personal needs. Camden Property Trust won in the midsize category, for companies with 150 to 499 employees. After Hurricane Harvey, the Houston-based multifamily housing company put up displaced workers in apartments for free. Medology landed atop the small companies' list for firms with between 50 and 149 employees. The online heath care service company gives 8 percent bonuses to passionate employees who voluntarily get tattoos of their company's logo. One in four employees have gotten tattoos bearing the logo. The companies that score high in the rankings care deeply for their employees and understand how to leverage the talents of people from all backgrounds, Energage said. "Think about growing your culture, imagination and expertise by bringing people into your world who are different than you," said Karen McCullough, a Houston-based branding expert, who gave the keynote address at the event. The former retail fashion executive worked for two decades at Ralph Lauren and as a social media expert with companies such as Oracle, General Electric and Exxon Mobil. The Chronicle also awarded executives and companies for their performance in special categories such as leadership, ethics and communication. Marc Laird, CEO of Cornerstone Home Lending, was honored for his leadership of a large company; Jose Rodriguez, the president and CEO at Shell Federal Credit Union, for his leadership of a midsize company; and Fiyyaz Pirani, founder of Medology, for his leadership of a small company. Rankings and stories about the winners can be found at chron.com/topworkplaces. WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld Energy Department decisions approving three projects to export liquefied natural gas, a boost for the Trump administration's strategy to increase energy production and promote exports. The Sierra Club was seeking to overturn approvals of export terminals in Maryland, Louisiana and Texas, saying the projects would increase air and water pollution and contribute to global warming. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a unanimous opinion that the Energy Department fulfilled its legal obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws. The court said its decision was similar to a ruling in August when it upheld approval of a separate export terminal in Texas. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas chilled to liquid form for shipment on tanker ships. Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, an advocacy group that promotes natural gas exports, said he hopes the decision "will put an end to the unnecessary and costly challenges by Sierra Club that delay LNG projects.". "The facts are clear and the court agrees: The regulatory review process for U.S. LNG projects provides a thorough review of both operational and environmental impacts before being approved," Riedl said. Exporting natural gas helps the U.S. economy and enhances geopolitical stability in countries that receive natural gas, such as Japan, China, South Korea and Argentina, Riedl said. Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club attorney, said expanding exports of gas produced by the drilling technique known as fracking inevitably increases air and water pollution. Fracking involves pumping huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals underground to split open rocks to allow oil and gas to flow. Fracking has led to a boom in natural gas production but raised widespread concerns about possible groundwater contamination and even earthquakes. Matthews said it was disappointing that the court declined to hold the Energy Department "accountable for doing a real analysis that takes the costs for American communities into account," through increased pollution and emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Dominion Energy's export terminal in Cove Point, Md., is scheduled to open in the coming weeks. Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana opened last year. And Cheniere's project in Corpus Christi is due to open next year. The projects, along with a fourth export terminal in Freeport, all were approved by the Obama administration. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The piece: "Galveston and Texas City, Year 2517" The artist: Erik Hagen Where: Art Alley, Silos at Sawyer Yards, 1500 Sawyer Why: We know sea-level rise is as inevitable as future rain-based flooding, right? Erik Hagen's installation visualizes what that might mean for the Texas Gulf Coast in 500 years. Even if you can't quite figure out the topographic rendering at its base - which Hagen compiled by layering about 30 maps in Photoshop - the watery surface supplies the basic idea: At some point, your descendents will need more than snorkels to live in Galveston and Texas City. The rate at which civilization slows or halts carbon dioxide emissions - a big unknown - will determine how far down the line those descendents will be. This isn't just pie-in-the-sky art talk. Hagen based his piece on information from Curt Stager's 2011 book "Deep Future," a survey of mainstream climate science. The maps he layered to illustrate future sea-level rises of various depths are sourced from government agencies. A legend in one corner identifies scenarios based on depths of 5-10 feet below sea level to more than 40 feet above. But that's not quite as dramatic as the opening "performance" Hagen staged by placing 3,000 pounds of ice (formed with 60 fused blocks of 50 pounds each) and allowing viewers to touch and play with it. Hagen estimated the ice would last 10 days after a Saturday debut, but by mid-morning Tuesday, all that remained was an iceberg-shaped fragment about a foot high and long. Hagen blamed high humidity and wind. Still, he was thrilled with the process of the melt: Not just the metaphor but the dripping and crackling sounds of ice returning to water and the sculptural shapes that evolved, "evoking loss, but hinting at the power of transformation." Within the shallow pool center of Hagen's tablelike structure of pressure-treated wood, resin and recessed, solar-powered LED lights, an organic, constantly shifting "sea bottom" has formed from granules of clay that blew over from Trey Duvall's nearby "Traverse: Stack/Void" installation of unfired porcelain slabs. Growing up in Minnesota, Hagen loved watching ice disappear each spring. "The melting snowbanks facing the sun would reveal a crystalline lacelike latticework suspended centimeters above the snow," he says. "During late afternoons, the meltwater would carve tiny caverns through rotten ice, and you could see sparkles as drops opened new paths to the earth." Funded through an Individual Artist Grant from the city of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Hagen's installation will remain up for a year and be duplicated this winter at Rice University. The ice may be gone, but he expects the water to ebb and flow continuously. "We get 36 inches of rain a year," he said. He hasn't planned for a drought. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate ASIA SOCIETY 1370 Southmore; asiasociety.org/texas "Above the Drowning Sea"A documentary about Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who found sanctuary in Shanghai. 6 p.m. Friday ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE CINEMA 531 Mason, Katy; drafthouse.com/houston "Freaks" A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance. 10:45 p.m. Friday "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" A man must struggle to travel home for Thanksgiving with a slob of a salesman as his only companion. 7:15 p.m. Saturday "The Room" A successful banker's fiancee tempts and manipulates his best friend. 10 p.m. Saturday "The Shining" A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence. 7:30 and 9 p.m. Tuesday MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON 1001 Bissonnet; mfah.org "The Divine Order" A young housewife challenges the status quo by fighting for women's suffrage in 1971 Switzerland. 7 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday MEMORIAL CITY MALL 303 Memorial City Way; memorialcity.com "Spider-Man, Homecoming" Peter Parker balances his life as an ordinary high school student in Queens with his superhero alter-ego Spider-Man. 7 p.m. Friday RIVER OAKS THEATRE 2009 W. Gray, landmarktheatres.com "The Shining" A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence. Midnight Friday and Saturday RICE CINEMA 6100 Main; film.rice.edu "We Are in It" The journey of five Houston residents and their attempt to find refuge in this American metropolis. 6:30 p.m. Friday "Lessons in Seeing" The story of Sibhatleab Mebratu, an aging math teacher who spent 25 years as a political prisoner and refugee in Ethiopia. 6:30 p.m. Saturday DISCOVERY GREEN 1500 McKinney; discoverygreen.com "Zootopia" In a city of animals, a rookie bunny cop and a cynical con-artist fox must work together to uncover a conspiracy. 6 p.m. Saturday HOUSTON MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE 5555 Hermann Park Drive; hmns.org "Incredible Predators 3-D" Deconstructs the world of major predators, taking an intimate look at the remarkable strategies they use to succeed. Multiple screenings daily "Dream Big 3-D" Learn how today's engineers are shaping the world of tomorrow. Multiple screenings daily "Amazon Adventure 3-D" A Victorian-era naturalist discovers a butterfly that reinforces Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Multiple screenings daily MILLER OUTDOOR THEATRE 6000 Hermann Park Drive; milleroutdoortheatre.com "Sing Along With The Muppet Movie" The 1979 classic follows Kermit the Frog as he embarks on a cross-country trip to Hollywood. 7 p.m. Saturday ITALIAN CULTURAL CENTER 1101 Milford; iccchouston.com "Wait Until Spring, Bandini" A Colorado family's struggles during the winter of 1925. 7 p.m. Monday This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With its intricate structure and 600-plus page length, Brian Selznick's "Wonderstruck" is not the easiest Young Adult novel to bring to the screen, and filmmaker Todd Haynes is not the likeliest director to take on any YA book, easy or not. Yet working beautifully together with a major assist from the visual team of cinematographer Ed Lachman and production designer Mark Friedberg, they have created a bit of magic with their production. Selznick, who also adapted the screenplay, previously had the experience of seeing a novel of his turned into Martin Scorsese's "Hugo," while Haynes, whose work includes such unclassifiable movies as "I'm Not There," "Safe" and "Velvet Goldmine," was in uncharted territory with this one. "My films are not always the most conventional," the director acknowledged when "Wonderstruck" debuted at Cannes. "The thing that excited me is that I'd never done a movie about kids, a film kids could see." Haynes also was energized by the possibilities that the unusual structure of Selznick's story offered. It's not every book that tells parallel tales half a century apart involving a pair of fearless and curious 12-year-olds, 1977's Ben and 1927's Rose, babes - not in Toyland - who run away from safe homes to unsettling Manhattan to chase personal dreams. More Information 'Wonderstruck' Rated PG: for thematic elements and smoking Running time: 117 minutes 4 out of 5 stars 'Wonderstruck' Rated PG: for thematic elements and smoking Running time: 117 minutes xxxx See More Collapse More than that, while Selznick tells Ben's story in prose, Rose's comes to us in exquisite black-and-white illustrations, pictures that are wordless because Rose is deaf and does not speak. (In an additional wrinkle, Ben becomes deaf after an accident early in the story.) Working from Selznick's script and complementing Friedberg's exceptional re-creation of two periods, Lachman, a Haynes veteran, has employed two visual approaches here. Ben's story is shot in gritty urban color reminiscent of "Midnight Cowboy" and "The French Connection," while Rose's tale is a silent movie shot in luminous black and white, such a rare occurrence that the 35 mm film stock had to be special-ordered from Kodak. Like any good tale of marvels, "Wonderstruck" has elaborately worked out parallels, both visual and narrative, between its stories - intricate, artful coincidences that we can believe in. And it has a through-line of emotion that connects them with each other and the audience. Met first is Ben, living in Gunflint, Minn., and with his young life in tatters, someone not surprisingly subject to nightmares of being pursued by wolves. Ben's mother, Elaine, has just died in a car crash (Michelle Williams plays her in flashback), and the boy, who has never been told who his absent father is, is living unhappily with his aunt and her kids. Sneaking into his old house, Ben (Oakes Fegley) is the victim of a bizarre accident that takes away his hearing in an instant. He also comes across a book called "Wonderstruck" about cabinets of wonder as the ancestors of modern museums. A bookmark with a note on it from Kincaid Books in Manhattan feels like a clue to his father's identity, so as soon as he can, Ben sneaks away and boards a bus for New York. Fifty years earlier, just across the river in Hoboken, N.J., young Rose (Millicent Simmonds) also has her eye on Manhattan. Deaf from birth though a stranger to sign language (both she and Ben communicate with others using written notes), Rose is fixated on silent film star Lillian Mayhew (Haynes veteran Julianne Moore). Rose finds out that the actress will be appearing on the Broadway stage and intrepidly heads into the big city to find her. In addition to narrative parallels that keep getting stronger, the alternating pair of stories in "Wonderstruck" also are linked by visual cues. When Rose puts a paper boat into the East River, for instance, the film cuts almost immediately to a shot of a wooden boat on the water in Gunflint. Another parallel is that both youngsters end up spending considerable time in Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History, especially the institution's iconic animal habitat dioramas. Though Moore and the other adult actors acquit themselves well, the task of carrying "Wonderstruck" falls to the children. That Fegley does well is no surprise to those who saw him in "Pete's Dragon," but Simmonds' work is another story. An exceptionally self-possessed and gifted performer who is herself deaf, Simmonds had mainly done stage work before was discovered in a nationwide search. With an expressive face and a vibrant personality, she is alive on-screen in the most wonderful way. Though it takes its time, "Wonderstruck" - like the best tales of wonder - resolves all its mysteries as the plot's disparate strands come together in a lovely way. "I need you to be patient with this story," a key character says to young Ben, and it's good advice for those of us in the audience as well. More than two dozen Houston police officers were en route to Puerto Rico Tuesday morning to help with hurricane recovery on the hard-hit island. The 25 officers - most clad in Astros gear - boarded shuttles at about 7:30 a.m. bound for the airport. They are scheduled to stay in Puerto Rico for three weeks. A former Richmond energy trader was convicted in a rare federal online stalking trial of sending gruesome and threatening images to an ex-girlfriend, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Following a five-day trial before U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt, a Houston jury found Heriberto Latigo guilty late Friday of intentionally torturing the woman through a series of graphic emails and web-based posts. The unusual allegations included the internet-era offense that Latigo, 44, used the web to cause significant emotional distress, a charge federal prosecutors have been able to prove for fewer than 100 defendants over 10 years. The charges were brought under a 1996 anti-stalking law that was part of the Violence Against Women Act, which makes it a felony to cross state lines to stalk, intimidate or harass someone causing them fear of serious bodily injury or death. He faces up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 at his sentencing, now set for Jan. 8. Latigo was denied bail in June 2015 after a magistrate found his activities where so egregious and that he posed a continued threat to his victim. A tumultuous relationship Latigo opted to defend himself against the allegations, although he had standby counsel from the Federal Public Defender's Office. He made opening and closing statements and questioned witnesses, including his ex-girlfriend. That portion of the questioning he conducted seated at counsel table, according to the judge's instructions. Latigo, who had worked as an oil trader at the Italian oil company ENI, sought to argue at trial that the stalking charges were in retaliation for whistleblower allegations he filed accusing his former girlfriend of being involved in financial fraud at the company. However, prosecutors argued this information had no bearing on the case, and the judge agreed, blocking the parties from mentioning it during the criminal trial. Evidence at trial laid out the tumultuous relationship - which begain in 2013 - between the ex-lovers. The woman testified that Latigo became increasingly controlling as the relationship progressed, pressuring the woman to send him naked images of herself. Later, she said, he became physically combative and she told the jury he raped her. She testified that when she learned she was pregnant in June 2014, she couldn't go on. Latigo's conduct was so manipulative and out of control, she said, that she decided to have an abortion. She said that in response, Latigo set up a Facebook page titled "Magdelana Aborted" written from the viewpoint of the aborted fetus. He then sent her a link to the page with the words, "Your abortion video will now be posted you whore." The online conduct prompted her to try to kill herself by overdosing on tranquilizers. But the conduct continued. Blackmail and threats Evidence during the trial demonstrated how Latigo continued to blackmail and threaten the victim during a period from March 2014 to April 2015, and employed a stockpile of images she had sent him of herself. Witnesses said Latigo used them to get her to agree to sexual demands, explaining he would post the images online unless she did what he asked. She contacted Google multiple times to have naked pictures of her removed. The defendant also forwarded the images to the victim's sister, her sister's boss and her male co-workers. He also set up a Gmail account and a Google& page using the victim's name that featured a naked image of her as the profile picture. The U.S. Attorney noted in a news release that the woman cried on the witness stand when she learned that naked images had been sent in response to a Craigslist ad that she had supposedly created. A forensic analyst testified that Latigo used multiple Facebook accounts and logged onto the victim's account from his own computer in an attempt to avoid detection. From his own email address, Latigo also sent messages demeaning the woman and commanding her to comply with sexual acts, according to witnesses. She told the jury because of Latigo's egregious internet conduct she moved, changed jobs, closed her Facebook account and stayed offline. But Latigo tracked her down, showed up at her workplace and kept up the behavior. Another witness testified that Latigo appeared at the school of the victim's daughter's to stalk her in person. Latigo argued to the jury that the victim brought the case because she wanted to hurt him and said she had been the one who created the accounts she said he had set up. Not so fast. If you remember my column a few days ago, you might deduce that the above headline does not pertain to Gun Runner, but the young gun, Gunnevera. Now I am not going to be brazen enough to state that Gunnevera is going to beat Gun Runner or Arrogate, or even West Coast and Collected. But if you know me by now, you know there ain't gonna be no favorites picked in these parts. But let's start by being more logical. The Classic is simple: Arrogate or Gun Runner? That is where everyone will be focusing their attention. In the two previous showdowns between these two antagonists, Arrogate proved to be the fastest gun alive. But that was then. Things have changed dramatically since that memorable duel in the desert. But ever since Arrogate returned to American soil and fired the blank heard round the world in the San Diego Handicap, it has been Gun Runner who has strutted around like Gary Cooper at the end of High Noon. Now Arrogate is back for one last showdown, trying to go out a winner and restore his once lofty reputation. Frankly, I have no idea what to expect. Having spent many a summer morning at Saratoga with Gun Runner I have been impressed with everything I've seen. He is all class and knows he's special. If I stick with Arrogate and if he gets beat by Gun Runner, I can live that. He's just not the same horse for whatever reason or he just doesn't handle Del Mar. But after heaping so much praise on Arrogate since last year's Travers, if I jump off the bandwagon now, especially when Bob Baffert believes he's back, and he does return to the old Arrogate and beats Gun Runner again and all the others, that would be tougher to live with; not only going against Arrogate, but Baffert, the man who always seems to find a way to win these kinds of big races. So I will stick with Arrogate and just hope we see the same horse who provided us with all those incredible thrills from last August to this March. If we do, we could see Arrogate put on a show. But I repeat, if we do. And remember, if Gun Runner does win it will be his first victory at 1 1/4 miles after three defeats, and he hasn't been facing horses of this quality. So just hope for clean trips and let the best horse wins. Racing wins either way because there is a good chance Gun Runner will be back next year, Yes, as a 5-year-old. Baffert, of course, also has the luxury of having three other top-class horses in here - West Coast, Collected, and Mubtaahij, a sensational feat in itself. But there are other days ahead for them. Not so with Arrogate. West Coast does have the making of another Arrogate, their careers pretty similar to this point. If he beats these older horses, then we have ourselves another superstar to look forward to next year. I also can't separate Arrogate and Gun Runner in the morning, as both have turned in sensational works. But I would have loved to seen Arrogate's last work come at Del Mar, a track on which many people still feel he is vulnerable. However, we don't even know what kind of track we're going to get. There also has been talk about Arrogate drawing the rail, which at first glance would look like a negative. But perhaps breaking from the one-hole and having to be hustled out of the gate by Mike Smith will rid Arrogate of his two-race malaise, in which he seemed to have little interest in the proceedings early in the race, and only began to show any interest in the final sixteenth of the Pacific Classic. With all that said, I will turn my attention to Gunnevera, who, even if you feel is not in the same class as the older horses or even West Coast, still looks to be a solid horse to fill out the exactas and trifectas. As I mentioned in my column last week, Gunnevera won the rich Delta Jackpot last year by coming from last in the field of 10 and blowing by the entire field on the turn and then drawing away to win by almost six lengths. Delta Downs is what is known as a bull ring track with an extremely short stretch of only 660 feet. This past winter, Gunnevera ran an almost identical race, again rallying from last in the field of 10 in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream and again going from last to first and drawing off to a 5 3/4-length score. Gulfstream normally has a short stretch of 898 feet, but when running 1 1/16 miles they finish at a secondary finish line inside the sixteenth pole that is only 668 feet from the head of the stretch. In his previous start, the Holy Bull Stakes, also at t 1/16 miles, he was way too close to the pace couldn't deliver that big move on the turn, but still ran well to finish second to the brilliant Irish War Cry. It is that natural speed he has that enables him to make such a rapid-fire move. We saw that speed at Saratoga last year when he captured the 6 1/2-furlong Saratoga Special, flying home the final eighth of a mile. You will find that horses that have that spectacular push-bottom move on the far turn often have excelled in sprints at some point in their career. But when Gunnevera ran this spring in the Triple Crown races he failed to threaten when moved late in the slop at Churchill Downs, where the stretch 1,234-feet long and at Pimlico, where it is 1,152-feet long. In the Travers Stakes, with new rider Edgard Zayas aboard, he again made that monster move on the far turn, going from 11th to second and looked like a winner turning for home. But with Saratoga's 1,144-foot stretch, he was unable to sustain his run and couldn't match strides with West Coast in the stretch, finishing second by 3 1/4 lengths, while finishing well clear of the third horse. You would think a horse who comes from far back and who is bred to run all day would run better at bigger tracks with longer stretches. But because his move on the turn is so quick and explosive it makes it more difficult to sustain. That brings us to Del Mar. Although this track is nothing like Delta Downs and Gulfstream at 1 1/16 miles, its stretch is only 919 feet, which is 315 feet shorter than Churchill Downs, 233 feet shorter than Pimlico, and 225 feet shorter than Saratoga. So it is possible that Gunnevera could make his patented move and show that turn of foot and be able to sustain it longer on the shorter stretch. So, let's say we have established that Gunnevera should like the tighter turns and shorter stretch at Del Mar. Is he fast enough to compete with the heavy hitters? When he won the Fountain of Youth Stakes, he earned a negative-2 1/2 on the Thoro-Graph figures, by far his fastest number and fastest of any 3-year-old on the Derby trail. He regressed in the Florida Derby coming back in four weeks and was taken too far back and moved too late and too wide to threaten Always Dreaming, who scorched that race in 1:47 2/5. It was the same in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. He was never able to make that electrifying move on the turn and may have gotten a bit sour by then. Given time off, he returned in a small stakes at Gulfstream and blew his field away. Sent off at 24-1 in the Travers, he once again demonstrated that monster kick on the far turn, going from eighth to third, a length off the pacesetting West Coast. As mentioned earlier, he wasn't able to sustain his run on Saratoga's longer stretch, but more important, he had just run his previous two quarters in :23 and : 23 3/5 for a blazing half-mile run in :46 3/5. He still finished strongly to finish second to West Coast, coming home in a respectable :24 4/5. And even more important than that, despite getting beat 3 1/4 lengths by West Coast, he actually earned a faster Thoro-Graph number than the winner, returning to his negative-2 1/2 from the Fountain of Youth. Now, instead of coming back in four weeks, he comes back in 10 weeks, and there is no reason to think he can't pair up that number or perhaps even improve on it. If he does, it put him right in the thick of things to at least finish in the money. Putting him in the exactas and trifectas with whichever of the big horses you like, as well as Pavel and Mubtaahij, will pay big bucks, certainly a lot better than you'll get betting Arrogate, Gun Runner, West Coast, and Collected in whatever manner. Speaking of Pavel, I still firmly believe this colt is freakish in what he has accomplished in only four career starts. I don't know if he's ready to compete with these horses right now, but definitely watch out for him next year. He could very well be racing's next big star. So, my big angle longshot is Gunnevera. And why not put a few bob on him to win just for the fun of it. And if you read my other column last week you know that I am not ignoring the Aidan O'Brien pair, especially War Decree, who is fresh and coming into this race the right way and I feel is sitting on a big effort. For more details on War Decree and Churchill in the Classic see that column. Dangerous horse at a big price. Even Churchill, with his class and miler's speed scares me. But the main focus of the race should be just enjoying the impending battle between Arrogate and Gun Runner and see what astounding tricks Bob Baffert can pull out of his hat. We have seen the magician at work many times, so don't be surprised by anything he conjures up on Saturday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO - When Dora Franco and her two sisters arrived at their parents' resting place in Block 38 of San Fernando Cemetery No. 2, sequined Dia de los Muertos masks and orange pumpkin remains of Halloweens past dotted the parched grass. The sisters made the sign of the cross upon the black granite gravestone. They placed fresh golden mums and white daisies at the grave site where rays of sunlight dappled through the shade. They recited the Lord's Prayer and a Hail Mary, followed by whispers of how much the six sisters and four brothers miss them both. "We just talk to them a little," Franco, 66, said, as a mariachi serenaded mourners at a funeral a few yards away. "We all remember something different." As she pulled stray strands of grass from around the headstone, her sisters Eloise Sandoval, 70, and Gracie De La O, 62, sat on a stone bench, reflecting. They had just placed flowers on the grave of a high-school classmate of Sandoval's who rarely receives attention, they said. "I tell him, 'I remember you. You were a really nice person,'" Sandoval said. Not forgotten Their respite was brief. They still had prayers to say for a stillborn brother and two sisters, one buried at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. The sisters chose a private remembrance Monday on All Saints' Day. Thursday, hundreds of people will converge on the cemetery for an All Souls' Day Mass to be celebrated by Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, honoring many. Countless more have already visited or will visit cemeteries across the city and just about anywhere there are Hispanic communities, recounting fond memories and assuring their late loved ones that they haven't been forgotten. The traditional celebration begins Oct. 31, All Hallows' Eve, and continues Nov. 1, All Saints' Day, which is dedicated to children. The Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches honor saints the same day. All Souls' Day, Nov. 2, is the day to remember everyone who has died. It's a celebration that can be traced back centuries in Mexico, where Dia de los Muertos is an official holiday. Symbols of the holiday, including marigolds and sugar skulls, are scattered across gravesites, as are ofrendas, or offerings, such as the deceased's favorite beer or treat. Sentimental remembrance On Wednesday, Juan Velasquez, 68, and his sister, Sylvia Ontiveros, 75, placed bouquets on the graves of their mother, Macimina Velasquez, and sister Yolanda Velasquez at San Fernando. Their mother was 91 when she died Feb. 17, 2016, still caring for her daughter, who was 72 but had the IQ of a 10-year-old. Velasquez said he worried about how he was going to tell his sister that their mother was gone, but she died just nine hours later and was buried next to her. Several relatives are also buried in the area, including their father and Ontiveros' son. "When a person dies, I believe they just move over," Juan Velasquez said. "We still remember them. They don't hear us, but it means sentimental remembrance. It's actually for the living, not the dead. We still say thank you." HOGP DALLAS - An execution date has been set for a man who shot his two daughters at his Deep Ellum loft in 2001 while their mother helplessly listened on the phone. John Battaglia, 62, is scheduled to be executed Feb. 1 in Huntsville. He had sought to delay or stop his lethal injection by saying he was not mentally competent. DALLAS - A former Texas nurse who is suspected in the deaths of dozens of babies is facing a fifth murder charge this year after an indictment Tuesday. Genene Jones, 68, is charged with the 1981 death of 2-month-old Paul Villareal. Jones, who has been called the "angel of death" and a "killer nurse," is serving concurrent 99-year and 60-year sentences in state prison for killing a 15-month-old and sickening a 4-week-old, who survived. Prosecutors in Jones' 1984 murder trial said she lethally injected children at a clinic in Kerrville to show the need for a pediatric intensive-care unit at a local hospital. Others speculated that she wanted to take swift medical action when the children went into cardiac arrest, so that she could save them and appear to be a miracle worker. The nurse is suspected of killing 60 babies, though she has maintained her innocence. She's been behind bars since she was found guilty of murder in 1984. Prosecutors didn't bring new charges against her until now, because they expected her to spend the rest of her life in prison for the 99-year sentence. She was scheduled to be released next March, however, as part of an effort to reduce overcrowding with credit given for good behavior, ProPublica reported. But the Bexar County district attorney now says Jones will be sent to the Bexar County Adult Detention Center while awaiting trial. Earlier this year, Jones was indicted in the deaths of three infants in 1981 and one in 1982 in an effort to keep her imprisoned. Jones worked at the pediatric intensive-care unit at what was then Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio in the early '80swhen, according to a 1983 Texas Monthly article, more than a dozen babies died during her shifts. When Jones switched jobs after the hospital upgraded its ICU to an all-registered nursing staff, death followed her. She began working at a pediatrician's office in Kerrville, about an hour northwest of San Antonio. There, she was supposed to give 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan routine shots. Instead, she gave the infant a strong muscle relaxant that caused Chelsea to go into cardiac arrest and die in her mother's arms. At Jones' murder trial, prosecutors presented evidence that six children, including Chelsea, had suffered unexplained seizures while in Jones' care. All had come into the clinic for routine checkups or minor complaints. The latest murder charge accuses Jones of killing 3-month-old Paul Villareal while working at the Bexar County Hospital in 1981. Villareal went into elective-skill surgery at the hospital and was moved to the pediatric ICU to recover, according to ProPublica. He died days after the surgery from severe bleeding and a seizure while under Jones' care. This may not be the last charge Jones faces. The district attorney said Tuesday that the case remains an open investigation. "We're going to do our best to not leave any baby, any victim behind," he said. "These babies need to be accounted for - for their families, for themselves and for the principle of it, and to our community." David Paul Morris AUSTIN -- Scott Milder, a former Rockwall city councilman and an outspoken candidate for public schools, formally announced Thursday that he will challenge Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the spring GOP primary. Milder, who had stated his intentions several weeks ago to run, was the first Republican to formally announce he will challenge Patrick, an ultra-conservative who he has criticized for his support of school vouchers among other issues. The Supreme Court is about to decide whether religious freedom is a license to discriminate. This deeply troubles me as both an American and a Christian pastor. The high court is expected in December to consider the case of a Colorado business owner who refused to sell a cake to a same-sex couple. In that case, Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the owner has cited his religious beliefs as exempting him from a nondiscrimination law that requires businesses to treat everyone equally. Clergy across Texas, including myself, are among nearly 1,300 faith leaders who have signed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that it is wrong to allow businesses to discriminate under the guise of religion. Many signers in this state are part of Texas Believes (TexasBelieves.org), a growing movement of religious leaders who support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Of course, this case could affect far more than just LGBT people. Allowing businesses to pick and choose which laws they will obey would open the door to rolling back discrimination protections for virtually anyone. Earlier this year, two other faith leaders associated with Texas Believes - a rabbi and an African American minister - wrote about how religion has been used in our history to justify discrimination against people like them. After so much progress - uneven as it has been - to end discrimination against Jews, African Americans and others in this country, this Colorado case could turn back the clock. Consider the possible consequences if the Supreme Court allows a special right of religious refusal to obey nondiscrimination laws. Some extreme religious sects teach white supremacy and anti-Semitism, for example. Should business owners who hold such religious views be given a pass to post signs proclaiming "Whites Only" and "No Jews" at the shop entrance? Likewise, would be it be acceptable for a restaurant owner to refuse service to people simply because their religion is different from his? Should a factory owner whose religion teaches that women must not work outside the home be allowed to fire or refuse to hire women who do? Most Americans would rightly answer no to those questions. That's because we decided long ago as a nation that those who do business in the public marketplace must treat everyone equally. That's an important civic and legal principle in America. But more fundamentally, it's a moral imperative. Discrimination is simply wrong. But now some are trying to use religious freedom to justify discrimination against LGBT people. They seek to radically redefine this freedom as the right to hurt people to whom they have personal objections. And they want our courts to embrace this cause. Yet, the stories of my faith are about radical acceptance and compassion. In them, Jesus reaches out to people who society has marginalized and lovingly brings them back into community. Over and over, we are taught to move from places of narrowness to spaciousness, from exclusion to equality. Simply put, we are taught to love as we have been loved. And so as people of faith, we must challenge these attempts to discriminate against the LGBT community, especially under the guise of freedom of religion, so all of God's children can be treated equally with respect and dignity. Of course, Texas does not currently have a statewide law protecting LGBT people from discrimination. But some Texas cities do, including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Plano. They are among more than 200 cities and 18 states that have already updated their nondiscrimination laws to be LGBT-inclusive. Those laws allow LGBT people to live their lives with less worry that they will be fired from their jobs, evicted from their homes or refused service simply because of who they are or whom they love. But this Supreme Court case puts those protections at risk. Religious freedom is a fundamental right for all. That's why we protect it in the Texas and federal constitutions. But protecting people from discrimination threatens no one's religious freedom. Indeed, treating others as we would like to be treated affirms a central teaching of many religions, including my Christian faith. As a pastor, I pray that the Supreme Court won't turn back the clock in this country. Walters is pastor at Presbyterian Church of Lake Travis near Austin. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. 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Log in below anisations are being advised to prepare their employees for the increasing presence of AI after one new study revealed the technology is set to revolutionise the world of work.Research from recruitment firm Hays suggests automation will soon lead employees to talk to chat-bots on a regular basis, work with an intelligent assistant and augment their roles with various AI systems.Many of us think nothing of speaking into a device and asking it to add an item to a shopping list or play a song we cannot remember the title of, says Nick Deligiannis, managing director of Hays in Australia & New Zealand. Now, AI is set to make a big impact in the world of work.A recent survey from Deloitte also supports the suggestion that AI will become increasingly common over the next few years. In fact, of the 10,400 respondents from 140 countries, 38 per cent said they already use AI in their workplace and 62 per cent said they expect to do so next year.One third also said they expect their jobs will be augmented by AI in the future.However, as much as AI has the power to streamline processes, the Hays Journal suggests the technology could also bring challenges primarily, the need to upskill workers in digital literacy and the high cost of implementing such advanced systems.Deligiannis outlined five years in which AI can initially seep into workers daily work routines:Because repetitive tasks can be automated, workers free up valuable time and can focus on other areas of their role.Machine learning chat-bots that recognise speech and text-based conversation will be used to respond to HR queries from workers.These help process large amounts of data for more and better information. Employees, then, could make more informed decisions.Algorithms could identify an employees area of learning and where their skills could be strengthened.Employers can tap potential talent even when they are not actively seeking jobs by using their online behaviour.The use of AI for internal communication is definitely on the rise and this is where we expect people to see the greatest initial impact of AI systems in their daily jobs, Deligiannis said. The restaurant group Melting Cook announced it is joining with Humane Society International to improve animal welfare in its supply chain, switching to a 100 percent cage-free egg supply chain, becoming the first Chilean company to join this global movement. Melting Cook will use exclusively cage-free shell eggs starting December 1st, and will conclude the transition for all products, including mayonnaise, by 2020. Melting Cook is a leading gastronomy group in Chile that owns the restaurants Uncle Fletch, La Mision, La Fabbrica, KrossBar, Bocanariz, Castillo Forestal and Chipe Libre. It will soon open new projects. The group will source exclusively cage-free eggs from Ecoterra, a Chilean egg producer internationally certified in animal welfare by Certified Humane. HSI supports companies like Melting Cook throughout the world in the implementation of their animal welfare policies including by providing technical resources and trainings on cage-free egg production. Jerome Reynes, CEO of Melting Cook, stated: Animal welfare is a priority CSR [corporate social responsibility] issue globally, and were proud to join and lead this important initiative in Chile. Confining egg-laying hens in battery cages isnt a sustainable practice and switching to a cage-free egg supply chain reflects our values as a socially responsible company. Were already begun the transition to cage-free eggs, and were happy to work with Humane Society International and Ecoterra to continue improving animal welfare in our supply chain. Ignacia Uribe, corporate policy and program manager for HSI Farm Animals, stated: We congratulate Melting Cook for joining the global cage-free movement and for its leadership in this issue in Chile. We hope other Chilean food companies will follow this example and also decide to eliminate using eggs from controversial battery cages. We look forward to continuing to work with Melting Cook on this and other animal welfare issues. Become a Farm Animal Defender. In Chile, the majority of egg-laying hens are confined in wire battery cages, so small they cant stretch their wings. Each battery cage confines five to 10 egg-laying hens and each animal has less space than a letter-sized piece of paper on which to spend her whole life. Hens confined in battery cages are unable to express important natural behaviors, including nesting, dustbathing and perching. Cage-free systems generally offer hens higher levels of animal welfare than battery cage systems. Media contact: Raul Arce-Contreras, 301-721-6440, rcontreras@humanesociety.org A couple of years ago I was approached by a journalist writing a feature on male fertility. She was keen to include case studies of men who had been through cancer treatment and were therefore at risk of being infertile. Keen to start of my family sooner rather than later and eager to find out if I was among those infertile due to cancer I agreed to get involved. Fertility Test First up was a trip to a well known fertility clinic in central London to provide a sperm sample for them to test my fertility. This was something that I was already well prepared for, having previously provided samples prior to the start of my treatment for leukaemia. Advertisement Second time round it was no less bizarre than it had been 12 years previously, although I was definitely more nervous as there was an awful lot more riding on it. The outcome of this test would decide definitively whether my wife and I would be able to try for a baby naturally or not. With all sorts of thoughts going round your head it's not surprising really that I found it difficult to, ahem, perform despite the array of visual aids available. Yes, they do provide magazines and videos though they're not anywhere near as appealing as you might think when you're in a tiny cubicle with seedy lights and disposable plastic coverings over all the furniture! Getting bad news After providing the sample it was a waiting game to find out the results. I'm quite used to this after all my various tests over the years for my leukaemia, and more recently my lungs, yet this wait - for an email - was in many ways much harder as the outcome would have impact my wife, just as much as it did on me. When the results came I think I was already prepared deep down for bad news. I never seem to be able to do things the easy way and I knew all the risks when I signed up to undergo intensive chemo and radiotherapy as part of my treatment for leukaemia. Advertisement However the way the news was delivered, via a cold email that didn't actually spell out my infertility, (I had to Google the condition I had) wasn't the best and I advise anyone thinking about their fertility NOT to pursue a private clinic of this type. Anywhere that emails the results and doesn't explain what they mean in a way that they understand is not the place to go. I had to call them to sort out a follow up consultation (at extra cost of course) to discuss the results in more detail if I wanted one. That just isn't right. Beginning the long road to IVF My next step was to get in touch with the hospital where I was treated to find out more about my frozen samples, which I hadn't given a moment's thought about in more than 12 years at the time. Thank goodness I did as it turns out that the hospital had been trying to get in touch with me for almost three years to get me to come in to do a fertility test of their own to determine whether they needed to continue holding my frozen samples in storage or not. By rights, my sperm should have already been destroyed as I hadn't got back in contact with them despite their attempts to contact me. They were sending all the correspondence to an old address and an email address which was incorrect. Looking back I was incredibly fortunate, but to this day I do wonder why they didn't try calling me or checking with haematology at the same hospital who had been seeing me to check if their details were the same (which they weren't of course). The consultant talked through my results with my wife and I as the clinic should have done. I was actually still creating sperm just very few of them with limited mobility, which makes it highly unlikely that we could ever conceive naturally. He said that for us IVF really was the only way forwards and as it would be a long and very drawn out process to get in to the system and in a position to have a go. Advertisement Bureaucratic madness What followed can only be described as bureaucratic madness. Despite having a referral from one of the leading andrology consultants in the country, my wife and I had to jump through so many hoops just to get an initial referral at our local hospital to officially begin the process. A series of tests for my wife followed (again delayed) and the start of an endless paper trail that included the same form on more than one occasion much to our frustration. Processing of these forms was also extremely slow and often only got followed up after chasing on our part. Eventually we got our referral more than a year after our initial meeting with the andrology consultant. IVF Once we were in the system with the Assisted Conception Unit things got an awful lot better and they were excellent with us from start to finish with our first round of IVF. Despite an amazing response to all the hormones and development of a strong embryo using my frozen samples, we sadly weren't successful on this occasion. Whilst the embryo did implant it stopped growing for whatever reason and we're now back at square one. The fact that we got that far is a positive sign and apparently such miscarriages after a few days are very, very common with couples trying naturally. The trouble with IVF is that it's all played out publicly so you know about a miscarriage at nine days whereas a couple trying normally wouldn't even be aware that they had even been pregnant in most cases. The future I'm optimistic about our chances going forwards but it hurts me that I've had to put my wife through so much both physically and emotionally. Despite it being my issue the pressure is now all on her as she has to do all the work and endure all the horrible injections and their side-effects. The fact that she's going to have to go through it all again upsets me but she's a strong and resilient woman and is as desperate as I am to have a baby. Advertisement Regional inequality Anyone that's been through IVF, successful or otherwise, will tell you that it's an extremely difficult process and I think it's so important that more is done to raise awareness about fertility and the IVF system which currently isn't fair and places undue stress on people. The chances of conceiving during the first IVF cycle are less than 50% on average and yet only one round is funded on the NHS. With IVF treatment so expensive couples are under enormous additional pressure for it to work first time round and this is really detrimental to the chances of conceiving as it only increases the stress levels. If this was the same for all couples in the UK then at least it would be a level playing field. However it's not. In some areas couples are entitled to three or even four NHS funded rounds of IVF. in Croydon there is no IVF funding at all. Zero. Yet it costs 4,500 minimum for a round - an amount that some can't afford to pay. My wife and I are in a very fortunate position where we are able to pay for another round or possibly even two of IVF. However others aren't so lucky and it makes me so angry and sad to think that some may not be able to pursue starting a family purely because they live in an area where funding has been cut. That can't be right and something needs to change to make access the same for all. Raising awareness I've raised this issue with my local MP, Dr Rosena Khan, who is fantastic and has agreed to meet up with me to discuss it further. Whilst nothing will change as a result of this meeting I'm hoping she will at least raise the issue in parliament and put it on the agenda going forwards. Advertisement I'm also going to raise the issue of provision for female teenage cancer patients who are being denied the opportunity in many cases to freeze eggs to use in the future if they're fortunate enough to beat their cancer and be in a position to want to start a family. Again this varies from hospital trust to hospital trust but it can't be right to deny young women such an opportunity as parenthood before they've even had a chance to live. I'll write a blog following my meeting with Dr Rosena Khan but in the meantime it would be great if you could help me raise awareness about fertility and IVF during National Fertility Awareness Week by sharing my blog post with friends and family and reading more about ways that you can get involved here: http://fertilitynetworkuk.org/national-fertility-awareness-week-2017/ Trends are all around us. We see them in what we eat, where we live and how we connect with each other. And whether we're aware of it or not, they dictate the products we want and the services we crave. Smart phones. Co-working spaces. Green juice. We know the trends that define our daily lives. Yet what we often fail to notice is the interconnections. Co-working spaces emerged to fill the new needs of a "creative class", while holding a green juice became a status item in a world where wellness carries more social cachet than wealth. So how do you forecast a trend? It's part art, part science, part math and part magic. The process combines intuition, experience and hard data to separate micro trends from macro trends. Advertisement Micro trends start with early influencers and moves to mass adoption within one to two years. A macro trend, by contrast, spans at least five years and impacts a variety of industries from technology to finance. Macro trends operate on a continuum and evolve from season to season, year to year - examples include the maker movement and the wellness boom. Trends are tracked through local patterns. When you see the same topics being explored by a subculture in Nigeria as an artist in Sante Fe, you have a pretty good signal that you're looking at a macro trend, rather than a fad. To be sure, instincts are validated using quantitative measures - retail data, brand perception metrics and historical evidence. Once confirmed, research and data is combined into a story - a macro trend. The Anatomy of the Trend One of the most overwhelming influences in the past twenty or so years has been the emergence of the millennial and corresponding trends. Rarely has a group been so analysed, debated and discussed - and, as they reach their peak spending years, this is unlikely to change for some time. As career opportunities changed, the economy faltered, and scientific advancements leapt ahead, marriage and childbirth became less of a priority. Millennials get married later in life and are on pace to stay unmarried at rates higher than previous generations, while millennial women are reproducing at the slowest pace in US history. Advertisement One example of how millennial lifestyles have influenced movements is in the rising popularity of pets. Although they are having children later, the need for companionship has led to a staggering rise in pet ownership among millennials. Consequently, the pet lifestyle market is steadily growing with American's spending an incredible $11bn to pamper their pets in 2015. From doggie couture to feline interiors, the commercial opportunities are endless. As they become parents, millennials are also disrupting the childcare market. Rebelling against the "helicopter" parenting of previous generations, they have established more relaxed views. Maintaining a career is critical and co-parenting is on the rise; in Scandinavia there is even a new breed of stylish, stay-at-home dads called 'latte papas' emerging as the counterpart to the UK's 'yummy mummys'. Millennial parents also take to social media more than any generation to document their children's milestones, giving rise to a culture of competitiveness with blogs like The Glow typifying the idyll image of millennial motherhood. Also growing? Alternative religion. As social and political upheaval make traditional religion less appealing, millennials are seeking new ways to channel their beliefs, triggering a wave of spiritual spending. Enterprising retailers have tapped into this: modern meditation - such as apps like Headspace - and adult colouring books emerged early on to help millennials learn to live in the moment, while New Age shops went from fringe to mainstream. In 2016, Selfridges hosted the Astrolounge, where customers could enjoy crystal massages, palm and tarot readings. Combining food and spirituality, Moon Juice provides 'cosmic provisions' tonics and Moon Dusts alongside classic green juices. Niche? Think again. Moon Dust can be found at Urban Outfitters, where an entire section of the site is devoted to 'mysticism', while Free People sells crystals for healing purposes. One thing is for sure, millennials are not like their parents. Or their parents' parents. They've challenged traditional notions of everything from religion, to professions and marriage. And with this disruption, they've pioneered previously unthinkable markets, like the sharing economy and online dating. As an incredibly engaged and influential demographic, millennials have impacted numerous trends in recent years, triggering a wave of changes across industries themselves. Advertisement iAaki antoAana plaza The London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA) will have to be relocated before the UK leaves the EU. Where they end up going will reveal a lot about European politics. First, there is simple question of geographic balance. EU institutions are located disproportionately in Francophone Western Europe. Strasbourg, Brussels and Luxembourg host the most important institutions, from the Court of Justice, the Parliament, Commission, Presidency and Council of Ministers. Advertisement Frankfurt won the seat of the European Central Bank in 1998 as it became apparent that the UK would not be joining the Euro currency, but London did pick up the Medicines and Banking regulators in recognition of the UK's strengths in these sectors. But the EU is a now continent-wide project, and many Eastern European countries are understandably arguing that a better balance needs to be struck. The Slovak and Greek capitals are arguing that relocating the EMA to Bratislava or Athens will help address this imbalance. But second, and in opposition to the geographic argument, is the case for the institutions to be based near the industries that they regulate. This was the impetus for London to host the EMA and EBA, with the largest agglomeration of pharmaceuticals and financial services in Europe. Leading the industry argument are Amsterdam and Milan, both of which are significant pharma and banking hubs. Dublin too is making a pitch on the industry argument, particularly if firms relocate from London to Ireland, which offers both Common Law and an English language environment. Advertisement Then there is the question of recruiting and retaining staffing and talent for the organisations. A recent survey of the EMA's staff found that the majority of staff say they will refuse to relocate to Eastern Europe. Workers in same-sex marriages have expressed concern that they will lose rights if they move to the East. This highlights a broader cultural split in the European project: how to accommodate the different attitudes towards and legal statuses of LGBT people in the East and the West. Indeed, even the broader question of how liberal Europe should be is at stake. Imagine you're facing state surveillance and physical attacks by the Chinese authorities because you're trying to protect Beijing residents from forced evictions. Or you're detained in an immigration removal centre in the UK, with absolutely no idea how long you'll be held there. Or you're facing 15 years in prison simply because of your work defending human rights in Turkey. You'd probably feel isolated, unprotected, vulnerable. These are real situations, that real people are going through, right now. Now imagine you're in one of these difficult positions and you start receiving letters - hundreds and thousands of messages from people all around the world - letting you know that you're not alone and that there are thousands of people that won't tolerate the human rights abuses you're suffering. And that these people will not only stand by you, but will stand up for you. Advertisement You're likely to feel comforted, stronger and more determined. And when thousands of letters start to pile up at the doors of governments or embassies, it's likely they'd have no choice but to take note and respond. This is the extraordinary power behind Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign, which every year sees the simple act of letter-writing transform people's lives. At this time each year, millions of people from all corners of the world write messages of hope and support to individuals suffering human rights violations, and send letters to pressure the authorities to stop the abuses being committed. Advertisement And it works. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people wrote to support Chelsea Manning, the US army whistle-blower. She was freed this year after outgoing US President Barack Obama cut short her draconian 35-year sentence. And pro-democracy activist Fred Bauma, who was released from a Congolese prison in August 2016, told us that "letters from Amnesty supporters...were really powerful and helped me to stay strong. They protected us because the authorities knew thousands of people were watching". It's wonderful to hear the stories of those who've been supported through the letters they've received. Every single year I am amazed by the power that one letter, when multiplied by thousands, can have. That is why we're encouraging as many people as possible to get involved in this year's campaign. Every single letter written or email sent counts and makes a difference. And this year we'll be writing for 14 individuals or groups who desperately need this support. From people held in UK immigration detention centres for an indefinite amount of time and often in terrible conditions, to Shackelia Jackson, a young Jamaican woman whose brother was the victim of an indiscriminate police killing and who is now fighting for justice. From 10 human rights activists currently on trial in Turkey, to Sakris Kupila, a 21-year-old Finnish transgender man who can't be legally recognised as male because he doesn't want to be forced through sterilisation - an absurd requirement of Finland's gender reassignment laws. These are just some of the individuals who'll be receiving thousands of solidarity letters this year. Advertisement Five minutes, some pen and paper or an email, is all it takes to show people being denied their human rights that you stand with them. When thousands of individuals speak up together, our voice becomes stronger - and yours can help make it even more powerful. 3 Tips For Gathering A Music Audience When it comes to promoting new music, you don't need to have a label at your back, but you do need to plan carefully and work hard. In fact, a scrappy DIY approach has, in some instances, been more effective. Here we look at three essential tips for bringing an audience in to your music. ______________________ Guest post by Jason Mayoral of the Symphonic Blog The key to promoting music is to start early and be really active. Just change your cover photo on Facebook by the album cover and announce the launch day does not lead anywhere. You need to create expectation over time and keep it after the disk appears. The fact is that you do not need the marketing department of a record label for the launch campaign of your album. With all the tools at your disposal on the internet, you can get diffusion for very little money, or even for free. In fact, the creative campaigns carried out by indie musicians tend to be more effective than the stereotyped strategies of the big labels. Here are three tips on how you can gather a music audience: 1. Make your fans work For the most part, as an indie artist (meaning independent artist), you need to set everything up for yourself, and that includes marketing. But in reality you have a full team of collaborators waiting to spread your news: your fans! Although you can not send them a plan of actions by email and expect them to complete the assigned tasks, you can, and should, create a strategy that encourages their participation. One of the best ways to achieve this is to involve them. If people think that they have contributed in some way to the project, they will be more willing to share it with their friends. This could be as simple as asking for photos to use in the video clip of your single. Crowdfunding platforms allow you to offer attractive rewards. how to include their names in a song, allow them to write a line of a letter, or appear in the acknowledgments in the albums booklet. Contests are another great way to get fans involved. Offer them something truly extraordinary, like a live webinar / concert through Google Hangout where you release a new song. Ask the fans to share something, like your single, on social networks to participate in the contest. You will also get more diffusion encouraging the winners to talk about their extraordinary experience in the contest. 2. Live promotion Currently, disc releases are becoming increasingly digital. You do not have to worry about your album reaching the big stores and then going to sign CDs on the day of release. Instead, you just have to click on the upload files button to send a few tweets, and you have already complied. Anyway, that you can do everything online does not mean you should do it. The face-to-face experience is still tremendously important in the music industry. I know that recording an album can be a bit chaotic, a struggle to get everything done on time, but its exactly when youre interested in playing concerts. Make your fans know that you are releasing a new song in your shows. This will not only attract people and draw attention to the new album, you will also have the opportunity to shoot the songs, based on the reactions of the audience. If it does not sound exactly as you thought when you play at full volume, you still have time to make some changes! You could even schedule four concerts in the month before the launch and tell your fans that you will play the entire album in one of them. In this way, if you really want to hear the new songs in advance, you will have to go to all the concerts! We all know that the live show can be useful to draw attention to the local scene on your album after the release. Its a fairly common practice to have a party or concert to release the album and then go on tour, but you have to think about how to take this strategy a step further and offer something that is really exciting for your fans, while increasing the diffusion of your album. Do a mini tour of homemade concerts in your area is a good way to give something extra special to your fans. You could even set up an attractive contest or sell two CDs for the price of one to encourage people to share. 3. Constant content The last thing you should do is start working on your next album and disappear for a few months. After months of silence, when you finally reappear with news, your fans may not be following you, listening or looking for your content. Social networks are one of the easiest ways to be on the radar of your fans. Post Twitter updates on the recording process, photos from the studio, or small teasers on Vine. If you have a blog set up on your website, follow the content flow! Share stories from the studio, or what the album inspired you, or some of the songs. You want your fans to visit your website regularly until you release the album. This way, they can buy the disc and maybe some merchandising when it appears. It will also improve your SEO approach by making your website improve its ranking. With SEO agencies like Rebel Corp a Miami SEO marketing agency you can get your music reach the people interested in the kind of music you offer. Also, PPC consultant (an expert that creates pay per click online campaigns using keywords associated to what your brand offer) can help make excellent marketing campaigns for your music to reach a specific target. If you want to reach an audience beyond your active database, bloggers are the way to go, and entering a blog is totally within your reach, as an independent artist, if you have a strategy in mind. The best thing about blogs is that they tend to have loyal followers who really trust the bloggers opinion. Above all, his followers are circumscribed to specific niches. This means that you are guaranteed an audience that already likes the kind of music you play. Do some research and find blogs that talk about musicians of your style and that are at a time in your musical career similar to yours. Then, you send them an email. You can usually find the contact information of the blogger looking for a bit on the web. Put a clear topic and make the personal email, brief and to the point. Share an interesting story about your album with a link to your music, but do not tell them your life in a long and boring mail. Remember, it is enough to intrigue them to check your music: music is the one that should speak. If you want to convert blog followers into fans, try to offer them an exclusive scoop of your single or a free download for their users. If they have a song and they like it, they are more likely to buy the rest of the album. You can even go deep into it and open the door to your fans to show them the composition process. Many people find the creative world of the musicians really interesting. Post short videos of drafts of songs you are working on or photos of short ideas for the lyrics. Ask your fans for opinion and talk to them about what inspires you. Not only will you follow your content with interest, you can also forge a more personal relationship. Share on: Public art commissioners William Blackmer, Cynthia Quinones, Gail Sellers, Erica Manville and Nancy Ziter discuss how to disseminate emails to the group. North Adams Arts Commission Reviewing Email Communications NORTH ADAMS, Mass. The Public Arts Commission is trying to get a handle on its email communications. Commissioner Gail Sellers asked that the issue be placed on the agenda at last week's meeting after learning someone had been trying to obtain information using the commission's email address but had not gotten any responses. The individual, Joseph Smith, had contacted Sellers when his query was answered Oct. 18 by Chairwoman Julia Dixon, who wrote that she had not been checking the email regularly. "I was very concerned that we would be having conversations of this type that we would not be aware of," Sellers said last Monday. "The Public Arts Commission has an email but I don't remember if we had discussion of how we could find out about who could access the emails." She said she was upset that Smith had apparently been in contact with the mayor, the City Council president, and city solicitor but the commission was just learning about these contacts now. Vice Chairwoman Erica Manville said there had not been much in the way of email during her time as chairman but believed that had picked up since Dixon, who was not present, had taken the leadership. The commission is only a couple years old and is only beginning to advance its mission of coordinating public art installations. "We have to understand that some of them are not pertinent," she said. Commissioner Cynthia Quinones, the secretary, suggested an automated response that would direct inquiries on applications and general information to the commission's web site and state someone would get back to them if necessary within 48 hours so people would not expect immediate responses. The letters could also be part of the regular agenda so all commissioners would know about any communications, she said. Sellers, however, said she was "angry and upset," feeling that Dixon's response to Smith that she had been busy with a work assignment was unprofessional. "This person feels like they're not being listened to," she said. "Whether we answer his questions specifically is not up to Julia." Commissioner Nancy Ziter agreed that the response wasn't appropriate and thought email questions should be responded to within 48 hours. [The emails] should go to the chair," she said. "With Mr. Smith, what might have happened is [to say] 'I appreciate your concern. We will put it on our agenda for our next meeting. " Smith's emails have centered on the controversial move by Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art to paint over the columns under the Veterans Memorial Bridge. The columns had featured reproductions of Arnold Print Works patterns and individuals from Lewis Hine's photographs of mill children. The project had been done by local artists and school children through Art About Town. "I responded and thanked him for bringing it to my attention and said I'd put it on the agenda," Sellers said. "I feel like we've been dumped on and I don't think we had the experience to deal with the columns." She said she wanted to appease his frustration but that he is a strong advocate to restore the children's work on the columns. Both Mass MoCA and the arts group had been permission for their work by two different mayors prior to the commission's establishment. The crux has been MoCA's stance that since its permission had been given nearly 20 years ago, it trumped the more recent work. The museum painted over the columns as a "restoration" of the "Harmonic Bridge" sound installation for the opening of Building 6 this past spring. The commission's position although not a unanimous one is that it will not take sides because neither organization has a contract spelling out its rights. "We're not a court. We're not deciding what should happen," Manville said. The commission had strongly encouraged artists to work it out between themselves . "They were supposed to speak to each other and they did not." Quinones said the conversation was getting away from the agenda item, which what to do with emails. Commissioner William Blackmer noted that some of the questions, such as legalities, were not within the commission's ability to answer. "I think it's the courtesy more than the answers," Quinones said. The commission determined to ask Dixon to set up an automated response about getting back to any queries within 48 hours, then follow up with a simple answer or affirmation that it will be brought up at the next meeting and invite the person to attend. They also decided to put Smith's original questions emailed to the commission, not the back and forth, on the November agenda. Sellers was tasked with getting his initial questions. "This seems to be something that should go to the city solicitor to ask what we need to do," Ziter said. The commission was also irritated that Mass MoCA had still not sent contracts for the light installation recently removed from Notre Dame Church. The commission also was updated that Griffin Labbance's project to paint on Montana Street has changed considerably and will no longer be on city property; decided to direct Ramona Fabregas to organizations that could help her prayer flag project; again postponed discussion on the Eagle Street Initiative for lack of information; and that someone would attend a meeting on the city's cultural district plan. Quinones asked that a member step up by December to replace her as secretary; because of personal reasons, she anticipated missing several meetings in the coming year. The former Elm Street Getty has been shut down by city officials. Pittsfield Officials Shut Down Elm Street Convenience Store PITTSFIELD, Mass. Building, fire, and health officials have shut down an Elm Street retailer because the building had fallen into disrepair. On Aug. 28, building inspectors deemed 155 Elm St. as "hazardous to life and limb" and restricted public access to it. The ceiling had collapsed on one half of the structure, and inspectors say there was significant water damage. A Board of Survey tour in early October upheld the building inspector's determination, and the Health Department followed up by suspending the owner's food and tobacco licenses. "During my evaluation of this structure from the outside, I noticed two large sections of the roof had collapsed into the structure, leaving the building unsecured against the elements and intruders," wrote Fire Chief Robert Czerwinski, who was one of four to perform the Board of Survey tour. "Looking at the interior through the windows it appears that wood framed walls/rooms were added or renovated over time. Examination of the interior shows a fair amount of water on the floors, most likely from recent rains. Also, on the interior, it is evident that there is a fair amount of structural damage to the interior walls. Holes are broken through numerous walls, leaving the structure open to additional damage such as mold and mildew. There is a fair amount of garbage and debris stored within the building." Czerwinski considered the building "an immediate danger to life" and recommended that it be razed. He noted that years earlier the condition of the roof had led the Fire Department to placard it as unsuitable for interior firefighting. Owner Saurin Shah, however, said the area in which the roof collapsed is separate from his business. Elm Street Convenience operates out of a portion of the west side of the building, which Shah said is stable. The portion on the east of the former the Elm Street Getty at the corner of Elm and Newell is where there is damage, he said. Shah is asking for the ability to continue operating out of that side of the building in order to have the cash flow to demolish the other side. He has been working with engineers at SK Design to craft plans to rebuild the site "to give Elm Street a whole new look." "I can't pay these guys, if I hire them, without any cash flow," Shah said. Shah purchased the building from the Getty Corp. in late 2012. He said prior to that, the building had numerous issues that the city knew about. He said he had pestered the former owners, even withholding rent at one point, to make the repairs. Eventually, he said the company put the building for sale and he either had to buy it or move. "I didn't own the building until 2013, 2014. Before that, we were just renting the building from the Getty Corporation. We even stopped paying rent to get attention to some of the issues," he said. "It was a known issue for a long time with the city." Shah has since paid to create engineering plans but says he can't move forward with actual construction unless he is operating the store. Shah takes issue with the city now shutting him down for longstanding issues in a different portion of the building. "I personally feel like it came on too fast. I am working on getting it done but I can't do it when I'm unemployed," Shah said. He added that after years of leasing space on Dalton Avenue for another store -- Dalton Avenue Variety -- he had just gotten a notice from the landlord that he has to move from there, too. He has two stores being shut down at the same time. Shah made an appeal to the Board of Health to lift suspensions on his permits for 90 days in order to create a revenue stream. The Board of Health rejected his petition but said if he can satisfy the Building Department or find a new location, then the Health Department will work quickly to lift the suspension. "Unless this building is made safe, there is no way we can reinstate the permits," Chairman Jay Green said. "There is just no way we are going to be able to permit you to operate with these licenses there." Green added that even if the board did lift the suspension, the Building Department would still need to lift the restriction on public access. "As long as you are taking affirmative steps, in good faith, in a proactive manner with the department, we'll work with you," Green said. The building has been noticeably in disrepair for years but it is unclear exactly when the roof over the garage portion collapsed. In the report filed by Building Inspector John Carchedi, a complaint had been made about the property leading to the Aug. 28 inspection. Czerwinski and three others, including a city engineer, also inspected the property on Oct. 13, finding the structure to be dangerous and open to the weather. The Board of Health says it will continue watching the condition of the old paper mill on Howland Avenue. Dumpsters Being Removed From Former Adams Paper Mill ADAMS, Mass. The overflowing dumpsters at the former Curtis Fine Papers are being removed. Code Enforcement Officer Thomas Romaniak told the Board of Health on Wednesday that the business storing the full dumpsters on the 115 Howland Ave. property has moved most of them to a different location it also leases. "There is still some junk there and in the back," he said. "There are some unregistered vehicles back there, too ... there have been issues there for a long time now." Discussion over the mill sparked up on social media when residents shared concerns over alleged activity there in October. The town had pulled MJD Real Estate's operating permits because owners Norman Dellaghelfa Jr. and Roberta Dellaghelfa, who used the facility for their trucking business, owe the town more than $450,000 in unpaid real estate and personal property taxes. The town is in the process of taking the property. While they were not allowed to operate on the premises, it appears that they were leasing space to a hauler. Last month, the Board of Health was asked to inspect the dumpsters on the property that were believed to be a fire hazard. Board of Health member Bruce Shepley said although the dumpster issue seems to be correcting itself, the board should keep a close eye on the mill. "I think this needs to stay open indefinitely and this is a multi-agency effort that until we all are in agreement should stay open," Shepley said. "This is a big issue and ... this is a thorn in the side of Adams." There are also zoning concerns with the property and Romaniak said he believes the town was in the process of finding out who else is leasing the property. He said there appears to be an automobile repair operation still on the premise as well as a continuation of freight movement. He added that the Dellaghelfas also owe fines to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Romaniak said he did not inspect the inside of the mill. In other business, the Board of Health said a vial of mercury was found in the transfer station shed and was properly disposed of through the Northern Berkshire Solid Waste Management District. No one knew how the vial got there. "Upon the annual cleaning of the shed by a known contractor, this bottle of liquid mercury was found in there," Shepley said. "How it got in there and who dropped it off is unknown to everyone." For the most part, the shed it locked and the attendant keeps a watchful eye on whatever materials come through, he said, adding the attendant may have been busy and missed the mercury passing through. Shepley asked at a future meeting they brainstorm how to prevent an incident like this from happening again. "It was just a small amount. You know enough to roll on our desks in the 1960s, but we want to make sure we can prevent this in the future," he said. "There could have been some significant ramifications." Board member David Rhoads said the full-service transfer station is now open and the town has already sold almost 300 permits. "We are open for business there were," he said. "Permits are in demand." The East Road transfer station had only taken recyclables in recent years and residents used commercial haulers or the North Adams transfer station. The town decided to start taking solid waste and implemented a pay-as-you-throw system to offset the station's costs. Rhoads also asked if it was possible in the future to accept expired propane tanks. Shepley said the attendant in the past had removed the valves and taken tanks but with no way to know if the tanks are completely empty, it could be dangerous. "Removing the valves is dangerous and we shouldn't be doing that," he said. "You never know if it has been completely discharged." Shepley said he would contact the waste district to see what the protocol for collecting propane tanks is. Williamstown Elementary School Committee members Joe Johnson and Caitlin Lopez participate in Wednesday's meeting. Mount Greylock Committee to Weigh Minor Changes to Regionalization Proposal WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. Two weeks before it asks the town's voters to put it out of business, the Williamstown Elementary School Committee met Wednesday to review the budget and discuss two final changes to the regional agreement to be considered on Nov. 14. That is the night the towns of Williamstown and Lanesborough will decide whether to expand the Mount Greylock Regional School District to include the junior-senior high school's two feeder elementary schools, Williamstown and Lanesborough Elementary. It is also the night when the three elected school committees in the two towns may begin the process of forming a transition committee that will direct the expanded district starting on Jan. 1. Although the Williamstown School Committee would continue to exist through the end of fiscal 2018, the focus of the district would shift to the transition committee if both towns approve regionalization at concurrent special town meetings. That transition committee would include four members from the current Mount Greylock School Committee, two from the Williamstown Committee and one from the Lanesborough School Committee and would be responsible for negotiating the initial contracts for union personnel in the three school buildings and developing the FY19 budget of the expanded district. It also would go away in November, when a new seven-member Mount Greylock School Committee is elected by voters in both member towns. Before any of that happens, the current Mount Greylock School Committee has one more piece of regionalizaton business on its plate, Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron explained to his colleagues on Wednesday night. On Thursday, the Mount Greylock School Committee will hold a special meeting to approve minor changes to the proposed regional agreement. Specifically, the district has been asked to add language that protects the two towns, who will continue to own the elementary school buildings and would lease them to an expanded preK-12 Mount Greylock district. "The changes were related to the lease clause," Bergeron said. One change adds language that clarifies the towns will be able to continue to use the school buildings for events like town meetings "with priority being given to school events." The other change specifies that "[p]lans to improve, alter or remodel the leased buildings will be subject to negotiations between the [regional district] Committee and the building owner-of-record Town." Both modifications were requested by officials in Lanesborough, Bergeron said. Neither the school committee members who crafted the proposed agreement nor officials at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education objected to the notions. "In a situation where the regional school district wanted to do capital improvements, there should be a discussion in partnership with the town prior to the school trying to do it," Bergeron said. "Instead of the school saying, Here's what we want to do; you can vote it up or down,' you would think the school committee would want to talk about it with the town first. "In DESE's mind you can put that stuff in the lease. But it gave more comfort to Lanesborough to have it in the agreement, and we don't see any obstacles to doing it." The Mount Greylock School Committee is scheduled to vote on the final language, seen below, at a 5:30 6:30 meeting at the high school on Thursday. The Williamstown Board of Selectmen plans to vote its recommendation on the regionalization at its Nov. 13 meeting. The School Committee plans at least one more public information session prior to the Nov. 14, 7 p.m. special town meeting at the elementary school. The deadline to register to vote at town meeting for those already not registered is Friday, Nov. 3. The town clerk's office at Town Hall will be open until 8 p.m. on Friday. In other business on Wednesday, the committee heard a budget update from Mark Chapulis of Auburn municipal finance firm The Management Solution, which is providing services to all three schools in the Lanesborough-Williamstown Tri-District. Chapulis told the committee that the FY18 budget is on track, though one area that the district will have to keep an eye on is funding from grants. "Grants are coming in a little lower," Chapulis said. "We may have to identify additional funding sources [to cover salaries tied to grants]." Chapulis said that he would have some line-item transfers for the committee to consider at its December meeting. Principal Joelle Brookner gave the School Committee a recap of last month's Words are Wonderful celebration, a weeklong event that, this year, featured residencies by authors Kate Messner and Timothy Basil Ering and a performance by Berkshire Theatre Group. Brookner thanked the volunteers who made the week happen, singling out chair Kathleen Igoe. Final Mount Greylock Regional Agreement Proposal by iBerkshires.com on Scribd Girls Inc. Region III Director Annie Heitman said the program was first developed in 1987. Brigham Center CEO Kelly Marion. Avangrid Foundation Director Nicole Licata Gran. State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier. BCC's Dean of Academic Affairs Charles Kaminski. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at MCLA Adrienne Wooters. PreviousNext Girls Inc. Launches 'Eureka!' Program, Focus On STEM Education In honor of the launch of the new program, Mayor Linda Tyer presented Brigham Center CEO Kelly Marion a copy of 'She Persisted' written by Chelsea Clinton. PITTSFIELD, Mass. The students who stand out for BCC's Dean of Academic Affairs Charles Kaminski are the ones who come in with bold dreams. It is the women who come from a family of nurses and want to take that a step forward and become biochemists. Or the girl who starts out thinking about becoming a teacher and instead aims to become a data analyst. It is the women who refuse to just accept what society tells them they can and cannot do that stands out to Kaminski because at one time women weren't encouraged in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Now, Kaminski is preparing to meet a whole lot more of those women who think bigger and bolder. Berkshire Community College is one of the many partners establishing the Eureka! Program through Girls Inc. "It is programs like Eureka that gets students to that tipping point, that catalyst to this realization that they can really pursue a field in STEM that they want to do and have a passion for, not just what they feel is expected of them because of their gender," Kaminski said. The program is one Gladys Allen Brigham Community Center CEO Kelly Marion has wanted to roll out locally for years but hasn't had the funding. It is a five-year program guiding a girl from middle school to college in the STEM career path. For the first two years, the student attends a summer camp on the campuses of Berkshire Community College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts doing hands-on experiments and programs. There is a focus on sports, specifically swimming, and personal growth. During the school year, there is continued mentoring, relationship building and field trips. In year three and four, the girls, in partnership with the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board, are given paid internships with local companies in the STEM field. And the fifth year, the focus is on preparing them for college. "Girls need opportunities, girls need resources, girls need to know they can be their best, accept challenges, support each other in achieving goals, take risks, to learn from and make mistakes, and to develop new skills," Marion said. The program is particularly aimed to help those of low-income and minorities. At the Brigham Center, 59 percent of the girls identify as a minority, 44 percent come from homes with annual incomes less than $25,000 per year, and 40 percent of the girls come from a single-parent household. Starting next year, 20 of those girls will be able to attend the program at no cost. "Our goal is to add new cohorts, eventually having 100 girls participating annually in a five-year cycle," Marion said. While the program is free for those participating, it does cost about $50,000 per year to run. Marion had talked about the program at business events and other social gatherings. And then she was put in touch with Berkshire Gas and the parent company's charitable arm, the Avangrid Foundation. The proposal came before Avangrid Foundation Director Nicole Licata Grant's desk. Grant went through a similar program when she a was a young girl so it wasn't hard for her to decide to get involved. "We were excited by the opportunity and it was one I similarly had as a kid growing up in New Haven, Conn. It made an enormous impact in my life. It was the first time I met engineers who were women. It was my first time on a college campus. It made all the difference in the world," Grant said. Avangrid Foundation and Berkshire Gas have put forth $25,000 for the first year of the program. It is a challenge grant and Marion said she will now be seeking other sponsors to get it off the ground. "In so many ways STEM represents the future of generations to come. Preparing young women to pursue STEM-based professions will create new possibilities for them and significantly expand the STEM talent pool for the benefit of all. Nothing could be more exciting. A new day is upon us and horizons for young people will be brighter than ever before," said Berkshire Gas President and Chief Operating Officer Karen Zink. Zink is hoping her company's gift becomes a "magnet" to bring in others. The Brigham Center will become just the 19th Girls Inc. Affiliate to run it. Karen Zink said the program opens up a bright future for local girls. According to Girls Inc. Regional III Director Annie Heitman, the program was designed in 1987 and in 1992 the National Science Foundation funded a pilot program of it at five different sites in the country. "It was designed to help women develop leadership and career skills and was targeted to girls of color, living in the inner city many of whom were economically disadvantaged," Heitman said. In 2010, the Clinton Global Initiative funded a massive expansion of the program and monitored the outcomes. "Girls participating in Eureka stay interested in math and science through high school and prepares them for a world that is increasingly technological," Heitman said. And now, the program continues to find its way into Girls Inc. Affiliates throughout the country with the Berkshires becoming the latest to take it on. Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at MCLA Adrienne Wooters said the program ties directly into the work of local educators. In 2003, MCLA, BCC, local school districts, and non-profits came together to form the Berkshire STEM Pipeline. Together they have focused on getting more and more students into the science and technology fields. "We have been meeting regularly and thinking about how we get STEM into the schools, how we increase the quality of teaching in the schools, and how we get more of our Berkshire County students to move into STEM fields. This is a big deal for us," Wooters. "Working with Girl's Inc. is absolutely part of the mission. It is part of the mission at BCC. It is part of the mission at MCLA." Marion added the importance the program will have to the local economy, where the workforce lacks employees with strong STEM backgrounds. State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier said the program is "changing lives" and reflected on the years in which women were discouraged and told they could not go into these fields. And Mayor Linda Tyer praised the support in helping young girls become the best they can be. iciHaiti - Education : Minister Cadet at the UNESCO Conference (Paris) Tuesday as part of the 39th session of the General Conference of UNESCO in Paris (30 October to 14 November 2017), Pierre Josue Agenor Cadet, Minister of Education, accompanied by his chief of staff, participated to the high-level round table on SDG 4-Education 2030, with his counterparts and government representatives from other countries. Several figures were provided on the progress made in the implementation of SDG 4 as well as the difficulties encountered and the bottlenecks in getting the process started. During this important conference, Minister Cadet participated in a working meeting with his French and Latin American counterparts (Cuba, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic). Exchanging on major education challenges, opportunities and the need to strengthen partnerships has been the focus of this working meeting. Minister Cadet reviewed the current efforts in Haiti and identified several problems common to Southern countries that do not favor the good development of the education sector, among others : the problem of school feeding, teacher training, the lack of financial resources for the implementation of innovative programs such as the development of Information and Communication Technologies for Education (ICT) in schools and overcrowding in classrooms. IH/ iciHaiti iciHaiti - Energy : Solar training for CEAC technicians A specialist from the Solar Electric Ligth Fund (SELF), organized a training session for technicians and other staff of the Electric Cooperative of the Arrondissement of Coteaux (CEAC) https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-10599-haiti-economy-first-electric-cooperative-in-haiti.html The objective was to enable the participants to be more proactive and effective in case of natural disasters in order to better manage solar panels https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22258-haiti-technology-coteaux-hybrid-power-plant-soon-rehabilitated.html . This training of a few hours focused on the design and role of each component of the system, the way the connection is made, the operating mode of the system and its maintenance. The staff also learned how to use plywood sheets to protect the solar panels and especially how to move them to shelter them without any damage. These activities were supported financially and technically by UN Environment / Haiti from a Government of Norway fund. See also : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-22488-icihaiti-energy-installation-of-solar-panels-continues-at-the-centrale-of-coteaux.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-22258-haiti-technology-coteaux-hybrid-power-plant-soon-rehabilitated.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-10599-haiti-economy-first-electric-cooperative-in-haiti.html IH/ iciHaiti Moving to Bismarck, North Dakota, had not been in the plan for Gary Adkisson. He came to Carlisle as the publisher of The Sentinel in 2014 after his career in the newspaper business had taken him to Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. We thought this would be the place that we would stay, Adkisson said. But, when the offer to become the next publisher of The Bismarck Tribune came, it seemed like the right next step, he said. Lee Enterprises Inc. announced the move Thursday. Gary has an impressive record of accomplishment and has excelled in every area of our business, said Julie Bechtel, president and publisher of Lees Central Illinois Group and company group publisher. He has great passion for strong local news and outstanding service to readers and advertisers. Kim Kamowski has been named interim publisher for The Sentinel, and Lee Enterprises will initiate a search for a new publisher. Gary created a great legacy. He had great ideas, and I just want to continue to uphold those, Kamowski said. Time in Carlisle Starting the Cumberland Valley Business Journal was a highlight of Adkissons time at The Sentinel, but the three-year run also featured a concerted effort to involve the newspaper in the life of the Carlisle community, particularly through organizations like the Greater Carlisle Area Chamber of Commerce, the Cumberland Area Economic Development Corp. and the United Way of Carlisle and Cumberland County. Adkisson said hes ready to do the same in North Dakota since getting involved is the only way to understand the needs and issues in the community. The Bismarck area has gone through the cycles of boom and bust that go along with the oil and gas industry. Its a completely different type of community and kind of economy, Adkisson said. Kamowski said The Sentinels involvement with the community will continue, and business at the newspaper will continue as usual as the search for a new publisher goes on. She already serves on committees with the United Way, Downtown Carlisle Association, Summerfair and the YMCA. I will continue to do all of that and pick up where he left off, she said. Adkisson joined Lee in 2014 after serving as general manager of The Paducah Sun in Paducah, Kentucky, since 2007. He previously was regional publisher of three dailies and 13 weekly publications at Brown Publishing in Delaware, Ohio. His career also includes positions as publisher at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in Bluefield, West Virginia; the Weatherford Democrat in Weatherford, Texas; and Livermore Publishing in Mineral Wells, Texas. He began his career in 1977 as a circulation district manager at The Tennessean and Nashville Banner in Nashville while still a student at Welch College. Adkisson and his wife, Glenda, have three adult children and six grandchildren. ATHENS Greece has made noticeable progress with its energy-sector reforms in recent years. The country moved forward on plans to restructure state-owned companies and liberalize electricity and gas markets, an impressive programme that will lead to more competitive and financially viable energy markets offering choices and low prices to consumers, according to the International Energy Agencys latest in-depth review of Greeces energy policies. The IEA report, Energy Policies of IEA Countries: Greece 2017 Review, encourages the country to pursue energy sector reforms that will provide long-term economic benefits. The report notes the important role that the countrys energy regulatory authority played in ensuring timely implementation of market reforms, and stresses the need to provide the regulator with all the necessary resources to meet its growing responsibilities. Prior to the launch of the report, IEA Executive Director Dr Fatih Birol held a bilateral with Greek Energy and Environment Minister George Stathakis in Athens to discuss the IEA's policy recommendations as well as recent developments in global energy markets and the IEAs upcoming 2017 Ministerial Meeting. The IEA report also welcomes the government's efforts to strengthen energy security through investments in natural gas and electricity infrastructure, most notably by enhancing regional inter-connections, extending gas storage and promoting international gas pipelines to diversify supply routes. However, the government should allow gas and electricity markets to promptly react to price signals and assess supply adequacy in an integrated and regional manner, according to the IEA review, the first since 2011. The country is expected to achieve its 2020 emission reduction and energy efficiency targets through a combination of targeted policy measures for renewable energy and energy efficiency, and the substantially lower energy demand as a result of the economic crises. Last year, Greece had more solar, notably solar heating, in total final consumption than any other IEA member country. Greece should also explore its renewable energy potential beyond solar and wind, and advance their usage beyond the electricity sector. Greece has a vast unexplored potential for renewable energy and we support the countrys efforts to explore this potential by interconnecting its islands with the mainland energy system, said Dr Fatih Birol. Dr Birol also noted the critical importance of gas and electricity sector reforms that will support the countrys economic recovery. Greeces economy is decoupling economic growth from increases in CO2 emissions but at a slower rate than the average for IEA member countries. The same is also true for the improvements in energy intensity. The drop in energy use because of lower economic activity hides minimal improvements in energy intensity since 2000, according to the IEA review. The report recommends that Greece pursues the implementation of ambitious energy efficiency policies, learning from the outcomes of past and current measures, also in other IEA countries. The report also found that current policies will not be adequate to guide the Greek energy sector towards the long-term energy transition that the government is aiming for. The countrys economic recovery should be used as an opportunity for Greece to get a head start on longer-term emission reductions by pursuing initiatives that support sustainable increases in efficiency, and a switch from oil and coal to natural gas and renewable energy. The IEA believes that a key priority for policy makers should be to introduce a comprehensive policy framework to 2030 and beyond, as a pick-up in economic growth could easily lead to a rebound of energy demand growth and increase in emissions, Dr Birol said. Greece currently lacks a longer term integrated energy and climate strategy and the report recommends the Government to develop such a strategy and to specifically take into considerations ambitions for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Imperial Valley News Center California Attorney General Becerra Advances New Court Motion to Protect Dreamers and DACA Sacramento, California - Today, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra - joined by the Attorneys General for Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, as well as the University of California, individual Dreamers and other plaintiffs - filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction against the Trump Administration over its decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative (DACA). In the motion, Attorney General Becerra asked the District Court for the Northern District of California to block the Trump Administrations rescission of DACA during the pendency of the underlying trial, arguing that California and the other plaintiffs have established that they are likely to prevail in this case. Attorney General Becerra stressed that ending the program is causing irreparable harm to DACA recipients as well as to the States in which they live. He further argued that retaining the balance and stability in the treatment of Dreamers which prevailed before the Trump rescission of DACA is of the utmost public interest. America is and has been home to the Dreamers who courageously came forward and applied for DACA. They have done everything our government has asked of them. They followed the rules directed by DACA, they succeeded in school, at work and in business, and they have contributed in building a better America. They epitomize the American Dream," said Attorney General Becerra. Our Dreamers deserve to know that we respect their values and grit. And they deserve to know that we will fight at every turn for their rights and opportunities so they may continue to contribute to America. A court hearing on Attorney General Becerras motion for a preliminary injunction is scheduled for December 20. Antigua and Barbuda Independence Day Washington, DC - Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson: "On behalf of the United States, we offer our best wishes to the people of Antigua and Barbuda as you celebrate 36 years of independence. "The United States honors the strength of character and spirit expressed by the people of Antigua and Barbuda during the catastrophic destruction from the recent hurricanes. Efforts by the people of Antigua and Barbuda to come together in support of families and communities devastated by Hurricane Irma underscore the strength and resilience of your nation and set an example for all of us. The United States remains committed to Antigua and Barbuda and will continue our support through this period of recovery. "We look forward to strengthening our partnerships in pursuit of shared goals for the Caribbean as stated in the Caribbean 2020 strategy. "We extend our best wishes to Antigua and Barbuda throughout the year to come." This Isnt Our Last Love Letter Dear Don Don, Way back in 92 I walked into the room and knew Never felt this way before I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes And the feeling grew As I took a seat I knew A love that would have my heart Forever I knew Way back in 92 They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true We were the exception to that rule Our love had no where to hide A spark set fire As if this is how the universe started I never doubted our love or what we could do Together we grew Forming a bond everlasting That became our glue My euphoria was YOU Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared For how fortunate we were : to have and to hold through sickness and in health Til death do us part Until we are together again This isnt our last love letter I love you with all my heart and soul Yours forever, Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow) Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus. A True American Hero I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus. I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years. I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years. But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us. In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about. Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle. I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life. I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life. No one will ever do what he did. I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO David Jurist IMUS IN THE MORNING FIRST DAY BACK! Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A model has come under heavy fire for making an "inappropriate" comment about a 14-year-old actor from Netflix show Stranger Things. Ali Michael, an American fashion model, shared a photo of Finn Wolfhard on her Instagram story alongside the caption not to be weird but hit me up in four years. Critics quickly pointed out that given the stark age gap - Michael is 27 and Wolfhard is just 14 - the comments are profoundly ill-considered. They also argued the remark would have been deemed a great deal more troubling if the roles were reversed and a 27-year-old man had said the same thing about a 14-year-old. But while most argued her comments were disgusting and the joke had been made in poor taste others came to her defence to argue it was merely a tongue in cheek joke and the backlash was overblown. I thought jokes were supposed to be funny, not scary, said one critic. Not to be weird? Well, Miss Ali Michael it is weird. you are 27, he is 14. leave him alone perhaps, chipped in another. The Texas-born model has now apologised for the remarks with a follow up post on her Instagram stories and said she understands why people were offended by it. Stranger Things 2 in pictures Show all 5 1 /5 Stranger Things 2 in pictures Stranger Things 2 in pictures Netflix Stranger Things 2 in pictures Netflix Stranger Things 2 in pictures Netflix Stranger Things 2 in pictures Netflix Stranger Things 2 in pictures Netflix It was completely absolutely a joke but I understand that people have been offended by it. It was wrong to joke about and I apologise, she said. I do not want Mike from Stranger Things to call me. I hope this clear things up. She elaborated on the apology in a further statement explaining that it was in no way ever her aim to sexualise the teenage boy. Emma Thompson: Harvey Weinstein is "the top of the iceberg" "On October 30th, I posted an Instagram Story with a photo of Finn Wolford who plays Mike in Stranger Things asking him to, call me in four years, she said in a statement to Teen Vogue. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up The general nature of my social media platforms is often one of humor, sarcasm and playful self-deprecation. I often quote, post and publicly respond to music videos, films, documentaries and television shows in a frank and candid manner. The nature of my posts in response to television and media are always tongue-in-cheek and never intended to mislead or upset anyone. In the past, I have asked fictitious characters of films to call me (namely Edward Scissorhands and Simba from the Lion King). In this instance, it has become clear to me that asking a character to call in four years and inappropriately tagging the underage actor who plays the character (Mike) was upsetting, suggestive and concerning for my audience. She continued: It was never my intention (nor has it ever been) to sexualise a minor in any way shape or form. To those I offended or misled, I apologise for a post made in haste and lacking in sensitivity, particularly considering the landscape of the present culture. Harvey Weinstein: The celebrities who have accused him of sexual misconduct so far The controversy comes after Wolfhard, a Canadian actor who is also known for playing Richie Tozier in the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's novel It, parted ways with his agent Tyler Grasham after allegations of sexual abuse surfaced. The veteran agent, who specialised in youth talent, faces a string of allegations of sexual assault and acting inappropriately with young aspiring male actors, including actor-turned-filmmaker Blaise Godbe Lipman. Last month, APA sacked Grasham from the agency. A spokesperson said: "Tyler Grasham's employment with APA has been terminated effective immediately" but declined to further comment. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Dustin Hoffman has had another sexual harassment allegation levied against him. The fresh claim from producer Wendy Riss Gatsiounis follows Anna Graham Hunters accusation that the actor harassed her on the set of Death of a Salesman when she was 17. TV producer Riss Gatsiounis (Genius) told Variety that, after scheduling a meeting with Hoffman and Tootsie screenwriter Murray Schisgal in 1991, he allegedly propositioned her and attempted to persuade her to accompany him to a nearby hotel. The purpose of the meeting had been for the struggling playwright then in her 20s to discuss adapting her new work A Darker Purpose into a film the actor then 53 could star in. The first meeting allegedly began with Schisgal asking whether Riss Gatsiounis whether she was in a relationship a question she says Hoffman chided the screenwriter for. She claims that their next meeting was different alleging that Hoffman said: Before you start, let me ask you one question, Wendy have you ever been intimate with a man over 40? Ill never forget, Riss Gatsiounis continued, he moves back, he opens his arms, and he says, It would be a whole new body to explore. Im trying to go back to my pitch, and Im trying to talk about my play. Then Dustin Hoffman gets up and he says he has to do some clothing shopping at a nearby hotel, and did I want to come along? Hes like, Come on, come to this nearby hotel. She claims that Schisgal encouraged her to go with him. but after repeatedly declining was allegedly told: Look, were not really interested in your play, because its too film noir-ish. Harvey Weinstein: The celebrities who have accused him of sexual misconduct so far Riss Gatsiounis whose play went on to be staged by New York theatre company Naked Angels later that year with actor Fisher Stevens described the alleged encounters as a source of torment claiming her then-agent Mary Meagher told her she had heard rumours about [Hoffman] for years. Schisgal issued a statement saying: Dustin Hoffman and I took many meetings with writers and playwrights over many years. I have no recollection of this meeting or of any of the behaviour or actions described. Hoffmans spokesperson declined to comment. Hoffman is the latest major Hollywood figure to be accused of sexual harassment, days after stories emerged about Kevin Spacey and producer Brett Ratner inspired by the scandal surrounding Harvey Weinstein who faces more than 50 allegations of sexual assault, harassment and rape. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Quentin Tarantinos career has been intrinsically entwined with Harvey Weinstein's the disgraced Hollywood mogul accused of sexual harassment by dozens of women all of the auteurs feature films having been produced by Miramax and The Weinstein Company. Following the numerous allegations made against Weinstein, Tarantino seeks a new home for his ninth picture. According to Deadline, the script has been given to every major studio, minus Disney. Weinstein often called his production company The House That Quentin Built, referencing the success of Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, the latter being their highest grossing film. Despite Tarantinos loyalty to the company and the company allowing the director to create movies no other place would the allegations have broken that bond. Tarantino recently said "I knew enough to do more than I did" regarding Weinstein, adding: "I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would not have had to work with him." 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. The script for his ninth film reportedly centres on the murders orchestrated by Charles Manson, the actor Margot Robbie having been asked to play murder victim Sharon Tate. While Manson may be the talking point, the script focusses on the villain the same way Inglourious Basterds focusses on Hitler: barely featuring the man but focussing on events regarding them. Tarantino veterans Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson are said to have had discussions regarding roles. Deadline also reports that Tarantino is focussed on getting worldwide distribution, hence talking only to major studios (Disney do not make R-Rated films akin to Tarrantinos work). The director hopes to gain a budget close to Django ($100 million) with a deal closing within the next two weeks. The publication notes that the script has wide appeal, apparently sharing more in common with Pulp Fiction than any of his other work. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Snoop Dogg apparently made another swipe at US President Donald Trump by revealing some new album artwork. The rapper reportedly posted an image on his Instagram account which showed him standing over a dead body coverered with the American flag. The body's foot had a tag attached which read: "Trump." TMZ reported that the record cover was posted on Snoop's Instagram on Tuesday but it appears to have since been deleted. Make America Crip Again is Snoop's follow up record to Coolaid, which came out in 2016. The image pays tribute to Ice Cube's 1991 record cover for Death Certificate, which showed him standing over a dead body, also covered by the American flag, with a tag which said "Uncle Sam." Ice Cube's cover caused mass controversy upon its release, leading to condemnations from Billboard magainze and widespread boycotts by retailers. In Oregon, there was an official statewide ban on displaying Ice Cube's image in stores. Reports of Snoop's new record cover follow the controversial music video which showed him parodying the assassination of Trump with a fake gun. In "Lavender", which features Kaytranada in the BADBADNOTGOOD remix, he pulls out a gun and points it to a clown resembling Trump. He then fires the gun, which unfurls a red flag with the word "BANG" written on it. Snoop Dogg assassinates Donald Trump in new music video In response to the video Trump suggested that the rapper should go to jail for the "assassination" reference. He tweeted: "Can you imagine what the outcry would be if @SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama? Jail time!" At the time he told Billboard: "I feel like it's a lot of people making cool records, having fun, partying, but nobody's dealing with the real issue with this f***ing clown as president, and the s**t that we're dealing with out here, so I wanted to take time out to push pause on a party record and make one of these records for the time being." The Independent has contacted a representative for Snoop Dogg for comment Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for insider tips and product reviews from our shopping experts Sign up for our free IndyBest email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyBest email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The latest smartphones do everything, it seems. Need to take a photo thats almost as high-quality as an SLR camera can manage? And then view or upload it? Want driving directions, with traffic? Or check your email, fix a food delivery or play a game? The smartphones below have you covered. They even, believe it or not, make calls and send texts, too. Design quality has changed hugely over the last few years, even if you cant tell that from the front now that most phones are nothing but screen with a hole or cut-out for the front-facing camera to peep through. But on the back, designers can make their mark. Metal-backed phones have been largely replaced with handsets that are glass front and back. Stronger glass makes that less precarious than it sounds and it also has the benefit of allowing wireless charging. There are three operating systems, iOS on Apples iPhones, HarmonyOS on Huawei phones, and Android which is basically on everything else. Huawei was forced to create its own system when it fell out with the US government, and it has fewer apps than the other two. How we tested Weve tested for ease of use, build quality, how quickly the phone opens apps, responds to your touch and so on. Weve checked out the cameras (a deal-breaker on many phones), range of features, elegance of design and, the clincher: battery life. The best smartphone on the planet wouldnt feature in this guide if it cant keep going for a day at least. Read more: The best phones for 2022 are: Best overall Apple iPhone 13 pro max: 1,049, Apple.com Apple iPhone 13 pro max: 1,049, Apple.com Best for design Oppo find x5 pro: 1,049, Oppostore.co.uk Oppo find x5 pro: 1,049, Oppostore.co.uk Best display Sony xperia 1 III: 1,199, Sony.co.uk Sony xperia 1 III: 1,199, Sony.co.uk Best camera phone Huawei p50 pro: 1,099.99, Huawei.com Huawei p50 pro: 1,099.99, Huawei.com Best Android phone Google pixel 6 pro: 849, Google.com Google pixel 6 pro: 849, Google.com Best value flagship OnePlus 10 pro: 799 Oneplus.com OnePlus 10 pro: 799 Oneplus.com Best for fast charging Xiaomi 12 pro: 1,049, Mi.com Xiaomi 12 pro: 1,049, Mi.com Best folding phone Samsung Galaxy z flip 3: 949, Samsung.com Samsung Galaxy z flip 3: 949, Samsung.com Best mid-range Apple phone Apple iPhone 13: 779, Apple.com Apple iPhone 13: 779, Apple.com Best rugged phone Nokia xr20: 399.99, Nokia.com Nokia xr20: 399.99, Nokia.com Best small smartphone Apple iPhone 13 mini: 679, Apple.com Apple iPhone 13 mini: 679, Apple.com Best camera phone for zoom Samsung Galaxy s22 ultra: 1,149, Samsung.com Samsung Galaxy s22 ultra: 1,149, Samsung.com Best Android phone for software Google pixel 6: 599, Google.com Apple iPhone 13 pro max Best: Overall Rating: 10/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.7in, 1,284 x 2,778px, 458 pixels per inch : 6.7in, 1,284 x 2,778px, 458 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB/1TB : 128/256/512GB/1TB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide, 12MP telephoto : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide, 12MP telephoto Camera (front) : 12MP : 12MP Dimensions : 160.8mm x 78.1mm x 7.7mm : 160.8mm x 78.1mm x 7.7mm Weight : 240g : 240g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes The Apple iPhone 13 comes in four versions, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 pro and iPhone 13 pro max. The max is the biggest of the group but is identical to the iPhone 13 pro in every way except size, battery size and price. So, if the 6.7in display here means the phone is too big for your hands, then the iPhone 13 pro is the one for you. Where the iPhone 13 and mini have two cameras, the pro version has a third, a telephoto lens. The cameras are one of the standouts on this phone. They are great in low light, have improved sensors and for the first time on an iPhone, a telephoto lens thats the equivalent of a 3x zoom of the main camera. That main camera has a very cool macro mode: as you get right up close to your subject, the iPhone switches to the ultra-wide lens for a close-up shot thats sharply focused. Theres also Cinematic Mode, a cool video feature which brilliantly, and automatically, blurs the background to put your subject in focus. It can even pull focus to favour whoevers facing the camera. The design of this years iPhones is nearly identical to last years iPhone 12 series, with flat edges. The pro and pro max were originally released in four colours, graphite (a very dark grey), silver, gold and Sierra blue which has a punch lightness to it. But in the last couple of months a new shade has launched, Alpine green, which is a subtle and elegant new option.It also uses something called a Ceramic Shield, a front covering thats toughened to withstand being dropped. Battery life has increased this year, with the iPhone 13 pro max boasting the longest battery life of any iPhone. Read the full iPhone 13 pro max review Buy now 1,049 Apple.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Oppo find x5 pro Best: For design Rating: 9/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,216px, 525 pixels per inch : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,216px, 525 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 256/512GB : 256/512GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 50MP wide, 13MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide : 50MP wide, 13MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 32MP : 32MP Dimensions : 163.7mm x 73.9mm x 8.5mm : 163.7mm x 73.9mm x 8.5mm Weight : 218g : 218g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Oppos find x5 pro continues the eye-catching design language of last years find x3 pro, with the camera panel rising organically from the back of the handset rather than a bolted-on mound. Here, the panel has a different shape that is attractive and appealing. The rear material is ceramic, which looks opulent and feels good. Oppo is part of the same organisation of companies as OnePlus, which is why both now have links to Hasselblad for their cameras. The cameras are excellent, though this phone sadly lacks the novel and fun microscope camera from the previous x3 pro on the other hand, the uses for that were limited. Video recording goes up to 8K, though given there are few 8K TVs on the market, this may have limited value, and anyway, 4K is crisp and immaculate. Like the OnePlus, this phone charges fast (empty to 50 per cent in 12 minutes). Buy now 1,049 Oppostore.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Sony xperia 1 III Best: Display Rating: 9/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.5in, 1,644 x 3,840px, 643 pixels per inch : 6.5in, 1,644 x 3,840px, 643 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 256/512GB : 256/512GB Expandable storage ? Yes ? Yes Camera (rear) : 12MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, 12MP telephoto : 12MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, 12MP telephoto Camera (front) : 8MP : 8MP Dimensions : 165mm x 71mm x 8.2mm : 165mm x 71mm x 8.2mm Weight : 186g : 186g Headphone jack ? Yes ? Yes Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Sonys latest flagship phone looks tremendous, especially when you look at the display: it has 4K resolution. Sonys the only company making phones with a display as high-resolution as a full-size TV and it looks spectacular. This is not a small phone, though the longer aspect ratio helps to keep it slim enough for most hands to find comfortable. Its a little thicker than previous Sony flagships but the good news is that it means it can accommodate a bigger battery and battery life is strong, lasting a full day with ease. Sony favours a fingerprint sensor mounted on the side of the phone rather than under the display as with some here, and this works very well. Cameras are the best yet on a Sony phone, with much better results using the default settings, though there are useful advanced features, too. Buy now 1,199 Sony.co.uk {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Huawei p50 pro Best: Camera phone Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.6in, 1,228 x 2,700px, 450 pixels per inch : 6.6in, 1,228 x 2,700px, 450 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB : 128/256/512GB Expandable storage ? Yes ? Yes Camera (rear) : 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto, 13MP ultrawide, 40MP black-and-white : 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto, 13MP ultrawide, 40MP black-and-white Camera (front) : 13MP : 13MP Dimensions : 158.8mm x 72.8mm x 8.5 mm : 158.8mm x 72.8mm x 8.5 mm Weight : 195g : 195g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? No Huaweis designs are stunning, with a great understanding of colour and material. This new phone comes in two appealing colours, golden black and cocoa gold, both of which have a shimmery and attractive finish. Huawei is also world-leading for cameras, and the four lenses here are arranged in two large black circular cut-outs, evoking a classic film camera. As well as high-resolution wide and telephoto cameras, theres also a 40mp black and white sensor, which is used to add sharpness for colour shots as well as impeccable monochrome ones. This Huawei phone uses Android, but does not have Google mobile services such as Google Maps, Gmail or, crucially, Google Play Store. As such the Harmony AppGallery, though growing fast, lacks a number of the biggest apps. Still, theres Petal Maps, designed in conjunction with TomTom, which is very good. The absence of GMS came about when Huawei fell out with the Trump government, and this has also led to the company being limited to 4G connectivity in this phone (unlike most other flagships which would be 5G-capable). Buy now 1,099.99 Huawei.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Google Pixel 6 pro Best: Android phone Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,120px, 512 pixels per inch : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,120px, 512 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB : 128/256/512GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 50MP wide, 48MP telephoto, 12MP ultrawide : 50MP wide, 48MP telephoto, 12MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 11MP : 11MP Dimensions : 163.9mm x 75.9mm x 8.9mm : 163.9mm x 75.9mm x 8.9mm Weight : 210g : 210g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes The new phones from Google (theres also the Pixel 6 below) have a distinctive design in the form of a camera panel, which stretches the width of the phones back. It has three cameras (two on the Pixel 6) and, this being Google, uses software to boost the image quality. This includes neat features like magic eraser, which can remove unwanted elements automatically or with a couple of taps. Its pretty good, though no match for Photoshop. The main camera has a 50MP sensor and this phone is outstanding at low-light or night photography. It also comes in cute colours, even if the names are questionable: stormy black, cloudy white and sorta sunny, each with two slightly different colours for the panels above and below the cameras. Like the iPhone 13 pro, it has a display with adaptive frame rates going up to 120Hz for the smoothest user experience. With this phone, and the Pixel 6, Google has switched to using its own processor. For users who want the purest version of Android (which Google also makes), with extra features onboard, this is the best phone, and it comes at a noticeably lower price than comparable flagships. Read the full Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 pro review Buy now 849 Google.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} OnePlus 10 pro Best: Value flagship Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,216px, 525 pixels per inch : 6.7in, 1,440 x 3,216px, 525 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB : 128/256/512GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 48MP wide, 8MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide : 48MP wide, 8MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 32MP : 32MP Dimensions : 163mm x 73.9mm x 8.6mm : 163mm x 73.9mm x 8.6mm Weight : 201g : 201g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Like the Oppo find x5 pro, there are Hasselblad camera smarts in the OnePlus 10 pro, which manages to offer as much as other flagship phones but for a noticeably lower price. Despite the price, its hard to find any cut corners. The display is rich and refreshes fast (120Hz), which makes everything look smooth whether youre scrolling through lists or watching videos. The cameras, as you might expect from the co-branding, are strong, with the main and ultrawide delivering very effective images, though there are better snappers on some rivals here. Battery life is good and this phone recharges fast, though not quite as fast as the Xiaomi 12 pro below. Read the full OnePlus 10 pro review Buy now 799 Oneplus.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Xiaomi 12 pro Best: For fast charging Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.73in, 3,200 x 1,440px, 521 pixels per inch : 6.73in, 3,200 x 1,440px, 521 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256GB : 128/256GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 50MP wide, 50MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide : 50MP wide, 50MP telephoto, 50MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 32MP : 32MP Dimensions : 163.6mm x 74.6mm x 8.2 mm : 163.6mm x 74.6mm x 8.2 mm Weight : 204g : 204g Headphone jack ? Yes ? Yes Wireless-chargeable ? No ? No 5G? Yes Xiaomis 12 pro is well-priced and offers a lot for the money. It has very fast charging: from zero to full in less than 20 minutes. It even charges quickly when youre using wireless charging, though its faster when connected by wire. The battery lasts a full day, though nightly recharges are recommended. The processor onboard, the Qualcomm snapdragon 8 gen 1, is fast and efficient, ensuring this phone is powerful and responsive. The curved edges make the phone fit the hand comfortably, though this is not a small handset, so its worth trying it out for size before buying. The three cameras work well. All have 50mp resolution though the main camera has the biggest sensor, able to deliver strong results even in low light. This is a great all-rounder phone. Buy now 1,049 Mi.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Samsung Galaxy z flip 3 Best: Folding phone Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.7in (unfolded), 1,080 x 2,640px, 426 pixels per inch : 6.7in (unfolded), 1,080 x 2,640px, 426 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256GB : 128/256GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 10MP : 10MP Dimensions : 166 x 72.2mm x 6.9mm unfolded, 86.4mm x 72.2mm x 15.9-17.1mm folded : 166 x 72.2mm x 6.9mm unfolded, 86.4mm x 72.2mm x 15.9-17.1mm folded Weight : 183g : 183g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Folding phones come in two types: ones that are phone size and fold out to be mini tablets. Then theres this king, which folds in half from being a regular phone size to becoming amazingly pocketable. Where previous z flip phones seemed fragile, here, Samsung has got everything right: from the build to the processor to the screen quality. There are neat extras: to take a self-portrait, press twice on the power button with the phone closed and the small external screen becomes a monitor to frame your shot so you can use the better, external cameras. The main display has a crease where it folds but, remarkably, when youre watching a video on this screen, the crease is not evident. Theres a price premium for the convenience of a folding phone, but this is a very cool handset. Read the full Samsung Galaxy z flip review Buy now 949 Samsung.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Apple iPhone 13 Best: Mid-range Apple phone Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.1in, 1,170 x 2,532px, 460 pixels per inch : 6.1in, 1,170 x 2,532px, 460 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB : 128/256/512GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 12MP : 12MP Dimensions : 146.7mm x 71.5mm x 7.7mm : 146.7mm x 71.5mm x 7.7mm Weight : 174g : 174g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Although the iPhone 13 pro is the most advanced iPhone yet, for many people the regular iPhone 13 is an appealing choice. It has a similar design to the pro, mostly different because there are two cameras, not three, positioned diagonally in the camera panel because theyre a lot bigger than last years. The other design differences are an aluminium frame and five different colours. These are midnight, pink, blue, product(red) and starlight, which is a cross between gold and silver. Like the iPhone 13 pro, the iPhone 13 has recently gained a new colour: green, a gleaming and attractive shade. The processor isnt quite as powerful as on the pro but key features like the excellent cinematic mode for video are here and performance is strong. Battery life is also better than last years iPhone 12. Read the full iPhone 13 review Buy now 779 Apple.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Nokia xr20 Best: Rugged phone Rating: 7/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.67in, 1,080 x 2,400px, 395 pixels per inch : 6.67in, 1,080 x 2,400px, 395 pixels per inch Screen technology : LCD : LCD Storage capacity : 64/128GB : 64/128GB Expandable storage ? Yes ? Yes Camera (rear) : 48MP wide, 13MP ultrawide : 48MP wide, 13MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 8MP : 8MP Dimensions : 171.6mm x 81.5mm x 10.6mm : 171.6mm x 81.5mm x 10.6mm Weight : 248g : 248g Headphone jack ? Yes ? Yes Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes Rugged phones are great for the active, the sporty and the clumsy. Usually, they have less-potent specifications, so the inclusion of 5G connectivity here is a surprise. Nokia has made rugged phones in the past, but this is its best in years. The front glass is tough and highly protective, and theres also a free screen replacement offered in the first year should you need it. The back is textured plastic with thick rubber bumpers. It also has waterproofing. Even so, it doesnt look as much like a ruggedised phone as you might expect. Like several phones here, theres no charger included, though Nokia makes a donation to charity if one is bought separately. Buy now 399.99 Nokia.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Apple iPhone 13 mini Best: Small smartphone Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 5.4in, 1,080 x 2,340px, 476 pixels per inch : 5.4in, 1,080 x 2,340px, 476 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB : 128/256/512GB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide : 12MP wide, 12MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 12MP : 12MP Dimensions : 131.5mm x 64.2mm x 7.7mm : 131.5mm x 64.2mm x 7.7mm Weight : 141g : 141g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? Yes ? Yes 5G? Yes In the last decade or so, the size of phones has grown hugely, but our hands havent really evolved quite as quickly. In a world of big smartphones, one stands out as perfect for smaller mitts. The iPhone 13 mini is smaller than the entry-level iPhone se, but because it has an all-screen front, theres a much bigger display in fact, its the highest-resolution screen on any smartphone in terms of pixel density. Last years iPhone 12 mini had decidedly average battery life but this years model has 90 minutes more per charge, enough to get through a day. It has a processor and cameras identical to the bigger iPhone 13, and a matching design, down to the tough front glass and chic design. At first, when you pick it up, its such a contrast to other phones it almost seems like a toy, but the display is quickly immersive. Its highly usable, though bigger fingers may find the small onscreen keyboard a little tight. It comes in the same colours as the iPhone 13 midnight, pink, blue, product (red) and starlight with green just added to the range. Buy now 679 Apple.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Samsung Galaxy s22 ultra Best: Camera phone for zoom Rating: 8/10 Screen size and resolution : 6.8in, 1,440 x 3,088px, 500 pixels per inch : 6.8in, 1,440 x 3,088px, 500 pixels per inch Screen technology : OLED : OLED Storage capacity : 128/256/512GB/1TB : 128/256/512GB/1TB Expandable storage ? No ? No Camera (rear) : 108MP wide, 10MP telephoto, 10MP periscope telephoto, 12MP ultrawide : 108MP wide, 10MP telephoto, 10MP periscope telephoto, 12MP ultrawide Camera (front) : 40MP : 40MP Dimensions : 163.3mm x 77.9mm x 8.9mm : 163.3mm x 77.9mm x 8.9mm Weight : 228g : 228g Headphone jack ? No ? No Wireless-chargeable ? No ? No 5G? Yes This is Samsungs flagship phone for the first half of 2022. Unlike previous Galaxy s phones, this one has a smart stylus, called the s pen, which tucks away into the bottom of the handset. This is a feature borrowed from the now-discontinued Note series and means that there is room for some productivity, such as scribbling notes on the phone when you dont have a notepad handy. This phone is the best-designed Galaxy so far, with the four big cameras peeping out of the back of the handset rather than a raised panel as on most phones. The cameras are exceptionally good and especially stand out for their capabilities when youre zooming in. Theres a 100x option, though realistically picture quality isnt the best at this level. This is an accomplished, highly capable and very powerful phone, though its not cheap. Read the full Samsung Galaxy s22 ultra review Buy now 1,149 Samsung.com {{#hasItems}} Price comparison {{#items}} {{ merchant }} {{ price }} Buy now {{/items}} Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Its official; the worlds first cheese advent calendar finally goes on sale next week. From beauty, biscuits and even gin, advent calendars have come along way since the days of fiddly foil-wrapped confectionery. But now according to dairy lovers at least - the ultimate alternative has been created. Enter, the Cheese Advent Calendar. Created by food blogger Annem Hobson from So Wrong Its Nom, the creation caused a frenzy when the initial prototype launched with more than 11,000 people signing up to buy one in just four days. Now though, with the help of Norseland in Ilchester, Somerset - the innovative cheese specialists behind leading cheese brands, Jarlsberg, Applewood, Mexicana and Ilchester Hobsons invention has finally become a reality. Arriving in stores next week at British supermarket ASA, the calendar includes a total of 24 individually wrapped cheeses and even features a unique book style packaging design, allowing one half to be torn off after the initial 12 days of Christmas to maximise fridge space. For years, chocolate has dominated key retail periods, and as a huge lover of cheese I want to turn this on its head, Annem said. After launching my #CheeseNotChoc campaign, the reaction from cheese lovers around the world has been phenomenal. Im thrilled that Norseland have helped my dream product come alive and Im overwhelmed by the support people have shown me. Asda are a brilliant retailer with a big team of cheese experts helping make this idea a success. With five varieties available it includes popular options like Jarlsberg, Applewood, Ilchester Mature Cheddar, Ilchester Red Leicester, and Ilchester Wensleydale with cranberries. The Cheese Advent Calendar will be available in Asda stores from 9 November and costs 8. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} From yummy drinks to delicious sandwiches through to scrumptious sweets, Costa Coffee fans are going to enjoy a wide array of treats as the popular coffee shop unveils its new festive menu. Headlining this year's drinks menu is the Billionaires Hot Chocolate. which includes layers of caramel sauce, freshly whipped cream topping and shortbread crumbs. Costa were so impressed with the customers choice that they decided to expand the Billionaires range, including the Billionaires Latte which combines Belgian chocolate sauce and caramel sauce with Costas signature Mocha Italia Blend. Billionaire's Hot Chocolate: voted by Costa Coffee Club members (Costa) Cold drinks are making an appearance for the first time this season as Costa serves its famous Frostinos. We're talking about decadently creamy cups of frosted deliciousness. The Billionaires Latte Frostino is the perfect chance to be a little bit naughty this Christmas. Back by popular demand is the Black Forest Hot Chocolate and it is joined by the Black Forest Frostino, a frosty new take on the fan favourite. Drinks in Costa's festive cups (Costa) Other returning festive favourites include the Gingerbread and Cream Latte, Honeycombe Latte, Mint Hot Chocolate and the bigger and better than last year, rich and creamy Lindt Hot Chocolate. Customers can also re-fuel from their shopping sessions with a Festive Pigs in Blanket Panini or the Creamy Brie, Smoked Bacon and Cranberry Panini. Creamy Brie, Smoked Bacon and Cranberry Panini (Costa) Christmas sandwich aficionados wont be disappointed as there's the British Turkey Feast and the Christmas Club Sandwich, which is packed with festive favourites like turkey, sausage, bacon, stuffing and cranberry sauce. And there's a delicious new range of sweet treats on offer. This years shimmer offering is the Chocolate and Hazelnut Shimmer Cake combining two different sponges and decorated with caramel and gianduja frostings for that touch of seasonal sparkle. There is also the Rudolph Mini Cake, a sticky toffee sponge filled with salted caramel frosting, and two new loaf cakes. Rudolph Mini Cake (Costa) No one will be left out this year as the vegan Christmas Cake Slice returns, while the new vegan Mince Tart is also gluten free. The Costa Christmas range arrives in UK stores from 2 November. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A British restaurant that holds three Michelin stars has banned diners from photographing their food. The Waterside Inn in Berkshire will no longer tolerate eager social-media snappers in its prestigious dining room. The restaurant was founded by Michel Roux and his brother Albert in 1972. Michel Roux (right) pictured at The Waterside Inn with Pippa Middleton and Alain Roux (Rex) Although the acclaimed, French-inspired establishment is now run by Michels son, Alain, Roux clearly maintains a strong influence over the restaurants rules and regulations. Im really getting so upset about people taking pictures, the 76-year-old chef told the Daily Mail, who instructed staff to put a card up on the restaurants door saying no photos, please. I mean, what are they doing? Maybe once during the meal you want to take a little photo of something because its unusual, he added. Part of Rouxs vexation with photographing food is that he feels a photo cannot represent the quality of the flavours. The riverside restaurant has been dubbed a classic French eatery by Michelin, which awarded the Roux brothers three stars a merit it has held since 1985 for their consistent culinary excellence. However, its not the only leading restaurant to have imposed a no photos policy. In 2014, a group of top chefs in France launched a campaign to ban the practice all together, claiming it spoiled the atmosphere of dining out. Shortly after, a slew of New York eateries enforced photography bans, including Momofuku Ko, the famously hard-to-reserve Asian fusion restaurant by David Chang. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} While some people lament the commercialisation of Christmas, rolling their eyes at the Coca-Cola Christmas truck and sparkly store windows, others enjoy brands annual forays into the holiday. And perhaps none has become more iconic than Starbucks red cups, which for many people signal the start of the festive season. Today is the day that the coffee chain bids farewell to its autumn menu (RIP pumpkin spice lattes for another year) and launches its Christmas range of food and drink. And with the menu comes the red cups, whose design generates much excitement every year. However, the brand is trying to move away from the name red cups, as theyve become known, and instead call them Christmas cups. For 2017, Starbucks has created its first-ever colour-in Christmas cup, encouraging customers to add their own splash of colour and style to their drink. The gingerbread latte (Starbucks) It taps into the idea of mindfulness and the current trend for colouring books for adults. The design is hand-drawn, featuring a pair of hands holding red cups of coffee connected by swirling ribbons with lively Christmas scenes and splashes of red and green. The companys Christmas advert has become a talking point this year too, as it features a pair of women about to kiss over their festive caffeinated treat. Starbucks advert features same-sex couple about to kiss But design of the cups aside, for many people its all about the contents. Festive favourites including the Gingerbread Latte, Toffee Nut Latte, Eggnog Latte and Fudge Hot Chocolate are all available once again, but the coffee giant is this year launching a new Festive Cold Brew, combining a classic cold brew blend with subtle Christmas-spiced notes and finished with orange and cranberry pieces. The festive cold-brew (Starbucks) Theres also a new festive food menu, including a poached egg and Hollandaise croissant roll, three cheeses and cranberry panini, turkey feast panini, Christmas tree brownie, cranberry cheesecake muffin and of course, mince pies. Starbucks is by no means the only coffee chain to launch festive takeaway cups, but it was the first - this year marks the 20th anniversary of their Christmas cups. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 keeps crashing when people try to use it as a phone. People are complaining that the 869 handset isnt letting them call people. Theyre also having trouble texting and even viewing their contacts. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Show all 12 1 /12 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Samsung Galaxy Note 8 A Samsung forum post first spotted by Android Police has attracted six pages of comments at the time of writing from Note 8 users. The thread is titled Note 8 Freezing and unresponsive. The majority of people say their Note 8 handsets keep freezing when they make a call or select a contact to either ring or message. In order to use their phones properly again, affected users are having to either restart them, wait for the battery to run flat or do a full Factory Reset. Even then, their phones are crashing again soon after. Its a huge problem, and its cause remains unclear. I am having some issues with my new Note 8 that I got yesterday, reads the original post on the forum. I set up speed dial and sometimes it will call but not show the contact info and sometimes it will just outright freeze on me. I am currently dialing each and every one of my contacts as of now to avoid this issue. Also I see that some people are having issues with thirdparty apps which I haven't ran into yet and hope I don't. I have tried everything and it doesn't seem to fix it and seems like Samsung will have to dispatch a hot fix soon. I have tried clearing data/cache as well as restarting and reinstalling apps to even a full factory restore. Really annoying when I need to call someone important and have to wait like 2 mins for a reboot. Samsungs forum moderators have acknowledged the issue, but say they need more information from affected users. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Stephen Hawking is concerned that artificial intelligence could replace humans. The world-renowned physicist fears that somebody will create AI that will keep improving itself until its eventually superior to people. He says the result of this will be a new form of life. 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 I fear that AI may replace humans altogether, he said in an interview with Wired magazine, seen by Cambridge News. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans. This is far from the first time Mr Hawking has spoken out about the development of AI. Earlier this year, he called for technology to be controlled in order to prevent it from destroying the human race, and said humans need to find a way to identify potential threats quickly, before they have a chance to escalate and endanger civilisation. Back in 2015, he also expressed fears that AI could grow so powerful it might end up killing humans unintentionally. Recommended AI tricked into thinking a turtle is a rifle and a cat is guacamole The real risk with AI isn't malice but competence, he said. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble. An ex-Uber employee was recently found to have set up a non-profit religious organisation calling for the creation of an artificial intelligence Godhead that humans would worship. Elon Musk, who has also expressed major concerns over AI, said he should be on the list of people who should absolutely *not* be allowed to develop digital superintelligence. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A fake version of the upcoming WhatsApp Business app is available to download from the Play store. The app, which has been developed by an outfit calling itself Whasp. Business Inc., has a surprisingly high rating, despite users describing it as a fraud app and data theft. One user has also complained about being unable to login to it, with another saying its full of ads. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Show all 12 1 /12 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Unsend messages You can unsend a message by tapping and holding it, hitting the Delete symbol and selecting Delete for Everyone. The feature works for all types of messages, but only if they were sent less than seven minutes ago. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Dodge the blue ticks WhatsApps blue ticks show when sent messages have been read, but you can disable them buy going to Settings > Account > Privacy > Read Receipts. However, bear in mind that, by doing so, youll lose the ability to see when your own sent messages have been read. Another, more fiddly way of reading your messages without triggering the blue ticks, is enabling Aeroplane Mode before opening your messages - just remember to close the app before switching Aeroplane Mode off again. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Hide your 'last seen' time Prevent your friends from finding out when you were last online by hiding your last seen time. Go to Settings > Account > Privacy > Last Seen. As is the case with disabling read receipts, hiding your last seen time will also stop you from seeing anybody elses. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Limit data usage You can control how much data you munch through on WhatsApp by limiting the types of media you automatically download on a mobile connection. Go to Settings > Data Usage and choose the best option for you. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Customise notifications If youre expecting an important WhatsApp message from someone, set a custom notification for them by opening the chat, tapping their name at the top and hitting Custom Notifications. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Format your messages To jazz up any of your messages, simply highlight it by tapping and holding it, hit the More Options key on the pop-up menu and tap the formatting option you want - bold, italic, strikethrough or monospace. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Type hands-free You can get Siri or Google Assistant to type your WhatsApp messages out for you by saying either Hey Siri or Okay Google, followed by the name of the person you want to message and the actual contents of the message. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Mark chats as unread When youve read a message but cant reply to it straight away, you can set a visual reminder by marking it as unread. On Android, long-press the conversation, and on iOS, swipe from left to right on a chat. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Email entire conversations You almost certainly wont do this on a regular basis, but its a handy option to have. You can export entire conversations - complete with emoji and media attachments - by hitting More inside a chat a selecting Email Chat. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Mass-message contacts You can send the same message to lots of your contacts without lumping them all into one group, much like the BCC option on email, by hitting the New Broadcast option on the apps main menu. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Pin conversations You pin up to three contacts and groups to the top of your WhatsApp conversation list by tapping and holding a chat, then hitting the pin icon. 12 useful WhatsApp features you didnt know existed Make things easier to find You can easily mark key messages with a star, allowing you to find them easily when you need to. Just tap and hold a message and hit the star icon to save it, and return to it later by selecting Starred Messages in WhatsApps main menu. It was flagged up by Twitter user @MujtabaMHaq and WABetaInfo, and multiple users say theyve reported it to Google. While there are lots of fake versions of WhatsApp on Google Play, this rip-off is particularly troublesome, as its masquerading as a hotly anticipated new WhatsApp app thats currently only available for an exclusive group of testers. As the official version of WhatsApp Business is yet to launch, and the fake version ranks very highly for the search term WhatsApp Business in the Play store, users can be forgiven for simply assuming that the fake app is the real deal. iPhone X: Review with David Phelan At the time of writing its still available to download. However, its developers appear to have now changed its name from Whatsapp Business to Update Whatsapp. Recommended WhatsApp Delete for Everyone will not always unsend your messages The real WhatsApp Business app, which is expected to launch in the near future, is designed to make it easier for businesses and regular users to communicate. People will be able to place orders through WhatsApp, and even receive updates from companies on it. It will also be compatible with landline numbers. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A wifes candid photograph of her husband went viral online after she told her friends this is what your knight in shining armour looks like when you are in your 40s. Amy Betters-Midtvedt shared the snap of Todd arriving at the supermarket to pay for her shopping after she misplaced her wallet. You're not supposed to be grocery shopping, I said I'd go this week," he told her. Betters-Midtvedt, who co-runs a lifestyle and parenting blog titled Hiding in the Closet with Coffee, went on to explain what love means to her. Young people, this is what love looks like when you're old and it's ridiculous how awesome it is, she wrote, before listing the various things she deems exhibitions of true love. Love also looks like me coming downstairs to a full pot of coffee every morning because coffee is love. Recommended Couple forbidden from dating by parents marry 40 years later Love looks like all the lunches being made already so I can enjoy that aforementioned cup of coffee. Love looks like someone washing the dishes while his wife catches up on This is Us while plopped on the couch not helping at all. She adds that simple tasks such as helping her five-year-old son with his homework and running to the corner shop to buy the milk for breakfast also qualify as tokens of love. The Wisconsin-based blogger went on to offer some advice to young lovers. When it comes to choosing a partner, Betters-Midtvedt suggests that women ignore showy signs of love, such as extravagant proposals and personalised chocolate bars. At the end of the day, these things are meaningless, she implies. Choose the man who will carry your too heavy flowered backpack in public because he will also be the man who bails you out at ALDI's when you're 40-? with a smile and a hug. "And that my friends is true love." Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A woman from California is suing beauty giant Sephora after claiming she contracted herpes from using one of the store's lipstick samples. Elena Davoyan says she had never had herpes or cold sores prior to visiting the store back in October 2015, but after testing a common use sampler at a Los Angeles branch she was diagnosed with the viral disease, TMZ reports. Now, in a bid to warn other make-up fans about the danger of testing in-store cosmetics Davoyan is suing Sephora for $25,000 for emotional distress in addition to liability, negligence and intentional infliction, according to court documents. Recommended Mother warns of dangers of cold sores after her child gets herpes As such the lawsuit, which has been filed by lawyer Robert Kransey, argues that the store encourages communal lipstick use and that many of its displays fail to warn customers of the dangers of using them. Davoyan also claims that Sephora doesnt have satisfactory practices in place to avoid herpes exposure, such as providing customers with lipstick wands or swabs. The bottom line is that (there) are numerous simple solutions to prevent the spreading of diseases through lipstick testers, and that is Sephoras responsibility, the lawsuit reads. In response, Sephora says that customer safety is their first concern. The health and safety of our clients is our foremost priority, the brand told Daily News. Bright Red Lipsticks Show all 8 1 /8 Bright Red Lipsticks Bright Red Lipsticks Nars, Heat Wave, 21 narscosmetics.co.uk Bright Red Lipsticks Burberry Kisses in Military Red, 25 feelunique.com Bright Red Lipsticks Rimmel 1000 Kisses Lipliner in Red Dynamite, 2.99 superdrug.com Bright Red Lipsticks Oribe, Lip Lust Creme Lipstick in The Red, 32 net-a-porter.com Bright Red Lipsticks Chanel, Rouge Allure in Excentrique, 26 boots.com Bright Red Lipsticks Laura Mercier, Lip Pencil in Punch, 19 selfridges.com Bright Red Lipsticks Lancome, LAbsolu Rouge Matte Lipstick in 184, 25.50 selfridges.com Bright Red Lipsticks Charlotte Tilbury, Hot Lips Lipstick in Tell Laura, 23 net-a-porter.com We take product hygiene very seriously and we are dedicated to following best practices in our stores. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist from Johns Hopkins University, told Live Science that while it is possible for a person to contract herpes from a lipstick, it is not common. Instead, its likely that the person already had the virus: I would suspect that many people who think they get herpes from certain things were already positive [for the virus], because it's such a common and unavoidable infection, he said. That being said, with a 2005 Rowan University study revealing that public make-up testers carry staph, strep and even E. coli bacteria, it makes sense to take precautions when using beauty samples. While many stores already clean their products, you can use rubbing alcohol to wipe the product down or alternatively use a Q-tip or sample sponge instead of applying it directly. The Independent has contacted Sephora for comment. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Its increasingly difficult to recall an age before Amazon when we had to either visit the high street in person or wait weeks for deliveries at home. The business is now the barometer for the latest thinking on everything from selling books (remember that?) to, most recently, how to break into the seemingly closed, oversubscribed world of TV. From the outside it seems to do no wrong, using tech to leap lightly through the kind of business evolution that traditional leviathans of industry battle to wade through, often coming to a grinding halt or losing themselves completely in the process. Amazon is without doubt the poster child for these disruptors the term used with increasing regularity to describe the relative newcomers, the alternative thinkers, those businesses that have looked at a need, want or opportunity and found a different way to fulfil it, quickly and profitably. You may be more familiar with these brands than you are with the traditional stalwarts whose existence they are disrupting. In the UK they are the Just Eats, Asos, and Purple Bricks of todays consumer world. So should you invest in them? In other words, now that theyve set a furious pace for growth, can they also deliver on profitability? And can they stick to it long term? Becoming mainstream At the beginning of the year, Amazons share price came in at about $750 (570). Having smashed through the $1,000 barrier for the first time, at the time of going to press it was sitting at around $1,110. With shares up by almost 50 per cent for the year, Russ Mould, investment director for AJ Bell, says investors still clearly think the company has the potential to hollow out older, bricks-and-mortar rivals and keep changing IT services, TV and other industries besides retail all at the same time. It has, or is building, a strong position in them all, and is nowhere close to touching the sides of the market. There is still a lot to go for, even in retail, Mould says. Amazons 2016 annual sales figure of $136bn represented less than 3 per cent of Americas total $4.8 trillion retail spending, while its revenues from IT services (providing servers for cloud computing, so other companies can manage their data storage more efficiently) and TV subscriptions are mushrooming. It may be these subscription payments are the key to the investment case for the stock. For a company valued at $550bn, its profits last year were small at $4bn, as Amazon continues to invest heavily in new products, services and technology while it acts as a price disruptor across so many industries. Stock market investors are clearly betting that one day and who knows when the company will mature, stop its land grab and start jacking up the price of its subscription services to ensure it turns sales into consistent profits and cash flow. If it does not do that at some stage then the shares look extremely expensive. That is the big risk with Amazon, from an investment point of view if something goes wrong the shares could fall hard. It is easy to forget that there is a precedent for that too. During the collapse of the tech-stock bubble in 2000 to 2003, Amazon shares fell from over $100 apiece to barely $8. When assessing Amazon, investors must therefore assess what could wrong as well as what could go right, just as they would with any other company, warns Mould. Not alone Weve seen a great deal of industry disruption across various sectors of late, mainly thanks to the rise of mobile computing and the effect this has had on consumer behaviour, adds Laith Khalaf, senior analyst for Hargreaves Lansdown. The likes of Asos and Boohoo.com have entered into the territory of the likes of M&S and Next, Purple Bricks is taking on the established estate agency industry, while Just Eat is providing a new marketplace for takeaway food. And the optimism in those brands is playing out in the share price. Though not quite in the same league as Amazon, at the beginning of 2017, Just Eats share price was 5.84. Its currently about 7.76. Purple Bricks started the year at 1.41 and now demands 3.57, while Asos was valued at 49.64 a share in January and now comes in at 57.15. Some of these companies have exciting prospects, but often a large amount of growth is already baked into share prices, says Khalaf, who notes that Amazons share price currently trades at 150 times the profits it makes per share because the market is expecting such rapid growth. While Amazon is a truly innovative company, there is therefore scope for disappointment if it doesnt grow as quickly as planned, he adds. Reining them in The growth of any disruptor relies upon its ability to dislodge other players in competitive markets without itself being dislodged. But there is also the risk of another major sideswipe. Regulators and government could try to rein in a company if it looks like it could become too powerful. And, once again, it may seem unlikely but there are precedents. And when they get hit, they really get hit. Back in 1911, for example, the US decided that Rockefellers Standard Oil company had become a monopoly and broke it up into no fewer than 34 different companies on anti-trust grounds. Future opportunities But what about those disruptors that havent yet emerged onto the market. Uber is not quoted on the stock market at the moment, although new chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has strongly hinted that there is a plan to take the company public by 2021 at the latest. If Uber does float, presumably in America, then investors can apply the same four-question checklist outlined by legendary US investor Charlie Munger, suggests Mould. Do we understand the business? Does the business have an intrinsic value or a durable competitive advantage? Does management have high integrity? Does the stock come at a reasonable price? In the end, companies have to make a profit and need to pay dividends for them to sustain any kind of stock market valuation. Cash is king that is the ultimate benchmark as it provides a tangible value and a tangible worth. If there is no cash coming out of them, all investors are doing is the equivalent of trading Match Attax cards, in the hope someone will pay more than they bought them for. Sometimes that works, such as during the bull markets of 1996-2000, 2003-2007, and 2009-2017. Sometimes it doesnt, such as 2000-2003 and 2007-2009. The best of the rest And what of everyone else? These tech disruptors, with their global search algorithms and cloud-based platforms have driven greater transparency in the supply chain and threatened many incumbents in well-established industries, says Craig Bonthron, the co-manager of the Kames Global Sustainable Equity Fund. Bricks and mortar retailers, industrial distributors, previously imperious consumer staple brands and TV networks are all feeling the heat, he says. From positions of high margins and returns earned via opaque pricing models or scale dominance, these companies are staring at strategic dilemmas. The costs of deploying new technology is getting cheaper and more scalable, and the internet giants highly public price transparency is deflating prices now and depressing future expectations. The conundrum now facing many investors is which of the incumbent companies are disruptable or Amazonable and which are able to weather the storm. According to Bonthron, it is the established companies with big addressable markets and high returns on capital that are most disruptable. He says: When looking at companies that wont be Amazoned we look for the following characteristics good vertical integration, controlling production distribution and customer relations, they offer customer price transparency, maintain high customer contact and offer high value products with an associated strong brand. Companies with these characteristics tend to exhibit the best pricing power. Businesses that have horizontal business models, opaque pricing and high returns are at risk, particularly if they are valued for their stability of earnings. This stability premium can quickly be eroded if a disruptor enters its market. 8 : , 12 For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Cashplus has become the latest challenger bank to apply for a full banking licence, joining the likes of Monzo, Atom and Starling. Unusually for a digital challenger bank, Cashplus has been around for 12 years and says it already safeguards around 200m in customer deposits. Cashplus, formerly known as Advanced Payment Solutions, has also been profitable for several years - another rarity in a field which is populated by startups, many of which are burning through investors cash on the long road to making money. In fact, Cashplus claims to be the only profitable challenger bank at the moment. The firms focus is on providing personal accounts and microloans to entrepreneurs and consumers who have had difficulty getting those services from high street banks. The company hopes that a full banking licence will allow it to lend more to its 100,000 existing small business customers as well as adding many new ones. Rich Wagner, chief executive and founder of Cashplus said: Weve been shaking up the banking sector from the outside as a digital challenger to banks. Working from the inside will mean we have the scope to provide even more services for customers whove been overlooked by the traditional banks. Im fed up at the raw deal these customers have been getting so Ive decided to get a banking licence to give them the best deal possible. Cashplus is in a crowded field attempting to take on the likes of HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, RBS and Santander. Several app-based banking services have been vying to win customers over the last couple of years. Durham-based Atom gained its licence from the FCA in June 2015, with ambitious plans to provide accounts to 5 million customers by 2020. Monzo, which started two years ago as a pre-paid card offering free withdrawals overseas, was granted its licence in April. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} HSBC is the unnamed bank that is the focus of Lord Peter Hains demand for a criminal probe into a relationship with South Africas Gupta family, according to two people with knowledge of the allegations. Labour peer, Lord Hain, asked the authorities to investigate a UK bank for possible criminal complicity, after it allegedly failed to take action on internal concerns about suspicious transactions related to the Guptas. He didnt name HSBC in his speech in Parliament but did so in a letter to Chancellor Philip Hammond. UK regulators last month said they are looking into whether HSBC and Standard Chartered facilitated money-laundering as a result of possible ties to the Gupta family after Lord Hain warned illicit funds may have passed through the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, where the banks have had large footprints. Lord Hain said on Thursday that he now has evidence of wrongdoing, and gave printouts of the transactions to the Chancellor a day earlier. Recommended HSBC and Standard Chartered face probe over Gupta links Undoubtedly hard questions will need to be asked of the facilitating banks, because they have aided and abetted the Gupta money laundering activities, Hain told parliament. Can the Chancellor please ensure that such evident money laundering and illegality is not tolerated and that the bank is investigated for a possible criminal complicity over this matter? Urgent action is needed to close down this network of corruption. An HSBC spokeswoman declined to comment and referred to comments chief executive Stuart Gulliver made on Monday. On the enquiries as a result of Lord Hains letter to the Chancellor, obviously we are responding to those enquiries that have come in from the FCA and also from South African authorities, and there is nothing more I can really add at this point in time, Gulliver said on a call with reporters. On 25 September, Lord Hain requested that the Financial Conduct Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Crime Agency look into whether British banks facilitated alleged money-laundering by the Gupta family. The scandal surrounding the Indian-born Gupta brothers, their business connections with the family of President Jacob Zuma and their alleged ability to direct state tenders have rocked South Africas government. Mr Zuma and the Guptas have consistently denied any wrongdoing. Spokesmen for Zuma and the Gupta family didnt immediately respond to phone calls and an email requesting comment. The Treasury said it passed the letter to the FCA. Bloomberg For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Discount supermarket Iceland has said it will accept old 1 coins in its stores until New Years Eve. The round pound ceased to be legal tender at midnight on 15 October following the introduction of the new 12-sided coin, which entered circulation on 28 March. We are trying to help out customers in any way we can, and the statistics tell us that many people must still have old pound coins stashed away in their homes or cars, said Icelands group managing director Tarsem Dhaliwal in a statement. The old round pound will be accepted in all Iceland and The Food Warehouse stores in the UK until 31 December. For consumers who missed the official 15 October deadline, and discovered round pounds squirrelled away at home, a number of businesses provided a short extension. Tesco gave shoppers an extra week while Aldi and Greggs offered two weeks. Poundland was also taking them until the end of October. Meanwhile, The Federation of Small Businesses, which represents 170,000 small retailers, suggested that its members continue to accept the old coin after 15 October to offer a useful community service. Iceland had originally extended its deadline to 31 October. A spokesperson for The Royal Mint told The Independent: "Businesses told us they wanted certainty on a cut-off date for the old pound coin, which is why we introduced the 15 October deadline. While the majority of firms tell us they are ready, the small minority who choose to keep accepting the old coin will have to make their own arrangements with their banks. However, many shoppers could benefit from businesses who continue to accept the coin. By The Royal Mints own estimate there are still between 400 and 450 million old pounds in circulation. 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. There are other options for those still in possession of round pounds. Consumers can still deposit the coin into their current accounts at most high street banks and at The Post Office. The old pound can also be donated to Children in Need, which has partnered with The Royal Mint and HM Treasury to raise money for the charity. Any branch of the Post Office will take donations of the coin for Pudseys Round Pound Countdown until 17 November. The new pound coin was introduced to limit counterfeits as the old pound was one of the most counterfeited coins in the world. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The UK has received a damning bill of health in the World Economic Forums (WEF) latest gender gap report, trailing dozens of other countries in areas like primary education, economic participation and healthcare, at a time when the Government is battling a slew of sexual abuse allegations. Out of the 144 countries examined by the WEF, the UK scraped into 15th spot behind G20 peers France and Germany. It made up five places on 2016, but still performed far more poorly than many developed countries in several categories. The UK ranked only 53rd on economic participation and opportunity, largely because of the gaping divide in unpaid work between the sexes. The report showed that 57 per cent of all work that UK women do is unpaid, compared to just 32 per cent for men. Recommended Gender diversity on FTSE 100 boards may be worse than thought It also found that the mean monthly womens earnings were just 66 per cent of mens, putting the UK in 95th spot overall for estimated earned income. Todays research provides more evidence that our economy does not see women, said Sophie Walker, leader of the Womens Equality Party. We can only change this by challenging the knee-jerk response to so many of these studies: that women should up-skill themselves and join men at the top table. Its time to stop blaming the women, she told The Independent. On education, the UK ranked 36th, pulled down by coming just 70th when examined for enrolment in primary education. Although children in the UK are legally obliged to attend primary school, the report found that the average rate of male enrolment was marginally higher than the average rate of female enrolment, proving enough to pummel Britain in the global classification. On health and survival, the UK ranked 100th, though that was a function of women having a healthy life expectancy, defined as years they are expected to live in good health, of 72.5 years, which is over two years more than men. The fact that the global gender equality gap is getting wider not narrower should sound alarm bells for all of us, Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, one of the UKs largest charities promoting womens rights, told The Independent. The monthly earnings gap in the UK is so wide because our economy is heavily dependent on low paid, part-time work. Jobs which are still dominated by women, she said. We need better quality part-time jobs. All jobs should be flexible by default unless there is a good business reason for them not to be. Dr Carole Easton, chief executive of UK charity the Young Womens Trust, also called for urgent action to tackle inequalities, particularly in the workplace. She said that there should be more opportunity for flexible working and urged firms to be penalised if they fail to accurately report pay gaps. Right from the start of their careers, far too many women in the UK continue to face disadvantage, discrimination and a lack of support in the workplace, she said. We need urgent action to close the inequalities that women still have to endure, including concerted efforts to support more young women into male-dominated sectors which tend to be better paid, have greater availability of flexible working and enforce penalties for firms that fail to report their pay gaps accurately. Under legislation introduced in April this year, any UK business with at least 250 employees has 12 months to publish data on the difference between how much they pay men and women at different levels, but critics have condemned the system, saying that the reporting wont be granular enough to facilitate real change. Last month Trade Union Congress general secretary Frances OGrady said that the UK was still decades away from closing the gender pay gap and warned that the Government has a duty to crank up the pressure on employers. The most recent Government data puts the median gender pay gap for full-time work at 9.1 per cent in the UK. Thats the lowest since the Office for National Statistics started recording that figure in 1997, but is down only 0.3 per cent over the last year. According to the Fawcett Society the pay gap is largely the result of differences in caring responsibilities, women tending to cluster in low-skilled and low-paid work, but also in some instances outright discrimination. Beyond the UK, Thursdays WEF report indicated a global lack of progress in 2017. It showed that after a decade of slow but steady advancement towards closing the gender gap, momentum stalled in 2017. Worldwide, the gap deteriorated across all the four of the metrics that the organisation monitors, including educational attainment, health and survival, economic opportunity and political empowerment. The WEF said that, at the current rate of progress, it will now take 100 years to shut the gender gap, up dramatically from the 83 years estimated just one year ago. In the workplace alone, the global gender gap wont be closed for another 217 years, the report predicted. Commenting on the findings, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF, said we are moving from the era of capitalism into the era of talentism. Competitiveness on a national and on a business level will be decided more than ever before by the innovative capacity of a country or a company, he added. Those will succeed best, who understand to integrate women as an important force into their talent pool. A slew of studies have suggested that improving gender parity may result in significant economic outperformance. In Thursdays report the WEF said that notable recent estimates suggest that economic gender parity could add an additional $250bn (188.6bn) to the gross domestic product of the UK, and $1.75 trillion to that of the US. For a ninth year, Iceland topped the WEF index in 2017 as the worlds most gender-equal country. But both second-placed Norway and third-placed Finland suffered setbacks, meaning that the disparity at the top of the index grew in 2017. Rwanda and Sweden took fourth and fifth spot respectively, followed by Nicaragua, Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand and the Philippines, rounding out to the top ten. Western Europe showed the highest level of gender parity for all categories examined in the report. Out of 20 countries in the region covered by the index, nine have improved their overall score in 2017 while 11 saw their score slip. The Middle East and North Africa scored poorest. The regions highest-ranked country was Israel, in 44th spot, followed by Tunisia in 117th and the United Arab Emirates in 120th. Its scored was particularly dragged down by poor political empowerment, especially in countries including Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and Yemen. Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Health Check email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Governments should put the lives of one million children who die each year from pneumonia above the patents and proprietary claims of drug companies, according to Save the Children. A report launched by the charity today calls for a new deal on treatments for the disease which causes two children' deaths every minute. This includes commitments to fund new immunisation programmes and bring down the price of vaccines, as well as distributing basic antibiotics and medical equipment that can treat symptoms before they become life-threatening. Save the Children CEO Kevin Watkins told The Independent the global health community has turned a blind eye to the scale of the pneumonia problem for far too long. Pneumonia kills more than a million children worldwide each year, and four out of five of these deaths are children under two years old. Mr Watkins said: This is, by a very long way, the biggest single killer of children." The disease is a severe infection of the lower lung, most commonly caused by the bacteria Streptococcus pneumonia. Malnourishment is a major factor in a childs ability to fight off infection, so pneumonia disproportionately affects areas that have been through a humanitarian crisis. Fighting for breath Seven month-old Mabior contracted severe pneumonia after becoming malnourished. His mother Ayen has had problems breastfeeding since becoming undernourished herself. She feared Mabior was on the brink of death when he began struggling to breathe and took him to a hospital in Bor, South Sudan which is supported by Save the Children The hospital has oxygen generators but no electricity to power them, meaning thousands of children there are unable to be given the quick-fix oxygen they need to survive pneumonia. Mabior was treated with antibiotics and is now recovering. Severe malnutrition multiplies the risk of a pneumonia death by a factor of four. (Martin Kharumwa / Save the Children) In these areas - like Somalia, southern Ethiopia, and Kenya - the charity says its clinics are seeing pneumonia deaths rising despite an overall decrease globally. Effective vaccines exist for the major causes of pneumonia and could prevent the majority of cases, while first line antibiotics that would cost around 30p in the UK are unaffordable in the areas that need them. Mr Watkins told The Independent for prices to come down organisations like the World Bank need to commit to buying vaccines or antibiotics that are produced, so manufacturers will know if they put the investment in there will be a market. But its also important to have more companies producing to drive prices down through competition. Currently only Pfizer and GSK manufacture vaccines for pneumonia, though both have committed to price freezes. One of the problems we highlight in the report is that Pfizer has taken out a patent in India which will obstruct the entrance of one of the new manufacturers, that could come on stream quite quickly. We argue that governments should really prioritise the public health interest, rather than the patent or the proprietary claims of pharmaceutical manufacturers on this. A Pfizer spokesperson told The Independent that its patent in India meant more than 1.2 million more doses were administered each year and has helped protect over 1.5 million child lives in India. Globally, our vaccines tiered pricing approach is carefully calibrated to help countries have access to our vaccines. Countries with the least ability to afford a vaccine pay a lower price in accordance with their governments resources while countries that can afford to pay more are asked do so. Pneumonia in the UK and US accounts for just 0.2 deaths in every 1,000 births (Save the Children) The Department for International Development said the UK already supports programmes to make vaccines affordable in developing countries. Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan is backing the global effort, and said the these countries could ill-afford the $9.15 price tag for vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies, governments, aid donors and UN agencies need to come together to make the vaccine prices more affordable to save more lives, he added. International Development Secretary Priti Patel said: Pneumonia is overwhelmingly a disease of poverty with almost all child deaths occurring in developing countries. Tragically four in five of the children who die from this cruel sickness are under the age of two. Immunising children is the most effective way to prevent the main causes of pneumonia, stop the deadly disease from spreading and give hope to the next generation. Through Gavi [Bill and Melinda Gates' "Vaccine Alliance"] the UK is providing life-saving vaccines to immunise more than 75 million children from preventable deaths until 2020. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The younger brother of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi could be sent to the UK from Libya after British police were granted a warrant for his arrest. Police said Libyan authorities are considering a request to extradite Hashem Abedi, who could face charges of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion in the terror attack. He has previously been accused of helping his brother manufacture a bomb that was made in flats around Manchester and concealed in a bag. Investigators revealed that more than 500 victims were injured in the blast, which killed 22 people, including children, as they left an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in May. Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson said no evidence of a wide network had been uncovered following the attack, which was claimed by Isis. I can now say that following a review of the evidence by the CPS, we have applied for and been granted a warrant for the arrest of Hashem Abedi, he added. Hashem is currently detained in Libya, and the CPS has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request. Mr Jackson said no further detail of the possible extradition could be given as the fast-paced investigation continues, involving police officers drawn from across the UK. Specialist officers are continuing work with families of victims and survivors, including 16 who suffered very serious injuries including paralysis, loss of limbs, internal injuries and very serious facial scars requiring complex surgery. Everyone, not least those who have lost their loved ones, will live with the memories of what happened forever, Mr Jackson added. Manchester Arena attack victims remembered as venue reopens Police arrested 23 people in the wake of the atrocity but none have yet been charged, with 30 properties searched and 11,000 pieces of evidence and 16 terabytes of data being examined. In all 512 people were either physically injured or left profoundly traumatised, Mr Jackson said, with 112 hospitalised. Investigators said they were working through 1,300 statements,16,000 hours of CCTV and more than eight million lines of telephone communications data. Hashem Abedi has been a key suspect throughout the investigation, with police quickly piecing together his brothers movements in the days between his return to the UK and the bombing. Libyan investigators previously suggested Hashem would go on trial in the country after being arrested in Tripoli, where the UN-backed Government of International Accord is struggling to retain control. Libyan Attorney General Sadiq al-Sour said Hashem was suspected of helping his brother and collecting materials for the device, after leaving Manchester or Libya on the same day as Salman in April. Libyan officials claimed Hashem told them he and his brother started supporting Isis in 2015, through the internet and some friends in the UK. Manchester explosion in pictures Show all 37 1 /37 Manchester explosion in pictures Manchester explosion in pictures People running down stairs as they attempt to exit the Manchester Arena after a blast, where U.S. singer Ariana Grande had been performing, in Manchester Twitter/@ZACH_BRUCE/ via REUTERS Manchester explosion in pictures Helpers attend to people inside the Manchester Arena after a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the end of an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people PA wire Manchester explosion in pictures Armed officers guard outside a hotel near the Manchester Arena following reports of an explosion, in Manchester, Britain EPA Manchester explosion in pictures Police officers are seen outside the Manchester Arena, where U.S. singer Ariana Grande had been performing, in Manchester, northern England Reuters Manchester explosion in pictures Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures AFP/Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police and fans close to the Manchester Arena, after reports of an explosion Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures There have been reports of explosions at Manchester Arena where Ariana Grande had performed Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police deploy at scene of explosion in Manchester, England, at a concert in Manchester Arena AFP/Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police stand by a cordoned off street close to the Manchester Arena Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police deploy at scene of explosion in Manchester, England AFP/Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police deploy at scene of a reported explosion during a concert in Manchester, England, on May 23, 2017. British police said early May 23 there were "a number of confirmed fatalities" after reports of at least one explosion during a pop concert by US singer Ariana Grande. Ambulances were seen rushing to the Manchester Arena venue and police added in a statement that people should avoid the area AFP/Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures An ambulance drives away from the Manchester Arena, where U.S. singer Ariana Grande had been performing, in Manchester Reuters Manchester explosion in pictures Police escort members of the public from the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures A woman sits in the street in a blanket near the Manchester Arena as police guard the area following reports of an explosion, in Manchester, Britain EPA Manchester explosion in pictures Two women wrapped in thermal blankets stand near the Manchester Arena, where US singer Ariana Grande had been performing, in Manchester Reuters Manchester explosion in pictures A Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) bomb disposal robot is unloaded outside the Manchester Arena following reports of an explosion, in Manchester. At least 19 people have been confirmed dead and others 50 were injured, authorities said. It is being treated as a terrorist incident until police know otherwise EPA Manchester explosion in pictures A Royal Logistic Corps (RLC) bomb disposal robot is unloaded outside the Manchester Arena following reports of an explosion, in Manchester EPA Manchester explosion in pictures Members of the public receive treatment from emergency service staff at Victoria Railway Station close to the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017 in Manchester, England. There have been reports of explosions at Manchester Arena where Ariana Grande had performed this evening. Greater Manchester Police have have confirmed there are fatalities and warned people to stay away from the area Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Armed police after a suspected terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena at the end of a concert by US star Ariana Grande left 19 dead PA wire Manchester explosion in pictures Emergency services arrive close to the Manchester Arena in Manchester Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures An amoured police vehicle patrols near Manchester Arena in Manchester Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures A man carries a young girl on his shoulders near Victoria station in Manchester AFP/Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police officers stand at the Miller Street and Corporation Street Crossroads, in front of the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police block a road near to the Manchester Arena in central Manchester, England AP Manchester explosion in pictures Armed police patrol near Victoria station in Manchester, northwest England. Twenty two people have been killed and dozens injured after a suspected suicide bomber targeted fans leaving a concert of US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Police forensic officers leave the Manchester Arena as they investigate the scene of an explosion in Manchester Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures A forensic officer collects evidence on a walkway between Victoria station and Manchester Arena following a deadly terror attack in Manchester, Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures A woman and a young girl wearing a t-shirt of US singer Ariana Grande talks to police near Manchester Arena following a deadly terror attack in Manchester, Getty Manchester explosion in pictures EPA Manchester explosion in pictures Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and Manchester City Council Leader Sir Richard Leese speak to the media outside Manchester Town Hall after a suicide bomber killed 22 people, including children, as an explosion tore through fans leaving a pop concert in Manchester Dave Higgens/PA Wire Manchester explosion in pictures The media gather behind a police cordon in Manchester Getty Images Manchester explosion in pictures Flowers left close to the Manchester Arena, the morning after a suicide bomber killed 22 people, including children, as an explosion tore through fans leaving a pop concert in Manchester Danny Lawson/PA Wire Manchester explosion in pictures Ariana Grande concert attendees Karen Moore and her daughter Molly Steed, aged 14, from Derby, leave the Park Inn where they were given refuge after last night's explosion at Manchester Arena Getty Manchester explosion in pictures Signs saying 'We love Manchester' are displayed in a window in Manchester, England Getty Images Their father, Ramadan Abedi, was also arrested in May but denied knowledge of the plot and has since been freed. Another relative, Mohamed Younis Abedi, is in custody in eastern Libya after his credit card was allegedly used to buy bomb components, and Libyan authorities say they have passed on a list of people living in UK who should be questioned. Investigators were attempting to discover whether Salman had undergone terror training or had help to build the device, or whether he had trained himself using online propaganda. The bomb contained triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a high-powered explosive that has become a signature of Isis attacks including Paris, Brussels and the attempt in Parsons Green. Experts told The Independent that Salman could have made a lethal quantity of the explosive in just 24 hours but that direct training or experience would have sped up the process. He is believed to have packed TATP in powder form inside a bag, surrounded by nails and shrapnel intended to inflict maximum death and injury. Greater Manchester Police said he made core purchases for the device alone, and in the four days between flying back from Libya and launching the attack. The 22-year-old, who was born in Manchester to Libyan parents, had left the UK in April after telling relatives he was making a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had made numerous trips to Libya after his parents originally refugees from Muammar Gaddafis regime returned to live there during the countrys bloody civil war, possibly fighting against government soldiers alongside his father. Islamist groups swiftly gained power in the conflict, where Isis has seized the opportunity to gain a foothold amid warnings the country could become a primary launch pad for terror attacks in Europe. Among the countless militias battling in Libya is Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, an Isis special operations unit whose operatives are said to have met Salman during his visits to Tripoli and the coastal city of Sabratha. A retired European intelligence officer told The New York Times that Salman Abedi kept in contact with the militants after returning to Manchester. Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, which was originally formed by Libyan jihadis fighting in Syria in 2012, had attracted foreign fighters including the Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was also linked to atrocities at the Brussels Jewish Museum, the Thalys train attack and several failed plots. Some Battar brigade members moved back to Libya and set up terror training camps, focusing on weapons training and bomb-making. The camps count among their graduates the Isis gunman who killed 30 British tourists on a beach in Tunisia in 2015, and the Bardo Museum attackers. 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 Training camps used by plotters actively planning operations against Europe on the coast have been targeted by US air strikes, since it emerged that the Berlin Christmas market attacker was in contact with Libyan Isis militants. Salman also had links with known extremists and gang members in Manchester, with friends remembering him as a fun teenager who drank and took drugs, before returning from a trip to Libya as a different guy and appearing increasingly religious. He had made extremist remarks and flown an Islamist flag from his Manchester home but did not raise sufficient alarm to spark intervention by British security services. He was an associate of Isis recruiter Raphael Hostey, also from Manchester, who was killed in a drone strike in Syria last year after allegedly radicalising and sponsoring militants. Salman also had links with local gangs, and was reportedly devastated when his friend Abdulwahab Hafidah was murdered by a rival group. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Two men have been arrested after a man was stabbed in the face with a pair a pliers, police said. Officers said a man, in his 20s, was found with stab injuries in Parkway, Camden, at around 7.30pm on Sunday night and taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. It follows reports of an altercation outside a grocer's shop in north west London which is thought to have started inside the store and spilled out into the street. Two men, aged 28 and 29, were arrested in Parkway and taken to hospital for treatment to minor injuries before being taken to a north London police station, detectives said. Both men have been released under investigation pending inquiries. Officers from the Metropolitan Police are now appealing for any witnesses to come forward. DC Dominic Brameld said: There were lots of people in the area at the time of this incident and we understand some of the witnesses may have filmed the altercation on their mobile phones. We would urge anyone with footage to pass this on to the police so we can piece together what happened on Sunday evening. 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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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 Anyone with information should call 020 8345 0145 or 101 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. PA Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Drug consumption rooms should be considered in cities across the UK to allow addicts to inject or inhale illicit substances without fear of prosecution, a leading MP has said. Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party and MP for Brighton and Hove, argued that introducing safe and supervised clinics in parts of the country could help reduce drug related harm, at a time when the number of drug-related fatalities is at a record high. Such rooms allow illicit drugs to be used under the supervision of trained staff, with the aim of reducing risks of unhygienic injecting and preventing drug-related overdose deaths. They also connect high-risk drug users with addiction treatment and other health and social services. They already operate in 10 countries, including Australia, Germany, France, Ireland and Switzerland and Glasgow is soon set to be the first British city with such a project in place. Ms Lucas argued that it is time the UK Government recognised their life-saving potential, urging ministers to create a legal framework to support the setting up of these spaces. Not only do these spaces save lives, decrease the risk of users contracting HIV and other diseases and clear related paraphernalia from our streets and parks, but they also help them access support services, such a healthcare, housing and benefits, she wrote in an article in The Independent. Recommended Drug consumption rooms can help reduce the harm caused by addiction They can help people take the first step in the journey from harmful addiction to a healthier life specifically because they provide safety from the hard hand of the law which criminalises drug use." The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 3,744 people 2,572 men and 1,172 women were fatally poisoned by both legal and illegal drugs in England and Wales in 2016, 70 more than the previous year and the highest number since comparable statistics began in 1993. About 70 per cent of the deaths were a result of drug misuse, with the highest rate coming in the 40 to 49 age category. Almost one in three drug overdoses in Europe were recorded in the UK and Home Office statistics suggest that illegal drug use costs our economy over 10bn a year - the biggest killer being heroin. Ms Lucas said that the "failure of national policy" can be seen in her constituency, Brighton and Hove, where shop owners have recently been finding pavements splattered with blood and needles. The Green Party co-leader said: "The need for evidence-based decision making on drugs couldnt be more apparent, and thats why I believe that we that we must consider on a case by case basis in communities across the country whether drug consumption rooms would help reduce drug related harm." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA "The current drugs policy framework drips with moralism but utterly lacks effectiveness and humanity. The evidence is clear on this: making drug use illegal doesnt protect people from harm. It's time the UK Government wakes up to the potential of drug consumption rooms to reduce drug-related harms and creates a legal framework to support piloting these spaces. "Britain is being left behind on this issue, as countries around the world adopt far more sensible approaches to this public health emergency. We must recognise that prohibition doesn't keep people safe and that a change of direction is needed now - failing to do so would be reckless in the extreme." Her calls come ahead of the opening of the Museum of Drug Policy, a pop-up arts and cultural hub featuring live programming and art from around the world that highlight how drug policies impact and shape our communities, in London. The Museum of Drug Policy will be open from Friday 3 November for three days between10am - 10pm (Sunday: 10am - 5pm), at 47-49 Tanner Street, SE1 3PL. It is free to enter. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A bus company boss fired his entire workforce with a blunt note telling them: "F**k it... I cannot work with you a moment longer." Managing director Sydney Hardy shut down Somerset firm Nippy Bus with immediate effect and told staff, thought to include his own daughter, he wanted to "pursue my dream of not having to work here". The sudden closure left 27 drivers out of work and affected 300 children whose school bus service was cancelled with no notice. Local schools and colleges were left rushing to find replacement operators at the last minute to get the pupils to and from lessons. Mr Hardy, 57, had run Nippy Bus for 13 years from the company's headquarters in Martock, a village near Yeovil. In a message to staff through the company's internal memo system, he wrote: "There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough. I have had enough and realise I cannot work with you, the people I employ, a moment longer. "There comes a time in any relationship when you just have to say 'F*** it', say goodbye and move on. This is my time! I am quitting to pursue my dream of not having to work here." Nippy Bus managing director Sydney Hardy, pictured in 2004 (Nigel Andrews / SWNS.com) He said "all staff should consider themselves dismissed/redundant", adding: "The gates are now closed and will not open so you can can stay in your scratchers Monday and have a lie in." A brief note on the firm's website said it had ceased operating with immediate effect. It added: "The company has appointed agents who will now work to release the company's assets and discharge its liabilities." Driver Steve Atkins, 61, from Martock, said staff were "in total shock". "Nobody expected it," he said. "It was a shock to see an email saying you ain't got a job tomorrow." Sydney Hardy fired his staff with a blunt message on the company's internal memo system Mr Hardy's own daughter was reported to be among staff caught unawares by the company's closure. Former colleagues said Nadine Hardy, 21, worked in the firm's offices. Dave English, 64, told the Daily Mail: "It seems shes been caught by surprise here, just like the rest of us." The driver had worked for Nippy Bus for nearly nine years and described the way Mr Hardy announced the the company's closure as "disgusting". Staff said the firm had been struggling after nine drivers quit, forcing bosses to cut up to six routes, earlier this year. Nadine Hardy is reported to have lost her job when her father closed his company (Facebook) "It's disgusting the way it's been handled," Mr English said. "Nobody has any respect for him. "He wasn't a nice person to work with. You can't just bury your head the way he has done and not confront the problems." He added: "He knew months ago that the company was in trouble in terms of the number of drivers we had. Everyone was doing long shifts but he just expected us to do them. The memo makes it out that it's the drivers' fault that this has happened, but without us he would never have had his company. "Some of these drivers have children and mortgages. We haven't been paid for last month's work." The closed Nippy Bus depot in Martock, Somerset (SWNS.com) Somerset County Council stepped in to organise alternative transport for those affected by the collapse of the firm on Monday. It said it was given no prior warning Nippy Bus planned to cease operating. As well as services to schools and colleges, the company had been running buses to small villages not otherwise covered by public transport. Other local operators said they were trying to "pick up the pieces" before meeting to find a more permanent solution. Mr Hardy could not be reached for comment. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} More than 400,000 more children are set to fall into poverty in the next four years if the Government pursues its planned tax and benefit reforms, a new report has warned. Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) forecasts that under current plans for changes to benefits, including the rollout of universal credit, absolute child poverty is set to increase from 27 per cent to 31 per cent by 2021. Experts have warned that Britains record of reducing child poverty is at risk of unravelling as a result of the changes. The research, which combines official economic forecasts with planned tax and benefit reforms to project incomes and poverty rates among UK households between 2015-16, shows that child poverty will rise in every region of the country over the next few years. Child poverty is defined as any youngster living in a household with an income of less than 60 per cent the national average, after housing costs are taken into account. The largest increases will occur in the North East, East Midlands, Wales, and Northern Ireland all areas where poor households get more income from benefits and less from earnings, or where more low income households will be affected by the limiting of means-tested benefits to two children. Tom Waters, an author of the report and a research economist at IFS said: If the Government sticks to planned benefit cuts, it should not be surprised if, according to the official measure, absolute child poverty rises. The larger projected rises occur in areas where families with children are more reliant on benefits than earnings for their income, and where more families are likely to be adversely affected by the new two-child limit on means-tested benefits. Around 7.5 million low income households will see their benefit entitlements cut by over 500 per year in real terms as a result of the freeze to most working-age benefits, the report states. It adds that the limiting of tax credits and universal credit to two children means that some low-income families will receive over 2,500 less in benefits than they otherwise would have. Income is projected to grow by just 4 per cent in real terms over the next four years which the report authors say is slow by historical standards. And they warn that this prediction could be optimistic, with the OBR indicating that they will downgrade their forecast for productivity growth at the Budget later this month. Recommended UK child poverty hits highest level since 2008 financial crisis The report comes amid growing pressure on Theresa May to make changes to universal credit, which is being blamed for plunging people into debt and sending them to food banks. In particular, there are calls - including from some Tory backbenchers for the six-week wait before a first payment comes through to be cut to no more than four weeks. So far, No 10 has refused to bow to the pressure, although the change is believed to be under consideration behind the scenes. However, there are also warnings that universal credit is punishing the self-employed, people working part-time and women because payments go a single household earner, usually a man. The shake-up replaces six different working-age benefits with a single payment, making the system simpler to understand and administer, Ms May has insisted. It also comes as new research from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) found that a lack of affordable childcare and poor opportunities for progression were already holding low and middle-income parents back, with almost half of working parents with an annual household income under 30,000 saying they didn't have enough money to support their families. A separate report published by campaign group Gingerbread meanwhile indicated that 165,000 single parents of pre-school aged children were at increased risk of going into poverty and debt because of new job-seeking requirements placed on them under the universal credit system. It has also emerged this week that benefit cuts and increased levels of poverty across the UK are a primary cause for an unprecedented surge in demand for childrens services in recent years, with cuts to financial support for families causing demand to rise to levels local authorities say they are unable to meet. Alison Garnham chief executive of CPAG, told The Independent the UK was heading for a "child poverty crisis", warning that it is "extremely unusual" to have increases in absolute child poverty in every UK region and nation on the horizon. "So much of the damage to household incomes is being caused by the freeze on benefits and the huge cuts to tax credits and universal credit," she added. "The Chancellor has the opportunity in this months Budget to reduce the scale of the oncoming crisis by ending the freeze on benefits and re-instating the money that has been taken out of universal credit. Failure to act will jeopardise the life chances of a generation." Campbell Robb, chief executive at the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), meanwhile said: These shocking figures show the UKs proud record of reducing child poverty is at risk of unravelling: it could mean an additional 1.2 million children in poverty by the end of the Parliament. 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 Twenty years of progress is at stake unless the Government takes urgent action at next months Budget. The biggest drivers of the increase in child poverty are changes to benefits and tax credits, especially the freeze on most working age benefits. This will leave families struggling to cover the rising cost of essentials as benefits fail to top up low pay and for those out of work incomes stay the same while prices rise. The Chancellor must lift the freeze in the Budget so these projections do not become reality. In response to the report, a government spokesperson said: "We are committed to supporting families while making the welfare system fair for those who pay for it and those who benefit from it. "There are 200,000 fewer children living in poverty than in 2010 and we are helping families keep more of what they earn by cutting taxes and increasing the national living wage. In particular, the North East has near-record levels of employment, and unemployment rate in Wales is the lowest on record." WASHINGTON, D.C. On Oct. 26, Congressman Jason Smith authored and introduced a bill that will help working students afford college tuition. Smith has met with students in every county of Missouris sprawling 8th Congressional District, and heard the need for legislation like the Upward Mobility Enhancement Act firsthand. The Upward Mobility Enhancement Act allows employers to offer tax-free education assistance of up to $11,500 a year to their employees. This gives students the opportunity to enter the workforce and earn money while getting portions of their tuition and other education related expenses covered by their employer. I am one of the only Members of Congress who is still paying back my student loans, so I know what a burden this can be, said Congressman Smith. Student loan repayment programs are great, but people who are working while pursuing their education need help right now. Smith worked with his colleague, Rep. Rodney Davis, on the legislation. Davis is from Illinois and recently visited several agricultural operations in southeast Missouri with Congressman Smith. Hard-working Americans at companies like Starbucks, McDonalds, and others across this country have success stories about furthering their education without taking on a large amount of student debt, said Davis. These companies are providing their employees with opportunities to grow, succeed, and achieve their dream. If we want to help people succeed and reduce the need for student debt, which is now the second largest form of consumer debt, we should ensure this benefit is adequate to helping people further their education. Fifty-seven percent of graduates in Missouri incur debt while earning their degree. The average debt for an individual graduate is $27,532. Smith has a record of supporting Missouri students. In 2015, Smith authored and passed legislation to give tax cuts to college students participating in work-learning-service programs like College of the Ozarks in southern Missouri. Many students cant afford to go to school without working at the same time, said Congressman Smith. In addition to creating tax cuts for hardworking Missourians, we are creating legislation like the Upward Mobility Enhancement Act which will allow more people to keep money in their pocket and stay out of debt while pursuing their education. Smiths legislation has bipartisan support in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Original supporters of the legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives include Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), Rep. Susan DelBene (D-WA), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL). Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Campaigners have lost a court battle to force the Government to take the number of child refugees it was expected would be brought to the UK under the Dubs Amendment. The amendment, passed in May 2016, required the Government to act as soon as possible to relocate and support unaccompanied refugee children in Europe. It was required to consult with local authorities to determine the number of children each council has the capacity to help. Help Refugees, the charity leading the case, accused the Home Office of adopting a seriously defective process to measure the capacity of local councils to take in child refugees, after it emerged many local authorities were not properly consulted. The Government announced in early February that it was to close the Dubs scheme after accepting just 350 minors. It later admitted that an administrative error led to 130 places for child refugees offered by local councils not being taken into consideration. Freedom of Information requests submitted by Vice later showed that under the National Transfer Scheme, councils had voluntarily offered to accept 1,572 more children than they were currently supporting. In June, Help Refugees asked the court to order the Secretary of State to consult local authorities again, urging that the Government reopen the Dubs Scheme. Although the closure of the scheme has been described as shocking and shameful by MPs and campaigners, the High Court judgement confirmed the Dubs Amendment will remain closed. Ruling on the case on Thursday morning, the Divisional Court said there was nothing that could show that the consultation process or the consideration of the results was unlawful. We are not prepared to hold that arrangements have not been made as soon as possible for this is not something within the control of the UK Government, the judge said. The Court accepted the Home Offices argument that the process of deciding who should be transferred was not one to which normal considerations of procedural fairness could realistically apply. Lord Alf Dubs, who himself was a child refugee, told The Independent he was very disappointed by the verdict, warning that the closure of Dubs will only lead to more children in precarious situations, with many falling prey to child traffickers. Recommended Thousands of refugees become targets for smugglers in northern France We went into this with high hopes. Based on the evidence Im really quite surprised. Ive spoken to lots of local authorities who are willing to take in more child refugees, he said. Im hoping the appeal will work. Ive been in Calais and Greece recently and this only means more children will be living in the woods with their lives are on hold. More will turn to illegal routes and the traffickers will have field day. These youngsters dont escape that theres a pull factor, as argued by Theresa May. I dont think the people living in the horrors of Syria, and caught up in conflicts in countries like Ethiopia and Eritrea come here because of Dubs. Ive met some of the children who have come across through Dubs and theyre doing really well, one wants to do some work with me in Parliament, another one got top marks in school. I was given the warm welcome in Britain years ago and we should still be offering this to child refugees. Reacting to the verdict, Josie Naughton, founder and chief executive of Help Refugees said they were bitterly disappointed by this result, and said the charity intends to appeal the Courts decision. At the time our litigation was issued, not a single child had been transferred to the UK under the Dubs Amendment, she said. Transfers began under the pressure of this litigation and under the pressure from campaigners and parliamentarians. Weve unearthed 130 extra places, which the Government eventually admitted it had overlooked. These places for children are needed now more than ever. There are young unaccompanied children sleeping rough in Europe completely unprepared for the coming winter. We intend to appeal. Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Show all 7 1 /7 Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The Solidarity With Refugees group said Saturdays protest aimed to show our Government and the world that Britain is ready to welcome more refugees. Rex Features Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis People march through central London as they take part in a protest rally organised by Solidarity with Refugees in a bid to urge the Government to take more action on the migrant crisis Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The protest comes days before world leaders meet to discuss crisis at UN General Assembly Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Demonstrators made their way from Park Lane to Parliament Square in London on Saturday afternoon Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis Marchers chanted refugees are welcome here and waved banners reading no-one is illegal and lets help people Press Association Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis The march was supported by charities and groups including the Red Cross, Asylum Aid, Save the Children, Hope Not Hate, Oxfam and the UN Refugee Agency Rex Features Refugees welcome here: Protesters demand UK resettle more migrants in response to refugee crisis In the wake of Alans death, David Cameron pledged to resettle 20,000 Syrian refugees in the UK over the coming five years but there have been additional calls to re-home those who have already reached Europe, as well as asylum seekers coming from other conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan Rex Features A Home Office spokesperson said: This judgement has confirmed that the consultation conducted last year on the Dubs Amendment and its implementation was lawful. We remain committed to transferring 480 children from Europe to the UK under section 67 of the Immigration Act. We have accepted further referrals this year and transfers are ongoing. We will continue to work closely with EU partners and local authorities to transfer eligible children here quickly and safely. In addition, our wider focus remains helping those in need of international protection in the region, which is why we have committed to resettle up to 23,000 refugees from the region almost 9,000 are already rebuilding their lives in the UK and pledged 2.46bn to the humanitarian response to the Syria conflict. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Two special forces soldiers have been charged with negligence over the deaths of three recruits during an SAS training exercise in the Brecon Beacons. Lance Corporals Craig Roberts and Edward Maher and Corporal James Dunsby died after collapsing as they marched in temperatures of more than 31C on the hottest day of 2013. A coroner ruled their deaths were caused partly by neglect. The Service Prosecution Authority (SPA) confirmed a charge of negligent performance of duty had been brought against a training officer and a chief instructor involved. The men face a maximum sentence of two years if convicted in a military court. An inquest in 2015 heard planning of the 16-mile march had been "inadequate" and weather conditions were not taken into account in the risk assessment. Coroner Louise Hunt also criticised the "failure to implement an adequate medical plan to allow for treatment of any heat illness casualties" and the insufficient water provided to those taking part in the exercise. She said the three men would have survived if given "basic treatment" of cooling, hydration, rest, and the removal of their kit. From left: Lance Corporal Craig Roberts, Lance Corporal Edward Maher and Corporal James Dunsby The chief instructor has since left the SAS but the training officer continues to serve. They have not been named and will be known only as 1A and 1B during their trial. The SPA initially decided not to charge the pair but relatives of the soldiers who died asked for case to be reviewed. Two of those soldiers L/Cpl Maher, 34, from Winchester, and L/Cpl Roberts, 24, from Llandudno died on the hills after suffering heatstroke while marching Pen y Fen, the highest peak in south Wales. Cpl Dunsby, 34, from Trowbridge in Wiltshire, died of multiple organ failure two weeks later in hospital. A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesman said: "Any decision to prosecute any personnel, veteran or serving, is made by the Service Prosecution Authority, an independent body." Last year the Health and Safety Executive reprimanded the MoD with an official censure - the highest action possible in the circumstances - over the soldiers' death. The MoD only escaped prosecution because of a historic convention that grants it legal immunity. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Identical twins cheated chilling 50 per cent odds of strangling each other in the womb, with this incredible, life-saving hug. Told at her 10-week scan that the twins were monoamniotic - meaning they shared one amniotic sac - nursery nurse Vicky Plowright, 30, was warned this meant their umbilical cords could become tangled, shutting off their oxygen supply and killing them both. Vicky, of Godalming, Surrey, whose fiance, Chris Cremer, 32, is also a nursery nurse, said: I was with my sister, Georgina, and we were told the twins were monoamniotic, or Mo-Mo (Monoamniotic-Monochorionic), twins. This is very rare, affecting between one in 35,000 and one in 60,000 twins in the UK, and means they shared one amniotic sac, instead of having one each. I was devastated, as doctors explained it also meant the babies were at extremely high risk - around 50 per cent - of not surviving the pregnancy, because of their close proximity. They still had two umbilical cords, to deliver nourishment, which could become tangled, strangling them, which was so frightening to even imagine. Vicky had gone to the 10 week scan with Georgina, expecting it to be routine and hoping to simply update Chris later. Recommended Twins joined at the head separated by surgeons in landmark operation Instead, she said: I was in total shock, as Id just been saying to my sister as long as theres not two, as we already have a daughter, Jocelyn, four, and I didnt think we had the space or energy for two more. But the laughter soon stopped when, moments later, the sonographer told them the twins looked worryingly close together. Immediately given an internal scan, fortunately, any possibility of them being conjoined was dismissed, but doctors were still concerned about the babies. The scan seemed to show our twins were sharing the same amniotic sac, Vicky continued. They said it meant the babies were at high risk and we needed to go back as soon as possible to see a specialist. I was hysterical and rang Chris in a total state. I had no idea what this would mean. In the space of an hour Id found out we were expecting twins, but that they could be in danger. It was torture, thinking that we could lose them at any time But everything changed at the 12 week scan, with a specialist sonographer, when Vicky and Chris saw the twins had moved into a lifesaving embrace. To our astonishment, at the 12-week scan, we saw that they were cuddling each other and holding hands, Vicky recalled. They were keeping each other alive by staying still, so their umbilical cords didnt get tangled. Doctors arranged to see Vicky every one to two weeks for check-ups, until the twins reached 32 weeks, when they wanted to deliver them. For the next few months, we were in a constant state of worry, said Vicky, who discovered at 17 weeks they were having boys. I didnt feel I could get excited, because I was so worried we were going to be told at every scan that our twins hadnt survived. Reuben, left, and Theo, right (PA) But, at the 12 week scan, the couple saw something magical - their boys happily hugging each other and holding hands. By staying still in that position, theyd stopped the cords from becoming so badly tangled that it killed them, Vicky said. It really was a miracle. At 13 weeks one twins cord did wrap slightly around the other, making them lie even closer and stiller. Fortunately, this meant it was less likely for a major knot to form. Then, at 32 weeks, Vicky was relieved when she was advised to give birth to her babies, as twin number two, Theo, had stopped growing, because of the limited womb space. So, on 22 December 2015, she was taken to a delivery suite at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guilford, with Chris by her side, for a caesarean. With Ed Sheerans 'Photographs' playing in the background, Reuben arrived at 11.22am weighing 3lb 14oz, followed by his identical twin brother, Theo, just one minute later, weighing 3lb 7oz. Both of them came out screaming and, most importantly, they were alive, Vicky recalled. Chris was sobbing next to me, as well. We were just so happy that theyd made it. Vicky was discharged on Christmas Day, enjoying a festive lunch at her parents Gerry and Rita Plowrights house, then returning to hospital to see the boys that evening. The twins were kept in the neo natal unit for another five weeks, before being discharged at the end of January. Now, aged 22 months, they could not be closer. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty They are the best of friends, Vicky beamed. Before they even knew the world, they knew each other, and grew together in such a small space that I knew they would have a special bond for the rest of their lives. Reuben is the do-er and Theo the thinker, but they always have an eye on where the other one is. Bliss, a charity for babies born premature and sick, supported Vicky by providing access to information and support services. Parents who find themselves in a similar position to Vicky can visit bliss.org.uk or call 0808 801 0322 for more information. PA Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Theresa May will hit out at a new and pernicious form of anti-Semitism as she welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UK. The visit will mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which signalled British support for the creation of a Jewish homeland. In a speech at a dinner to mark the centenary she will call for a renewed resolve to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will not be at the dinner, with the party represented by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry - who will also go to an event held by the Palestinian side. Labour has been dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism against some members despite Mr Corbyn's insistence that such views will not be tolerated. Mrs May will tell the dinner: There is today a new and pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist. This is abhorrent and we will not stand for it. Highlighting the UK's role in pressing for a new international definition of anti-Semitism, she will add: Criticising the actions of Israel is never - and can never be - an excuse for questioning Israel's right to exist, any more than criticising the actions of Britain could be an excuse for questioning our right to exist. And criticising the government of Israel is never - and can never be - an excuse for hatred against the Jewish people - any more than criticising the British government would be an excuse for hatred against the British people. Put simply, there can be no excuses for any kind of hatred towards the Jewish people. There never have been - and there never will be. Mrs May will say the UK is proud of its pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel. We are proud to stand here today together with Prime Minister Netanyahu and declare our support for Israel. And we are proud of the relationship we have built with Israel. She will call for a two-state peace deal with a secure and prosperous Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian State. A senior Labour source said: Jeremy Corbyn is unable to attend that particular dinner, but Emily Thornberry is going in his place. He had other engagements. That goes for many, many other events of that kind. There are events marking, commemorating, the Balfour Declaration by different groups and I think Emily Thornberry is also going to one event held by the Palestinian side on their perspective on the Balfour Declaration. 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 Asked whether Mr Corbyn's failure to attend the dinner continued a pattern set when he sent Ms Thornberry in his place to attend a Labour Friends of Israel event at the party's annual conference, the source said: Emily Thornberry is the shadow foreign secretary. Israel/Palestine is an international question. Jeremy did attend the Labour Friends of Israel event at the previous Labour Party conference. Sometimes he will attend some of these events and sometimes he won't, but Emily Thornberry leads on international issues. PA Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration will be marked by celebrations or protests by the different communities affected by it. What is the Balfour Declaration? The British pledge that paved the way for Israel's creation. The declaration saw Britain, a major world power, make the first key declaration backing a Jewish national home in what was known as Palestine. It was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 by the then British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to British Jewish community leader Lord Rothschild. What does it say? The letter, which states it is a declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations, promises British assistance to create a Jewish homeland. Here's the text in full: Foreign Office November 2nd, 1917 Dear Lord Rothschild, I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation. Yours, Arthur James Balfour How do historians view the declaration? The Foreign Secretary's intention in making the declaration is a hot topic of debate as the letter does not use the word state and also stresses that that nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Historian Simon Schama, in delivering the Balfour Centenary Lecture at the Royal Society, described Israel as a living, breathing, thriving democracy of six million Jews who are nothing short of a crushing retort to Hitler and the Shoah. He also pointed to schools like Yad Ve'Yad where the governing bodies, both Israeli and Palestinians, work together. How do Palestinians view the declaration? To this day it remains hugely divisive as it is despised by Palestinians while being celebrated by Israel. Zionists feel it is the foundation for modern Israel while non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs speak of loss and dispossession. Palestinians feel it signalled their nakba, or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. Palestinians have argued that Israel, through the declaration and its British backers, is a colonial enterprise. They have called for an apology from the British to the Palestinian people. Israel sees the letter as the first step and recognition from a major world power in backing the Jewish people's hopes of a national home. What is Britain's current position? Prime minister Theresa May at a dinner to mark the centenary is set to call for a two-state peace deal with a secure and prosperous Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian State. Mrs May will say the UK is proud of its pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel. We are proud to stand here today together with (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu and declare our support for Israel. And we are proud of the relationship we have built with Israel. PA Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Davis has been told to release secret studies into the economic damage from Brexit within a few weeks, after the Government conceded a Commons vote was binding. In major U-turn, the Brexit Secretary gave up his long fight to keep the documents hidden, after Labour used an ancient parliamentary procedure to force through a motion ordering their release. It is absolutely accepted that the motion passed by the House yesterday is binding, and that the information will be forthcoming, the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, told MPs. But there were immediate concerns that Mr Davis would drag his feet on disclosure and insist upon lengthy redactions before any information is released. In a strongly-worded letter, Hilary Benn, the chairman of the all-party Brexit Committee, said it should jointly decide what parts of the studies are too sensitive to make public. And he insisted ministers timetable for responding to Commons defeats on other issues 12 week would be completely unacceptable. I would be grateful if you could confirm in writing, as soon as possible, the arrangements that you are now making, to give to this decision, he told Mr Davies. The letter added: I would be very happy to discuss with you any particular concerns you may have about publication of parts of the material, so that the committee can take these into account. And, on the 12-week response timeframe, it said: Given that in this case the Government already has the material, I trust that it will be possible to provide the documents concerned much sooner than that. The pressure comes after ministers originally refused to say they would abide by what independent parliamentary clerks advised was a binding vote. Pro-EU Tory MP Anna Soubry said the Government was scared to reveal the truth about EU withdrawal, saying: It might prick this golden bubble, this balloon, of the promised land of Brexit. Mr Davis confirmed the U-turn, saying he had spoken with Mr Benn about how we handle the confidentiality of the documentation we'll hand over. He tried to play down its significance, insisting it was not some sort of grand plan, but data about the regulations and the markets of individual sectors. Of course we will be as open as we can be with the select committee, I fully intend to, Mr Davies added. However, the Labour motion called for the full, unredacted impact assessments to be passed to the Brexit select committee, which would decide what elements could be released. It is thought they have been placed in a single, huge document, covering experts verdicts into the likely impact of different scenarios for EU withdrawal on different sectors. They comprise no less than 88 per cent of the economy, covering everything from food prices, tourism and banking to aerospace, pharmaceuticals, oil and steel The clerks agreed that 19th century rules allow MPs to demand papers which are in the possession of ministers, by passing a motion. Ministers had insisted Brexit policymaking must be conducted in a safe space to allow for design and deliberation to be done in private. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The government has been urged to find the 178 refugee children in the Calais jungle who were granted the right to resettle in Britain and are still missing. Labour backbench MP Stella Creasy brought a debate to the House of Commons to call for action to be taken to make contact with these missing children, who were given UK resettlement rights via the Dubs Amendment. "A year ago I was trying to chase down with the Government what had happened to 178 children that the Prime Minister herself was directly notified about, and I have asked repeatedly about, Ms Creasy said. "Children who would have been ineligible to come here under the Dubs amendment. Recommended Campaigners lose court battle against Government over Dubs "I have to tell the minister, a year-and-a-half on, I am still waiting for a response for the confidence that our Government knows what happened to those children who they were notified about who were in Calais at that point in time, and yet nobody is able to make contact with. "Children who may be in this country, may be elsewhere, may be with traffickers. "I make a plea to the minister, will he at least go and see if we can find out whether any of those children are safe on our shores, because I think we have to accept a responsibility that they came to us asking for help." In the House of Lords, Lord Dubs, the Jewish peer who fled to the UK from Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, also urged the government to do more. "Why can't we get a move on," he demanded. "Why should they lie there in Calais or in Greece. Nothing seems to be happening and yet the Government has made that commitment." Lord Dubs said many local authorities were willing to take more child refugees and branded the situation in Calais "absolutely desperate". He told ministers: "Public opinion is still on the side of our taking more child refugees. We should take our fair share." Responding for the government, Home Office minister Brandon Lewis defended the UK's response to the conflict in Syria, saying: "We have pledged over 2.46 billion in aid and we will resettle 20,000 people in the UK by 2020 under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. "Over 8,500 individuals are already here, around half of whom are children. "We will also resettle 3,000 of the most vulnerable children and their family members from the Middle East and North Africa region by 2020 under the vulnerable children resettlement scheme." Mr Lewis reiterated the Dubs scheme was still open. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Davis has said he will look at proposals that would allow British nationals to opt-in and keep their European Union citizenship after Brexit. The Brexit Secretary said he would look seriously at associate citizenship and idea backed by the European Parliament to allow Brits to keep the right to live and work in the EU. The European Parliaments Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt has said the EU should be generous and open to British citizens who to want to retain the legal protections of EU citizenship and their identity as Europeans. He has also fast-tracked proposals for associate citizenship to the negotiating table by including them in the Parliaments negotiating mandate. Over 300,000 people have signed a European citizens initiative calling on the European Commission to back the plans, which they say could take the form of a separate EU passport. During a session of the House of Common on Thursday Mr Davis was asked by Tory backbencher Jeremy Lefroy whether he would consider giving British nationals the right to go and work within the EU without a visa. He added: The idea of associate citizenship is something that was raised by the president of the European Parliament and others. Would he look seriously at this so that British workers - particularly perhaps younger British workers - would have the opportunity to go and work in the European Union without a visa certainly for a limited, if not extended, period of time? European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt speaks during an event at the London School of Economics (PA) Mr Davis replied: Yes, we will look at these altogether - I have spoken to Guy Verhofstadt about this briefly, not at great length, already. I will be interested to hear from him what he hears from what they are proposing, and of course we will listen to anything of this nature. The aim of this exercise is to be good for Europe, good for Britain and that means good for the citizens of Europe and Britain and thats what well intend to do. Reacting to Mr Davis's comments, Mr Verfhostadt said: "Great to see that the idea of associate EU citizenship for UK citizens who want it, is also gaining traction in the U.K. government. All the more reason to speed up the withdrawal talks so we can write a new, positive story together." 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 A study released in July and conducted by academics at the LSE in conjunction will pollsters Opinium found that 60 per cent of the British public want to keep their EU citizenship. Most of these people said they would be willing to pay for the privilege. Downing Street has previously said the PM wants to find a way to allow British citizens to live and work unhindered in the EU but has shied away from fully backing any associate citizenship proposals. The Independent first reported the associate citizenship proposals last year, when they began life as an amendment to a report by liberal Luxembourg MEP Charles Goerens. The idea promises Brits who live and work across borders a way around the disruption caused by the Leave vote and young people looking to live in the EU more choice over where to move. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} An ex-head of the British Army has said Theresa Mays decision to make her loyal chief whip the new Defence Secretary is not the best choice "from a defence point of view". Richard Dannatt told The Independent that a minister at the MoD would have been a better option, but instead Ms May had made a heavily political decision to promote Gavin Williamson because he is a trusted lieutenant. It comes amid a parliamentary backlash following the boost for Mr Williamson, who also ran Ms May's leadership campaign, with one MP describing it as an HMS Pinafore appointment - a reference to the famous comic opera - and another senior backbencher calling the Prime Minister's decision "extraordinary". Speaking just hours after the move was announced, Lord Dannatt said he had found the appointment, quite surprising. He explained: It is obviously heavily political in so far as she has chosen a leading lieutenant to support her in Cabinet. Thats fine, but Im interested in the furtherance of our defence effort, with our budget under pressure and as Michael Fallon has started to speak publicly about the need to increase spending I hope [Mr Williamson] quickly comes to the same conclusion. Lord Dannatt, chief of the general staff between 2006 and 2009, said that he believes defence spending needs to increase by between 0.25 per cent and 0.5 per cent of GDP. He went on: I said this morning that promoting one of the existing defence ministers would be the best outcome from a defence point of view, but I fully respect the PMs desire to give a senior job in Cabinet to a trusted lieutenant. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA After Sir Michael resigned amid allegations in the growing Westminster sexual harassment scandal, names in the frame for the MoD top job had been Defence Minister Ben Wallace, Penny Mordaunt, an ex-defence minister now at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Brandon Lewis, the Immigration Minister. Mr Williamsons recent experience is in working closely with the Prime Minister, he has been critical to efforts to stabilise Ms Mays administration in the wake of the election helping broker a deal with the DUP and ensuring the Governments legislative programme has backing. His appointment also helps to keep the Brexit balance of the Cabinet, as Mr Williamson was a remainer like Sir Michael, whereas Ms Mordaunt was a Leaver. Mr Wallace is a close ally of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. New Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (Getty Images) On Thursday morning Conservative MPs also questioned the ex-chief whips suitability for the defence job, with one telling The Independent it was a real HMS Pinafore appointment. The comment is a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, which contains a song carrying the lyric: Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navee. With chief whips usually playing a central role in Cabinet reshuffles, Downing Street was forced to state that Mr Williamson had nothing to do with this particular one. But a senior MP was not convinced saying: Gavin is all about making sure Gavin is in a position from which Gavin can become Prime Minister. In this instance he has been judge, jury and executioner to Fallon and he is now also the beneficiary. Michael Fallon announces resignation as Defence Secretary "It's extraordinary that she sanctioned it. She could have made a major statement and appointed Penny as the first female Defence Secretary." A second backbencher told The Independent: It doesnt exactly symbolise a Prime Minister who is confident in her own position, does it. A Number 10 spokesman said: Gavin Williamson was an excellent and hardworking chief whip and the Prime Minister thinks he will make an excellent Defence Secretary. Ive done a lot of town halls around Missourinearly 50 of them just this yearmany in rural areas that remind me of where I grew up, in Houston, and Lebanon, Missouri. These are communities of working families, some of whom are living paycheck-to-paycheck, trying to earn enough money to pay their bills, afford their prescription drugs, or try to put their kids through college. These are folks who want to see a fairer system for the middle classand I agree with them. Heres the good news. Congress has an opportunity this year to put a little more money in the pockets of working families, while protecting their retirement accounts, and streamlining and simplifying something no American Ive ever met is fond of: the U.S. tax code. The White House and Republican leaders in Congress have released a frameworkthough as of today, no specificsfor their tax plan. Ive talked at my town halls about the deep concerns I have with that framework, because its one that will mainly give large tax breaks to corporations and the very wealthy, all while adding to our deficit and doing nothing to help Missouris middle class families. Some Republican leaders in Congress have even suggested that when they release the details of the plan, it will include cuts to peoples 401k retirement accountsand thats something I will not support, because theres no way Congress should be cutting taxes for the rich by cutting working peoples retirement accounts. But Im remaining stubbornly optimistican outlook my parents instilled in me when I was youngin the hopes I can work with the President and his team on changes to their tax plan to make it benefit the folks who need tax relief the most. Recently, I had dinner with President Trumps daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner to discuss the tax frameworkand it was a productive meeting, though without a detailed plan to discuss, we were only able to speak in broad strokes. I also recently had the chance to sit down with President Trump himself, to discuss his tax plan face-to-face. I emphasized to the President my willingness to work with him on tax reform that benefits the middle class, and was reassured when he said hes not interested in passing a tax cut for the rich. The President and I also agreed on the importance of having the details of the tax plan to have any hope of making bipartisan headway, and I am hopeful we will see those details soon. Without them, all we have is a framework that would leave Missouri families behind. And thats not something I can support. Supporting tax cuts for working families is nothing new for me. I teamed up with my Republican friend, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, on a bill to cut taxes on businesses and extend the payroll tax cut, and I was a strong supporter of the American Taxpayer Relief Act, which made permanent President George W. Bushs tax cuts for almost 98 percent of Missourians. I remain hopeful well see a bill that continues those efforts and puts Missouris working families first. If we do, Im all for it. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Tens of thousands of people living illegally in the UK have dropped off the Home Offices radar and been declared absconders, a damning new report has revealed. The study by David Bolt, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found that 140,000 people have been told they face removal from the UK. Of those 80,000 people are expected to report regularly to a Home Office centre or police station so authorities can keep track of their whereabouts. This means that 60,000 foreign nationals have at some stage absconded, meaning the Government does or did not know where they are. Some of them are likely to have left the country. In December 2016, almost one in 10 (nine per cent) of those required to report to authorities failed to turn up a total of 7,000 people. The report was passed to Home Secretary Amber Rudd in May but has only now been published. It gives the first clear indication of how many people who are living the UK illegally have been told they face action to remove them. Mr Bolt criticised Home Office procedures and highlighted poor internal communication and coordination as a factor behind officials losing track of thousands of people, including known offenders. There is little evidence that effective action was being taken to locate the vast bulk of absconders, he said. The finding is likely to raise questions about the Home Offices efforts to create a hostile environment for people living in the UK illegally. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA The policy was introduced under Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary. Speaking in 2012, Ms May said: The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration. Mr Bolt said hostile environment measures introduced in the Immigrations Acts of 2014 and 2016 had instead helped create a system where foreign criminals in the UK are able to disappear. Before the changes, foreign offenders in the UK were often given accommodation on their release from prison, enabling authorities to keep an eye on them. However, the two Acts made it harder for foreign national offenders (FNOs) in the UK to access services, including, housing. As a result, Mr Bolt concluded, the Home Office did not have a fixed address for some FNOs at the point they were released. The Chief Inspectors reports focused on the Home Offices system of monitoring those without rights to remain in the UK, and on the management of FNOs who have been told to leave the country. Downing Street says soaring population proves UK needs tougher immigration laws He concluded: In both cases, I found people and processes under strain. The numbers required to report routinely mean that it is extremely difficult for staff at reporting centres to ensure that reporting events are meaningful, in terms of encouraging voluntary departures or resolving barriers to removal. Meanwhile, the removal of foreign national offenders is regularly frustrated, often by last-minute legal challenges, and monitoring non-detained FNOs effectively is a challenge and one that raises obvious public protection concerns. The failures were in part a result of poor communication and coordination within the Home Office, he said. Recommended Mother of child in immigration shelter breaks down The inspection found that recording and treatment of non-compliance with reporting restrictions was inconsistent, and there was little evidence of effective action to locate absconders, he added. In response to the report, immigration minister Brandon Lewis said: People who have no right to live in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them. Our priority is to progress cases towards voluntary and if necessary enforced departures and we have removed more than 38,600 foreign offenders since 2010. This week, like every week, more than 100 foreign criminals will be removed from the UK. Elements of these reports make for difficult reading, but we are committed to a programme of transformation. That is why we are conducting a fundamental review of how we establish and maintain contact with those who have not complied with restrictions placed on their stay in the UK. Our future operations will be shaped by the outcome of this review. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Fellow Conservative MPs call Gavin Williamson the baby-faced assassin a nickname that can only be enhanced by his extraordinary rise to Defence Secretary. Strikingly, the 41-year-old has been appointed after apparently playing a key role in the sacking of his predecessor Michael Fallon, as the sex pest scandal grips Westminster. Some now believe the father-of-two, with a bedrock of support among Tory MPs, can go all the way to No 10 but others believe his star will fade in the new glare of publicity. Recommended Chief Whip Gavin Williamson named new Defence Secretary Williamson is a Northerner, the son of Labour voters and a state-educated graduate of the University of Bradford in stark contrast to the Oxbridge-dominated Conservative benches. A national chairman of Conservative Students before its extremism forced it to be wound up, in 1998 he worked in the Staffordshire pottery industry before becoming an MP. With those local roots put down, he won the safe South Staffordshire seat in 2010 and, within three years, had grabbed the powerful role of unpaid aide to David Cameron. However, his rapid ascent is explained by his astute decision to nail his colours firmly to Theresa Mays mast in the frantic days that followed the Brexit referendum result, in June 2016. After Camerons fall, Boris Johnson looked the coming man but Williamson phoned May and told her he wanted to help steer her campaign. He later wrote: Everyone told me I was wrong and that she couldnt possibly win, but I sensed the mood of the country. People were looking for someone who is a serious politician who can make tough decisions in challenging times. I just knew instinctively that she was the one. Within 24 hours, he was the future prime ministers campaign manager an appointment that left him absolutely flabbergasted, he later said and within weeks he was Chief Whip. Nearly a year later, May again found herself in Williamsons debt, as she scrambled to stay in Downing Street after her general election debacle. It was the Chief Whip who nailed down the 1bn cash for votes deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, which now props her up in power. Since then, he has hit the headlines after revealing he keeps a pet tarantula on his desk, which he has threatened to launch on rebellious Tory MPs. Sharing a picture of the terrifying-looking Cronus on his Instagram account, Williamson joked: Just finished packing everything I need for #conservativepartyconference. It is worth noting that, in Greek mythology, tough guy Cronus castrated and killed his own father before eating his own children because he feared they would overthrow him. Given that Williamsons job is to prevent the embarrassing loss of Commons votes, he is clearly failing in that. The Tories now regularly accept defeat on Labour motions including, this week, on the release of secret Brexit studies. However, that is a reflection of Mays own weakness and the extent to which she relies on him is illustrated by Wednesday nights dramatic events. Williamson is said to have warned the Prime Minister there could be further allegations about Fallons behaviour and advised that he should be fired. The very next day, Williamson has replaced the fallen Fallon as Defence Secretary like his boss, a Remainer who must now help drive through Brexit. One opinion is that he is a poor speaker and a bit goofy, but he has also been praised as hardworking, helpful, honest and friendly. Supremely well-connected at Westminster, as a founding member of the Curry Club of 2010 backbenchers, his fate is now tied to that of the beleaguered woman who propelled him to senior office. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Senior Conservative Ruth Davidson has said it is time to clean out the stables after Sir Michael Fallon became the first major scalp of Westminsters sexual harassment scandal. Speaking after an event in London on Wednesday, hours after Sir Michael announced his departure, Scottish Tory leader Ms Davidson said the dam has broken and the locker room culture of male-dominated professions has to stop. Ms Davidson, seen as a future Conservative leader, spoke out as further claims about Sir Michael were expected and as other Tory colleagues face a range of different allegations amid the growing political storm. In a speech at an event in Westminster, which Theresa May pulled out of at the last minute, Ms Davidson said it was time to clean out the stables. In an interview afterwards, she told the BBC: The dam has broken on this now and these male-dominated professions, overwhelmingly male-dominated professions, where the boys own locker room culture has prevailed and its all been a bit of a laugh, has got to stop. She added: It is clear that there has been not just in our trade, but in other trades that there has been this sense that people can use positions of power to demand things from others and that has got to stop. The way in which it has manifested itself is with sexual impropriety, misconduct and in some cases assault. But it isnt actually about sex. Its about power. Its always about power. We, as elected representatives, have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We are in positions of power so that we can make things better for those who comes after, not so that we can exert that power in a nefarious way. Earlier in the evening, Sir Michael said in a television interview that his behaviour in the past had fallen below the standards required of the armed forces he represents. He had been forced to apologise earlier in the week after it emerged he repeatedly put his hands on a female journalists knee. But asked if further revelations were expected about his behaviour he had simply said that behaviour that was acceptable ten years ago now no longer is. Ms Davidson said Sir Michael made the decision on his own behalf, as a point of honour and that it was right for him to do so. She said more broadly: When you put people in a position where they feel they cant speak out because theyre on a ladder and the person that is exerting power and influence over them is a few rungs further up that ladder then we absolutely fail as leaders. The way in which you succeed in leadership is to be a servant not a master. You serve to lead. At Sandhurst, thats what all officers are taught. You serve to lead. As law-makers and people who make decisions, we have to hold ourselves, our personal conduct to high standards, we have to run our offices, our personal offices, to a high standard, as well as public office and the offices of state, to a high standard. Sir Michaels resignation sent a shock wave through Westminster, which is still reeling from fresh allegations on Wednesday including that a male worker and female staffer had their crotches groped by different politicians and that another woman had her drink spiked with a date rape drug in one of Parliaments bars. Other Tory ministers hit back against a dirty dossier spreadsheet containing speculative allegations and being circulated on social media, with at least two consulting lawyers. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Laura Kuenssberg has spoken out against those who threaten and abuse her online, saying they are attempting to silence her. The BBC's political editor said there was no chance their campaign against her would work. The BBC assigned a bodyguard for Ms Kuenssberg when she covered the Labour Party conference in September after she received threats over alleged bias in her reporting about Jeremy Corbyn. Yvette Cooper: 'I'm sick of the vitriol aimed at Laura Kuenssberg' "I didn't aspire to have the finger pointed at me," she told guests at a Jewish Care business launch, according to The Jewish Chronicle. What they are trying to do is silence me. In an interview with her boss, James Harding, she said she would not allow the trolls to win. No matter how unpleasant and personal it might be, it is not as bad as what other journalists face around the world in much more difficult circumstances. 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 In the wide-ranging interview, Ms Kuenssberg, who is not Jewish, said she could see Theresa May staying on as Prime Minister until 2019. She suggested previous Conservative Governments would not have been as forgiving: In another time shed have been gone on June 9 [the day of the general election]. She said someone in Ms May's cabinet had made a joke about the Government being "weak and stable". Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Sir Michael Fallon has refused to say whether more allegations of sexual misconduct are likely to emerge in the future. Asked by the BBCs political editor Laura Kuenssberg whether he feared that would be the case he appeared to avoid the question. Instead he replied: Well the culture has changed over the years. What might have been acceptable 15 or ten years ago is clearly not acceptable now. Parliament now has to look at itself and the prime minister has made it very clear that the conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment." Sir Michael resigned as Defence Secretary, saying his behaviour in the past may have "fallen short" in the wake of harassment allegations swirling around Westminster. Accusations of sexual misconduct have surrounded Sir Michael in recent days after he admitted to feeling a female journalists knee in 2002. Julia Hartley-Brewer, now a host on talkRADIO, previously chose not to name the Defence Secretary in her account of the incident. 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 But in a letter to Number 10, Sir Michael said: A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false but I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent. I have reflected on my position and I am therefore resigning as Defence Secretary. In her reply to Sir Michael's resignation letter, Prime Minister Theresa May said: "I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others." Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Theresa May has said Israels illegal settlements presented an obstacle to peace, as she welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to Downing Street. The Prime Minister told her Israeli counterpart that Britain remained committed to a two-state solution with a viable Palestinian state. The Israeli premiers visit marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which signalled British support for the creation of a Jewish homeland. Ms May said she recognised the sensitivities around the anniversary. Speaking in No 10 she told Mr Netanyahu: Britain remains committed to a two-state solution. Im sure we will want to be talking about the peace process in the Middle East. I also want to talk about what we see as some of the barriers and some of the difficulties like the illegal settlements in relation to that peace process. Mr Netanyahu said Israel was committed to the peace process, but the Palestinians had to accept his countrys right to exist. He said: Israel is committed to peace, Im committed to peace. A hundred years after Balfour, the Palestinians should finally accept a Jewish national home and finally accept a Jewish state. And when they do, the road to peace will be infinitely closer. In my opinion, peace will be achievable. Ms May also stressed the UKs commitment to the Iran nuclear deal which Mr Netanyahu said was flawed. US President Donald Trump has condemned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal and Mr Netanyahu has called for it to be redrawn. But Ms May said: We remain committed to the JCPOA. Mr Netanyahu said: There are great things that are happening in the Middle East because many Arab countries now see Israel not as an enemy but as their indispensable ally in the battle against militant Islam. The threat we all see is a resurgent Iran that is bent not only on dominating the region but bent on developing nuclear weapons. The goal that I have in mind is not keeping or eliminating the deal, it is improving the deal and correcting its main flaws. I think those that want to keep the deal should cooperate on correcting the deal. Mr Netanyahu thanked the Prime Minister for her resolute stand against anti-Semitism before a speech later where she will speak out against new and pernicious forms of the anti-Jewish hatred. At a dinner to mark the Balfour Declarations centenary she will say that criticising the government of Israel is never and can never be an excuse for hatred against the Jewish people. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will not be at the dinner, with the party represented by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, who will also go to an event held by the Palestinian side. Labour has been dogged by allegations of anti-Semitism against some members despite Mr Corbyns insistence that such views will not be tolerated. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters A senior Labour source said: Jeremy Corbyn is unable to attend that particular dinner, but Emily Thornberry is going in his place. He had other engagements. That goes for many, many other events of that kind. Amnesty International said Ms May should use Mr Netanyahus visit to tackle him about Israels mass human rights violations. Kate Allen, director of Amnestys UK section, said: Its not just Balfour which is being marked this year, its also 50 years since Israels oppressive military occupation of the Palestinian territory began an occupation which shows no sign of becoming any less cruel for the millions of Palestinians suffering under it. PA Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Theresa May is struggling to contain the fallout from the deepening Westminster sexual harassment scandal amid a major backlash over her choice to succeed disgraced minister Sir Michael Fallon and a public rift between top figures in her party. Conservative MPs were scathing over the appointment of Ms Mays trusted lieutenant Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretary branding it disastrous, an unbelievable failure and her biggest and probably last mistake. A senior general also publicly criticised the appointment, telling The Independent it would have been better from a defence point of view if someone else had been given the job. Recommended This is only the beginning of the political changes which will happen Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and leader of the Scottish Tories Ruth Davidson then took diametrically opposed views over whether a cleanout of politics is needed with Mr Grayling regretting Sir Michaels departure, while Ms Davidson said it was right. It comes as pressure mounted on Ms May to deal with ministers Damian Green and Mark Garnier, both of whom are subject to Cabinet Office investigations over separate allegations. The Independent spoke to a string of Conservative MPs and ministers on Thursday who said they were livid, dispirited and angry about the appointment of Mr Williamson. He had been Chief Whip, a job which means in usual circumstances he would have played a key role in the decision to let Sir Michael go and decide his successor. 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 One senior Tory MP said: Gavin is all about making sure Gavin is in a position from which Gavin can become Prime Minister. In this instance he has been judge, jury and executioner to Fallon and he is now also the beneficiary. Another told The Independent that there is also anger felt towards Julian Smith, promoted from Deputy Chief Whip to Chief Whip. He said: Theyre like parasites feeding off her weakness and using it to advance themselves. They have controlled her party intelligence and they have massively and manipulatively misled her. Downing Street insisted Mr Williamson had played no role in the reshuffle, adding that his appointment was totally the Prime Ministers own decision. Much of the dismay focused on the fact that Mr Williamson has no experience in connection with the military, let alone running a major government department. One branded it a real HMS Pinafore appointment a reference to Gilbert and Sullivans opera, which contains a song with the lyric: Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, and you all may be rulers of the Queens Navee. Michael Fallon announces resignation as Defence Secretary Criticism was not confined to Westminster, with ex-head of the British Army Richard Dannatt telling The Independent Mr Williamson is not the best choice from a defence point of view. Lord Dannatt said a minister at the Ministry of Defence would have been a better option, but instead Ms May had made a heavily political decision. He explained: It is obviously heavily political in so far as she has chosen a leading lieutenant to support her in Cabinet. Thats fine, but Im interested in the furtherance of our defence effort, with our budget under pressure and as Michael Fallon has started to speak publicly about the need to increase spending I hope [Mr Williamson] quickly comes to the same conclusion. Gavin Williamson has been made the new Defence Secretary (Instagram) He went on: I said this morning that promoting one of the existing defence ministers would be the best outcome from a defence point of view, but I fully respect the PMs desire to give a senior job in cabinet to a trusted lieutenant. A No 10 spokesman said: Gavin Williamson was an excellent and hardworking Chief Whip and the Prime Minister thinks he will make an excellent Defence Secretary. The fallout came as the wider sexual harassment scandal exposed deep splits at the top of the party as to how to respond. Ruth Davidson: "The dam has broken on this now and these male-dominated professions" Scottish leader Ms Davidson said it is time to clean out the stables following Sir Michaels departure, in the wake of an incident in which he repeatedly touched a female journalists knee and with further allegations expected. She went on: The dam has broken on this now and these male-dominated professions, overwhelmingly male-dominated professions, where the Boy's Own locker-room culture has prevailed and its all been a bit of a laugh, has got to stop. On Mr Fallons resignation she said it was right for him to do so, but later in the day cabinet minister Mr Grayling disagreed. He said it is not about cleaning out stables before adding, Actually, I very much regret Michael Fallons decision. Asked if Sir Michael had done the right thing in resigning, Mr Grayling said: Its very much a matter for him and his judgement, and then went on, ... it is right and proper that we deal with the issues that have been in the headlines this week and make sure Westminster is a right and proper working environment. Damian Green is fighting allegations against him made by Times journalist Kate Maltby (AFP/Getty) (Getty) Meanwhile, Mr Green has instructed lawyers in response to allegations made in The Times by journalist Kate Maltby that he had made inappropriate advances to her, adding that he had fleetingly touched her knee during a meeting in a Waterloo pub in 2015 and a year later sent her a suggestive text message after she was pictured wearing a corset in the newspaper. Mr Green has since said that any allegation that he made sexual advances to Ms Maltby was untrue [and] deeply hurtful. Ms May has also asked the Cabinet Office to look into whether minister Mark Garnier broke the ministerial code of conduct in asking his secretary to buy him two sex toys, as well as referring to her in a sexual and inappropriate way. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A former British spy was paid more than 125,000 to outline Russian financial and personal links to Donald Trumps election campaign. Fusion GP, a Washington DC based research firm, hired former MI6 officer Christopher Steele to collect information about the US President and his advisers. A total of $168,000 (126,000) was paid to Orbis Business Intelligence, Mr Steeles company, to produce the Trump dossier, Fusion GPS said in a statement. It had previously not been disclosed how Mr Steeles company was paid, but Mr Trump had tweeted that it had cost $12 million (9 million), without citing any sources for the claim. Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?),...., Mr Trump tweeted. The collection of memos, which alleges the existence of a Russian programme "cultivating, supporting and assisting" Mr Trump to the presidency, was known to have circulated among intelligence officials and top politicians in Washington. Court filings submitted by Mr Steele stated that he shared the memo with a British "national security official" in their official capacity. Unconfirmed reports in the document, which Mr Steele previously told The Independent had been passed to British authorities, cover "at least" five years of communication, co-operation and conspiracy between Mr Trump's camp and Russian intelligence officials. Sources have also claimed that Moscow is capable of blackmailing the new president, and detail "perverted sexual acts" committed by Mr Trump as evidence. According to his court papers, Mr Steele decided to hand the dossier over "on a confidential basis in hard copy form" to the British intelligence services because it "had implications for the national security of the US and the UK", as well as being "of considerable importance in relation to alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election". The dossier came into the public eye when it was published by the Buzzfeed website, who stressed they were "unverified and potentially unverifiable". Mr Trump dismissed the wide-ranging allegations as "fake news" World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Mr Steele originally compiled the report for political opponents of Mr Trump in Washington, and was forced to go into hiding after being identified as its author. Sources familiar with Mr Steeles work said his for Fusion GPS started in May 2016 and stopped with the election. His reports are pivotal to investigations into allegations that Russia attempted to help the Trump campaign. Both Moscow and Mr Trump deny any collusion and have branded the investigation a witch hunt. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} In the hours before the coordinated attacks in Paris two years ago, a 10-man unit of Isis fighters carpooled to the city, where they shared hotel rooms before strapping on suicide belts. Weeks later, Isis released a video eulogising them as lions, and sharing clips of each fighter pledging allegiance to the militant group. Each fighter, that is, except Salah Abdeslam, the only member who did not die in the attacks, and who instead went on the run. He was dragged from his hideout in Belgium following a months-long manhunt. To date, analysts say, he has said little to interrogators who have pressed him for details on how the cell hatched its plan, the worst terrorist attack in French history. His absence from the numerous releases distributed by the group which often included photographs of his older brother, who detonated his belt in a Parisian cafe on the night of the attacks pointed to what would become a trend. Recommended Trump calls for New York terror suspect to get death penalty It may help explain why Isis had not, as of Thursday afternoon, asserted responsibility for the deadly rampage the day before in Manhattan by a truck driver who was wounded and arrested by the police, who say he is a disciple of the group. With few exceptions, Isis has not claimed attacks when a surviving recruit falls into the hands of the authorities. Its as if he didnt even exist, said Jean-Charles Brisard, director of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism in Paris, regarding the omission of the 10th attacker from the groups propaganda. Isis has followed this practice regardless of whether the attacker was directly dispatched or inspired remotely through online tutorials. Among the attacks that investigators have definitively tied to the group and which it never claimed, despite the casualties they caused were those at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, which left four dead, and on the Thalys train in 2015, which wounded three. Last year, when Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who planted bombs in New Jersey and in Manhattans Chelsea neighbourhood, was finally taken into custody, police also found his bloodstained journal, containing references to Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, Isis spokesman and the leading figure calling for attacks on the West. But Isis did not take responsibility for Rahimis acts. More recently, Isis never claimed a truck-ramming in Stockholm in April, even though the perpetrator was found to have been a recruiter for the group. Nor did the group take responsibility for a vehicular attack in Edmonton, Canada, just over a month ago, carried out by a man who took the time to drape the Isis flag on the dashboard of his Chevrolet Malibu before using it to ram through a traffic barricade. The constant in each of these cases is that the perpetrator was apprehended. More than 24 hours after the arrest of the driver in the Manhattan assault, which left eight people dead, the groups media arm remained mum, even though he had left a note stating that the Isis will endure forever, a reference to the groups slogan. The lack of a claim is conspicuous in light of how much territory the group has lost in Syria and Iraq in recent months, erasing 90 percent of the caliphate it once held. Claiming responsibility for the truck rampage in New York, the worst terrorist attack in the city since 11 September 2001, might be expected to project an image of strength for the group. A New York Times tally of the more than four dozen attacks on Western targets claimed by the group since 2014 indicates that the Isis typically issues its claim of responsibility within 24 hours, though there have been some exceptions, including two attacks this past summer that the group claimed a month later. It is possible that the group is simply taking its time. Among the arguments for why Isis would not claim responsibility, even when everything points to it, is a pragmatic consideration. Its essentially about loyalty. No one would be motivated to do an Isis attack if they know that when they end up getting caught, someone will out them, said Raphael Gluck, an independent researcher who focuses on the groups digital footprint and has embedded himself in many of the groups online chat rooms. It would work counter to their whole recruitment line and would serve to push off the next attack. Amarnath Amarasingam, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who has interviewed Isis followers online as part of his work, said that members of the group explained to him that not asserting responsibility for attacks was intended to protect fighters. I think its very much a matter of internal communication, he said, a way of telling their supporters that if they are captured, they wont be sold out by the group. Others said they see a theological justification: The Isis encourages recruits to die in a standoff with police in a martyrdom operation. When the fighter survives, the mission is incomplete, Brisard said. This theory has been given weight by several recent attacks, including the London Bridge and the Barcelona attacks this summer, in which assailants wore what turned out to be fake suicide belts. Online tutorials teach followers how to make these look-alike vests, strapped on for the purpose of inviting law enforcements gunfire. New York Truck attack Show all 6 1 /6 New York Truck attack New York Truck attack Investigators inspect the truck following the attack Investigators inspect a truck following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday when a suspect plowed a vehicle into a bike and pedestrian path in Lower Manhattan, and struck another vehicle on Halloween, police said. A suspect exited the vehicle holding up fake guns, before being shot by police and taken into custody, officers said. The motive was not immediately apparent. Getty New York Truck attack A paramedic looks at a body along the bike path A paramedic looks at a body covered under a white sheet along the bike path 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people Tuesday, police and witnesses said. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack The truck driver collided with a school bus Authorities respond near a damaged school bus Tuesday, 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Two adults and two children were on the bus at the time. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack A young girl reacts to the scene A young girl reacts as police officers secure an area following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday after a vehicle plowed into a pedestrian and bike path in Lower Manhattan, police said. 'The vehicle struck multiple people on the path,' police tweeted. 'The vehicle continued south striking another vehicle. The suspect exited the vehicle displaying imitation firearms & was shot by NYPD.' DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Police officers arrive at the scene Police officers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Multiple people were hurt in downtown Manhattan, US media reported after police confirmed that they were responding to reports of a shooting. Police said they had mobilized to the scene in Lower Manhattan and that one person was in custody, giving no further details. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Emergency personnel respond to truck attack in lower Manhattan Emergency personal respond after reports of multiple people hit by a truck after it plowed through a bike path in lower Manhattan on 31 October 2017 in New York City. According to reports up to six people may have been killed. Kena Betancur/Getty Images That motivation may also explain why the Manhattan assailant, Sayfullo Saipov, emerged from his rented Home Depot truck armed with both a pellet gun and a paintball gun, neither powerful enough to cause significant harm, but making him look dangerous to the police. According to their logic, their ideology, they are supposed to die during the action, Brisard said. The New York Times Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Pope Francis has reportedly requested that married men in Brazil be allowed to become priests - a controversial move likely to prompt a backlash from conservatives in the Catholic Church The issue will now be discussed and a vote by bishops in the South American country could now vote on the issue. The President of the Episcopal Commission for the Amazon, Cardinal Cludio Hummes, reportedly asked the pontiff to consider the move because there is a shortage of ordained ministers in the Amazon's remote communities. Recommended Catholic Church claimed victims consented to sexual abuse Catholicism has seen its influence wane in the region as evangelical churches have set up. The viri probati proposal which allows men of proven faith to carry out some duties has been around for decades, but it has drawn fresh attention under Pope Francis, the first ever Latin American pontiff. He raised the prospect of lifting the celibacy rule in March, when he told German weekly Die Zeit: "We must consider if viri probati is a possibility. Then we must determine what tasks they can perform, for example, in remote communities." The Pope has also said that the principle of celibacy for priests is a discipline, rather than a dogma. The church already allows some exceptions to priestly celibacy. Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Live and let live.' GETTY IMAGES Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Proceed calmly" in life' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Be giving of yourself to others' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Even though many parents work long hours, they must set aside time to play with their children' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Sunday is for family' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Respect and take care of nature' OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Stop being negative' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: Respect others' beliefs' AFP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness Pope Francis: 'Peace sometimes gives the impression of being quiet, but it is never quiet, peace is always proactive' FP/Getty Images Pope Francis gives life advice: in pictures Pope Francis' guide to happiness AFP/Getty Images Those in the eastern rite Catholic Church are allowed to be married, as are married Anglican priests who convert to Catholicism. It is thought that if successful the pilot project could be extended to other parts of the world, including Africa. However, the move is likely to anger conservatives in the church, who are already furious about the pontiff's decision to allow divorced people who re-marry to receive communion if their priests or local bishop approve. ST. LOUIS - In an effort to continue to develop the workforce in Missouri, nonprofit, online university WGU Missouri is proud to offer BJC HealthCares more than 30,000 employees and their families an affordable way to further their education. BJC, one of the largest nonprofit health care organizations in the United States, currently operates 15 hospitals and multiple community health locations in Missouri and southern Illinois. Through an existing partnership with WGU Missouri, BJC employees have enjoyed access to tuition discounts and scholarships to the school for years, but WGU Missouri is now extending those benefits to family members of BJC employees. Through Dec. 31, 2017, family members of BJC employees will receive a 5 percent discount (for up to two years) to pursue a bachelors or masters degree at WGU Missouri and will also be eligible to apply for exclusive BJC scholarships, valued at up to $2,000 each. Continuing education is important to BJC employees like Joel Longanecker, who completed his Master of Science in Management and Leadership with WGU Missouri in 2017. From learning to work autonomously to having a better idea of how to lead in the workplace, the things I learned at WGU Missouri had a significant impact in preparing me for my current position at BJC, said Longanecker. The competency-based format made it easier to me to get through classes quickly and confidently because I was able to apply what I was doing at work to the courses I was taking. More than 2,520 students from around the Show Me State are currently enrolled in a WGU Missouri program, including the popular RN to BSN program. Designed to meet the needs of working adults, WGU Missouris competency-based learning model allows students to study and learn on their own schedules and at their own pace. Rather than spending time in classes with set times, students can move quickly through material they already know so they can focus on what they still need to learn. As a result, many students are able to accelerate their time to degree completion the average time to bachelors degree at WGU Missouri is less than three years. This special, limited-time offer allows families of BJC employees to receive a five percent discount on tuition for up to four six-month terms. The discount will apply to any of WGU Missouris degree programs in information technology, health care, education and business. Tuition is charged at a flat rate of $3,000 per six-month term for most programs, and terms can begin on the first day of any month. Scholarship and federal financial aid are also available to qualified students. For more information on WGU Missouri, and details on the BJC partnership benefits, visit missouri.wgu.edu/BJC. WGU Missouri is a competency-based, online university created to expand access to higher education for Missouri residents. The university offers more than 50 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the fields of business, K-12 teacher education, information technology, and health professions, including nursing. WGU Missouri faculty members provide one-on-one guidance, support, and instruction. Established through a partnership with nationally recognized Western Governors University, WGU Missouri is open to all qualified Missouri residents. The university is nonprofit and self-sustaining on flat-rate tuition of about $6,000 per year for most programs. Degrees are granted under the accreditation of Western Governors University, which is accredited through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). Teachers College programs are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), and nursing programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE*). Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A far right activist has been banned from ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft after launching into a vitriolic anti-Muslim tirade in the wake of the New York terrorist attack. Laura Loomer, an internet personality, prompted anger for her response to the attack that killed eight people after a pickup truck crashed into a bike path in Manhattan on Tuesday. The provocateur, who works for far right site The Rebel Media which has been nicknamed Canadian Breitbart, claimed passersby in hijabs enjoyed the attack and called for the creation of a non-Islamic ride-hailing app. Uber confirmed Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant suspected of mowing a truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path on Halloween, had been a driver for them. Uber said Mr Saipov, who has said he was inspired by Islamic State and shot and injured by police at the scene, had passed the company's background checks and had made more than 1,400 journeys during his work with the company. Uber also said it was in contact with the FBI regarding him. New York Truck attack Show all 6 1 /6 New York Truck attack New York Truck attack Investigators inspect the truck following the attack Investigators inspect a truck following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday when a suspect plowed a vehicle into a bike and pedestrian path in Lower Manhattan, and struck another vehicle on Halloween, police said. A suspect exited the vehicle holding up fake guns, before being shot by police and taken into custody, officers said. The motive was not immediately apparent. Getty New York Truck attack A paramedic looks at a body along the bike path A paramedic looks at a body covered under a white sheet along the bike path 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people Tuesday, police and witnesses said. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack The truck driver collided with a school bus Authorities respond near a damaged school bus Tuesday, 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Two adults and two children were on the bus at the time. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack A young girl reacts to the scene A young girl reacts as police officers secure an area following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday after a vehicle plowed into a pedestrian and bike path in Lower Manhattan, police said. 'The vehicle struck multiple people on the path,' police tweeted. 'The vehicle continued south striking another vehicle. The suspect exited the vehicle displaying imitation firearms & was shot by NYPD.' DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Police officers arrive at the scene Police officers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Multiple people were hurt in downtown Manhattan, US media reported after police confirmed that they were responding to reports of a shooting. Police said they had mobilized to the scene in Lower Manhattan and that one person was in custody, giving no further details. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Emergency personnel respond to truck attack in lower Manhattan Emergency personal respond after reports of multiple people hit by a truck after it plowed through a bike path in lower Manhattan on 31 October 2017 in New York City. According to reports up to six people may have been killed. Kena Betancur/Getty Images Someone needs to create a non-Islamic form of Uber or Lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver, Ms Loomer wrote on Twitter. "I'm late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn't find a non-Muslim cab or Uber Lyft driver for over 30 min!" she said. She added: The two women were smiling or smirking in hijabs as they walked past scene of terrorist attack. That is not appropriate. I stand by what I said. Uber spokesperson, Matt King, told The Independent Ms Loomer had been banned for violating their community guidelines but they were not releasing a statement at this time. We are horrified by this senseless act of violence. Our hearts are with the victims and their families. We have reached out to law enforcement to provide our full assistance, the company said in a previous statement. Scott Coriell, a spokesperson for Lyft, said Ms Loomers account had been deactivated. Ms Loomer, who has over 100,000 Twitter followers, has hit out at the companies on Twitter for banning her. Uber will literally hire an Islamic terrorist, but they will ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns, she said. Last June, Ms Loomer disrupted a performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar because the character of the assassinated Roman dictator resembled President Donald Trump and had a Slovenian-accented wife. Prior to being escorted off the stage by security, she shouted: Stop the normalisation of political violence against the right! This is unacceptable!. This is not the first time Uber has banned someone on the far right. In the wake of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in the summer - which saw anti-fascist activists clash with neo-Nazis, KKK members and alt-right supporters - Uber banned Tim Gionet. The far-right activist, better known as Baked Alaska, was barred after a driver in Washington, DC booted him from her car for allegedly making racially-charged remarks. Mr Saipov told investigators he decided to attack on Halloween because he knew that there would be a lot of people on the streets and that his plan was to kill people on the West Side Highway and then "proceed to the Brooklyn Bridge to strike pedestrians," according to a complaint filed against him. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump is reportedly turning on White House adviser Jared Kushner as the prospect of his impeachment becomes a real possibility, it has been claimed. The US President is reported to be blaming his son-in-law for certain decisions that led to Robert Mueller being appointed to investigate claims of Russian collusion in the 2016 election campaign. Specifically, he questioned his role in the firings of Michael Flynn and James Comey, sources told Vanity Fair. Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg told the publication Mr Kushner was the "worst political adviser in the White House in modern history", claiming: "Im only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress." It comes just days after Mr Mueller issued indictments for two of Mr Trump's former campaign staffers, reportedly causing mass panic among Mr Trump's inner circle. "The walls are closing in," one senior Republican close to the White House told the New York Post. "Everyone is freaking out." The indictments included charges against Mr Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and former adviser George Papadopoulos. Mr Nunberg said: "Heres what Manaforts indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization. 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 "Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You cant go any lower. Hes f*****." Mr Trump continued to dismiss the indictments as fake news after their release, and attempted to shift the focus to Hillary Clintons dealings with Russia. However, a majority of voters said in a recent opinion poll they did not believe the Russia story was fake, and supported Mr Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has doubled down on his call for the suspected New York terror attacker to be executed. Following up on his comments about transferring Sayfullo Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mr Trump tweeted: "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system." "There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Legal experts warned the President's call for Saipov to be executed could prejudice the trial. Recommended Trump tweet may destroy legal case against New York terror suspect Such comments by the President could be used by defence lawyers to argue their clients cannot get a fair trial. Saipov, the 29-year-old Uzek immigrant accused of ploughing a truck down a New York City bike path, killing eight people, was hospitalised after he was shot by a police officer and arrested. He told investigators he had been inspired by watching Isis videos and began plotting Tuesday's attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed against him. 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 He confessed to authorities he made a trial run with a rental truck on 22 October to practice turning the vehicle and "stated that he felt good about what he had done" after the attack, the complaint said. Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically Isis, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump "is f***ed" after his former campaign chief was charged as part of an investigation into Russian interference in last year's election, an ex-aide has said. Sam Nunberg, an adviser to the Republican's presidential campaign, said Paul Manafort's indictment showed special prosecutor Robert Mueller would "go over every financial dealing" of Trump's businesses and allies. He suggested the President may not be able to survive the probe alongside dwindling approval ratings. Mr Manafort and business associate Rick Gates are under house arrest after pleading not guilty to 12 charges including money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the US. As part of the same investigation, Mr Trump's former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has admitted making false statements to the FBI about his contact with the Russian government. Heres what Manaforts indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of [senior Trump adviser and son-in-law] Jared Kushner and the Trump Organisation," Mr Nunberg told Vanity Fair. Referencing the President's worst approval rating since his election, he added: "Trump is at 33 per cent in Gallup. You cant go any lower. Hes f***ed. The results of Gallup's latest tracking poll were gathered before it had emerged Mr Mueller's team had filed indictments against three of his former campaign staff. The survey found 63 per cent of Americans were unhappy with the President's performance. Mr Nunberg, a Republican political analyst, described Mr Kushner as "the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history". Mr Trump is reported to blame Mr Kushner for his role in decisions, such as the firing of FBI director James Comey, that led to the Russia probe. Mr Nunberg worked as an adviser to Mr Trump's presidential campaign until August 2015, when he was fired after allegedly posting racist comments on Facebook. He was later accused of breaching a confidentiality agreement by leaking a story about tensions within the campaign. He claimed the allegation was an attempt to "silence" him after he endorsed Ted Cruz. Mr Trump sued for $10m (7.5m) but the dispute was settled out of court. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Hillary Clinton battling Jesus, a critique of police brutality and an homage to fallen officers. A call to embrace Muslim-Americans and a warning about Sharia law. As technology executives testified before Congress about Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election by exploiting social media, lawmakers released some of the online content that flowed from Russian-linked accounts. Some 130 million Americans saw at least one of the posts disseminated by Russian actors, according to Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, with the contents spread amplified by paid advertisements. While Facebook had said the ads sought to spread discord by widening social divides, it had not made the disputed content public. With Google, Twitter and Facebook in Washington DC, politicians finally released a sampling. The pieces run the gamut, offering a snapshot of the dynamics at play in the 2016 election as they embrace alternate ends of contested issues. Some vilify Ms Clinton, the Democratic candidate, some laud her rival Bernie Sanders and at least one assails Republican Donald Trump. They operated under convincing-sounding names like United Muslims of America, Black Matters and Heart of Texas. My concern is that a dictator like Vladimir Putin uses flaws in our social media platforms to inject the worst kind of identity politics into the election," said Indiana's Democratic Senator Andre Carson. He added that they cynically mimicked Americans. Heres a sampling. Several of the posts target Ms Clinton, like this post linked to the sponsored Army of Jesus page. An intelligence assessment concluded that Russia aspired to help President-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton. A Facebook post created by a Russian-linked account criticizes Hillary Clinton (Sen Mark Warner's office) (Sen Mark Warner's office) Some of the posts buoyed Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Ms Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination A Russian-linked Facebook page promoting Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders (House Intelligence Committee) And at least one sought to foment disapproval of Mr Trump, like this advertisement launched shortly after he won the election. A Russian-linked Facebook page promoting an anti-Donald Trump rally (House Intelligence Committee) Some advertisements sought to mimic the Black Lives Matter movement, which protests police violence against African-American men. This one used images of black men who were killed in police encounters and became symbols of the movement. A Russia-linked advertisement echoes the Black Lives Matter movement (House Intelligence Committee) Demonstrating how Russian actors sought to whip up a furor around divisive issues, this ad took the side of Black Lives Matters skeptics who see the movement as anti-police - in this case, claiming an activist actually attacked officers. The 'Being Patriotic' page that posted this also created a fake Miners for Trump' event, senators said. A Russian-linked advertisement claims Black Lives Matter is responsible for anti-police violence (House Intelligence Committee) Gun control, another divisive issue, surfaced in ads from decoy accounts like 'Defend the Second Amendment'. The following was posted to Instagram, a photo-sharing site owned by Facebook. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A former Trump campaign advisers admission that he had interactions with alleged government-connected Russians is leaving Attorney General Jeff Sessions facing renewed questions about how much he knew about Russian election interference. Special counsel Robert Muellers investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was triggered in part by Mr Sessions prior contact with the Russian government. The top law enforcement official recused himself from an examination of Russias role in the 2016 presidential election after it was revealed he had not disclosed meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during the presidential campaign - a move that infuriated Donald Trump and set in motion a chain of events that would eventually lead the appointment of Mr Mueller. Now Democrats are again asking questions about Mr Sessions testimony in January that he wasn't aware of any campaign contacts with Russia, after a court document revealed how campaign officials were presented with the option of talking to Russia. According to a document laying out the case against Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, Mr Papadopoulos repeatedly floated the idea of a possible meeting between the campaign and officials in Moscow. He pitched helping to arrange a meeting between Mr Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin at a March 31 gathering with Trump and other foreign policy advisors, the document says. A post from Mr Trumps Instagram account that day shows Mr Papadopoulos seated around a table with both Mr Trump and Mr Sessions. CNN reports that Mr Sessions rebuffed the prospective meeting. The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images But the fact that Mr Sessions was privy to the offer has fueled questions from legislators who say the Attorney General did not disclose the meeting when he spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee. New Mexico Democrat told CNN that it called into question whether whether [Mr Sessions] is being honest and forthright with the committee and Texas Republican John Cornyn called the meeting a legitimate area of inquiry, CNN reported. Jeff Sessions concealed his meetings with the Russians and he had an obligation to be more forthcoming about meetings that involved Papadopoulos, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, told CNN. Donald Trump 'disappointed' in attorney general Jeff Sessions In public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, Mr Sessions said he had not held other undisclosed conversations with Russian nationals or businessmen. During a Senate Judiciary Hearing last month, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham asked Mr Sessions if he ever overheard a conversation between you and anybody on the campaign who talked about meeting with the Russians. Mr Sessions sidestepped the query. I have not seen anything that would indicate a collusion with Russians to impact the campaign, Mr Sessions replied. The President has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia, a position he reiterated after Mr Papadopoulos plea was revealed and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was arrested on money laundering charges. He has said few people knew Mr Papadopoulos, whom he derided as a low level volunteer and a liar. Similarly, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Papadopoulos had an extremely limited role in the campaign. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Authorities are investigating the communications of the New York truck suspect, hoping to learn about the circumstances that led to the attack and whether the alleged killer had assistance of any kind. Police and FBI investigators have been trying to piecing together a complete picture of the path that led suspect Sayfullo Saipov to rent a truck and allegedly drive it through a crowded Manhattan bike path on Tuesday. They are looking for crucial clues to both explain the crime, and to ensure that others arent connected to the killer and capable of another attack. At the same time, a political battle has swelled over visa programs in the United States such as the one Mr Saipov used to enter the country and what to do with Mr Saipov should he be convicted, with President Donald Trump calling for the suspect to face the death penalty. Federal prosecutors have filed charges against 29-year-old Mr Saipov including one count of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organisation and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicle. In the charging document it said that Mr Saipov bagan to plan the attack a year ago and allegedly choose Halloween as he intended to kill as many people as possible and he had told investigators he felt good about the attack. The federal court documents also alleged that the suspect had planned to target Brooklyn Bridge as well, and wanted to display Isis flags on the truck, but decided they would draw attention. On Thursday, investigators indicated that they were talking with Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who they believe may have pertinent information about the attack, sources told CNN. The FBI had said on Wednesday that that were seeking Mr Kadirov, before announcing less than 90 mins later that they had found him they did not provide any further details. Mr Kadirov released a statement to Associated Press through a person in touch with his family, calling the attack sad and unbelievable. He said no human being who has a heart can do this. A law enforcement official said that Mr Kadirov was a friend of Mr Saipov and may not have any role in the case. Those charges against Mr Saipov came after he allegedly turned a rented Home Depot truck on to a bike path in lower Manhattan on Tuesday before speeding up, leaving a gruesome trail of bodies and mangled bodies in its path. His attack ended after he smashed his truck into a school bus, and exited with a pellet gun and paintball gun. Eight people were killed as a result of that attack, and at least 12 others were injured, some of them critically. Mr Saipov was shot by a police officer, and then taken to the hospital, where investigators say he has been cooperating. New York Truck attack Show all 6 1 /6 New York Truck attack New York Truck attack Investigators inspect the truck following the attack Investigators inspect a truck following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday when a suspect plowed a vehicle into a bike and pedestrian path in Lower Manhattan, and struck another vehicle on Halloween, police said. A suspect exited the vehicle holding up fake guns, before being shot by police and taken into custody, officers said. The motive was not immediately apparent. Getty New York Truck attack A paramedic looks at a body along the bike path A paramedic looks at a body covered under a white sheet along the bike path 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people Tuesday, police and witnesses said. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack The truck driver collided with a school bus Authorities respond near a damaged school bus Tuesday, 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Two adults and two children were on the bus at the time. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack A young girl reacts to the scene A young girl reacts as police officers secure an area following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday after a vehicle plowed into a pedestrian and bike path in Lower Manhattan, police said. 'The vehicle struck multiple people on the path,' police tweeted. 'The vehicle continued south striking another vehicle. The suspect exited the vehicle displaying imitation firearms & was shot by NYPD.' DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Police officers arrive at the scene Police officers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Multiple people were hurt in downtown Manhattan, US media reported after police confirmed that they were responding to reports of a shooting. Police said they had mobilized to the scene in Lower Manhattan and that one person was in custody, giving no further details. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Emergency personnel respond to truck attack in lower Manhattan Emergency personal respond after reports of multiple people hit by a truck after it plowed through a bike path in lower Manhattan on 31 October 2017 in New York City. According to reports up to six people may have been killed. Kena Betancur/Getty Images Investigators have since found that Mr Saipov came to the US legally in 2010 on diversity immigrant visa, which are awarded randomly to select countries to promote immigration from areas that dont usually send immigrants to the US. Since moving to America, Mr Saipov has worked as a truck driver and, more recently, as an Uber driver in Paterson, New Jersey, where he lives in a red brick apartment building near a mosque. Before moving to New Jersey, which appears to be a fairly recent decision, Mr Saipov had lived in Florida. Investigators say that Mr Saipov, who allegedly yelled allahu akhbar after exiting the truck, had seemingly radicalised himself online while living in the US. Mr Saipov had numerous Isis propaganda videos on his mobile phone, including footage of terrorists beheading people. Officials said that Mr Saipov appears to have followed directions for the attack that Isis published last year almost exactly. According to court filings, Mr Saipov later told investigators that he decided two months ago to use a truck, and had rented the truck previously in order to get used to the vehicles handling. Mr Trump waded back into the issue on Thursday reiterating the view that Mr Saipov should face the death penalty for the attacks, raising the rare prospect of a death penalty trial in New York, which bans that punishment at state level. Mr Trumps national security adviser, General HR McMaster, responded to those statements saying that the administration is looking to provide Mr Trump with prosecutorial options. Mr Trump and his administration have backed away from the prospect of jailing Mr Saipov in the Guantanamo Bay prison, which the President said previously that he would consider. Sending Mr Saipov there would be an unprecedented step, as nobody arrested in the US has been sent to the military prison. Also on Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told members of law enforcement in New York, in a visit scheduled before the attack that the US justice system can handle suspects like Mr Saipov. He noted over 500 defendants have been convicted of terrorism-related crimes since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Mr Saipov is being held without bail at a Manhattan federal lockup next to the courthouse. His attorney, David Patton, has said he hopes everyone lets the judicial process play out. On Wednesday, Mr Trump called the US justice system a slow-moving joke and laughingstock and said he would be open to seeing Saipov transferred to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where enemy combatants are tried by military tribunals. But the president reversed course a day later, tweeting that statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system. The President has also questioned the wisdom of having a visa program that let Mr Saipov enter the country nearly seven years ago. The people put in that lottery are not the countrys finest, Mr Trump said on Thursday, adding that the visa program creates significant vulnerabilities for American national security. Mr Trump also called on Congress to immediately terminate the program . Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump's tweet calling for the New York terror attack suspect to be executed could prejudice the trial, legal experts have warned. The US President called for the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant accused of ploughing a truck down a New York City bike path, killing eight people, describing him as "a terrorist." Saipov, who was hospitalised after he was shot by a police officer and arrested, told investigators he had been inspired by watching Isis videos and began plotting Tuesday's attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed against him. He confessed to authorities he made a trial run with a rental truck on 22 October to practice turning the vehicle and "stated that he felt good about what he had done" after the attack, the complaint said. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang Isis flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Mr Trump tweeted. Presidents are typically advised to avoid commenting on active legal proceedings, as such comments can be used by defence lawyers to argue their clients cannot get a fair trial, The New York Times reports. "Mr President, we all know he should get the death penalty. But when *you* say it, it makes it harder for DOJ to make that happen," Andrew C McCarthy, a former assistant US attorney said. Trump calls New York attack suspect an 'animal' and signals scrapping lottery visa scheme Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically Isis, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people. Manhattan acting US Attorney Joon Kim said the first count carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, while the second would make Saipov eligible for capital punishment if convicted, if the government chose to seek the death penalty. Additional or different charges could be brought later in an indictment, Mr Kim said. The complaint said Saipov was particularly motivated by seeing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis, exhorted Muslims in the United States and elsewhere to support the group's cause. Investigators found thousands of Isis-related propaganda images and videos on a phone belonging to Saipov, including video clips showing Isis prisoners being beheaded, run over by a tank and shot in the face, the complaint said. New York Truck attack Show all 6 1 /6 New York Truck attack New York Truck attack Investigators inspect the truck following the attack Investigators inspect a truck following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday when a suspect plowed a vehicle into a bike and pedestrian path in Lower Manhattan, and struck another vehicle on Halloween, police said. A suspect exited the vehicle holding up fake guns, before being shot by police and taken into custody, officers said. The motive was not immediately apparent. Getty New York Truck attack A paramedic looks at a body along the bike path A paramedic looks at a body covered under a white sheet along the bike path 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people Tuesday, police and witnesses said. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack The truck driver collided with a school bus Authorities respond near a damaged school bus Tuesday, 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Two adults and two children were on the bus at the time. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack A young girl reacts to the scene A young girl reacts as police officers secure an area following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday after a vehicle plowed into a pedestrian and bike path in Lower Manhattan, police said. 'The vehicle struck multiple people on the path,' police tweeted. 'The vehicle continued south striking another vehicle. The suspect exited the vehicle displaying imitation firearms & was shot by NYPD.' DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Police officers arrive at the scene Police officers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Multiple people were hurt in downtown Manhattan, US media reported after police confirmed that they were responding to reports of a shooting. Police said they had mobilized to the scene in Lower Manhattan and that one person was in custody, giving no further details. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Emergency personnel respond to truck attack in lower Manhattan Emergency personal respond after reports of multiple people hit by a truck after it plowed through a bike path in lower Manhattan on 31 October 2017 in New York City. According to reports up to six people may have been killed. Kena Betancur/Getty Images Earlier in the day, Mr Trump said he would be open to transferring Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where other suspects including alleged 11 September plotters are held. Mr Kim, the federal prosecutor, said there was nothing about charging Saipov in civilian court that would necessarily prevent him from later being declared an enemy combatant. Additional reporting by Reuters Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Billionaire Trump supporter Robert Mercer has stepped down from his massive hedge fund and sold his stake in Breitbart News, slamming right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in the process. In a letter to employees, Mr Mercer announced that he was stepping down as co-chief executive of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that manages more than $50bn in assets. He also announced that he would sell his $10m stake in Breitbart News the controversial right-wing news site where Mr Yiannopoulos got his start. Mr Mercer did not give a reason for resigning, and said he was selling his stake in Breitbart for personal reasons. But he also expanded on his feelings toward Mr Yiannopoulos and toward Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon. Recommended Milo Yiannopoulos sang as white nationalists gave Nazi salute I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him, he wrote. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon's. The Mercer family collaborated on at least five ventures with Mr Bannon between 2011 and 2016, according to the Washington Post. These ventures included Cambridge Analytica, a data science company that did work for the Trump campaign, and Clinton Cash, a documentary about Hillary Clintons foreign entanglements. 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 Mercer saved his most intense criticism for Mr Yiannopoulos, who previously worked as Breitbarts tech editor. A recent BuzzFeed expose brought renewed criticism to Mr Yiannopoulos, detailing the ways in which he used Breitbart as a rallying point for the so-called alt-right". Mr Mercer previously helped fund Mr Yiannopouloss college speaking tour via his political PAC. In his letter, Mr Mercer said he had supported the professional provocateur in hopes of promoting the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today. But now, he wrote, my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate. He added: I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him." Mr Mercer will sell his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters, including Rebekah Mercer, a major Republican donor who served on the executive committee of the Trump transition team. He will leave his post at Renaissance Technologies at the beginning of next year, but will remain active in the funds research arm. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} An expected choice for science adviser of the US Environmental Protection Agency believes the air is too clean another indication that Donald Trumps head of the EPA appears to be stacking the group in charge of trying to protect the environment with climate sceptics. Robert Phalen, who currently directs the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory at the University of California Irvine, has research that would support the deregulation of policies aimed at preventing air pollution. The relative risks associated with modern [particulate matter] are very small and confounded by many factors, Mr Phalen wrote in a 2004 study. Neither toxicology studies nor human clinical investigations have identified the components and/or characteristics of [particulate matter] that might be causing the health-effect associations. Mr Phalen has asserted that air is currently too clean, because childrens lungs need to breathe irritants so their bodies can learn how to fight them. Modern air, he said in 2012, is a little too clean for optimum health. Since becoming EPA administrator earlier this year, Scott Pruitt has been consistently lambasted by Democrats, scientists and environmental groups for several actions he has taken as head of an agency that has been tasked with protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. Critics of Mr Pruitt have said the former attorney general of Oklahoma is creating an EPA that is more industry-friendly and could be susceptible to being controlled by the businesses it is supposed to be regulating. Another controversial move that Mr Pruitt is expected to make is the appointment of Michael Honeycutt, the top toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, to chair the EPAs Scientific Advisory Board. Mr Honeycutt has argued with the agency over ozone standards. He also co-authored a study published in an air and waste management magazine which asserted that the health benefits associated with having more stringent air quality standards are overblown. 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 This week, the EPA announced it would bar certain scientists from serving on its independent advisory boards, which provide the scientific input for agency decisions around pollution and climate change regulation. Anyone who receives EPA grant money can no longer serve on those panels, the agency said. The agency labelled the move as a way to preserve the independence and diversity of the boards, but critics asserted that neither Mr Pruitt nor Republican critics of the panels had found any instances in which academic advisers profited from the EPA by providing advice. Whatever science comes out of EPA, (it) shouldnt be political science, Mr Pruitt said in a statement, adding that committee members will be financially independent from the agency. He is expected to appoint several industry representatives to the panels, according to the New York Times. Mr Trump has repeatedly touted that the EPA is removing restrictions that have intruded on American businesses and lives. We are returning the EPA to its core mission: clean air and crystal clean water. That's what we want. We want clean air. We want clean water, he said during a speech in September to the National Association of Manufacturers. Acclaimed Children of the World International Childrens Choir will perform a free concert at 6:30 p.m. Sunday at Memorial United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall in Farmington, located at 425 North St. The concert is part of the choirs Rescue Tour, a national tour to raise awareness about the challenges faced by millions of orphaned and disadvantaged children around the world. Through song, dance, spoken word, and creative media, the choir presents the reality of poverty, but also the hope of change through advocacy, investment, and compassion. The choir which represents a rich and culturally diverse set of backgrounds and experiences includes children from World Helps Child Sponsorship Programs in Uganda, Nepal, Honduras, and the Philippines. The children have performed at venues including Focus on the Family, Brooklyn Tabernacle, Disney World, and Shadow Mountain Community Church. For almost 17 years, Children of the World has spoken for the one billion children worldwide who today live in poverty, said Vernon Brewer, president and founder of World Help. Every day, boys and girls struggle with not having enough food; they have no access to an education; worse still, they succumb to illness and even death from preventable diseases. We hope those who attend this wonderful event will not only be blessed by the music and the joy of these inspiring, young lives, but also be moved to do what they can to rescue a child in need. The concert is free and open to the public. Doors open at 6 p.m. A free will offering for the choir will be received during the event. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has declared he wants to immediately work with Congress to terminate the diversity immigration lottery programme, which he says is how the 'animal' New York terror suspect got into the US. We need to get rid of the lottery program as soon as possible, Mr Trump told reporters. Were going to quickly as possible get rid of chain migration and move to a merit programme. Similar to how he responded to previous major terror attacks in the US and abroad, the President has vowed to toughen immigration restrictions after a truck driver rammed into bicyclists and pedestrians on a bike path in Manhattan, killing eight people. Mr Trump has also assailed Senator Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, who in 1990 introduced the bill in the House of Representatives that helped create the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program despite the fact that Mr Schumer was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers in 2013 who sought to end it. The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty, the President tweeted earlier on Wednesday. A 29-year-old Uzbek national with Isis associations is suspected to have carried out the attack. The US Department of Homeland Security later confirmed that he was admitted to the US in 2010 with a diversity immigrant visa. The programme awards up to 50,000 visas per year to people from parts of the world that have relatively few immigrants in the US. New York Truck attack Show all 6 1 /6 New York Truck attack New York Truck attack Investigators inspect the truck following the attack Investigators inspect a truck following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday when a suspect plowed a vehicle into a bike and pedestrian path in Lower Manhattan, and struck another vehicle on Halloween, police said. A suspect exited the vehicle holding up fake guns, before being shot by police and taken into custody, officers said. The motive was not immediately apparent. Getty New York Truck attack A paramedic looks at a body along the bike path A paramedic looks at a body covered under a white sheet along the bike path 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people Tuesday, police and witnesses said. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack The truck driver collided with a school bus Authorities respond near a damaged school bus Tuesday, 31 October 2017, in New York. A motorist drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Center memorial and struck several people, police and witnesses said. Two adults and two children were on the bus at the time. AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews New York Truck attack A young girl reacts to the scene A young girl reacts as police officers secure an area following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Several people were killed and numerous others injured in New York on Tuesday after a vehicle plowed into a pedestrian and bike path in Lower Manhattan, police said. 'The vehicle struck multiple people on the path,' police tweeted. 'The vehicle continued south striking another vehicle. The suspect exited the vehicle displaying imitation firearms & was shot by NYPD.' DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Police officers arrive at the scene Police officers arrive at the scene following a shooting incident in New York on 31 October 2017. Multiple people were hurt in downtown Manhattan, US media reported after police confirmed that they were responding to reports of a shooting. Police said they had mobilized to the scene in Lower Manhattan and that one person was in custody, giving no further details. DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images New York Truck attack Emergency personnel respond to truck attack in lower Manhattan Emergency personal respond after reports of multiple people hit by a truck after it plowed through a bike path in lower Manhattan on 31 October 2017 in New York City. According to reports up to six people may have been killed. Kena Betancur/Getty Images More than 45,500 diversity visas were issued in 2016. In 1990, when Mr Schumer was part of the House, he proposed making a set number of visas available each year to diversity immigrants from low-admission countries. The New York Democrat's measure was absorbed into a broader House immigration bill, which was sponsored by him and 31 other members of Congress, including several Republicans. The legislation received bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by Republican President George HW Bush. In 2007, the US Government Accountability Office reviewed the programme and found no documented evidence that diversity immigrants posed a terrorist threat. But legislators have continued to say there are national security reasons for eliminating the programme. Mr Schumer was part of the Senates Gang of Eight in 2013 that came up with sweeping bipartisan legislation aimed at improving the US's immigration laws. Among other proposals, the measure called for cancelling the diversity lottery. After Mr Trump attacked the Democrat over the programme, Republican Senator Jeff Flake who dramatically announced last week that he would not seek re-election came to Mr Schumer's defence. Actually, the Gang of 8, including @SenSchumer, did away with the Diversity Visa Program as part of broader reforms. I know, I was there, Mr Flake, an outspoken critic of Trump, wrote on Twitter. In fact, had the Senate Gang of 8 bill passed the House, it would have ended the Visa Lottery Program AND increased merit based visas. The bill passed in the Senate but died in the House. Mr Schumer also responded to Mr Trump's criticism by blasting the President for polticising the New York attack. I have always believed and continue to believe that immigration is good for America, Mr Schumer said in a statement. President Trump, instead of politicising and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution anti-terrorism funding which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget. The senator called on Mr Trump to immediately rescind his proposed cuts to this vital anti-terrorism funding. The midyear budget proposal from Trump called for cutting more than half a billion dollars from critical counterterrorism programs administered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to a congressional report. On the Senate floor later on Wednesday, Mr Schumer doubled down on his denunciation of the President's tweets. President Bush in a moment of national tragedy understood the meaning of his high office. ...President Trump where is your leadership? Mr Schumer said. The contrast between President Bush's actions after 9/11 and President Trump's actions this morning could not be starker. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Donald Trump has made it clear what he wants done with the suspect in the New York terrorist attack, tweeting to his 41m followers that the suspect SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! But if that's the outcome the President truly desires, legal experts say, tweeting about it is the worst thing he could have done. Twenty-nine-year-old Sayfullo Saipov is accused of driving a rented truck through a Manhattan bike path on 31 October, killing eight people and injuring 12. The suspect, who officials say was inspired by Isis, has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. He has yet to enter a plea. Recommended Trump calls for New York terror suspect to get death penalty The day the charges were announced, Mr Trump tweeted: NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! But Paul Dickinson, a wrongful death attorney who has practised for almost 30 years, says Mr Trumps comments could actually prevent the suspect from receiving the death penalty. If there's anything that the President could have done that would put that in jeopardy, it was tweeting out the words should get death penalty, Mr Dickinson told The Independent. Because thats him putting his finger on that scale, and putting his influence on everyone in the United States about what should happen. 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 Other attorneys expressed similar opinions on Twitter. Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted: Mr. President, we all know he should get the death penalty. But when *you* say it, it makes it harder for [the Department of Justice] to make that happen. Trump helped the terrorist with this tweet, added former prosecutor Renato Mariotti. Now prosecutors will have to spend time dealing with motions that the jury pool is tainted. Trump calls New York attack suspect an 'animal' and signals scrapping lottery visa scheme The issue stems from Mr Saipovs right to a fair trial, with an impartial jury. Jurors in every trial are required to swear that their decision will be made based only on evidence provided in the courtroom. Exposure to pretrial publicity can influence a jurors initial opinion, making them prejudiced. Thats why jurors are told not to read newspapers while they're in trial; thats why theyre told not to watch TV, thats why theyre sent to hotels at night, Mr Dickinson explained. ...Its to prevent people on the jury from being influenced. While defence attorneys usually fear the influence of TV and newspapers on jurors, Mr Trumps Twitter account could have a greater impact than both. There's nobody on the planet that would have greater influence on public opinion than the President of the United States, Mr Dickinson said. While Mr Trumps tweeting habit may be unprecedented, there are a few historical examples of similar situations. In 1970, then-President Richard Nixon proclaimed cult leader Charles Manson guilty of eight murders in Los Angeles. Manson, however, had yet to go to trial, and Nixon was forced to walk back his comments that same day. The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances, he said at the time. In a less extreme example, former President Barack Obama once commented that a police officer had acted stupidly by arresting a black man who was attempting to get into his own house. The National Republican Senate Committee declared Mr Obamas remarks inappropriate, and started a petition to that effect. Former Michigan congressman Thaddeus McCotter even introduced a resolution demanding that Mr Obama apologize. (He did not.) Mr Trumps remarks, Mr Dickinson said, were the same thing, just about 10,000 degrees [worse]. Still, other legal experts told the Associated Press that Mr Trumps comments would not deter the trial from moving forward. "Because this is in federal court, this will happen both speedily and without it interfering with the normal process of the trial, said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School. "Nothing slows down the train," added Fordham professor James Cohen. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} President Donald Trumps pick for chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture has withdrawn his nomination after the Russia investigation raised questions about his time on the Trump campaign. Sam Clovis Mr Trumps former campaign co-chair, and his top pick from the agriculture job withdrew from the nomination shortly after his communications with former campaign staffer George Papadopoulos were revealed as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling and possible Russian connections to the Trump campaign. Recently released documents show that a number of officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of Mr Papadopouloss efforts to reach out to Russian officials. Mr Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about meeting a professor with alleged connections to the Russian government and contact with a woman calling herself "Putin's niece". Recommended George Papadopoulos is working with the government Questions had already been raised about Mr Clovis' qualifications for the administration post. He is a self-described sceptic of climate change and Democrats have also flagged a number of other views. Mr Clovis has previously been criticised for rejecting the scientific consensus that human-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change as not proven, and had been criticised for statements made arguing against gay marriage. In a letter to Trump describing his decision, Mr Clovis made no mention of the Russia controversy, but cited the political climate inside Washington. The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day, Mr Clovis wrote in the letter, dated Wednesday. As I am focused on your success and the success of this Administration, I do not want to be a distraction or negative influence. In terms of the indictment of Mr Papadopoulos, in addition to his plea, the FBI released a trove of the former campaign staffer's emails. The recipients' names are shielded in the emails, but Mr Cloviss lawyer has confirmed that references to the campaign supervisor indeed refer to Mr Clovis, who served as campaign co-chair. The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images The documents show Mr Papadopoulos emailed Mr Clovis and other campaign officials about his meeting with the aforementioned professor. Mr Papadopoulos said that they had discussed arranging a meeting with Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump. Mr Clovis responded that he would work it through the campaign, and added: great work. A few months later, the documents show that Mr Clovis seemed to encourage Mr Papadopoulos to continue preparations for an off the record meeting with Russian officials, the documents reveal. Mr Cloviss lawyer told the Washington Post that the campaign co-chair always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign. She added that his responses to Mr Papadopoulos were courtesy by a polite gentleman from Iowa. Trump-Russia investigation: who has been charged in the Mueller probe But Senator Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee who would have need to confirm Mr Clovis after a hearing scheduled fro next week, said the documents raised concerns about Mr Cloviss nomination. "From early on, I have strongly opposed the nomination of Sam Clovis to be the chief scientist at USDA," she said in a statement. "...As we consider his nomination, I will be looking into these facts, along with his questionable qualifications and long history of divisive and outrageous statements." Donald Trump and Sam Clovis addressing a gathering for a non-declared presidential campaign stop in 2015 (ZUMA/REX ) (ZUMA/REX) On Monday, however, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave no inclination that Mr Cloviss nomination was in jeopardy. Asked if Mr Trump was still comfortable with his pick for USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, she replied: "I'm not aware of any change that would be necessary." On Thursday, Ms Sanders said in a statement: Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: We respect Mr. Clovis' decision to withdraw his nomination. There were some questions that our distinguished ranking member had for him that I think under the circumstances and given the votes his decision was a good one, said Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Ms Stabenow, said Mr Clovis' decision to back out was the right thing to do, adding he maybe, barely had the votes to win confirmation. She called the withdrawal was a "victory for science and our farmers who rely on agricultural research." Ms Stabenow said Mr Clovis' "lack of qualifications and long history of politically divisive statements were disqualifying, and the recent news surrounding his time as co-chair of the Trump campaign has raised even more questions." Mr Clovis is a former Iowa talk radio host and political science professor. He has a bachelors degree in political science, an MBA degree, and a doctorate in public administration, but no hard background in science. The news came as US judge ordered Mr Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort to remain under home arrest and wear an electronic monitoring device for now as he awaits a tentative trial date on money-laundering and other charges. Mr Manafort, who ran Trump's presidential campaign for several months last year, and his associate Rick Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday to a 12-count indictment. The charges include conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Both men appeared in court in Washington. US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said initial bail terms for the pair would remain in place for now, and set a bail hearing for Monday to consider changes. Mr Manafort and Gates are under house arrest, under unsecured bonds of $10 million and $5 million respectively, which means they do not have to post the bail unless they fail to show up for court or violate other conditions. Prosecutors have argued there is a risk the men would flee. They are also subject to electronic monitoring. Mr Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, argued that while his client is willing to comply with a daily curfew, he would like to have the GPS monitoring lifted. Judge Jackson also sharply warned lawyers for the duo about speaking about their case outside of court. This is a criminal trial and not a public relations campaign, JudgeJackson said during a hearing. I expect counsel to do their talking in the courtroom and in their pleadings, and not on the courthouse steps. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has said his administration will give Americans a tremendous tax cut for Christmas, even as conflict between Republican legislators threatens the partys chances of passing any tax measure by the end of the year. We are giving them a big, beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut, which will be the biggest cut in the history of our country, Mr Trump said. It will also be tax reform and itll create jobs. Later, during a meeting with the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Mr Trump stated a perhaps more extreme goal: I want to have a bill on my desk, Kevin, hopefully by Thanksgiving, he said, referring to the groups chair, Republican Kevin Brady. After some delay, Republicans in the House of Representatives have revealed the most sweeping rewrite of the US tax code in decades that could affect almost every single American household and business. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, estimated to cost $1.51 trillion over 10 years, proposes slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 20 per cent and would collapse seven tax brackets into four, with the highest rate remaining at 39.6 per cent and a new bottom rate of 12 per cent. With this plan, we are making pro growth reforms, so that yes, America can compete with the rest of the world, said House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The wealthiest Americans would benefit from the proposal through the cuts to business taxes and the elimination of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. 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 alternative minimum tax is designed to prevent tax avoidance. The estate tax, currently 40 per cent, only affects a few thousand uber-wealthy families each year individual estates larger than $5.49m, and $11m for couples. The legislation would also cut the popular mortgage interest deduction used by millions of American homeowners by about 50 per cent. Currently, Americans can deduct interest payments made on their first $1m worth of home loans. Under the bill, people with new mortgages would only be able to deduct interest payments made on their first $500,000 worth of home loans. This proposal would particularly affect those living in places where the cost of living is higher, such as San Francisco, Washington, DC and New York. Despite Mr Trumps display of optimism that the proposal will make it to his desk soon to be signed into law, disagreements between Republicans over particulars in the bill could derail the legislation before it even gets off the ground. The text of the bill released on Thursday is far from final, and is expected to ignite a legislative and lobbying battle in Washington. In the weeks leading up to the unveiling of the proposal on Thursday, party members argued over ways to pay for the tax cuts that will lead to a $1.51 trillion increase in the governments debt over the next decade. The bill calls for limiting the state and local tax deduction a proposal that could help Republicans raise a large amount of money. But it could become a sticking point for lawmakers from high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, where constituents greatly benefit from the deduction. Since Republicans are using a legislative process known as reconciliation meaning they can push a bill through Congress without any support from Democrats they must keep the cost of the bill to $1.5 trillion over 10 years. It also means the Senates Republican leadership can only afford two defections during a vote on the bill. The Republican party currently holds a narrow 52-seat majority in the 100-member chamber, and Vice President Mike Pence would cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} America is at its lowest point in living memory according to over half of Americans, a poll has found. The survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found 59 per cent said this point in their nations history was the lowest that they could remember. That opinion was felt across generations with the majority of baby boomers, Gen X-ers, millennials, and adults over the age of 72 giving the same answer. The findings suggest respondents feel 2017 ranks worse than World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. The APAs "Stress in America" poll, which was conducted in both English and Spanish, spoke to 3,440 people in the US. The survey was weighted to reflect the demographics of the country. The survey has been conducted annually since 2007 and this year's answers were collected through the month of August. American sportspeople kneel in protest Show all 14 1 /14 American sportspeople kneel in protest American sportspeople kneel in protest Terrance Smith #48, Eric Fisher #72, Demetrius Harris #84, and Cameron Erving #75 of the Kansas City Chiefs is seen taking a knee before the game against the Los Angeles Chargers at the StubHub Center on 24 September, 2017 in Carson, California Sean M. Haffey/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Members of the Dallas Cowboys link arms and kneel during the National Anthem before the start of the NFL game against the Arizona Cardinals at the University of Phoenix Stadium on 25 September, 2017 in Glendale, Arizona Christian Petersen/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Bruce Maxwell of the Oakland Athletics kneels as teammate Mark Canha #20 places his hand on Maxwell's shoulder during the singing of the National Anthem before their MLB American League baseball game against the Seattle Mariners at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, California on 25 September 2017 Reuters/Stephen Lam American sportspeople kneel in protest Members of the Oakland Unified School District Honor Band kneel as they perform the national anthem before a MLB American League baseball game between the Oakland Athletics and the Seattle Mariners at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, California on 25 September, 2017 Reuters/Stephen Lam American sportspeople kneel in protest Samaje Perine #32 and Chris Carter #55 of the Washington Redskins hold hands as they stand and kneel in unison during the national anthem before playing against the Oakland Raiders at FedExField on 24 September, 2017 in Landover, Maryland Patrick Smith/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Meghan Linsey, a former contestant on "The Voice," kneels after singing the national anthem before the start of the Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks football game at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee on 24 September, 2017 Ryan Hermens/The Paducah Sun via AP American sportspeople kneel in protest The Los Angeles Chargers are seen during national anthem before the game against the Kansas City Chiefs at the StubHub Center on 24 September, 2017 in Carson, California Jeff Gross/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Nick Kyrgios of Team World joined NFL stars from Wembley by dropping his knee before his Laver Cup match with Roger Federer today during his mens singles match against Roger Federer of Team Europe on the final day of the Laver cup on 24 September, 2017 in Prague, Czech Republic Julian Finney/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Laremy Tunsil #67, Maurice Smith #27 and Julius Thomas #89 kneel with Jarvis Landry #14 of the Miami Dolphins during the National Anthem prior to an NFL game against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium on 24 September, 2017 in East Rutherford, New Jersey Steven Ryan/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Tampa Bay Buccaneers Wide Receivers Mike Evans #13, and DeSean Jackson #11, take a knee during the national anthem before the game against the Minnesota Vikings on 24 September, 2017 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota Hannah Foslien/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Denver Broncos players kneel during the American National Anthem before an NFL game against the Buffalo Bills on 24 September, 2017 at New Era Field in Orchard Park, New York Brett Carlsen/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Buffalo Bills players kneel during the American National anthem before an NFL game against the Denver Broncos on 24 September, 2017 at New Era Field in Orchard Park, New York Brett Carlsen/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi's Stadium on September 12, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. The kneel began as a protest against police killing people of colour Thearon W. Henderson/Getty American sportspeople kneel in protest Megan Rapinoe #15 kneels during the National Anthem prior to the match between the United States and the Netherlands at Georgia Dome on 18 September, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia Kevin C. Cox/Getty It was carried out at the same time that protesters in Charlottesville clashed with white nationalists and Donald Trump had been in office nine months. When asked what specific issue in America caused them stress 63 per cent said it was the future of the country. This is more than money (62 per cent) and work (61 per cent). Healthcare was the most common issue Americans were concerned about at 43 per cent followed by economy at 35 per cent. However, Americans are reporting around the same levels of stress as last year - an average of 4.8 out of 10. The APA said: Millennials continue to have the highest reported stress levels, with this years survey finding an average stress level of 5.7, a slight increase from 2016." Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 47-year-old man suspected of walking into a store and killing three people has been detained by police. Colorado man Scott Ostrem was arrested on Thursday morning, about 14 hours after the shooting at a Walmart that witnesses said appeared to be random. His arrest followed a brief chase in which Mr Ostrem attempted to flee law enforcement, but was blocked by traffic. Police had warned the Denver community that Mr Ostrem was armed and dangerous, and to avoid the suspect if he was seen in public. An anonymous tip later led police to the suspects home, which is about five miles away from the Walmart. In interviews, police described a cool-headed shooter, who calmly walked into the supermarket before opening fire. After killing two men and a woman, the shooter simply left the building. He walked in very nonchalantly with his hands in the pockets, raised a weapon and began shooting. Then he turns around and walks out of the store, Victor Avila, a Thornton police spokesman, said. Mr Avila indicated that their description of the event was based on several witnesses in the Walmart, who said that the shooting appeared to be random. Las Vegas shooting in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Las Vegas shooting in pictures Las Vegas shooting in pictures People scramble for shelter at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures People carry a person at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures A handout photo released via Twitter by Eiki Hrafnsson (@EirikurH) showing concertgoers running away from the scene (C) after shots range out at the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Eiki Hrafnsson Las Vegas shooting in pictures People lie on the ground at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures A man in a wheelchair is taken away from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after hearing gun fire David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures People stand on the street outside the Mandalay Bay hotel near the scene of the Route 91 Harvest festival on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA/Paul Buck Las Vegas shooting in pictures FBI agents confer in front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting during a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting in pictures Las Vegas police run by a banner on the fence at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival grounds after shots were fired David Becker/Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures An injured person is tended to in the intersection of Tropicana Ave. and Las Vegas Boulevard after a mass shooting at a country music festival Ethan Miller/Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures Metro Police officers pass by the front of the Tropicana hotel-casino after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting in pictures A woman sits on a curb at the scene of a shooting outside of a music festival along the Las Vegas Strip AP/John Locher Las Vegas shooting in pictures A cowboy hat lays in the street after shots were fired near a country music festival in Las Vegas Getty Las Vegas shooting in pictures Las Vegas Metro Police and medical workers stage in the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard South after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Reuters/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus Las Vegas shooting in pictures Sheriff Joe Lombardo (2-R) speaking during a press briefing in the aftermath of the active shooter incident on Las Vegas Boulevard EPA Aaron Stephens, 44, said he was in the self-checkout line in the supermarket when he heard a gun shot, followed soon after by more bursts of gunfire. The scene was pandemonium: customers were screaming and rushing as quickly as they could to the exits while the shooter casually left. I was scared, Mr Stephens told The Denver Post. I feared for my life. The shooting was met with hundreds of emergency responders, who circled the Walmart and the shopping centre it is located in. The three victims have yet to be named by police, though police say they were the only three victims of the attack. The woman who was shot was rushed to the hospital, but was later pronounced dead. Others were treated for anxiety-related conditions following the shooting. The attack is just the latest incident of gun-related violence in the US, where the problem runs rampant. The country has some of the highest rates of gun violence, including mass shooting events that typically gain broader media attention. Hundreds of mass shootings have already occurred in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts mass shooting events based on the FBIs definition any event in which four or more people selected indiscriminately, not including the perpetrator, are killed. The US has more mass shootings than any other country in the world, a reality punctuated by high-profile incidents, such as the attack in Las Vegas where 58 people were killed and 500 more were injured after a gunman opened fire on a country music festival. That shooting, the worst in United States history, was just over a month ago. The study indicating that the US has more mass shootings than any other country is more refined than the FBI definition, and does not include gang killings or killings that involve multiple family members. The US also has some of the most lenient gun acquisition laws in the developed world. In many states, individuals are able to buy guns without background checks, and many states also do not ban assault-style rifles, a type of gun designed almost explicitly to kill people, and one with limited practical utility in terms of hunting or recreation. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A woman has been sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for fatally pouring vodka into her disabled sons feeding tube. Melissa Robitille, 41, from Hardwick, Vermont was sentenced on Tuesday to a minimum of four years in prison, WCAX-TV reports. Prosecutors say that Robittile and her boyfriend gave 13-year-old Isaac alcohol in order to keep him quiet in August 2014. The boy needed his feeding tube to survive and died soon after from alcohol poisoning. Robitille's boyfriend, Walter Richters, was convicted last year for manslaughter. He's already serving out a three-year sentence in prison. Robitilles family felt that the sentence was not hard enough: David Robitille, Isaac Robitille's uncle said: "The swath of destruction that this woman has laid behind her is wide and deep" 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 Robitille had previously been found guilty of manslaughter and her attorney argued the death was a tragic mistake. Lottie Allen, Isaac's former foster mother said: He was a very smart, strong young man that adapted to all of his imperfections. He knew and could tell everyone that touched him by a sign that they gave him. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A high-ranking North Korean defector has told a congressional hearing that a pre-emptive US military strike on the country would trigger automatic retaliation, with the North unleashing artillery and short-range missile fire on South Korea. The testimony from Thae Yong-ho, former deputy chief of mission at the North Korean Embassy in London, underscored the high risk in using military force against North Korea. The Trump administration has said this is among its options in stopping leader Kim Jong-un from perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the United States. Thae, the highest-level North Korean defector in two decades, appeared to confirm what has long been suspected but rarely articulated by US officials - that even a selective American strike could rain a potentially devastating North Korean military response on the South Korean capital and its environs, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) south of the heavily militarised frontier. Thae, who is making his first visit to Washington since his defection last year, said the US and allied South Korea would win a war after a preventive military strike on the North, but there would be a human sacrifice inflicted on the South from the tens of thousands of artillery guns and short-range missiles the North has at the frontier. North Korean officers are trained to press their button without any further instructions from the general command if anything happens on their side, Thae told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to a US bombing or military strike. We have to remember that tens of millions of South Korean population are living 70 to 80 kilometres away from this military demarcation line. He urged Washington to use soft power instead - enforcing sanctions and disseminating information challenging North Korean propaganda to turn people against Kim's authoritarian government. He also contended that if China allowed an exit route for North Korean defectors without fear of forcible repatriation there would be a massive exodus to the South that would cause the collapse of the North Korean system. North Korea has called Thae human scum and accused him of embezzling government money and committing other crimes. Thae's comments come ahead of President Donald Trump's five-nation trip to Asia that will include a stop in South Korea. The US administration says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff but all options are on the table. Trump has threatened the total destruction of North Korea if the US is forced to defend itself or its allies. A Congressional Research Service report published last week said that conservative estimates anticipate that in the first hours of a conflict, North Korean artillery situated along the frontier could cause tens of thousands of casualties in South Korea, where at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Americans live - including nearly 30,000 US troops. It said a protracted conflict, particularly one in which North Korea uses its nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, could cause enormous casualties on a greater scale. Some analysts contend the risk of Kim acquiring a nuclear weapon capable of targeting the US homeland is greater than the risks associated with the outbreak of a regional war, the report said. Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois wrote to Trump on Wednesday calling for him to provide the American public with declassified estimates of potential casualties, costs and outcomes from a limited or full-scale war with North Korea. I fear the country is being deprived of an accurate assessment of what war against the DPRK would entail, wrote Duckworth, referring to the North's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Duckworth, a former US Army helicopter pilot, suffered severe combat wounds in Iraq. In a separate development, the Senate Banking Committee announced late Wednesday it will take up legislation next week to strengthen and expand US financial sanctions against North Korea. Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters The bill targets banks and other financial institutions that continue to do business with Pyongyang and anyone else that evades existing sanctions to support with the rogue nation. The legislation also permits states and local governments to divest from or prohibit investments in companies that maintain ties to North Korea. Congressional oversight of North Korea sanctions also would be strengthened, according to the bill, and the Treasury Department would be given a bigger role in fighting human trafficking. AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} North Korea is developing an advanced version of its existing KN-20 intercontinental ballistic missile that could potentially reach the United States mainland, a US official has reportedly said. It follows the North testing its first intercontinental missile in July, which prompted international alarm. The developments are part of an accelerated programme by the isolated communist regime to rapidly advance every part of its missile and nuclear weapons attack capability, anonymous US officials told CNN. Recommended Trump will not visit demilitarised zone between North and South Korea Improvements to the North's nuclear fuel, missile launchers and targeting systems are also being made, they said. It comes days ahead of Donald Trump's 12-day long tour of Asia his first visit to the continent as head of state. Senior officials have said Mr Trump will not visit the heavily fortified demilitarised zone on the border between North Korea and South Korea, bypassing a symbolic opportunity to pass close to the regime. The visit has become a staple of Asia tours by American commanders-in-chief. US officials expect North Korea to become capable of mounting a miniature warhead onto an intercontinental missile at some point in 2018, CNN reported. The development would be a crucial step in extending the reach of the North's arsenal. The expedited weapons programme is being touted as the reason why senior US officials have been warning about a increased risk from Pyongyang, even as they search for a diplomatic solution. Defence Secretary James Mattis warned last week the North had "accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbours and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programmes". The Pentagon is expected to complete two reviews of its nuclear weapons by the end of the year that will inform future military spending to counter the North Korean threat. Made in North Korea - In pictures Show all 6 1 /6 Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Made in North Korea - In pictures Republican and Democratic US senators on Wednesday said they had agreed a new package of sanctions on North Korea. The Senate Banking Committee is expected to act on the legislation next week, while Mr Trump is in Asia. New sanctions are set to be imposed on foreign financial institutions, such as Chinese banks that provide services to any individual targeted with North-related sanctions. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A reported tunnel collapse at North Koreas key nuclear testing site has sparked fears of a major radiation leak. At least 100 workers at the Punggye-ri nuclear site are feared to have died in the accident that happened around 10 September following the regimes sixth atomic test earlier that month, Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi reported. The broadcaster said there was also a second collapse during the rescue operation which may mean the death toll exceeds 200. News of the two accidents has not been verified by Pyongyang, which is usually reluctant to acknowledge any failures to the outside world. North Korea's sixth and largest nuclear test on 3 September triggered landslides in the detonation area according to satellite images taken shortly afterwards, experts said. News of the accidents came just days as the head of the Korea Meteorological Administration, Nam Jae-Cheol, said future nuclear tests risked the collapse of the mountain test site, which could leak dangerous levels of radiation into the surrounding atmosphere. He said: Based on our analysis of satellite imagery, we judge that there is a hollow space, which measures about 60 to 100 metres, at the bottom of Mount Mantap in the Punggye-ri site. So far, the nuclear tests are not thought to have caused any radiation damage to foreign countries but scientists warn the hollow space inside the mountain makes it unstable. Chinese nuclear weapons researcher Wang Naiyan told the South China Morning Post last month: We call it taking the roof off. If the mountain collapses and the hole is exposed, it will let out many bad things. Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Show all 6 1 /6 Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb Photos released by North Korea show Kim Jong-un talking to subordinates next to a device thought to be the new thermonuclear weapon. There is no way of independently verifying the pictures STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korea claims it has successfully tested an advanced hydrogen bomb which could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile AFP/Getty Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A diagram on the wall behind Mr Kim shows a bomb mounted inside a cone STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) attending a photo session with participants of the fourth conference of active secretaries of primary organisations of the youth league of the Korean People's Army (KPA) in Pyongyang STR/AFP/Getty Images Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters Kim Jong-un inspects weapon North Korea says is powerful hydrogen bomb A new stamp issued in commemoration of the successful second test launch of the "Hwasong-14" intercontinental ballistic missile KCNA via Reuters A 100 kiloton bomb is a relatively large bomb. The North Korean government should stop the tests as they pose a huge threat not only to North Korea but to other countries, especially China. Pyongyang has stepped up its nuclear and missile tests over the past year as the international community has put further pressure on it. Donald Trump has repeatedly made incendiary public statements about the conduct of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The US President warned he will invoke fire and fury against the country as you have never seen before if it did not end its nuclear programme. But the regime has remained defiant and threatened to attack Guam the nearest US territory to the Korean peninsula. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Police in Pakistan have arrested eight men on suspicion of marching a naked teenager through her village in revenge for her brother allegedly damaging their family "honour". According to officers in Dera Ismail Khan, in the northwestern Khyber Paktunkhwa province, the men assaulted and humiliated the 16-year-old in retaliation for her brother having a romantic relationship with a girl from their family outside marriage three years earlier. The incident is believed to have occurred during the morning of 27 October when the girl was fetching water. She was set upon by the men, stripped naked and dragged along the ground before being made to walk around the village for an hour, police said. The local village council is believed to have originally fined the boy's family R250,000 (1,800) in relation to the original incident but the men then decided to punish his sister. The case is one of a growing number to emerge in Pakistan where people use the female members of a family to inflict retribution on men. These actions are often sanctioned, or even ordered, by local village councils, called panchayat or jirga, which bypass the official judicial system to impose tribal punishments on innocent girls and women for their male relatives actions. It is thought that hundreds of women are murdered every year when these village councils sanction honour killings, The Guardian reported. In July, an all-male village council near Multan in the neighbouring Punjab province sentenced a 17-year-old girl to be raped after her brother allegedly carried out a sexual assault against another woman. 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 Samar Minullah told the paper: Unfortunately, despite pro-women legislation we see that in remote areas women are still being bartered as inanimate objects. We consider girls or women as the honour of a home or a community, yet we dishonour them, barter them and hand them in compensation to end disputes? This is not only illegal but un-Islamic too. She praised the police for taking action and arresting the men but warned that the girl will still face a lifetime of stigma. But Pakistan Today reported that the authorities were initially reluctant to investigate the case and only arrested the men after the girl made several trips to the police station. Eight men have been arrested so far but the ringleader is still thought to be on the run. Following the death of social media star Qandeel Baloch in July last year, Pakistan has been gripped by a debate on the treatment of women in the country. Earlier this year the government passed new laws specifically targeting honour killings after Balochs brother admitted strangling her for dishonouring" the family name with provocative social media posts and outspoken support for womens rights. But her father, Muhammad Azeem, has since claimed she was killed by her cousin on the orders of cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi after she humiliated him by posting online pictures of her flirting with him. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Burmas de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has urged people not to quarrel as she visited Rakhine State for the first time since a military crackdown that drove more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee the country. Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has faced heavy international criticism for not taking a higher profile in responding to what UN officials have called ethnic cleansing by the army. Burma has rejected the accusations of ethnic cleansing, saying its security forces launched a counter-insurgency operation after Rohingya militants attacked 30 security posts in northern Rakhine on 25 August. On Thursday, amid heightened security, Ms Suu Kyi boarded a military helicopter at Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, to be taken to Maungdaw, one of the districts worst hit by the violence. Ms Suu Kyi met a group of Muslim religious leaders, said Chris Lewa, of the Arakan Project monitoring group, citing Rohingya sources. She only said three things to the people they should live peacefully, the government is there to help them, and they should not quarrel among each other, Mr Lewa said, quoting information from a religious leader who was present. Rohingya began fleeing predominantly Buddhist Burma for neighbouring Bangladesh in late August to escape violence in the wake of a military counter-insurgency operation launched after Rohingya militants attacked security posts in Rakhine State. A US State Department delegation will be in Bangladesh on Friday and Saturday to discuss the humanitarian emergency and human rights concerns stemming from the crisis in Rakhine state. The delegation will be led by Simon Henshaw, acting assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, the department said in a statement. On Wednesday, photographers saw thousands of desperate Rohingya wade through shallows and narrow creeks between islands of the Naf river to reach neighbouring Bangladesh as the exodus that began two months ago was far from over. Recommended Rohingya crisis drone footage shows thousands of Muslims fleeing Burma Some had small boats or pulled makeshift rafts to get to Bangladesh on the rivers western bank, but most walked, children cradled in their arms and the elderly carried on their backs, with sacks of belongings tied to staves on their shoulders. Reaching the far side, some women and older people had to be pulled through the mud to reach dry land atop steep banks. More than 4,000 crossed at different points on the river on Wednesday, Major Mohammed Iqbal, a Bangladesh security official in the southern district of Coxs Bazar, told Reuters. Ms Suu Kyi had not previously visited Rakhine since assuming power last year following a landslide 2015 election victory. The majority of residents in the northern part of the state, which includes Maungdaw, were Muslims until the recent crisis. Ms Suu Kyi was accompanied by about 20 people travelling in two military helicopters, including military, police and state officials, a reporter said. Businessman Zaw Zaw, formerly sanctioned by the US Treasury for his ties to Burmas junta, was also with the Nobel laureate. Ms Suu Kyi, who does not control the military, has lately appeared to take a stronger lead in the crisis, focusing government efforts on rehabilitation and pledging to repatriate refugees. She launched a project last month to help rehabilitation and resettlement in Rakhine and has urged tycoons to contribute. Ms Suu Kyi has pledged to allow the return of refugees who can prove they were residents of Burma, but thousands of people have continued to flee to Bangladesh. Refugees in the Bangladesh camps say the Burma army torched their villages, but Burma blames Rohingya militants. Rohingya refugees in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya refugees in pictures A young girl and a baby wade through mud after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh from Burma on 10 September Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya refugees walk through a camp in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh after arriving from Burma Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures A young Rohingya refugee gathers firewood after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh from Burma Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya refugees wait for sacks of rice to be distributed in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees arrive on a boat in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh after crossing from Burma on 8 September Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees react after being re-united with each other after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh on a boat from Burma Getty Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees walk along the remains of a road after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh on a boat from Burma Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees wade through water after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh by boat from Burma Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees wade through water after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh by boat from Myanmar Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Rohingya Muslim refugees stand in the rain after arriving in Whaikhyang, Bangladesh by boat from Burma Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Rohingya refugees in pictures Indian children hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against the alleged persecution of the Rohingya Muslims in Burma EPA/Raminder Pal Singh Rohingya refugees in pictures Supporters of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), an Islamic organisation, listen to their leaders' speeches against Burma's persecution of Rohingya Muslims, during a demonstration in Karachi Reuters/Akhtar Soomro Rohingya refugees in pictures Hundreds of Iranians take part in a protest against violence in Myanmar after weekly Friday prayers, in Tehran EPA/Abedin Taherkenareh Rohingya refugees in pictures Indonesian Muslim activists hold placards and shout slogans during a protest against the alleged persecution of the Rohingya minority in Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia EPA/Ali Lutfi Rohingya refugees in pictures Members of an Islamic organisation shout slogans against the Burma government during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh EPA Talks with Bangladesh have yet to deliver a pact on a repatriation process made more complex because Burma has long denied citizenship to the Rohingya. Ms Suu Kyis spokesman voiced fears on Tuesday that Bangladesh could be stalling on the accord to first get millions of dollars of international aid money, an accusation a senior Bangladesh home ministry official described as outrageous. United Nations refugee official Volker Turk appealed for the safe, voluntary and sustainable repatriation of Rohingya. In a statement issued on Thursday after a two-day visit to Burma, Mr Turk, the UNs assistant high commissioner for refugee protection, said he hoped the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees would be involved in the governments plans for voluntary repatriation. But the scenes at the Naf river showed Rohingya were still ready to risk being destitute in Bangladesh, rather than stay in Burma in fear for their lives. Reuters For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A British woman has been convicted of garroting, stabbing and burying the body of an autistic teenager in Western Australia. Jemma Lilley, previously of Stamford, Lincolnshire, murdered 18-year-old Aaron Pajich at her home in Perth, burying him in a shallow grave and covering it with concrete and tiles. Lilley said she wanted to kill someone before she turned 25, and once she had ticked off murder from her bucket list she was so full of herself and euphoric that she could not help boasting to a work colleague, prosecutor James McTaggart told the court during the four-week trial. The 26-year-old, who was convicted alongside 43-year-old housemate Trudi Lenon, had previously written a book about a serial killer called SOS and went on to assume the identity of the character, the Supreme Court of Western Australia was told. Speaking to The Times after the conviction, Lilley's stepmother, Nina Lilley, 48, said: The book was a big problem with me. At the beginning I was, 'Fair enough you want to write a horror story', but I didn't like the contents of it. She had always had an obsession with serial killers but she said it was a way of venting her frustration of what happened when she was a child. The victim - described by his mother as a precious little boy - was lured to his death on 13 June last year, with both defendants blaming each other for the killing. Lenon told the court Lilley approached the teenager from behind as he installed games on her computer, garrotted him until the wire broke then stabbed him three times. The prosecution said Lilley left incriminating messages to her obsequious and sycophantic follower Lenon hours after the killing, saying she was feeling things she had not felt before. After the verdict, the victim's emotional mother Sharon Pajich told reporters she was heartbroken and would have to deal with what happened to her son for a lifetime. His murderers were disgusting animals and should never be released, she said. He was my precious little boy, he was my first-born... he was full of life. They (the killers) deserve everything they get for what they've done, they've taken an innocent boy from his loved ones. His father Keith Sweetman and stepmother Veronica Desmond, who attended the trial every day, only said We love you, Aaron and were happy with the verdict. 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 Lilley's father Richard Lilley, who flew from England to watch his daughter being convicted, said nothing as he left the court building. A jury took less than three hours to find them both guilty and they will face a sentencing hearing on 23 February. PA For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man allegedly burned down a brothel after attacking a sex worker who he claimed owed him money. Michael Joel Kay, 30, is accused of setting fire to Love Machine in the Australian city of Sydney after punching, kicking and choking a sex worker. Downing Centre District Court heard that he paid $800 (470) for sex in a private upstairs room at the strip club and brothel in May 2013, according to news.com.au. While having sex with Anne McGarry the court heard that he put his hands around her throat and began to choke her. She pushed him off and they got dressed. As they left the room Mr Kay is alleged to have punched and kicked Ms McGarry and dragged her across the floor before choking her again. She fought back and he ran upstairs, where he allegedly started a fire before security dragged him out. Staff told investigators they heard him mumbling "something about burning the place down". The fire badly damaged the building's upper floor (News Limited) Flames spread across upper floor of the building, which suffered extensive smoke and water damage. No one was hurt. Mr Kay told police he ran upstairs with the intention of "trashing s**t" but denied deliberately starting the fire. The brothel is one of the most famous on the Kings Cross, the red light district of Sydney, where prostitution is legal. The trial continues. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Catalonias exiled disputed president has refused to return to Spain to face a court summons on charges of rebellion and sedition. Carles Puigdemont is in Brussels where he fled earlier this week following the announcement of the charges against him, relating to the holding of an independence referendum a month ago. In a statement the exiled Catalan government, which has had its powers suspended by Spanish authorities, denounced the political trial which it said was without a legal basis that only seeks to punish ideas. Recommended Carles Puigdemont says he cannot return to Catalonia Mr Puigdemont said some of his ministers would return to Spain to attend the court and make a complaint about the judicial system, but that he and others would stay in Belgium until their safety had been guaranteed. He said he and his colleagues would remain in Brussels not to evade justice but to demand it, criticising the courts planned disproportionate penalties equivalent to murder or terrorism. Mr Puigdemont spoke to a packed press conference in Brussels on Tuesday where he said the Spanish government was intent on seeking vengeance against him. Though he has said he will not formally claim asylum in the country, the president has hired a Belgian lawyer with experience in resisting extradition attempts. The lawyer, Paul Bekaert, told Spains TV3 channel: He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium. Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Demonstrators block a Guardia Civil vehicle as they try to leave the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Demonstrators react as they try to stop the car carrying Xavier Puig, a senior at the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office, after he was arrested by Guardia Civil officers in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A demonstrator reacts as he tries with others to stop the car carrying Xavier Puig, a senior at the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office, after he was arrested by Guardia Civil officers in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Spokeswoman of the Catalan pro-independence anticapitalist party "Candidatura d'Unitat Popular - CUP" (Popular Unity Candidacy), Ana Gabriel, talks to the media in Barcelona Josep Lago/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Republican Left of Catalonia party's (ERC) Member of Parliament Joan Tarda (C) attends a demonstration outside the regional Economy Ministry in Catalonia during a police search for documents connected with the organisation of the Catalan independence referendum, in Barcelona EPA/Alejandro Garcia Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A man holds pro-referendum poster next to a Spanish Civil Guard who stands in front of the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government in Barcelona. The operation comes amid mounting tensions as Catalan leaders press ahead with preparations for an independence referendum on October 1 despite Madrid's ban and a court ruling deeming it illegal Josep Lago/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People hold placards reading "Democracy" as they protest in front of the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government in Barcelona AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A crowd of protesters gather outside the Catalan region's economy ministry after junior economy minister Josep Maria Jove was arrested by Spanish police during a raid on several government offices, in Barcelona Reuters/Albert Gea Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People holding 'Esteladas' (Catalan pro-independence flags) attend a protest near the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government Lluis Gene/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People demonstrate on a Spanish Civil Guard Police car outside the Catalan Vice-President and Economy office as police officers holds a searching operation inside David Ramos/Getty Images The two-day hearing will start at Spains national court in Madrid and continue onto Friday. Mr Puigdemont and 13 others in total are sought by judges for questioning. The Madrid government has called snap Catalan regional elections for 21 December in order to elect a new Catalan parliament, after the current one voted to declare independence. The Catalan separatists have said they will accept the result of the polls. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The vice-president of the ousted Catalan government has arrived in Madrid for questioning over allegations of rebellion for declaring the region's independence from Spain. Oriol Junqueras was the first of around 20 regional officials due to appear in court on Thursday after the Spanish chief prosecutor demanded they face charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement after dismissed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont declared independence last week. Mr Junqueras went in accompanied by lawyers, passing by dozens of journalists, declining to answer questions. But Mr Puigdemont, who is currently in Belgium, said he cannot returned to Spain as the national government is intent on "vengeance" and has pledged to ignore the summons which could trigger a warrant for his arrest and extradition. His lawyer has suggested he could testify from Brussels. If convicted the group summoned, which includes 13 former cabinet members and six parliamentary board members, could face up to 30 years in prison. One of those who also appeared in court included former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell who has been one of the leading figures of the pro-independence movement for many years. Mr Puigdemont's decision to remain in Belgium, along with four of his ex-cabinet members, means he is unlikely to be able to stand in the snap regional election which is due to be held in Catalonia on 21 December. 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 This latest crisis began on 1st October when the Catalan government held a referendum on independence which had previously been declared illegal by a court in Madrid. The Spanish government sent in its semi-militarised national police force, the Civil Guard, to stop the vote taking place and they were seen brutally beating people at polling stations and firing rubber bullets into the crowd. The international community condemned the violence and 90 per cent of the people who voted opted for independence on a 40 per cent turnout. The vote was largely boycotted by the opposition who are against Catalan independence. But the result was annulled by the Constitution Court in Madrid and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy declared that there had been no referendum and the Catalan people had been duped into taking part in an illegal vote. Carles Puigdemont says he cannot return to Catalonia because Spain is intent on 'vengeance' Spain's King Felipe later called for calm and denounced the Catalan separatists for an "inadmissible lack of loyalty". On Friday, the Madrid government invoked the "nuclear option" in the Spanish constitution and declared direct rule on Catalonia until fresh elections could take place. On the same day Mr Puigdemont officially declared Catalonia a republic, saying: "In the days ahead we must keep to our values of pacificism and dignity. It's in our, in your hands to build the republic." Assumptio Lailla, a former lawmaker with Catalonia's Democrats party, said she had travelled to Madrid joining around 100 other politicians and elected officials to show support to those investigated in the rebellion probe. "This is an unjust situation in which they are being investigated for facilitating democracy," she said. "I don't understand how Europe can look away from democracy." The supporters greeted some of the lawmakers that are being questioned Tuesday at the Supreme Court cheering and shouting: "Freedom, Freedom" and "we are not afraid." Across the street, half a dozen protesters with Spanish flags were stopped by police. They shouted at the Catalan politicians, "cowards" and "to jail, to jail." Additional reporting by AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Catalonia's former president Carles Puigdemont has been criticised for fleeing to Belgium and warned that his departure could lead to others facing prison as a result. Mr Puigdemont, who spearheaded the region's independence bid, travelled to Belgium after Spanish Attorney General Jose Manuel Maza called for charges to be filed against Catalonias secessionist leaders. They face up to 30 years in jail on charges of rebellion and sedition after declaring Catalonia an independent republic. Joan Josep Nuet, who is one of the six members of the parliamentary speaker's committee due to be interrogated this week about the independence bid accused Mr Puigdemont of "irresponsibility" by leaving the country. This attitude from president Puigdemont could lead to all the people summoned ending up being remanded in custody because he is showing them in some way that escaping is a possibility, he told The Telegraph. He called for the former leader to stop performing "gestures and instead focus on negotiating a legal referendum with Spain. 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 Mr Nuet said he was prepared to fight a court case against the accusations levelled at him. The parliamentary speaker and four other member of the committee that agreed to put the independence legislation before Catalonia's parliament also face interrogation on Thursday by a Spanish supreme court judge. Mr Puigdemont said in Brussels earlier this week that he was seeking freedom and safety from Spanish authorities but he was not seeking asylum. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Spain's public prosecutor has asked a judge to issue an arrest warrant for exiled disputed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. Mr Puigdemont has fled to Belgium and refused to attend a court hearing in Madrid relating to charges of sedition and rebellion for his part in Catalonia's declaration of independence. Earlier, the judge questioned nine other Catalan ex-ministers and prosecutors asked for eight to be jailed unconditionally and one given the chance to pay bail. Recommended Spanish supreme court says arrest warrant likely for Carles Puigdemont The National Court has been questioning ousted Catalan government members but a parallel Supreme Court session for six Catalan politicians was postponed for a week. Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Mr Puigdemont, were called to appear. It came after the chief prosecutor demanded they be charged with rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the Catalan parliament's declaration of secession October 27. The crimes are punishable by up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. The group summoned includes Mr Puigdemont's 13-member former Cabinet and six parliamentary board members. c But Mr Puigdemont remained in Brussels along with four of his former ministers. Speaking in Madrid on Thursday supreme court president Carlos Lesmes said: "When someone doesn't appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued." In a statement the exiled Catalan government, which has had its powers suspended by Spanish authorities, denounced the political trial which it said was without a legal basis that only seeks to punish ideas. He said he and his colleagues would remain in Brussels not to evade justice but to demand it, criticising the courts planned disproportionate penalties equivalent to murder or terrorism. Mr Puigdemont spoke to a packed press conference in Brussels on Tuesday where he said the Spanish government was intent on seeking vengence against him. Though he has said he will not formally claim asylum in the country, the president has hired a Belgian lawyer with experience in resisting extradition attempts. The lawyer, Paul Bekaert, told Spains TV3 channel: He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium. The Madrid government has called snap Catalan regional elections for 21 December in order to elect a new Catalan parliament, after the current one voted to declare independence. The Catalan separatists have said they will accept the result of the polls. AP contributed to this report For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Eight sacked Catalan ministers have been jailed by a Spanish judge over their role in the region's declaration of independence. The move comes as prosecutors ask judges to issue an international arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont, the disputed Catalan president who fled to Brussels, as well as four other former ministers who did not show up to court on Thursday. The former members of the regional government are accused of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds. The crimes are punishable by 30 years in prison. Recommended Spanish authorities seek arrest warrant for Catalan leader Puigdemont The region held an independence referendum on 1 October that was declared illegal under Spain's constitution. The Catalan parliament went on to declare independence, leading the Spanish state to revoke the region's autonomy, impose direct rule, and call new elections. The National Court has been questioning ousted Catalan government members but a parallel Supreme Court session for six Catalan politicians was postponed for a week. Twenty regional politicians, including fired regional government president Mr Puigdemont, were called to appear. Speaking in Madrid on Thursday supreme court president Carlos Lesmes said: "When someone doesn't appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued." In a statement the exiled Catalan government, which has had its powers suspended by Spanish authorities, denounced the political trial which it said was without a legal basis that only seeks to punish ideas. Mr Puigdemont said he and his colleagues would remain in Brussels not to evade justice but to demand it, criticising the courts planned disproportionate penalties equivalent to murder or terrorism. He had spoken to a packed press conference in Brussels on Tuesday where he said the Spanish government was intent on seeking vengeance against him. Though he has said he will not formally claim asylum in the country, the president has hired a Belgian lawyer with experience in resisting extradition attempts. The lawyer, Paul Bekaert, told Spains TV3 channel: He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium. Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Demonstrators block a Guardia Civil vehicle as they try to leave the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Demonstrators react as they try to stop the car carrying Xavier Puig, a senior at the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office, after he was arrested by Guardia Civil officers in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A demonstrator reacts as he tries with others to stop the car carrying Xavier Puig, a senior at the Department of External Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency of the Catalan Government office, after he was arrested by Guardia Civil officers in Barcelona AP/Emilio Morenatti Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Spokeswoman of the Catalan pro-independence anticapitalist party "Candidatura d'Unitat Popular - CUP" (Popular Unity Candidacy), Ana Gabriel, talks to the media in Barcelona Josep Lago/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures Republican Left of Catalonia party's (ERC) Member of Parliament Joan Tarda (C) attends a demonstration outside the regional Economy Ministry in Catalonia during a police search for documents connected with the organisation of the Catalan independence referendum, in Barcelona EPA/Alejandro Garcia Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A man holds pro-referendum poster next to a Spanish Civil Guard who stands in front of the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government in Barcelona. The operation comes amid mounting tensions as Catalan leaders press ahead with preparations for an independence referendum on October 1 despite Madrid's ban and a court ruling deeming it illegal Josep Lago/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People hold placards reading "Democracy" as they protest in front of the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government in Barcelona AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures A crowd of protesters gather outside the Catalan region's economy ministry after junior economy minister Josep Maria Jove was arrested by Spanish police during a raid on several government offices, in Barcelona Reuters/Albert Gea Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People holding 'Esteladas' (Catalan pro-independence flags) attend a protest near the Economy headquarters of Catalonia's regional government Lluis Gene/AFP Catalonia referendum protests in pictures People demonstrate on a Spanish Civil Guard Police car outside the Catalan Vice-President and Economy office as police officers holds a searching operation inside David Ramos/Getty Images The Madrid government has called snap Catalan regional elections for 21 December in order to elect a new Catalan parliament, after the current one voted to declare independence. The Catalan separatists have said they will accept the result of the polls. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The crisis in Spain dramatically deepened and extended across the Continent after eight Catalan ministers were jailed by a court in Madrid and a European arrest warrant was issued to extradite the regions disputed president Carles Puigdemont from Belgium on charges of rebellion and sedition. The punitive moves by the Spanish courts are going to provoke anger and resentment in Catalonia, which has voted for independence in a referendum. Separatist activists reacted to the news by calling for mobilisation and street protests. Former deputy vice-president Oriol Junqueras, and former ministers Joaquim Forn, Raul Romeva and Carles Mundo, were among those denied bail and sentenced to immediate custody pending investigation and a trial. Recommended Spanish authorities seek arrest warrant for Catalan leader Puigdemont Four other members of the separatist administration were, however, allowed bail to prepare their legal defence, with a hearing scheduled for next week. Spains chief prosecutor, in a request to the Supreme Court for an arrest warrant to be issued for Mr Puigdemont, said: Repeated attempts to deliver the summons at home and repeated phone calls have been ignored. For his part, Carles Puigdemont has publicly stated his intention not to appear and has requested to make a statement via videoconference, without giving any information about his current whereabouts. The Catalan president should, he stated, be arrested and held in custody in Belgium pending his return. The legal manoeuvres leave it unclear whether Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues would be able to participate in the snap election called by the government of Mariano Rajoy for 21 December after the central government rejected a referendum vote for independence in Catalonia as unconstitutional and dismissed the regional government. Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Show all 6 1 /6 Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Pro-unity supporters take part in a demonstration in central Barcelona. Hundreds of thousands of Catalans took to the streets of Barcelona on Sunday to call for their region to remain part of Spain, two days after regional lawmakers exacerbated a political crisis by voting for the wealthy region to secede Reuters/Jon Nazca Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures A woman with the Senera and Spanish flags painted on her face shouts slogans as she takes part in a rally against Catalonia's declaration of independence, in Barcelona AP Photo/Gonzalo Arroyo Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Thousands of pro-unity protesters gather in Barcelona, two days after the Catalan parliament voted to split from Spain Jeff J Mitchell/Gett Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures People support a pro-unity demonstration from their balconies in central Barcelona Reuters/Rafael Marchante Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Pro-unity supporters take part in a demonstration in central Barcelona Reuters/Yves Herman Catalan pro-unity demonstration in pictures Protesters wave Spanish flags and carry banners during a pro-unity demonstration on in Barcelona Jack Taylor/Getty Carlos Lesmes, the president of the Supreme Court in Madrid, said this morning about Mr Puigdemonts absence: When someone doesnt appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other country, normally an arrest warrant is issued. The Catalan Presidents lawyer in Brussels insisted that his client will not return immediately to Spain. The climate is not good, it is better to keep some distance, said Paul Bekaert. He nonetheless added: If they ask, he will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice. Supporters of independence held a rally in Barcelona chanting in support of Mr Puigdemont and his colleagues, vowing resistance to Madrid. Banners accused Mr Rajoy of being the successor to Mussolini, Hitler and Franco; others called for solidarity from Europe for Catalonia. The move by the prosecuting authority for the extradition warrant and the jailing of the Catalan leaders were seen by some as vindication of Mr Puigdemonts decision to remain in exile. Miquel Rovira, a 36-year-old architect, said: This shows very clearly that they want to take our leaders from us and put them behind bars. It is an attempt to take away their voices before the December election and then to jail them for many years. These are Francoist tactics, they want to remove a generation of leadership from Catalonia. Artur Mas, a former Catalan President who had accompanied those facing charges to Madrid, pointed to his own experience to show what he considered to be the unfairness of the Spanish legal system. He had been banned from holding public office for two years by a court in 2014 after ignoring a ruling of the Constitutional Court and going ahead with a mock vote on Catalan independence. If the question is whether you can trust the Spanish judiciary, my answer is no, he said. From my personal point of view, considering what happened to me, I dont think that there are all the necessary guarantees to have a fair trial. Carles Puigdemont says he cannot return to Catalonia because Spain is intent on 'vengeance' But a lawyer for some of the accused complained that Mr Puigdemonts action was harming his colleagues in the PDeCAT Party. The Catalan President was spotted in a cafe while the others appeared in court. He is not here to answer questions. Not being at the service of the judiciary is always damaging for the rest of those being investigated, said Javier Melero. There were growing questions about Mr Puigdemonts behaviour in Catalonia. The newspaper el Periodico ran a critical article under the headline President, Enough is Enough. There were also doubts among some at the rally in Barcelona, even as Mr Puigdemonts name was being evoked by the crowd. Enrico Castells, a 30-year-old shop assistant, said: It is odd that the others had gone to defend themselves in Madrid and he is in Belgium. I think there should be unity in this. The ousted president of Catalonia has reacted to the jailing of nine members of his former Cabinet, posting on Twitter that "the legitimate government of Catalonia has been jailed for its ideas." Carles Puigdemont, the leader of the separatist government that Spanish authorities removed from office last week, was in Belgium on Thursday when a judge in Madrid jailed his colleagues. He and four regional ministers ignored a summons to appear in court for questioning in a rebellion investigation stemming from Catalonia's declaration of independence. The nine officials who were jailed complied. One of the nine has been granted bail, but the payment has not been posted. Puigdemont tweeted the government's "furious clamor" had sent the officials to jail. "The serene clamour of the Catalans is of freedom," he wrote, posting a photo of protesters in Barcelona. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man has been seriously injured after a gunman opened fire in a supermarket car park in the northern German city of Bremen, local police have said. Officers said the suspect is currently on the run but they believe there was is immediate danger to the public. "The background to this is not clear," said the police. Witnesses described seeing two men having an argument outside the REWE supermarket in the northern district of before one drew a gun and fired four or five shots at the other. The gunman then fled the scene. The victim is believed to have been seriously injured in the shooting according to German tabloid Bild which spoke to his family who were in the store with him at the time. His family were reportedly seen crying after the attack. The motive for the attack is currently unclear. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} An Italian court has acquitted a man of cannabis possession because he is a Rastafarian and was using the drug to meditate. The 30-year-old was arrested in May last year after police found eight grams of cannabis in his pocket and a further 50 grams at his home. A prosecutor called for him to be sentenced to up to four months in prison, but his lawyer successfully argued he should be acquitted because cannabis is regarded as sacred in the Rastafari religion. Explaining the judgement, the court in the southern coastal city of Bari said: Rastafarians are followers of a religion whose believers use marijuana for meditation. It added that the cannabis was only for his personal use. Rastafari is a young religion that developed in the 1930s in Jamaica. Rastafarians believe Haile Selassie, a former Ethiopian Emperor, is the reincarnation of God or a destined emissary. They say he will return to Africa members of the black community who were transported away from the continent during the slave trade and colonisation. 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 Marijuana has been at the centre of the Rastafari religion since its beginning and is smoked during religious discussion groups, called "reasonings". For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Police in Moscow have launched a murder investigation after an 18-year-old student allegedly stabbed his teacher to death before killing himself. Authorities believe Andrey Emeliannikov killed his health and safety teacher Sergey Danilov after he confronted him over truancy. The teenager allegedly posted photos of the killing online, in which he can be seen standing over the 44-year-old's body holding a knife, according to Russian news agency TASS. The bodies of Mr Emeliannikov and Mr Danilov were discovered in the classroom by another teacher, according to local media. Mr Danilov, described as a "kind and responsive" teacher, had been Mr Emeliannikov's head of class and was reportedly responsible for his overall academic performance. Students and teachers at the school expressed their shock at the horrifying incident. 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 One teacher told local media: "Intellectually, [Mr Emeliannikov] was always a little ahead of the others." One of Mr Emeliannikov's fellow students described him as a "well-read, self-possessed and kind person". Authorities told TASS a video found on the suspect's phone could serve as evidence in the ongoing investigation. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Spanish island of Tenerife has experienced 22 minor earthquakes in just four days, sparking fears the Mount Teide volcano could be about to erupt. The series of tiny tremors, the biggest of which had a magnitude of 1.4, struck the popular tourist town of Vilaflor. The 3,718 metre volcano - the highest point in Spain - is a major tourist attraction, seeing around three million visitors annually. Earthquakes can be caused by the movement of magma under the surface of a nearby volcano. As the magma moves it places pressure on the rock above which can cause an eruption. But the Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan) has tried to reassure tourists that there is nothing to worry about. In a statement on their Facebook page they said that these sorts of "swarms" of earthquakes are typical of a volcano like Mount Teide. They said: "Tenerife is an oceanic active volcanic island and as typical active volcanic system has a background seismic activity related to its volcanism. Seismic swarms are common in active volcanoes even during quiescent (inactive) periods, and Tenerife is currently facing a period of quiescent volcanic activity." Lucan Duria, a physicist who is studying the activity of Mount Teide, agreed that there was "nothing special" about the recent quakes. 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 told Mail Online: "Most volcanoes have shallow hydrothermal systems and when there is an increase in the pressure, these fluids mean earthquakes happen more easily then they do in other places. "Even a very small increase in pressure can cause earthquakes and remember these are very small earthquakes. "For the volcano to erupt the magma needs to erupt to a shallow level, but there is no risk of this happening in Teide as it is far too low." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Last week, a 14-year-old model from Perm, Russia, died while on a three-month assignment in China, setting off questions and a burst of unverified information regarding the circumstances of her death. On Tuesday, Russian authorities in Perm announced that they were starting a criminal investigation into whether Vlada Dzyubas death was caused by neglect, according to a local news publication. The inquiry could shed light on why a child who has not reached 14 years of age found herself abroad, who it was that brokered her contract, why she did not have the documents that provide medical support, said Anna Kuznetsova, the childrens rights commissioner for the Russian Federation, at a news conference in Vladivostok, according to the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. One red flag that has caught the attention of authorities: Dzyuba did not have health insurance, though her contract with Esee Models, the management company in Shanghai that hired her, stipulated that she should have enrolled before her arrival. Her lack of insurance may have kept Dzyuba from speaking up about the pains she was experiencing. Though an autopsy has not been performed, Andrey Kulikov, a representative of the Russian consulate in Shanghai, told RIA Novosti that the cause of Dzyubas death appeared to be multiple organ failure caused by sepsis and an infection in her nervous system. The Siberian Times had originally reported that Dzyuba was suffering from meningitis and severe exhaustion after participating in a 13-hour catwalk show during Shanghai Fashion Week, an unverified claim that was picked up by global news organisations. But the shows in Shanghai ended on 18 October and Dzyuba was not taken to the hospital until 25 October. It is unclear who was responsible for setting up Dzyubas insurance. Vlada and her mom signed the contract, and Vlada went by herself to Shanghai, wrote Dmitry Smirnov, a scout who brokered Dzyubas contract with Esee Models, in a chat on the social-media platform Vkontakte. He added that this was the second time Dzyuba had traveled abroad. She worked for three months in Taiwan last year. In Perm, Dzyuba was represented by Great Model, an agency run by Elvira Zaytseva. Zaytseva was reached Tuesday through Vkontakte, where she disputed accounts published by Russian media about Dzyuba being overworked, but would not give specifics. Zaytseva did not respond to questions about whether her agency had set up insurance for Dzyuba. According to a timeline provided by Esee Models, Dzyuba was on assignment in Yiwu, a city south of Shanghai, on 23 October. The next evening, she began to feel ill. Smirnov said that Dzyuba had a high temperature and was vomiting. On Wednesday, she returned to Shanghai and was taken to the hospital. She died on Friday morning. I didnt sleep for two days, and everyone was praying for Vlada, Smirnov said. The death of Vlada is not connected to her work as a model. It is a terrible tragedy. In a statement provided Tuesday, Esee Models said: We lost an angel. We must be strong and persevere in the aftermath. We are now working on an arrangement for the familys visit to China. We are also doing our best to communicate and cooperate with relevant departments. Esee Models said that Dzyuba worked mostly eight-hour days during her time in China. Under Chinese law, children who are younger than 16 are permitted to work for institutions of literature, art, physical culture and special crafts, so long as the work does not prevent them from attending school. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In the United States and Britain, companies are discouraged from working with models under the age of 16 by their respective fashion councils. New York City has a law in place that classifies underage models as child performers, with regulations that include limited work hours and mandatory trust accounts. In September, the French conglomerates Kering and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton passed a joint charter promising not to work with models under 16 for shows or shootings representing an adult and forbidding models ages 16 and 17 from working between 10pm and 6am. Kuznetsova, the childrens rights commissioner, announced that her agency would be looking into whether other underage Russian models are working in China without the necessary health insurance. The New York Times For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} An American family traveling through the Amazon region has gone missing after their vessel was robbed by river pirates. The Associated Press reported that the Heart family - husband Adam, wife Emily and two children - were among those on a ferry traveling in the Amazon River Delta area on Sunday when the vessel was attacked in northern Brazil. Several heavily armed men boarded the ferry and pusher and kept the passengers and crew hostage for hours, a police representative was quoted telling FocusOn News, adding that there were reports the family jumped into the river to escape their captors. Authorities said pirates fled the scene after forcing the boat to dock and seizing belongings onboard, according to the Associated Press. They arrived at the scene to find the Heart family missing. We have launched a full search with the civil police, military police, air rescue and fire department involved, the Daily Mail quoted a Ministry of Public Security and Social Defence spokesperson saying. According to the AP, authorities said the family had been living in the city of Florionapolis. Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home Show all 4 1 /4 Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home 256567.bin Handout/PA Wire Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home 256568.bin AP Photo/ EU NAVFOR Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home 256566.bin HO/AFP/Getty Images Fears remain as Briton captured by pirates calls home 256448.bin Getty Images The familys travels are documented in a blog that say an initial plan for a year-long trip to Tiera Del Fuego instead turned into an indefinite adventure. They are blisfully enjoying life on the slow road, with no end in sight, the blog says. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets on Thursday in protests across the West Bank marking a century since the Balfour Declaration, Britains promise to create a Jewish home in what is now Israel. In Ramallah, some 3,000 protesters marched from the city centre to the British Consulate, with many waving black flags and banners with slogans such as 100 years of dispossession. Smaller demonstrations took place in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank. Rawada Odeh, a demonstrator in Jerusalem, said she was protesting because Balfour promised a home to the Zionists while neglecting that there is a Palestinian population here in our land. The land does not belong to Balfour, she said. We are Palestinians, and we are living here and we are following our issue till we succeed. The 1917 declaration served as the basis for the British Mandate of Palestine, which was approved in 1920 by the League of Nations. The following decades saw a spike in the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine as Zionist state institutions took root. With that came increased friction with the Arab population. Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Show all 8 1 /8 Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Protesters wave Palestinian flags and carry a defaced photo of Theresa May and Arthur Balfour AP Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration A young protester holds a sign reading 'UK government should hang it's head in shame...' REUTERS Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians participate in a march to protest the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration AFP/Getty Images Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Protesters participate in the march AFP/Getty Images Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Protesters gather in the centre of the West Bank city of Ramallah AFP/Getty Images Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians protest against the Balfour Declaration on its 100th anniversary EPA Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians protest EPA Palestinians protest the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration Palestinian protesters burn a mock of Prime Minister Theresa May and Arthur James Balfour EPA Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish peoples desire to return to its historic homeland. It sees Britain as having played a supporting role in a narrative dominated by the determination, heroism and pioneering spirit of the early settlers who fought to build the state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is marking the anniversary in London at a dinner attended by Theresa May. The Palestinians see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their nakba, or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israels creation in 1948. AP For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Fake facts! exclaimed a senior Iraqi official in exasperation as he pointed to photographs online allegedly showing the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Kirkuk, orchestrating the Iraqi government retaking of the city last month. He said that in reality the picture, tweeted by a Kurdish leader as evidence of Iranian hegemony, dates from 2014. The greatest threat to the growing stability of Iraq is the differences between the US and Iran being fought out politically and even militarily in Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in an interview with the Independent earlier this week that his greatest concern is a US-Iran crisis. He added that it is not my job to solve their differences, but it is my job to prevent their confrontation inside Iraq. He hoped that mutual denunciations by Washington and Tehran would turn out to be rhetorical. Given US hostility to Iran, the Baghdad government is alarmed by what it sees as an attempt to portray it as an Iranian proxy manipulated by General Soleimani and reliant on the Shia paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Units (PMUs). Todays offensive by Iraq, PMU Shia militia commanded by Iranian IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on Kirkuk have sadly started a new war in Iraq & Kurdistan, reads a tweet from Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish leader and former Iraqi foreign minister last month. The senior Iraqi official said that Gen Soleimani never meets the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi or anybody else of real importance in Baghdad and has also failed to get an audience with the Shia supreme religious authority, Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. He said: In fact, Iranian influence over the Hashd has been going down over the last two years because they are no longer paying most of the groups, aside from Ketaeb Hezbollah. The propaganda war is intense and unscrupulous with Kurdish leaders in Irbil and much of the Arab media claiming that Iran pulls the strings in Baghdad, though the US is the governments main military ally. The PMUs are portrayed as sectarian death squads which are leading the offensive into Iraqi Kurdistan. One video posted online purports to show the Kurds blowing up a bridge over the Lesser Zaab river at Altun Kupri, where Kurdish and Iraqi forces confront each other, to block the PMUs advancing into the Kurdish heartlands. In reality, the bridge is still standing and the much-watched video is of an entirely different bridge in Topeka, Kansas being destroyed in a controlled explosion to make way for new construction. Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Show all 8 1 /8 Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqi forces flash the sign for victory as they head towards the city of Kirkuk AFP/Getty Images Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqi people gather on the road as they welcome Iraqi security forces members REUTERS Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqi children wave to Iraqi forces as they arrive AFP/Getty Images Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqis wave to Iraqi forces as they arrive in the first neighbourhood on the southern outskirts of Kirkuk AFP/Getty Images Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk A burnt Kurdistan flag is seen in Kirkuk REUTERS Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqi forces advance towards the city of Kirkuk AFP/Getty Images Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk Iraqis wave to Iraqi forces AFP/Getty Images Iraqi forces enter Kirkuk A member of the Iraqi forces walks past a defaced Kurdish flag painted on concrete blocks AFP/Getty Images The US has always been paranoid about Iranian influence in Iraq and tends to conflate Iraqi Shia fighting for their community and variant of Islam with proxies under the control of Iran. The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on a visit to Baghdad last month said the Hashd should go home, apparently believing that its members were IRGC fighters from Iran. Mr Abadi speaks out vigorously in defence of the Hashd, but says he is determined that they must be under strict government control. The power of the Hashd has become more limited today than when they were created as a mass movement three years ago by a fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Sistani - though several paramilitary organisations like the Badr Organisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Ketaeb Hezbollah have a much longer history. This was in June 2014 when the Iraqi army had lost Mosul to Isis and looked as if it would be unable to defend Baghdad. The Hashd was central in defending the capital and in early counter-offensives against Isis, but has increasingly had a secondary role in military operations which are now led by the highly trained and experienced Counter-Terrorism Force. In the nine-month siege of Mosul, the Hashd occupied territory outside the city, but the assault was led by the CTF, Federal Police and Emergency Response Division. There were no Hashd units in Kirkuk city earlier this week, though they do have joint checkpoints with the army along the road back to Baghdad. The Hashd, who are part of the Iraqi security forces and paid for by the state, are becoming less independent and less influenced by Iran because the Iraqi government is much more powerful than it used to be. But there is no doubt that Sunni and Kurds are frightened of them and they have a nasty reputation for sectarianism and criminality. For all their claims to be obedient to the state, there is an Iraqi saying that there are four givers of the law in Iraq: the government, the religious authorities, the tribes and the Hashd. Qais al-Khazali, 43, the leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shia paramilitary group, denies that it is under the control of Iran or is sectarian. Dressed in white turban and black robes, he answers questions swiftly and articulately, showing a moderation that feels out of keeping with his violent past. Once a lieutenant of the nationalist populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, from whom he split in 2004, he set up Asaib Ahl al-Haq which rapidly gained a reputation for ferocity and close links to Iran. Arrested by the British in 2007, he was released in exchange for a British hostage in 2010. Speaking in his office in Najaf in an interview with The Independent, he was keen to emphasise that his group were neither sectarian nor pawns of Iran. It is one of their lies, he says in response to the charge of sectarian killings. There has been no sectarian cleansing. I am adamant - we did not bring in any Shia families to a Sunni area. He says that American forces should leave Iraq because they are no longer needed. They dont want to leave, but we can force them to, he says. We have experience in resistance. If there is a mandate from the Iraqi parliament and the Iraqi people, then we will stand up to them. This would be the sort of nightmare envisaged by Mr Abadi, in which Iraqi Hashd - which the US believes are under Iranian direction - start killing American soldiers. As for the role of Iran and Soleimani in the taking of Kirkuk, Mr Khazali says that they were supportive to Mr Abadi and Iraqi government forces. The reason the Prime Minister gets the credit is because he galvanised a great force to show he was serious. He says that what Soleimani did was to pass on to the Kurds that Mr Abadi really meant business and they would not be able to resist. As for the future of the Hashd, he says that in future it should be completely amalgamated with the Iraqi military and should not be involved in politics. Much here will depend on whether or not there is a prolonged confrontation with the Kurds in northern Iraq, in which case Baghdad will continue to need large military forces, including the Hashd. As of Thursday, Baghdad is threatening to end a truce and take military action after the failure of talks about the central government taking control of the borders of Kurdistan. Speaking of more general developments in Iraq, Mr Khazali made an interesting point. He said that after the US invasion of 2003, it was the Shia and the Kurdish communities, long opposed to and oppressed by Saddam Hussein, who held power. But this Kurdish-Shia bloc was dissolved when the Kurds voted for independence in the referendum on 25 September and cannot be rebuilt. He says it might be time for the Shia community to look to the Sunni rather than the Kurds as their new partners in running Iraq. Asked if he thought the era of wars in Iraq was over, Mr Khazali, replied: Iraq is similar to Alice in Wonderland you cannot predict what is going to happen next. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Israel's deputy foreign minister has denied Palestinians are living under Israeli occupation, instead referring to the West Bank using the term "Judea and Samaria". Speaking on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which signalled British support for the creation of a Jewish homeland, Tzipi Hotovely said Israel gives equal rights to both Arabs and Israelis. Her remarks were challenged on BBC Radio 4's Today programme by host Nick Robinson, who said Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank do not have equal rights and that much of the international community recognises the West Bank as being under occupation. "I deny the idea of occupation. This is Judea and Samaria," Ms Hotovely replied. "Those are places where in the last 25 years the Israeli government was trying to give the Palestinians all chances to have their own ruling." She said "Palestinians refused every time to have their own self-determination" or recognise the state of Israel. Metal detectors removed from holy site by Israel authorities When Mr Robinson pointed out that the UN and many governments recognise the West Bank as occupied by Israel, Ms Hotovely said Israel could not "be an occupier in a land that the Jewish people belonged to for thousands of years." "Even Lord Balfour, the reason he recognised this connection, was because he was Christian, he knew the bible, he knew the thousands of years of connection of the Jewish people to these places." Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, land the Palestinians want included in a future state, in the 1967 Mideast war. The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Show all 10 1 /10 The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Medics evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an attack in Jerusalem. A Palestinian rammed a vehicle into a bus stop then got out and started stabbing people before he was shot dead AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Israeli ZAKA emergency response members carry the body of an Israeli at the scene of a shooting attack in Jerusalem. A pair of Palestinian men boarded a bus in Jerusalem and began shooting and stabbing passengers, while another assailant rammed a car into a bus station before stabbing bystanders, in near-simultaneous attacks that escalated a month long wave of violence AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Getty Images The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians throw molotov cocktail during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank. Recent days have seen a series of stabbing attacks in Israel and the West Bank that have wounded several Israelis AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Women cry during the funeral of Palestinian teenager Ahmad Sharaka, 13, who was shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes at a checkpoint near Ramallah, at the family house in the Palestinian West Bank refugee camp of Jalazoun, Ramallah AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A wounded Palestinian boy and his father hold hands at a hospital after their house was brought down by an Israeli air strike in Gaza Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinians look on after a protester is shot by Israelis soldiers during clashes at the Howara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus EPA The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies A lawyer wearing his official robes kicks a tear gas canister back toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration by scores of Palestinian lawyers called for by the Palestinian Bar Association in solidarity with protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, near Ramallah, West Bank AP The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Undercover Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian in Ramallah Reuters The IsraeliPalestinian conflict intensifies Palestinian youth burn tyres during clashes with Israeli soldiers close to the Jewish settlement of Bet El, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child The deputy foreign minister went on to say it was "very clear that the Palestinians are not interested in a Palestinian state". Asked if she could see Israel incorporating the occupied West Bank, she said: "I think Judea and Sumeria are definitely going to be under Israeli control. The Palestinians should decide whether they want to live peacefully with us. "If they would like to declare war on Israel, what was proven in the last 70 years was that Israel can win every single battle and every single war that the neighbours are declaring." The Balfour declaration is celebrated by Israelis while Palestinians view it as a political injustice. The declaration was the result of discussions between British Jewish leaders seeking political recognition of their goal of Jewish statehood and British politicians embroiled in the First World War. Written by British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour and addressed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British financier and proponent of Zionism, the declaration promised British assistance to create a Jewish homeland. "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object," the declaration reads, continuing with the caveat: "It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine." Israel views the pledge as the first international recognition granted to the Jewish people's desire to return to its historic homeland. Palestinians see the declaration as the original sin, a harbinger of their "nakba," or catastrophe, the mass displacement that resulted from the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} In a nutshell: A swish, art deco-inspired luxury hotel in Beverly Hills grand yet modern, luxurious but with laid-back staff. Price point: The neighbourhood In a prime position on the western edge of Beverly Hills, the Waldorf Astoria - which opened in 2017 - is right by Santa Monica Boulevard, and a hop and skip from Rodeo Drive. The centre of Beverly Hills is walkable, but like anywhere in LA, youll need a car to get anywhere else. Many choose to rent, but car-share apps like Uber and (the less controversial) Lyft are cheap out here, so nowheres going to set you back more than $15 a trip. From the hotel, its a 12-mile ride to Downtown, 6.5 miles to Hollywood, and 13 miles to LAX airport. The look The $200m hotel was in development since 2008, and was designed by the studio of Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR), with additional exterior collaboration with architectural firms Perkins+Will and Gensler. Made of white limestone, it's shaped like a wedge and positioned at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard in a satisfying curve. Inside, the white, clean interiors are peppered with metallic artwork like the grand bronze chandelier in the lobby - and bright colours. It feels like an art deco twist on mid-century design. The vibe Its a big, airy, modern hotel with plush furnishings. It feels like a perfect spot for well-heeled couples, although I did see several families playing poolside. Check-in was relaxed and unstuffy, and the incredibly quick turnaround from cab door to room door was impressive. They also offer a complimentary unpacking service if youre particularly lazy. Bed and bath Airy, pristine, white and above all large. The website describes even the entry-level rooms as oversize and they do deliver. Mine - an entry-level "superior with terrace" - was long, wide and high-ceilinged. You can jog from one end of the room to another, or breakdance in the bathroom, if thats your thing. Everything is geared around a good sleep: a gigantic bed, high above the busy street below, with sound-insulating windows and thick curtains. Lights and gadgets in the room can be controlled using the iPad provided from the opening of curtains to the dimming of lights. It's more of a novelty than a major timesaver, but a nice touch nonetheless. My south-facing room overlooked the urban sprawl of LA, and I could see DTLA in the distance to the left, and Century City to the right. Rooms facing north east get nice views of residential Beverly Hills, while those facing south get more of a feel for the bustling city. Dave Maclean's hotel review Food and drink The main restaurant is Jean Georges, located on the ground floor. It bills itself as French-American cuisine though the menu includes South American flavours and European classics - a slightly unfocused mish-mash, though there are hits. Dont leave without trying the avocado pizza, with chilli, lime and cilantro the freshness of the toppings and the tang of salt crystals offset the rich oily dough. The rooftop bar and restaurant - called simply The Rooftop by JG - has some of the best views in LA and the bar prices in particular are very reasonable for the part of town. Pools, spas and public areas Close to the bar, the rooftop pool is a no-fuss affair - a reasonably sized oblong area with surround views across the city. The gym is on the larger side for a hotel, and was empty when I explored it. Theres also a 5,000 square foot spa with six treatment rooms, and a hair salon. Nuts and bolts Room count: 119 rooms, 51 suites Freebies: Bottled water (2 x 800ml Voss bottles per day), and chocolates with the turndown In the bathroom: Toiletries by Diptyque WiFi: Free and fast Extra charges: Parking costs $50 a day for guests, or $17 for the first hour and $2 every additional 20 minutes Disability access: Wheelchair-accessible rooms available Pet policy: Pets allowed for a $150 fee Bottom line Best thing: The rooftop space is an unusually high perch in this part of town, and allows a full 360-degree view of the city with a little bit of wandering. Worst thing: Its a huge, high hotel with a limited number of lifts, which means waiting times can be a couple of minutes. Perfect for: Couples after a romantic stay in a fancier part of LA. Instagram from: The rooftop bar - overlooking leafy Beverly Hills. Room rate: Doubles from $815 (614), room only. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Singapore Airlines has just unveiled its new first-class suites, soon to be fitted onto its A380 fleet. Literally the height of luxury, these upmarket boltholes come complete with fully flat beds (with double beds available for couples), personal wardrobes, mood lighting and 32-inch screens. They may transform the experience of flying from bearable to downright enjoyable but they dont come cheap. A return flight from London to Sydney via Singapore will set passengers back at least 9,500. The suites feature a sit-down vanity mirror (Singapore Airlines) As exclusive a seat as youre likely to find on a plane other than flying by private jet the suites are few and far between, with only six available on each of the new aircraft. And, for now, they will only be available on selected flights on the Singapore-Sydney-Singapore portion of the route. Suites come with a separate leather chair and wardrobe (Singapore Airlines) Still, if you do have the cash and inclination, what else does 9,500 get you? The suites also feature fully adjustable leather seats upholstered by Poltrona Frau, sliding doors, customised handbag stowage compartment, amenity box lined with leather and two bathrooms, one of which has a sit-down vanity counter. The bed can also be fully stowed to create a bigger space. In fact, the suites look more like bijoux hotel rooms than plane seats. Recommended The travel trends that will change the way you holiday For the more plebeian passengers slumming it in Business Class there are 25 inch seats that fully recline into a flat bed to get excited about, with new wings on either side to give better back support. Premium Economy passengers can look forward to a 19.5 inch-wide seat, with 8 inches of reclining potential, plus noise-cancelling headphones. And even those in Economy will be treated to a six-way adjustable headrest and an ergonomically designed footrest. The new Singapore Airlines A380 fleet cost $850 million to upgrade and will have 471 seats altogether across four classes: six Suites, 78 Business Class seats, 44 Premium Economy Class seats and 343 Economy Class seats. The food offering has also been updated (Singapore Airlines) The significant investment that we are making with the introduction of new cabin products demonstrates our commitment to continued investment in products and services, our long-term approach to ensure we retain our leadership position, and our confidence in the future of premium full-service air travel, said Singapore Airlines CEO Mr Goh Choon Phong. The new cabin products are the culmination of four years of work, involving extensive customer research and close partnerships with our designers and suppliers. We are confident that the results will genuinely wow our customers, and ensure that we continue to provide them an unparalleled travel experience. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Old people. Screaming kids. Couples desperate to talk to anyone but each other. Cruises get a bad rap. But Sir Richard Branson thinks theres a gap in the market and this week, he announced the launch of adults-only cruises, marketed entirely at young professionals. Virgin Voyages which Branson unveiled at the dockyard in Genoa this week will launch in 2020. The cruises will be strictly over 18s and adult by design, with a strong focus on things that will appeal to a younger crowd. So what do younger cruisers want? Photo ops, for starters where cruise ships traditionally start with indoor cabins, and balconies are seen as luxuries, 93 per cent of the rooms will have an ocean view, and 86 per cent a balcony. Other details are being kept under wraps for now, but CEO Tom McAlpin has promised a sophisticated ship and a transformational experience, with rejuvenating day-life and exciting nightlife possibly millennial buzzwords. Interiors will be less cruisey and more lifestyle-focused, curated by designers whove worked on the hipster Ace hotel chain and Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. It will reflect the craftsmanship and materiality inspired by super yachts, McAlpin told Conde Nast Traveler. Richard Branson launched his new cruise line in Genoa this week (virgin.com) Virgin Voyages are building three ships from scratch for the venture at a cost of $2.55 billion. The first will take off from Miami in 2020, with a planned 2,700 passengers and 1,150 crew. Branson once envisaged a cruise line for under-30s, he told Conde Nast Traveler, though he has now focused on a more curated, adults-only pitch. The industry is trying to be all things to all people, and we want to create a cool experience, more romantic, a more transformational experience, he said. Branson is not the first to try and pitch cruises to a younger market. U by Uniworld will launch its first millennial cruise in April, repurposing two river cruise boats to appeal to younger people, and adding wine and painting classes, mixologist courses and silent discos. NCL, meanwhile, is adding a 1000ft race track for electric cars to its Norwegian Bliss ship from June. And, as the Independent reported in August, Aqua Expeditions is turning its hand to boutique and festival cruises along the worlds greatest rivers. Can't wait to cruise with Sir Richard? It may be three years away but Virgin Voyages is already taking sign-up deposits for $500 via its website. Should the ship (and routes) not live up to your standards closer to the time, you can cancel without penalty. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} So now its time for us all to follow Theresa Mays bone-headed suggestion that we feel proud of the iniquitous Balfour Declaration on its hundredth anniversary this week. The Israelis will be celebrating and why not, for it set Britains seal on the future Israeli state in Palestine. Perhaps Israel would not have been created without it. But the fearful suffering and tragedy of the Palestinian refugees which was to follow in the coming years suggest that the Balfour letter through its very wording was certain to create a terrible wrongdoing which to this day curses the place we used to call the Holy Land. Even more disgraceful than Mays foolish words for many Britons may well feel shame or prefer silence when they contemplate this episode of history were Mark Regevs remarks this week that citizens of the United Kingdom, to which he is currently accredited as ambassador are extremists if they oppose the Balfour Declaration. Thus, the man whose nauseous excuses for the slaughter in Gaza we had to put up with when he was an Israeli government spokesperson, continues that those who oppose the Balfour Declaration are exposing themselves for the extremists they are. If you oppose a Jewish national home, that means you think Israel should be destroyed. And lets be clear: thats the position of the Iranian government; thats the position of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. So I get it. Instead of giving the Israeli ambassador a dressing down for such undiplomatic language towards her own citizens, May preferred to keep a cowardly silence while Israels ambassador told us what to think about the Balfour Declaration and that if we didnt agree with him, we were all extremists, terrorists, and therefore presumably antisemites, racists, Nazis, not to mention sympathisers of Hamas. Centenary of the Balfour Declaration What gall this man has. Does Regev not even realise as at least one Israeli journalist has pointed out that the Balfour Declaration may itself have been, by extension, antisemitic? It followed only a few years after Britain passed laws specifically introduced to prevent further Jewish immigration to the UK from Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1917, we certainly wanted the support of the Jews of Europe and America in the First World War but we preferred any Jewish immigrants to avoid dank London and head for sunny Palestine. Yet lets point out something right away. Israel whether or not Balfour was its original foreign sponsor exists, and will only disappear if it destroys itself (which its prime ministers continued policy of thieving even more Arab land for Israeli colonists might ultimately bring about). As one of Israels finest historians, now an Oxford scholar, has rightly pointed out, Israels existence might have been grossly unjust to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes now a diaspora of more than six million refugees but it is legal and came into existence legally. It is internationally recognized though its colonies in the West Bank are not and it is a member of the United Nations and has diplomatic relations with 159 countries. This, however, does not excuse Theresa Mays pride. Indeed, it was instructive to note that in her remarks, she placed Britains trade relations in front of the terrifying injustice done to the Palestinians. Of course she did. For she cares more about the results of Brexit than she cares about millions of refugees. This, remember, is the lady who held Donald Trumps hand. Trump: Israelis and Palestinians are 'reaching for peace' Here, for the record, is what she actually said about Balfour: I am pleased that good trade relations and other relations that we have with Israel we are building on and enhancing. We must also be conscious of the sensitivities that some people do have about the Balfour Declaration and we recognise that there is more work to be done. We remain committed to the two-state solution in relation to Israel and the Palestinians. And that is about as disgraceful as the Balfour Declaration itself. So lets remember what this document actually said in 1917: His Majestys government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. The obvious lie in this single sentence a charter for refugeedom if ever there was one is that while Britain would support a Jewish homeland, the majority of the population (700,000 Arabs as opposed to 60,000 Jews, according to Hanan Ashrawi) are not regarded as having a homeland at all but merely referred to as existing non-Jewish communities. They are not even called Arabs or Muslims which most of them were but as just communities which exist. And which of course might be persuaded one day to exist somewhere else. We can forget that Balfour and his chums admitted within months that they didnt intend to give the Arabs any attention. They certainly didnt get any. Within just over 30 years, Israel itself was created and the Palestinian tragedy began. And in this, Theresa May takes pride. I did particularly enjoy those sensitivities she referred to. Not, presumably, the sensitivities of the Palestinian refugees, but perhaps a few Tory MPs and, I suppose poor Jeremy Corbyn whos getting his usual whipping, this time for not attending the Balfour Declaration formal dinner in London. If only he could be as forthright as this over Brexit and denounce the whole shambles of leaving the EU but alas, hes more worried about his Labour constituencies. Anyway, for May, there is more work to be done and she still supports a two-state solution. More work to do? When the occupied Arab West Bank is still being concreted over? When any sane person realises that the peace process has collapsed? This is a tragedy, of course, for Israelis as well as Palestinians. Israels achievement is that it has stayed alive with massive and uncritical support and subventions from the United States, to be sure and actually does exist as a state. But without peace with its neighbours and an end to Jewish colonisation of other peoples land, and without a Palestinian state which alas, I suspect will never exist Israel will always be at war, always live in fear and always have enemies. But there you go. Feel plenty of pride like Theresa. And if you dont, consider yourself a Nazi. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} That US President Donald Trump has not yet made an official visit to the UK is down to the entirely justifiable opposition such a prospect provokes. Here is a man who ran a racist election campaign and brought hard-right nationalists into the corridors of power, who has open contempt for treaties and bodies like the United Nations. Yet this week, Theresa May will welcome to London another world leader about whom the exact same and much more can be said: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His second time in London this year, Bibis visit is for no other reason than to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, a document ably summarised by Gideon Levy as an empire promising a land that it had not yet conquered to a people not living there, without asking the inhabitants. Trump: Israelis and Palestinians are 'reaching for peace' But while much of the focus understandably has been on the history, why is Netanyahu even a welcome visitor, given what is happening on the ground today? The Likud leader heads a government eagerly pursuing settlement expansion across the West Bank, aiming to have advanced 12,000 settlement housing units this year. Anti-Palestinian incitement and rejectionism is routine from senior Israeli politicians; as a recent AFP report noted, prominent members of Netanyahus coalition openly oppose the idea of a Palestinian state and advocate annexing most of the West Bank. Just recently, Israel has approved both a significant enlargement of a settlement within a Palestinian neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, and the first settlement homes to be built in Hebron for 15 years. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty Draft legislation include the first practical move to annex West Bank territories since 1967, while another bill declares that only Jews have the right to self-determination in Israel (not Israelis). Palestinian citizens, of course, already face systematic discrimination in the Negev, the community of Umm al-Hiran faces total destruction so that a Jewish community can be built in its place. A similar fate awaits Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank. Since the start of 2017, according to the UN, Israeli occupation forces have killed 46 Palestinians and injured 3,445, and have demolished 374 structures (displacing 588). There have also been 55 Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip this year alone (I know, you probably didnt hear about them). Netanyahu is the head of a regime that closes media companies and arrests journalists, jails Palestinian activists and human rights defenders without charge or trial, and tries children in military courts with a 99 percent conviction rate. This is (a fraction of) the Palestinians daily reality at the hands of the Israeli authorities. Yet Netanyahu will be welcomed with open arms by the British Government. So, what should Britain be doing? Expressions of support for peace and pro forma statements of criticism are not enough. There is also no point in waiting for Israelis to elect a new government as I wrote last week, the Israeli opposition merely wants a smarter apartheid. Private censure and constructive engagement have also proven to be ineffective, as demonstrated by the issue of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention. Last year, Israel cancelled a scheduled visit by a follow-up delegation of senior British lawyers who had authored a 2012 report on Children in Military Custody. Five years on, Israel still has not implemented recommendations from the original report but with zero consequences. What is urgently needed is action, and accountability. UK policy should reflect the asymmetry of the two parties (occupier and occupied), the importance of international law and human rights treaties as a reference point, and accountability for violations of that body of law and of those treaties. Practical measures the British Government can take include suspending the granting of arms export licenses to the Israeli military, a ban on Israeli settlement produce, and tougher rules for charities regarding support for settlements, building on the recent Charity Commission warning. The UK should condition bilateral ties with the Israeli government, including in relation to trade arrangements, on respect for international law and human rights. The past is not in the past, wrote British Palestinian scholar-activist Yara Hawari in June, and Britain continues to be complicit in the suffering of the Palestinians through its diplomatic and trade relations with Israel. Ending that complicity would be the best form of apology. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it, Boris Johnson told a parliamentary select committee yesterday. One year and half after the north London mum was arrested in Iran, a period in which shes been subjected to solitary confinement, alleged torture and separation from her baby daughter, the Foreign Secretary hands a gift to her jailors by confirming their false claim that she had visited the country for anything but a holiday. Teaching journalism covertly would be a serious crime in Iran and the fact is it is simply not true as both her husband Richard and her employer Thomson Reuters Foundation have been at pains to point out. If our first question to Boris Johnson is, What took you so long to speak out? in my opinion he has already answered it he simply doesnt care. Why else is he so phenomenally ignorant of the facts: Nazanin and her child were in Iran on holiday. 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 Not knowing this is a dereliction of duty that is costing a 38-year-old woman continued suffering. Richard Ratcliffe is left to express gratitude to Johnson for finally acknowledging his wife and for finally agreeing to meet their MP, Tulip Siddiq. He must surely be grateful that Johnson did not add: Well, as I understand it, she might actually have been intelligence-gathering. Incompetence? Stupidity? Surely not malice only Johnson can know. What is clear is that his reading of what Nazanin was doing in Iran is not true: there is nothing irregular about Nazanin having visited Iran in April 2016. She had done so before with her husband. It is quite astonishing that nearly 600 days in prison, being served under a five year sentence that risks turning into 16 years, the British Foreign Secretary needs Nazanins advocates to first persuade him that she was really on holiday there, visiting her parents with her daughter. Jailed in Iran: Richard Ratcliffe calls on the government to bring Nazanin home Sadly, Johnson has repeated the UK ambassador to Irans assertion that there is a humanitarian case for her release that is for criminals. She is not a criminal. It is a purely legal case. Johnson has clearly not bothered to read exiled lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadis column for The Guardian, which says the Islamic Republic is breaking its own laws in keeping Nazanin In response to a question, Johnson said he would be willing to visit Nazanin in prison a move welcomed by her husband. Indeed, that would be something for the Iranians. For the UK Foreign Minister to drop in on Nazanin and then leave without her is only a sign of British impotence it would be in no uncertain terms a humiliation for the UK. Boris Johnson going to Iran would be to do only what every business man and diplomat is there to do: bow to the strongman of the Middle East in person, confirm its victory in Syria, and hope that the relationship stays strong. Disagree? How useless would Bill Clinton have looked if hed turned up, in 2009, to just visit the two US journalists doing 12 years of hard labour after having crossed into North Korean territory? This is not day one. This is nearly day 600. What does Johnson plan to do? See Nazanin and then come back and tell us, Oh, she doing jolly fine making handicrafts and playing Sudoku. Nobody is loving his Brexit more than the Iranians. It is just what they want. A weaker EU, and a weaker UK, without so much as lifting a finger. And a Foreign Secretary without the clout to demand the release of a woman being used and abused as a pawn. Giving the Islamic Republics revolutionary guard the bizarre and untrue gift that Nazanin was training journalists is unacceptable and puts her life at risk. Ask Ahmadreza Djalali, the 45-year-old disaster medicine expert based in Stockholm who made the mistake of visiting his home country only to be accused of working with the Israelis he is waiting to appeal his death sentence. With Defence Secretary Michael Fallon apparently prompted to resign after allegedly sexually harassing women in and out of Parliament, perhaps Theresa May should step in to stop the abuse of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe at the hands of men seemingly without a conscience. Sign in Welcome! Log into your account your username When Abson Joseph begins his post as the new dean of Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University on Jan. 1, he knows he will have a trusted companion and peer by his side. Joseph, a professor of New Testament and biblical languages at Indiana Wesleyan, is excited for his promotion and the chance to shape what students will be taught at the school for years to come. This gives me the opportunity to craft curriculum and assessment work, helping people not just here but internationally and globally as well. Its an honor and a privilege to participate in serving people that way, shaping what the future will be and giving people interested in ministry a chance to acquire the tools to do what they do well, Joseph said. Joseph, who was born in Haiti, said he was sick when he was young and God answered his parents prayers to preserve him. He grew up with knowledge of the Bible and understood God wanted him to do something with his life. It wasnt until he participated in a conference just as he finished the equivalent of high school that he got a call to ministry. He originally thought he wanted to be an architect. It was then that God told me he wanted me to build lives, not buildings, he said. In his first year of seminary, he met Larisa Levicheva, who would become his wife. They met and, as Joseph said, quickly fell in love. Levicheva was in her last year at seminary and then left to teach for two years at Wesleyan Bible College in Vladimir, Russia. The two knew their futures were together, however, and since Levicheva specialized in the Old Testament, Joseph studied the New Testament of the Bible so their ministries could complement each other. Weve always seen our ministries as one, Joseph said. We have similar visions for seeing Gods work done and that people are trained to be the best ministers they can be. Levicheva said she was proud of what Joseph has accomplished and said they work so well together because of the two years they spent apart while Joseph was finishing seminary and she was in Russia. This was before Skype, so all we had was phone conversations, Levicheva said. We learned early on that whenever we had disagreements we had to hear each other and not project onto the other person. Just because we had disagreements of opinion, that wasnt an attack on us. Who we are as professionals and what our relationship is were two different things, and we learned to express opinions in a loving and respectful manner. Joseph said he has a vision to make Wesley Seminary not just the best in Indiana, but one of the best in the world. For pastors that are called to ministry, we want them to come and leave transformed by the academic rigor and depth of understanding the Bible, Joseph said. We want them transformed by theology and having encountered God and grown in their own walk with God and their spiritual life. Joseph said he is a little nervous to be starting this new position of great responsibility, but he finds confidence in the fact he is sure God has called him to his post, and hell have a great support from people around him, including his wife. I know He will empower me and I can rely on people around me, the faculty, staff and my friends that have come before me, Joseph said. I look forward to helping them and learning from them. I think we will learn from each other. 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The Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere has queried the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over its failure to invite the former Secretary to Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, following his indictment for corruption. It noted that the commission only extended an invitation to the former Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Mr Ayodele Oke, and his wife over the cash found in an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos. The two men were sacked by President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday following their indictment for corruption by a panel headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. Afenifere in a statement on Thursday by its spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, cautioned the EFCC against sparing Lawal, noting that its failure to invite the sacked official was contrary to the directive by the President that the ex-SGF and Oke should both be investigated by the EFCC. We are however surprised that the EFCC has not extended similar invitation to Mr Babachir Lawal, the former SGF sacked alongside Oke, Afenifere said. It observed that following public outcry that the Presidency should hand the former officials to the EFCC for prosecution after their sacking, spokesmen of the administration have been speaking in forked tongues about Presidency not teleguiding the anti-graft war and that the agency would exercise its discretion. Odumakin said the anti-graft agency seemed to have exercised its discretion by inviting Oke and sparing Lawal who he alleged was initially protected by the Presidency and defended after he was indicted by the Senate for fraud. The Afenifere spokesman insisted that Oke should be investigated and prosecuted if he was indicted for wrong-doing by the Osinbajo panel, adding that the EFCC cannot, however, spare Lawal while probing the sacked NIA boss. Inviting one and leaving the other has brought to the fore again the charge of selectivity with picking and choosing those to prosecute over corruption in the land which led a serving Senator to observe that insecticide comes handy when allegations of corruption are raised against some people and deodorant deployed when it is the turn of others, Afenifere submitted. The group insisted that EFCC must also invite Lawal in order to dispel the perception of selectivity in the anti-graft campaign, noting that everyone who broke the law must be treated equally no matter their status or origin. We insist that for the perception not to become stronger that the anti-graft war develops strong teeth against the vulnerable and become toothless against the sacred cows, the EFCC must invite Lawal as it goes after Oke, Afenifere stressed. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) Former Nigeria Vice President, Dr Alex Ekwueme, who is currently on admission in Memfis Hospital for Neurosurgery, Enugu is reported to be in stable condition. An aide of the former vice president, who spoke to newsmen on condition of anonymity, said that his boss was responding to treatment. When the News Agency of Nigeria visited the hospital, the manager said that it was against the practice to give out information about patients. Meanwhile, the family of the former vice president had in a statement thanked members of the public for their concern on the health of their father. The statement signed by the traditional ruler of Oko, Prof. Laz Ekwueme, said that the former vice president would remain under close medical attention. The former Vice President was on Oct. 29, hospitalised for alleged chest infection. Ekwueme had a quiet celebration of his 85th birthday on Oct. 21 in the company of his family members and he remained in high spirits up till his recent health challenges. His doctors confirmed that he is stable, but he will remain under close medical attention in the meantime. The family requests the sustained support and prayers of Nigerians as he continues to make a full recovery, Ekwueme said. Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman in Abia, Chief Donatus Nwankpa, has called on the Federal and South-East state governments to rally round the former Vice President to ensure he gets proper medical treatment. Ekwueme is a national figure. The Federal and the South-East governors should rally round the elder statesman to ensure that he gets the best of treatment. He was vice president under Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1983. Most of the Federal Government colleges were built under his watch and at a minimal cost. The former vice president has never been indicted for any corruption. Ekwuemes issue transcends party politics. I call on the Federal Government and the five south-east governors to urgently move in and intervene to ensure that he gets the best of treatment anywhere in the world. Source: ( NAN ) Zambia has refused to renew the immigration papers of a Nigerian cleric residing in the country as he has been given some two days to vacate their territory. The Government of Zambia has given a Nigerian pastor, Pastor Augustine Oso Ebosele of Omega Fire Ministries in Lusaka 48 hours notice to leave the country. The country said it decided not to renew the employment permit of the cleric because his conduct has divided the Omega Fire Ministries into two parties. OFM was founded by Apostle Johnson Suleman. Chief Government Spokesperson Kampamba Mulenga made this announcement in Lusaka, the Zambia capital. Ms Mulenga said it was feared that with the Pastors continued stay in the country, the acrimony in Omega Fire Ministries could result into the breakdown and law and order. She said Pastor Obesele was given 48 hours to leave the country, in accordance with the Immigration and Deportation Act number 18 of 2010. She added that contrary to speculations, the Government has not closed Omega Fire Ministries and was not against Nigerian Pastors. She added, Omega Fire Ministries Headquartered in Nigeria is free to send a senior pastor to come and help reconcile the membership in Lusaka. Members of the church should avoid speculation and remain calm as matters are being dealt with the Church authority. As the President Muhammadu Buhari-led federal government is set to take-over accounts belonging to millions of Nigerians that dont have a BVN, anxiety have gripped banks and its customers. Banks were gripped on Wednesday by the fear of a major liquidity crisis should the government pull out funds belonging to customers without Bank Verification Number (BVN). The deadline given by the court for such customers to lose their cash is tomorrow. Justice Dimgba Igwe of the Federal High Court, ruling on an ex parte application filed by the Federal Government through the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation on October 21, granted the temporary forfeiture of such cash within two weeks unless the owners justify their ownership of such accounts. There has been confusion over the status of such funds after the 14-day deadline. The Nation learnt yesterday that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) might, at the expiration of the deadline, compel the 21 commercial banks to provide a status report on non-BVN-linked accounts in their books. When that happens, banking sector liquidity may suffer as lenders begin to return un-linked funds to government coffers. The Vice-President, West African Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), Emeka Obegoru, said if there was no suit challenging the court ruling, the banks will have to produce a full list of their customers without BVN. He said failure to comply meant the banks will have to tell the court why they could not produce the list. Director-General of the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) Prof. Akpan Ekpo agreed with Obegoru. He said if neither the banks nor individuals complained and the timeline elapsed, the government must find a way to get the funds from the lenders. He disclosed that many people with skeletons in their cupboards still refused to enroll on the BVN network because it will expose their illicit financial dealings. He, however, said it would remain an uphill task for the government to trace the funds, given that the banks are more likely to protect their customers unless whistle blowers give out information on the accounts to the public or the government. Ekpo said keeping money in safe, a practice that does not require BVN, had been a regular practice, and will continue to be an avenue where fraudulent persons keep huge cash in banks vaults to evade asset tracers. I think it will turn a money spinner for whistleblowers as government pressures the banks to get the true position of key accounts without BVN, he said. Ekpo said lenders could collude with high net-worth customers or politically exposed persons without BVN or accounts not linked to BVN to ensure their financial dealings are not exposed. How to get the funds out from the banks is going to be a problem for government because chances are that banks will protect their customers. Even if the government decides to raid the banks, genuine customers money may be carted away, he said, Former Executive Director, Keystone Bank, Richard Obire, said for now, neither banks nor civil society groups had challenged the exparte the judgment, hence leaving the implementation of the ruling at the discretion of the Federal Government. He said where the funds involved were large enough, the liquidity of the banking sector might be threatened as more cash leave to government coffers. If the funds leave the banks to government coffers, the affected lenders may suffer liquidity challenges depending on the level of their customers involvement, he said. He added that the government may react to the criticisms by being selective in its implementation. Principal Counsel at Eze & Associates, Chukwuemeka Eze, said when the implementation begins, individuals affected by the policy could challenge it in court. That means the burden of proof will shift to the owner of the money not linked to the BVN. The person has to prove where he was, and why he was not able to enroll on the BVN network. It will be based on individuals making case for themselves when the timeline expires tomorrow, he said. Eze said the banks might escalate the discussion at the next Bankers Committee meeting because of the sensitive nature of the matter involved. When the banks come under serious pressure as the implementation begins, which is likely, they will have to call for a Bankers Committee meeting to decide on how to approach the dilemma. But there are still going to be some exceptions, such as Nigerians in Diaspora and those serving long prison sentences, he said. Eze said the government had to be careful in implementing the court order, as it had the capability of causing economic dislocation. The real targets, according to him, are people who open accounts with fake names to hide fraudulently obtained wealth. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, on Wednesday expressed his disappointment over the sudden resignation of a former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, as the Chairman, Corruption and other Financial Crime Cases Trials Monitoring Committee set up by the National Judicial Council. The CJN spoke at the inauguration of the committee, which is now headed by a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Suleiman Galadima. The NJC had on Tuesday announced Justice Galadima as Justice Salamis replacement following the ex-PCAs resignation reported in the media last week. At the inauguration of the Galadima-led 16-man committee on Wednesday, Justice Onnoghen noted that Justice Salami earlier gave his consent to serve on the committee. He however expressed gratitude that Justice Galadima accepted to serve on the committee. He said, The committee was initially billed to be headed by His Lordship, Hon. Justice Ayo lsa Salami, OFR, former President of the Court of Appeal. Having earlier given his consent, we regret that His Lordship is unable to assume the leadership of the committee for personal reasons. We do hope however that His Lordship, Hon. Justice Ayo Salami, OFR, will in the near future, be available to offer the judiciary in particular and the nation in general the benefits of his wealth of experience. However, I am pleased to announce that Hon. Justice Suleiman Galadima, JSC (retd.), CFR, has graciously accepted to serve as the chairman of the committee. Members of the committee are the current President of the Nigeria Bar Association, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, and some of his predecessors. Ex-NBA Presidents named as members of the committee are Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), Mr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), Mr. Joseph Daudu (SAN). and Mr. Augustine Alegeh (SAN). Other members of the committee are the Chief Judge of Borno State, Justice Kashim Zannah; Chief Judge of Imo State, Justice P.O. Nnadi; Chief Judge of Delta State, Justice Marsahal Umukoro; and Chief Judge of Oyo State, Justice M. L. Abimbola. Others include two members of the NJC, Dr. Garba Tetengi (SAN), and Mrs. R.I. Inga; representative, Non-Governmental Organisations, representative, Federal Ministry of Justice, and the representative, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. The Secretary of NJC, Gambo Saleh, will serve as the secretary of the committee. The CJN said the constitution of the committee was part of far-reaching measures aimed at providing renewed impetus to eradicate delays in the trials of corruption and other economic crime cases in our courts which he announced in September. The CJN, who is also the Chairman of the NJC, said the Council at its 83rd meeting held on September 27 and 28, 2017, approved the setting up of the committee. He said as part of such measures, he also announced that that heads of courts were directed to compile and submit a compendium of all corruption cases being handled by their various jurisdictions and also directed them to designate a court or more in their jurisdictions to handle solely such cases. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) Hundreds of customized UNICEF school bags and mosquito nets were recovered by the Kano Public Complaint and Anti-Corruption Agency at the Wambai Market in Kano. According to reports,the bags were provided by the international donor agency specifically to assist the children of the internally displaced persons (IDP) in the Boko Haram ravaged Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, but were said to be diverted into the local market in Kano. The Head of Operation of the agency, CSP Suleiman Aliyu Gusau, said the agency has intensified investigation to unravel those behind the diversion of the materials. One of the sellers of such items revealed that they mostly receive the supply from someone in Maiduguri, while he purchased the bags for N600 each and in-turn, sold it for N1,200. Source: ( Instablog9ja ) Media reports have it that a serious inferno has hit the house of a traditional ruler in the Niger Delta part of Nigeria. Reports reaching DAILY POST says property worth several millions of Naira have been destroyed as fire engulfed the inner room of the Dein of Agbor Kingdom. It was gathered that vital documents were also destroyed. The cause of the fire has not been ascertained at the time of filing this report, but Community Source who craved anonymity told a reporter that unknown persons allegedly set the palace on fire due to the Kings absence from the throne recently. The Source claimed that the masterminds stole valuable items at the Kings palace before burning same. I think the fire was put up by some group of people who were aggrieved that the king has been absent from the throne. I think they came into the palace to steal and after that, they set up the fire. The fire has destroyed the Deins vital documents and property. The Source added, We saw the fire inside the kings inner room, but we cannot enter the inner room of the king for any reason not even to put out the fire. Even fire fighters can not enter there The Special Assistant to the Monarch could not be reached for comments at the time of this report. Contacted, the Delta State Acting Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Andrew Aniamaka confirmed the report saying,What we heard is that there was fire outbreak at the palace of the Dein of Agbor. I cannot say if it is a case of arson but there was fire. If it is reported to us, we will have to investigate to know if there is foul play. The Acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, has confirmed that the commission will begin to hunt down human traffickers. Mr. Magu said this when a delegation from the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) visited him in Abuja. The spokesman of the commission, Wilson Uwujaren, who reported the visit in a statement, said the NAPTIP delegation was led by its Director-General, Julie Okah-Donli. Mr. Magu said the anti-graft agency had jurisdiction over human trafficking, which he said, was an offshoot of corruption. We are prepared to go after human traffickers, because we strongly believe that it is an aspect of corruption, and corruption is the greatest enemy of Nigeria. Corruption is the reason why young Nigerians are risking their lives walking through the Mediterranean up to Spain and other European countries in search of greener pasture. It is a very sad situation, and we must change the trend by ensuring that we join hands to fight corruption, as this is the only solution to the ills militating against our countrys development, he said. While calling for NAPTIPs partnership in the fight against corruption, Mr. Magu assured Mrs. Okah-Donli of the EFCCs support in combating the increasing cases of organ harvesting involving Nigerians. EFCC has an enormous task in the fight against corruption, and NAPTIP is also a stakeholder in the fight, so we also need your assistance and collaboration, he said. Mrs. Okah-Donli, who said the visit was part of the agencys familiarisation efforts, used the opportunity to highlight NAPTIPs strides in combating human trafficking in the country. According to her, the agency has busted a number of criminal activities, recorded 331 convictions since 2004, with various other ongoing cases at advance stages in courts. She added that NAPTIP had rescued many trafficked youths who were being rehabilitated and given a new lease of life. Mrs. Okah-Donli said: organ trafficking, which is now becoming a big business, is another form of human trafficking. She said many youth were being lured into it and they become afraid to come out to tell their stories. The DG requested for assistance of the EFCC in confiscating assets of traffickers, and also in the area of training and developing its own academy. Source: (NAN) The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said the state needs a $350 million loan from the World Bank to achieve its governance objectives in the short to medium term. Speaking in his monthly media chat on October 29, the governor said the Bank agreed to provide the facility after checking the laws, accounts and performance of the state. Mr. El-Rufai recalled that he had spoken about schools in the state not having roofs, doors, windows, water and toilets during the electioneering campaign in 2014 and early 2015 and promised to fix them. But as prepared as we were with our Transition Committee report, we still got a few shocks when we took office. In our first week, we took briefings from all MDAs in the state. That is when the then chairman of SUBEB told us that at least 50 per cent of our school children sit on floors because there was no school furniture. We declared a state of emergency in education and started to fix schools and buy furniture. After fixing almost 10 per cent of our over 4200 primary schools, we realised we would need a lot of money to fix everything and to actually build new schools that can have enough classrooms, staff rooms and other facilities. So, we compiled the pictures of our schools into an album, and I took it to Abuja and showed it to the Minister of Finance to explain the level of investment we would require. Then I shared the photos with our development partners, including the World Bank. The World Bank has scrutinised Kaduna State and they are convinced we meet their standards. We have healthy Fitch Ratings B Credit Rating with Stable Outlook. (In November 2016, Fitch Ratings assigned Kaduna State a long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) of B and a National long-term rating of A+(nga) with stable outlooks). The World Bank checked our laws, our accounts and our performance, they are convinced we merit their support. On his governments pattern of presenting budgets early and getting it signed before the year ends, he said imposing a sense of order in the budgeting process enables government to make proper choices in spending decisions, and to have a proper window for implementing pro-people programmes. We decided that our budget year must run from January to December, just like the Gregorian calendar. By Gods grace, we have been able to prepare, present and sign each of our budgets before the new year begins. He praised the State House of Assembly for its diligence in examining, discussing and passing the budget, noting, when they were considering the 2017 Budget in 2016, they even slashed it by N1 billion. Another factor that helps is the regular budget retreats that our state executive council holds every quarter. That way we know how the budget is performing and we are able to make adjustments. Then our Planning and Budget Commission issues the call circular early and our MDAs respond promptly. It is all team work, he added. Mr. El-Rufai said no state government has published as many tenders for capital projects like Kaduna State. He said this was because his government is committed to open, competitive bidding. He said the government had started many projects in sectors like Education, Health, Roads, Water Resources, Agriculture, Environment and Rural Development and does not have the resources to push some of them as strongly as necessary. The Governor said priority would be given to completing the projects, to consolidate on the practical things being done to make change real for the people. There are schools renovated, hospitals being rehabilitated, built and equipped, roads being constructed, mining communities being given infrastructure, water works being rehabilitated or retrofitted. He explained that his administration would complete the equipping of 255 Primary Health Centres and 23 secondary health facilities. Across the state, we are renovating our secondary schools. Some, like Queen Amina and Government College, Kaduna, have been completed. Many more are ongoing across the state. For instance, as at mid-2017, there were 443km of township roads and 16 intercity roads with a distance of 414.8km at various stages of completion. In addition, 17 rural feeder roads with distance of 172 km are being constructed. There are many schools being rebuilt, hospitals being upgraded and equipped, water works being refitted, rehabilitation centres being fixed. We are very proud to have initiated these projects in the interest of our people. And we have been clearheaded enough to take on inherited projects that we consider feasible and viable!, he said. He further expressed confidence in the Kaduna State Roads Agency, KADRA, urging that the agency continues to help to deliver and maintain decent roads across the state. When asked how his government will avoid the mistake of employing less qualified teachers after issuing notices to recruit 25,000 teachers in order to replace the 22,000 teachers that failed the competency test, Mr. El-Rufai said unqualified teachers entered the system because recruitment was politicised. The local government council chairmen and other senior politicians and bureaucrats saw teaching as a dumping ground for their thugs, supporters and other unqualified persons. Teachers were employed at local government level without adherence to standards. In many instances, no examinations or interviews were conducted to assess the quality of recruits. Political patronage, nepotism and corruption became the yardstick, thus giving unqualified persons a way in. Teaching jobs were given as patronage to those connected to politicians and bureaucrats. The Kaduna State Executive Council has approved the recruitment of 25,000 primary school teachers. Recruitment notices have already been advertised by the Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB). This time around, there would be standardized tests for the recruits and a further training programme before the new teachers take over the classrooms. No unqualified person will scale through. And we will vet certificates very closely and very often. The future of our children is so important that we will not take chances. We will be vigilant in ensuring that only good people teach in our public schools, he said. He said the June 2017 competency test in the state was administered to measure the impact of several training and retraining efforts by ESSPIN and the Teacher Development Programme, stressing that teacher training is about improving the capacity of a teacher to impart knowledge. What the competency test showed is that many of the teachers do not have the knowledge, so how can they impart what they do not have? Are they saying we should send primary school teachers back to Primary Four? If you have knowledge but are deficient in teaching skills, we can train you to acquire the skills of a teacher. But when there is no knowledge, what is there to teach?. He said despite that the previous government gave primary school teachers a five-year grace to acquire NCE, many teachers still dont have it. Reacting to the threats by the Nigerian Union of Teachers to go on strike should its members be laid off, he said, everybody knows that we will not be deterred in doing what is right for the future of our children. This is not about politics, or people making a public show of opposing what they know to be right. Shouldnt everybody be embarrassed by the test results? Where is the sense of shame? I hear some people say the pass mark for teachers in a Primary Four exam should be 60%; the same people say the state government has no right to test the competence of its employees. One evidence of the crisis in our society is that a union whose members failed a Primary 4 examination thinks it can create problems over the issue rather than be a part of the solution. We are not people that bow to threats. We will respond appropriately. What will be point of the threatened strike? To force us to violate our oath of office and knowingly retain as teachers those that are not qualified? That will not happen! We will recruit as many qualified teachers as we can find. We will not keep unqualified teachers on our payroll. On his reduction of ministries from 19 to 14 and commissioners from 24 to 15, he stated that his government was committed to reducing waste, eliminating fraud and cutting costs, saying he believes that most of the resources of government must be devoted to serving the needs of ordinary people, building schools, hospitals, roads and delivering other public goods. You cannot do this except you reduce the cost of running government. We started from the Executive branch. We inherited 19 ministries, but now we have only 14. The previous government had 24 commissioners, but we have only 15. We have fewer special advisers and special assistants than the government before us. Next, we verified state civil servants. We gave each ministry what its maximum establishment can be and signed an Executive Order to effect this. Surplus staffs above the establishment of each Mmnistry have been posted to the office of the Head of Service pending subsequent steps in our public service reform and renewal programme. We have now moved to the local government level. Remember that we reduced districts from 390 to 77, so that our local government councils will have fewer district heads and staff to pay and have more money for development, he said. He said part of the reason why many local governments are broke is that they are overstaffed. He made reference to the admin department of Zaria local government with about 300 staff, adding that this overstaffing was why many of the local government councils cannot pay salaries without the support of the state government. So, we have prescribed personnel figures for all the 23 local government councils in Kaduna state. Direct council staff will now be less than 7000 in total. This excludes teachers under SUBEB and primary health centre staff who have been moved to the State Primary Health Care Development Agency. I have signed an Executive Order directing the Administrators of the 23 local government councils to comply with the prescribed personnel levels, he added. Speaking on the unity of the All Progressive Congress in Kaduna State, the Governor said that the APC is united around its manifesto and its leadership does not view power as an excuse for a bazaar or focus on sharing offices among politicians, adding that the reason for being in politics is to influence policies and programmes, not to share appointments. He said the APC in the state would stay together to deliver concrete change for the people and pledged commitment of the party to serve the people. We are proud of our record as a job-creating government. We will create as many direct jobs as are necessary for our MDAs to work well, inject youth and be more efficient in achieving results. But all the direct jobs will be smaller than what the private sector can create. That is why we are pursuing multiple initiatives to attract private sector investments. Apart from the successes already recorded in agriculture through Olam, Sunseed, Vicampro and others, we are bringing Mahindra to assemble tractors. Peugeot France is also coming to build a brand new factory in Kaduna to assemble cars. They have already cleared the site in Chikun local government area. We are guided by the need to find jobs, jobs and more jobs for our teaming youth, he said. Governor El-Rufai said the state raised a record N23 billion as IGR in 2016 and hoped to do better it in 2017, urging residents to pay their Land Use Charge and Ground Rent. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) The National Elections Commission of Liberia has suspended electoral activities ahead of the November 7 run-off presidential elections in compliance with an order of the countrys Supreme Court halting the process. George Weah of the opposition Coalition for Democratic Change and Joseph Boakai of the ruling Unity Party received more votes than the rest of the other candidates in the presidential race, thus qualifying them to participate in a runoff election. Weah obtained 38.4 per cent of the total valid votes in the presidential race on October 10, while Boakai had 28.8 per cent. NEC had earlier announced that the runoff would be held next Tuesday. The chairman of the commission, Jerome Korkoya, announced the suspension of electoral activities at a press conference in Monrovia on Wednesday evening. Korkoya said the November 7 run-off was unlikely, as the commission had already started losing days for preparation due to the temporary Writ of Prohibition issued by the apex court on Tuesday. The loss of today (Wednesday) due to the order already means the Nov.7 date that was set for the run-off presidential elections does not look possible to meet. Prior to the stay order, election preparations were on track as ballot papers arrived as scheduled on Oct. 28. Packing had been on-going and ballot papers and other sensitive materials were being prepared and dispatched to centres across the country. Parts of the shipments of materials had already arrived in Maryland, Grand Kru, River Gee and Grand Gedeh counties at the time of the order, he said. Korkoya explained that distribution of the remaining materials to Maryland, River Gee, Nimba, Margibi and Bong counties had been scheduled for Wednesday. That was suspended, and in some cases, the materials already in transit as of the time the court order came were recalled to the commissions warehouses, he added. The NEC chairman said deliveries scheduled for Bomi, Grand Bassa, Cape Mount, Grand Gedeh, Sinoe and parts of Montserrado counties had been suspended. He stated that training of NEC staff had also been suspended. Magistrate and election supervisor training was completed before the stay order was issued. Materials for training that was scheduled to commence today (Wednesday) for presiding officers from across the country had arrived at the training centres at the time of the order. Training of polling staff scheduled for the Nov. 3 and 4 is suspended. The training of all staff was supposed to be completed on Nov. 5 to allow staff members to reach their polling places, he said. Korkoya said NEC had also asked its partners carrying out civic and voter education activities across the country to stay action. The Supreme Court had ordered the suspension of all electoral activities for the run-off until it considered an application challenging results of the first round of elections held on Oct. 10. The application was filed by the presidential candidate of Liberty Party(LP), Mr Charles Brumskine, who finished third in the first round. Brumskine had alleged fraud, late commencement of voting and disenfranchisement of LP members and supporters at some polling centres. Source: (NAN) A man brutally murdered his girlfriend in Liberia after she ended their relationship. The incident happened last Tuesday in Biokolleh, Bong County. The Liberian who shared the photos wrote A man who lied that his family had died inside a London tower fire outbreak to get money from the victim fund, has been expressed. A serial conman has admitted to pretending his family died in the Grenfell Tower fire to get 12,500 from the victim relief fund. Anh Nhu Nguyen, 52, even shook Prince Charles hand as the royal met with victims, with the man having claimed he had lost his wife and son in the fatal blaze. Southwark Crown Court today heard Nguyen pleaded guilty, having posed as a victim for nearly two weeks in the aftermath of the horrific fire while being put up in a Holiday Inn. At least 80 people are believed to have died in the blaze at the Kensington tower block on June 14. But callous Nguyen attempted to capitalise on the tragedy himself, claiming that he had been in a flat destroyed in the fire despite really living in Beckenham, on the other side of London, at the time. He even gave interviews with the media, recounting the moment he supposedly tried to escape the blaze. In an interview with Sky News, Nguyen spoke of becoming separated from his family on the smoke-filled stairwell but had been told by fire fighters he could not go back for them. He described cutting up towels and wetting them to cover his face before waking his wife and 12-year-old son and leading the way out of the flat 17. He told Sky: The smoke was like fog. You couldnt see anything, it was very hot. Nguyen also described climbing over dead bodies to escape, saying: Im sad, Im angry, I cry. Its terrible for everyone who lost family that day. Having said he lived on the 15th floor of the block for 20 years, the court heard that Nguyens claims were distressing for the genuine family who had lived in the flat. Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay told the court: The occupant of the flat did die in the fire, and his son has been distressed in having to provide a witness statement and that someone would claim what has been claimed. Wearing a grey prison jumper and tracksuit bottoms, Nguyen appeared in custody at Southwark Crown Court today where he finally admitted two counts of fraud and one of falsely claiming he lost his passport in the fire to apply for a new one. Judge Philip Bartle, QC, slammed Nguyens offences as despicable, saying: This is an offence of fraud, but as I say, has a contemptible element to it; trying to succeed in achieving money out of the misery and tragedy of people who, unlike this defendant if he pleads guilty, genuinely suffered by this terrible fire. The court heard that Vietnam-born Nguyen has an appalling criminal record containing 28 convictions for 56 offences committed between 1983 and 2015, a number of those for dishonesty. He has previously been jailed for theft, as well as previously having been put behind bars for harassment. DC James Tauber, the investigating officer, said: Nguyens fraud was designed to make sure he profited from the support intended for the true victims of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire. He went to great lengths to fabricate an elaborate story about his escape from the tower. Detective Chief Inspector Matthew Bonner said: The distress and suffering caused to so many that night in June is harrowing. People lost their homes, all their possessions and tragically their families and loved ones. Not only did Nguyen take money, housing and clothing intended for genuine victims, he diverted police time and resources away from those who most needed it. We will investigate anyone who we think is fraudulently profiting from the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower. Nguyen will be sentenced on December 15 after pre-sentence and psychiatric reports have been prepared. Miss Nigeria Organization is calling for entries into the 41st and Diamond Jubilee edition of the most prestigious and oldest pageant in Nigeria. Built as a platform to empower women beyond beauty, select young women have a chance to represent the 37 states (including the FCT) in Nigeria. Through very various strategic activities, they will be empowered to showcase their individual talents while competing for the crown. With a wholesome combination of vintage glamour and modern elegance, the Miss Nigeria pageant promotes positive attributes of Nigerian women and, importantly, does not include a swimsuit competition or any other competitions that do not exude modesty. In addition to winning the prestigious crown, the winner of the Miss Nigeria competition will be rewarded with a luxury car, N3 million, one year free accommodation in Lagos, and other amazing prizes and benefits. Meanwhile, Times Multimedia, organisers of the pageant, has shared their plans for this years pageant in a press conference that held over the last weekend in Lagos. According to the CEO, For this years event, we intend to have each State represented by its indigene. To do this, we have launched a digital Pan-Nigerian call-to-entry campaign, supported by in-person casting calls in key cities across the nation. The casting call tour kicks off in Abuja on Tuesday November 7th, 2017, and then we will proceed to Port-Harcourt on Thursday November 9th, before rounding up in Lagos on Saturday and Sunday November 11th12th. Interested applicants into the Miss Nigeria 2017 competition must be female Nigerian citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 years. They must be of good health and character, must not be married, mothers nor pregnant. They must also speak fluent English and not have any visible tattoos or body piercings. Interested young women living outside the country and with valid Nigerian citizenship can also apply. To do this, applicants should submit a 2-minute video clip stating their name, age, occupation, a brief background and reasons why they wish to become Miss Nigeria 2017 competition. They should upload to YouTube and send the link to us via email at [email protected] Or they can upload a 60-sec video clip to Instagram with the #MissNigeria2017and tag @missnigeriaorg. Successful candidates will be contacted on the next steps. Do you fit into these criteria? Do you have what it takes to become the next Miss Nigeria? Then hurry now to www.missnigeria.ng to purchase your entry form for N5,000 only. For more information on how to register, click on the call to entry tab on the website. For further enquiries or clarification, please send an email to [email protected] call 08090815695. You can also follow our social media pages listed below for more updates and exclusives. Facebook: @missnigeria Instagram: @missnigeriaorg Twitter: @missnigeriaNG source: Dailypost A court in Lagos has sent a 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat to jail for trafficking cocaine. A Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday convicted and sentenced a mother of four to 10 years imprisonment for trafficking in cocaine. The court convicted and sentenced the 56-year-old woman, Owolabi Oluwayemisi Modinat, to the jail term, after she pleaded guilty to one count charge preferred against her by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). The convict had earlier pleaded guilty when she was first arraigned before the court, and maintained her plea when the matter came up today . In urging the court to convict the mother of four, the NDLEA prosecutor, while reviewing the fact of the case, tendered the convicts harmonized ECOWAS passport with number: 1808098653, an E-ticket and boarding pass as evidence. Other evidence tendered by the prosecutor includes: three written statements of the convict, two request of scientific aid form, a drug analysing report, two evidence pouches, two transparent pouches containing bulk of the drug, two scientific report of the drug, and a sealed brown envelope with reference number:DEA/17/MM/013, which were admitted as exhibits After tendering the evidence, coupled with the plea of the mother of four, the prosecutor urged the court to convict and sentence her accordingly. Consequently, the presiding Judge, Justice Rilwan Aikawa, pronounced the convict guilty as charged. The convict, in her plea for leniency through her lawyer, Morenike Ogunleye, pleaded with the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing her. Ogunleye said: My Lord, the convict is a first time offender, and she is sober of her action. She is a mother of four children, who single-handedly taking care of them, as she has separated from her husband. In sentencing her, I urged my lord to consider section 416(2)(b)(d) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015. In sentencing the convict, the judge asked the prosecutor, for the punishment for the crime committed as stipulated by the NDLEA Act, and the prosecutor said it is life imprisonment. Justice Aikawa pronounced: I have listened to the plea made on her behalf by the counsel, and also listened to the prosecutor that she has no record of crime. Im balancing, I have to consider both her plea and the what the law says about the crime. Consequently, I hereby sentence her to 10 years imprisonment, starting from the day of her arrest. In the charge marked FHC/L/301c/17, The convict was arrested on May 19, 2017, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, during outward clearance of Qatar Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, with 330 grammes of Cocaine, a narcotic drug. The offence,committed by the convict is contrary to and punishable under section 11(b) of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Act, Cap. N30, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004. The Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, were both summoned over their clash at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. The fierce crossfire between Kyari and Oyo-Ita, which occurred shortly before the Federal Executive Council meeting, was believed to have been caused by the leaked memo, which Oyo-Ita sent to Kyari on the controversial reinstatement and posting of the embattled former chairman of the Pension Reforms Commission, Abdulrasheed Maina. A source at the meeting said Kyari accused Oyo-Ita of leaking the memo, which she wrote to the CoS on the reinstatement of Mr Abdulrasheed Maina into the Civil Service. In the memo, which was exclusively published by The PUNCH on Tuesday, Oyo-Ita said that she warned the President against asking Maina to return to the civil service, saying doing so could affect the anti-corruption war of the Federal Government. Oyo-Ita, it was gathered, also accused Kyari of being the brains behind the leakage. The altercation occurred in the presence of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo; President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, John Odigie-Oyegun; service chiefs and ministers. Saraki, Dogara, Oyegun and the service chiefs were present to witness the inauguration of the new Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, as well as the launching of the 2018 Armed Forces Remembrance emblem. A Presidency source, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, said the President was embarrassed when he was briefed about the altercation between Kyari and Oyo-Ita. He said even the presence of the Vice President did not deter the two officials from the clash. The source said, The President was embarrassed when he leant about the altercation between the two officials. He, therefore, asked the two officials to see him after the FEC meeting. It was a gory sight, seeing the two officials almost fighting at the Council Chambers. Efforts made by the VP to calm the two officials were rebuffed by the two officials. It was apparent that none of them had faith in each other. In the memo, Oyo-Ita had claimed that her warning was based on the implications Mainas reinstatement would have on the anti-corruption war of the Federal Government. The memo, with reference number HSCSF/HCSF/LU/COR/FCSC/750/T, was dated October 23, 2017. The memo, titled, Re: Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina, was received in the office of the Chief of Staff to the President on October 23. The President had directed the HoS to investigate the circumstances that surrounded the return of Maina to the civil service. He gave the directive following the public outcry that trailed Mainas reinstatement. Maina, whose whereabouts are still unknown, has been accused of embezzling pensioners funds running into billions of naira and is currently under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Explaining further, the HoS said she met the President after the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, October 11, and verbally warned Buhari against bringing Maina back to the service. She, however, did not say what the response of the President was after briefing him. Oyo-Ita said, Please, note that the OHCSF was never in agreement with the reinstatement and consequently never conveyed the approval of the FCPC to Mr. A. A. Maina, nor approved his posting to the Ministry of Interior or any other MDA. Rather, I sought audience with His Excellency, Mr. President on Wednesday, 11th October, 2017 after the FEC meeting where I briefed His Excellency verbally on the wide-ranging implications of the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina, especially the damaging impact on the anti-corruption stance of this administration. The letter also read, Further to your letter Ref. SH/COS/100/A/1570 dated 23rd October, 2017 on the above subject matter, I write to inform you of the circumstances leading to the irregular recall of Mr. Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina. I wrote to place on record the following facts as it permits (sic) to Mr. A. A. Maina who was dismissed from service on 21st February, 2013. The move to recall Mr. A. A. Maina was at the instance of a series of letters from the Attorney General of the Federation to the Federal Civil Service Commission requesting the commission to give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant of arrest issued against Mr. A. A. Maina, which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal. The letters herewith attached as Annexes I-III are: (a) Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/1 dated 19th January 2017, (b) Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/ 2 dated 21st February 2017; and (c)Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/1 dated 27th April 2017. The FCSC thereafter requested that the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation should advise the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior to consider the AGFs letter and make appropriate recommendations to the commission and this was so communicated to the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior took the matter to the Senior Staff Committee of the ministry and recommended the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina into the service as Deputy Director. The OHCSF forwarded the recommendation to the FCSC which has the constitutional responsibility for appointments, promotion and discipline for further action. The FCSC in consideration of the letter from the AGF and the recommendations of the SSC of the Ministry of Interior consequently approved and conveyed the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina with effect from 21st February, 2013 vide letter herewith attached as Annex IV. (vi) The letter of reinstatement, as communicated to HCSF Ref. FC. 4029.82/Vol. III/179 dated 18th September, 2017 attached herewith as Annex IV, ostensibly also copied the Ministry of Interior which is the one erroneously used to document Mr. A. A. Maina on a claim that he has resumed work since 28th September, 2017. The Ministry of Interior informed the OHCSF of this development vide letter Ref. MI/1436/II/24 dated 16th October, 2017 from Ministry of Interior stating that Mr. A. A. Maina has resumed with effect from 28th September, 2017, is attached as Annex V. Please note that the OHCSF was never in agreement with the reinstatement and consequently never conveyed the approval of the FCSC to Mr. A. A. Maina nor approved his posting to the Ministry of Interior or any other MDA. Rather, I sought audience with His Excellency, Mr. President on Wednesday, 11th October, 2017 after the FEC meeting where I briefed His Excellency verbally on the wide-ranging implications of the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina, especially the damaging impact on the anti-corruption stance of this administration. However, I have requested the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior, to provide any documentary evidence to support the claim of reinstatement and posting of Mr. A. A. Maina by OHCSF, since after his dismissal. The letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior is attached as Annex VI. The foregoing is accordingly submitted for your information and further consideration. Please accept the assurances of my best regards. Source: ( Punch Newspaper ) Some pleasure workers operating in the commercial capital of Nigeria, Lagos have been dragged to court over a violent conduct and alleged theft. A commercial s*x worker at Ilasamaja area of Lagos, identified as Amarachi Okereke was arraigned before Isolo Magistrates court on Tuesday for assault and fake information. Amarachi reportedly lost a certain N32, 000 she kept in her room which she claimed were proceeds from her services to various clients. Instead of searching for the lost money, she accused four other colleagues of hers: Akpan Cynthia, Blessing John, Loveth Bassey and Grace Okafor, of stealing the N32,000 and reportedly attacked them, which led to a serious fight among five of them. While the dirty fighting was on, a team of policemen got to the scene, arrested the five ladies and took them to Area D Police Command, Mushin. During interrogation, Amarachi was unable to prove how the other four ladies broke her room and stole the money. She was subsequently charged for assault and false information. In court, she pleaded not guilty. However, the presiding Magistrate, Mrs. A.O. Adedayo, granted Amarachi bail in the sum of N50,000 with one surety in like sum. Meanwhile, Amarachi was remanded in prison custody pending when she will perfect her bail condition. The four other women were released after standing as witness on the alleged offence committed by Amarachi. As she was taken to prison, Amarachi wept bitterly and lamented that her money was stolen and at the same time she was sent to prison. Snoop Doggs hatred for Donald Trump looks like an unending one as he comes for the controversial President again. Recall the rapper first released a music video for BadBadNotGoods track Lavender in March, where he was seen pointing a fake gun at the clown-like figure impersonating Donald Trump, complete with an orange face and blonde hair. On Wednesday Snoop posted a photo on Instagram which shows him standing next to a dead man with a Trump tag on his toe. The image appears to be the final cover of Snoops upcoming album, Make American Crip Again. The photo is also a spitting image to Ice Cubes 1991 cover for Death Certificate. A woman identified as Abosede Olayinka has been sentenced to 21 year-old imprisonment for trying to murder a 90 year-old widow in an attempt to steal 31,000 savings on the evening of April 27, 2017, in the U.K. Adeyinka had busted into Pam Battens home, knocking her to the ground before striking her twice with a hammer she had hidden in her handbag. When Mrs Batten pleaded for mercy, Adeyinka grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it like a dart, leaving it embedded in the pensioners neck. Adeyinka, a mother of three, had been the carer for Mrs Battens late-husband, Ernest, in the last six months of his life, and knew there were bags of cash hidden around the semi-detached West Drayton home. She covered her face with a red lace scarf during the shocking attack, but Mrs Batten recognised her immediately as the professional carer who had visited her home three-times-a-week. Mrs Batten said the horrifying attack has shattered her confidence, making her afraid to be home alone at night or speak to strangers, and terrified she will be attacked again. Adeyinka, a charity worker and Sunday school teacher, burst into tears and wailed loudly as Judge Peter Clarke QC jailed her for 21 years at Blackfriars crown court this morning. Adeyinka fled from the house empty handed after Mrs Batten said that her son was due to visit that evening, but her coat and bag were covered in the pensioners blood. Mrs Batten was found lying in the hallway by a neighbour, and was close to death when she was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, the court heard. Adeyinka had worked two jobs to support her three children, spent years volunteering for charity, and worked as a Sunday school teacher at her church. Source: ( Instablog9ja ) A gang of criminals have been caught while allegedly vandalizing transformers and stealing electric cables in Imo state. Luck has ran out on some notorious thieves after they were caught by men of Imo security network vandalizing transformers and stealing electric cables belonging to the Enugu Electricity Development Company EEDC. The two were seriously beaten and stripped unclad over the incident. The criminals were caught at Etiti Mgbidi Autonomous Oru west LGA in the act. They were identified as Aliu and Mohammed from Kano state and Idris from Niger Republic. After they were arrested yesterday following a tip off, they were handed over to the police for further interrogations. The Commissioner of Police in Anambra, Mr Garba Umar, on Wednesday, unmasked two suspects behind the invasion and killing of 18 worshipers at St. Philip Catholic Church, Ozubulu. The suspects are Prince Charles Obi a.k.a Gozila and Dickson Nwodi. According to the police, the duo are serving murder sentences in South African prisons. Umar disclosed this during a press briefing at Amawbia near Awka and added that the duo, based in South Africa, are serving murder sentences in South African prison. 18 persons were killed by gunmen while 10 others were injured while they were attending early morning Sunday mass at the Church on August 6. He said Obi and Nwodi, who hailed from Nnobi and Oba communities of Anambra, had mandated one Quintus Anayo, also based in South Africa, to inform Ozubulu elders that they were behind the invasion. The commissioner said that the account on Anayo was in line with the investigation of police into the matter. He said that already police had established contact with Interpol on the need to extradite the suspects from South Africa to Nigeria. He said that police in the state were already intensifying arrangements to arraign the three suspects earlier arrested in connection with the killings within the week. Umar thanked the public for the information to which he attributed the successes already recorded by police in the investigations. Police and the state government had blamed the invasion and killings on the drug war. NAN Its been almost a year since the romantic comedy The Wedding Party was released, becoming the highest grossing Nollywood movie of all time by a considerable margin. After a one-minute teaser that got us all hyped, The Wedding Party 2: Destination Dubai just dropped its first trailer and we can barely contain our excitement. The sequel focuses on the grooms brother, Nonso (played by Enyinna Nwigwe), who has continued his romance with Deirdre (played by Daniella Down), the bridesmaid from London. Nonso proposes by accident, while on a dinner date, and sets off a chain of events too powerful to stop. Deirdres upper-class British family is against the pairing, as are some members of the Nigerian clan. After a near-disastrous introduction ceremony in Lagos, both families reluctantly agree to a wedding in Dubai, setting off another colourful, chaotic and memorable journey to everlasting love. The original movies main cast will be returning, with a couple of fresh faces including Patience Ozokwor, Omoni Oboli, Seyi Law, Chigurl and more. The Wedding Party 2: Destination Dubai will hit cinemas on December 15. Heres the trailer: source: Stargist Kerrville, TX (78028) Today A few passing clouds, otherwise generally sunny. High 56F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear during the evening followed by cloudy skies overnight. Low 36F. Winds light and variable. Self-storage real estate investment trust Life Storage Inc. has named Joseph V. Saffire as its new chief investment officer (CIO) and appointed Carol Hansell to the company's board of directors. Saffire, a 25-year commercial banking veteran, will be a member of the senior management team and integral in executing the companys operational, investment, acquisition and capital markets strategy, according to a press release. He succeeds Paul T. Powell, whos retiring but will continue as an adviser to the company next year, as well as be involved with joint-venture formation and acquisitions. We are pleased to add an accomplished executive of Joes caliber to Life Storage. Joe brings extensive senior leadership experience and expertise successfully developing and implementing complex strategic plans, said CEO David Rogers. As we enter the next phase of growth following our transformation to the Life Storage brand, Joe is an ideal addition to our team. He will play an instrumental role in supporting our efforts to improve operational efficiencies and profitability while ensuring that Life Storage is well-positioned to continue strategically growing its high-quality portfolio and platform. I also thank Paul for his invaluable contributions to our company these past 20 years, and am pleased that he will remain with us through the transition period, helping us continue to grow our portfolio, Rogers added. Prior to joining Life Storage, Saffire served as executive vice president and head of commercial banking at First Niagara Financial Group Inc. In this role, he oversaw nearly $20 billion in assets, and was responsible for developing and implementing a five-year commercial strategic plan. He also led several lines of business including commercial lending, capital markets, equipment leasing and commercial real estate. Previously, Saffire worked at Wells Fargo & Co. in London, where he served as executive vice president and head of global banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, overseeing commercial lending and transaction services. He spent the majority of his career as an international manager with banking firm HSBC Holdings PLC, where he held a variety of leadership positions across Asia, Europe and North America. In his final role with HSBC, he acted as chief operating officer and head of international corporate and commercial banking, overseeing the firms business and growth initiatives in Germany. I am excited to join Life Storage at such a pivotal time in the companys history, Saffire said. Life Storages portfolio of facilities in attractive, diversified markets is uniquely valuable and well-positioned in the self-storage industry. With its strong balance sheet, Life Storage is poised to capitalize on key growth drivers and create value for its shareholders. I look forward to being a member of the management team to build on its progress. The addition of Hansell to the companys board of directors follows an extensive search process to further enhance the perspective and expertise available to the company, the release stated. Hansell will serve on the governance committee. Carol brings significant experience advising both public and private companies on complex corporate governance and legal matters, and we are pleased to welcome her to the board of directors, said Stephen R. Rusmisel, lead independent director. Following a thorough board process that included significant engagement with Life Storage shareholders, we are confident that Carols deep involvement in corporate governance policy and unique skillset make her a highly complementary addition. Hansell has more than 25 years of governance, government relations, legal and communications experience. Shes the founder and senior partner of Hansell LLP, and a principal with Hansell McLaughlin Advisory Inc., which delivers integrated legal, governance, government relations and communications advice. Hansell has served on boards of organizations across a variety of sectors including public companies, crown corporations, financial institutions, healthcare, not-for-profit and arts organizations. She currently serves on the boards of Munich Reinsurance Co. of Canada, the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and the American College of Governance Counsel. Shes the chair of the Business Law Advisory Council and serves on the ICGN nominating committee. She has served on the boards of the Bank of Canada, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, Toronto East General Hospital and SickKids Foundation. Shes a fellow of the Institute of Corporate Directors and the American College of Governance Counsel. I am honored to join Life Storages board of directors, she said. Effective corporate decision-making requires the ability to hear and consider different points of view, which results from people of different backgrounds and perspectives coming together. Life Storage has a strong portfolio of properties, and I look forward to working alongside the board and management team to continue to build upon the companys position in the self-storage industry. Based in Buffalo, N.Y., Sovran operates approximately 700 self-storage facilities in 29 states, under the Life Storage and Uncle Bob's Self Storage brand names. Its portfolio of owned and managed facilities comprises about 49 million square feet. Sources: Life Storage, Life Storage, Inc. Names Joseph V. Saffire Chief Investment Officer; Paul T. Powell to Retire Life Storage, Life Storage, Inc. Appoints Carol Hansell to the Board of Directors A former insurance agent has been sentenced in Lancaster County Court in Nebraska to at least six years in prison for pocketing almost $160,000 from his clients.The judge who passed the sentence Tuesday said that he felt heartsick for the victims of ex-insurance agent Raymond Sanchez Jr.Investigators claimed that Sanchezs clients in Lincoln gave him money to purchase annuities, but Sanchez instead deposited the cash into his personal account.Judy Quade-Anderson and her husband, victims of Sanchezs scheme, said that they had lost over $40,000. Judy said that she is disappointed in the sentence because she was hoping for recompense.Him going to prison isnt going to help me at all, she told The Associated Press.Judy explained that she had worked all her life to save up enough money for retirement. With all her savings stolen, however, her 73-year-old husband has to work longer than he should, she explained.The decision today I think is harder on the people who lost the money, the victims, she said.Defense attorney Matthew Burns maintained that his client Sanchez had paid about $30,000 of the nearly $160,000 he stole. Burns remarked that Sanchez eventually wants to repay it all back so that he could face his victims again and ask for their forgiveness.He wants to make these people whole, Burns said.Burns explained that Sanchez had a number of personal issues in his life at the time of the theft, which included back taxes, a gambling addiction, and alcoholism.I think from there it just spiraled out of control, and he just went down the rabbit hole so to speak, he said. The progress at RSA overall leaves Group profits ahead of the same period in 2016 though by less than we had targeted. These were the words of RSA Group chief executive Stephen Hester when the insurer, one of the biggest in the UK and beyond, released its third quarter trading update this morning. Celebrate excellence in insurance. Join us at the Insurance Business Awards in Chicago. Here are the numbers: Earnings per share year-to-date (YTD) ahead of 2016; however, held back by third quarter 2017 underwriting results. Overall Group underwriting results slightly weaker compared to 2016, with results partly impacted by US/Caribbean hurricane costs. Underwriting results for Scandinavia, Canada, Ireland, and Middle East YTD ahead of 2016. Except for the UK, YTD attritional loss ratios improved versus 2016 in all regions. YTD Group net written premiums of 5,077 million (approximately US$6,729 million) up 8% (excluding impact of Latin America & Russia disposals in 2016); up 3% at constant FX rates. In addition to the effect of the hurricanes in terms of costs, RSA also noted the lingering impact to the UK of the adverse household trends reported in the first half. Also, UK large losses YTD are elevated in the marine and international portfolios, as well as certain UK domestic broker schemes. We are continuing to drive business enhancements across the Group, while taking further underwriting action in some portfolios to improve performance for 2018, said Hester. As for weather losses in the third quarter, the insurer included a provision of 50 million against US and Caribbean catastrophe events, which were booked in the UK business segment. Claims notifications for these events are still developing, and we expect this provision to increase somewhat, said RSA. Swiss Re has reported a Group net loss of US$468 million for the first nine months of 2017, following the recent hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the Mexico earthquakes. Property and Casualty (P&C) Reinsurance and Corporate Solutions results were hit hardest by the natural catastrophe events, which the Group expects will generate US$3.6 billion in insurance claims. P&C Re reported a net loss of US$652 million and Corporate Solutions had a US$762 million net loss. Life and Health Reinsurance generated strong results of US$741 million net income and Life Capital has reported a gross cash generation of US$789 million and a net income of US$152 million. Overall, Swiss Re has maintained a strong capital position and high financial flexibility and, as a result, the reinsurer will launch its public share buy-back programme of up to CHF 1 billion on November 03. The severe natural catastrophes we have experienced so far this year have clearly impacted our results, said Christian Mumenthaler, CEO, Swiss Re Group. At the same time, we are able to absorb these losses and join forces with our clients to help affected people and businesses in getting back on their feet. This shows that our strategy to ensure superior capitalisation at all times is paying off. We believe we have the financial strength to respond to potential market developments and we continue to stay committed to creating long-term shareholder value. Swiss Res nine-month net loss of US$468 million contrasts with its net income of US$3 billion for the same period in 2016. This decline was primarily driven by the expected insurance claims in the aftermath of the recent Atlantic hurricanes, the earthquakes in Mexico as well as Cyclone Debbie in Australia and New Zealand and the floods in Peru in the first half of the year. Overall, the global reinsurer expects its insurance claims from natural catastrophes for the first nine months of 2017 to amount to approximately US$4 billion at a Group level, with around US$3 billion being incurred by P&C Re and approximately US$1 billion by Corporate Solutions. Preparing teens for their futures with soft skills Businesses of every size and industry continue to identify labor shortages as a top challenge across the country and... Where to find non-partisan ballot information Thank you for your non-biased bullet points explaining the three state ballot proposals in "A look at the three state... Californias Department of Insurance believes that the significant damage caused by the recent wildfire disaster in Northern California could discourage insurers from issuing new policies in affected areas.The department earlier this week confirmed that the total insured losses from the fires topped $3.3 billion. The claims for insured losses on residences, businesses and vehicles reflect a threefold increase from data recorded just two weeks ago.Behind each and every one of these claims, and behind the over $3 billion in insured losses claims, are ordinary people, said state insurance commissioner Dave Jones in a call with reporters. Tens of thousands lost everything in what has proven to be the deadliest and one of the most costly set of wildfires in our states history.Jones also remarked that the high level of devastation could make insurers reconsider providing insurance to areas once deemed at low risk of wildfire.We may also see, unfortunately, insurance companies updating their models of risk associated with these fires, he explained. And that may mean in some cases some insurers will decide to write less insurance in some areas that had traditionally had been viewed as lower risk.According to Jones, the residential property insured losses in Sonoma County exceeded $2.6 billion. The insurance commissioner also hinted that the number is likely to increase further as adjusters process more claims.Residential property losses in Napa County totaled over $266 million, with commercial losses exceeding $3.2 million. In Mendocino County, residential losses exceeded $115 million, while Yuba and Lake Counties had over $48.5 million each in residential losses.These numbers are based on actual claims filed with the insurance companies, Jones exclaimed. They are not an estimate, they are actual claimed insured losses.CNBC reported that the fires spread to at least eight Northern California counties.Residential insured losses for all the fires totaled just over $3.1 billion, while commercial losses were at $137 million. Auto losses hit over $28 million and farm/agriculture losses exceeded $4.5 million; most of the agricultural losses were recorded in Sonoma and Napa County.More than 14,700 homes were razed by the fires, as well as 728 businesses, and over 3,600 vehicles vehicles that include private cars, commercial vehicles, farm equipment and watercraft.At least 43 individuals died as a result of the fires, including a firefighter, CNBC said. Drone technology has the ability to revolutionize the insurance industry. Its high potential in capturing images for loss adjusting and risk assessment is widely acknowledged among insurance professionals.Drones increase the quality and accuracy of information used in the underwriting and claims processes by helping insurers and reinsurers see tricky locations, like complex structures and roofs and operate in difficult scenarios such as after a natural disaster.Having the right expertise to adjust losses in rural areas has not always been easy, especially in the most isolated regions of North America. But the marriage of insurance and technology to create a drone gig economy could provide an answer to that problem, according to Mike Quigley, head of property underwriting, Reinsurance Division, Munich Reinsurance America, Inc.Some insurtech companies are building platforms and capabilities that almost Uber-ize drones, Quigley told Insurance Business. Essentially, if you own a particular type of drone and youre registered with the FAA, and have the appropriate approval and regulatory requirements in place, you could register on to a platform to be available to pilot your drone on specific missions like capturing images needed for inspection or claims adjustment.The insurtech companies would transmit the time, place and flight plan to the drone pilot and get the appropriate consent from nearby air traffic control and property owners. All the drone pilot would have to do is show up at the provided location and fly a pre-determined flight pattern, capture images and upload them to the platform. The underwriters and claims adjusters at the insurance company would take over from there, analyzing the images on the platform.Using drones to increase efficiency, either internally or externally via insurtech platforms, can help insurers provide better customer service, according to Quigley. Being proactive and responsive to claims leads to better client retention and helps people / communities to rebuild quicker after a disaster.Being a drone pilot is a new opportunity for individuals, especially those who live in non-urban areas, said Quigley. But its also an opportunity for insurers and reinsurers to get information and analyze imagery almost straight away post-event, and adjust claims sooner and quicker.The Uber-ization of drones is a very interesting concept, according to Quigley. The merger of insurtech capability with the knowledge of the (re)insurance carriers around underwriting, risk and claims is a recipe for the future.As that relationship continues to build, Im sure we will start to see the use cases of drones increase and the ideas start to progress, he added. Five years from now, well probably be used to seeing drones flying by more frequently, and I think drones might become part of the normal inspection process after claims have been made. We caught up with Lisa Lindsay (executive director Private Risk Management Association ) for a few thoughts on the industry and her varied and hugely successful career to date.Lisa Lindsay: I am the executive director with the Private Risk Management Association (PRMA), a collaborative group that aims to raise awareness and educate agents and brokers about the evolving insurance industry landscape so they can better serve high net worth insurance consumers. I have been embedded in the industry for more than 30 years and served as former President of Marsh Private Client Services (PCS). I was instrumental in establishing PRMA and played a key role in developing The Chartered Private Risk and Insurance Advisor (CPRIA) certificate, the only online certification program specifically developed for professionals in the high net worth industry. I am passionate about the client experience and have spent my entire professional career helping develop and shape the standards and training that leads to an exceptional client experience.LL: The highs of my journey through the industry would be the ability to have impacted how Private Risk Management is viewed and to have created a culture whereby employees truly take pride in meeting client expectations and looking beyond the transactional nature of insurance. There is so much more to effectively serving the high net worth clients risk management program than placing personal insurance. A high net worth individuals complex lifestyle and risk profile can be just as complicated as the risk management program for a large corporation and being able to raise that awareness and provide employees with the tools to do their jobs has been very rewarding. The real bonus is being able to carry that work into the Private Risk Management Association and to be able to advance the mission beyond just one company.The biggest challenge in my journey through the industry has been raising awareness and elevating the status of Private Risk Management as a worthy career opportunity and as a valuable business segment within a larger firm primarily focused on commercial risk management. A career in Private Risk Management is interesting, challenging and very rewarding.LL: For me, success has always been defined as Did I make a difference? If the answer is yes, then success was achieved. I have had the opportunity to help employees be successful in their careers by providing them with the right training and tools to be successful. They in turn have been able to deliver the right advice and consultation to their clients. Educating employees and educating clients so that they can be successful has always been the way that I have defined my own personal success.LL: It is humbling to be a finalist in the Women of Distinction category. When you are passionate about what you do, you don't always take a step back and acknowledge the impact of what you do on a day-to-day basis or within a career spanning decades. Being a finalist has allowed me that rare opportunity to reflect on my career and has also given me an even higher level of urgency to continue to grow, contribute and help others be successful.LL: What we do in the insurance community is tremendously worthy work that requires deep technical expertise and an exceptional customer service mindset. How we do our jobs is the difference between an individual effectively managing risk and an individual facing financial ruin because they did not effectively manage risk. I am so proud to be part of a community that can have such a positive impact on the lives of the people and communities we touch.LL: I would consider winning the Women of Distinction Award as one of the hallmark moments of my career and look forward to celebrating with my colleagues, many of whom are up for awards themselves. Being a finalist is an honor, celebrating a win would be icing on the cake. Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier has ordered a statewide overall workers compensation rate decrease of 9.8 percent, a slightly higher decrease than the 9.6 percent decrease filed by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) back in August. Altmaiers order disapproving NCCIs 2018 rate filing was issued by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation on Tuesday, and stated NCCIs rate request be amended and refiled by Nov. 7, 2017. Altmaiers order cited NCCIs 2 percent allowance for profit and contingencies in its rate filing as the reason for rates being disapproved. The order states that the refiling should contain a profit and contingencies provision no greater than 1.85 percent. The rate decrease will come as a welcome surprise for many Florida businesses that were expecting additional rate increases after the Florida Supreme Court issued two decisions Castellanos v. Next Door Company and Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg, in 2016 that sent rates up by double digits this year. Using new data, this experience based filing proposes a decrease in rate level based on data from policy years 2014 and 2015 valued as of year-end 2016, the order states. While some of the experience used as the basis for this filing occurred before the recent Florida Supreme Court decisions, a portion of the experience period includes claims that occurred after the decisions. At a rate hearing in mid-October, NCCI said a decline in claims frequency due, in part, to safer workplaces, enhanced efficiencies in the workplace, increased use of automation, and innovative technologies were partly behind the recommended decrease. NCCI said this trend is not unique to Florida but countrywide, and is expected to continue in the future. According to OIRs order, from 2011 to 2015, the cumulative decreases in the indemnity and medical loss ratios were 19.9 percent and 12.3 percent, respectively. The primary reason for the declining loss ratios is a significant reduction in the lost-time claim frequency which declined by 45 percent from 2001 to 2015 with over 8 percent of the decline occurring in 2014 and 2015. Even after considering the impact of the Castellanos and Westphal decisions, other factors at work in the marketplace combined to contribute to the indicated decrease, which included reduced assessments, increases in investment income, decline in claim frequency, and lower loss adjustment expenses, the order states. However, the order also mandates that NCCI provide detailed analysis of the effects of the Castellanos decision by the Florida Supreme Court in future filings, which accounted for 10.1 percent of the 14.5 percent increase in Florida workers compensation rates this year. To ensure workers compensation rates are not excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory it is imperative that additional quantitative analysis be conducted to determine the effect the Castellanos decision is having on the Florida workers compensation market and the data used to support future rate filings, the order states. The analysis may include alternative data sources and should examine changes to the Florida workers compensation market that are attributed to or observed as a result of the recent court decision. Approval of a revised rate decrease is contingent on the amended filing being submitted with changes as stipulated within the order. If approved by OIR, the revised rate decrease would become effective on Jan. 1, 2018 for new and renewal business. Read Order: Florida OIR Workers Compensation Insurance Rate Decrease Topics Trends Florida Workers' Compensation Pricing Trends A husband and wife who owned an Atlanta pharmacy accused of supplying drugs to pill mill patients have been ordered to pay $5 million to state agencies that offer substance abuse treatment and victim assistance. Rosemary Ofume, 59, and Donatus Iriele, 63, were each ordered to pay $2.5 million in community restitution after they were convicted of using their business, Medicine Center Pharmacy to illegally dispense controlled narcotics to customers of a pill mill clinic, the U.S attorneys office in Atlanta said Friday in a news release. The restitution money is to go to the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council for victims assistance in restitution for the public harm they caused. Prosecutors say the restitution order is the first of its kind in the country against pharmacists. The pair were convicted on money laundering and drug trafficking charges and were sentenced to prison in July, with Ofume to serve 19 years and Iriele to serve 20. These pharmacists fed opiate addictions among so many as a means to sustain their lifestyles, said U.S. Attorney Byung J. BJay Pak. Now, they will begin to serve lengthy prison sentences and pay back the state of Georgia to account for some of the harm they caused to the community. An investigation revealed that Godfrey Ilonzo financed and operated at least eight clinics in Georgia under the AMARC name, including the Lakewood AMARC pain clinic, where his wife, Bona Ilonzo, served as office manager. Two doctors, Dr. Nevorn Askari and Dr. William Richardson, served as the primary physicians for the clinics. The Ilonzos and the two doctors have pleaded guilty to charges related to their roles in the scheme, prosecutors said. Ofume and Iriele operated Medicine Center Pharmacy across the street from the Lakewood clinic. The pair worked with the Ilonzos and the two doctors to facilitate the dispensing of oxycodone and other opiates to drug addicts and dealers, prosecutors said. Customers waited hours at the Lakewood clinic and paid cash for prescriptions for medically inappropriate and potentially lethal combinations of drugs and then bought the pills at high prices from the pharmacy, prosecutors said. Many customers came from throughout Georgia and even other states to visit the AMARC clinics and the pharmacy operated by Ofume and Iriele, prosecutors said. Ofume lied to pharmaceutical distributors to get enormous quantities of oxycodone and prescription pain pills, notably purchasing 11 times more oxycodone in 2009 than the average pharmacy in Georgia. The pharmacy bought nearly 1.4 million opioid pills between 2009 and 2012, prosecutors said. Ofume and Iriele took in more than $5.1 million from unlawful prescriptions from AMARC clinic doctors, accounting for more than 90 percent of the pharmacys revenue. They also laundered the money by buying vehicles in the U.S. for people in Nigeria without disclosing that those people were depositing equivalent amounts into Irieles personal bank account in the African nation. The Georgia Board of Pharmacy had revoked Irieles pharmacy license and temporarily suspended Ofumes license in 2007 after they failed to account for more than 600,000 controlled substance pills at their pharmacies and had dispensed controlled substances for more than 1,400 forged prescriptions. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Georgia Drugs WL Dueck was founded in 1998 by partners Warren Dueck and Steven Flynn. The tax team specialises in US and Canadian cross-border tax matters. The firm provides tax advice on offshore voluntary disclosures for high-net-worth individuals estates and trust. It also offers businesses advice on M&A and cross-border transactions, particularly investments between the US and Canada. The firms team is composed of four partners and 15 other tax professionals. The collaboration agreement between Andersen Global and WL Dueck continues the expansion of the Andersen Tax brand in North America. Options are a form of derivative contract that gives buyers of the contracts (the option holders) the right (but not the obligation) to buy or sell a security at a chosen price at some point in the future. Option buyers are charged an amount called a premium by the sellers for such a right. Should market prices be unfavorable for option holders, they will let the option expire worthless and not exercise this right, ensuring that potential losses are not higher than the premium. On the other hand, if the market moves in the direction that makes this right more valuable, it makes use of it. Options are generally divided into "call" and "put" contracts. With a call option, the buyer of the contract purchases the right to buy the underlying asset in the future at a predetermined price, called exercise price or strike price. With a put option, the buyer acquires the right to sell the underlying asset in the future at the predetermined price. Let's take a look at some basic strategies that a beginner investor can use with calls or puts to limit their risk. The first two involve using options to place a direction bet with a limited downside if the bet goes wrong. The others involve hedging strategies laid on top of existing positions. Key Takeaways Options trading may sound risky or complex for beginner investors, and so they often stay away. Some basic strategies using options, however, can help a novice investor protect their downside and hedge market risk. Here we look at four such strategies: long calls, long puts, covered calls, protective puts, and straddles. Options trading can be complex, so be sure to understand the risks and rewards involved before diving in. Buying Calls (Long Calls) There are some advantages to trading options for those looking to make a directional bet in the market. If you think the price of an asset will rise, you can buy a call option using less capital than the asset itself. At the same time, if the price instead falls, your losses are limited to the premium paid for the options and no more. This could be a preferred strategy for traders who: Are "bullish" or confident about a particular stock, exchange-traded fund (ETF), or index fund and want to limit risk Want to utilize leverage to take advantage of rising prices Options are essentially leveraged instruments in that they allow traders to amplify the potential upside benefit by using smaller amounts than would otherwise be required if trading the underlying asset itself. So, instead of laying out $10,000 to buy 100 shares of a $100 stock, you could hypothetically spend, say, $2,000 on a call contract with a strike price 10% higher than the current market price. A standard equity option contract on a stock controls 100 shares of the underlying security. Example Suppose a trader wants to invest $5,000 in Apple (AAPL), trading at around $165 per share. With this amount, they can purchase 30 shares for $4,950. Suppose then that the price of the stock increases by 10% to $181.50 over the next month. Ignoring any brokerage commission or transaction fees, the traders portfolio will rise to $5,445, leaving the trader with a net dollar return of $495, or 10% on the capital invested. Now, let's say a call option on the stock with a strike price of $165 that expires about a month from now costs $5.50 per share or $550 per contract. Given the trader's available investment budget, they can buy nine options for a cost of $4,950. Because the option contract controls 100 shares, the trader is effectively making a deal on 900 shares. If the stock price increases 10% to $181.50 at expiration, the option will expire in the money (ITM) and be worth $16.50 per share (for a $181.50 to $165 strike), or $14,850 on 900 shares. That's a net dollar return of $9,990, or 200% on the capital invested, a much larger return compared to trading the underlying asset directly. Risk/Reward The trader's potential loss from a long call is limited to the premium paid. Potential profit is unlimited because the option payoff will increase along with the underlying asset price until expiration, and there is theoretically no limit to how high it can go. Image by Julie Bang A Investopedia 2019 Buying Puts (Long Puts) If a call option gives the holder the right to purchase the underlying at a set price before the contract expires, a put option gives the holder the right to sell the underlying at a set price. This is a preferred strategy for traders who: Are bearish on a particular stock, ETF, or index, but want to take on less risk than with a short-selling strategy Want to utilize leverage to take advantage of falling prices A put option works effectively in the exact opposite direction from the way a call option does, with the put option gaining value as the price of the underlying decreases. Though short-selling also allows a trader to profit from falling prices, the risk with a short position is unlimited because there is theoretically no limit to how high a price can rise. With a put option, if the underlying ends up higher than the option's strike price, the option will simply expire worthless. Example Say that you think the price of a stock is likely to decline from $60 to $50 or lower based on bad earnings, but you don't want to risk selling the stock short in case you are wrong. Instead, you can buy the $50 put for a premium of $2.00. If the stock does not fall below $50, or if indeed it rises, the most you will lose is the $2.00 premium. However, if you are right and the stock drops all the way to $45, you would make $3 ($50 minus $45. less the $2 premium). Risk/Reward The potential loss on a long put is limited to the premium paid for the options. The maximum profit from the position is capped because the underlying price cannot drop below zero, but as with a long call option, the put option leverages the trader's return. Image by Julie Bang A Investopedia 2019 Covered Calls Unlike the long call or long put, a covered call is a strategy that is overlaid onto an existing long position in the underlying asset. It is essentially an upside call that is sold in an amount that would cover that existing position size. In this way, the covered call writer collects the option premium as income, but also limits the upside potential of the underlying position. This is a preferred position for traders who: Expect no change or a slight increase in the underlying's price, collecting the full option premium Are willing to limit upside potential in exchange for some downside protection A covered call strategy involves buying 100 shares of the underlying asset and selling a call option against those shares. When the trader sells the call, the option's premium is collected, thus lowering the cost basis on the shares and providing some downside protection. In return, by selling the option, the trader is agreeing to sell shares of the underlying at the option's strike price, thereby capping the trader's upside potential. Example Suppose a trader buys 1,000 shares of BP (BP) at $44 per share and simultaneously writes 10 call options (one contract for every 100 shares) with a strike price of $46 expiring in one month, at a cost of $0.25 per share, or $25 per contract and $250 total for the 10 contracts. The $0.25 premium reduces the cost basis on the shares to $43.75, so any drop in the underlying down to this point will be offset by the premium received from the option position, thus offering limited downside protection. If the share price rises above $46 before expiration, the short call option will be exercised (or "called away"), meaning the trader will have to deliver the stock at the option's strike price. In this case, the trader will make a profit of $2.25 per share ($46 strike price - $43.75 cost basis). However, this example implies the trader does not expect BP to move above $46 or significantly below $44 over the next month. As long as the shares do not rise above $46 and get called away before the options expire, the trader will keep the premium free and clear and can continue selling calls against the shares if desired. Risk/Reward If the share price rises above the strike price before expiration, the short call option can be exercised and the trader will have to deliver shares of the underlying at the option's strike price, even if it is below the market price. In exchange for this risk, a covered call strategy provides limited downside protection in the form of the premium received when selling the call option. Image by Julie Bang A Investopedia 2019 Protective Puts A protective put involves buying a downside put in an amount to cover an existing position in the underlying asset. In effect, this strategy puts a lower floor below which you cannot lose more. Of course, you will have to pay for the option's premium. In this way, it acts as a sort of insurance policy against losses. This is a preferred strategy for traders who own the underlying asset and want downside protection Thus, a protective put is a long put, like the strategy we discussed above; however, the goal, as the name implies, is downside protection versus attempting to profit from a downside move. If a trader owns shares with a bullish sentiment in the long run but wants to protect against a decline in the short run, they may purchase a protective put. If the price of the underlying increases and is above the put's strike price at maturity, the option expires worthless and the trader loses the premium but still has the benefit of the increased underlying price. On the other hand, if the underlying price decreases, the traders portfolio position loses value, but this loss is largely covered by the gain from the put option position. Hence, the position can effectively be thought of as an insurance strategy. Example The trader can set the strike price below the current price to reduce premium payment at the expense of decreasing downside protection. This can be thought of as deductible insurance. Suppose, for example, that an investor buys 1,000 shares of Coca-Cola (KO) at a price of $44 and wants to protect the investment from adverse price movements over the next two months. The following put options are available: 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 Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire by Stephen Cadogan The UK has agreed in Brexit talks to take over part of the current quota arrangements with non-EU countries for certain agricultural products. The UK said it will take a portion corresponding to its consumption of those quotas over the last three years. However, even this relatively minor Brexit deal has run into trouble, with seven of the worlds biggest food exporters (the US, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, New Zealand, Uruguay and Thailand) formally rejecting it. Therefore, the remaining 27 EU states having to soak up the UKs share of non-EU food import quotas has not yet been ruled out. For example, New Zealand is allowed to export up to 230,000 tonnes of sheep and goat meat per year to the EU, and the UK consumes up to 40% of this quota. Unless the UK continues to take 40%, EU-27 sheepmeat markets will be over-supplied. As for Brexit overall, it now looks much more difficult to achieve smoothly during the limited time available, opening the way for the cliff edge, because it will be too late to secure the agreement of the European Parliament before March 29, 2019, when the two-year Brexit negotiating period expires. Unless the EU-27 and the UK stop the clock, the UK would leave the EU without an agreement, and business leaders warn this would bring chaos at British, Irish and mainland European ports due to checking of consignments, as well as suspension of air travel between the UK and the EU, and other major disruptions. Despite prime minister Theresa Mays attempt in her speech in Italy on September 22 to relaunch negotiations on a better footing, the fourth round of Brexit negotiations in the last week of September brought little progress on issues under discussion such as citizens rights, the Irish border, and the UKs exit bill. Next, the Conservative Party conference confirmed that the cabinet remained divided on Brexit. There was minimal progress during the fifth round of negotiations, on October 9-12. However, European Council President Donald Tusk has stated that the EU does not anticipate a no deal scenario. In contrast, reports put the proportion of British cabinet members believing that no agreement will be reached at 40-50%, and there is disagreement within the Conservative Party on whether funds should be set aside to plan for a Brexit no deal. The UKs hopes that the EU would open the second phase of Brexit talks, on the future UK-EU trade relationship, were dashed on October 3 by a European Parliament resolution stating that sufficient progress has not been made (in a 557 to 92 vote). This was in line with the thinking of commission president Jean Claude Juncker and EU negotiator Michel Barnier. December is seen as a make or break month for Brexit talks. Mr Barnier has stated that there is significant political will in the EU to reach sufficient progress. And UK financial and manufacturing businesses are understood to have made it clear to their government that they cannot wait much longer, before they activate contingency plans for a no deal Brexit. If sufficient progress is not made in December, Brexit talks are thought more likely than not to fail. Labour claims there is no reason Ireland should charge for third-level education when primary and secondary school is free. A new report by the European Commission shows students here are charged the second highest college fees in Europe, at around 3,000 a year. A retired surgeon has been found guilty of indecently assaulting two boys at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and his private clinic on nearby Fair Street. Yesterday, Dr. Michael Shine of Wellington Road in Dublin 4 was cleared of groping three other boys. Dr Michael Shine pleaded not guilty to eight charges of indecent assault against six boys between 1964 and 1991. Each of the complainants gave evidence and yesterday he was cleared of four charges of indecent assault against three of them. Earlier in the trial, Mr J Paul McDermott directed the jury to return a not guilty verdict in relation to one complainant and he was found guilty of indecently assaulting the remaining two at midday.. One of the boys was groped at Dr Shines clinic on two separate occasions between 1974 and 1975. The second boy was indecently assaulted while being treated for an ingrown toe nail at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital sometime between 1975 and 1976. During his evidence, he said he was effectively tied down to a bed and he described how Dr Shine slipped his hand under the blanket. The 85-year-old was remanded on continuing bail today ahead of his sentence hearing in December. Trains will be back running by the morning - with the next day of action due on Tuesday. Unions have already said they're a long way off a deal to call off the other strike days. It has been a tough commute for thousands of passengers heading home tonight without Irish Rail. Today's one-day strike has placed a lot of pressure on Bus Eireann, which says it's services have been busier than normal. Four more strikes are planned over the next couple of months. Greg Ennis from SIPTU says they're a long way off a deal to call off the other strike days. "Every dispute is resolved and we didn't want this day to happen. "Unfortunately after two years of negotiations and procrastination by the management of Iris Rail, the Department for Transport, and ultimately the Department of Finance, we're left with no option. "Those five days could happen unless there is an intervention between now and then. "As was said by other speakers, there is a chasm between the trade unions in Irish Rail and the management in the context of a solution to this." Update 3pm: The Belgian government has said it will keep in contact with the Spanish authorities about the stay of ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont on its territory. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said on Tuesday that Mr Puigdemont, who arrived in Brussels the previous day, will not be granted any special favours. Mr Michel said in a statement that "the government will have regular diplomatic contacts with Spain regarding the current circumstances". The government insisted it had not made any effort to encourage Mr Puigdemont to come to Belgium. Mr Puigdemont insisted during a news conference on Tuesday he had no plans to ask for asylum in Belgium and would return once conditions allowed him. He said he was drawn to Brussels not as the capital of Belgium but as the seat of the main European Union institutions. AP Update 12.40pm: Ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has called for violence to be avoided and has said dialogue is a priority. Mr Puigdemont, speaking in Belgium, said his team would continue to work despite Spain's dissolution of his regional administration following the disputed independence vote and that separatists would "accept the challenge" of elections in December. Mr Puigdemont on Tuesday recapped the issues which led him to leave for Belgium the previous day, but did not immediately say in his statement what he would do in Brussels or whether he would seek asylum. Mr Puigdemont told journalists Spain wanted "'us to abandon our political project, and they won't achieve it". He had arrived at Brussels Press Club for a news conference amid speculation that he would claim asylum. Mr Puigdemont walked into the building past a few protesters with Spanish national flags and one sign that said Rule Of Law. He then said he had come to Brussels to act "in freedom and safety". Carles Puigdemont Update 11.30am: Spain's Supreme Court will investigate six ex-members of the governing body of the now-dissolved Catalan parliament for possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement following the parliament's declaration of independence last week. The six include ex-speaker of the parliament Carme Forcadell, one of the leading activists of Catalonia's pro-independence movement for many years. The ruling on Tuesday came a day after Spain's chief prosecutor Jose Manuel Maza announced he was seeking charges. Rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges carry maximum sentences of 30, 15 and six years in prison. Mr Maza is also seeking similar charges against ousted regional leader Carles Puigdemont, and his number two, Oriol Junqueras. The court said the case would be handled by Judge Pablo Llarena Conde. AP Earlier: Catalonia's ousted regional president will give a news conference in Brussels as speculation mounts as to whether he will request political asylum in Belgium. Carles Puigdemont arrived in Brussels on Monday, the same day that Spanish prosecutors announced they were seeking rebellion, sedition and embezzlement charges against deposed Catalan officials, including the ex-regional leader. European officials said Mr Puigdemont would speak publicly on Tuesday in Brussels. Over the weekend, a Belgian government official said that it would not be "unrealistic" for Mr Puigdemont to request asylum. Belgium allows asylum requests by citizens of other European Union nations, and in the past, some Basque separatists were not extradited to Spain while they sought asylum, causing years of friction. Meanwhile, one of Catalonia's main separatist civil society groups said that while it considered that Spain "illegitimately" called an early regional election, it was an opportunity to get a mandate to "ratify the republic". The Assemblea Nacional Catalana, or ANC, which only recognises an independent Catalan republic, made a statement Tuesday, after its leaders held a meeting late Monday. The ANC said that elections to be held on December 21 cannot be considered to have full democratic guarantees because they were "illegitimately called by the government in Madrid" and because two activists are in jail pending sedition charges, including ANC leader Jordi Sanchez. But the statement said that grassroots organisations need to prepare a "joint strategy" before the regional election with the goal of "obtaining an uncontested victory that will ratify the Republic". Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. The global nutrition groups nine-month interim management statement reports this performance was driven by volume growth of 2.4%, pricing growth of 0.9%, and a contribution from acquisitions of 3.3%. Total group revenue increased 13.5% on a reported basis and 13.7% on a constant currency basis. This was driven by 2.3% volume growth, 6.4% price improvement, and 5% contribution from acquisitions. Glanbias net debt has been decreased by 144m compared to the end of September 2016, largely due to receiving 210m net cash proceeds relating to the sale of 60% of Dairy Ireland to Glanbia Co-op this year. The companys reduced debt position was somewhat offset by the overall 181m spent acquiring US plant nutrition company Amazing Grass and the Dutch direct-to-consumer channel Body & Fit, and increased working capital primarily due to acquisitions, higher activity levels, and higher commodity markets. Group MD Siobhan Talbot said: Glanbia delivered a good result in the first nine months of 2017 with wholly owned revenue from continuing operations growing 6.6% in the period. Glanbia Performance Nutrition (GPN) was the main driver of revenue growth with Glanbia Nutritionals (GN) continuing to perform well. Our joint ventures delivered strong revenue growth as a result of improved dairy markets. The outlook for the remainder of 2017 is positive and we reiterate our full-year guidance of 7% to 10% growth in pro forma adjusted earnings per share, constant currency, for the continuing group. GPNs nine-month revenues increased by 9%, driven by a 2.7% increase in volume, 7.4% growth from the acquisitions of Amazing Grass, and Body & Fit offset by a 1.1% price decrease. The overall volume movement this year reflected branded revenue growth offset by a decline in contract business. The drivers of growth have been a good performance in the online and mass channels in the US as well as a strong performance across the EMEA and LAAPAC markets. GN delivered a good nine-month performance, with revenue growth of 4.6%. This was driven by a price increase of 2.5%, mainly as a result of improved dairy markets, versus prior year and volume growth of 2.1%, driven by Nutritional Solutions. Stock market commentators and analysts have broadly endorsed the companys 7%-10% growth forecasts for the year-end. Port of Cork commercial manager Captain Michael McCarthy said the volume of traffic from Irish ports using British roads to travel onto mainland Europe was so great that an adverse impact on Irish importing and exporting was certain unless alternatives were found. He was echoing the call of the Irish Academy of Engineering in its submission to the draft National Planning Framework, in which it urged the Government to commission a report to examine the capacity of our ports including road and rail access together with options for increasing air freight and the speed and frequency of cargo ships/ ferries to the continent. As an all-island body, the academy is particularly concerned with the possible impacts of Brexit, said the academys submission. If, as appears likely, the UK exits the EU customs union, we should ensure that alternative trade routes to [mainland] Europe, which avoid the land bridge through the UK, are made as attractive as possible for exports and imports, he said. Mr McCarthy echoed the call, saying: We should be looking at getting from A to B in as shortest time as possible, but we are still reliant on the most convoluted ways. Some 60% of cargo that we are sending to the continent is going via the land bridge of the UK. Post-Brexit, that just wont be possible. Even if we have a hard or soft Brexit, there will be customs inspections and other obstacles. No matter what the Brexit outcome, it will be different to what it is now and we simply must prepare our ports for that. Mr McCarthy said he had been exploring new ways for cargo and freight to reach continental Europe even before the Brexit vote. Even pre-Brexit we should have been looking at the situation. As it stands, most exporting out of Munster goes up to Dublin, onto the UK and then the continent. There is a huge case to be made for the likes of Cork to be utilised to import and export straight to and from the continent, he said. Chief executive of Dublin Port Company Eamonn OReilly said recently it was seeing increasing demand for direct freight services to continental Europe. He said a new ship introduced at the end of October the MV Celine which will operate between Dublin Port and the ports of Zeebrugge and Rotterdam was a result of the shipping sector reacting to Brexit. Brexit is creating a lot of uncertainty and the introduction of the new ship shows the shipping sector beginning to provide additional capacity to create more options for importers and exporters. We expect to see more new services to Continental Europe during 2018, he said. Meanwhile, Bank of England deputy governor Sam Woods said it was possible that the UKs financial sector could lose up to 75,000 jobs as banks and insurers shift operations to the EU after Brexit. Woods told MPs that the 65,000 to 75,000 estimate was drawn up in a report from consultants Oliver Wyman and not the Bank of England but that in terms of the long-term possibility, such a scenario was plausible. n Additional reporting Reuters In lovely Lismore is the 29-bed Lismore House Hotel, in the centre of the Blackwater-set scenic town, by the Ambrose Power Memorial. It was originally know as the Devonshire Arms Hotel, given its long, long links to the Duke of Devonshire, and was built to accommodate guests of the Cavendish family at Lismore Castle. Claimed as Irelands first purpose-built hotel, with a pedigree back to 1797, the Lismore House Hotel/Devonshire Arms underwent a significant overhaul and rebranding in 2006 (there was also another Blackwater Devonshire Arms Hotel in Youghal, in previous decades), setting up as a four-star boutique hotel with conference/function facilities for 200 people. The Georgian-established Lismore hotel was most recently associated with the Nolan family, who have an Irish and European transport-and-haulage business. Last year, members of the family settled a long-running legal battle with AIB over hotel investments, including the Lismore House Hotel, and Isaacs Hostel, in Dublin, where debts of up to 23m were in dispute. Lismore House Hotel has not traded recently; latest Tripadvisor comments were in mid-2016, but its almost in ready to go condition, says appointed selling agent, David Reynolds, of Sherry FitzGerald Reynolds, who is selling by private treaty. With recovery in the hospitality/hotel markets, and a new visitor focus on the county, due to factors like the Waterford Greenway cycle/walkway route to the south and the recent Dublin-Waterford motorway, demand for hotel accommodation has surged, according to Mr Reynolds. Given its 29, fine bedrooms, substantial conference and banqueting facilities, plus a well-appointed bar-and-restaurant area, this hotel should attract strong interest from the Irish and international markets, Mr Reynolds states. There is an obvious, severe shortage of bedroom accommodation, particularly in the West Waterford area, with many tourists now having to secure accommodation in neighbouring towns, he adds. Among the guest whove stayed at the Main Street hotel was the 19th century writer and traveller, William Thackery, whose name is recalled in a plaque on the hotel wall, while Lismore Castle and town also had a long association with Fred Astaire and his sister, Adele, who married a Cavendish. Details: Sherry FitzGerald Reynolds, 058-23444 Priority should be given to developing critical masses of internationally competitive indigenous enterprises. To do this involves seeing economic development as a bottom-up organic process as opposed to the existing over-centralised view. It requires that we design fit-for-purpose city regions, towns and rural places and that control and responsibility for enterprise development be decentralised to elected authorities in these places with tax raising powers. The present Government is planning for Ireland 2040 through the National Planning Framework (NPF). Planning over 20 years ahead requires a deep understanding of the drivers of Irish economic development for the past 40 years. We need to build on our strengths but learn from weaknesses. We need to face up to the fact that the recent crash revealed policy weaknesses that cannot be ignored. Of course, we must also face up to threats such as Brexit and corporation tax competition and actively search out opportunities. Unfortunately, the Governments current thinking on the NPF fails to address the enterprise sectors and the places which will drive Irish economic development and the governance arrangements required to fulfil Irelands economic development potential. This reveals three inter-related national problems: Weakness in developing indigenous enterprise, failure to see places as drivers of economic development, and a lack of institutional learning. Irelands weakness in developing critical masses of world-class indigenous businesses has featured since the 1950s. Unlike most other developed countries that had no choice but to develop on the back of indigenous enterprise, we could turn to foreign-assisted enterprise. By 2000 these businesses, many of which were world class, were a permanent feature. During and since the crash they have performed very well. We now have internationally competitive areas, including pharma, information and communications technology (ICT) and finance, which are all dominated by foreign-owned enterprises. Others food and tourism are largely indigenous, and both underperform. In policy terms, the dominant mindset is that the IDA delivers economic development top-down through its pipeline. The result is that politicians and central government have always seen Irish regions as being about redistribution, rather than development. This has been manifested in endless and meaningless revisions of regions and haggling over city boundaries that are wholly inadequate as city regions. There have also been recurring policy mistakes and system failures that have undermined our ability to reach potential. While these problems are grave, they flow from policy mindsets that are deep-seated and slow to change. However, it is never too late to plot a new course. Small changes at first may set in motion more fundamental reform. We need to view economic development as a bottom-up, organic process that taps into local people as best-placed for harnessing local potential to build concentrations of successful enterprises. In addition, we should strengthen existing concentrations in food and tourism and build new ones. The result will be more sustained prosperity in decades to come. These ideas will be debated at a Policy Forum: Re-thinking Irish Economic Development to be held in UCC tomorrow. Eoin OLeary is from the Competitiveness Institute, Department of Economics, Cork University Business School. Andy Connors, 46, of the Old Pound, Boherboy Rd, Saggart, Co Dublin was buried in a gold-plated coffin after he was shot in front of his family on August 19, 2014. His wife Ann Connors, four of his six children and a niece were in the house at the time. One of his daughters told how she was pushed to the floor by the gunman who entered the house through the back door into the kitchen shortly before 11pm. A man came to the door wearing a black balaclava, bulletproof vest and black gloves. He walked in the door. He grabbed me and pushed me to the ground. He had a gun in his right hand, the child said in her deposition, read out at Dublin Coroners Court. Family members cried as the details of the killing were recounted. Daddy didnt make it to the hall, he shot him. Then he walked out of the house and drove off. I went down the hall and saw mammy holding daddy, said the child. Mr Connors had been in good form earlier that evening according to neighbour Keith Brennan. He was 100% flying and in good humour. He didnt mention any threats, he said. The pair had had a few drinks at a pub in Monasterevin before returning to the Connors home in Saggart at around 10pm. Another daughter said she was playing in the bedroom when she heard a scream from the kitchen. She described the gunman holding what she thought was a Mac 10 machinegun in his right hand. He shot my daddy six or seven times. My daddy fell back onto my mammy. The man walked out, she said. A 999 call was made at 10.55pm. Mr Connors was unresponsive when gardai and paramedics arrived at 11.09pm. He was rushed to Tallaght Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 11.58pm. The cause of death was gunshot wounds to the chest, according to state pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy. Ann Connors asked the coroner if there was anything the family could have done to save him. Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane said that Mr Connors suffered direct injuries to his heart and died within seconds. There was nothing you could have done, the coroner said. Detective Inspector John Walshe told the court a file has been sent to the DPP but there has been no prosecution in relation to the killing. The investigation remains open. The jury at the inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing by person or persons unknown. The Government will also unveil plans today to strengthen money laundering laws, tighten up company director regulations, and planned enhanced anti-corruption measures. It comes on the back of the collapse of court cases, international tax evasion scandals as well as concerns about fraud in Ireland and delays in criminal cases. Under the proposals, the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement is set to get extra powers, staff and a wider remit. While the report sets out the setting up of a new agency, government sources insisted the ODCE would remain in principle, but with extra powers. The report proposes it be rebranded as a special commission, with a chief commissioner and several commissioners working on specific corporate governance areas. The ODCE came in for serious criticism after the collapse of the trial of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick. The courts found its work fell short of an impartial, unbiased investigation. It also emerged that documents were shredded . A crucial report from the ODCE on the trial to the Minister for Jobs Frances Fitzgerald delivered months ago has still not been released. The launch today says the new or enhanced agency should get more autonomy and flexibility. A separate garda-led joint agency task force will be piloted. This will involve several departments and will initially look into fraudulent payments to businesses and credit card fraud. As the 24-hour rail strike caused havoc for more than 155,000 regular commuters yesterday, another slower derailment was at risk of taking place far closer to Leinster House. While to date the issue has been limited to opposition criticism, unless the matter addressed before the second of five strike days next Tuesday frustration from voters in key constituencies means it could soon turn into a political crisis of the Governments own making, or, more specifically, Mr Varadkars and Mr Ross own making. Both are increasingly being targeted by political rivals, who are intent on blaming the pair for not addressing the problems that led to the strike in the first place. Before rising to their respective positions of Taoiseach and Transport Minister, the leader of Fine Gael and de facto leader of the Independent Alliance were always quick to explain how they would any strikes if they ever in a position of real authority. During the Fine Gael leadership race, Mr Varadkar told reporters at the launch of his policies at Smock Alley on May 22 that strikes would no longer be a problem if he was in charge. With one eye as ever on a headline and the other, at the time, on wooing support, Mr Varadkar said confidently that while strikes would not be banned under his watch, he wanted access severely limited to areas that are not essential services, adding if both sides go to the Labour Court, it should be settled. The comment inevitably led to union outrage, with Mr Varadkar forced to reject claims by National Bus and Rail Union representative Dermot OLeary that the Taoiseach-to-be was Thatcherite. However, instead of moving to assuage any misunderstanding between the incoming Taoiseach and unions, who know how to pack a punch, little appears to have been done to minimise the issue, contributing opposition parties have claimed to the current industrial relations problem coming down the tracks. Mr Ross has equally been shy of voicing an opinion on relations disputes, with regular Sunday newspaper columns before the last general election repeatedly lashing out at the stand-offs and various transport ministers, insisting action was needed. However, in Government, the once regular comments have been replaced by what opposition parties claim is a silence and an attempt to avoid responsibility, firstly, in the Luas strike row, then Bus Eireann, and now with Iarnrod Eireann. Mr Varadkar and Mr Ross have pointed out it is up to Iarnrod Eireann management and striking workers to resolve their dispute and, given the disputes complexity, this is understandable. However, due to their previous high-profile comments on strikes and the political need to resolve the matter quickly before it begins affect more than just the transport system, the relative silence from Mr Varadkar and Mr Ross leaves the Coalition open to becoming collateral damage should the stand-off descend as feared into a political train wreck. Over the past 48 hours, the first signs of this appeared, with Fianna Fail transport spokesperson Robert Troy taking aim at the Government, and Mr Ross in particular, saying the strike is part of a growing trend of industrial unease since Ross has taken office. The comments may be unfair, due to the practical realities of industrial relations, but given the strong opinions of Mr Varadkar and Mr Ross before they were in charge, there is unlikely to be much sympathy from voters left waiting on the platforms. Increased workloads, which cause stress and strain in both the workplace and the family, are fuelling the exodus of highly experienced military personnel, who are leaving for easier, better-paid careers in the private sector. Thats according to RACO president, Commandant Shane Keogh, who told Chief of Staff Vice Admiral, Mark Mellett, and Minister Paul Keogh, that the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps are in a state of crisis. So far this year, 77 officers have bailed out, up by six on the total for 2016. Since 2012, 547 officers have exited the services, 398 in advance of retirement. Comdt Keogh said ever-increasing gaps in all levels gave rise to real fears about health and safety, which were highlighted in the recently published report by University of Limerick academics. The lack of resources at operational level presents a real and present danger. That is where we must draw the line: the safety of our personnel, all ranks, must remain paramount, he said. Its a testament to the loyalty of our members that they continue to perform, regardless. However, we are at that point where an error is inevitable. The question only remains if the error will be administrative in nature or, as we all fear, catastrophic or lethal in consequence, Comdt Keogh stated. Some units had just 20% of the officers required and those still serving had to perform additional duties to plug gaps above and beyond what is acceptable over a prolonged period. He had met a colleague in the bomb-disposal squad who had to leave his family for 40 days in a two-month period, not as a result of increased operational taskings, but to fill in due to a shortage of numbers. The colleague admitted it was taking an enormous strain on his family life. As anyone could imagine, it would. It is an abuse of the loyalty of the members of the Defence Forces to ask them to continue on like this, with family life being sacrificed, as a result, Comdt Keogh said. He said the services were not being resourced. Unfortunately, similar scenarios are echoed throughout the Defence Forces, and often the frustrations are aired by the only means possible an exit from the Defence Forces, forced out, as they see it. Comdt Keogh also said the situation was simply unsustainable and it was a mistake to think that inducting large classes of cadets is the sole solution to the current dysfunction. He said RACO welcomed the new inductees, who were now in a particularly onerous role, due to the vacuum at middle-management level. Mentoring is key to our leadership doctrine and training. But whos going to do the mentoring? Middle management, with any degree of experience, is fast-becoming a thing of the past. We cant mitigate this risk with newly-commissioned officers. "Consequently, we have very capable personnel, but with very little experience, performing in appointments before their time, Comdt Keogh said. He welcomed the ministers commitment to a review of the Defence Forces industrial relations mechanisms. The warning was repeated by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney and British secretary for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire. Mr Varadkar insisted any new direct rule system must be different from the past and honour all parts of the 1998 Good Friday agreement. In a day of drama, talks between Sinn Fein and the DUP designed to end an eight-month stand-off on forming a new government fell apart yesterday as the parties failed to find agreement on key issues. The situation, which is underlined by both parties ongoing dispute over the Irish language act but stretches to a series of other problems in the province, led to Mr Brokenshire confirming he is likely to have to put the Northern Ireland budget to Westminster this month. Such a move would in effect lead to direct rule returning to Northern Ireland for the first time since the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Speaking in the US at the start of three days of meetings with multinationals such as Apple, Facebook, and Google, Mr Varadkar said he still believes a deal can be struck. However, in a warning for the Norths devolved assembly, he said it is sliding towards direct rule from Britain unless a deal can be agreed. We are of course concerned we are now sliding towards direct rule, the fact a budget may have to go to Westminster rather than Stormont is in many ways the first step to restoration of direct rule, he said. Its the position of the Irish Government that we cant support the restoration of direct rule in the form that existed before the Good Friday agreement. If its not possible for the DUP and Sinn Fein to form a government, and if the British government has to step in, then direct rule is going to have to be different than before. We would expect all the provisions of the Good Friday agreement to be honoured and that would include working through bodies like the British Irish [Intergovernmental] conference and trying to work institutions in the absence of an executive, he said. The view was repeated by Mr Coveney, who told RTE Radios News at One programme that the situation means Northern Irelands parties are taking a step back towards direct rule from Britain. It is certainly a step in the direction of direct rule, which is certainly not a place we want to be in, said Mr Coveney, who has been at the centre of the talks in recent months. The risk of direct rule could still be avoided if both parties return to the talks table and form an 11th-hour agreement, an issue which, it is understood, both Dublin and London believe could still happen party members have been warned their Stormont salaries will be scrapped if a deal is not done. However, while DUP leader Arlene Foster and Sinn Feins leader in Northern Ireland Michelle ONeill remain open to further discussion, neither party has said they are willing to back down on key issues at the centre of their stand-off. In the meantime, the largest maternity unit in the West, which had extended the service to all women, says it may have to revert to partial access for select cases because of a staff shortage. October 2019 has been set as the target date for the provision of full access to foetal anomaly scans but the HSE says that will depend on funding being made available to recruit and train 52 new sonographers. Until then, as many as 20,000 expectant mothers a year may go through their pregnancy without an anomaly scan, leaving them in the dark about potentially life-threatening conditions until their baby is born. AIMS Ireland, the Association for the Improvement of Maternity Services, called for recruitment to begin urgently, saying the gap in services was unacceptable. Spokeswoman Krysia Lynch said: Its the inequity of it thats glaring because there are some women who have full access to anomaly scanning and other women, who, because of where they live, dont have that access. We need this as a matter of course for all women. Foetal anomaly scans are carried out at week 20-22 to check on the development of the foetus and identify problems which would not show up in the standard early dating scan. An Oireachtas committee has heard that without the later scan, problems can go undetected, leaving parents and medics unprepared and dealing with an emergency, and sometimes a tragedy, at birth. Women in Dublin fare best but access is patchy in many parts of the country. In 2016, one in three pregnant women did not get an anomaly scan. And now at University Hospital Galway, where successful efforts were made to provide full access, the service has taken a hit because of a staffing shortage. The hospital said: GUH has been experiencing challenges relating to staffing in our maternity ultrasound department since August this year which we are trying to address. To date, we have been able to maintain the current service provision of foetal anomaly scanning to any patient who had been booked while we try to recruit/replace trained sonographers. We may have to reduce the availability of these scans to some patients. The HSE has committed to providing 100% access and says it has requested funding for recruitment in 2018. It said autumn 2019 was the projected end date to have all staff, training and referral procedures in place but added: Achieving the end date will be dependent on the resources required being made available. US PRESIDENT, Donald Trump, has decided not to certify that Iran is in compliance with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement constraining Irans nuclear-weapons programme. In effect, Trump has challenged the US Congress to do what is normally the executive branchs responsibility: create foreign policy. What that policy will be remains an open question. While the US Congress is already preparing sanctions, these will not, on their own, comprise a comprehensive Iran strategy. Instead, the US and Iran will need to negotiate directly on a range of non-nuclear issues. As it stands, few assert that Iran is actually failing to comply with its obligations under the JCPOA. Even US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who has made no secret of his disdain for Iran, complains only that Iranian leaders are violating the spirit of the deal. But the JCPOA is clearly and deliberately focused on curbing Irans nuclear-weapons development, not its missile programmes, regional ambitions, or animus toward Israel. The Trump administration also takes issue with the time limits on the JCPOA, with some provisions such as strict limits on research and development of advanced centrifuges in effect for just 10 years. Trumps denunciations of the deal have fuelled debate over the appropriateness of the time limits, though such discussions often fail to recognise that Iran agreed to adhere to International Atomic Energy Agency standards, including its advanced inspection protocols. In any case, the key to preventing recidivism, after the JCPOA sunset provisions expire, will be to move Iran toward good-neighbour policies, and to ensure that its economic interests supersede its ambition to become a regional hegemon. That is where bilateral negotiations come in. One reason why the JCPOA did not cover non-nuclear issues is that several other partners and allies namely, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the European Union were involved, and each had its own perspective and objectives. Regional powers with ringside seats to the talks, such as Saudi Arabia, also had plenty to say. Reconciling these actors conflicting interests and demands, concerning the full range of relevant issues, would have been next to impossible. Bilateral negotiations between the US and Iran, however, might allow the US to make progress on the issues that are important to it and, equally significant, to understand modern Iran better. Such negotiations would likely start with a lengthy discussion of the two sides conflicting interpretations of the history of their relationship in other words, each countrys grievances with the other. For Iran, such grievances include US support for the 1953 coup in Iran, and Americas subsequent ties to the Shah and his brutal secret police, the Savak. The US, for its part, would probably raise the 1979 abduction of US embassy staff by Irans fledgling Islamic revolutionary regime, and, more recently, its targeting of American troops by using Shia militia groups in southern Iraq. These discussions should include detailed questions and specific answers. Working groups might create a common narrative. The negotiations would also need to cover contemporary issues, including a tour dhorizon of current hotspots. What is Iran doing in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and especially Syria? How does it define its interests in these countries? Does it actually see itself, as many Sunni Arabs assert, as a protector of Shia Arabs? In Iraq, the US invested heavily in toppling Saddam Husseins regime and then in supporting a political process that has produced a Shia-led government a positive outcome, from Irans perspective. The key question, then, is why Iran continues to support militia groups that have often undermined Iraqs government. As for Syria, Iran moved quickly to support President Bashar al-Assads government. Irans backing of an administration dominated by the minority Alawites (a Shia sect) has clearly unnerved Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, which regards with great concern this Shia crescent just across its northern frontier. Iran cannot really expect the Saudis to be indifferent to such a change in their geostrategic position. But Iran is not the only actor that must explain its Syria strategy. The US, too, has so far pursued policies that, to put it mildly, have not always had a self-evident rationale. Now is the time for the US to put its cards on the table. Does it seek regime change, or would it settle for policy changes by whatever government Syrians eventually choose? And what about Israel? During his presidency, from 2005 to 2013, Irans Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inflamed world opinion by repeatedly questioning whether the Holocaust happened. Does this kind of ignorance and contempt for the Jewish people persist among Irans current leadership, colouring their approach to Israel? The final, vital issue that must be addressed in any bilateral talks between the US and Iran is the latters military activity and, in particular, its missile programmes. Iran frequently alludes to its right to maintain a modern military, with advanced missiles, though, unlike, say, North Korea, it stops short of claiming a right to nuclear weapons. To determine the appropriate role and capabilities of Irans military, direct talks between the US and Iranian militaries, like those the US has pursued with China, might be in order. The US cannot continue to base its policy toward Iran a huge country with a population of over 80m, a growing economy, and strong regional influence on sanctions and vitriol. Likewise, Iran needs to retire poisonous slogans like Death to America and, instead, work with the US to advance its own interests and aspirations. Perhaps the mountain of mistrust will turn out to be too high for the two countries to scale. But getting to the other side is worth a try. Christopher R Hill, former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is dean of the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and the author of Outpost. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015. Image courtesy of Eric Chenal Luxembourg Art Week 2017 Victor Hugo Hall and Tramsschapp, Luxembourg From November 03 to 12, 2017 LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK, the youngest of European art fairs, has as background one of the most dynamic economic and cultural regions of the world. Thanks to a selection of renowned galleries from the four corners of Europe, it allows amateurs and art collectors to discover contemporary artistic production in all its diversity. Image courtesy of Eric Chenal Located a few steps from the city center of Luxembourg, UNESCO world heritage site, LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK is particularly attractive for visitors from abroad. With a number of entries that exceeded the most optimistic projections (from 7,000 to 12,000 last year), the fair is already a must-see event in the local and regional artistic scene. The large spaces of the Halle Victor Hugo provide participants with a professional and affordable setting, allowing them to exhibit their works in the best conditions. Image courtesy of Eric Chenal For their guests, LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK has developed a program of guided tours finishing with a gala dinner. After the resounding success of the first two editions, LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK 2017 returns with two complementary sections: POSITIONS presents large established regional or international galleries, while TAKE OFF highlights emerging and collective galleries through works at affordable prices. Image courtesy of Eric Chenal In order to open up to the greatest number of people and to reinforce synergy effects, LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK will also offer an ambitious program of conferences organized in collaboration with institutional partners, including Mudam Luxembourg, Center Pompidou-Metz and Casino Luxembourg. LUXEMBOURG ART WEEK is supported by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Economy and the City of Luxembourg and relies on a large group of sponsors and partners. more. luxembourgartweek.lu Local Dems sweep; town rejects pot Every Democrat on the local ballot won their race Tuesday, including Jamestown resident Peter Neronhas re-election as the states top prosecutor, and local voters followed suit with the statewide trend... Voters rebuff allowing retail pot sales in shops By a margin of 157 votes, the electorate decided Tuesday not to allow local businesses to cultivate, manufacture, test or sell recreational marijuana in Jamestown. The referendum to allow the... School board agrees to contract with North Kingstown Jamestown students entering high school can continue to choose North Kingstown as their destination for grades 9-12. We are pleased to continue this historic partnership, said Ken Duva, superintendent of... Hollywood, If you spent a little time reading the threads rather than trying to troll people and attempting to control them while you hijack threads, you might learn something. Let's revisit the instant case: Clara007 asked another poster if they had read the Bible. I asked Clara007 if he / she had read the Bible and reminded him / her what that book has to say relative to the OP. Nothing more, sir and nothing less. My response was related to the OP based upon the book a poster inquired about. In doing so, any credibility given to the Bible is between Clara007 and myself. It don't have squat to do with you and the authority of the Bible is not at issue here. This thread is not about whether or not the Bible has any authority. I answered a poster's question. Period. I asked you politely that if you wanted to argue the Bible START ANOTHER THREAD. Now, either you cannot read OR you have no respect for your fellow posters. And here's the deal: You are all over this board with ******** this and **** that, always pretending to be the Head Honcho in Charge and never starting threads that articulate YOUR position. You're satisfied being everyone else's judge. You think the world revolves around you and you hate the Bible because you've decided that you're God. Time you got that bubble bursted: Nobody died and left you in charge. You are not God and I don't owe your fat *** a damn thing. I came here to post about topics, not have a never ending personality contest with a loser that is so henpecked that the only way he feels important is to demean and bully people he's never met. You lack the guts to start threads and show people where you stand. You blow hot air that you cannot and will not say to a person's face. That's why you act this way anonymously on the Internet. I'm just not your boy. I'm damn sure not someone you can bully. And if you don't have enough respect to leave people alone when politely asked, someone should figure a way to hold you accountable. You don't have enough IQ nor common sense to evaluate what I put on this board. If you weren't so totally uncouth, you'd take a hint and leave people alone when they asked it of you. I don't like your smart *** attitude and you will never be good enough to judge me. Well into the 1950's it was axiomatic that: "What goes up, must come down." NASA has put that one to bed. It's the 3rd Millennium H. The forensic quantum leap of fingerprint identification has been surpassed by DNA, and other investigative techniques. Much forensic evidence has already been gathered, independent of whatever the suspect may have divulged. from the murderer's cyber-footprint from his known associates neighbors etc. Please don't lose sight of the topic question: While some intelligence may be derived from debriefing the suspect, that scant intelligence will come at the cost of $millions in incarceration, guard, medical, housing, legal defense, and courtroom fees. Is it worth it? What is right vs wrong is obvious, not worth a thread of its own. Instead, this topic is about net benefit. "Is it worth" the $millions this mass-murderer will end up costing us, to get a little more information from him? I'm disgusted by all of these fake hipster Communist tools who tolerate Islamism. Look up what actual Marxists had to say about Islamists. Start with Tarek Fatah for a good example. There is no difference between a rich land owner and a mullah. Except that the land owner exercises his power as his state given privilege where as the mullah stupefies the illiterate peasantry into thinking that he has God given rights over them, which only he can know and interpret. The more literate these hipsters are the more stupid they become, such irony. A wave of sadness swept through the local music and yoga communities earlier this week as the news spread that one of their own was found dead in his West End home on Sunday evening. Robert Kirk, 60, photographer, recording engineer, musician, yoga practitioner and bon vivant, seemed fit and vigorous right up until his death. He died suddenly, and it was cardio-related, said his brother, Harvey Kirk, who lives in Greensboro. He did yoga every day and appeared so fit. Its a shock, really. The Kirks were from Kinston, originally but moved to New York City in 1965, Harvey Kirk said. According to his website, Robert Kirk began shooting fashion and lifestyle photos in Rome after attending UNC Chapel Hill. Before that, he attended Woodberry Forest, a prep school in Virginia. He spent the 1980s and 90s in New York shooting fashion and advertising photos, and working in photojournalism. He counted among his clients Ralph Lauren, Pete Townshend, Michael Kors, Harpers Bazaar, Mikimoto, Island Records, Calvin Klein, Our State Magazine, Drumhead Magazine, Alison Krauss, Leonard Ryden Burr, Winston-Salem Monthly and Revlon. He traveled for a time with rock bands, including the Who. Facebook photos show him backstage with Pete Townsend, the bands lead guitarist, at a concert in Greensboro in 2012. Kirk moved to Surry County in 1999, where family members lived, and bought a house on Brookstown Avenue in Winston-Salem soon after. He worked as a freelance photographer and a recording engineer. He loved to travel and to entertain, said Martha Bassett, a local musician who was married to Kirk from 2004 to 2007. He enjoyed being a catalyst, a person who brings people together. He loved having a houseful of people. Kirk had a recording studio, Treehouse Mobile Studio, where he worked with Rhiannon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dave Grohl, Zac Brown and others. He played drums in a band, the BiCoastals, with Bassett and Brenda Morie in the early 2000s. I still have people say things like, Why dont you do something like the BiCoastals? That was so much fun, Bassett said. Kirk recorded Bassetts first CD, Mortal Flesh, in 2003. He had a unique ear for recording, she said. He had amazing microphones and worked with vintage gear and worked with tape (as opposed to digital). He recorded and archived every song performed on every MerleFest stage from 2000 to 2017, and produced the short-lived Radio Relish, a show on WUNC with Ed Bumgardner, a former Winston-Salem Journal music reporter. He also had a Friday night blues and jazz show on radio station WFDD. His knowledge of music was deep and wide, said Lynn Rhoades, a friend. At one time he had thousands of (vinyl) records. He was very authentic, Harvey Kirk said. What you saw was what you got. If you were blessed by what you saw, then OK; if not, that was OK, too. And he was always that way. He could be very bohemian, but when it came time to be polished and navigate N.Y. society, he could pull that off with aplomb. Kirk became an avid student at Village Yoga about six years ago, according to Maureen Stitt, a teacher there. He took classes two to five times a week. He was a true, true yogi, Stitt said. He left nothing on the mat. He gave his practice every drop of his blood, sweat and tears. It was amazing to watch. Such an open heart. ... He always reached out to anybody who was new in the room. He was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful yogi, and he took his yoga off the mat. ... He was a great guy, a great yogi. We will miss and miss and miss him. Harvey Kirk said that each Thanksgiving he and his brother took an annual trip to the beach and he will continue that tradition this year, sprinkling Robert Kirks ashes there. There will be a Celebration of Life for Kirk from 4 to 9 p.m. Dec. 17 at the Millennium Center, 101 W. Fifth St. They are making this space available, and some local bands will participate, Harvey Kirk said. Im excited because I think it will be an event that Bob would have wanted to attend. ATLANTA Without a comma, the request for a lawyer dog was a bit confusing. With a comma, it made all the sense in the world. In a recent 6-1 decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Warren Demesme, who awaits trial on sexual assault charges. Demesme contends that his police interview improperly continued after he invoked his right to a lawyer. In a concurring opinion, Justice Scott Crichton explained that because Demesme was ambiguous and equivocal, the interrogation did not have to be terminated because he had not clearly invoked his right to counsel. According to Crichton, Demesme said this: (T)his is how I feel, if yall think I did it, I know that I didnt do it, so why dont you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not whats up. If you use a comma, Demesme said it this way so why dont you give me a lawyer, dog. Or more colloquially: so why dont you give me a laywer, dawg. Atlanta criminal defense attorney Don Samuel responded with disbelief at the courts decision. Its just ludicrous, said Samuel, who has written books on appellate case law. Nobody reading that, except someone who doesnt deserve to be a judge, can possibly doubt what the defendant meant by that. Even though the charges against Demesme are extremely serious, that shouldnt matter, Samuel said. Constitutional rights matter for every case, from being charged with littering on Peachtree Street or committing an act of terrorism, Samuel said. They shouldnt be denigrated by insisting on grammatical perfection when invoking those rights. When you start getting that picayune about something like that, youre just denying someones constitutional rights altogether. Without comment, Justice Jefferson Hughes III issued the only dissent in the case. Crichton said he wrote his concurring opinion to spotlight the very important constitutional issue regarding the invocation of counsel during a law enforcement interview. By saying lawyer dog, Demesme ambiguously referenced a lawyer, Crichton wrote. Stephen Bright, a professor at Georgetown University and Georgia State University law schools, said Demesme was denied justice. The court found ambiguity where none existed in order to rule against Warren Demesme, he said. It should have enforced the right to a lawyer instead of finding a way to avoid it. 2017 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. CHAPEL HILL One man was arrested and a professor was injured Thursday afternoon after an explosion scorched a famous tree on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. Fire and rescue crews responded to a call near the Old Well at about 3:30 p.m. The university said its police force was investigating the explosion of a small detonation device at the Davie Poplar in McCorkle Place. They closed Cameron Avenue to through traffic between South Columbia and Raleigh streets. A video showing a fire at the base of the landmark tulip poplar was widely circulated on social media. It was shot near Cameron Avenue and showed a man stomping the fire when the explosion occurred. Students at the scene said the man was trying to kick dirt on the fire. Town of Chapel Hill spokesman Ran Northam confirmed a professor was stomping out the fire when something exploded, causing minor injuries to his face and hands. Social media posts identified the man as professor Dan Reichart, who teaches in the physics and astronomy department. Christopher Clemens, senior associate dean for Natural Sciences, said he could not confirm the mans name because this incident involves medical treatment as a patient. Meanwhile Thursday, police were called in to a possible bomb in a car in Carrboro. Police closed West Weaver Street to traffic about 15 minutes later and tweeted that they were investigating a suspicious package. Carrboro Police Capt. Chris Atack said Thursdays incidents are related and said UNC-CH called them about the vehicle in Carrboro, across the street from the PNC Bank on Lindsay Street. They found a 2011 red Honda Accord registered to the suspect during their investigation, according to Atack. FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA In the stand-alone films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor always seemed to get the short end of the stick. The Thor films were never as popular as Iron Man, and didnt gain steam like Captain America. They were perhaps a little too serious and a little too dull none of which was the fault of star Chris Hemsworth, whose performances in the role have been so seamless and charming that he almost doesnt get enough credit. But Thor: Ragnarok has been touted as a different take on the God of Thunder. Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Co. signed up Taika Waititi, a New Zealand director with a unique voice. His riotous vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows displayed a quirky comedic sensibility. They took away Thors hammer, gave him a haircut, added some Led Zeppelin and told the set designer the more neon rainbows the better. The results are pretty decent, though perhaps not the total departure that had been hyped. The bones of the story are as preposterous as ever. It turns out Thor has a long lost older sister, Hela (Cate Blanchett), who his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins, who appears to have shot for about two hours) locked away because she was so dangerous. An event happens that releases Hela to the world. Shes really strong, like stronger than Thor strong, and really angry and basically punches Thor into another dimension and she heads off to Asgard to take the throne. The movie literally splits in two at this point. Poor Blanchett, who has gone full vamp as Hela, is good as always but how lame it must be to be in the fun Thor movie and have to play one of the most blandly written villains ever. While shes off waging her deathly serious takeover, Thor gets to join an irreverent comedy sideshow on the planet Sakaar a sort of wasteland at the end of the universe run by a Grade-A weirdo who calls himself Grandmaster, played, fittingly, by Jeff Goldblum. Its this section that is pretty amusing and where Waititis irreverence really gets to shine with pratfalls and witty writing. Its no surprise that this is right up Goldblums alley, but the real delight is Hemsworth who knows just how to subvert the Thor character without turning him into a total mockery. Hes a real comedic talent, which audiences got a taste of in Ghostbusters. And Tessa Thompson is fantastic as Valkyrie, a hard drinkin fighter with a secret past shed rather forget. I imagine Thor: Ragnarok is one that might improve on subsequent viewings, when you have a chance to relax with the jokes divorced from the pressure of juggling the silly/serious plot. But its a fairly flawed movie on the whole with egregious tonal shifts. Some of the gags go on too long with the Hulk with too little payoff and sometimes it seems as though theres a mandate that every 25 minutes there will be a big fight no matter what. One particular army of the dead sequence seemed like it could have been lifted from a Pirates of the Caribbean movie which is not the most flattering comparison. While Waititis energy and wit is apparent in the film, it still feels as though he had to operate from the same Marvel base flavor and was allowed on occasion to sprinkle a few of his own original toppings on. Youve picked out your dream house. Put down the earnest money. Now youre keeping your fingers crossed that everything looks good on the home inspection. Its tempting to step back and simply wait for the inspection report to arrive, but now is not the time to relax your due diligence. Buying a home is one of the largest financial transactions youll ever make, and your home inspection safeguards that investment. Its crucial that buyers take an active role in their home inspection, says Beverly H. Godfrey - President/CEO, Coldwell Banker Triad, Realtors. Its your one chance to discover the true condition of the home before you sign on the dotted line. How can you do that and be confident that the inspection will deliver the information you need to make the right decision? Experts recommend asking your inspector these 4 questions: 1. What are your credentials? Most states require that home inspectors be licensed. Accreditation comes from professional associations like the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI), the National Association of Home Inspectors (NAHI) or similar state groups. North Carolina requires a candidate to pass an exam, work as an associate inspector for at least a year and complete 100 home inspections. Licensing calls for adherence to certain codes of practice and participation in continuing education classes. Since building technology changes so quickly, keeping up with current industry standards is vital. 2. Can I see a sample report? Deciphering an inspection report can sometimes seem like reading Greek. You want an account thats both comprehensive and easily understandable. The best formats are written in clear language, highlighting defect disclosures while downplaying less germane details. Make sure that the report assesses the state of the foundation, framing, roof, site drainage, attic, plumbing, heating and electrical system. Also important are fireplaces, pavement, stairs, decks, patios, doors, windows, walls, ceilings, floors and appliances. 3. Can you point that out? The inspectors job is to identify everything that needs repair, replacement and maintenance. For a layman, taking part in the inspection can be overwhelming. You might jot down what the inspector says (for example, that wax ring that needs replacement) but often not understand what he means. Before leaving the property, ask the inspector to walk you through the house again to explain any the items that you have questions about. Beverly H. Godfrey adds that, if possible, its best to choose an inspector who includes digital photos in the report. That way, when youre referring back to the report days or weeks later, youll be able to easily visualize what the report is talking about, Beverly H. Godfrey says. 4. Can you show me how to work that? Nothing is worse that moving into a home and having no idea how to use the various systems. Ask your inspector to show you how to operate everything youre confused about, whether its the thermostat, water heater, stove or dishwasher. Its especially essential that you ask your inspector to point out the emergency shutoffs for the gas, water and electrical utilities. Knowing how to quickly and safely turn off these services during an emergency can be the deciding factor in preventing injury or costly property damage, Beverly H. Godfrey says. The real estate team at Coldwell Banker Triad understands that a comprehensive home inspection just one part of making the right decision about buying a home. With 5 locations to serve you, each office is locally owned, yet backed by Coldwell Bankers national brand, systems and technology. Visit CBTriad.com or call 1-800-327-4398 to find out more today. JURIST Guest Columnist Pacifique Manirakiza of the University of Ottawa discusses the effectiveness of Burundis withdrawal from ICC On October 27th, 2017 Burundi became the first State Party to withdraw from the Rome Treaty creating the International Criminal Court (ICC), in accordance with the provisions of Article 127. It is worth recalling that prior to Burundis withdrawal notice, the Office of the Prosecutor launched a preliminary examination into the situation in Burundi. Since this was a motu proprio move by the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), the latter cannot go further without an authorization from the Court. On the date of withdrawal, the Prosecutor has not formally seized the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of an authorization request to open criminal investigations on the alleged third term related crimes. Burundian victims and other actors were hoping the Prosecutor would have opened a formal criminal investigation by the deadline. The expectations became even higher when the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Burundi, in its final report, requested the OTP to speed up the examination and request an authorization to investigate those alleged crimes. However, for those familiar with international proceedings, the OTPs inaction was not a surprise. Technically, the OTP had to act in twenty months and this timeline obviously proved inadequate to build a strong case and meet the required threshold. The examination of the situation was still at the phase 2 (subject-matter jurisdiction) at the time the withdrawal became effective. Now that Burundi opted out, the fate of the preliminary examination is not clear. A legal discussion on whether or not ICC retains its jurisdiction on Burundi despite the withdrawal is well warranted, at least for the alleged crimes committed before October 27th. Each ones position on the issue depends on the reading and interpretation of paragraph 2 of Article 127 of the ICC Statute, which stipulates: A State shall not be discharged, by reason of its withdrawal, from the obligations arising from this Statute while it was a Party to the Statute, including any financial obligations which may have accrued. Its withdrawal shall not affect any cooperation with the Court in connection with criminal investigations and proceedings in relation to which the withdrawing State had a duty to cooperate and which were commenced prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective, nor shall it prejudice in any way the continued consideration of any matter which was already under consideration by the Court prior to the date on which the withdrawal became effective. Basing himself on the literal reading of this provision, Mr. Fadi El Abdallah, the ICC spokesman, in an interview relayed by the mainstream media such as AFP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, etc., stated that Burundis withdrawal does not affect the jurisdiction of the court with respect to crimes alleged to have been committed during the time it was a state party, namely up until October 27, 2017. The voice of the spokesperson usually represents the position of the Court or, at least that of the OTP. However, in this particular instance, one can legitimately ask the following question: to what extent can we rely on the spokespersons view as a statement of applicable law on such an important issue, absent a declaration from the OTP clarifying the way forward or an existing caselaw on the scope the said provision? Mainstream international and Burundian civil society organizations are also of the same view that the withdrawal does not bar the ICC to exercize its jurisdiction as the situation is already under examination. For instance, Amnesty International stated that The ICC can continue its preliminary investigations regardless of Burundis efforts to stop its work by withdrawing from the Court. Even if President Pierre Nkurunzizas government will not cooperate with the Court, the ICC has ways and means to investigate and prosecute the crimes committed. For the Federation internationale des droits de lhomme (FIDH), the withdrawal does not mean that Burundian perpetrators now have entered a safe space: the ICC can still open an investigation into crimes committed in Burundi before October 27, 2017. For The Burundian Coalition for the International Criminal Court, since the preliminary examination began before the expiration of the withdrawal date, the Prosecutor can still open an investigation into the alleged crimes. Apart from civil society organizations, where there is a consensus on the generous and liberal interpretation of Art. 127(2), the same consensus is not obvious among scholars. Some like Beitel van der Merwe think that ICC will retain jurisdiction on Burundi after its formal withdrawal. For him, at first glance then, it seems that the withdrawal will not affect the preliminary examination already underway. Other authors posit that the OTPs failure to open a formal criminal investigation, or at least to request an authorization thereof before the October 27 deadline deprives the ICC of its jurisdiction. In fact, the lack of consensus on this issue is intrinsically linked to the different views people hold on the question whether preliminary examinations are part or not of the court proceedings referred to in paragraph 2 of Article 127. Those who argue for the continuation of the ICC jurisdiction, except Whiting, favor the position that preliminary investigations are matters which are already under consideration by the Court, provided that the Prosecutor is also part of the Court. To the contrary, other authors are of a different opinion. After sampling and highlighting different provisions of the ICC Statute, which are formulated in a similar way as Art. 127(2), Kevin J.Heller concludes that the Court refers to the judiciary. Therefore, the OTP is not part of the Court for the purpose of Art. 127(2). He finally and convincingly argues that a situation is not under consideration of the Court by the virtue of OTP preliminarily examining it. I tend to agree with Heller. First of all, it is obvious that preliminary examinations are not part of either criminal investigations or proceedings referred to in Art. 127(2). According to me, criminal investigations refer to investigations duly authorized by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC (in a motu proprio situation) after the Prosecutor has demonstrated that the information and evidence at her disposal support reasonable grounds to believe that ICC crimes have been committed in a particular situation. Regarding the proceedings, the notion refers to proceedings already pending or under consideration before the Court. In my view, preliminary examinations are pre-investigations carried out in order to ascertain whether a particular situation warrants further OTPs action or not. At that particular stage, the State has no case to answer and in fact no legal obligation whatsoever towards the OTP. From a comparative criminal law perspective, the State is in a similar situation to a person of interest (PI) in domestic criminal investigations where the Police, which is the entry point for criminal proceedings, gets and analyzes information on a possible crime and the potential involvement of a particular person. The police will not bother or otherwise interfere with the person of interests life until they get precise and sufficient evidence to support an indictment. Until then, there is no criminal case. In the case of preliminary examinations, it is the same. In its Policy Paper on Preliminary Examinations, the OTPs position is that at the preliminary examination stage there is not yet a case, as understood to comprise an identified set of incidents, suspects and conduct. No wonder that under Ocampo tenure, preliminary examinations were treated as confidential information with little or no information released to the public during the process. This was not illegal practice at all. The difference with current practice under Bensouda is simply that now preliminary examinations are dealt with in a transparent manner. The launch is usually made public and the public gets updated information at each of the four stages of the preliminary examination. In conclusion, a State Partys withdrawal while under a simple preliminary examination deprives the ICC of its jurisdiction. In the particular case of Burundi, an OTP decision to continue examinations followed by the request to conduct investigations would lack a firm legal basis under the existing regime. The situation would have been different if the PTC was at least seized of a prosecutions motion requesting the authorization to open formal criminal investigations on the alleged third term related crimes. Whether the authorization was granted or still pending before the PTC, it can be said that the matter was under consideration before the Court, in accordance with the provisions of Art. 127(2). Therefore, it would be difficult to support the claim that ICC retains post-withdrawal jurisdiction on Burundi. The ICC Spokespersons statement was probably a strategic move to smoothly assuage the apparent deception of victims and other actors involved in this situation. In any case, if the Prosecutor is of the same view and decides to request a post-withdrawal formal investigation in the Burundian situation, it will be interesting to see how the PTC will interpret relevant provisions, in particular those of paragraph 2 of Article 127, especially when even the travaux preparatoires are not helping in order to understand the minds of the framers of the Rome Statute. Professor Pacifique Manirakiza is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law (Common Law Section), University of Ottawa where he teaches Canadian Criminal Law and International Criminal Law and African International Law. Professor Manirakiza is also a dedicated human rights lawyer. Suggested citation: Pacifique Manirakiza, The ICC Post-Withdrawal Jurisdiction on Burundi, JURIST Academic Commentary, Nov. 2, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/11/Pacifique-Manirakiza-ICC-Burundi.php [JURIST] Federal prosecutors on Wednesday leveledd two criminal charges [complaint, PDF] against the New York attack [CNN backgrounder] suspect, Sayfullo Habibullavic Saipov. Saipov appeared before Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses [official profile] of the Southern District of New York [official website] but did not enter a plea on the counts of (1) provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization; and (2) violence and destruction of motor vehicles. The count of terrorism connects Saipov to Islamic State (IS) [CNN backgrounder] militants and speaks to the current evidence on the events that occurred on October 31. Prosecutors allege that Saipovs actions correlate with terrorist propaganda urging followers to commit violent actions. According to the complaint Saipov also has admitted to law enforcement officers that he was inspired by IS videos and had been planning an attack on the United states for approximately one year prior to the attack. Saipov allegedly gave a detailed account of how he specifically orchestrated the attack in the last week or so. Search warrants on Saipovs personal items, like his cell phones, have garnered more evidence of the suspects ties to ISIS such as videos and images of ISIS. If Saipov were convicted of the charges he would face life in prison. Saipov immigrated [NPR report] to the US from Uzbekistan in 2010 with a diversity immigrant visa. He has previously worked as a commercial truck driver and a driver for Uber. As coming through the diversity program, opponents of the program, including President Trump [Twitter post], have states there are possible national security risks and possibility of fraud with the program. Information and possible co-conspirators are still being gathered at this time, and authorities have asked that any people with information on the incident to report it [text] to the FBI [official website]. A judge for the Guantanamo military commissions on Wednesday held Marine Brigaider General John Baker, the chief defense counsel, guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to 21 days confinement [transcript, PDF] and a fine of $1,000. The conviction comes as a response to Bakers refusal to testify about releasing three civilian defense attorneys [Navy Times report]Rick Kammen, Rosa Eliades, and Mary Spearsfrom the case in mid-October, alleging the government was listening in on their legal meetings, thereby violating attorney-client privilege. The military judge presiding the case, US Air Force Colonel Vance Spath, ordered Baker to testify as to reasons for the attorneys removal, but Baker refused [Miami Herald report]. Baker claims he is given the unchecked authority to release defense attorneys for good cause in the war court rule book. Spath also ordered the three civilian attorneys to appear at and participate in Fridays hearing. Bakers conviction will be reviewed, but he remains in contempt in his trailer at Camp Justice until convening authority and Pentagon senior official Harvey Rishikof has the opportunity to do so. Spaths decision Wednesday is the latest development in the case concerning the 2000 USS Cole bombing, In re: Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri. In October the Supreme Court denied certiorari [JURIST report] in the 2000 USS Cole attack case, leaving intact the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [official website] decision [text, PDF] that the military trial of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri may proceed. Al-Nashiri was the first death penalty case to go to trial under the military commissions system, which was instituted after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Currently, Al-Nashiri is not represented by defense counsel experienced in death penalty cases, as required under the Guantanamo military commission rules. Al-Nashiri will challenge [ACLU report] this on Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Today, a three judge panel announced [order, PDF] its intention to go forward with plans [JURIST report] to appoint a special master over the objections of North Carolina state legislators. The legislators objected [JURIST report] to the plans on Monday after the US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina [official website] ordered the appointment last week. The court ordered the special master to redraw two Senate and seven House districts to redress racial gerrymandering and comply with federal law by Dec. 1. Benton County sheriff's deputies now need a judges permission to use restraints on an inmate who is appearing in Circuit Court for a hearing. The change comes after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Oregon, ruled that defendants should not be shackled in the courtroom unless a judge determines an individual poses a danger or risk for escape. The basis for the ruling, which was handed down May 31, is that a presumptively innocent defendant has the right to be treated with respect and dignity in a public courtroom. The U.S. Attorneys Office applied for and was granted a 90-day stay on the issue, so the new policy went into effect this fall. When you see a person in shackles, it automatically makes you believe that theyve done something wrong, which belies the presumption of innocence, said Jennifer Nash, a Corvallis defense attorney. Local courts have long held that defendants should not be restrained during jury trials, but have typically shackled in-custody defendants for all other court hearings. This completely changes all that, said Sheriff Scott Jackson. Now, each time an in-custody defendant is scheduled to appear in court, a deputy fills out an affidavit in support of mechanical restraints in court proceedings, the sheriff said. The document includes information on the defendants criminal history, past jail and courtroom behavior and pending charges. A judge then decides whether mechanical restraints are necessary for the defendant. A hearing may be held on the issue. Jail Commander Diana Rabago said deputies look at the seriousness of charges. For a low-level offense like trespassing, they may not recommend restraints, she said. For Measure 11 offenses, which all carry a presumptive prison sentence, deputies would recommend shackles, she said. If someone knows, If Im convicted, Im going to prison, that inherently creates a flight risk, in my opinion, Rabago said. Nash said the Ninth Circuits decision disallows blanket policies, such as shackling for all serious offenses. My argument would be that it doesnt matter what the charge is, she said. The burden is the same there has to be reasons particular to that case. A judge must recognize those specific concerns. In September a judge denied a request for restraints in a case against Raymond Merl Turner, who was facing multiple Measure 11 sexual abuse charges, according to court records. When a judge denies the use of restraints, the deputies have to adjust their security plans, the sheriff said. We have an obligation to keep the community safe, Jackson said. Jackson said deputies can walk the defendant to the courtroom in restraints and then take off the restraints at the door. At least two deputies are then needed in the courtroom to respond to potential problems such as an inmate becoming violent or trying to escape, he said. Its a worry of mine as sheriff that were going to have some incident where either staff or a community member gets hurt, Jackson said. For the Turner case, four deputies were involved in transporting the defendant to court and making sure the floor where the hearing was taking place was clear of people so Turner would not be seen in shackles, the sheriff said. The extra staff needed to comply with the new rule is a strain on the department, Jackson said. The agency may need to hire more deputies or rely more heavily on reserve deputies or private security, he said. Theres going to be a cost of complying with this or we dont meet our obligation to keep the community safe, Jackson said. Rabago said deputies are filing, on average, three restraint affidavits a week. There are options beyond the typical belly chains and leg restraints, such as electronic devices that can be hidden by clothing. When these devices are used, a deputy holds a remote control unit that could issue an electric shock to the inmate if he were to try to run, the sheriff said. However, a judge must approve the use of such devices and theyre rarely used, Jackson said. (The last time he could recall using electronic restraints was during the case against Joel Courtney for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Brooke Wilberger.) The U.S. Attorney's Office has appealed the Ninth Circuits decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, Nash said. The Supreme Court has not yet accepted review of the case. TODAY TRIAD meeting, noon, Room 402, Linus Pauling Science Center, 2900 SW Campus Way, Corvallis. Douglas Warrick, associate professor of integrative biology, will present "Monsters: The Biology of What Isnt." The public is welcome to attend free of charge. An optional catered lunch is available for $13. Reservations: Jeannine.cropley@cgrb.oregonstate.edu. FRIDAY Ecology Conservation of Biodiversity Seminar, 3 p.m., Room 302, Learning Innovation Center, 165 SW Sackett Place, Corvallis. Allen Thompson, associate professor of philosophy at Oregon State University, will present "Natural Values and Novel Ecosystems: Adapting Nature Conservation. TUESDAY "Reforming Our Life in the Body: Martin Luther on Eating, Healing and Marriage," 7 p.m., Construction and Engineering Auditorium, LaSells Stewart Center, 875 SW 26th St., Corvallis. Ekaterina Lomperis of the Oregon State University School of History, Philosophy and Religion will speak. The Protestant Reformation was not only about reforming the churchs doctrine and structures, but also about reshaping Christian approaches to practices and phenomena of everyday life. And no other major Christian thinker was more interested in spiritual understandings of seemingly mundane dimensions of daily life than Martin Luther. This lecture will explore how, according to Luther, one should eat, heal and marry, as a Christian. WEDNESDAY 2017 Chepenefu Lecture Series, 7 p.m., Majestic Theatre, 115 SW Second St., Corvallis. The series, produced and sponsored by the Marys Peak Group of the Sierra Club, honors the Chepenefu Kalapuya people, who have inhabited the Marys River Valley (Corvallis, Philomath and Wren) for thousands of years, and who continue their cultural traditions. This month: Kalapuya Archaeology: Cultural Record of the Willamette Valley before 1850 by Thomas Connolly, director of archaeological research at the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History (since 1986) and author of "Oregon Archaeology." Information: http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/oregon-archaeology. Calligrapher Nancy Anderson and metal smith Mary Lou Boydston, both of Albany, will be the featured artists during November at Gallery Calapooia, 222 First Ave. W., Albany. An artists' reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3, will feature the artwork of Anderson and Boydston, as well as 17 other mid-valley artists. Wine, beer and snacks will be served. Live music will be provided by Tom Hughes, mandolin, and Kim Collar, guitar and violin. Boydston is a metal smith whose process of making jewelry begins with stones. She loves working with Oregon stones and gets inspiration from the stone itself, using them to help her decide which metal is best suited for color and texture. Anderson's artwork continues to evolve with an increasing emphasis on cut paper creations in addition to her calligraphy. In her work, lettering often becomes its own layer as she builds images and words. The reception is free. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 541-971-5701 or see gallerycalapooia.com. "For the Love of Oregon," a photography exhibit by the Willamette PhotoArts Guild celebrating the state and Oregon State University's contributions to it, will be shown Nov. 3 through Dec. 8, in the Giustina Gallery at the LaSells Stewart Center, 875 SW 26th St., Corvallis. A reception and awards presentation will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 8, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The exhibit commemorates OSU's 150th anniversary as a land grant institution by focusing on the beauty and diversity that makes Oregon special, and calling attention to OSU's research, education and extension programs. The more than 80 black-and-white and color photographs in the show depict a variety of subjects familiar to Oregonians, including rolling wheat fields and hillside vineyards, crashing waves and soaring bridges, snow-covered rangelands and ancient forests, counter-culture fairs and political protests. The Willamette Valley PhotoArts Guild was formed more than 30 years ago to promote and support fine art photography in the mid-valley and has been an affiliated guild of the Corvallis Arts Center since 1988. This is the 10th in its series of biennial expositions at the LaSells Stewart Center that explore the photogenic possibilities in our own backyards and beyond. The reception and awards presentation are free to attend. The LaSells Stewart Center is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and evenings during scheduled events. February 20, 1936 October 29, 2017 Delbert G. Deb Nichols, of Cottonwood, California, formerly of Lebanon, 81, took his final deep seat and tight rein on October 29, 2017, surrounded by the love of friends and family. He continues his journey peacefully in the hands of the Lord now. The bull riding or bucking broncos didn't do Deb in on that Sunday night. Nor was it sorting cattle on horseback in steep terrain that few will ever see. It was complications from a simple toe surgery that dealt him unexpected, insurmountably poor odds of recovery. Yet he kept on sorting cattle, walking on his sore wounded foot. The pain he endured from the onset of gangrene would have driven most people mad. Yet, Deb was loving, funny and polite to the very end. He was a good guy and a consummate gentleman. Deb lived most of his early life in Lebanon. He was a hard worker, a kid who had to grow up fast due to his father, Ralph Percy Nichols, unexpected early death when Deb was 12. Deb's tenacity and ability to think quickly on his feet got him elected as the 1954 Lebanon High School Student Body President. He met and would eventually marry the LHS Homecoming Queen, Betty Oakley. Deb and Betty Nichols owned and trained race horses that ran in Spokane, Salem and Portland. Two of the horses, Jade Sands and Sleigh Run, were outstanding runners that ran to win. These two horses brought so much joy to Deb, as he trained them to become consistent winners. As Deb tells it, he would whisper in the horse's ear baby needs new shoes and those horses would run even harder to finish first. (The baby needing new shoes was his baby daughter, Debra.) Deb Nichols was a local businessman and auctioneer. He built Deb Nichols Livestock on Airport Road in Lebanon from the ground up and co-owned the Corvallis Auction Yard for several years. Deb was a very good, well-respected auctioneer. He would travel to auction yards in Klamath Falls, Madras, Redmond, Roseburg, Myrtle Point and Grants Pass to sell their livestock sales or to buy or sell his own cattle there. At times, he did two in one day! Deb smiled when he auctioneered because he loved it so much. He enjoyed the cattle buyers and sellers, knowing them by name at each location. He was known throughout Oregon for his outstanding auctioneering skills. When he added Yreka, California to his busy auctioneering schedule, he got a taste of the Northern California cattle market and was instantly intrigued by all the possibilities. His career began to shift from cattle auctioneer to cattle buyer/broker. Deb Nichols was known in the cattle industry for his work ethic of being fair, honest and reliable. He wanted his cattle deals to be equitable for all and he wanted to earn their repeat business. Deb is acknowledged by Maurice O'Keeffe in Ellington Peek's book When to Buy When to Sell, page 228. Deb resettled as a divorced man in Cottonwood. He thrived at being a successful cattle broker and made many lifelong relationships and friends through his business dealings. A particular business relationship blossomed into much more and that was with Christine Barkdull. She was a business partner and devoted friend to Deb for over 45 years and spent many days with him just prior to his passing. Deb Nichols was a good guy and loved by so many. He was Papa to a few. He was Dad to his daughter, Debra. He was a kind and loving influence for Breanna and Chenowa. Deb was preceded in death by his mother, Glenna Lucille Blackburn Nichols Montgomery; and sister, Wanda Lee Nichols Ingram. His sense of humor continued to show, even during bouts of excruciating pain, as explained by his hospice nurse. She said he turned his hat around, made a funny face, and asked if she'd go out with him later. He liked to play cards every evening and feed the ducks and fish each day that he could. Deb recently went family camping and picnicked many times in the mountains. He enjoyed long visits with his cousin, Lyle Springer. Deb was always reaching for the stars. He will be missed. A graveside service will be at 2 p.m. on Monday, November 6, at Rock Hill Cemetery, Lebanon. Huston-Jost Funeral Home is handling arrangements. We taxpayers sometimes tend to downplay the benefits that good government managers can bring to a community. Sometimes, we have a sense that what amounts to a government run by volunteers can get the job done just as effectively and certainly more efficiently than if we handed it over to professional bureaucrats. In fact, the word "bureaucrat" is frequently used as a pejorative. Sometimes, of course, the pejorative is well-deserved. And volunteers certainly have important roles to play in government, serving on commissions and councils and committee, regardless of a community's size. But sometimes, a community grows to the point where it requires a more professional hand to guide the show. Which brings us to Millersburg, the fast-growing town just north of Albany. If you've been following recent developments there, you know its government is in the midst of considerable controversy: The city manager, city recorder and deputy clerk all have recently resigned. Six employees of the city have signed a letter of no confidence in Mayor Jim Lepin. In an October meeting, the council appointed Barbara Castillo as a volunteer interim city manager. But she is facing a complaint that's been filed against her with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission and has withdrawn from that post. At a meeting this week, the council decided to hire Kevin Kreitman, a former chief with the Albany Fire Department, as its interim city manager. Kreitman will be paid $6,500 a month starting this month. Although there was some concern from citizens about how the hiring was made (more later about the importance of transparency), this appears to be a good move. Kreitman's first job will be to bring a measure of stability and calm to Millersburg government. His second job will be to pave the way for the Millersburg council to hire a permanent, professional city manager. To that end, the council made another important decision this week: It voted to have the Council of Governments help Millersburg find a permanent city manager, and approved a pay scale of $80,000 to $100,000 for that position. It's a big step for the community, but this is the time to do it: Millersburg is among the fastest-growing towns in the state, with 26 percent growth in population from the 2010 census to 2016, when the estimated population was 1,674. And that growth pace isn't expected to slow down any time soon; in fact, the town could be booming in just a few years. Managing that growth is going to take a steady hand from a city manager and enlightened leadership from the town's elected officials. The process of picking that next city manager needs to be thoughtful and as transparent as possible: Considering the rumors swirling in Millersburg, it's incumbent on the council to put a premium on public input throughout the entire process. (Councilors should take heed of citizens' worries that too much city business is handled behind closed doors; that includes complaints from some citizens that the hiring of Kreitman appeared to be a done deal before this week's meeting. A good way to ease some of those worries would be to commit to transparency in the process of finding a new city manager.) Millersburg's elected officials and Kreitman also appear to have some work ahead of them in providing answers to residents who are legitimately concerned with recent events in City Hall. It may be an impossible task to quell all the rumors that are floating around town, but the best gift Kreitman and the council could give their next city manager would be a relatively clean slate. There will be plenty of other issues facing Millersburg and its city government over the next few years; the more the next city manager can focus on those, the better off the entire community will be. (mm) WASHINGTON At our political costume ball, it is definitely '90s nostalgia night. A president obsessed with attacking all things Clinton stands accused of serial sexual harassment, sends out underlings to dismiss the accusers as liars, condemns a federal investigation as a politically motivated fraud and is attempting to destroy the reputation of the leader of that investigation. Hillary Clinton may be Donald Trump's continuing target, but the Clinton years are clearly his inspiration. It worked the first time around. In Bill Clinton's case, the Democratic Party almost uniformly honored tribal loyalties above legal or moral principle. Even the feminist left generally fell into line for partisan reasons. "American women," said columnist Nina Burleigh, "should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs." What is a little sexual misconduct and obstruction of justice among friends when legal abortion is at stake? Now Trump appeals to the same type of team solidarity, this time on the right. "The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics," tweeted Trump, "but the R's are now fighting back like never before." Note how a federal investigation of Russian influence on American democracy has become "the Dems." Note also that it is not the president and his lawyers fighting this investigation but the "R's." Trump is conditioning Republicans and conservatives to view his upcoming legal defense entirely through the lens of partisanship. With the broad cooperation of conservative media, there is every reason to think he might succeed. Trump's ultimate objective in all this matters greatly. If he wants to recruit Republicans into a defense of the shady political and business dealings of Paul Manafort and the rest of the president's political circle now exposed by federal indictment it will be discrediting and humiliating. A party that rallies to the defense of corruption will eventually be seen as a swamp in need of clearing. But if Trump's goal is to escape a tightening legal investigation by firing special counsel Robert Mueller and issuing a string of self-protective pardons, the participation of the Republican Party takes on a different meaning. In this case, Trump would be turning his authoritarian pose into authoritarian practice, removing an essential check on the abuse of power. Liberal democracy itself would be under attack from an American Putinism. And elected Republicans who enabled this would be complicit in a crime against the Constitution and violate the oath they took to defend it. As the indictments begin to come down, Republicans need to ponder what legal and ethical lines, if any, they are willing to draw. Continuing the attacks on Hillary Clinton's own dishonest dealings is all fun and games (except to Clinton, I suppose). Joining the defense of slimy political figures such as Manafort makes one, ceteris paribus, into a slimy political figure. Obscuring or excusing Russian influence on the American political process is a dangerous disservice to the country. Supporting Trump in a power play against the special counsel and his investigation would be an attack on the stability and legitimacy of the Republic a source of infamy in American history. To what circle of hell are Republican officials about to consign themselves? It would be useful for members of Congress to declare that they will never enter the fourth circle the demolition of the integrity and independence of the FBI if only to deter Trump from forcing a constitutional crisis. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has done so, arguing such an action would be "the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency." But it is hard to imagine such courage written broadly in today's GOP and even harder to imagine such courage exhibited pre-emptively. It is worth making clear that every conservative media voice including, recently, the editorial voice of The Wall Street Journal that attacks the objectivity and legitimacy of Mueller is giving Trump cover and encouragement to move against him. They are dropping lit matches in the dry tinder of American politics. And they would be responsible, in part, for the resulting wildfire. Do Republicans and conservatives really want to be remembered as a bodyguard of enablers for this man? For this cause? Few enter the fray of political ideas, or make the considerable sacrifices of entering public life, to defend corruption and the abuse of power. That is now the calling of the Republican partisan, and the downward path of dishonor. Editor's Note: Froma Harrop is off. The following column is by Susan Estrich. It's not a small thing that the man who ran the president's campaign has been indicted on multiple counts of money laundering related to his work for a foreign government. I can't recall anything even remotely like it. Domestic corruption is nothing new. But to launder money from a foreign government seeking to influence global politics this is new. This should be causing outrage. And it's not just Paul Manafort. We're back to examining the meeting in which Russians brought dirt on Hillary Clinton to share with Donald Trump Jr., because a Trump aide has now pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the meeting. This is a much uglier swamp than the one he was supposed to drain. This one is full of the greediest bottom-feeders, whose patriotism is open to serious question. And what was Donald Trump's response to the news about Manafort? He attacked Hillary Clinton. I thought it was a joke when I first saw it. He couldn't possibly respond to the indictment of Paul Manafort by taking to Twitter to attack Clinton, I thought. The man is president of the United States. Surely he has something more to say. Surely he should be shocked, saddened, troubled, betrayed, even. Nope. He blamed Clinton. The Russians told Trump's aides that they were ready to dump hundreds of thousands of Clinton's emails, and did the Trump campaign say, "Hold on, we don't play that way"? No, it set up a meeting. Yet the president continues to attack Hillary Clinton. When I was in high school, we had a class called "Democracy in America." It was the senior-year civics course. For some of my classmates senior year was the last year of schooling they'd ever have, and this class was supposed to teach us to always remember the miracle that was our democracy slow, frustrating, cumbersome, but a miracle nonetheless, just like our annual town meeting, which everyone attended to vote on local issues. I fought with my hometown over such issues as excluding people from clubs based on race and religion and designating, through real estate maps, which religions could live where but it was, as my teacher used to say, "democracy in action." Today we have tweets in action. We don't have ethics; we have finger-pointing. What better time to attack your opponent of a year ago than on the day your top aide is indicted for money laundering? What does that say about the president? The answer is obvious. The president doesn't care if his aides lie to the FBI. He doesn't care if they launder money from adversarial governments, or if they fail to abide by rules that apply to those who lobby for foreign governments. He doesn't care about the rule of law. He'd like to fire Robert Mueller and everyone who works for Mueller. It's only the politics of it that is stopping him. We have a president who doesn't care not a whit about the rule of law. The rule of Trump is all that matters. Nothing else explains his reactions. Nothing else explains him. It should be terrifying. One prominent figure neither taken into custody nor charged with conspiring against United States this week was Hillary Clinton or Crooked Hillary, if you follow President Trumps frenzied tweetstorms. This was a big disappointment to the embattled chief executive. The impending arrest of his Russia-friendly campaign manager Paul Manafort drove Trump up the wall. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, he tweeted, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING! Never mind that the only reason for hiring so compromised a figure as Manafort to begin with appeared to be his Moscow connections. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders contended that the real Russia scandal was that the Clinton campaign paid for the fake Russia dossier, then lied about it and covered it up. In fact, Mother Jones October 2016 news story revealing the dossiers existence stated that Democrats sponsored it. So what? Never mind, too, that a guilty plea entered by Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos proves one thing: Scant weeks after Democratic National Committee emails were stolen in March 2016, a Russian operative posing as Vladimir Putins niece was dangling them in front of the Trump campaign. And nobody notified the FBI. Papadapoulouss guilty plea also confirmed, for those of you keeping score at home, yet another of the dodgy dossiers allegations about Russian efforts to elect Trump: collusion over stolen communications. Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump said during a July 2016 news conference. Different emails, I know. Theres no evidence anybody hacked Hillarys private messages. Even so, if Trumps antics looked unseemly then, they look worse now. Anyway, think about it: To buy the Trump/Sanders/Fox News alibi, its necessary to believe that Crooked Hillary conspired with British sleuth Christopher Steele and the Kremlin to throw the election to Trump himself. I know the woman is devious, but thats taking it awfully far. Suspicious, right? But only if you didnt know that Hillarys forthright statement of, I was what we called the billing attorney had been electronically deleted. It also helped to not understand that an attorneys death doesnt empower police to rummage through client files. Who would entrust sensitive documents to a lawyer if they could? Hence no cause for worry existed. Because it sounded fishy to me, I cross-checked the original videotape of the first ladys press conference. Uh-oh. Nevertheless, the fake quote appeared everywhere in the national news media, sparking widespread speculation that Crooked Hillary would soon be indicted. Why the Clinton White House never confronted this monkey business, I never understood. Those responsible should have been run out of journalism. Too late now. Entire TV networks now practice such dark arts daily. Every Crooked Hillary frenzy Ive encountered since has followed the same pattern: Correct the errors and fill in the blanks, and the scandal evaporates. Whether youd want her to be your president or even your neighbor, Hillary Clinton is a cautious, intelligent politician who colors inside the lines even if those lines are often drawn with legalistic exactitude. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott says she is declaring the need for an emergency meeting early next year on Aboriginal child welfare, linking the current state of affairs to Canada's residential school legacy that forcibly removed young people from their culture and families. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld The painting "The Persian" by Oskar Kokoschka is on display at the exhibition 'Gurlitt : Status Report' in Bonn, Germany, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Bundeskunsthalle museum is presenting some 250 art works from the 1,500-piece collection hoarded for decades by the late collector Cornelius Gurlitt, including pieces likely looted from Jewish owners under Nazi rule. (Oliver Berg/dpa via AP) FILE - In this 1998 file photo made available on March 19, 2004, Osama bin Laden is seen at a news conference in Khost, Afghanistan. The CIA's release of documents seized during the 2011 raid that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has again raised questions about Iran's support of the extremist network leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks. U.S. intelligence officials and prosecutors have long said Iran formed loose ties to the terror organization from 1991 on, something noted in a 19-page report in Arabic included in the release of some 47,000 other documents by the CIA. Iran always has denied any links. (AP Photo/Mazhar Ali Khan, File) This combination of photos shows from left, Ukranian President Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and Ukranian parliamentarian and former investigative journalist Serhiy Leshchenko. The three are among the Ukranian targets of the hacking group Fancy Bear which attempted to break into at least 545 accounts including half a dozen current and former ministers and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. (AP Photo) The Salvation Army of Kenosha will kick off its annual Red Kettle campaign Monday, setting an ambitious fundraising goal for the year. The annual holiday-season campaign is the biggest fundraiser for the organization each year, raising most of its operating funds annually. Money raised at the 21 Kenosha County kettle sites will remain in the community. The campaign launches Monday at Woodmans Food Market, 7145 120th Ave., and will run through Dec. 23. Corps Administrator Marie Lewis said the goal for the campaign this year is $200,000. The money will go to pay for programs like a food pantry, emergency assistance for families and individuals, a youth group, and spiritual counseling. Its a big goal, Lewis said, but an important one because the money is needed to fund programs throughout the year. This year, she said, they ran out of money for their utility assistance and transportation assistance programs by July. Dustin Beth, spokesman for the Salvation Army, said the campaign counts on volunteers. Eighty percent of our bell ringers are volunteers, he said, with individuals, groups and families signing up for shifts to man the kettles around town. This year, Lewis said, they hope to make the process of signing up to volunteer easier through an online program. Volunteers can sign up by location, date and time, and only the available shifts show up online. Right now only 12 percent of our slots are filled, Beth said. Lewis said she also hopes to grow matching programs, with donors, especially businesses, agreeing to match the amount donated at specific locations or city-wide during a specific shift or day. Ultimately, this is about the people and how we can serve this community, Lewis said. The need is so great. For more information about the Salvation Army of Kenosha, which is celebrating its 127th anniversary in the community this year, visit www.SAKenosha.org. To sign up as a volunteer for the Red Kettle campaign, visit www.KenoshaBells.com or call 262-564-0286. Although there was a Fox poll last week that showed a 42-42% dead heat between Democrat Doug Jones and Nazi Roy Moore in the Alabama's special Senate election December 12, a new Fox poll shows the Nazi way ahead of Jones-- 52% to 41%. Moore is in DC tonight for a fundraiser hosted-- according to Moore's campaign-- by Utah Senator Mike Lee. A spokesman for Lee said the "fundraiser is not on our schedule." Yesterday Moore was trying to pretend to be an ordinary Republican and not an actual fascist. Sean Sullivan and Dave Weigh reported that it wasn't working. "Roy Moore," they wrote, "arrived in the Capitol to play an unfamiliar role: Republican conformist. By the time he left, he was once again a lightning rod for controversy." The hard-right former judge made his second trip to Washington on Tuesday as his partys Senate nominee in Alabama. Unlike the last time he was in town, Moore decided to mingle with the Republican establishment he has villainized on the campaign trail. He joined Republican senators at their weekly policy luncheon. Most backed his opponent in the primary. He chatted with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), his bitter foe. Afterward, he refrained from reiterating his criticism of the Kentuckian. Moore also dodged questions from reporters about incendiary statements he has made about a Muslim serving in Congress and gay people, declaring that he was not there to answer any questions about issues. As he made the rounds, some of Moores potential future Republican colleagues strained to separate themselves from him. One even attacked him head-on in a speech on the Senate floor. The visit offered a preview of the headaches Moores presence could cause for Senate Republican leaders should he prevail in a Dec. 12 special election to fill the seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. ...Asked by one reporter whether he still thinks Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) should not be a member of Congress because hes Muslim, as Moore wrote in a 2006 opinion piece, Moore replied, Ill address that later. Did he still think homosexual conduct should be illegal, as he said in a 2005 television interview? Im not answering any questions on issues right now, Moore said. He said he spoke at lunch to McConnell, whom he has vowed to oppose as leader. But as he departed the second floor of the Capitol, he said he was not going to give an opinion on that matter at that moment. Less than two hours later, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), a frequent critic of the far-right and President Trump who is retiring at the end of this Congress, used a floor speech in favor of a conservative judicial nominee to condemn Moore. 150 Shares Share Ive discovered a new condition called Cadillac Health Care Syndrome. Those afflicted are relatively healthy people who have numerous diagnoses, take multiple medications and have frequent surgical procedures because they have excellent health insurance with little to no out-of-pocket expenses. Risk factors include early retirement, lack of hobbies, jobs with paid sick days, excessive television watching and overuse of the Internet to investigate symptoms. It has been widely assumed that better access to health care improves ones health. Yet, this is a relatively recent concept. For most of human history, patients were aware that allowing physicians to intervene had considerable risk. Hippocrates famous nostrum that persists in every physicians conscience to this day is primum non nocere, first do no harm. Most historians believe that George Washington died because of bloodletting. When President Garfield was hit with an assassins bullet in 1881, he died as a complication of surgery. In fact, the lawyer for the assassin argued that his client merely shot the President; his doctors had killed him. But with the advent of antibiotics, sterile technique, an explosion in medical knowledge and technical advances, doctors can not only save lives but solve a multitude of problems that patients were once forced to live with. Thus began the public demand for health insurance, either available cheaply through the private sector or via the government. The recent national discussions on the unaffordability of health care has focused on the consequences of being uninsured or underinsured. It is widely assumed that those without health insurance have shorter lifespans and more morbidity that than with good insurance. But a recent study in which 12,000 uninsured individuals in Oregon were randomly left uninsured or placed on Medicaid revealed no significant difference in health outcomes. Many industrialized democracies spend a fraction of what the United States spends on health care and have similar, if not superior, statistics regarding lifespan and infant mortality. Part of the problem is that the coding system by which doctors are paid requires a diagnosis. Thus, a plethora of new diseases are constantly being created. Behaviors that were once considered personality traits or normal aging a bad temper or decreased libido are now labeled as a personality disorder or erectile dysfunction complete with diagnostic codes followed by drugs to cure the condition. What then follows are the requisite concomitant television advertisements and an army of drug salespeople invading our offices to market these cures. Another problem is that asymptomatic diseases are addressed more aggressively. The vast majority of patients with hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and pre-diabetes are symptom-free. The indications for treatment of these entities have increased in the past several decades, but are entirely numerical. Finally, minor annoyances are also aggressively treated. When I started my ophthalmology practice over 25 years ago, it was unusual for patients to complain of dry, itchy or burning eyes. Patients simply lived with the problem. Now due to constant marketing and the advent of expensive but effective treatments, it is not unusual to have numerous patients complain of this on a given day. However, I have noticed that it is quite rare for the uninsured or high-deductible patient to persist with these complaints while the well-insured patient is happy to generate a half a dozen office visits until he or she is satisfied. The general public may suspect that doctors augment their income by targeting patients with good insurance and offering them more office visits and procedures than those with large deductibles or poor insurance. While there may be a small element of unscrupulous physicians who engage in such behavior, the more likely cause is that patients with good insurance tend to complain about minor issues or fears that minor complaints may be masking a serious problem e.g., a headache being a symptom of a potential glioma. Physicians, who are trained to take all complaints seriously, try to solve the patients problems. Furthermore, ignoring even documented minor complaints can result in catastrophic lawsuits if something is missed. While there may be a tendency to blame the patients for this problem, the media blitz of constant advertising for medications, surgical procedures and the rise of medically-credentialed celebrities, such as Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, are probably a contributing factor. A bureaucratic ruling by the Clinton administration in the 1990s reversed years of prohibition of medicines being advertised on television. Cadillac Health Care Syndrome must be differentiated from hypochondria and Munchausens Syndrome. Hypochondria is a belief that physical symptoms are signs of a serious disorder in spite of medical evidence to the contrary. Munchausen syndrome is a specific psychiatric disorder in which patients actually feign disease or illness to draw attention to themselves. Those with Cadillac Health Care Syndrome simply are availing themselves excessively to modern medicine because they have the time and the good insurance to do so. While seemingly benign, it may well be that many of these patients are having numerous side effects from multiple drug interactions not to mention the complications of surgery. Perhaps some well-controlled studies could determine if excellent health insurance combined with certain personality traits and excess leisure time results in inferior care in a select group of patients. Educating physicians on this type of patient may result in fewer iatrogenic complications. Joseph Bentivegna is an ophthalmologist and can be reached at his self-titled site, Joseph Bentivegna, MD. This article originally appeared in Connecticut Medicine. Image credit: Shutterstock.com 273 Shares Share Health care in America and the practice of medicine has undergone a sea change over the last couple of decades. It used to be about Dr. Johnsons office around the corner that would serve you and your whole family. Nowadays, its about mega-specialty groups and large health care conglomerates. Its about mergers and hostile corporate takeovers. Statistics now suggest that over 50 percent of physicians are employed rather than being in their own private practice as business ownersa state of play that has huge consequences for the way physicians work and their level of autonomy. Its also posed another unique challenge for physicians, traditionally used to being solo practitioners or in small group practices. When you are employed, its all about the organization and the philosophy of the board of executives. This is par for the course and where we find ourselves as a profession. But crucially, it also means that physicians have to think long and hard about how we brand ourselves and promote what we do. The need to market ourselves as individuals seems less relevant as an employee than a private practitioner, but physicians would be selling themselves short if they neglected this completely. Thats because as a physician you have a uniquely sellable and in-demand skill. Current estimates suggest there could be an upcoming physician shortage of up to 90,000 by 2025. Thats a staggering number. Who knows what the health care environment will look like in the future, and who you will even be working for? But the one certainty is that as long as any doctor stays in clinical medicine, their skills will remain in high demand. The job security and choice you have is unparalleled compared to almost all other industries, and should be taken advantage of. As uncomfortable as it may make the ranks of corporate medicine, the fundamental interaction of health care will always be between the patient and their doctor. Patients come in specifically to see their doctor, and assuming they like and have an ongoing relationship with them, couldnt give a hoot about the organization, business-type gimmicks, or that shiny corporate logo! By the same token, its foolish for any physician to have extreme loyalty or feel too proud of working for any corporation. Sure, do an amazing job to the best of your professional abilities and tick all of the necessary boxes, but dont get too attached or somehow see yourself or your title as an integral and indispensable part of any company. I always chuckle to myself a bit when I see physicians who think that their institution is the best and would do anything for them. (I kid you not, but I once worked somewhere where a physician named his dog after the health care organization!). The cold truth is that any corporation would fire you in a second if they ever needed to. They would perform the standard corporate restructure and juggle things around in a heartbeat if they deemed it to be in the best interests of the company bottom line. This is true in any big business, and is something that society as a whole is increasingly realizing. Its also why we are witnessing the seeds being planted of a whole new worker-employer relationship throughout many industries, especially when that worker is a highly educated and trained professional. What you should have extreme loyalty and pride in, however, is your own personal brand which you should strive to develop. Your own philosophy, dedication, and clinical skills. You can do whatever you like to promote this it could be a website, a social media account, or better still, even just the way you project yourself at work. The way physicians establish and brand themselves nowadays will be critical for their future career success. Doctors as a whole, have some catching up to do in this respect, because they are behind most other professions in realizing this. So doctor, understand that you have a very portable skill set that is transferrable anywhere. It may sound rather selfish, but be loyal only to yourself and your patients (in fact, be ruthlessly selfish in that regard just like that executive who claims to be totally immersed and wedded to an organization and then is gone in a flash as soon as a better offer arises!). At every point, communicate the fact that you are a skilled physician that could be working anywhere, and that your patients are coming to see you. Be your own brand of fabulous medical care delivery. You are as autonomous and independent-thinking as you possibly can be, and will always go your own extra mile for the patient. That will stand you in good stead as health care continues its tumultuous journey. Suneel Dhand is an internal medicine physician and author. He is the founder, DocSpeak Communications and co-founder, DocsDox. He blogs at his self-titled site, Suneel Dhand. Image credit: Shutterstock.com LAMOILLE Over its 112 years, the Lamoille Community Presbyterian Church has overcome damage from weather, woodpeckers and wasps thanks to the faithfulness of its congregation and the surrounding communities. Today, the congregation is reaching out for help to preserve the churchs stained-glass windows. Through a fundraising raffle for Tuscarora-raised beef, members hope to contribute to the $25,000 needed for the project. The original windows went into the church when it was built in 1905 in Lamoille at the crossroads of Halleck and Elko. Silica for the glass came from West Virginia and a Los Angles company fabricated the pieces, commissioned by the original pastor Rev. George Henry Greenfield and wife Eva in memory of their fathers. The panes which depict Jesus at the door described in the book of Revelation and Jesus at Gethsemane arrived in Elko by rail, then traveled by wagon to Lamoille. You can see that it was basically built around the windows, said Jim Connelley, a retired Mountain City-area rancher and former county school board member, who has been leading church restoration projects since 2011. Since installation, the two sermons in glass were reinforced once, in 1977, according to a history written by Linda E. Stapley in honor of the churchs centennial in 2005. Recent evaluations, however, show that the windows are deteriorating and need further repair. Of course, we dont want to lose them, Connelley said. Experts from Willett Hauser Architectural Glass, a Minnesota-based stained-glass window restoration firm, quoted the congregation a fee of more than $25,000 to repair the two large windows. Fixes will include re-cementing each piece and adding a structural aluminum perimeter. The church also features two round stained-glass windows above the church entrances and four on opposite walls of the nave. The 9 by 14 foot stained-glass windows in the Lamoille church are as beautiful today as they were in 1905, when craftsmen first set them in their tracery, Stapely wrote, adding that the original windows probably cost about $500 each. A modern appraisal places their worth at about $300,000. To fund the restoration project, the congregation is conducting a raffle for beef, donated by the Van Norman Ranches in Tuscarora, and cut, wrapped and frozen by Wolf Pack Meats in Reno. Tickets are $5 each or five for $20. First place wins half a grain-fed beef (a $1,500 value); second place wins a 75-pound box of grain-fed beef (a $500 value); third prize wins a 15-pound box of grain-fed beef (a $100 value). The drawing will be held Dec. 10, and participants do not need to be present to win. Tickets are available by calling Connelley at 778-9800 or 934-7699 or at the following locations: Northeastern Nevada Museum, 1515 Idaho St.; Elko Area Chamber of Commerce, 1405 Idaho St.; J.M. Capriola Co., 500 Commercial St.; Car Doctors, 936 W Main St., Lamoille 4-H clubs; Western Folklife Center, 501 Railroad St.; The Star Hotel, 246 Silver St.; and IFA, 390 30th St. The church ran a similar fundraiser in 2011, raising more than $100,000 for a new roof, fire escapes, parking lot improvements, paint and plumbing. Now faced with an amount that is more than the small congregation can afford, members are looking to friends and supporters for help. So, once again, states a letter addressed to friends of the church, we are asking for support from the community to complete this very necessary project to ensure that this iconic 1905 country church will continue to comfort and inspire all who visit. If fundraising is successful, the Lamoille Community Presbyterian Church one of the most photographed churches in Nevada, Connelley said, then it will pretty well be ready for another 112 years. Nov 2 (Reuters) - Australian newspaper publisher Fairfax Media said on Thursday its shareholders agreed to a plan to spin off its real estate classifieds unit, Domain Holdings Australia Ltd, into a standalone listed company. The resolution on the Domain separation from Fairfax Media "received overwhelming support from shareholders," the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review publisher said in a statement. The company added that it expected Domain to start trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on Nov. 16. (Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Ambar Warrick; Editing by Byron Kaye and Richard Pullin) SHANGHAI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - China's yuan strengthened in early trade on Thursday, breaching a key threshold, supported by heavy dollar selling after the central bank lifted its official fixing by the most in more than three weeks. Prior to market opening on Thursday, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the midpoint rate at 6.6196 per dollar, 104 pips or 0.16 percent firmer than the previous fix of 6.63 on Wednesday. The move in Thursday's official guidance rate was the biggest one-day strengthening in percentage terms since Oct. 11. The spot market opened at 6.5940 per dollar and rose to a high of 6.5827 at one point in early trade. Spot yuan breached the psychologically important 6.6 per dollar for the first time since Oct. 17. Traders said gains in the Chinese currency were driven by corporate dollar selling, which forced some market participants to follow and sell their dollar positions to reduce losses. As of 0148 GMT, the onshore spot yuan was trading at 6.5858 per dollar. Its offshore counterpart was trading 0.05 percent weaker than the onshore spot at 6.5890 per dollar. (Reporting by Winni Zhou and John Ruwitch; Editing by Jacqueline Wong) Nov 2 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines * Michael Fallon quits in Westminster sexual misconduct storm. * HSBC accused of 'possible criminal complicity' in Gupta scandal. * Trump set to name Powell as Fed chair nominee. Overview * British defence minister Michael Fallon quit on Wednesday, saying his conduct had fallen below the high standards demanded of his position, the first resignation in a sexual harassment scandal in parliament. * British lawmaker Peter Hain said on Wednesday he has asked finance minister Philip Hammond to refer an unidentified UK bank to regulators for an investigation into possible involvement in alleged money laundering involving South Africa's Gupta family. * U.S. President Donald Trump plans to nominate current Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the next chair of the U.S. central bank, according to two White House officials. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom; Editing by Sandra Maler) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump does not recall a meeting with his foreign policy advisers in March 2016 in which one of them suggested he could arrange a meeting between candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the White House said on Wednesday. George Papadopoulos, an obscure Trump campaign adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials, in the first criminal charges alleging links between the campaign and Moscow, according to court documents released on Monday. According to the court documents, Papadopoulos, a Chicago-based international energy lawyer, told the March 31, 2016, meeting that he had connections that could help arrange a Trump-Putin meeting. Asked at a news briefing if the Republican president recalled the suggestion by Papadopoulos, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said: No I dont believe he does. The charges against Papadopoulos were made public just after indictments charging Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide with multiple offenses, including money laundering, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents. The New York Times said Trump, in a telephone conversation with the newspaper on Wednesday, said investigations into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia had not come anywhere near him personally. Im not under investigation, as you know, the Times quoted Trump as saying. Pointing to Manaforts indictment, the president said: Theres not even a mention of Trump in there, according to the Times. It has nothing to do with us. U.S. intelligence agencies said in January that Russia had meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to discredit Trumps Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump has denounced the investigations as a witch hunt. Russia denies meddling in the U.S. election. Manafort and Rick Gates on Monday pleaded not guilty to the charges, some of which go back more than a decade and center on Manaforts work for Ukraine. Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictment against Manafort and Gates. Reporting by James Oliphant; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Peter Cooney (Adds background, share movement) Nov 2 (Reuters) - Australian newspaper publisher Fairfax Media said on Thursday its shareholders had agreed to a plan to spin off its real estate classifieds unit, Domain Holdings Australia Ltd, into a standalone listed company. The resolution "received overwhelming support from shareholders," the publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review newspapers said in a statement. The company added that it expected Domain to start trading on the Australian Securities Exchange on Nov. 16. The mandate clears the path for the company to sell its biggest-earning unit and keep a 60 percent stake. Fairfax expects Domain shares will grow as a result of being freed from the turmoil surrounding the broader media sector, and that it will benefit via its equity stake. Fairfax ramped up efforts to break out its Domain business after U.S. private equity firms TPG Capital Management and Hellman & Friedman abandoned moves to acquire the company. The publisher has said it would give shareholders one Domain share for every 10 Fairfax shares they own if the separation went ahead. Fairfax said there would be no new capital raised for the Domain separation. The second court hearing for the approval of the resolution was scheduled for Nov. 6. Shares of the company fell as much as 0.9 percent, while the broader market was little changed. (Reporting by Christina Martin in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Ambar Warrick; Editing by Stephen Coates) BATTLE MOUNTAIN SSR Mining released the names of the two workers whose lives were claimed at the Marigold Mine in Valmy on Tuesday, and federal mine safety regulators are investigating the accident. Safety superintendent Pete Kuhn and open pit operator Omar Bernal were killed when a van they were riding in was run over by a haul truck, Mine Safety and Health Administration spokeswoman Amy Louviere told The Associated Press Wednesday. Seven other trainees in the van were taken to a hospital where they were treated for minor injuries and released, according to the SSR Mining statement. The driver of the haul truck was hospitalized for treatment of shock, Louviere said. MSHA has several personnel onsite and an investigation has begun, she said in an email. The SSR Mining statement said the company is cooperating fully with the investigation and plans to conduct its own operational and safety review. Mine operations remain suspended and will resume only once management has conducted a site assessment and employees are briefed to ensure a safe mine restart, according to the release. All of us at SSR Mining are deeply saddened by these tragic events, said Paul Benson, SSR Mining president and CEO. Our immediate focus is on supporting the family and friends of our colleagues during this difficult time. The investigation is going to take some time to complete and we are doing all we can to support those efforts. We would also like to thank the mine rescue team and all those who responded to the incident for their invaluable help. Marigold Mine in Valmy reported the accident at about 2:15 p.m., according to Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Allen. SSR Mining, a Vancouver-based company, changed its name from Silver Standard Resources in August. MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - If the ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont fails to appear in court, the normal procedure would be to issue an arrest warrant, the president of Spain's Supreme Court said on Thursday. "When someone doesn't appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued," Supreme Court President Carlos Lesmes said. Puigdemont said on Wednesday he would ignore a court order to return to Spain to answer charges over the region's push for independence. He did not turn up at a High Court hearing on Thursday. (Reporting by Tomas Cobos; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Julien Toyer) By Mai Nguyen HANOI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Rains are expected to continue for the next few days in Vietnam, affecting the harvest in the world's top producer of robusta coffee, while Indonesia remained quiet, traders said on Thursday. A storm heading to the central and southern Vietnam is likely to cause rains in several parts of the Central Highlands, Vietnam's main coffee belt, during the weekend, preventing farmers from harvesting and drying coffee beans. "It's been rainy for three to four days but turns sunny this morning; farmers are not harvesting ... beans are not ripe yet," said Le Duc Huy, vice general director of Simexco, a top exporter in Daklak, Vietnam's largest coffee growing province. Severe rains would hit some eastern coastal provinces from Friday in the south and central Vietnam, and could extend to the Central Highlands in the west, with "complicated and prolonged" developments, the weather forecast centre said. Most parts of the Central Highlands are likely to see sunny days after the weekend rains, the National Meteorological and Hydrological Center said on its website. "If it turns out to be a mix of rainy and sunny days, it is actually a boost to the coffee beans to ripe faster and better," said independent analyst Nguyen Quang Binh. Traders said farmers in Daklak were offering coffee beans at 39,200-40,000 dong ($1.73-$1.76) per kg, the lowest level since Sept. 6, 2016, as prices track a fall in London robusta coffee market. London January robusta coffee futures contract fell as much as 5.9 percent this week to $1,830 a tonne on Wednesday, a low intraday level unseen since Sept. 1 last year, Thomson Reuters Eikon data showed. Export contracts were unmatched as sellers offered the 5 percent black and broken grade 2 robusta at a discount of $40-$50 to the January contract while importers asked for a discount of $60-$70, traders said. In Indonesia, the grade 4 defect 80 robusta beans was being traded at a $20-$30 premium to the January contract, tightening from a $40 premium a week earlier, a trader said. Most traders are only fulfilling their committed contracts and are not active, the trader said, as harvest will not start until April next year. ($1 = 22,713 dong) (Reporting by Mai Nguyen; Additional reporting by Mas Alina Arifin in Bandar Lampung; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier) By Samuel Shen and John Ruwitch SHANGHAI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Foreign holdings of Chinese shares exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($151.1 billion) for the first time in September, central bank data showed on Thursday, as capital market deregulation and MSCI's China inclusion fuelled demand for select blue chips. Foreign holdings represent just 1.7 percent of China's nearly $9 trillion market capitalisation, but a growing number of overseas investors are targeting companies with stable yield, or "new economy" stocks - such as consumer goods firms and drugmakers - that promise high growth potential. "Overseas investors are attracted to A-share companies that cannot be bought elsewhere, such as Moutai, or Wuliangye," said Bin Shi, head of China Equities at UBS Asset Management (Hong Kong) Ltd, referring to China's popular alcohol producers. With hundreds of billions of dollars flowing in and targeting a small number of companies, "the accumulative impact should not be underestimated," Shi said. By the end of September, foreign holdings in yuan-denominated A-shares hit a record 1.021 trillion yuan, up 50 percent from a year earlier, the data showed. A year earlier, the figure was 656.2 billion yuan. Foreign investor interest has heightened as Beijing opened its capital markets wider to woo inbound investment over the past year. In December 2016, China launched the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, broadening a cross-border channel that already linked Shanghai and Hong Kong. U.S. index publisher MSCI's decision to include China A-shares into its global indexes next year added further momentum. "Global capital is gushing into China," said Ma Xixun, executive director at asset manger PinPoint. "Foreign investors are realising that being consistently bearish on China is not good for their fund performance." Foreign capital worth more than 300 billion yuan has so far flowed into Chinese stocks via the Connect scheme, boosted by strong demand for companies ranging from home appliance makers Midea and Gree , to electricity giant Yangtze Power and diary producer Yili . Another investment channel, the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programme, also showed a preference for blue chips. The CSI300 index has risen 20 percent so far this year. In contrast, start-up board ChiNext , once the darling of local investors and a hotbed for speculation, has slipped 5 percent. Illustrating the bigger presence of overseas investors in China, Hengrui Medicine's and liquor maker Kweichow Moutai's top shareholder list is crowded with foreign institutions. These include among others Oppenheimer Funds Inc, Norges Bank Investment Management and Fidelity Management & Research Co. And both these companies have seen their share price soar more than 80 percent this year. Investment trends are changing as a result, with the Warren Buffet-style of "buy and hold" investing becoming more popular in a market accustomed to speculative casino-like behavior, Shi at UBS Asset Management said. "Previously, China's A-shares changed hands mainly among local investors...but with increasing foreign participation, China's market structure is changing." He said the sharp rise in companies such as Moutai reflects their rapid profit growth as well as normalisation of valuations from previously ultra-low levels. "The revaluation of China's blue chips is just under way, and is far from over." ($1 = 6.6183 Chinese yuan) (Editing by Jacqueline Wong) PARIS, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said on Thursday he was impressed by the speed and breadth of the economic reforms delivered by French President Emmanuel Macron since his election. "What we're seeing appears impressive, both in speed of execution of the reforms and in ambition," the head of the German central bank told French daily Les Echos in an interview published on its website. "Europe will also benefit from them, even if the effects of these reforms will only be felt in the medium term," he said. On reforms of euro zone governance, Weidmann said there was no conflicting point with Macron's views and that his German allies shared his aim for a stable euro zone. "Talking of risk-sharing, common budget, should not be an aim in itself. We should discuss first what functions and responsibilities are best served at the European level rather than at the national level," he added. (Reporting by Michel Rose; editing by John Irish) SHANGHAI, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Hong Kong stocks slipped on Thursday, echoing nervousness in global markets as investors waited for key policy events in the United States and what could be the Bank of England's first hike in more than 10 years. Investors also weigh the impact of a possible policy change that might change the share structure of "H-shares", or mainland companies listed in Hong Kong. Both the Hang Seng index and the China Enterprises Index fell 0.3 percent, to 28,518.64 and 11,598.36 points, respectively. Attention is fixed on who will become Fed chair when Janet Yellen's terms expires in February. The White House plans to nominate current Fed Governor Jerome Powell, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Investors also study the impact of a potential policy change regarding H-shares. Chinese media Caixin reported that China's State Council plans to revive a policy that will allow mainland firms to freely convert nonlisted "domestic shares" into "H-shares". The policy could potentially jack up H-share supplies. Sector performance was mixed. Financial shares dropped 0.7 percent, but energy stocks jumped 2.1 percent. (Reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Richard Borsuk) TOKYO, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world's largest pension fund, posted a 2.97 percent return on its investment in the September quarter as global stocks rallied. GPIF, which managed 157 trillion yen, or about $1.38 trillion, of pension money for Japanese nationals during the quarter, reported on Thursday a gain of 4.45 trillion yen for the three months. Japanese stocks rose to their highest in more than two years in September, with the benchmark Topix index gaining 3.9 percent during the quarter. GPIF said its Japanese stock portfolio achieved a 4.79 percent return, or a 1.8 trillion yen gain, while its foreign stock portfolio posted a 5.55 percent return, a gain of 2 trillion yen. Its domestic bond portfolio returned 0.16 percent in the quarter, while its foreign bond holdings posted a 2.49 percent return. GPIF's Japanese stock holdings accounted for 24.35 percent of its assets, while its domestic bond portfolio made up 28.50 percent, it said. The pension fund allocated 24.03 percent to foreign stocks in the quarter and 14.02 percent to foreign bonds. The remaining 9.1 percent was held mainly in cash. In 2014, GPIF made a historic change by cutting its reliance on domestic bonds and increasing its weightings of riskier assets such as stocks. ($1 = 113.8900 yen) (Reporting by Junko Fujita; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu) NAIROBI, Nov 2(Reuters) - The Kenyan shilling was steady against dollar on Thursday supported by tight market liquidity and inflows from horticultural sector matching dollar demand from multinational companies, traders said. At 0838 GMT, commercial banks quoted the shilling at 103.65/85 per dollar, little changed from Wednesday's close of 103.60/80. ...........................Shilling spot rates .....................Shilling forward rates .......................Cross rates ..................................Local contributors .......................Central Bank of Kenya Index .....................Kenyan Bonds contributor pages ...............Treasury bill yields ..................Central bank open market operations .........................Horizontal repo transactions , ................Daily interbank lending rate .............................Kenya Bond pricing ..................Real time Africa economic data ...........................African economic news .................................NSE-20 Share Index .................................NSE-25 Share Index .................................NSE All Share Index ...........................FT NSE Kenya 15 Index .......................... FT NSE Kenya 25 Index SPEED GUIDES: (Reporting by John Ndiso; Editing by Clement Uwiringiyimana) 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, Nov 2 (Reuters) - London-listed Kaz Minerals said the government of Kyrgyzstan had suspended operations at its Bozymchak gold and copper mine on Thursday for three months. "The Group believes that Bozymchak is in compliance with its obligations and is in discussions with the relevant authorities to recommence operations as soon as possible," the miner said in a statement. (Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by Mark Potter) 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. Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Thursday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour): PMI Markit is due to release October manufacturing PMI index at 0800 GMT. JUDICIAL REFORM President Andrzej Duda and the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party may agree on the shape of the reform of the Supreme Court and of the National Council of the Judiciary in the coming days, president's spokesman Krzysztof Lapinski told TVN24 broadcaster. PGNIG Polish gas company PGNiG said it has asked Russia's Gazprom to renegotiate the price paid for gas in its long-term delivery contract. The company is also in talks about acquiring new gas deposits in Norway and is making efforts to gain a new concession in Pakistan, PGNiG Chief Executive Piotr Wozniak told Puls Biznesu daily. GRUPA AZOTY Fertiliser producer Grupa Azoty will take a decision whether to build a polypropylene factory worth about 5.5 billion zlotys ($1.51 billion) in the coming weeks, the company's Deputy Chief Executive Pawel Lapinski told Rzeczpospolita daily. IDEA BANK Poland's sixth richest businessman Leszek Czarnecki is interested in selling his stake in the small Idea Bank, Parkiet daily said quoting unnamed sources. It is not clear, the daily said, whether Czarnecki is to sell the 16-percent stake he holds directly, or the entire one - 71 percent. ING BANK SLASKI Poland's sixth largest lender by assets ING Bank Slaski's third quarter net profit rose to 376 million zloty from 332 million zloty a year earlier, thanks to better interest income and fee and provisions results, it said on Thursday. EEW Germany's energy firm EEW is considering a project to build a garbage incinerator plant producing heat and energy in Poland's coastal city of Gdansk in the coming four years, a board member of the Polish unit of EEW, Frank Paasche, told Rzeczpospolita. GAS STORAGE Polish state gas pipeline operator Gaz-System is preparing to construct at least one new underground gas storage facility in the coming years, Rzeczpospolita reported. ****Reuters has not verified stories reported by Polish media and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** For other related news, double click on: Polish equities E.Europe equities Polish money Polish debt Eastern Europe All emerging markets Hot stocks Stock markets Market debt news Forex news For real-time index quotes, double click on: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX ($1 = 3.6306 zlotys) (Reporting by Warsaw Bureau) Nov 2 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. - The White House has notified Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell that President Donald Trump intends to nominate him as the next chairman of the central bank, according to a person familiar with the matter, a move likely to combine continuity on interest-rate policy with perhaps a lighter touch on financial regulation. - Police said two people were killed and a third was injured in a shooting Wednesday evening at a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado, outside Denver. - Hudson's Bay Co said it received an unsolicited offer for its German department store chain, Galeria Kaufhof, from its main rival in that country, but the company said the offer was incomplete and lacked financing. - Under Armour Inc is shedding more of its senior leadership, including its chief marketing officer and the head of its women's business, as the sportswear company continues to grapple with declining sales. - Uber Technologies Inc's effort to close a multibillion-dollar investment by SoftBank Group Corp is in danger of derailing as co-founder Travis Kalanick tussles with fellow board members, including Benchmark Capital, over the limits of his power at the ride-hailing giant, people familiar with the matter said. (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom) ABC/Randy HolmesThe music rights organization SESAC will honor Lady Antebellum with its Humanitarian Award Sunday night during its annual ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood will be recognized for the work theyve done through their charitable organization, LadyAid. Most recently, the trio gave $200,000 to help hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, having shot their Heart Break video there before the storm. Hillary will also present Kenny Rogers with SESACs Legacy honor on Sunday, at the evening also known as the Nashville Music Awards. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump is blaming one Democrat for an immigration program that was backed by both parties and signed by a Republican president in 1990. The "Chuck Schumer beauty," as Trump called the program, was also George H.W. Bush's beauty. A look at Trump's tweets Wednesday as he cast political blame on Schumer specifically and Democrats generally in the aftermath of the deadly truck attack in New York City, allegedly by a citizen of Uzbekistan. TRUMP: "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based." The terrorist came into our country through what is called the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 "Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems' said Col. Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends" "Senator Chuck Schumer helping to import Europes problems" said Col.Tony Shaffer. We will stop this craziness! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 THE FACTS: Schumer, then in the House, now a senator, did back the lottery program. It had bipartisan support in an era when legal immigration was less contentious. He also proposed eliminating it three years ago, colleagues say. The Homeland Security Department confirmed after the tweets that the accused assailant immigrated under the diversity lottery program. He came to the United States in 2010. The program is for people from countries with low rates of immigration to the U.S. It provides up to 50,000 visas annually by lottery. Applicants must have a high school diploma or meet work experience requirements. The program was created as part of a bipartisan immigration bill introduced by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and signed into law by Bush in 1990. Schumer indeed proposed a program for "diversity immigrants" that year. But Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said on Twitter that Trump was unfairly blaming Schumer for the diversity visa program. Flake, one of Trump's chief Republican foes in Congress, said Schumer was among a group of eight Republican and Democratic senators who proposed eliminating the program three years ago as part of a broader bipartisan bill to overhaul U.S. immigration laws. Flake, who served on that "Gang of Eight" with Schumer, said: "I know. I was there." Actually, the Gang of 8, including @SenSchumer, did away with the Diversity Visa Program as part of broader reforms. I know, I was there https://t.co/QQFJzPyRzC Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) November 1, 2017 The immigration bill ultimately failed in the GOP-led House after passing the Senate in June 2013, 68-32, with 14 Republicans joining Democrats. Schumer, meantime, cited cuts proposed by Trump in certain anti-terrorism programs. He mentioned, among other programs, a proposed cut of more than 25 percent in the Urban Area Security Initiative, which helps cities prevent, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism. My full statement in response to President Trumps proposed funding cuts to anti-terrorism efforts: pic.twitter.com/L0S6K1WkLX Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 1, 2017 In the Trump tweet, his reference to Europe's problems belies the fact that Uzbekistan is in Asia, not Europe. However, the State Department categorizes Uzbekistan and other former Soviet republics under Europe in its lottery program. The lottery is extended to citizens of most countries, excepting about 20. Among the excluded countries are many that already have high rates of emigration to the U.S., such as Mexico, Canada and India. In the most recent figures, the State Department selected more than 125,000 people in 2015 for the lottery program, accepting the first 50,000 who applied for visas. Among them, citizens of Cameroon, Liberia, Congo, Iran and Nepal led the list, with about 5,000 visa slots each. Citizens of Uzbekistan also figured prominently in the lottery, with 4,368 selected. Those numbers don't necessarily reflect who actually came because the number was capped at the first 50,000 who applied for visas after winning the lottery. TRUMP tweet on merit-based immigration: "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)." We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter). @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2017 THE FACTS: The president has taken steps to push for a merit-based immigration system but many of those efforts are still under development. In August, Trump embraced legislation that would dramatically reduce legal immigration and shift the nation toward a system that prioritizes merit and skills over family ties. The president promoted the bill, which would eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, at a White House event with Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. But the legislation has yet to gain any significant traction and is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The White House has signaled that it may seek some of these changes in coming negotiations with Democrats over a legislative solution that would extend protections first granted under former President Barack Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump is phasing out DACA, but has given Congress time to act before recipients' work permits begin to expire. A set of immigration principles laid out by the administration last month included calls for a "merit-based" immigration system that would end so-called "chain migration" by limiting family-based green cards to include spouses and minor children. But it remains unclear if Trump will insist on these changes in the DACA talks. Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report. MOSCOW, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Russian real estate company Hals Development said on Thursday it has signed a deal worth about $429 million to sell office space in Moscow for the use of government officials moving to the area. Hals, owned by Russian state bank VTB , said it has reached the deal with the state Unified Development Institution in the Housing Sector (UDIHS) over the sale of 74,655 square metres of real estate in the Moscow City business area. The value of the deal, which also includes 327 car parking places, is estimated at 25 billion roubles ($429 million), Hals said in the statement. Moscow City is a modern business district with skyscrapers, where some banks, including VTB, have offices. VTB took over Hals in 2009 in exchange for restructuring its debt. UDIHS did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment. This week, UDIHS said it planned to raise a total of 10 billion roubles by issuing domestic bonds with a maturity of 33 years. Russia's economy ministry along with the ministry of industry and trade and the communications ministry are all expected to move to Moscow City next year, according to a government decree issued in September. ($1 = 58.3092 roubles) (Reporting by Olga Sichar, Darya Korsunskaya, Elena Fabrichnaya and Elena Orekhova; writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle) Nov 2 (Reuters) - The energy ministers of Russia and Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil producers, are expected to travel to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Thursday night, two sources familiar with the plans told Reuters. Both said the ministers are expected to give a briefing in Tashkent. They did not provide other details. Russia and Saudi Arabia are leading the global oil production cut deal aimed at propping up global oil prices. (Reporting by OPEC Newsroom) Keywords: OIL OPEC/RUSSIA SAUDI 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. * Bailed-out Russian bank used Irish funding vehicles * Loans of $500 million terminated * Experts say episode will hurt Russia, Ireland By John O'Donnell FRANKFURT, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Russia's bailed-out bank Otkritie will not repay $500 million of loans raised in Ireland, potentially making it harder for other Russian private banks to borrow abroad and casting a cloud over Dublin as a "shadow banking" hub. Otkritie's refusal to pay sees shockwaves from Russia's biggest ever bank bailout reach Ireland, which has been used by international firms including Russian banks to raise hundreds of billions of euros in such loans. In a stock-exchange filing on Tuesday, OFCB, a vehicle that had issued $300 million of loan notes and lent the proceeds to Otkritie, said the Russian bank had "terminated" the repayment of the debt and more than $7 million of interest. BKM Finance, another vehicle that borrowed $200 million on behalf of Otkritie, made a similar filing on Oct. 27, saying the bank could not repay the money and interest of $4.7 million. A spokeswoman for Otkritie said it had "grounds to terminate its obligations related to subordinated instruments" and that it had acted in accordance with the law. Russia's central bank, which orchestrated a multi-billion dollar rescue of Otkritie after a run on the bank, had earlier warned that subordinated debt could be hit. OFCB has issued a further $500 million of subordinated debt, according to Otkritie's website, although the status of this was not immediately clear. Otkritie's fall was dramatic for a group that, with support from President Vladimir Putin's inner circle, snapped up rivals and even Lukoil's diamond business to become Russia's biggest private bank. "As Russia is gearing to raise more capital through international bonds ... this may well dampen investors' appetite for Russian assets," Anastasia Nesvetailova, an expert in financial crises at London's City University, said. Sergey Dergachev, a bond investor with Germany's Union Investment, said he feared others could suffer a similar fate. "If global economic conditions worsen, what will happen to Russia and its banks? I think the chances of seeing more subordinated debt out of Russian banks are slim." REPUTATIONAL RISK? Also potentially at stake is Ireland's shadow banking system, which has boomed since the financial crisis and given groups such as hedge funds increasing clout in global finance. The International Monetary Fund and Financial Stability Board, which monitors the financial system, have highlighted concerns over Ireland's outsized financial sector. The country is one of the euro zone's largest centres for financial special purpose vehicles, according to central bank data, many of which are used to borrow by international groups. The sector had total assets such as loans of 345 billion euros ($402 billion) in the middle of this year - bigger than the Irish economy. Russian companies have sponsored 14 percent of those vehicles in Ireland. But fund raising by companies such as Otkritie, poses a potential threat to Ireland's standing, said James Stewart of Trinity College Dublin who has written a report on the issue. "In terms of Ireland's reputation, these cases indicate a problem," said Stewart. "It reveals the absence of regulation and oversight of this important market. They create a systemic risk, if not to Ireland, then internationally." The Irish Stock Exchange, which listed the debt, declined to comment, while a spokeswoman for Ireland's central bank said the debt issues were restricted to "qualified investors" and that it had approved the prospectuses. "The veracity of that information is the responsibility of the issuer and its directors," said a spokeswoman. The Irish law underpinning special purpose vehicles was created by the government in the early 1990s to build an international financial services centre in a then derelict part of Dublin, a central plank to the country's economy and success. Many vehicles are shell companies set up to borrow and critics, including Stewart, say similar conduits hosted by Ireland helped trigger bank problems in Germany during the financial crisis. However, lobbyists, lawyers and many government officials want to keep the regime to attract business from London after Britain leaves the European Union. ($1 = 0.8579 euros) (Additional reporting by Ekaterina Golubkova in Moscow; editing by Alexander Smith) HANOI, Nov 2 (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 0417 GMT. November 2 USD/VND mid-point 22,466 USD/VND interbank 22,712/22,713 USD/VND unofficial 22,780/22,800 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.43/36.65 Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.6-1.1 1 week 0.9-1.2 1 month 1.5-1.7 3 months 3.1-3.6 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) MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - A Spanish judge on Thursday said she had ordered nine Catalan leaders, including former regional vice-president Oriol Junqueras, to be remanded in custody pending an investigation into Catalonia's independence push and a potential trial. One of them, Santi Vila, who stepped down from the Catalan cabinet before a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday and has since then been pushing for a negotiated solution with the government, was granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,300). (Reporting by Emma Pinedo; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Jesus Aguado) MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Spain's state prosecutor on Thursday asked an High Court judge to jail Catalan secessionist leaders pending an investigation over their role in Catalonia's illegal push for independence, a source with knowledge of the matter said. Nine members of the sacked Catalan administration testified on Thursday on charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds. The prosecutor recommended one of them, Santi Vila, who stepped down from the Catalan cabinet before a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday and has since then been pushing for a negotiated solution with the government, should be granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,275.00). ($1 = 0.8580 euros) (Reporting by Raquel Castillo; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Julien Toyer) (Kitco News) - Mining companies need to continue to clean up their balance sheets as investment capital continues to slowly enter the sector, says one mining executive. Image courtesy of Centerra Gold Scott Perry, chief executive officer of Centerra Gold, said in an interview with Kitco News that one of the companys priorities is to pay down its debt so it has a healthy balance sheet in case the sector has to deal with lean times again. Perrys comments come as Centerra gold repaid $111.9 million in debt in the third quarter. Perry said that for the year to date, the company has paid off about $172 million of its debt. Last year the company used debt financing to raise $300 million as part of its $1.1 billion purchase of Thompson Creek and its Mount Milligan project. I would like to see us continue to aggressively pay off our debt, he said. Our goal in this metals price environment is to continue to grow our net cash position. Perry explained that Centerras philosophy has helped the company grow as the sector has struggled to attract much-needed funds. He explained that the companys ability to diversify its gold production has been a direct result of its balance sheet. The only reason we got Thomson Creek was because we had such a strong balance sheet, significant cash reserves and we were in the right place at the right time, he said. The rest of the market was kind of handicapped and in a weak position because of their balance sheets. For Centerra, the Thomson Creek purchase last year has been a strategic move with fantastic results, Perry said. According to the companys earnings report, 61,640 ounces of gold were produced at Mount Milligan, generating revenues of $48 million during the quarter. The purchase of a Canada-based project has also helped Centerra, diversify its portfolio to reduce its geopolitical risks. Before its Thomson Creek purchase, Centerra was completely reliant on its Kumtor mine in the Kyrgyz Republic for its cash flow. As an example of its political risk, in the third quarter the company said that it paid a $60 million settlement to the Kyrgyz government. While the mine is not in a great mining jurisdiction, Perry said that the deposits assets outweigh the current risks. We have got one of the worlds best gold mines and it provides a lot of cash flow that lets us build out the company and diversify, he said. ISTANBUL, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Here are news, reports and events that may affect Turkish financial markets on Thursday. The lira stood at 3.8040 against the U.S. dollar at 0519 GMT, easing from 3.8134 at Wednesday's close. The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond was at 11.84 percent in spot trade on Wednesday and rose to 11.85 percent in Thursday-dated trade. The main BIST 100 share index rose 2.62 percent to 113,024.27 points on Wednesday. GLOBAL MARKETS Asian shares touched a 10-year high on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve expressed optimism about the economy, virtually cementing the case for a year-end rate hike as investors awaited the formal nomination of the next head of the central bank. But investors were nervous as they awaited a tax bill from squabbling Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was expected later in the session after a one-day delay. ERDOGAN President Tayyip Erdogan will speak at a meeting to present a Turkish car joint venture project (1000 GMT). Erdogan will then hold regular meetings with the head of the national intelligence agency Hakan Fidan (1200 GMT), armed forces chief General Hulusi Akar (1300 GMT) and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (1530 GMT). DEFENCE INDUSTRY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Prime Minister Yildirim will attend a meeting of the defence industry executive committee (0600 GMT). The prime minister will also attend the closing session of a symposium on the role of women in decision-making mechanisms (1300 GMT) CUSTOMS MINISTRY TRADE DATA The Customs Ministry will announce preliminary trade data for October (0700 GMT) NATURAL GAS CONFERENCE Energy Minister Berat Albayrak will attend a natural gas conference (1000 GMT). EXPORTS MEETING Finance Minister Naci Agbal and Customs Minister Bulent Tufenkci will attend an event as part of the Turkish exports week (0630 GMT). For other related news, double click on: Turkish politics Turkish equities Turkish money Turkish debt Turkish hot stocks Forex news All emerging market news All Turkish news For real-time quotes, double click on: Istanbul National-100 stock index , interbank lira trading , lira bond trading (Writing by Daren Butler) By Jan Wolfe Nov 2 (Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Thursday called a Nov. 7 hearing on the legitimacy of an agreement between drugmaker Allergan Plc and a Native American tribe intended to shield patents from administrative review. The House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on intellectual property, chaired by Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California, said in a statement that the hearing would include testimony from four experts on patent law, including a former in-house attorney at drug company Johnson & Johnson and a lawyer with a trade group representing the software industry. An Allergan spokesman declined to comment on whether the company would send any executives to the hearing. Allergan on Sept. 8 transferred patents on its dry eye medication Restasis to the upstate New York Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe, which agreed to exclusively license the patents back to the company in exchange for ongoing payments. According to Allergan, the tribe's status as a sovereign entity places the patents outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board, an administrative court created by Congress in 2011 that can cancel patents it decides should not have been granted. Generic drug companies frequently ask the tribunal to revoke patents on brand-name prescription drugs in hopes of launching their own lower-cost versions. A challenge to Allergan's Restasis patents brought by rival Mylan NV is pending before the board. Allergan Chief Executive Brent Saunders has said the patent tribunal is a flawed and unfair forum. He has said Allergan would not object to the Restasis patents being reviewed in federal court, which it called a fair and time-tested process. A federal court invalidated Allergan's Restasis patents on Oct. 16, rendering the tribal deal mostly meaningless. Allergan has appealed that ruling. Lawmakers have called Allergan's deal with the tribe a sham transaction. A bipartisan group of four representatives from the House Oversight and Government Committee on Oct. 3 asked Allergan to provide documents about its agreements with the tribe. After the ruling the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe said it was eager to make similar deals with other patent owners to generate much-needed revenue for its members. (Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Anthony Lin and Richard Chang) (Adds details, quote, background) CAIRO, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Egypt spent over 100 billion Egyptian pounds ($5.65 billion) more than it planned to in the 2016-17 fiscal year due to its decision to float the pound currency, three government sources told Reuters on Thursday. The central bank floated the pound in November last year and the government reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $12 billion loan that included subsidy cuts, tax increases and looser capital controls. The government had earmarked 974 billion pounds for spending in the 2016-17 budget approved by parliament but spent over 100 billion more. Egypt's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. "The government asked for parliament's approval for an extra allowance worth over 100 billion pounds due to extra spending because of the increases in prices of fuel subsidies and wheat purchasing as well as higher interest payments in the budget. Expenses were higher than planned for because of the float," said one senior government source, who requested anonymity. Oil Minister Tarek El Molla said in August that Egypt's fuel subsidy bill in 2016-17 jumped to 120 billion pounds, up from 51 billion in 2015-16. ($1 = 17.6990 Egyptian pounds) (Reporting by Ehab Farouk; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Gareth Jones) (Adds details, background) CAIRO, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Egypt has paid off the final instalment, worth $200 million, of a $1 billion loan it took out from Turkey in 2012 during Mohamed Mursi's brief tenure as president, state news agency MENA said on Thursday. Mursi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was ousted by the military after mass protests against his rule in 2013, a year after he came to power. His administration was an ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who condemned his ouster. Relations between Turkey and Egypt under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as military chief led Mursi's ouster, have since soured. Egypt also paid Libya $250 million as an instalment towards settling a $1.5 billion loan, also taken out during Mursi's presidency, Central Bank Sub-governor Rami Aboul Naga told MENA, and would pay two more instalments worth a combined $500 million next year to settle the debt. The payments were made on Wednesday, he told MENA. The central bank did not respond to a request for comment. Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer said two months ago Egypt would pay back around $8 billion in debts before the end of the year. Egypt has paid back $17.5 billion in foreign debts this year after the central bank floated the pound currency in November 2016. It also paid back a $1 billion debt owed to Qatar in July 2016 and a $2.5 billion deposit in 2014, when Doha asked for its money back following Mursi's ouster. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic, transport and trade ties with Qatar in June this year, accusing it of financing terrorism. Doha denies the charges. (Reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by John Davison and Gareth Jones) (Adds quotes on Powell, taxes and Bitcoin) NEW YORK, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc CEO Lloyd Blankfein said Thursday on Bloomberg TV that he would not be "one bit disappointed" if President Donald Trump nominated Jerome Powell as the new Federal Reserve chair. "His background is a terrific background - again a lot of government service, service in the Fed, service in the private sector," Blankfein said. "I think he is a very great, credible candidate. There were other credible candidates as well but I am not one bit disappointed if it turns out to be J. Powell." Trump was expected on Thursday afternoon to nominate Powell for the post, putting his own stamp on the leadership of the U.S. central bank while signaling continuity on monetary policy. Asked about Powell's lack of a PhD, Blankfein said, "I sometimes feel that people with PhDs - and believe me, I am not anti-intellectual, I have a law degree, my kids went to graduate school, I'm not against people who have PhDs -- but sometimes I wish people who only have PhDs had a little more life and professional and business experience." Blankfein also said a good U.S. tax plan will have "stimulative elements" and could get U.S. GDP growth to a higher level than 3 percent. "The free-est kind of stimulus you could provide for the economy is confidence and peeling away redundant or bad regulation, to be frank," Blankfein said. Asked about Bitcoin, which soared past $7,000 to a new record high on Thursday, Blankfein said: "I have a level of discomfort with it as I have a level of discomfort with anything that's new. But I learned over the years that there's a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don't love. "Right now, I tell you, I don't have an investment in it. But I'm not willing to pooh-pooh it and that's why, I say, I am open to it," Blankfein added. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Trump expected to name Powell as next Federal Reserve chair on Thursday ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting By Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Frances Kerry) (Adds variation from Sept, context) BAGHDAD, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Iraq's October crude exports from its southern ports rose to an average of 3.346 million barrels per day, up by about 100,000 bpd from September, oil ministry and state oil marketer SOMO officials told Reuters on Thursday. Iraq increased shipments from its ports on the Gulf to make up for a shortfall from its northern Kirkuk fields, they said. Iraq on Oct. 21 said it was increasing oil exports from the southern region by 200,000 bpd as output from Kirkuk fell when Iraqi forces took back control of the northern region's oilfields from Kurdish fighters who had been there since 2014. Until these shutdowns, the northern oil region exported about 530,000 barrels per day, of which about half came from the autonomous Kurdistan region and the rest from Kirkuk, a disputed province claimed by both the Kurds and Iraqi authorities in Baghdad. The crude from the northern regions is carried by a pipeline across Iraqi Kurdistan and then Turkey. It is exported from the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Kurdish Peshmerga forces deployed in Kirkuk in 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of an advance by Islamic State militants. The Kurdish move prevented the militants from taking control of the oilfields. (Reporting Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Jason Neely) (Adds details from source; background) LONDON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Kazakh miner Kaz Minerals said the government of Kyrgyzstan had suspended operations at its Bozymchak gold and copper mine on Thursday for three months. The London-listed company said it did not know why the operations had been suspended and the Kyrgyz government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "The group believes that Bozymchak is in compliance with its obligations and is in discussions with the relevant authorities to recommence operations as soon as possible," Kaz Minerals said in a statement. A source familiar with the situation pointed to political disputes between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Some Kyrgyz leaders have accused Kazakhstan, a bigger and wealthier neighbour in central Asia, of interfering in its Oct. 15 election after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met a Kyrgyz opposition presidential candidate. Kaz Minerals operates several copper mines in Kazakhstan as well as Bozymchak in Kyrgyzstan. Bozymchak produced 7,000 tonne of copper cathode and 38,000 ounces of gold bar in 2016. Kaz Minerals on Thursday kept its 2017 copper production guidance at 250,000-270,000 tonnes. Shares of the company fell more than 3 percent after news of the shutdown. (Reporting by Radhika Rukmangadhan and Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru, and Zandi Shabalala in London.; Editing by Mark Potter) * Rand rallies as dollar falters * Stocks drop led by rand hedge shares (Adds latest figures, analyst comments) JOHANNESBURG, Nov 2 (Reuters) - South Africa's rand extended its comeback on Thursday, ignoring turbulence in parliament to trade below the psychological 14.00 mark as a sharp slide in the greenback encouraged some short buying before focus shifts to Friday's U.S jobs data. Stocks fell led by rand hedge shares that weakened on the back of a strengthening currency. At 1500 the rand was 0.5 percent firmer at 13.9900 per dollar compared to close of 14.0600 overnight in New York. The rand touched a session best of 13.9075, driven initially by a dollar slide on reports U.S. President Donald Trump would nominate a dovish candidate to head the Federal Reserve. With no data releases on the local front, the currency's gains further supported indication the overhaul of U.S. tax code would falter due to lack of detail. "The immediate reaction to the tax proposals wasn't dollar positive. And the announcement that Powell is expected to be the next Fed chair also helped the rand," said currency dealer at TreasuryOne Andre Botha. "For the next couple of days you might see the rand holding below 14.00 especially after tonight if we see Powell confirmed," Botha said. A walk-out of a parliamentary answer session by the main opposition, saying President Jacob Zuma refused to answer how much the state had spent on legal fees to fight corruption allegations against him, had little effect on currency. Bonds were weaker, with the yield on the benchmark paper due in 2026 adding 2 basis points to 9.04 percent. On the bourse, the benchmark Top-40 index fell 0.4 percent to 52,846 points while the All-Share index dropped 0.31 percent to 59,331 points. Rand-hedged stocks, which make the bulk of their revenue outside South Africa and tend to weaken as the currency strengthens, fell on the back of gains in the rand. The biggest fallers on the Johannesburg Top 40 index included British American Tobacco , which fell 0.85 percent to 906.04 rand, Richemont dropped 1.49 percent to 127.76 rand and bourse heavy-weight Naspers weakened by 1.25 percent to 3431.46 rand. Curbing further losses, retailer The Foschini Group (TFG) rose 2.81 percent to 142.70 rand on the back on better than expected half-year earnings forecast. (Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana and Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by James Macharia) FRANKFURT, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Volkswagen could list its trucks business as a way to achieve its goal of turning the unit into a "global champion", a board member for the carmaker was quoted as saying in an interview. "A stock listing is among our options," trucks chief Andreas Renschler told Manager Magazin Online, adding that no decisions had been made on the matter. He also said that expanding in Russia or Southeast Asia were other possible strategic paths. Volkswagen in July said that an initial public offering of its trucks business had no priority at the moment, adding the group's focus was on boosting synergies among its truck brands. (Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Maria Sheahan) Earlier this week, the government revealed that a grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C., indicted a former Trump presidential campaign chairman and his former deputy and business partner for numerous felonies. Both were accused of working as foreign agents and failing to report that status to the federal government, using shell corporations to launder income and obstruction of justice by lying to the federal government. The financial crimes are alleged to have occurred from 2008 to 2014, and the obstruction charges from 2014 to 2017. At the same time it announced the above, the government revealed that a low-level former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and become a government witness. Does any of this relate to President Donald Trump? Here is the back story. At the same time that Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were guiding the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, Russian agents were manipulating American social media sites so as to arouse chaos in general and animosity toward Hillary Clinton in particular. The Department of Justice appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as independent counsel to determine whether any Americans had criminally helped the Russians. The alleged crimes of Manafort and Gates appear to have nothing to do with Trump, nor have they any facial relationship to the Russians. So why were these two indicted by a grand jury hearing evidence about alleged American assistance to Russian interference with the 2016 presidential campaign? When prosecutors confront a complex series of potentially criminal events, they often do not know at the outset of their investigation where the evidence will lead them. Sometimes they come upon a person who they believe has knowledge of facts they seek and that person declines to speak with them. Such a refusal to speak to the government is perfectly lawful in America, yet it often triggers a prosecution of the potential witness so that prosecutors may squeeze him not literally, of course for evidence to which they believe he can lead them. The ultimate target of Muellers investigation is President Trump. It is standard operating procedure when prosecutors have a high-level target to charge those below the target with something just to get them to cooperate. Though the charges against Manafort and Gates need not be related to the Russians or to Trump, they must be real. Its clear they are, as each is facing more than 20 years in prison. Mueller believes that that prospect is enough to dispatch their lawyers to make deals with him. The danger of such a deal is that Manafort and Gates may offer to tell Mueller what they think he wants to hear even if it is not truthful so that they can have their prison exposure lessened. There is more danger in the seemingly smallest of this weeks Mueller-generated events. Papadopoulos was interviewed voluntarily by the FBI on Jan. 27. He was arrested on July 27 for lying to FBI agents during that interview. In a secret federal court proceeding on Oct. 5, he pleaded guilty. In a profound miscarriage of justice, federal law permits FBI agents to lie to us but makes it a crime for us to lie to them. Nevertheless, why was the Papadopoulos guilty plea kept secret? What was he doing between his arrest and his plea and between his plea and its revelation? Judges are very reluctant to close their courtroom doors in any criminal proceeding, even if both the prosecutors and the defense counsel request it. The public has a right to know whom the government is prosecuting and what deals or punishments it may be obtaining. Yet if prosecutors can convince a judge that public knowledge of the existence of a guilty plea might harm an ongoing criminal investigation, the judge can keep the plea secret. That is apparently what happened here. It appears that Papadopoulos was gathering evidence for Mueller, probably by talking to his former Trump campaign colleagues while wired a process that would have been fruitless if his guilty plea had become public. Because Papadopoulos admitted under oath that he lied to FBI agents, the courts will treat his guilt as certain. That gives Mueller great leverage with him. It also gives Papadopoulos great incentive to help Mueller truthfully or not because he knows he is going to federal prison. He also knows that if Mueller likes what he hears, a five-year prison term could be reduced to six months. Hence, Papadopoulos could be a treasure-trove for Mueller on the production of any evidence linking the Trump campaign and the Russians and any evidence of Trumps personal knowledge or acquiescence. Papadopoulos has already produced a wild tale about meetings with a Russian professor and a female Russian government agent in London that the FBI apparently believes. Is this any way to conduct a prosecution? I have argued for years that squeezing defendants and witnesses by threats and promises to get them to spill the beans is a form of extortion or bribery not much different from the extortion and bribery that the government regularly prosecutes. You tell us what we want to hear and we will ask a judge to go easy on you. If not, you will suffer great losses. It is bad enough that the feds can legally lie to us and get away with it, but can they also legally threaten and bribe witnesses to testify against us and get away with it? Can they do this to the president? In a word, yes. My arguments have fallen on deaf ears. Squeezing witnesses and defendants is a way of life for federal prosecutors. For the president, it is the tip of a dangerous iceberg. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the worst mistakes ever made: the Communist revolution in Russia. Communist regimes went on to kill about 100 million people. Most died in famines after socialist tyrants forced people to practice inefficient collective farming. Millions of others were executed in political purges. Yet when the Russian Revolution happened, people both inside and outside Russia were excited. Crowds cheered Lenin. No longer would nobles rule; no longer would capitalists exploit workers. Now the people would prosper together. British journalist Theodore Rothstein wrote, The undivided sway of the Imperialist nightmare is at an end ... (there will be) rule of the labouring classes. But you cant have government plan every aspect of peoples lives and expect things to go well. Instead, you get bureaucratic planning commissions and secret police. That wont stop some Americans from celebrating Communisms anniversary. A day of anti-Trump protests is scheduled for Nov. 4, and Im sure some protestors will wave hammer-and-sickle flags. Some will wear Che Guevara shirts. A few commentators will call the protesters idealistic but impractical. They shouldnt. We should call them supporters of mass murder. Lenin ordered the hanging of 100 property owners at the very start of the Revolution, saying people needed to see the deaths of landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers. Mass murder and starvation rapidly increased the death toll after that. It wasnt exactly what philosopher Karl Marx had in mind but it shouldnt have surprised anyone. Marxs writing is filled with comparisons of capitalists to werewolves and other predators who must be destroyed. Marx admitted that capitalism is productive but said that capital obtains this ability only by constantly sucking in living labor as its soul, vampire-like. Even as the Russian regime killed millions, some journalists and intellectuals covered up the crimes. Stalin kept most media out, so few Americans knew that millions were starving, but New York Times writer Walter Duranty saw it first-hand. Yet he covered up Stalins crimes, says Tom Palmer of the Atlas Network, a group that promotes free market ideas around the world. Because Duranty wanted to support the cause, he wrote that report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. Duranty saw the truckloads of bodies, says Palmer, yet he wrote on the front page of The New York Times how wonderful everything was. He even got a Pulitzer Prize for it. In some ways, times havent changed that much. This year, the Times ran a series of essays commemorating the anniversary of Russian Communism, including one piece arguing that sex was better in the Soviet Union because the Revolution destroyed macho capitalist culture. At least The New York Times eventually admitted that Durantys work was some of the worst reporting in this newspaper, but the Pulitzer committee never withdrew its prize. Communism kills wherever its practiced. But people still people believe. Making a video on Communisms hundredth anniversary, I interviewed Lily Tang Williams, who grew up under the regime in China. Mao was like a god to me, she recounts. In the morning, we were encouraged to chant and to confess to dear Chairman Mao. Under Mao, Williams nearly starved. I was so hungry. My uncle taught me how to trap rats. But the problem is, everybody is trying to catch rats. Rats run out, too. Still, she says she was so brainwashed by Communist propaganda that she cried my eyes out when Mao died. But then, when I was college student, I met a U.S. exchange student ... He showed me a pocket Constitution and Declaration of Independence. A light bulb came on! For the first time, she realized, I have rights ... natural rights that cannot be taken away. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She escaped to the United States. Now she says her mission in life is to teach Americans the importance of liberty. I think her message is wiser than that of Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin. Big, powerful government, its very scary, she warns. It will keep growing like cancer, will never stop. If you empower government, not the individuals, were going to lose this free country! Jigsaw A mysterious mad man rounds up a group of victims to play sadistic games of life and death. Police soon find evidence that links the crimes to Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), the infamous killer who died 10 years earlier. Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig. Heart Blackened This movie is a remake of the Chinese film "Silent Witness." The fiancee of a financial magnate is murdered and the daughter of the financial magnate, Choi Hee-jeong (Park Shin-hye), becomes the prime suspect. She hires a lawyer (Choi Min-shik) to clear her name. Directed by Jung Ji-woo. Let Me Eat Your Pancreas A high school student (Takumi Kitamura) finds a diary that reveals his classmate Sakura Yamauchi (Minami Hamabe) is suffering from a pancreatic disease. 12 years later, he becomes a high school teacher at the same school he graduated from and remembers several months he spent with Sakura. Directed by Sho Tsukikawa. Thor: Ragnarok Imprisoned on the other side of the universe, the mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth) finds himself in a deadly gladiatorial contest that pits him against the Hulk. Thor's quest for survival leads him in a race against time to prevent the all-powerful Hela (Cate Blanchett) from destroying his home and the Asgardian civilization. Directed by Taika Waititi. Geostorm An intricate network of satellites called Dutch Boy was created by Jake Lawson (Gerard Butler) to control global climate and keep everyone safe. However, the system built to protect Earth is attacking it, and it becomes a race against the clock to uncover the real threat before a worldwide geostorm wipes out everything and everyone. Directed by Dean Devlin. By Yoon Ja-young The government will set up a 10 trillion won ($8.9 billion) innovation venture fund and raise 20 trillion won via state and private lenders to nurture startups over the next three months. To boost venture capitalists' investment in tech startups, the government will also revive a tax exemption for stock option gains for the first time in 11 years. These are part of a package of programs to build an environment where venture capitalists nurture innovative startups and share profits. "We will create a second startup boom by establishing a new ecosystem to nurture innovative startups," Strategy and Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon said. "The economy grew 1.4 percent in the third quarter, and both external and internal risks are easing. However, the improvement is not perceived by ordinary people. It is thus important to speed up innovative growth." The Moon Jae-in administration has been emphasizing an "innovation growth strategy" that seeks economic growth through innovative startups. There has been concern that Korea is losing dynamism in startups, unlike the early 2000s when there was a venture boom. While the number of startups is not small, few are based on entrepreneurship. The ratio of startup founders holding a master's degree or Ph.D. is just 14 percent, which contrasts with 40 percent in the United States. The ratio of startup investment to gross domestic product (GDP) was 0.13 percent in 2015, which is far lower than the 0.33 percent in the U.S. and 0.24 percent in China. The administration aims to motivate talented people to launch startups. People with creative ideas now hesitate since a business failure causes irreversible damage to the founder. They are rarely given a second chance, while they cannot quickly convert their achievements into cash by listing on the bourse or through mergers and acquisitions. To encourage workers of conglomerates and other companies to launch their own innovative businesses, the government will support firms if they invest in these intra-company startups. There will also be "startup leave," which guarantees them the chance to return to work at the firms if their startups fail. Universities and research institutes will also get incentives according to their support for startups. "The experience of failure should also be a valuable asset for society," Kim said. "An ecosystem should be set up so that those who fail should rise again." Technology financing is another key for an innovative economy. A comprehensive credit evaluation method will be applied, assessing both the credit and technology of the innovative business applying for a loan. The Centers for Creative Economy and Innovation around the country, which were established during the former Park Geun-hye administration, will support regional startups. On top of the 10 trillion won innovation venture fund for startups, policy financing from the Korea Technology Finance Corporation and private funds will amount to 20 trillion won for startups, to support their M&As, business restructuring, adoption of new technologies and facility investment. The government also plans tax exemptions for "angel" investors and gains from stock options. The tech-loaded junior KOSDAQ bourse will be revamped to induce more investment by funds. The government expects the promotion of the KOSDAQ will give startup founders a chance to convert their achievements into cash quickly. Community building is very different from EU' By Jeong Min-seung Professor Hidetoshi Nishimura, president of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) MANILA, the Philippines The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is trying to step up cooperation with Korea, particularly in the fields of technology and innovation, the chief of an ASEAN think tank said. "ASEAN is looking for cooperation, and Korea is a very important partner of ASEAN," said professor Hidetoshi Nishimura, president of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). "Korea has advanced technology in innovative areas. ASEAN is very fond of cooperation with Korea," he added. Nishimura noted that ASEAN has succeeded in eliminating tariffs nearly to zero to promote the free flow of goods among its member countries. "Now, the target for ASEAN 2025 is non-tariff measures (NTM) that is a dramatic increase in ASEAN," he said. He pointed out that ASEAN dialogue partners such as Japan, China, New Zealand, South Korea and India have far more NTM. He pointed out that more NTM doesn't mean more protection, but trade barriers to the economy. "Because society is sophisticated, we need regulations for safety. To normalize social matters, the government must strictly introduce new regulations so they are inevitably increasing along with the development of society," he said. "But the important thing is don't burden trade partners with unnecessary costs when introducing new regulations. So the number of regulations does not mean an increase in costs." He said that in 2003 ASEAN declared it would complete the formation of the ASEAN community by 2020. "But China produced a remarkable result in 2006 as its obligation to the WTO, so in 2006 ASEAN accelerated the goal (of the ASEAN community) from 2020 to 2015," he said. ASEAN established the ASEAN Economic Community, a common market, in 2016 to promote economic integration. "That's why ERIA was set up to support that kind of acceleration of integration in 2008. A lot of research and recommendations and adjustments were made." He said 20 researchers are working in the ERIA and dong 52 projects each year. ERIA is an international research institute based in Jakarta. Since its founding in 2008, ERIA has been supporting the regional economic integration process among ASEAN member countries. It serves as a leading economic think tank in the region and the Sherpa institution for the East Asia and ASEAN summit process. Its research and policy recommendations have influenced the policymaking process in the region. Nishimura lauded China for making a great effort in domestic reforms. "After that, there are some developing efforts and now the Chinese economy plays a very important part in the world economy," he said. "We are cooperating with Chinese specialists in policymaking, their recommendations and support with data to ERIA research in the economy," he added. He said his institute has shared ASEAN integration for the last 10 years with this year marking the 50th anniversary of ASEAN. He explained that ASEAN integration is quite different from the EU type from the aspect of community building. He said ASEAN has developed under four stages during the last five decades. According to him, ASEAN started with five countries Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in 1967 based on the mantra of "Don't kill each other." "At that time it was far-fetched to think about community building, but it was more like Don't hurt each other, don't go to war among them' that was the first stage of ASEAN community building," he said. The second stage began following the end of the Cold War in 1989. And the third stage was launched to cope with the Asian financial crisis in 1997. "In order to cope with that crisis, ASEAN decided to begin community building," Nishimura said. "At that time the Cold War had ended. The regime is different, socialist countries, Islam to Buddhist to Hindu, a lot of cultures, religions, languages ... and the discrepancy of development," he said. "Nobody can imagine a community with that much of diversification. That was an unprecedented challenge. So the ASEAN community has been created in a different way than the monotype EU." Under the fourth stage, ASEAN pushed for integration for community building with diversification. "In order to do that, ASEAN has done it in an ASEAN way with ASEAN consensus. Everybody agreed and everybody did it through much discussion. This has drawn criticism for being too slow," he said. Jeong Min-seung is a correspondent of the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times. He can be reached at msj@hankookilbo.com. Antitrust regulator doubts conglomerates' willingness to reform By Park Hyong-ki FTC Chairman Kim Sang-jo Fair Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Kim Sang-jo has once again sent a warning to the country's top five chaebol either they change on their own or the antitrust regulator will do it for them. This is FTC chief's second caution following his first meeting with executives from Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK Telecom, LG Corp. and Lotte last June. Kim said in their second meeting Thursday that the government will not just wait and be patient to see if they are pursuing self-reform on their own timetable. From next month, the FTC will begin conducting a thorough inspection of all nonprofit foundations affiliated with the top conglomerates, which the regulator believes have been used as vehicles for illicit deals for solidifying control of group units. The FTC will look into the foundations to see whether they are running legitimately as they are allegedly misused by chaebol owners to keep capital and further build up their wealth, rather than for charity work. "I think we can start the inspection of nonprofit foundations in December. We will be able to wrap it up in the first half of next year," Kim said. It has set up a division primarily targeting big conglomerates. This will carry out the investigation, along with other probes, including whether conglomerates are filing their disclosures properly. "The foundations receive tax benefits when they meet certain criteria," Kim said. "But we will see if they were really established for charity." Furthermore, he urged chaebol to be more ethically responsible, and improve their governance in line with the Stewardship Code, a set of principles for institutional investors. Among the participants in the meeting were Lee Sang-hoon, president of Samsung Electronics; Chung Jin-hang, president of Hyundai Motor; Park Jung-ho, president of SK Telecom; Ha Hyun-hwoi, president of LG Corp.; Hwang Kag-gyu, president of Lotte Corp.; and Lee Dong-geun, vice chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI). Kim said the government has sufficiently explained its policy and its commitment to social reform to chaebol, and the people are still unsatisfied with the way and how slowly conglomerates are moving to change on their own. "The people still have doubts about chaebol's commitment to self-reform," Kim said. He said even though the FTC will not "wield a sword" against them, it will not just continue to take a wait-and-see attitude toward reforming chaebol. This means they should speed up efforts to eliminate unfair and illicit business practices, because the people are still questioning their commitment to change. The FTC chief also said the regulator will look into the profit structure of the conglomerates to see whether there are illicit transactions among them. Kim also called for business leaders to share the profits with their subcontractors in a fairer and more transparent way. He added that the top conglomerates have the ability to carry thorough reforms on their own. "They have stronger capability and willingness to change than any other organizations in our society. They can change if they keep up with consistency," Kim said. Kim noted the conglomerates have made moves over the past months to reform themselves. "It's a good start. Still, they have a long way to go." KCCI Vice Chairman Lee agreed in the meeting that conglomerates have been moving "unsatisfactorily in the eyes of the public." Still, the top conglomerates asked for more time. By Park Hyong-ki Woori Bank CEO Lee Kwang-goo Woori Bank CEO Lee Kwang-goo stepped down and apologized for causing controversy over the bank's alleged illicit hiring of the offspring of government officials as its employees. He said in an email to the bank's employees on Thursday that he takes "responsibility as the top manager of the bank." He asked the board to immediately carry out the process to select his successor. Lee also called on his employees to work with the next chief executive to continue pursuing its plan to build a holding company system in the near future. "With 118 years of history, I hope Woori Bank will continue to grow by contributing to the economy and social progress," Lee wrote in the email to his employees. A Woori Bank official said Lee will faithfully respond and answer to any questions by the prosecutors in their investigations into the illicit hiring, which is suspected to have taken place in 2016. Woori Bank and Lee have been under spotlight during a National Assembly audit of the country's financial regulators. It has been alleged that Woori Bank hired more than a dozen people who were either children or relatives of officials from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the National Intelligence Service (NIS). The former's the country's financial regulator while the latter is its spy agency. Also, lawmakers claimed the bank hired children of its main customers, questioning the bank's intention to receive favors and benefits from the former government. In particular, Rep. Sim Sang-jung of the minor opposition Justice Party raised the issue in the parliamentary sessions. This led the finance ministry to conduct an all-out and nationwide probe into state-run enterprises' hiring records and methods, vowing to root out this malpractice once and for all. Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon recently said it will no longer tolerate with this, and will expand its probe further. Woori Bank CEO Lee took charge of the Seoul-based lender in 2014 and renewed his contract earlier this year. A former sales executive, he was credited with drawing investors to the bank as part of its privatization. Seven strategic and financial investors acquired a 29.7 percent stake in Woori Bank in November last year. The government has tried to privatize Woori Bank since 2001 as it sought to retrieve its investment in the bank. It injected about 12.8 trillion won into Woori Bank in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Such attempts fell apart but the government managed to sold the 29.7-percent stake through block deals. Lee was previously a vice president of the bank's client sales unit before he became the CEO. His performances have been quite good as the bank managed to raise profits and sales under his leadership. Lee was also behind securing an account to manage the National Pension Service's (NPS) funds as the main bank. But the hiring scandal cost his job and all eyes are on other financial leaders, who are also suspected of being responsible for other types of problematic hiring. More are expected to resign in the not-too-distant future. Korea's Minister of Government Legation Kim Oe-sook delivers an opening speech during the fifth Asian Legislative Experts Symposium at the Millennium Hilton in Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of the Ministry of Government Legislation Legislation chief stresses importance of human rights protection By Kim Jae-kyoung Korea's Minister of Government Legislation Kim Oe-sook has called for Asian nations to overhaul legislation systems to better respond to disasters and catastrophes. She said Asian nations need to find ways to enhance cooperation against disasters through legislation to protect the lives and human rights of the people. Her remarks came at the fifth Asian Legislative Experts Symposium hosted by the legislation ministry at the Millennium Hilton in Seoul, Wednesday. The symposium was designed to look into the status of legislation of Asian countries and their legislative strategies for effective responses to disasters. "Prevention of and swift response to disasters are not just needed for facility safety, but for the protection of the lives and human rights of the people," Kim said in her opening speech. "Collective cooperation and international responses are essential, because we are living in an era where no country and region is free from today's disasters, such as abnormal weather caused by climate change, earthquakes and nuclear accidents." She pointed to the fact that disasters are a result not only of natural processes on the Earth that are beyond the control of human beings, but also of reckless development and negligence. In particular, she said disasters pose a threat to the lives of the people and inflict especially serious damage to vulnerable populations, such as women and children. "In this regard, I hope this symposium serves as a venue to meet the needs of the times by comparing and analyzing laws for disasters and sharing good practices with each other," she said. Umar Hadi, Indonesian Ambassador to South Korea, concurred. In his congratulatory message, Hadi said Indonesia is also working hard to find ways to protect people from disasters and accidents. He stressed the importance of international cooperation through legislation because disasters and accidents do not care about national borders. During the symposium, over 170 law experts from public, private, and academic sectors in 37 countries, including Indonesia, China and Thailand, looked into the current statuses of applicable laws in Asian countries. Also, they had an in-depth discussion on how to organize laws that will especially assure building safety at times of disasters and accidents. "They agreed the laws must be organized to respond promptly to frequent disasters and accidents," the ministry said in a statement. The ministry said it plans to continue to promote the symposium by broadening the theme and attracting more experts from Asian countries, so it will cover the common interests of Asian countries. Former North Korean deputy ambassador to Britain Thae Yong-Ho testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on November 1, 2017. / AFP A high-ranking North Korean defector urged the United States on Wednesday to meet with Kim Jong-un before considering military action against his regime. Thae Yong-ho, a former deputy chief at the North Korean Embassy in London, addressed the current crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program as he testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill. "Some people do not believe in soft power but only in military options," the 55-year-old said on his first visit to the U.S. "But it is necessary to reconsider whether we have tried all non-military options before we decide that military action against North Korea is all that is left." He went on to make a proposal that Washington has been reluctant to embrace. "Before any military action is taken, I think it is necessary to meet Kim Jong-un at least once to understand his thinking and to try to convince him that he would be destroyed if he continues his current direction." The North Korean leader does not have a full grasp of the strength and might of U.S. military power, Thae said, leading him to believe that if he can get Washington to accept Pyongyang's possession of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S., all sanctions against his regime will be lifted. The former diplomat is in Washington at a time of heightened tension over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile testing. U.S. President Donald Trump is set to travel to Asia on Friday in part to rally further support behind his administration's sanctions and pressure campaign. But Thae appeared to question the U.S. policy. "We can educate the North Korean population to stand up by disseminating outside information," he said. "However, is the United States really doing enough in this regard? The U.S. is spending billions of dollars to cope with the military threat. Yet how much does the U.S. spend each year on information activities involving North Korea in a year? Unfortunately, it may be a tiny fraction." Thae defected to South Korea last year with his wife and two sons. He said he could not let his children live as "modern-day slaves" in North Korea after having grown accustomed to online gaming, Facebook messaging, email and Internet news in Britain. Human rights abuses in North Korea are "tantamount to the crimes committed by the Nazis," Thae claimed, and the world must come together to stop them as it did to abolish the South African apartheid. Thae said the sanctions campaign should also continue until North Korea returns to negotiations for its denuclearization. (Yonhap) By Kim Rahn Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a reply to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the latter's earlier congratulatory letter on his re-election as the leader of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), North Korean state media reported Thursday. But Xi has not yet sent one to President Moon Jae-in who also sent him a congratulatory letter, according to Cheong Wa Dae. The North's Korean Central News Agency said that Xi sent the reply to Kim the previous day following the latter's congratulations on his re-election at the party's 19th congress late last month. "I, as a representative of the central committee of the CPC, express sincere gratitude to the central committee of the Workers' Party of Korea and the committee leader for sending a congratulatory message on my re-election as the party chief," Xi's message read, according to the agency. "I wish that under the new situation, the Chinese side will make a joint effort with North Korea for sustainable, sound and stable development of the relations between the two countries, so the relations can contribute to bringing more happiness to people of the two nations and protecting peace, stability and common prosperity in the region," it said. Xi also hoped North Korea would make new achievements continuously under Kim's leadership. Kim sent the congratulatory message to Xi, Oct. 25, saying he was sure the relations between the two countries and those between the two communist parties of the nations would develop to benefit the people of their nations. The relationship between the longtime allies has been rather chilly in recent years, as the international community has pressured China to play a more active role in addressing North Korea's nuclear and missile threats while the North continues its provocations. So the exchange of messages may signal a thawing of the relationship, experts say. President Moon has not yet received a letter from Xi. "Xi was re-elected as the CPC's leader. Regarding North Korea and China, the messages were exchanged between leaders of each country's communist party, while in the case of South Korea and China, they are between the leaders of their respective government and party. The North and South's cases are different," a Cheong Wa Dae official said. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks with President Moon Jae-in at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday. They discussed cooperation in resolving North Korea's nuclear and missile threats. / Yonhap By Kim Rahn President Moon Jae-in and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed their cooperation in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, Cheong Wa Dae said Thursday. The meeting took place at the presidential office as part of Stoltenberg's trip to Asia. Moon expressed gratitude for NATO issuing statements to condemn North Korea's provocations and continuously supporting South Korea's stance on the issue. The former Norwegian prime minister, who visited the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) earlier in the day, said he was impressed at the soldiers there serving for peace in Korea and the world. Moon agreed, noting that the DMZ is only 45 kilometers away from the South Korean capital. "(Considering the short distance from the North), We could face disaster even by conventional weapons attacks, not by nuclear or long-range missiles," he said. "I believe you understand that it is desperate to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue peacefully without military clashes." The President also appreciated the NATO head's comments against risks of military clashes and his stressing the need to resolve the issue diplomatically. Stoltenberg said the North's nuclear and missiles are threats to NATO members as well, so international cooperation is required. "I think not only diplomatic and political pressure but also economic sanctions should be imposed on the North. The purpose of pressure is to resolve the issue peacefully and politically. We need to make efforts to address the issue through dialogue and pressure," he was quoted as saying by presidential spokesman Park Soo-hyun. The President also highly evaluated NATO's capability in keeping peace and security in Europe through its strong deterrence. "Many NATO members took part in the Korean War, fighting for the South and providing medical supplies and other aid, so South Korea feels friendly toward NATO. I hope the cooperative relationship between NATO and South Korea, as global partners, will be enhanced, especially in the military sector," he said. At the meeting, Stoltenberg was accompanied by Alejandro Alvargonzales, assistant secretary general for political affairs and security policy, and Gjermund Eide, a military aide to the NATO chief. Earlier during his visit to Japan, Stoltenberg said Monday that North Korea's missile ranges reach not only the western parts of the U.S. but almost all parts of Europe. He said the North's nuclear and missile programs were a global threat, calling for the international community to strengthen sanctions and pressure against the country to bring it to negotiations. Pyongyang denounced the remarks via a statement reported by the Korean Central News Agency Wednesday. "It is a sophistry to denounce our nuclear weapons as a threat to Europe and the world," the statement said. "The core of the Korean Peninsula issue is confrontation between the U.S., which is hostile to us and makes nuclear threats, and our republic, which is standing against it to protect the country, people's dignity and independence." Ahn Bong-geun, left, and Lee Jae-man enter the courtroom to review the validity of the warrants at the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap By Jung Min-ho The prosecution has requested arrest warrants for two former presidential secretaries over allegations they received bribes from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) while Park Geun-hye was president. Ahn Bong-geun and Lee Jae-man known as Park's closest aides attended a court hearing Thursday to review the validity of the warrants. The decision is expected to come out early Friday morning. The prosecution is detaining them for allegedly taking 1 billion won ($900,000) from the spy agency every year between 2013 and 2016 while working at Cheong Wa Dae. They admitted to receiving money but refused to reveal the details. The prosecution is expected to expand the investigation to Park, who already faces many charges including bribery and abuse of power. Lee told the prosecution he accepted money from the NIS whenever Park ordered him to do so. The presidential office is suspected of giving some of the money to a pollster run by a former Cheong Wa Dae official. The firm conducted surveys ahead of the 2016 general election. Jeong Ho-seong, the former presidential secretary who was named as part of a powerful trio along with Ahn and Lee while Park was in office, admitted he was also a beneficiary of the NIS' black budget. But the three are suspected of spending some of the 4 billion won also for personal use. The prosecution is looking into allegations Ahn and Lee used the bribes to buy an apartment in the affluent southern district of Seoul. Three other former presidential aides Cho Yoon-sun, Hyun Ki-hwan and Shin Dong-chul are also accused of receiving NIS money. While Cho and Hyun allegedly each pocketed 5 million won a month for one year, Shin allegedly received 3 million won every month for about two years. All this was revealed after Lee Hun-soo, a former senior NIS official, confessed to giving money to the suspects while being questioned over his role in the NIS' political interference under the two previous right-wing governments. The prosecution is soon expected to summon three former NIS chiefs Nam Jae-joon, Lee Byeong-ho and Lee Byung-kee for questioning. The NIS is also suspected of conspiring with executives of public broadcaster MBC to remove journalists and celebrities who were critical of then-President Lee Myung-bak. Also, the agency is accused of running a secret smear campaign against Moon Jae-in to help Park Geun-hye in the 2012 presidential election. By Lee Kyung-min The National Human Rights Council (NHRC) will investigate Pusan National University Hospital (PNUP), where a professor assaulted 11 medical residents over the past two years, it said Thursday. A subcommittee under the human rights watchdog said it will question the suspect and other witnesses. "We decided to conduct an investigation, as the alleged victims are believed to be in a position where they cannot disobey their mentor," it said. "We also considered the suspected abuser attempted to downplay the gravity of the case and told the victims not to raise the issue further." The decision was prompted by allegations the professor specializing in surgery asked victims and their parents to file a petition not to punish him. According to police in Busan, 10 out of 11 victims filed a petition, Tuesday, asking for leniency for the professor, a notable change in stance given all their earlier statements were consistent in demanding harsh punishment for him. The victims first reported the assaults to the school in August and demanded he be dismissed immediately. But the school only suspended the professor for three months. The abuse was made public last week by Rep. Yoo Eun-hye of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea when she disclosed pictures of the alleged victims whose bodies were severely bruised. The professor, according to Yoo, hit the residents out in public and habitually punched them in the head. In a photo obtained by Yoo, the victims' thighs, shins and buttocks were severely bruised. Some had their eardrums ruptured by the professor's fists. Police requested an arrest warrant for the professor. Police are set to restrict street rallies against the United States or President Donald Trump in areas near the presidential office in central Seoul during his visit to South Korea next week. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has given notices rejecting most of the 50 applications for rallies filed by 220 progressive civic groups under the name of Collective Action for "No Trump," according to police officials Thursday. It will only allow two rallies to be held near Gyeongbok Palace, situated between Cheong Wa Dae and Gwanghwamun Square, to guarantee freedom of assembly. Trump is scheduled to arrive in Seoul for a two-day visit next Tuesday (local time). He is expected to meet with President Moon Jae-in for talks on a wide range of issues concerning the two allies, including North Korea's nuclear provocations. It is the first time the police have restricted protests since the liberal Moon took office in May. The president has stood for freedom of assembly since he was a presidential candidate. His government removed the policy of heavily guarding the Cheong Wa Dae surroundings -- one of the choices preferred by his predecessor, ousted leader Park Geun-hye, for security reasons -- and has opened the area to the public 24 hours a day since June. An alley behind the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, central Seoul, swarms with Halloween partygoers on Saturday. / Korea Times photo by Kim Bo-eun Itaewon, Seoul's expat enclave also known for its vibrant nightlife, was packed with Halloween partygoers as well as police over the weekend through Tuesday, which was Halloween. According to Yonhap News Agency, Yongsan Police Station dispatched officers to places in Itaewon 372 times from Friday to Tuesday _ around 100 cases more than the same period a week earlier. From Friday 6 p.m. to Saturday 6 a.m., police were sent out 84 times. Many of the cases were assaults that occurred due to trivial reasons exacerbated by alcohol, but there were also cases of theft and sexual assault at clubs. On Sunday morning at 1:40 a.m., police received a report that coats and belongings which had been left in a locker at a club went missing. The victims had dropped the locker key at the club, which three people including a man in his 20s had picked up, taking items and cash worth 5 million won ($4,490). The police secured surveillance camera footage of the man and apprehended him in the area at around 6:30 a.m. The victims were able to get their belongings and cash back. On Sunday at 4:50 a.m., a man was booked on charges of assaulting a woman at a club. The male college student had made an advance on the woman in her 20s, but after she rejected him, he told her she "needed to lose weight" and assaulted her. Police mobilized twice as many patrolmen in Itaewon as usual for weekends. Yongsan Police Station was quoted as saying some of the patrolmen were mistaken as partygoers wearing police uniforms as their Halloween costume. Itaewon's main alley behind Hamilton Hotel swarmed with masses of costumed partiers including U.S. President Donald Trump, Disney princesses and Jesus, who were busy taking photos with passersby. People lined up to get their faces painted with blood and gore at booths along the alley, and formed long lines to get into clubs. Bars along the alley were packed to the extent it was hard to find empty tables. Crowds lined the streets to catch cabs in the early hours of the mornings, with many walking long distances to other areas for a better chance of getting a ride home. Celebration of the Western-originated festival of Halloween has grown among young people here, due to the influence of American pop culture and the growing expat community. The annual holiday of Halloween is celebrated on Oct. 31. It is believed to have originated from ancient Celtic or pagan traditions, and is held on the eve of the Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. Suh Hoon, left, director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), and Kim Sang-gyun, the second deputy director, attend a National Assembly audit at the NIS headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap By Jun Ji-hye Lawmakers have called for a thorough investigation into allegations the spy agency regularly paid several close aides of the ousted President Park Geun-hye while she was in office. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and other liberal parties claim that the payments were a form of bribery. The prosecution is now zeroing in on Park after securing testimony from one of the aides that he received the money from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) at her direction. The allegations were a hot topic during a National Assembly audit into the spy agency, Thursday. On Tuesday, prosecutors detained two former presidential secretaries for Park Ahn Bong-geun and Lee Jae-man. The two are suspected of having received 1 billion won ($900,000) each annually, totaling 4 billion won, from the NIS between 2013 and 2016. During questioning, Lee reportedly told prosecutors that he was told by Park to receive the money from the spy agency. This indicates that the investigation could be expanded to the former president who was impeached earlier this year and is currently standing trial for a massive corruption scandal. Separately, Ahn is suspected of personally receiving more than 10 million won from the NIS. Both Ahn and Lee reportedly claimed they received the money for use in their management of state affairs, which is not illegal. Prosecutors also believe Cho Yoon-sun and Hyun Ki-hwan, former senior presidential secretaries for political affairs for Park, received 5 million won every month when they held the posts at Cheong Wa Dae. Cho was in the position from June 2014 to May 2015, and Hyun, Cho's successor, was in office for about a year. "The prosecution's investigation should unearth the truth behind illegal activities including the government using taxpayers' money for itself," DPK Chairwoman Choo Mi-ae said during a party meeting Wednesday. "Those who used the national budget without rules and principles should be firmly punished." The money given to Park's aides was from the NIS budget allotted for so-called "costs for special activities." Such special funding is given to government agencies for use in activities requiring confidentiality, such as intelligence operations and investigations. It is given in cash, and those who use the money are not required to submit receipts in their expense reports. Critics have pointed out it is hard to know whether officials use such money in accordance with its initial purpose, calling it a "black budget." Among other government agencies, the NIS spends most of this money. This year, 893.8 billion won was allocated to 20 government offices as costs for special activities. Of this, the NIS secured 493 billion won. Justice Party Chairwoman Lee Jeong-mi said special funding given to the NIS should be reduced to root out the spy agency's political intervention. "The punishment of some people related to the allegations should not be the end of the issue. The national budget allocated to the NIS should be repaid," she said during a party meeting Thursday. As part of their investigation, prosecutors have searched the residences of three former NIS chiefs, including Nam Jae-joon, as well as Ahn, Lee and Cho to obtain evidence related to the allegations. Prosecutors also plan to question the three former NIS chiefs and Cho soon. Their investigation is focused on why the former aides to Park received regular payments from the spy agency and who was the final recipient of such money. Opposition parties demand withdrawl of Hong Jong-haak By Yi Whan-woo Hong Jong-haak Hong Jong-haak, President Moon Jae-in's choice for SMEs and startups minister, is facing mounting pressure to withdraw from the nomination over some of his family members' dubious financial transactions. His parliamentary confirmation hearing is set for Nov. 10. But opposition parties are demanding his withdrawal immediately, claiming that Hong, a former lawmaker and a professor of economics, is unqualified to be part of President Moon Jae-in's economic reform drive. The controversy is further stirring up a call for the overhaul of Cheong Wa Dae's personnel screening system, as Hong's nomination came after the previous choice, Park Seong-jin, withdrew in September after failing to win parliamentary endorsement. The delay in Hong's appointment also hampers the Moon administration's efforts to fill all 18 cabinet posts with his own nominees after Moon took office in May. The dispute about Hong centers on his 13-year-old daughter and wife each receiving a 25 percent stake in a building belonging to his mother-in-law as a gift in 2015. The move was seen as a bid to save money and pay less in gift taxes, which would increase if Hong's wife singlehandedly received a 50 percent stake in the building estimated to be worth 3.4 billion won ($3 million) The value of wealth held by Hong and his family increased to 5.58 billion won this year, up from 2.17 billion won in 2012. Such wealth management is illegal. But the opposition parties accused Hong of being hypocritical, pointing out that he was a vocal critic of wealth being passed on from one generation to the next when he served in the 19th National Assembly from 2012 to 2016. He had also claimed that inheritance and gift taxes should be raised when the amount involved exceeds 3 billion won. As Moon's campaign strategist for the May 9 presidential election, Hong called for larger inheritance and gift taxes as well when assets are passed down skipping a generation in a family, especially among conglomerates. Against this backdrop, Hong's eligibility as the minister was called into question again as his daughter was found to be receiving a loan of about 220 million won from her mother to cover the gift taxes. The loan is said to have been extended to Hong's daughter with interest. Despite Hong's explanation, the opposition parties raised suspicions whether the teenager had been paying the interest on her own. "I'd say Hong's words and behavior are the height of hypocrisy," said People's Party floor leader Rep. Kim Dong-cheol. "Not only does he fail to defend the spirit of noblesse oblige but he is also behaving shamelessly as a two-faced person." Rep. Choi Yeon-hye of the largest opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) asked Hong to step down immediately, saying "He reckons his family's transfer of wealth is righteous while accusing other families as being evil." The third largest opposition Bareun Party floor leader Rep. Joo Ho-young said Hong is "Moon's headache," adding "The pain will only grow as time goes on." The opposition lawmaker raised questions as well over Hong's eligibility to lead the newly-established SMEs and startups ministry because of comments he wrote in a book. In his book published in 1998, he cited a need for entrepreneurs to enter top universities, whereas many SMEs and startup owners did not attend those schools. "I wonder how many business people at SMEs and startups went to prestigious schools. It's evident that Hong has so many ethical shortcomings in addition to the ones related to the gift tax," said Rep. Jeong Woon-chun of the Bareun Party. The smallest opposition Justice Party floor leader Roe Hae-chan said his party remains prudent about what do to with Hong's future although it has doubts about his ethical standards. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea defended Hong, argued that "The opposition parties have crossed the line, making excessive verbal attacks and distorting the truth about Hong." More than half of Korean teenagers think their parents' ability not their own determines their future, according to a recent survey by the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education. That's sad but probably true. One needs to look nowhere else but Kangwon Land, a state-run casino operator, and other public corporations which came under fire for hiring new workers upon the lobbying of influential politicians, businesspeople and ranking government officials, in these times of high youth unemployment. Almost all sectors of South Korean society, including family-run conglomerates, media outlets such as the three major conservative newspapers the Chosun Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo universities and even churches have seen their management control passed down from founders to their grandchildren or great-grandchildren. In short, South Korea has become a society where rags-to-riches stories are increasingly hard to find. Among 400 billionaires in the world, 71 percent of Americans and 97 percent of Chinese built up fortunes out of nothing. All of five Japanese tycoons on the world's top 400 wealthy people's list created their business empires. In Korea, only one among the richest 10 shareholders of listed firms set up their own enterprise Lim Sung-ki, chairman of Hanmi Pharmaceutical Group. Inherited wealth does society more harm than good by personalizing benefits and socializing costs. Moreover, this new noble class of the 21st century hand over not just economic capital but also social capital personal connections, school ties and networking and cultural capital lifestyle and education to perpetuate their class and status, to the frustration of young people eager to develop their future. Here is another shocking news: 85 of its 100 largest stock owners are descendants of business magnates. This stresses the need, yet again, not just to eliminate irregular recruitment but also prevent unusual gifts and inheritance, and crack down on unfair trading practices by big businesses. By Donald Kirk Donald Trump faces obstacles when he gets to Seoul next week that have nothing to do with unruly mobs trying to shout loudly enough over mega-loudspeakers for him to hear them across rows of policemen in body armor. No doubt Trump's handlers will come up with the proper verbiage to reaffirm the historic bond between the two countries. Words and phrases like "ironclad" and "no daylight between us" come to mind. That's the American equivalent to the weird Chinese "as close as the lips to the teeth." Comforting statements gushing from the Trumpster and his entourage might remind us of another line, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." The first problem that needs covering up with bland cliches is simple: the U.S. and Republic of Korea leaders may not think alike on North Korea. Yes, President Moon Jae-in has "disappointed" pro-Northers by supporting rather strong UN sanctions against North Korea. He has also gone along with the U.S.-ROK military exercises and intimidation flights of U.S. and South Korean warplanes across South Korea after North Korean nuclear and missile tests. Moon draws the line, though, at talk by Trump, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others about holding out "the military option" against the North. You won't hear Moon yakking about any "option" that might precipitate an artillery barrage across the Demilitarized Zone, much less a second Korean War. He's absolutely against a "preemptive strike" to wipe out North Korea's launch sites before Kim turns his wild threats into action. Trump isn't going to say, "Look, Mr. President, we've gotta do what we gotta do." He's going to assure Moon, on the best advice from Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, that the U.S. is not thinking of doing anything without the full approval of the RoK. There will, however, be some catches to the happy talk. Moon's security adviser on unification is all for "freeze-for-freeze" the idea the U.S. and South Korea should halt the war games while the North suspends its nuclear and missile tests. Then, while both sides calm down, they should sit down and talk. The Americans see that stream-of-consciousness as a hoax. While North Korea would go on doing whatever it wished, short of testing, the Americans and South Koreans would have their hands tied. Talks, if Kim Jong-un agreed to them at all, would barely go beyond the handshake stage since the North Koreans have said repeatedly, "If there's one topic we're not going to discuss, it's our nuclear weapons program." Amazingly, after hearing that mantra so often, fantasists still don't want to believe it. Let's talk, they say, see what's bothering Kim so much and come to comfortable terms. Moon himself is not such a fantasist. He knows perfectly well there's no point in talks with the North even if he's getting differing shades of advice from members of his staff. There are, however, other pressing issues that are quite sensitive and may not be easily resolved. What about OPCON, the acronym, in capital letters, for "Operational Control" of troops in time of combat? Right now the commander of U.S. Forces Korea is also the commander of the Combined Forces Command and the United Nations Command, a legacy from the Korean War that includes troops from 16 countries. Isn't it about time to put a Korean four-star general in charge of CFC at least? Senior Americans beat around the bush on that one. Mattis before leaving Seoul last weekend came up with this circumlocution. "We have an integrated process," he said. "We are working together...the U.S. is assisting the ROK as we move forward on the issue." His words suggest the Americans and South Koreans have differences, to say the least. The ROK already commands all Korean forces in peacetime. Now Moon wants OPCON soonest, maybe in two years. U.S. military planners, and some Koreans too, aren't so sure. Trump has to be attuned to South Korean sensitivities on OPCON. Presumably Mattis has alerted him to ways to avoid the question while sounding off on the "ironclad" alliance against a threat that Mattis warned is "much more serious than when I first came to the ROK as a marine infantry officer in 1972." Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) has been covering war and peace in the region for decades. 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 Google Ad 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 By Yoon Sung-won Though it may sound a bit strange, both Koreas are aggressively pushing for ICBMs now. For North Korea, the acronym refers to intercontinental ballistic missiles. In contrast, South Korea is expediting the introduction of the internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, big data and mobile (ICBM) technologies to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, a term first used during the World Economic Forum in 2016, refers to dramatic changes on the industrial landscape fueled by artificial intelligence (AI) and ICBM technologies. In the public sector, the Ministry of Science and ICT is heading the Moon Jae-in administration's drive to introduce AI and ICBM technologies to boost industrial efficiency and create more good jobs. The President has stressed that AI and ICBM technologies should be introduced in a way that promotes human lives and does not deprive workers of their jobs. Upon his inauguration in July, Science and ICT Minister You Young-min pledged to foster experts in AI and ICBM technologies who can lead industrial innovations while boosting applications of such technologies in the public sector such as national defense and education. You said the ministry will play the role of "enabler" in the nation's Fourth Industrial Revolution. "We will be able to create better job opportunities through systematic cooperation between the public and the private sectors," You said in a recent forum in Seoul. "Science and information and communication technologies are the foundation of such changes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and are not separate but closely interconnected as one." The presidential committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution is also tasked with supporting the ministry's drive for national technological innovation. The committee led by veteran high-tech entrepreneur Chang Byung-gyu started operations, Oct. 12, as one of Moon's presidential pledges. AI and ICBM AI is widely considered to take center stage in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as it may improve industries, not just in manufacturing, but also in research and development to accelerate technological advancement to an unprecedented level. However, AI needs massive computing power and an extensive database, which are only achievable through IoT, cloud computing, big data analysis and a high-speed mobile network environment. IoT refers to the hyper-connected environment where everything _ not just computers and mobile devices but also buildings, cars, home appliances and even living things are interconnected through networks. IoT devices vary by different sizes and purposes. Large-sized IoT devices can be used for homes to physically control facilities such as heating and cooling as well as locking and unlocking doors and windows. Small-sized IoT chips, which have low energy consumption and are inexpensive, can be applied to factory equipment and public utility facilities to ceaselessly monitor their condition and collect data remotely and economically. Tapping into such extensive applications for IoT technologies, mobile carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus are already pushing for partnerships with diverse businesses such as construction, healthcare, energy, finance and electronics. Cloud computing refers to the technology that can connect physically far-off computing systems through networks to make them work as a single system. This technology enables analysis of a massive database, collected and compiled through IoT, at a speed that is impossible to reach on conventional computing systems. With Korea's cloud computing service market rapidly growing to reach 1 trillion won last year, Naver has been at the forefront in the tough competition with global giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and IBM. The company established the Naver Business Platform as a subsidiary to provide its Naver Cloud Platform for business-to-business (B2B) services. KT and LG CNS are also pushing for B2B cloud services businesses based on cloud data centers they have built nationwide. Naturally, securing, processing and using big data properly will also be the key to success in these industries. According to the National Information Society Agency (NISA), Korea's big data market will grow from around 260 billion won in 2015 to 1 trillion won by 2020. Retail businesses are already using big data on consumer tastes to boost marketing activities and develop new products. Card companies are also analyzing big data to look into consumption patterns and read market trends. Though the speed of hardware upgrades in smartphones has gradually been slowed down in recent years, progress is still being made in software services provided through high-performance mobile devices. Naver, Kakao and e-commerce businesses are expanding shopping and online-to-offline services on mobile devices, changing the way consumers buy not just actual products but also services such as getting a call taxi, making reservation for a parking lot space or arranging home cleaning. Need for deregulation Korea's introduction of ICBM technologies, however, has remained inadequate so far. According to NISA, only 4.3 percent of Korean enterprises were using big data at the end of 2015. Both the public and private sector have blamed the government for a lack of legal support for technological innovation. Rep. Shin Yong-hyun of the minor opposition People's Party urged the government to deregulate the new growth industries. She said the law should allow everything to foster new growth industries based on technologies such as AI and big data, except for areas that should be banned. "Advanced countries such as Britain and Japan have already introduced the regulatory sandbox policy to ease regulations on new industries for specific time and space," Shin said in a forum at the National Assembly, Sept. 19. "China has become the world's leader in the drone and mobile payment service industries on the back of supportive policy programs. We need to follow their lead to prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution." By Lee Min-hyung Apple's new flagship iPhone 8 smartphone is drawing a lukewarm market response here, with its pre-orders falling far short of those of its predecessor. The nation's telecom industry estimates the number of pre-orders for the iPhone 8 dropped by at least 30 percent from the iPhone 7 in the first five days since the former's pre-orders began last week via the nation's three mobile carriers - SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus. Analysts said one thing driving down the iPhone sales is the planned launch of the 10th anniversary special iPhone X. Earlier this week, Apple Korea unveiled the price tag of the 64 GB basic model of the iPhone X, which costs 1.42 million won ($1,270) here. "Many customers waited for the special edition, rather than opting for the conventional iPhone series," said a source from one of the mobile carriers in Korea. "But people here are generally voicing complaints over the record-high iPhone price. Customers appear to hold back their appetite to buy the new iPhones and take a wait-and-see approach before buying either of them," the source said. "Considering initial market responses for the iPhone 8, however, its mid- to long-term sales outlook does not look as bright as before." The iPhone 8 will be available for sale Friday, but the iPhone X launch date has yet to be confirmed due to the ongoing supply shortage of its components, such as OLED display panels. Another reason behind the iPhone's dwindling popularity is the unresolved controversy over reports on expanding batteries found in some new iPhone 8 handsets, according to experts. The reports have made headlines in recent weeks in Apple's cash cow markets, such as China, Japan and the United States. Last month, Apple said it is looking into the reported cases, but no updates have since been made. The government also said it may impose regulations after thorough inspections. "The Ministry of Science and ICT is concerned about the expanding iPhone 8, with relevant divisions planning to strengthen monitoring over the controversy," Minister Yoo Young-min said in a National Assembly audit, Monday. "Apple is in a position that only 11 iPhone 8s have so far come with the swelling problems out of more than 10 million of them sold across the globe. We will, however, collaborate with mobile carriers to come up with countermeasures and look into whether it poses any problems." Critics claim Apple is too complacent over the expanding phones which could lead to accidents. Comments from Apple Korea were not available. GS Group Chairman Huh Chang-soo, center, takes a look at a facial mask pack at an online shopping mall studio from Home Shop 18, in which GS holds a 15 percent stake. / Courtesy of GS Group By Lee Min-hyung GS Group Chairman Huh Chang-soo urged chiefs of its key affiliates to cultivate long-term global mindsets during a two-day meeting in India. "GS should focus on enhancing its group-wide capabilities into its long-term global strategy," the GS chief told its top management in New Delhi, Tuesday. In particular, he underlined the growth potential of the Indian market and called for GS executives to set business strategies by securing local talent. "We need to establish thorough and localized plans to tap deeper into Asia's next economic powerhouse," he said. GS has been holding the CEO meeting in non-Korean territories since 2011 as part of its bid to reduce its reliance on the local market and enhance its brand image as a global conglomerate holding affiliates in industries such as retail, oil refinery and trade. "India is a key emerging market which enjoys an annual economic growth rate of 7 percent," he said. "The market, in itself, comes with infinite potential for expansion. India is also expected to connect the dots for us to reach further into such regions such as Europe and the Middle East." Aside from the business-wise plans, Huh also called for executives to stand at the center of helping small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). "By taking advantage of GS's global network, we need to support Korea's SMEs in exporting their products and tightening their partnerships with overseas clients," he said. "This is crucial, as GS can also benefit from their mutual growth strategies." All the key GS executives participated in the meeting. They include GS Caltex Chairman Huh Jin-soo, and CEOs from GS Energy, GS Global and GS Retail. Driven by the global-first corporate drive, GS's overseas sales surged to 26.3 trillion won last year, a more than three-fold growth from 7.1 trillion won in 2004 when it was established. The conglomerate operates 49 overseas branches. The Indian government's corporate-friendly policy also played a crucial role for GS in deciding the country would become its next major cash cow. "By 2022, India is expected to become the world's fourth-largest economy," a company official said. "India is also offering a series of incentives to overseas corporations. We identify the market as our next opportunity with huge growth potential." GS is best-known for its retail business in Korea, running GS25 convenience stores across the nation. GS Caltex is also the conglomerate's major revenue generator, with its Indian branch expanding rapidly by selling lubricating oil. With the focus on Southeast Asian markets, GS has held management-level meetings in Asia's major emerging markets since 2011, including China, Sinapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. In particular, GS Energy and GS Global tapped into the Indonesian coal production industry by purchasing a 14.74-percent stake in BSSR coal mine in Indonesia. The deal, worth $45 million, allowed GS Energy to expand its product lineups from the petroleum and oil refinery business to coal mine development. GS Global, for its part, has been able to tighten its coal trading expertise through the contract. GS Retail's GS Supermarkets also opened its first Indonesian store this March and has since expanded the number to three. The firm's convenience store chain also prepares to launch its first Vietnam store this year. Nachihama CEO Ko Yong-soo / Yonhap By Jhoo Dong-chan Japanese detergent maker Nachihama is gaining attention for its differentiated technologies in eco-friendly detergent and dish-washing products. Selling about 100 different kitchen and bath products in Japan, Nachihama is tops in sales for related products at Japan's largest internet shopping mall Rakuten. Its annual sales stand at about 2 billion won ($1.8 million). "In a bid to introduce eco-friendly detergent and cleanser products that do not harm the human body, Nachihama has put its utmost efforts in R&D since my father served as the CEO," Nachihama CEO Ko Yong-soo said. "Thanks to its long-term efforts, Nachihama holds a number of patents in related products not only in Japan but also in other countries such as the U.S., Germany and the U.K. Our core technology applies natural rubber ingredients on the surface to remove slime and pollutants. I understand many conglomerates attempted to develop similar products only to fail." Founded by Ko's father, Nachihama first gained attention in the late 1980s with its eco-friendly detergent and cleanser products that caused no harm to the human body, but the business didn't perform as good as expected due to the lack of awareness for the environment. When Ko succeeded his father as CEO in 2002, Nachihama was cornered by debt and prolonged poor sales performance. "The company was built by my father. And I had seen how my father devoted his life to the company. I couldn't just walk away," he said. "So I decided to develop even better products while starting to raise the awareness for the environment and enhance our promotional operations. Nachihama then rebounded from the bottom." With more people concerned about the environment, Nachihama products started enjoying popularity and surging sales; and the company was able to pay off its existing debt. A couple of Chinese companies offered a supply deal, but Ko had to turn down the offers because of their low supply price. Nachihama was also introduced on the Japanese TV Channel, TBC, for its potential, and NHK also reported the company as a promising small business with technology. Ko is also serving with the World Okta, a business organization for overseas Koreans, as the Osaka Chapter Chairman. He said the company plans to advance into overseas markets through the World Okta network. After months of waiting with anticipation, famous actors of hit drama 'The Descendants of The Sun' Song Hye Kyo and Song Joong Ki finally got married on October 31st! After officially tying the knot and becoming the most coveted couple out there, the lovely pair has, alongside their agency, officially released some of their many wedding photos! Don't wait and view them down below! These two photos are actually from the day of their wedding, with the bottom one being a selfie! These photos are hinted to be their official wedding concept photos taken in LA, California! The casual, simplistic yet charming concept fits the two quite nicely. Their agency made a statement after releasing these photos explaining, We appreciate the great attention and love for their wedding. It was successfully completed with congratulations from many. It proceeded quietly in a private manner. We once again ask for understanding on the inability of filming as there were limitations in the location." Fans are expecting to see more photos of the two very soon! Stay tuned for more updates regarding the lovely couple and their wedding details! Peace Corps Volunteer dies in Lake Sevan U.S. Ambassador Richard M. Mills, Jr., Mourns the Loss of Peace Corps Volunteer Hanna Huntley: I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Peace Corps volunteer Hanna Huntley,of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Like so many volunteers before her, Hanna was answering a calling. She came to Armenia eager to lend a helping hand, looking forward to building personal connections and bridges between our two nations. She served in Sevan as a Community Youth Development volunteer, providing much-needed support to her community and investing in young Armenians, the future of this country. Hanna shared her American experience and values with her Armenian host family, colleagues, friends, and community. And just as importantly, she learned about Armenia and communicated her experience as a volunteer with her friends and family back home. I had the privilege of swearing Hanna in to Peace Corps service this past June. She raised her right hand and took the same oath that all public servants take an oath I myself took many years ago. While my official title is Ambassador, I consider Hanna an ambassador as well. For many of the Armenian people she interacted with every day, and particularly for the youth at the Sevan Youth Club where she volunteered, and at the Bohem Tea House she helped open, Hanna was their first exposure to the United States. For them, Hanna Huntley was the United States: her actions, words, values, and the help she gave them were representative of our entire nation. She will leave a lasting, positive impression on her community in Armenia. Serving as a Peace Corps volunteer is not easy, but few callings are. President John F. Kennedy said, when he signed the Executive Order that established the Peace Corps in 1961, But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps--who works in a foreign land--will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life, which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace. Those are lofty words, but as Peace Corps volunteers will tell you, they remain as true today as ever. 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 La Jolla Parks & Beaches, an advisory group with a history of opposition to signs along the coastline (some members call them visual pollution) is readying for two organizations to bring more signs to La Jolla. The board discussed the 10 signs on the way part of educational outreach for La Jollas Marine protected Areas (MPA) and signs to mark the California Coastal Trail at its Oct. 23 meeting at La Jolla Rec Center. WildCoast conservation director Zach Plopper explained that the new MPA signs will vary between 12-inch by 18-inch You Are Here signs with the rules of a MPA, and the larger 24-inch by 36-inch interpretive panels that show the wildlife regulations for that area. He told La Jolla Light that in the best case scenario, the signs would be installed by the end of the year. These You Are Here signs will be replaced where needed, and new ones will be posted in La Jolla. (Courtesy) There are four ocean MPAs in La Jolla from the mean high-tide line and out to sea, the San Diego Scripps Coastal State Marine Conservation Area, the Matlahuyal State Marine Reserve, South La Jolla Conservation Area and State Marine Reserve. The State Marine Reserves are a no-take zone of any living or non-living marine resource. In Marine Conservation Areas, there are varying take restrictions. We have to look at how to reach the public and get them on board and aware of what is allowed, Popper continued. Were developing materials like fishing guides and signage. We worked with the Department of Fish & Wildlife to create the content and find the best locations for these signs. In 2015, WildCoast installed a You Are Here sign at Scripps Pier, an interpretive panel south of Scripps Pier, two interpretive panels at La Jolla Shores (one went missing in the El Nino high-tide event) and a You Are Here sign at The Cove. Now, funding has finally come through for a new round. In addition to any other You Are Here signs that are identified as a need, others to replace dated or faded signs will also be installed, Popper said. (Learn more about the MPA program by e-mailing cory@wildcoast.net or at mpacollaborative.org) The other set of signs discussed would mark the California Coastal Trail portions in La Jolla. LJP&B president Ann Dynes explained that The Pacific Crest Trail runs from Oregon to Mexico, and the 1,200 California Coastal Conservancys California Coastal trail is the corollary to that along the coastline. The Conservancy is funded by taxpayers and is in the process of identifying the different stretches of coastline that are part of the Coastal Trail. Thats a done deal. The City has agreed, she said. I met with (San Diego) Park & Rec representatives to learn about how the signs would be installed so theyre not visual pollution. There are three kinds of signs: a little six-inch one, eight-inch by ten-inch ones, and large interpretive ones. Right now there are no interpretive signs in place and Dynes said any larger signs would be affixed to light structures. Just because weve said we dont want signs, I feel like we need to deal with these in a more comprehensive way. Signs are a constructive way to show what we have here. Proper signage is a public service and maybe (if people are educated) they will treat out coastline better. Trustee John Shannon noted that people who do not speak English visit La Jolla and suggested a symbol-based sign, specifically the international red circle with a line through it. In other Parks & Beaches news: Skate park in a La Jolla park? After trying and failing to establish a skateboard park at La Jolla Rec Center, proponents of a skate park in La Jolla presented the idea to LJP&B seeking another location. An early suggestion is the end of the Fay Avenue Bike Path. Supporter Linda Van Zandt told LJP&B the problem might be that theres an incorrect perception of what she and other proponents would like to see installed. She shared photos of a skate park in Leucadia similar in size and design to what she would like. People think its going to be an intrusive skate park. I dont think any of us want something (huge) similar to whats in Ocean Beach. Thats not what were talking about. Itll just be somewhere for kids to come and not have to skateboard in the street. She said she would return to next months meeting with a specific location for consideration. Wrack fight continues: Although the City has said it does not have the resources to clean up the wrack (dried seaweed that washes ashore and accumulates on La Jollas beaches), and claimed the wrack was never cleaned in an organized way, LJP&B trustee Ken Hunrichs continues his efforts to have it removed. Whether it was cleaned or not, this notion that we cant preserve our environment to make it more pleasant, seems a little odd to me. It should be cleaned. If we are concerned about sand flies, there 900 miles of coastline where they can exist. I dont think Childrens Pool or Marine Street beach will make a difference. There are other areas it can accumulate, he said. The argument for the wrack removal is that some consider it unsightly, pungent and overly abundant. Those opposed cite its biological significance for area insects and birds. Historic ties of north Meck span throughout region Though the north Mecklenburg area didnt see significant population growth until a few decades ago, its rich history dates back to the Revolutionary War. That was the basis of... An easier-than-expected first mammogram experience HUNTERSVILLE Scheduling a cancer screening probably ranks somewhere on your to-do list between "clean out the garage" and "donate those clothes that don't fit." Sure, you'll get to it at... Hon. Tilak Marapana, Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with his Chinese counterpart, Hon. Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of China, on October 30, 2017. The cordial discussions between the two Ministers focused on longstanding China-Sri Lanka relations, and hopes for future strengthening of cooperation and friendship. Foreign Minister Marapana is currently in Beijing, from 30 October to 03 November 2017 at the invitation of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, to attend the celebrations of the 60th Anniversary of diplomatic relations and 65th Anniversary of economic relations between Sri Lanka and China. At their meeting, the two Ministers remarked positively on the two key anniversaries, which they saw as an indication of the strong and traditional friendship between the two countries, and a good foundation for continued growth in the future. In this regard, both Ministers recalled the frequent high-level visits exchanged between the two countries in the recent past as a strong indicator of the high place that each country gives to the other in their international relations. On strengthening the relations between the two nations in the future, Foreign Minister Wang Yi recalled the importance of the One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR), and its status as a framework for future cooperation, and highlighted five areas for future bilateral growth between China and Sri Lanka. These areas included; the strengthening of traditional friendship and political trust, cooperation on major projects, traditional trade and investment cooperation, maritime cooperation, and people to people exchanges. Foreign Minister Marapana thanked his Chinese counterpart for the invitation extended to him to take part in the celebrations, and expressed Sri Lanka's willingness to further cooperate with China in the fields of maritime and economic cooperation. He also confirmed Sri Lanka's participation at the forthcoming Expo 2018. Further, the Minister appreciated the assistance provided by China to Sri Lanka during natural disasters. Foreign Minister Marapana identified the importance of facilitating the exchange of cultural troupes to enhance the cultural bonds of both nations. Following the bilateral meeting, the two Ministers signed the Certificate for the Exchange of the Instruments of Ratification of the Treaty between China and Sri Lanka on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. The Foreign Minister was accompanied by the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China Dr. Karunasena Kodituwakku, Mrs. Shani Karunaratne, Deputy Chief of Mission, Ms. Ruwanthi Ariyarathne, Commercial Counsellor, Ms. Inoka Weerasinghe, Third Secretary, Mr. Sameera Dayasekera, Assistant Director and Mr. Janaka Marapana, Private Secretary to the Hon. Minister. Courtesy : www.mfa.gov.lk Embassy of Sri Lanka Beijing 30th October 2017 This article appears in the November 3, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE Whats Really Happening in China and What It Means for Americans This is an edited transcript of the weekly Schiller Institute New Paradigm webcast of Oct. 26 with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. [Print version of this transcript] Harley Schlanger: Hello, Im Harley Schlanger from the Schiller Institute. Welcome to this weeks webcast with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute and its chairwoman. There have been incredible developments over the last week, starting with the continuation and conclusion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which laid out an absolutely bold strategic perspective for the next 35 years. This has gotten very little coverage in the West, but its an event which will shape what happens not just in China, but globally. Were going to put that on top of our list for discussion today, but well also take up some developments around Russia-gate and a few questions that were sent to me during the week. View full size Xinhua/Ju Peng So, Helga, to start with, the 19th Party Congress which just concluded, really was quite incredible, putting forward the idea of a beautiful China creating a beautiful world. Whats your impression? Helga Zepp-LaRouche: First of all, I would like to note the fact that the Western media, in their non-coverage and what they decide to focus on, are just completely ridiculous. Their main attention was directed to the fact that Xi Jinping did not present a visible successor. He was just voted in for five more years. This is obviously not the key point. What this Congress represents is a strategic shift. It is in line with the Belt and Road Initiative and the new model of international relations China has developed under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, and I think the West has not caught up with what this is actually all about. They are so much behind the curve, it is almost absurd. What Xi Jinping has accomplished in the five years of his Presidency so far, the previous five years, is that he has successfully taken on some of the problems China had, such as corruption, such as a slowing economy, and various other problems, and he has actually been extremely successful. Everybody who has been in China and has looked at China without prejudices, could not help but notice itthat it has led to a population which for the most part is very satisfied83% of the people are absolutely happy about what the government is doing. I would like to see the Western country that has such approval ratings. But what has happened at this 19th Party Congress is truly amazing. In a little more more than a week Xi Jinping has consolidated the party around a manifold perspective, of which I want to start to discuss various aspects: First of all, in the immediate next three years, by 2020, the aim is to eliminate poverty, to lift the remaining 42 million people who are presently living in poverty in China, above that level. Now, that compares with a similar number of people currently living in poverty in the United States, except that China has about four times the population of the United States, and it compares with the roughly 120 million poor people in the European Union (EU), who have been poor for the last 20 years, with nothing being done about it; theres no perspective to eliminate poverty in the EU. From 2020 to 2035, the aim is to make China a moderately prosperous, functioning socialist country; and then from 2035 to 2050, China is to become a completely developed, culturally harmonious, advanced, democratic, socialist and beautiful country. There is an additional element. First of all, what impressed me very much is the focus of Xi Jinping, and also other people who spoke, on the purpose of all thisnamely, that it is the improvement of the life of people, that people should live a better life, a happier life. That is completely lacking in the discussion in the West: That the aim of politics is that people should be happy! The pursuit of Happiness is an inalienable right, which was after all in the Declaration of Independence of the young United States. But there is another aspect to it. Xi Jinping, especially in his concluding remarks, spoke about a socialist model with Chinese characteristics for a new era. And the aim which was formulated very explicitly, was that China will take a global role in creating a beautiful future for all of mankind. Now, that is really something! When has any Western politician had a vision of creating a beautiful future for all of humanity? You have to go back a long way, until you find people even thinking in these terms. China has provided a model of international governance and international relationships based on the sovereignty and respect for the social model of the other country, non-interference, with no attempt to change the system to the Western model or to their own model, but to respect the other countries sovereignty. This is an incredible perspective, because if you look at it from the long arc of human history, this was an initiative which had to be made at a certain point in the development of humanity. There had to be at some point, somebody to say, we are the human species, the human species is oneXi Jinping always calls it the shared community for the future of mankindsomebody to put forth a vision of how we can organize our affairs on this planet in such a way that the result is a good life for all people living on this planet. Westerners tend to not understand that. They tend to either overlook it or denounce it as propaganda, just communist rhetoric; or they cannot imagine that it could be true, because they themselves are so unused to thinking in these terms. The poor power of their imagination is completely unable to imagine that there could be a political leader who thinks that way. But Im absolutely convinced that Xi Jinping is a Confucian man, that he wants to shape the world in a Confucian harmonic way. People in the West who want to understand whats going on, should not just push it aside, but really try to grasp it. Because its a tremendous potentiality for all of humanity, which must be supported and should be taken up. And I think its important that people achieve the intellectual integrity to try to comprehend what he is talking about. Schlanger: I found it very interesting that Xi traced the period that he described as a miserable period for China, to the Opium War, the British Empires efforts to force the Chinese to accept opium shipped into China by the British. Because that makes it clear that hes talking about China emerging from under an imperial system into a new era. Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. Also very noticeable is that, preceding and during this party congress, the attacks by the Western media against China were just unbelievable, blaming China for the coming crash, and decrying the debt of Chinawhile, in reality, every debt China has incurred is covered by capital assets, because they have invested in the real economy and infrastructure, and therefore in assets which would be there if there were a crashunlike the Western investments in speculation, in derivatives, which are just virtual and will disappear the moment the crash occurs. There was an unbelievable barrage of attacks also against President Xi Jinping himselftotally insane comparisons to all kinds of historical figures; it was just absolutely berserk. I noticed a new tone of self-confidence in the way the Chinese media responded to these attacks. They very self-assuredly said that the West does not get it, they dont understand China, they dont try to understand China; but moreover, the Chinese model is so clearly superior to the Western model. In the past, the Chinese have been much more restrained and have held back from saying such thingsbut now, when these attacks occurred, they said: But look at it, the Chinese socialist model with Chinese characteristics is having these unbelievably positive results, while in the West there is chaos. Especially if you look at the EU, or those in the West who are trying to export their model of Western democracy and human rights. And then they say, those people in the West who speak like that, obviously dont want China to succeed, and they think China is only doing well when it submits to Western valuesbut when China is developing, then they regard China as a threat to their world order. That is just completely ridiculous, they say, and therefore, since the West is collapsing and the influence of the Western media is vanishing, one can just ignore what these Western media are saying. That is a new tone, and I really like that. There was just a poll in the United States which found that 57% of Americansmore than halfdo not believe a word of what is said in the mainstream media. This is quite significant. Obviously the influence of these media is shrinking; they have overdone it; they have tried to pretend that they control everything, including the way people should interpret democratic elections in the United States. But they have overblown it, and I think there is a blowback, and I think that that creates a very interesting new situation. As for China, everybody should study the speeches of Xi Jinping. There is also a very interesting new three-part documentary on CGTN TV about Xi Jinping, which those who want to understand the man should just watch [China: The Time of Xi]. But study his speeches. When I did so over the years, I was very impressed by the fact that he always puts a lot of emphasis on traditional Chinese culture; he also knows the best periods of the cultures of other countries. When he travels, he always emphasizes the best contributions of the other culture, which I think is very important. He also puts a lot of emphasis on beauty, on the spirit of science. Hes a Renaissance man! We have not been used to having Renaissance men for a long time. My husband is one of them, but they are a rare species. I think people have a lot to discover if they engage in becoming familiar with Xi Jinping. Schlanger: I found one other thing quite significant, which is, in contrast to the nonsense in the media about Xi personally and about the direction of China, President Trump, when he called Xi Jinping right after the congress ended, congratulated him and spoke of his elevation, that is, his re-election, in positive terms. The President is heading to Asia soon. Can you update us on the prospects for that trip? Zepp-LaRouche: President Trump will be accompanied by a very large delegation of American businessmen. I am pretty sure that what will be discussed, both in Japan and also in China, is large Japanese- Chinese investments in American infrastructure. Those who are familiar with the activities of the Schiller Institute, probably know that we have campaigned in the United States since 2014 for the idea that the United States should fully cooperate with the New Silk Road, with the Belt and Road Initiativeand I think this will be on the agenda. Im pretty sure that the Chinese government and Xi Jinping, especially now with the accomplishment of the 19th Party Congress, will not miss the opportunity to offer something to Trump, who is obviously in a very difficult situation. American infrastructure is in terrible condition; the United States has only 150 km of high-speed rail, between New York and Boston, compared with far more than 20,000 km network of high-speed rail in China. China will have all its major cities connected by high-speed rail by 2020, just three years from now, and then they will have a 50,000 km network of high-speed rail. The Schiller Institute has proposed for some time now, that the United States needs a similar high-speed rail system connecting its East Coast, its West Coast, and maybe even build some new cities in the middle of the United States. The United States could have something like 50,000 km (35,000 miles) of high-speed rail. I think thats one area of cooperation, in investment in infrastructure. On the other hand, American businessmen and American firms could and should be investing in the many, many projects of the Belt and Road Initiative in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. A completely new level of international cooperation is on the horizon. I cannot predict for sure whether this will happen, but its obviously a direct potentiality. Should this occur, given that President Trump is very inclined to improve relations with Russia, which he reiterated in a recent interview, and if the three countries, the United States, China and Russia can find a way of cooperating, Im absolutely optimistic that this would represent a new era of civilization. Should President Trump move in this directionIve said many times, sticking my neck out and putting my reputation on the linethen President Trump has the potential to become one of the greatest Presidents in the history of the United States. Many people will be absolutely shocked at my saying that, but anybody who is not a complete moron should be happy if the three largest nuclear powers reach understanding and cooperation. With the win-win offer, the new era offered by China, the possibility to overcome geopolitics forever is clearly there. Most people have no inkling, no idea that that potentiality of a completely new era of civilization is before us. I simply ask all our viewers to not just believe methats not the pointbut to investigate it for themselves. Because this is one of, in German we say, the Sternstunden der Menschheitone of those star-hours of humanity, or decisive moments for humanity. In a sense this moment is different, it has an incredible promise similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall. That was one such star-hour of humanity, which as we now know, retrospectively, was missed, because geopolitics marched in: George Bush, Sr., Margaret Thatcher, and Francois Mitterrandwere all determined to prevent this opportuity for mankind from leading to a new era. This time, however, we are on the verge, on the eve, or maybe in the morning at sunrise of such a new era, in a much more powerful way, because its already a reality for about 100 nations. So people must really understand, this is a punctum saliens, as Friedrich Schiller would call it, where the entire direction of the human drama of history could go into a completely new stage and a new direction. We are very close to that. The only thing lacking is the Wests grasping it and joining it. Schlanger: Its not a coincidence that the same media that are attacking President Xi and attacking the Chinese model, are behind Russia-gate. Their continued efforts to come up with some smoking gun, to try to get rid of Trumptheres a whole new series of articles about the 25th Amendmentbut something that happened in this last week, which is in part a result of the work that weve done, getting out the Mueller dossier, but also the work by some of the Republicans in Congress, to go after the authors of the sex dossier against Trump. As you know, Helga, it came out that Hillary Clintons campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded that Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele sex memo. This obviously turns things upside down, doesnt it? Zepp-LaRouche: Well, it was sort of to be suspected that that was the case, but now its out and I think theres a lot of egg on the faces of Hillary Clinton and the whole Democratic National Committee (DNC), because they lied, and they knew they were lying. They used foreign [British] intelligence against their own elected President. I think there will be a big aftermath, and I think the timing is very good that this story is coming out now, because it brings the entire Russia-gate narrative to its final end, which process was started with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) memo of July 24. It frees up President Trump for his upcoming Asia trip. Another point which I think is worthwhile to reflect on, is that all the Europeans believed this Russian electoral interference story, and went with it as 100% true, and are also saying now, that this is proof that Russia will manipulate European elections and internal affairs. But I think people should reflect on this whole thing, and really understand what the British empire is, what this apparatus isits called deep state by some, but I think its really, fundamentally, the old paradigm of geopolitical thinking, of the Western financial system which goes for high profit, and which defends the interest of its privileged classin total contrast to the new system, the new model, the new paradigm, which aims at the common good of the people, and a better, happier life for everybody on this planet. So its really the fight between these two systems: Its terrible, I almost feel pity for the Clintons, because they really look terribly bad now. But I think its very good for history that the truth has come out, and it will give a lot of impetus to this trip of President Trump. Schlanger: And it also gives President Trump a certain amount of credibility that the media have been trying to take away from him, because hes been insisting from the beginning that theres no story here, and its a fraudulent attempt to undercut him. I got an email from someone who asked if you could talk about the significance of the Catalan separatist movement, in the context of this fight between the old paradigm and the new; I think theres been a lot of confusion about what it represents, partly coming from the European Union itself. So, whats behind this, and why is it happening? Zepp-LaRouche: The Catalonia development is also an effect of the neo-con/neo-liberal paradigm. In Spain, as in Greece, Italy, and Portugal, the populations were hit by the absolutely brutal austerity of the Troika. Despite the fact that many young people and many skilled laborers have left, Spain still has an unemployment rate among the youth of, I think, up to 60%young people who neither have a job, nor are in education, which means they have no future! View full size cc/Sasha Popovic This is something which has hit all of Spain, and an Italian Member of the European Parliament named Marco Zanni said correctly, that the fight between the Catalans and the Spanish federal government is a fight between the poor and the poorer. I think that that is what triggered the unwillingness of the Catalans to continue to pay the federal governmentso the trigger, therefore, is in the overall policy of the Troika. Like the Brexit, or the victory of President Trump, or the no to the referendum in Italy, or the recent election result in Austria, or the Czech Republicall of these reflect the discontent of the people with the neo-liberal economic policy. But there are other features. Of course it is wrong for the Catalans to demand independence, because it goes against Spains constitution, and we cannot have a Europe of the regions, because this is the design, not only of the federalist movement of Coudenhove- Kalergi, of the Pan-European Union, but of the British who are supporting the Catalans openly in all their newspapers, because they want the destruction of the nation-state. If you have 50 or 100 small regional entities all being independent, as compared to the supranational institution of the EU, they would have absolutely no power, and therefore the common good of the people could not be defended. The significance of the emergence of the nation-state was that it is the only institution which, especially in times of crisis, defends the common good of the people, not the private interests. So there is that aspect of it. But then there is also another point, which I think President Putin of Russia pointed to. He said: Well, the West was so emphatic in pushing democracy, democracy, democracy, and they developed this double standard. Democracy and independence for Kosovo is fine, but of course, now they are caught in a paradox, because if the same thing happens to a pro-EU government like that of Prime Minister Rajoy [of Spain], then of course there is a contradiction, because there is no good solution. If the Catalans declare independence, and Rajoy allows it, that threatens the integrity of the Spanish state, so he cannot do that. On the other hand, if he tries to quell the masses in the streets by the use of military means or police powerthere were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in Barcelona and there will probably be as many again in these coming daysthen that is terrible for all the values the EU is supposed to represent, such as democracy and human rights, and other things in that category of issues. So its a paradox. There is no solution within that system. We have said, very clearly, the only way you can remedy this situation is for Spain to fully become a hub in the New Silk Road, which Rajoy already wants Spain to do. Only when the Iberian peninsula is fully developed as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, can the tensions between the different provinces of Spain be overcome. By the way, the leader of the Basque region has also already come out in support for the Catalans, so this has a tremendously explosive potential. There is one other aspect to add and that is that in Spain, a dossier came out which we have not yet been fully able to look into, but it mentions that the Catalan independence movement is supported by George Soros, by the Ukrainian Maidan forces, and by [Gene] Sharp, who is the author of the whole color revolution program cooked up in Oxford and Cambridge. So this is a big story, and we will investigate and look into it further. Because Soros is the main force behind a lot of these color revolutions, including that in the United States. The right answer is clearly the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road, common development for alland then a solution can be found. In that light, I think its very positive that Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, just met with his Ukrainian counterpart [Pavlo Klimkin], and Ukraine and China said that they want to cooperate very closely in the Belt and Road Initiative. Here again, what we have said for years, the only way that you can solve the Ukraine crisiswhere the west of Ukraine is Western oriented, Catholic; and the eastern part, is Orthodox, Russian orientedthe only way to get back to the unity of Ukraine, is if the Eurasian Land-Bridge, the New Silk Road, is in construction from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In that way, a higher level of cooperation is implemented, which then solves all of these conflicts. So that is also a very promising development. Schlanger: As your husband always says, when youre confronted with two bad choices, always choose the third. And thats what we see with Spain and with the Belt and Road Initiative overall. Helga, next week, when we convene for the webcast, well be on the eve of Trumps visit to Asia, in particular his meeting with Xi Jinping [in Beijing]. Any last words of advice for President Trump? Zepp-LaRouche: Well, Im optimistic. President Trump is a good businessman. Hes becoming a good President, and therefore, he will absolutely recognize the incredible potential, not only for American business interests, but for the United States to become great by being part of a greater whole. Schlanger: OK, with that, well say good-bye, and well see you next week. Zepp-LaRouche: Good-bye. This article appears in the November 3, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. The Fight Is On for South American Bioceanic Railway by Gretchen Small [Print version of this article] Oct. 30China is inviting Ibero-America and the Caribbean to get aboard Chinas high-speed development train, Zhang Run, Deputy Director General of the Latin American and Caribbean Affairs Department at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, announced in a press briefing in Beijing on Oct. 20. He added that the Latin American and the Caribbean region is like an extension of Chinas Silk Road project, and we are ready to get more deeply involved. Discussions are underway across the region on all kinds of individual projects as part of that offer, but none is more important than the construction of a bioceanic railway across the heart of the South American continent, connecting its Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Alternative Routes for South American Transcontinental Railroad View full size Since the first detailed discussion of such a rail line in the 1880s and 1890s under the impetus of the great development advocate U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine, this transcontinental railway has been recognized as the necessary platform for opening up the still-underpopulated, undeveloped interior of South America, transforming the entire continent into a modern economic powerhouse. The Schiller Institute argued the urgency of building two bioceanic rail lines across the heart of South Americaas well as critical North-South routes to link South America to North America, through the Darien Gapin its 1986 book, Ibero-American Integration: One Hundred Million New Jobs by 2000! (serialized in English in EIR at the time). That study, applying Lyndon LaRouches method of physical economy, elaborated how the region can form an Ibero-American Common Market to counter the onslaught of neoliberal usury and new Opium Wars from which the Ibero-American and Caribbean nations have yet to be freed. The study outlined the integrated continental rail and water transport network capable of sustaining the great industrial and agricultural projects required to lift all the people of the region out of povertywhich today can be realized. The decision to actually build the bioceanic rail lines is yet to be taken. Which route across the central heart of the continent should be built first, is still under discussion, while the governments of the two necessary bookends of such a railroad, Peru and Brazil, are (at best) dragging their feet, saying yes, but looking to Wall Street for favors, unwilling to move. Chinas offer to Ibero-America to join in sharing in its own stunning development through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), however, has stirred up a thirst for development, and an optimism that the region can finally take off. The power of this optimism is growing, overcoming the fear of bankrupt Wall Street thuggery. The Bolivian government is playing a particularly important role in pushing this process forward, which, with the momentum provided by China, is leading to serious discussion of this great project, which is taking on a life of its own in South America, as never before. In the new era of development exploding around the world triggered by the Belt and Road, EIR is confident the obstacles can be overcome. In fact, with even West Europeans joining China by bidding to play a part in this great project, it is beginning to look like the only nation not jumping at the chance to participate in making it a reality is the United States, whose policy for the region is still shaped too much by Londons Wall Street. Abraham Lincoln, Blaine, William McKinley, and JFK would be as disgusted at todays short-sighted U.S. politicians and businessmen, as Lyndon LaRouches magazine is! If China Can End Poverty. . . Chinas economic relations with Ibero-America have taken off. In his briefing to the press, Zhang Run reported that Ibero-America and the Caribbean are now the second-biggest regional destination for Chinese overseas investment, at 15% of all investment abroad, second only to its investments in Asia. Other Chinese officials have recently stated that China is involved in more than 179 specific projects in the region already, as Mexicos official news agency, Notimex, reported on Oct. 27. Since 2015, Chinese investments in Brazil have increased by $19 billion, so that China is now Brazils number one source of foreign investment, desperately needed when Brazils national industrial and logistics capabilities are otherwise being dismantled by Wall Streets anti-corruption hit-squad known as Lava Jato. Trade relations have grown to such an extent that now Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, together, provide 20-25% of all food imported by China, as Chiles Ambassador to China, Jorge Heine, reported in an Oct. 23 op-ed in Chinas Global Times. He called it amazing that Chile is now the No. 1 exporter of fruit to China, with $1.2 billion [per year], meaning that one out of every four pieces of fruit imported by China by value ($5 billion) came from Chile, the farthest country from China. Chinas development model is becoming as important as its resources in the region. According to the World Bank, in 2015, one out of every five of the almost 648 million people living in Ibero-America and the Caribbean lived in chronic poverty (never escaping from it); that is 130 million people. Adding in the transitory poor (those driven into poverty supposedly temporarily), the number of poor is over 160 million, one in four. If anything, that number has grown since 2015, with the number of poor in Brazil alone rising by over one million since 2016, under Wall Streets grip, while the same policies are also increasing poverty rapidly in Argentina. Thus, there is intense interest in Chinas success in lifting more people out of poverty over the last 30 years700 millionthan the entire population of Ibero-America and the Caribbean, and doing so by focusing on infrastructure, and technological and scientific advance. The Executive Secretary of the UNs Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Barcenas, was interviewed by Xinhua on Oct. 18 after President Xi Jinpings opening report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. She noted how impressed she is at what China has accomplished in the five years of Xi Jinpings presidency, by improving the quality of life of its people, including pulling nearly 60 million out of poverty. Chinas world leadership has been achieved by innovation, the platform which has brought about the great modernization of China, and provided the Chinese people greater opportunities, intellectually and even in questions of jobs, she said. Barcenas called for the region to put aside internal conflicts, and get to work on drafting a unified proposal for the infrastructure, science, technology, and innovation projects which should be incorporated in the 2019-2021 China-Latin America Caribbean Action Plan. Relations with China would be facilitated if it dealt with a regional bloc, rather than 33 different nations, she argued. The Belt and Road Factor The sheer scope of the Belt and Road Initative (BRI) is encouraging more audacious regional thinking throughout Ibero-America. Uruguay is one country enthusiastically urging others to join it in jumping onboard the BRI. Antonio Carambula, Executive Director of Uruguays trade and investment promotion agency, Uruguay XXI, has been traveling throughout the region, promoting participation in this years Nov. 30-Dec. 2 meeting of the China-Latin America & Caribbean (China-LAC) business summit in Punta del Este, Uruguay. Its two main panels will be on the BRI, and on cooperation on development and infrastructure. The BRI is shaking the world, he said in a visit to Panama last week. (This forum meets annually, sponsored by the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the Inter-American Development Bank.) Chiles former President Eduardo Frei, now Minister Plenipotentiary for Asia-Pacific Affairs in the Bachelet government, told an Aug. 30 seminar in Beijing on Chile and the Belt and Road Initiative, that his government seeks to fully participate in the BRI, and especially to form joint ventures with Chinese companies to build infrastructure in Chile. Chile wants to access new technologies offered by China in order to industrialize; we dont just want to be permanent raw materials exporters, Frei told EFE news service while in Beijing. In an Oct. 9 interview with China Hoy, Chiles Undersecretary of Public Works, Sergio Galilea, specified two southern bioceanic corridors between Chile and Argentina that Chile wants China to help build. The more difficult is the two-way tunnel beneath the snowy Agua Negra pass, high in the Andes. Its not just anyone who can build tunnels at 4,500 meters of altitude, Galilea noted. Enter Bolivia The Latin American nations, Bolivia among them, are today a natural extension of what is called the 21st Century New Silk Road, Bolivias official ABI news agency wrote on Oct. 24, in reporting about the upcoming Nov. 9-11 International China-LAC Expo in Guangdong, China. Since it nationalized the oil and gas industry in 2006, when Bolivia was one of the three poorest nations in the Americas, President Evo Moraless government has set out to create the industrial base and infrastructure required for Bolivia to become a modern nation employing 21st Century technology. This includes arranging training for a small cadre force of nuclear and aerospace engineers and technicians. Receiving only hostility from the still British/Wall Street-dominated United States, Bolivia found allies in Russia, China, and some other Asian nations for its development. View full size China Daily Chinas Ambassador to Bolivia, Liang Yu, was emphatic in an Oct. 2 interview with the Bolivian daily El Deber, that China intends to energetically help Bolivia, in any way Bolivia wishes, to develop into a prosperous, industrial nation at the center of a prosperous and developing South America. Expanding cooperation on such areas as productive capacity, mining and energy, infrastructure, the development of highways, airports, railroads and hydroelectric plants, and collaboration and exchanges in such areas as aerospace, telecommunications, science and technology, and protection of the environment, will drive the development of Bolivian industrialization; the value-added of Bolivian products will increase, and its capacity for autonomous development will advance, Ambassador Liang told the daily. He cited in particular, the contract signed for Chinas Sinosteel Equipment and Engineeering Co. to build a steel complex near Bolivias huge Mutun iron ore deposits, which when completedprojected now for 2020will turn Bolivia into a significant steel producer in Ibero-America. Today it produces no steel to speak of. View full size Bolivia Communications Ministry Ambassador Liang rightly called the Mutun steel complex a gigantic step for the industrialization of Bolivia. Mutun has some of the largest and purest iron ore (and manganese) deposits in the world, and the government has long sought to create a pole of development based on processing that ore. Sinosteels contract is to build an iron ore concentration plant, a pelletizing plant, a direct reduction plant, and a steelworks with a continuous caster and a rolling mill, such that Bolivia can become largely self-sufficient in sponge iron, structural steel and long products (bars, rods, beams and rails). Eventually, Bolivia will become a steel exporter, after the second phase of the project is completed, including construction of the necessary logistical capabilities for export (roads, bridges, railways, and port infrastructure). And the Bioceanic Railway Bolivias idea is to turn its geographic position at the center of the South American continent into an asset, transforming itself into an energy and transport hub for the continent, making this the key to its entire industrial development project. In 2010, Bolivian President Evo Morales proposed a bioceanic railway to Perus then-President Alan Garcia. But what turned the bioceanic railway into an actual possibility was Chinas commitment to see one built. In meetings on the sidelines of the 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, President Xi reached agreements with the then-Presidents of Brazil and Peru to cooperate on building a bioceanic railway. Bolivia immediately began organizing for the bioceanic rail line to pass through its territory as well. Since then, two primary routes have been contending for the project. Few are bold enough to recognize that the Schiller Institute is right, that if the trans-Atlantic sectorincluding South Americajoins the physical economic cooperation proposed in the Belt and Road, and, like China, commits to eradicating all poverty within their nations, then both routes, and more, will be needed to support the explosion of city-building and productive activity that will result. The route recommended by China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. (CREEC), in its feasibility study presented to the governments of Brazil and Peru in October 2016, would run from Brazils Atlantic port of Santos into Peru, where it would cross the Andes at their lowest point in the north at Saramirisa, and end in one of Perus Pacific ports, such as Paita. This northern route avoids the greater geological difficulties of the higher portions of the Andes mountains to the south. At the initiative of the Economists Association of Perus Ucayali region, a movement of business, labor, indigenous, and civic representatives from the northwest of Peru is determined that this northern route be built, as it passes through their region. In November 2016, the Ucayali group made the Brazil-Peru bioceanic railway development corridor the central topic of the national Economists Association annual convention, and invited German Schiller Institute president Helga Zepp-LaRouche to give the keynote speech. The movement has drafted proposals for bringing supporting infrastructure, science cities, industry, and development into the largely undeveloped Amazon region, and has not stopped holding meetings and organizing since. The other proposed route is the Central Bioceanic Railway Corridor championed by the Bolivian government. This would run from the port of Santos, through Bolivia, into southern Peru, where it would terminate at the Pacific port of Ilo. Bolivia proposes that six of South Americas 12 nations would benefit, if the Brazil- Bolivia-Peru bioceanic rail corridor were connected to the Parana-Paraguay waterway, which would incorporate Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. That can easily be accomplished by running a rail line down from the Bolivian portion of the bioceanic line, to a Paraguayan port on the waterway. Bolivia is lining up interested nations to sign memoranda of understanding on the project, and has set up a technical working group. Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Huanacuni has stated several times that ideological differences among governments in South America cannot be allowed to get in the way of getting this project built. German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, and Spanish companies, some with the active backing of their governments, are also making offers for how they could participate. For its part, the Bolivian Ministry of Public Works signed an agreement with the Military Engineering School earlier this month to begin training rail experts. And, as occurred along the northern route, cities through which the railroad would pass (e.g. Bolivias Cochabamba and Oruro, and Perus Arequipa and Ilo) are already discussing preparations for the changes it could bring. In this hot debate over routes, China has made clear it is open to both, but is waiting for the countries in the region to make their decision. Chinas Ambassador Liang told El Deber: China is paying attention to the construction of the bioceanic railway. It is said that the total amount of investment for this megaproject is enormous, and concerns numerous countries. When the work is completed, it will facilitate the exchange of the regions goods and people, and efficiently promote the ecnomic development of all the countries through which it passes. China is waiting for the interested countries to carry out a feasibility study of the project, laying a solid basis for the later execution of the project. Political Will Accomplishes Dreams What has seriously set back the great project, is Wall Streets two de facto coups in 2016 in two key countries: in Brazil (with the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff, placing subservient Michel Temer in office) and in Peru (placing Boston banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the presidency). PPK (as Kuczynski is known) rejected the northern route flat-out on monetarist grounds (too expensive!) and environmentalist excuses (cant touch the Amazon!). The seriousness of his current stated support for the central route, remains to be tested. Brazils actual position is also unclear. Although the government is said to be about to give a formal yes to proceeding on feasibility studies for the central route, Temer (who has a 3% popularity rating) has been abjectly loyal to Wall Streets hatred of such projects, and is likely to remain so. But because neither China, nor Bolivia, nor many in Peru accept no for an answer, organizing for the project has never stopped. Bolivian Deputy Minister of Planning and Strategy, Hianny Ruben Romero, hit the nail on the head when he told a Paraguay seminar on South American infrastructure for regional integration on Oct. 24, that political will is often a factor which can determine whether any such project is done or not done. Bolivia wants to dream big about functioning as the heart of South America with the railway uniting the continents two coasts. Many dreams which were seen as impossibleS have been realized, he said. Sometimes one may think that a project is very ambitious, and it can be ruled out as not feasible, but when there is will, enthusiasm, and technical competence by the different countries, it is simply a matter of putting it on the agenda, and aligning interests. PRESS RELEASE U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer Tries To Block Halt to Saudi Bombing in Yemen Nov. 1, 2017 (EIRNS)U.S. House Minority Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer is blocking a bipartisan effort in the U.S. House of Representatives to end U.S. support for the Saudi bombing of Yemen. Hoyer is trying to defeat H. Con.Res.81, a resolution sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and 34 other Congress members to end U.S. military assistance to the Saudi-led war effort. The resolution calls on President Trump to remove U.S. military forces from the fighting in Yemen within 30 days. The resolution would not impede U.S. military action against Al Qaeda in Yemen. The Intercept reports that Hoyer and Republican caucus leaders are pressuring Congress members not to sponsor the legislation. Saudi bombing of Yemens civilian infrastructure and blockade of Yemens main port has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises of the century. Nearly 25% of the countrys 28 million residents are starving, and thousands, mostly children, are dying of cholera, as shipments of food and medicine are blocked. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), who opposes the war in Yemen, told The Intercept, "Ive been making the rounds on the Hill, and Ive heard from Hill offices that behind the scenes, House Democrats are being urged by Congressman Hoyers office not to sign on to H. Con.Res. 81." Hoyer is also trying to avoid a special Rules Committee decision by the House Republicans that would effectively kill the legislation before it receives a vote. Currently, the Resolution has privileged status under the War Powers Act of 1973, which means it will make it to the floor for a vote regardless of what happens at the committee. Those opposed to the Yemen war are afraid that the Republican leadership will strip the legislation of its privileged status, which means the resolution will have no chance. On Oct. 30, the 75-member Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed the Yemen resolution, calling for a swift end to "the senseless suffering of Yemeni victims of the U.S. Saudi military campaign, millions of whom are on the brink of starvation." PRESS RELEASE Portugal Signs Action Plan with China on Maritiime Silk Road Nov. 1, 2017 (EIRNS)Portugals Minister of the Sea, Ana Paula Vitorino, accompanied by representatives of 39 Portuguese port and related companies and industries, is in China for a busy, eight-day visit (Oct. 28 to Nov. 4) to concretize Portugals participation in the Maritime Silk Road. That includes hopes for some $2.5 billion in Chinese investments in expanding container and other facilities in the Portuguese ports of Sines (towards the south), Lisbon (in the center), and Leixoes (towards the north), as well as in areas of "blue biotechnology," oceanic aquaculture, and marine industry. The first of two planned high-level seminars took place in Beijing on Monday, with representatives of 86 Chinese companies present. Vitorinos Chinese counterpart, State Oceanic Administration Director Wang Hong, there spoke of maritime cooperation as an "essential part" of Chinese-Portuguese cooperation, and discussed Chinas overall view of the "ocean as an important doorway for China to embrace the whole world." Vitorino, for her part, said that "Portugal wants to declare itself a global logistical hub in the Atlantic area," and "double the value of the blue economy," to the level of becoming one of the five most sea-related economies in the world. She described Portugal as "a necessary stop on north-south Atlantic routes ... [and] a required crossing point in east-west routes." That statement echoes Portuguese State Internationalization Secretary Jorge Costa Oliveiras declarations at the May Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, that Portugal desires that "a maritime route to [the port of] Sines be included, and in addition, that the land rail Silk Road, which already goes from Chongqing to Madrid, also comes to Portugal." So far, Vitorino has signed an Action Plan with her Chinese counterpart, outlining collaboration on research and commercial projects as China and Portugal establish an expanded "blue economy" partnership. She met today with the President of the Development Bank of China. Vitorino also reported that agreements had been reached between Portuguese and Chinese companies to form consortia which would compete for various of the planned investment projects. No specific details were given, but the Portuguese businesses represented are leading port operators, construction companies, logistics operators, naval boatyard repair works, engineering, energy, aquaculture, and fish transformation companies, Macauhub reported. PRESS RELEASE Presidents of Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan Hold Summit in Iran Nov. 1, 2017 (EIRNS)The summit was held in Tehran on Nov. 1. The leaders met in both bilateral and trilateral formats, and discussed several issues, including Syria, joint efforts in the fight against terrorism, and economic cooperation. On the latter, they especially discussed infrastructure projects, including the construction of a main railway linethe western branch of the North-South Transport Corridoras well as cooperation in the energy sector. They also shared opinions on current international problems. The talks demonstrate how far relations among the three countries, which at many times had been tense over the years, have progressed, especially concerning economic cooperation. Russian President Vladimir Putin met in bilateral sessions with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "We are very pleased that, apart from our bilateral relations, our two countries play an important role in securing peace and stability in the region," Iranian President Rouhani told Putin in his welcoming remarks. In later talks, Rouhani noted Russian-Iranian cooperation in fighting terrorism, especially in Syria. "Iranian and Russian cooperation has had a great impact in fighting terrorism in the region. The joint cooperation and consultations are very important in the final stages too." Ahead of the talks, Putin thanked Rouhani for organizing the meetings. The Iranian Presidency reports that Putin made reference to attempts to dismantle the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran. Putin was quoted by Associated Press as saying: "Unilateral dismantling of the nuclear deal under any excuse is not acceptable. The lack of acceptance of international commitments by some countries is not acceptable." On the same day of the visit, Russias state-controlled oil company, Rosneft, signed a road map with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to build joint oil and gas projects worth $30 billion. Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said that the two countries would sign a memorandum of understanding to support the new pipeline project, which will bring Iranian gas to India. The day before the visit, a Russian company broke ground on two new power plants due to be built at the Bushehr nuclear facility in Iran. In his meeting with Azerbaijans Aliyev, Putin noted, "I am very pleased to see you in Tehran. We talk frequently, we talk on the phone. Because there is a special relationship between our countries. Our relations are at strategic partnership level." Putin also noted that the trade volume between Russia and Azerbaijan in the first nine months of the year had increased by 62%. For his part, Aliyev said: "We give a new impetus to the development of relations, we are very glad that in the economic sphere the trade turnover is growing. This shows great mutual interest of the business structures of the two countries. Our relations with Russia are of a strategic nature. We cooperate in all areas: in the humanitarian, economic, energy, transport, and military-technical areas. Therefore, these are comprehensive relations of friends, neighbors and close partners." Following the meeting of Putin, Rouhani, and Aliy ev, the Iranian President said at their joint press conference that "Mr. Putin proposed holding the next summit in Russia, and we agreed with this. I thank Mr. Putin, and we announce that the next summit will be held next year in Russia." Putin told the media, PRESS RELEASE Storm Infrastructure Issue Sharpens; Texas Asks for $61 Billion Nov. 1, 2017 (EIRNS)On Tuesday a report of the Governors Commission To Rebuild Texas confronted Congress with a request for $61 billion in new funds for storm protection reconstruction in the state, including at least $35 billion for major storm-protection infrastructure on Texass Gulf Coast. The report was taken to Washington by Gov. Greg Abbott, who discussed it with the Texas Congressional delegation and then with the House and Senate Republican leaders, according to the Texas Tribune Nov. 1. About a third of the funds requested are for housing restoration, but at least $35 billion is for Army Corps of Engineers work on the "Ike Dike" coastal barrier, other critical coastal infrastructure, "hardening" of the Houston Ship Channel against hurricanes, and other projects, the Dallas News reported today. That would only begin to address the needed investments. The Texas Water Development Commissions comprehensive, 1960s-dated plan for additional dams and reservoirs on the rivers flowing into Galveston Bay and the Gulf, and a coastal canal linking them, is not reported to be in the Commissions 300-page request as of now. Other plans, for stormwater capture and storage in aquifersstill in the feasibility study stagehave been passed by the Texas Legislature but vetoed by the Governor. The Trump Administration and Congress have so far quickly provided $36.7 billion in hurricane recovery emergency funds for Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the other states and territories that were hit. But with Texas making the first proposal for large-scale funds including investment in new economic infrastructure, action will become problematic. Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands will make critical infrastructure requests. The Congressional GOP "tax reform" obsession will delay the requests, and actually compete with them for new "budget deficit room" of which tax reform demands $150 billion/year. These needs clearly demand a national credit institution whose major mission is to fund such major new infrastructure needs, which require trillions nationally. LaRouche representatives have discussed a "Hamiltonian" national bank with many Members of Congress; but the most immediate opportunity for progress on it, lies actually in President Trumps upcoming meetings with President Xi of China and Prime Minister Abe of Japan. Cooperative investment in infrastructure in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative of China, will open up the potentials. One day in the fall of 2015, Matthew Weiner was wandering a rarefied block on the Upper East Side when he saw a construction worker leering at an adolescent girl in a school uniform tall and slender and a little knock-kneed as she walked into a building under renovation. What I really notice, he says, remembering the event, is him stare at her in a way that really just makes me sick. Now hes tucked into a booth in the velvety bunker of the restaurant at the Carlyle Hotel, near where he witnessed the troubling encounter. As I was walking around the corner, I just thought, what if her dad saw that? That carnal glance inspired Heather, the Totality, the first work of fiction published by the man best known for creating the Emmy-winning television sensation Mad Men. The slim novel, written from the perspective of multiple characters, is a taut tale of obsession involving an affluent Manhattan couple, their beloved daughter and a disturbed young man. Advertisement While the novels contemporary timeline and sparse dialogue mark a departure from Mad Men, its New York setting and exploration of class, marriage and the perils of success will be familiar to viewers of the drama, which followed 1960s ad man Don Draper. The thing I was making was the thing not the blueprint of the thing. When Weiner wrapped post-production on the series in December 2014, he followed the advice of friends and spent several months refilling the tank. The 52-year-old wore his robe a lot and read, for the first time, Alice Munro and Haruki Murakami. He caught up on TV and re-watched Angels in America, a favorite because theres just no rules in that thing. He even took a break from his long-held habit of jotting down ideas and overheard conversations in a notebook, then gradually tried to start again a painful process, it turns out. My ear wasnt there, Weiner says. One day, he scrawled a note in frustration: So much coming in, nothing coming out. People kept asking him the same thing: Whats next? Even his children (Weiner and his wife, Linda Brettler, have four sons) would pose the question in jest, and Weiner would play along. Well, Im probably going to go downstairs and make some coffee, hed say. Then he talked to his friend, the novelist A.M. Homes, who suggested he apply to Yaddo, the famed artists retreat in upstate New York, to figure out how hed follow the groundbreaking success of Mad Men. He was on a pit stop en route to Yaddo when he witnessed the schoolgirl and the ogling worker. That week he also saw Hamilton and Fun Home on Broadway, and read correspondence between Hemingway and Fitzgerald at the Morgan Library indisputably inspiring stuff, he remembers. A few days later at Yaddo, It comes to me that Im going to do a story about this moment, and I started going backwards: Ok, who is the girl? Who are her parents? Why are they in this neighborhood? The resulting story shifts perspectives between Mark and Karen Breakstone, who live in a luxury apartment near Central Park with their daughter, Heather, who is intelligent, empathetic and, from infancy, so beautiful that she would inevitably become the center of attention in a park or a store. Early in the narrative, Weiner introduces another character, Bobby Klasky, raised by a drug-addicted single mom, setting up what will be an inevitable collision between their worlds. As he puts it; You know that these three people are hurtling towards each other. Matthew Weiner. (Michael Nagle / For The Times ) With an omniscient narrator, Heather, the Totality also features very little dialogue a surprising choice, perhaps, for someone whos spent much of the last two decades writing lines for actors to deliver. But it was a conscious decision to make the few lines of dialogue really huge, he says. Besides, When you write a conversation, its open to interpretation. I didnt want it to be up for debate. Its tempting to view this last admission in light of Mad Men, a show that was endlessly dissected by a cottage industry of recappers and faced both ecstatic praise and harsh criticism. Weiner concedes that he wanted to escape what I had been doing on some level. The beauty of writing Heather, the Totality was that he never had to worry about budget, casting or location. The thing I was making was the thing not the blueprint of the thing, he says. If we want to go back and meet Marks parents in a flashback, that could cost a fortune in a movie. They go to Paris for one sentence. Its free! Often praised for its novelistic style, Mad Men was also dense with literary allusions Frank OHara, Mary McCarthy, D.H. Lawrence. Weiner, who grew up in a family where books were revered and TV-watching was strictly limited, has cited John Cheever as a major influence on the series. While hed written some poetry, his earlier attempts at fiction had petered out. Ive always wanted to do it and admired it, and maybe it is the highest form in some way, he says. Years in the writers rooms of shows including The Sopranos and Becker gave him a better understanding of how to see a narrative through to its resolution, Weiner says. Once youre doing 22 stories a year, youre starting to understand what a story is. Chatty and digressive an observation about the physical intimacy of books somehow leads to a defense of Mad Mens feminist credentials and thoughts about the Orwellian tendencies of the Trump administration Weiner possesses a restless intellect and voracious sense of curiosity. He also seems to delight in new artistic challenges, directing the comedic feature Are You Here in between seasons of Mad Men, and a pivotal episode of the prison drama Orange Is the New Black last year. Hes immersed in writing and directing the upcoming eight-episode anthology series The Romanoffs for Amazon Studios. (The long hours, he says, are part of why hes looking so trim.) Weiner is guided by advice once given to him by Larry Gelbart, the late MASH writer: Dont do anything for money, dont do anything that youve done before and dont do anything thats boring. And you will know if youre bored that youre doing it for money. Rather than bored, Weiner seems energized giddy, even by the process of writing Heather, the Totality. With a grin, he says, 18-year-old Matt cant believe theres a novel. Perched on a vista high above the city, immersed in rare, significant papers and art, Liska Jacobs had what seemed like a dream job as an assistant librarian at the Getty Research Institute, where she managed the special collections reading room. The only trouble, she realized while archiving a delicate collection of writings and letters that had once belonged to the surrealist artist Man Ray, was that it wasnt her dream. I just out of the blue quit, which you dont really do, said Jacobs, sitting at the dining room table in her Pasadena home. Our meeting was her first interview as a published novelist, and although her hand trembled faintly as she poured fresh mint tea, she spoke with conviction about her path to writing. In rehousing Rays so-called Hollywood album, which includes ephemera from the time he spent living in Los Angeles, Jacobs read in his letters that he saw photography as a way to make money and that he actually wanted to paint. It sort of shocked me. He wrote often about hating photography, she said. That Ray resented the work he was known for, his passions subsumed, affected Jacobs deeply. It felt like a message, asking: Would her work at the Getty be her legacy? No, she recalled thinking. Id rather live on the beach and write. Advertisement In Catalina, Jacobs tracks, with a sense of inevitability, the fallout of a woman with the audacity to make her own mistakes. Catalina, Jacobs riveting debut novel part California story, part feminist social commentary is the result of taking that plunge. She drafted the book while pursuing a masters in fine arts from UC Riverside-Palm Desert, working as an event coordinator at the Last Bookstore and in her spare time co-editing the cult favorite Dum Dum Zine. Her book is so rooted in place in the high-thread-count sheets of the Miramar in Santa Monica and the nearby shores of Catalina Island that her vivid, evocative prose feels backlit by the glare off the sea. Its California that her narrator, Elsa, returns to after the end of an affair and an untidy firing from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and her reckless, compulsively readable unraveling takes place on Catalina Island during a tense reunion with an ensemble cast of old friends. >>Liska Jacobs celebrates the release of Catalina at the Last Bookstore at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 10. In Los Angeles, theres this duality, said Jacobs, an L.A. native who comes from a line of Hollywood sound editors on her fathers side. Its very plastic and built up. We dont really keep any of our old buildings but then right outside of it we have the Santa Monica Mountains, Griffith Park. Attuned to the polarities of Los Angeles nature and development, the inherent symbolism of lawns landscaped in a desert climate, of sunny bungalows built on the San Andreas Fault Jacobs set the book in what she saw as its ultimate expression: Catalina. Liska Jacobs. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times ) I think its such a strange island, she said, referencing the touristy appeal of its only city, Avalon, in contrast to the natural beauty of Paradise Cove and the village of Two Harbors, all crucial locations in the book. Its a loaded place, and a natural extension of Elsas identity crisis, as well as the novels contention that appearances can deceive. (I like the idea of a decorative predator, Elsa thinks on Page 1.) Each character has their exterior, which is one way, and their interior, which is something else, says Jacobs, who discussed her work with careful, steady focus. Her sense of the sinister lurking in paradise is bone deep. In California, she added, theres always ugliness to beauty. Catalinas intelligent, beautiful narrator, Elsa, hell-bent on a booze-fueled, pill-popping undoing, would agree; she embodies the potential menace of a sharp, gilded edge. She comes from a long line of tortured-women-on-the-edge characters, Jacobs said of her literary inheritance, Jean Rhys heroines, Joan Didions Maria Wyeth. Jacobs, who doesnt plot outside of a mood-board and timeline pinned above her pleasantly lived-in desk (the anthologies Writing Los Angeles and Seeing Ourselves: Womens Self-Portraits topped crooked stacks), was surprised by just how much her protagonist, in 2017, has in common with those forerunners. Today, as back then, a tortured female character runs the risk of being labeled unlikable, although Jacobs resists this: All that were really saying is that [shes] a woman with agency making choices different than our own. [Jacobs] sense of the sinister lurking in paradise is bone deep. In California, she added, theres always ugliness to beauty. Some of Elsas choices might be considered morally bereft, but she makes them without apology. And yet despite her agency, neither her sexuality nor her rage go unpunished. In Catalina, Jacobs tracks, with a sense of inevitability, the fallout of a woman with the audacity to make her own mistakes. A prodigal daughter, Elsa flees the affair, only to discover that while you can never really go home again, you also cant escape. Women are trapped by their womanhood, said Jacobs, because its something thats defined by whoever is in the room with them. Or, in Catalina, whoever else is on the island or manning the boat. The trip includes Robby, Elsas ex-husband; Charly, her childhood best friend; and Tom, their wealthy, unscrupulous sailing captain and host for the trip. Their myriad histories, flirtations and betrayals crisscross like threads of cats cradle. That the novel has been praised as California noir interests Jacobs. All I tried to do in this book is be honest, she said. I dont live in a California noir. Jacobs time at the Getty entered the text obliquely: She was inspired by the museums sense of remove and isolation, the solitude of beautiful objects behind glass. Catalina, Jacobs adds, is a lot about [Elsas] loneliness. Drug and alcohol abuse are part of her characters dissolution; sometimes she would seep too much into me, Jacobs said. My husband would come home from work, and Id be having a martini and Id have bought a pack of cigarettes. Jacobs took to playing a certain song, Service Bell by Grizzly Bear and Feist, to bring her back into the atmosphere of the novel as an alternative. To capture Catalina, Jacobs spent a week there, writing at a camping table; her current research is farther flung. I swore to myself, if I ever sold a second book, I would place it somewhere more exotic, she said with a laugh. So the second book takes place in Rome and Puglia. Shes traveled there twice in the last six months. Research trips to Italy seem a distant cry from the 50 or 60 rejections she received when querying agents for Catalina, or, for that matter, the chill of museum air. Writing is long, arduous work, but its nothing compared to the cliff dive of following your calling. The hardest part about selling a book, said Jacobs, is believing in it. agatha.french@latimes.com @agathafrenchy The University of Notre Dame, which once reigned as a beacon of liberal Catholic thought, has announced that it will cancel all birth-control coverage for students and employees next year. That includes contraception provided to those recipients for free, under government auspices and at government expense. Notre Dame thus becomes the first and most important employer publicly to take advantage of the Trump administrations Oct. 6 rollback of contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The act requires insurance plans to provide contraceptive services without charging a deduction or co-pay. Trump expanded an exemption aimed at religious institutions and widened by the Supreme Court to cover privately held companies claiming religious scruples, to almost any employers claiming religious or moral objections to birth control. The Trump policy also made a workaround developed by the Obama administration for employees of exempt employers optional. That workaround allows those employees to obtain birth control from a third-party insurance provider, with the cost covered by the government instead of the employer. Under the Trump rules, employers no longer have to notify their insurer or the government of their objection, and the third-party coverage is no longer mandatory. Advertisement Notre Dame wants to eat its cake, and have it still, at the expense of Congress, administrative agencies, and the employees who will be affected. Federal Judge Philip P. Simon Women and familities covered by employers who claim the exemption and reject the accommodation will henceforth have to pay for contraceptives out of their own pockets. That will be the case for Notre Dames employees and students covered by university insurance plans. Notre Dame has said that it wont accept the accommodationin fact, it sued in federal court to overturn it, albeit unsuccessfully. The university says it has about 12,400 students, of whom 3,000 are covered by its health plan, and 5,800 employees. Notre Dame has been in the forefront of the war against the contraception mandate, though the university has been consistently slapped down in federal court. Before we get into the procedural details, the universitys position is worth placing in historical context Notre Dames history, that is. The universitys prestige as an academic institution dates only as far back as the presidency of the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who led Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987. Hesburgh not only moved Notre Dame into the forefront of American academia; he and his university became identified with progressive Catholic thought, largely by establishing that the Catholic university must operate with true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. That phrase comes from the 1967 Land OLakes statement, which was issued over the signatures of leaders of numerous Catholic institutions, including Georgetown University and Boston College, but which Hesburgh masterminded as a sort of manifesto for Catholic higher education. Its purpose was to balance the universitys responsibility to modern society with devotion to religious ideals: The Catholic university of the future will be a true modern university but specifically Catholic in profound and creative ways, the statement read. Hesburghs progressive approach extended beyond academia and the Catholic hierarchy. He was a prominent liberal figure throughout the civil rights era a famous photo shows him linking arms with Martin Luther King Jr. and singing We Shall Overcome at a 1964 rally in Chicago and was known for his work opposing nuclear proliferation and fighting poverty at home and abroad. But he also was a controversial figure for Catholic conservatives, not least for his stance on contraception and womens role in the church he was once quoted saying he had no problem with females or married people as priests and he turned Notre Dame from an all-male into a co-educational university. Although he was a staunch opponent of abortion, he supported a liberalized view of human sexuality and population control policies generally, and he supported dissenters on his own faculty from Pope Paul VIs 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which reinforced the churchs opposition to contraception and abortion. Its hard to know what Hesburgh, who died in 2015 at the age of 97, might have thought about Notre Dames stance on the Affordable Care Act contraception mandate. But the university has been an especially aggressive challenger of the mandate. The university sued to block the mandate in December 2013, only days before the rules were to go into effect, and demanded an emergency injunction. That irritated Judge Philip P. Simon of U.S. District Court in Indiana, who observed that the rules governing the contraceptive mandate had been published the previous July. Notre Dame has in many ways created its own emergency, he wrote, and I am left to wonder why. Simon denied the injunction request, noting that Notre Dame could take advantage of the Obama accommodation by merely signing a statement that it objected to providing contraceptive coverage. He gave short shrift to Notre Dames claim that it would be tainted with sin by signing a form that allowed another entity to provide the coverage to its own workers and students, since the opt-out notice would leave the university with nothing to do with providing contraception. Notre Dames goal was not only to avoid paying for its charges contraception, Simon wrote, but to stop anyone else from paying for it either. Notre Dame wants to eat its cake, and have it still, he wrote, at the expense of Congress, administrative agencies, and the employees who will be affected. Notre Dame signed the opt-out form on Dec. 31, the last day it could have done so, and then appealed the denial of the injunction. It was again turned down by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Trumps Oct. 6 order, however, absolved the university and all other objecting employers from the requirement that they opt out from the birth control mandate in writing, and eliminating the third-party work-around. The universitys president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, said after the rule change that critical issues of religious freedom were at stake in the contraceptive mandate. For that reason, we welcome this reversal. Notre Dames contraceptive coverage will end with the start of the next insurance plan year, Jan. 1 for employees and Aug. 15 for students. Jenkins got some pushback from one of Notre Dames own law students, Kate Rochat. No woman should ever be denied health care because her employer or universitys religious views are prioritized over her serious medical needs, Rochat said. She was speaking in connection with a a lawsuit to overturn the Trump rulemaking filed by American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of its 1.6 million members and members of the Service Employees International Union, whose contraceptive coverage is at risk of being canceled. As an ACLU member, Rochat is implicitly a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com. Return to Michael Hiltziks blog. UPDATES: 2:04 p.m.: This post has been updated with more details of the effect of the Trump Oct. 6 order on the Obama-era accommodation for contraceptive coverage. The shift toward electric vehicles took a big hit Thursday when Republicans officially proposed wiping out the $7,500 federal tax credit for buyers of electric cars as part of a sweeping tax overhaul. Tesla would be the hardest-hit company should the plan pass Congress and be signed into law by President Trump. Although Chief Executive Elon Musk has said the companys business plan does not depend on such subsidies, the credit would be cut beginning in 2018, just when Tesla plans to scale up production of its new Model 3 sedan, with a current price of about $45,000 before subsidies. Tesla stock slid 6.8% on Thursday to $299.26. The automaker had no immediate comment. It isnt the first time Teslas clean-energy focus has conflicted with the Republican agenda. Musk had served on a business advisory committee assembled by Trump, but quit over Trumps opposition to the Paris climate change accord. Advertisement Other companies that would be immediately affected include General Motors, which sells the Chevy Bolt EV and Volt plug-in hybrid, and Nissan, which just introduced a new version of its all-electric Leaf. All major automakers have announced plans to begin selling all-electric vehicles over the next several years, and all would have to deal with the fallout from the elimination of the tax credit. Battery packs for electric cars still cost thousands of dollars more to make than traditional internal combustion engines, and removing the subsidy could place them at an even bigger price disadvantage with gasoline- and diesel-powered passenger vehicles. Electric vehicles are several years away from being cost competitive, said Colin McKerracher, advanced transportation analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. If the credit is cut, it would have a very big impact on the EV market. Electric car promoters are hoping the credit will be restored to the bill before passage. This is a terrible idea, said Joel Levin, executive director of the advocacy group Plug In America. Fortunately, this is just the beginning of the discussion, not the end of it. Subsidy foes say electric cars should compete at a free-market price without government assistance. Steve Leslie, who owns a roofing company in Hood River, Ore., and drives a Tesla Model S, said he wont give up his deposit on a Model 3, tax credit or no. A big fan of electric cars and Tesla CEO Musk, Leslie acknowledged that the lack of a credit might make the car unaffordable to some Model 3 depositors, which he said would be too bad. Obviously wed like to have the credit, said Leslie, 56. Everybody likes a tax break. But I hate the oil companies more. I hate them so much I dont [care] about the tax break. Mandates favoring electric vehicles are being implemented or considered around the world. London and Paris want to ban gas-powered vehicles by 2040. China has made clear it aims to dominate electric vehicle production, and is considering mandates on top of existing incentives. The question for the United States is whether we want these cars to be built here or in China, Levin said. In California, legislators plan to introduce a bill in January that would mandate electric powertrains for all new cars sold in the state by 2040. California currently offers $2,500 refunds on electric cars, which would remain whatever happens with the federal credit. The states Zero Emission Vehicle program, which in effect mandates automakers meet a certain percentage of EV sales in California and nine other states, would remain. The aim for automakers is 8% of new car sales in California be electric by 2025. Its not a foregone conclusion that U.S. automakers would shelve their EV plans, said Bloomberg New Energy Finances McKerracher. But it would take the pressure off a little bit and could have implications for their (global) competitiveness. It could also hurt a budding industry in battery packs, charging stations and other electric car components. China and Germany are committed to the electric car market, he said. Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts 1 million pure-electric passenger vehicles will be sold in 2017, half of them in China, about a quarter in the U.S. UPDATES: 3:10 p.m.: This article has been updated with comments from a Tesla customer. 2:20 p.m.: This article has been updated to include additional analysis of the electric car market and a closing stock price for Tesla. This article was originally published at 1:25 p.m. Leaders of the NAACP and American Airlines have met to discuss the civil rights groups travel warning alleging discriminatory practices by the airline, but no resolution appears imminent. The NAACP issued a travel advisory late last month, warning African Americans that flying on American Airlines could subject them to disrespectful, discriminatory or unsafe conditions. The NAACP cited four incidents in which African American passengers were either removed from a flight or forced to give up a first-class seat on the carriers planes. Advertisement According to the annual air travel consumer report compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation, American Airlines had 18 complaints last year that alleged discrimination based on race, more than any other carrier. On Tuesday, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, NAACP General Counsel Brad Berry and several activists met in Washington with American Airlines Chief Executive Doug Parker and the carriers vice president for customer experience, Kerry Philipovitch. We welcomed the opportunity to meet, and had a positive and productive dialogue, airline spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said of the meeting. We look forward to continuing the conversation and working together. The NAACP issued a statement, saying the two sides had a full and frank dialogue, but words are no substitute for action. Both sides said they will continue to meet to discuss the allegations. hugo.martin@latimes.com To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter. Broadcom Ltd., a $100-billion semiconductor company legally based in Singapore, will relocate its home address to the United States, President Trump announced Thursday. The company, which manufactures communications chips around the world, said it would relocate its legal address to Delaware once shareholders approve the move, bringing $20 billion in annual revenue back to the U.S. Its corporate headquarters will remain in San Jose. The move would enable Broadcom to avoid a cumbersome federal review process. Advertisement The Oval Office announcement was tied to the release of congressional Republicans tax reform proposal, which would drastically reduce corporate rates and make it easier for companies to deduct foreign taxes. The company credits the GOP plan with making it easier to do business in the U.S. but said it will move to the U.S. regardless of whether the plan passes. A year ago, Broadcom entered into a $5.5-billion agreement to merge with San Jose network provider Brocade Communications Systems Inc., but that has been delayed while the deal is scrutinized by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The high-level government committee, known as CFIUS, investigates proposed acquisitions of U.S. companies by foreign buyers on national security and intellectual property grounds. By becoming a U.S.-based company, Broadcom would avoid the CFIUS process. The company makes semiconductor chips used for a variety of products, including cable set-top boxes, smartphones and other wireless devices. Its rooted in one of the largest tech industry acquisitions, when Singapore-based Avago Technologies Ltd. bought Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion last year. The deal made Broadcom Ltd. the parent company of both Broadcom Corp. and Avago Technologies. By joining forces, the rival chipmakers hoped to make a bigger dent in the rapidly growing market for wireless devices. Nearly 20% of its revenue in the most recent fiscal quarter came from sales to Apple Inc. and contractors that manufacture Apple products, such as Foxconn Technology Group. About half of its revenue comes from China-based distributors and manufacturers, though the end products are used around the world. The Singapore Economic Development Board has awarded the company with tax breaks for having a major presence there, but the company said in a recent regulatory filing that one of those benefits ends in 2021, four years earlier than expected. About 39% of Broadcoms employees are in Asia. Broadcom said it has 7,500 U.S. employees across 24 states. It has manufacturing facilities in Colorado and Pennsylvania and engineering offices in California. Our move would domicile our $20-billion annual revenue in the United States, Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan said in a statement. From our base here, each year we will invest $3 billion in research and engineering and $6 billion in manufacturing, resulting in more high-paying tech jobs. Broadcom shares edged up 0.1% on Thursday to $259.50. Brocade shares jumped 7.2% to $12.58. UPDATES: 1:50 p.m.: This article was updated with Broadcoms and Brocades stock prices. 11 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about Broadcoms history, products, workforce and finances. This article was originally published at 10:10 a.m. The sidewalk outside Njideka Akunyili Crosbys art studio in an industrial area south of downtown L.A. is bustling and loud. The other side of her graffiti-scribbled front door, however, is neat and peaceful. In fact, the room she paints in is completely bare, but for a ladder, fans and a tiny cart housing tubes of paint. Cream and white sheets hang loosely from the window, blocking the sun, and the stark, white walls are studded with nails for hanging works in progress. Today, there are none. The room is conspicuously devoid of art. Thats because the Nigerian painter, who has lived in the U.S. for the last 18 years and last month was named a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, has shipped off every last one of her paintings for exhibitions around the country. Her solo show Front Room: Njideka Akunyili Crosby Counterparts opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art in October, as did Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Predecessors at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Later this month, the artist will debut new work at Prospect New Orleans, a triennial of contemporary art. Njideka Akunyili Crosby inside her bare L.A. studio. The artist has shipped off all her works for exhibitions around the country. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times) Propping herself up on a stool to chat, Akunyili Crosby seems somewhat cautious about her success, including the $625,000 award from the MacArthur Foundation. Im happy? she says of this moment in her career. Im just so hard on myself, so critical of what I do, that its tough to just have that full moment of relaxing and feeling all is well. She smiles shyly, glimpsing around the spare room. But, yeah, Im happy. Then she breaks into a little contained jig from the waist up: thumbs in the air, forearms gently chugging back and forth. Then just as quickly, she composes herself. That duality the diligent artist prone to making lists and putting in seven days a week in her studio versus the goofy creative who might burst into a jig alone in the supermarket aisle is central to Akunyili Crosbys identity; hybridity defines her work. Shes a transnational artist whos lived for roughly equal amounts of time in the U.S. and her native Nigeria, and shes a career woman juggling a 10-month-old baby. Even her outfit today is a smashup: a worn, cotton T-shirt that says Native Texan on it it belongs to her husband, who is white worn with blue jeans and a silk scarf she bought in London that is tied around her head in traditional Nigerian fashion. This multinational perspective runs through every one of her pieces. Her large-scale mixed-media works on paper blend figurative painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and collage. The mix of techniques and materials together with imagery from the U.S. and Nigeria the late dictator Sani Abacha, a friends North Dakota wedding, a band in Nigeria that began as Michael Jackson impersonators speak to straddling nationalities, divided personal histories and the greater appropriation of cultural traditions. It really is about what it means to be someone who has existed between multiple worlds and carries all those influences with them at once for me, a rural Nigerian person, an urban Nigerian person and an American at the same time, Akunyili Crosby says. Im trying to use my work, and my life story, to explore this idea of a liminal space, or a third space, where multiple things come together to yield a new thing. Njideka Akunyili Crosbys Nyado: The Thing Around Her Neck, 2011. It includes charcoal, acrylic, colored pencil, lace collage and Xerox transfers on paper. (Victoria Miro, London/Venice) Njideka Akunyili Crosbys Home: As You See Me, 2017. The work includes acrylic, transfers, colored pencil, charcoal, collage and commemorative fabric on paper. (Brian Forrest / Victoria Miro, London/Venice) Akunyili Crosby scatters color pictures of her work across a tabletop. Her intimate and seemingly quotidian scenes of domestic life in Nigeria and the U.S. are bold and colorful, literally layered with narratives that are personal and political, like the layering of sediment, she says. Into painted scenes of her grandmothers dining table or her husband hugging, Akunyili Crosby lays dense collages mixing cutouts from Nigerian lifestyle magazines, family photographs, news clippings, album covers and other sources. Occasionally, she glues the images on directly, providing texture, but more often, she photo-transfers them, then applies color washes, which break up the collaged areas into abstract blocks and give them a faded, almost receding effect. Its like a faint, faded memory of a place I used to know, a place I used to live in, she says. As personal as they are, the works also speak to cultural appropriation, presenting Nigerian traditions as if Russian nesting dolls. Images of tea service appear repeatedly, a local custom absorbed after British colonialism. She pastes West African portrait fabric into her work, a commemorative cloth worn at celebratory events such as weddings, thats created using a Dutch wax-print technique that itself originally came from Indonesia. A pair of works in the Baltimore show each features a self portrait based on near identical photographs. In one, shes seated at a modest Nigerian dining table; images in the collage below include a photo of her mother from Akunyili Crosbys wedding, Nollywood actress Genevieve Nnaji and a Nigerian lawyer wearing a traditional white wig. The companion piece depicts the artist seated at an IKEA-like dining table in a West Coast apartment; images in the collage include a photograph of Akunyili Crosby and her husband hiking in Colorado and Janelle Monae in front of a sign that says, Black girls rock. Njideka is an artist who has the capacity to really bring together worlds that may not stand in unison. Which is to say the continental African experience and that of black folks living in diaspora, says Jamillah James, curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. In 2015, when James was at the Hammer Museum, she gave Akunyili Crosby her first solo museum exhibition, and she organized a concurrent show of Akunyili Crosbys work at Mark Bradfords Leimert Park gallery and social services complex, Art + Practice. Shes able to speak universally about the experience of family and community and finding ones way in the world, James says. But theres something thats really powerful about putting forth images of black people and having those be embraced by institutions and galleries. I think thats where the political power of her work really is. Njideka Akunyili Crosbys I Still Face You, 2015. Acrylic, charcoal, colored pencils, collage, oil and transfers on paper (Joshua White Photography / Victoria Miro, London/Venice) Njideka Akunyili Crosbys Mama, Mummy and Mamma (Predecessors #2), 2014. Acrylic, color pencils, charcoal and transfers on paper (Mario Todeschini / Victoria Miro, London/Venice) Growing up in Nigeria, Akunyili Crosby toggled between rural and urban life. Her family lived in Enugu, a former coal mining town, and she spent weekends and summers in her grandmothers rural village images of which factor heavily into her paintings. As age 11, she attended boarding school in the more cosmopolitan city of Lagos. Art wasnt a large part of Akunyili Crosbys upbringing. As a girl, she copied pictures from her fathers Time and Newsweek magazines for fun. But hers was a science family: Her father was a physician, and her mother, a Ph.D. in pharmacology, taught and went on to become a government official, heading up the Nigerian version of the Food and Drug Administration. Of her five siblings, three are doctors, a profession Akunyili Crosby always thought shed end up in. After her mother won a green card lottery for the family, Akunyili Crosby moved at age 16 to Philadelphia. She took an oil painting class at the local community college, and that sent her on a new path. She studied fine art and biology at Swarthmore College, where she met her future husband, also an artist, and did a stint at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before earning an MFA in painting from Yale University in 2011. In the six years since, Akunyili Crosby, now 34, has swiftly ascended in the art world. She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which honored her with the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, and she received the Smithsonian American Art Museums James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize, among other awards. In L.A. alone, her work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer. Akunyili Crosby reached an entirely new level of recognition when she was named a MacArthur Fellow, recognized for visualizing the complexities of globalization and transnational identity. I had no idea, none, she says of winning the award. She was in the car, pulling up to her studio, when the phone rang. Telemarketers, she thought, but she picked up anyway. Even after the MacArthur Foundation identified itself, the good news didnt compute. My brain was still playing catch up, I was in a fog, she says. I wasnt screaming and laughing. I just was in a daze, sitting in my car, wondering if I was having a real experience or a dream and hallucination. The MacArthur award was something shed always hoped would come, maybe in her 50s or 60s, but it was at the end of my list of hopes and dreams, she says, breathy, as if still stunned by the news. Im just excited to hibernate in my studio and experiment. Njideka Akunyili Crosby, photographed in her studio in Los Angeles last month before the MacArthur announcement. (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation) That could take a while. Akunyili Crosby works slowly and deliberately, scouring the internet for days at a time, thumbing through family photo albums, reading novels and postcolonial theory, sketching ideas and it all goes up on a messy process wall. She creates eight or nine large-scale works a year. Pushing the boundaries of painting breaking the rules, she says is as important to her as the work itself. Im really trying to figure out how I can work within traditional figurative painting but also, whats the new thing youre adding to this conversation? she says. The five pieces at the Baltimore Museum of Art, per Akunyili Crosbys instructions, hang unframed, without glass. The exposed works have movement and texture, says exhibition curator Kristen Hileman. Its like youre standing in front of huge pages out of a book, or a huge photo album, Hileman adds. Its a very immediate experience of being with the artwork. You get a sense of it coming off the wall, of it coming into your space. The figures in the image are almost life-sized, so you really feel like youre in the same space as the image. The MacArthur genius grant is a no-strings-attached award. Akunyili Crosby plans to use the money to travel to Nigeria for an extended period to do research. I want to go deeper, she says. That goes for studio experimentation as well. Other than being included in a group exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in June 2018, no new shows are in the works, giving her some free-form studio time. Im looking forward to having a stretch of time where Im making work without the pressure of a show and I can just experiment, she says. Because its in those moments of experimentation that I expand on my practice and discover new moves. The end goal? Fill up her studio again with new works. Njideka Akunyili Crosbys The Beautyful Ones, Series #1c, 2014. Acrylic, color pencils and transfers on paper. (Joshua White Photography / Victoria Miro, London / Venice) deborah.vankin@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin ALSO Sexual harassment allegations at Artforum Yayoi Kusama at the Broad: Lots of mirrors, not so much artistic reflection Alejandro Inarritu's virtual reality installation, 'Carne y Arena,' wins a special Oscar If you stand outside of Mary Corses studio in Topanga Canyon at just the right hour, you might get to see one of her works come to life. The painter, who is known for playing with the properties of light, last year transformed the exterior of her studio into one of her largest pieces to date. Along the buildings exterior face, she painted a sequence of four simple columns employing one of the materials for which she is best known: white paint mixed with glass microbeads. The material is what gives street signs and lane markings their illuminative properties. They dont reflect light, they prism, Corse says. It makes a triangle between the surface, the viewer and light. So if the viewer moves, then it changes. For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that Mary Corse received a bachelors degree from UC Santa Barbara and a masters from Chouinard Art Institute. Corse attended UC Santa Barbara but did not receive her degree there. She received her bachelors from Chouinard. In broad daylight, the columns on Corses studio are barely perceptible. But at dusk, when the light dims, it is a different story. The moment the wall is hit by any stray beam of light, the columns take on an otherworldly glow. The effect is that of a portal opening into a parallel universe. Advertisement I like work that takes you beyond, Corse says, seated in her studio on a bright October day. Thinking is great in its place. ... But my work resists the technological in a way. It resists thought. Thinking is finite. Thinking is in the past. I like work that takes you into the infinite. Its hard not to have a whoa moment when standing before a work by Mary Corse. If the viewer moves, then it changes. Mary Corse on her light-sensitive work Since the 1960s, the Los Angeles artist has produced a body of work that toys with light and the emotional states it can induce using reflective and refractive materials to create pieces that can shift and change in surprising ways as you move before them. For much of her career, Corse has worked quietly in Topanga Canyon, apart from the hubbub of the art world, and apart from the largely male California Light and Space artists with which she is most frequently associated. That movement identified with figures such as James Turrell, Larry Bell and Robert Irwin was once clustered primarily around Venice Beach. One of the things I like about being here in Topanga, Corse says, her bright blue eyes surveying the room, I was left a lot to my own ideas. Corse has consistently made a living as an artist. She was part of the stable at Richard Bellamys famed Manhattan gallery. She has shown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Her work is in the permanent collections of the prestigious Menil Collection in Houston and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. But as an artist, she has remained somewhat under the radar known to a circle of art world insiders; less so to the general public. That is changing. Corse is the subject of a one-woman show now at Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, with works from various stages in her career including an immersive environment she first conceived in the 1960s titled The Cold Room, a free-standing structure kept at near-freezing temperatures, in which floats a spectral light box. If its very hot, you slow down, she says. If its colder, you wake up and pay attention. I like that state. In May, Dia:Beacon, the temple to minimalism in New Yorks Hudson Valley, will present a long-term installation of four recently acquired works covering the span of her career. And the following month, the Whitney Museum of American Art will open the doors on Corses first solo museum survey. It will be focusing on her critical moments, says the exhibitions curator, Kim Conaty, starting with her early experiments with shaped canvases, when she was beginning to think about how to find light within painting. In powerful, yet understated ways, Corse uses materials both common (paint) and high-tech (Tesla coils) to create perceptual experiments that also nod to abstraction and Light and Space. She has not only used materials in innovative ways to literally capture light, Conaty says, but to also capture the metaphysical qualities of light. And she has done a lot of it through painting. Bill Griffin, a founding partner at Kayne Griffin Corcoran, who has represented Corse since last year, says he came to her work through Turrell, whom he also represents. Hes a huge champion of Mary and the degree to which she has been under-recognized, says Griffin, who feels its time for Corse to get her due. This is a story of somebody who has been completely committed for five decades, regardless of what the market or what anybody said. She has carved out an incredible body of work on her own. The light spark Corse grew up in Berkeley, where she cultivated an early interest in both art and ballet dancing until the age of 16. On a couple of occasions, she even appeared in performances for the Oakland Ballet Company. Through ballet, I learned to work hard, she says. The freedom of ballet is when you are finally moving across that floor doing these amazing jumps and turns to the music. You really lose yourself in this other world. Its another state. Art offered her similarly ecstatic states and the path she would ultimately follow. Corse says the private girls school she attended afforded her the luxury of a well-trained art teacher who cultivated in students a serious interest in abstraction. I was introduced to [Willem] de Kooning, [Hans] Hoffman, Josef Albers a lot of artists, she says. And she was taught that painting did something. You looked at a Hoffman and things were moving around back and forth, she explains. Same with Albers. You stare at it and you see one color and then you see another. That was important to me. After high school, she attended UC Santa Barbara for a time before ultimately transferring to Chouinard Art Institute (later to become part of CalArts), where she got her bachelors degree. By the time she landed at Chouinard, Corse was already on her way to defining her mature artistic voice. She had explored color and abstraction creating octagonal paintings that experimented with the nature of the medium, adding metallic flake to her paint for extra brilliance, placing works inside Plexiglas boxes to give them an added dimension. In those early years in Los Angeles, she lived and worked out of a warehouse on the fringes of East Hollywood, where she began creating light boxes out of argon tubes. I was on my own trip, she recalls of that era. [Painter] Emerson Woelffer was my teacher. He would come by every six months. I worked more there than you do at school. Over time, Corse became interested in creating squares of light that appeared to hover in space. To get rid of all the electrical clutter, she began employing a high-frequency generator, known as a Tesla coil, to light the bulbs. (Mere proximity to a Tesla coil can illuminate a bulb without the need for wires or transformers.) Most remarkably, Corse didnt farm out the electrical engineering. She did it herself. In fact, sitting in the middle of her studio is a working Tesla coil. She walks over, flips it on and places a light tube a few inches away. It flickers right on. See, it creates this spark, she says. I once built one that was 4 feet tall. The technology required the artist to have a working knowledge of physics something that has also inspired her work. Quantum physics really impressed me, she says. I was starting to understand that there is no objective reality as clear as we might think. I had been looking for this objective truth, making these light pieces that were true. Then I realized that perception was as much a part of reality as reality. The turning point came during a sunset drive in 1968. She was headed east and noticed that the light was illuminating the lane markings and street signs before her. I was in Malibu, she recalls. The West was behind me and everything was lighting up. Corse immediately looked into the source of that light. It came courtesy of microbeads used to make roadway markings more visible in the dark. At that moment she realized she didnt need actual light to create a perception of light. She has been using glass beads ever since. This is a story of somebody who has been completely committed for five decades, regardless of what the market or what anybody said. Bill Griffin, founding partner at Kayne Griffin Corcoran This results in paintings that are never the same from one moment to the next. Step back and steely light might turn white. Move to the right and a previously dim painting lights up like a flash. Walk back and forth in front of it, and you might feel a rippling effect. (All of this is impossible to convey in the photographs. To truly see a Corse painting, you have to do so in person.) My work is about light and space, but Id like to add time, she says. The paintings are long. It takes time to walk by. I put time into the paintings. Conaty says the work requires some commitment from the viewer. You pass it, you do the double take, you come back, you move along the side of it, she says. You cant just walk through. Painting the infinite In the early 70s, Corse relocated to Topanga Canyon, in search of a quiet place to work. I came the first time myself and I went with the first realtor and the first place he brought me was here and it was a cinder-block shack with a donkey walking through it, she says with a laugh. It was like destiny. I just knew. The shack is now the site of a small, well-appointed home. Immediately adjacent is her sun-filled studio. In this peaceful spot she has raised her two sons. She has also produced multiple series of works featuring a range of materials, including inky fired clay panels that take the form of the earth (all crafted in a kiln that Corse built herself). Mary Corse, shown in her studio, will be the subject of a career survey at the Whitney Museum in New York. (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times ) Over the years, there have been high points: her inclusion in the high-profile 2011 Pacific Standard Time exhibition Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego brought her work to the attention of a new generation of critics and curators. There have also been myriad challenges: During the Northridge earthquake in 1994, a boulder came rolling down the mountain and smashed into her living room. Plus, there was the very public bankruptcy of Ace Gallery, the Beverly Hills space that represented her for a number of years. It is a matter that Corse prefers not to dwell on. We are moving on, she says. Whatever is happening outside the studio, however, is less important to Corse than what happens in it. Its my sanity, she says. As soon as the paint brush is in my hand its another conversation. Its the infinite rather than the finite. The success has been nice, but what holds the most meaning for this artist lies in the magic of making. As we wrap up our interview, Corse stands to see me out. Now, she says with a smile, I can put on my paint clothes and get to work. +++ Mary Corse: Then and Now Where: Kayne Griffin Corcoran, 1201 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles When: Through Nov. 11 Info: kaynegriffincorcoran.com Sign up for our weekly Essential Arts & Culture newsletter carolina.miranda@latimes.com @cmonstah ALSO What the sexual harassment allegations at Artforum reveal about who holds the power in art (hint: not women) Rent hikes and evictions is it the last stand for artists in the Arts District? Datebook: Californias mythical roots, layered histories of the slave trade, machines for enlightenment Kevin Spacey has spoken out after a second accusation of inappropriate sexual behavior. Filmmaker Tony Montana earlier this week accused Spacey of drunkenly grabbing his genitals in early 2003 and then following him into a restroom where Montana said hed gone in shock to collect himself. That accusation came on the heels of actor Anthony Rapps allegations over the weekend that Spacey sexually assaulted him in the 1980s when Rapp was 14 years old. Spaceys initial response triggered a strong backlash for including confirmation that the Usual Suspects actor is gay. So he tried again. Advertisement Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment, a rep for the Oscar winner said in a statement late Wednesday. No other information is available at this time. Montana, who first shared his story with Radar Online, recently told The Times that he was by himself in a booth at a now-defunct dive in West Hollywood making paper edits on a documentary, got up to get a drink and found himself talking to the actor at the bar. Spacey, he said, was making fun of a movie he had just been doing press for, United States of Leland. Montana said he had never met Spacey before. He was slurring his words, saying, Lee-land, lay-land, wanna get laid. He was joking and stuff, Montana said. When someone whos drunk and is joking, you let your guard down. Plus, he said, it was Spacey. Kevin Spaceys fine, he thought. Then, Montana said, He got close to me and put his arm around me and moved in, so now I can feel his breath, and smell it, and then he grabbed me, hard on the genitals and told the filmmaker, This designates ownership. Montana said he pulled Spaceys thumb backward to get him to let go, then paid for the drink and went to the mens room. Moments later, he said, Spacey walked in on him and practically fell onto him. It was a urinal. So Im trying to get away from a guy whos grabbed me like that, and then Im going into a urinal to expose myself, and he comes in? I get a double whammy? Montana said, adding that he pushed Spacey backward out the bathroom door, where one of the actors friends steered him away. Montana, who is straight, said his reaction had nothing to do with the actors sexual orientation. Spaceys apology for his alleged behavior with Rapp didnt ring true to Montana. Spacey said in the statement that he didnt remember the incident alleged by Rapp who accused the American Beauty star, then 26, of putting him in a bed and climbing on top of him after a party when he was 14 but apologized for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. The notoriously private actor then confirmed that he is gay. That read like somebody who was trying to make it go away in the most polite way possible and who has gifted the world with revealing his sexuality identity, Montana said. And that kind of comes across as smarmy and it comes across as somebody that is projecting that they still have license. Montana said he had post-traumatic stress symptoms that lingered after his own alleged incident including when he would see Spacey in the media or hear the actors name brought up for consideration at a business meeting feelings that had welled up again as he talked about it publicly. Im not going after Kevin for money. I dont wish him any ill will. Tony Montana He said he struggled as he sought advice at the time from friends and family, to whom he didnt give specifics beyond saying someone had touched him inappropriately and that he was having a hard time dealing with it. What actually defines PTSD is having a change in how you view yourself in the world, and a fundamental change in how you see yourself as being safe, said Jeannie Lochhead, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at UC Riverside School of Medicine. Lochhead, who specializes in trauma treatment, has not treated Montana. Montana said that by coming forward with his story, he was just trying to work through what happened to him. Im not going after Kevin for money. I dont wish him any ill will, Montana said. Its just... he did something 14 years ago thats affecting not only him but all the people who work on that show. That show would be House of Cards on Netflix, which this week indefinitely suspended production of the series sixth and final season. Montana thinks Spacey will bounce back from the allegations, but said that given the current atmosphere in the industry and the country, such a comeback might look a bit different. I just know there seems to be a lot of people who are angry, he said, referring to the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal and how it has focused attention on Hollywoods inner workings. Kevin will take some time away, or hell muscle through it, Montana said. He has such a high like factor. Hell be back. cdz@latimes.com @theCDZ Young bodies gyrate, sway and sometimes fall into a hot embrace in the most ecstatic moments of BPM (Beats Per Minute), a restless, engrossing dramatic portrait of Parisian activists fighting the AIDS pandemic in the early 1990s. Pitched between the long, anxious scenes of group discussion that make up much of the narrative, these dance sequences, awash in throbbing electronica and neon-blue lighting, play like bursts of abstract punctuation an opportunity for the characters to get some much-needed downtime. The act of dancing is, of course, its own form of protest, a defiant expression of life from a group toiling in the shadow of death. One longtime member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), welcoming a few new recruits to their first meeting, instructs them to express agreement with a speaker not by clapping their hands, but by snapping their fingers, which will limit disruptions and keep the discussion moving. For these activists, some of whom we see popping AZT and other pills during meetings, there isnt a moment to waste. BPM is steeped in such vividly specific details, and it moves with the same crackling urgency. The movie, which recently won the Grand Prix at Cannes and will represent France in the Oscar race for best foreign-language film, is a highly personal project for its writer-director, Robin Campillo (Eastern Boys), and his co-writer, Philippe Mangeot, who drew on their own experiences as members of ACT UP Paris in the 90s. They have made a sprawling, passionate tribute to the power of organized protest, one that derives its authenticity from not only moments of fierce, confrontational action, but also extended elaborations of policy and procedure. Advertisement If that sounds dry or uninvolving, it isnt. Plunging us into a not-so-distant moment when AIDS was decimating the LGBT community, among others, this is clear-eyed, present-tense historical filmmaking that refuses the consolations of hindsight or nostalgia. The dialogue crackles with anger; even the simplest exchanges seem brusque, testy, drained of the usual pleasantries. Nary a moment passes when we arent reminded of how high the stakes are and how vigilant those on the front lines have become. Among their many goals, they seek to combat the French governments silent indifference toward gays and lesbians, drug users and others affected by HIV and AIDS, and to call out the dishonesty of pharmaceutical firms withholding potentially life-saving new treatments from those who could most stand to benefit. But one of the movies insights is that such sweeping change can only be accomplished through a steady flow of argument and negotiation, by tactical adjustments and compromises plotted out and refined through an endless system of trial and error. A granular epic, BPM spends much of its 142-minute running time in a university lecture hall where ACT UP Paris members, most but not all of them young gay men, gather each week to hammer out policy, plan future protests and debrief earlier ones. Advancing the narrative strategy he employed in The Class (2008), the superb Palme dOr-winning drama he wrote with the director Laurent Cantet, Campillo makes riveting cinema of these frequently contentious debates, aided by Jeanne Lapoiries dynamic cinematography and his own nimble editing. Most of all, he relies on the furious chemistry and concentration of his actors, who brilliantly trace the alliances and fault lines running beneath the groups fragile unity. Outside that lecture hall, we see the activists promoting their cause, whether passing out condoms at a high school or shaking pompoms at a Gay Pride parade, but the camera rarely follows them into their homes or workplaces. (Its late into the film before we even learn what some of them do for a living.) Despite or perhaps due to the scripts limited vantage, we end up learning as much about them as we might have gleaned from a more conventionally character-driven approach. The key players include the groups slick but polarizing leader, Thibault (Antoine Reinartz), and a steely, competent organizer, Sophie (Adele Haenel), who try to keep their members on the moral high ground even when theyre, say, crashing a medical conference and pelting the speaker with fake blood. But its hard to maintain order even at their own meetings, which are invariably undermined by some of the groups more rebellious participants, none more outspoken than Sean (a brilliantly puckish Nahuel Perez Biscayart), who pushes for a more disruptive and even violent form of advocacy. Every movie about an organizations intimate workings needs an outsiders fresh perspective, and here that audience-surrogate role is filled by Nathan (Arnaud Valois), a studly newcomer who soon becomes romantically involved with Sean. The delicate matter of the lovers respective HIV statuses, and how that affects their cautious but appreciably active sex life, are addressed here with exquisite tenderness and matter-of-fact candor. In one extraordinary scene notable for its hot-blooded sensuality and its intricate, bittersweet play with memory, BPM treats sex as not just an expression of love or lust, but an act of life-affirming reclamation. For a young man with little left to lose, its one way to give death the finger. One might argue that in its final moments, marked by passages of breathtaking surrealism and mournful silence, the movie becomes indulgent and unwieldy, that its need to tie up emotional loose ends winds up toppling its exquisite balance. But the beauty of BPM, and what connects its hard-fought, well-remembered battles to those of the present, lies in its willingness to embrace life in all its messiness, its refusal to pretend that the personal isnt also political and vice versa. You may well weep at the end, but you might also feel like snapping your fingers. ------------ BPM (Beats Per Minute) (In French with English subtitles) (Not rated) Running time: 2 hours, 22 minutes Playing: Laemmles Royal Theatre, West Los Angeles; AMC Dine-In Sunset 5, West Hollywood See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers justin.chang@latimes.com @JustinCChang ALSO Review: Francis Lees Gods Own Country finds rapturous romance in the wilds of England Review: Ruben Ostlunds The Square is a virtuoso satire of the modern art world Has horror become the movie genre of the Trump era? Writer-director Douglas Muellers tedious drama Repatriation seems unsure of what it wants to say or how to say it much less how to effectively shoot or edit it. Chad Tyler (Ryan Barton-Grimley), following a vague stint in the military, returns to his small Midwestern hometown and right off the bus sets out on a nightlong pub crawl. Bar by bar, Chad reconnects with a jumble of old friends and acquaintances, knocking back a series of drinks hes bought as a thank you for his service. En route, Chad pairs off with the shy Camille (Jes Mercer) who, back in the day, worshipped the former jock from afar. Advertisement However, as the evening wears on, and Chad becomes drunker, tenser and ruder, it appears he may not be such a hero after all. In fact, we learn hes actually a disreputable jerk who serially cheated on his high school girlfriend. People hate him! So why did everyone at the start seem to love him? Thats just one of many things that make little sense in this unconvincing journey, one thats filled with banal, often repetitive chatter, clunky exposition and spotty acting. But its the films lulu of an ending that, for many viewers, may prove most exasperating. -------------- Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 12 minutes Playing: Arena Cinelounge Sunset, Hollywood; also on VOD See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Movie Trailers calendar@latimes.com Few American independent filmmakers are in the sequel business, but Richard Linklater, the most experimental of mainstream directors and vice versa, has long been a fascinating exception to the rule. His idea of a movie franchise the decades-spanning romantic trilogy Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) is less an attempt at brand extension or box-office longevity than a casually profound meditation on time and its paradoxes. The raucous college shenanigans of Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) may not have been a direct or immediate response to the high-school high jinks of Dazed and Confused, but the near-spiritual connection it forged to that 1993 masterpiece felt both intuitive and undeniable. Last Flag Flying, Linklaters warm, ribald and elegiac new comedy about three Vietnam vets having a fateful reunion, is another sequel of sorts, albeit to a picture that he neither wrote nor directed. If youve seen The Last Detail, Hal Ashbys 1973 classic about two U.S. Navy sailors escorting a third to a military prison, you will recognize elements of that story haunting this one, which revisits some of the same geographical and emotional terrain. If you havent seen it, dont worry. The memory of Ashbys movie enriches the experience, but Last Flag Flying stands assuredly on its own. Advertisement Both films are based on novels by Darryl Ponicsan (who collaborated with Linklater on the script for Last Flag Flying), but unlike the books, the new movie deliberately blurs the connections between past and present. Character names have been tweaked and narrative specifics altered, to the point where the two stories could be taking place in parallel universes, both of them called America. But the bond between the two movies is more than plot-deep; its the rich sense of emotional continuity Linklater achieves that matters. Larry Meadows, the sailor played by a baby-faced Randy Quaid in The Last Detail, has become Larry Doc Shepherd (Steve Carell), a former Navy Corps medic whose downward-drooping mustache is like a distillation of purest tragedy. Richard Mule Mulhall, the gunners mate embodied by the late Otis Young, is now a veteran Marine and fiery Baptist preacher named Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishburne), who still lets out the occasional Oohrah! in between impromptu sermons. No nominal similarities bind Sal Nealon (Bryan Cranston) to his Last Detail alter ego, perhaps because the name Buddusky is as inimitable as Jack Nicholsons magnificently rascally performance. But Cranston does what he can, which is plenty; he unleashes a back-slapping, barn-storming, unshackled id of a performance. When we first meet Sal behind the counter of a bar in Norfolk, Va., we feel we know him instinctively: a hard drinker, a skirt chaser, the lovable, incorrigible life of the party. Doc, the shy, sensitive widower who brings us into that bar, is a more mysterious figure, and it doesnt take us long to realize why. More than Sal or even Richard, who got his leg shot up in Vietnam and now hobbles around on a cane, Doc has seen his share of personal anguish. He spent two years in the brig in Vietnam for reasons that, its implied, should have implicated his friends too and more recently lost his only child, Larry Jr., a 21-year-old Marine reported killed in action in Baghdad. Now on his way to bury his son at Arlington National Cemetery, Doc wants his old buddies at his side a request they can hardly refuse, despite Richards reluctance to leave his wife (Deanna Reed-Foster) and congregation behind. But the mens plans change when they arrive at an Air Force base in Delaware and learn the true circumstances of Larry Jr.s death, despite the efforts of a hard-headed colonel (a supremely punchable Yul Vazquez) to spin them in a more heroic direction. Doc, his grief exploding into fury at the dishonesty of the official response, decides his son will have a civilian burial in his New Hampshire hometown and arranges to transport the body there by train. Larry Jr.s loyal comrade Charlie (a fine J. Quinton Johnson) comes along for the ride, as do Richard and Sal, who spend most of the movie at each others throats, at times suggesting an angel and a devil respectively perched on Docs weary shoulders. Linklaters ear for the boisterous, colorful language of male bonding is almost without equal, and his grasp of the more explosive vernacular of male anger is no less acute. Beneath its off-color jokes and curse-laden rants, Last Flag Flying offers a pointed consideration of the hard choices that Americans of all generations have made to serve their country, and of the betrayal they have felt when that country has not risen to the level of their sacrifice. Linklater has never been exactly shy about giving voice to his politics, and here, with post-9/11 anxiety running high and images of Saddam Husseins downfall blasting from every TV screen, he lets his characters cut loose, denouncing the corruption and futility of a U.S. military campaign with no apparent end in sight. Of course, given all the traumas rattling the body politic at present, a flashback to the George W. Bush years may flood even the most unsympathetic viewer with a measure of nostalgia. (So will an amusingly digressive scene in which Sal, Richard and Doc stop by a shop selling mobile phones, which are suddenly all the rage.) But if Last Flag Flying plays like a period piece, it never feels musty or dated. On the contrary, it joins a solid company of timeless American movies a partial list would include Flags of Our Fathers, The Messenger and a handful of classic Vietnam War epics that have saluted the courage of our troops while casting a hard, ambivalent eye on the government machinery that sends them into battle. Its a sharp critique of American bluster, but also a sincere and funny valentine to everyday American life. If that strikes you as an irresolvable contradiction, then so, too, might this movies mix of buoyant buddy comedy and blunt psychological realism. But its precisely those daring tonal juxtapositions that make Last Flag Flying so disarming: Its a sharp critique of American bluster, but also a sincere and funny valentine to everyday American life. Working with cinematographer Shane Kelly, whose exterior shots of highways, train tracks and nighttime cityscapes are overlaid with the cheery, reassuring notes of Graham Reynolds score, Linklater turns shabby everyday interiors a U-Haul truck, an Amtrak car, a budget motel room into spaces of warm, intimate communion. Next to the realist triumphs (Boyhood and Before Sunset among them) that have made Linklater one of the most genuinely independent American filmmakers working today, Last Flag Flying, with its leisurely road-movie structure and grumpy-old-men shtick, inevitably feels more schematic, more self-consciously written. You might roll your eyes whenever Richard, the most strident and least developed of the three protagonists, launches into another long-winded religious debate with Sal the swaggering atheist. But if their back-and-forth feels ladled on a bit thick, it also manages like one piercing scene featuring a gem of a performance by Cicely Tyson to get at the tough questions looming at the edges of the characters experience. How much do we really want to know the real story? When is a consoling fiction preferable to an unbearably painful truth? Sometimes, as Sal makes furiously clear, you have to push back against authority and demand honest answers. In Richards estimation, youre better off bending humbly to Gods will. The quietly shattering final word on the matter belongs to Doc, and Last Flag Flying, having spent two hours talking a good, sometimes great game, is wise enough to shut up and listen. ------------ Last Flag Flying Rating: R, for language throughout, including some sexual references Running time: 2 hours, 4 minutes Playing: The Landmark, West Los Angeles See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Sarah Gadon is not your typical young Hollywood star. For starters, she lives in Toronto. She also made a name for herself not by starring in blockbuster sequels but in the idiosyncratic films of David Cronenberg (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises). And shes the type who, over a lengthy FaceTime interview, expounds not on her latest juice cleanse but on subjects like the importance of textiles to a culture and emblems of female vanity throughout art history. Which may be why the 30-year-old is poised to become the latest it girl make that it woman of TVs current feminist streaming wave, joining a club that includes Elisabeth Moss of The Handmaids Tale, Betty Gilpin and Alison Brie of GLOW and Krysten Ritter of Jessica Jones. Beginning Friday on Netflix, she can be seen as the enigmatic title character in Alias Grace, adapted from the novel by Margaret Atwood. The six-part limited series is led by a team of impressive women, including director Mary Harron (American Psycho) and writer-producer Sarah Polley (Away From Her). Atwood was also involved as a supervising producer. Advertisement At the center of it all is Gadon, who gives a mesmerizing performance as Grace Marks, a housemaid and Irish immigrant fending off near-constant abuse in colonial-era Canada. First seen contemplating her own reflection in the mirror, Grace is a mystery to everyone around her including, possibly, herself. When I watch the show, its a real exploration on female subjectivity that gets me really excited. Sarah Gadon When I watch the show, its a real exploration on female subjectivity that gets me really excited, says the actress. Thats the power of women making images, opening up this discourse and this dialogue about how women are seen. Polleys quest to bring Alias Grace to the screen began two decades ago, when as a teenager, she first read Atwoods novel. Her agent rightly sensed that Polley, then a child star known for her role in the series The Road to Avonlea, might want to branch out beyond acting and suggested she try to option the rights. Thankfully, I didnt get them at 17, because I wouldnt have done a very good job, says Polley, now an accomplished writer-director, via telephone. But the novel, and especially its elusive protagonist, made an impression. Published in 1996, Alias Grace is inspired by the real-life figure of Grace Marks something like Canadas answer to Lizzie Borden. A teenage domestic worker and immigrant from Northern Ireland, she was sentenced to life in prison for involvement in the 1843 murders of her employer, a wealthy Ontario farmer, and his housekeeper. In Atwoods rendering, Grace is alluringly inscrutable and essentially unknowable. Id never read a character that complex, a woman or a man, says Polley, who was able to snatch up the rights some years later. But finding an actress who could convincingly play Grace as a teenager, a young woman and in middle age and, oh, yeah, do a perfect Northern Irish accent was no small feat. Harron had directed Gadon in the 2011 horror movie The Moth Diaries, while Polley had acted with her in the 2004 Canadian indie Siblings. Both were impressed by her composure and self-assurance. Sarah on-screen has this gravity, which could suggest someone whos been through a lot, says Harron. She has an old-soul quality that you needed for Grace. She can do very delicate shifts of emotion, even when listening or reacting, even when being still. Her face is very emotionally transparent. Its like water, with little shifts under the surface. In addition to capturing Graces complexity, Gadon mastered the tricky accent by listening to BBC Radio Ulster and asking friends in Belfast to record portions of the script. The constant manipulation of her jaw gave Gadon brutal headaches, she recalls with a wince. She also had to learn how to cook and clean like a 19th-century domestic servant, since Grace is nearly always engaged in some kind of physical labor sewing, scrubbing the floor, emptying chamber pots, laundering clothes. Harron says it was critical that the series show how these young girls just worked from morning until night. So Gadon was sent to Black Creek Pioneer Village, a historical re-enactment camp outside Toronto, and studied Mrs. Beetons Book of Household Management, a Victorian housekeeping guide. Gadon acknowledges that the physical, technical and emotional demands of the role not to mention the long hours occasionally took their toll. Id get to a point where I was paralyzed with anxiety, she says. But Harron praises Gadons meticulous preparation, likening her to a British theater actor. Gadons discipline may also stem from her training in ballet. She began performing professionally at age 9 in a production of The Nutcracker and eventually segued into acting. Though Gadon wanted to move to L.A. once she graduated from high school, her level-headed parents her mother is a kindergarten teacher and her father a therapist insisted she go to college instead. Polley attributes Gadons terrifying confidence to her grounded family life: Sometimes you meet someone who is that at ease and at peace in their own skin and the only explanation is they are one of the very few people who have two totally stable parents who stayed together and didnt die. At the University of Toronto, she pursued a degree in film theory but also started working with fellow Torontonian Cronenberg, starring as Carl Jungs wife in A Dangerous Method and Julianne Moores dead mother in Maps to the Stars (long story). Gadon is often described as Cronenbergs muse, a term that seems to offend her Canadian modesty. Its so ridiculous, she says with an eye roll. Hes such a genius that he doesnt need me for inspiration at all. The director also has a supporting role in Alias Grace as a minister sympathetic to Graces plight. At Polleys request, Gadon informed Cronenberg of the offer in an email, jokingly assuring him that hed have way more lines than Atwood, who makes a cameo. (The series, which is a co-production with the CBC and premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, might be the most Canadian thing since Strange Brew.) Alias Grace arrives less than two months after another long-gestating Atwood adaptation, The Handmaids Tale, swept the Emmy Awards, and like that Hulu series, deals with reproductive rights, social class and womens sexual exploitation. It doesnt feel like a coincidence, Gadon says of the current Atwood-mania. Particularly as a number of sexual misconduct scandals have brought new attention to womens lack of power in Hollywood, Gadon describes working on such a female-driven series as a special moment. While her performance in Alias Grace will almost certainly bring more high-profile offers from Hollywood, Gadon has no plans to leave Canada permanently. I will always view Toronto as my home, she says. Eager to generate material that will allow her to stay put north of the border and inspired by Polley Gadon has also begun to contemplate roles beyond acting. Sarah has been really encouraging me to think what kind of stories do I think need to be told and is there any way I can be instrumental in helping those stories get to the screen? See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour Alias Grace Where: Netflix When: Any time, starting Friday Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17) meredith.blake@latimes.com Follow me @MeredithBlake ALSO: Margaret Atwood answers the question: Is The Handmaids Tale a feminist book? Margaret Atwood has a few wry comments about being a PEN Center USA lifetime achievement honoree Josh Loeb owner with his wife, Zoe Nathan, of the Santa Monica restaurant Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen has always had a penchant for wine. As he was coming up in the industry, he had stints buying wine at a small number of places, most notably Capo, Bruce Marders wine-centric spot in Santa Monica. And so, naturally, he composed Rustic Canyons opening list in 2006. But when the restaurant became a group in 2010, Loeb was obliged to delegate. The task fell to Kathryn Weil Coker, then a 30-year-old whirlwind who rose out of the server ranks with an aptitude and a skill such that she now heads all of the restaurants beverage programs. The most active of these, wine-wise, are Rustic Canyon, Cassia the restaurant Loeb runs with chef Bryant Ng and Esters, a Loeb partnership with Coker and her husband, Tug, which is, right now, amid great competition, the best wine bar in Southern California. The menu at Rustic Canyon, the groups flagship, has always been locally sourced, comfortable, unruffled. One of Loebs more oft-quoted sentiments is that it should be an everything place, where people in ripped jeans and flip-flops dine next to linen-clad Santa Monicans and no one feels out of place. Advertisement The wine program felt similar, fueled by California Pinot Noir, Loebs personal fave and the closest thing we have in this day and age to an omnibus wine for an everything place. (Oddly, the restaurant still calls itself a wine bar, as in Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen, though with the talent thats manned that kitchen Evan Funke, Samir Mohajer and now Jeremy Fox no one comes strictly for the wine.) In Cokers hands, Rustic Canyons wine list has become both larger and more diverse. Shes compiled an enviable selection of grower Champagne and sparkling wines, and a core of French bottlings, not to mention an ever-growing selection of Italian wines (her floor sommelier, Ferdinando Mucerino, a native of Naples helps out here). But the spiritual center of the wine list is a special page devoted to Williams Selyem, the iconic Russian River Valley Pinot house, more than a dozen of their single vineyard bottlings, many in verticals, going back as far as 2005. Floor to ceiling of wine from around the world at Esters Wine Shop and Bar in Santa Monica. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times ) At Cassia the menu skews southeast Asian, suffused through French bistro. In keeping with the bistro setting, Coker has maintained a fairly small list, about 60 selections, though she intends to expand it to more than 200 within a year. The focus is on white wine, as it should be, with a healthy selection of Riesling, but also other, more playful options like Broc Cellars Love White or the Austrian producer Morics blend, Super Natural; or you can get considerably more serious, like F.X. Pichlers sumptuous Smaragd Gruners, or de Montilles grand Corton, one of the worlds most majestic Chardonnays. Of the reds, most are diminutive and light-bodied, like Arnot Roberts spicy Trousseau and Sebastian Davids jangly, peppery Cabernet Franc lHurluburlu served chilled, of course. For Coker, that leaves Esters rather like a candy store as much as a wine program. Right now, L.A.s wine bar scene is exploding: Bar Covell, Bar Bandini and Augustine are all thriving in wildly disparate formats, as well as newbies Hayden, Stanleys Wet Goods and Tabula Rasa. (This isnt counting wine-themed restaurants like A.O.C., Wallys Beverly Hills, or Marvin or Rustic Canyon, for that matter.) At the moment, none can hold a candle to Esters, a high-ceilinged temple of vinous pleasure that doubles as a retail store by day, and chill, intimate wine bar by sundown. Its collection of trophies, unicorns, bubbles and date-night wines has the place full nearly every evening. So, some trophies: Current vintages of Chateau de Brezes Saumur Clos de la Rue is here, as is the Muscadet Gaia from Jerome Bretaudeau; both rarities, and we havent even left the Loire Valley. There are Rieslings from Eva Fricke, roses from Etna, Bandol, Oregon, even the Nahe if youre feeling daffy. But the bulk of the list is reserved for Burgundy. Of the roughly 350 selections massive for a wine bar fully one-third is devoted to Burgundy, from Bourgogne Rouges to Bonnes Mares from Bruno Clair, putting Esters, if not on par with a Spago or a Melisse, in the ballpark as one of the best, and best priced, sources for Burgundy in the city. Kathryn Cokers wine program at Esters Wine Shop and Bar in Santa Monica. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times ) Wine director: Kathryn Coker Floor sommelier(s): Marisa Brown (Cassia), Ferdinando Mucerino (Rustic Canyon), Tom Wood (Esters). Least expensive wine: $40 (Esters & Rustic Canyon), $46 (Cassia) Most expensive wine: $818 (Esters), $325 (Cassia), $2,200 (Rustic Canyon) Median bottle price: $100 (Rustic Canyon), about $72 (Cassia & Esters) Particular strength: Rustic Canyon: California Pinot Noir. Esters: Burgundy. Cassia: Riesling and more esoteric varietals that go with spicy cuisine. Food and wine pairing: Esters 72-hour short rib steak, scallion, romesco, paired with the 2013 Giuseppe Mascarello Barbera dAlba Scudetto. This is a serious Barbera from a blue-chip producer that absolutely overdelivers, says Coker. The steak is small but mighty, smoky and incredibly flavorful, not heavy. A Barolo would be too big but this Barbera is serious enough and has dusty, deep red fruit that complements the smoky flavors in the steak. Advice for the adventurous drinker: Drink Sekt the 1992 Peter Lauer, Saar-Mosel Riesling Sekt (at Esters or Cassia). This wine is nuts, says Coker. Twenty-five years old, bone dry, rusty metal pipes, briny sea water and mushrooms. Completely savory, no fruit, and bubbly. So oysters, and other briny things, are just the match. What wine should people drink more? Champagne, says Coker. More people should be drinking quality grower Champagne from small producers. There is such a variety of Champagne, its not just about style terroir is real. People need to start thinking of it as an all-the-time wine and not just for special occasions. food@latimes.com Two days after the Navy blamed sloppy seamanship and navigational blunders for two avoidable collisions at sea that killed 17 sailors this summer, President Trump flies to Hawaii on Friday to visit the Pentagons troubled Pacific Command. Trump will get a briefing at command headquarters in Honolulu and visit the battleship Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor before he leaves for his first official visit to Asia, where he will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Pacific Command oversees U.S. military operations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, including those near North Korea and China. But it has been the focus of intense concern at the Pentagon and in Congress this year for a series of major failures. Advertisement The Obama administration added U.S. Marines and ships to the Pacific fleet as part of what it called a strategic rebalance. Trump has not announced any changes to those policies and has not publicly commented on the problem-plagued Pacific Command. The Navy publicly embarrassed the White House in April when a spokesman said it was sending an aircraft carrier task force into the Sea of Japan as a show of force against North Korea, fanning fears of a potential conflict with the nuclear-armed nation. It turned out the carrier, the Carl Vinson, and the three other warships in its strike force were actually sailing in the opposite direction to take part in joint exercises with the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean, 3,500 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula. The Pentagon later blamed an ill-timed announcement by Pacific Command and other miscommunications for the mix-up. The Vinson subsequently reported to duty off Korea. Other than North Korea, the chief hot spot is the resource-rich South China Sea. China has built up a handful of reefs and shoals into strategic outposts with runways and military installations, deepening long-standing maritime and territorial disputes with neighboring nations. In response, the Navy has stepped up what it calls freedom of navigation operations, sending warships and aircraft on patrols near the disputed islands. But the more immediate concern has been what the Navy called preventable accidents at sea this year involving four large U.S. warships in the western Pacific. Seven sailors were killed aboard the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald on June 21 when it collided with a container ship off the southern coast of Japan. Ten others died on the John S. McCain, another guided-missile destroyer, when it was rammed by an oil tanker in busy sea lanes near Singapore on Aug. 21. The sailors all were crushed or drowned, many as they slept in their berths, according to the 72 pages released Wednesday. These accidents were preventable and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents, Adm. John M. Richardson, chief of naval operations, said in a statement. We must do better. The Navy has fired senior officers on the Fitzgerald and McCain, and two other admirals decided to retire early because their prospects for promotion were quashed. More significantly, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, commander of the Navys 7th Fleet, where both ships were assigned, was also sacked due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command. Aucoin was the highest-ranking commander to be dismissed for an operational issue since Adm. Husband Kimmel, commander of Pacific Fleet, lost his job after Japanese aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, bringing America into World War II. In addition to the two collisions this year, the Lake Champlain, a guided-missile cruiser, crashed into a South Korean fishing boat, and the Antietam, another guided missile cruiser, ran aground in Tokyo Bay. They suffered damage but there were no serious injuries. The Navy reports blamed a mix of poor leadership, equipment failures, inadequate training and high operational tempo for the accidents. The description of the McCains predawn crash with the Alnic MC, a much larger oil tanker, was especially vivid. The collision was felt throughout the ship, the report said. Some sailors thought the ship had run aground, while others were concerned that they had been attacked. Sailors in parts of the ship away from the impact point compared it to an earthquake. Those nearest the impact point described it like an explosion. It said many of the decisions that led to the collision were the result of poor judgment and decision making of the commanding officer, the report added. That said, no single person bears full responsibility for this incident. The crew was unprepared for the situation. James Stavridis, a retired admiral who is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, called the seagoing disasters and subsequent fallout unprecedented. The Navy needs to continue to move methodically and unemotionally to sort out root causes, reverse engineer them, and kill the pattern of mistakes, he said. The collisions also gave China a new way to criticize Americas military presence in the Pacific, long a sore point with Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry has said U.S. warships pose a security threat to civilian vessels, a disparagement that has echoed across Chinese state-run media. The Chinese have seized upon these accidents as a way to say that the U.S. is destabilizing the region, said Ely Ratner, an expert on China at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.It has allowed them to turn the tables and say the U.S. is the one whos the provocateur in the region. A Government Accountability Office report issued in September found numerous problems in the Navy, including deployment lengths, shortened training periods, and reduced or deferred maintenance to meet high operational demands, which has resulted in declining ship conditions and a worsening trend in overall readiness. A key finding was that 37% of certifications, including for seamanship, for Pacific naval cruisers and destroyers had expired. Another finding highlighted that sailors often worked 100-hour-plus weeks that contributed to safety risks. Naval officers and outside analysts blamed the shortfalls, in part, on the Navys can-do attitude, complacency and overconfidence. There is a cultural factor here, where youre more dedicated if you can stay awake, Richardson, the Navys top officer, told a recent Senate hearing. Its like pulling an all-nighter in college. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and son and grandson of the McCains namesakes, said the Navy has promised corrective training and other steps to prevent future accidents. Time is of the essence in fixing the problems, and Congress must provide the necessary resources in a timely and predictable manner, he said in a statement. The failure to properly fund, train and equip our military directly contributed to these collisions. william.hennigan@latimes.com Twitter: @wjhenn ALSO: U.S. special operations forces face growing demands and increased risks The U.S. is launching danger-close drone strikes so risky they require Syrian militia approval The U.S. military is targeting Islamic States virtual caliphate by hunting & killing its online operatives one-by-one When the New York state comptrollers office recently audited a charter school in Rochester, N.Y., investigators found a number of troubling financial practices, including inadequate oversight. One issue auditors noted was that the local school contracted out its financial management to the national charter network it was part of and membership on the Rochester schools board and the school networks board overlapped. Rochesters PUC Achieve is the only school outside California in the 18-school Partnership to Uplift Communities charter school network co-founded by L.A. school board member Ref Rodriguez. Rodriguez and his PUC Schools co-founder Jacqueline Elliot were flagged for being on both of the boards. Advertisement While not prohibited by law, these situations create a conflict of interest, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli wrote when the audit was released in May. Rodriguez has more pressing concerns in Los Angeles, where he faces three felony and 25 misdemeanor charges for alleged campaign money laundering. But problems in Rochester broadly echo some questions recently raised in L.A. about Rodriguezs conduct and PUCs management practices. In Los Angeles, PUC Schools itself last month filed a conflict-of-interest complaint against Rodriguez with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The complaint accused Rodriguez who was a senior executive at PUC until he joined the L.A. school board in July 2015 of possibly being on both sides of a series of transactions when he allegedly authorized about $285,000 in payments drawn on PUCs accounts. In Rochester, the alleged conflicts are different and Rodriguezs level of involvement is unclear. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment for this story. PUC Achieve opened in the struggling former boomtown in 2014, starting with 87 fifth graders with ambitions to grow to 3,600 K-12 students. Rodriguez served on its board through January 2017. In the comptrollers audit, the presence of Rodriguez and Elliot on the two boards even though they recused themselves from some votes was seen as a problem because the local school hired PUC National to provide financial management services. The auditor concluded that the arrangement stood in the way of the local board evaluating school finances as well as the quality and cost of PUC Nationals services. L.A. Unified, in an Oct. 23 warning letter sent to PUC, flagged its own longstanding concern about shared membership on PUC National and regional boards. When the district first raised this concern about two years ago, Elliot and Rodriguez left local PUC boards in L.A. In Rochester, Elliot remains in both roles. Rodriguez no longer serves on either board. Overlapping boards are not uncommon in charter networks, but the practice has critics, even among some charter supporters. Thats not good practice and that shouldnt happen, said Greg Richmond, president and chief executive of the National Assn. of Charter School Authorizers, which advises the governmental bodies that approve or deny charter school petitions. The New York audit found the arrangement between PUC Achieve and PUC National did not provide adequate oversight and left the Rochester-based board members possibly unaware of a $470,000 operating deficit out of a $2.24 million budget during the schools first year. Ultimately, PUC National made up the difference until PUC Achieve could pay back the money. DiNapoli highlighted another issue: One of the schools trustees was a manager and investor in a company that helped arrange the schools mortgage; the trustee benefited indirectly from the schools lease agreement, the audit said. Unlike most PUC schools in L.A., the Rochester school also has struggled in academics. A report in July from its authorizer, the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute, criticized its poor performance. If it doesnt improve dramatically, PUC Achieve could run the risk of not being renewed, said Joe Belluck, an institute trustee. Administrators said the reports have overstated problems, and that they have turned the corner financially and in attracting students. This is a transitional time, said Robert Zimmerli, the schools executive director. Joy.Resmovits@LATimes.com @Joy_Resmovits Times staff writer Howard Blume contributed to this report. ALSO Its gonna be a sad day in L.A. tomorrow: Dodgers fans devastated after Game 7 loss Police kill parent who held teacher hostage at elementary school, ending tense standoff Deputy who shot, stomped a downed suspect can be sued for excessive force, appeals court rules Los Angeles school district officials plan to recommend at the next school board meeting that 10 charter schools be shut down because they refuse to comply with district rules. The district confirmed the recommendations Thursday. For the record: An earlier version of this post identified a Camino Nuevo charter school as among those recommended for shutting down. The Camino Nuevo charter is recommended for approval. Charter school leaders, who say they are standing up against regulations they find onerous, wont back down and will leave it to board members to decide their schools fates Tuesday. They may get a sympathetic ear because the board majority is the first to be elected with major financial support from charter backers. Advertisement The futures of six other charter schools also are at risk over the same issues. All told, there have never been as many L.A. charter schools facing potential closure at one time certainly never over conflicts they instigated. If the charters dont prevail, they still could appeal any denials to the county or state education boards. Both the district and charter operators say they are looking out for students. A key point of dispute is the authority of the districts inspector general to conduct long-running investigations of charter schools. Charter operators want to narrow this power and say state law supports such limits. They also want more legal rights to contest district decisions and more multiyear contracts to use district campuses. Current state law requires only one-year agreements. More broadly, they contend that their schools suffer from having to navigate district policies that change frequently, often appear to be arbitrary and are applied inconsistently. Having fewer rules, they say, would be in keeping with state law and the idea that charter schools should be less burdened by bureaucracy and thus freed to approach education more creatively and efficiently. The five charter networks opposing the rules are absolutely committed to making improvements to policy that are reasonable, straightforward and in the best interests of students, said Cassy Horton, a managing director with the California Charter Schools Assn. District officials praise the inspector general for rooting out criminal activity at a few charters and also for identifying poor practices, which then can be improved. The work of the inspector general and the enforcing of common-sense rules, they say, are essential to financial and academic accountability, according to L.A. Unified. Both sides have compromised, but not enough to resolve the dispute. The districts charter division recommended denying renewed authorization to eight Alliance College-Ready Public Schools campuses and two Magnolia Public Schools campuses. Six KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) schools may be reauthorized on the condition that they demonstrate compliance with district rules in the near future. KIPP administrators have not agreed to that condition. Three proposed charters, which hope to open in the future, also are at risk in this dispute: one each from KIPP, Equitas Academy Charter Schools and STEM Preparatory Schools. The boards vote on the recommendations could be its most defining and important to date. In July, the new, charter-supported majority took control. Charter operators felt the time was right to press for changes they consider long overdue. We remain hopeful that the LAUSD board on November 7th will do the right thing for students, leaders of the five charter networks said in a statement. Charter schools are privately managed, publicly funded and exempt, under state law, from some but not all rules that apply to traditional schools. L.A. Unified has imposed regulations of its own, as have other districts. L.A. Unified officials say that theyve developed their charter rules and policy over two decades of experience and that their approach has made the school system a national model for charter oversight. The rules, they argue, have helped make many charters successful and kept them publicly accountable. With 224 independent charter schools, the district is Californias largest charter authorizer. Weve learned a lot of lessons with our schools, said Jose Cole-Gutierrez, director of the charter division. These are lessons learned to try to be helpful, not to try to undermine any autonomies. The board majority could side with charters and overrule the staff recommendation, but such a move which could be seen as reducing oversight could come with political blowback if Ref Rodriguez is the deciding vote. Rodriguez faces criminal charges of political money laundering. Separately, Partnerships to Uplift Communities, the charter network he co-founded, recently reported possible conflicts of interest involving Rodriguez and $285,000 in payments that he allegedly authorized when he was a senior executive at PUC. Rodriguez, who has denied any wrongdoing, left his job at PUC Schools when he joined the L.A. school board in July 2015. In all, 28 existing charter schools are coming up for renewal, and four new ones will be seeking authorization. Two negative recommendations, for a proposed charter and for the North Valley Military Institute, will be based on factors other than the dispute over district rules. howard.blume@latimes.com @howardblume UPDATES: 6:25 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the districts recommendations on certain charter schools. This article was originally published at 3:05 p.m. An Anaheim police officer used excessive force when he gunned down a 25-year-old man who was running away from him in an apartment building courtyard in 2012, a federal jury decided Thursday in the trial of a lawsuit filed against the city and the officer by the mans family. Jurors hearing the trial of the civil lawsuit will now be asked to determine how much in damages should be awarded to the family of Manuel Angel Diaz. The Orange County District Attorneys Office prosecutors cleared Officer Nick Bennallack of any criminal wrongdoing in the July 21, 2012, fatal shooting of Diaz. One day after the shooting, another Anaheim police officer fatally shot 21-year-old Joel Acevedo at the end of a stolen-car pursuit, touching off several days of demonstrations alleging excessive force by police. Some of the protests turned violent. Advertisement We believe the evidence shows the force was excessive and it wasnt necessary to shoot and kill him, attorney Dale Galipo, who is representing Diazs family, told jurors during his closing argument. Galipo said what made the case unique was Bennallack and his partner, Officer Brett Heitmann, were not responding to a specific service call when they spotted Diaz standing outside a car in an alley near 700 North Anna Drive. They dont see any specific criminal activity, Galipo said. Diaz, however, started running when he saw police. The officers shouted to him to stop, but he kept going into a courtyard, where he was gunned down before reaching a fence. The entire encounter took about 10 seconds. Bennallack testified he was concerned Diaz had a gun because his hands appeared to be near his waistband. Hes using both hands in a location where a weapon is typically kept, Bennallack said. Also, just before he opened fire, Bennallack noticed Diaz was not pumping his arms as if he were trying to get away and was looking back as if he were sizing him up, the officer testified. He didnt appear to be looking for the path of least resistance to escape me, Bennallack said. I think he could have easily escaped on foot. The officer also testified that the suspect appeared to have an object in his hand that he believed may have been a gun. Bennallack said Diaz, with his back to him, was assuming a low ready position to quickly turn and open fire. Bennallack said his decision to open fire twice was because of an accumulation of many things. I thought he would shoot me and my partner, Bennallack testified. Galipo argued there was testimony that Diaz had a glass pipe, a cellphone and a cloth bag with something in it at various times during the seconds-long pursuit. How many objects can Mr. Diaz have in his hand? Is he a circus juggler? Galipo said. And, Galipo asked, if Diaz were slowing down to confront the officers, how did he manage to keep a 10-foot distance ahead of the officers? Galipo also doubted speculation that the black cloth bag contained a gun that someone else took away from the scene. Three teenage witnesses testified Diaz was shot twice in the back and in the back of his head with a pause between shots, Galipo said. Galipo argued that the officers had to see a gun or fear there was an imminent threat of danger to them before opening fire and that wasnt the case in this instance. The officers also did not warn Diaz they would shoot if he did not stop, Galipo said. It appeared Diaz could have been surrendering when he was shot, the attorney argued. Attorney Steven Rothans, who represents the city in the trial, said the officers were in a high-crime neighborhood and that Diaz appeared to be clad like a gang member when they officers tried to approach him. These were Boy Scouts hanging out. They were talking about a merit badge, Rothans said sarcastically. Thats what Mr. Galipo would like you to believe. Bennallack has been involved in three deadly officer-involved shootings since January 2012. Diazs mother, Genevieve Huizar, lost her first bid to hold the city liable for her sons shooting in a 2014 trial, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the verdict, ruling that Diazs gang affiliation was wrongly included in evidence. During demonstrations that erupted across the nation after the election of President Trump last year, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested hundreds of protesters far more than any other law enforcement agency in the country. Of the 462 people arrested during marches that wound through downtown, Westlake and onto the 101 Freeway between Nov. 7 and Nov. 12, most were held on suspicion of blocking a roadway or failing to disperse after officers declared unlawful assemblies. But nearly a year later, a Times analysis of arrest records shows, the LAPD has sought formal charges in only 10 cases, and prosecutors have filed charges against just three people. In all, three felony cases were filed with prosecutors, but two were dismissed due to lack of evidence, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office. Of seven misdemeanor cases presented to the city attorneys office, only two resulted in charges, according to spokesman Rob Wilcox. Advertisement The low number of charges has renewed criticism that the LAPD was too aggressive in arresting protesters. Civil liberties advocates said the LAPD tactics used last year could deter people from exercising their 1st Amendment rights. Other cities saw larger, and far more violent, demonstrations but arrested fewer people. Police in Oakland recorded 60 arrests during protests in the same time frame, even after demonstrators hurled Molotov cocktails at officers. Portland police made roughly 100 arrests during demonstrations that law enforcement officials there described as a riot. Los Angeles and other major cities are bracing for a new wave of protests near the anniversary of Trumps election victory. The group Refuse Fascism has called for anti-Trump demonstrations across the country, including an event slated for Saturday afternoon in Pershing Square. Several law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Times that local agencies are gearing up for demonstrations this weekend. Amid those preparations, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a controversial ordinance that would prohibit demonstrators from carrying a wide array of items at protests, which could provide additional grounds for arrests. The ordinance largely bans items that are already illegal to possess or brandish openly including guns, swords and martial arts weapons and severely limits the kinds of signs that can be carried. The ordinance was driven in part by violence seen during demonstrations in Berkeley and Charlottesville, Va., in recent months and has drawn sharp criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union. LAPD Cmdr. Vito Palazzolo said there were several reasons for the low number of charges stemming from the 2016 protests. In the case of those arrested for blocking roadways, the LAPD sought charges in municipal traffic court, which no longer handles those types of cases, he said. Department officials said they chose not to refile those cases because the purpose of the arrests was to end protests that were growing unruly, not to seek convictions of demonstrators. In other cases, officers may have failed to take the time to gather sufficient evidence against demonstrators whom they were trying to process quickly, he said. The LAPD did not want to hold demonstrators unless they had an active warrant or were accused of a more serious crime than unlawful assembly. We had the probable cause to make those arrests, but we didnt want to keep people incarcerated overnight, Palazzolo said. LAPD Assistant Chief Michel Moore credited officers for using minimal force and said the lack of charges was not a concern. Officers allowed protesters to march for several hours but moved to stop the demonstrations because of episodes of illegal conduct and the fact that the spontaneous demonstrations were stretching resources thin, Moore said. The LAPD racked up more than $2 million in overtime costs during the protests, officials said. We effected arrests as a means of stopping violence, of stopping property damage, Moore said. In some cases, of stopping things from going on to infinity. But others worry the widespread arrests could have a chilling effect on future marches. Jim Lafferty, executive director for the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles, said he feared the LAPDs tactics might deter protesters from attending future demonstrations. Several of the guilds legal observers said officers last year gave confusing dispersal orders and made arrests without giving protesters a chance to comply, Lafferty said. They join a protest, its peaceful and without further ado theyre all arrested after being lulled into believing thats what they can do, he said. I think thats outrageous behavior on the part of the Police Department. Many of the protests last November followed a similar pattern. Demonstrators would marshal at a central location, typically City Hall or Pershing Square, then march through downtown, freezing traffic along Spring Street and outside Staples Center. The protests were largely peaceful, with police intervening only to prevent vandalism or stop demonstrators from entering a freeway. Nearly a third of the arrests took place on the final night of protests, when Los Angeles police officers detained nearly 150 demonstrators who took part in a winding, hours-long march. The LAPD declared an unlawful assembly in front of City Hall and ordered marchers to leave Spring Street, but then arrested dozens who had sat down to rest in Grand Park. Several tried to leave peacefully but were denied by officers. We didnt know we were doing anything wrong. We just thought they were there to watch us, and we thought they were going to escort us out, said Gail Reznik, a 59-year-old paralegal from Calabasas who was arrested but not charged. One protester arrested on the 101 Freeway pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of brass knuckles, and another pleaded no contest to vandalism charges, Wilcox said. Five other protesters who were arrested by the LAPD for blocking a thoroughfare were ordered to attend informal hearings, according to Wilcox, but the city attorneys office declined to charge them. A 20-year-old woman was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon after she was involved in a brawl that left a police officer injured outside LAPD headquarters that week. She later pleaded guilty to one count of disturbing the peace, according to court records. Other large-scale protests this year, including demonstrations at Los Angeles International Airport after the White House issued the first version of an executive order limiting travel from seven mostly Muslim countries, resulted in few, if any, arrests. The department has also made efforts to collaborate with protest organizers to create more manageable conditions, as it did on Inauguration Day, Moore said. But the LAPD has struggled over the years to strike a balance between public safety and 1st Amendment rights when policing large-scale demonstrations. In 2014, the LAPD arrested 323 protesters angered by a grand jurys decision not to charge the officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Months later, the city attorneys office decided to bring charges against 27 people and formally rejected charges in 181 cases. The departments overzealous response in 2007 to May Day protests in MacArthur Park, which left 250 people injured and led to lawsuits and policy reforms, also looms large in the minds of some civil liberties advocates. I think that the LAPD needs to look at its policies and bring them up to date with the law. Theres a lot of cases out there that say, Look, when you allow people to march without a permit, then you have to allow them to march without a permit, said Carol Sobel, a civil rights attorney who has successfully sued the LAPD over its handling of protests in the past. You need to allow spontaneous speech. You need to be really clear about the parameters. james.queally@latimes.com Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California. More than 300 recruits at the Marines boot camp in San Diego are suffering from diarrheal symptoms from an bacterial outbreak, officials disclosed this week. With most of the cases linked to Shiga toxin-producing E.coli bacteria, physicians are treating 302 patients out of the more than 5,500 candidates undergoing training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot. Our immediate focus is identifying, isolating and treating recruits who present symptoms, said Brig. Gen. William Jurney, the commander of both the depot and the Corps Western Recruiting Region, in a written statement Tuesday. We are working to identify the cause of the sickness, making sure our affected recruits can return to training as soon as possible and continuing training for recruits not influenced. Advertisement The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the bacteria sickens 265,000 Americans annually, triggering 3,600 hospitalizations and 30 deaths. Symptoms typically include painful stomach cramps, diarrhea that can become bloody, a mild fever and vomiting.While most victims recover within a week, some infections can threaten lives. Between 5% and 7% of patients develop hemolytic uremic syndrome, a form of kidney failure, according to the CDC. The bacteria was identified in recruits at both the depot and at Edson Range at Camp Pendleton beginning on Wednesday, but the number of cases spiked on Monday, officials said. Ten recruits were transported to an undisclosed hospital off the base for additional care. Its anticipated that theyll get to training but were not sure when that will happen, said depot spokesman Steven H. Posy. Family members will be notified if the illness delays a recruits graduation date and no drill instructors or other base staffers appear to have contracted the malady, he added. While investigators continue searching for the source of the contagion, commanders have quarantined sick recruits from those who have yet to display symptoms, mandated increased hand washing and ensured proper sanitation in all training areas, officials said. Naval Medical Center San Diegos Preventative Medicine Unit also hiked inspections of barracks, dining facilities and common areas across the depot. Prine writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. A group led by San Fernando Valley-area activists is calling for California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra to resign following revelations that, as a top legislative aide eight years ago, he was disciplined after being accused of groping another staffer. Pushing a stroller with her infant son, Tujunga resident Victoria Garcia marched into Bocanegras Arleta office Wednesday with about a dozen other local residents and told the Democrats staff their boss should resign. Were all disappointed, were disgusted, Garcia told two Bocanegra staffers who met the group. We dont feel that hes fit to represent us anymore. Advertisement The Times reported last week that Bocanegra was disciplined eight years ago after legislative staffer Elise Flynn Gyore accused him of reaching under her blouse at a Sacramento nightclub in 2009. At the time, Bocanegra was working as chief of staff to then-Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes. Margarita Cervacio, center, and Gwendolyn Posey are part of a group calling on Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra to resign. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times ) An investigation by independent attorneys hired by the Legislature concluded that it is more likely than not that Bocanegra engaged in behavior that night which does not meet the Assemblys expectations for professionalism, and Bocanegra was ordered to stay away from Gyore. The assemblyman apologized last week when asked about the 2009 incident. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Kagel Canyon resident Bonnie Corwin called Bocanegras punishment a slap on the hand and said he should step down. The protest was organized by several local activists, including Corwin, who ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles City Council this year, and David Hernandez, a longtime community leader. Former Assemblywoman Patty Lopez also appeared at the event, which consisted of about half a dozen people standing on the sidewalk outside Bocanegras office, taking turns speaking out against the assemblyman or the issue of harassment. Lopez, who ousted Bocanegra in a surprise 2014 victory and then was defeated in a rematch last fall, didnt speak at the event because she said she didnt want her appearance outside his office to distract from the issue of harassment at the Capitol. Its not about me. Im here to support the women, Lopez said. People are still scared to speak out. A Bocanegra spokesperson declined to comment on the protest. The assemblyman wasnt in his district office when the group arrived. His staffers took down the names and phone numbers of the protesters, at the request of the protesters. In Sacramento, the chairman of the California Democratic Party was addressing the potential political fallout. Party leader Eric Bauman said Bocanegra must come to terms over whether he can continue serving. He stopped short of indicating the assemblyman should step down and suggested that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) should help Bocanegra decide what his future is going to be. I think Assemblyman Bocanegra needs to look into his own heart and decide what hes going to do, Bauman said. Both Bauman and California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte, who appeared together at a Sacramento Press Club luncheon Wednesday, said their parties have zero-tolerance policies on sexual harassment. Brulte said he supports an independent review process, free of partisanship, to look into allegations of harassment in the Legislature. I think its very, very difficult for organizations to police themselves when it reaches a certain point, Brulte said. A Los Angeles Daily News editorial published this week cited The Times story and called for the assemblyman to resign, stating that there was no public information about the alleged assault when Bocanegra was first elected in 2012. In light of this revelation, Bocanegra cannot be taken seriously as a representative of the people who elected him without this knowledge, and we ask that he step down immediately, the editorial said. Dozens of women have spoken out in recent weeks about sexual harassment in the Capitol, describing an atmosphere where unwanted touching and remarks are commonplace. Phil Willon in Sacramento contributed to this report. dakota.smith@latimes.com Twitter: @dakotacdsmith ALSO Female lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists speak out on pervasive harassment in Californias Capitol Graphic allegations about California legislator show there are few protections for female lobbyists in the Capitol Sexual harassment becomes focus in Sacramento Coverage of California politics Its an immigration program thats been around for more than two decades, offering a limited number of visas to people from across the world. Well known abroad, it has received little public attention in the U.S. until now. On Wednesday a day after a rented pickup barreled down a crowded bicycle path in Manhattan, killing eight people federal officials said the suspect in the attack, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov , had entered the country from Uzbekistan in 2010 through the Diversity Immigrant Visa program. That kicked off a political debate. He came in through the diversity program were going to stop that, President Trump told reporters. Here is some background on the program best known as the visa lottery. When was it started? The program dates to the Immigration Act of 1990. It was tucked inside the legislation largely in response to lobbying by Irish and Italian American groups who hoped to help distant relatives gain U.S. residency. Passed by lawmakers from both parties and signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, the immigration law put the diversity visa program into effect in 1995. Whats its goal? The mission, according to the U.S. State Department, is simple: grant permanent resident visas better known as green cards to people in countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said the program was a recognition that some areas of the world have historically been given few opportunities for entry. It was never a lottery in the sense of buying a winning ticket to waltz into the United States without little vetting or review, he said. How does it work? Each year, millions of people from around the world apply for the visa program during a 30-day window, often in the fall, but occasionally during other times of the year. Applicants must have a high school education or its equivalent. The first round of the selection process is a lottery. Those lucky enough to make the cut are then put through the standard vetting process for any foreigner seeking U.S. residency. Ultimately, about 50,000 applicants are successful each year. They are distributed among six geographic regions Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and the South Pacific island nations known collectively as Oceania and within a given region no single country may receive more than 7% of the visas. How many people have been admitted through the program? Between 2007 and 2016, nearly 473,000 people were granted a diversity visa. The largest share have gone to Africans, who accounted for 43% of those awarded last year, compared with 32% that went to Europeans, 19% to Asians, 3% to Latin Americans and less than 1% to people from Oceania. In 2010, the year Saipov received a visa, nearly 3,300 people from Uzbekistan were granted diversity visas, according to the State Department. Last year, about 46,000 people in total were awarded the visas, with 2,300 arriving from Uzbekistan. Have terrorists used the program in the past? Yes. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet and his wife received diversity visas in 1997. Five years later, he killed two people at Los Angeles International Airport. Even so, Joseph K. Young, a professor of law and criminology at American University, said research on terrorism suggested that immigrants were less of a threat than people born in the United States. Single events like this are tragic, but this does not mean all immigrants in this program or any other are more dangerous than homegrown threats, Young said. What is the status of the program? It remains in place. In 2013, a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight crafted a comprehensive immigration bill that included a provision to scale back the diversity visa program in favor of merit-based system that centered on education and job skills. The bill passed the Senate but later stalled in the House. What are lawmakers proposing to do with the program? On Wednesday, Trump criticized Democrat Charles E. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, for his support of the diversity program in the early 1990s, and advocated for a system along the lines that had been put before lawmakers in 2013 . The terrorist came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, a Chuck Schumer beauty, Trump tweeted. I want merit-based. Schumer, who was among the Gang of Eight, pushed back against Trumps accusations. I guess its not too soon to politicize a tragedy, Schumer said. Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona who also worked on the comprehensive immigration bill, came to Schumers defense. Attorneys representing a consortium of news outlets including the Los Angeles Times filed two lawsuits in Nevada on Wednesday night asking officials to turn over law enforcement records related to the Oct. 1 massacre in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead. A month after the shooting, many questions remain unanswered about why the gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., opened fire on a country music concert from his room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, as well as questions about how police and hotel officials responded as Paddock unleashed his attack. One of the lawsuits filed in Clark County, Nev., district court asks a judge to unseal court records related to at least 14 search warrants filed in connection with the investigation of Paddock, including probable-cause affidavits and transcripts of oral arguments that might provide insight into the police investigation. Advertisement The law enforcement authorities in charge of the criminal investigation have publicly declared that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, acted alone, the lawsuit says. Although aspects of that investigation are still ongoing, law enforcement officials cannot credibly claim that a search for further suspects the primary reason why investigations are kept confidential will be harmed if these records are unsealed. The lawsuit adds: The public has a compelling interest in learning as much as possible about the governments response to the deadliest mass shooting in this nations history. The second lawsuit filed in the district court Wednesday demanded that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department turn over law enforcement records that had been unsuccessfully requested by several news outlets in public records requests. The requests sought police body camera footage, recordings of 911 calls, dispatch calls, evidence logs and surveillance footage collected from the Mandalay Bay as evidence. The lawsuit argues that under Nevada law, all video and audio recordings made by police-worn body cameras are public records subject to inspection, as are recordings of 911 calls. In some cases, police denied requests to release the records, stating that the investigation was ongoing, while ignoring other requests altogether. A full month later, significant questions remain unanswered about the shooters actions and the response of public agencies, the lawsuit argues. Authorities blanket refusal to produce any of the records pursuant to the requests is improper, and all requested information and records should be produced without redactions. The lawsuit asks a judge to order police to turn over the records immediately, and also seeks attorneys fees. The news organizations plan to file an additional lawsuit Thursday in federal court with a separate request to unseal records connected to the shooting. The other news organizations involved in the lawsuits include the Associated Press, ABC News, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and KSNV-TV, the Las Vegas affiliate of NBC. The media outlets are represented by the Ballard Spahr law firm in Las Vegas. Las Vegas police did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent late Wednesday night. matt.pearce@latimes.com Matt Pearce is a national reporter for The Times. Follow him on Twitter at @mattdpearce. More national headlines Sam Clovis, a fiery Iowa talk radio host and former Trump campaign co-chairman who has been caught up in the special counsels Russia investigation, has withdrawn his name from consideration to be chief scientific advisor to the secretary of Agriculture. The nomination was controversial because Clovis, 68, had no scientific or medical degrees or experience, and because court papers released Monday showed he had encouraged George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to the campaign, to arrange meetings between Trumps aides and Russian officials. Clovis removed himself from consideration days after he was questioned by investigators for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating the Trump campaigns contacts with Russia, and by the federal grand jury taking evidence in the case, NBC news reported. Advertisement Papadopoulous has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with several Russians during the campaign. Court filings say they offered him disparaging information about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, including thousands of emails, as well as introductions to high-level officials in the Kremlin. He kept people in the campaign, including Clovis, apprised of his efforts by email and apparently boasted of them on Facebook. In a Nov. 1 letter to Trump, Clovis said the political climate in Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position, and asked the president to withdraw his nomination as undersecretary of research, education and economics at the Agriculture Department. The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity each day, he wrote. The White House confirmed receiving the letter. Clovis confirmation was in doubt even before his role in the Russia probe emerged. CNN dug up posts from his blog, Impact with Sam Clovis, from 2011 and 2012 that referred to race traitor liberals who he said want to enslave the country. The Senate Agriculture Committee had tentatively scheduled a hearing next week on his nomination. Clovis currently serves as a senior White House advisor for agriculture, a job that doesnt require Senate confirmation, and he suggested that he would stay on. He wrote Trump that he would continue to serve at the pleasure of you and the Secretary of Agriculture. Clovis helped bring Papadopoulos into the campaign last year and served as his supervisor, according to a former campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the Russia case. Court documents show Papadopoulos traded emails with his supervisor about his calls and meetings with several Russians, including an official who claimed to be from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and about a possible meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the documents, Papadopoulos wrote his supervisor in June 2016 that he was in contact with a Russian diplomat who was asking me if Mr. Trump is interested in visiting Russia at some point. Wanted to pass this info along to you for you to decide whats best to do with it. In August, after the campaign decided Trump would not visit Russia, the supervisor urged Papadopoulos to organize an off the record meeting with Russian officials. I would encourage you to make a trip to Russia if it is feasible, he wrote. The trip never occurred. Clovis served in the Air Force, was a business school professor, a candidate for U.S. Senate, a conservative radio host, and a professor of economics at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, before he joined the Trump campaign. But he had no degrees in agriculture, science or medicine. The 2008 farm bill specifies that the Agriculture Departments chief scientist should be chosen from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics. The position supervises nearly $3 billion in research and education grants, and helps set research priorities for the department. Mueller has charged Paul Manafort Jr., Trumps former campaign manager, and Rick Gates, a senior deputy, with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in an alleged financial scheme separate from the presidential race. Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty. david.cloud@latimes.com Twitter: @davidcloudLAT Theres a popular postcard of Hawaii that shows the blue waters of Waikiki Beach and the famed Diamond Head with the greeting Aloha a symbol of the open-arms, easygoing way of life touted by the state. But this week, a different image has spread around the islands through fliers and social media. It shows the same picture with a green scoreboard: Hawaii 3, Trump 0 a nod to the states judicial defeats of the presidents travel ban under the words, Wish you werent here. When President Trump arrives in Honolulu on Friday, hell be in enemy territory. This is still Obama country, a place where the former president was born and raised, and tourists continue to flock to his childhood haunts. The islands, where 30% of voters supported Trump in the 2016 presidential election the lowest of any state are ones the president has long derided. For years he led the birther movement that sowed doubt that Obama was born here. Trump has railed for months against a Honolulu judge who repeatedly struck down his travel ban. Advertisement Presidential visits always bring concerns of gridlock and protest and give the White House a chance to meet with federal and state officials, items on Trumps list for his visit that will feature tours of military and historic sites. But with Trump, the stakes of a one-day stop in Honolulu ahead of his five-country Asia tour seem higher because he will be in a state that ignores or challenges him at every turn. If theres a headquarters of the Trump resistance, this state -- run nearly entirely by Democrats -- might be it. Pres. Obama is about to embark on a 17 day vacation in his native Hawaii, putting Secret Service away from families on Christmas. Aloha! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2013 Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama's college records (destroyed?) and check "place of birth" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2014 Oh no. Its horrible, said Honolulu resident Jon Osorio, who said hed rather see the president skip the state altogether. Hes bound to say something foolish on nuclear weapons, or North Korea, or race or native Hawaiians or the large number of Asian people who live here, said Osorio, a professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I dont know if Hawaii even registers on the Trump scale. We seem so low-priority to him, said Robert Kay, a freelance writer who runs the website ObamasNeighborhood.com that guides tourists to spots where Obama spent his youth. They include places like the Hawaii Kai bungalow where he lived as a child, the Baskin Robbins where he got his first job at age 16, and Sandy Beach, where the former president would bodysurf. Ive lived here 20 years and I dont hear about Trump much. But Obama is a homeboy. Hes still on peoples minds, Kay said. Trumps visit to Hawaii will last less than 24 hours. He arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on Friday afternoon before he meets with military officials at Pacific Command, tours Pearl Harbor and lays a wreath at the Arizona memorial. Hell then spend the night before taking off for Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, where he will attend meetings with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders group and the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations. But many Hawaii residents hope a visit to the state will expose the president, whose presence here is limited to a Trump-branded Waikiki tower that is not owned by his familys company, to the environmental and security threats that face the state, 2,471 miles from the mainland. Gaye Chan, an artist and art professor in Honolulu, is helping organize a protest against President Trump during his visit to Hawaii. (Jaweed Kaleem / Los Angeles Times ) When I first found out he was coming here, my reaction was a physical one, like you touch something sticky and slimy, said Gaye Chan, an art professor at the University of Hawaii who formed an anti-Trump coalition, Hawaii J20+, thats demonstrated since the inauguration. The group is spearheading the protest outside the Hawaii state Capitol on Friday thats advertised in the Youre not welcome here postcards. The American Civil Liberties Union, Sierra Club, Womens March Oahu chapter and dozens of other organizations have endorsed it. Most of what his administration is doing just feels so wrong to us. Hes harming the environment, hes harming LGBTQ people, hes insulting races and ethnicities for us in a state where the majority of us are not white, said Chan. Police are also preparing for two other anti-Trump protests over the weekend, including one Saturday that coincides with a national series of refuse fascism demonstrations. Its unlikely Trumps motorcade will pass by demonstrators, but he will get face-time with more high-profile critics. Speaking to reporters this week, Gov. David Ige, a Trump critic, said he would greet the president and First Lady Melania Trump on Friday afternoon with an Aloha. I dont intend to have a heated issue or political debate on the tarmac, said Ige, a Democrat. Whenever any president visits the state of Hawaii, I think its an opportunity to learn about the people, place and culture. We all learned a long time ago that when we work together we accomplish great things. State officials were infuriated this year when Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions called Hawaii an island in the Pacific in response to a Honolulu-based federal judge blocking the travel ban. Sessions said he was making a joke when he said he was amazed that a judge so far away could take on the president. But for Hawaii residents, it added to a sense that mainlanders such as Trump see them as foreigners. We realize President Trumps time in the Hawaiian islands is short, but hope he appreciates the history and values our state contributes to the national fabric, said Atty. Gen. Douglas Chin. His office launched court filings against the travel ban, the presidents halting of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and Trumps attempt to block transgender Americans from serving in the military. Hawaii is essentially a one-party state, with Democrats holding all statewide offices. The state House of Representatives has just five Republicans among its 51 members, and all 25 members of the state Senate are Democrats. In its small Republican Party, representatives said the visit could be a boon. President Trump is taking a very important trip for our national security interests. Were very focused on his agenda to reaffirm our leadership in the Asian-Pacific region, said Shirlene Ostrov, chair of the Hawaii Republican Party. Were incredibly excited. Ostrov, who traveled to Washington this week to finalize plans for the presidents visit, said Trump would not be meeting with local party members while in town. For some residents and tourists, the presidents visit may go unnoticed. I had no idea he was coming, said Tayte Alan, 19-year-old employee at Island Snow, a clothing store and shave ice shop in Kailua. The business, about 30 minutes northeast of Honolulu, is a favorite of Obamas, and photographs of the former president from past vacation visits line a wall. Were busier here with people who come for photos on the bench where Obama eats his dessert, Alan said. This week, one of those visitors was Shigeru Kithikoshi, who dropped by during his vacation from Sapporo, Japan, as part of a family tour of famous Oahu sites. Kithikoshi, 69, said he didnt know Trump would be in Hawaii and Japan, where hell meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the weekend. I like, I respect Obama, he said as he posed for photos in front of the shop with shave ice in-hand. I dont understand Trump. jaweed.kaleem@latimes.com Jaweed Kaleem is The Times national race and justice correspondent. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. More national headlines The man who shot hundreds and killed 58 at the Route 91 Harvest music festival a month ago was a narcissist who may have seen his image as a high-rolling gambler declining, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said as the investigation into the Oct. 1 shooting rampage entered its second month. He was going through some bouts of depression. But he was status-driven, Lombardo said in a wide-ranging interview with 8 News Now in Las Vegas that offered the first hints of what might have driven 64-year-old Stephen Paddock to open fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. Paddock had been losing money for two years, Lombardo said, and had been showing signs of depression. Advertisement Since September 2015, hes lost a significant amount of wealth, and I think that might have been a determining factor on what he was determined to do, Lombardo said in his Wednesday night interview. This individual was status-driven based on how he liked to be recognized in the casino environment and how he liked to be recognized by his friends and family. So obviously that was starting to decline in the short period of time and that may have had a determining effect on why decided to do what he did, the sheriff said. He was going in the wrong direction. Lombardo said investigators still dont understand precisely what set Paddock off a little more than a year ago when he began stockpiling weapons and scouting locations around the country. Paddock fatally shot himself at the end of his 10-minute-long attack, and the hard drives that had been removed from the computers found in his room have not been found, the sheriff said. Lombardo used the interview to try and set straight the initially confusing timelines offered by authorities in the days after the shooting. The chief questions have centered around the fact that Paddock was able to fire at the crowd opposite the hotel for a full 10 minutes, though a hotel security guard had been shot before the main shooting rampage began, and had reported it. What happened was this, the sheriff said: The security guard, Jesus Campos, had been alerted that a room on the 32nd floor had a door that had been held open for a long period of time. He found that the door to that floor from the stairwell had been barricaded, and he radioed in to report that at 9:59 p.m. Campos, Lombardo said, then took the stairs to the 33rd floor, exited, walked to the elevators and took one back down to the 32nd floor. He was shot in the leg as he walked outside Paddocks door. So subsequently you have a couple minutes of him going up, going down the elevators and back down the hallway and then he encounters the suspect, Lombardo said. He receives a wound, he attempts to go through his radio and then he also confirms his communication with dispatch via cellphone. All of the timelines have shown that Paddock opened fire on the crowd at 10:05 p.m. What time did Campos report that he had been shot? Police have never said, and Lombardo didnt elaborate on that in the televised interview. We didnt know shots were fired until 10:05 pm 10:04:55 or something like that, Lombardo said. Thats when we actually determined through calls for service, computer-aided dispatch, body-worn cameras, other peoples observations through videos in Uber, taxis things like that we feel pretty comfortable in that the large amounts of firing by the suspect occurred at 10:05 p.m. Since September 2015, hes lost a significant amount of wealth, and I think that might have been a determining factor on what he was determined to do. Sheriff Joe Lombardo Two Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers already were at the Mandalay Bay on another call and began working their way up the stairs as the shooting began. They, too, came across the barricaded stairwell door. So that was right around 10 minutes they were able to do that. So thats pretty amazing in public safety time you call dispatch, you get a revise, you formulate a plan, you ascend the stairwell, you have no idea what floor it is, youre receiving information from disparate directions, and then you encounter this blocked doorway and that was right around 10 minutes, Lombardo said. And then our other officers ascended via the elevator bank and came out into the foyer or hallway from the elevator bank there right around 12 minutes. During that time, the suspect had stopped firing. And so when we dont hear any firing taking place, then it becomes slow and methodical. At that point, he said, it was important to extract people from adjacent rooms to ensure their safety and plan a breach of Paddocks room. By the time they entered, the gunman had shot himself. I honestly believe that he believed the wolf was at the door being us, LVMPD and that is when he made the decision to take his life, Lombardo said. Paddock expended more than 1,000 rounds over the 10 minutes he fired, in what authorities were able to identify as 12 bursts. The pauses between them, Lombardo said, could have resulted from either jammed or faulty weapons, or the need to replace clips as they were emptied. Paddock made money on real estate investments and described himself as a professional gambler, though he had previously worked also as a defense industry auditor. He often spent long hours playing video poker. But Lombardo said Paddock had gone up and down in his wealth and had recently been losing money. The sheriff said that while that might have been a factor in the shooting, authorities are still trying to learn if there was some triggering event in October, when Paddock first began stockpiling weapons and ammunition including high-capacity assault rifles. He noted reports that Paddock may have scouted other locations to carry out his plan, including the Life is Beautiful event in downtown Las Vegas as well as locations in Boston and Chicago. Obviously he took a long time to think this out, Lombardo said. With so little still understood about Paddocks motive, Lombardo confirmed that the gunmans girlfriend, Marilou Danley, a former casino concierge who lived with him in Mesquite, Nev., continues to be interviewed and is still considered a person of interest. He declined to comment on Paddocks siblings, one of whom, Bruce Paddock, was arrested in Southern California last week and charged with possession of child pornography. The mens father was a notorious bank robber who was on the FBIs most wanted list during Stephen Paddocks childhood, but Lombardo said the Las Vegas gunman had no criminal history. david.montero@latimes.com Twitter: @davemontero ALSO She searched desperately for a man she helped after the Las Vegas shooting. Then she found him Husband and wife who survived Las Vegas shooting die in car crash Wounded casino security guard vanishes from Las Vegas and surfaces on the set of Ellen Brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock charged with child porn possession in L.A. A military judge has begun deliberating the punishment for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for endangering comrades by walking off his post in Afghanistan in 2009. Army Col. Jeffery Nance said he planned to spend Thursday afternoon deliberating. He planned to open court again Friday and could continue deliberating then. He didnt indicate when he would deliver the sentence. Both sides gave closing arguments. Prosecutors again cited serious wounds to several service members who searched for Bergdahl. They recommended a prison sentence of 14 years and a punitive discharge. Advertisement Defense attorneys argued for leniency by citing Bergahls five years in Taliban captivity, harsh campaign-trail criticism by Donald Trump and his mental disorders. They asked for a dishonorable discharge but no confinement as Bergdahls sentence. A new Oklahoma law is making it official: Slower drivers need to move to the right. A new law that took effect on Nov. 1 states that the left lane on multilane roadways in Oklahoma will be for passing only, not traveling, the Tulsa World reported . Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Dwight Durant said vehicles in the left lane will be required to move to the right if another vehicle comes up from behind, allowing the faster moving vehicle to pass. Advertisement Youre no longer allowed to travel in that left lane. Period, Durant said. The law includes some exemptions, including the potential of merging traffic, executing a left turn and moving over for stopped or emergency vehicles. Fines for traveling in the left lane are about $235. Were going to take into consideration congested traffic and metropolitan areas, Durant said. Were mainly concerned with the long stretches in the rural areas. Tulsa Police Sgt. Shane Tuell said the department didnt anticipate a change that would affect how officers enforce traffic flow. Weve always had laws about impeding the flow of traffic, Tuell said. The trouble is enforcement. Tuell said officers will enforce violations as they see them. The issue, he said, was having enough officers to enforce such laws. Lawmakers passed the statute in May, hoping to prevent collisions caused by a congested left lane and reduce road rage. ALSO Can North Koreas missiles deliver an atomic weapon to the U.S. mainland? Maybe Remarkable dinosaur discoveries under threat with Trump plan to shrink national monument in Utah, scientists say Can Trump be trusted with the nuclear launch codes? Can any president? When a top Interior Department official acknowledged recently that the Trump administration wouldnt try to block removal of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, he signaled a monumental victory for local Native American tribes, salmon fishermen and the national dam removal movement. Yet this development is less momentous than it would have been in 2015, when dam removal was just one component of a broad plan for the Klamath Basin, which straddles the California-Oregon border. That plan included salmon habitat restoration, the return of tribal land and water-sharing among farmers, ranchers and tribes. It was the product of a decade of trust-building and honest negotiation among representatives of the basins constituencies, whose efforts turned one of the nations most contentious water basins into a model of collaboration. It helped that big money didnt skew the process: Most of the basins residents are far from wealthy, and the only corporation involved is PacifiCorp, the utility that owns the dams. But congressional Republicans declined to support the deal (it required legislative authorization and funding) on the grounds that taking down four obsolete, inefficient and soon-to-be money-losing dams could set a precedent that would eventually threaten, say, Hoover Dam. By espousing an outdated tenet of conservative ideology all dams are engines of economic development they sabotaged the interests of their own supporters. Advertisement Two years later, the dams are going to come down, but no water-sharing plan will accompany their removal. As a result, the ranchers and farmers in the Upper Klamath Basin, where Republican voters predominate, will not have a reliable source of irrigation water. Upper Klamath farm country is already studded with for sale signs. Becky Hyde, an Oregon rancher who courageously fought for a comprehensive basin agreement for many years, says the 2015 plans collapse feels like a betrayal. She diplomatically declines to say who she thinks the betrayers are. Given the presidents environmental record, the decision to take down the Klamath dams was made despite its benefits to the river, not because of them. The good news is that dam removal is virtually certain. Beginning in late September, Alan Mikkelsen, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations acting commissioner, has repeatedly stated that the Interior Department wont interfere with the application before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to dismantle the Klamaths four dams. FERC approval, widely expected in mid-2019, is the only remaining obstacle to freeing the river. If the dams come down as planned in early 2020, the event will mark by most measures the nations and perhaps the worlds biggest dam removal project. The dams absence will reopen about 500 miles of river and tributary habitat for salmon, whose numbers have plummeted since the dams were built beginning a century ago. It will end the poisoning of the Klamath River proper, where blue-green algae is now so pervasive that signs warn visitors not to even touch the water for much of its 254-mile length. Given the presidents environmental record, the decision to take down the dams was made despite its benefits to the river, not because of them. What appeals to Interior Department officials is that removal is the preference of PacifiCorp. The dams owner faces the straightforward choice of spending $200 million to take the dams down or spending an unknown multiple of that amount on fish ladders and water quality improvements to secure the dams re-licensing, all to continue generating an inconsequential amount of electricity. To the Trump administration, its just a business decision, outside the appropriate purview of government. That puts the last remaining opponents of dam removal, the outspokenly conservative Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors in California, in the awkward position of appealing to federal officials to nullify a private corporations decision, which stands right-wing dogma on its head. Some basin farmers and ranchers hold out hope for another round of negotiations and a new water-sharing plan, but developments since the collapse of the 2015 deal have decreased that prospect. For one thing, the senior water right of southern Oregons Klamath Tribes was recently judicially affirmed, giving them much less incentive to negotiate. Instead of guaranteeing a minimum share of the basins water to the irrigators in dry years, as the tribes agreed to in the 2015 deal, they have cut off flows to the farms and ranches every year since 2013 so they can provide increased protection to the rivers deeply threatened fish populations. The collapse of the 2015 deal also soured the Klamath Tribes governing council on negotiations. Our congressional folks told us that if we could come up with an agreement that works for all, that it would move through Congress, Don Gentry, the Klamath Tribes chairman, told me over the phone. We expended a lot of time, developed relationships and reached a solution, and Congress didnt move it forward. So the question is, what opportunity is really there? Our members have been very frustrated. The dams dismantling will hearten environmentalists, but the collapse of the grass-roots Klamath Basin plan should hearten no one. Congress undermined an agreement that balanced conservation and agriculture, fish and farmers a model the West will need in the future. As our water resources dwindle, the Republicans reputation for nihilism grows. Jacques Leslie is a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook On Halloween, a 29-year-old New Jersey man plowed a rented truck into crowds of people on a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people. The attack was reportedly inspired by Islamic State, although no connections have yet been established between the attacker and any known terrorist organization. He entered the United States from Uzbekistan on a diversity visa in 2010, and appears to have been radicalized since then. Sixteen years after Sept. 11, some dismiss concerns about radical Islamic terrorism as right-wing fear mongering or a Bush-era hangover. It is fashionable in certain quarters to deride the odds of any American being killed by Islamist terrorists, and to argue that purely homegrown terrorists such as white supremacists are a numerically larger problem. They claim we should all be more worried about mass shootings, like the recent atrocity in Las Vegas. But theirs is a too-narrow view of both the data and the nature of the threat. Radical Islam is a set of political, not religious, beliefs. It compels its believers to make war not only against Israel, the West and India, but especially against Muslims who reject their political vision. That vision includes killing people who convert from Islam, brutally murdering homosexuals, the forcible subjugation of women and reclamation of any land that has ever been in Muslim hands. The political goal is to create and expand the kind of stark theocracy run by Islamic State or the Taliban. Advertisement Radical Islam is not the only source of terrorist attacks, hate crimes or mass shootings. But it is still by far the most dangerous. These political doctrines are so dangerous precisely because they are preached to their believers as the religious commands of Islam, and can be hard for outsiders to untangle from more conventional Islamic teachings. Confusing the two is a goal of the radicals: It inflates their perceived numbers, intimidates anti-radical Muslims and invites backlash. The radicals are most likely a very small percentage of the worlds estimated 1.6 billion Muslims, but you can hide a lot of fish in such a large sea. In some ways, atrocities by radical Islamists are like conventional hate crimes: They target groups of strangers, spreading fear of similar attacks far beyond their immediate targets. But comparing the raw number of casualties within the United States and then excluding Sept. 11, as comparisons often do significantly understates the threat in four important ways. First, unlike mass shootings by unstable individuals, terror attacks happen for a reason that goes beyond the perpetrator. Because they come from ideas that are widely shared, they are more likely to be repeated than random attacks. And unlike extremist versions of Christianity or extremes of the American political left or right, radical Islamists can look to internationally prominent spokesmen who openly advocate violence. Second, terrorism by nature is episodic; what looks like a small threat for a year or two can come roaring back. Data on radical Islamic terrorism in the United States in the 1990s would have gravely underestimated the threat that loomed in 2001. We know that radical Islamic terrorists continue to aim for mass-casualty attacks. Many have been thwarted by the very anti-terror policies that critics see as an overreaction. Accounting for the threat has to include the Sept. 11 attacks, because we deal with enemies who would love to repeat them. Third, the radical Islamic movement is global, so any estimate of the threat should not treat terrorism in the United States as if it were walled off from the rest of the world. Tuesdays attack, in which an Uzbek immigrant drew on radical ideas from Syria and Iraq, using a truck-attack tactic commonly used in Europe and the Middle East, reminds us of how quickly problems that seem far away can appear on our shores. Fourth, radical Islam continues to draw on vastly larger resources organizational and financial support, state sponsorship and the violent know-how gained in conflicts across the globe than any other extremist movement in the world. Even major white nationalist groups pale in comparison (the closest they have to a major state patron is Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Putins preferred modus operandi is to boost groups involved in elections). The government has resisted collecting data that classifies terrorist attacks by source, but the State Departments annual reports on known terrorist organizations have long been dominated by radical Islamic groups. Its 2016 report yet again found that a majority of all terrorist attacks and deaths took place in seven countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Syria and Nigeria), all targets of radical Islamic terror. Over the last decade, the State Departments global toll of terrorism annually has ranged from 25,000 to 35,000 dead, an equal number injured, and perhaps half as many kidnapped or taken hostage. Here in the United States, a 2017 study by the libertarian Cato Institute found that radical Islamist terrorists accounted for 92% of the deaths and 94% of the injuries due to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil over the last 25 years, the bulk of those in the Sept. 11 attacks. Radical Islam is not the only source of terrorist attacks, hate crimes or mass shootings. But it is still by far the most dangerous. Dan McLaughlin is an attorney in New York and a contributing columnist to National Review Online. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook. Weve known well, most of us have since the 2016 presidential campaign began that Donald J. Trump lacked the personal characteristics to step in as a reliable leader of the free world. Hes impetuous, unthinking, and the sway his emotions hold over his mouth or his Twitter fingers belies a frightening immaturity for a man in his 70s. And he keeps proving his unsuitability, most recently in a series of tweets late Wednesday in which he called for the speedy trial and execution of Sayfullo Saipov, accused in the New York City truck terror attack, and publicly mused about whether Saipov should be sent to Guantanamo Bay for military trial or remain in New York to face charges in the civilian courts. These arent the actions of a president; they are the inane chatter from the loudmouth at the end of the bar. Or the leader of a mob. Trump has so tarnished the image of the United States abroad that his successor whoever and whenever that might be will have a challenge in restoring it. Europe has determined it can no longer rely on U.S. leadership (Note: Trumps big in Russia, though). The presidents policies have removed the United States as a leader in the fight for global human rights. His playing games with the Iranian nuclear deal tells other regimes that the word of the United States cant be trusted, and that a deal is not necessarily a deal. Thats dangerous. Advertisement For all his bluster, Trump has been abjectly ineffectual on domestic issues, failing (fortunately) in his prime goal of repealing Obamacare, failing to put forth a detailed infrastructure plan, and (fortunately, again) running into legal barriers with his atrocious executive orders on refugees and immigration enforcement. Trumps response: Angry recriminations as he attacks congressional leaders, the courts, the media and citizens who criticize him. Trump has the bully pulpit, and its a good fit in name Liddle Bob Corker, Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, Wacky Congresswoman Wilson but not in deed. In fact, the public has learned to take his utterances with a shaker of salt. Even his apologists tell the world not to believe everything he says, or they try to argue that the president didnt say what he just said. At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the president addressed the terror attack and said that we need quick justice and we need strong justice much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and its a laughingstock. A short time later, a reporter asked his spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Why did the president call the U.S. justice system a joke and a laughingstock during his comments in the Cabinet? Her answer: Thats not what he said. Both statements were included in official White House transcripts. There is no truth with this White House. So how does the nation deal with such unreliability from the president and his staff? Keep the spotlight on. Keep exposing the lies (Politifact has been keeping a running log, though its usually a few days behind) and the inconsistencies, and hope that truth will win out. These arent the actions of a president; they are the inane chatter from the loudmouth at the end of the bar. A democracy is only as strong as the faith of the people living under it. Theres an argument that Trump is undermining the institutions of our democracy, and theres a lot of truth to that. But public skepticism of Congress, of the courts, of the presidency and of the media was high before Trump surfaced as a serious presidential candidate. He didnt create the crisis so much as he exploited it, and in his victory has only worsened it. Yet here we are with a president who lies at will, surrounded by enablers and apologists, and whose ignorance of the importance of the institutions he is attacking is astounding. Republican congressional leaders are so driven by political tribalism that they willingly go along with his insults, his challenges, his actions to demean and undercut them, all for the sake of a Holy Grail of what, passing tax reform? Repealing Obamacare? They cant even agree on their own agenda. Its one thing to disagree over the proper role of government in society, or the best way to provide healthcare, over the proper role for the United States on the world stage. Its another thing entirely to abide the forces that seek to erode the foundations of American society itself. scott.martelle@latimes.com Twitter: @smartelle To the editor: On Thursday, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will consider adopting their proposed Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) to reduce emissions from trucks and other sources. The CAAP is a good start, but more needs to be done, especially in the near term, to help achieve clean air and protect public health in our region. The South Coast Air Quality Management District is committed to working with the ports and all stakeholders to implement, accelerate and supplement the measures in the CAAP. Specifically, SCAQMD has sponsored the development of near-zero (such as natural-gas-powered engines) and zero (such as battery-powered electric) emission technology that reduces smog-forming emissions by 90% to 100% when compared with current tailpipe standards. Utilization of these technologies will provide the immediate and long-term reductions necessary to meet our air quality standards, and funding is available now to help truck owners replace their older trucks with these cleaner technologies. Advertisement We cant afford to wait to protect the health of the breathing public especially with clean technologies and presently available funding. William A. Burke, Los Angeles The writer is chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Petition drive to repeal California gas tax increase temporarily slows down By Patrick McGreevy A motorist prepares to gas up her vehicle in San Rafael, Calif., in 2015. ( (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)) Paid signature-gatherers for a ballot measure that would repeal gas tax increases may be hard to find on the streets of California this week. Organizers say its not a money issue, adding that they needed to briefly halt paid signature-gathering to catch up on collecting petitions from volunteers. The petition drive has so far collected more than 327,800 verified signatures of the 587,407 needed to qualify the measure for the November ballot, according to Dave Gilliard, the political strategist behind the drive. We knew it was popular but the incredible pace is even faster than we expected so we outran the capacity of our verification operation over the Christmas holiday and told our crew managers to slow down so we could catch up, Gilliard said. We will be back up to speed by the end of this week. The gas tax and vehicle fee increases signed by Gov. Jerry Brown are expected to raise $5.2 billion annually for road and bridge repairs and expanded mass transit. The gas tax jumped from 18 cents to 30 cents per gallon on Nov. 1, and vehicle fees of at least $25 kicked in Jan. 1. The gas tax repeal petition is breaking records for both paid and volunteer signatures and were using the next two weeks to catch up on validation of signatures already received, said Carl DeMaio, a former San Diego City Councilman and conservative radio talk-show host. As a grass-roots-funded effort we are also continuously raising funds and volunteer support. We are highly confident well qualify this Initiative for the November 2018 ballot. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print State pot bureau ready to enforce Californias new marijuana laws as license applications flood in By Patrick McGreevy The state has issued 104 licenses for retail stores to sell marijuana for recreational use in California and 239 other applications for those permits are pending, officials said Tuesday. An official with the state Bureau of Cannabis Control added that the agency is prepared to begin taking enforcement action against pot shops that are not properly licensed. The bureaus enforcement team is ready to respond to any complaints it receives and start doing compliance checks and site visits at any time, said Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the bureau. Selling marijuana without a license is a crime punishable by up to six months in county jail and a fine of up to $500. Those convicted of engaging in any marijuana business activity without a license will also be subject to a civil penalty of up to three times the amount of the license fee for each violation. A new report issued Tuesday indicated the bureau has issued 478 temporary licenses to firms to test, distribute and sell medical and recreational marijuana, which began Jan. 1 after voters approved a legalization initiative, Proposition 64, in 2016. Businesses have received 153 licenses to sell marijuana for medical use. Another 1,458 firms have applied for licenses that are still being processed. The state Department of Food and Agriculture has separately issued 207 licenses to marijuana growers. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Two possible instances of discrimination reported after California issues drivers licenses to immigrants here illegally By Jazmine Ulloa The California Research Bureau on Tuesday released its first report on incidents of discrimination under a 2015 state law that has provided drivers licenses for hundreds of thousands of immigrants here illegally. Researchers found no complaints have been made against government agencies tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination laws. But two possible instances of discrimination were reported in focus group interviews conducted by Drive California, a coalition of advocates studying the impact of the new law. In one case, a woman in Fresno was told her license was not a valid form of identification at a retail store, though it was unclear whether the incident reflected intentional discrimination or simple ignorance of the license marking, the report states. A MoneyGram clerk in another case denied a license holder the ability to cash a check. The same person was later rejected again at a bank. The state Department of Motor Vehicles has issued 960,000 AB 60 drivers licenses as of Nov. 30. The state research bureau produced the report for the Legislature as part of the new law, which declares discrimination against an AB 60 license holder a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California lawmaker proposes requiring panic buttons for hotel workers in response to widespread sexual harassment By Patrick McGreevy More than half of hotel workers surveyed report being sexually harassed at some point. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times) Alarmed by a survey indicating sexual harassment of hotel housekeepers is widespread, a California state lawmaker on Tuesday proposed requiring employers to provide panic button devices to their employees so they can summon help if abused by a guest. The bill to be introduced Wednesday by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) would also require individual hotels to impose a three-year ban on guests who engage in harassment on the property. We want to protect our most vulnerable women workers, hotel maids who are going into rooms alone, from sexual harassment, said Muratsuchi, who co-authored the bill with Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward). The legislation signals that concerns over sexual harassment that dominated the state Legislature last year will continue to be an issue for lawmakers as they begin the new legislative year Wednesday. Harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, comedian Louis C.K. and other high-profile men have involved sexual misconduct in hotel rooms. A survey in July by Unite Here Local 1 found that 49% of female hotel workers in Chicago had experienced a guest answering the door naked or exposing himself. The report titled Hands Off, Pants On, found 58% of hotel workers said they had been sexually harassed by a guest. Californias Unite Here Local 11 has been calling for the action proposed in the legislation. It is the intent of this measure to protect hotel employees from violent assault, including sexual assault, and sexual harassment, and to enable those employees to speak out when they experience harassment on the job, said the introduction to the legislation introduced by Muratsuchi. In addition to requiring hotels to provide panic buttons to employees who work alone in rooms, the bill requires hotels to take written complaints from employees and keep them for five years. Any complaint backed by evidence including a statement given under penalty of perjury would result in a guest being banned from a hotel for three years. Hotels would also be required to post a notice on the inside of hotel room doors warning guests about the consequences of sexual harassment. Updated at 4:10 pm to include comment from Assemblyman Muratsuchi. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Money, Republican malaise and Tom Steyer: These are the things to watch for in Californias 2018 statewide elections By Seema Mehta Get ready, California. What had been a behind-the-scenes dash for cash closely watched by few other than political observers is about to burst into public view. Voters this year will decide who will succeed Democrat Jerry Brown as the next governor and whether they will send Sen. Dianne Feinstein back to Washington. Before the June 5 primary, candidates will ramp up their campaigns with messages on television and stuffed into mailboxes. Heres a primer on the states two marquee races. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Fickle L.A. County is pivotal in the race for California governor By Phil Willon Home to a quarter of Californias 5.2 million registered voters, Los Angeles County is the biggest prize in Californias 2018 race for governor. For two hometown Democratic candidates especially former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang of Torrance doing well in L.A. County is essential if they hope to best the front-runner, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Yet this overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold continually bedevils even the most adept campaigns. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A renewed brawl over single-payer healthcare in California is on deck for 2018 By Melanie Mason Carolyn Angela Chen, a registered nurse, gives a free hepatitis A vaccination to Glenn Gardner, 52, at Joshua House Clinic (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) California officials are bracing for healthcare battles in Washington to have a major impact on the states budget and programs. Activists and politicians are planning a showdown over whether or not to establish a single-payer healthcare system in the state. And prescription drug manufacturers are the target of a number of bills meant to target the rising costs of medication. Sound familiar? Turns out the brewing healthcare battles in California in 2018 arent all that different from those from 2017. Heres a primer on the upcoming healthcare agenda in California: Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print How California lawmakers plan to protect the online privacy of consumers in 2018 By Jazmine Ulloa (Elise Amendola / Associated Press) With federal regulation rollbacks and a rise in data breaches, California lawmakers this year are looking for ways to protect consumers and their personal information. Some legislation under consideration could give people more notice and control over what data is collected, without having to pay for privacy or better services. Other bills could provide free credit freezes for consumers and require new privacy features for products that connect to the internet. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print 2018 will see California motorists pay more to the state to repair roads and bridges By Patrick McGreevy The new year brings with it new vehicle fees in California ranging from $25 to $175 depending on the value of your car, but Republican lawmakers are hoping to qualify a ballot measure in November to repeal the higher charges. The fees and a 12-cent increase in Californias gas tax last year are part of a plan by Democrats to raise more than $5.2 billion annually to deal with a backlog of road and bridge repairs. Petitions to qualify a repeal initiative are circulating now. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement A rent control battle tops the list of California housing issues to watch in 2018 By Liam Dillon A new-home community in Anaheim in 2016 (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times) California lawmakers arent wasting any time in tackling one of the most contentious issues in state housing politics this year. On Jan. 11, the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee is set to hold a hearing on legislation that could lead to a dramatic expansion of rent control policies across the state. The debate over rent control could spill over onto the 2018 ballot, where Californians also could see proposals to expand or curtail the property tax restrictions ushered in 40 years ago by Proposition 13. Lawmakers will have to wrestle with how to follow up a package of housing bills that passed last year. The measures provided new funding and regulations designed to encourage homebuilding, but are unlikely to make an appreciable difference in housing costs. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas is resigning By John Myers Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas abruptly announced his resignation from the California Legislature on Wednesday, citing health reasons. Ridley-Thomas, a Democrat from Los Angeles, informed Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) Tuesday night. The reason for this difficult decision is that I am facing persistent health issues, Ridley-Thomas, 30, said in a written statement on Wednesday. On December 18th, I underwent surgery for the fifth time this year. Although I expect a full recovery, my physicians advise that I will need an extended period of time to recuperate. Earlier this year, Ridley-Thomas was absent from work for more than two weeks. Staff members initially said the absence was a personal leave, then said the time off was due to unspecified medical reasons. His resignation letter on Wednesday offered no additional details. When I resume public life, I intend to remain active in civic affairs, where my passion lies, he said in the statement released by his office. Ridley-Thomas was first elected to the Assembly in a 2013 special election. He is the son of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Before winning elected office at age 26, the younger Ridley-Thomas worked as an aide for Los Angeles City Councilman Curren Price and managed a 2012 Assembly campaign in San Bernardino County. In a statement about his sons decision, Mark Ridley-Thomas said he and his wife more than anyone, have seen him struggle with health challenges this year, and we fully support his decision to step down from the state Legislature so that he can recuperate with complete rest, in accordance with his doctors orders. His solidly Democratic district includes the west Los Angeles neighborhoods of Westwood, Culver City, Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills. He is chairman of the influential Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee, which oversees all tax-related legislation. Ridley-Thomas is a proponent of changes in the operation of the state Board of Equalization, though his plan would have allowed the agency to ultimately retain many of its duties. A more substantial shake-up was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in June. Ridley-Thomas was the author of a bill signed into law in October giving the Los Angeles Unified School District the power to preserve some of its existing single-gender schools. He was unsuccessful, though, in an effort to stop local governments from imposing taxes on streaming video services like Netflix and Hulu. Ridley-Thomas departure will require a special election in 2018. He is the fourth Southern California legislator to leave office this year. The election of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) to Congress also required a special election. The other two lawmakers Assemblymen Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) and Matt Dababneh (D-Woodland Hills) stepped down in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct, which both men have denied. A special election to fill Bocanegras seat will be held on April 3, with a potential runoff on June 5. A special election date has not yet been set for Dababnehs seat. My colleagues and I wish Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas all the best going forward as he deals with his health challenges, Rendon said in a statement. The Assembly will continue to assist the residents of the 54th Assembly District until a new assemblymember is seated. This post was updated with comment from Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, as well as more information about special elections. It was originally published at 11:10 a.m. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California Senate Democrats are considering some ideas to counter the GOP tax plan By Liam Dillon Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Democrats in the California Senate are planning to write legislation to lessen the effects of the elimination of popular tax breaks in the GOPs overhaul of the federal tax system. To finance broad-based corporate tax cuts and reductions in individual tax rates, the GOP plan caps the deductibility of state and local income and property taxes a benefit used often in suburban areas of California. The Republican tax scam disproportionately harms California taxpayers, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement. Our hard-earned tax dollars should not be subject to double-taxation, especially not to line the pockets of the Trump family, hedge fund managers and private jet owners. De Leon, who also is running for U.S. Senate, said the state Senate is working with law professors at UCLA, UC Davis and the University of Chicago to develop the legislation. Ideas being considered, according to a de Leon spokesman, include: Reducing state personal income taxes through a tax credit program and offsetting that amount through payroll taxes. Allowing individuals to make voluntary gifts to the state of California, which would be deductible as a charitable donation under federal law. The deduction for the donated amount would replace the state and local tax deduction. Lawmakers return to Sacramento in January. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti admits considering a 2020 bid: I am thinking about this By Seema Mehta Eric Garcetti (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Its no secret Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is interested in running for president. When reporters ask about his intentions, he has used all sorts of ways to deflect, typically by saying hes focused on his day job for the moment. But speaking in Spanish to a Univision reporter this week, Garcetti edged ever closer to the telltale admission hes actually considering it. I am thinking about this, said Garcetti, who is partly of Mexican heritage but learned Spanish attending private school. The majority of time goes to my work as mayor of Los Angeles, but every [citizen] should think about what our role is in these difficult times, in these dangerous times. Garcetti added that he expects many mayors to run for president, and noted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently visited Iowa, which holds the first presidential nominating contest. Garcetti has long been rumored to be flirting with a White House bid, and he has fueled such speculation by traveling out of state to places such as the early presidential primary state of New Hampshire to campaign for a mayoral candidate. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Gov. Brown makes judicial appointments, including attorney who helps train Legislature on anti-sexual-harassment policies .@JerryBrownGov makes two court of appeal and 33 superior court appointments including Lauri Damrell in Sacramento. Damrell, an attorney at Orrick, testified at the Assemblys recent hearing on sexual harassment, outlining the assemblys current prevention efforts. Liam Dillon (@dillonliam) December 22, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Californias former top cop forms marijuana distribution firm in new age of legalization By Patrick McGreevy Former California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer is going from enforcing laws against marijuana to legally distributing the drug under the states new rules that allow the sale and possession of pot for recreational use. With state-licensed sales of marijuana starting Jan. 1, Lockyer has co-founded a firm, C4 Distro, that will distribute packaged marijuana concentrates and edibles to stores in Los Angeles. He says Californias new regulated system has a chance to be a model for the rest of the country. For me as somebody who was on the law enforcement side for so many years, I saw the inadequacies of the effort to regulate something just by calling it illegal, Lockyer said. I think legalizing will help stabilize and help legitimize this industry and result in better consumer protection and other public benefits. Lockyer, a Democrat who served in the state Assembly and was leader of the state Senate, has co-founded the firm with Eric Spitz, who was chairman and president of the former parent company of the Orange County Register. The businessmen aim to get their products to pot shops in L.A. in late January or early February, Spitz said. Asked if he uses marijuana himself, Lockyer, 76, said, Not in any recent times, but there were college years. He said he sees his involvement in the marijuana industry as a mixture of helping to pay for his kids college tuition and public service to help the new regulations work. This whole industry has to come from the dark side to the light, he said. By focusing on delivery to as many as 700 stores that might open in Los Angeles, C4 Distro hopes to capture a targeted market while other firms distribute statewide. The business has a warehouse in southeast Los Angeles County and is close to applying for a distributors license from the state, Lockyer said. Lockyer served a quarter century in the state Legislature before he was elected as state attorney general in 1999. He left that office in 2007 when he was elected as state treasurer, serving until his retirement from politics in 2015. Before co-leading a group that bought the Register newspaper in 2012, Spitz served as chief financial officer at Narragansett Brewing Company. Spitz left the Registers Freedom Communications in 2016. 2 p.m.: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said Spitz left Freedom Communications in 2015. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print House passes disaster aid bill with wildfire funding, 18 Californians vote no By Sarah D. Wire (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Eighteen of Californias 53 House members voted no on an $81-billion disaster aid package Thursday, which includes funds for Californias recent wildfires. The 17 Democrats and one Republican voted no on the bill, which passed the House by a 251 to 169 vote. The Senate is not expected to take up the bill until January, when Congress returns from its holiday break. The entire California delegation had recently signed onto a letter asking for the disaster aid. In a speech on the House floor before the vote, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) pleaded with colleagues not to take a political stance on a disaster aid bill. Dont play politics on a vote to give aid to the people of Texas, to the people of Puerto Rico and to the Virgin Islands, to the people of Florida, and to the people of California that are still fighting the fires. Dont play politics on a bill where you hope to maybe stop another. That would be the worst of any politics Ive seen played here, McCarthy said. Here and now, right before Christmas, dont vote against aid for Americans who just lost everything. Several of the Democrats who voted no also voted against the spending bill Thursday, and said that they felt they could not support either because the bills did not include Democratic priorities for the end of the year, including protections for people brought to the country illegally as children. Others said the aid bill doesnt provide enough money for California and doesnt treat Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands fairly in terms of competing for the funds. The 18 representatives voting no were: Nanette Barragan (D-San Pedro) Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles) Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) Linda Sanchez (D-Whittier) Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) Norma Torres (D-Pomona) Juan Vargas (D-San Diego) Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Three California House members cross party lines on spending bill to keep government open By Sarah D. Wire Three California House members crossed party lines Thursday on a vote to pass a spending bill that will keep the government open until mid-January. Democratic Reps. Jim Costa of Fresno and Raul Ruiz of Palm Desert joined the majority of Republicans to vote for the bill. Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine joined Democrats to vote against it. The bill, which funds the government through Jan. 19, passed the House 231 to 188, right before representatives left for the holidays. Costa said in a statement that he voted yes because keeping the government open is Congress job, but he called the vote a continuation of the dysfunction in Washington. It further illustrates the damage that results from partisan politics and irresponsible leadership. It is unacceptable that we have to resort to funding the government for weeks at a time because we cannot sit down together Democrats and Republicans and negotiate a real budget bill, Costa said. Hunters staff said the congressman was concerned that military spending in the bill was extended for only a short period. He had wanted the spending to be extended until September. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Poll points to all-Democrat runoffs in California races for governor and senator By Seema Mehta Californians could see two Democrat-on-Democrat contests in the states premier races in 2018, according to a new poll released Thursday. In the gubernatorial race, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom remains the front-runner with the support of 26% of likely voters in a Berkeley IGS poll. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa came in second with the backing of 17%. The poll found notable demographic differences in the two mens bases of support. Newsom had strong leads in the Bay Area, where he once served as the mayor of San Francisco, as well as among white voters, liberals and the wealthy. Villaraigosa saw strong backing in Los Angeles County, among Latino voters and among those who earned less than $40,000. Republicans splintered in the race, placing businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen in a tie for third place with 9% each. Two other Democrats, state Treasurer John Chiang and former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, each won the support of 5% of likely voters. If Republicans fail to consolidate behind a candidate in the June primary, voters will for the first time see no GOP candidate on the November ballot for governor. Its a repeat of what occurred in the 2016 U.S. Senate race, and what is likely to occur again in the 2018 U.S. Senate race if the field does not grow. Sen. Dianne Feinstein has the support of 41% of likely voters in her reelection bid, but her rival, fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon, won the support of 27%, according to the poll. There is no GOP candidate in the race. Feinstein, who has served in the Senate for a quarter-century, has enormous advantages in fundraising, name recognition and support among powerful political groups. However, the poll found that nearly one-third of likely voters said they are undecided or would like to support another candidate. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California legislator wants to curb sexual harassment in Hollywood and eating disorders for models By Melanie Mason Fashion models show off the BCBG MAX AZRIA Spring 2016 collection during New York Fashion Week. (Richard Drew / AP) A new proposal by a California assemblyman is taking aim at two of the more criticized phenomena in the entertainment industry: sexual harassment and unhealthy body standards for fashion models. The legislation, by Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael), would require the states Occupational Safety and Health Standards to adopt guidelines for fashion models in an attempt to combat the prevalence of eating disorders and excessive thinness in the industry. This is the second time Levine has tried to take on the fashion industry. His similar bill to impose standards on models sputtered in 2016. This time, Levine also is trying to address the prevalence of sexual harassment in the entertainment industry by requiring that talent agencies which represent actors, performers and other artists provide training on sexual harassment and how to identify and prevent inappropriate behavior. I believed women who told me their stories of abuse when I introduced legislation to provide workplace protections in the fashion industry in 2016 just like I believe them now, Levine said in a statement. Its time that law reflects societys rejection of sexual harassment in all workplaces, including Hollywood. My bill aims to address the problem before it starts, but also empowers survivors with the tools to report these cases. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Local Indivisible group picks Democrat to endorse against Rep. Duncan Hunter By Christine Mai-Duc Ammar Campa-Najjar, 28, is running against Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine). (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune) With an already crowded field of contenders hoping to unseat Rep. Duncan Hunter and months to go before the candidate filing deadline, one local activist group has made an early endorsement in the race. Indivisible CA50, made up of activists mostly in San Diego County, announced Thursday that its endorsing Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat and public affairs consultant whos challenging Hunter. The endorsement comes as liberal activists and interest groups all over the state are grappling with whether and how to winnow down the dozens of candidates vying for 10 GOP-held seats in California. The group held more than half a dozen endorsement meetings to allow members throughout Hunters district to vote on their preferred candidate. One of the candidates, Pierre Beauregard, dropped out of the race recently and endorsed Campa-Najjar. In a statement Campa-Najjar said in a statement that the nod represents the enthusiasm of hundreds of progressive grassroots activists. Indivisibles national political director Maria Urbina said the endorsement was the first made by any California chapter in the 2018 midterms. Aside from Campa-Najjar, two other Democrats are running for Hunters seat: Josh Butner, a school board trustee and former Navy SEAL, and realtor Patrick Malloy, who ran last year and lost to Hunter by nearly 27 percentage points. Hunter will also face at least two GOP challengers: Shamus Sayed and Andrew Zelt. Hunter is not considered to be particularly vulnerable in next years election, but an investigation into his alleged misuse of campaign funds has caused at least one election handicapper to move his race from solid Republican to the likely Republican column. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print San Francisco is getting a new mayor and creating a political star. Who will it be? By Mark Z. Barabak San Francisco is the city everyone loves, even if they hate it. The stately Victorians, like a gingerbread dream come to life. The majestic Golden Gate Bridge, standing like heavens portal above the fog. The plucky cable cars, scrabbling up its impossible hillsides. It can almost make you forget the bands of ravaged homeless, the paralyzing traffic, the scent of human waste wafting from sidewalks outside the citys posh eateries and palatial tech headquarters. San Francisco is getting a new mayor, owing to the sudden death of incumbent Ed Lee. All of the grandeur, and all of the grit, accompany the position. To say the race is wide open Lee having died just about a week ago is an understatement. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Sen. Dianne Feinstein is under pressure over a fix for Dreamers By Sarah D. Wire California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is under pressure from activists and fellow Democrats to withhold support for a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown in exchange for protections for people brought to the country illegally as children. Feinstein said in October that protections for so-called Dreamers are the most important thing we can get done, but the senator known for her moderate bent said this week that she wont try to block the end-of-the-year spending bill over it, and has not offered an explanation. Dreamers this week flooded Feinsteins five California offices and her office on Capitol Hill. Two UCLA students refused to leave her Capitol Hill office after three hours Tuesday and were briefly detained by police. On Wednesday, about a dozen students and parents returned and were asked to leave after about 30 minutes of shouting in her office lobby. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print The GOP tax plan passed. Now Democrats have another big issue to use in the midterms By Sarah D. Wire As GOP leaders in Congress met behind closed doors to hash out the details of their massive tax overhaul, a group of UC Irvine graduate students met in Rep. Mimi Walters district, fretting about how the plan could cost them money. About 20 miles north, dozens of activists in top hats stood outside Rep. Ed Royces Brea office as they chanted, Shame on you! And up in the Central Valley, protesters gathered outside Rep. Jeff Denhams Modesto office to sing Protest ye dreary congressman Remember that he voted to take healthcare away. To save himself from taxes now, so you will have to pay. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Kevin de Leon to Feinstein: Dont come back to California without forcing a government shutdown over Dream Act By Jazmine Ulloa State Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), left, and Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), right. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press) Taking direct criticism to the woman he is attempting to unseat in next years U.S. Senate race, California Senate leader Kevin de Leon on Wednesday urged Democrats to block a year-end spending bill as leverage to pass a Dream Act clean of GOP demands for increased border security. At a news conference in downtown Los Angeles, De Leon commended Sen. Kamala Harris for pledging to block the measure, saying he could not understand why her colleague Sen. Dianne Feinstein had failed to take a similar stance in pushing for legislation to protect the so-called Dreamers, immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. Dreamers make up hundreds of thousands of Sen. Feinsteins constituents, and while talking a good game on Dreamers, when it comes to standing up and supporting them, she is AWOL, said De Leon (D-Los Angeles), who has attempted to position himself to Feinsteins left as he campaigns for her seat. His statements follow days of demonstrations by young protesters at legislators offices in Washington and California. The coalitions of activists have been calling on Democrats to hold up the spending bill, a move that could force a government shutdown. They want to pass Dream Act legislation that would provide protections and a path to citizenship to young people without legal residency in the U.S. At least two young protesters were arrested Tuesday outside of Feinsteins Capitol Hill office, and more demonstrations took place at her offices in Washington and San Francisco on Wednesday. Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) have sponsored Dream Act legislation but have not pledged to hold up the spending deal. A separate bipartisan group of senators is advocating punting the issue to January. President Trump has asked Congress to come up with a solution by March. Standing next to De Leon and immigrant rights advocates on Wednesday, state Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) said advocates had to double down the shame on any Democrat who thinks its time to wait on the issue. De Leon said they had made that message clear to Schumer, saying, It is time to find your spine, sir. To Pelosi and Feinstein, he said: Dont come back to California if you havent demonstrated your leadership and your courage to stand up for these young men and women. I can tell you this, De Leon said. If the Republicans were on the other side, they wouldnt hesitate for a nanosecond to shut down the government to move forward what they believe in. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement 12 California Republicans vote to support tax overhaul for a second time; Rohrabacher and Issa say no By Sarah D. Wire The House gave final approval for the GOP tax bill Wednesday, with 12 Republicans in the state delegation again voting in favor of the bill. Reps. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Darrell Issa of Vista voted no. The House and Senate both passed the bill Tuesday, but, because Democrats raised procedural objections that forced the bill to be changed in the Senate, the House had to vote on the bill again Wednesday before sending it to President Trump for his signature. Though many California taxpayers are expected to see an initial income tax cut under the plan, a significant number probably will have higher taxes because of the lost deductions. Analysts also expect the biggest cuts to flow to corporations and the states wealthiest residents. Republicans are expected to head to the White House later Wednesday for a celebration with Trump. No House Democrats, including the 39 from California, supported the bill. Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-Norwalk) was not present for the second vote, but she voted no on Tuesday. See the Republican votes here: Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias Democratic senators vote no on GOP tax bill Californias @SenKamalaHarris and @SenFeinstein join rest of Democrats in the Senate in voting no on the GOP tax bill, which passed 51-48 along party lines. Sanders, who is an Independent, voted with Democrats. Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) December 20, 2017 "At a time when wages have stagnated and working Americans are trying to do more with less, this tax plan pulls the rug out from the middle class to give billions to those who already have so much. This is an attack on our values, and Americans deserve better," Harris said. Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) December 20, 2017 "Californians will be hit especially hard by the cap on the state and local tax deduction, making it more difficult for communities to pay for services that our families rely on, Its no wonder a bill that primarily benefits the wealthy is so unpopular..." Feinstein said Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) December 20, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print GOP tax overhaul passes House with help from a dozen California Republicans By Sarah D. Wire Despite weeks of consternation from some California House Republicans, a dozen of them joined their colleagues to pass an overhaul of the U.S. tax code Tuesday. Two Reps. Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher voted against the plan. In the weeks before the vote, Republican Reps. Mimi Walters of Irvine and Steve Knight of Palmdale cited new caps on popular deductions as reasons they were uncertain about whether to vote for the bill. Both worked behind the scenes on changes and ultimately supported the bill, which passed the House on a near party line vote 227-203. Knight said hes satisfied the changes are enough to to turn what would have been a tax increase into a tax cut for his constituents. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement More than half of Californians oppose GOP tax bill, according to new poll By Sarah D. Wire House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) arrives for a news conference about the tax plan. (Win McNamee / Getty Images) More than half of Californians oppose the GOP tax bill expected to be approved by Congress today, and just 20% believe it will have a positive affect on their families, according to a poll released Monday. Just over half of California voters, 51%, oppose the tax bill, and 30% support it, according to the newest IGS Poll, a survey by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. And the belief falls largely along party lines, with Democrats opposing the bill by a more than 4-to-1 (67% to 15%) margin and Republicans supporting it 3 to 1 (60% to 21%). The House and Senate are expected to vote on the tax bill Tuesday. Californias Republican members of Congress largely support the bill despite some concerns about how cuts to the state and local tax deduction and mortgage interest deduction might affect Californians. Democrats in the delegation oppose it and have said they will use the vote against vulnerable Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections. When asked about the impact they think the bill will have on themselves and their families, just 20% of the polls respondents said they think it will benefit them directly, while 40% foresee a negative impact. About 27% do not expect much of an impact, and 13% said they dont know if theyll be affected. The poll of a random sample of 1,000 registered voters was completed by telephone in English and Spanish from Dec. 7 to 16. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A quick look at some of the biggest tax changes for Californians By Sarah D. Wire (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) Congressional Republicans are framing their tax cut bill as a Christmas gift that will give Americans an average tax cut of $2,059. For Californians, especially in the wealthier areas along the coast, the situation isnt as clear-cut. When the measure comes up for a vote in the House on Tuesday morning, its expected to pass along party lines. At least two Republicans say they will join Democrats in the California delegation to oppose the plan because they fear it will hurt their constituents bottom line. Take a quick look at what some of the biggest changes in the tax bill might mean for average Californians. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Lawmakers, pot growers say Californias marijuana cultivation rules favor big corporate farms By Patrick McGreevy Californias new rules allowing marijuana cultivation favor large corporate farms despite a promise in Proposition 64 that small growers would be protected, according to a group of state lawmakers and marijuana industry leaders who called Monday for the policy to be changed. The California Department of Food and Agriculture issued emergency rules last month that allow for small and medium-sized farms of up to a quarter acre and one acre, respectively, to get licenses for the first five years. That five-year head start for small farms was promised in Proposition 64, the initiative approved last year by voters that legalized growing and selling marijuana for recreational use. Individuals and businesses can get only one license for a medium-sized farm, but the new rules do not set a limit on how many small-farm licenses can be obtained by one person or business. That could allow a corporation to assemble a 20-acre farm by obtaining 80 licenses for a quarter-acre each, opponents worry. Democratic state Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Mike McGuire of Healdsburg, Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) and the California Growers Assn. asked for swift action by the state agricultural department to change the rule. This is clearly a broken promise, McGuire said. For two years, every discussion has included a cap on cannabis grows and the Department of Food and Agriculture needs to fix this massive loophole they have created. This last-minute revision rolls out the red carpet for large corporations to crush the livelihood of small family farmers. With cultivation licenses set to take effect next month, the lawmakers also promised legislative hearings on why the rules were drafted to disadvantage small, mom-and-pop farms. California only has one chance to get this right, and it is already on the wrong path with this last-minute change that flies in the face of what the backers of Prop. 64 promised, said Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the California Growers Assn. This single decision will hand over the California marketplace to multinational corporations and a wealthy few at the expense of thousands of growers who are ready to play by the rules and provide economic opportunity in communities that until recently were criminalized or at the very least marginalized. The industry estimates there are about 3,500 independent growers on track to get a state license in the first half of 2018. Allens group estimates that number could grow to as many as 10,000 or 15,000 by the end of 2020, but not if large corporate farms are allowed in early. The agricultural agency issued a response later: A one-acre canopy limit has not been in proposed regulations at any point and was not included in the emergency regulations due to the fact that Proposition 64, the law guiding the process, did not provide authority to include it. However, local jurisdictions may impose that limitation on their own if it meets the needs of their constituents. Updated at 5:10 pm to include comment from agricultural agency. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Final tax bill dramatically softens blow to mortgage interest deductions in California By Christine Mai-Duc Last-minute changes to the Republican-led tax overhaul seem to be tailor-made to entice support from California GOP lawmakers, several of whom voted against a previous version passed in the House last month. The House version, passed with the support of all but three California Republicans, had proposed capping the mortgage interest deduction at loans of $500,000 or less. Republicans in high-tax, expensive states had voiced concerns the bill would have major effects in their districts. But the final version of the bill dramatically slashed the percentage of new mortgages that would be affected if the package becomes law. *New mortgages over $500,000 include data through Sept. 2017. New mortgages over $750,000 include data through Oct. 2017. Source: Times analysis of data provided by CoreLogic The particulars of the mortgage interest provision and other popular deductions were major sticking points as House and Senate negotiators hammered out a compromise between the two versions. A previous Times analysis showed that more than half of new mortgages this year in Rep. Dana Rohrabachers coastal Orange County district exceeded the $500,000 cap laid out in the House version. Text of the new bill released Friday outlined a cap of $750,000, which would apply to just under a quarter of new mortgages there through October 2017. Rohrabacher was one of three California Republicans, along with Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) and Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) who previously voted against the measure. Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) said she supported the House version after receiving assurances from leaders that the bill would be changed to account for the loss of deductions, The percentage of new mortgages over the cap dropped from 48% to 14%. Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), whose district had 1% of mortgages exceeding the $500,000 cap proposed previously, saw that share drop almost to zero; 27 of 7,515 mortgages in his congressional district this year have been for more than $750,000. The House is expected to vote on the final tax bill Tuesday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A major change to Proposition 13 takes its first step toward the 2018 ballot By Liam Dillon A commercial property in San Bernardino County that could face higher property taxes under a proposed ballot measure (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times) Proponents of making a dramatic change to Californias landmark Proposition 13 property tax restrictions took their first step to getting a measure on the November 2018 statewide ballot Friday. The change would allow the state to receive more tax dollars from commercial and industrial properties by assessing them at their current market value, an effort known as split roll because existing tax protections on homes would remain in place. Advocates of the measure, including the League of Women Voters of California and community organizing nonprofits California Calls and PICO Network said the change could raise billions of dollars that could be spent on public schools and community colleges. I think the cumulative effects of the unfair tax system have gotten to the point where its created crippling economic impacts on the state, said Melissa Breach, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California. Backers filed their proposed initiative Friday. The attorney generals office will prepare an official title and summary for the measure and it will receive a financial analysis. From there, advocates will decide if they will collect signatures to put the measure on the ballot. Proposition 13 passed in 1978 amid concerns that rising property taxes could force people out of their homes. The ballot measure limited property taxes to 1% of a propertys value at the time of purchase and ensures that the assessed value on which taxes are based can only increase by a maximum of 2% a year no matter how much a propertys market value goes up. Split-roll measures have been long debated in state politics, but business groups and anti-tax groups have expressed substantial opposition to the idea, arguing that it would cause major harm to the states business climate. Breach said she expected an avalanche of big money against the measure should it go forward, but said that her organization wouldnt get involved without believing it could raise sufficient funding.S For the record 1 p.m., Dec. 18: An earlier version of this post said the split roll ballot measure would allow California to charge higher tax rates on commercial and industrial properties. It would allow the state to assess those properties at current market value, not charge higher rates. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Three more women accuse California assemblyman of sexual misconduct By Melanie Mason Assemblyman Matt Dababneh (D-Woodland Hills) (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times) A Los Angeles woman has filed a police report alleging Democratic Assemblyman Matt Dababneh had sex with her without consent four years ago, adding new allegations of sexual misconduct to those that led the politician to announce his resignation last week. He says her claims are false. Nancy Miret, 26, told The Times that when she was 22 and a recent college graduate, she spent time with Dababneh over two months in late 2013, primarily at his Encino apartment. At the time, Dababneh was running for Assembly to represent the western San Fernando Valley. They had consensual sex on one occasion, but after that, Miret said she had multiple nonconsensual sexual encounters with Dababneh that left her traumatized. Miret, who now works in commercial real estate, is one of three women interviewed by The Times who have made new allegations concerning Dababnehs behavior. These allegations are false and Im confident that when all the facts are in, it will clearly show that these claims are not true, Dababneh told The Times. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print San Diego business is first in California to be issued license to sell marijuana for recreational use By Patrick McGreevy A San Diego medical marijuana business is the first firm to be issued a license by the state of California to sell marijuana for recreational use, officials said Thursday. Torrey Holistics received two of the first 20 licenses granted by the state Bureau of Cannabis Control this week to sell or distribute marijuana, although the licenses do not take effect until Jan. 1, according to bureau chief Lori Ajax. An additional 180 firms have applied for licenses but they are being processed. Last week, we officially launched our online licensing system, and today were pleased to issue the first group of temporary licenses to cannabis businesses that fall under the Bureaus jurisdiction, Ajax said in a statement. We plan to issue many more before January 1. The bureau is issuing temporary, four-month licenses to firms initially, but will eventually require firms to undergo background checks and pay a $1,000 application fee for yearlong permits. Tony Hall left a chemical distribution business two years ago to start Torrey Holistics with a friend and classmate at San Diego State. He said he was ecstatic to have the first recreational permit in California. He also obtained a new license to continue selling marijuana for medical uses. We feel fricking great about it, he said Thursday. Its just exciting. This is a once in a multi-generational event, he added, likening it to the end of prohibition. Added Ruthie Edelson, the firms marketing director, We will be open at 7 a.m. on Jan. 1. Last year, voters approved Proposition 64, which makes California one of eight states that allow the growing and sale of marijuana for recreational uses. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Conservative activist group files a lawsuit over Los Angeles County inactive voter list By John Myers A Washington-based conservative-leaning activist group filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging Los Angeles County officials are refusing to cancel the registrations of voters who are ineligible to cast a ballot. The legal action by Judicial Watch comes four months after the organization first accused elections officials across the state of maintaining registration lists that are larger than their voting-age population. The lawsuit also names Secretary of State Alex Padilla as a defendant and alleges the voter lists violate the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA. They dont care about removing ineligible registration, said Robert Popper of Judicial Watch. I think we have a very strong lawsuit. The lawsuit names four Los Angeles County voters as co-plaintiffs and asserts that a countys two lists of voters the file of active voters and those whose registration has been placed on inactive status should be combined into a single total. The inactive list includes people who havent cast ballots in recent elections and havent responded to inquiries from elections officials. Though the names on that list are considered voters, they are not counted in official registration reports and are not mailed election material. Popper led an effort earlier this year to estimate the size of each countys voting-age population using the Census Bureaus American Community Survey. He said the surveys five-year average of county populations was then adjusted by focusing just on the estimate of those over the age of 18, and then comparing that with the combined active and inactive voter lists. Popper dismissed any concern that the resulting number might be skewed by the different standards used by counties for the inactive list, which could include names of voters who moved or died and thus be an imperfect guide. I believe that a court is going to accept our numbers, he said. Dean Logan, the registrar of voters in Los Angeles County, said his staffs practices are consistent with federal law. This lawsuit appears to fundamentally interpret the requirements of the NVRA in a manner inconsistent with ensuring voter enfranchisement and appropriate list maintenance, he said. The lawsuit also alleges that Los Angeles elections officials failed to provide Judicial Watch with requested data about the size of the inactive list, and accuses Padilla of failing to address the groups concerns about California not following NVRA rules. In a statement on Thursday, Padilla said county inactive-voter files are not out of compliance with the law. He criticized Judicial Watch for its baseless assertions, bad math, and flawed methodology. Local elections officials have said very few inactive voters show up on election day, and that any who do would be asked to cast a provisional ballot one that isnt counted unless the voters eligibility is confirmed through additional review. Popper insisted that if the list is never used, theres no reason to keep it. Judicial Watch, which sued for access to Hillary Clintons emails in 2016, alleged that its calculations show 11 California counties with questionable voter registration totals. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Voters in California GOP districts may get calls asking them to thank their member of Congress for tax plan By Sarah D. Wire Voters in four key Republican-held congressional districts could get a robocall starting Friday urging them to call and thank their member of Congress for supporting the tax bill. Its a last minute effort by American Action Network, a politically active nonprofit connected with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that has spent millions to shore up Republican support for the bill. The robocalls include the members office number. The four California members being targeted are Reps. Jeff Denham of Turlock, David Valadao of Hanford, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Mimi Walters of Irvine. All four represent districts that backed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 and are Democratic targets in 2018. Knight and Walters had been particularly vocal about their concerns with the plan, saying it might raise taxes for their constituents. The final text of the bill is set to be released Friday, with a vote expected early next week. In total, American Action Network plans to place 1 million robocalls in 29 districts nationwide. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Merry Christmas Republicans in Congress: Funny or Die video goes after California lawmakers over DACA By Christine Mai-Duc As members of Congress try to pass a controversial tax bill and a measure to keep the federal government funded, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is hitting Republicans hard over another unresolved issue: the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people brought to the country illegally as children who could face deportation if lawmakers dont act. Amid negotiations over a long-term spending bill, Democratic leaders have been pushing their GOP colleagues to include a fix for those who were granted temporary protection under President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA. President Trump announced an end to the program earlier this year and gave Congress a March deadline to address it. Funny or Die and BOLD PAC released a video Friday featuring comedians skewering GOP members, including two in California, for their inaction. In the video, Oscar Nunez, best known for his role on The Office, calls out Reps. Steve Knight (Palmdale), Ed Royce (Fullerton), Carlos Curbelo (Florida) and John Culberson (Texas), who get to go ahead and celebrate as thousands of Dreamers are banished from the only country theyve ever called home. How many broken promises can fit in a stocking? Nunez asks later. Im asking for a congressman. The political action committee says its spending six figures on the weeklong buy, which will go out nationwide across Funny Or Dies social media channels. They are known for blasting out irreverent, often viral parodies that play to young audiences. The video will also be targeted to constituents in each of the four congressional districts. A separate video released by the ACLU last week also urged members of Congress to strike a deal on DACA. Many California Republicans have remained mum on the issue, particularly those facing tough races in 2018. So far, only Reps. David Valadao (Hanford), Jeff Denham (Turlock) and Mimi Walters (Irvine) have pressured fellow Republicans to come up with a solution before Congress breaks for Christmas. Following Trumps decision, Knight said the issue should receive attention by Congress. Royce, who has taken hard-line stances on immigration in the past, urged his colleagues to provide a permanent, legislative solution that gives certainty to these kids. Neither elaborated on what that solution should be. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print For a prominent California consumer group and savvy political consultants, documents reveal a close financial relationship By John Myers If theres a clear mantra for Consumer Watchdog, one of Californias most visible and vocal advocacy groups, its that hidden financial relationships shouldnt shape politics and public policy. The Santa Monica-based nonprofit has spent more than three decades reprimanding politicians and interest groups for doing the bidding of those who give them money. Its official motto is expose, confront, change. We are loud, and we speak more of a populist truth than the way people usually talk to each other in Sacramento, said Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdogs president. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Regional director resigns from California Democratic Party amid sexual misconduct claims By Jazmine Ulloa A regional director with the California Democratic Party submitted his resignation on Thursday, nearly two weeks after a 23-year-old woman reported that he sexually assaulted her last year, spurring party leaders to seek his ouster. Craig Cheslog served as Region 2 director spanning the East Bay, Napa, Sonoma and the Clearlake areas. In a statement, his lawyer, Mary P. Carey, said she and her client were confident that a full and fair exploration of this matter, undertaken in an appropriate, fact-governed venue, would exonerate Mr. Cheslog. We are prepared, if necessary, to put forward the facts of this matter in just such a venue, she said. Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman and other officials initially called for Cheslogs removal in a Nov. 29 letter to state party secretary Jenny Bach. They said he was seen acting in an inappropriate and sexually aggressive manner toward a member of the party in a public area of the Westin San Francisco Airport Hotel, following a Nov. 18 executive board meeting. The level to which this activity advanced made a number of those in attendance uncomfortable, the letter stated. It added that another member reported that Mr. Cheslog raped her at a CDP executive board meeting the previous year. Party officers said the incident occurred during a weekend where the prevention of sexual harassment of women in politics was a dominant theme in the wake of the #metoo movement. Before the meetings conclusion on Sunday, the California Womens Caucus approved a resolution making clear that sexual harassment, bullying and other forms of abuse are grounds to lose endorsements and be stripped of party membership. Maddy Dean, who was not named in the letter, spoke at the meeting about her experiences of sexual harassment in the movie industry, and told the Times that she reported Cheslog. She said she could not provide further details about her allegation as she explores possible legal paths moving forward. This was about protecting other women and in particular other young women, she said of reporting the assault. In his own letter to Bach on Thursday, Cheslog did not acknowledge any wrongdoing. He said he was stepping down to prevent any personal misconduct allegations from creating a distraction with the party at a critical moment in national and state politics. I am confident of the results that would be forthcoming in a fair, fact-based exploration of this matter, he said. Since the report, Cheslog has been fired from his job at Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that helps families navigate media and technology. He also has stepped down from his position on the Acalanes Union High School District Board of Trustees. The conduct represented a serious violation of both company policy and the way in which our employees are expected to conduct themselves in the community at large, Common Sense spokeswoman Corbie Kiernan said in a statement. We immediately suspended Mr. Cheslog and conducted an investigation. As a result of the investigation, Mr. Cheslogs employment with Common Sense was terminated. 4:05 p.m.: This post was updated with Cheslogs resignation from the school board. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Sen. Bob Hertzberg will cooperate with investigation into unwanted hugs By Patrick McGreevy State Sen. Bob Hertzberg works at his Senate Chambers desk. He faces an investigation into unwanted hugging (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) State Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles) said Thursday he will cooperate with a state investigation into complaints from a former legislator that she was uncomfortable with his repeated hugs after she asked him not to touch her. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon said Thursday that a team of outside attorneys will investigate a complaint by former Assemblywoman Linda Halderman that Hertzberg has made her uncomfortable with hugs that were too close and lasted too long. Hertzberg, well-known for hugging other lawmakers, said he supports having any allegations investigated by the two outside law firms. I just learned of the investigation, and will fully cooperate, he said. The use of an independent third party investigator is essential to improving transparency and trust in the system. Halderman said Thursday she was encouraged that her concerns will be investigated, but said it was disturbing that attorneys for one of the law firms selected, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, contributed more than $90,000 in campaign funds to sitting legislators including Hertzberg. Halderman, a surgeon, served in the state Assembly from 2010 through 2012 and said Hertzberg hugged her multiple times even after she asked him to stop because she was uncomfortable. The last incident occurred in a hallway of the Capitol, she claimed. I told him I dont care to be hugged. Dont touch me, Halderman recalled. He then grabbed me and pinned my arms to my side and used his hands to press my lower back into his groin and he essentially pinned me so I couldnt push off of him to get away the way I ended previous hugs. It was certainly so over the line, she added. Halderman said a current female senator and assemblywoman also have complained about inappropriate hugs from Hertzberg. However, Sen. Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton) defended Hertzberg, saying she has known him for many years and he has always acted as a gentleman. I have never felt uncomfortable with him, and have always felt his hugs were a display of affection - which I appreciate, she said. I consider him a dear friend. Updated at 5:30 pm to include comment from Sen. Galgiani. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Rep. Maxine Waters asks Justice Department to investigate fake letter tweeted by Republican opponent By Sarah D. Wire (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) Rep. Maxine Waters is asking the Justice Department to look into a fake letter posted to Twitter by her Republican challenger that falsely indicated the congresswoman wants to resettle tens of thousand of refugees in her Los Angeles district. The GOP candidate, Omar Navarro, posted the letter on what looks like official House of Representatives letterhead to Twitter on Monday. The letter, which purports to be from the congresswoman, says the congresswoman wants to bring refugees to her congressional district after the 2018 election and perhaps even once I have secured the Speaker of the House position. Navarro accompanied the tweeted letter with a message: According to this document, Maxine Waters wants more terrorists, like the one who bombed NYC, in Californias 43rd District. As Congressman of CAs 43rd District, I will oppose such policies. Its been retweeted more than 680 times. But the letter is a forgery and a fake, her chief of staff, Twaun Samuel, said in a news release. The letter, dated June of this year, also contains several inaccuracies. It references multiple committees and subcommittees Waters does not serve on, and lists an address for a district office that has been closed for nearly a decade. Waters filed a complaint about the tweeted letter with the House general counsel, who forwarded the complaint to the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California and the fraud section of the Criminal Division for the United States Department of Justice. The complaint states that Waters has not communicated with the letters purported addressee Teri Williams, who is president and chief operating officer of the Los Angeles-based OneUnited Bank, about any refugee resettlement program. Impersonating a federal official and misusing a federal seal are federal crimes. Navarro, who is backed by big name far-right conservatives, said Thursday that the letter was sent to his campaign through Facebook by a person he didnt know. He said neither the Justice Department or Waters staff has asked him about the letter. I dont know if its real or not, so I put it out there, Navarro said, adding that he believed his followers would help him determine if it is real. It doesnt say that I know. Its according to this document what, am I supposed to send it to her and get an email back from Maxine? According to this document, Maxine Waters wants more terrorists, like the one who bombed NYC, in Californias 43rd District. As Congressman of CAs 43rd District, I will oppose such policies. #VoteNavarro2018https://t.co/vO8YUsyPp3 pic.twitter.com/k7ef0H20if Omar Navarro (@RealOmarNavarro) December 11, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Sen. Tony Mendoza refuses to take a leave of absence amid harassment probe By Patrick McGreevy Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia), left, talks earlier this year about a pending bill with Sen. Ted Gaines (R-El Dorado Hills). (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Defying pressure from legislative leadership, state Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) refused Thursday to take a leave of absence until an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against him is concluded early next year. Mendoza has denied allegations by former employees that he treated three female aides inappropriately, inviting them to hotel stays and asking one to visit his home to work on her resume. I am very disappointed that certain Senate Rules Committee members are apparently asking me to take a leave of absence or resign before any investigation has even begun and without giving me an opportunity to defend myself, Mendoza said in a statement. This is contrary to the very concept of due process, which is a pillar of our American system of fairness and judicial prudence. These actions bypass any process in a rush to judgment. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) earlier Thursday called on Mendoza to take a leave of absence. Mendoza had previously been stripped of his leadership positions, including chairmanship of the Senates committee on banking and insurance. Mendoza questioned statements urging him to step down, saying they leave him concerned about the fairness of the investigation. He also said he has been disappointed that he has been told he cannot publicly address allegations. I was not appointed to the position I hold, but was elected by the voters in my district, he said. I am grateful to the voters in my district and thank them for their trust and their continued support. The Senate owes them an opportunity to hear the truth. I assure them that I will vigorously defend myself to clear my name. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print State Senate leader asks Sen. Tony Mendoza to take leave of absence amid sexual harassment investigation By Patrick McGreevy (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) State Senate leader Kevin de Leon said Thursday he has strongly suggested that Sen. Tony Mendoza take a leave of absence until the completion of an investigation by outside attorneys into allegations that Mendoza sexually harassed three former aides. Given the severity of the allegations against Senator Mendoza I do not believe he can perform the duties in Sacramento right now while the investigation is being conducted, De Leon told a packed news conference in his Capitol office. I believe Its the right thing to do, its the fair thing to do, to take a leave, he said. The Senate leader also said the outside attorneys have been asked to investigate complaints by former Assemblywoman Linda Halderman that Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Los Angeles) inappropriately hugged her on multiple occasions in a way that made her uncomfortable, even after she asked him to stop. De Leon also announced the hiring of two law firms to handle the Mendoza and Hertzberg investigations, and all future probes of harassment and abuse involving Senate employees. Mendoza, a Democrat from Artesia, did not immediately respond to the request to step aside. De Leon, a Democrat from Los Angeles who had been Mendozas roommate before the allegations were made public, said he made the suggestion to Mendoza in a meeting Thursday morning. If Mendoza refuses to take a leave, the Senate has the power to suspend him without pay, but De Leon said that is not currently under discussion. There is an effort underway to force his expulsion in January when the Legislature returns to Sacramento. Former Mendoza employees have claimed that he gave inappropriate attention to a female fellow and intern, inviting one to his home and hotel and giving the other alcohol in a hotel even though she was underage. Another former female aide told the Sacramento Bee that Mendoza invited her to one-on-one dinners and a weekend at Pebble Beach. Mendoza has denied the allegations. The Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher and Van Dermyden Maddux law firms have been retained for two years, according to Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles), who participated in their selection. Have you experienced sexual harassment in government or politics? Tell us your story In addition, the state is contracting with Weave, a Sacramento crisis-intervention organization for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, to provide counseling and to establish a hotline for Senate employees who are victims of sexual assault. The hotline number is 1-800-729-1443. America is finally reckoning with entrenched inequities in our personal and professional relationships and in workplaces of every type, De Leon said. Nowhere is this reckoning more important than in the halls of power our political institutions. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Watch live: California Senate leader addresses sexual misconduct at state Capitol Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California state senator pledges to bring back net neutrality rules just as FCC votes to repeal them By Jazmine Ulloa Demonstrators rally in support of net neutrality outside a Verizon store in New York on Dec. 7. (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Moments after the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to roll back net neutrality regulations, a state senator pledged to introduce legislation that would preserve open internet protections for consumers in California. Net neutrality is essential to our 21st century democracy, and we need to be sure that people can access websites and information freely and fairly, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said in a statement. If the FCC is going to destroy net neutrality and create a system that favors certain websites just because they can pay more money, California must step in and ensure open internet access. The announcement of the proposal came shortly after the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality in an expected 3-2 party-line vote, with Republicans calling for an end to the utility-like oversight of internet service providers. The Obama-era rules put in February 2015 barred broadband and wireless companies, such at AT&T Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. from selling faster delivery of certain data, slowing speeds for certain video streams and other content, and discriminating against legal material online. Before the vote, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai argued loosening the regulations would allow the online economy to flourish. FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, one of the the two Democrats on the commission, said the rollback would inhibit the openness that has made the U.S. internet the envy of the world. Supporters of net neutrality are expected to file suit to try to halt the repeal plan. Weiners attempt to institute net neutrality rules in California could have challenges. The FCC order states that allowing state and local governments to adopt their own separate requirements, which could impose a heavier burden on companies, could disrupt the balance between state and federal regulations. The preemption of state and local net neutrality measures is something that could be challenged in court. Amid such legal battles state legislation could face heavy lobbying efforts from internet providers arguing against uneven regulations. A bill by Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) was shelved last legislative session over similar disputes. It would have enshrined in state law other FCC regulations that were rolled back this year by President Trump and Congress. The Internet privacy rules limited what broadband providers can do with their customers data. The bills defeat capped a behind-the-scenes battle that pitted telecom companies against state internet service providers and brought other bills to a halt in the state Senate as negotiations unfolded over legislation that would have had national significance. UPDATES 7:57 a.m.: This post was updated with additional information about the potential legal case. LA Times reporter Jim Puzzanghera contributed to this report. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print L.A. County sheriffs office failed to follow policy for issuing concealed weapon permits, audit says By Patrick McGreevy Handguns are displayed at the Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show in Las Vegas in 2016. ( (John Locher / Associated Press)) The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department has repeatedly failed to follow its own rules for issuing concealed weapon permits, the state auditor concluded in a report released Thursday. L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell disputed some of the key findings of the audit, saying state officials misinterpreted the policy. The department policy requires applicants to provide convincing evidence of a clear and present danger to life or of great bodily harm to get a license, but the audit found the department issued 24 licenses during the last few years without sufficient evidence. Most of the 197 active licenses in L.A. County as of August went to current or former law enforcement officers, judges and prosecutors, the audit found. The lieutenant in charge of reviewing applications told auditors that people in law enforcement satisfy the departments requirements by the nature of their jobs. However, making that decision based solely on the applicants profession both directly contradicts Los Angeless written policy which specifically states that no position or job classification in itself shall constitute good cause for issuance and has led the department to treat applicants inequitably based on their occupations, the audit says. McDonnell said the audit identified some legitimate issues, and the department has added a checklist to the application process in order to show requirements have been met. But he disagreed on the reports sweeping conclusion that the department consistently failed to follow its own policies. The LASD policy simply requires that the applicant provide convincing evidence that his or her life or physical safety is threatened, the sheriff said. He said the policy does not require additional documentation of that evidence if sufficient information is provided in the application. Auditors also concluded that Sacramento County issued some licenses without proper documentation and that San Diego Countys renewal process led it to inappropriately renew some licenses. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Anti-Issa effort discloses donors: Leo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, Ted Danson and more By Joshua Stewart A political group that has brought professional political organizers into the campaign against Rep. Darrell Issa has received its most significant contributions to date from actress Jane Fonda and other celebrities. Fonda gave $100,000 to Flip the 49th! Neighbors in Action, which recently registered as a political committee to get Issa, R-Vista, out of office. Comedian Bill Maher gave $15,000 to the group, a rebuke of a politician who has twice appeared on his talk show. Former California Sen. Barbara Boxer gave $2,500, as did Academy Award recipient Leonardo DiCaprio. Actor Ted Danson gave $1,500. Flip the 49th gave the The San Diego Union-Tribune a list of donors more than a month before its required to disclose them to the Federal Election Commission. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California Senate GOP leader: Release Capitol whistleblowers from non-disclosure agreements By Melanie Mason California Senate Republican leader Patricia Bates is wading into the sexual harassment debate that has swept up the Capitol and is calling on her Democratic colleagues to allow whistleblowers to speak out by releasing them from non-disclosure agreements. Bates (R-Laguna Niguel) wrote in a letter to the Democratic legislative leaders Senate Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) that Senate Republicans are calling for the Legislature to allow victims or witnesses who may have signed such agreements to share their experiences publicly. This release from NDAs would empower victims of sexual harassment, create a new atmosphere for resolving sexual harassment or discrimination concerns, increase public awareness and transparency, and ensure that both the Senate and the Assembly fulfill their obligations to the public and their employees for providing a safe and welcoming workplace environment, Bates wrote in the letter, dated Dec. 12. The Republican senator also laid out suggestions to improve the Legislatures handling of sexual harassment complaints, such as jointly convening both houses rules committees which act as the chambers human resources departments to have a comprehensive, bicameral and bipartisan review. Bates wrote that the Joint Rules Committee should consider the assigning of an outside entity for assuming responsibility for all issues regarding sexual harassment. She said the California Highway Patrol or an inspector general could serve that function. Bates is currently serving on a panel designated by the Senate Rules Committee to select an outside law firm to investigate sexual harassment complaints. De Leon, in a statement, said he agreed with Bates that sexual harassment is a bipartisan, bicameral problem that requires bipartisan, bicameral solutions. Many of these recommendations we are already pursuing and evaluating in some form and we look forward to working in collaboration with Senator Bates as we did with the independent selection panel on additional reforms in the weeks to come, De Leon said. With regard to non-disclosure agreements, De Leon spokesman Jonathan Underland said the Senate is discussing with attorneys and anti-harassment experts about what options are available without violating the privacy rights of past victims. John Casey, a spokesman for Rendon, said the Assembly does not ask for NDAs in settlement agreements. The Speaker agrees with both the Legislative Womens Caucus and the Rules Committee chair that any sexual harassment policy should be both bicameral and bipartisan, Casey said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print California plans to send out licenses for pot sales this month but they wont be effective until Jan. 1 By Patrick McGreevy Patrons shop at Bud and Bloom, a Santa Ana marijuana dispensary, last year. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) California officials said Wednesday they plan to use email before the new year to send out some licenses to sell marijuana to speed up the transition to a regulated market. The licenses will not go into effect until Jan. 1. Proposition 64, which legalized the sale of marijuana for recreational use, required the state to begin issuing licenses by Jan. 1. Because that date is a state holiday, the bureau originally planned to begin sending them out on Jan. 2. That has changed. Much of the date discussion Jan. 1 versus Jan. 2 was based on whether or not wed be able to be open on a state holiday, said Alex Traverso, a bureau spokesman. The solution to that issue was to issue licenses with an effective date of Jan. 1 since licenses will be issued electronically. That eliminates the need to have the office open on Jan. 1. He said that, as of Wednesday, the bureau has not yet sent out any emails with licenses approved to begin operating Jan. 1. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias budget director makes last ditch effort to urge GOP members to vote against tax plan By Sarah D. Wire House Republicans hold a news conference after the House passed the GOP tax bill. (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) As closed-door negotiations over the final tax bill come to an end, the head of the California Department of Finance is making a last-ditch effort to convince Republicans in the states congressional delegation to vote against the plan. In a letter to the entire delegation Wednesday, Finance Department Director Michael Cohen detailed 10 issues in the current tax proposals about which the state is worried. Some of Cohens concerns may be addressed in the deal that House and Senate leaders said they reached Wednesday morning. Details of the agreement are not yet public. Cohens concerns range from potentially billions less in federal funding available to California to offset the $1.4 trillion the plan is expected to add to the federal deficit, to the environmental effect of ending green energy tax credits. Californias 39 Democratic representatives are expected to oppose the final tax bill, which could come before both chambers of Congress by early next week. Three California Republicans Reps. Darrell Issa of Vista, Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove voted against the original House version, and several other California Republicans have indicated they might be willing to vote against the final plan. Cohen specifically pointed to issues that have been raised by the uncertain House members, including the proposal to lower the cap on the mortgage interest deduction, the plan to limit state and local tax deductions and the elimination of a deduction for uninsured personal property damaged in natural disasters such as fires. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement California lawmakers have fought sexual misconduct on military bases, farms and college campuses. Will they police their own house? By Jazmine Ulloa Over the past decade, California lawmakers have worked to help curb sexual violence in the workplace and other spheres of public life. They have pushed college campuses to keep better track of incident reports, created whistleblower protections for military officers who file claims and established sexual harassment training for farmworkers and janitors. Now, as more than 140 women have come forward in an open letter to denounce a pervasive culture of sexual harassment in the California Legislature, activists and employment lawyers say lawmakers have not held colleagues and staffers to the same standards demanded of those in other fields. Members [of the state Assembly and Senate] are quick at pointing the finger at other folks, said Fiona Ma, a former Democratic assemblywoman from San Francisco who is now running for state treasurer. But they dont want to look inside and fix their own house, air their own dark, dirty laundry. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Californias cap-and-trade climate program could generate more than $8 billion by 2027, report says By John Myers Gov. Jerry Brown signs an extension of Californias cap-and-trade program in July. (Eric Risberg / Associated Press) Although Californias cap-and-trade program was designed to combat climate change, a new analysis predicts it could also provide significant cash as much as $8 billion in a decades time for state and regional programs. The report issued Tuesday by the independent Legislative Analysts Office projects a wide range of revenue generated by the sale of permits for companies to emit greenhouse gases beyond a state-ordered emissions cap. The most recent auction of those emission permits brought in more than $800 million. The analysis warns that annual cap-and-trade revenue beyond 2020 is highly uncertain, and offers a possible range from $2 billion in 2018 to almost $7 billion in 2030 the final year of the program under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed in July. The estimate of $8.3 billion in 2027 is the high-water mark for any year in the report. Researchers cite a number of factors that make a specific prediction impossible, including future technology that allows industries to cut greenhouse gas emissions easily and thus pass on purchasing emission allowances. While it is clear that there will be additional revenues to the state beyond 2020, the amount that will be generated annually is highly uncertain, the report reads. Money collected from the sale of pollution permits is required to be spent on programs combating climate change. A portion of the money also is earmarked for the states high-speed rail program. The report urges lawmakers to provide oversight for future decisions made by the California Air Resources Board, the agency that has taken the lead on climate change efforts. In particular, the analysts warn that allowing businesses to stockpile too many permits ones bought at current low prices could lead to excessive greenhouse gas emissions in future years, potentially even causing the state to miss its annual benchmark as soon as 2024. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Vice President Pence meets with California lawmakers about massive fires By Sarah D. Wire Briefed bipartisan group of California reps on the fed response to #CAwildfires. @POTUS approved an emergency declaration last Friday & @forestservice is providing air & ground assets including 1,000 personnel. Together, we will help the people of CA restore, rebuild & recover. pic.twitter.com/zn7QdbCZOQ Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) December 12, 2017 A handful of California representatives discussed the federal response to their states wildfires Tuesday with Vice President Mike Pence. Attending the West Wing meeting were House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), Darrell Issa (R-Vista), Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village), Steve Knight (R-Palmdale) and Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara). It was a very bipartisan-spirited meeting. He clearly understood the significance of the fires and the impacts, Brownley said after the meeting. She said Pence offered federal assistance and recognized that recovery was going to be very important and that we want to work together to make sure that we can get the resources needed. President Trump signed an emergency declaration for the Southern California fires last week. Pence visited California this fall to view fire damage in Northern California. He stayed engaged and specifically wanted to make sure that FEMA and the other organizations were continuing to meet or exceed all expectations, Issa said after the meeting. We mostly thanked him for the fact that hes taken a personal interest and his team has been at the heart of the domestic coordination. There was no discussion about reinstating a federal tax deduction for uninsured damage repairs that would end up in the House and Senate tax bills, Brownley said. If you cant deduct uninsured property loss, its devastating. It would be devastating, Brownley said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement We must talk about the health aspects of climate change, Schwarzenegger says in Paris By Kim Willsher (Thibault Camus / Associated Press) He showed up at Paris City Hall on Monday on a green bicycle and wearing a green tie to talk climate change with the mayor. But Arnold Schwarzenegger almost didnt make the trip from Los Angeles. One of the wildfires scorching Southern California was threatening his home. Luckily we have extraordinary firefighters, he told a group of officials and journalists. The actor and former governor of California was speaking in Paris as the founder of R20, a nonprofit based in Geneva that aims to help regional, state and local governments reduce their carbon emissions by developing clean energy sources. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print A special recall election for state Sen. Josh Newman would cost a lot more than waiting for the June primary, state says By Patrick McGreevy State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton) faces a recall campaign (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)) State finance officials said Monday it would cost about $2.67 million for a special election on the recall of state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), but only $931,000 to put his potential recall on the regular June primary ballot, which will also feature races for governor and congressional seats. The savings and the time it took to complete the financial assessment could give ammunition to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to put the recall measure on the primary ballot, possibly improving Newmans chance of staying in office. The higher turnout expected in the primary might benefit Newman as he tries to fend off the Republican recall drive. The financial analysis was a new requirement of a law approved this year by the Democrat-controlled Legislature that has slowed the Newman recall. Brown and legislators now have 30 days to review the election cost report. The deadline for calling a special election was last week, 180 days before the June 5 primary, although state officials have been known to extend such deadlines. In this case, that is unlikely. Carl Demaio, a former San Diego City councilman who is leading the Republican-funded recall, denounced the lengthy new process Monday, but said it will not save Newmans political career. This is about a shameful tactic by Sacramento politicians to keep politicians who break public trust and engage in misconduct in office for as long as possible, he said. Republicans launched the recall after Newman voted with the majority of le Former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was named as special counsel in May to investigate Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election and any evidence of collusion by people linked to President Trump. He convened a criminal grand jury in August, which can be used to issue subpoenas, gather testimony and compel individuals to testify. Mueller has authority to investigate related crimes that his team uncovers, even if they are not connected to Russia. Michael Flynn Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump's national security advisor, plead guilty Friday morning to a single count of making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. The plea deal was announced by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who has been investigating whether members of Trump's team had aided Russian interference in last year's presidential election. According to the plea deal, Flynn lied to FBI agents about whether he asked the Russian government in December 2016 to hold off on retaliating against sanctions imposed by then-President Obama for trying to interfere with the campaign. He also lied about how the Russian government had agreed to "moderate its response," according to the court papers. The October indictment Criminal charges against three former campaign aides to Trump, including his former campaign manager, marked a new phase in the investigation. Paul Manafort, a wealthy Washington lobbyist and power broker and his political aide, Richard W. Gates III, were arraigned Monday in federal court on a dozen charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in an alleged scheme to conceal more than $75 million overseas without paying taxes. In addition to money laundering, the men were charged with filing false reports to conceal the fact that they were acting as unregistered foreign agents. Separately, George Papadopoulos, a 30-year-old who served as a foreign policy advisor to Trumps campaign, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents. His plea agreement disclosed he had been cooperating with the investigation since this summer. The entities used to launder more than $12 million Owned or controlled Entity Total laundered Owner Manafort, Gates Business Lucicle Consultants Limited Total laundered $3,387,075.00 Owner Unknown Business Yiakora Ventures Limited Total laundered $3,139,249.00 Owner Manafort, Gates Business Global Highway Limited Total laundered $2,283,702.00 Owner Manafort Business Global Endeavour Inc. Total laundered $1,434,875.00 Owner Manafort, Gates Business Leviathan Advisors Limited Total laundered $1,394,452.00 Owner Manafort, Gates Business LOAV Advisors Limited Total laundered $202,500.00 Owner Gates Business Pompolo Limited Total laundered $188,900.00 Owner Unknown Business Unknown Total laundered $56,293.00 Owner Manafort, Gates Business Peranova Holdings Limited Total laundered $37,500.00 Owner Manafort, Gates Business Black Sea View Limited Total laundered $20,000.00 Paul Manafort (Evan Vucci / AP) Manafort worked for the Trump campaign from March until August 2106, serving for several months as campaign chairman. He resigned his position after being dogged by questions about his work for the pro-Russian former ruling political party in Ukraine. The indictment alleges that Manafort failed to register his activities as an agent of a foreign power, the Ukrainians, and laundered $18 million that he received for his work, using it to buy real estate, expensive clothes and other items. The indictment also accuses him of getting loans against his properties to obtain cash in the United States without paying taxes on the income Charges Status Charges Conspiracy against the United States Status Awaiting trial Charges Conspiracy to launder money Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2011 Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2012 Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2013 Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2014 Status Awaiting trial Charges Unregistered agent of a foreign principal Status Awaiting trial Charges Made false statements in Foreign Agents Registration Act Status Awaiting trial Charges Caused another to make a false statement Status Awaiting trial Richard W. Gates III In this July 21, 2016, photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on stage with Rick Gates, left, during a walk through at the Republican National Convention, Thursday, July 21, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) (Evan Vucci / AP) The indictment alleges that Gates moved $3 million from offshore accounts to pay his mortgage, childrens tuition and bills for interior decorating. Charges Status Charges Conspiracy against the United States Status Awaiting trial Charges Conspiracy to launder money Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2011 Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2012 Status Awaiting trial Charges Failed to report foreign accounts 2013 Status Awaiting trial Charges Unregistered agent of a foreign principal Status Awaiting trial Charges Made false statements in Foreign Agents Registration Act Status Awaiting trial Charges Caused another to make a false statement Status Awaiting trial George Papadopoulos Photo of George Papadopoulos from his LinkedIn profile. (LinkedIn) Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in a closed-door court hearing on Oct. 5 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with people who claimed to have direct connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials. He admitted that he had met with an unnamed professor in London who told him that high-level Russian officials had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, including thousands of emails. In court papers, Papadopoulos was described as a proactive cooperator, a term that veteran prosecutors say sometimes signals that a defendant has been wearing a hidden recording device to gather evidence on others. Papadopoulos plea deal that means he will probably serve no more than six months in prison. UPDATES: Accused of multiple financial crimes, President Trumps former campaign chairman on Thursday attacked the strength of the evidence against him, saying the case brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is embellished. In a court filing Thursday, attorneys for Paul Manafort defended him as a successful, international political consultant who, by nature of his work on behalf of foreign political parties, was necessarily involved in international financial transactions. They say Manafort, who led Trumps campaign for several months last year, has done nothing wrong and doesnt pose a risk of fleeing the country. The filing was the first volley from Manaforts defense team, which seeks to undermine a 12-count indictment against him and longtime business associate Richard W. Gates III. Both men are scheduled to appear Thursday afternoon in Washingtons federal court. Advertisement Mueller on Monday announced the indictment charging the men with money laundering and other financial crimes related to their political consulting work for Ukraines former ruling party. They were placed on home confinement during a court appearance earlier this week, and both were released on multimillion-dollar bonds. In addition to the indictment of Manafort and Gates, prosecutors revealed a guilty plea from a campaign advisor named George Papadopoulos, who admitted lying to the FBI about foreign contacts during the campaign. Prosecutors disclosed additional details about the wealth of Manafort and Gates in a court filing Tuesday that sought to keep Manafort confined to his house. In the filing, prosecutors note that Manafort has provided differing accounts of his assets and that he has three different passports. In a response Thursday, Manaforts attorney, Kevin Downing, countered that the passports are in his clients name and noted that, though it may be surprising to some, it is perfectly permissible to have more than one U.S. passport. He also denied that Manafort was involved in any criminal activity related to his Ukrainian work, saying that all funds that went through offshore bank accounts were from legal sources. Downing said that Manafort was not trying to conceal his assets, noting that prosecutors say funds that originated in the Ukraine and went through Cyprus ultimately arrived in the United States. Obviously, international funds entering the U.S. banking system, or going to U.S. vendors, are traceable and subject to U.S. process, they said. It goes without saying that in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States. The defense lawyers also challenged the inclusion in the indictment of allegations that Manafort failed to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department. The Justice Department, they said, has brought only six criminal prosecutions under that statute since 1966 and secured only one conviction during that period. Also Thursday, the government filed court papers seeking to restrain Manafort from selling, drawing on or transferring a life insurance policy. Prosecutors are seeking to seize the policy, saying they believe it is the proceeds of criminal conduct. A new Democratic candidate used a popular liberal news show Thursday to launch a bid to oust Dianne Feinstein, saying its time for Californias longtime senator to go. Dianne Feinstein isnt doing it at all, said 37-year-old Alison Hartson, the leader of a group aimed at getting money out of politics, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. We as a progressive movement, we have got to take this fight to the doorstep of Congress, she said. Advertisement Cenk Uygur, the host of the flagship, namesake show on the online progressive media network The Young Turks, will advise Hartsons campaign. She also has the support of Justice Democrats, a progressive political action committee that is targeting incumbent Democrats across the country. Hartson lives in Orange County and is not well-known outside of progressive circles. She said she is hoping to capitalize on the wave of people inspired by the 2016 presidential bid of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. We have to get more progressives to help Bernie keep this fight moving forward, Hartson said. We get in there and begin showing people whats possible, I guarantee you we are going to light a fire. Her candidacy presents an immediate challenge to Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, who is hoping to be the more progressive foil to the moderate-leaning Feinstein and announced he would run against the senator last month. The progressives who were electrified by Sanders campaign talk about free college, healthcare for all and getting big money out of politics are frustrated enough to challenge incumbent Democrats who they say arent fighting hard for those issues. As an example, Hartson pointed to Sanders 2015 push for a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics, which no other Democrat co-sponsored. Some California progressives have voiced frustration with Feinstein in part because shes not willing to offer blanket resistance to the Trump administration. Though she has staunchly opposed Trump on many issues, progressives lashed out at her in late August when Feinstein urged patience with Trump and said she believed he could be a good president if he learns and changes. De Leon was one of Feinsteins biggest critics following the patience comment. Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer is also weighing a Senate bid in California and has urged Democrats to push for Trumps impeachment. More than a dozen lesser-known candidates have announced theyll challenge Feinstein too. Hartson pledged to take donations only from individuals and to turn down corporate or political action committee donations, similar to Sanders policy during the 2016 election. Refusing corporate or special interest money, especially in a contest against a senator who is known for her strong fundraising and who could self-fund the campaign if necessary, makes for an uphill battle in a state where senate campaigns can cost more than $10 million. Hartson hopes that the affiliation with The Young Turks, on which Uygur often asks viewers to contribute to his causes, will help her compete and that progressives will unite to support the campaign. Shes been on the show a handful of times in the last five years but is not a regular face. Now that we know what were capable of I am very confident that the people on the ground, the boots on the ground are going to make up for the money, Hartson said. To focus on the race, Hartson is stepping down as national director of WolfPAC, a nonpartisan political action committee associated with The Young Turks network that is dedicated to getting big money out of elections. WolfPAC is working to get state government to support a ban on corporate money in elections by amending the Constitution. Five states, including California, have passed a resolution calling for a campaign finance amendment. Hartson was a high school English teacher in Orange County when she realized the influence of money in politics was the root cause of other problems in society, she said. She volunteered for groups working on the issue and quickly rose through the ranks at WolfPAC. She organized supporters across California to push the resolution through in Sacramento in 2014 and led the effort that passed similar resolutions in three other states. sarah.wire@latimes.com Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics ALSO: Californias Sen. Dianne Feinstein says shell run for a sixth term: Theres still so much work left to do California Senate leader Kevin de Leon announces he will challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein California could flip the House, and these 13 races will make the difference Updates on California politics Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52 Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants known as Dreamers who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms.... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many if any of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday. Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance you know, some of them called it a performance I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18 On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star..... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017 the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m. reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost Wait did the president really say, Mission Accomplished? By Marc Olson Some are recalling the last time a president declared Mission accomplished, in May 2003 when George W. Bush was talking about Iraq. (Stephen Jaffe / AFP/Getty Images) President Trump on Saturday morning thanked his allies in a tweet that declared the airstrikes on Syria perfectly executed, but he might have wished hed stopped there. Instead, he ended his message with the phrase, Mission Accomplished! Thats a line that might have a previous president shaking his head. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq under a Mission Accomplished banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. That war, which began in March 2003, grew into a prolonged conflict that didnt end until 2011. In 2008, the White House said it had paid a price for the backdrop. A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2018 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Auditor says Pentagon is censoring key data on the war in Afghanistan By Shashank Bengali The Pentagon is blocking the release of data showing how much of Afghanistans territory lies outside government control, censoring a key metric used to gauge progress in the 16-year war, a watchdog agency said Tuesday. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, an auditing agency established by Congress, said in its latest report that the Pentagon instructed it not to release unclassified data on how many districts and people are controlled or influenced by insurgent groups. This is the first time SIGAR has been specifically instructed not to release information marked unclassified to the American taxpayer, the head of the agency, John F. Sopko, wrote in a letter. Sopko also said the U.S.-led military coalition, for the first time since 2009, classified information about the size and attrition rates of the Afghan security forces, important indicators of progress in building up army and police forces on which the U.S. already has spent $70 billion since 2002. The decision to withhold more information from congressional oversight and the public comes amid growing violence in Afghanistan and an intensifying combat mission involving a greater number of American troops. Following a series of bombings in Kabul that left at least 136 people dead in 10 days, President Trump signaled on Monday that he was focused on trying to win the conflict militarily, saying, We dont want to talk with the Taliban. But data released by SIGAR since 2015 have shown how the insurgents have gained ground against Afghan security forces. In its previous quarterly report, the watchdog said that only 57% of Afghanistans 407 districts were under Afghan government control or influence as of August 2017, the lowest level of control since it began tracking the statistic in December 2015. The steady decline in government control should cause even more concern about its disappearance from public disclosure and discussion, Sopko wrote. The watchdog also accused the Pentagon of overstating the impact of its efforts to combat drug cultivation and trafficking, among the Talibans main sources of revenue. The Pentagon touted airstrikes that destroyed 25 drug labs in November and December, saying it eliminated nearly $100 million of Taliban revenue. The labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace, SIGAR said. According to some estimates, they only take three or four days to replace. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Women journalists shunted to rear for Pences visit to Western Wall By Noga Tarnopolsky The view from the womens section. (Noga Tarnopolsky / Los Angeles Times) Vice-President Mike Pences 48-hour visit to Israel stumbled into a public storm Tuesday when female reporters covering his final stop at Jerusalems Western Wall were penned behind four rows of their male colleagues. White House officials told stunned journalists that the arrangement emanated from a request made by the Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, and followed Western Wall rules. Some women journalists said they could not recall such treatment in the past. In a statement to Israels Channel 10 news, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation said it was exactly as it was during the visit of the U.S. president to the Western Wall last May. Later in the day, in a statement to the newspaper Haaretz, the foundation blamed the United States embassy in Tel Aviv and Israeli security officials for the segregation, and announced they would reexamine the way they handle such events. Women who covered previous VIP visits said the Pence arrangements were significantly more onerous than previous visits, when male and female journalists were separated but not offered substantially different work conditions. LIVE coverage of our male colleagues granted access to cover VP at Western Wall as we are penned into #PenceFence pic.twitter.com/k3svkxfQsa Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) January 23, 2018 The arrangement reflected procedures at the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site, where on regular days, men have access to two thirds of the area available for prayer. Tal Schneider, the diplomatic analyst for Globes, a financial newspaper, protested that the separation of men and women may be valid for the requirements of Orthodox prayer, but no one is praying here. We are here to work. I dont appreciate being restricted in my ability to work because I am a woman, she said. The discriminatory attitude towards women is infuriating and is unbefitting of a modern country. Yael Freidson, the Jerusalem affairs correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, Israels widest circulation newspaper, said she worried that her editors could choose male colleagues for the next assignment, knowing they would have better access. Before Pence arrived, journalists were herded onto a specially constructed platform in the middle of the Western Walls esplanade, with women guided to the right behind a white fence, and men, many carrying cameras, directed to the left, where they had more than double the space. Towards the end of the vice presidents 10-minute visit, male journalists were permitted into the VIP tent where he received a gift from Rabinowitz, while the women remained in their enclosure. None of the men publicly protested the treatment of their female colleagues. Israels Association of Women Journalists filed a formal complaint with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, herself a woman. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, after his pardon from Trump, says hell run for Senate in Arizona By Kurtis Lee (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) (Mary Altaffer / Associated Press) Former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who last year was pardoned by President Trump in a case stemming from his enforcement tactics aimed at immigrants, announced Tuesday he will run for the open Senate seat in his home state. I am running for the U.S. Senate from the Great State of Arizona, for one unwavering reason: to support the agenda and policies of President Donald Trump in his mission to Make America Great Again, Arpaio, 85, said on Twitter. Hell enter a Republican primary for the seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake. Last summer, Trump pardoned Arpaio, who was convicted in July of criminal contempt for violating a federal court order to stop racially profiling Latinos. It was Arpaios roughly quarter-century as sheriff that gave him a national reputation for his tough treatment of people suspected of being in the country illegally. Repeated court rulings against his office for civil rights violations cost local taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. In the early 1990s, Arpaio directed construction of a tent city for immigration detainees, a measure he said was intended both to alleviate overcrowding and to underscore his aggressive enforcement measures. But it was open to the burning Arizona sun, and drew widespread criticism. After Trump entered the presidential race in July 2015, Arpaio invited him to Phoenix to talk about a crackdown on illegal immigration. He endorsed Trump just before the first votes in the Iowa caucuses in 2016 and frequently spoke out on behalf of Trumps campaign. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement President Trump ends controversial voter fraud commission By Kurtis Lee President Trump signed an executive order late Wednesday ending the voter fraud commission he launched last year as the panel faces a flurry of lawsuits and criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Trump signed the order disbanding the commission rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by executive order in May with the stated goal of restoring confidence and integrity in the electoral process, has faced a barrage of lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns, as the commission sought personal data on voters across the country. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Congress returns to work with slimmer GOP majority to accomplish Trumps agenda By Lisa Mascaro Congress returns to work this week with unfinished business on spending, immigration and other crucial issues, but with an even narrower GOP majority that will make it tougher to move on President Trumps agenda. The House and Senate will convene Wednesday, swearing in the newly elected Democratic senator from Alabama, Doug Jones, and Minnesotas Tina Smith to replace a fellow Democrat, Sen. Al Franken, who is resigning as the latest high-profile public figure sidelined by allegations of sexual misconduct. The change gives Republicans only a one-seat margin in the Senate. Trump, fresh off passage of the GOP tax cuts bill, is pushing lawmakers to pivot quickly on his new year priorities of infrastructure investment and immigration, as well as his foreign policy agenda. But another legislative victory seems far off. Republicans have struggled to hold their majority together and Congress first must tackle critical stalled agenda items that leaders punted to 2018. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump threatens to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump on Tuesday angrily threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Palestinians as punishment for what he called their failure to show appreciation or respect to the United States. Writing on Twitter, the president compared the Palestinians to Pakistan, a nuclear-armed ally that abruptly drew his ire this week and a similar threat to drastically curtail aid. He accused the Palestinians of recalcitrance in what he described as their refusal to negotiate a peace deal with Israel. Palestinian officials have said they can no longer use Washington as a broker to restart peace talks with Israel following Trumps Dec. 6 decision to overturn decades of U.S. policy and recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and ultimately to move the U.S. Embassy there. The Palestinians also claim part of Jerusalem as the capital of an eventual independent state. Until now, the United States and most of the world agreed the citys political status was a matter to settle in final peace talks. The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned any effort to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the Palestinian leadership said it would not meet with Vice President Mike Pence, who had planned a trip to the region. That trip is on hold. [W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDRED [sic] OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect, Trump wrote on Twitter. [W]ith the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them? In response to Trumps tweet, Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, issued a statement saying: Palestinian rights are not for sale. By recognizing Occupied Jerusalem as Israels capital Donald Trump has not only violated international law, but he has also singlehandedly destroyed the very foundations of peace and condoned Israels illegal annexation of the city. We will not be blackmailed, she said. President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions! The United States does not pay large amounts of money directly to the Palestinian Authority, the government that rules over parts of the Palestinian West Bank. Instead, most money goes to the U.N., refugee or aid agencies and even Israel to pay for roads, welfare, schools, security and other Palestinian projects. The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, said Tuesday that the administration was planning to cut off one of those organizations, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, until the Palestinians return to the negotiating table. UNRWA, which receives around $300 million annually from the U.S., for years has been the lifeline to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was not clear if Haley was threatening to cut all U.S. support for the agency. Special correspondent Noga Tarnopolsky in Jerusalem contributed to this report. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print The White House stops short of calling for government overthrow in Iran By Brian Bennett President Trump wants Iran to give its citizens basic human rights and stop being a state sponsor of terror, his top spokeswoman said, but the White House stopped short of calling for a change of government in Tehran. If they want to do that through current leadership, if thats possible, OK, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. Sanders praised the organic popular uprising, which she said the widespread protests in Iran represented. The protests grew out of years of years of mismanagement, corruption, and foreign adventurism have eroded the Iranian peoples trust in their leaders, she said. Earlier Tuesday, Trump called Irans government brutal and corrupt and wrote in a tweet: The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching! Trump also blamed President Obama for foolishly giving Iran money that he said went to fund terrorism. The money he referred to were funds belonging to Iran that had been frozen by the U.S. and were released as part of the deal in 2015, which blocked Irans development of nuclear weapons. 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 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Retirement of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch clears the way for a Mitt Romney revival By David Lauter The retirement of Utahs senior senator, Orrin G. Hatch, opens the way for a widely expected Senate bid by Mitt Romney, the Republicans 2012 presidential nominee and a frequent critic of President Trump. Although Romney previously served for two terms as governor of Massachusetts (and was raised in Michigan, where his father was governor and his mother ran for the Senate), he comes from a prominent Mormon family with strong ties to Utah. He also served as chief executive of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Hes viewed as a strong candidate for the Senate seat. Romneys criticisms of Trump, however, could prompt a challenge in a Republican primary. Trump was widely reported to have tried to convince Hatch to run for a seventh term, in part to head off a Romney candidacy. Last month, Romney and Trump were on opposite sides of one of the biggest political fights of the fall the battle over the Senate seat from Alabama. The president strongly supported Roy Moore, the Republican candidate who had been accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Romney called Moore a stain on the GOP. Roy Moore in the US Senate would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation. Leigh Corfman and other victims are courageous heroes. No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity. Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 4, 2017 On Tuesday, Romney tweeted praise for Hatch, but did not immediately reveal his own plans. I join the people of Utah in thanking my friend, Senator Orrin Hatch for his more than forty years of service to our great state and nation. Read my full statement: https://t.co/YwjUpjez5y Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 2, 2018 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.S. calls on Iran to unblock social media sites amid protests By The Associated Press The Trump administration is calling on Irans government to stop blocking Instagram and other popular social media sites as Iranians are demonstrating in the streets. Undersecretary of State Steve Goldstein says the U.S. wants Iran to open these sites. He says Instagram, Telegram and other platforms are legitimate avenues for communication. The United States is encouraging Iranians to use virtual private networks, known as VPNs. Those services create encrypted links between computers and can be used to access blocked websites. Goldstein says the U.S. is still communicating with Iranians in Persian through State Department accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. He says the U.S. wants to encourage the protesters to continue to fight for whats right. Goldstein says the U.S. has an obligation not to stand by. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump blasts Democrats in advance of immigration meeting By Brian Bennett The day before a meeting of administration officials and congressional leaders on outstanding legislative business, President Trump accused Democrats of doing nothing to hammer out an immigration deal to protect from deportation people brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA just interested in politics, Trump wrote in a Tweet on Tuesday morning, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by its acronym. 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 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer along with the Republican leaders, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are scheduled to meet on Wednesday at the Capitol with Trumps legislative director, Marc Short, and budget director, Mick Mulvaney. The White House on Tuesday said the meeting is to discuss separate spending caps on military and domestic programs. Yet the Democrats insist the discussion also must include a variety of legislative issues that Trump and Congress punted into the new year on immigration, the budget, healthcare and more. That stance reflects Democrats leverage: Republicans need Democratic votes to pass a government-funding bill and avert a federal shutdown when the current funding expires Jan. 19. Democrats especially want separate legislation replacing the Obama-era DACA program; Trump in September ordered a phase-out of the program, beginning March 6, and called on Congress to act before then on an alternative way to address the plight of the group. However, Trump has demanded that any alternative must be part of a package including both money for a border wall and immigration limits. Democrats are opposed. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Pakistan hits back after Trump accuses its leaders of lies and deceit By Aoun Sahi Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies and deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. 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, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. 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. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump again cheers on Iran protests 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 The presidents earlier hailing of the protests drew condemnation from Irans government. A Foreign Ministry spokesman called his comments deceitful and opportunistic. Following an overnight report of the first two fatalities stemming from the protests, Trump raised some eyebrows by expressing concern over human rights violations as authorities move to crack down on the demonstrations. During his first year in office, the president has shown scant inclination to press foreign governments to respect the fundamental rights of their citizens. The USA is watching closely for human rights violations! Trump said in his tweet Sunday. Some domestic critics have pointed to the presidents inclusion of Iranian nationals in his travel ban, suggesting he was more interested in bashing the Tehran government than in supporting freedom of speech in Iran. Even some of the presidents allies said that supporting the protesters on social media did not amount to making policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he had urged Trump to give a national address laying out his Iran strategy. President Trump is tweeting very sympathetically to the Iranian people, Graham said on CBS Face the Nation. But you just cant tweet here. You have to lay out a plan. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Australian diplomats tip a factor in FBIs Russia inquiry By Associated Press Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer. (Alastair Grant / Associated Press) An Australian diplomats tip appears to have helped persuade the FBI to investigate Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign, the New York Times reported Saturday. Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos told the diplomat, Alexander Downer, during a meeting in London in May 2016 that Russia had thousands of emails that would embarrass Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, the report said. Downer, a former foreign minister, is Australias top diplomat in Britain. Australia passed the information on to the FBI after the Democratic emails were leaked, according to the Times, which cited four current and former U.S. and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians role. The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016, the newspaper said. White House lawyer Ty Cobb declined to comment, saying in a statement that the administration is continuing to cooperate with the investigation now led by special counsel Robert Mueller to help complete their inquiry expeditiously. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and is a cooperating witness. Court documents unsealed two months ago show he met in April 2016 with Joseph Mifsud, a professor in London who told him about Russias cache of emails. This was before the Democratic National Committee became aware of the scope of the intrusion into its email systems by hackers later linked to the Russian government. The Times said Papadopoulos shared this information with Downer, but it was unclear whether he also shared it with anyone in the Trump campaign. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump offers fresh support for protesters in Iran as demonstrations continue By Lisa Mascaro Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! pic.twitter.com/kvv1uAqcZ9 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2017 President Trump again offered support Saturday for anti-government protesters in Iran, where a third day of demonstrations, the largest in years, spilled across the country amid fears of a crackdown. Oppressive regimes cannot endure forever, and the day will come when the Iranian people will face a choice. The world is watching! Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump took a break from playing golf near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to tweet clips from his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September when he called for Iranian democratic reforms. Iranian authorities warned of potential violence as the street demonstrations, which began over economic conditions, swelled into frustrations with the theocratic rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Trump has maintained a hawkish stance toward Iran, sharply criticizing the landmark nuclear disarmament accord that Tehran reached with then-President Obama and five other nations in 2015. In October, Trump declined to certify the accord to Congress although the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency says Iran is complying with it. Several conservative GOP senators signaled their support for Trumps position and backed the protesters in Iran. Others in Congress did not immediately respond, however, amid conflicting reports over who had organized the demonstrations. Even after the billions in sanctions relief they secured through the nuclear deal, the ayatollahs still cant provide for the basic needs of their own people, said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a Trump ally and opponent of the nuclear deal. We should support the Iranian people who are willing to risk their lives to speak out against it, he added. Trump initially tweeted his support on Friday night. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement at that time as protests spread. There are many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regimes corruption and its squandering of the nations wealth to fund terrorism abroad, Sanders said. The Iranian government should respect their peoples rights, including their right to express themselves. The world is watching. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement When it comes to U.S.-Russia relations, it takes two to tango, Kremlin says By Sabra Ayres The deteriorating relationship between the United States and Russia is one of the biggest disappointments of 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman told reporters today. Russia would like to rebuild relations between the two adversaries, but it takes two to tango, Dmitry Peskov said today during a conference call with the press. We want and are looking for good mutually beneficial relations based on mutual respect, mutual trust with all countries, primarily with European ones, including the United States, but it is necessary to dance tango, as they say. Peskov blamed the ongoing anti-Russian Russophobia in Washington for playing a major role in blocking the two countries from moving forward in their relationship. U.S. investigations into the Trump presidential campaigns alleged collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 U.S. election and accusations that the Kremlin tried to interfere with the electoral process continue to cast a dark shadow over the relationship, he said. Peskov told reporters that Moscow was perplexed by the investigations. The Kremlin has continued to deny having any involvement with the Trump campaign or doing anything to interfere with the American election. This is definitely a U.S. domestic affair, but in this case it naturally hurts our bilateral relations, which is regrettable, Peskov said. Relations between the U.S. and Russia have been categorized as the worst theyve been since the end of the Cold War. This year, Washington and Moscow have engaged in a diplomatic tit-for-tat in which both sides have been forced to reduce diplomatic staff, embassy properties have been repossessed by the hosting countries and visa services have been interrupted. The U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia shrank from 1,200 personnel, including some Russian local staff, to just over 450 across all its three consulates and embassy in Moscow. In the U.S., Russia was forced to vacate its San Francisco consulate. Moscow has also blamed anti-Russian sentiments on the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban Russian teams from wearing their tricolor uniforms or flags during the upcoming games in South Korea. The international body accused some of the Russian national teams of doping. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.S. and Turkey resume reciprocal issuing of visas but frictions remain By Tracy Wilkinson The United States and Turkey began issuing reciprocal visas again on Thursday, more than two months after normal visa service was suspended in a dispute over the arrest of two U.S. diplomatic staffers in Istanbul the latest friction between the two nominal allies. The State Department said it was lifting the visa restrictions after it was assured by the Turkish government that U.S. Embassy employees would not be arrested when performing their official duties. But the Turkish Embassy in Washington denied assurances were offered concerning the ongoing judicial processes, and suggested that the arrests were legal and justified. It is inappropriate to misinform the Turkish and American public that such assurances were provided, the embassy said in a statement. The dispute has aggravated the already tense relationship between the United States and Turkey, which is a member of the NATO military alliance. The two countries have clashed over U.S. support for Kurdish rebels in Syria and over Turkeys demands that the U.S. extradite a Turkish cleric who lives in rural Pennsylvania. After a failed coup attempt killed more than 250 people in July 2016, Turkeys autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launched a harsh crackdown on his political opponents, arresting or firing tens of thousands of teachers, police, journalists, military officers and others. Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic educator and former political ally, of orchestrating the coup. Gulen, who has lived in a compound in the Pocono Mountains, has denied any involvement. The Justice Department has so far denied Turkeys repeated demands to extradite Gulen. Erdogan raised the issue again at the White House in May, but his visit ended in a public relations disaster when his security guards brutally beat peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassadors residence. Two Turkish employees of the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul were arrested this fall for alleged ties to the 2016 coup attempt. The U.S. responded by suspending most visa services at its missions in Turkey in October. The Turkish government reciprocated in November. State Department officials said they have repeatedly demanded more information about any formal charges against the two employees. They reiterated on Thursday that serious concerns about the allegations remained. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump: China caught RED HANDED allowing oil to reach North Korea By Brian Bennett (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) President Trump isnt taking a holiday vacation from Twitter. In one of three tweets early on Thursday from his West Palm Beach golf club, he charged that China was caught RED HANDED allowing oil shipments to reach North Korean ports. Pronouncing himself very disappointed, Trump in effect was acknowledging the failure of his months-long effort to convince China to clamp down further on energy shipments going to the isolated country, which relies heavily on Beijing, as a way to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. Caught RED HANDED - very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2017 Trumps tweet came after a South Korean newspaper published what it said were U.S. spy satellite images of Chinese ships selling oil to North Korean ships. The United Nations Security Council, which includes China, has voted repeatedly to restrict fuel shipments to North Korea. Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping in November to cut off North Koreas oil supply entirely, the American ambassador to the U.N., Nikki R. Haley, said at the time. It is unclear if Trumps admonishment of China was based on news reports or classified information he received from U.S. intelligence officials. There was no daily intelligence briefing on Trumps public schedule Thursday. He is expected to return to Washington next week after spending the Christmas holiday and New Years Eve at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print President Trump again falsely claims hes signed more bills than any president By Brian Bennett President Trump visits a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. (Nicholas Kamm / AFP) After another morning at his Florida golf club, President Trump visited firefighters and paramedics at a West Palm Beach firehouse and praised his own performance as president, including with a false boast. Trump touted his administrations work to roll back government regulations and cut taxes and claimed credit for the stock market hitting record highs. He also said hes signed more bills into law than any other president, which isnt true. We have signed more legislation than anybody, Trump said, standing in front of a rescue vehicle inside the fire station. We have more legislation passed, including the record was Harry Truman a long time ago, and we broke that record, so we got a lot done, Trump said. An analysis by GovTrack, a website that tracks bills in Congress, shows that Trump has signed the fewest bills into law at this point than any president in more than 60 years, back to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trump administration urges Russia to reinstate monitors in Ukraine, lower violence By Tracy Wilkinson Sergei Lavrov (AFP/Getty Images) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Russia on Wednesday to reinstate its military personnel at a monitoring station in eastern Ukraine intended to quell escalating bloodshed. In a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Tillerson also urged Russia to lower the level of violence and underscored the Trump administrations concern over increased fighting in Ukraine, the State Department said in a statement. Russia last week withdrew its monitors from the Joint Center on Coordination and Control, which is tasked with verifying a much-violated ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists. Moscow cited what it called restrictions and provocations from Ukrainian authorities that made it impossible for the observers to do their jobs. Washington has accused the pro-Russia forces of being responsible for many of the truce violations. Late last week, the State Department also announced plans to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, a decision that angered Moscow. The State Department statement did not say whether the weapons deal came up in Tillersons conversation with Lavrov. The two also discussed North Korea, its destabilizing nuclear program and the need for a diplomatic solution to achieve a denuclearized Korean peninsula, the statement said. Russia has offered to serve as a mediator between Washington and Pyongyang, but direct talks do not seem likely at this point. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.S. sanctions two more North Korean officials for ballistic missile program By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration announced sanctions Tuesday against two more North Korean officials for their alleged role in Pyongyangs expanding ballistic missiles program. The Treasury Department is targeting leaders of North Koreas ballistic missile programs, as part of our maximum pressure campaign to isolate [North Korea] and achieve a fully denuclearized Korean Peninsula, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement. The nuclear-armed country tested an intercontinental ballistic missile last month that U.S. officials said appeared capable of reaching New York or Washington, a significant milestone in the countrys growing arsenal. The Treasury Department identified the two North Korean officials as Kim Jong Sik, who reportedly is a key figure in the ballistic missile program and led efforts to switch missiles from liquid to solid fuel (which makes them easier to hide before launch), and Ri Pyong Chol, who was reported to be a key official in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The sanctions block banks, companies and individuals from doing any business with the targeted officials. It also allows the U.S. government to freeze any American assets owned by the officials. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to add more sanctions on North Korea, its third round this year. The new measures order North Koreans working abroad to return home within two years, and ban nearly 90% of refined petroleum exports to the country. In a statement published Sunday by North Koreas state-run KCNA news agency, the foreign ministry denounced the new U.N. sanctions as an act of war. We define this sanctions resolution rigged up by the US and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region and categorically reject the resolution, it said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Salt Lake Tribune calls on Sen. Orrin Hatch to not seek reelection in scathing editorial Perhaps the most significant move of Hatchs career is the one that should, if there is any justice, end it. The last time the senator was up for reelection, in 2012, he promised that it would be his last campaign. That was enough for many likely successors, of both parties, to stand down, to let the elder statesman have his victory tour and to prepare to run for an open seat in 2018. Clearly, it was a lie. Read the editorial>> Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Christmas Eve, Trump on Twitter: New attacks on FBI official, decrying Fake News By Laura King President Trump launched a Christmas Eve attack on FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, whom he accuses of favoritism toward his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, and also returned to a longtime favored theme, excoriating the news media for failing to sufficiently extol his accomplishments. .@FoxNews-FBIs Andrew McCabe, in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Thank you President TRUMP!! pic.twitter.com/LKdkT0FL99 oregon4TRUMP (@shawgerald4) December 23, 2017 The Fake News refuses to talk about how Big and how Strong our BASE is. They show Fake Polls just like they report Fake News. Despite only negative reporting, we are doing well - nobody is going to beat us. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017 Trump, who is spending the holidays at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, also sent Christmas greetings to deployed military personnel, praising them for success in the fight against terrorism. The early-morning swipe at McCabe followed a flurry of tweets attacking the deputy FBI chief on Saturday. McCabe, who has been a lightning rod for Republican attacks on the FBI, is expected to retire early in the new year. How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wifes campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017 Critics say the president and his allies are in the midst of a systematic campaign to denigrate the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign in Russias attempts to sway the 2016 presidential election. In a pair of statements on Twitter, Trump again expressed scorn regarding news coverage of his administration. For months, the president has been particularly critical of reports regarding the Russia investigation and more recently has repeatedly complained he does not receive enough credit for a booming stock market. In his video conference message to troops overseas, the president made apparent reference to the fight against the militants of Islamic State, who over the last year have lost most of the territory they previously controlled in Iraq and Syria, including former strongholds in Mosul and Raqqah. Were winning, Trump told military personnel deployed in Qatar, Kuwait, Guantanamo Bay and aboard the guided missile destroyer Sampson. Reporters traveling with the president heard his address, but were ushered from the room before he took questions from the troops. The president often breaks with longtime custom and makes politically charged statements at events in which he addresses military personnel. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Trumps Wells Fargo tweet cited in court hearing as reason to remove Mulvaney as CFPB acting chief By Jim Puzzanghera A recent tweet by President Trump about possible penalties against Wells Fargo & Co. was cited during a court hearing Friday as a reason for removing White House official Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The attorney for Leandra English the bureaus deputy director who has said she is the rightful acting head said Trumps tweet showed he was trying to exercise improper influence over the independent consumer watchdog. I think that [tweet] shows you this isnt just some hypothetical concern, the attorney, Deepak Gupta, told Judge Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia during a nearly two-hour hearing. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump administration recognizes Honduran presidents reelection By Tracy Wilkinson The Trump administration on Friday formally recognized the incumbent president of Honduras, conservative Juan Orlando Hernandez, as the winner of a bitterly contested presidential election held last month. In a statement, the State Department congratulated Hernandez while also acknowledging widespread irregularities in the Nov. 26 vote and calling for a robust national dialogue to overcome political discord in the Central American country, a close ally of the administration. The Organization of American States, which monitored the election, said it was so flawed that only a new round of voting could establish a fair and transparent outcome. But the U.S. rejected that determination. Uproar over the contest led to demonstrations in Honduras that left numerous civilians dead after state security forces opened fire on the protests. Activists and others voiced criticism Friday of the administrations decision. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a leading Democratic voice on Central American issues, said he was angry and deeply disturbed by the State Department decision. The recent elections in Honduras were deeply flawed, chaotic and marred by numerous irregularities, McGovern said. U.S.-Honduran cooperation on matters such as drug-trafficking, violence and immigration requires a credible, legitimate government that has the support of its people, in Honduras, McGovern said. Hernandezs victory also was controversial because it was the first time a sitting president was allowed to run for re-election, barred until now by the Honduran Constitution. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says fixing DACA is no emergency until March By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday hes committed to allowing a vote on a bill for so-called Dreamers in January, but sees no rush to resolve the deportation threat posed by President Trumps decision to end a program protecting immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. There isnt that much of an emergency there, he said. There is no emergency until March. Well keep talking about it. Trump called for phasing out by March the Obama-era program that allows the young immigrants, many of them longtime residents, to get two-year deferrals of any deportation threat so they can legally attend school or work. Beneficiaries must be vetted for security purposes. Trump told Congress to come up with a legislative alternative for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Obama created by executive order, to protect those currently eligible. A bipartisan Senate group has been working with the White House, but talks stalled this week amid administration demands for curbs on legal immigration flows in exchange for protecting the DACA recipients. Meanwhile, Dreamers and immigrant advocates stormed the Capitol in recent days pressing for the help promised by Trump and Democratic congressional leaders that failed to materialize in the years final legislation. Advocacy groups say more than 120 immigrants each day are falling out of compliance without DACA renewals, putting them at risk of deportation. The number that is projected to swell to more than 1,000 a day in March. Weve been gridlocked on this issue for years, McConnell said. We want to have a signature. We dont just want to spin our wheels and have nothing to show for it. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print President Trump signs tax bill By Noah Bierman (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump on Friday morning signed a sweeping tax-cut measure his first major legislative achievement before heading off for a Christmas vacation at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla. The president also privately signed a short-term spending bill to fund government operations through Jan. 19. Congress approved it Thursday, after Republican leaders were unable to bridge differences in their own party as well as with Democrats to get agreement on funding for the full fiscal year. The stopgap bill punts fights on immigration and other issues to January. The tax bill, approved earlier this week in Congress in largely party-line votes, slashes corporate tax rates from 35% to 21% and also includes a host of other provisions for individuals, all intended to boost the economy. Critics point to nonpartisan analyses showing that the package, including changes greatly reducing the number of estates subject to taxes, steers the bulk of tax benefits to top earners and the wealthy, including Trump, despite his repeated claims that hell take a hit. Trump signed the bill quietly Friday, but held a public ceremony with Republican lawmakers on Wednesday after the bills passage; he also tweeted about the measure extensively. He is expected to hold another public ceremony after the New Years holiday. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Pelosi urges Ryan to prevent Republicans from curtailing Houses Russia probe By Chris Megerian House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin greets House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Friday urging him to ensure the Houses investigation into Russian interference with last years presidential campaign is not cut short. The American people deserve a comprehensive and fair investigation into Russias attacks, wrote Pelosi, of San Francisco, in her letter. Political haste must not cut short valid investigatory threads. The House Intelligence Committee has been probing the issue since March 1, and Democrats have repeatedly warned that Republicans are trying to wrap up its work prematurely. Pelosi said Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, should take urgent action to ensure this investigation can continue. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Ryan, said Pelosi simply wants to see this investigation go on forever in order to suit her political agenda. Whether it concludes next month, next year, or in three years, she will say it is too soon, Strong said in a statement. She added, The investigation will conclude when the committee has reached a conclusion. The committees work is led by Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas). His spokeswoman, Emily Hytha, said he remains committed to conducting this investigation as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible. With more interviews scheduled, the investigation shows signs of extending into next year, Bloomberg reported Friday. BREAKING: Steve Bannon and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have been sent letters requesting they testify to House Intel panel in early January, per @HouseInSession Laura Litvan (@LauraLitvan) December 22, 2017 Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Congress votes to avert government shutdown, but Senate fails to pass disaster aid package By Lisa Mascaro ( (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)) Congress approved a temporary spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, but failed to complete work on an $81-billion disaster aid package to help California, Gulf Coast states and Puerto Rico recover from wildfires and hurricanes, as lawmakers scrambled Thursday to wrap up business before a Christmas break. The stopgap measure continues federal operations for a few more weeks, setting up another deadline for Jan. 19. But it left undone a long list of priorities that members of both parties had hoped to finish this year. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Wells Fargo says raises were not linked to tax bill passage then backtracks By James Rufus Koren Wells Fargo & Co.s move to raise its minimum pay to $15 an hour was part of a long-term plan and not related to the passage of the Republican tax overhaul as the company implied, said a bank spokesman, who later backtracked and stated the hikes were a result of the bills approval. The bank was among several large corporations to publicly announce pay raises or new investments immediately following the final House vote in an apparent public relations offensive to boost the popularity of the tax bill The San Francisco bank had implied the direct linkage to the tax legislation in a news release Wednesday, shortly after Congress passed the tax overhaul, which slashes the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% starting Jan. 1. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Obamacare signups beat expectations, despite Trump administrations opposition By Noam N. Levey President Trump with Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) Despite Trump administration efforts to discourage people from signing up, the number of people enrolling for Affordable Care Act coverage nearly hit last years level, the government revealed Thursday. Exchange open enrollment for 2018 coverage ended w/ approx 8.8M people enrolling in coverage. Great job to the @CMSGov team for the work you did to make this the smoothest experience for consumers to date. We take pride in providing great customer service. Administrator Seema Verma (@SeemaCMS) December 21, 2017 The 8.8 million people who enrolled in the 36 states that use the federal governments healthcare.gov system significantly exceeded most forecasts. The Trump administration stopped most outreach and other efforts this year aimed at getting people to sign up. The president also repeatedly said publicly that Obamacare was dead. Open enrollment continues in California and several other states that run their own healthcare marketplaces. The figures from the federal government indicate that when those states wrap up for the year, the number of people covered by Obamacare will be nearly the same as in 2017. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly condemns U.S. policy change on Jerusalem despite Trumps threats By Tracy Wilkinson The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted Thursday to condemn President Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite Trumps threats to punish countries that voted against the U.S. position. The resolution passed in an emergency session at U.N. headquarters in New York with 128 in favor, nine opposed and 35 abstentions. The nonbinding resolution demands that Washington rescind its declaration, which included a plan to transfer the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in coming years. The resolution value is mostly symbolic, showing how isolated the U.S. is in the move. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., warned this week that she would be taking names of countries that opposed the U.S., and Trump on Wednesday suggested he might cut U.S. aid to governments that voted in favor of the resolution. Let them vote against us, Trump said. Well save a lot. We dont care. The U.S. recognition of Jerusalem reversed decades of international consensus on the political status of the divided city. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital in a future independent state. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the U.N. was facing an unprecedented test and that history would remember those who stand by what is right. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Democrats defend Robert Mueller, saying Russia investigation must be allowed to continue By Chris Megerian Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) speaking during a committee hearing earlier this year. (Molly Riley / Associated Press) House Democrats said they will fight Republican attempts to discredit and undermine the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating whether President Trumps associates helped Russian meddling in last years election. There is an organized effort by Republicans, in concert with Fox News, to spin a false narrative and conjure up outrageous scenarios to accuse special counsel Mueller of being biased, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said. Trump has said he has no plan to fire Mueller, but Democrats are alarmed by escalating criticism of the special counsels work. Why is the president afraid of the facts and the truth? Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said. He added, No matter what the facts are, were satisfied if the investigation is complete. A letter of support signed by 171 Democratic members of Congress will be sent to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, a former FBI director, and oversees his investigation. Rosenstein has defended Mueller in the face of Republican criticisms. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print U.S. blacklists Myanmar army general who it says oversaw atrocities against Rohingya Muslims By Shashank Bengali The Trump administration on Thursday blacklisted a Myanmar army general who it said oversaw human rights abuses committed by security forces against Rohingya Muslims. Imposing economic sanctions against the general, Maung Maung Soe, was the toughest action the United States has taken in response to a brutal army offensive that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described as ethnic cleansing. In a statement, the Treasury Department said it had examined credible evidence of Maung Maung Soes activities, including allegations against Burmese security forces of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and arbitrary arrest as well as the widespread burning of villages. The Rohingya are an ethnic and religious minority of about 1 million people in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, also known as Burma. The United Nations says that more than 640,000 Rohingya have fled the country since August, after the army launched clearance operations in response to attacks carried out by a Rohingya insurgent group against security forces. Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in neighboring Bangladesh have described horrific violence by Myanmar forces, including mass rapes, summary executions and children being burned alive. The aid group Doctors Without Borders estimates that 6,700 people were killed in the first month of the operation. Myanmar authorities deny committing atrocities and say that only a few hundred fighters were killed. Maung Maung Soe was chief of the armys Western Command, which carried out the offensive. He was transferred from his position last month, according to news reports. He was one of 13 individuals worldwide who were blacklisted Thursday under a new U.S. law that gives the Treasury Department authority to target officials for human rights abuses and corruption. Others included former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh; Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the late Uzbekistan dictator Islam Karimov; and Artem Chaika, son of Russias prosecutor-general. Today, the United States is taking a strong stand against human rights abuse and corruption globally by shutting these bad actors out of the U.S. financial system, said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The sanctions freeze any assets Maung Maung Soe holds in the United States and bars Americans from doing business with him. It is also a sign of how quickly U.S. relations with Myanmar have soured. Under the Obama administration, the United States forged closer ties with the former military dictatorship and eased economic and political sanctions as the country began implementing democratic reforms. But Myanmar, which does not regard the Rohingya as citizens, has lashed out at the international community over the current crisis. It has jailed journalists, blocked access to affected areas in the western state of Rakhine and this week barred a U.N. human rights investigator from entering the country. Rohingya activists said the U.S. action would not have much effect on a country that survived under economic sanctions for years. It is the whole military institution that has a policy to persecute these people, said Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist and blogger in Germany. According to the U.S.s own definition, the army is carrying out ethnic cleansing. They have a responsibility to protect these people. Sanctions on one person are really not enough. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Dreamers will have to wait until next year for Congress long-promised protections By Lisa Mascaro Amanda Bayer, left with banner, and Marisol Maqueda, right, join a rally in support of so-called Dreamers outside the White House. (Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)) A promised year-end deal to protect the young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation collapsed Wednesday as Republicans in Congress fresh off passage of their tax plan prepared to punt nearly all remaining must-do agenda items into the new year. Congressional leaders still hope that before leaving town this week they can pass an $81-billion disaster relief package with recovery funds for California wildfires and Gulf Coast states hit during the devastating hurricane season. But passage even of that relatively popular measure remained in doubt as conservatives balked at the price tag. Rather than finish the year wrapping up the legislative agenda, the GOP majorities in the House and Senate struggled over their next steps. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Chants of protest drown out any caroling this holiday season at the Capitol By Lisa Mascaro U.S. Capitol Police arrest a man wearing a Santa Claus hat during a protest against the Republican tax bill. (Alex Edelman / AFP/Getty Image) Outside the U.S. Capitol, the lights on a towering Christmas tree are flipped on each evening, giving the Engelmann spruce a festive twinkle; inside the marble halls, wreaths and garlands decorate doorways and alcoves ahead of the holidays. But the spirit of the season has been punctuated by other sights: a Jumbotron parked across from the Capitol reflecting pool broadcasts images of young immigrants who face deportation; Little Lobbyists, children with complex medical needs, were featured in a recent news conference; protesters filed into the visitor galleries to shout against the Republican tax plan. While its beginning to look a lot like Christmas at the Capitol, its also shaping up to be a holiday season of protest. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Tax bill simplifies filing for some but complicates it for others and dont count on that postcard By Jim Puzzanghera A priority of the Republicans tax overhaul was simplification, and they drove home the point this fall with an omnipresent prop: a red-white-and-blue postcard. Were making things so simple that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said last month, pulling one from his jacket pocket as he and Republican leaders unveiled their bill. They gave a couple of the cards to President Trump at a White House meeting a few hours later and flashed them often during news conferences and TV interviews in the coming days. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Top U.N. human rights official reportedly wont seek reelection The top United Nations official for human rights, who has frequently criticized the Trump administration, has reportedly decided not to seek a second term, saying his work had become untenable. Zeid Raad Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, notified his staff in an email that was obtained by several news outlets, including Agence France-Presse. Staying when his four-year term is up for renewal at the end of August might involve bending a knee in supplication, AFP quoted Husseins email as saying. Hussein is a Jordanian prince who has criticized, among other things, President Trumps attempts to ban visitors or refugees from six predominantly Muslim countries. The news comes a day before the U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote on a nonbinding resolution condemning the Trump administrations formal declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a decision that went against international consensus. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has warned she will be taking names of those who vote against the United States on Thursday. Trump echoed that sentiment Wednesday, voiced support for Haley and implying to reporters that he would consider cutting off U.S. aid to countries that vote against the U.S. Well, were watching those votes, Trump said. Let them vote against us. Well save a lot. We dont care. On Monday, the United States lost a Security Council vote 14-1 on a binding resolution that would have required Washington to rescind its declaration. Haley then vetoed the resolution. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Top Democrat warns Trump not to fire Mueller or interfere with his investigation By Chris Megerian Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, one of the top Democrats involved in the congressional inquiries into Russian interference in last years election, said Wednesday that any attempt by President Trump to interfere with the separate criminal investigation would be a gross abuse of power. Warner, who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, delivered his warning from the Senate floor as Republicans escalate their criticism of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team of prosecutors and FBI agents. Some Democrats believe Trump is laying the groundwork to fire Mueller even though the president has publicly denied it. Mueller was appointed in May after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. In the United States of America, no one, no one is above the law, not even the president, Warner said. Congress must make clear to the president that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences. Some Democrats say the White House may try to in effect short-circuit the Mueller investigation by replacing Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who is the only official empowered to fire Mueller. Rosenstein recently told Congress that the special counsel is acting appropriately and that he would not dismiss Mueller without just cause. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump says after tax bill passes By Brian Bennett President Trump at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday at the White House. (Chris Kleponis / Getty Images) President Trump is celebrating Republicans passage of the tax overhaul bill as a two-fer: On Wednesday, in addition to tax cuts, he checked off his promise to repeal Obamacare, pointing to a provision in the bill to end the penalty on Americans who dont get health insurance. We have essentially repealed Obamacare, Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Other provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act are still in place, and Trump and congressional Republicans failed completely on the replace half of their vow to repeal and replace the program. In Trumps view, however, stripping away the laws individual mandate to get insurance or else pay a tax penalty amounts to repeal of the whole law. Congressional analysts have said that millions of people would lose insurance as a result, either by choice or because they cannot afford it without subsidies, and that premiums would increase for others as younger, healthy people drop coverage. We will come up with something much better, Trump said, adding that block grants to states could be one approach. By his comments, Trump tacitly acknowledged that repeal of the mandate is likely the best he can do following Republicans failure this year to agree on a repeal-and-replace bill. Looking back on his first year, Trump also boasted of his administrations efforts against the Islamic State and increased immigration enforcement. He said he had not given up on funding a border wall or tightening immigration law to limit citizens ability to resettle foreign relatives in the country. He said he would very shortly visit the border with Mexico near San Diego to see wall prototypes that have been built. He didnt answer a reporters shouted question about how he would personally benefit from the tax bill. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print House gives final OK to GOP tax plan, sending it to Trump By Lisa Mascaro Congress gave final approval to the GOP tax plan Wednesday, 224-201, after the House took an unusual do-over vote to clear up differences with the Senate-passed bill. The $1.5-trillion package now heads to President Trump, who plans to sign it into law. The House had approved the tax bill on Tuesday but was forced to take another vote Wednesday because a couple of provisions in the version it approved were found to be in violation of Senate procedures. Those provisions were dropped before the Senate gave its approval early Wednesday. Critics complained the Republicans rushed to pass the sweeping tax plan to deliver Trump a year-end legislative victory, but supporters shrugged off the problems as minor. The tax plan dramatically cuts corporate rates and provides some individual rate reductions, overhauling the tax code for the first time in 30 years. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump administration effort to block immigrant from having an abortion fails By David Savage Scott Lloyd is director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images) President Trumps lawyers rushed to the Supreme Court and U.S. appeals court in Washington on Monday evening to file emergency appeals seeking to prevent an immigrant in detention, dubbed Jane Roe in court, from having an abortion. That set the stage for a legal showdown on whether the administration can block pregnant minors in custody from choosing to have an abortion. But the legal clash, which the administration has seemed eager to have, fizzled out Tuesday when the governments lawyers admitted the 17-year-old unaccompanied minor in their custody was actually 19. They said they had obtained her birth certificate and realized she was not a minor after all. As a result, Roe, who is 10 weeks pregnant, will no longer be held in a detention center for immigrant minors, and will not be subject to an administration policy that tries to prevent minors in immigration detention from having abortions. Administration lawyers told appeals court judges Tuesday night that Roe was being sent to a facility for adults and likely would be released until her immigration status can be resolved. In a brief order, the D.C. Circuit Court agreed to put the case on hold, but told government attorneys to confirm that she will be permitted to obtain an abortion. The administration had earlier tried to delay another young woman, referred to in court as Jane Poe, from having an abortion, but officials relented on Monday because she was 22 weeks pregnant and nearing the time limit for a legal abortion. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Senate panel rejects Trumps pick to lead Export-Import Bank, a leader in the effort to shut it down By Jim Puzzanghera A Senate committee on Tuesday rejected President Trumps nominee to lead the Export-Import Bank, extending the chaos at the embattled agency whose job is to help U.S. companies sell their goods abroad. Two Republicans joined all Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee in voting against former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to be the banks president. Garrett had been a vocal critic of the Ex-Im Bank and a leader of a conservative effort that shut the bank down for five months in 2015 by blocking its congressional authorization. He and other bank opponents branded the banks aid as crony capitalism. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Congress proposes $81-billion disaster aid package, including funds for California wildfires By Lisa Mascaro Congress is set to consider an $81-billion disaster aid package that includes wildfire recovery money for California and other Western states as well as hurricane relief with a price tag reflecting a year of record-setting natural calamities. The legislation, the text of which was released late Monday, would provide almost twice as much as the $44 billion the White House sought last month to cover relief efforts along the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean. Republican congressional leaders added more money after California lawmakers objected that the administration had failed to include help for areas damaged by wildfires and Democrats protested that the overall amount President Trump asked for was insufficient. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print White House blames North Korea for worldwide WannaCry cyber attack By Noah Bierman The Royal London Hospital, a victim of the unprecedented global cyberattack in May. (Niklas Hallen / AFP/Getty Images) The White House officially blamed North Korea on Tuesday for the cyberattack in May known as WannaCry that infected hundreds of thousands of computers in 150 countries, affecting healthcare, financial services and vital infrastructure. Thomas P. Bossert, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, noted in a briefing with reporters that the consequences were beyond economic. He warned that North Koreas malicious behavior is growing more egregious. Bossert did not specify what evidence American officials have to blame North Korea, citing security issues, but he cited the countrys prior attacks as revealing hallmarks of how Pyongyang and its network of hackers operates. He said other allied countries had joined the United States in making the determination. The administration did not announce any penalties on the regime, which is already subject to severe sanctions over its nuclear program. They want to hold the entire world at risk, Bossert said of North Koreas rulers, referring to the nations nuclear and missile provocations as well as its alleged cyberattack. Given its isolation and international sanctions, North Korea is desperate for funds. Bossert said the country did not appear to make much money on the ransom attack, as word spread that paying a ransom did not result in getting computers unlocked. Its primary goal, he said, was spreading chaos. Bossert and Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary of homeland security for cybersecurity and communication, said the United States, through a combination of preparation and luck, escaped the worst of the attack, as a patch to the malware was found before U.S. companies and other interests were severely crippled. However, Manfra said, We cannot be complacent. Bossert added, Next time were not going to get so lucky. Manfra praised Microsoft and Facebook for their efforts to combat WannaCry and to block more recent attempts to hack U.S. systems. She and Bossert urged more cooperation and information-sharing from American and multinational companies, arguing a united front is vital to protecting against bad actors who do not differentiate between government and business. Bossert rejected criticism that the the Trump administration has more aggressively called out North Korean cyberattacks than it has Russias meddling in the 2016 election. He said the administration has continued the national emergency initiated by President Obama. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print GOP lures some mountain bike groups in its push to roll back protections for public land By Evan Halper When their vision of creating a scenic cycling trail through a protected alpine backcountry hit a snag, San Diego area mountain bikers turned to an unlikely ally: congressional Republicans aiming to dilute conservation laws. The frustrations of the San Diego cycling group and a handful of similar organizations are providing tailwind to the GOP movement to lift restrictions on the countrys most ecologically fragile and pristine landscapes, officially designated wilderness. Resentment of these cyclists over the longstanding ban on mechanized transportation in that fraction of the nations public lands presents a political opportunity for Republicans eager to drill fissures in the broad coalition of conservation-minded groups united against the GOP environmental agenda. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Vice president postpones Israel trip a second time in case his vote is needed to pass tax cut bill By Noah Bierman (Ethan Miller / Getty Images) Vice President Mike Pence is delaying his trip to Egypt and Israel for a second time in case he is needed to break a tie in the Senate for the tax bill that is expected to pass narrowly this week. Two White House officials confirmed the changed schedule, which they say is unrelated to to protests in the region over the administrations decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital. Pence had initially been scheduled to leave last Saturday. Late last week, the White House moved the trip back a few days to Tuesday night, in case Pence was needed to break a Senate tie. But Monday, they decided to postpone the trip further, to January, given the possibility of a late Senate vote and the coming holidays. He wants to see it through the finish line, said a White House official, referring to the tax measure that is a centerpiece of the Republican legislative agenda. We dont want to leave anything to chance. The mid-January dates will allow Pence more breathing room to merge schedules with embassies and hotels, the official said. Trump still plans to address the Israeli Knesset, a high-profile venue to discuss the Jerusalem decision where it is most popular. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump judicial pick who drew ridicule at hearing withdraws By Associated Press A White House official says the Trump judicial nominee whose qualifications were questioned by a Republican senator has withdrawn his nomination. Matthew Petersen, who was nominated by President Trump to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has been the subject of widespread ridicule since he was unable to define basic legal terms during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. A White House official says Petersen has withdrawn his nomination and that Trump has accepted the withdrawal. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the development publicly. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy pressed Petersen, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who testified he had never tried a case, on his qualifications to the bench. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump says McCain will return to Washington if needed for tax vote By Laura King President Trump said Sunday that Sen. John McCain, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, was returning home to Arizona for the holidays but would come back to Washington if needed to cast a vote on the Republicans tax overhaul bill. The Arizona Republicans office announced last week that McCain was receiving treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington for complications from his cancer treatment. McCains daughter Meghan tweeted earlier Sunday that her 81-year-old father would be spending Christmas in Arizona. The Senate is expected to vote early this week on the tax cut legislation, but the GOP appeared to have secured sufficient support without McCains vote. John will come back if we need his vote, Trump told reporters as he returned from a weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David. Hes going through a very tough time. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Putin calls Trump to thank him for U.S. help foiling terrorist strike By Laura King Vladimir Putin phoned President Trump to thank him for what the Russian president said was CIA help in foiling a terrorist attack, the Kremlin said on Sunday. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the two leaders conversation to reporters. It was the second time that the two leaders had talked in four days; Trump called Putin on Thursday to thank the Russian leader for lauding the U.S. economy. Putin, in his annual year-end news conference, had praised Trump for a strong performance by the U.S. stock market. Perhaps ironically, given his credit to the CIAs recent help, Putin at that news event dismissed as hysteria the consensus among American intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign. In reporting Putins call to Trump on Sunday, the official Russian news agency Tass said Putin thanked his American counterpart for information shared by the US Central Intelligence Agency that had helped break up a plot to set off explosives in St. Petersburgs landmark Kazan Cathedral and elsewhere in the city, which is Russias second-largest. Russian authorities last week had credited their countrys counter-intelligence service, the FSB, for foiling the attacks. They reported that seven people affiliated with Islamic State had been detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the plot. The FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, announced Friday that the group had planned to carry out the attacks on Saturday, and that one of those in custody had confessed to the cathedral bomb plot. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Mnuchin: Government shutdown unlikely but could happen By Laura King Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said on Sunday that a government shutdown this week was unlikely but possible. A two-week stopgap spending bill passed by Congress earlier this month provided enough funding to keep the government running through Friday. A deadlock on another temporary funding measure would open the door to a possible shutdown. I cant rule it out, but I cant imagine it occurring, Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday, suggesting everyone had an interest in avoiding the government grinding to a halt and federal workers going unpaid, especially in the holiday season. I would expect that both the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats, understand if they cant agree on this, they need to have another short-term extension to move this to January, the Treasury secretary said. We cant have a government shutdown in front of Christmas. In May, irate over concessions made to Democrats in hammering out a spending measure, President Trump tweeted that a good shutdown might help matters. While both parties agree that a government shutdown involves a degree of disruption that is not beneficial to either side, shutdowns in 1995-96 and in 2013 mainly caused a backlash against Republicans. The latest funding measure is to be taken up after a vote on a massive GOP tax overhaul, expected by midweek. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Trump transition team says sensitive emails should not have been shared with Robert Mueller By Chris Megerian (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) President Trumps transition team is crying foul over how special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained emails for his investigation into Russian meddling in last years campaign and possible Trump campaign complicity. Kory Langhofer, a lawyer for the transition team, sent a letter to Congress on Saturday saying there was an unauthorized disclosure of emails. While the Trump transition is long over, the transition team remains a nonprofit organization. Its emails were hosted by the General Services Administration, a federal agency. Mueller reportedly obtained the emails directly from the agency. There are attorney-client communications, Langhofer said in an interview. There are executive-privileged communications. He added, What were asking Congress to do is to take some legislative action to make sure this never happens again. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsels office, defended the process for obtaining emails. When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owners consent or appropriate criminal process, he said. The letter was first reported by Fox News. A request for comment from the General Services Administration was not immediately answered. This story has been updated with a comment from the special counsels office. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Virginia house arrest is ending for Paul Manafort By Chris Megerian (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) A federal judge agreed Friday to end Paul Manaforts house arrest in Virginia, allowing President Trumps former campaign manager to return to Florida while awaiting trial. The decision followed a dispute between Manaforts legal team and prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who accused Manafort of violating a court order restricting public statements about the case. Under the terms of the judges order, Manafort will be allowed to live at his home in Florida as long as he stays within Palm Beach and Broward counties and obeys a curfew from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. If he misses a court appearance, he would forfeit four properties valued at $10 million total. The deal, which includes GPS monitoring, is not as permissive as Manafort originally sought. He had asked to be able to travel freely among Florida, New York, Virginia and Washington. Manafort faces criminal charges of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print GOP negotiators enhance child tax credit to win over Sen. Rubio By Lisa Mascaro Republican negotiators slightly increased the refundable portion of the expanded child tax credit in their tax plan, raising it to $1,400 in hopes of winning back Sen. Marco Rubios (R-Fla.) support ahead of next weeks vote. Rubio announced Thursday he was withholding support after negotiators ignored his push to make the expanded tax credit, which increases from the current $1,000 to $2,000 in the proposed bill, fully refundable for lower- and moderate-income filers. The refundable portion in the original bill was $1,100. The Florida senator argued that was not enough to help working-class Americans, many of whom already view the GOP plan as tilted toward the wealthy. Rubios office was waiting to see the final text before commenting on whether the change was enough to win him over. We have not seen the bill text, and until we see if the percentage of the refundable credit is significantly higher, then our position remains the same, Rubios spokeswoman said. Negotiators meeting Friday before unveiling the bill said they thought they had the support they needed from Rubio and other holdouts. Im confident both chambers will pass it next week, said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Sen. Marco Rubio opposes GOP tax bill, depriving leaders of crucial support By Lisa Mascaro 20.94% Corp. rate to pay for tax cut for working family making $40k was anti-growth but 21% to cut tax for couples making $1million is fine? Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) December 12, 2017 Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) says he is currently opposed to the GOP tax plan because it fails to include his proposed enhancements to the child tax credit, leaving leaders without crucial support ahead of next weeks expected vote. Republicans can only lose two GOP senators from their slim 52-48 majority as they push the plan forward under special budget rules to prevent a Democratic filibuster. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday altered his planned Israel trip so he could be on hand, if needed, to cast a tie-breaking vote. Rubio, and GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, have fought to increase the child tax credit, doubling it to $2,000 in the GOP plan, but they also want to increase its refundability. They argue it will lower taxes on middle-income families at a time when the tax plan is being criticized as tilted to the wealthy. Sen. Rubio has consistently communicated to the Senate tax negotiators that his vote on final passage would depend on whether the refundability of the Child Tax Credit was increased in a meaningful way, Rubios spokeswoman said. Lee stopped short of opposing the bill, but his spokesman said Wednesday he is undecided. GOP leaders, though, have said they believe they have the support for passage. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print White House gives Roy Moore a unsubtle shove: Time to concede By David Lauter (Alex Wong / Getty Images) The White House sent a clear signal Thursday to the defeated Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama: Its time to concede. Roy Moore refused to concede the race on Tuesday night when Doug Jones, the Democrat, was declared the winner. Election night results show Jones winning by about 1.5 percentage points, three times more than the states standard for a recount. Although a few absentee and provisional ballots remain to be counted, theres no indication they would change the result. On Wednesday, Moore notably did not call to congratulate Jones even as President Trump and other leading Republicans did. Instead, he released a video declaring the battle rages on. Asked at the daily news briefing whether the White House thinks Moore should concede today, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, It probably sounds like it maybe should have already taken place. Sanders also dismissed the idea, pushed by some Moore supporters, that Jones victory was tainted in some fashion. Asked if the Democrat had won fair and square, she said, I think the numbers reflect that. The states Republican senator, Richard Shelby, offered a similar comment in an interview with MSNBC in which he said he was willing to work with Jones. If I was 25,000 votes behind, its not going to change much, Shelby said. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print House Speaker Paul Ryan says hes not leaving anytime soon By Lisa Mascaro House Speaker Paul D. Ryan shot down suggestions Thursday that he might soon be retiring. Stories often circulate that party leaders, especially the House speaker, are stepping aside. Ryans tenure has been as rocky as that of his predecessor, Rep. John Boehner, who abruptly resigned in 2015 amid GOP infighting. Asked Thursday if he would be leaving, Ryan answered a simple no, as he left his weekly press conference in the Capitol. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who reluctantly took over the speakers gavel after Boehners departure, had just finished talking up the GOP tax plan, which leaders hope to pass next week. He also outlined his sweeping agenda for his longtime goal of entitlement reform of welfare benefits next year. Two stories published Thursday suggested Ryan may soon be out. This is pure speculation, said spokeswoman AshLee Strong. As the speaker himself said today, hes not going anywhere anytime soon. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print GOP leaders reach tax deal, cutting corporate rate to 21% and top individual rate to 37% By Lisa Mascaro Republican leaders on Wednesday agreed on a revised plan to cut taxes that would lower the corporate rate from 35% to 21% and drop the top individual rate for the richest Americans to 37%, according to GOP senators and others briefed on the deal. The tentative accord marked a significant step in the Republican push to have a tax bill on President Trumps desk by Christmas. Leaders did not release details of the compromise or the text of a final bill as negotiations continued. Its critically important for Congress to quickly pass these historic tax cuts, Trump said Wednesday, promising that Americans could begin to reap the benefits of the plan as early as February, if passed. Critics, however, said the latest changes particularly the lowering of the top individual rate from the current 39.6% only reaffirmed several independent analyses that show the bulk of the savings from the Republican plan would go to businesses and the wealthy. Read More Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Copy Link URL Copied! Print Advertisement Farenthold to retire from House amid harassment accusations By Associated Press Texas Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold wont seek reelection next year, two Republicans said Thursday, adding his name to the list of lawmakers leaving Congress amid sexual harassment allegations that have cost powerful men their jobs in politics, the arts and other fields. The accusations against Farenthold surfaced in 2014, when a former aide sued him alleging sexually suggestive comments and behavior and said shed been fired after she complained. The lawmaker said he engaged in no wrongdoing and the case was settled in 2015. But the House Ethics Committee said last week that it would investigate Farenthold after congressional sources said hed paid an $84,000 settlement using taxpayers money. Though Farenthold said hed reimburse the Treasury Department, such payments have drawn public criticism from people saying lawmakers should use their own money for such settlements. A House official said Farenthold spoke twice Wednesday to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), while another official said the congressman spoke once with Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) who heads the GOPs House campaign committee. Those discussions suggested that Farenthold may have come under pressure from leaders to step aside. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Last week, three lawmakers facing accusations of sexual harassment announced their resignations. Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) have already left Congress while Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has said he will step aside soon. Mike Bergsma, Republican county chairman in Farentholds home county of Nueces, Texas, said Fare After performing last year with Rolling Stones tribute band Jumping Jack Flash, Corona del Mar High School students are tackling another iconic music group: the Beatles. Four members in the Corona del Mar High School string quartet have been selected to participate in five songs in the touring musical In My Life A Musical Theatre Tribute to the Beatles, coming to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday, March 17. The musical will feature the live music of tribute band Abbey Road. In My Life producer Andy Nagle contacted Corona del Mar High Schools orchestra director, Val Jamora, looking for an ensemble to play with a rock band in front of an audience. When I learned of this opportunity, I jumped at the chance, Jamora said. Its a bigger production and were very excited. The quartet helping the Fab Four are freshmen Rita Debbaneh and Wesley Davies, junior Robert Garrett and senior Ellie Pietsch. Together they will join the band for the songs Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, A Day in the Life, Hello Goodbye and Hey Jude. The award-winning musical will look at the Beatles through the eyes of manager Brian Epstein starting in February 1964, when Americans saw the mop tops for the first time on the The Ed Sullivan Show playing I Want to Hold Your Hand. The show will follow the groups musical stages, including the psychedelic era of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the creation of Yesterday and Revolution. We look forward to playing a Beatles show, Wesley said. Were going to be famous. In My Life A Musical Theatre Tribute to the Beatles will be performed at 8 p.m. The Irvine Barclay Theatre is at 4242 Campus Drive. Tickets are $35 to $55. For more information, call (949) 854-4646 or visit thebarclay.org. -- Kathleen Luppi, kathleen.luppi@latimes.com Twitter: @KathleenLuppi The Costa Mesa Planning Commission this week delayed voting on the citys proposed general plan update, saying commissioners and local residents should have more time to look over the plan in detail and get answers to questions they may have. Commissioners had the option Monday to recommend that the City Council adopt the general plan update, but they instead voted 4-0 to delay a recommendation until their next meeting April 25. Chairman Robert Dickson was absent. It is a large document, Commissioner Stephan Andranian said. It takes some time to read; it takes some time to analyze and digest. A handful of Costa Mesa residents submitted letters asking commissioners to delay action since the deadline to submit comments on the update is next Monday. The general plan is a state-mandated document that acts as a blueprint for development in the city. The proposed update would permit more residential units, particularly high-density units, than what is allowed in the current general plan. The update also would include some major land-use changes, such as redesignating the site of the Fairview Developmental Center to allow for redevelopment should the center close, as is proposed. Michael Balsamo, chief executive of the Orange County chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California, sent a letter to the city in support of the update. Adding more housing in centrally located Costa Mesa, close to jobs and essential services, will help in balancing Orange Countys jobs-to-housing ratio, assist in alleviating traffic and contribute to state-mandated environmental and regional planning policies, the letter reads. However, several people who spoke at Mondays meeting said they were concerned that the development allowed under the revised general plan would add more traffic to local roads or harm Costa Mesas air quality. Follow us on Facebook >> Others said the general plan needs to somehow touch on the issue of sober-living homes in Costa Mesa. Resident Mary Spadoni called the homes, which house recovering drug and/or alcohol addicts, probably one of our larger industries and said the plan should account for the effects those facilities can have, such as on traffic. City officials have estimated that, as of January, Costa Mesa had about 300 sober-living and group homes. This is a monumental job thats going to affect not only todays residents but the residents children and their childrens children, Spadoni said of the general plan update. Our vision has to be reflected in this, so I hope our vision can be to uphold some of the character of Costa Mesa. Kathy Esfahani of the Costa Mesa Affordable Housing Coalition raised concern about a proposed general plan incentive program designed to entice motel owners along Harbor and Newport boulevards to redevelop their properties into housing projects. The density bonus would allow developers to build more units on a property than originally permitted. That density bonus, without any affordable-housing requirement, will result in a massive displacement of motel residents people who rely on motels, and have for years, as de facto affordable housing in our city, Esfahani said. Minoo Ashabi, principal planner with the city, said the City Councils direction was to not include anything related to affordable housing in the incentive areas. The council voted last week to move ahead with a possible $20-million bond for affordable-housing projects, Ashabi pointed out. That measure is expected to be on the November ballot. -- lucas.money@latimes.com Twitter: @LukeMMoney -- ALSO Police seeking SUV in hit-and-run that injured a pedestrian in Costa Mesa School board to consider adding doors to some Estancia High classrooms Pizza oven catches fire at Costa Mesa restaurant A traveling art exhibit stopped at The Lab in Costa Mesa on Wednesday in an effort to put a human face on the immigration debate and urge congressional action to protect from deportation people who were brought into the country illegally as children. Organizers of the Inside Out/Dreamers project said their goal is to encourage support for the Dream Act legislation that would allow those immigrants, known as Dreamers, to earn lawful permanent residence in the United States and, eventually, citizenship. Such action is necessary, supporters say, given President Trumps recent move to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that shielded nearly 800,000 such individuals from deportation and made them eligible for work permits. Unless Congress comes up with a solution by the time the program is scheduled to end in March, people covered by DACA more than one-fourth of whom live in California could face deportation. Theyre here; theyre working; theyre going to school, Inside Out/Dreamers spokeswoman Paola Ramos said Wednesday. We just want them to be able to do the same things because this is the only country they know. They were brought here by their parents. Ivan Ceja is among the DACA beneficiaries who call California home. He immigrated to the United States from Mexico with his parents when he was 9 months old. Now 25, hes still undocumented, but not for lack of trying, he said. The countrys immigration system, he said, is full of more hurdles than many realize. There isnt necessarily a line for all of us to get behind, the Compton resident said. If there was, believe me, wed be signed up. On Wednesday, dozens of people entered a photo booth truck set up at The Lab to take pictures of themselves. The images were printed on large sheets of paper, then pasted to the side of one of the shopping centers buildings. The resulting collage was made up of a variety of ages, genders and ethnicities. That wasnt lost on Ceja. That is what Dreamers look like, he said. You cant necessarily stereotype us into a certain category, and thats why we want to change that narrative. During the event, speakers implored elected officials such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) to support a clean Dream Act one that doesnt include additional immigration enforcement measures or funding. A spokesman for Rohrabacher did not return an email Wednesday seeking comment. Ramos said almost 4,000 Dreamers live in Costa Mesa and Huntington Beach alone. Those are people that you work with, she said. Those are people that serve in our military. Theyre your friends; theyre your teachers you may know, you may not know. The only difference is that someone has papers, the other one doesnt. Inside Out/Dreamers is a collaboration of the Emerson Collective, a social-justice organization, and the Inside Out Project, a participatory art initiative from French artist JR. The Costa Mesa exhibit continues from noon to 6 p.m. Thursday at The Lab, 2930 Bristol St. Other exhibits are scheduled nationwide in coming weeks, culminating in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18. luke.money@latimes.com Twitter @LukeMMoney A state appeals court has ruled in favor of Huntington Beach in a lawsuit filed against the city by an affordable-housing advocacy group. The Irvine-based Kennedy Commission had argued in its case, filed in 2015, that an amendment to a development plan for the Beach Boulevard-Edinger Avenue corridor made earlier that year violated state housing law. The amendment which came after residents complaints of over-development reduced the number of permitted housing units in the Beach-Edinger area from 4,500 to 2,100. The Kennedy Commission argued the reduction would make Huntington Beach unable to meet its low-income housing requirements. City Attorney Michael Gates argued that the amendment was valid because Huntington is a charter city, which exempts it from some state zoning laws. Being a charter city one run by a charter adopted by city voters gives it more local control, he contended. A panel of the California 4th District Court of Appeal agreed. The city also noted how in 2015 it retained an independent housing expert to identify other affordable-housing sites, all of which were outside the Beach and Edinger Corridors Specific Plan area. In May, the Court of Appeal panel issued a tentative ruling favoring the city. It effectively overturned a Los Angeles County Superior Court judges opinion favoring the Kennedy Commission. On Tuesday, the appellate panel filed its final decision. We are gratified that the Court of Appeal has agreed with the city and affirmed our legal arguments in defense of the city on this important case regarding local control, Gates said in a statement. This is a huge win for Huntington Beach and the city attorneys office. Many said we would never prevail. We did. We were right all along, and now the city of Huntington Beach can exercise the local control that outsiders, like the Kennedy Commission, claimed we couldnt. Gates called the case an example for all charter cities not to give up local control by giving in to special interests outside your city simply because of another lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit. Cesar Covarrubias, executive director of the Kennedy Commission, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. The commission could appeal to the California Supreme Court, according to Gates. The Court of Appeal ruling also still allows the commission to argue some of its original claims in Los Angeles County Superior Court, which handled the original complaint. bradley.zint@latimes.com Twitter: @BradleyZint With the Nov. 7 election days away, La Canada Unified school board candidates and residents campaigning for a $149-million school bond are hitting the streets to rally the support of more than 13,000 voters living inside district boundaries. Meanwhile, campaign finance documents released by the county registrars office provide an interesting look at the fundraising efforts and spending activities of the campaign committees behind the candidates and the causes. On Tuesday, La Canada Unified School District voters will choose from among five candidates running for three open seats on the school board. They will decide the fate of the Measure LCF school bond, a plan to help fund the rebuilding and modernization of district campuses. The bond needs 55% voter approval to pass. There are currently 13,255 registered voters living inside LCUSD boundaries, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, but just how many people will turn out to vote remains to be seen. Measure LCF school bond Hoping for a favorable outcome, Citizens for Modernizing LCUSD Schools has convened to campaign for Measure LCF, collecting $67,630 in local donations as of the last filing period ending Oct. 21, according to county documents. Financial contributors to the bond campaign include school board members as well as school and district administrators and at least two businesses whove done facilities-related work with La Canada Unified. LPA, Inc. is the Irvine-based architectural firm that helped LCUSD develop its facilities master plan, the document that lists and prioritizes building projects to be paid for, in part, by Measure LCF funds. On Sept. 28, that firm donated $25,000 to Citizens for Modernizing LCUSD Schools. Documents also indicate Linik Corp., a Valencia-based construction management firm and known vendor to the school district, donated $3,500 to the bond campaign on Sept. 13. Volunteers will spend Saturday afternoon walking the neighborhood and sharing how the school bond would bring needed improvements to school facilities, according to bond committee organizer Josh Epstein. Weve spent some time making sure everybody gets the message, Esptein said, explaining phone bankers will make calls into election day. The turnout is likely to be low, so every vote we get is an important vote. Measure LCF proponents point out passage would not raise tax levels, just extend the current level over a longer time period. If the bond is passed, property owners would continue to be taxed at their current rate of $60 per $100,000 of assessed property value over the next three decades, a figure that would otherwise drop to about $30 by 2021 as old bonds expire. School board race, three seats The five LCUSD school board hopefuls are also hitting the streets in the few remaining days of their campaigns, discussing key issues and hoping to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Among them, incumbents Dan Jeffries and Kaitzer Puglia said they feel confident in their ability to build upon the past four years of accomplishments, which have included successful negotiations with the teachers union, progress on a possible Sagebrush territory transfer and concentrated focus on student well-being. Ive been doing the job for the past four years I feel comfortable with the information, and comfortable with the knowledge base, Puglia said, adding that shes taking a personal approach to campaigning. This is a small community. So thats been part of the [campaign] process, to keep it kind of small townish. An education professor at Pasadena City College, Puglia is the only candidate not to have formed a campaign committee, required by the California Fair Political Practices Commission when political candidates and causes receive or spend $2,000 or more. Jeffries, a prosecutor for the Los Angeles City Attorneys office, is running his campaign on a $5,000 self loan and an additional $434 in monetary contributions to himself. As of the most recent reporting period ending Oct. 21, he had an ending cash balance of $3,301. He said hes telling people not to donate to his campaign. Id rather do it all myself and encourage people, if they wanted to donate, to donate to support groups for the schools, he said, adding that he and wife Andrea wanted to remind people of the diverse opportunities they have to contribute to local education. The three contenders JPL manager Chris Salvo, land use attorney Josh Gottheim and retired Nestle executive Joe Radabaugh said in separate interviews the campaign trail has helped acquaint them with district voters and the issues they care most about. Salvo, whos lent his campaign committee $1,392 and collected an additional $100 in individual contributions, according to county records, is taking a door-to-door approach to introduce himself to the voting community and discuss the need for a bond and how hed bring a level of scrutiny to important board decisions. Ive gotten a lot of good support, and I think Ive got a message that resonates with a lot of people, he said. But then, theres a lot of people out there. I cant wait to see the [election] results. Gottheim, whose campaign is running on $3,500 in self loans and $7,157 in contributions as of the latest Oct. 21 filing period, has spent $9,114, according to the most recent documentation. He estimates hes knocked on about 1,200 doors, using the old shoe-leather approach and has had many talks with voters about how how hed help oversee bond spending, were Measure LCF to pass, and support technology in the classroom that would tailor lessons to students learning levels. At first, no one knew who I was. It was kind of a hard sell, he said of the campaign process. Now, people are starting to pay attention to the race. Im getting to know the community, and the communitys getting to know me thats been nice. Radabaughs campaign earnings include $12,632 in contributions and a $2,500 self loan, making him the most funded of the five school board candidates as of the Oct. 21 end of the most recent filing period. He said the campaign has been a lot of work, but very gratifying and that hes eager to answer voters questions and follow through on his commitments if elected. Every yard sign is like a mini-contract with that person, Radabaugh said. I often find myself asking, What else can I do? You can always make another phone call, meet one more person, hold one more meeting or ring one more doorbell. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine Where in the West would documentary filmmaker Ken Burns recommend you visit? Burns and Connecticut-based Tauck travel company have crafted a Mythic West tour to Montana, Wyoming and Yellowstone thats equal parts cultural history and natural wonders. Yellowstone National Park and the Teton Mountains are the focus of this eight-day tour, which adds a lot of little extras along the way, such as a private visit to a wildlife photographers home; a lecture at the Western Heritage Center in Billings, Mont.; a demonstration of cowboy skills; and a rafting trip on the Snake River. Also, participants will see film vignettes about the West made for the tour by Burns and Dayton Duncan, who wrote and co-produced the National Parks series. Advertisement Stops along the way include Pompeys Pillar National Monument, a rock formation in south central Montana; the Little Bighorn Battlefield, where Gen. George Custer and the U.S. Army squared off with Native Americans; guided tours of Yellowstone; the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo.; and more. (Burns does not appear on this tour.) When: June 10 and 24; July 15 and 22; Aug. 5, 12 and 26; Sept. 9 and 16 Price: $4,690 per person, double occupancy. Includes accommodations, meals, tours, exclusive sessions and ground transportation. Airfare to and from Billings is extra. Info: Tauck, (800) 468-2825 or call a travel agent ALSO Lonely Planet names Chile the worlds top travel destination for 2018. Detroit and San Juan land on 10 best cities list Bicycle Irelands wild side and the backdrop for Star Wars: The Last Jedi New hotels mean Palm Springs is once again the capital of cool travel@latimes.com @latimestravel The original Jan. 27, 1936, Los Angeles Times caption reported on the wheel change: Passenger Engine No. 7856 of the Union Pacific rolled into the Los Angeles shops for a new set of tires. As simple as jacking up a flivver to put on the spare, workmen at the shops lifted the 200-ton locomotive from its wheels. August C. Roepke, mechanical supervisor, second from right, signals crane operator while J.H. Sinnar, foreman of the shop, extreme right, oversees operations and makes certain that workmen are careful and in the clear in case of accident. This post was original published on June 20, 2012. See more from the Los Angeles Times archives here A Spanish prosecutor asked a judge Thursday to issue an international arrest warrant for the former president of Catalonia and four of his regional ministers after they did not comply with a summons ordering them to appear in a Madrid court. Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his Cabinet were summoned to Spains National Court for questioning in a rebellion investigation stemming from the regions declaration of independence. Puigdemont surfaced in Belgium on Tuesday with some of his ex-ministers, saying they were seeking freedom and safety there. He and four of the officials remained in Brussels on Thursday. Advertisement Nine former Catalan Cabinet members did show up in court, where prosecutors asked for eight to be jailed indefinitely and one to be held with eligibility for bail. The judge has not yet ruled on the request. Meanwhile, six Catalan lawmakers appeared Thursday for a parallel session in Spains Supreme Court. They were given a week to prepare their defenses and instructed to return for questioning on Nov. 9. In all, 20 regional politicians are being investigated on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement for the declaration of secession the Parliament of Catalonia made on Oct. 27. The crimes are punishable by up to 30 years in prison under Spanish law. Those summoned include Puigdemont, his 13-member Cabinet and six members of the regional Parliament. Puigdemonts No. 2, former Vice President Oriol Junqueras, was the first to arrive Thursday at the National Court. He went in accompanied by lawyers, passing by dozens of journalists, and declined to answer questions. The proceedings started with an appearance by the regional governments former spokesman, Jordi Turull. He was followed by Josep Rull, who handled the regions territorial affairs. Spain took the unprecedented step of triggering constitutional powers allowing it to take over running Catalonia following the regions declaration of independence. Madrid dismissed the Catalan Cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and called a new regional election for Dec. 21. Javier Melero, a lawyer representing some of the separatist lawmakers investigated in the Supreme Court, criticized Puigdemont and the four ministers who skipped court. He said their actions would be damaging for his clients, three lawmakers who are members of Puigdemonts PDeCAT party. Not being at the service of the judiciary when you are summoned is always damaging for the rest of those being investigated, Melero said. A female Liberty High School student reported an attempt to lure her while walking home on Union Boulevard in Bethlehem. The Bethlehem Area School District alerted the community to the incident in an automated telephone alert Thursday afternoon. It was said to have occurred on Union Boulevard, in the 200 block, though it wasn't immediately clear if it was East or West Union Boulevard. The date of the incident also was not immediately clear. The alert described the perpetrator as a black male in a blue Toyota Corolla. That is the same description of a man further described as between 25 and 35 years old and in good physical shape seen exposing himself and masturbating in view of women in the parking lot of St. Luke's University Health Network's Union Station Plaza on South Side. Bethlehem police on Wednesday put out an alert on those incidents, said to have occurred Sept. 15 and Oct. 9. The Bethlehem schools alert referenced "similar incidents not involving students (that) have occurred in other parts of the city." It went on to ask the school community to review safety precautions with children. City police were not immediately available Thursday for more information on this latest reported incident. The public is advised to not approach this perpetrator if he is seen and to immediately call Detective Moses Miller at 610-997-7674, police at 610-865-7187 or the Bethlehem Police Department Tip Line at 610-691-6660. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A Berks County man is in custody in Illinois and awaiting return to Pennsylvania to face charges he killed an Upper Macungie Township woman, authorities report. Upper Macungie police on Wednesday contacted Pennsylvania State Police in Hamburg about Tara Marie Serino, 19, who had gone missing, according to a news release. Troopers at 5:47 p.m. that day searched the mobile home where Christopher Ryan Tucker lived at 282 Roth Road in Albany Township and found Serino dead, state police said. The cause and manner of her death are pending an autopsy, the Berks County Coroner's Office said. With the charges against Tucker, the manner will eventually be homicide. Tucker, 35, had fled but was arrested in Illinois, state police said. He awaits extradition to Berks County, state police said. He is charged with homicide, murder in the first degree, murder in the third degree, two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a weapon of crime, police said. Tucker has previously faced DUI and marijuana counts in Lehigh and Northampton counties, records show. Upper Macungie police confirmed that Serino went missing on Wednesday but referred any other questions to state police. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. As expected, a former charter school music teacher and facilities manager admitted in federal court to possessing and producing child pornography. David Golden was scheduled for trial Oct. 30, but last week his defense attorney said Golden planned to plead guilty at a hearing on Wednesday. Golden did plead guilty in federal court, to all three charges: producing, receiving and possessing child pornography. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 16. There is no sentencing agreement, and Golden faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in federal prison. He faces a possible maximum sentence of 60 years. Citing the charges as crimes of violence, federal prosecutors asked for Golden's $500,000 bail to be revoked. Golden was on electronic monitoring and confined to his home in the 3800 block of West Greenwood Drive in Bethlehem Township. Judge Edward Smith agreed, and remanded Golden to Lehigh County Jail while he awaits sentencing. "The offenses are just too serious and the potential sentence is just too great," Smith said. Golden, who was 64 at the time, was arrested in February on allegations of impersonating an 18-year-old to have young girls send sexually explicit images to him. Prosecutors said they found more than a hundred sexually explicit images of teen girls on his cell phone and sexually explicit messages exchanged with a 12-year-old girl in Florida. Golden was facilities manager at the Arts Academy Charter Middle School in Salisbury Township when he was charged. He was a substitute teacher at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts in Bethlehem from October 2008 to June 2010, and a part-time music teacher at the school from September 2010 to June 2012, according to Diane LaBelle, that school's executive director. There has been no evidence that Golden victimized any charter school student or any child in the Lehigh Valley. Prosecutors said Golden used the school's wifi signal to transmit inappropriate subject matter on his cell phone. The phone was seized when authorities raided Golden's home, court papers say. Fitzpatrick said the school turned over Golden's computer to authorities. Prosecutors said Golden would meet the minor girls in a forum known to law enforcement, and then begin communicating with them through the Kik app, which allows users to maintain their anonymity. He claimed his name was "Don Hine" who played the trumpet and liked classical music. Golden asked the 12-year-old Florida girl to send him explicit photos and videos, and he sent the girl a photo of his private parts, court records say. On Thursday, prosecutors read some of the sexually graphic text messages Golden sent the girl. The girl's father discovered sexually explicit online communications between his daughter and Golden in October and November and reported them to law enforcement in January, records say. Even though the girl stopped communicating with Golden in November, he continued to reach out to her. Prosecutors said the last attempt was the night before they raided his home in February. Police tracked the communication back to an RCN account at Golden's home and the internet protocol address subscribed to through the Arts Academy Charter Middle School. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. TRENTON -- A statewide crackdown on distracted driving ordered by Gov. Chris Christie's attorney general earlier this year led to a surprising catch in New Jersey's first lady, Mary Pat Christie, NJ Advance Media has learned. To her credit, unlike others with influence in Trenton, the first lady did not play the "Do you know who I am?" card after being pulled over, dash cam video of the traffic stop shows. As it turns out, how the first lady wound up getting that ticket is perhaps more interesting than why. After New Jersey traffic fatalities jumped 8 percent in 2016, state Attorney General Christopher Porrino requested and received $1.2 million in federal grant money to launch a campaign against texting and other distracted driving that was behind the rise. More than 190 police agencies throughout New Jersey mobilized using National Highway Traffic Safety Administration grants disbursed to help pay for increased enforcement from April 1 through April 21. On April 10, Officer Timothy Richard of the Bernardsville Police Department was assigned to a grant-funded detail to enforcing the hands-free cell phone law. Shortly before 11 a.m., records show, Richard pulled over a white 2016 Chevy Suburban whose driver was clutching her phone in her hand while driving. Sworn in as an officer just three months earlier, Richard, 27, of Dunellen, had no idea he'd just pulled over the first lady of New Jersey, according to a source at the Bernardsville Police Department who was not authorized to speak publicly about the department's internal affairs and requested anonymity. Richard was informed some time later by his colleagues. Mary Pat Christie did not tell him she was the first lady, the dash cam shows. Officer Timothy Richard. (Credit: Bernardsvile Police Dept.) Richard did not return phone calls and Bernardsville Police Chief Kevin Valentine declined to comment on the traffic stop. Brian Murray, a spokesman for Gov. Christie, dismissed the ticketing of the first lady as "a non-story, and we're not offering anything more on it." However, the attorney general's crackdown on distracted driving did have a measurable effect on traffic fatalities. During April's distracted driving dragnet, police officers across New Jersey handed out 15,292 tickets for cell phone use, including Mary Pat Christie's, as well as 7,003 careless driving summonses. As a result, Porrino's office said traffic fatalities have fallen more than 7 percent compared to the same time period last year. In the end, the first lady did not contest the ticket, and appeared in Warren Township municipal court in May to answer the charge of operating a motor vehicle while using a cell phone. She pleaded guilty and paid a $250 fine. NJ Advance Media learned of the incident by obtaining the MVC's driver histories of the governor, the candidates hoping to replace him, and their spouses under the Open Public Records Act. No one else in the current field had any recent run-ins with police while driving. A check of the first lady's driver history obtained from the Motor Vehicle Commission under the Open Public Records Act shows only one other recent incident: Mary Pat Christie was involved in a traffic accident on February 26, 2016 -- the same day Gov. Christie endorsed Donald Trump for president. Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. I'm responding to Lou Kauffman's Oct. 27 letter, "Trump dossier might be Hillary's downfall." Sadly, like the whiny weakling in the White House, Kauffman seems to get upset when he hears from outspoken women, especially women of color. Here's what is known. Donald Trump is so deeply in hock to the Russians that he needs to hide his tax returns. His campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been charged with laundering money, and he briefed the Russians on the Trump campaign. Trump himself called for the Russians to hack Democratic emails, and they did, unearthing a bunch of nothing worth knowing. Carter Page, a campaign advisor, is suspected of acting as a foreign agent for Russia. Mike Flynn had multiple ties to Russia and misled the Pentagon about them. Jeff Sessions initially lied under oath about his meetings with Russians. Donald Trump Jr. is suspected of lying about his meetings with the Russians, which took place in Trump Tower in New York. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson actually has a medal from Putin honoring him for his Russian ties. Since his election, Trump has tried to tear down NATO and the European Union, which benefits Putin and weakens the U.S. Trump has refused to enforce sanctions on Russia mandated by Congress in July. The disgraceful Keystone Pipeline is being built with Russian steel, despite promises from the administration. Yeah, Hillary is in big trouble, all right. Ed Pell Washington A 34-year-old Pen Argyl woman was charged Thursday morning with involuntary manslaughter and related offenses involving the death of her disabled 2-year-old child. Michelle Wallace (Courtesy photo | For Lehighvalleylive.com) Michelle Wallace was arraigned at 9 a.m. before District Judge Alicia Rose Zito in Bangor. Bail was set at $500,000 and Wallace was housed in Northampton County Prison, court records show. Wallace was arrested Wednesday night by Slate Belt Regional police, records show. An officer on patrol about 8:30 p.m. in Weona Park was approached by the father of Wallace's 10-year-old, who said he couldn't get her to answer the door or answer her cellphone during a scheduled custody drop-off at 8 p.m. Wednesday, court papers say. Officers, doing a welfare check at 8:44 p.m., entered Wallace's apartment at 410 W. Pennsylvania Ave. -- Route 512 -- and found her "passed out" on the couch, court papers and police say. An officer woke her up and, noting she was disoriented, asked her if anyone else was in the apartment, court papers say. She reportedly said "maybe the baby." The water was running in the bathroom, court papers say. Asked who was there, Wallace suggested her fiance. She headed for the bathroom and screamed "frantically," court papers say. When the officer got there, Wallace was holding the unresponsive boy and the tub was overflowing, court papers say. CPR was performed and EMS called, but the child was pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem Township, authorities say. Wallace told police the child is disabled and can only get around on his knees, court papers say. She later reportedly told Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek that she put the boy in the bath. A search warrant was executed early Thursday morning and police found a needle and a spoon in a purse next to the couch, court papers say. In addition to involuntary manslaughter Wallace is also charged with recklessly endangering another person, endangering the welfare of children and possession of drug paraphernalia, court papers say. Slate Belt Regional police investigated through the night, Chief David Mettin said. Lysek couldn't immediately be reached for more information. The father of the 10-year-old boy filed for a temporary protection-from-abuse order against Wallace on Thursday; the application was waiting to go before a Northampton County judge for approval. In the application, John Neely said the 2-year-old was immobile and couldn't speak. A previous drug-related case Wallace pleaded guilty in February 2013 to a burglary charge from a break-in she led in October 2012 into her late father's home in Pen Argyl, authorities said at the time. Along with three Bethlehem men who she only knew as Louis, Jay Jay and Bam Bam, Wallace entered the home in the 400 block of Williams Street through a removed storm window. She told authorities she let the others into the home and they stole power tools and a computer printer. Along with Jay Jay and someone named D, she entered the home the next night, as well, where D stole a bow and a shotgun, court papers say. Wallace was going to share the items taken in the burglaries in order to pay a debt to Louis and buy heroin, court records said. Wallace was banned from the home when her father Frank was still alive, a relative told authorities. Her uncle John Wallace told investigators in 2012 that she had a serious drug problem and she had reached "rock bottom." Michelle Wallace was sentenced to four to 12 months in jail and 108 months of probation, record show. She had issues with parole, and one of the last times she was in court on the case, she was told to enroll in "intensive outpatient treatment for at least 30 days," court papers say. The court guidance continued with "following birth, have urine screens twice weekly. Visit probation officers once a week. Continue mental health treatment and take medications." Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A west Kildare man was refused bail yesterday after a District Court was told that his sister had passed away in Limerick in previous days. Dermot OBrien (29), with an address given as his mothers address, at 710 Ashgrove, Derrinturn, appeared before Judge Brian OShea at Naas District Court on November 1. He is charged with public order charges at Castlefen estate in Sallins at The Willows, Castlefen. He and his brother, Brendan (32), of the same address, were arrested after Gardai said they were called out to the estate by members of the public on October 25 last. The State is alleging that they caused damage to a Garda patrol car including spitting in it and resisted arrest. Gardai objected to bail due to the serious nature of the offence and in Dermot OBriens case because of 27 bench warrants, which had previously being issued for his arrest. The brothers had been refused bail by Judge Desmond Zaidan on October 26 for these reasons. Garda Emma Butler outlined to the Court on both occasions how Gardai got a call about two men breaking bottles in the Castlefen estate. She found them intoxicated. Dermot OBrien, giving evidence on October 26, said they did no damage in the Square and accused Garda Butler of telling lies, which she denied. His brother, Brendan, apologised to the Court on October 26. David Powderly, solicitor, for the two men said on October 26 that they felt that they should not have been arrested. Judge Zaidan remanded them in custody until yesterday, November 1 when Judge Brian O'Shea made his decision. Judge O'Shea was told that Brendan OBrien had been the subject of four bench warrants. Mr Powderly also said their sister had died in Limerick. The matter was adjourned for a short while for the State to check the solicitor's instructions out. The funeral is due to take place (tomorrow) Friday. Judge O'Shea opted to remand Brendan on bail with the condition that he stay out of Sallins, reside at a Derrinturn address, stay off alcohol and observe a curfew at the house between 10pm and 6am each day. However, the Judge refused bail to Dermot and remanded him in custody until November 15. I am not satisfied Dermot O'Brien will turn up for the hearing, said Judge O'Shea. The judge said the State would have to go look for him at a cost, or he would turn up later and the whole process would begin again. Judge O'Shea said that Mr O'Brien could appeal to the High Court and it might take a different view. Mr Powderly asked if the judge could recommend to the prison Governor that Dermot O'Brien be given temporary release for the funeral. Judge O'Shea said he would not, but he would leave it the prison Governor as to whether he would grant such a temporary release. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. IFA has secured a commitment from the Department of Transport that there will be full negotiation with the IFA and other key stakeholders ahead of the implementation of any aspects of a roadworthiness test for tractors. Earlier this year, when IFA raised farmers concerns on the issue, Minister for Transport Shane Ross gave a clear commitment that ahead of the drafting of any national regulations on tractor testing, the RSA would engage with key stakeholders affected. This did not happen and Minister Ross proceeded to sign the relevant Statutory Instrument into law last month without any consultation. At the meeting with IFA , the Department of Transportfully accepted that the commitment to consultation had not been honoured and assured the IFA delegation that full consultation would now take place on all aspects of the relevant Statutory Instrument. The Statutory Instrument will be reviewed in the coming weeks. Following the meeting, IFA President Joe Healy said, There was an acceptance that the consultation process promised to IFA will now take place in full with all aspects on the table. We will now get down to negotiations with the Minister and the Department to ensure that normal farming activities are excluded from tractor testing. We expect all tractors used for farming and for bringing farm produce and raw materials to and from the point of sale will not be subject to testing. Liam Dunne, IFA National Grain Chairperson, welcomed the Departments commitment, saying it is very important that the realities of farming and the obligations farmers already face are taken into consideration. He said, Famers are legally required under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 to ensure that brakes, handbrake, mirrors, lights, indicators, wipers and hitches are all in working order. There is no need to duplicate the requirements imposed on farmers. Thomas Cooney, IFA Environment Chairperson said many farms are divided into several parcels, with outfarms some distance away common place. The majority of farmers are not involved in commercial haulage and are not getting paid for transporting their livestock to marts and factories, which are often some distance away. Once farmers are compliant with the 2005 Act, this should be sufficient and should not be duplicated by the Department of Transport," he pointed out. Overactive bladder may be treated with lifestyle changes, drugs, office procedures, implantable devices, or surgery. Guidelines from the American Urologic Association to treat non-neurogenic OAB, updated in 2019, recommend as first line treatment behavioral therapies such as bladder training bladder control strategies pelvic floor muscle training fluid management (4) If lifestyle measures arent enough, youll most likely be prescribed a small dose of a drug, which can be increased as needed to control symptoms. If drugs dont deliver the relief you need, your doctor may give you Botox (botulinum toxin) injections to help relax your bladder muscle. Both office-based procedures and implantable devices can deliver electrical impulses to the nerves that communicate with your bladder, helping it relax. In rare cases, your doctor may recommend surgery to increase your bladders capacity or to remove it completely. Medication Options Your doctor may prescribe drugs to help your bladder muscle relax, including the following categories: Anti-muscarinics Beta3-agonists These drugs help prevent your bladder from contracting before its full, helping limit the number of urges to urinate throughout the day. You may take these drugs as pills by mouth or as transdermal patches that deliver the drug through your skin. If conventional drug treatments dont do enough to control your OAB, your doctor may recommend Botox injections to help your bladder relax. To administer Botox to your bladder, your doctor will give you a local anesthetic and inject the treatment directly into your bladder muscle. Doing this requires passing a tiny tube with a camera, knowns as a cystoscope, into your bladder. Botox treatments for OAB may be effective for up to six months. (4) Nonsurgical and Surgical Procedures If medication isn't effective at treating your overactive bladder, you may be a candidate for certain procedures. Nerve stimulation, also known as neuromodulation therapy, sends electrical impulses to nerves that connect the bladder and the brain to help them communicate more effectively. There are two main types of nerve stimulation: percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (PTNS) and sacral neuromodulation (SNS). The first involves a series of in-office treatments, while the second involves surgically implanting a bladder pacemaker. In very rare and serious cases, surgery may be considered to enlarge the bladder or change the flow of urine. (1) Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Therapies and Practices There may be steps you can take on your own to improve your bladder control, either with or without medical therapies. Keeping a bladder diary tracking your urination as well as food and beverage intake, and other activities can help you figure out what foods or behaviors might contribute to OAB. Changing your urination behaviors may help train your brain to send signals to urinate in a more regular way. Techniques that may be helpful include: Double voiding (trying to urinate again immediately) Delayed voiding (waiting a few minutes to hours when you get the urge to urinate) Timed urination (urinating only at scheduled times) Its a good idea to talk with your doctor about these techniques before trying any of them. You may also benefit from exercises that use your pelvic floor muscles, including the following: Kegels This exercise involves squeezing your pelvic muscles tight for a few seconds, then relaxing and repeating this for a set number of repetitions. This exercise involves squeezing your pelvic muscles tight for a few seconds, then relaxing and repeating this for a set number of repetitions. Quick Flicks When you have the urge to urinate, you may be able to help control it by quickly squeezing and relaxing your pelvic muscles over and over. (1,3) Consult Your Doctor About Herbs, Botanical Medicines While there are also some herbs and botanical medicines and combination of herbs from traditional Chinese medicine that have been used traditionally or have been explored to help reduce OAB symptoms, research is limited and variable in quality and conclusions. Before starting an herbal remedy, especially if planning to take longer term, its best to speak to your urologist, primary care provider, or an integrative medicine physician. (5) Learn More About Treatment for Overactive Bladder Prevention of Overactive Bladder Following a healthy diet and getting enough physical activity can help improve bladder symptoms by strengthening muscles in your torso, ensuring bowel regularity, and helping you maintain a healthy body weight. Certain foods and ingredients can irritate your bladder, and you may want to keep a diary to figure out whether any are contributing to your symptoms. Foods and beverages that may contribute to OAB include: Coffee Tea Alcoholic beverages Carbonated drinks Citrus fruits Tomato-based foods Chocolate Spicy food By avoiding foods that give you problems, you can potentially reduce your symptoms enough to give other therapies a better chance to work. In addition, you can do exercises to condition and strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. These exercises may help you resist the urge to urinate and reduce urine leakage. (1,3) Learn More About Prevention Strategies for Overactive Bladder AMBITIOUS plans are in place to build a lavish boutique townhouse to bring a boost to tourism in Limerick city centre next summer. The new venture, which is being spearheaded by Limerick Travel, will feature a 12-bedroom guest house on Bedford Row, and is due to open in early summer 2018. Plans were submitted by the popular city centre retailer in March this year, and were given the green light by Limerick City and County Council in June. The project, entitled The Bedford, will operate side-by-side with the existing travel business on Bedford Row, which opened its doors in 1971. The project will include the redevelopment top three floors of the historic building, which was once home to former Limerick Mayor and industrialist Peter Tait. Additional amenities including a breakfast room, gym and steam room will also be provided for guests to enjoy. Limerick Travel managing director, Peter Brazil said that he was delighted to announce the details of the companys next venture. The rich history which our city is steeped in combined with the recent investment in areas such as the citys waterfront make Limerick a truly unique destination to visit. The Bedford will provide both the leisure and business traveller with contemporary surroundings in which to enjoy our wonderful city, he told the Leader. He added that while there is a significant expansion of the building, it is absolutely business as usual for Limerick Travel. The retail travel shop on the ground floor will also be benefitting from a refurbishment which we hope our loyal and valued customers will enjoy. A key focus for us is to maintain our high standard of customer service throughout the development period. Welcoming the news, Limerick Travel chairperson and co-founder Tony Brazil said: Over the last 46 years we have been at the forefront of the Irish travel industry so it was a natural next step to to grow and expand the business further within the sector we know best. Limerick City is emerging as a vibrant business and cultural hub and we are very pleased to be part of this renaissance. The project will managed by Charleville-based OCarroll Fitzgerald Project and Commercial Management Ltd with Pinnacle building contractors recently appointed as contractor for this development. A MAN who forced his way into a Limerick city centre apartment and attacked the occupant with a hammer has been jailed for four years. Michael Corbett, aged 43, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to charges of assault and burglary relating to the incident which was sparked by a row over Christmas songs. Details of the frenzied attack were revealed earlier this year during a sentencing hearing after the defendant entered his guilty plea. Sergeant Vincent Brick said gardai were alerted to the incident at Windmill House after the victim, whose aged 56, presented at Henry Street garda station at around 1.20pm in a distressed state having sustained serious head injuries. John OSullivan BL, prosecuting stated that the victim sustained 10 stables and seven stitches across his forehead. The victim told gardai he had been watching Fair City when he answered the door of his apartment. Corbett who was wearing a hoodie then forced his way inside where he proceeded to carry out a frenzied attack. Describing what happened as a blitz attack Sgt Brick said it was totally unprovoked. The victim was struck with a kettle and a lump hammer during the incident while a glass table was also smashed. In a victim impact statement, the victim said he believed he was going to be killed, his sleep was affected as a result and that he has since moved out of the apartment due to fear. During interview following his arrest, Corbett told gardai he had been passing the victims apartment when words were exchanged about the singing of Christmas songs on the steps outside. Pat Whyms BL said his client was highly intoxicated at the time and he accepted that he fled to the UK and had to be extradited last year. Imposing sentence, Judge Tom ODonnell said what happened was extremely serious and that the level of violence perpetrated by the defendant was unacceptable. He said the defendants admissions, guilty plea and his remorse were all mitigating factors he had to consider. He imposed a four year prison sentence - backdating it to November 28, 2016 - the date of his arrest in the UK. NEW FIGURES released for Limerick show that it had the most homeless people in the country outside Dublin in September. Statistics in the Homeless Report 2017, released by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, show that show that there were 315 people homeless in Limerick in September, a figure which has been increasing every month since June. Limericks homeless figures are considerably more than Corks at 278. Labour spokesperson on Housing, Jan OSullivan, has again called on the Housing Minister to take vacant homes into use and include Limerick as a rent pressure zone as a matter of urgency. Between September 18 and 24 there were 315 people homeless in Limerick, in a city of 70,000 people, this is a disgrace, she said. Addressing the issue of the extensive number of vacant homes across Limerick Deputy OSullivan said: There is a vacancy rate of roughly 10% in Limerick, and as the Simon Community have repeatedly said focusing on this low hanging fruit offers a significant opportunity to provide homes for people that need them. Rents have risen by 12% in the last year and people are losing their homes. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan described the figures as extremely worrying. Unfortunately, Septembers homeless figures show another rise in the number of people homeless in our state, which now stands at 8,374. Limerick now has 315 individuals that are homeless, a 31% rise from this time last year. The number of families homeless in the Mid-West has tripled since the start of 2017, going from 27 families to 81, with the number of children involved increasing from 52 to 152. Anne Cronin, Head of Homeless Services at Novas, explained that reducing these figures was very much a partnership approach between Novas, HSE and the local authority. We would ask if there are people that are in circumstances that need support get in contact with us or link in with their local services, added Ms Cronin. A GROUP of leading institutions in Limerick have combined to voice concern at the governments national planning framework as a missed opportunity that will add to existing economic imbalance. The lead authors of a joint submission from the Mid-West Limerick City Region have stated that the vision for Ireland 2040, as set out in the draft National Planning Framework, will only lead to disproportionate economic growth across the country. The grouping, made up of Limerick City and County Council, plus the Clare and Tipperary authorities, along with UL, LIT, Shannon Foynes Port Company and the Mid-West Action Plan for Jobs, made a joint submission to the draft National Planning Framework. It argues that, while there are some positives to the plan, it will result in a further deterioration of quality of life in Dublin and its commuter belt and exorbitant infrastructure requirements for the capital, while the city-regions will continue to be under-utilised assets. A draft submitted by the group argues that proper spatial planning and more cost-effective investment in the regions will grow regional economies exponentially, strengthening the global competitiveness of the country by complementing the growth of the capital city. It further argues that the Mid-West/Limerick City region will be in danger of losing out on significant investment opportunities while Dublin continues to overheat. The group has proposed that a high quality motorway network between regional cities be installed, that the Northern Distributor Road be built, that future growth at Shannon Airport is facilitated and transport connectivity to it is strengthened, that the wider role of the Shannon Estuary building on the growth of Shannon Foynes Port Company be enhanced and that a faster rail link between Limerick and Dublin/Cork line be built to allow faster commute times. If we are to correct economic imbalances across the island, regional cities must grow more than Dublin does and under the draft NPF, Dublin on its own, outside entirely from its commuter belt, is to have a population growth of quarter of a million, which is more than the cities of Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway put together, said Conn Murray, CEO of Limerick council. From our perspective, the development of a Mid-West Limerick city region with a critical mass that has national and international scale is imperative if the NPF is to deliver for the nation. The same applies to the other cities. The NPF references Limerick as a regional centre; our aspirations are far greater than that and if we dont have that ambition, we are not going to deliver for the region and the nation, he added. "The Limerick City Region has enormous competitive advantages, including its central location on the Atlantic corridor, its national and international trade and tourism connectivity through Shannon Airport and Shannon Foynes Port Company and a third level complement via UL and LIT that ensures constant supply of graduates. "The NPF fails to take advantage of this mix." Mr Murray had previously voiced his concern at the draft planning framework on a visit to the city by finance minister Paschal Donohoe, saying his governments planning framework was limiting to Limericks potential. The draft National Planning Framework (NPF) envisages the population of Limerick city to grow from 100,000 to 140,000 by 2040. But it also suggests a growth of some 250,000 people in Dublin and Mr Murray says all the plan does is reinforces the imbalance between east and west. He made the comments at City Hall, where Dublin TD Mr Donohoe was giving a briefing on Budget 2018. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. Where blues fans must go for their weekly fix Each episode of the 14-year-old Bandana Blues podcast brims with new discoveries /news/talking-point/where-blues-fans-must-go-for-their-weekly-fix-111646920924035.html 111646920924035 story By the time you read this, the 711th episode of the Bandana Blues podcast will likely be out. It will be around 2 hours long and crammed with blues songs25-30 of them or even more. The episode could have a theme, often related to whats happeningsuch as the violence at the rally by white supremacists in Charlottesville; the devastation caused by a hurricane; or just a plain and simple celebration of something like Fathers Day. Or it may not. It could just be a string of great blues songsmany by musicians that you may never have heard before but also some that are celebrated old classics. Last week, episode No.710 kicked off with a high-energy, guitar-fuelled instrumental titled Hot Pulldown, by the Wildcat OHalloran Band based in west Massachusetts. Moving along, the 2-hour stream had an eclectic mix of blues songs. There was the late Irish bluesman Gary Moores Driftin from his superb 1995 album, Blues For Greeny, an album Moore had dedicated to Peter Green, British blues-rock guitarist and founder of blues-rock band Fleetwood Mac. All the songs on that album are compositions by Green (or Greenbaum, which is Greens birth surname) but Moore reincarnates every one of them with his fiery guitar licks. When you listen to Moores solos on Blues For Greeny, which is one of his best albums, or for that matter on any of his 20 albums released between 1973 and 2008, you cant help wondering why hes so underrated and why even many hard-core blues fans may not have heard of him. Moore is an example of blues musicians that the Bandana Blues podcast can help you discover. The podcast has early roots. Founded by Ted Beardo" Dames, it began in 1999 on the Live365 network, an internet broadcasting system where users can set up their own internet radio stations by curating playlists. Then, in the early 2000s, Beardo started weekly podcasts of his playlist. He would play batches of songs non-stop, with short commentaries between each batch. Soon, he had a partner, a Dutch blues radio jockey from The Hague in the Netherlands who goes by the name Spinner. Beardo and Spinner jointly created their weekly podcast: Typically, Beardo would kick off with a first batch of songs; then Spinner would play his; and then they would alternate again. The two complemented each other. Both would delve into the past and play classic blues musicians as well as spring contemporary surprises that you may never have heard of. Beardo would sprinkle his comments with a few, not many, sardonic comments on current affairsTrump, the US economy, and so on. Spinner would occasionally add his picks of northern European bands, providing a taste of the vibrant blues scene in the region. I first heard the late Sharon Jones, who died of cancer last year, on an episode of the Bandana Blues podcast. Hers was an unusual story. Honed in gospel music and old-school R&B as a child, Jones big-voiced retro-style funk and soul singing won her fame only after she turned 40. Till then she worked as a corrections officer at the infamous Rikers Island prison. In 2002, around the time Jones brilliant debut album, -Dippin, with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, came out, Beardo played a track on an episode of the podcast. Jones singing style was a throwback to the glory days of funk and soulthe 1970sand she helped revive listeners interest in that old style at the turn of the 21st century. Occasionally, Beardo would pull out the real surprises. A couple of years ago, he played Aki Akarsha" Kumar on the podcast. Born in Mumbai, Kumar moved to the US when he was 18, at first to study computer science and then to work in San Jose at Adobe. As a child in India, Kumar learnt the tabla and keyboards and, like most Indian kids, was influenced by Bollywood music. But he caught the blues bug in Bay Area bars. Soon, he was playing the blues himself on his harmonica, and singing. Before long, the Indian techie had quit his job and become a full-time bluesman with his own band. His first album in 2014 is titled Dont Hold Back, and, last year, he released his second, Aki Goes To Bollywood, in which Chicago blues meets Bollywood music. This summer he toured Europe, and, going by his gig schedule in the US and elsewhere, he is already a rising star. You may have noticed that Ive been referring to Beardo in the past tense. Its because this September fans of the Bandana Blues podcast received some bad news. Even as he was preparing an episode to upload, Ted Beardo" Dames died of a massive heart attack in south-eastern Pennsylvania, where he lived. He was 65, a widower, and had virtually no savings and no insurance. The podcast was a free, non-profit labour of love, which ran mainly on passion and whatever Spinner and he could scrape together, and from meagre donations that listeners could make to the virtual tip jar on the website. Ive lost count of the number of musicians I heard for the first time on Bandana Blues. I heard the incredible Israeli guitarist Oz Noy; I discovered the French Blues Explosion; I became a fan of the British band Savoy Brown (known as the Savoy Brown Blues Band when it was formed in 1965) and its amazing lead guitarist and founder, the Welshman Kim Simmonds; as I did of Mike & the Mellotones, a Dutch blues band based in Nijmegen. For me, Bandana Blues had been an appointment listening fixture for more than 10 years; one that I would wait for every weekend, which was usually when it would be uploaded, quite certain that every episode would definitely lead me to new finds. So the death of its founder, Beardo, came as a sad blow. His comments, delivered in his deep baritone, will be missed. But theres good news too. Bandana Blues co-host Spinner is keeping the podcast alive. Whats more, almost the entire archive of podcastshundreds and hundreds of blues songs, impeccably listed and cataloguedis available to download or stream at Beardo1.libsyn.com. If you love the blues, dont miss it. *** The Lounge List Five tracks to bookend this week 1. If You Be My Baby by Gary Moore from Blues For Greeny 2. Eena Meena Deeka by Aki Kumar from Aki Goes To Bollywood 3.Elephant Walk by Oz Noy from Schizophrenic 4. Hellbound Train by Savoy Brown from 5 Live Hits 5. I Learned The Hard Way by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings from Miss Sharon Jones! First Beat is a column on whats new and groovy in the world of music. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Under police questioning hours after Kate Steinle was fatally shot on San Franciscos Pier 14, the accused killer at one point said he had aimed at a sea animal. At another point, he said the gun had been under a rag that lay on the ground near the waterfront, that it fired when he stepped on it, and that he quickly tossed the weapon into the bay so it would stop shooting on its own. The varying confessions offered by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate captured on video and played Wednesday for jurors at the 45-year-old mans murder trial may clarify what happened along the Embarcadero on the evening of July 1, 2015. Then again, they may not. Garcia Zarate, a homeless undocumented immigrant with a history of drug crimes and deportations, repeatedly changed his story and seemed not to understand basic concepts. His interrogators implored him to tell us the truth. He told investigators he was born in 1863, that he was a citizen of Colombia rather than Mexico, and that he was 5 to 6 feet away from Steinle on the pier, despite evidence that at least 90 feet separated the two at the time of the shooting. Now Playing: On Monday, jurors heard from crime scene investigators who say the bullet that killed Kate Steinle ricocheted before striking her. Video: KTVU The prosecution believes that Garcia Zarate pulled the trigger of the pistol which had been stolen four days earlier from the nearby parked car of an off-duty federal ranger and fired toward Steinle, an unexplained but intentional act showing the malice needed for a second-degree murder conviction. But the defense, citing evidence that the bullet skipped off the concrete ground, has said the gun accidentally discharged after Garcia Zarate found it in a T-shirt or cloth under his seat on the pier and unwrapped it. The case gained wide attention not only because of the randomness of Steinles death, as she strolled on Pier 14 with her father, but also because of how it figured into the national debate over the enforcement of immigration laws and the anti-immigrant sentiment embraced by President Trump. Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation when federal authorities brought him to San Francisco to face an old warrant in a marijuana case. When city prosecutors dismissed the case, the Sheriffs Department, relying on the citys sanctuary policies for immigrants, released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for removal. In the video played Wednesday in Superior Court by Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia, the defendant sat huddled in the corner of an interrogation room at the Hall of Justice, declining food or drink. When police homicide investigators asked him if he needed anything, he said he was cold. It was past midnight, in the aftermath of the shooting. Garcia played the footage after calling Lt. Anthony Ravano, the lead investigator in the case, to the witness stand. Through a Spanish interpreter, Garcia Zarate said he had been walking near AT&T Park that evening, southeast of Pier 14, eating crackers. He said he had, prior to that, been sleeping after coming in from work, collecting recyclable bottles and cans from garbage bins. We want to know if he was on the pier, Ravano asked the interpreter, a Spanish-speaking city officer. No, I was farther away, said Garcia Zarate, who made some responses in Spanish and others in English. I was sitting next to a planter. Ravano testified that he became more aggressive in his questioning because it was my belief that the defendant was lying to us. He said he deceived Garcia Zarate a tactic that is allowed in interrogations by telling him police had already recovered the gun from the bay, had DNA and gunshot-residue evidence tying him to the shooting, and had found witnesses who saw him shoot. In fact, a dive team would fish the pistol from the bay the day after the killing. No one witnessed the shooting, but Ravano, in the interrogation, had photos of Garcia Zarate taken by tourists proving he had been on the pier. This is you. We know this is you. People say this is you, Ravano said in the video. Garcia Zarate defended himself, saying it was a coincidence that the man in the photo was wearing the same shirt as him. He pointed out there were no crackers in the photo, even though he had been eating crackers. I want to know why you shot the girl and threw the gun in the water, said Sgt. Chris Canning, who was also in the room. Garcia Zarate stayed silent. This girl, Ravano said, gesturing to a photo of Steinle. You fired the shot. Why? Still he remained silent. Whats the matter? Canning asked. Are you sad? Eventually, Garcia Zarate admitted throwing the gun in the bay because he wanted it to stop shooting, suggesting the discharge was accidental. Later, Ravano asked of the fatal shot, What were you aiming at? Nothing, Garcia Zarate responded. What were you aiming at? Ravano repeated. I think it was a sea animal, Garcia Zarate said. A sea lion. He later said it was a black fish, and when Ravano asked how long he had the gun, he said it was only there at the pier. He then changed his story. When I was walking along, there was a rag, Garcia Zarate said. I stepped on it and it fired and I threw it. Why did you throw it? Ravano asked. I was trying to stop it from shooting on its own, Garcia Zarate responded. Canning pulled his seat close to the suspect and put a hand on his shoulder, bringing his face close to Garcia Zarates face. The truth is very important, he said. Lying will just give you more trouble. As difficult as the truth can be, the truth is always the best. So tell us the truth. You didnt step on the gun, did you? Yes, Garcia Zarate said. You pulled the trigger. Is that the truth? Canning asked. Si, Garcia Zarate said. But he continued to answer in the affirmative, even when Ravano and Canning asked if he shot Steinle from 5 feet away. The investigators repeatedly tried to get Garcia Zarate to describe a motive, with Ravano at one point asking whether the shooting could have been an accident. All Garcia Zarate would say was that the gun was too big for his hand, and he had to throw it. The interrogation ran from 1:50 a.m. to 5:45 a.m., Ravano testified. Garcia Zarate, who was arrested on the Embarcadero soon after the shooting, had sat handcuffed in a patrol car since about 7:30 p.m., and had arrived at the Hall of Justice about midnight which his attorney says likely contributed to his scattered statements. How do you feel? one of the investigators asked Garcia Zarate at one point, seemingly trying to prod him into expressing remorse over Steinles death. I just want to stay attentive and focused and I just want to sign the papers that I did it, he said in Spanish. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez, of the city public defenders office, pointed out that amid Garcia Zarates alleged confessions, he continually returned to the version in which the gun accidentally discharged shortly after he found it on the pier. The police were able to get Mr. Garcia Zarate to abandon what he said and adopt what they were saying, Gonzalez said, but as soon as they thereafter asked him his question again, he would revert back to his position. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office / / Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office / / Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office / / Show More Show Less 5 of 5 Police are searching for a 19-year-old Antioch man who is suspected of shooting and killing a Discovery Bay man during a dispute over the weekend, authorities said Wednesday. The suspect, Brayan Zavala, is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached, officials with the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas this month is poised to execute a Mexican national accused 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 as required by the United Nation's 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." 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." READ MORE: Laredo police blotter: October 2017 But it is not claims of innocence that are the crux of Mexico's gripe over the case. "It's a significant treaty violation," said Gregory Kuykendall, an Arizona attorney authorized to speak on behalf of Mexico. "What separates us from anarchy is our commitment to due process and that's the processes of the laws that are in effect in both the United States as well as internationally," said Kuykendall, who directs the Mexican Capital Legal Assistance Program, a program created by Mexican officials to fight death penalty cases for Mexican nationals in the U.S.. "Our treaty commitments reign supreme." The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has weighed in with a resolution recommending 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. Kuykendall stressed that Mexico is not seeking to change U.S. law, although there is no capital punishment in Mexico. "Mexico considers the death penalty a cruel and inhuman sanction, and it's opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances," Kuykendall said. "It has reiterated its opposition both nationally and internationally in its effort to obtain the eventual abolition of the death penalty worldwide." 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. State Department 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 nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. 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, the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Medellin v. Texas deemed it unenforceable, unless Congress takes legislative action and it hasn'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. Famously, the state put to death Jose Medellin the man behind the Supreme Court case in 2008, over protestations from Mexico. Even before the international legal saga, the case had already gained notoriety for its sheer brutality. In 1993, Medellin and five other men raped and slaughtered two teens in a Houston park during a bloody gang initiation. The case netted five death sentences, though two were later commuted to life because of the defendants' ages at the time of the slayings. Then three years ago, another Houston case drew sharp condemnation south of the border when the state executed cop-killer Edgar Tamayo, another Mexican national not informed of his consulary rights. 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. In September, Levin filed a motion for DNA testing of scrapings taken from beneath Mayra's fingernails. "To permit Mr. Cardenas's execution to proceed without permitting this testing would fly in the face of the most fundamental concept of justice," she wrote in a scathing Hidalgo County court filing. A judge slapped down the motion last week, but Levin said she plans to appeal. 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. "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." Fiyyaz Pirani, the 28-year-old CEO and founder of online health care services company Medology, calls himself a "serial tech entrepreneur" who eschewed higher education in pursuit of a vision he said traditional classrooms don't teach. Modeling tech world giants who also dropped out of college - Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg - the Houston businessman has not only built a company that he hopes will turn the medical testing world on its head, he has gained the intense loyalty of a growing workforce. Pirani has earned a Top Workplace leadership award in the small company category. The Chronicle recently talked with him about his vision. Q: How did you get started? A: I started creating businesses when I was in high school. I started this company called Essay Paradise, where we would help students write essays and term papers. I went to the University of Texas at San Antonio for a few months, but I quickly realized that school was not my thing and dropped out and moved back to Houston. I realized I had a marketable skill: What I had learned about e-commerce in high school, I could actually market to companies as an adult. I got a position as a digital marketing analyst at an agency. I was 18 years old. The thing about the internet world is that formal education is worth very little because you don't have the degree programs that teach you how to be successful, at least back then. Q: You say you are anti-higher education. Why? A: I think there is a place for it depending on your goals, but to be successful in business you learn by just getting out there and doing it. It's a personality type. Do I do four to six years in higher education, or am I just itching to take that opportunity and do my own thing? Q: How did that get you to Medology? A: I started Medology in 2010. We have a very interesting business model. We retail lab testing. Insurance companies have negotiated rates with providers. In the same sense we have negotiated rates with laboratories. We have over a dozen physicians who prescribe lab testing for our patients, and we sell patients lab testing online. You can go to our site and buy a lab test; you can buy an allergy test, you can buy an HIV test. If you are pregnant, you can buy prenatal testing. Then you would go to lab collection location with a prescription in hand that we have emailed to you. They do the testing and send us the results since we are the physician in this situation. We have software that automatically interprets the results. If everything is OK, we release the results. If there is a problem, we would loop the physician back in. Q: Why is this an important innovation? A: We're cutting out the physician, and we're cutting out the red tape. Labs don't have a problem with our service because we drive a lot of volume. We have opened up a whole new level of access. It's the technology that drives the volume. Having a business like this run by a tech guy, you can get a lot more volume than run by a physician. Q: You won a leadership award. How are you a good leader? A: I'm present. I'm here 50, 60 hours a week. Any of my employees can book time with me. All of us are very friendly with each other. We hire based on culture fit along with tech ability. We do end up with a younger demographic. Our average age is well under 30. That is not because we look at age as a hiring factor. It is because we are a software company, so we assess for technical skill before a candidate even walks in the door. Q; What makes a company thrive? A: We have one core value, and that is "kaizen," which is Japanese term for continuous improvement. We're always doing new things. No one is ever bored. Everyone has the opportunity to have their voices heard. Once we hire people, they stay. NEW YORK Republican mega-donor Robert Mercer, a billionaire with close ties to President Donald Trump, is stepping down from his position as chief executive officer of the New York investment firm Renaissance Technologies. The 71-year-old Mercer is also selling his personal stake in the pro-Trump website Breitbart News to his daughters. He announced his decision on Thursday in a letter to investors that also condemned white supremacists, distanced himself from former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and declared he was mistaken for supporting alt-right hero Milo Yiannopoulos. I have decided to correct some of the misinformation that has been published about me, wrote the 71-year-old Mercer, who cited a great deal of scrutiny from the press. The notoriously private Mercer is considered one of the most powerful political benefactors in the Trump era. After initially backing the presidential bid of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, poured resources into efforts to help elect Trump last fall. They are also major backers of Breitbart News, which is led by Bannon, Trumps ex-chief strategist. The site has been criticized for encouraging white supremacists who make up the so-called alt-right movement. Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group, Mercer wrote in his resignation announcement. Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant. On Bannon, who is now leading an effort to take down congressional Republican incumbents, Mercer wrote that their politics are not necessarily in lockstep. I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannons, Mercer wrote. At the same time, he condemned Yiannopoulos, one of Bannons proteges at Breitbart, who has inflamed racial tensions in a series of provocative speeches on college campuses across the nation. In my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate, Mercer wrote. I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him. The development comes as another Mercer-backed company, the data firm Cambridge Analytica, faces new scrutiny for possible links to the federal probe into Russias meddling in the 2016 president election. Wikileaks editor Julian Assange told The Associated Press last week that Wikileaks received a request for information from Cambridge Analytica prior to the election. Assange would not specify the request, which he said was rejected, but The Daily Beast reported that the head of Cambridge Analytica reached out to Assange during the presidential campaign about the possible release of 33,000 of Hillary Clintons missing emails. Those emails have never been publicly released. Mercer said he would formally step down from his leadership role at Renaissance Technologies on Jan. 1. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When Hal Wychopen found out that one of his first employees became engaged, the CEO of Texas Saffire offered to host the wedding at his office, a remodeled 1980s farmhouse in Magnolia. The employee took up his offer - and asked Wychopen, a pastor, to officiate at the ceremony. He obliged, marrying the couple earlier this year at his farmhouse-turned-office in front of 100 family members, friends and co-workers. "We are truly a family business," Wychopen said. "We have a level of trust inside our office that can't be found but in family and longtime friends." It's that close-knit culture that helped the fire sprinkler company maintain its No. 2 ranking among small businesses on this year's Top Workplaces list, based on an employee survey conducted for the Chronicle by Energage. The company was ranked No. 1 on the list in 2015. Wychopen founded Texas Saffire - an amalgam of "safe" and "fire" - in 2011. Since then, Wychopen and his wife and CFO, Cherie, have expanded the company to more than 80 employees. Each year, Texas Saffire installs automatic fire sprinklers in70 to 90 commercial projects spanning some 10 million square feet. Texas Saffire plans to hire a dozen more workers in the coming year to keep pace with Houston's growth, Wychopen said. The company offers health insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan with a 4 percent match and on-the-job training, benefits that Wychopen said many of his competitors don't offer. Employees who responded to the Energage survey said Texas Saffire treats them with respect. "I feel like everyone here cares for their co-workers," one employee said in the survey. "The feeling of family is truly genuine. Everyone helping each other helps you want to reach your potential and beyond everyday." The May/December union that marked a new start at Lowbrow in Montrose has already come to an end. Chef John Sheely, a longtime fixture on the Houston dining scene, has left Lowbrow and his partnership with the younger Chris Ray who once worked at Sheely's late, lamented Mockingbird Bistro when he was in college. The two joined forces in June to reinvigorate Lowbrow at 1601 W. Main, a project that came about when Gary Mosley of the Creek Group restaurants offered the space. This is the ideal week to release LBJ, because there is something of a Halloween costume about Woody Harrelsons appearance in the film. He looks as if frozen midway into some morphing process between himself and Lyndon Johnson, a process that, by pure chance, happened to stop at the precise moment he began to look comical. Theres the fake nose and the fake hair and, peeking out from the prosthetics, Harrelsons eyes, which suggest a certain zaniness that we just dont associate with civil rights and the Kennedy assassination. And then theres the voice, which sounds nothing like Johnson and exactly like Harrelson at his most easygoing and engaging. Its a strange thing, but Harrelson had more of a Johnson vibe as the frustrated colonel in War for the Planet of the Apes. But no, lets not talk about wars. LBJ is about the happy side of Johnsons legacy, so all talk of Vietnam must be kept to a minimum. Thats director Rob Reiners prerogative, but it does make you wonder if some enterprising Republican director might someday make a movie called Nixon and deal with the opening to China and detente with Russia, leaving out all that unfortunate Watergate business. Better yet, someone should do a documentary about that lively Civil War-era comedy Our American Cousin and omit mention of the Friday night performance that was interrupted by a brief disturbance. They might even ask Mrs. Lincoln what she thought of the play. Yet for all this, LBJ is far from terrible so long as you adopt the proper viewing strategy. Stop worrying, for example, that Harrelson doesnt really look like Johnson, and reverse the thought. Imagine, instead, that this really is Johnson, but that he has a disease thats turning him into Woody Harrelson. Then imagine how fun the movie might be were the disease to become contagious, so that, by the end, all the Cabinet members, including Bobby Kennedy, would be played by the same actor. Yes, that would be weird, but the movie is weird as it is. It takes place in two time periods and goes back and forth from one to the other. The first covers the period in 1960 when Johnson ran against John F. Kennedy for the Democratic nomination and eventually became his running mate. The second takes place in 1963, just before and after the assassination, when Johnson decided to take up civil rights as his principal crusade. The jumping around gives the movie a start-and-stop quality, to no discernible purpose. Jeff Donavan as JFK is a collection of verbal mannerisms, served up without nuance or charm, as if no one even bothered to watch the classic Robert Drew documentaries that show Kennedys private manner. Rarely has an empty performance ever been delivered with such confidence. Michael Stahl-David does better as Bobby Kennedy, though the screenplay gives him little to do but act like an angry terrier on his brothers behalf. His counterpart, in the LBJ corner, is Johnsons wife, Lady Bird, a one-note role that Jennifer Jason Leigh somehow invests with a wealth of warmth and feeling. In the end, its history that saves LBJ from disaster. Reiner and Co. come in swinging and hit this era with every form of ineptitude they can devise strange casting, comical makeup jobs, inept and obvious dialogue, an ineffective story structure, some genuinely bad acting, and the filmmakers determination to make a hero out of a problematic personality and president but they still cant make it boring. LBJ is a good story told badly, but a good story all the same. Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicles movie critic. Email: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MickLaSalle LBJ Drama. Starring Woody Harrelson and Jeff Donavan. Directed by Rob Reiner. (R. 98 minutes.) WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to rule out sending the New York terrorism suspect to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after threatening a day earlier to send the alleged attacker to the detention center. Backing off his initial statement that he was considering detaining the suspect at America's most notorious prison, Trump said Thursday that Sayfullo Saipov instead should be executed through the civilian justice system, which historically has been delivered faster convictions than the military tribunal system. Trump tweeted, "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system . . . There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" On Wednesday, Trump said he felt the U.S. criminal justice system was "a joke" because it took too long for accused terrorists - "these animals," he called them - to be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. "We need quick justice, and we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now," Trump told reporters during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. "Because what we have right now is a joke and it's a laughingstock." When a reporter asked whether he would send Saipov to the Guantanamo Bay prison, Trump replied, "I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo. I would certainly consider that, yes." A few hours later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president's unscripted remark should not have been interpreted as a statement of intention or policy. "Look, the point he was making is that he supports, or would support that, but he wasn't necessarily advocating for it," Sanders said. Sanders said the Trump administration considers Saipov to be an "enemy combatant," but stressed that no decision had been made about how to prosecute him or where he would be detained. Just hours after President Donald Trump finished calling Iran a "murderous regime," in his September 19 speech at the United Nations, the administration asked French President Emmanuel Macron for a favor. Would Macron inquire whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was interested in speaking directly with Trump? All three leaders were in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, as was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who conveyed the request to Macron, according to several administration and foreign officials. Iran's response, later that afternoon, was an unequivocal no. The Iranians, the French reported, "don't believe you're serious" and thought it was some kind of trick, a senior administration official said. In his own U.N. speech the next day, Rouhani denounced the "ignorant" rhetoric of "rogue newcomers to the world of politics," although he did not mention Trump by name. Trump has long held a deep belief in his face-to-face negotiating skill. He has said he would be "honored" to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "under the right circumstances." He also declared it an "honor" to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an international summit in July. He said recently that once he got quarreling Persian Gulf allies together with him in a room, their dispute would "quickly" end. But there seems little room for negotiation on the issues that divide the United States and Iran. Trump has said he wants to rewrite or "terminate" the Iran nuclear agreement; Iran and other signatories have flatly refused. He has demanded that Iran cease its ballistic missile development, which Iran says it is legally entitled to carry out. He has accused Iran of being the world's biggest supporter of international terrorism. Before Tillerson's request, Trump already had broached the general idea of using France as a go-between during a bilateral meeting with the French president the night before his U.N. speech, the senior administration official said. "You guys have good relations" with Iran, Trump told Macron, according to the official. "Could you use your relations" to ask if Tehran is willing, should "the Americans want to talk?" the official said Trump asked. "Macron said sure, he would try to do that," the official said. Asked why Trump wanted to meet with Rouhani, the official said it was "in order to say, 'Here's all the mean stuff you do in the world, and we want you to stop. . . . If not, you should know we're working on a strategy to get you to confront all of this.' " The primary message, the official said, was that "the golden Obama-era window of rapprochement is over." This official and others spoke only on the condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic exchanges. For his part, any seeming weakness by Rouhani toward the United States probably would undercut his already-tenuous political position in the face of Iranian hard-liners seeking to undermine his presidency. Trump has accused President Barack Obama of being soft on Iran, allowing it to expand its "malign" influence in the Middle East and beyond and to threaten U.S. friends in the region. Most prominently, he has called the 2015 nuclear accord that the Obama administration negotiated "the worst deal ever." Last month, responding to oversight provisions imposed by Congress, Trump refused to certify Iranian compliance with the deal. He has ordered lawmakers to come up with a proposal to rewrite the agreement and impose new sanctions, threatening otherwise to "terminate" U.S. participation. Word of the proposed Trump-Rouhani meeting request first circulated Sunday, when Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi told reporters in Tehran that "indeed, a request was made by the American side, but it was not accepted by President Rouhani." In discussing the proposal, some officials described it as "vague" and indicated that it left open the question of whether Trump, Tillerson or some other senior official was on offer to speak with Rouhani. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, queried by NBC News on Sunday about Qassemi's statement, emailed that it was "false," the network reported. At Tuesday's State Department briefing, spokeswoman Heather Nauert said of the statement that "I know that was something that the secretary had floated. . . . The Iranian officials said no, and that was the end of it." Asked directly whether the Iranians had specifically turned down a meeting with Trump, Nauert said, "They did." Pressed further, however, she spoke only of a proposed meeting with "U.S. officials," before referring any additional questions to the White House. Tillerson, the senior official said, also had raised the possibility of "talks with other officials at various levels" when he spoke directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sept. 20 during a multilateral meeting at the United Nations, the senior official said. Highlighting Iranian suspicions of U.S. motives, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - as prolific as Trump on Twitter - wrote in a tweet to Iranians on Wednesday, "My dear children, do not forget, in the important, conducive path toward ideals, your major enemy is the U.S." - - - The Washington Post's Erin Cunningham in Istanbul contributed to this report. For four years, Australia has detained hundreds of refugees on a remote island belonging to Papua New Guinea. From the start, those refugees, who had attempted to reach Australia illegally by boat from all over the world, protested the detention center's terrible conditions. They clamored for the center's closing, and many in Australia took to the streets with signs that read: "Bring them here." On Tuesday, Australia delivered on that first wish, shutting off electricity and plumbing and ending food services at the Manus Island facility. The Oct. 31 closing date has long been known - Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court set the date in April 2016 when it ordered the center shut. But the 606 people - all men - who remained in the center on Tuesday were left in the lurch. Despite the long lead time, the United Nations says new accommodations for the refugees are far from ready, and detainees say they are surviving on boxed food packets and digging in the ground to get water. Detainees and locals are terrified of one another after repeated violent, and sometimes deadly, clashes between the groups. The detention center's privately contracted security guards have left the island. On Tuesday, local media and human rights groups reported numerous instances of looting by locals, who tore down some of the center's perimeter walls once they were left unguarded. The detention center has become an embarrassment for a country widely thought of as an upholder of human rights. The center has been the site of horrific incidents, including riots, prolonged hunger strikes and dozens of gruesome suicide attempts, some involving the swallowing of razor blades or scissors. In one incident, local police and gangs allegedly infiltrated the facility and attacked detainees, injuring 77 and killing one by dropping a large rock on his head. A United Nations report found that 88 percent of detainees examined by doctors on Manus showed signs of depressive, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorders. Of the 606 men, Australia has deemed 440 to be legitimate refugees. More than half of the rest have had their applications for refugee status denied, while about 50 refused to be processed as a way of protesting their detainment. Today, the stranded detainees are refusing to leave the very detention center they were once so desperate to leave. The detainees are "terrified about the possibility of [Papua New Guinea] security forces forcibly removing them from the main center," said Elaine Pearson, the Australia director for Human Rights Watch. "It's cruelly ironic that they have barricaded themselves inside a center where they have been shot at and attacked in the past, but they are terrified of moving. Further bloodshed is likely if they move to less secure facilities in the main town." Even if they wanted to move to the new facility on Manus Island's main town of Lorengau, it wouldn't be ready for them. Nat Jit Lam, a regional representative for the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said he had inspected two of the three sites and told ABC Radio that "major earthworks were still in progress" and "fences were still being put up." Nick McKim, an outspoken refugee rights advocate and Australian senator from the Greens party, visited Manus this week. Of the preparations in Lorengau, he said Wednesday, "So, even if all the guys came out today, there would be 150-plus of them who would be left on the side of the road in Lorengau, where there have been brutal attacks." By granting 440 of the men refugee status, Australia has implicitly acknowledged their inability to safely return to their home countries. But Australia has also held fast to a policy that does not allow resettlement within its borders of anyone who tried to reach the country illegally by boat. It credits the policy with almost entirely eliminating attempted arrivals of that kind. Australia and Papua New Guinea, commonly referred to as PNG, are locked in a legal battle over which of them bears responsibility for the men. International legal opinion and that of the United Nations broadly agree that Australia is responsible, as PNG simply hosted the men in return for various forms of compensation from the Australian government. The Australian government also paid private security contractors to operate the facility. The Obama administration had struck a deal with Australia to resettle hundreds of the refugees detained on Manus and at another facility on the even more remote Pacific island of Nauru. In a heated phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, President Trump lambasted the deal. According to the Associated Press, the United States has taken 54 refugees from Manus in recent weeks. One of the refugees who remains on Manus is Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran seeking asylum. Amid the lack of electricity, he has been charging his phone - which he uses as an advocacy tool - using solar power. For years he has acted as an unofficial spokesman for the group. Over the past days, his Twitter timeline has highlighted the plight of the stranded detainees in wrenching detail. PATERSON, N.J. - Over the past few weeks, Carlos Batista noticed something odd - his neighbor Sayfullo Saipov would occasionally drive a Home Depot pickup truck on the block, even though he didn't seem to be carrying any building material, or doing any construction work. Batista, 23, said he noticed Saipov driving the truck around with a couple of his friends. "They didn't even have one piece of wood in there, and that's why I found it a little suspicious,'' he said. "And I do construction, so I know when somebody is doing some type of work.'' Federal agents suspect the early rentals were part of Saipov's preparation for the attack he carried out Monday - mowing down bicyclists and pedestrians on a busy bike path on the west side of Manhattan. Eight people were killed and a dozen injured - the deadliest act of terrorism in New York City since the World Trade Center was felled by airplane hijackers in 2001. According to criminal charges filed Tuesday night, Saipov rented the truck on Oct. 22 to practice making turns with the vehicle in preparation for the attack. The criminal complaint said Saipov confessed that he began planning for it about a year ago. Saipov emigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010, and before moving to Paterson he lived in Ohio and Florida. Counterterrorism officials say they had not previously investigated him, but his name had surfaced in an FBI probe of a friend, and he was named as a point of contact on immigration paperwork for other immigrants. Law enforcement officials cautioned that in the small, tightknit world of Uzbek immigrants to the United States, it was not that unusual for Saipov's name to surface in multiple settings. They added that until Monday, federal agents had not found anything to prompt specific concerns about him. In his confession to authorities after the attack, Saipov left no doubt about his motive - support for Islamic State, also known as ISIS. According to the criminal complaint filed against him, Saipov "requested to display ISIS's flag in his hospital room and stated that he felt good about what he had done." Investigators also said he had been watching violent Islamic State videos on his phone for months. Friends and acquaintances said since he came to the United States, Saipov worked intermittently as a truck driver and an Uber driver, but some said he had a bad temper and lost driving jobs because of it. When his neighbor Batista saw the Home Depot rental truck on his block, Saipov was always driving, and his two friends were passengers. While he found Saipov's use of the truck odd, he didn't stand out in other ways, the neighbor said. Batista thought of him generally as a calming influence in the neighborhood, where he'd lived for about half a year. One time, when Batista was riding his dirt bike, he got into an argument with two of Saipov's friends. Saipov emerged from his house to break up the dispute. "He was the peacemaker,'' Batista said. "I went on my way.'' Batista did not know the names of the two men Saipov was often seen with. FBI officials have questioned Saipov's wife, who has denied any knowledge of the planned violence, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The person, who spoke to his wife by phone Tuesday evening but did not want to be identified, said she seemed "shocked and horrified and scared and sad." At the time, federal agents were at her house, encouraging her to cooperate to ensure no one else was harmed. Other neighbors on the block of Genessee Avenue where Saipov lived said nothing struck them as unusual about the 29-year-old father of three young children. Altana Dimitrovska, a tenant who lived in the same small apartment complex, said she was surprised by the news. She used to see Saipov bringing one of his children to school in the mornings. Speaking through a translator, Dimitrovska said she once asked him if he ever went to work, because she would see him on the sidewalk a lot. "He said 'yeah, I do go to work.' But I never saw him going to work,'' she said. Asked if she ever saw anything suspicious about the man, the 63-year-old neighbor replied, "No, no, no.'' Before he lived in Paterson, Saipov and his family lived in an apartment in Tampa, next to Kyong Eagan. Eagan called Saipov "shy, soft-spoken, very quiet.'' "He was a small guy, only 100 pounds and 5 feet tall,'' she said. "I could have punched and knocked him down. I can't believe this small guy did this monstrous thing.'' During the time Saipov and his family were her neighbors, she said, he was very generous to her. "He would give me a whole case of water from his truck," Eagan said. "Sometimes he would give me a whole box of mango juice and never charged me." Eagan said he also brought her home-cooked meals and said he wanted to share food from his country with her. Eagan said that on most weekends, about 30 men - young and old - gathered at Saipov's house to pray. "I just have to pinch myself over and over," Eagan said. "That's my neighbor. That's my neighbor. This doesn't make sense to me. He was a very polite man. He offered me food and drinks. He never said anything hateful about the country. He's a monster now." Eagan says Saipov lived in her apartment complex just over a year and left Tampa this past spring. He said he left her a vacuum cleaner, brooms, a mop, two printers and a computer, and on March 8, according to her receipt, she donated them to the Salvation Army. "He was in a big hurry to move out of there," Eagan said. In Ohio, where Saipov lived when he first immigrated to the United States, one of his friends described a darker personality - one prone to fights and misunderstandings. "Everyone in our neighborhood knew he was a little bit troubled,'' said Mirrakhmat Muminov, a 38-year-old truck driver living outside Akron, Ohio. He remembered Saipov once parked in a handicapped spot and that someone tried to make him move his car. "He started yelling, 'Is that your place? Are you buying this place? Why are you telling me where to park?' " Muminov said. "This aggressive behavior happened all the time." On the job, sometimes customers would get mad if he was late for a delivery and refuse to pay him. "He would raise his voice and say, 'How can you not pay me?,' " Muminov said. "The customers would call us to report the problem. We would warn him a couple times, 'You have to be nice to customers.' And then we fired him." Muminov said that Saipov lived in the Cuyahoga Falls area, which has an Uzbekimmigrant community of several dozen refugees, for about three years. Saipov went to the neighborhood mosque but was not an active member and was not involved in community activities. --- Rosenberg reported from Paterson, N.J. Abigail Hauslohner in Paterson, Jon Silman in Tampa, and Julie Tate and Katie Mettler in Washington contributed to this report. A Belgian woman with two young sons has been identified as one of the eight people killed in Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York. Anne-Laure Decadt, 31, was biking along the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan with her mother and two sisters, when a man driving a truck turned onto the bike path and struck several pedestrians and cyclists. At least eight died in the attack, authorities said. Her husband, Alexander Naessens, learned of Decadt's death less than an hour after the attack when officials at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital called him, according to the New York Times. Decadt was the only woman among those killed. She was the mother of a 3-year-old and a 3-month-old, according to the New York Daily News. "This loss is unbearable and unthinkable," Naessens told the newspaper. "Anne-Laure ... was a fantastic wife and she was the most beautiful mom to our two sons." Decadt's mother and two sisters were not harmed, he said. The family was still waiting for the remains to be released by U.S. authorities so that they could be repatriated, said Francesco Vanderjeugd, the mayor of Staden, Decadt's hometown in the West Flanders province of Belgium, who said he was friendly with the family. "A few days ago, I sent an SMS to one of the sisters when I saw on social media that she was in the United States," Vanderjeugd told the Belga news agency. "I wished them a great trip, hoping that they would enjoy each other's company and the Halloween celebrations that are even stronger in America than here. And then it happened." He said that another family from the town of 11,000 people had narrowly avoided tragedy in August's vehicle attack on Barcelona's Las Ramblas boulevard, saying that terror can strike even the smallest communities. Vanderjeugd told the Daily News that Decadt was set to leave the United States on Friday. Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders, who has been in New York, said three other Belgian citizens were injured in the attack but did not specify if they were related to Decadt. In remarks with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Reynders pledged Belgium's commitment to the fight against terrorism. "We are in the same coalition against Daesh, we fight to rebuild some countries in the world, but I'm sure that we need also to exchange the best practices to fight against radicalization, homegrown terrorism, homegrown violent extremism," Reynders said, according to the State Department. "It's a real fact. We have seen that in London, in Berlin, in Paris and Nice, and also in Belgium, and now again in the U.S." After leaving behind a trail of chaos, the driver of the truck was shot and arrested by police, ending what authorities described as a terrorist attack. Officials said the suspected attacker, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, left a note pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, said Saipov was believed to be a lone wolf who was "radicalized domestically" after moving to the United States from Uzbekistan six years ago. The others killed in the attack were from the United States and Argentina, said police, who identified the American victims as Darren Drake, 32, of New Milford, N.J., and Nicholas Cleves, 23, of New York. The Argentine Foreign Ministry identified the five dead Argentine nationals as Hernan Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damian Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernan Ferruchi. The New York Police Department said all of the men were 47, except for Erlij, who was 48. (The NYPD identified him as "Ariel Erlis.") The men were all longtime friends who had traveled to New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation. --- Birnbaum reported from Barcelona. FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's attorneys concluded their defense Wednesday, bringing the former Taliban prisoner's fate one step closer to the military judge who will determine whether he goes to prison for abandoning his post in Afghanistan eight years ago. Bergdahl, 31, who on Monday apologized to fellow troops injured while searching for him after he disappeared, listened while the final witnesses brought to his sentencing hearing discussed his mental health. Closing arguments are expected Thursday with an outcome possible later in the day or Friday. The testimony tied together two central arguments made by Bergdahl's legal team: that his critical-thinking skills are compromised, contributing to his decision to walk off his base and into enemy hands and that the torture he endured during five years of captivity warrants leniency. Bergdahl has pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Charles Morgan, a forensic psychologist, told the judge, Col. Jeffery Nance, that he diagnosed Bergdahl with a schizophrenia-like illness after speaking with the soldier, conducting tests, interviewing family members and reviewing relevant records. He's prone to paranoia, severe social anxiety, unconventional beliefs and socially awkward behavior, Morgan said. Bergdahl, he added, has contemplated self-castration, believing it would purify him, and has trouble understanding how to form social relationships. Morgan's findings are consistent with an Army sanity board document, he added, but stressed that it is not a psychotic condition and that Bergdahl is mentally competent. Morgan concluded that Bergdahl had the condition before he enlisted in the Army, suffering also from post-traumatic stress disorder from a hot-tempered father who allegedly punched holes in walls and sent Bergdahl fleeing when he heard his father's truck rumbling toward their home in Idaho. Bergdahl had a panic attack in Coast Guard training in 2006, which led to his dismissal. He joined the Army with a waiver in 2008. Bergdahl has said he left his base in Afghanistan to alert a commander at another base to issues with his chain of command. That act - to walk without a weapon alone in a war zone - proves that Bergdahl has an inability to consider the second- and third-order effects of his decisions or reasonably anticipate how other people will react to certain situations, Morgan said, and that he's incapable of weighing alternative actions. "I think he believes there are times if it's the morally right thing to do, you have to break the rules," he said. "There's not a thinking through of 'Are there other ways to achieve this goal?' " The prosecution countered Morgan's testimony, saying Bergdahl's preparation ahead of leaving his base, such as mailing his laptop home and drawing money, showed signs of clear thinking. Morgan, whose work focuses on mental health among former prisoners of war, said Bergdahl's paranoia and intense study of his surroundings may have aided his survival those five years. POWs who are passive tend to have a hard time with the enemy, he said. But a return to captivity - a potential jail sentence - would exacerbate Bergdahl's symptoms and trauma stemming from his time as a prisoner, Morgan said. "There are things that will be reminiscent" of his time as a prisoner, Morgan said, such as enclosed spaces and loss of independence. The defense also called a cat rescue worker in San Antonio who declined to give her name. Bergdahl helped build an elaborate trap for feral cats and has shown deep emotional attachment to the animals as a "cat whisperer," she said by phone. The GOP tax plan's changes to deductions would hit people in blue states hard, with limits on popular tax deductions that would have the biggest effects on people with high property taxes and expensive homes. The tax plan doubles the standard deduction to $24,000 for a married couple, meaning most people wouldn't itemize their mortgage interest or property taxes. But for those who do, the popular mortgage interest deduction would be capped at $500,000 of the loan amount for home purchases made after Nov. 2, 2017, instead of the current $1 million cap. The deduction of state and local property taxes would be capped at $10,000, and state and local income and sales taxes could no longer be deducted. Some Republicans in blue states immediately expressed their opposition to the bill. "I cannot support the current version of the tax bill because it will increase taxes for many of my constituents to subsidize tax cuts for the rest of the country," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said. "My job is to protect the taxpayers of Long Island and New York." Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said he could not support the bill because it didn't keep the entire state and local tax deduction. "Eliminating the SALT deduction would be a geographic redistribution of wealth, picking winners and losers," Zeldin said in a statement. Both of the limits introduced in the tax plan are targeted at deductions popular in blue states. "If you live in New York City, where you pay high taxes and where the cost of housing is pretty high, this is a double whammy," said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. There aren't many people with mortgages over $500,000 - only about 1 million mortgages, or about 5 percent of mortgages that originated between 2012 and 2014, according to an analysis by the United for Homes campaign, which advocates for changes to the mortgage interest deduction. Those mortgages are most common in solidly blue states. The District of Columbia tops the list, with 27 percent of mortgages over $500,000, followed by Hawaii, California, New York, Connecticut, Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois. "Anything that's going to impact the sacred mortgage deduction is going to have a significant impact on home values here in Connecticut, and on excitement about owning a home," said Scott Cooney, regional vice president for the Connecticut Association of Realtors. An analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation found that capping the mortgage interest deduction would decrease the deficit by $319 billion over a decade. The Tax Foundation also found that limiting the deduction would have the biggest effect in raising the taxes of people at the top of the income distribution, with very modest effects for people in the middle. For people who make between about $49,000 and $88,000 per year, the cap could reduce after-tax earnings by 0.05 percent.Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist for LendingTree, said that the tax plan could create an incentive for people who already own homes that cost more than $500,000 to stay in them, since existing homes would be grandfathered in and the new deduction limit would apply only to new home purchases. "Say you own an $800,000 house and you're thinking of moving or trading up. If you sell your $800,000 house and buy a new $800,000 house, you've just gotten a new tax bill," Kapfidze said. The deduction for state and local property taxes is also more commonly used in blue states - although high-income taxpayers who pay the alternative minimum tax are already barred from taking advantage of the property tax deduction. "Anytime you're essentially targeting state and local taxes of any kind, we know that tends to zero in on the likes of New York, New Jersey, California - and those are states that some of the Republicans in Congress are hostile to - and it's a convenient target," said Mark Hamrick, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com. An analysis by the Tax Foundation showed that 37 percent of filers in Connecticut took a property-tax deduction, followed by Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Oregon. "I think the basic thing to say about this tax bill is, like most tax bills, it is very political," Gleckman said. "This is just moving stuff around, raising taxes on some people, cutting taxes on some people - it's all political." The National Association of Realtors has already begun its fight against the bill, with 105,000 members contacting their members of Congress, according to Evan Liddiard, senior policy representative for federal taxation. Liddiard pointed out that Republicans and Democrats alike live in areas with high property taxes or home values. "We're worried about the effect on middle-class homeowners, and not what party they belong to," Liddiard said. WASHINGTON - The federal judge overseeing the criminal trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Rick Gates said Thursday she was inclined to impose a gag order in the case and believed that the men pose a risk of flight significant enough to require close electronic monitoring. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington stated her intentions at a 30-minute hearing to review bail terms for Manafort and Rick Gates, who were in court. Each has pleaded not guilty to a 12-count indictment unsealed Monday that charges them with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other offenses in connection with their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. She said the men will stay on house arrest through the weekend and that both may need to remain on GPS tracking throughout the case. The men were arraigned three days ago on the first criminal allegations disclosed by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, which is investigating possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs including the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. "This is a criminal trial, and it is not a public-relations campaign," said Jackson, a 2011 Obama appointee. Noting extraordinary public interest in the case, Jackson gave each side until Tuesday to argue why she should not issue an order barring both sides from releasing information or commenting on the case outside of court, saying, "I expect counsel to make their statements in the courtroom and in pleadings and not on the courthouse steps." A U.S. magistrate had put the men on electronic monitoring and confined them mostly to their homes pending the Thursday appearance after Manafort, 68, pledged to pay a $10 million penalty and Gates, 45, promised to pay a $5 million penalty if they failed to return to court. Jackson also granted prosecutors' unopposed request to suspend the usual speedy trial requirements because of the complexity of the case and set a tentative trial date for spring. She set another hearing for 9:30 a.m. Monday to sort out terms for their continued release. Attorneys for Manafort and Gates said they would ask to go free on their personal recognizance and remain on unsecured bond. Prosecutors insisted in court that any bail package be secured by assets. Jackson deferred ruling until seeing each side's requests but said the tracking was important and should stay in place. "I think if they leave and don't come back, we need to know where they went," she said. Prosecutors argued in a court filing Tuesday that both men "pose a risk of flight" based on a "history of deceptive and misleading conduct," the evidence against them, and their wealth and foreign connections. The government argued Manafort had a greater incentive to flee because he faced spending most of the rest of his life incarcerated if convicted of charges that would carry a recommended sentence of about 12 years to 15 years. Gates if convicted could face a recommended 10- to 12-year sentence. Prosecutors also said Manafort held three passports and that he registered a phone and an email account under an alias in May and traveled with it to Ecuador, China and Mexico between May and June. On Thursday his lawyers said Manafort's passports were all under his own name and that travel with multiple passports was "perfectly permissible," such as for travel between countries with sour relations. Mueller team prosecutors Andrew Weissmann, Greg D. Andres and Kyle R. Freeny also cited the difficulty in ascertaining each man's wealth as a strike against allowing him to remain free. The government said in loan applications and financial documents Manafort assessed his financial holdings as ranging from $136 million in May 2016 to $28 million and $63 million that August, in two separate financial applications, the government said. Gates listed his and his wife's net worth as $30 million in a February 2016 application for a line of credit but just $2.6 million in a March 2016 residential loan application, prosecutors said. Manafort's attorneys called prosecutors' characterization of the case against him "embellished" and filled with "loose talk" over what they said amounted to an investigation for criminal tax evasion. Jackson said she had directed both sides to put their bail proposals in writing and from the bench admonished them because they had not done that. The government's allegations about the defendants' risk of flight came in what she called an unusual, "free-standing brief," without stating what terms it wanted or would accept, and that the defendants replied without details of what they sought for a release. In a nine-page filing Thursday morning, Manafort's lawyers said their client does not pose a danger to the community and should go free on unsecured bond with the condition he not commit a crime. "Mr. Manafort is ready to defend these allegations and preserve his livelihood and his assets," attorneys Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle said in filings. The prospect that Manafort would "simply up and leave" his wife of nearly 40 years, two daughters and grandchildren to "live the rest of his life on the lam . . . is an imagined risk," they said. Manafort is "one of the most recognizable people on the planet today," they added, asking, "Where such an individual could [sic] even hide?" Gates presented a new legal team Thursday, replacing George Dry, including Walter Mack of Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York City, Shanlon Wu of Wu, Grohovsky & Whipple in Washington, and Annemarie McAvoy, a former federal prosecutor and consultant specializing in financial crime investigations. Wu also said Gates would seek his release in a written motion. Downing on Monday had objected to prosecutors using the "valuation of assets that fluctuate greatly in different countries" to argue for Manafort's home confinement. Downing also ridiculed prosecutors for bringing what he called a trumped up "criminal tax case" with their allegations Manafort was trying to conceal assets from the government through international foreign transactions and moving money into the United States, including through accounts in Cyprus. "The funds deposited in the Cypress [sic] accounts were from legal sources," Downing and Zehnle wrote, adding, "It goes without saying that in an international scheme to conceal assets, individuals generally move them offshore, not to the United States." The filing showed signs of being hastily proofread, consistently misspelling Cyprus, for example, and at one point misidentifying Mueller's team as the "Office of Special Investigation." Investigators continued Thursday to probe the 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant charged with the New York truck attack, poring over his communications to see whether he had any help before the deadly rampage, while President Trump publicly weighed in on the federal prosecution of the suspect. New York police officials say that the attacker appears to have self-radicalized and that it does not appear anyone else was involved, though they said that continues to be a key question in the international investigation launched after the Halloween attack in Lower Manhattan killed eight people and wounded a dozen others. Authorities are trying to determine whether Sayfullo Saipov, who was charged Wednesday with providing support to a terrorist group, only drew inspiration from the Islamic State and its calls for adherents to attack using vehicles, or whether he was enabled in some way, which so far does not seem to be the case, officials said. On Thursday, the Islamic State, through its online publication, claimed responsibility for the attack without providing any evidence to support the claim, Reuters reported. A key difference in this case compared with past attacks is that Saipov, who was shot by a police officer after crashing his truck into a school bus, was taken into custody alive. "When you capture a live terrorist, you have the ability to question that person and you're able to glean a lot about those things," John Miller, the deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism with the New York City Police Department, said Thursday on "CBS This Morning." "Were they part of a larger network? Is this something bigger? Were they acting alone?" Saipov could also offer information to authorities helpful beyond his case, because a suspected terrorist in custody also lets investigators delve more deeply into "the arc of their radicalization," Miller said. "What we're seeing today is, in the United States, a great deal of that is just done online," he said. In court documents, authorities depicted Saipov as a man who plotted carefully and was proud of the carnage inflicted upon pedestrians and bicyclists Tuesday afternoon. Officials said Saipov told them he wanted to kill as many people as he could, picking Halloween because he thought more people would be outside, according to the criminal complaint. Trump tweeted hours after Saipov was charged that he "SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" On Thursday, Trump backed away from his suggestion a day earlier that he could send Saipov to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, writing that there was "something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed." He added, though, that the case "should move fast" and again called for the death penalty, which could create a hurdle for federal prosecutors in the case. One of the charges against Saipov could carry a potential death sentence, although the Justice Department has not said whether it will pursue that. If they do, defense lawyers could argue that Trump's tweets may prevent a jury from giving Saipov a fair trial. David Patton, Saipov's defense attorney, declined to comment on Trump's tweets. In a statement released before the president's comments, Patton said: "In a case like this involving so much tragedy, it's more important than ever to let the judicial process play out. How we as a society treat Mr. Saipov will say more about us than it will about him." Saipov was charged Wednesday in a criminal complaint, though authorities will eventually ask a grand jury to indict him, and he could face additional charges. His next court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 15, though that is likely to change after an indictment is filed. During a speech Thursday morning in New York City that was scheduled before the truck attack, Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemed to offer a subtle hint to the president that terrorism suspects can face justice in federal courts. He highlighted the work federal prosecutors have done bringing cases against terrorism suspects, noting in particular the conviction last month of Ahmad Khan Rahimi, who set off bombs in New York and New Jersey a year earlier; the recent unsealing of charges against three men who plotted to bomb the New York City subway and Times Square; and the apprehension of Mustafa al-Imam, a Libyan national charged with participating in the 2012 Benghazi attacks. But Sessions, a vocal supporter of using the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, also made mention of the facility there. "Terrorists should know: This administration will use all lawful tools at our disposal, including prosecution in Article III courts and at Guantanamo Bay," Sessions said, according to a prepared copy of his remarks. "If anyone has any doubt about that, they can ask the more than 500 criminals whom the Department of Justice has convicted of terror-related offenses since 9/11. And they can ask the dozens of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay." Sessions, who attended a roll call Thursday with officers, also heaped praise on the New York Police Department, in particular the officer who shot and wounded Saipov. The attorney general has had a strained relationship with New York City's leaders. In April he declared that gang murders there were the "predictable consequence of the city's 'soft on crime' stance." - - - The Washington Post's Eli Rosenberg and Abigail Hauslohner in Paterson, N.J.; Renae Merle in New York; and Devlin Barrett, Sari Horwitz, Julie Tate, Philip Rucker, Amy B Wang and Samantha Schmidt in Washington contributed to this report. As Republicans in Congress work to finalize a major tax cut bill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump's "MAGA-nomics" plan, Americans are not entirely enthusiastic about it. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week, only 25 percent said the bill is "good idea," a potential pitfall as Trump and GOP lawmakers try to sell tax cuts for corporations and individuals to the nation Thursday. Trump has repeatedly tried to generate excitement for tax cuts by giving speeches in Indiana and Pennsylvania and tweeting often about "massive tax cuts" that "you deserve." Yet, support for the bill doesn't seem to be improving. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in September asked, "Do you support or oppose Trump's tax plan?" Only 28 percent said they "strongly" or "somewhat" supported the plan, almost exactly what the WSJ/NBC poll conducted last week showed. In that poll, what support there was came largely from Republicans; fifty-four percent said the tax plan is a "good idea," while only 22 percent of Independents and 4 percent of Democrats thought so. The lukewarm support for Trump's tax cuts is a stark contrast to the sentiment President Reagan faced heading into the 1986 tax reform, which Trump is trying to emulate. According to a Gallup/Newsweek poll in August 1985, 46 percent of Americans thought Reagan's proposal to change the federal tax system was a "good idea." Reagan also enjoyed substantially higher approval ratings of his presidency than Trump does. Reagan's approval rating was averaged 60 percent in 1985, giving him a solid base of support as the House introduced the tax reform bill in December of that year. "Without President Reagan's support, the 1986 Act never would have happened," says Pete Davis, president of Davis Capital Investment Ideas, who worked for many years on the Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress. "The bill almost died at least a dozen times." Trump's approval rating is below 40 percent, which might be a challenge as he plays the role of salesman on taxes. The centerpiece of Trump's tax plan is a substantial cut for corporations, which is particularly unpopular with the public. Republicans and some Democrats say the United States needs to lower its business tax rates in order to make American companies competitive with foreign rivals. The GOP bill would reduce the top rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. But polling indicates that most Americans think taxes should go up for large corporations and the rich. A CBS poll released Wednesday found over 80 percent think that taxes for big business should stay the same or go up. This echoes a Washington Post-ABC poll in September, which found that 73 percent of Americans feel the current tax system favors the wealthy and 65 percent believe businesses pay too little. Trump and Republican leaders in Congress have been trying to cast the corporate rate cut as a way to create more jobs and higher wages for workers, since good-paying jobs remain a concern for many Americans. "We will cut taxes on American businesses to restore our competitive edge and create more jobs and higher wages for American workers," Trump said at a speech in Indianapolis in late September. But polls indicate that Trump and Republicans have a lot more work to do to sell the tax bill to the public. The latest Politico/Morning Consult poll out Wednesday showed the highest support for the tax bill: 48 percent said they support or "somewhat" support it. But sentiment dropped sharply when people were asked specifically about a tax cut for big business. Just 39 percent thought "large corporations" should pay less in taxes. Some question whether there is appetite at all for a tax cut. A Bloomberg poll in July asked Americans which issue was the most important facing the country. Health care was by far the top response; only 4 percent said taxes. But many of the recent polls show broad support for tax cuts for small businesses and the middle and lower class. America has yet to see the full details of the bill, making it hard to gauge people's views on this exact piece of legislation. But what's clear from numerous polls in recent weeks and months is that Americans across the political spectrum don't think the wealthy or big businesses should get a tax cut. WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientist nominee, Sam Clovis, withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday amid revelations that he was among top officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of efforts by foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to broker a relationship between the campaign and Russian officials. Court documents unsealed Monday revealed that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in early October to making false statement to FBI investigators about his contacts with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections. In August 2016, Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to organize an "off the record" meeting with Russian officials, according to court documents. "I would encourage you" and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to "make the trip, if it is feasible," Clovis wrote. The meeting did not ultimately take place. In a letter to the president Wednesday, Clovis explained that he did not think he could get a fair consideration from the Senate, which was slated to hold a hearing on his appointment on Nov. 9. "The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position," wrote Clovis, who currently serves as USDA's senior White House adviser. "The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases with intensity each day." Clovis' attorney, Victoria Toensing, told The Washington Post on Monday that her client "always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign." She described his responses to Papadopoulos as a courtesy by "a polite gentleman from Iowa." On Thursday White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump had accepted Clovis' request, saying, "We respect Mr. Clovis' decision to withdraw his nomination." However, Clovis indicated in his letter that he will stay on at the Agriculture Department in a senior role, writing, "I will remain a devoted and loyal supporter and will continue to serve at the pleasure of you and the Secretary of Agriculture." A USDA official confirmed that Clovis would remain at the department in his current job, but did not offer any further details. CNN first reported Clovis' decision Thursday morning. The professor and conservative radio talk show host from Iowa, who served as national co-chair of Trump's campaign, had come under intense fire since Papadopoulos's guilty plea was filed this week. But he had been a contentious pick since Trump first nominated him this spring, given the fact that he has no experience in the hard sciences and had made controversial comments in the past on climate change and gay rights. The position for which Clovis was nominated has traditionally been held by individuals with advanced degrees in science or medicine. The 2008 farm bill specifies that appointees to the position should be chosen "from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics," given that the official is "responsible for the coordination of the research, education, and extension activities of the Department." Clovis confirmed in an Oct. 17 letter obtained by The Washington Post that he has no academic credentials in either science or agriculture. Clovis, who possesses a bachelor's degree in political science, an MBA degree and a doctorate in public administration, repeatedly acknowledged his lack of background in the hard sciences when responding to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. "Please list all graduate level courses you have taken in natural science," the second of 10 questions requested. "None," Clovis replied. "Please list all membership and leadership roles you have held within any agricultural scientific, agricultural education, or agricultural economic organizations," the third question read. "None," Clovis replied. Asked about his agriculture research experience, Clovis replied, "I bring 17 years of agriculture experience integrated into both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses throughout my teaching career as reflected in my curriculum vitae as well as the Committee's questionnaire." And having twice run for statewide office, he added that "one cannot be a credible candidate in that state without significant agricultural experience and knowledge." Several Senate Democrats had criticized Clovis for the fact that he had questioned the consensus scientific view that human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have driven recent climate change and had suggested that protecting gay rights could lead to pedophilia. During a 2014 radio interview with Iowa Public Radio, Clovis said the connection between human activity and global warming is "not proven; I don't think there's any substantive information available to me that doesn't raise as many questions as it does answers. So I'm a skeptic." Stabenow called his decision to withdraw "a victory for science and our farmers who rely on agricultural research," while Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., another member of the Agriculture Committee, said in a statement, "Sam Clovis was almost a comically bad nominee, even for this administration." "He is inarguably unqualified, and he is wrong on almost every major issue relevant to the chief scientist post to which he was nominated. His nomination is all too typical of the anti-science agenda and the know-nothingism pushed by President Donald Trump and his administration," Leahy said. "But President Trump already knew that when he nominated Mr. Clovis, and that is not why his nomination was abruptly pulled today. Not because of his association with birtherism or as a climate change denier, or his other repugnant assertions." Lisa Archer, food and technology director for the advocacy group Friends of the Earth, said in a statement that Clovis "should resign his current position at the USDA and should not be allowed to serve anywhere else in the Trump administration. Trump is still trying to fill his government with anti-science extremists aiming to promote only corporate agriculture." WASHINGTON - More than twice as many Americans approve as disapprove of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of possible coordination between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and the Russian government, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds, indicating that the conservative effort to discredit the probe has fallen flat as the case has progressed toward its first public charges. A 58 percent majority say they approve of Mueller's handling of the investigation while 28 percent say they disapprove, the Post-ABC poll finds. People's views depend in large part on their political leanings, but overall, Americans are generally inclined to trust Mueller and the case he has made so far. Meanwhile, fewer than 4 in 10 Americans say they believe Trump is cooperating with Mueller's investigation, while about half believe he is not. A similar 49 percent think it is likely Trump himself committed a crime in connection with possible Russian attempts to influence the election, though more say this view is based on suspicion rather than hard evidence. Mueller's investigation entered a new phase this week as he revealed charges against three former Trump campaign officials: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime business partner Rick Gates, as well as foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Manafort and Gates were charged with crimes unrelated to their campaign work. In a 12-count indictment, the special counsel alleged they engaged in a conspiracy to launder money and defraud the United States, stemming from their attempts to hide their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. A court hearing in their case was scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday. Papadopoulos, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the nature and timing of his conversations with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections. His plea, which was unsealed Monday, describes how he had extensive talks to try to broker a meeting between campaign and Russian officials, and high-level members of the campaign seemed to entertain what he was doing - though some seemed to be wary. The poll finds strong backing for the charges against Manafort and Gates - nearly 7 in 10 approve - and a general suspicion that more is to come. A narrow 53 percent majority say those charges and the plea by Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI represented broader wrongdoing by people involved in Trump's campaign while 28 percent think they are limited to these instances. Mueller and Trump have notably different styles, with the president often airing his grievances publicly, while the special counsel works largely in secret. Trump was said to have fumed Monday at news of charges in the case, and on Twitter, he tried to cast the case against Manafort and Gates as unconnected to him. "Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????" he wrote, adding minutes later, "....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!" The president and his surrogates have long sought to raise questions about the credibility of Mueller and his team. In the summer, they focused on the people Mueller was hiring, noting that many had donated to Democratic political candidates and Trump's opponent in the presidential election, Hillary Clinton. Trump at that time called the probe the "single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history," adding that it was "led by some very bad and conflicted people!" More recently, Trump and his allies, buoyed by conservative media, have tried to point attention toward the Clinton campaign's role in funding the production of a salacious dossier about Trump - which was prepared by a former British spy who got information from Russian sources. The special counsel has explored some of the allegations in the dossier. Conservatives have also sought to highlight Clinton's alleged role in approving the sale of a Canadian company with mining rights in the United States to Russian's nuclear energy agency. The Post-ABC poll finds politics influences people's responses, with 78 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of independents approving of the way Mueller is handling the investigation, compared with 38 percent of Republicans. People on both sides of the aisle are more unified in supporting the particular charges against Gates and Manafort. A 57 percent majority of Republicans say they approve of that case, as do 78 percent of Democrats. Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty, and in a court filing Thursday, attorneys for Manafort asserted that the evidence against him had "been embellished." Partisanship also colors how people perceive the significance of Mueller's charges, with more than three-quarters of Democrats saying they represent "broader wrongdoing" by people involved in the Trump campaign, compared with a small majority of independents. Republicans are less united, with 46 percent saying wrongdoing is limited to Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos and 30 percent suspect broader misconduct. Almost a quarter of Republicans say they have no opinion. A larger 82 percent majority of Republicans say it is unlikely Trump himself committed a crime, though half of independents and 74 percent of Democrats say that is likely. Among the public overall, 19 percent think there is "solid evidence" Trump committed a crime, while 30 percent say that is merely their suspicion. Among Democrats, a 30 percent minority believe there is solid evidence Trump committed a crime. Trump had in the past inquired about his power to pardon aides, and Democrats have feared he might move to fire Mueller before the probe is complete. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, though, said this week Trump had "no intention or plan to make any changes with regard to the special counsel." And Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer overseeing the administration's handling of the Mueller probe, said there had been no talk of possible pardons for Manafort or Gates. The Post-ABC poll was conducted Oct. 30-Nov. 1 among a random national sample of 714 adults reached on cell and landline phones with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points. - - - The Washington Post's Scott Clement contributed to this report. Supporters of a towering cross-shaped monument at a busy intersection in Maryland asked an appeals court on Wednesday to revisit a ruling that said it was unconstitutional to have the memorial on public land. The request for a hearing by the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit follows a decision last month by a three-judge panel that said the 40-foot-tall cross maintained with taxpayer funds "excessively entangles the government in religion" in violation of the First Amendment. "This is a case of exceptional importance that threatens memorials nationwide. We are hopeful the Fourth Circuit will recognize the significance," said attorney Michael Carvin, who filed a petition for review Wednesday on behalf of The American Legion. Adrian Gardner, general counsel for the state agency that owns the monument, said in a statement that the use of government funds to maintain the memorial is "lawful and consistent with our role as good stewards of local history." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is also among the monument's defenders and called the panel's Oct. 18 ruling "an affront to all veterans" that "should not be allowed to stand." The issue for the Richmond, Virginia-based court was whether the memorial, known as the Peace Cross, is a secular tribute to local men who died in World War I or an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion that must be removed from public property. The case attracted attention from several conservative members of Congress, who said the legal challenge threatened to eliminate other monuments and inscriptions with religious significance, including at Arlington National Cemetery. After the panel's ruling, Hogan directed the state's attorney general to defend the monument's location on a grassy median at the intersection of Maryland Route 450 and U.S. Route 1 in Bladensburg. Built in 1925 with funding from local families and The American Legion, the cross honors 49 Prince George's County men who died in the war, listing their names on a bronze tablet. On the base are the words valor, endurance, courage and devotion. The monument sits on land owned since 1961 by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, a state agency that pays for upkeep and repairs. It is part of a larger memorial park in the immediate area honoring veterans of several wars and stood without protest for decades. The legal case was brought by the American Humanist Association, a nonprofit organization that argued the cross sends a message of exclusion and gives the impression only Christians are being honored. A District Court judge in 2015 disagreed, ruling the ownership and upkeep by a state agency was "driven by a secular purpose, maintaining and displaying a 'historically significant war memorial' that has honored fallen soldiers for almost a century." The 2-to-1 ruling from the 4th Circuit reversed that decision in part because of the height of the monument. "The cross is by far the most prominent monument in the area, conspicuously displayed at a busy intersection," wrote Judge Stephanie Thacker, who was joined by Judge James Wynn Jr. More than 2,000 people have signed an online petition submitted to the state agency in support of maintaining the monument, calling it a "landmark that has become synonymous with the historic town of Bladensburg." The petition says: "Don't let The American Humanist Association take this HISTORICAL piece of history away!" The request for review by the full 4th Circuit was filed by the nonprofit First Liberty Institute representing The American Legion. A separate appeal for rehearing was also filed late Wednesday by the park and planning commission. If the 4th Circuit opts not to hear the case, the future of the Peace Cross could end up at the Supreme Court. The high court has not provided clear guidance when it comes to religious displays on government land, allowing some monuments with religious content to stand, while ordering the removal of others. The cases have turned on particular facts, such as the size, setting and history of the display. WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump moved quickly Wednesday to gain political advantage in the wake of the New York terrorist attack, casting blame on Democrats for lax immigration laws and calling the criminal justice system's handling of suspects "a joke." A day after an Uzbek immigrant killed eight people on a Manhattan bike path in an act authorities said was inspired by the Islamic State, Trump seized on the deadly crime to renew his calls for a series of hard line policies. The president said he would move to eliminate a popular "diversity lottery" for foreigners seeking U.S. visas, direct the State Department to ramp up "extreme vetting" of immigrants and suggested he would consider sending the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States, to the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "We have to get much tougher," Trump said. "We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything." Trump campaigned on vows to get tougher on terrorism and immigration but his agenda has been largely stalled in Congress and in the federal courts, where judges have blocked several attempts from the administration to enact a sweeping travel ban on immigrants from a handful of countries, though Uzbekistan was not one of them. It was not clear how much action Trump could take on his own to make good on his renewed pledges. But his response - including blaming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., for helping create the visa program that allowed Saipov to enter the country - stood in sharp contrast to the White House's reaction to the mass shooting in Las Vegas last month that killed 59 people at a country music concert. After that attack by a Nevada man who killed himself, Trump denounced the shooter's act as "pure evil," but White House aides and Republican allies rejected calls by Democrats for a renewed debate over gun control laws, saying it was not appropriate to politicize the tragedy. On Wednesday, however, Trump said the United States needs a system of "punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They'll go through court for years . . . We need quick justice, and we need strong justice." Trump also said the criminal justice system was "a laughingstock" in how suspects were prosecuted and said keeping the country safe will require the "unflinching devotion to our law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence professionals." The comments are remarkable given the Justice Department's heavy focus on prosecuting terrorism cases. Just two weeks ago, a federal jury convicted a New Jersey man born in Afghanistan for detonating explosives in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York last year. Referring to Saipov as an "animal," Trump asserted that the 29-year-old was responsible for the entry of 23 immigrants, many of them family members. The president said such "chain migration" endangers national security and he called for the elimination of the State Department's Diversity Visa lottery, through which authorities have said Saipov came to the United States in 2010. It was not clear what evidence the president had for the claim; legal permanent residents are only permitted to sponsor their spouse and their children under 21 years old for green cards, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lottery program issues up to 50,000 visas per year to people from dozens of countries granting them legal permanent residency. The aim is to mix up the nation's melting pot, although the visas are a tiny fraction of the roughly 1 million green cards issued annually. "It's not good. It hasn't been good. We've been against it," Trump said. He has expressed support for an immigration bill from Republican Sens. Tom Cotton, Ark., and David Perdue, Ga., that would slash legal immigration levels by half over a decade, including eliminating the diversity lottery. Democrats and many Republicans have opposed the bill. "This man that came in, or whatever you want to call him, brought in with him other people, and he was the primary point of contact for - and this is preliminarily - 23 people that came in or potentially came in with him," Trump said. "That's not acceptable." Asked whether Saipov's family members represent a security threat, Trump said, "They certainly could. He did. They certainly could represent a threat." In 1990, Schumer, then a House member, introduced the bill that helped create the diversity visa program, which passed Congress with a bipartisan majority and was signed into law by former president George H.W. Bush, a Republican. In 2013, however, Schumer was part of a bipartisan group of senators that sought to end the program as part of a comprehensive immigration reform package that later died in the Republican-controlled House. Schumer denounced Trump's remarks and pointed to President George W. Bush's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which he attempted to rally the nation to find a common approach to confront the threats. "All President Trump does is take advantage - horrible advantage - of a tragedy and try to politicize and divide," Schumer said. "This is a tragedy. It's less than a day after it occurred and he can't refrain from his nasty, divisive habits." At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders rejected the notion that Trump had politicized the attack, saying the president has consistently spoken about the need for tougher immigration laws. "This is something that, frankly, the president has been talking about for a long time," Sanders said. "This isn't a new policy. This isn't a new position. This isn't a new conversation." The clash once again pitted the two New Yorkers against each other over an attack that played out miles from where they grew up. It also raised questions about whether the fallout could further complicate the already tenuous path for Congress to find compromise over legislation to legalize hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants, known as "dreamers." They were thrust into limbo in September after Trump announced the termination of a deferred deportation program created by former president Barack Obama that allowed them to live and work in the United States. "I have always believed in immigration as good for America - so do the vast majority of Americans. I stand by that today," Schumer said. "It's a good thing for America. Whether President Trump believes that or not, we don't know, because some days he's very anti-immigrant and then he calls [House Minority] Leader [Nancy] Pelosi and I to the White House and says, 'Let's help the dreamers.'" Other New York Democrats also took umbrage at Trump's response to the attacks. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the president's tweets against Schumer and the immigration system were intended to "point fingers and politicize the situation." Such tactics "play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society," Cuomo said. Sanders said Trump spoke on the phone with both Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, D. A summary of the call from de Blasio's offices said the president praised the efforts of the first-responders and offered federal assistance in the investigation, while the mayor thanked Trump for the help from homeland security officials. The two did not have much else to talk about, however. The call, the mayor's office said, lasted approximately five minutes. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Houston ISD, Texas' largest school district, canceled classes Friday so students can celebrate the Astros' World Series win. Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza announced the closure on Twitter. The city will hold a victory parade downtown at 2 p.m. Friday. OUR STORIES, YOUR INBOX: Get the Morning Report, a free email newsletter sent every weekday with top news from Houston, Texans and beyond. Check it out. "Our hometown heroes are World Series Champions for the first time in franchise history," Carranza said in a statement. "This is a memorable moment for our city and a time to celebrate, especially after all the challenges Houston has faced over the past several months." He later added on Twitter: "2 million expected in the city for the parade tomorrow. Congestion. Safety for students and staff. Go Astros!" Now Playing: In 2014 SI's Ben Reiter predicted that the Houston Astros, a team coming off three-straight 100-loss seasons, would be on the top of baseball in three years. His prediction came true. Here's how the Astros became the most feared team in baseball. Video: Sports Illustrated Most Houston ISD schools were closed for two weeks after Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain across parts of the Houston metropolitan area, and some were closed for a month after their schools were flooded. The district educates about 215,000 students, and at least 6,500 students were displaced after Hurricane Harvey. The decision by Houston ISD officials didn't have unanimous support. Some parents took to social media to vent frustration that they will have to make childcare arrangements on short notice. Mesha Davis, whose 10-year-old daughter Alisha attends Bruce Elementary School, about two miles northeast of the parade route, said she was caught off-guard when she heard Houston ISD was canceling school on Friday. "I work. I was not prepared for a babysitter," Davis said. "I understand it's history and all that fun stuff, but I would've liked to have been better prepared." Other than Houston ISD, the region's largest school districts all said they have no plans to cancel school Friday. Cy-Fair ISD, the region's second-largest district, will not cancel classes Friday, Superintendent Mark Henry said. He didn't heed the calls of more than 20,000 people who signed a change.org petition calling for the district to cancel classes. Cypress Ranch High School senior Bradley Hooton, who started the petition Thursday morning in his second-period English class, said students throughout the vast district latched on to the unsuccessful push. Hooton originally hoped to get 100 signatures after telling his English class peers to sign the petition, then watched on his phone as the number ballooned in just a few hours. "It made its way clear across our district, and I saw that some people in California and Canada signed it," Hooton said. "It's just been cool all day. Everybody in class has been saying, 'Sign the petition! Sign the petition!" Alas, Hooton's hopes were dashed a mere three hours after the petition started, when Henry tweeted that classes will continue as planned Friday. The 17-year-old, whose uncle Burt Hooton pitched in the Major Leagues for 15 seasons and coached for the Astros from 2000 to 2004, didn't know if his petition reached Henry's desk. "Something that I'd want him to hear is that this is our home, and this is the first time our home has ever won," Hooton said. "An experience like this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It may happen again, but it will never be the first time. District officials in Katy, Fort Bend and Aldine ISDs, which round out the five largest districts in the Greater Houston area, all opted to keep schools open Friday. "While we wish we could all be present to celebrate their World Series championship, Friday will be a normal instruction day in Fort Bend ISD," district officials said in a statement. "After Hurricane Harvey, each school day counts, and we have a full day of learning planned." No districts have announced school closures other than Houston ISD. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A political action committee mostly funded by the nation's largest teachers' union has received $225,000 to spend on supporting four candidates for the Houston ISD school board election and a city ballot measure, campaign finance reports show. Houston United for Strong Public Schools plans to spend in support of three incumbent candidates -- Wanda Adams, Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca and Anne Sung -- and newcomer Elizabeth Santos ahead of Tuesday's election, records show. The PAC doesn't plan to spend on candidates in two other Houston ISD board races. Political action committees operate independently of individual candidates' campaigns. Houston United for Strong Public Schools has received the most donations to date among PACs supporting local school board candidates. Records show Houston United for Strong Public Schools took in $150,000 from the political arm of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents about 1.7 million public employees, most of them working in schools. ELECTION: 6 seats up for grabs on Houston ISD board amid turbulent times The PAC also received $75,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union representing about 1.6 million public service employees. In addition to supporting the four board candidates, the PAC plans to spend in favor of a Houston city ballot measure to authorize the sale of $1 billion in bonds under a pension reform plan. In a statement, AFT President Randi Weingarten said union members contribute to candidates who work to make public schools a place where "parents want to send their kids, teachers want to teach and kids are engaged." "In Houston, that means first and foremost supporting school board candidates focused on helping children and educators heal and recover after Hurricane Harvey and ensuring Houston families continue to have control over their public schools," Weingarten said. "And it means electing candidates who support strong community schools, are focused on real learning over high-stakes testing and recruiting and retaining teachers so they stop leaving the district after only a few years in the classroom, and who will fight for additional funding from Austin." Flynn Vilaseca, Santos and Sung are current or former K-12 teachers, and Adams is a professor at Texas Southern University. The PAC is not supporting four other candidates with teaching experience. HoustonChronicle.com: Voters in 6 districts to decide on $2 billion in school bonds Adams, the board's president, is running for re-election in District IX against Karla Brown and Gerry Monroe. Flynn Vilaseca, who was appointed to the District VI seat in January, is seeking her first victory at the polls against Daniel Albert and Robert Lundin. Santos is running against Monica Flores Richart and Gretchen Himsl for the open seat in District I. Sung has a rematch against John Luman, whom she defeated in a special election last December for the District VII seat. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate EDINBURG A jury has found a former South Texas hospice administrator guilty of capital murder for killing an elderly McAllen man to gain access to his money and estate. Monica Melissa Patterson, 50, the daughter of Hector Tito Palacios, a former Hidalgo County Precinct 2 Commissioner and former Mayor of San Juan, was convicted Wednesday in the asphyxiation death of Martin Knell, 96. The state decided not to seek the death penalty in the case, so the conviction carries an automatic life sentence without parole. RELATED: South Texas hospice administrator, immigrant charged in death of elderly man Prior to her death, Knells wife had been a patient at the nonprofit Comfort House Services Inc. in McAllen, where Patterson was an administrator. In addition, Patterson was convicted of theft of property of $200,000 or more connected to Knells estate. The jury also found Patterson guilty on a separate count of theft of more than $100,000 but less than $200,000, related to money she took from Comfort House and one count of misapplication of property as a fiduciary while she was an administrator at the facility from January 2014 until her arrest in August 2015. For the theft of Knells property, the jury gave her 15 years and a $10,000 fine. For the theft from Comfort House she was given 75 years and a $10,000 fine. For the fiduciary violation, she was handed four years and another $10,000 fine. The sentences will run concurrently. Shes a thief. She committed theft, she did it through deception, said Assistant Criminal District Attorney Joseph Orendain in his closing argument Wednesday. And through Angel Mario Garza, her flunky, her co-defendant, she committed capital murderfor promise of money. Prosecutors said Patterson directed Garza, 39, to smother Knell in his home. Garza also faces a capital murder charge. At the time of Knells death, Patterson had been named payee upon death on his bank accounts and stocks, and was executrix and beneficiary of his will. Over the course of the five-week trail, in the same courthouse where Pattersons brother is a county court-at-law judge, dozens of witnesses were brought to the stand, though none as pivotal to the prosecutions case as Knells caretaker, Celestina Mascorro, 60, at his home. RELATED: Mexican Mafia member testifies how the killing of a San Antonio-area cop went down Mascorro testified that on January 28, 2015, Patterson ordered her to wait outside while Garza entered the Knell residence wearing plastic gloves. Patterson told Mascorro that Knell had to be put to sleep because he had accused Mascorro of stealing. Patterson then instructed her to wait 30 to 45 minutes before calling 911, Mascorro said. At first, Mascorro told authorities that Knell had been found slumped over and was not breathing, and a preliminary investigation did not indicate foul play. A justice of the peace pronounced Knell dead of natural causes, and no autopsy was ordered. But Mascorro later confessed to Texas Rangers investigators that Knell had been killed, explaining that she had lied to authorities out of fear for her safety. Patterson met Knell in late 2014 when his ailing wife was admitted as a patient to Comfort House. Pattersons defense argued that she had looked out for him. And, in closing arguments, defense attorney Ricardo Rick Salinas attempted to cast suspicion on Mascorro, the prosecutions star witness. You have to ask yourself this question, who do you trust, Salinas asked jurors in closing. But the prosecution painted a darker version of events and her motives. anelsen@express-news.net | Twitter: @amnelsen This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Antonio man who claimed self-defense in the 2016 shooting death of a woman whom his attorney argued threatened his wife with a gun, was found guilty of murder Thursday. It took a Bexar County jury of eight women and four men a little over three hours to find James Striblin guilty of murder in the death of Margarita Natividad, 28, the mother of six. Striblin, who had no reaction in court, had elected punishment by District Judge Jefferson Moore, who is expected to sentence him next month. Prosecutors said Striblin was frustrated, jealous and angry at his wife, Priscilla Cueva, who had gone out with Natividad, and that the victim was protecting Cueva from getting beaten up by her husband for being late. The defense contended that Natividad, who was using drugs that night, pulled a gun on Cueva because she wanted her to betray her husband. Prosecutor Alfred Ramirez told the jury in his closing statement that it was absolutely not necessary for Striblin to kill Natividad, whom Cueva called Striblins best friend. There were three witnesses, two gunshots, one scared, panicked wife, and one Margarita Natividad lying on the sidewalk, he said. Ramirez told the jury the death was not committed in self-defense, and that Striblin was not acting in defense of another person. Authorities said at the time of the shooting that it appeared as if Natividad had intervened in an argument between Striblin and his wife and was trying to shield Cueva with her body when she was shot after the women had returned home from a nightclub between 3:30 and 4 a.m. July 22, 2016. Ramirez pointed to Cuevas testimony, which conflicted with what she told police in an interview five days after she and her husband were located and Striblin was arrested. She never told police Natividad pointed a gun at her, something she told the jury Wednesday. Listen to Priscillas testimony. Shes lying. She spent five days with him cooking up the story. A 9 mm handgun was found near Natividads hand and foot, but none of the witnesses reported seeing it the night of the killing. Witnesses testified seeing both women on the ground in front of Natividads apartment in the 4000 block of Medical Drive on the Northwest Side. They said they heard the cries of two women pleading with J to not shoot. One neighbor testified she saw Striblin hit Natividad in the head with the butt of an assault rifle, and she dropped to her knees just moments before Striblin crouched down and shot her in the face. Recordings of the 911 calls captured some of the screams of the women and from Striblin as well. Defense attorney Robert Gebbia told the jurors he was sorry for the loss of Natividad, but that she was the one who pulled a gun on Cueva, and Striblin was protecting his wife. We know she pulled a gun because it was at the scene, he said as he showed the jury photos of the crime scene that included a 9 mm handgun. She racked it; she pulled it; thats use of deadly force. Gebbia told the jurors that what Striblin did was justifiable homicide. Nobody deserves to die; but if you pull a gun and put it in someones face, you cant argue it wasnt justified. In her closing argument, prosecutor Gretchen Flader said the women went to a club and stayed out too late, and Striblin was angry about it. That man was mad, Flader told the jury. He meets them outside (with the rifle) and shoots it in the air. Flader reminded the jury that Natividad, who worked at a strip club, owned a lot of guns, had a concealed handgun license and kept a gun in her purse. I carry one in my purse. If someones coming at me with a gun, I know Im pulling mine out, Flader said. Just because the victim uses drugs, works as a stripper and carries a gun, you dont get to take her life, Flader told the jury. Follow the law and the evidence and find him guilty. Murder is a first-degree felony. Striblin faces up to life in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced at 9 a.m. Dec. 7 in the 186th state District Court. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Previously unseen documents related to a string of grisly murders in Austin during the 1800s are now on display at the Travis County Administrative Building. Travis County Archivist Christy Costlow was cleaning out a warehouse during the summer of 2014, her first project at her new job, when she happened upon a pile of papers. When she noticed the word "ax," Costlow said she knew what the papers were files from "Servant Girl Murders" of 1884-1885. RELATED: Look back at the serial killer that terrorized Austin in the 1880s Seven servant girls were attacked in their sleep between Sept. 28, 1884 and Dec. 24, 1885 by a man wielding an ax who dragged them outside, raped them and killed them. The killer, known as the Servant Girl Annihilator, who could be the first known serial killer in the United States, also killed a man. Suspected killer Nathan Elgin was never convicted because he was killed before he was able to testify. The string of murders remains unsolved to this day, so when Costlow discovered the documents, she wanted to preserve them carefully, she told mySA.com. READ ALSO: 100-year-old photos show the University of Texas at Austin before the hoopla "I was very excited to find these," she said, adding that the documents have been digitized and are now preserved in folders in a climate-controlled box. Among the findings is an autopsy for one of the killer's victims and two "statement of facts" from husbands of the victims, she said. The documents can be viewed at the Travis County Administrative Building, 700 Lavaca, in Austin through November, she said. Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5 Turns out Alice Walker fans arent the only ones who cant get enough of the color purple these days. Much ink has been spilled of late averring the Lone Star States impending transition to the royal tint. Ought these pronouncements be believed? Or is this little more than grasping at demographic straws? Texas remains the largest Republican bulwark against the blue wall, so one can hardly overstate the significance of this political soothsaying for each partys electoral fortunes. Careful scrutiny of the available evidence is warranted to either substantiate these predictions, or lay them to rest. For nearly a century after Reconstruction, Texans reliably elected Democrats for governor and U.S. senator, and chose a Republican for president just three times. By the 1980s, that had changed. After sending John Tower to the Senate, Texas then elected its first Republican governor, Bill Clements, and began voting for Republican presidential candidates consistently. The congressional delegation shifted, too, as growing numbers of influential Republicans like Bill Archer joined its ranks. Democratic dominance in the statehouse proved more durable: both chambers remained solidly blue until 1996, when Republicans captured the Texas Senate, followed by the House six years later. From Towers 1961 election through the early 1980s, one finds obvious indications of Texas increasing preference for Republicans. If the purple-Texas theory holds water, we ought to see an equal and opposite trend occurring today. Yet a look at the numbers proves these reports of Republican demise are greatly exaggerated. For instance, take the Texas Legislature: As recently as the 81st Session, the GOP held a slender two-seat majority in the Texas House. That lead has since expanded to 40 seats. Likewise, in 2000 there were 15 Democratic and 16 Republican senators, while today that tally is 11 to 20. Until just a few years ago, Texas voters narrowly divided the statehouse, but have now handed bicameral near-supermajorities to Republicans. As for the Texas congressional delegation, Democrats controlled 17 out of 30 seats at the turn of the century, compared to just 11 out of 36 today. In other words, Texas is swinging all right its turning redder. Now, proponents of Purple Texas will quickly dismiss all this as the pernicious consequence of partisan gerrymandering. While the Legislatures creative cartography can certainly magnify trends in voter preference, slim evidence suggests it can wholly create them. Au contraire, a review of Democrats statewide electoral fortunes gives the lie to the misbegotten notion that Texans would be electing gobs of pink-sneakered progressives to Congress were it not for the partisan maps. Today, Republicans control every single statewide office in Texas. In fact, no Democrat has been elected to any of these offices since George Bush captured the governors mansion from Ann Richards in 1994 that 23-year losing streak is the longest in the nation. While it is true the Republican presidential margin has grown closer since 2000, consider: a favorite son was on the ballot in 2000 and 2004, while Donald Trumps unique candidacy likely had a similarly confounding, suppressive effect. Moreover, in the governors race, the Republican margin has increased every year since 2006. The strongest evidence of the partys feeble statewide footing? Their evident inability to field a credible alternative to Greg Abbott in 2018 at this late hour. The bottom line is the people of Texas have shown no quantifiable indication of an increasing desire to be governed by progressive Democrats, even in elections that cannot be gerrymandered. And as proven in 2016, demographics arent destiny. Our state stands to benefit from a plural exchange of ideas between two robust parties, but that wont happen until Democrats set aside partisan finger-pointing and wishful thinking, and instead develop a platform that actually appeals to the people of Texas. William A. Estes is a medical student at Texas A&M. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Pinergy is currently gearing up for growth with establishment of new Energy Services business. The smart energy provider, has announced the establishment of a new Energy Services division that is dedicated to providing both domestic and business customers with a range of energy efficient technology solutions. As part of this latest strategic move, the company has partnered with some of Irelands most innovative energy technology providers that support a range of solutions including solar energy, wind energy, heat pumps, LED lighting and refrigeration energy systems. Included among the partners is Longford based tech firm Airsynergy. 2017 has been a milestone year for Pinergy in scaling the business, Enda Gunnell, CEO of Pinergy said. We are seeing real traction in demand for more innovative and energy efficient solutions to meet the needs of both homes and businesses. The launch of our new Energy Services business now strongly positions Pinergy as the go-to energy supplier for advice and customised energy solutions and we are very proud of the strong set of energy technology partners that we are now building out. He went on to say that extending Pinergys smart meter based offering into the SME sector and micro-sectors such as dairy farming, fast food restaurants and property management businesses had also proved fruitful. Our energy supply and services offering allows businesses eliminate administrative costs in their business, manage risks associated with energy consumption, budget with certainty, and use real time information about their consumption to enable change and better manage and reduce their energy costs. Pinergy has also stated its continued commitment to roll out smart meters and innovative smart services to both domestic and business customers. The company has over 35,000 customers and is forecasting further growth within the SME market with its latest expanding portfolio of smart energy solutions and advisory services. Newly installed President of Longford Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Niamh Donlon has said that the planned sale of the Chamber headquarters on the Market Square is regrettable, but represents the only way forward for the Chamber. The old Harbour House is a listed building and a focal point in the heart of the town. It was purchased as a HQ by the Chamber over twenty years ago. At the Chambers recent AGM, members unanimously passed a motion from the directors of the property to sell the building. Speaking after the AGM, Ms Donlon said that the Chamber wasnt equipped to operate as landlords and the constant pressure of maintaining and financing the property had put an inordinate strain on the Chamber and impacted on its ability to effectively promote the interests of its members. She told the Leader: First and foremost the Chamber is about promoting and encouraging business in the county town. The efforts that were required to service the loan on the property and maintain it to the required level, were simply detracting from the Chambers primary objective. The property will now go for sale at auction and it has a guide price of 150,000. The Chamber plan to ringfence the proceeds from the sale and return to the membership with a view to seeing how this money could be targeted in the best interests of the town. Ms Donlon said one of the options could be to invest it in the proposed hub at the old Providers building. She told the Leader: At this early stage there is no set plan and every option and suggestion will be looked at. The decision to sell has been made and it was a very hard and emotional decision. It wasnt arrived at easily but it is certainly in the best interest of the Chamber and its members. Ms Donlon took over as President from Derek Scanlon, the recently appointed CEO at St Christophers, who announced his decision to step down at the AGM. The incoming Vice President is Fiona Fenelon. At the AGM, Ms Donlon paid tribute to Derek Scanlon and also singled out the work and dedication of the treasurer, Peter Dolan, who also stood down after four years on the Chamber Council. A bank manager with Ulster Bank, Ms Donlon said the absolute focus for Chamber now has to be on promoting the town, assisting businesses and attracting investors and shoppers to the town. She said: We need to roll out our Black Friday initiative and we want to build on the successes of the past two years. Partake in the Mexican festival Day of the Dead, catch a critically-acclaimed German flick or two these are just some of the things you can look forward to delving into this weekend! As always, there is something for everyone to get up to in our tiny island city. For the culture vultures: make a date with the Singapore Writers Festival 2017 which returns for a 20th year with a stimulating literary programme, or immerse yourself in the fascinating world of German cinema at the German Film Festival. For the party enthusiasts: indulge yourself in a boozy, poolside affair with infectious hip hop beats at Tropic Like Its Hot at Mercure Singapore Bugis. And lastly, for the spiritual seekers: if youve ever wanted to experience a Tibetan singing bowl session, heres a spot of good news: now you can. For more exciting things to get up to this weekend, browse the gallery above! Sarah Khan Read More: 7 New restaurants and menus to check out in Singapore this November 2017 The French Film Festival 2017 is back this November Wine Yoga, Doga & More: The 6 quirkiest yoga styles to try in Singapore? Want to Be a Trader? Start by Mastering Elliott Waves -- Here's Why A few tips from someone who's lived financial markets for almost 25 years In this new interview with Jeffrey Kennedy, the editor of our Commodity Junctures & Trader's Classroom services, he offers a few trading tips for those who are newer to the Wave Principle and explains how Elliott wave analysis helps you master ALL forms of technical analysis. New Trader Resource: 12 Real-Life Techniques that Will Make You a Better Trader Now Over 5 free videos, Master Instructor Jeffrey Kennedy gives you 12 battle-tested trading tips -- 100% free. These free lessons will help you understand the steps you should always take to capitalize on new market opportunities. Start watching now, free! This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline Want to Be a Trader? Start by Mastering Elliott Waves -- Here's Why. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts led by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. USDCNH Broke Below Price Channel Support USDCNH recently broke below the bullish price channel on the 4-hour chart, suggesting that the short term uptrend from 6.5555 had completed at 6.6635 already. Further decline would likely be seen over the next several days. The USDCNH pair is expected to test 6.5949 support, a breakdown below this level could take price to next support level at 6.5555. Below this level would aim 6.5350, which is the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement taken from 6.4412 to 6.6884, followed by the 76.4% retracement at 6.5000. If these levels give way, the pair would find support at 6.4412. A breakdown below 6.4412 support will indicate that the long term downtrend from 6.9867 has resumed, then the following downside movement could take price to 6.3860, which is the 61.8% Fibonacci support taken from 6.0152 to 6.9867. Near term resistance is at the falling trend line on the 4-hour chart, now at around 6.6360. Only a clear break above this trend line could indicate that the short term downtrend from 6.6635 is complete, then the following upside movement could bring price back to test 6.6635 resistance. A breakout of this level could trigger further upside movement towards 6.6884 key resistance. For long term analysis, the USDCNH pair moved within a bearish price channel on its weekly chart, suggesting that the price remains in the long term downtrend from 6.9867. As long as the price is in the channel, the rise from 6.4412 could be treated as consolidation of the downtrend and further decline to 6.3860 area is still possible. However, a breakout of 6.6884 key resistance will signal completion of the downtrend, then the next target would be at 6.7210, followed by 6.8588. Technical levels Support levels: 6.5949 (the October 20 low), 6.5555 (the October 11 low), 6.5350 (the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement), 6.5000 (the 76.4% Fibonacci retracement), 6.4412 (the September 8 low), 6.3860 (the 61.8% Fibonacci support). Resistance levels: 6.6360 (the falling trend line on the 4-hour chart), 6.6635 (the October 27 high), 6.6884 (the October 3 high), 6.7210 (the June 1 low), 6.8588 (the June 26 high), 6.9170 (the important resistance on the daily chart), 6.9867 (the January 3 high), 7.0000 (the important psychological level). This article is written by Franco Shao, a senior analyst at ForexCycle. 2017 Copyright Franco Shao - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Regulation Is Killing Community Banks - Public Banks Can Revive Them At his confirmation hearing in January 2017, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin said, "regulation is killing community banks." If the process is not reversed, he warned, we could "end up in a world where we have four big banks in this country." That would be bad for both jobs and the economy. "I think that we all appreciate the engine of growth is with small and medium-sized businesses," said Mnuchin. "We're losing the ability for small and medium-sized banks to make good loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the community, where they understand those credit risks better than anybody else." The number of US banks with assets under $100 million dropped from 13,000 in 1995 to under 1,900 in 2014. The regulatory burden imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act exacerbated this trend, with community banks losing market share at double the rate during the four years after 2010 as in the four years before. But the number had already dropped to only 2,625 in 2010. What happened between 1995 and 2010? Six weeks after September 11, 2001, the 1,100 page Patriot Act was dropped on congressional legislators, who were required to vote on it the next day. The Patriot Act added provisions to the 1970 Bank Secrecy Act that not only expanded the federal government's wiretapping and surveillance powers but outlawed the funding of terrorism, imposing greater scrutiny on banks and stiff criminal penalties for non-compliance. Banks must now collect and verify customer-provided information, check names of customers against lists of known or suspected terrorists, determine risk levels posed by customers, and report suspicious persons, organizations and transactions. One small banker complained that banks have been turned into spies secretly reporting to the federal government. If they fail to comply, they can face stiff enforcement actions, whether or not actual money-laundering crimes are alleged. In 2010, one small New Jersey bank pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Bank Secrecy Act and was fined $5 million for failure to file suspicious-activity and cash-transaction reports. The bank was acquired a few months later by another bank. Another small New Jersey bank was ordered to shut down a large international wire transfer business because of deficiencies in monitoring for suspicious transactions. It closed its doors after it was hit with $8 million in fines over its inadequate monitoring policies. Complying with the new rules demands a level of technical expertise not available to ordinary mortals, requiring the hiring of yet more specialized staff and buying more anti-laundering software. Small banks cannot afford the risk of massive fines or the added staff needed to avoid them, and that burden is getting worse. In February 2017, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed a new rule that would add a new category requiring the flagging of suspicious "cyberevents." According to an April 2017 article in American Banker: [T]he "cyberevent" category requires institutions to detect and report all varieties of digital mischief, whether directed at a customer's account or at the bank itself. ... Under a worst-case scenario, a bank's failure to detect a suspicious [email] attachment or a phishing attack could theoretically result in criminal prosecution, massive fines and additional oversight. One large bank estimated that the proposed change with the new cyberevent reporting requirement would cost it an additional $9.6 million every year. Besides the cost of hiring an army of compliance officers to deal with a thousand pages of regulations, banks have been hit with increased capital requirements imposed by the Financial Stability Board under Basel III, eliminating the smaller banks' profit margins. They have little recourse but to sell to the larger banks, which have large compliance departments and can skirt the capital requirements by parking assets in off-balance-sheet vehicles. In a September 2014 article titled "The FDIC's New Capital Rules and Their Expected Impact on Community Banks," Richard Morris and Monica Reyes Grajales noted that "a full discussion of the rules would resemble an advanced course in calculus," and that the regulators have ignored protests that the rules would have a devastating impact on community banks. Why? The authors suggested that the rules reflect "the new vision of bank regulation -- that there should be bigger and fewer banks in the industry." That means bank consolidation is an intended result of the punishing rules. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, sponsor of the Financial CHOICE Act downsizing Dodd-Frank, concurs. In a speech in July 2015, he said: Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer. But because Washington can control a handful of big established firms much easier than many small and zealous competitors, this is likely an intended consequence of the Act. Dodd-Frank concentrates greater assets in fewer institutions. It codifies into law 'Too Big to Fail' . ... [Emphasis added.] Dodd-Frank institutionalizes "too big to fail" by authorizing the biggest banks to "bail in" or confiscate their creditors' money in the event of insolvency. The legislation ostensibly reining in the too-big-to-fail banks has just made them bigger. Wall Street lobbyists were well known to have their fingerprints all over Dodd-Frank. Restoring Community Banking: The Model of North Dakota Killing off the community banks with regulation means killing off the small and medium-size businesses that rely on them for funding, along with the local economies that rely on those businesses. Community banks service local markets in a way that the megabanks with their standardized lending models are not interested in or capable of. How can the community banks be preserved and nurtured? For some ideas, we can look to a state where they are still thriving -- North Dakota. In an article titled "How One State Escaped Wall Street's Rule and Created a Banking System That's 83% Locally Owned," Stacy Mitchell writes that North Dakota's banking sector bears little resemblance to that of the rest of the country: With 89 small and mid-sized community banks and 38 credit unions, North Dakota has six times as many locally owned financial institutions per person as the rest of the nation. And these local banks and credit unions control a resounding 83 percent of deposits in the state more than twice the 30 percent market share that small and mid-sized financial institutions have nationally. Their secret is the century-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation's only state-owned depository bank, which partners with and supports the state's local banks. In an April 2015 article titled "Is Dodd-Frank Killing Community Banks? The More Important Question is How to Save Them," Matt Stannard writes: Public banks offer unique benefits to community banks, including collateralization of deposits, protection from poaching of customers by big banks, the creation of more successful deals, and . . . regulatory compliance. The Bank of North Dakota, the nation's only public bank, directly supports community banks and enables them to meet regulatory requirements such as asset to loan ratios and deposit to loan ratios. ... [I]t keeps community banks solvent in other ways, lessening the impact of regulatory compliance on banks' bottom lines. We know from FDIC data in 2009 that North Dakota had almost 16 banks per 100,000 people, the most in the country. A more important figure, however, is community banks' loan averages per capita, which was $12,000 in North Dakota, compared to only $3,000 nationally. ... During the last decade, banks in North Dakota with less than $1 billion in assets have averaged a stunning 434 percent more small business lending than the national average. The BND has been very profitable for the state and its citizens -- more profitable, according to the Wall Street Journal, than JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. The BND does not compete with local banks but partners with them, helping with capitalization and liquidity and allowing them to take on larger loans that would otherwise go to larger out-of-state banks. In order to help rural lenders with regulatory compliance, in 2011 the BND was directed by the state legislature to get into the rural home mortgage origination business. Rural banks that saw only three to five mortgages a year could not shoulder the regulatory burden, leading to business lost to out-of-state banks. After a successful pilot program, SB 2064, establishing the Mortgage Origination Program, was signed by North Dakota's governor on April 3, 2013. It states that the BND may establish a residential mortgage loan program under which the Bank may originate residential mortgages if private sector mortgage loan services are not reasonably available. Under this program a local financial institution or credit union may assist the Bank in taking a loan application, gathering required documents, ordering required legal documents, and maintaining contact with the borrower. At a hearing on the bill, Rick Clayburgh, President of the North Dakota Bankers Association, testified in its support: Over the past years because of the regulatory burdens our banks face by the passage of Dodd Frank, and now the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it has become very prohibitive for a number of our banks to provide residential mortgage services anymore. We two years ago worked both with the Independent Community Bankers Association, and our Association and the Bank of North Dakota to come up with the idea in this program to help the bank provide services into the parts of the state that really residential mortgaging has seized up. We have a number of our banks that have terminated doing mortgage loans in their communities. They have stopped the process because they cannot afford to be written up by their regulator. Under the Mortgage Origination Program, local banks get paid what is essentially a finder's fee for sending rural mortgage loans to the BND. If the BND touches the money first, the onus is on it to deal with the regulators, something it can afford to do by capitalizing on economies of scale. The local bank thus avoids having to deal with regulatory compliance while keeping its customer. The BND is the only model of a publicly-owned depository bank in the US; but in Germany, the publicly-owned Sparkassen banks operate a network of over 15,600 branches and are the financial backbone supporting Germany's strong local business sector. In the matter of regulatory compliance, they too capitalize on economies of scale, by providing a compliance department that pools resources to deal with the onerous regulations imposed on banks by the EU. The BND and the Sparkassen are proven models for maintaining the viability of local credit and banking services. It is time other states followed North Dakota's lead, not only to protect their local communities and local banks, but to bolster their revenues, escape the noose of Washington and Wall Street, and provide a bail-in-proof depository for their public funds. Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and the money trust. She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from the money trust. Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Natures Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org Copyright Ellen Brown 2017 Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. MARTINSVILLE City Sheriff Steve Draper said Wednesday night he is pleased that 22 percent of Martinsville Sheriffs Office employees are minorities, yet he is striving to hire more. He commented during a forum for municipal candidates in Tuesdays election, organized by the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce. Drapers challenger in the election, Jackie Dillard, a retired deputy with the sheriffs office, did not attend the forum. Chamber officials and participating candidates said they did not know why. In a phone interview after the event, Dillard said I feel it suits me better to go door-to-door and meet people rather than participate in forums, although he has taken part in some. Sometimes people dont feel comfortable asking questions in front of other people, he said, adding that talking with people individually enables them to get to know him better, and it helps him get to know them and what is on their minds better. According to Draper, 14 of the city sheriffs offices 63 employees are black. They include a male shift supervisor; two female school resource officers, one of whom holds the rank of first lieutenant; two female courtroom bailiffs and nine other males working in jail or courtroom operations. Martinsvilles sheriffs office mostly is responsible for operating the citys jail facilities and providing security inside the jail and the municipal building uptown. Law-enforcement mainly is the Martinsville Police Departments responsibility, although the sheriffs office provides support to police if needed. Im very proud, Draper said, of the number of minorities on his staff. He said the sheriffs office ranks sixth among its counterparts statewide in terms on the number of minorities on their forces. When positions come open at the sheriffs office, he said, they are advertised and publicized through the Martinsville Bulletin and the citys website, as well as through area colleges and universities. One of those schools is N.C. A&T State University in Greensboro, N.C., a historically black university. Draper added that in 2014, he wrote and delivered a letter to each predominantly African-American church in the Martinsville-Henry County area, asking their pastors to announce to members that the sheriffs office is seeking to hire black deputies, both male and female. He mentioned that he made a similar announcement during a breakfast sponsored by the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP. We work very hard to recruit minorities, Draper said. The forums moderator, local lawyer Phil Gardner, asked Draper what he recently has done to improve security in the jail, as well as for staff and visitors at the municipal building. Draper responded that under his watch, entry into the municipal building has been restricted to its front doors only employees have access to other doors. Metal detectors and X-ray machines have been installed at the front entrance, where sheriffs deputies are stationed. Also, security cameras now are installed outside the building, and court offices have panic buttons that employees can push if they feel threatened. The devices immediately send a call for help to police and sheriffs deputies, Draper said. Gardner asked Draper how the sheriffs office tries to ensure that jail inmates get some benefit from their incarcerations. Draper responded that inmates are able to study to earn GED certificates (the equivalent of high-school diplomas) and take part in career readiness programs. He said the installation of a tablet computer system to assist them in their studies is almost completed. The computers will provide them Internet access, but only to certain approved educational sites, he emphasized. Nonviolent offenders at the lower-security jail annex off Clearview Drive can volunteer to be on work crews that do various tasks citywide, such as picking up trash on roadsides and doing odd jobs assigned by the public works department, Draper said. The crews work has saved the city about $500,000 a year versus costs for having to hire workers or outside contractors to do the tasks, he said. The goal is to provide inmates skills they can use in life and to find jobs after their incarcerations end, he said. A lifelong Martinsville-area resident, Draper has been the citys sheriff for 24 years, and he has received some law-enforcement training. Before he first was elected in 1993, he gained 13 years of management experience in industry, he recalled. Draper said he is proud to be a past president of the Virginia Sheriffs Association. He emphasized that no other Martinsville or Henry County sheriff has held the post. Dillard, who retired from the city sheriffs office last year after 24 years as a correctional officer and courtroom bailiff, said in the phone interview that he understands not all city candidates were invited to the forum. Also participating in the event were commonwealths attorney candidates Clay Gravely and Joan Ziglar. The two revenue commissioner candidates, incumbent Ruth Easley and challenger Tyler Freeland, did not participate. Neither did Cindy Dickerson, the incumbent treasurer who is unopposed in her re-election bid. However, Easley and Dickerson were among the roughly 60 people in the audience at the forum. SPRINGFIELD -- It's the most direct attack on Peter Pan since Captain Hook. Greyhound, Springfield-based Peter Pan Bus Lines' former partner and now competitor, has targeted Peter Pan with a thinly veiled taunt on an Interstate 291 billboard. It reads, "Fares that make our competition green with envy." That is a reference to the dominant color of Peter Pan buses. The billboard is just a few blocks from Peter Pan's headquarters and from Springfield Union Station, the transportation hub both Greyhound and Peter Pan share. "Isn't that silly?" said Peter Picknelly, chairman and CEO of Peter Pan. Lanesha Gipson, a Greyhound spokeswoman, said the billboard is part of a new advertising campaign being rolled out all over the Northeast, with Springfield as a focus. "Now with the addition of nine new routes with 13 daily departures from our new home at Springfield's Union Station, we felt it was important for residents to know they have choices when it comes to bus travel," Gipson wrote in an email. Peter Pan and Greyhound in September ended a partnership under which the two companies cooperated on routes and sold tickets on each other's buses. Greyhound's management changed repeatedly and it held Peter Pan back from making technological improvements like paperless ticketing and boarding passengers in the order tickets were sold, Peter Pan said previously. After the separation, Greyhound came back with additional Springfield-to-Boston service and new service from Springfield to New York City's George Washington Bridge Bus Station. Peter Pan invested $13 million in new buses, constructed new ticket counters and hired new staff in each city it serves, and can now offer paperless boarding and is guaranteeing the lowest price on those tickets. Peter Pan said it will credit a customer's Peter Pan PERKS account for future travel with the difference if a customer finds a lower fare on another bus company's website for the same itinerary, within 24 hours of purchase. Sam Adams has announced the release of a beer with a three-digit price tag. The brewery announced the 10th release of its Utopias, a limited release, extreme barrel-aged craft beer. The brew is 28% ABV, uncarbonated and described by Sam Adams as "reminiscent of a rich vintage Port, old Cognac, or fine Sherry with notes of dark fruit, subtle sweetness, and a deep rich malty smoothness." The alcohol content is so high - more than five times higher than the brewery's lager - it is banned in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, and Washington. The beer is made with a blend of two-row pale malt combined with Munich and Caramel 60 malts and three varieties of German Noble hops - Spalt Spalter, Hallertau Mittelfrueh, and Tettnang Tettnanger. 68 wooden casks of the beer were created this year and 13,000 bottles will be sold nationwide for $200 a bottle. "Utopias challenges conventional thinking about beer but it is definitely a beer - that's what's so exciting!" Jim Koch, founder of Sam Adams, told Fortune. "Utopias is brewed like any other Sam Adams beer, using four main ingredients and the traditional brewing process, but it's the yeast strains we use, as well as our barrel-aging and blending process that makes Utopias truly one-of-a-kind." With his career rocked by multiple allegations of unwanted sexual advances, two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey is reportedly seeking professional help. "Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment," his spokesman told Variety. "No other information is available at this time." Earlier this week, Netflix and producer Media Rights Capital halted production on the sixth and final season of Spacey's hit series "House of Cards" because of the scandal. Meanwhile, the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced in a statement that it was withdrawing the International Emmy Founders Award it planned to give Spacey on Nov. 20 "in light of recent events". Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have come forward in recent days with accounts of how Spacey allegedly made unwanted advances. Spacey's advances toward young male actors was "common" practice during his 12-year run as artistic director at The Old Vic Theatre in London, Cavazos claimed. Montana said Spacey groped him at a Los Angeles nightclub in 2003 and followed him to the restroom. Those accusations follow the allegation on Sunday by "Star Trek: Discovery" actor Anthony Rapp that Spacey made an unwanted advance on him in 1986 when he was just 14 and Spacey was 26. Spacey apologized in a widely criticized statement in which tweeted that he was "beyond horrified" by Rapp's account, but did not recall the incident because he was drunk. Spacey was accused of deflecting Rapp's allegation by also revealing he is gay in the statement. A Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted Andrew MacCormack, 29, on a first-degree murder charge in the homicide of his wife, Vanessa MacCormack. Days after the Sept. 23 killing, Andrew MacCormack pleaded not guilty to the brutal murder of his wife in their Grand View Avenue home in Revere. A Chelsea District Court Judge ordered the suspect be held without bail after a state prosecutor detailed a police investigation that pointed to Andrew as the killer. Vanessa's death attracted widespread attention, especially in the Revere and Lynn communities. Vanessa, 30, taught second-graders at the Connery Elementary School in Lynn. MacCormack will be arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court on Nov. 14. Medford Police report 23-year-old Matthew B. Rudolph has been missing for five days now. Police say Rudolph, a student at the University of Massachusetts Boston, went missing from his Medford apartment on Sunday. That evening was the last time anyone saw or contacted him on social media. Family and friends told police they are concerned for Rudolph's well-being, saying it is unusual to not hear from him for such an extended amount of time. Police say Rudolph just recently moved into an apartment in Medford. "Matthew has had some recent changes in his life that may have caused him to feel depressed," Medford Police said in a statement. A friend told police Rudolph may be camping in the Middlesex Fells Reservation area, a wide stretch of land that lies in Medford, Stoneham and Winchester. Anyone with information is urged to contact Medford Police at 781-395-1212. The City of Quincy plans to sue pharmaceutical companies in response to the opioid crisis. Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch told the Patriot Ledger that "Big Pharma has been getting away from this for a long time" and that access to pills has become too easy. In 2010, the Quincy Police Department became one of the first agencies to carry and distribute Naloxone, known more commonly as Narcan, to reverse drug overdoses. The city's efforts even earned the title "the Quincy model" by national drug control agencies. Since Quincy's adoption of the life-saving drug, more than 1,200 law enforcement programs were created to offer Narcan in over 35 states, according to Narcan advocacy group North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition. Though it is unclear which pharmaceutical companies the city plans to sue, it is evident the City of Quincy is seeking financial damages and formal changes in the way Big Pharma operates. Reports say the city has signed a contract with law firm Motley Rice -- the same firm who successfully sued the tobacco industry two decades ago. According to the Ledger, Quincy will not pay fees for Motley Rice, but the firm is entitled to 25 percent of potential damages awarded to the city. In the 1990s, the law firm won $246 billion from the largest U.S. tobacco producers. That money was reimbursed to states for publicly-funded health care costs, marking the country's largest financial resolution in a civil litigation case. The city's plans to sue come on the heels of President Donald Trump's announcement that the opioid crisis be designated a national emergency. The declaration earlier this month directed federal agencies to use all resources available to help combat the growing number of opioid-related deaths across the country. Steve Wynn is known as a casino developer. But he is also an English literature major who studied anthropology. That was a jumping off point for him as he spoke to Boston business leaders on Wednesday, describing how the $2.4 billion hotel and casino he's building in Everett, a community north of Boston, is influenced by the ancient origins of Earth. Speaking at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce luncheon inside the Colonnade Hotel, Wynn pointed to the warmth of the sun, water and the plants producing oxygen. "Those are the primordial forces of life. And I said to myself and my colleagues, 'Look if we're going to get people to come out here in the desert or to Boston, to deal with the complexities of travel, we're going to have to resonate with human aspiration, which is fancy language,'" he said. "But the fact of the matter is if you stay close to the primordial sources of life - water, plants and sunlight - you resonate with people in a way that all of us don't necessarily articulate consciously," he added. "But it does move us. We all love sunshine and beautiful flowers. We love looking at the water." The reason people react that way is because "in some way in our souls we know that is the source of our own life, our existence," he continued. "And that's where I start when we dream up one of these places." The theme of the hotel is "flowers," according to Wynn. The lobby will look out over the Mystic River, the Boston skyline in the distance, and sunlight will come through the ceiling. A carousel of flowers will turn. The lobby will have two curved escalators - costing $900,000 each, ten times more than a straight escalator - and in between them will be the $28 million Popeye sculpture, Wynn said. The 27-floor hotel and casino resort is scheduled to open in June 2019. The casino developer admitted that the process for coming up with Wynn Boston Harbor, which was initially called Wynn Everett, was slow. "Art isn't easy," Wynn said. "It wasn't a question of how fast can we get to cash-flow, the question was how good can we make it?" he added, explaining how they got to the $2.4 billion price tag. Wynn Boston Harbor will also have an Italian restaurant, with a Frank Sinatra theme. Wynn plans to put on display Sinatra's Emmy, Grammy and Academy award given to him by Sinatra family members. In an effort to be family-friendly, the 13 restaurants, the lobby and the 671-room hotel will be separate from the gambling floor, according to Wynn. People will be able to enjoy the hotel without ever seeing a slot machine or a roulette table, Wynn said. "By law and logic, a casino is not a place for children," he said. "It's for adults. And we want the hotel to be enjoyed by everybody even if they have the kids with them." LOWELL -- The second pit bull involved in the death of a 7-year-old boy in the backyard of a home on Clare Street on Oct. 21 was euthanized Wednesday afternoon, the Lowell Sun reported. Lowell police told the newspaper the female dog was put to death at a Dracut veterinary hospital after a 10-day observation period. The male dog was shot and killed by police the day of the attack after it escaped its owner's yard and was found approximately a mile away. Police Superintendent William Taylor told the Sun the medical examiner has classified the boy's death as accidental and no charges have been filed in the case. The Boston Globe identified the boy as Javien Candelario. BOSTON -- A 24-year-old Yarmouthport man agreed to plead guilty to drug distribution charges in Boston federal court Wednesday afternoon and now faces a potential life sentence in prison. Kevin Fraga entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy to distribute and a single count of possession with the intent to distribute 400 grams of fentanyl, 500 grams or more of cocaine and 100 grams or more of heroin. Fraga and several others, including his brother Alex, are accused of shipping large quantities of drugs from the Boston area to be redistributed on Cape Cod. The Fraga brothers were arrested in August, and large quantities of all three drugs were confiscated from Kevin's Jeep, a Winnebago RV and the home the brothers shared. A week later, Kelvin Chales and James Ramirez were arrested in Dorchester. Authorities alleged the pair were the Fraga brothers' suppliers. Authorities found fentanyl pills and powdered fentanyl at two houses and a bank safety deposit box, all in Dorchester. Ramirez agreed to plead guilty to charges last week. Fraga faces a minimum sentence of 10 years and up to life in prison, five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $10 million. U.S. District Court Judge Allison Buroughs has set Jan. 24, 2018, for sentencing. WEST SPRINGFIELD -- A drug raid at the Westside Inn resulted in one arrest and the seizure of 700 bags of "blue shark" heroin, according to the West Springfield Police Department, whose Narcotics Unit executed a search warrant at the Riverdale Street motel on Thursday afternoon. Local police were joined by members of the FBI's Western Massachusetts Gang Task Force and the Hampden County Narcotics Task Force attached to District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni's office. Officers executed a search warrant at the inn, formerly Elsie's Motel, at 1032 Riverdale St. In addition to the bags of heroin, which were stamped with a "blue shark" logo, officers seized about $6,700 in cash, police said. There was never any "threat to public safety," said Kristen Setera, an FBI spokeswoman in Boston. A man was taken into custody in connection with the raid, said West Springfield Police Sgt. Nolan Ryan, who declined to identify the suspect because the investigation is ongoing. "He's cooperating," Ryan said. Public reaction to the news was swift on the Police Department's Facebook page. "The more busts, the more they may think twice about being here," said West Side resident Kathy Riley, claiming some city motels on Riverdale Street are a "nightmare" and haven for drug dealers. A Massachusetts college who wore a brown, German army uniform featuring swastikas on Halloween faces disciplinary action at his school, reports Boston 25. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy student was videoed by peers wearing the costume while eating a meal. School President Admiral Francis McDonald told Boston 25 that the costume, "was noticed by fellow students right away" and school authorities were "notified immediately." "The reaction by his peers gives me the confidence that we are moving the needle on matters of hate and bigotry," McDonald told the television station. According to 25News, the student faces disciplinary action and expulsion could be on the table, but the student remains in class as an investigation into the incident continues. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, a prestigious state college, is located on Cape Cod in the town of Bourne, near Buzzard's Bay. HOLYOKE -- Between January 2014 and August of this year, the Holyoke Soldiers' Home recorded 2,074 cases of residents falling on the property of the state facility. In 594 of those falls, a veteran was hurt. Injuries have included bone fractures, joint dislocations, altered consciousness or loss of consciousness, and skin tears. The Republican sought data on falls through a public records request to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, after reporting in September on employees and a resident who raised concerns about treatment of patients and staff at the 110 Cherry St. facility for aging military veterans. Employees said issues jeopardizing care included inadequate staffing, poor management and deployment of existing staff, a lack of well-being checks on veterans who live in dormitory rooms, and an increase in patient falls. Since that story, the Holyoke Soldiers' Home has changed its policy in relation to dorm residents, who now must physically check in every morning with staff in the main building across the parking lot at the facility. In response to questions about the falls, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Services said on Tuesday that the state takes pride in providing quality care for veterans and will investigate when allegations suggest that's not happening. The nature of nursing home residents' physical and cognitive impairments -- and the finite number of staff -- means that falls are going to happen at such facilities, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But state figures show the number of falls at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home steadily rising over a period of four months this year, from 45 in April to 70 in July. Such a rise was a major reason employees said they contacted The Republican after, they claim, the facility's managers did not address their concerns. Every case of a resident falling down at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home is subject to a nursing assessment and review by medical staff to determine whether adjustments are needed to the resident's care plan, a state official said. A registered nurse who specializes in preventing falls was among state officials who did a "high-level clinical and management quality review" at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home on Sept. 25. And a "complete review of all the fall prevention policies" is taking place, said Joe Truschelli, spokesman for the Department of Veterans Services. "The Soldiers' Home in Holyoke takes pride in providing the highest quality of care to our aging veterans, and while we are below the national average for falls data at state veterans' homes throughout the country, based on data collected by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, we are vigilant about preventing and treating falls and providing our veterans with the exceptional care they deserve," Truschelli wrote in an email. Moreover, he said, the facility maintains data on all falls -- including minor incidents in which there is no injury to the veteran. Some falls occur because not enough staff are available to walk residents to the bathroom and other areas of the facility, so they proceed on their own. In July, two of the residents who fell suffered fractured hips, employees said. According to records obtained by The Republican: In 2014, 563 falls were reported, with an average of nearly 47 a month. There were 165 injuries. In 2015, 577 falls were reported, with an average of 48 a month. There were 172 injuries. In 2016, 539 falls were reported, with an average of nearly 45 a month. There were 158 injuries. In 2017, from January through August, 395 falls and 99 injuries have been reported. Most of the falls occurred while residents were walking or trying to get out of bed or a wheelchair, according to the records. The Republican asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to recheck records to ensure that the numbers for falls and resulting injuries were accurate. Truschelli said the numbers provided to The Republican reflected the department's data on falls. Statewide, falls -- not just in nursing homes -- were the leading cause of injuries and injury deaths for people 65 years and older, according to a September 2013 report of the Massachusetts Commission on Falls Prevention. "These numbers are rising," the report said. Nationwide, over 1.4 million residents were living in nursing homes on Dec. 31, 2014, including 43,463 in Massachusetts, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) annual Nursing Home Data Compendium. Falls in nursing homes are not uncommon. From 2011-14, 16.3 percent to 16.9 percent of residents in American nursing homes fell at least once, with injuries occurring roughly 5.3 percent of the time, that study said. Defining falls Staff monitoring of residents at the Holyoke Soldiers' Home includes "the goal of proactively anticipating the needs of our veterans, improving the quality of care and reducing falls," Alice Pizzi, records access officer for the Department of Veterans Services, wrote in a Sept. 29 letter to The Republican accompanying the requested records. It was important to note, according to the letter, that the Holyoke Soldiers' Home provides four separate care centers, "all delivering individualized levels of care." Those centers include facilities for memory care, comfort care, long-term care and independent living. "Many veterans ambulate independently meaning they are permitted and encouraged to walk or move freely from place to place without staff assistance," Pizzi wrote. The Holyoke Soldiers' Home promotes mobility and autonomy for those residents who have the right to be mobile without restrictions, the letter stated. The word "fall" can be used to describe a number of circumstances that would be captured in the state's data. The definition of "fall," according to Pizzi's letter, is "any unintended change in position that results in coming to rest on the next lower surface (bed, chair, mat, ground or floor)." For example, an incident in which a veteran loses his or her balance and is assisted to the floor by a staff member is counted as a fall. Every fall is subject to a nursing assessment and a review in morning meetings, referred to by Pizzi as "a morning clinical huddle." A team of nursing, medical, pharmacy and rehabilitation staff reviews each fall. Recommendations from that team can result in adjustments to the resident's care plan, she said. "Falls are closely monitored by the quality team for trends and improvements," Pizzi said. The Holyoke Soldiers' Home has followed the nursing home industry practice of reducing the use of alarms residents can activate, with a focus on staff monitoring. The facility has reduced the use of anti-psychotic medications and eliminated the use of restraints in order to encourage and enhance residents' mobility -- both steps aimed at reducing cases of falls, she said. The Republican had a meeting scheduled on Sept. 1 with Holyoke Soldiers' Home Superintendent Bennett W. Walsh to discuss the numbers of falls and other issues. But the Department of Veterans Services canceled the meeting and offered a statement that morning from Truschelli: "The Soldiers' Home in Holyoke takes pride in providing quality care to our aging veterans, and will always thoroughly investigate any allegations of less than exceptional care. We recognize that our ability to continue providing a high level of direct care is contingent upon the professionalism of the valued staff at the home." The statement did not include data on falls, leading to the records request. State Auditor Suzanne Bump's office, meanwhile, has pending audit reports on the Department of Veterans Services and the Holyoke Soldiers' Home. The Soldiers' Home audit began in the fall of 2016 and lasted into this year. Officials have said Bump's office publishes about 100 audits every year -- some of which identify substantial problems, and some of which do not. Bump's office announced the Holyoke Soldiers' Home audit after the release of a 2016 audit report on the Chelsea Soldiers' Home. Founded in 1952, the Holyoke Soldiers' Home provides residential beds and inpatient care for veterans, as well as outpatient services. As of early August, the Holyoke Soldiers' Home had 237 military veterans in long-term care and 25 living in dorms, cared for by a staff of more than 300, Walsh said. The Holyoke Soldiers' Home employees interviewed by The Republican for the Sept. 10 story said 176 staff members had signed onto an effort called Employees Unite 4 Change. It is described as "a collective staff effort to identify and problem solve a myriad of issues greatly impacting veteran care and the facility as a whole." NORTHAMPTON - A forum will be held in Northampton this month considering the U.S.'s relationship with North Korea. The city's Democratic City Committee plans to hold an event entitled "The North Korea Nuclear Threat and U.S. Policy: Is War Avoidable? What Can We Do?" that will address the growing possibility of conflict in Asia. The event will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 15, from 7-9 p.m., in the Northampton High School auditorium at 380 Elm Street. The forum will be open to the public and will include a panel of foreign policy and world security experts, professors, and journalists, who will discuss the relationship between the two countries. The panel's speakers will include Dr. Michael Klare, a Five-College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies, Tom Countryman, Chair of the Board of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C., and Professor Dennis Yasutomo, the Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Government at Smith College. Also participating in the discussion will be Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Ma 2nd District, who will be joining the panel by video to talk about current efforts on Capitol Hill to avert war. "We are perhaps closer to war in Asia than at any time since the end of the Vietnam War, and this time we face a very real risk of nuclear weapons use," said panelist Michael Klare, in a statement. "We need to know the facts, and we need to figure out how we can avoid going to war." Elizabeth Silver, chair of the Northampton Democratic City Committee said that the forum would offer "people known nationally and internationally with unsurpassed levels of expertise." The event will include a 15-minute presentation by panelists, followed by a long Q & A session. "Especially in light of the president's Asian trip this week, it is critical to hear from them about what is actually happening in the region and what we, as a general but concerned public, can do to avoid war," Silver said. The event is being co-sponsored by a number of organizations, including the Smith College Government Department, the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership, Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, and Northampton Community Television. White House chief of staff John Kelly seems to have forgotten that he's supposed to be the adult in the room. Even most of those who support President Donald Trump had to have been cheered by Kelly's ascension to power at the end of July. After all, the Trump administration hadn't exactly been the picture of stability during its first six months, with the reality TV star turned president frequently veering hither and thither, sowing seeds of discord at nearly every turn. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, it was hoped, would put a stop to that by bringing some much-needed order to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And at least for a time if you don't consider the president's never-ending Twitter problem he seemed to be having a positive effect. But during a Monday TV interview, Kelly demonstrated that he's actually more like the president he serves than most had thought. Digging deeply into the divide over the Civil War and monuments to Confederate leaders, Kelly said that "men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand." Well, that's technically true, of course, except that some made their stand with slavery, a system that treated some human beings as chattel, as clearly inferior creatures, as mere possessions that could be bought and sold by their owners. But Kelly didn't stop there. He said also that "the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War." Well, that also could be seen as technically true. If you point to those in the slave-owning South as those unwilling to compromise, that is. Reasonable people can disagree about Civil War monuments. One can argue, for example, that efforts to remove statues of Robert E. Lee, who commanded the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, are attempts to whitewash our history. On the opposite side, others can strenuously maintain that we shouldn't be honoring a man who fought to end the sacred union that created the United States of America. Such debates can, and will, go on and on. But when folks work to establish moral equivalencies between those defending slavery and those who fought to end it, there can be no debate. One side was right, the other fought to defend an unrelenting evil. Our nation, of course, was created only through great compromise. Think the Constitution wasn't a work of pure genius? Consider just one fact: It united the free states of the North and the slave states of the South. And those who have learned even a bit of history know that there would be many compromises ahead. Most famously, there was the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which sought to maintain the balance of power between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North. And there'd be other compromises to come. But in the end, when the slave states were unwilling to maintain their position but instead pushed for still more, the possibility of compromise was out the window. You'd like to think that Kelly, who was supposed to be the adult in the room, would understand this and would be able to explain it clearly. Massachusetts is seeing a large spike in anti-Semitic incidents this year, according to a report released Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League. According to the ADL, there were 117 anti-Semitic incidents in Massachusetts between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 -- an increase of 44 percent over the same time last year. "Anti-Semitism is sadly becoming a daily reality for thousands of Massachusetts residents," ADL New England Regional Director Robert Trestan said in a statement. The Massachusetts incidents include 53 cases of harassment and 64 cases of vandalism, spread across 58 communities. The report also documents significant growth in anti-Semitism in schools and on college campuses. Among the incidents: Glass that makes up part of the Holocaust Memorial in Boston was shattered. Graves were toppled in a Jewish cemetery in Melrose. Anti-Semitic graffiti was found on a wall in Marblehead and at a high school in Reading. White nationalist fliers were distributed at Clark University in Worcester. The report found an uptick in anti-Semitism throughout New England, but that mostly reflected the large increase in Massachusetts. Nationally, there has been an increase in anti-Semitism in 2017, with 1,299 anti-Semitic incidents as of Sept. 30 -- a 67 percent increase over the same time period last year, according to the ADL. As in Massachusetts, there have been an unusually large number of incidents in K-12 schools and on college campuses. There was an uptick in incidents after the violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. While that rally was the most high-profile event, there have been 33 public white supremacist events in the U.S. so far this year. The states that have the most Jews tend to be the states with the most anti-Semitism, including New York, California, Massachusetts, Florida and Pennsylvania. "Every single day, white supremacists target members of the Jewish community --holding rallies in public, recruiting on college campuses, attacking journalists on social media, and even targeting young children," said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO and national director, in a statement. BOSTON -- Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream fame, will be in Boston Friday scooping ice cream to call attention to a ballot initiative aimed at limiting the influence of corporate money in politics. "Massachusetts is now ground zero for the campaign to get money out of politics," Cohen said in an interview. The ballot initiative is a project of American Promise, a national organization based in Concord aimed at getting citizen support for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. The 2010 decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money supporting or opposing a candidate as long as they did not coordinate directly with the candidate. Overturning the decision would require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would take a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, then ratification by three-quarters of the states. American Promise is trying to gain public support to begin that process. So far, voters in 19 states passed resolutions saying they would support a "28th Amendment" overturning Citizens United. Efforts are underway to place resolutions on the ballot in Wyoming and Missouri in 2018. In Massachusetts, the state Legislature passed resolutions supporting a 28th Amendment in 2012 and 2014. A Massachusetts ballot initiative is not allowed to be a resolution taking a stance on an issue; it must make new law. As a result, the ballot initiative would create a 15-member Citizens Commission to research, report and make recommendations to assist in drafting and promoting a constitutional amendment. Ben Gubits, associate director of American Promise, said Massachusetts is the first state to propose a Citizens Commission. If the ballot question does well here, American Promise may push for similar language elsewhere in 2020. "It's a precedent-setting ballot initiative because it establishes a Citizens Commission that actually holds politicians' feet to the fire," Cohen said. "The politicians' feet, they haven't really been hot enough." Gubits said the issue of money in politics is getting increasingly important as more money is pouring into political races. "Money in politics, corporate overreach in government is an issue that's not getting better, it's getting worse," Gubits said. Although a commission can be created without a ballot question, Gubits said the point of the question is to generate public attention and excitement. "The idea for a citizens commission is to keep the heat up, hold elected officials accountable to make sure the 28 th Amendment is moving forward," Gubits said. "By issuing public statements, holding hearings, talking about money in politics in Massachusetts, and ensuring swift ratification when it comes back to states." Gubits acknowledged that the chance of passing a Constitutional Amendment through today's polarized Congress is slim. But he said that is the point of generating public pressure. "Without building out that grassroots base and power, we essentially won't have the political power we need to say, Hey, x member of Congress, you need to support this," Gubits said. Cohen argued that the influence of money and special interests in politics is the reason why the country is facing numerous problems, such as high health care costs, lack of regulations on climate issues and high student loan debt. He pointed to the current debate in Congress over tax reform as an example of corporate influence. Congressional Republicans are considering cuts to the top tax rate, the corporate tax rate, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, all of which would help wealthier individuals. "Eighty percent of the cuts go to corporations and the ultra wealthy," Cohen said. "It's not a philosophy, it's a payoff. They're giving back money to the people who have been funding their campaigns." Cohen will be scooping ice cream on Friday at 1 p.m. at Boston University, at 3 p.m. at the Ben and Jerry's store on Newbury Street in Boston and at 6 p.m. at Old West Church in Boston. He will kick off signature-gathering events for the ballot question on Saturday at noon at The Ballot Box bar in Worcester and at 5 p.m. at Shire City Sanctuary in Pittsfield. Asked what flavor ice cream he would be scooping, Cohen would not say. But he said he has recently been enjoying Urban Bourbon and Chubby Hubby. According to Gubits, the People Govern, Not Money initiative has gathered close to 60,000 signatures, with a goal of 90,000 by Nov. 22, using a combination of volunteers, staff and paid signature gatherers. To get on the ballot in November 2018, an initiative needs 64,750 certified signatures. BOSTON -- Walk down the Statehouse hallways and, in the words of Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield, "The corridors are lined with dead white guys." Now, top female lawmakers are calling for the creation of a task force to study the art in the Statehouse "to ensure that it is reflective of the people of Massachusetts." The recommendation was included in a response by Farley-Bouvier and Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, co-chairwomen of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators' sexual assault working group, to recent accusations of sexual harassment on Beacon Hill. The goal, the women say, is to make sure the art in the Statehouse reflects the people who live in the state. "We call this the People's House," Farley-Bouvier said. "It's not at all reflective of the people of the commonwealth." Ehrlich added, "I think when there's visitors at the Statehouse and they walk around and look at who's on the walls and listen to tours, women especially or people of color don't see themselves reflected back at them." A spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Administration and Finance, which oversees the Statehouse, did not respond to requests for comment. One reason for the disparity is that many of the portraits on the Statehouse walls are of the former Massachusetts governors -- all but one of whom were male and all but one of whom were white. Former acting Gov. Jane Swift was the only female governor and former Gov. Deval Patrick was the only black governor. Farley-Bouvier said the former governors who are depicted include some appointed by the British king during colonial times, who only served a few months. However, nowhere in the Statehouse is there a depiction of Susan B. Anthony, the Massachusetts-born activist who campaigned for women's suffrage. "This idea that it's always been this way is not acceptable to me," Farley-Bouvier said. There is one wall in the Statehouse dedicated to women's history, featuring pictures and quotes from six significant Massachusetts women. But Farley-Bouvier and Ehrlich note that it is in a quiet corner, far less prominent than the main hallways that are lined with artwork depicting men. "Unfortunately, that's the majority of the women in the whole Statehouse," Ehrlich said. There is also a statue of female Army nurses in Nurses' Hall and a gubernatorial portrait of Swift. "That's about it for women in artwork across the Statehouse," said Lauren Scribi, executive director of the Massachusetts Caucus of Women Legislators. Thursday, the official portrait of former Senate President Therese Murray will be unveiled. Portraits of the Senate presidents are displayed in the Senate Reading Room. Murray was the first female Senate president. Today, there are 51 women in the 200-person state Legislature. There have never been more than 52 women in the Legislature at any one time. Historically, 197 women have held seats in the state Legislature, compared with around 20,000 men, according to the Caucus of Women Legislators. Legislative leaders looking to fast track a bill that would guarantee women in Massachusetts access to free coverage for birth control received a cost analysis key to moving the measure forward that determined the benefit would add between 7 cents and 20 cents to monthly health insurance premiums. The review produced by the Center for Health Information and Analysis found that mandating coverage of birth control without co-payments for women in Massachusetts would cost the health care system between $1.9 million and $5.7 million annually over the next five years. The per month per member increase would amount to an increase of less than one half of 1 percent in total premiums for employers and individuals. Rep. Aaron Michlewitz and Sen. Jamie Eldridge wrote to CHIA in early October requesting an expedited review of the legislation after President Donald Trump expanded employers' ability to opt out of the free birth control coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act on moral grounds. State law requires a cost analysis of all proposed new insurance benefit mandates before they can be moved out of committee. "We're taking a look at. We're reviewing it. And hopefully we'll have some news shortly," Michlewitz told the News Service Wednesday. The CHIA report was filed with the Legislature Tuesday evening, and the North End Democrat said he spent part of the night reviewing its finding. Michlewitz could not say whether he would push for a vote in the House before the Legislature breaks for the holidays on Nov. 15 until after the New Year. "We want to make sure that it's properly constructed, and because there was an agreement between the insurers and the advocacy groups, we're trying to make sure all those pieces can get done. We would like to do something sooner rather than later, but I don't want to put a timeline on it because I don't think that's fair to the issue," Michlewitz said. Massachusetts already requires insurers to cover birth control, but not without co-payments. The so-called ACCESS bill, filed by Senate Majority Leader Harriette Chandler and Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, would guarantee free access to oral contraception for women in Massachusetts, let women pick up a 12-month supply of birth control after their initial prescription, and mandate coverage of emergency contraception at pharmacies without a copayment or a new prescription. Before a hearing on the legislation last month, Massachusetts health insurers and advocates, including Planned Parenthood, announced that they had agreed to compromise language that would ensure their support for the bill, if added. The 78-page report, prepared for CHIA by BerryDunn, found that the most costly element to the legislation was the requirement that insurers cover all versions of prescribed, FDA-approved oral contraceptives without cost sharing. In total, the new coverage mandates would add between 84 cents and $2.40 to the annual premiums for a Massachusetts subscribers, or an increase of 0.042 percent on the high end. CHIA also noted that at least one study has shown that women receiving birth control pills for 13 cycles at a time were more likely to receive routine and recommended Pap and chlamydia tests and were less likely to have a pregnancy test than women who had to fill their prescriptions more regularly. Women who received a full year's supply of birth control were also 30 percent less likely to have an unintended pregnancy than women receiving one, three-month supply. "It's certainly reasonable for what we're trying to accomplish here, but I think we need to delve a little more into the numbers and take a closer look at it before we make a full determination from the committee's standpoint," Michlewitz said. He added, "Let's put it this way. It wouldn't be the highest per member per month we've ever done, but it would certainly not be the lowest." Some Catholic organizations oppose the bill, despite the exemption for church or qualified church-controlled organizations who would be allowed to opt out. The protections for free birth control would also not apply to the self-insured market, which accounts for many large employers in Massachusetts. Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle has called the bill a "special interest legislation is intended to maximize contraceptive use." Gov. Charlie Baker pledged in March to use state resources to offset federal funding cuts to Planned Parenthood that were being threatened by Republicans in Congress, and said last month after Trump issued new birth control coverage rules that he supports the concepts of the compromise struck in Massachusetts between insurers and advocates. This story elaborates on a story published at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017: Ward candidates in Holyoke debate Spanish-speaking importance, voting records HOLYOKE -- Challengers contested records of the incumbents seated beside them on issues such as constituent service at a debate Wednesday between candidates for City Council ward seats held at Kelly School. "I think it's time for a change in Ward 1," candidate Juan G. Sanchez said, adding later, "There's hardly any resident engagement in the ward." "I've been in the trenches through this," Ward 1 Councilor Gladys Lebron-Martinez said. "I've lived in the neighborhood for 20 years." In Ward 3, challenger Darlene Elias said, "Many of the residents are feeling not listened to or disengaged. They want a new voice in Ward 3." "I appreciate the respectful comment," Ward 3 Councilor David K. Bartley said. "That's why we have a democracy, that's why we have an election in a week...Rhetoric is all great and good and you've heard a lot of it tonight, but I'll certainly let my voting record" and education and passion for Holyoke speak for itself. Election Day is Tuesday. The debate included Ward 2 incumbent Nelson R. Roman and challenger J'Anthony I. Smith and Ward 6 candidates Juan C. Anderson-Burgos and James Brunault. Kevin A. Jourdain, the incumbent Ward 6 councilor and current City Council president, is not running for re-election. Ward 4 Councilor Jossie M. Valentin, who is unopposed for re-election, also participated. The other two ward councilors who are unopposed in Tuesday's election, Linda L. Vacon of Ward 5 and Todd A. McGee of Ward 7, were invited to participate but were unable to do so because of other commitments. City neighborhood associations, El Sol Latino, Holyoke Media, The Holyoke High Herald and Radioplasma organized the ward candidates event. Besides constituent service, topics included the importance of elected officials being able to speak Spanish, which is the main or only language of many of the Latinos who live in Holyoke, and fire protection. Anderson-Burgos said his ability to speak Spanish would help him communicate with and get involved the Latinos who live in Ward 6's Beaudoin Village and Jarvis Heights. He questioned whether Brunault, who had said he'd knocked on every Ward 6 door in campaigning, had visited such largely Latino sites. "Again, it is very important to open up dialogue in two languages, especially when there are Latinos in Ward 6, and plenty of them, and their concerns are that their voices are not heard....because any voice that is unheard is not fair," Anderson-Burgos said. It would hardly be helpful to the residents of Puerto Rico who are due to come here to escape the devastation of Hurricane Maria and say, "Hold on, let me get you a translator," he said. Brunault said he has visited Beaudoin Village and Jarvis Heights areas twice. He, in turn, questioned the propriety of Burgos being among candidates who have accepted campaign donations from a company that is building a medical marijuana facility at 28 Appleton St. Anderson-Burgos received $2,500 from GTI Massachusetts NP Corp. executives. Brunault said he wouldn't accept campaign donations from a company with an "active concern" before the city. "My opponent has, unfortunately, not said the same," he said. Further, Brunault noted Anderson-Burgos' voting record in city, state and federal elections of only 40 percent since 2002. "His participation has, unfortunately, not been as high as it could be," said Brunault, noting his own voting record was 100 percent. Brunault also said his job as a counselor and job placement specialist with the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission here puts him in touch with a mostly Latino clientele, so he is experienced in communicating with all people. Holyoke has a history of marginalizing Latinos, said Brunault, who said, "I would say 70 percent of the people I work with who come into our office are people of Hispanic origins." Anderson-Burgos has said previously he had sound reasons, including caring for a friend, for his voting decisions. "I come from a community in Holyoke that was not reached out to by many city leaders in the past," Anderson-Burgos said when Jourdain raised the issue in 2015. "Growing up, I don't ever remember someone knocking on our door asking my parents for their vote. The community I come from often felt marginalized and devalued. We didn't vote because nobody gave us a reason to believe that it mattered." Anderson-Burgos said he was raised by his grandparents. His grandfather worked at the former Hart Wool Combing Factory and his grandmother was seamstress, he said. "Planning is fundamental, this is what I learned from my grandparents growing up in Holyoke...He would say, do you have a plan? In order to succeed, you must have a plan....My grandparents had a plan and I am living proof that it worked," Anderson-Burgos said. Brunault said in his rebuttal on the language barrier issue that he has visited every address in Ward 6. "I have yet to meet a person in the city of Holyoke that I have not been able to conmunicate with...so it has not yet been an issue," Brunault said. Roman said accomplishments in his first term as Ward 2 Councilor include helping residents of Ward 2's Churchill, Ingleside, Springdale and South Holyoke areas form or improve on neighborhood associations, establishing the Puerto Rican Cultural Area in South Holyoke and The Flats and co-founding the Taste of South Holyoke Festival. "What Ward 2 needs is a proven leader," who will fight misogyny, sexism and racism, Roman said. "And I carry all of you with me every day....I hope to continue on in this work." Roman also announced that if re-elected, it would be his last term as Ward 2 counncilor, as he would seek an at large seat in future elections. J'Anthony Isiah Smith Sr. is 19 and a student at Holyoke Community College. "I'm here to remind you of how democracy works. The election is coming up in six days," he said. Voters must research candidates instead of just voting for a name or party favorite, he said. "It's easy to just check on that box, whoever you like, whoever is with the party you want," Smith said. Language barriers such as those faced by people who speak only or mostly Spanish are about more than just trying to understand words. The matter involves helping people understand the process being discussed in a language they are trying to grasp, he said. "That's where I feel we need to do more," Smith said. When it was his turn to speak again, Roman did so first in Spanish, then noted in English that 90 percent of people in Ward 2 speak mostly or only Spanish. His campaign signs are in English and Spanish, because if signs in only English, "What does that tell our community?" All city councilors march in the Holyoke St. Patrick's Parade but only on the Latino ones participate in the Puerto Rican Parade, said Roman, prompting one of several bursts of applause. Spanish language translations of City Council agendas and elsewheree in government affairs is necessary, he said. "We have to work together to stop this race divide," Roman said. Sanchez said his main goal if elected will be to keep Ward 1 residents informed and involved. He would establish neighborhood associations and a bilingual newsletter, he said. Lebron-Martinez said she has worked on the City Council since 2012, and the School Committee before that, when both boards had few Latinos. She has sought to keep ward residents informed, she said. "This is how I realize that we need more representation. I have been telling (residents) that the opportunities are there," Lebron-Martinez said. Sanchez thanked Lebron-Martinez for her work, but questioned why Ward 1 has lacked the festivals and cleanup days held in other wards. "I really want to replicate a lot of that in Ward 1," he said. Elias said the barrier that Spanish-speaking residents face is a "systemic issue," a wall that exists in the schools and government here in general, with the city not receptive to moving fast to help such people. "So to me that's a really big concern. It acts as a major issue," Elias said. Bartley said the city's diversity has made him a better person and Holyoke a better city. But key to helping Latinos is placing more Latinos in City Hall positions or appointing them to city boards, and that responsibility lies with the mayor, he said: "It's got to start with Room 1...I don't see it...It's a lack of leadership." Elias said Bartley was "point on" as far as lack of diversity in city government, with political connections most often determining elevations instead of ability. Ward 3 residents have told her the issues that concern them most are traffic, panhandling, increased crime and the need to ensure responsible business development. While Bartley does a good job of reaching out by holding monthly meetings, Elias said she would meet in smaller sections to ensure more concerns are heard and can get addressed. "How do we get you, the voters, involved?" Bartley said. "How do we get us, as elected officials and candidates in touch with you? That is the age -old question, that's representative democracy." His efforts have included establishing a monthly meeting model featuring the ward councilor and School Committee member that other councilors have copied. He pushed to establish the Purple Heart Trail in the city and for a Holyoke Day at the annual Big E fair in West Springfield, he said. Fire Department protection has been an issue in City Council races and in the battle between Mayor Alex B. Morse and candidate Jay Ferreira, a former councilor. The debate has centered on the browning out, or temporary removal of service, of Engine 2 and then its elimination as a regular part of the rotation. The Fire Commission voted June 21 to remove Engine 2 from service for 90 days beginning July 1 in a plan designed to restaff and increase first-response capabilities. Firefighters and others have said the plan would weaken public safety. The trial shut down of Engine 2 was to be analyzed after the 90 days with a study of the Fire Department. But the support expressed for such a study never materialized into an appropriation to provide funding and a search to hire a consultant. Fire Chief John A. Pond has said that his reorganization plan involves shifting firefighters from Engine 2 to other trucks and would increase the number of firefighters per vehicle on initial responses in an emergency. Bartley was critical of Morse's decision against funding the study of Fire Department personnel and equipment capabilities and needs. Mayor said "no to the audit, no to public safety. This is not a personal attack. I'm just laying out the facts," Bartley said. Lebron-Martinez said that she has always voted in favor of public safety funding, but that passage of orders requires majority approval from the 15-member Council and sometimes orders can stuck in committee. "I do not play with people's lives. I just want to make that clear," Lebron-Martinez said. Sanchez, noting he has been endorsed by the firefighters union, said it doesn't make sense to remove any trucks from service that could be deployed to the densely populated areas of the ward. "I agree with my colleague, public safety should be the first on our agenda for anyone," said Lebron Martinez, adding, "I've been a champion, you can look it up." That led to Sanchez saying it was one thing merely to cast a vote on a matter, and another to argue for its passage. "I'll be a voice, I'll be a force to be reckoned with when it comes to public safety in the city of Holyoke," Sanchez said. Roman said he met with Pond as one his first steps as Ward 2 councilor and learned a lot about fire coverage. It's a "myth" to say Engine 2 is Ward 2's only fire coverage, he said. "The Fire Department's there without hesitation," he said. He also praised Morse's problem property group, a board of city staff that catalogues abandoned buildings and targets the most dangerous for demolition. The real problem is the "slum lords" who own apartment buildings but fail to care for them, Roman said. Smith said public safety shouldn't be subject to a budget number. "These are human lives that we're putting at stake because of a budget," he said. Valentin said helping the community remains her priority. She was not born here, but is active in numerous ways, and such residents are as valid in the community as natives, she said,. "I look forward to continuing to serve," Valentin said. She said it was "terribly, terribly crucial" for an elected official to be able to speak Spanish in certain wards, where for many people Spanish is their most comfortable, or only, language. Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill that would create a registry for home care workers. The goal is to ensure that a senior who uses a home care worker from an agency that is under a state contract knows who is coming into their home. "The initial purpose of the bill is to provide consumer protection for people as they do rely on those services to ensure that whether it's them or a family member making a decision about who's coming into their home that there is information about the people that are filling those positions," said Sen. James T. Welch, D-West Springfield, Senate chairman of the Health Care Financing Committee. But the bill has run into concerns about how to ensure safety for clients while at the same time not compromising the privacy of the workers. "We are certainly concerned about the rights of the worker and their due process and having an opportunity to decide whether or not they want their personal information...uploaded to a system," said Lisa Gurgone, executive director of the Home Care Aide Council, which represents home care workers. A version of the bill was included in the fiscal 2018 budget that passed the Legislature. It was vetoed by Gov. Charlie Baker, who cited privacy concerns for home care workers. Different versions of the bill have been proposed by members of the House, members of the Senate and the governor and are working their way through the legislative process. The bill would require home care workers who work for state-contracted agencies to include in a database their name, home and mailing addresses, gender, job title, and trainings or certifications. The information could be reported to labor unions, home care worker agencies and private organizations that have state contracts to connect people with elder services. Home care aides have raised concerns about what this means for workers who may not want to disclose personal information. For example, workers who are victims of domestic violence would not want a perpetrator to be able to track down their address. "The worker loses the ability to control what personally identifying information gets out in the public domain," Gurgone said. One change being discussed would create a method for workers to opt out of having personal information included in the registry. Another proposal would create exemptions for workers who have been the victim of domestic violence, stalking or sexual assault. A bill pending in the Senate would create a registry focused more on training than on personal information. That bill would set up a licensing process and use the registry to track who has completed home health aide training requirements. Under that proposal, the registry would not include personal information like home address, but would include work-related information like what training the worker completed, their language abilities and their employment history. Gurgone said home care workers favor the training registry because workers would benefit from being included. The original proposal, she said, "would give other agencies and elder service programs information, but it's not clearly giving the worker any benefit in terms of getting more jobs and showing consumers what they have." Welch said the bill is an example of the legislative process resulting in a stronger bill. "As it's gone through the process, there were more protections to protect workers as well," Welch said. "The purpose behind the registry is to provide safety both for consumers and at the same time provide a safe working environment for those that are homecare workers." BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a bill aimed at making it easier for students to report sexual assault on campus. The bill comes at a time of renewed focus on sexual violence nationally, after accusations were leveled at several famous figures, including movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Advocates for the bill say sexual assault on campus has long been a problem. A 2015 survey of 150,000 students by the Association of American Universities found that 23 percent of female undergraduates reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact. Between 72 percent and 95 percent of incidents went unreported. "That's indicative that we've got an issue here," said Sen. Michael Moore, D-Millbury, who sponsored the bill. "Why aren't they reporting? Is there a cultural change that needs to take place?" The bill, S.2191, would include mandatory training and programming related to dating violence, sexual assault and stalking for students as well as for campus police and school employees involved in the disciplinary process. It would ensure that schools adopt policies related to sexual violence and that students are aware of the school's policies. Campus security policies would need to include information about sexual violence, how to report an incident, where to seek help and medical assistance and what rights the victim and the accused student have during the disciplinary process. Students would need to be told about their right to notify law enforcement and about any protective measures that are available, such as the ability to move dormitories. The school would have to post online information about on- and off-campus resources. Policies related to sexual violence would have to be emailed to all students and employees at the beginning of each year. The policy would be coordinated with various administrators involved in counseling, health care, law enforcement and residential life. The school would also have to enter into memorandums of understanding with a sexual assault crisis service center and domestic violence agency, so students can be connected to off-campus resources. The bill sets out guidelines for how campuses must handle sexual violence cases to protect both the accuser and the accused - for example, having an investigation by a trained official, allowing students on both sides to have an advocate or lawyer, allowing both parties to present evidence and using a standard of "preponderance of the evidence." The school would have to allow for a method of reporting sexual violence anonymously. It would also have to provide a confidential resource officer, who would give the student reporting the incident information about options and resources, such as counseling, academic accommodations and legal processes. The bill would require schools to report data about the number of sexual violence incidents on their campus to state officials. Nationally, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently reversed Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault investigations. In light of continuing federal uncertainty, Moore said, "We need to on a state level address this issue, establish benchmarks on proper protocols, proper services and protections our students should have." A similar bill passed the Senate last year, but it was at the end of the legislative session and the House did not have time to review and vote on it. "We're hoping now that the passage of this today and all the national attention brought upon these types of issues will help people realize there is urgency to having this legislation," Moore said. Sen. Cynthia Creem, D-Newton, said the bill is particularly important in light of the recent #metoo campaign, in which women have been revealing stories of sexual assault. "I, as well as many of my colleagues, have had more than one #metoo story," Creem said. She said there is a common theme in many of the stories that women were afraid to speak up or did not know how to speak up. "It's clear we have to do more than we have done in the past," Creem said. "We cannot tolerate living in a culture where sexual violence and harassment are so commonplace that a majority of women will experience some form of sexual harassment in their life." The bill will now go to the House for consideration. NORTHAMPTON -- Could the United States be headed to war with North Korea? Might President Trump's Twitter war with Kim Jong-un lead to actual death and destruction? Is there anything ordinary people can do? Those questions and others will be thoroughly vetted at an upcoming panel discussion sponsored by the Northampton Democratic City Committee. Journalist Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies for the Five Colleges, will deliver remarks. Writing in The Nation on Wednesday, Klare noted that three powerful US aircraft carrier groups have converged in the Pacific on the eve of Trump's 10-day trip to Asia. "Not since 2007 has there been such a concentration of US firepower in the Asia-Pacific region," Klare writes. He said there can be only two plausible explanations for the naval buildup: "to provide Trump with the sort of military extravaganza he seems to enjoy; and/or to prepare for a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea." Also speaking will be Tom Countryman, a former assistant secretary with the U.S. Department of State; and Dennis Yasutomo, the Esther Cloudman Dunn Professor of Government at Smith College. U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Worcester, plans to participate via video and describe efforts on Capitol Hill to avert conflict. The panelists will make 15-minute presentations, then take audience questions. "This will be a town hall type of event, intended to foster community awareness of the situation and discussion of options with the emphasis on avoiding war," said Elizabeth Silver, chair of the Northampton Democrats. The event is co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Smith College Government Department, the Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, the Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership, and Northampton Community Television. "We are perhaps closer to war in Asia than at any time since the end of the Vietnam War, and this time we face a very real risk of nuclear weapons use. We need to know the facts, and we need to figure out how we can avoid going to war," said Klare. The event, open to the public, is set for Nov. 15 from 7-9 p.m. at the Northampton High School auditorium. Admission is free. Newton Mayor Setti Warren, who is mounting a run against Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker in 2018, is taking aim at Baker's recent meeting with casino mogul Steve Wynn. During an October trip to Nevada, Baker met with Wynn, a top GOP fundraiser who is building a $2.4 billion resort casino north of Boston. Baker's itinerary included a clean energy summit and a visit to a Las Vegas memorial honoring the victims of the Oct. 1 mass shooting at a music concert. Both were on Baker's public schedule regularly released to reporters, while his meeting with Wynn was not. Wynn mentioned the sit-down while speaking to attendees of a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Wednesday. A Baker aide told MassLive the governor and Wynn, who will become a big Massachusetts employer once the Wynn Boston Harbor resort opens in June 2019, discussed economic development issues. "Governor Baker's decision to hold a secret meeting in Las Vegas with a major Republican donor who has billions of dollars worth of business before the state raises serious questions that should be answered," John Walsh, the Warren campaign's senior adviser, said in a statement. "If Steve Wynn had not mentioned it in a speech we might not even know that this off-the-books conversation even happened." Warren is one of three Democrats vying for the chance to take on Baker, a popular moderate Republican. The other candidates are Jay Gonzalez, former budget chief to ex-Gov. Deval Patrick, and environmental activist Bob Massie. "Since it appears Gov. Baker's team made an effort to hide this clandestine out-of-state meeting, it is not unreasonable to ask about the topic of conversation," Walsh added in his statement. "Did Gov. Baker want to talk to Mr. Wynn about funneling millions of dollars into his campaign account? Did Mr. Wynn have a favor or two to ask the governor of the state where he is building a billion dollar casino?" A spokesman for the Massachusetts Republican Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Baker is widely expected to run for another four-year term in 2018. U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, praised a White House panel this week for the actions its has recommended the government take to combat growing rates of opioid abuse and overdose, but warned that without additional federal funding, the group's work "will be little more than ink on paper." The Massachusetts Democrat, who has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's response to the opioid abuse epidemic, lauded the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis' for offering 56 "sensible" recommendations in its final report released Wednesday. Markey, however, raised concerns that without White House or congressional action to secure funding to implement those recommendations, which span from requiring opioid prescribers to receive mandatory education to expanding efforts to intercept illicit fentanyl, the panel's proposals would remain "just a list of actions." "The White House opioid commission has put forth a set of sensible policies, but these recommendations will be little more than ink on paper unless the president requests a specific amount of funding for the federal government and states to implement them," he said in a statement. "The American public, and especially those families suffering in this crisis, need more than just a list of actions from a commission; they need a commitment to action." The senator, who has backed legislation that would invest $45 billion in prevention, detection and treatment of opioid abuse, added that while he's committed to working with congressional colleagues from both parties to address the opioid epidemic, President Donald Trump "must show leadership and dedicate resources to address this scourge." The commission, among many things, recommended that federal officials: create an expansive, national multimedia campaign to highlight the dangers of opioid abuse, remove stigma as a barrier to treatment and cast addiction as a "chronic brain disease;" provide better addiction prevention education to students; and get federal funding support more quickly and effectively to state governments. It also urged the Trump administration and Congress to "block grant federal funding for opioid-related and (substance use disorder)-related activities to the states," contending that the current system of multiple agencies and grants "cause states a significant administrative burden from an application and reporting perspective." The group's final set of recommendations build on those included in its July preliminary report, which described the overdose death toll as "September 11th every three weeks" and urged the president to immediately "declare a national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act." Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency earlier this month and directed federal agencies to use all resources available to help combat the growing number of opioid-related deaths across the country -- a move which drew pushback from Markey and other Democrats over its lack of new funding. The senator, who had called for Trump to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency, told reporters this week that while former President Barack Obama also did not make the emergency declaration, he believes the Democrat's administration responded better to the issue. "President Obama signed a bill that provided $1 billion in funding, Donald Trump has the ability to release all that money, he hasn't even done that yet as part of his response," he said after a Pittsfield town hall event on Sunday. "It's a problem that has mushroomed rapidly, I think more should've been done sooner, but I went to a major conference on Air Force One with President Obama last March: he and I spoke at that conference, and he asked the surgeon general to do an opioid surgeon general's report ... he instructed his secretary of (Health and Human Services) to do everything that she could, so I differentiate President Obama from President Trump," the senator added. Trump, however, has pledged to take steps to additional steps to combat growing rates of opioid abuse, including implementing recommendations in the opioid commission's final report. This bill would revise the goal of the program to provide that its goal is to approve funding by December 31, 2022, for infrastructure projects that will provide broadband access to no less than 98% of California households in each consortia region, as identified by the commission on or before January 1, 2017. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1665 The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the University Economic Development Association (UEDA) are pleased to announce IEP Open! Interested in learning more? Join APLU and UEDA for an informational webinar on December 14, 2017. About the Innovation & Economic Prosperity Universities: APLU established the Innovation and Economic Prosperity (IEP) Universities program to recognize institutions that are exemplary in their contributions to regional economic development through their work in economic engagement. Economic engagement holistically encompasses university efforts promoting faculty/student innovation and entrepreneurship, excellence in technology transfer, contributing to talent and workforce development, establishing strong government-university-industry partnerships, and fostering community and "place" development through public service, engagement and outreach. https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5202367140625596930 Early College juniors traveled across the state on a four-day college exploration trip. During the course of the trip, students visited the University of North Carolina campuses at Greensboro, Chapel Hill, Wilmington and School of the Arts, as well as N.C. State University. Students also got to visit Marine Quest at UNC-W to take part in hands-on science activities. We participated in a seining activity in a salt water marsh, measuring barrier reefs at the ocean, a squid dissection and collected plankton to observe under microscopes. We also visit the aquarium in Fort Fisher and the kids had a little time at the State Fair. It's a whirlwind trip, but a great one, MEC teacher Terri Ingle told The McDowell News about the experience. The 11th-grade trip is connected to a seminar course in which 11th grade students begin to explore and visit colleges across the state, Ingle explained. The majority of students are working toward a degree in college transfer, so the trip helps them consider schools and prepare for their final year. NEW YORK - Authorities said Wednesday that the 29-year-old man accused of mowing down pedestrians and cyclists on a Manhattan bike path, killing eight people, plotted for weeks before carrying out the attack in the name of the Islamic State. Officials identified the suspected attacker as Sayfullo Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States who arrived in the country from Uzbekistan in 2010 through a diversity visa program. They said Saipov was influenced by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and its violent tactics after coming to the United States. Saipov left notes pledging his allegiance to the group, authorities said, though they have not identified any direct connections between Saipov and the organization. These notes, which included symbols and words, were handwritten in Arabic essentially said "that the Islamic State would endure forever," John Miller, the deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at a briefing on Wednesday. The Islamic State has urged its followers to use vehicles to carry out attacks. "He did this in the name of ISIS," Miller said. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a T the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack." The new details came as authorities continued to explore the violent rampage that tore through a stretch of Lower Manhattan and became New York's deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001. Police say Saipov climbed into a rental truck on Tuesday afternoon and careened down a bike path along the Hudson River, slamming into numerous people before he was wounded by police and taken into custody. He drove southbound on the path "at a high rate of speed" and appeared to specifically target cyclists and pedestrians, Miller said. Six people were pronounced dead at the scene and two more at area hospitals. Among the dead were five Argentines gathered for a reunion and one Belgian, while the two Americans were from New York City and New Jersey. The victims of the rampage included seven men and one woman; they ranged in ages from 23 to 48. Twelve more people were injured, some critically, during the carnage. Nine of the injured remained hospitalized on Wednesday, according to Daniel Nigro, the New York fire commissioner. The Trump administration considers Saipov to be an "enemy combatant," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a press briefing. "The actions that he took certainly justify that," she said. President Donald Trump earlier on Wednesday had called Saipov an "animal" and, after criticizing the way the country's legal system treats suspects, said he was considering sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay. But it was unclear whether the Trump administration intended to follow through on this and remove Saipov from the federal legal system and instead send him to the military justice system. Police on Wednesday offered their first timeline of the attack. Saipov rented a large Home Depot truck in New Jersey at 2:06 p.m. on Tuesday, they said. Using license plate readers and cameras, police tracked his travels into Manhattan and onto the West Side Highway. He drove onto the bike path at 3:04 p.m., police said. The rampage down the path continued until he collided with a school bus, injuring still more people, at which point he emerged from the truck, according to the police narrative. A stream of 911 calls soon came in reporting the injuries, the bus accident and a man with a gun in the street. Officer Ryan Nash, at a nearby school for an unrelated call, approached Saipov and shot him in the abdomen. The weapons Saipov were brandishing turned out to be a pellet gun and a paintball gun, police said. Officials praised Nash for his heroism in stopping Saipov, with Mayor Bill de Blasio, D, calling his actions "extraordinary." The violent route, which remained a crime scene on Wednesday, was strewn with bodies, wreckage and scattered personal items such as purses, backpacks and shoes, resembling the scenes witnessed in Berlin, London, Barcelona and other places where vehicles have been used for attacks. Investigators have spoken to Saipov, who remained hospitalized Wednesday, but officials declined to publicly reveal what he said. They also continued to scour his background and life for clues, an effort that included carrying out search warrants and interviewing people who knew him. Saipov, a legal permanent resident of the United States, came to the country in March 2010 and had lived in Florida, Ohio and New Jersey, according to authorities. He had been an Uber driver without any worrisome safety reports, the app said, and was banned after the attack. He had never been the subject of an FBI investigation or a New York police intelligence investigation, Miller said. However, Saipov had been known to authorities. According to a law enforcement official familiar with the current investigation, Saipov's name surfaced during an earlier Homeland Security probe into some of his friends. Miller seemed to be alluding to that when he said investigators looking into Saipov were trying to determine "how has he touched the subjects of other investigations - what is his connectivity to those people." Miller compared the investigative effort to building out concentric circles that will show Saipov to "have some connectivity to individuals who were the subject of investigation, though he himself was not.'' New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, said authorities believe Saipov was a lone wolf who became "radicalized domestically" while living in the United States. "The evidence shows . . . that after he came to the United States, is when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics," Cuomo said during an appearance on CNN's "New Day" earlier Wednesday. "We have no evidence yet of associations or continuing plot or associated plots, and our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he himself performed." Video from the scene of the attack appeared to capture Saipov jumping out of the wrecked vehicle brandishing what appeared to be handguns. Some witnesses said he shouted "Allahu akbar,'' meaning "God is great'' in Arabic. The Islamic State did not immediately claim responsibility for the New York attack, though its supporters cheered what happened, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity. The militant group frequently takes credit for attacks, doing so in some cases where there is little clear indication of its involvement. The attack may inflame the political debate over immigration and security. During remarks Wednesday, Trump called the criminal justice system's handling of suspects "a joke" and suggested it was too slow and weak, remarks he made just weeks after federal prosecutors secured the conviction of a New Jersey man who last year planted bombs in Manhattan during another attack. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted critically about Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., saying that Saipov had entered the country through a diversity visa lottery program he blamed on the senator. Trump pledged to get rid of that program, seizing on it and Schumer as political targets. After Trump repeatedly criticized the visa program, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman confirmed Saipov came to the United States with a diversity immigrant visa. Trump has argued for stricter screening of immigrants, which he said is needed to prevent terrorism, while opponents of his policies have repeatedly gone to court to block his efforts. Uzbekistan was not among the countries named in any version of the president's travel ban, which largely targeted a number of majority-Muslim countries and would not have kept out anyone behind deadly terrorist attacks in the United States. Cuomo and de Blasio said Wednesday morning that Trump had not called either of them. The men said they were not bothered because two senior Trump administration officials called them, but they also both expressed umbrage at what they described as attempts to politicize the attack. "The president's tweets I think were not helpful," Cuomo said at the briefing Wednesday. "I don't think they were factual. I think they tended to point fingers and politicize the situation." In the aftermath of the attack, throngs of New Yorkers went out to celebrate Halloween, with many attending the city's annual parade, which officials extolled as a show of the city's resilience. Police also said New Yorkers would see a beefed-up law enforcement presence in the coming days. Cuomo, who described the truck attack as a "failed" effort to scare and terrorize people, reiterated that he felt like responses such as Trump's were not the right way to react. "You play into the hands of the terrorists to the extent you disrupt and divide and frighten people in this society," he said. As the sun rose over New York on Wednesday, the bike path remained blocked off by police tape between Houston and Chambers streets. Dozens of police officers guarded the perimeter while crime scene investigators wearing white suits slowly searched the length of the path. At the bike path in New york, two men holding coffee cups approached the line police tape early Wednesday. "I don't see what happened," one said. "You don't know what happened? Yesterday. Someone drive a truck into people," the other said. "Did people die?" "Yeah," said the man. "People died." - - - Barrett and Berman reported from Washington. The Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan and Monica Hesse in New York and Philip Rucker, Brian Murphy, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins in Washington contributed to this report. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. Advertisement The fungus which produces these toxins can stay dormant in the soil for years. It infects maize and groundnut during drought and heat stress. Contamination also happens when grain is stored in hot, humid and poorly-ventilated conditions. Since aflatoxins are potent carcinogens, the United States does not allow the sale and export of food with aflatoxin levels exceeding 20 parts per billion (ppb). European Union standards are more stringent; the bar is 2 ppb."Plant defensins exhibit potent antifungal activity against several economically important fungal pathogens and it is exciting to see successful application of this technology for reducing the pre-harvest infection by Aspergillus and alleviating the burden of mycotoxins in genetically modified groundnut. If deployed commercially, this technology has significant potential to contribute to food safety in the under-developed and developing countries where mycotoxin contamination of groundnut, maize, chili and cottonseed pose a major threat to human and animal health," said Dilip Shah, Ph.D., principal investigator at the Danforth Plant Science Center.World peanut production totals about 29 million metric tons per year. The U.S. is the world's third-largest producer, after China and India. Peanuts are the 12th most valuable cash crop grown in the U.S. with a farm value of over one billion U.S. dollars. American consumers eat more than 6 pounds or 2.7 kilograms (kernel basis) of peanut products each year, worth more than $2 billion at the retail level. Worldwide peanut exports are about 1.25 million metric tons annually.Two complementary approaches are being deployed to address the issue. Shah and his team transferred small proteins called defensins from alfalfa and the Mediterranean clover to the DNA of an Aspergillus-susceptible peanut variety widely grown in Africa and India which allowed the groundnut to stop the fungus from infecting the plant.ICRISAT scientists worked with collaborators at the USDA and Louisiana State University to transfer small RNA molecules from the Aspergillus fungus that are involved in the aflatoxin synthetic pathway. The nuts produced these RNA molecules during fungal attacks and inactivated target genes responsible for aflatoxin synthesis. The technology is also translatable to maize and de-oiled cakes used for animal feed, pistachios, and almonds.Source: Eurekalert Advertisement which will develop into active tuberculosis for one in ten victims years or even decades later.TB is notoriously difficult to treat with current drug treatments often producing debilitating side effects within patients, including muscle wastage and loss of sight.Previously, the Doherty group at the University of Sussex's Genome Damage and Stability Centre discovered that mycobacteria repair DNA breaks using an enzyme complex called Ligase D (LigD).The latest study establishes that a closely related protein apparatus called Ligase C, whose function was unclear until now, combines with other repair proteins to fix damaged DNA bases in mycobacterial genomes caused by the attack of oxygen free radicals.Deleting LigC reduced mycobacteria's ability to repair and survive oxidiative DNA damage. Deleting both LigC and D lowered their survival rate even further, suggesting that inhibiting these repair mechanisms could be exploited to develop novel anti-microbial strategies.Prof. Aidan Doherty hopes this discovery will aid in the designing of new antibiotics that could help target mycobacteria, particularly during their latent phase.He added: "Mycobacteria are incredibly resilient and can remain dormant for many years inside cells where they are exposed to significant levels of free radical damage designed to kill foreign "invaders". However, these bacteria survive using complex repair mechanisms that protect their genomes from these attacks."We have shown that by removing LigC and D, mycobacterial cells become much more sensitive to oxidative damage. With further investigation of these protective mechanisms, it is hoped that this research will pave the way for the development of new drugs to more successfully target mycobacteria." ??Dr Simon Waddell, a senior lecturer in microbial pathogenesis at the Sussex and Brighton Medical School, said: "This study defines a new DNA repair pathway in mycobacteria, a greater understanding of such fundamental bacterial systems may lead to new drug therapies and strategies to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant tuberculosis."Source: Eurekalert The reinstatement of floating market at the village (Photo for illustration/ Source: CPV) Activities will introduce the traditional cultures of Tay, Dao, Mong, Thai, Muong, Kho Mu, Ta Oi, Co Tu, Ede and Khmer ethnic groups. During weekends, there will be traditional artistic performances by artists from Vietnam National Academy of Music; performances praising the beauty of the homeland and people in Binh Phuoc province. Special foods, agricultural products and handicrafts from various localities will be introduced. Folk games will be also held. There will be dancing performances of the Thai ethnic group every day; folk singing and gong performance of the Muong ethnic group; Then singing of the Tay ethnic group; and dance of the Dao ethnic group. Visitors also have a chance to enjoy folk games and experience special dishes of ethnic groups./. The production in a RoK-invested company in Nhon Trach 3 industrial zone (Photo: baodongnai.com.vn) The APEC Economic Leaders Week this year entitled Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future will be held in Da Nang city from November 6th-11th, aiming to obtain liberation and openness of trade, invest in and encourage economic and technological cooperation, and promote convenient business environment. Established in 1989 with 12 member economies, APEC now has 21 members, representing 2.8 billion people and 57% of global GDP. Vietnam joined APEC in November 1998./. NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (and General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and State President Bounnhang Volachith (Source: VNA) NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan made the promise while paying a courtesy visit to General Secretary of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) and State President Bounnhang Volachith. Ngan has been in Laos to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of the Lao NA House, which is a gift donated by the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), State and people to the neighbouring country. She noted with joy the fruitful development of the special relationship and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, especially the success of the meeting between the two Politburos in January 2017 and the 39th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee in February 2017, and the exchange of visits by senior leaders. Vietnam is actively preparing for the upcoming visit by comrade Bounnhang Volachith to attend activities wrapping up the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017, she said. The Vietnamese legislature will also join hands with its Lao counterpart to encourage relevant agencies to deploy agreements reached by senior leaders of the two countries and outcomes of the two aforementioned meetings, while preparing for the next meetings of the Politburos and the Inter-Governmental Committee in 2018, the top legislator said. The legislatures will also step up cooperation and exchange legislative experiences, and team up with concerned agencies to increase supervision over joint projects in order to expand and raise efficiency of cooperation, particularly in economy, trade and investment. Ngan called on Laos to create the best possible conditions for overseas Vietnamese to work and study in Laos, consider reducing fees for procedures and services, and taxes for Vietnamese, and employ more Vietnamese labourers in Vietnamese-invested or joint projects. For his part, Volachith thanked Vietnams great support to Laos during the countrys past struggle for national liberation as well as the present cause of national construction and development. He spoke highly the valuable assistance of the Vietnamese Party, State and people to Laos in constructing the Lao NA House, a symbol of the traditional friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between the two Parties, Governments, legislatures and people. Later the same day, Ngan and her entourage left Laos, successfully concluded her visit to the country to attend the ground-breaking ceremony of the Lao NA House./. Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Kotzias and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Amanatidis met, yesterday, with Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem and All Palestine, on the margins of the 2nd International Conference on Religious and Cultural Pluralism and Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East. The challenges that Christians in the Middle East are facing were discussed. In this context, stress was put on the need to defend and preserve the status quo in the Holy Land, based on legality and transparency. In light of the ever-increasing instances of it being disputed, the protection of this status quo, which has ensured for centuries the peaceful coexistence of all religions, takes on increased importance. The Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs also referred to the age-old ties of Hellenism and the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, expressing his readiness to provide support to the difficult work of the Patriarchate. The inauguration ceremony (Photo: vov.vn) The event was organized on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Vietnam-Cambodia diplomatic relations, and the Vietnam - Cambodia friendship year 2017. Speaking at the ceremony, Cambodian Minister of National Defense Tea Banh highly appreciated the significance of the work used as library and meeting hall of Brigade 911 funded by Vietnams Ministry of National Defense. The work contributes to modernize the units infrastructure, improving capacity to be ready to fight and implement the task of defending national territorial sovereignty, maintaining political stability and social order. "On behalf of Cambodias Ministry of National Defense, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Government, Army and people of Vietnam for their frequent assistance so that Cambodia builds the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces stronger, contributing to building and developing the country of Cambodia. This is a result of the long-standing friendship and solidarity between the two national defense ministries, which have existed for decades," said the Cambodia Minister of National Defense. Over the past years, Brigade 911 and Vietnams High Command of Commando have been in close contact with each other. The two sides often exchange delegations, experiences and assist each other in training personnel and providing equipment./. It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the UPPER THUMB To fund or not to fund is the question Cass City Village officials will face when they start drafting the 2018 budget later this month. Once again, Trustees Tom Herron and Nancy Barrios sparred over the Tuscola Area Airport funding during the recent council meeting. While Barrios, who sits on the airports board, was giving an update on the airport, Herron interrupted to again state his opinion that the Tuscola County Board of Commissioners should fund the airport, and that Cass City should end the practice of subsidizing it. The airport was founded in the 1930s and was owned and operated by the village of Caro until the Tuscola Area Airport Authority took over ownership in 1993. Funding the airport at 1750 Airport Road has been an area of contention between the two trustees for several months. Everybody in this town does not want their money going to the airport," said Herron. "We are going to start a mission to end that." I think you have already started your mission, Tom, countered Barrios. We have and are going to do it a lot harder, he said. Barrios then complained about Herron talking to Commissioner Tom Bardwell privately about pulling out of the airport. The council has not made a decision that we are moving out of the airport," said Barrios. "Your mission, I think is improper to speak our considerations on behalf of the board that this is what we are going to do before we have actually voted to pull out." And, I caution you about going to our local business like UPS (United Parcel Service) and suggesting they go out of our county to do our business because UPS is in our community," she added. According to the (UPS) district manager, the reason they use Caro is because they have to get their stuff out by deadline and would have to hire additional staff if they went out of the county." As Barrios took a breath to continue talking, Herron said, I just dont believe we should spend $10,000 on it. You want to talk to me about things I did, dont get me started on things you did. At that point, Village Manager Deboria Powell stepped in, calling an out of order." She said committee meetings and working on next years budget is the time for such a discussion. There will be a strategic planning meeting at 7 p.m. Nov. 8. The budget and finance committee meetings will be at 10 a.m. Nov. 13 and Nov. 27. It has been pointed out that if Cass City left the authority, it would change the structure of the countys only general aviation airport because an authority cannot have only one member. Cass City Village Attorney Jason Bitzer has been asked to look at the issue. A report of operations shows some of the entities that use the airport include UPS, Dairy Farmers of America, and Walbro Engines, which are each in Cass City; Poet Biorefining in Caro; University of Michigan Hospital; and Michigan State Police. The original members of the authority were the villages of Cass City, Caro and Kingston, and the townships of Almer, Indianfields, Ellington, and Elkland. Over the years, only Cass City and Caro are still participating. Cass City contributes about $10,000 and Caro gives about $9,000 to support the airport. During audience participation, Don Ball asked the nearly 30 attendees for a show of hands of who supported the airport. No hands were raised. According to Ball, he told Barrios to have those who supported the airport to attend the meeting. The next meeting of the Tuscola Area Airport is at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 9. In other airport matters, there will be a regional safety training program to re-certify pilots Nov. 28, and on Dec. 9 and there will be a fly-in at 10 a.m. In other village matters, council approved a resolution to participate in the Redevelopment Ready Communities, which is a certification program of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and appointed Rick Andrich, who is the branch manager of Chemical Bank of Cass City, to the Cass City Downtown Development Authority and the Cass City Economic Development Corporation. Each term ends May 1, 2020. LANSING -- As cases continue to rise, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has activated the Community Health Emergency Coordination Center to coordinate the response of the multiple jurisdictions involved in the hepatitis A outbreak. "To help coordinate Michigan's response to the hepatitis A outbreak, we are opening the Community Health Emergency Coordination Center to assist the multiple local public health jurisdictions involved in the response and prevention of further cases," said Nick Lyon, director of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). The Community Health Emergency Coordination Center (CHECC) has been activated to provide support to impacted jurisdictions including local health departments, hospitals, EMS, healthcare coalitions and other healthcare providers. This coordination and communication support includes responding to requests for health related resources, developing and distributing guidelines and educational materials to meet the needs of this outbreak. As there are indications that the outbreak could spread outside of the Southeast region of Michigan, MDHHS is urging all healthcare providers to promote hepatitis A vaccination to the highest risk individuals, including: Persons with a history of substance use. Persons currently homeless or in transient living. Men who have sex with men. Persons incarcerated in correctional facilities. Food handlers. Healthcare workers. Persons with underlying liver disease. Persons who are in close contact with any of the above risk groups. Persons wishing to be immune to hepatitis A. "We know that the hepatitis A vaccine is more than 90 percent effective in protecting someone who may be exposed to hepatitis A," said Dr. Eden Wells, Chief Medical Executive with the MDHHS. "Without a single source associated with these cases, the importance of vaccination and proper hygiene is vital to ensuring we stop the person-to-person spread of hepatitis A." Since Aug. 1, 2016, there have been 457 confirmed cases of hepatitis A, including 18 fatalities, associated with this outbreak in the City of Detroit, Huron, Ingham, Lapeer, Livingston, Macomb, Monroe, Oakland, Sanilac, St. Clair, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties reported to MDHHS. Primary cases range in age from 20 to 87 years with median age of 42 years. Sixty-three percent are male and 85.6 percent have been hospitalized. Forty-eight percent of cases reported illicit drug use, 27 percent of cases were co-infected with hepatitis C, and three percent co-infected with hepatitis B. Six percent report recent incarceration, and 7.7 percent are MSM. Transmission is primarily person-to-person as no single source has been identified. Due to the temporary limitations on the availability of Adult Hepatitis A vaccine, MDHHS recommends that healthcare providers postpone administration of the second dose of Adult hepatitis A vaccine unless individuals require the second dose to address high risk conditions, including travel to a hepatitis A endemic country. Pediatric hepatitis A vaccine should continue to be administered routinely as there are no limitations on the availability of this vaccine for those 18 years and younger. MDHHS today broadly issued a statewide message through the Health Alert Network to encourage healthcare providers across Michigan to be on alert for hepatitis A infection in high risk individuals and to order testing when suspected as soon as possible. The earlier the report of a case is received, the better chance public health officials have at determining exposure and administering appropriate interventions. MDHHS and local public health officials are working to quickly investigate cases as they are identified, as well as notify the healthcare community and encourage providers to speak with their patients about hepatitis A, increase vaccinations, and test for hepatitis A when appropriate. On Sept. 18, the state Medicaid program issued a letter to healthcare providers about the outbreak, testing information, including prevention, testing, and treatment information. This letter was sent to 5,069 Medicaid-enrolled providers and another 11,758 providers and interested parties signed up for Medicaid updates. There are ongoing vaccination campaigns in jails, substance use treatment centers, health departments, emergency departments, and homeless centers, as well as with the Michigan Department of Corrections, to reach highest risk individuals. Supported by contracted nurses from the Visiting Nurse Association, MI Volunteer Registry -- volunteers, and MDHHS, local health departments are partnering with community organizations to provide hepatitis A vaccine to at-risk individuals. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two Roads Brewing Company is building a second brewery that could turn even the staunchest wine connoisseur into a beer lover. The Stratford craft beer behemoth broke ground Thursday on a $12 million, 25,000 sq. ft. barrel-aging facility dubbed "Area Two." The new site is being built on 2.5 acres of land adjoining the existing brewery, and is expected to open in the fall of 2018. Area Two will focus exclusively on rare sour and barrel-aged beers, fruity styles that are popular in Europe and tend to be higher in alcohol content. Many of the recipes require wild yeast, which cannot be used in the main facility due to the potential for contamination. Some of the Area Two brews will spend upwards of two-and-a-half years in wooden barrels sourced from wineries and distilleries, transforming into "something more wine-like than what we're used to," Two Roads Master Brewer Phil Markowski said. RELATED: New lighting system, campus expansion part of Two Roads' growth Like wine, these beers are often made with fruit. Two Roads already has a small orchard on the orchard, growing sour cherries, black currants, elderberries and raspberries, with plans to expand and produce peaches, gooseberries and other fruits. "We'll mix it up," Markowski said of the different flavor combinations in store for Area Two. With hundreds of barrels aging beer in excess of two years, Markowski said, the new facility will look more like a winery than a traditional brewery. Visitors can expect to see materials common in winemaking, like concrete tanks and foudres, casks used for maturing and storing wine. "Part Disney World, part science lab," is how Neil Hauck describes plans for Area Two. His Darien-based firm, Neil Hauck Architects, is designing the facility Petra Construction Corp., based in North Haven, will build it. RELATED: Two Roads opens tap room at Bradley International Airport According to Hauck, people will enter the building through a vestibule on the second floor and then descend into the 120-person tasting room, while taking in the surrounding brewery. Visitors can sip on their beers on the deck overlooking the property's wetlands, which Two Roads plans to beautify to create a park-like atmosphere. "This is going to be a showcase," CEO Brad Hittle said. He and his co-founders Markowski, CFO Peter Doering, and CCO Clem Pellani acknowledged Stratford officials like Mayor John Harkins and State Rep. Laura Hoydick for their work in helping Two Roads get its start five years ago. Since its inception, the brewery has grown to produce the equivalent of two million cases of beer and is considered a Top 40 brewery in the U.S, Hittle said. And now, with a second facility in the works, Two Roads is being taken to another level. According to Pellani, beers brewed in Area Two will allow Two Roads to distribute to areas they don't normally reach, because the barrel-aged beers travel well. "I am incredibly excited for this," Pellani said. "It's a nice complement, to give the people of Connecticut a slightly different experience" alongside what the traditional brewery offers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate MIDDLETOWN Traffic on already busy Route 66 may soon be slowed by the overwhelming scent of fresh desserts, breads and coffee wafting from Mozzicato DePasquale Bakery when it opens on Washington Street in early January. The bakery is beloved around the region for sweet Italian confections: pasta ciotti, cannoli, biscotti, bigne shells filled with sweet ricotta, vanilla and chocolate cream, rum rolls, sfogliatelle with mandarin-flavored ricotta filling, tiramisu hazelnut rolls and countless other delights. The 3,000-square-foot Middletown location, at 762 Washington St., will expand the footprint of Mozzicato DePasquale, said co-owner Rino Mozzicato, who will oversee day-to-day operations. Its construction will add a fourth location to the familys empire, which includes the Frankin Avenue bakery in the capital city, and others on New Britain Avenue in Plainville and North Colony Road in Wallingford. Middletown Common Councilman Sebastian N. Giuiliano, whose father was born in Melilli , recalled trips to Mazzottas Bakery, which now offers catering from its Ballfall Road location. It started out in the 1980s where the new College Street Apartments high rise is being built on the corner of Broad and Court streets, Giuliano said. Later, Mazzottas moved to South Main Street, where Antonios Market & Catering is now. We used to have a whole bunch of them in town and every Sunday morning, wed go to get fresh bread, Giuliano said. You would have to buy two loaves because one of them wasnt going to make it back home, he said. One was to bring home, the other was to eat along the way. It came out of the oven warm. Theres nothing like it. The cannoli is from Sicily, he said. Ill never say no to one. Some of them get it just right. If you put too much sugar in the ricotta, it comes out way too sweet. Youve got to get the consistency right. While in America, customers can choose cannoli that has the ends dipped in chocolate chips, while some prefer chopped almonds on one end and a cherry on the other, he said. Thats the way I grew up with them, said Giuliano, who added that the shell is actually deep-fried manicotti pasta. Since Taste of Italy closed its Newfield Street bakery earlier this year, the city hasnt had an authentic Sicilian retail store. Melilli Caffe & Grill, which occupied the storefront prior to Taste of Italy, moved across the river to 264 Main St. in Portland. The Mozzicato family is also building a 4,370-square-foot MedExpress walk-in urgent care clinic next door at 752 Washington St., next to Valvoline Instant Oil Change. Work on the facility, which will be leased by MedExpress, headquartered in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania Complete, will occupy the space by the end of the year. Theyve demolished the two-family house and are now excavating and preparing to do the footings and foundations, said Jim Sakonchick, president of the Southington-based Kratzert & Jones civil engineering and land surveying firm, architects of the project. The empty land on the corner of Plaza Drive, where the antique shop was knocked down, will be a different development, Mozzicato said. Middletown is a good community. Weve done business in Middletown for many years, he said. We felt like it was the right fit for us. The new bakery will be similar to the Plainville and Wallingford ones, he said. The space will be a retail bakery and cafe, while the other half will be reserved for baking and preparation of cakes and pastries, Mozzicato said. It will be identical to our other three stores. In Hartford, we have a separate cafe, we have a liquor license and were open later in the evenings, Mozzicato said. But we found, in the bakery, people like to sit down and have a pastry while theyre hanging around in the bakery itself, so its nice. Meanwhile, fans can enjoy the shops desserts at Linos Market in Durham, Public Market on Main Street downtown, and other restaurants in the Higganum section of Haddam and the Cobalt portion of East Hampton, he said. Middletown will end its dearth of such pastry shops, satifying both area residents and Sicilians from Melilli, Middletowns sister city. Gino Mozzicato, who came to the U.S. from Italy in 1968, founded Mozzicato Pastry Shop in Hartford in 1973 with his wife, Gisella. The pastry shop specialized in cakes, pastries and cookies and also featured imported Italian confections, according to its website. In 1975, the couple purchased DePasquale Bakery, a nearby business founded in 1908, which specialized in breads and rolls. The Mozzicatos combined the two product lines, becoming Mozzicato DePasquale Bakery and Pastry Shop, the website said. In 1978, the couple opened Mozzicato Caffe, modeled after the many caffes of Italy, according to the family. In 1993, along with their children Gina, Paolo and Rino Mazzotta, they expanded and renovated the bakery. The caffe serves espresso, cappuccino, lattes, teas, Italian cookies, cakes, pastries, gelato and granita, along with a full liquor bar. For information, call 860-296-0426 or see mozzicatobakery.com. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HADDAM Bringing clean water to homes and businesses in Tylerville is a priority for local Republicans. Polluted groundwater has plagued more than two dozen homes in the area of town for at least three decades. First Selectman Lizz Milardo, who is wrapping up her first term and seeking re-election, said the issue has lowered Tylerville home values, dissuaded developers from building there and made life difficult for folks already living and working in Haddam. There have been water contamination issues in Tylerville since the 70s, she said. People have to use bottled water. Obviously, just simple life things like bathing and cooking have become difficult. Last summer, the state Bond Commission was expected to approve $5.13 million to fund a project to connect a water main from Chester to the area and finally bring in clean water, Milardo said. Ultimately, the funds were not approved. Still, Milardo is hopeful that, now that the state has passed a budget, the commission will revisit funding the project. In addition, Milardo said she has spoken to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and has been told there is money set aside for the project. Milardo wants to see the project through. Im hopeful that were going to break ground in the spring, she said. Without this water line, were dead in the water. Larry Maggi, owner of Fireworks Hearth and Home in Tylerville, is running on the Republican ticket for a seat on the Board of Selectmen. Not having any water down here, that (affects) businesses, he said. If Lizz had a handle on it, I know we can handle it. Maggi would like to see a cellphone tower put somewhere in the area to improve cellular service along Route 154. Milardo has been in talks with a developer who wants to build an urgent care center in Tylerville and is waiting for a resolution to the water issues, she said. There are also other developers who want to bring shops to the area. Its a beautiful area, she said. Its the perfect village area for different types of artisan shops and things. Another important thing on Milardos to-do list is putting in infrastructure to bring industry, restaurants and other services to Higganum center, where there are architecturally significant and historic buildings, including an old mill, she said. Im so passionate about that. Businesses arent going to come here if they dont have the (infrastructure). She envisions more businesses coming to the area and offering options to keep folks around town. Our residents dont want to have to go outside town for services, she said. They want to stay in town. Making the town affordable for seniors is also important to Milardo and Maggi. Seniors need to get around and afford to live here, Milardo said. If they want to downsize, they need a place to go, a place to stay. Maggi said he would also like to make it easier for young people to remain living in town. As it is now, theyre moving out, he said. They cant afford it here. Part of the problem, as Milardo sees it, comes from above with the state budget, something Milardo is very concerned about. Milardo, who has a financial planning background, said small towns like Haddam have joined forces with big cities like Bridgeport through the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities , to help work through the problem, she said. But the state hasnt taken their advice. (They) have come together, saying, This is what you need to do, she said. They just arent listening. Milardo works with the Connecticut Council of Small Towns and said its important for small municipalities to work together to ensure they have a voice and are not overshadowed by the needs of more populated cities. Haddam has 8,300 residents. Since she has been in office, Milardo said the towns bond rating has gone up and is now a Triple A. Milardo and Maggi also want to work across the table, bringing people from both parties together. Shes a hard-working woman and I give her a lot of credit, and I can learn a lot from her. Id really like the opportunity to be with her ... and to work side by side, Maggi said. Whether shes a D or an R, that shouldnt matter. For information on Tuesdays election, including polling places in Haddam, see haddam.org/registrar-voters or call 860-345-0979. The Army's chief of staff may soon decide on the specific shade of brown beret that will be worn by soldiers in the new Security Force Assistance Brigades, despite media reports that the specialized unit will don berets similar to those worn by Special Forces. The controversy began when an image of an olive-greenish beret surfaced in an Oct. 26 Soldiersystems.net post that indicated the 1st SFAB would wear the green beret, which has striking similarities to the traditional Army Special Forces beret. The service plans to stand up six of the advise-and-assist brigades -- five active and one National Guard. The Army has approved a new shoulder sleeve insignia with a tab for the SFABs, Maj. Chris Ophardt said. The arrowhead-shaped patch features a broadsword facing upward. The tab reads "Advise-Assist." Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley is awaiting swatches in varying shades of brown to consider for the SFAB beret, Ophardt told Military.com. The swatches are not yet available for public view, Program Executive Office Soldier spokeswoman Debra Dawson said. The Army has not issued a formal statement about the SFAB beret color, but Ophardt released the following comments that Milley posted to a recent Army Times story on the subject: "I want to assure everyone that the color of the SFAB Beret will be brown and will not be green or any shade of green," Milley wrote. "It is derived from the Brown Infantry Beret worn by many Armies. There was no intent to dishonor or misappropriate the Green Beret of US Army Special Forces and all it stands for." The 1st SFAB posted the following message on its Facebook page to address the issue: "The 1st SFAB has great respect for U.S. Army Special Forces, their many accomplishments and their singularly distinguished history. We also respect the concerns associated with the heraldry of the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade. "The 1st SFAB is not a Special Forces organization," the statement continued. "We are a conventional force purposefully built to partner with other conventional forces. SFABs will support Army readiness by allowing brigade combat teams to focus on building their readiness for large-scale contingencies instead of on the train, advise and assist missions. "In accordance with Army guidance, we will select a new unit name," the 1st SFAB statement said. "The Army has also decided the SFABs will wear a Brown Infantry Beret like those worn by many armies. Our new name and photos of the beret will be published once the final decisions are approved." Milley, who served in the Army's 5th Special Forces Group, discussed the SFAB units Oct. 9 at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting, stressing they are not designed to become a substitute for Army Special Forces SFABs will be structured using the noncommissioned and commissioned officers of infantry brigade combat teams to train foreign military units in conventional light infantry tactics, he said. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. 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... Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter at @JosephVMicallef. Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State, has fallen to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mostly Syrian Kurd group consisting also of Arabs, Yazidis, Turkomen and Assyrian Christians, backed by airpower, advisers and armaments supplied by the United States. The apocalyptic battle, complete with the appearance of messianic figures that had been predicted by ISIS propagandists, failed to materialize. A few months earlier, Mosul -- the largest city held by ISIS -- had fallen to a combination of Iraqi military and security forces, Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iranian-backed Hash'd al Shaabi Shia militias (Popular Mobilization Forces or PMF). Syrian military forces, with Russian support, have broken the siege of Deir ez-Zur and are engaging with ISIS forces around the city. Iraqi forces have moved to besiege the last major ISIS strongholds in the districts of Al-Qa'im and Rawa along the Euphrates in Anbar province. By any military standard, the Islamic State and its military forces are in a state of collapse. In the meantime, both Syrian Military Forces and the SDF are rushing to get control of ISIS-controlled oil fields in eastern Syria. Is this the end of the Islamic State, or simply the beginning of the next chapter? Regardless of what the future holds for ISIS, there is no escaping the reality that both Syria and Iraq are failed states. Destroying the Islamic State will not restore either country to its pre-ISIS state nor will it bring a return to a stable order. In fact, the opposite will be true. In Syria, while it appears that with Russian support the Assad government will continue to be the titular head of the country, it is unlikely that Damascus will be able to exert authority over the entire country. Syria today is simply not the same state it was in 2012. First, there is the matter of Rojava, the Syrian Kurdish state along the Turkish-Syrian border. Ankara would like nothing more than to roll over the Syrian Kurds and end their incipient claim to autonomy, much less statehood. Militarily, the Turkish military would have little trouble doing this. This is a difficult region to defend, as it is primarily flat and lacks any obvious defensible geography. The U.S. would be unhappy with such an outcome, but is unlikely to want to see a further deterioration of its relationship with the Erdogan government by actively opposing any Turkish attack. Russia is a different matter. Notwithstanding Turkey's participation in NATO for almost 70 years, and its historic reliance on American security guarantees, Ankara seems less concerned about alienating the U.S. than it is about negotiating with Russia over the eventual outcome of the Syrian Civil War. Russia does not want to see a Turkish attack on Rojava -- at least not yet. The continued presence of Rojava gives Russia useful leverage against both Erdogan and Assad, not to mention Baghdad and Tehran. The latter two have their own Kurdish problem and are sensitive to what happens with the Syrian Kurds. The most likely outcome is that Moscow will broker a deal between the Kurds and the Assad government in which the Syrian Kurds are given some degree of autonomy and Rojava is recognized as a separate but federated state of Syria. The arrangement would be similar to the status of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurds do not pose a fundamental threat to the Assad government. They are not looking to overthrow the Assad regime or fundamentally change Syria's governance, outside of their own objective of greater autonomy and perhaps eventual independence. The continued existence of the Kurdish state in Syria is more valuable to Russia than eliminating it is to the Assad government. In addition, there is the de facto presence of Turkish troops in northern Syria and Turkish support for various Turkoman and Syrian Arab militias as well as the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Realistically, these groups do not have the ability to overthrow the Assad government without substantial help from either the U.S. or Turkey. American help is unlikely, as Washington has pretty much washed its hands of these groups. Turkey's position is more complicated. Ostensibly, the primary reason for the Turkish intervention was to support the various Sunni groups battling Assad and to pre-empt Syrian Kurds from linking up Rojava directly with the predominantly Kurdish-populated canton of Afrin. The former task is a lost cause. The latter task has been accomplished. It is highly unlikely that the Kurds will seize control of the region between the west bank of the Euphrates and Afrin as long as Turkish troops are there. Ankara, however, has stopped short of directly engaging Syrian military forces, although it has continued to aid various militia groups fighting the Assad government. It stands to reason that there is an unspoken understanding between Ankara, Damascus and Moscow that any direct action against the Assad regime will bring more Russian support in favor of Syrian Kurds and their ambitions for Rojava. Moreover, an all-out war between Turkey and Syria would be highly unpopular in Turkey. Forced to choose between eliminating Rojava or the Assad government, Ankara has made it clear where its priorities lie. While ideally it would like to get rid of both, Ankara is not prepared to pay the political price that a full-fledged Turkish invasion of Syria would require. Secondly, Damascus will continue to have its hands full in dealing with the various Islamist groups active in Syria. While Syrian forces, backed by Russian airpower, will have a decisive advantage in engaging those groups, they are unlikely to ever completely defeat them. The more likely outcome is that Damascus will nominally control the Sunni areas of Syria but find itself battling a long-term insurgency, much like the U.S. found itself battling in Iraq after 2004. The reality is that a vast area of Syria, especially in the Sunni heartland of central and eastern Syria, has been destroyed by almost three years of relentless fighting. Much the same can be said of the former ISIS-controlled territory in western and northern Iraq. Virtually all the principal cities in the Sunni triangle of western Iraq -- Fallujah, Ramadi, Baiji, etc. -- have suffered extensive damage. So too has Mosul and its surrounding region. The cost of Syrian reconstruction will be enormous. First, there are still tens of thousands of improvised explosive devices that have been deployed in the area. These will have to be cleared before any substantial reconstruction can begin. Using Iraqi estimates as a guide, the cost of reconstruction will likely amount to between $25 billion and $50 billion. That's a guess; no one really knows for sure. Moreover, continued insurgency in the region means that reconstruction will be disrupted and what rebuilding does take place is subject to ongoing damage from attacks. There is no appetite in the U.S. or the European Union to fund any significant portion of this reconstruction effort. Bashar al-Assad is an anathema to Washington and Brussels, and no aid will be forthcoming if he stays in power. Russia lacks the financial wherewithal to contribute meaningfully to Syria's reconstruction. Tehran also lacks the financial ability to contribute significantly to that reconstruction. Moreover, it has little incentive to fund the reconstruction of a region where it is unlikely to have any significant ongoing influence or support. In the meantime, continued Sunni unrest in Syria means that Assad will continue to be dependent on Russia and Iran to hold on to power. The situation in Iraq is not much different. Russia and Iran will both be constrained in contributing to the reconstruction effort by the same factors as in Syria. Washington and Brussels have their own funding issues, and Iraqi reconstruction does not figure very prominently for either party. Iraq is a major oil producer, and its production has been increasing. Still, despite rising production, it is already facing a $20 billion-plus budget deficit in 2017. Baghdad simply doesn't have the money to fund a major reconstruction effort. In Mosul alone, the UN-Habitat Agency has estimated that around 10,000 homes have been destroyed, as well as large numbers of public buildings and infrastructure. According to the Iraqi Fund for Reconstruction, the cost of rebuilding Mosul and its surrounding area will amount to $50 billion. Iraqi Minister of Planning, Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi, has estimated the cost of rebuilding all the areas affected by the war against Islamic State at around $100 billion over 10 years. Some 80 percent of the Iraqi government's budget goes to pay salaries. Those patronage networks are a critical element of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's support and are the quid pro quo for ensuring continued support of his government and cooperation in parliament from the other Shia political parties. Reducing such payments to fund the reconstruction of damaged Sunni areas of Iraq will prove to be politically difficult. Moreover, given the endemic corruption in both Iraq and Syria, it's likely that reconstruction costs will probably be much higher. That is yet another reason that will dampen any prospects of financial help from the U.S. or Europe. It's possible that other Arab countries may be willing to fund some portion of the reconstruction effort. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Cooperation Council allies have their own financial issues at the moment. Moreover, any substantial aid from Sunni governments in the south will likely come with a political agenda and may be contingent on more autonomy for the Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. The most likely scenario is that most of the former geography of the Islamic State, as well as some of the formerly rebel-held areas of Syria, will become a sort of ungovernable wild west. Neither Damascus nor Baghdad have the wherewithal to militarily occupy this region. At best, the illusion of control will be maintained. Police and army units will be stationed there, but they will keep to their barracks and much of the region will become a no-go zone for government security forces and officials. In short, an outcome very similar to the situation that prevailed before the U.S. surge and the organization of the Awakening Movement in 2005, or that prevailed before the collapse of Iraqi forces in June 2014. Reconstruction will commence, but it is unlikely to do so at a meaningful pace. A region that was increasingly economically marginalized before the advent of Islamic State will find itself in even more dire economic straits and lacking much of the basic infrastructure, habitation and services that its inhabitants will demand. The inability of Damascus and Baghdad to rectify the desolation that has been wreaked on many areas of Sunni Iraq and Syria may even succeed in rehabilitating, in part, the brutal tenure of Islamic State. In this environment, jihadist groups, including ISIS, will find it easy to melt back into the civilian population and to return to the insurgency tactics they had adopted prior to the breakout of Islamic State in June 2014. In that case, one chapter in the war against ISIS will end and another one will begin. There is one other possibility, Baghdad and Damascus may both opt to rely on the Iranian backed PMF militias to maintain order in the Sunni areas. To date, both governments have tried to keep those militias out of Sunni cities, except when no alternative was available, or they were under political pressure to allow their participation in the military effort against ISIS. The presence of the Shia militias in Sunni areas has typically resulted in widespread reports of looting, vandalism and extrajudicial killings. In the short term, the deployment of these militias into Sunni areas may allow both governments to exert a greater degree of control, but at the price of exacerbating Shia-Sunni tensions, and in making the political situation much worse in the long-term. The PMF itself is, like the Baghdad government, a shaky coalition comprised of Shia militias beholden to different political masters. The PMF has about 60,000 active fighters and it's believed could increase its strength by another 30,000, if it should want to do so, divided among 40 different core groups. These groups range from the Abbas division, organized in response to a fatwa by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in June 2014, the Peace Brigades loyal to Iraqi cleric and political figure Moqtada al-Sadr, to the Badr Organization militias organized and funded by Iran and often led by officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In addition, there are also smaller militias loyal to other Shia political factions. The Baghdad government has introduced legislation to incorporate the PMF into the Iraqi military--a decision that will likely be problematic for the U.S. Many of the militia groups openly fought with U.S. forces when they were stationed in Iraq. Access to Iraq's oil revenue has been one factor that has kept this uneasy coalition together. Any disruption in that largess could risk plunging the country into a sort of militia based "warlordism," in which different groups resort to violence to ensure their piece of Iraq's oil revenue. The situation between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) will also be a factor in the struggle with Islamic State. Iraqi military forces have moved to take back many of the areas seized by the Kurdish Peshmerga from ISIS, or which were taken over when they were abandoned by the Iraqi Army in June 2014. The KRG has been backpaddling on its quest for Kurdish independence in light of its failure to obtain meaningful diplomatic support for its plans. Continued conflict between the KRG and Baghdad, even if it stops well short of an all-out war, will have a bearing on both the amount of funding ultimately available for reconstruction as well as Baghdad's options for securing and retaining control of predominantly Sunni areas. Islamic State itself will adapt and change as a result of losing its associated geographic state. ISIS may return to the insurgency and subversive techniques it employed in the past but ISIS today is also a different organization than it was prior to 2014. For one thing it is now much more international. Despite its losses in Syria and Iraq, it continues to demonstrate the ability to finance and organize large scale operations from West Africa to the Philippines. Moreover, the return of thousands of ISIS trained jihadists to Europe has significantly expanded its terrorist playbook there. Finally, while it has lost many of its lucrative sources of revenue, it now also has fewer financial obligations and it's developing other sources of funding from narcotics and other criminal activity. It's prestige and allure may have taken a hit from its battlefield losses and its apocalyptic predictions may have failed to materialize, but it still enjoys considerable appeal and support among jihadists and their supporters. The demise of ISIS as a sovereign state may ultimately benefit other jihadist organizations like al-Qaeda. If so, then all that has been accomplished has been to trade one jihadist foe for another. Even so, the success of ISIS has caused other jihadist organizations to become more like them, to up their game, so to speak, when it comes to social media, propaganda and recruitment efforts. This is evident from the increasingly sophisticated media efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Even in defeat, the ISIS template, minus its more genocidal brutality, has been adopted by other jihadist organizations. Either way, the war against the Islamic State is far from over. One chapter is ending. The next one is about to begin. -- The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration. In the wake of two ship collisions within months of each other that claimed the lives of 17 sailors this summer, a three-star admiral was relieved, a four-star was passed over for command, and a number of other officers were removed from their posts. But more serious personnel actions may be still to come and could include legal prosecution, as well as administrative moves. On Thursday, the Navy released the results of a 60-day comprehensive review, blaming the two collisions on an array of factors, from insufficient training and experience to crew fatigue and a punishing operational tempo that damaged readiness. But, said Adm. John Richardson, chief of Naval Operations, negligence was also a factor in the mishaps. Related content: "We found the commanding officers were at fault, executive officers were at fault, there were some watchstanders on the ships. And we've been pretty clear about identifying where there was fault and taking appropriate accountability actions, up to and including the 7th Fleet commander," Richardson said. Richardson added that he had appointed Adm. Frank Caldwell, the four-star head of the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Program, to be the consolidated disposition authority with regard to the crashes and personnel action. Caldwell, he said, will "take a comprehensive look at all of these and ... make his recommendations with respect to any further action." USNI News first reported Caldwell's appointment. Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the 7th Fleet Commander, was the first to be relieved immediately following the collision of the destroyer John S. McCain with a Liberian-flagged tanker Aug. 21. Aucoin's replacement, Vice Adm. Phil Sawyer, then relieved the commander of Task Force 70, Rear Adm. Charles Williams, and the commander of Destroyer Squadron 15, Capt. Jeffrey Bennett. The commander and executive officer of the McCain, Cmdr. Alfredo Sanchez and Cmdr. Jessie Sanchez, were fired Oct. 11. The destroyer Fitzgerald, which collided with a Philippines-flagged container ship in June, had its entire command triad -- Cmdr. Bryce Benson, executive officer Cmdr. Sean Babbitt and command master chief CMC Brice Baldwin -- relieved in August. On Sept. 25, the four-star commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Scott Swift, announced he would retire after being denied a nomination to head U.S. Pacific Command in the fallout from the collisions. Investigations into both collisions made public Wednesday paint a damning picture of errors in judgment and inattention to near danger. Aboard the McCain, the decision of Sanchez, the commanding officer, to transfer steering control to another station caused massive confusion and resulted in the helmsman reporting the ship had lost steering as it began an uncontrolled turn in a busy shipping lane. In the case of the Fitzgerald, watchstanders were looking the wrong way as a merchant ship, the ACX Crystal, drew dangerously close, and the officer of the deck badly miscalculated the ship's trajectory, concluding that it would pass 1,500 yards away. The officer of the deck also froze as disaster grew imminent, making a command and then rescinding it as the ship continued at full speed on its collision course. Could these failings result in charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice? It's possible, said Brian Bouffard, a former Navy JAG officer with two decades of experience as a criminal trial lawyer. "[Charges could include] hazarding a vessel," he said. "It could be any number of orders violations, if they could show that somebody violated existing orders that could have applied. Depending on interviews that they have conducted, they may be able to prove false official statements. Those are the ones that immediately leap to mind." As the consolidated disposition authority, Caldwell has the right to make recommendations up to and including general court-martial for any personnel found at fault, Bouffard said. The charge of hazarding a vessel is considered a capital offense under the UCMJ. But to be convicted, it must be proven that the act to endanger a U.S. military vessel was intentional. Other, lesser charges, such as violations of standing orders, might be easier to prove. Though rare, the option to charge a Navy officer in the wake of a tragic mishap has been exercised before. When the Portland-class cruiser Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine in 1945, resulting in massive loss of life, the ship's commander, Charles B. McVay III, was made to face court-martial. Navy officials alleged McVay failed to zigzag to make the ship a harder target for the enemy and did not give the order to abandon ship soon enough. The Japanese submarine commander who sank the ship was called upon to testify in McVay's defense during the court-martial. Ultimately, McVay was convicted of failing to zigzag and lost some seniority. In 2000, however, Congress would pass a resolution exonerating him. More recently, the Navy handed out punitive letters of reprimand and non-judicial punishment to a number of sailors in 2016 after two riverine boats strayed into Iranian waters, and 10 sailors were briefly held captive by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. The incident was quickly resolved, but proved an embarrassment to the Navy and highlighted failures of leadership and planning. At a Pentagon press conference Thursday, Richardson was asked whether he believed he had the confidence of the Navy to continue as chief of naval operations in light of the failures in training, operations and readiness that have occurred on his watch. "I feel responsible for this," Richardson said, but maintained he could remain in his position with the confidence of the fleet behind him. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. More than 80 percent of veterans nationwide favor legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana and would want to have it as a potential treatment option, according to a survey released Thursday by the American Legion. Eighty-three percent of veteran households surveyed said the federal government should legalize medical cannabis, and 82 percent indicated that they would want to have medical cannabis as a legal treatment option. In addition, 92 percent of veteran households support research into the efficacy of medical cannabis for mental and physical conditions and as a possible substitute for prescription opioids, the survey said. The telephone survey was conducted for the two-million member Legion by Five Corners Strategies from Oct. 8 to Oct. 10 and had a plus or minus margin of error of 3.43 percent. A memo from Five Corners Strategies on the survey said, "Support for medical cannabis and research on medical cannabis is high across veterans and caregivers, all age ranges, gender, political leanings and geography." The survey showed that 88 percent of self-identified conservative respondents, 90 percent of self-identified liberals and 70 percent of self-identified independents supported federally legalized medical cannabis. The survey was released at a Capitol Hill news conference attended by Reps. Tim Walz, D-Minnesota, ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee; Mark Takano, D-California; Julia Brownley, D-California; and Matt Gaetz, R-Florida. At its national convention in Reno, Nevada, in August, the American Legion adopted a resolution urging the federal government to allow doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs to discuss and recommend medical marijuana in the 26 states where cannabis is legal. The Legion previously had urged the removal of marijuana from the government's list of "Schedule 1" drugs. The list includes heroin, LSD and Ecstasy, which are deemed to have no medical use. In May, VA Secretary David Shulkin said he was open to new evidence showing marijuana could be used to treat veterans, but VA policy currently bars its doctors from sharing their opinions on marijuana with veterans or recommending it for medical use. At the news conference Thursday, Legion Executive Director Verna Jones stressed that the Legion is "not advocating for recreational use of marijuana, but we are advocating for the removal of cannabis from Schedule One of the Controlled Substances Act so that more medical investigators can do research." Lou Celli, the Legion's national director of Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation, said that as a former law enforcement officer and Army master sergeant, he was initially skeptical when veterans told him of the beneficial effects of medicinal marijuana. He said he has come to believe that "cannabis is improperly categorized as a 'most dangerous and most addictive' drug -- right up there with Ecstasy and heroin. Ironically, all of the opioids that kill more than 90 Americans every day are Schedule II and III drugs." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. ANN ARBOR, MI - Job recruitment and social networking website LinkedIn has named Ann Arbor-based cybersecurity firm Duo Security as one of the top startups in the United States. LinkedIn's ranking titled, "The 50 industry disruptors you need to know now," includes Duo Security in the No. 18 slot. It is one of five cybersecurity companies represented on the list, and the highest-ranked cybersecurity company compared to others like Cybereason and CrowdStrike. Duo is the only company in Michigan recognized in the list of startup companies from across the country. The ranking notes Duo's diverse client base including Facebook, Toyota and Zillow, its growth in both employees and users, and the embracing of its Midwestern roots by "enforcing a 'no jerks' policy and gives each employee a personal candy pack from Zingerman's, the famous local deli, on the first day." Raffaele Mautone, Duo's chief information officer, said in an email to The Ann Arbor News they are proud to be the highest-ranked cybersecurity company and to represent Michigan in the listing. "This is further proof that the talent coming out of our world-class universities can find a rewarding technology career right here in southeastern Michigan," Mautone said. LinkedIn created the ranking using metrics from its website such as employee growth, job seeker interest, member engagement, and partnered with CB Insights to identify venture-backed funding. Eligible companies are 10 years old or younger, have at least 100 employees, are independent and privately-held, and must have completed one round of venture-backed funding. LinkedIn's recognition of Duo as a top startup follows on the heels of the company's announcement that its latest round of funding has increased its worth to $1.17 billion. The software-as-a-service (Saas) company recently exceeded 10,000 customers worldwide and uses its flagship project of two-factor authentication, available in an app, to secure more than 300 million logins a month, a company statement said. According to Duo co-founder and CEO Dug Song, the company has added a new employee every other day since early 2016. More than 500 employees now filling the company's offices in Ann Arbor; San Mateo, California; Austin, Texas; and London. In an interview with The Ann Arbor News, Song called cybersecurity the "biggest problem of our time." "The reality is, we think every market and every industry needs us, unfortunately," Song said. "Really, nobody's safe." LinkedIn's ranking also includes companies with a Michigan presence like WeWork, which just opened a hub in Detroit in July; ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft; and vacation rental website Airbnb. YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley is dedicating its 200th home next week after 28 years of assisting low-income families secure affordable housing across Washtenaw County. Renovations at the property in the Holmes Road Neighborhood in northeast Ypsilanti Township started in the spring and are wrapping up ahead of the 2017 holiday season. That's just in time for Ann Arbor residents Elijah and Marissa Wheeler to celebrate the holidays with their firstborn in a house of their own. The couple has since outgrown the one-bedroom apartment they lived in for two years after welcoming Elijah Junior. The apartment has meant not only cramped quarters but increased rental rates and mounting utility bills, Habitat for Humanity said in a press release. Elijah Wheeler said he and his wife are thankful for being part of the home ownership program in a Habitat statement. They plan to move into the house in mid-November. "We are ecstatic that we will finally get a place of our own where our family can continue to grow. We are thankful for this experience and opportunity with Habitat," Wheeler said. "Also, we give a special thanks to our friends, family, and the volunteers who participated on this house." Applicants going through Habitat's home ownership program are required to demonstrate a need for decent and affordable housing, a willingness to contribute 250 hours of "sweat equity," and ability to pay the monthly mortgage, according to the website. They also must live or work in Washtenaw County and not currently own a home or have a mortgage. Renovations related to the home ownership program average around $65,000, said Karol Chubb, development associate with Habitat Huron Valley. More than 85 volunteers worked on the Wheeler's new home. According to Chubb, the Wheeler's applied for the home ownership program in January 2017 and chose between two houses in their price range. Their new home is the tenth house in the Holmes Road neighborhood Habitat Huron Valley has renovated and sold since 2013, the organization said. A dedication ceremony is planned for Tuesday, Nov. 7. Habitat for Humanity also offers nationwide programs for home improvement, community development and financial education related to housing and debt payment. Those programs have been created and grown since the Huron Valley organization was founded in 1989, with a mission of providing affordable housing for low-income families in Washtenaw County. The first family assisted by Habitat Huron Valley moved into their home in 1990. Sarah Stanton, executive director, said in a statement that the completion of the 200th home is a "phenomenal milestone" in the organization's history. "We believe that by building strong homes, stable communities emerge and create a better environment for our community members," Stanton said. GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Ceres Solutions Cooperative -- formerly North Central Co-op - is getting a $350,000 loan to help with the next phase of the company's $10 million expansion in White Cloud, according to The Right Place, Inc. and the Newaygo County Economic Development Office (NCEDO). The grant will increase logistics capacity at the site, including a new rail siding, existing track improvements, and the installation of ingredient receiving pits, according to the announcement on Thursday, Nov. 2. The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) Freight Economic Development Program will provide the loan funding needed for the project's rail improvements. These loans may cover up to 50 percent of the cost of the rail infrastructure and are limited to the rail infrastructure itself. "This latest project is yet another example of the important role NCEDO plays in spurring economic growth in our community," said Todd Blake, Fremont City Manager/Finance Director, and chairman of NCEDO. "NCEDO exists to provide business support services like this to growing companies in Newaygo County." The $10 million expansion was first announced in 2016. It will create three new jobs. Ceres Solutions Cooperative is a farmer-owned supply and service agribusiness based in Crawfordsville, Ind. It serves farmers in Michigan and Indiana. ANN ARBOR, MI - One year into its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion plan, 72 percent of the University of Michigan's students, staff and faculty indicated they are satisfied with the current campus climate. Survey results from UM released Thursday Nov. 2, indicate that while the majority of the 8,500 students, staff and faculty surveyed last fall believe the university is doing its best to be inclusive for all, members of traditionally marginalized groups across race, sex, sexual orientation, age, ability status and national origin experience the campus less positively than members of traditionally majority groups. UM President Mark Schlissel believes the survey data will help the university gain a better understanding of the makeup of its campus and what needs to be done to make it more inclusive. "We have made good initial progress on many of our goals across the institution in accordance with our Strategic Plan," Schlissel said during a news conference Thursday. "I also am proud that we have incorporated diversity, equity and inclusion into many basic aspects of our operations and mission, including our budget process." Surveys showed that women and underrepresented minorities, in particular, are less satisfied with the climate and have less positive experiences on campus than others. Underrepresented minorities, especially African Americans, consistently report having the least positive experiences compared to any other social identity group on campus. Surveys - made up of random samples of 3,500 students, 3,500 staff and 1,500 faculty designed to adequately represent the UM community - showed that 62 percent of undergraduate underrepresented minority students and 55 percent underrepresented minority faculty said they are satisfied with the campus climate, compared with 72 percent of the overall UM community. "... It is also very clear that our campus is not a similarly positive place for all members of our community," Schlissel said. "We are not yet where we want - or need - to be as we strive for a more diverse, more equitable and more inclusive academic community. "It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the quality of the Michigan experience differs among people with differing individual and group identities," he added. "In particular, women, minorities, people with disabilities, and people in LGBTQ+ communities shared that they experience the campus in less positive ways than others in the community." UM Chief Diversity Officer Rob Sellers said a lack of satisfaction from the campus community's underrepresented minorities, particularly black students, is the result of a climate that has been in place for a long time. "I would say there's a history that each of those communities have felt not only with the university but the larger society and larger structure," Sellers said. "As a result of that, there is a skepticism for groups that have been poorly treated. I see that as our challenge to earn that trust back." Among students, females were 52 percent more likely than male students to report feeling neutral, unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the campus climate within the past 12 months. LGBTQ+ students were 59 percent more likely than heterosexual students to report feeling neutral, unsatisfied or very unsatisfied, while students with disabilities were 145 percent more likely than students without a disability to report feeling neutral, unsatisfied, or very unsatisfied. Surveys asked a range of questions about demographics, perceptions of the campus climate and the DEI climate, interactions with other members of the UM community and experiences of discrimination at UM. Other key findings from the surveys indicate: Approximately 17 percent of the UM community said they felt discriminated against on campus in the past 12 months. Race and gender were the most frequent reasons students, faculty and staff reported experiencing discrimination; Among underrepresented minority staff, 46 percent of staff identifying as African American said they are satisfied with the campus climate, followed by Middle Eastern or North African (58 percent) and Hispanic or Latinx (63 percent); 75 percent of Asian undergraduate students felt satisfied or very satisfied with the campus climate - higher than the overall university average; Members of minority groups were significantly more likely to report experiencing discrimination. Among staff, 51 percent of African Americans said they experienced at least one discriminatory event as a result of race in the past 12 months; Among faculty, 41 percent of females said they experienced at least one discriminatory event as a result of gender in the past 12 months; For students, 48 percent of those with disabilities said they experienced at least one discriminatory event as a result of their ability status in the past 12 months. First-generation students are 127 percent more likely than other students to report feeling neutral, unsatisfied, or very unsatisfied; White students were 331 percent less likely than black students and 75 percent as likely as Hispanic/Latino students to report feeling neutral, unsatisfied, or very unsatisfied. The surveys were designed by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, with assistance from two advisory committees and experts from the UM Institute for Social Research. An outside vendor was hired to conduct the study in order to ensure confidentiality in survey responses. Last October, UM announced it was committing $85 million in new resources to make the university community more diverse, equitable and inclusive over a period of five years. Since then, UM began implementing the initiatives in the plan, which fall into three overarching strategies: creating an inclusive and equitable campus; recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse university community; and supporting innovation and inclusive scholarship and teaching. Schlissel said it was disappointing but not surprising to find that certain populations at UM are less satisfied than others, and believes that improving that campus climate is a shared responsibility going forward. "The results of the survey serve to quantify and further reinforce the feelings and challenges that we heard about in detail during the strategic planning process and that we have been working to address for many years," Schlissel said. "The data give us a greater opportunity to tailor our work and make changes where needed most." DETROIT - Police are searching for two women and a getaway driver involved in the fatal shooting of an O'Reilly Auto Parts manager on Wednesday, Nov. 1 on Detroit's west side, according to a report by WXYZ. James Haller Jr., 75, was killed about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday when two women attempted to rob the store at the store at 16830 Schaefer Hwy, according to the report. Haller was a Vietnam veteran and retired General Motors worker, according to WXYZ. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact police. Mr. Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, had a telephone conversation for approximately 10 minutes commencing at 8:48 p.m. on Thursday, November 2, 2017, with His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The overview is as follows. 1. In the beginning, His Majesty King Abdullah IIextended his congratulations to Prime Minister Abe upon his victory in the recent House of Representatives election. His Majesty also stressed that he will work together with Prime Minister Abe to further enhance the relations between Japan and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In return, Prime Minister Abe expressed his gratitude. 2. Prime Minister Abe and His Majesty King Abdullah IIdiscussed regional situation including the Middle East Peace Process. Prime Minister Abe said he would like to advance the cooperation with Jordan approaching the stability of the region. Furthermore, the two leaders shared the view to further deepen the relationship between Japan and Jordan. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises is in talks with China Machinery Engineering Corp (CMEC) for the financing of a controversial coal mine project in Australia, two sources with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday. Adani is seeking A$2 billion ($1.54 billion) in outside financing for its proposed A$4 billion Carmichael coal mine in the state of Queensland. However, Australian and overseas banks have balked at granting loans for the project which environmentalists oppose because of concerns over the size of the mine and the potential for damage to the Great Barrier Reef. CMEC is an engineering contractor that is majority-owned by Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) China National Machinery Industry Corp Ltd, or Sinomach. CMEC would provide financing through the China Export Import Bank or China Construction Bank, or both, in return for winning the procurement and engineering contracts, for the project, according to a report issued earlier on Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, (IEEFA) an outspoken opponent of the project, citing unidentified sources. "Chinese SOE backing raises the probability that Adani can secure a financial close for this long delayed project," the report said. In addition to the A$2 billion in financing, Adani has also applied for A$900 million in Australian government loans to build a railway to ship coal 400 km (250 miles) from the Carmichael site to a port on the Pacific Ocean for export. Carmichael has been delayed by court challenges from environmentalists and indigenous groups concerned about climate change, and the impact on native land and water supply, but those challenges have been rejected. Jeyakumar Janakaraj, chief executive of Adani Australia, told Reuters on Oct. 3, it wants to tie up financing by March 2018 and would look to sell a minority stake in the project to help raise funds. Adani hopes to start shipping coal from Carmichael under the first stage of the project by March 2020. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Bharat Road Network Ltd has informed BSE that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on November 02, 2017, inter alia, have declared an interim dividend of 5% (Rs. 0.50) per equity share of Rs. 10 each fully paid up of the Company.Source : BSE Read More live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Board Meeting of the Company will be held on 10.11.2017 (Friday) at Pipalia Kalan, District - Pali, Rajasthan - 306307 at 02:00 PM. The share touched its 52-week high Rs 190.00 and 52-week low Rs 69.20 on 23 October, 2017 and 17 November, 2016, respectively.Currently, it is trading 6.32 percent below its 52-week high and 157.23 percent above its 52-week low.Market capitalisation stands at Rs 144.36 crore. Source : BSE Read More Myth 3: Everyone who has a mental illness needs medication to manage symptoms | Bulthuis says no two patients are the same. While medicines can help manage symptoms, there are some people with mental illness who do not require medication. For others, medicine is essential for recovery. (Representative image) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Generic drug industry is under the scanner as a large group of US states have alleged four Indian pharma companies of a broad price-fixing conspiracy. Companies accused of deliberately keeping drug prices high include Dr Reddys Laboratories (DRL), Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, and Emcure Pharmaceuticals. Earlier this week, a lawsuit was filed by the attorneys of 45 states and the District of Columbia, accusing 18 companies and subsidiaries and named 15 medicines, reports Reuters. What is the accusation? According to the complaint filed by the states, drugmakers and executives divided customers for their drugs among themselves, agreeing that each company will have a certain percentage of the market. The companies sometimes agreed on price increases in advance, the states added. Along with this, the lawsuit has also charged two top executives- Pune-based Emcures Managing Director Satish Mehta and US-based Mylan NVs Executive Director Rajiv Malik, says the Reuters report. According to a Business Standard report, the complaint has details of communication between Malik and executives at Emcure. Apart from this, there were 1,501 calls and text messages between executives and salespeople at Teva and its competitors between July 2013 and 2014. At a time when more generic drug companies are entering this space as US wants to bring prices down, these allegations come as a big blow to the pharma industry. The case is being led by Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen who said that the price-fixing is systematic, it is pervasive, and that a culture of collusion exists in the industry. When did the issue come to the fore? The issue was raised in December last year when the original complaint targeted companies like Mylan, Heritage, Aurobindo Pharma USA Inc, Citron Pharma LLC, Mayne Pharma USA Inc and Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. Adding to the woes, the new complaint has more companies on the radar including Novartis AGs unit Sandoz, India-based Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Endo International PLCs unit Par Pharmaceutical, Dr. Reddys Laboratories, Apotex Corp, Glenmark Generics Ltd, Lannett Company Inc, Alkem Laboratories Ltds unit Ascend Laboratories and Cadila Healthcare Ltds unit Zydus Pharmaceuticals Inc. Increase in drug prices In the original lawsuit, inflated prices of two medicines were mentioned. Price of doxycycline rose from USD 20 for 500 tablets to USD 1,849 between October 2013 and May 2014, according to US Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who had been pressing for action on high drug prices. The new complaint will include glipizide-metformin and glyburide-metformin, which are among the most commonly used diabetes treatments. Others include: acetazolamide, which is used to treat glaucoma and epilepsy; the antibiotic doxycycline monohydrate; the blood pressure medicine fosinopril; the anti-anxiety medicine meprobamate; and the calcium channel blocking agent nimodipine. Praveg Communications (India) Ltd. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Divis Laboratories on Thursday said it was informed by the US FDA that it will be lifting the Import Alert 66-40 and moving to close out the warning letter issued to the company at Unit-II in Chippada, Visakhapatnam. The announcement marks the complete resolution of the import ban, removing the regulatory overhang on the stock. Earlier in July US FDA lifted import alert 99-32 issued on the same unit. In March, the US FDA issued an import alert under clauses 99-32 and 66-40 to the companys Visakhapatnam unit following an audit between 29 November and December 6, 2016. According to details on the US FDAs website, import alert 99-32 is issued when a firm refuses an FDA inspection of its facility, while import alert 66-40 is issued to companies that do not comply with good manufacturing practices. The import alert, however, exempted dozens of products from the ban due to shortages in the US. The USFDA inspected Vizag unit-II that manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients from November 29 - December 6 and issued a warning letter in December last year citing several deviation of good manufacturing practices including breaches in data integrity. The USFDA also alleged refusal by the company to provide access to the audit trail data of chromatographic systems used in testing drugs to the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) inspectors. Divis hired external consultants and subject matter experts, and undertook extensive remedial measures to address the concerns raised by US FDA. The USFDA re-inspected the companys unit-II for full cGMP and verification of corrective measures against previous observations in September. The company said all observations raised in the previous inspection have been resolved, except for 6 new observations which were minor in nature. North America accounts for around 20 - 25 percent of the revenue of the Hyderabad-based active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates manufacturing company. In FY17, Divis Lab had revenues of Rs 4,181 crore. Analysts said the lifting of the import alert will be "positive" for the company. "The import alert resolution will lead to resumption of 5 percent sales, which are under non-exempted category, getting new product approvals to drive growth and relaxing supply constraints due to certain protocols to be followed for exporting exempted products," said Amey Chalke, Research Analyst at HDFC Securities "Overall we are expecting around 15 percent upside in earnings per share upside and upgrading multiple to 22X leading Rs 1080 target price," Chalke added. Another analyst said Divis resolving two import alerts in a span of less than a year is a major achievement. Shares of Divis rose as much as 20 percent on BSE this morning. The shares were trading at 1076.50 rising 16.98 percent on BSE at 10.35 am, while the benchmark Sensex gained 0.08 percent to 33,628.12 points. Glenmark Pharmaceuticals on Thursday posted 4 percent decline of net profit to Rs 214 crore in the second quarter of FY17 largely in line with analyst estimates - helped by improved India, Europe and API sales, despite a drop in US sales. The company reported Rs 223 crore in the year-ago period. Revenues rose 1.46 percent to 2256.6 in Q3 against 2224.1 in the year ago period. While the net profit beat analyst estimates, revenues were in line with expectations. A CNBC-TV18 poll of analysts estimated the net profit to be at Rs 180.4 crore and revenues at Rs 2264.3 crore. The overall performance was driven by our India, Europe & API business, said Glenn Saldanha, Chairman & MD, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Despite several challenges in the market, India business recorded high single-digit growth. The Europe business performed very well during the quarter due to a strong performance by the Western European region, Saldanha said. Saldanha said the company is on track to file new drug application (NDA) for its asthma drug candidate GSP 301 in 2018. US generic business dropped 5.72 percent to Rs 727.1 crore in the September quarter against revenue of Rs 7712 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year. During the second quarter, the company received eight final approvals taking the tally to 13 final approvals for the first half of this financial year. Some of the approvals in second quarter include Acyclovir Ointment and Nitroglycerin Sublingual Tablets; Amlodipine and Olmesartan Medoxomil Tablets, Desonide, Triamcinolone Acetonide Ointment, Propafenone Hydrochloride Extended-Release Capsules. The company filed three ANDA applications with the US FDA, and plans to file an additional seven applications in the forthcoming quarter. The company has thus filed five ANDA applications in the first half of this financial year. Glenmarks marketing portfolio through September 30, 2017 consists of 126 generic products authorized for distribution in the US market. The company currently has 61 applications pending in various stages of the approval process with the US FDA, of which 28 are Paragraph IV. Sales for the formulation business in India for the second quarter rose 5.30 percent to Rs 710.7 crore; on a sequential basis the net profit grew 15.3 percent indicating substantial recovery from GST rollout. As per IMS MAT June 2017, Glenmark is ranked 14th compared to 16th in MAT June 2016 with a market share of 2.25 percent exhibiting value growth of 13.5 percent compared to industry growth of 8.2 percent.. Sales of Africa, Asia and CIS region declined 0.14 percent to Rs 252.1 crore, while Europe formulation rose 48.50 percent to Rs 200 crore on new launches. However, Latin America business remained subdued at Rs 105 crore on account of sharp decline in Venezuelan sales. The active pharmaceutical ingredient business saw growth rate of 6.90 percent to Rs 237 crore on account of sales from Perindopril, Lercanidipine, Etoricoxib, Adapalene and Amiodarone. The results were announced after market hours. Shares of Glenmark rose 4.39 percent to close at Rs 648.55 on BSE, the benchmark Sensex declined 0.08 percent to 33,573.22 points. Godrej Consumer Products posted a healthy set of earnings in Q2 with domestic volumes being the big positive. In an interview to CNBC-TV18, Vivek Gambhir, MD & CEO of the company spoke about the results and his outlook going ahead. Rural demand grew marginally ahead of urban. However, yet to see a meaningful pick-up there, said Gambhir. He also said that we are not seeing high wage growth in rural markets. He further said that higher minimum support price (MSP) and better monsoons will aid rural recovery in second half. Talking about GST, he said general and modern trade is back to normal post goods and services tax (GST). On business front, he expects stronger pick-up in hair colour and insecticides. He also expects 10-15 percent reduction in logistics and transportation cost going forward. On Indonesian market, he said sales growth in Indonesia was challenging. Therefore, will take a couple of quarters before the business returns to normalcy, he added. He is seeing signs of sequential recovery in India. We are not looking at any acquisitions at this point of time, he mentioned. Public sector lender Punjab National Bank's profit is likely to decline 33.3 percent year-on-year to Rs 366 crore for quarter ended September 2017. Profit in year-ago quarter stood at Rs 549 crore. Net interest income, the difference between interest earned and interest expended, is seen growing by 0.9 percent to Rs 3,913.2 crore compared with Rs 3,880 crore in same quarter last fiscal, according to average of estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18. Key things to watch out for:- Analysts feel if slippages come below Rs 6,000 crore, loan growth in double digits, and net interest margin & gross non-performing assets improve, then that will be taken positively by the Street. Management commentary on capital raising from government will be seen closely. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Dredging Corporation has run up by nearly 30 percent ever since the government said that they will divest its entire stake in the company. The Cabinet approved the sale of the government's entire 73.47 percent stake in the company after the Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sale is expected to fetch about Rs 1,400 crore to the exchequer. Dredging Corporation, which comes under the Shipping Ministry, is involved in maintenance dredging, capital dredging, beach nourishment, land reclamation, shallow water dredging, project management consultancy and marine construction. The move to exit the company had been recommended by government think-tank Niti Aayog, which along with Dredging Corporation, has given a long list of companies that can be strategically sold. The government has budgeted to raise Rs 72,500 crore through stake sale in PSUs in the current fiscal. This includes Rs 46,500 crore from a minority stake sale, Rs 15,000 crore from strategic disinvestment and Rs 11,000 crore from the listing of PSU insurance companies. Exiting completely helps both the buyer to run the company with a free hand and also the residual shareholders who will be able to unlock value. Public sector companies not only have a strong tangible asset base but also have the skilled manpower. What holds them back is non-accountability and government interference. Piecemeal divestment, on the other hand, does not change the way the company operates. Only financial investors take part in these divestment and there is little benefit to the non-government shareholders from such sale. In the hands of a professional management and room to operate freely, these companies can grow at a faster pace. Both Indian Petrochemical Corporation Ltd (IPCL) and VSNL have demonstrated the strong growth and value unlocking when freed from government shackles. Both these companies were merged into the parent company soon after the change of control. With a number of ports coming up around the country and government's plans of increasing use of waterways, Dredging Corporation has enough potential for growth. The company has had a flattish revenue growth of nearly a decade. Having touched the Rs 700 crore mark in FY08, the company managed to cross the level only twice in the past decade. Private sector competitors have pulled its margins lower from 30 percent levels till 2007 to around 20 percent currently. A management with a strong focus on growth rather than survival can take the company to a different level given the experience and expertise that the company has. Strategic sale has always been opposed by the management and staff of the companies with political parties joining the chorus. But its in the interest of all stakeholders of the companies that their company is run more proficiently. The argument that these are profit-making companies and need not be sold does not hold water as there will be fewer takers for loss-making companies when they will be sold on scrap valuation. Take the case of Air India, where the government has to give sweeteners and break the company into pieces to attract buyers. As has been said many a time, governments job is to govern and not run companies. In the present case, too, the company will be better taken care of by professionals. For those who do not want to handle the pressure of targets under a private sector, the setup can always opt for the generous voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) that generally comes with the sale. Strategic sales is the only way out for smaller companies which have good potential but need capital for growth. The government is unlikely to provide growth capital as it steps in only when the company is in distress. It's in the interest of all stakeholders to be run by a management which is keen to grow the business. business Ease of doing business: Check on ground realities CNBC-TV18's Manisha Natarajan caught up with experts to find whether World Bank's Ease of Doing Business rankings capture the onground realities of setting up a business in India? Arvind Fashions' interest cost for FY20 was Rs 289 crore, while the operating profit for the same fiscal was Rs 231 crore. Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das said that his government would provide employment to two lakh youths in the textile sector in the next two years. "We are continuously working in other sectors as well with an aim to generate lakhs of employment opportunities and check migration (of workers) from the state," Das told a function organised to observe the 40th death anniversary of Dalit community leaders Lilu Bauri, Hiru Bauri and Patal Bauri at Jaitara village under Chas block of Bokaro district. Das said the 3rd ground breaking ceremony of Momentum Jharkhand-a Global Investors Summit (GIS) will be held in Bokaro in December, according to an official release. The objective of the ceremony was to promote avenues for industrialisation in and around Bokaro, he said, adding that the government was committed to all-round development of the state. "My government do not do politics of casteism, communalisam, but politics of development," he said. The government was working to make women self-reliant, he said, adding that in an attempt to achieve the target, the government has taken initiative to train women under the Entrepreneur Sakhi Mandal and provide them loan. As many as 4,80,000 women from 32,000 villages of the state would benefit from the scheme, he said. "Jharkhand is a land of warriors who had made this pious land free of exploitation and injustice," he said, paying tributes to the martyrs. He appealed to the people to follow the teachings of these martyrs to create a new Jharkhand and reiterated his commitment to eradicate poverty and illiteracy from the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been working for the development of poor, farmers and rural pockets rather than indulging in politics of casteism and communalism, he said. Das said his government would soon discuss with the Union Coal Ministry the issue of re-opening of closed coal blocks in the state. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has demanded a CBI inquiry against Infosys and other companies for the failure of the goods and services tax (GST) portal in spite of the large amount of investment and time that has gone into the system. Traders are frustrated with the GST portal. A good taxation system like GST is earning a bad image, not only among the trading community but all stakeholders, said Praveen Khandelwal, Secretary General of the CAIT. He said that when the new tax regime was rolled out, people expected a functioning portal, but traders are facing problems in filing returns. Infosys has failed to delivereven the maintenance of the portal is under Infosys, there is a need to fix responsibility, Khandelwal told Moneycontrol. CAIT has demanded the government conduct a CBI inquiry against Infosys and other concerned companies to explain why they have failed to ensure satisfactory performance of the portal. Denying claims made by the traders' body, Infosys in an email response to Moneycontrol said, the information you have received is completely inaccurate. The IT major was awarded a contract worth Rs 1,380 crore in 2015 to build and maintain the technology network which is the backbone for the GST regime, which was rolled out on July 1 this year. Infosys added that the system till date has 37 crore invoices that have been uploaded, while the system is designed to handle 300 to 320 crore invoices every month. 70 lakh taxpayers have successfully migrated to the new system and the country has recorded 29 lakh newly 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 percent of the filings done in that timeframe and 70 percent of the collection achieved with just 25 percent of server utilization, demonstrating the systems ability to manage scale, Infosys said. As on October 31, 2.26 crores returns have been filed and 1.4 crore payment transactions conducted on the GST portal, the company added. During its latest quarterly results on October, Infosys had said its finest engineers are working on the GSTN. Prakash Kumar, the chief executive of the GST Network (GSTN), the IT backbone of the GST, quashed claims that the portal was unstable. In a three month period, 2.26 crore returns have been filed, and 64.41 lakh taxpayers have been migrated to the system. How can it be unstable? he said. CAITs Khandelwal, however, said traders were facing issues across different aspects of the GST portal- from waiting hours and hours to log in, to taking time to make submissions to the portal, and sometimes an error causing the entire exercise to go waste. Name the thing and there is a problem with the portal, he said, adding that the only way to file GST returns is through the portal and that it was crucial that it works well for everyone. The CAIT has also demanded a third party audit into technical and other issues related to the GST portal, as well as asking the government to release a white paper on the status of GST portal till date. neha.alawadhi@nw18.com Highway projects worth Rs 10,000 crore in Rajasthan came up for discussion during a meeting between Union minister Nitin Gadkari and state Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje here, an official said. Raje had called on Gadkari to discuss highways infrastructure, water and irrigation projects in the state. The projects discussed included schemes worth Rs 10,000 crore including three National Highways to be constructed in the state at Kherwara, Dungarpur, Sagwara and Banswara stretches among others, the official said. Besides, projects under Sethubharatam were discussed during the meeting. Rajasthan Road Transport Minister Yunus Khan too attended the meet. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More HCL Technologies will start its business operations at Nagpur campus from the first week of April 2018, a senior company official said here. Training of the first batch of recruits is currently underway and the business operations will commence from the first week of April with 200 people, said senior vice president of HCL Technologies Sanjay Gupta here. He was addressing reporters on the sidelines of HCL Foundation CSR Symposium on 'Socio-Economic Developmental Challenges and Solutions'. The HCL Nagpur campus will have a capacity of 2,000 people. Gupta also informed about a unique Early Career Programme (ECP) for 10+2 passed students who are financially poor. Under this programme, the selected students will be given 12 months training and later absorbed by the company. The first batch of such trainee students will start at HCL Lucknow campus from May 1, he said, adding, this initiative will be implemented in other campuses as well. Director CSR - Head HCL foundation Nidhi Pundhir briefed about the development projects currently underway. The other IPO which also received huge responses were Happiest Minds Technologies and Chemcon Speciality Chemicals, which was subscribed 150.98 times and 149.3 times respectively. Interestingly, both these stocks have seen bumper listing gained over 100 percent. Let's see how the IPO subscription and listing happened in 2020 so far, considered only IPOs issue size over Rs 100 crore. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Kolkata based, Khadim India Ltd is one of the leading footwear brands in India with presence of more than 3 decades in the footwear wear business. Khadim is 2nd largest Footwear Retailer in India in terms of number of exclusive retail stores operating under the Khadims brand, with the largest presence in East India and one of the Top 3 players in South India, in fiscal 2016. Its sub brands include British walkers, Lazard, Turk, Cleo, Bonito, Softouch etc. It offers affordable footwear to its customers across various price segments. The company operates through two distinct business verticals, retail and distribution of footwear. Presently, Khadim has 2 Owned Manufacturing Facilities and 2 Outsourced Manufacturing Facilities. Valuation We believe Investors are getting opportunity to invest Indias footwear sector which has bright prospects ahead. The sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% by 2020 as population and income growth will continue. We see with GST implementation, organized footwear segment is expected to grow better than the current growth. Hence Khadim is well placed in the affordable fashion segment to tap the growth. Considering parameters like premiumization of its sub-brands, Growth from organised sales push and Industry potentiality, On the valuation front, Khadims issue price is at attractive levels in terms of P/E as compared to its peers. We recommend investors to subscribe to the IPO offer both for listing premium as well as long term basis. Msearch IPO Note Khadim Oct 2017 For all IPO stories, click here The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. The other IPO which also received huge responses were Happiest Minds Technologies and Chemcon Speciality Chemicals, which was subscribed 150.98 times and 149.3 times respectively. Interestingly, both these stocks have seen bumper listing gained over 100 percent. Let's see how the IPO subscription and listing happened in 2020 so far, considered only IPOs issue size over Rs 100 crore. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Khadim India Limited is one of the leading footwear brands in India, with a two-pronged focus on retail and distribution of footwear. It is second largest footwear retailer in India in terms of number of exclusive retail stores operating under the Khadims brand, with the largest presence in East India and one of the top three players in South India. It also has largest footwear retail franchise network in India. The core business objective of the company is to create an identity as an affordable fashion brand, catering to the entire family for all occasions. As of Mar 2017, Khadim India Ltd operates in 23 states and 1 union territory in India. The company is led by promoter, CMD, Siddhartha Roy Burman with 34 years of experience and corporate Promoter is Knightsville Private Limited. Valuations: At the offer price band of `745-750/- the issue is commands a P/E of ~43.6x its FY17 estimated diluted EPS of 17.18/-& 2.2x it post issue market cap /sales. We believe the stock is currently pricing in all near-term triggers and hence are NEUTRAL on the issue. For all IPO stories, click here The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. 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 A government panel has recommended shutting down cryptocurrency dealers in India in a move to restrict the use of virtual currencies in the country, reports The Economic Times. According to the report, the decision came after the digital currency Bitcoin hit record highs when CME Group, operator of the worlds largest futures and options exchange, announced the launch of Bitcoin futures by the year-end. The digital currency hit a new all-time high of USD 7,067.54 on Thursday, as per CoinDesks Bitcoin Price Index valuing it at USD 118 billion. Bitcoin has gained more than 600 percent (USD 6,000) since the start of the year, up from USD 968 on December 31, 2016. Legendary stock investor and billionaire Warren Buffett recently said that digital currency is in bubble territory, a concern shared by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed and Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. The present price of Bitcoin in India is at Rs 4.9 lakh. Hesham Rehman, CEO & co-founder of Bitxoxo, was quoted as saying that instead of shutting down cryptocurrencies dealers, the government must take steps to curb buying and selling of bitcoins or cryptocurrencies in cash. There has been speculation of late that the Indian government may introduce its own virtual currency. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Hero MotoCorp (HMCL), the largest player in the 2-wheeler (2W) segment, continues to ride smoothly as is evident from its second quarter numbers. HMCL posted volume and revenue growth and maintained its EBITDA margin on the back of tight cost control measures. Strong leadership in the two-wheeler segment, a revival riding on rural growth, slew of new launches, structural changes from an upcoming product rejig, focus on exports market and reasonable valuations make it a stock worth accumulating for long-term investors. HMCL registered a volume growth of 11 percent (YoY), helped by recovery post-GST and a good monsoon. The management expects the momentum in sales to continue, going forward. On the back of volume growth, the company registered a growth of 7.7 percent (YoY) in net revenues from operations and a growth of 11.5 percent (YoY) in net revenues (adjusted for GST accounting change on Haridwar sales). The realization witnessed a decline of 3.3 percent (YoY), primarily because of the GST accounting change on Haridwar sales.Despite the rise in key raw material prices (162bps (YoY) as a percent of net revenues), the company was able to record an increase of 110bps (YoY) in its EBITDA margins at 17.4 percent. The expansion was led by tight cost control as is evident by the fall of 151bps in other expenses as a percentage of net operating revenues. What makes this a one-term bet? HMCL is a formidable player in the 100/110cc segment and commands close to 70 percent of market share on the back of its strong distribution network and brand recall. The management expects to achieve volume growth in this segment which should be better than the industrys double-digit growth rate on the back of normal monsoon, market share gains and network reach.Recognising that fact that the company is under-represented in the growing premium motorcycle segment, the management is reworking its product strategy and expects FY18 to be much better for premium motorcycles. The management plans to launch a new 200cc bike towards the end of 4QFY18. In the 125 cc segment, the management indicated that there were some supply constraints leading to weakness in volume of its Glamor brand. The constraints have now been addressed and volumes can pick up, going forward; however, some carry-over effect was there in 2QFY18. The management has earmarked Rs 2,500 crore, to be spent over two years, for capacity expansion, technology upgrade and digitization. The Gujarat plant is also ramping up and is expected to add significant volume starting next year. Additionally, the companys expansion plan at Halol is on track and a plant is coming up in Andhra. Post expansion, HMCLs capacity will increase to 10 million units from the current 8.9 million units. It has also invested in Ather Energy, a startup in electric two-wheeler space, with a focus on launching electric vehicles (EV). The management also mentioned that they are working in-house for developing EVs. HMCL is focusing on exports and plans to expand its presence in fast growing markets of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. It commenced production at its second global manufacturing facility in Bangladesh in May 2017. The plan is to expand to as many as 50 countries by 2020 from the current 35 countries. The management indicated that they see a positive momentum in many countries, going forward. HMCL currently trades at 19.2 times FY18 and 17 times FY19 projected earnings. With an efficient execution and transformation strategy in place, the emerging macro tailwinds make HMCL an ideal candidate for accumulation for long-term investors. Follow @agrawant For more research articles, visit our Moneycontrol Research Page Ramco Systems | In FY21 so far, the stock has gained 516 percent to Rs 444.65 on November 23, 2020, from Rs 72.20 on March 31, 2020. Whereas in FY20, it had fallen 70 percent to Rs 72.20 from Rs 239.50 on March 29, 2019. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Ramco Systems, an enterprise software provider, as part of plans to expand its overseas presence would tap United Kingdom and Ireland markets with human capital management product, a top official said today. About 76 per cent of company's revenues contributed from markets outside India, with the city-based company having offices in seven countries including Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong and the Philippines. "We are seeing some green shoots in Europe especially in the United Kingdom. We will be formally launching a payroll system in the UK first and then Ireland..", company CEO Virender Aggarwal told reporters here. New Zealand and Europe have "shown promise" with orders getting booked for human capital management (HCM) software, he said. Stating that the company has been launching "country-specific" payroll products, he said, "Australia has been an established market for us with more than 25 customers." "The Philippines, Indonesia and China have emerged as new growth markets," he said. To a query, he said the company's two segments - human capital management including global payroll system, enterprise resource planning with logistics business would drive the revenues followed by aviation software. The company on the occasion also released the financial performance for the second quarter ending September 30, 2017. Ramco Systems has registered net profit after tax at Rs 64.99 million for the second quarter ending September 30, 2017. It had registered a net loss at Rs 10.95 million during corresponding quarter of the previous year. For the half-year period ending September 30, 2017 net profit after tax stood at Rs 34.97 million as against a net loss at Rs 2.17 million. "The improvements in profits was due to foreign exchange...", Aggarwal said. Total income for the July-September 30, 2017 marginally went up to Rs 1,172.12 million as compared to Rs 1,136.85 million registered during year ago period. For the six-month period ending September 30, 2017 total income increased to Rs 2,300.21 million from Rs 2,242.00 million registered during same period of last year. Ramco Systems has over 1,600 employees and has offices in 24 destinations globally. Angel Commodities' report on Cotton MCX Cotton Nov futures recovers on Wednesday for the second consecutive session on short covering after closing lower for three consecutive sessions. The prices have been under pressure by higher than expected cotton production in the country. Textile industry has urged Cotton Corporation to procure about 100 lakh bales to stabilize the prices this season. Moreover, Gujarat government has announced a bonus of 500 per quintal over and above the minimum support price of 4,020. The CCI is set to open its procurement centers in major cotton - growing states as it is believed that the prices may decrease below the MSP during the peak arrival season. The arrivals in the current season during Oct are about 20.27 lakh bales compared to 18.72 lakh bales last year as per ICC. Cotton futures are expected trade sideways to higher on good physical demand from the stockists, mills and traders as CCi may soon start procurement in cotton growing states. However, reports of improved arrivals from the new season crop in the domestic market and higher production estimates may keep the prices sideways. For all commodities report, click here Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Read More Aadhaar Card The number of contributors to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) declined by as much as two million following the Centres directive of linking Aadhaar with PF accounts, the Business Standard reported. There were 46.4 million EPF contributors in July this year, and 44 million in September, according to officials in the Ministry of Labour and Employment. A senior official of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) told the newspaper that the decrease in number of contributor was largely due to the Aadhaar linking mandate. However, he expects the number of contributors to increase in the next few months. Last year, the number of contributors were around 37.6 million. Otherwise, the number of contributors have only increased over the years, he told the newspaper. The most impacted were the 11 regional offices of the EPFO. While West Bengals Silliguri saw a decline of 7.7 percent of contributors in September compared to last years average, Tamil Nadus Vellore suffered a decline of 5.2 percent, followed by Delhis Laxmi Nagar with 4.3 percent. An expert familiar with the workings of the Labour ministry, cited three possible reasons behind the notable decline. One is the delay in linking Aadhaar with the account, second is when people with multiple Universal Account Numbers numbers fail to link each number with Aadhaar and lastly, a decline in the employement. The governments 31 regional offices have logged a decrease of more than 10 percent of contributors in September. Patidar leader Hardik Patel on Thursday gave the clearest indication yet that he will back the Congress in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections, saying the state's opposition party was "clearly supporting" members of his community. "I have been telling my community that they have to vote the BJP out of power...the community is directly supporting the fall of the BJP," the 24-year-old leader was quoted as saying by NDTV. "People are intelligent. When I tell them to vote the BJP out, they know who to vote for." Patel, who has put forward a set of demands before the Congress as a pre-condition for extending support to the party in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly polls, had earlier asked it to make its stand clear by November 3 on how it would ensure reservation for the community. The Congress has not yet made good on these demands. In a tweet, he also threatened that the Patidar community would oppose Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi during his visit to Surat on November 3, like it did to BJP president Amit Shah during one of his public gatherings in the city. "3/11/2017 tak Congress Patidar ko Samvedhanik aarakshan kaise dengi, us mudde par apna stand clear kar de nahi to Amit Shah jaisa mamla Surat mein hoga (Congress should make its stand clear by November 3 on how it will provide reservation to the Patidar community under the Constitution, otherwise the Amit Shah episode will be repeated in Surat)," he tweeted. In September last year, Shah had faced a strong opposition from the workers of the Hardik-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) during his visit to Surat. Dozens of PAAS workers had disrupted a function which was being attended by the BJP chief. Narendra Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi today attacked the Congress for promising "zero tolerance" on corruption when its own chief minister was facing allegations of graft and said the state's ruling party had become a "laughing club". Addressing a poll rally here, Modi said it was time to rid "Devbhoomi", or the land of the gods as Himachal Pradesh is known, of monsters. Chief Minister Virabhadra Singh, Modi said, was "out on bail" on graft charges. He asked the crowd whether it could digest the fact that such a chief minister had released the Congress manifesto promising to combat corruption. "I feel the Congress has become a laughing club. The chief minister is himself out on bail... "And he is out on bail on what charges? That of corruption. He is facing serious allegations," Modi said. Despite the charges, he added, Congress leaders came out before the media to release their manifesto, which says the Congress government will show zero tolerance on corruption. "Can you digest it?" he asked the crowd and added that even a small child from Himachal would not fall for it. Continuing his attack against the Congress, Modi said people across the country were engaged in Swachhta Abhiyan (cleanliness campaign) and were "wiping out" the old party whenever they got the opportunity through elections. "It is time to save Himachal Pradesh from those who looted it...from danavas (monsters)," he added. Himachal Pradesh goes to the polls on November 9. Banaskantha: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi arrives to visit the flood affected areas of Runi village in Banaskantha district on Friday. PTI Photo (PTI8_4_2017_000158B) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will take a break from his ongoing 'Navsarjan Yatra' in poll-bound Gujarat to visit Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh today to meet the families of victims of a massive explosion at an NTPC power plant. At least 20 people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a massive explosion ripped a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPC's Unchahar plant. "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli today morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon," the Congress leader tweeted. Rahul Gandhi began his three-day campaign tour of south Gujarat, where Assembly poll will be held in December. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who represents Rae Bareli in the Lok Sabha, in her condolence message said she wanted to be with the families of the victims to share their pain in this hour of grief, but could not do so due to her indisposition. Pakistani cleric Maulana Masood Azhar (C) who was freed in exchange for hostages on a hijacked Indian plane, attempts to stop photographers taking pictures as he arrives Karachi Press Club February 4, for a news conference. Azhar announced the establishment of a new party by the name of Jaishe Muhammad ( the army of the prophet Muhammad) to fight Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region. ZH/AA - RTRYE7 China today for the fourth time blocked India, the US and other nations' bid to list Pakistan- based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying "there is no consensus" within the members of the sanctions committee. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UN's list of banned terror outfits. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. The comment came as the China's three-month-old technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. Like last year, China first blocked the US application backed by France and the UK, who are also veto wielding members, with a six-month technical hold followed by another three months as per the rules of the Committee. The application would now lapse as there is no consensus. Diplomatic sources say China's recurring veto to prevent the UN ban on Azhar poses a major challenge for India, US and other countries. It is significant that China has rejected US application ahead of US President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing next week during which his new South Asia policy under which Washington is pressuring Pakistan -- China's all weather ally -- to shutdown all safe havens for terrorists. China has been defending Pakistan, saying that the world should respect its sacrifices with regard to counter terrorism. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules. The committee is yet reach the consensus. "The Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact," Hua said. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist after having blocked the move in February this year at the UN. Hua's remarks indicate that China will continue its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhar's listing during the second term of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which began over a week ago. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding on Azhar's listing. In the last two years, China has stonewalled efforts by India to declare Azhar as a global terrorist. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping chat as they walk along the front patio of the Mar-a-Lago estate after a bilateral meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria - RTX34M80 China hopes to improve its relations with the US during President Donald Trump's visit to the country next week, Foreign Ministry said today. Trump will visit Beijing at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping from November 8 to 10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement. The two heads of the state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said. He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results for Trump's visit and his meeting with Xi, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. The two countries have grappled to deal with deepening crisis over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes. China has faced mounting pressure from the Trump administration to rein in its close ally Pyongyang. Trump's visit to China will come after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Beijing last month. He conveyed Trump's greetings to the Chinese president, saying the US president was looking forward to his visit to China. The US has been accusing China of violating international rules and norms by laying claims on the disputed South and East China seas. China claims sovereignty on almost all of the South China Sea (SCS) which is disputed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. China has also laid claims on the Senkaku islands under the control of Japan in East China Sea and resorted to aggressive patrols in the last two years. The US calls the dominance of China over the SCS a threat to national interest in freedom of navigation. Tillerson has said China's "provocative actions" challenge international law and norms. The US has also asked China to provide fair and reciprocal treatment to its firms and cease "predatory" trade and investment practices. Trump had asked his country's top trade official in August to probe into Chinese trade practices with focus on intellectual property (IP) and advanced technology. "I'm directing the United States Trade Representative to examine China's policies, practices, and actions with regard to the forced transfers of American technology and the theft of American intellectual property," Trump had said as he signed a memorandum in this regard. Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un a rare message, Pyongyang's official news agency reported today, in his first public communication with his wayward neighbour for more than a year. The note signalled a possible improvement in their strained relationships, which has soured over Pyongyang's growing weapons ambitions even though Beijing is its longtime ally and economic benefactor. Xi's message, dated yesterday, was sent in response to congratulations from Kim last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party. "I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to the North's KCNA news agency said, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman". In his earlier note, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed his belief that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries". The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016. Analysts say that such exchanges have become extremely rare under the current leaders, even though Beijing and Pyongyang traditionally sent greetings and congratulations on each other's key anniversaries in the past. Their relationship was forged in the blood of the Korean War, when Mao Zedong sent millions of "volunteers" to fight US-led United Nations forces to a standstill. Mao described the allies as close as "lips and teeth", and China has long been accused of failing to enforce United Nations sanctions against the North for its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, even after voting for them in the Security Council. But Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September. Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the public exchange of messages signalled a willingness on both sides to improve relations. "The fact that both sides are swiftly trading letters and announcing it carries a symbolic meaning," Yang told AFP. "If the message was more intimate, we could expect a faster thawing of ties," he added, "but for now, it shows that both sides agree on the need to improve their relations". November 02, 2017 / 11:38 AM IST 09:15 Police compare an image on a smartphone to a person they spotted in the crowd at the shooting scene height="433" /> Police compare an image on a smartphone to a person they spotted in the crowd at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado November 1, 2017. (Reuters/Rick Wilking) Shooting witnesses are leaving the police station and being reunited with their family. Lots of hugs and crying #9news Katie Eastman (@KatieEastman) November 2, 2017 08:55 Police interviewing people, reviewing footage The Thornton Police Department has said that its detectives are currently reviewing security footage at the Walmart store and are interviewing witnesses for assistance on suspect(s) description/information. 08:51 People watch an ambulance leave the shooting scene People watch an ambulance leave at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado November 1, 2017. (Reuters/Rick Wilking) 08:48 Shooter not in custody: Police According to 9News Denver, Thornton Police Department PIO Matt Barnes, has said that they do not have a suspect in custody in the Walmart shooting. 08:45 SWAT medics evacuating people from the shooting scene Patrick Carnes is evacuated in a Walmart cart by SWAT medics from the scene of a shooting at a Walmart where Carnes was shopping in Thornton, Colorado November 1, 2017. (Reuters/Rick Wilking) 08:38 08:21 At least 2 dead in the Walmart shooting incident At least two people have been killed and one has been wounded in the shooting inside a Walmart store in suburban Denver on Wednesday, police said. Thornton Police Department did not immediately release any information about the circumstances of the shooting or who was responsible for it. In a Twitter post the police said investigators had confirmed that two men were dead and a woman was taken to a local hospital, but no further details were given. The situation appeared potentially ominous from authorities' initial reports. (With Reuters inputs) 08:17 Police guard the entrance at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton Police guard the entrance at the scene of a shooting at a Walmart in Thornton, Colorado November 1, 2017. (Reuters/Rick Wilking) Numerous people being led to an RTD bus in front of a closed Gander Mountain next to Walmart. #thorntonwalmartshooting #9NEWS #9WantsToKnow Kevin Vaughan (@writerkev) November 2, 2017 08:04 The Thornton Police Department is expected to brief people about the incident, shortly. 07:56 Media reports are now suggesting that the shooter has been taken into custody. 07:51 Reports of shots fired came shortly before 6:30 pm (local time) Mountain Time, a police spokesman told local 9NEWS in Denver, according to Reuters. Local television images showed a number of police cars and ambulances surrounding the store, lights flashing. 07:50 The Thornton Police Department have now confirmed that 2 men have been killed and 1 woman has been injured in the shooting incident. 07:47 The Thornton Police Department has said that there is no active shooter "at this time". However, they have called it an "active crime scene". 07:42 "We've got multiple parties down, we're still trying to ascertain what their conditions are," Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters. The store had been "self-evacuated" by customers and employees who fled following the gunfire, Avila said. 07:38 Multiple people were shot on Wednesday inside a Walmart in a Denver suburb, local police said, Reuters is reporting. Police in Thornton, Colorado, did not release any information about any of the victims and it was not clear if an assailant had been taken into custody. Thornton is about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Denver. Sauber's test and development driver Charles Leclerc has completed the latest test of Pirelli's 2018 tyre compounds. This year, the tyre manufacturer has been permitted to run 29 days of in-season tests using current cars and drivers. Data is then openly shared with all teams. The 20-year-old Monegasque was in action on both Tuesday and Wednesday. On the first day he was working alongside his Force India counterpart Alfonso Celis. Overnight rain before the second day meant that he started on intermediates, before moving to slick tyres as the test progressed. Neither Leclerc nor Sauber were told which development compound they were running at any time. Leclerc had already completed a total of 115 laps on Tuesday. He then added another 104 laps on Wednesday at the 2.674 mile, 17-turn Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Prior to this week's test, Leclerc also participated in first free practice ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix. On that occasion he completed 28 laps sitting in for the team's regular driver Marcus Ericsson. "The track is fun to drive on. I really liked it," the Formula 2 champion had said. "It has a bit of everything, all kinds of corners. "I am learning more and more each time I drive the car," he added. "I am really looking forward to getting back into the Sauber C36-Ferrari for the free practice session in Brazil." Celis had also been involved in FP1. Unfortunately he completed only 17 laps before collecting the barrier and triggering a red flag. "I love the track and really wanted to put on a good show," the Mexican native explained later. "Unfortunately I pushed a bit too hard and ended the session early. I turned in and lost the rear at the final corner. "The track had quite low grip and several other cars did the same thing, but I made contact with the wall. I wanted to show the true performance of the car, but it just didn't happen." Celis successfully bounced back from the FP1 setback to pile on 114 laps on Tuesday. The session was conducted on slick tyres in warm and sunny conditions. Pirellis next tyre test will take place at Interlagos after the Mexican Grand Prix. The McLaren-Honda team is scheduled to be in attendance. Gallery: The beautiful wives and girlfriends of F1 drivers Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter US President Donald Trump today demanded death penalty for Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov after he killed eight people in a truck attack in New York. Trump has been vocal in condemning the yesterday's attack carried out by the 29-year-old ISIS-inspired man who ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path near the World Trade Centre, killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen others. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump said in a tweet, in reference to the FBI's statement that Saipov, a resident of New Jersey, was inspired by the ISIS and "requested to display ISIS's flag" in his hospital room. Trump said yesterday that it was "another attack by a very sick and deranged person" while extending his "thoughts, condolences and prayers" to the victims. He also called for tougher "merit-based" immigration measures and vowed to do away with the diversity visa programme. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Programme'... I want merit based," he wrote on Twitter. Saipov was today charged with terrorism offences by US prosecutors who said he decided to carry out the attack "to inflict maximum damage against civilians". The FBI and New York Police Department are jointly investigating the terrorist attack, the deadliest in New York post 9/11. Hours after the terrorist attack, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security for "extreme vetting". He has also supported the idea of sending the suspect to Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre in Cuba. A Pakistani anti-graft court today ordered Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to appear before it on November 8 and maintained a bailable arrest warrant against him after he failed to turn up citing health reasons. The case was filed against 67-year-old Dar by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) following a verdict by the Supreme Court, which disqualified prime minister Nawaz Sharif after an investigation into corruption allegations against his family. Dar's counsel Khawaja Harris appeared in the Accountability Court and sought exemption from appearance on medical ground as the minister is in the UK. He also shared medical certificate of Dar and informed the court that the minister would undergo angiography tomorrow in a London hospital. The NAB prosecutor opposed the exemption, saying the medical certificate did not specify the disease from which the minister was suffering. It pressed the court to issue a non- bailable arrest warrant. Judge Muhammad Bashir maintained the bailable arrest warrant against Dar while refraining from issuing a non- bailable arrest warrant against the minister as he was unwell. The court ordered Dar to appear before it on November 8. The bailable arrest warrant was issued against Dar after he failed to appear before the court in a corruption case stemming from the Panama Papers scandal. The minister has so far appeared before the court seven times since the trial began. Earlier, he missed the first hearing on September 20 and two successive hearings on October 30 and November 2. At the hearing on October 23, the court recorded statements of NAB witnesses, including Abdul Rehman Gondal of Allied Bank and Masoodul Ghani of Habib Bank Limited against Dar. Three witnesses, including Al-Baraka Bank Senior Vice- President Tariq Javed and Shahid Aziz of the National Investment Trust (NIT) asset management company, have testified in the case. Dar was indicted last month in the case in which he is accused of making assets that were "disproportionate to his known sources of income for which he could not reasonably account for". On July 28, a five-member Supreme Court bench had ordered NAB to file three references against Sharif and one against Dar, on petitions filed by leaders of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan, Jamaat-i-Islami's Sirajul Haq and Awami Muslim League's Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. In its reference against Dar, NAB has alleged that "the accused has acquired assets and pecuniary interests/resources in his own name and/or in the name of his dependants of an approximate amount of Rs 831.678 million (approx)". Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has picked Roh Hee-chan as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), putting the executive in charge of one of Asia's biggest corporate cash piles. The appointment, which Samsung announced on Thursday, came after former CFO Lee Sang-hoon stepped down from the role two days ago after being nominated Samsung's next chairman of the board. Roh was previously the CFO of Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics. He will oversee some 76 trillion won ($68.31 billion) in Samsung Electronics' holdings of cash and cash equivalent as of the end of September, which rose 8 percent from the June quarter. Roh's appointment was part of several senior executive promotions announced on Thursday. The appointments included a new head of Samsung's China business, Hwang Deuk-kyu, but most kept their current roles in addition to being promoted to President. Samsung Electronics named a new generation of top managers this week, replacing the leaders of its three main businesses, and promised to reward shareholders with $26 billion in payouts to 2020. The shake-up was designed to ease investors' concerns about a leadership vacuum following the arrest and conviction of Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges earlier this year. Samsung Electronics' shares have risen around 6 percent in three days since the shake-up was unveiled to a record high of 2.876 million won per share during trading on Thursday. Finnair airplane is docked at the Chopin International Airport in Warsaw February 6, 2012. Finnair will present its Quarterly results on February 9, 2012. REUTERS/Peter Andrews (POLAND - Tags: BUSINESS TRANSPORT) - GF2E82616SH01 Imagine that you reach the airport for a flight and at the check-in counter the airline staff asks you to stand on a weighing scale, what would you do? This is the dilemma that passengers of Finnair, a European carrier, are facing when they are checking in at the Helsinki Airport. Finnair staff at the airport are politely requesting their customers to step up on a weighing scale for research purposes! According to the BBC, the airline is surveying customers to check that the estimates used by them to calculate total weight, fuel and safety are accurate. Like most of the European airlines, Finnair uses European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) passenger standard weight estimates, according to which a male passenger's weight is taken as 84.6 kg, a female passenger's as 66.5 kg and for kids who are less than 12-year-old, the average weight is taken as 30.7 kg. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. According to EASA, first-class male passengers weigh more than their economy class counterparts, on the other hand, for female passengers, the reverse is true. So, if the number of males and females are skewed or if there is a difference in the occupancy of business and economy class, it would affect the final calculation. Moreover, the average weight of luggage, according to EASA estimates is 6.1 kg, but practically, in winters people pack heavier bags than in summers. The airline wants to arrive at an average that is specific to their airline, reflecting the kind of passengers they get, of all racestall Finnish men to small Asian women. In two days, they have already found 180 volunteers who agreed to weigh themselves, along with their carry-on luggage. The airline needs at least 2,000 volunteers to get a fair idea of their regular payloads, the report said. The airline is looking to continue this drive for all seasonswinter and summerso that they can adjust their weight calculation accordingly in the future. "The thought is that parents, grandparents, will bring their kids there to have fun, to use the trails, but also to understand the history of veterans' service in Towamencin," land planner Peter Simone November 02, 2017 Neocons Push Dubious Paper To Allege Iran - Al-Qaeda Connection The anti-Iran powers in the U.S. again try to smear Iran as allied with al-Qaeda. The accusations will be used to justify further hostilities against the country. Suddenly an anonymous, and likely fake, document appears and is prominently launched into the public circulation. To provide plausibility for the publishing the new CIA director Mike Pompeo ordered his staff to release additional data allegedly found in Osama Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan. These "new" papers were first released to the neoconservative anti-Iran lobby Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Among the "hundred thousands" of pages a mysterious 19 page document is claimed to prove Iranian collaboration with al-Qaeda. The way the release was handled and the prominence put on this one specific paper indicates that the now released stash was "spiked" with this document to initiate hostilities against Iran. We have been here before. Fake documents produced by the CIA and neo-conservative think-tanks were used to allege that Saddam Hussein was buying Uranium in Niger (copy below). False claims were made that Saddam had contacts with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack in New York. Former CIA Career Analyst Ned Price explains the politics behind the new release: Ned Price @nedprice - 6:30 PM - 1 Nov 2017 @CIA released what it claims are the final public files from Bin Ladens lair. Im all for transparency, but this isnt about that. In Jan, DNI, which led the declassification effort, released what it said was the final tranche of Bin Laden files. Link The DNI-led review was overseen by career intel officials, who concluded that, w the Jan files, all those of public interest were released. But a funny thing happened when CIA Director Pompeo came into office. Im told he re-launched a review of the files. In doing so, he took officers away from important missions to poreand re-poreover the millions of documents. How can we be sure this was a CIA effort? Unlike previous releases, todays files are hosted on CIA.gov, not the DNI site. He said as much at the gathering of a conservative group, @FDD, opposed to the Iran deal in September. Link As luck would have it, CIA provided an advance copy of todays files to @LongWarJournal, this groups publication. Link The ploy is transparent despite the fact that the newly-released documents dont tell us anything we didnt already know. Whats not as transparent are the motives of Pompeo, the administrations leading and most influential Iran hawk. Remember Cheney on @MeetThePress, pointing to Attas supposed Prague meeting w Iraqi officials? It was a key element of the march to war. History doesnt repeat itself but it does rhyme. Need to remain vigilant to ensure Pompeo isnt able to write it. The CIA's outlet for these papers, the FDD, writes about the cache: The CIA is releasing hundreds of thousands of documents, images, and computer files recovered during the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ... The CIA provided FDDs Long War Journal with an advance copy of many of the files. It will take years for experts and researchers to comb through this treasure trove of information. However, we offer some preliminary observations below. It is astonishing, and quite suspicious, that the FDD immediately 'found' one very specific document out of "hundreds of thousands which will take years to comb through". This one specific document allegedly 'proves' that Iran is in cahoots with al-Qaeda: The files provide new details concerning al Qaedas relationship with Iran. One never-before-seen 19-page document contains a senior jihadists assessment of the groups relationship with Iran. The author explains that Iran offered some Saudi brothers in al Qaeda everything they needed, including money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Iranian intelligence facilitated the travel of some operatives with visas, while sheltering others. Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, an influential ideologue prior to 9/11, helped negotiate a safe haven for his jihadi comrades inside Iran. But the author of the file, who is clearly well-connected, indicates that al Qaedas men violated the terms of the agreement and Iran eventually cracked down on the Sunni jihadists network, detaining some personnel. Still, the author explains that al Qaeda is not at war with Iran and some of their interests intersect, especially when it comes to being an enemy of America. This very document is the sole one in the stash FDD now uses to insinuate cooperation between Iran and al-Qaeda. Other Bin Laden documents that were included in earlier releases provided the exact opposite. In 2012 Reuters headlined: Documents show tense al Qaeda-Iran relationship: Al Qaedas relationship with Irans government has been fractious at best and openly antagonistic at worst, according to documents confiscated from Osama bin Ladens hideout in Pakistan and made public on Thursday. The one new document that now changes the old assessment by 180 degree is of course the one the right-wing Telegraph and other outlets immediately point out: Trove of Bin Laden documents reveal Iran's secret dealings with al-Qaeda. But how come that an assessment from a "senior jihadist" received by Bin Laden is anonymous? How does FDD know that the author is "senior"? Why doesn't he have a name? The alleged "senior jihadist" paper wants us to believe that Iran offered al-Qaeda training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon"? That is ludicrous. Al-Qaeda always had an anti-Shia ideology and agenda. It is not plausible that the Shia majority Iran would ask the Shia organization Hizbullah to train the anti-Shia killer gangs of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is an enemy of Iran. After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 some al-Qaeda members and their families fled towards Iran. They had no other place to go. All of them were immediately detained or put under house arrest. A deal was likely made in which al-Qaeda promised to refrain from attacking Iran while Iran would keep these hostages unharmed. The al-Qaeda members were not "guests" in Iran. In its yearly Country Reports on Terrorism the U.S. State Department notes: Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qaida (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. In 2015 Iran released some al-Qaeda members in exchange for an Iranian diplomat al-Qaeda had taken hostage in Yemen. That is not the record of a friendly relation. The 19-pages document is not plausible. It was obviously produced and prominently launched for a specific political purpose. It contradicts earlier released papers as well as the historic record. Professor Max Abrams notes: Max Abrahms @MaxAbrahms - 4:05 AM - 2 Nov 2017 The regime change playbook plays on American fears of Salafist terrorists by claiming the target-leadership supports them. For Saddam it was that he supported Al Qaeda. For Assad it was that he supported ISIS. For Iran it will increasingly stress Al Qaeda ties. Add to that the equally implausible claims that Russia is supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. (With what? Rusty AK-47s?) It seems likely that the "never-before-seen 19-page document" with "a senior jihadists assessment" was written up in Langley or Tel Aviv. It was then put into the stash of the now released Bin Laden files to give it a somewhat plausible origin. FDD was specifically pointed to that very document to bring it into public circulation. This is clearly reminiscent of the Bush/Cheney regime's campaign against Iraq in which faked documents claimed that Saddam was buying Uranium from Niger and that he had contacts with the perpetrators of 9/11. The release of this document is primitive warmongering propaganda. So primitive indeed that many will fall for it. --- Update: Others are equally suspicious of this release. Ankit Panda at The Diplomat asks: Was the bulk release of Osama Bin Ladens Abbottabad data trove an act of transparency or something else? Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, the Angry Arab, notes a lot of auspicious issue in a released document the CIA called the Bin Laden journal. Of the document discussed above he writes: Then there is that 19-page document (unsigned) and it is ostensibly is a document showing ties between Iran and Al-Qa`idah. This one is the hardest to believe. The document does not make sense: at several points it talks about Iranian regime being very pragmatic and another point it talks that the enmity between US and Iran is very real and not fake. But this last contention is totally against all the beliefs of Islamists (of the various kind) who are convinced that the US and Iran are allies under the table. The paper also alleges that Iran offered to send Al-Qa`idah members to train at Hizbullah camps in Lebanon. This is clearly a fabrication and shows a clumsy effort to implicate Iran in a relations with Al-Qa`idah. But why would Iran need to send Al-Qa`dish fighters who are allegedly in Iran already to Lebanon to train? Why not train them there in Iran? Also, the document itself then says: that Iranian governments arrested all of them and they had to go into hiding. This document in particular clearly is fabricated--I venture--and I don't know who wrote it. It also struck me as less religious in tone than what we normally read form those quarters. Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif jumps in: Javad Zarif @JZarif - 7:29 PM - 2 Nov 2017 A record low for the reach of petrodollars: CIA & FDD fake news w/ selective AlQaeda docs re: Iran can't whitewash role of US allies in 9/11 Posted by b on November 2, 2017 at 11:36 UTC | Permalink Comments Thanks to Nigel the Nutcracker from The Warehouse, we are granting wishes across the country! Muna Abu-Habsa: We recently published the Global Fund Investor Experience report, where weve taken a close look at the experiences of fund investors in 25 countries across the world. We evaluated countries across four key areas which are Regulation and Taxation, Disclosure, Fees and Expenses, and Sales. Depending on how each country fared within those areas, it was then graded on a 5-point scale of Top, Above Average, Average, Below Average, and Bottom. As evidence mounts that fees can be a crucial factor in investment performance, we weighted Fees and Expenses more heavily in 2017 than in previous editions of the report. The UK fared strongly in this area relative to other countries, reflecting the implementation of RDR, which has banned advice fees from being bundled with fund expenses. Since this has taken effect, weve found reported ongoing charges to have fallen in most asset classes. Overall, the UKs grade was Above Average. A number of other European countries, particularly France, Italy, Finland, Spain, and Belgium suffered on Fees and Expenses, pushing their overall grades down to Below Average. We expect that the impending MiFID II regulations will bring in tougher rules to protect investors and should see those European markets improve in this study. Overall though weve found that theres been widespread improvement in investor experiences across multiple markets across the globe and we think thats been driven by globalisation, stronger regulation, and a move towards adopting best-practices. In fact, no country received the Bottom overall grade, and more than half received an overall grade of Average. Having said that, theres still a lot of work to be done. Although the United States remains the country with the highest gradeas it has since 2009leading with lower expenses and a strong disclosure regime, it is still held back by a Regulation and Taxation grade that trails many markets. We hope that this study will continue to encourage dialogue about best practices and act as a catalyst for positive change. Maintaining independence and editorial freedom is essential to our mission of empowering investor success. We provide a platform for our authors to report on investments fairly, accurately, and from the investors point of view. We also respect individual opinionsthey represent the unvarnished thinking of our people and exacting analysis of our research processes. Our authors can publish views that we may or may not agree with, but they show their work, distinguish facts from opinions, and make sure their analysis is clear and in no way misleading or deceptive. To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research. Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process. Commercial real estate in Canadas six major markets is, by and large, healthy, but Alberta continues reeling from the aftershocks of the oil sectors plummet a few years ago, according to the National Dashboard Report by Colliers. Robust office space absorption in Vancouver is being largely driven by the technology, advertising, media and information industries, accounting for 40%, while education institutions are expanding throughout the metropolitan area and comprises 12% of the absorption. Colliers reported the vacancy rate dropped from 6.3% in Q2 to 6% in Q3. Education tenants, which figure transit access into location planning, rose from 35,000 square feet in 2016 to 300,000 Q3 of 2017. The National Dashboard Report also noted that Vancouvers Broadway Corridor/Mount Pleasant area is flourishing with over half a million square feet of office space under construction or pre-leasing. Vancouvers industrial demand is in strong demand, and the third-quarter vacancy rate in Metro Vancouver is 1.8%, down slightly from Q2s 1.9%, and remains below the five-year average of 3.1%. Between the third quarters of 2015 to 2017, the vacancy rate has been under 2.5%, in part, because of restricted new supply. The Greater Toronto Areas vacancy rate during Q3 was 5.3%, while the availability rate was 7.7%, both of which decreased from the second quarter. The average asking net and gross rates also decreased from the previous quarter the net is $19.37 and the gross $37.18, and the rates increased downtown and in the GTA West, which have the regions highest office concentration. The investment market also had an extremely healthy Q3 showing; sales volume rose by 29% since the previous quarter, totalling slightly below $1.8bln. Scotia Plaza sold its remaining stake for $681mln, and 777 Bay St. sold for $398mln. The citys industrial market had strong leasing during the third quarter of 2017, with positive absorption in three out of the GTAs four markets, for a total of 1,820,301 square feet. GTA West experienced the largest decrease in availability rate, down 0.7% from Q2, for a GTA-wide availability rate of 2.3%. Sales in the investment market averaged $132 per square foot, and 2.8mln square feet of additional space expected within a couple of years. Monreal is flush with new developments, like the Humaniti tower at 1030 Rue de Bleury, and Maison de Radio-Canada, but there will be considerable vacant office space in the business district, resulting in strong need for Class-A property investment if the intent is to compete and retain tenants. Prestige Class-A office buildings sell at cap rates in the 5-5.75% range. SNC Lavalin just completed a 20-year- sale-leaseback of its Blvd. Rene Levesque Ouest headquarter. The Collier report also stated that investor appetite for office product in Montreals downtown core remains voracious. The industrial sectors vacancy rate in Quebecs largest city is on a downward trend, as it concluded the third quarter at 4%, while the availability rate was 6.6%. Well-leased, modern industrial facilities in Montreal are in high demand and short supply, putting upward pressure on price points, especially as REITs and institutional investors bid competitively. The National Dashboard Report stated that purchasers said they expected top industrial properties to yield between 6.5% and 7%. Montreal has seen substantial growth in its artificial intelligence sector and by extension, optimism for the city, as its a globally-renowned AI development hub. Canadas second-largest city is also home to the worlds biggest community of deep-learning researchers, believed to be close to 250, who are associated with the French associated with Universite de Montreal and McGill University. The nations capital is devoid of Class-A space, and thats left Class-B properties picking up the slack. Large tenants in the technology sector still opt for Ottawas downtown, leading to Colliers to speculate that there could be tech boom on the horizon. Ottawas industrial sector is presently short of smaller space with quality loading features, and Colliers wonders whether or that will slowly, but surely, raise price points. Theres also a dearth of industrial space in the neighbourhood of 10,000 square feet that has adequate height. Ottawas east end continues to boast the best combination of location and space, and the Deep East and West both present ideal conditions for developers. The oil industrys decline has had lasting shockwaves in Calgary, where downtown office leasing activity remains cowed. That was likely been exacerbated by the summer, a typically quiet time of year. However, AA- and B-Class absorption during the third quarter was strong, resulting in 138,000 square feet. Since 2012, Q3 was only the second consecutive quarter with positive absorption, bespeaking the potential for economic growth. Calgary industrial sector is riding a high, as vacancy continues declining. Four consecutive quarters of positive absorption totalling 2,413,238 square feet have reignited the development of multi-tenant buildings. In tandem with minimal new supply going back six quarters, developers are moving along with project phases. The report surmised that the vacancy rate will keep trending downward through the end of the year. Edmontons office absorption rate during Q3 was -35,919 square feet, for an 11th straight quarter of negative absorption. However, the Albertan capital fared worse in this regard during the first two quarters of 2017. While the vacancy rate has slightly decreased, it is only because of building conversions, but that number is expected to climb with the Stantec Tower in 2018 increasing inventory. In Q3, industrial vacancy in Edmonton dropped to 7.7% from 7.8% in Q2, and the region had a positive absorption of 146,364 because manufacturing, storage and warehouse activity in the citys southeast are strong. However, the surrounding areas dipped in Q3 absorption to 93,853 square feet from 176,682 in Q2, but Colliers allayed concern by pointing out the provinces oil and gas sector are rebounding with the production and exports of crude oil increasing through the first half of the year. Moreover, manufacturing, retail, sales, exports and housing construction had solid recoveries from their lows a year ago. In the latest report from real estate services firm Altus Group, commercial property tax rates in Ottawa are some of the highest nationwide, in spite of a steady downward slide over the past decade.The Canadian Property Tax Rate Benchmark Report showed that businesses in Ottawa pay $28.52 in property taxes for every $1,000 of a propertys assessed value, representing a 0.4% year-over-year decline. According to Altus, the national average is $23.02.The report also provided a comparison between commercial rates to residential rates, with the rate in Ottawa being 2.67that is, a commercial property valued at $1 million would have taxes 2.67 times higher than an equally valued residential property. The national average of this ratio is 2.85.High commercial property taxes place a greater weight on businesses to contribute an unequitable share of municipal budgets, Altus noted in the study, as quoted by the Ottawa Business Journal. While every homeowner would appreciate paying less property tax, it is important to balance the burden paid by businesses in each city. Lower commercial property taxes help make cities more competitive, promote job growth and investment, and subsequently generate more stable and sustainable revenue.A citys property tax rate is directly linked to its competitiveness, REALPAC chief executive Michael said in a statement. High commercial property tax rates send business and economic development elsewhere, and work at cross purposes with infrastructure investments, particularly transit. Further efforts should be made in all cities to bring commercial property taxes down to more reasonable levels. Builders Blast Tax Proposal; Realtors not Smiling Either Congressional leadership and the Trump Administration stand accused of "abandoning middle-class taxpayers in favor of high-income Americans and wealthy corporations' by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The remark came in a statement from NAHB Chairman Granger MacDonald regarding Thursday's release of the framework for the long anticipated Republican tax reform proposal. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) also released a statement critical of the plan, but withheld talking about specifics pending further review. MacDonald had no such reservations. In the statement, which carried the headline "Republican Tax Reform Plan Slams Middle Class," he said, "The bill eviscerates existing housing tax benefits by drastically reducing the number of home owners who can take advantage of mortgage interest and property tax incentives," and that "Capping mortgage interest at $500,000 for new home purchases means that home buyers in expensive markets will effectively lose this housing tax benefit moving forward." The bill, is expected to hit heavy headwinds from other lobbying groups as well. It cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent but appears not to eliminate many of the current exemptions that cut the average corporate tax bill to 18 percent. The bill would reduce the current six tax brackets to four; 39.6 percent for households making more than $1 million annually, and 35 percent on incomes from $260,000 to $1 million. A 25 percent rate would apply from $90,000 to $260,000, and percent from $24,000 to 90,000. Households making less than $24 would pay no income tax. The plan also: Caps the mortgage-interest deduction on new home sales at $500,000 rather than the current $1 million for couples filing jointly. Caps deductions for state and local property taxes at $10,000 and repeals other state and local tax deductions. Eliminates deductions for student loan interest Taxes endowments at large schools at a 1.4 percent rate. Raises the childcare tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600, and Leave provisions for 401(k) retirement savings plans untouched. Granger further charged that "The House leadership killed a cost-effective plan proposed by NAHB that Ways and Means Committee leaders agreed to include in the legislation. It would provide a robust homeownership tax credit that would have helped up to 37 million additional home owners who do not currently itemize. Most of them are low- and moderate-income home owners. "Meanwhile, as corporations receive a major tax cut, small businesses, which generate the lion's share of job growth, get limited relief. The bottom line, according to Granger, "Congress is ignoring the needs of America's working-class families and small businesses. And by undermining the nation's longstanding support for homeownership and threatening to lower the value of the largest asset held by most American families, this tax reform plan will put millions of home owners at risk." When early details about the plan began to leak out, NAHB seemed ready to abandon the mortgage interest deduction as long as the low-income tax credit stayed in place. However, they said over last weekend that they felt betrayed by the refusal of House Speaker Paul Ryan to allow inclusion of their tax credit in the bill presented to the House. They announced then that they would spend the money they had set aside to lobby in favor of the tax proposal to fight against it instead. The statement from NAR President William E. Brown said, "We are currently reviewing the details of the tax proposal released today, but at first glance it appears to confirm many of our biggest concerns about the Unified Framework. Eliminating or nullifying the tax incentives for homeownership puts home values and middle-class homeowners at risk, and from a cursory examination this legislation appears to do just that. We will have additional details upon a more thorough reading of the bill." Two major markets are showing an increased risk of mortgage application defects; but for the first time this year the country, overall, saw declines. In September, the overall risk of defects, fraud and misrepresentation declined for the first time this year, although there are regions with higher defect risk due to recent natural disasters, said Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American. Unfortunately, historical data indicates that natural disasters and loan application defect risk go hand-in-hand. Our defect, misrepresentation and fraud risk index identified signs of this risk trend in Texas and Florida this month and particularly in Houston, where risk increased the most among all the major markets we track. In Houston, which was severely impacted by flooding, defect, fraud and misrepresentation risk surged 7.2 percent, the largest month-over-month increase among the top 50 metropolitan markets. Flooding is associated with elevated risk for misrepresentation of collateral risk condition. Thats the bad news. The good news is that the frequency of defects and fraud among submitted mortgage loans fell 1.2% month-over-month in September, according to First American Financial Corporation. The defect index is also down 18.6% from its peak in October 2013. In July and August, we reported that the Loan Application Defect Index didnt rise, which was good news given that loan application defect, fraud and misrepresentation risk had risen throughout 2017, Fleming said. In September, the overall risk of defects, fraud and misrepresentation declined for the first time this year, although there are regions with higher defect risk due to recent natural disasters. Servicemember complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) about mortgage products ranked second by volume among all financial products, according to a report by the agency.Among servicemembers, the top five products by volume of complaints were debt collection at 39%, mortgage at 17%, credit or consumer reporting at 15%, and credit card and checking or savings both at 7%.The CFPB said that it has handled more than 91,000 complains from servicemembers since 2011, or an average of 15,000 complaints each year. The CFPB classification includes servicemembers, veterans, and their families.According to the CFBP, factors related to the military careers of servicemembers often complicate the challenges they face. Complaint data showed instances where the experience of servicemember families differed from that of non-servicemember families.Nationally, the CFPB analysis found that servicemembers are more likely to submit complaints about debt collection when compared to non-servicemembers. Only 26% of all complaints from non-servicemembers are about debt collection, compared to 39% for servicemembers.Additionally, servicemembers are less likely to submit complaints than non-servicemembers about the other top four types of complaints, such as those related to mortgages and credit reporting.The CFPB also found regional differences in servicemember complaint data. For example, servicemembers in California submit more complaints about debt collection than any other product. Meanwhile, North Dakota servicemembers complain about credit or consumer reporting the most.Complaints by servicemembers and their families show a range of problems with financial products and services, the CFPB said. For example, servicemembers have complained about debt collectors calling their superiors about debts without authorization. One familys decades-long environmental stewardship, combined with the support of Angelo State University and Shell Oil, which stepped in to provide funding, evolved into the Rangeland Reclamation Project. The project, led by Dr. James Ward, associate professor of geology in ASUs Department of Physics and Geosciences, had Ward, who had developed techniques alongside his parents, who were lifelong environmental stewards, and fellow faculty members and their students researching ways to remediate saltwater-impacted lands. The results are expected to have implications for landowners and oil and gas producers alike. Shell Oil heard about the work and stepped in with funding. Dr. Ward, along with Dr. Cody Scott and Dr. Mike Salisbury from ASUs Department of Agriculture teamed up to begin working on in situ rangeland restoration for brine-impacted soils. Shell Oil heard about the work and provided $116,000 three years ago and an additional $70,000 this year. To date, ASU has graduated one masters student in agriculture and six bachelors of science and senior thesis students in geoscience, funded off these projects. The students have presented their research at a number of national scientific meetings. The work drew the support of the committee charged with selecting the winner of the Bruno Hanson/Midland College Environmental Excellence Award, earning the trio the award. On behalf of the Hanson family, this award is especially important because my father was a rancher as well as a geologist. The Ward family exemplifies the values close to my fathers heart: Land and the environment. Shell Oil Company helped with the project and Angelo State worked closely with the research, commented Gretchen Bakke, Bruno Hansons daughter and a member of the selection committee. The Rangeland Restoration Project, which originated from the ideas and labors of the Ward family and has been carried on and further developed through Angelo State University along with funding from Shell Oil Company, is a project that exemplifies the tradition of excellence that this award represents. Through research conducted to develop cost-effective ways to remediate impacted lands, West Texas landowners and oil companies will benefit; while providing education to the students on land stewardship as well, commented M.L. Hanson, Bakkes niece and a committee member as well as senior geologist with Beryl Oil & Gas LP. Committee Member Debi Moore, president of Sport Environmental Services LLC, said, The Rangeland Restoration Project demonstrates exemplary environmental stewardship in the Permian Basin. The project is comprised of proactive members of industry, academia and the public working together to improve rangelands in West Texas. Their innovative protocols and procedures have resulted in cost-effective ways to remediate saltwater-impacted lands. The knowledge obtained from this project continues to spread as students touched by the project pursue further education and employment opportunities. The projects legacy has its roots in the Ward familys early commitment to sustainable agricultural practices, which is commendable and the basis for my selection of the Rangeland Restoration Project as award recipient for the 2017 Bruno Hanson Midland College Award for Environmental Excellence. Gilbert J. Van Deventer, partner, project manager, senior hydrogeologist at Trident Environmental and a committee member, observed, The award is particularly special this year because it involves the unique combination of inspiration and volunteering by an environmentally conscious agricultural family, useful scientific work and dedication by students and faculty with Angelo State University in the advancement of their Physics and Geosciences program, and the generosity of a major an oil an gas company, Shell. Committee Member Stephen Robertson, executive vice president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, said, It is the mission of the mission of the PBPA to promote safe and environmentally responsible oil and natural gas operations in the Permian Basin. Efforts like the Range Reclamation Project greatly support our members abilities to be strong environmental stewards. Not only is the work meaningful, but the commitment to the project over time by all involved has been tremendous. According to Committee Member Arlen Edgar, Recognition for this award represents an excellent collaborative effort between individuals, academia and the corporate world. The Ward Family exhibited a responsible, proactive effort to remediate land. Angelo State University provided a platform for course studies involving a variety of faculty and students in the effort. Shell Oil exhibited industry support by coming forward to provide funding. It is heartwarming to see a three-pronged project that encourages college students to be environmental stewards in a practical, real world way. Since gaining a foothold in the Southern Delaware Basin in 2015 with the merger of Rosetta Resources, Noble Energy has continued to expand that footprint, acquiring Clayton Williams Energy earlier this year. The region has now become a significant portion of the companys portfolio, with plans to ramp up activity in the area. The companys three-point method of operation, and its commitment to the Permian Basin, has earned Noble Energy the Hearst Energy Award for Company Performance. Noble Energy is creating differential value with long laterals, midstream advantage and high liquids content, Donnie Moore, Nobles vice president of Texas operations, told the Reporter-Telegram by email. We are leveraging predictive analytics to drill wells faster and with more precision. We are realizing significant drilling efficiencies and have reduced Delaware Basin drill time for 10,000 foot lateral wells by eight days versus the beginning of 2017. Third-party analysis of operators in Reeves County show that Noble Energy has the top productivity per 1,000 feet for both total production and oil production over the first three months of a well.Secondly, he said, the company is driven by its purpose, which is Energizing the World, Bettering Peoples Lives. Said Moore, Our purpose and vision of creating sustainable, mutually beneficial value permeates everything we do, everywhere we work. Third, Noble Energy is centralized, which allows us to take advantage of learnings across multiple resource assets. As a multiple-basin operator, we accelerate the learning curve by applying shared learnings and leveraging technical capabilities across our U.S. onshore operations and our midstream business provides a significant operating advantage. Nobles Permian operations are focused on the Delaware, where it holds net unrisked resources of 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent and 118,000 net acres. Because the region is an important growth asset for Noble, Moore said the company is significantly ramping up its activity, doubling the amount of wells brought online each quarter. Three wells were brought online in the first quarter of the year, and he said Noble will have 20 to 25 online by the end of the year. Currently Noble has five rigs and two frac crews operating, with plans to increase activity next year. The first Delaware central processing facility, operated by Noble Midstream Partners, began operation at the end of July and the company plans to bring one more facility online by the end of the year and three more in 2018. Consolidated Natural Gas System saw potential in Paul Morris at a young age, offering him a scholarship while he was in high school. That set the West Virginia native on a path that led from cable tool rigs to becoming the youngest vice president at Columbia Gas Development Corp. to the independent oil and gas world and working for the legendary Jack Brown and Cy Wagner. Morris career is a testament to the potential Consolidated saw in that high school student, earning him the Hearst Energy Award for Lifetime Achievement. His own start in the industry began as such: Consolidated came to me in high school and offered to send me to the University of Cincinnati, he recalled for the Reporter-Telegram recently. I was interested in and wanted to study engineering when Consolidated offered me the opportunity to go to the University of Cincinnati, he said. Adding that he had grandparents and uncles in the oil and gas industry, my family definitely had influence on my decision to go into the industry. He said the company promised him a job with the company after five years the amount of time it took then to earn a degree. I started out in their oil fields, working on cable tool rigs when I was 18, he said. Then they put me through their total program for the next four years. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Cincinnati his other education includes the business program at Penn State University he was indeed offered a job with Consolidated there, but he opted to return home to West Virginia, taking a job with Columbia Gas Development Corp. At that time, it was the countrys largest integrated utility company, and Morris rose through the ranks to become the youngest vice president at age 34. In that position, he oversaw all of Columbias exploration and production activities, with the exception of the Appalachian Mountains. Thats what led me to the independent oil and gas world, he said, and it put him in the orbit of Wagner and Brown, who formed the Wagner and Brown partnership on a handshake. After 17 1/2 years with Columbia, he left to form Banner Energy in Midland, where he worked seven years before Wagner and Brown called him to join their company. It was one of the greatest events of my life, working for those two legends, Morris saida. I worked for them 25 years. I ran all of their operations CNG, real estate, exploration and production, whatever they needed. It was a great period of time. After leaving Wagner and Brown in 2013, he co-founded and serves as chief executive officer of Elk River Resources. Morris said the industry has come a long way in the 57 years since he began working on that cable tool rig. I just had someone from Nabors Drilling in the office, and we were talking about all the software on drilling rigs these days, he said. Midlanders, rejoice! The Chick-fil-A near the north-side Wal-Mart reopens for business today after a complete teardown and rebuild, which franchisee Andy Slatken said was necessary to better serve the community. "The building was 22 years old, and we had exceeded its capacity twice over," franchisee Andy Slatken told the Reporter-Telegram recently. "It just wasn't built to handle the volume, and the community has supported us so greatly that we felt like it's time to get the restaurant upgraded and provide a remarkable facility to go along with the service we aspire to provide." The restaurant, located at 4508 W. Loop 250 N. was upgraded in several ways: The building's footprint grew by 1,000 square feet. Employee headcount will be about 90, an increase of 45. The dining room will seat 127, up from 72, and will feature a 10-seat community table. The drive-thru is now two lanes all around the parking lot and can accommodate 32 cars. "I think our customers will find our dining room very welcoming," Slatken said. "It's going to have some character to it. We're going to have high-top tables along with traditional booths and regular tables." The restaurant will feature a "heritage" restaurant interior design with Coke bottle chandeliers and peach basket light shades, according to a press release. Slatken said what customers will notice most is the freshness of the building. "You're talking about one of the oldest buildings in the chain to the newest building in the chain. They're still going to get the great service and great food, but they're going to be impressed with the environment." The location first opened in 1995. Slatken took over the store on Nov. 1, 2013, after the original owner retired. He previously owned a franchise in Tennessee but sold it to move to Midland. "We felt Midland is a great community to raise a family. It was about finding a place that's comfortable to live in, and we (my family) felt like we could be part of a great and growing community. Midland had all of that to offer." Slatken's roots with Chick-fil-A go back decades. "I started at 14 years old as a team member in Paramus Park, New Jersey, in October 1990. I was a team member through high school and college, and I received the Chick-fil-A college scholarship. I found myself working full-service restaurants for 15 years before coming back to Chick-fil-A." During the four-month shutdown, Slatken and his crew volunteered thousands of hours at West Texas Food Bank and Breaking Bread Kitchen. "We enjoy serving the community, and when you close your doors for a remodel, you lose the opportunity to serve," he said. About 35 of his employees participated in the volunteer initiative, and Slatken said their effort to give back to the community "shows who they are." "We don't hire staff because of experience. We hire based on who they are and who they want to be. At the end of the day, if they're not going to serve from the heart and aren't going to care about the person they're going to serve in front of them, then they're not the person you want working for you." "We did all of this (volunteer work) without publicity," he said. "We didn't do it for recognition. We did it because we wanted to give back. ... We encourage others to do the same. Do it because you want to." As for the rebuilt restaurant, Slatken said he and his staff are ready to get back to work. "As much as the community has missed us, I can tell you that our staff has missed them, no doubt about it." GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Oakland parents and community activists called on school officials Wednesday to adopt a policy that ensures students have access to safe drinking water, an outcry spurred by test results showing faucets at seven school sites had high levels of lead. Were talking about the water in schools being dangerous to our kids, said Vien Truong, an Oakland mother whose child is in kindergarten. Our families already have too much to worry about they shouldnt have to fear drinking water at schools. School board member Roseann Torres said she expects the panel to vote before the end of the year on setting testing requirements and possibly reducing allowable lead levels in school drinking water. Schools were built in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, Torres said. We know we have pipes that are very old. Test results released to The Chronicle last week showed that taps at seven Oakland schools dispensed water with lead levels higher than the 15 parts per billion allowed under federal guidelines. A kitchen tap at the temporary site of Glenview Elementary School near the Emeryville border dispensed water containing 60 parts per billion. This is an emergency, Sylvester Hodges, a former school board member, said at a news conference in City Hall. Its time for some action. The district is testing water taps at its other schools as quickly as possible, said spokesman John Sasaki. He said the taps where lead levels exceeded the federal limits have either been fixed or are off limits. We know we have a sense of urgency to get this right, Torres said. Representatives of the consumer rights group CalPIRG and other activists called on the district to replace all pipes and fixtures that contain lead, which could include any plumbing installed before 2010. They also asked for filters on drinking water taps and regular testing for lead. Torres said shed like to follow the example set by the San Diego school district, where officials limit lead levels to a maximum of 5 parts per billion rather than the 15 set by federal guidelines. Some activists maintain that no amount of lead exposure is safe for children. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that school water contain less than 1 part per billion of lead, said Jason Pfeifle, a CalPIRG health advocate. Lead is a toxic metal that can cause irreversible neurological and brain damage, including lowering a childs IQ, said Dr. Noemi Spinazzi, a pediatric physician at UCSF Benioff Childrens Hospital Oakland. It gets stored in the bones, it gets stored in the liver, it gets stored in the brain, she said at the news conference. Even at low levels, it leads to lower IQ. Many other districts have been grappling with the lead issue since the state launched a voluntary program in January allowing for free testing of five taps at each school by the local water utility. San Francisco found three school sites with elevated levels of lead, including one water fountain in the San Francisco International High School gym that had 860 parts per billion. Schools in San Mateo, Napa, Sacramento and San Bernardino counties also have found elevated levels. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law last month that will require all schools to test for lead before 2019. Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker Weather forecasters said Thursday this weekends anticipated storm system will bring in less rain to the Bay Area than expected. We were looking for the storm to strengthen over the Vancouver area to a larger degree, and it looks like its not going to do that, Drew Peterson, a meteorologist with the National Weather service, said of the storm that is coming from the Gulf of Alaska. San Francisco and Oakland will see about half an inch of rain during the next few days and the South Bay will probably receive even less, he said. The storm could bring an inch of rain to the North Bay, particularly in the areas that were burned by last months wildfires, but its unlikely, Peterson said. He forecasts about two-thirds of an inch for the North Bay. Most of the moisture is not hitting the North Bay, he said. Rain showers will begin in the Bay Area on Friday morning, with the bulk of the rain on Saturday into Sunday, Peterson said. All along, weve been saying the confidence levels on the amounts of rain have been low, Peterson said. Im not really surprised to see all this backing off now. Temperatures throughout the Bay Area also will start cooling as the rain arrives in the region. San Francisco and Oakland will remain relatively balmy Friday, in the low 60s, before temperatures drop to the mid- to upper-50s for Saturday with overnight highs in the 40s. Temperatures will stay in the mid-50s on Sunday and Monday. The North Bay will remain at about 55 degrees. San Jose will be slightly warmer, about 60 degrees throughout the weekend. Because precipitation levels are expected to be low throughout Northern California, Peterson said that less snow is expected in the Sierra. Through Monday, Donner Pass and Echo Pass will receive a total of about 18 inches of snow and Tahoe City will get 3 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Reno. A winter storm watch has been issued for the northern Sierra from Friday night to Sunday, meaning gusty winds and slick, snow-covered roads. After the rain dwindles Monday, Peterson said, another storm system will move into the Bay Area near the end of next week. Its on the horizon, Peterson said, though he added that its unclear how much rain there will be. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani The Business Ombudsman's Council in the third quarter of 2017 received a record number of complaints from businesses - 408, which is almost twice as much as in the previous quarter, and 69% more compared to the third quarter of 2016, business ombudsman Algirdas Semeta said at a round table in Kyiv. At the same time, the State Fiscal Service remains the leader in the number of complaints - in the third quarter of 2017 some 263 complaints were received. "The main reason for increasing the number of complaints is a new mechanism of registration of tax invoices. At the same time, the number of complaints for receiving VAT refunds significantly reduced. The position of the business ombudsman is that the system should be changed but not stopped in the course of its work," he said. In addition, 26 complaints about local authorities, 18 about the National Police, 17 about the Ministry of Finance were received. The number of complaints about law enforcement officers increased by 22% in the third quarter. "Although the largest number of complaints is about the Fiscal Service, however, this agency has carried out 90% of our recommendations. The SBU has even higher figure. The police carried out 85% of recommendations, the prosecutor's office some 73%," Semeta noted. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Welcome to our Top Workplaces section for 2017. But if the key sentence in your company's mission statement is to maximize profits, this section is not for you. Top Workplaces is about Houston-area companies that have taken a longer view. Companies focused solely on the bottom line often go on to make headlines for bankruptcies, layoffs and scandals. Their executives and board directors line their pockets and move on to the next thing, while the rank and file lose their jobs. We've seen the pattern all too often. Truly successful companies - the ones that are in it for the long haul - do not have mediocre employees. And even mediocre employees will not stay where they are poorly treated. Top Workplaces is a celebration of companies that not only recognize this, but are constantly seeking ways to keep their employees empowered and engaged. Often, it's not about the money, even for employees. Giving someone a purpose and a little appreciation goes a long way. The Houston Chronicle teamed up with Energage, which recently changed its name from WorkplaceDynamics, to conduct the rankings, which were based on surveys from more than 84,000 Houston-area employees. Making the Top Workplaces list, at any rank, means a company cares deeply about the people who in turn care for its customers. Congratulations to all the winners. - Al Lewis, Business Editor This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Antonio financial services firm USAA once again plans to expand its offices downtown. USAA, which occupies four floors in its One Riverwalk Center at 700 N. St. Marys Street, will take an additional four floors in the building allowing it to add about 400 workers. It already employs more than 200 people in the building. Employees are expected to move into the renovated space, totaling 63,000 square feet, in the last quarter of next year, USAA spokesman Matt Hartwig said. RELATED: Ernst & Young may add up to 600 jobs in San Antonio The exact roles and mix of employees moving downtown are still to be determined, Hartwig said. The employees will include new hires and some staff relocating from USAAs headquarters at 9800 Fredericksburg Road. USAA Real Estate Co. purchased One Riverwalk Center in 2013. USAA has periodically been adding staff in the building; almost 100 technology and innovation employees moved into the top floor of the 18-story building earlier this year. These moves create additional capacity in the home office to support USAAs ongoing growth strategy, Hartwig siad. USAA employs almost 19,000 people in San Antonio and more than 32,000 overall. The company, which provides banking, insurance and other financial services to the military and their families, has about 12.3 million members. RELATED: Lone Star Brewery to be auctioned off at foreclosure sale Construction on floors 5, 6, 7 and 12 in One Riverwalk Center will begin before the end of the year. USAA recently completed the relocation of about 1,500 IT and insurance employees from its headquarters into 286,00 square feet in two Northwest Side office buildings Vista Corporate Center, near Interstate 10 and UTSA Boulevard, and WestRidge II at La Cantera, along La Cantera Parkway just north of Loop 1604. pdanner@express-news.net Last year, San Antonio-based Billing Services Group agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission that the company billed phone customers for unauthorized services. BSG, though, blames third-party service providers for the practice known as cramming, where charges are slipped into phone bills without a consumers authorization or knowledge. The company now is going after those third-party providers. BSG affiliates last month sued 11 companies connected with purported crammer Cindy Landeen in an attempt to recover the $5.2 million owed to the FTC, plus more than $4.5 million in attorneys fees and costs defending the FTCs action. Thats not all. The BSG affiliates want those 11 companies and about 100 others to pay for damages and costs incurred as a result of two class-action lawsuits brought by consumers against AT&T and Verizon Communications Inc. over unauthorized phone bill charges. All told, the BSG affiliates filed nine lawsuits last week in San Antonio federal court and Bexar County district court combined claiming at least $12.6 million in damages for allegedly breaching agreements. A BSG representative and the lawyer who filed the suits didnt respond to requests for comment. According to the FTC, BSG operated for years as a billing aggregator, passing charges from third parties to telephone companies for placement on consumers telephone bills. Five years ago, the FTC accused the BSG companies of violating a 1999 court settlement relating to cramming. The FTC alleged the BSG companies failed to vet charges for services before processing them. The services included voicemail, directory assistance, streaming movies, identity theft protection and job skills training, the FTCs complaint said. BSG has previously said it has fought hard to stop crammers. Nevertheless, a federal magistrate judge in 2015 found BSG in contempt of court for violating the 1999 settlement. The FTC sought $53 million in sanctions, an amount that BSG said could put them out of business. Ultimately, the FTC settled for $5.2 million which is being paid in 10 quarterly installments. The BSG affiliates contend in one of their lawsuits that they were injured by the Landeen Companies fraudulent behavior. The Landeen companies are obligated to compensate the BSG affiliates for their costs, the suit added. Landeen, who is identified as a Nevada resident, couldnt be located for comment. Another company, Indiana-based Durham Technology, appears to have been dissolved in 2012, according to that states corporate records. Durham Technology and nine other companies BSG affiliates are now suing were among more than two dozen companies that the FBI sought information on from the public in 2010. No federal charges were ever filed as a result of the investigation, FBI spokesman Chris Bavender in Indianapolis said in an email. Meanwhile, the BSG affiliates agreed to compensate AT&T and Verizon for liabilities that arose from the two class-action lawsuits. According to the 2013 class settlement in the AT&T case, the company was responsible for paying the settlement administrator more than $15 million. In the 2013 settlement of the Verizon case, consumers could receive a $40 payment or a full refund of the unauthorized charges that were paid. Just how much Verizon paid out wasnt disclosed. In their lawsuits, BSGs affiliates want the courts to declare that the companies can allocate the costs from the class-actions to the third-party providers. The claims made against more than 100 companies range from as low as about $4,800 to as much as about $1.2 million against Durham Technology. AT&T last year discontinued third-party billing and Verizon will no longer accept third-party charges for placement on telephone bills effective Dec. 31, BSG has said. BSG, which trades on the London Stock Exchange, has been feeling the effects from the fallout. Revenue has been in a free fall this decade. Since peaking at $145.5 million in 2010, revenue has tumbled every year since, falling to $30.2 million last year. It generated $11 million in revenue in the first half of the year, down 32 percent from $16.2 million in the same period last year. BSG is now offering a direct-billing service and provides services to the wireless market. It said earlier this year that it had initiated a strategic review to determine its future business lines and capital structure. pdanner@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Southwest Airlines will add two new daily nonstop routes from San Antonio International Airport to Oakland, California and Fort Lauderdale in July, officials said Thursday. Southwest Airlines will also restart a nonstop daily route to Cancun in June, airport and city officials announced Thursday at a press conference accompanied by a mariachi band at City Hall. The additional flights will give the San Antonio airport 43 nonstop routes by July 2018, said Aviation Director Russ Handy. City Manager Sheryl Sculley said more nonstop flights will come as the city grows its business base. RELATED: San Antonio airport to launch nonstop American Airlines flight to Philadelphia As we work at economic development in the community, those flights will follow, Sculley said. Oakland and Fort Lauderdale were considered high priorities for San Antonio International Airport under the citys air service development plan, Handy said at the news conference. About 34 percent of business travelers out of San Antonio International Airport land in destinations on the West Coast, Handy said. Those travelers were clamoring for an option that gave them easy access to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, he said. We had not only numbers but real companies that were telling us that, Handy said. And Fort Lauderdale is a vital connecting market to Latin America and South America for leisure and business travel, Handy said. We dont just look at passengers terminating at Fort Lauderdale, Handy said. We look at the whole string we look at whos going to Latin America and whos going to the Caribbean. RELATED: San Antonio airport ranks near bottom for mid-sized airports in new J.D. Power survey Nonstop flights to Oakland and Fort Lauderdale will be optimal for San Antonio-based data security firm Jungle Disk, said CEO Bret Piatt. The company is looking to expand into Latin America within the next year so connecting to Fort Lauderdale could be crucial, Piatt said. And flying into Oakland International Airport instead of San Francisco International Airport is actually more convenient for San Antonio techies who need access to Silicon Valley, Piatt said. You can be in downtown San Francisco faster from the Oakland airport via BART than you can to downtown San Francisco via BART from SFO, Piatt said. The San Antonio airport has added 20 flights in the past 18 months, including many nonstop routes. The airport recorded its 15th consecutive month of growing passenger numbers in September with more than 687,000 travelers that month, officials announced earlier this week. Southwest Airlines operates routes to 20 markets from San Antonio International Airport, said David Harvey, Southwest Airlines managing director of business development. Harvey said the airline plans to continue flying a one-stop direct route to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington D.C. RELATED: San Antonio could get new airport under Nirenberg initiative jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFreports Attention, TV viewers of Military City, USA: So what if none of the soldier stories that have saturated the small screen this fall have made much of an impression. The very best, as it turns out, has been saved for last. The Long Road Home, debuting Tuesday on National Geographic Channel, not only delivers harrowing depictions of real-life people battling valiantly and selflessly in deadly combat, but also takes us on an intimate at times, poetic journey that involves quieter moments with the men in the field and their families back home. Making it all the more compelling? That home is just a ways up the road from San Antonio Fort Hood. Whats even more unusual, considering the few television series and movies filmed in Texas in recent years, The Long Road Home, all eight parts of it, was shot on and around the Army post in Killeen where the real soldiers and their wives and children lived. Based on journalist Martha Raddatzs bestselling book, the limited series stars Jeremy Sisto, Kate Bosworth, Jason Ritter, Michael Kelly, Sarah Wayne Callies and many other lesser-known faces that, thanks to powerful and engaging performances, should stick with you long after the final credits roll. The Long Road Home dramatizes the heroic fight for survival during the Iraq War when the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood was ambushed on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City, Baghdad, leaving eight dead and more than 50 wounded, a day that came to be known as Black Sunday. The series cuts between the explosive action on the ground in Iraq and the homefront back in Central Texas, where worried wives and families await the news for 48 hellish hours, expecting the worst. The first two hours premiere at 8 p.m. Tuesday on National Geographic, followed by subsequent episodes at 9 p.m. Tuesdays through Dec. 19. Here are five reasons why you shouldnt miss a single, heartfelt, chilling minute: Vivid characters Thanks to author Raddatzs detail and the devotion to realism by screenwriter and showrunner Mikko Alanne, we really get to know these people inside and out. Among the most memorable are moody Staff Sgt. Robert Miltenberger (Sisto, Six Feet Under), a career soldier on the cusp of retirement whose premonition of death before the fateful Sadr City mission is as moving as it is eerie; Capt. Troy Denomy (Ritter, Parenthood), a dedicated family man who adores his wife (Kate Bosworth, Blue Crush) and new baby, but also is fiercely determined to do right by his men and not doubt his decisions even though he often does; and the even-tempered Lt. Shane Guerrero (E. J. Bonilla, Unforgettable), who tries his best to keep the peace in a situation rife with tension and suspicion. Painstaking authenticity We received unprecedented support from the Army, in part because were telling the story of people who are around today, and in part because of the people that lost their lives in the battle, executive producer Jason Clark told TV critics at a recent press session. Most importantly, the support made this possible to actually film on the location where the soldiers trained before they deployed on this mission. Iraq street scenes were filmed at Fort Hood, too. Over 100 buildings were constructed to re-create Sadr City, Alane said. Great care was taken to replicate every detail, using photographs and video taken by soldiers to re-create the architecture exactly. Two veterans of the battle, Aaron Fowler and Eric Bourquin, worked on the show as technical advisers, and soldiers and family members stayed in contact with the production team throughout the project, offering insights and memories. Mike Medavoy No one does war better than this film giant, who was involved in the making of Coming Home, Platoon and Apocalypse Now, and served as executive producer of The Long Road Home. I thought it was time that I tell a story set in Iraq, Medavoy said. Families that ring true Its refreshing to see children acting like children loving, yes, but also stubborn, temperamental, even hateful at times. Spouses at home also react honestly to worrisome news, becoming angry or sobbing profusely, instead of keeping it together as they might in a typical Hollywood script. Inspirational dialogue Beautiful Biblical verses and lines of poetry help some of the men cope with their scary plight, while others such as Sgt. Eric Bourquin (Jon Beavers) spout nuts-and-bolts truths that have a certain zing to them: Way I see it, dont matter who you are or where, one day death comes. At least if we die here, tonight, for each other, we die for something. Aint no better way to go. Spouses at home also crack wise to stay sane. After learning of the ambush, Gina, wife of Capt. Denomy, tells a fellow military spouse: In ancient times, wives went to war with their husbands. I guess we still do that. Jeanne Jakles column appears Thursdays and Sundays in mySA. jjakle@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate High-dollar benefits and Steven Tyler are not the odd couple they seem to be at first glance. The Aerosmith frontman, the star attraction at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts annual benefit concert, has been honored for his philanthropy. In 2016, he received the Hospitality Committee for United Nations Delegations Humanitarian Award for raising money through his Janies Fund to assist young female victims of abuse or neglect. In January, he raised $800,000 for the fund for auctioning a prized car, a Hennessey Venom GT Spyder. Compared to that, $1,000 for a front-row seat seems like a steal. Tickets are still available for the concert, which benefits the Tobin Centers Generation NEXT education initiative. If this were an Aerosmith show, concertgoers might also pay with their hearing. At the bands mid-1970s peak, it could induce tinnitis in the Convention Center Arenas cheap seats. Saturday, Tyler will be backed by Nashville country rock act the Loving Mary Band, playing classics such as Sweet Emotion and songs off his solo country album, Were All Somebody From Somewhere. According to an Arizona Republic review of a 2016 Tyler concert, it should please Aerosmith fans without sending them to an ENT clinic. Those countrified versions of the songs hed done with Aerosmith still sounded more like Aerosmith than anything youd hear on country radio, Ed Masey wrote, while the country songs sounded like the sort of power ballads Aerosmiths been doing since the 80s. More Information In concert Who: Steven Tyler/Loving Mary Band When: 8 p.m. Saturday Where: Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 Auditorium Circle Tickets: $100-$1,000, 210-223-8624, tobi.tobincenter.org See More Collapse Power ballads such as Angel and Cryin were a big part of Aerosmiths 80s revival, as were MTV, which showcased videos for songs like Janies Got a Gun and Crazy, featuring actresses Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler, Steven Tylers daughter; and rap group Run-DMC, whose Walk This Way cover reminded everyone how great the band was in the first place. Walk This Way was central to the bands first act, the biggest hit off the 1975 album Toys in the Attic, also home to Sweet Emotion and the salacious blues cover Big Ten Inch Record. That mix of sex, swagger, Tylers deep musical knowledge and drug-fueled excess that seemed to amplify, not obscure, how smart and good these guys were, propelled the band from Boston to arena-rock status. If any American band ever had an answer to the Rolling Stones Jagger and Richards, it was Tyler, his long hair echoed by the scarves swirling around his microphone stand, and guitarist Joe Perry. With pauses some longer than others for rehab and flare-ups of interband feuds, Aerosmith has continued to record and tour up to the present. The band was in Europe in the summer and South America in the fall, a trek that was cut short in October so Tyler, 69, could undergo an undisclosed health procedure. (Saturdays concert is one of his first since then; he played a benefit in Vancouver on Oct. 21.) Hard rock or country, solo or fronting Aerosmith, Tyler is the center of attention, a charming motormouth with a skewed take on reality. Thats the guy on full display during two seasons as a judge on American Idol, his third big act and the one that made his late-blooming solo career a possibility. His conversational style is a thing of wonder, David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone, a torrent of fiercely held opinions, impulsive contradictions, vivid adolescent reminiscences, street-corner profanities, colorful sexual metaphors and explosive laughter. Thats another reason those high-dollar seats are worth the price. When Tyler expounds on music and life between Sweet Emotion and Dream On, fans wont have to miss a thing. jkiest@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Forget Hawaiian-style, the latest target of mass internet ire is strawberry pizza. Social media users had their pitchforks ready on Sunday when @MoonEmoji tweeted a photo of a strawberry-topped pizza pie with the caption "strawberries>>pineapples." The internet critics were not having it. "That is so wrong it's unreal," wrote @Jeromebill on the photo, which has more than 2,000 comments. "The police are on their way, I hope it was worth it," added @Blaker212. One Twitter user simply wrote, "I want to die." Others were less critical of the idea, with some welcoming the sweet-and-salty concoction and others noting the ubiquitousness of fruit on cheese platters. The fruit-on-pizza debate is steeped in historical tension. Earlier this year, the internet broke into unrest after Iceland's president Gudni Th. Johannesson said he was "fundamentally opposed" to pineapple on pizza and would ban it if he had the power. Everyone from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to pop star Justin Bieber weighed in on the foodie controversy (both Justins are pro pineapple). Things got so out-of-hand, Johannesson issued a statement on Facebook, which evolved into a polemic on presidential power. "I do not have the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapples on their pizza," he wrote. "I am glad that I do not hold such power. Presidents should not have unlimited power." Though @MoonEmoji is taking all the credit, the Twitter user is not the first to place the sweet red berries on his or her pie. Multiple cooking blogs have shared recipes for the savory pizza, including a basil and balsamic number from Cookie and Kate in 2013 and a bacon and onion pie courtesy of Closet Cooking. In December, The San Francisco Chronicle's Food Editor Paolo Lucchesi tasted a strawberry pizza while on a trip to Finland. He cited the experience as the "most mind-bending food moment of 2016." Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf. Before the end of the year, fans of Dough Pizzeria Napoletana will be able to grab a pie downtown. Founders Doug and Lori Horn announced plans to open a second San Antonio location at Hemisfair Park last year, and the two are close to welcoming their first customers. The new space should be complete at some point in December, Lori Horn said Wednesday. The new spot is located at 518 S. Alamo St. in the former OK Bar Building at the intersection of South Alamo Street and Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. The Horns have put an addition on the property, giving them 2,400 square feet of elbow room with more dining space outside. Total seating capacity will be about 125, and the restaurant will employ about 75 people. Technopromexport (TPE) had assumed that turbines for the thermal power plants in Crimea would be manufactured by the Russian company Siemens Gas Turbine Technology, but it turns out they were made in Germany, TPE's lawyer said in Moscow's Arbitration Court on Thursday. "A condition in the contract had called for the turbines to be manufactured by the supplier, a Russian organization. We learned today that they were manufactured in Germany and the [equipment] sent to Russia by Siemens AG," TPE's lawyer said, following the hearing. The information was contained in an explanatory letter sent by the German company to the Russian company before the court hearing. "Until now we assumed that the equipment, in accordance with point 4.1 in the contract, was manufactured by LLC Siemens Gas Turbine Technology, but now we learned that they were imported to Russia by Siemens AG from Germany," TPE's lawyer said during the court hearing. "We never operated on the basis that our client in the current case could lie about a Russian organization allegedly manufacturing the gas turbines," TPE's lawyer said. Troy Steve McLaughlin has made a doozy of a campaign promise: If he's elected Rensselaer County executive next week, he will never talk to this newspaper. "My comment, when we win this next Tuesday, for the next four years to the Times Union is going to be no comment," the Republican said Wednesday on Fred Dicker's radio program. "I'll talk to every other press outlet." McLaughlin's words came as part of an extended fit of pique. He called the Times Union both a "useless rag" and a "worthless rag." He said we're "ridiculous" and "hacks." Oh, and "fake news" too. Ouch. How do you really feel Steve? Presumably, McLaughlin remains miffed about the Times Union's reporting on recordings in which he lashed an aide with nasty language. The context for his Talk 1300 diatribe was discussion about this newspaper's endorsement of his opponent, Democrat Andrea Smyth. McLaughlin is entitled to his opinions, of course, and I won't waste my time trying to rebut the sillier things he said. Suffice to say, I don't believe I work for a useless rag. If you're a subscriber, I'll assume you agree. If you're reading this for free online, I still hope you do. But I certainly know many of you agree with McLaughlin when he says the media is biased against conservatives. I see comments to that effect frequently in my inbox, and I hear it from relatives. I've seen the polls like the recent one from Gallup, which found that 77 percent of Republicans believe the media is not on their side. More Information Contact columnist Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse Such polls are silly. Media are entirely too diverse for the question to have any meaning. How do you lump Us magazine in with the Wall Street Journal? They're different animals. But the Republicans in that Gallup poll aren't wrong. Much of the media is biased against conservative views. That's especially true if you include Hollywood, but it's also true of too much of the news. To deny it is to deny the obvious. Some of the bias is ideological. More of it, I think, is cultural. Either way, it isn't good for the media's financial health. McLaughlin, 53, was right when he said on the air that Republicans are turning away from mainstream media outlets. "They want unbiased journalism," he said, "and they're just not getting it." Understand, though, that "fake news" claims serve a potent purpose. Once a politician convinces supporters that the news is phony, that politician is inoculated against anything negative that's revealed. Too much media criticism reflects our silos: If a news story says something unflattering about your tribe, it is fake and biased; if it is unflattering about the other, it must be 100 percent true. To the point: Many of the people who claimed the McLaughlin tapes weren't newsworthy would celebrate if Gov. Andrew Cuomo or another Democrat were caught saying the same things. And yes, the Times Union would report on those tapes, too. Just weeks ago, Smyth told me she wouldn't be making the McLaughlin recordings a focus of her campaign. Turns out, that wasn't true. They are heavily featured in her radio ads. I'll be surprised if the strategy works, and I'll be shocked if McLaughlin loses Tuesday. And I'm not just saying that because he's a Red Sox fan who still speaks with hints of that wonderfully melodic Boston accent. McLaughlin has devoted supporters who will come to the polls because, as one publication put it, he has long "been one of the Assembly's most outspoken voices, especially on official corruption." Who wrote those flattering words? Why, it was the Times Union editorial board when it endorsed McLaughlin in 2014! I'll assume the newspaper wasn't a useless rag in McLaughlin's mind then. I've written that McLaughlin's anti-establishment tone fits the times. He deserves particular credit for standing up to Cuomo a bully who, it should be noted, is also contemptuous of the media when the rest of the Republican Party seemed cowed by the governor. When McLaughlin is at his best, he's feisty and brave. When he's not, his tone turns angry and strident, as it did during his talk with Dicker. If McLaughlin wins as expected, we will see it all. We'll be in for a wild ride, whether he talks to the Times Union or not. cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill NORTH HAVEN Rabbi Philip Lazowski was 11 when German Nazis invaded his home town of Bielica, Poland, in 1941 and burned nearly the entire village. At 87, he is one of a few Holocaust survivors still alive and able to recall the events. He shared his story of survival through the Holocaust at Quinnipiac University Wednesday with the public and teachers who are participating in the Anti-Defamation Leagues Echoes & Reflections Holocaust education program, which is co-sponsored by Quinnipiacs School of Education. It is sad that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, Lazowski said. I firmly believe by studying the past we can build a safer and sound tomorrow. My story is a lesson to show how the Nazis brutalized, murdered and oppressed a civilization and the world stood by and didnt do anything about it. After his village was burned and its Jewish leaders executed, the Germans evacuated the village and moved everyone to a bigger town called Dyatlovo. They were put in a ghetto of the town with Lazoskis mother, father, sister and three brothers all sleeping on the floor in one room. Food was scarce. Lazowski and his father built a cave to hide in and it wasnt before long the first massacre started, he said. That night, Lazowski couldnt sleep and when he heard the trucks coming , so he woke his family. He heard soldiers shouting for everybody to get out of the homes and go to the marketplace. The cave needed to be shut from outside, so Lazowski volunteered and said he would find another place to hide. Bu t German soldier spotted him and asked why he was not in the marketplace, saying he would shoot Lazowski now or he could start running. Lazowki ran to the marketplace. The Germans had surrounded 3,000 to 4,000 people in the marketplace and Lazowski quickly figured out the Jews were being divided into two groups those who were going to be executed and those who held certificates that showed they had professional skills and would be useful for work, such as cobblers and tailors. I thought Im going to die, he said, but he thought to ask somebody to take him in as a son. He saw a woman who was standing with two young girls and holding a certificate as a nurse. Lazowski asked her if she would take him and she agreed, saving his life. As the killing continued, Lazowski was again separated from his family, and when soldiers found him they brought him to a movie house, where his mother and siblings were also taken. After three days there, troops were coming to kill everyone, he said. His family was on the second floor of the theater and his mother broke a window, telling her son to jump. She said, I want you to live, want you to survive, to tell this story if you survive and I want you to be somebody and she pushed me out of the window, he said. Another boy was also pushed out the window and they both ran, not knowing where they were going until they heard that many Jews were in the nearby town, where they were building an airfield for the Germans. When Lazowski reached the town, he was reunited with his brother. They were put in an orphanage but soon an uncle came looking for thefamily. He told Lazowski that his father was alive and living in the woods. They escaped the ghetto that night and wentto find his father. They were reunited and lived in the woods for 21/2 years with a group of other Jews, withstanding temperatures that dropped to 50 below zero, and little to no food. You only survived by the heat of the fellow next to you, Lazowski said. When the Jews were liberated, he went to visit his mothers grave, where 1,000people were in one grave. We cannot stay in this land of blood, he said and his family went to Austria for two years until his fathers siblings living in the U.S. had learned their brother was still alive. They immigrated to the U.S., where Lazowski went to Brooklyn College and Yeshiva University Rabbinical School to became a rabbi. Years later, he went to a rabbi friends wedding. I never danced in my life so I sat like a klutz on the chair, he said, but he started a conversation with a girl . She asked where he was from and when he mentioned the town the woman said her best friends mother saved a boy from Bielica and didnt know whether he was alive or dead, Lazowski said. He told her he was that boy and asked for the name of the family, which was Rabinowitz. The Rabinowitz family lived in Hartford and when he went to visit he was reintroduced to Ruth Rabinowitz, the daughter of the woman who saved his life. He married the daughter 61 years ago years and they have three sons and seven grandchildren. The importance of hearing a survivor is there are very few left who can speak, said ADL Senior Associate Director Marji Lipshez-Shapiro. This is touching history, and getting firsthand knowledge of someone who experienced it so teachers can tell their children. Teachers need the tools and knowledge to be able to teach about the Holocaust and genocide. No matter how much horror or adversity you face, theres always hope to get you through and I plan on taking that back to the classroom, said Rick Hribko, who is a teacher in Milford. The Echoes & Reflections Holocaust education program, a 10-part curriculum on the Holocaust, is directed toward middle and high school teachers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. So far, ADL has trained more than 1,000 teachers in Connecticut, with 25 participating in Wednesdays program. mdignan@hearstmediact.com HARTFORD A former Middletown store owner was sentenced Wednesday to 10 months in prison, followed by one year of supervised release, and has to pay a $30,000 fine for attempting to obstruct federal tax laws, according to a press release from the U.S. attorneys office. Asafak Bhura, 51, of Manchester, previously pleaded guilty to attempting to interfere with the administration of Internal Revenue Service laws, according to the U.S. attorneys office. Bhura owned and operated Nafisa and later BAB Enterprise, a convenience store in Middletown. The store was registered with the U.S. Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network as a money service business that sold money wire services and money orders to the public for fees. However, the store was never licensed by the state to be a check cashier, which would allow the store to cash checks for a fee greater than 50 cents per check, according to the release. In response to an IRS audit in April 2010, Bhura adopted an anti-money-laundering program and check-cashing policies and procedures for his store. The procedures listed the acceptable forms of identification for those looking to cash a check and required the collection and verification of the customers information, which included addresses, home telephone number and place of employment, along with a copy or scan of the cashed checks, according to the press release. From March to June 2012, Bhura accepted and cashed 126 U.S. Treasury tax refund checks, totaling over $787,000, for an individual. Bhura did not properly identify the person and the checks were not made payable to that person, officials said. He also deposited the checks into his personal bank accounts rather than the stores business operating accounts, the press release said. Bhura purposely failed to comply with his stores anti-money-laundering program and check-cashing policies and procedures. Based on prior IRS examinations of the store, Bhura knew the auditor reviewing the stores money service business activities and business bank accounts would detect the cashed U.S. Treasury checks if they were deposited into the stores business accounts, officials said. The federal tax refund checks Bhura cashed were payable to payees residing in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. The investigation revealed that the checks were federal tax refund checks that others fraudulently obtained through filing federal income tax returns that contained stolen or fraudulently obtained personal identifying information, the federal press release said. For his services, Bhura received and kept a 5 percent fee for cashing the 126 checks, which amounted to over $39,000. He has since paid restitution in that amount to the IRS. He is currently released on $50,000 bail and was ordered to report to prison Dec. 27. A woman and her teenage daughter are dead after an apparent murder-suicide in the Energy Corridor, according to police. Houston police made the gruesome discovery after responding to call to an apartment at 15000 Park Row around 6 a.m. Tuesday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate - Correction: An earlier version of this article provided inaccurate information regarding Annie's List. The organization does not provide birth control. The race between Carol Stromatt and incumbent Laura Fillault for the Position 7 seat on The Woodlands Township Board of Directors is heating up with thousands of robocalls from the political action committee Texas Right to Life being made into The Woodlands. The calls, which back Fillault, list several reasons why voters should not choose Stromatt in Tuesday's election. Luke Bowen, the interim political director for Texas Right to Life, said somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 calls were made Tuesday night, Oct. 31, by the PAC in support of Fillault. The recorded calls attack Stromatt, describing her as a "pro-abortion liberal Democrat," who, according to the robocall, "gives money to the radical pro-abortion group Annie's List." The text of the message also claims Stromatt supports The Woodlands Parkway extension. Annie's List is an Austin-based group that describes itself as working to "achieve equity for women" while also supporting numerous philosophies and issues related to women's equality, including access to general health care as well as reproductive health care, seeking economic equality for women and also providing opportunities for disadvantaged groups of women to achieve inclusion and protection in all aspects of life. Stromatt has said she is running on a nonpartisan platform and questioned why such matters were being brought up in a local election. "I am deeply disturbed and saddened by the partisan, divisive politics my opponent has chosen to pursue," Stromatt said. "My opponent is inviting national issues that a Township Board Director has absolutely no power to influence, nor have they any bearing on the business of the Township. She is doing this because she's losing the debates about her commitment, stances on local issues and poor choices in Twitter rants unbecoming as a leader in our hometown." Stromatt also relayed a personal experience and explained the claims against her are "hurtful." "Such mean spirited misrepresentations of me are particularly hurtful-as I have lived through a very private experience, coming home from the hospital with empty arms," Stromatt said. "It was a heart-wrenching tragedy that, in time, by God's good grace ended with the blessing of adopting our precious baby." She also said her views on the "full spectrum of national issues have no relevance to this Township campaign." "My character, integrity and dedication to represent the interests of my community do [have relevance]," Stromatt added. "I challenge my opponent to compete on these issues. I'm running to restore unity in our community-and it starts with neighbors respecting neighbors and focusing on local issues that we can come together around and influence right now." Fillault did not respond to a request for comment on the robocalls. Texas Right To Life officials said they put their backing behind candidates who are pro-life, focusing exclusively on local and state races. Bowen also criticized Stromatt for her affiliation with the Democratic Party. "She's a precinct chair of the Democratic Party," Bowen said. "She's definitely a Democrat. She knows she can't get elected as a Democrat." The Montgomery County Democratic Party's website lists Stromatt as a chairperson in The Woodlands West area, Precinct 61, while a listing in the business directory bizstanding.com identifies her as the director of the Lone Star Democratic Club of Montgomery County. The registration date of the club was 2006, but the organization has since disbanded and it's not clear when its registration was last updated. Fillault, who is serving her first term on the township board, has been under scrutiny in recent months after she posted a series of Tweets on her personal Twitter account, using foul and abusive language aimed at other Twitter users. Fillault has since apologized for what she has termed "salty language" and has pledged not to make such posts again. She has also declined to provide additional comment on the social media posts and whether she felt they would have any impact on the election. The robocalls are the second attack on Stromatt in the past week. A fake campaign flier with alleged campaign positions recently was posted to the "Alden Bridge (uncensored)" Facebook group. The fake flier, which Stromatt said was a bad "joke," was later removed from the Facebook group. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD Moderators rules against applause and signs were ignored a few times during the final mayoral debate Wednesday night at the University of Connecticuts downtown Stamford campus. Audience members as they have in previous debates clapped loudly when the Republican candidate, Barry Michelson, said the city too often sides with developers and not residents fighting to preserve their neighborhoods. The incumbent Democrat, David Martin, was applauded after a closing statement in which he listed Stamfords successes low crime, low unemployment, top bond ratings, a lively downtown, a renewed South End, and a new elementary school and dorms for UConn. And the unaffiliated candidate, John Zito, after his closing statement, broke the sign ban and held up a handmade one that read, Im not for sale. Residents who filled the UConn auditorium heard what other audiences have heard during recent forums designed to help them decide how to cast their votes on Tuesday. Martin, running for a second term, said Stamford is the envy of the state. People are coming to Stamford because of our wonderful quality of life, the mayor said. Not everything is perfect ... but lets keep moving in a positive direction. He has worked to keep down the costs of pensions and long-term city employee benefits, Martin said, which will keep taxes down in the future. Were even filling the infamous hole in the ground, Martin said of the empty lot in the heart of downtown where development is about to begin. But Michelson said development in Stamford has been marred by a failure to adhere to zoning regulations and respect outcries from congested neighborhoods. Michelson said his will be a more transparent and honest administration that acknowledges the struggles of average residents. He said the cornerstone of his campaign is that folks feel they are not being heard ... that when they go before boards and commissions, the decisions are predetermined ... that (no one) is responding to the concerns of the neighborhoods. Zito, who has not held public office before, said look how the politicians have screwed up. Residents are struggling, unhappy with the way things are going, and those who say different are out of touch, Zito said. I dont know the Harvard brainiac who came up with the slogan the city that works, but its because of the people. Among the things the people want is for developers, such as Building and Land Technology, to follow the rules, Zito and Michelson said. BLT tore down the citys only boatyard in violation of zoning regulations and will replace it with something on that peninsula that will get bombarded in a storm, Zito said. Michelson said the peninsula and harbor are a gift and a chance to provide more diverse industries. There are few like it on the East Coast, he said, and were making it available to be used for an office building that we can build any place. Martin said his administration has held BLT to the rules. Go down to the beautiful boardwalk that is part of BLTs Harbor Point development in the South End, Martin said, and you can see a beautiful (replacement) boatyard being built. The three candidates agreed that school buildings are in need of repair, but disagreed on the six-figure salaries of many city employees. Martin said most of the top salaries go to police officers who earn overtime. They are well worth the pay, Martin said. Given the benefit costs, I would rather have well-managed overtime than hire additional employees. Zito said, If I were mayor, I would walk in the government center and shake everybody upside down and get our money back. Michelson said efficiency is the key. We have to figure out exactly how many employees we need in each department. In some departments, we have one supervisor for every four employees. And we have too many departments ... with overlapping authority and responsibilities, Michelson said He lamented the loss of neighborhood schools, and said hour-long bus rides to and from schools are bad for students. Busing is expensive and the money should go back into the classrooms, he said. Zito said he would deploy more police to traffic duty, because crossing a street in Stamford has become dangerous. Martin said hes hired 50 police officers since hes been in office, equipped their cars with GPS so they can be dispatched more efficiently and that they soon will be wearing body cameras. They also addressed the citys demographics. The population is trending younger and apartment dwellers now outnumber single-family home dwellers, Michelson said. Its created a transient population that the city needs to examine, he said. Martin said its an issue of ensuring that the new population can fill the needs of employers the city needs to attract for jobs and to fill vacant commercial space. Zitos idea for engaging younger residents drew laughter, and some of the applause that debate moderators asked be withheld. Lets throw a keg party, he said. We need more activities to get them involved. acarella@stamfordadvocate.com. WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats have demanded that Attorney General Jeff Sessions explain why he did not disclose a March 2016 gathering with then-candidate Donald Trump and members of his campaign team at which an adviser offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sessions's participation in the gathering was detailed in court documents released Monday by special counsel Robert Mueller III. The adviser who offered to set up the meeting was George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to the documents. Sessions had not previously disclosed the meeting, despite being asked over multiple appearances on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians. "This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation's top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump team's contacts with agents of Russia," Senate Judiciary Committee member Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote Thursday in a letter to Sessions. Senate Republicans have not rushed to Sessions's defense but were less ruffled about his participation in the Papadopoulos meeting. "If anybody's got any concerns about his meeting, write him a letter and see what he says," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. A Sessions spokeswoman declined to comment this week on the March 31 meeting with Trump and campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos. But on Thursday, a person familiar with Sessions' recollections said that "people who remember the conversation" believed that Papadopoulos was proposing an idea of using his Russian contacts to try to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, "which was immediately rejected by then-Senator Sessions." "Papadopoulos was some 29-year-old that nobody had ever heard of and who struck people in the room as someone who didn't have a lot of credibility," the person said. "As far as Sessions seemed to be concerned, when he shut down this idea of Papadopoulos engaging with Russia, that was the end of it and he moved the meeting along to other issues." "The March 31 comments by this Papadopoulos person did not leave a lasting impression," the person said. "The attorney general immediately dismissed it and moved on." J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesman and Trump adviser who attended the meeting, also recalled that Sessions "shut him down" when Papadopoulos announced that he could introduce Trump to Putin. "It was a bad idea and the Senator didn't want people to speak about it again," he said. The Washington Post also reported earlier this week that Papadopoulos sat next to Sessions during a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention, according to another person who attended. At the time of that article, a spokeswoman for Sessions declined to comment. But on Thursday, the person familiar with Sessions' recollections said, "the attorney general has no clear recollection of this person. He may have been at future Trump events that Sessions attended - including a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club with some members of the foreign policy committee over the summer - but Sessions doesn't recall any further interactions with him, including any phone calls or emails." Gordon said that he did not fault Sessions for not recalling things that Papadopoulos said in private settings, noting that thousands of people approached the campaign, "including many, many true volunteers." This is not the first time lawmakers have accused Sessions of withholding information from congressional testimony about interactions with or about Russians while working with the Trump campaign. During his January confirmation hearing to become attorney general, Sessions told the Judiciary Committee that he had had no communication with Russian officials, only to have The Post reveal in March that he had spoken twice with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. Following the Post report, Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department's Russia probes - an action that infuriated Trump. Last month, Sessions told the same committee he was not aware of any Trump surrogates having contacts with Russian officials. Democrats on the committee, including Franken, are now arguing that statement may have been false, too. "He needs to clarify his testimony before our committee," said Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "There were questions that elicited exactly the kind of information that the Papadopoulos plea agreement made." "The attorney general needs to explain to our committee what are the obvious implications of his presence at that meeting, and how he can square that with his testimony to our committee," said Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., another member of the Judiciary Committee. The person familiar with Sessions' interactions with Papadopoulos said that Sessions had been "entirely truthful and consistent on this matter" and that "he had no knowledge of any conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign with any Russian or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States." Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also looking into allegations of collusion and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, also want a reckoning from Sessions. "I think there are many more questions for Jeff Sessions," said Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a member of the panel. "He should be honest and disclose all truths, especially when he is under oath or testifying before the United States Congress." - - - The Washington Post's Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. Ukraine supports ICAO approaches to the security of civil aviation and is ready to cooperate for the safety of air traffic over the Black Sea, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said. "Ukraine fully supports and complies with the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for the safety of civil aviation and is grateful to the leadership of the organization for supporting Ukraine's position regarding the safety of air traffic over the Black Sea," Groysman was quoted as saying by the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers on Wednesday, November 1. He said at a meeting with ICAO Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu and ICAO Secretary General Fang Liu that Kyiv was ready to use all available potential for regulating air traffic over the Black Sea. "This is a very important issue for us. We are ready for cooperation and are ready to use Ukraine's potential to resolve this extremely important issue," Groysman said. Aliu, in turn, expressed gratitude for the desire of Ukrainian experts to enter the governing bodies and strengthen the management of the organization. "We are grateful that Ukraine wants to strengthen the ICAO management, because we are well aware that Ukraine has very skilled specialists and very high standards of education in the field of aviation safety," he said. During the talks, the sides agreed to strengthen technical cooperation and develop cooperation on ensuring air traffic safety. Al Cardenas, the former head of the American Conservative Union, has long lauded Republican Ed Gillespie for his campaign to diversify the GOP and recruit minority candidates. Now Cardenas is among a cluster of Republican leaders, operatives and Gillespie associates who are struggling to embrace the rhetoric he's deploying in his race for Virginia governor against Democrat Ralph Northam. In recent days, they have expressed disapproval over Gillespie's campaign commercials, including one defending Confederate monuments and another about MS-13 street gangs that Democrats have cast as being anti-immigrant. A third Gillespie ad, intended to disparage Northam's support for restoring felons' rights, highlighted the case of a convicted sex offender. "Ed Gillespie used to be the champion of diversity in the GOP...," Cardenas tweeted Monday. In an interview, Cardenas said he remains supportive of Gillespie's candidacy but that his "ads don't represent the flavor of someone who has been embracing diversity for so long." "These ads are frankly very disappointing to me," said Cardenas, the Cuban-born former head of Florida's GOP. "That's the work of consultants who want to ride the wave I find very disappointing in our party - that angry populist wave that seems to be in favor with many. I can just imagine a justification by the campaign but I'm not sure we're a better country if we accept these norms." Gillespie, responding to the general criticism of his ads from GOP allies, brushed off the criticism. "They should look at my policies, and they'll see that I'm putting forward policies to address the needs we face and the challenges we face in the commonwealth," Gillespie said. "People are free to vote, that's one of the great things about this country, and they are free to have their opinion." In recent days, Republican allies and strategists, as well as longtime Gillespie associates, have also voiced critiques, including some on social media. Gabe Schoenfeld, an author and former Gillespie colleague who left the Republican party after President Trump's victory, tweeted last week: "I worked with @EdWGillespie on the Romney campaign; a great guy now covering himself in filfth." Six hours later, Norm Ornstein, who taught Gillespie as a professor at Catholic University, responded to Schoenfeld's tweet: "I knew Ed when he was a college student. Man, how he has fallen! Right into the gutter." The next day, Ornstein followed up with a second tweet that was retweeted 2,500 times: "Ed Gillespie is running one of the most vile campaigns I have seen in a long time. He really should be ashamed of himself." Doug Stafford, a political strategist for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tweeted an invective to describe his view of one Gillespie ad and, in another tweet, wrote: "So the last 3 ads by @EdGillespie are: gangs, people getting their voting rights back and monuments. The dog whistle is a little loud, Ed." Then Stafford tweeted, "I am a conservative Republican and I know Ed personally. And his TV ad campaign is gross." Reached by phone, Stafford said that Gillespie "can do better" but declined to elaborate except to say that he has not "made up my mind" whether he would vote for the Republican next week. Bruce Bartlett, a former advisor to President Reagan who switched from Republican to Independent a decade ago, was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in the 1980s, a period when he knew Gillespie, then Rep. Richard Armey's chief spokesman, as a "mainstream Republican." Last Friday, Bartlett tweeted to his 53,000 followers: "I will not be able to vote for my old friend Ed Gillespie. His pandering to racists & neo-Confederates is reprehensible." In an interview, Bartlett said, "Based on what I know about him and his character, this is something he's doing under duress - the duress of a campaign that's probably close. He feels he needs to shore up the base of his party and unfortunately the base of his party is rank scum." Responding to Bartlett, Gillespie's campaign digital director, Eric Wilson, in his own tweet, accused the author of "going after Ed Gillespie to gin up sales for his new book. Sadly, the media gives these washed up GOPers a second chance as Republican bashers. Note it's never people at the top of their careers." As a lobbyist, and former counsel to President George W. Bush and RNC chair, Gillespie personifies the Republican establishment that President Trump railed against in his victorious campaign. And while Hillary Clinton won Virginia, the president's support in the commonwealth is sufficient enough to force Gillespie - even as he has maintained distance from the White House - to invoke Trumpian rhetoric to attract conservative rural voters. David Ramadan, a Republican and a former Virginia state delegate who is a Gillespie ally, said that his friend is "stuck in a political climate stemming out of Washington, D.C." that doesn't allow a candidate to posture as "pro-immigrant and for a bigger tent and what we've known about Ed Gillespie for the last 15 or 20 years." Ramadan blamed Gillespie's ads on the candidate's campaign consultants. "He will be a better governor than his own campaign," said Ramadan, who plans on voting for Gillespie. "I know Ed well enough to know that Ed is not a racist. I have no issues with Ed Gillespie's morality." Michael Steele, a Gillespie ally and former RNC chair who has also advocated for a more diverse party, said the TV commercials are "not indicative of who he (Gillespie) is or what he thinks." But Steele also chided Northam's campaign for not disavowing an ad sponsored by the Latino Victory Fund in which a man driving pick up truck with a Gillespie bumper sticker is chasing after a cluster of terrified minority children. The group made the ad in response to Gillespie's commercials but took it down Monday night after the driver of a truck killed eight people in New York in what police are calling terrorist attack. "They're both ads that have no place in the campaign," Steele said. "But let's look at this across the board and not just at Ed Gillespie. Both campaigns have gone to that space in an unfortunate way." Yet Ornstein, who has moderated panels on which Gillespie served, said the imagery evoked by the Republican's campaign shows "a level of amorality that even in rough and tumble politics is encouraging the worst instincts in people." "These commercials hit me in the wrong way," he said. "I get that campaigns can do dirty things or appeal to baser instincts but maybe I held him to a higher standard that represented what I thought I knew about him. You have choices you make in political life about how far you're going to go and this to me was too far." --- The Washington Post's Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report. A man suspected of calmly walking into a Colorado Walmart and fatally shooting three people was captured without incident Thursday morning, police said. Scott Ostrem, 47, was picked up near his Denver home after police received a tip from a citizen. The capture ended a manhunt that began after police say Ostrem opened fire in the Thornton, Colorado, store in suburban Denver, apparently at random, then turned around and walked out. "From the witness accounts, he nonchalantly walked into the front of the business through the south door and just raised the firearm and began firing," Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila told reporters at a news conference Wednesday night. The Adams County Coroner's office on Thursday identified the victims as Pamela Marques, 52, of Denver; Carlos Moreno, 66, of Thornton; and Victor Vasquez, 26, of Denver. Moreno and Vasquez died at the scene, while Marques succumbed to her injuries at the hospital. Police and witnesses described a chaotic and confusing scene as the shooting started around 6 p.m. Wednesday. Hearing the gunshots, hundreds of customers tried to flee the store. Some customers pulled their own concealed weapons, Avila said. Unsure if the gunman was still inside, police cordoned off the area, blocking people from leaving the scene. Once police determined that the shooter was gone, they enlisted the help of Walmart employees, who reviewed hours of surveillance video to identify a possible suspect. The surveillance cameras captured a crisp image of the suspect - a slim man with a receding hairline, his hands jammed in the pockets of his black jacket. Police circulated the picture on social media late Wednesday, including images of what was believed to be his car, a red 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage. Aaron Stephens was wrapping up a grocery shopping trip when he heard the distinctive pop of a gun, he recalled Thursday. Like those around him, he paused a beat and looked around. "After two more shots, I heard a woman scream bloody murder, like the worst bone-chilling scream you could hear," he said. "Then, all the customers and staff started running around like crazy." Stephens, 44, a children's book author, said he "hit the ground. Because I don't know where the bullets are coming from. . . . I kept thinking, I don't want to get shot. I don't want to die." Jay Quawrn Thompson, an 18-year-old Walmart employee, was working in the back of the store when he heard the shots. "A lady came running back, screaming about the shots," Thompson told the Denver Post. "I got her out." The Walmart was still closed as of Thursday morning, Thornton Mayor Heidi Williams said. In a statement, Walmart spokesman Ragan Dickens said the store's employees are all accounted for and safe. "We are relieved that an arrest has been made in this case," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families who lost loved ones and on supporting our associates. We will continue assisting law enforcement however we can." Police have not released a motive for the shooting. Moreno was a well-known fixture at the Auraria Higher Education Campus, a large college in downtown Denver where he worked for 18 years. He worked as a structural tradesman, doing repairs of various kinds, spokesman Blaine Nickeson said. "He had a lot of staff and faculty on campus that relied on him and felt like he was someone who gave them great customer service," Nickeson said. "He was easy to engage with and always had a smile on his face." Vasquez was a father with two little girls and another child on the way, according to a GoFundMe site set up to raise money for his family. According to public records, Ostrem worked in the construction industry, including as a sheet metal fabricator. Over the years, he started at least two businesses that are now delinquent, according to the Colorado Secretary of State. Ostrem frequently moved, most recently settling in a drab apartment building on Samuel Drive in Denver. In 2015, Ostrem filed for bankruptcy. In 2013, Ostrem was arrested in nearby Wheat Ridge for driving under the influence of alcohol, according to police records. Court records also show that he was charged in 1999 with resisting arrest, a charge that was later dropped. NEW YORK CITY - The lone New Yorker to die in the terrorist attack in Manhattan on Tuesday was Nicholas Cleves. The 23-year-old software engineer lived in a West Village apartment within biking distance of the Hudson River, which is less than two blocks away. His building, The Archive, is a New York historic landmark. "He was a really, really kind, not heartless, intelligent and curious person," Bahij Chancey, Cleves' friend, told ABC 7. "He's from the village, he grew up in the village and like me he grew up biking around New York to get around," Chancey said. As a child in the city,Cleves attended Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, also known as LREI, from Kindergarten through 12th grade. He graduated from the progressive Manhattan school in 2012, and in recent years worked on its IT staff part time, said Phil Kassen, the school's director, in a Facebook post on the LREI alumni page. "Nicholas was kind, caring, curious, interested, and a great friend," he wrote. "He always had a kind word when you would pass him in the hall, and the biggest smile, and always offered to help, no matter the situation." Kassen extended his condolences to Cleves' parents - Richard Cleves and Monica Missio - who were involved in the school throughout Nicholas' time there. Monica led several art auctions, Kassen wrote, and Richard Cleves created the "most wondrous and scariest haunted houses," as well as a mad scientist's laboratory, for the school's Halloween Fair. "To the Class of 2012, we are sorry for your loss, it is profound. I cannot imagine the good fortune of having a friend like Nicholas and then losing him," Kassen wrote. "Though you must count yourselves fortunate for having had him as a schoolmate." After high school, Cleves enrolled in classes at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he majored in computer science and minored in physics. As a university student, Cleves studied Italian, worked as an IT Help Desk assistant and tutored students in astronomy, said Philip Glotzbach, the college's president, in a statement posted Wednesday on the college's website. Cleves' mother also attended Skidmore, and graduated in 1981, Glotzbach said. "An incident of terrorism that takes the lives of innocent people anywhere in the world touches each of us in our fundamental humanity," he wrote. "But the effect is more pronounced - and far more personal - when our community is directly linked to such a horrendous event." During his senior year of college, Cleves interned at Unified Digital Group and was hired full-time as a software engineer "without hesitation," after he graduated, said Alex Silverstein, president of the Saratoga Springs-based company, in a statement posted on its website.Silversteinremembers being impressed by Cleves' first interview, during which Cleves demonstrated his knowledge in advanced computer science topics ranging from artificial intelligence to game theory and cryptography to the latest engineering advances at Tesla. "Perhaps more importantly," Silverstein wrote, Cleves "was polite, funny, and, above all, considerate in action. He possessed a rare capacity for emotional IQ in an often-stoic professional milieu." Attempts by the Post to reach Cleves' family were unsuccessful. Jim Burnham, who identified himself to Newsday as a friend of the family, told reporters outside of Cleves' building that the family was grieving and not ready to talk about Cleves' death. "Nicholas Cleves was a fine young man starting out a successful career, struck down way earlier than he should have been," Burnham said. Cleves was among eight people killed when 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov allegedly plowed a rental truck into pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path along the Hudson River. Saipov is a legal permanent resident of the United States who arrived in the country in 2010 from Uzbekistan through a diversity visa program. Officials said Saipov plotted for a year before carrying out the attack in the name of the Islamic State. NEW CANAAN Police said a man went to the police station to discuss his involvement in an incident with a female jogger at Waveny Park. On Oct. 31 around 5:40 p.m., the jogger told police she was approached by a white man who tapped her on her shoulder and made alarming, inappropriate remarks. WASHINGTON - Seven Democratic senators Thursday introduced legislation designed to slow the "revolving door" between federal agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the pharmaceutical companies they regulate. "The pharmaceutical industry has a deep-rooted and strong influence in Washington, and a revolving door between drug companies and government cannot undermine the safety of our communities," said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., who sponsored the bill. The legislation would impose a two-year "cooling off" period on former officials from the DEA and the Food and Drug Administration, barring them from assisting pharmaceutical companies with lobbying efforts. The bill also expands the definition of "lobbying contact" to include taking part in activities such as strategy sessions. And it limits the issues pharmaceutical industry officials can handle if they join the federal government. It is not unusual for corporations to hire federal employees directly from the government, nor for industry officials to join the government in high-ranking positions. Industry representatives say the pharmaceutical industry is highly specialized, and they rely upon the expertise of former government officials to help them comply with complex drug laws. There are regulations designed to prevent potential conflicts of interest. The current restrictions include a lifetime ban on participating "personally and substantially" on a "particular matter" that the official had handled while working for the federal government. Government ethics experts say some of those laws are easily skirted. "The bill could go further, but this is a nice step toward slowing the revolving door that is responsible for steering public policy in favor of the drug companies and distributors rather than in the favor of the public," said Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C. watchdog group. The proposed legislation follows a joint Washington Post/"60 Minutes" investigation into the opioid industry and its influence in Washington. Companies that manufacture or distribute highly addictive pain pills have hired dozens of high-ranking officials from the DEA during the past decade, many of them from a division that regulates some of the same companies. A decade ago, DEA investigators began to crack down on large drug companies they suspected of failing to report unusually large orders of painkillers, many of which were winding up in the hands of street dealers and users. Since then, drug companies and the law firms that represent them have hired at least 46 DEA officials - 32 of them directly from the agency's division that regulates the industry. One of those DEA officials left the agency and formed a law practice to represent opioid companies. He later helped to write a law that undercut the agency's enforcement efforts against large companies accused of violating federal drug laws, according to government documents and a legal analysis of the law by the DEA's chief administrative judge. Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., introduced the legislation in the House and collected nearly $100,000 from political action committees representing drug companies. In the Senate, the law's primary sponsor was Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who negotiated a final version with DEA and Justice Department officials. In the wake of the Oct. 15 Post/"60 Minutes" investigation, Marino withdrew his nomination to be the nation's drug czar under the Trump administration. Several co-sponsors of the Marino bill have since come under fire from their constituents and political opponents for backing the measure at the height of the nation's worst drug crisis. The prescription drug epidemic has claimed nearly 200,000 lives, more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War. Baldwin said her proposed legislation would serve as a check on the power the pharmaceutical industry wields on Capitol Hill. She cited an investigation by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity that found that the makers of prescription painkillers spent $880 million on campaign contributions and lobbying efforts between 2006 and 2015. The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Ed Markey, D-Mass., Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Tom Udall, D-N.M. So far, no Republicans have signed onto the measure. "Patients, families and the public need to have trust that the DEA and FDA are working for them, not powerful Washington interests," Baldwin said. A new Ukrainian transport An-178 aircraft with a carrying capacity of 18 tonnes developed and produced by Antonov state enterprise (Kyiv) has been recently introduced to potential military customers in Kuwait, the specialized resource Defence Blog has reported. According to the resource, on October 30 as part of a tour in the Middle East, the new Ukrainian transport aircraft conducted a demonstration flight in Kuwait with the participation of the Kuwaiti Air Forces. It is planned in future to organize the participation of An-178 aircraft in demonstration flights at the Dubai Airshow 2017 international aerospace exhibition, which will be held in the UAE in November. The Antonov press service told Interfax-Ukraine the An-178 airplane flew from Ukraine to Kuwait. However, it avoided specifying any details at this stage, as well as plans for the Middle East "tour" of the new Ukrainian transport aircraft. About 200 companies from 15 countries are involved in production cooperation under the An-178 program. Today Antonov is promoting the An-178 program in the Middle East and Central Asia: the UAE, China and Azerbaijan have already shown interest in the new Ukrainian transport air carrier. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate RICHMOND, Va. -- Nearly every evening after work, Monica Hutchinson crunches up and down leaf-strewn sidewalks to remind African-American residents that Election Day is Nov. 7 and to deliver this message: "We are the deciding vote." Hutchinson, a volunteer with the advocacy group New Virginia Majority, has data on her side. African Americans make up about 20 percent of Virginia's electorate, and a surge in black voting has been decisive in recent statewide elections. Democratic candidates were the beneficiaries, tilting what had been a reliably red state into full swing status. But that wave shows signs of ebbing, and some argue that the Democratic ticket led by gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam hasn't done enough to energize black voters and ensure a big turnout against Republican Ed Gillespie. It's part of a national problem for Democrats, who are fretting over the way forward in the age of President Trump and struggling to take advantage of demographic shifts that should favor them. Some black Democrats worry that the party is taking the wrong lesson from Trump's victory, putting too much emphasis on trying to win back working-class whites instead of solidifying the minority electorate that was awakened in 2008 by Barack Obama. "The Democratic Party doesn't seem to have gotten the message," said Phil Thompson, president of the Loudoun County chapter of the NAACP. "They just take our votes for granted." The consequence could be a low turnout, which would probably be fatal to Northam in a close election Tuesday. African Americans turned out to vote in the 2013 governor's race at roughly the same rate as Virginians overall and made the difference for Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D, in a narrow win. This year, African Americans are somewhat less likely than whites to say they are certain to vote or are following the race closely, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Tuesday. A new Post-Schar School poll finds Northam leading Gillespie 89 percent to 8 percent among black likely voters, almost identical to McAuliffe's margin of 90 percent to 8 percent four years ago. Virginia's Democratic ticket occasionally has hurt its own message to black voters. Last month, the Northam campaign authorized a flyer in northern Virginia that omitted lieutenant governor candidate Justin Fairfax, who would be the first African American elected statewide in more than 25 years. The omission was requested by a union that funded the mailer and had endorsed Northam but not Fairfax. After the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the summer, Northam called for Confederate statues to be removed from public property - then seemed to backtrack, saying it should be a local decision. The statues are a tricky issue for Northam. Numerous polls show that most Virginians don't want them taken down. His initial hard-line stance risked alienating white voters, but his "local" compromise waters down a position that many black voters are passionate about. Gillespie, meanwhile, has played the issue both ways. He has condemned the racial violence of Charlottesville but refused to comment on Trump's equivocation that there were "very fine people" on both sides of the conflict. And he has aired ads promising to defend Virginia's Confederate "history" and suggesting that illegal immigration leads to Latino gang violence, while also promising to be a governor for "all Virginians." At the same time, Gillespie has made overtures to African-American voters, attending events large and small and offering positions on issues such as criminal justice reform that bend to the left of Republican orthodoxy. For instance, Gillespie favors raising the threshold for felony larceny and said he would seek to limit the practice of suspending a driver's license for failure to pay court fees - positions similar to Northam's. The efforts have drawn notice among some black businesspeople and those who are less connected to the Democratic establishment. "I'm just looking for the person that says they're going to do the most in our community. I don't care about the rhetoric," said Jerry Lee, 47, of Richmond, who works with felons to readjust to life outside prison. "If you're telling me that you're going to do work in my community, then I'm all for giving you a shot, and that's pretty much what I'm getting from Gillespie." He said that both candidates have come to events hosted by his group but that Gillespie took notes and made specific policy recommendations. Northam, he said, was "more broad." Lee came away feeling that the Democrat expected support simply because the audience was primarily African American. Northam has spent most of the year attending multiple black churches on Sundays and regularly speaks to largely black groups and businesses. As lieutenant governor, he established relationships with African American elected officials across the state. They helped mobilize votes for him during the June Democratic primary, when he posted an unexpectedly large win over former congressman Tom Perriello. The criticism of Northam is not that he ignores the black community; it's that he does little to inspire excitement. The NAACP's Thompson said Northam and other Democrats too often stress their work to restore voting rights to felons when speaking with African Americans. "They talk about felony restoration like we're all criminals," Thompson said. Democrats have been curiously low-key in pointing out that Fairfax, the nominee for lieutenant governor, would be the first African American elected statewide since Gov. Douglas Wilder. But Nadia Anderson, 39, a Richmond businesswoman who attended an event with Northam at a beauty salon, said she is glad the party stresses Fairfax's qualifications and not his skin color. "They're not saying vote for him because he's black," she said. In recent days, Democrats have brought in national figures aimed specifically at energizing African American voters. "We can always do more," Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said Sunday after attending events with voters in Richmond. She had appeared with former U.S. attorney general Eric Holder, telling a diverse group at Blue Bee Cider that "Virginia has the fate of our country in its hands." Democrats everywhere, not just in Virginia, "can do a better job of turning out those votes" in minority communities, she said. "It's critical that we put the resources into reminding all of these communities that they matter, especially when there is so much hate and division that is being spewed," she said. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., were both scheduled to appear for Northam and the Democratic ticket on Wednesday night. The party's biggest effort to motivate voters in Virginia was a Richmond rally last month with Obama. Many of the thousands who attended expressed euphoria at being able to bask in Obama's presence. "I was just reflecting on how great those eight years were with him," Shadi Khalil, 27, a graduate student at the University of Virginia, said shortly after the rally. Asked whether he had similar passion for Northam, he smiled. "I'm passionate about him defeating Gillespie," he said. Critics argue that the late effort to mobilize votes doesn't show a long-term investment in wooing minority communities. The consequence is that the enthusiasm generated by Obama and his presidency could be slipping away. "There are signs that energy and mobilization among African-American voters was not where we had it once upon a time when we put in the resources and efforts and had a candidate like Barack Obama," said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. Obama's election unlocked a pent-up wave of African-American voters nationwide, and Virginia supported a Democrat for president for the first time since Lyndon Johnson. Although just 52 percent of black residents in Virginia participated in the 2004 presidential election, black turnout surged to 68 percent when Obama ran in 2008 and 67 percent in 2012, according to the Census Bureau. Last year, black turnout in Virginia dropped slightly to 65 percent and fell even more in many places across the country. Belcher rejects the idea that black voters stayed home because they didn't have a black candidate. Democrats who make that argument "are using [Obama's] blackness as an excuse for not putting together the tactics, the strategy and the resources to mobilize these voters," he said. A spokesman for the Northam campaign said Democrats have spent $3.5 million this year on phone and door-knocking efforts to reach minority voters. An outside group, BlackPAC, says it will spend $1.1 million to "mobilize black voters" in Virginia. That has included TV and online advertising, mailers and door-to-door canvassing in Hampton Roads. "There's a tendency to engage with black voters later, to see them as just get-out-the-vote, motivation voters," said Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC. "I think that's the wrong approach. We need to see black voters as voters that need to be persuaded." Which is what Hutchinson has been trying to do almost every day for weeks now. On a warm night in late October, limping slightly on a reconstructed ankle, Hutchinson walked up to a small white house in eastern Henrico County just as Shirley Christian was taking out the trash. Her right arm bandaged from dialysis, a scar peeking out of her shirt from recent open-heart surgery, Christian, 59, said she was worried about the cost of health care. Hutchinson unleashed a pep talk about taking a stand for that issue in the upcoming election. "And the first step is voting," she said. "When it comes down to it, if an elected official knows that you don't vote, then their job isn't in jeopardy from you. So long as we're united in our voting, we're essentially telling them, you know . . . " " . . . This is what we'd like to have," Christian said. "Exactly," Hutchinson said. "So once we have that united front, things will change." --- The Washington Post's Scott Clement contributed to this report. A member of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Tymofiy Milovanov has said that there is a risk of suspension of the program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if the country's authorities do not settle the liability of systemically revising internal gas prices. "The non-increase of the tariffs and talks on the possibility of returning to different tariffs for business and households [the source of corruption in times of the previous authorities] could make the IMF angry and result in the postponement of the new tranche or the termination of the program," he wrote on his Facebook page. He said that the break in relations with the IMF could case many hazards to the country. "International markets and politicians could negatively react and decrease trust to the country, weaken its support. This, in turn, would worsen the economic situation, strengthen populism and isolation, increase a likelihood of the economic and political crisis in 2019 and 2020," Milovanov said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In the late 1960s, when Ted Koppel covered the Vietnam War as ABC News war correspondent, he would ship his film by air back to the networks New York studios, a journey that took two to three days. By 2003, when he began covering the Iraq War, Koppel could broadcast from the desert, bringing news to his viewers the same day it happened. Now, Koppel said Wednesday in a lecture at Trinity University, half the American public gets its news immediately on Facebook. What social media does is give all of us the opportunity to say anything at any time at any length about anybody, without regard to fact-checking or its accuracy, he said. Thats something totally new. In his lecture about the state of journalism in America, Koppel offered a grave assessment of political polarization in the U.S. while underlining the importance of factual accuracy. When I would write a script, my script would be read by the executive producer, by a senior producer, by a fact-checker, before I could put it on the air, he said. And I felt wonderful about that. He later added that a nation like ours cannot survive in freedom if we are incapable of agreeing on something as simple as what is factual. He also urged media outlets to focus on fact-based reporting rather than analysis. I believe it is the responsibility of journalists at this time in our history to do what has been their responsibility throughout every other time in history, Koppel said. And that is to report the facts. And get away from all the analysis. He added that papers should continue to have op-ed pages and networks need not get rid of all analysts, though not to the exclusion of reporting. Report whats important, report it accurately, get it fact-checked, make sure that what youre saying is right, Koppel said. And then let the chips fall. An anchor for nearly 26 years of the late night news show Nightline, Koppel began his career in 1963 when he became ABC Radio News youngest correspondent. Coming onto the national scene with his coverage of the Kennedy assassination that year, Koppel, now 77, went on to cover Richard Nixons administration, traveling with the president to China in 1972. He now contributes to CBS News Sunday Morning. Koppel on Wednesday also said journalists should not cover the investigation into the alleged ties between President Donald Trumps campaign and the Russian government at the expense of other news stories. Its not important to the exclusion of everything else, Koppel said. Its an easy thing to talk about. Every day offers us a new evolution in this story. And its a lot less complicated than talking about cybersecurity and the danger of cyberattacks. In 2015, Koppel released a book on cybersecurity called Lights Out, which he also discussed during his lecture Wednesday. The internet, in addition to being an extraordinarily valuable tool and a wonderful addition to our lives, also has the potential of being a weapon of mass destruction, Koppel said. We have already seen what people with bad intentions using or misusing the internet (can do). He also warned of the tenuous nature of the nations power grids, divided into three sections including one devoted entirely to parts of Texas and how easily other countries could hack into the grids. If a foreign government could get inside one of those systems, it could shut down an entire power grid, Koppel said. jscherer@express-news.net | Twitter: @jaspscherer Gov. Greg Abbott has appointed Angelina D.A. Gooden to serve as judge for the 280th District Court in Harris County. Gooden, of Pearland, will serve the remainder of a term set to expire Dec. 31, 2018 or until her successor is elected. The Solomiansky District Court of Kyiv has chosen personal recognizance as a preventive measure for the son of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Oleksandr, as part of the 'backpack case'. Judge of the Solomiansky district court of Kyiv Vitaly Ukrainets passed relevant ruling on Wednesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported. "The prosecutor's request has been partly satisfied To elect a preventive measure against Oleksandr Avakov... in the form of a personal recognizance. He must appear at the request of the investigators and report on his movements," the judge said, reading the decree. Prosecutors requested a 60-day arrest with an option of a UAH 5 million bail. According to them, the defendant can put pressure on witnesses, and, taking into account his wealth, he can leave Ukraine. Representatives of the prosecution also noted that "dozens of butch people and members of the National Police" were trying to prevent them from conducting investigatory actions in the 'backpack case'. Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office A 44-year-old mom of Pharr, a suburb of McAllen, was arrested last week after she allegedly admitted to having sex with her daughter's teenage boyfriend, according to reports. Claudia Yaneth Lopez is charged with sexual assault of a child, which is a second degree felony, KGBT-TV reports. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Antonio police detective fired for mishandling more than 130 sex and family crime cases failed to submit forensic evidence to the crime lab for a year and in several cases failed to act on evidence provided by the crime lab, according to suspension records obtained by mySA.com. Detective Kenneth Valdez, a 17-year veteran of the San Antonio Police Department, was terminated Thursday. Dozens of cases involving child sex abuse and injury to a child went through Valdez, who worked in the department's Special Victims Unit. Police officials announced the investigation into Valdez' alleged misconduct last week but declined to comment more specifically on how the cases had been mishandled. The records, released to mySA.com Thursday, filled in those gaps. According to the document, Valdez did not act on information given to him by the Bexar County Crime Lab in at least two cases. In one case, Valdez received DNA information from the lab pointing to a suspect in a case but the detective ignored the data. Valdez failed to submit forensic evidence to a crime lab for an entire year, from Aug. 15, 2016 to Aug. 15, 2017, according to the records. Investigators discovered evidence from 27 cases was not submitted for testing, and 17 of those needed to be looked at forensically, according to the records. RELATED: Detective accused of mishandling 130 sex crime, family crime cases terminated by SAPD State law requires officials like Valdez to submit evidence in a sexual assault case within 30 days of receiving it. Investigators found Valdez did not properly preserve or handle evidence in multiple felony cases within the Special Victims Unit. Seven unlabeled cell phones, five buccal swabs in random envelopes, uncategorized DVDs and CDs and a $50 bill were found in Valdez's office, according to the records. The DVDs and CDs were eventually tied to four cases while two of the cell phones had no identifying markings. This summer, between July 4 and July 24, Valdez "deliberately refused to obey a lawful order given to him by his supervisor," read the records. Cases were submitted to Valdez's superior, despite needed additional work, according to the document. "There simply is no excuse for such improper behavior, and Detective Valdez is not representative of the thousands of men and women in our police department who are passionately committed to protecting the most vulnerable among us," City Manager Sheryl Sculley said in a statement Thursday. More than 130 SVU cases went through Valdez and the department is under an independent review. Mishandled cases date back to 2013, said Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood. "I'm frustrated at the possibility there are children out there wondering why their voice isn't being heard, wondering why nobody is listening to them," LaHood said. Read the records in full here. kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5 Officer Julio Cavazos held back tears for much of his interview -- his first time speaking publicly about being shot on June 29 and losing his partner, Officer Miguel Moreno. The two were shot by Andrew Bice, a man they were approaching near San Antonio College while responding to a car burglary call. Cavazos was critically injured but survived. Moreno was killed. "I get out of the car, Miguel gets out of the car ... and I saw the barrel of the gun," Cavazos, 36, said, in a video interview posted to Facebook by the San Antonio Police Department. "It happened so slow. I saw the white flash and I heard the boom and I know I had been shot." RELATED: Man who killed San Antonio police officer had a sinister tattoo A bullet struck Cavazos' chin and moved into his chest cavity. He still managed to pull Moreno into safety. He then pursued Bice, who ultimately shot himself in the head before officers got to him. "After working so long together ... I looked over to my right and I expected Miguel to be standing there, but he wasn't," Cavazos recalled. "I saw that he was injured and that he was down." Cavazos teared up again describing his last interaction with his partner. "I wish I had something better to say," he said. "But all I told him was, 'stay with me buddy.'" RELATED: SAPD officer injured in shootout: 'Words can't begin to explain how thankful I am' The San Antonio Police Department hinted that more videos of Cavazos would be posted soon as he continues recovering from his injuries. In the video, he said he's working hard to get back to work and hopes to be patrolling again in January. "I want to thank everybody that's watching and that gave something, even if it was a silent prayer or a thought," Cavazos said. "It means the world." 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 U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, will not seek re-election in 2018, a person in his Washington, D.C. office said. Although the spokesperson could not give a reason for Smith's decision to retire, they said he was grateful for his time representing the 21st District of Texas, which includes parts of Bexar County in the San Antonio-area. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After San Antonio Police Officer Julio Cavazos' partner was shot and killed earlier this year, Cavazos decided he wanted to get into precision shooting and build a commemorative rifle in memory of his partner, Officer Miguel Moreno. Cavazos, a nine-year-veteran of the department, purchased all the parts online, and at a friends suggestion, went to Sons of Liberty Gun Works on Pleasanton Road on the South Side to have the gun assembled. I walked in and I was treated immediately like a million dollars, Cavazos said Thursday. I was treated like their best customer, and they didn't even know who I was. After owners Michael Mihalski and Kyle Grothues realized who Cavazos was and who he was building the gun in memory of they suggested he use their parts. Cavazos, who was also injured in the shooting, called his wife to tell her the bad news: He'd be spending even more money, but she said it was OK, because it was for Mo. A few weeks later, once the gun was assembled, Cavazos went to the shop, which builds and sells custom rifles for gun enthusiasts and law enforcement agencies. Mihalski and Grothues told Cavazos they would be donating the parts and labor. Words can't begin to explain how thankful I am for ... the generally good people of San Antonio and a small shop like this, that do things like this for us, Cavazos said, during his first public remarks since the shooting on June 29. So thank you. Thank you for this beautiful gift, and thank you everyone in San Antonio for being so supportive of us. The rifle, a semi-automatic Mk12, is engraved with Morenos badge number, #1603, and his end of watch date, June 30, 2017. The shop employees gave the weapon to Cavazos on Thursday during a public ceremony. Cavazos, who appeared emotional throughout, said the rifle was such a beautiful weapon. The presentation Thursday comes about four months after the shooting, which killed Moreno and left Cavazos critically injured. About 3:30 p.m. June 29, Moreno and Cavazos were investigating a car that appeared to have been broken into in the 200 block of West Evergreen Street near San Antonio College, officials previously said. They saw two suspicious men walking on the sidewalk, so they parked their vehicle. Moreno and Cavazos had just exited their cruiser when one of the men, later identified as Andrew C. Bice, pulled out a handgun and shot Moreno in the head and Cavazos in the chin, though the bullet eventually lodged itself in his chest cavity. Bice, 34, was wounded in the buttocks when Cavazos returned fire as he was moving his partner to safety. Bice fled down Evergreen and shot himself in the head yards away from the attack, dying shortly afterward. At the time, McManus said it was unclear what motivated the attack. Bice was a career criminal whose past arrests included charges of kidnapping, drugs and evading arrest. A subsequent autopsy revealed that Bice had a RIP COPS tattoo on his wrist. Moreno, 32, died the next day. Moreno had served the city for nine years, most recently on the Central B shift. His friends have said he was a proud police officer who also had an adventurous side. He loved to fish, ride his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and travel. Read more about Cavazos recovery at ExpressNews.com. eeaton@express-news.net |Twitter: @emilieeaton A man accused of fatally shooting another man during a heated argument in front of a West Side convenience store in early October was arrested Wednesday. Nathan Knowles, 34, was arrested in the fatal shooting death of Mike Berlanga, 40, police confirmed. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Before the Pearl Brewery took center stage as the San Antonio destination it is today, the spot was merely background noise to a story about love, murder and three women named Emma. First, and most prominent, is Emma Koehler, who took over Pearl Brewery after her husband Otto was killed in 1914. She successfully led employees through the Prohibition Era before passing away in 1947, according to Hotel Emma's website. Employees at Hotel Emma, named after Koehler, honored her this week for Dia de Los Muertos. An altar at the hotel for her is full of flowers, candles, photos and skulls, according to Facebook. "Gone but not forgotten," reads a Facebook post from the hotel. "Dia de Los Muertos ofrenda for Emma Koehler." RELATED: Pearl food hall adds weekday happy hours But there are also two other Emmas in this story. Four years before she took the reins of the brewery over, Koehler was in a car accident and required full-time care at home. Her husband Otto hired a home nurse, who was also named Emma. This Emma, however, went by Emmi, according to the hotel's website. Otto Koehler struck up an affair with Emmi and her friend, the third Emma. This Emma was tall and blonde, according to the website. Otto set up the pair of Emmas in a house on the city's South Side. But not everything was paradise. On Nov. 12, 1914, Otto visited the house and some sort of argument occurred. The taller, blonde Emma shot him dead, according to the hotel's website. "I'm sorry, but I had to kill him," she told police. She was charged with murder, but fled to Europe to help as a WWI nurse. Four years later, the tall Emma returned to the Alamo City and was found not guilty by an all-male jury, according to the hotel's website. Later, she married one of the jurors. As for nurse Emma? She got married and wasn't heard from again. Hotel Emma was named after Emma Koehler before opening in November 2015. A drink called "The Three Emmas" memorializes the women at the Sternewirth Bar inside the hotel. It's a drink made up of pearl beer, rose cordial, amontillado sherry, botanist gin, grapefruit and lemon juice, according to the bar's menu. Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate San Antonio-based USAA has pledged $500,000 to San Antonios Tricentennial as the commission overseeing the celebration continues to struggle with reaching its fundraising goals. The half-million-dollar contribution comes two months prior to the kickoff of the tricentennial year amid acknowledgment from Tricentennial Commission chairmen that fundraising for the celebration started late and has lagged. The contribution from USAA, which will be the official military appreciation sponsor of the celebration, brings the organization to 60 percent of its $10.3 million goal. As of Thursday, $6.1 million has been raised. The donation will ensure that the military legacy of San Antonio and Bexar County is incorporated into all aspects of the commemoration. Bo Gilbert, USAAs assistant vice president for Government and Industry Relations, serves as the chairman of the commissions fundraising committee. Mayor Ron Nirenberg applauded USAA for its partnership with the Tricentennial. San Antonio continues to benefit from USAAs values and investment in our communities, Nirenberg said. An exemplary corporate partner, USAA will be integral to the Tricentennial celebrations throughout 2018, helping to commemorate our milestone and the fundamental role the military has played in the development of our city and county. For the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, Fort Sam Houston will be open to the public on Military Day, which will occur during the May Commemorative Week, according to a Tricentennial press release. We look forward to paying tribute to the citys 300-year legacy and honoring our veterans, actively serving members and their families, Stuart Parker, the financial institutions CEO, said in a press release. Military Day will showcase active-duty military and missions, both past and present, from Joint Base San Antonio. Tricentennial plans also include other military-themed events, such as demonstrations from the U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Team and the Navys Leap Frogs. County Judge Nelson Wolff noted that the 300th anniversary of San Antonio is about honoring heritage. USAA stands for these very same values, he said in a release. Their commitment to our legacy and our future is greatly appreciated and I look forward to 2018. jbaugh@express-news.net | Twitter: @jbaugh Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, the Belarusian state news agency BelTA said. "As for political interaction, we don't have problems. We are absolutely following the course that we agreed to follow," Lukashenko told the Ukrainian president, according to BelTA. The presidents have found a way to meet and discuss their relations even far from their countries, Lukashenko said. "Now we have the opportunity to discuss issues that probably need additional momentum from us. I want to assure you that we have always kept our promises. I want to guarantee that to you for the future," Lukashenko said. The meeting also addressed the issue of trade and economic cooperation. "We are working together very actively in the trade-economic sphere. Our trade turnover, despite various problems and obstacles, has now exceeded $3 billion, it's probably somewhere around $3.5 billion now. But we have a very good opportunity to broaden cooperation through interaction between regions," Lukashenko said. He said he is confident that the first forum of regions of Belarus and Ukraine, which is expected to be held in Gomel, will contribute to the development of relations between the countries. Poroshenko, for his part, talked about work to implement agreements achieved earlier, from demarcation issues to trade-economic cooperation. "I am monitoring this issue," Poroshenko said. He said he is pleased that the countries are broadening their cooperation in various areas, including the economy and the social sphere. Lukashenko is in the UAE on a working visit. He is scheduled to have talks with the country's administration and meet with businessmen. Poroshenko also went to the UAE for a working visit on November 1-2. He was previously in Saudi Arabia. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The wife of a man accused in the fatal shooting last year of a 28-year-old mother of six testified Wednesday that the woman knocked her down and pointed a gun in her face moments before she was shot and killed. James Striblin is accused of killing Margarita Natividad on July 22, 2016. Authorities believe that Natividad was protecting Priscilla Cueva, Striblin's wife, following an argument that happened after the women returned in the wee hours from a nightclub. Striblin has said he shot Natividad in self-defense to protect his wife. Cueva, the first defense witness Wednesday after the state rested, appeared nervous on the witness stand. She said she did not recall much from the night of the shooting until her video statement to police was played for her during a jury recess. Under direct questioning by defense attorney Robert Gebbia, Cueva told the jury that the night of the incident, she went with Natividad to a nightclub where she worked and that after the woman drank, took pills and snorted a substance, they went to a restaurant, where Natividad started acting crazy. Once they got back to the Northwest Side apartment complex in the 4000 block of Medical Drive where both women lived, Cueva said Natividad's boyfriend, Francisco Baca, was at the woman's apartment, yelling at Margie, Cueva said. Then, Cueva said Natividad pushed her, got on top of her, and Cueva yelled for Striblin. Margie and I weren't fighting, said Cueva. She pushed me to the floor to try to keep me from leaving the apartment. She was acting crazy. Cueva said once she was pushed to the ground, she saw that Natividad had a gun, so Cueva said she placed her hands and arms over her head. When did she pull out the gun, when did she pull it on you, Gebbia asked. She didn't, she just had it out, Cueva said, adding that she didn't even know Natividad had a gun until it was in my face. Prosecutor Gretchen Flader questioned Cueva on conflicting statements between what she told police after the incident and her testimony Wednesday. When Flader asked Cueva if she recalled her husband shooting Natividad, Cueva said she did not, nor could she remember how she and Striblin ran from the scene. Under re-direct, Gebbia asked Cueva why she ran. I was scared, she said. Two neighbors testified Tuesday that they saw Striblin hit Natividad in the face with the butt of an assault rifle, heard the women yell, No, Jay! No, Jay, no! moments before he shot her in the head and dragged her by the hair. Afterward, he and Cueva left the scene. Closing arguments are expected to begin at 9 a.m. Thursday in the 186th state District Court, presided by Judge Jefferson Moore. If convicted, Striblin faces up to life in prison. ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863 Police are asking for the public's help in locating and identifying the suspects who gunned down a bouncer outside a San Antonio gay bar last year as he walked a patron to her vehicle. The victim, 35-year-old Christopher Fuentes, worked at The Annex Bar in the 300 block of San Pedro Avenue, north of downtown. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate DEA agents in Bexar County arrested a Border Patrol agent Tuesday on a drug possession charge, according to county officials. Gregory Dylan Sessions was charged with possession of between four and 400 grams of a controlled substance. He was booked into the Bexar County Jail on a $20,000 bond and has since been released. RELATED: Municipal court detention officer arrested for allegedly selling classified law enforcement info According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Sessions is a border patrol agent assigned to the Carrizo Springs Station, which is about 80 miles north of Laredo. He's been employed with the agency for six years. "U.S. Customs and Border Protection stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe," read a statement from Customs and Border Protection Spokesman Dennis Smith. "We do not tolerate corruption within our ranks, nor acts which tarnish our agency's reputation. We fully cooperate with any criminal or administrative investigations of alleged misconduct by any of our personnel, on or off duty." RELATED: Municipal court detention officer arrested for allegedly selling classified law enforcement info The details surrounding Sessions's arrest and the charges against him were not immediately available. It's also unclear what kind of drugs Sessions had, but they were categorized as Penalty Group 2 drugs, according to Bexar County officials. According to the Texas State Code that designation applies to dozens of chemical compositions of hallucinogenics. The Bexar County District Attorney's Office is now handling the case, according to Dante Sorianello, the DEA assistant special agent in charge in San Antonio. Leslie Garza, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said the office will not comment on Sessions's arrest at this time. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com Caleb Downs is a crime reporter for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here.| cdowns@mysa.com | Twitter: @calebjdowns The San Antonio Police Special Victims Unit detective accused of mishandling at least 130 sex and family crimes cases has been terminated, officials announced Thursday. Detective Kenneth Valdez was assigned to sexual assault of a child and child injury cases. He had been with the department for 17 years and earned an annual salary of $160,000. The announcement came from City Manager Sheryl Scully, who had previously said she was "appalled" when she learned about the allegations. RELATED: More than 130 cases mishandled by SAPD detective assigned child sex abuse, injury, officials say Now Playing: "There is a lot more that I want to say about this, but federal law and provisions in the collective bargaining agreement with the police union prevent me from doing so," Sculley said before taking questions. Video: San Antonio Express-News "Detective Valdez was given his due process in accordance with Federal law, State law and the Collective Bargaining Agreement," the statement read. "The results of the Internal Affairs investigation were presented to the City's disciplinary review board made up of citizens and officers who unanimously recommended to Chief McManus that Detective Valdez be terminated." Police learned Valdez did not properly investigate those cases after an internal audit revealed a difference in the number of cases reported and cases filed, Police Chief William McManus previously said. The cases dated back to 2013, and the statute of limitations have run out on some. Officials previously said a lieutenant and two sergeants have also been transferred from the Special Victims Unit for failing to properly supervise the investigations. They have not yet been named. "There simply is no excuse for such improper behavior, and Detective Valdez is not representative of the thousands of men and women in our police department who are passionately committed to protecting the most vulnerable among us," Sculley also said in her statement. Sculley also launched an independent review of the department's SVU unit. In the statement, Sculley said the review began this week and "SAPD's SVU will be a better unit as a result." Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com Staff writer Caleb Downs contributed to this report. | Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA Former Head of the State Agency for Investment and National Projects of Ukraine Vladyslav Kaskiv has not admitted his guilt legally, but his first testimony actually testifies to this, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said. "Legally it's not admission of his guilt," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday, November 1. At the same time, he stressed that the testimony given by Kaskiv on Wednesday morning gives grounds to say that this is actually admission of his guilt. According to international law, the Ukrainian prosecutor noted, the Ukrainian side informed the Panamanian law enforcement agencies that Kaskiv will be held accountable only for the crime under which he was extradited, and if there are any new episodes, Ukraine will send repeated appeals to the Panamanian side. "This is not an agreement. This is a confirmation of Ukraine's international obligations, a standard guarantee in the course of extradition. There are no other agreements with Mr. Kaskiv or his lawyers," Lutsenko said. He also added that at present there was no reason to say that "Panama wants to somehow help officials suspected of corruption." Lutsenko stressed that the fact that Kaskiv paid the full amount of damage caused to the state fully confirms the validity of the indictment. Speaking about compensation for the damage inflicted on the state by Kaskiv, he said that he had received a document from the main department of the State Treasury Service of Ukraine with a notification that UAH 7.471 million received from Kaskiv had been transferred to the budget. According to Lutsenko, this indicates the full compensation by Kaskiv of the damage caused to the state. After Mondays legal shock and awe, one thing is certain: The Mueller investigation poses a serious and perhaps existential threat to the Trump administration. Apologists for the president can yell nothing burger until theyre blue in the face. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Richard Gates now under home confinement and charged with offenses that carry long prison terms would likely disagree. Campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, whom special counsel Robert Mueller has flipped into cooperating with the probe, also might attest that Mondays acts and revelations are a very big deal. President Trump had good reason to spend that morning upstairs in the White House residence, brooding and fuming. Regarding Manafort and Gates, Trump perhaps could argue that Mueller has made no allegation thus far of collusion with the Russians to boost Trumps prospects in the election. But the Papadopoulos case, according to court documents, is all about Russian mischief and what the Trump campaign may have known about it. Perhaps the nastiest surprise for Trump and those close to him is that Papadopoulos, who was on the campaigns foreign policy team, was arrested July 27 and became a proactive cooperator with the Mueller probe. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty Oct. 5 to making false statements, in an interview with the FBI earlier this year, regarding his contacts with foreigners about obtaining Russian help for the campaign. That is ominous news on every level. First, while there had been speculation that Mueller might go after Manafort and Gates, no one outside of Muellers team appears to have known anything about Papadopoulos. How long has he been cooperating with the investigation? And what might that cooperation have entailed? Anyone who had a conversation with Papadopoulos since his July arrest has to wonder whether he was wearing a wire. Have others connected with the Trump campaign been squeezed for information in a similar way? Is more proactive cooperating presently taking place? Papadopoulos had a series of meetings with a London-based professor who has connections with the Russian government, and in an April 2016 encounter this professor claimed the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton that included thousands of emails. This was after Russian hackers had broken into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and also managed to steal the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. It is reasonable to assume that these are the emails that the professor was talking about to Papadopoulos, who made repeated attempts to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian officials even suggesting, at one point, a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin. No such get-together took place. But in June, there was that meeting at Trump Tower at which senior figures in the Trump campaign met with a well-connected Russian lawyer in hopes of receiving dirt on Clinton. Were the Russians exploring various avenues that might lead to a meaningful connection with the Trump campaign? Did they find one? As it happened, the DNC and Podesta emails were eventually released through WikiLeaks in a manner clearly designed to do maximum damage to the Clinton campaign. We also know that the Russians flooded social media with pro-Trump fake news. In many instances, this propaganda campaign targeted voters at such a granular level that one has to wonder where the Russians got such sophisticated and detailed data. Trump must have noticed that one important name was not prominently mentioned Monday: that of Michael Flynn, his short-lived national security adviser. Flynn faces potential legal jeopardy for his alleged representation of foreign interests without properly registering to do so. Trump has consistently gone out of his way to protect and defend Flynn, even to the point of asking former FBI Director James Comey to go easy on him. If I were Trump, Id have to wonder if Flynn could be cooperating with Mueller. Id worry about what he might say. And if I spoke with Flynn, Id choose my words very carefully. eugenerobinson@washpost.com Re: Young vets suicides soar; Its a grim byproduct of the nations forever wars, front page, Sunday: This heartbreaking article should be a wake-up call for the military and the country. These are the best of our men and women, and they placed their lives on the line for us. We must insist the Veterans Administration do more to stem the tide of suicides among younger veterans. Military commanders must stop the stigma attached when help is requested. Kudos to the friends who are there to help stop a suicide. PTSD is winning the battle; we must defeat it. Sandra Scott, Schertz Kelly is right Re: President Trump jabs back at congresswoman as spat continues, Nation & World, Oct. 22: Im so proud that our freedom of the press allows the Express-News to stoop to the lowest level of uncivil discourse by printing the disrespectful, disgusting comments and name-calling by the Never Trumpers, including the comments of Rep. Frederica Wilson. If they cant respect the man in the office, they should, at least, show respect for the office the man was elected to serve in. Rep. Wilson of Florida should be ashamed and ostracized for her interference, for publicizing and taking words out of context from a private and personal condolence call between the president and a recently widowed wife of an American serviceman deployed overseas. It was appropriate and overdue for former four-star Gen. John Kelly, a Gold Star father, to publicly call her out, and admonish her empty barrel rhetoric and her self-aggrandizing efforts to make this a sordid affair. Ronald B. Jenkins Straus for president I was saddened to hear that House Speaker Joe Straus is resigning but encouraged that he may consider a run for statewide office, perhaps as governor. What a blessing that would be for our citizens who suffer our incompetent and dysfunctional officials and legislators. As a Democrat, I have often criticized destructive right-wingers who support the agenda of the elite 1 percent. Joe Straus is the type of Republican we sorely need in a leadership role. When will the 99 percent wake up, overcome their complacency, and correct the destruction of the middle class and the denigration of the poor who are denied educational and other opportunities to advance? They have the elective power to do so. Enlightened minds know this would improve society as a whole and not take anything away from the rich. On the other hand, instead of governor, the Republican Party would do well to promote Joe Straus for the next president of the United States. George Farias Enough already To disrespect the American flag is to disrespect all American heroes, heroes of all races, who fought to win the freedom blessing us today. Thousands lost their lives to save millions more, black and white. These heroes had nothing to do with racial issues or with a policeman who killed a black man. Black and white fought together for us. The key word is together. Enough is enough. America would be so much better without these kneelers and protesters. If you dont love, admire and respect our country and flag, it is time to get the hell out of Dodge. The sooner, the better. Start packing! Helen Dugosh, Boerne 1 Nonsmokers vacation: A marketing company in Tokyo is awarding a novel perk to its non-puffing employees: an extra weeks holiday for nonsmokers. The corporate planning director for Piala, Hirotaka Matsushima, said Thursday that the company began offering the six days of extra vacation to all of its 120 staff members in September. Overall, smoking is still quite prevalent in Japan, with almost 20 percent of over-20-year-olds saying they smoke. Nearly 40 percent of men in their 30s smoke, though thats down from more than half in 2001. 2 War crimes trial: A former member of a Marxist group that seized control of Ethiopia in the 1970s in a bloody purge known as the Red Terror apologized Thursday for the regimes many crimes but denied personal responsibility. In a dramatic confrontation with survivors in a Dutch courtroom at The Hague, 63-year-old Eshetu Alemu accepted blame for the crimes of the Marxist rulers known as the Dergue nearly 40 years ago but insisted he did not carry out the crimes for which Dutch prosecutors hold him responsible. Alemu, a citizen of the Netherlands, is charged with war crimes including involvement in torturing prisoners to death under the 1974-1991 Dergue regime. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted. Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has said that the Ukrainian authorities can provide U.S. law-enforcement agencies with any information they require about ex-chairman of U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign Paul Manafort. Groysman made the comments in an interview during his visit to Canada, where he met with his counterpart Justin Trudeau. "We haven't received any requests for information in this regard, but if we receive a request we will, of course, provide the information we have," Groysman said, according to Kyiv-based 112.Ukraine TV channel. Groysman said Manafort's case is connected to the rule of disgraced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his government and does not involve members of the current government. The State Border Service of Ukraine constantly records provocative actions on the part of the Russian Armed Forces along the entire perimeter of the Ukrainian-Russian border, Head of the Eastern Regional Department of the State Border Service of Ukraine Serhiy Bidylo has said. "At present the units of the Russian Armed Forces constantly commit provocative actions. I'm talking not only about the state border in Kharkiv region, but also the entire perimeter of the Ukrainian-Russian border. These are 1,578 kilometers. One or two APCs and from five to ten servicemen permanently approach the state border and checkpoints and carry out certain actions," he said in Kharkiv on Wednesday, November 1, at a visiting session of the parliamentary committee on legislative support for law enforcement activity. Bidylo said that the 20th Guards Army was deployed in full force in Voronezh in September 2017. "Its units and formations are in the immediate vicinity. They are deployed 15-20 kilometers from the state border... Full-scale and combat efficient units (both mechanized and tank units) were deployed... Throughout 2017, we constantly record the deployment of radio engineering and reconnaissance systems near the state border," he said. ALEXANDRIA, Va. Attendance at the 2017 NACS Show surged 7% to a record 24,940 attendees from 63 countries. In addition, buyers attending the NACS Show, classified as retailers and convenience distributors, including Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI) registration, grew 3.3% to 8,502. The NACS Show is the premier event of the year for the convenience and fuel retailing industry. It featured four days of general sessions, 60 education sessions and 1,263 exhibiting companies in a record-setting 425,800 net-square-foot expo. The NACS Show general session speakers featured industry, business and leadership experts, and the popular NACS Ideas 2 Go program, a fast-paced video program of emerging concepts that redefine convenience, made its 2017 debut. The Ideas 2 Go program is available for purchase at convenience.org/ideas2go2017. Attendees also could choose from education sessions covering relevant industry topics such as foodservice and food safety, leadership development, marketing, technology and fuels. Reflecting the growing international opportunities offered at the NACS Show, select education sessions were translated into Portuguese and Spanish, and the general sessions were translated into Portuguese, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. In addition, the NACS Convenience Matters podcast recorded a dozen new episodes that included NACS Show general session speakers William Shatner and Chip Conley, as well as a special live session with prominent convenience retail industry CEOs Billy Milam (RaceTrac Petroleum Inc.) and Kevin Smartt (Kwik Chek Food Stores). These episodes are available at www.conveniencematters.com. Extending the value of the expo, the popular Cool New Products Preview Room showcased 312 new products and services from 186 companies. Visitors to the Preview Room used handheld scanners to capture product and booth information of the exhibitors they were interested in, producing nearly 20,000 total product scans. The New Exhibitor area was also a popular destination for attendees, featuring 200 exhibitors new to the convenience and fuel retailing industry and NACS Show. TechEdge at the NACS Show, in its fourth year, attracted 470 industry technology professionals participating in the programs specialized education sessions on topics ranging from data security to how to improve overall operational efficiency. This year, the TechEdge Center at the expo displayed three future technologiesin actionthat address mobile payments, connected commerce and IoT monitoring. TechEdge was cosponsored by Conexxus, one of four cosponsors of the NACS Show in addition to NACS. The others were the Petroleum Marketers Association of America (PMAA), Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI) and, new in 2017, the National Grocers Association (NGA). Attendees also experienced the new brand identity of NACS, which focused on the C in convenience. I love the versatility of the C with our rebrand. It certainly stands for conveniencebut it can stand for so many other aspects of our industry, said NACS President and CEO Henry Armour, highlighting some of the other unique industry facets that the C represents. For example, the C stands for customers: The U.S. convenience store industry serves more than 160 million customers per dayhalf of the countrys total population. C also stands for community, and that message was highlighted in donations to local food banks both before and after the NACS Show. Prior to the NACS Show, Tyson Foods Inc. and NACS partnered to donate a truckload of protein totaling 36,060 pounds to the Greater Chicago Food Depository to help fight hunger in the Chicagoland area. The Food Depository will distribute the donated food, which is equivalent to 144,240 meals, through its network of partner agencies, including food pantries, soup kitchens and shelter services across Chicago and Cook County. At the conclusion of the NACS Show, more than 52,000 pounds of refrigerated and frozen food product were collected by Greater Chicago Food Depository volunteers; the Ronald McDonald House collected 70,000 pounds of shelf-stable goods for use in their local facilities and other charities. We truly believe that c-store doesnt just stand for convenience storeit also stands for community store, and we are proud to join Tyson Foods in supporting the Chicagoland community that we call home this week during the NACS Show, said Jeff Lenard, NACS vice president of strategic industry initiatives. The NACS Show is also a business meeting, and NACS elected new members to its Retailer and Supplier Boards. Joe Sheetz, president and CEO of Altoona, Pennsylvania-based Sheetz Inc., was named the 2017-18 NACS Chairman, and Jay Ard, vice president of national sales, convenience retail, at The Coca-Cola Company, was named 201718 chairman of the NACS Supplier Board. Sheetz talked about the industrys focus on communities during his Oct. 20 NACS Show speech. Our industry's commitment to the communities we serve is truly amazing. We collectively contribute $1 billion a year to charities, said Sheetz. But it's not about just stroking checks. It's about volunteering time, donating product and supporting first-responders. There is no industry more grounded in their communities than we are. The 2018 NACS Show will take place October 710 in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Highlights from the 2017 NACS Show and information on next years event can be found at nacsshow.com. NACS has a complete listing of 2018 events posted at convenience.org/calendar. This year marked the 25th annual NACS Show, which has attracted more than 500,000 attendees over the past quarter century. However, NACS has held an annual meeting since its founding in 1961. It wasnt until 1976 that the meeting even included a true exhibition. While NACS continued to hold annual meetings, the expo was part of the event only every two or three years. From 1986 on, the annual meeting included an expo, although those early years featured a greatly scaled-down expo every other year until what is known today as the NACS Show debuted in 1993. Today, the NACS Show rotates between three cities: Chicago, Las Vegas and Atlanta. Find the newest releases to watch from National Geographic on Disney+, including favourite documentary series and films Free Solo, The Rescue, Shark Beach with Chris Hemsworth and The World According to Jeff Goldblum. The Telescope in the Ice: Inventing a New Astronomy at the South Pole Mark Bowen St. Martin's: 2017. 978-1137280084 Mark Bowen, a physicist-turned-writer, sets his sights high in The Telescope in the Ice, the history of a detector buried in Antarctic ice since the 1990s. The IceCube observatory is designed to do the near-impossible: track neutrinos. These tiny particles whiz through the Universe in staggeringly huge numbers while hardly ever interacting with matter; billions upon billions are passing through your body right now. The IceCube Laboratory at the AmundsenScott South Pole Station. Credit: Felipe pedreros, icecube/NSF IceCube and its predecessor, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA), are international collaborations led by the University of WisconsinMadison (UWMadison) and located at the AmundsenScott South Pole Station. Their detectors, arrays of optical modules on strings, are sunk into the ice sheet. The AMANDA group coalesced at a cosmic-ray meeting in 1990. By 1994, it had installed 4 strings; by 2000, that had grown to 19. IceCube, established in 2005, began adding more. By the time it had finished construction 6 years later, pushed through by supporters including principal investigator Francis Halzen, it had 86 strings studded throughout a cubic kilometre of ice. Bowen has been embedded in this project since 1998. During those decades, he has had access to team meetings and other insider information, much as sociologist Harry Collins has with researchers hunting gravitational waves at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO; see Nature 542, 2829; 2017). Both observatories use expensive, technologically challenging machines to answer profound physics questions. Whereas Collins spun erudite, sociologically distanced tales, Bowen comes off as more of a booster. The Telescope in the Ice begins with a brisk history of neutrinos. In 1930, the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli put forward the idea of an electrically neutral, nearly massless particle emitted during radioactive decay. In 1956, physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines reported measuring about three neutrinos per hour coming from a nuclear reactor in South Carolina. Bowen sketches these and other discoveries while noting some of the scientists' personal quirks, such as Pauli's tendency to party and Reines's aggressiveness in staking claims. By 1960, physicists including Moisei Markov and Kenneth Greisen were beginning to dream up ways to capture the fleeting particles. Markov's contribution was the plum-pudding model, in which detectors are embedded in a 3D grid. When a neutrino interacts with the surrounding material, it generates another particle, a muon. The muon rushes on in the general direction in which the neutrino had been going, creating pale-blue radiation. By capturing and analysing the tracks of blue light, physicists hope to recreate the path and energy of the neutrino. The detector, however, must have immense amounts of shielding to screen out the confounding effects of cosmic rays. Some observatories are buried deep in rock; for the team that would create AMANDA and IceCube, that screening meant Antarctic ice. Bowen's involvement began in 1997, when he encountered ice driller Bruce Koci while reporting on efforts to acquire ice cores from mountain glaciers. In the off season, Koci worked for AMANDA, decamping to the South Pole to drill and melt the long boreholes needed to take the detector-laden strings the plums in the pudding. Koci had to invent new methods for solving issues such as how to keep the huge tanks of water hot, and maintain the flow. In the first season, 199192, the team lost the drill. It also became apparent that there were more bubbles in the ice than expected, which interfered with the detectors' ability to capture the faint glow from travelling muons. That meant going even deeper into the ice and the birth of IceCube. Its detectors start about 1.5 kilometres below the surface. The Telescope in the Ice acknowledges the many external factors that can help a large scientific project to completion. The fortunes of IceCube (which cost a cool US$279 million to build) were bolstered, for instance, by an influential 1997 report chaired by aerospace executive Norman Augustine; this stressed the importance of international cooperation at the pole, with a subtext of maintaining US dominance in Antarctic research. In 2000, when the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California proposed itself as lead institution for IceCube, the Wisconsin contingent tussled with George Smoot, a future Nobel laureate who wanted to take over as principal investigator. (He failed.) And a well-timed 2002 visit to a White House office by the UWMadison group, including Halzen, helped to override the reluctance of National Science Foundation (NSF) director Rita Colwell. Bowen covers every twist and turn of the budgetary debates, technological challenges and scientific scepticism, including the occasional much-needed loan from UWMadison when the NSF could not cough up enough funding. The Zoomable Universe Caleb Scharf and Ron Miller. Scientific American (2017) 978-1786494047 978-0374715717 In 1977, designers Charles and Ray Eames harnessed camera zoom and graphics to play with cosmic scale. The result: iconic film Powers of Ten. Forty years on, after vast advances in astrophysics, the quantum and the subatomic, physicist Caleb Scharf revisits the territory. Zooming from the observable Universe (29 billion parsecs across) to nearly nothing (1035 metres), Scharf's vivid writing meets its match in Ron Miller's mind-bending illustrations. A total delight, evoking the Milky Way as ringmaster to a Galactic swarm and musing at the jiggling weirdness of quantum foam near the Planck scale. Leonardo da Vinci Walter Isaacson Simon & Schuster (2017) 978-1501139154 978-1471166761 Leonardo da Vinci's prowess as a polymath driven by insatiable curiosity about everything from the human womb to deadly weaponry still stuns. In this copiously illustrated biography, we feel its force all over again. Walter Isaacson wonderfully conveys how Leonardo's genius unified science and art. His grasp of the skull's structure, for instance, fed the exquisite modelling of his portraits. But the prime focus here is the notebooks glorious mash-ups mixing to-do lists, bravura drawings of human musculature, oddly random questions and 169 formulae for squaring a circle. Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity Sandra Postel Island (2017) 978-1610917902 Dams, levees, canals: humanity's battle with water is age-old. Yet droughts and flooding cost billions, as the planet is lashed by extreme weather and climate change and our lifestyles lap up gargantuan volumes of H 2 O. Sandra Postel's superb study demonstrates how working with wetlands and watersheds can turn that tide. Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project, cites scores of sustainable wins, from permeable pavements that control storm water in Kansas City, Missouri, to groundwater replenishment in rural Rajasthan, India, kick-started by conservationist Rajendra Singh. Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery Scott Kelly Knopf (2017) 978-1524731595 Biographies by US astronauts are booming, and what's most notable is how distinct the personalities are under the right stuff label. Scott Kelly, who spent almost a year aboard the International Space Station in 201516, is a markedly down-to-earth high-flyer. A blue-collar New Jersey boy, Kelly grew up with an alcoholic father, discovering the joys of study in time to ensure that he became a pilot and, finally, astronaut. The details grip, from the hideously complex simulated missions to the 400 experiments he conducted on board and the insights he developed in his annus mirabilis. Animals Strike Curious Poses Elena Passarello Jonathan Cape (2017) 978-1941411391 978-1787330306 Sonia Silvestri was trained to use satellite imagery to map coastal vegetation and salt marshes. But when a colleague e-mailed her last year about the Indonesian Peat Prize a competition to determine how best to map the extent and depth of peatlands in Indonesia it sparked her interest. A prize for mapping Indonesia's peatlands could help to stop illegal clearances, which are a fire risk. Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock Peatlands result from the accumulation of dead plants on wetlands to form thick, carbon-rich layers. In Indonesia, where peatlands are drained and cleared for oil-palm plantations, resulting fires often send thick smoke throughout the region and release vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: in 2015, fires in the region emitted hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. To boost the enforcement of a nationwide moratorium on peatland development, the Indonesian government worked with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in the United States to create the prize, which carries a US$1-million purse. Silvestri, then a remote-sensing researcher at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (where she maintains a courtesy appointment), theorized that scientists could map peat by combining satellite images with airborne electromagnetic data, which are often used to find layers of coal or minerals below ground. She and a wetland ecologist from Duke put together an international team that includes geophysicists, foresters and environmental consultants. The team is now one of five finalists for the prize, whose winner will be announced in February 2018. It's been an exciting adventure, says Silvestri, who leads the DAG4Peat team. This prize gave me the opportunity to follow a new direction in my career, but it was also risky, something that would have been difficult to get funded via traditional grants. The use of goal-driven prizes to spur innovation has increased since the success of the Ansari X Prize in 1996, which aimed to accelerate the development of low-cost space flight (see 'Glittering prizes'). The X Prize Foundation in Culver City, California, offered a $10-million prize for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable crewed craft into space. By the time the prize was awarded, in 2004, some 26 teams had signed on. Innovation prizes offer cash incentives to solve vexing problems. They are now a staple throughout US federal agencies, including NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as well as in philanthropic organizations such as the Roddenberry Foundation in Encino, California. These one-off contests pit teams of scientists from companies, consulting agencies and academia against each other. Prize competitions typically offer a substantial purse to the first team to achieve a specific goal. Some competitions offer milestone cash awards to help teams continue to develop their idea. 'Challenges' for example, those offered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) or by Cancer Research UK often aim to spark innovation in a research area, and typically reward a set of selected teams with seed funding to develop their ideas and to compete for more funds to conduct research or commercialize the project. Unlike conventional federal investment in research and development roughly $113 billion in 2016 in the United States alone or awards such as the Nobel prizes, which honour scientists' past work, these prizes and challenges typically aim to translate science into tangible solutions, such as new devices or research capabilities, that will further the awarding organization's aims. The competitions typically take at least one year, if not several, and often require competitors to reach project milestones. Europe took longer than the United States to warm to the trend, says Olivier Usher, research manager at the Challenge Prize Centre at Nesta, an innovation foundation based in London. However, the European Commission (EC) is inviting submissions for nine Horizon Prizes up to 2019, including a 1.5-million (US$1.8-million) prize to find ways to help cut atmospheric CO 2 emissions. Yet competing for prize or challenge funding can be tricky for academic researchers, particularly those in the early stages of their careers. Unlike grants, prizes pay off in prestige, expanded networks and media attention for the finalists, but typically only one winner gets the purse (although some competitions, such as the Google Lunar X Prize or the Roddenberry Prize, reward finalists with smaller sums). Aspiring prizewinners will need to secure funding to compete. They should seek competitions whose goals and winning criteria are clearly articulated, and will need to discern whether entering the competition will significantly improve their science. Success stories Silvestri, now based at the University of Padua in Italy, admits that her gamble paid off. Earlier this year, she won a Marie Curie Fellowship, funded by the EC, to expand on how the techniques that her team is exploring could be used to map peatlands on a global scale. Entering the prize competition allowed her to develop new capabilities that could prove useful to any country with peatlands. Hao Hu, a photonics scientist at the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby, and his team were already working on an international project, funded by a 9-million Danish Research Council grant and an ECJapan grant, when they won the 500,000 Horizon Prize in 2016 for breaking optical-data transmission barriers in telecommunications. The prize opened new doors for me, says Hu. It's the start of brand-new research. Model of an unmanned lunar rover developed by Team India for the Google Lunar X Prize. Credit: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Although only the winner or winners get financial benefits, the organizations that run prize competitions argue that all entrants stand to gain recognition. While the competition winner reaps the most benefits, other entrants also get increased visibility, says Walt Reid, who directs the Packard Foundation's conservation and science programme and came up with the idea of the Indonesian Peat Prize. Competing also expands entrants' reputation and experience, adds Robert Benedict, a co-founder of Context Partners in Portland, Oregon, which designed the Peat Prize. He urges scientists to consider the perks of competing, such as enhancing their CV, expanding their network or gaining access to a particular field site to test an experiment. Charlie Brown, co-founder of Context Partners, advises would-be participants to look for clear articulation of the problem statement, the competition's eligibility requirements and criteria for winning. Aspirants should also make sure that the research will help them to reach their career goals whether they win or not. Muhammad Zaman, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, won a $2-million award in 2014 to scale up PharmaChk, his fast, portable device to screen for counterfeit or substandard medicines. The Saving Lives at Birth challenge winner was funded by USAID, the Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and others, and built on an earlier $250,000 seed grant from the programme. Before this, most of Zaman's funding had come from the US National Institutes of Health or the US National Science Foundation. Through competing, we forged new collaborations with people in East Asia and West Africa that wouldn't otherwise have happened at all, he says. Zaman marvels that his work will now have an impact beyond what he could have accomplished through his academic research alone. It's phenomenal that the prize money has helped a small research group like ours to affect millions of people, he says. Will it be worth it? Prizes create the infrastructure and competition necessary to launch new branches of scientific exploration, but competition rules may shift or be unforgiving, which can disrupt the playing field. And the final purse may not be what the prize organization had originally advertised. Anil Vaidya, a London-based medical engineer and industry consultant, assembled a team to compete in the $10-million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, launched in 2012, to develop SCANurse, a precision-diagnostics device. He was happy to take the risk to develop and promote the team's device, but doubts that he'd want to invest as much (his team spent at least $100,000) to compete again. As it was, his team had to drop out of the competition because of a US Customs and Border Protection glitch. John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, a space-robotics company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, entered his company into the Lunar X Prize competition to be the first private firm to land on the Moon; the competition initially promised $20 million to the winner. His team alone met the three milestones, netting $1.7 million in prize money, but Thornton says that the team spent far more than that throughout the competition. Astrobotic dropped out of the competition late last year, saying that it could not accelerate its research and development to meet the launch deadline. The paperwork required to enter a prize competition is minimal compared with that for most grants, but entrants need immediately to grab the interest of reviewers who are unlikely to specialize in their research area. You have to explain how you are going to change the world to a panel that is not in your scientific domain, says Trey Ideker, a systems biologist at the University of California, San Diego. As a runner-up in the inaugural Roddenberry Prize competition in 2016 which sought ways to address social issues such as education or poverty his team received $150,000 to create cancer-cell maps. Competitions often draw a huge number of entrants, lowering the likelihood of winning and making it difficult to capitalize on the marketing value of the prize or to raise interim funds, says Thornton. A $30-million USAID competition in 2016 to combat the Zika virus received more than 900 applications in just 9 weeks, but only 21 applicants received funding for further development. More than 600 groups submitted proposals to the Roddenberry Prize, which awarded a cash prize to one winner and four runners-up. The financial cost of entering a contest can deter aspirants who cannot devote time and resources to a project when they are not getting paid up front. Zaman, who has participated in several competitions, has received discretionary funds from his department and the university in the early stages of prize-project development. If I didn't have those, it would be a challenging situation, he acknowledges. He says that the university provided him with a line of credit for institutional funds, which allowed him to meet initial competition milestones. But universities' familiarity with prizes and their potential benefits varies, as does their support. Silvestri struggled to secure interim funding to compete in the peat prize. She couldn't get university funds to cover her fieldwork; administrators cited concerns about whether the university could recover the expenses even if she won, because prize funders often do not allow the purse to be used for recompensing institutions' indirect costs. Eventually, Silvestri got funding from Stanford University in California and the Duke University Wetland Center for her fieldwork outside Indonesia. Prize administrators encourage entrants to explore a range of funding options. Paul Bunje, a senior scientist for energy and environment at the X Prize Foundation, advises contacting networks of alumni, who are often eager to see their alma mater in high-profile competitions. Collaborative networks may also be able to help. Many competitions require interdisciplinary efforts, which can diffuse the financial load, says Reid. Having team members at a variety of institutions can help raise initial funding, he says. Credit: Elena Drummond Immunologist Thomas Wynn left a 20-year career at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier this year to lead research on inflammation at Pfizer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Why did you leave the NIH for industry? I've collaborated with big pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies since the mid-1990s. I worked with Amgen to investigate the therapeutic potential of different antibodies in models of inflammation and fibrosis, and with Genentech we examined inflammatory pathways in asthma. I've negotiated agreements with Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies to move basic science on fibrosis into preclinical trials conducted collaboratively with the NIH. I was doing so much with industry that I decided to explore what it would be like to do this work full-time. Did the current US administration affect your decision? It's not a major reason for my move at all. It's unfortunate that the administration is not, at least outwardly, as supportive of science as previous administrations were. But I put my faith in Congress and the US Senate, which have always shown support for science and for the NIH. How would you describe morale at the NIH? Surprisingly upbeat despite what's going on in the news and the threat of NIH budget cuts. The fact that NIH director Francis Collins is still at the top has helped. How did your colleagues react to your move? A lot of people were shocked. What will be your biggest challenge as you move into industry? At the NIH, labs are a one-person show. People develop collaborations, but they are fragmented. At Pfizer, groups interact seamlessly. I get to work with geneticists, chemists, molecular biologists and bioengineers. The culture is different here it is focused on translating the best ideas into new medicines. How did the move affect your NIH research group? It was a slow process accepting the job here because of worrying about my research family at the NIH. Nothing stopped immediately. Most of my lab is still there. Three members have accepted positions at Pfizer. Everybody has until 2018 to finish up projects, publish and make their own career moves. How did you come to work at the NIH? After getting my PhD at the University of WisconsinMadison, researching how macrophages kill tumour cells, I wanted to work more on disease pathogenesis. My PhD mentor was married to a parasitologist. They suggested I merge my interests in molecular immunology and parasitology. I wrote to several people doing parasite immunology at the NIH and was invited to work as a postdoc in the laboratory of parasitic diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda. Describe your NIH career. I was a postdoc at the NIH from 1991 to 1995, and then a staff researcher until 1997. Opportunities for full-time employment at the NIH were few and far between, so I began interviewing for jobs outside. But a retirement opened up a slot for a tenure-track investigator. I had other offers on the table when the NIH began recruiting, but I ended up with the position in 1997. Do you think you'll get more accomplished in industry? That hits the nail on the head it's what I find most exciting. You did a lot of mentoring at NIH. What made for successful mentees? I mentored more than 20 postdocs, as well as graduates and undergraduates, during my time at NIH, where I was also scientific director of an NIHOxfordCambridge Scholars programme. The junior scientists who tend to stumble are the ones who don't reach out for help or forge collaborations with people. It's important to take advantage of expertise. A former high-ranking official of the Georgian Interior Ministry, who was placed on the international wanted list in 2012 at the request of Georgian law enforcers, was arrested by a Ukrainian court for 40 days and the procedure for his extradition to Georgia has begun. "According to a ruling of the Halytsky District Court of Ivano-Frankivsk region, a citizen of Georgia was given a measure of restraint in the form of arrest for 40 days and the procedure for his extradition to his homeland was launched," the press center of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reported on Thursday. The special service said it had detained the foreigner when taking measures to expose and block the channels of illegal entry of representatives of international terrorist and extremist organizations into Ukraine. "[SBU] seized from the detainee two forged passports of a citizen of Ukraine, one of a citizen of Latvia and one of a citizen of Belize, drawn up for different surnames but with his photograph, as well as a fake seaman's certificate, which he used to cross the state border of Ukraine and other states," the SBU said. At the same time, the Ukrainian special service does not name the detained Georgian citizen, but says that he has been wanted since 2012 for committing violent crimes stipulated in Articles 24, 138 and 144 of the Criminal Code of Georgia. "According to Interpol, since 2002, the detainee, while holding senior positions in the Georgian Interior Ministry as part of an organized criminal group of the ministry's employees, has used torture, physical and sexual abuse of persons detained and convicted for committing crimes," the report says. Earlier on November 2, the Georgian prosecutor's office reported that Georgia had launched the legal procedures for the extradition to Tbilisi of former chief of the military police of the Georgian Defense Ministry Megis Kardava, who was detained in Ukraine on November 1. Kardava left Georgia in 2012 and was placed on Interpol's wanted list in 2013 on the basis of the materials of the Georgian Prosecutor's Office. In 2014, Kardava was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison. Kardava is accused on several counts, including the organization of prison rebellion, which led to the death of prisoners, torture of prisoners, secret surveillance of political opponents of the regime of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, and embezzlement of public funds. While commenting on Kardava's detention in Ukraine, Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page that he was not familiar with him and that he had never met him. "Media sources are very imperfect. I have never met with this 'closest associate' and I know about his existence only from the press," Saakashvili wrote. Students at Dublin High School were dismissed early from class Thursday afternoon due to a bomb threat investigation. Dublin police said no explosives were located at the campus. School officials said all afternoon events, scheduled practices and games were canceled due to the investigation. No other information was immediately available. Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night defended her campaign's funding of the Steele dossier that alleged ties between Donald Trump and the Kremlin, and also said the American people should have known the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign before the presidential election. Clinton appeared on "The Daily Show" to promote her book, "What Happened," and she was asked by host Trevor Noah if she thinks there is a difference between the Democratic National Committee and her campaign lawyer's funding of the research that led to the dossier and members of Trump's campaign working with the Russians to influence the election. "Of course there is, and I think most serious people understand that," Clinton said. "This was research started by a Republican donor during the Republican primary and then when Trump got the nomination for the Republican party the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer and said, 'Would you like us to continue it?' And he said yes," Clinton said. "He's an experienced lawyer, he knows what the law is, he knows what opposition research is." The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, first paid political research firm Fusion GPS for opposition research into Trump in 2015 and ended its relationship after Trump secured the GOP nomination the following year, The Associated Press reported. Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias then retained the firm, which later hired former British spy Christopher Steele for its research. Trump has called it a "disgrace" that Democrats paid for the research. The bigger problem according to Clinton, which she writes about in her book, is that the American people were not aware of the FBI's investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia until after the election. "I know that voters should have had that information, that's something that may have influenced some people. And its part of what happens in a campaign, where you get information that may or may not be useful and you try to make sure anything you put out into the public arena is accurate. So this thing didnt come out until after the election and its still being evaluated. But the fact of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia should have come out. Clinton also criticized how Trump responds in difficult situations, the latest being the New York City terror attack on Tuesday that left eight people dead and a dozen injured. "He just doesn't have any empathy," she said of Trump, adding, "You can disagree with someone over all kinds of partisan issues but you want a president who can try to put himself into the shoes, the feelings of someone else, and he has not been able to do that." Clinton's appearance comes nearly one month after news broke about sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. Noah lamented that misogyny and sexism undoubtedly cost Clinton some votes. Clinton agreed. "Sexism and misogyny are endemic in our society, not just politics," she said. "The only way to get sexism out of politics is to get more women into politics." A babysitter kidnapped a one-year-old Fort Worth boy and fled to Arkansas where she told her estranged boyfriend that the child was theirs and she wanted to "live together as a family," according to court documents. Wendy Hernandez, 35, pleaded guilty in federal court to kidnapping the boy. The bizarre saga, which has not been previously reported, took place in April. Hernandez had babysat for the boy, Jeremias Portillo, once or twice a week for several months and had built up trust with his parents, according to the boy's mother, Ana Lilian Escobar. "We considered her a part of our family," Escobar said in Spanish. On April 29, Hernandez asked if she could take the child to Plano to visit her aunt, and Escobar agreed. But instead of returning that afternoon as planned, Hernandez called to say that strong thunderstorms rolling through the area would make driving dangerous. She promised to return in the morning. The mother said she felt uneasy about her son being away from home for the night but went along with the plan. "The next morning she was going to return, but in fact, she didn't return," Escobar said. That's when Hernandez stopped answering her phone and responding to text messages. "In that moment, honestly, I was thinking the worst," Escobar said. She and her husband contacted police. Detectives with the Fort Worth Police Major Case unit tracked down the "aunt" in Plano. She said she wasn't really Hernandez's aunt but was a lifelong friend. She said that Hernandez had not visited her house and also revealed that Hernandez had asked her to hide her "true whereabouts," according to Hernandez's arrest warrant. Police learned that Hernandez and the child were in North Little Rock with the woman's ex-boyfriend. Officers in Arkansas rescued the boy and arrested Hernandez. Detectives interviewed the boyfriend who said he "truly believed" the boy was his son, the warrant said. "When he and Hernandez separated, she told him she was pregnant with his child," the investigator wrote in the warrant. "They continued to communicate, and she would frequently update him on the progress of her pregnancy. "(The boyfriend) stated that it was his and Hernandez's intention to live together as a family so that he could have a relationship with his son," the agent said. The boyfriend was not arrested. Three days after he disappeared, Jeremias was reunited with his parents. "It was the happiest day of my life," his mother said. Hernandez is scheduled to be sentenced in February by U.S. District Judge Terry Means. Her possible punishment of up to life in prison may be reduced, because prosecutors filed a document saying she has accepted responsibility for her crime and has been cooperative with the investigation. But her future remains unclear for another reason. Court documents suggest she may be an undocumented immigrant. Her signed confession, known as a factual resume, included a warning from prosecutors. "The defendant recognizes that pleading guilty may have consequences with respect to her immigration status if she is not a citizen of the United States, including removal from the United States," it said. Undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes typically serve their prison time before being deported. Federal investigators have seized millions of dollars in assets from the owner of Retail Ready Career Center in Garland, the for-profit vocational school attended by more than 300 veterans that abruptly shut down in late September. Students said they were in the middle of a six-week HVAC certification course when they were told the school was closing and they needed to leave campus. "When the school closed, it really took me by surprise," said one former student, Marine veteran Patrick Thompson. Investigators from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs executed a search warrant at the school a week prior to the school's closure, looking for evidence of possible fraud. The Texas Veterans Commission later withdrew the career center's approval to train veterans using VA Education benefits in the school's heating and air conditioning program. Court records show the government has now seized more than $4.5 million in one school account, along with funds found in several others connected to the school. Investigators also seized several luxury cars belonging to the school's owner, Jonathan Davis, including a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a Bentley and two Mercedes. A $2 million Addison home that belongs to Davis has also been seized. "Definitely leaves me in awe as to why you shut the school down if you have the money to purchase all of these luxurious items, then you can continue your school," Thompson said. "We're three weeks into the program, we only had three weeks to go." Davis' attorney, Derek Staub, says his client is fighting the forfeitures and denies there was any fraud at the school. Note: The graphic details of this story may be disturbing to readers. In a horrifying child abuse case, two Texas Parents were arrested, accused of using shock collars on their girls and forcing them to brush their teeth with cat feces, WOAI reports. The San Antonio couple, 32-year-old James Chalkley and 22-year-old Cheyanne Chalkley, were detained by police Tuesday, authorities said. The father and stepmother were accused of abusing their 5-year-old and 10-year-old daughters by spanking them with a thorny switch, making them brush their teeth with cat feces, and force them to wear a dog shock collar, according to arrest warrants. The younger of the siblings told police that her father would brush her teeth so hard that her mouth would bleed in addition to putting "poop on her toothbrush." "I've been a police officer for the better of 25 years," Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told WOAI. "Just when you think nothing shocks you anymore, nothing surprises you, nothing disturbs you, a case will come across your desk like this one." Read more at WOAI. The suspect in yesterday's terrorist attack in New York City that left eight people dead and at least a dozen injured came to the United States from Uzbekistan, but the country should not be seen as a hotbed for terrorism, experts say. Uzbeks have been involved in other terrorist acts, but most of the perpetrators appear to have been radicalized after they left the region, according to professors who study Central Asia. The country, north of Afghanistan, is 88 percent Muslim, though relatively secular because its previous leader, Islam Karimov, cracked down on what he considered "extremist" Islam. Karimov served as president from 1991 until his death last year. "You would not be able to find someone who did not know someone who was put in jail by him under some charges of Islamic terrorism or radicalism," said David Montgomery, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. "Many people, if they went to the mosque too often, they were seen as Islamic radicals." Karimov often called his opposition Muslim extremists, even when there was little evidence to back up the charge, experts say. The international community criticized Karimov for human rights abuses. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a 29-year-old who came to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010, allegedly drove a rented pickup truck down a bicycle lane in Lower Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, mowing people down and crashing into a school bus. According to authorities, he shouted "Allahu akbar," Arabic for "God is great." Saipov, who on Wednesday was charged by the U.S. Attorney's office with one count of material support to a terrorist organization and violence with a motor vehicle, was inspired by the Islamic State, police say. He had just "recently" started consuming ISIS propaganda and he appears to have "self-radicalized," a federal law enforcement official told NBC News. After Sept. 11, Uzbekistan volunteered to assist the U.S. in the "war on terror," said Scott Radnitz, an associate professor of Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington. "The government saw Islam as a threat to the regime and was happy to help repress its opponents," Radnitz said. "There was no serious threat internally from Islamic organizations, despite what some reports may say. The government exaggerated these groups but actual evidence of their activities is scant or nonexistent." Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbekistan's new president, condemned yesterdays terror attack in a letter to President Donald Trump. Since Mirziyoyev took office last year, the country has begun to open up and become more optimistic, experts say. "Uzbekistan, for its part, is ready to use all the forces and means to assist in the investigation of this terrorist act," Mirziyoyev wrote in the letter to Trump. Several Uzbeks have been linked to terror plots in the U.S. and other countries in recent years, including a truck attack in Sweden in April and a nightclub shooting in Istanbul in January. "I think were seeing a trend here, and it's an unwelcome one," said Paul Stronski, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "We are seeing not just in Uzbekistan, but in former Soviet states in Central Asia, there seem to be more people involved in global terrorist incidents. They tend to be more lone wolf than anything else." It is after people move out of the region that they seem to become radicalized, Stronski said. "To associate Uzbekistan with terrorism is not the way to see the country, because it really represents a tiny fraction of what's going on there," Russell Zanca, a professor of anthropology at Northeastern Illinois University, told NBC. "I'd say theres probably just as many, if not more, Islamic militants in the U.S. as in Uzbekistan. No majority of Uzbeks would support this." Although its relationship with the U.S. has been shaky in part because of the human right records of its government, Uzbekistan has, in some ways, been a partner of the U.S. in fighting terrorism, even when the authoritarian Karimov was still in power. The U.S. had an air base in the country to support the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2005. "Right now, and this is another shame in this situation, Uzbek American relations right now are probably the best in a while, and that's because of the new leader since September 2016," Zanca said. "Uzbekistan is becoming more open and the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent working hard to improve relations." Zanca said most Uzbeks are pro-American and grateful for the opportunities they have in the U.S. "They're so livid and upset that this is all what they'll be known for," he said. Navbahor Imamova, a journalist who reports on the Uzbek community in the U.S. for the Voice of America Uzbek service, said Uzbeks are very proud of their culture and often frustrated that Americans dont know about the country. Now they will, but in a negative context. "It's a shock to many because this guy grew up after the years of independence in Uzbekistan," she said. "If anyone visits Uzbekistan, they will see how secular the country is." Uzbeks in the U.S. were left stunned and afraid after Tuesday's attack, especially after President Trump said Tuesday that he wanted to eliminate the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," which provides up to 50,000 visas annually by lottery. Trump said Saipov entered the U.S. through the lottery program. "Theyre very worried and incredibly scared because when they hear President Trump saying we have to stop this program, they are freaking out, because when youre on a green card, it takes a while for your family to join you," Imamova said. "So it's a long process and their futures depend on the U.S. immigration system." Uzbekistan is not one of the countries listed on Trump's immigrant ban. Number of recorded homicides in 2017 is the lowest for last 20 years Abroskin The number of recorded intentional murders in 2017 is the lowest for the last 20 years, Deputy Head of the National Police of Ukraine Viacheslav Abroskin has said. According to him, not a single murder has been recorded for the past day in Ukraine. According to statistics from 1997 to 2017, cited by the Liaison Department of the National Police of Ukraine, the number of premeditated murders committed during the nine months of each year ranged from a peak of 3,494 such murders (2000 year) to the lowest recorded in this year 1,185 premeditated murders. Consequently, the number of murders committed during nine months of 2017, compared to the previous years, has decreased almost threefold. During the summing up of the work of the department during nine months of this year, the head of the National Police Serhiy Kniazev said that 88% of the murders in the country have been solved. Earlier, the first deputy head of the National Police Abroskin said that the number of murders and assassinations this year was the lowest in the last ten years. The talent agency CAA is no longer representing Kevin Spacey as of late Thursday evening. A person with knowledge of the decision who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that both CAA and Spacey's publicist Staci Wolfe have parted ways with the actor amid growing claims of sexual harassment against him. Representatives from the agency did not immediately respond to request for comment. CNN reported Thursday that eight current or former "House of Cards" workers claim Spacey made the Netflix production a "toxic" workplace and one ex-employee alleges the actor sexually assaulted him. In a statement to NBC News, Spacey's representatives said the actor is getting help and would take a step back for evaluation, but did not give further details. "Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time, the statement said. Spacey's fall from grace is yet the latest domino to drop in the three weeks since the string of allegations against Harvey Weinstein first began, a tidal wave effect that has tumbled through not just Hollywood, but at least a dozen other industries. It's open season on open secrets. Nearly every day has brought new allegations of sexual harassment, assault or misconduct, and subsequent firings, dismissals or the distancing of men in various stations of power, from highly regarded media pundits to celebrity chefs. "There is no turning back," Asia Argento said Wednesday on Twitter. "All predators will go down." Argento, the Italian filmmaker and actress who has said Weinstein raped her, declared that shortly after allegations of sexual harassment were leveled by six women against filmmaker Brett Ratner. (Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex, while Ratner has denied each allegation against him.) Her social-media avatar is a simple photo of herself, with a fist raised high. The posture and language of revolution has been adopted by others, too, like actress Rose McGowan, another alleged victim of sexual assault by Weinstein. At last week's Women's Convention in Detroit, McGowan declared: "Join me. Join all of us!" What's unfolding, women's rights advocates say, is a rolling reckoning that's gaining steam with every new revelation of sexual harassment. What began with just a handful of women standing up against one of Hollywood's most pugnacious power players has turned into a movement of its own. Now that some of the silences and stigmas around sexual harassment have been shattered, the flood gates are open. "This is the patriarchy starting to crumble," says Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization of Women. "I think that women are finally taking their power. They know they're strong." In the three weeks since the first allegations were leveled against Weinstein, there have been at least 20 prominent men who have been forced to defend or apologize for past actions. Amazon Studios chief Roy Price resigned after a television producer on one of Amazon's shows said he had sexually harassed her. Following allegations of sexual advances on an underage actor, Netflix halted production on Kevin Spacey's "House of Cards." A Roman Polanski retrospective prompted protests in Paris. Sari Kamin was one of 38 women who came forward to the Los Angeles Times to say that the director James Toback sexually harassed her by luring her with the possibility of a film role. Toback has denied the claims but within days the number of alleged victims climbed past 300. "Listening to women come out from the Harvey Weinstein fallout, that certainly empowered me," said Kamin. "It brought back a lot of painful memories and kind of unlocked something. It made me think: Well, if they can come forward maybe so can I." "More than anything what made me want to come forward is: I felt like finally people were listening," said Kamin, a once aspiring actress who now works in publishing and food writing. "That was signaled very clearly with what happened with Weinstein. Another woman spoke and then another woman spoke and there was action. There were consequences. It told me not only that people were listening but that they wanted to do something that they want to stand up and say: 'No more.' That was a powerful thing to tap into." An air of "who's next" has settled over not just Hollywood, but elsewhere, too. NBC News terminated Mark Halperin's contract allegations that he sexually harassed a dozen women while at ABC News. John Besh, the New Orleans celebrity chef, stepped down from the company he founded after more than two dozen allegations of sexual harassment. Fashion photographer Terry Richardson, who has previously been accused of sexual harassment, was banned by Conde Nast. Accusations of harassment have been leveled against actors Dustin Hoffman and Jeremy Piven. Vox fired its editorial director, Lockhart Steele after a former employee raised allegations. Andy Signore, senior vice president of Defy Media, was fired after several women made sexual harassment allegations. The Atlantic magazine removed contributing editor Leon Wieseltier from its masthead after allegations emerged that Wieseltier harassed numerous women during his lengthy tenure with The New Republic. Two executives at Fidelity Investments were forced out for sexual harassment. Nickelodeon fired "The Loud House" show runner Chris Savino for sexual harassment. NPR news chief Michael Oreskes, who was ousted after sexual harassment allegations dating back to the 1990s surfaced. Oreskes was a vice president and senior managing editor at The Associated Press from 2008 until he joined NPR in 2015. It has been a head-spinning few weeks that some believe is adding up to a landmark moment for a pervasive and under-reported problem. Up to 85 percent of women say that they have been sexually harassed at work, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but only a fraction of those cases are reported, partially due to the professional and legal risks for women who come forward. In the wake of the Weinstein saga, millions of women have posted "me too" on social media, sharing their individual stories of sexual assault and harassment. "I'm sensing a cultural shift," says Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center. "In an issue that has usually been met with widespread disbelief and shaming, people have been able to really tell their stories of harassment and violence without shaming, without discounting and disbelief. And that's really empowering. I don't think you can just put that back into a box." Some, however, are concerned that the Weinstein saga is unfairly tarring men with the same brush of scandal that those who might be considered merely lecherous are being conflated with predators. "As we grapple with these issues, we desperately need nuance," Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason, wrote in an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times. "Let's distinguish between abuse, minor bad behavior and innocent miscommunication. And let's not demonize men or patronize women." Yet others see this domino effect as a long-overdue culmination in the decades-long fight for gender equality. "Women speaking out about sexual harassment reminds me of one of the core reasons we came together for the March," said Teresa Shook, one of the organizers of January's Women's March the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. "'Hear our voice' was a unifying mantra for 'we will not be silent anymore.'" Linda Sarsour, an organizer of the Women's Convention and of the march, drew even more direct lines from the Weinstein fallout to the political climate following the election of Trump, who famously boasted about groping women to "Access Hollywood." "This is all connected," said Sarsour. "What you'll see over the course of next year is more women taking agency and getting into more powerful positions." "This is a big moment in our history," Sarsour added. "Definitely one for the history books." The City of Miami Fire Rescue Department has fired six people over what officials have called "sexually explicit and racially offensive conduct" at a fire station following an investigation. City manager Daniel Alfonso announced the firings in a statement Wednesday. The firefighters were fired after someone hung a noose over a black colleague's family photos, the Miami Herald reported. Miami Police launched an investigation into the incident after Alfonso and Chief Joseph Zahralban were made aware of it on Sept. 9. Initially, some of the workers at the station were transferred to other stations, Alfonso said. Alfonso said 11 workers were relieved of duty with pay before the six were terminated. The investigation is ongoing into lesser involvement by others who were at the station, and the findings could lead to suspensions or demotions, Alfonso said. "It is the policy of the City of Miami to provide a workplace for all employees that is free from intimidation, threats or violent acts," Alfonso said in the statement. "We cannot and will not tolerate behavior that is disrespectful, hurtful and compromises the integrity of the department and the City of Miami." Alfonso, Zahralban and Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado will hold a news conference Friday to discuss the firings. A Miami Fire Rescue Department public information officer said the incident occurred at Miami Fire Station 12 located at 1455 NW 46 Street. The fired firefighters were identified as Cpt. William Bryson, Lt. Alejandro Sese, Kevin Meizoso, Justin Rumbaugh, David Rivera and Harold Santana. The firefighters have denied the allegations. Fred Delgado, from the Miami International Association of Firefighters, said that his organization has "not yet been provided with all the information that the city relied upon in making the decisions it did today." We expect all of our members to be provided a safe, comfortable workplace and also to have a fair and complete investigation and just discipline when it's warranted," Delgado said in a statement. "We are very disturbed by the allegations and look forward to the opportunity to review all the facts. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected a proposal by a junior campaign aide who offered to use his "Russian contacts" to try to set up a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. Former Trump campaign aide George Papadapoulos, has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and documents released Monday show he was in contact with Russians who offered him "dirt" including thousands of emails on Hillary Clinton, NBC News reported. This revelation is a significant one, because Sessions told Congress under oath in June that he had "no knowledge" of any conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign about "any type of interference with any campaign" by Russians. In a letter to Sessions on Thursday, Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, accused him of failing "to tell the truth about your interactions with Russian operatives during the campaign." Sessions' spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Franken letter. A Delaware veteran and her family are searching for her missing service dog. Lori Bilyou told NBC10 her service dog Ozzy suffered a seizure and ran off from her Newark, Delaware home two weeks ago. Bilyou is a National Guard veteran who served in Afghanistan. She suffered a brain injury and has PTSD as well as balance issues and needs Ozzy for help. Helping her get around. Helping her stay stable, said Bilyous husband Guy Bilyou. Picking things up for her. Hes a missing piece. Its a vacancy. Its like a hole in our hearts. Lori placed surveillance cameras on trees throughout her neighborhood and missing dog fliers were passed around the community Halloween night. Local pizza delivery drivers and mail carriers are also on the lookout. The couple says Ozzy has been spotted a few times not far from their home but each time the dog was scared away. Lori says she doesnt want anyone to call for him or try to catch him. She just wants people to call her. Hes in survival mode, she said. He will run from everyone. Im concerned about the hunters in the parks. I'm concerned about dogs chasing him and people trying to catch him because we need him to stay in the area so that we can catch up with him." If you happen to spot Ozzy, call 302-765-8694. What to Know Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney is backing a plan to dissolve the School Reform Commission (SRC) and take control of city schools back. For 16 years, the SRC has overseen the citys public and charter schools, making budget and policy decisions. Even if the dissolution of the SRC is granted, it won't go into effect until June 30. UPDATE: Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney revealed his plan Thursday to wrestle back control of Philadelphia schools. Philadelphia is moving one step closer to taking back control of the citys struggling school district, which is facing a $1 billion deficit. After years of political tug-of-war, Mayor Jim Kenney is backing a plan to dissolve the School Reform Commission (SRC). Dismantling the commission would mean regaining local control of Philadelphias school district since a state takeover more than 15 years ago. On Thursday morning, Kenney addressed a packed session of Philadelphia City Council to discuss the plan. "Again, and again, we've told the people of Philadelphia the state of their schools is someone else's responsibility, that ends today," Kenney told council. Created in 2001, the SRC oversees the citys public and charter schools, makes major policy and budgetary decisions for the school district and appoints the superintendent. The SRC currently comprises three members appointed by the governor who serve five years each and two members appointed by the mayor who serve four years each. There is no limit to the number of terms a member can serve. Opponents of the SRC have called for the creation of a locally-controlled school board. Under the plan, the SRC must recommend its dissolution by a majority vote on Nov. 16. The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education must then certify the vote by issuing a declaration dissolving the SRC by Dec. 31. Even if the dissolution is granted, it won't go into effect until June 30 the end of the fiscal year. During the six-month period, the SRC will continue to oversee the district while the new school board is appointed. The new school board will be composed of nine people appointed by Kenney. Before that occurs however, there will be a 13-member nominating committee who will receive nominations and make a short list of 27 names for Kenney to consider. Kenney is expected to announce the nominating committee at the end of this year and nine of the best people will be chosen. Unlike traditional school boards, the members will not represent specific districts or geographic locations to ensure "equitable representation," officials said. Officials say Philadelphia City Council is expected to pass a measure that would require them to approve the school board and by February or March of next year the school board will be appointed. They won't have any official power until July 1, 2018 however. Officials say the board members will serve at the pleasure of Kenney for the remainder of his term. When a new mayor is elected however, the new mayor will have the opportunity to appoint a new board and get rid of anyone. Existing SRC members will be instructed to reapply if interested in serving on the new school board. A 19-year-old faces attempted murder charges in the close-range shooting of a rookie Camden County police officer Wednesday night. Delronn Mahan, of Lindenwold, was charged Thursday with attempted murder, aggravated assault and related offenses, Camden County Prosecutor Mary Eva Colalillo said. Mahan is accused of shooting 21-year-old officer Patrick O'Hanlon shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday around 8th Street and Chelton Avenue in Camden. The first-year officer approached three men he believed were suspicious, investigators said. The area is known for gang and drug activity, Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said. As O'Hanlon walked toward them, one of the men began to flee. After O'Hanlon caught up to him, the man allegedly pulled out a gun and the two men began to struggle over the weapon. Mahan then opened fire at close range, shooting O'Hanlon in the leg, police said. "It appears that the suspect tried to shoot the officer a second time in the face, but the gun did not go off," Thomson said the gun jammed, likely saving Officer O'Hanlon's life. Responding officers took the suspect into custody and tended to the wounded officer. "The officers who immediately responded to the scene immediately applied a tourniquet to the wounded officer's leg," Thomson said. O'Hanlon, who is also an Army reservist, was taken to Cooper University Hospital where he was listed in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Thomson said the bullet went through O'Hanlon's upper right thigh. He praised the officers who rushed O'Hanlon to the hospital. "They saved the life of their brother officer and got him to the hospital and he's gonna be fine," Thomson said. The officer remained in a lot of pain Thursday, his parents at his side, Thomson said. O'Hanlon was able to give a thumbs up from his hospital as seen in a tweet from police. NBC10/ Camden Police Mahan was not injured during the incident. Police say O'Hanlon never opened fire during the struggle. "I'm extremely proud of the officer," Thomson said. "I'm extremely proud of the fellow officers that responded, minimized the situation without injury to even the suspect in that matter. That's asking a lot of people to do." Mahan was jailed ahead of a bail hearing, prosecutors said. "We know that a really bad guy had a gun on him and he was gonna do some bad things with it out there on the street," Thomson said outside Cooper University Hospital late Wednesday night. "If not for our officer intercepting him and taking him off the street and the gun there probably would have been a lot worse events taking place tonight." Police continued to investigate the incident Thursday. More than two dozen more Marine recruits have been sickened in an E. Coli outbreak at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego (MCRD), officials confirmed Wednesday. The E. Coli exposure affects both MCRD San Diego and the command field's training facilities at Edson Range on Camp Pendleton. The outbreak was first announced Monday when diarrheal illness sickened more than 300 Marine recruits, an MCRD spokesperson said. More than 5,500 recruits are in training. Since then, dozens have gotten better. Two hundred and fourteen recruits remain ill, officials said. Twelve recruits have been admitted to an off-base medical facility. The other cases are being treated aboard the base. An investigation is underway to determine the source of the E. Coli bacteria. Some of the cases are infected with the Shiga toxin causing E. Coli bacteria. Our immediate focus is identifying, isolating and treating recruits who present symptoms, said Brig. Gen. William Jurney, commanding general of MCRD San Diego and the Western Recruiting Region, in a statement. In the past week, there were limited cases reported, said the spokesperson. However, the number of cases spiked notably on Monday. We are working to identify the cause of the sickness, making sure our affected recruits can return to training as soon as possible and continuing training for recruits not influenced," added Jurney. While the command searches for the source of the outbreak, they will implement the following preventative actions: Recruits with E. Coli symptoms will be isolated to prevent spreading the sickness to their peers. There will be increased hygiene requirements with an emphasis on handwashing. MCRD San Diego will undergo extensive cleaning to ensure proper sanitization. Naval Medical Center San Diego's Preventative Medicine Unit will inspect barracks, chow halls and common areas. Recruits will receive guidance on how to identify symptoms. The MCRD will notify families if the outbreak affects a recruit's graduation date due to missed training. Officials will provide additional updates to keep families informed on Twitter until the outbreak subsides. A Ukrainian company that has led innovation in the area of stem-cell treatments is now joining the ranks of financial innovators, using an initial coin offering to raise funds for expansion into the U.S. market. The medical company ilaya is planning to sell its own cryptocurrency to fund clinical trials in America for its revolutionary treatment of avascular necrosis (AVN) of the hip. AVN, a condition that affects about 20,000 new patients in the U.S. each year, is the death of bone tissue after a loss of blood circulation; the precise causes remain unknown. The trials are necessary to get approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. ilaya developed its innovative methods for stem cell regeneration of bone tissue by working with soldiers wounded in Ukraines anti-terrorist operation in the southeast of the country. So far the company has helped more than 80 veterans, who would have faced amputation if ilaya hadnt been successful in re-growing their bones. The expansion to the civilian market of AVN treatment places ilaya in a long tradition of technical innovations that were originally developed for the battlefield but later found more widespread application, such as radar. At the moment there is no gold standard for treating AVN of the hip, said Vitaliy Kriukov, director of the medical company ilaya International and one of the founders of the project. "The majority of AVN patients end up having hip replacement surgery, which typically costs $30,000 - $50,000 and can significantly reduce the patients mobility and thus, their quality of life. ilaya has applied for recognition in the United States of its Ukrainian patent, and has also begun a dialogue with the FDA. The companys treatment method is based on taking adult stem cells from the patients own body, replicating them in a laboratory and then injecting them back into the patients body at the spot where new bone is needed. In the case of AVN, this is the head of the femur (the top of the thigh bone). The Ukrainian team has already done significant work and it will be an advantage in the approval process in the U.S., " Kriukov said. "Because of the clinical work thats already been carried out in ilaya, our project has a more favorable position in the market. Weve developed a strategy for the rapid and successful conduct of clinical trials in the US, which significantly increases our chances of success of winning a large share of the market. ilaya is now seeking partners for the project, who will either purchase tokens in its ICO (units that entitle their holders to a share in the profit from the project), or equity directly in the U.S. company. The ICO makes it easy to invest even a small amount in the project, and to exit at any time, says Kriukov. The opportunity to invest in AVN treatment by ilaya at the pre-ICO stage will provide the investor with additional preferential benefits. At the same time, the project is also open for classic equity investments." Dmytro Zubov, a biologist and biotechnologist, is the head of ilayas scientific team. The holder of 16 patents, he runs the laboratory for stem cell production, which was established in 2011. Unfortunately, in Ukraine weve had a lot of opportunities to learn about regeneration of bone tissue that has been damaged by trauma, says Zubov. So we hope some good can come out of it for people in the U.S. who are suffering from AVN. While the precise causes remain unclear, AVN is linked with a number of factors, including traumatic injury and steroid medications, and can be exacerbated by factors like alcohol consumption. Zubov and his team are already researching other applications of the companys technology, and after introducing its treatment for AVN in the U.S., the company plans to expand into other geographical markets, and offer treatments for other conditions. For example, the company sees huge potential to use its stem cell technology to treat herniated spinal discs. "We are convinced that there will be strong demand for our technologies," says Kriukov. "Using our AVN treatment for tens of thousands of patients per year can save millions of dollars in disability payments and the costs of joint replacement. This is a real opportunity to improve peoples quality of life and keep them in the workforce." More information is available on the projects website, AVN.ilaya.com. https://youtu.be/LrtCH8CIXFk https://youtu.be/_c0tfJPUnlY avn.info@ilaya.es By Associated Press WASHINGTON: The hackers who upended the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. "It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence." ALSO READ: US should've anticipated Russian hacking efforts, says FBI chief Andrew McCabe The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of emails." ALSO READ: US President Trump's UN envoy: Russia's election interference is 'warfare' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered "unfounded." But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. "This is the Kremlin and the general staff," said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. "I have no doubts." THE NEW EVIDENCE Secureworks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and especially Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle. The AP also found a handful of Republican targets. Podesta, Powell, Breedlove and more than a dozen Democratic targets besides Podesta would soon find their private correspondence dumped to the web. The AP has determined that all had been targeted by Fancy Bear, most of them three to seven months before the leaks. "They got two years of email," Powell recently told AP. He said that while he couldn't know for sure who was responsible, "I always suspected some Russian connection." In Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding war against Russia-backed separatists, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. The list includes Serhiy Leshchenko, an opposition parliamentarian who helped uncover the off-the-books payments allegedly made to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort whose indictment was unsealed Monday in Washington. In Russia, Fancy Bear focused on government opponents and dozens of journalists. Among the targets were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in exile, and Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants. "Everything on this list fits," said Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst who was himself among the targets. He said Russian authorities would have been particularly interested in Navalny, one of the few opposition leaders with a national following. Many of the targets have little in common except that they would have been crossing the Kremlin's radar: an environmental activist in the remote Russian port city of Murmansk; a small political magazine in Armenia; the Vatican's representative in Kiev; an adult education organization in Kazakhstan. "It's simply hard to see how any other country would be particularly interested in their activities," said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. He was also on the list. "If you're not Russia," he said, "hacking these people is a colossal waste of time." ___ WORKING 9 TO 6 MOSCOW TIME Allegations that Fancy Bear works for Russia aren't new. But raw data has been hard to come by. Researchers have been documenting the group's activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russia's intelligence services. The "Fancy Bear" nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russia's national symbol. In the wake of the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly endorsed the consensus view, saying what American spooks had long alleged privately: Fancy Bear is a creature of the Kremlin. But the U.S. intelligence community provided little proof, and even media-friendly cybersecurity companies typically publish only summaries of their data. That makes the Secureworks' database a key piece of public evidence all the more remarkable because it's the result of a careless mistake. Secureworks effectively stumbled across it when a researcher began working backward from a server tied to one of Fancy Bear's signature pieces of malicious software. He found a hyperactive Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to sneak thousands of malicious links past Google's spam filter. Because Fancy Bear forgot to set the account to private, Secureworks spent the next few months hovering over the group's shoulder, quietly copying down the details of the thousands of emails it was targeting. The AP obtained the data recently, boiling it down to 4,700 individual email addresses, and then connecting roughly half to account holders. The AP validated the list by running it against a sample of phishing emails obtained from people targeted and comparing it to similar rosters gathered independently by other cybersecurity companies, such as Tokyo-based Trend Micro and the Slovakian firm ESET. The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. The AP's findings also track with a report that first brought Fancy Bear to the attention of American voters. In 2016, a cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike said the Democratic National Committee had been compromised by Russian hackers, including Fancy Bear. Secureworks' roster shows Fancy Bear making aggressive attempts to hack into DNC technical staffers' emails in early April 2016 exactly when CrowdStrike says the hackers broke in. And the raw data enabled the AP to speak directly to the people who were targeted, many of whom pointed the finger at the Kremlin. "We have no doubts about who is behind these attacks," said Artem Torchinskiy, a project coordinator with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund who was targeted three times in 2015. "I am sure these are hackers controlled by Russian secret services." ___ THE MYTH OF THE 400-POUND MAN Even if only a small fraction of the 4,700 Gmail accounts targeted by Fancy Bear were hacked successfully, the data drawn from them could run into terabytes easily rivaling the biggest known leaks in journalistic history. For the hackers to have made sense of that mountain of messages in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Arabic and many other languages they would have needed a substantial team of analysts and translators. Merely identifying and sorting the targets took six AP reporters eight weeks of work. The AP's effort offers "a little feel for how much labor went into this," said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He said the investigation should put to rest any theories like the one then-candidate Donald Trump floated last year that the hacks could be the work of "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." "The notion that it's just a lone hacker somewhere is utterly absurd," Rid said. ___ Donn reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Myers reported from Chicago. Chad Day, Desmond Butler and Ted Bridis in Washington, Frank Bajak in Houston, Lori Hinnant in Paris, Maggie Michael in Cairo and Erika Kinetz in Shanghai contributed to this report. Novaya Gazeta reporters Nikolay Voroshilov, Yana Surinskaya and Roman Anin in Moscow also contributed. WASHINGTON: The hackers who upended the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. "It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence." ALSO READ: US should've anticipated Russian hacking efforts, says FBI chief Andrew McCabe The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm Secureworks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. Secureworks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of emails." ALSO READ: US President Trump's UN envoy: Russia's election interference is 'warfare' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered "unfounded." But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. "This is the Kremlin and the general staff," said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. "I have no doubts." THE NEW EVIDENCE Secureworks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defense contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and especially Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle. The AP also found a handful of Republican targets. Podesta, Powell, Breedlove and more than a dozen Democratic targets besides Podesta would soon find their private correspondence dumped to the web. The AP has determined that all had been targeted by Fancy Bear, most of them three to seven months before the leaks. "They got two years of email," Powell recently told AP. He said that while he couldn't know for sure who was responsible, "I always suspected some Russian connection." In Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding war against Russia-backed separatists, Fancy Bear attempted to break into at least 545 accounts, including those of President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei, half a dozen current and former ministers such as Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and as many as two dozen current and former lawmakers. The list includes Serhiy Leshchenko, an opposition parliamentarian who helped uncover the off-the-books payments allegedly made to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort whose indictment was unsealed Monday in Washington. In Russia, Fancy Bear focused on government opponents and dozens of journalists. Among the targets were oil tycoon-turned-Kremlin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in exile, and Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina. Along with them were 100 more civil society figures, including anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and his lieutenants. "Everything on this list fits," said Vasily Gatov, a Russian media analyst who was himself among the targets. He said Russian authorities would have been particularly interested in Navalny, one of the few opposition leaders with a national following. Many of the targets have little in common except that they would have been crossing the Kremlin's radar: an environmental activist in the remote Russian port city of Murmansk; a small political magazine in Armenia; the Vatican's representative in Kiev; an adult education organization in Kazakhstan. "It's simply hard to see how any other country would be particularly interested in their activities," said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. He was also on the list. "If you're not Russia," he said, "hacking these people is a colossal waste of time." ___ WORKING 9 TO 6 MOSCOW TIME Allegations that Fancy Bear works for Russia aren't new. But raw data has been hard to come by. Researchers have been documenting the group's activities for more than a decade and many have accused it of being an extension of Russia's intelligence services. The "Fancy Bear" nickname is a none-too-subtle reference to Russia's national symbol. In the wake of the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly endorsed the consensus view, saying what American spooks had long alleged privately: Fancy Bear is a creature of the Kremlin. But the U.S. intelligence community provided little proof, and even media-friendly cybersecurity companies typically publish only summaries of their data. That makes the Secureworks' database a key piece of public evidence all the more remarkable because it's the result of a careless mistake. Secureworks effectively stumbled across it when a researcher began working backward from a server tied to one of Fancy Bear's signature pieces of malicious software. He found a hyperactive Bitly account Fancy Bear was using to sneak thousands of malicious links past Google's spam filter. Because Fancy Bear forgot to set the account to private, Secureworks spent the next few months hovering over the group's shoulder, quietly copying down the details of the thousands of emails it was targeting. The AP obtained the data recently, boiling it down to 4,700 individual email addresses, and then connecting roughly half to account holders. The AP validated the list by running it against a sample of phishing emails obtained from people targeted and comparing it to similar rosters gathered independently by other cybersecurity companies, such as Tokyo-based Trend Micro and the Slovakian firm ESET. The Secureworks data allowed reporters to determine that more than 95 percent of the malicious links were generated during Moscow office hours between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. The AP's findings also track with a report that first brought Fancy Bear to the attention of American voters. In 2016, a cybersecurity company known as CrowdStrike said the Democratic National Committee had been compromised by Russian hackers, including Fancy Bear. Secureworks' roster shows Fancy Bear making aggressive attempts to hack into DNC technical staffers' emails in early April 2016 exactly when CrowdStrike says the hackers broke in. And the raw data enabled the AP to speak directly to the people who were targeted, many of whom pointed the finger at the Kremlin. "We have no doubts about who is behind these attacks," said Artem Torchinskiy, a project coordinator with Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund who was targeted three times in 2015. "I am sure these are hackers controlled by Russian secret services." ___ THE MYTH OF THE 400-POUND MAN Even if only a small fraction of the 4,700 Gmail accounts targeted by Fancy Bear were hacked successfully, the data drawn from them could run into terabytes easily rivaling the biggest known leaks in journalistic history. For the hackers to have made sense of that mountain of messages in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Arabic and many other languages they would have needed a substantial team of analysts and translators. Merely identifying and sorting the targets took six AP reporters eight weeks of work. The AP's effort offers "a little feel for how much labor went into this," said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. He said the investigation should put to rest any theories like the one then-candidate Donald Trump floated last year that the hacks could be the work of "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." "The notion that it's just a lone hacker somewhere is utterly absurd," Rid said. ___ Donn reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Myers reported from Chicago. Chad Day, Desmond Butler and Ted Bridis in Washington, Frank Bajak in Houston, Lori Hinnant in Paris, Maggie Michael in Cairo and Erika Kinetz in Shanghai contributed to this report. Novaya Gazeta reporters Nikolay Voroshilov, Yana Surinskaya and Roman Anin in Moscow also contributed. By AFP MADRID: Spain is set for another day of high drama in the Catalonia crisis on Thursday with a judge in Madrid to grill the deposed leaders of the region's separatist government. Notable by his likely absence, however, will be the dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and according to his lawyer refusing to come. "He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium," Paul Bekaert told Spain's TV3 television on Wednesday. The hearing at the National Court in Madrid, which deals with major criminal cases, was to start at 9:00 am (0800 GMT) and to continue on Friday. The judge wants to question Puigdemont and 13 others over their efforts to spearhead Catalonia's independence drive, which has plunged Spain into its biggest crisis in decades. An independence referendum on October 1 -- that heavy-handed Spanish police tried and failed to stop -- was followed by a declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament last Friday. ALSO READ: Catalonia crisis 'sensitive', says Rafael Nadal Later that day Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government dismissed the regional government and moved to impose direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region. - Rebellion and sedition - On Monday, Spain's chief prosecutor said he was seeking charges of rebellion -- punishable by up to 30 years behind bars -- sedition and misuse of public funds against the 14. IN PICTURES: Why does Catalonia want to secede from Spain? The speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, and five parliamentary deputies will also be grilled over the same alleged offences, but by a judge at the Supreme Court. It was unclear how many of them will show up. Puigdemont, 54, has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and on Tuesday said he would remain in Brussels until he had guarantees that any proceedings would be impartial. He has retained the support of many in Catalonia, whose people are fiercely proud of their language and culture. Maria Angels Selgas, a 60-year-old sales manager in Barcelona, said that for her, Puigdemont was still the Catalan president. "If they humiliate him then they humiliate also the more than two million Catalans who voted 'yes' in the referendum," she told AFP. On Wednesday several hundred separatist supporters accompanied some of those due to appear in the Madrid court to Barcelonas main train station, chanting "liberty" and "you are not alone". - Spanish flags - But Catalans remain deeply divided about independence, polls indicate. The international community has swung firmly behind Rajoy, and uncertainty about Catalonia's future has prompted companies to move their legal headquarters outside the region in droves. In addition, there are signs of growing divisions in the separatist camp, with many unhappy with Puigdemont and his handling of the situation. Joan Josep Nuet, a Catalan parliamentary deputy due to go before the Supreme Court, said Wednesday that a now-show by Puigdemont raised the risk that those that do come will be put in preventive custody. "The attitude of the (Catalan) president and the government in recent days has been really absurd, managing only to create yet more bewilderment," Nuet told Catalunya Radio. ALSO READ: Here's how the industrial heartland of Spain became a hotbed of separatism Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist in Madrid, said he believed that Puigdemont, a former journalist, "is more interested in obtaining media attention than escaping justice." "It's a media war. The aim of (the Catalan executive) has been to try and present the Spanish state as an oppressor state and Puigdemont needs to feed this narrative," he said. Rajoy has called snap elections for December 21 to replace the Catalan parliament. Puigdemont said he would "respect" the result -- and appealed to Madrid to do the same. MADRID: Spain is set for another day of high drama in the Catalonia crisis on Thursday with a judge in Madrid to grill the deposed leaders of the region's separatist government. Notable by his likely absence, however, will be the dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in Brussels and according to his lawyer refusing to come. "He will not go to Madrid and I have suggested that he be questioned here in Belgium," Paul Bekaert told Spain's TV3 television on Wednesday. The hearing at the National Court in Madrid, which deals with major criminal cases, was to start at 9:00 am (0800 GMT) and to continue on Friday. The judge wants to question Puigdemont and 13 others over their efforts to spearhead Catalonia's independence drive, which has plunged Spain into its biggest crisis in decades. An independence referendum on October 1 -- that heavy-handed Spanish police tried and failed to stop -- was followed by a declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament last Friday. ALSO READ: Catalonia crisis 'sensitive', says Rafael Nadal Later that day Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government dismissed the regional government and moved to impose direct rule on the wealthy northeastern region. - Rebellion and sedition - On Monday, Spain's chief prosecutor said he was seeking charges of rebellion -- punishable by up to 30 years behind bars -- sedition and misuse of public funds against the 14. IN PICTURES: Why does Catalonia want to secede from Spain? The speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, and five parliamentary deputies will also be grilled over the same alleged offences, but by a judge at the Supreme Court. It was unclear how many of them will show up. Puigdemont, 54, has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated and on Tuesday said he would remain in Brussels until he had guarantees that any proceedings would be impartial. He has retained the support of many in Catalonia, whose people are fiercely proud of their language and culture. Maria Angels Selgas, a 60-year-old sales manager in Barcelona, said that for her, Puigdemont was still the Catalan president. "If they humiliate him then they humiliate also the more than two million Catalans who voted 'yes' in the referendum," she told AFP. On Wednesday several hundred separatist supporters accompanied some of those due to appear in the Madrid court to Barcelonas main train station, chanting "liberty" and "you are not alone". - Spanish flags - But Catalans remain deeply divided about independence, polls indicate. The international community has swung firmly behind Rajoy, and uncertainty about Catalonia's future has prompted companies to move their legal headquarters outside the region in droves. In addition, there are signs of growing divisions in the separatist camp, with many unhappy with Puigdemont and his handling of the situation. Joan Josep Nuet, a Catalan parliamentary deputy due to go before the Supreme Court, said Wednesday that a now-show by Puigdemont raised the risk that those that do come will be put in preventive custody. "The attitude of the (Catalan) president and the government in recent days has been really absurd, managing only to create yet more bewilderment," Nuet told Catalunya Radio. ALSO READ: Here's how the industrial heartland of Spain became a hotbed of separatism Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist in Madrid, said he believed that Puigdemont, a former journalist, "is more interested in obtaining media attention than escaping justice." "It's a media war. The aim of (the Catalan executive) has been to try and present the Spanish state as an oppressor state and Puigdemont needs to feed this narrative," he said. Rajoy has called snap elections for December 21 to replace the Catalan parliament. Puigdemont said he would "respect" the result -- and appealed to Madrid to do the same. By AFP LONDON: British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said Wednesday they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. LONDON: British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said Wednesday they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. Biden: Deadly missile that hit Poland 'unlikely' to have come from Russia A missile that landed in Poland and killed two people is unlikely to have been fired from Russia, President Joe Biden said late Tuesday. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Cloudy. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Temps nearly steady in the low to mid 30s. Winds W at 15 to 25 mph.. Tonight Cloudy. Low around 25F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Thirty-Two lives snuffed out in yet another industrial disaster. India has little choice but to come to terms with what unfolded at the NTPC plant at Unchahar in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli district on Wednesday. A massive explosion ripped through a boiler at the state-run power utility, killing at least 32 staffers and injuring over 100. The accident has again brought into focus industrial safety and the absence of protocol followed to avoid such disasters. The lower rung workers, mostly contractual labourers who are outside the purview of the companys social security net, often become cannon fodder. Experts say loopholes are too many to be counted, starting with the poor commissioning of boilers and auxiliaries by companies to the violation of safety protocols such as an absence of basic circuit breakers during welding and cutting jobs. There are also complaints regarding lack of adequate protective equipment for labourers. Maintenance of boilers, which is the nerve centre for energy generation in a plant, is often ad hoc and safety valves are seldom checked at regular intervals. Any instrumentation interlock failure could invite massive disaster. Another major issue is poor literacy and training levels of these contractual employees. In most cases, they possess poor or inadequate knowledge of modern process plants, which involve multiple levels of protection interlocks. The standard operating procedure (SOP) is rarely followed. When they needed it most, the fire hydrant line and the detection system fail to respond. Also, on several occasions these SOPs arent updated when the process or the plant goes through minor modifications. Consequently, it is not surprising such industrial disasters keep recurring at regular intervals. Indias worst industrial disaster, the 33-year old Bhopal gas tragedy is still fresh in peoples memories. The tragedy claimed over 3,500 innocent lives and left over five lakh injured. The countrys track record has not improved much with several accidents taking place recently. In May, two contractual labourers were killed in SAILs IISCO Steel Plant in Burnpur. In May last year, three engineers were killed in a boiler explosion at a private thermal power plant in Madhya Pradeshs Annupur district. In the same month, five persons had died in an explosion in a chemical factory in Maharashtras Thane district. In June 2016, three people lost their lives in a boiler explosion inside the Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF) plant in Chembur. Indias poor industrial safety record is also stamped by the latest available National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data. The 2015 NCRB data says 299 cases of industrial accidents were reported, in which 225 people were killed, including 29 women. The previous year saw 335 industrial accidents, resulting in 161 deaths. Most data on industrial accidents is seriously under-reported and non-fatal incidents are rarely covered. The NCRB data further reveals that Madhya Pradesh saw the maximum number of deaths in industrial accidents. As many as 55 workers, including 14 women, died in the states industrial complexes. MP was followed by Gujarat, which recorded 31 deaths. Rajasthan ranked third with 28 fatalities. Uttar Pradesh recorded 23 deaths. The perilous nature of Indian industries is also affirmed by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). According to its website, only in last decade, 130 significant chemical accidents were reported in India, which resulted in 259 deaths. NDMA lists 1,861 Major Accident Hazard (MAH) units, spread across 301 districts and 25 states & 3 Union Territories. Its not that theres a dearth of a legal framework and protection offered to workers in these plants. There are many including the Explosives Act 1884, Factories Act 1948, Disaster Management Act 2005 and Petroleum Act 1934. Similarly, there are numerous safety protocols depending on the industries. But given the frequency of industrial disasters, it seems, all these are just paper tigers that are rarely visible on the factory floor. New Delhi: Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Padmavati seems to be stuck in a loop of controversies and roadblocks, with the latest coming from the ruling BJP in Gujarat. The party now wants the films released be delayed, looking at the sensitive nature of the film and that it might irk the Rajputs in the state that is going to polls in the same week as the films release. According to a Times of India report, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday wrote to the Election Commission and the Gujarat election commissioner to facilitate a pre-release viewing for certain Rajput community members, to alleviate their raised tempers and provide fair opportunity to prevent unnecessary tension ahead of polls. BJP state president IK Jadeja said on Wednesday that the party would like Padmavati either to be banned or delayed. While the film based on a fictional account of Rani Padmavati of Chittor and Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji is set for a December 1 release, Gujarat is going to polls on December 9 and 14. BJPs official stand on the films release comes just days after its senior leader Shankersinh Vaghela wanted to see the film before its official release. The protesting Rajputs and especially the Karni Sena, a Rajput organization, has raised objections to an alleged romantic angle between Padmavati and Khilji being shown in the movie. However, director Bhansali and the actors have maintained throughout that the film doesnt portray any such relationship between the two protagonists. With this objection, the Karni Sena had even vandalized the sets of Padmavati in Rajasthan and beat up Bhansali and other crew members. New Delhi: A sessions court on Thursday sentenced two maternal uncles of the 10-year-old Chandigarh rape victim to life imprisonment. The court held the two brothers guilty of raping the girl who gave birth to a girl child in August after the Supreme court rejected a plea seeking a permission for an abortion. Additional District and Sessions Judge Poonam R Joshi, while pronouncing the quantum of sentence, also imposed a fine of Rs 3.05 lakh each in the case. "The court today pronounced life imprisonment for both the brothers in the rape case," said counsel Manjit Singh, who represented the elder brother. Public prosecutor Atul Sethi said, "They will stay in jail till death." "This is a very good decision and the verdict will be a lesson for those who indulge in such heinous crimes," he said. Sethi said Rs 6 lakh would be given as compensation to the victim while Rs 10,000 would go to the state. In September 2017, to everyone's shock, the DNA sample of the newborn daughter didn't match the rape accused, the victim's elder maternal uncle. This shocking revelation came after the forensic report was submitted to the Punjab and Haryana Court, compelling the police to investigate the case further. A fresh DNA test showed the younger maternal uncle to be the father of the child. The police maintained that both maternal uncles had sexually exploited their niece. The 10-year-old, a student at a Chandigarh government school, had complained of stomach pain in July 2017. The medical examination disclosed that she was six months pregnant. The Chandigarh police had filed an FIR against her maternal uncle for having sexually abused the girl repeatedly over a period of time. The family wanted the foetus aborted, but the advanced stage of pregnancy and medical reasons couldn't have allowed that. The family knocked on the doors of Supreme Court, seeking the permission to abort the foetus, but the plea was rejected. Srinagar: In a fresh militant attack on security forces in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, five security personnel were injured on Thursday. According to police, militants opened fire on a vehicle of the 96 Battalion CRPF at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 am. He said three CRPF jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. (With PTI inputs) Kuala Lumpur: When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month, fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation in India. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia's administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been declared an absconder in India and was banned from the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naik's presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicised Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election - the ruling coalition's worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has aroused controversy with his puritan brand of Islam - recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith. A Youtube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden "is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him". Last week, the National Investigation Agency prepared charges against Naik, saying he was inciting terror and "promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups through public speeches and lectures." Bangladesh also suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naik's preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because "he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects," said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. "If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public." FACEBOOK PHOTOS At his appearance at the Putra mosque last month, a female Reuters reporter asked about the investigation in India. Naik would only say: "Sorry, it is not right for me to speak with ladies in public." Naik did not respond to subsequent requests for comment from Reuters. Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament on Tuesday that Naik, who obtained permanent residency five years ago, was not being given "preferential treatment". "Over the time spent in this country, he has not broken any laws or regulations. As such, there is no reason from a legal standpoint to detain or arrest him," Zahid said. The government has not received any official request from India "related to terrorism allegations involving him", he added. Zahid and the prime minister have both posted photos on Facebook of their meetings with Naik last year in Malaysia. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society - about 40 percent of Malaysia's population is non-Muslim. The group said it was unaware Naik had been going to the Putrajaya mosque - or where he might be in Malaysia. Officials at the Putra Mosque said Naik has been attending Friday prayers there for about a month. He has also been spotted in other mosques, hospitals and restaurants in the administrative capital in recent months, according to witnesses that Reuters spoke to. Naik has in the past denied India's allegations. In an interview with a Kuwaiti television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi because of his popularity. Malaysia's opposition Islamic Party (PAS), which has defended Naik in the past, last week urged the government to disregard any potential Indian extradition request, saying the allegations aim "to block his influence and efforts to spread religious awareness among the international community." Lucknow: The Allahabad High Court on Thursday granted bail to Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad alias 'Ravan', the main accused in the Saharanpur violence, and three others, saying the charges against them are politically motivated. Chandrashekhar has already got bail from Sessions Court in Saharanpur in one case, while hearing is due in case registered under IT Act. Single Bench of Justice Mukhtar Ahmad sanctioned bail while hearing the bail application filed by Chandrashekhar and his deputy Kamal Walia. Both of them were booked under charges of murder, robbery, riot and arson. The Bhim Army chief had been on the run after charges were framed against him, before being finally arrested in Himachal Pradesh by the Uttar Pradesh STF. Imam Mabud Khan, Chandrashekhars lawyer, told News18, As you know there were caste based riots in Saharanpur in which about 50 to 55 houses of Dalits were gutted in fire but only 25 FIRs were registered by the administration and that too after a lot of pressure. To counter these FIRs by Dalits, the administration lodged counter FIRs against Dalit leaders and students. Due to which Chandrashekhar Ravan was arrested from Himachal despite the fact that he was not involved in anything. After hearing todays arguments the court observed that they were falsely implicated and the charges were politically motivated. Hence, the honourable court granted bail to all of them, he added. Chandrashekhar was born in Dhadkuli village near Chatmalpur in Saharanpur. A law graduate from a local college in the district, he first courted controversy in 2015, when he put up a board at his native place that read 'The Great Chamars of Dhadkauli Welcome You'. The move led to tensions between the Dalits and the Thakurs in the village. New Delhi: In a significant move that will benefit over 64,000 personnel, the Army has said junior commissioned officers (JCOs) are gazetted officers, cancelling its earlier note that described them as "non-gazetted" officers. The decision by the Army two days back comes amid growing resentment from a large section of its personnel over issues relating to pay-parity and ranking. In an official note, the Army headquarters has cancelled a communication issued in response to an RTI application in 2011 which had stated that the JCOs are non-gazetted officers, according to documents accessed by PTI. Highly placed official sources said the Army committed a "major mistake" in 2011 on the status of the JCOs and now the Army headquarters has removed the ambiguity and made it clear that JCOs are gazetted officers. The clarification will benefit over 64,000 JCOs who are ranked in three categories -- Naib Subedar, Subedar and Subedar Major. The 2011 note had triggered widespread outrage among the JCOs. Asked how the Army headquarters made the "mistake" in 2011, classifying the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, a senior Army official said there are separate definitions of officers and the JCOs in the manual of military law and it could have been a case of misinterpretation of the rule book. The issuance of the letter is also seen as a message by the Army to the government to address grievances of a section of the Army personnel over what they call "disparity" in the current pay band. The issue of status equivalence between military officers and their civilian counterparts was discussed at the recently concluded Army Commanders' conference. Asked whether the Army headquarters will send a fresh communication to the RTI applicant who had filed the query about status of the JCOs in 2011, the Army refused to comment. Defence Ministry sources last week had said that it was seriously examining the long-standing issue relating to status equivalence between military officers and their civilian counterparts. There has been growing resentment among the military officers who have been insisting that the current status equivalence was flawed and that government must address their concerns. As per the current pay structure, the subedar majors and subedars are part of the pay band for gazetted officers but there has been discrepancies there as well, said an official. The Naib subedars whose number of around 55,000 get salary under non-gazetted category, he said. The matter is among the main issues being examined as part of the pay and allowances anomaly. Last year, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had set up a high-level committee to look into the issue. Kerala: Just days after the Supreme Court said it would like to meet Hadiya on November 27, her father said he was okay with his daughter living as a Muslim, but would not agree to her staying with Shafin Jahan. Jahan has a terrorist mindset. I would not like to see my daughter as his wife. Let her live in my house as a Muslim, let her marry another Muslim if she wants. But not Shafin, he said, claiming that that he had proof of his terror links and would produce them in court in due course of time. Asokan said he would produce his daughter in court on the designated date and let the law take its due course. My daughter has been psychologically kidnapped. She doesnt understand the seriousness of the whole situation. For him, she was going to Syria to study Islam. She still doesnt know why they were trying hard to send her to Syria. Im sure the court will take into account all aspects of the case, including the NIA report and come to a fair conclusion, he told CNN-News18. Quizzed on activist Rahul Easwarans video that showed Hadiya pleading for life and accusing her father of beating her, Asokan said it appeared the words were coaxed out of her. He came to counsel my daughter. I doubt he might have told her to say all this, he said. He also added that he had never stopped his daughter from meeting people. She is open to meeting whoever she wants. She can go out also with the police protection, I have never stopped her. She herself doesnt want to interact with people. What can I do about that? he told CNN News18. But when CNN-News18 tried to speak to Hadiya, Asokan did not give permission. The father also slammed the state government for refusing an NIA investigation into the case. No matter who rules, be it the LDF or the UDF, their governance has always helped Popular Front of India (PFI) grow. The NIA has talked about so many cases. Why isnt the state government speaking out? he said. New Delhi: The mother of Nirbhaya, the 23-year-old woman who was brutally gang-raped and killed in a moving bus in 2012, has thanked Rahul Gandhi for helping her son become a pilot. "Ever since I lost my daughter, I had given up all hopes, but today, when I see Aman (name changed) as a pilot, my willingness to live comes back because I know how much Nirbhaya wanted his brother to become a pilot," Asha Devi told CNN-News18. She said that Rahul sponsored her sons education and called him often to counsel and motivate him. "And today I feel everybody should know that I'm grateful to Rahul and Priyanka for supporting us throughout this toughest phase of our lives." The brother was a Class 12 student when his sister succumbed to grievous injuries inflicted by her rapists. He wanted to join the Army, but the tragedy shook him and derailed his plans. When Rahul learned that Aman wanted to join the defence forces, he asked him to pursue a pilot's training course, she said. He helped get him enrolled at an academy in Rae Bareli, which is the parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi. Asha Devi said that the Congress vice-president used to talk to him over the phone during the 18-month course and taught him to adopt a never quit attitude." Rahuls sister, Priyanka, also called the family often to enquire about their health. Nirbhaya's brother has now completed his training from the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRUA), in Rai Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. "He is now undergoing final training with a commercial airline in Gurugram. He will soon fly a plane. Had she (Nirbhaya) been there, she would have been the happiest of us all. I know wherever she is, she is watching his brother becoming a pilot." While Aman was seen in court during the trials, the youngest son of the family has been kept away from media glare. He is studying engineering in Pune. Their father works at the Indira Gandhi International airport in the capital. The attack shook the country and saw mass protests in several cities and towns. In May this year, the Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence to all the four convicts. Another convict had died in prison, while the minor involved was released in December 2015 after serving three years in a detention home. Rae Bareli: Twenty-six people were reported dead and over 100 hundred injured when a blast took place at NTPC's thermal power plant at Unchahar in Rae Bareli district on Wednesday. The accident took place in unit six of the plant. According to initial reports, the accident happened after the steam pipe of the boiler plant burst open. "Ash-pipe exploded due to pressure at NTPC plant in Rae Bareli, at least 100 injured," said DM Rae Bareli. The injured have been admitted to the district hospital. As per reports, about 150 workers were present inside the plant when the accident took place. The project site where the blast happened produces 500 MW of electricity. UP CM Yogi Adityanath, who is on a three-day visit to Mauritius, took cognizance of the accident and directed Principal Secretary, Home, to send all possible help for the victims. He also tweeted and announced that injured will be treated at SGPGI, Lucknow, and that the UP Government will bear the treatment cost. The CM also announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh for those who are killed, Rs 50 thousand for those who are seriously injured and Rs 25 thousand for the injured. ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said that all available ambulances were pressed into action and the additional district magistrate and the additional superintendent of police were on the spot to supervise relief and rescue operations. A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was also despatched to the explosion site from Lucknow for relief and rescue operations, an official said. The NTPC, in a statement after the incident, said that "an unfortunate accident in the boiler of 500MW under trial unit of NTPC Unchahar occurred this afternoon. Rescue operations are underway in close coordination with the district administration. Injured persons are being shifted to the nearby hospitals". Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 1, 2017 Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi also announced that he would visit the accident site on Thursday. Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon. Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 1, 2017 The Unchahar sub-division in Raebareli district is around 110 km from the state capital. New Delhi: After a 155 year run, a train meant exclusively for rail employees and popularly known as the coolie train, came to its final and permanent halt on Wednesday. Started by the British in 1862, the historic train has for more than one-and-a-half century, ferried workers to-and-fro from Jamalpur engine factory in Munger district. Sources in the railways said that with expenses to run the train going up to Rs 40-50 lakh, as against a revenue of Rs 1 lakh, there were no options left but to end the service. Meanwhile, Jamalpur rail factory employees are pressing for the factory to resume the service unless they are provided with an alternative ferry service. Run and maintained by the Malda zone of the Indian Railways, the train was a lifeline for the workers who would come to the Jamalpur factory from Dhanauri and Sultangunj. The decision is bound to have adverse effects on these workers, who would always take a drop at the equally old factorys Gate Number 6. Jamalpur Station Master Sudhir Kumar Singh told News18 that the authorities did not wait much before stopping the services after taking the decision. While the train might have been popularly known as a coolie train, it became a lifeline to thousands living in dozens of villages on the JamalpurDhanauri and JamalpurSultangunj routes. An Eastern Railways employee, Ashutosh Kumar, admitted that apart from the railway workers, locals would also board the coolie train and stopping the service would undoubtedly cause them a major inconvenience. Prakash, another railway employee says, the factory was founded on February 8, 1862 and since then the train has served these towns every day till now. The factory was founded by the East India Company when they were expanding their operations through the railway network. Rakesh Kumar, the guard of coolie train, boarded it for the last time on Wednesday. He said that personally, there was a sense of loss. I have been boarding this train for the past two years and today it feels like the foundation for these Jamalpur employees has slipped away from under their feet. Chennai: Elli Avram has been cast in the Tamil and Kannada remakes of Hindi entertainer Queen, while Shibani Dandekar has been zeroed in for its Telugu and Malayalam versions. The producer says they will lend "freshness" to the movies. Earlier, Amy Jackson was to play essay Lisa Haydon's role from the original Queen in all its four southern versions. Amy had walked out of the film citing creative differences and non-availability of dates. Producer Manu Kumaran said in a statement: "We have made several changes to the script and the films are going to be different in each language. We had planned on Amy Jackson initially, but it became clear that the character demanded a specific look and feel. "Elli Avram and Shibani Dandekar will be the much-required freshness to the movies". He is upset over Amy's claims. "For Amy to say that it didn't work out creatively is completely wrong as she didn't meet any of the two directors who are making these 4 movies." The makers of the film will be kickstarting their first schedule in France. Starring Tamannaah Bhatia, Kajal Aggarwal, Manjima Mohan and Parul Yadav in the lead in their respective languages, the film will be sequentially be shot at various locations adding a tinge of the southern element to it. Comedian Kapil Sharma recently visited the Shirdi Sai Baba Temple along with girlfriend Ginni Chatrath to pray for the success of Firangi, his upcoming film and debut venture as a producer. However, reports indicate that the couple may have been seeking blessings for something else as well. Rumors are abuzz that they are set to tie the knot early next year, with DNA quoting a source saying, There is a lot of pressure from the two families. Ginnis parents are keen that the couple makes their relationship official. Kapils mother also wants him to marry Ginni, whom she has grown fond of. Ginni had promised to consider marriage only after Kapil cleaned up his act. Now, that the stand-up comedian is completely off alcohol and in a much more relaxed frame of mind, he too seems to be in the mood to take the plunge. The Kapil Sharma Show was recently taken off the air apparently due to Kapils health concerns. After having taken some time out to rejuvenate at an Ayurveda center in Bengaluru, the comedian returned to Mumbai to wrap up the filming of Firangi, which is slated for a November 24 release. Lets hope things continue to look up for Kapil and Ginni and we hear wedding bells soon. Marvel fans are all set to enter the realm of outer world in the third Asgardian film Thor: Ragnarok. The god of thunder and lightning is back after being missing from the elaborate Avenger cast in Captain America: Civil War, and he had a perfectly good reason why. All the thumping comic book action this time takes the form of a veritable Twilight of the Gods. Sporting a clean-shaved look, Thor would be seen sans his hammer (and home) in the upcoming film, with the Hulk on his side. The god of thunder will be seen going against the goddess of death in a highly action-packed adventure. Odinson will be join forces with Bruce Banner's green alter ego to Hela the Norse goddess of death without his biggest strength, Mjolnir. Here's everything you need to know about the thunder god's newest adventures in Midgard and beyond in Thor: Ragnarok. A Bridge before Infinity War Chris Hemsworth's reunion with his hammer and armour was originally scheduled for July 28, 2017, but later slipped to its current release date of October 24, 2017, in the UK and November 3, 2017, in India. That places it after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming and before Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War. Ragnarok has also been described as a 'bridge' between the ongoing MCU plots and the big bust-up with Thanos in Infinity War. Director Waititi has said his film will be a mere 90 minutes long, making it the shortest MCU installment yet by far. Cameo by Other Avenger(s) Mark Ruffalo will also be showing up as Bruce Banner and his big green alter ego, the Hulk, after like Thor himself missing out on the Captain America: Civil War action this year. A glimpse Thor holding a card on set that bears the address of Doctor Strange's Greenwich Village base the Sanctum Santorum led to speculation that after Thor's cameo in his debut Marvel film, Benedict Cumberbatch's Sorcerer Supreme would return the favor. Strange's appearance in Thor: Ragnarok has been very much confirmed. He's there to help find the missing Odin. Some Familiar faces from the Real World Following Marvel's trend for getting major A-listers for key roles, Cate Blanchett would be seen in Ragnarok as Hela Marvel's equivalent of the Norse death goddess Hel. Jeff Goldblum will play the Grandmaster, a troublemaker of cosmically powerful proportions with a love for games. And Star Trek's Karl Urban will be taking on the role of Thor's long-time foe Skurge, an Asgardian also known as the Executioner. Anthony Hopkins's Odin who had been replaced by Loki in The Dark World is coming back. He was spotted on set in full hobo mode leading fans to suspect that he might have been wandering amnesiac on Earth since Loki got to him. And Idris Elba's Heimdall is also returning. An Interesting Plot The film is named for the Norse end of the world myth Ragnarok which is supposed to kill off the gods and bring mankind to the brink of extinction (quite literally leaving only two survivors left to repopulate the world). The film will see the return of Hela (we don't know where she's been yet), who promptly destroys Thor's hammer. The thunder god is banished to the planet Sakaar and forced to fight in the Grandmaster's arena, while Hela makes a bid to conquer Asgard. In Marvel's comics, Thor has faced Ragnarok several times, although theoretically he finally managed to end the cycle forever. Expect a blast of Fun! It won't all be doom and gloom, though, as Ruffalo has said that Hulk and Thor will be embarking on a "universal road movie" across the Nine Realms, and Waititi's promises that fans can expect a typical Marvel comedy. The director has hinted at the tone of the film, saying "the new logo suits the '70s/'80s sci-fi fantasy that this film is becoming". Anyone else thinking of The Neverending Story right now? He has also said that he is basically ignoring the other two Thor films and the rest of the MCU, which is a bold move. Nor does it sound like Ragnarok spells an ending for the MCU or even Hemsworth's Thor, as he's already been confirmed for Avengers: Infinity War. All this and more makes Marvel-verse all the more excited for November 3, as the ultimate 'doomed' road trip is sure to give us some 'out of the world' travel goals. New Delhi: Day after the CBI gave a clean chit to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the Vyapam scam, opposition Congress dubbed the investigating agency as Compromise Bureau of Investigation. The party also said that it would move court against the CBI and its officers. The party further alleged that the investigators had "tampered" with the hard disc of a computer seized from an accused in the case which, they said, had a direct reference to Chouhan and other ministers. "The CBI has many names and after what the CBI has said on Vyapam, its name now is Compromise Bureau of Investigation," Congress leader Kapil Sibal told reporters. Sibal, accompanied by party leaders Vivek Tankha and KTS Tulsi, said the Congress would support the whistleblowers in the case and would "investigate the investigator". "It is unfortunate... in a country where investigative agency works one-sided and flouts the rule of law, what will happen to democracy there, one should think," Sibal said. Sibal accused the CBI of "tampering" the hard disc. He alleged that a whistle-blower has filed an affidavit in the court that an IT expert had opened the hard disc and a copy of it was sent to an independent lab, whose report has not been taken into account by the CBI. The party demanded that the hard disc be sent to any international agency for test. "It has now come to this level...we will now have to investigate the investigator. The Congress party will investigate it. We will all get together and charge-sheet them. We will file a private complaint in the trial court and ask the court to re-investigate. The accuser will become the accused now. The charge-sheeter has to be charge-sheeted," he said. In a veiled threat to those behind giving clean chit to Chouhan in the case, the former Union minister said, "We are watching very carefully as to who is doing what. In the coming times, we also know who is doing what." The CBI had on Tuesday filed its charge sheet in the Vyapam scam case and claimed there was no truth in the allegations that data files seized by the state police from an accused and having mention of the word 'CM' were tampered. The charge sheet filed by the CBI in connection with Pre Medical test for 2013 has listed 490 accused which includes three Vyapam officials - Nitin Mohindra, Ajay Kumar Sen and C K Mishra. The CBI charge sheet came as a major relief to the Madhya Pradesh chief minister as he had been given a virtual clean chit by the probe agency. Tankha, the head of Congress's legal cell, said many lawyers would come to the aid of the whistleblowers in the case. Nominated Rajya Sabha MP Tulsi, while referring to the CBI, alleged that he found it strange that "the black parrot which was caged, it now seems its neck has also been broken". He said he has not seen a single case where over 50 witnesses have died, but the agency is unable to ascertain as to who the beneficiaries of the money were. Sibal alleged several officers had been elevated by the government to higher posts in the CBI and the NIA disregarding complaints against them. "If you keep your own people and the investigator will not do an impartial probe, you can imagine its result. This threat is not before political parties but also to every individual who speaks against this government, as he will face different agencies. We have never seen such a thing by investigating agencies. "We in the Congress party will now charge-sheet the one who charge-sheets others and will get together to tell the Madhya Pradesh court to do justice in the case," Sibal said. The former Union Minister alleged that whenever it comes to Congress leaders, the CBI always targets them and it does whatever the government asks it to do. However, it never initiates any probe against the ruling party leaders, he alleged. (With PTI inputs) Chennai: Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan has revived the controversy over the phrase "saffron terror", saying in his weekly column that the right wing no longer can deny the presence of extremist elements among its ranks. In his column in the weekly Ananda Vikatan, Haasan said that where Hindu extremists earlier believed in holding a dialogue to push their point, they now indulged in violence. In the past Hindu right-wing groups would not indulge in violence, but they would hold a dialogue with the opposite parties on their arguments. But this old tactic was defeated and what they stated to do is use muscle power. They started indulging in violence, he wrote. Referring to the counter-argument that Hindus have not been found guilty in terror-related cases, he said: The right-wing can't challenge anyone asking the question show me, one Hindu terrorist. Terror has spread into their camp as well. Such terror activities are not going to help them in any way. The actor further said that Tamil Nadu will become an example for social justice once again, and congratulated Kerala for "showing the way." Haasan's column reiterated his anti-Sangh positioning ahead of his expected entry into active politics and was panned by the BJP and allies. "Kamal Haasan should apologise and take his words back. In reality, there is peace because Hindus are in a majority," BJP spokesperson Narayanan Thirupathi said. Shiv Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said, "Such claims will not work in politics. The Congress which talked of Hindu terrorism is today out of power," referring to the political backlash the Congress faced for using the phrase. Political analysts saw this as Haasan trying to occupy an emptying political space. "I believe Kamal is trying to occupy the considerable anti-Hindutva space in Tamil Nadu vacated by a docile AIADMK and a confused DMK," said RK Radhakrishnan, Associate Editor, Frontline. New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Partys (AAP) Sixth National Council meeting concluded on Thursday with the party giving several senior leaders speaking slots. However, one notable exception was AAP founding member and Rajasthan unit chief Kumar Vishwas. The poet-turned-politician, who has expressed his displeasure with the party quite openly this year, has been slotted as a speaker in every AAP NC meeting conducted so far. This year, however, he was not included in the partys official speakers list. When the turn came for state conveners to speak, a handful of National Council members demanded that Vishwas be invited to speak, not in his capacity as Rajasthan chief but as a national-level AAP leader. Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia seconded the idea and invited Vishwas to speak. Vishwas, however, declined the offer and refused to speak after being asked thrice. He soon left the meeting but not before taking a jibe at the party. Viswas said, I thought only Congress and BJP were scared of me. He said he would not leave the party and would speak only when he thought the time was ripe. This comes at a time when tensions between Vishwas and party chief Arvind Kejriwal are on the rise again. After the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections, in which the AAP was routed by the BJP, Vishwas had openly criticized the direction the party was taking. An AAP source told News 18 that Vishwas and Kejriwal had not been on talking terms for about five months when Vishwas decided to break rank and lash out at the party leadership. AAPs Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan, who was also present at AAPs NC meeting on Thursday, had called Vishwas a BJP agent back then, which led Vishwas to threaten that he would quit the party. Kejriwal went to Vishwass residence to pacify him. As a compromise, Khan was suspended from the party and Vishwas was given charge of the Rajasthan state unit. Two days before the NC meeting, Vishwas, in an exclusive interview to News18, had hinted that someone was pulling the strings from behind Khan. He said, Amanatullah is a leader who has come from the LJP and has been accused of spreading communal hatred. I dont even want to comment on him. He is just a mask. When asked about the NC meeting, he had said, The agenda of the NC meeting is pretty clear. Sanjay Singh Ji will speak on the economic situation of the country and Ashutosh Ji will speak on political resolutions. This is the first NC meeting in which I am not a speaker, so I will go as a listener. If the party asks me to say something, I will. In the future, we will have to go back to basics. We will have to go back to our values of zero tolerance against corruption, principles of Swaraj and inner-party consensus. Meanwhile, AAP leader Sanjay Singh said the party had passed a number of resolutions expressing concern on the current political and economic climate of the country. We spoke about the economic crisis in the country, the condition of farmers and joblessness among the countrys youth. The AAP National Council concluded that the two main reasons behind the economic slowdown are demonetization and GST. We demand that the Centre clear the Lokpal bill that has been passed by the Delhi Assembly and also bring a Jan Lokpal at the Central level, he said. We are also concerned about the undeclared emergency in the country today in which courageous journalists are being killed, editors are being pressured. This is an assault on free speech. AAP wants the Election Commission to conduct all forthcoming elections to be held with VVPAT machines in at least 25% of all booths, he added. Kejriwal, who arrived later in the evening, said, Two governments were elected with high popularity the AAP government in Delhi and the BJP government at the centre. There were high expectations from both. BJP did nothing for any section of society. But people are talking about AAPs efforts in health and education. He added that AAP volunteers will be asked to help out in Mohalla Clinics and Delhi government schools. Speaking on the upcoming Gujarat elections, senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said that the party would contest elections on 25 seats in the western state. He said the aim is to have capable people inside the Gujarat assembly who would raise the peoples issues. Mumbai: In a surprising development on Thursday, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Mumbai, igniting a fresh debate in political circles. The Sena chief was accompanied by son Aaditya Thackeray. The father-son duo met Mamata at a south Mumbai hotel where she was staying. Sources told CNN-News18 that the meeting lasted three hours and the two leaders discussed demonetisation and the poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax. Both Shiv Sena and Banerjees Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads with the BJP and the Narendra Modi government on a host of issues, including demonetisation. Banerjee, who is in the city since Tuesday and expected to return to Kolkata on Friday, met top industrialists and bankers here on Wednesday as part of a roadshow. This comes ahead of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in Kolkata in January. The Shiv Sena had last year teamed up with the TMC in a bid to take on the BJP over the issue of demonetisation. Uddhav had told mediapersons in November last year that if there was nothing wrong in Prime Minister Modi meeting (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar, then there was nothing wrong if the Sena held talks with Banerjee on a crucial issue. (With PTI inputs) Bharuch: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is trying to add a personal touch to his Gujarat election campaign and seems more spontaneous during his public interactions now. On Wednesday, Rahul got off the yatra bus and climbed atop a matador for a road show through Bharuch town during the third and crucial phase of Congress Navsarjan Yatra. He readily shook hands and went past the SPG cover. A young girl shouted at Rahul that she wanted to take a selfie with him. She was pulled atop the matador. Selfies were clicked, and the roadshow continued. Standing by his side all along was Ahmed Patel. The understated, low profile, yet powerful, political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Patel won in 1977 from Bharuch bucking the anti-Emergency trend. He entered the power corridors of Delhi along with Shankersinh Vaghela and has worked closely with Rajiv Gandhi between 1984 and 1989. Since his victory in a bitterly contested Rajya Sabha elections that Patel won by a slender margin, Ahmed Bhai as he is known in political circles has kept a low profile. Recently, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani tried to link Patel with a hospital where a suspected IS operative was recently arrested by the state anti-terror squad. In Bharuch, Patel in one of those rare public speeches challenged the BJP. I do not have to learn nationalism from the BJP. Hundreds of Congress leaders have died fighting terrorism. People who escorted terrorists to Kandahar are demanding my resignation, he said. Patel then went on to state that the alleged IS operative who worked at the Sardar Patel Hospital in Ankleshwar, earlier worked at the Care Hospital that was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. In the urban areas of Bharuch and Ankleshwar, Rahul Gandhi raked up the issue of demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) implementation. The target audience is small and medium scale entrepreneur. The BJP wants to celebrate November 8, while the whole country is crying. Where is the black money? Small entrepreneurs are the backbone of our economy, and they have been hit the worst, Gandhi said. It is in South Gujarat that the Congress will face its toughest challenge. The party was swept away from urban centers by a rampaging BJP with a 90 plus strike rate in cities and big towns. In tribal-dominated rural districts, which were once considered Congress stronghold, the party has steadily conceded space to the BJP. As the Congress has been out of power for more than two decades now, the organisational base has eroded. For both the Congress and Rahul, it is now a long road ahead to redemption. Chipmaker Qualcomm and private equity firm JMC Capital Partners are looking to sell their stakes in a joint venture that operates more than 1,300 free WiFi kiosks fashioned from old phone booths around New York City, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is the latest twist in the project overseen by Daniel Doctoroff, former chief executive of news and data provider Bloomberg LP and former deputy mayor of New York City. He now runs Sidewalk Labs, an urban development unit of Google parent Alphabet. Doctoroff is chairman of a Sidewalk Labs subsidiary that is the top investor in the joint venture. Qualcomm and JMC are working with an investment bank to explore the sale of their stakes in CityBridge, the venture that is behind the LinkNYC WiFi project, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Qualcomm is seeking to exit the venture because it views it as non-core, while the private equity firm JMC is aiming to generate a profitable return on its investment, the people said. Qualcomm and Sidewalk Labs declined to comment. JMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Jovana Rizzo, a spokesperson for CityBridge, said in a statement that the group is "committed to fulfilling its obligation to the city of New York and continuing the expansion of LinkNYC across the five boroughs." A spokeswoman for New York City's Information Technology & Telecommunications Department said in a statement that the city would have to approve any changes and so far "nothing has been presented to us. Any decision we make has to centre around continuing the success of the program and ensuring New Yorkers best interests are met. LinkNYC emerged in 2014 as part of a 12-year contract with New York City to replace 7,500 payphone stands and was expected to generate $500 million in revenue for the city's coffers. The program's launch in February 2016 prompted complaints from business owners and residents about crowds hanging around the hotspots for hours at a time and users browsing online pornography on kiosk screens. LinkNYC removed the web-browsing feature. More than 2.7 million people have registered to use the kiosks, which also have phone charging stations and free calling services, LinkNYC said Wednesday. LinkNYC kiosks generate revenue through ad sales. Qualcomm and JMC each invested about $25 million into the joint venture in 2014, the sources said. Another $50 million came from an outdoor advertising company and a software firm that were later bought by a consortium led by Sidewalk Labs and merged in 2015 under the name Intersection. Sidewalk Labs remains the lead investor. Sidewalk Labs, which already owns more half of the CityBridge joint venture through Intersection, could be a potential acquirer of the stakes, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Sidewalk Labs declined to comment on its potential interest. Large wireless carriers such as Verizon Communications and AT&T could potentially be good partners as well in the joint venture, according to the sources. Verizon and AT&T could not immediately be reached for comment. Sidewalk Labs' Intersection expanded its network of Internet kiosks to London in June, turning on the first of 1,000 expected to be installed with Britain broadband provider BT and a local advertising firm. On Wednesday, Intersection announced plans to open 100 kiosks in Philadelphia without any business partners starting next year. Watch: Nokia 2 First Look: The New Budget Nokia Android Phone Alphabet's Google and Facebook on Wednesday joined a legal challenge by more than 100 tech companies against a decision to end protection for so-called 'Dreamer' immigrants, the companies told Reuters. A legal briefing was filed Wednesday afternoon on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects immigrants brought into the United States illegally as children from deportation and which the Trump administration has decided to scrap. Tech firms argue that such immigrants are vital to the U.S. economy and that ending the program will hit growth. The filing is in support of a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in the Northern District of California, according to the filing. Tech companies signed on to the amicus brief - a supporting document in a case, submitted by interested parties - also included Airbnb, Microsoft Corp, Salesforce.com, Lyft, Uber and Twitter. Becerra filed an additional motion on Wednesday that seeks to put a block on the withdrawal of DACA. That was supported by iPhone maker Apple. "Apple will be harmed significantly if it can no longer benefit from the hard work, creativity, and intelligence of its employees with DACA status," said Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's vice president of people, in a filing supporting the motion. Apple employs more than 250 DACA recipients, the filing said. The lawsuit challenges Trump's September decision to rescind DACA, which was established by former President Barack Obama in 2012. It is set to expire in March. "DACA's rescission will inflict serious harm on U.S. companies, all workers, and the American economy as a whole," the filing reads, according to a draft of the amicus brief provided by one of the companies. A week ago, dozens of tech companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.com and others, formed The Coalition for the American Dream, a group calling for bipartisan legislation this year that would give illegal immigrants a path to permanent residency. Reuters was first to report that the coalition was being formed. About 900,000 immigrants have been shielded from deportation since the DACA program began. Watch: Nokia 2 First Look: The New Budget Nokia Android Phone As in other business fields, Chinas commercial space sector will soon see its price advantage as it eyes to bring down the price of rocket flights to as low as $5,000 per kilogram. Speaking at an aerospace forum in Beijing on Wednesday, Yang Baohua, vice general manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), revealed that the company is ready to provide cheaper and faster low-earth orbit rocket launches. The price could be as low as $5,000 per kilogram and the pre-launch preparation will only need a week. (File photo of Long March-6 rocket. Courtesy of CASC) It will cost $5,000-6,000 for those eyeing sun-synchronous orbit and the preparation period will take about 10 days. For geostationary transfer orbit, the price will stay between $8,000 and $10,000, according to Yang. Meanwhile, CASC might start providing services for sea launches in 2018. It is also seeking opportunities to offer commercial launches at low altitude. On worldwide communication, Yang shared the companys blueprint to set up worldwide mobile broadband service by 2026, which means the deployment of more than 300 satellites in 18 different orbits. (File photo of Long March-11 rocket. Courtesy of CASC) London: In a 67-word statement composed 100 years ago, Britain endorsed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, triggering a process that would culminate in the creation of Israel - and with it one of the world's most intractable conflicts. On Thursday, British and Israeli leaders will commemorate the centenary of that statement, known as the Balfour Declaration after the foreign minister who penned it, with a banquet in the gilded halls of London's Lancaster House mansion. But as Prime Minister Theresa May and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu dine, protesters in London and the Palestinian Territories will gather to demand that Britain acknowledge the suffering they say the declaration has caused to Palestinian people, and recognise their claim to statehood. "The reason it is getting so much attention is because of the conflict which it launched ... is still very much in existence and there is a sense, particularly on the Palestinian side, of continuing injustice," said Ian Black, an academic at the London School of Economics. "It really is an issue which is alive and toxic and bitterly divisive." While Israel reveres Arthur Balfour, naming streets and a Tel Aviv school after him, Palestinians decry his declaration as a promise by Britain to hand over land it did not own. The contested declaration is at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian territorial conflict which, after several wars and decades of international diplomacy, remains unsettled. According to advanced excerpts of her speech, May will say at the banquet: "I believe it (the declaration) demands of us today a renewed resolve to support a lasting peace that is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians and in the interests of us all." Britain held Palestine, which had previously been under Ottoman Turkish rule, from 1922 until after the end of World War Two. Israel declared independence in 1948, at the end of British Mandatory rule and after the U.N. General Assembly voted in 1947 in favour of a plan, rejected by Palestinian representatives, to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The ensuing regional conflict played out over a series of wars fought along Arab-Israeli lines, has left the Palestinians seeking to establish an independent state in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. DELICATE COMMEMORATION Thursday's commemoration, culminating in the dinner hosted by descendants of Balfour and the recipient of his declaration, Jewish community leader Walter Rothschild, requires Britain to strike a delicate diplomatic balance. Britain regards Israel as a close and important ally and supports international efforts to find a peaceful solution that results in separate Israeli and Palestinian states. "I don't think the British are celebrating the commemoration, in fact, I think they're trying quite hard to avoid doing that," said Black, who has written a book to mark the centenary entitled "Enemies and Neighbours". Attempting to strike the right balance, Britain's foreign minister, Boris Johnson, on Monday praised the declaration for helping to create a "great nation", but he also said the spirit of the declaration had not been fully honoured. "The vital caveat in the Balfour Declaration - intended to safeguard other communities - has not been fully realised," he said, referring to a clause in the document which said nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities. Israel has traditionally focused less on that clause and more on the declaration's landmark endorsement of a Jewish homeland and plans to celebrate the anniversary. The Israeli parliament will hold a special commemorative session. Its foreign affairs and defence committee will hold what was described as a "special celebratory meeting" entitled "100 years since the Balfour Declaration, to independence, to becoming a regional superpower". "While the state would not have arisen without settlement, sacrifice and a willingness to fight for it, the international impetus was undoubtedly the Balfour Declaration," Netanyahu told a meeting of his cabinet ahead of his visit to London. Israel does not oppose international efforts to make peace but says - as do international sponsors - that a solution cannot be imposed and should stem from talks between the two parties. Some Arab lawmakers in the Israeli parliament said they would boycott the celebrations, and protests are planned across several days in London by organisations pledging solidarity with the Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas used an article in Britain's Guardian newspaper to reiterate calls for the British government to acknowledge the declaration as a mistake. "The creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another now a deep imbalance between occupier and occupied," he wrote. "The balance must be redressed, and Britain bears a great deal of responsibility in leading the way." Britain has refused previous Palestinian demands for an apology, and does not officially recognise Palestine as a state. Johnson said on Monday Britain would be willing to do so, but wanted to time it to give maximum impetus to peace efforts. "We certainly will do it we want to do it but now is not yet the time," he said. "That on its own will not end the occupation or bring peace." Israel: Prime Minister Theresa May and Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday were preparing to celebrate the centenary of a British declaration that ultimately led to the foundation of the state of Israel. "We are proud of our pioneering role in the creation of the state of Israel," May will say at a dinner in London to mark the date alongside Netanyahu, according to extracts released by her office. May will also warn about a "pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist." On the second day of his five-day visit to Britain, Netanyahu was set to meet with May in her Downing Street office and hold talks with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, including on the Iran nuclear agreement. The dinner will be attended by dignitaries including a descendant of the Balfour Declaration's author, then foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour who called for "a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration is seen as a precursor to Israel's creation in 1948 and the anniversary is a joyous occasion for Israelis but is contentious for many Palestinians who say it led to hundreds of thousands fleeing or being forced from their homes. Speaking ahead of his departure for London, Netanyahu said: "The Palestinians say that the Balfour Declaration was a tragedy. It wasn't a tragedy. "What's been tragic is their refusal to accept this 100 years later. I hope they change their mind, because if they do they can move forward finally to making peace between our two peoples," he said. At the dinner, May is also set to call for "a renewed resolve to support a lasting peace that is in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians -- and in the interests of us all. "A peace deal that must be based on a two-state solution, with a secure and prosperous Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state." Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour main opposition, will not attend the dinner due to "other engagements" and is sending foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry instead, the party said. Labour has been embroiled in a number of rows over anti-Semitism under his leadership, and Corbyn himself has in the past come under fire for meeting representatives of Hezbollah and Hamas. London: British Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to appoint a new defence minister on Thursday after her ally Michael Fallon quit in a sexual harassment scandal that has prompted calls for an end to the "locker room" culture in parliament. Just hours after Fallon resigned over past behaviour he said had fallen "below the high standards we require of the armed forces", May appointed Gavin Williamson, 41, a rising star in her ruling Conservative Party. Weakened after losing her parliamentary majority in a June election that many Conservatives blame on her, May had to move swiftly. The growing harassment scandal threatens to undermine her further if other allegations against Conservatives, including against her deputy Damian Green, force more resignations. Williamson has risen quickly up the ranks of the Conservatives and May selected him last year as the party's chief whip in parliament - a role in which he is tasked with maintaining voting discipline on legislation. As chief whip, Williamson was renowned for his toughness and for introducing lawmakers to his pet tarantula Cronus, named after the god of time who swallowed each of his children according to Greek mythology. But he has no former experience of the armed forces, according to his online profile, and some Conservative lawmakers openly questioned the appointment. Sarah Wollaston writing on Twitter: "There are times when offered a job that it would be better to advise that another would be more experienced and suited to the role." SCANDAL Williamson said nothing as he arrived at the Ministry of Defence on Thursday, taking on the role at a difficult time for May, who since June's election is dependent on the support of a small Northern Irish party for a majority in parliament. Fallon's resignation after he apologised for repeatedly touching a female radio presenter's knee in 2002, was yet another blow. Described by Conservative sources as a political "Rottweiler", Fallon was a trusted minister able to robustly face down criticism of the government. Britain's parliament is the latest institution to become embroiled in a sex scandal after abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein prompted thousands of women and men to share stories about improper behaviour. Ruth Davidson, leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, said it was time to break with a culture in politics where powerful people "use positions of power to demand things from others". "The dam has broken on this now, and these male-dominated professions where the boys-own locker room culture has prevailed and it's all been a bit of a laugh, have got to stop," she told the BBC. Allegations of sexual abuse have ranged from a charge of rape by an activist in the opposition Labour Party by a senior party member, to unconfirmed details of serial "sex pests" on a list reportedly drafted by aides and researchers in parliament. May has ordered investigations into a report that one of her ministers asked a female secretary to buy sex toys and an allegation that her deputy, Green, made an inappropriate sexual advance on a young woman - something he denies. Washington: The hackers who upended the US presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting Russian opposition figures, US defence contractors and others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe - from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. "It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence." The AP findings draw on a database of 19,000 malicious links collected by cybersecurity firm SecureWorks, dozens of rogue emails, and interviews with more than 100 hacking targets. SecureWorks stumbled upon the data after a hacking group known as Fancy Bear accidentally exposed part of its phishing operation to the internet. The list revealed a direct line between the hackers and the leaks that rocked the presidential contest in its final stages, most notably the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The issue of who hacked the Democrats is back in the national spotlight following the revelation Monday that a Donald Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, was briefed early last year that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of emails." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the notion that Russia interfered "unfounded." But the list examined by AP provides powerful evidence that the Kremlin did just that. "This is the Kremlin and the general staff," said Andras Racz, a specialist in Russian security policy at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary, as he examined the data. "I have no doubts." SecureWorks' list covers the period between March 2015 and May 2016. Most of the identified targets were in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria. In the United States, which was Russia's Cold War rival, Fancy Bear tried to pry open at least 573 inboxes belonging to those in the top echelons of the country's diplomatic and security services: then-Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-NATO Supreme Commander, US Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, and one of his predecessors, US Army Gen. Wesley Clark. The list skewed toward workers for defence contractors such as Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin or senior intelligence figures, prominent Russia watchers and - especially - Democrats. More than 130 party workers, campaign staffers and supporters of the party were targeted, including Podesta and other members of Clinton's inner circle. Sittwe: Myanmar's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, visited areas hit by conflict in the western state of Rakhine on Thursday for the first time since attacks by militants from the Rohingya Muslim minority two months ago sparked a refugee crisis. A Reuters reporter saw Suu Kyi board a military helicopter at Sittwe, the Rakhine state capital, at about 9 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Thursday. Spokesman Zaw Htay told Reuters she was visiting the troubled border district of Maungdaw, where more than 600,000 members of the stateless Rohingya group have crossed into Bangladesh since Aug. 25. "She will go to Maungdaw and I cannot give any more details," he said. Suu Kyi had not previously visited Rakhine state since assuming power last year after a landslide 2015 election victory. The majority of residents in Maungdaw were Muslims until the recent crisis. Myanmar has been stung by international criticism and accusations of ethnic cleansing, which it rejects, for the way its security forces responded to attacks by Rohingya militants on 30 security posts. Suu Kyi was accompanied on Thursday by about 20 people travelling in two military helicopters, including state officials and military and police officers, according to the Reuters reporter. Businessman Zaw Zaw, formally sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury was also with the Nobel Laureate. Suu Kyi launched an initiative last month to assist rehabilitation and resettlement in Rakhine and has called for tycoons to contribute to the project. She has pledged that refugees who can prove they were residents of Myanmar will be allowed to return, but thousands of people have continued to arrive in Bangladesh as recently as last night. Talks with Bangladesh have yet to lead to an agreement on a repatriation process made more complex because the Rohingya have long been denied citizenship in Myanmar. Karachi: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Pakistan's celebrated Oscar-winning filmmaker, has defended her tweets after they sparked off a debate in the social media on what constitutes "harassment". Chinoy, a two-times Oscar-winner for her documentary /biographical films, was trolled when on October 23 she tweeted that her sister's doctor at the Aga Khan University Hospital harassed her by using her personal details to send her a Facebook friend's request after the treatment. She was criticised for a particular tweet where she said, "Unfortunately the doctor messed with the wrong women in the wrong family and I will definitely report him! Harassment has 2 stop! (sic)" Many on social media brutally criticised the director for overreacting and accused her of being an elitist even though some defended her. Chinoy later clarified that though she may have used strong words, what happened to her sister was harassment and a breach of patient-doctor privilege. "My recent tweets about a doctor's inappropriate behaviour has drawn much criticism and controversy. The conversation has unfortunately steered far from the safety of women, unchecked unethical practices, and harassment. Some of the words I used in anger have disappointed people and I agree that they were poorly chosen in a time of heated emotion. My words and heated sentiment seem to have drawn away from the real issues at hand," she said in a statement posted on her Twitter page. She said her tweet about the "wrong women in the wrong family" was not meant to suggest a sense of privilege or power but to say that women in her family were strong and always stood up for themselves. "It was not meant to suggest a sense of privilege or power," she added. The director said the doctor in the case was on call that night in an emergency ward and a stranger to her and her sister "with whom no conversation other than medical was had, was trusted with medical access to a very private examination in the ward". "Following this examination, he chose to seek out the patient on social media leaving comments on photographs & trying to add her as a Facebook friend." Chinoy said that people may disagree with the way she called out the doctor's behaviour and debate the boundaries of social media but in her eyes it was a "breach of trust and a severe lack of professional code of conduct" and she would not stay silent on the topic. The director won the Oscar award in 2012 for her documentary, "Saving Face" and then in 2016 for her biographical "A Girl in the river". Most of her work has focused on inequality with women in Pakistan and she has been often accused of defaming the country with her work by hardliners. One private hospital even stepped in to offer the doctor, who was reportedly fired for his conduct, a job on the same pay scale. Thorton, Colorado: Police in Colorado on Thursday captured a man who they had said calmly walked into a suburban Denver Walmart and fatally shot three people before driving away. The Thornton Police Department said on Twitter that Scott Ostrem, 47, had been taken into custody. It did not immediately give details. Authorities had earlier released a surveillance camera photograph of a middle-aged white man wearing a black jacket and blue jeans. They also published a photo of the red four-door hatchback he is believed to have fled in. Ostrem "nonchalantly" entered the store in Thornton, about 10 miles (16 km) northeast of downtown Denver, and opened fire on shoppers and employees a little after 6 p.m. time, police said, citing witness accounts. Two men were killed in the shooting and a woman who was shot was taken to a hospital where she died, according to police. Vatican City: Pope Francis condemned on Wednesday recent deadly attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and New York, saying militants were abusing the name of God to justify their violence. "I am profoundly saddened by the terrorist attacks in these recent days in Somalia, Afghanistan and yesterday in New York," the pope said in an address to mark All Saints Day, adding that he was praying for the victims and their families. "We ask God to convert the hearts of terrorists and free the world of hatred and of mad murder that abuses the name of God to disseminate death," he said to Roman Catholic faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. A man driving a truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists in New York on Tuesday, killing eight people. CNN and other U.S. media said the attacker had left a note claiming allegiance to Islamic State and that he had shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - when he jumped out of his truck. Also on Tuesday, as many as eight people were killed by a suicide bomber in the Afghan capital, Kabul. It was the latest of a string of attacks in Afghanistan last month, including one on a Shi'ite mosque that killed more than 50 people. On Sunday, at least 29 people died in an Islamist attack on a hotel in the Somali capital, Mogadishu. The assault came two weeks after two bombings in the city killed more than 350 people. Pope Francis has repeatedly condemned Islamist militants in recent years, saying followers of religions who carry out acts of fundamentalism or terrorism are profaning Gods name. Pushed by a lack of jobs and strict control of behaviour and dissent, millions of Uzbeks have emigrated in recent years. Hundreds of those joined Islamic State in the Middle East, while others turned to religious extremism in their host countries. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in a truck attack in New York on Tuesday, appears to have taken the latter path, becoming radicalised after struggling with life in the West. According to US police, the 29-year-old followed online instructions from Islamic State before launching the assault. Saipov's was at least the fourth deadly attack abroad by an Uzbek national or ethnic Uzbek this year, and his actions have highlighted the outsized influence the Central Asian state of 32 million people has had on global jihad in recent months. "These things take time to prepare and what we're seeing today is a result of work that has been done over the last few years (by Islamic State and similar groups)," said Kazakhstan-based Central Asia analyst Alexander Knyazev. People who follow Uzbekistan closely say that, based on what is known so far of Saipov, he appears to be one of "a forgotten generation" of Uzbek men who left the former Soviet republic for a better life bereft of a proper religious education and unequipped to navigate the West. That and the common difficulty of assimilating into a foreign country and culture may have left him susceptible to extremist influences when times got tough. "He became religious on the spur of the moment," Mirrakhmat Muminov, a truck driver and Uzbek community activist who lives in Stow, Ohio, and knew Saipov, told Reuters by telephone. He said Saipov had previously lived in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. "He started studying religion in the United States," said Muminov, adding that Saipov "couldn't get enough" of the religious freedoms enjoyed in the United States after living in the strict confines of Uzbekistan. Islam is widely practised in predominately Muslim Uzbekistan, but worship is tightly controlled by a government wary of radicalism. Ruled with an iron fist for more than two decades by former Communist Party boss Islam Karimov, who died last year, Uzbekistan has long said its tough religion policy is justified by national security concerns. Under his successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who took office at the end of 2016, the authorities have started to signal a more tolerant approach, and there are hopes that economic reforms will begin to free up the command economy. Mirziyoyev said in September that Uzbekistan had removed about 16,000 people from a 17,000-strong security blacklist of potential Muslim religious extremists and wanted "to bring them into our society and educate them." Whether such changes reduce the risk of flight or radicalisation remains to be seen, and come too late for Saipov and others. Many Uzbeks have fled only to later despair of becoming bottom dollar labourers or unemployed in the West or Russia. It is at that point that some have turned to radical Islam. VOLATILE REGION Speaking from Tashkent, Steve Swerdlow, a researcher for Human Rights Watch in Central Asia, said around 5 million Uzbeks had emigrated to Russia in recent years, with others like Saipov trying their luck in the West. "The radicalisation process takes place outside Uzbekistan," said Swerdlow, who added that the country has one of the worst human rights records in the world and does not tolerate dissent. "They are often individuals who are far from home, who are marginalised and who are experiencing some kind of dislocation from their community and social network." With security inside the country, part of the Soviet Union until the bloc collapsed in 1991, so tight, it is not thought to have suffered an Islamist attack since 2004 when suicide bombers attacked the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent. Yet deadly ethnic tensions occasionally flare up in the Ferghana Valley, a fertile region spanning areas of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In 2010, dozens of people were killed in ethnic clashes in the Kyrgyz part of the Valley. A security source in Kyrgyzstan told Reuters that Saipov had also lived there, receiving temporary identity papers in the town of Uzgen, in the Ferghana Valley, in 2004. A statement from Uzbekistan's U.S. embassy said Saipov moved to America in 2010 having won a green card visa lottery. Mirziyoyev said his government would do all it could to help investigate the "extremely brutal" attack. FOURTH UZBEK-LINKED ATTACK THIS YEAR Before this week's attack, an Uzbek gunman burst into a nightclub in the Turkish city of Istanbul and killed 39 people on New Year's Day. In April, an ethnic Uzbek man born in Kyrgyzstan blew up a metro train in the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing at least 14 people, and the same month an Uzbek man rammed a truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four people. Uzbek men have also swollen the ranks of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. According to a report from the Soufan Center last month, more than 1,500 Uzbeks have joined the extremist group in the Middle East, the highest number of all five Central Asian countries, all of which have provided recruits. The number of fighters from Uzbekistan is smaller than that for countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia, the same report showed, but still remains statistically significant. Paul Stronski, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank, and former National Security Council staffer during the Obama administration, said radicalism among migrants from Uzbekistan, the most populous country in Central Asia with a long border with Afghanistan, could grow as more people leave to find work. "We haven't seen many extremist problems in Uzbekistan because of the lack of space and the fact that it's all been pushed underground," Stronski said. "The problem is manageable in the region. It's becoming a bigger problem outside the region." London: British defence minister Michael Fallon quit on Wednesday saying his conduct had fallen below the high standards demanded of his position, the first resignation in a sexual harassment scandal in parliament. Prime Minister Theresa May, weakened after losing her parliamentary majority in a June election, loses a loyalist at a time when she is trying to break a deadlock in talks to leave the European Union. Fallon was described by sources in her ruling Conservative Party as a political "Rottweiler". He was the first high-profile resignation after a growing number of allegations of inappropriate behaviour have been made against ministers and lawmakers, fuelled by sex abuse allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein. Fallon apologised earlier this week for touching a radio presenter's knee in 2002 - something the woman in question described on social media as "mildly amusing". In his letter of resignation to May, he said there had been many allegations about lawmakers in recent days, including "some about my previous conduct". "Many of these have been false but I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," he said. "I have reflected on my position and I am therefore resigning as defence secretary." May replied in a letter saying she appreciated "the characteristically serious manner" in which Fallon had considered his position and "the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others". Local media said his replacement would be announced on Thursday. A spokesman said it would not happen on Wednesday. The growing scandal could damage May if there are further allegations against members of her party as it relies on a small Northern Irish party for a majority in parliament. Allegations of sexual abuse have ranged from a charge of rape by an activist in the opposition Labour Party by a senior party member, to unconfirmed details of serial "sex pests" on a list reportedly drafted by aides and researchers in parliament. On Monday, May sat beside the leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom as she set out the government's plans to tackle sexual harassment, including measures to enforce a code of conduct and to set up an independent grievance procedure. May has ordered investigations into a report that one of her ministers asked a female secretary to buy sex toys and an allegation her deputy, Damian Green, made an inappropriate sexual advance on a young woman - something he denies. The prime minister, who has long championed the careers of female lawmakers, said on Wednesday that action would be taken when there were allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct. "I am very clear that we will take action against those where there are allegations that we see, and the evidence is there, that there has been misconduct," May told lawmakers. He said that personally, there was a sense of loss. I have been boarding this train for the past two years and today it feels like the foundation for these Jamalpur employees has slipped away from under their feet. (Image: ETV) Xi Jinping delivered an important report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 18, which will guide the Party and the nation for the next five years and beyond. One thing that stood out was that China had entered a new era. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has crossed the threshold into a new era, Xi said. The reason why this is a new era is because China has made remarkable achievements. China has become a global leader in terms of economic and technological strength, defense capabilities, and comprehensive national strength. China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty since the launch of reform and opening up some 40 years ago, and the goal of building a moderately prosperous society is well within reach. In less than 70 years, the Peoples Republic of China has stood up, grown rich, and become strong. The start of a new era indicates that a more confident and aspirant China will begin to embark on a new journey from a fresh starting point. But the judgment is also grounded on the evolution of the main contradiction facing Chinese society. In this new era, the Party aims to solve the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the peoples ever-growing needs for a better life by adopting a more comprehensive and balanced development approach. Xi outlined two stages for national modernization. In the first stage from 2020 to 2035, the Party will build on the foundation created by the moderately prosperous society with a further 15 years of hard work to basically realize socialist modernization. In the second stage from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century, the Party will 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. Chinas entry into a new era is also why all eyes are on Beijing. As Xi pointed out, No country can alone address the challenges facing the world today. To build a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation at the core, Xi said that China will hold high the banner of peace, development, and win-win cooperation, maintain world peace and promote common development, and develop friendly cooperation with all countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. China's rise should be seen as a huge opportunity rather than a challenge. China is committed to promoting an open economy and free trade, and in the process, the world will be introduced to more Chinese solutions for global problems. China is a rising tide that is lifting all boats. In many ways, China's future is the world's future. A new era for China is here and why it matters The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) an employees representative body says it has lost 300 000 of its 400 000 membership due to the economic collapse which has caused massive job losses in the formal sector. Peter Mutasa, the Unions president, told the Daily News yesterday that company closures in the past two decades had dealt a huge blow on them and their membership. ZCTU membership is made up of the formally employed. ZCTU had a membership of 400 000 in 1990s but our membership is now around... 100 000. This reflects the effects of company closures and wave of job losses, Mutasa said. We are in a deep crisis as a country. We are all suffering as workers in Zimbabwe, he said, adding that workers in the formal sector are working in difficult conditions some of them are not getting their salaries. He said only 5,5 percent of economically active people are currently employed in the formal sector. Despite the drastic loss of membership, he said: We still control the some sectors. Mutasa added that they were going to join vendors and other informal sector players in planning a mass protest against the economic decay. ...we are still consulting with all sectors of the economy. ZCTU was formed in February 1981, bringing together 52 unions that had existed separately. At the time, unionists that were closely associated with the ruling Zanu PF party took over the reins of the labour movement. Thus, during the first five years of independence, the relationship between Zanu PF and by extension, government and the ZCTU was largely paternalistic. It was only after the collapse of the then executive of the ZCTU, and its second congress held in 1985 that a more independent leadership, largely drawn from the larger and more professionally run unions that the relationship between the ruling party and the ZCTU was reduced to arms-length. Daily News How Much Is 'Hand of God' Ball Worth? We'll Soon Know A rental home near a New York college campus became a house of horrors for fraternity pledges who were vomited on, doused in urine, and forced to eat foods that sickened them, authorities said Wednesday. The AP reports more details of the allegations against Pi Alpha Nu emerged in documents filed in court in the case against 21 State University of New York students charged with hazing. The abuse endured by 10 pledges was carried out inside the frat house located near the campus of SUNY Plattsburgh. The victims told authorities how the fraternity brothers subjected the pledges to hazing that also included repeated paddling on the buttocks and being forced to eat food off the floor. According to court documents, a 19-year-old student told campus police that while being paddled, "One of the brothers hit me so hard that my knees buckled and I had to be held up." He also said pledges were forced to drink alcohol and other liquids and eat foods that would make them throw up, including condiments, raw sardines, clam juice, and chewing tobacco. Another pledge told authorities that during "hell week" last February the pledges were made to get down on the floor in a plank position while some frat members vomited on the students and others tossed cups of urine on them. College officials have suspended the fraternity as authorities continue their investigation. Nine of the 21 students charged were arraigned Wednesday, and all pleaded not guilty, including 21-year-old frat president Evan Floreck. (Read more hazing stories.) A nomadic American couple and their two young children were found alive Wednesday, three days after they went missing in an attack by river pirates in Brazil. Police say Adam and Emily Harteau and their daughters, 6-year-old Colette and 3-year-old Sierra, were passengers on a ferry from the Amazon gateway city of Belem to Macapa that was attacked by pirates on Sunday, ABC reports. Police say the pirates held the crew and passengers hostage for hours and there was no sign of the family after they left. The Harteaus were rescued Wednesday by a villager who spotted them floating on a piece of driftwood in the river, police say. They were unharmed apart from scratches and insect bites. It's not clear how the family escaped the pirates, though Emily Harteau's father, Warren Brandle, tells the Wall Street Journal that he has seen a report that they jumped out of a boat with their surfboards and rode currents to safety. He adds that such an escape wouldn't surprise him because his son-in-law is a "build-a-fire-out-of-sticks kind of guy." The couple, who documented their travels on the "Our Open Road" blog, left California in 2012 intending to spend a year traveling South America in their Volkswagen van, but ended up making it a much longer journey. Adam Harteau's brother, Keith Harteau, tells the AP that the family was planning to move back to California later this month so the girls could grow up close to relatives and "have a little bit of foundation." (River pirates killed a British traveler in the same Amazon region in September.) The divisiveand sometimes bizarreFacebook ads bought by Russian operatives were on display Wednesday as Facebook, Google, and Twitter execs appeared before congressional panels for a second day. The House Intelligence Committee released the ads, a wide selection of which can be seen here, in what it said was an effort to show just how hard the Kremlin had tried to polarize American voters before and after last year's election. The ads purchased by Russia's Internet Research Agency targeted Clinton, Trump, and Sanders voters as people on both sides of issues like the police violence and Black Lives Matter controversy. One ad posted the day before the election told Texans to be ready to secede if "Killary Rotten Clinton" won. "My concern is that a dictator like Vladimir Putin abused flaws in our social media platforms to inject the worst kind of identity politics into the voting decisions of at least 100 million Americans," said Democratic Rep. Andre Carson, per the New York Times. Facebook execs said the ads reached almost 150 million users, more than previously disclosed. Facebook reported very strong quarterly earnings Wednesday, though Mark Zuckerberg warned that moves to boost security could cut into future profits, USA Today reports. "We're bringing the same intensity to these security issues that we've brought to any adversary or challenge we've faced," he said. "I'm dead serious about this." The company says it plans to double the number of security personnel to 20,000. "What they did is wrong and we're not going to stand for it," Zuckerberg said. (Read more Facebook stories.) After years of public controversy and debate, work is finally beginning Thursday on a massive memorial to President Dwight Eisenhower. A groundbreaking ceremony will mark the start of the project, which has been plagued for years by a bitter running fight over the memorial's design and aesthetics, the AP reports. Famed architect Frank Gehry, who designed the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was commissioned to design the memorial. However, Gehry's original plan was strongly opposed by three of Eisenhower's grandchildren and the organizing commission was hit by multiple resignations. Gehry's vision would transform a four-acre space on Independence Avenue in Washington, DC. Plans call for a series of columns and multiple statues depicting the 34th president and World War II military commander at various stages of his life and career. An enormous woven metal tapestry will depict the French beach at Normandy, where Eisenhower's troops launched the D-Day invasion. The Republican, who was elected president in 1952 and served two terms, died in 1969. Gehry's original plans called for a heavier emphasis on Eisenhower's childhood in Abilene, Kansas. When the memorial is completed, Eisenhower will join an elite club. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt also have prominent memorials in the nation's capital. (Read more Dwight Eisenhower stories.) Kevonna Stevens graduated as valedictorian of her class and became the first of her family to head to college, thanks in part to teacher Jason Boll, who helped her apply. Now Boll is stepping up for Stevens again, in an even bigger way. The 18-year-old told the Pittsburgh teacher in October that while she was getting good grades, she might not be able to afford to stay in college at Philadelphia's Temple University, Boll's alma mater. With Stevens' OK, Boll started a GoFundMe campaign that passed its $7,500 fundraising goal in just about a week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Boll closed the fundraiser when $8,500 had been raised, since that covers what Stevens needs for the rest of the school year, but he encourages backers to share any scholarships or other financial assistance they knew of for students. Stevens lived in Las Vegas, North Carolina, and New York before arriving in Pittsburgh her freshman year of high school; she moved multiple times even once she'd settled there, including when her father moved across the country after her parents split up, and then after the family home burned down. None of this seemed to faze her, Boll wrote on the GoFundMe page. She got a job to pay for bus fare, and "she would get on a bus for an hour each day, traverse the city in time to arrive at [school] by 7:11 for first period. She kept smiling, kept being a good friend to her classmates, and kept getting good grades," Boll tells the Post-Gazette. When he heard about her financial troubles, he says, "I thought, there's no way that this is the end of the story." Most of Stevens' college costs are covered with grants, student loans, and scholarships, but a housing mix-up led to the financial issue. (Read more uplifting news stories.) Allowing a condemned killer with health problems to partially sit up during his execution next month would be a "reasonable" accommodation, according to a doctor working for Ohio's prison system. Death row inmate Alva Campbelldescribed by a Franklin County prosecutor as "the poster child for the death penalty"became mildly agitated when officials tried lowering him to a normal execution position in an Oct. 19 test, according to a medical review by Dr. James McWeeney, per the AP. McWeeney noted there were no objective findings such as increased pulse rate or breathing to corroborate Campbell's anxiety. But he said he supported "a semi-recumbent position" for Campbell given his apparent agitation and "underlying pulmonary and mental health disorders." Campbell's attorneys also say he uses a walker, relies on an external colostomy bag, requires four breathing treatments a day and may have lung cancer. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said it "has taken Campbell's medical conditions under consideration for planning of possible accommodations for his execution." Campbell, 69, is scheduled to die Nov. 15 for fatally shooting 18-year-old Charles Dials during a 1997 carjacking. Paroled in 1992 after serving 20 years for killing a man in a Cleveland bar, Campbell overpowered a Franklin County sheriff's deputy on the way to a 1997 court hearing for armed robbery charges and took the deputy's gun. He then carjacked Dials before shooting him twice in the head, according to court records. (Read more death row stories.) "If you know someone who has lost a house, let me know," a Canadian man wrote on Facebook this week after stumbling upon a complete house in the middle of his property. His plea worked. Patrick Maze tells the CBC he was driving past a section of his property near Pilot Butte, Sask., on Oct. 26 when he noticedit was hard not to noticea gray dwelling on a trailer parked in the middle of a field Maze rents to a local farmer. "I assumed that it was just to be left overnight and they would come back right away," he says. But when the house remained days later, Maze turned to Facebook for help in tracking down its owner. "That's my house," Brenda Robertson responded after his post, which included several photos, was shared nearly 300 times, per Metro. Robertson, who lives roughly 30 miles from Pilot Butte in Lumsden, went on to explain there had been issues in the delivery of her new house from neighboring Manitoba. Though the home had reached Saskatchewan, Robertson was told it had to be taken back across province lines in order to have permits reissued"so it's quite a surprise to see my house on your land," she wrote. Robertson says she has since learned the house mover was instructed to leave the house behind and tried but failed to contact Maze and his neighbors. Maze now says the home is expected to leave his property Thursday. And though he joked that he might be able to keep it "under 'finders-keepers' laws," he says its departure will bring a "happy ending." (A Canadian couple accused neighbors of copying their house.) After President Trump refused to recertify Iran's compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it was a "waste [of] time to respond to the rants and whoppers of the foul-throated president of the United States." But the country's supreme leader had more to say in response Thursday, when he declared America "the number one enemy of our nation," Reuters reports. "The American president's foolish remarks against our people show the depth of America's hostility towards the entire Iranian nation," he said in a televised speech. "We will never accept their bullying over the nuclear deal ... Americans are using all the wickedness to damage the result of the nuclear talks." The US is the only one of the signatories of the multinational nuclear deal refusing to recertify, and the UN on Sunday confirmed Iran is still adhering to the deal, which lifted most sanctions in exchange for Tehran cutting back on its development of its nuclear program. The other signatories say even withdrawal by the USwhich is up to Congresswould not cancel the international accord, but Iran has warned of consequences if the deal does crumble. "Any retreat by Iran will make America more blatant and impudent," Khamenei said Thursday. "Resistance is the only option." His speech comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for the deal during a visit to Iran, the AP reports. Khamenei told Putin during that visit that Iran and Russia must work together toward Middle East stability and isolate the US, Reuters reports. (Read more Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stories.) President Trump sent out a midnight tweet calling for the New York City truck suspect to face the death penalty, and he doubled down Thursday morning. "Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" he wrote. Trump added that while he'd like to see Sayfullo Saipov sent to Guantanamo Bay, it might be more efficient and more fitting to keep "him in the home of the horrible crime he committed." But could the presidential tweets actually help Saipov's defense? The New York Times reports that Trump's public push for the death penalty could "haunt prosecutors," because Saipov's legal team could argue that it's now impossible to get a fair trial. The Washington Post has a similar take, observing that Trump's tweet "deviated from an unwritten rule that presidents shouldnt express themselves on the outcome of pending criminal cases." The story notes that another Trump sentiment is factoring into the case of Bowe Bergdahl, now awaiting sentencing for abandoning his military post in Afghanistan. Trump as a candidate called Bergdahl a "traitor," and while the presiding judge rejected a request to dismiss the case, he said he would take Trump's statements into account when doling out Bergdahl's sentence. (Read more New York City terror attack stories.) To say that it was an indulgent purchase would be an understatement: A Chinese millionaire paid a record $10,050 for a shot of 1878 Macallan single malt scotch in Julyexcept it turns out the alcohol was all of 40 years old. Eyebrows were raised about the veracity of Zhang Wei's purchase after photos were posted online of Zhang posing with the bottle and the manager of the Waldhaus Am See hotel; the Swiss hotel's Devil's Place whisky bar has a 2,500-bottle collection. The prime condition of the vintage bottle, and the wording on the label didn't add up, said doubters. They were right. The BBC reports a series of lab tests were performed and returned all-around negative results. University of Oxford researchers carbon dated the sample and say there's a 95% probability it was produced between 1970 and 1972. And it's not even a single malt, as testing by alcohol analysts Tatlock and Thomson found it was a blend of 60% malt and 40% grain. Manager Sandro Bernasconi tells the Scotsman, "The result has been a big shock to the system, and we are delighted to have repaid our customer in full as a gesture of goodwill." The repayment was done in what's likely the most expensive way possible: SwissInfo.ch reports Bernasconi flew to Beijing to apologize and reimburse Zhang. The Daily Meal suspects the bottle is one of a batch of fakes that were so convincing Macallan actually purchased 100 such bottles in 2002. As for the story behind the man who felt comfortable paying so much for a nip of Scotch, he's a 36-year-old writer of online fantasy novels who reportedly made $16.8 million in 2015. (Here's why water improves whisky.) Donna Brazile, former head of the Democratic National Committee, made headlines Thursday when she accused the Clinton campaign and DNC of "unethical" behavior and "rigging" the primary in favor of Hillary Clinton. While not containing much new, provable information, Brazile's allegation is equivalent to "taking the smoldering embers of the 2016 primary and throwing some gasoline on them," Aaron Blake writes for the Washington Post. He says the allegations "could lead to some further soul-searching and even bloodletting in the Democratic Party" and could ruin the tenuous unity the Democrats built up in the face of the Trump presidency. Here's what else you need to know about Brazile's bombshell: New York disagrees, stating Brazile's account is "remarkable ... for the substance of its allegations and the melodramatic tenor of its prose." It argues one of the big takeaways is that Brazile believes the future of the Democratic Party is with Bernie Sanders and that she may be positioning herself for a role with the Sanders 2020 campaign. The Atlantic is more skeptical of Brazile but concurs that her going public is one more sign that Sanders is the unofficial leader of the Democratic Party despite signs from Clinton that she wants to stay involved in the political arena. Brazile's allegations show the Democrats need to have the same "war" they've been watching Republicans fight publicly since the arrival of Donald Trump, the National Review states, adding: "it cannot truly begin until they take off their rose-colored glasses and see clearly for the first time the candidate they presented to America." That war is surely coming, Susan Glasser wrote for the New Yorker a day before Brazile's allegations, but with Trump in office "it's no surprise that the brewing fight over the Democratic Party's future gets so little airtime." She says she hasn't "talked with a single Democrat or independent analyst who doesnt think that the Party remains in serious danger of another electoral catastrophe." Meanwhile, Splinter states the only surprising thing about Brazile's allegations is that a longtime Democratic Party fixture is "finally selling off her worthless stock in Hillary Clinton once and for all." It's something that "would have been unthinkable just two years ago." And Red State is using the allegations to accuse the Clinton campaign of violating campaign finance laws and money laundering, "sort of like the way old-time Mafia guys would 'buy' a restaurant and milk it dry by skimming off cash." Finally, current DNC head Tom Perez says he's not discussing the allegations made by his predecessor. "We're moving forward," Real Clear Politics quotes Perez as saying. "One of my goals here as DNC chair is to make sure that the nomination process for 2020 is a process that is totally fair and transparent for everybody." (Read more Donna Brazile stories.) Sorry! This content is not available in your region ABC(NEW YORK) -- A 17-year-old who was injured in the deadly terrorist attack Tuesday in lower Manhattan went to school the next day because he was working on 100 percent perfect attendance," New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina said. The teen was on a school bus when it was struck by the suspect's truck just across from Stuyvesant High School. The collision left the school bus mangled. Another student on that school bus, a 14-year-old girl, was injured, suffering a fractured hip, internal bleeding and a laceration to the liver. Two adults on the bus were also injured. The teen, Noah Salz, and his parents spoke to New York ABC station WABC on Thursday and he said he remembered the whole crash and ensuing chaos. "I heard a loud crash sound and the bus matron landed right on me," said Noah. His father, David, works in 7 World Trade Center and went to New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital to pick up his son, knowing nothing of the attack at the time. "I was able to call Noah and was able to talk to him briefly, and then I saw him on a stretcher on Channel 7, so that was a real odd moment," said David, who was in the hospital waiting room at the time. "It lasted long enough, he was on a stretcher, and he seemed OK." Eight people were killed and 12 others were injured in the attack, which started when the suspect mowed people down on a bike path. A police officer shot and injured the suspect, ending the threat. Farina said she talked to the injured 17-year-old who returned to school. He told her, I told myself Im going to be fine because a lot of people want to help me. When asked by WABC why he wanted to return the next day, Salz offered a simple answer. "Because I wanted to go, because I wasn't hurt and I wasn't injured," Noah said. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio visited Thursday morning with students and school officials at Stuyvesant High School, including a teacher who was on the bike path at the time of the attack. That teacher was injured but still went to work the following day, the mayor said. After the incident, the students at Stuyvesant High School thought it was "their duty to be back" at school to mourn those who were lost and to show that terror would not stop us," de Blasio said. The mayor said it "very moving" to hear teenagers think about their responsibility to respond to an act of terrorism. De Blasio, who spoke to the media this morning after visiting the school, told reporters that everyone at the school "handled a very tough situation exceptionally well." "The training and preparation worked," he said of the school security protocols. "They called the alert immediately to shelter in place and students could tell it was not a drill. ... No one stopped and questioned. De Blasio said while the school was on lockdown, "students of all backgrounds, every nationality, every faith," were checking on each other and supporting each other. De Blasio said students told him they had great faith that all the adults in the building were protecting them. Overall, the solidarity in the school was very evident, the mayor said. "Everyone had each others backs and they knew they had to be there for each other," de Blasio said. "And no one, no one, expressed to us a sense of fear or insecurity. They simply were resolute. And it was very very admirable." The man suspected of plowing into the victims is 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov. He allegedly was inspired by ISIS videos he watched on his cellphone, according to the criminal complaint against him. Saipov was charged Wednesday with providing support to ISIS and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Copyright 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. (Xinhua) 15:54, November 02, 2017 WUHAN, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- A freight train loaded with car engines produced in China left Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, bound for Dourges in FranceThursday. The 3,432 engines made by China's Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Company were ordered by French car manufacturer, Groupe PSA. The engines were transported via the new direct China-Europe freight train route opened on Oct. 28. The train will pass through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, reducing the transport time to France by nearly 20 days compared with ocean shipping. The journey will take about 18 days. The freight train is scheduled to send the engines to France every week until March 2018. About 16 Wuhan-Europe freight routes have been launched since 2012, linking Wuhan with more than 60 cities in Europe, Central Asia and West Asia. As of Oct. 20, 277 trains carrying a total of 25,000 containers had travelled the route this year. U.S. President Donald Trumps first state visit to China is an historic opportunity to boost cooperation between the worlds two largest economies, and a chance to tackle the problems that dampen bilateral ties, said experts. The state visit comes at a time when the two nations relationship is solid and stable. Despite Trumps unpredictable China policies and some possible conflicts on the trade and economic front, the future of the relationship is bright, as stable bilateral ties are crucial for their development, Lu Jinyong, a professor at Foreign Trade University, told Peoples Daily Online during a conference held by the Center for China & Globalization (CCG), a leading think tank in China, on Thursday. Lus remarks come ahead of Trumps Nov. 8-9 visit to China, which many experts believe will mainly focus on security issues and energy cooperation, as well as seeking approaches to reduce friction on the trade imbalance and intellectual property rights. According to Xinhua News Agency, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump will also exchange in-depth views on China-U.S. relations, as well as major global and regional issues of common concern. Major concern in trade and security issues Competition between China and U.S. in the security sphere is getting fiercer. U.S. authorities are worried about Chinas fast development in this sphere, as the latters military force is now experiencing major changes regarding strategic guiding thoughts and military technologies, said Teng Jianqun, director of the Department of U.S Studies at the China Institute of International Studies. Chinese President Xi Jinping in October called for fully transforming the peoples armed forces into a world-class military by the mid-21st century, adding that by the year 2020, mechanization will be basically achieved, and the modernization of national defense and the armed forces should be basically completed by 2035. Experts predict that during his visit, President Trump will reiterate the U.S. stance on major security issues, including the Korean Peninsula crisis, even though it is unlikely that he could coax China to reach a full consensus. With little knowledge of China and much of his foreign policy regarding the Asian Pacific region not in place some 10 months into his presidency, Trump is unlikely to make a breakthrough with his Chinese counterparts in the security sphere, a major area of competition for the two nations now, noted Teng. In addition to security, the two nations trade and economic cooperation will also become a crucial topic during Trumps visit, added the experts. Based on my calculation, Chinas GDP will be double that of U.S. by the end of 2050, at which point China will have become a modern socialist country, according to its Two Centenaries Plan. Trump may hold talks with Xi on the development of trade ties in the next 30 years, said Cui Fan, a professor of international trade at the University of International Business and Economics. According to Cui, competitive industries of China and U.S. will overlap more in the future, leading to even fiercer trade competitions between the two nations, while cooperation and contest in technology, talent, and capital will rise as new major concerns for bilateral economic ties. Lv Xiang, a research fellow at the Institute of World Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that Trumps visit will attach great importance to energy cooperation. Around 40 companies will follow Trump to visit China, 10 of which are energy enterprises like Cheniere Energy, the only company sending Americas shale gas overseas. I think the two nations will surely discuss the possibility of building a port on the U.S. west coast to export natural gas, boosting bilateral cooperation in energy, said Lv. Possible solutions Though several conflicts and problems hindering bilateral ties remain, experts believe that deepened mutual trust and profound cooperation will benefit both nations in the long run. Bilateral cooperation in infrastructure will provide great opportunities for both nations. Trump has rolled out plans to upgrade Americas infrastructure, but his $1 trillion plan is as elusive as ever. On the other hand, China has spent $11 trillion on infrastructure in the past decade, accumulating rich experience in building high speed rails, roads, and energy plants and proving itself to be a strong partner, said Wang Huiyao, director of CCG. Meanwhile, the U.S. can also help Chinas Belt and Road initiative, as the former has rich experience in economic cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road. It would be a win-win solution for both nations if the U.S. is willing to participate in the Belt and Road initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, added Wang. In terms of boosting the stability and development of the region, experts believe that promoting a Free Trade Area of the Asian Pacific (FTAAP) with both the U.S. and Chinas participation can alleviate their conflicts in the region, seeking more mutual benefits. Trumps decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been denounced by many American leaders and other member nations, while the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which involved China has yet to make any remarkable economic achievements. A FTAAP with both China and the U.S. may solve the current problems, but it would require hard work and mutual trust from both sides. Mumbai: Maharashtra Tourism Minister Jaykumar Rawal on Wednesday demanded a ban on Sanjay Leela Bhansalis upcoming film Padmavati, and said the state government would be writing to the Censor board on the issue. The film has kicked up a controversy as some organisations in Rajasthan have accused it of distortion of history. Speaking to reporters here, Rawal said he was a descendant of the clan of Rawal Ratan Singh, Rani Padmavatis husband. History and historical references are being twisted in this film. A legal disclaimer is being inserted just to save ones skin. I have told Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis how facts are being twisted and passed off as history. You cannot take liberty with history and the film needs to be banned. We even intend to move the Centre over the Rajput communitys demand for a ban on the film, Rawal said. Rawal, who hails from Sindkheda in Dhule district in north Maharashtra, said, The sacrifice of Rani Padmavati, who along with 16,000 royal women committed Johar (self-immolation) rather than be captured by Alauddin Khilji, is a matter of great pride for us. To this day we teach our girls about the valour of our Rani Padmavati. We are direct descendants of Rawal Ratan Singh and Bappa Rawal, he added. There are many from the Rajput clan in Maharashtra. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has many other subjects to make films on. I wonder how an actor like Ranveer Singh agreed to play the role of Alauddin Khilji. Rani Padmavati never indulged in dancing, let alone in public, Rawal said. He has apprised the chief minister of the sentiments of the Rajput community, and the state government would write to the Censor board demanding a ban on the film, the minister said. The film, starring Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, is slated for release on December 1. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Yuvika Chaudhary, who was seen in Bigg Boss 9, has rubbished the reports of her wedding with Prince Narula and said that marriage is not on the cards yet. Her statement came after producer Vikas Gupta claimed that the couple is planning to take the plunge. According to the media reports, Vikas Gupta, who is one of the contestants on Bigg Boss 11, had reportedly stated that Yuvika and Prince are keen to take their relationship to the next level and that the two will get hitched by end of 2017 or early 2018. However, contrary to the reports, Yuvika has vehemently rubbished the rumors . "No comments. I don't know when I am getting married. I really don't know what Vikas said inside the house but I am unaware of my marriage date or month. What is there to hide about marriage. It is such a happy occasion. If I get hitched, I will tell the whole world about it," Yuvika was quoted saying to Bollywood Life. Interestingly, Yuvika and Prince had met during their stint in Bigg Boss 9 and their sizzling chemistry both off and the on the screen had become the talk of the town. While Prince seemed to be head over heels in love with the lady, Yuvika has apparently maintained 'just friends' stance with the BB9 winner. However, the reports of their love affair continues to be rife. We wonder what Prince Narula has to say about his wedding reports. New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday conducted National Council Meeting amid a lot of anticipation as to what is in store for party. Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia spoke at length on the occasion. He took feedback about the works of Delhi government from the party workers who came from different states. Sisodia said that AAP was constituted with an objective. Its first Opposition is working in Punjab and three MCDs. Deputy CM said that the Delhi government is being hailed in other parts of country due to ease of business. People want an end to the bribery. Indias ranking in ease of doing business has improved only because of Delhi and Mumbai, said Sisodia. According to a report, the electricity connection which used to be given in 148 days is now given in 35 days. We want to give electricity connection in one day, he said. Sisodia added that if central government stop interfering in the works then we will make Delhi a better state in terms of health and education. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Ajay Bisaria will be Indias new High Commissioner to Pakistan, the Ministry of External Affairs announced on Wednesday. He is currently the Indian ambassador to Poland and Lithuania. He takes over from Gautam Bambawale, who was last month appointed India' ambassador to China. "He is expected to take up his assignment shortly," the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement. He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from Delhi's St Stephen's College (1980-83), a Master's in Business Administration from IIM-Kolkata (1983-85), and a Master's in Public Policy from Princeton University, USA (2008-09). He also worked as a Soviet internal affairs specialist in the months leading up to the break-up of the USSR. When India was engaged in building relationships with the post-Soviet countries, he was served as under-secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs on the East Europe desk. He was shifted to the Ministry of Commerce at a time when India was engaged in building a relationship with Soviet. He was posted as First Secretary in the Indian Embassy in Berlin. He was entrusted with the project for the construction of the now-iconic building of the Indian embassy in Berlin. Bisaria was appointed Private Secretary to the Prime Minister in 1999 and served in this capacity until 2004. During most of this period, he was an aide to Vajpayee and focussed on economic, defence and foreign policy issues. He was then posted to the World Bank in Washington DC as adviser to the executive director for South Asia (2004-2008), where he worked on development projects and aid issues. Bisaria returned to India in 2009 to serve as Joint Secretary (Eurasia) in the Ministry of External Affairs (2009-2014). He helped articulate an ambitious policy vision for India in Central Asia and coordinated India's approach to six annual Indo-Russian summits. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday charged the Modi government for not implementing one rank, one pension (OROP) scheme for ex-servicemen and war veterans, protesting at Jantar Mantar. The party said the BJP government should apologise to them. While addressing a press conference, Congress spokespersons RPN Singh and Ajoy Kumar asserted the government had not left any place for peaceful protests in the national capital and it was not acceptable in a democracy. The government continues to trouble them even now, after removing them from Jantar Mantar, Singh said. In a statement later, the Congress leaders said, The brutal crackdown on war veterans is an insult to India. The Modi government cannot digest the peaceful protests for OROP and Delhi Police has no powers to crackdown on war veterans, war widows and ex-servicemen. The Modi government cannot silence the voices of war veterans on the pretext of noise pollution. It is high time, that the Modi government apologise to the war veterans for this misbehavior and provide them with full version of one rank, one pension, the statement added. Armed with an order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banning protests and dharnas around the historic Jantar Mantar here, the police and civic officials had on October 30 demolished tents and makeshift structures set up by the protesting ex-servicemen. (With PTI Inputs) The NGT, in its October 5 order, said protests and dharnas around the historic Jantar Mantar violated environmental laws. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Thursday spoke at length about its chances to join hands with Congress in Gujarat. He continued to attack Bhartiya Janata Party on its policies. Mevani said that he works for the welfare of Dalits and will continue to fight against the anti-Dalit policies of BJP. On being asked about his chances to join Congress, Mevani said that the party should clear its stand on the 17 demands that been put out to them. He said that land has been allocated but only on paper. Mevani said that there should be Reservation Act in Gujarat. He added that the promises made during Una incident have not been fulfilled. I have been asked to join Congress but I will not join hands with them. I will meet Rahul Gandhi with lot of questions, said Mevani. The government has met with Patidars but have so far ignored Dalits. We have only seen dictatorship in last 22 years. Mevani cleared that he will not join any party during the upcoming polls. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday arrived in Himachal Pradeshas Kangra to address a rally ahead of assembly polls next week. PM Modi will also address a rally inA Paonta Sahib constituency of Sirmaur district on Thursday. Himachal Pradesh will goA onA polls on November 9. With elections approaching next week, political machines have started working overtime inA state. While Congress is fighting anti-incumbency, the BJP is in quest of piercing through Congressa vote bank. Here are the live updates: #A Someone born in a family which has ruled for decades doesn't believe his own Army and agencies? Meets China's envoy and asks about Doklam:PM #A Country is aware how the #Doklam issue was dealt with, but the Congress even questioned that: PM Modi #A There are 5 monsters in HP which we need to get rid off- Mining mafia,forest mafia,drug mafia,tender mafia and transfer mafia: PM Modi #A Congress has now become a laughing club, they need to introspect why ppl are turning away from them across the country: PM Modi in Kangra #A "I wasnat too eager when we were planning a meeting here because it wasnat needed. I know we will win anyway," Modi said. #A HP CM is embroiled in corruption yet Congress in manifesto says there will be zero tolerance of corruption. Even a child won't believe it: PM #A I have worked extensively in Himachal Pradesh, very familiar with all cities and know each and every street here: PM Modi # On November 9, you have the chance to say good by to those who have looted Himachal Pradesh: Modi Jinhone Himachal Pradesh ko loota hai unhe vidaai dene ka avsar aapke paas November 9 ko hai: PM Modi in Kangra pic.twitter.com/mvLaoiCj4e For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. ADS ADS There could only be two more years of SalonQP left before the nature of the Swiss watch industrys relationship with the UK market changes considerably. But at the moment, the Swiss watch industry is keen to tap what is currently the fourth biggest export market for Swiss watches. One brand that is debuting at SalonQP after securing a new distribution agreement for the UK with Mode9 is Emile Chouriet. The Chinese-owned brand is dominant in the country of its owners but has slowly been making inroads in Europe. Dont be put off by the ownership either: Emile Chouriets CEO Jean Depery (a distant relative of the man himself) was ahead of the curve in developing his own in-house movement at the first signals of ETA cutting its supply. In a gesture of deference that would not be out of place in the Sloane Square setting of SalonQP, Emile Chouriet surprisingly followed the ladies first principle in making its EC 5318 calibre available first of all for its ladies collection. But there is something for gents, too, with the latest Ice Cliff model in blue with a blue Cordura strap on show at SalonQP at an unbeatable 1,100 Swiss francs with a self-winding movement. Ice Cliff Emile Chouriet Other brands will be using SalonQP to present brand-new watches. This is the case for Bovet, which will be presenting two new versions of its Ottantasei model designed by Pininfarina. The new models come with a grade 5 titanium case with a choice of blue or bronze PVD coatings. Like the other models, these arent limited, but Bovet is only producing 86 movements to equip them, true to the watchs name. Ottantsei Bovet 1822 SalonQP will also offer a chance to see some recently launched watches in public for the first time. Examples include The Alfred, by Urban Jurgensen, the Predator 2.0 collection by Rebellion and the new Laureato 42mm in black ceramic by Girard-Perregaux. Those keeping their cards close to their chest, preferring to wait until the doors open before showing off their latest products, include Czapek & Cie. The Alfred d'Urban Jurgensen, et Predator 2.0 de Rebellion Urban Jurgensen / Rebellion Laureato 42mm ceramique Girard-Perregaux The SalonQP programme includes themed exhibition on astronomy, showcasing watches such as the Jacob & Co. Astronomia and the Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Planetarium. Luca Soprana, the man behind Jacob & Co.s out-of-this-world collection of highly-complicated Astronomia models will give a presentation of this unique collection. New Delhi: The Haryana Urban Development Agency (HUDA) has sold 10 acres of land in Gurugram to the global home-furnishing company IKEA for Rs 842 crore. Through an e-auction, Ikea has purchased the land. HUDA has put the land up for auction on October 6. IKEA already has a presence in the city, a corporate office in Cyber Hub. The firm plans to open 25 stores in India by 2025 with an investment of Rs 10,500 crore. Before Gurugram deal, the Swedish firm has also purchased land in Hyderabad and Mumbai to set up stores. Before this, Huda's record deal was for a 7,820 sqm (2 acres) plot it sold to car-maker Hyundai in November 2016 for Rs 205.88 crore. J Ganesan, chief administrator of Huda, said, "It will augment our efforts to ensure a steady revenue stream for Huda. This is not a one-off deal as we have planned auctions of other institutional and commercial properties across the city in the next few months. Gurugram has seen reduced demand for land, mainly due to rapidly changing investment scenario in real estate, especially in the commercial sector." Ikea should have told Robert Vadera that they need 10 acres commercial land in Haryana. Ganesan hoped the Ikea land deal would act as a trigger for the real estate market and help in reviving business sentiment in the city. "Contrary to the prevailing trend of falling real estate prices and reduced demand, this deal exhibits the city's potential to be a global destination," he said.Huda had found no takers for the Sector 47 land in earlier bids. "The site was put up for e-auction three times but it had no takers until October 31 when the multinational company finally participated," said Huda's Gurugram administrator Yashpal Yadav, adding a few more global corporate houses were in touch for purchasing plots. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: After China blocked the move to list Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, the ministry of external affairs on Thursday said India is deeply disappointed with the neighbours step. Deeply disappointed once again after a single country blocked international consensus on designation of an acknowledged terrorist Masood Azhar, the Ministry of External Affairs said. The MEA further said, India strongly believes that double standards and selective approaches will only undermine international communitys resolve to combat terrorism. We can only hope that there will be a realization that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is both short sighted and counter productive," the MEA said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Indian Army for the first time in its history is going to induct Indian indigenous breed of canines in its ranks. The Army and other security forces in the country have foreign breeds of dogs including German Shepherds, Labradors, Great Swiss Mountain Dogs and Belgian Shepherds in its ranks. The army is all set to take service of the lean and lanky desi hounds, Mudhol, by end of the year. According to a report published in Time of India the Armys Remout and Veterinary Corps (RVC) centre in Meerut has almost completed the rigorous training of sex desi dogs and likely to be inducted by end of this year and will be posted in Jammu and Kashmir. The report states that six desi dogs were sent to RVC centre in 2016 from a Karnataka breeding centre. The dogs were initially kept in quarantine to check if they had any diseases. Later they six desi canines underwent basic obedience training followed by battle inoculation specialised training. The Mudhol is also known as Caravan Hound and also referred as Pashmi. It is a commonly found in villages in India's Deccan Plateau. Modhul has a strong lineage. It is popular for its speed and swiftness thus making it a good hunting and guarding dog. The breed like other hounds have long-narrow head, broad ears, long broad muscled back with ducked abdomen. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Two Army soldiers were killed during an encounter between terrorists & security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama on Thursday evening. A militant was also killed in the operation and his body was recovered. A senior police officer not willing to be quoted said, On intelligence inputs a joint operation including Jammu and Kashmir Police and Indian Army was launched in Pulwamas Samboora village. He added the security forces had learnt that few militants were camping in the forested area near the village. The militants opened fire when the security forces approached them. The security personnel retaliated. In the retaliatory firing one terrorists were killed. Till the time report was filed gunbattle continued between security forces and militants. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Samba: A Boder Security Force (BSF) jawan died in the unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan on Thursday in Samba sector of Jammu and Kashmir . The Indian security forces are giving a befitting reply to unprovoked firing. The BSF jawan had suffered fatal injuries in the unprovoked firing. The injured jawan has been identified as Ct Tapan Mandal was rushed to local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The deceased BSF trooper is a resident of West Bengal. His death was confirmed by BSF DIG Dharmendra Pareekh. Security officials believe the mortar shells and firing by Pakistan Rangers from across the border is being done to distract the attention of Indian forces to pave way for infiltration. The last ceasefire violation was reported on October 23 and 24 in Jammu and Kashmirs Nowgam sector of Handwara area. The Indian Army has also retaliated strongly. Intermittent exchange of fire was reported 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. Also read: Also read: BSF ASI killed, 3 militants killed near Srinagar Airport; Operation ends, combing operation underway For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Continuing its idea of Parivartan Yatra, BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday will kick start partys election campaign in southern state of Karnataka. More than one lakh party workers from Karnatakas 28,000 booths are expected to reach state capital Bengaluru where Shah will address a rally, a BJP statement said. With an aim of returning to power, the 79-day Karnataka Parivartan Yatra will conclude with Prime Minister Narendra Modis rally on January 28. Watch: College girl clicks selfie with Rahul Gandhi a top his van Partys chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyurappa will also attend Shahs rally along with other top leaders of the state. The Karnataka Parivartan Yatra will pass through 224 assemblies of the state. The Congress party is in power in the state and the BJP is making all-out efforts to oust it in the Assembly polls scheduled to be held early next year. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Terrorists on Thursday attacked a CRPF vehicle in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district. Five jawans were seriously injured in the cowrdly attack. The attack took place on Thursday morning when a CRPF vehicle was moving in Anantnag district. The terrorists fled after the attack and security forces have laucnhed a massive search operation in the areaA to nab them. Meanwhile, the injured jawans were rushed to a nearby hospital for the treatment where their condition is stable. More details are awaited. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has given green signal to excavate a place in Uttar Pradeshs Bagpat district which is believed to be the site where Kauravas had built Lakshagriha (lac palace) to kill Pandavas by historians and archaeologists. According to historians, the evidences of lac palace built by Kauravas as mentioned in Mahabharat can be found Barnawa village in Bagpat. Further excavation will give more significant detailings about the lac palace. ASI excavation director Jitender Nath confirmed the development. He said, ASI officials from Institute of Archaeology in Red Fort, Delhi, and our excavation branch will excavation." According to officials of the department the excavation at Barnawa will start later this year. Also read: Culture minister comes under attack for raising doubts over birthplace of Goddess Sita in Rajya Sabha According to historians Lakshagriha incident has a significant role in Mahabharat. According to the epic Kauravas had built the Lac Palace to kill Pandavas but they escaped unharmed after Karan learnt about the plan and alerted Kunti. The five brothers along with their mother escaped through a tunnel. Also read: Archaeologists discover 110 sites in Pakistan that are 30,000-year-old The historian also believe that Barnawa is twisted name of Varnavrat. A tunnel, which is believed to be used by Pandavas and Kunti to escape the evil plans of Kauravas was earlier found in the proposed excavation site. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Jodhpur: Pulling up the state police over its handling of a case of a womans alleged forcible conversion to Islam and marriage, the Rajathan High Court on Wednesday directed it to register an FIR and submit a report after her family claimed that it was an instance of love jihad. A bench of justices GK Vyas and MK Garg also directed the state government to file a reply clarifying the legal provisions pertaining to religious conversion in the state. Hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by the 22-year-old womans brother, the bench expressed anger over the negligence of the police, which allegedly refused to file an FIR on her familys complaint. The court questioned as to how the police could assume that the girls conversion was legal just by way of an affidavit over a stamp paper of Rs 10, when there was no provision in law in this regard. By this way, tomorrow, even I could address myself as Gopal Mohammad, it said. In his petition, the brother claimed that one Faiz Modi had been harassing his sister for long and abducted her while she was going to college. She was made to sign some papers by him and fake marriage documents were prepared, he alleged. When the family members could not find her, they approached the police which refused to file an FIR stating that Faiz Modi had already produced proof of marriage and an affidavit of religious conversion by the woman dated April 14, the brother alleged. He alleged that she was blackmailed by the accused with objectionable pictures and forced to convert to Islam and marry him. Appearing from the petitioner, lawyer Gokulesh Bohra argued that the girl was with her family till October 25, while the documents were predated by six months. This is a clear case of love jihad and over half a dozen such cases have already been reported in the city in the past some time due to the disinterest shown by the police in investigating these cases, Bohra claimed. It has been alleged that Hindu girls are being lured into conversion and marriage by Muslim men and it is often termed as love jihad especially by Hindu outfits. Hearing the petition, the court on Wednesday asked the Rajasthan Government to specify the laws and guide lines for conversion in the state. The court directed that the girl be sent to Nari Niketan (women shelter) for seven days and instructed the police to ensure that no one meets her there. Seeking a detailed report in the matter, the court asked the police whether it tried to probe the truth of the purported affidavit by the girl. It directed the police to file an FIR and probe the matter. The matter comes in the backdrop of the controversy over a case of a Kerala Hindu woman, who had converted to Islam before marrying a Muslim man, Shafin Jahan. The Kerala High Court had annulled his marriage and described it as an instance of love jihad, which was challenged by Jahan. It was alleged that the woman was recruited by Islamic States mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge. Ashokan K M, the father of the woman, had alleged that there was a well-oiled systematic mechanism for conversion and Islamic radicalisation. Jahan had on September 20 approached the apex court seeking recall of its August 16 order directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case. The matter is now before the apex court. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday observed that Delhi government has to take Lieutenant Governoras consent to govern the national capital but the latter cannot hold a file beyond a reasonable period. The Apex Courtas observation came over an appeal against Delhi High Court order that LG is the boss of the national capital. Senior lawyer Gopal Subramanium appeared for Delhi government and told the Supreme Court that it has limited power and should be given more power. A He also added that Delhi is the only Union Territory which enjoys maximum autonomy.A "More than 1.14 lakh vacancies are there, but I cannot fill it up and have to seek LG's permission. I can't take steps to stop deaths in sewers. This is hampering governance.The LG cannot use his power under Article 239AA proviso (4) to stultify the daily governance by sitting over the files," he said. Gopal Subramanium, representing Delhi govt told Supreme Court that it has limited power and should be given more power. a ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 The Delhi government argued in court that the elected government must have some sanctity and constitutional provisions have to be interpreted harmoniously. Gopal Subramanium also added that Delhi is the only Union Territory which enjoys maximum autonomy a ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 The top court will continue the hearing on Tuesday. The apex court said that Article 239AA of Constitution is unique with respect to Delhi and prima facie it appears that the LG is given more powers here, unlike in the other UnionTerritories. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief JusticeDipak Misra is hearing a batch of pleas filed by the Delhi government against the high court verdict, which had held that Delhi is not a state and the LG is its administrative head. AAP government told the apex court that its ministers have to bow down before the bureaucrats to get their opinions and, by virtue of proviso in Article 239AA, the babus do not acknowledge them as the heads of the departments. "Article 239AA is unique to Delhi. Prima facie it appears that it gives more power to Lieutenant Governor unlike other Union Territories. LG in Delhi has the primacy under the Constitution," the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri,A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan, said. (With PTI Inputs) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. ADS ADS Sothebys upcoming auction of Important Watches in Geneva will bring together a selection of fine and rare timepieces to suit every collecting style. Highlights from the sale, to be held on Sunday, 12 November at Mandarin Oriental, Geneva, include a selection of vintage and modern watches from the most prominent brands, including Patek Philippe, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, F.P. Journe and Richard Mille. Furthermore, a collection of Urban Jurgensen watches will be bring to auction for the first time. Standout wristwatches by Patek Philippe include a 1974 example of the reference 3448 - the first automatic perpetual calendar ever made in series a reference 2526 in pink gold with enamel dial and an Astronomical watch, the reference 5102G, featuring a dynamic celestial chart of the Northern Hemisphere. For the upcoming sale in November, we have carefully assembled a wide range of fine and rare watches to suit every collector, from the connoisseur searching for an exceptional piece, to watch lovers seeking to build on to their collection or enhance their personal style. This autumn selection includes prestigious watchmakers Patek Philippe, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin and Cartier, as well as a remarkable collection of watches and pocket watches by Urban Jurgensen, Mikael Wallhagen, Head of Sothebys Watch Department, Geneva, said. Auction Highlights: Patek Philippe - Celestial Vintage wristwatches Pocket watches Vacheron Constantin - Metiers d'Art "Les Masques" Cartier - "Rotonde" Richard Mille - RM 35-01 Rafael Nadal Date of the auction: Sunday 12 November 2017 Address: Mandarin Oriental, Geneve Quai Turrettini 1, 1201 Geneve Public exhibitions: New Delhi: Sexual offences are worse than murder and other heinous crimes as the assault in such cases is not just on the body but on the soul of the victim, a Delhi court has said while sending a man to jail for 14 years for raping a minor. Physical wounds heal up with the passage of time and medication but wounds on the mind and soul are of a persistent and nagging nature, which remain alive for years together, making the victim shudder with pain, time and again, eclipsing all pleasant memories, Additional Sessions Judge Seema Maini said. The judge made the observation while convicting 27-year-old north Delhi resident Santhosh Kumar for raping a 10-year-old girl in 2015. The court awarded a compensation of Rs two lakh to the victim under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, noting that she lost her childhood, her carefree attitude and the pleasant and joyous approach towards life. The victim of such an offence when happens to be a child of tender years i.e. 10 years of age, the pain and the trauma, which such an offence qua her, at the hands of the convict, would have brought into her life, can never be expressed in words, it said. The judge did not mince words when the counsel appearing for the convict sought leniency citing his family circumstances. ALSO READ | Uttar Pradesh: 100-year-old woman dies of trauma after rape in Meerut Such sexual offences, in my opinion, are worse than murder/culpable homicide, since the assault in such cases is not just on the body of the victim but also on the soul, mind as well as the whole persona of the victim. Such an offence, having been committed with the child, makes it imperative that the offender is dealt with a firm hand and the mitigating circumstances of the convict cannot be given precedence over the pain, suffering and trauma of the victim child, the judge said. According to the police, Kumar lured the minor neighbour into his room and raped her in 2015. The convict, however, denied the allegations in the court and claimed that he was falsely implicated in the case. The judge said that the convict has been held liable to be punished under various provisions of the POCSO Act and the Indian Penal Code, for commiting penetrative sexual assault upon the victim. ...the convict is being awarded punishment under IPC... rigorous imprisonment for a period of 14 years, along with a fine of Rs 50,000, it said. ALSO READ | Punjab: 17-year-old girl gang-raped in Jalalabad bleeds to death For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday met with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray at a five-star hotel in South Mumbai. Uddhav Thackeraya son Aditya Thackeray was also present on the occasion. The party dubbed the meeting as a courtesy call, saying that nothing much should be read into it. Shiv Sena has been attacking its ally BJP in Maharashtra and Centre, and the current development indicates that a new equation could emerge before 2019 Lok Sabha polls. A few days back , Fadnavis had said that Shiv Sena must understand that it cannot play the role of a ruling party and opposition simultaneously. Mumbai: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee met Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray; Aditya Thackeray also present. pic.twitter.com/zyds8yCbvY a ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 The chief minister had said, "Some Sena leaders have developed the habit of opposing everything our government does... One can understand opposition to a few things as they are a different party." Shiv Sena says, 'the meeting b/w Mamata Banerjee & Uddhav Thackery was just a courtesy call & there is no other meaning to it.' a ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The YSR Congress on Thursday requested the Andhra Pradesh DGP (in charge) to make adequate security arrangements for party chief Y S Jaganmohan Reddy's 70-day-long padayatra (foot march) across the state beginning November 6. The party has written a letter to the top cop in this regard. The DGP and Deputy Chief Minister (Home) already made it clear that a prior permission is mandatory for undertaking any such yatra. However, the YSRC said N Chandrababu Naidu, as the then leader of opposition, did not obtain any prior permission when he undertook a similar foot march in 2012-13. Jaganmohan Reddy, who is also the leader of opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, had announced that he would undertake the 'Praja Sankalpa' padayatra "to reach out to the unreached and interact with over two crore people" of the state. In his letter to the state police chief, Jaganmohan Reddy's private secretary P Krishna Mohan Reddy stated the yatra would commence from RK Valley (Idupulapaya) in Kadapa district and culminate at Ichchapuram in Srikakulam district, covering a distance of around 3,000 kms across the 13 districts. "This padayatra will be spanning over a period of seven months approximately, with regular night halts at an interval of 15 to 16 km every day. You may be aware that YS Jaganmohan Reddy is a 'Z' category protectee, hence, I request that necessary security arrangements are to be made," he wrote. During the yatra, YSRC MPs, MLCs, MLAs and other leaders would be accompanying Jaganmohan Reddy who would interact with different sections of people. "Detailed route plan in a district would be given to the district police by the district incharges of YSRCP. This is for favour of information and necessary action," the YSRC leader stated. (With PTI inputs ) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Controversial Islamic scholar Zakir Naik has been given residency in Malaysia, as per Reuters. In September, when Zakir Naik had emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque, fans had swarmed to click selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist. Critics claim that Naik's presence in Malaysia is a sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in the country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik made a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia's administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. A group of Malaysian activists has filed suit in the High Court to deport Naik, saying he is a threat to public peace in the multi-racial society - about 40 percent of Malaysia's population is non-Muslim. ALSO READ: NIA files charge sheet against Zakir Naik for hate speech Naik has in the past denied India's allegations. In an interview with a television channel in May, he said he was being targeted by the Indian government because of his popularity. India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) has already filed a charge sheet against controversial Islamic Scholar Zakir Naik in the case of money laundering and terror funding. He fled from India on July 1, 2016 after terrorists in Bangladesh said that they were inspired by his speeches. READ: National Investigation Agency declares Zakir Naik proclaimed offender 51-year-old Naik has been booked under the charges of inciting youths to take up terror and hateful activities and promoting hatred between religions. In its 1000-page charge sheet, the agency has also named Naik's two firms, Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) and Harmony Media Private Ltd. The NIA charge sheet also includes as much as 80 statements made under the different Sections of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The NIA is probing the televangelist under terror and money-laundering charges. A non-bailable warrant (NBW) was also issued against him in April this year. NIA registered a case against Naik on November 18, 2016. Naik, who is still absconding, is out of country since 2016 after some terrorists in Bangladesh claimed they were motivated to take up arms by his speeches. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Teenage mothers are at higher risk of heart disease later in life than older mothers, a new study has found. The study which was published in Journal of the American Heart Association examined 1,047 women between the ages of 65 and 74, who were from Canada, Albania, Colombia and Brazil. After obtaining the information on the age of the women's first pregnancy, the researchers used the Framingham Risk Score (FRS) to check for correlations with cardiovascular disease risk. The findings show women who give birth before the age of 20, scored significantly higher on the Framingham Risk Score, a measure used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk. Read more: Loneliness may cause you to have junk foods instead of healthy ones According to Dr Catherine Pirkle, the lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Office of Public Health Studies at the University of Hawaii, lifestyle factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease should be taken into consideration by adolescent mothers, including maintaining a healthy body weight and sufficient physical activity. New Delhi: Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has launched a warning saying that artificial intelligence (AI) will eventually take over mankind and hold the capacity to crush humankind. The 75-year-old visionary warns human beings of the risks involved in AI, stating that "if people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself. This will be a new form of life that outperforms humans." In an interview with WIRED magazine, Hawking stated that he doesn't believe there's a difference between what a human brain and a computer can achieve, so it follows that at some point the machines can become better than us. Read more: Aliens might be a lot like humans, claim Oxford University scientist Recently, when Robot Sophia, who became the first robot to be awarded citizenship in Saudi Arabia, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk tweeted his opinion, speaking indirectly about the destructive consequences that could follow. Musk is widely known for his opinion on the possible harm AI can cause. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Google has launched its latest smartphone Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Both the smartphones will be exclusively available online on Flipkart for sale and offline through retailers including Reliance Digital, Croma and many more. Currently, Pixel 2 is available for sale on the e-commerce website but Pixel 2 XL is available for pre-order and the sale will start from November 15. Flipkart is even offering Rs. 8,000 cashback for the customers using HDFC Bank Credit Card. Option for exchange is also available for upto Rs. 20,000 for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL and no-cost EMI starting at Rs. 3,389 is available as well. Talking about the price of the smartphones, Pixel 2 is priced at Rs. 61,000 for the 64GB variant and Rs. 70,000 for 128 GB model. However, price of Pixel 2 XL starts from Rs. 73,000 for 64 GB and Rs. 82,000 for the 128 GB model. Pixel 2 comes with a 5-inch FHD AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels with 16:9 aspect ratio whereas Pixel 2 XL has larger screen than Pixel 2, it comes with 6-inch FHD display with 2880x 1440 pixels resolution with 18:9 aspect ratio. Both the smartphones comes with a 4GB RAM powered with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. The camera of both the smartphones has a 12-megapixel rear camera with f/1.8 aperture along with dual LED flash. There is a 8-megapixel camera in the front as well. Beijing: China on Thursday said it has blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying there is no consensus. A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked Indias move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. JeM has already been in its banned list. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. China has rejected the move as there is no consensus, sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. ALSO READ | Will not sit idle till Masood Azhar brought to justice: Indias envoy to United Nations The comment came as the Chinas technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse on Thursday. It appears that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall Indias application before the same Committee. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15-nation UN organ to put a hold on Indias application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhis bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. ALSO READ | Rohingya crisis: JeM chief Masood Azhar calls for his followers to prepare for action in Myanmar For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: In a bid to fight against the terrorism, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have to come together, the White House said after Modi offered his condolences to Trump over the phone following New York attack. Trump accepted the condolences of Modi following New York terrorists' attack in which eight people dead and about a dozen others injured, the White House added. Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families, a readout of the call said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism," the White House said. Earlier in a tweet yesterday, Modi had condemned the attack seen as the deadliest in New York since 9/11. "Strongly condemn the terror attack in New York City. My thoughts are with the families of the deceased & prayers with those injured," he said. British Prime Minister Theresa May also spoke with Trump over phone, according to the White House. "President Trump and Prime Minister May agreed on the importance of closer counterterrorism coordination between the United States and the United Kingdom," the White House said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beirut: Syrias army and allied fighters have captured the city of Deir Ezzor from the Islamic State group in a Russian-backed operation, a monitor said on Thursday. There was no immediate confirmation from official sources, though state media earlier reported army advances in the city in the countrys east. Regime forces and allied fighters... with Russian air support have full control of Deir Ezzor city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fighting has ended, now there are sweeping operations under way, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. Earlier, the Observatory and Syrian state media reported Syrian government troops had captured three new neighbourhoods from the jihadists. But a military source had said the government only held around 80 percent of the city. Syrias army broke into Deir Ezzor in September, ending an IS siege of nearly three years on government-held parts of the city. IS once held most of Deir Ezzor province, an oil-rich region that runs along the eastern border with Iraq. But it is under attack from two separate campaigns, including the regimes Russian-backed assault, and another operation by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Egypt's security forces killed five terrorists on Thursday who were attempting to attack a checkpoint in the border North Sinai region, where the military is fighting an Islamist insurgency, the military said in a statement. A group of "armed terrorist elements" opened fire at security forces stationed at the checkpoint, who returned fire, forcing the gunmen to flee and hide. Air forces pursued the terrorists and launched air strikes, killing five and injuring six others. Two 4x4 vehicles and two buildings where the gunmen were hiding were also destroyed. Earlier this week, Egyptian security forces freed a police officer who was kidnapped during the deadly shootout earlier this month between policemen and terrorists in Egypts Western Desert which left 16 policemen dead. Search Keywords: Short link: Washington: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will make his maiden trip to Myanmar this month to discuss the Rohingya crisis. Tillerson will travel to Naypyidaw on November 15 to hold talks with senior officials on the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine State and US support for Myanmars democratic transition, the State Department said on Thursday. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh following a security crackdown in Rakhine, drawing allegations of ethnic cleansing and overshadowing Myanmars US-backed transition to democracy. Tillerson will also accompany President Donald Trump on his five-nation trip to Asia that starts this weekend. Trump is travelling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Secretary will also make an additional stop in Burma, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said. Tillersons six-country visit demonstrates the Trump administrations commitment to our alliances and partnerships in the Asia Pacific and highlights our ongoing engagement in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) on regional issues of mutual interest and concern, she said. Giving a detailed itinerary of Tillersons Asia trip, Nauert said he will first travel to Tokyo for Trumps meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that starts Sunday. Tillerson will also join the president for summits with the leaders of South Korea and China, and for regional summits of Asia-Pacific leaders in Vietnam and the Philippines. In Japan, he will also engage with Japanese and American business leaders and meet with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime. He will support the presidents focus on bolstering the US-Japan Alliance, strengthening our shared resolve on North Korea, and pressing for more balanced trade that fosters strong domestic demand-driven growth and free and fair trade practices, the spokesperson said. In Seoul, he will join Trump in meeting with senior Korean officials to discuss the US-South Korea alliance and their shared global priorities, including coordinated response to the threat posed by North Korea. On November 8-10, the Secretary will visit Beijing and will participate in Trumps summit meeting with President Xi Jinping. He will have discussions with Chinese officials on bilateral, regional, and global issues that affect both countries. At the top of the agenda will be North Korea and the economic relationship between the United States and China. The US seeks a constructive and results-oriented relationship with China, Nauert said. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Egypt's parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal warned Washington on Thursday that a cut to its financial aid package to Cairo may undermine mutual ties between the two close allies at a time when US support for Egypt's fight against terrorism is needed. Abdel-Aal made his remarks during talks in Washington with U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and other American lawmakers. "Cutting US aid to Egypt doesn't only reflect differences of opinion between both countries over some issues, but it also harms these relations," Abdel-Aal was quoted by Egypt's state news agency MENA as saying. "This gives an impression that [relations] are suffering a great deal of instability at a time when the United States should back Egypt in its fight against terrorism." The US has been providing Egypt with foreign aid, including military assistance, since Cairo's 1979 peace deal with Israel. Each year Egypt receives approximately $1.3 billion in US military aid, as well as about $250 million in economic assistance. The US said in August it would withhold part of its upcoming annual aid package to Cairo, with $195 million to be held in reserve until the US "can see progress on democracy" in Egypt. Cairo said at the time that the move was not in line with the strategic relations between the two allies, and that cuts could have negative repercussions in achieving their common interests. During the talks, Abdel-Aal also discussed a new Egyptian law regulating the work of non-governmental organizations. Rights groups have criticized the legislation, saying it has effectively banned their work. The senior lawmaker noted that the law, which was introduced in May, is primarily aimed at ensuring that funds given to NGOs "won't be directed to financing terrorism." Abdel-Aal further proposed setting up a US-Egyptian friendship association to boost bilateral parliamentary cooperation and address points of contention between the two countries over issues of mutual interest. The two sides also looked at ways to promote greater US investment in Egypt in light of a new law introduced by Cairo which aims to ease the process of doing business in the country. Search Keywords: Short link: Eight members of Turkey's security forces and five Kurdish militants were killed in a clash early on Thursday near the border between northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, security and hospital sources said. They said Turkish forces launched a helicopter-backed operation in search of further Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, who sought to cross the border into Hakkari province's mountainous Semdinli district. Six Turkish soldiers and two members of the country's state-backed village guard militia were killed in the fighting, along with five PKK members, the sources said. They said the clashes were continuing. The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union. Search Keywords: Short link: Poland: Russian-made missile fell on our country, killing 2 WARSAW, Poland (AP) Poland said Wednesday that a Russian-made missile fell in the countrys east, killing two people, though U.S. President Joe Biden said... Fresh leak springs ahead of NASA moon rocket kaunch A fresh leak sprouted as NASA fuelled its new moon rocket Tuesday for a middle-of-the-night launch, its third try to put an empty capsule around the moon for the... Trump Seeks White House Again Amid GOP Losses, Legal Probes Watch Video Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will mount a third White House campaign, launching an early start to the 2024 contest. The... Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine A Russian missile barrage on the Ukrainian power grid sent the war spilling over into neighboring countries Tuesday, hitting NATO member Poland and cutting... Russia hopes that all Syrian opposition groups will attend a Moscow-backed Syrian congress in southern Russia on Nov. 18 despite some objections, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reported. The event, called the Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, was first mentioned by President Vladimir Putin last month who said he believed that militants in Syria would soon be defeated. It is due to be held in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. But while Damascus has backed the Russian plan, some opposition groups have rejected the idea, calling it an attempt to rehabilitate President Bashar al-Assad's government. They have said they will stick to U.N.-brokered Geneva peace talks. Asked if Moscow still hoped to see opposition groups like the High Negotiations Committee, which has refused to come, attending, Interfax cited Bogdanov as saying: "We hope that everyone who believes that the fate of the country, its unity, its territorial integrity and its sovereignty are important will participate." Search Keywords: Short link: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate DANBURY For firefighters and police officers responding to an emergency at an airport, communicating with the air traffic control tower and being aware of their surroundings can mean the difference between life and death. Thats because an accident on one runway doesnt prevent other runways from remaining active, so planes may be landing and taking off nearby as first responders are on the scene. Communications and situational awareness were among the key skills discussed during a joint training exercise held at the Danbury Municipal Airport Thursday with members of the citys fire department, police department and airport administration officials. When you are responding to an accident on the streets, you can drive just about anywhere, Assistant Airport Administrator Mike Safranek told a group of firefighters and police officers who participated in the training. But once youre at the airport, you need to take your directions from the control tower. Emergency responders trained for a variety of scenarios Thursday, including a disabled plane with a fuel leak, a plane on fire, a late night emergency and a disabled plane with a combative pilot. After 10 p.m. the airport is no longer controlled by the tower and pilots arent required to broadcast their landing, Safranek said. He stressed the importance to first responders of being aware of their surroundings at all times and looking out for incoming planes. Safranek suggested that the incident commander assign a firefighter who can make frequent calls on the proper aviation channels every couple of minutes to alert aircraft to the emergency. Its also a good idea to have just about every light on your firetruck going, Safranek said. One problem that came to light during the exercise is that while most fire engines in the city have an aviation radio, city police cruisers do not and would be unable to communicate with the control tower in an emergency. To resolve the situation, airport officials said they would look to purchase two avaition radios that police shift commanders can have available in case of an emergency at the airport. When you have an incident you dont have time to evaluate the performance, Safranek said. During a drill like this you can flush out all the different scenarios you might encounter and any problems that might arise. Thats why we train. In the past, the fire department has held annual training exercises at the Westover Airport in Massachusetts, which has a specialized training area for live burns, said Steven Rogers, the fire departments training officer. By holding the exercise locally, members of the airport administration, police department and control tower officials were able to participate and work together, much like they would be required to in a real emergency. Its great that we have all the agencies training together today, he said. These drills are designed to sharpen our skills and our situational awareness, which means not just knowing where you are but where everyone else is. We want to train people on these skills until it becomes second nature. Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour said he was also impressed with the days activities. For us to be here so that we can all be on the same page when responding to these types of incidents is very important, he said. Its also a good opportunity for us to work alongside the fire department in a situation that isnt an emergency. It allows us to build relationships that help in responding to emergencies down the road. Several emergency responders credited the airports administration for hosting and organizing the event. I think the training exercise was so successful that we will try to expand it next year, Rogers said. dperrefort@newstimes.com According to a Harvard Business School study, approximately 75 percent of startups with venture funding will eventually fail. The same study found that a similar percentage of small businesses will fail within the first ten years of existence. Related: Four Simple Ways to Find Customers Of course, the primary reason for most business failures is an inability to profitably attract and retain customers. While there are many different types of business models out there, from software as a service, to marketplaces, to ecommerce businesses (and many others), there are a few common mistakes that business leaders make when trying to attract customers. Here are ten of the most common, but often overlooked, reasons why your startup isn't able to attract enough customers to become successful. 1. Missing product-market fit Product-market fit is the single biggest reason why businesses fail. If the product being offered is not aligned with the needs and wants of the target audience, it won't matter how good your marketing or sales teams are -- you simply will not be able to attract enough of the right customers to build a sustainable business. As Eric Ries described in The Lean Startup, an effective way of testing product-market fit is by building an MVP (minimum viable product) that you then share with the target audience. By listening to customer feedback, you and your team will be able to find product-market fit over time. Related: The Fastest Way to Find New Customers 2. Misaligned product-channel fit Second only to product-market fit, product-channel fit is another critical business component that entrepreneurs must perfect in order to build a sustainable business. Channel refers to the marketing channels that a business employs to promote the product. Depending on the business model and the product in question, your business will be a good fit for some channels and a bad fit for others. For example, Pinterest and Quora were able to grow their products quickly by harnessing the power of organic search. That channel fit well with the products offered by the respective companies, and with the desire of the target audience to quickly discover fascinating new content. On the other hand, organic search might be a poor performing channel for an ecommerce business. The reason is that it can be difficult for a business to rank well organically in a world where giant ecommerce companies and review-oriented media outlets rank highly for most relevant keywords. Instead, an effective channel might be social media ads, like those offered by Facebook and Instagram, which employ machine-learning algorithms to find and engage ideal customers. 3. Poorly trained salespeople Businesses that rely upon a sales team to acquire new customers must make sure that those salespeople are some of the best trained, smartest and most compassionate members of the organization. After all, it's the sales team that will represent the company each and every day to members of its target audience. If salespeople don't understand the market, or how the product is positioned within the market, it will be incredibly difficult to acquire new customers. You should benchmark your sales-team performance compared to your industry. Are salespeople performing at or above this benchmark? If not, it's possible that the sales team is a weak link within your organization. 4. Confusion about the ideal customer profile Each person within your company should know who your ideal customer profile (ICP) is. Members of your team should know the demographic and psychographic makeup of ideal customers. They should know how to find them, and how to speak their language in order to engage with them as a marketer, salesperson or customer-service representative. If there is misalignment within the organization about the ICP, or worse, if your organization does not have an ICP, it will be challenging to craft a customer experience that appeals to prospects. 5. Impractical pricing strategy Can your product be obtained at a reasonable price that makes sense to members of the ICP and to the economic buyer? Remember, you are not always selling the individual in your ICP; you may need to use your ICP as a champion within the target organization who then needs to convince his or her boss that your product or service is worth the investment. Make sure that your pricing strategy makes sense to your ICP and to the economic buyer. Otherwise, it will be difficult for prospective customers to see the value of your product, relative to the price. 6. Lack of market education Is the target market aware that your business category exists in the first place? If not, you should consider building a market education campaign to make people aware that a solution to their problem is out there. Take a page out of the marketing playbooks of pharmaceutical or biotech companies. These organizations are constantly developing category-defining products that did not exist before. The first thing these organizations do is educate doctors about the problem and offer their solution. They do the same with the general public through a mix of traditional and digital advertising. Once the market is educated, buyers are more receptive to the solution prescribed by the doctor. 7. Inaccurate lead-scoring Businesses that sell to other businesses often employ a lead-scoring system to determine what leads should be sent to the sales team, and what leads should be held for further nurturing. If the lead-scoring system is not working properly, that may mean the sales team is being sent unqualified leads, and its members may lose faith in the marketing team. Another possibility: The sales team is not being sent qualified leads, and therefore the sales team will be unable to hit quota. The criteria for the lead scoring system should constantly be reviewed to ensure that the right leads are sent, while leads that are not a fit are kept for nurturing. 8. Dysfunctional lead nurturing All types of businesses can and should employ a lead-nurturing system based on email workflows (also called automated emails). Ecommerce businesses that send out a regular newsletter can engage customers that might otherwise forget about the brand; and B2B businesses that send well-timed automated emails can engage prospects just in the nick of time. In fact, a study by McKinsey & Co. found that marketing email is the second most effective way to acquire new customers, second only to organic search, and well ahead of social media. Ensure that your business has a healthy lead-nurturing system in place to generate customers consistently over the long run. 9. Dissatisfying customer service The average person will tell 16 other people about a poor customer service experience according to an American Express study. If your business is providing dissatisfactory customer service or support, the problem is surely costing you customers. That means ten poor customer service experiences will result in a minimum of 160 other people viewing your business in a negative light. Poor customer service may also be preventing your organization from attracting new customers through word-of-mouth referrals. The same American Express study found that the average person shares a positive customer service story with nine other people. 10. Disruptive competitor While we often think of startups as disruptive organizations, by nature, it is certainly possible that another business is offering a more attractive product or service that is robbing your organization of customers. A good way to determine this is to speak with people in your target audience. Ask them about the solutions they currently use and why they chose them. If a disruptive competitor is out there, you will eventually learn about it through speaking with customers. Conclusion There are a number of plausible reasons why your business is unable to attract enough customers. Some of these reasons may be unique to your industry, but many plausible explanations are shared among businesses of all kinds. Related: 5 Tips for Finding Your Ideal Customers Instead of Waiting for Them to Find You Before looking for less-obvious answers, be sure to review the 10 reasons listed here to see if any of the common mistakes outlined are causing your business serious challenges. Related: 10 Reasons Why Your Startup Isn't Getting Customers The Best Way to Grow a Huge Email List? Do a Simple Giveaway. Steal These 4 Proven Customer-Retention Strategies Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com Russian long-range aviation has targeted targets of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in the town of Abu Kemal in the province of Deir Ezzor for the second day in a row. The Russian Defense Ministry has announced that six Tu-22M3 strategic bombers had launched a massive strike on IS arms and ammunition depots, command posts and fortified areas that were confirmed to be destroyed by means of reconnaissance. The strike came just a day after the Russian long-range bombers that flew over the territory of Iran and Iraq carried out a strike destroying IS targets in the town of Abu Kemal. Search Keywords: Short link: CALGARY, Nov. 1, 2017 /CNW/ - (TSXV: CWC) CWC Energy Services Corp. ("CWC" or the "Company") announces the release of its operational and financial results for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2017. The interim Financial Statements and Management Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") for the three months and nine ended September 30, 2017 are filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Highlights for the Three Months Ended September 30, 2017 CWC's drilling rig utilization of 63% in Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: 37%) exceeded the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors ("CAODC") industry average of 28% (2016:17%). The increased activity level in Q3 2017 compared to Q3 2016 reflects increased year-over-year industry activity, focused marketing efforts on E&P companies with ongoing drilling programs and the high quality and efficiency of our drilling rigs and field employees. CWC's Q3 2017 utilization of 63% was achieved on 522 drilling rig operating days (Q3 2016: 301 drilling rig operating days). In addition, the upgrades to Drilling Rig #4 to a high specification rig capable of racking over 6,500 metres of drill pipe was completed in the quarter. CWC's service rig utilization of 47% in Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: 38%) from 28,320 operating hours was 24% higher than the 22,927 operating hours in Q3 2016 and outperformed the CAODC Q3 2017 industry utilization of 32% (Q3 2016: 26%). CWC maintained its industry market share of 10% with only 7% of the total active CAODC registered rig fleet despite experiencing project delays caused by unusually wet weather conditions in September 2017 and the change in ownership of land and wells amongst two of our largest E&P customers in our most active operating region. and the change in ownership of land and wells amongst two of our largest E&P customers in our most active operating region. CWC's coil tubing utilization of 22% in Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: 29%) with 1,783 operating hours declined from 2,160 operating hours in Q3 2017. Operating hours were negatively impacted by the extremely low natural gas prices and lower crude oil prices throughout much of Q3 2017 causing delays in allocation and commitment of capital by our E&P customers, particularly in steam-assisted gravity drainage ("SAGD") wells. These capital allocation delays were further impacted by abnormally wet weather conditions in September 2017 and change of ownership in land and well positions among some of CWC's key customers. and change of ownership in land and well positions among some of CWC's key customers. Revenue of $27.2 million , an increase of $8.7 million (47%) compared to $18.5 million in Q3 2016. The increase from Q3 2016 is driven primarily from increased drilling and service rig activity, offset by lower coil tubing operating hours. In addition, higher day and hourly rates in all business segments contributed to the higher revenue. CWC has been successful in modestly increasing pricing in Q3 2017 supported by strong customer demand. , an increase of (47%) compared to in Q3 2016. The increase from Q3 2016 is driven primarily from increased drilling and service rig activity, offset by lower coil tubing operating hours. In addition, higher day and hourly rates in all business segments contributed to the higher revenue. CWC has been successful in modestly increasing pricing in Q3 2017 supported by strong customer demand. Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $4.1 million , an increase of $2.4 million (133%) compared to $1.7 million in Q3 2016. The increased Adjusted EBITDA is a direct result of higher drilling rig activity at day rates 15% higher than Q3 2016 and an increase in service rig activity at modestly higher hourly rates. CWC has achieved 17 continuous quarters of positive Adjusted EBITDA since Q2 2013 demonstrating management's superior ability to reduce costs to offset lower revenue from reduced pricing and activity since the beginning of this industry downturn three years ago. of , an increase of (133%) compared to in Q3 2016. The increased Adjusted EBITDA is a direct result of higher drilling rig activity at day rates 15% higher than Q3 2016 and an increase in service rig activity at modestly higher hourly rates. CWC has achieved 17 continuous quarters of positive Adjusted EBITDA since Q2 2013 demonstrating management's superior ability to reduce costs to offset lower revenue from reduced pricing and activity since the beginning of this industry downturn three years ago. Net loss of $0.6 million , an improvement of $1.4 million (70%) compared to a net loss of $2.0 million in Q3 2016. The year-over-year change is primarily due to increased Adjusted EBITDA partially offset by an increase in depreciation and amortization. , an improvement of (70%) compared to a net loss of in Q3 2016. The year-over-year change is primarily due to increased Adjusted EBITDA partially offset by an increase in depreciation and amortization. During Q3 2017, 1,402,000 (Q3 2016: nil) common shares were purchased under CWC's Normal Course Issuer Bid ("NCIB") and 1,441,500 common shares were cancelled and returned to treasury. On August 4, 2017 , CWC and its syndicated lenders completed an extension of its credit facilities and certain other amendments to provide financial security and flexibility to July 31, 2020 . The amendments further provide the Company access to another equity cure under the same terms and conditions, a reduction in the minimum liquidity from $10.0 million to $5.0 million , and quarterly financial covenant for Consolidated Debt to Consolidated EBITDA ratio as follows: For the Quarter Ended Previously Currently September 30, 2017 4.50 : 1 4.50:1 December 31, 2017 4.00 : 1 4.00:1 Thereafter 3.50 : 1 4.00:1 Highlights for the Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017 CWC's drilling rig utilization of 49% in the first nine months of 2017 (2016: 25%) exceeded the CAODC industry average of 29%. Activity levels in 2017 have increased 117% compared to 2016 reflecting increased year-over-year industry activity, focused marketing efforts on E&P companies with ongoing drilling programs and the high quality and efficiency of our drilling rigs and field employees. Year-to-date 2017 operating days of 1,209 (2016: 557 operating days) is the most since the acquisition of Ironhand Drilling Inc. in May 2014 . . CWC's service rig utilization was 45% for the first nine months of 2017 (2016: 38%). Activity levels in 2017 have increased 19% to 81,364 hours (2016: 68,117 hours). The increased activity reflects strong well servicing demand and optimism experienced in Q1 2017 from higher commodity prices, partially offset by lower Q2 2017 operating hours from a normal spring break up compared to the unusually dry weather conditions in Q2 2016 further bolstered by a strong Q3 2017 where activity levels were 24% higher than in Q3 2016. CWC's outperformance in service rig utilization compared to its CAODC industry peers is attributed to the modern fleet of 74 service rigs, exceptional sales and operational management, and experienced rig crews performing work safely and efficiently. Revenue of $74.8 million , an increase of $22.7 million (44%) compared to $52.1 million for the first nine months of 2016. The increase is predominately due to significantly higher activity and pricing in all three business units. , an increase of (44%) compared to for the first nine months of 2016. The increase is predominately due to significantly higher activity and pricing in all three business units. Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $9.4 million , an increase of $4.1 million (78%) compared to $5.3 million for the first nine months of 2016. The increased Adjusted EBITDA is consistent with the increase in activity levels and pricing. of , an increase of (78%) compared to for the first nine months of 2016. The increased Adjusted EBITDA is consistent with the increase in activity levels and pricing. Net loss of $3.7 million , an improvement of $2.1 million (36%) compared to a net loss of $5.8 million for the first nine months of 2016. The lower net loss in 2017 is primarily due to the increase in Adjusted EBITDA offset by higher stock based compensation and depreciation and amortization, and lower deferred income tax recoveries. , an improvement of (36%) compared to a net loss of for the first nine months of 2016. The lower net loss in 2017 is primarily due to the increase in Adjusted EBITDA offset by higher stock based compensation and depreciation and amortization, and lower deferred income tax recoveries. For the nine months ended September 30, 2017 , the Company purchased 3,088,500 (2016: nil) common shares under its NCIB which were cancelled and returned to treasury. (1) Please refer to the "Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Measures" section for further information. Subsequent Events On October 30, 2017, CWC announced the following transactions: CWC has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the service and swabbing rig assets and ongoing operations of C&J Production Services-Canada Ltd. ("C&J Canada") from C&J Energy Services, Inc. ("C&J Parent") for total consideration of $37.5 million in cash (the "Transaction"). The Transaction is expected to close on or about November 6, 2017 . The combination of CWC's premier well servicing fleet of 74 service rigs and C&J Canada's 75 service rigs will create the largest active service rig fleet in Canada based on reported operating hours in 2016 and year-to-date 2017 by the CAODC with a Canadian service rig market share of approximately 15%. in cash (the "Transaction"). The Transaction is expected to close on or about . The combination of CWC's premier well servicing fleet of 74 service rigs and C&J Canada's 75 service rigs will create the largest active service rig fleet in based on reported operating hours in 2016 and year-to-date 2017 by the CAODC with a Canadian service rig market share of approximately 15%. CWC and its syndicated lenders have agreed to the Company's exercise of the accordion feature to expand its credit facilities from $65 million to $100 million . The expanded credit facilities provide financial security and flexibility to July 31, 2020 . The syndicate lenders have also provided consent to permit the acquisition of the C&J Canada assets with the expanded credit facilities. The expanded credit facilities will initially be used to complete the Transaction and upon the successful completion of the Rights Offering, will subsequently be available to assist the Company in completing further acquisitions, financing capital expenditures and for general working capital purposes. . The expanded credit facilities provide financial security and flexibility to . The syndicate lenders have also provided consent to permit the acquisition of the C&J Canada assets with the expanded credit facilities. The expanded credit facilities will initially be used to complete the Transaction and upon the successful completion of the Rights Offering, will subsequently be available to assist the Company in completing further acquisitions, financing capital expenditures and for general working capital purposes. To repay a portion of the debt incurred to complete the Transaction, CWC will be offering rights (the "Rights") to holders of its common shares (the "Common Shares") of record at the close of business on November 15, 2017 (the "Record Date"). The Rights issued under the Rights Offering will expire on December 11, 2017 (the Rights Expiry Date"). Each registered shareholder of Common Shares on the Record Date will receive one (1) Right for each Common Share held by such shareholder. Three (3) Rights plus the sum of $0.20 will entitle the Rights holder to subscribe for one Common Share. Eligible shareholders are entitled to subscribe for additional Common Shares, subject to certain limitations set out in the Company's rights offering circular (the "Rights Offering Circular"). Registered shareholders wishing to exercise their Rights must forward the completed Rights Certificates, together with the applicable funds to Computershare Trust Company of Canada , the rights agent of the Company, on or before the Rights Expiry Date. Shareholders who own their Common Shares through an intermediary, such as a bank, trust company, securities dealer or broker, will receive materials and instructions from their intermediary. Brookfield Capital Partners Ltd. and certain of its affiliates (collectively, "Brookfield"), the Company's significant shareholder which controls approximately 72.7% of the outstanding Common Shares, has indicated to the Company that provided that the Transaction is completed, it intends to participate in the Rights Offering to the fullest extent possible. A fully subscribed Rights Offering is expected to generate gross proceeds of approximately $26 million . For further information regarding the Transaction, please refer to the Press Release dated October 30, 2017 as filed on SEDAR. Financial and Operational Highlights Three months ended September 30, Nine months ended September 30, $ thousands, except shares, per share amounts, and margins 2017 2016 Change % 2017 2016 Change % FINANCIAL RESULTS Revenue Contract drilling 10,130 5,071 100% 24,308 10,604 129% Production services 17,043 13,435 27% 50,487 41,526 22% 27,173 18,506 47% 74,795 52,130 43% Adjusted EBITDA (1) 4,055 1,741 133% 9,433 5,297 78% Adjusted EBITDA margin (%) (1) 15% 9% 13% 10% Funds from operations 4,055 1,741 133% 9,433 5,297 78% Net loss and comprehensive loss (638) (2,042) (69%) (3,683) (5,751) (36%) Net loss and comprehensive loss margin (%) (2%) (11%) 9% (5%) (11%) 6% Per share information Weighted average number of shares outstanding basic and diluted 392,935,814 390,319,009 392,604,720 336,130,388 Adjusted EBITDA (1) per share basic and diluted $0.01 $0.00 $0.02 $0.02 Net loss per share - basic and diluted $0.00 ($0.01) ($0.01) ($0.02) $ thousands, except ratios September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 FINANCIAL POSITION AND LIQUIDITY Working capital (excluding debt) (1) 14,567 11,333 Working capital (excluding debt) ratio (1) 2.7:1 2.5:1 Total assets 208,355 210,750 Total long-term debt (including current portion) 34,404 33,142 Shareholders' equity 151,833 155,482 (1) Please refer to the "Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Measures" section for further information. Operational Overview Contract Drilling CWC Ironhand Drilling, the Company's Contract Drilling segment, has a fleet of nine telescopic double drilling rigs with depth ratings from 3,200 to 5,000 metres, eight of nine rigs have top drives and two have pad rig walking systems. The drilling rig fleet has an average age of eight years. All of the drilling rigs are well suited for the most active depths for horizontal drilling in the WCSB, including the Montney, Cardium, Duvernay and other deep basin horizons. In Q3 2017, the Company completed the upgrades to Drilling Rig #4 to a high specification rig capable of racking over 6,500 metres of drill pipe. The upgrade is part of the Company's strategic initiatives to increase the capabilities of its existing fleet to meet the growing demands of E&P customers for deeper depths at a cost effective price. Three months ended OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS Sep. 30, 2017 Jun. 30, 2017 Mar. 31, 2017 Dec. 31, 2016 Sep. 30, 2016 Jun. 30, 2016 Mar. 31, 2016 Dec. 31, 2015 Drilling Rigs Active drilling rigs, end of period 9 9 9 9 9 8 8 9 Inactive drilling rigs, end of period - - - - - 1 1 - Total drilling rigs, end of period 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 Revenue per operating day (1) $19,424 $19,575 $20,942 $20,623 $16,835 $21,754 $21,565 $24,996 Drilling rig operating days 522 155 532 257 301 65 191 191 Drilling rig utilization % (2) 63% 19% 66% 31% 37% 9% 26% 23% CAODC industry average utilization % 29% 17% 40% 24% 17% 7% 20% 20% Wells drilled 29 17 41 21 21 5 14 16 Average days per well 18.0 9.1 13.0 12.2 14.3 13.0 13.6 11.9 Meters drilled (thousands) 112.2 45.6 151.8 82.0 70.0 19.5 56.0 59.9 Meters drilled per day 215 294 285 319 232 300 293 314 Average meters per well 3,869 2,684 3,702 3,906 3,332 3,903 4,000 3,741 (1) Revenue per operating day is calculated based on operating days (i.e. spud to rig release basis). New or inactive drilling rigs are added based on the first day of field service. (2) Drilling rig utilization is calculated based on operating days (i.e. spud to rig release basis) in accordance with the methodology prescribed by the CAODC. Contract Drilling revenue of $10.1 million for Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: $5.1 million) was achieved with a utilization rate of 63% (Q3 2016: 37%), compared to the CAODC industry average of 29%. CWC achieved 522 drilling rig operating days in Q3 2017, a 73% increase from Q3 2016 reflecting increased year-over-year industry activity, focused marketing efforts on E&P companies with ongoing drilling programs and the high quality and efficiency of our drilling rigs and field employees. Q3 2017 revenue was 100% higher compared to Q3 2016 as increased activity was combined with a 15% increase in revenue per operating day. Contract Drilling revenue of $24.3 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2017 (2016: $10.6 million) was realized as a result of a 117% increase in drilling rig operating days to 1,209 days (2016: 557). CWC's utilization rate of 49% continues to exceed the CAODC industry average of 29% and has increased from 25% for the nine months ended September 30, 2016 when CWC marketed only 8 of 9 drilling rigs for the first half of the year. Increased activity was complemented by average revenue per operating day of $20,106 in the first nine months of 2017, 6% higher than the same period in 2016. Improved financial performance for the first nine months of 2017 reflect higher industry activity due to higher average crude oil prices, despite experiencing a modest pull back in Q2 2017 and Q3 2017, and to CWC's modern, relevant, well maintained and cost effective drilling rigs as well as a solid reputation for safe and efficient operations, exceptional management and experienced drilling rig crews. Production Services CWC is the second largest service rig provider in the WCSB, based on our modern fleet of 74 service rigs as at September 30, 2017 which consists of 41 single, 27 double, and 6 slant rigs. At an average age of ten years, CWC's fleet is amongst the newest in the WCSB and provides services which include completions, maintenance, workovers and abandonments with depth ratings from 1,500 to 5,000 metres. CWC has chosen to park seven of its service rigs and focus its sales and operational efforts on the remaining 67 active service rigs with one temporarily taken out of service in the first nine months of 2017 to complete its Level IV recertification. CWC's Class I, II and III coil tubing units have depth ratings from 1,500 to 4,000 metres. As at September 30, 2017, the Company's fleet of ten coil tubing units consists of six Class I, three Class II and one Class III coil tubing units. In light of competitive challenges for CWC's Class III coil tubing unit, the Company has chosen to focus its sales and operational efforts on its nine Class I and II coil tubing units which are better suited at servicing SAGD wells, which are shallower in depth and more appropriate for these coil tubing operations. Three months ended OPERATING HIGHLIGHTS Sep. 30, 2017 Jun. 30, 2017 Mar. 31, 2017 Dec. 31, 2016 Sep. 30, 2016 Jun. 30, 2016 Mar. 31, 2016 Dec. 31, 2015 Service Rigs Active service rigs, end of period 66 66 66 67 66 65 65 64 Inactive service rigs, end of period 8 8 8 7 8 9 9 10 Total service rigs, end of period 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 74 Operating hours 28,320 20,047 32,997 27,091 22,927 21,724 23,466 21,008 Revenue per hour $559 $551 $584 $536 $543 $548 $580 $615 Service rig utilization % (1) 47% 33% 56% 45% 38% 37% 40% 36% Coil Tubing Units Active coil tubing units, end of period 9 9 9 8 8 8 8 8 Inactive coil tubing units, end of period 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 Total coil tubing units, end of period 10 10 10 10 9 9 9 9 Operating hours 1,783 1,557 4,243 2,349 2,160 1,147 3,034 1,665 Revenue per hour $688 $657 $491 $507 $458 $508 $662 $657 Coil tubing units utilization % (2) 22% 19% 52% 32% 29% 16% 42% 23% (1) Service rig utilization is calculated based on 10 hours a day, 365 days a year. New service rigs are added based on the first day of field service. Service rigs requiring their 24,000 hour recertification, refurbishment or have been otherwise removed from service for greater than 90 days are excluded from the utilization calculation until their first day back in field service. (2) Coil tubing unit utilization is calculated based on 10 hours a day, 365 days a year. New coil tubing units are added based on the first day of field service. Production Services revenue was $17.0 million in Q3 2017, up $3.6 million (27%) compared to $13.4 million in Q3 2016 primarily as a result of service rig utilization of 47% in Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: 38%) with 28,320 operating hours, 24% higher than the 22,927 operating hours in Q3 2016. During Q3 2017, approximately 2,616 operating hours (Q3 2016: 5,000 operating hours) were lost due to unusually wet weather. In addition, project delays caused by crew shortages in our key operating areas and the change in ownership of land and wells amongst two of our largest E&P customers in our most active operating region contributed to what would otherwise have been an extremely busy quarter. CWC's coil tubing utilization of 22% in Q3 2017 (Q3 2016: 29%) with 1,783 operating hours declined from 2,160 operating hours in Q3 2016. Operating hours were negatively impacted by the extremely low natural gas prices and lower crude oil prices throughout much of Q3 2017 causing delays in allocation and commitment of capital by our E&P customers, particularly in SAGD wells. These capital allocation delays were further impacted by abnormally wet weather conditions in September 2017 and change of ownership in land and well positions among some of CWC's key customers. Average revenue per hour for coil tubing units of $688 in Q3 2017 is 50% higher than $458 in Q3 2016 which reflects some modest price improvements, but is primarily due to a higher mix of deeper Class II units generating revenue in Q3 2017 compared to lower priced, shallow Class I units generating revenue in Q3 2016. For the nine months ended September 30, 2017, Production Services revenue of $50.5 million was 22% higher than the $41.5 million achieved in the same nine month period in 2016 driven by service rig utilization of 45% (2016: 38%) with 81,364 service rig operating hours in the first nine months of 2017; a 19% increase to the 68,117 operating hours for the same period in 2016. In addition for the first nine months of 2017, coil tubing unit operating hours increased 20% to 7,583 operating hours (2016: 6,341 operating hours) which helped contribute to the increased Production Services revenue year-to-date in 2017 compared to 2016. Strong Q1 2017 well servicing demand and optimism from improved commodity prices was partially offset by lower Q2 2017 service rig operating hours driven by normal spring breakup compared to the unusually dry weather which allowed equipment and field employees to return to work earlier than normal in Q2 2016. The year-to-date 2017 results were further bolstered by a strong Q3 2017 where service rig activity levels were 24% higher than in Q3 2016, which experienced unusually wet weather having a significantly negative impact on operating hours and revenue in Q3 2016. Capital Expenditures Three months ended Nine months ended September 30, September 30, $ thousands 2017 2016 Change $ Change % 2017 2016 Change $ Change % Contract drilling 1,504 65 1,439 n/m(1) 2,788 359 2,429 677% Production services 1,040 198 839 424% 2,829 538 2,291 425% Corporate - - - n/m(1) 9 7 2 71% Total capital expenditures 2,544 263 2,281 867% 5,626 904 4,722 522% Growth capital 1,363 - 1,363 n/m(1) 1,735 - 1,735 n/m(1) Maintenance and infrastructure capital 1,181 263 918 349% 3,891 904 2,987 330% Total capital expenditures 2,544 263 2,281 867% 5,626 904 4,722 522% (1) Not meaningful. Capital expenditures for the first nine months of 2017 of $5.6 million are $4.7 million higher than $0.9 million in the first nine months of 2016 and primarily consist of drilling rig upgrades, recertification costs, replacement components and leased vehicles. This compares to the first nine months of 2016 capital expenditures consisting of recertification costs and one leased vehicle. Growth capital of $1.4 million in Q3 2017 included a well control upgrade for Drilling Rig #7 and upgrades to Drilling Rig #4, which were completed in Q3 2017 at a total cost of approximately $1.1 million. The Drilling Rig #4 upgrades increased the hook load, racking capacity, and pumping power as well as an improvement to its well control such that it has the ability to drill to total lengths of over 6,500 metres. The 2017 capital expenditure budget of $5.9 million was approved by the Board of Directors on December 6, 2016 comprised of $5.4 million of maintenance and infrastructure capital related to recertifications, additions and upgrades to field equipment for the drilling rigs, service rigs and coil tubing divisions as well as for information technology and $0.5 million of growth capital. The upgrades to Drilling Rig #4 were not included in the original 2017 capital expenditure budget. Outlook The optimism built up in Q1 2017 over improved crude oil prices as a result of the November 30, 2016 decision by OPEC to curtail production, turned to uncertainty in Q2 2017 as U.S. drilling activity, production and inventory levels increased to offset the OPEC production cuts resulting in continued oversupply of global crude oil inventory. In Q3 2017, some optimism returned for crude oil prices as the steady decline since April 2017 in U.S. crude oil inventory storage levels finally dropped to within the upper band of the five year range of 340 to 470 million bbl at the end of Q3 2017. Crude oil, as represented by WTI, averaged US$48.18/bbl in Q3 2017, consistent with the Q2 2017 average price of US$48.15/bbl, and a 7% increase from the Q3 2016 average price of US$44.99/bbl. Natural gas prices were particularly volatile as AECO, averaged $1.36/GJ in Q3 2017; a decrease of 48% from the Q2 2017 average price of $2.64/GJ and a decrease of 39% from the Q3 2016 average price of $2.22/GJ as Canadian natural gas storage levels increased from slightly above the five year average at the start of Q3 2017 to the upper band of the five year range of between 580 to 750 bcf at the end of Q3 2017. Despite the uncertainty over commodity prices, on October 31, 2017, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada ("PSAC") announced its forecast of 7,900 wells to be drilled in 2018; an increase of 5% from the 7,550 wells forecast to be drilled in 2017. CWC is experiencing continued strong utilization in its drilling rig and service rig business units well above the CAODC industry averages. The Company currently has seven drilling works working and expects to have eight of its nine (89%) drilling rigs working until Q2 2018 spring breakup. Similar to CWC's drilling rigs, the Company's service rigs continue to see strong industry demand with a modest price increase of approximately 5% in Q4 2017. Aggressive pricing from competitors will continue to limit the ability to raise day and hourly rates substantially in the near term. Given the industry's competitive pricing pressures on our day and hourly rates, CWC has sustainably positioned itself as a low cost contractor for its E&P customers providing the highest quality service from the highest quality people at reasonable prices. The Company has been able to do this by carefully managing fixed and discretionary costs on its relatively modern fleet of equipment with ongoing repairs and maintenance capital being low and predictable. As a result, CWC has demonstrated an ability to consistently generate positive Adjusted EBITDA and cash flow in each of its last 17 quarters, despite significantly reduced customer pricing over the last 2.75 years. While CWC continues to maintain focus on its operational and financial performance, it also recognizes the need to pursue opportunities that create long-term shareholder value. On May 4, 2017, CWC announced a process to review strategic alternatives with a view to maximizing shareholder value by capitalizing on CWC's strong financial and operational performance, market share and attractive fleet of modern assets. This strategic alternatives review process has resulted in the announcement on October 30, 2017 of CWC's purchase of C&J Canada's service and swabbing rig assets to become the largest service rig company in Canada by operating hours, according to the CAODC, with 110 active service rigs and approximately 15% of the Canadian service rig market share. The Transaction is expected to be accretive to CWC on an Adjusted EBITDA, cash flow and earnings per share basis. The Company anticipates closing of the Transaction on or about November 6, 2017. CWC will continue to pursue further opportunities to consolidate the North American drilling and well servicing industry as such other opportunities were revealed in its review of strategic alternatives. CWC cautions that there are no guarantees that other strategic opportunities will result in a transaction, or if a transaction is undertaken, as to its terms or timing. About CWC Energy Services Corp. CWC Energy Services Corp. is a premier contract drilling and well servicing company operating in the WCSB with a complementary suite of oilfield services including drilling rigs, service rigs and coil tubing units. The Company's corporate office is located in Calgary, Alberta, with operational locations in Nisku, Grande Prairie, Slave Lake, Red Deer, Drayton Valley, Lloydminster, Provost and Brooks, Alberta. The Company's shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "CWC". Forward-Looking Information This MD&A contains certain forward-looking information and statements within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Certain statements contained in this MD&A, including most of those contained in the section titled "Outlook" and including statements which may contain such words as "anticipate", "could", "continue", "should", "seek", "may", "intend", "likely", "plan", "estimate", "believe", "expect", "will", "objective", "ongoing", "project" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements. In particular, this MD&A contains forward-looking statements including management's assessment of future plans and operations, planned levels of capital expenditures, expectations as to activity levels, expectations on the sustainability of future cash flow and earnings and the ability to pay dividends, expectations with respect to crude oil and natural gas prices, activity levels in various areas, continuing focus on cost saving measures, expectations regarding the level and type of drilling and production and related drilling and well services activity in the WCSB, expectations regarding entering into long term drilling contracts and expanding its customer base, and expectations regarding the business, operations and revenue of the Company in addition to general economic conditions. Additionally, this MD&A contains forward-looking statements involving the anticipated timing for the completion of the Transaction, the anticipated timing for the completion of the Rights Offering, including the amount of funds to be raised pursuant to the Rights Offering and the intended use of proceed of the Rights Offering, Brookfield's intentions to participate to the fullest extent possible in the Rights Offering provided that the Transaction is completed, Brookfield's share ownership following the Rights Offering and management's assessment of future plans and operations and expectations regarding the business, operations, revenue and debt levels of the Company in addition to general economic conditions. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking information and statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information and statements because the Company can give no assurances that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking information and 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 risks associated with the drilling and oilfield services sector (ie. demand, pricing and terms for oilfield drilling and services; current and expected oil and gas prices; exploration and development costs and delays; reserves discovery and decline rates; pipeline and transportation capacity; weather, health, safety and environmental risks), integration of acquisitions, competition, and uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans with respect to acquisitions, development projects or capital expenditures and changes in legislation, including but not limited to tax laws, royalties and environmental regulations, stock market volatility and the inability to access sufficient capital from external and internal sources and the inability to pay dividends. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Additional information on these and other factors that could affect the Company's financial results are included in reports on file with applicable securities regulatory authorities and may be accessed through SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information and statements contained in this MD&A are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information or statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Any forward-looking statements made previously may be inaccurate now. Reconciliation of Non-IFRS Measures Three months ended Nine months ended September 30, September 30, $ thousands except share and per share amounts 2017 2016 2017 2016 NON-IFRS MEASURES Adjusted EBITDA: Net loss and comprehensive loss (638) (2,042) (3,683) (5,751) Add: Depreciation 4,512 3,705 12,292 10,515 Finance costs 333 596 1,448 2,013 Deferred income tax recovery (203) (699) (1,143) (1,994) Stock based compensation 165 132 591 351 Loss (gain) on sale of equipment (114) 49 (72) 163 Adjusted EBITDA (1) 4,055 1,741 9,433 5,297 Adjusted EBITDA per share basic and diluted(1) $0.01 $0.01 $0.02 $0.02 Adjusted EBITDA margin (Adjusted EBITDA/Revenue) (1) 15% 9% 13% 10% Weighted average number shares outstanding - basic and diluted 392,935,814 324,840,096 392,604,720 308,738,337 Gross margin: Revenue 27,173 18,506 74,795 52,130 Less: Direct operating expenses 19,959 13,959 55,741 37,961 Gross margin (2) 7,214 4,547 19,054 14,169 Gross margin percentage (2) 27% 25% 25% 27% $ thousands September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Working capital (excluding debt): Current assets 23,061 18,692 Less: Current liabilities (8,673) (7,535) Add: Current portion of long term debt 179 176 Working capital (excluding debt) (3) 14,567 11,333 Working capital (excluding debt) ratio (3) 2.7 2.5 Net debt: Long term debt 34,225 32,966 Less: Current assets (23,061) (18,692) Add: Current liabilities 8,673 7,535 Net debt (4) 19,837 21,809 (1) Adjusted EBITDA (Earnings before interest and finance costs, income tax expense (recovery), depreciation, amortization, gain or loss on disposal of asset, goodwill impairment, stock based compensation and other one-time gains and losses) is not a recognized measure under IFRS. Management believes that in addition to net earnings, Adjusted EBITDA is a useful supplemental measure as it provides an indication of the Company's ability to generate cash flow in order to fund working capital, service debt, pay current income taxes, pay dividends, repurchase common shares under the Normal Course Issuer Bid, and fund capital programs. Investors should be cautioned, however, that Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss) determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of the Company's performance. CWC's method of calculating Adjusted EBITDA may differ from other entities and accordingly, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to measures used by other entities. Adjusted EBITDA margin is calculated as Adjusted EBITDA divided by revenue and provides a measure of the percentage of Adjusted EBITDA per dollar of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA per share is calculated by dividing Adjusted EBITDA by the weighted average number of shares outstanding as used for calculation of earnings per share. (2) Gross margin is calculated from the statement of comprehensive income as revenue less direct operating costs and is used to assist management and investors in assessing the Company's financial results from operations excluding fixed overhead costs. Gross margin percentage is calculated as gross margin divided by revenue. The Company believes the relationship between revenue and costs expressed by the gross margin percentage is a useful measure when compared over different financial periods as it demonstrates the trending relationship between revenue, costs and margins. Gross margin and gross margin percentage are non-IFRS measures and do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures provided by other companies. (3) Working capital (excluding debt) is calculated based on current assets less current liabilities excluding the current portion of long-term debt. Working capital (excluding debt) is used to assist management and investors in assessing the Company's liquidity. Working capital (excluding debt) does not have any meaning prescribed under IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures provided by other companies. Working capital (excluding debt) ratio is calculated as current assets divided by the difference of current liabilities less the current portion of long term debt. (4) Net debt is not a recognized measure under IFRS and does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures provided by other companies. Management believes net debt is a useful indicator of a company's debt position. SOURCE CWC Energy Services Corp. For further information: CWC Energy Services Corp., 610, 205 - 5th Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2V7, Telephone: (403) 264-2177, Email: [email protected]; Duncan T. Au, CPA, CA, CFA, President & Chief Executive Officer; Craig Flint, CPA, CA, Chief Financial Officer Related Links www.cwcenergyservices.com MONTREAL, Nov. 2, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Development and Peace - Caritas Canada is launching an emergency appeal to help Rohingya communities who have been forced to flee Myanmar and seek refuge in Bangladesh and is calling upon the generosity of all Canadians for support. The urgency with which refugees had to flee in the face of abuses by the army and the breadth of their displacement has exacerbated the vulnerability of thousands of children, women, and men who now have little to no access to basic necessities and services. Since August 25th, when violence erupted between the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army and the Myanmar Army in northern Rakhine State, more than 600,000 people from the Muslim Rohingya minority have fled their country to take refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh, where they are living in conditions of extreme insalubrity and insecurity. Development and Peace supported the emergency by providing assistance to the exhausted refugees who left their country with no more than the clothes on their back and allocated $50,000 to its partner Caritas Bangladesh as soon as the crisis arose. Through this initial commitment, Development and Peace has already helped close to 25,000 of the most vulnerable people in the district of Cox's Bazar with the distribution of food. "The Rohingya population had to flee the atrocities as quickly as possible, leaving behind burnt villages, as well as their cattle and possessions. Humanitarian aid is essential in such an emergency context so that refugees may somehow survive," explains Stephane Vinhas, Emergency Relief Program Officer for Development and Peace, who is currently in Bangladesh to assess the situation. He added that, "The Rohingya community is not only stateless, but one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. The United Nations describes the situation as 'ethnic cleansing' and it would seem important to support this population, which has been facing discrimination for a number of years." Development and Peace is mobilizing its entire network and appealing to the generosity of the Canadian public to help the Rohingya refugees. The funds raised will be used to respond to health and water needs, as well as to provide shelter, food, and other essential items for Rohingya refugees in the district of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Thanks to the Myanmar Crisis Relief Fund established by the Government of Canada, the impact of your donation will be doubled until November 28th, 2017. Development and Peace is accepting donations to support its efforts and is calling upon the generosity of all Canadians. Give before November 28th and your donation will be matched. Notes : >> Since January, Development and Peace has been supporting an access-to-education program for children displaced by violence, in partnership with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), in the dioceses of Myitkyina and Banmaw in Myanmar. >> In 2013, Development and Peace Caritas Canada acted alongside its partner Karuna Myanmar Social Services (KMSS), the social assistance service of the Catholic Church in Myanmar, to help displaced persons in the north of the country. Following the passage of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, the organization collected $2.4 million to support disaster victims and reinforce KMSS emergency response initiatives. SOURCE Development and Peace For further information: Kelly Di Domenico, Communications Officer, 514-257-8711 ext. 365, [email protected]; Sylvie Lamiot-Milliner, Director of Communications and Philanthropic Development, 514 257-8710 ext. 361, [email protected] Related Links www.devp.org CHICAGO, Nov. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Boyd Group" or "Boyd") today announced the October 27 acquisition of a multi-store operation ("MSO") in Tennessee, consisting of nine collision repair centers located in the Nashville region. The MSO was founded in 1970 and previously operated as Auto Art Body Shop. The centers will initially be co-branded as Gerber-Auto Art and will transition to Gerber Collision & Glass over the next few months. "This is an important acquisition that provides an entry point into the Tennessee market, expands our reach to new customers, increases our geographical footprint for our insurance industry partners and also provides us with a new region from which to execute our growth strategy," said Tim O'Day, President and COO of the Boyd Group. "We look forward to becoming part of these communities." Danny Wallace and Twila Harris, who owned and managed the locations, will continue to lead their teams as part of the Gerber family. "We look forward to joining Gerber," said Danny Wallace. "We can assure our customers that they will continue to receive the best service and the highest quality of repairs, using the latest innovations in processes and technology that Gerber is known for." The Boyd Group is continuously looking to add new collision repair locations to its existing network in Canada and the U.S. Interested collision repair center owners are asked to contact Kim Allen at the contact coordinates below for more information. About The Boyd Group Inc. The Boyd Group Inc. (the "Company"), directly and through subsidiaries, is one of the largest operators of non-franchised collision repair centres in North America in terms of number of locations and sales. The Company operates locations in five Canadian provinces under the trade names Boyd Autobody & Glass (http://www.boydautobody.com) and Assured Automotive (http://www.assuredauto.ca), as well as in 21 U.S. states under the trade name Gerber Collision & Glass (http://www.gerbercollision.com). The Company uses newly acquired brand names during a transition period until acquired locations have been rebranded. The Company is also a major retail auto glass operator in the U.S. with locations across 31 U.S. states under the trade names Gerber Collision & Glass, Glass America, Auto Glass Service, Auto Glass Authority and Autoglassonly.com. The Company also operates a third party administrator, Gerber National Claims Services ("GNCS"), that offers glass, emergency roadside and first notice of loss services. GNCS has approximately 5,500 affiliated glass provider locations and 4,600 affiliated emergency roadside services providers throughout the U.S. For more information on The Boyd Group Inc. or Boyd Group Income Fund, please visit our website at (http://www.boydgroup.com). SOURCE Gerber Collision & Glass For further information: Stephen Boyd, Vice President, Corporate Development, Tel: (204) 594-1776, [email protected]; Kim Allen, Director of Business Development, Tel: (847) 410-6003, [email protected] TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Mattamy Group Corporation ("Mattamy"), the largest privately owned homebuilder in North America, today announced key operating results for the first quarter ended August 31, 2017 and posted full financial results for the first quarter on Intralinks. First Quarter 2018 Key Operating Highlights Homes closed increased 8.7% to 1,157 from 1,064 in the prior year quarter Net sales orders decreased 5.2% to 1,266 homes from 1,335 homes in the prior year quarter Sales order backlog decreased 4.9% to 7,407 units from 7,791 units in the prior year quarter LTM August 31, 2017 Key Operating Highlights Homes closed increased 22.6% to 6,855 from 5,590 in the prior year period Net sales orders decreased 14.6% to 6,472 homes from 7,579 homes in the prior year period For Access to Conference Call and Financial Reports: Mattamy will host its conference call, for qualified investors, to discuss its fourth-quarter financial results live on November 9, 2017, from 10:00 am EST to 11:00 am EST. Full financial results are available on Intralinks. An audio replay of the call will be available within 24 hours after the call on Intralinks. Access to Mattamy's Intralinks site is accessible to beneficial owners of notes, prospective investors and others upon certification to establish its identity as such to the reasonable satisfaction of Mattamy. To obtain information on how to access the site, or if you experience any difficulty please contact [email protected]. About Mattamy Homes Mattamy Homes is the largest privately owned homebuilder in North America, with operations across the United States and Canada. Mattamy has sold more than 90,000 homes in hundreds of communities. In the United States, the company is represented in nine markets Charlotte, Phoenix, Tucson, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, Sarasota, Naples and Southeast Florida and in Canada, those communities stretch across the Greater Toronto Area, as well as in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. Visit www.mattamyhomes.com for more information. SOURCE Mattamy Homes Limited For further information: Investor Relations Contact: Darryl Dawe, 416-637-0794, [email protected] Related Links http://www.mattamyhomes.com/ This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate CHESTER Art openings, free beer samples, wine tastings, a book signing, trunk show, artisan knife makers, a new collection of plaid and stripped clothes, music, fine art glass works, lots of wine and food and free items from the design archives of Cummings and Good. All this and more is happening on First Friday, Nov. 3, when Chester restaurants, galleries and shops stay open until at least 8 p.m. with special offerings for visitors to the downtown. Ruba Ruba will unveil a new collection of clothing with plaid and stripped themes while at French Hen, resident Caryn Davis will be signing her new book, A Connecticut Christmas, and Uno de 50 jewelry will be featured in a trunk show. The Perfect Pear will host two artisan knife makers: Stein Roaldset who will show, sell and discuss his work and woodworker Jerry Lalancette who will showcase his hand-made knife handles. Cummings and Good are clearing out their design archives and offering for free on their porch: pins, cards, posters prints calendars, paper, pads and more - all designed by them. Leif Nilsson is opening his Autumn Exhibit of new oil paintings of the Connecticut at his Spring Street Studio & Gallery. The Lori Warner Gallery will exhibit a new collection of glass work by Carrie Gustafson. Her highly collectible fine art glass has garnered numerous awards including the coveted Smithsonian Excellence in Glass Award. Lori Warners new series of monotype prints, Horizon in Vertical will also be on view. Giving herself strict perimeters in which to create a new series of monotype prints, Warner succeeds in working with horizontal bands of color within a vertical plate emphasizing the balance of color. The Opening Reception is Friday from 5-9 p.m. Both artists will be present at the reception. This event is free and open to the public. The exhibition will be on view through Jan. 3. Gustafsons modern aesthetic is inspired by patterns and forms from art history and direct observation in nature. Her cold work glass technique begins on the surface of hand blown glass forms, where she applies an intricate pattern of hand shaped and cut stencils to the top layer of colored flash glass. Next, she sandblasts through multiple, translucent under-layers to reveal a matrix of color and light. To reach the gallery, call 860-322-4265, gallery@loriwarner.com, www.loriwarner.com and on social media, Facebook and Instagram. Artist Peter Barretts solo show, Art of the Sea will welcome guests for a wine and cheese reception on Friday from 5-8 p.m. in Maple and Main gallerys Stone Gallery. A graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and an avid boater, for a quarter of a century, Barrett has been recording with his paint brushes the waves crashing against Maine rocks, boats bobbing at rest in quiet Connecticut coves and herons and terns at the waters edge of New England beaches. He is mainly self-taught but has been mentored and guided by well-known artists over the years including Elizabeth Sennett of East Hampton and good friends and internationally known artists Mary Erickson and Donald Demers. His oil paintings are done both on location and in the studio. His daughter-in-law, Lindsay Barrett recently died of cancer and the show is dedicated to her memory. Fifteen percent of all sales will be donated to Yale New Haven Hospital Closer to Free Hematology Fund in Lindsays name. A recently retired businessman, Barrett is a founding member of Maple and Main, developing its financial model and serving as CEO for the majority of its eight years in business. In addition to Maple and Main, Barrett is an associate artist at Lyme Art Association and has been in juried shows there, at Hartford Fine Art and the Mystic Outdoor Arts Festival. Learn more about the gallery at Mapleandmaingallery.com or call 860-526-6065, or go to Facebook and Instagram. A new report by financial site WalletHub puts Westport, Conn. near the top of its list of the best small cities in America. The site looked at 1,268 cities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000 and ranked them across five key dimensions: Affordability, Economic Health, Education & Health, Quality of Life and Safety. The cities were ranked by percentile with the 99th percentile representing the best cities. NEW HAVEN Efforts to feed the states hungry got a big boost Wednesday as KeyBank announced a three-year, $105,000 grant to the Connecticut Food Bank. Bank officials announced the grant, as well as the results of a month-long food drive that was conducted at nine KeyBank branches around the state, during a ceremony Wednesday morning at the financial institutions regional headquarters at 195 Church St. The food drive brought in more than $3,30 in cash donations as well as nearly 1,500 pounds of food, which combined will be enough to provide more than 7,800 meals. We need tremendous support and this generous grant helps us keep moving toward a hunger-free Connecticut, said Bernie Beaudreau, the Food Banks chief executive officer. Its truly an investment in our communities. The Wallingford-based Food Bank distributes food to more than 600 community-based organizations, which serve an average of 148,000 people each month, Beaudreau said. The grant from KeyBank is one of the largest the organization has received this year, said Paul Shipman, a spokesman for the Food Bank. Anytime you get a six-figure donation, youre extremely grateful, Shipman said. Jeff Hubbard, KeyBanks president of the Connecticut and Western Massachusetts market, said bank officials are hopeful that the grant will take us one step closer to ending hunger in Connecticut. KeyBank has made it our business to give back to the areas that we live and work in, Hubbard said. The banks food drive is the brain child of James Trimble, a New Haven resident who works in the mailroom at KeyBanks regional headquarters. Trimble is a longtime Food Bank volunteer and started his own personal food drive in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. It was an incredible, cathartic experience for me, he said, recalling the first food drive. It made me want to do more. Working on his own, Trimble was able to garner enough food donations and funding to provide 16,000 meals since 2013. This year, Trimble went to Hubbard and asked for his support. I said, James, were all in, Hubbard said. We wouldnt be here today, celebrating all that were doing with the Connecticut Food Bank, if it wasnt for James. KeyBank has 66 branch offices in six Connecticut counties, including 21 in New Haven County. It entered the Connecticut market last summer after the Cleveland-based financial institution complete its acquisition of First Niagara Bank. Karen Crane, a KeyBank spokeswoman, said the company has a strong community service component in addition to its philanthropic efforts. Las spring, Connecticut employees donated more than 1,100 hours of their time during a single day to take part in community volunteer efforts. The initiative is known as Neighbors Make The Difference Day. luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of various cities in the occupied territories on Thursday to protest on the 100th anniversary of Britain's Balfour Declaration, which helped lead to Israel's creation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas used the occasion to denounce the declaration, writing in a newspaper opinion piece that "the creation of a homeland for one people resulted in the dispossession and continuing persecution of another". Several Palestinian leaders have called on Britain to apologise for the 67-word declaration that said it viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Around 4,000 people gathered in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, where effigies supposed to represent British Prime Minister Theresa May and former British leader Arthur Balfour were set ablaze. A few thousand more gathered in Gaza and hundreds in Ramallah. Smaller rallies were held in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, where protesters burned a British flag. Several dozen Palestinians also protested outside the British consulate in Jerusalem. In Nablus, marchers chanted "Oh the English colonisers, we want an apology from you." In Ramallah signs called Balfour "the promise of he who doesn't own to those who don't deserve" -- a common expression in Arabic for the Balfour Declaration. Some protesters held black flags calling for Palestinian refugees to be allowed the right to return, as they marched from Ramallah's Arafat Square to a nearby British cultural office. "Balfour promised to establish the Israeli entity and its result is everything the Palestinian people still suffer from today, such as displacement, destruction and pain," said Abu Haitham Amro, 70, who was carrying a Palestinian flag. The United Nations Refugees and Work Agency says some 5 million Palestine refugees receive UNRWA services today. Another four million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In Gaza, more than 3,000 people took part in a march from a square in Gaza City to the local United Nations headquarters. The Balfour Declaration is celebrated among Israelis, who see it as a major step toward the founding of their state in 1948 at a time when Jews were facing persecution elsewhere. But the war surrounding Israel's creation also led to some 750,000 Palestinians either fleeing or being expelled from their homes -- what they call the "Nakba", or catastrophe. Senior Palestinian official Mahmoud Al-Alul told AFP in Ramallah the British government should apologise. "It is unprecedented for criminals to celebrate their crime. That the British prime minister insists on celebrating this means they persist in the oppression of the Palestinian people." In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War. It has since annexed east Jerusalem and the occupation of the West Bank continues. Abbas wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper: "We have endorsed the two-state solution for the past 30 years, a solution that becomes increasingly impossible with every passing day. "As long as the state of Israel continues to be celebrated and rewarded, rather than held accountable to universal standards for its continued violations of international law, it will have no incentive to end the occupation," he added, referring in particular to illegal Israeli settlement building. *This report was edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NEW HAVEN At least eight new faces will be present in Aldermanic Chambers at City Hall when January rolls around, though that number could increase to as many as 14 if challengers were to pull David-and-Goliath-type upsets in the Nov. 7 election. Once again, however, theres no threat to the Democratic supermajority on the board. Twenty-one aldermanic candidates, all Democrats, are running unopposed, including 17 incumbent representatives and four new candidates who face no competition. Ward 1 candidate Hacibey Catalbasoglu is running unopposed as an unaffiliated, petitioning candidate. Only five incumbent alders face challengers; there are 30 alders in total representing the citys legislative branch. Among the eight Democratic candidates facing opposition are Alder Evelyn Rodriguez, D-4, facing petitioning candidate Mayce V. Torres; Ward 11 candidate Renee Haywood, who faces petitioning candidate Robert Lee; Ward 12 candidate Rodney Williams will face competition from petitioning candidate Steven Winter. A three-way race between Democratic primary winner and appointed Alder Michelle Edmonds-Sepulveda, D-30, and petitioning candidates Charlie E. Delgado and Tosha James-Goldson will determine the next West Rock alder. Edmonds-Sepulveda was appointed following Carlton Staggers resignation this summer. Additionally, Alder Delphine Clyburn, D-20, faces a challenge from two registered write-in candidates in Kenneth Cousar and Yancey D. Horton. Ward 7 candidate and Democratic Party nominee Abigail Roth will face registered write-in candidate Robert Kiley in that wards election. Sitting alders who are not seeking re-election include Sarah Eidelson, D-1; Latrice E. James, D-3; Lukas Moe, D-7; Jessica Holmes, D-9; Barbara Constantinople, D-11; Al Paolillo Jr., D-17; Alfreda Edwards, D-18; and Brenda Foskey-Hill, D-21. Paolillo also serves as a state representative representing New Haven. Candidates running unopposed include Catalbasoglu; Alder Frank Douglas, D-2; Ron C. Hurt in Ward 3; Alder Dave Reyes, D-5; Alder Aaron Greenberg, D-8; Charles Decker in Ward 9; Alder Anna Festa, D-10; Alder Gerald M. Antunes, D-12; Alder Rosa Santana, D-13; Alder Kenneth Reveiz, D-14; Alder Ernie Santiago, D-15; Alder Jose Crespo, D-16; Jody Ortiz in Ward 17; Kimberly Edwards in Ward 19; Jeanette Morrison, D-22; Alder Tyisha Walker, D-23; Alder Evette Hamilton, D-24; Alder Adam Marchand, D-25; Alder Daryl Brackeen Jr., D-26; Alder Richard Furlow, D-27; Alder Jill Marks, D-28; and Alder Wingate, D-29. Alders Dolores Colon, D-6, and Sal E. DeCola, D-18, are the only two incumbents facing opposition from a major party candidate. Their Republican foes, John Carlson in Ward 6 and Joshua Van Hoesen in Ward 18, face stiff odds against the heavily Democratic voter pool in the city. DeCola, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker who now volunteers regularly with FISH of Greater New Haven, was first elected in 2011. He said residents in the Morris Cove neighborhood have raised concerns over taxes, hoping to keep them down and keep the citys tax rate unchanged. DeCola said his retirement makes it easier to serve the city. Yet providing city services is a concern for residents; its an issue his challenger, Van Hoesen, has raised during his campaigning. DeCola said issues over trees can be resolved with a call, but others, such as sidewalk issues, can take more time. You cant get to everybody. Everybody wants it done, DeCola said. You cant just get a sidewalk or street done. (Money) has to be allocated, bonded. Damage by trees, sidewalk repairs ... its not that easy. But were getting it done. Nothing is done overnight, DeCola added. He said speed bumps, for example, are a concern but arent something that can be popped in anywhere. DeCola said there are federal restrictions that must be observed. DeCola said his competitor has raised concerns over his transparency, which DeCola balks at due to what he said is his 24/7 availability. He said he feels confident about winning next weeks election. They think the ward is Republican, DeCola said. My ward and everyones ward in the city votes for the person, not the party. It has nothing to do with the party. Colon is the longest continually serving alder on the board. She was first elected in 2001. Colon faces a Republican challenger for the second time in four years. She defeated Republican Francis M. Lobo in 2013. Carlson, her latest opponent, is a former registered Democrat who assisted in one of Colons campaign . Its always a possibility. Its a democracy, so its OK, Colon said. This particular candidate worked on my campaign when Norma (Rodriguez-Reyes) ran against me. Its a little unusual; he switched parties. It was interesting. Colon joined Rodriguez, Alder Dave Reyes Jr., D-5, and Hurt to run collectively as the Hills Alders United slate. The four candidates worked together to share expenses, release campaign literature and identify issues concerning residents, Colon said. Crime remains a major point of concern for residents in Colons ward. Of course, crime is always an issue. People want their streets to be crime- and conflict-free, Colon said. There are increasing concerns over individuals who frequent parks in the ward while intoxicated. However, it can be challenging when residents conflate her position as alder with being a law enforcement agent. Every citizen has a responsibility to call the authorities, to have that behavior checked (out), Colon said. A fatal stabbing in front of the APT Foundation, a substance use and mental health clinic, last month brought to light uneasiness from residents alarmed by loitering near the facility. Clients and others usually congregate in the area and smoke and drink, Colon said, which has been an issue for the area going on for years. Clients, they hang out there and they dont go home, Colon said. The clinic is located blocks from John C. Daniels School. We want to make it clear that its OK to have a treatment center there, but we want to have it (be peaceful), Colon said. We need to address that negative behavior in a residential neighborhoods. Catalbasoglu, Democrat or unaffiliated? Of the candidates running this fall, Catalbasoglu is a unique position among his peers. Hes a registered Democrat running as a petitioning candidate. Facing no competition, the Yale University junior will be Yales next public representative. Yet, despite being a registered Democrat, Catalbasoglu said he would want to serve as an unaffiliated candidate, hoping that by joining the alders as an unaffiliated member, he will earn minority leadership. This strategy will only work if neither Republican or perhaps even write-in candidates win an election. Being a minority leader would give him an edge, Catalbasoglu said, and allow him more access to Mayor Toni Harp. He said this would also mean he would likely get first pick of committee membership as minority leader. The Office of the Legislative Services said its not quite that simple, however, since committee assignments are made by the president. Since hes still a registered Democrat, its unclear how Catalbasoglus situation would play out come January. A minority leader would be voted upon by other minority party candidates. Catalbasoglu said he prefers the unaffiliated distinction, since he said he doesnt want the letter next to his name to prohibit residents and students from coming to him. Catalbasoglu has earned the Yale College Republicans endorsement and a statewide endorsement from the Connecticut Young Democrats. He met with the Yale College Democrats last week about a possible endorsement. I was able to speak to Republicans and thats exactly what I want to do, Catalbasoglu said. I want to be able to talk to a variety of different people, from a variety of backgrounds, and hear their ideas. Catalbasoglu said as alder he would focus on several issues, though his primary concern will be improving Yales and New Havens relationship. He said it was too much of a one-way road at the moment. At the moment, I think the relationship is not where it should be, Catalbasoglu said. It should be a two-way road. Before Im a Yalie, Im a New Havener. I want to work with the city and university, not just the students Other focal points of Catalbasoglus platform include assisting the homeless, working on helping small-businesses and improving education. He is the son of Turkish immigrants whose family owns and operates Pizza at the Brick Oven, which he said provides added motivation to assist the immigrant community in New Haven. I want to fight for the rights of immigrants, Catalbasoglu said. We need somebody to advocate on behalf of the immigrants and as the son of immigrants that what Ill be doing. Fresh faces with local ties headed to the Chambers Hurt, who is running uncontested in Ward 3, works part-time at Big Lots in North Haven and Compass Consulting, based in Massachusetts. Hes lived in New Haven for 23 years. His motivation is seeking a better lifestyle for residents in his ward, perhaps none more important than children. Hurt said food insecurity is a major factor in his ward. I know that our ward is one of the hardest things wards as far as hunger, Hurt said. Kids in the Hill, who to sleep without dinner...my heart goes out to that. I want to see people prosper. As vice-chairman for the Hill North Management Team, Hurt has been involved with local organizations providing coat drives during winter months, turkey drives in November and toy drives during Christmas time. Hes a member of Deliverance Temple Church and has worked with the ministry outreach there for several years. I feel that Im prepared, to the point where I believe that I am ready to step-up into the role as alder and fulfill the shoes as alder that we can work toward a better community, pull up, help people, Hurt said. Out in Ward 17, Jody Ortiz has some big shoes to fill. Unopposed, she will replace Paolillo, the majority leader and a 15-year veteran alder who will shift his focus to his position as state legislator. Ortiz is a tutor at Nathan Hale School and a part-time after-school teacher specializing in art. Like Hurt, Ortiz earned the partys nomination in July. Since then, Ortiz has remained active in the community by helping organize neighborhood events such as a color run in September and a school picnic. Ive been going to meetings at East Shore Management Team, meeting the other alders, trying to hear what the issues are in the other communities, as well as mine, Ortiz said, adding, I enjoy being a worker bee. I enjoy working on projects. I enjoy working with the youth. Thats what my family is about, helping the community. Her overall message is spreading positivity. She wants to encourage more community involvement including in youth and recreation. Im going to try and do the best I can, Ortiz said. Im very excited about the position. Williams, the Democratic nominee for Ward 21, faces opposition from petitioning candidate Winter, who said hes been knocking on doors since early August. Among the biggest issues affecting the ward is lack of communication, Winter said. Winter said would like to improve communications and stay in regular contact with his neighbors. Winter said he wants a network providing more information for local meetings. He said people need to be well connected to work together on working on addressing concerns, such as access to affordable after-school programs and increasing community oversight for police. Theres a lot of real issues facing our ward, Winter said. I thought the best way to reach people directly and hopefully represent them directly is to run as an independent candidate. Last week, Williams said he wasnt interested in speaking to the New Haven Register so close to Election Day. He declined further comment after adding he was the kind of guy who passes on last-minute opportunities. Being from this community, I am looking for the community to elect me, not the Register, Williams said. Reach Esteban L. Hernandez at 203-680-9901 or esteban.hernandez@hearstmediact.com. ORANGE Arnie Pritchard of New Haven and his two brothers knew in a general way growing up that their mother, Marion Pritchard, had sheltered Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust. But it wasnt until 1981 when they were well into adulthood that they learned the details and scope of her heroism when their mother received the Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem, Israels Holocaust memorial. It would turn out that while in her early 20s in Holland, Marion Pritchard risked her life many times over by assisting in saving some 150 Jews, mostly children, killing a man with her pistol to protect a Jewish family and sheltering a Jewish family with an infant for three years. She was even imprisoned for her resistance work. Arnie Pritchard said his mother wasnt giftedwith nerves of steel she once was terrified when a bat was flying around the house yet she endured so much risk during that dark time in history when over 6 million Jews were killed. Its not that she didnt feel the fear. She was able to overcome it, said Arnie Pritchard, who came to New Haven in 1970 to attend graduate school at Yale University and settled here. While she was sheltering the Polack family of four, Marion Pritchard even fatally shot a Nazi officer who came to the door if the family had been found, they would have been sent to a death camp then covered up his death by getting a local mortician to put him in a casket with another dead body. Pritchard famously said in hindsight, according to Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus of Or Shalom synagogue in Orange,: I lied, stole and even killed I had to save those children I would do it again. Wainhaus said killing the Nazi always haunted her. Marion Pritchard loved children. One of those children, Erica Polack, was a baby when she arrived with her father and two siblings to be cared and hidden by Pritchard, a social worker, who had to giver sleeping powder at night to keep her quiet. Pritchard was even imprisoned and tortured for her resistance work at one point. The late Pritchard, who died last year at the age of 96, will be honored and remembered Sunday at Or Shalom as part of the synagogues annual Kristallnacht remembrance. The program begins at 9 a.m., is open to the public and free. Donations will be accepted for one of Pritchards favorite causes: Save the Children. Arnie Pritchard will be there to receive a U.S. Senate Commendation from Sen. Richard Blumenthal on behalf of his late mother, as will baby Erica who flew in from Holland for the occasion. Kristallnacht, which translates to Night of Broken Glass. Kristallnacht refers to attacks Nov. 9-10, 1938, in Nazi Germany and Austria in which massive destruction and violence against Jews, synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses and everything Jewish took place. Some 30,000 were arrested during the attack and sent to Nazi concentration camps and more than 1,000 synagogues were burned. Kristallnacht is considered the beginning of the Holocaust and each year the synagogue recognizes a person who was a beacon of light in the darkness as Wainhaus likes to put it. This is a labor of love, Wainhaus said of the program, noting he would not be here if not for such heroes because his father, Rabbi Anshel Wainhaus, was among the thousands rescued through a transit visa issued by Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. Waihaus said he thinks the goodness of people like Pritchard and Sugihara who saved so many lives during the Holocaust is the answer to the oft asked question: Where was God during the Holocaust? There is inconceivable goodness and kindness in the human soul, not only evil, Wainhaus said. Wainhaus said saving babies and young children during the Holocaust as Pritchard did was particularly risky business because there is no way to control a cry at all times and many went to their death by letting out a cry at the wrong time. Wainhaus said watching Jewish children picked up by their ponytails, arms, legs and thrown on the truck like lumber really shook her to core, referring to Pritchard, and made her feel compelled to risk everything. He said the Polack family moved on with their lives after the war and were reunited with their mother who wasnt sheltered, as she was active in the resistance. Decades later when Erica was in her mid-30sand had given birth herself, she had primal memories of having had another mother and felt the urge to reunite with Pritchard, Wainhaus said. She contacted Pritchard and the two would have a decades long relationship in adulthood. After World War II, Marion Pritchard worked in a displaced persons camp in Germany, where she met her husband, Anton Pritchard, an American serviceman . They later settled in the United States where she became a noted social worker, college professor and after the award in 1981, a successful lecturer around the country. Arnie Pritchard said his mother used the speaking opportunities as a way to bring attention to causes such as the humane treatment of children and to dispel myths about the Holocaust. Arnie Pritchard said hes proud and that what his mother did during World War II is fairly remarkable. On Tuesday, the Virginia governor's race will be the biggest show in town. But further down the ballot, the usually sleepy state legislative contests are drawing an unusual surge of interest from Democrats across the country. President Donald Trump's election sprouted a network of activists who want to flip seats blue. It served as a wake-up call for Democrats to pay attention to lower-profile state races as a way to chart a path back to power. For a new crop of Democratic groups, Virginia is the opening salvo and a testing ground ahead of what they hope is a wave election in 2018. Virginia is the first state to hold a competitive contest for governor after Trump moved into the White House, and both parties want to win it - the Democrats as a rebuke of Trump, and the Republicans to show they are not blemished by an unpopular president. It's also a purple state where Democrats have been winning statewide since 2009, but Republicans hold 66 of the 100 seats in the House of Delegates. Democrats are running in 54 GOP-held districts this year, and scores of groups - some well-financed, some loosely organized - are looking to leave their mark on those contests. There's a Democratic super PAC planning to spend $1 million - with an eye to a bigger goal of raising $100 million to take control of state houses across the country. An organization founded by wealthy Virginia donors and bankrolled by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur is beta-testing technology to help low-budget campaigns run more efficiently. Activists in solidly Democratic states are forming groups to help Virginia from afar, by fundraising and making phone calls. "We certainly had a lot of support in '13 and '15, but the level of the support now is astronomically larger," said Trent Armitage, the executive director of the Virginia House Democratic Caucus. "It's incredibly reflective of the energy we have seen across the country, and the fact that Virginia is first in a post-Trump world is making it even more pronounced." Republican state lawmakers and candidates aren't seeing the same influx of outside groups coming to their cause. They benefit from a massive war chest accumulated after years of controlling the chamber, increased financial support from the long-standing Republican State Leadership Committee and the name recognition and legislative record that comes with incumbency. "You can bring all the outside money you want, but we have proven our value in governing Virginia effectively while we've had the opportunity," said Del. Todd Gilbert, who is set to be the majority leader if his party maintains control of the chamber. While Democrats this year have also looked for clues about 2018 in a handful of special elections to fill congressional vacancies around the country, Virginia's legislative races may be a better bellwether because the turnout will be similar to the midterms, said David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "The House of Delegates races in Virginia this November could tell us more about 2018 than any other election this year," Wasserman said. "Democrats will find out whether Trump can motivate enough casual voters to flip seats because they came close to winning a number of these [Virginia] seats in 2013 and 2015." The flood of outside groups also presents challenges for Democrats. Many disagree about whether to pour resources into races perceived as winnable, such as those where the Republican incumbent is retiring or where Hillary Clinton prevailed last year or whether to try to expand the map to red-leaning rural and suburban districts. Not every lesson from Virginia will translate to other states. Lax finance campaign rules in the Old Dominion allow groups to pour in unlimited sums and directly coordinate with campaigns. "Other state legislative elections are not going to have quite the same national attention paid to them," said Ross Morales Rocketto, co-founder of Run for Something, which helps train and raise money for 10 delegate candidates in Virginia. "But it's important for us to start learning the lessons from Virginia now, so we can start applying those in 2018 when we don't have as much national focus on one state." --- Democrat Jennifer Carroll Foy, running for an open seat in the Washington exurbs Clinton carried by 17 points, is seen as a prime pickup opportunity for her party. Foy's campaign manager Teddy Smyth (himself plucked from an outside group: the Progressive Campaign Change Committee) has a spreadsheet on his computer keeping track of 73 representatives of outside groups coming to her aid. They include a Sister District program in Massachusetts raising money, a group of Los Angeles filmmakers cutting a campaign ad and a Washington, D.C., organization deploying canvassers. Also on Smyth's laptop are portals to technology tools provided by new groups trying to help shoestring campaigns. Mobilize America, a group founded by an Obama staffer turned Silicon Valley executive, seeks to wrangle grass-roots energy with an app connecting people to volunteer events that is synced to their calendars and email inboxes for reminders. That saves campaign staffers time spent calling volunteers. Win Virginia, a PAC led by former U.S. congressman Tom Perriello - who unsuccessfully challenged Northam for the Democratic nomination for governor in June - is also connecting candidates for the House of Delegates to organizing tools. They range from simple (a portal for supporters to upload video testimonials) to complex (a program to easily send local voters texts about upcoming events and reminders to vote - which Republicans blasted as spam). Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and a prolific Democratic donor, has given $300,000 to Win Virginia, nearly a third of its funding. "We are experimenting in different types of technologies, different types of messages, just to see what will reach voters who haven't been reached," said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a venture capitalist and political strategist who advises Hoffman. Chief among lessons to be learned from Virginia: how to tap into voter dissatisfaction with Trump while also focusing on local issues like schools, roads and taxes? "There is a big debate among Democratic circles on if Democrats should focus just on how horrible the president is," said Ravi Gupta, co-founder of The Arena, which produced digital biography ads for six candidates and is testing what resonates best online. "The Virginia race is in so many ways a gateway to discussions folk should be having about '18." Others are lending their star power to down-ballot races. Democrat Jason Kander drew national attention in 2016 after nearly unseating Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., in a state Trump handily won. Now he heads Let America Vote, a group that aims to combat gerrymandering and voter suppression. His call to action has drawn 114 interns since June - some who learned about the group on the popular Pod Save America podcast, others who were among his 240,000 Twitter followers - to a field office in Manassas, Virginia, where they canvass for Democrats in 10 northern Virginia races. That's success, Kander says. "We are going to use THE same boots on the ground in five states we expand to in 2018," he said. --- Republicans, who are watching these efforts, see it as playing catch up. In 2010, the GOP executed a strategy that helped Republicans win control of 22 additional state legislatures, which allowed the party to redraw legislative districts and solidify its control of Congress. Several Democratic groups are trying to replicate their success. The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, backed by former President Barack Obama and chaired by his former Attorney General Eric Holder, has sent more than $1.2 million to Virginia Democrats as part of its strategy to limit GOP influence over redistricting in 2021. It's working with Forward Majority, a super PAC founded by Obama campaign alumni, that's using Virginia as its "prototype" as its eyes as an expansion to states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Kentucky. Forward Majority's $1 million foray into Virginia involves digital advertising and voter outreach in 12 contests that aren't top priorities of party leadership. The group is experimenting with text messaging and digital advertising as a way to draw voters to the polls in what is traditionally a low turnout election the year after a presidential contest. Meanwhile, the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group dedicated to electing Republicans in down-ballot races around the country, nearly tripled its giving to Virginia's GOP House leadership from $258,000 in 2013 to $755,000 this year. The Democratic groups will learn on Tuesday if the attention and money they've invested in Virginia was worth it. "Failure to deliver and translate momentum into electoral outcomes in Virginia this fall could be very damaging for our overall progress as a party," said Vicky Hausman, co-founder of Forward Majority. "With Donald Trump in the White House, now more than ever we should be able to translate this enthusiasm into electoral success." In a rare message sent out of politeness Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly communicated with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after more than a year. The note was note sent in response to congratulations from Kim Jong-un last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party. "I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side will make efforts with the DPRK to promote relations between the two parties and the two countries to a sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to North Koreas KCNA news agency, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman. Previously, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed hope that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries". In a regular press briefing in Beijing on Thursday Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the message from the North Korean leader was just one among many others received. Xi had responded "out of politeness," she said. The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016. Although Beijing and Pyongyang have exchanged greetings and congratulated each other on key anniversaries in the past, in recent times such exchanges have become very rare due to political tensions in the region. Beijing has backed a new set of UN measures after North Korea launched a number of sporadic missiles and conducted its sixth nuclear test in September. Search Keywords: Short link: It would be foolish to believe two Republicans running for New Havens Board of Alders have a real chance of winning on Tuesday, but politics isnt always about victory. Its often about defining terms of debate. Democrats have defined those terms for a long time, but that could change if the citys Republicans were to adapt to on-the-ground needs, expand their policy positions, and compete hard to win. I see a small chance of that happening, not this year but maybe over a decade or so, under the new leadership of Republican Town Committee Chairman Jonathan Wharton. The first thing any Republican must do in a city dominated by Democrats is make clear to voters that not all Republicans are the same. Wharton does a lot of that hard work by just being himself hes black. This does not give him an advantage, of course, but given that so much of New Havens Democratic politics is black politics, his race means open-minded voters might give his brand of Republicanism the benefit of the doubt. This goes for his policy views, as well. He told the Register in June 2016, after taking the reins of the local GOP committee, that he would not vote for candidate Donald Trump, that he desired an end to Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that launched our era of big money politics, and that he hoped the Congress would pass a bipartisan path to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country unlawfully. This may sound liberal for a Republican, but such a reaction is part of Whartons challenge. Republicans, historically speaking, were not always as demagogic as they tend to be now, even here in Connecticut. The president and the rest of the GOP, down to the state and local level, has succeeded in recent years by stoking white resentment and inflaming racist hatreds, dividing voters as much as they can between us and them. But such demagoguery makes little sense if youre a black Republican in a Democratic town. Who is us and who is them? So while the Republican Town Committees platform calls for an end to New Havens sanctuary city status, Wharton calls for a pathway to citizenship. (The platform is incorrect in saying the city must comply with federal law; it already does.) The rest of the platform has items equally measured. Some are orthodox the city should lower taxes and be friendlier to business. But others are not the city should have its own bus service, street parking shouldnt be politicized, and every police officer should be equipped with body cameras. Again, these are not what youd expect from Republicans. Wharton is influencing more than policy. In addition to two Republicans running for alder, one for Ward 6 (the Hill) and one for Ward 18 (Morris Cove), 25-year-old Kate Adams is running against incumbent Ed Joyner for a seat on the Board of Education. Why? Wharton asked her to run. Before becoming education coordinator for Integrated Refugee & Immigration Services, a nonprofit, Adams was Whartons student at Southern Connecticut State University, where he is a professor of political science. If elected, Adams said she would demand placing one teacher of English as a second language in every school in the city. Most importantly to this columnist anyway is that the Republicans, as a minority, must take a position on the high ground. They cannot win with numbers, but they can threaten the Democrats by appealing to the ongoing need for good governance. The local platform calls for greater transparency, accountability, and ethical leadership at City Hall. This is more important than you may know. Consider the connection between good governance and political participation. If voters believe their government is corrupt, according to a 2016 article in the Journal of Election, Public Opinion and Parties, they lose faith and dont bother voting. But if that corruption is low, they believe their votes matter, and they vote. Its unclear how to break that cycle, but one thing is for sure. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if the minority party can do no more than hold the majority party accountable, the Republicans will have served us all well. And, indeed, they will have redefined the terms of debate. John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative and a New Haven resident. As far as you were concerned, once she had identified you, she had to die, he said. You have shown not one iota of remorse. You planned a burglary with gloves, a mask and a hammer, it was for gain, and your victim was especially vulnerable. You previously owed her a duty of care and she will live all her last days in fear. The defendant was aware of the cash in the house, and went there on the day in question to steal that money, said Mr Barry. Finding Mrs Batten at home and having been recognised by her, she attacked and attempted to kill her. Before the attack, she felt lonely because her husband had died, but not afraid like she is now, said Mr Barry. Mrs Batten now regularly uses a Zimmer frame to walk because she is unsteady on her feet and frightened to walk without it. The hammer blows affected her vision in her right eye, and Mrs Batten said she has changed after the attack. Before, she was the sort of person who was friends with everyone but now she is frightened if someone speaks to her. She is nervous and wonders why this happened to her, she has lost confidence and worries she will not be able to face things in the future. A carer who tried to murder a 90-year-old widow by bludgeoning her over the head and stabbing her in the neck in an attempt to steal 31,000 savings has been jailed for 21 years today.Abosede Adeyinka, 52, from Nigeria burst into Pam Battens home, knocking her to the ground before striking her twice with a hammer she had hidden in her handbag.When Mrs Batten pleaded for mercy, Adeyinka grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it like a dart, leaving it embedded in the pensioners neck.Adeyinka, a mother of three, had been the carer for Mrs Battens late-husband, Ernest, in the last six months of his life, and knew there were bags of cash hidden around the semi-detached West Drayton home.She covered her face with a red lace scarf during the shocking attack, but Mrs Batten recognised her immediately as the professional carer who had visited her home three-times-a-week.Mrs Batten said the horrifying attack has shattered her confidence, making her afraid to be home alone at night or speak to strangers, and terrified she will be attacked again.Adeyinka, a charity worker and Sunday school teacher, burst into tears and wailed loudly as Judge Peter Clarke QC jailed her for 21 years at Blackfriars crown court this morning.The court heard Adeyinka, an agency carer for Avant Healthcare Services, ambushed the pensioner when she was home alone on the evening of April 27 this year.Knowing Mrs Battens husband had squirrelled away cash around the semi-detached home, she planned to burglar the house and, believing the pensioner was out she went to get a key which she knew was hidden round the side.When Mrs Batten opened the door and called out her name, Adeyinka barged through the front door and knocked Mrs Batten to the floor.She pulled a hammer from her handbag and hit the widow at least twice over the head as she lay defenceless on the ground.She grabbed Mrs Battens handbag, as the pensioner pleaded with her: Please dont hit me.Prosecutor Kevin Barry said Adeyinka then grabbed a kitchen knife and threw it like a dart at the victims throat, leaving it embedded in her neck.Adeyinka fled from the house empty handed after Mrs Batten said that her son was due to visit that evening, but her coat and bag were covered in the pensioners blood.Mrs Batten was found lying in the hallway by a neighbour, and was close to death when she was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, the court heard.In a victim impact statement, Mrs Batten said she is now nervous at night and scared someone is going to come to the door.Tyrone Silcott, mitigating, said the evidence suggests Adeyinka did not go to the house intent on murdering Mrs Batten.At some point, she was recognised, and it appears that was the spur for an impulsive attack, seeking or attempting to kill Mrs Batten, he said.He said Adeyinka had worked two jobs to support her three children, spent years volunteering for charity, and worked as a Sunday school teacher at her church.Adeyinkas niece, Olajumoke Williams, told the court: On behalf of our family, I express great sympathy for all the Battens have been through, and I hope you can move forward in peace.Adeyinka, from Hayes, west London denied attempted murder at trial but was convicted by a jury.The judge also imposed an indefinite restraining order on Adeyinka contacting Mrs Batten and her family or going to her home. Meets development partners, says husband loves yamThe United Nations (UN) has assured the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) of its support to reduce the number of financially excluded persons from 41.6 per cent to 20 per cent being targeted by the year 2020.The UN Special Advocate for Financial Inclusion and Queen of The Netherlands, Maxima Willem-Alexander, gave the assurance when she visited the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, to inquire about the progress of financial inclusion.She commended the CBN for its efforts at reducing the population of the financially excluded from 46.3 per cent in 2010 to the current level last year.According to Queen Maxima: You have tried very hard to achieve your targets. We are more than prepared and willing to support Nigeria in this process with assistance and knowledge from abroad of our experiences.We are looking at what has worked, what has not worked and we are committed to pushing the private sector forward in this endeavor.I dont think I need to tell of how important financial inclusion is to the development and to reducing inequality and the spill-over effects this could have on the African continent.Speaking earlier, Emefiele said the CBN would aggressively pursue its 20 per cent financial exclusion target by 2020.The financial inclusion strategy was launched on October 12,2012 with a target to reach 20 per cent exclusion rate by 2010.He said while the 80 per cent financial inclusion target was very ambitious, the bank would work with the Nigerian Communications Commission on how best to take advantage of mobile communications to reach those that were financially excluded.Emefiele said within a six-year period covering 2010 to 2016, the CBN reduced the number of Nigerians that were financially excluded from 46.3 per cent to 41 per cent.While stating that more work needed to be done, he said the bank would need the UNs assistance to achieve the target. He described Maximas visit to Nigeria as remarkable, as it demonstrated her love for the improvement of Nigerians access to finance.He added that the CBN had initiated a number of programmes to achieve the target including agent banking framework, Know Your Customer (KYC) framework, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) development, national collateral registry and credit bureau, among others.Meanwhile, Queen Maxima disclosed that her husband, King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands loves yam like Nigerians.She disclosed this, when a yam trader and mobile money operator customer, Hasfat Iyabo, gave her a tuber of yam.Iyabo told the Queen: I appreciate your coming. Take this yam with you back to The Netherlands and cook it for your husband.Responding, Queen Maxima said: Oh my God! Sure, my husband loves yam! Im grateful. But Im going to pay for it to encourage this woman and I want the money to be paid into her Mobile Money Account.The Dutch Queen was on an on-the-spot assessment of the Mobile Money Agent, operated by MTN Mobile Money, in conjunction with Diamond Bank Plc, to assess the countrys financial inclusion strategy.Queen Maxima, who is the United Nations (UN) Secretary Generals Special Advocate on Financial Inclusion, first visited in 2012, when the project was launched in Nigeria.She watched as the N500 she insisted on paying for the yam was credited into the womans Mobile Money Agent deposit account.She explained that the gesture was to show approval and the UNs endorsement of the financial inclusion, as a way of breaking the barriers to banking by those who are socially excluded from the financial services.Earlier, Queen Maxima received briefing behind closed doors, from the heads of UN Development Agencies in Nigeria.She was also at the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) to assess its activities as they affect the provision of loans to MSMEs. The Chairman of DBN, Shehu Yahaya, implored the Queen to push for increased access to finance MSMEs to enhance financial inclusion in the country. Nasarawa State Governor, Umaru Tanko Al-makura has approved the sum of N67 million for 100 Christians embarking on the 2018 pilgrimage.Executive Secretary of the Nasarawa State Christian Pilgrims Welfare Board, Barrister Musa Aloko disclosed this at a press briefing in Lafia, on Thursday.According to him, the governor also cleared the payment of five pilgrims who could not perform the holy exercise in 2016 due to late submission of forms.This early start through this approval earned us accolades from the National Christian Pilgrims Commission, Abuja. It is our desire that we shall do the needful to meet up with the deadline of screening, inoculation and other ancillaries for the pilgrimage, he said.He, however, enjoined all Christians in the state to make the holy exercise a point of duty as it is scriptural to carry out the exercise while on earth. Another suspected case of the monkey pox disease has been discovered in Cross River State, bringing the number of suspects to three. Another suspected case of the monkey pox disease has been discovered in Cross River State, bringing the number of suspects to three.Director General of the Cross River State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr Betta Edu, who confirmed the development to The Nation yesterday, said the latest case was in Ikom local government area, and the suspect is a 28 year old female local government worker.The first case and second case in Ikom and Calabar Municipality respectively were discovered early last month.Edu said the suspect like the previous two cases had been quarantined and all contacts traced.She said the blood sample had been taken and handed over to the disease surveillance and notification officer.She said results for the earlier suspected cases which were sent to Dakar in Senegal had not been gotten yet. Egypt has paid off the final installment, worth $200 million, of a loan borrowed from Turkey in 2012, said an Egyptian central bank official on Thursday. Central bank deputy-governor Rami Aboul-Naga told Egyptian official news agency MENA the $1 billion loan was taken out under ex-president Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Aboul-Naga stressed that Egypt had paid all the loan installments on time, saying the country's financial obligations have been fulfilled with no delays. Two months ago, central bank governor Tarek Amer revealed that Egypt had paid $17 billion worth of foreign debts since floating its currency in November 2016. Amer also said Egypt would pay $8 billion more this year. Search Keywords: Short link: The Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday struck out an application by former President Goodluck Jonathan seeking an order setting as... The Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday struck out an application by former President Goodluck Jonathan seeking an order setting aside the subpoena issued on him to appear in defence of a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Mr. Olisa Metuh.The court, presided over by Justice Okon Abang, also dismissed an application by a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, seeking an adjournment pending the determination of his motion pending before the Court of Appeal to challenge the subpoena issued on him to appear in the case.Justice Abang held that granting Dasukis application would amount to flouting the earlier judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered on September 29, directing him to sign and ensure the execution of the subpoena on Dasuki.Jonathan had in his own application, sought an order setting aside the subpoena issued on him or in the alternative directing Metuh to deposit N1bn to cover his travelling expenses to travel to Abuja to testify.But the judge after hearing Jonathans lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), and Metuhs defence team, who opposed the application, held that he had no jurisdiction to entertain the application.The court held that since the ex-President had yet to be served with the courts subpoena directing him to appear in court, it was not enough for him to rely on news reported in the media to file the application.He ruled, It is my humble view that I lack jurisdiction to entertain the application filed by the applicant, that is, His Excellency, Goodluck Jonathan. From the records of the court, it is not in dispute that Dr. Jonathan has yet to be served with the subpoena issued by this court on October 23, 2017 on the application of the 1st defendant (Metuh).Unless his Excellency, Dr. Jonathan is served with the subpoena and the proof of service is duly filed and placed before the court, I have no jurisdiction in making an enforceable order, which is executory in nature, even if the order is declaratory, either in his favour or against him.Service of the court process on him goes to the root of adjudication, the absence of which nullifies the proceedings, no matter how well conducted. I do not want to work in vein. It is even not proper to work in vein.Dr. Jonathan, with the greatest respect to him, cannot rely on a newspaper publication or news item from the electronic media to come to the conclusion that the subpoena is vague. It is a hearsay evidence, which has no relevance in court of law.The issue of alleged invasion of his right to personal liberty or privacy can only be considered where he is in court and in the witness box and he is asked questions. If there is an objection then, the court will determine if such question infringes on his right to personal liberty, not when he has not been served and he is not in court.The application is likened to a defendant arraigned in a criminal matter, except his plea is taken, the court will not have jurisdiction to take decisions for or against the defendant. See the case of Mohammed Abacha vs Federal Republic of Nigeria, reported in Part 1042 NWLR. Except Dr. Jonathan is served with the subpoena, I have no jurisdiction to entertain his application.I am inclined to dismiss this application because it has been argued on the merit, but reluctantly. I am going to strike it out. The application is struck out for want of jurisdiction.With respect to Dasukis application, the judge held that he refused to grant it because it would amount to granting an order of stay of proceedings prohibited by the Administration of Criminal Justice Act.He cited the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Metuh against the Federal Government in which judgment was delivered on June 9, 2017 validating the provision of section 306 of the ACJA which prohibits stay of proceedings.He said, This is an application filed in criminal proceedings, therefore, it is governed by the provision of section 306 of ACJA adding, I am bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in this regard.According to the judge, it would also amount to staying the judgment of the Court of Appeal which ordered him to sign the subpoena issued on Dasuki.He added, If I adjourn this case, it would have stayed the judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered on September 29, 2017.He said if Dasuki was dissatisfied with the Court of Appeals order, the applicant knows what to do.He also told Dasuki not to urge the court not to move the court to be on collision course with the Court of Appeal.The judge ruled, I will take the evidence of Col. Dasuki that is in court today, adding that the justice of this case demands that it should be dismissed.Dasuki entered the witness box as Metuhs eighth defence witness after Justice Abang dismissed his application on Wednesday.Fielding questions from Metuhs lawyer, Mr. Emeka Etiaba (SAN), Dasuki told the court that he could no long remember the details of the N400m which he gave to Metuh in 2014.It was the first time Dasuki would be physically asked questions relating to his alleged diversion of funds meant for arms procurement into presidential campaigns of the then ruling PDP in 2015.Dasuki, who had been in the custody of the Department of State Services since December 2015, was produced in court by the agencys operatives on Wednesday following an application by Metuh that the ex-NSA be summoned.Led in evidence by Etiaba, Dasuki said he could not remember the details of the payment of N400m, which is part of the subjects of the charges instituted against Metuh.He said his incarceration for about two years had deprived him of access to documents that could help him to give any meaningful evidence.When asked if he, as the then NSA, remembered that he had dealing with Metuh and his (Metuhs) firm, Destra Investments Limited, in 2014, Dasuki said, I cannot confirm if I had any dealing with him from memory.He added, If I have any dealing at all as it relates to this case, its not possible that without reference to my record, I cannot respond in a manner that will please you (referring to Metuhs lawyer).He said as the NSA he was essentially a principal staff officer in the Office of the President.Asked why he was in court, he said, he said, I am here to answer to a court ruling, a subpoena.When asked to give the details about the payment, Dasuki said, That will be very difficult for me to give any details of the money paid to Chief Olisa Metuh and the second defendant (Destra Investment Limited) without reference to my records. Three years is a long time.Asked when he could have access to his records, Dasuki said, I have stated earlier that I have been in custody for two years. As soon as authorities decide to obey the subsisting court orders.I have four bail court orders and an ECOWAS Court ruling. When they release me, I can go through the records. That is when I will be able to give a timeline. As long as I am in detention, the answer is I dont know.He confirmed that he had filed processes before the Supreme Court in respect of his bail which had been slated for hearin on January 25, 2018At this point, Etiaba sought an adjournment on the basis of the need for Dasuki to have an access to his records.Justice Abang fixed November 3 for ruling. Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr Ibrahim Magu, has expressed the commissions resolve to go after human traffickers.Magu said this when a delegation from the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) visited him in Abuja.Spokesman of the commission, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, who reported the visit in a statement, said the NAPTIP delegation was led by its Director-General, Dame Julie Okah-Donli.Magu said the anti-graft agency had jurisdiction over human trafficking, which he said, was an offshoot of corruption.We are prepared to go after human traffickers, because we strongly believe that it is an aspect of corruption, and corruption is the greatest enemy of Nigeria.Corruption is the reason why young Nigerians are risking their lives walking through the Mediterranean up to Spain and other European countries in search of greener pasture.It is a very sad situation, and we must change the trend by ensuring that we join hands to fight corruption, as this is the only solution to the ills militating against our countrys development, he said.While calling for NAPTIPs partnership in the fight against corruption, Magu assured Okah-Donli of the EFCCs support in combating the increasing cases of organ harvesting involving Nigerians.EFCC has an enormous task in the fight against corruption, and NAPTIP is also a stakeholder in the fight, so we also need your assistance and collaboration, he said.Okah-Donli, who said the visit was part of the agencys familiarisation efforts, used the opportunity to highlight NAPTIPs strides in combating human trafficking in the country.According to her, the agency has busted a number of criminal activities, recorded 331 convictions since 2004, with various other ongoing cases at advance stages in courts.She added that NAPTIP had rescued many trafficked youths who were being rehabilitated and given a new lease of life.Okah-Donli said: organ trafficking, which is now becoming a big business, is another form of human trafficking.She said many youths were being lured into it and they become afraid to come out to tell their stories.The DG requested for assistance of the EFCC in confiscating assets of traffickers, and also in the area of training and developing its own academy. The Governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose has revealed that his exotic G-wagon car was actually set ablaze by his enemies. The Governor of Ekiti state, Ayodele Fayose has revealed that his exotic G-wagon car was actually set ablaze by his enemies. Fayose broke his silence over the fire incident that gutted his car recently in Lagos, claiming that his exotic car was actually set ablaze. The governor didnt mention the people that perpetrated such act, but said it was obviously by his enemies. Fayose, who spoke on a monthly Radio and Television Programme in Ado-Ekiti, said he would neither be swayed nor distracted by the incident. He also thanked God for saving his life. Banks were gripped yesterday by the fear of a major liquidity crisis should the government pull out funds belonging to customers withou... Banks were gripped yesterday by the fear of a major liquidity crisis should the government pull out funds belonging to customers without Bank Verification Number (BVN). The deadline given by the court for such customers to lose their cash is tomorrow.Justice Dimgba Igwe of the Federal High Court, ruling on an ex parte application filed by the Federal Government through the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation on October 21, granted the temporary forfeiture of such cash within two weeks unless the owners justify their ownership of such accounts.There has been confusion over the status of such funds after the 14-day deadline.It was learnt yesterday that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) might, at the expiration of the deadline, compel the 21 commercial banks to provide a status report on non-BVN-linked accounts in their books. When that happens, banking sector liquidity may suffer as lenders begin to return un-linked funds to government coffers.The Vice-President, West African Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU), Emeka Obegoru, said if there was no suit challenging the court ruling, the banks will have to produce a full list of their customers without BVN.He said failure to comply meant the banks will have to tell the court why they could not produce the list.Director-General of the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) Prof. Akpan Ekpo agreed with Obegoru. He said if neither the banks nor individuals complained and the timeline elapsed, the government must find a way to get the funds from the lenders.He disclosed that many people with skeletons in their cupboards still refused to enroll on the BVN network because it will expose their illicit financial dealings.He, however, said it would remain an uphill task for the government to trace the funds, given that the banks are more likely to protect their customers unless whistle blowers give out information on the accounts to the public or the government.Ekpo said keeping money in safe, a practice that does not require BVN, had been a regular practice, and will continue to be an avenue where fraudulent persons keep huge cash in banks vaults to evade asset tracers. I think it will turn a money spinner for whistleblowers as government pressures the banks to get the true position of key accounts without BVN, he said.Ekpo said lenders could collude with high net-worth customers or politically exposed persons without BVN or accounts not linked to BVN to ensure their financial dealings are not exposed. How to get the funds out from the banks is going to be a problem for government because chances are that banks will protect their customers. Even if the government decides to raid the banks, genuine customers money may be carted away, he said,Former Executive Director, Keystone Bank, Richard Obire, said for now, neither banks nor civil society groups had challenged the expartethe judgment, hence leaving the implementation of the ruling at the discretion of the Federal Government.He said where the funds involved were large enough, the liquidity of the banking sector might be threatened as more cash leave to government coffers. If the funds leave the banks to government coffers, the affected lenders may suffer liquidity challenges depending on the level of their customers involvement, he said.He added that the government may react to the criticisms by being selective in its implementation.Principal Counsel at Eze & Associates, Chukwuemeka Eze, said when the implementation begins, individuals affected by the policy could challenge it in court. That means the burden of proof will shift to the owner of the money not linked to the BVN. The person has to prove where he was, and why he was not able to enroll on the BVN network. It will be based on individuals making case for themselves when the timeline expires tomorrow, he said.Eze said the banks might escalate the discussion at the next Bankers Committee meeting because of the sensitive nature of the matter involved.When the banks come under serious pressure as the implementation begins, which is likely, they will have to call for a Bankers Committee meeting to decide on how to approach the dilemma. But there are still going to be some exceptions, such as Nigerians in Diaspora and those serving long prison sentences, he said.Eze said the government had to be careful in implementing the court order, as it had the capability of causing economic dislocation. The real targets, according to him, are people who open accounts with fake names to hide fraudulently obtained wealth. The Federal Government has filed six counts against the embattled former Chairman of the Pension Reforms Commission, Abdulrasheed Maina. The Federal Government has filed six counts against the embattled former Chairman of the Pension Reforms Commission, Abdulrasheed Maina.The charges, filed before a Chief Magistrates Court in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, formed the basis on which the court issued a fresh warrant for the arrest of Maina, who is currently on the run.The warrant of arrest was signed by the Chief Magistrate, Elizabeth Jones.According to a copy of the Judicial Form 4 sighted by our correspondent on Wednesday, the fugitive is being wanted for offences bordering on theft of public money, obtained (sic) money under false pretences, breach of trust, cheating, official corruption, embezzlement of pension money, fraud, etc.The chief magistrate ordered all police officers and the EFCC personnel to execute the warrant issued against Maina.You are hereby directed to arrest the said A.A. Maina, the warrant of arrest read.Meanwhile, our correspondent also sighted a January 11, 2016 letter from the world police body, popularly known as INTERPOL, indicating that Maina had been placed on the organisations Red Notice based on the request by the EFCC.The letter addressed to the commissions boss was signed by the Commissioner of Police (INTERPOL), Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department, Olushola Kamar Subair.The letter, with reference number CB: 3383/X/ICPO/FHQ/ABJ/ADM/VOL.1/83, was titled, Re:Request for publication of Mr. Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina (PPT. NO. AO 5130220) on the INTERPOL red alert.It read partly, I refer to your letter no. EFCC/EC/IGP/09/334 dated the 18th November, 2015 on the above-mentioned subject.Be informed that the Bureau has taken necessary action on the wanted fugitive as requested in the INTERPOL General Secretariat, Lyon, France.He has been published on the INTERPOL Red Notice accordingly (see the attached copy of the publication), for your information and retention.Accept the warmest regards of the Inspector-General of Police, please. Okezie Ikpeazu, Governor of Abia State has insisted that people of the South-East have shown more faith in the unity of Nigeria than any ot... Okezie Ikpeazu, Governor of Abia State has insisted that people of the South-East have shown more faith in the unity of Nigeria than any other region. Ikpeazu said due to the faith Igbos had in Nigeria, they were found all over the country, including Sambisa Forest. Speaking with newsmen, the governor said people of the South East have business ventures scattered all over the country, an indication that they believed in one Nigeria. According to Ikpeazu, If the questions we ask in this country today are whether there are inequalities, there are gaps, there are people who dont feel that they have been fairly treated either as an individual or as a family or as a geopolitical zone, the answer is yes. There is agitation in the north east, there is agitation in the south west, of course there is agitation in the south east but I dare say that there is no other ethnic group in this country that has as much faith in Nigeria as a country, one united country than the people of the south east, that is why they are in Sambisa. You can count how many big businesses belonging to the south westerners that are in Aba. You can count how many big businesses belonging to the people from the north east, north west, north central that you can find in Owerri, you cannot find a four storey building belonging to somebody from the north east anywhere in the south east. Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has reacted to the death of Jide Tinubu, first son of a national leader of the All Progressives Congres... Former President, Goodluck Jonathan has reacted to the death of Jide Tinubu, first son of a national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu. Jonathan, who commiserated with the former Lagos State Governor, described the death of Jide as a great loss. In a tweet on his official Twitter handle, the former President prayed God to grant repose the soul of Jide. My deepest sympathies to asiwaju and family on the great loss you have suffered. May God grant your son Jide repose in His Bosom. GEJ, the tweet reads. Chairman of APC in Lagos, Otunba Henry Ajomale confirmed Jides death in a short statement he (Ajomale) issued on Wednesday. The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has sanctioned 23 broadcasting stations for various breaches of the Nigeria Broadcasting ... The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has sanctioned 23 broadcasting stations for various breaches of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code in the third quarter of 2017.The Head, Public Affairs, NBC, Mrs Maimuna Jimada, in a statement on Wednesday in Lagos, said that the broadcasting stations were fined a total of N2.849 million.Jimada said that the contraventions included breaches of the rules on hateful speech, vulgar lyrics and unverifiable claims.She said that all the erring stations had been fined according to the provisions of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code.The commission wishes to remind broadcasters that they have a duty to promote the socio-economic well-being of the Nigerian state and abide strictly by the provisions of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code or face sanctions.For the Use Of Hateful Speech; Family Love FM, Uyo, was fined N200,000, ABS FM, Enugu-N100,000, Express FM Radio, Kano, N100,000. The latter was also fined twice later for similar infractions.On the Use Of Indecent Musicals; Royal FM, Abuja was fined N100,000, FLO FM, Enugu-N100,000, Radio Continental, Lagos-N200,000, Crystal 100.5FM, Abuja-N100,000.For Unverifiable Claims, a fine of N100,000 was meted on Crowther FM, Abuja, Harmony FM, Abuja-N100,000, Inspiration FM, Uyo-N100,000, BCA FM, Enugu-N150,000, ABS, Enugu-N100,000, Minaj Systems Radio, Enugu-N100,000 and IBC (Orient TV) Enugu N50,000.Others are Rainbow FM, Ibadan-N100,000, Globe FM, Jos-N100,000, Arewa Radio, Kaduna-N100,000, EBS Radio, Benin-N100,000 and Bond FM, Lagos-N499,000.ITV, Jos was fined N100,000, while IBC (Orient TV), Enugu was sanctioned N50,000 for Voicing and Unprofessional Broadcast. The Federal Government will aggressively pursue the recovery of additional $321m looted fund domiciled in Switzerland. Malami The Federal Government will aggressively pursue the recovery of additional $321m looted fund domiciled in Switzerland.This follows the approval of the move yesterday by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation Abubakar Malami, said yesterday.Last month, the minister announced that $85m had been recovered out of the amount that should accrue to the country from the controversial Malabu oil deal.He was with Minister of Information Lai Mohammed, Minister of Agriculture Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu and Minister of Trade and Investment, Okechukwu Enelamah.Malami said: As you are aware, the Federal Government has been making efforts to recover stolen funds, loot, assets and the efforts have been indeed yielding fruits particularly as it relates to local recoveries. A memo has been presented to council this afternoon by the office of the Attorney General which is intended to shift focus to international recovery.Before going into the memo, I think it is important to bring to your attention that recently, about a week ago, we succeeded in recovering 85million dollars relating to Malabu issues from U.K.And then, now, there exist a forum, that is Global Assets Recovery Forum taking place in December, in US and we are looking towards that, we are in agreement substantially with Swiss for the recovery of additional sum of 321million dollars.That memorandum of understanding has been substantially agreed between Nigeria and Swiss. We intend to now execute or to sign off the agreement during the global forum on assets recovery coming up December.The intention of the memo, one is to seek the approval of the council to allow the Attorney General to sign the agreement on behalf of the Government of the Federation of Nigeria. Two, is to develop an instrument of ratification which will now give the Attorney General, the powers to ensure the repatriation of the funds.It is collectively agreed upon between Nigeria and Swiss that we on own part should seek the approval of council to ratify the MoU as agreed, and they on their own part too, procure the instrument of ratification that will now give the respective officers of the two countries the desire power and effect to now sign off on the agreement.He said that the Council had approved the memo.The implication of which is that the MoU as negotiated between Nigeria and Swiss has been agreed and ratified by council and then the Attorney General has been mandated to execute the agreement that will see to the repatriation of the 321million dollars and added to it to develop the instrument of ratification that will be expected from both sides of the device which will constitute the basis for the signing of the agreement in December in US during the global forum on assists recovery. he saidMinister of Trade and Investment Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah said FEC celebrated Tuesdays ranking of Nigeria in the World Bank Doing Business report, which moved Nigeria 24 places up from its last ranking on ease of doing business.He said the ranking was significant because it exceeded the target of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) which only sought to move Nigeria 20 places up.Describing the feat as a turning point for Nigeria in view of the persistent decline in Nigerias ranking on ease of doing business in the last 10 years, Enelamah said the ranking showed that the government was moving in the right direction. However, he said what was paramount to FEC would be to see the ranking translate to practical ease of doing business in the country.He also said FEC commended the National Assembly for passing some bills which enabled owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to obtain loans for their business transactions. He commended states which partnered with the council in the pursuit.He said the National Action Plans one and two which were recently launched were yet another round of reforms being pursued by the government to enhance Nigerias business environment.Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu said the council approved N40.2 billion for the completion of an irrigation dam in Kotangora in Niger State.He said the project which had been under execution since 1985, witnessed the upward review of the initial N18 billion required to complete the project to N40.2 after rigorous analyses.The duration of the project is 36 months.Adamu said the National Irrigation Master Plan launched in 2016 would guarantee the provision of irrigation for 100,000 hectares of land..Minister of Agriculture Audu Ogbeh, who said despite government efforts to boost local production, massive smuggling of rice into Nigeria through land borders has remained a great challenge.The minister also said FEC approved a memo to spray pests destroying farm produce in 11 states in the North using aircraft. He listed the states to include: Zamfara, Kebbi, Kano, Yobe, Borno, among others.He also said there was a suggestion to consider using drones to spray the pests which, he said, were coming to Nigeria from neighbouring Niger Republic, noting that using drones for the exercise will be cheaper. Respite has come for Nigerian students, who are stranded abroad as President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki has directed Ministr... Respite has come for Nigerian students, who are stranded abroad as President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki has directed Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to submit outstanding scholarships to the senate. Saraki also called for review of scholarship policy in the country. The Senate President made the call on Wednesday when he met with representatives of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) responsible for the welfare of Nigerian Students on scholarships abroad. The Senate in plenary had mandated the President of the Senate to intervene and know why Nigerian students on scholarships in foreign countries were yet to be paid their scholarship funds. Saraki at the meeting which was attended by the Senate Leader, Deputy Senate Leader, Chairman Senate Committees on Tertiary Education and TETFUND and other Senators directed the Federal Scholarship Board (FSB) to urgently present a comprehensive report of all Nigerian students on scholarship abroad and their outstanding entitlements to the relevant committees of the Senate to enable the Senate make Appropriations for their settlement. While saying that the Senate committees after due consideration of of the reports would make recommendations to the Senate on how to clear the backlogs through appropriation, he called for a comprehensive review of scholarship policies in the country so as to save the nation from future embarrassment. According to Saraki, the meeting was called to enable the leadership of the Senate and heads of relevant agencies put heads together on a matter of pressing concern, which is the welfare of Nigerian students on scholarships who are stranded abroad due to the inability to fulfill the countrys responsibilities to these students, and meet their needs. As some of you may know, I was in Russia last month to participate at the 137th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), and I heard first-hand the plight of our students for whom the expected scholarship funding has dried up, Saraki said. The overwhelming feeling on the part of these students is one of abandonment by their motherland. He said that the outstanding students allowances needed to be settled urgently to save them from untold hardship. This feeling of abandonment is one that we must move quickly to dissipate, by working urgently to alleviate the difficulties faced by these students, Saraki stated. He added that, We must look for ways to reestablish the pipelines and remove the bottlenecks, so that our students who went abroad with the promise and assurance of scholarship funding, will get their stipends as and when due. He lamented that several brilliant Nigerian students on federal scholarships are languishing abroad due to the inability of the Federal Government to pay its counterpart funding of the scholarships awarded under bilateral agreements with with foreign governments Under the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) entered into by Nigeria and several foreign governments, some of the host countries have responsibility for part of the upkeep of Nigerian students while Nigeria must necessarily fulfill her own part. There is a need for the MDAs to look at our responsibility to our students in the different countries, and devise ways of making good on our part of such agreements. We must recognise that these students scattered that are currently in dire conditions all over the world, represent a sizable component of the future of Nigeria her dreams of progress and development. This is another kind of brain drain, The worst part is, this is a brain drain that benefits no one, not even foreign countries. We are not even losing the best of these students to foreign lands we are in danger of losing them, period. If we dont rectify this situation let me put it bluntly we would be sacrificing their futures; and that, is unthinkable, Saraki said. The Director in charge of Scholarship at the Federal Scholarship Board (FSB), Fatima Ahmad, had earlier told the Senators than there is an outstanding of N2.4 Billion in scholarships yet to be settled by the Board due to inadequate or lack of budgetary provisions. She stated that for the year 2015 and 2016 that there was an outstanding scholarship allowance to the tune of N799.8 million, out of which N444.2 million has been paid leaving balance of N355.6million. This November 55 feature and short films from 26 countries will be screened across 10 Egyptian governorates Egypts annual Panorama of the European Film returns next week for its tenth year, marking the occasion with a vibrant programme that brings both classics and new films to Egyptian audiences, and an expansion of screenings to reach 10 different governorates. A total of 55 features and short films from 26 countries are featured in this years festival, which runs from 8 to 18 November. They include landmark films that have had significant impacts on world cinema, recent award-winning offerings from European directors, and first features from promising young filmmakers. The full programme will take place in Cairo in two film theatres and two cultural institutes. However, a selection of films will also be screened in Alexandria, Ismailia and Port Said, and one-off screenings will be held in Assiut, Damietta, Mansoura, Minya, Qena and Zagazig. A special section will screen a selection of European films chosen by Egyptian filmmakers, to emphasize intercultural and artistic dialogue; this year films from France, Greece, and England by three different renowned filmmakers of different generations. Programme highlights The festival will be opened on 7 November by the award-winning 2016 film King of the Belgians, directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. The Belgian film has won a number in international awards, including the KNF Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2017, the jury of which described it as an immensely likable film set in a parallel world." The film is part of the Long Narrative section of the festival. Also included in this section are a number of recent, highly acclaimed features, including this years Palme dOr winner at Cannes. Loving Vincent, directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, is the world's first fully oil-painted feature, and explores the mysterious death of Vincent Van Gogh. The Polish-British film has won four international film festival awards including the best animation film from Shanghai International Film Festival 2017, which praised the film that spoke to the heart of the artist. Manifesto is another award-winning film set to play. Directed by Julian Rosefeldt, the Australian-German film features Cate Blanchett in 13 different roles performing various manifestos, in a series of striking monologues. The film was nominated for the Golden Tulip from Istanbul International Film Festival 2017, and it won the Guerrilla Staff Award at the Biografilm Festival 2017. The biographic comedy drama Redoubtable by Michel Hazanavicius explores the life of renowned French director Jean Luc Godard during the mid-sixties and how the events of May 68 transformed him profoundly, from a star cineaste to a Maoist artist entirely outside the system. The film saw Hazanavicius nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year for the best film director, and Redoubtable was also nominated for the Best International Film Award from Munich Film Festival 2017. Panorama will also screen the film that did go on to win the Palme d'Or this year: Swedish satirical drama The Square by Ruben Ostlund. Pedro Almodovar, who was the jury president at Cannes, said that the film, which satirises the Swedish art world, depicts "the dictatorship of being politically correct." The Other Side of Hope by Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki is also on the screening list. The film explores the refugee crisis via a story about a friendship between a Syrian refugee and a Finnish man. It won both the Silver Berlin Bear for the best director at the Berlin International Film Festival 2017, and the FIPRESCI Film of the Year award from the San Sebastian International Film Festival 2017. The Emerging Directors section at Panorama is dedicated to first feature films, with the aim of selecting innovative and exciting work by new talents. Among the 10 films on the screening list this year are Scary Mother by Ana Urushadze, which won the best film award in Locarno International Film Festival 2017, Sarajevo Film Festival 2017, and El Gouna Film Festival 2017. Adama, a French animated drama film directed by Simon Rouby, is also featured. The film tells the story of a young West African boy who sets off across Europe in search of his older brother during World War I. It was nominated for Cesar Awards in 2016 and the best feature film award from Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2015. Seven films will feature in the Documentary Rendez Vous section, which will this year include a special selection of short Irish documentaries. The seven films include American documentary I Am Not Your Negro about writer James Baldwin, which was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature award at the Oscars this year. The French documentary Plot 35, which was nominated for the Golden Eye award at Cannes this year, will also feature in this section. The film explores director Eric Caravacas own family history. The Carte Blanche section was first introduced at the seventh Panorama, with the aim of presenting three Egyptian filmmakers' European film choices. This year, Breaking The Waves (1996), directed by Lars Von Trier, was chosen by director Kamla Abu Zekry. Belle de Jour (1967) by Luis Bunuel was selected by director Ali Badrakhan. The third film, chosen by local director Tamer El Said, is Eternity and a Day (1998) by Greek director Theo Angelopoulos. The three Egyptian film directors will attend the post-screening discussions of the works they have chosen. It has also become an annual tradition at the Panorama to feature an artistic, in-depth look at the reality of a European city via a careful selection of a number of films, and this year, London will be the city on display, under the title Mysterious London. In partnership with the British Council, this years Urban Lens section focuses on the gloomy streets of the British capital, via a selection of dark movies that feature the city. The three films are Frenzy (1972) by Alfred Hitchcock; Night and the City (1950) by Jules Dassin; and Sapphire (1959) by Basil Dearden. The Special Screening section this year pays tribute to three cinema pioneers, the ethnographer Jean Rouch and the the Lumiere brothers. A selection of restored films and archival footage will be screened for the occasion. Educational programme A series of masterclasses, workshops, and panel discussions will take place as part of the Panorama parallel programme, which is dedicated to aspiring filmmakers. The documentary filmmaking masterclass will be presented by Marie Dumora, the director of Belinda (2017), which was nominated for the Glasshutte Original Documentary Award at the Berlin International Film Festival 2017. The scriptwriting masterclass will be presented by French actor and director Thierry de Peretti. There will also be two technical workshops. Pinhole Camera, a workshop for children, will be presented by Hossam Shukralla in collaboration with ADEF (Arab Digital Expression Foundation). Sound In Film will be presented by Laurent Chassaigne, a sound recordist, sound editor and sound mixer who is known for Beauty (2011) and Captive (2012), and Fred Attal, a sound designer and sound editor who is known for Raining Cats and Frogs (2003) and Alexander (2004) by Oliver Stone; and Ahmed Adnan, a sound mixer and sound recordist whose filmography includes Asmaa (2011) and Excuse my French (2014) by Amr Salama, and Clash (2016) by Mohamed Diab. The Panorama of the European Film is an annual event that was launched by Misr International Films in 2004, and was incorporated under Zawya in 2014. The Panorama of the European Film takes place under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Egyptian Film Center, and is funded by the European Union, the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the French Institute, the Italian Cultural Institute, alongside the embassies of Ireland, Holland, Sweden, and Portugal. For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture Search Keywords: Short link: President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday summoned his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Win... President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday summoned his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, over their clash at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja.The fierce crossfire between Kyari and Oyo-Ita, which occurred shortly before the Federal Executive Council meeting, was believed to have been caused by the leaked memo, which Oyo-Ita sent to Kyari on the controversial reinstatement and posting of the embattled former chairman of the Pension Reforms Commission, Abdulrasheed Maina.A source at the meeting said Kyari accused Oyo-Ita of leaking the memo, which she wrote to the CoS on the reinstatement of Mr Abdulrasheed Maina into the Civil Service.In the memo, Oyo-Ita said that she warned the President against asking Maina to return to the civil service, saying doing so could affect the anti-corruption war of the Federal Government.Oyo-Ita, it was gathered, also accused Kyari of being the brains behind the leakage.The altercation occurred in the presence of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo; President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, John Odigie-Oyegun; service chiefs and ministers.Saraki, Dogara, Oyegun and the service chiefs were present to witness the inauguration of the new Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, as well as the launching of the 2018 Armed Forces Remembrance emblem.A Presidency source, who spoke to our correspondent on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, said the President was embarrassed when he was briefed about the altercation between Kyari and Oyo-Ita.He said even the presence of the Vice President did not deter the two officials from the clash.The source said, The President was embarrassed when he leant about the altercation between the two officials. He, therefore, asked the two officials to see him after the FEC meeting. It was a gory sight, seeing the two officials almost fighting at the Council Chambers.Efforts made by the VP to calm the two officials were rebuffed by the two officials. It was apparent that none of them had faith in each other.In the memo, Oyo-Ita had claimed that her warning was based on the implications Mainas reinstatement would have on the anti-corruption war of the Federal Government.The memo, with reference number HSCSF/HCSF/LU/COR/FCSC/750/T, was dated October 23, 2017.The memo, titled, Re: Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina, was received in the office of the Chief of Staff to the President on October 23.The President had directed the HoS to investigate the circumstances that surrounded the return of Maina to the civil service.He gave the directive following the public outcry that trailed Mainas reinstatement.Maina, whose whereabouts are still unknown, has been accused of embezzling pensioners funds running into billions of naira and is currently under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.Explaining further, the HoS said she met the President after the Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, October 11, and verbally warned Buhari against bringing Maina back to the service.She, however, did not say what the response of the President was after briefing him.Oyo-Ita said, Please, note that the OHCSF was never in agreement with the reinstatement and consequently never conveyed the approval of the FCPC to Mr. A. A. Maina, nor approved his posting to the Ministry of Interior or any other MDA.Rather, I sought audience with His Excellency, Mr. President on Wednesday, 11th October, 2017 after the FEC meeting where I briefed His Excellency verbally on the wide-ranging implications of the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina, especially the damaging impact on the anti-corruption stance of this administration.The letter also read, Further to your letter Ref. SH/COS/100/A/1570 dated 23rd October, 2017 on the above subject matter, I write to inform you of the circumstances leading to the irregular recall of Mr. Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina.I wrote to place on record the following facts as it permits (sic) to Mr. A. A. Maina who was dismissed from service on 21st February, 2013.The move to recall Mr. A. A. Maina was at the instance of a series of letters from the Attorney General of the Federation to the Federal Civil Service Commission requesting the commission to give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant of arrest issued against Mr. A. A. Maina, which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal.The letters herewith attached as Annexes I-III are:(a) Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/1 dated 19th January 2017,(b) Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/ 2 dated 21st February 2017; and(c)Ref. HAGF/FFCSC/2017/VOL.1/1 dated 27th April 2017.The FCSC thereafter requested that the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation should advise the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior to consider the AGFs letter and make appropriate recommendations to the commission and this was so communicated to the Ministry of Interior.The Ministry of Interior took the matter to the Senior Staff Committee of the ministry and recommended the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina into the service as Deputy Director.The OHCSF forwarded the recommendation to the FCSC which has the constitutional responsibility for appointments, promotion and discipline for further action.The FCSC in consideration of the letter from the AGF and the recommendations of the SSC of the Ministry of Interior consequently approved and conveyed the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina with effect from 21st February, 2013 vide letter herewith attached as Annex IV.(vi) The letter of reinstatement, as communicated to HCSF Ref. FC. 4029.82/Vol. III/179 dated 18th September, 2017 attached herewith as Annex IV, ostensibly also copied the Ministry of Interior which is the one erroneously used to document Mr. A. A. Maina on a claim that he has resumed work since 28th September, 2017. The Ministry of Interior informed the OHCSF of this development vide letter Ref. MI/1436/II/24 dated 16th October, 2017 from Ministry of Interior stating that Mr. A. A. Maina has resumed with effect from 28th September, 2017, is attached as Annex V.Please note that the OHCSF was never in agreement with the reinstatement and consequently never conveyed the approval of the FCSC to Mr. A. A. Maina nor approved his posting to the Ministry of Interior or any other MDA. Rather, I sought audience with His Excellency, Mr. President on Wednesday, 11th October, 2017 after the FEC meeting where I briefed His Excellency verbally on the wide-ranging implications of the reinstatement of Mr. A. A. Maina, especially the damaging impact on the anti-corruption stance of this administration.However, I have requested the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior, to provide any documentary evidence to support the claim of reinstatement and posting of Mr. A. A. Maina by OHCSF, since after his dismissal.The letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior is attached as Annex VI. The foregoing is accordingly submitted for your information and further consideration.Please accept the assurances of my best regards. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for the Iran nuclear deal on an official visit to Tehran on Wednesday, in what Irans... Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for the Iran nuclear deal on an official visit to Tehran on Wednesday, in what Irans leadership has interpreted as a rejection of U.S. policy.Putin met with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rowhani, who had been expecting a statement of approval from the Russian leader on the 2015 deal that obliges Iran to cut back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions.U.S. President Donald Trump has lambasted the deal and refused to confirm whether his government will comply with it.The U.S. suspects that Iran has been seeking to build a nuclear bomb.Putin, Rowhani and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a joint statement released after the Caspian regional heads of state met in Tehran that all parties to the agreement, which includes the US, should strictly abide by their obligations, according to Russian state news agency TASS.The talks were also geared at boosting trade between the three countries, which share access to the Caspian Sea.Iran has expressed a desire to show that U.S. approval is not needed for regional cooperation.No one is paying attention to the Americans rhetoric, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, Ebrahim Rahimpur, said ahead of the talks.In a news conference on Wednesday, Putin also expressed solidarity with Iran regarding the two countries cooperation in the ongoing conflict in nearby Syria.Both Tehran and Moscow support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and are fighting together against the Islamic State terrorist group.Tehran and Moscow are in favour of new elections in Syria, albeit with al-Assads participation. (dpa/NAN) The Senate Leader, Ahmad Lawan, on Thursday said the nature of the 2018 Appropriation Bill to be presented to the National Assembly next week would determine how soon it would be passed into law.Lawan said this in an interview with State House correspondents shortly after he and Senator Sola Adeyeye met President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.He said although it was the desire of all stakeholders that the bill be passed latest by December 31, federal lawmakers would do a thorough job on the document.Lawan said, It (passing the budget by December 31) depends on how it goes. You know we are supposed to be working for the same people of Nigeria and we will like to see the National Assembly working with the executive arm of government.You know these things will be determined by what the budget looks like, the estimates presented to us because naturally, we always try to do a very thorough job, a very patriotic job to ensure that the budget is implementable, to ensure there is equity, fairness, and justice in the distribution of projects across the country.We will like to see that done, but we shouldnt just do that at all costs; we should be looking at the benefits that could accrue from doing that and whether it is possible to just do it at once or maybe reduce the period in two phases or even more.The 2017 budget took effect from June this year; if it is possible for us to complete the implementation of the budget in six months from June, so be it; but that also requires that we implement the budget properly because these are projects that are supposed to bring development, relief and succour to Nigerians, and if it is not possible, we shouldnt force it on ourselves.Asked if he was satisfied with the implementation of the 2017 budget so far, he said, We are still working to ensure that the implementation of the 2017 budget continues, so far it hasnt been able to be implemented the way we thought it would. PARAMUS -- A borough man charged with slitting his mother's throat with a boxcutter and leaving her body to decompose in the garage of the home they shared was sent to a psychiatric hospital 22 times before the alleged murder, authorities say. Officers were called to the home of Jesus and Susana Lopez no fewer than 14 times from June 1, 2015 until the day she was killed, according to police reports released to NJ Advance Media. And at least a dozen 911 calls were made from the home over a two-year span. Jesus Lopez was admitted to Bergen Regional Medical Center 22 times over the past few years for mental health issues. Each time, the admissions were because he had become violent, according to a law enforcement source. The source, who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak about the case, argues that Lopez should have remained in psychiatric care until his issues were adequately addressed. "Both mother and son fell through legal cracks," the source said. Lopez, 30, is charged with murder in the death of his mother, 56. Her body was found in the garage of their Spring Valley Road home on Oct. 24. In one 911 call released by police, Susana Lopez is clearly in fear of her son. "I'm getting threatened, threatening conversations from my son and I'm afraid," she says in the recording. "Has he put his hands on you at all?" asks a police dispatcher. "No. But he will because he's saying he will," Susana says. On another call, Susana tells police her son has been acting "aggressive and angry." "I don't want to be around that kind of energy because it makes me really, really anxious and scared," she told a 911 operator. In a call on June 2, Susana Lopez tells a dispatcher her son overdosed by taking 24 aspirin. The calls and reports also that show Susana had her own mental health issues. In one 911 call, Susana slurs her speech, telling an operator she may have taken an overdose of Seroquel, an anti-psychotic drug prescribed for bipolar disorder. Jesus is in the house asleep, Susana says, adding after a long pause: "I just don't want my son to hear." Around the same time, a neighbor called 911 to report that Susana was in her car, slumped in a seat for more than two hours in hot weather. "I rolled my window down and asked her if she was OK and if she needed help. She looked in my direction and just looked away," the caller told police. While police had no reports that Susana was violent, the same is not true for her son. The mother and son arguments ranged from what they were going to watch on television to his mother's renting of rooms to strangers, according to police records. Neighbors said they saw police at the house frequently. Merrel Kovats, who lives around the corner on Brookfield Avenue, said both mother and son could be "difficult" and that both exhibited odd behavior. "It's unfortunate what happened but I had a feeling things weren't right over there," Kovats said. In addition to violent outbursts, police records paint a picture of Jesus Lopez as a troubled young man dissatisfied with his life at home. At one point, he called the police emergency number and asked if officers could help him find a job. "I need to work desperately," Jesus said in a 911 call last May. "I'm having a really hard time. I'm stuck here with my mom in my house." "All right, so you called 911. Is there anything you need the police for?" says the dispatcher, who appears frustrated by the call. The Spring Valley Road garage where the body of Susana Lopez, 56, was found. Her son Jesus is charged in her murder. In another incident in 2015, Jesus showed up at the Paramus Fire Department "seeking employment as a fireman," according to a police report. The firefighters, who knew Lopez from the neighborhood, told him he would be contacted in the near future to discuss employment options. "They did not want to possibly anger Jesus by rejecting him," the report states. A police detective later visited Jesus at his home and informed him there were no jobs for him at the fire department. The detective told him not to go back there anymore, according to the report. On Oct. 24, the day Susan Lopez's body was found, Wendy Wirtz, a social worker with Bridgeway Rehabilitation Services in Hasbrouck Heights, called 911 to request a welfare check. "We haven't seen (Jesus) for a week now at his house, so we just want to make sure he's OK," Wirtz told a 911 operator. The responding police officer would later report that nobody answered a knock at the front or back doors. When the officer looked toward the garage, he saw "a large quantity of flies" buzzing inside a window and smelled a foul odor. Unable to open the locked garage, the officer said he climbed through an open window of the house, walked down a dark hallway and found Jesus alone in a room, sitting in a chair in the corner and staring at a wall. Lopez appeared to be "catatonic," the officer wrote in his report. The officer unlocked the front door to allow a second cop in the house. "I killed my mother 13 days ago," Lopez allegedly told the two officers. Lopez is being held without bail in the Bergen County Jail. The Spring Valley Road home where Susana Lopez, 56, lived with her son Jesus, who is charged with her murder. Each time he was sent to Bergen Regional, he was stabilized, released and went back home to his mother, according to the source. Joe Masciandaro, president and CEO of CarePlus of Paramus, says mental health professionals in New Jersey are required to release patients when they no longer pose a threat - no matter how many times they have been committed by police. "In 72 hours, they don't really get to the bottom of what's going on," said Masciandaro, whose non-profit organization provides low-cost mental health care in Northern New Jersey. If a person is held against his or her will beyond 72 hours, the hospital is required to appear in court to determine why someone should be held longer, Masciandaro said. "That can be very difficult if not impossible. The hospital has to have a pretty good case or the judge is going to release them," Masciandaro said. Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook. CAMDEN -- A federal prisoner serving a lengthy term for having child pornography in Michigan admitted he dealt in child porn at the federal prison at Fort Dix, authorities say. Erik M. Smith, 36, pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Camden to possessing a computer card containing 213 sexually explicit pictures of children. He'll be sentenced in February, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Authorities say he told another inmate the card contained "mostly boy stuff," and he admitted he dowloaded the images from a cloud account on behalf of other inmates. Smith was one of five inmates at the prison -- called Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix -- charged in April with trading child pornography in the prison's east compound. Originally from Iron Mountain, Michigan, a town on the Wisconsin border, Smith was serving a 235-month term for child pornography for images found on his computer during a homicide investigation there, news reports say. Smith was a suspect in the 2008 killing of a man and Wisconsin authorities later charged and convicted Smith of the killing. He received a 25-year sentence in 2015, a term that awaits him when his federal sentence is scheduled to end, in 2027, officials say. Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Q. My mother lives with me but has dementia and she may soon need to move into a facility. She has only Social Security income. She gave me her savings which is $150,000 so she could help pay her way at my house. I know there is some kind of look-back, and how would that work if she had to go into a home? -- Need help A. Trying to help an older loved one who has dementia is a truly challenging endeavor. There is help for you, but you need to understand the rules. You're correct when you said Medicaid has a look-back period, said Geraldine Callahan of Callahan Financial Services in East Hanover. It's over a five-year timeframe, she said. "The $150,000 given to you by your mother would be classified as a gift unless it was prior to the five-year look-back," Callahan said. You mentioned the money was used to pay her way at your house. Was there a rental agreement? Callahan said Medicaid would want to see a rental agreement and household expenses totaling $150,000. "If less was spent on the household, it must be paid back and spent towards the cost of her care in a facility," she said. "Keep in mind you cannot go back and add a rental agreement but you can start now if it hasn't been done." One option would be to give the money back to your mom. "If not, your mother would be disqualified from applying for Medicaid for a fixed number of months or would have to pay out-of-pocket for her care until she has spent the $150,000," Callahan said. Email your questions to Ask@NJMoneyHelp.com. Karin Price Mueller writes the Bamboozled column for NJ Advance Media and is the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Follow NJMoneyHelp on Twitter @NJMoneyHelp. Find NJMoneyHelp on Facebook. Sign up for NJMoneyHelp.com's weekly e-newsletter. NORTH CAPE MAY -- The Cape May-Lewes Ferry is offering a special "thank you" to current and former members of the military on Veterans Day. On Nov. 11, the ferry will provide free fare for roundtrip, same-day foot passengers who have served or are serving their country. "Veterans have sacrificed a lot for us and this is a small way we can give back," said Heath Gehrke, director of ferry operations. Although military discounts are available all year long at the ferry, this is the first time that those in the military will be offered the free fare on Veterans Day. Along with the free foot passage on Nov. 11, military personnel and veterans will receive a free cup of coffee or fountain soda plus 11 percent off any food or retail purchases in either terminal or aboard a ferry vessel. A valid ID is required for the discounts. All past and present service members are eligible no matter where they live. The ferry, which connects Cape May and Lewes, Del., has operated since 1964 between New Jersey and Delaware. The 17-mile crossing of the Delaware Bay takes 85 minutes. "Many of our employees are veterans and reserve military themselves from all branches of the military, our homeport of Cape May is also home to the United States Coast Guard Training Center, and we are a key way for veterans and active military to get to Washington, D.C., for ceremonies and events," Gehrke said. The Veterans Administration says that more than 400,000 veterans live in New Jersey while 78,000 reside in Delaware - about 8 percent of the First State's population. In Cape May County, veterans make up nearly 9 percent of the population, one of the highest rates in the state. If traveling roundtrip with a vehicle, standard rates apply with a $14 discount. These discounted rates are valid only on Nov. 11. The ferry is operated by the Delaware River and Bay Authority which also owns the Delaware Memorial Bridge, several regional airports and a business park in Salem County. "We're happy to make the journey just a bit easier on this important day for those who have served," Gehrke said. Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook. WOODBRIDGE -- It's almost time to let the Skee-Ball roll: On Nov. 13, the very first N.J. Dave & Busters will open in the Woodbridge Mall. The 34,000-square-foot venue -- which blends an amusement, restaurant and bar environment -- is located in the upper level of the Sears wing of the mall. Another N.J. Dave & Buster's is set to open soon in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, where construction is underway. The company has not yet announced an opening date for that location. The opening of the Texas-based chain in New Jersey was made possible by legislation signed by Gov. Chris Christie two years ago lifting the 56-year ban on the pairing of alcohol sales and amusement games. The ban didn't apply to casino or video games but restricted the businesses that gave away tickets for prizes for games, such as Skee-Ball. Dave & Buster's lobbied for years to get the law changed. The company currently has 93 locations across the country including three in the Philadelphia area and one in New York City. Craig McCarthy contributed to this story. Jessica Remo may be reached at jremo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaRemoNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. WOODBURY -- Dominic Santangelo was on his way to a hunting trip in Maine when his Jeep was struck from behind by another vehicle in the early hours of Oct. 22 on Route 55 in Mantua Township. The other driver, identified as Jatinder S. Bhatti, 21, of Queens Village, New York, was traveling at such a high rate of speed that the Jeep flipped end over end down the highway, said Santengelo's daughter-in-law, Marie. Santangelo, 78, was thrown from the vehicle and died later at Cooper University Hospital. Bhatti is charged with vehicular homicide and will appear in Superior Court on Monday for a detention hearing. Santangelo's family is heartbroken, his daughter-in-law said. "He was a wonderful man," she recalled. "He would have given you anything." He and his wife resided in Buena had just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in September. The family had gathered to celebrate the couple's milestone. "They were just awesome together," Marie Santangelo said. The Army veteran retired a few years ago after the couple sold Timber Hill Nursery on Ellis Mill Road in Harrison Township. He always enjoyed going hunting this time of year and was trying to get an early start on his trip when the crash occured, she said. The Santangelo family gathered for a recent photo. (Provided photo) "For him to be taken so recklessly, it's just awful," Santangelo said. "Everybody is just destroyed, because this isn't how it's supposed to happen. We are a loving, very close family. We live within 20 minutes of each other." Santangelo said her father-in-law was looking forward to her daughter's wedding next year. "He was so excited. He wanted to wear a tux," she said, fighting back tears. "We miss him terribly and are sad for our children who no longer have their grandfather to celebrate special events coming up." Santangelo said she also feels for the loss suffered by Bhatti's family. As a parent, she understands how hard this experience must be for his mother. "I was heartbroken for what he did to his family," she said. She still wants to see justice served, however. "I was sad that she was losing her son, but you can't get away with it," she said. Jatinder S. Bhatti, 21, of Queens Village, New York. (Salem County Correctional Facility) State police allege Bhatti was under the influence of alcohol and possibly drugs when the crash occured. A trooper said he saw Bhatti try to dispose of a bag containing Adderall pills in a wooded area next to the roadway, according to a criminal complaint. He was additionally charged with tampering with evidence and drug offenses. Bhatti's blood alcohol concentration was 0.11 percent, according to the complaint. A motorist is considered under the influence if their BAC is 0.08 percent or greater. Bhatti is represented by the public defender's office, but is seeking private counsel, court officials indicated Thursday. He is housed in Salem County Correctional Facility. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. Prime Minister Theresa May says she is 'proud' of Britain's role in creating Israel. However, History will show that the Balfour Declaration was a crime against the Palestinian people One day, History will acknowledge that the Balfour Declaration was a crime committed against the Palestinian people, against humanity and its values of civilization. A crime that paved the way for a series of other crimes, the most heinous of which was the crime of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in 1948, leading to the displacement of 70 percent of its sons and daughters and the demolition and perishing of 400 Palestinian villages and towns. One of the most horrible oddities is that this declaration, issued by the British government, lacked any legal foundation, for what Britain gave to the Zionist movement was the land of another people, over which it had no right and no authority. As a matter of fact, the Balfour Declaration was part of a colonial plan to divide the Arab lands among the colonial powers based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement. This declarations main objective was completing the Sykes-Picot plan through creating a colonial base to be used in serving the colonial aims of repressing the peoples of the region and seizing their wealth. The definitive evidence of this came when the colonial powers Britain and France used Israel in launching the Tripartite Aggression in 1956 against Egypt as a response to the nationalisation and liberation of the Suez Canal. This matter recurred in the 1967 Aggression, which aimed at breaking the backbone of the Arab national liberation movement. However, the most salient feature in the Balfour Declaration was its repugnant racism. For it gave three percent of Palestines population the right to a national homeland with full political rights, viewing the other 97 percent (the Palestinians) as just "the rest" a minority that could enjoy freedom of religious worship and civil rights, but without any political rights. The declaration itself even stipulated a provision ensuring the political rights of the Jews all over the world and granting them the right to a Jewish national homeland, despite their constituting only three percent of Palestines population. Balfours repugnant racism was directed not only at the Palestinians, but in a certain sense against the Jews themselves. For the declaration aimed at removing or expelling them from Europe in order to employ them as a tool against the people of the region and against many peoples of the world. In that way, the declaration created the basic element of instability in the entire Middle East. But the biggest racist crime was the one committed against the Palestinian people. For the Balfour Declaration laid the foundations for the worst apartheid and racial discrimination in human history, which we are now living through in Palestine. The word "apartheid" vexes both the extremist Zionists and the moderate ones, such as Yossi Beilin, because it exposes the impossibility of the coexistence of the Zionist idea with human justice. The word "apartheid" literally means the existence of two legal systems for two human groups living in the same geographical area. That is exactly what the Balfour Declaration has laid the foundations for and what Israel has created in Palestine. What provokes the Zionists is that we Palestinians didnt allow them to defeat us and didnt allow them to totally deport us, because we stood fast in our homeland, despite all the suffering and despite the majority of us being displaced. In historical Palestine, we are now equal in number to the Israeli Jews, if not more numerous. What vexes them is that through our steadfastness, we have foiled the attempts to hide and bury the apartheid regimes blatant features, visible on their faces in full view of the entire world. We will remain steadfast until we gain our freedom and rights and until we bring down the apartheid, racist Israeli regime and foil the intentions of the Balfour Declaration, whether it takes 100 years or more. But what Ms Theresa May, Britains prime minister, must remember when she announces her pride in the Balfour Declaration and insists along with her ambassadors on celebrating it, is that the Balfour Declaration is a crime that is still being committed in the present day, not a forgotten crime from the past. The Balfour Declaration, which was executed through killing, terrorism and massacres in the Palestinian territories of 1948, is executed now via colonial settlements, barriers and the Separation Wall, and through repression and siege in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. Theresa May will hear our response to her position in the cries of tens of thousands of Britons who will demonstrate in the streets of London on 4 November, denouncing the Balfour Declaration and demanding that their government apologise for this disgraceful act. She will hear it from Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, who won the votes of more than 40 percent of the British electorate, and she will hear it from millions of workers who are members of the trade unions supporting the Palestinian peoples rights. She will hear the echo of demonstrations, which will be organised in Palestine and all over the world in front of the British embassies. She will hear it resoundingly, because it is the voice of righteousness and justice, which doesnt sleep; the same voice of righteousness yelled by the throats of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. We wont get tired or bored until Britain presents its apology to the Palestinian people for this historical crime, compensates them for the harm they suffered and acknowledges their free, independent state. Perhaps Britain will also apologise to the Jews for using them as fuel for both their own colonial plans and the Zionist movement, which everyday insults the pain and suffering they underwent at the hands of Fascism and Nazism. Righteousness doesnt sleep, the apartheid regime wont last, and the dawn of freedom will come. One day, History will write that the Balfour plot ended in failure due to the legendary steadfastness of the people of Palestine. The writer is Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative. Search Keywords: Short link: The 1907 challenge that led to the founding of Loyola NOPD responded to a carjacking and an armed robbery overnight between Wednesday, Nov. 1 and Thursday, Nov. 2. (Times-Picayune archive) LSU's Barnes & Noble bookstore at the corner of Highland and Raphael Semmes roads. Semmes was a Confederate admiral who spent less than five months teaching at the school in 1867.(Photo by Robert Mann) Mark Jacobs is campaigning for several measures he believes will help improve education in Iowa. Jacobs, who grew up in Des Moines, returned to the state about six years ago after careers in New York and Houston and founded the nonprofit organization Reaching Higher Iowa. He also ran for U.S. Senate against Joni Ernst in the Republican primary in 2014. Jacobs said he remembers Iowa being one of the top two states in education when he was attending Roosevelt High School in Des Moines. Weve lost that leadership position not because weve gotten worse, but because weve been stagnant, he said Wednesday in an interview with The Nonpareil. The state needs to make the following key changes, Jacobs said: Implement statewide assessment aligned to academic standards that will measure each childs annual academic growth. Currently, he said, the state assessment does not align with state standards, and the test rates students by percentile, which doesnt translate to an objective score that can be used to track individual students progress. Many school districts use their own assessments to track student growth, but Jacobs said districts could benefit from each other if they used a common measuring tool. Offer competitive compensation to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers. The most cost-effective way to do this is to target young, rock-star teaching candidates, Jacobs said. Provide continuing education opportunities for teachers and principals. We believe we have significant underinvestment in our professional development, Jacobs said. The state needs to put educators in a position to be successful, he said. Of course, different districts spend different amounts on professional development. And the state does provide supplemental funding to public schools for professional development. Give families options in education and environment to best suit each child and modify Iowas school charter law to attract high-quality charter schools to the state. We believe one of the things we need to do in Iowa is to build more choices, Jacobs said. Critics, however, see the expansion of charter schools particularly without the approval of local school districts as a threat to adequate funding for public schools. While public schools are the backbone of the states educational system, Jacobs argued, charter and online schools could help fill some of the unmet needs. Jacobs served on the board of directors for a string of charter schools in Houston while living in that area. On average, he said, charters operate on 72 percent of a public schools budget, adding, Theres really not a lot of correlation between academic achievement and dollars spent. We have the opportunity to learn from other states, he said, citing examples where per-pupil public school funding has gone up because of cost-savings achieved by independently-operated charter schools. Currently, Iowa law puts local school districts in charge of approving and overseeing charter schools. There are three in the state: one in Des Moines, one in Cedar Rapids and one in Storm Lake thats a collaborative venture with Iowa Central Community College and Buena Vista University. Jacobs said he would like to see the states business community get more involved in education, since they are affected by the work readiness of Iowas high school graduates. Most of the members of Reaching Higher Iowas board come from the business community. A panel of judges recently reviewed tourism efforts by Iowa cities to determine this years Outstanding Community Award. At ceremonies last week, Council Bluffs was announced as the winner. In fact, the Iowa Tourism Office and Travel Federation of Iowa recognized Council Bluffs with three awards at the annual Iowa Tourism Awards, held in Sioux City on Oct. 26. In recent history, I dont think we came home with three awards, said Mark Eckman, executive director of the Council Bluffs Convention & Visitors Bureau. Its definitely note-worthy. Iowa cities with populations of 10,000 or more competed for the Outstanding Community Award, Eckman said. Thats a lot of communities, he said. Council Bluffs won that award because of numerous accomplishments, Eckman said. Those accomplishments, he said, included a new promotional website, strong hotel occupancy and successful efforts in attracting large meetings and sporting events, to name a few. Eckman said the city also won the Outstanding Event Award for the annual Loessfest celebration. In putting together the Loessfest nomination, the Council Bluffs Parks Department cited the 45,000 attendees at the 2017 event and the 175,000 who have attended since its inception in 2013. Finally, Council Bluffs won the Outstanding Website Award for UNleashCB.com. Since its launch in May, this website has seen a triple-digit percentage increase in users, sessions and pageviews compared to a previous site, Eckman said. These awards were three of 27 presented in 13 categories for nominees from across Iowa in both metro and rural areas, Eckman said. There was a lot of collaboration among different organizations and individuals that made these award-winning efforts possible, he added. Tourism plays a big economic role in Iowa and Pottawattamie County, Eckman said. Travelers spend more than $8 billion in Iowa and $300 million in Pottawattamie County annually. It speaks to the quality of our efforts, Eckman said of the awards. OMAHA A year ago, Tyler Carach used his allowance to buy four deputies what he considered their favorite food: doughnuts. The Florida boys gesture of thanks has turned into a mission to show his appreciation for police officers across the country by delivering doughnuts to them. Tyler, who has become known as Donut Boy, brought his message to Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday. The 9-year-old shook hands with officers, posed for pictures and chatted with Mayor Jean Stothert during his visit to the Omaha Police Departments southwest precinct in the Millard area. He handed officers a card that read: Please stay safe and keep up the great job. He has visited two dozen states since last year and his goal is to hit all 50. He has so far delivered more than 36,000 donuts. Tyler said cops are special. They risk their lives every day (and) protect your family, said Tyler, whos had law enforcement officers in his family. Officers presented him with gifts, including police patches and T-shirts. He turns 10 this week, so officers sang Happy Birthday and set out a special cake. He met a police dog and police horses. He checked out a police SWAT truck, lifted a battering ram and tried on a gas mask. Dozens of officers from agencies across the Omaha area attended the event, where they sampled doughnuts donated by area Hy-Vee stores. His mom, Sheena Carach, said that as the events have grown bigger, shes asked local stores to help by donating doughnuts or providing them at a discount. Sgt. Erin Payne of the Omaha Police Department said she was grateful for his visit. In his 9-year-old way, hes doing what he can to show his appreciation for the men and women in blue, she said. Tylers mom said even though hes 9, he knows that the public doesnt always appreciate police officers. When he bought the doughnuts for the deputies last year, he asked his mom why they were so happy. She told him that it wasnt just the treat they enjoyed. They appreciated that Tyler was showing his gratitude. Thats when the idea for a nationwide thank-you clicked. She said her son is a kind, compassionate boy who wont step on bugs on the sidewalk and opens doors for ladies. His desire to thank officers fits his personality, she said. His next stops include South Dakota and Minnesota. She said a GoFundMe page has been set up to help cover the travel expenses. His school sent his work with him for this trip, and his mom is helping him keep up with his studies. She said that Tyler wants to become a police officer and that local law enforcement set a great example. Hes learning how to be a wonderful cop from these heroes, she said. United States military men and women will receive some words and gifts of joy this Christmas from sixth-graders and senior citizens in North Platte. On Wednesday, the Community Connections Impact Team, along with mentees and mentors, joined forces with senior citizens to put together care packages for the annual project. Our Impact Team is a group of sixth-grade students from Madison School, said Angela Hipp, Community Connections mentor coordinator. They meet once a week and they have class time where they learn communication skills and hear anti-bullying messages. Then every other week they come to the (North Platte) Senior Center and meet with mentors from the community who will reinforce those messages. As part of the program, the students also do community projects. Last week the Impact Team cleaned up a flower bed at the senior center, Hipp said. Operation Christmas Card is another one of the community projects we do together. The students are partnering with the senior center and Community Connections mentees and mentors to prepare the packages for shipping. The project is where we do Christmas cards and care packages for the U.S. military members, Hipp said. We got a list from a lady who started a Facebook page for this project, and I thought this was a good idea for the kids to learn about and to send some appreciation to our military. She said the cards will go all over the world. Some of military members are on ships; theres a name of someone in Afghanistan, one is in Germany, and more all over the place, Hipp said. We have a list of 13 names for care packages and a list of 125 names for Christmas cards. Some of the students were writing messages on the cards, while others were filling the boxes with goodies and practical items. The manager over at Dominos was stationed in Iraq, so this kind of really hit home for him, Hipp said. Hes bringing pizzas for us, but he said they love to get baby wipes because sometimes they dont get to take a shower. Hipp said donations and cards can be delivered to her at Community Connections through Nov. 8. Call Hipp at 308-696-0975 for more information. The Nebraska Economic Development Task Force was created this year with the passage of Legislative Bill 641 to examine the effectiveness of economic development programs and to look at alternatives. Due to my position as Education Committee chairman, I am appointed as one of its 10 members. So far we have met every month, requiring a trip to Lincoln. Originally, the subject was geared to analyzing what state and local economic development programs were effective, weighing the cost to the taxpayer versus the economic activity created. The topic of late has turned to tax increment financing, a program that has legislative oversight by the Urban Affairs Committee. It was created by ballot approval of citizens, adding a new section to our State Constitution, Article VIII-Section 12. TIF is intended to create an incentive to transfer existing economic growth from the outer edges of a community to redevelopment in blighted and substandard older areas. It was never intended to become a tool for communities to use to compete with other communities for normal regional development growth; and it was never intended to be used as a cure-all for normal free-market irregularities such as a present perceived shortage of workforce housing. This year I led a successful filibuster of LB496 legislation that would have added private construction cost of projects (outside of Omaha and Lincoln) to the total cost property tax dollars could be used for to finance TIF. This was a major change to the present belief that TIF dollars are still tax dollars and should be used for public purpose: Limited to the cost of removal of blighted structures and replacement of older public infrastructure streets and public utilities. The false perception during debate on the bill was that TIF was not being used for housing. The most recent TIF report by the Department of Revenue showed $557 million of statewide residential property value involved in TIF projects. Most of those residential projects, due to being limited to public infrastructure cost, run their course on average much less than the allowable 15 years, thus returning those tax dollars back into the communities tax base sooner rather than later. By adding construction cost to the equation, all residential TIFs would run the full 15 years. The question also arises: Why would any contractor build a residence without TIF? It would soon become apparent that to compete, TIF would be a necessary part of the projects financing. Last year, outside of Douglas and Lancaster counties, Nebraska had $667 million in residential construction growth; considering the vast majority of that growth was in the city limits of communities, it is not hard to imagine the hit our states property tax base could take if LB 496 would pass. Last year, residential TIF had a $12 million cost; that could easily double in a few years. In Lincoln County, we have an odd array of economic indicators. Low unemployment but, at the same time, loss of population is one. How can there be a shortage of housing when we have fewer people? Is the cost of housing the problem, or is the cost of owning housing the culprit? I go back to high property taxes as a source for part of the housing situation. The mere fact that the supporters of LB 496 claim that property taxes are such a burden that the diversion of a homeowners taxes to a contractor for 15 years is a deciding factor to build should give pause to all of us when we examine our property tax burden. For example, a family looking to buy a $200,000 home in North Platte would pay on a 4 percent interest, 30-year mortgage a reasonable $955 loan payment; but when you throw into escrow an additional $100 for insurance and $350 for property taxes, a monthly payment of $1,405 can deter home ownership. So I continue to work for property-tax relief for all and fight against answers that only profit special interests. As a statewide policy maker, I have to take into consideration unintended consequences of legislation. Often when you try to fix a perceived short-term economic bottleneck, you end up breaking the bottle. Contact Sen. Mike Groene: mgroene@leg.ne.gov or 402-471-2729. A man and woman with warrants out for their arrests for narcotics-related charges were apprehended Monday. Kevin Kissam, of the 900 block of East 850 South in Hamlet in Starke County, had a warrant through New Jersey for manufacturing and distribution of dangerous drugs, according to a news release. His LaPorte County warrant was for dealing cocaine or a narcotic drug over 10 grams, a level 2 felony, police said. Ava Strieter, 32, had a warrant through LaPorte and Marshal counties for narcotics possession, police said. Members of the Fugitive Apprehension Street Team and the U.S. Marshal Great Lakes Fugitive Task Force were attempting to locate Kissam and Strieter about 4:45 p.m. Monday, according to the release. After police stayed in the area for several hours, they were both seen arriving at their home in Hamlet, police said. Kissam was arrested on an extraditable warrant out of New Jersey, and Strieter was taken into custody. After his arrest, Kissam was seen dropping and kicking a clear, plastic bag full of whitish, brown, rocky powder under the rear vehicle tire. The substance later tested positive for 15.8 grams of heroin, police said. Also taken as evidence was $830 in cash that was in Kissams pocket, police said. Deputies from the LaPorte County Sheriffs Department and the Kingsford Heights Police Department assisted FAST and the U.S. Marshals' task force. The case has been turned over to the LaPorte County prosecutor's office. INDIANAPOLIS The Indiana Court of Appeals has unanimously affirmed the murder conviction of Thomas Reichler, of Porter, who at age 18 caused the death of a Portage man by shooting him in front of his wife and children. According to court records, Reichler and two accomplices were stealing items from unlocked cars in the early morning hours of Dec. 12, 2014, when Alexius Tapia, 36, confronted Reichler in Tapia's driveway. Following a scuffle, Reichler shot Tapia in the abdomen as Tapia's wife called 911 from their front porch and two of his three children watched through the open front door of their home. The bullet severed Tapia's iliac artery and he died at the hospital from massive internal bleeding, court records show. Reichler was found guilty of murder by a Porter County jury and sentenced to 62 years in prison. He argued in his appeal that jurors should have been allowed to consider convicting him of reckless homicide instead of murder. After reviewing the case evidence, the appellate court concluded that Reichler knew his actions had a high probability of causing Tapia's death and were more than just reckless. As a result, Porter Superior Judge Mary Harper was correct to omit reckless homicide from the jury instructions as a lesser included offense, the court said. Now 20, Reichler's earliest possible release date from prison, assuming good behavior, is Sept. 14, 2068, according to the Department of Correction. CROWN POINT A juvenile court magistrate may decide by Friday afternoon whether a 16-year old Hammond boy charged with the murder of a grandfather will be tried as an adult. The 16-year-old was charged July 31 in Lake County Juvenile Court with murder and criminal organization activity in connection with the death of Robert DeClements, 51, who was shot March 20, 2016, in the 1100 block of Becker Street in Hammond. Magistrate Matthew B. Gruett presided during an omnibus hearing Thursday with defense attorney Michael Woods representing the teenager and deputy prosecuting attorney Keith Anderson representing the state. Gruett took the decision to waive the 16-year-old to adult criminal court under advisement. A 21-year old co-defendant told prosecutors in February that the 16-year-old, a member of the East Haiti Crew, allegedly killed DeClements during a shootout with a gang member from GUWAP, records state. St. Mary Catholic Community School will host its 56th annual spaghetti supper on Nov. 8 at 405 E. Joliet St. Lunch will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and supper from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Drive-thru service is available; call ahead for orders of 10 or more. Delivery service is also available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for those who have a place of business in the Crown Point area and would prefer to dine in for lunch. There is a five-order minimum for this free delivery service. To request a delivery service order form, call the school and an order form will be faxed to you or email cflores@stmarycp.org. The meal includes a serving of spaghetti, Caesar salad, Italian bread, dessert and coffee or milk. Ticket prices are $5 for senior citizens, $8 for adults age 15-59 and $5 for children 5-14; children 4 and younger eat free. Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance by calling the school at 219-663-0676 While in Colorado on a recent trip, I recalled many a great meal eating cutthroat trout, which is native to that area. The memories took me back to the fun of fishing in some little stream and the fight a little fish can put up before being reeled in. Ah yes, fond memories that get better with each passing decade. However, in this column we discuss a different kind of catch that even has its own spelling: phishing. In this application of the term, you and I are the ones being pursued and unfortunately often caught. It is estimated phishing occurs through email 80 percent to 90 percent of the time. Hackers use phishing to discover confidential information such as login credentials, personal identifiable information, private health information or anything that might be useful to a cybercriminal. The same thing happens over the phone but is called vishing. It also happens over texts and is called smishing (as in SMS texting). Emails can include links that take the user to infected websites that infect your device or attachments and, when opened, install malware. They can be disguised as Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, JPGs or virtually any legitimate looking file. They can appear to be from trusted sources, so confirming the real email address (Mom@gmail.com versus Surprise!@hackerland.com) is a positive step before you click. However, email addresses, like websites, can be hijacked. So that isnt the final step. If Mom doesnt usually send you attachments or even emails, pick up the phone and ask her if she sent you the email you are looking at and if she included the attachments and/or links. Shell appreciate the call. If she says she didnt, then delete the email immediately. Use that same methodology whether the email is from your boss or your client. While your boss may not appreciate a call from you to verify his email, he will really be unhappy if you bring rootkit into his network and cause a data breach. Your boss should appreciate your protective attitude. While Im at it, dont send or receive emails that have been forwarded. Forwarding something that is infected cannot only infect your family and friends that you send it to, but also all that they send it to and so on down the line. The most popular phishing email subjects look legitimate. Referencing things like Breach Notification or failed delivery attempts (such as UPS or FedEx), password expiration, and employer references, such as messages from human resources, these emails are effective against us because they strike a note of fear. Hackers play on our basic emotions like fear, greed, curiosity, lust, etc. The most successful scams of all time include IRS and FBI impersonations because communication from them strikes a chord within each of us. Legal authorities, such as the IRS and FBI, will not communicate with you by email or phone. The IRS will mail its communications, and the FBI knows where you are and will come to you if needed. Dont be fooled over the phone, and definitely dont be fooled through email. If you feel you have been hacked or a cybercriminal has attempted to hack or scam you, call your local law enforcement (city police or county sheriff) immediately. Then go the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center website to report the incident at https://ic3.gov. Stay involved and follow up with the authorities. Once you become a live target to hackers, it is hard to remove yourself from their spotlight. Make every effort to avoid their attention to begin with, and think before you click. Lighthouse Television (LTV), the pioneer gospel television in the country, marked its 20-year milestone on the Ugandan airwaves last week. Rev Pr Bob Nichols, 82, the founder of Calvary Cathedral International that owns LTV, was at the breakfast held at Serena hotel to celebrate the TV station that first introduced many Christians to international channels such as TBN, and famous televangelists including Pr Benny Hinn, Pr Joyce Meyer, Bishop T.D Jakes, Rev John Hagee and many more. In his sermon, Nichols hailed the Ugandan government for helping the gospel TV station stand the test of time. He noted that although TV is an expensive way of spreading the gospel, it has been a worthwhile venture since many lives were touched through the stations broadcasts. For me and for our church, this has been a not-for-profit venture; we did not come here to make money, but to spread the gospel of Christ, he said. Among the many lives the stations work touched is Pastor Wilson Bugembe who was also present at the event. Bugembe said he is who he is today, because of the inspirational sermons he watched on the station, especially those by T.D Jakes. LTV sowed a seed not only in me, but in also many other young people who are going to take over this country in the coming years, Bugembe said. It is Eng Godfrey Mutabazi, now Uganda Communications Commission executive director, who engaged Nichols about establishing a branch of the station in Uganda, having watched it in Texas, USA. I was intrigued by the idea of having a gospel-only TV station in Uganda, said Mutabazi who made the necessary arrangements for the station in Uganda, including saving part of his salary for two months to contribute to Nichols and his wifes familiarization visit to Uganda. I later worked on the process of acquiring a license for the station. We got one and that was the beginning, Mutabazi said of the station that then minister of information Dr Ruhakana Rugunda opened on August 16, 1997. pbaike@yahoo.com Police in Aswa region have arrested a renowned local musician-turned crime preventer for allegedly impersonating Gulu District Police Commander (DPC) with intent to extort money from the public. Loketo Lee, 35, a resident of Laroo division in Gulu municipality is a common figure at Gulu Central police station making many question whether he is a police officer or a crime preventer. On Saturday, Loketos luck ran out when he tried to con Charles Atube, a resident of Koro Lapainat in Omoro district. He allegedly approached and demanded for Shs 100,000 from Atube to 'settle out' his case at the police as the DPC. Atube however was not convinced by Loketo's unconventional approach and reported him to police who later accompanied him to hand over the money from a location in front of Smiling Panda,a hangout adjacent to the police headquarters. Aswa regional police spokesperson Patrick Jimmy Okema Loketo was given Shs 70,000 which he accepted and was immediately arrested and detained at Gulu central police station on Saturday. Aswa regional police spokesperson Patrick Jimmy Okema told reporters in Gulu that the Police Professional Standard Unit referred Loketos case for investigation after he was found to be a crime preventer, not a police officer as earlier claimed. Okema says the suspects file is ready for sanctioning but he has been released on bond. "We have his file ready but we had to release him on bond because of the prosecutors strike. We shall charge him for either conning or extortion depending on the advise from the Resident State Attorney", said Okema. He added that members of the public should be on the look out for crime preventers who exceed their mandate to exploit others. "The are people who go to others in the name of police. Crime preventers are not supposed to be at the police stations, they are to be at their various locations to report and effect arrests. If you say there are crime preventers who always sit at the police station, we shall investigate that as well." Okema added. Crime preventers are a group of 3,000 individuals selected in every district in Uganda to aid police in averting crime in the community where they live due to the few number of police officers against the high population in the country. The war of words between government officials over disagreements on whether teenagers should be given contraceptives is not about to come to an end. On Tuesday this week, while at the National Conference on Unsafe Abortions at Hotel Africana, Prof Anthony Mbonye, the director general of health services at the ministry of health; told stakeholders that he was ready to be sacked but he insists that contraceptives must be provided to teenagers as one of the measures to tame unwanted pregnancies. But just a day later, Joyce Moriku Kaducu, his senior and state minister for Primary Health-Care says there will be no provision of contraceptives to girls aged below 18 years. While Mbonye argues that his senior officials including Health minister Ruth Aceng are burying their heads in the sand, by not acknowledging that teenagers are sexually active and need to guard against unwanted pregnancies, Kaducu notes that providing contraceptives is one of the main drivers of the current high HIV prevalence rates in the country. Joyce Moriku Kaducu, state minister for primary health care She explains that because of having no fear of getting pregnant due to easy access of birth control pills, more youth have neglected using condoms and have thus ended up contracting the HIV virus. According to statistics from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 360 girls and young women are infected with HIV every week in Uganda. UNFPA also notes that Uganda experiences high teenage pregnancy rates with one in four young girls either pregnant or having given birth by the age of 19. Speaking on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting to discuss Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and HIV (SRHR/HIV) and Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) integration, Kaducu said government's emphasis was on abstinence and not provision of contraceptives. She explained that government too was alarmed by the high teenage pregnancies and HIV infection rates among youths and would counter the challenges with educating the youths on reproductive and sexual rights according to the age brackets but not providing birth control pills. "Contraceptives are for married couples, after explaining to them the concept of husband and wife then they can choose the method they want to use. Even if you give a young person, contraceptives, it doesn't stop them from getting HIV, STIs," said Kaducu. "We can reduce pregnancies without giving contraceptives to the girls", she added. She further argued that there was need for parents to teach good morals to their children and tell them to abstain from sex. Kaducu observed that religious leaders need to play their role on guiding communities and not leaving the entire burden to government. Opening both the regional and national meetings, Kaducu revealed that the ministry with support from UN agencies had revised the SRHR/HIV integration strategy and would implement it country-wide. She urged district health officers (DHOs) in attendance to list their priorities in line with SRHR/HIV integration and present them to the funders and ensure that they are priotised in the district development plans. "I strongly recommend that the time for integration pilot projects in Uganda is over. It's now time for the tough work and get everyone into scale-up mode all across the country. We need to move the integration agenda forward and get out the business as usual mode," Kaducu told the DHOs on Wednesday at Imperial Botanical Beach in Entebbe. Ever since the adoption of the National Policy Guidelines and Service Standards for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights last month, there is a big rift between the political and technical wing in the Health ministry. One major point of contention in the policy, is provision of contraceptives to under age girls. While the technical wing supports the move, the political wing is against it. The policy notes that females aged 15-49 can access contraceptives. The technical wing was accused of "smuggling" into the guidelines, a clause urging for the provision of contraceptives to all sexually active groups including teenagers. Mbonye says that provision of contraceptives to teenagers has been researched on world over proven to curb down unwanted pregnancies among teenagers and Uganda can not choose to act different until it carries out its own research to prove otherwise. The guidelines are currently under review and have since been stayed by government. Last month, First Lady and education minister Janet Museveni attacked unnamed government officials of priotising love for material gains and losing all pride by accepting practices alien to the African cultures and society. She said in the African culture, sex is only allowed between adults. At Entebbe, health experts from over 10 East and Southern Africa countries met to share experiences and lessons from the recently-concluded first pilot SRHR integration linkage project and pave a way forward on how to consolidate their gains. Rwanda, Botswana and Namibia are some of the countries that were commended for their efforts to integrate SHRH/HIV, and SGBV interventions into their development programmes. abumay1988@gmail.com A section of the school Muntuyera high school in Ntungamo district has suspended 81 students following ethnic clashes between senior four and senior five students that pitted Bahima and those of Rwandan origin. The school head teacher, Stephen Atuhaire, says the clashes originated from discussions on the proposed amendment of the presidential age limit. He says the discussions that started on Friday last week split the students into two rival groups. One of the groups argued in favour of the proposal while the other opposed the move. According to Atuhaire, on Tuesday night senior four students assaulted their senior five colleagues leading to serious clashes. At least six students were injured in the clashes. He explains that the senior five students held a meeting outside the school premises and planned a revenge attack but they were stopped by the heavy police deployment in and around the school. He says following their aborted move, the students retreated to bars in Rwashameire town council where they planned another attack on their colleagues on Wednesday morning. They also allegedly planned to burn down the school. Atuhaire, however, says that when the students stormed the dormitories, they found them empty and decided to raid examination rooms but met stiff residents from their senior four colleagues and police. To stem the tension, the school management decided to suspend the entire senior five class. However, the group was ambushed by their senior four colleagues who were armed with sticks in Rwahsameire town council leading to fresh clashes. He says the school administration took the decision to send away all senior five students to allow the senior four candidates to complete their examinations in a peaceful environment. Atuhaire blames the clashes on indiscipline, saying some students always fear to sit the south Ankole diocese examinations, which are scheduled for next week. He says police have also launched investigations into the clashes, saying the culprits will be brought to book. Politics is always part of the student's discussions at Muntuyera high school, which is named after the father of the Forum for Democratic Change party president, Gen Mugisha Muntu, who donated a huge chunk of land to the school. Erin Gawne College of the Rockies has appointed Erin Gawne executive director, public relations. Gawne comes to the Cranbrook, British Columbia-based college from Edelman, where she was a senior director, providing integrated communications solutions involving brand development, media relations, reputation management, paid advertising, digital communications, stakeholder engagement, and development of online content and print materials. I have no doubt that her experience and background will be of great benefit to the college, said College of the Rockies president and CEO David Walls. We look forward to her contributions to our community. Diana Dugina WordWrite Communications has hired Diana Dugina as creative director. Before joining WordWrite, Dugina was an independent creative and art director at her own firm. She previously worked at Della Femina McNamee and formed a three-person creative boutique, The Ad Farm. At WordWrite, she will oversee all facets of comprehensive branding initiatives, digital and traditional print advertising, and broadcast creative direction. "In the 21st century, public relations has evolved to include full creative services, said Paul Furiga, President and CEO of WordWrite Communications. With Diana, we will grow our creative department." Kathleen Caputi Huntington, NY-based Epoch 5 Public Relations has promoted Kathleen Caputi to the position of senior vice president. Caputi has more than 20 years of experience heading up marketing programs for clients in the legal, real estate, accounting, transportation, architecture and aging services industries. Prior to Epoch 5 Public Relations, she worked for Cablevision Systems Corporation in the companys marketing, creative services and human resources departments. Among the industry awards she has won are the MarCom Gold, Summit International Award and APEX Writing Award. Dan Johnson R&J Strategic Communications has promoted Dan Johnson to senior account executive. Johnson joined the firm in November 2016 as an account executive. In his new role, he will build upon the communications strategies he has developed and implemented, as well as leading day-to-day account activities for his clients. His leadership and diverse experience will help him excel in his new position and he will play an integral role in growing our agencys real estate, financial services and non-profit practices, said Tiffany Miller, R&J Strategic Communications associate VP. Paul Manafort Paul Manafort, Trump's indicted former campaign manager, and his right-hand man Rick Gates approached 5W Public Relations CEO Ronn Torossian in 2012 to ask if he would work for them without registering with the Justice Dept. and agreeing to be paid via offshore accounts, according to Business Insider. Torossian, who declined comment to ODwyers, told BI that he either met or spoke with Manafort and Gates multiple times to discuss a PR campaign for billionaires and the Ukraine government. They acted like they controlled the government of Ukraine, he said. The 5W chief turned down potential Manafort/Gates work, telling BI that he was uncomfortable about dodging the Foreign Agents Registration Act and receiving payment from offshore accounts. Torossian has represented ex-Trump advisor Felix Sater, Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko and Eric Trumps foundation. Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty to charges lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller. Those charges include failing to file reports from foreign bank accounts and filing false or misleading statements about their lobbying work. The blight of fake news is creating new trust in traditional media, say reporters who responded to an Ogilvy survey. Ogilvys annual survey, polling 250+ reporters and producers in North America, Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific in April, found that traditional news media is the most trusted news source at 52% followed by company websites and press releases at 22%. Jennifer Risi Jennifer Risi, Ogilvy worldwide chief communications officer, said Fake news has put a spotlight on traditional news and has challenged journalists to put more limits in place to ensure accuracy in the news. She added: Another top contributor to fake news is confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new information with existing beliefs. As user-generated content increases through blogs and other social media, anyone can post anything at any time, she said. Fake News Causes In North America, 24%, of reporters blamed fake news on social media, 17% on polarized media coverage, 14% on confirmation bias, and 17% on money. Jordan McCrary The battle with fake news goes beyond fact-checking and rebuilding trust with the audience, said Risi. Globally, 41% said that better reporting is necessary and 24% said that collaboration with social media is important to verify the accuracy of news reports. Reporters around the world are aware of the issue of fake news, but they are also aware of the solutions that could possibly begin to combat the issue, she said. Building trust between a brand and its stakeholders is more important than ever in this era of fake news. The Ogilvy survey was posted on the website of the Institute for PR by grad student Jordan McCrary. An executive summary is here. Agricultural News Jimmy Kinder Announces Run for President of Oklahoma Farm Bureau It was expected that current Oklahoma Farm Bureau President Tom Buchanan would run for reelection for that position at their annual meeting later this month at the organization's 75th Annual Meeting in Norman. Now, it appears the Vice President will challenge Buchanan for the top job- Jimmy Wayne Kinder of Walters, currently the Vice President and District 4 Director, has sent a letter to Farm Bureau leaders across the state announcing his intention to run for the job of President. You can see the letter by clicking on the PDF link at the bottom of this story. Kinder says "I am announcing my candidacy to be elected as your Oklahoma Farm Bureau President. "After talking to Margaret Ann, my family, and numerous conversations with God, I am applying for the job. I believe OKFB members deserve a choice. I hope you would consider me for that job. "The last 6 years have been very eventful as the District 4 director. Thank you to all who have supported me in the past and now I ask for your support as a candidate to become OKFB President. "For those of you who may not know me, I am a 4th generation full-time farmer and rancher from Cotton County and a 3rd generation OKFB member. We raise mostly wheat and cattle. My grandfather and father were active on our local county board and were involved in OKFB state leadership activities too. My involvement in Farm Bureau began as a YF&R member, next as a county board member, and later county president. I know the frustrations of local boards and understand d the needs of county members. With your help, I would transition OKFB, into an organization that is more responsive to county leaders and their local efforts. The greatest benefit to rural Oklahoma is giving local members the knowledge and support they need to make things happen. We need local involvement for OKFB to be effective in State and National issues." Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Farm Director Ron Hays sppoke with Kinder this morning- he wants Farm Bureau delegate to have a choice on who their President will be for the next 2 years- he added that he had talked with Tom Buchanan about it and "we're good to go." The Oklahoma Farm Bureau Convention happens November 10-12 at the Embassy Suites in Norman. Click here for a release on the meeting and tenative agenda. 00897_2017_OKFB_Election_Letter.pdf WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady NSI Top Agricultural News Part of the parcel that Methodist Health System put up for sale on the south side of busy West Dodge Road near 85th Street will remain in a local health systems hands. Childrens Hospital & Medical Center announced Thursday that it had signed an agreement to acquire the 12-acre property Methodist listed earlier this fall. Childrens will keep about seven acres on the east end of the parcel, which lies just west of the HDR Inc. properties it purchased in June 2016. The move, hospital officials said, should meet the hospitals space needs and secure the location as its home for decades to come. This is really to keep us in the center of Omaha for the rest of the century, said Dr. Richard Azizkhan, Childrens president and CEO. NP Dodge Co., which worked with the hospital on the deal, will purchase the western portion of the parcel, about five acres, and redevelop the building at 8601 West Dodge Road for a mix of uses, said Debra Graeve, president of NAI NP Dodge Commercial Real Estate. Azizkhan said the two organizations will work together to determine appropriate uses that will support them both. Graeve said the ground level would be good for retail service businesses such as restaurants, coffee shops, dry cleaners and specialty boutiques. The company may add a pad site in the northeast corner of the parking lot for a sit-down restaurant. The surrounding area has thousands of office workers who would welcome more retail options, she said in a statement. NP Dodge Co.s headquarters is next door at 8701 West Dodge Road. For Childrens, the additional seven acres increases its total footprint in the area to about 22 acres, with about seven acres at HDR and a little more than seven acres at its main campus at 84th Street and West Dodge Road. Construction is underway on a new 10-story clinical facility on the hospitals existing grounds. With the addition of the new Hubbard Center for Children in 2021, the hospital will grow from about 140 beds to about 250. Azizkhan said Childrens hasnt completely determined how it will use the Methodist property. But the hospital and its leadership are excited to have the added flexibility it offers. And it has time to plan. Methodist this summer began construction of a new $30 million corporate headquarters at 168th and Pacific Streets, which is scheduled for completion in late 2018. However, the health system wont entirely vacate its current offices until April 2019. While Methodist Hospital will remain at its current location at 8303 Dodge St., health system officials have said the new headquarters not only provides updated space that can better meet its current needs, but also a location in close proximity to its three hospitals and more than 25 clinic sites, which stretch from Council Bluffs to west Omaha. The Methodist parcel, however, will allow Childrens to meet its parking needs for the foreseeable future and provide future expansion space that could include bringing in other organizations that serve children. Azizkhan declined to specify which groups might be involved but said discussions are underway with a number of them. Childrens officials also know theyll need to build additional specialty clinic space at some point, he said. The specialty clinic facility it completed on the west side of the hospital in 2010 already is out of room. We know what the needs are, Azizkhan said. We just want to be able to sequence them in a manner that makes sense for the long run. Hospital officials also know theyll need about 1,800 more parking spaces, he said. The hospital already is short about 900 slots. More than 600 employees currently park at Crossroads Mall. The hospital anticipates adding about 1,000 employees with the addition of its new clinical building, as well as additional patients. Azizkhan said the hospital can support the purchase. Its share of the cost of the property is just under $10 million. The potential purchase of the property has been part of the hospitals capital plan since he arrived in October 2015. We programmed that if it ever came available, we would want to acquire it, and fortunately, it did, he said. A 33-year-old man was shot in his shoulder during a confrontation early Thursday inside a South Omaha liquor store, police said. Juan Armand was shot about 12:45 a.m. near a counter just inside a door leading from a garage at Crystal Beverage near 20th and M Streets, Lt. Steve Cerveny said. Two employees were in the store at the time that Armand was shot. One of the employees told authorities that he shot the man to thwart a robbery attempt. Were trying to substantiate that right now, Cerveny said about 1:30 a.m. outside the store. Armands weapon may have been a pellet gun, police said. Armand suffered a somewhat superficial wound, Cerveny said. He was taken to Nebraska Medical Center, with nonlife-threatening injuries, police said. LINCOLN Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, the 23-year-old sailor from Nebraska was literally dying of thirst. Clarence Hupka and other crew escaped the sinking of the USS Indianapolis only to spend nearly five days adrift under a tropical sun. Hed seen dozens of his crewmates die from wounds, dehydration and even shark attacks in the hours after a Japanese submarine had torpedoed the heavy cruiser in the waning days of World War II. Hupka wanted nothing more than to obey his parched, swollen tongue, but he knew that drinking salt water meant death. So he obeyed his training, which he later credited for keeping him among the 317 men who survived. The 879 other crew members went down with the ship or perished while awaiting rescue. Hupka one of the last living survivors of the Indianapolis died Sunday in Tecumseh at the age of 95. Over the years, the soft-spoken, unassuming farmer had shared his war experiences with schoolchildren and civic organizations across southeast Nebraska. He was one of the sweetest, most humble people that Ive ever known. ... He had a wonderful heart, said Sara Vladic, a San Diego film director who made the 2015 documentary USS Indianapolis: The Legacy. Hupka grew up on a farm near St. Mary and attended parochial school through the eighth grade. He enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and served as a baker on the Indianapolis, which earned 10 battle stars in the Pacific Theater. He narrowly survived a kamikaze and bomb attack on the ship during the Battle of Okinawa. On the final mission, the crew had secretly delivered components of the atomic bomb Little Boy to Tinian Island in the western Pacific. The bomb was later dropped on Hiroshima, helping to bring an end to the war. The Indianapolis was speeding toward Leyte in the Philippines on July 30, 1945, when it took direct hits from two Japanese torpedoes. Hupka spent four days and five nights without drinking water or food, kept afloat by a life jacket or a floating net. He had never been taught to swim. During the ordeal, one of Hupkas buddies was attacked by a shark and suffered a hand wound. Despite the risk from fresh blood in the water, Hupka stayed near and helped the sailor get on a life raft once the rescue operation began, said Vladic, who remained in contact with Hupka after the filming of the documentary. I really think, talking to Clarence and other survivors, it came down to sheer will, she said. They were prayerful. They were young men. ... They were expecting to come home. Only 18 survivors are still living, said Peggy Campo of Urbana, Illinois, secretary of the survivors group. Nebraska has another surviving member of the crew: Dale Krueger, 94, of Wayne. Several hundred people attended a screening of the documentary in Tecumseh on Veterans Day 2016, Vladic said. In January, hundreds also attended a question-and-answer session with Hupka. Hupka also lived to see a new chapter in the Indianapolis story: On Aug. 17 of this year 72 years after the disaster a team of marine explorers found the ships wreckage 18,000 feet below the surface of the Philippine Sea. After the war, Hupka farmed for 40 years near Cook. He and his wife, Helen, had four sons. He loved to bowl, square dance and listen to polka music. He also was active in the Indianapolis survivors organization and strongly advocated for people with developmental disabilities. Health problems sent him to an assisted living center a couple of years ago, and a recent fall put him in the nursing home. But mentally he remained strong, said his son, Jim Hupka of Olathe, Kansas. He died quietly in a recliner while watching the World Series, his son said. He is survived by his wife, three sons and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and one great-great grandson. Services will be 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Tecumseh. Wherry Mortuary in Tecumseh is in charge of arrangements. WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientist nominee, Sam Clovis withdrew his name from consideration Wednesday amid revelations that he was among top officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of efforts by foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to broker a relationship between the campaign and Russian officials. Court documents unsealed Monday revealed that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in early October to making false statement to FBI investigators about his contacts with foreigners claiming to have high-level Russian connections. In August 2016, Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to organize an "off the record" meeting with Russian officials, according to court documents. "I would encourage you" and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to "make the trip, if it is feasible," Clovis wrote. The meeting did not ultimately take place. In a letter to the president Wednesday, Clovis explained that he did not think he could get a fair consideration from the Senate, which was slated to hold a hearing on his appointment on November 9. "The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position," wrote Clovis, who currently serves as USDA's senior White House adviser. "The relentless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases with intensity each day." Clovis confirmed in an October 17 letter obtained by The Washington Post that he has no academic credentials in either science or agriculture. Clovis, who possesses a bachelor's degree in political science, an MBA degree and a doctorate in public administration, repeatedly acknowledged his lack of background in the hard sciences when responding to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. "Please list all graduate level courses you have taken in natural science," the second of 10 questions requested. "None," Clovis replied. "Please list all membership and leadership roles you have held within any agricultural scientific, agricultural education, or agricultural economic organizations," the third question read. "None," Clovis replied. Asked about his agriculture research experience, Clovis replied, ""I bring 17 years of agriculture experience integrated into both undergraduate- and graduate-level courses throughout my teaching career as reflected in my curriculum vitae as well as the Committee's questionnaire." And having twice run for statewide office, he added that "one cannot be a credible candidate in that state without significant agricultural experience and knowledge." Clovis' attorney, Victoria Toensing, told The Washington Post on Monday that her client "always vigorously opposed any Russian trip for Donald Trump and/or the campaign." She described his responses to Papadopoulos as a courtesy by "a polite gentleman from Iowa." On Thursday White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump had accepted Clovis' request, saying, "We respect Mr. Clovis's decision to withdraw his nomination." CNN first reported Clovis' decision Thursday morning. The professor and conservative radio talk show host from Iowa, who served as national co-chair of Trump's campaign, had come under intense fire since Papadopoulos's guilty plea was filed this week. But he had been a contentious pick since Trump first nominated him this spring, given the fact that he has no experience in the hard sciences and had made controversial comments in the past on climate change and gay rights. The position for which Clovis was nominated has traditionally been held by individuals with advanced degrees in science or medicine. The 2008 farm bill specifies that appointees to the position should be chosen "from among distinguished scientists with specialized training or significant experience in agricultural research, education, and economics," given that the official is "responsible for the coordination of the research, education, and extension activities of the Department." You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close OK! Magazine 16 Nov 2022 Former POTUS Donald Trump revealed that he is vying for the White House yet again, unveiling his 2024 presidential campaign. 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. FOXNews.com 15 Nov 2022 The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported credit card balances surged 15% year-over-year in the third quarter, the highest jump.. ODN 05 Nov 2019 Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon has used his valedictory speech in the House of Commons to warn the UK is dealing with.. The singer was left with a torn ear drum after being attacked outside a bar in New York this week. BBC News 22 Apr 2022 The Wrap 23 Mar 2021 Parler co-founder and former CEO John Matze has sued the company and says that his 40% stake was stolen from him in what he calls.. Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) this morning to mark the 70th anniversary of Australia-Sri Lanka bilateral relations. According to BIA sources he was arrived at 7.10am by an Australian special flight boeing 737-707 (ASY-357) with a 13 minister deligation. He arrived in the island for the brief visit while returning to Australia following visits to Israel and Palestine. He is to meet President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today during his four hour visit and would discuss on strengthening economic links, defence engagement and on working together to combat trans-national crime particularly people-smuggling between the countries. Prior to his visit, the Australian PM had said this year marks the 70th anniversary of Australias bilateral relationship with Sri Lanka, and I am delighted to be able to visit Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will leave for Austria at 12.15p.m. (T.K.G.Kapila) Bennett ends Quakers season in AA semifinals After allowing 460-yards and five touchdowns in their Sept. 24 matchup, Orchard Park head coach decided that if Bennett was... Quakers reach Sectional Finals vs Lancaster Orchard Park boys volleyball coach Rick Albano always wants his team to be playing their best volleyball at the end... Bertola leads harriers on record day at sectionals Orchard Park cross-country coach Steve Dillsworth went pretty far back into the history of Quakers cross-country, and he was unable... All-Bee Girls Soccer Majority of First Team are past honorees Many of the First Team selections on the 2022 All- Bee Girls Soccer Team are no strangers to the all-star... UPDATE: This article has been updated to include Stephanie Harper's resignation letter. The Portland Public Schools lawyer who tried to keep secret details about the district's mishandling of sexual misconduct complaints against an educator has submitted her resignation, a spokesman said. Stephanie Harper's resignation letter says she is leaving "for a new opportunity that allows for a relocation closer to family beginning Wednesday October 25." Harper would not agree to be interviewed. Harper became a central player in Oregon's largest school district last year after upheaval from a lead in drinking water crisis. Many high-ranking staff left the district, including the district's longtime top lawyer. Thrust into the role of general counsel, Harper made high-profile legal calls that came under fire. They included a failed bid to keep secret investigation records about gym teacher Mitch Whitehurst, who was the subject of many sexual misconduct complaints; the choice to sue a parent and a journalist who filed another open records request; and the district lost a $1 million jury verdict on her watch. This summer the district hired a permanent general counsel, which sent Harper back to a lower-profile role as lawyer in the district's legal department. But fallout from her time in command of Portland Public Schools legal strategies continued to haunt her. In August, The Oregonian/OregonLive published an investigation that revealed how district officials protected Whitehurst time and again at the expense of children. Harper fought to keep secret records that were a primary basis for The Oregonian/OregonLive's reporting, going so far as to hire an outside firm to help. That move didn't work. The Multnomah County District Attorney ruled the records were public. School board chair Julia Brim-Edwards, who took office after that records battle and has pledged greater transparency, questioned that tactic. She noted the board itself had at that time asked for district officials to look more deeply at the Whitehurst case and the information concerned troubling sexual misconduct in the public interest. Harper's departure could have implications for the district's independent investigation into its treatment Whitehurst, which the school board launched in response to The Oregonian/OregonLive's news story. Harper knows critical information, including who wrote off eighth-grader girls' complaints about Whitehurst and why. Investigators cannot compel former employees to speak to them. So Harper's departure means she is free not to. Harper hasn't been identified as someone who made key decisions about how the district treated Whitehurst. But she was tapped by the district to answer for Portland Public Schools actions under oath in response to a lawsuit brought by a male employee against the district. Whitehurst touched that employee in an offensive manner at school. The man's complaint triggered a criminal investigation, which resulted in Whitehurst pleading guilty to harassment. That incident also led state licensing investigators to learn of previously ignored complaints of sexual misconduct with students. As a result, Whitehurst lost his teaching license. Harper was asked as part of the lawsuit to convey "knowledge of allegations of sexual misconduct against Whitehurst and what steps, if any, the district took to investigate." In that role, she said in 2013 the district wrote off middle school girls' fears about Whitehurst's as "rumors." But she didn't say who made that call and has refused to add clarity to the issue, despite repeated questions from The Oregonian/OregonLive and outrage from multiple school board members. Harper has stressed through email that "rumors" was the exact word conveyed to her, but still won't say whose determination it was only that it wasn't her own. The "rumors" conclusion is nowhere in district records, so Harper is the best lead for investigators on that front. Additionally, Harper's exit will impact the district's efforts to change how it handles sexual misconduct. She became the point person on that issue after district lawyer Jeff Fish left toward the end of last school year. Harper has been with the district since 2013, when she was hired from the City of Portland. Stephanie Harper's resignation letter. Her tenure as top lawyer was rough from almost the start. The district attorney slammed Portland Public Schools for its sluggish responses to records requests when Harper was a few months into the job. In his order, District Attorney Rod Underhill noted the backlog wasn't Harper's personal fault and that she had given him "stark summary of her incredible workload." Still, he found it fell to her to ensure the district did better. Harper's decision to sue a reporter and parent to try to keep secret records of staff on paid leave prompted many questions. Previously, the district released records about employees on paid leave, but Harper changed the district's stance. Paid leave information should be treated as confidential to safeguard workers from wrong conclusions about why they are out, she reasoned. Scrutiny over her decision to sue the pair who sought those records has only grown more intense since Harper left the general counsel role. The Associated Press highlighted the case in September. The Multnomah County district attorney disagreed with the Portland Public Schools' new legal interpretation. Undeterred, Portland Public Schools sued in order to get a judge to weigh in. On Harpers' watch, the district went to trial for the first time in years. The district lost big. A jury returned a $1 million verdict in the racial discrimination case, which was brought by two maintenance workers. On all these matters, Harper sought advice from the district's longtime outside counsel, Miller Nash Graham & Dunn. Harper has not responded to requests for comment. It is possible that, as someone filling in during a time of painful transition, Harper leaned heavily on that firm for its help and institutional knowledge of the district it has served for more than a decade. Miller Nash has come under scrutiny since The Oregonian/OregonLive's investigation into Whitehurst. Brim-Edwards pulled a $4 million contract from a routine business agenda after several board members raised questions. Board member Mike Rosen said in August the board got a "convoluted" rundown of the facts when briefed on the lawsuit related to Whitehurst. He said he felt lawyers pressured board members to settle the case for $250,000 to avoid more information about the district's mishandling of Whitehurst emerging in a trial. "I don't want to mention names. I think it is enough to say the counsel that what we got from our attorneys whether they were from inside the district or outside counsel it was awful," Rosen said. "It just makes me realize we need better counsel from the inside and the outside." Bethany Barnes Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com NOTE: This article was originally published on Nov. 1 at 5:51 p.m. and was updated on Nov. 2 after the district released Stephanie Harper's resignation letter. A 38-year-old Clackamas man shot and killed a gray wolf in Union County on Oct. 27, according to Oregon State Police. And for the first time since wolves returned to the state in the late 1990s, the man claimed self-defense. Law enforcement officials agreed. Troopers consulted with the Union County District Attorney's Office about the incident and no charges are expected to be filed. State troopers did not release the man's name in a press release. According to troopers, the man was hunting elk alone in Union County when he said he saw three animals he thought to be coyotes moving around him. The hunter told troopers he shot at one of the animals when it ran at him. The hunter, police said, screamed at the animal and "feared for his life" before shooting the canid once. He reportedly returned to his camp and discussed the incident with some fellow hunters, the police account said. He later returned to the site of the shooting and determined the animal was likely a wolf. The hunter then called state fish and wildlife officials and troopers. An investigation indicated the wolf was 27 yards away from the hunter at the time of the shooting. ODFW identified the animal as a 83-pound female connected to OR30, a wolf known to travel in Union and Umatilla Counties. It is illegal to shoot wolves anywhere in Oregon, aside from instances when the animals are observed in the act of attacking livestock or if it's an incident of self-defense. In May 2016, a sheep herder in Umatilla County legally shot and killed a member of the Walla Walla Pack when he caught the animal attacking his livestock. That's the only such instance since wolves returned to the state. Wolves have rebounded in Oregon in the past decade after being wiped to the point of extinction across the west by the early to mid 1900s. The last wolf bounty was claimed in Oregon in 1947. The population continues to grow in thestate, with at least 112 animals estimated last year. That population was relatively stagnant over the previous years, and officials said it was a blip in an otherwise upward trajectory for the still threatened species. A wildlife biologist responded to the hunting incident last week and confirmed the animal was a wolf and weighed her. A tissue sample was sent to the University of Idaho for DNA analysis. In a statement, acting wolf coordinator, Robyln Brown, said dangerous encounters between humans and wolves are rare, "as are such encounters between people and cougars, bears and coyotes." Wolves typically avoid humans. "If you see a wolf or any other animal and are concerned about your safety, make sure it knows you are nearby by talking or yelling to alert it to your presence. If you are carrying a firearm, you can fire a warning shot into the ground," Brown said. Just last year, a man shooting coyotes in Eastern Oregon shot and killed a wolf. The animal was wearing a tracking collar. The man pleaded guilty to killing an endangered animal and was fined several thousand dollars and forced to hand over his rifle. The state this fall released an online quiz to see if hunters can correctly identify wolves and coyotes. The state also approves killing wolves if they are confirmed to have repeatedly killed livestock. In the past few months, Oregon fish and wildlife officials have shot and killed four wolves in nearby Wallowa County. Four additional members of the Harl Butte pack were additionally approved for removal, but an Oct. 31 deadline came and went and those animals were not killed. A fifth animal was shot and killed in Umatilla County earlier this year for repeatedly attacking livestock. That animal, a wolf from the Meacham Pack, was the first approved killing carried out by a private rancher. This story will continue to be updated. -- Andrew Theen atheen@oregonian.com 503-294-4026 @andrewtheen A new study commissioned by the Willamette Riverkeeper nonprofit found that freshwater mussels, a key indicator of river health and water quality, are not reproducing in one swath of the river 20 miles upstream from Corvallis (Andrew Theen/Staff) One of the largest known mussel beds on the Willamette River, home to tens of thousands of mollusks that can live for up to a century on the river bottom, appears to be in poor health. The mussels are not reproducing, according to a study released this week by the nonprofit Willamette Riverkeeper. Because the mussels can live for as long or longer than humans, its worrisome researchers found a large healthy older population but no juveniles. At some time in the past, the habitat was suitable for mussels, the study said, but conditions within the lifespan of this aged population have changed. Don't Edit Researchers counted at least 40,000 Western pearlshell mussels in a channel near Norwood Island on the Willamette River (Andrew Theen/Staff) Celeste Mazzacano, a veteran freshwater mussel scientist, conducted the research along with Willamette Riverkeeper staff and volunteers this summer. It's the most in-depth look at the health of the freshwater mussel known as the Western pearlshell in the Willamette River system. Its not great news. Once ubiquitous across the West, several species of freshwater mussels appear to be in decline. Western pearlshells are the most common species in the Pacific Northwest, but little is known of their overall health and range. Experts say the mussels fate is tied to a smorgasbord of environmental and human factors -- climate change, agricultural runoff, a decline in salmon and steelhead populations and fluctuating flows and temperatures on heavily dammed rivers of the West. Don't Edit Mussels can be hard to spot on the river bottom, where they sit and filter feed (Photo courtesy of Travis Williams/Willamette Riverkeeper) Mazzacano said mussels are important to freshwater ecosystems because they filter out particles and bacteria such as E. coli and feed on organic material and plankton. They provide essential habitat for insects, too, which are a key food source for many river creatures.Their decline, Mazzacano said, should be important to anyone who cares about native fish like salmon and steelhead. Conversely, the fish help distribute the mussels embryos, which latch onto fish gills or fins. Mazzacano said the animals are also significant to Oregons Native American population. Some tribes, like the Umatilla and Warm Springs, are working to reintroduce mussels to rivers where they were historically a source of food and vital for cultural reasons. Don't Edit Travis Williams snorkels in search of freshwater mussels near Norwood Island on the Willamette River (Andrew Theen/Staff) Mussel declines and reproductive issues are well documented in the eastern half of North America, where several species are classified as threatened or endangered, and government resources and attention have helped pay for population studies. But the western population is less well-known. No mussel is listed as threatened or endangered in Oregon. Some Oregonians are trying to change that. Don't Edit Don't Edit Don't Edit Andrew Theen/Staff Travis Williams, Willamette Riverkeepers executive director, snorkeled a 120 mile stretch of the river this summer along with five other people. The extensive river survey indicated the area immediately adjacent to Norwood Island, a 90 acre area about 20 miles upstream from Corvallis, was home to an unusual and abundant cluster of mussels. On Monday, Williams stood on the edge of the island in a dry suit holding three of the palm-sized mussels. The Long Tom River intersects with the Willamette nearby, and Williams said the shallow channel offers ideal habitat. According to the study, at least 40,000 mussels line the river bottom here. Theyre pretty magnificent animals, Williams said, holding one of the bivalve shells, which blend in with the river bottom and are difficult to spot. Don't Edit A tree-lined area of the Willamette River, about 20 miles upstream from Corvallis (Andrew Theen/Staff) Willamette Riverkeeper, which has helped manage the island for the past several years, bought the property for $70,000 this year. Williams said he first started paddling through the area of Norwood Island in 2002 and noticed the mussel bed, which he described as mind-blowing. That discovery prompted years of interest in the invertebrates and eventually the 2017 study. Williams hopes to drum up more interest to study the mussels in Oregon and help protect them, and he plans another study next summer. A separate report, release last month by the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, Nature Conservancy, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and a North Carolina-based consultant group, raised warning flags about the extinction risk for a variety of mussels in the western half of North America. The report compiled thousands of records dating back to the mid 1800s about mussels. Don't Edit Norwood Island on the Willamette River is a 90 acre parcel about 20 miles upstream from Corvallis (Andrew Theen/Staff) Emilie Blevins, a conservation biologist with Portland-based Xerces Society, said the mussels are still pretty widespread in the west, but declines are occurring in new areas like the Willamette. The report classified the Western pearlshell as near threatened. Blevins said more research needs to be done. For mussels to persist into the future, its going to require us to protect the existing populations, she said. Michele Weaver, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife endangered species specialist, said the agency is aware of the general decline in mussels nationally but acknowledged little is known about the overall status of western pearlshell in Oregon. Don't Edit A dead Western pearlshell pictured at Norwood Island. It's illegal to remove or move the invertebrates without a permit (Andrew Theen/Staff) Other freshwater mussel species were included in a 2016 conservation strategy intended as a blueprint for how to protect potentially vulnerable species. Three other freshwater mussel species made the list. Mazzacano, the mussel researcher and scientist, said the good news is that conservation projects have been successful in the past. Its possible to bring back mussels, either by reintroducing them or improving water quality. Its not as like these guys are total goners, she said. -- Andrew Theen atheen@oregonian.com 503-294-4026 @andrewtheen A heart procedure performed on hundreds of thousands of people a year to relieve chest pain doesn't work, a new study said. The research looked at whether the insertion of a stent, a mesh device designed to open a blocked artery, helped patients suffering from angina or chest pain. The condition can be so debilitating that patients can't even climb stairs. Doctors insert stents on 500,000 people a year, yet they don't seem to work, said the study, published in the journal The Lancet. Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States. The study was based on a clinical trial in Britain involving 200 patients with a blocked artery and angina. Other studies have found that stents relieve chest pain but in this one a group of randomly picked patients were made to believe that they underwent a stent procedure when they did not. The patients were tested on a treadmill to see how long they could exercise and then were put on medication, including aspirin, a statin and blood pressure drugs, to increase blood flow and prevent a heart attack. Everyone was wheeled into the operating room and underwent a procedure. Half received a stent. The other half had a catheter inserted and withdrawn in what's known as a sham procedure. Six weeks later they were tested on a treadmill. Patients in both groups did better on the treadmill and reported reduced symptoms though patients who received a stent were able to exercise longer. But the difference was not enough to be statistically significant, the study found. Researchers said the results appear to contradict what patients experience after receiving a stent for angina. But they said those improvements are likely caused by the placebo effect. Dr. Vinay Prasad, an oncologist at Oregon Health & Science University and study specialist, was not surprised by the result. "Although I have been calling for such a study for years and although I suspected such study would be negative, I'm still saddened to see these negative results," Prasad said in an email. "The real lesson here is that costly invasive procedures performed on patients should be tested prior to their use and not two decades later, as in this case." Cardiologists had mixed reactions to the study. Some called it stunning. Others said the results were preliminary. Dr. Richard Sohn, cardiologist and medical director of the catheter lab at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, praised the use of sham operations: "That's a new concept and it's to be applauded." He also said the study was well done but said it was too small to be conclusive. "I don't think this study should change what we do until there are larger studies that confirm the results," Sohn said. He said cardiology studies often enroll thousands of patients. "It's possible if you had 2,000 patients instead of 200 the statistical difference would have been high enough that it would have concluded that stents are better than a sham procedure," Sohn said. Medication is the first treatment for angina patients, Sohn said, adding that stents are only used when the patients don't experience an improvement. The average cost of having a stent inserted is at least $28,000 in the United States, according to the International Federation of Health Plans. Researchers said the study doesn't mean that patients with angina should never undergo the procedure. They said some patients might want it anyway to potentially cut down on their need to take medications to reduce chest pain. The research didn't address the use of stents to save the lives of heart attack patients. Stents restore blood flow to stop a heart attack that can damage the heart. "That's a very different scenario than a stable patient," Sohn said. -- Lynne Terry By Mark Olsen "Wonderstruck" is a film that takes place in two time periods, 50 years apart. In 1927, a young girl travels alone to New York City; in 1977, a young boy does the same. The mysterious connection between their stories becomes the movie's driving force. What it also united was a creative team of collaborators that Portland director Todd Haynes trusted to bring this unusual story to the screen. Cinematographer Ed Lachman, costume designer Sandy Powell, production designer Mark Friedberg and composer Carter Burwell all have long relationships with Haynes, and they have come to collaborate with one other in ways that are unusual. Brian Selznick wrote the screenplay for "Wonderstruck," adapted from his own novel of the same name. In both versions, the young girl Rose is deaf from birth, while the boy Ben becomes deaf after being struck by lightning. (Actress Millicent Simmonds is deaf in real life, while actor Oakes Fegley is not.) For Haynes' film, the style of each section aims to evoke the way its young protagonist interacts with the world. "I found the material to be something out of the sensibility and the experience of children," said Haynes. "Paralleling these two stories and not relying on dialogue to tell the story, the cinematic language, all of the elemental arts of cinema, had to step up and make the film work." Emphasizing the collaborative nature of his process, Haynes went on to mention not only Powell, Friedberg, Lachman and Burwell but also editor Affonso Goncalves, casting director Laura Rosenthal, first assistant director Timothy Bird and even the team involved in casting extras. A three-time Oscar winner, costume designer Powell was nominated for her work on Haynes' "Carol" as well as Kenneth Branagh's "Cinderella" in the same year. It was Powell, who knew Selznick from having worked on "Hugo," Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the author's work, who brought Selznick's "Wonderstruck" screenplay to Haynes. "Todd is an incredibly visual director," said Powell, also credited as an executive producer on the movie. "Having worked with him on several projects, it's so much easier. You've already developed a language between you. He's very articulate when talking about visuals, and he has a keen eye. It's just a joy to work with someone who is as excited by things as you are. And Todd always gives so much. At the beginning of a project, he always has a massive visual reference, so you're already halfway there." Haynes' ongoing collaborations help not just in his own relationships with each department but also to get those departments interacting as well. "Because it's a lot of the same people again and again, at this point, I already know people that on most films the composer wouldn't really overlap with," said Burwell. "We've spent time together, and I do actually know them. It did feel like very much a team." Lachman, nominated for Oscars for his work with Haynes on "Far From Heaven" and "Carol," noted that he used research done by Friedberg's art department in planning his own work. "Wonderstruck" provided Lachman with the opportunity to shoot in black and white, evoking the graceful look of the silent era - there is even a brief silent film within the film - as well as the vibrant colors and more street-style photography reminiscent of New York cinema of the 1970s. "I like to think of the images creating the emotions, or as I said it, that you're hearing with the images," said Lachman. "You're seeing images that would obviously have sound, but now they're either muted or natural sound. So we're trying to create the subjectivity of someone who has lost their hearing. It's really a film about listening with your eye." Friedberg worked with Haynes on "Far From Heaven" and the HBO limited series "Mildred Pierce," but the two have known each other since both attended Brown University. For Friedberg, the collaboration with Haynes was as much about evoking the times they were portraying as the specific details of moldings and colors. In re-creating 1970s New York City, with scenes shot at a location in Brooklyn meant to depict a young boy's arrival to the city's Port Authority, Friedberg had an entire team adding trash to the shots to bring them more in line with the Big Apple of that era, which faced a widespread blackout and the notorious "Drop Dead" headline. "I'm really curious about the cultures of the worlds we're creating," Friedberg said. "It's important to understand that as an organizing principle, so the work comes from an idea, to understand these times. The story we're telling is in the context of these places. With Todd, on all the movies I've worked on with him, there is always an intellectual construct and an emotional one." Powell is known for her dazzling work in color, but for the 1920s section of "Wonderstruck," she worked in black and white for the first time. "What was most important dealing with black and white was texture, finding fabrics that had a strong texture and a lot of contrast," she said. "Ed Lachman asked particularly for things that had contrast. So I did all of that, but I still at the end of the day wanted Rose to wear things that looked nice to the eye, looked nice to us on set. I couldn't send her out with clashing colors - just because I didn't want to look at it." Composer Burwell, nominated for an Oscar for his score for "Carol," began his work on "Wonderstruck" well before shooting. He and Haynes discussed how to handle the film's distinct periods, how to evoke deafness in the score and whether the music should suggest the separate times or look to somehow unite them. "We didn't settle on real answers, but we have the discussions just so we can open up the questions," said Burwell. "While he's shooting, I'm doing research and thinking of all the different ways to address those questions. By the time he's got a rough edit of the film, that's when I'm really going to start writing music, but we already have a really firm grasp on the questions the film raises and hopefully, a slew of possible answers." The emotional climax of the 1977 section takes place at the "Panorama of the City of New York," an enormous scale model housed in the Queens Museum and originally constructed for the 1964 World's Fair. (In a delightful coincidence, Lachman's older brother was involved in making the bridges for the "Panorama.") The seemingly separate strands of the movie come together - in a sequence featuring another frequent Haynes partner, actress Julianne Moore - similar to how all of Haynes' collaborators worked in concert. "It was really about point, counterpoint," said Haynes. "What I love about Brian's concept at the core, and what felt so coherent, is this is a mystery. "And the mystery keeps being furthered by the intercutting between the two stories. Every time you cut, that basic premise is rephrased, which is 'Why are these two stories sharing one film? What are the things that link them?' There is something underneath them we're going to find out. That structure was the most creative challenge and excitement throughout the process." Todd Haynes will attend a special "Wonderstruck" screening at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, at the Hollywood Theatre, 4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd. Housing permits for single family home construction increased 4.5 percent in Michigan during the first nine months of 2017. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 12,663 permits issued in the first nine months of 2017, compared to 12,115 for the same period a year ago. The rate of increases is in line with the annual housing permit forecast for Michigan issued in January 2017 by the Home Builders Association of Michigan. That report predicted a full year increase of 4.2 percent for the home building industry. It is great that we are ahead of last year, but we have to balance that with the fact that three months ago we were running 10.6 percent ahead of 2016, HBAM CEO Bob Filka said. Builders are being impacted by a shortage of skilled workers, lot availability, regulatory delays and rising costs. Following a series of housing summits held around the state earlier this year, HBAM issued a major report that warned of a looming housing shortage in Michigan. HBAM proposed a 13-point action plan to aggressively attack the challenge. Industry officials say they are encouraged by the positive reception the report has received from the governor, state lawmakers and others at the state and local levels connected to the homebuilding industry. The state will soon commission a study analyzing how local municipalities manage land development, housing and renovation approval processes. Several bills dealing with skilled trades and other issues identified in the report have also been introduced. The fact is that new home production is constrained and prices are rising. More and more middle class consumers are getting priced out of the new home housing market, Filka said. This has a ripple effect throughout the housing marketplace, resulting in higher rents and sales prices for existing homes. Housing affordability is becoming a bigger and bigger challenge for communities and we are encouraged by actions being taken at the Capitol and around the state in response to our report. Copies of the HBAM report, Housing Challenges Threaten Our Economic Growth Where Will Ten Million Michiganders Live? can be downloaded at HBAofMichigan.com Award-winning violinist Hal Grossman will perform in concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, in the Rhea Miller Recital Hall at Saginaw Valley State University as part of SVSUs Rhea Miller Concert Series. Critics have praised Grossmans "vibrant tone" and "superb technique." He is a first prize award winner for International Cleveland Quartet Competition and the National Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Grossman's debut performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City received high praise from a review in The New York Times. The violinist was also invited to play for Prince Charles and Princess Diana in a CBC television and radio broadcast. He has appeared on stages throughout North America and Europe, where he has held the position of concertmaster in five orchestras. In addition to performing, Grossman has also spent time teaching violin at the University of Miami, the University of Oklahoma, and the Interlochen Arts Academy. He is the founder and creator of The Grossman Method, pedagogy that incorporates stretches in young violinists to promote healthy string playing. Accompanying Grossman on stage at SVSU will be Norman Boehm. Specializing in music from the 19th and 20th centuries, this skilled pianist has performed in numerous single-composer recitals. Boehm composes his own work and arranges larger symphonic works for chamber ensembles, as well. The Rhea Miller Concert Series is made possible by a generous gift from Rhea E. Miller, a longtime friend of SVSU. Her gift, administered by the Miller Trust for Music Education, has provided the university with the opportunity to offer outstanding performances by nationally and internationally acclaimed musical artists at no cost to the audience since 1993. For more information, call 989-964-4159 or email music@svsu.edu Moscow Ballet's "Great Russian Nutcracker" returns to the Temple Theatre at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 5 on its 25th anniversary tour. A traditional Russian tea featuring light fare will take place at 2 p.m. Tickets for the tea are available for purchase at templetheatre.com As part of Moscow Ballet's Dance With Us program, several dance students from studios around mid-Michigan have been selected to perform on stage. Audition Director Alisa Bolotnikova traveled to Saginaw from Moscow in September to conduct auditions, work with local instructors to teach students the choreography, and hold master classes at local studios for dancers of all ages. Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker is the United States' only fully produced tour of the traditional Christmas ballet, including one 60-foot growing Christmas tree, seven backdrops featuring Russian heritage, 10-foot tall puppets, 40 dancers, and 100 costumes. The new backdrops and costumes were hand-made in Russia at a 300-year old theatrical shop. Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker appeals to city dwellers and small-town citizens, teens and retirees, ballet aficionados and families alike. The Saginaw performance is part of Moscow Ballet's tour of the Eastern United States, and features a cast of highly decorated principal and featured dancers. Iryna Borysova is a recipient of bronze medal from Ukraine's International Ballet Competition Named After "Serge Lifar" in Kiev. She was named finalist at the Varna International Ballet Competition. Partner Kostyantyn Vinovoy, Laureate of Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition in Ukraine, participated in "The Young Ballerina Festival" in Nagoya, Japan. Veronika Hordina won first place for her performance of "Halitska Terpsichore" at the International Youth Competition of Choreography in Kiev. And Olekseii Potiomkin won silver at the 3rd Istanbul International Ballet Competition, bronze at International Ballet Competition Kiev, and received the diploma of distinction at the International Junior Competition named after Grigorovich. In or out? Yes or no? Those were the questions 18-year-old Robert Moe wondered about after failing his physical for the Army in 1943. He was told he would be notified if anything changed. He returned to high school for his senior year but in November he was ordered to report for a second physical and this time he passed. On Dec. 10, 1943 he reported to Ft. Sheridan in Illinois and was put to work at the railroad station unloading Christmas mail. On Dec. 23 he was assigned to the 142nd Ordinance Base Automotive Maintenance Battalion, 3019th Company. Their job was to rebuild jeep and truck engines. Bob would eventually be in the Occupation Army in Japan in 1945. Texarkana, Texas saw the battalion doing six weeks of basic training. We were in the Red River Valley," Bob said. "All mud. In the morning it was so cold I put on my overcoat but by noon it was 80 degrees and I still had my overcoat on. They crawled through mud and water, under barbed wire fencing wearing overcoats and carrying rifles. At the end of the day they showered still wearing their uniforms to clean the mud off their clothes and themselves. If we were lucky, our clothes dried overnight," Bob said. "If not, we wore them anyway. On Feb. 20, 1944 the battalion left Texas for Pomona, California. On Feb. 23 they reached Pomona where temporary quarters were set up in the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. More training ensued. The time in California was excellent, Bob said. He struck up a friendship with Jared Nemnich. They shared the same birthday. Neither smoked nor drank and weekend passes were plentiful. "One Saturday we were walking down the street and a lady with about 20 G.I.s told us to fall in line," Bob said. "We did and we ended up at the Brown Derby for lunch Los Angeles had a huge U.S.O. with movie stars volunteering in abundance to meet the young men, dance with them and help serve food. Bob saw Lena Horne and Ethel Waters. In France he had lunch with movie star Mickey Rooney. While stationed in California, Bob got a two-weeks leave and took the Challenger Train as far as Chicago. Bob said, It took three days and it was so crowded I sat on the floor the entire three days. There wasnt room to move around. You could hardly get to the toilet. Bob took a bus from Chicago to Midland, and on July 15, Bob and Mildred Horning were married in the First Baptist Church with his sister, Clara May Penney, and a friend, Lloyd Mudd, standing up with them. After a short three days together, Bob was headed back to California. The stay in California lasted from Feb. 23, to Aug. 21 of 1944 and then they were sent to Flora, Mississippi for advanced training. Bob said, Things were not so good there. The weather was muggy. The mess hall served mutton four days each week. I could smell it so I ate at the PX, candy bars and ice cream," Bob said. A three-day pass allowed Bob to fly from Jackson, Mississippi to Chicago and from Chicago to Flint where his dad picked him up and drove him home for a short one-day visit before heading back to Flora, Mississippi. On Nov. 5, 1944 they left Flora, Mississippi for Camp Shanks in New York where the men got their shots before going overseas. On Nov. 11, 1944 the men went by barge to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where they got on the USAT Cristobol, a converted banana and passenger boat. The USAT Cristobol met the convoy at Hampton Roads, Virginia and they spent the next 14 days on the boat. Bob pulled guard duty from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. Again, the food wasnt the best but he discovered that the cooks in the ships kitchen were baking bread for breakfast each day. A loaf of freshly baked bread with butter and jam became his meal for the day. The troop transport was overcrowded. No ventilation, only two meals a day, water was rationed for drinking, no water for bathing or washing clothes. On Nov. 25 they reached Marseilles, France. We got off the boat carrying everything we owned in our duffel bags besides our rifles and marched straight uphill for 15 miles to a plateau they called the Callas Staging Area," Bob said. "It was nicknamed the death march because a lot of the guys couldnt make it and they dropped off. The next morning trucks were sent out to pick them up. There were no barracks at the Callas staging area so the men slept on the ground for the next two weeks. (Some reports spelled it Calas.) On Dec. 8, 1944 they were sent to Langres, France to guard German prisoners who were loading ammunition on trucks. The prisoners were young Germans about 15 and 16 years old," Bob said. "They could speak better English than I did. They had been taught English because they were going to be in the occupation forces when Germany conquered the United States. Bobs Battalion was stationed in Langres until May of 1945 when Germany surrendered. On May 13 they were alerted that they would be sent to the Pacific Theatre where war with Japan was still going on. On May 21, 1945 they moved from Langres, France back to the Callas Staging Area where they were billeted until July 15, 1945 when Bob was one of 5,600 men who boarded the US General George M. Randall, docking 10 days later at Cristobal, Panama. In August 1945 President Truman announced that Japan had surrendered. Nine of the 10 ships in the convoy turned around and headed stateside. Bobs ship continued on to Japan. On Sept. 2 the men were alerted that they would be part of the Occupation Army in Yokohama, Japan. By now they had been on the US General George M. Randall for 43 days. On Nov. 10, 1945 they sailed for Yokohama, Japan where they spent the next two months repairing sleeping quarters, mess halls and setting up a base shop in the Nippon Aircraft Factory about five miles from Yokohama, Japan. We were given rations for 100 men but there were only 32 of us," Bob said. "I gained a lot weight and went from 145 to 176. The mess halls were staffed by the Japanese under the supervision of GI personnel. The Japanese also had a barber shop where the men could get the works. The Japanese were great to work with and we never had any trouble with them," Bob said. "There were no bad feelings. On April 6, 1946 the men left Yokohama on the Perpetuia for Seattle. In the middle of the Pacific they crossed paths with a typhoon with the ship losing power temporarily but on April 18, 1946 the ship docked at Ft. Lewis, Washington and from there they went to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin. On April 25, 1946 Bob reached Midland after receiving an honorable discharge from the Army. Midland Police are looking for a man who is wanted on five warrants as this weeks Wanted Wednesday. Named as this weeks subject is Trent Richard Columbus, 20. Columbus is 6 feet 2 inches tall, and weighs 215 pounds. Police did not release a photo of Columbus. Coming soon Scheduled to open in area theaters next weekend (Nov. 10) are: Daddy's Home 2: In this inevitable sequel to the 2015 hit, father/stepfather Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) and Brad (Will Ferrell) join forces to provide their kids with the perfect Christmas. Alas, their newfound partnership is put to the test when Dustys old-school, macho dad (Mel Gibson) and Brads ultra-affectionate and emotional dad (John Lithgow) arrive just in time to throw the holiday into the requisite complete chaos. John Cena co-stars. Murder on the Orient Express: A remake of the all-star 1974 film version of the Agatha Christie classic, which featured Albert Finney as the mustachioed Hercule Poirot. The role of the Belgian detective is taken over here by Kenneth Branagh, who also found time to direct. A la the 1974 version, the suspects embroiled in a slaying on board the famous train comprise another all-star gathering: Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Michael Pena, Leslie Odom Jr., Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Derek Jacobi, Josh Gad, Penelope Cruz, Sergei Polunin and Willem Dafoe. Film clips Freebies: The Illinois State University Department of Sociology & Anthropology's continues its film series focusing on "Food Justice and Sustainability" with Cafe, showing free at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Normal Theater. Filmed over the course of a year in the Nahuatl village of Cuetzalan, Mexico, the film "brings a deliberate and poetic sensibility to ritualistic daily moments marking life in this mountain village" ... Last but not least, the Six-Week Film School's fall session at the Normal, "From Alice to Silence: The Scorsese Style," concludes at 7 p.m. Wednesday with a free showing of 2016's Silence, hosted by ISU film professor, William McBride. Its been a long time since The Best Years of Our Lives, the beloved 1946 film about soldiers returning home to their families after World War II, but the story, in many ways, remains the same. In William Wylers movie, the sacrifices of war were embodied by vet-turned-actor Harold Russell, who lost both his hands in the Army. But combat injuries arent always so visible, as evidenced in Thank You for Your Service, the directorial debut of American Sniper writer Jason Hall, who adapted David Finkels book for the screen. Thank You for Your Service explores the devastation of PTSD suffered by American soldiers returning home in 2007, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Washington Post journalist Finkel embedded with a group of soldiers in Iraq to write the book The Good Soldiers, and his follow up, Thank Your for Your Service, details their readjustment to their families and civilian life while battling physical, mental and emotional injuries. Miles Teller stars as Sgt. Adam Schumann, who struggles to find his footing back home with his wife (Haley Bennett) and kids. He seems most at ease when looking out for his boys, like he did back in Iraq, and is plagued by guilt over incidents at home and abroad when he was unable to save his buddies from injury or death. The detailing of their physical and emotional injuries is laid in an almost edu-tainment style, citing statistics about suicide, and careful questionnaires about mental distress. But its at once an account of PTSD and a wartime mystery. While these young vets struggle to receive treatment for their combat stress, traumatic brain injuries and suicidal thoughts, they also speak cryptically about, what happened to Doster, one of their comrades who died, leaving behind a distraught widow (Amy Schumer) searching for answers. While parts of Thank You for Your Service work well, overall, the film is inconsistent. A middle section lays out a perfect villain that is disappointingly dropped: the governmental system that churns through boys and leaves them alone to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare that is Veterans Affairs, while admonishing them that its bad for morale to ask for help. This biting, trenchant social commentary is abandoned for a misguided subplot involving Solo (Beulah Koale), Adams buddy, getting caught up in a bad situation with a drug dealer, a Desert Storm vet. Its extremely disappointing that the film ultimately positions the real threat as a fellow vet, a man of color, rather than the war machine that chewed them up and spit them out. The representations of the Army wives arent all that much to write home about either. Theyre mostly shrill nags who cant understand. Amy Schumer, making a turn toward dramatic fare, is woefully miscast. In a brown wig, its too hard to separate her from her comedic persona, and it almost feels like one of her Inside Amy Schumer sketches. Teller is a compelling actor, and when the film focuses on Adam and his boys their bonds forged in combat, sealed with blood its sensitive and moving. No man is left behind, even back home. Teller is best across from Koale, who is utterly riveting in his soulful performance as the American Samoan soldier Solo. Despite its storytelling inconsistencies, the film reveals a harrowing veteran experience when it focuses simply on the men themselves. Patna: District Magistrate Sanjay Agrawal, batting for Nitish Kumar's agenda against child marriage in Bihar on Wednesday pushed the ball a few more yards for the Chief Minister when he held a meeting with Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian religious leaders and asked them not to preside over weddings that involved underage children. Speaking to over 100 priests and clerics, wedding band owners, and wedding card printers at his Collectorate office, Agrawal asked them not to solemnize marriage if it involved children who were minors. "The Chief Minister has launched this campaign to ensure child marriage is eradicated from Bihar and it is our responsibility to make it successful because child marriage is not only a social evil but it has also been scientifically proven to negatively affect the mind and body of both the boys and the girls, " Agarwal said. The District Magistrate also sought suggestions from the priests and clerics on ways to battle child marriage while also gently reminding them that those who did perform underage marriage would be faced with severe legal actions including prison time if they were found responsible for taking part in a minor's wedding. "While we cannot charge you in dowry cases, you will be held responsible for performing any child marriage," he told them. On the occasion, all the religious leaders took an oath never to solemnize wedding of underage children. Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, soon after returning from Ranchi where he was to appear before a CBI court in connection with the fodder scam, called press reporters to his home to continue from where his son Tejaswi Yadav left yesterday during a similar press conference. Repeating his son's accusations against his situational friend slash enemy Nitish Kumar, Yadav declared prohibition in Bihar had failed and bootleggers with a nod from the Chief Minister himself were making home deliveries of liquor bottles to those who were willing to pay the premium price for their love for alcohol. "Government officials, and even school children are now working as agents of the liquor mafia in Bihar," Yadav, who is described by his opponents as the leader of the land mafia in Bihar, said. He also made direct accusation against JD-U Secretary General K C Tyagi of receiving kickbacks from liquor mafia while also accusing District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police (SPs) of extorting money from the bootleggers to avoid being arrested. The RJD chief further accused the Chief Minister of being 'anti-dalit' who was opposed to reservation of any kind. "Uday Narayan Chowdhary and Shyam Rajak were right when they said that quota in promotion was being scrapped under the Nitish administration and there was a proposal to introduce creamy layer in reservations for SCs and STs. Reservation for dalits is under attack and I am surprised that Nitish Kumar is silent on this issue. I have always known that he has been anti-reservation all along," he said. Yadav, never shy to pull the caste card, then went on to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being anti-Yadavs. "Modi is anti-Yaduvanshis so I appeal to all Yadavs in Gujarat not to vote for the BJP in the state election," he said. Do Americans Want to Renegotiate the Nuclear Deal with Iran? 11/01/17 By Nancy W. Gallagher (source: LobeLog) World leaders involved in Iran nuclear talks pose for photo in Vienna (July 14, 2015 photo by by Mostafa Ghotbi, IRNA) A recent article in The Hill claimed that "a strong majority of voters-including most Democrats" want the United States to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. The results it cites are at odds with many other polls. For example, a CNN survey done the same week found that 67 percent of Americans did not think that the United States should withdraw from the nuclear deal, while only 27 percent thought that it should. The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland did an in-depth survey in December 2016 that asked explicitly about renegotiation. After reading arguments used by the incoming Trump administration against the deal, as well as arguments in favor of continued U.S. participation, two-thirds of respondents opposed withdrawing from the deal and seeking to renegotiate. Seven in 10 doubted that it would be possible to extract any more concessions from the Iranians. The Hill article is based on data from the most recent Harvard-Harris poll. The pollsters did not, however, follow the standard practice for academic public opinion research of disclosing what percentage of respondents picked "don't know" or refused to answer a question. Instead, they calculated percentages based only on those who picked one of the offered response options. This is normally only done in advocacy polls to drive up a number one is trying to project. The practice can make it look like there is majority support for a position when the percentage of respondents who chose that option is actually under 51% when the "DKs" and "NAs" are included. The Iran deal was only one of many issues covered by this survey. One question not mentioned in The Hill article undercuts any notion that the American public is clamoring for renegotiation. Only one percent of respondents thought that "undoing the Iran deal" should be the top priority for President Trump and Republicans in Congress. The survey question that supposedly showed support for renegotiation is seriously flawed. It asked respondents to choose between two competing statements that were ostensibly pro and con arguments for renegotiation. Yet neither of the statements actually said that the United States should seek to renegotiate the deal now, and both included factually incorrect assertions. The statement offered in support started by saying that "the deal is not perfect," without saying anything positive about what it does do. It then asserted that "the Iranians are building up their nuclear capability secretly." Even strong opponents of the deal do not make this patently false statement. Proponents make the opposite point that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly affirmed that Iran is in compliance. The "pro" statement concluded by saying that despite the deal's imperfections and Iran's cheating, "we should not rock the boat and just let it all slide along." This sounds more like a caricature made by an opponent than a serious presentation from a supporter of the deal. The con argument did not provide evidence of Iranian violations. Even President Trump has not asserted that Iran is in material breach of its legal obligations, saying instead that some of Iran's actions outside the scope deal violate its "spirit." What Trump refused to certify-against the recommendation of his top security advisors-was that the national interest continues to be served by giving Iran some sanctions relief in return for special limits and transparency arrangements on their nuclear program. The con argument is posed as a hypothetical: "if Iranians are not compliant we have to call them out on it and push to renegotiate the deal with real verification." It is hard to see how even a strong proponent of the deal could disagree with the principles that arms-control agreements should include effective verification and that countries who violate arms-control commitments should be held accountable. Given how the pro and con arguments were framed, it's frankly surprising that only seven out of 10 opted for the option that emphasized accountability and effective verification, instead of turning a blind eye to cheating. Strikingly-given the biased wording of previous questions-the poll found that the public is essentially evenly divided over Trump's decertification decision, another result not mentioned in The Hill article. This was the only question in the survey that reminded respondents that U.S. actions could end the special limits and transparency measures on Iran's nuclear program. It noted that decertification triggers a decision by Congress about "whether to end the deal by putting sanctions back on Iran." Harvard-Harris reports that 51% approved Trump's decertifying, while 49% did not. As noted above, though, without DK and NA response rates reported, it's not clear what percentage of all respondents really thought that decertification was the right decision. The Harvard-Harris poll gave the same 51-49 breakdown for a broader question about whether respondents support or oppose what President Trump is doing against Iran. This is extraordinarily peculiar, given the large majority responses against the deal in the poll's other questions. But such wild discrepancies between responses to different questions in the same poll can happen when balance and grounding in factual context are lacking. Nancy Gallagher is the director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland. Photo: Joint commission on the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. Ayatollah Khamenei to Putin: Iran-Russia cooperation in Syria proved fruitful 11/02/17 Source: Tehran Times In a high-profile meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on Wednesday, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei noted that the experience of "good cooperation" between Tehran and Moscow in Syria showed that it is possible to achieve "common goals". "The result of this cooperation showed that Tehran and Moscow can realize common goals in difficult situations," Ayatollah Khamenei remarked. Vladimir Putin meets Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency) The "joint resistance" by Iran and Russia against "takfiri terrorists" in Syria, which are supported by some foreign countries, proved "meaningful" and bore "important results", the Leader pointed out. He also said the coalition between Iran and Russia against terrorists helped make Russia emerge as an "influential force in Western Asia". The Leader also said, "We should use the recent years' useful experiences at (both) regional issues and bilateral levels to strengthen and develop ties." Ayatollah Khamenei also said the potential for economic cooperation between Tehran and Moscow is far higher than the current level, suggesting that Iran and Russia can extend their economic ties by linking Chabahar port in the Persian Gulf to the port city of St Petersburg. The Leader also called for cooperation to counter sanctions against the two countries by the United States, suggesting that the two countries can boycott U.S.-made goods through certain approaches including eliminating dollar and replacing it with national currencies in bilateral or multilateral economic transactions. In this way the sanctions will become "ineffective" and Washington will even be "isolated", the Leader noted. (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency) Elsewhere in his remarks, Ayatollah Khamenei called Putin a "man of action" with "strong personality". "It is due to this reason that one can talk to Russia as a great power about important works, which entail determination and efforts, and establish logical cooperation," Ayatollah Khamenei said. The Leader also welcomed proposal by Putin for multilateral regional cooperation. Putin also said Russia considers Iran as a "strategic partner" and "great neighbor" and that Moscow will use every opportunity to strengthen inclusive ties with Tehran. Putin also praised cooperation between Russia and Iran in Syria, saying it has produced good results. He also said the two countries should go ahead with their struggle against terrorism in Syria and simultaneously help facilitate a political process for the resolution of the conflict between the Syrian government and armed opposition groups. Putin also defended the international nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1 countries, noting his country is opposed to any changes to the terms of the multilateral nuclear agreement through a unilateral approach. "We consider it a violation international law and regulations," he asserted in open reference to U.S. President Donald Trump's call for changing the terms of the nuclear agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In this talks with the Leader, Putin also said linking Iran's other issues including its defense program with the nuclear deal is a "wrong approach". With an accelerated growth of 9 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the second quarter of 2017, Ghana represents an attractive window of opportunity for Mexican companies seeking to broaden their horizons and consolidate their economic and comercial ties, especially with non-traditional markets. Ghana is the second largest economy in West Africa, with a stable socio-political climate, a robust rule of law, an attractive business environment and a strategic geographical position. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ghana is on track to be one of the three fastest growing economies in 2018. To deepen trade ties, Ghanas Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyerematen, visited Mexico last week. The team was made up of officials from the Trade ministry, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, the Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC), as well as a group of businessmen with interests in sectors such as: construction, agro-industry, energy (oil and renewables), transportation and services, among others. These actions seek to help both countries serve as a gateway to trade and investment between Africa and Latin America. The Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID), the Mexican Embassy in Ghana, ProMexico and the Mexican Business Council for Foreign Trade, Investment and Technology (COMCE), integrated a rich agenda that the Minister of Trade and Industry of Ghana, Mr Alan J. Kyerematen, took part in during the visit. In the framework of the 15th edition of the Mexico Business Summit, held in San Luis Potosi from October 22 to 24, Minister Kyerematen spoke Facing the urgent need to develop new business partners and the diversification of exports, together with Mrs Yasushi Akahoshi, President of Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and Chun Beeho, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea. During their stay in Mexico, the authorities and representatives of Ghanas private sector participated in the Mexico-Ghana Business Dialogue in which the Chairman of the Committee Mexico-Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) of COMCE, recognised this visit as an opportunity to boost bilateral economic exchanges. Mr Kyerematen held meetings with members of the Mexican federal cabinet, including the Ministries of Economy and Energy, and with the Directors General of ProMexico and Bancomext. He also met with the deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Carlos de Icaza, on behalf of Minister Luis Videgaray. With the above-mentioned officials, he shared the objectives and progress of Ghana's industrial development program and Ghanas potential to become a strategic economic partner of Mexico. These actions which seek to help both countries serve as a gateway to trade and investment between Africa and Latin America, taking advantage of the commercial instruments that each one maintains within its own regions and with third markets in North America and the European Union. This is the first high-level visit that has taken place since Mexico reopened its Embassy in Ghana in 2014 and it is the result of joint actions carried out with a view of strengthening bilateral ties in economic, political and cooperation matters. These types of activities are part of the diversification strategy of economic relations in Mexico, with special attention to a continent that is home to 7 of the 10 most dynamic economies in the world. Source: The Finder Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) says it would pull down the bill boards of businesses in the metropolis that fail to meet their tax obligations with immediate effect. In line with this, the AMA taskforce, led by Robert Kwame Dadzie, Chair of the Revenue Sub-Committee, paid an unannounced visit to some businesses, mostly advertising companies, to inform them of the decision of the AMA. He said the sub-committee, since its reconstitution, has on numerous occasions called on the defaulting businesses to pay their taxes. So we are here to let them know that the AMA is very serious about its revenue generation channels used in running the metropolis, he said. Mr Dadzie said the assembly has no choice than to take action in order to retrieve all monies. We have no choice than to pull down every billboard and signage, because it is their responsibility to pay us and they have failed to do so, he said. Today is 31st October, the month has ended and we havent seen anything yet, most of these companies have failed to comply with our directive and so we will deal with them in accordance with the law, he added. He told the media that Alliance Media owes the Assembly more than GH10,000 but has failed to pay, adding that other agencies, including Emerge Media, have equally failed to live up to expectation. As we speak, Alliance Media alone owes us over GH10,000, we have asked them to pay and what they are telling us is that they dont issue cheques and that they will transfer the money into the assemblys account before close of the week. Addressing the media after the visits, he said the AMA has decided to make Accra one of the best cities in the world but will need revenue to make that happen. People expect a lot from the AMA but these same people are refusing to pay their taxes so how do we get the money to rid the city of filth and create the development we want, he quizzed. The Executive Director of the Advertising Association of Ghana, Francis Dadzie, in an interaction with the media, said the association is in full support of the Assemblys action. He said there is galamsey in outdoor advertising and we must address that and take the bull by the horn. It is not fair for others to pay their bills while some fail to do so. It is more than just looking at the revenue side of it, we should look at the public safety and that is what we bring on board. If we have a well-structured road network and proper placed boards, we can get a lot of revenue, he added. 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. Featured Video Members of the National Service Persons Association (NASPA) have issued a stern warning to its leadership and the National Service Secretariat (NSS) to stop the monthly insurance package for the personnel or face their wrath. According to a statement by the National Service Persons of Ghana, the leadership of NASPA is collaborating with GLICO and MTN to roll out an insurance package where there will be a monthly deduction of GHC 15 from their allowance. The group wants government to take actions to stop the leadership from carrying out their plan saying "we wish to alert the government, NSS, NASPA and all other stakeholders involved that this decision is against our fundamental human rights and freedom. We are all not in agreement over this move hence should be discouraged. It must not be allowed. You cannot sign us up for an insurance package by compulsion. Our opinions were also not sought for. The executives of NASPA cannot take such a decision which grossly affects our monies without consulting us". "What would happen to our deductions at the end of the service year? Do they know our individual plans and whether or not we have already insured ourselves?" they further questioned. "An insurance is supposed to be a means of protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risks of a contingent, or uncertain losses. The loss may or may not be financial, but it must be reducible to financial terms, and must involve something in which the insured has an insurable interest established by ownership, possession, or preexisting relationship", portions of the statement read. The service personnel described the package as a "daylight robbery", calling on the NSS and government to intervene or they file a law suit against the authorities. "Inasmuch as we appreciate the efforts of NSS for trying to seek our welfare, we wish to state categorically that this particular package is a daylight robbery if the deductions are made compulsory hence should be discouraged immediately or we follow the appropriate procedures to challenge it in court. In principle, one would have to understand how an insurance package works before subscribing to it. Two of the most important components of all the insurance policies are the premium and the deductible. A firm understanding of these two concepts goes a long way to helping one in choosing a policy that is best for him or her. It is a risk which should not be made compulsory hence nobody should decide for us". NASPA launched a National Service Insurance Policy on Wednesday, November 1, in collaboration with GLICO Life Insurance Company and MTN to deduct GHC 15 from the personnel's allowance every month. The policy was broken down into the following packages: 1. In the event of death during service - 15,000 cedis. 2. In the event of Injury during service - 15,000 cedis. 3. In the event of disability during service - 3,000 cedis. 4. Loan given to service personnel's amounting to 500 cedis and will be paid by Personnel over a period of 6 months. 5. Free Inter-MTN calls. 6. 5 cedis airtime free to call other networks. 7. Free data. 8. 500 SMS every month. 9. Free movies twice in a month. But the service personnel have appealed to authorities of the NSS, NASPA and the government to "make this insurance package optional. We know what is good for us so whether an individual decides to subscribe to this package or not, he or she would be prepared to bear the consequences. Do not compel us to subscribe or impose the deductions on us. How much is our monthly allowance before so much unnecessary deductions are going to be imposed on us? Earlier, we heard rumours that the NASPA executives are going to sanction deductions on the allowance to offset our dues. "This is also against our fundamental freedom of association. We must not be compelled to do certain things against our interest just because the constitution demands that we render a mandatory service to the nation. As the constitution demands, we are serving the nation with our strengths and skills for which we are paid less. The Ghanaian government can equally raise a seed money to insure us without having to deduct from our meagre allowances" the statement signed by Cephas Akortor on behalf of all the Concerned National Service Persons of Ghana further stressed. 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. Featured Video Twenty-two persons, suspected to have submitted dubious documents to receive salaries as National Service Personnel, have been dragged to a Kumasi court. Reports say scores of other culprits in other regions of the country have also been sent to court. Henry Nana Boakye, aka Nana B, a deputy Executive Director at the National Service Secretariat (NSS), made the disclosure in an interview. He hinted that anyone that would be found culpable of trying to impersonate and take monthly allowance from the NSS would not be spared. As I speak with you now, 22 people who submitted dubious documents to take salaries from the NSS in the Ashanti region are in court. We have similar cases in other parts of the country, where people are also facing trial for trying to illegally benefit from NSS salaries, he disclosed. According to him, national service in Ghana is done only once so those who want to do it twice or more and benefit from the NSS salary scheme would be exposed. Nana B announced that a staggering 58,000 NSS personnel have been paid their two-month salary by his outfit to support their livelihood. He, however, hinted that people, who are suspected to have used dubious documents and are being investigated as a result, were excluded from the pay roll. The deputy director further cautioned that service personnel who refused to take part in the biometric registration exercise, ordered by the NSS, could not be paid. According to him, the affected people could only be paid after they had duly gone through the biometric registration exercise. Source: the publisher Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The management of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) is accusing the previous management of the board under the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of awarding contracts for ghost cocoa roads in the country. It said an interim audit on the contracts of the cocoa roads conducted by technical consultants had revealed that many of the cocoa roads for which contracts were awarded had been found to be nonexistent or excessively over bloated. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the COCOBOD, Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, who announced this, said: For the first time in the history of Ghana, the NDC had introduced ghost cocoa roads in Ghana. Road debts Briefing journalists yesterday at a press conference, Mr Aidoo accused the previous administration of engaging in various financial malfeasances, resulting in huge debts, hinting that the board had instituted a number of investigations and audit findings into such deals. Mr Aidoo said, for instance, that upon the assumption of office in February 2017, his administration inherited cocoa roads debt of GH3.52 billion. Mr Aidoo said even though a budgetary allocation of GH1.64 billion was earmarked for the cocoa roads project between the 2014/2015 and 2016/2017 cocoa seasons, the then government awarded contracts to the tune of GH5.16 billion. Abuse Mr Aidoo said under the cocoa roads contracts, four-wheel drive vehicles were purchased by COCOBOD for the contractors as part of the contract price, adding that 160 vehicles were with the contractors. To indicate the abuse, an 18km road, for example, was allocated six fourwheel vehicles for inspection by the old administration. I have initiated steps to retrieve the vehicles from the contractors, he told the press conference. NDC press conference at Bodi Meanwhile, at a press conference at Bodi in the Western Region last week, the Minority in Parliament accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of neglecting the over 230 cocoa roads selected from all the cocoa regions in Ghana on contract. The NDC Member of Parliament (MP) for Bodi, Mr Sampson Ahi, said: It is sad to note that no provision was made for cocoa roads in the COCOBOD budget for 2017/18. Stabilisation fund On the stabilisation fund, Mr Ahi said even though the NPP was not able to provide adequate answers to issues raised earlier by the NDC, we are still interested in knowing how much is accumulated in the Cocoa Stabilisation Fund and its impact on the cocoa farmers in this critical period. However, Mr Aidoo accused the NDC government of not setting aside the budgeted figure of GH93.5 million for the 2016/2017 season as a result of misplaced priorities. He explained that when the NPP government took office in January 2017, an amount of GH103.5 million had been added to the fund, bringing the cumulative balance to GH310 million. Mr Aidoo said the actual amount required to maintain the producer price in the 2017/18 season was GH1.294 billion, explaining that the price subsidy to the farmers was, therefore, GH984 million after setting off the stabilisation fund of GH310 million. Free fertilizer programme Speaking on the free fertiliser programme, Mr Ahi noted that the NPP government demonstrated its insensitivity to the plight of the ordinary cocoa farmer by ignoring our wise counsel and proceeding to replace the free fertilization programme with subsidised arrangement, under which a bag of fertiliser which was given to the farmer for free was now sold at GH80 in spite of its embossment of strictly not for sale. However, in a rebuttal, Mr Aidoo accused the NDC government of introducing sub-standard and inefficacious fertilisersinto the cocoa hitech programme. He said when that fertilizer was procured, the cocoa farmers expressed misgivings and disquiet in accepting the sub-standard fertilisers through the free fertilizer programme introduced by the immediate past CEO of the board, Dr Stephen Opuni, and the NDC regime. Mass spraying Touching on the mass spraying exercise, Mr Aidoo accused the previous administration of changing the normal model of spraying by gangs to the distribution of sub-standard insecticides and fungicides to farmers to spray their own farmers. The amount saved from the non-payment of gangs was misapplied through inflated contracts, he alleged. Syndicated loan Speaking on the syndicated loan, Mr Aidoo noted that the NDC government secured an amount of $1.8 billion for the 2016/2017 cocoa purchases, which were projected at 850,000 metric tonnes. As of January 2017, the $1.8 billion had been fully drawn and utilised when only 587,125 metric tonnes of cocoa had been purchased. The mystery surrounding the exhaustion of the $1.8 billion is being investigated and the full facts will be made known to Ghanaians in due course. Peculiar to the loan utilisation is the last drawdown of $400 million which was effected on December 20, 2016 at the time the NDC had woefully lost the December 2016 election, he said. 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. Featured Video The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has launched a comprehensive national tax campaign to encourage more Ghanaians to honour their tax obligations to enable the government to realise its domestic revenue targets, increase social intervention policies and accelerate development across the country. The aggressive campaign, which will include stakeholder engagements, dawn broadcasts, social media activities, consistent media announcements, community outreach programmes, compliance and enforcementactivities, among other things, is also to help increase the number of people paying taxes from about 16 per cent of the population to be at par with the sub-regional average of 20 per cent. In his quest to motivate the public to play a more pivotal role to ensure the success ofthe campaign, the acting Commissioner General of the GRA, Mr Kofi Nti, at the launch of the campaign in Accra yesterday, asked members of the public to bring to the notice of the GRA businesses activities within their vicinities to enable the authority to bring those businesses into the tax net for a reward. The reward, he said, would be a percentage of the tax collected from the operators, and gave an assurance that the GRA will keep the identities of the informants confidential. Mr Nti painted a gloomy picture of the number of people in the tax bracket and said: Even though many Ghanaians are engaged in income-earning activities, particularly in the informal sector, only about 1.2 million people are registered for tax purposes. Out of the number, about one million are in the formal sector, leaving only about 200,000 in the informal sector, he said, adding that the result of this situation is that for a long time the contribution of the informal sector to total tax revenue has remained below five per cent, although the economy is dominated by informal sector players. Mr Nti said the phenomenon created a huge gap in the national kitty and stressed the need to reverse what he described as a disturbing situation to bring as many people as possible into the tax net and help bridge the gap between public expenditures and revenues. Collaboration He said tax mobilisation was a shared responsibility between citizens and the tax administration. "As a result, the GRA is collaborating with organisations such as the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the Information Services Department (ISD) and the media to execute this campaign, he said. Launching the campaign, the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, joined other speakers to describe tax payment as a civic responsibility that all Ghanaians must discharge. He pointed out that for the government to discharge its duties of providing social amenities, such as free senior high school (SHS), health insurance, among others, there was the need for citizens to honour their tax obligations without fail. Demonstrating how much more the government could raise in taxes if many more people honoured their tax obligations, he said from the pay as you earn (PAYE) of just about a million, the government raised about GH3 billion per annum. Mr Ofori-Atta called for a national dialogue on the need to pay taxes to enable the country to generate its own resources and avoid looking outside for support. He said the government had put in place many measures to protect the public purse, while working to consistently improve macro-economic indicators. The Finance Minister asked the importing public to desist from tempting officials of the Customs Division of the GRA at the entry points and allow them to discharge their duties per their mandate. Do not attempt to offer them money before they work. If you do that, then you are the cause of corruption. Allow the system to work and you will be served accordingly and the state will also get what is due it, he said. Solidarity messages In their messages, the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation asked the government to take steps to protect the public purse as a way of encouraging people to honour their tax obligations. The presidents of the two bodies, Nana Barimah Ofori Ameyaw and Nii Ayi Ayitey, respectively, pledged their support for the campaign and called for more resources from the government to enable the GRA to prosecute the campaign successfully. They also asked the GRA to periodically evaluate the campaign to ensure that it wasdelivering according to plan. 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. Featured Video Journalist and a member of Media for Justice and Accountability, Kwabena Bobie Ansah, has said the former NDC administration must be blamed for the spate of vigilantism by NPP members in the country. Bobie explained that the NPP youth groups have gained notoriety in view of the Mahama administrations failure to contain the NPP attacks when it surfaced in the run-up to the 2016 general elections. I get sick if i hear NDC also criticizing this phenomenon because they failed to stamp out the attacks by NPP members when they were in power. You had power and could have easily used the state security apparatus to rein them in when they were getting out of hand. These boys begun their attacks under the NDC administration and now theyve gained a solid foothold. Perhaps the thinking of the former administration was that it was NPP members fighting among themselves and so they will not bother to intervene. I can tell you on authority that even one of the bigwigs in NPP and owner of a private newspaper went to the National Security under the Mahama-led administration to complain about this, that the government should clamp down on the NPP attacks, but were to no avail because it didnt concern them. he told Kasapa FM Tuesday. The NPP youth groups have since January ramped up attacks on state installations and other government agencies. At least 20 of separate violent cases perpetrated by loyalists of the governing New Patriotic Party(NPP) have been recorded since the party won political power in 2016. Several Civil Society Groups have called on government to act decisively against the escalating mayhem and disturbances taking a centre stage in Ghanaian politics. Most argue the situation may get out of hands, especially when culprits involved in such acts are left off the hook, or are treated with kid gloves by the Police and the Judiciary after their arrests. Source: kasapafmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Leadership is a burden that must be exercised responsibly; it puts one in a position of trust, which must reflect in the way and manner, the person carries himself or herself. Since we ushered in the Fourth Republican dispensation, we have made a lot of progress to the envy of many African countries. We are the trailblazers and we have always raised the bar high, anytime we go to the polls to elect our president and representatives to the August House. A few individuals, who are not fit for purpose, but have been privileged because of their proximity to power, are hell bent on sending this country back to the dark days. Geoarge Ayisi Boateng, is one of those people, who are not fit to be burdened with any leadership. A Ghanaian is not defined based on his tribe or the political party, he or she belongs to. Ghanas High Commissioner to South Africa, has introduced a new definition for who a Ghanaian is, according to George Ayisi Boateng, one is a Ghanaian, if he or she belongs to the New Patriotic Party. We are not surprised by the utterances of Ayisi Boateng, he was only echoing the long held view right-thinking Ghanaians have about president Akufo-Addo and the NPP. The entitlement mentality that has been the stock in trade of the Danquah-Busia tradition, since its formation is what is manifesting before our eyes and ears. A diplomat who is representing his country, will not speak the way George Ayisi Boateng did. This man does not deserve another day in that office. What he said when he met the Tertiary Education Network of the NPP in Kumasi, has the potential to plunge this country into civil war. If those who have been classified as special, are using violence to get what they want, what about us, who are considered, non-entities. The president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has demonstrated that, he does not have the spine to deal with his people. The buffoonery is beginning to define his government. An explosive country like South Africa, where there have been xenophobic attacks over the years, leading to the death of many people from other African countries, including Ghana, our representative to that country, must not be the one to crucify innocent Ghanaians, who probably didnt vote, because they do not belong to his party. George Ayisi Boateng, is a tribal bigot, who is not fit to occupy the office of a High Commissioner. This guy does not deserve a penny from the tax payer. Should the president still continue to keep him there, he must be prepared to pay him from his pocket. When we are paying tax, which is used to make life comfortable for him in South Africa, we do not do so, based on our political affiliation, we do that because we are Ghanaians. An elder, does not speak the way he did, maturity means, you are able to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. George Ayisi Boateng, has exposed his limitations and has betrayed the trust of Ghanaians. He should do the honourable thing and resign; an apology will not be enough. Source: the herald 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 Former President Jerry John Rawlings says until Ghanaians assume the right, duty and responsibility to assist in confronting the fight against corruption, government would have a hard time doing it alone. He said the corruption he faced when he first came to power in 1979 was not as bad as what is being confronted today. Flt Lt Rawlings stated that, the current government owes its own survival to the anti-corruption crusade, explaining that some administrations who found the integrity level of the AFRC/PNDC too high and intimidating made it a point to corrupt some of our national institutions in order to survive. The former President who spoke during a meeting with a delegation of political leaders from Sierra Leone led by former Vice-President Chief Sam-Sumana on Sunday, said each administrations refusal to contain and punish corruption, invariably provided the climate and opportunity for the problem to eat deeper into the fabric of the nation to the extent that one could only succeed by doing things the wrong way. By the time this administration came into office the country was literally drowning in the practice of corruption with impunity. This administration has therefore inherited national corruption at its worst, Mr. Rawlings stated. Former President Rawlings told his guests that the revolution brought the best out of the people. He recalled several efforts supported by Western powers to derail the process, including the deportation of one million Ghanaians from Nigeria under Shehu Shagaris administration. The expectation was that the revolution would have to be collapsed in order for Shagari to survive. Unfortunately the revolution survived and Shagari had to go, unseated by General Buhari who seemed slightly out of touch with the prevailing political climate and subsequently had to be unseated by General Babangida. We survived because the people felt they owned the process, former President Rawlings said. Chief Sam-Sumana who was dismissed under controversial circumstances in 2015 informed the former President that his delegation comprised leaders drawn from several political groups in Sierra Leone and the diaspora who had decided to come together as a coalition to contest the next election. The former Vice-President said the group recognized President Rawlings ideals and desire to see a better Africa, describing him as a man who served as the foundation for the renewed development of Ghana after the demise of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. We look up to you as a role model because of the peace and stability you brought not only to Ghana but to Sierra Leone and Liberia during your tenure as Head of State, Chief Sam-Sumana said. Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Vice President of the Republic, H.E. Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has assured the investor community of excellent opportunities in the health care sector of Ghana. Ghana, Dr Bawumia maintains, is open for business, and this is reflected in the various reforms being undertaken by the Nana Akufo-Addo government including the abolition of 15 nuisance taxes in the 2017 budget statement, as well as the introduction of a paperless port system and online registration for would-be businesses, among others. The Vice President gave the assurance when he led a delegation including H.E. Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, the First Lady of the Republic, senior government officials as well as officials of the Consulate of Ghana, Dubai to visit the Ajman Rulers Court and the Gulf Medical University (GMU), Ajman the leading private medical university of the region. The Emirate of Ajman is one of the seven Emirates (states) of the United Arab Emirates. In separate interactions with His Highness Sheikh Humaid Bin Rashid Al Nuaimi, Member of the Supreme Council, UAE and Ruler of Ajman, and other officials of Ajman, both Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and First Lady Mrs Rebecca Akufo-Addo outlined a number of areas for mutual cooperation between Ghana and Ajman, especially in the training of Ghanaian medical personnel and the establishment of medical facilities in Ghana. The delegation was later shown round the Gulf Medical University (GMU)s educational and research facilities, including the different ongoing projects of the hospitals and medical centers in the campus. Speaking after the tour H.E. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stated: We are very impressed with what we have seen here. We are happy that many Ghanaian students are pursuing their medical education at GMU. We hope to see this remarkable model of healthcare, medical education and research replicated in Ghana. Mr. Thumbay Moideen, Founder, President Board of Trustees of GMU, which is owned and operated by the Thumbay Group, disclosed that Gulf Medical University was in the process of establishing campuses in three new countries, including Ghana. Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia is in the United Arab Emirates to participate in the ongoing Global Business Forum Africa taking place in Dubai. He returns to Accra on Friday November 3, 2017. 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 Coakley's Restaurant in New Cumberland is about to be sold. The building on Bridge Street is under contract to tentatively be sold to a group of investors on Nov. 8, said Doug Morrow, a New Cumberland mayoral candidate. Morrow said he has been working on securing a buyer for the property for several months. The buyers include a real estate equity company, prominent developer and businessman from Philadelphia and a businessman from New Cumberland, he said. "They want to keep the apartments that are upstairs, but downstairs they want to put some type of a restaurant establishment in the old Coakley's," he said. More details, including plans, will become available Nov. 8 after the sale, Morrow said. Earlier this summer, Coakley's was part of a judicial tax sale in Cumberland County. The building had been home to Coakley's Restaurant & Irish Pub. It closed three years ago after operating for more than 40 years. Owner Tim Hogg had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2013, and told PennLive the pub was in the midst of restructuring, and he expected to keep the landmark running. But in July 2014, Coakley's closed, much to the disappointment of its local patrons and business owners. "The new owners want to bring commerce back," Morrow said. "The group wants to put a lot of money back into New Cumberland." A Berks County man has been charged with homicide in the death of a 19-year-old Lehigh county woman found dead Wednesday in a Berks County home, state police say. Christopher Ryan Tucker, 35, of Albany Township, is charged with homicide in the death of Tara Marie Serino of Orefield. She was found dead around 6 p.m. Wednesday in a home in the 200 block of Roth Road where Tucker lived, state police in Hamburg said. Serino had been reported missing by Upper Macungie Township police. Tucker fled the area, and was taken into custody in Illinois. He is charged with criminal homicide, first and third degree murder and related offenses, and is awaiting extradition back to Pennsylvania. CARLISLE--The Native Americans buried here died generations ago, but painful consequences of what happened to them still flow through their family trees. On Thursday, a gathering of people turned to prayer and spiritual song and dance as a way to counteract negative legacies of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which took Native American children away from their families and homelands in an effort to Americanize them. Tom McBratney, an organizer, used the term "generational scars" to describe lingering damages of the former school, where about 10,000 Native American children, many from the western United States, were boarded and taught from 1879 to 1918. Many of the scars are rooted in the fact children at the school grew up without the love, emotional support and guidance of family. That in turn robbed them of experience and tools that would have been beneficial when raising their own families. It contributed to problems such as addiction and despair that impacted generations, said McBratney, the founder of Restoration International, a non-profit involved with supporting and healing Native Americans. Much of the prayer at the two-day gathering which began Wednesday was led by Lockley Bremner, a Native American and U.S. military veteran who served in Vietnam. In addition to praying for relief from the lingering scars, a goal of the event is to raise awareness of the cemetery itself, Bremner said. About 200 young Native Americans who died at the school are buried in the well-manicured cemetery of white headstones just off Claremont Road on the edge of Carlisle Barracks, which is home to the U.S. Army War College. The federal government and Native Americans recently began a process where remains are returned to relatives to be buried again among family. It began this year with the opening of three graves, including one that contained remains other than those of the person thought to be buried there. Families and representatives of tribes must file paperwork including proof of lineage in order to have remains returned, with the actual removal of remains taking place once annually. The U.S. government pays for the costs, including travel expenses for relatives or tribal elders. It's unknown how many families or tribes will eventually seek return of relatives. Bremner said Thursday he believes some families aren't aware a relative is buried in the Carlisle cemetery, and one of his main goals is to spread awareness. He said he believes most if not all of the families would want to have the remains returned. The gathering drew several dozen people, including Native Americans and people from the Harrisburg region and several other states who support Native Americans. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was run by the federal government and considered the "flagship" of about two dozen such schools around the country. Children typically had their hair cut, their names changed and were forced to put aside native customs and language. Mary-Ellen Petitt of New Jersey, who has Native American relatives through marriage, said some Native Americans still feel bitterness over the schools. But she held out hope events such as those held this week, and the effort to return the remains, will help the bitterness fade. "Everyone has skeletons in their closet. But if we take responsibility that helps people find closure," she said. PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Philadelphia's mayor is taking steps to have the city take control of the public school system after 16 years of state oversight. Mayor Jim Kenney said in a speech Thursday that it's time for the city to be accountable for the education of its 200,000 schoolchildren. Gov. Tom Wolf, a fellow Democrat, supports local control. So, the commission that now governs the nation's eighth-largest school system is expected to be dissolved by the end of the school year. Philadelphia schools face a $100 million deficit in the next fiscal year. More than a third of the students have been siphoned off by charter schools, which get public funds. Kenney wants the city to cover the deficit and appoint school board members. He says mayoral control has benefited school districts in New York, Boston and Washington. By ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE, Associated Press A proposal is now on the table that calls for a three-year phase out of state funding to help underwrite the cost of operating Pennsylvania's unemployment compensation system. The measure, offered by House Labor & Industry Committee Chairman Rob Kauffman, R-Franklin County, would provide $75 million that is to be used to complete the $35 million benefits modernization information technology project that began over the summer and is reported to be on track for completion in 2019. The rest of the money would go toward helping cover the system's operating costs until the Department of Labor & Industry can figure out a way to operate it solely on the approximate $130 million in federal money it receives. Kauffman points out other states are able to do that, why not Pennsylvania? In a memo he is circulating to seek legislative support for his proposal that was cobbled together with input from other Republicans on his committee, Kauffman cited his concerns about the department's mismanagement of the UC operation and the toll this continued diversion of money that would otherwise go into a trust fund to pay unemployment benefits is taking on the UC system's financial health. "Without measures to offset the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars being diverted from the benefits fund, the Department of Labor and Industry must end its reliance on these supplemental dollars," Kauffman said. But the department indicates that such a move would carry with it unpleasant consequences. Citing one week's worth of statistics from earlier this year when the department was running solely on federal dollars, spokeswoman Theresa Elliott said 4.3 million customers calling UC centers encountered busy signals while those lucky enough to get through spent, on average, more than five hours on hold waiting to speak to a UC agent. "If we were to maintain our current operations and staffing levels, we project a budget deficit of $28.5 million in 2018. The budget deficit would continue to increase each year to $38.5 million in 2020," she said. On the other hand, "if we operate solely on federal dollars, we would need to make staff reductions of a little more than 300 positions in 2018, with additional staffing reductions of approximately 45 in 2019 and 2020. The potential impact on services would be dire." The only way federal funding for UC operations would likely increase is if the state's jobless rates go up, she added. Further, Pennsylvania is not an anomaly in supplementing federal funds to operate its UC system. She said 41 other states do it as well. Pennsylvania began directing a portion of the revenue from an unemployment compensation tax that Pennsylvania workers and employers pay into a temporary special fund to support the UC system in 2013. When this so-called Service and Infrastructure Improvement Fund was created, lawmakers gave it an expiration date of December 2016. During those ensuing years, $178 million went into that fund, which many lawmakers believed was being spent mostly on improving the system's technology. But along with it, the state spent another $170 million on a contract with IBM for a computer project that later was terminated after it ran $60 million over budget and was 45 months behind schedule. In March, Gov. Tom Wolf filed a lawsuit in Dauphin County Court against IBM over that project that is still pending. Once the Service and Infrastructure Improvement Fund expired last December and without revenue to replace those state dollars, L&I laid off 521 employees and closed three of the system's seven service centers last December. That led to lawmakers' phones ringing off the hook from constituents complaining the level of customer service they were receiving from UC service centers. Lawmakers asked state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale to conduct an audit to determine how the state funds that went into the special fund were spent. His auditors discovered that money had been comingled with other funds and many of the answers that lawmakers sought couldn't be found. The Legislature last spring voted to revive the special fund and approved putting $15 million one-year bridge funding to tide over the system until a longer term fix was found. Kauffman said he has been disappointed with department officials' lack of cooperation in identifying ways to reform the system and lessen its dependence on state money to operate it. "They've neglected over the last many months to get us a proposal and to provide answers to questions that have been asked," Kauffman said. "They've been derelict in their duties, the management of the department, in really working with us so we've been moving forward." Rep. Sheryl Delozier, R-Cumberland County, is equally as frustrated by L&I's handling of the situation. The department's benefit modernization efforts have gone on for far too long, she said. Instead of working on a way to wean itself off of state dollars, L&I officials keep coming back asking for more money. "His bill is a fair way of taking a look at a situation where they're supposed to be fixing the problem, solving it and getting the benefits modernization completed so our unemployed can have good service and not be depending on" state dollars to continue helping to pay for it, she said. Another source of aggravation, Kauffman said, is his committee asked the department for recommendations on changes in the unemployment compensation law that might free up some funding for the system to do its job better and more effectively. "They've shown no willingness and no desire to let us help them run their system more effectively through changes in law," he said. "So I am gravely concerned about the future of the UC system and gravely concerned primarily about the mismanagement of it." However, he said his criticisms aren't aimed at the front-line workers who answer the calls at the UC service centers and process the benefit applications. Kauffman said frankly he has more confidence in their abilities to fix the system than the management. "If many of them were actively helping management run the system, we'd probably do a whole lot better than we're doing it now," Kauffman said. The L&I employees he praises and the Service Employees International Union Local 668, which represents many of them, who have been pressing for a long-term funding fix oppose Kauffman's proposed solution. They point out it provides far less state dollars to operate the system than the $160 million that DePasquale's audit recommended was needed over the next four years to upgrade the system's technology and maintain a decent level of customer service. L&I employee Penny Erney went so far as to call Kauffman's proposal unworthy of consideration and that Pennsylvanians deserve better. "It's not serving anyone," she said. "It doesn't show a real solution to the problem we have so I don't think it's a serious bill." Rep. John Galloway, D-Bucks County, the ranking Democrat on the House Labor & Industry Committee, called it a conversation starter. "I am glad that Chairman Kauffman's proposal takes a multi-year approach, but believe his numbers may be low," he said. "That's why the Democrats are reviewing his proposal along with talking to interested stakeholders, including representatives of UC employees, and what Labor & Industry believes is necessary to ensure uninterrupted prompt service to UC claimants in future years." Senate Labor & Industry Committee Chairwoman Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland County, has been looking into a long-term funding plan for the UC system as well. That committee's executive director Eric Kratz said at this point, Ward has not introduced legislation but is keeping that option open. Both Ward and Kauffman say they want to have a long-term funding plan for the UC system in place by the end of this year to avoid future disruptions like the one that occurred earlier this year that crippled the system and left it operating with only half of the staff it previously had. Meanwhile, L&I employees along with union representatives are planning a Nov. 14 rally outside the Capitol to urge lawmakers to come up with a better solution. Traci Genereaux is seen in this undated handout photo. RCMP have identified the remains found on a Salmon Arm, B.C., property as those of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux. Police say no charges have been laid in connection with her death, which is being treated as suspicious.THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, RCMP *MANDATORY CREDIT* The wreckage of a Carson Air cargo aircraft which crashed in British Columbia in 2015, killing the two crew members on board, is shown in a handout photo from the Transportation Safety Board.THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Transportation Safety Board MANDATORY CREDIT Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi arrives in Sittwe, Rakhine state, Myanmar, Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017. Suu Kyi made her first visit as Myanmar's leader Thursday to the conflict-torn region where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence that has spiraled into Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades. (AP Photo) From left: Annette Wooton, the executive director of WAVE; Jennifer Hyer, a physician at the Petersburg Medical Center; and Jared Popp, a police officer in Petersburg. Medical staff, an advocacy group and the police station in Petersburg have created a three-pronged approach to sexual assault cases. "Understanding what sexual assault is, it's kind of eye-opening," said Annette Wooton, the executive director of a Petersburg advocacy group called WAVE, or Working Against Violence for Everyone. "For a lot of people, when you look at the statutes, you realize 'oh, I've been assaulted.'" The Sexual Assault Response Team, or SART, is headed by local police, medical professionals and WAVE. Wooton said the first step for anyone, let alone investigators, is to be... OSLO Petroleumworld 11 02 017 Oil explorers are neglecting their old hunting grounds in the North Sea, threatening to deepen an expected slump in Norway's output in the middle of the next decade, the country's industry regulator warned. Norway's oil and gas production, which peaked in 2004, is already forecast to fall again after 2025 as old fields decline. But that estimate includes resources yet to be found, meaning without new discoveries it could be even lower. This year's record drilling campaign in frontier areas of Norway's Arctic yielded disappointing results. It also masked a greater threat: exploration in the North Sea, the heart of the country's offshore industry, fell to an 11-year low. That worries me, Bente Nyland, the head of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate , the regulator, said in an interview in Stavanger on Tuesday. Successive governments have focused on the Barents Sea, stimulating exploration there to help set up a new hub in the Arctic waters thought to hold at least half Norway's remaining resources. But the region has limited infrastructure, with only one gas field and one oil field brought to production so far. Norway's North Sea is in the opposite situation: huge deposits that have pumped oil and gas for decades are now maturing. That means it's critical to add new resources before infrastructure such as platforms and onshore processing plants are forced to shut down, Nyland said during a conference organized by LO, Norway's biggest union. The NPD expects about 15 exploration wells to be drilled in both the North Sea and the Barents Sea this year, a presentation by Nyland showed. While that's a record for the Barents, it's the lowest level for the North Sea since 2006. The slump comes after Norway had its worst exploration results in a decade in 2015. A case in point is Lundin Petroleum AB , one of the most active explorers off Norway in the past decade and the company behind the 2010 discovery of the Johan Sverdrup field in the North Sea, the country's biggest find since the 1980s. This year, Lundin is drilling as many as six wells in the Barents Sea as an operator and only one in the North Sea. Nyland's worries are well-founded, especially considering the limited number of companies leading exploration efforts, Lundin Chief Executive Officer Alex Schneiter said in a phone interview Wednesday. But 2018 will be a very active exploration year for Lundin, including in the North Sea, he said. Nyland's concerns echo those of Norway's Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Soviknes, who said in a recent interview he's more concerned about a drought in large discoveries than by peak oil demand . Norway's offshore industry, which has lost about 50,000 jobs since the crude-price collapse of 2014, is facing a dearth of large projects after Sverdrup and the Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea start production in 2019 and 2022, respectively. Statoil ASA , which staged an exploration comeback in the Barents Sea this year with five wells, didn't get the results it hoped for, CEO Eldar Saetre said at the conference on Tuesday. Nyland's warning that explorers shouldn't forget the North Sea needs to be heard, he said in an interview. If we continue to see a trend where we're not making bigger discoveries, we will have to search more in mature areas, he said. This is an important issue. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters Analysts say sanctions mainly aimed at potential projects. U.S. sanctions have not yet impeded Russian oil production. Rosneft has reportedly suspended an oil project in the Black Sea due to western sanctions. MOSCOW Petroleumworld 11 02 017 Newly updated sanctions introduced by the United States against Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis may put a brake on Russia's future efforts to increase its exposure to the global oil and gas industry, analysts said on Wednesday. However, the punitive measures will have little immediate effect on the operations of Russian energy companies abroad, they said. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday published an amendment to sanctions against exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects implemented by Russian companies, including abroad. In particular, the document prohibits helping Russian oil companies that already face sanctions in exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects abroad which are to be initiated after Jan. 29, 2018 and where Russian holdings are 33 percent or more. To see the document, click on bit.ly/2z9w0Lp Leading Russian energy producers did not respond to emailed requests for comment on the updated sanctions. So far, the sanctions have had little impact on the production of Russian oil, which is being pumped at a rate of 10.92 million barrels per day (bpd), not far off a 30-year peak. Projects currently being implemented do not fall under the sanctions. This includes Lukoil's projects in Romania and Ghana offshore as well as Rosneft's projects in Venezuela, Fitch Ratings analyst Dmitry Marinchenko said. Last month, Rosneft bought a 30 percent stake in Egypt's Zohr field, the largest gas deposit in the Mediterranean. The (33 percent) threshold leaves the possibility for sanctioned Russian companies to take part, even in new projects, Marinchenko said. Russian oil production is mainly located in western Siberia's brownfields. Local companies have also been expanding operations in remote fields in the Arctic and eastern Siberia, such as Rosneft-owned Vankor. There is only one offshore Arctic oilfield in Russia, Prirazlomnoye, which is being developed by Gazprom Neft . It plans to produce more than 50,000 bpd this year. Russia has voluntarily agreed to curb oil output as part of global efforts to reduce production and support weak oil prices. SHALE INTERPRETATION Analysts pointed to grey areas over what constitutes shale oil. A lack of clarity over its definition has allowed foreign companies to produce something similar to shale oil in Russia. Moscow-based producers have not yet outlined plans to produce shale oil abroad. The sanctions may still jeopardise any such future projects, analysts said. The issue is one of interpretation. There are some risks now for Russian producers if they want to start drilling for shale oil in China or Argentina, said Alexei Kokin of Moscow-based brokerage Uralsib. The Iraqi oilfields Badra and West Qurna-2, as well as projects in Venezuela's Orinoco belt, are the largest for Russian companies globally but are not targeted by sanctions. David M. Magerman, a Main Line resident, was suspended from his job at Renaissance Technologies Corp. after criticizing co-CEO Robert Mercer's role in the Trump presidency. Read more Robert Mercer, billionaire co-CEO of the $50 billion Renaissance Technologies hedge fund group, is stepping down from his leadership position and transferring his ownership stake in Steve Bannon's Breitbart website to Mercer's daughter Rebekah, according to a letter Mercer sent Renaissance partners and staff Wednesday. In the letter, which is posted below, Mercer affirmed his support for Bannon and the general policy direction of President Donald Trump, and notes he has been criticized for taking such a strong partisan position. Mercer also said he doesn't support everything Bannon does. And Mercer said he had been wrong to support Bannon ally and activist provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. He cited that error in his decision to pass his stock along to his own daughter, a conservative activist who has worked closely with Bannon. The elder Mercer will remain active at Long Island-based Renaissance, but no longer as co-CEO. Mercer's role in elevating Bannon to a role as a leading Trump adviser was publicly criticized by David Magerman, a Mercer data scientist, restaurateur and private-school donor based in Lower Merion Township. Magerman in particular cited Bannon's popularity among white-nationalist groups. In his letter Mercer said he supports racial equality. Magerman left Mercer earlier this year after publicly denouncing Mercer's political involvement in an article in the Wall Street Journal and a manifesto first posted in my column. Memo follows: From: "Robert Mercer" To: all Sent: Thursday, November 2, 2017 10:13:29 AM Subject: Past, present, and future Dear Colleagues, During the past year, I have been the object of a great deal of scrutiny from the press. I have declined to comment on what has been written about me, imagining that with time the attention would dissipate. Because that has yet to happen, I have decided to correct some of the misinformation that has been published about me. It is not my intention to impose the views I describe below on anyone else. My goal is simply to explain my thinking, the very essence of which is that all of us should think for ourselves. I believe that individuals are happiest and most fulfilled when they form their own opinions, assume responsibility for their own actions, and spend the fruits of their own labor as they see fit. I believe that a collection of individuals making their own decisions within the confines of a clear and concise set of laws that they have determined for themselves will advance society much more effectively than will a collection of experts who are confident in their knowledge of what is best for everyone else. This is why I support conservatives, who favor a smaller, less powerful government. A society founded on the basis of the individual freedom that flourishes under a limited federal government has no place for discrimination. Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group. Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant. The press has also intimated that my politics marches in lockstep with Steve Bannon's. I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon's. Without individuals thinking for themselves, society as a whole will struggle to distinguish the signal of truth from the correlated noise of conformity. I supported Milo Yiannopoulos in the hope and expectation that his expression of views contrary to the social mainstream and his spotlighting of the hypocrisy of those who would close down free speech in the name of political correctness would promote the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today. But in my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate. I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him. For personal reasons, I have also decided to sell my stake in Breitbart News to my daughters. I would also like to inform you of a decision I have reached with respect to my role at Renaissance, an organization I adore with colleagues whom I deeply respect and admire. I am 71 years old, the same age that [former Mercer co-chief] Jim Simons was when he retired. I do not plan to retire, but I do plan to relinquish my management responsibilities. Peter Brown and I have been Co-CEOs for the past eight years. On January 1, 2018, I will step down from my position as Co-CEO and resign from the board of directors. I will continue with the firm as a member of its technical staff, focusing on the research work that I find most fulfilling. Peter will continue on as CEO, and I will provide him with my counsel whenever he feels that I can be helpful to him and to the company where I have spent so many wonderful years. RLM UberEATS says the McChicken from McDonalds is its most-delivered sandwich in Philadelphia. Read more With National Sandwich Day on Nov. 3, UberEATS has disclosed its list of the 10 sandwiches that its Philadelphia customers order most. The list excludes hamburger and hot dogs. In UberEATS' estimation, they do not count as sandwiches. The top-delivered sandwich is the McChicken from McDonald's, followed in order by cheesesteaks from Pat's, Joe's, Oregon Steaks, Larry's in Wynnefield, and Chickie's & Pete's. I'll add a couple of asterisks. One: Uber, which did not release actual sales numbers, told me that it delivers from 97 McDonald's locations in the region, which skews any comparison between the fast-food giant and the smaller, mainly one-off cheesesteak shops. Two: If Uber opines that hamburgers and hot dogs are "not sandwiches," then how is a chicken sandwich which simply swaps a deep-fried chicken patty for a possibly lovingly constructed burger any more worthy of inclusion? Its position is that burgers are a category of their own. Sigh. The list: McChicken (McDonald's) Cheesesteak (Pat's King of Steaks in South Philadelphia) Cheesesteak (Joe's Steaks + Soda Shop in Fishtown) Cheesesteak (Oregon Steaks in South Philadelphia) Regular cheesesteak (Larry's Famous Steaks on 54th Street in Wynnefield) Classic Cheesesteak (six Chickie's & Pete's locations) Filet o Fish (McDonald's) The Southern sandwich (Wishbone in Center City and University City) Philly cheesesteak or chicken Philly (Wit or Witout in Northeast Philadelphia) Fish hoagie (Sister Muhammad's Kitchen in Nicetown/Germantown) Uber EATS says the most popular time to order sandwiches in Philadelphia is 11 a.m., and orders spike weekly on Sundays. It adds that its most expensive sandwich is the $19.95 lobster roll from Chickie's & Pete's. For comparison: in Pittsburgh, the most popular time to order sandwiches is 6 p.m, with orders spiking weekly on Fridays. Artist's rendering of Penn's New College House West residential building, planned for a site bounded by Locust Walk, Walnut Street and 40th Street. Read more The University of Pennsylvania plans to build 250,000 square feet of new undergraduate student housing on what's now open space near the corner of 40th and Walnut Streets, beside the Free Library of Philadelphia's West Philadelphia Branch. The 450-bed New College House West will primarily house sophomores, juniors and seniors in a mix of five- and six-bedroom two-bath suites and two-, three- and four-bedroom one-bath suites, Anne Papageorge, Penn's vice president for facilities and real estate, said in an interview Thursday. The $163 million project, on a site bounded by Locust Walk, Walnut Street and 40th Street, will be Penn's second custom-built "college house," bringing together undergraduates, faculty, staff and graduate students in living spaces that include rooms for seminars and extracurricular activities, Papageorge said. Like the university's first building to be constructed especially for the residential program, New College House at Hill Field near 34th and Chestnut Streets, the new project is being designed by Philadelphia-based Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects. Construction is scheduled to start in the spring, with the building expected to open for occupancy in fall of 2021, Papageorge said. In the last few weeks, many famous men, including Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, and Harvey Weinstein (pictured, from left), have been accused of sexual harassment. Read more Well, hello there! Please join me as I pour a second cup of coffee and bite into a doughnut, the better to relish the week's delicious news: Michael Oreskes has quit his job as senior VP of news and editorial director at National Public Radio in the wake of allegations that he's a hound-dog pig. Repeat after me: Sip. Chew. Cackle. According to the Washington Post, two women separately alleged that when Oreskes was a New York Times bureau chief, he subjected them to "unwanted physical contact" when they met with him to discuss job prospects. Each woman said that in lieu of a friendly "Goodbye, let's stay in touch," the Times bigwig shoved his tongue in her mouth. To paraphrase the Times' motto: Talk about all the eews that's fit to print. One of the women said she confronted Oreskes two months later, telling him his behavior had been "totally inappropriate." He allegedly responded, shocked: "I was overcome with passion. I couldn't help myself." So, what, she should be flattered? The allegations rocked NPR. The network had already formally rebuked Oreskes once, in 2015, for getting all sex-talky with a young female employee who'd met with him over dinner for career advice. Once NPR heard of Oreskes' alleged creepiness while at the Times, it had no choice but to put him on leave while it investigated whether that icky dinner was a lone incident. Within hours, Oreskes resigned. Sip. Chew. Cackle. What, you think it's unseemly to enjoy this humiliating comeuppance for Oreskes, 63, a married dad whose wife and kids must feel like vomiting right now? Spare me. What's unseemly is how routinely women are subjected to workplace pawing from powerful men. And how frustrating it can be for women who complain to have little say about whether and how the perp is punished. As local employment-rights attorney Alice Ballard noted in an Inquirer Q&A last week, when it comes to workplace harassment, "HR is not your friend. Their job is to do damage control for the company. They decide whether to take on an investigation and how that investigation is run. If you complain, you'll do it at great personal cost, though you will benefit the women who come after you." So, how sweet it is to see Oreskes lose his job. How satisfying to see movie mogul Harvey Weinstein lose his marriage, his Hollywood standing, and the power he leveraged to allegedly sexually assault and rape women who naively believed he cared about them as actors. How sublime to know that NBC talking head Mark Halperin lost his job, book contract, and lucrative deals with HBO and Showtime after five women accused him of treating them like blow-up dolls when they worked with him at ABC. How rich to see Amazon Studios head Roy Price resign just days after a producer publicly accused him of repeated, lewd harassment. And how stunning it is to read more headlines, nearly every day since news broke of Weinstein's piggery, of more alleged harassment and assault. And actor Dustin Hoffman has publicly apologized for groping and talking filthy in 1985 to a high school senior named Anna Graham Hunter, who interned on the set of his film Death of a Salesman. Hoffman was 48, Hunter was just 17. In an essay last week for the Hollywood Reporter, Hunter describes unrelenting lewd encounters with Hoffman, which she detailed in a handwritten diary from way back then. A photographed page from the diary, included in the Reporter piece, reads: Today this business got scarier. Or at least less appealing. This morning when I asked Dustin what he wanted for breakfast, he said something that beat even his lows. It was worse than anything anyone has ever said to me on the street. It was so gross I couldn't say anything. I just turned around and walked out. Hunter's curly, girlish script makes the entry especially heartbreaking. Defenders of Hoffman and his dirty bros will say: "Those were different times. The culture was different. You can't blame these guys for what was the norm back then." Actually, you can. Because not every man with power used it back then or uses it today to violate young women who deserve to be treated as more than comely faces or shapely bodies. Good men get that. Bad men have gotten away with pretending not to. But not anymore. Sip. Chew. Cackle. I can't think of anyone better than Yevgenia Albats to tell the back story of why the Russians hacked the U.S. election and flooded Facebook and Twitter with fake political ads. Albats is the prize-winning editor-in-chief of the last independent Russian political weekly, the New Times, and an anchor with Moscow's last independent radio station, Echo Moskvy. This week she is the inaugural writer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House and Kelly Writers House. It takes phenomenal courage to pursue independent journalism these days in Moscow. One of Echo Moskvy's correspondents was stabbed in the neck two weeks ago. And a few years ago, when Albats sent her Subaru to be serviced, the mechanics found a plastic package under the hood containing a Nokia cellphone and plastique explosives. Seven months ago, the bolts on her tires were unscrewed. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists 58 Russians killed since 1992 while covering politics, crime, war, and human rights, with an additional 24 murdered for unknown motives. So it's a far cry from the heady days in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost policy loosened press restrictions, and gutsy journalists like Albats seized the chance to start revealing Soviet secrets. That year I shared an office with her at Moscow News, the newspaper at the forefront of glasnost, where I was an exchange journalist, as she started writing about the KGB. She later wrote the seminal book The State Within a State: KGB and Its Hold on Russia. Today, says Albats, the KGB has been reincarnated big time in its new form under Vladimir Putin. She says Russia has become a corporation where security, the economy, and virtually all media are controlled by intelligence agencies and the military, from which all top officials now come. Putin, of course, is a former KGB colonel. Understanding that KGB dominance helps answer the big question: Why did the Kremlin try to hurt Hillary Clinton and presumably help Donald Trump? Albats cites two key reasons: Putin's yen for revenge against Clinton and his desire to discredit the U.S. ballot. The Russian leader's KGB mentality is the key to both. Putin believed Washington was behind the so-called color revolutions in several ex-Soviet republics in the 1990s, while Bill Clinton was president. He held Hillary personally responsible for massive protests in Russia in 2011 and 2012 against unfair elections. And he "absolutely believed" the United States organized a popular uprising in Kiev in 2014 that led to the ouster of a Putin-backed Ukrainian president. "Putin thought, 'You, Clinton, did what you did in my backyard. I'll show you what I can do to you,'" says Albats. "They can't comprehend the idea that people might rise up out of convictions." Moreover, the Kremlin "was afraid of Hillary" because they believed she would maintain U.S. sanctions imposed after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "There was constant anti-Clinton and pro-Trump propaganda on Russian TV in 2016," she recalled. The Kremlin was convinced Trump would lift the sanctions, which had really hurt the ruling elite. But the Kremlin also believed U.S. polls and thought Trump couldn't win the election. So Putin's second goal, Albats says, was "to bring about chaos. Putin believes in managed chaos." The aim was to exacerbate divisions in U.S. society as well as harm the reputation of the woman he thought would win. The Russian leader also wanted to message to his own people that "U.S. democracy doesn't exist, or fair elections, and that freedom leads to chaos." The leading Russian talk show host, Dmitry Kiselyov, a mouthpiece for Putin, told his audience in September 2016, on state-controlled TV, that the U.S. establishment might kill Trump because he was ready to come to an agreement with Russia. In other words, the U.S. system is no different from theirs. When Trump won, the Russian leadership was ecstatic. "There were celebrations with champagne in the state Duma," Albats says, and Putin's elite thought sanctions would end immediately, and they could shop again elsewhere in Europe and vacation in the south of France. So Putin was shocked that Trump didn't immediately deliver. "They were stunned because in their psyche, Trump is the most important man on Earth and he is constrained by who by Congress? They don't understand that Trump can't just call these people and tell them to lift sanctions. In Russia, the KGB would just put a camera in an apartment" of key legislators and use blackmail. Although Putin has been thwarted in his expectations of Trump, this doesn't mean he won't try to meddle in U.S. politics again. As Albats points out, Russian meddling is about more than Trump or Clinton. It is about Putin's hostility toward the U.S., which he considers Russia's Enemy No. 1. Hacking and manipulation of social media are but one dangerous tool in his effort to weaken his adversary. So long as Trump refuses to recognize that reality and devise a counter-strategy, he is helping Putin continue this dangerous game. Sharon Black of Las Vegas, right, hugs Airmen First Class Williams of the U.S. Air Force after they were both overcome with emotion while viewing wooden crosses bearing the names of those killed during last months mass shooting. Read more Did you hear the one about the middle-aged white man who calmly walked into a busy Colorado Walmart on Wednesday night, pulled out a handgun, murdered three completely random shoppers, and then coolly walked away? I'm not trying to make some kind of warped joke about a deathly serious and uniquely American tragedy. I'm literally asking if you've heard about it because in 2017 a story of random gun terror claiming three innocent lives barely breaks through the clutter of Trump-era media chaos, amid a culture that's practically thrown its back out from shrugging its shoulders so hard and so often about our national obsessions with violence and weapons. It happened just after 6 p.m. in a typical suburban strip of big-box stores and fast-food joints in a Denver suburb. The killer was well-dressed and fled in a sporty red Mitsubishi Mirage. One of the shoppers, Hayne Rucker, told the New York Times of a mad dash from the checkout counter to the front door when the shots rang out, and said that thoughts of so many other recent mass shootings raced through his brain. "You can't get that out of your mind," he said. "When you're in a public place and you hear gunshots, that's kind of the first thing that comes to your mind: Here we go again. Looks like this time, we are potential targets." We are all potential targets a notion that is somewhat terrifying. That is not to be confused with "terrorism" which occurs a lot less frequently on U.S. soil than mass shootings and which, unlike these incidents in which a white "American" dude turns Aisle 9 into a shooting gallery, get a much more urgent response from Washington, the elite news media, and the twitchy Twitter fingers of our 45th president. The Colorado Walmart carnage took place exactly one month after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, when a man firing his semiautomatic-weapon-on-steroids from the 32nd window of a Las Vegas resort into a crowded country-music concert below managed to kill 58 people and wound 546 over nine unbearable minutes. The grim, choreographed ritual that followed the Nevada bloodshed followed the oh-so-predictable script of modern American politics: The "thoughts and prayers" of countless National Rifle Association-endorsed political handmaidens, the timid calls for a relatively minor incremental gun-safety legislation to be followed by the complete abandonment of even that small-bore action once the ADD-addled media have forgotten that a once seemingly unforgettable massacre has even occurred. In the case of Las Vegas, the public still doesn't even have the slightest clue why the killer a wealthy 64-year-old white man who gave zero advance inkling of his intentions, other than taking advantage of our porous laws to acquire his massive armory of lethal weapons did what he did. Nor do people seem to care much. The national conversation has spoken, and what it has said is, essentially, "Whatevs." This is what unconditional surrender looks like. America's collective amnesia on Las Vegas, and our lack of national will to tackle gun violence, is an embarrassment, but for the fact that we've proved generally over these last 10 months that we are not a country that easily feels embarrassment. And the current state of inaction was sealed when we as a nation did absolutely nothing after a gunman walked into a Newtown, Conn., elementary school and mowed down 26 people, mostly kindergartners and first graders. No one epitomizes the cynical post-Newtown state of affairs better than one of our own, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. The senator has mostly been a reliable vote for the NRA, but after the Connecticut massacre in late 2012 he did cross the aisle to work, briefly and unsuccessfully, with West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on one of those small-bore commonsense measures, to expand background checks for gun purchases. It wasn't a lot, but it was something enough to persuade Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor and leading gun-control advocate, to spend, through a political action committee, a whopping $3 million to ensure Toomey's narrow 2016 reelection. Bloomberg has a reputation as a shrewd businessman, but Toomey has to have been the dumbest investment he ever made. The Pennsylvania conservative has shown zero passion and minimal interest in even the smallest gun-sanity measures since he returned to Capitol Hill in January. His spokesman Steve Kelly insisted to me in an email that Toomey "is definitely looking for ways to advance his background check legislation" an effort so quiet that it's failed to make the slightest footprint on the congressional debate. In an interview 10 days after Las Vegas, Toomey did say "we need to take a hard look" at bump stocks, the device that the Vegas killer used to make his legal semiautomatic weapons function like mostly not-legal fully automatic ones. But it was clear from Day One that "hard look" wasn't ever coming from Washington. Many lawmakers, including some Republicans, said in the hours after Las Vegas that action on bump stocks was required. But then the NRA pulled off a stealthy end run by seemingly agreeing on the bump-stock ban yet also insisting that this wasn't a job for Congress but for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, knowing full well that the ATF doesn't have the appetite or even the legal mandate for such a move. Then the whole issue seemed to vanish in the haze of America's complex and increasingly apathetic relationship with gun carnage. What's so frustrating is the stark contrast between how our top leaders react to events like Las Vegas or the Colorado Walmart shooting and how they deal with violent events that cause similar levels of death and injury to innocent Americans yet are classified as "terrorism" because they involve Muslims or perpetrators who aren't white males. When a cowardly loser from Uzbekistan in a rented pickup truck fatally mowed down eight people on a Manhattan bike path Tuesday, President Trump branded the killer "an animal" who deserved the "DEATH PENALTY" and more important he called for specific governmental actions, such as eliminating the diversity visa lottery through which the Uzbek man had come to America, and possibly expanding his travel ban. Those aren't necessarily the smartest responses to the New York incident, but there's a broader concept at work: the idea that the government can see a problem and actually decide to do something about it. Our initial responses to the 2001 terror attacks stepped-up security at airports or with airliner cockpits, for example have been remarkably effective in preventing those types of attacks. Just imagine what similar resolve on Las Vegas-style mass killings might accomplish. Shira Goodman, executive director of the gun-safety lobbying group CeaseFirePA, told me she was "disappointed but not shocked" by Washington's anemic response to the Las Vegas massacre, but she also said that in the wake of tragedy there's "a new kind of energy and anger and frustration we feel we should be asking more and holding people's feet to the fire." Goodman feels there's more hope on the state level, noting bipartisan support, for example, in Harrisburg for a bump-stock ban and an apparent increased willingness to debate other gun-safety measures. Still, the NRA has historically had the same kind of clout bottling up state legislation that it has wielded in the nation's capital. But Goodman and other activists believe that citizens tired of gun violence can make a difference simply by reaching out to lawmakers, and also by voting in elections such as Tuesday's Pennsylvania judicial races. That makes sense. The reason that the NRA has dominated the gun debate in this country for the last half century hasn't been money its donations are small potatoes compared with players like the billionaire Koch brothers but the zeal of its individual members and their enthusiasm for showing up on Election Day. What if legislators grew to be as afraid of offending the large majority of citizens who support commonsense laws like background checks or restrictions on assault weapons as they are currently scared of the gun lobby? What if Americans started pointing fingers instead of just an outstretched shrug? When Cate Blanchett showed up for the raucous cast party otherwise known as Thor: Ragnarok, she decided to go stag. At least judging by the enormous antlers she wears to play Hela, Goddess of Death, sister of Thor, and goth girl with raccoon eye makeup and a welter of withering wisecracks. She looks like a trophy elk, and certainly acts like an alpha grabbing Thor's hammer and crushing it (ouch), banishing her brothers and rivals, taking a male servant (Karl Urban), and ascending the throne. Certainly she wears the leather pants in Valhalla, a movie that takes the Norse end of the Avengers franchise and turns it into a comedy, with jokes at the expense of Thor himself (he also loses his hair, like Samson) and macho iconography in general. I don't know how much more emphatically the movie could make this point, short of actually emasculating the title character. Oh, wait, I do. When helpless, hammerless Thor is exiled to a prison planet, he is subdued by female warrior Valkyrie (Creed's Tessa Thompson) and whisked away in her spaceship. Director Taika Waititi shoots the getaway scene in a very loaded way Thor below, Valkyrie above, Thor's head positioned suggestively. Waititi comes from New Zealand, and from comedy. His style is quirky and humane, explored throughout his directorial work, including some episodes of Flight of the Conchords, Eagle vs Shark, What We Do in the Shadows (in which he also co-starred). Shadows was about a bunch of vampires sharing an apartment, a mockumentary that de-fanged its creatures of legend (they argue over who does the dishes), and at the same time created a warm, low-key parable of tolerance and decency. He brings some of the same tone and ideas to Ragnarok, and this is shrewd. Thor has always been the most laughable of the Avengers, and Waititi's approach means we don't have to pretend to take seriously the insane mythology about outer-space Vikings ruling over nine galactic realms. Waititi says: Let's just have some Flash Gordon fun (the score even borrows some of the same musical ideas). Some brilliant cameos kickstart the movie; although, Benedict Cumberbatch pops up, absurdly, as Dr. Strange. Jeff Goldblum steals scenes as the amusingly amoral leader of a prison planet that serves up gladiatorial combat; the main event pits Thor against the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo). Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is on hand, as usual looking out for himself. It's fellow malcontent Valkyrie who must be roused from her cynicism to help Thor and Hulk save Valhalla from Hela. Everyone's having such a good time (Chris Hemsworth, as Thor, is an extremely good sport, and a comedy natural), it's a shame the movie eventually has to drag itself back to Valhalla for a straight-faced 30-minute finale, where giant devil dogs and fire monsters make the movie needlessly long and kill the mood. To paraphrase the actors' aphorism: Digital effects are easy. Comedy is hard. Ben Sisto was reading the Wikipedia page for Baha Men's 2000 hit, "Who Let the Dogs Out," when he noticed a missing citation. It was 2010, and Sisto was likely enjoying a story on the song's 10-year anniversary when he sought out background information, as is his habit. "It said something like, 'The song was recorded off a float by a hairdresser named Keith,'" Sisto recalled. (Currently, the "Who Let the Dogs Out" Wikipedia page does not refer to where the song was recorded.) "My initial effort was to find out who Keith was, exactly." After some digging, it was determined that Keith was Keith Wainwright, an English hairdresser who worked with Elton John, David Bowie, Roxy Music, and more. He was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2011 for his contributions to hairstyling, including working with chemists to create colored hair dyes during the 1970s, Sisto said. They talked for a while when Sisto realized there were probably a ton of doggie stones left unturned. He was right. The nearly eight-year research project culminated in the Who Let the Dogs Out Museum, a collection of nearly 300 artifacts and memorabilia related to the song. Sisto brings his findings, along with a presentation, to the Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art on Monday and Tuesday. An artist and cultural event programmer, Sisto had never deeply investigated cultural phenomena but found excitement in speaking face-to-face with the players involved in the song, originally recorded by the Trinidadian artist Anslem Douglas. He traveled to London to sit down with another major player in the song's history, producer Jonathan King, who sent a version of Douglas' song to Baha Men's manager. "He's been arrested and served jail time for sex with minors," Sisto said of King. "He's a dicey character, to say the least. It was so weird to be face to face with his person who's on the one hand, a music-industry legend, and on the other hand is this nefarious guy who doesn't have a good relationship with the people of London." The talk will spotlight Sisto's findings, including legal details from a friend of Douglas' then-brother-in-law Patrick Stephenson, who sued Douglas for credit over the chorus, which the latter had written for a radio jingle. Stephenson skirted Sisto's calls for five years. Suspicious, too, were many lawyers involved in the number of lawsuits that have stemmed from the song's origins, suspecting Sisto had motives other than his anthropological project. "I have an audio tape where it said, 'I'm not trying to dig up dirt; I'm trying to find who let the dogs out.'" Through the song's widespread appeal it's frequently played at sporting events and was featured on the Rugrats in Paris soundtrack Sisto has found a positive reaction from his presentations. After all, it's hard not to have a connection with the song: the barking, the exuberance. But when it comes to the big question who did let the dogs out? the answer is much more complicated. "I would say if you want to know who let the song from the underground culture and amplified it to this pop-level song everybody knows, it's a guy named Steve Greenberg, who managed the Baha Men," Sisto said. "But you can equally say that this guy Keith Wainwright let the dogs out by purchasing the illegal bootleg on a gut feeling that this was a cool track. You could say these radio jingle guys did. You can trace it back as far as 1992 to Miami Boom Productions, who put out a single that 'who let the dogs out' was the chorus." Or, finally: You can look at "the societal level, where you can say contextually within the song, dogs are sexually heteronormative cis men, and they've never been contained." Who Let The Dogs Out Museum Gallery open from 6 to 9 p.m. Monday; lecture at 7:30 p.m. Gallery open from noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday, lecture at 7:30 p.m. Suggested $5 donation PhilaMOCA, 531 N. 12th St. Sean Smith, who has autism, gets his hair cut at Wiggle Worms Childrens Hair Studio by owner/operator Kira Ferguson who has special training in working with autistic children. Read more As hair stylist Kira Ferguson buzzed his head with clippers, Sean Smith, of Philadelphia, reached for M&Ms his mother offered as she sat nearby. He fiddled with a vibrating massager while the stylist trimmed his locks. Sean, a tall, handsome 11-year-old with thick, dark hair, has autism. "Sometimes I have to feed him M&Ms to try to keep him calm," said Anna Maria Smith, Sean's mother. At Wiggle Worms Children's Hair Studio in Feasterville, Ferguson, the owner, and her staff give haircuts to up to 10 autistic children a day. The salon is one of a growing number of services that cater to the everyday needs of autistic children. In recent years, Ferguson and other professionals have turned to parents and people in the autistic community to learn how to help those with autism, and are sharing their knowledge with others in their professions. Most children outgrow their fear of haircuts as toddlers. But for autistic kids, the dread of a stranger armed with scissors and a noisy hair dryer may not fade as easily. They may also fear going to a dentist or eye doctor or being on a crowded bus or at a busy airport. Autism is a developmental disability that causes problems with social, emotional, and communication skills. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autistic children and adults may have increased sensitivity to light, sound, or smell, coupled with hyperactivity or repetitive behaviors and a tendency to avoid other people. The Pennsylvania ASERT (Autism Services, Education, Resources and Training) program states that, as of 2011, 10,727 people, both adults and children, were receiving state services for autism in the five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania. That number has almost doubled since 2005. In New Jersey, the Department of Health reports 25,000 people from birth to age 21 on a state registry designed to promote research and provide support for affected families. In 2012, the number was 8,867. Researchers believe the increase could be due in part to a growing awareness and an expanded definition of the disorder. At Wiggle Worms, Ferguson lets autistic children play with a massaging tool that mimics the feeling of the clippers that will be used on their heads. "It's a distraction," said Ferguson, 44, who shares her techniques with other stylists. "We use very quiet clippers," said stylist Colleen Tomczak. At the Bucks County Technical School in Bristol Township, cosmetology teacher Brandee Baker advises students, "to speak very calmly and keep the directions simple" when working with autistic clients. Other tips include wetting a comb rather than spraying the child's head with water. Word choice is important, too. "When you say 'cut' with little kids, they think of hurting and blood, so say 'trim,'" Baker said. She also suggested that autistic children see the same stylist for each visit, if possible, to help them develop a rapport with the person. Maria Velasco, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, stressed talking in words that children understand. When an autistic girl needed an X-ray in a machine that circled her head, Velasco told her to imagine being on a space ship. "Many [autistic children] don't get vision screenings because providers are not trained on how to interact and manage their sensory differences," said Roseann Schaaf, chair of the occupational therapy department at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Jefferson is leading a program that trains medical students at Jefferson and Wills Eye Hospital on the subtleties of caring for an autistic patient. For example, when children need eye drops, they should be allowed to feel the drops on their hands first, she said. The Center for Autism Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) also hosts or sponsors training programs for professionals, retailers, and community groups. "It's a growing area of interest as the rates [of autism] are increasing," said Judith Miller, a psychologist at CHOP. ASERT and the Philadelphia Autism Project a joint endeavor of City Council, the city Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services, and the Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University are educating Philadelphia police officers, firefighters, other first responders, and juvenile justice and child welfare workers on how to identify and assist an autistic person. A similar program, called the Autism Shield Project, was created in New Jersey by the nonprofit Parents of Autistic Children. It also trains school bus drivers. In addition, several state government departments have formed an Interdepartmental task force to publish a directory of resources regarding autism. SEPTA has developed and is now expanding a training facility in the concourse of Suburban Station, where those with special needs can practice riding buses and other public transportation in a more calming environment. The center is under renovation but expected to reopen by the end of this year. "Travel training is one of the best investments we can make," said SEPTA spokeswoman Kristin Mestre-Velez. "Accessible vehicles and facilities are wonderful but only if people know how to use them." Autism Speaks, a national advocacy group, is also a good resource to find localized autism-friendly services. Some YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers provide swim lessons to autistic children, said Lisa Goring, chief program and marketing officer for Autism Speaks. "Many children with autism are drawn to water," Goring said. "It's so important the children know how to swim." As more autistic children enter adulthood, a survey by the Pennsylvania Autism Needs Assessment has found that fewer than 25 percent participate in community activities and more than two-thirds are unemployed. The services offered by those like Ferguson and the training now available to help both professionals and the public understand autistic youths and their special needs may improve those statistics. At Cooper University Hospital where Camden County police officer was taken with a gunshot wound. Read more A police officer was shot in the leg during a struggle with a suspect Wednesday night in Camden. Camden County Police Chief Scott Thomson said the officer, who has been on the force for a year, was in stable condition at Cooper University Hospital. Shortly after 10 p.m., the officer approached three individuals who were acting suspiciously at Eighth Street and Chelton Avenue when one man tried to run away. The officer, who Scott Thomson declined to identify, caught the suspect and a struggle ensued. The suspect pulled out a gun and fired a shot, striking the officer in the right leg, Thomson said. The suspect was quickly apprehended without further incident and his gun was recovered. Fellow officers responding to the scene applied a tourniquet to the officer's leg and rushed him to Cooper. "It seems to be a through and through bullet wound to the upper right thigh," Thomson said. "Thank God the situation wasn't worse," Thomson said. Annie Hillegas, 16, an Owen J. Roberts High School junior, was run over by a truck while walking her dog last week. Police are continuing to search for the driver. Read more Mother and daughter lay helpless between the trees. Their black Labrador mix, Frisco, took off in a panic. Just a few moments earlier, a white pickup truck had sped toward them down the winding Chester County back road, seemingly out of control. On a walk in their Chester Springs neighborhood around 5 p.m. last Friday, Annie Hillegas, 16; her mother, Jen; and Frisco hurried away from the street. They made it about eight feet off Art School Road, said Jen's mother, Gwen Hillegas, before the truck struck, then sped off. Jen had a broken wrist and a bump on her head. Her daughter's condition was much worse. "Annie was the big worry," Gwen Hillegas said. "The truck went right over her." A passerby stopped and called 911. Annie Hillegas was airlifted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in serious condition, her grandmother said, and underwent surgery for extensive injuries. She was later transferred to a suburban rehabilitation facility, where she was being treated Thursday. As the Owen J. Roberts High School junior began a six-month recovery process, the driver of the truck had yet to be identified. And a week after the accident, West Pikeland Township police continued their search, releasing enhanced photographs of the vehicle in hope someone might recognize it. Authorities said they were looking for a white man who was driving a four-door, contractor-style Chevrolet Silverado Crew Cab with lettering on the door, black handles, a silver and/or black grille, black trim around the wheel wells, and a ladder rack. If Gwen Hillegas could meet that man, she would have words for him, she said, but "it wouldn't be fit to print." Yet her granddaughter Annie, who was awake throughout the ordeal, has a different message for the person who caused her so much pain. "She's a better person than I am," Gwen Hillegas said. "She talks about how she doesn't want to meet the man, but she must forgive him." At the hospital and in rehab, the teenager has been buoyed by cards and gifts from friends and family. (Annie has joked that she "didn't know that many people knew and liked me," Gwen Hillegas said.) An honors student, avid horseback rider, and competitive skier, Annie is anxious about missing school and heartbroken about being temporarily unable to participate in the activities she loves, Gwen Hillegas said. Annie's family, meanwhile, is grateful the girl is alive. Jen Hillegas has been spending as much time as possible at her daughter's side. Annie's father, Lance, called her older brother, Will, as soon as he heard about the accident, and Will returned home from college to be with his family, Gwen Hillegas said. Annie has been recuperating "as well as can be expected," Gwen Hillegas said, and the family trusts police are looking diligently for the person responsible. "To think that somebody could do that, drive away not knowing whether they had life-threatening injuries," Gwen Hillegas said. "In an instant, my son could have lost half his family." Gebah Kamara, a social worker, was seen leaving the federal courthouse in Philadelphia on June 12, 2014, after his arraignment. Read more A former social worker who stole the identities of foster children and sold the information to tax preparers has been sentenced to 2 years in federal prison on charges that he conspired to defraud the IRS, authorities said. Gebah Kamara, 50, of West Chester and formerly of Sharon Hill, had worked at Catholic Social Services in Philadelphia from 2007 to around October 2011. U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III sentenced him Wednesday on charges of conspiracy, aiding and abetting the preparation of false federal income tax returns, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Kamara pleaded guilty to the charges in December 2014. Acting U.S. Attorney Louis Lappen said in a statement that Kamara had stolen the personal identity information of foster children from his employer, and sold that information to tax preparers in Philadelphia to use as fraudulent dependents on income tax returns. Federal prosecutors said that beginning about 2008, Kamara sold the personal identity information of children to his codefendants, who operated Medmans Financial Services, a tax-preparation business with two offices in Southwest Philadelphia. Kamara had access to the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of foster children and members of the children's foster families, authorities said. Kamara was among eight defendants charged in the scam. The owner of Medmans, Mohamed Mansaray, is to be sentenced Monday. An eighth person, Shirl Robinson of Darby, was indicted in 2012, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced in 2013. The details of her sentencing were sealed. The false information provided by Kamara generated large fraudulent tax refunds, some in excess of $9,000 per return, authorities said. Kamara was paid about $200 to $300 for each child's identity that was included on an income tax return that was accepted by the IRS for processing, prosecutors said. For the 2007 through 2010 tax years, 283 false tax returns were filed using 321 foster children's identities that had been provided by Kamara, causing a tax loss of $1.2 million, prosecutors said. Kamara's defense attorney, Brian McMonagle, could not be reached Thursday for comment. Attorney James M. Polyak of Reading, who had represented Kamara at his June 12, 2014, arraignment, said then that Kamara was "prepared to accept responsibility for his role in the incident." He said Kamara was a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Liberia and lived with his wife and children in Sharon Hill. A Father Divine follower, dressed in her Rosebud uniform, walks through one of the many rooms in the Father Divine Museum and Library. Read more Two ornate, velvet-upholstered chairs thrones, almost were positioned facing the crowd gathered for the Sunday-afternoon ribbon cutting for Father Divine's Library and Museum. The seats appeared to be empty, but each speaker that stepped up turned to greet them before addressing the audience: "Peace, Father. Peace, Mother. Peace, everyone." Life and death, presence and absence, are fluid concepts at Woodmont, the grand, 73-acre Gladwyne estate that is the last stronghold of the International Peace Mission movement created by Father Divine, the civil rights leader, businessman, philanthropist, and self-proclaimed god. Today, more than 50 years after his death, he's still the head of the household. The movement or, perhaps, cult was once reported to have as many as 20 million followers. Now, just 12 or 15 true believers, most in their 80s or 90s, reside at Woodmont, living in celibacy and isolation according to Divine's International Modest Code. These days, those left in the Peace Mission have turned their focus to legacy-building by finally opening the library, a collection of hundreds of thousands of letters, photographs, audio recordings, home movies, and manuscripts that was a decade in the making, and by welcoming in documentary filmmaker Lenny Feinberg (The Art of the Steal, Black and White, and Dead All Over) for three years of shooting. His film, Father's Kingdom, will premiere at the Doc NYC film festival Nov. 11. "It's a different universe once you go through these gates. It's a different world, a different time zone," Feinberg, of Lower Merion, said last Sunday, greeting a visitor to Woodmont with the word "Peace." ("Hello" which contains within it the word "hell" is taboo.) Feinberg began researching the Peace Mission after his daughter, Julia, told him about a banquet she attended at Woodmont, how the women in their red "rosebud" uniforms designating their almost nun-like status and men in their baby-blue jackets served Father's empty chair first and addressed him as if he were present. In the film, Feinberg attempts a delicate balance in navigating Father Divine's undeniable successes as a passionate civil rights leader and the many questions that surround him. That starts with describing Father Divine's birth in 1879 in Rockville, Md., as George Baker; that claim, to Divine's followers, is blasphemy. It continues with questions about how the Peace Mission accumulated wealth, likely by persuading followers to part with their savings, and with Divine's rejection of personal attachments. For those raised as children in the movement, that led to chronic emotional neglect. And it follows the anguished deliberations of Christopher Stewart, who moved into Woodmont full time in September, but hasn't yet taken "crusader's vows." Those would mean a lifetime of celibacy, and permanently severing his 26-year romantic relationship. Producer Nancy Cutler said the followers shared their stories for one reason: "They're on a quest to keep Father Divine's legacy alive." After all, Divine also worked to combat Jim Crow: organizing to demand justice for lynchings and integrating segregated communities like Brigantine, N.J., where beaches were reserved for whites until Father Divine purchased a large resort there. The Divine Lorraine was the first integrated hotel in Philadelphia. The Peace Mission distributed food and clothing to anyone who needed it, white or black though words describing a person's race were scrubbed from all the movement's language. When Father Divine was arrested for disturbing the peace with the hordes who followed him to Sayville, Long Island, a judge sentenced him to year in prison then dropped dead three days later. Divine was quoted from his prison cell as saying, "I hated to do it." The film tracks "miracles" such as that spurred the growth of the religion, the movement, and the real-estate empire of "Heavens" scattered around the Northeast. It also notes how the locus of the mission shifted to Philadelphia in 1942, when Father Divine fled New York after a court there ordered him to repay a follower who'd given him her life savings. His followers bought Woodmont, the 1894 estate built by steel magnate Alan Wood Jr. for $75,000 in 1952. And, it charts the movement's denouement after the death of Father Divine in 1965, as Mother Divine, his second wife, attempted to keep it going. She died in March 2017. It's now facing the same challenges as other religions, like the Shakers, that favor neither proselytization nor procreation. Peace Mission members declined to estimate the number of followers remaining. "Their answer to everything is Father and Mother will provide," Feinberg said. But Roger Klaus, one of Father Divine's younger followers at age 71, is hoping they may provide through this film. "It had some things that were inaccurate," he said like the references to George Baker. On the other hand, "Father Divine's name used to be known all over the world, but the younger generation doesn't know anything. I hope they hear about this." And he's hoping the library and museum, open to the public on Sunday and Wednesday, will generate fresh interest. The cornerstone reads "2009 A.D.F.D." short for, "in the year of our lord, Father Divine." Construction was completed in 2011, but it took another six years to open the library to the public. And there's more still to be done. Almost every word Father Divine spoke was documented in shorthand, or in various iterations of recording media: wax cylinders, wire recordings, reel-to-reel tapes, and cassettes. Stewart, 47, who's the chief curator, said volunteers are needed to continue cataloging and digitizing the archives: "at least 50,000 letters, correspondence, a quarter-million photographs." Because it was pouring rain on the day of the ribbon cutting, the crowd packed into a separate building for speeches. They included Kenny Gamble, who recalled dining at Circle Mission as a young boy, plus academic researchers, historians, supporters, and followers. True believers and agnostics shared the microphone easily. One speaker said a central part of his interest in the Peace Mission was in the cooperative economic system it utilized, including property deeds sometimes with 400 names on them. Another believed Father Divine had cured his cancer. There were also "harmonizers" like Carol and Marshall Strax, a Nanuet, N.Y., couple who spoke reverently of Father and Mother Divine. "Marshall was raised by a follower, Precious Jewel. One day she retired and disappeared from their home. Marshall always wondered what happened to her," Carol said. Rather than resenting the movement, though, they began visiting Woodmont regularly themselves. Rik Rydant, a researcher from High Falls, N.Y., with a longstanding interest in the Peace Mission, contributed a large collection of primary documents to the library. "Coming here, it's almost like being back 2,000 years ago, watching the apostles of Christ at the Last Supper," he said. Leonard Norman Primiano, a professor of religion at Cabrini College, said he was just relieved that the gospels were intact. "As a scholar of the Peace Mission movement, many years ago I would say to Father and Mother, you have got to preserve the history," he said. "These are invaluable resources for the history of religion in the United States. The way this country developed and the way race relations developed." Then everyone shook out their umbrellas and walked back across the rain-soaked lawn to tour the new library. Feinberg said, "You'd think Father would have picked a better day." FLORIDA, Puerto Rico Nearly six weeks after Hurricane Maria passed over this island, green has started to return, the patches of new leaves that now dot the once-barren mountains giving many hope that a rebirth is underway. But Covalys Roman's backyard is all brown, an expanse of mud from which no grass can sprout. The flood washed away all the life. "I didn't know how to get out," Roman said through a translator Wednesday, remembering how the shallow ditch behind her house filled with murky water, and how four feet of that water then filled her home. "Nobody could help. I called 20 times to 911 and nobody answered." Earlier in the day she had waited at a nearby church as a team of Red Cross volunteers, five of them from Philadelphia, handed out food and bottled water. "It was something I had to do," said Michael Bastone, an inspector with the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office who helped organize the trip. His team, four others from the Sheriff's Office and one man who works for Peco, arrived in Puerto Rico on Oct. 15 to volunteer for three weeks. All have family on the island. "I'm here to help what I consider my people," Sgt. Joshua Perez said. "I always say I wasn't birthed here, but you gave me life. Because once you drive around the island, you'll see how proud we are as Puerto Rican people, with the flags flying no matter the situation. The resiliency is beyond words." He has seen cracks in that strength, too, like the man who was sleeping in his driveway on a wet mattress and said he wanted to be strong for his wife, then cried on Perez's shoulder. Perez cried, too. For Bastone, that moment of heartache came Monday, when his team pulled over to help a man named Hector who was trying to nail a tarp over his bedroom. The roof had been blown off, the walls opening up to an expansive sky and mountains that seemed to tower over him. Hector told them he could barely sleep at night, too afraid a mudslide would bring those mountains barreling down. He was alone and out of food. Bastone said his team had already given out all its supplies that day. So the men gave him cash, some donated by people in Philadelphia, some from their own wallets. Bastone said the experience left him emotionally spent. "We were done," he said. "We were done, done, done." He said he got up the next day and kept working, knowing Hector was "just one of many" in need. They have worked every day on the island, forgoing their scheduled days off because not working would mean two trucks not going out to people in need. When the Red Cross caravan arrived in Florida on Wednesday, the truck driver pumping the horn as he pulled into the parking lot, the 50 people waiting in line broke into cheers. Moving quickly, the volunteers unloaded the truck, then heaved the items into people's outstretched arms. The boxes of food and cases of water were brought back to homes missing roofs and reeking of mildew, a smell that permeates the town. "I don't have no idea" when FEMA will come, said Edith Negron Gonzalez, 67, leaning for support against her second-story balcony and resting her hand on the palm-size lump on her chest. She said that she doesn't know what caused the mass but that it grows when she is stressed. The swelling hasn't subsided since the storm. Facing the street, she had tacked a yellow piece of paper that gave FEMA permission to make repairs to her roof, which was severely damaged during the storm. A FEMA spokesman Wednesday said the agency was working to respond to such requests in Florida and Puerto Rico's 77 other municipalities but said the Puerto Rican government is leading the effort. Due to the "prolonged time frame" that many will be without power, FEMA will consider providing those that are still waiting generators, the spokesman said. In the meantime, Negron Gonzalez's son fashioned a makeshift roof, a patchwork of tarps and metal slats dotted with holes. Like Roman and many others in town, Negron Gonzalez only returned to her home when the shelter closed a little more than a week ago. The first floor had flooded with six feet of water, a line marked by an arrow drawn in black spray paint at the front door. She and her son now sleep on cots in a second-floor bedroom, beneath mosquito nets that are tacked to the walls to make a cage around each bed. They wake each morning to see the bugs have found their way in. How they are living like this, she said, she doesn't know. Yet somehow they are. "Only God is going to kill me," she said. "He gave me life. He will take it away." From 1994: Jimmy Tayoun arrives in Philadelphia from prison at the Trailways station on North 11th Street. Read more This article originally appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News on June 29, 1994. Only in Philadelphia could a politician who went up the river for racketeering, mail fraud, tax evasion and obstruction of justice come home to a hero's welcome. Former City Councilman Jimmy Tayoun, one of the city's most colorful political felons, came home yesterday after almost three years in jail. He flashed a million-dollar smile as he got off a Capitol Trailways bus in the dark and dirty 11th Street tunnel outside the Peter Pan bus terminal. As he sighed and looked around, the carbon monoxide and sooty air of his hometown must have seemed like fairy dust. A moment later, he hugged his friend Charlie McSorley with all the enthusiasm of a man who just got out of the joint. How'd he feel? The tan Tayoun pumped a bicep and kept that smile going. It was like he was getting home from a spa in Palm Beach, not a stretch in the big house. "It's good to get away from the city, but I'm glad to be back," he said. Indeed. Passers-by shouted out "Hey Jimmy! " Whether he knew them or not, the natural pol asked how they were doing. Stephan Curry, a South Philly man like Tayoun, stopped him on the street and shook his hand. "Tayoun's a good man. He made his mistakes. He paid his debt to society. Give the man a break," Curry said. Summing up his jail term, Tayoun joked, "I've done very well for myself thanks to the government." As consumed with happiness as he was, Tayoun still had time to get in a commercial or two. In a brief interview, he plugged his book and his restaurant. He wants his first meal in town to be at the Middle East Restaurant, which he owns with his brother, Ed. "It's a great place to go for shishkebab," he said. And, he plugged a book he wrote while inside the Federal Correctional Camp in Minersville. It's a political novel called "All Sheep Got To Be Sheared." He's looking for a publisher. The book is about a city councilman who endures a criminal investigation, not unlike Tayoun's own experience. That brings us to why the feds decided to deprive Philadelphia of the former three-term state representative and councilman. Between 1984 and 1987, Tayoun was a lobbyist who paid about $30,000 in bribes to ex-Councilman Leland Beloff and an aide for their support on real estate projects. When Beloff was busted for an unrelated extortion scheme, Tayoun ran for Beloff's Council seat and won it. Then the fun began. In 1988 and 1989, Tayoun made about $22,000 in bribes and concealed about $210,000 in income from the IRS, including money he skimmed from his lobbying business. Beloff, like Tayoun, just recently got out of the joint. But what makes Tayoun a beloved crook is that he was the kind of city councilman who got potholes filled, alleys cleaned and street lights fixed. At his trial, he had a bevy of character witnesses, including a woman suffering from leukemia who told how Tayoun nurtured her back to health after she was assaulted. Tayoun will spend two months at a local federal halfway house, then three years on probation. For those three years, Tayoun must stay out of politics, according to assistant U.S. Attorney David Howard, who put him away. Describing Minersville, Tayoun said, "It's all outdoors. It's America's mountain town. It's nice country to be in." Tayoun started out in jail as a recreation orderly taking care of pool tables and volleyball courts. He moved up to running the prison kitchen. Besides the political novel, he wrote a guide called "Going to Prison?" It tells future inmates to get their teeth fixed before moving inside, bring two pairs of glasses and abstain from sex. The jury in the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez began hearing closing arguments on Thursday, after more than two months of testimony. Read more NEWARK, N.J. When U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez told CNN in January 2013 that it took him more than two years to repay a wealthy friend nearly $60,000 for free trips on a private jet, he said the matter had simply fallen "through the cracks." That was a lie, a prosecutor told jurors Thursday during his closing argument in the senator's federal bribery trial. Prosecutors say the senator received scores of other gifts from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, all of which the New Jersey Democrat failed to report on his financial-disclosure forms: more free flights, vacations at the friend's home in an exclusive Dominican Republic resort, $4,900 for a three-night stay at a Paris hotel, and more. "He may have been elected to represent New Jersey. But Robert Menendez chose instead to represent the wealthy doctor from Florida," prosecutor J.P. Cooney said. "He was Salomon Melgen's personal United States senator. Hold these defendants accountable. Find them guilty." In exchange for the gifts and big political donations, Menendez used the power of his office to advance Melgen's personal and financial interests, the government charges. Defense attorneys for Melgen declared Thursday that prosecutors had lied to jurors by manipulating witnesses and omitting key facts. "They don't have any evidence of a bribe, no evidence of corruption, no evidence of a corrupt agreement, no evidence of conspiracy," defense attorney Kirk Ogrosky told jurors. "Sometimes the simplest answer is the right answer," he said. "And that is, these men are friends." Closing arguments came after more than two months of testimony from more than 50 witnesses. The defense is to continue its summation on Monday, followed by a rebuttal from the government. The case is being closely watched in Washington, given the GOP's slim majority in the Senate. Prosecutors say Menendez helped obtain visas for Melgen's foreign girlfriends, sought to change the outcome of the doctor's $8.9 million billing dispute with Medicare, and pressured federal officials to protect Melgen's port-security contract with the Dominican Republic. Under the law, prosecutors do not need to prove that Menendez was successful in advocating on Melgen's behalf or even that the senator intended to take official action. The government just needs to show that the senator agreed to take official acts in exchange for bribes. "These two defendants shared the same expectation: For all the gifts he got, Sen. Menendez would step to the plate for Dr. Melgen when his number got called," Cooney told jurors. The defense said there is no written account of a corrupt agreement and contended that Menendez acted out of friendship and legitimate policy interests. They also pointed to what they described as logical inconsistencies in the government case: If Melgen really had Menendez on retainer, why didn't the senator intervene when an energy company the doctor had invested in hit a roadblock at a federal agency? And when the Medicare and port-contract disputes first arose, Melgen hired lawyers, Ogrosky said. "That's a hell of a bribe to spend millions of dollars on attorneys when you have a senator on retainer," he said. Prosecutors say the scheme began when Menendez, a representative in the House, was appointed to the Senate in 2006 by Gov. Jon S. Corzine, and ended in early 2013 amid media scrutiny. Among the official acts Menendez is accused of taking is pressuring an assistant secretary of state to get the Dominican government to honor a contract with Melgen. The contract to provide cargo screening services at a port had been tied up in litigation. In late 2011, the senator's staff began asking Melgen for political contributions. But the doctor only delivered $60,000 to two Menendez-aligned political groups once the senator met with the assistant secretary of state, William R. Brownfield, in May 2012. The senator told Brownfield he would hold a congressional hearing if Brownfield didn't fix it. And when Melgen stood to lose millions in his dispute with Medicare, Menendez lobbied relentlessly in his favor, urging the administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to clarify its policy on administering multiple doses of a drug from a single vial. The administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, testified that the change would have benefited Melgen. She stood by the policy, and Menendez unsuccessfully took his case to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Menendez met with Tavenner on June 7, 2012, just days after Melgen gave a $300,000 check to a Menendez confidant for a super PAC allied with Senate Democrats. "Who pulls out their checkbook and hand-writes a $300,000 check?" Cooney asked jurors. "How about someone trying to send a message? How about someone who has $8.9 million hanging in the balance?" Defense attorneys said Melgen contributed to help Democrats and because 2012 was the first presidential election after a Supreme Court decision allowed independent political groups to solicit and spend unlimited amounts. A U.S. military judge, in a highly unusual move, has ordered a Marine Corps general confined to his quarters at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, fallout from a legal dispute in which the general refused to comply with the judge's orders. Brig. Gen. John Baker, the chief defense counsel for military commissions at Guantanamo, received 21 days of confinement in his trailer at Guantanamo after the judge, Air Force Col. Vance Spath, held Baker in contempt of court. Harvey Rishikof, a U.S. official who oversees the commissions, will decide in the next few days whether to affirm, defer, suspend or disapprove Spath's sentence, a Pentagon spokesman said. Their dispute emerged from the ongoing prosecution of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian citizen accused of masterminding the deadly USS Cole bombing in October 2000. Baker, as top defense counsel, agreed to let Nashiri's three attorneys quit after they alleged the U.S. government spied on them while discussing legal strategy. Baker asserted it was within his authority to do so. Spath has said that's a call only a judge can make. Baker's confinement, first reported by the Miami Herald, is yet another setback for the Pentagon's much-maligned commissions system, which has faced years of criticism over the case's protracted nature and the legal challenges that have arisen as cases are appealed. The dispute between Baker and Spath has been watched closely by active-duty and retired military lawyers, said James Weirick, a retired Marine Corps lawyer who served as a prosecutor at Guantanamo from 2008 to 2011. "Everybody has for the most part viewed this as making a side show out of the process," Weirick said. "It definitely doesn't help the public faith of the military commissions." The confinement of a general over a legal dispute is likely unprecedented, said Charles Dunlap, a retired two-star general who left the Air Force in 2010 as its second highest-ranking attorney. "I can't think of another case like this in a military setting," he told the Washington Post. "Because the facts are evidently classified, it's hard to know what is really going on." Spath ruled that Baker acted outside his authority in dismissing the other lawyers, and that it "flies in the face of commonsense judicial review," according to a transcript of Baker's contempt hearing. Baker also refused to testify about his reasons why. "The bedroom of any system is compliance with court orders, followed by attempting to navigate evidence and appeal for relief," Spath said during the hearing. "Many lawyers don't like ruling from trial judges, but every lawyer knows you have to follow them almost exclusively, without exception, until another court steps in." Spath has ordered Nashiri's three lawyers to appear in his Guantanamo courtroom Friday morning via a video teleconference system at the headquarters for military commissions in Alexandria, Virginia. It is not clear whether they will comply. Baker, who did not respond to requests for comment, still has Internet and cable access and has communicated with some other colleagues in the military justice community, Weirick said. "The living conditions are a little spartan, but they're not really a punishment of any sort," he said. "He's really just being sent to his room." Khat seized by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents in Philadelphia. Read more Well, well, well. Look at what the khat dragged in. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, officers in Philadelphia seized nearly 69 pounds of khat, a schedule 1 drug, at Philadelphia International Airport last week. The khat was in four packages sent from Frankfurt, Germany and bound for Minneapolis, Minn. CBP estimates it had a street value of about $18,000 when it was seized during a stopover in Philly on Oct. 25. No arrests have been made and the investigation remains ongoing. Khat is a stimulant that comes in leaf form and is typically chewed or brewed into a tea. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, khat can "reduce the user's motivation and can cause manic behavior with grandiose delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations." It is legal in Africa and the Arabian peninsula and is a part of social customs in some societies there, but khat has been classified as a controlled substance in other parts of the world. "Khat remains illegal to import into the United States and so CBP officers will continue to seize khat when we encounter it," said Joseph Martella, acting CBP Port Director for the Area Port of Philadelphia. Perhaps if more people started asking questions about the drug, the substance would become less of a problem. Everybody knows curiosity killed the khat. Sales of soda and other sweetened beverages in Philadelphia have dropped significantly by 57 percent in volume since the city's new beverage tax went into effect in January, according to researchers. But despite that decline, overall sales at chain stores in Philadelphia have not suffered due to the tax, said Sara Bleich, a professor of public health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Bleich on Wednesday presented the findings of a team from Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins Universities, based on the first six months that Philadelphia's tax on sweetened beverages was in effect. "Declines in beverage sales don't appear to be impacting total store sales in Philadelphia," Bleich said in a telephone interview after her presentation at a conference in Washington D.C. on obesity. The study, touted by Mayor Kenney's administration as the first to take a hard scientific look at the tax's effects, was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has poured millions of dollars into supporting taxes on soda across the country as a means of fighting obesity. Bleich's presentation marked the latest in a stream of studies about the controversial and closely watched 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages. Philadelphia became the first big city to implement such a levy in January, other cities have followed, and more are watching as the beverage industry continues to fight the tax. Both sides also are waiting to hear whether the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will consider Philadelphia's tax. Bleich is one of the researchers participating in the multi-university, three-year study about the tax. Researchers are comparing sales in Philadelphia at both chain retailers and independent stores to sales in Baltimore, which does not have a tax on sweetened beverages. Bleich said other top findings from the first six months of data included: Independent retailers passed through 100 percent of the cost of the tax to consumers, while chain stores passed on 75 percent. (Philadelphia's tax is levied on distributors, many of whom have passed it along to retailers. Retailers in turn have passed much of it along to consumers.) Dollar sales of taxed beverages dropped 46 percent at chain stores in Philadelphia in the first six months of the tax compared with Baltimore. While there have been significant drops in store sales in Philadelphia since 2014, researchers said the new tax does not appear to have intensified that decline. The difference in total store sales in Philadelphia before and after the tax, as compared with Baltimore, is "no different than zero," Bleich said. The Kenney administration found the study's conclusions encouraging. "This is very positive news both for public health and for the economic health of our stores," said Mike Dunn, a city spokesman. "It shows that people are drinking fewer sweetened beverages, which is great for their health. At the same time, overall store sales are not impacted by the tax, which is great news for local retail businesses." Other studies including some funded by the American Beverage Association, which opposes the levy have also found declines in beverage sales in Philadelphia since the tax began in January. But Anthony Campisi, a spokesman for the Ax the Beverage Tax Campaign, cast doubt on the study because it was funded by Bloomberg. He also said it understated the impacts on businesses. "Our own analysis of independent market research data over a similar period found total store sales in Philadelphia supermarkets down nearly 10 percent," Campisi said. "Supermarkets are seeing declines in sales of yogurt, soup and rice because families are driving to the suburbs to do their shopping. This tax has been an economic boom for nearby suburban towns and an economic disaster for Philadelphia neighborhoods." Store owners also have been outspoken against the tax. Jeff Brown, who owns several Philadelphia ShopRite stores, testified at a state Senate hearing last month that his store profits have dropped by 15 percent. Philadelphia's tax raised about $60 million in its first nine months. Revenue from the tax was $7.4 million in September, marking the highest monthly collection to date and the closest the city has come to hitting its $7.7 million monthly average collection needed to raise its projected revenue. The tax revenue will pay for pre-K, community schools, and improvements to the city's parks, libraries, and recreation centers. For the study, researchers are examining sales at 60 independent stores in Philadelphia and 60 independent stores in counties surrounding Philadelphia, as well as stores in Baltimore. To analyze chain store sales, Bleich said, the researchers purchased data from IRI, a market research company that tracks store sales. The IRI gave researchers data from 687 chain stores. The research will also include bag checks with individual shoppers as they leave stores, to better understand individual shopper behavior, as well as interviews with store owners and beverage distributors. This article has been updated to clarify that the percent change researchers found in volume and dollar sales of taxed beverages was only at chain stores in Philadelphia. Fred Anton, a longtime Republican power broker in Pennsylvania politics and a Philadelphia native, was found dead Thursday in the Delaware River after being reported missing the day before, police said. Anton, 83, was last seen leaving his residence in the unit block of North Christopher Columbus Boulevard about 10:45 a.m. Wednesday. Police said he was suffering from undisclosed medical issues and depression. Shortly after 11:30 a.m. Thursday, the police Marine Unit responded to a report of a person in the river near where Anton lived and recovered his body. The Medical Examiner's Office was investigating how he died. Anton had long been the leader of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, a statewide trade organization that became the premier pro-business lobbying presence in Harrisburg under Anton. "At his peak, he could kill a bill if he wanted to, or he could make a bill if he wanted to," former Gov. Ed Rendell said. In 2012, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profile led off with this sentence: "When Fred Anton calls Republican politicians at the state Capitol, they don't put him on hold." David N. Taylor, president of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, said in a statement that the organization was heartbroken by Anton's death. "All of us who had the privilege of knowing him and working for him will treasure the memories of our time with him, with gratitude for having had him as our leader," Taylor said. Speaker of the Pennsylvania House Mike Turzai, an Allegheny County Republican, said in a statement that he was "deeply saddened" by Anton's passing. "When Fred entered a room, everyone's attention turned to him. It is no coincidence that many of Pennsylvania's governors, U.S. senators, congressmen, and state legislative leaders have considered Fred a close friend and adviser. He was gracious to everyone who came to know him," Turzai said. "Being profoundly well-read, well-spoken and knowledgeable, Fred freely offered advice to those who would listen, and I will forever be grateful for his invaluable advice and friendship through the years," Turzai said. "Lidia and I send our deepest sympathy to his partner of many years, Emily Ryan, and his children, Fred and Sarah." Pennsyvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, a Republican from Centre County, in a statement said Anton's "presence dominated a room." "While he was well known as a leader who got things done, I knew him as a cherished family friend whose caring and kindness supported and inspired three generations of Cormans. He will be greatly missed," Corman said. U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey also offered a statement on Anton. "Fred was an icon in Pennsylvania's conservative movement and served as a mentor to many, including myself," the Pennsylvania Republican said. "He was a passionate advocate for the city of Philadelphia, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and for the country he loved. My thoughts and condolences are with Fred's family; he will be missed." Former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge in a statement called Anton "a true gentleman." "His loss will leave a huge void in Pennsylvania, and beyond," Ridge said. Anton was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Haverford High School. He earned a law degree from the Villanova School of Law and was a veteran of the Marine Corps. When Rendell was elected mayor of Philadelphia in 1991, Anton joined his transition team and worked with Rendell throughout his two terms in office. "Fred was one of the most important business leaders in Philadelphia," Rendell said. "He deeply cared for the city," Rendell said, adding that they were good friends, "even though we were at opposite ends of the political spectrum." Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, seen here Sept. 12 at the Capitol for a meeting on the Republican tax overhaul. Read more WASHINGTON Republicans promise that their massive tax overhaul plan will help the middle class. But who exactly fits into that category? Despite weeks of invoking the middle class, Republicans don't have a ready definition. "I don't think we have a precise line," said Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), who sits on the Senate committee that writes tax law. "It's different in different regions of the country. It's different in different parts of Pennsylvania." The question is more than esoteric. As House leaders rolled out a sweeping tax bill Thursday and began to fill in the details of the plan, the question of where the middle class starts and ends could drive key policy decisions that determine who benefits and who doesn't. If some tax breaks are phased out or capped, what will be the income cutoff? Would a couple with two children and $250,000 of income be considered middle class and thus entitled to the full array of tax benefits? Or will breaks be scaled back to provide more for people lower down the income scale? The House bill starts to lay out those answers. For example, it limits the deduction for home mortgage interest to homeowners with new loans worth up to $500,000, down from $1 million, and caps property-tax deductions at $10,000. But the details are likely to change in the course of long negotiations in that chamber and the Senate. The question of who should be seen as middle class defies easy answers in a sprawling country where costs vary widely from places like Philadelphia to, say, Omaha. Kevin Hassett, the University of Pennsylvania- and Swarthmore College-educated chair of President Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, would not offer his own parameters when pressed on the definition of middle class. He only noted that the middle 20 percent of income ranges roughly from $40,000 to $70,000 without saying if the administration had adopted that definition. "I have not been in discussions with the White House about what the definition of middle class is," Hassett told reporters in October. "What middle class is, it depends on what the question is." Several lawmakers from the Philadelphia area cautioned that what looks like a lot of money for much of the country might not make someone wealthy in this area. "The income that looks pretty high in Tennessee may not look all that high to a family in North Jersey or eastern Pennsylvania, especially if they have child care or college expenses or things of that nature," said Rep. Pat Meehan (R., Pa.). "There's an appreciation that there will be differences from district to district." Rep. Tom MacArthur (R., N.J.) offered a broad range for his high-income and high-cost state: $78,000 up to about $330,000. "In New Jersey, with our taxes and our cost of housing and such," he said, "that group needs to come out OK in all this reform." Democrats insist that Republicans' plan will mainly help the wealthy, citing independent analyses written before the bill was released. Republicans slammed those critiques and insisted that "middle class" Americans will reap the benefits of the final plan. One way economists look at the question is to consider the middle 20 percent of the income range, said Kimberly Burham, managing director of legislation and special projects at Penn Wharton's Budget Model, which analyzes economic policy. Another is to look at the middle three quintiles of the income scale leaving the bottom 20 percent as lower class and top 20 percent as upper class. That leaves the middle 60 percent of income ranges, which runs from $24,000 to $121,000, she said. "That can encompass a lot of people," Burham said. In a study last year, the Pew Research Center labeled as "middle income" those who make between roughly $42,000 and $125,000 for a family of three. That definition, based on 2014 economic data, encompassed people who made between two-thirds of the median national income up to double the median, said Rakesh Kochhar, an associate director of research at the center though he noted that the lower and upper ranges have probably increased somewhat in the years since. Around half of U.S. households fit into this middle-income group down from 61 percent in 1971, Kochhar said. But regional differences can slide the definition. In the metro area that includes Philadelphia, the "middle income" range for a family of three is from about $45,000 to nearly $135,000, Pew found, and about 51 percent of adults fit into the tier. By comparison, in Toledo, Ohio, for the same size family, middle income begins at about $37,500 and tops out at around $112,400. New Yorkers making up to $152,800 are still considered middle income by Pew's standard. For most people, numbers don't tell the whole story of their class. Being middle class has much to do with cultural signifiers, like jobs, education, or personal interests. A medical resident at Harvard, for example, might be in the lower-class income bracket but likely feels middle class or higher, Kochhar said. "That can be: How do I feel? How am I doing in life? How do I compare to the people that I see around me?" Burham said. Rep. Donald Norcross (D., N.J.), a former electrician and labor union leader, had a vague definition of middle class. "It's also a state of mind," he said. "That you get up every day, you go to work, earn a living." But such soft definitions won't provide much help when it comes to writing laws with hard lines about who pays how much in taxes. Toomey argued that Republicans can be successful as long as they spread the benefits of their tax plan widely. "If everyone has lower taxes," he said, "then you know you've covered the middle class." Britain's Defense Minister Michael Fallon has resigned after allegations of inappropriate behavior emerged. Fallon said in a resignation letter to Prime Minister Theresa May that his "previous conduct... may have fallen below the high standards that we require of the Armed Forces." May accepted the resignation Wednesday, saying she appreciated "the characteristically serious manner" in which Fallon had considered his position. The sexual harassment and assault allegations brought against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein have emboldened women in several countries to speak out about their experiences. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been sued by the city over federal grant money that is being denied to sanctuary cities. Read more A federal judge declared from the bench Thursday that the City of Philadelphia a so-called sanctuary city substantially complies with the Trump administration's conditions for receiving a government law enforcement grant. U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson made no formal ruling in a case that has been widely watched and debated, and indicated he would not issue a decision for two weeks. But after pressing administration lawyers with question after question, Baylson said he believed that "the city is in substantial compliance" and that a Justice Department letter asserting otherwise "is wrong." At the heart of the case is a relatively small amount of money a $1.5 million federal grant to a city with a $4.4 billion budget but a big principle: whether the administration can withhold money unless the city agrees to more actively help federal agents identify and arrest people who immigrated without appropriate documents. The city filed suit against Attorney General Jeff Sessions in August. Broadly defined, a sanctuary city limits its cooperation with federal authorities who enforce immigration law. Those cities' leaders aim to ease fears of deportation among undocumented residents, believing that members of immigrant communities will then be more willing to report crime. President Trump and Sessions have argued that sanctuary city policies allow dangerous criminals to be released to prey on local neighborhoods when instead they should be returned to their homelands. The administration aims to withhold grant money as a means to make cities assist federal agents seeking to deport undocumented immigrants. Baylson heard a day of testimony last week and a half-day of arguments Thursday, and continues to review a voluminous written record. "I think he's leaning toward us," said lawyer Sara Solow, retained to help represent the city in the case. Barring appeals, that would clear the way for the city to receive the federal money for police overtime, training, and other improvements. City officials testified that they willingly turn over information about undocumented people who have been convicted or are actively under suspicion of committing a serious crime. "Isn't that all you're entitled to?" the judge asked Chad Readler, the administration's acting assistant attorney general for the civil division. If federal agents were willing to accept that without demanding information on every person about whom they inquire, "we wouldn't be here," Baylson told Readler. Readler declined to comment after the hearing. In court, he argued that the case was simple: The government has the power and right to set conditions on grants. The city has the option of meeting those terms and getting the money. "If they want to keep a policy that's different from the federal policy, don't accept the grant," Readler said. In July, Sessions added two more requirements for cities wishing to receive law enforcement grants: When requested by officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cities must give agents two days' notice before releasing undocumented inmates from custody. In addition, they must allow ICE agents to enter any detention facility to question immigrants about their right to be or stay in the United States. Readler contended that ICE was not getting all the information it needed from Philadelphia. City officials testified that both they and ICE authorities have access to the same law enforcement databases and that local police are not agents of the U.S. government. They testified that it is impossible for them to provide advance notice of an inmate's release, because those dates are unknown. The vast majority of prisoners in city jails haven't been convicted of anything they're awaiting trial, and could be released at any time by posting bail or by judicial order. Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and California also have gone to court over the new grant restrictions. Nicole Bojko was on her way home from work when her train overshot her stop, Torresdale Station, coming to a screeching halt. It could not back up, and passengers had to get off at the next stop, where they were hustled onto a train on the other side of the tracks. Bojko said she asked a conductor repeatedly whether the train would return her to Torresdale, but he ignored her. She boarded the train and hoped. Riders were "unsure of what's going on, and to me it was upsetting that they wouldn't answer my question," said Bojko, 26, who works in technical support and rides SEPTA Regional Rail to Suburban Station every weekday. "That's something I would get fired for, if I ignored somebody like that." Issues with communication have been among the top complaints from riders but they aren't the only ones who are frustrated. Some conductors said it's difficult to update passengers when they themselves don't have accurate information. Conductors are party to radio traffic between dispatchers and engineers, but the chatter can be confusing and difficult to interpret. "SEPTA does tell us to keep the passenger informed, but if nobody tells us what's going on, how am I supposed to relay that to a passenger?" said one conductor who requested anonymity so he could speak frankly about management. While riders chafe at poor communication and complain of indifferent and uninformed conductors, SEPTA's workforce says these problems are byproducts of their own difficulties on a railroad that has seen shrinking manpower and growing ridership in recent years. That left trains understaffed and crews overworked. SEPTA's engineers have historically called their managers "the goons," a moniker that spoke to the deep level of distrust between management and workers. As much as train cars and railway signals, the relationship with engineers and conductors is a part of railroad operations SEPTA has sought to repair in the past year. To address some of the riders' complaints, workers and managers face the difficult task of turning around their workplace's culture. It's a slow process, with both sides burdened by decades of bad blood and resentment. Stress, frustration, and uncertain schedules have contributed to a morale problem that makes some workers unmotivated to put the riders first, leaders say. "There's a 'not my job' syndrome" among workers when it comes to the railroad as a whole," said Matt Mitchell, vice president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, a regional public transportation advocacy group with connections to rail workers. That sense of disaffection comes in part, because for too long managers have not sought staff input, he said: They don't ask, "What can you do to help these things run more reliably?" The agency has made significant progress in the last year, according to interviews with managers and union leaders conducted by The Inquirer and Daily News. This week, we are reviewing the steps taken to improve Regional Rail service over the past year for its approximately 63,000 daily riders. (Read part one, part two, and part three.) A year ago, SEPTA officials said a lack of manpower, in part stemming from a slew of retirements, played a role in making schedules unreliable. Since then, staffing numbers are up and train cancellations are down. SEPTA's first step to warm a chilly relationship with workers came last year with the creation of an independent Railroad Operations division that separated the rail service from the city transit division, which has vastly different concerns. Michael Dobson, the 33-year SEPTA veteran tapped to head it, communicates daily with union leaders, gives his phone number to rank and file workers, and seeks worker feedback on new schedules all ways to draw on workers' years of expertise and experience. Although years of adversarial relations can't change overnight, union leaders say the outreach is a marked change from the way they used to interact with management. Addressing a personnel shortage has also been an issue; stressed workers have historically called out sick with short notice or started train trips late because they didn't have enough time to prepare for the route. Each train typically aims for a crew of four an engineer, who drives the train, and three conductors, who collect fares and respond to passengers. Having a full crew, which generally means one head conductor and two assistants, helps ensure the trains run on time. In the past year, SEPTA has bolstered its ranks with 60 new assistant-conductor hires. By next spring, it hopes to hit its target of 213 engineers. Because aspiring head conductors and engineers must work as assistants first, those hires could beef up future head conductor ranks; SEPTA is short its budgeted target of 273 by 24. SEPTA officials claim trains can manage with one conductor and one engineer. But conductors say working solo is overwhelming. "With head count now going up we should in the next year start seeing improvements," said Don Hill, of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. Still, hiring so far has already yielded real benefits for riders. Train cancellations due to manpower issues are significantly down as a result: In the last six months of 2016, staffing problems were the cause of two-thirds of cancelled trains, a trend highlighted by the Inquirer in a December report. In the first six months of 2017, they caused less than one-third. Conductors say they have fewer solo shifts, and train crews have longer breaks at the end of each trip, meaning more time to use the bathroom, refresh, and prep for the train's next route. Those grace periods also mean that even if a train concludes a trip late, it still might be able to depart on time for the next one. Even as they give credit to Knueppel and his railroad management team for reaching out to workers, representatives from both engineers and conductors unions noted they are in the midst of negotiating new contracts. The results could determine the course of the relationship between the railroad's top people and its workers. "The set of managers that are in now, we're going to say we have a guarded optimism," Hill said. "It's definitely far better than it was, but it's nowhere near where it needs to be." Philadelphia police on Thursday were investigating three deadly overnight shootings. About 1:25 a.m., police responded to the 1600 block of West Lippincott Street in North Philadelphia, where they found a man inside a vehicle, suffering from a gunshot wound. The victim was pronounced dead at 1:38 a.m. On Friday, police identified the victim as Jalen Hall, 22, of the 3100 block of North Chadwick Street in North Philly. In another North Philadelphia shooting hours earlier, police had responded to the 2800 block of West Harold Street, where they found two victims. Saleem Mitchell, 32, died from a gunshot wound to the chest. The second victim, a 25-year-old man whose name was not released, was shot once in his right leg and listed in critical condition at Hahnemann University Hospital. No arrests were reported in the North Philadelphia shootings. Police on Thursday also identified a man fatally shot in Port Richmond on Wednesday night as Shannon Blassengale, 27, of the 2300 block of East Ann Street. Shortly before 8:30 p.m., police responded to Gaul and Monmouth Streets and found Blassengale suffering from several gunshot wounds. He later died at Temple University Hospital. Police called it a domestic-related shooting and said they had a suspect in custody, but did not release the person's name. The sky billboard near 2nd and Race streets in Old City. Read more High above the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, facing Second and Race Streets in Old City, a billboard defies its mission. It tries to blend in. There's no text, no website, no hashtag. Just a sky-blue rectangle with wisps of clouds against the cerulean beyond. The ironic, almost calming, view was named one of the top 10 places to Instagram in Philadelphia by the Democratic National Convention's local host committee last year. So who's behind the billboard in the sky of the sky? An airline? A hot-air balloon company? A funeral home? Some sage commenting on our ad-saturated society? PennDot came back pretty quickly with an answer: Keystone Outdoor, a company with about 110 billboards in the region. Keystone is more often in the news for battling with residents over sky-high digital billboards. Why's a billboard company trying to disappear? Owner Joe Felici said the point isn't a billboard as much as a windshield to protect the two other Ben Franklin billboards: A SugarHouse Casino ad facing inbound traffic and one for Boomerang Office Furniture facing those headed to New Jersey. "If I didn't have that windshield, it'd be an open V and it could blow out the face panels this ties it together," Felici said. "Structurally, there's nothing better than a triangle." Even if he wanted to slap an ad on it, Felici said, city and state law limits billboards to two commercial-use faces. "You could never put anything up there," he said. "Even like a Nike symbol." Lovers of the cloud billboard, rejoice! Initially, the windshield/billboard was black vinyl, but it went sky blue five years ago at the recommendation of the president of the company, Dominick A. Cipollini, who thought it would be more pleasing to passersby. It's so unobtrusive that it took me five years to see it, though I'm not alone. On a recent sunny morning, most people I buttonholed were noticing it for the first time. Their takes ranged from introspection to confusion. Jonathan Langley, 38, of West Philadelphia, passes it every day on his way to a house he looks after at Third and Vine. He'd never noticed the massive sign before. Once he took it in, his thoughts flowed: "Being as though I've got this cross on today, I guess my mind would be thinking something spiritual. Just being at a place where you don't have any problems." His mom is battling Alzheimer's and she's been his biggest cheerleader. "Down here there's so many different things going on, but if we were up there we wouldn't be thinking of that. Sometimes I have these dreams about flying and I think it's because when you're high above, all that stuff that's down here, it feels better, you know?" Janet Conforti and her husband, Rob, of Long Beach Island, N.J., had a more transactional take. "It doesn't look finished," Rob said. "It makes you stop and slow down and look at the clouds a little bit, disconnect from everything," Janet said. "Or it's not finished," Rob said. Outside the Fireman's Hall museum on Second Street, Ed Chaney and J.T. Williams were staring at the billboard, which the firefighters said they pass twice a month. This was the first time they'd noticed it. "It's a waste of money," Chaney said. "There's already a sky behind it." Heavy-duty vinyl billboards like the blue sky one cost between $1,400 to $2,000 and are built to last. "The cloud vinyl will probably stay there for the life of the billboard," Felici said. "Unless someone comes up with a better idea." Anyone? Needing a victory to validate their majorities, congressional Republicans have chosen not to emulate Shakespeare's Henry V before Agincourt. He advocated stiffening the sinews, summoning up the blood, and lending the eye a terrible aspect. The Republicans would rather define victory down. What began with a bang of promises of comprehensive tax reform will end with a whimper. The only large change will be to the national debt. Consider a small proposal repeal of the estate tax. That tax will be paid by an estimated 5,500 people dying this year, raising about $20 billion a pittance in the $3.88 trillion budget. Repeal's significance would be philosophic rather than economic. In 1975, Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw explained what he would do with his $75,000 salary: "Ninety percent I'll spend on good times, women, and Irish whiskey. The other 10 percent I'll probably waste." If you work hard, make a pile, then choose to squander it on dissipations, go ahead, it's a free country. But try to pass the pile to progeny, grasping government will intervene. Ending the estate tax would extinguish the government's delusion that it has the duty and skill to prevent the intergenerational transmission of family advantages (of which money matters much less than transfers of social capital habits and aptitudes, which government cannot redistribute). Desperate to propitiate impatient constituents, Republicans say this is no time (actually, there never is a time) to fret about the national debt, which was $9 trillion a decade ago and passed $20 trillion two months ago, having increased 22 percentage points under the Republican president who preceded the present one. House Speaker Paul Ryan says: Do not worry, "We finally have a president who is willing to actually balance the budget." Ryan underestimates the president, who has promised to eliminate not just the budget deficit but the national debt in just eight years without touching entitlements. Beneath the froth of political discord, America's granite-like harmony persists. The comparatively superficial discord distracts attention from this bipartisan consensus: We shall have a generous entitlement state and not pay for it. Instead, we shall offload onto future generations a substantial portion of the costs of our current consumption of government. As Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute naughtily reminds us, during a half-century of Republican rhetoric of frugality, 1960 to 2010, entitlement spending grew 8 percent faster under Republican presidents than under Democrats. In the ninth year of an unusually long expansion, and with the economy near full employment (ignore the dismal workforce participation rate), the budget deficit for the past fiscal year was $666 billion, up $80 billion from the previous year. To partially recoup revenue lost from reduced rates, Republicans reportedly flinched (Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says his fellow Republicans were "asked to vote for a budget that nobody believes in so that we have a chance to vote for a tax bill that nobody's read") from a "border adjustment tax" on imports ($1 trillion in a decade) and now have gone wobbly about ending the deductibility of state and local taxes ($1.3 trillion). Republicans might still be contemplating steep reductions in the amounts that individuals can put into tax-deferred 401(k) retirement accounts. This will displease the approximately 32 percent of workers who have 401(k)s, and will worsen the inadequate savings rate of a nation where defined-benefit pension plans are now mostly luxuries for government workers and where almost a majority of people approaching retirement have nothing saved for it. The current median Social Security payment is about $16,000 a year. When the president said tax reform is "going to be so easy," he overlooked this fact: The tax code's baroque complexity that demands radical reform makes the code almost impervious to such reform: Every provision was put there to placate a muscular faction or to create a grateful faction. Republicans should have heeded Dwight Eisenhower's axiom: "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it." They should have made the case for large reforms that annoy democratically almost everyone, simultaneously but for a large purpose. The aim should have been a revenue system that stops subordinating economic efficiency to social engineering and rent-seeking, thereby maximizing the probability of economic growth sufficient to fund the entitlement state. Such a bold aim requires a commensurately bold argument for a consumption tax or a carbon tax or a zero corporate tax rate or anything for which public-spirited people might stiffen their sinews and summon up their blood. George Will is a Washington Post columnist. georgewill@washpost.com For an old Moscow hand, Putins brazen seizing of Crimea from Ukraine was less surprising than the fact that Ukrainewith its long historic, economic and ethnic ties to Russiahad become a separate country to begin with. Read more On an icy November night in 1984, I boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway at Moscow's Yaroslavl station for a 5,300-mile journey across seven time zones to the far eastern city of Khabarovsk. The purpose of the trip was twofold to experience firsthand the vastness of the Soviet Union and to spend hour after hour in close quarters with ordinary Soviet citizens. By that time I had been living in the Soviet Union as the Inquirer's Moscow correspondent for nearly two years, and, like many of my peers, was frustrated by the impossibility of having honest conversations with ordinary people the great majority of the public who were neither dissidents nor official propagandists and whose acquiescence was essential to the survival of the Soviet state. When I would periodically venture onto the street to get public reaction to an important event in U.S.-Soviet relations, I was amused and amazed at how people instantly recognizing the situation they'd been put in would almost word-for-word spout whatever party line had appeared in that morning's newspapers or on the TV news the night before. While it would be impossible to fully get beyond that guarded response to a foreign correspondent's inquiries, I figured my best chance for candid conversation would be to take the longest possible train journey, allowing me to spend full days and nights with a variety of fellow travelers. The idea worked. Over the seven days of rail travel (extended further by two overnight stops), I shared food and ample drink, played chess and cards, delved into personal problems and family histories, and had many hours of sometimes-heated political conversation with a good cross section of the Soviet public or, more precisely, of the dominant Russian majority. The revolving cast of characters included workers, scientists, teachers, a low-level bureaucrat, two high-level bureaucrats, and a factory supervisor. Virtually without exception they proved to be passionate and relentless defenders of the Soviet state not just its Cold War foreign policy, but its then-tattered domestic achievements. They conceded that America was a great, if misguided, country. They wanted me to understand and acknowledge the Soviet Union's greatness as well. While it was not surprising that people would take an orthodox line in a conversation with a Western journalist, I wrote, "the intensity of their arguments went beyond the call of duty." Had it survived, the Soviet Union would be turning 100 on Nov. 7. That train ride and related experiences over my 3 years in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s hardly prepared me for its largely peaceful dissolution in 1991. Less surprising, however, is the reemergence of strident Russian nationalism and intolerance of dissent under Vladimir Putin. Were I to have a reunion with my traveling companions from 1984, I have little doubt as to where they would stand. To be an American reporter in Moscow in the final years of an unapologetic Soviet state the period just before Mikhail Gorbachev's ill-fated efforts to publicize Soviet failings in order to correct them was to be among the last generation of correspondents to experience firsthand the system we had hated and feared for all those years. While our job was to objectively convey the reality of the Soviet Union to American audiences, it was hard not to make value judgments in the process. The cruelest years of Soviet power the bloody purges and state-created famines of the Stalinist era had long passed. But the suppression of all manner of dissent, though more finely tuned, was relentless. The KGB's tools of choice were imprisonment and exile, rather than murder on a grand scale. Those allowed to remain at large were too weak and isolated to pose a threat. Equally relentless was the official propaganda that emanated from newspapers and TV stations that were universally state-controlled. The Soviet Union was never at fault in its foreign adventures, and its dysfunctional economy was simply in need of harder work and greater discipline. When a South Korean passenger airliner with 269 souls aboard strayed into Soviet airspace and was presumably misidentified and shot down by a Soviet fighter jet, the official line was not that a horrible tragedy had taken place. After initially denying any knowledge of the matter, the authorities declared that the huge Boeing 747 was on a spying mission to probe Soviet military preparedness and that all blame lay with the American spymasters the ultimate example of declaring everything bad in the world our fault. I used to joke that the Moscow press corps was a tiny right-wing enclave within the generally left-leaning American news media. President Ronald Reagan's reflexive anticommunism and uncompromising responses to Soviet bluster, while controversial in the United States, sounded right to a lot of us and to the dissident Soviet intellectuals we associated with. And yet it was impossible to live and work in the Soviet Union without understanding the Russians' side of the story. While the privileged official class known as the nomenklatura enjoyed better housing and access to special stores and medical clinics, there was no great wealth or conspicuous consumption in the country. Nor was there much visible poverty. The state imposed a harsh ceiling on economic advancement, but it also provided a sturdy floor through subsidized housing and universal employment. The janitor in the complex that housed the Inquirer's office was a sweet man and a staggering drunk who wouldn't have lasted a week on an American job site. But he had a guaranteed job and a well-heated, one-room basement apartment that allowed him to get by. It was an inefficient arrangement for sure, but also a humane one. From a Western perspective, one of the enduring black marks against the Soviet Union was its occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, its installation of communist regimes in those states, and its suppression of periodic rebellions. The Soviet perspective was that, in the long, brutal, and ultimately triumphant military campaign from Stalingrad to Berlin far more German soldiers were killed on the Eastern than the Western front the U.S.S.R. had paid for that land with its blood and was thus entitled to a buffer zone against future invasions from the West. That the Soviet Union allowed Eastern Europe to peacefully go free in 1989 was a wondrous development. The resulting incorporation of those countries into NATO opposed by the aged George Kennan, the architect of America's successful containment of the Soviet Union, as a "tragic mistake" seemed to confirm Russians' darkest fears. The territorial dismantling did not stop, of course, with the loss of Eastern Europe. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet state, all 14 of the U.S.S.R.'s non-Russian republics most of which had been part of greater Russia since well before the founding of the Soviet state were granted independence. For an old Moscow hand, Putin's brazen seizing of Crimea from Ukraine was less surprising than the fact that Ukraine with its historic, economic, and ethnic ties to a long-dominant Russia had become a separate country to begin with. Americans, of all people, can appreciate a national identity that centers on the idea of greatness. The Soviet Union, for all that was very wrong about it, was nevertheless a great country. Putin has called its dissolution the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century. The sad but unsurprising reality is that so many of his countrymen agree. Donald Kimelman is a former deputy editorial page editor of the Inquirer. donkimelman@gmail.com Malaysia is investigating an alleged attempt to sell the data of more than 46 million mobile phone subscribers online after a major data breach, Communications and Multimedia Minister Salleh Said Keruak said on Wednesday. The massive data breach was first reported last month by Lowyat.net, a local technology news website, which said it had received a tip-off that someone was trying to sell huge databases of personal information on its forums. Salleh said the country's internet regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), was looking into the matter with the police. "We have identified several potential sources of the leak and we should be able to complete the probe soon," Salleh told reporters at parliament. 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Thank you very much! Capability is one thing, but before we even approach landing on Mars we have to figure out what we are actually going to do once we land, how we are actually going to take our images, and how we will conduct the overall science mission. This whole area is called "mission operations," but when we speak we abbreviate that to "ops". Some of the questions we ask ourselves as we begin to plan mission operations are: How are we going to control a rover that is millions of miles away, with a team of hundreds of scientists and technical support folks literally spread all over the world, across at least eight time zones? How do that many scientists and engineers look at the same data from Mars, at the same time? How do we develop tools to enable the engineers and scientists to communicate efficiently and make decisions together in real time? How do we give them the necessary training to use those tools? How will they have live, real-time discussions to come up with one single science plan for each sol (a day on Mars is called a "sol")? How do we make sure that the plan that satisfies all the tight constraints on the rover and doesn't pose a risk to our precious vehicle or instruments? Once we answer these questions, we need to be ready with adequate computer power and disk space, functioning software tools, and step-by-step procedures long before we get to Mars. We need to get everyone trained and perform testing, testing, and more testing to ensure that all the tools are working right for each job. Just as important, we need to learn how to work together in spite of, and because of, our varying areas of expertise and what we each uniquely bring to the job. Five-hour operations Tactical operations planning for Mars 2020 will be a complicated and incredibly detailed process that ends with hundreds of commands being sent to the rover almost every single Earth day. This isn't different from previous rover missions. But the Mars 2020 team also faces a new challenge: we must accomplish all this in only five hours of work on each typical planning day. No rover mission has been run this way before. When Curiosity first landed, it took 16 hours to plan one sol. Planning has gotten more efficient over time, but it still typically takes 8 or 9 hours. Why the focus on five-hour planning days? The main reason is that the Mars 2020 mission is trying to avoid the inefficiency imposed by "restricted sols." To explain: the Mars day is longer than the Earth day by 40 minutes. When the rover finishes work in its afternoon and downlinks data, it's at roughly the same time every Mars sol, but downlink creeps later and later every Earth day. If we were willing to work around the clock on Earth, we would simply shift our working hours by 40 minutes every day, and sometimes end up working at night and sleeping in the day. We call that working on Mars time. All Mars missions have worked on Mars time for at least three months right after landing, but it is very difficult on humans who have lives and families away from Mars; it's not sustainable for long periods of time. When landed missions transition to "Earth time," we run into a situation several days a month when we have not yet received yestersol's downlink when we are planning the next sol of operations. We only have two-day-old data available to make decisions. That can mean the difference between being able to drive or not drive to a new target location, or can leave us without enough information to make other important scientific decisions. We refer to this as being in "restricted sols". In some cases, being in restricted sols can delay work on Mars by a sol. As those restricted sols accumulate, it delays our mission from reaching its goals by a significant amount. If we are able to make plans quickly enough and are willing to accept a slightly wider range of working hours in the Earth day schedule, we can avoid restricted sols. For the Mars 2020 mission, the management team has decided that it's acceptable to start work as early as 6:00 am and end as late as 11:00 pm in the Pacific time zone. Within those limitations, it turns out that if we can get our work done in five hours, we can still catch the most up-to-date downlink every day when we start planning, and never experience a restricted sol. Experiment Operations Plan The February 2017 Mastcam-Z science team meeting took place almost exactly four years before landing on Mars. To get science planning and commanding done in 5 hours a day, we are working now, four years before landing, to develop several new technologies and software tools for the Mars 2020 mission in order to avoid restricted sols altogether and conduct our scientific mission with maximum efficiency. At this stage of the mission operations preparations a main focus has been preparing our "Experiment Operations Plan" (EOP). The EOP is a document in which the Mastcam-Z team describes to the Mars 2020 project (our JPL colleagues and NASA managers) how we plan to operate the cameras in a way that will fit into Mars 2020's overall rover operations plan. We have to describe our team's plans for developing software and procedures to command the cameras and check (and triple check) that everything is done exactly right. We also have to list what computer and other IT support equipment we need to do our work as we build our operations facilities, and how that will change when we are operating the 2-Earth-year long (or more) mission on Mars. We have to lay out a plan for all the jobs we need to do. We have to describe when and how we are going to staff and train scientists and engineers to fill all those jobs. Naturally, we also have to include our schedule and budget for carrying out all of the tasks that need to be completed in the six years or so it will take to design, test, and fly our cameras to Mars and complete the nominal mission. Last but not least for our Mastcam-Z investigation, we have to describe in the EOP how we intend to communicate with and involve and engage the public (what we call Education and Public Outreach, or EPO). This is one of our favorite perks. Reaching out to and engaging with you all puts smiles on our faces and reminds us why we do all this hard work. If you'd like to know more about our plans and how you can get involved, check out our Mastcam-Z EPO page. Mars 2020 Software Tools We have some pretty cool operations software tools in the works as well. For example, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is currently planning a tool named ASTTRO (Advanced Strategic and Tactical Targeting Tool for Remote Operationsyes, NASA loves acronyms!). ASTTRO is not just for visualization: users like science team members and rover planners (also known as rover drivers) will use it to create science target suggestions for discussion with others. Then "Payload Uplink Lead" (PUL) engineers can read the suggested targets from ASTTRO when they write detailed instrument command sequences for uplink to the rover. The five-hour operational timeline creates stresses on instrument teams to work fast without sacrificing accuracy. In those five hours, we have to define, write, check, test, and uplink our commands. You don't usually get a second chance to take any of the pictures we take of Mars, so we want it to be right the first time. Every time. To that end, for Mastcam-Z, we wanted our own very specialized and highly capable camera visualization and commanding tool to interface with JPL's ASTTRO program. We are already beyond planning and deep into the development and testing phase of this tool, which is called Viewpoint. Viewpoint will be able to read in and display all the images we have taken on Mars so far from previous rovers, as well as HiRiSE images of the landing site and traverse path taken from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Combining surface and orbital images, creating mosaics on the fly, and being able to virtually move the rover and oneself around in the environment to gain different perspectives, Viewpoint is akin to using Google Mars on your home computer. There's an "overhead view" that uses Mars data from the MRO orbiter that enables you to see the Mars rover in the landscape from above, providing excellent context to where we are right now, and where we are going next. There's also the "street view" where you can look out on the Mars landscape from the perspective of the rover. Several of us have already started to use Viewpoint on the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers. This software enables us to see the sand and rocks the Curiosity rover is standing on, for example, and pan all the way to the horizon where you can see the Gale Crater walls, and Mt. Sharp in the distance. David Hallberg on His New Memoir, and How His Injury Recovery Changed Him On November 7, David Hallbergs highly anticipated memoir, A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back, will be available in bookstores. (Its currently available for pre-order from Simon & Schuster and various other retailers.) Published by Touchstone Books, the autobiography details Hallbergs arduous recovery from a series of career-threatening injuries, and his triumphant return to the stage. Marina Harss spoke with the American Ballet Theatre principal about how his experience has changed him, his future with the Bolshoi and his desire to someday direct a company. Courtesy Simon & Schuster Why did you decide to write a memoir? The initial seed was planted by New York Times dance critic Roslyn Sulcas. This was way before the Bolshoi. She just said youre traveling a lot now. You know, maybe just start to jot some things down about your experiences. So I took her advice, and then Simon & Schuster called and expressed interest in a book, and I dove in headfirst. The focus of the book must have changed a lot after the injury. Absolutely, and to be honest, the book had no backbone before the injury. It was dance memoir 101. Not to say I didnt have a story to tell. But the meat of the book and for me, the heart, and soul, and the gut, is the nightmare that I went through with the injury. As I was reading the book it felt almost as if you were a survivor of some kind of trauma. It was emotionally traumatic. It was physically traumatic. It was mentally traumatic. Everything unraveled, and everything went wrong. How has the experience of being away from the stage for two years, and coming back from a series of potentially-career-ending injuries changed you? I see things more holistically. Its really not just about the self and the ego anymore. Im more compassionate, and I know that when something comes my way, I can live through it. Im a lot more aware of everything around me, of who Im partnering, of portraying a character, of boiling it down to who I am within a given framework. Hallberg backstage with ABTs physical therapist, Peter Marshall. Photo Courtesy Simon & Schuster. You talk a lot about the ego in the book, and in your profession you need a healthy ego. So how are you going to reconcile this new outward focus with the ego that goes with being an artist? One thing I havent lost is my ambition. Its never good enough. Theres always something to discover. When I step onstage as Albrecht or in a new ballet, I do so wanting to discover the experience, using what Ive been given and my years of experience. But the sour part of ego, thats when things spoil and when the goal is compromised, and it becomes about something more fickle than artistic fulfillment. It seems that one thing that led to your injury is overwork. Have you learned to say no? Absolutely. I revel in preparatory time, in being afforded six weeks to prepare for the fall season as opposed to coming in two weeks before and doing repertoire that I already know so I could just throw it onstage and say Ive done a full season. I dont have to run around like crazy. It doesnt make me feel good anymore. Another important theme in the book is loneliness. Is it something inherent in the profession? Or is it more about who you are? Its the loneliness of the path I chose. I chose to travel a lot. I chose to accept these invitations. I chose to put myself in an environment where I knew no one and didnt speak the language. Its more who I am than about the profession. I go to Australia, and there, its this inclusive environment. The dancers are so beautifully taken care of. They all go through their entire school and professional lives together. Its this environment thats very protective, and you feel this connectivity with everyone around you. I had the opposite, and so I guess its what I crave as a person. You crave it? It sounds like a double-edged sword. Yeah, its difficult, but Ive learned that I get bored if I dont have those challenges. I love the difficulty of saying Im going to Moscow alone. How exciting. How scary. Or, Im moving to Paris. I dont speak the language. I know no one. Im buying a one-way ticket, and Im moving to Australia for I dont know how long to see if strangers, essentially, can save my career. Those experiences are who I am. Hallberg with Evgenia Obraztsova in Onegin at the Bolshoi Ballet. Photo by Batyr Annadurdyev, Courtesy Simon & Schuster. Are you going to go back to the Bolshoi? Not sure. You havent made plans yet? No. To be determined. You write very movingly about what it felt like to dance Giselle and Romeo and Juliet with Natalia Osipova. And how bewildering it was when she left the Bolshoi, where you had hoped to dance with her. It has recently been announced that you will be dancing Giselle with her next year, at ABT and the Royal Ballet. Have you been in touch? I have. It makes me emotional. Was that the ultimate experience for you? It was. Thats why I dance. To experience what we had, not just what she gave me, but what I gave her, what we give each other. How have you changed as a dancer? Its a constant evolution. I feel like physically, Im more earthbound. Ive restructured my entire instrument, and it has more weight. I carry myself differently because I have a lot more to support myself with. You had help on the physical side, but was the rest of it, the mental healing, up to you? Well, one of the branches of the rehab team is a sport psych. So I would see a sport psych every week, just mentally get me through the process. But I have to say, as much as it helped seeing a sport psych and as vital as it is going through an injury, it was the moments of just sitting in the park drinking beer, and smoking, and just, being alone that really. Those were the most productive moments. Hallberg and Australian Ballet principal Amber Scott. Photo by Kate Longley, Courtesy Simon & Schuster. Now that youve gotten so close to losing your dance career, can you imagine a life after ballet? Absolutely. I still think about it daily. I was this close. I was about to step over the edge and go into another life. I know my passion as a dancer is so crystalized because of what I went through, but my passion for what I want to give as a non-dancer is even more crystalized. That was part of the process, as well. I know what it tastes like. Im not scared of it at all. And what is that? You know, I feel so empowered to give to this art form as a leader. I can see where it is now, and I want to drive it forward. The most obvious thing would be to be a director of company. I feel so impassioned about leading dancers and taking what Ive been given in my career around the world and applying that to an institution. Ive always had an interest in that, but eventually, push will come to shove, and I will hopefully find an institution that I believe in and that believes in me, and Ill be so ready. A 56-year-old DeKalb County, AL, deputy was killed Tuesday in a traffic crash, according to officials with the department where he worked, reports the Times Free Press. "Our hearts here at the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office are saddened this morning when we learned that one of our deputies, Daniel Matthews was in a car accident that took his life," DeKalb County Sheriff Jimmy Harris said Tuesday in a news release. "Daniel was 56 years old, was with the DeKalb County Sheriff's Reserves for two years before becoming a deputy." Matthews had been a deputy for four years and also was employed by the Fort Payne Housing Authority, Harris said. The U.S. military conducted bombing drills recently in the mountains of Missouri to practice hitting targets in North Korea. According to U.S. website the Aviationist on Tuesday, the U.S. Air Force practiced night-time air raids at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri involving three B-2 stealth bombers, while radio communication was overheard referring to "North Korea's leadership." David Cenciotti, who runs the website, said, "Was the exercise aimed at simulating a raid on a North Korean 'VIP'? Most probably yes." A California man stabbed and killed a police K-9 before being fatally shot by a police officer Tuesday afternoon. The man had also stabbed his girlfriend and thrown butcher knives at other officers, police said Wednesday. K-9 Jax was stabbed to death. (Photo: Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety) Jesus Birelas-Contreras refused to surrender before hurling the knives, according to police. Lt. Emmet Larkin fired at Birelas-Contreras, killing him, reports the Mercury News.. The girlfriend survived, but one of the Department of Public Safety's dogs, Jax, succumbed to his wounds. Jax, a 4-year-old German Shepherd, had served for two years with the department and was one of four dogs in the K-9 unit. Jax was the first Sunnyvale police dog killed in the line of duty. "It's a huge loss," said Chief Phan Ngo. "He was a family member, and his void will always be felt. He will always be in our hearts." Sayfullo Saipov has been charged with federal terrorism offenses in connection with Tuesday's attack in New York City in which eight people were killed, according to a charging document from the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek national who was living in New Jersey, is charged with providing material support to ISIS and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Sayfullo Saipov has been charged with federal terrorism offenses. (Photo: St. Charles Department of Corrections) Saipov rented a truck similar to the one used in the attack several times over the course of the last several weeks in order to be familiar with operating it, a law enforcement official tells CNN. He was said to be in critical but stable condition after Officer Ryan Nash of the New York Police Department shot him in the abdomen following the Halloween assault. But he was reportedly celebrating the deadly attack, rejoicing in his room at Bellevue Hospital, sources told the New York Daily News Wednesday. "He's talking. He's laughing. He's very happy with what he did," said a source who was briefed by a hospital staffer on the floor. "He feels accomplished." A second source said Saipov, in his interviews with investigators, showed "no remorse" and was "glad that he did what he set out to do." The driver who sped down a crowded bike path in New York City on Tuesday, killing eight people, had been planning the attack for weeks and appeared to have connections to people who were the subjects of terrorism investigations, police officials said on Wednesday, reports the New York Times. As counterterrorism investigators drilled into whether the attacker had meaningful ties to terrorist organizations, it also became clear that some of those close to the attacker had feared for years that he was heading down the path of extremism. Saipov rented a pickup truck from a Home Depot in New Jersey at 2:06 p.m. on Tuesday before crossing into Manhattan on the George Washington Bridge, the police said in the first public timeline provided by authorities. At 3:04 p.m., a camera caught him driving onto a bike path alongside the Hudson River, where the police said he appeared to be targeting pedestrians and cyclists as he mowed people down. After crashing into a school bus near Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan, he jumped out with a pellet gun and a paintball gun and shouted, "Allahu akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the authorities said. Investigators found a number of knives in and around the truck, the police said. And near the truck was a handwritten note with a few lines of Arabic indicating allegiance to the Islamic State, law enforcement officials said. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a 'T' the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack," John Miller, NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said on Wednesday, CNN reports CNN. Thornton, CO, police have arrested a 47-year-old suspect in the apparently random Walmart shooting in which a man almost casually shot two men and a woman, killing them, before turning around and walking out of the store Wednesday night. Scott Ostrem, 47, was arrested at around 8 a.m. Police searched Ostrems last known address, in the 7100 block of Samuel Drive in Denver, on Thursday morning, Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila said at a 9 a.m. news conference. Ostrem was not at home. Ostrem was stopped and arrested without incident, Avila said. A loud noise reported by bystanders was a SWAT units flash-bang grenade, used as a distraction during the arrest, Avila told the Denver Post. Ostrem allegedly used a handgun to shoot the three people in the Walmart Wednesday evening, Avila said. Jacob Solberg is accused of punching a police horse. (Photo: Hennepin County) A 22-year-old man is accused of running up to a mounted police officer in downtown Minneapolis early Saturday morning and punching a police horse. The Minneapolis Police Department says officers were patrolling on horseback after bar close when the man ran up, without provocation, and punched a police horse. Neither the horse or the ride were injured, CBS Minnesota reports. The man identified as Jacob Solberg, of Minneapolis ran off, but officers quickly gave chase and arrested him. New Smyrna Beach (FL) police officer Josh Caverley was killed in an off-duty vehicle accident. (Photo: New Smyrna Beach PD) An off-duty New Smyrna Beach (FL) Police Department officer was killed in a single-vehicle accident early Thursday morning, according to the department and the Florida Highway Patrol. At about 1:45 a.m., patrol officer Josh Calverley was driving his 2004 Toyota pickup truck northbound on U.S. 1 when for some reason, the 29-year-old driver lost control and went into the median, troopers say. He reportedly overcorrected and went into the east shoulder, where his pickup overturned. The roof of the truck hit a tree. He died at the scene, MyNews13 reports. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print WASHINGTON (Reuters) The U.S. House Intelligence Committee will disclose on Wednesday a sample of Russian-linked content that ran on social media during the 2016 presidential election, the panels top Democrat said. Representative Adam Schiff said the committee would show a representative sample of Russian advertisements and posts during a hearing on Wednesday at which lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Alphabets Google, were testifying about Russian influence on their networks. Here are some of the Russia linked ads: (Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Andrew Hay) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print By Olivia Oran (Reuters) Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein will visit China as part of a business delegation in November at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump, a Goldman spokesman confirmed. Blankfein will be the only executive of a major financial company traveling as part of the trade mission which is being led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, according to a preliminary list. Executives from major industrial companies including General Electric Co , Honeywell International Inc and Boeing Co are on the list, as well as a large number of leaders from energy and commodities firms. Blankfein has publicly used Twitter to speak out against Trump. In January, he became the first major Wall Street leader to speak out against Trumps order to halt arrivals from several Muslim-majority countries. He also criticized the White Houses decision in September to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that protects young, undocumented immigrants from deportation. China is an important region for Goldman, which ranked as the top M&A dealmaker in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan in the first nine months of the year, according to Thomson Reuters data. While Wall Street firms like Goldman have to partner with a Chinese joint venture firm to run their investment banking businesses on the mainland, U.S. banks have for years been trying to operate these businesses on their own. Following a trip to Beijing earlier this year, Blankfein said there was a a lot of confidence in China and it was almost an island of stability. (Reporting by Olivia Oran in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print WASHINGTON (Reuters) Raytheon Co has been awarded a $2.87 billion contract for services supporting the Army, combatant commanders and other Department of Defense customers for live, virtual and constructive training domains, the Pentagon said on Thursday. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by David Alexander) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print In a new letter, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) his position as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to call out Attorney General Jeff Sessions lies about Russia, and demand answers from Sessions about his false statements. In a letter to Sessions, Franken wrote: The letter goes on to demand answers from Sessions about his interactions with George Papadopoulos and attempts to set up a meeting between Trump and the Russians. Franken calls out Sessions for making contradictory statements and demanding in writing to know the truth. Sen. Franken has been a constant thorn in the side of the Trump administration ever since Sessions lied about meeting with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation hearing. Al Franken knows that Jeff Sessions has perjured himself multiple times in sworn testimony in front of the United States. If there is one Trump administration official who is a Russia related domino ready to fall, it is Jeff Sessions. The top law enforcement officer in the country cant be a pathological liar when it comes to Trump/Russia collusion. Sessions is up to his eyeballs in the Russia scandal, and Sen. Al Franken is fighting hard to get to the truth behind Jeff Sessions Russia lies. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print In news that surprises no one, President Donald Trumps Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been caught in yet another Russia-related lie. It turns out that George Papadopoulos suggested the idea of Trump meeting with Putin while Sessions was present. Rep. Ted Lieu weighed in succinctly, saying on Twitter, Turns out that Lyin Jeff Sessions lied. Under oath. Turns out that Lyin' Jeff Sessions lied. Under oath. https://t.co/13QqTLkyjP Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) November 2, 2017 CNN reported, According to court filings unsealed this week, Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos suggested at a March 2016 meeting that he could use his connections to set up a meeting between Putin and Trump with the then-GOP candidates national security team. An Instagram picture on Trumps account shows Sessions attended the meeting at which Papadopoulos made the suggestion. Meeting with my national security team in #WashingtonDC. #Trump2016 A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Mar 31, 2016 at 7:09pm PDT Furthermore, Trump declined to rule out the idea of meeting Putin. Sessions stepped in to reject the idea, according to a person who attended the meeting and spoke to CNN. This is yet another example of Russia-related memory loss for the Attorney General, but magically Sessions memory returned: So in his confirmation hearing, the attorney general misled the Senate twice in his testimony https://t.co/fU6KsOC8Br Adam Serwer (@AdamSerwer) November 2, 2017 Sessions also lied during his confirmation hearing when he denied meeting with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. The phrase lock him up has never been more appropriate, as Sessions may go from Attorney General to the inside of a jail cell. Shin (95), who has dementia, was indicted in October last year on charges of paying W50.8 billion in wages to family members who had never worked for the company, including his older son Shin Dong-joo (63) and mistress Seo Mi-kyung (57). "Considering his status and role in this crime and the scale of profits he gained directly or via family members, harsh punishment is inevitable for him, despite his old age and poor health," a prosecutor said. Prosecutors on Wednesday called for a 10-year prison sentence and W300 billion fine for Lotte Group founder Shin Kyuk-ho for embezzlement, breach of trust and other charges (US$1=W1,115). The Supreme Court ruled in June of this year that a guardian should be appointed for him after determining that he is no longer capable of proper decision making. Shin appeared in court in a wheelchair on Wednesday and gave nonsensical replies, as if he was not aware that he was on trial. Shin's lawyer said in a court session late last month, "Please do not turn him into a convict. He has lost most of his memory and is incapable of defending himself." One lawyer who used to be a judge said, "What's the point of sentencing someone to 10 years when that person cant possibly be sent to prison?" Prosecutors also sought a 10-year prison term and W100 billion fine for his second son, current Lotte chairman Shin Dong-bin (62), who has been engaged in an unsightly tussle for the succession with his brother and father. Prosecutors said Shin's "entire family used any means possible to treat the company's assets as their own, while the scale of embezzlement is unprecedented." Prosecutors probed the conglomerate for more than four months. Twenty prosecutors and 200 investigators were assigned to the massive investigation and its offices were raided a dozen times. Around 400 Lotte staffers were summoned for questioning. But after failing to locate alleged slush funds amassed by the Korean-Japanese family, prosecutors fixed their sights on tax evasion charges. Another lawyer said, "It looks like prosecutors sought an extra-tough sentence because of the public outrage and the need to save face." Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print WASHINGTON (Reuters) Sam Clovis, a top adviser to President Donald Trump during his election campaign, on Thursday withdrew his candidacy for a senior administration post, just days after he was linked to another aide who pleaded guilty in the probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. We respect Mr. Cloviss decision to withdraw his nomination, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Tim Ahmann) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print By James Oliphant FRONT ROYAL, Va. (Reuters) Ralph and Mike Waller are such ardent backers of President Donald Trump that they help stage a counter-protest every Wednesday in front of their Front Royal, Virginia, pawn shop, sparring with anti-Trump demonstrators who gather across the street. But ask them about Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Virginia governor in next Tuesdays election, and they show little enthusiasm. I would like somebody whos more closely aligned with Trump, Ralph Waller, who is Mike Wallers uncle, said from the shop floor, racks of pawned rifles behind him. Gillespie is, in fact, nothing like Trump, a real estate magnate who had never before held political office, although both are members of the same party. Gillespie is a Washington lobbyist who worked in President George W. Bushs White House, the kind of establishment mainstay Trump bashed on the campaign trail. Moreover, Gillespie has largely kept his distance from Trump, rarely mentioning him by name and notably not asking for Trumps help in a tight race. But Gillespie still needs voters like the Wallers. Trump, who lost Virginia last year by 5 points to Democrat Hillary Clinton, did best in rural areas such as the counties along Virginias mountainous spine, less so in urban areas. That tension has Gillespie looking to thread the thinnest of needles, trying to appeal to voters turned off by Trump while retaining enough of Trumps passionate base to secure victory. Should he win, Gillespie might provide a blueprint for other Republican candidates unsure how to campaign in an era when the president is popular with fewer than 40 percent of Americans. If he manages to do this, hes shown how you engage Trump voters while literally avoiding Donald Trump, said Quentin Kidd, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. The Virginia governors race, one of only two in the country this year, is being watched nationally by political observers looking for clues about next years midterm elections, in which Democrats are seeking to seize one or both houses of Congress. GANG WARFARE Gillespie has been courting Trump voters by focusing on what he says is the threat posed by illegal immigrants, a longtime Trump campaign theme. He has criticized sanctuary cities and run ads warning of the street gang MS-13, which is largely composed of members from Central America. He has also called for preserving Confederate monuments following the clashes between white supremacists and protesters in August in Charlottesville, Virginia. Once trailing significantly behind Democrat Ralph Northam, the states lieutenant governor, Gillespie has risen in the polls since the ads began running regularly. Kidd credits the spots for making the race competitive. Sanctuary cities, Gillespie told Reuters in an interview, are not going to make us safer. While Virginia has no sanctuary cities, which often do not use municipal funds or resources to enforce federal immigration laws, the issue arose earlier this year when a measure by the states legislature to prohibit them was vetoed by Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe. But some argue Gillespie is being too cautious. Corey Stewart, who ran against Gillespie in the gubernatorial primary and garnered support from Trumps base, said Gillespie erred in not asking the president to campaign for him and in not doing more to harness the energy Trump has stirred. Hes put the president at a distance, and he has offended a lot of the presidents supporters, Stewart said. And it could cost him the election. Trump has tweeted his support for Gillespie, but that is as far as it has gone. Gillespie said he appreciated Trumps endorsement but declined to say whether he would ask for more, even parroting Trumps own words in doing so. Just like the president doesnt disclose his military strategy, we dont disclose our campaign strategy, he said. SUBURBAN SWING At a recent house party in Fairfax County, Virginia, just outside Washington, Gillespie mixed with a prosperous group of Republicans who snacked on a catered spread and chatted about private schools. He spoke to them about traditional Republican priorities such as economic growth and education reform and never once mentioned Trump, while referring to other politicians who support him such as Vice President Mike Pence and George W. Bush. Thats smart, said Chris Andreas, a Great Falls, Virginia, resident who attended the event and said he believed Trump had hurt the Republican party. In 2016, Trump fared significantly worse in Fairfax County than Republican nominee Mitt Romney did four years earlier. There are more voters to be gained there than anywhere else in the state. The strategys downside is that while Democrats hold a large advantage in Northern Virginia, they are losing ground in rural areas. In Warren County, where Front Royal is located, Trump gained 2,000 votes more than Romney largely by attracting wayward Democrats, said Stephen Kurtz, a former chair of the county Republican Party. The pattern, he said, repeated across other counties in rural Virginia. Kurtz said he had heard grumbling over Gillespies Washington background and worries some voters energized by Trump may stay home. It is a hard sell, believe me, Kurtz said. (Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Much is being made of the Democratic civil war with some Democratic strategists clinging to the idea that economic anxiety is the key to winning Trump voters, and blaming Democrats for not having an economic plan. Not only does the American National Election Studies (ANES) show that economic anxiety is not why Trump voters supported the President, but even right now in Virginia, the Republican in the 2017 gubernatorial race is gaining by going racist. Republican Ed Gillespie was losing in the polls to Democrat Ralph Northam as he walked the wire avoiding the toxicity of Trump but trying to court Trump voters. Gillespie found the sweet spot for Trump voters by focusing on illegal immigrants and Confederate monuments. That is to say, he is going racist. Gillespie has been courting Trump voters by focusing on what he says is the threat posed by illegal immigrants, a longtime Trump campaign theme. He has criticized sanctuary cities and run ads warning of the street gang MS-13, which is largely composed of members from Central America. He has also called for preserving Confederate monuments following the clashes between white supremacists and protesters in August in Charlottesville, Virginia, James Oliphant reported Thursday. Once trailing significantly behind Democrat Ralph Northam, the states lieutenant governor, Gillespie has risen in the polls since the ads began running regularly. Kidd credits the spots for making the race competitive. Stanley Greenberg, the veteran Democratic strategist, claimed that Virginia is a good example of the malpractice Hillary Clinton engaged in during her 2016 campaign. Look at Virginia right now, Greenberg is reported telling the New Yorker: We have a candidateRalph Northam, the Democratic gubernatorial nomineerunning as Hillary Clinton. He is running on the same kind of issues, and has the same kind of view of the world. Its the Republicans who talk about the economy, not the Democrats. This was the approach that doomed Clinton against Trump. The electorate was angry in 2016 and remains angry now, Greenberg said, and Northam, a Norfolk doctor, didnt get it. Neither did Clinton and the team of Obama veterans who staffed her Brooklyn headquarters. If you live in the metro areas with the elites, you dont wake up angry about whats happening in peoples lives, Greenberg said. Ironically enough, Greenberg said this while sitting in his Capitol Hill townhouse. Whereas I am writing this from rural Pennsylvania. The Russians, it turns out, used Black Lives Matter to rile up support for Trump. Yes, it was racism. I get it, Democrats love nothing more than blaming themselves for things, but in this case, its simply not accurate. The data doesnt support this and neither does reality. Hillary Clinton talked incessantly about the economy. No one cared. They cared when Bernie Sanders talked about the economy. Why is that? Perhaps it was Clintons style, perhaps is was difficult for some people to hear a woman, perhaps those saying this dont see Clintons economic plans for women and working families as addressing economic issues for reasons they should examine on their own time, or perhaps the media fell in love with Donald Trumps easy clicks. Reality is it was not economic anxiety. Analyzing ANES, Nation concluded, Our analysis shows Trump accelerated a realignment in the electorate around racism, across several different measures of racial animusand that it helped him win. By contrast, we found little evidence to suggest individual economic distress benefited Trump. The Washington Post found, Since 1988, weve never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions The same jump on the SRS (symbolic racism scale) scale made someone 20 percent more likely to vote for Trump. It is the racism. One could argue that behind racism there is often economic anxiety, but that is also not a full explanation for the racism of the Trump voters, as many are not the destitute former coal workers the media portrays them to be. Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals are Trump voters here in rural Pennsylvania. If you ask why, the reasons are things that have been debunked. Then in the next breath, you will be told that black people whining about not having access to guns is why we cant have gun control. The racism is the hook for the misinformation. This is the kind of misinformation campaign Democrats and, actually, democracy, are up against. Its not about issues. If only it were that simple. Hungary would badly need funding, investors don't care Hungarys Government Debt Management Agency (AKK) has on Thursday put the largest lot of 12-month discount Treasury Bill up for auction in nearly a year, but due to muted demand it did not manage to allot as much as it wanted to. The issuer had greater luck with the floating-rate bond where a HUF 7 bn lot was scooped up. The process we have seen over the last few weeks continued at todays auction. The debt manager raised the offered lot further but at such depressed yield levels investors were not enticed. The AKK placed a HUF 40 bn lot of 12-m T-bills up for auction, which is the largest amount offered since the end of December 2016. The usual lots on offer at the previous auctions were HUF 15-20 bn therefore todays lot marks a major raise. That is part of the reason why the auction was not a success and only HUF 29.8 bn worth of bids were submitted by primary dealers, of which HUF 25 bn were accepted. The average yield, however, was up at 0.03% from -0.02% two weeks ago. And now the lowest accepted yield was no longer zero; accepted yields were in a range between 0% and 0.05%.The auction of the 5-year floating-rate bond was more successful. A HUF 7 bn lot attracted HUF 14.2 bn worth of bids, and the AKK allotted the original lot on offer. Travelers line up at a security point at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on the day before Thanksgiving in 2013. Travel is expected to climb 3 percent around the November holiday. File/Detroit News via AP The owners of The Venue at Falls Park in Greenville are expanding their footprint with another upscale events venue in the space formerly occupied by Pour Taproom. Read moreFormer Pour Taproom in downtown Greenville to become an events venue President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday called for a referendum on constitutional changes that would strip presidents of some of their regal powers and make it possible for them to seek re-election. "I think it would be good timing to hold a referendum in tandem with regional elections in June next year," Moon told the National Assembly. "I ask you to start working on it so that we don't miss that time." A constitutional revision was one of Moon's election pledges, and he is apparently frustrated that lawmakers have yet to debate the changes that were widely demanded amid the ouster of ex-President Park Geun-hye. Moon said he also hopes the electoral system will be revised to reflect voters' choices more fairly. Moon supports limiting excessive presidential authority and devolving more power to regional governments. A special committee at the National Assembly has been set up to hammer out a draft revision but has been bogged down in cross-party bickering. ERETRIA, Greece The sites of horror the places where mass murder happened are seared into my memory. Holocaust sites such as the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz, or Kigali, where the Hutus butchered the Tutus, or the Falls Road in Belfast, where many died over the decades of strife. Read moreCommentary: New sites of death are minted every day Michelin Guide Seoul on Wednesday published a list of 48 "Bib Gourmand" restaurants in Seoul, ahead of the release of the second full Seoul edition next week. The Bib Gourmand category consist of restaurants where customers can enjoy "exceptionally good food at moderate prices" -- under W35,000 in the case of Korea (US$1=W1,115). Their number has jumped from last year's 36. Restaurants serving gukbap, or hot meat soup with rice, fared particularly well with three new entrants. They are stalwarts Hadongkwan and Mapook, which first opened in 1939 and 1949, and Okdongsik, the "pioneer of a new genre of pork soup." Daesungjip and Imun Seollnongtang beef soup restaurants were already on last year's list. Among other Asian restaurants were Inaniwa Yosuke, the Seoul outpost of Sato Yosuke in Tokyo, Hanoi-style pho restaurant Emoi, and Taiwanese noodle bar Wooyukmien. These walking dead arent zombiestheyre poets. Though Sylvia Plath and Gil Scott-Heron are dead, their poetry give them eternal life. Experience part of that life at the Day of the Dead Poets Slam. The event combines elements of the traditional Dia de los Muertos celebration with a live poetry-reading competition. "Combining a Mexican cultural tradition with a recent literary phenomenon is something that is unique to the Day of the Dead Poets Slam as far as I know," says event founder, director, and emcee Danny Solis. At the slam, costumed poets might arrive in makeup while wielding props to compete as the dead poet they represent. The events carnival-like atmosphere encourages rowdy crowd participation, including cheers for incredible performances and hisses for the judges unfavorable scores. The key to delivering another poets work, says Solis, is "losing the self (and) opening yourself up to the spirit of the poem, serving that singular piece of vision and passion, and then giving it all away to the audience." ADVERTISEMENT Now in its fourth year, the slam, which takes place Nov. 4 at the Rochester Art Center (RAC), is at the epicenter of three compelling cultural happenings: a youth poetry reading entitled "I remember", a VIP (Very Important Pachanga) Dance and Poetry Party, and a Free Family Day featuring Dia de los Muertos crafts at the RAC. The competition, complete with cash prizes, will take place amidst decorated sugar skulls, altars commissioned from local artists, and the intense rhythms of Mexica Yololt and Mexica Yololtzin, Aztec dancing groups. With all the moving parts, the event requires a lot of help. "I am a tiny part of a really wonderful and talented whole," says Solis, "and that includes all the production crew, visual artists, and poets." He also singles out McKay Bram, the events grant writer, as being integral to the process. This year, eight poets were left standing after the auditions. Solis, one of three judges, describes the process as "fraught with tension and the fickleness of a five-minute sample of a performers work." Max Brumberg-Kraus (performing as Antonin Artaud), Madeline Karita Fleming (Amiri Baraka), Susan Cossette (Sylvia Plath), Torres Hodges (Gil Scott-Heron), Parvathi Balachandran (Langston Hughes), Jennifer Jesseph (Maxine Kumin), Ginger Fride (Frank OHara), and Khadija Siddiqui (Parveen Shakir) have all passed a trial by fire to compete at the deadly slam. In addition to poetry, local artists will execute their own takes on traditional Day of the Dead altars. "This year [the] selection of artistsfeatures several firsts in terms of [the] artists identity and collaborations" says Solis, pointing to the events first husband-husband artistic team of Jeff Jurewicz and Miguel Pareja Cajiao, the first mother-daughter artistic team of Karla Giguere and Genevieve Giguere, and the first non-binary transgender artist, Amarama Vercnocke. This "dead" events lively atmosphere makes it the perfect platform for art-centered fun, and Solis promises the slam will bring us closer together: "All the arts make us more human. Poetry, dance, music, [and] visual arts serve to make us more understanding of each other, to bridge the daunting voids between us." What Day of the Dead Poets Slam ADVERTISEMENT When 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4 Where Rochester Art Center 40 Civic Center Dr SE, Rochester, Minnesota 55904 Admission Free A 15-year-old John Marshall High School student could be criminally charged after he allegedly threatened to shoot up the school a threat that was surreptitiously recorded. Rochester police responded to the school about 11:25 a.m. Wednesday after another student reported overhearing the 15-year-old complain about getting a failing grade, the report says. The suspect said he was going to shoot up the school and the teacher who gave him the grade, said Capt. John Sherwin, and told school officials. The claim was reportedly caught on Snapchat , an image messaging app. The school went into a "soft lockdown," which means the day proceeds as usual, but no one is allowed to leave the building. The 15-year-old was found at lunch, Sherwin said; he didn't have a weapon and was cooperative with authorities. He faces a possible charge of making terroristic threats. Road construction and changes are spurring a Rochester credit union to close a northwest brand in December. First Alliance Credit Union announced this week that it plans to close its northwest branch at 3900 Fairway Place NW, just off 55th Street Northwest. It will close for good on Dec. 29. New First Alliance CEO Michael Roseksent out a note this week to members to explain the change. "While member traffic at the branch started out very strong, the major road construction project has significantly decreased convenient access to the northwest branch, as such, member activity has declined, and we anticipate continued declines in member activity and traffic at this location due to the roadway changes," Rosek wrote. First Alliance originally opened the branch in 700 square feet of leased space in 2014. It has one members services staffer based there along with two part-time tellers, according to Lisett Comai-Legrand, First Alliance's director of marketing and product management. ADVERTISEMENT Comai-Legrand said the staff will moved to other sites when the branch closes, so no jobs will be lost. The credit union has two other Rochester branches at 320 Alliance Place NE and 501 16th St. SE, as well as one in Byron. First Alliance also has a full-service ATM site off 48th Street Southeast, near the entrance of Rochester's Shoppes on Mainedevelopment. In the closing announcement, Rosek said the credit union still is interested in having a branch in that quadrant. "We continue to search for a suitable location in the northwest section of Rochester as we know our members live and work in this area. Unfortunately, at this time, there are no viable options for us," he wrote. First Alliance does own land on 41st Street Northwest as well as next to the ATM at 48th Street Southeast, though there are no active plans for either site. There's no word on any potential tenants taking over the space in the 55th Street commercial building after December. Home Federal Savings Bankoriginally built the 9,800-square-foot facility in 2002. The bank occupied it until 2014. However, the Rochester bank was a leasing tenant at that point because it sold the building to Les Nelson, of Clear Lake, Iowa, in 2009 for more than $2 million. KASSON The savory, sweet smells of southern barbecue will soon be wafting from a former department store on Main Street. Jeannine Hensley, owner and general manager of the Misplaced Magnolia, is opening a southern barbecue bistro in one of the four units in the former Leuthold's building at 111 W. Main St. in Kasson. She and her husband, Gerry Hensley, a civil military project manager with the Army Reserves, spend their days trying to tie up loose ends in anticipation of opening the modern-rustic restaurant 11 a.m. Nov. 13. The dining area, which will seat 48, exhibits a rustic and historic atmosphere while embracing some modern twists. The menu features a variety of southern foods, such as po-boys, catfish nuggets, and fried green tomatoes. There's also a chop board featuring pork barbecue and brisket Jeannine and Gerry came to Minnesota from Greenbrier, Ark. For years, Jeannine has dreamed of owning and operating a restaurant where she could be her own boss. ADVERTISEMENT "I've been general manager for well over a decade, and have been running other people's restaurants since high school," she said. "I know every job from the front door to the back door." While working at a restaurant in Rochester, a customer referred to Jeannine as a "misplaced magnolia" having come from Arkansas. She found the name perfect for her future restaurant. The big sign outside of the former Leuthold's clothing store is proof new life is getting breathed into the once-vacant property. Passing pedestrians sneaki glances through the windows. "We've actually had to lock the front door," Jeannine said. "They're excited to see something open in the building back on Main Street. it's nice that the community is invested in finally seeing something happening. I'm excited to be a part of getting more stuff in town for the local Kassonites." A misplaced magnolia Leuthold's closed more than a decade ago, and several of the units in the store front have been dormant for years. Now, three of those units are occupied by small businesses, including the new restaurant. Swiss immigrant Jacob Leuthold Sr. opened in 1865, the same year Kasson was founded, as a general store. About 13 years later, his son started a men's clothing store, and the business quickly grew, adding two other stores in Minnesota. Larry Turner and his wife, Sonja, took over the Kasson store in 1985. Then, in 2006, Leuthold's closed. ADVERTISEMENT Having lived in Kasson for nearly a decade, the Hensleys watched businesses and restaurants come and go. For a time, they wondered if anything would open in Leuthold's. So, when an opportunity arose, they jumped at it. However, the path to a blossoming Misplaced Magnolia has not been a smooth one.. "The first bank we went to told us that they would not loan us money because 'it was junk,' and that the property was neglected for too long." Gerry said. "It was considered a gamble. (we thought) the character of the building was worth it." Eventually, a credit union helped the Hensleys secure the necessary money to purchase the unit and renovate the space. However, renovations took almost eight years from the upstairs apartment to the main floor restaurant. Basically, the couple had to "start from scratch." The Hensleys pulled up five layers of flooring to expose the original hardwood floors and sandblasted the ceilings to reveal the original white tin, which had been painted black. Gerry also was deployed to the Middle East about 11 months ago, leaving Jeannine with the bulk of the project. When he returned home at the end of August, he was stunned to find Misplaced Magnolia coming together. "I was feeling kinda guilty," Gerry said. "I felt guilty for leaving (Jeannine). She said, 'Go, I got this.' She did. She had this and she managed the household too. I think she did a great job." A place for locals ADVERTISEMENT A firm believer in supporting all things local, most of Jeannine's 16 employees live in Kasson or nearby. The bistro hopes to source much of its produce locally by next spring. They also hired local contractors from Dodge County to help assist with construction and renovations. "Kasson is growing, but our choices haven't," she said. "I think by adding one more place, it's going to benefit everyone. Rochester is real close, and we want to add more variety so we can keep tax dollars here rather than giving them to Rochester." With the grand opening of Misplaced Magnolia near, the Hensleys said they feel both nervous and confident. "I'm just hoping I can get some good food to everybody fast enough," Jeannine said with a smile. Misplaced Magnolia southern bistro 111 W. Main St., Kasson Anticipated grand opening: 11 a.m., Nov. 13 Hours of operation (subject to change) Monday-Thursday: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Strike back against sex trafficking at a fundraising luncheon and art sale Saturday at Calvary Evangelical Free Church in Rochester. The event will raise money for Love Justice International , formerly Tiny Hands International, a nonprofit that works to stop the international trafficking of young women and children. Tickets are $20. "Love Justice is having a huge impact," said Vicki Tiede, a member of the Love Justice International board of directors. "In the last 15 years, they've intercepted more than 12,000 girls." "The beauty is that they're intercepted before they're handed over to a brothel," Tiede said. "Because you can't undo that damage. Interception is a beautiful thing, it changes the way a person's life was going to go." The organization hopes to prevent 3,400 young women and children from being trafficked in the next year. ADVERTISEMENT Love Justice began in Nepal and sets up stations at borders around the world, looking for women and children who appear to be traveling under duress. It takes about $20,000 per year to set up and run a new station. The luncheon has raised around $10,000 for the organization in years past, Tiede said. This year, she hopes for $20,000. "There's just all sorts of things that we need," Tiede said. "By coming to the event, people can see what they can do." Matt Allmand of Love Justice International will speak during the luncheon, and the Pearson Family will provide live music for the event. What : Luncheon and art sale to benefit Love Justice International When : 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. A pre-sale for ticketed guests will begin at 10:30 a.m., followed by the luncheon at 11:30. From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., the art and craft sale and silent auction will open to the public. ADVERTISEMENT Where : Calvary Evangelical Free Church, 5500 25th Ave. NW, Rochester. Tickets : $20, available at www.calvaryefc.org. The effort to design a new banner for Rochester is not flagging. In fact, it picked up speed Wednesday, as the first six finalists in the contest to design a city flag were announced at City Hall. Three flags selected by a panel of judges, along with three flags selected by public vote were unveiled. They will be part of a group of 12 finalists, from which a recommendation will be made to the City Council next spring. "There are common themes, even though they're so different," Lee Herold, a flag design consultant with the Rochester Flag Committee , said of the entries. "It draws you to what people see when you say Rochester." There are, for instance, references to health care, the local rivers, winter, and of course, the city's population of Canada geese even though these days the geese are probably outnumbered by crows. Those similarities are especially interesting given that four of the final six designs in this first round are by people who don't live in Rochester. ADVERTISEMENT The first-place design in the public vote portion of the contest is by Joe Ariemma, of Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. His design partially reflects the current city flag, which dates from 1980, with a sky blue band representing the Zumbro River running horizontally across the flag field. A flying goose is in the center of the flag. Second place in the public vote went to Joe Uessem, from Dusseldorf, Germany. Third place went to Jeff Bell, from Rochester. In the judges' vote, first place went to Brandon Hundt, of Minneapolis. His design features a white Greek cross, symbolizing medical care, on a field of two shades of blue, symbolizing water and the IBM plant. Second place in the judges' vote went to Donald Buske, of Rochester, while third place went to Masao Okazaki who grew up in Rochester but now lives in Tokyo. "This was certainly a grass-roots effort," Randy Staver, city council president, said of the effort to come up with a new flag. The current flag, he said, "has served us pretty well." But, Staver said, "As good as the current flag is, it was designed at a certain time in the city's history, and is reflective of that time." The new designs revealed Wednesday, he said, appear to be more timeless. There were 55 entries in the first design contest. The second contest, in which six more finalists will be selected, is open through Jan. 19. Design hints and requirements are available at rochesterflag.com. STEWARTVILLE Nick Johnson needed a place to open his financial services business, a storefront location where he could meet clients. But starting a new business can be expensive, and Johnson, who has opened a Thrivent Financial branch on Main Street in Stewartville, wanted to make sure his business had every chance to succeed. Enter the Stewartville Economic Development Authority and its business incubator program. The program is designed to help fill empty storefronts and commercial properties in Stewartville. "We have existing buildings in town, and we want a myriad of businesses to take advantage of the program," said Joya Stetson, Stewartville's EDA director. Often, it is the first year or so, as a business is building its client base and dealing with first-time expenses, that a business will fail, Stetson said. To help businesses succeed, Stewartville's fledgling incubator program works in a unique way. Rather than providing a low-cost office space to be shared by several startups, the program offers up to 18 months of rental assistance to businesses just starting out in their own commercial space. "This will help us fill those vacancies in town while simultaneously helping those businesses," Stetson said. ADVERTISEMENT The program also helps new businesses by offering education on everything from accounting to marketing and social media, she said. Catching Fire Things work very differently at Red Wing Ignite, the incubator that has helped businesses grow in Red Wing since 2013. "Our mission is to help build our community by fostering innovation," said Red Wing Ignite Executive Director Neela Mollgaard. The incubator has about 15-20 resident businesses at any given time including businesses with offices in the building and companies that use the space for meetings in lieu of renting their own storefront. "Sometimes you don't want to meet clients in a coffee shop," Mollgaard said. As part of its mission, Red Wing Ignite helps promote STEAM science, technology, engineering, arts and math education in the schools; helps develop emerging businesses though mentorships, investor events and partnerships with regional accelerators and grant-giving nonprofits; and supports businesses through training and workspace. Tim McKim one of the owners of BAM Video along with partners Joey Brunner and Steve Aldrich said his company needed room to start up but didn't want to invest in a big commercial space right off the bat. ADVERTISEMENT "It's a great place to get started," he said. "If we'd done our own thing, it would have cost a lot more. Here we have a small office for video editing and an office for our business needs." BAM Video also takes advantage of the gigabit internet connection in the building and the meeting spaces available to all Ignite residents. "It's a great place to get started," he said. "And there are other local businesses here and businesses coming through here we interact with. That's probably the top reason I wanted to be here." Elaine O'Keefe, coordinator for Live Healthy Red Wing, has office space at Ignite as well. The location downtown is close to her strategic partners, most of whom also work within walking distance. The Price Is Right "It's affordable," she said, a need for her nonprofit. "I can walk to most of my partners nearby or host them here. "And they've got all the technology I need," O'Keefe added. She said the video conference rooms allow her to host meetings without investing in the infrastructure such as projectors, video equipment and high-definition monitors. Johnson said Stewartville's rent assistance with his storefront has meant he should be able to invest in his business more quickly. ADVERTISEMENT "We'd like to hire an office professional," he said. "We should be able to accelerate that because of the funds they have helped with. Otherwise, it would likely have taken longer." Stetson said the company's plan to reinvest its savings is the kind of thing the Stewartville EDA is looking for in an incubator client. "One of the things we look for is people aren't relying on the money from the EDA," she said. But perhaps the biggest advantage of the incubator program, Johnson said, is the support from the city it represents. When Thrivent Financial's application was approved for the program, Mayor Jimmie John King welcomed the business to Stewartville and thanked Johnson for bringing his business to the city. "Stewartville has been so welcoming and so encouraging," Johnson said. "The encouragement is almost greater than the actual funding itself." Stetson said the program was started with a $9,000 grant from the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation. Similar to Red Wing Ignite, the Stewartville program offers business education classes through Community and Economic Development Associates. Because the program does not require investment in a building as Red Wing Ignite does, Stetson said, it could be replicated in smaller cities throughout the region. ST. PAUL A Rochester child care provider is among those calling on state lawmakers to repeal a new state law that will require her 14-year-old son to have his fingerprints taken. Jennifer Parrish said the state is going too far by mandating children ages 13 to 17 who live with a licensed child care provider have their fingerprints and photographs taken as part of a background check. If the law isn't repealed before taking effect next year, Parrish said she'll close her in-home day care. "If it comes down to it, and my only choices are that my children have to submit to this, I will have no choice," said Parrish, who is vice president of the Minnesota Association of Child Care Professionals . But representatives of the Minnesota Department of Human Services defended the new policy in a Senate hearing on Wednesday. Deputy Commissioner Chuck Johnson told senators the department pushed for the language in the bill. Since 1989, state law has required background checks be performed on children ages 13 to 17 using name and date of birth. Those background checks on minors resulted in 16 disqualifications in 2016 and nine so far in 2017. Johnson added that mandating that fingerprints be taken improves the background check process, which helps protect children. ADVERTISEMENT "The fingerprint really is the way to get to federal criminal information and what you lose without it is the ability to look at whether there was a crime that happened in another state," he said. During the hearing, licensed child care providers blasted the proposal. Parrish submitted written testimony in opposition to the plan because she was traveling and unable to attend the hearing. Federal law requires that anyone age 18 and older in a child care home undergo a fingerprint-based FBI study. The new Minnesota law goes a step further, requiring fingerprints be taken of 13 to 17-year-olds. Counties have long been responsible for performing background checks on the families of in-home child care providers. As part of the law change, the state is planning to take over those duties. Reggie Wagner, DHS' deputy inspector general, told lawmakers the state has a fingerprint-based background check system already in place so it make sense to do that with teenagers in child care homes. She emphasized that for minors, those checks would be done at the state level. No fingerprints would be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation unless the individual has a criminal record in Minnesota and is a multi-state offender. Fingerprints are destroyed at the state level and photographs are never sent on to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or the FBI. Wagner added that minors will not be required to go to a police department to get their fingerprints taken. Instead, some nursing homes, child care centers and counties can do it in addition to some FedEx and UPS store locations. "We have tried to build an infrastructure that reduces the stigma," Wagner said. But the department's answers did little to quell the concerns of child care providers and lawmakers. Julie Petersen, co-chairwoman of the Meeker County Child Care Association, said they have already seen a steady stream of providers shutting down their businesses. She said this added regulation will only worsen the situation. "There are many providers who are considering not being in this job anymore," Petersen told members of the Senate Human Services Reform Committee. ADVERTISEMENT The fingerprint requirement for minors has not yet taken effect. Johnson said the department doesn't expect that to happen until late summer or fall of 2018. He said the agency is willing to work with lawmakers before that happens. Senate Human Services Reform Committee Chairman Jim Abeler said in an interview after the hearing he supports repealing the law requiring minors be fingerprinted. "It's invasive and unnecessary and it's going to have a detrimental effect on people continuing to provide licensed home child care," the Anoka Republican said. No member of the committee voiced support for the law during the hearing. Sen. John Hoffman, DFL-Champlin, said he is frustrated that the provision was tucked into a massive health care bill that legislators had little time to review. "It's about the process and how this stuff gets put in front of us as a full body on the Senate floor when that bill was this thick and we had two hours to look at it," Hoffman said. Parrish said she hopes lawmakers will follow through and repeal the law next session. She said it is patently unfair to the children of licensed child care providers. She added, "Being fingerprinted and having essentially mug shots just to be able to live in your home is pretty ridiculous." ADVERTISEMENT MOORHEAD The University of Minnesota says wheat yields will hit a record 67 bushels per acre this year, topping the 60 bushels per acre harvested in 2015. Yields have doubled since 1995, partly because of successful regional wheat breeding programs that developed new varieties well suited to the states growing conditions, said Jochum Wiersma, small grains scientist with U of M extension. The boost in yields has come equally from improvements in genetics and better crop management; farmers have also been doing a better job of managing fungal diseases that decimated wheat crops in the early 1990s, Wiersma added. This year just over half of the wheat grown in Minnesota came from varieties developed by the University of Minnesota. While yields have steadily increased, fewer acres of wheat are planted in the state as farmers switched to corn and soybeans, Wiersma said. ADVERTISEMENT About 1.17 million acres of Minnesota farmland were planted with wheat in 2017, down from 1.3 million last year, according to the U. Most of the wheat is grown in the northwestern part of the state. The total harvest is forecast at 75.7 million bushels this year, up slightly from 2016 but down significantly from 85.8 million bushels in 2015. Minnesota ranked eighth among states in wheat production last year. I hope youve noticed that I havent written anything for a while. This is because I have been on vacation in England, and generally offline, for the last 11 days. So, did anything happen while I was gone? Just kidding. Ill have more to say about events of recent days before long, but for now just want to comment on conversations I had with Brits about politics while on vacation. These were few and unscientific, but were with well-informed people, including an MP. I pass them on for what they are worth. Several people asked what I think about President Trump. All were surprised when I said I think he is doing a good job, and if he keeps it up will be our best president since Reagan. All said they have hardly heard anyone defend him. All the people I talked politics with were intrigued by my defense of Trump, since they had never heard it before. Trump is restoring the rule of law? Who knew? The other thing I observed was that the level of interest in the Mueller investigation is high, but knowledge about it is nil. Everyone I talked politics with thought it was a big deal that Manafort and that other guy no one ever heard of have been arrested. One lefty I spoke with was literally rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of another endless Watergate drama. Needless to say, he was shocked at my suggestion that Trump should appoint a second independent counsel to investigate 1) the Uranium One scandal, 2) the role of the FBI in general, and Bill Mueller and James Comey in particular, in covering up the Uranium One scandal, and 3) collusion between the Clinton campaign and Russians to influence the 2016 election. It isnt only the British Left that takes the Mueller investigation seriously. Relatively conservative Brits seemed to have essentially the same view, mostly (I think) because they never hear the other side of the story. They suffer from the delusion that the New York Times and the Washington Post are reliable news sources. Thus, the Telegraph, which passes for a center-right newspaper in Great Britain, published this cartoon yesterday. (It is small because I would have had to pay for a bigger image.) So the Trump administration is a house of cards that will be brought tumbling down by the arrest of Paul Manafort for tax fraud predating his association with the Trump campaign. No doubt the cartoonist would have been stumped if asked what Manafort has been charged with and why it reflects in any way on President Trump, but the cartoon illustrates the zeitgeist. At present, it looks as though Muellers investigation will end with a whimper. There is still no reason to think anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. On the other hand, it is now universally accepted, I take it, that the Clinton campaign did collude with the Russians through Fusion GPS, not just to obtain damaging information on Donald Trump, but to fabricate it. This is one instance where I feel pretty sure that the truth is powerful, and all the Posts horses and all the Timess men wont be able to put the silly Trump/Russia narrative back together again. The Obama administration suppressed the release of the trove of al Qaeda documents seized in the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Ladens Abbotabad lair. It released a grand total of 571 documents and sat on the rest. Why so shy? Today the Trump administration released hundreds of thousands of the documents as well as images and computer files recovered in the raid. Tom Joscelyn and Bill Roggio provide an overview here at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Long War Journal. Joscelyn has separately posted bin Ladens journal online here. Based on a video released with the documents today, Tom has also separately posted an account of the video of Hamza bin Ladens wedding here. FDD infers that the wedding took place in Iran. All of which raises the question why the Obama administration was so keen to hold the documents released today. In their overview, Joscelyn and Roggio note that the files reveal new details concerning al Qaedas relationship with Iran. They write, for example: One never-before-seen 19-page document contains a senior jihadists assessment of the groups relationship with Iran. The author explains that Iran offered some Saudi brothers in al Qaeda everything they needed, including money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Iranian intelligence facilitated the travel of some operatives with visas, while sheltering others. Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, an influential ideologue prior to 9/11, helped negotiate a safe haven for his jihadi comrades inside Iran. But the author of the file, who is clearly well-connected, indicates that al Qaedas men violated the terms of the agreement and Iran eventually cracked down on the Sunni jihadists network, detaining some personnel. Still, the author explains that al Qaeda is not at war with Iran and some of their interests intersect, especially when it comes to being an enemy of America. Bin Ladens files show the two sides have had heated disagreements. There has been hostility between the two. Al Qaeda even penned a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei demanding the release of family members held in Iranian custody. Other files show that al Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat to exchange for its men and women. Bin Laden himself considered plans to counter Irans influence throughout the Middle East, which he viewed as pernicious. However, bin Laden urged caution when it came to threatening Iran. In a previously released letter, bin Laden described Iran as al Qaedas main artery for funds, personnel, and communication. And despite their differences, Iran continued to provide crucial support for al Qaedas operations. See also Jonathan Lasts notes including the compilation of Weekly Standard pieces by Steve Hayes and Tom Joscelyn arguing for the release of the bin Laden documents. I took the number of 571 documents released by the Obama administration from Lasts notes. We have a lot to learn, not just about al Qaeda and Iran, but also about the bed the Obama administration has made for us to sleep in with Iran. PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account. MIDDLE TOWNSHIP Township Committee may reintroduce an ordinance aimed at cutting excessive calls to police for intervention at area motels as early as next week. Township officials tabled the ordinance, which would attach a fee to an inordinate number of calls seeking police action at an establishment, last month with an eye toward reintroducing it once potential legal challenges were addressed. On Oct. 26, Business Administrator Elizabeth Terenik said the ordinance will likely be scheduled Nov. 6 for a second reading, public comment and potential adoption. Township Solicitor Frank Corrado advised committee members Oct. 16 to forestall action on the ordinance, saying several motels had hired attorney Jeffrery Brennan, of Voorhees, to intercede on their behalf. Lower Township police investigating Molotov cocktail car fire in Villas LOWER TOWNSHIP Township police investigated a suspicious car fire early Thursday morning i There are similar ordinances around the country that triggered sanctions based on the number of calls to police that have been challenged, Corrado said. The attorney suggested there could be constitutional issues by putting limits on contacting police. Brennan did not return calls seeking comment. Avoiding the cost of a federal lawsuit was worth waiting a couple of weeks, Corrado said, adding that while he believed the ordinance was good one, postponing the second reading would give him a chance to speak with Brennan. Several residents expressed concerns that an ordinance aimed at so-called voucher motels would impinge on their own need to call police to their residence or neighborhood. Coast Guard rescues two in sinking boat off Cape May CAPE MAY The U.S. Coast Guard rescued two people Wednesday from a sinking boat off the coa Police Chief Christopher Leusner said the ordinance is aimed at nuisance properties that generate more than their fair share of calls to police. Officer-initiated visits to a residence, business or neighborhood are not considered qualifying calls under the ordinance, he said. For example, residential properties with one to four units can have five qualifying calls in a 60-day period before triggering a review. A motel with more than 80 units can have 30 calls in a 60-day period, while restaurants can have 30 calls before a review is begun. Properties that exceed the number of qualifying calls in a 60-day period will be defined as nuisance properties under the ordinance, and further calls to that property could cost the property owner $300 per call. According to the ordinance, calls for police action that qualify under the ordinance include disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, littering or excessive noise, damage to property, injury to a person, prostitution, public urination and criminal activity. In August, during a work session to discuss the ordinance, Committeeman Jeff DeVico, a retired township police officer, said any business in the township could expect, at one time or another, to have the need to call police. Boy, 7, airlifted to Cooper after hes struck by vehicle on Halloween night UPPER TOWNSHIP A seven-year-old boy was airlifted to Cooper Hospital after he was struck by a vehicle at about 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 31 in the area of 11 Cole Avenue, Ocean View, according to New Jersey State Police. Motels in Rio Grande, he said, might even make as many as one or two calls each month. But more than twice a month is too many police visits, DeVico said. At the time, DeVico and Mayor Mike Clark were looking over a spreadsheet of police visits to the 15 motels in the Rio Grande area. Leusner said the spreadsheet did not include officer-initiated visits, but only those called in from the motels. Some of the numbers were high, DeVico said. The Beach House Motel had 173 calls in 2015, 180 calls in 2016 and 50 calls in the first half of 2017. All businesses have police calls, DeVico said. But how do you handle this? How as a taxpayer do we handle this? Township officials have struggled for years with managing voucher motels, which accept recently released prisoners through a state- and federally funded program run by the Cape May County Board of Social Services. Police have said some of those properties receive a disproportionate number of calls, and authorities have asked owners to install better security and lighting, disallow visitors or reconsider how long visitors stay. We have bent over backward to be fair, said Committeeman Tim Donohue. We could have raised fees to cover our costs, but we want to be fair to all of the motel owners. Donohue said the ordinance needs to be adopted. Middle Township covers 72 square miles, and taxpayers shouldnt have to pay extra for enforcement in such a small area, he said. The goal is to set the motel owners on a path to responsibility. Amanda Albees family was devastated when the 30-year-old pregnant mother was found dead after overdosing last November. They still are devastated, but Albees sister said they dont want to see the life of the dealer who sold Albee the drugs destroyed, either. Alycha Rodriguez, 23, of Brooklyn, New York, was sentenced last Friday to seven years in prison after she admitted to selling fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more potent than heroin, to Albee, who was three months pregnant. We feel its appropriate, said Albees sister, Amy Toomin, 30, of Lower Township. Theres justice served because even though were hurt by the loss of my sister, we want the girl (Rodriguez) to take opportunities and try to better herself. Albee left behind a 9-year-old daughter. Toomin said Rodriguez is also the mother of a young child. She seemed very apologetic, Toomin added. She did turn and address the family. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to strict liability of drug-induced death a charge prosecutors in New Jersey are utilizing more in the midst of the opioid epidemic. However, it can be difficult to prove. You need to know who the actual seller is and be able to link that particular distribution to the persons death, said Assistant Prosecutor Ed Shim, of the Cape May County Prosecutors Office. The state Attorney Generals Office issued a directive in 2014 instructing local officials to take advantage of the law, which was enacted in 1986. Strict liability arrests have increased significantly across the state since from two and three in 2011 and 2012 to nine and 15 in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Last week, the Cape May County Prosecutors Office charged a Middle Township man with strict liability for allegedly selling heroin to a man who died of an overdose hours later. Toomin said the legal proceedings brought a degree of closure to her family because Albees death was officially linked to Rodriguez. There is some accountability on the addict themselves, she added. Theres accountability on both parts. Strict liability convictions can carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, but Toomin, who is in recovery from addiction herself, isnt sure whether that will discourage dealers. We really dont know, Toomin said. Its definitely something different that theyre trying. Rodriguez had no prior convictions, Shim said. She was staying at the Beach House Motel in the Rio Grande section of Middle Township when she was arrested. Shim and Toomin said Rodriguez thought she was selling heroin not pure fentanyl, which is much more deadly. Shim said Rodriguez will have to serve at least 85 percent of her seven-year sentence. SEATTLE, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Initial Coin Offering enters its last day with $9 million already raised Dragonchain, which brings blockchain technology to businesses with its secure, serverless, scalable platform, today enters the last day of its public token sale. The tokens issued in the ICO, Dragons, will provide utility access to platform services, project incubation, and professional services to support start-ups and entrepreneurs building applications on the platform. Dragonchain was originally developed at Disney's Seattle office between 2015 and 2016 under the name "Disney Private Blockchain Platform". The project launched as open-source by Disney on October 2, 2016. George Sarhanis, Chief Business Officer of Dragonchain Inc., says: "We created Dragonchain to be an easy-to-use hybrid blockchain platform with all the benefits of immutable proof on the public blockchain. Our incubator programme will nurture the next generation of blockchain applications, and we already have start-ups in the programme which will use Dragonchain to verify the provenance of art, secure the last-mile delivery of packages and implement frictionless payments." Learn about how you can use Dragons here: https://youtu.be/HDf88Omur80 Join Dragonchain CEO, Joe Roets and Dragonchain Foundation President, Eileen Quenin on 11/2 at 10:00 AM PST as they talk about some of the Dragonchain fundamentals, foundation, history, how to use Dragons, the future of Dragonchain, as well as answer questions submitted by the audience: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2_StJYNWFrQz2wiL8n6hoA/live Dragonchain's Initial Coin Offering is open until Nov 2, 2017 17:00 US/PDT (UTC-7). About Dragonchain Dragonchain simplifies the integration of real business applications on a blockchain and provides features such as easy integration, protection of business data and operations, currency agnosticism, and multi-currency support. The company also provides professional services to build-out development and successful tokenization ecosystems with long term value utilizing an incubation model. Please visit and contact us at https://dragonchain.com/. Media Contact: Tom Fry Bright Bee PR media@dragonchain.com +44(0)208-8193170 SOURCE Dragonchain EXX.com is a professional cryptocurrency exchange, providing customers with an unrivalled experience to exchange cryptocurrency and digital assets with quick and efficient trade execution, fast customer service response and industry best security strategy. Liquidity is always a top priority for EXX. The partnership will create a borderless liquidity pool through QUOINE LIQUID, a global trading platform backed by QASH. QASH is the native currency of QUOINE LIQUID, and can be used to transact at lower rates. EXX.com will support the development of QUOINE Liquid through listing QASH for trading once the ICO has concluded. "EXX is fond of the QASH concept and we believe it will boost our liquidity worldwide. As a long-standing partner with QUOINE, EXX is very happy to make the strategic cooperation that we anticipate to be smooth and seamless. We will be one of the first global exchanges to list QASH on its launch day and we are looking forward to its further development in the crypto world," commented Marco Ferreira, COO of EXX. Mike Kayamori, CEO and Co-founder of QUOINE commented on the strategic partnership: "The joining of QUOINE and EXX, two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in their respective markets will bring about enhanced liquidity at scale in the crypto space. QUOINE welcomes all cryptocurrency exchanges in the world to join our Global Liquidity Alliance to be part of the QUOINE LIQUID platform to achieve global liquidity for the crypto economy." The QASH Token Sale is set to commence on November 6th, with more information available on Liquid.Plus. QUOINE is a leading global fintech company that provides trading, exchange, and next generation financial services powered by blockchain technology. With offices in Japan, Singapore, and Vietnam, they combine a strong network of partners with extensive experience in finance to deliver best-in-class financial services. Furthermore, in October 2017, they became the first licensed Japanese cryptocurrency exchange to launch a global ICO. Learn more and stay up to date on QASH ICO. ABOUT EXX: Operated by EXX GROUP LIMITED, EXX is the Abbreviation of EXCHANGE X, offering cryptocurrency trading for the global users, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. EXX is a professional cryptocurrency exchange focusing on providing customers with convenient transaction process and professional customer service. ABOUT QUOINE: QUOINE is a leading global fintech company that provides trading, exchange, and next generation financial services powered by blockchain technology. With offices in Japan, Singapore and Vietnam, QUOINE combines a strong network of local partners with extensive team experience in banking and financial products to deliver best in class financial services for its customers. More information is available at www.quoine.com. In 2014, QUOINE launched Quoine Exchange, now known as QUOINEX, which became one of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the world by transaction volume. QUOINE offers powerful trading features, a sophisticated user dashboard, and secure regulatory compliance to individual and corporate customers. QUOINEX provides trading services for bitcoin and fiat currency pairs in Japanese yen, US dollar, Euro, HK dollar, Indonesian rupiah, Singapore dollar, Philippine peso, Indian rupee, Australian dollar, and Chinese Renminbi. QUOINEX has exceeded USD12 billion in transactions in the past two years. In September 2017, QUOINE Corporation became the first global cryptocurrency exchange to be officially licensed by the Japan FSA. More information can be found at www.quoinex.com. In June 2017, QUOINE launched a fully digital cryptocurrency exchange and trading platform called QRYPTOS, exclusively for cryptocurrency trading in desktop version at www.qryptos.com. In October 2017, QUOINE became the first licensed global cryptocurrency exchange in Japan to launch a global Initial Coin Offering (ICO), also known as the QASH Token Sale. QUOINE Corporation was officially licensed by the Japan FSA on 29th September 2017. QUOINE launched its QASH Token Sale website at https://liquid.plus on 1 October 2017, to fund the growth of the QUOINE LIQUID platform. More information can be found at: QASH Token Sale Website (and registration): https://liquid.plus Whitepaper download: https://liquid.plus/quoine-liquid QUOINE ICO Brand Reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5mvYnammC0&t=51s QUOINE LIQUID Reel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5gs2sX7W-g&t=2s Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/FPU5vRGhiBjfLcQogatv3g CONTACT DETAILS Contact Person: Katherine Ng Email: katherine.ng@quoine.com Website: www.quoine.com Telegram Community:https://t.me/joinchat/FPU5vRGhiBjfLcQogatv3g Twitter: @QUOINE_SG Facebook: www.fb.com/quoine.sg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/quoine Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/QASH/ Steemit: https://steemit.com/@quoineliquid Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOR2GJnFoOgTazC5v6mBTSA/featured?disable_polymer=1 Related Links http://www.quoine.com SOURCE QUOINE Hero of Mollywood's first musical hit 'Thiramala' shares his Hollywood stint, directing Prem Nazir and more 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 Washington, Oct 27 : Was the Soviet Union involved in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy? New documents on the assassination released on Thursday provide insights into how the killing was viewed inside the Soviet Union. The reaction appears to have been one of genuine surprise, as well as concern inside the Communist Party that the killing of Kennedy might be part of a larger right-wing coup to take over the US government, npr.org reported. Shooter Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union and lived there in the years leading up to the assassination. In a memo labeled "Top Secret" and dated December 1, 1966 from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to Marvin Watson, a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, cites "[a] source who has furnished reliable information in the past and who was in Russia on the date of the assassination ..." The news, it says "was greeted by great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy." The memo continues: "According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United States to effect a 'coup.' They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part." The Soviets were fearful that the assassination would be used to play on "anti-communist sentiments" in the US to "stop negotiations with the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and thereafter spread war". Oswald, a former US Marine, went to the Soviet Union in 1959 and married there. Apparently disenchanted with Soviet life, he returned to US soil less than two years later after apparently trying to commit suicide. The FBI memo, citing the unnamed source, says "Soviet officials claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald had no connection whatsoever with the Soviet Union. They described him as a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else." The same single source reported that the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency, "issued instructions to all of its agents to immediately obtain all data available concerning" President Johnson. The memo said that in the months after Kennedy's death, the KGB had come into "possession of data purporting to indicate that President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy." In a different memo, this one from the CIA Director of Security to CIA Headquarters, originally classified "Secret" and dated March 11, 1964, refers to a George M. Lesnik, a former KGB agent who was in Moscow on the day of the Kennedy assassination. After hearing the news, he "dashed to his office" to look at Oswald's file. "When he found the file he reviewed it and found that Oswald had not been used or even approached for use by the Russian intelligence." Lesnik claimed that he then called others in the KGB who said they were unaware that Oswald had been cultivated in any way before returning to the United States, npr.org said. Erbil, Oct 28 : Iraqi troops accompanied by police forces, and combatants from the Shia Popular Mobilization Units on Saturday continued with their efforts to take control of one of the Islamic State's last strongholds in the province of Anbar after having discovered a mass grave containing the remains of up to 50 people, officials said Iraqi forces have found the mass grave on Friday with the bodies of victims killed by IS militants in al-Hawija, northern Iraq, Efe reported. "A mass grave has been found with 50 bodies of members from Iraqi army and police killed by IS combatants in al-Bakara town, located in al-Hawija," Iraq's joint operation command said in a statement. The statement added that Iraqi units will take "legal steps to open the mass grave" in order to analyze the bodies. Earlier this month, Iraqi forces launched a military campaign and liberated al-Hawija, which was considered the last stronghold for IS radicals in northern Iraq. During the offensive against IS militants, Iraqi authorities have found several mass graves, including one with about 500 bodies in Badush prison, located about 25 kilometers (some 15 miles) from the northern city of Mosul. Tehran, Oct 29 : The Iranian authorities on Sunday said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not requested fresh inspections to verify Tehran's compliance with its international nuclear agreement and asked the organisation not to bow to pressure from the US to do so. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, urged the IAEA Director General, Yukiya Amano, to remain impartial with regard to upholding its landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was struck by global powers in 2015 and sees Tehran stop its nuclear programme for alleviating sanctions. "We called on the IAEA to continue their monitoring in accordance with the agency's statute and in an impartial and independent manner," Salehi said according to Iran's news agency Mehr. It is scheduled that Amano, who is on a visit to Tehran, will also meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Amano's visit comes two weeks after US President Donald Trump decided not to certify Iran's compliance with the nuclear pact and threatened to abandon it if Tehran did not correct its "shortcomings." The US has asked the IAEA to carry out further inspections in Iran, specifically in its military installations, under the JCPOA nuclear deal. In this regard, Salehi insisted that Amano did not request new inspections, warning that any breach of the pact will have unpredictable and indescribable consequences. Ramallha, Oct 29 : Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Sunday called on Britain to apologize for the Balfour declaration that has aided the establishment of Israel on the lands of Palestine, instead of celebrating it. Hamdallah said that Britain "should undertake its responsibility and apologize for the historic injustice that it has caused for the Palestinian people and rectify it instead of celebrating it," Xinhua reported. He described Britain's centennial celebration of the declaration as a "defiance of international public supporters of the Palestinian cause and supporters of justice, freedom and human rights". November 2 marks 100 years since the Balfour declaration, which is the name given to the letter dated in 1917 from Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, who was then a leader of the British Jewish community, announcing British support for the Jewish people to build their state on the lands of Palestine. Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, announced last Wednesday that her country "will certainly mark the centenary with pride." "We must also be conscious of the sensitivities that some people do have about the Balfour declaration and we recognize that there is more to be done. We remain committed to the two-state solution in relation to Israel and the Palestinians," she added. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas demanded during his UN General Assembly speech last September that Britain apologize for the Balfour declaration and compensate Palestinians for the occupation of their lands after that letter paved the way for it. Islamabad, Oct 29 : Pakistan released 68 Indian fishermen on Sunday as a goodwill gesture, officials said. The Indian fishermen had been arrested for intrusion into Pakistani waters for illegal fishing and were freed from a prison in the Pakistani port city Karachi, Xinhua news agency reported. They will be handed over to Indian authorities at the Wahga border on Monday. An official from Sindh province told the media that the fishermen were released after the authorities received instructions from the Interior Ministry in Islamabad. Pakistan and India routinely arrest fishermen who cross water boundaries for illegal fishing. The two countries have not reached an agreement on maritime boundaries. Pakistan freed a group of 78 Indian fishermen in July this year. Raigad (Maharashtra), Oct 30 : After nearly 18 months, the famed 110-year old Matheran Toy Train resumed partial services on Monday, after it was suspended in May 2016 following several derailments, a top official said. "The train resumed services on the critical Matheran-Aman Lodge sector, around 3.5 km distance. We are planning to restart services on the entire 21-km Neral-Matheran route as soon as possible," Central Railway (CR) CPRO Sunil Udasi told IANS today. From Monday, the CR started 12 shuttles daily on the route. It started from Matheran at 8.50 a.m. and in return direction from Aman Lodge at 9.25 a.m., in what is Asia's only automobile-free hill station nestled in the Western Ghats, around 110 kms from both Mumbai and Pune. To ensure passenger safety, the CR has introduced enhanced safety features in the toy train 'Phul Rani', and replaced the original manual brakes with the safer air brakes system. In the original system, there was a manual braking in which six brake porters applied the brakes in sync and any timelag between could cause an accident. Under the new air brake system, the train driver can now slow down or apply the brakes as required without the involvement of the brake porters. Udasi said that the final trials to check the safety and operational issues before top officials were conducted on Sunday before giving the green signal to resume operations from Monday. The resumption of services would prove a boon to the local residents and tourists to Matheran as the winter peak tourism season has started and they were forced to cough out exorbitant amounts to hire horses or carts. The other option for the able-bodied people was to walk the steep route from Matheran to Dasturi Naka, the termination point for all vehicles outside the hill station precincts. The narrow guage toy train is considered a marvel and ascends in a crazy zig-zag (with more than 280 steep turns) from Neral to Matheran, around 2,500 feet from sea-level, offering breathtaking views of the lush green and steep hills and deep valleys, highlighting the beauty of the hill station. The toy train was built by a Mumbai industrialist, the late Sir Adamjee Peerbhoy at a staggering cost of Rs 1.60 million in seven years, between 1901-1907. The hill railway contributed in a big way to the growth of Matheran and forever changed the face of the tiny hillstation, after it was discovered in May 1850 by the then Mumbai Collector Hugh Poyntz Malet. Beijing, Oct 30 : In a setback to India, China will block the US resolution at the UN this week to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar an international terrorist. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council was yet to reach the consensus to ban Azhar, who is the mastermind of the deadly terror attack at an Army base in India last year. "As for the listing application by the relevant country, there are disagreements. China put the technical hold so as to allow for more time to deliberate on this matter. To our regret, the Committee so far has yet to reach consensus," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. China has repeatedly scuppered India's effort to have Azhar declared an international terrorist. After Beijing blocked and put a technical hold on India's application that lapsed last year, the US in January put a fresh proposal - backed by France and the UK - to designate Azhar an international terrorist. Beijing again put a technical hold on the proposal till August and extended it for another three months. The technical hold expires on Thursday this week. New York, Oct 30 : Infertile women have 10 per cent higher chance of dying prematurely than those able to conceive and are 45 per cent more likely to die from breast cancer, a large study has found. The findings, presented at the annual congress of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in San Antonio, suggest that having a baby could have a rejuvenating effect on the health of a woman. The results have prompted calls for women who struggle to conceive to be screened for certain cancers, the Telegraph reported on Monday. While it is not known for sure what links infertility and early mortality, the stark association with breast cancer, plus a 70 per cent increased risk of death from diabetes, points strongly towards hormone-related disorders. "Associations between infertility and medical disease have been noted in the male population, the relationship between a woman's fertility and her overall health has not been as robustly examined," lead researcher Natalie Stentz from University of Pennsylvania in the US was quoted as saying. "The study highlights the fact that a history of infertility is indeed related to women's lifelong health and opens potential opportunities for screening or preventative management for infertile women," Stentz added. The study followed more than 78,000 women for 13 years, 14 per cent of whom reported infertility, an inability to conceive for one year or more. Even though the incidence of diabetes was similar in fertile and infertile women, infertile women experienced an increased risk of death from endocrine-related diseases, including diabetes and breast cancer. Infertility was not, however, linked to increased rates of ovarian or uterine cancers. "One of the things we do know is that having a baby at some point in a woman's life is protective for health," Stentz said. Washington, Oct 30 : Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and and his former business partner Rick Gates surrendered on Monday to Justice Department's special counsel Robert Mueller after being indicted on charges of conspiracy against the US, money laundering and making false statements. The two were indicted under seal on Friday. Mueller said Manafort laundered more than $18 million to buy properties and services, the New York Times reported. "Manafort used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the US without paying taxes on that income," the indictment read. Gates was accused of transferring more than $3 million from offshore accounts. "As part of the scheme, Manafort and Gates repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants and legal counsel, among others," the indictment read. The indictment against the two men contained 12 counts: Conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. The charges did not cover any activities related to the 2016 presidential campaign, though these are the first criminal allegations to come from Mueller's investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election. Manafort arrived at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Washington field office on Monday morning. The two were being processed separately, according to a law enforcement official. They will later be transported to federal district court in Washington and will make their initial court appearances before US District Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. A White House spokesman told CNN that the Trump administration "may not have a response at all" regarding the charges. Manafort, whose work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych attracted scrutiny from federal investigators, previously denied financial wrongdoing regarding his Ukraine-related payments, his bank accounts in offshore tax shelters and his various real-estate transactions over the years. He joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 and Trump tapped him to serve as campaign chairman in May of that year. Manafort left in August 2016 after being accused over his dealings with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Gates, who also denied wrongdoing, was Manafort's longtime business associate in his lobbying firm before being tapped as his deputy on the Trump campaign. Over the weekend, the US President called Mueller's investigation a "witch hunt" and demanded that "something" be done about alleged irregularities that his former Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, committed during the 2016 election. New Delhi, Oct 30 : The Congress on Monday said it will observe November 8 as "Black Day" with country-wide protests against demonetisation with the theme "Bhugat Raha hai desh" (the country is suffering) and will not rest till "inherent flaws" in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) are resolved. The party said the people of the country will never pardon the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will go down in India's history alongside Muhammad Bin Tughlak for the "gross misadventure" of demonetisation that wreaked havoc with India's economy. The party made the announcement after a meeting of its General Secretaries which was presided over by Vice President Rahul Gandhi. In another meeting on GST, Rahul Gandhi, Former Prime Manmohan Singh along with P. Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh and finance ministers of the Congress-ruled states examined the "mess created by the Modi government on account of inherent flaws in the design, architecture and rates of the GST". "The meeting decided that Congress leadership and Congress finance ministers will espouse the pain and suffering of MSMEs, shopkeepers, traders, housewives and common man, both inside and outside GST Council," said Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala. "Congress will not rest until a resolution of these issues is done by the BJP government to the satisfaction of business and services," he added. Briefing reporters, Surjewala said demonstrations will be held in every district and state capital on November 8, the day the Modi government decided last year to junk Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. "Bhugat Raha hai desh" is the common theme of the Congress and other opposition parties. Surjewala said demonetisation "was the biggest scam of the century" and that GST had "crushed businesses and wiped out jobs". The party general secretaries will be present on November 8 in all the states. The party workers will hold rallies and protest march across all state and district headquarters in the morning and will also hold a candlelight march in the evening. "A government drunk with power and blinded by arrogance has the audacity to celebrate the surgical strike on India's economy," said Surjewala. Surjwala asked: "Who is responsible for the death of nearly 150 ordinary citizens who died in bank lines? Who is responsible for the utter confusion and consequent losses caused by repeated change of demonetisation rules by RBI on 135 occasions? Who is responsible for loss of over 3.72 crore jobs on account of demonetization in MSME sector alone? Who is responsible for loss of entire savings of crores of housewives done over a lifetime? "Who is responsible for crash of business of small shopkeepers and small and medium enterprises on account of the impact of demonetisation? Who is responsible for contraction of GDP from 9.2 per cent to 5.7 per cent resulting in a loss of over Rs 3 lakh crore?," asked Surjewala. "GST has crippled micro, small and businesses, stunted the economy and has led to insurmountable job losses." "The meeting noted with grave concern the fact that GST compliances in its present form have become impossible for shopkeepers, traders and businesses, wiping out their life's earnings. Panaji, Oct 31 : The Congress' Goa unit on Monday demanded an audit of all projects undertaken by the Indian Navy in the coastal state, including constructions in naval bases. State party president Shantaram Naik also claimed that according to the Defence Ministry, permission under state laws is not required for navy projects. At a press conference here, he said that the Defence Ministry, in a much delayed written reply to a question raised by him as a Rajya Sabha member, had said, that no state level permissions were required for sanctioning of naval projects, as they fall under the Item 4, List 1 of the Union list of Articles, dealing with subjects which are exclusively covered by the central government. "We need an audit now to see how much work has been carried out in the naval base without permission from the state government. Other Central government projects shoud also be audited. While Defence Ministry has claimed that no permission is required from state government agencies, we insist that permission from local panchayat and municipal bodies is required for all central government projects, including the navy," Naik said. Naik said that he had asked the question in the Rajya Sabha more than two years back, when he was a member and Manohar Parrikar, now the Goa Chief Minister, was then the Defence Minister, but the response was sent to him after two years. "I had asked the Defence Ministry to spell out the number of residential units constructed by the Indian Navy in Goa and whether permissions had been sought from locally elected bodies for these residential quarters. In light of the answer now received by me from the Rajya Sabha, the residential quarters of the Indian Navy appear to be illegal," Naik said. The issue of alleged land-hogging by the Indian Navy has been been a bone of contention in Goa and dates back to the liberation of the coastal state from Portuguese in 1961. Both the Congress as well as the Bharatiya Janata Party have accused the armed forces, including the navy which operates three naval bases in Goa and the Indian Army, of unfairly occupying prime real-estate. Some years back, political parties across party lines had opposed the Indian Navy's attempts to take over two islands, Grande and St. George for "security purposes". Beijing, Oct 31 : China is set to build a massive DNA database platform in Nanjing aimed at storing genetic information of millions of its ethnic Chinese population, a senior health official said on Tuesday. The project is part of the National Health and Medicine Big Data (Nanjing) Centre, a six-billion yuan project under construction in the city, Xinhua news agency quoted the official as saying. During the first phase, health and medical information on about 80 million people, the equivalent of the population in Jiangsu province, will be stored at the centre, he said. "When the facilities are ready, the designed capacity for DNA sequencing will be up to 400,000 to 500,000 samples per year." The DNA sequencing project will be jointly undertaken by the state-owned Yangzi Group, Southeast University and Nanjing Medical University. Researchers will then use big data created in the database to study genetic mutations related to major diseases, look for the impact of interaction between genes and environmental concerns on human heath, and provide statistical support for diagnosis and treatment of major diseases, the official said. Cai Long, board director of Yangzi Group, said the programme will focus on population genetics, newborns, childhood brain and cognitive development, cancer, and rare and chronic diseases. The database is expected to be completed in about four years. Chandigarh, Oct 31 : Objecting to the Army's involvement in civilian projects, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said on Tuesday that the Army was not meant to build bridges or clean roads and warned of consequences of the "misuse" of armed forces. "The Army's job is to train for war and protect the country's borders, not to build bridges and clean roads," Amarinder Singh said in a statement here. He warned against "serious implications of such misuse of the Indian armed forces by utilising their services for non-emergency civilian jobs". Earlier in the day, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fernandes said the Army engineers will design and build three overbridges in Mumbai, including the one on the Elphinstone Road, where 23 persons were killed during a stampede on September 29. The Punjab Chief Minister said the move was "deplorable and an admission of the failure of the government and the Indian Railways". Amarinder Singh, a former Army Captain, said: "Whatever the urgency of the situation, it does not merit such a decision, which will have an long-term adverse implications as it could encourage civilian authorities to seek Army help for major civilian works every time they find themselves ill-equipped to handle infrastructural or other challenge." He urged Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman "to refrain from diverting critical defence resources to civilian works", adding it would otherwise set a bad precedent. "The Army is regularly used to help out in emergency situations such as floods and earthquakes. It is even engaged in infrastructural development in sensitive areas, such as the north-east. If it is now burdened with the additional task of helping out in other civilian tasks, merely because civilian authorities are unable to handle the same, it will further impact its resources," Amarinder Singh said. "It will also lower the morale of the Army men, who join the force with a vision to secure the country's borders and protect its people from the enemy," he added. "The Defence Minister -- instead of being a party to this decision and announcing it with such pride -- should have categorically rejected any such suggestion in the interest of the armed forces," the Punjab Chief Minister said. Mumbai, Oct 31 : Key Indian equity indices on Tuesday fell from their record high levels to close on a flat-to-negative note as investors booked profits in metals, automobile and IT stocks. According to market observers, mixed global cues, coupled with heavy selling pressure in index heavyweights like Infosys, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), Tata Steel, State Bank of India (SBI) and Tata Motors, among others, added to the losses. The broader Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed lower by 28.35 points, or 0.27 per cent, at 10,335.30 points. The barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE closed at 33,213.13 points -- down 53.03 points or 0.16 per cent. The Sensex touched a high of 33,294.30 points and a low of 33,164.28 points during the intra-day trade. However, the BSE market breadth was slightly bullish -- 1,398 advances and 1,320 declines. The broader market indices outperformed the BSE Sensex. The S&P BSE mid-cap index closed higher by 0.14 per cent and the small-cap index by 0.46 per cent. "Markets corrected on Tuesday after the Nifty touched life highs in the previous session (on Moday). The indices had opened lower in the morning on the back of mixed Asian markets and a negative closing for the US markets overnight," Deepak Jasani, Head - Retail Research, HDFC Securities, told IANS. On Monday, the key indices scaled fresh highs, both on closing as well as intra-day basis. The Sensex closed at a fresh high of 33,266.16 points, after touching a record high of 33,340.17 points intra-day, while the broader Nifty50, which touched an intra-day record high of 10,384.50 points, closed at a new high of 10,363.65 points. "Major Asian markets ended on a mixed note, while European indices like FTSE 100 and CAC 40 traded higher," Jasani added. Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, said: "Markets ended on a negative note after a volatile trade due to strong resistance around recent high and profit booking in PSU banks and metal stocks after the recent solid performance. "The domestic macros remain positive supported by ample reforms and good Q2 results so far, while rising oil price in the global market and tomorrow's (Wednesday) FED policy influenced domestic market to take a wait and watch approach." On the currency front, the rupee strengthened by 10-11 paise to close at 64.75 against the US dollar from its previous close at 64.85-86. "Indian shares fell on Tuesday, retreating from record highs hit in the previous session, as recent outperformers such as SBI fell, while Infosys dropped after going ex-dividend," Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, told IANS. "Government's measures on bank recapitalisation, infrastructure, and crop prices, coupled with domestic flows, would support India stocks even as downgrades in earnings continue," he added. Sector-wise, the S&P BSE metals index declined by 264.53 points, followed by automobile index by 104.34 points and IT index by 66.72 points. On the other hand, the S&P BSE consumer durables index rose by 139.98 points, banking index by 69.52 points and realty index by 67.73 points. Major Sensex gainers on Tuesday were: Axis Bank, up 8 per cent at Rs 523.05; ONGC, up 2.38 per cent at Rs 191.10; Bharti Airtel, up 0.98 per cent at Rs 497.65; Hero MotoCorp, up 0.63 per cent at Rs 3,854.75; and Wipro, up 0.39 per cent at Rs 294.35. Major Sensex losers were: Infosys, down 2.43 per cent at Rs 921.65; M&M, down 2.14 per cent at Rs 1,345; Tata Steel, down 2.11 per cent at Rs 703.65; SBI, down 2.02 per cent at Rs 305.80; and Tata Motors, down 1.66 per cent at Rs 428.55. Madrid/Brussels, Oct 31 : The ousted leader of Catalonia on Tuesday said he accepted the upcoming regional elections imposed by the Spanish government and asked that the results be respected. In a press conference in Brussels, Carles Puigdemont warned that there was a serious lack of democracy in Spain today as the judiciary was politicised and lacked impartiality and referred to himself as the legitimate President of Catalonia, Efe news reported. "We are taking the elections as a democratic challenge," Puigdemont said. "Democratic challenges don't scare us," he added, asking the Spanish state to respect the majority pro-independence vote that he said would prevail on December 21, the date chosen by the central government for the ballot in Catalonia. On Tuesday, Spain's Constitutional Court, the top rung of the judiciary, suspended Puigdemont's unilateral declaration of independence after Catalonia's Parliament gave it a go-ahead late last week in a vote. Also, the Spanish police raided the central headquarters of the Catalan regional security force to seize communication records of the October 1 disputed independence referendum. The searches coincided with ongoing investigations into allegations that the regional police force Mossos d'Esquadra demonstrated passivity when ordered to collaborate with semi-militarized Civil Guard and the Spanish National Police to block the voting process in the illegal ballot. Puigdemont on three separate occasions dismissed speculation that he was in Belgium to apply for political asylum, insisting he was only there because it was the heart of the European Union. The ousted regional president said he and five members of his government had travelled to Belgium because they had become aware of "verified information that indicated the Spanish government was proposing a highly aggressive and unprecedented offensive against the people of Catalonia and the officials who remained faithful to the legitimate government". He said that under the circumstances, he and his government colleagues had chosen the best course of action which was to give priority to what he described as "prudence, security and moderation". Spain's state prosecutor had on Monday filed a lawsuit at the National Court against Puigdemont, his cabinet and the regional Parliament's speaker which included charges of rebellion and sedition. Puigdemont said that he would be prepared to return to Spain if he were to be offered a fair trial. "Should that be the case, we would return rapidly," he told a room packed with journalists at Brussel's Press Club. New Delhi, Nov 1 : Sanjay Leela Bhansali's much-awaited period drama "Padmavati" will release in the US on December 1. Starring Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor, "Padmavati" is being distributed internationally by Paramount Pictures. Ajit Andhare, Chief Operating Officer, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, said in a statement: "I am very proud to announce that Paramount Pictures will lead the international release of our epic film 'Padmavati'. We are breaking new ground with 'Padmavati', its marketing and release strategy. With Paramount coming on board, we will take the film to a whole new level globally." Megan Colligan, spokesperson of Paramount Pictures, said: "'Padmavati' has all the makings of a hit film and we are excited to bring Sanjay's incredible vision to audiences across the international marketplace." The movie stars Ranveer as Sultan Alauddin Khilji, Deepika in the lead role of Rani Padmavati and Shahid as Maharawal Ratan Singh. The movie sets out to tell the tale of Rani Padmavati - the legendary Mewar queen known as much for her beauty and intelligence as she was for her courage, her husband Maharawal Ratan Singh - a glorious Rajput ruler and a warrior king who fought till his dying breath to defend his kingdom and his wife's honour and Sultan Alauddin Khilji - an ambitious and obsessive invader. New Delhi, Nov 1 : The Mahagathbandhan or the conglomerate of non-BJP secular parties will observe November 8, the first anniversary of demonetisation, as "Black Day" in every district in Bihar, Janata Dal United (JD-U) leader Sharad Yadav announced on Wednesday. On November 8 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes with a stated objective of curbing black money and corruption. "The steps of demonetisation and GST implementation have hit the economy so hard it will perhaps take at least 10 years for the economy to recover. "The government is trying to take certificates of economy doing well from the World Bank and several foreign rating agencies. But we are witnessing the reality in our country. The reality is that the economy and employment have been destroyed," Sharad Yadav said, referring to a report saying that India has climbed 30 notches up in ease of doing business. "The reality is that despite imported food grain, people are dying of hunger in this country. The farmers are distressed as they are unable to recover even their costs from their crops. They are committing suicide. The reality is that lakhs of people have been rendered unemployed," he added. Accusing the Narendra Modi government of going back on its election promises vis-a-vis employment generation, agriculture and farmers's issues, Sharad Yadav said that the government was "doing everything except what it promised". "From love jihad to 'ghar wapsi' and from Taj Mahal to Tipu Sultan, every other day they find a topic to divide the society along communal lines. They want to hide their failures by such tactics," he said. On the Gujarat assembly elections, he said that his party will support the Congress. "Recently, the acting President of our party Chhotubhai Vasava met Rahul Gandhi and discussed issues related to Gujarat elections," Yadav said. A dispute over the JD-U's "Arrow" symbol is going on between Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav factions of the party. The matter is being heard by the Election Commission. Beijing, Nov 2 : US President Donald Trump will pay a state visit to China from November 8-10 at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Thursday. The two heads of state will exchange in-depth views on China-US relations and major global and regional issues of common concern, Lu said in a release, Xinhua news agency reported. He said China stands ready to work with the US to achieve important results for Trump's visit and Xi-Trump meeting, in order to inject new and strong impetus to the development of bilateral ties. Tehran, Nov 2 : Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers in 2015 is a "good pact in line with expansion of peace and stability in the region". Putin, who made the remarks on Wednesday, was on a visit to Iran to attend the tripartite summit of Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan, Xinhua news agency reported. Iran President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that his administration welcomes the participation of Russian investors and private sectors in joining Iran infra-structural projects, according to Mehr news agency. Iran's industry and energy, rail networks, and the "North-South Corridor," extending from Russia through Azerbaijan to Iran, are the areas for cooperating between Tehran and Moscow, Rouhani said. "So far, good agreements have reached between Iran and Russia in the areas of energy, peaceful nuclear technology, and transportation, but more efforts are needed to put these agreements into practice in the course of growing ties," he said. "Cooperation of Iran and Russia has been of great influence in the war against terrorism in the region," Rouhani said, adding that this cooperation and exchange of views is still of importance at the closing stages of war on terror in Syria. "The Islamic Republic of Iran holds that any instability in the region is harmful for all countries of the region," he added. Therefore, Iran and Russia cooperation "has proved to the world that political settlement and security should be reinforced in Syria," he stressed. Putin said that bilateral cooperation of Iran and Russia in energy, peaceful nuclear technology, railroad and transportation is developing and voiced Russia companies' readiness for joining project in Iran. "Russia bears no limit in developing comprehensive ties with Iran and welcomes the growing trend of cooperation," he stressed. "The tripartite meeting of presidents of Iran, Russia, and Azerbaijan can play a key role in developing transportation and transit, particularly in the North-South Transit Corridor," said Putin. "Trade transactions between the two countries witnessed a jumping growth in 2016, and this trend should be maintained and accelerated," he said. New York, Nov 2 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump vowed during a phone call to continue jointly fighting terrorism, according to the White House. Modi expressed condolences for the deaths caused by the terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday, the White House statement said on Wednesday. "Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families," it said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism." Eight people - six of them foreign tourists - were killed when a Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a van into bicyclists and pedestrians near the 9/11 memorial. The attack was linked to the Islamic State (IS) because of statements he made after his arrest, authorities said. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in) Washington, Nov 2 : US President Donald Trump has said he will consider sending the suspect in Tuesday's terror attack in New York to the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Trump also said he would ask Congress to terminate the visa lottery program under which the suspect Sayfullo Saipova, a native of Uzbekistan, entered the country. During a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House on Wednesday, Trump told reporters the US government needed to be much tougher and smarter and less politically correct and accused previous administrations, particularly that of predecessor Barack Obama, of being overly soft on immigration and terrorism, Efe news reported. "Send him to Gitmo - I would certainly consider that," Trump, using a nickname for Guantanamo, said when asked about that possibility by one reporter. No one detained on US soil has ever been sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, located on a US military base in Cuba, and no suspected terrorists captured abroad have been transferred there since 2008. Obama vowed to close Guantanamo upon taking office in early 2009; although he did not keep that promise, he reduced its population from 242 inmates to 41 by transferring nearly 200 individuals to third countries. While awaiting fresh details about the 29-year-old Uzbek suspect, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Efe news on Wednesday that Saipov had entered the country under the so-called Diversity Visa Lottery Program, which offers up to 50,000 visas per year to nations with a low rate of immigration to the US. Trump had been critical of that program prior to Tuesday's attack, but on Wednesday he went a step further. "I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program," Trump said. "We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit and we want to get rid of chain migration," Trump added, telling reporters that Saipov had been allowed to bring in 23 other people as a "primary point of contact." The Diversity Visa Lottery Program originated in a bill that was introduced in 1990 by US lawmaker Chuck Schumer (then a member of the US House of Representatives) and subsequently absorbed into a broader immigration bill that was passed with the votes of Democrats and Republicans and signed by then-President George H.W. Bush. Investigators say Saipov on Tuesday used a rented Home Depot pickup truck to run over several people on a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan, killing eight and injuring 13 before smashing into a school bus. The suspect, who eyewitnesses say screamed "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," and waved a paintball gun and a pellet gun after stepping out of the vehicle, was shot at least once in the abdomen by police and is now hospitalized in critical but stable condition. Saipov had spent several weeks preparing the attack and precisely followed the online instructions of the Islamic State terror organization, authorities in New York said on Wednesday in a press conference. Kabul, Nov 2 : At least 15 people were killed and 30 others injured when an oil tanker exploded in Afghanistan's Parwan province, a senior official said on Thursday. The incident occurred late Wednesday night in the provincial capital of Charikar after a bomb attached to the tanker exploded, the official told Xinhua news agency. "The number of the casualties may rise as several injured were in critical condition," he said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. Washington, Nov 2 : US President Donald Trump is set to nominate Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the American central bank, the White House announced. The President had settled on Powell by October 28 and spoke with him on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying. Trump had recently concluded interviews of five candidates for the next Fed chair, including Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. On Wednesday, Trump said that he planned to formally announce his pick for the Fed chair on Thursday, adding "you'll be extremely impressed by this person". If confirmed by the Senate, Powell, a lawyer and former US Treasury official, would be the first Fed chair in three decades without a Ph.D. in economics. "He would represent continuity of the Fed system and culture but a break from the predominance of monetary policy as the core background of the chair," Aaron Klein, an economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying. The appointment of Powell is likely to be well received on Wall Street, as he has never dissented from any monetary policy decision since becoming governor in May 2012. He is widely expected to continue Yellen's gradual and cautious strategy in tightening monetary policy after taking the helm of the central bank. "The healthy state of our economy and favourable outlook suggest that the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) should continue the process of normalizing monetary policy," Powell said in June at the Economic Club of New York, referring to the Fed's policy-making committee. "The Committee has been patient in raising rates, and that patience has paid dividends," he said. Los Angeles, Nov 2 : Actor Dustin Hoffman has been accused of sexually harassing Anna Graham Hunter when she was an intern aged 17 in 1985. Hunter, now a writer, has alleged that the actor, now 80, groped her on the set of the movie "Death of a Salesman" and spoke inappropriately about sex with her, reports theguardian.com. "He asked me to give him a foot massage on my first day on set; I did," Hunter wrote in the guest column for hollywoodreporter.com. "He was openly flirtatious, he grabbed my ass, he talked about sex to me and in front of me. One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time. Then he said, 'I'll have a hard-boiled egg A and a soft-boiled clitoris'. His entourage burst out laughing. "I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried." Hunter detailed Hoffman's alleged treatment of her over her five weeks on set in a diary that she mailed to her sister at the time. "Today, when I was walking Dustin to his limo, he felt my a** four times. I hit him each time, hard, and told him he was a dirty old man," she wrote. She claimed that on set, she was told to put up with his behaviour by a supervisor who told her to "sacrifice" some of her values for the sake of the production. Hoffman has responded to the article with an apology: "I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am." The story comes after a deluge of similar stories of sexual harassment within Hollywood against producer Harvey Weinstein, filmmaker James Toback and actor Kevin Spacey. Kolkata, Nov 2 : Bangladeshi filmmaker Mostafa Sarwar Farooki, who plans to make a film on the Rohingya persecution in Myanmar, says India should stand by his country, as also the embattled community, amid the ongoing crisis. Farooki, whose latest film "Doob: No Bed Of Roses", an Indo-Bangla joint venture, is set to embark on his next venture, the "Identity" trilogy, with the last film dealing about the Rohingyas' persecution in Myanmar, he revealed. Farooki, a leading name in Bangladesh's alternative cinema circuit, is one of the pioneers in introducing realism in the country's cinema. Plunging into a discussion on the issue at a time when the influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar continues despite the two countries signing an agreement to stop the exodus, Farooki opined it's a "dangerous world" that has been created. "During this time, India should really stand beside Rohingyas and Bangladesh. India has a legacy of democracy and secular politics. As a democracy it should stand by the Rohingyas and it should stand by Bangladesh because India counts Bangladesh as its friend," Farooki told IANS in an interview here. "In the last 10 years, Bangladesh has proved we did everything we could to ensure India's safety regarding extremism and everything. Bangladesh now deserves some love from India," he noted with optimism, literally doffing his cap, (Farooki's signature look), as a toast to the friendly relations between the neighbours. In its latest report, the UN Inter-Sector Coordination Group said that around 605,000 Rohingyas had arrived in Bangladesh since August 25, when the Myanmar Army launched a crackdown in Rakhine state. Farooki said the situation brings out the ongoing crisis of human identity: How a community or an individual's identity is linked to one's perception these days. "We are creating a dangerous world. It is so medieval. I don't know if the medieval age was so bad. You are hating a population because of who they are and not because of what they do." The front-runner of an avant-garde filmmakers' movement called "Chabial" (The Film Hawkers) in Bangladesh, Farooki said he is working on "Saturday Afternoon", the first film of the triology. This would be succeeded by "No Land's Man" which has got grants from India's Film Bazaar and the Asia Pacific Screen Academy-Motion Picture Association Film Fund. "And the third one will be on Rohingya persecution in Myanmar. We will shoot in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. I want to show the human conditions. We need not take sides. The film will not take sides. The audiences can come to their own conclusions." "Earlier, we used to love or hate a person because of what he or she did or does. But now it's who you are. That's a strange world we are actually in," he remarked in response to a query on the context of the trilogy. Acclaimed for films like "Television" (that closed the Busan festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Asia Pacific Screen Awards and was Bangladesh's submission to 86th Academy Award foreign language category) and "Ant Story", Farooki's "Doob" has already bagged an independent jury award at the 39th Moscow International Film Festival. Addressing middle class angst, guilt, urban youth romance and redemption, his oeuvre is an exploration of complex cultural issues as well. Having served as jury member on various international film festivals, Farooki feels South Asian films are on the right path. "In the last five to seven years, we have been walking in the right direction. South Asian movies have got an identity because of Satyajit Ray. He put us on the map. After that there was a huge slump. Indian cinema is really growing in the last seven to ten years. A new wave is coming. You can see some independent filmmakers in Mumbai (Marathi, Hindi) and in Malayalam. Bangladesh is trying to catch up and Sri Lanka and Nepal too are trying to catch up. It will take some time but we are coming up," Farooki signed off. (Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in) Pyongyang, Nov 2 : North Korean state media on Thursday said Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter to Kim Jong-un urging him to maintain stable ties between the two countries at a time of increasing distance between Beijing and Pyongyang. The letter was published by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), reports Efe news. "I wish that under the new situation, the Chinese side would make efforts with the North Korean side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," the letter said. In the letter, the Chinese President also thanked Pyongyang for its congratulatory messages on the occasion of his being re-elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Xi also emphasised the need to defend "regional peace, stability and common prosperity". Xi and Kim have never met in person, but last year a high-level North Korea delegation met the Chinese leader in Beijing. The letter comes at a time when North Korea's relations with its closest ally, China, have hit their lowest point in recent years due to Pyongyang's continuous weapons tests. North Korea's sixth nuclear test, conducted on September 3, and the launch of two intercontinental ballistic missiles, led the UN, with the support of China, to impose new sanctions on Pyongyang. Almost all of Pyongyang's foreign trade is done with China which has also imposed unilateral sanctions on North Korea, including a closure of North Korean companies in China, a ban on North Korea's textile products and limitations on its petroleum exports to Pyongyang. Patna, Nov 2 : Mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bihar Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday said that ease of doing business in India has "improved by 16,000 times" while "ease of dying by hunger" has increased by 200 times. "We have a textbook example on how ease of doing business in India improved by 16,000 times. And ease of dying by hunger increased by 200 times," Tejashwi Yadav said in reference to reports that BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jay Shah's firm allegedly saw an increase in turnover of 16,000 times in a year after the BJP-led NDA came to power at the Centre, and of India's ranking in the Global Hunger Index. Tejashwi Yadav said that Modi and the entire BJP are desperate to win the Gujarat Assembly polls, which they appear to have already lost if reports of anger among people against the BJP that is in power for 22 years there is anything to go by. Tejashwi Yadav said his RJD party would organise a protest against demonetisation on November 8 across Bihar to give voice to the common people hit hard by the move. The World Bank Ease of Doing Business 2018 report on Tuesday said India has jumped 30 places to the 100th rank among 190 countries. New Delhi, Nov 2 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the people who lost their lives in the NTPC boiler blast in Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. Rs 50,000 was announced for each person injured in the state-run National Thermal Power Corp plant blast on Wednesday. The announcement was made by the Prime Minister's Office in a tweet. The death toll in the blast rose to 22 on Thursday, with two more succumbing to their burn injuries. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe, while the NTPC has also launched a probe into the incident which it said took place due to "excess ash deposition" in the furnace. Rae Bareli District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told IANS that the number of injured stood at 64. The massive explosion took place in a 500 MW boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when the fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. Earlier, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also announced ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh for the kin of dead and Rs 50,000 for the injured. Jammu, Nov 2 : A Border Security Force (BSF) trooper was killed on Thursday in unprovoked Pakistani firing on the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district, police said. The Pakistan Rangers opened fire on a BSF patrol party. "The trooper was critically injured. He later succumbed to injuries," the police added. Rae Bareli, Nov 2 : The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast here in Uttar Pradesh rose to 26 on Thursday, with more injured workers succumbing to their burn injuries, officials said. Doctors warned that the toll was likely to rise further as more than a dozen contractual labourers were battling for life with more than 90 per cent burn wounds. District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told IANS that the number of injured in the Wednesday tragedy at the state-run National Thermal Power Corp (NTPC) plant stood at 64. The massive explosion took place in a 500 MW boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when a fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. Khatri said the authorities were now focussing on providing the best possible treatment to the injured. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the dead, Rs 50,000 each to the critically injured and Rs 25,000 to those who suffered minor injuries. They will all get free treatment at government hospitals. Angry locals and family members of the injured alleged that there was a complete absence of medical facilities at the NTPC campus, which pushed up the number of casualties. On Thursday, contractual labourers at the plant raised slogans against the NTPC management. They claimed they had warned about an impending disaster at unit six as the temperature near the furnace had been steadily rising. The NTPC has launched a probe into the incident, which it said took place due to "access ash deposition" in the furnace. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited Rae Bareli after cutting short his Gujarat tout and met family members of the victims, party sources said. Rae Bareli is the Lok Sabha constituency of his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. She may not visit the constituency as she is reportedly unwell. Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Vadra is also scheduled to visit Rae Bareli. Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma also called on the injured at the district hospital. Three senior officials of the NTPC who suffered critical injuries are being flown in an air ambulance to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram near Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses during a BJP rally ahead of November 8 Assembly polls, in Rehan of Himachal Pradesh's Kangra district on Nov 2, 2017. Image Source: IANS Kangra, Nov 2 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday tore into the Congress government in poll-bound Himachal Pradesh, saying the party leadership had made itself a "laughing club" that vows zero tolerance towards graft but was out on bail on corruption charges. "We all need to look at the Congress. We should appreciate their courage. Yesterday, they released a manifesto vowing zero tolerance on corruption if the Congress returns to power. They have a gall to claim there will be zero tolerance against corruption," Modi told an election rally in this town ahead of Himachal's November 9 Assembly polls. He targeted Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who has been charged by the CBI of holding assets disproportionate to his known sources of income: "Singh 'saheb' is claiming there will be zero tolerance against corruption. Can anyone believe him? Can you digest it?" Modi asked this to the crowd repeatedly. "The Congress has become a laughing club. Their Chief Minister has a corruption case against him. He is out on a bail. Nothing is left for them and they have lost their hold from every part of the country." He said this was not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters "but of corruption, dynasty politics and casteism. "The Congress is an epitome of rotten thought. When we say we want the country rid of the Congress, we mean to rid the country of this rotten thought." Modi said the Congress needed to introspect why a "forgiving country like India" was out to punish its leaders "by turning away from them one by one". Donning a Himachali cap, the Prime Minister called the state a land of "martyrs and soldiers" and said the Congress government had patronised "mafias in the Devbhoomi". "There are five monsters in Himachal Pradesh - mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia. "These five monsters are looting your resources, future, spreading corruption and nepotism and snatching away the future of the youth." The BJP's Chief Ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal and former Chief Minister Shanta Kumar were present at Modi's rally. Trying to reconnect with voters, the Prime Minister said: "I have worked extensively in Himachal Pradesh, am familiar with its cities and know each and every street here. On November 9 you have the opportunity to bid farewell to the people who have looted the state. "The lotus will bloom in Himachal and there will be an end to corruption," he said. He also took a dig at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese Ambassador at the height of a military standoff between Indian and Chinese troops in Doklam. He alleged that Gandhi sought Doklam details from the Chinese envoy but didn't believe what the government had to say about the disputed plateau. "Instead of asking Indian diplomats and the foreign ministry, you go and ask the Chinese envoy. Isn't it insulting when these people talked to Chinese on Doklam instead of asking the elected government? "Sorry to say, this shows lack of primary understanding. The country knows how the Doklam issue was dealt with, but the Congress even questioned that," he added. Agartala, Nov 2 : Six Tripura legislators who joined the BJP after quitting the Trinamool Congress three months ago are yet to get recognition in the state assembly as BJP lawmakers though the assembly begins its last session before the polls on November 13. The Left-ruled Tripura goes to polls in February next year. The five-year term of the assembly will end on March 14. A brief last session will begin on November 13. "The six legislators who joined the BJP on August 7 are yet to formally seek recognition as BJP MLAs. Now the scope to recognise them as BJP legislators is very limited as there is lack of time to do the necessary formalities for that," Tripura Assembly Speaker Ramendra Chandra Debnath told IANS. According to the Speaker, Tripura BJP President Biplab Kumar Deb wrote to him on September 20 requesting that the six legislators be recognised as BJP members. "In response, I wrote to him asking that the six legislators submit letters individually or collectively saying they have shifted allegiance from TMC to BJP," said Debnath. "After getting the letters from the six MLAs I will have to call them for a meeting and start the necessary procedure in this regard," the Speaker explained. Deb had requested the Speaker to recognise Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl, one of the six members and a veteran tribal leader, as leader of the BJP group. Led by Sudip Roy Barman, five lawmakers -- Ashish Kumar Saha, Biswa Bandhu Sen, Pranjit Singh Roy, Dilip Sarkar and Hrangkhawl -- accompanied by hundreds of former Trinamool Congress leaders and workers joined the BJP on August 7. The six legislators, according to the Speaker, are still recognised as legislators of the Trinamool Congress. Political analyst Tapas Dey said the dispute in the BJP is over the leadership of the legislators group, which has led to the delay in recognition of the six. "BJP President Biplab Kumar Deb and the party's observer Sunil Deodhar are not in favour of Sudip Roy Barman as leader of the BJP legislator's group. They want to project Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl as BJP's tribal face by making him the leader," Dey told IANS. Ashish Kumar Saha, one of the six legislators who was formerly Tripura TMC president, said that Assam Finance and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who is on a two-day visit to the state would meet them to settle the issue. Sarma, who is convener of the BJP-led anti-Congress alliance, North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), has been playing a crucial role to boost the party ahead of the assembly elections. Veteran tribal leader Hrangkhawl, a former President of the state Congress, said after the Speaker accords him recognition, the BJP would be the main opposition group in the 60-member Assembly. "We believe that the Speaker would complete the formalities very soon," Hrangkhawl, former leader of the TMC legislator group, told IANS. In the 60-member Assembly, the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led Left Front has 51 members and the Congress only three. After recognition of the six as BJP members, the Tripura Assembly will get its first saffron party members. After the princely-ruled Tripura merged with the Indian Union on October 15, 1949, the "C" category state under the North Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971 -- along with Manipur and Meghalaya on January 21, 1972 -- became a full-fledged state with a 60-member Assembly. The six TMC legislators had in June last year resigned from the Congress and joined the TMC to protest the Congress' electoral alliance with the Left for the 2016 West Bengal elections. They, along with rebel Congress legislator Ratanlal Nath, voted for National Democratic Alliance nominee Ram Nath Kovind in the presidential election on July 17. Himanta Biswa Sarma, also a former Congress Minister who joined the BJP before the Assam elections, facilitated the TMC legislators' entry into the party. "Ratanlal Nath will also join the BJP soon," a BJP leader told IANS on condition of anonymity. The Congress has already served notice on Nath for anti-party activities. According to sources, he is likely to be expelled soon. However, Nath has been evading queries about joining the BJP though he has met many of its state and central leaders in recent months. Beijing, Nov 2 : China is set to block the US application to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist on Thursday when the technical hold raised by Beijing comes up for discussion at the UN. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made it clear there was no change in Beijing's position on the resolution seeking an international ban on Azhar, who is accused of plotting a deadly attack on an Indian airbase last year. "We raised a technical hold so as to allow for more time for the committee and all the members to deliberate on this matter but there is an absence of consensus on this matter," she said. "China's actions are meant to safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the committee (1267 Security Council). We will continue to follow the mandate of this committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with all the members." After Beijing blocked and put a technical hold on India's application that lapsed last year, the US in January had put a fresh proposal - backed by France and the UK - to ban Azhar. Beijing again put a technical hold on the proposal till August, only to extend it further for three months. The technical hold expires on Thursday. China's 'no' to the US proposal means that a new resolution will have to be moved. Barring China, all the countries of the 15-member Security Council have consensus to ban Azhar, who heads the JeM outfit. China is one of the five veto-holding members in the UN and its vote for and against the resolution is decisive. The listing of Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India. In September, China agreed to include Azhar's outfit in the joint statement issued by BRICS members. London, Nov 2 : An Indian-origin MP has accused British Prime Minister Theresa May of failing to act when she was tipped about a Westminster sexual abuse cover-up three years ago. Labour Party's Lisa Nandy made the allegation in a dramatic confrontation during the Prime Minister's presence in the House of Commons on Wednesday. She claimed she brought evidence to May three years ago when the latter was Home Secretary but no action was taken, the Independent reported. "Three years ago, I brought evidence to her in this House that Whips had used information about sexual abuse to demand loyalty from MPs," Nandy told the Commons. "I brought that information to her in this House and warned her at the time that unless real action was taken, we risk repeating those injustices again. "On three occasions, I asked her to act and on three occasions she did not. So can I ask her, in this of all weeks, for the fourth time, will she finally take concrete action to tackle this?" According to Commons records, Nandy raised the issue twice in 2014 in the chamber and then in a written question. Following her question in Parliament, the Wigan MP tweeted an extract of her exchange with May on the matter, dating from July 2014. It revealed that Nandy had told May that in the mid-1990s, a senior long-serving ex-Whip said the whips' office "routinely helped MPs with scandals" including those "involving small boys" in a bid to exert control and prevent problems for the government. Replying to the claim, May said: "I will of course look back at the questions that she has said that she raised with me in this House." Nandy's claim came amid a deepening scandal over sexual abuse in Parliament with Westminster staffers coming forward to make allegations of harassment, misconduct, assault and rape. The Tories hit the headlines in last few weeks with Minister Mark Garnier admitting he sent his secretary to buy sex toys. May's deputy Damian Green was accused of making advances on a younger writer. Labour MP Jared O'Mara was suspended last week because of sexist remarks made online. Senior activist Bex Bailey claimed she had been raped and discouraged from reporting the incident by senior Labour officials. More claims of harassment in Parliament emerged as a spreadsheet was leaked containing a list of 36 Tory MPs, including some ministers, who had been accused of misconduct. Islamabad, Nov 2 : Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has indirectly conceded that his ministry was not in authoritative control of the countrys foreign policy. Winding up discussion on US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's October visit to South Asia and the new American strategy on Afghanistan, Asif said the foreign policy was being shaped by different institutions and no single institution was in charge of foreign affairs, Dawn online reported on Thursday. But he said on Wednesday that the policy was framed in the light of recommendations of the National Security CommitAtee and Parliament. Senator Farhatullah Babar had criticised Asif for advising the Americans to have an Afghan policy free from the influence of generals and asked him to apply the same in Pakistan. The Minister responded: "I agree that it should be so." Asif said he had not "unwittingly" criticised American generals for their failure in Afghanistan. He said the new US policy was ineffective because it was influenced by the generals who suffered defeat in Kabul. "The Americans have devised a framework for their policy for South Asia which is in fact focused on Afghanistan. It was devised by generals who have struggled in Afghanistan for the last 15 years. "I do not think any policy can be made by people with that baggage and mindset," he said. Asif said he had urged the State Department and other policy-making institutions in the US to have greater control of the American policy "instead of relying on President (Donald) Trump's rejected approach to this problem". The Minister reiterated that Pakistan wanted a regional solution to the Afghan problem. "The entire region has a role to play in the Afghan process and Pakistan wishes for a regional solution to the security challenges faced by the country." Ahmedabad, Nov 2 : Sanjay Leela Bhansali's multi-starrer "Padmavati" has run into trouble - this time political - in Gujarat ahead of its December 1 release. While the ruling BJP has demanded the release be postponed till after the state elections, the Congress has said if there is actually "distortion of history" in the movie then it should not be released at all. The BJP on Wednesday wrote to the Election Commission seeking a ban on release of the movie till after the Gujarat Assembly elections on December 9 and 14. The BJP claimed the movie would hurt the sentiments of Kshatriya and Rajput communities for its "wrong depiction of history". "Rani Padmavati never met Alauddin Khilji. The movie wrongly portrays history," BJP spokesperson and former senior Minister I.K. Jadeja stated. "The state is set to witness elections and in such an environment it is imperative that there is no controversy related to any community and so we have approached the Election Commission for a ban on the release of the movie in the state," he added. Senior Congress leader and national spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said, "With elections round the corner, a Minister from BJP has written to the Election Commission seeking a ban on 'Padmavati' till the elections are over. It is your government, write to the PM." "Also just postponing the release will not assuage the feelings of a community. We demand that if there has been distortion of history as claimed, the movie should not be released at all," Gohil told reporters. He said before arriving at any decision, there should be a special screening of the movie for select community leaders and cuts be made to keep their feelings in mind. Earlier, members of the Kshatriya and Rajput communities from 17 districts met with several ministers seeking a ban on the film. In the past, members of the Karni Sena in Rajasthan had resorted to burning posters of the movie and had even disrupted its shooting in Jaipur. In Gujarat, a group of protesters had stormed into a mall in Surat in mid-October and destroyed a rangoli of actress Deepika Padukone's 'Padmavati' poster drawn by a young local artist. The Bhansali movie has Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh in lead roles. Mumbai, Nov 2 : Choreographer and filmmaker Farah Khan brought along a "lot of cheer and fun" to the set of "The Great Indian Laughter Challenge", which is co-judged by her brother and director Sajid Khan and actor Akshay Kumar. During the shooting of one of its episodes, Farah made a surprise entry. This was when super judge Akshay was amidst an egg breaking contest between judges Shreyas Talpade and Sajid. Farah joined the three on stage sans make-up. "I knew Farah shoots next door but never expected her to turn up on our set. It was a pleasant surprise. She was sporting enough to shoot sans make-up and her presence added a lot of cheer and fun to the atmosphere," Sajid said in a statement. The episode will air on Star Plus on Saturday. Lucknow, Nov 2 : Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has finally agreed to provide his voice sample in the case filed by IPS officer Amitabh Thakur regarding an alleged threat given by him over mobile phone on July 10, 2015, police said on Thursday. Mulayam Singh's willingness was revealed by the case's investigating officer, Circle Officer, Hazratganj, Abhay Mishra when Thakur sought to know about the progress in the case. The investigating officer also said he will be collecting voice sample of both parties very soon. Previously in his report submitted before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Lucknow, Mishra said that Mulayam Singh was not cooperating in the investigation. He said that he and his predecessor Awanish Mishra have sent notice to Mulayam Singh around dozen times through special messenger, registered post and Station Officer, Gautampalli but no one in his residence had received it so far. New York, Nov 2 : The State Bank of India (SBI) has deployed Microsoft Office 365 to improve communication and collaboration among its workforce. This is one of the largest deployments of Office 365 in India, spanning SBI's countrywide network of 23,423 branches, enabling 263,000 employees and servicing more than 500 million customer accounts. "We are excited about our partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft's cutting-edge technology is helping us lead the digital transformation by making it part of our DNA," Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, SBI, said in a statement. SBI employees will now be able to use easy-to-use tools naturally in everyday work, while addressing key aspects of data security and sovereignty. Microsoft has also consolidated SBI's messaging and collaboration server infrastructure in 17 countries, helping it save more than $200,000 annually. "We are thrilled to partner with SBI on their digital transformation as they harness the intelligent cloud and build new digital capability to empower their employees; engage customers in new ways and transform their products and services, while maintaining security, trust and compliance with industry regulations," added Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. With this deployment, SBI will upgrade to Cloud-based technology, focusing on user adoption by identifying use cases based on work profiles. C0hennai, Nov 2 : Tamil movie actor Kamal Haasan, who is planning to jump into active politics, says there are "Hindu extremists" too. Writing in a Tamil magazine, Kamal said that earlier rightwing Hindus used to argue but without indulging in violence. But as their "cunningness" started to fail, they began to resort to violence, he said. "Extremism has spread into their camp as well," the actor said. "This extremism is not a victory or progress to those who call themselves Hindus." He moaned that these days festivals had been commercialized. According to him, the older generation upper caste people who get jittery on seeing equality in society were now trying to impose Sanathana Dharma on the youth by coating it with honey. This was being done through festivals, culture and art, he said. Mumbai, Nov 2 : A top trustee of the well-known Lilavati Hospital, Bandra west, on Thursday accused his relatives of allegedly indulging in a Rs 500 crore fraud in the hospital management and demanded action against them. The Managing & Permanent Trustee Niket Mehta met Mumbai Police Commissioner Datta Padsalgikar to submit his written complaint against the co-trustees of the hospital, besides writing to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, said his lawyer Tanveer Nizam. Speaking to the media on Thursday, Mehta said the Supreme Court had ordered a special investigation team to be set up to probe the state of affairs at Lilavati Hospital, where top celebrities throng for treatment. However, though the Income Tax Department raided the hospital and the trustees, but no report has been filed yet with the apex court. "I have demanded on several occasions an external audit of the accounts of the hospital, preparation of audited reports which could indicate the main findings, detect the huge amounts of funds siphoned off, modus operandi of the frauds and other irregularities, and create a mechanism to prevent recurrence of such frauds in future," Mehta said. Nizam said there was an attempt by two factions in the trust management to sell off the hospital, now worth several billions and pocket the proceeds, which would defeat the vision of its Founder, the late Vijay Mehta. He alleged that till date, the trustees have already sold/siphoned off prime properties of the trust in Mumbai, Pune, Raigad, New Delhi and Kolkata, collectively worth around Rs 500 crore. In order to sell of the hospital, Mehta - who serves in an honorary capacity without drawing any remuneration - said there was an unsuccessful attempt made on his life on July 23, 2010, since he was the Managing & Permanent Trustee of the hospital trust. Shocked by the attack, Mehta said his father Vijay Mehta died the following day, for which the trustees are directly responsible. The trustees include: Prabodh Mehta, his son Chetan Mehta, Kishore Mehta, Charu Mehta, Prashant Mehta, Rashmi Mehta, Bhavin Mehta, Charu Sheth, and others. The two said that in the Supreme Court, the trustees had suppressed the fact that the hospital stands on government land and hence is barred from renting or sub-letting the premises to any other party. Mehta has made an appeal to Chief Minister Fadnavis to help him fulfill his father's dream of providing quality healthcare for all and ensure that the culprits are booked. Mumbai, Nov 2 : Hollywood director Paul Feig of "Ghostbusters" fame on Thursday said Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is a gift to the world. Feig, whose wife Laurie is an ardent fan of Shah Rukh and his work, on Wednesday shared a birthday message for the actor, on Twitter. "Happiest of birthdays to you today, SRK! You are a gift to the world. Hope to see you soon, my friend," Feig, who has also helmed films like "The Heat" and "Spy", tweeted. Back in 2016, when Shah Rukh had hosted a star-studded dinner party for Apple CEO Tim Cook, Feig's wife had tweeted: "Some day I hope Paul Feig can be welcome at Mannat! Dream, Shah Rukh Khan." Shah Rukh had then invited the couple over for a meal. The director had then responded: "You're on, Shah Rukh Khan! I'll bring the ketchup. It would be an honour to meet you. Many thanks, my friend." Canning (West Bengal), Nov 2 : BJP national General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya on Thursday slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for meeting industrialist Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai at a time when her state is in the grip of dengue. "You are in Mumbai to meet Mukesh Ambani. A 21-year-old youth died in Kolkata's alleys due to lack of treatment. You don't care for him but you care for Mukesh Ambani because he is a crorepati and he will give you funds for elections. "Thousands of people are dying in the state from dengue. But shameless government and shameless CM is saying it's not dengue but something else... ," he said here. Banerjee on Tuesday met Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and requested him to invest in her state. Reacting to Vijayvargiya's comment, Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee said: "It is a problem and the issue should not be politicised. Unfortunately, they (the BJP) are observing everything with a political angle. The government is taking all the initiatives and building awareness. There is no reason to panic." Banerjee had a one and half hour meeting with Ambani soon after reaching the country's financial capital where was scheduled to attend a business conclave. Banerjee later told reporters that Ambani would attend the Bengal Global Business Summit organised by her government in January 16-17 in Kolkata. Vijayvargiya also took potshots at the higher education system in the state. "Calcutta University is at the 800th position among 1000 varsities. You are downgrading the level of education in the state. It's has gone down so much that now CU is giving D.Litt to Mamata. Where one time CU had given D.Litt to Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, now it's Mamata. Where is Raja Bhoj, where is Gangu Teli?" he mocked. Gandhinagar, Nov 2 : Dalit youth leader Jignesh Mewani on Thursday said he won't join any political party but wanted the "arrogant BJP government" ousted in Gujarat. Addressing the media, Mewani said the Bharatiya Janata Party government was not even ready to discuss Dalit issues. "The SC community is heavily discontented with the BJP government. It is a hypocritical government," Mewani said. "They even discriminate against Dalit martyrs like Kishore Vanavi... The BJP had promised Rs 4 lakh to his family but they have not given anything to them. "They are not even ready to have discussion regarding our issues which we have been asking for one-and-a-half years. "We don't want this arrogant BJP government at any cost. But at the same time we also won't be joining or supporting any political party," he added. Mewani said a Congress leader had asked him to meet party Vice President Rahul Gandhi. "So I will go and meet him but not for personal gains, but to see their approach towards our 17 demands. Then our community will decide at the time of (the Gujarat Assembly) election (who to vote for)." Nay Pyi Taw, Nov 2 : Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited confict-battered Rakhine state on Thursday for the first time since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims began fleeing the country in August to escape a military operation. The Nobel laureate has been criticised around the world for not stopping the military crackdown on Rohingyas amid allegations of ethnic cleansing. Suu Kyi's brief trip allowed her only short stops in areas affected by the military operation against Rohingya militants. She visited the regional capital Sittwe and other towns during an unannounced one-day trip, the BBC reported. The local media reported that Suu Kyi visited two villages in Maungdaw district -- one of the worst affected by the violence. Accompanied by about 20 people travelling in two military helicopters, including Army, police and state officials, Suu Kyi met the remaining Rohingya residents. Images posted on social media showed the leader speaking to villagers. Some 600,000 Rohingyas fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in two months, carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar's security forces who said they were responding to militant raids on August 25. Pressure is mounting on Myanmar to provide security for Rohingyas and allow them to return home. Chris Lewa, a Rohingya rights activist, said the leader stopped her car at one point to speak to locals. "She only said three things to the people -- they should live peacefully, the government is there to help them, and they should not quarrel with each other," Lewa said, citing a Rohingya religious leader present there, the local media reported. European Commissioner Christos Stylianides visited the Rohingya camps this week in Bangladesh and said the conditions were "beyond imagination". "(The) Rohingya are nothing less than every other human being in the world. This (situation) is, especially for the European Union and also for me personally, appalling," he was quoted as saying by the Dhaka Tribune after a two-day visit. On Wednesday, Myanmar government spokesman U Zaw Htay accused Bangladesh of delaying the start of the repatriation process. "The Myanmar government already declared we are ready to receive [the refugees] at any time ... but the Bangladeshi government is still considering the agreement between the two countries," he said. Chennai, Nov 2 : Thane in Maharashtra will be the first Indian city to be assessed for potential for implementation of district cooling system, said the Indian subsidiary of Danish company Danfoss A/S. In a statement issued here, Danfoss Industries said: "As part of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Initiative, six cities in India including Thane, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Rajkot, Coimbatore and Bhopal have been chosen to explore District Energy systems." "Thane - also part of the Central Government's Smart Cities Mission - will be the first city to be assessed for its potential for implementation of the district energy system," it said. Simply put, district cooling is a system where water is chilled at a central place and is sent to various buildings via pipelines to cool indoor air using the air conditioning system there. According to Danfoss, district cooling systems are energy efficient and would reduce total power consumption for cooling buildings. The water is not for human consumption. "With the Central Government's vision to build 100 smart cities and the UN's District Energy in Cities initiative, we are certain that the six pilot projects of District Cooling which are being launched today, will serve as an inspiration for the rest of the country," Ravichandran Purushothaman, President, Danfoss Industries was quoted as saying in the statement. "Danfoss has implemented both, district cooling and district heating technologies around the globe and we are now looking to showcase this expertise in India as well," he added. Chandigarh, Nov 2 : A fast track court here on Thursday sentenced two maternal uncles, guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl, to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 3.5 lakh on them. The uncles, brothers hailing from Nepal, were convicted on Tuesday for raping the minor victim. The victim gave birth to a baby girl in August after the Supreme Court turned down her plea for abortion as she was over 30-week pregnant. The police had initially arrested one uncle based on the victim's statement. However, when the DNA of the newborn did not match with that uncle, the case took a curious turn. The Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory (CFSL) report, which was submitted before a trial court here in October, had pointed out that the DNA sample of the child and the alleged rapist (uncle), arrested earlier, did not match. The Chandigarh Police, which launched re-investigation into the matter, arrested the second uncle in October, nearly two months after the rape victim delivered the child. The DNA of the second uncle, who is the younger one of the two, matched with the newborn. The prosecution told the trial court that the younger uncle had first raped the girl in December last year. The older uncle raped her repeatedly from April to July this year. The girl had told her parents and police investigators earlier that her maternal uncle (cousin of her mother) had raped her. She had also identified the accused. The victim's plight made national headlines after the Supreme Court on July 28 disallowed her advanced pregnancy to be terminated. The victim delivered a girl child in the Government Medical College and Hospital in Sector 32 here on August 17. The girl's pregnancy was discovered in July after her parents took her to the hospital when she complained of stomach pain. They discovered that the child had been repeatedly raped. A medical board, set up by Chandigarh's Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) on the court's orders to examine the pregnant child, warned that an abortion would risk the girl's life. The order came on a PIL by advocate Alok Srivastava, who moved the top court after a plea for the medical termination of pregnancy was refused by a district court in Chandigarh on July 18. The plea was made while pointing out that the victim's body was not ready for child birth. Shimla, Nov 2 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a "jumla babu" as he is known for making "false promises" and discriminating with the hill states, including Himachal Pradesh, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said here on Thursday. "The 'jumla babu' is here again with false promises. But he will not be able to fool the people of Himachal, who are prepared to give him a befitting reply in the polls," he told reporters here. His remarks came on the day Modi held two public meetings in the poll-bound state to garner votes for the BJP. This was Modi's maiden visit since the pronouncement of the elections. "While he (Modi) snatched the special category status from the state in 2015 (while restoring it temporarily in 2017), he has not fulfilled his promise of raising import duty on apples or laying the railway line from Mandi to Leh," the Congress leader said. Regarding the launch of the 'Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik' (UDAN) scheme between Shimla and Delhi, Surjewala said the central government's scheme has failed completely. He said the Modi government's policies have made the life of common people very tough, with rising prices. The hill state will go to polls for 68 assembly seats on November 9. The votes will be counted on December 18 along with those in Gujarat. In Himachal Pradesh, Congress won 36 of the 68 seats in 2012 with a vote share of 42.81 per cent, while the BJP bagged 26 seats with a 38.47 per cent vote share. Chandigarh, Nov 2 : A multi-crore scholarship scam involving various educational institutions has been unearthed in Punjab, a minister said here on Thursday. Scheduled Castes, Backward Classes and Minority Welfare Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot disclosed that the scam came to light in the special audit of the 'Post Matric Scholarship Scheme' carried out by the department. "Two departmental officers have been placed under suspension for scam in the academic welfare scheme, hobnobbing with the scamsters and gross negligence of duty," he told media here. Dharamsot said Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had, on June 16, ordered the special audit of all the educational institutions of the state with regard to the Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for SC or OBC from 2011-12 to 2016-17. While the special audit was still going on and would be completed by December 31, the scam had been detected in the audit done so far. "Under the scheme for OBC, the Universal College, Dera Bassi claimed Rs 1.18 crore from the Welfare Department in the name of 311 students belonging to the OBC category which was thoroughly probed by the department resulting in the college returning the amount to the tune of Rs 1,17,62,000 to the department," the minister said. He said that during the course of the probe, two officials were found guilty of collaborating in the scam and indulging in gross negligence. The Minister also revealed that during this specialised audit, Devraj Group of Colleges from Ferozepur also tried to defraud the department of Rs 4.4 crore by showing bogus students. "This institution had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court regarding pendency of Rs 4.40 crore with the Welfare Department. When the special audit of this institution was conducted, the claim of Rs 4.40 crore pertaining to this institution was found to be fraudulent." The Minister added that he has ordered registration of FIRs against both the institutions. He said that the Finance Department has conducted the audit of 249 institutions under the Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for SC leading to the audit parties claiming Rs 53.76 crore amount against these institutions. "The audit parties has calculated this objectionable amount against various educational institutions who had wrongfully claimed scholarship under the Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for SCs on the grounds of without acknowledgement to renewed students, without income certificate, unsigned applications by the students and in the name of drop out students," he stated. Dharamsot said that the department has also decided that the audit of the amount released under the Aashirwad Scheme (Shagun Scheme) during the previous five years (when the Akali Dal-BJP government was in power) would be conducted. Mumbai, Nov 2 : The Maharashtra government has asked for a detailed CBI probe into the illegal sale of Herbicide Tolerant BT cotton seeds of five branded companies, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said here on Thursday. He said the sale of such seeds is not permissible under the provisions of the Environment Protection Act, 1986 and police complaints have been registered against the five companies in Nagpur. "It is also found that such type of seeds are being produced in many other states too. Due to the seriousness of the issue, Maharashtra has sent a request to the Centre for a detailed CBI enquiry into this," Fadnavis said here. After the tragic incidents of pesticides poisoning in Yavatmal and other places, a detailed study was done by the Central Institute of Cotton Research (CSIR) and the report was submitted to the government recently, after which the decision was taken, the Chief Minister added. The issue was first highlighted (IANS report on October 20) when the Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavlamban Mission Chairman Kisore Tiwari demanded a CBI probe into reports that around 3.50 million packets of illegal HT genetically-modified cotton seeds worth around Rs 4.72 billion had flooded the markets during the current season in several cotton growing states of India. Tiwari said these hybrid cotton seeds were attacked by pests and bollworm, for which farmers made indiscriminate use of deadly pesticides under unsafe conditions, leading to over 40 deaths and more than 2,000 were affected so far. He said despite the Centre and states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and concerned agencies like GEAC, ICAR and CICR being informed about this, rampant sale of these HT cotton hybrid varieties continued and its deadly effects were witnessed in Maharashtra. Maharashtra Agriculture Minister Pandurang Phundkar had also demanded a ban on these seeds. Tiwari cited reports that though such HT cotton hybrids are being grown in USA, Brazil and some other countries since 1998, it has not been technically and formally approved in India so far, thus rendering its cultivation completely illegal. In fact, the CICR has even found that six of the nine cottonseed hybrids tested positive for herbicide tolerance, but did not care to inform the Maharashtra authorities. It was only after the state's Principal Secretary (Agriculture) Bijay Kumar sought to know details about it following media reports of extensive cultivation of such HT cotton hybrids in the above states that the matter came into limelight. He said while India has tough laws and regulations for approval of GM crops which need to adhere strictly to bio-safety standards to obviate risks to humans, animals and environment, the lackadaisical attitude of CICR, ICAR, GEAC allows rogue actors a free hand. "The casual attitude of these departments, their officials and the states' agriculture departments needs a thorough CBI probe," Tiwari urged. According to some reports, the global giant Monsanto, which owns the HT trait found in CICR samples, has claimed it has informed the GEAC about it since 2008 and most recently in August 2017. "Yet, the GEAC has turned a blind eye to the issue, pointing to a larger involvement of regulatory bodies which needs to be scanned properly by different experts," Tiwari claimed. Seoul, Nov 2 : The National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea on Thursday warned that Pyongyang might carry out new missile tests soon, after Seoul detected movements in North's military installations. NIS representatives told a parliamentary committee that they had seen an active movement of vehicles around a missile research facility in Pyongyang which could suggest a possible missile launch for the first time since September 15, Efe news reported. The warnings came just before US President Donald Trump begins a tour of Asia including visits to Japan, South Korea and China, centred on the North Korean crisis among other issues. Repeated weapon tests by North Korea, including a nuclear test on September 3, as well as strong war rhetoric from the Trump administration had escalated tensions to unprecedented levels since the Korean War in the 1950s. The NIS representatives said the North may carry out more nuclear tests and could push for developing miniature nuclear warheads, Yonhap reported. The NIS also said that tunnel 3 at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site was ready for a nuclear test at any moment although the facility could have suffered considerable damage after the powerful test on September 3. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is currently in South Korea on a two-day visit, on Thursday urged for a peaceful solution to the North Korean crisis. However, he insisted that NATO was ready for any scenario and had the capability to deter attacks. Patna, Nov 2 : The Bihar governnment on Thursday decided to move the Supreme Court against the Patna High Court order on equal pay for equal work to thousands of schoolteachers hired on contract in the state. Education Department Principal Secretary R.K. Mahajan gave information to the media here in this regard. Education Minister Krishnandan Verma held a meeting with top officials after the Patna High Court's order on Tuesday, wherein officials told him that the Education Department will have to spend Rs 15,000 more per teacher in case the state government went ahead to ensure pay parity to nearly 3.5 lakh schoolteachers working on contract, informed sources said. The High Court had ordered that the demand of contractual schoolteachers for equal salaries for equal work was right and had to be met. The contractual teachers had earlier staged protests in support of their demand for parity in salaries with government teachers. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had expressed disappointment over the protests and said their salary parity demand would not be met. Srinagar, Nov 2 : A militant was killed and a soldier critically injured in an ongoing gunfight between security forces and militants on Thursday in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, police said. Police said security forces started a cordon and search operation in Samboora village near Pampore town in Pulwama on Thursday evening following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. "As the security forces closed on the hiding militants they were fired upon and retaliated, triggering the gunfight," police said, adding two militants are reportedly hiding in the village. Exchange of fire was still on at 9 p.m., police said. Tehran, Nov 2 : The Iranian Supreme Leader said on Thursday that resistance was the only way to face the US, which he considered to be Tehran's main enemy. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was addressing thousands of school and university students to honour the National Day of the Fight Against Hegemony, which is to be celebrated on Saturday and commemorates the taking of the US embassy in Tehran by students in 1979. "The US is literally the nefarious and major enemy, and this has been established not through bias and pessimism, but through experience, the realization of issues and field facts," state-run IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. Khamenei said that the US had been taking measures in order to sabotage the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In 2015, Tehran, P5+1 (the US, Russia, Briatin, France and China plus Germany) and the EU signed the JCPOA, which limits Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for easing the sanctions imposed on the Middle Eastern country. US President Donald Trump on October 13 threatened to cancel the deal if it was not modified, which Iran refused to do. Khamenei referred to Trump's remarks, such as calling Iran a terrorist nation, as an example of America's belligerent attitude towards the country. "These absurd words show that not only are the Americans an enemy of Iran's leader and government, but that they also hold a grudge against Iranian people who have tirelessly resisted against them," he added. Pyongyang, Nov 2 : North Korea on Thursday denounced a "false report" by Japanese TV Asahi, which said a pit collapse in the country's nuclear test ground had led to many deaths. Japanese authorities are responsible for allowing TV Asahi to release "the false report", the country's official media KCNA said in a commentary. It also said that Japanese authorities were seeking a pretext for sending troops to the Korean peninsula. Japanese TV Asahi reported on Tuesday that a tunnel under construction at a North Korea nuclear test site collapsed and as many as 200 workers could have been killed. New Delhi, Nov 2 : The Congress on Thursday demanded an apology from the Modi government for the "brutal crackdown" on protesting ex-servicemen who were evicted from Jantar Mantar and demanded that the 'One Rank, One Pension scheme be implemented in full. The party said crushing dissent, strangulating voices and silencing democracy has become the chief hallmark of the ruling BJP. "Brutal crackdown on war veterans and ex-servicemen is an insult to India. Modi government cannot digest peaceful protests for OROP. PM celebrates Diwali with jawans, but his government does not listen to the rightful demands of ex-servicemen," said Congress spokesperson R.P.N. Singh. Ex-servicemen who were protesting at Jantar Mantar since 2015 for implementation of OROP were on Monday evicted from the spot. "Two days ago, Jantar Mantar was silenced using brute force by a government whose defining feature is intolerance to any form of dissent. "Though the government enforced its will under the garb of an order by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), the country knows the real reason for the alacrity with which the iconic protest site was cleaned up. Again today (Thursday), Delhi Police arrested the war veterans at Sansad Marg police station," he added. The party said about 12 ex-servicemen and war veterans were detained from Patel Chowk when they were silently sitting at a bus stop. "They had no banners, no placards and were not shouting any slogans, still 25-50 policemen lathicharged them and later detained them. Is this Democracy under Modi?" asked the Congress leader. Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar said: "The mask of nationalism peeled off when the Modi government used Delhi police to forcibly evict peaceful ex-servicemen from Jantar Mantar and even arrested them thereafter. "The Modi government which did nothing to fulfill the valid demands of 'One Rank One Pension' by the ex-servicemen is now resorting to use brute force against them," he added. Kumar also said: "Modi celebrates Diwali with our army men but commits gross injustice with the same people just after Diwali by denying them the benefit of OROP. Since more than 870 days, now war veterans are forced to sit in protest to demand their pay parity." The party leader further said: "Time and again the Modi government has used brute force on war veterans. First they used police force to evict and lathi-charge them on Independence Day in 2015. Then an ex-serviceman was forced to commit suicide in November in 2016 and now it is hiding behind an NGT order to target them." "To deny benefit of OROP to all serving personnel of the three armed forces is a cruel injustice. Modi government must apologise to the ex-servicemen for this misbehaviour and provide them with full version of 'One Rank, One Pension'," he added. Bengaluru, Nov 2 : US-based Epicor Software Corporation on Thursday said it would sell Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in India through Redington India. "Reddington will distribute our industry-specific ERP solutions to the Indian manufacturing industry, especially the small and medium enterprises," Epicor Vice President, International, Sabby Gill told reporters here. As a leading technology products distributor, Redington India will select and training specialist resellers to grow the Epicor customer base and meet demand for ERP solutions across the country. "Epicor ERP is a great fit for Indian manufacturing firms looking to grow. Adding its ERP to our portfolio will enable us to capitalise on the untapped market potential," said Redington President Anand Chakravarthy. The modern architecture of Epicor ERP will enable customers to deal with challenges of preparing for Industry 4.0, as smart technologies are adopted. "Whilst India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also a digitally advanced market. Redington has expertise to enable manufacturers to digitally transform and grow their businesses," added Gill. Epicor's Regional Vice-President Thiru Vengadam will spearhead the strategy to grow its footprint and help companies thrive through ERP. New Delhi, Nov 2 : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday accused the Centre of imposing an "undeclared emergency" in the country and sought "public apology" from the government for the demonetisation move, at a meeting that was marred by sloganeering between supporters of AAP co-founder Kumar Vishwas and Delhi MLA Amanatullah Khan. The sixth annual National Council Meeting of Delhi's ruling party also expressed "grave concern" over "politically motivated communal tension and fear" in the country due to upcoming assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat. The meeting attended by over 300 AAP delegates from across the country unanimously passed a resolution that also raised concern over the "declining economic growth" attributed to demonetisation and hastily implemented Goods and Services Tax (GST). "The AAP seeks public apology from the Centre for a fraud in the name of demonetisation. The AAP also demands that GST slabs and rates should be reduced to give respite to small traders and proposed that cash transactions in rural areas should be re-established. "The economic growth rate has gone down to 5.7 per cent and is constantly declining. This happened because of the government's anti-people policies. The country had to bear the double brunt of demonetisation and GST." The resolution said that India has the largest population of youth in the world who have become "hopeless" because there are no jobs available. "The BJP before it came to power had promised to create 2 crore jobs per year. But the government's anti-people note ban and GST have cost 45 per cent of jobs available in the country. Ninety per cent of employment in India comes from the unorganised sector that has been destroyed after the note ban." The AAP condemned the "undeclared emergency-like situation created by the central government" and said independent and fearless journalists were being killed or harassed by police. It also condemned pressure being applied on the media in an attempt to print or air only one-sided news stories. The resolution appealed to all sections of the society to maintain peace as "an environment of communal tension and fear was being created in view of the upcoming polls". The meeting was attended by two MPs, all MLAs from Punjab and party state representatives. There were five main speakers including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his deputy Manish Sisodia and spokesperson Ashutosh. The meeting ended in a ruckus after supporters of AAP leader Kumar Vishwas and MLA Amanatullah Khan raised slogans and counter-slogans. Earlier this week, the AAP revoked the suspension of Khan, who had faced disciplinary action in May after he called Kumar Vishwas, its Rajasthan in-charge, a "BJP agent". As both leaders came out of the meeting and walked towards their cars, their supporters raised slogans against each another. Asked whether he expressed his displeasure at the meeting over the revoking of Khan's suspension, Kumar Vishwas said he did not speak because he was not listed as a speaker. A party source told IANS that Kumar Vishwas -- who was not seated on the dais with Kejriwal and other senior leaders and sat amongst the delegates -- spoke twice at the meeting but not on Khan. Earlier, Kumar Vishwas had said that Khan represented those who wanted to destroy the AAP. In May, Kumar Vishwas was named the AAP in-charge of Rajasthan, where elections are due next year. The same day, Khan was suspended from the party. The decisions came days after Khan alleged that Kumar Vishwas was conspiring to break the AAP and plotting a coup against Kejriwal at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Kolkata/Mumbai, Nov 2 : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who on Thursday met Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray, backed his stand against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, saying it's the "right thing to do". "His political party has its own ideology. Despite being in the NDA, they are criticising (the government)... this is a big thing. What Uddhav is doing is the right thing," Banerjee told the media in Mumbai after Thackeray on Thursday afternoon called on her and discussed various issues. Uddhav, accompanied by his son Aditya, visited the hotel in south Mumbai where Banerjee is staying and were warmly received by the Trinamool Congress chief. Later, they spent some time discussing issues of mutual interest. "Meeting was good. It was a courteous meeting. I know them very well. Even when demonetisation started, when we met President of India, he (Uddhav) sent his representative. We discussed about demonetisation, GST, present situation of fixed deposits. We discussed about the common people," Banerjee said. Asked about her party's plans on the Gujarat Assembly elections on December 9 and 14, she said her party will not contest but only try to tell people not to vote for the BJP. "The entire country is unhappy (post demonetisation). We had first warned about demonetisation and hasty implementation of GST... the common man is suffering. We are trying to go to Gujarat. We are supporting (the common man in) Gujarat... about a lakh of people in Surat have lost their jobs. "Even people in Mumbai told us about their problems. We are not contesting the election in Gujarat but whoever is contesting the polls, we will tell people not to vote for the BJP. We don't support them... that (our stand) is ideologically backed," she said. Incidentally, both the Shiv Sena, which is a partner in the NDA government at the centre and the state, and the Trinamool are at daggers drawn with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party on a variety of issues including demonetisation and GST implementation. Banerjee is in Mumbai since Tuesday for a meeting with top industrialists and bankers for the upcoming fourth Bengal Global Business Summit scheduled in Kolkata on January 16-17. Beijing, Nov 2 : China on Thursday again stymied India's efforts to impose an international ban on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar by vetoing a US resolution at the UN. "Due to the lack of consensus at the UNSC committee, the application seeking a ban on Masood Azhar has been rejected," a Chinese Foreign Ministry official told IANS. This is the second time Beijing has vetoed the proposal which was first moved by India at the Al Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council in March last year. It did the same to a US proposal backed by France and Britain, first blocking it in January and then put a technical hold for three months in August. new resolution will have to be moved now. China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief who is accused of plotting the deadly attack on an Indian airbase. India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar as an international terrorist. China is one of the five veto-holding members and its vote for or against the resolution is decisive. Action against Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India, though the former agreed to include Azhar's outfit in the joint statement issued by BRICS members at their summit in China. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had indicated on Monday that it will block the US resolution. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Monday the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council was still in disagreement over approving the application. "As for the listing application by the relevant country, there are disagreements. China put the technical hold to allow more time to deliberate on this matter," Hua had said. "To our regret, the committee so far has yet to reach consensus," she had added. Agra, Nov 2 : After a harrowing three-hour rescue operation, two male hyenas were rescued from a well in Agra district, with one of the two animals sustaining injuries. On Wednesday morning, residents of Pinahat woke up to the sound of distress cries of some animal echoing from a well. On reaching there, they were shocked to find two heynas trapped inside an approximately 25-feet-deep dry well. A four-member rescue team comprising trained rescuers, along with two forest officials, arrived on the scene and started the rescue operation. As they could not lower two cages into the narrow well simultaneously, the team had to lower them one by one, keeping in mind their as well as people's safety. "One hyena has sustained injuries in the mandible (jaw bone) that has led to swelling in the lower jaw. Both hyenas are currently undergoing treatment," said Dr. Ilayaraja, Deputy Director - Veterinary Services of Wildlife SOS. Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder and CEO, Wildlife SOS said: "Such cases have been increasing in the recent years and the main reason behind this appears to be lack of proper fencing around wells. We must work closely with the local communities to address this problem." Earlier this year, Wildlife SOS rescued a severely injured hyena from a well in Fatehpur Sikhri but the animal succumbed to its injuries, he said. "Pinahat is located in the Chambal forest range, which is home to unique wildlife species such as striped hyenas, mugger crocodiles, gharials as well as several turtle species," Satyanarayan said. Once the injured animal is declared fit, both hyenas will be released back into the wild. Wildlife SOS has also launched a petition to invite public participation to highlight the issue of open and abandoned wells that pose a threat to both human beings as well as animals. Rae Bareli, Nov 2 : The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast here in Uttar Pradesh rose to 30 on Thursday, with more injured workers succumbing to their burn injuries. Power producer NTPC shut down the 500 MW unit following the accident. The National Human Rights Commission has issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the deaths. Nine of the injured in the boiler blast are to be shifted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi, an official said on Thursday. Three senior officials of the NTPC who suffered critical injuries are being flown in an air ambulance to Medanta Hospital in Gurugram. Doctors warned the toll was likely to rise as more than a dozen contractual labourers were battling for life with more than 90 per cent burn wounds. On Thursday, contractual labourers at the Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station here raised slogans against the NTPC management. They claimed they had warned about an impending disaster at unit six as the temperature near the furnace had been steadily rising. The NTPC has launched a probe into the incident, which it said took place due to "excess ash deposition" in the furnace. The state government has ordered a magisterial probe. District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Khatri told IANS that the number of injured in the Wednesday tragedy at the state-run National Thermal Power Corp (NTPC) plant stood at 64. The massive explosion took place in a 500 MW unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many were trapped when a fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the dead, Rs 50,000 each to the critically injured and Rs 25,000 to those who suffered minor injuries. They will all get free treatment at government hospitals. Angry locals and family members of the injured alleged that there was a complete absence of medical facilities at the NTPC campus, which pushed up the number of casualties. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday visited Rae Bareli after cutting short his Gujarat tour and met family members of the victims. Rae Bareli is the Lok Sabha constituency of his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. She may not visit the constituency as she is reportedly unwell. Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka Vadra is also scheduled to visit Rae Bareli. Rahul Gandhi demanded a "fair probe" into the boiler explosion and sought government jobs for the kin of the dead. Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma also called on the injured at the district hospital. Meanwhile, Union Power Minister R.K. Singh visited the site and denied claims by some political leaders and families of the dead that human negligence was to blame for the boiler blast. "I have seen everything during my physical inspection of the accident scene and I can say that there is no human negligence in the unfortunate incident," Singh told reporters, after visiting the accident site along with state Power Minister Shrikant Sharma. He also announced that the Central government has decided to give financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh to the families of the deceased and Rs 10 lakh each to the critically injured, while those who sustained minor injuries would get Rs 2 lakh each, the Union Minister announced. This compensation would be in addition to the ex-gratia and financial assistance announced by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The state-run NTPC has also announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of the dead. The Prime Minister's Relief Fund will also give Rs 2 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased. Minister R.K. Singh said the priority of the government, both at the Centre and the state, was to save as many lives as possible, provide them best, prompt and adequate treatment. Singh also said that NTPC's Unchahar unit was among the best in the country and that rumours that there was extra load on it or that it was under pressure to increase production were unfounded and baseless. How and why the accident happened would be conclusively found and detailed in the probe ordered by the Ministry which would be completed in 30 days, he added. Madrid, Nov 2 : The Spanish prosecutor's office on Thursday requested that a European Arrest Warrant be issued against the recently-ousted president of the Catalonia region and the four former cabinet members who are believed to be with him in Brussels. Carles Puigdemont and the ex-cabinet members are currently facing charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds for their involvement in an illegal independence referendum and subsequent unilateral declaration of independence, Efe reports. Hours after the declaration, the Spanish Senate triggered Article 155 of the Constitution, rescinding Catalonia's regional autonomy, dismissing Puigdemont and his cabinet and calling for regional elections on December 21. Spain's public prosecutor filed a lawsuit against Puigdemont, his cabinet, the speaker of the regional parliament and five top officials in the regional chamber, but by then the president and some of the cabinet had gone to Belgium. While those who remained in Spain appeared before the National Court on Thursday, Puigdemont's lawyer said Wednesday that he would not be attending court. According to the public prosecutor's office, he has "publicly expressed his intention to not appear before the court and has requested to testify by video conference without giving any information on where he is at the moment." If the judge approves the European Arrest Warrant, Puigdemont and the ministers could be arrested at any moment and remain in detention until they can be extradited to Spain. Sources from the Belgian prosecutor's office told Efe that if the warrant is received, they will apply the law as necessary, but that no further comments of conjectures could be made. New Delhi, Nov 2 : A forum of journalists from South Asia on Thursday urged governments and society to respect professional media, uphold the law, and resist the intimidation and censoring of journalists. The South Asia Media Defenders Network, on the occasion of the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, paid tributes to journalists throughout the world who work tirelessly, courageously and professionally to report on and defend human rights and all those who work for substantive equality, a statement said. Journalists face a unique set of challenges while performing their duties and often run into specific risks of intimidation, harassment and violence. The alarming increase in violence against media defenders and violation of their rights demonstrates the importance of strengthening protection mechanism across the globe, it noted. According to the UN, more than 900 journalists have been killed in the last decade, while over 30 journalists have been targeted and killed in 2017, including the recent attacks on journalists in Kenya, Malta, India and Pakistan. It called on governments to ensure accountability through the conduct of impartial, speedy and effective investigations into cases of violence against journalists and media workers and to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to justice, and assure victims access to appropriate remedies. It urged media owners and publishers to protect staff and provide assistance cover in all situations, including the confiscation and destruction of equipment. It affirmed the importance of freedom of expression and of a free media in building inclusive knowledge societies and democracies to foster intercultural dialogue, peace and good governance. The statement was signed by Sanjoy Hazarika, Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), columnist and author, Salil Tripathi, columnist, author, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International, London, Tarun Basu, Director and former Chief Editor, IANS and President, Society for Policy Studies (SPS), Mahfuz Anam, Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star, Bangladesh, among others. New Delhi, Nov 2 : Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel on Thursday told the Delhi High Court that he wants to withdraw the letter he wrote to Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal expressing agony at "developments that are purposely triggered to cripple the functioning of the Legislative Assembly". A bench of Justice G.S. Sistani and V. Kameshwar Rao asked counsel appearing for Goel to give a written request for withdrawing of the letter dated October 27. Counsel told the court that the letter was between two constitutional authorities and should be treated as unconditionally withdrawn. The bench, asking the counsel to come with a written request to withdraw the letter, now posted the matter for November 8. The three-page letter, which is now being heard as a petition, alleged that a division bench of the court had passed orders against the legislature without ascertaining facts. The speaker, who is the Aam Aadmi Party legislator for Shahdara, did not name the two officials. But, as per sources, the reference is to petitions in high court filed recently by Principal Secretary, PWD, Ashwani Kumar and Delhi Chief Secretary M.M. Kutty. Kumar approached the court against "breach of privilege" proceedings initiated by the assembly's privilege committee. He got a stay from the court on the proceedings which had been initiated against Kumar for allegedly misleading a house panel on desilting of drains in the city. Kutty also got a stay from the high court on a show-cause notice issued by the assembly's "question and reference committee" for allegedly not following its directive to incorporate adverse remarks in the annual confidential report, or ACR, of a bureaucrat. The letter claimed that in two of three matters heard by a high court division bench, the Delhi assembly was not even served notice and they were not able to represent their position to the bench. In his letter to the Chief Justice, Goel said: "I urge upon you to not to allow in future such acts which endanger the delicate balance and harmonious relationship that exists between the legislature and judiciary." The letter also said that state that the pronouncements of a division bench of the high court "turned out to be alarmingly injurious to the relationship" between the organs of the state. New Delhi, Nov 2 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said here on Thursday said that though his government doesn't have legal power in many areas, they know how to get things done. Kejriwal, who is also the National Convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), was speaking at the annual National Council Meeting of the party attended by more than 300 party delegates. "We don't have legal power, but we are people from the ground and street. If things can't be done in that way, then we know how to do it this way. When we didn't have power, we used to get things done, now at least we have some power," he said, referring to AAP MLAs protest at the Lt Governor's office for "not passing" files related to Mohalla Clinics, a flagship project of the Delhi government. "One day all these MLAs went and sat at the LG's house and said that 'sir either you clear the files or else we will eat here'. Later the files were cleared in two day's time," Kejriwal said in his address to the delegates. "I'm not exaggerating, but I can't even appoint my peon, all our powers have been taken away," he said. Kejriwal said that the Supreme Court is hearing a case on power distribution in Delhi between the Central and state governments and added that if they get back control over the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB), then they'll show the Central government the grit they had in the first, 49-day AAP government. He said that when they came to power in 2013 for 49 days, officers and police were not taking any bribe as the ACB was under the Delhi government, but though the ACB was taken away from the Delhi government when AAP came to power for the second time, "they couldn't take one thing from us - passion". Kejriwal said that two things -- Jan Lokpal and Swaraj -- were their foundation, but the party has not been able to achieve these. He said that though the Jan Lokpal Bill was passed by the Delhi assembly, it was pending with the Central government. "If Jan Lokpal is passed in Delhi, then our MLAs will be trapped, our ministers will be trapped, our Chief Minister will be trapped, it's good for you (central government), so pass it. But they won't pass it because, if it happens in Delhi then there will be demands from the whole country to pass it in their states too," he said. Bonn, Nov 2 : To combat the worsening impacts of climate change and air pollution, civil society groups across 28 European nations on Thursday starting campaigning under Europe Beyond Coal, a collective campaign to move away from coal towards clean renewable energy. Underscoring the need for this shift, new health impact modelling released by the campaign showed that in 2015, the European Union's coal fleet alone was responsible for an estimated 19,500 premature deaths and 10,000 cases of chronic bronchitis in adults. Coal's health costs are equally staggering, with up to 54 billion euros in the same one year period, they said. "Momentum is building for Europe to be coal-free by 2030, and civil society is coming together to make it happen, and happen sooner," Europe Beyond Coal campaign Director Kathrin Gutmann said, according to a statement. Calling for faster closing of coal plants which are a "liability for all of Europe, and our planet as a whole", she said: "We're calling on governments, cities, companies, banks and investors to cement their plans to move out of coal before the 2018 international climate meeting in Katowice (Poland). "The UN climate meeting starting in Bonn next week is an excellent opportunity for additional, ambitious commitments to phase out coal." Since 2016, Europe Beyond Coal groups have helped retire 16 coal plants across Europe and 39 more are to close with the Netherlands, Britain, Finland, France, Portugal and Italy committing to being coal-free by 2030. The campaign is focussing its efforts on turning these announcements into action and hastening closure of 293 remaining plants. Geneva, Nov 2 : The United Nations said on Thursday it had found the Islamic State responsible for international crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. These abuses reportedly took place during the Islamic State's nine-month attempt to repel the Iraqi army's offensive on Mosul. "During the course of the operation to retake Mosul City, thousands of civilians were subjected to shocking human rights abuses and clear violations of international humanitarian law," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein. The report, prepared by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), documents mass abductions and the use of thousands of civilians as human shields, as well as the murder of people trying to flee the city. At least 2,521 civilians were killed during the offensive, most as a result of attacks by IS. "The execution-style killing of civilians, the suffering inflicted on families, and the wanton destruction of property can never be tolerated in any armed conflict, and those responsible must answer for their heinous crimes," said al-Hussein, reports Efe. In addition to those killed during the hostilities, the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps informed the UN that on October 26, that they had recovered the remains of 1,642 civilians from underneath rubble in Mosul. The UN Special Representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said the report documented evidence of the mass atrocities committed by IS against civilians in Mosul. "Daesh's reign of terror has spared no one, inflicting untold suffering on unarmed residents whose only guilt is that they lived in the areas under ISIL's control. "Their evil acts did not stop at killing and terrorizing residents, as they wantonly destroyed cultural and religious monuments, including the city's iconic leaning minaret Al-Hadba, in total disregard of history and Islam, the religion this terrorist organization falsely claimed to represent," he added. The report also stated that since 2014, 74 mass graves have been found in Iraq _ with varied numbers of corpses, ranging from less than a dozen to thousands of bodies _ and urged authorities to preserve those places as evidence of crimes. It concluded by calling on the international community, including the UN Security Council, to take action to ensure that those responsible for these crimes are held accountable. The report also called on the Iraqi government to investigate alleged violations and human rights abuses by the Iraqi army and allied forces, as it recorded 461 civilian deaths as a result of airstrikes during the most intensive phase of the Iraqi offensive. However, in these cases the UN recognizes that it could not determine the responsibility for the airstrikes. Athens, Nov 3 : State officials and representatives of major enterprises signed here a series of memoranda of understanding to promote bilateral economic cooperation under the 2017-2019 Greece-China Action Plan. The plan was sealed in May this year in Beijing during Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' visit. "The basis of this cooperation we believe is that Greece's growth strategy meets China's Belt and Road Initiative and the benefits are mutual," Xinhua news agency quoted Greek Deputy Economy and Development Minister Stergios Pitsiorlas as saying while welcoming the Chinese delegation. "Today we have the first tangible results. The signing of a series of agreements and MOUs are the first steps in the implementation of this action plan; therefore we are on the right path." National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Vice Head Ning Jizhe on his part expressed delight to see that the action plan has provided a good collaboration platform and some initial tangible results have been achieved. Ning, also head of China's National Bureau of Statistics, hoped that both sides can enhance their cooperation on investment, trade and industrial capacity under the Belt and Road Initiative in tune with the principle of planning together, building together and benefiting together. On Thursday, the two sides specified details of cooperation projects included in the three-year action plan and witnessed the signing of several MOUs which are expected to further boost bilateral ties. London, Nov 3 : British Prime Minister Theresa May has backed a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. She made this assertion while hosting her Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu at an event here on Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in which the United Kingdom gave its support to the Zionist project, Efe news reported. "Britain remains committed to a two-state solution. I'm sure we will want to be talking about the peace process in the Middle East," she told Netanyahu when he met her at the beginning of a four-day visit. According to a statement issued by the British Government, May said she was concerned by "illegal settlements" in Palestine. She invited Netanyahu to London to underline the key role London had played in creating Israel. On November 2, 1917, as World War I still raged, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed the government's support for a Jewish state in Palestine, a territory then ruled by the Ottoman Turks, where Jews represented roughly 10 per cent of the population. The Balfour Declaration made Britain the first world power to recognize the Zionist movement. The Balfour Declaration was followed by decades of intense diplomatic and non-diplomatic activities leading to the 1947 United Nations partition plan drafting the creation of separate Jewish and Palestinian states. Sanaa, Nov 3 : At least two militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch were killed in a US drone strike in northeastern province of Marib, a security official said. The suspected terrorists were targeted on Thursday while driving a car in al-Huson area in al-Wadi district southeast of Marib, Xinhua news agency quoted the official as saying on condition of anonymity. The US military has stepped up drone airstrikes against Yemen-based al-Qaida branch in the Arabian Peninsula since President Donald Trump approved expanded military operations against the group. The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, regarded by the US as the global terror network's most dangerous branch, has exploited over two years of deadly civil war between Yemen's Government and Houthi rebels to expand its presence, especially in the south and north-eastern provinces. Kiev, Nov 3 : Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, have agreed to launch a visa-free travel between their countries, the Ukrainian presidential press service said. The agreement was reached during Poroshenko's visit to Dubai on November 1-2, said the statement on the presidential website, Xinhua news agency reported. Poroshenko's spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko said both sides will abolish visa requirements for each other's citizens starting from next month. Ukraine and the UAE established the diplomatic relationship on October 15, 1992. Edison Press acquires Lincoln Press Our employees have been the backbone of our success, and we're excited to add the talent, experience and capabilities of Lincoln Press to the Edison team." Edison Press announced the acquisition of Lincoln Press, expanding printing, wide- format press, mailing and fulfillment capabilities, and adding tremendous value for employees and customers. The combined companies will operate as Edison Press. When people get together, great things can happen. Relationships flourish, and business improves. Our acquisition of Lincoln Press and its client base will expand our print-production capabilities, and help solidify Edison as the largest commercial printer in Sanford and Southern Maine, stated Joe Rosenfield, President of Edison Press. Jay Van Tassel of Lincoln Press indicated that, "We celebrate a new milestone as we formally join the Edison family. Our alignment with Edison Press will create tremendous value for our companies, our employees, and loyal customers. Together, we will draw on our decades of experience to push the company forward with technology, innovation and experience. Rosenfield concluded that, We will work with our management team for a smooth transition to a single company. Our employees have been the backbone of our success, and we're excited to add the talent, experience and capabilities of Lincoln Press to the Edison team." The firms will merge business operations in the coming weeks, with the combined company operating under the Edison Press brand. The offices will remain in Sanford at Edison headquarters. About Edison Press Since 1978, Edison Press has delivered innovative and creative print, production, and fulfillment services. Lincoln Press has delivered short-run sheet printing, digital and large-format production since 1932. joe(at)edisonpress.com For more information, please visit EdisonPress.com. The simplicity of MADP has opened a new avenue to efficiency and is subsequently transforming app development business models across nearly every industry. SyncDog, Inc., the leading ISV for mobile application security, today announced an expanded integration partnership with mobile software solutions provider Kaonsoft. The agreement provides NIST-certified (cert. 2687), FIPs 140-2 encryption for data both at rest and in transit on employees mobile devices through SyncDogs Secure.Systems containerized workspace, providing full device security for fully-functional mobile application development in KEMP (Kaonsoft Enterprise Mobility Platform). KEMP is an award-winning, holistic development architecture designed to facilitate the creation of mobile apps that meet burgeoning business demands. Were excited to add even more data protection to KEMP, said Daniel Lee, Kaonsoft CEO. With more companies needing to build apps in-house, MADP (mobile app development platform) is quickly becoming a standard for large-size enterprises. This enhanced integration to the Kaonsoft/SyncDog product lines positions us well for future growth, said Jonas Gyllensvaan, CEO and founder of SyncDog. The partnership helps validate the markets need for a secure and highly-functional mobile app container that is NIST-certified. We are working on similar integration enhancements with Microsoft and its Office 365 Enterprise product line, as well as other enterprise-sized software vendors. The simplicity of MADP has opened a new avenue to efficiency and is subsequently transforming app development business models across nearly every industry. In todays digital ecosystem, mobile app development by laymen mobile developers often lacks security needed to protect data and intellectual property, yet business apps must meet still meet rigorous standards for security, scalability, and compliance. This is a difficult task that must be achieved without sacrificing the end-user functionality that made custom mobile app building a viable bottom-line proposition at the start. SyncDogs partnership with Kaonsoft leverages the Secure.Systems product as a secure environment in which organizations can use KEMP to develop bespoke enterprise applications tailored to their workflows and proprietary IP with little impact to the end-user experience. By adding device-level fortification with the Secure.Systems containerized workspace, KEMP will equip developers with all the essential tools and services needed to build, deploy, and manage mobile solutions in an environment free from the rising risk of mobile threat. A recent study by Gartner showed that in 2015, about 60 percent of organizations were engaged in mobile app development and by 2016 that number had jumped to 73 percent. Gartner further predicts that by 2022, 70 percent of software interactions in enterprises will occur on mobile devices. This strategic partnership between Kaonsoft and SyncDog provides a solid foundation for organizations seeking the following elements of a robust MADP to drive mobile productivity and stimulate enterprise growth: Development flexibility: open-standard technology with virtually no vendor lock ensures that continuous improvements are implemented without any proprietary constraints or artificial barriers to deliver sustainable and configurable mobile solutions Security infrastructure for data protection: Secure.Systems containers provide FIPS 140-2 compliant and AES 256-bit encrypted mobile application security to safeguard sensitive, mission critical data both at rest on the device and in transit from device to datacenter. Cross-device compatibility for multiple operating systems: cross-platform development tools ensure that data from back end systems and legacy applications are rapidly delivered to any mobile device to support CYOD and BYOD policies and can easily scale for growing needs Pre-built components for easy integration with backend systems: modular architecture of KEMP combined with a myriad of engines on the server side promote seamless integration with existing network systems and services to preserve and leverage existing enterprise assets Dashboard for actionable business insights: modern portal of KEMP provides contextual data and statistics on app usage to ascertain operational effectiveness and efficiencies KEMP is an enabling technology with the potential to modernize workplaces across industries. With 100+ individual UI templates, 70+ scenario-based templates and 30+ standalone application templates allowing for easy customization, KEMP has the potential to significantly improve many business practices said Daniel J. Lee, Co-founder/CEO of Kaonsoft. Organizations utilizing Kaonsoft and SyncDog powered mobile solutions can expect to see enhanced workflow with greater efficiency. The Secure.Systems Workspace SyncDogs Secure.Systems, formerly SentinelSecure, is a secure mobile app workspace with AES 256-bit encryption that secures data between the enterprise and secure, sandboxed applications running on employees mobile devices. The mobile workspace delivers a highly functional and easy app experience for users, and protects enterprise data with a secure, partitioned FIPS 140-2 certified* container across both iOS and Android devices. Applications in the workspace include Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise, Skype for Business, SharePoint, OneNote, DropBox, enterprise chat, geo-location services and a host of other productivity applications for mobile. Secure.Systems can be delivered via SaaS, Hybrid Cloud, or On Premise, and has a multi-tiered licensing model. Please visit https://secure.systems/licensing for licensing options. About Kaonsoft, Inc. Established in 2011, Kaonsoft is a software company that delivers secure mobile strategies to organizations across industries for complete digital transformation. Backed by decades of digital expertise, Kaonsoft provides end-to-end mobility solutions that include an award-winning app development platform, a line of business-specific mobile applications as well as app delivery services. Kaonsoft aims to help clients improve customer experience, increase operational efficiency and optimize top line growth through a successful realization of enterprise mobility. For more information, visit http://www.kaonsoft.com, or connect with Kaonsoft on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. About SyncDog, Inc. SyncDog is the leading ISV for building mobile IT frameworks that extend enterprise app functionality to mobile devices while securing networks from mobile-endpoint threat. SyncDog Secure.Systems delivers an unimpeded, fully-functional mobile app experience that supports Microsoft OneDrive, Office 365, Skype for Business, and other Microsoft productivity apps within a NIST-certified, FIPS 140-2 workspace. The Secure.Systems mobile-app mobile workspace is ideal for organizations that want to deliver a rich mobile app experience across BYOD, CYOD, or other device policy. Secure.Systems can be deployed as managed service from https://secure.systems or as an on-premise solution. Secure.Systems can be found on both the Microsoft Azure and MobileIron marketplace exchanges. For more information about SyncDog, please visit https://syncdog.com. We spent a lot of money on the legal advice regarding the trademark. At first we were sceptical about trademarking a word like "Firework" but in the end we decided to pay because it would help us protect our brand. The website says that since they purchased the business 2 months ago. They have been handling numerous complaints about fireworks bought from other sites. This is thought to have had a knock on effect to their website and brand. Last month they were in contact with Trademark professionals who explained to them that they would succeed if they applied for a trademark due to them owning the website FireWorks.co.uk Company spokesman Richard Barker said We spent a lot of money on the legal advice regarding the trademark. At first we were sceptical about trademarking a word like "Firework" but in the end we decided to pay because it would help us protect our brand. If the website is successful in its application, it would mean that any business in the UK that uses or wants to use the word FireWorks on their products would need to obtain permission from them first and pay a licensing fee. They insist that it is all about protecting their brand and maintaining safety standards not about raising money from fees. With the trademark, the company can perform their own tests on products to make sure they are of a certain standard before being sold to the public. Richard Barker later said people think this is about the fees, but it isnt. Businesses can use the word Pyrotechnics on their box because it is generic. Fireworks, is our brand, not generic and therefore we have a right to protect it. The company expects a lot of people to object to the trademark application. The Intellectual Property Office refused to comment other than to say we do not comment on individual applications The entire ProFood World team is excited about the buzz already in place for the 2018 awards. ProFood World, a publication of PMMI Media Group, part of PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, is pleased to announce submissions for the second annual Manufacturing Innovation Awards are now open. All submissions are due January 22, 2018. To nominate a company, visit ProFoodWorld.com/mia-awards-details. Following a great start with our inaugural awards ceremony held at ProFood Tech in April 2017, the entire ProFood World team is excited about the buzz already in place for the 2018 awards. We anticipate receiving many outstanding entries for 2018, said Joyce Fassl, Editor in Chief of ProFood World. Types of projects eligible for the award include: Major plant expansion Major plant renovation Greenfield facility Brownfield facility Major line expansion incorporating ground-breaking technology Major automation upgrades Major food safety upgrades Major sustainability upgrades Overall plant efficiency upgrades The winning manufacturing plants will be honored at a special event in June 2018. Videos highlighting past award winners are now posted on the ProFood World website. Past winners include: Caito Foods, Castellini Brothers and Morada Nut Company. Learn more about ProFood Worlds Manufacturing Innovation Awards. About PMMI Media Group PMMI Media Group is a market-leading B2B media company that produces information for packaging, processing and automation professionals, bringing together solution providers and end-users and facilitating connectivity throughout the supply chain. Its world class media brands Packaging World, Automation World, Healthcare Packaging, Contract Packaging, Packaging + Processing OEM and ProFood World are proven leaders in covering this diverse and dynamic marketplace, and its digital products incorporate leading edge media technologies to deliver informed, actionable business intelligence to the industry. PMMI Media Group also produces the Automation Conference & Expo, an annual education and networking forum, taking place in Chicago each spring. PMMI Media Group is a division of PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, a trade association representing more than 800 North American manufacturers and suppliers of equipment, components and materials as well as providers of related equipment and services to the packaging and processing industry. Learn more at PMMIMediaGroup.com Having established the firm as Sage Intacct's strongest partner and overall Partner of the Year for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, AcctTwo's move from #79 to #51 in the VAR 100 continues to demonstrate the firm's growth trajectory. AcctTwo, a leading consulting firm and provider of cloud-based financial management and managed accounting solutions, announced that it has been named to Accounting Today's VAR 100 List for 2017. Accounting Today is the leading provider of online business news for the tax and accounting community, offering breaking news, in-depth features, insightful editorial analysis, and a host of web-related resources and services. Their annual VAR 100 list ranks the top resellers in the accounting space, and dives into the major issues theyre facing, as well as their strategies for success. Having established the firm as Sage Intacct's strongest partner and overall Partner of the Year for 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, AcctTwo's move from #79 to #51 in the VAR 100 continues to demonstrate the firm's growth trajectory. AcctTwo has, in just six short years, established itself as the go-to consulting firm for Sage Intacct and other cloud-based financial management solutions, as well as a leading provider of Managed Accounting Services (MAS) delivered via a powerful shared services model. AcctTwo's partnership with Sage Intacct, the industry-leading best-in-class cloud accounting ERP for mid-market companies, continues to have a bright future as more and more businesses move their financials to the cloud, taking advantage of powerful automation, insight, and performance. And the firm's recent move to become a full-fledged sales and implementation partner for Adaptive Insights will enable AcctTwo to provide turnkey finance solutions - as well as managed accounting and analytics services - to companies and nonprofits from start-ups through the top end of the midmarket. "We're very proud of our continued success and we're excited to make the VAR 100 list again," said Marcus Wagner, CEO and Founder of AcctTwo. "I credit a sales team that focuses on a consultative sales process, a professional services team dedicated to customer success and satisfaction, and our partnership with Sage Intacct and their commitment to supporting their channel partners." About AcctTwo: AcctTwo is a leading consulting firm and reseller of cloud-based accounting, ERP, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software. Our sophisticated systems solve the issues growing middle market companies and nonprofit organizations face today. AcctTwo also provides Managed Accounting Services (MAS), allowing clients to focus on the core competencies of their business. We provide the people, processes, technology, and office facilities to perform these functions, while allowing clients to collaborate interactively through an on-line portal. AcctTwo is headquartered in Houston, Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.accttwo.com or call 713-744-8400. Contacts: Peter Wagner Director of Marketing AcctTwo Cell: 512.415.6846 Email: pwagner(at)accttwo.com Receiving this honor would not be possible if not for our hard-working, quality-focused franchise owners and corporate team, said Larry Kraska, Interim Healthcare Inc. CEO and President. Interim HealthCare has been named to Franchise Times Top 200+ list for 2017. The company ranked #89 among the top 200 franchise organizations across the U.S. This is the 15th year making the Franchise Times 200+ list, which is an annual ranking of the 500 largest franchise systems in the United States by global systemwide sales, based on the previous years performance. By category, employment services and health-oriented franchises led the list with 9.4 percent and 6.9 percent sales gains. Interim HealthCare was ranked number two out of 19 medical/health franchise opportunities included. Receiving this honor would not be possible if not for our hard-working, quality-focused franchise owners and corporate team, said Larry Kraska, Interim HealthCare Inc. CEO and President. Weve had significant achievements due to the fact that an Interim HealthCare franchise is not only an affordable investment opportunity, but one with great potential for expansion given the aging American population. In fact, Americans spent roughly $88.8 billion for home health care services in 2015, and by 2030, one in five Americans will be a senior citizen, likely requiring home health or hospice support. We are truly thrilled to be recognized among the whos-who of the worlds most successful, recognizable franchises. Interim HealthCare offers extensive training and innovative marketing programs for all franchisees through one of the most experienced franchise support teams in the industry. Its legendary brand has been built on 50 years of home care, hospice and staffing expertise. A deep understanding of todays regulatory environment and complexities of building franchise operations, such as marketing, sales, finance, training and human resources, continues to drive business success for franchise owners. For more details about the companys franchisee opportunities, visit http://www.interimfranchising.com. About Interim HealthCare Interim HealthCare Inc., founded in 1966, is a leading national franchisor of home care, hospice and healthcare staffing. It is part of Caring Brands International which also includes UK-based Bluebird Care and Australia-based Just Better Care, both well-known franchise brands in their countries. With more than 530 franchise locations in seven countries Caring Brands International is a global health care leader. Interim HealthCare in the United States is unique in combining the commitment of local ownership with the support of a national organization that develops innovative programs and quality standards that improve the delivery of service. Franchisees employ nurses, therapists, aides, companions and other healthcare professionals who provide 25 million hours of home care service to 190,000 people each year, meeting a variety of home health, senior care, hospice, palliative care, pediatric care and healthcare staffing needs. For more information or to locate an Interim HealthCare office, visit http://www.interimhealthcare.com. I couldn't have managed this acquisition without Globals expertise and the Garages marketplace in helping me sell three other pieces of equipment. This is what makes them such great partners to grow with. Global Imaging is a grand format printing solutions provider, curating exceptional devices to the industry for more than 20 years. The company recently guided Lake Graphics Label & Sign in the acquisition of multiple pieces of new equipment: the Durst Rhotex 325, Monti Antonio calender, and Impulsa industrial sewing equipment. These acquisitions will open the door to an entirely new market segment for this 8-year-old company. Lake Graphics Label & Sign Company, based in Cleveland, Ohio, is an all-digital producer for labels, decals, signs, large-format prints, finishing, and now with their recent acquisitions fabric printing services. Largely involved in wholesale production in their fabric business, Lake Graphics specializes in identifying unique solutions to application issues, and delivering white-label products seamlessly. While the company was initially interested in franchise operations, they chose instead to direct their efforts to offering wholesale customers expanded capabilities, and choosing the right devices has been critical for this strategy. In supporting Lake Graphics with their expansion into fabric offerings, Global Imaging not only helped identify the best piece of equipment for the companys needs but it also provided all of the financing through Global Imaging Financing, along with strategic guidance on moving Lake Graphics into more lucrative work. Says Founder and President Mark Tangry: The people at Global Imaging opened my eyes to what our business could be like if we only settled for the best Their recent VIP event was not only educational, but I made great contacts with owners of businesses much larger than mine, as well as all the vendors including Durst, who attended. These discussions gave me very candid opinions on what has worked or not worked for others, and helped me identify Durst as the manufacturer and Global as the vendor of choice. I feel confident that I have true partners to help me be successful. Mr. Tangry also had good things to say about Global Imagings partner company the countrys largest marketplace for used grand format equipment Global Garage: I have bought / sold several pieces of equipment on Global Garage and every time the experience was perfect. They really know the market and are upfront about what your machine will sell for. The new Durst Rhotex 325 has given Lake Graphics entry into the fabric printing market. While they will initially offer the service to their wholesale accounts, they hope to expand that offering to national accounts in retail, institutional and wholesale. Continues Mr. Tangry, This printer will help me to retain the clients I have and add new ones, too. It will be additive to our top line and bottom line sales results. Both firms look forward to a long-term partnership. Mr. Tangry concludes: Our credibility in the market depends on our ability to deliver the best solution, on time, and at a competitive price. Our partners Durst and Global Imaging are in my opinion the best way to do that in the new market we are entering. I couldn't have managed this acquisition without Globals expertise and the Garages marketplace in helping me sell three other pieces of equipment. This is what makes them such great partners to grow with. Lake Graphics will begin offering high-quality wholesale fabric printing from their Durst 325 beginning in November 2017. About Global Imaging Global Imaging has been the leading integrator of wide and grand format printing systems and supplies since 1995. Through its comprehensive portfolio of brands, it provides a complete array of products, services and the technical expertise needed for strategic business solutions and profitability in the wide and grand format printing industry. These brands include Global Garage, Parts Depot, Panoply Finance and PrinterEvolution. Globals 6500 sq. ft. Workflow Studio is the only demonstration area in the country that emulates an entire grand format production facility with the most current and cutting-edge products available. Students work together using BookNook "We are excited to deepen our partnership with BookNook because of its innovative approach," Kyla Johnson-Trammell, Superintendent, Oakland Unified School District The Oakland Public Education Fund (Ed Fund) and BookNook Inc. announced a new partnership that will significantly improve student reading achievement in Oakland. Eight schools in the Oakland Unified School District, a mixture of district-run and charter, will participate in an initial deployment that will eventually expand to 20 schools across the city. Students and educators will use the BookNook platform to engage in adaptive small group learning activities that take place both during and after school. BookNook will also offer at-home supports for students to continue their work during breaks and over the summer. While a relatively new technology, BookNook has already demonstrated significant benefits for children. 28 elementary schools and nonprofits piloted BookNook in the last school year, seeing significant improvements in students reading abilities. Despite starting more than a year behind in reading, 44% of students caught up to grade level. When we looked at BookNook we saw scalability, we saw cost effectiveness, we saw that principals wanted it, and most of all we saw outcomes for students, said Brian Stanley, Executive Director of the Ed Fund. We think this new partnership will be a game changer. "Reading at or above grade level is critical for students' long-term success, and supporting young people as they master reading is one of our highest priorities, said Kyla Johnson-Trammell, Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). We are excited to deepen our partnership with BookNook because of its innovative approach, versatility, and most importantly, the results BookNook has been able to show for students." Oakland is a place of incredible educational innovation and creativity, which makes it the perfect place to show what a technology like BookNook can do. Were thrilled that it also happens to be our home town, said Michael Lombardo, founder and CEO of BookNook. # # # About the Oakland Public Education Fund The Oakland Public Education Fund leads the development and investment of community resources in Oakland public schools so that all students can learn, grow, and thrive. Since 2003, it has raised more than $50 million for programs that put the right tools in students hands to give all kids the excellent education they deserve. Learn more at oaklandedfund.org. About BookNook BookNook is a social enterprise based in Oakland, California that is working to change the when, where, and who of small group learning for children. Its platform is used by dozens of school districts and nonprofits across thirteen states. Founded in 2016, the companys early investors include Reach Capital, Better Ventures, and the Urban Innovation Fund. For more information visit booknooklearning.com. The SOC 2 Type 1 examination was carried out by an independent CPA, and along with the facilitys SSAE16 and HIPAA compliance, provides colocation clients with third-party verification of the facilitys suitability for hosting mission critical infrastructure. Nexcess, a trusted provider of colocation hosting, has successfully completed a SOC 2 Type 1 examination of its Southfield data center. The independent examination focused on availability and security controls for colocation. The service auditor for the most recent examination was 360Advanced. Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 reports are based on the Trust Services Principles. Type 1 examinations report on the design of controls relevant to outsourced services. In Nexcess case, that includes the Security Principle, which addresses the logical and physical protection of systems against unauthorized access; and the Availability Principle, which addresses the availability of the service providers systems. Nexcess Southfield data center is regularly examined and audited by qualified third parties, commented Chris Wells, President and CEO of Nexcess. The SOC 2 Type 1 examination was carried out by an independent CPA, and along with the facilitys SSAE16 and HIPAA compliance, provides colocation clients with third-party verification of the facilitys suitability for hosting mission critical infrastructure. Nexcess Southfield data center is an SSAE 16-certified, HIPAA-compliant, colocation facility located in Detroits most connected suburb. The facility offers 16,000 square feet of raised floors, fully diverse fiber paths to a wide variety of backbone carriers, and round-the-clock on-site technical support and security staff. As Nexcess corporate headquarters and largest US data center, the Southfield facility offers colocation clients the same reliability and network optimization that Nexcess relies on to support its renowned performance-optimized WordPress, Magento, and CraftCMS hosting plans. Colocation clients entrust Nexcess with sensitive data and mission critical infrastructure. By submitting to external examination of its controls, Nexcess demonstrates its commitment to transparency and its confidence in the security and availability of its data centers and networks. ### About Nexcess Nexcess is a Southfield, Michigan-based managed application and colocation hosting provider founded in 2000, with data centers distributed throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. Nexcess offers premium colocation hosting services based in its HIPAA-compliant, SSAE-16-audited data center in Southfield, Michigan. For more information, visit http://www.nexcess.net. Examples of Swell Rewards and Referral Programs BigCommerce announced today that it has named Swell a BigCommerce Certified Technology Partner, providing more than 50,000 BigCommerce customers access to Swells highly customizable incentive marketing platform that includes rewards, referrals, and email capture tools. BigCommerce customers can now integrate Swells platform into their stores through the BigCommerce App Marketplace (https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/rewards-and-referrals-by-swell/). "We are thrilled to partner with BigCommerce and to offer our incentive marketing solutions to BigCommerce merchants," said Josh Enzer, CEO, at Swell. "We offer programs that allow for merchants of all sizes to take advantage of our highly customizable platform and drive increased revenue and customer engagement. Swell is an incentive marketing platform that helps e-commerce businesses implement and manage high-performing loyalty, referral, and email capture programs. With an easy-to-manage interface, merchants can easily customize Swells programs to meet their incentive marketing needs and integrate with their existing branding. On average, merchants who use Swells platform earn $9 for every $1 invested in their program. Our partnership with Swell demonstrates our commitment to providing merchants the highest-caliber technologies in the industry, said Russell Klein, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for BigCommerce. Swell shares our desire to help merchants sell more and grow faster to maximize success, and we look forward to working together to mutually support customers. BigCommerce Certified Technology Partners are selected for offering best-in-class technologies, value, and superior customer service. For more information, visit: https://www.bigcommerce.com/partners/. I am proud to bring real savings to Ohio consumers, unlike anything offered elsewhere in the United States. Chuck Ewing CEO and Founder Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom is expanding into Ohio to fill the void left by hhgregg, who served the Ohio market for over 30 years. Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom is recognized by the manufacturers across the nation as an aggressive discount appliance and mattress retailer that provides incredible savings to their customers. Its estimated theyve sold over 1 billion dollars worth of appliances and saved their customers $50 million dollars compared to what they would have paid at the big box stores. They do this by partnering with manufacturers, bringing in special buys, uncrated merchandise, and closeouts with a legitimate savings of 30-60%. The product is brand new and has full warranty. They also have extremely knowledgeable sales staff and supply their customers with luxury and premium appliances such as KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Monogram, and Bosch. Owner and CEO, Chuck Ewing: We opened up in Columbus to fill the void left by hhgregg. We will bring legitimate savings of 30-60% to customers in Ohio. Were also providing jobs to extremely knowledgeable appliance product experts from hhgregg. Weve assembled a tremendous staff that has outstanding knowledge and skills to support the customers of Columbus. For their grand opening celebration, Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom has purchased thousands of appliances including hundreds of brand new, in-the-box refrigerator brands such as KitchenAid, Jenn-Air, Whirlpool, Maytag, GE, and Hotpoint and available for 30-60% off. The savings on these refrigerators are unbeatable. They are brand new in-the-box refrigerators that may have cosmetic flaws on the case. They have also purchased hundreds of LG, Samsung, and other branded washers and dryers at incredible savings to their customers. I am proud to bring real savings to Ohio consumers, unlike anything offered elsewhere in the United States, Ewing stated. About Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom has leased the hhgregg Sawmill location. Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom is the nations 28th largest independent appliance and mattress retailer, moving up two spots from last year. CEO Chuck Ewing started the company in Denver from his garage in 1985 and grew it into a successful local business employing nearly 500 people. WHO: Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom WHAT: The hhgregg Sawmill location has been leased by Appliance Factory & Mattress Kingdom and plans to open in November. WHEN: November 1, 2017 to November 30, 2017 WHERE: All 17 Locations By delivering simple solutions to complex problems, we allow district personnel to focus on what is the most important: the students. PowerSchool, the leading provider of K-12 education technology solutions, today announced a partnership with Level Data to offer its State Data Validation Suite as a fully integrated data validation tool for PowerSchools Student Information System (SIS). One of PowerSchools core tenets is data integrity and as the data collected by schools and districts come from many different sources, this partnership with Level Data will improve the ecosystem for providing information for school officials. Schools depend on a modern, easy-to-use solution to improve daily operations and administrative productivity, as well as identify problem areas and ensure funding through appropriate reporting. PowerSchools SIS covers both administrative and instructional needs, enabling school personnel to efficiently manage a variety of student data including demographic information, attendance, state compliance reporting, grades, and emergency/medical and health. Our collaboration with Level Data brings valuable tools such as the State Data Validation Service to PowerSchool SIS customers, said Chris Porter, PowerSchools President and COO. With this partnership, school administrators are able to focus more on efficiently running office operations to receive maximum state funding by significantly reducing time and resources spent managing student data from external sources. Level Data provides faster correction capabilities than the conventional process where users typically access individual records to make corrections. With Level Data, users can correct multiple records concurrently that are in violation of any particular state validation rule. Two of the most challenging tasks in a school district are maintaining high-quality student and staff data and managing onerous processes associated with preparing data for state and federal reporting submissions, said Matt Betts, President and Founder of Level Data Inc. Data quality issues are costly and can have a negative impact on student security, district finances, and staff productivity. By delivering simple solutions to complex problems, we allow district personnel to focus on what is the most important: the students. This tool is available now for PowerSchool student information system customers. Visit http://www.leveldata.com/validationsuite/ for additional information. About PowerSchool Group LLC PowerSchool is the leading K-12 education technology provider of solutions that improve the education experience for 100 million students, teachers, and parents in over 70 countries around the world. We provide the industrys first Unified Classroom experience, empowering teachers with best-in-class, secure, and compliant online solutions, including student information systems, learning management and classroom collaboration, assessment, analytics, behavior, and special education case management. We streamline school office and administration operations with online solutions for student registration, school choice, and finance/HR/ERP. We drive student growth through digital classroom capabilities and engage families through real-time communications across any device. Visit https://www.powerschool.com/ to learn more. About Level Data Since 2007, Level Data has been partnering with school districts and agencies providing industry leading data validation, data integration and directory provisioning managed services. Ranging from small rural districts to large urban districts to State Departments of Education, our tailored solutions reflect the desire for best practice, improved efficiency, improved accountability, and lowered costs. Erroneous and inconsistent data is easily identified and corrected. The clean data is then available for distribution to other applications and for use in state and federal reporting. Level Datas Managed Solutions are uniquely tailored to each client large or small and do not require any additional hardware, software or support on behalf of the client. We deliver simple and intuitive solutions that address the most complex issues for our clients. Level Data proudly enjoys a 98% client retention rate, a direct reflection of the innovative nature of our solutions and our attention to customer needs and support. Please visit http://www.leveldata.com for more information. In an effort to facilitate students in their academic ventures, QuickStart and its affiliates have signed an articulation agreement with the American Business & Technology University and the University of Phoenix to offer college credits on its IT Technical Certification Training Courses. Now all the QuickStart learners will be eligible to receive college credits on the selected courses and apply it towards their degree should they choose to pursue their degree programs from one of the universities. The American Business & Technology University (ABTU) and University of Phoenix Online (UOP) are both online universities. This makes both ABTU and UOP a natural fit for QuickStart and its learners. We are excited about this partnership with ABTU. Says Ed Sattar, CEO of QuickStart, QuickStart is all about using bleeding edge technologies to create a transformational and personal experience for learners. All of our certifications are designed to empower technology teams and IT professionals. By partnering up with ABTU and UOP, we will be able to offer college credits to our students, which will help them in their pursuit of professional degrees. Founded in 2001, ABTU was the first school of its kind to offer live, real-time streaming of live lectures that can be delivered to any internet ready device. The college offers bachelors degrees, associate's degrees technical diplomas, and an MBA in different domains in IT and economy. As a Best Value School award recipient, we are very careful in who we partner up with. With QuickStart, I am happy to say that we have found a reliable IT training provider that has three decades of experience in the industry. I am confident that our students can benefit greatly from their CLIPP platform and IT instructors, and that the transition from QuickStart to ABTU and vice versa will be smooth and seamless for all learners enrolled in different courses, said Lute Atieh, CEO of ABTU. The courses span over the following categories: Cyber Security Database Administration Development/Programming IT Foundations Network Administration Project Management Server Administration The hours of credit you get for each course ranges from one to three hours. About QuickStart For three decades, QuickStart has been known as a provider of premier IT technical and developer training and the industrys only four-time Microsoft Gold Learning Partner. Today, QuickStart's mission is to help organizations transform IT project performance and career growth through cognitive learning platform and multi-mode training. https://www.quickstart.com/ For more information about the partnership between ABTU and QuickStart, visit this page: http://info.abtu.edu/quickstart Duo-Gard Translucent Canopies One challenge for this budget-conscious client was the ability to design durable structures while balancing aesthetics and functionality. Duo-Gard successfully addressed these challenges, Mamayek said. What does $96 million buy today? For Springfield, Massachusetts, it bought the return of a historic past and the giant step toward a dynamic future with the massive renovation of Union Station. Enjoying a heyday in the 1920s, the train station closed in 1973 due to declining use. Empty for over 40 years, it re-opened in June 2017 as a regional intermodal transportation and retail hub, following renovation and restoration by HDR Boston, who served as the design and executive Architect for the project. It now accommodates rail, bus, bicycle and pedestrian traffic, with plans to expand rail service in the near future. The interior features original artifacts along with new artwork in an environment that houses the terminal on the lower level with restaurants, retail stores and office space on the upper floors. The exterior accommodates the public with functional, protective structures that combine aesthetics, economy and high performance. These include six canopies, 10 bus shelters and a bike shelter all engineered by Duo-Gard Industries, a leading design/build/manufacture firm located in Canton MI. The company specializes in translucent glazing technologies. This specialization was important to HDRs design principal Joe Mamayek, AIA, LEED AP. One challenge for this budget-conscious client was the ability to design durable structures while balancing aesthetics and functionality. Duo-Gard successfully addressed these challenges, Mamayek said. He said Duo-Gards translucent, multiwall polycarbonate glazing systems were used on all the structures, adding Ive always been fascinated with the translucent qualities of polycarbonate glazing as it allows natural lighting, enhances safety and provides impact resistance with minimal maintenance. Mamayek became familiar with Duo-Gards systems after seeing the Morgan Street Stations trackside canopy in Chicago. For Springfield Union Station, the design intent was to achieve contemporary vernacular that was easily distinguishable for all the structures, he said. The following Duo-Gard features were integrated into the overall project: The Intercity Canopy: Spanning from the Terminal to the new 377-car parking facility is the largest canopy serving the Intercity bus lines. This canopy measures 322 feet long by 25 feet wide and features two wings. The Walkway Canopy: Running along the south side of the parking garage, this canopy measures 200 feet long by 11 feet wide and allows pedestrian movement across the site via Main Street. This canopy serves as a natural gateway from the downtown area of Springfield to the project. The Island Canopy: The free-standing, butterfly roof measures 189 feet long by 18 feet wide. This canopy serves Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) which operates the regional bus lines for Springfield MA. The Terminal Canopies: Welcoming the public at three secondary terminal entrances are canopies providing shelter and iconic gateways into the historic Terminal building. Bus Shelters: A total of 10 bus shelters was strategically integrated into the site. One cluster of six at 22 feet 5 inches by 4 feet 6 inches and one of four shelters at 16 feet 6 inches by 4 feet 6 inches serves passengers. The style echoes the clean, contemporary aesthetic of the canopies, complete with green 8mm polycarbonate. The walls are 3/8-inch clear tempered safety glass. Bike Shelter: Completing the theme is Duo-Gards Harbor bicycle shelter, a contemporary structure 24 feet by 8 feet 6 inches in a quarter-round style with requisite 8mm green polycarbonate. It features racks to park 18 bikes. The canopy systems all feature Duo-Gards Series 2500 System, designed for wide-span strength. Glazing is 20mm batten polycarbonate in a soft sage green. The steel and aluminum substructure is cream-colored in a Tnemec finish for durability. Duo-Gard provided the entire steel substructures and connections. The Union Station canopy project was a challenge due to the complexity of the engineering of the steel structure, the connections and the components that were anchored to the canopy structure, as well as the existing site conditions,l said Dianne Salata, senior project manager for Duo-Gards Architectural Division. Duo-Gards engineering team prepared an extremely detailed set of shop drawings which assisted the project manager to guide the general contractor, Daniel OConnells Sons, through the two-year process. With great communications, together we were diligent about the details and provided updated information to engineering to make the necessary changes due to unexpected site conditions. Reaction to the renovation has been gratifying. Mamayek said everyone is pleased with the performance of the Duo-Gard structures: The project required a unique intervention. Duo-Gard provided not only a superior product but also a partnership that allowed a positive outcome for the client and the citizens of Springfield. About Duo-Gard Industries Inc.: Duo-Gard Industries Inc. is a leading innovator in special-purpose shelters, high-performance translucent daylighting systems and architectural illumination, as well as custom canopies and outdoor structures. For over 29 years, Duo-Gard has advanced translucent technology with design, engineering, fabrication and installation of custom architectural products that enhance sustainability. Duo-Gard was established in 1984 and is based in Canton MI. The company was honored in May 2012 as one of the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch in 2012. For additional information, please visit http://www.duo-gard.com. Editorial contacts for Duo-Gard: Julie Mead, Marketing Manager 810-623-0561 Linda Byam, Marketing Consultant 248-761-7990 Photos: Clark Linehan Photography When veterans succeed as entrepreneurs and business owners...they continue their service to our community. VEDC, the largest community development financial institution and small business resource in Los Angeles, will celebrate National Veterans Small Business Week on November 3, 2017 with a public event at the Pacoima Entrepreneur Center. Local veteran entrepreneurs are invited to participate in networking and educational activities starting at 8:30 a.m. and lasting until mid-afternoon. In cooperation with Travelers, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, and other state and national organizations, VEDCs event will focus on providing business-related training to veteran servicemen and women in the San Fernando Valley and across Los Angeles County. A special panel featuring the U.S. Small Business Administrations regional director and a member of the Department of Veterans Affairs will answer questions about accessing capital and offer alternative financing solutions. Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in a new workshop launched by Travelers and VEDC through the Small Business Risk Education program. The workshop is specifically designed for veteran entrepreneurs and will guide participants through building a business plan from start to finish. Were excited to partner with strong veteran organizations across the county to celebrate veterans this week, said Alex Guerrero, Chief Development Officer at VEDC. With hundreds of local servicemen and women opening up their own businesses, there are bound to be questions, and VEDC is proud to be a resource for education. These are Americas warriorsthey fought for our country, and theyll fight hard and long to make their business successful. Travelers is committed to supporting our countrys veterans, service members and their families through a variety of initiatives, such as expanding our Small Business Risk Education program to offer a workshop geared toward veteran-owned small businesses, said Tara Spain, Second Vice President, Community Relations and Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Travelers Foundation. Were proud to work closely with VEDC for this celebration and in developing another program to help our veterans succeed. Its an honor to help Americas veterans start and grow their small businesses with programs, capital access, training, and federal contracting opportunities. We recognize that when veterans succeed as entrepreneurs and business ownerswhether thats founding FedEx or buying a family dinerthey continue their service to our community. Victor Parker, Los Angeles District Director, U.S. Small Business Administration. The celebration is free to attend for all entrepreneurs and includes meals and music by local veteran business owners. To register for the event, or for more information on VEDCs services, visit http://vedc.org/events or call 1-800-304-1755. Background: SBA Veterans Small Business Week: October 30 - November 3, 2017 SBA celebrates, connects, and empowers service member (including National Guard and Reserve), veteran, and military spouse entrepreneurs and business ownerspast, present, and futureduring 2017s National Veterans Small Business Week (NVSBW). NVSBW, now entering its fourth year, raises awareness of veteran business ownership and encourages communities to support their veteran- and military-owned businesses. It also inspires business support and mentorship within the veteran and military community, while connecting these business owners to entrepreneurship resources administered through OVBD and its stakeholders. Perhaps most importantly, NVSBW 17 is an annual renewal of the national commitment to veteran business ownership, while highlighting its positive impact on the U.S. economy and the ongoing challenges faced by the veteran entrepreneurship community. About VEDC VEDC is a leading non-profit small business lender that has a 40 year history of changing the way small business lending is done by making it more available and impactful. With a growing footprint, VEDC has lent more than $400 million in direct and guaranteed loans to over 108,000 small businesses to create and retain more than 200,600 new jobs. VEDCs mission, as a certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), is to help create jobs and promote small business development in under-served communities. The organization provides loans and micro-financing options to small businesses, particularly those owned by women and minorities, that dont qualify for traditional financing. VEDCs expanding portfolio is composed of community-based loan funds in California, Illinois, Nevada, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida and New York. About Travelers Small Business Risk Education Program The Travelers Small Business Risk Education program provides safety risk management education for minority- and women-owned small businesses. Travelers has partnered with nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and Atlanta to deliver the following three-part program: Dr. Dennis Ng, M.D. leads a recent peer review session with several Vohra physicians in Las Vegas, NV. "A company that doesnt do peer review, that doesnt share that knowledge, just cant equal that fund of knowledge-base that we have at Vohra Wound Physicians. - Dr. James Kramer, M.D. Vohra Wound Physicians is excited to build upon their position as the largest group of post-acute physicians in the Nation. While continuing to grow, the companys team of physicians recently expanded to 245 wound experts. Vohra physicians provide wound management services at more than 2,500 facilities across the United States, helping to heal well over 1,000,000 unique wounds. Over the last 17 years, the company has built the infrastructure to support these physicians and their practices in 27 states. Part of that infrastructure includes clinical affairs oversight for their clinicians. The Vohra physicians go through peer review, chart audits and site visits regularly to ensure they stay up to date on the standard of care and any new advancements in the field. This ensures all of Vohras patients are getting top-level care. Recently, many of Vohras physicians gathered at the Symposium on Advanced Wound Care in Las Vegas, Nevada. They participated in the educational sessions at the conference, also taking time to learn from the other Vohra physicians by participating in peer review. Vohra is a company, 245 physicians strong, says Vohra Senior Clinical Lead Dr. James Kramer, M.D. of Pennsylvania. So, we have 245 clinical minds out there treating thousands and thousands of wounds. During the peer review process, we go over our treatments together. We can garner the opinions of multiple physicians from across the country. Whereas, if youre just one physician treating wounds on your own, its up to you. Vohra Clinical Lead Keith Bucklen, M.D. of North Carolina agrees, One of the things I really appreciate about Vohra Wound Physicians is the self-monitoring. That really helps ensure the quality of the care we deliver. We look for opportunities to meet as clinicians to share ideas and best practices. We also look at one anothers reporting and charting to find areas where we can help each other. I think its extremely important. Ive never actually been a part of a practice that does more self-monitoring than Vohra Wound Physicians. I think its a great thing. Were always working toward improved quality. Vohra often holds their peer review sessions in conjunction with large wound care conferences, such as SAWC. That allows the physicians to also spend time hearing about the latest developments in wound care research and education. Vohra Clinical Lead Dr. Dennis Ng, M.D. of Connecticut says, I feel that the utility of these annual national wound care conferences lies in the power of knowledge and the dissemination of the most recent research findings. At the same time, it allows physicians from different areas of the country to come together and share ideas from the field in an effort to facilitate standardization of practice. And, to ensure that were all practicing with the current standard of care. Kramer says it's special to be a part of such a large group of physicians working with a single mission to heal wounds. Its not only amazing, its powerful. We see wounds all across the country. We see wounds in different environments. We see wounds all over the spectrum of every type of nursing home in America basically. We see what works in different regions. We can share that with our other physicians. This type of learning is invaluable to our patients. A company that doesnt do peer review, that doesnt share that knowledge, just cant equal that fund of knowledge-base that we have at Vohra Wound Physicians. Award-winning financial services company Advance Financial announced today that Scott Bojczuk has joined the company as chief administrative officer and general counsel. In his role Bojczuk will use his business, legal and operational experience to advise the company through its future growth. He will report directly to Chief Executive and Chief Experience Officer Tina Hodges. Advance Financial continues to grow at a rapid pace and we are continuously focused on effectively positioning the company for future success, said Hodges, Scott brings the right mix of talent, experience and resources to help us thrive in our next level of growth. We are thrilled to welcome him to the Advance Financial family and look forward to seeing where his leadership will take us. Bojczuk has spent much of his career serving in executive and legal roles for financial services companies, including Electronic Funds Source LLC, Direct General Corporation, and Jackson Hewitt Inc. He will oversee several departments at Advance Financial, including Compliance and Legal Affairs and Office and Facilities Management, as well as the Advance Financial Foundation and the companys corporate social responsibility efforts. A graduate of Bucknell University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Bojczuk is a member of the Tennessee Bar Association, Nashville Bar Association and the Association of Corporate Counsel. He has published work for the Aspatore Law Books Inside the Minds Series and was featured as in-house counsel in The National Law Journal. About Advance Financial Advance Financial, founded in 1996, is a family owned and operated financial center based in Nashville, Tenn. The company currently operates more than 85 locations throughout Tennessee and employs more than 800 local representatives. By focusing on a wide variety of financial services including wire transfer, bill payment, unlimited free money orders and FLEX loans they are committed to building long-lasting, strong relationships with every customer. Advance Financial recently earned an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and was named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the country for the fifth year in a row. Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food, a division of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, is proudly sending two representatives, Chef Rob Nelson and Chef Michael Kuefner, to Russias MEGUSTRO expo November 7-9, 2017. Chef Nelson, a Brightwater board member, is owner/executive chef of Tusk and Trotter. Chef Kuefner is a professional chef and lead culinary instructor at Brightwater. Chef Nelson and Chef Kuefner will be highlighting their work on Zero Waste programs at the expo. Both chefs have worked with Zero Waste programs at the James Beard Foundation and implemented various techniques in their kitchens. As a matter of fact, Chef Kuefner established the Brightwater butchery program around the Zero Waste concept. Our participation in the MEGSTRO expo represents an unbelievable opportunity to gain global inspiration and insight to bring back to NWA for benefit of NWAs burgeoning culinary ecosystem, Chef Nelson says. I am extremely honored and thankful to be a culinary ambassador at this event for the USDA, and hope to represent them, the United States, my home region, and Brightwater well." MEGUSTRO is one of the largest events for the restaurant operators in Russia. The expo will include the latest trends, inspiration, new ideas, interesting communication, and creativity in the restaurant industry. It will allow chefs to showcase new knowledge, while highlighting professional speakers and speeches of experienced experts in the restaurant business. Brightwater was invited to attend MEGUSTRO through the USDA Trade Offices in Russia. We are living through a critical moment in U.S.-Russia relations. While there are many areas of profound disagreement that are compounded by trade sanctions, the MEGUSTRO event offers a great opportunity for positive and mutually beneficial engagement, David Leishman, Director of the U.S. Agricultural Trade Office in Russia, says. Russias culinary community is developing rapidly, and we see great interest in American food and cuisine. As we invite Brightwater to Russia, we are helping to build bridges for the future. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is focused on developing market opportunities for U.S. products. Linking with importers, distributors and retailers, we are encouraging long-term relationships that will ultimately benefit American farmers and the U.S. economy as a whole. Prior to 2014, U.S. agricultural exports to Russia reached $1.5 billion, and every $1 billion in exports supports approximately 8,000 American jobs. The key direction will be the inspiration unit, which will host the Chefs Challenge a gastronomic show from international chefs and the owners of Red Michelin Stars such as Paul Pairet, Tristan Brandt, and Claudio Sadler. The expo will also be attended by chefs from Germany, France, Italy, Japan, China and Spain. Chef Nelson and Kuefner will also visit SwissAM, a culinary school there to explore potential partnerships with Brightwater. ABOUT BRIGHTWATER Brightwater: A Center for the Study of Food is a division of NorthWest Arkansas Community College located in Bentonville, Arkansas, that approaches food as art, food as wellness, and food as business to offer an entirely unique methodology to the culinary arts. Their goal is to develop leaders who combine culinary skills with the ability to recognize and address complex food issues. In addition to artisanal food, culinary arts, butchery, pastry and baking, and beverage management, they offer exclusive courses focused on culinary nutrition, food waste reduction, and food security. For more information visit their website: http://www.brightwater.org. According to Chief Executive Officer Anthony N. Leo, As a growing community bank, First Home Bank is pleased to be a part of this vibrant area. We have a talented team of bankers ready to help local residents and businesses with their banking needs. First Home Bank is pleased to celebrate the opening of its newest full service banking and executive center in the historic west end area of downtown St. Petersburg. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Thursday and officiated by Mayor Rick Kriseman along with the First Home Bank executive team. Approximately 150 guests attended the event including local business leaders, bank clients, staff, and members of the First Home Bank Board of Directors. Located at 700 Central Avenue, First Home Bank offers numerous banking services to serve varying lifestyle needs, including a TrendSetters Club that offers special perks for the over 50-year old clients, a Kids Club to teach children smart money skills, and a NuStart account option aimed at helping individuals with past banking troubles. Lobby and drive through hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 am - 5:30 pm and Saturday 9:00 am to noon. Fresh cookies are served daily and the banking center is dog-friendly. The First Home banking and executive center is home to over 80 employees, including the First Home Bank executive team, SBA Lending Division, Residential Mortgage Division, and various administrative departments. According to Chief Executive Officer Anthony N. Leo, As a growing community bank, First Home Bank is pleased to be a part of this vibrant area. We have a talented team of bankers ready to help local residents and businesses with their banking needs. In the spirit of St. Petersburgs dedication to helping local businesses grow, First Home has a robust small business lending program. In fact, First Home Bank is a SBA Preferred Lender and currently ranks as a Top 10 SBA Lender. Recently, First Home earned the distinction as the No. 5 Top Performing Community Bank from S&P Global Market Intelligence reports. In 2016, First Home established a Best in Class Residential Mortgage Division offering a wide range of home financing options including conventional, first-time homebuyer, Jumbo, FHA, VA, USDA, second home, and construction loan programs. About First Home Bank: First Home Bank was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Seminole, Florida. With total assets of approximately $227million, First Home operates three full service banking centers in St. Petersburg, Seminole, and Pinellas Park, Florida. In addition to its banking centers, First Home operates a national SBA lending platform and a full service national residential mortgage platform. At September 30, 2017, First Home Bank was ranked as the 12th largest SBA Lender nationally in dollar volume lent and 10th nationally in number of SBA loans issued. Additionally, First Home Bank is the #1 performing community bank in Florida measured by return on average assets and average equity, and is ranked 33rd out of 5,865 nationally. Its a privilege to help those in need of workers compensation legal advice, and I am humbled to be recognized by others in the field. Hosted by Best Lawyers, the publication selects its honorees by conducting a rigorous peer-review survey, which includes more than 7.4 million confidential evaluations by top attorneys. Martin has continuously been included in this list since 1999. Mr. Martin specializes in workers compensation law, and has represented thousands of employees injured on the job. He takes a personal interest in every case he takes, and is dedicated to guiding his clients through the legal process. To be included in The Best Lawyers in America publication is truly an honor, said Martin. Its a privilege to help those in need of workers compensation legal advice, and I am humbled to be recognized by others in the field. Over the past three decades, Best Lawyers has gained a strong reputation for providing the most credible measure of legal integrity and distinction the United States. The company shares and celebrates top legal talent and accomplishments so others can feel confident in knowing theyve chosen a high-quality legal representative. This recognition by Best Lawyers will be added to the list of accolades Martin has previously received, which includes being voted as Orange Countys Best Workers Compensation Attorney, Workers Compensation Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Orange County Trial Lawyers Association, and listed as one of Southern Californias Super Lawyers. To learn more about Thomas F. Martins work, contact Thomas F. Martin, PLC at 714-547-5025 or visit http://www.ThomasFMartinPLC.com. Today, immoviewer, the first international company to be selected to join the NAR REach technology accelerator program, is announcing an exclusive integration and marketing partnership with the innovative Panono 360 camera. The Panono 360 camera uses 36 fixed-focus lenses to produce a highly detailed 108-megapixel image in a single capture. Panono is very excited about our partnership with immoviewer, said Stefan Kissaroslaki, VP Sales at Panono. A state-of-the-art software platform paired with the highest resolution single-shot 360 camera is a very promising combination. Both teams at Panono and immoviewer are dedicated to serve customers and supply them with the best possible results to help them gain a competitive advantage in their businesses. Panono has been working with the immoviewer development team on the technical integration with immoviewer for several months. Immoviewer clients working inside the immoviewer editor can upload Panono pictures instantly from the cloud to the tour creation process. We believe our software platform is the perfect vehicle for demonstrating the quality and versatility of the Panono camera, says Jeff Turner, CEO North America for immoviewer. The quality of the 360 image is superb, and its ability to capture a single moment with such a high level of detail sets it apart from any other 360 camera available today. It will help us deliver on our commitment to have a platform that can meet any quality expectation. We are thrilled to show it off at NAR Annual Conference. The immoviewer software platform is designed to accept images from any compatible 360 camera, and the app itself can create tours with just your mobile device as well. We are truly camera agnostic in our approach, explains Steve Bintz, immoviewer Director of Sales. Because we can also work with easy to use and carry consumer level cameras, our users can create tours in unique ways. Single shot 360 cameras can even handle locations filled with people, so the potential for creating tours of the community, not just homes, is now a real and powerful option. As a result of this exclusive partnerships, immoviewer customers get a discount of $500 on a Panono camera. REALTORS attending the NAR Conference who would like to see the Panono 360 camera in action can visit immoviewer in the REALTOR Pavilion at booth #2225 or the immoviewer booth #1126. About immoviewer, Inc. immoviewer (http://www.immoviewer.com) is an international technology company providing fully interactive, virtual reality-compatible DIY 3D home tours with live 24/7 open house capability, floorplans and digital home staging. immoviewers easy-to-use and affordable software solutions help real estate professionals create an outstanding real estate experience for buyers, sellers, and investors. About Panono Panono (http://www.panono.com) is a Berlin-based technology company offering both Hardware and Software Solutions for professionals. Panono is the fastest 360 single-shot camera with a resolution of 108 MP currently available on the market. With its fully automated cloud-based stitching software, Panono enables its users to create spherical 360 x 360 images in high resolution within minutes. These meetings are ideal opportunities to share experiences, exchange ideas with the right people in the business, expand your knowledge and broaden horizons, hone your skills, open your mind to the student mentality needed to succeed and network with successful businessmen The meetings commenced at the Lakes Hotel in Johannesburg offering gorgeous views over the lakes as an idyllic backdrop for the event. Then, after a quick flight down to the mother city of Cape Town, the Two Oceans Aquarium hosted the second meeting. Credico then headed to the sunshine coast of Durban at the Greyville Racecourse, and ended their succession of events in the Eastern Cape at the breath-taking Fish River Sun Hotel. About Credico: http://www.credico.com/who-we-are/about/ Over the course of the sales training day, Credico team members and their contractors were given the chance to learn from the big sharks in the business, as a number of guest speakers conducted insightful talks and Q&As with attendees. The underlying theme of the meeting was building entrepreneurs, and focused on equipping attendees with the knowledge needed to build and grow their own businesses. Meticulous attention to detail was placed on ensuring individuals reach their end goal of being successful entrepreneurs, by applying the teachings and proven business basics of the guest speakers. Credico, who provide B2B and B2C clients with high-quality direct sales solutions in retail, events, door-to-door and street markets, rendered the training meeting a huge success. A Credico South Africa spokesperson branded the meeting, an opportunity for team members to learn more about the growth of the business as well as giving them the chance to network and bounce around business ideas. With over 2,570 people from different provinces around the country joining inspirational, informative and motivational discussions during the meetings, Credico believes there is no doubt that the industry is growing rapidly, with more milestones set to be achieved before the end of the year. The firm particularly enjoy hosting workshops and training days like this, and hope to consistently motivate their team members and contractors to work harder towards accomplishing shared company goals. These meetings are ideal opportunities to share experiences, exchange ideas with the right people in the business, expand your knowledge and broaden horizons, hone your skills, open your mind to the student mentality needed to succeed and network with successful businessmen, stated a spokesperson for the firm. Following the event, the field marketing specialists have thanked everyone who attended this event, and are eagerly anticipating the emergence of new entrepreneurs in the industry. We are constantly working towards making work simpler for our customers and improving their satisfaction with our solutions. Dreamforce is the premier forum for us to showcase this progress. Avankia today announced the availability of new features and enhancements to its DBSync and TargetRecruit product lines at Dreamforce 2017. Recent advancements to Avankias DBSync app provide the ability to easily connect to ERP, leading case management tools, as well as use APIs to adopt digitally connected operations. New features and enhancements added to TargetRecruit, a cutting-edge Workforce Management System built entirely on the Salesforce Platform, help engage contingent workforce effectively and brings visibility to all workforce management processes in a single platform. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Avankias DBSync and TargetRecruit apps are currently available on the AppExchange: Listing of TargetRecruit, Listing of DBSync. New features and enhancements include: DBSync Cloud Workflow: New connectors for Jira, NetSuite, SkuVault, PocketAdvantage, ChabadOne, Swagger ReST API. DBSync Cloud Replication: Enhanced recover and test data management for Product to Test to Production data replication. TargetRecruit End-to-End Workforce Management System: Reduced cost-to-hire, shorter time-to-fill, enhanced productivity and increased visibility when engaging gig, temporary, freelance, contract and project-based workforce. TargetRecruit Supports the Mom Relaunch Initiative: Powering this exciting initiative, which helps moms get back to the workforce and enables companies to leverage this talent pool and meet their diversity goals. AccountingBook: New enhancements for small businesses and nonprofits to better run their accounting on Salesforce. We have been sponsoring Dreamforce for 3+ years now, and we are as excited this year to showcase the new features of our apps. We are constantly working towards making work simpler for our customers and improving their satisfaction with our solutions. Dreamforce is the premier forum for us to showcase this progress. said Reena Gupta, Founder and CEO, Avankia. Exhibiting at Dreamforce 2017 Avankia is a Bronze sponsor at Dreamforce 2017, the most inspiring technology event of the year and the world's largest gathering of Trailblazers. Avankia is exhibiting at booth 1939 in the Dreamforce Customer Success Expo, showcasing its apps (DBSync, TargetRecruit, AccountingBook) and the Mom Relaunch initiative. About Salesforce AppExchange Salesforce AppExchange is the worlds leading enterprise apps marketplace that empowers companies to sell, service, market and engage in entirely new ways. With 3,000 partner apps and more than 4 million customer installs, it is the most comprehensive source of cloud, mobile, social, IoT, analytics and artificial intelligence technologies for businesses. About Avankia Apps Avankia specializes in technology implementation as well as application customization and development. Avankia is uniquely positioned to implement scalable, innovative, and efficient web-based enterprise solutions including its proprietary applications DBSync, TargetRecruit and AccountingBook. Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee with offices in Dublin, California and Bangalore, India. DBSync is a leading provider of data replication and application integration for the CRM, accounting, eCommerce, warehouse management, ERP systems, and databases. With easy to use pre-built templates and powerful Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) capabilities, DBSync enables users to easily link information between leading Cloud and On-premise applications. DBSync is recognised in Gartners Magic Quadrant for iPaaS, Worldwide for two consequence years, 2016 and 2017. More information: http://www.mydbsync.com TargetRecruit is a highly innovative talent management platform with an ecosystem of customizable apps that gives business operations the capabilities they need to be efficient and find and retain the best talent. Built on the Salesforce platform, TargetRecruit modernizes the entire staffing and workforce management processes. TargetRecruit is listed in the Inc. 5000 (2016) as well as Gartners Critical Capabilities Report (2017) and Market Guide for Service Procurement Solutions (2016). More information: http://www.targetrecruit.com Mom Relaunch is the initiative started by a group of moms with a vision to foster a society which is empowered by strong and self-sufficient women, who serve as role models for their children and help grow the economy. It is designed to train and help employ women who have taken a career break. Service offerings of Mom Relaunch to corporates include our unique Momplemenation services in HR operations & IT consulting services. More information: http://www.momrelaunch.com Salesforce, Dreamforce and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. All trademarks owned by their respective companies. CaterTrax Team Photo outside their office in downtown Rochester's Village Gate Each employees passion and determination to drive our vision and mission is why we are able to make this list three years in a row, and it will be this team that drives the next generation of success for CaterTrax. Leading Catering Management Software company, CaterTrax is celebrating their third consecutive year on the Rochester Chamber Top 100 List, jumping 30 spots since 2016 to number 52. This award recognizes the fastest growing privately owned companies in the Greater Rochester region. CaterTrax has experienced double-digit growth since their inception over a decade ago, and attributes this growth to the hospitality the CaterTrax team demonstrates. The hospitality of TRAXERS will never be far from view. The level of service that we provide has fueled our growth and its our people that power that. The spirit of hospitality is present from conversations at the water cooler to the sales demo through the clients lifetime. The level of care that is taken is a force that has united us and is what we rely on. We have grown by leaps and bounds because of it. Hospitality is our foundational core value and our 18 teams work together to define that every day and thats what keeps us going, said CEO and Co-Founder Rich Rund. Located in downtown Rochesters Village Gate, CaterTrax employs almost 100 people from the Rochester area. Over the past 2 years, the company has proudly recognized employees with three, five, and ten years of service to the company, while the biggest companies in tech boast under a 3 year average stint for their employees. Three years ago we collaborated with our teams to outline the 10 core values for being an Ambassador of Hospitality a CaterTrax employee. These are the values that we have built our company on and are reflected in every member of our team. Theyve helped us create an environment that draws in the right people and makes them want to be here. When I reflect on how grateful I am to have this outstanding team fueling our growth, I think of that value passionate and determined. Each employees passion and determination to drive our vision and mission is why we are able to make this list three years in a row, and it will be this team that drives the next generation of success for CaterTrax. added CIO and Co-Founder Dan Welch. CaterTrax serves thousands of clients across the United States and Canada, partnering with North Americas top non-commercial foodservice providers. Despite their nationwide reach, the company maintains strong ties to the local Rochester community, hiring local talent and encouraging employees to give back to the community. Earlier this year, the company was featured in an article in the Rochester Business Journal, naming it as one of the software companies that is part of an emerging tech hub in Rochester. Last year, the company said their success is first and foremost their people, and Rochester has proven a great place to attract the humble, hungry, and smart talent they are looking for as they continue to grow. From left: Ray, Anne and Eileen Huntington from Huntington Learning Center and Anothony Birrittery, Editor New Jersey Business Magazine What continues to make our family tutoring and test prep business thrive is our commitment to our mission, which is to give every student the best education possible. Huntington Learning Center, the nations leading tutoring and test prep provider and a family-owned and operated business, was named a finalist at the 2017 New Jersey Family Business Awards. The event was hosted by the Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Fairleigh Dickinson University; other sponsors of the event included Sobel & Co., Coughlin Duffy, PNC Bank, Crystal Plaza, New Jersey Business & Industry Association and New Jersey Business magazine. The New Jersey Family Business of the Year Awards recognize the significant contributions to the economy and community made by New Jersey family businesses. Family businesses play a vital role in the economy, making up to 90 percent of the nations commerce. The New Jersey Family Business of the Year Awards program is celebrating its 25th year of recognizing successful New Jersey family businesses making a positive impact. On behalf of the entire team at Huntington Learning Center, we are honored to receive this important award, said Anne Huntington, VP of the company and second generation of this family business. It is especially significant for us as this is Huntingtons 40th anniversary of helping students achieve their academic potential. What continues to make our family tutoring and test prep business thrive is our commitment to our mission, which is to give every student the best education possible. Huntington was founded in 1977 and began franchising its retail-based learning centers in 1985. It now operates 300 centers in 40 states nationwide. To learn more about Huntingtons franchise opportunities, email Franchise(at)HLCmail(dot)com, call (800) 653-8400 or visit http://www.HuntingtonFranchise.com. About Huntington: Huntington Learning Center is the nations leading tutoring and test prep provider. Its certified teachers provide individualized instruction in phonics, reading, writing, study skills, elementary and middle school math, Algebra through Calculus, Chemistry, and other sciences. It preps for the SAT and ACT, as well as state and standardized exams. Huntington programs develop the skills, confidence, and motivation to help students succeed and meet the needs of Common Core State Standards. Huntington is accredited by Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Founded in 1977, Huntingtons mission is to give every student the best education possible. Learn how Huntington can help at http://www.HuntingtonHelps.com. For franchise opportunities visit http://www.HuntingtonFranchise.com. Volunteers from Neighborhood Credit Union take calls from donors at the 2016 Christmas for Children Radiothon. Getting to see where our contributions go, hearing the success stories, and knowing that we are making a difference in these kids lives is an incredible feeling. Its the beginning of the 2017 giving season and Neighborhood Credit Union is excited after donating the biggest amount in its 23 year partnership with Childrens Health/Childrens Miracle Network. Neighborhood Credit Union allows its members to skip a loan payment during the holidays in return for a small donation. The money raised from the Skip-A-Payment campaign is donated directly to Childrens. In 2016 alone, Neighborhood CU raised $67,500 for Childrens Miracle Network. Neighborhood CU staff also volunteers at the Christmas is for Children Radiothon each year, a live broadcast where radio personalities encourage listeners to call in to make donations. Over the past five years of volunteering at the Radiothon, Neighborhood Credit Union and its members have been able to contribute a total of $153,953.92. We have been privileged to be able to work alongside Childrens Health over the past 23 years, said Carolyn Jordan, senior vice president of Neighborhood Credit Union. Getting to see where our contributions go, hearing the success stories, and knowing that we are making a difference in these kids lives is an incredible feeling. It doesnt stop there. Each year in September Childrens Miracle Network holds whats called Miracle Jeans Day where employees can make a donation to wear jeans to work that day. Neighborhood Credit Union looks forward to that day because its just another way it can support a cause it cares so deeply for. Then enters 14-year-old Sim Scott, a Plano brain tumor survivor. It was through the Christmas for Children Radiothon that Scott formed a special relationship with Neighborhood Credit Union as their Child Champion, a $25,000 a year sponsorship. In 2009, then six-year-old Scott was diagnosed with a grade II astrocytoma brain tumor that required two major surgeries as doctors worked to remove the tumor from his brain stem. Not letting anything slow him down, Scott has earned himself a spot in Plano Independent School Districts Health Sciences Academy, an academic program that prepares students who want to pursue a pre-med path in college. Over the past five years, Scott and Neighborhood Credit Union have worked together raising awareness and funds for Childrens Miracle Network. He has even been a speaker at various Neighborhood Credit Union events. Our team at Neighborhood Credit Union thinks the world of Sim Scott, said Neighborhood Credit Union President and CEO Chet Kimmell. Sims humility, perspective and passion have inspired our credit union members and staff alike to contribute more than $150,000 in matching funds to help other children facing life-threatening conditions. About Neighborhood Credit Union: The oldest credit union in Dallas (chartered April 18, 1930), Neighborhood Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial organization serving Dallas, Denton and Ellis counties, as well as the City of Arlington. With branches in Dallas, Richardson, Arlington, Mesquite, Duncanville, Waxahachie, Lancaster, Grand Prairie, Coppell, and Highland Village, and assets topping $600 million, Neighborhood Credit Union has a membership of 49,000 and continues to welcome new members daily. For more information, call (214) 748-9393 or visit http://www.myncu.com. Hanley Wood, the premier information, media, event, and strategic marketing services company serving the residential, commercial design and construction industries, has released the findings of the 2017 REMODELING Brand Use Study. Results from this years study show continued movement in brand leaders and a continued increase in willingness among remodelers and home improvement pros to try new brands. Our 2017 REMODELING Brand Use Study confirms that it is critical for building product manufacturers and service providers to demonstrate new or advanced product features, quality and performance, said Rick Strachan, President, Residential Remodeling Group. Highlighting these features combined with brand reputation and strong brand identity will drive usage among home improvement pros in todays market. REMODELINGthe leading media brand in the residential remodeling industryhas conducted its Brand Use Study since 1992. The report has become one of the most anticipated industry resources for trends, brand and product information. The 2017 study was conducted in collaboration with The Farnsworth Group, a leading industry market research firm, and represents a sample of 855 qualified residential remodelers, replacement contractors or residential general contractors with more than 50% of business as remodel/repair. The 2017 REMODELING Brand Use Study indicates that the average remodeling/replacement job cost for a homeowner is $40,709. The survey found that 44% of projects are additions/alterations, 32% of projects are for major replacements and 24% of projects are maintenance and repair. Thirty-six percent of building material expenditures go to lumberyards or building material dealers, 23% go to warehouse home centers and 13% go to specialty dealer or specialty distributors. The REMODELING Brand Use Study examined: Brand familiarity, brands used most, brands used within the past two years and brand quality across over 54 building product categories Firmographics including size of firm annual revenue, new construction vs. remodel/repair work, average 2016 job cost and channel supply share Importance of factors influencing brand selection The 2017 REMODELING Brand Use Survey results can be found on REMODELINGs website here. About REMODELING REMODELING, published by Hanley Wood, is the leading publication in the home improvement industry. REMODELING has and continues to be the indispensable tool that remodelers cannot do withoutdelivering the business know-how, product and technical information that home improvement pros need to help make smart decisions that will shape their project success. Learn more at http://www.remodelingmag.com About Hanley Wood Hanley Wood is the premier company serving the information, media, and marketing needs of the residential, commercial design and construction industry. Utilizing the largest analytics and editorially driven Construction Industry Database, the company provides business intelligence and data-driven services. The company produces award-winning media, high-profile executive events, and strategic marketing solutions. To learn more, visit hanleywood.com. SSH keys are more secure than password authentication, but theyre only secure if server hosting clients keep the private key safe. Future Hosting, a global managed server hosting provider, has warned server hosting clients not to upload private SSH keys to production servers. The warning was prompted by a rapid increase in the number of malicious scans that attempt to discover accidentally uploaded SSH keys (as reported by WordFence on October 18, 2017). If SSH private keys fall into the hands of malicious third parties, they can be used to compromise servers and the data stored on them. Private keys can be accidentally uploaded to the publicly accessible directories of web servers, and it is trivially easy for a malicious third-party to scan for private keys in those directories. Future Hosting advises server hosting clients to use passphrases with their SSH key pairs. Using passphrases may be inconvenient, but a key pair with a passphrase is useless to an attacker even if the private key is made public. SSH keys are more secure than password authentication, but theyre only secure if server hosting clients keep the private key safe, said Maulesh Patel, VP of Operations of Future Hosting, "Its unfortunately common for private keys to be uploaded to servers. Wed like to raise awareness of this issue to help server administrators and developers understand the risk and take steps to keep private keys out of the hands of criminals. SSH is a secure protocol used to access the servers that host web sites and applications. A password can be used to log in to a server with SSH, but key-based authentication is more secure. A user generates a key pair, which includes a public and a private key. The public key is uploaded to the server. The private key should be stored securely on the users devices. If the private key is accidentally uploaded to a public directory or to a version control system, it may be discovered by an attacker and used to gain access to the server and any other server that uses the same key pair for authentication. About Future Hosting, LLC Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and 3-hour Service Level Agreement. Future Hosting is based in Southfield, Michigan. For more information, visit http://www.futurehosting.com Data is every organizations most valuable asset and this session will provide the insight organizations need to use ADM to accelerate their digital transformation journey, said Kristian Kalsing, VP of Solutions Marketing at Winshuttle. Winshuttle is excited to announce theyll be leading a general session at Americas' SAP Users' Group's (ASUG) 13th annual Enterprise Information Management (EIM) conference held in Schaumburg, Illinois November 7-9th 2017. Winshuttle has paved the way for Application Data Management (ADM) in the SAP space, which allows companies to take advantage of trends like digital transformation and real-time analytics. They wrote the first book on the subject, Application Data Management Empower Business Teams to Get Data Right and will be leading a session on how organizations can leverage ADM in the digital future. Businesses across industries are already treating data as a strategic asset in order to leverage the trends of digital transformation and advanced analytics. However, traditional approaches to data governance have fallen short of enabling business domain experts to take back the required ownership of their data. Winshuttles session will introduce the emerging discipline of Application Data Management as a framework to empower business teams and bridge the gap between centralized data governance and operational data stewardship. Were very excited to share how companies are getting to market faster and becoming more successful by adopting an ADM framework within the greater SAP community, said Kristian Kalsing, VP of Solutions Marketing at Winshuttle. Data is every organizations most valuable asset and this session will provide the insight organizations need to use ADM to accelerate their digital transformation journey. Conference goers can stop by the Winshuttle booth #2 to pick up a copy of the ADM book while supplies last, and catch the ADM session Wednesday, November 8th 4:15-5:00 PM. Winshuttle will also be hosting a happy hour for attendees during the conference Wednesday, November 8th from 5:30-8:00 PM at Westwood Tavern. About Winshuttle Winshuttle is a leading provider of enterprise applications for data management, offering the broadest vision for data management and governance needed to fuel business transformations that keep companies competitive. Its tools, platforms, and solutions reduce the friction of implementing data-intensive, mission-critical processes in SAP by automating data movement tasks and critical workflows, ensuring business processes are orchestrated, repeatable and scalable. Learn more about Winshuttles SAP data management solutions by visiting http://www.winshuttle.com Ruffalo Noel Levitz logo Todays campus leaders must be prepared to meet the changing academic demands, employment needs, and increasing diversity of learners. At this high-impact forum, well dig deep into how to make the strategic enrollment planning process effective. Lewis Sanborne, RNL vice president Ruffalo Noel Levitz, leading provider of higher education enrollment management, student success, and fundraising solutions, will outline strategies for creating a high-impact, data-driven strategic enrollment plan at a day-and-a-half forum, Dec. 5-6, in Boston. The Strategic Enrollment Planning Executive Forum will be presented by Lewis Sanborne, vice president and editor of Strategic Enrollment Planning: A Dynamic Collaboration; Kevin Crockett, Ruffalo Noel Levitz senior executive; senior vice presidents Gary Fretwell and Sarah Coen; and Michael Williams, senior executive. Forum topics: External trends and demands that influence student enrollment Academic program trends and revenue implications Strategies for student success and new-student enrollment Return-on-investment analyses used to set priorities and goals Tips for plan development and execution According to Sanborne, Todays campus leaders must be prepared to meet the changing academic demands, employment needs, and increasing diversity of learners. At this high-impact forum, well dig deep into how to make the strategic enrollment planning process effective. We encourage participants to bring a team, use the forum as a strategic enrollment planning retreat, and leave re-energized, organized, and prepared to make positive enrollment change happen on their campuses. Hands-on planning time will be provided for individual attendees and teams to apply SEP concepts and to begin their plans. Each attendee will have access to an informative set of online materials, including copies of all presentations, in addition to the Ruffalo Noel Levitz book, Strategic Enrollment Planning: A Dynamic Collaboration, the most comprehensive study of the topic. The registration details are available at http://www.RuffaloNL.com/Events About Ruffalo Noel Levitz Ruffalo Noel Levitz is the leading provider of higher education enrollment, student success, and fundraising solutions. More than 1,900 colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations rely on RNL for advanced analytics, personalized engagement, and industry-leading insights to achieve their missions. The firm is distinguished by its powerful portfolio of solutions focused on the entire lifecycle of enrollment and fundraising, assuring students find the right college or university, graduate on time, secure their first job, and give back to support the next generation. Ruffalo Noel Levitz conferences, research reports, papers, and articles help clients stay on top of current trends. Visit http://www.RuffaloNL.com. Avecto, a leading privilege management company, has been selected by McAfee Security Innovation Alliance (SIA) as its Most Valuable Partner of the Year at the McAfee MPOWER cyber security summit in Las Vegas. The McAfee Security Innovation Alliance is a technology partnering program that accelerates the development of interoperable security products, simplifies the integration of these products and provides a truly integrated, connected security ecosystem A McAfee SIA partner since 2011, Avecto was named Most Innovative Partner in 2013 and is today, a leading sales teaming partner in the McAfee SIA Program. Avectos Defendpoint software integrates with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) and is widely considered to be one of its deepest and most comprehensive technology integrations. In 2016, Avecto was also the first privilege management vendor to offer full integration with McAfees TIE/DXL framework. Avectos integration with McAfee solutions provides customers with actionable intelligence to manage their multi-vendor security environments. By implementing Avectos Defendpoint software via McAfee ePO, customers experience faster deployment times, reduced costs and improved security. Said D.J Long, head of the McAfee Security Innovation Alliance. Avectos strength is in its simplicity, with familiar and integrated management, out-of-the-box setup and a seamless end user experience. Avecto is a strong contributor to the growing Security Innovation Alliance ecosystem and often leads the charge. We continue to be impressed by their drive and commitment to innovation in the privilege management space. Paul Kenyon, Co-CEO and Co-founder at Avecto added: We are honored to accept this award from McAfee. For over seven years, Avecto has been a committed part of the SIA Program and a proud McAfee Partner. With Avecto and McAfee working together, organizations have been able to eliminate the threat of local admin rights, quickly operationalize their security investment and get more meaningful insight into the threats they face. This is a great example of two market-leading organizations coming together to deliver unparalleled customer value. For more information on Defendpoint ePO edition click visit the Avecto website or alternatively, meet the team at MPOWER Amsterdam or Gartner Symposium ITXpo in November. ### About Avecto For organizations seeking to prevent breaches without hindering productivity Avecto Defendpoint combines best-in-class privilege management and application control software, making admin rights removal simple and scalable across desktops and servers to ensure compliance, security, and efficiency. Since 2008, the company has enabled over 8 million users across the world's biggest brands and most highly-regulated industries to successfully work from the safety of standard user accounts while enjoying the flexibility of admin accounts. About McAfee McAfee is one of the worlds leading independent cybersecurity companies. Inspired by the power of working together, McAfee creates business and consumer solutions that make the world a safer place. This project aims to provide appropriate care to the right patient, at the right time and in the right setting, Beckey Cochran, Quality Insights Quality Innovation Network Director said. Patients will remain at home for non-emergency medical needs that do not require hospital or emergency depart Quality Insights has received funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to help emergency medical service (EMS) providers offer expanded care to people with Medicare who live in West Virginia. The goal of this collaboration is to lessen unnecessary hospital admissions and emergency department visits while enhancing access to quality care for the states most vulnerable and rural residents. Hospital readmissions and emergency department visits are common and costly, particularly for people with chronic conditions and the elderly. In an effort to address this issue, Quality Insights will support EMS providers that offer mobile integrated health care services commonly called community paramedicine to help patients and hospitals with high rates of emergency department use or a large number of patients who are frequently readmitted. Specifically, Quality Insights will help: Identify causes of hospital readmission or emergency department use Develop and conduct assessments to identify local needs Provide reports to participating health care providers that identify key drivers of hospital readmission Select and share best practices to address key drivers of hospital readmission and emergency department overuse Develop resources and educational materials to support both patients and health care providers Engage patients and their families as partners through feedback on proposed strategies, usefulness of educational materials and assessment of improved knowledge as a result of community paramedicine efforts Community paramedicine is an emerging health care delivery model that increases access to basic services through the use of specially-trained EMS providers in an expanded role. Community paramedics provide care at home under the supervision of a physician or an advanced practice nurse. They can help fill gaps in rural health delivery caused by a shortage in available providers as well as long travel times to hospitals or clinics. Community paramedics are also considered trusted health care professionals and are often members of the community where they serve. This project aims to provide appropriate care to the right patient, at the right time and in the right setting, Beckey Cochran, Quality Insights Quality Innovation Network Director said. Patients will remain at home for non-emergency medical needs that do not require hospital or emergency department services. This will hopefully result in a reduction in unnecessary hospital readmissions and as emergency department visits, and more importantly improve patient safety and access to care. Quality Insights will work with consultant James Mason to implement the project. Mason has experience as a paramedic in four states. He became involved with community paramedicine in 2014, while a Rural Health Initiative student at the West Virginia Osteopathic School of Medicine. He helped achieve passage of a Senate bill for community paramedicine demonstration projects. He coordinated community paramedicine development with 19 agencies and 44 health care entities in West Virginia. Mr. Masons experience and knowledge around community paramedicine will be critical to bridge the gap between existing care coordination efforts and new opportunities, Cochran said. This program is important because were going to be able to bring quality health care to the most rural and vulnerable citizens in West Virginia, Mason said. We hope to expand the viewpoint of the type of services that paramedics provide into more of a comprehensive health care provider realm. A community paramedic can address both medical and social needs. Community paramedics can provide home safety assessments, triage and referral services, chronic disease management education, support for family caregivers, medication compliance support, vaccinations and more. Offering community paramedicine services will allow patients to choose to use community resources rather than inpatient and emergency facilities for non-urgent care, Cochran said. This will also empower hospital-based doctors, who might be concerned about the availability of resources for chronically-ill patients, to make referrals for high-utilizers to the program. For more information about this project, contact Biddy Smith at bsmith@qualityinsights.org, or call (304) 346-9864 ext. 3252. About Quality Insights Quality Innovation Network Quality Insights is the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for Delaware, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Quality Insights collaborates with healthcare providers, patients and allied organizations across the network to bring about widespread, significant improvements in the quality of care they deliver. We are committed to reaching the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' goals of better care, smarter spending and healthier people. To learn more about the network, visit http://www.qualityinsights-qin.org. angelMD Logo The critical nature of emergency medicine lends itself perfectly to new and better ways of working, said Tobin Arthur, CEO of AngelMD. On October 30th and 31st, 2017, AngelMD hosted a startup pitch event during the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2017 Scientific Assembly. The pitch event, which was held as part of the incubatED section of innovatED, highlighting eight early stage healthcare companies from around the United States. AngelMD is an investment platform and network where physicians and investors have the opportunity to analyze, advise and invest in companies that show high potential for success in the healthcare field. ACEPs focus on new technologies was an ideal match for AngelMD, and allowed ACEP members unprecedented access to the next generation of healthcare innovators. The critical nature of emergency medicine lends itself perfectly to new and better ways of working, said Tobin Arthur, CEO of AngelMD. The teams selected to present at ACEP were selected from a much larger field of applicants, and we look forward to working with each of these winners as their companies gain traction in the market. Each day, four of the companies had the opportunity to present their ideas to a team of five emergency medicine expert judges, with the audience acting as the sixth judge. The teams were competing for a cash prize from TMCx, the healthcare innovation accelerator arm of the Texas Medical Center, as well as a spot in the centers 2018 cohort. The Digital Health winner was EvidenceCare from Nashville, TN. The company focuses on delivering evidence-based protocols to providers and hospitals. EvidenceCare impressed the judges with not only their unique approach to the problem, but also their business acumen. The Medical Device winner was Forest Devices from Pittsburgh, PA. The company has developed a novel approach to stroke detection called AlphaStroke. The product can detect a stroke in as little as one minute, leading to dramatically reduced effects related to delayed treatment. Forest Devices is a graduate of TMCx, which opened the door to the third-place finisher in the competition to take the prize of a slot in the 2018 cohort. That honor went to Adroit Surgical. Based out of Oklahoma City, OK, the company has developed a patented method for securing difficult airway openings in emergency medical situations. Our relationship with AngelMD was instrumental in pulling together this value-added piece of the annual ACEP conference, said Sudave Mendiratta, FACEP (Fellow of the Emergency College of Physicians). For emergency physicians, a spotlight on innovation is an opportunity to look into the future and see what the next generation of healthcare will hold. The incubatED pitch event was held as part of a broader relationship between AngelMD and ACEP. The relationship gives ACEP members access to curated news, data, and content related to innovation in emergency medicine. ### About AngelMD AngelMD is an investment and networking platform connecting innovative medical startups, physicians, investors, and industry partners. Leading physicians from all over the US have joined AngelMD to help source, evaluate and advise companies in biotechnology, medical device, and healthcare technology. For more information, visit http://www.angelmd.co. Conventional wisdom may suggest that you need to start a tech company in a top-tier market, but Pendo is proof that Silicon Valley success doesnt require a Silicon Valley address. Pendo.io, creator of the leading web-based Product Experience Platform, today announced that co-founder and CEO, Todd Olson, is one of three executives from across the United States selected to participate in a Salesforce Dreamforce panel discussion on what it takes to start and grow a high profile technology company in a lower profile locale. Moderated by Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star of hit series Shark Tank, the panel will include the following entrepreneurs: Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Raleigh, NC-based Pendo.io, a high-growth SaaS provider helping digital product teams to deliver product experiences that users love. Shradha Agarwal, co-founder and president of Chicago-based Outcome Health, a health tech company providing digital advertising solutions for pharma companies. Rachel Carlson, CEO of Denver, CO-based Guild Education, an edtech company that provides a lifelong learning platform with classes, programs and degrees. The panel discussion will take place on Monday, Nov. 6, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel in Yerba Buena Salon 9. Silicon Valley may seem to get all the headlines, but the spirit of entrepreneurship is strong across North America, the panel description says. Whether you're from Poughkeepsie or Palo Alto, you will gain perspective and get practical advice, no matter where you hang your hat. The topic has particular timeliness and relevance as many entrepreneurs and knowledge workers reconsider the lifestyle tradeoffs of top-tier technology markets like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York and Boston, where cost of living has outpaced earning power for even many highly-skilled workers. According to Zillow, the average home price in San Francisco exceeds $1.2 million, whereas, in cities like Raleigh, NC and Austin, TX, an equivalent home might cost less than a third of this price. Accordingly, many entrepreneurs and knowledge workers are actively migrating to smaller, lower-cost markets where its easier to recruit and retain affordable talent and to find a sustainable balance between work and life. I believe the talent and ecosystem advantages of Silicon Valley, while still real, are reaching the point of diminishing returns as competition for talent overheats and living costs rise through the roof, said Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Pendo. Conventional wisdom may suggest that you need to start a tech company in these top-tier markets, but Pendo is proof that Silicon Valley success doesnt require a Silicon Valley address. In further support of this trend, Pendo was named one of LinkedIns Top Companies | Startups, a list of 50 industry disruptors selected from an eligible field of 25,000 startups. The list includes Silicon Valley stalwarts like Slack, Stripe, Dropbox, Uber and Lyft, as well as Raleigh-based Pendo. Im a big believer in Silicon Valley and all it brings, but also recognize that its not for everyone, said Megan Quinn, a partner at Spark Capital, a Pendo investor based in Silicon Valley. I also recognize--and the Pendo story is a testament to this--that Silicon Valley and other major markets are hardly the only valid options for starting and growing a wildly successful company. Pendo has raised over $56 million to date, $45 million this year, from top-tier Silicon Valley investors including Battery Ventures, Spark Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners. The company recently announced its first acquisition, Israel-based Insert.io, which extends its product analytics and user engagement capabilities to richer mobile use cases, and adds Pendos first international office. The company has over 150 employees and plans to double headcount, primarily in Raleigh, NC, in 2018. About Pendo Pendo delivers a complete platform for product teams to help companies create products that customers love. With Pendo, product teams can understand product usage, collect feedback, measure NPS, onboard users, and announce new features in app - all without requiring engineering resources. Founded in 2013 and backed by Meritech Capital, Spark Capital, and Battery Ventures, Pendo has raised $56 million and grown revenue by 400% in the past year. Used by hundreds of innovative software product leaders, Pendo tracks 20 billion user actions, and improves the product experience for 22 million users every month. For more information, visit: http://www.pendo.io Mark does a great job with outreach and continuing education. Leading Dallas, Texas, trust and estate litigation law firm, Burdette & Rice is proud to announce that attorney Mark Caldwell will be speaking November 8, 2017, on the topic of "Summary Judgements" at the Rockwall County Bar Association. Dedicated to serving the legal needs of Rockwall County, the attorneys of the Rockwall County Bar Association are committed to remaining on the cutting edge of the profession and serving the needs of their clientele. Monthly meetings center around speakers discussing legal issues affecting the membership; Caldwell's talk is a highly anticipated talk that will focus on "summary judgements" as they pertain to trust and estate litigation under Texas law. Mark does a great job with outreach and continuing education, said Elliott Burdette, Managing Director of Probate Litigation at Burdette and Rice. Anyone who is in the Rockwall County Bar association or nearby on November 8, 2017, is highly encouraged to attend his talk. To learn more about the Rockwall County Bar Association, visit their website at http://rockwallbar.com/. Persons interested in specifics of the talk, or who may be facing a private matter concerning trust and/or estate litigation are urged to reach out to either Mark Caldwell, directly, or to just visit the Burdette & Rice website at http://www.dallasprobateattorneys.com/ to request a no obligation consultation. No two situations are alike, and so combining the depth of experience of Mark Caldwell with the specifics of an individual case is an excellent way to learn and move forward within the constraints of Texas law on probate, estates, and trusts. MORE ON ATTORNEY MARK R. CALDWELL Mark earned his law degree from New England School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts in 2005. He entered private practice as a litigator in a boutique probate and trust firm, representing executors, guardians, and beneficiaries in complex estate and trust litigation. He has also represented fiduciaries in all phases of estate, trust, and guardianship administration. Mark enjoys the investigatory aspects of estate and trust litigation, including reviewing and analyzing medical, financial, and suspicious property records and transactions. Mark is committed to developing and maintaining strong, personal relationships with his clients. He endeavors to offer smart, pragmatic and cost-effective legal advice. Mark believes that the strongest winning position is one that is simple, direct, and understandable and he realizes that estate and guardianship litigation often involves substantial damage to family relationships. While he strives to advocate strong, aggressive positions for clients, Mark also strives to resolve disputes in an ethical and reasonable manner that, if desired, does not preclude the opportunity for reconciliation. Mark is married and has three children. He enjoys spending time with his family, living an active lifestyle and traveling. ABOUT BURDETTE & RICE, PLLC Burdette & Rice, PLLC is a top Dallas probate law firm, with lawyers dedicated to listening to their clients, being fully present to them, and advocating their clients positions in the simplest and most persuasive way possible. The law firm employs some of the top probate and estate lawyers in Dallas, Texas. Clients come to Burdette & Rice to contest a will in Texas, work on complex inheritance litigation and disputes, and to litigate disputes over powers of attorney, guardianship and trustee issues all based on Texas law. Burdette & Rice, PLLC Media Relations http://www.dallasprobateattorneys.com/ 972-991-7700 Cypress Creek is proud to be a major driver of employment growth in the United States. Cypress Creek Renewables announced today the launch of an ambitious partnership with Greenville Technical College to strengthen South Carolinas solar workforce and grow the states economy. The partnership will support the states thriving solar industry and help to train and prepare a new generation of energy workers. Cypress Creek Renewables also announced today a plan to invest over $1.5 billion to develop and build 2 GW of solar across more than 80 projects in the Palmetto State. Together, these projects will create nearly 10,000 construction jobs and power over 600,000 homes with clean, affordable energy. South Carolina is currently home to nearly 3,000 solar professionals. Proactive investment in workforce development and training programs could increase this number to 10,000 over the next decade. Cypress Creek Renewables initial $25,000 investment in Greenville Technical Colleges Solar Training Center will support the development of new curriculum and provide scholarship assistance for students, with a focus on veterans. Today, the national solar sector employs more veterans on average than the rest of the US economy. South Carolinas solar industry, like every industry in our state, is growing and bringing new jobs and investment to our state. This new partnership between Cypress Creek Renewables and Greenville Technical College is an important step towards strengthening our energy workforce and creating opportunities for South Carolinians, said South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. Cypress Creek is proud to be a major driver of employment growth in the United States, said Matthew McGovern, Chief Executive Officer of Cypress Creek Renewables. The solar industry has grown 17 times faster than the rest of the U.S. economy. Our partnership with Greenville Technical College serves as a model for how we can continue to create good paying jobs and opportunities for American families for years to come. We are grateful to Cypress Creek Renewables for partnering with us to create the future workforce, said Dr. Jermaine Whirl, Vice President for Economic Development and Corporate Training at Greenville Technical College. Funds for curriculum development and scholarship assistance allow us to create opportunities for students while we deliver the well-trained workers the industry will need to meet demand. About Cypress Creek Renewables: Cypress Creek Renewables partners with communities to develop, build and operate affordable solar projects across the United States. Through a combination of organic growth and strategic development, Cypress Creek has grown into one of the countrys leading solar companies. For more information about Cypress Creek Renewables, visit https://ccrenew.com About Greenville Technical College: Greenville Technical College (GTC) is a five-campus system where nearly 30,000 students are annually preparing for the strongest careers of today and tomorrow. Established in 1962, the colleges mission is to transform students lives and help the community thrive by providing a world-class, affordable education. With more than 100 curriculum program choices along with short-term training for career and personal development, Greenville Technical College gives employers a ready supply of skilled workers and provides students with an education that will help them succeed. InVue Acquires MicroSigns This acquisition is part of our strategy to broaden our offering to help our customers merchandise more effectively and consequently, increase their profitability..." InVue entered into an agreement to acquire MicroSigns Inc., a leading provider of digital retail content and pricing systems headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Through the acquisition, InVue expands their software offerings and further strengthens their leadership position in retail security and merchandising solutions. MicroSigns will become part of InVues Software Solutions division, which includes security platform Access Manager as well as InVue Insight, a merchandising analytics and planogram compliance system for retailers. This acquisition is part of our strategy to broaden our offering to help our customers merchandise more effectively and consequently, increase their profitability. We are now able to offer our retail and brand partners an enhanced experience for their customers which includes digital messaging and analytics., said InVues CEO Jim Sankey. MicroSigns digital messaging platform allows retailers to instantly update or change what is displayed on devices within their stores, eliminating traditional price tags and messaging, making it an ideal complement to our existing software solutions. MicroSigns founder & CEO, Rene-Pierre St. Laurent, commented, We are thrilled to be part of InVue. The partnership will allow us to offer our solutions to a broader range of customers as well as invest and expand our product portfolio. The pioneer in security for merchandise on display, InVue has over 40 years experience providing global retailers and brands innovative ways to increase sales while securing their merchandise. InVue continues that legacy with the addition of MicroSigns to the portfolio. About InVue Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, InVue provides global brands, retailers and businesses with innovative merchandising, software and security solutions. InVue products promote and protect retail merchandise seamlessly to help customers improve their profits. About MicroSigns Established in 2003 and headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, MicroSigns has developed a unique platform specifically tailored to meet the operating challenges of todays retailers. MicroSigns consumer-facing devices and on device apps improve the in-store experience for both shoppers and staff through custom digital messaging. Kitchie McBride There are only so many hours in the day! By working with TruBlue, you can hand over your honey-do list and free up that time to spend with your loved ones or enjoying everything Hawaii has to offer. Kitchie McBride is pleased to announce shes launched a new professional home maintenance company in Honolulu, TruBlue Total House Care. TruBlue offers handyman services, maid and cleaning services, lawn care, emergency repairs, seasonal projects, a home watch program, a senior accessibility program and more. TruBlue also partners with homeowners, realtors, and rental property owners to get homes move-in ready and prepared for market. TruBlue is also a great option for seniors who desire comfort and accessibility at home without the worry property maintenance. TruBlue of Honolulu serves Manoa, Honolulu, Aina Haina, Waikiki, Kakaako, Waialae-Kahala and the surrounding areas. Prior to launching TruBlue, she built her career working in clinical services, business development and revenue integrity in the health care industry. Working in an industry that served many seniors, she saw that there were gaps in services for seniors and their busy families including the kind of home maintenance services TruBlue provides. I was thinking about opening my own business and I knew I wanted something that was flexible and allowed me to work with people to improve their lives. With TruBlue, I can get to know my clients, build an understanding of their needs, create customized plans to suit their lifestyles and work with them to give them more time for the people and activities they love, McBride said. TruBlue is a great optio n for busy families, seniors aging in place, families caring for seniors and anyone who doesnt want to worry about home repairs, cleaning or lawn maintenance. McBride is especially looking forward to working with families who are caring for their older loved ones. In Hawaii, we have multi-generational or extended families, mostly living closely together or under the same roof. Its one of the things that make Hawaii wonderful. But many of the younger people are working very long hours or taking multiple jobs while taking care of their older family members. There are only so many hours in the day! By working with TruBlue, you can hand over your honey-do list and free up that time to spend with your loved ones or enjoying everything Hawaii has to offer, McBride said. We are a one-stop shop for home maintenance. For McBride, helping families keep their homes in excellent condition while they care for their loved ones is more than a job. I have senior parents who dont live in Hawaii and I cant be there for them all the time. Im hoping, through TruBlue, I can help other families both create great living situations for their loved ones and find more time to be together. I want to be a bigger part of this community through this business, she said. All TruBlue franchises are fully insured and bonded and all employees are background- checked. To learn more about TruBlue of Honolulu, call (808)376-2772, email KMcBride(at)TruBlueHouseCare(dot)com or visit http://www.TruBlueHonolulu.com. About TruBlue TruBlue provides one convenient and affordable solution for all your house care needs inside and out. TruBlues services include house cleaning, household repairs, yard work, emergency repairs and seasonal work, all handled by a personal House Care Manager. These affordable services are available year-round and customized to meet your needs and budget. TruBlue strives to provide affordable, worry-free living for seniors and hassle-free living for busy adults with the goal of eliminating the worries, hassles and headaches of home maintenance by providing full-service, trustworthy house care services to fit any budget. "We're all about making lives easier for real estate agents." - Robert Davis, President & CEO of Circlepix Circlepix, the leader in real estate marketing solutions, proudly announces its latest technological innovation: a PIXsocial Amazon Alexa skill that allows real estate agents to check their social media marketing statistics. PIXsocial is Circlepixs social media automation tool that allows agents to automatically and consistently post dynamic content to subscribers social media profiles while also providing them lead-generating opportunities. The new integration of the Circlepix Alexa skill with PIXsocial allows real estate agents to easily get weekly stats without having to access their Circlepix account via computer or smart phone. Were all about making lives easier for real estate agents, says Robert Davis, President and CEO of Circlepix. And whats easier than simply asking Alexa to Ask Circlepix to get my PIXsocial stats? To celebrate the new Alexa Skill, Circlepix will be giving away one free Amazon Echo Dot every day during the National Association of Realtors Conference & Expo in Chicago from Friday, November 3 through Monday, November 6. Agents and brokers can enter to win by stopping by the booth during regular Expo hours. Agents that stop by the Circlepix booth at the NAR Conference & Expo can also receive our 30-minute social media check-up for free (a $100 value). Our 5-point social media consultation session individually reviews your social media pages and profiles and provides real estate agents with the industrys best practices. For more information, visit http://www.circlepix.com. About Circlepix: Circlepix is the leader in real estate marketing automation, with over 100,000 agents across the US and Canada using its services. Its three core platforms PIXphotography, PIX marketing and PIXsocial give real estate agents the tools they need to sell homes faster and for more money. Adam Bryant Adam has a proven ability to distill real-world lessons and insights from hundreds of CEOs, and were thrilled he is joining the Merryck team to help our clients deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams, remarked Merryck Americas CEO David Reimer. Merryck & Co., the only global leadership-development firm that provides business mentoring by CEOs and other top executives, is pleased to announce that noted journalist and leadership expert Adam Bryant has joined the firm as Managing Director. Bryant will continue to write on Leadership topics while working with the firms clients. Prior to joining Merryck, Bryant worked for 30 years as a journalist, including 18 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The New York Times. Bryant interviewed more than 500 CEOs for "Corner Office," a weekly series on leadership and management that he created in 2009. He is the author of two books based on themes that emerged from the interviews: Quick and Nimble; Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, and The Corner Office; Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed. Adam has a proven ability to distill real-world lessons and insights from hundreds of CEOs, and were thrilled he is joining the Merryck team to help our clients deepen their leadership benches and strengthen their teams, remarked Merryck Americas CEO David Reimer. Bryant was also a member of the team that produced the Innovation Report at The New York Times, which is widely considered a key inflection point in The Times' transition to a digital-first company. Bryant's work on leadership is used widely on college campuses, and he is a frequent speaker at business schools across the country. In addition to his consulting work on leadership development and mentoring, he teaches a leadership course at Columbia University on "The Practice of Leadership." About Merryck & Co Merryck & Co is the only global leadership development firm that provides business mentoring by former CEOs and other top executives. By bringing an operators perspective to executive development, Merryck Mentors are committed to helping current business leaders and their teams lead more effectively and build more successful businesses. The firms clients include some of the most successful executives within the highest-performing companies in the world, boards of directors, and select teams of individuals. The firm has offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Singapore and Sydney. For more information please visit: http://www.merryck.com. Promise to Drive Focused Grand Prize Winner Christy Clark-Weese (center holding check) with California Casualty Representatives We are dedicated to protecting educators. Each promise to drive focused created safer roads for them, their families and their students. Taking a pledge to avoid distracted driving has paid off for Christy Clark-Weese. The PE teacher at Coal Ridge Middle School in the St. Vrain Valley School District in Firestone, Colorado, is the recipient the $20,000 grand prize in California Casualtys Promise to Drive Focused sweepstakes. Clark-Weese said taking the pledge to stay focused while driving was very important. Im a role model for my students and even my own kids, and I need to be a good example. Ms. Clark-Weese, who has taught at Coal Ridge Middle School for 13 years, feels blessed to be recognized. Im not used to being thanked or appreciated; you teach because you love kids. In an effort to combat the growing epidemic of distracted driving crashes, California Casualty teamed up with the NEA and its affiliates, asking educators across the country to make a promise to drive focused, complimenting the efforts of Impact Teen Drivers, a nonprofit founded and supported by California Casualty to prevent inattentive driving. Surrounded by children every day, educators are important role models who know all too well how devastating the preventable death of a young person can be. The National Safety Council believes we can all reverse the trend of preventable traffic fatalities and injuries with a coordinated effort. We are dedicated to protecting educators, said California Casualty Sr. Vice President Mike McCormick. Each promise to drive focused created safer roads for them, their families and their students. More than 76,000 teachers, administrators and educational support professionals took the pledge and became eligible for the grand prize drawing for a new Ford Focus or a check for $20,000. Clark-Weese chose the cash option. She will use the funds to purchase a vehicle for her daughter who attends college out of state. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, with Service Centers in Arizona, Colorado and Kansas, California Casualty provides auto and home insurance to educators, firefighters, law enforcement officers and nurses across the country. Founded in 1914, California Casualty has been led by four generations of the Brown family. To learn more about California Casualty, or to request an auto insurance quote, please visit http://www.calcas.com or call 1.800.800.9410. Recognizing both extraordinary commercial and cultural impact, The Business Marketing Association New York City (BMA NYC) presented its 2017 Communicator of the Year Award to State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) for Fearless Girl today at its 2017 Regional Conference. The conference convened global business marketing leaders at Bloomberg, L.P. headquarters to explore the business and moral imperatives of communicating in the 21st century under its theme, Can Marketing Change the World? The Fearless Girl campaign ignited a conversation globally on the need for greater gender diversity in senior business leadership, demonstrating the answer to this question is a resounding yes. In just 12 hours after the placement of the iconic statue in New York Citys financial district, Fearless Girl generated more than one billion impressions on Twitter alone. With recipients representing world-class brands from American Express to Verizon, the Communicator of the Year Award has been one of BMA NYCs most prestigious and enduring initiatives for 54 years. Sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, the award recognizes outstanding B2B marketers who, in the judgment of BMA NYCs Board, exemplify insight, creativity and effectiveness in business marketing. John Brockelman, Managing Director and Global Head of Communications and Brand Marketing, State Street Global Advisors, accepted the 2017 award: "We created Fearless Girl to spark a global conversation. The public discourse that resulted from this campaign is already leading to increased gender diversity in senior leadership worldwide. We are honored that Fearless Girl is being recognized by the BMA NYC as a marketing campaign that has helped change the world with their 54th annual Communicator of the Year Award." BMA NYC BOARD ADVISORS SURVEY OF MILLENIAL MARKETERS At the conference, BMA NYC Board Advisors revealed surprising findings from a survey of more than 100 millennial marketers on whether marketing can change the world and why more millennials than ever are choosing marketing as their business discipline. Among the most counterintuitive of the following results are that significantly more marketers over the age of 35 than millennial marketers personally align with the marketing, purpose or messages of their employers (88% to 79%) and value customer experience the most when it comes to what they love about their favorite brands (59% to 30%): Do you believe marketing can change the world? -Millennials: Yes 100% -Over 35: Yes 94% Describe the primary emotion evoked by the most provocative marketing you experienced in the last two years evoked. -Millennials: Empowerment 33% Urgency to act 15% Compassion 12% -Over 35: Empowerment 35% Urgency to act 29% Compassion 17% What do you love most about your favorite brand? -Millennials: Ability to innovate and think ahead 42% Commitment to customer experience 30% The values the company upholds 21% -Over 35: Commitment to customer experience 59% Ability to innovate and think ahead 18% The values the company upholds 18% Do you believe it is important for a company to address current affairs, or is it better to remain neutral? -Millennials: Address and be involved 79% Remain neutral 21% -Over 35: Address and be involved 76% Remain neutral 24% Do you personally align to the purpose, marketing messages or narrative of the company where you work? -Millennials: Yes 79% No 21% -Over 35: Yes 88% No 12% Do you feel empowered in your role today to make the marketing at your company help drive change? -Millennials: Yes 67% No 33% -Over 35: Yes 65% No 35% We saw tonight the incredible power that marketing has to change the world, and now more than ever we must use the tools of marketing to inform and inspire action for good, said Tom Stein, President, BMA NYC; and Chairman and Chief Client Officer, Stein IAS. The business and moral imperatives of our time demand it. SIEGEL+GALES SIMPLICITY AT WORK STUDY At the conference, global brand strategy firm, Siegel+Gale launched the findings from their Simplicity at Work study. Based on a survey of more than 14,000 people in nine countries, the research shows organizations who invest in simplifying their workplaces benefit from greater trust, advocacy, retention and innovation among employees. Despite this, only one out of five employees finds their workplace truly simple. In a simple workplace: -95 percent of employees are more likely to trust their companys leadership; -54 percent find it easier to innovate; -65 percent are more likely to refer someone to work at their company; -84 percent of employees plan to stay longer in their job. Employee engagement has become a boardroom issue, said Margaret Molloy, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Siegel+Gale. A tight labor market coupled with the supremacy of brand experience means that an engaged workforce is a powerful asset while a disengaged workforce is a huge risk for every organization. Our research shows that simpler workplacesthose where employees easily get their work done and feel productive and fulfilled doing so engender more advocacy, innovation, and retention. Download the full report here. The New York chapter of the Business Marketing Association, the largest association of B-to-Bcentric marketers in the world, provides a like-minded community of New York-area business professionals and numerous opportunities to network, exchange ideas, and learn from experienced experts. This year, online holiday spending is expected to overtake in-store spending for the first time ever, according to Deloitte. Consumers are projected to gravitate towards digital experiences for convenience, selection and immediacy, but the physical store will still play an important role for more interactive, engaging experiences. To understand how consumers are going to shop during this years holiday season, Astound Commerce Insights surveyed 1000 consumers from the United States and 1000 consumers from Europe who own a smartphone and shop online at least four times per year spending $250 or more. Competing For Customers During the Holidays and Beyond found that the customer experience coupled with strong service will be important factors in retailer selection this season, but savings trumps all of the above. Our study revealed that every channel has a role to play this season. Brands and retailers have to make sure they can get products to consumers when they want them and how they want them, as efficiency is top of mind for shoppers, says Lauren Freedman, SVP of Digital Strategy, Astound Commerce. They also need to figure out how to keep people coming back and away from Amazon, as not surprisingly our research found that the company will play a huge role this year in holiday shopping. Price and Free Shipping are the Top Purchase Drivers Price is the top consideration for consumers when selecting a retailer. In projecting behavior for the holidays relative to current patterns, over 50 percent will increase their behavior when it comes to shopping early for price promotions, looking for coupons and discounts, and gravitating towards free shipping, as they focus squarely on price. The key factors that drive consumers to purchase include: Price drives top three always purchase factors: 78 percent of shoppers say the right price, 71 percent say free shipping, and 60 percent say valuable promotions are factors that always cause them to purchase from a specific retailer. Speed plays a key role: The top two logistics features that always drive shoppers to purchase from a specific retailer are product is in stock and ready to ship (73 percent) and fast delivery (66 percent). Free shipping trumps assortment: Free shipping is the number one factor outside of price that consumers care about, ranking ahead of product assortment, shipping speed, convenience and loyalty programs. Amazon and Marketplaces Will Play a Starring Role Amazons influence continues to expand, and consumers are now comfortable turning to the company for almost every purchase. In fact, 40 percent indicate they will make half their purchases on Amazons site. Amazons rise has also opened consumers up to other marketplaces, with 69 percent of consumers reporting they will choose marketplaces over retailers due to better prices. Key marketplace and Amazon findings include: Amazons prices, fulfilment and variety drive purchases: More than half of shoppers rank Amazon #1 for the lowest prices, speed of shipping, and broad assortment, while less than 25 percent of consumers rank brands and large stores #1 for the same categories. Marketplaces will play a larger role: Sixty-three percent of shoppers will purchase from Amazon this season, 60 percent will purchase from Walmart, and 45 percent will buy goods from eBay. Loyalty programs like Prime drive purchases: Forty-one percent of online shoppers will always make a purchase from a particular retailer given their participation in a loyalty program. New Channels and Experiences Peak Shopper Interest While the main focus for the holidays will be on digital storefronts, other channels like social media and brick-and-mortar will also play a critical role in driving sales. Social media will be a leading traffic driver to ecommerce sites, and 66 percent of consumers will still go to physical stores to touch and feel products before purchasing. Here are the top omnichannel findings: Shoppers will use tech in stores: Nearly a third (32 percent) of consumers are highly likely to use touchscreens or kiosks in store for product finders, ordering or delivery, and more than a quarter (27 percent) will use VR to assist in product selection (beauty simulation, room planning, etc.). Social media will drive purchases: Fifty-nine percent of millennials have made a purchase as a result of a social engagement in the past, compared to only 50 percent of total consumers surveyed. More than half of millennials (55 percent) will be prompted to visit a website as a result of social media, compared to 45 percent of total respondents. Mobile growth will continue: A quality mobile app or web experience will cause four in 10 consumers to make a purchase from a retailer. Nearly 40 percent of consumers plan to order more products this year on mobile than last year. Brands and retailers must have a sophisticated set of programs, capabilities and customer service in place to grab their share of consumer dollars during the holidays with innovation always on the horizon, furthered Freedman. Marketplaces are well poised to continue their impressive growth, but competitors can leverage their physical stores and social media presence to entice customers to choose them instead. To learn more about how retailer and brands can prepare for the 2017 holiday season, click here. About Astound Commerce Astound Commerce, the world's largest privately held digital commerce agency, combines strategy, technology, creativity, insight and a proven methodology to deliver exceptional digital shopping experiences. Through a forward-thinking, results-driven approach, Astound Commerce serves leading global brands such as adidas, LOreal, Under Armour, Jimmy Choo, Lacoste and Versace. Founded in San Francisco in 2000, the passionate team of nearly 700 dedicated, diverse industry and technology experts has decades of ecommerce experience and more than 400 implementations under their belt to address the complex challenges, advancing technologies and unique needs of global markets. To learn more, visit http://www.astoundcommerce.com. This rebrand is just the next step in helping our customers take full advantage of what communities can do for them. JCS Consulting, a leading technology implementation consulting firm, announced today that is has completed the rebrand of the organization to Paladin Group. This new brand better reflects the company's focus on online community deployments and comes after a period of aggressive growth. JCS Consulting originally focused on multiple technologies and has a strong background in Jive. Other platforms include Salesforce, Box, and Igloo. As the company has grown, it has become a leading champion for Salesforce Communities this reflects the company's new brand, as, by definition, a paladin is "a leading champion of a cause." While Paladin's new focus may be Salesforce Communities, the company still supports its partnerships and existing and new clients who use the Jive, Box, or Igloo platforms. "We've experienced incredible growth over the last few years, especially in the Salesforce Communities space," said Alan Lewis, Chief Executive Officer of Paladin Technologies. "We've assembled an incredible and experienced team. This rebrand is just the next step in helping our customers take full advantage of what communities can do for them." "We will still support our clients who utilize our other technology partners, and we are excited to move forward with Salesforce external communities. We reviewed each of the possible options, but in the end, we wanted to provide the best possible solution for our customers, the seamless vertical integration, the flexibility to deliver exactly what the customer wants and the ability to deliver an outstanding user experience makes Salesforce an excellent choice for external communities. That's what mattered most to us, and we feel confident in our decision," said Chief Technology Officer Carlo Saggese. Paladin Group's new website can be found at https://www.paladingroup.com ABOUT PALADIN GROUP Paladin Group (Paladin Technologies, Inc.) is a leading Salesforce Communities implementation partner. Although headquartered in Solana Beach, California, Paladin Group has enabled companies across the country to maximize the benefits of collaboration and digital transformation. Since its founding in 2012, the company has worked with household names such as Bank of America, Bethesda, Fico, Qualcomm and DirecTV. For more information about Paladin and its services, please visit https://www.paladingroup.com or follow the company on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. FGFR Inhibition in Mesothelioma Treatment BAP1 protein loss was associated with enhanced sensitivity to FGFR inhibition. A study conducted in England and The Netherlands may open the door to new kinds of mesothelioma treatments using drugs that block the fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) signaling pathway. Surviving Mesothelioma has the full story. Click here to read the article now. Research at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and University College London suggests that mesothelioma patients with a mutation on the BAP1 gene may be more responsive to FGFR inhibitors. BAP1 protein loss was associated with enhanced sensitivity to FGFR inhibition, writes author, Josine Quispel-Janssen, MD, a thoracic oncologist at Netherlands Cancer Institute. "BAP1 protein loss...could serve as a potential biomarker to select patients for FGFR inhibitor treatment." According to the study published in Clinical Cancer Research, the FGFR pathway is a tyrosine kinase signaling pathway that plays an important role in the development and growth of cancers such as malignant pleural mesothelioma. Current mesothelioma treatment is largely a process of trial and error since there is no good way to predict which patients will respond to which treatments, says Alex Strauss, Managing Editor for Surviving Mesothelioma. This research may pave the way for more targeted and effective treatments for these FGFR-sensitive mesothelioma patients. To read more about FGFR and its potential significance in the development and treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, see FGFR Inhibitors May Offer New Way to Treat Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma, now available on the Surviving Mesothelioma website. Quispel-Janssen, JM, et al, Comprehensive pharmacogenomic profiling of malignant pleural mesothelioma identifies a subgroup sensitive to FGFR inhibition, October 23, 2017, Clinical Cancer Research, Epub ahead of print, http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2017/10/21/1078-0432.CCR-17-1172 For more than a decade, Surviving Mesothelioma has brought readers the most important and ground-breaking news on the causes, diagnosis and treatment of mesothelioma. All Surviving Mesothelioma news is gathered and reported directly from the peer-reviewed medical literature. Written for patients and their loved ones, Surviving Mesothelioma news helps families make more informed decisions. 2018 Covered California Bus Tour WHAT: Covered California will hold a news conference as part of its statewide bus tour at Quote Selection Insurance Services in Huntington Beach. Officials will discuss whats new for this years open enrollment efforts despite national confusion and chaos surrounding the Affordable Care Act key dates and deadlines. Free in-person enrollment assistance for consumers to sign up for health insurance will be available. The Huntington Beach store front is 1 of 22 stops across California, and will be Covering the state in Art, this year. Quote Selection Insurance Services is proud to help support Covered Californias commitment to building communities, and promoting health and wellness for all Californians. Quote Selections Huntington Beach store front will be one of the locations where a mural will be painted. WHO: Executive Director, Peter V. Lee, Covered California CEO, George Balteria, Quote Selection, Inc. Quote Selection Muralist, Bodeck Hernandez WHEN: Thursday, Nov. 2 1:00 p.m. 1:30 p.m. News Conference 9:00 a.m. 6:00 p.m. Free Enrollment Assistance WHERE: Quote Selection Insurance Services 16532 Beach Blvd. Huntington Beach, CA 92647 WHY: Open enrollment is a three-month period for Californians to enroll in affordable, quality health coverage. They cannot be denied coverage and 9 out of 10 qualify for financial assistance to lower the cost of their coverage. Certified Insurance Agents employed by Quote Selection Insurance Services will be on site offering free enrollment assistance. The fifth open-enrollment period for Covered California begins, Wednesday Nov.1, 2017 and runs through Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2018. About Quote Selection Insurance Services Quote Selection Insurance Services is a business to consumer insurance agency that operates retail Covered California Store Fronts in Orange and South Los Angeles County. Quote Selection helps individuals for free to determine whether consumers are eligible for low-cost or no-cost Medi-Cal. NFP, a leading insurance broker and consultant that provides employee benefits, property & casualty (P&C), retirement and individual private client solutions, today announced that Kevin Brown has joined the company as a managing director working out of NFPs national distribution resources platform in Austin, TX. Brown will lead NFPs retail sales and distribution operation, serving the Central Texas market, and will report directly to Ed OMalley, president of Corporate Benefits and Individual Solutions at NFP. Kevin will be a great addition to NFP as we continue to strengthen our Texas presence, said OMalley. Kevins extensive sales and leadership experience in Central Texas reinforces our commitment to becoming the market leader for Texas insurance brokers and consultants serving the increasingly complicated needs of our clients throughout the state. My twenty years of group insurance carrier experience coupled with the past twelve years with a large Texas regional insurance broker provide a great background to expand NFPs Texas presence, said Brown. Im honored and humbled to be joining an organization of NFPs caliber, with a strong national network of resources and offerings to deliver an exceptional customer experience that transcends what clients traditionally expect from their insurance broker or consultant. Brown obtained his bachelors degree from University of Missouri-Columbia. Prior to joining NFP, Brown was most recently a market president and statewide employee benefits practice leader at Frost Insurance. Previously, Brown served as vice president of key accounts in Central Texas at United Healthcare. Brown started his employee benefits career at Great-West Life, where he was in sales and leadership roles in St. Louis, Charlotte, Houston and Austin. About NFP At NFP Corp., our solutions and expertise are matched only by our personal commitment to each client's goals. Were a leading insurance broker and consultant that provides employee benefits, property & casualty, retirement and individual private client solutions through our licensed subsidiaries and affiliates. NFP has more than 3,800 employees and global capabilities. Our expansive reach gives us access to highly rated insurers, vendors and financial institutions in the industry, while our locally based employees tailor each solution to meet our clients' needs. Weve become one of the largest insurance brokerage, consulting and wealth management firms by building enduring relationships with our clients and helping them realize their goals. Recently NFP was ranked the 4th largest U.S.-based privately owned broker and the 5th largest benefits broker by global revenue by Business Insurance, the 9th largest property & casualty agency by total 2016 P&C revenue by Insurance Journal, the 11th largest global insurance broker by Bests Review and the 12th largest broker of U.S. business by Business Insurance. For more information, visit NFP.com. One of Flora's Mercantile Most Popular Items: hemp teas Chris Bedrosian, owner of Floras Mercantile noted, This was an incredibly effective campaign for us. We will be back again, especially as the Citizen Toke network grows. We think they are really onto something with this marketing platform. CannaSys, Inc. (OTC PINK: MJTK) (CannaSys), a marketing, branding, and technology company, today announced that it has realized its first revenues from its Citizen Toke platform, one month ahead of schedule. Citizen Toke, a direct to consumer, SMS-based marketing platform, has operated in beta format for the last several months to stress test both its underlying technology and market demand. The most recent campaign was with Floras Mercantile, a hemp and CBD-specialty branded products company based in Colorado. Citizen Tokes marketing blast was sent to 546 people across the United States and received a nearly 20% response rate. Of those that responded to the deal, 9% completed purchases, netting over $450 in revenue to Floras Mercantile in a 48-hour period, an ROI of nearly 900%. Chris Bedrosian, owner of Floras Mercantile noted: This was an incredibly effective campaign for us. We will be back again, especially as the Citizen Toke network grows. We think CannaSys is really onto something with this marketing platform. We are very happy with these results. Citizen Toke is an equal opportunity marketing platform for the cannabis industry. We noticed variations in conversion rates and user engagement as we put through these blasts, and, while we aim to get our partnered retailers and brands the best return on their investment, we can only control whether a user receives a marketing message in the most engaging form of digital communication, SMS. Conversion rates and ROI are outside of the scope of this product. These case studies with Strava and Floras should help illustrate the potential of this platform to reach new customers more effectively than other means, commented Patrick Burke. Given the limited options for cannabis and CBD-based businesses to effectively market to, and reach, new consumers, Citizen Toke offers an alternative through the use of SMS, creating a simple, direct, engaging, and uncluttered marketing message that can connect new customers with brands. Citizen Toke offers exclusive, instant, location-based, gamified promotions for cannabis retailers looking to more intimately connect with their consumers directly through SMS. Citizen Toke is an efficient means for retail centers to communicate exclusive promotions to their consumers and to extend brand awareness to current and potential new customers. More details on the technology and business plan of Citizen Toke can be found at White Paper. CannaSys and its board and senior management remain committed to creating long-term shareholder value and will provide timely updates to shareholders as they occur. About CannaSys, Inc. CannaSys is a technology solutions, marketing, and branding company. Its core products are delivered software as a service to facilitate point-of-purchase transactions and customer relationship marketing solutions. CannaSys plans to develop, acquire, and build strategic relationships with other businesses in order to bring additional solutions to market. For more information, please visit http://www.cannasys.com and http://www.citizentoke.com. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This release includes forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including continued acceptance of CannaSyss products, increased levels of competition for CannaSys, new products and technological changes, CannaSyss dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in CannaSyss periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. iJET International, Inc., a recognized leader in integrated risk management solutions, is pleased to announce the promotion of Maureen French to Senior Vice President of Direct Sales, Americas Region. Formerly iJETs Vice President of Major Accounts, French will continue to consult with and assist iJETs Fortune 500 and Global 1000 clients in developing and executing on their integrated risk management strategies. In her new role, French will also lead iJETs direct sales team in the Americas and will co-lead the companys direct sales global community which identifies, develops, and shares best practices across iJETs worldwide sales teams. 2018 will be a pivotal year for iJET, said Maureen French. The risk climate around the world is changing and I look forward to continue working with the iJET team to address the evolving needs and concerns of clients in new industries as well as those we already serve. Together, well go-to-market with new technologies and deliver duty-of-care and risk management solutions that extend beyond travelers, helping employers safeguard the well-being of all their employees. French brings more than 15 years of senior sales and consulting experience, along with a consistent track record of over-achieving quota, developing exceptionally strong relationships with her clients, and mentoring and motivating her teams to achieve their goals. Her areas of expertise include technology and services sales, account management, program management, and supply chain strategy. Maureen quickly earned universal respect throughout our company and amongst our clients since joining the team over eight years ago, said iJET International CEO Ben Allen. We are confident that she will continue to provide the leadership, vision and expertise needed to help guide iJET through its next phase of exciting growth. ### About iJET iJET International (iJET) provides intelligence-driven, integrated risk management solutions that enable multinational organizations to operate globally with confidence. iJETs end-to-end, tailored solutions integrate world-class operational threat intelligence, innovative technology, and response services to help organizations avoid threats, mitigate risk and protect their people, operating locations, and reputation. Founded in 1999, iJET is a privately held company headquartered in Annapolis, MD, U.S. with offices in London, Singapore and Cape Town. For more information, please visit http://www.iJET.com. iJET Media Contacts: MULTIPLY Jessica Davis 202.292.4567 jessica.davis(at)wearemultip.ly iJET International 410.573.3860 pr(at)ijet.com We are very excited to have reached this milestone. It is a testament to the hard work, dedication and quality our employees display every day. JKR Advertising & Marketing, the Orlando-based automotive advertising giant, celebrated a monumental agency milestone on Halloween Day, October 31. The company ended 2017s Third Quarter with its largest client roster in company history, as they recently eclipsed the 120 mark. To celebrate their achievement, the company held a Halloween event that even the most discerning Transylvania resident would have appreciated. We are very excited to have reached this milestone. It is a testament to the hard work, dedication and quality our employees display every day, said Steve Lorenzo, Senior Partner at JKR. We have a great deal of positive momentum heading into the homestretch of 2017. Recent additions to JKRs client list include Sherwood Kia (MD), Salt Lake Mitsubishi (UT), Sunset Kia (FL), Gainesville Mitsubishi (FL), Cronin Toyota/Nissan (IN) and Hyundai of Mankato (MN). Founded in 2007, JKR Advertising & Marketing delivers all aspects of automotive retail advertising. JKR provides market analysis, creative, radio, TV, print, public relations, and digital. JKRs experience, knowledge, and dedicated focus result in the overwhelming majority of clients outperforming their peers, markets, and competitors. Clients include individual dealerships and multi-brand, multi-store groups. http://www.jkradvertising.com I am beyond thrilled Liberty University had chosen to make this center a part of its curriculum. Over the years, thousands of students have asked me what school would best prepare them for a career as an author or screenwriter. Now the answer is easy: Liberty University. Karen Kingsbury In an ongoing partnership with #1 New York Times best-selling author Karen Kingsbury, Liberty University has announced the opening of its new Karen Kingsbury Center for Creative Writing. Under the center, and in conjunction with the College of Arts and Sciences, students can currently pursue the new Minor in Creative Writing, which is offered both residentially and online. The center is exploring adding new programs in the future. I am beyond thrilled Liberty University had chosen to make this center a part of its curriculum, Kingsbury said. Over the years, thousands of students have asked me what school would best prepare them for a career as an author or screenwriter. Now the answer is easy: Liberty University. In Kingsburys interactive and engaging courses, students are trained to cultivate their gifts as writers and to express their faith in creative and original ways. We want to train Libertys next generation of students to make a living as professional writers upon graduation, Kingsbury said. Dr. Roger Schultz, dean of Libertys College of Arts and Sciences, said he expects curriculum offered through the center to be very popular among incoming students. In keeping with the larger mission of Liberty University, the purpose of the new center is to Train Champions for Christ students who can articulate their Christian worldview with originality and excellence through written communication, Schultz said. Creative writing through blogs, short stories, lyrics, screenwriting, and full-length works of fiction and non-fiction provide opportunities for students to communicate their biblical faith and the message of Christ to a fallen world. Kingsbury has more than 25 million copies of her books in print. Many of her novels are under development as major TV and motion picture films. Her Baxter Family books are in pre-production for a TV series with Roma Downey, Mark Burnett, and MGM Studios. She has a longstanding relationship with Liberty and has been inspiring students for many years as an adjunct professor for writing, research, marketing, and film classes, and is also a favorite speaker at Convocation. She received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Liberty in May. Kingsbury and her husband, Don, are the parents of six grown children, three of whom are Liberty students. The excellence in every facet of education at Liberty University is the reason my family and I have become such fans, Kingsbury said. When Im teaching on campus, Im constantly amazed at the quality of students and professors Liberty University draws. These students are looking to be a light to a fallen world, and to do so with excellence. With this new center, I plan to do everything in my power to help train and encourage them. For more information, call (800) 543-5317 (Liberty residential students) or (800) 424-9595 (Liberty online students). Contact: Len Stevens, Executive Director, Liberty University External Communications Office (434) 582 7751 ljstevens(at)liberty(dot)edu About Liberty University Liberty University, founded in 1971, is the largest private, nonprofit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world. Located near the Blue Ridge Mountains on more than 7,000 acres in Lynchburg, Va., Liberty offers more than 550 unique programs of study from the associate to the doctoral level. More than 250 programs are offered online. Libertys mission is to train Champions for Christ with the values, knowledge, and skills essential for impacting tomorrows world. Global Spa & Wellness Awards 2017 Wellness travel is a movement that continues to thrive as it becomes the norm, rather than the exception, for many of todays travelers, said Julie Keller Callaghan, editor-in-chief & publisher, American Spa. The editorial teams at American Spa and Luxury Travel Advisor have lined up a renowned panel of judges to review the nominations and determine the winners of the inaugural Global Spa & Wellness Awards. These awards will offer both domestic and international spas and wellness facilities the opportunity to earn international recognition and receive exposure for both winners and finalists in a special supplement featured in both American Spa and Luxury Travel Advisor magazines. The spa industry judges include: Christi Cano, president, Innovative Spa Productions; Julie Keller Callaghan, editor-in-chief & publisher, American Spa, Amy Macdonald, owner & CEO, Under a Tree Consulting; Heather Mikesell, executive editor, American Spa; and a combined vote from the management team at Blu Spas: Cary Collier, principal, co-founder, and business/project planner; Kim Collier, operations and education; and Doug Chambers, principal and co-founder. Travel industry judges include Jaye Austin, well-being travel specialist, Gulliver's Travels Inc/Journey to Wellness; Stephanie Durst, wellness travel specialist, Protravel International; April Schmitt, CEO & travel expert, Divine Destination Weddings & Honeymoons; and Ruthanne Terrero, VP of content & editorial director, Luxury Travel Advisor. Wellness travel is a movement that continues to thrive as it becomes the norm, rather than the exception, for many of todays travelers, said Julie Keller Callaghan, editor-in-chief & publisher, American Spa. It makes sense for us to spread the word about properties that are standing out in this powerful space. Teaming up with our colleagues at our sister publication, Luxury Travel Advisor, felt like a natural collaboration, and we are thrilled to join forces to honor the best of the best. Weve been watching the emergence of wellness travel for some time now and felt as the leader in luxury travel news, that it was the right time to leverage our two great brands and bring this opportunity to the forefront for both spa and travel industry colleagues alike, said Ruthanne Terrero, VP of content & editorial director, Luxury Travel Advisor. Applicants may submit their nominations until December 31, 2017 via Globalwellnessawards.com. To enter, users must create a new account and then follow the instructions to enter their nominations. There is a $200 entry fee per application. An entry can be submitted into multiple categories by paying separate entry fees for each category entered. Entries submitted to multiple categories will be judged separately based on the category submitted, and are eligible to win multiple awards. American Spa has been the top choice for spa professionals looking to better their businesses for more than two decades. An annual award winner for exceptional editorial and design, American Spa is the industry authority and reaches wellness leaders and decision makers with news, business advice, research, trends, and features on the worlds top spas. American Spa connects with our audience via a dynamic website, multiple newsletters, an exciting new e-learning platform, engaging social media, and a powerful monthly print magazine. Luxury Travel Advisor is the travel trades first and only publication dedicated to educating a select group of luxury travel advisors through detailed coverage and exclusive features about luxury travels finest hotels, resorts, destinations, cruise lines, and events. About Questex Questex LLC is a leading global business events and information company serving corporate and government clients and industries that are driving economic growth and business innovation around the world. The company drives business investment, innovation and demand-creation in the markets it serves by bringing together investors, buyers, sellers and professionals through its over 120 trade shows, conferences and other business events and informing them through related business media and information products. Questexs industry-focused business units include Life Sciences & Healthcare, Hospitality & Travel, Beauty & Wellness, Technology & Telecom groups. Questex is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts. The company employs over 350 professional staff members operating in the United States and the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions. For more information, visit questex.com. # # # Eleanor Leger, USACM board member and founder and co-owner of Eden Specialty Ciders, Newport, VT Cider is a diverse beverage, almost as diverse as wine. Its exciting to see different kinds of ciders being appreciated as people get to know them. Registration is now open for CiderCon 2018, to be held January 31 February 2, 2018 at the Waterfront Marriott in Baltimore, Maryland. CiderCon is the premier annual opportunity for the cider community to gather, share ideas, collaborate and learn. For the first time in its seven-year history, the annual CiderCon conference of the United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) will feature a schedule of panels and presentations focused on Heritage Ciders, which are ciders made from apples that are grown specifically for cider making, including bittersweet and crabapples, using a vintage winemaking approach. Heritage cider has emerged as an exciting new growth category in the cider marketplace. The cider market has been evolving rapidly over the past 10 years, says Eleanor Leger, a USACM board member and founder and co-owner of Eden Specialty Ciders, a producer of heritage ciders in Newport, Vermont. The number and quality of producers making heritage ciders has reached critical mass, and the category is ready to come into its own. Cider is a diverse beverage, almost as diverse as wine. Its exciting to see different kinds of ciders being appreciated as people get to know them. Because of the price of their ingredients, heritage ciders are expensive to produce, and the taste has to justify the higher price, Leger continues. At CiderCon 2018, producers of heritage ciders will have a great opportunity to hone their craft and learn interesting new techniques as they meet and compare notes about this exciting cider category. CiderCon participants will have an opportunity to learn from many of the leaders in the emerging heritage cider marketplace. Confirmed speakers include Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Cider, Dugspur, VA, who will keynote the event with a presentation entitled Heritage Ciders - Keys to Success in the Next Cider Growth Category. Diane is a 2017 James Beard Nominee for Outstanding Wine, Spirits or Beer Professional. Heres a look at some of the other Heritage Cider panels and presentations that are planned: Holistic Orchard Management Growing Bittersweet Apple Varieties for Cider: Practices and Terroir Cidermaking with Heirloom and Bittersweet Varieties Champagne Method Cider panel with cider tasting Heritage Cider Options - Wild Ferments, Barrels and More panel with cider tasting Cidernomics for Start-up and Small Scale Cideries Production Hacks for Heritage Cider Makers group networking discussions Heritage Ciders on the Menu panel of chefs and restaurant operators. Additionally, heritage ciders will be highlighted as part of a tour of cideries and restaurants in the Beltway area. Other CiderCon 2018 Activities In addition to the Heritage Cider track, the education and training program of CiderCon 2018 will be packed with other information rich sessions, including a full day of cider training for distributors. This session will cover the content needed to pass the Level One of the Certified Cider Professional (CCP) exam. The CCP program is the industrys first cider accreditation program designed for distributors, servers and others who are interested in becoming bonafide experts on all things cider. For the first time this year, CiderCon will feature a panel discussing the potential impact of climate change on the cider industry. This panel features some of cider's best known orchardists including Diane Flynt, Foggy Ridge Cider, Virginia; Jim Koan, JK's Farmhouse Ciders, Michigan; Ian Merwin, Black Diamond Cider, New York; Greg Peck, Pomologist, Cornell; Alex Peckham, Peckham's Ciders, New Zealand; Marcus Robert, Tieton Cider Works, Washington State; and Steve Wood, Farnum Hill Cider, New Hampshire. Other planned activities at CiderCon 2018 include: Industry Research: USACM has entered into a partnership with Nielsen, the global performance management company that provides research into what consumers watch and buy, to collect cider marketing data as a benefit to USACM members. Nielsens presentation at CiderCon 2017 created a buzz in the industry because its data showed continued strong growth among craft/local cider companies not attached to larger beer companies. Nielsen analysts will present an update and deliver a white-paper on Cider Trends as featured speakers at CiderCon 2018. Cider and Food Tastings. Each year at CiderCon, USACM invites a select few cider makers from a different country to share their traditions and cider with CiderCon attendees. Cider makers from France were the guests of honor at CiderCon 2017. USACM plans to invite cider makers from New Zealand to join them in Baltimore for CiderCon 2018. For further details and to register for CiderCon 2018, please visit bit.ly/2iopruf. About USACM The United States Association of Cider Makers (USACM) is an organization of cider and perry producers in the United States. It gathers and shares information about cider production, regulations and cider apple growing to help members improve their operations, raise awareness and advance cider in the market. The mission of USACM is to grow a diverse and successful U.S. cider industry by providing valuable information, resources and services to its members and by advocating on their behalf. For more information, please visit http://www.ciderassociation.org/. David Weekley Homes, the nations largest privately-held home builder, announced today its expansion to its newest market in Portland, OR, and has named Steve Puls as division president. I am very excited to bring David Weekleys award-winning designs and world-class service to homebuyers in Portland, Puls said. I look forward to growing our Portland division and introducing our high-quality homes in beautiful communities throughout the city. Puls joined David Weekley Homes in 2016, bringing 25 years of home building experience to his new role. He earned a degree in construction management from California Polytechnic University. Headquartered in Houston, David Weekley Homes began building in 1976 and has closed nearly 90,000 homes to date. The builder is now selling single-family homes in the Portland-area communities of Berkshire at Villebois and Brookwood Landing. Berkshire at Villebois is located in Wilsonville. This master-planned community offers great views and more than 160 acres of trails and paths, parks, green spaces and nature reserves. Weekleys two- and three-story homes in Berkshire at Villebois range from 1,700-2,100 square feet with optional bonus rooms. A Grand Opening event will be held November 4-5 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at The Stanford model home located at 11422 SW Barber Street in Wilsonville. Weekleys second Portland community, Brookwood Landing, is located just west of Portland in Hillsboro. This new community offers nearby parks, playing fields, and nature and hiking trails. Floor plans in Brookwood Landing include main-level living, along with flexible designs that offer up to five bedrooms. The community is convenient to several major employers such as Intel and others in the Silicon Forest, and offers convenient access to Highway 26. A grand opening event is set for November 11-12 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. at The Berrydale model home, which is located at 702 Southeast Greenview Court. For more information about David Weekley Homes in Portland, call 855-513-5432. CAPTION: David Weekley Homes has expanded to Portland, naming Steve Puls as division president. About David Weekley Homes David Weekley Homes, founded in 1976, is headquartered in Houston and operates in 22 cities across the United States. David Weekley Homes was the first builder in the United States to be awarded the Triple Crown of American Home Building, an honor which includes Americas Best Builder, National Housing Quality Award and National Builder of the Year. Weekley has also appeared 11 times on FORTUNE magazines 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Since inception, David Weekley Homes has closed more than 80,000 homes. For more information about David Weekley Homes, visit the companys website at http://www.davidweekleyhomes.com. Two powerful trade associations slammed the GOP's tax plan on Thursday, saying the reduction of a key benefit for homeowners could hurt the market. The plan would cap the mortgage-interest deduction which allows homeowners to subtract interest payments from their taxable income on new homes at $500,000. This could dampen the benefit of the deduction outside of the most expensive housing markets and may lower home values. Howard estimated that 7 million homes would be excluded from the mortgage-interest deduction, amounting to about a third of the homes in California. "You're talking about potentially causing housing recessions in some of the biggest markets in the country, and those kinds of recessions tend to have spillovers," Howard said. "We're worried about a national housing recession." The trade association had been working with lawmakers to replace the mortgage-interest deduction with a tax credit offering the same incentive. "The House Republicans have violated the president's charge of doing a tax reform that helps middle America," Howard added. "Values of [Americans'] homes are at risk of declining. Baby boomers ought to think about putting off retirement for a couple of years because they may not have the equity in their homes that they thought they did." The National Association of Realtors similarly expressed concern that the GOP's plan would hurt home prices. "Eliminating or nullifying the tax incentives for homeownership puts home values and middle-class homeowners at risk, and from a cursory examination this legislation appears to do just that," William Brown, the group's president, said in a statement on Thursday. Thanks for signing up for our daily insight on the African economy. We bring you daily editor picks from the best Business Insider news content so you can stay updated on the latest topics and conversations on the African market, leaders, careers and lifestyle. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! LONDON Theresa May is facing a major backlash after appointing her chief whip Gavin Williamson as the new defence secretary, with some Conservative MPs "livid" at the promotion. Williamson was appointed on Thursday morning following Sir Michael Fallon's shock resignation as defence secretary on Wednesday evening after he was implicated in the Westminster sexual harassment scandal. One senior Conservative backbench MP described the surprise promotion of Williamson to The Guardian as "Unbelievable. Ludicrous. Astonishing." Former Chief of the General Staff Lord Richard Dannatt said the appointment was "quite surprising" and not the best option "from a defence point of view." This is Williamson's first ministerial position, but is thought to be trusted by May after he ran her leadership campaign and was a trusted ally as chief whip since she became prime minister. His departure has caused a shock at a time when party discipline is very important, due to the government's wafer-thin majority in parliament. Williamson was instrumental in organising the "confidence and supply" deal with the Democratic Unionist Party following the disastrous general election and has ensured May has not lost a government vote in the House of Commons. Tory MP Sarah Wollaston tweeted: There are times when offere... @ Sarah Wollaston Williamson's appointment did gather some support from May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy, however this was not well received by Conservative MP Anna Soubry: Concerning comment from som... @ Anna Soubry MP Meanwhile, Lord Dannatt told the Independent: "It is obviously heavily political in so far as she has chosen a leading lieutenant to support her in Cabinet. "I said this morning that promoting one of the existing defence ministers would be the best outcome from a defence point of view, but I fully respect the PMs desire to give a senior job in Cabinet to a trusted lieutenant." One minister said the move was "the most unpopular political decision I have ever known," and a Tory MP told Buzzfeed News that it's May's "biggest and probably last mistake." Another Conservative MP told the New Statesman: "He [Williamson] has become the most loathed person in the parliamentary party, he's overplayed his hand, he's out of his depth, he's never held a ministerial post, he's never spoken at the despatch box and he's deserted the whips office at a perilous moment." The prime minister's spokesperson insisted this morning that "Gavin Williamson was an excellent and hard-working chief whip and the PM is certain he will make an excellent defence secretary." Asked whether the prime minister was confident that Williamson would not have more questions to answer over the role of the whips office in the scandal, the spokesperson told BI: " In an interview with his local paper, The Express and Star, Williamson said he was expecting a "baptism of fire" and insisted that the appointment came as a surprise to him. He said: " Former Conservative minister Nick Boles tweeted: 1. Facebook crushed its third-quarter earnings but warned investors that future profitability will be impacted by increased investments in security.The social network grew its daily active users to 1.37 billion, a 50 million user increase from the previous quarter. 2. Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks Google and Facebook are facing a much bigger and more dangerous problem than ads placed by Russia-linked groups during last year's election. Instead, he thinks misinformation and "fake news to broad numbers of people" are more important issues. 3. Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet, warned that China is poised to overtake the US in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) if the US government doesn't act soon. Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit on Wednesday, the former Google CEO said: "Trust me, these Chinese people are good." 4. TripAdvisor users are accusing the site of deleting their accounts of rape and assault.The users were given a variety of reasons for the deletions, from accusations of hearsay to violations of the site's family-friendly policy. 5. Representatives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter are all testifying this week before congressional committees investigating Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US election.But the people speaking on behalf of those companies are their top lawyers not their CEOs. 6. Apple published a press release with positive quotes from reviewers from publications like Buzzfeed, TechCrunch, a photography blog, and a few selected international newspapers.The iPhone maker also compiled those quotes into graphics and animations that appear to be perfect for use in advertisements or as a promoted post on Instagram or Twitter. 7. A law banning the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, and other internet proxy services has come into effect in Russia. The law, the latest in a spate of legislation stifling internet freedoms in Russia, was pushed by authorities who cited concerns about the spread of extremist materials. 8. Microsoft veteran Julie Larson-Green is leaving after almost 25 years at the company.Larson-Green held 10 positions during her time at the Redmond-headquartered company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Some of her most recent and most senior positions include chief experience officer for Office and VP of Windows. 9. Google has announced some new hardware: A set of devices to help businesses with video conferencing. The Hangouts Meet hardware comprises of a touchscreen controller, a 4K camera, a speakermic, and a Chromebox computer. About 50 students both male and female complained of stomach aches after eating waakye at schools canteen on Sunday, and had to be rushed to St. Josephs Hospital the next day, Citifmonline reports. One of the affected students said: I bought waakye at the bush canteen and in the evening on Sunday, I started running, others who also ate at the dining hall also started complaining of tummy ache so we were rushed here. Some parents have since rushed to hospital to check on their children. The Medical Director in charge of the St Josephs Hospital, Dr. David Kupualor, has said the facility is trying its best to manage the situation. Jeanette Chiapello, originally named Beata Nyirambabazi was taken to Italy for adoption during the genocide as she was taken for an orphan. According to the Guardian, the last time Leonard Sebarinda saw his daughter was when she was 2 two years. Chiapellos mother, a Tutsi, had taken her and other siblings to shelter at the Nyamata Catholic church hopefully for safe keeping. But Hutu attackers came, throwing grenades and spears into the church, killing about 10,000 of those cowering inside. Fortunately, Villagers reportedly found Chiapello alive among the piles of bodies, with her mother, and two siblings lying dead nearby. She was taken to a local orphanage to be cared for. At that time, Chiapellos father had been hiding in a different location his three other children. He spent days searching for the rest of his family and eventually found Chiapello at the orphanage, alongside hundreds of children who had lost their families. Leonard Sebarinda told the Eastern African that I confirmed that she was indeed my Beata. She even smiled at me when I saw her. I left her there to plan on how I was going to get her out of the orphanage so that I could take care of her together with her siblings who had survived. I left the orphanage with plans of coming back. However, before her father returned, Chiapello had been taken to Italy where she was registered as one of the orphans up for adoption. That marked the beginning of the disaffection. The Guardian reports that some 92 children returned to Rwanda from Italy in 1997 after the intervention of the UN, but others stayed in Italy despite personal appeals for their return from Rwandas president, Paul Kagame, to the Italian government. The Newspaper says one of Chiapellos brothers, Vincent Twizeyimana, began searching for her about 10 years ago. He approached the orphanage where she had lived in Rwanda, and managed to get some pictures of her and eventually her name and email address. READ ALSO: Woman kills 16 family members after allegedly poisoning husband to exit forced marriage Initially, she rejected her brothers advances, saying she was an orphan and could not be the person Twizeyimana was looking for. However, earlier this year, Chiapello reached out to her brother through Facebook. The Guardian says a DNA test confirmed they were family. Subsequently, Chiapello travelled to Ntarama in Bugesera district with her Italian husband to meet her family earlier this month, where she was welcomed with a traditional ceremony. According to reports, she only knows a few words of Kinyarwanda, the language of her area, but spoke to her relatives through a translator about her life in an orphanage and subsequent adoption by an Italian family. Killing of farmers on their farms has become a serious problem in South Africa. READ MORE: Popular TV show host collapses during live broadcast Earlier, when protesters scheduled the demonstration dubbed the Black Monday Protest, the pan-Africanist and revolutionary socialist political party urged South Africans to not take part in the protest. Its reason was that white farmers are racist, cruel land thieves and deserve to be killed. The movement further said that Its a lie to say white farmers feed the nation. Half the South African population is without food security. White farmers poison the nation with GMOs. They produce for profit and dont care for the health of the nation. During the protest, a truck driver allegedly drove into the demonstrators injuring three people, two of whom were in heart stopping states and were rushed to a local hospital for medical attention. However, rather than sympathizing with the victims, the pan-Africanist and revolutionary socialist political party, BFL has saluted the driver for what he did, saying he was Godsent. BLF said in a statement that (We acknowledge) the revolutionary act of the truck driver who rammed into a settler colonialist racist protest of Afriforum, Democratic Alliance (DA) and white monopoly capital (WMC). Such an act shows that our people will not fold their arms when those who stole our land look down upon us, abuse us and undermine our very existence. The truck drivers actions, intention notwithstanding, are revolutionary. According to reports, the little girl escaped from her parents near Genevas central railway station on Sunday and took a train to the airport. Airport spokesman Bertrand Staempfli said her frustrated parents got in touch with the Swiss police, who tracked her progress through the airport on security videos. The little girl managed to outsmart security officials at the gate of the airport and carried herself as the child of adults who were coincidentally around her at that moment. The airport said in a statement that the girl used her small stature to slip through the departure gate without being noticed and boarded a plane. Initially when she tried to follow a crew toward the plane, she was prevented, but she maneuvered her way into the crowd and pretended she was looking for her parents. She was noticed and handed over to the police after she eventually managed to board a particular plane whose identity the airport is unwilling to disclose. It only hinted that the plane was leaving from the airports French sector and the destination was in France. It is also the time to become a financially smart young adult, start your side gig and join the young millionaires club. Know your budget status The key to really being successful at budgeting is to make a realistic budget. Knowing your best, the money at hand to spend helps to plan effectively and stick to your budget. Rent your textbooks Textbooks are extremely expensive these days. The best way to make extra money after completing your is to rent out your books for a lesser price. However, make sure there is a mutual agreement that the books should be returned in the right condition or the lessee pays the full amount of the book. Another great way to save is to sell your last semester books. Many introductory courses require the same book for each year so if you end up purchasing a book, sell it once the semester is over. Chill out on eating out Try to cook different types of local dishes and store in the fridge during weekends. Eating out can be very tempting especially when your roommates are always eating from a fancy restaurant. You can eat out at least twice a month and rack up on grocery items that can last. There are creative ways to turn leftover food into some sumptuous. READ ALSO: 5 bad savings habits Ghanaians need to stop now Determine your needs vs. wants First and foremost, buy things you need for yourself and other educational materials before you consider buying your wants. When you go out for shopping, When youre out, check your list before purchasing an item. Dont forget to buy your grocery in bulk to save extra cash. This helps you to monitor what youre spending and create accountability for your future. Cut out unnecessary expenses Ideally, active university students are busy with schoolwork as well as organizations, activities, and hopefully a healthy social life if they dont attend midweek church services. You really dont need to purchase that ticket to that event, however, you do need to make sure your hostel bills are paid on time to avoid late fees. READ ALSO:9 compelling reasons why you may need a personal loan now Guide others with their assignments You can guide freshmen with their assignment for extra cash. Your business will flourish during examination time. Organise events Event organize really pays if you have good advertising and promotion strategies. Organise events when the freshmen arrive and at the end of every semester to make extra money. READ ALSO: 10 tips on how to save time and meet your target at the office Be an entrepreneur Most successful entrepreneurs made their fortune while in school. It will be very challenging, especially while juggling a course load and African print bag business but it will be worth the try. In a post, the Ghana president condemned terrorist attacks on the people of New York, which led to many deaths and injuries. TWITTER In showing solidarity to the victims, Akufo-Addo tweeted: We stand in solidarity with the city of New York in condemning the activities of terrorists. However, not many are enthused by the Presidents comments, with some social media users chiding him for failing to show the same level of solidarity towards other neighboring African countries that have also been subjected to terrorist attacks. Subsequently, his Twitter feed was flooded with comments of criticism, with others also describing his message as hypocritical. READ ALSO: Sophia Akuffo orders judges to wear wigs Below are some of the sampled comments: TWITTER TWITTER TWITTER TWITTER The suit against Thaddeus Sory was thrown out by the Accra High Court. On July 25, 2017, Mrs Osei sued Mr Opoku-Agyemang for defamation and professional misconduct in the court. That was after the leakage of a 27-page petition to the Presidency calling for her impeachment, said to be from some workers of the EC represented by Mr Opoku-Agyemang. Conflict of interest However, Mr Opoku-Agyemang has filed an application seeking an order from the court to restrain Mr Sory and his law firm, Sory @ Law, from representing Mrs Osei in the matter. It also wants the court to dismiss the writ filed by Mr Sory on behalf of Mrs Osei in the defamation case. Lawyer for Mr Opoku-Agyemang, Mr Julius Opoku Adjei, told the court that Mr Sory must not be allowed to represent the EC boss in the defamation case because of conflict of interest. The defamation case, he said, was borne out of the petition seeking to impeach Mrs Osei as such Mr Sory, who is also the lawyer for the EC, could not represent the EC boss. Counsel argued that the petitioners, in seeking the impeachment of Mrs Osei, were fighting in the interest of the EC and, therefore, Mr Sory could not protect the interest of the EC by representing its boss. He has described as falsehood allegation by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Joseph Boahen Aidoo of COCOBOD that he ordered the construction of the guest house in his hometown Bole in the Northern Region. Joseph Boahen Aidoo has accused Mahama of constructing the guest house at Bole to "enable him [Mahama] enjoy comfortable holidays during visits to the constituency. He said "The penchant to siphon funds through inflated contracts was rampant in the NDC-Opuni administration through ill-conceived construction contracts in the cocoa sector. These contracts were awarded without proper value for money analysis, bringing into question the motive for the contract for instance, to construct a guest house at Bole in the Northern Region, which was needless at the time it was awarded. President John Mahama was said to have influenced the awarding to enable him enjoy a comfortable holiday during his visit to his constituency." But Special Aide to the former President, Joyce Bawah Mogtari said the guest house in question, the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) Research Station Guest House, has been in existence since 1975, and could not possibly have been constructed during the tenure of Mahama. In a statement, Mahama said the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) Research Station Guest House in Bole has been in existence since 1975, and could not possibly have been constructed during the tenure of President Mahama. The assertion therefore that he influenced its construction is also false. "A decision by the Board of COCOBOD to renovate the facility, after many years of use cannot be needless, and does not require the influence of the President of the Republic, as he then was." Read below the full statement: CRIG Guest House was built in the 70s, not for Mahama The Office of Former President John Dramani Mahama has learnt of a number of claims by Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Joseph Boahen Aidoo, at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday. Among others, Mr. Boahen Aidoo stated that President John Dramani Mahama influenced the award of a contract to construct a guest house at Bole in the Northern Region to enable him enjoy comfortable holidays during visits to his constituency." For the avoidance of doubt, the Office of the Former President wishes to state that this claim is false. The guest house in question,the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) Research Station Guest House, has been in existence since 1975, and could not possibly have been constructed during the tenure of President Mahama. The assertion therefore that he influenced its construction is also false. The Station conducts research into Shea nut and Cashew, to boost production of these two crops in the Brong Ahafo, Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions that constitute the Northern Savannah zone. Also, the CRIG Research facility includes the guest house that has always provided commercial accommodation services to officials of COCOBOD and any other person that requires its use. A decision by the Board of COCOBOD to renovate the facility, after many years of use cannot be needless, and does not require the influence of the President of the Republic, as he then was. The Office of the Former President has noted a regrettable pattern of false and inaccurate information put out by the Chief Executive of COCOBOD intended to slander the former President as a way of covering up bad management practices and decisions identified and highlighted by the NDC Minority in Parliament about the countrys cocoa sector. Such an unwholesome practice will only serve to detract from the important business of managing the Cocoa sector which is the lifeblood of the Ghanaian economy. Mr Ayisi-Boateng had earlier defended his words. But on Wednesday, November 1, 2017, he said in a statement: I have, upon sober reflection, decided to retract the comments I made during my interaction with some Members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region over the weekend. RETRACTION OF PARTISAN COMMENTS AND SUBMISSION OF UNQUALIFIED APOLOGY TO THE GHANAIAN POPULACEI have, upon sober reflection, decided to retract the comments I made during my interaction with some Members of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Ashanti Region over the weekend.I have realised that my statement is unfortunate and at variance with the letter and spirit of the Ghanaian constitution and the dignified office of High Commissioner that I occupy.I am aware that as the representative of Ghana to South Africa, I have a responsibility to protect the interest of all Ghanaians within my jurisdiction and to grant them equal access to opportunities that are presented, irrespective of their political affiliation.I regret the effect of my speech delivered to the young party members which has generated public outcry.I, therefore, wish to retract my comments and render an unqualified apology to the Presidency and all Ghanaians.SignedGeorge Ayisi-BoatengWednesday 1 November, 2017 Speaking to Dutch public newscaster NOS late Tuesday, Belgian lawyer Paul Bekaert said "as far as he told me that's not going to happen" when asked if his client would go back to Spain having been summoned to appear in a Madrid court. "That's because we are awaiting further reactions from the Spanish authorities to see what's going to happen," Bekaert said, speaking by phone to the Nieuwsuur news programme. Puigdemont together with 13 other former members of his administration, dismissed by the Spanish central government last week, has been summoned to appear by the National Court in Madrid, Spain's top criminal tribunal. On Monday, Spain's chief prosecutor said he was seeking charges of rebellion -- punishable by up to 30 years behind bars -- sedition and misuse of public funds. The National Court told Puigdemont and his 13 deputies to appear for questioning in Madrid on Thursday and Friday and gave them three days to pay a combined deposit against potential penalties of 6.2 million euros ($7.2 million). Prosecutors could order their arrest if they failed to appear. But Puigdemont, 54, is in Brussels, where he surfaced after reportedly driving to Marseille in France and flying to the Belgian capital. "I don't forsee him going back to Spain within the coming weeks," Bekaert told VTM. He said he believed "there is a good chance Puigdemont will be detained" should he return. Asked by NOS whether Puigdemont would face a fair trial in Spain, Bekaert said: "It would be premature (to say), but that would certainly be an argument we would use at an eventual extradition request". He added that an extradition request from Madrid "is not essential". "I have handled a large number of cases involving Spanish Basques and in those cases an interrogation simply took place here (in Belgium) with local police," he said. Bekaert told VTM however that "when Spain asks for his (Puigdemont's) extradition a Belgian judge would have to make a decision about it." "Therefore it's not the (Belgian) government that decides about the extradition, it's the courts," he said, adding his client would not seek political asylum in Belgium. "You can request asylum, but seldom or never is it given," he said, adding his four previous attempts to win asylum for different clients had all ended in failure. At a chaotic news conference Tuesday in Brussels, Puigdemont said he was in the Belgian capital "for safety purposes and freedom" and to "explain the Catalan problem in the institutional heart of Europe". Xi's message, dated Wednesday, was sent in response to congratulations from Kim last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party. "I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to the North's KCNA news agency said, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman". In his earlier note, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed his belief that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries". The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016. Analysts say that such exchanges have become extremely rare under the current leaders, even though Beijing and Pyongyang traditionally sent greetings and congratulations on each other's key anniversaries in the past. Their relationship was forged in the blood of the Korean War, when Mao Zedong sent millions of "volunteers" to fight US-led United Nations forces to a standstill. Mao described the allies as close as "lips and teeth", and China has long been accused of failing to enforce United Nations sanctions against the North for its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, even after voting for them in the Security Council. But Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September. Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the public exchange of messages signalled a willingness on both sides to improve relations. "The fact that both sides are swiftly trading letters and announcing it carries a symbolic meaning," Yang told AFP. "The deployment of Malian, Nigerien and Burkinabe troops in the G5 Sahel force began this morning," said a colonel for France's Barkhane mission, speaking on condition that only his first name of Marc-Antoine was used. It will "provide a show of strength and demonstrate presence" in the Mali, Burkina and Niger border regions "and impede freedom of movement, which several armed groups have enjoyed for months," Marc-Antoine said. "The ultimate goal is to boost the power of the G5 Sahel force so that it can relocate by itself in cross-border zones," said Marc-Antoine. The world's newest joint international force, the five-nation G5 Sahel plans to number up to 5,000 military, police and civilian troops by March 2018. Five-country force The 5,000 will comprise two battalions each from Mali and Niger and one each from Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania. The force has been placed under the leadership of a Malian general, Didier Dacko, although for the time being the national contingents will not be integrated. The idea behind the force dates back to November 2015, when countries on the rim of the Sahara grappled with an escalating wave of jihadist attacks. After Libya fell into chaos in 2011, Boko Haram took over swathes of northeastern Nigeria and Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda took over northern Mali in 2012. French-led intervention in January 2013 largely chased out the jihadists from northern Mali, but this region, and the centre of the country, remains chronically violence-prone and attacks have spread to neighbouring countries. Across the region -- vast, poor, arid and politically volatile -- thousands of people have died, many of them in suicide bombings, and tens of thousands have fled their homes. In areas controlled by jihadists, extreme Islamist law is enforced, with suspected thieves having hands or feet cut off. The Sahel crisis leapt on to the front pages and TV screens in the United States last month when four US special forces troops were killed as they patrolled with Nigerien troops near the Niger-Mali border. The G5 Sahel's activities will be initially confined to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where central governments have weak control over remote areas. The first priority will be "taking back control of border areas," targeting jihadists, bandits and human traffickers are major problems, Dacko has said. France, the G5 Sahel's most vocal backer, has 4,000 personnel in the Barkhane force. Its role in Hawbi will be to provide "advice and support" with air and artillery, said Marc-Antoine, speaking from a forward base in the In-Tillit region in central Mali. About 100 French troops will be involved in this context. Funding problem Money remains a major concern for the G5 Sahel, whose members are among the poorest nations in the world and whose military are badly under-equipped. Estimates for the first year of operations are put at 423 million euros ($490 million), although French officials say the budget can be brought down to around 240 million euros. At present, it has funding pledges from 108 million euros, comprising 50 million from the European Union, 50 million from the five countries themselves and eight million from France, plus $60 million promised last week by the United States. A donor conference will be held in Brussels on December 14. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has put forward four options to provide help, but has run into heavy US resistance. They include setting up a United Nations support office in the Sahel and sharing resources from MINUSMA, the 13,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Mali. He also recommended extra financial backing for equipment including heavily reinforced vehicles and observation capacities, including drones. But on Monday the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said UN resources, already strained, should not be further overstretched, nor should be they used for non-UN missions. Some 600,000 of the stateless minority have fled to Bangladesh since late August carrying accounts of murder, rape and arson at the hands of Myanmar's powerful army, after militant raids sparked a ferocious military retaliation. The UN says that crackdown is likely tantamount to ethnic cleansing, while pressure has mounted on Myanmar to provide security for the Rohingya and allow people to return home. In addition to the state capital Sittwe, Suu Kyi is also visiting two of the epicentres of the violence, Maungdaw and Buthidaung, as part of the "one day trip," government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP. It is her first trip in office to northern Rakhine, which has seen some of the worst of the communal violence that has cut through the western state since 2012, severely damaging Myanmar's global reputation. It was not clear if Suu Kyi would visit some of the hundreds of Rohingya villages torched by the army -- allegedly aided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhist locals. But "The Lady" -- as she in known -- did meet with Rohingya in Maungdaw, according to local media, a first for a leader keen to convince observers inside the country and abroad that the crisis has abated and reconstruction of Rakhine can begin. The Rohingya who remain in northern Rakhine are living in fear, surrounded by hostile neighbours, who refuse to let them farm or move freely. The UN on Thursday again called for unfettered humanitarian access to a zone still under army lockdown. On Thursday 2,500 Rohingya arrived by land at the Bangladesh border, a sign hunger and fear is still driving people from their homes. "The army didn't attack us but made our life very difficult,"Mohammad Zafar, 35, from a village in Buthidaung told AFP at the Bangladesh border. "We were not paid for any work and couldn't go to markets. How long is it possible to live like that?" 'Here for generations' Suu Kyi heads a committee charged with rebuilding Rakhine. She was joined on Thursday by businessman Zaw Zaw, one of a host of military "cronies" who thrived under junta rule and are now taking prominent roles in rebuilding the battered region. There are fears a carve-up of contracts in Rakhine by big business will further divorce the Rohingya from their land. She says the Rohingya who have fled are now welcome back, if they meet contested "verification" criteria for re-entry to Myanmar. The Rohingya are loathed in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. Their legal status is at the crux of communal tensions, with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists adamant that Rohingya are foreign interlopers. A Rohingya resident who has remained in Maungdaw town appealed to Suu Kyi to reconsider foisting a controversial national verification card (NVC) on the minority. The card grants them limited rights of residence in Myanmar, but does not recognise them as an ethnic group with citizenship. The Rohingya say it is a bureaucratic attempt to erase their identity and force a shaky legal status onto them in a region where many claim generations of ancestry. "We can not do anything with this NVC card, so we do not want to receive it," the resident said, requesting anonymity fearing reprisals. "We are not Bengalis from Bangladesh, we are Rohingya living here for generations." Observers say Suu Kyi has chosen not to criticise the army in fear of a backlash from a powerful institution that controls all security matters. The plight of the Rohingya garners little sympathy inside Myanmar, making a defence of the minority a politically toxic cause. The Rohingya have packed into makeshift camps on a poor, already overcrowded slip of border land inside Bangladesh. Aid groups say the risk of major outbreaks of disease is high, while they struggle to deliver food and basic supplies to the unprecedented number of refugees. The "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" will include a broad set of proposed changes to the corporate and individual tax system, building off a nine-page framework the White House and congressional Republican leadersdropped in September. Among the details of the new bill emerging Thursday morning is a proposed elimination of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which is a benefit that allows people to deduct those taxes from their federal bill. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady said Tuesday the GOP reached a deal that would allow people to deduct state and local property taxes up to $10,000 but not income or sales taxes. ost of the claimants that benefit from the deduction live in traditionally Democratic states like California and New York. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that New York and California receive about 30.5% of the total benefits from the SALT deduction. Police officials in Colorado said a man nonchalantly walked into a Walmart late Wednesday night, killing two men and a woman. The suspect, 47-year-old Scott Ostrem, initially fled the scene, but Thornton Police Department officers were able to track him down and bring him into custody, NBC 9 reported. The local news station also reported that federal authorities and Aurora SWAT members were responding to assist local police officers. The Thornton Police Department confirmed the deaths of two men and a woman on its Twitter account. The police department also said that the shooting appears to be random. Witnesses reported hearing multiple shots at the Walmart, and videos of the scene show an empty store with uniformed police officers nearby. WASHINGTON The Republican tax bill unveiled Thursday repeals a longstanding law that prohibits tax-exempt churches and religious groups from taking political stances. Known as the Johnson Amendment, it stipulates that churches and religious groups are not permitted to endorse candidates and back political efforts while maintaining a tax-exempt status. Under the new bill released Thursday morning, churches would not be penalized "solely because of the content of any homily, sermon, teaching, dialectic, or other presentation made during religious services or gatherings," according to the text. Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican tax writer in the House, told reporters, "I don't want the IRS looming over our faith leaders in the community as they express their religious freedom." "We don't need to protect government from our faith leaders," Brady added. "We need to protect faith leaders from government." In October, nearly 100 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Brady and Rep. Richard Neal, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, urging the committee to keep the Johnson Amendment in place, fearing its repeal would be included in the tax bill. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump tweeted late Wednesday night. The tweet comes one day after 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov steered a truck into cyclists and pedestrians down a Manhattan bike path before being shot and taken into police custody. On Wednesday, Trump called for harsh punishment for Saipov, describing the US justice system as "a joke and a laughing stock" and saying he was considering sending the suspect to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But Wednesday night's tweet was a startling escalation of rhetoric in legal proceedings that have barely begun, let alone led to a sentence. Federal prosecutors filed terrorism charges against the suspect, an Uzbeki immigrant, on Wednesday. Law-enforcement officials who spoke to Saipov on Wednesday said the suspect told them he was "proud" of his actions and requested a flag of the Islamic State to hang in his hospital room, a detail Trump referenced in his tweet. Moments after the tweet, political observers and ethics experts criticized the president for possibly jeopardizing a potential legal case against Saipov. Trump's comments have played into legal cases before just this week, a military judge said he would likely opt for a lighter sentence for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked off his Army post and was captured by the Taliban in 2009, in light of Trump's past suggestions that he should be executed. The ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft barred a far-right activist who complained about Muslim Uber and Lyft drivers after Tuesday's terrorist attack in New York City that was carried out by a man authorities identified as a former Uber driver. Uber told Business Insider in a brief email on Wednesday that Laura Loomer a former Project Veritas activist who has more than 100,000 Twitter followers had been barred for violating the platform's community guidelines. Lyft also told Business Insider in an email that it had deactivated Loomer's account. Loomer posted a series of tweets complaining about Muslims following Tuesday's attack, in which a Muslim former Uber driver named Sayfullo Saipov is accused of steering a rented truck into a bike lane, killing eight people and injuring 12. Among those complaints, which sparked outrage online, Loomer lamented that she was late to a press conference because she could not find an Uber driver who she did not believe was Muslim. "I'm late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn't find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min! This is insanity," Loomer wrote. Loomer also retweeted a Twitter user who said they were kicked out of an Uber in September for being Jewish. Uber declined to comment on the accusation. Wednesday was not the first time Uber barred a far-right activist from its platform. the best high school in America, thinks about the Advanced Placement (AP) program differently than it used to. "We were one of the founding AP schools in the 1950s," head of school John Palfrey told Business Insider. "We have decided over the time that teaching to the AP is not the best way of teaching [US history]." Created by a company called the College Board, the AP program offers college-level classes to students in high school, with the intent that some students can earn credit toward their college degree early. Some colleges accept high scores on the AP exam for credit or for students to bypass an entry-level classes. Since its founding, the AP program has grown at a quick pace. In 2016, 2.6 million students took 4.7 million AP exams. While Andover does offer some AP classes, it does so only in certain math and science fields, without offering AP courses in the humanities and social sciences. Other schools have eschewed the courses all together. It's a trend that appears at many top private high schools, but also speaks to the difference in resources that exists between private and public schools. Private schools, with the benefit of hefty budgets and small class sizes, are able to provide flexible, creative, and rigorous curricula, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004 as a number of private high schools dropped AP classes. These schools don't want to have to rigidly subscribe to what the College Board deems appropriate for mastery of a certain subject. This is certainly true at Andover, which has a $1 billion endowment and offers intimate classes. The Many also want to unburden students from feeling like they must take an AP class because it's in some way superior to a class that's better suited to their interests. Andover offers classes in many students still choose to take AP exams, meaning they must take on additional reading and studying to their already packed schedules. Students likely think that colleges look favorably upon the number of high scores they receive on AP exams. Andover teachers recognize that not offering AP courses places the burden on students who still want to take and pass the tests. "It is a hard response to hear when these students are juggling a lot of different things," dean of students Jenny Elliott told Business Insider. As a reward for not taking daily smoke breaks, non-smokers at the Japanese company Pilia Inc. now receive an extra six days off each year. Pilia, a marketing firm based in Tokyo, enacted the policy in September after CEO Takao Asuka received complaints from his non-smoking employees that smokers shouldn't be rewarded for their habit with 15-minute breaks. Although the US has had its own problems with people not taking enough time off from work, Americans aren't smoking as much as they used to. In 1965, more than 42% of adults smoked. By 2015, the rate had fallen to 15%. CEO Zachariah Reitano alongside co-founders Rob Schutz and Saman Rahmanian are the brains behind Roman, an app that will screen you for ED, let you talk one-on-one with doctors, and even get prescriptions delivered to your door all without ever leaving your house. Youll be required to provide a recent blood pressure reading and if you havent had one in the past six months itll direct you to get one before you proceed. A physician reviews your info, and if youre a candidate for drugs, youll be issued a prescription and can order the medicine right in the app. It's a web app that starts by asking you questions about your general health and lifestyle and then offers tailored follow-up questions, depending on how you answer. It will be delivered right to your door in discreet packaging in something that looks more like an iPhone box than something from Walgreens. You can also sign up for automatic refills, and if you have questions, you can message or video chat with one of the doctors at any time. If its determined that something more serious might be going on, youre referred to a local clinic for an in-person check-up. For the time being, Roman is only available in New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Teenage life For Zachariah, the invention of Roman is more of a personal mission having struggled with erectile dysfunction since he was a teenager. It turned out to be one of the first signs that he was suffering from serious heart problems. He was however lucky in that his dad was a physician specializing in sexual health. So he was able to talk openly with him about what was happening and his father recognized it as a signal that something more critical was up. Its something that men care about enough in the present enough to research, enough to Google. Whereas if we just started with something like hypertension or cholesterol, its often not something that someone wakes up with and affects their day to day life, even though its incredibly important," he says. Viagra While this could look on the surface like simply a place to get a free-flowing supply of recreational Viagra, thats not the intended reality. If youre not having any issues with maintaining an erection, drugs like Cialis and Viagra arent really going to do much to enhance your sexual experience. Thats a real problem because about 80 percent of the Viagra bought online is actually counterfeit and is often contaminated by things you definitely shouldnt be swallowing like paint. Of course, Roman is not aiming to replace a doctor entirely, and there may be plenty of cases in which it's either more cost effective or medically more sound to go through an IRL physician. Ultimately,by developing this app, Reitano hopes to crush the stigma surrounding ED. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Thirty minutes into his sermon, the popular man of God started to talk mainly about the principle of tithing. Tithe is a way to show that God is the supplier of your resources. God blesses and I respond with my 10%. It is an honour system, it means the money is not your God. You wont be cursed if you dont tithe but when you tithe you are saying you recognise Him and it keeps the cycle moving, said Paul Adefarasin. This statement is based on Hebrews 7:58. He used the part of the Scripture to explain why it is important to pay tithe to ordained Men of God while noting that this payment is not compulsory, as it will not stop anyone from enjoying Gods blessings. He did not make everyone a preacher, Dont let anyone tell you to take your tithe to charities, elsewhere. he further said as he used Ephesians 4:1114 as a reference. ALSO READ: 10 shocking things Daddy Freeze says about religion Further, into the sermon, Pastor Paul Adefarasin spoke about people attacking the church. In his words, A guy can not just show up and say he is an overseer. He cant. Overseer from where? Who is your father? Who ordained you? Where are you coming from? John Doe can not get up and say he is a pastor, there must be evidence of righteousness in his life. The pastor continued by saying, Anyone that attacks the body of Christ is not a Man of God. You cant attack the church and call yourself a Man of God. We have to have decency and order in the Body of Christ. Paul said, Let everything be done decently and in order. If I have an issue with Pastor Adeboye, my responsibility, be in Christ as he is, is to go to Him. Especially because of the weight of his influence in the Body of Christ, Otherwise I am dividing the Body of Christ. Paul tells us to mark those that cause divisions in the body of Christ. If your teaching veils Christ and doesnt bring Him forth, then there is something wrong with you. At this point of the service, the congregation clapped and cheered heavily. Recently, the issue of tithing and Paul Adefarasin has been in the news. Controversial media personality Freeze called out the House on the Rock Church leader for sneaking him into a sermon on October 16, 2017. This was followed by another post on October 29th by Freeze about angry congregants allegedly walking out because of a sermon about tithing. The recent arguments and controversy surrounding tithing have been led by Freeze who is against the popular Christian practice. In the next few days, the VC's office will be occupied by another professor to steer the affairs of the institution for another five years. The Valedictory Conference has held already and by mid-November UNILAG community will be referring to Prof Rahamon Adisa Bello as the former Vice Chancellor of the institution. So, before we throw a party for Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe to welcome him to the 11th floor, here are 11 things to know and remember about the outgoing Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos. 1. Prof. Abdulrahman Bello is the 11th Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos. He was appointed on Sunday, November 11, 2012. 2. Ten years before his appointment as the Vice Chancellor, UNILAG authorities had banned unionism in the school. In 2015, Bello's tenure saw to the restoration of the ban. 3. The VC who hailed from Iboro in Ogun state graduated from Obafemi Awolowo University in 1974 and observed his NYSC service with the then North-Eastern State Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Maiduguri. 4. The outgoing VC became a staff member of the prestigious University in 1977 when he was appointed as an Assistant Lecturer in Chemical Engineering. 5. He became the Head of Department of Chemical Engineering between 1999 and 2002. 6. He became a Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1998 7. According to him, the University has graduated a total of 50, 785 students in the last five years of his administration. 8. His tenure produces 188 professors. He said this at the Valedictory Conference that 104 professors out of the total 292 the institution has produced were appointed in the last five years. 9. He also made efforts to Internationalize the universitys programmes by signing MoU with the University of West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. 10. Professor Rahamon Bello is married with four children and all of them are alumni of UNILAG. 11. The out-going Vice-Chancellor is an excellent academic. Prof is very good at everything academic dancing is not his calling. See his dance steps in the video below. Speaking at the Grand Finale of the Lagos State Festival of Instructional materials on Tuesday, October 31, Adebule said the instructional materials are useful for modern teachings. The Deputy Governor who was represented by Adesina Odeyemi, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, however, enjoined teachers to learn how to make the materials from available resource and apply them in their classroom. Emphasising the importance of the materials, Adebule said research had shown that using locally-made learning resources made learning easier and more interesting. Speaking during a valedictory press conference at the University's Senate Chambers on Tuesday, October 31, Bello urged his successor to put the institution first in his decisions. The outgoing VC, therefore, implore the University Professors, Dean of Faculties, Heads of Departments and other stakeholders to the incoming 12th VC in order to have a successful administration. ALSO READ:ASUU may go on strike again in November He said, I am convinced and can say, with all modesty that I will be leaving office with fond memories of the University of Lagos as a better place in terms of teaching research and service to the community, According to The Cable, Ezeja was impeached alongside two members of his cabinet, the vice president and director of transport. The Speaker of the students' House of Representative, Tabugbo Kenneth announced the impeachment in a statement. He said, This is to bring to the notice of all lions and lionesses, that the house of representatives in her sitting held on October 30, 2017, upon deliberations on the allegations of financial misappropriation, embezzlement of union funds and crass incompetence put before it, has come to the following conclusions: Having had before it, indubitable evidence of embezzlement of funds to the tune of over N4 million by the SUG president, the president stands impeached. On the grounds of financial misappropriation and embezzlement of union funds, denigration and complete disregard of the house, the vice-president stands impeached. Guilty of financial misappropriation, commercialization of union properties without the consent of the house, crass negligence and ineptitude, the director of transport stands impeached. All impeached officials are forthwith, denied all privileges of membership of the executive council and mandated to return all properties of the union to the secretary-general, within 7 days. However, two students of the University who spoke to Pulse about the impeachment of the SUG President said they have not heard about it. A student simply identified as Michael said he has not confirmed the story. "There are lots of stories going online. I myself I am not in school, I am actually in Lagos, I will probably go back to school tomorrow t confirm that. If you want concrete information when I get back to school I can give you something better but for now, no comment." Another student who does not want her name mentioned said the impeachment story might not be true because the SUG President has been at the forefront agitation for the reduction of school fee which was recently increased. The two time Oscar winner is doing so because of the multiple sexual allegations levelled against him. According to People Magazine,Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information will be available at this time. This statement was sent to People by a rep of Kevin Spacey. This statement is coming after actor Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey made unwarranted sexual advances to him at a private party in New York City in 1986. He made this revelation in an interview with Buzzfeed. Kevin Spacey was 26 and Rapp was 14 at the time. "He was trying to seduce me. I don't know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually" Rapp told Buzzfeed. Immediately Anthony Rapp dropped his bombshell revelation, Kevin Spacey apologized for his behavior on Twitter. He claimed his behaviour was as a result of his drunken state at that time, thereafter he openly declared that he was gay. The AI was invited to testify before the special board of inquiry set up the Federal Government after AI accused the Nigerian Army of human rights violation in the fight against Boko Haram insurgents in the north-east parts of the country. The Army team led by Professor Yemi George, [SAN], who cross-examined AIs team of researchers at the tribunal on their methodology, said the entire report lacks any iota of credibility to be published in the first instance, if not for selfish motives. The ongoing public sitting briefly descended into an exchange of heated words between members of the panel and the AI representatives. The rancor started when a member of the panel, Olawale Fapohunda, asked the representatives of AI if they are aware that having access to restricted documents they copiously referred to in their report was an illegal act. To this, AIs Senior Director for Research, Dr. Anna Neistat, replied that if the panel is accusing the organization of committing any crime, the organization would like its corporate lawyer to be present. If you insist AI should answer this question, it would be provided in writing after consulting with our organizations lawyer, she replied. Fapohunda had earlier asked if, in the over 55 years existence of AI, there was an occasion where it was discovered that facts contained in their publications were found to be incorrect, to which Dr. Neistat replied: Yes, there are cases of minor errors discovered and in all these cases, they have been immediately corrected and rightly communicated. But none of these errors have ever affected any of the allegations we raised. We have an extremely rigorous process before publishing our reports. However, when another member of the panel, Maj. Gen. Patrick Akem [Rtd] said he found it shocking that AI did not visit Maiduguri before publishing its report entitled 'Stars on their shoulder, blood on their hands', the counsel representing AI, Prof. Ernest Ojukwu [SAN] replied that the panel was already 'telling us your result without any conclusion. You are already shocked and it sounds conclusive.' At this point, the Chairman of the panel, Sir Justice Biobele A. Georgewill intervened, assuring that although it was expected that there would be a little altercation in such hearings, no single panel member will have a final say. Please, ignore these exchanges, just let the panel conclude its investigation, he said. The Chairman, however, asked AI how it expects the panel to go about investigating the allegations when it did not provide specifics or present eye-witnesses. Groups like us document our allegations to form a prima facie case for the government to investigate. Our role is not to implicate any individual, AIs Director of Research and Advocacy for Africa, Netsanet Belay said. In an incident that further underscored Amnesty International's growing loss of credibility in Nigeria and other parts of the world, the Save Humanity Advocacy Centre [SHAC] said it would be forced to kick the international NGO out of Nigeria if the Federal Government fails to expel it for its many atrocities against the country. SHAC said it takes particular exception to reports by AI like 'Blood on Their Hands,' and other reports aimed at undermining the ability of the Nigerian military and security agencies to respond to security threats and protect its citizens. It further disclosed that it would mobilize Nigerians to the International Criminal Court [ICC] to reject the NGO's position while ensuring that Amnesty International is compelled to pay the necessary compensation for the damages done to the image of the country. The video, pictures, and submissions were earlier discredited by SHAC which paraded nine international experts on human rights and conflict resolution. The local NGO which submitted three memos on the Nigerian states response to threats to humanity had monitored proceedings of the panel since its inauguration including a visit to the north-east, south-east and south-south geo-political zones of the country where its experts assessed the threats being faced by the people of Nigeria. Lead Counsel to SHAC, Edward Omaga, while speaking to newsmen after the sitting, said AI should apologize to the Nigerian people for the various unsubstantiated allegations it published as reports in online and electronic media even before approaching the panel and the ICC without a single proof to back up its claim. He warned that failure by AI to do this within 14 days will force SHAC to institute an action against them at the ICC same way they did against the Nigerian authorities as their motive has clearly been exposed by their poor outings before this panel in Nigeria. "AI has constituted itself into a court where the same party acts as a judge, a victim and a defendant in its own case. This must not be tolerated any further anywhere close to Nigerian soil and the attempts to discredit the Federal Government in protecting its citizens has surely failed. Nigerians will not forgive Amnesty International for trying to twist the successes of the anti-terrorism campaigns against those whose blood was used as sacrifices for us to have the current peace and tranquility in the country," Omaga stated. Ani, 37, whose residential address was not given, is facing trial on a five-count charge bordering on conspiracy, fraud, stealing and breach of peace. The Prosecutor, Insp. Francis Igbinosa, told the court that Ani and others still at large, committed the alleged offences between 2004 and 2008, at No. 9, Debo Ani, Omole Estate, and Suite A103, Ikota Complex, Victoria Island, Lagos, respectively. He said that the defendant obtained goods under the pretext of selling and remitting the proceeds to the complainant, one Hilary Ugo, but failed to do so. He alleged that the defendant obtained 55,000 pieces of female clothes at the rate of N400 each, all valued at N22 million. Igbinosa said that the defendant also stole car and land documents, international passport, and bank cheque booklets, all belonging to the same complainant, Ugo. According to the prosecutor, the offences contravened Sections 166, 287, 314 and 411 of (d) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015. The defendant, however, denied committing the offences, while the Magistrate, Mrs O. Kusanu, granted him bail in the sum of N100,000, with two sureties in like sum. A Facebook user in the West African country, Philip Jabah who posted the story and very graphic photo on his wall, narrated that the two had been in a relationship for a long time and the man had hoped to get married to the deceased. But later, they had some misunderstanding due to the man's temperament which made the lady have second thoughts about getting married to the suspect and decided to call off the affair, fearing that her life would b in danger if she gets married to him. When the lady told the man that she was no longer interested in the relationship, he was said to have gotten mad and descended on her, beating her to stupor before proceeding to hack her to death. He was about escaping from the scene before he was caught by residents and handed over to the police. This is how Jabah posted the gory news: Good morning, people of Liberia. Why do some Liberian men do bad things to their own citizens? This is bad news from Bong County. The Magistrate, Mr Olalekan Ijiyode, granted Abalo, facing one-count charge of theft, bail with one surety in like sum. Ijiyode said the surety must swear to affidavit of means, be a civil servant of any grade level or blood relation who resides within the courts jurisdiction. The magistrate added that Abalo and the surety must present two recent passport photographs each to the court as he adjourned the case until November 29 for mention. The defendant had, however, pleaded not guilty. Earlier, the Prosecutor, Insp. Emmanuel Abdullahi, told the court that Abalo committed the offence on October 29 at about 1 p.m. at Yekemi village via Ile-Ife, Osun. Abdullahi said the accused stole bicycle parts worth N5,000, belonging to his landlord simply known as Lateef. News Agency of Nigeria [NAN], reports that the Commissioner of Police in the state, Garba Umar, gave this update during a press conference held in his office on the outcome of an intensive investigation. Recall that gunmen had attacked the church during the 6 am morning mass, firing indiscriminately, leaving about 13 people dead while scores were left with several degrees of injuries. After the mindless attack, the police had come out with preliminary detail that the attack was as a result of a drug deal gone wrong involving a member of the community, Chief Aloysius Ikegwuonu aka Bishop, and some of his business partners in South Africa and that Ikegwuonu was the target. However, CP Umar has fingered two Nigerians, Prince Charles Obi, aka Gozila and Dickson Nwodi, alias Afam, who are both in South African prison for murder, as the brains behind the mass murders. CP Umar said intensive investigations into the massacre led the police to the two and that they have taken responsibility for the attack while vowing to kill some more people in the community if a certain amount of money was not paid as compensation. The police boss added that the Interpol had been involved to help in extraditing the suspects so as to face trials in Nigeria. He also said other suspects in the killing who had been in police custody would be arraigned this week. A statement signed by the CP reads: Two indigenes of Anambra State from Nnobi and Oba LGAs respectively, currently serving prison terms in South Africa for murder, have taken responsibility for the attack. They vowed that there will be more attacks if their financial demands, which were not disclosed, made of certain persons are not met. They mandated one , alias , also based in South Africa, to come to Ozubulu and inform the elders of the town of this threat. The two prisoners in South Africa are a.k.a. , and aka . The command wishes to state categorically that we will ensure that all identified perpetrators are brought to book. On that strength, three of the suspects in custody are to be arraigned within this week on charges of conspiracy and murder with other suspects at large. The Interpol is already involved in the investigation and possible extradition of the suspects based in South Africa who claimed responsibility for the attack on the church. Vietnam's livestock, poultry meat market worth $18 billion VietNamNet Bridge - More than 3 million tons of meat were consumed in Vietnam in 2016, according to Euromonitor. With a value of $18 billion, Vietnam is the third largest market for meat in Asia, behind China and India. Vietnam consumes 3,000 cow meat every day, while domestic supply can only satisfy 20-30 percent. President of Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group Doan Nguyen Duc estimated that Vietnam consumes 3,000 cow meat every day, while domestic supply can only satisfy 20-30 percent.The remaining is imported from Australia, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. He believes that farming milk and meat cows has great opportunities for development.Hoang Anh Gia Lai imports cows from Australia, about 250 kilo per each. It feeds cows grass and maize.It is estimated that the weight of every cow increases by 1.6 kilos per day. Hoang Anh Gia Lai can sell cows after six months, when they weigh 500 kilos.The cow sales make a big contribution to the conglomerates revenue. It reported revenue of VND2.631 trillion in the first nine months of 2016, a notable increase compared with the same period one year before.Anova Farm is now developing pig farms in Binh Thuan and Ba Ria-Vung Tau provinces where there are 2,400 sows and 12,000 merchandise pigs.Annova Farm only produces clean meat, so it farms pigs with modern closed technology with breeders from the US, animal feed meeting Global GAP and vaccine meeting WHO-GMP standards. It has a specific traceability system, applying QR code and management software which traces the types of animal feed and medicine used during the culture process.According to Euromonitor, in 2016, the meat processing industry in Vietnam grew by 6 percent in value and 5 percent in output. It is expected that the annual 2.2 percent growth rate in output and 1.9 percent in revenue would be obtained by 2021.Masan, a consumer goods producer, after receiving capital from KKR investment fund, has joined the meat market.Danny Le from Masan said, when buying Saigon NutiFood, plans to use technology and experience of the company as a springboard to join the meat market.When buying a 24.9 percent stake of Vissan, Massan considers this key to the 3F chain. Only 3F chain produces meat at reasonable prices and provides clean meat. Masan also took over Proconco and Anco, the animal feed manufacturers,Nguyen Lam Vien, general director of Vinamit, a dried fruit manufacturer, has decided to jump into the meat market because he believes the demand for clean meat is on the rise.Vinamits pig farm is the first farm in Vietnam applying the US and European Animal Organic standards. Vien not only wants to provide clean meat, but also meat products, which are the biggest source of profit. RELATED NEWS Dairy farmers turn to beef production Meat imports, banned substances threaten Vietnams livestock industry Kim Chi News Agency of Nigeria [NAN], reports that Modinat was convicted by the presiding Judge, Justice Rilwan Aikawa, after she pleaded guilty to the one count charge preferred against her by the National Drug Laws Enforcement Agency [NDLEA]. Modinat was arrested on May 19, 2017, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Ikeja, during the outward clearance of Qatar Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, with 330 grammes of Cocaine found on her. While presenting his case and urging the court to convict the accused, the NDLEA prosecutor tendered her harmonized ECOWAS passport with the number: 1808098653, an E-ticket and boarding pass as evidence. Other evidence tendered by the prosecutor included three written statements of the convict, two requests of scientific aid form, a drug analyzing report, two evidence pouches, two transparent pouches containing the bulk of the drug, two scientific reports of the drug, and a sealed brown envelope. In her plea for leniency through her lawyer, Morenike Ogunleye, Modinat begged the court to temper justice with mercy in sentencing her. My Lord, the convict is a first-time offender and she is sober of her action. She is a mother of four children, who single-handedly taking care of them as she has separated from her husband. In sentencing her, I urged my Lord to consider section 416(2)(b)(d) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015. In sentencing her, Justice Aikawa said: "I have listened to the plea made on her behalf by the counsel, and also listened to the prosecutor that she has no record of crime. Im balancing, I have to consider both her plea and the what the law says about the crime. Consequently, I hereby sentence her to 10 years imprisonment, starting from the day of her arrest. News-Times reports that Abuja Daddy who was responsible for many high profile abductions in Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo and Delta States as well as other parts of the southern Nigeria, was nabbed after a painstaking intelligence gathering and monitoring. The native of Lobia town in Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State is said to be one of the big time kidnappers and was responsible for the abduction of the younger sister to Governor Seriake Dickson, Nancy, in 2015. According to the reports, the suspect was also the one who kidnapped a local musician, Pereama Freetown, and a business mogul, Amaebi Efere aka Double Snake, who was on his way to negotiate the release of one of his kidnapped victims. Asomugha, whose address was not given, is standing trial on a three-count charge of conspiracy, forcible entry and breach of peace. The Prosecutor, Insp. Francis Igbinosa, told the court that the accused and others still at large committed the offences on Oct. 31, at Lake View Estate, Phase II, Amuwo-Odofin, Lagos. He said the cleric forcibly entered the property of the complainant, Amb. Christopher Ezene, and unlawfully conducted himself in a manner likely to cause breach of peace. According to the prosecutor, the offences contravened Sections 52, 168 (d), and 412 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015. The accused however pleaded not guilty to the charges. Counsel to the accused, Mr E. I. Uwezoke, urged the court to grant the cleric bail on liberal terms. The Magistrate, Mrs Olabisi Kusanu, granted the accused bail in the sum of N50,000, with one surety in like sum. She said that the surety must provide evidence of tax payment to the Lagos State Government and have his address verified. The three teenagers are of ages 14 and 16 years with oldest among them having a Senior Secondary School certificate. The accused, who is standing trial on a two-count charge of conspiracy and knowingly allowing teenagers to engage in unlawful sexual intercourse. She, however, denied the charges. But the Prosecutor, Sgt. Kehinde Omisakin told the court that the accused committed the offences between June 2016 and Oct. 28 at No. 22, Oresegun St., off Odo Eran in Bariga. She alleged that the woman allocated a room to the teenagers for the purpose of prostitution and collected returns from the girls after sex bouts. The offences contravened Sections 138 and 411 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that section 138 stipulates 14 years imprisonment. According to The Southern Daily, a South African tabloid, the church known as Gabola Church of International Ministries, [Gabola being the Tswana word for drinking], was founded two months ago and the number has increased so tremendously that it has become the most popular church in Freddys Tavern, Orange Farm, which is in the south of Johannesburg. Describing the Gabola Church as a gathering of like-minded worshippers, Southern Daily said the members have no problem spending a lot of time in church to show their 'love of the Lord', as long as there is enough booze to go around. "This church is not called Gabola Church for nothing. Gabola is the Tswana word for drinking and in this holy church of the Lord, the congregation rocks up at a tavern. With cold beers going down, loud cries of 'Amen' can be heard booming from Freddys Tavern in Orange Farm, south of Joburg. From the Pastor to the Bishop of the two-month-old Gabola Church of International Ministries, and to members of the congregation, one cold beer after another is handed out. Members are baptized with their choice of alcohol. Gabola Church congregants drink together during the church 52, is the founder of the church in South Africa. He started the church in a tavern, and it now has five hundred members. The church accommodates people who are not welcome at other churches. When sources visited the church, the Bishop was quenching his thirst with his drink and praying with members who were also drinking. Makiti said when Jesus came to his followers, alcohol changed everything. According to Bishop Makiti, people didnt know what to do for fun, but when Jesus changed water into wine, he prayed for it to stimulate their bodies. In his words: 'So this church also prays for their drinks before they are served. With God in our taverns, we would see crime being reduced and love and respect promoted.' People who drink beer are happy and peaceful. This means they are living in the shadow of God. The owner of the tavern, Freddy Mathebula who also spoke on the church proceedings, said the church accommodated the rejects of communities. Since the church started, crime has been reduced and we have received a great response from the community. A member of the Gabola Church, Jeffrey Mokoena, also spoke of his happiness being part of such an exciting family. The church makes me feel at home. I cant see myself being a member of any other church, he said proudly. Michael Motsepe, another member was quoted as saying: As a young person who likes his beer, I feel uncomfortable in other churches. But when Im here, I can drink. God is everywhere, even in taverns. The diasporans were reacting to the CBN Governor's remarks at a senior executive course 39 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru near Jos, where he suggested that Nigerians living abroad are not doing enough to revamp the nation's economy. The response came at a policy forum titled "Policy Roundtable on Business and Sustainable Development", at the British Houses of Parliament, London. "Mr. Emefiele has completely missed the point on that front. As at 2015, the diaspora remittances to Nigeria was $21B and the man was in charge of the CBN then and he is still the one superintending the apex bank. So instead of looking across the ponds for what is not, he should face the bigger picture. He should face the efforts at rebuilding investor confidence, getting the monetary policy really well and making good use of the remarkable diaspora remittances into Nigeria, among other necessities," said Lekan Fatodu. For Priscilla Nwikpo, "We thought the era of blame game was over. Nonetheless, after several months of economic shocks, this moment should be a great opportunity for the managers of the Nigerian economy including Mr. Emefiele, to get the solution right as there won't be any excuse for another failure. Nigerians home and abroad are yearning for inclusive growth". Kayode Salau said, "the Nigerians in diaspora who are toiling daily and are constantly sending money to Nigeria for different purposes and projects deserve commendation. We are actually the major facilitators of foreign investments, investors and key international partnerships. So Mr. Emefiele and his colleagues need to redouble efforts in building a stronger economy and creating an environment that is attractive and secure for investments." Meanwhile the British Prime Minister's Envoy on Trade to Nigeria, John Howell MP and the Private Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary on International Trade, Iain Stewart MP, who hosted the policy forum have reiterated the UK's commitment on trade relation and development of Nigeria. "Nigeria remains our good trade partner. And the UK government through this office and other relevant government agency like the DFID is committed to offering interventions and support that will enable Nigeria attain its true potential", said John Howell. ALSO READ: CBN Gov shuns Reps committee investigating Ikoyi loot She said this while speaking at the African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council Nigeria (ECOSOCC) which held at the ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja. Dabiri-Erewa also wondered why well educated Nigerians will leave the country in search of greener pastures. She said Nothing is stopping you but yourself. You have young educated graduates drowning at sea trying to cross over from Africa to Europe. I have come across graduate, these are not poor people, these are people who have gone to schools and then you decide that you can only get life by seeking hope in hopelessness by going through the desert, Niger, Chad, half of them die before they get to Libya anyway, some get to Libya many times and even get killed as black immigrants all because you want to get to Europe and then you find that one is a challenge and failure of leadership in Africa. I was coming from Addis Ababa and I said I want a situation where Europe will be migrating to Africa not Africa migrating to Europe but it calls into question of leadership, we just have to get it right all over Africa and that challenge goes back to the Nigerian youths. We brought back a guy from Lybia, he was locked up and was about to be killed by Gaddafi, we brought him back with 24 others. The presidential aide also called on Nigerians to support President Buharis anti-corruption war. She said We have to support President Buharis fight against corruption, corruption will destroy our future. In fact, it has destroyed a lot of things, lets save our country now. There is no compassion in governance anymore if there is compassion you will know that pension money is not meant to be stolen anymore, but why are people stealing anyhow because there are no sanctions, there is so much corruption, not because Nigerians are poor, not because Nigerians are greedy but because there are no sanctions. Now, we have a President that says there must be sanctions, it is going to take a while because the justice system is slow but we have to support him to ensure that those who stole your money go to jail. The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, disclosed this on Thursday, November 2, 2017. Ngige, however, did not disclose the membership of the yet-to-be inaugurated committee, but he said it includes representatives of the Federal and state governments, as well as the private sector. He stated this while speaking to State House correspondents at the end of a meeting he had with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. ALSO READ: Pressure group calls for review of minimum wage The Minister said the nominations came from stakeholders, adding that plans are in top gear to fix a date for the committee's inauguration. Ngige said, "The old (minimum wage) law expired last year August and we are now in the process of empaneling a new national minimum wage committee. "I have cleared the appointments with the President today (Thursday) and as soon as the labour people come back from the Labour Governing Board meeting in Geneva, we will take a consensus date with the governors because it is a tripartite committee involving federal, states and the private sector: NECA, MAN, NACCIMA, SMEs. Uwujaren said Suswam was invited by the anti-graft agency on Thursday, November 2, and is still n custody as at the time of filing this report. The ex-Governor is being questioned over his alleged role in the disbursement of N23 billion which came from the embattled former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke. Alison-Madueke allegedly disbursed N450 million to Governors and Ministers on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. He said the President would have to go through the standard procedure provided by the party's Constitution should he decide to contest. Speaking to State House correspondents on Wednesday, November 1, in Abuja, after a meeting with Buhari, the Governor said the APC would not tolerate the imposition of candidates. "We wont allow imposition of candidates, it must be democratically done," he said. "If President Buhari will lead the ship in 2019, it must be democratically done and I say democratically, transparently." ALSO READ: 7 times Okorocha has baffled Nigerians Braimoh, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the death of Jide was a colossal devastation. We received with a deep sense of loss and profound regrets the rather too soon passing of Jide Tinubu, one of the future bearers of the illustrious Tinubu dynasty. Losing such a prominent and promising young man at the unfolding stage of a great life is not only despairing and debilitating, it is quite demoralizing and dejecting, he said. The lawmaker, however, noted that death is a necessary end common to the young and old and therefore inescapable at one time or the other. What is therefore important is not how long, but how well. Jide led a good life but was recalled at a time when ordinary minds would summate as too soon, but which discerning and developed minds would submit to be the will of God. While I lack the adequate and appropriate words to describe this colossal devastation on the family of our venerated and revered mentor and tutor, I humbly remind him of his unusual and uncommon courage which had seen him through unsavory situations in the past. I therefore commiserate with the immediate and extended family of our National Leader, pray for the repose of the departed soul and for God to grant us the fortitude to bear this great loss of our beloved son and brother. NAN reports that the National Leader of the APC on Wednesday lost his first son, Jide. Gov. Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State also condoled with the APC National Leader in a statement signed by his Special Adviser, Communication and Strategy, Mr Yomi Layinka in Ibadan on Wednesday. Ajimobi described the news of Jides death as depressing, saying that the cold hands of death has snatched another promising and ebullient young man. He stated that the sudden death of the APC national leaders son was not only shocking, but also unfortunate and disheartening. My dear Asiwaju, please accept my heartfelt condolences. On behalf of myself, family and the good people of Oyo State, I pray that God will give you the strength and courage to bear this monumental loss. THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER Dasuki declines to testify in Metuhs case Former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki, yesterday declined to testify at the trial of former National Publicity Secretary, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Oliseh Metuh. Oyo-Ita confronts Kyari at FEC The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HoSF), Winifred Oyo-Ita, yesterday confronted the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, during the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting inside the council chambers of the Presidential Villa. FG directs Malami to recover $321m Abacha loot from Switzerland The Federal Government yesterday authorised the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to endorse an agreement between Nigeria and Switzerland to facilitate the repatriation of $321 million Abacha loot at the forthcoming global forum on asset recovery in the United States (U.S.) next month. __________________________________________________ VANGUARD NEWSPAPER Maina: HoS, Kyari in verbal tango at FEC THE weekly Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting which started after the swearing-in of Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, and the launch of the 2018 Armed Forces Remembrance Day Emblem witnessed a mild drama as Head of Service, Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, and Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, were involved in a shouting match. Senate threatens to arrest IGP Idris The Senate has threatened to issue arrest warrant against the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Ibrahim Idris, for failing to appear before its ad-hoc committee investigating allegations of abuse of office against him. Judge throws out Diezanis application to facilitate her return from UK A Lagos Federal High Court has dismeissed an application filed by Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Minister of Petroleum Resources, that she be joined as a defendant in an alleged N450m fraud case in Nigeria. __________________________________________________ THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER Leaked memo: Buhari summons Kyari, Oyo-Ita after FEC clash President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday summoned his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, and the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, over their clash at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Cabal bought houses abroad in my name - Magu The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has raised the alarm over an alleged plot to frame its Acting Chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, with ownership of assets abroad. Im unhappy Salami rejected anti-graft job CJN The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, on Wednesday expressed regret over the sudden resignation of a former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, as the Chairman, Corruption and other Financial Crime Cases Trials Monitoring Committee set up by the National Judicial Council. __________________________________________________ THISDAY NEWSPAPER Buhari Resets Administration, Says Nigeria Must Never See War Again President Muhammadu Buhari has commenced the retooling of his administration, which would see strong political leaders from the All Progressives Congress (APC) being brought in as ministers to represent the six geopolitical zones in the country, THISDAY has learnt. EFCC Summons Ex-NIA DG, Oke, Wife over $43.5m Ikoyi Cash In furtherance of President Muhammadu Buharis directive to the law enforcement agencies to investigate the former Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayodele Oke, and the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Wednesday announced that it was inviting Oke and his wife, Folashade, for questioning. Malami Given Mandate to Recover $321m Abacha Loot from Switzerland The federal government Wednesday empowered the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami (SAN) to sign an agreement between Nigeria and Switzerland for the repatriation of $321 million linked to former military Head of State, the late Gen. Sani Abacha, at the forthcoming global forum in the United States in December. __________________________________________________ BUSINESSDAY NEWSPAPER Lagos, Delta rank top in states first sub-national index Lagos State came out on top, followed closely by Delta and River states, on the maiden National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria (NCCN) index, which ranked all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory across four key areas: Human Capital, Infrastructure, Economy and Institutions. Nigeria facing rice dilemma The volume of rice exports to Nigeria from Thailand, one of the worlds leading rice producers has dropped sharply between 2015 and 2017, in what at first glance appears to be a result of ongoing efforts in the country to reverse the $1 billion spent on rice imports annually. MTN to IPO in 6 months adding third major sector after banks, Dangote The Lagos state chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday condoled with the national leader of the party, Chief Bola Tinubu over the death of his son, Jide, earlier in the day. The chairman of the state chapter of the party, Chief Henry Ajomale, expressed the partys condolences in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Looking to burnish his hardline image after what appeared to be the first major jihadist attack on the homeland during his administration, Trump pledged sweeping changes and later called for the attacker to be put to death. Surrounded by the cabinet, Trump -- who ran for the White House on a promise to end what he called "radical Islamic terrorism" -- announced he was "starting the process of terminating" America's green card lottery. "Diversity lottery. Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It's not nice," he said. "We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything." The program was created 27 years ago and awards US permanent resident visas to around 50,000 applicants from around the world each year. According to Trump, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, identified by authorities as the man who plowed a rented truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a New York City bike path Tuesday, came to the country via the program in 2010. Trump urges execution Trump also floated deep changes to how terror suspects are prosecuted and said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention center which holds suspected foreign jihadists in Cuba. "(We) have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now," Trump said. Trump continued his hardline rhetoric on Twitter Wednesday night, calling for the attacker's execution. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!", he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group. The White House was forced to walk back some of his comments, stressing that he was not taking executive action but looking to Congress to change decades-old laws. "We're going to continue pushing for and advocating for getting rid of this program," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the green card lottery. Sanders also ruled out executive action to introduce "quicker" and "greater" punishment for those guilty of terror offenses. "I believe he was voicing his frustration with the lengthy process that often comes with a case like this," Sanders said. And just hours after Trump and the White House suggested declaring Saipov an "enemy combatant" -- opening the possibility of detention without charge and possible dispatch to Guantanamo -- that idea was also undercut. Closing doors to immigration Prosecutors in New York quickly announced two initial charges against Saipov: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Saipov, 29, who was arrested after being shot by police, planned for weeks to undertake his attack in the name of Islamic State group, following online instructions from the jihadist organization, officials said. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he was "radicalized domestically" only after he came to the country, "when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics." Trump ran for election last year promising a crackdown on immigration, including building a wall on the Mexican border and banning Muslim immigrants. This year he has already slashed the country's annual refugee intake by more than 50 percent to 45,000, tightened visa issuance around the world and ordered a ban on travelers from 11 unnamed "high-risk" countries. Refugee experts say all but one have Muslim-majority populations; they do not include Uzbekistan. The officially titled Diversity Lottery Program aims to diversify the origins of people granted permanent residence -- so-called green cards -- in the United States. In 2015, lottery applications were received from more than 14 million people, of whom 49,377 won green cards, including 2,524 Uzbeks. Few US attacks by immigrants Trump said he wants to move US immigration to a "merit-based system" and not allow immigrants to bring their extended families. Republicans in Congress have tried for several years to eliminate the visa lottery program, but were stifled by Democratic resistance. Trump blamed the program on Chuck Schumer, the senior Democratic senator from New York, even though it was resoundingly supported by both parties and signed into law in 1990 by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush. Tuesday's incident was the second time the lottery has been tied to a jihadist attack inside the United States. In July 2002, an Egyptian man whose wife entered the country on the green card program shot two people dead at the ticket counter for El Al, the Israeli airline. Otherwise, Trump's immigration crackdown would not have prevented any of the deadly jihadist attacks inside the United States over the past 16 years. Governments from London to Berlin have made no secret of their reluctance to take back nationals who went to fight in Iraqor Syria but now find themselves, as defeat nears, heading for home. Yet the situation also raises ethical dilemmas -- particularly whether to abandon European jihadist wives to their fate, even if they have had a change of heart, along with their children. "Madam Chancellor, I want to come home with my family, help us," a woman identified as 31-year-old Nadja Ramadan, from Frankfurt, pleads in a video addressed to German leader Angela Merkel. "I'm not a terrorist," she insists in the video aired by Die Zeit newspaper, a baby in her arms. Kurdish fighters detained Ramadan and her three children in Raqa, the IS Syrian "capital" which was recaptured this month by a US-backed alliance. So far, Berlin has refused to assist her. She is one of a growing number of Europeans issuing pleas for help from their governments -- either via the media or through their families. Last week, around 20 families wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron urging him to bring their daughters home to face the courts. "It is difficult to accept that our daughters, who did not fight, might be treated in the same way" as their husbands, they wrote. They urged "France, a country of human rights," not to let the women face possible torture or death in Syria or Iraq. 'Kill them' Of some 5,000 EU jihadists believed to have gone to fight, around a third have already returned home, according to The Soufan Center, a US-based NGO that conducts research on global security. Some will have remained committed to violent jihad, it warned, adding: "It is clear that anyone who wishes to continue the fight will find a way to do so." So far, France, Germany and Britain have tackled returnees on a case-by-case basis. In Britain, where some 425 have returned, the goal is to "put them in court so they go to prison for a long time", said top anti-terrorism police officer Mark Rowley. For those who cannot be put behind bars, he said, authorities will have to lean on surveillance and other "prevention measures" to keep the country safe. But some in Britain openly tout a tougher line. Junior foreign minister Rory Stewart said last week that there was only one way to neutralise British IS fighters. "These people are a serious danger to us," he told BBC radio. "Unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them." Defence Minister Michael Fallon also said Britons fighting with IS were "a legitimate target", following reports that Sally Jones, a Muslim convert nicknamed the "White Widow", had been killed in a military strike. Children as a threat Raphaello Pantucci, International Security Studies director at the British think tank RUSI, said governments "haven't been rushing" to claim responsibility for nationals captured by Kurdish fighters in Raqa and beyond. Although fighters and their wives in most cases ended up in the warzone by choice, "we do have a duty of care to our citizens", he told AFP. "If they are showing up and we are able to put them through due process, that's what we should be doing." The children of European jihadists can hardly be blamed for their parents' decisions and beliefs, he added. But in Germany at least, even these youngsters are being regarded as a security threat. "We consider the return to Germany of jihadists' children, indoctrinated in a warzone, to be dangerous," German intelligence chief Hans-Georg Massen warned this month. "This could allow a new generation of jihadists to be raised here." In France, which has seen some 300 of 1,700 nationals return, authorities have taken a firm stance in the face of pleas from jihadists' families to rescue loved-ones being held in territory reclaimed from Islamic State. Defence Minister Florence Parly said Tuesday that French citizens detained in Iraq could be tried there. In Syria, she added, French nationals being held by different groups were being flagged to the Red Cross. Those who made it home would be held to account for their acts, she said. "People returning to France know that they are exposing themselves to systematic legal proceedings." Hundreds of thousands of Catalans vote in an independence referendum held despite a court ban deeming it unconstitutional. Spanish riot police try to block the vote. Shocking footage emerges of them using batons and rubber bullets on crowds. The Catalan government says 90 percent of those who voted backed independence, but turnout was only 43 percent. October 3: General strike A strike disrupts Barcelona's port, transport and some businesses. Up to 700,000 people demonstrate against police violence. King Felipe VI accuses Catalan leaders of threatening Spain's stability and urges the state to defend "constitutional order". October 5: Business exodus Banco Sabadell, Catalonia's second largest bank, announces it will shift its registered domicile out of the region. About 1,700 companies follow suit. October 7-8: Mass protests Tens of thousands of people demonstrate across Spain on October 7, some demanding unity, others dialogue. The next day hundreds of thousands march in Barcelona to back unity. - October 10: 'Suspended' independence declaration Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his separatist allies sign a declaration of independence, but say they are suspending its implementation to allow for time for negotiations with Madrid. The next day, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy gives Puigdemont until October 16 to clarify his stance. October 16: Separatists detained Puigdemont refuses to clarify whether he had declared independence and instead calls for dialogue. Madrid gives him an extended deadline of October 19 to say whether he is planning to secede. A court orders the leaders of two powerful grassroots independence groups, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez, to be detained pending an investigation into sedition charges. October 21: Spain to sack Catalan government Rajoy announces drastic steps to halt the breakaway, employing previously unused constitutional powers to seek the dismissal of Puigdemont's government and new regional elections. Puigdemont accuses Rajoy of "the worst attack on institutions and Catalan people" since Spain's dictatorship and turns down an invitation to address the Senate to state his case for independence. October 26: No regional elections Puigdemont says he considered calling elections to stave off the central government's takeover bid, but received "no guarantees" to make this possible. October 27: Takeover vs independence Catalan lawmakers approve by a narrow majority to declare an independent republic. Supporters stage mass street celebrations. The Senate grants Madrid powers to impose direct rule on Catalonia. Rajoy announces he has dissolved the Catalan parliament and removed Puigdemont and his executive from office. He calls regional elections for December 21. October 28: Madrid fires police chief Spain moves to assert direct control over the region, formally removing top officials including Puigdemont and Josep Lluis Trapero, the chief of Catalonia's regional police, the Mossos d'Esquadra. Puigdemont calls for "democratic opposition" to direct rule. October 29: Pro-unity Barcelona rally Hundreds of thousands of protesters rally in Barcelona, chanting "Viva Espana!" and urging national unity while demanding "Prison for Puigdemont." October 30: Puigdemont travels to Belgium Facing possible charges of rebellion, Puigdemont travels to Belgium. His party says it will stand in the December 21 regional election. October 31: Puidgemont summoned to court Puigdemont tells a news conference in Brussels he is not seeking asylum in Belgium but is there "for safety purposes and freedom" as Spain's top criminal court summons him for questioning. November 2: Spain seeks custody for Catalan leaders Spanish prosecutors call for eight former separatist members of Catalonia's government, including its vice-president, to be detained. Born into a family of poets, prominent politicians and academics, the 41-year-old face of the Left-Green Movement has a chance of becoming Iceland's next prime minister, after being given a mandate Thursday to form a coalition. "We want to lead a government that can create a broad unity on a long-term vision for the society," Jakobsdottir told AFP last month. Described by supporters as "charismatic" and "trustworthy", nearly one in two Icelanders would like Jakobsdottir to be their next prime minister, according to a recent poll. If her talks to form a coalition are successful, then the Left-Green Movement and its partners would become the country's second left-leaning government since its independence from Denmark in 1944. The Left-Green election campaign was focused on inequality. Jakobsdottir has promised to make sure Iceland's economic prosperity, triggered by booming tourism, leads to a boost in public spending on health and education. Growing public distrust of the elite in recent years has spawned several anti-establishment parties, fragmenting the political landscape and making it increasingly difficult to form a stable government. The Panama Papers, which revealed offshore tax havens, listed more than 600 Icelanders -- in a country of just 346,750 people -- including the outgoing conservative Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson. 'A strong leader' Jakobsdottir is free of scandal -- unlike her rivals from the centre-right -- and served as education minister for Iceland's first left-leaning government which took power after the nation's devastating 2008 economic collapse. "When we are in a situation of having such great distrust in politicians, she's the person you would like to invite to your home and have coffee with," said Egill Helgason, a political commentator for public broadcaster RUV. Married with three sons, Jakobsdottir graduated from the University of Iceland and later received a master's degree in Icelandic literature after writing a thesis on the popular crime writer Arnaldur Indridason. Surveys suggest she garners most of her support from voters aged between 18-29, in particular women, and that she appeals to an electorate beyond the Left-Green Movement's base. "I think she would be a strong leader... because she has been a member of the parliament for a long time among corrupt people and still stayed true to herself," said Solkatla Olafsdottirs, a 26-year-old supporter of the anti-establishment Pirates Party. Helgason said Jakobsdottir has i "She avoids confrontations and that could become her weakness" in negotiations to form a government, he added. The last time Jakobsdottir was close to power, after last year's snap vote, her party failed in its bid to form a new coalition government. But now she has more experience, a large segment of public support and could possibly be on the verge of becoming the latest young Western politician to reach power. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Rakhine since late August during military operations that the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing and the world's most acute refugee crisis. Myanmar authorities say the security crackdown was in response to attacks by Rohingya militants on police posts in late August. "For people to go back and for this return to be sustainable, you need to address the very complex issue of citizenship," Grandi told reporters after addressing the Security Council. "No return will be sustainable ... if that issue is not unblocked." For decades, the Rohingya have faced discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship and denigrated as illegal "Bengali" immigrants. Aside from recognizing the Rohingya as citizens, the government must also agree on a development program for Rakhine state, one of the poorest in the country, said Grandi. The violence has to stop and humanitarian aid workers must be given access to Rakhine to reach those in need after villages were torched and remaining residents face hunger, Grandi said. Myanmar authorities are in talks with the UN World Food Programme to resume food deliveries in Rakhine, but details on the relief effort have yet to ironed out, he added. Grandi said the Myanmar government had invited the UN refugee agency to a meeting to discuss the plight of the Rohingya and he expressed hope that this will lead to more cooperation. But for many families, the memories are all too fresh in 2017. The year has been marked by two powerful earthquakes that killed 465 people in September, as well as a new surge in the already-horrific murder rate that has put Mexico on track to make 2017 its deadliest year. The exuberant parades, skull-shaped candies and bright marigolds that mark the holiday -- the first two days of November -- jar with the still-raw trauma of the deadly quakes and a drug war that has left a trail of mutilated bodies and mass graves in its wake. Mario Vergara is one of those who says he doesn't feel like celebrating. Last week, as officials in Morelia held a press conference to beckon tourists to the western city's elaborate Day of the Dead festivities, Vergara silently protested with a sign demanding to know what happened to his missing brother. His brother Tomas is one of 30,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico since the government declared war on the country's powerful drug cartels in 2006. Nearly 200,000 more have been murdered -- including more than 18,500 so far this year. Tomas Vergara was kidnapped in 2012. His brother, who comes from the troubled southern state of Guerrero, has been looking for him in the unmarked graves that litter the Mexican countryside. "I think this Day of the Dead business is horrific," said Vergara, 42, as the city readied its traditional parade of skeletons and skulls. "Our loved ones were abducted and ended up as actual skulls," he told AFP. "It's our tradition... but for the families of the 'disappeared,' it's horrible." Laughing at death? In many places, people respond to death with black clothes and somber mourning. Day of the Dead is about celebrating your loved ones and reviving a physical sense of their presence in your life. Some Mexicans believe the dead come back for the day. Many create elaborate altars for their late family members, decorating them with flowers, colorful paper cutouts and things the person loved. In the village of Pomuch, indigenous Mayans even dig up their relatives' bones and lovingly wash them. It's often said Day of the Dead is about laughing at death. Mexicans are known for their black humor about death, summed up by the holiday's most famous symbol: "Catrina," a skeleton decked out in swank Victorian clothes who was created by cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) as a spoof of Mexican aristocrats' pretentious imitation of European ways. Today, Catrina and her extravagant threads are imitated in countless Day of the Dead costumes each year. But anthropologist Jose Mendozal rejects the idea that death is less traumatic for Mexicans than anyone else. If Mexicans are laughing at death, it's more like nervous laughter, he said. "It's one thing to look at a caricature of death, it's another thing to see a dead body, and another thing still to see the skeleton of someone who was violently murdered," he told AFP. The fine line between joy and mourning is all the more delicate this year. Mexico City's government seemed aware of that in organizing the city's Day of the Dead parade, a new event that the capital began putting on last year after a fictional version proved to be a smash hit in the opening scene of the James Bond movie "Spectre." This year, the parade was as boisterous and lavish as in the movie -- but opened and closed with rescue workers marching in solemn tribute to the victims of the September earthquakes. "Mexico City deserves a little joy. Little by little, we are rising up again," said parade organizer Paula Schlaepfer. According to reports, the Uzbekistan native told policemen during interrogation that he was happy about what he did. Authorities also say that he left a note in his truck saying that he carried out the attack on behalf of ISIS. CNN also reports that Joon H. Kim, the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said that the 29-year-old was charged with charged with providing material support to ISIS, violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Investigators also revealed that over 90 ISIS propaganda videos was found in a cell phone which was taken from Saipovs apartment. Controversially, scholars from a Washington think-tank who were given access to the now de-classified trove say the documents also shed new light on Al-Qaeda's murky relationship with Iran. "Today's release ... provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization," said CIA director Mike Pompeo. The CIA put online 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead the leader of Al-Qaeda's global extremist network. According to Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, scholars from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who were allowed to see the trove before it was made public, it provides new insights. Wedding video "These documents will go a long way to help fill in some of the blanks we still have about al Qaeda's leadership," Roggio said. The inclusion of Hamza Bin Laden's wedding video, for example, gives the world public the first image of Bin Laden's favorite son as an adult -- an image apparently shot in Iran. Previous document releases, including letters revealed by AFP in May 2015, show that Bin Laden was grooming Hamza to succeed him as leader of Al-Qaeda's global jihadist campaign. But plans for him to come to Bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout seem to have been abandoned after the deadly US raid, and the young man -- now aged 27 or 28 -- is presumed to be in Iran. According to Joscelyn and Roggio, writing in the FDD's Long War Journal, one of the newly released documents is a 19-page study of Al-Qaeda's links to Iran written by a Bin Laden lieutenant. Last month, at a seminar hosted by the same FDD that had an advance look at the files, Pompeo had promised to release Abbottabad documents that would show Iran-Al Qaeda ties. "There have been relationships, there are connections. There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al-Qaeda," the US spy chief argued. "There have been connections where, at the very least, they have cut deals so as not to come after each other." This raised alarm bells among critics of President Donald Trump's new strategy to counter Iranian influence, wary that hawks like Pompeo may be making a case for war. The full extent and true nature of this relationship is unclear and a matter of dispute among scholars and policy-makers. On the one hand, Tehran and its largely Shiite proxy forces in the Middle East often fight against Sunni movements aligned with Al-Qaeda's deeply sectarian ideology. The Iranian backed Hezbollah, for example, is locked in conflict against Al-Qaeda linked Syrian rebels. But the very fact that Hamza and other senior figures appear to be able to live under Iranian protection or custody supports claims that Tehran and Bin Laden had a working relationship. One document, Joscelyn and Roggio write, recounts how Iran offered training, money and arms to some of Al-Qaeda's "Saudi brothers" on condition they attack US interests in the Gulf. But the files also show Tehran and Al-Qaeda sometimes had stark disagreements, and Bin Laden once wrote to Iranian leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to demand his relatives be released. "Other files show that Al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in order to force an exchange," Joscelyn writes. "Osama bin Laden's correspondence shows that he and his lieutenants were also concerned that the Iranians would track Hamza or other family members after they were released." Open conflict In addition, Roggio and Joscelyn say, "Bin Laden himself considered plans to counter Iran's influence throughout the Middle East, which he viewed as pernicious." Nevertheless, they argue, analysis of the intelligence points to Al-Qaeda having been able to maintain a "core facilitation pipeline" on Iranian soil. Some in Washington are skeptical about the motives behind the release, coming after what the intelligence community had previously said was the last dump from the Bin Laden files. Ned Price, a former CIA official who was seconded as a national security adviser to former president Barack Obama, said the new documents "don't tell us anything we didn't already know." Instead, he argued on Twitter, Pompeo may have released the files to bolster the case against Iran as a sponsor of terror, pushing the United States closer to open conflict with Tehran. "I am saddened by the terrorist attacks in recent days in , and yesterday in New York," the pope said during his Angelus prayer in St Peter's Square. He asked people to pray that God "converts the hearts of terrorists and frees the world of hatred and murderous madness, which abuses the name of God to disseminate death," adding that he was praying for the victims and their families. Eight people were killed and 11 injured in Lower Manhattan, New York, on Tuesday when the driver of a pickup truck hit people on a cycle path. At least 27 people were killed on Saturday in the capital, Mogadishu, in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda linked Shabaab militants. The investigation into purported links between Salman and Qatar was first launched in August, after a quartet of Arab countries -- Bahrain included -- accused their gas-rich neighbour of supporting terrorism and close relations with Shiite Iran. State-run Bahrain Television aired a report which claimed that neighbouring Qatar was behind anti-government protests that have shaken the tiny kingdom for the past six years. It alleged that Qatar's former premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani contacted Salman -- then head of Bahrain's largest opposition group, Al-Wefaq -- in 2011 and asked him to urge protesters to flood the streets and ramp up pressure on the state. Salman has been behind bars since 2014 serving a nine-year sentence for allegedly inciting hatred. He has now been charged with "spying on behalf of a foreign country ... with the aim of carrying out subversive acts against Bahrain and harming its national interests," the Bahraini prosecutor's office said in a statement. The dissident was also charged with "revealing defence secrets to a foreign country and disseminating information that would harm Bahrain's status and reputation". The statement did not say when the trial would begin. Al-Wefaq was the largest group in parliament before its lawmakers resigned en masse in protest at the crushing of Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations in 2011 calling for an elected government. The Shiite Muslim movement has called for Sunni-ruled Bahrain to become a constitutional monarchy. But some 600 men have locked themselves inside despite water and electricity being cut and dwindling food supplies, saying they are fearful for their safety if they move to transition centres amid reports locals do not want them there. "UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, today reiterates its call to Australia to stop a humanitarian emergency unfolding on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea," the organisation said in a statement. Describing the situation as "increasingly tense and unstable", the agency said there was inadequate accommodation outside the camp for all of the men, with one centre still incomplete. Within the camp, they were storing water in garbage bins to sustain themselves, UNHCR said. One Manus detainee, an Iranian called Behrouz Boochani, tweeted Thursday that refugees were "digging into the ground to find water". "As the days go by where they have no water and no electricity, I think the tensions will just go up higher," UNHCR representative Lam Nai Jit told AFP from Manus Island, adding that the weather was "extremely hot and humid". He said unease between the refugees and local communities had grown due to a lack of consultation when the transition centres were being constructed. "The local population have not been prepared... that creates an environment of high risk for both sides," he said. Lam added that while he had been in contact with PNG authorities, who assured him the detainees would not be forcibly transferred, he had not heard from Australian officials, who had mostly left the area. 'Disgraceful' The men's plight has attracted the attention of Hollywood, with Australian star Russell Crowe describing the situation as "disgraceful". He added that he was willing to do his part, tweeting: "I've thought about this. I believe I could house and find jobs for 6. I'm sure there'd be other Australians who would do the same." The detainees were also terrified of being forced out after control of the camp officially transferred back to PNG's navy Wednesday, advocates said. But the PNG naval base's commanding officer Begsy Karaki insisted they "will not be forcefully removed". "There is no panic and those that have pre-conceived ideas developed by the asylum-seekers, I reiterate that there is no threat," he told PNG's Post-Courier newspaper Thursday. Australia's Immigration Minister Peter Dutton insisted the new facilities were "much better" than being at the camp and said he wanted "to close Manus as quickly as possible". Australian Greens senator Nick McKim visited the camp this week and on Thursday called on Dutton to end the impasse, saying the refugees were "caught in limbo" between the two countries' governments. "Each government is trying to claim that the refugees are the responsibility of the other and the men are caught in the middle, and everywhere they turn there is danger," McKim told AFP Thursday. Barred from moving to Australia, they have been offered transfers to another Pacific on facility on Nauru, but reportedly few have accepted. A third-country resettlement deal struck between Canberra and Washington has so far only seen 24 refugees flown to the United States. Resettlement in New Zealand -- raised in 2013 but never taken up by Canberra -- could be viable again after new leader Jacinda Ardern said Thursday she planned to raise the issue with her Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull. The pair are due to meet on Sunday in Sydney. The shortlisted bidders are Alstom, Bombardier Transportation, Hitachi Rail Europe, Talgo and Siemens. HS2 Ltd will invite the five companies to tender in spring 2018 and it plans to award a contract in 2019. The first trains are expected to roll off the production line in the early 2020s. The trains will need to be compatible with Britains restrictive loading gauge as they will operate beyond the high-speed network to serve Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle and Edinburgh. The new trains will be required to meet HS2s design and performance needs and the highest standards internationally for passenger experience, noise reduction, and environmental sustainability, while maximising skills, employment and growth opportunities, says HS2. The winner of the contract will maintain the fleet at a new rolling stock depot to be constructed at Washwood Heath in Birmingham. This will also be the location of the HS2 control centre. The four-car 74.3m-long trains have capacity for 510 passengers and will supplement the authoritys existing fleet of 15 sets. Alstom is currently delivering 30 trains to Skanetrafiken, and this order will be an add on to that production line, particularly for manufacturing of bodyshells. The trains will be built at Alstoms plant in Salzgitter, Germany, and will be delivered in Spring 2019. For more information on thousands of fleet orders from around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro. The work will start in January 2018 and must be completed by the end of 2022. The bogie overhauls will be managed by Stadlers bogie revision centre of competence in Szolnok, Hungary. Stadler bogies are due for overhaul after they have been in service for about 1 million kilometres and the overhauls are done on a condition-based approach. Junakalusto was set up by the cities in the Helsinki metropolitan area in 2004 as a not-for-profit company to procure rolling stock for commuter services in the Finnish capital and lease the trains to Helsinki Regional Transport (HSL). Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK Siemens seeks to halt proceedings over alleged supply of its turbines to Crimea MOSCOW, November 2 (RAPSI) German conglomerate Siemens has filed a motion with the Moscow Commercial Court asking to halt proceedings in its lawsuit against subsidiaries of Russias state corporation Rostec, Technopromexport companies, over alleged supply of its turbines to Crimea, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday. The plaintiff seeks to suspend the proceedings until the court issues a ruling in a lawsuit filed by the conglomerates Russian subsidiary, Siemens technologies of gas turbines, seeking to recognize a contract with subsidiaries of Rostec over supply of turbines as partially invalid. According to Siemens, a ruling in that case will be relevant to its own lawsuit seeking to find the deal unlawful as well. On October 16, Technopromexport filed a counterclaim against Siemens also seeking to recognize a contract with the Russian Siemens subsidiary over supply of turbines as partially invalid. In July, Siemens asked the court to seize four turbines constructed by its subsidiaries and prohibit defendants from installing these turbines, acquired in 2015. The court dismissed this claim due to the lack of evidence. In September, the court dismissed the conglomerates claim due to the lack of evidence. In October, the Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal against the ruling. Earlier, reliable sources told Siemens that at least two out of its four gas turbine installations provided for a project in Southern Russia were transferred to Crimea. Siemens believes that these actions are in clear violation of the conglomerates distribution contracts prohibiting a client to provide equipment to the region. Siemens initiated investigation into persons responsible and filed lawsuits with the Moscow Commercial Court seeking cancellation of all additional provisions to Crimea and return of equipment to its original point of destination. Yukos ex-shareholders withdraw lawsuit on seizure of Russian property in Belgium MOSCOW, November 2 (RAPSI) Court proceedings over seizure of Russian property in Belgium, initiated by former shareholders of Yukos oil corporation, have been cancelled, the press-release of the International Centre for Legal Aid reads on Thursday. According to the Centre, this development means final lift of Russian propertys arrest in Belgium. After a court in Belgium lifted the arrest in June 2017 the plaintiffs appealed the ruling. In few months they withdrew the lawsuit. At the moment, all enforcement proceedings against Russia initiated by the companys former owners were postponed or cancelled. At the same time, the legal dispute in The Hague continues. In October, the Centre announced that similar proceedings were cancelled in France. In July 2014, the Permanent Court of Arbitration ordered Russia to pay former shareholders of Yukos about $50 billion in compensation. This decision was overruled by the District Court of The Hague in April 2016. Now, the dispute will be reviewed by The Hague Court of Appeal. We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on the website. The purposes of using cookies are defined in the Privacy Policy of RAPSI If you agree to continue using cookies, please click the "Confirm" button. If you do not agree, you can change your browser settings. U.S. President Donald Trump will embark on his first presidential tour of Asia on Friday, where he will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. The trip kicks off just 10 days after Chinese President Xi Jinping emerged triumphantly from the Communist Party of China's 19th Party Congress, having solidified his rule over the party and articulated a strategic vision for China's emergence as a global power. Property details: NEW LOW RESERVE PRICE! 2 Acres of secluded, pristine hunting land located in Perry Co. Tennessee. Approx. 6 miles south of Linden, Tn. 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Commanding a stunning view of the Jiminy Peak ski area, your home at Vacation Village will also serve as your gateway to all that the Berkshires has to offer. The Berkshires has been a center for the fine arts since the turn o... Price: $ 1 State/Province: Maine Seller State of Residence: Pennsylvania City: Hancock Property Address: 276 Brodie Mountain Road Zip/Postal Code: 01237 Number of Bedrooms: 2 Number of Bathrooms: 2 Location: 180**, Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 2 , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Donald Trump, Jr., celebrated Halloween by dressing as his father, President Donald Trump. ADVERTISEMENT The 39-year-old businessman channeled his father by wearing a Donald Trump mask and an American flag spandex onesie on Tuesday. Trump is the eldest child of Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump. "Taking it to the next level #merica #maga #halloween #costume #nyc #kids #trump," he captioned a slideshow of photos with his kids on Instagram. Trump, who shares 10-year-old Kai, 8-year-old Donald, 6-year-old Tristan, 5-year-old Spencer and 3-year-old Chloe with wife Vanessa Trump, visited a haunted house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his children. "Literally a full interactive maze. They go all out and it's amazing," he said of the neighborhood attraction, which was located in someone's home. "They also let anyone in to see it." Trump followed up by sharing a photo of daughter Chloe before putting his kids to bed. He sent social media into a frenzy by remarking about socialism in the caption. "I'm going to take half of Chloe's candy tonight & give it to some kid who sat at home. It's never to early to teach her about socialism," the businessman wrote. FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS! Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source! "Fill her bucket with old candy left by her great-grandfather, then explain that she has more because she's smarter than all the other kids," Rowling wrote. "Perhaps if you also told her the kid was too sick to get up and go trick or treating, and had no healthcare, she might learn about sharing," Takei added. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of a woman who crashed her car into a group of cyclists in 2016 while under the influence of prescription drugs, killing a UGA graduate student. 'Should views such as Damore's be ignored, stigmatised, or corrected, point by point?' asks Mihir S Sharma. How does a company balance its responsibility to provide a wholesome workplace environment and its duty to allow its employees to think freely? That's never an easy question at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Google, perhaps the highest profile company in the world, was forced to answer that question when one of its engineers wrote a memo questioning its diversity policies -- a memo that went viral. After an uproar, Google fired him. The engineer, James Damore, is not a sympathetic figure. His memo -- 3,000 words long and with a multitude of links to various graphs and supporting documentation -- may read like a purely academic exercise, but it was also, unquestionably, a bit of a provocation. He began it with the assertion that Google's diversity policy was bad for the company's bottom line. But the question that Damore's bosses could reasonably have asked him is: So, how is it your business? When you are a shareholder, you can step up and complain, perhaps. But as a junior employee? On the other hand, it is far from clear that firing someone for expressing an opinion, however politically fraught, is a great precedent. Google was caught in a cleft stick, of course: Whatever they did, they would be pilloried by people on the Internet. I suspect that they eventually decided that getting rid of the engineer would be the quickest way out of the problem. Better to be seen as cowards bowing to an online campaign -- which is how the right sees the firing -- than as a sexist corporation -- which is what some on the left would have thought had Damore been retained. Yet what if Damore had argued on the wrong side of this issue? What if he had claimed that Google's policies were sexist and racist, and was fired for that? That could easily happen, if not at Google, then elsewhere in the corporate world. Is the precedent really as pleasant as all that? Google would argue that this is irrelevant, since what Damore did in his memo -- which argued, inter alia, that there are genetic differences between men and women that are relevant to engineering tasks -- was declare in effect that some of his co-workers were not competent enough to be there. In the words of one ex-Googleian (Googler? Goog?) Damore created a toxic workplace environment because it would be difficult then to create a team containing someone known essentially for declaring that other engineers were inferior. This is the crux of the company's argument: It had a responsibility to its workers and its shareholders to ensure a comfortable working environment, and retaining Damore would undercut that responsibility. Again, Damore is an unlikeable figure. But I feel, nevertheless, there is some sleight of hand in Google's argument. The memo that Damore wrote is being slightly misrepresented to make the company's argument stronger. Damore himself insists that his claim about genetic differences can be true only on the average; it means nothing about the competence of any particular 'diversity hire'. (One wonders, therefore, why he bothered to write it. Actually one doesn't; angry white men aren't really a mystery after 2016.) But if so, then there is no reason to feel that he would necessarily be impossible to put into a team. The larger question here is whether views such as Damore's should be ignored, stigmatised, or corrected, point by point. My instinct is always to go with the third. Damore's memo is an odd mix of evolutionary psychology mumbo-jumbo, on-point genetic science and political whining. The first and third elements of that mix are easily dealt with. The problem is the second element; there are indeed enough studies at the moment that suggest there are minor differences in how the brains of men and women behave when faced with certain problems. These are the studies that Damore quotes extensively. Ignoring or dismissing these studies is unwise; it suggests that there's a grand, dangerous truth that 'liberals' are seeking to hide. In fact, there isn't. The simple truth is that, first, the differences such studies claim, even if true, are way, way too small to explain existing hiring differentials or wage or gender gaps. Second, that the differences such studies claim, even if they exist, are way, way too small to make a difference to actual on-the-job competence. And third, that the differences such studies claim, even if they do exist, are in neurological approaches to problems that are vastly different from the real job of an engineer. Perhaps the last argument is the most intriguing. For it suggests that Damore didn't understand what it means to work at a company like Google, even as an engineer. It isn't about coding or number-crunching, which he incorrectly claimed his women colleagues might be worse at; it's about working in teams, and having the empathy to detect and fix problems as swiftly as possible. And it turns out Damore may not have been very good at that. That's one argument that Google could have run with: 'We don't care about the content of what this man said, but he understands neither data nor engineering. He's fired.' De-scaling of businesses, job losses and subsequent impact on disposable incomes have created negative sentiment among traders, business owners and workers alike, says Abhishek Waghmare. In a few weeks from now, the people of Gujarat will cast their votes to elect a new legislative assembly. This is the first time in 15 years that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is entering the poll battle without the popular face of Narendra Modi, who spearheaded three back-to-back electoral victories in 2002, 2007 and 2012, though with reducing seats and vote share. Though the direct economic impact of policies on citizens is debatable, three factors here are likely to impact the political outcome in Indias perennially lauded entrepreneurial state. Namely, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and its implementation, farmer unrest due to falling agricultural prices and inequality among social groups. Good and simple tax or not? The combined impact of demonetisation and implementation of the GST was disruptive in that it dried the liquidity on which the value chains of various sectors ran. While demonetisation blew away cash, the GST reduced the available working capital. The quantum of this impact is likely to have been especially harsh on Gujarat. Even if the number of operational factories in Gujarat is less than in the equally industrialised states of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, the gross fixed capital formation -- the measure of increase in investment in capital assets -- in Gujarat was more than that of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra combined, according to data from the Annual Survey of Industries 2014-15, the latest available. Textiles is one of the most important traditional economic sectors, providing large-scale employment, after only agriculture and construction. Gujarat accounts for a third of cloth production in India and ships 60 per cent of its textiles as exports. Surat, known as Indias silk city, is the countrys largest synthetic (man-made) fabric manufacturing hub (40 per cent), traditionally producing 50 million metres a day. Our daily fabric production has come down to 35 million metres a day. The initial effects of the GST dented all the recovery we had achieved in the aftermath of demonetisation, said Ashok Jirawala, president at the Federation of Gujarat Weavers Associations. "Surat alone ran 700,000 looms, of which about 90,000 have been sold as scrap in the past year at 20 per cent of the depreciated machine cost, he said. This has put more than 100,000 workers, indirect job workers and small establishment owners out of employment. Gujarat has 30 per cent of Indias looms, the highest for any state. Half of them were closed as of September-end, according to data on the website of the textile commissioner of India. Cashlessness impacted the small enterprises more, while the GST equally impacted small, medium and large enterprises. Traders input costs have increased due to GST and, at the same time, we have to pay tax before our sale, contrary to the pre-GST regime. "Our system of three-month credit that facilitated fast growth in our business is now turning against us, Manoj Agarwal, president, Federation of Surat Textile Traders Association, said. De-scaling of businesses, job losses and subsequent impact on disposable incomes has created negative sentiment among traders, business owners and workers alike. Agrarian economy While indebted agricultural households in India increased by eight per cent in the period from 2003 to 2013, those in Gujarat reduced 15 per cent in the same period. Gujarat is the highest per capita milk producer in India and the highest contributor to exports, too. It produces highest quality irrigated cotton, with record productivity. The state also has 15 per cent of Indias livestock-related establishments and employs 17 per cent of workers in the sector, the highest in India. As many as 3.3 million are employed in the livestock sector in Gujarat, according to the Sixth Economic Census. However, the tides for these two segments are seemingly turning down. Indias export of dairy products -- skimmed milk powder comprises half -- have been declining over the past five years, and so is the international price of milk powder. Productivity of cotton came down from 685 kg/hectare in 2013-14 to 587 kg per hectare in 2015-16, to rise to 673 kg in 2016-17 (provisional data). But, nationwide cotton production in the 2017 season (32.3 million bales) has been estimated to be below last years (33.1 million) despite an increase in area under cultivation (10.3 to 12.3 million hectares), meaning a drop in productivity. Over the year, cotton prices at the Rajkot wholesale market have dropped 20 per cent, from Rs 5,700 per quintal to Rs 4,500 per quintal. The issue of rehabilitation of tribals after the increase in height of the Sardar Sarovar dam has resurfaced, adding to rural unrest. Social inequality The current legislatve assembly has seen three chief ministers -- Narendra Modi, Anandiben Patel, Vijay Rupani. And, the re-emergence of quota-based agitations, especially led by Patels, the most influential community in the state. They are 12-15 per cent of the population; Scheduled Castes are seven per cent. While Patels are agitating against job insecurity, Dalits are mobilising against a rise in assaults from upper castes. A primary analysis of the data from the India Human Development Survey, commissioned jointly by the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Delhi, and University of Michigan, USA, yields some results. Though the Patels are deemed the most influential caste group, non-agricultural income per household for them is Rs 4,800 a year, while that for SCs and other backward castes (OBCs) is Rs 13,500 a year. On the other hand, average agricultural income per Patel household is Rs 104,000 a year, while that for other forward castes is Rs 48,400. For SCs, it is less than Rs 20,000 a year. Patels own twice as much land per household (31 acres) than SCs (16 acres). Patels on an average also earn less income from government and formal sector jobs than SCs, while leading all communities in agricultural income. These indicators help explain the reasons behind violent agitations in the cities of Gujarat in 2015 and 2016. The same unrest could get reflected electorally at the end of the year, possibly benefiting the main opposition grouping, the Congress. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani to his right, Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel to his left, releases water from dam gates in Jamnagar, Gujarat, August 30, 2016. Photograph: Press Information Bureau. 'The creation of Pakistan was integral to Britain's grand strategy.' 'If they were to ever leave India, Britain's military planners had made it clear that they needed to retain a foothold in the NWFP and Baluchistan because that would provide the means to retain control of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.' IMAGE: Lord Louis Mountbatten, the viceroy of India and his wife Lady Edwina Mountbatten flank Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah at the viceroy's house, now Rashtrapati Bhavan, April 9, 1947. Photograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Prasenjit K Basu is a Singapore-based economist, formerly chief economist for Southeast Asia & India at Credit Suisse First Boston, chief Asia economist at Daiwa Securities and global head of research at Maybank group. Basu speaks to Aditi Phadnis about his latest book, Asia Reborn: A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism. Your book is a modern economic and political history of the whole of Asia, told from an Asian perspective. Where do Pakistan and Afghanistan figure? The creation of Pakistan was integral to Britain's grand strategy. If they were to ever leave India, Britain's military planners had made it clear that they needed to retain a foothold in the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) and Baluchistan, because that would provide the means to retain control of Iran (where BP's predecessor, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, owned oil reserves), Iraq (where a British puppet monarchy enabled tight British control of the Iraqi Petroleum Co.) and the potentially oil-rich British protectorates of Kuwait, the Trucial States (now the UAE), Bahrain and Qatar. The problem for Britain was that the NWFP had elected Congress governments in both 1937 and 1946, and the NWFP delegation had entered the Constituent Assembly of India in December 1946 (defying the Muslim League's call to boycott it). The sordid story of how Nehru caved into Dickie Mountbatten's sly entreaties (with more than a little help from Edwina) to persuade Jawaharlal to agree to a referendum in the NWFP -- which Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted -- is one of the tragedies of the period. Khan Market in Delhi is named for Ghaffar Khan. But that is little recompense for what happened to the Pathans on both sides of the Durand Line over the past 70 years. Badshah Khan himself was largely confined to Pakistani jails for the rest of his life, in order to ensure that the ISI could subvert the peaceable Khudai Khidmatgars and instead train vast cadres of jihadi terrorists -- first the mujahideen led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, then the Taliban and Haqqani network, and later Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Pakistan remained a dominion until 1956, but duly followed its strategic destiny by joining the Baghdad Pact and CENTO. Its first election was to be held in 1959, but it became clear by 1958 that 'left wing' and pro-India parties like the ANP (Awami National party) in the NWFP, Mujib(-ur Rehman)'s Awami League, the Jiye Sind led by G M Shah and Ghous Bux Bizenjo's party in Baluchistan would win the election. So a military coup was mounted by Ayub Khan in 1958, with the connivance of the Americans, who made a Faustian bargain with Pakistan's army, allowing it to retain effective power in exchange for the US gaining access to British military bases in Pakistan -- such as the one Gary Powers took off from in Peshawar before his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra D Modi pays tribute to the statue of Sri Aurobindo at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, April 11, 2015. Photograph: MEAIndia/Flickr One of your theories is that the parts of Asia that were ruled by Japan (Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria and coastal China including Hong Kong) are the most prosperous today, while the parts that were ruled by Britain the longest (Bangladesh, Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, eastern UP, coastal Andhra) are the poorest. But there were enclaves which were ruled by other Western powers like France and Portugal, which are not too badly off, relatively... The prosperity of Japanese-ruled parts of Asia isn't a theory, it is just a fact. The CIA acknowledged in 1950 that Manchuria and Taiwan (respectively controlled and ruled by Japan for 40 and 50 years) were by far the most prosperous parts of Asia at the time (other than Japan itself). The only parts of China today that are industrialised are precisely those that Japan ruled. And because Japan ruled all of coastal China, the Western powers gave up their century-long treaty port rights in 1943, facilitating the genuine independence of China after the war. Similarly the parts of Asia ruled by Britain the longest are poorest, partly because they were looted more thoroughly, and subsequent investments were minimal in those areas -- which also experienced the horrific famine of 1943-44. The French and Portuguese enclaves in India were tiny, and so cannot be compared with the rest of India. The parts of Asia that the Portuguese ruled (East Timor, Macau, Goa, and 150 years each in Ceylon and Malacca in Malaysia) left no visible imprint of industrialisation, although Goa and Macau developed tourism sectors (mainly after the Portuguese had left Goa, and based on gambling in Macao). Pondicherry benefitted from the influence of the Hindu sage Sri Aurobindo, who was one of the leaders of the often violent nationalist response to the first partition of Bengal. French-ruled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were noticeably less industrialised than the Japanese-ruled parts of Asia in the first half of the 20th century. Agrarian reform in the Japanese-ruled areas also delivered agricultural prosperity there, in stark contrast to the rural poverty that pervaded European-ruled Asia. IMAGE: Indian bicycle troops in Somme, France, during World War I. Photograph: Kind courtesy Wikimedia Commons Your hypothesis is also that the British Indian armed forces were vital to holding the European empires together across Asia (from the Opium wars to the Boxer rebellion to World War I and World War II, and especially their aftermath). But Nehru dissipated this legacy. Please explain. The importance of the British Indian armed forces to the Allies became evident in WWI, with Indian soldiers playing the key role in Allied victories in Jerusalem, Haifa and Damascus, and the British defeats at Gallipoli (one of Churchill's follies) and Kut al-Amara in Iraq (with horrific humanitarian consequences for the Indian soldiers during and after the long Siege of Kut). In WWII, Indian troops played key roles in the illegal invasions of Iraq (which was supposedly independent; its elected PM Rashid Ali al-Gaylani wished to stay neutral in the war, but was instead ousted via the 1941 invasion) and Iran (where the modernising reformer Reza Shah was ousted in September 1941 by a joint Anglo-Soviet invasion, with Indian troops playing the key part in Britain taking control of southern Iran, where APOC owned the oilfields). Jawaharlal was a brilliant historian: his Glimpses of World History is a masterpiece. But his naivete on statecraft was astounding, as if his knowledge of history was somehow utterly separated from his approach to governance and foreign policy. While Patel saw clearly that India's traditional role as Tibet's main ally (and the only country with four consulates in Tibet, while China had no representation in 1950) was essential to India's security, Jawaharlal allowed China to invade and occupy Tibet -- while doing nothing militarily or diplomatically to thwart this thrust from a rogue Communist regime that most of the world didn't recognise as legitimate at the time. More broadly, the British Indian army and navy should have inherited Britain's paramountcy in the Indian Ocean area. Pakistan was created to enable Britain to retain its paramountcy in West Asia -- which was part of a continuum of military control that took in Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. But Suez (1956) demonstrated that Britain's military power was hollow without the Indian army -- and Britain soon began to abandon Ghana (1956), Malaya (1957) and other colonies; it wasn't a surprise that 1956 was also the year that Pakistan ceased to be a dominion. This was when India needed to step into the strategic breach across the Indian Ocean. Instead Nehru pursued his quixotic dreams of leading a non-aligned bloc, while utterly neglecting the military. By giving the defence ministry to (V K) Krishna Menon (who was thoroughly distrusted by Gandhi, Patel and Azad, who recognised him as a 'Communist fellow traveller') Nehru invited the disaster of 1962 by under-funding the military while strutting forward unprepared along the border. The failure to use air superiority was another glaring strategic error in 1962 (the mirror image of how US air power enabled the allies to win the battles of Kohima and Imphal in 1944). IMAGE: Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru. You feel that not enough attention has been paid to the role of militant outfits like the Indian National Army of Subhas Chandra Bose and the Ghadar party in the Independence movement which undermined the loyalty of the British Indian armed forces by sparking the RIAF and RIN mutinies in 1946 that forced Britain to abandon its long term plans for its Indian empire. But surely these movements were underpinnings for a bigger tumult that had over taken India... The biggest tumult during WWI was the Ghadar rebellion led by Hardayal, Rashbehari, Vishnu Pingle, Maulana Barkatulla and Bagha Jatin. (Gandhi, meanwhile, was recruiting Indian soldiers for the British). The Ghadar rebellion scared the British enough for them to introduce the Rowlatt Act in March 1919, despite Montague's promise of August 20, 1917 to move towards 'progressive self-government' in India. This was a nod to (US President Woodrow) Wilson's 14 Points and his central plank of 'self determination', which the British and French interpreted as not applying to their empires (and instead only to those of the defeated powers, whose territories were subjected to an Anglo-French race for control via the Sykes-Picot plan). During WWII, Gandhi's Quit India call of August 1942 was crushed by a British military response, and the jailing of the top and middle leadership of the Congress, which was thus rendered moribund until 1945. Half a million Indians joined the British armed forces in August-December 1942, demonstrating the impotent failure of the Quit India call. But India's fight for independence continued in south-east Asia under the leadership of Subhas Bose, who created a provisional government of Free India (74 years ago on October 21, 1943) which was fully financed by Indians in the region, and had its own gold-backed currency. The INA raised the flag of free India over Moirang in Manipur in April 1944, with Moirembang Koireng Singh (who would later become Manipur's first chief minister) leading its Manipuri allies, and A Z Phizo leading the Naga contingent in the INA. The British had kept a tight lid on information about the INA's military victories and losses. But when the INA trials began in November 1945, the people of India heard for the first time about this freedom army of men and women, soldiers and civilian recruits who had fought doughtily for our freedom. Within a fortnight, the governors of Punjab and NWFP were beseeching (British Viceroy Field Marshal Archibald) Wavell to call off further trials of INA soldiers, for fear of a full scale rebellion in the key recruiting grounds of the British Indian army. Far from sentencing them to death for high treason, Dhillon-Sahgal-Shahnawaz were acquitted on January 4, 1946, in the hope of keeping a lid on the brewing mutinous sentiment in the armed forces. But 5,200 personnel of the Royal Indian Air Force still mutinied in January, and the HMIS Talwar spurred a mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy on February 8, 1946, which spread to 78 of the 88 ships of the RIN by 18th February -- and to every one of the RIN's ports. On 19th February evening, (British Prime Minister Clement) Attlee announced in the (House of) Commons that he would send three of his senior-most colleagues to negotiate India's freedom. The well laid out plans for holding India until 1960, and retaining a solid British commercial foothold through Divide and Rule, lay shattered. Like every other major nation, India ultimately threw off the shackles of colonial rule through military means (although ahimsa had played a key role in mass mobilisation in 1920-21). IMAGE: Part of the Raman Singh government's outreach programme in Chhattisgarh, the Lok Suraj Abhiyan delivers items like LPG cylinders and stoves to villagers in Bastar. Photograph: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com What can India learn from the development economics of the South East Asian countries? The South-East Asian economies, led by Singapore and later emulated by China, sought to attract FDI by multinational corporations (and overseas Chinese businessmen to China). The more appropriate model for India will be the model of Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Like them, India has a large entrepreneurial community that can be induced to participate in industrial development. The key is to: a. Ensure that real estate as an alternative means of wealth creation is minimised; b. Credit is directed to those with a demonstrable ability to create world-leading and export-oriented businesses, rather than to property speculators; c. The bureaucracy develops long-term expertise in key areas of industrial development (skills training, labour market flexibility and redeployment, technology imports and R&D) and public enterprises are led by specialist managers with long term mandates to make them world class (and to privatise partly or wholly if that is the only means to turn around a chronic loss maker). Additionally, our Constitution hobbles social development (public health, nutrition, education, etc.) by making them all state subjects, while giving all the revenue-raising power to the Centre. This is a problem that Japan, Korea and Taiwan never had to confront. Without universal literacy, and the basic levels of health and sanitation necessary to a modern existence, we cannot expect to achieve the 10% annual economic growth that our demographics should be delivering at this stage. That land reform in India was uneven is an impediment (relative to Japan, Korea and Taiwan) but not insurmountable. But rapid industrial growth is still needed to move people from low marginal-productivity agriculture to labour intensive manufacturing (the first stage of industrial development that India has largely skipped). Vietnam, Bangladesh and Cambodia are now demonstrating that labour intensive manufacturing still has a role. The self serving consensus that has emerged in India about robotics and artificial intelligence precluding the basis of labour intensive manufacturing is empirically unsound, in my view. Those working in IBM's artificial intelligence lab, for instance, will tell you that the human element of work will never be completely eliminated. The need for labour market reform identified in the BJP's 2014 election manifesto still remains relevant today, although it has only been modestly implemented in five states. MUST READ features in the RELATED LINKS alongside A Border Security Force jawan was killed when Pakistan Rangers fired at a patrol party along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir's Samba district, drawing heavy retaliation from the Indian force in which three posts were damaged and two rangers injured. "Pak Rangers fired at the BSF patrol in Samba sector around 0930 hours today," a senior BSF officer said. He said that due to the unprovoked firing, constable Tapan Mondal sustained serious injury and later died. "The BSF carried out calibrated retributive action against Rangers in Samba sector and caused serious damage to 2-3 Pak posts and grievous injuries to two Pak Rangers," he said, adding Pak Rangers violated ceasefire. "The retaliatory action continued till 1400 hours," the officer added. On October 31, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by firing from small arms along the Line of Control in Karmara belt of Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district, resulting in injuries to a girl. There was another incident on October 26, when Pakistani troops fired at Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of Kerni sector but there was no casualty. On October 18, eight civilians, including a two-year-old child, were injured in heavy Pakistani shelling. Image only for representation. IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing a rally in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, on Thursday. Photograph: @BJP4India/Twitter Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attacked the Congress for promising 'zero tolerance' on corruption when its own chief minister was facing allegations of graft and said the state's ruling party had become a 'laughing club'. Addressing a rally ahead of the November 9 assembly elections, Modi said it was time to rid 'Devbhoomi', or the land of the gods as Himachal Pradesh is known, of monsters. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Modi said, was 'out on bail' on graft charges. "I feel the Congress has become a laughing club. The chief minister is himself out on bail... And he is out on bail on what charges? That of corruption. He is facing serious allegations," Modi said. He asked the crowd whether it could digest the fact that such a chief minister had released the Congress manifesto promising to combat corruption. Even a small child from Himachal would not fall for it, he declared. Targeting Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador during the stand-off in Dokalam earlier this year, Modi said, "The leader whose father, grandmother and father of the grandmother were PMs of India, and who has been born and brought up in the ruling family, is acting in an insulting way. "Isn't it insulting when these people hold talks with Chinese leaders on Dokalam instead of asking the elected government?" The prime minister also brought up India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a reference to the Jan Sangh, which he said was created to counter the Congress through the efforts of leaders like Shanta Kumar, a former chief minister of the state and a BJP candidate from the area. "Pandit Nehru... said theyd uproot and throw away the Jan Sangh during its early years," Modi said. Continuing his attack, he said it was not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters but a party of corruption and dynasty politics. "Yeh Congress party sadi hui soch ka namoona hai. Hum jab Congress mukt bharat kehte hain, hum is sadi hui soch se mukt bharat chahte hai (The party is an example of a rotten thought process. When we ask for a Congress-free India, we want an India free of this thinking)," he said. People across the country were engaged in Swachhta Abhiyan (cleanliness campaign) and were 'wiping out' the old party whenever they got the opportunity through elections, Modi said. India would forgive those who work in public life with honesty and make mistakes but not those who do wrong and deceive people intentionally, he said. The Congress, he added, must introspect on why people were punishing it. "But one needs to have soul to introspect." Modi also accused the Congress of allowing the growth of 'danavas' (monsters) in Devbhoomi. "It is time to save Himachal Pradesh from those who looted it...from the monsters," he added. There are, the prime minister said, five monsters in Himachal Pradesh that people need to get rid off -- 'mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia'. Exhorting people to come out in large numbers, he said he wanted record polling this time. "I know we will win anyway, because I have worked in Himachal and know the pulse of the people of this hill state... You have the opportunity to dismiss those who looted the state by pushing the right button on November 9," he said. Making a strong pitch for the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi said people should remember Wazir Ram Singh Pathania, a local freedom fighter from the British era, when they cast their votes to bring the 'right' party to power in the hill state. The BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal also addressed the rally. Kangra district has 15 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly. The prime minister is scheduled to address two more rallies in the district ahead of the elections. Virbhadra Singh is facing cases related to income tax returns, disproportionate assets and money laundering. The cases are being investigated by various probe agencies. Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 2008 Mumbai attack case, according to documents seized from a Pakistani compound where the Al Qaeda founder was killed in a United States raid in 2011. The Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday released 4,70,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden. The files include Laden's son's wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born terrorist. The documents revealed that Laden closely followed news related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications. An Indian Express article titled 'Omar Sheikhs Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handled Headley' was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated November 16, 2009. An article 'Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK' published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Ladens computer. A Press Trust of India story headlined 'Al Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pakistan Government: Gates', dated February 9, 2010, was also found on Laden's computer. Another article found on his computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) links. The news was published by The Time of India on November 15, 2009. Laden also saved on his computer another PTI article, titled: 'India to send magistrate to US to record Headley's statement'. Laden highlighted in yellow some portion of the article titled 'Pak Major handled Headley's India recce', published on March 16, 2010. The highlighted portion reads, 'The dossiers also sought the custody of Pakistani terrorist, Ilyas Kashmiri.' The documents also revealed that Laden was interested in news related to Kashmir and several terrorists. An Economic Times story 'US asks Pakistan to find Iyas Kashmiri' dated January 7, 2010 was among the saved documents on Ladens computer. A February 2009 article about 'Pakistani Kashmiri militants now fighting NATO forces' was also found. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the release of recovered Al Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of the terrorist organisation. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the CIA put online 470,000 additional files. However, the CIA withheld release of nearly two dozen videos, including the one titled 'The Story of India' stating that they were copyrighted videos. The 'Story of India' is a BBC documentary series about the history of India. The documents also include Laden's personal journal, over 18,000 document files and 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence and imagery gathered or generated by Al Qaeda for a variety of purposes. "The CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security," he said. "The materials are posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited," the CIA said. The CIA said these materials provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within Al Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that the terror group faced at the time of Laden's death. Other themes in the materials include Al Qaedas preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the group's attempts to promulgate its message through western media. The documents also provide insight into Al Qaeda's efforts to exploit the Arab awakening for its benefit and that of the global jihad, Ladens efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine and the terror group's efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals. The CIA said the information remaining in the Abbottabad collection that has not been released publicly includes materials that are sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; materials protected by copyright; pornography; malware and blank, corrupted and duplicate file. Actor Kamal Haasan, who has been flirting with the idea of entering politics and has promised that he will make an announcement to this effect on his birthday next week, is also a columnist with the popular Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan. The fifth in his series of columns -- titled The storm that is centred in me: You cannot anymore say there is no Hindu extremism -- is all about his much-publicised visit to the Ennore coastline off Chennai which has been overrun by factories and industrial effluents. The column ends with a question posed to the actor by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan (Haasan had called on him in Thiruvananthapuram in September). The CM asks: Of late, sectarian tendencies and regressive ideologies are trying to gain a foothold in Tamil Nadu, the infiltrating forces of Hindutva are weakening Dravida principles. As a social observer what is your view? Haasan replies: Always, as now, that prosperity is accompanied by foolhardiness can be seen worldwide by the attraction fascism holds for a few. This attempt to make the world turn right is not going to win, I believe it is a temporary fashion, like hairstyle, and wont last long. Those of the old generation who are upset at society becoming equal (specifically the upper castes among them) are trying to sugarcoat their outdated traditions and restrictions and feed them to the young generation. They are spreading their old thoughts through culture, festivals, worship, music and arts. The right-wingers from other religions too set out to dispute their claims and oppose them. This is the case not just in Tamil Nadu but I see it as a national regression. Science, knowledge, the natural attraction that progress holds for the human race, will ensure that the ranks of the rationalists will exceed those who oppose them. But the youth of Tamil Nadu, rather than wait for this universal rule to take effect, are actively engaged in the task of saving Tamil Nadu. The old will give way to the new. The traditionalists, instead of highlighting the praiseworthy features of an ancient culture, are engaged in concealing them. Destroying agriculture, trying to sell underground natural gas deposits, or attempting to project the ancient epics as history is the evil deeds they have been perpetrating for years on end. The many festivals which were conducted peacefully have today become noisy and raucous, as commerce trumps piety. The people of Tamil Nadu have been seeing this for many years now. At a time when an entire generation has grown up without awareness of caste differences, these traditionalists have infiltrated modern arenas inhabited by this generation to preach their caste differences. You can see it in the open listing of cine artistes on the basis of caste on the internet. Earlier such Hindu right-wingers would not indulge in violence with other religionists, but through their arguments and counter-arguments provoke them into violence. Once this old strategy started losing out, they have started doing through muscle power what they couldnt through cunning. They have also started indulging in violence. Show me one Hindu extremist! is a challenge they cannot extend anymore, for extremism has spread so much in their ranks. This extremism is no victory or progress for those who call themselves Hindus. The motto Truth alone triumphs being replaced by might is right will make savages of us all. Change is the only constant. Regardless of how many are trying to push it on a backward path, the worlds force will take it forward. The day is not far off when Tamil Nadu will once again be beacon of social reform. Today it is Kerala that is the prime example of social reform. My greetings to you on it. IMAGE: Actor Kamal Haasan with Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan at the latter's official residence in Thiruvananthapuram on September 1, 2017. Photograph: PTI Photo. FBI says investigators have found a second Uzbek man they had been seeking in connection with the attack. United States President Donald Trump on Thursday demanded death penalty for Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov after he killed eight people in a truck attack in New York. Saipov, accused of carrying out the Islamic State-inspired assault on the New York City, was on Thursday charged with terrorism offences by US prosecutors who said he decided to carry out the truck attack 'to inflict maximum damage against civilians'. Trump has been vocal in condemning the attack by the 29-year-old man, who ploughed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path near the World Trade Centre, killing eight people and injuring nearly a dozen others. 'NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!' Trump said in a tweet, in reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's statement that Saipov, a resident of New Jersey, 'requested to display ISIS's flag' in his hospital room. Trump said on Wednesday that it was 'another attack by a very sick and deranged person' while extending his 'thoughts, condolences and prayers' to the victims. He said he will ask the Congress to end an immigrant visa programme through which Saipov entered the country. Saipov was charged with providing material support to the Islamic State group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. He crashed the truck into a school bus, left the vehicle brandishing imitation firearms. He was shot by police. It was the the worst terrorist attack in on the city since 9/11. Saipov underwent a surgery in a New York hospital on Wednesday. He appeared in federal court on Thursday in a wheelchair and did not enter a plea. A 10-page complaint was filed by the FBI before a federal court in New York against him. The FBI complaint stated that Saipov said he felt good about what he had done. Saipov told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State videos, in particular one showing their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it said. The suspect decided to conduct a truck attack 'to inflict maximum damage against civilians' and that he specifically chose to strike on Halloween 'because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the holiday', the complaint says. He began planning an attack a year ago and decided two months ago to use a truck, officials said. 'In particular, Saipov was motivated to commit the attack after viewing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi... questioned what Muslims in the United States and elsewhere were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq,' the complaint said. During a search operation, federal officials obtained two cell phones from his possession. One cellphone contained approximately 90 videos, many of which appear to be, IS-related propaganda. The cell phone also contained approximately 3,800 images, many of which appear to be IS propaganda. Internet search history of the second cell phone reflects, among other things, that Saipov searched for a store in Passaic in New jersey on October 4, searched for Halloween in New York on October 15, and searched for truck rentals on October 18, the complaint said. After Saipov rented the truck from Home Depot, he entered the New York City. In carrying out the attack, Saipov relied on the playbook laid out by ISIS in recent years, officials said. "He appears to have followed almost exactly to a 'T' the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before, with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack," John Miller, New York Police Department commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at an earlier news conference. A handwritten 'document' found near the scene had both Arabic and English text, and included the message that the Islamic State would endure, the complaint said. In the vicinity of a place where Saipov was shot, he dropped the weapons, which appear to be a paintball gun and pellet gun, and a black bag. Inside the Bag, law enforcement officers recovered, among other things, three knives and a wallet. Meanwhile, the FBI said that the investigators have found a second Uzbek man they had been seeking in connection with the attack. The FBI had released an alert saying they were seeking information about the second man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, in connection with the attack. With ANI inputs. IMAGE: The white pick-up truck that Saipov rammed into bicyclists and pedestrians after entering the West St-Houston St pedestrian-bike path in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday. Photograph: Reuters The winter session of Parliament is likely to be a curtailed affair as most MPs would be busy campaigning for the Gujarat assembly polls to be held in two phases in December. While a final call is yet to be taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, two senior government functionaries said the session could be held in November end and may last a week or ten days. The date of the meeting of the CCPA headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh has not yet been finalised, they said. The Gujarat elections will be held on December 9 and 14 and the counting of votes will take place on December 18 together with Himachal Pradesh, which goes to poll on November 9. The winter session is usually held from the middle of November till the third week of December. "It is already November 2. We still don't have the dates for Parliament. I am hoping Parliament to start either on November 20 or 21. Why the government is so cagey about announcing the dates," Trinamool Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha Derek O'Brien said. "It may be a good idea to make a Parliament calendar at the top of the year. Why are they playing games before announcing the dates," he added. Communist Party of India's D Raja deplored any attempt by the government to have a short session. "The government has not yet communicated formally to us. Shortening of winter session is not right. Our Parliament is not even sitting for a minimum of 100 working days in a year. Elections are happening in the states but it cannot be the reason to shorten the winter session", Raja, CPI leader in the Rajya Sabha, said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday attended the silver jubilee function of the Akshardham temple of the Bochasanwasi Shri Aksharpurushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha in Gandhinagar which has many followers in the Patidar community in Gujarat. Modi did not speak much about politics but made a reference to the agitation by the Patels for quotas, while recalling his long association with the seers of the Swaminarayan sect, apparently seeking to strike a chord with the Patidar community. "This Swaminaryan sect has a very large following among the Patel community members. Patel community has traditionally been with the Bharatiya Janata Party, but a section of the community has turned against the party due to recent agitation for reservation," he said. The Congress is trying to wean away Patidar voters, who have been the bedrock of the BJP's support base in the state, apart from the upper castes and the Vaishya community, from the saffron party. Led by Hardik Patel, a sizeable section of the Patidars has been demanding reservation in government jobs and educational institutions under the OBC quota. In his address, Modi praised late Pramukh Swami Maharaj for bringing in "modern management" in BAPS while keeping the Indian tradition followed by seers alive. "Pramukh Swami Maharaj constructed around 1200 temples in his life time. They are not just brick-and-stone structures, but centres of cultural and spiritual enlightenment. "He brought modern management to the sect and used to complete all the projects on time," the prime minister said. In April this year, Modi had paid an emotional tribute to Pramukh Swami who died at the sect's temple in Sarangpur in Botad district. "When I was the chief minister of Gujarat, I had invited saints of the sect to give lectures to our bureaucrats on how to complete projects in time. The governments are known to delay projects and Narmada dam is a glaring example," Modi said. He was referring to the Sardar Sarovar Project on river Narmada, the foundation stone for which was laid in 1961 by then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but was competed this year. Hailing Pramukh Swami Maharaj for his "out-of-the-box" thinking, Modi said the seer had built a 3D theatre at the Akshardham temple in Delhi, and also a stadium at the sect's shrine in the UK. "A saint can think of such things and implement them is a good sign," he said. "This sect has around 1100 saints which should be the highest in number for any sect after the Ramkrishna Mission," Modi said, adding that in this materialistic age, it is very difficult to attract youth to give up worldly things. The prime minister also recalled his personal encounter with the Swami. "When I was chief minister, Maharaj called me one day and asked for audio recordings of my public speeches. I sent them to him. After a few days he called me again, asking me to meet him. "When I met him he had prepared detailed notes after listening to each and every speech delivered by me and available in audio recordings. He then instructed me what not to speak and what to speak. He directly told me that you cannot speak certain things in your speech. This shows that he used to take interest in my progress," Modi reminisced. Modi also remembered the Swami called him six times to find out if he was safe after he had gone to Srinagar to unfurl the national flag during the Ekta Yatra led by BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi in 1992. The sect also has a large following among the backward classes in the poll-bound state. Thousands of devotees were present during the grand celebrations marking the silver jubilee of the temple. The present head of BAPS sect Mahant Swami praised Modi, calling him a hardworking prime minister, and hoped that the work he had started for the country would get completed in time. Photographs: @narendramodi/Twitter IMAGE: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi meeting the family members of the victims of Unchahar NTPC boiler blast, outside the post-mortem house of district hospital in Raebareli on Thursday. All Photographs: PTI Photo The toll in the massive explosion that ripped a boiler at NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district on Wednesday has risen to 29, the state-run power giant said on Thursday. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Union minister of state for power R K Singh visited the accident site. Taking a break from his Gujarat election tour, the Congress vice president visited the district hospital and NTPC premises and enquired about the incident from officers present. He was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress state president Raj Babbar. "How many workers were working there?" he was heard asking officers at the Unchahar unit of NTPC. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," Rahul told reporters. Azad demanded a high-level probe by an outside agency to bring out the fact. IMAGE: Union Power Minster R K Singh, right, with UP Power Minister Srikant Sharma, left, visiting the Unchahar NTPC plant on Thursday. Rahul also came face to face with Singh during his NTPC visit. When asked about the incident, Singh said there could be two issues -- design or maintenance. "We are looking into both the aspects," he said. On charges that the plant unit was commissioned ahead of time, he said it was not done in haste. "The work was completed before March and after two-three months of trial, it was commissioned," he said. Singh also said the compensation by NTPC had been raised from Rs five lakh to Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased. Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma and UP power minister Srikant Sharma also visited Raebareli and met the injured. Gandhi took a break from his ongoing 'Navsarjan Yatra' in poll-bound Gujarat and rushed to Rae Bareli, his mother Sonia Gandhi's Lok Sabha constituency, to meet the families of victims of the explosion. The Congress president has expressed shock at the 'terrible tragedy'. Azad said she has been discharged from hospital on Tuesday. Had she been well, she would have visited the families of the victims, he said. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad, had announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the family of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, besides Rs 25,000 for other injured workers. IMAGE: Rahul Gandhi visiting the injured victims of the boiler blast at the district hospital. UP Principal Secretary-Home Arvind Kumar told reporters in Lucknow that the toll in the NTPC boiler blast has risen to 26. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. In a statement, the National Thermal Power Corporation has said that at unit number six of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon. There was an opening in corner number two from which gas and steam 'escaped' affecting the people working around the area, the central public sector undertaking said. It added that around 80 people were rushed to the NTPC Hospital, most of whom were discharged after first-aid. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. Meanwhile, the state administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that he was 'deeply pained' by the accident at the power plant. Modi approved ex gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those killed. 'Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident,' PMO India said on Twitter. The Union power minister also announced an ex gratia amount of Rs 20 lakh to the families of the deceased, Rs 10 lakh for the seriously injured and Rs 2 lakh to the other injured over and above the statutory compensation, it said. Gavin Williamson, a close aide of Prime Minister Theresa May, was on Thursday appointed as Britain's new defence secretary after his predecessor Michael Fellon resigned amid a deepening sexual harassment scandal engulfing United Kingdom parliamentarians. Fallon,65, resigned as defence secretary saying his conduct may have fallen below the high standards expected amid revelations that he had made unwanted advances towards a journalist years ago. He was replaced by 41-year-old Williamson, the MP for South Staffordshire, who has been responsible for exerting discipline over the prime minister's fractious parliamentary party since last year. Williamson was closely involved in negotiating the confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist party that secured the parliamentary support May needed to govern in the aftermath of June's general election. "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false, but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," Fallon said in his resignation letter to May. It remains unclear if it was the particular revelation of Fallon repeatedly placing his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer that triggered his decision to step down or there were other incidents involving an abuse of power that may have precipitated his departure. Hartley-Brewer, at the centre of the allegations that came to light earlier this week, has stressed that she did not see herself as a victim and that the incident had not "remotely upset or distressed" anyone. "If this is over kneegate, him touching my knee 15 years ago and me not having any issue with it today, this is the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a Cabinet minister ever," she said. The British prime minister in her response to Fallon's resignation letter praised his "diligent service" and welcomed the "particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others". Fallon, described as a Conservative party heavyweight and even tipped as a future prime minister, becomes the first victim of a deepening scandal over sexual misconduct in the corridors of political power in the UK. Williamson has been running the Tory whips' office since being appointed chief whip by Theresa May in 2016. He has been replaced by Julian Smith, Tory MP for Skipton and Ripon, as chief whip of the Conservative party. While May moved quickly to appoint a new defence minister without the need for a very wide reshuffle, the position of another of her senior ministers, First Secretary of State Damian Green, remains precarious after disclosures by an academic and Conservative party activist Kate Maltby. He has categorically denied making unwanted sexual advances towards Maltby but remains under investigation by Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood on the orders of May. There are growing fears that Fallon's surprise resignation could trigger a freefall within government ranks and lead to more shake-ups. "Parliament now has to look at itself and the prime minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment," Fallon said soon after his resignation. His name had appeared on an unverified list of sexual misconduct, a so-called dirty dossier, circulating in Westminster. It has attracted a mixed response because it implicates MPs who have had consensual affairs with colleagues in the same space as more serious accusations of sexual abuse. The prime minister is struggling to contain the crisis and opened parliamentary proceedings yesterday with a statement on the issue, stressing that she had been holding a series of meetings to set up a "common, transparent, independent" grievance procedure. Indian-origin Opposition Labour MP Lisa Nandy challenged her in the House of Commons over her failure to act over sexual abuse cover-up she had informed her about three years ago -- when May was the UK home secretary. "On three occasions, I asked her (Theresa May) to act and on three occasions she did not," Nandy claimed. May assured the House that she was determined to take firm action and is set to hold a meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn early next week to address the issue across party lines. She has reportedly read the "riot act" to her Cabinet, warning them to ensure exemplary behaviour. IMAGE: Michael Fallon, Britain's ex-Secretary of State for Defence, in London. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters 'Even now, I look at my phone at night looking for a message from her.' 'She hasn't done anything wrong; she fought against the bad, she fought for justice.' 'So, I know she will get justice one day.' IMAGE: Gauri Lankesh, right, with her mother Indira, centre, and niece. November 5 will mark two months since Gauri Lankesh was murdered outside her home. The murderers are yet to be identified and arrested. When Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier spoke to her mother Indira Lankesh at her younger daughter Kavitha Lankesh's Bengaluru home, she broke down several times. Indira Lankesh spoke for more than an hour, ending the conversation by saying, "I talk about her to all the newspapers, thinking something good would come out of it, and she will get justice." Gauri, my first child, was far more mature for her age. When she came to see Kavitha, my second child, in the hospital, she was just 3, but was not at all jealous of the newborn. She was so understanding that she said, "Let Amma be with the new baby, I will sleep with my grandmother." She was such a quiet child that I don't remember her ever fighting with her siblings. She was 7 when Indrajit, my son, was born and she loved taking care of him as a big sister. Being the youngest, he was the pampered one at home, but that did not make her envious of her brother. In school and college she had lots of friends and they used to come home regularly. She was not only friendly, but very kind to everybody. Though never a topper in class, she used to pass always with a first class. By the time she was in college, Gauri had become quite vocal about the rights of women and spoke always for equality. I could not believe the transformation; from a soft-spoken girl to a strong young woman fighting for equality, against caste discrimination and injustice. When her maid respectfully accepted her salary, Gauri would ask her not to do so. 'You worked to earn the money, accept it as your right,' she would say. She was instrumental in changing me, too. I used to address my husband (the late editor, writer, film-maker P Lankesh) as 'yajamaanaru' (master). She told me one day, 'He's not your yajamanaru and you are not his slave. Stop calling him that.' After that, I addressed him as 'namma mane varu' (the man of my family). Though she was close to her father, when we fought, she always supported me. She would tell her father, 'Amma works so hard in the shop and also takes care of the family. You should not say anything to Amma.' More than a daughter, she took care of me and was always on my side. Her father was an influential figure in her life, always recommending the kind of books to read. He gave only books as presents, and not jewellery or dolls or dresses. He used to take the children to the book store on birthdays and ask them to buy as many books as they wanted. That was how her love for books started. She was a voracious reader, more than her siblings. When she was studying in Paris, her father had a stroke, but we hid the news from her as we knew she would get upset and fly back immediately. When she called on his birthday, he had almost recovered and without thinking, he said, 'Now I am fine. You don't worry'. She got so alarmed and pestered me to know the truth. I had no other go, but to tell her what had happened. Then she said, 'I am coming back right now.' I told her, 'This is precisely why we didn't inform you.' IMAGE: Indira Lankesh. In a way, it was my husband who inspired her to be fearless and straight forward. He was that kind of person, a person who was very brave. He never accepted advertisements from anyone including politicians for his newspaper Lankesh Patrike. He did not want to be indebted to anyone. Gauri followed the same path when she took over the paper after her father's death. When my husband was working as an assistant professor of English at Bangalore University, he used to speak in public places about corruption and criticise the government in strong words. When the university asked him for an explanation about his speeches as he was not supposed to talk like that as a government servant, he resigned and came home. He had always been like that -- fearless and bold. Once he caught an MLA's son copying and did not let him write the exam. He didn't care whether anyone had any political connections or not; he only fought against injustice. He started Lankesh Patrike in 1980 after he resigned his job at the university. People loved his paper, but the powers that be were scared. He used to attack the people in power without fear, and they were scared of him, unlike today. Today, politicians have become so powerful that they silence those who attack them. It was not that there were no threats then; there were, but it was not like what we witness today. When she was in college she got close to Chidanand Rajghatta (the well-known journalist, currently The Times of India's US correspondent). I was against it as I wanted her to concentrate on her studies. I came to know from my friends that despite my objections, she was still going out with him. During that time, a young man known to us had come to see her. Maybe because of her relationship with Rajghatta, she came home that day after cutting her hair very short. She thought he would reject her if she had short hair. I was so angry to see my daughter in short hair that I slapped her! Without uttering a word, she went inside. She was a college girl and a very bold one, but she didn't say a word against me although I slapped her. She never did say a word against me. That was how my daughter was. I told her to get married to Rajghatta and if they had no such plans, she should end the relationship. It was after my warning that they got married. Anyway, the marriage did not work and they got divorced. But they were in touch as friends. Gauri remained single, but she loved children and adored her niece and nephews. Gauri studied journalism in Bangalore and then moved to Delhi. From there, she got a scholarship to study in Paris for one year. After she became a journalist, the father and daughter became even more close. She used to call from Delhi and discuss all her important assignments with her father. Taking over Lankesh Patrike My husband worked till the last moment of his life, I would say. He came home after getting the paper ready for the week on a Tuesday night and went to bed, but he didn't get up in the morning. When he passed away, she was in Delhi, but was here to meet him a week earlier. She was very distraught to hear the news. Hhis death was a huge shock for all of us. All those who worked for Lankesh Patrike wanted to know if the paper would continue. Both Gauri and Indrajit decided to jointly run the paper. One thing Gauri felt quite bad about was her lack of knowledge of her mother tongue, Kannada. All my children are proficient in English and not Kannada. After she took over the paper, she learnt Kannada and started writing a lot too. Unfortunately, differences cropped up between the sister and brother over the kind of stories they wanted to publish in the paper. Unlike Indrajit, Gauri was very bold and like her father, she wanted to be aggressive in her approach to every issue which my son did not like. He preferred to have a moderate, soft, voice. I tried my best to patch them up, but there were some people who took advantage of the situation and created a wedge between them. I could not do anything to bring them together and it was very upsetting for me. The consolation was that they split only professionally and not as brother and sister. While Indrajit held on to Lankesh Patrike, Gauri left and started Gauri Lankesh Patrike and followed her father's style of functioning. One day she asked me to pen my memoir; my life with the well-known writer and journalist P Lankesh. I am not a writer and I told her I didn't know to write. But she persuaded me, encouraged me to write whatever came to my mind, in the language that I think. She said she would polish it before publishing it. He had titled his life story as Hulimavina Mara (The Sour Mango Tree), so I decided to write Mulimavu Mattu, Naanue (The Sour Mango Tree And Me). The book starts with me getting married to him and it ends with him passing away. Gauri wanted me to be very honest while writing the book and true to myself. I had a life that was full of ups and downs, both financial and personal. From extreme happiness to sadness, I had felt all the emotions in my married life. My life changed after I came to know about my husband's affairs. I used to love and respect him till then, but after that, love went out of our marriage. We respected each other till the end, but I lost the love I had for him. When I sat down and went back in years, I experienced mixed feelings, happiness and also sadness. I cried many times writing what I went through. Gauri knew everything that had happened in my life, but my son was young at that time. Only when he read what I wrote did he become aware of so many things. 'Only from your book did I come to know how much you struggled in life,' my son told me. After serialising the story, Gauri published it as a book from which I read a few chapters at the Bangalore Lit Fest. I chose the chapters on my husband and Gauri. It was only because of her that I wrote my life story, otherwise the idea would not have come to my mind. If you ask me what my husband would have said if he had read my book, I think he would have said,'Mmeow!' That was what he always said if he wanted my attention. IMAGE: Gauri with her niece. As Gauri did not have a family or children, her life was her paper. She dedicated every moment of her life to her paper. I feel she would have behaved differently if she had children. She was not only a journalist, but an activist too. It was the activist in her that made work closely with Naxalites. She was against caste discrimination, Hindutva, beef politics, etc and was very vocal about her disapproval. I was a bit upset about her involvement in these issues, but then I could not dissuade her. Some of the issues she took up were so grave that even she knew something would happen to her; in fact, she had told me also that they would try to harm her. When she used very strong words against someone or some political party, I would tell her to tone it down and be a little less aggressive. I used to tell her constantly to be cautious as I was always worried about her safety. On the 5th of September around 7.30 in the evening I got a call from Gauri's neighbour. She said, 'Your daughter has fallen in front of the gate. Please come fast. I have already informed the police and called for an ambulance.' I thought she might have fainted due to fatigue. Only my granddaughter Esha and myself were at home. Kavitha had gone to play badminton. While we were on our way, my brother called me and said, 'We see on TV that Gauri has been attacked.' A week earlier, she had told me about some people lurking near her house, but then she also said it could be sex workers. By the time we reached there, in 15 or 20 minutes, the place was crowded with the police, people and the media. The police didn't let us go in initially. Then I saw the car near the gate with the headlights on... and there she was lying on the ground, face down, with her hands spread out... I will never be able to erase that image of my daughter... They took her body to the hospital, but everything was over by then. She used to go home from work very late, by 10.30-11 at night. She would message me every night after she reached home as she knew I would be worried and not sleep till I got her message 'I am back home. I am fine, but I am tired.' And if she was with her friends, she would message, 'They will leave me at my house. Don't worry.' Only after I got her message would I go to sleep. Even now, I look at my phone at night looking for a message from her even though I know she is not there to send me any more messages. Yes, there will not be any more messages from my daughter. She hasn't done anything wrong; she fought against the bad, she fought for justice. So, I know she will get justice one day. When I went to meet the chief minister, I told him, she never took any favours from anyone. Please see that she gets justice in death. What hurt me was when so many people abused her in such foul language on social media after her death. I don't know why people have become so hateful these days. At the same time, there were many, many, unknown people talking and writing in support of her. On the 12th of October, there was a public meeting and I was touched to see so many people coming with the badge, 'I am Gauri', to mourn her death. I also had the badge, 'I am Gauri'. I named her after my mother whom I lost when I was two. My daughter was like a mother to me ... always supporting me, encouraging me, protecting me... It is becoming more and more apparent that Shyamvar Rai is like an onion. And a pretty pungent one at that. As layer after layer of his life gets peeled off, in full view of the court, new layers of his character are exposed. Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com Twenty one. This number came up quite prominently at the Sheena Bora murder trial on Wednesday, November 1, which has been progressing rather briskly these last few days in CBI Special Judge Jayendra Chandrasen Jagdale's Courtroom 51 at the sessions court in south Mumbai. Astonishingly, 21 was the number of calls that were exchanged between the Mukerjeas' former driver Shyamvar Pinturam Rai and Sameer Buddha in the week before Sheena's death. It was not the first time the name Buddha came up in hearings in this court. Buddha and his brother Sohail's names had been floating about on the periphery of the murder investigation right from 2015. Sameer Buddha is the director of marketing at Star Protection Private Limited. This agency is apparently an ISO 9001 certified company that offers security planning and assistance with investigations, cyber threats or forensics. Between 2007 and 2009 Sameer worked for INX Media. His brother Sohail was for 22 years on the Mumbai police force before he became vice- president, internal security, Star TV, the company Peter Mukerjea helmed at that time. After Rai left the Mukerjeas' employ in 2012, he worked for a time, from 2013, with Sameer Buddha, who was a friend of the couple, according to the chargesheet filed against Peter (excerpts of which were quoted in a Mumbai Mirror report in 2016). This newly revealed level of involvement between Rai, who is now an approver and prosecution witness, and Buddha, before he became their employee, was odd and could be the newest twist in this case if the defence is to be believed. Indeed it is becoming more and more apparent that Shyamvar Pinturam Rai is like an onion. And a pretty pungent one at that. As layer after layer of his life gets peeled off, in full view of the court, new layers of his character are exposed. There seems to be no end of peeling that has to be done till you get to the core of the onion and understand who the real Rai is. What's more? Each new layer is more smelly (damning) than the next. The year 2012, as per Rai's call data records, that Indrani Mukerjea's lawyer Sudeep Pasbola has been milking gleefully for all its worth, was obviously somewhat of a busy year in the life of Danwa, Madhya Pradesh-born Rai. Apart from his involvement in the Sheena killing, Pasbola uncovered, as he continued to thoroughly and methodically cross examine Rai, that the former driver kept in touch, in a hectic manner, with an entire universe of people -- the Mukerjea-Bora clan, the Mukerjeas' help, former employees of INX Media, many of the drivers and staff at the Marlow building, Worli, south central Mumbai (where the Mukerjeas own a flat) and over above that with innumerable real estate brokers, property developers, builders, several money lenders and also seven or eight advocates. This all -- bafflingly -- in the run up to the murder. When questioned about his reasons for these numerous silsila (connections), Rai predictably feigned loss of memory, though he didn't entirely deny them. Here are details of the illuminating exchange: Pasbola started off silkily, in an extra polite tone that he seems to use when he knows the hunt is good and the kill very close by: "Ek number puchta hu, yaad karo, from jis din yeh ghatna hua (Let me ask you about one number. Try and remember, it is from the days of the murder): 09969472944. Yeh number kiska tha, yaad hai to bataeeye? (Whose number was this, if you remember, tell me?)" Rai: "Yaad nahin (Don't remember)." Judge Jagdale: "Are you asking about the customer? (at this number?)" Pasbola: "The user." Pasbola, turning back to Rai, asked gruffly: "Jante nahin? Ki batana nahin chahte ho? (You don't know? Or you don't want to say?)" Rai answering quickly and stiffly: "Yaad hi nahin aa raha hai (I can't remember )." Pasbola: "Yeh dekho, April 17 se le ke April 24, 2012 tak 21 baar baat kiya (Listen, between April 17 and 24, you spoke 21 times). July 6 was the last call." Rai: "Kiya hoga (I may have)." Pasbola: "Eight times it was you who made the calls." Rai, his face wooden and his answer terse: "Humko yaad nahin (I don't remember)." Pasbola: "You called eight times, but you don't remember. Why did you call this number? For what reason?" Rai: "I don't know." Pasbola, incredulous: "Murder hone ke pahele kis se baat kar rahein -- yaad nahin! (Just before a murder you don't remember who you were talking to!) Not just once or twice. Many times!" Rai, looking a bit queasy: "Yaad nahin." Pasbola triumphantly: "This is the number of Sameer Buddha, brother of Sohail Buddha. You are trying not to disclose his name!" Rai sullenly: "Maloom nahin toh kaise bata sakte hai? (If I don't know how can I tell you?)" Pasbola: "Why were you talking over and over again with Buddha? From January to April baar baar lagatar calls kyo aata tha? (Over and over, constantly why were these calls coming?)" Indrani was all ears at the back of the court in the accused box, her pen poised, listening alertly and seriously to the exchange, as were co-accused Sanjeev Khanna and Peter. By contrast CBI Prosecutors Bharat Badami and Kavita Patil were especially quiet volunteering no "Objections your honour." Were they dismayed over the damage that the uncloaking of Rai's reputation in court could cause? Thereafter, Pasbola fired multiple questions in quick succession, trying to engineer that Rai admitted it was Buddha with whom the interactions were taking place. Rai answered nervously but didn't fall into that trap. He finally said, "Sameer Buddha used to work for INX Media, therefore I might have called repeatedly." Pasbola: "Kis silsile mein phone karta the aur aap kis silsile mein phone karta tha? (In what connection was he phoning you and you him?)" The lawyer then reeled off several other names/parties with whom Rai was mysteriously having multiple conversations with -- NDTV Imagine (where Sohail Buddha was working then), Anakin Management Consultants, Elixir Consulting, Shivaji Shamrao Kolekar... Rai said each time, to each name, uneasily, in a dull, tired voice, that it rang a bell and he could have called or had calls, but he didn't remember the details anymore. Kolekar, it turned out, was a driver from Marlow. That friendship Rai too denied offhandedly, saying: "We were all friendly in Marlow." Judge Jagdale looked gently at him and with a smile offered a memorable line: "Dosti karna crime nahin hai (Making friends is not a crime)." Pasbola accosted Rai with the fact (which he denied) that he told Kolekar that with the 'Rs 5 lakhs I got' he bought land in Madhya Pradesh. "From January 2012 till March 2012 aap bahut saare land brokers, builders, construction walle se baat kar rahein the (Between January and March 2012 you were speaking to many land brokers, builders etc). Why? You also spoke to a lot of money lenders, mortgagers." Judge Jagdale: "Savkars? (traditional moneylenders?)" The lawyer concurred and then offered some examples: Austin Construction, Kalyan (builders), Shree Mahalaxmi Developers, Neral (builders), Rima (lenders), Kotadia (mortgagers). Rai first said he didn't remember and then, with a smile, offered, "The paper was full of ads (for land, property) and so I used to call." Pasbola sarcastically in disbelief: "Ha jee, ha jee, ha jee..." The judge then turned to Rai and pensively looked, for a long moment, into his face, as if searching for an answer or the truth. Earlier, he had repeated what Pasbola said, asking Rai directly, quietly, "Jhoot bol rahe ho? (Are you lying?)", and Rai smiled and said no. Judge Jagdale, you observe, is the only person in the courtroom who connects with the driver on a much more human, individual-to-individual, level. Pasbola continuing his exploration of Rai's lawyer contacts: "You were speaking to seven to eight advocates like Sanjay Kohlapur..." Judge Jagdale with a mischievous grin added: "Pasbola?" Laughter followed. Pasbola with a chuckle: "Humein property se lena dena nahin hai (I have no transactions with property)." The lawyer to Rai: "Advocate Chaitanya Torgal... Why were you calling them and they calling you? Twenty times or more?!" At every question Rai either popped his eyes or took a deep breath and said he might have, but didn't remember. On Wednesday, all the cockiness had drained out of Rai. The sheaves and sheaves of call record data that Pasbola constantly refers to, while constructing a fresh query, may be slowly eroding his morale, although on Tuesday the CBI suggested that one of the telecom companies said that the call data records may be 'subject to errors', whatever that means. Wednesday was also the day Judge Jagdale, always easy going and beaming, ready to crack a joke or two, put his foot down. Firmly. First, there was a Level 3 Variety Storm between him and Badami and Patil. Later, in a more even tempered but strict manner he took Pasbola on too. Pasbola was asking Rai about Shrinivas Bhave, the advocate the Rai family hired to defend the driver before he became a sarkari gavai (approver). The lawyer wanted to know for which case (Rai was initially booked under The Arms Act when he was apprehended in 2015 with a country revolver on his person) was Bhave hired and which court and so on. Pasbola to Rai: "How many times did Bhave come to see you in Thane jail?" Judge Jagdale to Pasbola, his face sombre, in a clipped tone, interjected: "I am surprised. Why are you putting this question? He has the right to have an advocate." The judge went on to add that those conversations and meetings were confidential. "I am not asking about the conversation. I am not going to ask," Pasbola said categorically but respectfully, explaining that he had a purpose in just finding out the number of visits that happened and the judge assented. "Teen baar se jyada (more than three times)" was finally Rai's answer, in addition to five to six visits in court. Differences of opinion, between Judge Jagdale and the CBI lawyers occurred twice, finally causing that storm. The first was when Patil was preventing Pasbola from asking certain questions of Rai. Judge Jagdale told her sternly: "You cannot control his cross examination." Patil: "We don't want to." Judge Jagdale: "Otherwise, he will pack his bags and go for appeal!" The second instance was over what should or could be added to the court record. The court record is hallowed ground and what goes on it is purely and ultimately a judge's call. It is often meticulously constructed. In any Q and A between Rai and Pasbola, the driver always attempts to deflect the question and give some alternate answer or else add a bunch of extraneous, sometimes colourful, details, perhaps to cloud his real lack of answer. This habit would frustrate Pasbola considerably, but he has learnt to deal with it by ignoring the background or white noise and requesting the judge to merely put down the pertinent and generally slender parts of Rai's answers. Each time this has happened, over the last couple of weeks, one of the CBI prosecutors would suggest to Pasbola, and the judge, that the non-germane little bits can also come on the record. "Let it come there," is the plaintive refrain. A tussle would follow with Pasbola insisting that it was not necessary and the judge placating both sides and restoring the peace. On Wednesday, Pasbola was asking Rai if he hired lawyer Bhave or his family did. Rai explained that his brother Virendra Kumar did and then went on to add details about his wish to become an approver etc. Pasbola rudely cut him off. Patil to Pasbola: "He has volunteered the information, let it come on record." Judge Jagdale, who relents on most things, would not budge: "Is it a disputed fact? You want to take this on record?!" His tone now icy, the judge asked, "Is Mr Bhave a witness in this case?" Pasbola: "No!" Judge Jagdale again: "Whether it involves a disputed fact?" Patil said she still had an objection. Judge Jagdale: "Everything cannot come on the record..." He then broke into Marathi making his position even clearer to Patil. "What is relevant I am taking, voluntarily." Patil: "What is the problem in taking this?" Judge Jagdale: "It is not necessary." Patil countered him again. Judge Jagdale irate: "Give an application. That is enough. Nahin! Nahin!" Patil: "I am making an application." Judge Jagdale, his face like thunder, "You can make!!" Wednesday's hearing closed with a discussion on when the much awaited Airtel call data records would come in. Judge Jagdale said he didn't expect them till the 15th. Pasbola, who needed these records to begin another chapter of cross examination, looked dejected. November 10 was chosen for the next hearing when Pasbola and the CBI prosecutors could go over some loose ends and record/sort out the contradictions and omissions. The room emptied as Patil sat down to write her application. On Wednesday, Sanjeev had his cousin visiting and bringing lunch for him and Indrani. Peter unfortunately did not connect with his lunch because the young friend/ex-colleague who brought it arrived a few minutes after he left for jail. Sanjeev's burly photographer cousin seems to be the ideal relative. If Sanjeev went shopping for a better cousin he couldn't have found one. The cousin carefully supervises all of Sanjeev's legal matters, patiently and tirelessly, probably setting aside large chunks of his life to do this. It was quite a glam Indrani who arrived in court on Wednesday. She looked especially fetching and youthful in a sleeveless rich brown kurta with panels of embroidery and maroon beads, matched with a beige salwar and chunni. These days Indrani is a far cry from the grey-haired, forlorn woman coming to the trial when it began in February. Bit by bit she seems to be reverting back to the lively faced media personality of pre-2015, before she was arrested by the Mumbai police. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate ORANGE >> When a massive police presence descended on Eisenhower Park in Milford recently and the area was put in lockdown because a despondent man was threatening to harm himself, the Orange Fire Department was called in to help because they had just acquired a special tool called an Unmanned Aerial System more commonly known as a drone. Fire Marshal Tim Smith said authorities flew the drone to provide overhead coverage of the vast park and support for the Milford Police Departments SWAT team. We were able to provide aerial support to make sure no one came out, he said. The Orange fire and police departments will share the drone and are among only a handful of public safety departments in the state to be trained in the cutting-edge technology and own a drone. Smith said the use of a drone has numerous applications in fire service. Assistant Police Chief Anthony Cuozzo, who sees the drone as a great search and rescue tool in a place with vast open space such as Orange, credits the forward thinking of Police Chief Robert Gagne for bringing drone capability, including training, to the department. Drones used at a professional level require a certification by the Federal Aviation Administration, as they are considered aircraft and their users are pilots. Smith said they have to pilot the device around power lines, trees, roofs and airplanes. Oranges new drone flies up to 40 mph, has four large propellers, and is about 2 feet square. Drones arent allowed to fly more than 400 feet off the ground. The device is battery operated, there is a screen on the controller and, in Oranges case, a second screen available on an iPad. Growing drone use Michael Uleski, chief public safety instructor at DARTdrones, recently trained public safety officers in a class here including fire and police personnel from other departments in Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties. Uleski, a police officer, firefighter and EMT in Florida, said having the drone puts Orange in an elite, but ever-growing class around the nation. Uleski said at last count just months ago, out of 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, fewer than 300 owned drones. Sadly, public safety agencies are always behind, he said, noting the same phenomenon with body cameras they were slow to take hold, and then suddenly every department wanted one. Uleski said although the benefit of a drones photographic application of drones is immeasurable, the flying devices are about much more than taking pictures. In a standoff with a suicidal man in Florida, negotiators lost touch because the mans cell phone died, he said. Police couldnt move in because the man was armed, so they flew a drone over to drop him a phone charger. Negotiators were able to continue talking with the man who wound up convinced not to end his life, Uleski said. Uleski said a drone can be used to drop a line to a hiker who has gone off a cliff at a place such as Sleeping Giant State Park or to drop a raft with dead-on accuracy to someone stranded in the water. Its actually about thinking outside the box and asking, What cant we use this for? John DeCarlo, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and a retired Branford police chief, agrees with Uleski that the public safety field as usual is playing catchup with technological innovations such as drones. He said drones have potential with crime scenes and other aspects of police work such as search and rescue, but they also carry a lot of liability issues, not only in terms of crashing into property or people, but also by potentially being used in ways that violate privacy rights as set forth in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. While training and certification are rigorous, police officers and firefighters will not be using them every day, he said, so they could potentially be out of practice when an emergency hits and the operation may be affected by a stressful situation. DeCarlo said because of those issues, hes happy to see Orange police take the lead because they have such responsible leadership in Gagne and Cuozzo. Smith said while hobbyists and videographers have been using drones for years, the cost of a professional-grade drone was prohibitive until recently. Smith already has big plans for its application in the fire service here. He said drones can fly it overhead during a fire to see hot spots and keep track of personnel. It adds a whole new dimension to scene management, Smith said. He said a drone can also be used to photograph the tops of buildings before a fire happens so they can pre-plan for tricky areas in case of fire. Smith said he is eyeing using the drone as part of the routine inspection process. He said officials can fly it around a commercial kitchen exhaust under a roof to see if the area is clean rather than just take the word of the business owner as they do now. He said they can use the drone measurements and photographs in fire investigations and to see how a fire progressed. Without the drone, firefighters relied on an aerial ladder to get them to high spots. Cuozzo said there is tremendous potential for drones to help in search and rescue situations. He said they hope to add infrared to the drone for night searches. Cuozzo said the goal is to have three officers trained as drone pilots. Smith, who did extensive research on drones, said, I see a lot of capability coming out of this. Contributed photo/Not for resale HARTFORD With a collection of more than four million items, the Connecticut Historical Society is home to some unusual pieces of history - quite of few of which cannot neatly be categorized and logically placed in larger exhibits. These include truly unique treasures such as the display flag that was draped over President Abraham Lincolns booth at the Ford Theatre the night he was assassinated, as well quirky items such as wood objects made from the Charter Oak tree, death masks, a leech jar and early industrial tools and household items. Now, in an effort to bring attention to these uncommon pieces, the CHS has prepared a new exhibit, Thats Weird!, which opens Nov. 10 and runs through April 28, 2018. In addition to the Lincoln display flag, the exhibit includes two pieces of preserved wedding cake, hair jewelry, a Civil War era sketch of a gangrenous foot before and after the toes were amputated (drawn by the patient himself), in-home commode from 1846 and a foot-pedal shower from 1869, a corpse preserver and mourning clothing, a WWII Japanese weapons collection, a disposable and very popular paper dress (more than 500,000 sold by the Scott Paper Company), and an early set of motoring goggles used before the automobile was enclosed. The exhibit also includes items that contribute to, or perhaps even disprove, some long-standing local legends such as the mysterious traveling Leatherman, Yales secretive Order of Skull and Bones, and Col. Ledyards vest which he was wearing when fatally stabbed by the British. NEW HAVEN Approximately 30 police officers, clad in navy blue uniforms, sat in a classroom-type setting Wednesday morning, being quizzed. Those men and women were the first officers to receive training for recently approved body-worn cameras. Chief Anthony Campbell said he believes both the community and the police department will have greater safety, accountability and transparency, thanks to the body-worn cameras, describing Wednesday as the day both sides could claim victory. We believe our officers are doing the right thing, but [the cameras] are going to help with transparency, Assistant Chief Racheal Cain added. We are a community-based agency, and its important for the public to be able to see exactly what the officers are doing, and this will help with that. However, a recent study involving Metropolitan Police Department officers in Washington, D.C., found that body-worn cameras had no measurable effect on police discretion, fueling renewed skepticism about whether the equipment actually fosters accountability and transparency in law enforcement. Despite any uncertainty, about one-third of the nations 18,000 police agencies have embraced or are testing body cameras, and many neighboring departments in Connecticut have employed them for years. Branford was one of the first departments in the state to use body cameras, buying them as inexpensive alternatives to dashboard cameras about 10 years ago. The department has since equipped its fleet with dashboard cameras that sync with the body cameras, creating a visual and audio account of every encounter. While the Hartford Police Department did purchase body cameras for its officers in 2012, the program was taken offline after only several weeks due to a labor dispute with the police union. The equipment now resides in storage. Following the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Jayson Negron by a Bridgeport police officer in May, there was a push by some for that department to outfit its officers with body and dashboard cameras after cell phone video of the incident surfaced. Despite the city obtaining the money to buy the equipment, it lacked the funding to securely store the footage. New Haven Mayor Toni Harp said the idea came several years ago when public discussion turned to the use of body cameras and police transparency and community trust. What appeared to be an increasing number of controversial police actions across the nation begged a better sense of what really transpired and the ability to reconstruct what really happened in these cases, Harp said. So at that time, we arranged for New Haven to host a pilot program to evaluate the potential for body cameras in Connecticut. After several years of trying to get the program off the ground, the Board of Police Commissioners unanimously voted Oct. 17 to approve the use of body cameras after the police department received a grant in May to purchase 800 body-worn cameras. However, union President Craig Miller said he believes members of the board approved the policy without having adequate time to review it. So everything got pushed on and off, and so in the meantime, were still negotiating, and then it came to the point where they said, We have a deadline, and were just [going to] present it to Board of Police Commissioners, who received it like the same night, 30 minutes prior to the meeting, and approved it, he said. Cain responded by explaining that the department followed the model created by the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, which was later adopted into state law. She added that the day before the meeting, the members of the Board of Police Commissioners received a copy of the draft policy, which was identical to the policy presented at the meeting. The cost for the entire program, which includes the Axon cameras along with unlimited data storage during the five-year contract, initially was lower, but she said the department added some necessary features, bringing the total to $779,000 for the first year, for which the state will reimburse the department. For each subsequent year, she said it would cost the city approximately $350,000 for unlimited cloud-based storage. Sgt. Rose Dell said the department currently has more than enough cameras to outfit an entire shift plus extra-duty and overtime officers. During the first launch, Dell explained that each officer will be assigned two cameras: a hot camera that officers will wear while on patrol and a cold camera that will be in the docks charging and uploading video. After an officer shoots video, he or she will then place the hot camera in the docking station, where the footage will be uploaded to a secure cloud-based storage system. Depending on the type of incident, the footage is stored for at least 90 days. Chief Anthony Campbell added that the footage will be reviewed periodically unless there is some sort of high-profile incident. While only the police headquarters currently has a docking station, they eventually will be available at substations. Cain said the goal is to have officers be able to upload footage without taking the cameras out of the field. When an officer is on-duty and interacting with public, as part of their law enforcement function, the camera will be recording [both audio and video], Cain said. Of course, there are certain times where the law says we can shut the camera off, such as interviewing a victim in a hospital setting or if a person does not want to give us information while the camera is on. Obviously, getting the information is more important than having the camera rolling, so in those situations we would be able to shut the camera off. Officer Reginald McGlotten, who was part of the pilot program and one of the first officers to receive training on the new equipment, described the initial experience as weird and challenging, explaining that he had to remember to actually turn on the camera . While he had to get used to wearing the body camera during his regular police duties, he said he eventually got used to it. Most importantly, these body cameras are a visual for more collaborative and interactive community model of community police, Campbell concluded. jessica.lerner@hearstmediact.com; @jesslerner on Twitter Register Citizen Staff TORRINGTON - The city's fire department took time out to honor some of its brethren during a ceremony at the Water Street headquarters Tuesday. "They awards are submitted by (the firefighter's) officers," Deputy Chief Jaye Giampaolo said. "They are tougher on them than we could ever be." Firefighters, Police Chief Robert Milano, Deputy Chief Michael Maniago and several city officials joined the informal ceremony, which lasted about an hour. Chief John Field said he felt almost like a proud parent. He cited an example of firefighter dedication, when a department engine was assigned to Waterbury to cover a fire during the funeral of Capt. John Keane, who died from injuries sustained in a crash involving two fire engines. "This is just an example of what these guys do," Field said. Christopher Pepler was chosen Firefighter of the Year for 2006, following in the footsteps of Lt. Charles "Chip" Warner, who received the recognition in 2005. "It's an honor to be picked by my peers, and there's many other people in this department who deserved this award just as (much) as me," Pepler said after the ceremony. An assistance citation was given out to 13-year-old Dane Kinahan. On the evening of Jan. 1, 2007, Kinahan warned his elderly neighbor when he noticed smoke in the chimney of her home. It turned out that the home was filling up with carbon monoxide, Field said. A furnace malfunction caused the leak, he said. "It's not too often that we have citizens who step up above and beyond," Field said. Engine 3 of Group 1 was honored for its assistance with an arrest of John Guzman, a student who allegedly assaulted School Resource Officer Richard Dowd after a false alarm at Torrington High School on March 15, 2006. Dowd was injured in the scuffle and Guzman was arrested. Lt. Warner and firefighter Edward DeLisle subdued Guzman and then helped Dowd, Giampaolo said. "They went above and beyond their call," Giampaolo said. An assistance citation was also awarded to Merli's Automotive, which has always been ready to help the department, Field said. Sixteen firefighters were given Holmatro Extrication Awards from Holmatro Rescue Tools. They were recognized for their work with extrication equipment at two separate accident scenes earlier this year, one on April 5 and another on April 15. The two teams recognized for the April 5 accident were from Group 1. One team was comprised of DeLisle; Lt. David Tripp Jr.; Dan Kibbe and Joe DuCotey; while the other team included Lt. Warner, Jeffery French, Dave Casper and Jarred Howe. The two teams recognized for the April 15 accident were from Group 3. One team was comprised of Michael Riggs; Mark Hilpert; Terry Schroeder and Richard Prince; while the other team included Lt. John Hannon; Ed Bascetta; Phil Hearn and Robert Ebner. At the start of the ceremony, a wreath was placed at the monument outside the department by DeLisle and Aaron Picz, one of the fire department's newest members. Kevin D. Roberts can be reached by e-mail at torrington @registercitizen.com. Maryknoll, NY -- (ReleaseWire) -- 11/02/2017 --Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM) announces the appointment of Mr. Theodore (Ted) Miles as Executive Director. Ted assumes the role on December 1st, following the departure of Executive Director Sam Stanton, who will continue to work with MKLM in various roles. Ted comes to MKLM from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) where he worked for nearly 13 years, most recently serving as the Manager for Youth and Religious Education Engagement. He holds a BA in Psychology from Loyola University in Baltimore and an MA in Psychology from Bucknell University. Ted's main focus at CRS has been leading and implementing the agency's youth and religious education outreach in the United States, with the goals of fostering a deep commitment to global solidarity in the vision of Catholic youth ministry and faith formation and creating opportunities for young people to understand and support the mission of CRS. Among his numerous responsibilities, Ted provided oversight for resource development, led solidarity delegations for Catholic leaders, and developed strong, strategic partnerships with organizations like the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM) and the National Catholic Network de Pastoral Juvenil Hispana (La RED). The NFCYM is a membership organization that supports and strengthens those who accompany young people as they encounter and follow Jesus Christ. La RED is an inclusive association of Roman Catholic Church organizations and pastoral ministers committed to the evangelization, holistic development, ongoing support and formation of Hispanic youth and young adults in the United States. Ted's other responsibilities included representation to the Catholic Climate Covenant, an organization formed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to help US Catholics respond to the Church's call to care for creation and care for the poor. Through his work, Ted hopes that young Catholics today can see these organizations "as Good News, as inspirational church." In The Beginning Firmly rooted in his focus on parish youth ministry, social ministry, Catholic high school education and faith formation, Ted has served this goal in every step of his career. A Catholic camp in the Adirondacks of New York, where he served on staff for five years, opened his heart to working with children and youth. It grew into a vocation through his work as a Jesuit Volunteer in education and youth ministry in Belize and Guatemala, Central America. His Jesuit volunteer experience also gave birth to a passion for and commitment to mission, Catholic social teaching and its call for long-term social justice. Ted's noted work includes designing and directing the Archdiocese of Baltimore's Justice Action Week a justice formation program for youth that explores urban poverty and injustice through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching, serving as Director of Student Development for the Cardinal Gibbons Catholic School in the effort to develop leadership skills for urban high school youth in Baltimore, and providing leadership for youth involvement in the Archdiocese of Baltimore Haiti Project. "I'm truly proud of the Justice Action Week program, as it was formed at a time when very few parishes offered extensive social justice formation for young people," recalled Ted. Though no longer in existence, this program highlighted a real world need for holistic formation geared to Catholic youth. As a result of this initiative, the integration of comprehensive serving learning into local ministries became more commonplace, especially in parish youth ministries. For his commitment to and work with young people, in the past decade, Ted was awarded the Cardinal Sheehan Award by the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the National Youth Ministry Award for Leadership in the Area of Gospel Values of Peace and Justice by the NFCYM. Personal Life The oldest of a family of five children, Ted was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, with a great love of family. He stated his most precious gift of late has been his nephews and niece, two of whom were adopted from Ethiopia. "Their addition to our family has solidified the idea to me that we really are all connected," said Ted. "There isn't a day that I don't express gratitude for our connection to a family in Ethiopia. My niece and nephews have brought such amazing joy into our lives. It has also deepened my commitment to do what I can to contribute to a more just and peaceful world for them." In addition to being a lover of theater and a self-proclaimed "big Orioles fan," Ted is an avid hiker and camper. His love for exploring the natural world has instilled a belief that we can have profound experiences of God through nature. It has also fueled his commitment to work for environmental and climate justice. "I believe that we need a new and expanded understanding of solidarity, one that helps us to recognize our unfathomable connection to all God's creation." he said. "Deep into the heart of community and nature, we discover God is so much bigger than we imagine and is always drawing us into unity, into communion. I believe a more profound respect for each other and for all God's creation rooted in deep listening and compassion can help make all the difference in our attempts to mercy, 'solidarize', and contribute to a just and sustainable development of all people!" Looking Forward Given the remarkable history of MKLM, Ted feels that this next step is just a natural extension of his life experiences. "I feel that all of my experiences so far have built upon each other to help me listen more carefully to the world and, in turn, see God's presence and handiwork in the lives and stories of our sisters and brothers around the world. All of this has fostered an intentional commitment to ministry and servant leadership," said Ted, of his life's work. "It has helped me understand how to serve in a manner that respects the dignity of others. It is an honor to join MKLM, an organization that manifests so clearly Christ's love in the world through its commitment to mission and its service to our sisters and brothers on the peripheries." "Maryknoll Lay Missioners wishes to thank Sam Stanton for his long, dedicated and effective leadership and we welcome Ted with assurances of enthusiastic support from our entire Board of Directors," said Father Bill Vos, MKLM Board Chair. "We do so with confidence that he will enjoy a warm welcome from our entire Maryknoll family." About Maryknoll Lay Missioners Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM) is a Catholic organization inspired by the mission of Jesus to live and work with poor communities in Africa, Asia and the Americas, responding to basic needs and helping to create a more just and compassionate world. Our Lay Missioners work to assist those living in extreme poverty, victims of human trafficking, people in prison and those affected by war and urban violence. They live and work with those they serve. They also offer their compassion and skills through more than 100 ministries which encompass healthcare, education, compassionate care of children and orphans, microenterprise, faith formation and restorative justice. To date, approximately 800 lay missioners have been involved in mission work around the world. The ruling Chinese Communist Party routinely discriminates against more than 200 million people with high blood pressure in its government recruitment drive, lawyers said as candidates across China began enrolling for the prestigious annual civil service entrance exams this week. Some 1.5 million people enrolled for civil service entrance exams last year, competing for around 27,000 jobs for life, known colloquially as an "iron rice bowl." But a group of seven rights lawyers this week penned a letter to the government departments in charge of civil service recruitment, calling on them to revise rules banning anyone with high blood pressure from being offered one of the jobs. A 2016 government report on cardiovascular health in China showed that some 270 million people have hypertension, a figure that is estimated to keep rising. But stringent health checks linked to the civil service recruitment drives specify that anyone with high blood pressure must be considered to have failed. "If we start to see discriminatory rules affecting people's careers and life choice, this will create injustice for a great many people," Wang Shengsheng, one of the seven lawyers who signed the letter, told RFA." "We want to see some genuine equality in the guidelines for civil service recruitment." 'Various types of discrimination' Last year, concerns were raised that the civil service recruitment policy bars those living with a disability or HIV from getting a much sought-after government job, too. "For a long time now, the civil service recruitment guidelines have consisted of a collection of various types of discrimination," Lu Jun, who founded the anti-discrimination group Beijing Yirenping, told RFA on . He called on the newly reshuffled ruling Chinese Communist Party leadership to make good on its promises to do more to end social conflict and inequality during the 19th party congress last month. "They were talking about important social conflicts and unbalanced levels of social development as an issue at the 19th party congress that has just finished," Lu said. "The rights of vulnerable groups are a very important aspect of that." "They have yet to be fully guaranteed or protected," he said. Applicants endure five hours of written tests and interviews, including a rapid-fire multiple choice questions covering topics from mathematics and logic to languages, environmental protection and world affairs. Successful applicants are offered government jobs in local and national governments, which come with a range of perks and benefits including subsidized housing, transportation costs and paid leave. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. One of the world's largest academic publishers has confirmed that it blocked access to some 1,000 journal articles to Chinese internet users because they contained banned keywords relating to political topics such as Tibet, Taiwan, or the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Springer Nature, which publishes Nature and the Scientific American, blocked the articles, all of which appeared in the Journal of Chinese Political Science and International Politics, the company said in a statement. "As a global publisher we are required to take account of the local rules and regulations in the countries in which we distribute our published content," the company told the Financial Times newspaper. "Chinas regulatory requirements oblige us to operate our SpringerLink platform in compliance with their local distribution laws [which] only apply to local access to content," it said. The articles remain accessible to anyone outside of the complex system of blocks, filters, and human censorship known collectively as the Great Firewall. "This is not editorial censorship," it said. "In not taking action we ran the very real risk of all of our content being blocked." In August, the Cambridge University Press (CUP) said it had censored more than 300 articles from the China Quarterly academic journal's China website at the request of media regulators in Beijing, citing similar reasons. However, it later reversed the decision, and refused a later request from the State Administration of Press and Publications, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) to block around 100 articles published by the Journal of Asian Studies. Expanding influence Jonathan Sullivan, director of Nottingham University's China Policy Institute, and the author of one of the articles which have been blocked, told the Financial Times: "Its a symbol of how unprepared we are in the West for Chinas influence expanding outwards." A request for comment by RFA to Springer Nature went unanswered by the time of writing on Thursday. Retired Shandong University professor Sun Wenguang agreed, saying that nowthat China has imposed stringent controls on online content in its own backyard, it is looking to extend censorship overseas. "They want to make sure that only the content they approve of ever makes it into people's minds," Sun said. "Imposing total control on the internet is no longer enough for them." "This will affect a lot of students, as well as the editing of teaching materials in mainland Chinese high schools, higher education, and elementary schools," he said. "Of course the academy produces biased output, and its impact is very wide-reaching indeed." Meanwhile, James Sung, politics lecturer at Hong Kong's City University, told RFA that the ruling Chinese Communist Party's focus on state security and the requirements of the regime have gone up a notch since the 19th party congress last month. "A lot of university lecturers [in China], especially the younger ones, hold views that are pretty sympathetic to Western ideas of democracy and human rights," Sung said. "The central propaganda ministry and ideological departments are very concerned about this, so they are calling for some curbs." "We may think that academics and scholars make up a very small segment of the population, and have little to do with ordinary people's lives. But from Beijing's point of view, they are still hugely influential." "We are now seeing whether overseas publishing houses have enough clout to negotiate with China," Sung said. 'Try not to offend China' U.S.-based democracy activist Fang Zheng said publishers nowadays fear Beijing's displeasure. "So they comply with some of the requirements of the Chinese government, for fear of offending them and losing a lot of benefits," Fang said. "Then there are no traces to be found of real history." "The Chinese government is rich, and they are using their financial clout to influence values around the entire world, which is terrible," he said. University of Sydney professor Feng Chongyi said overseas governments haven't yet woken up to China's growing political, economic, and cultural influence beyond its borders. "It's as if there is a global consensus among states that we must ... try not to offend China," Feng said. "This is a two-sided process whereby China has something they want, so overseas governments and the business community slowly weaken their stance and avoid criticism of this authoritarian regime." "We need some legislation. We can't allow this situation to continue," Feng said. And in Germany, exiled dissident writer Liao Yiwu said the publishing industry is selling its soul for profit. "They are giving up their own values of academic freedom and supremacy, and this has shaken the academic world to its foundations," Liao said. "They should display their motto clearly on their logos 'business trumps scholarship: profit trumps academic [freedom]." Reported by Gao Feng for RFA's Mandarin Service and by Wu Yitong for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. North Korea is using false documents to move coal and minerals recently barred for export under U.N. sanctions, often with the help of trading firms based in China and Russia, sources say. The sanctions, imposed in August by the world body to punish North Korea for its nuclear weapons and missile tests, prohibit the country from exporting coal, iron, seafood, and other goods, but much is still being sold abroad to earn foreign cash, sources say. Trading firms recently began to export coal and minerals using Chinese or Russian cargo ships, an executive of a company based in North Koreas North Hamgyong province, bordering China, told RFAs Korean Service. Other countries wont accept North Korean minerals now, so they are exported using forged papers showing a different country of origin, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Loads of coal and other goods coming from North Korea are now unloaded from North Korean ships in Chinese ports such as Dandong, and from there they are exported again to Southeast Asian countries with papers showing they have come from China, the source said. North Korean firms using the false documents include the Daesong Trading Company, the Chilsong Company run by the North Korean military, and the Myohyang Company run by North Koreas Office No. 39, which raises money for the regime of national leader Kim Jong Un, the source said. There are many illegal trading firms in China and Russia helping them, he said. Speaking separately, a second source in North Hamgyong confirmed the practice, saying, It is common now for foreign-currency-generating firms that export goods to Russia to fabricate certificates showing country of origin. Much of the coal that used to be exported to China is now being sent to Russia, where it is turned into Russian origin coal and is then re-exported to other countries, the source said, also speaking on condition he not be named. Russian and Chinese trading firms help in the effort to deceive customs officials by using their own ships and by re-certifying the origin of sanctioned goods, the source said. Local trading partners are deeply involved in each step of the process, he said. Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Richard Finney. Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at the airport in Sittwe for a one-day visit to ravaged northern Rakhine state, Nov. 2, 2017. Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi paid a brief, unannounced visit to conflict-ridden northern Rakhine state on Thursday, the first time the countrys de facto leader has entered the area since a brutal military operation drove more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh. Aung San Suu Kyi flew to the state capital Sittwe where she boarded a military helicopter to take her to Maungdaw and Buithdaung townships, the epicenters of the recent violence and ethnic strife following deadly Aug. 25 attacks by the militant Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and a subsequent military crackdown. The Nobel laureate has come under fire by the international community for not speaking out about the treatment of the Rohingya in what the U.N. and others call ethnic cleansing in the region an allegation Myanmar has rejected. Aung San Suu Kyi discussed with Muslim religious leaders the need to live peacefully in northern Rakhine and explained the governments humanitarian aid plans for the region during a meeting with the ethnic Mro, Khami, and Daingnet minority groups. Under tight security on her one-day trip, she visited an ethnic Mro ethnic village called Kone Tine that was burned down after the deadly Aug. 25 attacks by ARSA and met with residents of Pantawpyin Muslim village. Daw [honorific] Aung San Suu Kyi asked us if we have already started resettlement work for the villagers, and we answered that we have started them, said Maung Hla, administrator of Kone Tine. A resident of Pantawpyin village said that when Aung San Suu Kyi met Muslim villagers, she asked them to speak openly with her about what they need and what difficulties they face. Aung San Suu Kyi also met with volunteers who are participating in the governments humanitarian work to help Maungdaw residents. One volunteer told RFAs Myanmar Service that volunteers from around the country will be trained to perform humanitarian work on Nov. 6-8 in the countrys commercial capital Yangon, and volunteers from Maungdaw township will receive 20 days of instruction. Groups of 40 volunteers each will coordinate with the government to survey areas affected by recent violence and deliver goods to victims for 20 days, and will then be replaced by another group that will continue the work. She told us how to perform humanitarian work effectively and systematically, said volunteer Htet Paing Soe. She also told us that we are doing not only humanitarian work, such as delivering goods and recording information, but also working for peace and development in the region and helping to alleviate trauma. Bridge inspection Aung San Suu Kyi also inspected the Myanmar-Bangladesh Friendship Bridge that connects Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh in Taungpyo Letwe village, one of two border checkpoints where Myanmar will accept returning Rohingya. Myanmar has blamed Bangladesh for stalling on the points of a 1993 agreement between the two nations that would allow the return of Rohingya refugees who have fled, saying that the country is holding out for more international aid funding. Bangladesh has denied the accusation. Myanmars home affairs minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe; border affairs minister Lieutenant General Ye Aung; labor, immigration and population minister Thein Swe; and social welfare, relief and resettlement minister Win Myat Aye joined Aung San Suu Kyi on the trip. Prominent Myanmar business executives who last month pledged millions of dollars to rebuild ravaged northern Rakhine under the governments newly created Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine State (UEHRD), also accompanied her. Aung San Suu Kyi is chairperson of the body. Some ethnic Rakhine residents told RFA they were unhappy that Aung San Suu Kyi only met with Muslims and not with them and local NGOs. Aung San Suu Kyi's last visit to Rakhine state was during the 2015 election campaign that eventually brought her National League for Democracy (NLD) party to power. Reported by Min Thein Aung and Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Rohingya Mohammad Hashim carries his mother to shore after getting off a boat at Dakhin Para in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, Nov. 2, 2017. Bangladeshi boatmen are ferrying Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar in rickety vessels, despite a police crackdown following accidents in which almost 200 people drowned during the past two months. Within a span of about three hours on Thursday, reporters for BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, witnessed at least 100 members of the uprooted minority mostly women and children arrive in separate boats at Dakhin Para, mainland Bangladesh's southernmost tip that lies along the porous border with Myanmar. The refugees said they were picked up from the Myanmar side by boats in the dead of the night and dropped off at Shah Porir Dwip, a remote Bangladeshi fishing village some 5 km (3 miles) from the mainland. The islands west coast opens to the Bay of Bengal. Nuruddin, who did not want his full name disclosed, admitted to taking his boat to the Myanmar side after dark to pick up Rohingya. [It takes] a little under two hours each way, the 56-year-old former fisherman told BenarNews, as he stared blankly at a group of men struggling to bring their fishing boat ashore. I dont like fishing anymore. I make more money now than I did fishing. Asked how much he charged each Rohingya for the boat ride to the Bangladeshi side, he said: Sometimes 3,000 taka (U.S. $36), sometimes 4,000 ($48), sometimes even more. It depends on how much they have. Whatever they have, I take. I have to take out the cost of fuel. Besides, its a risky journey. So many people have died in these waters, he added. On Sept. 28, a boat carrying about 80 Rohingya capsized just 1,000 feet from the shore there, killing at least 50 people most of them children in the deadliest accident of its kind since the latest mass exodus of the Muslim minority group from Myanmar began in the last week of August. More than 600,000 Rohingya have arrived in southeastern Bangladesh from predominantly Buddhist Myanmar since its military launched a counteroffensive in response to attacks by militants in Rakhine state on Aug. 25, according to the latest estimates from the United Nations. Nuruddin said he undertook two trips a day during the initial days of the refugee crisis, picking up anywhere between 25 and 40 Rohingya during each visit. But now the police have become very strict. Theyve ordered us not to bring the refugees by boat. So I go at night, about two or three times a week, he said. At least 190 people have died since Aug. 25 while trying to cross over to Bangladesh via the Naf River, which lies to the east of Shah Porir Dwip, or the Bay of Bengal. About 450 arrested, 155 boats destroyed Deaths from the accidents have prompted local authorities to crack down on boatmen ferrying Rohingya, who in Myanmar are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Myanmars military crackdown took place after Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents launched an offensive in Rakhine state. The military operations, labeled as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing by the United Nations, spurred the Rohingya influx into Bangladesh. Since it began in late August, Bangladesh border authorities have arrested and detained about 450 people suspected of transporting refugees through waters that divide Bangladesh and Myanmar. Last month, local police seized and destroyed 155 boats, Teknaf upazila (sub-district) police chief Mainuddin Khan told BenarNews. Some people are still bringing Rohingya to Bangladesh on boats. We will find them and arrest them soon, he said. Bangladeshi border officials describe the ferrying of Rohingya as human trafficking. In September, authorities announced that they would crack down on fishermen who were asking refugees for money to transport them to safety. Fisherman Mohahmmad Harun, 38, also a resident of Shah Porir Dwip, said he used to take one trip daily to Myanmar to pick up Rohingya during the initial days of the crisis, but had completely stopped after the police crackdown. The last time I went was about a month ago. I would pick up about 30 to 40 refugees, charging each person between 3,000 taka (U.S. $36) and 4,000 taka ($48). I did that for about one month, but I dont do it anymore, he told BenarNews. Haruns colleague and next-door neighbor, Nurul Amin, 40, said it was a quick and easy way to make money as long as we returned safe and sound. I dont have my own boat, so I used to rent one for 40,000 taka ($481) a day. That meant I would have to make two to three trips to the Myanmar side every day. I used to carry a lot more people on the boat at one time than Harun did so I could make a decent profit, he told BenarNews. Both Harun and Amin said that if police allowed them to do so, they would make the trips to Myanmar again to bring the Rohingya to Bangladesh. They are suffering there. The army is killing them, burning their villages. We feel happy if we can help them. And if in the process we can make a little extra money, I dont see anything wrong with it, Amin said. We are desperate, they know it But Rohingya refugees who arrived Thursday on mainland Bangladesh refuted the fishermens claims. There are a two to three Bangladeshi boats waiting on the Myanmar side every night to pick up Rohingya, Mohammad Hashim, 42, told BenarNews after arriving in Bangladesh with his wife, five sons and his mother. This was his second trip to the country in the last 10 days. Two weeks ago, the Myanmar army soldiers came to our village and began firing indiscriminately. Many people, including my cousin, died. Two bullets pierced my fathers arm and shoulder, Hashim said. After hiding his family in a forest a short distance from his village, Hashim carried his father on his back for five days until he reached the river, where a Bangladeshi boatman agreed to take him and his severely injured 80-year-old father across the border for 2,000 taka ($24), he said. But by the time he reached the Chittagong Medical College, his father died. I buried him here and went back to Myanmar to bring my family, he said. He paid 7,000 taka ($84) for each member of his family to get to the other side. We are desperate, they know it. So they charge whatever they want, the farmer said before making his way to Teknaf in search of a new home for his family. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Rohingya Farhim Urmin shivered as she faced a reporter at the door of her new home, a seaside hut miles from overcrowded refugee camps in Coxs Bazar. The newcomer to Bangladesh seemed wary at first while answering questions. Little by little, she opened up about her experience of fleeing an explosion of violence in neighboring Myanmar and venturing away from the camps to get a job which officially violates local rules for Rohingya refugees like herself. I recently started working as a housekeeper in a nearby hotel. They have promised me a salary of 4,000 taka (U.S. $48) a month, Urmin, a 23-year-old mother of two toddlers, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Her husband, too, has found work as a daily-wage laborer, earning about 200 taka ($2.40) a day when he finds work, she said. The couple is among thousands of newly arrived Rohingya refugees who have given authorities the slip by leaving the refugee camps to search for work in other towns and cities to eke out a meager living, according to local officials. Urmin and her husband are among more than 600,000 people who fled from Myanmars Rakhine state following an outbreak of violence in late August. The new arrivals joined more than 400,000 Rohingya refugees who had escaped earlier cycles of killings in Rakhine and are concentrated largely in camps along Bangladeshs southeastern border with Myanmar. Urmins family crossed into Bangladesh on foot last month following a fresh wave of reported pogroms against members of Myanmars Rohingya Muslim minority. The family pays a monthly rent of 1,000 taka ($12) for a single-room tin hut in Samiti Para, a section of Coxs Bazar town. Some 7,000 Rohingya live in Samiti Para. Of them, about 4,000 are new arrivals. Most of them have found jobs, the localitys municipal councilor, Akhtar Kamal, told BenarNews, adding that many more had moved farther inland and found work in Chittagong and even as far away as Dhaka. We have to be more humane The new wave of refugees crossed the frontier in the aftermath of a military offensive launched in Rakhine after an insurgent group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked police outposts on Aug. 25. The new refugee arrivals have been given shelter in about 15 camps situated about 30 km (18.6 miles) to 70 km (43.5 miles) from Coxs Bazar. While Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognize members of the Rohingya Muslim minority as citizens, referring to them pejoratively as illegal Bengali immigrants, government officials on the other side of the border refuse to classify them as refugees. Instead, Bangladeshi authorities consider them as forcibly displaced Myanmar citizens. [T]hey are not being recognized as refugees. They have just sought shelter here in Bangladesh, Shah Kamal, Bangladeshs secretary for disaster management and relief, told reporters in October. A local security official said Rohingya refugees are not allowed to leave the camps or seek employment outside them. They are not citizens or permanent residents of Bangladesh. Legally, they are not allowed to work here, Maj. Ruhul Amin of Bangladeshs Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), told BenarNews. But we are aware that many of them have found odd jobs in bigger towns and cities. Whenever they are caught, we send them back to the camps, he said, adding, We dont arrest them because we need to be sensitive toward the problems they are facing. We have to be more humane and understand that they are going through an extremely difficult situation. Avoiding checkpoints Urmin and her family escaped Myanmar after the army set her entire village in northwestern Rakhine ablaze, she told Benar. Absolutely nothing was left of our village, she said. The family walked through forested hills for about 10 days before reaching Coxs Bazar. The Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia upazila (sub-district), where her family arrived on Sept. 6, was overflowing with refugees, she said. It was extremely chaotic and crowded. We stayed there for some days in an open shelter, but didnt feel safe, Urmin said of the largest of the refugee camps along the border. Her family, along with some other new arrivals, then decided to make a run for Coxs Bazar town, a popular beach resort, where, they were told, some Rohingya had settled and found work. The 32-km (20-mile) narrow road leading to the town has several check points guarded by Bangladeshi army and the elite RAB, whose personnel stop each vehicle and check I.D. cards of all commuters to prevent Rohingya from leaving the camps. We didnt come [to town] via the road. We walked overnight through the jungle that runs adjacent to it, Urmin said. Forces admit helplessness Security officials conceded that it is difficult to keep the Rohingya confined to their designated camps. We are trying our best to ensure refugees dont venture into the cities. But it is near impossible considering the sheer number of them that have entered the country over the last two months, said Maj. Amin of the Rapid Action Battalion. Every day, we intercept about 100 refugees making attempts to get to cities. But some manage to slip through, he said. The figure, Amin added, was significantly higher in the initial days of the crisis. They are desperate. No matter how many times we catch them and send them back to the camps, they keep trying to leave, he said. Urmins neighbor in Samita Para, Mohsana, 25, who arrived in Bangladesh about two months ago, said she left her village after her husband was shot dead by Myanmar army soldiers in front of her eyes. Late last month, she sneaked into Coxs Bazar town from Ukhias Balukhali refugee camp with her three daughters. We hitched rides, getting off several times along the way and walking through the jungle to avoid check points, she told BenarNews. Just a day after reaching the Samiti Para area, Mohsana, who declined to reveal her last name, found work at a fish farm. The job fetches her about 3,500 taka ($42) a month. I remove scales and gut at least 300 fish daily. The fish are then laid out to dry before being packed in boxes and sent out. Most Rohingya living here do the same job, she said. I stink but I dont mind it. It is much better than life in the camps. Here, it is quieter, cleaner and right next to a beach where the kids can play without fear, Mohsana said. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Richmond police are investigating the vandalism of a vehicle that was spray-painted with an anti-gay message as a hate crime. Between 9:30 and 10 p.m. Tuesday, which was Halloween, someone with white spray paint tagged the side of a vehicle with the words GAY MOVE DIE in the 3400 block of Delaware Avenue in the citys North Highland Park neighborhood, police said. The Richmond Police Department stands with the LGBTQ community in condemning what happened last night, Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham said in a statement. I have directed the departments LGBTQ liaison, Capt. Dan Minton, to monitor the progress of the investigation to keep everyone informed. Police declined to say why they believe the graffiti was a hate crime or whether it was directed against a member of the gay community. We dont profile victims, police spokesman Gene Lepley said. James Millner, president of Virginia Pride, said the victim is a known gay man whose vehicle was targeted. This was certainly not done by a random graffiti artist, Millner said. This man is known to be gay, and the message on the car says Gay Move Die its a death threat. Thats not random graffiti trying to be destructive. The fact that Chief Durham himself has inserted himself into this should be an indication as to how seriously the Richmond police are taking this, Millner said. And also the swiftness with which they elevated this to a hate crime which was a matter of hours after it was brought to their attention is also significant. So there seems to be no hesitation. Police ask anyone with information about the incident to call 4th Precinct Detective Lieutenant Herman W. Loney III at (804) 646-4195 or contact Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000 or www.7801000.com. A Richmond school bus carrying 12 students from Armstrong High School was shot multiple times in the citys East End on Wednesday afternoon. No one was injured, an outcome Richmond Public Schools interim superintendent, Tommy Kranz, described as very, very fortunate. Its the third time a Richmond school bus has been hit by gunfire in the city in the past year and a half. You know, when children are on a yellow school bus, that should be a safe zone, Kranz said. And its unfortunate when its not treated as such. The bus was carrying students who live in two public housing communities: Whitcomb Court, where the shooting took place, and Mosby Court, where the bus driver drove afterward to wait for police. Students from the two neighborhoods will be transported on separate buses beginning Thursday, Kranz said, though he said he had no information that neighborhood rivalries, which have sometimes fueled violence in the city, were a factor in Wednesdays shooting. Were going to be proactive and not reactive, Kranz said. Our team is comfortable that will be a safer transportation routing than whats currently in place. A fight on the bus preceded the shooting, police said, though authorities said they were not yet sure whether it was connected to the shooting, which was reported just before 3 p.m. at the intersection of Sussex and Whitcomb streets. A police spokeswoman, Koury Wilson, said a student had gotten off the bus when two individuals approached from outside and fired several shots. Two bullet holes were visible on the side of the bus as investigators documented the scene at the intersection of Raven and Ford streets in Mosby Court. Parents and students waited at the scene to speak to police. My son was sitting right there where the bullet holes are at, said a mother who asked not to be named, for fear of retribution. When it hit, the glass got in his eyes. He had his headphones on, but saw people started running. Kranz praised the bus driver for following the districts protocol by alerting dispatch, triggering the buss emergency alert and proceeding to a safe location. I commend her for what she did and how she handled herself, he said. In addition to running separate buses to the two neighborhoods, Kranz said, school personnel will be following special protocols at Armstrong High. We want to make sure that when we open, weve got a good feel that were not seeing any type of actions or retaliations or anything related to that, he said. We want to make sure that were going to be safe. Mayor Levar Stoney wrote in a tweet Wednesday night that we will not tolerate personal beef that endangers our children, adding that Richmond police will do everything & all to bring the perpetrator to justice. This is not the first time Richmond Public Schools students have been touched by the citys growing gun violence. According to statistics released by the district this year, two school buses were shot between September 2016 and May 2017. During the same period, 23 students were shot during nonschool hours. Five of the students died. Police ask anyone with information about Wednesdays incident to call Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000. CHICAGO When he first came to this city 14 years ago from his home, located 20 miles outside of Sofia, Bulgaria, he knew only two words in the English language: Pepsi and pizza. I came here because my best friend said, In America, no matter who you are, you can make something of yourself and make something good for your family if you just work hard, he says with a rich mixture of his native tongue and near-perfect English. So, I did. Along with him came his wife and his 5-year-old son. They immediately settled in the northwest suburbs of Chicago a city, by the way, that is home to the largest Bulgarian immigrant population in the world. U.S. Census data show around 20,000 Bulgarian-Chicagoans. The consulate general of Bulgaria claims nearly three times that many. He is part of a wave of Bulgarian immigrants who have arrived in the Windy City in the past 15 years, a wave that has embraced the American Dream with gusto. These are the folks who help make Chicago Chicago; they are builders, construction workers, artisans, business owners, and professionals. They learn trades. They attend college. And they feed into our unique American exceptionalism. He says: We thrive because we love the opportunities we have here not just for ourselves but for our children. The key is, not to give up. The deadbolt is, even when everything conspires to work against you, you have to be willing to find a way to make a living another way. He knows change is coming. He has been a professional driver since he arrived here and has seen the changes that car services like Uber have made on his profession. He knows that technology in the not-too-distant future will eliminate many drivers altogether with autonomous cars. He explains: Today, I make the same amount that I did ten years ago. It is not because I work less; it is because all of these technological advances have impacted my industry. I used to work 12 hours; I now work 14 to 16 hours to keep my salary the same. Sound familiar? It should. Despite his youth, his relatively short time in this country, and his incredible work ethic, his economic struggles sound eerily similar to those of middle-aged Rust Belt voters whose manufacturing jobs were displaced by technology. They are the very sons and daughters of the last great European immigration wave of the 20th century. Like him, those immigrants had strong pride in becoming American. Like him, they instantly became cornerstones in their community. And like him, they worked hard for their family to have a better life. Every immigrant in this country is an echo of all of us. Tug the thread of his story seen throughout the fabric of our country and you find that same strain of defiance that says you will make it regardless of what obstacles you face. It is common across the country, but it is particularly visible in first-generation immigrants. He says he does not understand the part of the country that is angry all of the time. He beams: I understand that things need fixed or changed, but sometimes I wonder if some Americans really understand how blessed they are. If they take the time to ponder that. No country is perfect; this country, if you use the opportunities in front of you, is as close as you can get. It really is that simple, he says. He is appalled at what parts of Chicago have become. He says: Too much death, there are kids who are afraid to go to school because they have to cross over several different gang territories to get from home to the school. I blame the machine politics of this city for that. They keep people down and give them just enough stuff to get their vote, but it is a culture that keeps them from succeeding. Seeing our country through the eyes of a recent immigrant provides a glimpse into the experiences many of our families faced. They came here without much, sometimes just the clothes on their back. They did not know the language, the people, the customs or whether they would be able to get a job once they got here. Like him, they came anyway. Life wasnt always easy sometimes it wasnt easy at all but they became the people who built America. They drove the trucks, dug the dirt, made the food, harvested the grain, soaked their lungs in coal dust, singed their hair and their skin while working in the steel mills, and sent their sons and daughters off to college for a better life than theirs. The next time we complain about the metro or the barista or how offended we are by the outrage of the moment, we should think about the young immigrants of our country and try to imagine what it is like to appreciate what we have instead of believing we are entitled to it. MARION An independent candidate running to represent Smyth, Carroll and Wythe counties in the House of Delegates is a convicted sex offender who was among some 156,000 felons to have his rights to vote and run for office restored this year under Gov. Terry McAuliffes 2016 clemency order. Smyth County resident Kenneth D. Browning is making a longshot bid to unseat Del. Jeff Campbell, R-Smyth, in the 6th House District. Browning pleaded guilty to using a computer to facilitate sex with a minor in 2008 that year and was sentenced to serve six months in jail. He also pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender, according to online court records. He is currently listed on the Virginia Sex Offender Registry. Browning admitted in a criminal complaint that he contacted a 15-year-old boy and asked to have sex with him. The candidate said he believes voters should consider what he can do for the community and not his criminal record. I knew my past would come up, but Im trying to help the people in the 6th District, Browning said. The past needs to be left in the past. Lets concentrate on the future. They should vote for the man who gets the job done. I want to be the man that hears the peoples voice. Browning said he plans to take steps to have his record expunged, but Smyth County Commonwealths Attorney Roy Evans said one would generally have to have been acquitted of charges or have the charges dropped before an expungement can take place. Browning isnt the only ex-felon contending for a seat in the House of Delegates this year. In Fauquier County, Libertarian candidate Nathan Larson is on the ballot after spending 16 months in federal prison for threatening to kill former president Barack Obama. The Fauquier Times reported that Larson also had his rights restored under McAuliffes executive order. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ralph Northam said Wednesday that he would sign a bill to ban so-called sanctuary cities if a Virginia locality tries to become one in the future. Republican nominee Ed Gillespie has pushed the issue of sanctuary cities to the forefront of the governors race. The term is loosely defined but generally understood as a locality that will not cooperate with federal immigration authorities. No Virginia city or county has tried to adopt policies to impede such cooperation. Northam, Virginias lieutenant governor, has insisted he opposes sanctuary cities while also accusing Gillespie of fabricating the issue for political advantage. But in an interview Wednesday with the Norfolk TV station WAVY, Northam said for the first time that, under certain circumstances, he would sign a bill similar to the one he voted against this year, a vote that spawned a wave of ominous ads from the Gillespie campaign linking Northam to the Latino gang MS-13. If that bill comes to by desk ... I sure will. Ive always been opposed to sanctuary cities. He knows that, Northam said of Gillespie, whose MS-13-themed ads have been blasted by critics as racially tinged. Northam elaborated Wednesday night in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, saying he stands by his vote against a bill that was nothing more than a political game meant to promote fearmongering. I dont go to Richmond to play games, Northam said. During a debate last month in Southwest Virginia, Gillespie asked Northam if he would sign legislation to ban sanctuary cities if one appeared in the future. Northam reiterated his opposition to sanctuary cities, but didnt give a direct response on whether hed sign a bill. During the legislative session in February, Republicans maneuvered Northam into the position of having to cast a tiebreaking vote on a sanctuary cities ban that was ultimately vetoed by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, R-James City, orchestrated the move by initially voting with Democrats to create the 20-20 tie requiring Northams vote. Norment then changed his vote so the bill could pass. The Gillespie campaign sent out a news release almost immediately, an early sign of the immigration-themed campaign ads to come. Northam said if he wins the Nov. 7 election and Republicans send him the same bill to pre-emptively ban sanctuary cities that dont exist, hed veto it just as McAuliffe did. But if a locality does try to declare itself a sanctuary city and legislation to stop it lands on his desk, hed sign it, Northam said. The Gillespie campaign seized on Northams comments in the TV interview, saying Northam had promised to sign legislation like the very bill he has bragged about voting against. I sincerely hope that this change of heart is real, Gillespie said in a statement. That Ralph Northam recognizes MS-13 is a real issue, and a serious threat, and that allowing for the creation of sanctuary cities here would only make things worse. Given his track record on this issue, Im not sure where the lieutenant governor stands. Before we talk about the most controversial ad thus far in Virginias governors race, lets once again express our amazement that people pay attention to political ads at all. If Pepsi said such hyperbolically bad things about Coke, would anyone believe it? If Ford devoted its advertising to trashing Chevrolet in such histrionic terms, would that be credible? Yet somehow voters who otherwise think of themselves as savvy consumers seem completely gullible when it comes to campaign advertising. Why? We are right to worry about Russia trying to interfere in American politics, yet we also ought to be concerned about American political consultants who push whatever psychological buttons they can push to provoke a Pavlovian response from voters. This kind of emotional manipulation is practiced with equal glee by both parties but the ad in question today comes from the Democratic side specifically the Latino Victory Fund. The one-minute video shows a sinister-looking white man chasing down minority kids with his pickup truck thats adorned with three tell-tale symbols a Confederate flag, a Tea Party license plate and a bumper sticker for Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor. At the end, this is all revealed to be a dream, as the kids wake up shaking in the middle of the night, while the narrator intones: Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American dream? Republicans called the ad a sickening resort to fear-mongering. The campaign of Democrat Ralph Northam distanced itself from the ad produced by an independent group, saying he did not condone the message. The Latino Victory Fund defended the ad, saying We held a mirror up to the Republican Party, and they dont like what they see. We are not Republicans, but we dont like what we see, either. Well explain why. First, its factually wrong no small thing. The ad suggests that Gillespie supporters are racist vigilantes who want to run down minority kids. Really? Really?? Secondly, the ad does not target the candidate but rather his supporters. That seems akin to Hillary Clintons comment about many supporters of Donald Trump being a basket of deplorables. Her comment was misinterpreted; she went on to define those deplorables as people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Islamophobic you name it. Ideally, even Republicans would agree that racists, sexists and the lot are deplorable, but her comment came off as showing contempt for Trump supporters in general. This ad doesnt even have that Clintonesque nuance. It just shows a white guy in a pick-up truck and implies Gillespie supporters want to kill minority kids. Umm, thats a lot of Virginians right there who are being called not just homicidal but genocidal. Weve already said that campaign advertising is exaggerated so we understand were not supposed to take this ad literally. But the message is unmistakable Republicans are bad people. Thats not a good message to be sending in a democracy, where come the day after the election were all still going to be living together and working together in a civil society. Perhaps you think Gillespie is wrong on the issues, but that doesnt make his supporters bad people. To say this ad holds a mirror up to the Republican Party is as dangerous as GOP Senate hopeful Corey Stewart declaring over the weekend that the Democrats really fall into four basic categories: criminals, communists, crackheads, and weirdos. This is not harmless campaign rhetoric. This is language that leads to tyranny. If Republicans really do want to run down kids, why shouldnt Democrats lock them all up? If Democrats really are criminals, communists, crackheads and weirdos why not herd them all into concentration camps? Republicans ought to be denouncing Stewarts reckless words and Democrats ought to be denouncing the Latino Victory Fund ad. Both spring from the same poisonous well where its become acceptable to not just say the other sides candidate is wrong on the issues, but the other sides supporters are existential threats to society. The Latino Victory Fund does have some legitimate issues: The Trump administrations anti-immigration policies have provoked fear; Trumps reaction to the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville was both weak and alarming. If this ad had shown an immigration officer snatching kids off the street, that would have been fair comment. Last week, immigration agents in Texas really did seize a 10-year-old girl from a hospital and set in motion deportation proceedings. Thats factual, and just as horrifying. The girl has lived in the United States albeit without proper paperwork since she was an infant. She has no memories of the Mexico that our government wants to send her back to. Is that really the America we want to be, where federal agents are grabbing kids out of surgery and sending them to some strange country? But thats not what the ad shows. Most Republicans are basically wrong on immigration. Demographically, the United States needs more young adults to offset a graying population that is counting on somebody to fund their Social Security benefits. Economically, the nation needs a bigger labor pool to drive an economy that is increasingly tilting toward retirees. These, by the way, are not ideological viewpoints; they are the statistical conclusions of a Federal Reserve report last year. (They were also campaign planks of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but you see where that got him.) Closer to home, the GO Virginia economic development council for Southwest Virginia just produced a report that warned a declining population makes it hard to retain existing businesses in the region, much less attract new ones. Southwest Virginia needs new residents; whether they come from New Jersey or New Delhi is irrelevant. Southwest Virginia needs immigration. Thats a hard conversation to have, and this ad makes it even harder. Instead of demonizing every middle-aged white guy with a pick-up truck, a rebel flag and a Tea Party license plate, the Latino Victory Fund needs to be making the case for why immigration is actually in that guys best interest if he wants to keep his job and collect his retirement benefits. Instead, the fund just called him a racist. Dont be surprised if he doesnt listen to anything after that. #fisheries official death Ex-deputy national security chief questioned in fisheries official's death Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned a former deputy director of the presidential National Security Office as part of an investigation connected to the 2020 death of a fisheries off... JSC Nizhne-Lenskoye filed a liquidation form to the Russian tax bureau, Interfax reported. The company's assets will be transferred under control of Almazy Anabara, which, like Nizhne-Lenskoye, is a subsidiary of ALROSA. The liquidation process should be completed by December. According to the government of the Yakutia Republic, the merger of companies was decided upon by ALROSA to reduce costs of field operations and eliminate excessive production links. In addition, the management of the company will be optimized, said Andrei Panov, Minister of Industry and Geology of Yakutia. Nizhne-Lenskoye started to transfer its licenses to Almazy Anabara in 2016, and by the beginning of October of the same year three areas - Molodo, Talakhtakh and Bolshaya Kuonamka were handed over. After the transfer of mining licenses, Nizhne-Lenskoye reported a decrease in the geological exploration and mining operations. According to last year's results, it produced about 1.7 million carats of diamonds worth $165.5 million. Diamond Trading Slows over Diwali 02 november 2017 News (Rapaport) - Diamond prices softened slightly in October amid slow trading as businesses closed for Indian and Jewish holidays. Polished inventory levels dropped during the month, but remain higher than usual for this time of year, exerting downward pressure on prices. The RapNet Diamond Index (RAPI) for 1-carat diamonds slid 0.2% in October and has declined 4.7% since January. The Rapaport Monthly Report November 2017 notes that the US and Chinese jewelry markets are showing signs of sales growth. However, fewer jewelers are operating in the US: 228 businesses closed in the third quarter, while just 40 opened, according to the Jewelers Board of Trade. Jewelers who can create a sense of community, tell an authentic story, guarantee ethical sourcing, and mesh online engagement with their in-store experience are gaining market share and will have a successful holiday season. Jewelers are maintaining cautious inventory controls as they adjust to the new consumer reality, and diamond buying has consequently contracted. Manufacturers have built up polished inventory, due to aggressive rough buying in the first half. The number of unique diamonds listed on RapNet has increased 18% since January to 1.4 million. Dealers are holding large volumes of hard-to-move goods and seeing shortages of select in-demand categories, such as RapSpec A3+, SI-clarity diamonds. Rough trading slowed in October due to low profitability and Indian manufacturers closing for three weeks over Diwali. Still, mining companies remain bullish about rough supply. In the third quarter, global production rose to its highest quarterly level since 2008. Stable diamond trading is expected in the next two months, with demand shifting to the Far East ahead of the Chinese New Year. The first quarter will likely see stronger activity as jewelers replenish stock following the Christmas season, hopefully enabling dealers to reduce their built-up inventory. CSX Plans to expand the Howard Street Tunnel in Baltimore came to a halt as CSX has decided not to pursue the project. Height restrictions within the 121-year-old tunnel prevent the shipment of double-stacked intermodal containers by rail to and from the Port of Baltimore. The tunnel is also one of the last impediments to a once-held CSX vision of having a fully double-stack cleared rail corridor between Florida and New York. What a difference a year and a new CEO makes. In October 2016, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and then-CEO of CSX Mike Ward joined to reiterate their shared commitment to seeing the project through to fruition. The two also pointed out that advancements in construction allowed for the project cost to be reduced from an estimated $1-3 billion to $425 million. The Class 1 had previously committed $145 million to the project with Maryland committing $125 million and applying in December 2016 for a federal grant to help fund the balance of the project. The railroad said the proposed project no longer justifies the level of investment required; a determination brought by an updated network evaluation, as well as recently adopted operating changes by CSXs new leadership team. The expanded tunnel was seen as a way to raise the Port of Baltimores competitive edge and provide a boost to the state and regional economies. In a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn said the department would not submit an application for an INFRA grant on the project, but said the department would work with CSX to pursue innovative ideas to efficiently and effectively move freight through the port. Singapore Airlines is investing $850 million to revamp its 19 Airbus A380 aircraft. The revamp will increase the overall seat count by 24 percent to 471 seats and also introduce "bedroom" first-class suites. Singapore Airlines said that its new cabin products will be fitted to its entire Airbus A380 fleet. The airline was the launch operator of the A380 when it took delivery of the world's first superjumbo in 2007. Singapore Airlines, which earlier had the lowest A380 seat count in the industry, will now have the highest seat count following the revamp. While the revamp will better utilize the aircraft's space, it will not reduce the size of class seats. The new aircraft configuration will carry up to 471 customers in four classes of travel, with six Singapore Airlines Suites, 78 Business Class seats, 44 Premium Economy Class seats and 343 Economy Class seats. The number of first-class suites on the aircraft will thus be halved and will be moved from the lower deck to the front cabin of the upper deck. Each suite will feature a plush mattress bedding, two pillows and a fluffy cotton duvet, complete with embroidery crafted by the French luxury brand, Lalique. They will also have sliding doors. Each suite will be furnished with a separate full-flat bed with adjustable recline, plush leather chair and a 32-inch full HD monitor that can swivel for the different viewing angles in seat and bed modes. The class seat, which has two side wings for better back support, can recline directly into a comfortable full-flat bed. The seats have a carbon fibre composite shell structure, unlike conventional aircraft seats that use metal as the primary support structure. According to the airline, the thinner base structure will allow for better optimization of the seat and create more under-seat stowage space. In the economy class, seats will offer more legroom and back support. They will also come with an 11.1-inch touchscreen monitor, personal storage space, in-seat power supply and a footrest with adjustable positions. The airline's new cabin products will start to enter service in December 2017 on the first of five new A380 aircraft on order with Airbus. Retrofit work will start in late 2018 on the 14 existing A380 aircraft that will be fitted with the new products, with all scheduled for completion in 2020. Singapore Airlines' A380 aircraft currently serve Auckland, Beijing, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Sydney, and Zurich. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News The Collins English Dictionary has called the term "fake news", frequently used by US President Donald Trump, as 2017's Word of the Year due to its "ubiquitous presence", the media reported on Thursday. The Dictionary's lexicographers, who monitor the 4.5 billion-word Collins corpus, said that usage of the term had increased by 365 per cent since 2016, reports the Guardian. The phrase, often capitalised, is frequently a feature of Trump's rhetoric; in the last few days alone he has tweeted of how "the Fake News is working overtime" in relation to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. Trump has used the term frequently, and claimed last week to have invented it - "the media is really, the word, one of the greatest of all (the) terms I've come up with, is fake'... I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years, but I've never noticed it," he told an interviewer. This etymology was disputed by the dictionary. Collins said that "fake news" started being used in the noughties on US television to describe "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting". Its usage has climbed since 2015, according to the dictionary, and really took off this year, with its ubiquity to be acknowledged with a place in the next print edition of the Collins Dictionary. A number of other words related to politics and current affairs were also in its list of the words of the year, the Guardian reported. "Echo chamber", defined as "an environment, especially on a social media site, in which any statement of opinion is likely to be greeted with approval because it will only be read or heard by people who hold similar views", has seen a "steady increase" in usage over the last five years , while "antifa" saw its usage rise by almost 7,000 per cent following violent clashes between anti-fascist protesters and the far right, particularly in the US. Corbynmania, up by 310 per cent, was also on the list: Collins said the term for "fervent enthusiasm" for UK's opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn "first emerged in 2015 and after a dip last year made a striking comeback in 2017 as the Labour leader impressed on the campaign trail". "Much of this year's list is definitely politically charged, but with a new president in the US and a snap election in the UK, it is perhaps no surprise that politics continues to electrify the language," said Collins's head of language content, Helen Newstead. China on Thursday blocked a US resolution seeking to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist. Due to lack of consensus at the UNSC committee, the application seeking a ban on Masood Azhar has been rejected, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official told . This is the second time Beijing has vetoed the proposal which was first moved by India at the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council in March last year. China did the same to a US proposal backed by France and the UK. It first blocked it in January and then put a technical hold for three months in August. A new resolution will have to be moved now. China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the terrorist who is accused by India of plotting a deadly attack on an Indian airbase in January 2016. India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar as an international terrorist. Dear Editor, All this year my wife and kids have been looking forward to going to Samoa this Christmas. We bought our tickets early because we know how much prices go up near Christmas. We were just buying the last of our presents and counting down the weeks when I received this email: Urgent Flight Notification Virgin Australia wishes to advise you that the Samoan Government has denied authorisation of our scheduled services between Apia and Auckland. We are disappointed by this decision and are working in conjunction with the Australian Government to explore options to encourage the Samoan Government to reconsider its decision. Our flight had been cancelled and my stomach fell to the floor! Naturally I immediately called Virgin and after 90 minutes on hold (other passengers had received the same email) one of their fabulous staff members rebooked our flight through Sydney at no extra cost. Now, theres only so many Australia to Apia flights and most are already full booked so it stands to reason that many families who have already paid to fly Auckland / Apia with Virgin are going to be very disappointed this Christmas. I presume this stoush between the Government and Virgin is something to do with either the aviation fuel tax credits that Virgin is owed or the Samoan government want a monopoly on the Auckland to Apia route for their new airline. Whatever the reason the timing and short notice of this disruption is shameful! How can a government show such disregard for its citizens who just want to spend Christmas together or for a tourist industry thats crying out for more flights but get fewer flights instead? Samoa a Christian country whose leaders are chosen by God? I think not. PikaT A very sad Samoan to find the writers hiding behind anonymity by using their freedom of expression to vent their vile and demeaning allegations on social media will no longer be tolerated. They should be warned now that their days of mischiefs are numbered, P.M. Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi The government has asked the Attorney Generals Office to look into reintroducing the Criminal Libel law, which was abolished by the government in 2013. The decision was revealed in a statement issued by the governments Press Secretary last night. It is part of efforts to address the growing number of ghost writers who use fake social media pages to attack members of the public. One such page is known as Ole Palemia. The Police had launched an investigation to find out who is responsible for the page but up until now they have not been successful. There are other pages. And now the government has had enough. The intention is not only to protect the privacy of the individuals and the general public from unsubstantiated, vicious and inciting allegations posted by ghost writers on the social media but to safeguard and ensure peace and harmony in the country remains intact, the statement issued last night reads. The statement quotes Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi as saying that since the Criminal Libel law was abolished (from the Crimes Act of 2013) some have abused the freedom to express their views in particular the defamatory allegations posted on social media. Some of these postings could lead to violent confrontation which may eventually cause misery to families and government will not stand by any longer, Tuilaepa said. Subject to approval by Parliament, the Prime Minister says the new act will ensure that the ghost writers will be brought to justice to answer to their writings. And they could be liable to be prosecuted with offenses that will include imprisonment. The H.R.P.P caucus is in full support, Tuilaepa said. There are 4,500 hackers in Samoa. Some are children and even lawyers are among the best hackers in the country. And to find the writers hiding behind anonymity by using their freedom of expression to vent their vile and demeaning allegations on social media will no longer be tolerated. They should be warned now that their days of mischiefs are numbered. The hackers, added the Prime Minister Tuilaepa, will be used by government to track down the ghost writers. Its like using a thief to catch a thief, he said. The proposed Act is anticipated to be tabled in the next Parliament session. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaois government has got it wrong. Thats the reaction from Member of Parliament, Olo Fiti Vaai, to the governments decision to revoke the license of Virgin Australia to fly between Auckland and Apia, leaving more than 6,000 travellers in limbo with their Christmas travel plans. Speaking to the Samoa Observer yesterday, Olo said having Virgin Australia continue to fly to Samoa from Auckland would be good for travelers, tourists, hoteliers and the business community. Having three airlines in Virgin, Samoa Airways and Air New Zealand will produce healthy competition for us the consumers, Olo said. This means cheaper airfares and that is what we need. But now the government has gone ahead and changed all that. Why? Olo accepts that Virgin Australia has been milking the route. For far too long Virgin Australia took advantage of the fact there were only two airlines and the airfares were ridiculously high, he said. But the governments decision announced this week will help matters. Olo blames Prime Minister Tuilaepa for the mistake made in the Virgin Australia deal. Their biggest mistake was getting in bed with them with the joint venture in the first place, Olo said. Now they that they have revoked their license, its another big mistake. The Member of Parliament said the government should grant the license allowing Virgin Australia to operate on their own with no ties to the government. Earlier this week, Tuilaepa announced their decision was final. Speaking to the Samoa Observer on Tuesday, Tuilaepa said his government would not yield to threats made by officials within the Australian government. The Prime Minister blasted the airline for selling tickets when they do not have a license to operate after 5th December, 2017, calling the airline liars and stupid for their actions. The license will expire when the joint venture expires, he reiterated. The joint venture between the government, Virgin Australia and the Grey Investment Group expires on 5th December, 2017. According to Olo, public records show that in the past 10 years, Virgin Australias most profitable route is Auckland to Samoa. I know this is why the government is adamant to stop Virgin from flying this route, now this is just petty and greedy, he said. The government should look at what benefits everyone, but not just the government. But no, the government wants to control the air space on which route Virgin Australia takes. The government is greedy and wants to take over all the routes especially the flights between Samoa and Auckland. I applaud the government for bringing back Samoa Airways, however there shouldnt only be two Airlines; it will go right back to where it was when it was only Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia - high airfares, said Olo. What Samoa needs are consistent flights in and out of Samoa and I am beyond certain this will strengthen competition and of course reduce the airfares and again, will benefit us all, the people and the economy. In a statement issued by the government earlier this week, it defended the decision saying Virgin should not be surprised by what has happened. This decision should not have come as a surprise to VAI, as the previous License was granted on the basis of the joint venture with the Government. That arrangement comes to an end on 13th November 2017. Further our government officials have previously made efforts to notify Virgin that they should stop selling Auckland Apia tickets beyond the 13th November date, without the proper approvals. To date, our government has received no direct response from Virgin to those communications. The efforts to contact Virgin included offers to discuss the License with Virgin officials. This offer has not been taken up to date. Instead Samoa was approached by the Australian Government officials where it became necessary to make the decision clear to them. This decision emphasised that VAI would be approved to operate scheduled services from points in Australia to Apia and return but with the Auckland to Apia and return services not approved. The necessary approvals were issued to VAI over the past few days. The hope is that this direct link between Australia and Samoa will be reciprocated when the Samoa Airways application is considered. Samoa Airways is working hard to comply with terms of that application to fly direct from Apia to Australia. The Government stands by the decision to decline the approval for Auckland and Apia Virgin flights. It was made clear to Virgin that they are free under the License terms to fly direct from Australia to Samoa and return; but Auckland is no longer accessible. The Government disagrees with the statement made, that this violates previous Air Service Agreements given that those did not remove Samoas sovereign rights to consider all applications made to Samoa, and the overall impact that it can have on our people, economy and country. Further, the spirit of those agreements were to facilitate cooperation such as past code sharing with airlines like Qantas and Polynesian Airlines; not to allow for rippling economic damage to Samoa in favour of a Multinational Airline. The statement quoted P.M. Tuilaepa as saying: We are an island nation attempting to re-start jet services with only a one aircraft airline, and we are being treated in this manner by a multinational company in response. However, steps to start from this humble beginning and aim towards the future are on schedule and will continue. We therefore have no choice but to stand against any efforts to destroy that goal for our people. We are grateful for the assistance of those airlines and governments willing to assist. Ramona Aleli, a cancer survivor, has hailed efforts by Aolagi Jackson-Anderson, who held a 24-hour cancer awareness campaign using her photo next to the Pink iconic clock at the heart of Apia. In her pink rubber band ponytails, Aolagi smiled as her mother Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, snapped her photo and posted it on social media with the message, "to translate this post to action we will donate a dollar for every engagement this post has in the next #24hours in the name of cancer." As part of Pinktober, Aolagis photo activity raised $327 and on the last day of October, Aolagi made a donation of $350 to Ramona who is a uterine cancer survivor. The amount of likes, comments and Instagram engagement contributed to Lagipoiva and her husbands donation towards their daughters campaign. Lagipoiva told the Samoa Observer that Ramona manages one of the local coffee shops and she felt its most appropriate to donate directly to her to assist with her doctor's visits and pain medication. As part of Brave Storms help - Mona also received some advice and a one on one with Oncology Nurse and Storms, Leilani Jackson from NZ who has committed to assist Ramona. The cancer survivor patient told the Samoa Observer that she never expected this from anyone. Ramona commended efforts by Aolagi and her mother to donate funds to assist with purchasing of her medication. I am so thankful and so appreciative for the donation because the truth is I did not think that I will ever receive anything like this." I was shocked I didnt expect this when they asked me to meet them, said Ramona. Ramona said its been four years since she survived uterus cancer. Apias iconic clock tower returned to its original shade on Tuesday evening, signifying the official end of the Pinktober Campaign. The village of Fagalii has agreed to fine any person who is found littering in any part of the village $1,000. This is part of their efforts to promote this years Environment Week theme Healthy Environment, Healthy People. If they do not abide by it (penalty) they will face the consequences of such actions through the law, village representative, Umalau Tapunuu Auvaa told the Samoa Observer yesterday. In this way we support the Ridge to Reef Programme. The Ridge to Reef Programme is endorsed by the S.P.C. and M.N.R.E. The project aims to integrate land, water and coastal management at the Fagalii watershed area. However, Ridge to Reef Manager, Fata Leaitiogie Malolo, said in the past they had found that the Fagalii watershed area was being used as a dumping place by the public. It is a concern to the ministry because it has a lot of impact on the environment, he said. I want to put out a message to the public who are dumping rubbish at the Fagalii area and Letogo, to please be mindful of their actions. Keep Samoa clean. According to Umalau, their village strongly supports the programme. There will be village members who will take turn in monitoring the Fagalii Watershed Area because there are some people who use the river to wash their vehicles. Others use it as a dumping place for their own rubbish. As part of the programme, Ridge to Reef Programme handed over tools to the Village of Fagalii which was accepted by Umalau. The pilot programme has already been implemented in Faleaseela, Aleipata, Sagone and Vaipouli on the big island of Savaii. The protection of Samoas borders has just received a tremendous boost with the arrival of Flame the black Labrador. The Detector dog is in Samoa as part of the Pacific Detector Dog Programme (P.D.D.P.) managed by the New Zealand Police Dog Section and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The programme has been running for 10 years, supplying and training dogs and handlers for Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands and Fiji. Police Sergeant Al Campbell arrived in Samoa last week to deliver Flame and get her final training completed in order to start her new role as an operational drug dog. Once Flame gains some experience she will also be trained to find firearms. She will be replacing one of the current drug dogs Boss who is retiring after providing outstanding service to Samoa Police and the Samoa Customs K9 Unit since 2010. Boss will be retired to a home in Samoa. Inspector Todd Southall, National Coordinator: Police Dogs, says Flame, a female Labrador and the fifth dog from the P.D.D.P. programme to go to Samoa, is full of energy and has performed well throughout her training in New Zealand. She will be assigned to Police Constable Mozart Kueva Milo who underwent certification with Flame last week under the guidance of Sergeant Campbell. NZ Police Dog Training Centre staff visit the Pacific countries involved in the P.D.D.P. three times per year to undertake maintenance and certification training with the dog teams in all environments. The standards expected of the Pacific teams is no different to that of NZ detector dogs. Dog Training Centre staff also work to educate and train other staff in the Pacific who work alongside the drug dogs. Inspector Todd Southall says NZ Customs are also working with NZ Police in a joint partnership to ensure the dog teams are getting the best training available. Customs have been invaluable around border control and intelligence training as well as assisting with dog training. We really value this partnership and are proud of the fantastic work we are doing to help our Pacific neighbours in this area. It is about helping protect our neighbours. The Asia-Pacific is us and if we are protecting their borders, we are protecting our borders. No matter where life takes you, you will always find comfort at home. Meet Siaosi Iogi, 45, from the village of Leulumoega. He is a family man in every meaning of the term. This is the fourth month since I moved back here in Samoa from Australia, he said. I am here to help out with my brother taking care of our plantation. My wife and kids are still in Australia while I am here helping my brother because everyone else started moving abroad and there is no one else here to take care of our land and plantation. Mr. Iogi shared the difference between living in Australia and Samoa. Its totally different somehow, Mr. Iogi said. I think Samoa gives you the right to live on your own land and get to do what you want wherever you stay, but not there. Australia on the other hand, regarding salaries, is way different from here, no matter if you are a janitor, your money is definitely enough for your family, but here its a different story. Mr. Iogi also said his return did not disappoint him at all. I am excited I get to come back here and work our land here, there are so many blessings around our land here and we just have to work it. The only sad thing is living away from my wife and kids but I also didnt want them here because the kids have settled with their school there. Mr. Iogi said part of giving back to the family was sacrificing what he wanted and coming home to help his family. I am willing to do my part and I am really enjoying everything as well as making sure everything is well looked after, he added. For most of his 80 years, Dave Dana has been a student of history and one thing hes learned from his studies and travels is that history can repeat itself when we dont learn from the past. Today, Russias covert efforts to influence the West dominates the news and a new border wall is taking shape on this countys southern border. Thats strikingly similar to what Dana encountered 56 years ago during a 1961 trip behind the Iron Curtain. Back then, Dana was a 24-year-old American law student traveling with friends through the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany. In letters home to his parents, Dana wrote that he found the Eastern Bloc governments repressive, the people seemed miserable and the economies were stagnant. Trains and buses were regularly searched for refugees fleeing to the West. Advertisement Five days after Dana flew out of East Germany in 1961, the Berlin Wall went up. Among the souvenirs in the book-lined study of Danas Carlsbad home is a fist-sized chunk of the Berlin Wall. It was a gift from his son after the infamous concrete barrier was torn down in 1989. Walls are not helpful in international relations; theyre provocative, he said. Refugees are an inevitable fact of life. Refugees from wars, religions, ethnic differences, disease They are the history of humanity the U.S. was settled by fleeing from somewhere else. A piece of the Berlin Wall in Dave Danas study in Carlsbad. The memento, given to Dana by his son, commemorates his trip to Berlin just days before the wall went up in August 1961. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune ) Born and raised in Lenox, Mass., Dana studied history in college, where his thesis was on the Marshall Mission, the failed U.S. diplomatic mission with communist China after World War II. Danas interest in the topic was piqued by his family history. Danas grandfather spent a decade in the mid-1800s in China as a trader (most likely in opium). After earning his history degree, Dana moved on to law school and was on a summer break in 1961 when he took that memorable trip overseas. Dana said his experiences that summer fueled his passion for history and made him interested in international relations. Dana collected all of his letters home that summer in a journal thats titled Behind the Iron Curtain. In the prologue, he writes about how the world seemed to be at a major turning point in 1961. Political tensions were rising between the U.S. and Russia with the spread of Communism to Latin America and Africa, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and Nikita Krushchevs efforts to force Allied powers out of Berlin. Dana traveled that summer to Sweden for a friends wedding. Then he and a group of friends joined a tour group traveling from Finland to Poland, the Soviet cities of Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev, and finally Berlin. In the Soviet Bloc, Dana said he was warned not to take pictures of troops or government officials, sell items to black marketeers or attempt to distribute religious or other materials. Tourists were constantly shadowed by government agents. Cover page of a journal Dave Dana created from letters he wrote home to his parents from a trip into the Soviet Union in 1961. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune ) Moscow was not a happy place, he recalled. The people drank a lot and didnt seem particularly happy. Whenever wed ask if we could go visit places, they would say, yes, of course, but its closed today. The Soviet cities were rundown and dreary, the food was tasteless, the hotels were substandard. Traveling from Kiev to Warsaw, Danas group shared a train with numerous Russian soldiers carrying guns. In retrospect, he wondered if they were among the 4,000 Russian troops being secretly sent to Berlin to erect the wall. On Aug. 4, the group arrived in Berlin, where Dana said he was stunned by the contrasts between the dark, deserted, crumbling Soviet-controlled eastern half of the city and the bustling, noisy, vibrant, modern Allied-occupied western half. The West Berliners feared for their friends and family whenever they traveled to the East side. The East Berliners who could get out were already gone. The older, poorer residents seemed resigned to their fates. On Aug. 7, Dana traveled to an airport in East Germany. Before his flight left for Vienna, he saw a large Russian plane arrive filled with Soviet officials. He suspected later they were arriving for the wall-raising. On Aug. 12-13, East German and Soviet soldiers laid 30 miles of razor wire between East and West Berlin. Work on the concrete barrier began three days later. After finishing law school, Dana spent three years in the Marine Corps at El Toro air base in Orange County, where he met his future wife. He also spent one year on the general counsel desk for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., before setting up his own private law practice. The Danas had two children and moved back to Southern California in the early 1970s. He retired in 1995. Seven years ago, the Danas moved into the La Costa Glen retirement community in Carlsbad, where she passed away four years ago after 48 years of marriage. Dana said his love for history has never waned. His bookshelves are filled with hundreds of books on world history, including Frederick Kempes 2011 book Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Krushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth. In his journal, Dana wrote about a debate he had with a tour guide in Kiev who criticized Americas freedom of the press and believed it was better that the Soviet government dealt quietly with its problems by simply throwing troublemakers in jail. These kind of comments really showed how differently we think about everything, Dana wrote. They take our self-criticism and expression of opinion as a sign of weakness. We see it as a sign of strength. pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com CARDIFF Dinner fundraiser at Chipotle tonight The Cardiff Schools Education Association holds a dinner fundraiser from 4 to 8 p.m. tonight at Chipotle, 268 N. El Camino Real in Encinitas. Bring in a flyer (available at the schools or at bit.ly/2gPlleA, click on Cardiff SEA Chipotle Dinner Fundraiser), show it on your smartphone or tell the cashier youre supporting the cause before you order to make sure that 50 percent of the proceeds will be donated to Cardiff SEA. Advertisement ENCINITAS Grauer School hosts open house Saturday The Grauer School invites the community to learn about independent education at its open house from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at 1500 S. El Camino Real. Students will lead campus tours every 20 minutes. Meet teachers, students and current Grauer parents. Stuart Grauer, founder and head of school, will speak every half hour starting at 11:30 a.m. RSVP at grauerschool.com. ESCONDIDO County awards $25K grant for band program The County of San Diego, through County Supervisor Kristen Gaspars office, has awarded a $25,000 grant to Classical Academy High School to support its band program. The grant will purchase instruments that will be played by up to 60 students. The schools band program began in the 2014-2015 school year with only three students; it now serves 25 students from six campuses. Georgias Dance school holds rummage sale Georgias School of Dance is holding a Rummage Sale fundraiser for its award-winning competition team from 7 a.m. to noon Sunday at Georgias, 142 E. Grand Ave. Sale items include clothing, books and household goods. All proceeds will support dancers in regional competitions. Email georgiaschoolofdance@gmail.com or call (760) 745-6662. Conway festival seeks donations, volunteers Conway Elementary School holds a Fall Festival from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Nov. 9 at 1325 Conway Drive with games, food, cake walk, music and raffles. Free tickets for those donating canned goods to the Salvation Army food drive: one ticket per can, limit five tickets per family. Donations of extension cords, canned sodas, outdoor lighting and store-bought desserts are requested. Volunteers are needed: Call Rosario at (760) 432-2435 or sign up at bit.ly/2zVHT4z. Game and food tickets are five for $1 if preordered by Monday, or four for $1 at the door. Call (760) 432-2435. NORTH COUNTY School group honored for health efforts The Learning Care Group was recently recognized as the 2017 Partner of the Year by the Partnership for a Healthier America. The group, which includes La Petite Academy schools in Carmel Valley, Vista, Oceanside and San Diego, was honored for its work in aligning with former first lady Michelle Obamas Lets Move! Child Care goals for physical activity, food, beverages, infant feeding, screen time and parent engagement. Visit lapetite.com or learningcaregroup.com. OCEANSIDE Cultural Tea Talk offered at high school The Oceanside High School English Language Development program invites the community to a Cultural Tea Talk from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the multipurpose room. Enjoy coffee, tea, champurrado or Abuelita hot chocolate while discussing the communitys strengths, the issues faced and ways to contribute to the growth and success of Oceanside. RSVP to kimberly.moreno@oside.us or fill out the form at goo.gl/forms/MoiIorbmVCTYF48s1. RAMONA NJROTC Cadets ceremony at RHS Ramona High Schools Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps recently held its annual installation of cadets ceremony at the stadium. The ceremony transitions its new recruits to cadets, with families and friends pinning the new rank of Seaman Apprentice on the cadets. Four NJROTC platoons 120 cadets were commissioned by their commanding officer, Cadet Nicole Lewis, on the command of the new Naval Science instructor, Lt. Cmdr. Adam Birst. Guest speaker was Mike Ernst, Ramona High vice principal and former senior Naval Science instructor at RHS. Also instrumental in the ceremony was Chief Petty Officer Bob Richardson, who is also a Naval Science instructor. SOLANA BEACH Solana Pacific solar project ribbon-cutting The Solana Beach School District hosts a ribbon-cutting for the Solana Pacific Solar Project, funded by Measure JJ, at 3:30 p.m. Friday at the school, 3901 Townsgate Drive. The Flip the Switch event will celebrate new solar canopies that will produce clean, green energy for the school. The Solana Pacific International Heritage Night follows. Limited seating provided. RSVP not required. Call (858) 794-7130. VALLEY CENTER District appoints new superintendent Ron McCowan will be the new superintendent of the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District, effective Jan. 1, 2018, the district board of trustees has announced. McCowan has been with the district for 19 years, serving as principal of the elementary upper school, and vice principal and principal of Valley Center High School. He holds a masters degree in educational leadership from Azusa Pacific University, and is a former high school biology teacher. McCowan will continue as principal of Valley Center High until the end of the calendar year. Superintendent Mary Gorsuch announced her retirement earlier this summer. VISTA Students to stage Sister Act this month The students at Guajome Park Academy present Sister Act: The Musical at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10-11 and 2 p.m. Nov. 12 in the school gymnasium. Tickets available at the door for $12 adults and $10 students. The school is at 2000 N. Santa Fe Ave. Call (760) 631-8500. Author visits school to discuss debut novel Julia Walton, an alumna of Rancho Buena Vista High School, recently visited the school library to talk to students about her debut novel, Words on Bathroom Walls, released this summer by Random House. The young adult novel deals with a boy who has schizophrenia and how he handles his illness. Walton spoke to the students about rejection, her writing process, taking the right classes and more. Mission Vista High presents The Crucible Mission Vista High School presents Arthur Millers The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials, at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Nov. 9, and Nov. 16-17, with 3:30 p.m. matinees Nov. 15 and 17 at the school theater, 1306 Melrose Drive, Oceanside. Matinee tickets are $7; presale tickets are $10 until Tuesday; $8 for seniors and students with ASB cards; $12 for general admission. Please send items to laura.groch@sduniontribune.com at least 10 days before events take place. laura.groch@sduniontribune.com Events 608 restaurant has launched Tasting Thursdays, an experimental and experiential surprise four-course menu offered the first Thursday of each month. Guests become the driving force behind the ever-rotating menu that highlights locally sourced ingredients and spirited platings. Executive chef/owner William Eick and his team prepare the evenings menu and determine, from customer reactions, what dishes to add or remove from the menu. Some items may appear on future menus while others have their five minutes of fame, never to be eaten again. Past favorite dishes include local stone crab, soy-braised short rib and roast duck breast. 608 Mission Ave., Oceanside. $35 per person. Reservations: (760) 291-1040 or 608oceanside.com El Chingon in the Gaslamp Quarter is celebrating National Nachos Day on Monday with Nachos Libres. The hearty platter of Americas favorite Mexican dish is made with crisp, freshly made tortilla chips, topped with the restaurants signature Chingon cheese blend, Mexican citrus cream, candied jalapeno, avocado crema, pico de gallo and guacamole. Normally priced at $11, the nachos will be offered half-priced all day long. 560 Fifth Ave., San Diego. (619) 501-1919 or elchingon.com San Diego Beer Week: Friday through Nov. 12 San Diego Brewers Guild Festival, the official kick-off event, features more than 60 local breweries, restaurant fare and live music. 6 to 9 p.m. Friday (VIP Brewer Takeover) and 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday (Festival). The Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier, 1000 N. Harbor Drive, downtown San Diego Marina. $45-$100. Proceeds to benefit local charities and the San Diego Brewers Guild. sdbw.org Advertisement Longship Brewery will release a keg of its new craft beer, Oaked Ragnabock. Crafted using the brewerys award-winning Ragnabock a dark, strong lager the beer was aged in bourbon-barrel oak chips for six months allowing vanilla and oak notes to combine with the already deep toffee and dark fruit flavors. 5 to 10 p.m. Friday. 10320 Camino Santa Fe, Suite C, San Diego. (858) 246-7875 or longshipbrewery.com Hundred Proof and Modern Times Brewery have teamed up for a no cover Boiler Room Brawl. Guests can choose from a selection of five boilermakers priced from $10 to $14. They include Modern Times Fruitlands Gose, Modern Times Blazing Worlds Hoppy Amber, Modern Times Critical Band IPA, Modern Times Black House Coffee Stout and Modern Times Orderville IPA. Chef Brad Wise will serve the restaurants full menu of bar bites, including short rib bao buns and crispy chicken oysters, as well as a vegan special. 4130 Park Blvd., San Diego. (619) 501-6404 or hundredproofsd.com Seasonal food and drink menus Cafe 21 owner and chef Leyla Javadov has created new dishes using all-natural meats, wild seafood and local and organic produce. The menu features grilled pear salad ($12), slow braised short rib ($21) and sweet potato dreams ($14). 802 Fifth Ave., San Diego. (619) 795-0721 or cafe-21.com Herb & Wood in Little Italy has curated a fall menu with dishes like Dungeness crab salad ($19.80), kiwi and burrata (fresh Italian cheese) salad ($13.89), wood-roasted kabocha squash ($9.42), berbere-crusted (spice mixture) duck confit ($21.69) and for dessert, hazelnut bar ($12). 2210 Kettner Blvd., San Diego. (619) 955-8495 or herbandwood.com Madison on Park in University Heights offers diners Mediterranean and Southern California-inspired dishes like apple cranberry walnut salad ($11) and portobello fries ($10). Try the Harvest Moon cocktail ($12), a unique spin on the Old Fashioned. 4622 Park Blvd., San Diego. (619) 269-6566 or madisononpark.com Green Acres chef Brian Malarkey has added a lamb barbacoa gyro ($12.79) to the menu. Topped with rancho barbecue sauce, tzatziki (a yogurt-based sauce), lemon-pickled jalapenos and queso fresco, the gyro is on a traditional naan bread. 10300 Campus Point Drive, San Diego. (858) 450-9907 or greenacresd.com The Bristol Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter is serving guests a new drink special for the fall season. The Salted Caramel Martini ($12) is crafted with RumChata, Stolichnaya Salted Karamel Vodka and finished with a salted caramel rim, a drizzling of caramel inside the glass and a caramel garnish. 1055 First Ave., San Diego. (619) 232-6141 or thebristolsandieog.com Cusp Dining & Drinks has added hearty and warm dishes to its menu, featuring baby beet salad, cauliflower with lemon jam, lamb shoulder pappardelle pasta, roasted New York steak and roasted lamb loin. 7955 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla. (858) 551-3620 or cusprestaurant.com True Food Kitchen in Fashion Valley has debuted its new fall menu with dishes like heirloom carrots tossed in sherry vinaigrette and garnished with zaatar (Middle Eastern spice) yogurt, pistachios and fresh dill; and squash pie, made with butternut squash puree and a hint of brandy, nutmeg and other fall spices and garnished with whipped coconut cream. 7007 Friars Road, Suite D394, San Diego. (619) 810-2929 or truefoodkitchen.com The Haven offers diners pumpkin-inspired dishes perfect for a light lunch. Menu items include pumpkin soup topped with roasted pumpkin seeds, cream and a dash of fresh parsley; pumpkin and sage lasagna, made with layers of noodles, pumpkin, cheese and herbs; and Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale, a full-bodied brown beer with notes of pumpkin and brown sugar. 4051 Adams Ave., San Diego. (619) 281-1904 or thehavenpizzeria.com Rustic Root executive chef Marcel Childress has introduced meat, vegetable and pasta-focused dishes to its seasonal menu. Highlighted dishes include roasted Cornish hen, seared sea scallops, steak and frites and wild boar bolognese. 535 Fifth Ave., San Diego. (619) 232-1747 or rusticroot.com Salvuccis in East Village is welcoming guests to try its new tableside Parmesan cheese wheel. Every Thursday, upon request, guests can experience the interactive, tableside demonstration as fresh, handmade pasta is placed into the carved cheese wheel as it thoroughly coats the pasta with cheese flavors. Once coated, guests can add additional sauces and toppings to their dishes. 935 J St., San Diego. (619) 255-1112 or salvuccissd.com Farmers Table has added two new autumn-themed libations to its drink menu. The American Dream, a concoction of Cutwater Spirits Horchata Vodka, cold press organic apple juice, Angostura bitters, fresh lemon juice and a salted caramel-cinnamon rim. The Basic is honed with Hiram Walker Pumpkin Spice Liqueur, Cafe Moto Nitro Cold Brew, Jameson Irish Whiskey and cream, and topped with whipped cream and cinnamon. 8141 La Mesa Blvd., La Mesa. (619) 724-6465 or farmerstablelamesa.com Flower Child Del Mar is celebrating autumn with offerings like the Brussels and squash salad, roasted butternut squash side dish, Madras curry bowl and heirloom bean burrito bowl. Flower Hill, 2690 Via De La Valle, Del Mar. (858) 314-6818 or iamaflowerchild.com The Pool House at Pendry San Diego opened its doors to the lunch crowd with dishes prepared by renowned chef Jojo Ruiz. Bites include smashed avocado toast, big-eye tuna poke, roasted chicken club sandwich and the Pool House burger. Stay hydrated with the Fresca Fizz, made with Stoli Razberi Vodka, raspberries, lemon, mint and Chandon sparking wine or The EDM, a frozen cocktail made with Casamigos Blanco Tequila, triple sec and fresh sweet and sour mix. 435 Fifth Ave., San Diego. (619) 738-7030 or poolhousesd.com Seasons 52 has launched a new three-course Harvest dinner menu. Guests can choose one item from the starter, entree and dessert menus. Entree choices include maple-glazed all-natural roasted half chicken, cedar plank-roasted salmon, wood-grilled filet mignon, boneless beef short rib or braised Australian lamb shank. Available through Nov. 22. $29 per person; $6 select wines are also available. Seaport District, 789 W. Harbor Drive and UTC, 4505 La Jolla Village Drive. seasons52.com Barrel Republic has unveiled its new and improved fall menu crafted to complement the San Diego food scene. Inspired dishes include arugula and white bean butternut hummus salad, lamb Reuben sandwich, spicy udon noodle salad and creamy house-made chocolate pudding. 215 N. Coast Highway, Oceanside and 2961 State St., Carlsbad. barrelrepublic.com Osetra Seafood & Steaks has launched its new Pre-Fixe Theatre Menu specifically crafted for theatre-going diners. Guests choose one item from each of the three courses offered. Entree choices include Northern Atlantic salmon, Italian sausage rigatoni, rosemary chicken or New York steak. $40 per person. 904 Fifth Ave., San Diego. (619) 239-1800 or osetraseafoodandsteaks.com Urban Plates offers diners a fall harvest on every plate with its new seasonal menu. Highlights include panko-crusted Idaho trout, sweet potato, carrot and red curry soup, miso mushroom sweet potato saute and quinoa tabbouleh with feta. Leave room for dessert with more than 20 house-made sweets to choose from, including mango tart, hummingbird cake, urban cowgirl cookie and fresh apple caramel cake. 1923 Calle Barcelona, Carlsbad; Del Mar Highlands Town Center, 12857 El Camino Real, San Diego; and 8707 Villa La Jolla Drive, La Jolla. urbanplates.com carolina.gusman@sduniontribune.com To say the 18th San Diego Asian Film Festival offers variety is a Technicolor understatement. Genres range from horror, comedy and drama to documentaries and animated movies. Characters include lovers, veterans and teens to extraterrestrials and monsters. The largest Asian film festival on the West Coast, SDAFF will present more than 150 films from 20 countries in 30 languages in six local venues from next Thursday to Saturday, Nov. 18. If youre a lover of indie film, youll see it here, said Kent Lee, executive director of Pacific Arts Movement (Pac Arts), the nonprofit that presents SDAFF. If you want Hollywood-type blockbusters from Asia, it will be here. Half of our audience is non-Asian. You can find a little bit of everything. Advertisement The opening and closing films of the festival will be shown at the Natural History Museums Kaplan Theater in Balboa Park. Both events will feature food prepared by local chefs during the screenings. SDAFFs opener will be Oh, Lucy, a comedy about a middle-aged woman in Tokyo who leaves her dull office life for San Diego (unfortunately, Los Angeles subbed for our city). A Better Man, the closing film, will be shown Nov. 17. The intensely personal documentary is by Attiya Khan, who films a conversation between herself and her real-life, former abusive boyfriend. Their remembrances are so different, said Brian Hu, Pac Arts artistic director and SDAFFs cinema selector-in-chief. When I was at the Cannes Film Festival, I saw no movie that came up to the emotional level of Better Man. Its a very timely piece. Attiya will be here, and its bound to be powerful. Anyone who has followed #starringJohnCho and #starringConstanceWu online knows that these viral campaigns have encouraged leading roles for Asian-American actors in Hollywood. Both actors will appear (onscreen only) at SDAFF. Wu has a major role in the lesbian-centric ensemble comedy The Feels. This proves Constance can be a lead, Hu said. The films director is not Asian. Why cant other people believe that these two could star in feature films? Two John Cho movies will screen at SDAFF. One is a world premiere of a new restoration of Shopping for Fangs, a comedic thriller about four intriguing Asian-American 20-somethings (take notice, fans of LGBT cinema and werewolves). In the indie drama Columbus, Cho plays a character who tries to sort out his relationship with his ailing father as he develops an intimate friendship with a young woman. Thats something so familiar to all of us, Hu noted. Most actors have had family and romantic relationships on screen. Why cant John Cho? Here, were showing Fangs from 1997 and Columbus from 2017. This is definitely #starringjohncho. The jampacked festivals red-carpet awards gala is on Nov. 11. Other highlights include podcast panels, which will be recorded onsite. One podcast will feature Hu, his co-host, Ada Tseng, with guest and SDAFF founder Lee Ann Kim. The festival continues even after closing night. On Saturday, Nov. 18, four movies will be screened at Balboa Parks Museum of Photographic Arts. If theres an overriding theme to the festival, Hu said, it is nostalgia, survival and home. He points to this years logo, designed by Carolyn Ramos, as representing this theme. We have gotten a lot of positive response to the logo, he said. The rice cooker is a symbol of family. In a way, its an inside joke. Rice is a staple in all Asian cultures. Asia is so diverse, but this seems universal. I like the logo because its a little retro with the neon lights. We want to be pop-culture savvy. Rice cookers havent been a part of mainstream pop culture. Why not? Focus on veterans This year we have a trio of war films, said SDAFF Artistic Director Brian Hu. I dont plan those things, but its exciting when there are trends. These three films are from different perspectives and from different countries. But they all demonstrate the more universal feelings of sacrifice and how society treats veterans after they come home. Ones made in Micronesia (Island Soldier) and has a San Diego connection, Hu explained. Another, My Enemy, My Brother, follows two men who fought against each other in the Iran-Iraq war and become friends after relocating to Vancouver. The third veteran-themed film is Youth, which explores Chinas Cultural Revolution and the Sino-Vietnamese war through the eyes of a young dance troupe. Screenings will be held at UltraStar Mission Valley Island Soldier, Nov. 13 (with the filmmaker) My Enemy, My Brother, Veterans Day, Nov. 11 (with the two veterans featured in the film) Youth, Nov. 15, Nov. 16 18th San Diego Asian Film Festival When: Thursday, Nov. 9, to Saturday, Nov. 18 Where: UltraStar Mission Valley, SDAFFs home base, 7510 Hazard Center Drive, Mission Valley, plus five other venues throughout San Diego. Tickets: $10 to $12 general admission; $8 panels; $40 opening and closing night films; $60 festival six-pack; $295 all-festival pass. Discount prices for Pac Arts members. Check website for free programs. Phone: (619) 400-5911 Online: sdaff.org Potluck Podcast Collective The Potluck Podcast Collective, a group of podcasters who discuss all things Asian American, will be at SDAFF on Saturday, Nov. 11. These live-recording events will allow the audience to observe and participate in podcasts before they are aired. Wood is a freelance writer. Wood is a freelance writer. Five months after he returned from a combat deployment that took his 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and their vital artillery to aid American-backed forces in Syria, Col. Clay C. Tipton stepped down. During an change-of-command ceremony last month at Camp Pendletons Del Mar Parade Field, Col. Fridrik Fridriksson took the helm of Tiptons Pride of the Pacific 11th MEU and its nearly 2,400 Marines and sailors. Thank you all for attending todays ceremony, specifically Col. Tipton for his leadership of the 11th MEU. To the Marines and sailors of the MEU, thank you for the opportunity to lead you, said Fridriksson, according to a news release from the corps. Advertisement Returning on May 15 as part of the San Diego-based Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, the unit spent three months in the Pacific Ocean and another four in the waters of the Middle East and Africa. They supported the Jan. 29 raid in Yemen in which a Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens was killed by Islamic State militants. They also deployed artillery and infantry troops to Syria to attack ISIS positions in Raqqa. Pronounced Mew, a MEU is the tiniest component of a Marine air-ground task force. Built around an expeditionary quick reaction force of infantrymen, its designed to rapidly meet a wide range of crises, from embassy rescue missions to humanitarian relief and heavy combat. It packs a punch with close air support jets, armored amphibious assault craft, artillery and combat engineers who clear battlefield obstacles. Joining the Corps in 1991, Fridriksson arrived at the expeditionary unit from Task Force Al Assad, where he commanded an American-led coalition of forces supporting combat operations in Iraqs Euphrates River valley. Their mission was to advise and assist Iraqs Jazira al-Badiyah Operations Center and the 7th Iraqi Army Division. He previously led the Camp Pendleton-based Thundering Third of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines and taught at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com A U.S. Navy report released Wednesday uncovered numerous failures in leadership, training and seamanship that caused deadly collisions over the summer involving the destroyers McCain and Fitzgerald. Claiming the lives of 17 sailors, two of them from San Diego County, the crashes in the busy waters of the western Pacific Ocean highlight a Navy struggling to train, test, credential and deploy warships in the Japan-based 7th Fleets area of operations, a region stretching from the Arctic south past Australia. Both of these accidents were preventable, and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents, said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson in a written statement. We must do better. Advertisement Vowing to ensure that such collisions never occur again, Richardson urged our culture, from the most junior sailor to the most senior commander to value and achieve the highest standards of performance. We will spend every effort needed to correct these problems and be stronger than before, he said. Completed on Oct. 23, the 71-page unclassified report was scathing in its denunciations of the leadership teams aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers and detailed in the harrowing descriptions of what sailors faced below deck when their vessels were struck by commercial ships. Shortly before the ACX Crystal speared into the U.S. Navy destroyer Fitzgerald on June 17 in the Philippine Sea, the Navy officer of the deck and the team on the bridge were sailing too fast in waters jammed with commercial vessels. They failed to veer away from the incoming ship as required by the International Rules of the Nautical Road, never notified other craft of danger and werent even looking on the starboard side of the bridge, focusing only to the port, before the Crystal appeared and struck them. The Fitzs lax radar operators failed to properly tune and adjust the equipment to gain an accurate picture, navigators were blithely unaware of the expected flow of maritime traffic and no one turned on the automated identification system that would have provided updates in real time of commercial vessels that are tracked by satellites. And the warships leadership team pushed a punishing schedule of inspections and certification testing that fatigued the crew and then failed to ensure enough rest in the hours before tragedy unfurled. Capt. Lawrence Brennan, the Navys former senior admiralty counsel who now teaches at Fordham Universitys School of Law, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the report establishes a shocking level of crew incompetence and unseaworthiness that was punctuated by violations of long-established standard operating procedures, international law and the norms that guide the navigation of all oceangoing vessels. Its almost as if no one on the Fitzgerald or the McCain looked at the rules of the road or read a manual about how to operate a ship at sea, said Brennan, who served in the Navy for 33 years and investigated several major ship accidents. In the predawn Aug. 21 collision of the destroyer McCain east of Singapore, the bridge leadership and crew bungled the steering of the warship, losing control of the vessel as it lurched left toward the incoming oil tanker Alnic MC, according to the Navy report. Multiple bridge watch standers lacked even a basic level of knowledge of the steering control system, investigators determined, and other sailors tasked with training them had an insufficient level of knowledge to effectively maintain appropriate rigor in the qualification program. In fact, the most senior officer in charge of maintaining standards lacked a general understanding of how to transfer steering between consoles. Neither the unnamed officer of the deck nor the conning officer on duty attended a navigation brief on the afternoon preceding the collision, a meeting thats designed to provide maximum awareness of potential safety risks. The McCains crew failed to sound five short warning blasts or hail the bridge of the Alnic after it lost control, efforts that might have prevented the crash, according to the report. Sounding the alarm is vital, Brennan said. That wakes you up. It gets you moving. In my opinion, that failure to sound the warning alarm to the commercial vessel and general quarters for the crew cost lives. The crashes of the McCain and Fitzgerald had been preceded by a Jan. 31 accident in which the cruiser Antietam ran aground on rocks lining the Japanese coast. Less than five months later, the San Diego-based cruiser Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing boat, but those incidents werent fatal. Two of the seven sailors killed on the Fitzgerald were from the San Diego area Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, of Oceanside, and Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Hitch Sibayan, 23, of Chula Vista. They were drowned after the ACX Crystals bow stabbed through the below deck steel, sluicing water into their sleeping quarters and triggering flooding that was exacerbated by a crushed fire main and pipes that spurted firefighting foam. Sailors screamed Water on deck! and Get out! but its unclear in the report if Douglass or Sibayan heard them. Investigators determined that some their shipmates heard neither those calls nor the peals of alarms echoing through the heavily listing warship. One sailor awoke only after hed been jerked from his rack into the rising water, mattresses and an exercise bike floating between wall lockers that bobbed in the murk. Guided often only by dim battle lanterns that kick on after a section loses electrical power, one submerged sailor swimming for safety took what he thought was his final breath before being yanked from the water, red-faced, his eyes bloodshot. Another found an air pocket and sucked in a breath before swimming for an escape hole. He blacked out along the way but made it to another section and survived. Five sailors pounded away with a sledgehammer, kettlebell and their own bodies at the stateroom hatch to their trapped skipper, Cmdr. Bryce Benson. Once they crawled into the cabin, they found that the ships steel skin and outer bulkhead had been peeled away. Seeing the night sky through hanging wires and torn metal, they tied themselves together to form a makeshift harness to retrieve Benson, who was hanging from the side of the ship. In the weeks after the destroyer disasters, the Navy brass fired Benson, his executive officer Cmdr. Sean Babbitt and their senior enlisted sailor, Command Master Chief Brice Baldwin. They also relieved the McCains skipper Cmdr. Alfredo J. Sanchez and his second-in-command Cmdr. Jessie L. Sanchez, plus Rear Adm. Charles Williams, commander of the McCains Combined Task Force 70, and Capt. Jeffery Bennett, commodore of their Destroyer Squadron 15. Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the three-star commander of the Japan-based 7th Fleet, was dismissed shortly before his planned retirement, too. But an important thing to remember is that the same two ships that performed so poorly at seamanship performed so brilliantly at damage control, Brennan said. They fought and saved their ships. Sailors that can be trained to do that so flawlessly can be educated to do other things right. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com Caught in a dispute over a controversial Christmas display last year at the boot camp in San Diego, the Marine Corps retreated. Marine officials told the Military Religious Freedom Foundation on Wednesday that all new displays and signs on base, theological or secular, would be subjected to a legal and ethical review process, settling a case that had lured the American Civil Liberties Union into the fray. Before Wednesdays announcement, the Marines had no policy at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego for religious displays. The new process promises to open a path for a wide array of faiths to display their religions on the base grounds, to avoid unconstitutional favoring of one faith. Advertisement This was never about suppressing Christianity, said Michael Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force officer and the foundations creator, during a Thursday morning interview. It was always about leveling the playing field so that no religion felt is was below another in the Marine Corps. Marine officials have not responded to a request for comment. At issue was a nativity scene erected last December on the grounds of Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego to mark the Christmas holiday. The lighted memorial was erected near the base chapel and featured statues of the three wise men bearing gifts to the newborn. The landmark 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case of Lemon v. Kurzman held that government violates First Amendment religious freedom protections if a displays purpose isnt secular, primarily advances or inhibits religion or fosters an excessive entanglement of the government with a particular faith. A petition was signed by 27 active-duty, retired and veteran Marines. On Jan. 17, the New Mexico-based foundation asked recruit depot commander Brig. Gen. William Jurney for a new policy allowing troops of other faiths to put up similar religious displays where the nativity scene was. Twenty of the petitioners were Jews who wanted a Hanukkah menorah on the depots grounds each December, with the rest Christians or others who worshipped no deity but wanted to take a stand on religious fairness, the foundation said. On Feb. 10, Jurneys staff judge advocate general, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Munoz, told the foundation in a letter that such concerns were premature because there was no longer a nativity scene on the depot grounds and the next holiday season was months away. Base spokesmen also dug in when contacted by The San Diego Union-Tribune, repeating the words in the Munoz letter while insisting that the depot allowed people of all faiths to freely worship without discrimination. But the Marines appear to have quietly relented since then, following a written plea by David Loy, legal director for the America Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties, urging officials to follow legal precedent. According to Weinstein, the Marines told him that the new signage and memorial review policy was established by April but he wasnt alerted to the reforms until Wednesday. He commended Jurney and his senior staff for ensuring that this new legal (and) ethical review process by his USMC legal staff is now in place for specific review of all future religious display requests. Military Videos On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal cprine@sduniontribune.com The nations largest port complex approved a plan Thursday to slash air pollution by encouraging the phase-out of diesel trucks in favor of natural gas and, ultimately, zero-emissions trucks and cargo-handling equipment over the next two decades. The Clean Air Action Plan, unanimously adopted at a joint meeting of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor commissioners, provides a framework for transforming the massive hub for freight-moving trucks, trains and ships to cleaner technologies through 2035. But it leaves many details undetermined, including who will pay for up to $14 billion in cleaner trucks and equipment and which industries will benefit. The plan is the most significant and expensive environmental initiative yet by the ports, which have sought to distinguish themselves from competitors over the last decade by pioneering air quality improvements, some of which have been replicated by other seaports and enshrined by California regulators. Advertisement Despite dramatic reductions in diesel emissions under the ports 2006 clean-air plan, the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex remains the largest single source of air pollution in Southern California, with progress tapering off in recent years. State and local air quality regulators say attacking the ports overwhelmingly diesel-fueled operations is crucial to cleaning the nations worst smog to meet federal health standards, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and easing asthma, lung cancer and other pollution-triggered health problems from harbor-area communities to the Inland Empire. The Los Angeles and Long Beach port complex is the biggest single source of Southern Californias air pollution. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times ) Port officials said the plan seeks to accelerate pollution reductions while remaining sensitive to the economic effects of transforming the complex, which handles about 40% of U.S. imports and support hundreds of thousands of jobs across Southern California. Though the volume of shipments moving through the L.A.-Long Beach ports has tripled since the mid-1990s, they face increasing competition from East and Gulf Coast ports, which have less stringent environmental mandates. By adopting the plan, the ports are expecting businesses and taxpayers to foot the bill. They are also sending a signal to manufacturers that there will be demand for cleaner trucks and freight-moving equipment, and, eventually, models with no tailpipe emissions. Another question is how quickly the ports strategies will cut emissions and whether they will satisfy the demands of state and local regulators, who are increasingly targeting port pollution to reduce health risks and smog in time to meet federal deadlines. While the plan outlines goals to slash greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, it lacks new targets for reducing smog-forming emissions. Key to the plan is a new Clean Trucks Program that uses fees on trucks entering port terminals and other mandates to phase out the oldest, dirtiest diesel trucks, transition to cleaner natural gas models, and ultimately switch to electric and other zero-emissions technologies. Projections show most of the 17,000 trucks serving the ports becoming near-zero, or natural gas-fueled, by 2024. Zero-emissions trucks would become the majority by 2036. A key part of the new plan adds fees on trucks entering port terminals in order to help the transition to cleaner natural gas models. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times ) Among other provisions, the plan requires that terminal operators begin deploying zero-emission cargo-handling equipment in 2020 with a goal of making a full transition by 2030. It also calls for expanding the use of emissions-capturing devices to reduce pollution from docked cargo ships. Before casting votes, commissioners heard from environmentalists, community groups and elected officials, some holding their asthma inhalers, who expressed disappointment. They said the plan does not go far enough to mandate the cleanest technologies and to ease the pollution-triggered illnesses suffered by residents in the shadow of the ports. Urging accelerated deployment of near-zero-emissions trucks was the natural gas industry, which in the short term is expected to reap the benefits of the rollout of such technologies. Commissioners also heard from Tesla Motors Inc. and other manufacturers that said heavy-duty electric trucks would be commercially viable sooner than expected. Some environmental groups criticized the plan as a windfall to the natural gas industry and said it lacks clear milestones to force the adoption of zero-emissions trucks. Its not a path to zero-emission trucks. Its a natural gas plan, said Morgan Wyenn, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. And its a very expensive distraction from where we need to go. Port officials defended the plan as a balance between near- and long-term goals, and between economic and health concerns. They called it a technology neutral plan that doesnt mandate any fuel in particular, but leaves it to industry to decide how to comply. Business groups, cargo-moving industries and truckers have criticized the estimated price tag of up to $14 billion, which they say could cause more shippers to divert cargo to other ports. John McLaurin, president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., told commissioners he fears the cost and its potential negative impacts on port competitiveness and the one in nine jobs in the Southern California region that are reliant on the ports. The projected price dwarfs the nearly $2 billion in public and private funds spent implementing the 2006 clean-air plan. That has stoked worries among truckers that they will shoulder the cost of expensive, and perhaps less reliable, natural gas-fueled rigs, then battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell models. The plan includes assurances that it should not fall solely on the drivers to fund the transition to a new truck fleet to serve the ports. But labor and community groups said it lacks sufficient safeguards for drivers. Mayor Eric Garcetti suggested that expected advances in technology will create a market for electric vehicles that will eventually reach a tipping point, even without firm benchmarks by the ports. We will get to zero emissions, make no mistake, Garcetti said. Garcetti urged regulators to secure the funds needed to make that transition and expressed confidence in officials to hold our feet to the fire and to implement this the right way. tony.barboza@latimes.com Twitter: @tonybarboza ALSO Trumps pick as EPA air pollution chief wont pledge to maintain Californias authority Gubernatorial candidate John Cox calls for repeal of Californias Environmental Quality Act Remarkable dinosaur discoveries under threat with Trump plan to shrink national monument in Utah, scientists say More zero-emission vehicles will mean better air quality, Gov. Jerry Brown promises while signing new laws UPDATES: 3:45 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the plan, including goals for zero-emission cargo-handling equipment. This article was originally published at 2:20 p.m. San Diegans who make too much to qualify for traditional affordable housing but not enough to rent in many places will get some help next year through a new pilot program. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill introduced by Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, that authorizes the San Diego Housing Commission to work with developers and property owners to include middle-income earners in projects that also include low-income housing. The new program, which also will be introduced in Santa Clara County, will allow housing authorities to make loans to finance the construction of projects that include units specifically for middle-income households. It will not divert money from low-income housing or reduce the number of units set aside for low-income families. Advertisement Participating projects will have 40 percent of units for low-income people with housing vouchers and 10 percent for middle-income earners who will pay less than the market rate. Gloria said its hard to say how many units will be created for middle-income renters in the program. This really is exploring an area that hasnt been explored before, he said. Just the idea of legalizing housing authorities to work in this space could be a modest effort, or it could be transformative. Assembly Bill 1637, also known as the Missing Middle Housing Act, was signed by the governor Oct. 14 and will create a four-year pilot program in the city of San Diego and Santa Clara County beginning in 2018. Gloria said he originally wanted the program to go into effect throughout the state, but it was scaled back to just two areas that had similar markets. Under a program already in place, developers and property owners receive federal tax credits for projects that include units for low-income people. In one example, projects set aside 20 percent of units reserved for people who earn 50 percent or less of the areas median gross income, which in the city of San Diego is $55,000 for a single person, according to the San Diego Housing Commission. The tax credits also are available for projects where 40 percent of the units are reserved for people who earn 60 percent or less of the area median gross income. Under the new program, projects with 40 percent of units for low-income renters also will set aside 10 percent of the units for people who earn up to 150 percent of the areas median gross income, which in San Diego calculates to $82,500. A lot of the conversation about housing affordability is low-income, as it should be, Gloria said. I think what is missed is, when you look at the amount of people who are housing insecure but have jobs and make money, its a pretty large number. The San Diego Housing Commission has reported that about 70 percent of San Diegans are priced out of the housing market, and the countys average rent hit a record high of $1,875 a month in September. MarketPointe Realty Advisors reported rent has increased 7.59 percent this year. Debbie Ruane, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for the San Diego Housing Commission, said the program creates opportunities for more affordable housing, including low-income people who qualify for housing vouchers. With a 10-year waiting list of 84,000 people for 15,500 vouchers, Ruane said there is a pressing need for more low-income units. The pilot program will create a new funding mechanism because qualifying projects can use a combination of bond money used for low-income housing and conventional debt used for market-rate housing. The commission cannot use existing funds for middle-income housing so it is seeking new investors for the program, Ruane said. Although focused on rental units, Gloria said the program has the potential to allow housing authorities to create affordable housing that can be purchased. More directly, he said the program could lead to home ownership for middle-income people who can afford monthly mortgage payments but cant afford a down payment on a house. The break in rent will help them save for the big initial cost, he said. My constituents talk to me all the time, and its very common for me to hear from someone I represent, Hey, my spouse and myself both work, and we cant foresee a day when we can afford to buy a home, he said. Gloria said the pilot program to help middle-income earners complements the citys efforts to create more affordable housing. In July, the San Diego City Council approved a change in the municipal code to make it easier to build granny flats and revised a program meant to encourage construction of affordable housing by speeding up the permitting process. Gloria said the pilot program can include acquisitions by the Housing Commission such as the Hotel Churchill, which was converted into affordable housing for veterans and others who would be homeless. He also said he expects construction of new projects will be market-driven, with developers and investors participating because of the demand for more middle-income housing. Homeless Playlist On Now San Diego hepatitis outbreak continues to grow: 481 cases On Now Homeless entrenched in booming tent city along Santa Ana River On Now San Diego mayor agreed to homeless hub, then delayed, advocates say On Now Homeless outreach in San Diego On Now Video: Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #8 On Now In poverty himself, 'Water Man Dave,' is the fearless saint of San Diego's homeless 5:41 On Now Video: Homeless living in cars find safe havens 2:21 On Now Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #7 On Now Pitching a tent plan for San Diego's homeless On Now Homeless efforts get $80M boost for various services gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939 San Diego Rep. Scott Peters has joined a large delegation from California at Vatican City for a conference focused on disasters driven by climate change and how to reach out to those impacted. The event, which includes Gov. Jerry Brown, is part of an ongoing effort by Pope Francis and UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan to win the hearts and minds of those they believe will be most hurt by global warning, namely poor and middle-class families. The conference, held Thursday through Saturday, will be streamed live on YouTube. Peters is slated to speak Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time, following Brown. Advertisement According to an advanced copy of Peters speech, the congressman will focus on building support among Republicans for addressing the worst implications for a warming planet. When I have a beer with my Republican colleagues, they will generally acknowledge that they are aware of climate change and that human activities are driving that change, his speech says. But they fear losing their elections. In a swing seat, a moderate stance by a Republican on climate may limit the ability to raise campaign money. The following is a conversation with the congressman about this theme: Union-Tribune: In your speech you lay out a detailed argument for why conservatives deny the existence of human-cause climate change to win reelection. Specifically, you talk about the wave of challenges that Republican lawmakers have seen in primary elections from far-right candidates. However, you also quote polling that found about 70 percent of Republicans believe in climate change and 53 percent think its being caused by humans. What do you think is driving this potential disconnect between voters personal opinions and the types of candidates they back for office? Peters: Unfortunately, the most extreme voters are often the most motivated voters, and thus the ones that get the most attention from candidates. And more moderate voters dont always see climate as their most important issue. Thats why its so important for trusted voices across the country to sound the alarm bell on climate. Union-Tribune: You mentioned in your speech that elected officials are paying attention to an increase in natural disasters linked to global warming such as devastating hurricanes and flooding especially when it impacts their constituents. You also said that many of your Republican colleagues acknowledge in private conversations a belief in human-driven climate change. Can you elaborate more on those interactions? Have members of Congress whove run on a platform that includes denying aspects of climate change also expressed concern to you about how warming and associated natural disasters hurt the people they represent? Peters: One of the first votes I took in Congress was to approve $60 billion off budget for superstorm Sandy. There simply is no denying that more of these storms are happening, and that theyre extremely expensive. Those are just the facts. So if we cant get Republicans to agree that the causes of these extreme weather events are human-induced, at a minimum we might be able to get them to agree on the need for resiliency, good planning and smart budgeting. I hope thats a first step. Union-Tribune: You wrote in your speech that the trusted voices that can shift the public dialogue on climate change include scientists, state and local governments, businesses, Republicans no longer in office, United States Armed Forces, news media and the church. Many of these groups have for years seemingly struggled to control the narrative around climate change. In fact, in your speech you outline how in the last decade the issue of global warming has transformed from one of significant bipartisan consensus to one of extreme political divisiveness. Do you think this is changing? If so, how? Peters: I sense a change in the Republican establishment, and in the involvement of the church. I hope that each of these forces tugs on the conscience of Republican elected officeholders so that we can work in a bipartisan way to mitigate climate change. Republicans have acknowledged that the climate is changing. This means we can plan as a country for more severe fires and storms, sea level rise and food supply disruptions. A number of Republicans have joined the climate solutions caucus, a bipartisan group now up to 60 members. So far, this is not produced any mitigation policy, but at least its a forum to talk about what we do to slow the rate of climate change. Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com Local water quality officials proposed on Tuesday fining San Diego $4.6 million for allegedly allowing private construction sites to pollute sensitive waterways, including the Los Penasquitos Lagoon. Over a period of nearly five years, city officials failed to conduct proper site inspections, prevent harmful sediment erosion and enforce the citys water quality ordinances at multiple sites, according to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. Erosion from construction sites can send sediment downstream to creeks and lagoons, where it can transport toxic pollutants, clog natural drainage systems and smother habitat, according to a six-page complaint issued by the board. Advertisement A city spokesman said officials were reviewing the complaint on Tuesday and examining ways to address the boards concerns in a manner that would provide greater environmental benefits to communities in San Diego. The city could pay the penalty, contest it or propose a settlement that may include a supplemental environmental project. The board has scheduled a hearing for Oct. 12. The complaint blames the violations partly on poorly trained city inspectors, and calls the violations surprising because the regulations have been in place for more than 20 years. The water board expects the citys commitment to water quality ordinances to be embraced more broadly by all city staff not just the planners who wrote them, said James Smith, the boards assistant executive officer and leader of the prosecution team. The complaint says the maximum fine for the violations, which also affected the Tijuana River Estuary in the South Bay, would have been $22.7 million. The $4.6 million proposed was described as the citys minimum liability. The alleged violations took place between October 2010 and May 2015. The complaint says San Diego inspectors were either unable or unwilling to take the enforcement actions against construction sites that are spelled out in city ordinances. It says city officials and the water board jointly crafted plans to address sediment problems affecting salt marsh habitat in the Los Penasquitos Lagoon, noting that the partnership prompted the board to take a flexible approach. The San Diego water board put a lot of resources into collaborative, outcome-focused efforts to protect and restore areas like Los Penasquitos Lagoon and Tijuana River Estuary, Smith said. Enforcement like this is the result of a major deviation from the expectations we had for those partnerships. The complaint says an investigation by the board found city officials were allowing construction sites within the lagoons watershed to skirt erosion control requirements, leading to multiple instances of sediment pollution that could have easily been prevented. San Diego Coastkeeper, a nonprofit group focused on local water quality, said it was disappointing to see such violations. Its unfortunate that we still have municipalities failing to implement even the minimum measures necessary to achieve clean water when we know that stormwater pollution is one of the biggest threats to our water quality, said Matt OMalley, Coastkeepers legal and policy director. OMalley praised the board for its vigilance. We are pleased to see the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board working so diligently to protect the waters of San Diego, he said. The proposed fine is based on a formula of $10,000 per day, plus $10 for every gallon of pollutant discharge above 1,000 that does not get cleaned up. The formula also adds on 10 percent as a punitive deterrent. Fine money goes into a statewide account for clean-up and abatement projects, but up to half could be set aside for local projects if the city and the board reach a settlement, a board spokeswoman said. Just over a year after after he spoke at the Democratic National Convention and challenged Donald Trump to read the Constitution, Khizr Khan was back at his home in Charlottesville, Va., where he said he saw the hatred he warned about in his famous speech walking through the streets of his community. He was headed home in his car when the Unite the Right rally, a conservative political gathering that turned deadly, stopped traffic and blocked his route. And then we saw, with our own eyes, men with rifles and multiple guns around their waist and torches in their hands, Khan recalled in an interview Wednesday. And then, the worst that I had never imagined that I would see in the United States, my blessed nation was the Nazi flag that they carried. I looked around me, there were other people and they had exactly the same concern and fear on their faces that I did. Advertisement Khan was in San Diego to encourage students to speak out when they witness similar types of hatred. The event, the No Place for Hate Leadership Conference, was hosted by the Anti-Defamation Leagues San Diego office, and included more than 200 students who will be trained to take action when they see bias at their schools. Charlottesville responded, the real America responded. America responded, by vigils, with candles, songs, family, and the children that were scared because they had seen some of it, heard of it, seen on television, to hearten them, to tell them what real American values is, which is neighbor supporting neighbor, neighbors being peaceful with one another and standing with respect and dignity to one another, Khan said. They should respond like the country did in Boston mere weeks after Charlottesville, he said. A small group of white supremacists there were outnumbered by tens of thousands of protesters. This is un-American hate that must be rejected, Khan said. A Muslim born in Pakistan who immigrated to the United States and became a citizen, Khan and his wife, Ghazala, received national attention from their appearance at last years Democratic Convention. Khizr Khan spoke about his son, Humayan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Our son, Humayun, had dreams too, of being a military lawyer, but he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son the best of America, Khizr Khan said at the Democratic Convention. A lawyer, Khan spoke against Trumps campaign pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and ban Muslims from entering the country. He pulled a small copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights from his jacket pocket and asked the Republican nominee for president if he had read them at last years convention. Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan holds up a copy of the Constitution of the United States as his wife listens during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia (J. Scott Applewhite / AP ) In this document, look for the words liberty and equal protection of law, Khan said at the convention. On Wednesday he was the keynote speaker at the ADLs conference, at the Lawrence Family Jewish Connunity Center in La Jolla which, by his count, was his 163rd address since the Democratic Convention. Students from San Diego County school districts would then participate in sessions to stop violence to make help make schools safer places for their classmates. Educators would also receive training about the First Amendment, free speech in schools and their legal limitations. Khan took time to meet attendees and sign pocket-sized copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In Democracy, always remember, silence equals death. Do not be silent, speak. Participate, join hands, he said. In the interview Khan also said Trump not treat the families of the soldiers who were killed in an ambush in Niger properly. There were reports, based on interviews with several witnesses that Trump told one of the soldiers widows that he knew what he signed up for. The president denied using those words. At such moments, dignity and restraint are the call of the moment, and the White House didnt display that, Khan said. He declined to say if then President George W. Bush contacted his family when his son was killed. Kahn said it was a private matter that he had not received his familys permission to discuss it. The annual conference has doubled in attendance in the last year, said Terese Farmen, the chairwoman of the Anti-Defamation Leagues education committee. She said the exact cause isnt clear, but people in the San Diego community have a growing interest in leadership and doing something positive here. At least six school districts, including San Diego Unified, participated and schools that designated themselves at No Place For Hate will have three events over the academic year designed to help students confront biases, said Kelsey Greenberg Young, the Anti-Defamation Leagues regional director. They emphasize that all perspectives from all backgrounds need to be protected, including in school, but that people cant use the experiences from their own background to ostracize others, Greenberg Young said. Twitter: @jptstewart joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1841 Rep. Scott Peters has endorsed fellow Democrat Paul Kerr, a real estate investor and Navy veteran running against Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. Peters said he has known Kerr for years and backed him over two other Democratic candidates Doug Applegate, a retired Marine colonel who was narrowly defeated by Issa last year, and Mike Levin, an environmental attorney and Democratic Party activist. Applegate, also an attorney, nearly upset Issa in the 49th Congressional District, losing by 1,621 votes the closest congressional race in the country. Advertisement (Update: The above paragraph was corrected to reflect that it was the closest race in the country, not just the county.) Levin was executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party and leads the challengers in fundraising. The district straddles north San Diego and southern Orange counties. In endorsing Kerr, Peters made note of their long personal ties. Paul has lived in San Diego County for over 43 years and grew up in a family that had to work hard to make ends meet; hes personally lived the struggles many Americans face today, Peters said in a statement issued by Kerrs campaign. Ive known Paul for many years and I know hell be a fighter for working families. Paul will aggressively protect our environment, and work hard to ensure our veterans get the health care and services theyve earned. Businesses and people benefiting from financial deals with the city of San Diego would need to start fully identifying themselves under a long-stalled proposal city leaders endorsed on Wednesday. Billions in city contracts and real estate deals could no longer move forward with limited liability corporations or similar financial entities unless city officials are told the names and roles of all people involved in such transactions. San Diego residents actually voted to require such disclosures in 1992 after the city nearly made a $47 million real estate deal with a reputed mobster without knowing it. Advertisement But those regulations, approved as Proposition E by more than 86 percent of voters, have never been enforced based on concerns they are too vague in some ways and too far-reaching to be enforceable in other ways. So city officials plan to present voters in November 2018 with a revised version of the law, which would amend or replace the city charter section voters approved 25 years ago. In the interim, the San Diego City Council hopes to approve an ordinance that would make the old law more enforceable until voters can permanently fix it. On Wednesday, the councils Rules Committee unanimously approved that proposed ordinance, which clarifies who is subject to the rule, precisely what they must disclose and when the information must be provided. The ordinance, which the full council is expected to consider later this year, also stipulates that a transaction with a business or individual can be rejected without such disclosures, and lays out an appeals process when such rejections happen. The charter amendment planned for the 2018 ballot is expected to go beyond that to specify that felony convictions disqualify some people from doing business with the city, and that full disclosure of involved parties wont be required for transactions below a certain threshold possibly $500,000. A member of Mayor Kevin Faulconers staff said Wednesday that proposed language for that charter amendment would be unveiled in the next few months. The most significant problem with the existing law is it requires disclosure of the name and identity of any and all persons directly or indirectly involved in the application or proposed transaction. Attorneys for the city have said repeatedly that this language, if taken literally, would require General Motors to list all of its stockholders in an offer to sell the city a maintenance truck or police cruiser. The law has also been criticized for not being specific enough about the process of disclosing the required information and what recourse the city has when such disclosures arent made. Former City Councilwoman Donna Frye, who has long lobbied for enforcement of the law, said Wednesday she was pleased progress is finally being made. The public has a right to know who is getting the publics money, said Frye, long an open-government advocate. Just because a document says its called Alpha-Beta Company, that doesnt tell you anything about the ownership. In addition to helping the city avoid deals with shady businesses or people, Frye said the revised law would boost transparency regarding who is behind many projects all over the city. This means the council will no longer get a document in front of them that says only Humpty Dumpty LLC, leaving them with no idea who that is, she said. Frye said updating and then enforcing the law would also help council members avoid conflicts of interest, explaining that theyre now vulnerable to unwittingly approving contracts with companies they own stock in or people they have connections to. Kristina Peralta, the citys purchasing and contracting director, said Wednesday that many business are already voluntarily complying with the disclosure requirements. david.garrick@sduniontribune.com (619) 269-8906 Twitter:@UTDavidGarrick Nearly four decades after San Diego police Officer Archie Buggs was executed by a teenage gang member during a traffic stop, the police station in the community he once patrolled will be named after him. The dedication ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday at the southeastern division substation on Skyline Drive. The date marks 39 years since the officer was gunned down about a block from where the station now stands. The division, which will be named the Archie Buggs Memorial Police Building, is the first to be named after a person in the departments history. Saturdays dedication is the culmination of decades of work by family members, law enforcement officers and city officials to honor Buggs legacy. Advertisement It is long overdue, but Im so, so thankful that its happening, said Pam Buggs Jones, the officers cousin. I wish that his mother and sister could have been here to see this come to pass. Buggs was 30 years old when he pulled over the car driven by Jesus Cecena for speeding on Nov. 4, 1978. The 17-year-old was a member of a street gang and had already committed a number of crimes as a juvenile. As Buggs wrote the ticket, a passenger handed a gun to Cecena, who was outside the car. The teen opened fire, shooting the officer three times in the chest. Buggs fell to the ground, and Cecena shot the officer one final time in the head. He sped away, leaving Buggs bleeding in the street, his nearby patrol car still running. His hand was on his service revolver, and his citation booklet was on the ground. The officers former partner, Jesse Navarro, remembers that night like it was yesterday. There are certain things in life that all of us go through that you never, never forget, he said in an interview Wednesday. Buggs and Navarro became officers in 1974 at a time when the federal government was pushing law enforcement agencies to hire officers of color. Buggs, who was black, and Navarro, who is Latino, were assigned to southeastern San Diego and became fast friends both on and off duty. It was common for the two to park one of their patrol cars and ride together, sometimes without telling their supervisors, to keep each other safe. They had planned to patrol together that night, but Navarro got held up by a supervisor. Navarro was driving to meet Buggs when he heard shots had been fired on Skyline Drive and an officer was down. Navarro said he knew right away that it was Buggs. He drove at least 100 miles per hour and was the second officer on scene. I ran up to him and said, Archie, Archie, Im here, Navarro said. Cecena and his 20-year-old passenger were caught hours later. Cecena was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole. His sentence was modified years later, making him eligible for parole. A state Parole Board has recommended his release from prison three times since 2014, determining he did not pose a reasonable risk to society. Gov. Jerry Brown has overturned the decision each time. For years, various groups have worked to memorialize Buggs. Lt. Ben Kelso, president of the San Diego Black Police Officers Association, remembers former leaders of the association discussing how to best honor the slain officer decades ago. That effort picked up steam this year, after Cecena was most recently recommended for parole, Navarro said. First, they tried to get Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Paradise Hills named after Buggs. Navarro said the two used to visit the school to talk to students as officers. It didnt happen. Then they considered the Paradise Hills Branch Library in Skyline, near where Buggs used to patrol. That didnt happen either. The process was hard on family members, who already felt it had taken too long to properly recognize Buggs sacrifice. It was frustrating, Pam Buggs Jones said. There were other officers who had been slain after him and theyre having something named in their honor. Finally, at a community meeting, someone suggested renaming the southeastern substation, Kelso said. The idea took off, and, with a lot of help from Council President Myrtle Coles office and various police groups, it finally happened. The elation knowing that this effort has finally culminated in being what it should be very honorable for Archies legacy is indescribable, Kelso said. Pam Buggs Jones said, I just know that the family can finally rest in peace. Twitter: @LAWinkley (619) 293-1546 lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com A fugitive who escaped a Texas federal prison 24 years ago was tracked down and arrested in Tijuana by U.S. and Mexican authorities Tuesday, officials said. Mario Huerta was on the lam since Nov. 26, 1993, when he escaped from the low-security La Tuna federal prison, about 20 miles north of El Paso. He had served six months of his 10-year sentence for possession of cocaine, U.S. Marshals Service officials said. Soon after his prison escape, Huerta, then 26, slipped across the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said. Advertisement Information gathered by the Marshals Service led to his arrest Tuesday in Tijuana by Mexican authorities, officials said. He was taken to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, where he was turned over to U.S. authorities. Huerta will be transported to Texas, where he is expected to face additional charges related to the escape, officials said. Breaking News Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com Phone: (619) 293-1876 Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez An airplane headed to Las Vegas was about to take off from San Diego International Airport when the pilot spotted smoke from a hydraulic leak Thursday morning, officials said. Spirit Airlines flight 359 was on the runway when the pilot noticed the problem about 9:05 a.m., airport spokesman Jonathan Heller said. The plane was towed back to the gate about 10 a.m. A San Diego Fire-Rescue Department crew cleaned up the spill. There was no fire and no one was injured, a fire department spokeswoman said. Advertisement According to the airports website, the flight departed sometime later. Twitter: @LAWinkley (619) 293-1546 lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com Five years ago, I started a public school called Thrive. This work was inspired by a quote from famous American educator Horace Mann: Education is best provided in schools embracing children of all religious, social, and ethnic backgrounds. In order for a diverse population of students to succeed, they need choices that best meet their needs and options that will allow them to thrive. Though other schools in San Diego are making valiant efforts every day to serve all students, unfortunately, the need is extensive. In San Diego, one of the most diverse and innovative cities in the country, the traditional, one-size-fits-all approach to school does not work. California offers various public school options for families. Right now, in San Diego Unified, we are in the open application or choice time. Parents can choose from Magnet, STEM and specialty public schools beyond their assigned neighborhood school. Families also have charter public schools to consider. Some focus on projects, technology, social emotional learning, bilingual acquisition and more. Related: Why charter schools should be more regulated Advertisement Thrive is a charter public school. Like all charter schools in California, we are a free public school. For us, charter is only a qualifier much like magnet is a qualifier. It provides further definition of our public school program. What does charter mean? A charter is a document authorizing an entity, like a school, to operate under the oversight of a larger organizational body. Charter schools are often formed because parents or the community demands a different instructional approach. Local districts, counties and the state can authorize a charter as a public school. Charters have been in California for nearly 25 years. They are free public schools which operate separately from the district. They must perform within the confines presented by their authorizing body. These confines include high standards for ethical, fiscal and academic performance. Charters must be renewed every five years with their authorizer, who can deny renewal if the school isnt academically or financially sound. Why do charters exist? Like magnets and other school choices, charter public schools offer families an option. Charter public schools are an integral part of the public school system that give parents the opportunity to choose the learning environment they feel is best for their child. As a parent, educational choice is something I deeply value for all families and not just those with resources to afford a private school. Whos paying for these schools? In California, charter public schools are funded in the same way as traditional district schools, under the Local Control Funding Formula, which allocates state and local tax dollars to schools based on the number of pupils per grade. Additional funding is provided for students with high needs, such as English learners and foster youth. Public funding follows the student to the public school that the parents choose. Many charter schools also raise additional funds (much like education foundations do in districts). Investment in charter public schools is important because its an investment in innovation. Charters have the freedom to look at education in different ways because they are outside of large bureaucracies. For many charters, this allows them the ability to extend school days, choose their curriculum or decide their academic focus. For Thrive, this allows us to use technology and personalize lessons at students learning levels. It also allows us to use social emotional learning practices like Council in Schools to build community. In exchange for flexibility, charter schools must meet high standards of accountability as discussed above. While there is work to be done raising student achievement across the state, data from the California Charter Schools Association show charters are performing better than or equal to district schools. This is true for some of our most vulnerable populations, including African-American, Latino and socio-economically disadvantaged students, as well as students with disabilities. Thrive is in the top 1 percent nationally for reading growth on NWEAs Measure of Academic Progress (a norm-referenced, national assessment used by our neighbors like Coronado, Poway and other high-performing districts.) At Thrive, where our special education numbers are almost double that of the district, this growth is possible because our teachers have increased flexibility to choose curriculum based on students real-time needs. Charter schools play an important role in fostering innovation and leveling the playing field for families who cannot afford private school. Today, one in 10 public school students in California attends a charter school. As more people understand what charters are, the mystery cloud will rise and the answer will be clear: Public funds must support all public schools including magnet and charter schools. Assisi is a former San Diego Unified School District teacher, a parent and a charter leader. For information on Thrive, go to thriveps.org. Every year, hundreds of millions of California tax dollars go to help private groups build, lease or buy buildings, with little oversight or accountability. The fortunate recipients of this public generosity are companies that manage charter schools. While public funding builds the private empires of charter groups, San Diego Unified School District and other public school systems face devastating decisions to solve budget deficits by laying off teachers and staff. A severe lack of regulation leads to misuse and mismanagement of public funding for charter schools, the research and policy center In the Public Interest revealed in a report earlier this year. Advertisement Related: Why charter schools dont need more regulations Its as if legislators turned on a faucet of money and then just walked away, wrote the reports author, University of Oregon professor Gordon Lafer. Public dollars and tax subsidies are going to charter schools opening in neighborhoods that already had enough classroom space, and even to schools that discriminate against students with poor academic records, limited English-speaking skills or disabilities. Also, the private charter management organizations, or CMOs, are misusing public funds for their own personal gain. These private groups have exploited a loophole to leverage tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer support to build or purchase buildings that have become their private property. One glaring example: The Alliance College-Ready Public Schools chain in Los Angeles used over $110 million in federal and state taxpayer support to accumulate real estate now worth more than $200 million. California needs common-sense regulation to increase oversight, transparency and accountability of charter schools. A few simple changes could go a long way: CMOs shouldnt be allowed to use public funding to purchase or construct buildings that become private property. In districts that have enough schools for the projected student population, CMOs should be required to prove their new school provides unique or exemplary programs that the district is incapable of providing. Schools that continue to discriminate against students should lose all public funding and return any taxpayer money they have received. Finally, locally elected school boards should have the ability to hold charter schools in their communities accountable to students, parents and taxpayers. Under current law, neither local districts nor counties have final authority to determine whether or not a new charter school fits the needs of their community the final decision comes from Sacramento. Its easy to see how San Diego would benefit from such changes. Just last month, Thrive Schools finalized its plan to build a new charter school in Linda Vista, the chains fourth school in San Diego County. The school district and the county Board of Education both had denied Thrives charter application because they questioned the CMOs commitment to the community and its ability to recruit students. Despite these flaws, the State Board of Education approved Thrives charter, becoming the schools long-distance authorizer and overseer. Not only will the San Diego Unified School District lose state funding that follows students to the new school, the district will be unable to hold the school accountable to parents and the broader community. On top of that, Thrive received $6.7 million in tax credits to purchase land for the school through the federal New Market Tax Credit program the same program that funded much of the Alliance chains real estate empire in Los Angeles. Every public dollar that goes to the private Thrive chain is one less dollar available to fund programs like music and art and to pay public school teachers. For some, private profit appears to be more important than fulfilling the mission of public education to provide a quality education for all students, no matter their abilities or backgrounds. While CMOs are benefiting from the severe lack of regulation, school districts statewide are forced to cut staff and essential programs and are struggling to give students in traditional public schools all the tools they need to succeed. For the sake of students and taxpayers, Sacramento needs to act quickly to stop the bleeding and give control of public dollars back to communities and the democratically elected officials that represent them. Cohen is the founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national policy center on privatization and responsible contracting. Greene, Ph.D,, is executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, a San Diego nonprofit institute for social and economic justice. If we have any hope to solve the homeless problem, we must give some thought to its causes. It is deceptively easy to see the problem as one of access to resources, with job loss, the cost of housing or a death in the family being the most likely circumstances leading to homelessness. Homelessness, however, has a darker side to it; drug and alcohol abuse and an actual desire to stay homeless is at the core of it. The idea of homelessness being a lifestyle choice is difficult for most of us to understand, but understanding the truth of this concept will help us all make decisions about the kinds of solutions that will result in meaningful change. It is also important to understand that the California Legislature has pushed an ideology that does little to moderate homelessness and much to propagate it. The explosion of homelessness that we as a region have experienced over the past two years can be directly linked to out-of-control substance abuse and a legislative agenda in Sacramento that is heavy with unintended consequences, making the homeless problem much worse. It all started with Assembly Bill 109, passed in 2011. The idea of realignment was to ease prison overcrowding in California by simply deciding that many crimes were no longer punishable by incarceration. More than 70 crimes were redefined as less serious or nonviolent. This began in 2015, and since then my city of El Cajon, has seen a 35 percent increase in homelessness. Many beach communities have seen well over 100 percent increases. Sacramento will say that there is no correlation, but that defies logic. In San Diego County alone, 7,619 probationers were released into the county, with 1,077 being homeless upon release. Approximately 10 percent of the homeless in our region were prisoners on an early release program. Advertisement Next, Proposition 47 was approved in 2014. This law converted a series of crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Again, this is designed to keep people out of prison, but it has many unintended consequences. Proposition 47 also makes shoplifting of items less than $950 a misdemeanor. Recently I had a group of 7-Eleven owners in my office complaining that the homeless stole from them with impunity, and no fear of the police. Proposition 47 also makes personal use of most drugs a minor offense; subject to a ticket or more likely no enforcement. Honest assessments conclude that over 90 percent of homeless people are using drugs or alcohol. Over the past two years there has been a flood of powerful but cheap drugs, mostly methamphetamines, which have been thrust into our culture causing mass addiction, disability and dropping out of society. In 2017, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 180, which limits the ability of law enforcement to send chronic drug abusers back to prison. A recent court case limited law enforcements ability to stop people from living in their cars. In 2015, a Supreme Court case limited a citys ability to criminalize panhandling. Cities cannot enforce vagrancy laws unless they have cooperation from the District Attorneys Office, which that office is loath to provide. Cities are constantly under pressure from the ACLU and local grand juries to open the parks for the homeless, allow tent cities and refrain from harassing the homeless. So enforcement is difficult at best. If the police do arrest a homeless person and that person has a shopping cart of possessions, the police are obligated to catalog and store these possessions regardless of worth. Sacramentos approach to this problem is one of normalizing homelessness. The idea is to accept mass homelessness as just a part of any society. The thrust of the fight has been one of permissiveness and rejection of value judgments that might shame the homeless, or pressure them out of the homeless lifestyle. In parallel, the Legislature has made the same arguments toward drug and alcohol addiction and criminality. It is up to the public to accept or reject this approach. It seems clear to me that to accept this, however, is to accept the recent increase in homelessness as a reality that is here to stay and likely to grow. In any event, I contend that local government has little to do with the increase in homelessness. It is the California Legislature that has designed this problem and it will have to be the California Legislature that designs the solution. Wells is mayor of the city of El Cajon. A Poway native recently debuted a new theater piece at the La Jolla Playhouses Without Walls Festival. Lily Padilla, who was born and raised in Poway and is earning her MFA in Playwriting at UC San Diego, co-created the audio installation piece with Dylan Key and John Burnett for the festival. It was uniquely tailored to the space Padilla was assigned, the old grain silo at Bread and Salt, a former bread factory turned performance space in Logan Heights. (The Without Walls Festival) is a place-specific festival, said Padilla. The idea is to take theater outside of traditional performance spaces and use raw spaces (to shape the performances). She had originally pitched a different piece for the festival, but was asked to create a new piece with a sound installation for the grain silo. Her piece, And Then You Wait, tells the loose story of three families who have turned the grain silo into a fallout shelter and are waiting out a nuclear apocalypse and their attempts to survive despite the pressures of a collapsing world, Padilla said. She tried to make it as local as possible, she said, incorporating the grain silo itself and making the families from different parts of San Diego. The vignettes of the story are told through a month of narrative. A sound installation differs from a traditional play as it does not involve live actors. Padilla instead had the actors pre-record their performances, which were played for those walking through the installation. The silo was also staged to look as if it were a fallout shelter, complete with artifacts left behind by the former residents that could be touched and explored by the audience. The intent was for the audience to guide their own experience, Padilla said. The sound recordings were played in random orders and triggered by different locations and items, so each group going through the installation had a unique experience and received the story in a different way. Six different speakers allowed the audience to tune in to the story wherever they chose. If the voices are the memories of the people who lived here, the objects are the residue of what they brought, said Padilla. These objects included an exploded guitar, which if the audience members reached inside, they could find scraps of music, a journal left by one resident and objects and drawings left by a little girl. Objects were also hung from the silos 80-foot ceiling so if the audience looked up, theyd see parts of the story above them as well as around. The goal was to build layers of revelation. The audience, which consisted of seven people at a time, explored the dark space with flashlights. We wanted to maintain a personal experience, Padilla said. Padilla said the piece, which features characters in a loose story, was a challenge for her because up until now, she has worked on more traditional plays with live actors. While Padilla said she might develop something from the characters and story she created, the installation will most likely never be shown again, as it was specifically created for the grain silo, unless the silo wants to host it again. The characters in the story were so interesting, they could be part of a play. I love re-imagining (works), she said. Padilla began acting in musical theater at the age of 6, when she said her mom got her involved because she didnt have many friends. I was into writing short stories, probably to a fault. She kept up acting through high school, attending Poway High School before transferring first to a school for the arts in Coronado and then a boarding school for the arts in North Carolina. She studied theater and design at NYU Tisch, took a year off to travel and when she returned, decided she did not want to audition for plays. Padilla said she developed her love for playwriting during an internship at a play development center, where she received feedback on her work from staff. When the staff asked to produce one of her works, Padilla called the experience revelatory, saying it was a major turning point for her. She returned to San Diego in 2015 to study at UCSD. I hadnt planned (to return to San Diego), she said, but I love being back. Padilla is working on a show called How to Defend Yourself, which is the story of a self-defense class run by the vice-president of a sorority at a San Diego university after a series of campus rapes. Despite the heavy subject meeting, Padilla said she thinks her work tends to be comedy. Its the only way to get the medicine down. Email: entertainment@pomeradonews.com We are just a year away from what is destined to be a test of democracy in America. It seems as if we will be in for a bare-knuckles fist fight between traditional conservatives and a militant right wing bent on pushing the old guard onto the trash pile. To some, it may feel like liberation. To others, a hostile takeover. Harvey Levine For several months, Republicans have been jockeying to find their voice. In the midst of their weaving back and forth on policy and politics, we have seen abuses and disarray so rampant that even seasoned conservatives are sounding off about the failure of the current administration and congressional leadership to stand for popular American values. Washington is focusing on the negative and delivering nothing of value for our people. The list of protesters lining up to voice their disgust is a whos who of Republican standard-bearers: Michael Steele, Robert Traynham, George Will, John McCain , Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, John Kasich , Steve Schmidt, Peggy Noonan, Nicole Wallace, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson and David Brooks. And on Oct. 19, the finest plea to stop this affront to decency and humanity was made by a Republican of note, George W. Bush. Moreover, these are just the tip of the iceberg. But since the most recent outcry from Bush, McCain, Corker and Flake, a strange silence has fallen over the Capitol. The squeaky little mice have been quieted to a whimper. Steve Bannon has clearly and proudly announced his intent to destroy American democracy. His so-called separation from Trump is a classic deception. Handcuffed from taking down the government from within, Bannon gleefully slips into the back alleys of America to work on liberating the people from the burdens of democracy. The emasculated representatives of the people, sworn to uphold the Constitution and to serve their constituents, have gone silent. Why? Because they are terrified that the new power brokers, the Bannon-Trump coalition, will push them out of office. While working in the kitchen, my ear caught an interesting declaration on the TV (I wish I could remember who said it), Patriotism is the preservation our democratic system. So where have all the patriots gone? Is a person who works or colludes to destroy our democratic system a traitor? We need not to go back too far in history to find classic examples of the current subversive plot. In Europe, in the 1930s, democracy fell to a fascist scheme, built on breeding contempt for outsiders and for the legitimate government. It appealed to the raw emotion of a populace hurting economically and gave them scapegoats upon whom to disgorge their anger. The irony is that there are no winners in this hostile takeover. The so-called representatives of the people will become puppets of a totalitarian regime, marching in goose-step columns like North Koreans celebrating another rocket launch. The economy is unlikely to improve, leaving all of the unemployed and underemployed in the worst shape since the Great Depression. The great deceptions will continue. Affordable health care will fall victim to major budget reductions, brought about by lowering taxes for the rich and increasing the deficit. Tax reform a code word for preferential treatment for domestic oligarchs will fail to achieve anything except to reduce the burden on the 1 percent. The concept of trickle-down economics has been repeatedly proven to be an illusion. Its akin to selling something at a loss and making it up on the volume. Economist/columnist Paul Krugman , in a July 31 op-ed in the New York Times, quoted Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism. Kristol in the 1970s embraced supply-side economics the claim, refuted by all available evidence and experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves by boosting economic growth. Krugman goes on to write that years later, Kristol actually boasted about valuing political expediency over intellectual integrity: I was not certain of its economic merits, but quickly saw its political possibilities, Kristol wrote. Krugman continues, The problem is that once you accept the principle that its OK to lie if it helps you to win elections, it gets ever harder to limit the extent of the lying or even to remember what its like to seek the truth. Unless the people wise up, and recognize the difference between political expediency and intellectual integrity, our democracy will fail and the leader of the free world will wither in disgrace. A South Korean man reads a newspaper with photos showing a Chinese woman Deng Xinming poses with South Korean diplomats, on the street in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 9, 2011. South Koreas Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan has offered a public apology over an alleged sex scandal involving several diplomats and a Chinese mistress. The headline says, Crime of passion penetrated South Korean diplomacy. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) ( / AP) South Korea is investigating several diplomats accused of trading government documents for sex with a Chinese woman while posted at the countrys consulate in Shanghai, officials said Wednesday. The scandal - only the latest for President Lee Myung-baks administration - was splashed across South Korean newspapers Wednesday after the Foreign Ministry and the prime ministers office said they were probing at least four officials, including the former consul general. Advertisement The mass-circulation Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported that South Korean diplomats are believed to have given the woman a list of telephone numbers of top South Korean officials and politicians, including President Lee. An official in the prime ministers office said it had not yet determined whether such information had been passed or even if any of the documents were confidential. The JoongAng Ilbo newspaper cited a South Korean official as saying that the exposure of high-level information was slim since the consulate in Shanghai deals with few state secrets. The newspapers editorial page, however, sounded the alarm anyway. What has been revealed so far may be just the tip of the iceberg, the JoongAng Ilbo said in an editorial Wednesday. The government should now take steps to investigate and correct the moral standards of our diplomats. The officials are also accused of using their influence to help Chinese citizens - picked by the woman - get South Korean visas more quickly, the official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way. Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan said the probe began after the government received a tip, but he did not elaborate. South Korean media reported that the Chinese womans South Korean husband, a businessman, alerted government authorities late last year. Kim said the government also planned to launch an investigation into the entire Shanghai consulate. Im apologizing for causing the people anxieties over an unsavory incident, Kim told lawmakers during a parliamentary committee meeting. The scandal is a new headache for Lees government, whose single five-year term ends in early 2013. Earlier this week, a parliamentary committee decided to delay debating a free trade agreement between South Korea and the European Union after errors in the accords Korean-language version were found. And police last month began a probe into a mysterious break-in at the Seoul hotel room of a visiting Indonesian official amid widespread speculation that South Korean spies had unsuccessfully tried to steal documents about a possible arms deal. New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/02/2017 -- Ferrochromium, also known as Ferrochrome, is an alloy of iron and chromium containing 50 to 70% of chromium. It is produced by electric arc melting of chromium ore and chromite. Ferrochromium is consumed extensively in the manufacturing of steel to achieve the qualities such as corrosion resistance, tensile strength, heat resistance and yield strength. The global ferrochromium market is anticipated to be in deficit to cater the increasing global steel market in near future. Ferrochromium is mostly produced in India, China, South Africa and Kazakhstan because of large chromite resources found in these countries. The global ferrochromium market is witnessing a modest single digit CAGR growth up till now and is expected to continue in future. Ferrochromium is having its maximum share of consumption in steel industry and due to the ever increasing construction and demand of steel the global ferrochromium market is forecasted to flourish. In order to get a continuous supply of raw material for ferrochrome, China has established its operations in the countries like Turkey, South Africa, Philippines and Zimbabwe which would boost the global ferrochromium market in future. Due to the favourable conditions like lower electricity price and lower labour cost in upcoming markets like China, the production cost reduces comparatively. This will boost the production of ferrochrome to suffice its increasing demand and will contribute in global ferrochromium market. A sample of this report is available upon request @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/10046 The global ferrochromium market can get hampered because of the increase in the export tax and fixed export quotas imposed by South Africa on chrome ore, owing to the concern of losing ferrochromium market to China. South Africa is having a significant market share in global ferrochromium market but there are concerns of power supply and higher production cost which would lead to the closure of small competitors and is estimated to slowdown the global ferrochromium market. Based on the carbon percentage, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as - Extra low carbon ferrochromium powder Low carbon ferrochromium powder High carbon ferrochromium powder Extra high carbon ferrochromium powder Based in the available form, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as Ferrochromium slag Ferrochromium powder Based on the application, the global ferrochromium market is segmented as Ball bearing steels Acid resistant steels Cast irons Powder metallurgy Others (civil engineering, refractory materials) To view TOC of this report is available upon request @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/10046 The global ferrochromium market can be divided into five regions, namely North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific is having the maximum market share in global ferrochromium market, China and India are the countries having an excellent steel market, so these countries are significant in the consumption of ferrochrome. China is expanding its capacity to import chrome ore for the production of ferrochrome from the countries like South Africa, Turkey, Zimbabwe. Middle East and Africa are also marking a significant growth in the global ferrochromium market, Especially South Africa is having plenty of chromite resources for the production of ferrochrome. Europe is an emerging market in the field of ferrochrome and is anticipated to have a considerable market in future due to the flourishing automobile sector in the region. North America and Latin America is at a nascent stage in the global ferrochromium market. Wayne, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/02/2017 -- The humble, and personable duo of Luke Castle and Tony Rey have been at the business of window blinds for longer than they can remember. During their collective 30 years in the realm of window treatments, they've served Montgomery County, PA and other local areas with a sense of fun and loyalty, every day. Leveraging relationships with some of the finest interior designers, builders, and manufacturers this side of the Mainline, the Blind Gallery brings an expertise, and an artistry that is simply unmatched in its industry. At their showroom on Waynewood Avenue, in Wayne, PA, the Blind Gallery is showcasing some of the best wood blinds from Hunter Douglas. Whether they're coming from Mainline PA or the city of Philadelphia, customers find wood blinds galore at the Blind Gallery. Luke Castle and Tony Rey, forever enthusiasts of Hunter Douglas, feature a range of wood blinds, from the economical to the luxurious. Including a variety of Parkland Classics, EverWood TruGrains, and Parkland Ashes, their collection has the perfect mixture of function, price, and aesthetics. All of the Blind Gallery's wood blinds can be customized at their customers' request, tailoring wood type, stain color, the size of slats, and even how they're operated. Channeling their good taste and storied history with window treatments, Luke and Tony will assist customers as they choose the ideal blind for their homes. Anyone with an interest in sifting through the Blind Gallery's extensive selection of blinds is welcome to visit their showroom in Wayne, PA. Luke Castle and Tony Rey can also be contacted by phone at 610-228-0189. About The Blind Gallery The Blind Gallery, which is owned by Luke Castle and Tony Rey, is a retail window treatment showroom located in Wayne, PA. Together, Castle and Rey have over three decades of experience in the industry, and those who choose the company will find that they take pride in being timely, competitively priced and most of all, professional. The company is a Hunter Douglas Showcase Dealer and installs every product they sell. Those who visit their showroom will find a variety of Hunter Douglas blinds, shutters, shades and many other products. To learn more about the Blind Gallery, please visit them on the web at http://blindgallerypa.com. According to NASA, the agencys next Mars rover will have more cameras than any rover before it: a grand total of 23, to create sweeping panoramas, reveal obstacles, study the atmosphere, and assist science instruments. There will even be a camera inside the rovers body, which will study samples as theyre stored and left on the surface for collection by a future mission. Mars 2020 rovers cameras represent a steady progression since NASAs Mars Pathfinder rover: after that mission, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers were designed with 10 cameras each, including on their landers; Mars Science Laboratorys Curiosity rover has 17. Camera technology keeps improving. Each successive mission is able to utilize these improvements, with better performance and lower cost, said Dr. Justin Maki, Mars 2020s imaging scientist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The cameras on the Mars 2020 rover will include more color and 3D imaging than on Curiosity, added Arizona State University researcher Dr. Jim Bell, principal investigator for 2020s Mastcam-Z. The Z stands for zoom, which will be added to an improved version of Curiositys high-definition Mastcam, the rovers main eyes. Routinely using 3D images at high resolution could pay off in a big way. Theyre useful for both long-range and near-field science targets, he said. The Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity rovers were all designed with engineering cameras for planning drives (Navcams) and avoiding hazards (Hazcams). These produced 1-megapixel images in black and white. On the Mars 2020 rover, the engineering cameras have been upgraded to acquire high-resolution, 20-megapixel color images. Their lenses will also have a wider field of view. Thats critical for the mission, which will try to maximize the time spent doing science and collecting samples. Our previous Navcams would snap multiple pictures and stitch them together. With the wider field of view, we get the same perspective in one shot, said Dr. Colin McKinney, product delivery manager for the new engineering cameras at JPL. That means less time spent panning, snapping pictures and stitching. The cameras are also able to reduce motion blur, so they can take photos while the rover is on the move. NASA plans to use existing spacecraft already in orbit at Mars ESAs Trace Gas Orbiter and NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN orbiter as relays for the Mars 2020 mission, which will support the cameras during the rovers first two years. In the Great Hall of All Saints Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland, the members of Boy Scout Troop 52 recently planned a trip to Shenandoah National Park. They talked about what clothes to wear, what food to bring and their camp site's expected elevation. And, as usual, they recited the Boy Scout law. But it wasn't just boys participating in the meeting and preparing for the trip - girls were a part of the group too. While Boy Scouts of America announced last week it will be fully inclusive for girls for the first time in its nearly 100-year history, Troop 52 may be one of the few groups that already knows what inclusion looks like. Though the girls are technically part of a Venture Scout crew, which is a co-ed program, they've been participating in activities alongside the boys since 1997. "The rest of the world is going to catch on to what we're doing here," Scoutmaster Will Stone, 55, told the group at last week'smeeting. This is 15-year-old Cadyn Harrington's second year in the venturing crew, which she joined after deciding that her Girl Scout troop was no longer a good fit for her interests. Since joining the group, Cadyn said there isn't anything separating her from the boys - aside from the different uniforms and rank advancements. "It's a really cool experience because you're out with the girls doing your own thing, but you're also interacting with guys," she said. "We're just a part of the troop." In recent years, Boy Scouts of America has changed membership rules, lifting the ban on openly gay scouts and troop leaders and allowing transgender boys. Even with the latest change, Lidia Soto-Harmon, CEO of Girl Scouts Nation's Capital, says she thinks Girl Scouts will continue to be the best choice for many. Girl Scouts Nation's Capital serves 60,200 girls in the District of Columbia and counties in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia with a program that is "tailor made for girls," she said. A co-ed program, Soto-Harmon argues, benefits boys over girls. "Parents should have lots of choices about what's best for children and my hope is that they will look at the ways their children learn and pick what is best for their daughters," she said. "I think that Girl Scouts is best for their daughters ...When they say girls want to do the same things boys do, it's happening at Girl Scouts." Stone said the co-ed program has been good for everyone in his 70-person troop, 16 of whom are girls. The troop camps and hikes and participates in service projects. At last week's meeting they passed out plastic bags for the upcoming Scouting for Food project, an annual food drive. Meredith Sherman, 19, served as venture crew president and assistant senior patrol leader while she was in Troop 52 and said some of the boys pushed back on her leadership. But she stuck with it, and eventually she said the boys learned that women deserve the same respect. Sherman went to an all-girls high school and now, studying at Tufts University, she reflected on her experience in Troop 52 and said it was "really rewarding." "By the end of the year they accepted my leadership, that it's a totally normal thing for a girl to have a leadership position over boys," Sherman said. "There's a really important element to young boys being exposed to girls doing all the same things as them, having leadership positions over them, so I think it really cultivates a sense of acknowledgment and respect." Troop 52 has never been one to wait around for the national organization to explicitly permit a change. An openly gay scout, Pascal Tessier, belonged to the troop before the ban on gay troops was lifted and he then became one of the nation's first openly gay youths to achieve the Eagle Scout ranking under the changed policy. Senior patrol leader Camaran Gaillard, 17, said it's been normal for him to participate alongside girls in scouts and he's glad the national change will allow girls to work toward the same recognition as the boys who achieve the highest rank of Eagle Scout. "They've always been doing the same scout skills as we've been doing. They've always been a part of this troop," Camaran said. "We've grown so accustomed to them being there so it's not a big deal to us. All the craziness going on, it seems foreign to me." Despite the integration, there are moments when the girls are aware they are not full members of the troop. Before Stone wrapped up the meeting last week, he explained certain next steps needed to work toward the Eagle Scout award and Larissa Sakaria, 16, zoned out. No matter how far she advanced, as a girl she had never been qualified to achieve that goal. Stone, noticing she had lost interest, approached afterwards and asked, "What do I always tell you?" She replied: "Anything that a guy can do, a girl can do - and probably better." Bishop is taking on the role of chairman of Selandia in addition to his post as head of business development for V.Group. The company is aiming to grow Selandia's 140 vessel strong fleet. The acquisition of Selandia Ship Management provided us with an intriguing opportunity to further develop an already strong brand to meet tanker specific client expectations out of India and Southeast Asia, said Bishop. Martin Christiansen, group cco at V.Group, commented, We are delighted to retain Bobs experience and passion for ship management. He is an important link in the continuity of quality service to our clients. Mary Ann Stark Fostering greater diversity in the nursing profession is vital, says Dr. Mary Ann Stark, professor of nursing. Bronson School of Nursing has received the resources to do just that with a four-year project to recruit, retain and graduate more underrepresented students into the nursing profession. The project started with a $5,000 internal grant that went on to receive nearly $2 million in federal funds. The Nursing Workforce Diversity Grant, through the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, will fund the Empowering Nursing Students for Success project. The program has been ongoing and the new funding will allow it to expand. Funding will be used to recruit students from underrepresented groups and those who are educationally and financially disadvantaged. Once enrolled, they will be paired with faculty mentors and student navigators to help guide them through the Bronson School of Nursing program. Problems underrepresented students face make it much harder to make the transition to college and are mirrored in the state's nursing demographics, Stark says. Financial problems, having graduated from underperforming K-12 schools, and coming from different social and educational backgrounds than white students are among the problems before students. Of the 14 scholars initially included in the program, all have been successful academically. Armed with the new grant funding, the program is poised for wider success. Almost half of the grant money goes directly to the scholar for scholarships or stipends. The rest goes to pay for mentoring and to hire student navigators. Stark says it's important for the medical profession to mirror society as a whole in its ethnic makeup. There are large differences between ethnic groups in terms of mortality and morbidity, diseases that are more or less common and different cultural traditions and ways of communicating. In addition, a more diverse nursing population enriches the profession with different talents and outlooks. As of 2017, 83.2 percent of Michigan's nurses were white. The state population overall is 75.4 percent white, Stark says. Only 6.3 percent of nurses are black, compared with 14.2 percent in the general population. The Latino nursing and general populations are even more skewed, Stark says. Latinos make up only 1.6 percent of nurses compared to 5 percent Latinos in the general population. "We have a real mismatch between the racial and ethnic backgrounds of nurses compared to the people we serve in our state," Stark says. The program they have developed has been successful in addressing that. Source: Western Michigan University Under police questioning hours after Kate Steinle was fatally shot on San Franciscos Pier 14, the accused killer at one point said he had aimed at a sea animal. At another point, he said the gun had been under a rag that lay on the ground near the waterfront, that it fired when he stepped on it, and that he quickly tossed the weapon into the bay so it would stop shooting on its own. The varying confessions offered by Jose Ines Garcia Zarate captured on video and played Wednesday for jurors at the 45-year-old mans murder trial may clarify what happened along the Embarcadero on the evening of July 1, 2015. Then again, they may not. Garcia Zarate, a homeless undocumented immigrant with a history of drug crimes and deportations, repeatedly changed his story and seemed not to understand basic concepts. His interrogators implored him to tell us the truth. He told investigators he was born in 1863, that he was a citizen of Colombia rather than Mexico, and that he was 5 to 6 feet away from Steinle on the pier, despite evidence that at least 90 feet separated the two at the time of the shooting. Now Playing: On Monday, jurors heard from crime scene investigators who say the bullet that killed Kate Steinle ricocheted before striking her. Video: KTVU The prosecution believes that Garcia Zarate pulled the trigger of the pistol which had been stolen four days earlier from the nearby parked car of an off-duty federal ranger and fired toward Steinle, an unexplained but intentional act showing the malice needed for a second-degree murder conviction. But the defense, citing evidence that the bullet skipped off the concrete ground, has said the gun accidentally discharged after Garcia Zarate found it in a T-shirt or cloth under his seat on the pier and unwrapped it. The case gained wide attention not only because of the randomness of Steinles death, as she strolled on Pier 14 with her father, but also because of how it figured into the national debate over the enforcement of immigration laws and the anti-immigrant sentiment embraced by President Trump. Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation when federal authorities brought him to San Francisco to face an old warrant in a marijuana case. When city prosecutors dismissed the case, the Sheriffs Department, relying on the citys sanctuary policies for immigrants, released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for removal. In the video played Wednesday in Superior Court by Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia, the defendant sat huddled in the corner of an interrogation room at the Hall of Justice, declining food or drink. When police homicide investigators asked him if he needed anything, he said he was cold. It was past midnight, in the aftermath of the shooting. Garcia played the footage after calling Lt. Anthony Ravano, the lead investigator in the case, to the witness stand. Through a Spanish interpreter, Garcia Zarate said he had been walking near AT&T Park that evening, southeast of Pier 14, eating crackers. He said he had, prior to that, been sleeping after coming in from work, collecting recyclable bottles and cans from garbage bins. We want to know if he was on the pier, Ravano asked the interpreter, a Spanish-speaking city officer. No, I was farther away, said Garcia Zarate, who made some responses in Spanish and others in English. I was sitting next to a planter. Ravano testified that he became more aggressive in his questioning because it was my belief that the defendant was lying to us. He said he deceived Garcia Zarate a tactic that is allowed in interrogations by telling him police had already recovered the gun from the bay, had DNA and gunshot-residue evidence tying him to the shooting, and had found witnesses who saw him shoot. In fact, a dive team would fish the pistol from the bay the day after the killing. No one witnessed the shooting, but Ravano, in the interrogation, had photos of Garcia Zarate taken by tourists proving he had been on the pier. This is you. We know this is you. People say this is you, Ravano said in the video. Garcia Zarate defended himself, saying it was a coincidence that the man in the photo was wearing the same shirt as him. He pointed out there were no crackers in the photo, even though he had been eating crackers. I want to know why you shot the girl and threw the gun in the water, said Sgt. Chris Canning, who was also in the room. Garcia Zarate stayed silent. This girl, Ravano said, gesturing to a photo of Steinle. You fired the shot. Why? Still he remained silent. Whats the matter? Canning asked. Are you sad? Eventually, Garcia Zarate admitted throwing the gun in the bay because he wanted it to stop shooting, suggesting the discharge was accidental. Later, Ravano asked of the fatal shot, What were you aiming at? Nothing, Garcia Zarate responded. What were you aiming at? Ravano repeated. I think it was a sea animal, Garcia Zarate said. A sea lion. He later said it was a black fish, and when Ravano asked how long he had the gun, he said it was only there at the pier. He then changed his story. 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. When I was walking along, there was a rag, Garcia Zarate said. I stepped on it and it fired and I threw it. Why did you throw it? Ravano asked. I was trying to stop it from shooting on its own, Garcia Zarate responded. Canning pulled his seat close to the suspect and put a hand on his shoulder, bringing his face close to Garcia Zarates face. The truth is very important, he said. Lying will just give you more trouble. As difficult as the truth can be, the truth is always the best. So tell us the truth. You didnt step on the gun, did you? Yes, Garcia Zarate said. You pulled the trigger. Is that the truth? Canning asked. Si, Garcia Zarate said. But he continued to answer in the affirmative, even when Ravano and Canning asked if he shot Steinle from 5 feet away. The investigators repeatedly tried to get Garcia Zarate to describe a motive, with Ravano at one point asking whether the shooting could have been an accident. All Garcia Zarate would say was that the gun was too big for his hand, and he had to throw it. The interrogation ran from 1:50 a.m. to 5:45 a.m., Ravano testified. Garcia Zarate, who was arrested on the Embarcadero soon after the shooting, had sat handcuffed in a patrol car since about 7:30 p.m., and had arrived at the Hall of Justice about midnight which his attorney says likely contributed to his scattered statements. How do you feel? one of the investigators asked Garcia Zarate at one point, seemingly trying to prod him into expressing remorse over Steinles death. I just want to stay attentive and focused and I just want to sign the papers that I did it, he said in Spanish. Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez, of the city public defenders office, pointed out that amid Garcia Zarates alleged confessions, he continually returned to the version in which the gun accidentally discharged shortly after he found it on the pier. The police were able to get Mr. Garcia Zarate to abandon what he said and adopt what they were saying, Gonzalez said, but as soon as they thereafter asked him his question again, he would revert back to his position. Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On the night of Oct. 8, as a windstorm raged across the North Bay, some of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.s local power lines were programmed to try to restart themselves in case service was interrupted even if they were knocked to the ground or tangled in a tree. Devices called reclosers similar to automated circuit breakers were set to shoot pulses of electricity through lines that tripped off. If conditions on the line seemed normal, the reclosers would automatically restart power. If, however, the lines were in contact with branches or brush, those pulses of electricity could have started a fire. State investigators are trying to determine whether PG&Es power lines played a role in triggering the wildfires that swept across Wine Country that night, destroying whole neighborhoods and killing at least 43 people. No cause has been determined. Now Playing: Ratepayers could pay if PG&E is found liable for the North Bay fires. Video: KTVU Reclosers are a key tool for preventing blackouts, but they have been implicated in wildfires before. The danger they pose is significant enough that two of Californias three investor-owned utility companies San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison routinely reprogram them during fire season so that the devices dont automatically try to restart power lines. PG&E, Californias largest utility, has been conducting a pilot program this year to do the same thing, spokesman Keith Stephens said. Some of PG&Es reclosers in the North Bay were part of that pilot program, he said. When the windstorm hit, they functioned as programmed and let power lines that went dark stay dark. But other reclosers in the area were not part of the experiment, Stephens said. Instead, they were programmed to try up to three times to restart power lines that had shut down. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is investigating the possible causes of the fires, wont say if it is looking specifically at reclosers. But state Sen. Jerry Hill wants the potential role of these devices examined. Frankly, not turning off the reclosers could have started many if not all of the fires, said Hill, D-San Mateo. Two years ago, Hill held a public hearing on how utilities deal with the threat of wildfires, bringing together executives from PG&E, Edison and SDG&E. Those from Edison and SDG&E told the hearing that they block reclosers from automatically restarting lines during fire season. Patrick Hogan, PG&Es senior vice president of electric operations, said his company had the ability to do the same, even though it could mean more power outages. So you take the reliability hit, but you gain the wildfire benefit, Hogan said. PG&E did not respond to questions Wednesday about why the company is still just experimenting with the idea. Nor did it say how many North Bay reclosers had been set to shut down at the first sign of trouble, compared with those programmed to restart their lines. Hill said he feels misled. I was under the opinion that they had the technology and used it the way Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric do, he said. I think they misled me and the public. The windstorm and the fires it fanned both exacted a heavy toll on PG&Es equipment. Reports that the company filed with California utility regulators described finding entire trees some of which appeared healthy that had fallen into power lines and knocked them to the ground. More than 350,000 PG&E customers lost power. PG&E mobilized 4,300 workers to restore service. Should Cal Fire investigators pin blame for the fires on PG&Es equipment, the company could be held liable for economic damages, even if it followed all safety regulations to the letter. Wildfires have become a costly problem for California utilities. SDG&E paid out $2.4 billion to settle lawsuits triggered by a series of wind-driven wildfires in October of 2007. One of those, the Witch Fire, began after power fluctuations interrupted service on a transmission line three times and caused an electric arc. Reclosers kept turning the line back on. An investigation into the 2009 Kilmore East Fire in Australia, which killed 119 people, placed some of the blame on a recloser that tried to restart a dangling power line. Whenever an interruption occurs on a line that has an automatic recloser, the device will wait a few seconds and then send a pulse of electricity back through the line to see if conditions have returned to normal. If the line behaves properly, the recloser will restart electricity service through the line, without the need to send out a utility crew. Since most of the glitches that affect power lines tend to be temporary, the devices help prevent outages, particularly in remote rural areas. PG&Es North Bay reclosers that were not part of the pilot program were set to try to restart their lines 1 to 3 times, Stephens said. If the lines did not respond properly after that, the reclosers were programmed to lock down the lines and keep the power off. Blocking reclosers from automatically restarting lines is one of several ways California utilities have tried to prevent wildfires. Placing some lines underground and swapping out wooden poles for steel ones are others. SDG&E will even pre-emptively shut down some rural power lines when forecasts call for high winds and low humidity. The most recent shut-off came last week, when the utility cut power to two rural lines and blacked out 87 customers. The company uses an automated dialing system to alert customers in advance. SDG&E takes our responsibility to operate our system safely very seriously, said spokeswoman Allison Torres, in a statement. If weather conditions threaten the integrity of our system, we will need to de-energize to protect public safety. PG&E isnt eager to take that step. Turning off a power line carries its own risks, said Kevin Dasso, PG&Es vice president of electric asset management. It knocks out electric garage doors, making it harder for homeowners to flee an advancing fire. It may prompt some of them to switch on their own power generators, which can throw off sparks. Then theres the difficulty of deciding how many people to black out. The Oct. 8 windstorm affected most of PG&Es vast service territory, which covers much of Northern and Central California. We had wind warnings and red-flag warnings in 44 of the 49 counties of our service area, Dasso said. De-energizing all our lines in those counties would have had a huge impact. David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavidBakerSF San Ramon chain 24 Hour Fitness will pay $1.2 million in civil penalties, plus restitution to members, for claims that it falsely promised low annual renewal rates to members in exchange for large up-front membership fees. The company will refund any past or present members who joined after 2006 and believed they were promised low rates. The agreement applies across the country. The settlement, reached Tuesday, was announced Thursday by the Contra Costa district attorneys office in conjunction with the Orange County district attorneys office, where the investigation originated. The fitness company will also pay $100,000 in costs to the two counties. Were very pleased with the settlement, said Dodie Katague, deputy district attorney in Contra Costa County. This took a year and a half of investigation, of talking to former employees and trying to determine their practices, and of talking to the victims. So this was a lot of hard work that paid off. The trouble appeared to start in 2006, when 24 Hour Fitness changed its membership contract to allow for annual rate increases but sales representatives allegedly continued to promise consumers between 2006 and 2009 that their rates would remain low. In 2015, the gym began to hike rates for some members, who felt that those verbal agreements were violated. Current and former members have six months to get their money back. Anyone who joined after 2006 will receive a notice via mail or email, and if they believe they were misled, they can submit a declaration that will be reviewed by a third party. Anyone whose membership was terminated because of failure to pay the increases can be reinstated at a lower rate, as can those who canceled their membership. Even members whose rates havent yet been increased should fill out the declaration if they were promised a lifetime annual renewal, Katague said, to preserve their lower rates. Katague said its difficult to put a number on how many consumers may have been deceived. He estimated that in 2015, rates of at least 100,000 members were raised, but it was unclear how many of them were promised lower rates. Nationwide, 24 Hour Fitness has about 4 million members in 18 states. The company has 140 locations in California. The issues with 24 Hour Fitness first came to local officials attention in 2015 when consumers began complaining to the Better Business Bureau and the district attorney in Orange County. A Change.org petition started by Raigan Enfield in 2015 garnered 2,904 signatures. Enfield described being hit with a rate increase of $50 to her annual dues, after being promised a lifetime membership at a rate of $29.99. I would like to request that 24 Hour Fitness either stands by their agreement to grandfather us into a certain rate for our annual memberships or if they refuse then use the support of all of you to start a class action lawsuit against 24 Hour Fitness for this unjustified price increase, Enfield wrote. This is not the only time the company has settled claims of misleading business practices. In 2007, 24 Hour Fitness paid approximately $1.8 million over cancellation fees. In 2006 and 2010, it settled smaller claims around membership fees. In a statement, 24 Hour Fitness said it had cooperated with the Orange County and Contra Costa County district attorneys offices. The membership product in question was offered over eight years ago, and the rate increase is consistent with the contract terms, it said. 24 Hour Fitness denies any wrongdoing. This resolution nonetheless addresses the concerns raised by some members who say that a sales representative made verbal representations inconsistent with the written contract terms. Sophie Haigney is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophie.haigney@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophieHaigney As women across the country continued to share stores of sexual assault and harassment, a curious email recently landed in my inbox. On November 2nd, Obvious Ventures will be hosting an off-the-record conversation with a small group of CEOs, editors and writers to discuss the state of unethical/illegal behavior within Silicon Valley, the email said. Topics will include the nature of current coverage, the types of questions investigators and investors might ask earlier on to help inoculate against this behavior. An off-the-record event means journalists cant report on anything people said. So why invite them? At a time when people are publicly confronting sexual misconduct, holding an off-the-record discussion about the topic seemed incredibly off-point. Consider also that San Franciscos Obvious Ventures was co-founded by Ev Williams, the creator of Blogger, Twitter and Medium three tools that helped people speak democratically and openly. If you guys really care about the issues at hand, then I suggest that people in Silicon Valley speak up publicly, I wrote back. That might have been the end of it but an unexpected thing happened: The organizers agreed with me. We initially planned this event in the hopes of being a relaxed evening to create a dialogue around these important issues, the email said. You made a great point regarding the downside of an off-the-record event. We discussed internally and realized there was no need to label it that way so the evening will now be on-the-record. Obvious reversal, though its a small gesture amid a sea of exclusive, off-the-record Silicon Valley events and hush-hush contracts, offers both hope and caution for people who want the technology industry to confront the pervasive sexual misconduct and misogyny infecting its culture. On the one hand, its quite admirable that a venture capital firm like Obvious Ventures wants to talk about this stuff, and to reporters no less. But the firms instinctive need to keep the discussion private suggests that transparency wont come easy to an opaque industry that prizes both informality and control. When you put leaders in a room, they feel like theres a bigger chance that Im going to say something stupid, said Kate Mitchell, co-founder and partner with Scale Venture Partners in San Francisco. But if we keep it under wraps, were not going to solve the problem. Silicon Valley is borderline paranoid. Companies frequently accuse each other of stealing talent and intellectual property. Visitors to buildings must sign nondisclosure agreements just to grab coffee with a friend. Innocuous events like dinners, cocktail parties and conferences are strictly off-the-record. Even TechCrunch, the tech news site whose founder once boasted about making industry secrets public, held Off the Record sessions at its September Disrupt event in San Francisco. Thats not to say that discretion is never appropriate. Journalists often negotiate to speak with sources off the record to obtain information that would not otherwise be unavailable. But companies do these things so often, and impose off-the-record status unilaterally, that secrecy becomes an end in itself. Its no wonder that issues like sexual misconduct and racism stay in the shadows. At least until now. So far this year, weve witnessed an extraordinary chain of events even before several women accused movie producer Harvey Weinstein of rape and harassment. Powerful financiers like David McClure of 500 Startups and Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital resigned their positions amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Ubers board of directors forced co-founder Travis Kalanick to resign as CEO after an investigation detailed a culture that tolerated inappropriate behavior toward women from top executives. Weve seen more progress over the last 12 months than the entire decade before, said James Joaquin, co-founder and managing director of Obvious Ventures in San Francisco. Joaquin has seen a lot in Silicon Valley over the years. While studying computer science at Brown University in the 1980s, he co-founded Clearview Software, which eventually was acquired by Apple. He spent six years in marketing and engineering roles at the Cupertino computing giant. I certainly remember inappropriate behavior in the workplace and legal actions from employees, Joaquin said. But now that Joaquin is running his own venture capital firm, hes in a position to do something. At Obvious Ventures, investors require entrepreneurs to detail the companys mission and values as part of their term sheets. The firm provides a CEO Welcome Kit to entrepreneurs and offers one of its partners to conduct a workshop on values at the startup. Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes But the flurry of recent events inspired Joaquin to host the event Thursday night. Its enlightened self-interest, Joaquin said. Over the past year, weve seen a lack of a moral compass in a growing number of Silicon Valley companies. We havent done enough as venture capitalists. Joaquin is not the only one whos trying to do more. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman urged venture capitalists to take a Decency Pledge regarding sexual harassment. Any VC who agrees that this is a serious issue that deserves zero tolerance and I certainly hope most do think this way should stop doing business with VCs who engage in this behavior, Hoffman wrote in a blog post this past summer. Limited partners should stop investing. Entrepreneurs of all genders should stop considering those VCs. This behavior occurs in our industry not just because some believe its no big deal, but also because those who do find it unacceptable dont do enough to actively discourage it, Hoffman wrote. But venture capitalists shouldnt just police themselves. As recent events have demonstrated, only public transparency (women telling their stories to the media) has forced Silicon Valley to focus on these problems. So kudos to Obvious Ventures for hosting the discussion but especially for putting it on the record. For Silicon Valley to combat sexual misconduct and other internal woes, it must cede a little control and resist the urge to keep things quiet. Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee Restoring power in the wake of last months devastating Wine Country wildfires will likely cost Pacific Gas and Electric Co. $160 million to $200 million, the utilitys corporate parent reported Thursday in its first financial estimate for the work. PG&E will seek to recover that money from its customers, said Jason Wells, chief financial officer of PG&E Corp., during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss third-quarter earnings. He did not offer an estimate of how the fire recovery costs could affect electricity rates. PG&E Corp. reported a quarterly profit of $550 million, or $1.07 per share, up nearly 42 percent from $388 million, or 77 cents per share, during the same period last year. PG&E executives spent much of the earnings call discussing the fires, PG&Es response to them and the possibility that the company could be held liable for the economic losses they caused. Investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, are trying to determine whether PG&Es power lines, blown about in a fierce windstorm, played a role in starting the fires, which erupted on Oct. 8 and killed at least 43 people. Under a legal doctrine known as inverse condemnation, utility companies in California can be held liable for economic damages arising from fires caused by their equipment, even if the companies followed all applicable safety rules. PG&E Corp. Chief Executive Officer Geisha Williams told the analysts that inverse condemnation posed a risk to all energy companies operating in the state, and PG&E would fight any effort to apply it in suits arising from the North Bay fires. We would challenge its application if that were to be the case in these events, she said. PG&E has joined with Californias two other investor-owned utility companies San Diego Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison to argue that utilities should be able to pass on to their customers any costs they face through inverse condemnation. Consumer advocates call that an attempt by the companies to escape paying for their own mistakes. The California Public Utilities Commission, which sets utility rates, is scheduled to vote on the issue next week. Meanwhile, four state legislators plan to introduce legislation in January that would prevent utilities from passing on wildfire costs to their customers in cases where the companies negligence caused the incidents. A Sacramento County judge ruled in June that under inverse condemnation, PG&E may be held liable for damages in the 2015 Butte Fire, which began when a pine tree leaned into a power line. Wells said Thursday that if third-party claims from the Butte Fire surpass the $922 million limit of PG&Es liability insurance, the utility will try to recover any further costs through its electricity rates. David R. Baker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dbaker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DavidBakerSF President Trump used a deadly terrorist attack in New York City Tuesday to renew his support for a chief campaign promise: curtailing the number of low-skilled immigrants coming into the country to make room for those whose abilities can command higher salaries. His remarks come a day after Sayfullo Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who was admitted to the U.S. on a diversity visa, was accused of plowing a pickup truck into a crowded bicycle path in Manhattan. Eight people were killed, and several more were injured. Trump said Wednesday that he would ask Congress to begin unraveling the visa program: We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems, the president tweeted. This program was started in 1990 as a way to bring foreigners into the U.S. from countries with low rates of immigration. The government issues up to 50,000 of these visas through a lottery each year, a tiny fraction of the millions who apply. During the application period for fiscal year 2017, about 19 million people applied for the U.S. diversity visa program, according to the Pew Research Center. The government is currently taking applications for the next fiscal year, with a deadline of Nov. 22. The visa has long been considered a golden ticket for those coming from countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, who dont have family ties or a job offer in the U.S. To qualify, all a person needs is a high school education, two years of work experience and a passport from a country whose number of immigrants to the U.S. fell below a certain bar in a given government fiscal year. The qualifications are much less rigorous than those for other visas commonly used in Silicon Valley, like the H-1B, which requires a foreigner to have at least a bachelors degree and be paid a certain salary. Tech companies like Google and Facebook rely on H-1B visas to fill engineering positions, and have long complained about the limited number of visas available for high-skilled workers. Each year, 85,000 H-1Bs are allocated to for-profit companies through a lottery. H-1B holders often get stuck waiting for green cards for years because of the high volume of foreigners emigrating from those countries. Indian and Chinese citizens, who account for the majority of H-1B holders, are excluded from the diversity lottery. In theory, doing away with the diversity visa could benefit high-skilled immigrants by freeing up more green cards in the U.S., said Ed Litwin, a Bay Area immigration attorney. While some (diversity visa recipients) could be professionals and could be very well-trained, thats not a requirement, Litwin said. We need to have more availability to these international educated people that are at the cutting edge. But, when Trump says he wants to do away with the diversity visa, he doesnt necessarily mean he will reallocate those visas to the highest-skilled, said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank. Merit-based is purely a slogan, Anderson said. Its not a serious effort to increase the amount of immigrants coming into the country. Anderson added that the administration has a series of proposals that actually make it harder for certain high-skilled immigrants to come into the country. In August, the president endorsed the RAISE Act, which would slash legal immigration in half and establish a point system for those considered higher-skilled. Meanwhile, the administration is also scrutinizing several other Obama-era rules that help high-skilled foreigners live and work in the U.S. Some rules on the chopping block include those designed to benefit startup entrepreneurs, spouses of H-1B visa holders, and foreign students who graduated with a degree in scientific or technical fields. The administration has also issued a series of memos that have the effect of making it harder for H-1B applicants to qualify. It would be more sincere to have a proposal that would take the numbers of the diversity visa and put them toward employment-based immigration, Anderson said. But all their advocacy is for fewer people coming in. Period. Following the attack, Trump chided Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., because he supported the diversity visa program when it was enacted nearly 30 years ago. On Twitter, Schumer shot back: President Trump should be focusing on the real solution anti-terrorism funding, he wrote. Pres Trump, instead of politicizing & dividing America which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should bring us together. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani The diversity visa by the numbers How many people apply? 2007: 9.1 million 2008: 10.1 million 2009: 13.2 million 2010: 9.8 million 2011: 16.5 million 2012: 19.7 million 2013: 12.6 million 2014: 14.6 million 2015: 14.4 million 2016: 17.6 million 2017: 19.3 million (Note: Fiscal years; the U.S. government fiscal year ends Sept. 30.) How many are admitted? There are 50,000 diversity visas allocated every year. What are the qualifications? At least a high school education Two years of work experience, in a profession approved by the Department of State Once an individual is chosen, they must: Submit a detailed background check Go through a security check and health screening Submit to a visa interview Pay $330. Santa Clara Police Department / Santa Clara Police Department Police arrested a woman suspected of using a stun gun on a 16-year-old girl at Californias Great America amusement park during last weekends Halloween Haunt, which was thrown into chaos when multiple groups of teenagers became involved in violent altercations with other park guests. Leticia Saxton, 44, was in the amusement park for the holiday event when a fight erupted between her daughter and the victim, who attend the same East Bay school, police said. Saxton used the stun gun on the other girl, investigators said. Squatting down, I plucked a cotton boll, ready to be harvested, snowy white and softer than kittens fur. Rubbing it between my fingers, I glanced at what appeared to be the former plantation house in the distance, and sickened, thinking of the slaves who had toiled in these fields. My husband and I were recently in North Carolina, east of Raleigh on the Albemarle Sound. Before we arrived, I had wondered how the official record dealt with that dark history, one whose legacy still reverberates across the country at a time when athletes are kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African Americans; when white supremacists march out in the open, and the president and his administration are their apologists. Earlier this week, John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, claimed that the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War. Compromise? How can you compromise over the abhorrence of slavery, unless you think that the people in bondage are less than you? At a visitor center in North Carolina, we spotted a historical exhibition about Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, first published under a pseudonym in 1861. As I started to read the placard, I fumed, During the first six years of her life, Harriet Jacobs ... enjoyed a close-knit family life with [her] parents. Enjoyed as in living with every freedom stolen from them? After the death of her mother, Jacobs moved into the home of her white mistress, who eventually died, and Jacobs was bequeathed to another family, the Norcoms. According to the placard, the husband harassed her, the wife became vindictive and jealous. Harassed as in attempting to rape her? In the placards telling, the Norcoms treatment of Harriet brought her to the attention of Samuel Tredwell Sawyer, a future United States congressman. Harriet chose to begin a relationship with Sawyer. Their liaison produced a son ... and a daughter. Chose a liaison as if suggesting she could voluntarily enter a romantic relationship with this powerful lawyer? Shaking with rage, I left the center, vowing to read Jacobs book. As I suspected, the visitor center had distorted the history, glossing over tragedy to create a rosier narrative. I urge you to read it, too; her eloquent words are just as searing and timely today. Of her first mistress, Jacobs writes, She had taught me the precepts of Gods Word. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them. But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor. I would give much to blot out from my memory that one great wrong. ... Notwithstanding my grandmothers long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend. Jacobs writes chillingly about the threats that slave girls encounter upon entering adolescence: If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave. ... My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. Her words resonate, as scores of people have been coming forward to share their stories of sexual assault and harassment at the hands of the mighty. When Jacobs falls in love with a free born man, a young colored carpenter, he proposes to buy her so they can be together, she writes. Her master refuses, tells her he can take up with one of his slaves instead, and threatens to kill her young love. Desperate, she gets entangled with Sawyer, whom she describes as a white unmarried gentleman ... he expressed ... a wish to aid me. He constantly sought opportunities to see me, and wrote to me frequently. I was a poor slave girl, only fifteen years old. By getting pregnant, she hopes she might ward off her master, and that Sawyer might someday free her. He does not. Eventually, she escapes by hiding for nearly seven years in an attic above a storeroom that dismal little hole, almost deprived of light and air ... with no space to move my limbs before fleeing to New York by boat. Slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks, Jacobs tells us. Its a curse that Kelly, President Trump and their ilk cant distort any longer, a curse that we must face as a country, or remain as haunted as we were then. Vanessa Hua is a Bay Area author. Her columns appear Fridays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com Donna Personnas hands flew gracefully through the air as she talked me through her journey from a happy but confusing childhood in San Jose to her role as a vibrant transgender activist and performer. For the past couple of years, Personna has partnered with one of her many causes, the Tenderloin Museum, to create and produce a play based on San Franciscos Comptons Cafeteria riot of 1966. We sat at one of the small cafe tables in the center of the Tenderloin Museum, where Personna detailed gay life in 1966 San Francisco. I was here in the 60s and Im here now, said the 71-year-old. Im an emblem of survival in the Tenderloin. Wed met each other a few months ago, when Personna and I were seated across a runway show from one another. Throughout it, Personna met my eye, somehow knowing wed share the same sense of humor. After the performance, we became fast friends. Her energy was easy and warm, that of a funny mother who exudes an almost instant unconditional love toward strangers. I asked Personna to meet again, so she could take me to the Tenderloin Museum, her second home, and show me around. I came here at 19 years old, she said of the Tenderloin neighborhood. I got on a Greyhound bus in San Jose. Personna comes from a traditional Mexican family, and while she was adored at home, she figured San Francisco was where one went to have a gay life. She didnt identify as trans then, but Personna always knew she was different. Some (trans) people say, I knew I was a woman or I felt like a woman. I didnt. I was just me. A life of secret nightclubs and bar backrooms followed as Personna developed her street smarts and discovered her queer community. This was before the Summer of Love, before any cultural revolution. The drag queens and transgender sex workers of the Tenderloin took Personna under their wing, and she would sit with them late into the night as they sipped 10-cent cups of coffee at Comptons. Thats where you got your information about how to navigate the night, she said. I scribbled furiously in my notebook, wanting to capture all of Personnas fantastic phrases like navigate the night. But people are already onto Donna Personna. She is having, as the kids say, a moment. She serves on numerous boards and committees involved in preserving the trans history of the Tenderloin and naming streets after trans activists. Filmmaker Jay Bedwani is working on his second documentary about Personna, and her story is a major part of next years The Comptons Cafeteria Riot, an interactive play about the oft-forgotten trans and gay riot against police brutality and oppression, produced by the museum. Personna didnt even begin to perform drag until she was 59. At 59, I had to learn to be a lady, she said with a smile. Tenderloin Museum Executive Director Katie Conry considers Personna a beloved member of the community and a trusted resource. We all can learn so much from our queer elders, said Conry, one of the relentless forces behind the Comptons Cafeteria play. And its not just historical. Donna is very much still a part of this neighborhood. She is also a window into a part of San Franciscos past that not enough of us understand. Personna reminisced about the mystique of long-lost underground gay bars like the Gilded Cage and the Fantasy and confessed to being seduced by the secrecy. Everything back then was more special, she said, sighing. But being gay or trans or anything else considered subversive in 1966 was often lonely, painful and dangerous. Im a happy person, and I say thats in my DNA, she said, but Im always just on the cusp of total devastation and tears. Her eyes welled, as did mine. Donna Personnas life is beautiful and passionate and complicated. Its been filled with a lot of love and a lot of pain. She wears it all with pride and honesty. Personna is looking forward, pressing on with positivity. Shes ready for her story to be told, ready for the play to open next year. I want this story to never die, she said of the riot and the transgender communitys undeniable impact on the Tenderloin. Itll never be dated or not worthy of being told. Never! Conry gazed at Personna and said, Shes our hero. Beth Spotswoods column appears Thursdays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Dianny Patricia Menendez begged to be deported. In early October, the 38-year-old undocumented immigrant told immigration Judge Joseph Park in San Francisco that she could no longer tolerate the conditions at the jail in Contra Costa County where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was detaining her. The story she and other detainees, their lawyers and jail monitors told me is one that jail officials found hard to believe yet said they would investigate. Menendez explained to me, over two phone calls from the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, why she didnt fight deportation to her native Honduras, far from her children and the house she owns in Fontana (San Bernardino County). The jail cells, she said, have no toilets, and when inmates need to use the bathroom, they must wait for jail staffers to let them out of their cells. Sometimes, Menendez said, inmates are locked up for 23 hours before they can leave their cells, which hold one or two inmates. She described hearing the sound of other distressed female inmates, screaming and pounding on their cell doors. Their choice, she and others said, is humiliating: urinating and defecating in their clothes or in plastic bags in their cells, which some inmates place into trash cans they squat over. Do any other detainees live this way? All of them, Menendez told me. On Tuesday, I got a rare tour of the West County Detention Facility and even rarer access to some of the female ICE detainees there. Its true the jail cells have no toilets. Each cluster of cells has a restroom nearby in a secured area that inmates can access by opening their cell door. Heres where the truth gets murky: The women I met said their doors are often locked and they cannot get out. Their jailers say the women are rarely locked in and have access to the bathroom most of the time. Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle But after hearing about the allegations this week, Contra Costa County sheriffs officials, who contract with ICE to hold immigration detainees, said they will investigate. The women I met spoke of having to relieve themselves in red biodegradable plastic bags, the kind given to vomiting inmates going through drug withdrawal. Karina Paez, whos from Tijuana, told me her roommate defecated in clothing soon after they arrived about a month ago. Later on, somebody told us that we were supposed to scream red bag out the window, Paez said, referring to the biodegradable bags. I didnt know that. I just arrived here, and she was new, too. Paez, 36, was arrested two years ago in Missouri for possession of heroin with intent to distribute. She said shes ready to leave the U.S. for good, even if it means her life will be in danger because she testified against drug traffickers. I cant do this, she said, choking back tears. I really cant be in my room 23 hours a day. Im going crazy. Courtesy Photo In the phone interview, Menendez told me that jail staffers frequently cancel the hour of daily free time, when inmates can bathe, call family and friends, and clean their cells. There were times, she said, when she had to wait days to shower. I just dont want to be here detained anymore, Menendez said. I dont feel good physically. Its everything. The terrible food, being enclosed. Rodrigo Torres, a volunteer with Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement, a group that monitors jails where immigrants are detained, has repeatedly heard these complaints about West County. A lot of times theyre just not allowed out of their rooms, Torres said. So during those times, theyre not allowed even to go to the bathroom and theyre told to use the bio bags. An immigration lawyer for one of the women I met also said hed heard from several inmates that theyre locked in their cells for more than 20 hours. Its not something isolated, said the attorney, Joseph LaCome. Its not just the women that Ive heard complaints from. Its also male clients that I have who are in the detention center, too. The West County Detention Facility is a minimum security jail off Giant Highway in Richmond near Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, a regional park. It opened in 1991, but its not a traditional jail where inmates are locked behind steel bars like seen on an episode of Law & Order. There are several classes and programs computer graphics, engraving, printmaking and landscaping, to name a few that are available to inmates who are allowed to walk unescorted from their dorms to classes. A majority of the cells are dry rooms lacking toilets and sinks. Each cellblock has shared restrooms and showers. The Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office has a $6 million-a-year contract with ICE to run the immigration detention center. During my tour, 214 ICE detainees were in the jail, 38 of them women. A total of more than 800 inmates are housed at the jail. The sheriffs officials who gave me the tour said they were surprised by the womens allegations that they were unable to use the restrooms. They denied that inmates are locked up for long periods. My tour was led by Tom Chalk, a sheriffs captain. We were joined by Chris Simmons, another sheriffs captain; Matthew Schuler, assistant sheriff and commander of the custody services bureau; and Marc Andaya, commander of the West County Detention Facility. Simmons was adamant that detainees arent kept on lockdown. The only time its locked down at all is during count and some staff changes during the count times, Simmons said. He pointed out women in the doorways of their cells chatting and walking to the bathroom during what was technically a lockdown period. The only time that theyre in their rooms, a lot of them, especially if they choose to involve themselves in programs, is in the evening when theyre sleeping, Simmons said. Even then, the buildings not in lock. They can open their door and go to the restroom and come back. Simmons and the other jail officials said ICE detainees can drop complaints about anything in boxes fastened to wall on the first floor. They said only ICE has access to the boxes. If theres any complaints or anything that comes out of that, we have no way of interfering with it, Chalk said. ICE then notifies us if theres anything, and of course well investigate. ICE didnt respond to my repeated requests for comment. I asked my sheriffs tour guides: Why would some women say they were kept from using the bathroom? Noah Berger/Special to The Chronicle The answer came from Chalk: Detainees, either because theyre confused, or they have a grievance against us and want to say things that may be inaccurate or untrue that happens. Still, Chalk and the others said they would investigate the complaints. They wont be alone in their probe. The Prison Law Office, a Berkeley nonprofit public interest law firm, has been investigating conditions at Contra Costa County jails for more than a year, focused on access to medical care. Still, Donald Specter, the nonprofits executive director, was startled when told of the womens allegations. Its unusual for prison cells in this day and age not to have toilets, Specter said. John Gioia, a Contra Costa County supervisor, was taken aback by the allegations. This is the first Ive heard about this, and I think it warrants further understanding, Gioia said. If these allegations are true Im not saying they are true it raises serious issues about the way that the facility is being operated with respect to these individuals. Its not just the bathroom access that had the women clambering to voice their experiences, speaking within earshot of jail officials. Several, like Ana Henriquez Nuila, talked about inadequate access to health services. Nuila, 32, spoke in Spanish and her words were interpreted by fellow detainee Nancy Meyer, 40. Nuila said she fell off the top bunk in her cell several days ago. Her arm was in a sling. She said shes asked to get an X-ray, but the medical staff has offered only a topical cream and aspirin and a spot on a waiting list. Another detainee, 29-year-old Adriana Diaz, pulled up her shirt to reveal a fist-sized lump near her waistline. Its growing, and she doesnt know what it is. She said the jail medical staff hasnt given her attention. The jail officials said inmates have access to the facilitys medical staff when they request it. The nurse in medical may not give them what they want during the course of that conversation, Simmons said. Thats when we see some of the complaints about medical. On the day of my tour, Menendez, the woman who begged a judge to be deported to her native Honduras, was getting her wish. She was driven from the Richmond jail to San Franciscos ICE offices and then taken to the airport. Menendez was deported twice before during the 20 years she lived in the United States, and her life story is wrapped in tribulation. It includes a drug charge, a DUI charge and a trip back to Honduras in 2011 with the bodies of her sister and her twin nephews who were slain in a domestic violence incident. Her U.S.-born children, an 18-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, are with relatives. She had been trying to return to them in 2016 when she was caught entering the U.S. illegally. Because she was a repeat offender, she was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, which she served in the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin. In May, she was transferred to the West County Detention Center. And on Oct. 11, she begged Judge Park to send her out of the country. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. usually appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr To be fair, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to suggest that scientists have discovered a device that opens up a wormhole to travel across the galaxy, but they didn't not not say that there was one. So, y'know, technically, it could be there. Most likely, however, is that it isn't. A team of Japanese and French scientists conducted two years of study on the Great Pyramid of Giza and discovered two voids - one large, one small - in its structure. The precise nature of the voids remains unclear, as neither are accessible through the normal passageways through the pyramid. The voids were discovered using muography, which detects changes in density in large rock structures. At 140 metres high, the Great Pyramid - also known as Khufu's Pyramid, in honour of Pharoah Khufu - is the largest of the three pyramids of Giza. The void is said to be directly above the Great Gallery, and roughly mirrors its size. Speaking to the BBC, archaeologist Mark Lehrer believes that the newly-discovered voids may simply be there for structural purposes, and not actual chambers. "It could be a kind of space that the builders left to protect the very narrow roof of the grand gallery from the weight of the pyramid." Again, nobody's not saying it doesn't contain a Stargate - so, yeah, let's just say that there's something there and it could contain one. Or not. Via BBC Acts of terrorism inflict national trauma by design. Its this nations unfortunate lot that we can count on our current leaders to aggravate the wounds with divisive rhetoric and counterproductive prescriptions, giving terrorists what they want. Less than 24 hours after an Islamic State-inspired Uzbek immigrant used a rented truck to kill eight and injure 12 on a Manhattan bike path, President Trump vowed to end the so-called diversity visa lottery that admitted the man seven years earlier, blaming the program on New Yorks Chuck Schumer, the Senates top Democrat. Schumer was one of many backers of the lottery legislation, which had bipartisan support and was signed by President George H.W. Bush. More recently, he was also one of a few senators who tried to end the program as part of an immigration overhaul. Americans have opposed the Trump administration in many ways, from taking to the streets to leaving Congress. Heres a more practical form of protest: obtaining health insurance. Getting or renewing coverage during this years Affordable Care Act enrollment period, which started Wednesday, will amount to an act of defiance. Thats because President Trump, driven by an obsession with erasing his predecessors legacy, has done everything in his power to sabotage the law he disparages as Obamacare right up to pretending it no longer exists. Despite the presidents worst efforts, however, it still does. Eleven insurers are offering coverage through Californias ACA exchange, Covered California. Though available plans are changing in many areas and premiums are rising as a result of uncertainty nationwide, making it particularly important for those insured through the exchanges to examine their options, subsidies will insulate many of them from price increases. Covered California has increased its marketing budget and will allow enrollment for three months. That is in contrast to the federal government, which has halved the enrollment period for HealthCare.gov and will shut down the site intermittently during that period. Meanwhile, the Health and Human Services Department cut the programs nationwide marketing budget by more than 90 percent to less than a tenth of Covered Californias and reduced enrollment assistance by more than 40 percent. These supposed efficiencies were imposed while the departments then-secretary, Tom Price, was racking up enough bills for chartered flights to eventually force him from office. Having repeatedly failed to corral his fellow Republicans in Congress into repealing the ACA, Trump also eliminated funding that stabilized its insurance exchanges and signed an order to encourage low-coverage plans that circumvent the law. And he has withheld support from a bipartisan bill that would strengthen the exchanges, give states more flexibility, and save the federal government billions. In a bizarre apotheosis of his anti-ACA propaganda, Trump recently declared that the law passed by Congress, signed by President Barack Obama, and upheld by the Supreme Court had somehow ceased to be. Obamacare is finished, he told a Cabinet meeting. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore. Trump was right in one respect: Obamacare is a bogeyman he and others invented. The Affordable Care Act is expanding Americans health care access to this day. This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters. When Larry Kramers play The Normal Heart premiered at the Public Theatre in New York in April 1985, the AIDS crisis had only just begun. President Ronald Reagan hadnt mentioned the disease publicly; that would finally happen a few months later. It would still be two years before Kramer would found ACT UP and two years before the first AIDS memorial quilt would be assembled. The number of annual AIDS diagnoses wouldnt begin to decline for another decade. Still, in the four years leading up to the plays opening, Kramer had seen plenty. The very first people who got infected and died were my friends, my age group, from New York and Fire Island, Kramer, now 82, says by phone. So, from the very beginning I got involved. The Normal Heart which is being presented for three weeks by Theatre Rhinoceros beginning Friday, Nov. 3 is not a feel-good story. It is a shout, a scream for attention. The play, largely based on Kramers life, is a polemic against the politicians, physicians and activists whose various failings contributed to the spread of AIDS. Its also something of an indictment of Kramer himself who (through Ned, the principal character) succeeds mostly in alienating his friends with his unsparing activism on the subject. The curtain closes as Ned grieves the loss of his partner, feeling as though he hadnt done enough for the cause, while the death rate continues to climb. The audience is not allowed to feel relief, and thats by design. In 1985, no relief was in sight. I wrote the play to make people cry, and it seems to succeed in doing that, Kramer says. AIDS is a plague, you know? And I want to the world to still know that and to know that when we first started yelling about it there were only 41 cases. Much has changed since then. San Francisco continues to hit new annual lows in reported cases. Pharmaceuticals have made it so that HIV, for many, is a chronic condition that rarely progresses to AIDS. There is a daily pill for men who have sex with men that studies have shown almost entirely eliminates the possibility of contracting HIV. But Larry Kramer is still shouting. In part thats because, despite (and sometimes because of) all of these advances, hes worried HIV/AIDS is being forgotten. Because there is this new drug that keeps the virus at bay, people just think that the end of the plague is here, and thats just not true, Kramer says. People of color and people with less money generally dont have access to these preventative therapies, and even as rates continue to fall in rich, metropolitan cities, new cases are being diagnosed every day around the world. Kramer also sees LGBTQ rights backsliding in other areas; trans people are being kept from using the bathroom of their choice and religious liberty bills are turning up in state legislatures across the country. Were being treated like s, he says. Now, its worse than ever with this new president. Theyre beginning to dismantle many of the things we already won in various court cases. Theres a sense of deja vu about it all, Kramer says. Its just awful how we have to fight these fights over and over again. Thats something I try to stress to the kids today. The activism never stops. And neither should the anger. The Normal Heart is undoubtedly a play about HIV and AIDS, but beyond that, says John Fisher, the plays director and also the actor playing Ned, its a play about rage. A play like this is important because it reminds people that the activists, the people who get angry, are part of the movement, says Fisher, who is also a playwright and Theatre Rhinos executive director. Its not all about mellow, take it easy, take it slow. Rage is important and thats what the play is about. In some sense, rage is what Larry Kramers life has been about, too. The Normal Heart was just the beginning. A couple of years after the premiere, Kramer started ACT UP, a direct action advocacy group that staged die-ins and drew headlines. We were able to scare everybody because we were so visible and we were demanding things because we were dying and that gave us a motivation that doesnt seem to exist anymore. Now as he reaches the end of his life, hes focusing his attention on the second half of a two-volume queer history called The American People. Volume 2 is largely concerned with the history of HIV/AIDS, how it became a plague that has claimed more than 35 million lives worldwide. Kramer was printing a copy of it out as he spoke over the phone. He doubts many people will read all 2,000 pages of the collected history. But I will have written it, he says. And I will have condemned all the people I want to condemn. Ryan Kost is a Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com The Normal Heart: Presented by Theatre Rhinoceros, Nov. 3-25. The Gateway Theatre, 215 Jackson St., S.F. $20. www.therhino.org Each of San Franciscos 11 supervisors has called for equity in the citys cannabis laws, meaning they want to create a racially diverse industry that gives former drug offenders a shot at success. On Wednesday, Supervisor Malia Cohen presented an ordinance to help the city achieve its social justice goals when sales of recreational marijuana become legal throughout the state in January. The city wont issue permits to sell recreational cannabis until an equity program is approved. Cohens proposal modeled after a similar program that Oakland approved in March and another thats being considered in Los Angeles would prioritize permits for dispensary operators with marijuana arrests or convictions between 1971 and 2009. Also eligible for priority would be entrepreneurs who committed other nonviolent crimes during that time period, or who earn 80 percent of San Franciscos area median income, or who were displaced from their homes within the past 22 years. Equity applicants must also prove that they have lived for at least five years in a city census tract where at least 17 percent of the households had incomes at or below the federal poverty level. We consider (this) a robust proposal for how to codify an equity program, said Cohens legislative aide, Brittni Chicuata, laying out the supervisors 10-page ordinance at a meeting of the boards Rules Committee. Its members Supervisors Ahsha Safai, Norman Yee and Sandra Lee Fewer voted 2-1 to incorporate the equity program into a meticulously detailed set of regulations that the Office of Cannabis introduced in September. Fewer dissented. The committee will hold a special meeting next week to vote on the cannabis regulations again before sending them to the full board the following week. Chicuata said that Cohen chose the 1971-2009 period because of its historical significance. In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Beginning in 2009, rising real estate prices and changes in the labor market forced many low-income households and people of color out of the city. It was also the year that former District Attorney Kamala Harris stopped prosecuting people convicted of marijuana crimes. We wanted to recommend something that gets at the community-level impacts of the failed drug war, Chicuata said. Cohens law would also fast-track permits for businesses willing to nurture equity applicants by providing mentorship and technical assistance, or rent-free commercial space for at least three years. These incubators would also ensure that at least half their employees meet the equity criteria, and that San Francisco residents do at least half of the work. The equity program coincided with two new reports that the Office of Cannabis, city controller and Human Rights Commission released Wednesday. Those reports overlapped at many points with Cohens program, in that they also recommended an incubator system and urged the city to prioritize residents of neighborhoods that suffered most during the drug war, said Office of Cannabis Director Nicole Elliott. Cannabis business owners who attended the three-hour meeting offered their own definitions of equity, most of which were a little more far-reaching than Cohens. San Francisco should make the equity program as broad as possible, said Alexandra Butler, founder of Hepburns, a collective that sells pre-rolled cones of cannabis and ice-water hash. Butler envisioned an equity program that would incorporate women entrepreneurs, as well as people of color and people arrested for selling cannabis. Other business owners asked that veterans be included. Supervisors Safai and Jeff Sheehy added amendments of their own, requiring cannabis operators who didnt fit the equity criteria to hire locals for at least 30 percent of their workforce. They also added provisions to protect cannabis workers rights to unionize. Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan ANAHEIM Heres one question that Californias Republican candidates for governor dont want to hear, let alone answer: How are you different from President Trump? Thats because answering it is a no-win proposition for Republicans marooned west of the Sierra Nevada. So they do what politicians do best: They parse. They cant say they love Trump, because only 27 percent of Californians think hes doing a good job. And those haters arent all Democrats; only 27 percent of independents approve of Trump, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll. They cant say they hate Trump, because 70 percent of California Republicans think hes doing a good job. A Republican candidate needs the support of his fellow Republicans because 41 percent of the ballots cast in Junes primary will be for a GOP candidate, predicts Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data, which provides voter information to campaigns and pollsters in both parties. They cant say they love Trump, because the anti-Trump resistance is centered in California and anyone supporting his immigration proposals or travel bans or tax plan would get them tagged as Trump Lite and ticketed for a post-election vacation. They cant say they hate Trump because then Republicans would tar them for turning their back on an economy that has grown at 3 percent for two consecutive quarters for the first time in three years and an unemployment rate (4.2 percent) that is at a 16-year-year low. Yes, those economic trends started under Barack Obama, but theyve continued under Trump. So one of the political life skills California Republicans have developed over the past year is the fine art of the Trump parse how a candidate says something positive about the president without really saying anything that will make independent voters think they might actually like him. The Republicans running for governor Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox and Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach have become skilled practitioners of the parse. Someone from Allens gubernatorial campaign sent me a note the other day to say that Allen feels I misquoted him when I wrote that he disagreed with Trump on many things. He actually said there were lots of things they differed on when he appeared with me on The Chronicles Its All Political video podcast recorded at last months California Republican Party convention in Anaheim. Not that he actually listed many. When I asked him to explain at least twice where he differed from Trump, he said at one point, Its an interesting question. Now Playing: The Chronicle's Joe Garofoli interviews Travis Allen, a California Republican candidate for governor. Video: Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle Then he riffed for a couple of minutes about how his Southern California upbringing gave him a different perspective on some issues. Then he pivoted quickly to talking about how, like Trump, he wants to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Allen said that separates him from Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, also a candidate for governor, who supports single-payer health care, which Allen said means youd have to go to the DMV to see your doctor ... it will bankrupt the state in the first six months. Good DMV zinger. But Allen didnt mention a whole lot of differences between him and Trump. On Wednesday, I asked his campaign one more time for some differences. The response, a portion of which is below, is a master class in Trump parsology: Trumps statements could be more nuanced at times, but the bottom line is that his America First policies have benefited our country immensely, Allen said in a note. I believe that we will continue to see the positive results of Trumps policies over the next eight years. It remains to be seen whether Trumps federal tax reform will lead to a net reduction in Californians taxes due to the elimination of the state and local tax deduction, but his enforcement of federal immigration laws, push to repeal and replace Obamacare, and America-first economic policies, and his Supreme Court appointment have all been huge wins for the country, Allen said. I fully supported President Trump and also voted for him. When it comes to pointing out differences, Allen saves his best shot for his opponent. He is fond of pointing out that Cox voted for former GOP New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson in last Novembers presidential race, after Johnson had transformed into a Trump-hating Libertarian. In my mind, if you didnt vote for the Republican nominee for president, essentially thats a vote for Hillary Clinton, Allen told me in Anaheim. That doesnt really resonate very well with statewide Republicans. No, no it doesnt. Which is why at the Republican convention, Coxs team sought me out after deadline at the convention hotel bar to explain that he regretted not voting for Trump. I set down my beer to take notes. Im a solid conservative, Cox said, offering as evidence that he was on the 2012 finance team of Newt Gingrich (friend of Trump!). Theres a lot of conservatives nationwide who were deeply suspicious of Donald Trump. I care about my vote. As a conservative, I was suspicious about Donald Trumps real ideology. He was not someone who was involved in the conservative movement one iota prior to running for president. Ive been involved in the conservative movement for 30 years. But Cox said hes been pleased with how, as president, Trump has cut regulations, and with his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Im convinced that hes a conservative, Cox said. Im willing to say that I probably should have voted for him knowing what I know now. In a follow-up note Wednesday, Cox spelled out in more detail where he differs from Trump. Can you smell the parse-snips? I support free trade and believe that it benefits the American people and the American work, Cox said. I certainly understand negotiation and getting a better deal for our country, and dealing with trade inequities. But I think history has demonstrated that tariffs and trade wars are not in our best interest. Settle in, because Allen and Cox will be walking this tightrope on Trump until June. One bad step could be fatal. Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli The United Kingdom was China's second-largest trading partner from among members of the European Union in 2016, and its eighth-largest worldwide, according to a new study. Britain did 55 billion pounds ($71.9 billion) of trade in goods with China last year, said the report from the Confederation of British Industry, which is also known as the CBI. Germany came in first out of all EU nations, with 112 billion pounds. The United States was China's top trading partner, doing 386 billion pounds worth of trade in goods with China in 2016. Britain, Germany and the United States were the only economies from outside the Asia-Pacific Region to feature among China's top nine trading partners in 2016. Guy Dru Drury, head of CBI China, said a strong trading performance with China is encouraging news for the UK as it prepares to exit the EU. "As the UK forges a new global trading future, it is well ahead of the curve in making the most of its relationship with the worlds fastest-growing economy," Drury said. Transport technology, including automotive, rail, air, and maritime resources, accounted for 21 percent of British exports to China. Machinery and electrical goods made up 12 percent of the UK's China-bound exports, followed by 8 percent in chemical products and 5 percent in metals. The UK's top service export was travel, which accounted for 1.5 billion pounds of exports. Last year, a record 270,000 Chinese travelers visited the UK, and 91,000 Chinese students enrolled in British universities far more than from any other country. The UK was eighth worldwide in terms of foreign direct investment in China between 2006 and 2015, with investment totaling 4 billion pounds during the period. The study also found that, unlike most economies, the UK is shifting its focus from coastal to inland Chinese provinces, which have historically received a smaller share of foreign direct investment. In 2015, British foreign direct investment in China totaled 1.5 billion pounds. More than half of that total went to inland regions, led by Heilongjiang province in Northeast China, which received 313 million pounds of investment, and Henan province in Central China, which received 276 million pounds. As of the end of 2015, Heilongjiang had approved 69 UK-invested enterprises that focused on sugar and other food processing, the wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, and advanced technology promotion. One hundred enterprises in Henan received some form of British investment in 2015. British automotive engineering company GKN has a factory in Henan that has grown into Asia's largest producer of automotive cylinder liners. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The federal agency that controls predators for ranchers and homeowners in 16 Northern California counties agreed Wednesday to do an environmental analysis of the impact of its killing program and implement bans on aerial gunning and several kinds of lethal traps in wilderness areas. The agreement, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, settles a lawsuit filed by several wildlife advocacy groups that accused the U.S. Department of Agricultures Wildlife Services of indiscriminately killing animals, including mountain lions, bobcats and coyotes. The deal gives Wildlife Services until 2023 to issue a report analyzing the impact of its lethal control program, but it also bans use of lead ammunition, cyanide spray devices and fumigants to kill fox and coyote pups in their dens. Aerial gunning and body-gripping traps, including neck snares and steel-jawed leg holds, will be banned in designated wilderness areas. It is a tremendous victory, said Camilla Fox, executive director of Project Coyote, which filed suit along with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Animal Welfare Institute, the Western Watersheds Project and WildEarth Guardians. It demonstrates that Wildlife Services has failed to use the best available science and continues to rely on ecologically destructive and ethically indefensible management practices, Fox said. As a result of this settlement, thousands of animals will be saved from the horrific fate of dying in a painful trap or from poison or aerial gunning. Counties contract with Wildlife Services trappers to get rid of predators that kill or harass livestock. The conservation groups claim the traps, snares and other lethal methods used by trappers sometimes inadvertently kill peoples pets or endangered species. They accused the government of failing to consider nonlethal methods of animal control. The agreement does not constitute an admission, implied or otherwise, of any fact, claim, or defense on any issue in this litigation, Tanya Espinosa, spokeswoman for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees the wildlife management program, said in a statement. While the settlement conditions may affect the use of certain tools in some areas of the state, she said, Wildlife Services believes the changes do not restrict our ability to protect agriculture, property, natural resources, or public health and safety in California. The federal trapping program has increased tension between ranchers and conservationists in California. Some livestock owners in the far northern part of the state consider wolves, coyotes and other predators to be vermin and have threatened to use the three Ss shoot, shovel and shut up to protect their property and livelihood. Last month, authorities confirmed that a 600-pound heifer had been killed by a wolf pack that recently moved into Lassen County. It was the first time in over a century that a ranchers livestock had been killed by a wolf in California. There are as many as 700,000 coyotes in the state, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Mountain lions are also abundant, and both predators kill a great deal of livestock, which are commodities that contribute to the state and local economy, said the California Cattlemens Association. Wildlife Services reported killing 3,893 coyotes, 142 foxes, 83 black bears, 18 bobcats and thousands of other creatures in California last year. The settlement will require Wildlife Services to take steps to prevent gray wolves in California from being accidentally killed. This settlement provides needed interim protections to protect wolves while a detailed environmental study examines whether lethal wildlife management options should even be on the table, said Erik Molvar of the Western Watersheds Project. It is long past time that federal agencies stop the killing of native wildlife at the behest of the livestock industry, and ultimately we hope that the added public scrutiny will force a shift to nonlethal options. Several jurisdictions, including the city of Davis and the counties of Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino, have at least temporarily severed contracts with Wildlife Services and adopted nonlethal methods of predator control. Marin County adopted a nonlethal control program in 2000, using the money once paid to federal trappers to help ranchers build fences, night corrals and lambing sheds, and purchase guardian dogs to protect their animals. Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate I go to Anna Weinbergs bars for the wallpaper. At Petit Marlowe, the newest addition to Weinbergs Big Night Restaurant Group, the wallpaper is a gorgeous tableau of puttering ducks, elaborated in quaint black-and-white toile. Big Nights previous venture, Leos Oyster Bar, makes one feel as if one stepped inside a Victorian botanical drawing full of lush green leaves and pink blossoms. Theyre two of the prettiest spaces to drink in town. Beyond Petit Marlowes wallpaper, however, I cant find much to love. Petit Marlowe bills itself as a wine bar and oysterette. One of the main imperatives of a wine bar, I believe, is to spur discovery: Because wine can be confusing, and because buying a whole bottle can be too large a commitment for every drinking session, a wine bar should offer interesting wines by the glass, and always pair them with an attentive staff thats keen to educate. Its a model thats reached near-perfection in San Francisco at places like High Treason where owners John Vuong and Michael Ireland are always tending bar (I know; I go a lot), proffering sample tastes and infecting all who enter with their passion. And at the Mission Districts 20 Spot, where owner Bodhi Freedom has transformed a former record shop into a funky den for imbibing great Riesling. I cant say the same of Petit Marlowe. Over the course of three visits in recent months, I did not observe the wine bars by-the-glass list to change. Service was curt. The message seemed to be: Point to a line on the menu, dont engage in a conversation. Most wines that I tried were uninspiring. And somehow, on one visit, two friends and I managed to spend over $200 (two glasses each; a few snacks) and still left hungry. Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle The by-the-glass list nods to trendy or obscure wine categories Sicilian Carricante! Trousseau from the Jura! but, in general, turns out to offer fairly homogenized versions of these types. Theres Austrian Gruner Veltliner, from producer Schloss Maissau, but its a bland Gruner, featuring none of the varietys savory pepper or vegetable flavors. That Carricante a Sicilian grape variety that, when made right, could prompt a religious conversion in this case, the 2015 Enrico IV from producer Valenti, is over-oaked and strangely spritzy. My best characterization of this by-the-glass list: inoffensive. Is it possible that Petit Marlowe has an admirable goal here, to offer simpler, friendlier versions of sometimes-polarizing wines? Maybe. But if Im going to drink Jura Trousseau or Bourgueil Cabernet Franc, I want the wines to taste like the feral animals I know they can be. The markups are not kind. For a bottle of Copains Les Voisins Pinot Noir 2014, from Anderson Valley, you could pay $94 at Petit Marlowe, or you could pay $60 at Wayfare Tavern. Krug rose nonvintage is $642 per bottle at Petit Marlowe; at Quince, its $595. At least Quince throws in some amuse-bouche and extra-comfy seat pillows. Practically nothing on Petit Marlowes wine list has bottle age which is to my mind one of the main incentives for paying restaurant prices for wine. Theres one red, a Brunello, from 2009; the rest is younger. (To drink some of these wines now, like the 2012 Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, or the 2013 Mangeard-Mugneret Echezeaux Grand Cru, a red Burgundy, would constitute infanticide in some circles.) The food, meanwhile, hovers confusingly between hearty appetizer and passed hors doeuvres. The heirloom tomatoes dish ($16) was promised as a salad, but I would consider it a soup: chunks of tomatoes with pine nuts, basil and slices of serrano chile resting in a tepid broth. Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle Le Petit Chop ($17) was not, as I had imagined, a chopped salad, but was rather a mound of greens barely dressed and overpowered by large slivers of pickled vegetables, blanketed by shreds of cured meat. Burrata granted, always a ripoff here will set you back $23. Oysters range to $5 apiece. And the avocado toast costs $14. No comment. Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle My favorite bite was the Spicy Porc deviled egg, made with nduja and bruleed lardo at $3.50, a bargain compared with the $6 oyster-topped deviled egg at Leos. Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. A night out in San Francisco rarely comes cheap. But its still possible to spend your money well in this city, even on indulgences like wine. In fact, we live in an area where indulging in wine so often overperforms for its price tag. Youre getting a deal when James Yu at Berkeleys Great China has tracked down rare and old Burgundies youd never procure on your own, slashing his markup. Or when Shelley Lindgrens team at A16 guides you through the salty unknown back roads of Italian table wine. Or when Mark Nevin and April Sack at Tofino Wines pour you some idiosyncratic bottling from your own California backyard that tastes weird and new and like nothing youve ever tasted before. When your favorite thing about a bar is its wallpaper, its probably not a great bar. Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine, beer and spirits writer. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob To order: Wine by the glass ($10-$25); Spicy Porc deviled egg ($3.50) Where: Petit Marlowe, 234 Townsend St., S.F. (415) 923-8577 http://petitmarlowesf.com When: 4 to 10 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, and until 11 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. Closed Sunday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Heavy earth-moving equipment knocked down the Goodwill store and headquarters on the corner of Mission and Van Ness streets over the weekend, spurring residents to post dramatic photos and video of the demolition on social media. Many bemoaned the change, calling it "gentrification!" "San Francisco no longer exists. It's been slowly tortured to death," wrote a Facebook commenter. "Goodbye Goodwill...hello gentrification. Welcome to San Francisco!" shared a Twitter user. Driven by tech workers and the popularity of Airbnb, gentrification is accelerating across San Francisco at a rapid pace as the cost of housing is rising in traditionally working-class neighborhoods and pushing out less-well-monied residents such as teachers, artists and old-time residents with immigrant roots. As a result, many have a knee-jerk reaction to shout "gentrification" any time they see a change on the city's map, but in reality gentrification is more complicated and nuanced and this brings us to the question: Is the demolition of Goodwill gentrification or simply change? Here are the facts: The Goodwill campus at 1500-1580 Mission St. included a thrift store, donation site, truck yard, warehouse and a development center that trained its employees, which include seniors, veterans and people with disabilities and criminal backgrounds. More for you Goodwill to move S.F. headquarters to Tenderloin These services moved to Bay Street in North Beach a year ago, and now Goodwill is selling that property and moving to a newly purchased location on the northern edge of the Tenderloin not far from the former Mission Street spot, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Tuesday. "The next executive director thought they should move back to where they were," says John Updike, the head of the City of San Francisco's Real Estate Division. "They're moving back to the edge of the Tenderloin. That's evidence in a change in leadership. I think it's great that they're moving back to their roots." The Mission Street location is being replaced by "a 39-story apartment tower and a 16-story office tower, which will be owned by the city and house the Department of Public Works along with the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection," according to the Chronicle. In other words, the city is getting an office building out of the deal, and the market rate housing is cross-subsidizing the office building. Twenty percent of the housing is classified as affordable; when the deal was made the code requirement was 12 percent, according to Updike. Goodwill was not forced out because a landlord increased the rent. The company owned the 2.5-acre property and its executive director and board at the time chose to sell it for $65 million to the privately-owned real estate firm Related California in 2014 when the city changed the zoning for the area. "They knew they were sitting on a very valuable piece of land," says Updike. "It offered an opportunity to create an endowment." The zoning change came in 2008 with the Market and Octavia Area Plan that calls for increasing the housing density around the Civic CenterVan Ness transportation hub with both Muni and BART stops. "The city decided we're going to jack up the height so we can get a lot of housing down there," says the San Francisco Chronicle's urban design critic John King. King says that everyone defines gentrification differently and he sees the demolition of the Goodwill campus as an "aspect of the larger gentrification" of the mid-Market neighborhood but he doesn't view the change itself that's happening at the Goodwill's former Mission Street location as gentrification. "Some things are gentrification and people being upended and others are the map of the city changing," he says. "This is not the forced displacement of Goodwill and its service for low income people." That said, King adds: "That doesn't wipe away the visceral feeling people get when they see a photo of a San Francisco building demolished. My heart breaks as the architecture critic. It's the only concrete block building built in last 25 years and it's a great, honest piece of functional architecture." Updike concurs, saying Goodwill's move is change and not gentrification. "I would say it exemplifies the opportunity that the hub project speaks to," he says. "We're really creating a neighborhood and we're improving city infrastructure and we're taking advantage of the infrastructure we have." A 45-year-old man was struck and killed by a car Tuesday night in San Franciscos Sunset District, authorities said. The man was crossing the street at Sloat Boulevard near 36th Avenue when he was hit at about 8:10 p.m., said a police spokesman, Officer Robert Rueca. The victim died at the scene. His name was withheld until relatives could be notified. The 75-year-old driver stopped and cooperated with investigators, police said. His name has not been released. Sloat Boulevard has been identified as a high injury street under Vision Zero, a city program to enforce road safety. That means it is among the 12 percent of streets that collectively are the site of nearly three-fourths of pedestrian deaths and serious injuries in the city, said Tom Maguire, sustainable streets director at the Municipal Transportation Agency. Because of its designation, Sloat gets priority for city safety funds. Sloat is one of the main areas that we want to focus on for pedestrian safety, said Ashley Summers, a legislative aide for Supervisor Katy Tang, who represents the neighborhood. Sloats dangers became especially apparent in 2013 when a Lowell High School student was struck and killed by an alleged drunk driver. In April, the citys Public Works agency began installing bulb-outs to shorten pedestrian street-crossing distances and improving curb ramps and walkways. Twelve pedestrians have died this year citywide, officials said. There were 20 pedestrian deaths in 2015 and 16 last year. Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani A number of homes sold for below market rate as part of a plan by the city of San Francisco are likely being rented out illegally, a KPIX report reveals. Below Market Rate homes also called BMRs are sold through a special city program exclusively reserved for use by only those who are first-time homebuyers, work in San Francisco, and are considered to earn low- to mid-incomes. The income limit definition varies based on the unit, but as The San Francisco Chronicle writes, these buyers usually "can't earn more than 100 percent of the area's median income for their household size." Right now, that median is $103,750 for a three-member household, or $124,500 for a five-member household. RELATED: Stuck in the middle with few housing options As KPIX found, however, some people are abusing the system. The reporter on the story, Susie Steimle, visits several listed owners for these BMR homes who appear to be renting out their homes to others illegally on Craigslist and Airbnb. In one case, Steimle finds a woman named Caroline Novak, who owns a BMR apartment at the Embarcadero, in an affluent Redwood City neighborhood called Emerald Hills, where she reportedly owns a house she bought for $2.5 million. When pressed by Steimle, Novak maintains that she does live at the Embarcadero home and that she's only staying at the Emerald Hills home "for a couple days." Another case involves Amy Gussin, a woman whose New Montgomery Street condo, acquired through the BMR program, is listed on Airbnb for $149 per night. KPIX notes that Gussin also owns a pricy unit in the Millennium Tower as well as other properties in New York, Los Angeles, and Beijing. KPIX reports the city has "served notices of complaint" against Novak and Gussin and is currently prosecuting three cases of BMR cheats. Maria Benjamin, director of Homeownership and Below Market Programs for the Mayor's Office of Housing, notes that it's investigating 40 cases of "misuse of Below Market Rate units," but that "the amount of people misusing the system are so small compared to the people using the system for its purpose." Watch the full report above. Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Update: The SFist homepage was live as of Friday afternoon. New content does not appear to be posted, with the most recent story having a timestamp of 1:45 p.m. Thursday. Local news site SFist is shutting down, according to a redirect message that appeared on the site's domain Thursday afternoon. Joe Ricketts, who bought SFist earlier this year, will also shutter associated sites under the DNAinfo and Gothamist umbrella in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Shanghai and New York. About 2 p.m., a letter from Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade, appeared on the SFist page, which had been posting new content earlier that day. "DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure," Ricketts wrote. "And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn't been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded." SFist contributors had received assignments just over an hour before the shutdown message appeared, said Joe Kukura, a freelance writer for the site. Rain Jokinen, who contributed to SFist for more than a decade, said she heard about the shut down through social media before confirming with her editor that, "I wouldn't be needing to submit a movie review tomorrow, as scheduled." Email text, obtained by SFGATE, sent from an editor to freelance writers seems to suggest that the editor was not expecting the shutdown. "So you may have heard the news that Gothamist and DNA Info are effectively winding down starting today," the email read. "We have to assume this is true though I'm waiting to hear possibly more tomorrow." Barmann could not be immediately reached to comment. The SFist site was founded by Eve Batey, Rita Hao and Jackson West in 2004. Batey, now a senior editor, learned of the closure Thursday. She told SFGATE, "It's been a wild, wonderful ride, and while I'm sad today at how things appear to have ended, I'm still happy that for so long it was such a big part of, I hope, so many of our lives." Former SFist editor Brock Keeling said he was "stunned" by the news of the 13-year-old site's closure. "It was amazing. It was a community," Keeling said. "It produced some strong, sharp voices that will be missed." The official SFist Twitter account was still active about 20 minutes before the announcement. Though all the articles appeared to disappear from SFist and associated sites, an official at DNAinfo told the New York Times that the stories would be archived online. Journalists at the New York-based Gothamist and DNAinfo sites voted to join the Writers Guild of America East last week. An official from DNAinfo told the Times, "The decision by the editorial team to unionize is simply another competitive obstacle making it harder for business to be financially successful." In a Wednesday statement, the Guild said it was "deeply concerned by Joe Ricketts' decision to shut down" the sites. "It is no secret that threats were made to these workers during the organizing drive," the statement said. "The Guild will be looking at all of our potential areas of recourse and we will aggressively pursue our new members [sic] rights." Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, purchased SFist and the sites in its national network in March 2017. In his statement, Ricketts thanked the company's employees 115 who will lose their jobs, according to the Times and his site's many loyal readers. "I'm hopeful that in time, someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling for I believe telling those stories remains essential," he wrote. Michelle Robertson is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @mrobertsonsf. WASHINGTON Broadcom, a $100 billion semiconductor company from Singapore, will legally relocate its home address to the United States, President Trump announced Thursday. Broadcom Ltd., which manufactures communications chips around the world, said it would relocate its legal address to Delaware once shareholders approve the move, bringing $20 billion in annual revenue back to the U.S. The move will allow Broadcom to avoid a cumbersome federal review process. Its official corporate headquarters will remain in San Jose. The Oval Office announcement was tied to the release of congressional Republicans tax reform proposal, which would drastically reduce corporate rates and makes it easier for companies to deduct foreign taxes. The company credits the GOP plan with making it easier to do business in the U.S. America is once again the best place to lead a business with a global footprint, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said. However, Broadcoms move to the U.S. will take place regardless of whether the Republican plan passes, the company said. A year ago, the company entered a $5.5 billion agreement to merge with U.S. network provider Brocade Communications Systems, but that has been delayed while its scrutinized by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. The high-level government committee investigates proposed acquisitions of U.S. companies by foreign buyers on national security and intellectual property grounds. The company makes semiconductor chips used for a variety of products, from cable set-top boxes to smartphones and other wireless devices. Its rooted in one of the largest tech industry acquisitions ever, when Singapores Avago Technologies bought Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion last year. The deal made Broadcom Ltd. the parent company of both Broadcom Corp. and Avago Technologies. By joining forces, the rival chipmakers hoped to make a bigger dent in the rapidly growing market for wireless devices. Broadcom has 7,500 U.S. employees across 24 states, the company said. It has manufacturing facilities in Colorado and Pennsylvania and engineering offices in California and traces its origins to blue-chip American companies like Bell Laboratories, Lucent and Hewlett-Packard. Zeke Miller and Matt OBrien are Associated Press writers. Construction work is carried out at the UK's Hinkley Point C power station, which has one third investment from China General Nuclear Power Group. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn] Britain's University of Sheffield and China's Tsinghua University announced on Wednesday they have jointly created a masters degree course in nuclear engineering and management, something that will help ensure the supply of suitably qualified graduates for bilateral nuclear projects. This program is the first China-international joint masters in nuclear engineering and management, and leverages on both universities' respective expertise in the nuclear technology sector. The first intake of students, who will start their classes at Tsinghua University in Beijing in September, will comprise 80 students from China and 30 from overseas. The two-year master's program is taught in English. The University of Sheffield is heading efforts to market this program outside China, and in addition it is offering 10 scholarships to woo international students to join the program. China General Nuclear Power Group, China National Nuclear Corporation, and the State Nuclear Power Technology Company will all partner on the masters degree program by providing students with internship opportunities. One aim of the program is to help young engineers from the United Kingdom become familiar with the Chinese nuclear industry and its technology, especially so they can contribute to projects such as Hinkley Point and Bradwell. CGN, and France's EDF are jointly investing in three nuclear power stations in the UK: Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C, and Bradwell B. The projects represent China's first investments in the nuclear industry within a mature economy. CGN has submitted China's nuclear reactor design, HPR1000, to the UKs nuclear regulator in search of its approval. If the plans are cleared for use, the Chinese-designed reactor will be built at Bradwell B. Meanwhile, CGN has made a bid to buy an equity stake in another UK plant, Toshiba's NuGeneration, which is also known as NuGen. All of the developments will require considerable research and development work to ensure effective China-UK collaboration and the successful localization of Chinese technology and expertise in the UK. Cultivating the requisite knowledge and skills is seen as an important part of this localization work. "Part of the aim of the joint program with Tsinghua is to get young UK engineers familiar with Chinese methods and ways of working, and vice versa," said Andrew Storer, chief executive officer of the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, the UK government-backed center at the University of Sheffield. "It's all part of the preparation for Hinkley Point C, and especially for Bradwell. Itll be even more beneficial if CGN does acquire NuGen and HPR1000 reactors are built." The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre has been working with CGN on its potential acquisition of NuGen. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Francisco man who set his girlfriend on fire nearly four years ago in an apparent dispute over laundry pleaded guilty to attempted murder Thursday and will be sentenced to 27 years in prison. Dexter Oliver, 27, was charged in San Francisco Superior Court with arson and domestic violence after police said he doused his girlfriend, Starr Lamare, with gasoline from baby food bottles and set her on fire during a Jan. 6, 2013, argument that began when Oliver refused to help Lamare carry clothes to a coin-operated laundry in the Bayview district, prosecutors said. Lamare, who suffered life-threatening burns to her upper face and body, declined to appear in court Thursday for Olivers plea. Shes doing OK, prosecutor Sam Totah said outside court. Shes ... strong. Very resilient. Oliver will be sentenced Jan. 4. His proposed prison term was lengthened because of enhancements that involved causing great bodily injury and prior robbery convictions out of San Mateo County in 2009. As part of his plea, he must abide with an order to stay away from Lamare when he is released. By pleading guilty, he is, in fact, incriminating himself, Olivers attorney, Michael Gaines, told the court. Oliver has three previous convictions related to domestic violence involving two women, prosecutors said. Olivers grandmother Lajuana Ceaser and great-grandmother Nora Ceaser acknowledged outside the courtroom that Oliver had temper problems throughout his life and said they wish hed gotten more help. They said they wanted him to serve less prison time. Thats my baby in there. It hurts me, Nora Ceaser said. I raised him. Oliver and Lamare had known each other for eight years but had started dating six months before the incident, Lamares sister, Precious Craig, told The Chronicle at the time of the attack. Lamare had tried to break up with him after a previous domestic violence incident, Craig said, but Oliver, described as domineering and controlling, talked his way back in. Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The problem with Californias public colleges and universities is not in the quality of their academic offerings its that the schools dont do enough to help students find affordable places to live, according to a new statewide survey about higher education. Thats the view of a large majority of Californians 85 percent who participated in the Public Policy Institute of Californias annual survey of attitudes on the states public higher-education systems. Most of the 1,703 residents who answered questions in English or Spanish by phone last month said they like the quality of education provided by community colleges, California State University and the University of California more than 63 percent in each case. The big problem, they said, is housing. The stress placed on students to find adequate, affordable places to live near campus is so great that many simply give up and never graduate, 75 percent of respondents agreed. Most Californians going to college are in the community college or California State University system, which dont always have dorms and housing has gotten really, really expensive, said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California. Its a big problem. Even UC Berkeley, UCs flagship campus, is 6,900 beds short of the 15,600 it needs to house just half of its undergraduates and a quarter of its graduate students, according to a 2017 report on housing there. Chancellor Carol Christ has called the matter urgent and is leading an effort to figure out how to solve the problem. Baldassare said his polling group has reported that California will be short 1.1 million college-educated workers by 2030 unless problems with the higher-education system are resolved. The new poll, he said, points to one of the biggest challenges the state faces in getting there. How are we going to achieve the kind of college graduation rates we need unless we somehow connect the dots between housing and affordability in California? Baldassare said. He said the extent to which respondents called housing a major barrier to a college education surprised him. Even when the surveys margin of error was considered plus or minus 3.3 percentage points the sentiment was strong. The poll also asked Californians what they think should be done about the housing crunch. Respondents were unwilling to tax themselves to solve the problem, with the survey showing 53 percent opposed. An even larger segment, 79 percent, said they would would not raise student fees for the purpose. But a majority, 57 percent, said they would support a state bond measure for construction projects at colleges and universities. Among the narrower group of likely voters, 53 percent said they would vote yes on such a proposal. When responses were broken down by ethnicity, political party, gender and income, the only groups to oppose a construction bond for higher education were whites, homeowners and people earning at least $80,000 a year. Other findings from the survey: Sixty-two percent of respondents said state funding of public higher education is too low. Although 80 percent said the higher education system was vital to Californias future, half of respondents said a person didnt have to go to college to succeed. Sixty-three percent said higher education would be a very important issue in next years governors race. Only 35 percent of likely voters approved of how the Legislature is handling higher education. Just over half of respondents disapproved of how public university officials have handled free-speech issues. Protests have arisen at UC Berkeley and several other state campuses this year over appearances by conservative speakers, most notably far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov BPM (Beats Per Minute): French director Robin Campillo directed and co-wrote this visceral memory piece about a period in the early 90s when he worked with ACT UP in Paris. A little long-winded and ultimately monotonous, its nonetheless a powerful film that takes audiences back to that era with directness and immediacy. Not rated. 143 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Mick LaSalle Faces Places: This may be the final film of Agnes Varda, one of the last surviving members of the French New Wave. It documents her tour of small and rural French towns in the company of a much younger artist (shes 89) named JR, during which they photographed working-class people and posted huge, blown-up images of them on local structures. Its good to spend time with Varda. Rated PG. 89 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Walter Addiego Jane: Using previously unseen footage stored for more than 50 years in National Geographics archive, this documentary offers a close-up, extraordinary look at Jane Goodalls pioneering work with chimpanzees in 1960s Tanzania. The film wraps up too quickly and neatly, but that does not make the Tanzania footage less exquisite. Rated PG. 90 minutes. Carla Meyer The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Interesting and very low-key horror film, with Colin Farrell as an emotionally disconnected, flawed heart surgeon whose family becomes terrorized by a malevolent and destructive force. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Rated R. 121 minutes. Mick LaSalle This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate After an extended hiatus, Jeffrey's Toys has reopened at 45 Kearny St. (between Post St. & Maiden Lane) near Union Square. The original Jeffrey's Toys at 685 Market St. closed in 2015, after 45 years in business. Owner Mark Luhn couldn't keep up with a substantial rent hikereportedly to $40,000 per month. (The shop's former space remains unoccupied and is still for rent, more than two years later.) After closing on Market Street, Jeffrey's moved to Fourth Street in Berkeley, and will remain open there. The company announced its return to San Francisco, in the former Asian Arts Center space on Kearny, last month. As before, it will stock a wide selection of toys, games, crafts, sports, puzzles, comic books, and other items for kids. RELATED VIDEO: This 'Must Have' Holiday Toy is Already Flying Off the Shelves Now Playing: If you want your child to have the most popular toy of the 2017 Holiday season, you had better get to the store. Keri Lumm (@thekerilumm) reports. Video: Buzz 60 More for you A.G. Ferrari to close all Bay Area stores Jeffrey's was reportedly the inspiration for the Pixar film Toy Story. (Mark Luhn's son, Matthew, was one of the filmmakers behind the hit animated trilogy.) The store is also believed to have been the first in America to carry Legos. It's still early days for the new locationit's got just one review on Yelp thus far. Ken G., who was the first Yelper to review the new spot on October 15th, said: "It was a sad day when their Market Street location closed a couple of years ago (the previous space is still vacant) and but it was awesome news to hear that they'd be reopening in San Francisco. The customer service is still good and they definitely fill something that was missing in the area." Head on over to check it out: Jeffrey's Toys is open MondaySaturday from 10am7pm, and Sunday from 10am6pm. This story originally appeared on Hoodline. WASHINGTON Senate Democrats have demanded an explanation from Attorney General Jeff Sessions over why he did not disclose a March 2016 gathering with then-candidate Donald Trump and members of his campaign team at which an adviser offered to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sessions participation in the gathering was detailed in court documents released Monday by special counsel Robert Mueller. The adviser who offered to set up the meeting was George Papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, according to the documents. Sessions had not previously disclosed the meeting, despite being asked over multiple appearances on Capitol Hill whether he or anyone on the campaign ever discussed meeting with Russians. This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nations top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump teams contacts with agents of Russia, Senate Judiciary Committee member Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote Thursday in a letter to Sessions. Senate Republicans were less ruffled about his participation in the Papadopoulos meeting. If anybodys got any concerns about his meeting, write him a letter and see what he says, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. A Sessions spokeswoman declined to comment this week on the March 31 meeting with Trump and campaign advisers, including Papadopoulos. But on Thursday, a person familiar with Sessions recollections said that people who remember the conversation believed that Papadopoulos was proposing an idea of using his Russian contacts to try to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, which was immediately rejected by then-Senator Sessions. Also Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agricultures chief scientist nominee, Sam Clovis, withdrew his name from consideration amid revelations that he was among top officials on the Trump campaign who was aware of efforts by Papadopoulos to broker a relationship between the campaign and Russian officials. In August 2016, Clovis encouraged Papadopoulos to organize an off the record meeting with Russian officials, according to court documents. In a letter to the president Wednesday, Clovis explained that he did not think he could get a fair consideration from the Senate, which was slated to hold a hearing on his appointment on Nov. 9. Karoun Demirjian, Juliet Eilperin and Philip Rucker are Washington Post writers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON Responding to deadly wildfires in California and the West, House Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill to allow faster approval for logging and other actions to reduce the risk of fire in national forests. The House voted 232-188 to loosen environmental regulations for forest-thinning projects on federal lands. The measure now goes to the Senate. House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill was needed to protect the nations forests from the kind of devastation that California experienced. The GOP bill will help us stop forest fires before they occur, said Ryan, R-Wis. Republicans and the timber industry have long complained about environmental rules that block or delay plans to cut down trees to reduce fire risk. Democrats and environmentalists say GOP policies would bypass important environmental laws to clear-cut vast swaths of national forests, harming wildlife and the environment. The GOP bill is one of at least three being considered in Congress to address wildfires and solve a longstanding fire borrowing problem that forces officials to take funds from fire prevention programs to put out increasingly dangerous wildfires. The legislation comes as the Forest Service and other federal agencies spent a record $2.9 billion battling forest fires in one of the nations worst fire seasons. Wildfires have burned nearly 9 million acres across the country, with much of the devastation in California, Oregon and Montana. At least 43 people were killed in a series of wildfires in California last month, and firefighters have been killed in Montana, Oregon and other states. The House bills sponsor, Rep. Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said the fires show how years of unmanaged federal forests have wreaked havoc on our environment, polluting our air and water and destroying thousands of acres of wildlife habitat. He and other Republicans say proactive management of forests including prescribed burns, salvage logging of dead trees and projects to cut small trees and underbrush reduces the risk of wildfires and lessens the severity of fires that occur. Democrats say they support responsible projects to prevent fires, but accuse Republicans of using the current fires as an excuse to undermine the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and other laws. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said the GOP bill would elevate logging over all other uses, increasing logging companies access to public lands but doing little to prevent forest fires. House Republicans know the bill has no future in the Senate and are pushing it anyway as a purely ideological exercise, Grijalva said. The Trump administration said it appreciates the intent of the bill, but questioned a provision aimed at solving the fire borrowing issue. As written, the bill would force firefighting agencies to compete for emergency funding with other natural disasters such as hurricanes, the White House said in a statement. Matthew Daly is an Associated Press writer. THORNTON, Colo.- At least two people were killed and one wounded in a shooting inside a Walmart store in suburban Denver on Wednesday, police said. Police in Thornton, Colorado, did not immediately release any information about the circumstances of the shooting or who was responsible for the gunfire. In a Twitter post about 90 minutes after the shooting, police said investigators had confirmed that two men were dead and a woman was taken to a local hospital, but no further details were given. The situation appeared potentially ominous from authorities' initial reports. "We've got multiple parties down, we're still trying to ascertain what their conditions are," Officer Victor Avila of the Thornton Police Department told Reuters by telephone not long after police arrived on the scene. About an hour after the initial alert, police said on Twitter that the threat of gunfire had ended at the store, which was surrounded by police and fire crews. "At this time this is NOT an active shooter. Active crime scene. We will update as info becomes available," the police department said in that tweet. Confirmation of the two fatalities came about 20 minutes later. Thornton is city of about 120,000 people roughly 10 miles (16 km) northeast of downtown Denver. Avila said police were called to the store at about 6:30 pm Mountain time (8:30 pm ET) and that the gunshots had ceased by the time the first officers arrived at the scene. A Walmart customer, Aaron Stephens, 44, of Thorton, told Reuters he was inside paying for groceries at a self-checkout stand when he heard gunshots and the sound of ricocheting bullets. "The employees started screaming and the customers started screaming" as people began to flee the store, he recounted. "I ran out, too, because I didn't want to get shot." Stephens said he did not see where the shooting had come from and did not see anyone struck by bullets. Local NBC television affiliate 9NEWS reported that a woman whose son was in the Walmart had told her that he had heard about 30 gunshots and was still inside. A video posted on Twitter showed the Walmart, which is situated in a large complex of big-box stores and other retail outlets adjacent to US Interstate 25, apparently empty except for police officers with guns drawn. Reuters A 36-year-old man who rented a room through Airbnb was allegedly murdered by three men who lived in the home, police in Australia say. Local media reported the victim was Ramis Jonuzi, a Melbourne man who was using Airbnb to find temporary accommodations while seeking more permanent housing. The Airbnb he found, located in Brighton East, was reportedly $30 a night. But the "energy" in the house didn't feel right, Jonuzi told a friend, and he planned to cut his stay short. He packed up to leave on Oct. 25 but, according to Australian newspaper The Age, he was attacked on the front lawn by the home's three occupants, raped and murdered. According to BBC News, paramedics responding to the scene found Jonuzi suffering from heart failure. He was rushed to the hospital, where he later died. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Screenshot via Twitter Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Debbie Barrow / EyeEm/Getty Images/EyeEm Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Jonuzi's cause of death was not released. MORE: California family missing in Brazilian jungle found safe Victoria police announced they arrested three men in connection with the crime; they were identified by local media as Craig Levy, 36, Ryan Smart, 37, and Jason Colton, 41. "We have removed this listing from our platform and will fully cooperate with law enforcement on their investigation," Airbnb said in a statement issued to the Washington Post. "There is no place on Airbnb for such an abhorrent act, which violates everything our global community stands for." Levy, Smart and Colton are expected to appear in court on March 22. Preparing for doomsday is not just for the tinfoil hat crowd these days. The apocalypse is on so many people's minds that an article in the New York Times Style section cheekily detailed survivalist must-haves for the "swelling class of weekend paranoiacs." Could that be you? Just remember, if you've got apocalypse on the brain, you're not alone. For company, just head over to Reddit and check into dozens of "prepper" threads. Getting ready for total social meltdown and the ensuing chaos depends, of course, on where we live and what we can afford. For the real preppers, stocking up on canned goods is only the beginning. You need to be seriously ready when the government fails and total anarchy ensues. Do you know how you will take care of yourself? For the wealthy, that can mean buying a renovated missile silo, land in New Zealand and perhaps a private plane to get you there. Some of the uber-rich in Silicon Valley are getting kind of obsessed with their doomsday prep. Now Playing: The theoretical physicist says humans will only survive another 1,000 years if we stay on Earth that is. Video: Vocativ But for folks of more average means, survival after the apocalypse may mean heading for the hills with a packed "bug out bag" and a good set of survival skills. Maybe you can't afford a Tesla Powerwall to keep your house fully lit up as you prepare your escape, but a portable solar charger is probably within means. And if you have any condoms lying around, well, here are 20 ways they just may save your life. In the above gallery, take a peek at some doomsday essentials for the haves and have nots. (And some for both.) Some are items to pack when all hell breaks loose. Others are places to go or means of transit that could be lifesavers. Look through the gallery, then get to work on your "bug out bag." Hopefully, you'll never have to use it. French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, October 31, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] PARIS - French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday signed new anti-terror legislation which he said was necessary to muscle security at home to combat high terrorism menace. "This law will allow us to come out of the state of emergency as of Nov 1 while ensuring the full security of our citizens. This law will allow us to reinforce our means to fight terrorism," Macron said. Current security measures have been in place in France under a state of emergency imposed since November 2015. The legislation, one of Macron's main campaign pledges, will become law "from tomorrow", he said. "It will be evaluated within two years and what will have to be changed will be," he added. Under the new law, police will have more power to search, arrest without judge approval and restrict people movements and gathering. Despite persistent terror risks, emergency security measures give fuel to domestic critics of the French government, who say the law would undermine the Republic's values and freedom of expression and right to assembly. For the Minister of the Interior Gerad Collomb, the law "takes into account the need to protect citizens and ensure maximum individual freedom". This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate OAKLAND (BCN) A union spokesman said today that nearly 2,000 Oakland city workers plan to begin a one-day strike at 2 p.m. Thursday to protest what they allege are the city's unfair labor practices. City workers also said they will picket outside Mayor Libby Schaaf's "State of the City" address at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland on Thursday evening. Gabriella Miroglio, a spokeswoman for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said the union has filed unfair labor practice charges against the city for allegedly changing conditions of employment without bargaining and failing to negotiate in good faith. ALSO: 3 teens killed in crash on Highway 35 above Woodside Longtime residents and community activists will join city workers as they picket outside Schaaf's address, Miroglio said. Union leaders said striking workers and residents will present what they described as the "Real State of Oakland" outside Schaaf's speech and community organizations will discuss the growing housing crisis and how they believe Oakland leaders need to put promises into action. Union officials said city workers have been negotiating with the city for fair wages, worksite safety improvements and community welfare for almost six months and said workers will highlight how their understaffed city departments are relying on overworked employees to keep the city running. Union leaders said the city workers who plan to go on strike include librarians, building inspectors, street cleaning crews, sewer workers, parking enforcement officers, Head Start instructors and others. SF SHOOTING: Shooting in SF's Castro leaves officer, suspect hospitalized However, emergency responders will remain at work during the strike, according to Miroglio. Union officials said that as Oakland's economy continues to prosper and grow, the city is operating at staffing levels that date back to 2008, with more than half of its workers only on the job part-time. The union alleged in a statement, "The mayor and her administration are creating a health and safety crisis in Oakland." Oakland city spokeswoman Karen Boyd and spokespersons for Mayor Schaaf haven't responded to requests for comment on the city workers' plan to strike. Schaaf is scheduled to present her "State of the City" address at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California at 1433 Madison St. at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. City workers said they will begin picketing outside the facility at 5 p.m. that day. Belgium is offering high-profile promotions to attract Chinese investors and tourists to explore its unique advantages, said Joris Salden, the Belgian consul general in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. Joris Salden (first from left) and Michel Kempeneers (middle) pose for a group photo after a memorandum of understanding was signed between Wallonia Export-Investment Agency and Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. Located in Western Europe, Belgium is at the heart and crossroads of the continent, both geographically and culturally, Salden said. Departing from Belgium, shipments can reach 75 percent of the European market, or 40 percent of the continent's consumers, in just two hours by train or air. It is also an important location in which many international organizations have chosen to set up their headquarters, including the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Usually, Belgium will be included in a 10 or 12-day European tourism package for Chinese tourists, but they will spend less than one day in the country, or just pass through, Salden noted. "In my view, tourists should spend at least two days in Belgium because we have wonderful wine, food and fruit, and beautiful scenery," he said. Business relations between Belgium and China have improved, especially with the Belt and Road Initiative, he said. Michel Kempeneers, chief operating officer of Wallonia Export-Investment Agency of Belgium, said at a recent seminar that the country has multimodal transportation, a favorable location, cheaper land, deferred customs clearance within 90 days, multilingual professionals, logistics incubators, and preferential tax policies and incentives. These advantages have made the country an ideal gateway to connect China and Europe, he said. "Wallonia is regarded as the best region for logistics in Europe by numerous international consultants, and as better than its neighbors for e-commerce logistics," Kempeneers said. British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon arrives at the National Cyber Security Center in London, Britain, Feb 14, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] The fragility of the British government led by Prime Minister Theresa May was emphasized by the resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon late on Wednesday after he admitted behaving inappropriately with a journalist 15 years ago. May named Gavin Williamson as the new defense minister on Thursday but commentators expect her government could be further damaged by a wave of allegation of sexual misconduct among ministers and politicians that has not yet subsided. The revelations were inspired by the more than 50 allegations of rape, assault and harassment against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. This led to an international viral campaign #metoo in which women said they were abused and further campaigns against a culture of abuse in arenas such as politics, media and theater. The accusations are particularly awkward for May because of the fragility of her government and the seriousness of its predicament in trying to exit the European Union. In addition to Fallon, four other serving ministers have been implicated in the current wave of allegations, including Damian Green, May's foremost Cabinet ally. He and two others deny any impropriety but one has admitted to asking his assistant to buy sex toys for him. May cannot govern without the assistance of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party, after failing to win the general election she called earlier this year and can ill afford further disruption. The prime minister will be waiting nervously for the newspapers on Sunday which specialize in revelations of this kind. The two main political parties, Labour and the Conservatives have both been accused of ignoring complaints of rape, assault and harassment from women. Senior officials have tended to place the good image of the party above the needs and rights of junior members, especially women. The Weinstein scandal has caused a powerful reaction against the power structures in many areas which legitimize the abuse of women and sometimes men. In British politics, party disciplinarians have tended to use knowledge of bad or criminal behavior as a way of controlling miscreants for the benefit of the party rather than the victim. Female politicians have united to demand that scrutiny of allegations of misconduct should be handled by an independent figure rather than each party's "whip", an official responsible for discipline. The scandal comes at a time when women have a more prominent role in the UK than ever before. Five parties are led by women, the UK government and one of the devolved governments. Ruth Davison, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said that in spite of this, it was necessary to root out sexism and misogyny in British politics. "The house clearing that is about to happen needs to happen and we can never go back to where we were before," she said. Britain's Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson is seen in Downing Street, London, Britain, November 2, 2017. [Photo/Agencies] LONDON - Gavin Williamson was appointed on Thursday as the new British defense secretary to replace Michael Fallon, who resigned Wednesday over allegations about his past inappropriate behavior. Williamson, the former chief whip, was a surprise appointment to the role, having risen quickly through the cabinet ranks but holding no real defense experience. Julian Smith, the former deputy, has been appointed chief whip and Esther McVay, who only returned to British Parliament this year, takes on the deputy role. British Prime Minister Theresa May's minority government suffered a heavy blow Wednesday night with the resignation of Fallon. In a letter to the prime minister, Fallon said that his behavior had "fallen short" of the "high standards" expected of the British armed forces. Accepting his resignation, May said in a separate letter that she noted the "characteristically serious manner" in which Fallon had considered his position. The resignation came a day after Fallon admitted he had touched the knee of a journalist at a party conference event 15 years ago. Fallon apologized this week over the past incident in which he made unwanted advances to the journalist, Julia Hartley-Brewer, repeatedly placing his hand on her knee. Allegations of inappropriate behavior have been swirling around U.S. film producer Harvey Weinstein over the past weeks since the Weinstein scandal encouraged women to speak out about their experiences of sexual abuse or harassment. MADRID -- Spanish state prosecutor asked judge on Thursday to issue European arrest warrant for sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four other members of ousted Catalan regional government. The Spanish authorities has demanded Puigdemont, who has been in Brussels since last Friday, to return to Spain for questioning over the charges of rebellion, sedition and the misuse of public funds. Eight former members of Puigdemont's deposed government, including his former deputy Oriol Junqueras, appeared in Spain's High Court in Madrid on Thursday, to answer questions from judge High Court Carmen Lamela. Puigdemont and four more former ministers opted to remain in Brussels insisting they would not get a fair hearing in what was a "political trial". Puigdemont's lawyer Paul Bekeart told reporters that the climate in Spain was "not good. It is better to have some distance", but insisted that if asked, his client would "cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice". However, Spanish prosecutors are against Puigdemont being allowed to testify by video-conference. "When someone doesn't appear after being cited by a judge to testify, in Spain or any other EU country, normally an arrest warrant is issued," said Carlos Lesmes, Spain's Supreme Court President. Fireworks explode as an effigy of Guy Fawkes is burnt as part of bonfire night celebrations in Edenbridge, Britain, Nov 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] Each year, on Nov 5, Britain's skies are lit up with fireworks and its people gather around bonfires to burn effigies, known as a "guy". It is a fun festival and one that is especially aimed at children but the light-hearted amusement belies the brutal and controversial history behind Nov 5. The festival commemorates the capture of Guido Fawkes in 1605 as he prepared to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London in an attempt to kill King James I and his ministers. It was no idle plot. Fawkes had smuggled 36 barrels of gunpowder into the cellars of Parliament that were ready to be ignited when the king opened Parliament on Nov 5. In the years following the reign of King Henry VIII, the Church of England had become increasingly estranged from the Catholic Church in Rome. Henrys daughter, Elizabeth, had confirmed that the state religion in England was Protestant. It was a time when England's Catholics had little choice but to follow their faith in secret. When King James I ascended to the throne of England, there was no sign that he would end the persecution of English Catholics, and a group of Catholic activists, led by Robert Catesby, began a conspiracy to assassinate James and his ministers. Fawkes fought abroad for the King of Spain, who was the leader of Europe's Catholics in their fight against Protestant regimes. When Fawkes returned to England, he was determined to restore Catholicism as the national religion. Fawkes was discovered by a search party before he could detonate the explosives after the authorities had received information about the plot. He was tortured until he confessed. The next year, he was dragged by horse through the streets of London, and was slated to have been hung by the neck, but fell off the platform and broke his neck. He thus avoided the worst part of his sentence, which was to have been disembowelment while still conscious. The day of the discovery of the plot, Parliament called upon Londoners to light bonfires to celebrate the kings health and the country's continuation as a Protestant nation. The festival has continued ever since. Often,these days, the guy is modeled on a reviled figure from current affairs. Zhang Yangfei contributed to this story. DJ Alice hosts Chinese Spectrum every day between 5 and 8 pm UK time. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn] A radio presenter has won an award for her work preparing British Chinese youngsters for jobs in the media. Alice Yu, who goes by the name DJ Alice, received the Asian Media Group's GG2 INSPIRE Award, which recognizes outstanding work in the community that has served to inspire young people. The presenter hosts a daily radio show called Chinese Spectrum, which broadcasts music, current affairs and discussion about British-Chinese community issues in Mandarin and Cantonese. "I never thought I would win an award like this," she told China Daily. "It gives me motivation to do more with the community and much more with the younger generation." After arriving in Britain from Hong Kong as a student in the early 1980s, Alice started a Chinese community radio program in Manchester. She later joined the Spectrum Radio Network, which hosts several shows for ethnic minority communities in the UK. Alice has volunteered for the British Chinese Project, which promotes Chinese issues in British politics. Eleven years ago she started the Chinese Youth Radio project, training young people from the British Chinese community in radio and presenting skills. "We are underrepresented in media, in television, in politics," Alice said. "I feel the strong need to train second generation Chinese so they can have a platform and are able to voice their opinions more than their parents have." Chinese people make up just 0.28 percent of the journalism workforce in the UK, despite accounting for 0.7 percent of the population, according to a study by Neil Thurman, a lecturer in communication at City University London. Thurman said his research revealed a lack of diversity in British journalism. The 2016 study found 94 percent of journalists are white, compared to 87 percent of the UK working population. "British journalism is unrepresentative of the general population, and certainly the number of Asian journalists does not represent the number of Asians in the UK," Thurman told China Daily. Virgin America After months of working to integrate Virgin America into its system, Alaska Airlines has finally set a date for the end of Virgins identity as far as its flights are concerned. FULL STORY HERE As of April 25, 2018, customers will no longer be able to book Virgin America flights under that identity, according to a report on FlightGlobal.com, which said it learned of the date from an internal Alaska Airlines memo and subsequently confirmed it with the company. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate If you're planning to drive between the Bay Area and the Sierra this weekend, you'll want to time it right. A storm system dropping from Western Canada into Northern California will bring up to a foot and a half of snow to elevations above 6,000 feet and up to two feet to elevations above 8,000 feet between Thursday night and Sunday morning. Snow levels will drop to 5,000 feet in the Tahoe area with Blue Canyon on Highway 80 expected to get less than an inch. They'll drop as low as 4,000 feet in the Shasta and Lassen areas. Light snow will begin to fall Thursday night and conditions will worsen from Friday morning into Saturday. "Snow will get heavier as the day progresses on Friday, so the earlier you can leave the better," says Jim Mathews, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. "If you're leaving Friday afternoon or evening, you're going to be stuck in chain control and all that." Motorists should be prepared for chain control on the highway 80 and 50 corridors. "If you leave Friday afternoon, prepare for travel delays," says Mathews. Driving conditions will continue to be poor throughout Saturday as the storm blasts the Sierra. The storm will clear Sunday afternoon, and this will be a good time to hit the road and head home. Be sure to leave before the sun goes down as another storm system will hit the Sierra Sunday night into Monday. To the south in Yosemite National Park, Glacier Point Road and Tioga Road (State Route 120) will close to all traffic beginning Thursday at 5 p.m. due to the incoming storms. "This closure will remain in effect through the weekend and road conditions will be assessed on Monday, November 6, 2017," reads a statement from the park. Caltrans is closing Sonora Pass (State Route 108) Thursday at midnight, and (Monitor Pass State Route 89) is under observation. BEIJING Donald Trump vowed a more unpredictable foreign policy when he campaigned for president. Mission accomplished, if the mood in Asia ahead of his first presidential trip to the region is any indication. Much like the prelude to a bruising typhoon, Trumps upcoming 12-day tour has inspired fear, resignation, indignation and morbid curiosity. During his first months as president, Trump, who will visit Japan, South Korea and China before attending regional summits in Vietnam and the Philippines, has blended moments of flattery with vows to rip up trade deals, destroy a sovereign nation with nuclear weapons and generally crash long-standing norms of diplomacy anywhere it suits his aims. He has wined and dined the leaders of China and Japan, and been fawned over in return, and his shaky ties with South Korea President Moon Jae-in have led to worries that Washington could take military action against North Korea without Seouls approval. A look at some of the issues and leaders Trump will face during his trip, which begins in Japan on Sunday: North Korea: Trumps quarrel with the Norths ruler will dominate the trip. Amid nuclear and missile tests and a standard barrage of belligerent rhetoric, Trump has veered from threats to unleash fire and fury on the North to calling Kim a pretty smart cookie and saying hed be honored to talk, under the right circumstances. Trumps comments have caused both confusion and fears of war. South Korea: South Koreans have long fretted about being pushed out of efforts to deal with the North. And Trump has suggested that Seoul should pay the entire cost of a U.S. missile defense system in the South that many there dont even want. China relations: Some experts say Trump has been good for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, because he has raised global doubts about Washington. Trump, for instance, pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal Obama negotiated with 11 Pacific Rim countries. Japan fear: Theres worry in Tokyo about Trumps tough talk on trade, and the possibility that U.S. military action against North Korea could endanger Japan. Foster Klug is an Associated Press writer. Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates A journal made public by the CIA and apparently handwritten by one of Osama bin Ladens daughters offers a glimpse into how the late al Qaeda leader viewed the world around him and reveals his deep interest in the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions that were unfolding in the months before a U.S. raid killed him. He talks about Libya becoming a pathway for jihadists to Europe; of his time as a young teen visiting William Shakespeares home in Britain; of how quickly turmoil had gripped the Middle East. Informatiile publicate de evz.ro pot fi preluate de alte publicatii online doar in limita a 500 de caractere si cu citarea sursei cu link activ. Orice abatere de la aceasta regula constituie o incalcare a Legii 8/1996 privind dreptul de autor. MADRID A Spanish prosecutor asked a judge Thursday to issue an international arrest warrant for the former president of Catalonia and four of his ministers after they failed to appear in a Madrid court for questioning about their efforts to break the region away from Spain. Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his 13-member Cabinet were among those summoned to Spains National Court. Puigdemont surfaced in Belgium on Tuesday with some of his ex-ministers, saying they were seeking freedom and safety there. He and four of the officials remained in Brussels on Thursday. Metro Performance Glass shares fell to a record low, dropping 4.3 percent to 90 cents, as a member of the senior management team leaves. Grant Davies, investment advisor at Hamilton Hindin Greene, said the company had disappointed the market "over and over" in the course of its listed life, with multiple earnings downgrades. The shares listed after an initial public offering at $1.70 in July 2014 and reached a record $2.23 last September. "The confidence of investors at that point starts to wane, and it doesn't take much to hit that confidence again," Davies said. "Clearly the market doesn't have a huge amount of confidence in the management, and it's going to take a couple of good results to earn that back." There is also concern in the market about the building sector more generally, with Fletcher Building and Steel & Tube Holdings seeing share price weakness this year, Davies said. Metro Glass' first-half results are due on Nov. 27, and in October it reiterated its expectation of improved full-year results. It delivered a $19.4 million net profit for the year to March 31. The shares sank 10 percent to $1.19 in August when the company said it expected its first-half results to be largely flat, having already warned that annual earnings would Last month, Metro Glass said it will carry out a strategic review of all aspects of its business while trimming forecast capital expenditure for the current financial year by as much as a fifth. Last Friday, the Accident Compensation Corporation announced it had downgraded its stake in Metro Glass to 6.4 percent, from 7.4 percent it had previously held. Between Aug. 30 and Oct. 27, ACC sold 2 million shares on-market for $2.09 million, it said. Milford Asset Management recently sold its stake to 6.8 percent from 7.8 percent, while the New Zealand Superannuation Fund has lifted its holding to 7.3 percent from 6.2 percent. Separately, Metro Glass announced that its North Island general manager Dean Brown will be leaving the company with effect from Dec. 7 "to pursue other opportunities." The role is one of three regional managers promoted to the company's New Zealand senior leadership team earlier this year, along with general manager operations Geoff Rasmussen and general manager South Island Barry Paterson. Metro Glass said the company will not fill the position, and Brown's responsibilities will be "redistributed on a functional basis within the expanded senior leadership team." (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: GWC - WasteCo Reverse Listing - Special Meeting of Shareholders CRP Executes Mining Services Agreement with Golding 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 The Council of Trade Unions is pleased to see trade talks with European officials will include discussion of labour and environmental standards, but isn't counting its chickens too early. Members of the European Parliament's trade committee visited New Zealand and Australia this week as a precursor to formal negotiations in both nations as the regional bloc steps up to take a leading in role in global trade talks since the US administration adopted a more inward-looking focus. Committee chair Bernd Lange floated the prospect of pursuing environmental and labour standards in what he hoped would be a "comprehensive" deal, and Trade Minister David Parker said he was keen to develop a gold-standard agreement. CTU national secretary Sam Huggard welcomed the move to align environmental and labour standards and replace Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions, however, the peak union body isn't throwing its weight behind the proposed deal yet. "We're cautiously optimistic about the potential for a new approach to trade and investment by the initial negotiation of the EU-New Zealand arrangement," Huggard told BusinessDesk. "We've been very critical in the past of what we've called international commerce agreements - the days where these were largely about trade in commodities are gone." The union body has long campaigned against the expanding reach of free trade agreements, raising concerns about giving multinational companies unrestricted access to land, resources, workers, culture, plant life, indigenous intellectual property and so on without providing protections for the people of that country. European policymakers have been grappling with similar concerns after the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the US raised public fears about some of the deep-reaching provisions contained within the deal, which was ultimately rejected. Europe has since changed tack, and Lange says future negotiations will have a level of transparency and openness not seen before. The CTU's Huggard is "thrilled" about the more open process, but said the union movement still has concerns about whether there would be an impact on policymaking, citing the ability of governments to use procurement to support local industries. "We're really keen to make sure that a good gold-standard trade agreement is not just around greater openness and greater participation and greater recognition of labour and environment clauses, but also addressing some of those fundamentals ensuring the government can still regulate, procure, provide in the national interest," he said. An element of that transparency is increasing the social and consumer impact of free trade deals, which have been ignored at the expense of focusing on industry, Huggard said. New Zealand exported $4.93 billion of merchandise goods to the European Union in the year ended Sept. 30, down 6.4 percent from a year earlier, and imported $9.8 billion of goods, up from $9.33 billion a year earlier. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: GWC - WasteCo Reverse Listing - Special Meeting of Shareholders CRP Executes Mining Services Agreement with Golding 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 Its not every day that you are afforded the ability experience something so lifechanging, that you want it to stay with you forever. Its not every day that you are afforded the chance to experience, if only for a moment, the hardships that people experience each and every day of their lives. And its not every day that you are able to give back to those very people and try to help, even if only in a small way, them on their journey through life. For a select group of Cronulla Sharks representatives though, this became a reality. Departing for the Kokoda Track on Monday, October 18, a group of men began their journey from Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, bound for the Papua New Guinea capital of Port Moresby. From here they would venture to one of the most symbolic locations in not only Australian wartime history however a place etched in the overall narrative of our great nation; the Kokoda Track. It was something Ill never forget, said Sharks hooker Jayden Brailey. Mentally and physically, Kokoda was one of the toughest things Ive had to do. I also took a lot of lessons out of the experience which was great. It was a great feeling to be able to help out the Menari Village and install light in their homes, makes you realise how something as small as that can have a big impact on people who arent as lucky as us that may not have certain things we take for granted. The light that Brailey is speaking of was the 75 solar panel systems installed by the travelling party, bringing light to the remote community of the Menari Village along the track for the first time. Kindly donated by the Australian company Solar Buddy, the solar panels were donated by Australian school students with the idea of enabling these students to develop a deeper understanding of energy poverty and the challenges faced by children and families living in developing countries such as PNG. Brailey said that to know that he and the expedition crew have left a lasting legacy on the area, is something very special that will stay with him for a long time to come. To see these people looking at light, for the first time most of them, was unreal. They can now go about their daily lives with the help of solar powered light which is great. To know that we played a part in that, will stay with me for life. Brailey also said that to walk in the footsteps of the ANZAC soldiers some 75 years after they forged along the Track, was an experience he will take with him for the rest of his life. Learning about the war between the ANZACs and the Japanese in 1942 on those trails and being able to see where the battles took place had a big impact on me. It just makes you appreciate what they did for us. Run in conjunction with the Kokoda Track Foundation, the Cronulla Sharks will be looking to make this an annual event, with the hope of bring more goodwill and development to the remote communities along the Track. Our Club would like to thank both the Foundation, Solar Buddy and the caring people of Papua New Guinea who we encountered along the Track. By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. Agree Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal. Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Health authorities are urging Canberrans to ensure their vaccinations are up to date after a second measles case was recorded in as many weeks. Chief health officer Paul Kelly said the latest case didn't appear linked to one confirmed in October but ACT Health was still investigating. Canberra has recorded its second case of measles in a fortnight. Credit:Louie Douvis "The Health Protection Service [is] following up people known to have been in contact with this latest case of measles," Dr Kelly Said. "As this individual has visited several public locations in Canberra while infectious, it will not be possible to identify and contact all people who may have been exposed." Some Catholic high school students chose to stay home on Thursday after unionised teachers and support staff went on strike for half the day. About 200 teachers and support staff rallied at Rydges Capital Hill in protest of the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations' refusal to budge on a disputes clause within its proposed new employment agreement. Independent Education Union NSW/ACT secretary John Quessy. The Independent Education Union wants the contract to include the right to call in the Fair Work Commission for arbitration on disputes that can't be settled in-house. The commission would rather maintain the status quo, where such a deal hasn't been made in writing. Catholic Education Office Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn director Ross Fox said it was business as usual at most ACT primary schools on Thursday, though noted a "large cohort" of secondary school students opted to work from home. Greens leader Shane Rattenbury told the Assembly the Greens would vote down the motion. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos Mr Coe said some lobbyists and developers in Canberra had "only gained access" because the government had given them preference or had rejected others. But Mr Barr hit back, saying while there had been some no confidence motions since he had been an MLA; none, including this one, had any merit, and he "completely and utterly reject the Opposition's allegations". "I reject them personally and reject them on behalf of the government," he said. Mr Barr said the motion appeared to be a tactic by Mr Coe to "hide his hard-line conservatism behind smear and baseless allegations". He said the government had released "all relevant material" on the Glebe Park purchase to the Auditor-General and a committee investigating the deal, and the Dickson land had been acquired to address housing and homelessness. But he did not directly address the questions posed about the Dickson deal being negotiated as early as two years before expressions of interest were publicly issued, among others posed by Mr Coe. On the Labor Club's role, Mr Barr said it was "an independent organisation run by its own board" and the party had not received any donations from the club since 2013, despite known links between the club and the party's financial arm. Greens leader Shane Rattenbury, who reserved the right to support the motion should it prove corruption or gross negligence, among other criteria, voted against the motion. He told the Assembly the Greens would not bring down a chief minister "in response to a political attack from the Opposition", which he felt over-stepped the mark. Mr Rattenbury said some issues were being investigated by the territory's Auditor-General, and as such the Greens would wait to see what that independent office found. He also said the Opposition's motion lacked detail and despite a series of general allegations made, there was "certainly not a case of proven corruption" among them. "With the Auditor-General's work not yet complete, it is hard to avoid the feeling this motion is more about politics than proven evidence," he said. Unions ACT secretary Alex White said he believed Mr Coe might have misled the Assembly and had misused parliamentary privilege without "a single shred of evidence to back up his allegations". He called on Mr Coe to repeat the allegations in full detail, providing all evidence to support them, outside the Assembly, or resign. "The privilege that is given to members of parliament is something no-one else in the community has, and it needs to be treated with great respect, and when someone like Mr Coe misuses that position it is a more serious thing than just normal parliamentary tactics," he said. While the debate heard from several other members, the Assembly adjourned over lunch and heard only from Mr Coe in closing after MLAs returned to the chamber. Mr Coe said he had lost "one or two acquaintances" over raising such issues in the past, but he had "no regrets" about bringing the motion forward, and the community had "seen what happens when the union bosses meddle in the preselection process of the Labor Party". While Mr Coe had made the allegations in the Assembly, he had not referred them to either police or the Assembly's Commissioner of Standards. Asked why he did not do so, he said it was "very hard to say whether we're talking about criminal conduct or whether we're talking about abuse of power and inappropriate use of taxpayer's money". When the only pieces of jewellery you own are a necklace your daughter made in craft about eight years ago and a silver ring that is slowly turning a shade of green, it's somewhat hard to get excited about the strands of diamonds on display for the sneak preview of the National Gallery of Australia's next blockbuster, Cartier: The Exhibition. But the longer I stare at the glittering diamonds of the Halo tiara, or the delicate fall of the Stomacher brooch, I'm drawn in, Gollum style, by these precious pieces of art. Pierre Rainero from Cartier with the Crocodile brooches. Credit:Rohan Thomson And I know I'm totally sold when I want to take two little crocodiles, made from 1023 yellow diamonds and 1060 emeralds, with a couple of rubies thrown in, and place them on my decolletage, wondering how exotic and glamorous I would feel then, the diamonds cold against my skin. Cartier: The Exhibition, which opens on March 23, 2018, will feature more than 300 pieces from the Cartier collection, charting the prestigious Paris jewellery houses throughout 20th century history. Watercolours and woodcuts. By Salvatore Zofrea. Nancy Sever Gallery, 4/6 Kennedy Street, Kingston. Until November 12. Salvatore Zofrea has been a larger than life character in the Sydney art scene and is possibly best known for his monumental oil paintings and murals on literary, historical and religious themes, glowing with sensuous colour and also for his romantically inspired portraits. Salvatore Zofrea's Wax flowers in long grass, 2016, features in the Watercolours and woodcuts exhibition. Born in Calabria in southern Italy, Zofrea emigrated with his family to Australia at the age of 10, in 1956, and came to art through the Julian Ashton School and private classes with Henry V. Justelius. His studio is located at Kurrajong, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, where in more recent years he has found inspiration in Australian flora. This exhibition is a celebration of botanical fecundity, where Zofrea in his watercolours and woodblock prints examines the native flora, bunched together more as an arrangement than observed in situ. He is an artist who has a mastery of technique with watercolours that breathe and radiate with light, where in a painting such as Australian heather, 2015, detail is picked out with ink and watercolour is allowed to convey the polychrome richness of the flowers. Salvatore Zofrea, Banksias, 2008 in Watercolours and Woodcuts at Nancy Sever Gallery. Similarly, in Australian irises and red wax flowers, 2015, sufficient detail is included to suggest form, at a viewing distance, while the white of the paper is allowed to show through so that the whole composition seems to breathe and the wind and the sun are included in the drawing. It is this vibrancy and virtuosity in the handling of watercolour that gives life to these watercolour drawings. However, it is the woodcuts that form the backbone of the exhibition and are the strongest part. The sizeable print Christmas bells, flannel flowers and native irises, 2008, is one of several accomplished prints in the exhibition. It immediately brings to mind a parallel with Margaret Preston both in the subject matter and the technique, as well as their common inspiration in Japanese art. Compositionally, Zofrea is more informal in his structures than Preston and permits a greater complexity with interwoven floral designs printed against a dark background. Like Preston, he carves the shapes out of the woodblock and prints in black ink on paper and subsequently hand-colours his prints employing fresco pigments. They are pleasing, decorative prints that radiate with joyous energy. Without being able to put my finger on it, Zofrea, even when he celebrates the Australian flora, seems to retain a slight Italian accent, which is much more pronounced in his large oil paintings. His banksias, kangaroo paws and grevilleas are gorgeous floral tributes from someone looking out of a window, admiring them and celebrating them in art like a visitor who is discovering things for the first time. The Popular Mechanicals. By Keith Robinson, William Shakespeare and Tony Taylor. Directed by Sarah Giles. Original direction by Geoffrey Rush. The State Theatre Company of South Australia. The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre. Sexual references, some coarse language. Until November 14. 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au. Glorious stuff, the world of Shakespearian send-up and Sarah Giles' production of a classic Australian take on Shakespeare's "rude mechanicals" makes the most of it. The cast of The Popular Mechanicals impress with their Shakespearian send-up. Credit:David James McCarthy Make no mistake about it; these are not just Athenian tradies wanting to have their play chosen for Duke Theseus' wedding celebrations at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream. They may have day jobs but they also have a repertoire that includes the extremely vulgar Beryl the Widow and considerable skills with what might be termed Theatre of the Rubber Chicken. Their world is Shakespeare's but it inexplicably also contains irons and ironing boards and cardboard cask wine. Tailor Robin Starveling (Julie Forsyth) cheerfully runs her business via a series of elderly telephones and the musically inventive Snug (Holly Austin) tangles with a drum kit downstage. The cask wine fuels Ralph Mowldie, the run-down but professional actor fleetingly recruited when Bottom (both played by Charles Mayer) disappears with an ass' head on his shoulders. Snout (Lori Bell) has a valiant go at stand-up and Flute (Nathan O'Keefe) floats around in white tights, only briefly resisting the role of Thisbe on the grounds that he has "a beard coming". Mayer's Bottom is a seriously pedantic bloke with more than a touch of John Cleese and a lower-class Malvolio. They are held together by the serious Peter Quince (Rory Walker), who finds a lovely use for Henry V's "Once more unto the breach" as he dresses for Pyramus and Thisbe. The set contains a heap of trapdoors, while round the edges are the grottier trappings of backstage. The elements of this are given a highly imaginative workout with lots of special effects at the right moments. The Mechanicals may be technically amateurs whose request to do an encore will be firmly rejected by Theseus but they certainly know how to throw a stage around. And the core of all of this, the seminal Pyramus and Thisbe, gets a gorgeous going over as they take to a "drama workshop brought up to concert pitch" style that involves white body suits. There's stage fright and throwing up and things go wrong with a vengeance where the chink in the wall through which the lovers are to speak is concerned. It's a world where Starveling's huge reflective moon half blinds the audience but not enough to miss Forsyth's deeply expressive face. Loading A Canberra man who police say is linked to the Nomads bikie gang has been released on bail after officers allegedly seized a loaded shotgun and ammunition from his work ute. Police who searched Aaron James Graham's vehicle also allegedly found a hooded jumper with a logo that read: "I will associate with whoever I want" and "bad laws", "good bikies". Aaron James Graham, 24, was charged with possessing an illegal firearm and ammunition. Credit:Megan Gorrey Mr Graham, 24, was charged for illegally possessing the sawn-off shotgun and ammunition after officers from ACT Policing's anti-bikie Taskforce Nemesis stormed three homes in raids across the capital on Wednesday. Police said in court they seized shotguns, assault rifles and a hand grenade among a weapons cache discovered in the roof of a Richardson house - a discovery a magistrate described as "frightening". It's Friday! Congratulations on making it through another working week. It'll be a minimum temperature of seven degrees today and a maximum of 21. The weather bureau says there's a slight chance of a shower in the afternoon - pack your umbrella just in case. Communications Minister Mitch Fifield knew for weeks that Stephen Parry could be a dual UK-Australian citizen, but said nothing after the former Senate president confessed to him. Mr Parry also confided in an unnamed member of the outer ministry about his citizenship concerns. He revealed his concerns after former cabinet minister Fiona Nash referred herself to the High Court - but he incorrectly believed Ms Nash would be safe, leaving him in the clear. James Massola has the latest on the former senator's extraordinary resignation from Parliament here. Private details exposed in data breach Adelaide star Rory Sloane says he won't put a timeline on a decision about his future ahead of a year in which he becomes an unrestricted free agent. The tough Crows midfielder, who was has polled 44 Brownlow Medal votes across the past two seasons, is out of contract at the end of 2018, which is his 10th season in Adelaide. Adelaide's Rory Sloane. Credit:Justin McManus Sloane, who turns 28 in March, is expected to be highly sought-after, especially in his home state of Victoria. However the Adelaide vice-captain said he was in no hurry to recommit, setting the scene for what shapes as one of the major AFL storylines next year. About 100 aspiring start-up founders and team members gathered at Amazon's Sydney office on Park Street this week. Top venture capitalists such as Blackbird's Samantha Wong and AirTree's James Cameron, and other industry figures, traded war stories and shared their views on the best ways to fund and grow a tech business. Contrary to the narrative that has haunted much of corporate Australia over the past year that Amazon is finally coming to these shores in the next few months Amazon is already here, and has been for a while. Arguably its most transformative (and certainly its most profitable) business unit Amazon Web Services has been up and running in Australia for five years now. It counts many of our best known companies (Qantas, Atlassian and Fairfax Media) as clients. The last parcel of Sir Reginald Ansett's former estate, a 22-hectare beachfront grazing property in Melbourne's bayside Mount Eliza, has been put on the market with expectations around $40 million. Equity Trustees, which manages the R.M. Ansett Trust, will offload the large block of vacant land to free up funds for the trust, which donates to charities that run child-focused programs and scholarships. The last parcel of Sir Reginald Ansett's former estate, a 22-hectare beachfront property in Mount Eliza, is for sale. Credit:Simon Johanson Sir Reginald was best known for founding Ansett Airlines, which collapsed in 2001. The land between Kunyung Road and Port Phillip Bay is next door to the 8.9-hectare former home of University of Melbourne's Melbourne Business School. Mr Shellenberger, who is on his third visit to Australia, said he wanted to help Australians to better understand nuclear power. "This is a really safe way to make power," he said. An American nuclear power advocate who has campaigned against pesticides and to protect ancient trees says Australia has a "hang-up" about nuclear power that he can't understand. "Whenever I get an invitation to come to Australia I like to come, because it's such a rich and intelligent country, but it's just got this one little hang-up about nuclear. So I like to come and talk a little bit about why I think the country needs to get over it a little bit," he said. Nuclear power produced minimal waste which could be stored securely, he said, adding that it was not "liquid and green" and prone to spilling, like it was depicted in the famous American television show The Simpsons. "For me, the waste issue became one of the things I worried about the least," he told delegates at the International Mining and Resources Conference. Mr Shellenberger, who is the founder and president of the group Environmental Progress, said nuclear power was the "cleanest form of energy" available. And he cited the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, where a nuclear reactor suffered a full meltdown, saying the incident "proves the inherent safety of nuclear. There was a full reactor meltdown, that's the worst thing that could happen in a nuclear plant, and nobody got a dose of radiation higher than one-sixth of a chest X-ray". Australia has improved its ranking in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, but remains behind a number of European, African and South American countries. Australia is now ranked 35th (down from 46th last year) out of 144 countries. The top 10 were Iceland, Norway, Finland, Rwanda, Sweden, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Ireland, New Zealand and Philippines. Countries get ranked on the gap between women and men on health, education, economic and political indicators. The report measures these differences irrespective of overall income levels, so some relatively poor countries can perform well on the index. Australia 3rd in Asia-Pacific It is appropriate that, as his government unravels, Malcolm Turnbull is visiting Israel, where existential threats to survival constitute the routine of daily life. His hosts' insouciance in the face of pervasive danger seems to have affected our own Prime Minister, who is avowedly experiencing unprecedented fun and zest for life. I do not lightly dismiss Turnbull's claim. His self-regard is boundless and holding office is its own reward. He may well be having the time of his life. And there is evidence he has not lost his sense of humour. The date of the byelection for New England, occasioned by the citizenship woes of his former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, is December 2. That is the anniversary of the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. When the hapless William McMahon finally called that election Whitlam grandly noted it was also the anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz, where Napoleon had routed another "ramshackle" and "reactionary" coalition. Illustration: Simon Letch Given Turnbull's business and personal links to the Whitlam dynasty, it is unlikely such a coincidence would have eluded him. Indeed, Turnbull's obvious warmth towards Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran and Paul Keating has long been a source of consternation among Coalition colleagues. To Liberal hardliners, Turnbull has always been somewhat suspect as a careerist devoid of ideology. Despite his abundant talents and vaulting self-belief, Turnbull's political career seems to be drifting towards final, ignominious failure. His legacy may resemble Billy McMahon's rather than Whitlam's. Turnbull has never been able to seize and retain the political initiative since his languid, directionless double-dissolution election campaign last year. The same polls, which provided the rationale for his elevation to the leadership, are now remorselessly squeezing the life out of his government. The reckoning cannot be far off. As Jane Juska divorced, lonely and 66 watched Eric Rohmer's film Autumn Tale in 1999 in Berkeley, California she was swept up by the story, in which a married woman secretly places a personal advertisement in a newspaper for a widowed friend who believes it is too late for her to find love. Why not, Juska wondered, do something similar for herself? Seeking to meet intelligent men, she bought an ad in the personals section of The New York Review of Books. Not wishing to overspend on the ad, she winnowed her piquant message to these memorable words, which cost her $US4.55 each: "Before I turn 67 next March I would like a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me." Jane Juska placed a personal advertisement and discovered the joys of sex. Credit:NY Times More than 60 letters arrived quickly, forwarded by The New York Review in manila envelopes. One included a nude photo; another was filled with sexual promises. Juska's encounters formed the basis of A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, a memoir, published in 2003, that followed her from her prudish midwestern roots to liberated flings, and brought her to Oprah Winfrey and Charlie Rose's television talk shows to tell her story. "I wanted to be the woman I was never able to be, a woman who delights in intimacy with a man, not fears it," she wrote, adding, "I wanted to get fat on the bounty of men." But her book (the title refers to an old slang phrase for a promiscuous woman) is not only an accounting of her belated carnal adventures. Nor is it a real-life precursor to E. L. James's 2011 best seller, Fifty Shades of Grey. Rather, it is a story funny, heartbreaking, erudite, critics have said about her Victorian upbringing in Archbold, Ohio, bad marriage, single motherhood, struggle with obesity, enlightenment through psychoanalysis and passion for teaching. What's your favourite quote from The Castle? My teenage sons weren't born when arguably Australia's greatest comedy won best original screenplay at the 1997 Australian Film Institute awards 20 years ago this month. Yet they can still recite lines that have gone down in the national lexicon. "Tell him he's dreaming!" (The perfect response whenever some chancer is asking too much for jousting sticks or to sign-up to the NBN.) Anthony Simcoe, Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry in The Castle. Credit:Village Roadshow/Working Dog "How's the serenity?" (A philosophical reminder to ignore petty irritations, whether that's the electronic bug zapper at your personal Bonnie Doon or the expulsion of a deputy prime minister for being part Kiwi.) "This is going straight to the pool room." (An affectionate acceptance speech to be recited whenever you're handed a completely useless gift such as a Bavarian beer mug or connection to the node.) The closure of Australia's detention camp on the poor Papua New Guinea province of Manus Island happened on Halloween, of all days. The symbolism wasn't lost on those of us appalled by what's been an Australian-government-orchestrated horror story. This fluid crisis could have been avoided well before the PNG Supreme Court ruled the camp was illegal. Hundreds of men, many found to be genuine refugees, are now truly forsaken. Only about 60 have agreed, under some pressure, to move to three incomplete so-called transit centres that will lead to destinations unknown. Many more, about 600, would rather stay in the shell of the detention centre with no electricity, water or food than to "transfer" or walk into the Manus Island community and face violence at the hands of locals or police. Staying has its own risks. Looters are taking electric fans, plastic chairs, tables and rubbish bins while authorities look on. And the mental fragility of the remaining men is such that they could take out their frustrations on each other. Many are impaired, more so as their supply of tobacco, a incentive used by guards, has been cut off. They are jittery, at tipping point, on edge. They are staying at the compound because it gives them some sense of control. Signs held up by them on Facebook read: "If the air was in Australia's hands it would cut us" and "Pray for us". The number of countries in which greenhouse gases has peaked continues to rise, representing a "critical turning point" in the task of curbing climate change, according to a report by the World Resources Institute. While offering a "silver lining", the rate of national peaking won't be fast enough to prevent emissions reaching a zenith before 2030, assuming countries implement their Paris climate pledges, the Washington D.C.-based think-tank said. Any backsliding by China and the US, the two biggest emitters accounting for more than a third of the total, would also "significantly compromise" the peak projections, it said. Most of the early peakers were former Eastern Bloc nations, whose heavy industry sectors hammered in the run-up to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Germany, France and the United Kingdom, though, had also seen their greenhouse gas pollution top out by that year. Social media giants Facebook and Instagram have told a parliamentary inquiry they are strongly opposed to any tightening of the laws on cyber bullying, saying prevention is better than cure. The two platforms were invited to respond to the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee, which is looking at whether existing laws go far enough to punish perpetrators of cyber bullying. Social media giants have told a parliamentary committee they do not support tougher penalties for cyberbullies. The inquiry was prompted by the death of 13-year-old Adelaide schoolgirl Libby Bell. The year 8 student took her life in August after what her family alleges was years of cyber bullying by her peers online and at school. Papua New Guinea's defence force is poised to evict hundreds of refugees refusing to leave an Australian detention camp, a senior military official said. The base's commanding officer, Begsy Karaki, said no "arbitrary action" would be taken against the men who refused to leave the detention centre inside Lombrum naval base, but he warned officers might have no choice but to forcefully evict the protesting refugees if the situation continued to escalate. Refugees protesting on Manus Island in a photo tweeted by Greens Senator for Tasmania Nick McKim. Credit:Twitter/@NickMcKim Mr Karaki told PNG local press the Post-Courier on Thursday that the more than 600 men who were refusing to leave the now-decommisioned centre on Manus Island were still under the care of the PNG immigration office and Australia and no action would be taken by his officers unless instructed to by their headquarters. "They are here at the military camp and most of their base in military camp are out of bounds to any civilian and they will not be seen wandering around in the campbut if anything happens, with instructions from headquarters, we can act," he said. Cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg says it is "absurd" to suggest he holds dual citizenship as his Budapest-born mother was stateless when she arrived in Australia in 1950 as a migrant, aged seven. A report emerged overnight suggesting the Environment and Energy Minister may hold Hungarian citizenship by descent, and that he was trying to clarify his citizenship status. The Hungarian embassy in Washington says under current law, "the child of every Hungarian citizen becomes a Hungarian citizen by birth (whether the mother or the father is a [or both are] Hungarian citizen[s])". But Mr Frydenberg says he is not entitled to dual citizenship because his mother and grandparents were stateless when they arrived in Australia. He has produced documents from the national archives showing their landing details. There is now a humanitarian disaster on Australia's doorstep. And it's our responsibility. The refugees on Manus Island must be resettled promptly. After four years, all options other than Australia have come to nothing or have been rejected by our government. There is now no option but to resettle them in Australia. There are 600 persons, most of them proven refugees, who are at risk on Manus Island. They were taken there under an agreement between the governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea. They have been there more than four years. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Credit:Andrew Meares The original agreement provides: "Australia and Papua New Guinea take seriously their obligations for the welfare and safety of any persons transferred to Papua New Guinea under this arrangement." "Australia will provide support, through a service provider, to any refugees who are resettled in Papua New Guinea or in any other participating regional, including Pacific Island, state"; and "Australia will bear the full cost of implementing the arrangement in Papua New Guinea for the life of the arrangement. If this requires additional development of infrastructure or services, it is envisaged that there will be a broader benefit for communities in which transferees are initially placed." In late 2014 three senior members of the NSW government put their signatures to a document they hoped would buy them some political support. It was a memorandum of understanding between the NSW Liberals, NSW Nationals and Clubs NSW, the powerful umbrella body for the state's registered club network. Dated October 13 of that year, the MOU was signed by then premier Mike Baird, then Nationals leader and deputy premier Andrew Stoner, then gaming minister Troy Grant and Peter Newell, who remains Clubs NSW chairman. It states: "The agreement binds the parties until the end of the term of the NSW government to be elected in 2015." A man who took naked photos of his flatmate without her consent has been fined $3750 by a Sydney court. The woman undressed for a shower at her Strathfield unit at about 9.45pm on September 27 this year when she saw a flash from the bathroom window that appeared to come from a phone camera. Jiarui Li leaves Burwood Local Court on Thursday after being fined. Credit:AAP She quickly got dressed and alerted her boyfriend, who lived with her in the two-bedroom unit along with another man. They attempted to speak to their 22-year-old flatmate Jiarui Li in his room, which had a balcony that looked into the bathroom window, however he wasn't home. A teenager is in a critical condition after being stabbed in the chest outside a shopping centre in Sydney's west on Thursday afternoon. Witnesses reported a young man wielding a knife outside Westpoint Blacktown around 2.20pm. A Western Sydney Local Health District spokeswoman confirmed the victim, who police said was 17, was in a critical condition at Westmead Hospital. Police said the victim suffered a stab wound to his "upper torso". With hoods covering their faces, the four assassins crept up the set of stairs before entering the supposedly secret unit block housing bikie associate and underworld figure Kemel "Blackie" Barakat through a rear fire door, before shooting their target dead. But homicide detectives believe a video of the men arriving and leaving the upmarket Mortlake complex show enough of their mannerisms to make them easily recognisable to those in the know. Mr Barakat, 29, was shot several times inside his harbourside home unit after it was stormed by the killers about 2.30am on March 10. A female companion also in the unit was not physically injured. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has come out swinging against dumped Labor MP Rick Williams, saying the recordings of a phone conversation which he published on Friday show "the type of man" he is. The independent member for Pumicestone released audio of a phone conversation he had with the Premier "a few weeks" before his disendorsement, during which Ms Palaszczuk said he was "doing a good job" and she was receiving "positive reports". Pumicestone Labor MP Rick Williams was disendorsed on October 27 and is running as an independent. Credit:Glenn Hunt However, the Premier said she warned Mr Williams about his behaviour in the lead-up to his axing and stood by her decision. He was told not to pick any more fights and thats exactly what he went and did," she said. Reported late-night assaults have dropped markedly in Queenslands largest party zone since the introduction of Labors first tranche of controversial so-called lockout laws. But a finding on whether they have worked wont be made until months after the election. Over the same period, the granting of new liquor licences decreased almost as steeply across the state but particularly in inner-city Brisbane, painting a broad-brush picture of the regions changing nightlife. Police figures detailing weekend night assaults in the Fortitude Valley Safe Night Precinct showed an 8 per cent decrease in the six months after venue trading restrictions kicked in on July 1, 2016. From the first half of 2016 to the first of this year, Friday and Saturday night assaults fell by almost a third but were still only slightly lower than 2015 levels, according to police data. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has been forced to play down accusations of political interference by her former police minister on day five of the election campaign. A Fairfax Media Right to Information investigation revealed the Palaszczuk government ignored police advice and went ahead with a cheap upgrade of the Ipswich police communications centre rather than closing it. The move was made despite repeated warnings from senior officers that it was the least desirable option and would maintain current operational risks. MP Jo-Ann Miller says political interference was behind the Premier's decision to go against the advice from police. Credit:AAP Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller, who blamed the controversy for her 2015 sacking from the ministry, claimed the Palaszczuk government decision was political interference. It was the gut instinct of a Brisbane-based biochemist that lead her team to uncover a potential cure for Zika virus in an Australian native plant earlier this year. Trudi Collet, who heads a team that examines the medicinal properties of Australian native plants, said she had been examining the antiviral effects of a particular compound when her team found it could kill the Zika virus without any damage to the host. QUT Indigenous Medicines Group Trudi Collet. To be quite honest, I had a feeling it was going to work, she said. There is precedent out there, we already know that plants have antibacterial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties. A woman charged with murder over an alleged fatal fight outside a pub has fronted court, but spent her time in the dock trying to hide her identity. Zoe Giannioudis, 29, sporting a mohawk, pulled her black top over her face and head as she raised her knees up to her chest while seated in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday. Police outside the Bakers Arms hotel in Abbotsford on Monday. Credit:Justin McManus Ms Giannioudis is charged with murder over the death of Simon Charles Cartwright, who was allegedly stabbed on the footpath outside the Bakers Arms Hotel in Victoria Street, Abbotsford, on Monday night. Mr Cartwright, 38, died in hospital. Ms Giannioudis said nothing during her court appearance and was more intent on hiding her face from a sketch artist. She was charged with murder on Wednesday. Murderer and rapist Sean Price had his video link switched off when a judge refused to tolerate a series of offensive hand gestures, before increasing his non-parole period by three years. Price called out after being prevented from saying something to the County Court on Thursday, and over the following minutes repeatedly waved his arms wildly and made lewd hand gestures, while judge Meryl Sexton began sentencing him for breaching a court-imposed supervision order. Judge Sexton had the video link muted when Price called out and then cut the link after he continued gesturing, and the sentence went on despite the killer being unable to hear or see what was happening. He was ultimately jailed for four years and 11 months for breaching the supervision order, which increases the minimum sentence he must serve for murdering 17-year-old Masa Vukotic and raping a woman over three days in March 2015. A diner at an Indian restaurant in Ballarat was drunk, aggressive and complaining about the food before he got into a fight with the chef and was killed, a court has been told. The Nepalese chef, Hari Prasad Dhakal, 49, has pleaded not guilty to murdering a diner and was on Thursday committed to stand trial at the Supreme Court. The Ballarat Curry House. Credit:Lachlan Bence, The Courier Abdullah Siddiqi was found with stab wounds inside the Ballarat Curry House restaurant on October 25, 2016. A committal hearing at the Ballarat Magistrates Court was told Mr Siddiqi attended the restaurant with a bottle of Jim Beam, appeared distressed and became abusive towards Mr Dhakal. A 21-year-old man is in custody after police allegedly spotted him smashing business windows with a shovel in the early hours of Thursday morning. WA Police say they watched as the man made his way down Main Street in Ellenbrook at about 2.40am, and smashed the shopfront windows of nine different businesses with a shovel.. It's not clear why the man attacked the business shopfronts. Credit:Jason South Loading It is understood he did not take anything from any of the businesses. The man who sexually assaulted two young children after luring them away from a North Perth childcare centre has had four-and-half years added to his 10-year jail sentence. Three days before he molested the four-year-old girl and five-year-old boy in April last year, Vincenzo Mule, 54, destroyed his ex-girlfriend's car and damaged her North Beach house by setting them on fire. Vincenzo Mule on CCTV abducting two children from a child care centre. Prosecutor Edward Fitzpatrick told the WA Supreme Court on Thursday the 54-year-old had a "vendetta" against the woman. "He was in the habit of just upsetting her," Mr Fitzpatrick said. Consumer Protection WA have warned Perth residents against hiring a Butler stonemason who has accepted just over $8000 for jobs he never did. Shawn Ragno Stone Installations, otherwise known as Shawn Ragno Masonry, has accepted $8353 in deposits from seven Perth customers for the installation of stone benchtops in 2017. Consumers who have had unsatisfactory dealings with Mr Ragno and his businesses are urged to lodge a complaint if they havent done so. (file photo) Credit:Louie Douvis He never turned up to complete the jobs, and left six customers out of pocket. Only one customer was provided a refund. A 27-year-old man has been charged with murder after a man was stabbed to death inside an Alexander Heights home in the early hours of Wednesday morning. The man was taken into custody only hours after a police investigation into the death began, and he was officially charged with murder on Thursday morning. Police cordoned off Linto Way in Alexander Heights while Homicide Detectives investigated. Credit:6PR / Chelsie Stone Police were called to a home on Linto Way at around 1.30am Wednesday morning, and found a 22-year-old man suffering stab wounds. He was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital but died a short time later. In my first management role I was surrounded by people who looked like me. Young guys with university education. For a while it felt good. We were the bees knees. But the more work we did the more I questioned who I was working with. All thoroughly decent and capable people, but our life experiences were incredibly similar that we weren't able to consider issues with the depth they needed. Eventually I had to bite the bullet and bring diversity into the decision-making process. I recruited women and people with different cultural backgrounds. This worked for me, and for the past few years I've been working with business to improve fairness and equality in the workplace. None of us have the answers to every question we are faced with, and it's the same in business. Most of us agree with this, but West Australian business fails to bring women into the decision making process. The average size of management and boards in WA's largest companies is six people. It shocked me to learn that the typical number of women sitting on each of these teams is less than one. I think blokes are pretty good, but are we so good that we should only speak to each other? In a report I'm releasing on Thursday about the link between gender diversity and corporate performance, I looked at WA's largest businesses like Wesfarmers and Woodside through to emerging companies that weathered the downturn. I assessed them on metrics across five years through to today. I wanted to know whether having women in decision making roles made a difference to the performance of these businesses, or if the all male teams were onto something. For every company I assessed it became clearer: businesses with women around decision making tables outperform the market. Companies with women on their board and in their management have better dividend yields and returns on equity and investment than companies without. CREDIT LINE New research suggest companies that include women perform better. Credit:Theresa Ambrose They also have healthier finances - like yearly revenue growth and positive operating margins. Businesses with women making decisions alongside men tend to be more stable. They managed the downturn better and can navigate the headwinds of global business. In comparison, companies with only men in decision making roles have the worst returns on equity and investment, while their operating margins make me question their viability. Madrid: Less than a week after Catalonia declared independence, a judge from Spain's national court has ordered prison without bail for eight of the region's separatist leaders and reportedly issued an arrest warrant for the movement's leader Carles Puigdemont, now in Brussels. In all, Spain's attorney general is seeking to prosecute 20 Catalan separatists, including Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia, who refused to join the others summoned to court in Madrid. Spain's public prosecutor asked the judge, Carmen Lamela, to approve an arrest warrant for Puigdemont and four other Catalan politicians who left for Belgium on Monday as the Madrid government began taking over direct administration of Catalonia under emergency measures. But his lawyer told Belgian state broadcaster VRT, it had already been issued. President Donald Trump has projected an air of calm after charges against his former campaign chief and a foreign policy aide roiled Washington, insisting in an unexpected phone call to The New York Times that he was not "angry at anybody" and that investigations into his campaign's links to Russia had not come near him personally. "I'm not under investigation, as you know," Trump said in a brief telephone call late on Wednesday afternoon, local time. Pointing to the indictment of his former campaign chief, Paul Manafort, the president said, "And even if you look at that, there's not even a mention of Trump in there." "It has nothing to do with us," Trump said. He also pushed back against a report published on Tuesday by The Washington Post, which the president said described him as "angry at everybody." Tokyo: Over the northern summer, the man told his father that his life had no meaning. Then he went looking for others who felt the same way, and apparently killed them. The man, Takahiro Shiraishi, was arrested on Tuesday, a day after police visited his apartment almost 50 kilometres south-west of Tokyo and found the dismembered parts of nine bodies. Japan was riveted as the news media disclosed more grisly details from the second day of the investigation, reporting that Shiraishi, 27, had confessed to finding the victims, who he said were considering suicide, on Twitter. Takahiro Shiraishi was arrested following the discovery of nine dismembered bodies at his apartment unit in Zama, Kanagawa , Japan. Credit:AAP In Japan, a low-crime country, it is the grimmest such case since a former employee of a centre for the disabled went on a knife rampage there, killing 19 people last year. Shiraishi's case, involving social media suicide pacts, connections to Tokyo's notorious red-light district and neighbours who did not report a noxious smell coming from the suspect's apartment for months, has the hallmarks of a grotesque thriller novel or horror movie. A man has given a graphic account to the FBI of the New York terror attack, saying the suspect came within metres of him, "eyeballing" him as he waved guns in the air, and spoke incoherently. "He gets out of his pick-up truck and he's coming towards me," Anthony, who was waiting outside a primary school in lower Manhattan for his 12-year-old son, told Fairfax Media on Wednesday. "He had a big thick beard, very long, and he was expressionless." "He was talking to himself out loud, not really screaming. It was gibberish. He could have been saying: God is great in Arabic. I couldn't understand it." Washington: A US judge has ordered indicted former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates to remain under home arrest, rejecting for now their pleas for less stringent bail conditions. US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson also sharply warned lawyers for the duo not to speak about their case outside of court. Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, left, exits the US Courthouse in Washington, DC. Credit:Bloomberg "This is a criminal trial and not a public relations campaign," Jackson said during a hearing on Thursday. Manafort, 68, who served several months as Trump's campaign manager, and Gates, 45, who also worked on the Republican's campaign, pleaded not guilty on Monday to a 12-count indictment, which included charges of conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Restored print to premiere Nov. 4 as part of UCLA Film & Television Archive Exhibition A single 35 mm nitrate print had screened in New York City in 1934 and then been placed in a vault. But where did it go? In September 2016, Jan-Christopher Horak, director of UCLA Film & Television Archive, was searching for material germane to the Archive's research project, Recuerdos de un cine en espanol: Latin American Cinema in Los Angeles, 1930-1960, and noticed a promising film title: Romance Tropical. A single 35 mm nitrate print had screened in New York City in 1934 and then been placed in a vault belonging to the Krypton Corporation, the contents of which the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) acquired in 2008. Shortly thereafter, PHI added the material to its collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive. UCLA motion picture archivist Todd Wiener confirmed that the title was produced in Puerto Rico and was possibly the first sound feature film from the island. Horak followed up with colleagues in Puerto Rico to determine if the title in question was the same Romance Tropical (1934) for which archivists in their country had been searching for more than 80 years. Other than a few photos, a poster and newspaper articles from its initial release, nothing was thought to have remained of the film. In February 2017, a representative of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Jose Alfredo Hernandez-Mayoral, travelled to Los Angeles to inspect the print and confirmed it was the long-lost film. Puerto Rican film pioneer and Hollywood veteran Juan E. Viguie produced Romance Tropical and many famous Puerto Rican citizens worked on the movie, including screenwriter Luis Pales Matos-one of the founders of Afro-Antillano poetry, which blends words from Afro-Caribbean culture with the Spanish verse of Puerto Rico. The film also features the work of composer Rafael Munoz, the island's most famous big band leader. "The serendipitous rediscovery of Romance Tropical is one of the major accomplishments of our present efforts to find and preserve classic Latin American cinema," said Horak. "Finally finding Romance Tropical is a wonderful motivator as we make efforts to recover after the devastating passage of Hurricane Maria on our beautiful island. As we watch the film, we have the opportunity to see the Puerto Rico of the 1930s, and to be reminded that, as before and as always, Puerto Rico will rise," said Carlos R. Ruiz Cortes, executive director, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. A fundraiser reception benefitting Puerto Rico's National Archive will be held at the tranquil courtyard AMMO Cafe following the film. Enjoy fresh, locally-sourced Puerto Rican inspired fare and drinks. DONATION of $50.00 -Each reception attendee will receive a complimentary ticket to the film screening at 7:30 p.m. For tickets visit: bit.ly/RomanceTropical The original camera negative for Romance Tropical remains missing. Due to the production's inexperience with new sound technology, the surviving 35 mm print had significant inconsistencies in portions of the audio track. PHI re-recorded the soundtrack and produced a new preservation negative and two new 35 mm prints. PHI will repatriate a print to the island when the Archivo de Imagenes en Movimiento has recovered from Hurricane Maria. The newly restored Romance Tropical will premiere on Saturday, Nov. 4 as part of UCLA Film & Television Archive's ongoing exhibition, Recuerdos de un cine en espanol: Latin American Cinema in Los Angeles, 1930-1960, which celebrates the Spanish-language film culture of downtown Los Angeles. For decades beginning in the 1930s, a vibrant Spanish-speaking cinema culture thrived in downtown Los Angeles where venues such as the Teatro Electrico, the Azteca, the Mayan and the Million Dollar Theatre were home to popular movies from the golden age cinemas of Mexico, Argentina, Cuba and other Latin American countries. The Archive's 38-film retrospective runs through Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017 at its theatrical home, the Billy Wilder Theater, and at the Downtown Independent, the former site of the Azteca. Puerto Rican film pioneer and Hollywood veteran Juan E. Viguie produced Romance Tropical and many famous Puerto Rican citizens worked on the movie Recuerdos de un cine en espanol is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America. UCLA Film &Television Archive is renowned for its pioneering efforts to rescue, preserve and showcase moving image media and is dedicated to ensuring that the collective visual memory of our time is explored and enjoyed for generations to come. A public arts unit of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, the Archive is a unique resource for media study and one of the largest repositories of moving image materials in the world. The Archive is well known for its moving image restoration efforts, and many of its projects are invited to screen at prestigious events around the globe, as well as screening locally at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater. Lt. Col. Oscar Gomez Cifuentes was an army battalion commander accused of human rights violations Demobilized members of the ELN (National Liberation Army) arrive in Cali, Colombia. Individuals pictured were not involved in this story. Deportation officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) on Tuesday removed a former Colombian national army battalion commander accused of human rights violations. Retired Lt. Col. Oscar Gomez Cifuentes, 53, was implicated in five killings in Colombia that allegedly occurred while he was the commander of Infantry Battalion 43 Efrain Rojas Acevedo. These allegations relate to a disputed report stating that five persons were killed by the battalion during a confrontation at a Colombia ranch in November 2007. This incident was among other incidents reported by military units as "positive" killings of guerrillas in combat; but later these killings were alleged to have been executions committed outside of combat. Such killings are referred to as "false positives." Between 2008 and 2014, Gomez was admitted into the United States three times as a temporary non-immigrant visitor through New York and Miami. He departed as required the first two times, but he overstayed his visa in 2014. On April 4, 2017, a federal immigration judge ordered him removed back to Colombia; Gomez appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). On June 10, 2017, ERO Miami officers assigned to ICE's Fugitive Operations Team arrested Gomez, and he was taken into custody pending his appeal to the BIA regarding his removal order. However, on Aug. 24, 2017, he withdrew his appeal. This case was litigated by ICE's Office of the Chief Counsel in Miami with the support of the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center (HRVWCC). The HRVWCC was established in 2009 to further ICE's efforts to identify, track and prosecute human rights abusers. It leverages the expertise of a select group of agents, lawyers, intelligence and research specialists, historians and analysts who direct the agency's broader enforcement efforts against these offenders. Corvil Unveils New UTC Traceability Solution for MiFID II and CAT Compliance DUBLIN, IRELAND (Marketwired) 11/02/17 today announced the launch of a new solution that establishes a system of traceability to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a critical capability for monitoring, analyzing and reliably reporting activity on electronic trading networks. This is now a mandatory requirement for businesses to comply with pending financial regulations such as MiFID II from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This capability also extends and is necessary to assure accountability, auditability, and performance in algorithmic and AI environments. Rapidly deployable and providing continuous assessment of clock synchronization stability, Corvils UTC Traceability Solution provides business, technology, and compliance teams with precise visibility, quantitative analysis, and insight into computer clock accuracy compared to the UTC reference. It provides an independent, continuous assessment, and record of UTC synchronization integrity and automatically provides alerts when clock synchronization is not compliant. The solution also provides automatically generated reports for clock synchronization quality, saving time and reducing risk associated with MiFID II and CAT compliance. The consistency and integrity of time across computer systems is an increasingly important aspect of providing transparency into the business transactions executed across those systems. The speed and automation of todays financial markets and other industries makes it challenging to measure performance, determine causality and establish an accurate, sequenced forensic record of what has transpired. As regulators look to recreate markets, they have mandated greater precision, oversight, and auditability of clock synchronization. To that end, both ESMA and the SEC will soon require trading venues and market participants to have a system of traceability to UTC in place for all reportable events within the trading network. Supplementing its existing solutions for real-time monitoring, surveillance, and precision timestamped order record-keeping, Corvil now tracks variability to UTC. Corvils UTC Traceability Solution delivers an independent, continuous assessment and record of UTC synchronization integrity, which provides firms the insight and information to meet the obligations of MiFID II (RTS 25, Article 4), and CAT Reg 613. Reporting on variances more granular than the level of current regulations, it is also expected to address the tightening of future compliance requirements. Corvils new offering enables businesses to rapidly respond to issues or outages by alerting when there is any loss or disruption of clock synchronization. It also identifies messages whose timestamp accuracy may be suspect so customers have a record of the affected transactions for closer examination, auditability, risk mitigation, and regulatory reporting purposes. As we shift to a world run by algorithms and artificial intelligence, there is a new reality of time that we must understand to provide oversight of what transpires digitally, said David Murray, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer. Financial markets have moved first to regulate the precision by which time and events are captured within trading networks to help increase transparency and surveillance. Corvils UTC Traceability Solution provides an important capability for compliance with new regulations, but can be effectively applied beyond financial regulations by any company looking to monitor and assure critical business activity on their networks. Customers already relying upon Corvils compliance solutions have realized the following benefits: An investment firm reduced risk and accelerated their compliance timeline by three months by deploying Corvil to replace bespoke and manual processes dependent on system logging for UTC traceability. A multinational bank is leveraging their MiFID II investment in Corvil not only to meet compliance requirements for tracking order flows and for timestamped order record-keeping across multiple asset classes, but to also improve understanding of their clients experience leveraging Corvils analytics. A regional bank minimized complexity and reduced their planned cost meeting, while maintaining their MiFID II order record keeping and UTC traceability compliance requirements through their Corvil deployment. Validating the capacity requirements under MiFID II RTS 7 presented many challenges for one European exchange. The difficulties lay in monitoring a simulated environment operating at twice the historical peak message rates with enough granularity to accurately assess capacity utilization. Corvil was deployed to capture and analyze every order and market data message under those conditions to simplify and accelerate the exchanges compliance efforts. Available this month, the Corvil UTC Traceability Solution is rapidly deployable, creates zero performance impact on systems or networks, and leverages the Corvil machine-time analytics platform, already widely used and trusted across the largest venues and market participants. For more information, please visit Corvils . Corvil is the industry leader for deriving Security, Operational, and Business intelligence from network data. As companies adopt faster and smarter machine technology, it becomes critical to tap into richer and more granular machine data sources to safeguard the transparency, performance and security of critical infrastructure and business applications. The Corvil streaming analytics platform captures, decodes, and learns from network data on the fly, transforming it into machine-time intelligence for network, IT, security and business teams to operate efficiently and securely in this new machine world. Corvil uses an open architecture to integrate the power of its network data analytics with the overall IT ecosystem providing increased automation and greater operational and business value outcomes for its users. The Corvil solution is trusted by leading financial institutions to safeguard their businesses across the globe involving 354 trillion messages with a daily transaction value in excess of $1 trillion. Learn more about Corvil: | | | For more information, please contact: LaunchSquad for Corvil 212-564-3665 Isabel Dalton +353 1 859 1040 Newtec Appoints Steve Mills as Global VP Sales Steve Mills has been appointed as Global VP Sales as Newtecs growth increases for the fifth consecutive year SINT-NIKLAAS, Belgium, 2 November 2017. Newtec a specialist in designing, developing and manufacturing equipment and technologies for satellite communications today announced it has appointed Steve Mills to the position of Global VP Sales, as it continues to record year-on-year growth of 10 to 20%. The addition of Mills to the Newtec management team demonstrates the companys continued expansion, with its latest results showing increased revenue across its core markets of broadcast, consumer and enterprise VSAT and GovDef, fueled by High Throughput Satellite (HTS) deployments. Newtec specifically saw increased market penetration in mobile backhaul and mobility, including Inflight Connectivity (IFC) and maritime communications. Prior to joining Newtec, Mills was Head of Global Sales and Marketing, Secure Communications, at Airbus Defence and Space where he gained extensive experience in the government and defense market, among others. This role followed four years at Inmarsat as the Senior Director in Global Government. Newtec CEO Thomas Van den Driessche said: The designation of Steve comes at a great time for Newtec, with almost 80% revenue growth over the past four years showing clear market share gains in the satellite ground segment. Steves background and experience will help us build further on both our commercial and government markets, as well as support our continued growth in VSAT mobility, cellular backhaul for 4G and 5G, and solutions to monetize HTS. Mills, who will be based in Europe, will oversee the sales and sales support teams in his new role and will be responsible for growing both direct and in-direct business, along with a strong Newtec value proposition in all markets worldwide. The current satellite industry is an incredibly exciting place to be right now, said Mills. The rapid advancements being launched by global satellite network operators are, more than ever, creating a growing need for advanced and innovative solutions and services which allow integrators, service providers and end-customers to exploit this new era in space. Newtec is paving the way in delivering technological and business differentiators that will provide enormous value. Im thrilled to be joining the team and excited to see how far we, as industry leaders, can steer satellite communications over the coming years. Newtec will be exhibiting its latest solutions for a range of applications at AfricaCom, which will be held at CTICC in Cape Town, from November 7 to November 9, and at Global MilSatCom, which takes place in London on the same dates. The latter will provide visitors with the first chance to meet Newtecs new Global VP Sales Steve Mills in person. Jose Irizarry accepts that hes known as the most corrupt agent in U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration history, admitting he became another man in conspiring with Colombian cartels to build a lavish lifestyle of expensive sportscars, Tiffany jewels and paramours around... The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2016 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement The government's propaganda chief has a quick answer for every question, and he counters every statistic with his own figures. Five thousand refugees a month? "That's a fantasy number. It's no more than a few hundred." But why are they running away? "Because the EU grants asylum to anyone. That's the allure. But many simply want to work or study abroad. Migration is part of human nature, and it will always exist." Serious human rights violations? "There are violations here and there, as there are everywhere, but Sheila's completely exaggerated report is an insult to our country." The draconian military and work service conscription? "It may be a burden for some, but we need it to develop and defend our country." A Better Future His country must arm itself against powerful neighbor Ethiopia, which has attacked Eritrea several times, Gebremeskel explains. "Anyone who knows our history also understands the necessity of military service." It is the history of a 30-year war of liberation against Ethiopia, which ended in 1991. Eritrea gained its independence two years later, and with it came the hope of a peaceful and better future. The power elite headed by charismatic President Isaias Afwerki sought to create an egalitarian commonwealth, a socialist nation that was to develop under its own steam and rejected international aid. But the next war with Ethiopia erupted near the end of the decade, lasting from 1998 to 2000, and it destroyed all of Afwerki's visions. The war, a border dispute over a barren piece of land, claimed about 100,000 lives and ruined the young nation's economy. In 2009, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo against the government, accusing it of secretly supporting Islamist militias in Somalia. There is no proof of these allegations to this day. Eritrea faces a very real threat from Ethiopia, which is heavily armed and wants to regain access to the Red Sea. The Eritrean government uses this threat to justify keeping its army of about 200,000 men and women in permanent operational readiness and militarizing society. In doing so, it is mutating into a Big Brother that seeks to constantly remind the people of the danger of the eternal aggressor. Photos from the war of liberation hang in the corridors of the Information Ministry, while placards on public buildings depict heroic scenes from the war. A militaristic battle monument known as the tank cemetery was built on a hill overlooking the capital. It consists of neat piles of discarded weapons, captured troop carriers, artillery and tanks, most of them produced in the Soviet Union. "Our lives are dominated by the military," says Graciano, an elderly man sitting in the Impero bar in downtown Asmara. An image of an Italian armored cruiser from the 1930s, when Mussolini's fascists ruled Eritrea, hangs above the bar. Graciano raves about the period, saying that everything was better back then. "Nowadays, young people have no work and are driven into the national service." Conscription was extended indefinitely to increase the population's resolution to defend the country and to monitor them at the same time. Starting at the age of 18, all men and women must perform this service in the army, on construction crews, in agriculture or in education. Many Eritreans have already been serving for more than 10 years. For them, "national service" is nothing but forced labor. A Stubborn Autocrat "It's no wonder that people are leaving," says Graciano. The 66-year-old makes ends meet by working as a money changer and wants to remain anonymous, as does almost everyone we meet in Eritrea. "You cannot speak freely here. If you do, you quickly disappear." The people have not forgotten what happened to the G-15, a group of distinguished war veterans and party members who called for democratic reforms after the absurd border war with Ethiopia. To this day, Eritrea has no constitution, and the last time its citizens were allowed to vote was in the 1993 referendum on independence. The G-15 was silenced. Some managed to flee, but 11 of its members have been in prison since 2001, sharing the same fate as hundreds of regime opponents, the exact number of whom nobody knows. After the "purges," many disappointed sympathizers in Eritrea and abroad turned away from the government in Asmara, accusing it of having betrayed its own ideals. Afwerki, 71, remains at the head of the one-party regime. He is a stubborn autocrat who still thinks like a liberation fighter, at least according to one of the few advisers with access to the president. Afwerki lives in a simple house, where he conducts experiments in breeding crop plants. He is, the adviser says, feared by his subordinates. Apparently Afwerki only understands the language of violence. During his combat years, he would reportedly head-butt fellow fighters who disagreed with him. There are many indications that the president suffers from "Gorbachev syndrome," worried that his power structure will collapse if he tries to reform it. "There is also a generational conflict. Our country is ruled by old men. There are no ministers under 65," says a businessman. "These gerontocrats suffer from paranoia and desperately cling to their failed utopia." We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. Chahid El Hafed, Nov 01, 2017 (SPS) - The Ministry of the Occupied Terrirories and the Saharawi Diaspora condemned on Tuesday, through a statement, the expulsion of several members of the United Left, from the occupied El Aaiun. "After the expulsion of a delegation composed of MEPs, on October 27, the occupier, once again repeats the same cowardly act, by expelling Unai Orbegozo Uribesalgo and Amaia Arenal Vidorreta belonging to the Spanish political force, Izquierda Unida", The statement notes, before stating that "arbitrary expulsion" aims to prevent reporting on the "deteriorated situation of human rights in Western Sahara." The Ministry of Occupied Territories and Diaspora, has appealed the international community and all human rights organizations, to exert their pressure on Morocco, to lift its blockade imposed on the territory. Finally, the Ministry demands the release of all Saharawi political prisoners, as well as the creation of a UN mechanism to report and document the human rights situation in Western Sahara. SPS 125/090/TRA Sao Paolo (Brazil), Nov 02, 2017 (SPS) - the World Peace Council, condemned on Tuesday, via a communique, the expulsion of several MEPs from occupied Western Sahara by Morocco. "We reject in the most severe terms the decision of the Moroccan authorities to expel United Left MEPs on Friday, October 27, preventing their visit to Western Sahara," says the statement of the World Peace Council, before clarifying that "the Kingdom of Morocco often seeks to prevent access to the occupied territory militarily to journalists, activists and parliamentarians, "who want to know the situation in the territory. "The attempt of the Kingdom of Morocco to silence those who denounce the arbitrariness and brutality of the occupation it exercises over the Saharawi people will not succeed", said the note. Finally, the World Peace Council reaffirms its commitment to supporting the right of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence. SPS 125/090/TRA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate For the Connecticut Republicans, a party starving for national relevance, Paul Manafort was one of their own. On the same day that Donald Trump clinched the GOP presidential nomination last year, his then-campaign chairman obligingly posed for selfies with convention delegates from his home state in Cleveland after speaking at a breakfast for the group. The New Britain native was the man of the hour. But that was then. Now that Manafort has been indicted for alleged money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent stoking the fires of potential collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia state GOP members have gone from name-dropping Manafort to just dropping the political fixer. He has no ties to us, said J.R. Romano, the state GOP chairman. The guy, his family is originally from Connecticut. Thats pretty much it. Manafort is under house arrest, the top target caught up in the dragnet of Special Counsel Robert Mueller so far. Hes maintained his innocence through his lawyer, who in court filings Thursday argued that the multimillionaire and holder of three U.S. passports is not a flight risk. Given the substantial media coverage surrounding Mr. Manafort and this investigation, it is fair to say that he is one of the most recognizable people on the planet today, Manaforts attorney, Kevin Downing, wrote Thursday in a federal court filing in Washington, D.C. Query where such an individual could even hide? Plenty of awkward reminders from Manaforts audience with Connecticut Republicans at last years convention still exist. Thats given Democrats in the state a visual device to spin their narrative that the state GOP is the party of Trump. You know what they say about the company you keep, the Connecticut Democrats tweeted with a photo of Manafort and state Rep. John Frey, R-Ridgefield, on the convention floor in Cleveland. Frey, a Republican National Committee member, served as the conventions sergeant-at-arms and was tasked with keeping order in the Quicken Loans Arena. He downplayed the Manafort connection, saying they discussed security. I had like two conversations with him at the convention, Frey said. I had never met him before. Betsy McCaughey, a Greenwich resident and former New York lieutenant governor, presented Manafort with a copy of her book bashing Obamacare at last years convention. I think this indictment is much ado about nothing, McCaughey said Thursday. Theres nothing in this indictment that connects him to any wrongdoing on behalf of the Trump campaign. McCaughey tried to thread the needle between Manafort and Trump, whom she referred to as an outsider. The fact is everybody knows Washington is rotten, she said. Most of these campaign operatives on both sides of the aisle, theyre rotten. Long before Manaforts was a household name, his familys name was ubiquitous in Connecticut. His late father was New Britains mayor and public buildings commissioner for Gov. Thomas Meskill in the early 1970s. Manaforts cousins run one of the largest and most profitable construction firms in the state, Manafort Brothers Inc., which has been awarded at least $366 million in contracts from the state Department of Transportation during the last decade. Landing Manafort for a delegation breakfast on the second morning of the July 2016 convention was viewed as a coup for the Connecticut contingent. His appearance came the morning after Melania Trump was accused of plagiarizing parts of a Michelle Obama speech in her convention debut. In one photo from that morning, Manafort was flanked by Romano and Kevin Moynihan, who went to Georgetown University with Manafort and is running for first selectman of New Canaan. I dont know this guy, Romano said. At the end of the day, theres this litmus test that the media seems to want to put on us. Its not like hes running to be governor like (Bridgeport Mayor) Joe Ganim is. We have an ex-felon running on the Democrats side of the aisle and we have Democrats posing for pictures with him every day. Moynihan has characterized Manafort as a casual acquaintance. A request for comment was left Thursday for Ganim, who served seven years in prison for corruption before winning back the mayors office in the states largest city. Ganim is exploring the governors race. Former Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia asked Manafort to take a selfie at the delegations hotel, the Courtyard Cleveland University Circle. A request for comment was left Thursday for Moccia. Manafort served as Trumps campaign chairman from March of last year until August, with Trump enlisting him to corral GOP delegates for a contested convention that never materialized. With Trump trailing Clinton in the polls and scrutiny mounting over Manaforts business interests in Russia, he was bounced from the campaign. I dont know why you want to talk about Manafort, Romano said. He has nothing to do with Connecticut. http://twitter.com/gettinviggy; nvigdor@hearstmediact.com; 203-625-4436 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate WASHINGTON House Republicans took the wrapping off their long-anticipated tax bill, revealing a few attempts to appease lawmakers from states like Connecticut concerned about the proposed elimination of state and local tax deductions. The GOP bill stopped short of total repeal of the so-called SALT deduction, which actually dates back to the Civil War. Instead, it proposed capping state and local property taxes at $10,000. But it gets rid of deductions for payment of state income taxes, a blow to Connecticut residents who pay between 3 percent and 6.99 percent of annual income to Hartford. It also eliminates deductions for sales taxes. ``Middle class families are at grave risk in Connecticut, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. ``This is not tax reform; its just tax cuts for the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent. The loss of the SALT deduction will fall squarely on middle class families. In a high-cost state like Connecticut where even middle-class homes can be pricey, the loss of the state and local deductions could prove to be a hardship. According to IRS data extrapolated by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington, the average for Connecticut tax returns claiming the deduction is $19,665. And according to Zillow, the average price of homes listed in Fairfield County is $549,000. President Trump and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill extolled the plan as a boon for the middle class. ``We are giving them a big beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House. ``It will be the biggest cut in the history of our country. It will also be tax reform, and it will create jobs. If approved, the Republican plan would be the most ambitious overhaul of the federal income tax system in decades. A Republican document detailing the plan said it would give a typical family of four with an annual income of $59,000 a $1,182 tax cut. But much of the back-and-forth on taxes Wednesday ranged over familiar terrain: Whether cutting taxes would spur growth, investment and jobs (and thereby more tax revenue), or would it blow a hole in the deficit and simply line the pockets of CEOs, investors and Wall Street high-rollers with no trickle-down to average workers? Apart from the SALT issue, the plans basic elements include reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, collapsing the income brackets from seven to four, doubling the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples, repealing the alternative minimum tax that guarantees the wealthy pay some taxes, child-care credits, and ``pass-through deductions for taxpayers that enable them to pay 25 percent on business income declared on personal taxes instead of a higher individual income rate. Some of the plans highlights are aimed at mollifying the critics. Among them: _ No changes to pretax treatment of popular 401(k) retirement plans, which had been the source of much anxiety for lawmakers fearful of negative voter reaction. _ Restoration of a 39.6 percent top rate for married couples earning over $1 million. _ Extending the repeal date of the estate tax. Instead of immediate repeal, GOP plan doubles the level where the tax kicks in to $11 million and phases it out in six years. But the plan also includes some changes that might ultimately prove problematic: _ Elimination of deductions for taxpayers with high medical expenses, as well as a tax credit aimed at those over 65 on disability. _ The mortgage interest deduction would be capped at $500,000 for new loans. Previous outlines of the plan had suggested this popular deduction would remain unchanged. It hits hard in states such as Connecticut where home prices are relatively higher. _ Charities might suffer if fewer people itemize because of the doubling of the standard deduction. Charitable organizations are sending up warning flags. _ Interest deductions on student loans would be eliminated, a potential financial blow for those attending colleges or universities. National real estate and small-business groups Wednesday came out against the plan. Among them were the National Association of Home Builders and the National Federation of Independent Business. Gov. Dannel Malloy cited a non-partisan study that showed elimination of the personal income and sales tax deductions would increase taxes on Connecticut taxpayers by 13.5 percent, or more than $800 on average. ``The fact is, this proposal will raise taxes for a significant portion of Connecticut residents, likely leading to cuts in state and local services, he said in a statement. ``It is a prime example of what it means to be penny-wise and pound foolish and should be rejected by reasonable members of Congress. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., said even partial elimination of the SALT deduction would amount to ``double taxation. She cited a study that shows Connecticut gets back 83 cents for every tax dollar it sends to Washington. Without the SALT deduction, the rate would be even more unfavorable, she said. ``Thats just unfair, she said. ``It breaks a contract between states and the federal government thats been in place for more than a century. Trump told Republican lawmakers he wanted the bill on his desk before Thanksgiving. If approved, it would represent a significant win for Republicans in a year that has brought them little to cheer about legislatively. But GOP lawmakers faces a steep climb to offset the $1.5 trillion over a decade that this measure would cost. Without enough offsets to cover the gap, Republicans could face a maneuver by Democrats in the Senate to require 60 votes for passage which would doom it because Republicans have only 52 votes and virtually all Democrats are opposed. But a vote based on ``reconciliation rules would require only 51 votes to pass a tall but achievable order if all Republicans stick together. Such a battle would pit the Senates two masterful tacticians, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a chess game of wits. The outcome at this point would be uncertain. ``Republicans have proved proven endlessly ingenious in their maneuvering, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal. ``We will see if theyre able to engineer enough excuses for a vote of 50 senators. ========== dan@hearstdc.com e David Pate and his wife, Chikako, hatched a plan years ago to open a hair salon in Culpeper. Traveling to the area with parents and on vacations, they chose the location for its quaint beauty and differing pace from New York City and Japan, where they both had worked as stylists. She decided she wanted a slow life, said Pate. In Japan, you work six days a week and we wanted to slow down a bit. But in 2013, Chikako discovered a small lump on the side of her throat. She and David returned to Japan for medical treatment after the doctors told her it was cancer. The tumor grew, and she underwent chemotherapy and radiation. After that crisis passed, another tumor developed and Chikako decided she didnt want to endure further treatments. She only had six months to live. Pate, who bought his wife an iron rendering of the logo for their future salon for Christmasa dragon ginger plant that represents her kamon, or family crestlost his best friend and wife of 10 years in January 2014. It took a few years for Pate to make his way back to the United States, but when he did, he chose Culpeper as his home. His salon, named Dachi as a combination of his name and Chikakos, opened recently on W. Davis Street. That was her idea, he said, of the salons name, which they also chose because it resembles the Japanese word tomodachi, meaning friend. At the salon, Pate employs a technique unique to Culpeperhe cuts dry hair. First, the hair is straightened using an iron, he said. Then, you can begin sculpting the shape into the hair, said Pate. It looks like its all one length until you put your hands in it and that reveals the shape. Pate, whos been cutting hair for about 30 years, learned the technique in New York City from stylist John Sahag, inventor of the method. There, Pate said, he enjoyed the opportunity to take scissors to the locks of some very famous people, including Jennifer Anniston, Liv Tyler, Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt, Julia Styles and Hugh Grant. He has a massive amount of hair, he said of Grant. He absolutely does. Dachis decor reflects serenity. With its bubbling rock water fountain, wrought iron poles created to mimic bamboo and large walnut slabs at the styling stations, Pate said its designed to honor nature. [The clients] are here to relax and be taken care of, and thats how it should be, he said. Shortly before the salon opened, Pate recruited stylist Stephanie Turner to join the operation. Shes still learning the dry-cutting technique, which she calls exciting. It looks easy, she said, but its so far from easy. But it makes sense. Turner swears by the technique. The proof, she said, is her own coif. She recently had her hair cut during a demonstration by stylist Arous Parker and the thick, headache-creating ponytail she usually wears became a bygone. I cant stop playing with my hair, she said. Pate said its easy to remove weight and bulk without sacrificing length using the Japanese-influenced cuts. An appointment at Dachi may be more expensive than other salons in the area, but Pate said his work usually enables clients to go longer between trims. Most of them only need to come every three months, he said. Once the shape is there, it remains. If youre going to the salon every month, thats incredibly too soon. Its unnecessary. Pate said he prefers to cut dry because wet hair also sticks together and unpredictable sometimes unfortunate things can happen when the hair dries. If theres any texture in there, its going to pop up, he said. And when it dries, it shrinks. Everyone in the world is taught to cut it wet, and Ill never cut it wet again. Clients dont need to do anything special to prep the hair before an appointment. They do need to plan on being there longer than most typical hair appointments; a first cut could take as long as an hour and half to two hours. The Culpeper Chamber of Commerce scheduled an official ribbon cutting for Dachi at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 9. The salon is located at 123 W. Davis St. and can be reached at 540/718-9062. Pate also operates a Facebook page: DACHI. For the longtime stylist, Dachis open doors prove bittersweet. He loves Culpeper and misses Chikako. That was meant to be her station, right there, he said, pointing. SCOTTSBLUFF Scottsbluff Public Schools to conduct annual districtwide emergency response simulation. On Monday, Nov. 6 at approximately 8:30 a.m., Scottsbluff Public Schools will conduct its annual districtwide emergency response simulation. Emergency response personnel will coordinate activities at each school. Students and parents will be given advance notice that the activity is occurring and is only a simulation not a real event. Emergency responders who will be coordinating the exercise include Chief Kevin Spencer, Scottsbluff Police Department; Sheriff Mark Overman, Scottsbluff County Sheriffs Office; Chief Dana Miller, Scottsbluff Fire Department; and Ray Richards, 911 communications director, Lt. Kevin Kryzanowski, Nebraska State Patrol and James Todd, SBPS Safety and Security Coordinator. The simulation, now in its seventh year, demonstrates the strong partnership Scottsbluff Public Schools has established with the areas emergency responders. The simulation incorporates advice from each of these agencies to help the district improve response protocols and enhance security practices, the district said in a press release. The districts emergency readiness includes four key areas: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. This planning drives the schools efforts to ensure a high-quality school emergency operations plan. The exercise is intended to operationalize the procedures detailed in SBPS All Hazards School Emergency Operations Manual which follows guidelines from the National and State Emergency Management Systems, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FEMA Incident Command System, the I Love You Guys Foundation and the Nebraska Department of Education School Safety Center. 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The authorities banned 30 of these people from entering again in Romania, for a period between six months and five years.According to IGI, the Immigrations policemen took the specific measures of removing the 37 foreign citizens, aged 19-57, from Romanian territory.Among them, 30 were taken into public custody and remained under escort until they were crossed the country border, while the other seven were taken out within 24 hours. Most foreigners were discovered while trying to illegally cross the Romanian border, said the source.As many as 16 of them, coming from Albania, China, India, Iraq, Iran, Kosovo, Moldova, Serbia, Pakistan, Ukraine and Latvia, were crossed the border under escort, while 12 people coming from Pakistan were taken under escort back in their country. Eight people were transferred, according to the Dublin Procedure, to a state member responsible for assessing their international protection claims.As an alternative to forced removal, one person chose to file for the voluntary humanitarian repatriation and left the country with the support of the International Organisation for Migration. AGERPRES . There is generally a "presumption of incompetence" plaguing women in the workplace, a negative discrimination that follows them in their professional career that should disappear, Marlene Schiappa, French minister of state for gender equality, told AGERPRES in an interview on Thursday. Schiappa attended a two-day Conference of Francophone Women in Bucharest that ends on Thursday. The French official has sponsored a piece of legislation designed to combat against harassment of women and violence against women and criminalise them. She also works for the real application of equal pay for men and women in the workplace.According to the French official, there is currently a "presumption of competence" working in favour of men at the level of society at work, while women are subject to "a presumption of incompetence," and rather being first scanned for physical appearance and personal life."With regard to women, I think their struggle must be against this form of, let's say, minimisation, hesitation. It is harder for a woman to get the attitude 'I am excellent, I am competent, I deserve a higher position, a better wage.' It's harder for women to think so, they have not been used to such attitude, they were not raised in the culture of risk," said Schiappa.AGERPRES: You have initiated a piece of legislation in your country that criminalises street harassment of women and gender-based violence. What can you say about this bill in more details? I mean in particular the idea of harassment, which is hard to demonstrate and define.Marlene Schiappa: Yes, we are working on a law that has many purposes, including combating sexist violence and sexual violence, staring with verbal harassment in the streets. Police and the law enforcement forces to be mobilised by the Interior Ministry, can legally define street harassment. The difficult part is to describe in law what this harassment in the streets, in the public space, means. Five lawmakers from all the political groups are working on this definition, and on the basis of it we can address the problem of harassment in the public space.AGERPRES: You are also tackling gender equality in terms of pay for men and women. It is a problem that affects multiple layers. There are even Hollywood actresses having complained about having dramatically lower salaries than their male colleagues. How do you handle the problem?Marlene Schiappa: Speaking of this issue of equal pay, we can say that the gender pay gap is 12 percent to 27 percent. In 9 percent of the cases there is no explanation for the pay differences. Simply the pay gap has no justification. Nobody knows how to explain why this happens. It is not about maternity leave, or the fact that women and men work in different departments. There are differences between the wages of a man and a woman who have exactly the same job and those differences cannot be explained.We are working on this subject with companies to engage them in this endeavour, and also to start a "name and shame" movement - if a woman has such an experience she should make it public, she should disclose the name of the companies that do not meet the legal obligations.AGERPRES: Is there pressure from companies on this initiative to equalise women's and men's wages?Marlene Schiappa: Companies do not want to be part of this campaign to denounce that they are not observing the law. As soon as we have created this "name and shame" practice, there were companies that protested, but that did not stop us. We need to be aware that for about 30 years there have been laws in France speaking of gender equality in terms of wages, but the law is not fully enforced. The law is a first step. We must not let things pass; we must enforce the law, including coercive measures when necessary. In this regard, we have proposed random inspections of companies and fining them in the event of non-compliance with the law.AGERPRES: Do you have figures describing both discrimination against women and violence against women?Marlene Schiappa: Yes, we have official figures showing that in France there are 84,000 rapes a year and about 150,000 sexual assaults. But these are calculation methods that do not show the true number, given that this phenomenon is very difficult to quantify. Most women do not talk about what has happened to them. Of the vast majority of sexual violence we will never know anything, because women live them, but then they do not report it or call an association for victim support. These are just estimates. We are deploying efforts to reduce those figures, which remain the same every year.AGERPRES: Since you talk very much about discrimination, can you give discrimination examples from your own experience? You are a female politician, but you were a blogger first. How have you been discriminated against, in this context?Marlene Schiappa: I have had an evolution that is not typical. I have benefited from much support in my professional career, I was lucky. I noticed that when I worked as a journalist, when I was writing economics articles on the blog, I had comments such as 'oh, it is written by a girl, she is young,' they commented on my photo, if they liked it or not. They weren't talking about the content itself. Briefly, they questioned my legitimacy. At some point, I decided to sign with a male name. I signed various articles with male names. At that moment, people didn't doubt my competence; they strictly focused on the analyses in the articles. They weren't making comments about my age, about the way I look; they weren't trying to send me private messages. They started from the principle that the person signing [the article] is competent. Therefore, we can talk about the fact that, in the case of men, there is a presumption of competence. If you are a man, you are definitely competent, if you are a woman, you are definitely incompetent. There is a presumption of incompetence. It is a very strong form of negative discrimination, a discrimination against women in the workplace.AGERPRES: In the political world, can you tell what are you criticised for in terms of being a woman?Marlene Schiappa: There are not many sexist criticisms coming from my colleagues in politics. However, earlier, I was a deputy mayor in a city. At that moment there hadn't been any sexist comments from colleagues either, but rather from the press. The articles about me were rather about my hair style, about my make-up, about the nail polish I was wearing, about clothes. One realises that, as a woman, one is firstly judged for appearance. Once scanned according to this criterion, there may be some interest in what you have to say. But first you are judged according to personal looks and private life - if you care for children or not, if you are a mother, and what your civil status is. Are you a trustworthy woman or are there question marks over your private life? It is a very sexist scanning for all women who have public appearances and for all working women, in general.AGERPRES: What can men and women do to fight against gender discrimination?Marlene Schiappa: I believe there is currently a personal battle. We must fight against our own stereotypes. We all have stereotypes, cliches. When we see people for the first time, we have an almost surveillance mechanism. We analyse them and put them into several categories: he is a man, he must do this, she is a woman, she must do this. I believe that, in the first place, the fight is against us, against our own cliches and stereotypes. With regard to women, I think their struggle must be against this form of, let's say, minimisation, hesitation. It is harder for a woman to get the attitude 'I am excellent, I am competent, I deserve a higher position, a better wage.' It's harder for women to think so, they have not been used to such attitude, they were not raised in the culture of risk. Women must overcome themselves; dare assert themselves, as the title of the conference in Bucharest also says.AGERPRES: You are the creator of the "Maman Travaille" (Mother Works) network, therefore you also speak of women as mothers. What is your approach of equal pay for men and women in the context in which women sometimes have this second role, of mothers?Marlene Schiappa: There are mechanisms which I call "the mother ceiling," which put the brakes on the career of women for reasons related to their potential of becoming a mother. I want to say that, when women go to a job interview, they are regarded from the start as 'risky' candidates, no matter if they are pregnant, have children or not. Companies believe they are taking a chance hiring women - they will have children, the children will get sick, they'll take days off. Even if at present she doesn't have kids, some day she may have, therefore the employer takes up a risk - the risk for the woman to have children while under contract with them.The fact that maternity - be it about women who have or women who don't have children - is a factor of negative discrimination must be overcome. Moreover, women who don't have children at a certain age are generally regarded with suspicion. They are told: "How come you don't have children? It is weird." This is a form of judging the status of a woman depending on her being a mother or not. This is undoubtedly a negative element.AGERPRES: What do you believe are the highest obstacles to implementing the policies regarding the equality of chances between men and women?Marlene Schiappa: The highest obstacle is what the French sociologists call the myth that this equality already exists. Namely, the premise that we are already equal. For instance, it is to be presumed that if you are a woman journalist, I am a woman politician, this chance for women exists everywhere and there is no problem. In reality, we are part of a minority, we are few. For a short time, women have earned the right to have jobs like yours or mine. I believe this is the great danger. There are very many things to be done in each country, in Europe, as well as worldwide, in general. There are still girls who don't go to school because they are girls, girls who die because they are girls, women battered because they are women, raped because they are women, paid less by an employer because they are women and who, in the end, have a more complicate life than men, and this is unacceptable. President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday stated that there are neither occult, nor underground forces in Romania, and added that the Senate Speaker Calin Popescu-Tariceanu sometimes creates the impression that he's "a bit obsessed". "In Romania there are neither occult, nor underground forces and certainly there is no parallel state here," Iohannis asserted at the Cotroceni presidential Palace, asked to comment on the recent statements of the Senate's head. He asserted that Tariceanu turned more and more weird. "For a while, I have looked into the statements of the gentleman you have mentioned, who used to be a prime minister at some point. He sometimes had interesting to follow approaches, but for some time now I follow no more the assertions of this gentleman because he became more and more weird. Sometimes an impression that he is a bit obsessed is created. Or, the persons a bit obsessed do no good to politics and above all, these very strange approaches have surfaced intensely ever since the prosecutors have sent this gentleman to court," the head of state said. On Monday, the Senate head, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu affirmed that the president of Romania could have had a stance and call to observance of the Constitutional Court's decisions, regarding the persons who do not want to show up when summoned to the parliamentary committees' inquiries. "After taking over his mandate (Klaus Iohannis, ed. n.), he is proving us that he is the beneficiary of this system, of the parallel state and through his attitude and public statements he only confirms this assertion of mine. It is regrettable, because there could not be two parallel powers in the state: the legitimate power and an illegitimate power," Tariceanu had said. President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday urged the governing coalition to give up the kind of tax policy it promotes, for it generates "distrust" and "uncertainty." "I urge the ruling coalition, made of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals, to show responsibility and give up this kind of tax policy that is generating distrust and uncertainty and doesn't help anyone," Iohannis said at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.He recommended the government and politicians to make more prudent economic decisions."Romania needs a policy that solves the problems today and the day after tomorrow more serious problems arise, but it needs a policy that solves the problems of Romanians for a foreseeable future, so a sustainable policy, as it is said in the specialized language. That it is why I warn the political decision-making factors in the most serious manner to be careful and try to think clearly not to throw Romania and the Romanians in a sad-end fiscal adventure," added Iohannis.He said he had discussions with Government's representatives but "each remained with their opinion". The head of state mentioned he would not attend the Government meeting that will discuss the package of fiscal measures, because, under the Constitution, he has no economic attributes. AGERPRES . Senate President Calin Popescu Tariceanu on Wednesday stated that the Dutch Ambassador in Romania has been trying to teach him what Romania should do in the Justice field, so that he told his Dutch counterpart about "the unacceptable behavior as an Ambassador" of the first. "When talking to me, for instance, instead of daring to propose Mrs. Kovesi, the Dutch Ambassador was trying to teach me how to act and what to do in the Justice field, what is right and what is wrong. After a short while since we had that conversation, during which I set the records straight with him, I told my Dutch counterpart about the unacceptable behavior of the Ambassador and that he broke every diplomatic rule, which is not normal. The consequence was that in two months' time he was recalled to The Netherlands. There are ways to set the records straight with those who show no respect for Romania as a sovereign country. But unfortunately there are things that happened in Romania because the Romanian authorities allowed those people to interfere in the type of problems that Titus Corlatean was mentioning," Tariceanu told Romania TV private broadcasting station.He also added that Romania is the single country in Europe where things like this happen.Former Minister of Justice Titus Corlatean on Wednesday stated that during his term in office there were some pressures from the Ambassadors of The Netherlands and the US related to who should be appointed "in a top office" in the judiciary system. AGERPRES . This is the fourth in a series. Links to earlier stories appear at the end of this report. DETROIT When U.S. authorities arrested Arthur Rathburn last year, they hailed their investigation as a milestone in efforts to police a growing industry: brokers who acquire bodies donated to science, dissect them and sell or lease the parts for profit. The indictment alleges that Rathburn stored bodies destined for medical education and training in grisly conditions and dismembered them with a chainsaw. He is accused of endangering clients, mostly health care workers, by renting them cadavers and severed heads that were infected with HIV and hepatitis. A government news release touted the arrest as a significant step, one that demonstrates that protecting the public is a high priority. But authorities missed repeated opportunities to rein in Rathburn, Reuters found. Warning signs about his activities date back more than a dozen years. In the mid-2000s, for example, New York state health inspectors twice reprimanded him for failure to provide documentation that bodies he acquired were in fact willingly donated. Rathburn also had been on the radar of federal authorities since 2010, when border agents first questioned him about 10 heads he was transporting from Canada, court records show. Over the next three years, agents documented five similar cross-border shipments, one that included a severed penis. But agents did not raid Rathburns warehouse until December 2013. In the meantime, he acquired, sold and rented out more bodies and parts. The failure to intervene sooner shows how easily brokers can evade government scrutiny and points to a gap in U.S. law surrounding the body trade, an industry that typically targets the poor with incentives such as free cremation. Rathburn and his then-wife were charged with defrauding customers, not with selling or desecrating human remains. Selling or leasing body parts is not a federal crime and is largely unrestricted in all but a few states. The FBI told me they found my sisters shoulder inside Rathburns warehouse, said Carol Keenan. Her sibling had donated her body in 2013, hoping to aid cancer researchers. It was hard enough to lose her, but this has been devastating, Keenan said. I was shocked when I learned theres no regulation that any Joe-fly-by-night can start up a company and nobody knows what hes doing. Rathburn, 63, faces trial in January on charges of defrauding health care workers and lying to federal agents. He has pleaded not guilty and remains jailed. His ex-wife, Elizabeth Rathburn, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and is cooperating with prosecutors. Neither the Rathburns nor their attorneys responded to requests for comment for this story. The FBI also declined to comment. Calls for protection A chance to establish national standards governing body brokers came in 2004, after disturbing reports emerged about the nascent industry. In one case, police arrested a California university employee for secretly selling donated cadavers. In another, the U.S. Army admitted that bodies originally donated to a university for educational purposes were used in landmine experiments. Harpers Magazine also published a 10-page expose on body brokers, briefly citing Rathburn as a supplier. Appalled by the reports, a federal health advisory panel meeting that year called for regulation of body brokers. The panel asked the U.S. government to apply the same strict oversight to the body parts trade that already governed organ transplantation. Nothing came of the panels recommendation. Since that failed effort, the market for body parts has grown, and abuses abound, some reminiscent of those the 2004 federal panel sought to prevent. A Reuters review of court, police and internal broker records and interviews identified more than 2,357 body parts obtained by brokers from at least 1,638 people that were misused, abused or desecrated. The customers include the U.S. government. As Reuters reported in December, the Army used heads, arms and legs from more than 20 bodies in blast experiments in 2012 and 2013, even though donors had not given permission. In one of the most egregious examples, the military used the body of an Army veteran who signed a donor form two months before he died of cancer in 2013. The man was so angry about the poor health care provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that he checked No to military experimentation on the consent form. It didn't matter. His body was used in a violent Army test anyway. An Army spokeswoman said the military was deceived by its supplier and never knowingly used the bodies of donors against their wishes. Asked about the federal panels 2004 call to regulate body brokers, a U.S. Health & Human Services Department spokesman said the agency was under no obligation to accept the recommendation. How and whether to police the industry, spokesman Martin Kramer added, is left to each state. Most states, including Michigan, dont regulate body brokers closely, or at all. In those states, a broker may legally sell a donated cadaver or its parts, such as heads and arms, so long as the remains are not intended for transplantation. Only 10 states provide any oversight. Just a handful require licensing or disclosure. As a result, donors and their families are left to rely on the good faith of the people who run the programs, said retired anatomy professor William Burkel, who supervised Rathburn at the University of Michigan when they both worked there in the 1980s. Because the laws vary so much from state to state, Burkel said, there is a lot of opportunity for people like Mr. Rathburn to do it without any sort of oversight. Rathburns alleged victims included not only donors and their families but also the doctors, dentists and other health care workers who acquired parts from him. Steve Schomisch, who directs surgical training at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, learned recently how unregulated the industry can be. Federal authorities told him that a head Rathburn supplied to train Case Western neurosurgeons in 2013 was among a number of body parts that could not be traced to a donor, raising questions about the donations legitimacy. We felt betrayed, Schomisch said. Then we said, What can we do to make sure this doesnt happen again? Schomisch formed a university committee to research the way the industry supplies body parts; the panel found little oversight and few rules. Today, Case Western leases only from a handful of pre-screened brokers that follow standards established by the American Association of Tissue Banks, a national accrediting organization. Its such a difficult decision whether to donate, Schomisch said of people who bequeath their bodies. I think you just assume that by donating, youre doing something good. But people like Art Rathburn tarnish that. 'A charisma about him' Rathburn was hired in 1984 by the University of Michigan body donation program, which uses cadavers for anatomy classes and research. He was 30 years old with a community college degree and a work ethic that endeared him to better-educated colleagues. He had a charisma about him, said former supervisor Stuart Baggaley. Rathburn arrived at a critical time. University archives show that Rathburn helped the program rebound from complaints by donor families about poor customer service. He was just energetic, doing something all of the time, said Burkel, who led the program during those years. He had a lot of ideas. One merited publication in a scientific journal and a patent: A State-of-the-Art Embalming and Autopsy Station, a device that promised safer and easier preparation of dead bodies. In 1988, Rathburn was prominently featured in the monthly Ann Arbor Observer newspaper. He expounded on the significance of cadavers in the classroom and told a whimsical tale about his entry into the business a friend bet him $10 he wouldnt fill out a funeral home job application. He did. In a photograph accompanying the story, Rathburn wears a tie, lab coat and broad smile. Two years later, however, Rathburn left the school, records show, following unspecified allegations of misconduct. He obtained a court order barring release of his personnel records. But recently, two people with direct knowledge disclosed the alleged transgression: Rathburn mishandled the donor ashes, a cardinal sin in the funeral industry. With that information shielded from public view, Rathburn set out in the early 1990s to sell body parts. One person Rathburn impressed was Ed Eichenlaub, then a doctors assistant in Pittsburgh who began working with him to supply body parts for research and surgical seminars. I would call up Art and say, I need half a dozen human heads, he said. Later, Eichenlaub said, he worked for Rathburn handling body parts at medical seminars in New Orleans, San Francisco and Chicago. I wont lie to you. It was creepy, said Eichenlaub. You arrive at this place and there is this huge ice chest and you open it and there are a dozen heads. Theyre wrapped up, but it takes a special person to do this. 'Thorough examination' One reason entrepreneurs like Rathburn can avoid scrutiny is the patchwork of state laws relating to the sale of body parts. Only 10 states provide meaningful oversight, and almost all of them do it differently. For example, Virginia and Florida regulators need to give advance permission before a broker may bring body parts into the state for research or training. In Oklahoma and Oregon, regulators do not require prior approval to ship individual body parts, but they do inspect brokers regularly and require stringent record-keeping. In two of the 10 states, the laws do not appear to be a high priority. In New Jersey, an official said, a 2008 law restricting the business to nonprofits and requiring brokers to register with health authorities hasnt been implemented, because the legislature failed to authorize funds. In Maine, a state spokesman said that although the law requires brokers to be registered, officials havent bothered to create rules because no one has ever applied for a permit. Perhaps no agency in America imposes tighter controls on body brokers than the New York state health department. New York requires licenses, inspections and annual statistical reports for any broker, even those not based in the state, that ships body parts to customers in New York. State health officials travel around the country to inspect brokers. Still, neither New Yorks laws nor its regulators were enough to stop Rathburn, according to a review of court documents and state health records obtained under open-records laws. In 2004, a New York inspector traveled to Rathburns warehouse in Detroit. Though Rathburn was notified of the visit a week in advance, the inspector still found serious deficiencies flaws that demonstrate how body parts can enter a black hole of accountability after being donated, dissected and shipped to customers. Among the problems: Rathburn could not produce documents proving that bodies were donated willingly. There are no such records for whole bodies and body segments received for use at the facility, the report said. Rathburn, the records show, contended that privacy laws and supplier policies prevented him from providing such proof. New York officials said that was no excuse for not supplying consent forms. Your plan of correction, inspectors wrote him in 2005, does not address the core of this deficiency. In 2006, officials told Rathburn he could no longer ship body parts to New York until he resolved their concerns. In 2007, New York health officials issued Rathburn a provisional license, allowing him to resume operations there. In a statement to Reuters, New York officials said they conducted a thorough examination. A New York health official added that her agency did not notify Michigan authorities at the time because such a regulatory agency does not exist in that state. The official did not elaborate on what agency that might be. The records show that, from 2005 through 2007, Rathburns business continued unabated outside New York as he distributed more than 200 severed heads. At least one broker voiced concern during this period. Walter Mitchell, former owner of BioGift, an Oregon body donation firm, said he stopped supplying body parts to Rathburn after a 2006 incident. A week after shipping two human torsos to Rathburn in Detroit, Mitchell got a call from the airline that transported them. No one had picked up the packages at the airport. When are you going to come? an airline employee asked, according to Mitchell. The coolers are leaking and it smells. Rathburn ultimately picked up the torsos, Mitchell said. 'Ill-conceived plan' In the mid-2000s, Rathburn launched an ambitious expansion, one that would lead to bankruptcy. For $1.8 million in 2005, Rathburns company bought a funeral home and warehouse in Richmond, Va. People familiar with the deal said he chose the properties because they were strategically located near two interstate highway exits, a convention center and a medical school. The neighborhood also was on the upswing. They were going to bring in loads of cadavers to be stored at the warehouse and, as needed, transferred to the funeral home, then to medical training events, recalled former city councilman Bill Pantele. Having invested a lot of years in revitalization of that neighborhood, I thought, This is a bad idea. Faced with community opposition, Rathburn abandoned the plan and struggled financially. While his Michigan company grossed almost $900,000 annually from 2006 to 2008, records show, debts mounted. By late 2008, when Rathburns company declared bankruptcy, it reported assets of $72,130 and debts of $621,905. It owed $210,402 in back taxes and at least $175,000 to companies supplying body parts. In court records, Rathburn described the Virginia venture as an ill-conceived plan. As part of the bankruptcy filing, Rathburn provided a list of assets. The inventory included 14 chairs, 10 file cabinets, 91 heads, 18 spines, six hips and a copy of the Hippocratic Oath. He put the total market value of the body parts at $160,900. Warning signs Despite the bankruptcy, Rathburn continued to operate. Through 2013, six body brokers shipped him more than 800 body parts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, court and New York health department records show. And federal authorities came into contact with Rathburn or his employees a dozen times including six border crossings from 2010 through 2013. In 2010 and again in 2011, federal law enforcement records show, Rathburn was stopped returning from Canada. Each time, he was carrying 10 human heads. In 2012, picnic-style coolers containing eight heads in red liquid arrived at the Detroit airport. Border agents confronted Rathburn. Among the lies agents allege Rathburn told them was that the liquid wasnt blood, but Listerine mouthwash, used to preserve specimens. The alleged lies to the federal agents appeared to accelerate the investigation of Rathburn, court records show, though no one intervened to search his warehouse or stop his business. Seven months later, his indictment alleges, Rathburn sent a cadaver infected with Hepatitis B and HIV to a medical convention in Washington, D.C. No attendees were harmed, although they would not learn of the potential danger for years. In August 2013, New York officials inspected the Detroit warehouse once more and again reported problems with Rathburns ability to keep proper records for each body part. No other action was taken against him at the time. Rathburn continued to acquire bodies for $5,000 and heads for $500 until late 2013. Among those remains: the head, two legs and a shoulder from Glorious Pearl Jeffries, according to her daughter, Lachell Jeffries-Hanson. The Chicago-area wedding planner, who died at age 72 of a pulmonary embolism, hoped her donation would educate others, the daughter recalled. The daughter said the FBI told her recently that the donation firm that took her mothers body distributed some of its parts to Rathburn. You dont really read through everything, Jeffries-Hanson said of the donation paperwork she signed. I was distraught. In December 2013, after nearly four years of investigation, the FBI raided Rathburns warehouse and office. Inside, authorities said, agents found thousands of body parts. Rathburn stored human heads by stacking them directly on top of each other without any protective barrier, authorities said in a court filing. The FBI began informing next of kin with a form letter: There is nothing that I can say that can make this news easy for you. As a victim, however, you have the right to know the truth ... We want justice, Jeffries-Hanson said. What troubles her most, she said, is that her mothers head, which she thought had been cremated, was sitting on someones shelf. Thats her face, thats her brain, thats her, thats what made her function. Rathburn was arrested in January 2016. By then, he told agents, he was homeless and living out of his van. _____________________ To read earlier stories in this ongoing series, click on the headline: Updated at 3:47 p.m. AT&T Inc. and the U.S. Department of Justice are discussing conditions the No. 2 wireless carrier needs to meet in order for its acquisition of Time Warner Inc. to win government antitrust approval, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters on Thursday. The $85.4 billion deal, unveiled in October 2016, is opposed by an array of consumer groups and competitors on the grounds that it would give the wireless company too much power over the media it would carry on its own network. Wall Street largely believes the transaction will go through, but its success is not assured, and the issue has become a political battleground. President Donald Trump, who has accused media companies like Time Warner's CNN of being unfair to him, criticized the deal on the campaign trail last year and vowed that as president his Justice Department would block it. As president, he has not revisited the subject. Approval of the deal marks an early challenge for the Justice Department's new antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, a Trump appointee who was confirmed by Congress in late September. Delrahim said at his confirmation hearing in May that he would not discuss antitrust matters with the White House. Delrahim, perhaps looking to make a mark in his new job, may want to ramp up pressure on AT&T. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday that the Justice Department was laying the groundwork for a potential lawsuit aimed at stopping the deal if settlement talks did not work out. The Journal reported that the outcome could go either way. It did not say what the sticking points were. The Justice Department did not reply to requests for comment. Shares of Time Warner initially plunged after the Journal report, but recovered some losses and closed at $94.70, down 3.8 percent. AT&T's shares fell 1.1 percent to close at $33.17. "The market is saying that the deal still most likely gets done," said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson. "It's just not as much of a sure thing as it was yesterday." All possible scenarios AT&T has said it expected the deal to close by the end of the year. AT&T executives have repeatedly expressed confidence that it would reach an agreement with the antitrust enforcer. "When the DOJ reviews any transaction, it is common and expected for both sides to prepare for all possible scenarios," AT&T said in a statement on Thursday. "For over 40 years, vertical mergers like this one have always been approved because they benefit consumers without removing any competitors from the market," AT&T said. "While we won't comment on our discussions with DOJ, we see no reason in the law or the facts why this transaction should be an exception." Arguments over the deal have focused on how much power a pay-TV provider should have in steering its customers to cable channels that it also owns. Critics from both parties argue that AT&T's purchase of Time Warner would give it the clout to steer customers to its own premium content. Time Warner properties include CNN, HBO, the film studio Warner Bros and other coveted media assets. Trump has not repeated his criticism of the deal since becoming president, and he has met with AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson at least twice in 2017. Delrahim underscored in May that he would not be swayed by political considerations. "The independence of the decisions made in prosecuting and reviewing mergers as well as other conduct is a serious one that should be free from any political influence," he said. "They will be free if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed." The opposition Daphna Ziman, the founder and president of Cinemoi, a female-owned TV network, told Reuters last month she had met with the Justice Department to discuss the merger. She told a U.S. Senate panel that "further consolidation could be catastrophic to diverse, minority and women-owned voices." The Justice Department has been discussing whether to require conditions that AT&T does not discriminate against channels that compete with Time Warner and unfairly advantage its own channels, time limits on any such conditions and customer data issues, sources told Reuters. Barclays analysts said similar issues were addressed in the Justice Department's consent decree allowing Comcast Corp to acquire NBCUniversal in 2011. Wall Street played down the news on Thursday as a threat to the deal. "These headlines may be more about increasing the (Justice) Department's leverage in negotiating conditions than a serious intent to try and sue to block the deal, said Jennifer Fritzsche, analyst at Wells Fargo. "This is still a vertical merger and the DOJ would face the same uphill battle in court if it sued to stop it, same hurdles it faced a month or six months ago." ST. LOUIS A former local fitness company executive, Todd Beckman, pleaded guilty to a federal charge Thursday and admitted drug dealing and kidnapping a man who stole money and marijuana from him. Beckmans guilty plea to conspiracy to commit a kidnapping could mean 20 years in prison for the 53-year-old. Wearing a striped jail jumpsuit as police and federal agents looked on, Beckman told U.S. District Judge Audrey Fleissig, Its a little overwhelming, near the end of the hearing. Beckman was founder, president and CEO of BAM Brands. After his December arrest, Beckman stepped down from his position with the company, which owns TanCo, Xist Fitness, Massage Luxe and age management company LifeXist. The details in Beckmans plea agreement echo those made public Wednesday during a guilty plea by co-conspirator Caleb Laubinger, 27, of Pacific. Laubingers brother Blake Laubinger and another co-defendant, Kerry Roades, are scheduled to change their not-guilty pleas Friday. In court Thursday, Beckman admitted having 50 to 80 pounds of marijuana at a time commercially shipped to St. Louis and sold. According to details from court Wednesday, the pot was packed in industrial toolboxes that were commercially shipped in large wooden crates. When a dealer who worked for Beckman stole 24 pounds of marijuana and $15,000 cash, Blake Laubinger and Beckman devised a plan to get the drugs and money back, his plea says. The Laubinger brothers beat and kidnapped the victim on Nov. 21 and took him to Blake Laubingers home in Pacific, where he was tied up in the basement and shocked with a Taser, the plea says. Beckman shaved his head. Beckman told Fleissig that he didnt remember pistol-whipping the victim or dry-firing the gun that he pressed to the victims head, but said he knew witnesses for the government would testify that he had. He also said he couldnt recall threatening to shoot the victim, shrink-wrap his body and send it to California. After being held overnight in a shipping container on a lot in Fenton belonging to Beckman, the victim was dropped off in a nearby shopping center in a TanCo van after the victims parents paid the conspirators $27,000 ransom. The mans father took him to a hospital, where employees called police. As part of the plea, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis agreed to ask for 20 years at Beckmans sentencing Feb. 9, the same as the deal for Caleb Laubinger. Beckmans lawyers could ask for less. Another co-defendant, Zachary Smith, then 25, pleaded guilty in May to misprision of a felony, or helping conceal a crime, for failing to call police after seeing the victim in the basement. He could face roughly 21 to 27 months in prison. ST. LOUIS African-American clergy and activists announced on Thursday a targeted boycott of several national businesses with St. Louis outlets, in protest of a raft of issues from police treatment of blacks to bank loan practices to infrastructure neglect in the northern part of the city. In addition to individual businesses, the boycott names the Delmar Loop, raising questions about minority contracting used in building the new Loop Trolley there. It also names the St. Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights, the site of a protest in late September that ended in more than 20 arrests. We pay taxes ... We spend our dollars in other communities, other venues, and we have not received an equitable return for those monies that we have invested, said Rev. Dinah Tatman, one of the organizers. Were now taking our money and investing in ourselves. The boycott, announced at a news conference at Westside Missionary Baptist Church, referenced the Sept. 15 acquittal of Jason Stockley, a former St. Louis police officer who is white , on a murder charge in the 2011 shooting death of black drug suspect Anthony Lamar Smith. The verdict sparked more than a month of sometimes violent protests. But organizers cited numerous other issues as well, including financial redlining by the real estate industry, mistreatment of black customers by retail outlets and dilution of black political power by redistricting. The list of businesses cited by the boycott include five listed on a website set up by organizers (nojusticenoprofit.us), in addition to seven listed in printed material handed out to reporters at Thursdays news conference. Some businesses on the boycott list are there for alleged mistreatment of black employees or customers based on previously filed lawsuits. Other reasons cited are more complicated. Target Corp. is on the list, according to the groups website, because of a legal dispute over a series of books and movies it created in honor of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, which led to an unsuccessful copyright lawsuit by a nonprofit organization that claims the right to Parks image. Schnuck Markets also is on the list, though the only reason cited by the website and by organizers at Thursdays event is that the company is a major contributor to the Republican Party. In a statement, Schnuck said it was surprised and disappointed to be included in the boycott. The statement noted the grocery chain is one of only a few grocers that invests in the urban areas of St. Louis, something we have been doing for nearly 80 years. It also noted it has opened a new location in Ferguson, the site of nationally controversial racial strife in 2014, and that it donates food and money to various programs for low-income families. Upated at 3:15 p.m. Thursday with details U..S. Sen Claire McCaskill tweeted Thursday that her husband, Joseph Shepard. was much better after a "near-death experience" related to his hospitalization for heart problems earlier this week at Saint Louis University Hospital. "Our thanks to the great doctors and nurses and staff at SLUH hospital for the terrific care," McCaskill also tweeted Thursday afternoon McCaskill said Monday that Shepard had been hospitalized in ICU. "My husband has a very big heart but right now not working very well," the Democrat had said on Twitter Monday. McCaskill and Shepard married in 2002. He made millions as a developer, with much of his work focused on low-income housing. A Michigan native, he moved to St. Louis in 1973. McCaskill had to postpone a D-Day trip in 2014 because Shepard was hospitalized. John LaBombard, a spokesman for McCaskill, had said in an email that Shepard was in St. Louis. LaBombard said he had no other details to release. McCaskill identified the hospital in her Thursday tweet. Attorney General Josh Hawley, who is running for the Republican nomination to oppose McCaskill in the 2018, elections, offered prayers for Shepard and McCaskill in a tweet. JEFFERSON CITY There are more than 200 boards and commissions in Missouri. Some ensure public safety and health. Others promote Missouri products or administer professional certifications. Many sit dormant. The Unmarked Human Burial Consultation Committee last met in 2006. The Professional Services Payment Committee was formed in 2007 but has never met. The Small Business Compliance Advisory Committee hasnt held a meeting since 2012. In April, Gov. Eric Greitens appointed a 12-member task force to come up with ideas to sweep up, streamline and generally cut red tape from state government. The panel published its final report on Tuesday saying the state should cut 450 gubernatorial appointments, merge certain panels, get rid of others and lower fees when possible. Filling the boards has become a bipartisan challenge. Former Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, was dinged in an August audit for letting panels languish by not filling vacancies and for letting appointees serve expired terms. He culled 70 boards and commissions himself during his tenure. According to the Greitens task force report, 5 percent of state panels dont have a quorum, vacancies are common and more than 75 percent of the panels have members serving expired terms, which is allowed under state law. Government is too big, too slow, and works too poorly, Greitens said in a news release. With these recommendations, the task force took an important first step to shrink the size of government and make it work better for people. State Sen. Jacob Hummel, D-St. Louis, served on the task force, which was led by Lt. Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican. Hummel said the process was bipartisan. He said that because many of the boards on the chopping block dont meet, there would be little impact. It may look good on paper, Hummel said, but I dont think it has a strong practical effect. Some of the suggestions are not half-bad, said state Rep. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette. There are many boards and commissions that havent met in years, and it certainly calls into question their need to exist. But she cautioned: I want to move forward in a respectful manner. There are many professions and issues that could be impacted. McCreery said she was worried the task force could recommend merging certain environmental panels. A draft report obtained by the Post-Dispatch in September recommended merging the states Clean Water Commission and the Air Conservation Commission as well as two other panels. Not anymore. Under the final plan, the Clean Water Commission is spared any changes while the Air Conservation Commission would take on the duties of the Small Business Compliance Advisory Committee. The Post-Dispatch also reported that in the draft, task force members aimed to eliminate the Citizens Advisory Committee on Corrections, which processes inmate complaints. In its final report, the task force recommends it be reevaluated. The task force said the committee had no direct authority but could be beneficial if reevaluated. The report generally offers a zoomed-out view of state government, assessing boards and commissions department-by-department. The Legislature would have to approve most of the reforms, while the governor can use his executive powers to streamline some things himself, such as requesting departments come up with plans for consolidation and elimination. Some of the panels recommendations include shifting appointment authority from the governor to board chairs and department heads. For example, the state could create a nine-member Health and Senior Services Board, with various advisory panels under it. The board chair would appoint members to the advisory panels, not the governor. The panel also recommended eliminating boards that are not meeting, including the Life Sciences Research Board, the Small Business Regulatory Fairness Board, the Missouri Task Force on the Prevention of Infant Abuse and Neglect and the Professional Services Payment Committee. The report states that the Holocaust Education and Awareness Commission has already approved curriculum for schools, so its role should be re-evaluated. The Hispanic Business, Trade and Culture Commission and the Missouri Minority Business Advocacy Commission are not currently meeting, the report said. It said those two groups should be consolidated into a new board to promote inclusiveness. Through consolidation and merger, several other boards and commissions including the State Milk Board, the Unmarked Human Burial Consultation Committee, and the Missouri Film Commission would be no more if the state acted on all of the recommendations. Shakespeare's Birthplace in Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. Photo: Mark Williamson. A visit to Stratford by Osama bin Laden during his teenage years helped foster his hatred of the west, newly released documents revealed this week. The Guardian reported that a personal journal, recovered from the house in which he died in 2011, revealed that he visited Stratford when he was a 13-year-old. A brief entry describes his visit to the town and says that he was not impressed by British society and culture. It reads: I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didnt allow me to form a complete picture of life there. We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeares house. I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society. The journal was part of 470,000 documents released yesterday by the CIA in the interests of transparency and to enhance public understanding of al-Qaida and its former leader. CIA Director Pompeo said: "Todays release of recovered al-Qaida letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization. The CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security." Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader Qamar Zaman Kaira on Thursday said that they are not against accountability, but they should also not be discriminated against. Speaking at a press conference here, the PPP leader recalled the arrest of former Sindh minister Sharjeel Memon by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) officials at Islamabad airport. In March, a NAB team took Memon into custody as his flight landed at Islamabad airport. The former provincial minister, who faces charges of corruption worth nearly Rs6 billion, had returned home after over two years in self-imposed exile in Dubai and London and was released after brief detainment. "Memon was not allowed to step down from the plane," Kaira said, adding that there should be no discrimination in the process of accountability. He also announced that his party will hold a rally in Islamabad on December 5. Taking exception to the Tehreek-e-Insaf leadership, the PPP leader said Imran Khan should see the people standing beside him. "The PTI chief speaks against corruption, making his 'ATM machine' stand next to him," he remarked. Kaira called on Khan to exclude individuals facing corruption cases from his party's ranks. On October 23, Memon was arrested by the NAB after hours of being holed up in court premises. He was taken into custody as he left the court. Memon was shifted to NAB headquarters Sindh after being escorted from court. "The accused persons are charged with embezzlement of Rs5,766,479,766 purportedly paid to seven advertising agencies for awareness campaigns between 2013 and 2015," said a press release by NAB. The accused persons jointly and severally in connivance with each other have been alleged for awarding the contracts to favour certain advertising agencies and to their own favour, in violation of relevant laws and rules and against exorbitant rates," added the release. He was attempting to avoid being arrested by NAB after the cancellation of his bail extension plea by the Sindh High court. Memon, who returned to Pakistan in March this year after ending his near two-year-long self-imposed exile, was arrested on his arrival by NAB but later obtained bail. The other accused in the case include bureaucrats, officials of the information department and members of private advertising agencies. Memon claims the charges against him are politically motivated. Too low, imo.Canada to admit nearly 1 million immigrants over next 3 yearsCanada will welcome nearly one million immigrants over the next three years, according to the multi-year strategy tabled by the Liberal government today in what it calls "the most ambitious immigration levels in recent history."The number of economic migrants, family reunifications and refugees will climb to 310,000 in 2018, up from 300,000 this year. That number will rise to 330,000 in 2019 then 340,000 in 2020.The targets for economic migrants, refugees and family members was tabled in the House of Commons Wednesday afternoon.Hussen said the new targets will bring Canada's immigration to nearly one per cent of the population by 2020, which will help offset an aging demographic. He called it a historic and responsible plan and "the most ambitious" in recent history."Our government believes that newcomers play a vital role in our society," Hussen said. "Five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035 and we have fewer people working to support seniors and retirees."Hussen said immigration drives innovation and strengthens the economy, rejecting some claims that newcomers drain Canada's resources and become a burden on society.He said the government is also working to reduce backlogs and speed up the processing of applications in order to reunite families and speed up citizenship applications. Angstrom said: www.cbc.ca/beta/news/politics/philpott-child-welfare-emergency-meeting Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott is calling for an emergency meeting early next year on Indigenous child welfare, declaring that the current situation resembles the horrors of Canada's residential school system that forcibly removed young Indigenous people from their families and community. For better or for worse. Social reprogramming is our thingIndigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott is calling for an emergency meeting early next year on Indigenous child welfare, declaring that the current situation resembles the horrors of Canada's residential school system that forcibly removed young Indigenous people from their families and community. Click to expand... "We have to debunk that mainstream understanding that when these children are taken they are put into these loving, caring environments," she said. "That's far from the reality ... All these children want to go home."It would be interesting to know what the children think and feel about all of this. I imagine it would depend on how brutal the situation was at home and how long they had endured the abuse. I would also challenge the author to provide stats that back up her 'far from reality' claim. I don't believe for an instant that all foster homes are the same having read of several where children endured much the same treatment as they experienced at home. However, by far the greater number of foster homes are indeed caring and nurturing. Families who do their best to provide for those in their care are now seeing those efforts disparaged and discounted.It will be quite some time before the fostering of native children is left solely in the hands of the natives themselves. Until that happens, acknowledging the contributions provided to the children by fostering families - by the native community - would not only be the right thing to do, it might also help ensure that their children find themselves welcomed to a stable, caring family environment when the need arises. A former student at the University of Hartford has been charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace after bragging online about contaminating her roommates belongings with bodily fluids, including rubbing dirty tampons on her backpack and putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesnt shine.Eighteen-year-old Brianna Brochu appeared in court Wednesday. A judge banned her from the campus in central Connecticut and ordered her not to have any contact with her former dormitory roommate, Chennel Rowe, pending the conclusion of the case, according to the Hartford Courant.Authorities told the Courant that Brochu, who is white, also faces a hate-crime charge stemming from the alleged actions against her roommate, who is black.Last month, Brochu allegedly wrote on Instagram that she finally got rid of her roommate, whom she referred to as Jamaican Barbie.After 1 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons [on] her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesnt shine, and so much more, I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie, the post read, according to court records obtained by Heavy. Dems to file new impeachment articles against TrumpA group of Democrats will file new articles of impeachment against President Trump before Thanksgiving, according to Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), whos leading the charge.It is clear to us that he is unfit to be president of the United States of America, Gutierrez said Wednesday.Gutierrez, one of Trumps sharpest critics, declined to specify what grounds the articles will cite, saying only that the Democrats are working with constitutional scholars to solidify their case.I assure you we will not leave you lacking for reason, he said.Its also unclear which Democrats will join Gutierrez in the effort, though an aide named Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) as one such lawmaker. Cohen in August announced his intent to introduce impeachment articles, citing Trumps defense of the white nationalists who participated in deadly protest marches in Charlottesville, Va., that month.Cohens office declined to comment Wednesday.Democratic leaders have sought throughout the year to discourage impeachment efforts against Trump, fearing it could politicize the ongoing investigations into Russian hacking of the 2016 election and potential collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign. Behind House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), top Democrats are awaiting the outcome of those probes, particularly the one being conducted by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department in May.But Gutierrez said the time to wait is over. And the indictments against several former Trump campaign figures, announced by Muellers team on Monday, have only fueled the effort, Gutierrez said.There is increased interest, he said.Two other Democrats Reps. Brad Sherman (Calif.) and Al Green (Texas) have already introduced articles of impeachment targeting Trump. Last month, Green stopped just short of forcing a vote on the issue, but hes suggesting a future vote is inevitable. Congresss impeachment powers were drawn for a time such as this and a president such as Mr. Trump, he said Tuesday during an interview in his Capitol Hill office.Im in no rush to be first, but I will say this: We have to we have to bring it to the floor, Green said.Green acknowledged that some Democrats might be agitated by the aggressive impeachment push while the Mueller investigation continues. But hes growing impatient, warning that history wont be kind to those lawmakers who sit idle amid the swirl of controversies surrounding Trump.I cant let my record show this, Green said. The people who will probably judge us, probably havent been born.Gutierrez seems to agree, and hes glad to have a growing coalition to help him make the case.I appreciate what single members have done, Gutierrez said. I think its time to do a group. Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller is welcoming the announcement the unemployment rate is now the lowest since the beginning of the global financial crisis. A strong labour market and dropping unemployment is great news for kiwi families, businesses and New Zealand as a whole, says Todd. This kind of economic performance doesnt happen by chance and is a reflection of the confidence that New Zealand businesses have had in the Governments economic plan over the past nine years. When businesses have the confidence to invest and are growing it is every day people who see the benefits during Nationals time in office the average wage increased by more than 28 per cent to $59,840, he says. What we are seeing are more people in work, earning higher wages. When broken down by regions with the greatest employment growth the Bay of Plenty is up 9.2 per cent second only to the Waikato up 9.4 per cent. This reflects the feeling Im getting in conversations around the electorate from the builder looking to take on new apprentices, to the hairdresser taking on new staff, to the Auckland business people who are looking to relocate their operations to the Bay. The new government are inheriting a very strong economy. For New Zealands sake I hope they maintain business confidence, promote an open and growing economy, and dont waste away the hard fought gains of the last nine years. The governments announcement of a ban on foreigners buying existing residential housing has had a mixed response. When SunLive revealed the news on Tuesday, Facebook users were quick to endorse the idea. The story received more than 120 likes, with comments including Yay we are finally going in the right direction, Yay!! Its about bloody time!!, and Awesome news for kiwis. Tauranga-based New Zealand First list MP Clayton Mitchell says their position on this issue has been pretty clear from the moment the party was formed. As far as the housing crisis goes, this has been the elephant in the room right from the start. These changes will enable New Zealanders to have the first opportunity to buy property around the country. He believes it will make a huge difference to the shortage of housing. Foreigners will have to actually build a home, which creates opportunities for the building sector, and adds another house. Its a bigger problem in Auckland, but you have people from Auckland who have sold to foreign speculators coming down to Tauranga and putting pressure on our housing stock. So it will definitely cool the market down. However, Tauranga Property Investors Association president Simon Darmody doesnt believe the proposed changes will have much of an impact on the market. From what I see and conversations I have had, the number of foreign speculators purchasing properties anywhere outside of Auckland and Queenstown is a very, very low number. It is a very smart move from the government as gives the perception of doing something to stop the housing shortage, but in reality it will have negligible effect on prices or demand. He says if it encourages a few new builds in Auckland or Queenstown, then the policy could be welcomed in those areas. I think the expectation of most people will be different to the reality, as they do not understand foreign buyers who are New Zealand citizens or residents will still be able to buy properties. National Party Finance spokesperson Steven Joyce says the governments announcement raises many more questions than it answers. "The first and strangest thing about Labours announcement is that it isnt an actual ban. Putting houses through a sensitive land purchase criteria is definitely bureaucratic but does not constitute a ban on such sales," says Steven. "There are also all sorts of definitional questions. Is an apartment on the fourth floor of a building sensitive land? Is a two hectare property with two houses on it being sold for development able to be sold to an international investor? "This proposal would also be a massive compliance cost for house buyers of all types. For example, will somebody with a foreign sounding name have to prove their citizenship to the real estate agent? "The whole announcement was very strange. There has been no paperwork released and the Prime Minister indicated many of the detailed decisions remain to be made. A man has been arrested following a road rage incident in Papamoa where another driver was struck in the face with a weapon. The incident, which happened on Domain Rd, Papamoa 13 August, featured on Police Ten 7 last week in the hopes of generating information that would lead to an arrest. Today Papamoa Police executed a search warrant at a residential address in Te Puke, and arrested a 25-year-old man in relation to the incident. The man is due to appear in the Tauranga District Court on Monday, charged with assault with a weapon and cultivation of cannabis. I would like to thank everyone who rang in and supplied information to Police following the airing of the Ten 7 story, you r information has been invaluable in assisting us to locate the person responsible, says Sergeant Tristan Murray, Officer in Charge of Papamoa Police Station. It is very much appreciated and will no doubt bring some comfort to the victim that weve been able to hold the offender to account. This is a great example of our local community and the Police working together to make Papamoa a safer place to live in. Its 200 years since the James Parkinson, the English surgeon, apothecary, geologist, paleontologist and political activist James Parkinson wrote a ground breaking work called An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. He was the first to describe paralysis agitans, or shaking palsy, after reporting on three of his patients and three people he saw in the street. Its a condition that 60 years later would bear his name Parkinsons disease. This week has marked two centuries of progress in understanding and treating Parkinsons. But at the same time, the Tauranga Parkinsonism Society is using Parkinsons Awareness Week to send the message that 200 years is too long to wait for a cure. The Society has been organising a number of activities all with the purpose of raising awareness about Parkinsons. One of the key factors to managing Parkinsons is to keep moving. And so local walking groups are stepping out for a combined 500 kilometres this week a symbolic number because thats the number of people in the Bay of Plenty region, both individuals and families, affected by Parkinsons disease. Tomorrow, Friday November 3, the Fraser Cove walking group will leave Fraser Cove at 9am, make their way to Greerton and Gate Pa before returning to Fraser Cove. Everyones welcome to join the group to walk part or all of the walk. Also tomorrow, the Welcome Bay Walking Group will take part in this fund raiser They will walk as a group, from the Welcome Bay Hall, using public walkways and the main road in order to raise public awareness. Look out for the groups wearing the red Parkinsons t-shirts, and add your steps to the 500 kilometre target. Theres also a chance to meet the societys community educators who provide information and opportunities to discuss Parkinsons with people with Parkinsons as well as carers and family and whanau. You can contact these community educators by phoning Glennis on 021 840808, Liz on 021 844566 or Sharyn for the Eastern BOP on 07 2190818. Several Tauranga schoolkids got the chance to explore Japanese culture up close at a special event hosted by visiting Japanese students. The students, from Morimura Junior High School, hosted the cultural event at Greerton Hall on Wednesday for pupils from Bellevue Primary School, Tauriko School, and Gate Pa School. Lets Homestay managing director Stuart Cundy says the 190 students were here to experience a farm stay staying with a Kiwi family on a farm, as opposed to a suburban home. Instead of sightseeing this year, they decided they wanted to engage with local youth more, hence the youth day. Each school brought around 85 children, says Stuart. They learnt about Japanese manga, kanji writing, and a Japanese card game called karuta. There was also a corner where the pupils could try on a kimono. The Kiwi kids thought it was awesome to interact with so many Japanese kids, and learn about the culture, while the Japanese students have really enjoyed giving back some hospitality to the youth of Tauranga. Stuart says his company specialises in providing farm and home stay experiences for Japanese visitors. Weve got a big group of 95 boys coming from Taurangas sister-city Hitachi in February for six nights, who were currently trying to find host families for. If youre interested in providing a home stay experience, email stuart@letshomestay.com Doctoral students at the University of Waikato think they might have found a way to stabilise Omokoroas sensitive soils and reduce the number of landslides. The Western Bay of Plenty District Council will contribute $10,000 annually over the next three years towards a University of Waikato Doctoral Research Project on Omokoroas geology, centred on soil stabilisation. The project, led by Earth Sciences senior lecturer Dr Vicki Moon and undertaken by doctoral student Tom Robertson, is focused on discovering how to improve the stability of the material in the sensitive soils that make Omokoroas peninsula cliffs prone to slippage. Vicki and her colleague Dr Willem de Lange presented an update of their research to the councils operations committee this week. The team has been studying Omokoroas landslides since 2009, focusing on the Bramley Drive landslide that occurred in 1979. Vicki says their attention is on the failure of the sensitive soils at the base of landslides. Omokoroa has two types of landslides translational and flow slides the most damaging are the flow slides due to the fragility of the sensitive soils. These soils are mainly made up of halloysite a mineral that forms in old volcanic ashes typical to Omokoroa. The latest findings of the research project indicate a form of salt can act as a stabiliser in halloysite-rich soils by `locking up the soils over a period of time. Vicki says initial laboratory testing shows huge promise with a big uptake of the salt and a near-doubling of the peak strength of the soil. However, more testing is required over a wide range of stresses to confirm the early results. A small field trial in Omokoroa will be carried out when possible to install soil mixed columns and monitor how quickly concentrations of the salt can be achieved. On-site research has been stalled since Cyclone Debbie caused further slippages in April this year, making the cliff sites too unsafe for researchers. Evidence relayed in court this week details the brutal end for Opotiki woman Marie Halick, who was killed late last year. Robert Hohua, 36, is charged with her murder following an assault at an address in Wellington Street on November 22. Marie died following a 20 minute beating in which Hohua punched, kicked and stomped her, with the sounds reverberating through the house and alerting neighbours, who called police. Hohua has pleaded not guilty to murder, but admits killing her. The jury trial on the murder charge is proceeding in the High Court at Tauranga, with Justice Anne Hinton presiding. Over the past few days, the court has heard the evidence of medical examiners alongside key detectives related to the incident. ESR forensic scientist Jason Barr described in detail the evidence he witnessed at the scene. His evidence presented on Wednesday, describes visible blood stains found at the scene as well as blood discovered at the scene using Luminol, a chemical substance used to detect trace amounts of blood. He indicates the kitchen, living room, bathroom and main bedroom as being key areas where the 20 minute assault may have taken place. Following this medical examiner Dr Thambirajah Balachandra and Whakatane Detective Jon McKenzie also presented evidence to the court yesterday. A verdict is yet to be heard and the trial continues today at the Tauranga District court. The weather forecast is an overcast day with occasional rain and northerlies. Its a one-clothing layer day today with a high of 19 and an overnight low of 16 degrees. Low tide is at 12.40pm and high tide is at 6.50pm. Sea temperature is 17 degrees. Theres an average sea swell of about .6m and sunset tonight is at 7.47pm. If youre going fishing today the best fish bite time is between 11am and 1pm. This day in NZ history in1886 the Manawatu rail link opened. Also in 1886 on this day was the birth of Anchor butter. From a dairy factory at Pukekura, Waikato, Henry Reynolds launched his Anchor butter. The brand name, allegedly inspired by a tattoo on the arm of one of his workers, would become one of this countrys best-known trademarks. On this day in 1974, Summer time was reintroduced on a trial basis. The trial proved popular with most New Zealanders and daylight saving of one hour between October and March was made permanent in 1975. Not everyone was happy. Dairy farmers in particular objected to having to get up in the dark all year round. Others worried that putting their clocks forward would make hens stop laying, curtains and carpets fade faster, and lawns go brown. In world history on this day in 1507 Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to paint Lisa Gherardini (Mona Lisa). In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II with the dog Laika, the first animal in space, aboard. In 1973 NASA launched Mariner 10, which will become the first probe to reach Mercury. Today is the birthday of John Montague, fourth Earl of Sandwich and inventor of the sandwich. He was born in 1718. Today is also the birthday of American poet William Cullen Bryant who was born in 1794 and wrote "Go forth under the open sky, and listed to natures teachings." To get involved in activities around the Bay please check out our Whats On page. Have a great day! With offices in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, the IYC trio in Florida will now offer owners and potential clients enhanced support in the region while building on all aspects of yacht sales, purchase, charter and management. The IYC Palm Beach office is staffed by a team of highly-experienced and well-known brokers; including Sales & Charter Consultants James Wallace, Michael Rafferty, Brendan Roney, Jamie Wallace, Katie Macpherson, Fletcher Daves and Cindy Ross with more appointments soon to be announced. Every new office we open takes careful thinking and considerable amount of planning, but with Palm Beach the whole process felt totally intuitive. The location perfectly complements our US operation and we could not have hoped for a better team of charter and yacht sales professionals. says Stefanos Macrymichalos ,IYCs CEO. IYC confirmed that the American market has long been one of the most active and important within the superyacht industry, and the opening of this latest office demonstrates IYCs dedication to the region. This news comes with a score of new fleet updates such as Bilgin's latest launch Nerissa and a 'custom built' opportunity in the form of the intriguing C55. Pair this with a 25 yacht fleet on display at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show this week, such as Noble House, Clarity, Silver Lining, Carpe Diem, Bliss, Silver Cloud to name a few, and IYC's growth - not only in America - is clear to see. We look forward to bringing you more updates from the IYC team as more details emerge over the coming weeks and into 2018. Margoti Blanco Ayala returned home from a short trip to Madrid and sat down to check her emails. Within a very short time she started to feel ill and, thinking she had perhaps picked up a virus, went to bed until she felt better. Once she had recovered, a couple of days later, she sat at her desk to use her computer again, and the same thing happened. Margoti, who lives in Jimena de la Frontera, then discovered that while she had been away her husband Guy had upgraded their wi-fi Internet to 4G. I was always fine when I used the internet in the house before. Nothing ever happened, but all of a sudden I started feeling very ill whenever I used the computer at home, she says. So we wondered if it could be anything to do with the new 4G connection. The next time Margoti tried to use the internet at home she was so ill that she was rushed to hospital, where she stayed for a week and underwent a barrage of tests. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong, and when she was well enough to be released they suggested that she consult a psychiatrist. I was willing to do that, she says. It was possible that the cause was psychological, because they couldn't find any other reason. I just wanted to sort the problem out. But then Guy and Margoti, who run a successful estate agency, visited a house which was about to come onto the market, and Margoti went upstairs to take photos. Almost immediately, the symptoms started, she says. I went back downstairs and asked if they had a 4G internet router switched on up there, and they had. I hadn't known that, so it made me think I was onto something and the problem isn't psychological. She left the property quickly, but still felt so ill that it took her several hours to recover. The symptoms Margoti suffers are not minor. Guy says he thought she was having a stroke, on the occasions when she was taken ill at home. Her face seemed to change shape, he says. She couldn't move and was struggling to speak. Her voice became deeper than usual, and her speech was slow and slurred. Margoti says it makes her feel paralysed and heavy-limbed, her mind becomes foggy and she is completely unable to concentrate on anything. Although she had never experienced anything this severe before, she says she had never really liked using the internet on her mobile phone because it seemed to sap her energy, gave her a sensation of tightness in her head and sometimes made her feel nauseous. Hypersensitivity In Margoti's case, as all the medical tests proved negative, most doctors were sceptical of her belief that she is responding physically to being 'blasted' by electromagnetic frequencies. However, there is a condition called electromagnetic-hypersensitivity (EHS), which is recognised by the World Health Organisation. For several years now its website has included information about the condition, and it says that the symptoms most commonly experienced include dermatological symptoms (redness, tingling, and burning sensations) as well as neurasthenic and vegetative symptoms (fatigue, tiredness, concentration difficulties, dizziness, nausea, heart palpitation, and digestive disturbances). The WHO says studies have shown that only a few individuals per million in a population show signs of EHS, although figures from self-help groups claim the number is much higher. Studies also seem to indicate that the problem is worse in some countries than others: the reported incidence of EHS has been higher in Sweden, Germany, and Denmark than in the UK, Austria, and France. In fact, Sweden was the first country to recognise electromagnetic hypersensitivity as a condition of functional impairment, or disability. One study which concluded definitively that EHS does exist was carried out in 2011 at Louisiana State University, where researchers tested a woman who claimed to have EHS by exposing her without her knowledge to low-level pulsed electromagnet fields. Every time without fail, in less than two minutes she developed physical symptoms including headache, twitching muscles, irregular heartbeat and others. Affecting lives The problem is, of course, that wi-fi and internet are everywhere now, because it is a service that people expect. Margoti says her life is being badly affected by whatever is causing her symptoms: she has to avoid using the internet and regularly has to leave places because she starts feeling ill. The couple changed their home wi-fi to a line-of-sight system in the hope that this would sort out the problem, but it involved a more powerful router (300 mbp instead of the previous 140) and Margoti suffered the same symptoms. She therefore believes she may be extremely susceptible to any type of powerful internet system. She has tried using a device to block the effects, but so far with little success. They say it might not work straight away, because it takes people time to detox from the unnatural radiation, she says. While hoping desperately to find a way of overcoming this problem, Margoti would also be interested in hearing whether other people have experienced anything similar, or believe they might be affected. She would also be grateful to hear from any doctors who have come across similar cases, or technical experts who may have information which could prove useful. When Pluto was downgraded to dwarf planet status in 2006, it put Neptune as being the most distant planet from the Sun at almost 4.5 billion km. It is so far from the Sun that it takes almost 165 earth years to travel once around in its orbit. Neptune's discovery in 1846 was by pure mathematics. French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier had calculated its position after observing discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus. Le Verrier sent the coordinates to his friend Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin observatory asking him to verify. Galle found Neptune on the same night he received Le Verrier's letter, within 1 of the predicted position. The discovery was hailed as one of the most remarkable moments of 19th century science. At the same time in England, but unknown to Le Verrier, English mathematician John Crouch Adams was also carrying out his own calculations and observations of Uranus and he too came up with the same result. Unfortunately he mailed his results to the Royal Greenwich Observatory two days after Galle had discovered the planet and missed out on becoming the discoverer of a new planet. Various names were proposed for the new planet such as Janus and Oceanus; Le Verrier wanted to name the planet after himself but this proved very unpopular as France had objected to Uranus being named after its British discoverer, Herschel. Eventually the name of Neptune the Greek God of the sea was adopted, thus keeping up with tradition of naming all of the planets (except Earth) after Greek Gods. Neptune is the fourth largest planet in the solar system, it is slightly smaller than Uranus and, like Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus , is a gas giant made up of mostly hydrogen, helium and methane. Its atmosphere also contains icy clouds and the fastest wind speeds recorded in the solar system. Particles of icy methane and other gases give Neptune the deep blue colour that distinguishes it from green coloured Uranus. It has at least 14 moons in orbit around it. Everything we know about Neptune comes from a NASA spacecraft Voyager 2 that flew past the planet in 1989. You need good binoculars or a small telescope to see Neptune, but on Monday 30 October it will be less than 1 from the moon, helping you to find it easily. Look slightly above and a little to the left of the moon and if you see a tiny blue 'star' then you have found it! Pere Argudo was born in the foothills of the Pyrenees but came to Malaga with his family three and a half years ago, attracted by the abundance and quality of the milk from the Malaguena breed of goat. He is proud of the fact that his extraordinary soft cheeses are taking the name of Malaga to specialist shops and major restaurants in Paris, Turin and Milan. We are one of the biggest local exporters. Around 85 per cent of our production, which will be 200 tons this year, goes to Italy and France, he says. Lact-Argudo, the company this master cheesemaker runs in Campillos with his sister Margarita and his children, Mateu (25), and Marina (22), is not easy to find. It has no website, is not on social media, and only recently appointed a local distributor (Comercial Galera). The reason is that the Argudo family came here to satisfy the demand of a loyal European clientele who wanted more products; it was only later that they started exhibiting at trade fairs, after joining the Sabor a Malaga association. There is a lack of goat milk in France and Italy, where most cheese is consumed, so I started to produce it for those markets; more than 50 per cent of goats milk from Malaga goes to France We don't see the Spanish market as our main focus, because this type of cheese isn't in such demand here. It isn't traditional of this region says Pere. There is no section for cheeses like ours in local competitions but we are delighted that people like them and now that our labels identify our cheeses as being made in Malaga we are collaborating on promoting the quality and variety of local cheeses abroad, he explains. Pere Argudo began to make cheese from the milk of his own goats when he was 23 years old. In the 1980s, when the very traditional industry began to adapt to the demanding European sanitary regulations, he was the first producer in the region of La Garrotxa (Girona) to obtain a sanitary certificate and make his popular Garrotxa cheese, which nowadays is produced in Campillos under the name Gris de Montana. There is a lack of goat milk in France and Italy, where the most cheese is consumed, so in 2002 I started to produce cheese for those markets. Even today, more than 50 per cent of goats milk from Malaga goes to France and because of that, and its quality, it seemed the perfect place to set up a business. A factory was up for sale in Campillos, so we came here. We modernised it and now it is working at full capacity, says Pere. Every day, the Quesos Argudo factory processes 6,000 litres of goat milk from local farms and produces 12 different cheeses, including the five specialities it sells under its ownname, blue cheeses and others which are only made to order. In 2016, its 'Briqueta de cabra', a soft square cheese, won first prize in its category at the National Cheese Fair in Trujillo. It also makes Timbal de Cabra, Pastura, Raclette and the Gris de Montana. The process of making soft cheese is different to that of hard cheese because the whey is allowed to drain naturally, just being turned occasionally. Soft cheese needs a higher humidity so the rind ripens properly. Throughout the whole process, the cheeses are looked after as if they were babies. Every Thursday, the week's production is rushed by refrigerated lorry to be sold in France and Italy. Mateu, who shares his father's passion for cheese, is in charge of the daily production. We are a team of 14, most of them young people who live locally. We can process this quantity of milk because we have optimised every step of the process. We have two shifts, one in the morning which carries out the production and one in the afternoon which does the cleaning (hygiene is absolutely essential in cheese production). It is hard work but it's ok - we always make sure there is time for a beer or two after work, he laughs. Monday 27 October 2003 will go down in history in the city of Malaga, as the day when the long-awaited Picasso Museum finally opened to the public. Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, in the house in the Plaza de la Merced which is now run as a gallery and museum by the Foundation which bears his name. Many of the paintings by this genius, who is considered the most influential artist of the 20th century, featured aspects of the city as he remembered it from his childhood, such as the pigeons in the square where he used to play, and the bullfights he watched with his father at La Malagueta. The inauguration of the museum in the beautifully restored 16th-century Buenavista Palace in Calle San Agustin was a glittering occasion, as members of the artist's family and dignitaries from the local and regional authorities gathered to watch King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia perform the opening ceremony. The first temporary exhibition to be held at the MPM (Museo Picasso de Malaga) was called 'El Picasso de los Picassos', and comprised 87 oil paintings and sculptures which the artist had created between 1903 and 1971. It ran until the end of February 2004. Most of the works on display had been donated by Picasso's daughter-in-law Christine, and grandson, Christine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, from their private collections; many had been left to them by Paul Ruiz-Picasso, the artist's elder son. Only three of the works were on loan from elsewhere: 'El retrato de la senora Canals' and 'Las Meninas' came from the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and 'La Celestina' from its counterpart in Paris. The Picasso Museum of Malaga had been a long time coming to fruition. It was originally Picasso's own idea, which he first discussed with the provincial delegate for Fine Arts, Juan Temboury Alvarez, back in 1953. They even considered creating the museum in the Buenavista Palace, but the project was progressed no further. During the 1990s, Christine Picasso helped the council to organise two major exhibitions, and it was in 1996 when the idea of a permanent museum was taken up again. Nowadays, the MPM is the most popular museum in Andalucia, and it was visited by 558,033 people in 2016. In addition to the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions, it also organises educational activities and concerts regularly take place in its auditorium. The Omaha Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women (OACCW) will hold its fall meeting on Nov. 14 at St. John the Baptist Parish, 201 N. Fourth St., Petersburg, hosted by the women of the Rural Central (RC) Deanery. All Catholic women of the Archdiocese of Omaha are invited to attend. Registration is at 9:30 a.m. and the board meeting begins at 10 a.m. The executive board meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. Registration includes rolls, coffee and lunch. Mass will be offered. The recent conventions of the National Council of Catholic Women and the OACCW will be reviewed. Deacon John Starman will tell about a new program he is leading in his parish. Attendees are asked to bring any board books, underwear, socks or diapers they want to donate for the service projects. Call RC Deanery Secretary, Barb Tassemeier, at 402-582-3216 if you have any questions. A Radford University student from Bland County has started a Go Fund Me account to help finance a mission trip to Thailand. Kalub Lambert hopes to visit the country in early January with members of Chi Alpha, a ministry group at Radford. For Lambert, who has gone on several mission trips, the trip to Thailand will be his first time out of the country. He has also taken trips to Atlanta and Arkansas. I really feel called to go on this mission trip, he said. A lot of Thai people have not heard the gospel and now is a prime opportunity to go. It is a prime opportunity to understand what different cultures look like and to have that experience. For me, personally, it has been a longing to go and visit the culture and begin to understand that diversity. Lambert, a 2015 graduate of Bland County High School, is the son of Jason and Pamela Lambert and a member of Bastian Union Church. Lambert, who is studying business management with a minor in communications, is a Chi Alpha leader. He said he hopes to one day earn a masters degree in business and perhaps work for a campus ministry. He is a junior at Radford. When he arrived on campus, Chi Alpha only had about five members. Now, there are about 100 members. When I got here my freshman year, I knew someone in the group, he said. At that time, it was very non-existent, a very small group. But we had a vision of what it could actually be, and since then, we have been running with it. It has exploded. Lambert said the ministry hosts events and small group meetings throughout the week. Its just been a lot of trusting in the Lord and staying faithful and doing what he has called us to do here at Radford, he said. Its been really cool to see. Regarding the mission trip to Hat Yai, Thailand, Lambert said he will work directly with students on the campus of Price of Songkla University. Our main focus throughout the trip will be evangelism, relationship building, and ultimately sharing the love of Jesus with the Thai people, his Go Fund Me account said. Throughout our time, we will also have the opportunity to interact with and teach English to local children within Hat Yai. The cost of the trip is $2,600, which includes travel expenses, housing, food, insurance and day-to-day costs. As of Monday afternoon, Lambert has raised $355. He previously raised about $1,600 through Go Fund Me to attend a leadership conference. For information, visit online at www.gofundme.com/4mgnq-thailand-trip or visit www.gofundme.com and search for Lamberts name. To reach Millie Rothrock, call 228-6611, ext. 35, or email mrothrock@wythenews.com. An off-duty Onondaga County sheriff's deputy who was charged with leaving the scene of an accident after crashing into another vehicle in Tully on Oct. 6 has returned to work, according to several sources. The deputy, Kevin Drumm, 34, returned to work earlier this week, the sources told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. Whether or not he is back on road patrol or at a desk job isn't clear. The sheriff's office today refused to say whether Drumm has returned to work, saying the crash is still under investigation. On Oct. 12, the sheriff's office released a statement saying its Internal Affairs Unit is investigating the incident and how the deputies responding handled the case. Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard first reported on the crash on Oct. 11. "The thorough internal investigation into this incident is expected to be completed within the next few days. The sheriff will release a statement then,'' said Sgt. Jon Seeber, a spokesman for the sheriff's office. It has been 28 days since the crash. In the past, then-Sheriff Kevin Walsh has said the department can suspend a deputy for without pay for only 30 days. After that the deputy must be paid until any administrative charges are resolved, according to New York State Civil Service regulations, he has said. Sheriff Eugene Conway has not responded to inquiries about Drumm's case, referring any questions to his spokesman. Drumm was suspended without pay by the sheriff office after Drumm's truck hit another vehicle and left the scene. He drove 2.5 miles down the road and crashed a second time, going off the road, tearing up a lawn and damaging a mail box, witnesses said. The sheriff's office has refused to say if Drumm underwent any testing for alcohol or drug impairment. Police responding to the call were alerted by 911 dispatchers that witnesses believed the driver was impaired. Several experts contacted said, given the circumstances, Drumm should have been tested for alcohol or drugs. Drumm told a deputy investigating the first crash into another truck that he "dropped some food that he was holding," and became distracted, according to the two-page New York State Motor Vehicle police accident report obtained earlier by Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. He said he "felt his truck veer to the left," and then "felt an impact,'' according to the report. He had hit a Chevy Silverado pickup truck driven by Cheryl Wayne of Tully, who said his truck hit her along the whole side of her truck. Drumm said he "believed he had hit debris in the roadway," and then "left the area to get his truck back to his residence," according to the report. Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard has not been able to obtain an accident report for the second crash where Drumm went off the road east of Tully. Drumm's annual salary is $70,038, according to the Onondaga County Comptroller's Office. Drumm has pleaded not guilty to the charge, according to Tully town court filings. He is scheduled to appear in Tully town court Dec. 12. ONEIDA, N.Y. -- Local law enforcement will be stationed around the Oneida City School District Thursday as an added precaution after a student made a threatening statement online, the district announced Wednesday. Police do not believe the threat, made by a student via SnapChat, is credible, according to the Oneida City Police Department. The district said they were made aware of the threatening post against the Oneida Senior High School on Wednesday morning and immediately called police, who are now investigating. The high school is located at 560 Seneca St. The student responsible also caused a lockdown and shelter-in-place at the high school within the last two weeks, the district stated. It is unclear if the student will be charged or disciplined. While there does not appear to be any immediate danger, police were asked to be on scene at the district the rest of the day, and will also be there Thursday to help relieve any stress or fears, the district stated. Counselors will also be available and classes will run as normal. Other Central New York school districts have also seen threats this week. East Syracuse Minoa high school in Onondaga County is investigating its second threatening message this week, and Whitesboro High School in Oneida County also had an investigation Wednesday after an alleged threat, according to the Utica Observer-Dispatch. The incident in Whitesboro ended up unfounded, while police are still investigating both threats at ESM. UTICA, N.Y. -- A Utica man was charged Wednesday for possessing and uploading child pornography online in the city of Utica, according to the Oneida County Sheriff's Office. Jeffrey L. Clem, 48, was charged with multiple counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child and promoting a sexual performance by a child, all felonies, deputies said. The arrest stems from an investigation and search warrant that was executed on Clem's residence on Wednesday. Several electronic devices were seized from Clem's residence for further forensic examination. The investigation is ongoing and more charges are possible, deputies said. The Oneida County Child Advocacy Center was assisted by members of the New York State Police Computer Crimes Unit and the Utica Police Department Crime Scene Unit. A new trailer for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" has been released, and there's more on the way from a galaxy far, far away. Disney and Lucasfilm debuted a TV spot for "Episode VIII" Wednesday, featuring several new shots including Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) back in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) had a similar nostalgic moment in 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," suggesting its followup will have a similar mix of throwbacks mixed in with new elements. According to SlashFilm, the new clip also shows Supreme Leader Snoke's throne room with General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), Praetorian Guards and another ominous message. "Darkness rises and light to meet it," Snoke says as Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) lightsaber lights up and we see flashes of Luke and Rey (Daisy Ridley). "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," directed by Rian Johnson, is scheduled for release Dec. 15. The cast also includes John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma) and the late Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia). And looking ahead, Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed there's at least a decade of more "Star Wars" movies on the way. "We're sitting down now, we're talking about the next 10 years of Star Wars stories and we're looking at narratively where that might go," she told The Star Wars Show. "Future stories beyond Episode IX, with these new characters, Rey, Poe, Finn, BB-8." "But we're also looking at working with people that are interested in coming into the Star Wars world and taking us to places that we haven't been yet, and that's exciting too because it's a vast galaxy far, far away. The possibilities are endless!" "Solo: A Star Wars Story," directed by Ron Howard (and Phil Lord and Chris Miller) will be released next on May 25, 2018. J.J. Abrams will write and direct the final film in the new trilogy, "Episode IX" in the original series, scheduled for release May 24, 2019. An Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff movie is expected to be the next standalone film. Syracuse, NY -- One of Syracuse's most powerful law firms continued its expansion into the energy and environmental business by combining with one of its downtown neighbors. Barclay Damon LLP, with its roughly 275 lawyers, is bringing Gilberti Stinziano Heintz & Smith, P.C. into the fold. Barclay Damon recently raised its public profile by moving into an office tower at Warren and Jefferson streets, putting its name on the building. Its lawyers are spread over 11 offices in Upstate New York, Toronto, New York, Newark and Washington D.C. For now, Gilberti's 11 lawyers operate out of an office at 555 E. Genesee St. It specializes in energy, mining, municipal, regional and state government. Gilberti's lawyers will eventually move into Barclay Damon Tower after space has been built out. Barclay Damon, which began in 1855 with two brothers from Tully, evolved into the banking industry, becoming the law firm for Key Bank. But when Key Bank left for Cleveland, the firm had to reinvent itself again. In 2015, it combined with a Buffalo law firm, changing its name from Hiscock & Barclay to Barclay Damon. It has since continued expanding into, among other things, energy industries. The firm also recently added four Massachusetts lawyers specializing in renewable energy. Barclay Damon also handles an encyclopedic variety of other types of civil litigation. The firm's managing partner, John Langan, said successful mergers like this one helped grow the firm from 50 lawyers to more than 275 today. Gilberti CEO William J. Gilberti, Jr. has become a partner at Barclay Damon. The Fremont Creative Collective, in partnership with Midland University, is bringing a variety of local leaders and business owners together to talk about how a city can create a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem. The event is Creative Collectives third annual entrepreneurship conference on November 10th on the campus of Midland University, which will focus on local economic ecosystems. In the past it has always been geared toward general entrepreneurship, but this year we have a theme that we are encouraging all of our speakers to speak about and that is an ecosystem, Brock Ellis, Tech Education Director at Fremont Creative Collective, said. How can Fremont develop an ecosystem that is attractive and helps small businesses and start-ups not only exist but flourish? The conference, which was previously called the May Day Event and was held in the May Brothers Building, has shifted focus and with the partnership with Midland University aims to get students involved in the entrepreneurial process. The event was held in May and we really wanted to shift our focus on to students and so we got a big partnership with Midland University this year, Ellis said. With that partnership we kind of realized May is a terrible time to have an event for students because they are getting ready to graduation and dealing with finals. So we switched to to the fall and are having it on campus to make it as accessible as possible for them to join in the talks. The conference will feature a variety of speakers throughout the day and will begin at 9:30 a.m. with speaker Catherine Lang who is the State Director of the Nebraska Business Development Center, before breaking out into four hour long individual sessions from 10-11 a.m. The breakout session will feature four local speakers who will all touch on different topics surrounding starting and running a business. The speakers will include Corey Ruzicka who is Director of Learning at Sycamore Education; Steve Navarette who is a partner at Shaw, Hull, & Navarette; Connie Kreikemeier Executive Director of Personal & Career Development Center at Midland; and Glenn Ellis who is the founder of Sycamore Education and the Fremont Creative Collective. Following the breakout sessions, speakers will continue throughout the day until 3 p.m., which will lead into a speaker panel to close out the conference. One of the speakers Ellis is excited about is Rebecca Stavick who is the executive director of Do Space in Omaha. Do Space in Omaha is a technology library, and its a really, really cool innovative space, he said. She is a huge advocate for tech education and literacy and community building in general, so she knows probably better than anyone else in the region how to build a community that embraces technology and empowers people to do things they couldnt do before. The conference is completely free and open to the public, and includes a free lunch with online registration. Registration, a map of the speaking venues on Midlands campus, and a full list of speakers at the conference can be found at www.fremontcreativecollective.org/forward-fremont. Sony has shipped 67.5 million PlayStation 4 units worldwide since the console was launched in November 2013. PlayStation 4 sales are still going strong after four years in the market. However, there are several challenges that might make it harder for the console to hold on to its crown. PlayStation 4 Sales Still Going Strong In Sony's earnings report for the quarter ended Sept. 30, the company noted that it shipped 4.2 million PlayStation 4 units during the period compared to 3.9 million units in the same quarter last year and 3.3 million in the quarter ended June 30. The improved PlayStation 4 sales figures show that the four-year-old console is still going strong. Sony has even increased its expected PlayStation 4 sales for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018 to 19 million units, up 1 million units compared to the previous forecast of 18 million units. Sony said that it had sold 67.5 million units of the PlayStation 4 worldwide at the end of its fiscal second quarter. With 7.5 million units shipped so far in its current fiscal year and an expected 19 million units sold by the end of it, Sony is targeting 79 million units of the PlayStation 4 sold by March 31, 2018. The figures reveal that the PlayStation 4 has sold twice as quickly as the PlayStation 3, as the previous-generation console had sold about 34 million units by its fourth year. The PlayStation 4, however, has not been able to match the performance of the PlayStation 2, which had sold over 81 million units by 2004 after its launch in 2000. Challenges For The PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 is still on top of the video game industry, but Sony's console will face several challenges moving forward. First and foremost is the resurgent Nintendo and the wildly popular Nintendo Switch, which has outsold the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in the United States in five out of the seven months since it was launched in March. It remains to be seen how the hybrid console will fare in the holiday season against the PlayStation 4, though, as supply issues might affect the Nintendo Switch's availability. Microsoft's Xbox One, which has long been in second place behind the PlayStation 4, may also see renewed interest with the upcoming Xbox One X. The console will also welcome the Steam record-breaking PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds as an exclusive. Cross-platform play has also been a sensitive topic, with Sony so far refusing to budge in its rejection of enabling the feature. There is no incentive for the PlayStation 4 to agree to cross-platform play with the Xbox One as it sits on top of the industry, but its hardline stance might drive away players to other platforms that would enable it. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Researchers analyzing data from NASAs Kepler space telescope have pinpointed 20 planets that could potentially be habitable and host life. Habitable Worlds The analysis found a treasure trove of planets that orbit sun-like stars, including KOI-7923.01, which is equal to 97 percent of Earths size. The exoplanet, which orbits its star in 395 days, is colder than Earth because it is farther from its parent star, which also happens to be cooler than the sun. The finding implies that the exoplanet has more areas similar to Earths tundra regions than its temperate zones. However, in spite of being on the colder side, KOI-7923.01 is warm and big enough to support liquid water that is crucial to host life. Kepler Mission Earlier, Kepler mission scientists had revealed the clearest catalog created of probable planets in the Milky Way that brought up the total number to 4,034, 2,300 of which have been confirmed as planets. The researchers further added that 219 of the total candidates are new entries into the catalog that were detected earlier this year. Furthermore, two of the recent candidates, referred to as KOI-82.06 and KOI-2926.05, are multi-planet systems, and 10 are terrestrial-size, high-reliability habitable zone candidates. The find also included 30 terrestrial-size planets that are located in the Goldilocks Zone or the habitable zone of their parent star. Now with the recent observations, the number of probable terrestrial-sized candidates located in their star's habitable zones has gone up to 50, with more than 30 confirmed as exoplanets. A new tool called the Robovetter, which automatically analyzes Kepler discoveries, was used to create the catalog that represents Kepler's final survey from the Cygnus constellation, spanning the spacecraft's first four years of data. Incidentally, the nearest candidate to Earth is a world referred to as K77-11, which receives the same energy amount from its star as the Earth does from the sun. The celestial body is only a bit bigger than our planet, at 1.3 Earth radii. Two Categories Of Small Planets Could Help Detect Aliens Apart from new exoplanet candidates, scientists have also detected a significant distinction between the small planets that can help in searching for alien life in the future. The small planets can be categorized into gaseous worlds smaller than Neptune and rocky planets that are the size of Earth. "This new result presented today has implications for understanding the frequency of different types of planets and galaxies, and helping us to advance our knowledge on how planets are formed," said Mario Perez, Kepler program scientist at NASA. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. An arrest has been made in connection with the Oct. 22 hit-and-run accident occurring at Jacks Liquor which resulted in more than $15,000 in property loss and damage. On Thursday afternoon, Jorge Alberto Cruz Aguilar, 24, of Cresco, Iowa, voluntarily spoke with Fremont Police around 1 p.m. at the station, Lt. Ed Watts said. He allegedly took responsibility for the incident, which consisted of a 1990s model red Jeep Grand Cherokee reversing through several pane glass windows at the store entrance before fleeing the scene. He came in and pretty much admitted to everything, Watts said. He admitted that he drove into the building, said that it was an accident and that he panicked and then fled. Aguilar was arrested and charged with criminal mischief in the amount of $5,000 or more; a Class IV felony. Investigator Matt Hultquist handled the investigation, Watts said, however, he was unavailable for comment Thursday. Following the incident, Jacks liquor was closed the remainder of the day Sunday, and all of Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday, general manager Mike Bridges told the Tribune. With that being said, though, there is still a great deal of work needing to be completed before the store has the same look it did prior to the crash. In fact, a portion of the stores entrance remains boarded up awaiting glass installation. We were actually still moving things around yesterday and today, Bridges said. Obviously, we will keep doing that until we get back everything where it belongs. Observations from U.S. space agency NASA and European Space Agencys telescopes have unveiled that Jupiter generates X-rays into its atmosphere. Consequently, the phenomenon causes the beautiful auroras seen above the gaseous giants two poles quite akin to the aurora borealis seen on Earth. Jupiters Puzzling Auroras The finding, however, has taken scientists by surprise because huge gaseous planets are not known to generate any X-rays in fact, neither does Jupiters neighboring planet, Saturn. Therefore, the researchers are pondering over the question on how does Jupiter emit X-rays? Moreover, researchers have discovered another puzzling occurrence, observed by them for the first time that each of Jupiters poles pulses at totally different, and sometimes even, erratic frequencies. The northern pole auroras have been found to flare up without consistency or any warning, whereas the southern pole auroras pulse every 11 minutes consistently. Charged particles have to hit Jupiters atmosphere at exceptionally fast speeds in order to generate the X-ray pulses that weve seen, said Licia Ray, study coauthor from UKs Lancaster University. We dont yet understand what processes cause this, but these observations tell us that they act independently in the northern and southern hemispheres, she added. The findings related to Jupiters auroras are a breakthrough in what scientists have known about space and can totally change their perception of how celestial bodies generate auroras. At present, scientists have suggested two explanations for Jupiters poles acting independently of each other. The first suggestion is that conditions in the giant planets magnetosphere can shift quickly, therefore whatever influences one pole may not have a similar impact when it reaches the other pole. Another explanation is that the northern and southern poles of Jupiter somehow have different general activities. The researchers, however, added that some of the ideas they have proposed, regarding the auroras, could inevitably be wrong. Jupiter Missions Could Help In Solving Auroras Mystery NASAs Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, should gather data that will help solve the puzzle of the auroras related to the largest known planet of the solar system, according to the researchers. Moreover, ESAs Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is tentatively scheduled to reach the planet by 2029, where it will spend three years observing the gaseous giant and its three largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, in detail. The observations made by the spacecraft could be the key to solving the mystery of Jupiters auroras, as well as other puzzles associated with the planet. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A 17-year-old boy was cited for driving under the influence of alcohol after allegedly causing an accident late Friday evening, Fremont Police reported. Officers were dispatched at 11:30 p.m. to the 1700 block of North Broad Street in regard to a personal injury accident. A 2005 Audi being driven by the minor allegedly crossed the center line, striking another vehicle before crashing into a tree, police said. The driver of the struck vehicle was uninjured. The minor driver complained of head pain and was transferred to Fremont Health Medical Center. After being removed from his vehicle, police say an empty beer bottle was located. Because the 17 year old showed signs of impairment, a preliminary breath test was administered, which he failed. The boy was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, being a minor in possession of alcohol and driving without a valid operators license. Trinity Lutheran Schools in Fremont is hosting a running fundraiser as way to get more involved with the community and also to support an Omaha-based veterans organization. On Sunday, Run for Warriors, a 5k-run and 1-mile run, is being held Sunday afternoon with the races starting and ending at the school, 1546 N. Luther Road, said Ashley Waggy, Trinity instructor and race coordinator. We were just thinking about how we can get Trinity even more into the community and we have never hosted a run before, Waggy said during a Wednesday interview with the Tribune. So it kind of started off with the idea of having a color run, and then after talking with our committee, we decided that a color run wasnt really the direction they wanted to go with it. One committee member, Sarah Brandt, spoke about how one of her friends took part in a veterans run held in Iowa, and how memorable of an experience it was. She said that it was amazing to see civilians running next to veterans and people that are still serving in the military, Waggy said. And we thought this was a great way for Trinity to do something good in the community for our veterans that live here, as well as in surrounding communities. The races are being held from 3-5 p.m. with a pre-race ceremony being held at 2:20 p.m. The Offutt Honor Guard will be doing the presentation of colors, and Jackson Brettman (former Trinity student and current FHS student) will be playing the National Anthem on the Trumpet. We will also have Gen. Roger Lempke giving a brief speech 10 minutes before racetime, she said. The 5k run costs $15 for veterans and active duty military, and that simply covers the expense of a shirt and other items included in a swag bag that every participant receives. For adult civilians ages 19 and older the 5k run costs $35. The adult 1-mile run costs $20. For students ages 6 through 18, the 5k run costs $25 and the 1-mile run costs $15. The 1-mile run costs $15 for veterans and current military members, too. The proceeds collected from the two events are being divided among Trinity Lutheran Schools and Omahas Wounded Warriors Family Support. The funds will stay right here in Nebraska and given to veterans who return home and need certain things so they can live their everyday life again, Waggy said. The community support surrounding the Run for Warriors event has been phenomenal. We have 176 participants, which is way more than we thought we would get having this for our first year, she said. We didnt want to have huge expectations and then have it not pan out. I wanted to have 50 I would have been happy with that, and now we are up to almost 200 runners so Im really excited about that. About 85-percent of the runners are civilian, and 40-percent of the runners for both races are made up of students, Waggy said. We are civilian-heavy right now, she said. But we have been in contact with (a man) who is part of the military, and he has a unit that has the option of coming to run in the Run for Warriors or be at drill. So he said that there is a strong possibility that we will have soldiers running with us. Waggy is excited for Trinity students to be part of the festivities. The most exciting thing is for everybody to be here supporting our veterans, she said. And also to have our students experience what it means to be there for our vets. They can see that they dont have to go out there and give money or anything like that; just being there and saying thank you and showing their support is all they need to do. Those interested in registering for either of the upcoming Run for Warriors run are encouraged to visit www.tlsfremont.com. D'IBERVILLE, Miss. (AP) Police are searching for a Louisiana woman whose car was found abandoned along an interstate highway in Mississippi. Linda Thompson, 67, was last seen Friday at her home in Baton Rouge. Police found Thompson's car later that day 140 miles away along Interstate 10 in D'Iberville, Mississippi, the Sun Herald reported. D'Iberville police Lt. Jason King said officers towed the 2005 Lexus and got a warrant to search it, but found nothing unusual inside. Baton Rouge police said Tuesday that they believe Thompson suffers from mental illness. Police said authorities cannot rule out the possibility of foul play. King described Thompson as having blond hair and green eyes. He said no one has been able to contact her since she was last seen. Anyone with information is asked to contact the DIberville Police Department at 228-396-4252 or the Baton Rouge Police Department at 225-389-8617. Two fire districts in southern Livingston Parish are up for ten-year tax renewals on the Nov. 18 ballot. Residents in French Settlement-area District 8 and Maurepas-area District 9 will vote this month on whether to continue paying property taxes that fund their local firefighters. The tax millages generate annual revenues of about $164,000 in French Settlement and $193,000 in Maurepas, according to the Louisiana Secretary of State's website. French Settlement Fire Chief Alan Guitreau said the 16.63 mill tax, plus an annual fundraiser, pays the department's costs for equipment and training of its 32 volunteers. "Whats at stake is everybody's insurance rating. What people pay in millage is nothing compared to what you would pay with fire insurance without a fire department," he said. He said the department responded to 392 fire and medical incidents last year. The district has a class 5 rating, he said. Fire districts are ranked from 1 to 10, with 1 being the best and 10 meaning there is no fire department at all. Livingston Parishs Fire District 8 gains improved fire rating FRENCH SETTLEMENT Area residents should see their fire insurance rates go down as a result of Fire Protection District 8s improved rating, Maurepas Fire Chief Samantha Breaud said the 10.38 mill property tax in her jurisdiction covers her entire budget of two paid firefighters and training, supplies and trucks for 38 volunteers. "If our millage doesn't pass, we probably would only be able to last another year or so before we would have to be seeking more funding," she said. The Maurepas-area department has a fire rating of 6, according to Breaud. She said the department has worked its way from a 10 to a 6 since 2005. "We would prefer to stay on top of things and continue moving the department forward," she said. Breaud said the department has responded to 402 calls so far this year. Of those, there were 283 medical emergencies, 18 structural fires, 50 car accidents and 14 mutual aids with other districts. Another 37 calls were for miscellaneous incidents, according to department records. Fire protection taxes are typically considered a shoo-in because of the effect a fire district has on property insurance rates. But, in December 2014, residents in Holden, a Livingston Parish town just 20 miles north, narrowly voted down a tax renewal for its fire department. The tax was placed back on the ballot in May 2015 and won by a wide margin. Livingston Parish voters approve four tax renewals on Saturday ballot by wide margins Livingston Parish voters approved four property tax renewals Saturday, including a scaled-back version of the Health Unit tax voters rejected For District 8 residents taking the homestead exemption, the 16.63 mill tax costs $41.58 per year for a house worth $100,000 and $124.73 for a $150,000 house. For District 9 residents taking the homestead exemption, the 10.38 mill tax costs $34.50 per year for a $100,000 house and $103.50 for a house worth $150,000. Early voting runs from Friday through Nov. 11. Election day is Nov. 18. Editor's note: This article was changed on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, to note that early voting starts on Friday, Nov. 3. A Mexican national in the United States illegally when he allegedly shot and killed a Baton Rouge boy on the teen's 16th birthday in March was sentenced to two years in federal prison Thursday on gun and immigration charges stemming from the fatal shooting. Octavio Bringas-Posadas, 50, also is under indictment in state court on a negligent homicide charge in the killing of Darius Plummer at Bringas-Posadas' Southpark Drive apartment off Airline Highway. Plummer was the best friend of Bringas-Posadas' son. Assistant Federal Public Defender Mark Upton told U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick that Bringas-Posadas, who pleaded guilty in June to the federal charges, also intends to accept responsibility for Plummer's death in state court. +2 Mexican national pleads guilty to federal charges stemming from fatal teen shooting in Baton Rouge A 50-year-old Mexican national accused of fatally shooting a Baton Rouge boy on his 16th birthday in March pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal Bringas-Posadas asked Dick for forgiveness through an interpreter and said he is very remorseful. "He says he is remorseful? He wasn't remorseful when he fled," Plummer's mother, Trina Plummer, said outside Dick's courtroom after Bringas-Posadas was sentenced. Police have said Bringas-Posadas told a relative he was playing with a gun on March 13 when it fired by accident and struck the boy. He also told the relative on the phone that he was not coming back to Baton Rouge and would not talk with police, according to his arrest warrant. Bringas-Posadas was stopped on Interstate 10 in Lake Charles. "It's just pure ignorance, carelessness," Trina Plummer said of Bringas-Posadas' actions. She said Bringas-Posadas' son also was present at the shooting and could have been hit. Upton called the fatal shooting a "massive tragedy." "He is incredibly remorseful," Upton told Dick. "If he could he would take it back and change places." Negligent homicide carries up to five years in prison. Bringas-Posadas pleaded not guilty to that charge in August. His next appearance in state court is Nov. 20. +2 Man in U.S. illegally pleads not guilty in March shooting death of Baton Rouge teen A man in this country illegally when he allegedly shot and killed a 16-year-old Baton Rouge boy on the teen's birthday in March pleaded not gu "He is ready to go forth and accept responsibility (in state court) as he has in this court," Upton told the judge. Dick said Bringas-Posadas' two-year term will run concurrent with whatever sentence he might receive in state court in the fatal shooting. Bringas-Posadas was deported to Mexico in 2012 after a Baton Rouge drug arrest but later returned to the United States. Dick has said he is likely to be deported again. The judge also ordered Bringas-Posadas to forfeit three handguns and ammunition found during a search of his car and apartment. Almost 2,000 prisoners walked away from Louisiana prisons, jails and parole offices Wednesday, the first to benefit from a new law to shrink the sentences of non-violent inmates in an effort to reduce the state's sky-high incarceration rate. Even as the inmates moved on to life on the outside, local law enforcement officials expressed concern about whether Louisiana has done enough to prepare for their release, while criminal justice reform advocates said they are working on ramping up services. The law releasing this group of prisoners was a part of the 10-bill criminal justice package passed in the spring, which proponents said would save money by reducing the number of locked-up offenders and, over time, chip away at an incarceration rate that has remained the highest in the nation for many years. +3 Full criminal justice package, to reduce state's prison population, clears House and Senate All 10 bills of a dramatic overhaul of Louisiana's criminal justice system have passed both chambers of the Legislature, and are within reach East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III said he believes the intent to release these inmates 128 of whom were prosecuted in his parish came from a good place, but he worries about their long term success without more help. "Our concern is that these people are just being released, without a whole lot of assistance being given to them," Moore said. "We're just not giving them any help. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." He said he wishes the Legislature pushed for these changes in sentencing along with more reentry assistance. Under the law, nonviolent offenders are eligible for good time release after serving 35 percent of their sentence, down from 40 percent before the change, which also applies retroactively. The average prisoner is getting out around 60 to 90 days earlier. But Kelly Orians, an attorney for the nonprofit The First 72+ based in New Orleans that works to support the formerly incarcerated, said these prisoners who are getting out under the accelerated release were going to be leaving state prisons or local jails either way, whether it was later this month or in the coming year. "It's not an overwhelming number at all, it's an absolute necessity," Orians said. "We have to address mass incarceration." She said there are never enough resources to help former prisoners address the hurdles they encounter after their sentences, but she doesn't think that means they shouldn't walk free. Orians said organizations across the state, like her own, have known this date was coming and have done what they can to be ready. She has been leading classes across southeast Louisiana to educate lawyers how to best assist this specific population with legal issues they might encounter, and has a growing list of these attorneys ready to volunteer on their behalf. "We have been prepared generally to see an increase in people getting out," Orians said. "Over the last couple of months we have been refining our intake system and our procedures in the office so we can operate as quickly as possible.... (but) of course we are limited in our capacity." 17 prison reentry-focused groups in Baton Rouge area receive $1 million to lower recidivism rates It hasn't yet been a year since Andrew Hundley was released from prison. Dennis Schrantz, a co-director of the state's Center for Justice Innovation which works on reentry programs both inside and outside of prison, said he agrees with Moore that there should be more programs for the formerly incarcerated. He's spearheading the Louisiana Prison Reentry Initiative, a new state program set for implementation in 2018 that would bring strategic planning and personal evaluations to a segment of prisoners reentering the five biggest parishes. While, the program will not fully apply to Wednesday's newly released prisoners, Schrantz said through its development they have created a stronger network for the formerly incarcerated. "We've done a better job of saying who has the resources and how to connect with them," Schrantz said. "(But) it's not like the system has improved because the Legislature decided to release (this group)." Ricky Babin, the District Attorney for Ascension, Assumption and St. James parishes, said his main concern, however, is that these offenders could pose a threat for citizens. They went through the 30 prisoners from his district who were released and found red flags in their criminal histories. A lot of them were, true, lower level offenders, but some might pose a more heightened risk than the charge they were convicted under, Babin said. This could happen, for example, if a prisoner took a plea deal. But others countered that these inmates are like others who routinely leave Louisiana's prisons. "Apprehension (about this issue has made it seem like) there's a greater public risk with this group, and there isn't," said Andrew Hundley, formerly incarcerated himself, and now the co-director of the Center for Justice Innovation, which works on reentry programs in and out of prisons. He said he hopes the atmosphere around this release will not affect the chance at employment for these prisoners, many of whom have learned trades or skills while behind bars. "There is of course some risk here. It's a risk the state's decided to take," Schratz said. "When you start to reverse these things, there is some risk, but it's a risk the legislature has decided to take, and law enforcement supported... I don't think that folks should be overly concerned." These released offenders are expected to return to the parish where they were prosecuted: 164 from Caddo, 139 from Jefferson, 139 from Orleans, 82 from St. Tammany, 60 from Lafayette, according to numbers from the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety. The November spike in released prisoners is not a trend people should expect to see for the coming months, said Department of Corrections spokesman Ken Pastorick. After this release, Pastorick said the corrections agency expects the number of releases to be just a bit more than the previous monthly averages typically around 1,500 prisoners. Jimmy LeBlanc, secretary of Louisiana's Department of Public Safety and Corrections, noted that the release Wednesday is modest compared to the 18,000 state inmates who walk out of prisons every year. He hopes the public views it as an opportunity to reset the states relationship with incarceration. LeBlanc said that for years, few people have asked him about the services available to inmates upon their release. In the past few weeks, he has suddenly been deluged with questions. Nobody seemed to care, and now everybodys caring, and I am excited about that, he said. The long-term goal of the criminal justice reform package is to take money away from incarceration and redirect some of it toward rehabilitation and re-entry services. This is an investment, its not an expense. Were going to continue to save money with this investment. Those savings will grow over time, I assure you, Leblanc said. Moore said because of the gap he's seeing in services, he hopes to set up a way to support these prisoners on his own by meeting with the former inmates, asking what their needs are and then introducing them to specific resources in the community. "We're going to be able to deal with this because they're coming anyway, the tougher part is doing 1,900 on one day," Moore said. Advocate staff writers Matt Sledge and Mark Ballard contributed to this report. Eleven people who applied to become the next Baton Rouge police chief have passed a civil service exam and will move forward to the next step in the hiring process: evaluation by a committee of community leaders who will provide recommendations to the mayor. The applicants who passed are Shawn Caldwell, Myron Daniels, Sharon Douglas, Richard Harrell, Darryl Honore, Jeremy Kent, Mark Kraus, Robert McGarner, Murphy Paul Jr., Ronald Stevens and Samuel Wyatt. Riley Harbor III did not receive the required passing score of 75 percent or higher. The Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board held a special meeting Thursday morning to review and approve the scores, allowing the board to forward the passing applications to Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, who will ultimately choose the next chief. All 12 applicants for Baton Rouge police chief move forward in hiring process A civil service board determined Thursday that all 12 applicants to become the next Baton Rouge police chief meet the minimum qualifications f I am confident that from the list of individuals presented that I can select a chief who is experienced, progressive and visionary, Broome said in a statement Thursday. My intent is to choose (someone) who can best lead our men and women of the BRPD and can best establish trust between all of our citizens and our officers." The exam was administered Oct. 10 and included both an interview and a written test. Daniels had the top score with 93 percent, according to records obtained by The Advocate. The other scores were as follows: Wyatt with 92 percent, Kent with 89 percent, Harrell with 89 percent, Kraus with 88 percent, Douglas with 85 percent, Paul with 85 percent, Caldwell with 85 percent, Stevens with 82 percent, McGarner with 81 percent and Honore with 75 percent. Harbor's score was not provided. Broome said she created a committee to review applications and conduct interviews, then recommend five finalists from which she is expected to chose the next chief. The committee consists of Jan Bernard, Jennifer Carwile, former U.S. Attorney and former U.S. Rep. Don Cazayoux, Metro Councilman LaMont Cole, Pastor Errol Domingue, Pastor Tommie Gipson, former U.S. Attorney Walt Green, Cordell Haymon, Pat LeDuff, state Rep. Ted James, Ernest Johnson, Julie Baxter Payer, Melissa Thompson and Metro Councilwoman Tara Wicker. They meet for the first time next week, but Darryl Gissel, chief administrative officer for the mayor, said that a clear timeline beyond that meeting has yet to materialize. He said officials are still hoping to have a new chief named by sometime in January, though scheduling interviews with candidates in the meantime could affect the process. Officials have not yet determined whether the Thursday meeting will be open to the public, or whether members of the public will have a chance to meet with top candidates and participate in the selection process, Gissel said. The police chief position opened in July after former Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. announced his retirement following a standoff with Broome, who had promised during her 2016 campaign to conduct a national search to replace him. But James Llorens, who was interim chief administrative officer until Gissel was hired, recently said Broome was forced to abandon the national search because the unusual civil service requirements make the job unattractive for qualified candidates outside the state. All of the applicants have worked in Louisiana law enforcement. Lt. Jonny Dunnam, the current interim chief, did not apply for the position though he had taken and passed the civil service test for the chief three times in the past most recently in 2013, when he scored the highest on the test. Dunnam has said he plans to retire in about three years. Baton Rouge police chief search: Learn more about the 12 applicants for the job All 12 people who have applied to be the next Baton Rouge police chief are working in law enforcement in Louisiana, and five of them currently There are five applicants who are currently Baton Rouge police officers, including Daniels, who has been with the department for 19 years and applied for the chief's position in 2013 after former Police Chief Dewayne White was fired. Daniels scored a point higher than Dabadie on the civil service exam. The other applicants who are currently Baton Rouge police officers are Douglas, Harbor, Honore and McGarner. Douglas joined the agency in 2004 and works in the departments recruiting and training services. Harbor, who joined the force in 1996, works in the community policing department and is a pastor. Honore has a master's degree in criminal justice from Southern University and joined the department in 1995. McGarner, a U.S. Army veteran, has been with the department since 1989 and works in its Street Crimes Division. The other seven chief candidates are based either in Baton Rouge or around Louisiana. Stevens previously worked at the Baton Rouge Police Department from January 1975 to July 2004. In November 2008, he joined the Louisiana Department of Justice where he still works. Three current Lake Charles Police Department officers also applied for the position: Caldwell, who has worked there since 1993, Harrell since 1995 and Kraus since 1989. The agency's website states that Caldwell is deputy chief of operations, Kraus is deputy chief of investigations, and Harrell is a spokesman. Kent joined the University of Louisiana at Monroe Police Department in November 2016 after 14 years with the Monroe Police Department. Wyatt is currently the director of investigations in the office of internal audit for the LSU System. He spent 18 years in law enforcement with the Caddo Parish Sheriff's Office and the Bossier City Police. He is a doctoral candidate at LSU scheduled to graduate in December. Paul has worked for 23 years with Louisiana State Police and is currently deputy superintendent of the Bureau of Investigations, according to the agency's website. State prosecutors are raising alarms about a legislative audit that found the system used to keep track inmates is riddled with problems, including trouble accurately calculating dates when inmates are to be released. In addition, the agency spent $3.6 million for a new tracking system that failed because of inadequate planning and testing, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera said in his report. The audit, said Pete Adams, executive director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, confirmed some things that we have seen that have raised our concerns that were not getting all the Correction information that we were promised. The state Department of Corrections on Wednesday released more than 1,900 convicted state prison inmates prior to the completion of their sentences. The release was part of a comprehensive revamp of Louisiana criminal justice system that was passed into law earlier this year. Louisiana releasing more than 1,900 inmates early; here's why Starting at midnight and going throughout Wednesday morning, more than 1,900 convicted inmates are walking out of prisons across the state bef We agreed to some things to help this thing pass because we thought something needed to be done, said Adams, who was instrumental in passing the revamp. Were just wondering how trustworthy this information is. Were talking about misidentifying offenders and misidentifying release dates. Its concerning, but its too early to tell if those apparent errors have serious consequences, Adams added. The audit report, which was released earlier this week, said the department "does not have a formalized, consistent method for calculating offender release dates." Auditors said they asked two employees of the state Department of Corrections to calculate the release date for an offender. Each employee used a different method, and their results differed by 186 days, according to the study. The agency also lacks a policy that requires initial release date computations to be reviewed by a supervisor, according to the audit. Corrections Secretary James LeBlanc said those errors come about because Louisianas criminal code isnt as well organized as it is in other states. Staff must manually check with the 20 different laws, then visit 100 different data points in every inmates file to make the calculations. Its a very complicated process, LeBlanc said. He had hoped that the new computer system would consolidate the work being done in the probation and parole offices with that being done in the prison system. But when we turned on the computer, it just couldnt keep up with all that we were doing, LeBlanc said. The state uses the Criminal and Justice Unified Network CAJUN a system that began in the 1970's and was updated in 1991. Officials spent $3.6 million between 2012-16 to replace it. The new system went live on June 15, 2015 but was taken down six weeks later. A contractor has been hired to determine if the computer platform can be changed. LeBlanc said hell know in December whether they can make it work or whether we have to chunk the whole thing and start over. In another area, the report said the state system for overseeing where offenders are located is flawed. Of 100 cases reviewed, 11 inmates were at facilities that differed with what was shown in state records. Of those four were violent offenders, the report says. In one case, department officials thought an offender convicted of second-degree murder was at the Evangeline Parish jail for 166 days. Actually, he was at another site more than 100 miles away. Were fixing that immediately, LeBlanc said. He spoke Monday with the sheriffs that run the parish jails where about half of the states 35,000 inmates serve their sentences. The others are in one of Louisiana's nine correctional facilities. LeBlanc said that over the years sheriffs would take four or five days to alert the state that a prisoner has been moved. They need to tell us immediately. They can do that now, he said. During a period as artists-in-residence at the National Museum of Australia's Songlines: Tracking Seven Sisters exhibition, several Red Desert Indigenous artists have been providing visitors with a glimpse into their world, art styles and techniques. Martumili Artists was established in 2006 as an artist-run art centre to create art spaces and studios in seven Indigenous communities. It enabled traditional people to create meaningful works of art including baskets and paintings while living on country. Songlines at the National Museum of Australia Indigenous artist Nola Taylor demonstrating traditional weaving. Credit:Rohan Thomson Operated from a central office in Newman in the Pilbara area of Western Australia, it was established by traditional owners and their families from Karlamilyi (Rudall River) and the Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson Desert areas of Western Australia. Judith Samson, 29, said she had been an art worker with Martumili for the past five years, cataloguing works and selling paintings, among other duties. Nor have any of Australia's agreements ever had to face official scrutiny after the event . "Not that I am aware of," were the words used by a foreign affairs official at a parliamentary hearing. Seriously. Korea, Japan, China. None of the three big agreements boasted about by Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull has been subjected to an independent assessment of its benefits and costs. And nor has the far bigger, 5600-page, Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement signed by trade minister Andrew Robb shortly before he resigned and took up a position with the Chinese investor that runs the Port of Darwin. This week we learnt that it will end the practice of signing Australia up to trade agreements that haven't survived a benefit-cost analysis. Labor won't fully return to its original expensive plan to deliver fibre to 93 per cent of households and businesses. Credit:Glenn Hunt The US-Australia free trade agreement at least faced an unofficial analysis about the time of its 10th birthday in 2015. An economic modeller from the Australian National University applied the framework developed by the Productivity Commission and found it had cut rather than boosted trade between Australia and the US and the rest of world. Trade between Australia and the US also slid, but for other reasons. It's easy to see why it cut trade with the rest of the world. Like most exclusive agreements it gave special access to exports from its members. Here's how it would have worked with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (had Donald Trump not pulled the pin): Vietnam would have been a member but Thailand would not have been. The US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics has found that Vietnam would have exported more to Australia (which would have boosted its economy) in place of Thailand, which would have exported less (which would have harmed its economy). And Australia would have had to change the way it made things, cutting inputs from countries such as Thailand and Indonesia under complex "rules of origin" if it wanted special access to the US, even where that meant much higher costs. The Korea-Australia agreement included 5200 rules of origin. It's little wonder that the business organisation closest to the action, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, finds its members less than keen to use the agreements trumpeted by the Coalition. Only 15 per cent use and understand the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, 5 per cent use it without understanding it, 17 per cent understand but don't use it, and 22 per cent neither understand nor use it. Another 41 per cent say it's not relevant to them. It's got me wondering: if NSW or Victoria did cross that threshold, would news organisations continue to include the same potentially life-saving referral to suicide-prevention services in their reports? Or will that footnote need to be updated, with one message for those whose deaths the publishers wish to avert, and another for the people whose deaths they are happy to facilitate? On Thursday, Victoria's upper house is expected to debate legislation to make assisted suicide legal in that state, while here in NSW, a bill sits in the upper house waiting to be debated. I have even seen it included in editorials explicitly endorsing the right of certain people to end their own lives with the help of a doctor. It's a dark, stark dissonance, and a confronting illustration of former prime minister Paul Keating's observation that, if we make assisted suicide legal, "there will be people whose lives we honour and those we believe are better off dead". A familiar footnote or something similar appears at the bottom of countless news reports on "voluntary assisted dying" (the latest euphemism for euthanasia and assisted suicide): "If you are troubled by this report, experiencing a personal crisis or thinking about suicide, you can call Lifeline 131 114 or beyondblue 1300 224 636 or visit lifeline.org.au or beyondblue.org.au." Nia Sims, who suffers from the terminal illness scleroderma, and her friend Jane Morris celebrate the decision in Victoria's lower house to pass the dying with dignity bill. Credit:Justin McManus And what about the suicide prevention hotlines themselves? Will they screen out people whose wish to die sounds rational, and who may qualify under the relevant legislation, distinguishing them from the thousands of callers desperately seeking help to avoid the tragedy of suicide? Will those hotlines be asked to refer people who can legally end their own lives to places where they can get more information on how to go about it? Will the hotlines acquiesce in such requests? And what about the arbitrary thresholds that the legislation sets? The NSW bill would make assisted suicide illegal for people under 25, but legal for everyone else. So if you're a 24-year-old with a terminal illness, and intent on ending your own life, are we (as a community) supposed to counsel you that suicide is not the answer that you never know what the future holds, and that while there's life there's hope? Or should that conversation be more respectful of the newfound right to suicide? Something along the lines of "patience friend (or son, or daughter, or wife, or husband, or Mum, or Dad), your birthday is just around the corner and then you can do as you wish". How reliable are the so-called "safeguards" anyway? Today the NSW bill says you must be 25, but in Victoria you only need to be 18. How long before the push to end such arbitrary interstate ageism? After all, once the threshold is breached once our community officially says, "Yes, for some people suicide is OK" we're really just quibbling over details. It's not a question of "whether" taking of one's own life is OK, it's just a question of "who" gets to enjoy that strange privilege. And what about mistakes? Our legal system prizes its cornerstone principle of "innocent until proven guilty". The great jurist Lord Blackstone said, "Better that 10 guilty persons go free than that one innocent party suffer". And yet, despite this, innocent people go to jail. Lawyers, juries, judges, police and witnesses all make mistakes, because the fact is, no human system of safeguards is infallible. The historical tension between capital and labour is largely over, bar the occasional rhetorical skirmish, because labour now owns so much capital through retirement savings. To borrow from the advertising by Australia's industry-based superannuation funds, consistently the best performers in the superannuation business, we really are all in this together. Australia has but a third of 1 per cent of the world's population but is the world's 13th-biggest economy overall and the 10th-richest per head. As a result of the retirement savings system introduced a quarter of a century ago in an enlightened collaboration between business, unions and government, Australia has the fourth biggest pool of superannuation. Yet, because of stagnant wages and the surging cost of energy, healthcare and housing, inequality in income and wealth has been growing. A little over a decade ago, the richest 20per cent held 58.6 per cent of wealth, while the poorest fifth had 1.4 per cent. In recent years the corresponding figures have been above 60 per cent and down to 1 per cent. Credit:Illustration: Jim Pavlidis The low growth of wages is not just making life difficult for the poorest in our community to the point where 3 million are below the poverty line but is shackling the entire economy because people have insufficient cash and confidence. This is the context in which the ACTU is advocating that Australia emulate Britain in adopting a minimum living wage, set at 60 per cent of the median income. This would mean an increase of $80 a week in the minimum wage of $695, phased in over two years. It is an argument consistent with recent recommendations by Australia's most conservative economic and policy institution, the Reserve Bank. The greatest form of social justice is a job, and the greatest source of employment is private businesses. So, an unduly large increase in the minimum wage would be counter-productive. Equally, as the Reserve Bank and many private sector economists hold, the lack of growth in wages dampens spending, profits and employment. Senior officials considering lending public money to develop Australia's biggest coal mine have known for months of environmental and financial concerns surrounding the proponent Adani, internal emails reveal. The emails, obtained under freedom of information laws, have fuelled the mine's opponents, who say granting the $900 million loan would pose unacceptable risks to taxpayers and the Commonwealth. The Adani coal mine would be Australia's largest. Credit:Darren Pateman Indian mining giant Adani has proposed a $16.5 billion Carmichael coal mine in Queensland's Gallilee Basin, sparking legal challenges and widespread protests. Australia's big four banks have ruled out funding the project, and Adani has sought a federal government loan to build a railway line from the mine to the Abbot Point coal terminal, near the Great Barrier Reef. Actor Russell Crowe has lashed out at Australia's handling of the escalating situation at the Manus Island detention centre, labelling it a "nation's shame" and offering to house and support refugees himself. More than 600 men are refusing to leave the now-decommissioned centre in Papua New Guinea and relocate to alternative accommodation. They have expressed concerns for their safety, and asylum seeker advocates say the facilities are not ready. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has also reiterated her country's offer to take 150 refugees from Australia's detention centres, and said she would raise the issue of Australia's tough treatment of asylum seekers, including the men on Manus, in her first meeting with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this weekend. Ms Ardern said New Zealand was "lucky" not to be dealing with a situation like Australia's. A refugee living in Australia's offshore detention centre on Nauru has been killed in a motorcycle accident. The 29-year-old Bangladeshi man "died after the motorcycle on which he was travelling collided with another vehicle", according to the Nauruan government, which said police were investigating. The Nauru detention centre has been "open" since late 2015, allowing refugees and asylum seekers to move freely around the 21-square kilometre island nation. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The government also directly addressed rumours circulating on social media that the death was not an accident, branding them "false". The Nauru detention centre has been "open" since late 2015, allowing refugees and asylum seekers to move freely around the 21-square kilometre island nation. When photos emerged of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau trick-or-treating with his family for Halloween this week I held my breath and braced for the backlash. Unsurprisingly, the world swooned at the way Trudeau prioritised being a dad, not to mention his rather endearing costume of Clark Kent. But what about his son? Was no one thinking about the children?! Justin Trudeau takes his youngest son Hadrien, dressed as Paw Patrol character Skye, trick-or-treating. Credit:AP We now have photographic evidence that Trudeau allowed his three-year-old son Hadrien to be dressed up as a girl. More specifically, the toddler dressed up as Skye, the character from Paw Patrol, complete with a pink dress and pink accessories. To the uninitiated, the Nickelodeon TV series is about five male rescue dogs and only one female rescue dog a gender split not dissimilar to real life. (Skye's probably paid less than her male co-stars too.) Nearly 50,000 Australians and 5000 federal public servants have had sensitive personal information exposed online as part of one of the nation's biggest ever data breaches. Employees of the Department of Finance, the Australian Electoral Commission and National Disability Insurance Agency have been caught up in the massive leak caused by a private contractor, along with more than 40,000 private sector workers from insurer AMP, utility UGL and Dutch multinational Rabobank. The leaked information included names, passwords, ID data, phone numbers, as well as credit card numbers and corporate information including salaries and expenses, IT News reported on Thursday. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet confirmed it was aware of a breach involving a third party contractor, but said the data exposed was historical, archived and partially anonymised. Plans for forced public service relocations haven't slowed amid Parliament's citizenship crisis, despite warnings from the ACT government of $110 million in damage to Canberra's economy for every 1000 jobs lost. The Turnbull government is currently considering submissions from portfolio areas facing decentralisation moves away from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, despite the plan's architects Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash being removed from Parliament by the High Court. Acting minister for regional development Darren Chester. Credit:Jessica Hromas Acting Regional Development Minister Darren Chester described the moves as a key Coalition policy supported by cabinet, while the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is leading implementation efforts. In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry considering the Nationals-led decentralisation push, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr warned regional NSW and the ACT would suffer and federal government agencies would work less effectively if forced to relocate. A punter accused of the brutal killing of Sydney bookmaker Charles Skarratt in 1989 is the son of a reformed gambler who devoted half his life to helping others combat their addiction. Mr Skarratt, a well-known identity within the greyhound racing industry, was found dead in the garage of his home in Woolwich, on Sydney's lower north shore, on December 22, 1989. Charles Skarratt was murdered in the garage of his Woolwich home. Credit:Michele Mossop Police claim the 72-year-old was ambushed as he got out of his car inside his garage about 1am. He was bound, assaulted, stabbed, and robbed of about $25,000 cash the takings from a Dapto greyhound meet held the night before. No one was arrested at the time and the case was shelved for almost 30 years until Unsolved Homicide Squad detectives reviewed the case in 2016 and re-tested several exhibits. The University of Sydney has rejected calls from its staff to make a public statement in support of marriage equality. Vice-chancellor Michael Spence reiterated his belief that advocating a "yes" vote would compromise the institution and have "a potentially chilling effect on debate". Staff at the University of Sydney claim the university is out of step with other universities that publicly support same-sex marriage. But staff claim the university's neutral stance is out of step with other Australian universities. A delegation of staff rallied outside the office of the vice-chancellor on Thursday to deliver an open letter that also called on the university to encourage its students, staff and alumni to vote "yes" in the same-sex marriage survey, which closes on November 7. Alleged whistleblower and independent candidate Rick Flori has resigned from the states police service in an open letter, saying he has lost faith in its culture and has no confidence in its management. The former Gold Coast police officer, who is accused of misconduct in public office for allegedly leaking CCTV footage of a brutal police bashing to the media, posted the resignation letter to his campaign website on Thursday. Alleged whistleblower cop Rick Flori leaves the Brisbane Supreme Court. Credit:Jorge Branco The former officer was suspended without pay after the alleged leak. He claimed a gradual slippage of leadership and a declining morale was impacting the way crime is managed, reported and investigated. Voters on Brisbanes eastside will return to polling booths on January 20 to select a new Brisbane City councillor to replace Labors Shayne Sutton. The Greens have confirmed they will run a candidate, given the success of Jonathan Sri in the Gabba Ward, which covers West End and South Brisbane. Voters will choose a new candidate to replace Morningside councillor Shayne Sutton on January 20. Credit:Glenn Hunt Cr Sutton announced last week she would retire when she said she was moving to Townsville with husband Stephen Beckett, who had accepted a senior job with Townsville City Council. Cr Sutton served as a councillor for 13 years, including four years as Labors opposition leader when future premier Campbell Newman was Brisbanes lord mayor. A Perth man has been charged after 30 years with the Melbourne murder of 27-year-old Ranny Yun. Ms Yun's body was found in her Springvale home on October 15, 1987. Ranny Yun was found dead in her home in Windsor Avenue, Springvale. Cold case detectives from Victoria arrested a 49-year-old Thornlie man on Thursday and are applying to extradite him to Victoria. At the time, investigators said Ms Yun had been a member of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge and had fled to Australia a year before her death. Melbourne teenager Jake Bilardi was recruited into the murderous Islamic State by an American who allegedly encouraged him to carry out a suicide attack in Iraq, telling him he hoped his victims' organs would implode. The new details surrounding the recruitment and death of 18-year-old "Jihadi Jake" have emerged from New York on Thursday after an American was extradited from Bosnia and charged. What's thought to be the van Bilardi was driving when he triggered an explosion and died in a suicide attack. Mirsad Kandic, who prosecutors claim recruited foreign fighters from the US, UK and Australia, pleaded not guilty in the Brooklyn federal court on Thursday (AEST) to providing support, including personnel, to the terrorist group. Authorities allege that the 36-year-old, who has lived in Brooklyn and the Bronx, boasted in a recorded voice memo he had "sent out over 20,000 brothers". Jaala Pulford's speech for voluntary assisted dying took a little over 12 minutes, roughly one minute for each week between the day her 13-year-old daughter was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and the day she died. It was long enough to turn the upper house into an emotional wreck, with MPs on both sides in tears. Ms Pulford has told the story of Sinead's life and death before; of a vivacious child who dreamed of joining the circus, mastered the unicycle and who died of liver cancer in the same week her mother was named a minister in the new Andrews government in 2014. She told some of it again on Thursday in a speech that mixed raw emotion with eloquence and an essential optimism about life that was remarkable given the tragedy her family suffered. Police in one of WA's favourite tourist destinations believe they have made a big dent in the town's drug supply chain after uncovering a sophisticated cannabis crop. Acting on intelligence, Kalbarri police officers raided a property on Tuesday where they uncovered about four kilograms of cannabis. The raid uncovered a sophisticated hydroponic cannabis set up in a garage where cannabis plants were being grown under tents and exhaust fans. Police will allege the hydroponic operation had been set up in a way so the fumes and the smell from the cannabis was being filtered through an exhaust fan, so as not to attract attention. About $5000 worth of equipment was also recovered from the scene. A Perth hair product business providing help to cancer patients has been struck by heartless thieves who stole wigs and hair extensions in a brazen robbery this week. Curly Sue's Wigs and Hairpieces in Morley have been supplying hair products for over two decades. The gang smashed a window to gain access to the business. Their customers range from children through to the elderly. Many of them are cancer patients, or suffering from alopecia who require wigs or extensions. Arranged marriages are a standard practice in Pakistan and there's no shortage of stories about the extreme steps some Pakistani women will take to escape them and marry the men they choose. But few go as far as Aasia Bibi is alleged to have gone. Aasia Bibi and her boyfriend Shahid Lashari are presented to journalists. Bibi is alleged to have poisoned her future husband's milk, inadvertently killing 17 other people in a remote village. Credit:AP According to Pakistani authorities, the 21-year-old woman tried to slip poison into her new husband's milk and inadvertently killed 17 of his family members in the process. Bibi, who is charged with murder, appeared in court on Tuesday in the north-eastern city of Muzaffargarh, where she told reporters that her parents had forced her in September to marry a relative, Associated Press and ITV reported. New York: US President Donald Trump called for the death penalty on Wednesday for an Uzbek immigrant accused of plowing a truck down a New York City bike path, killing eight people, describing the man as a "terrorist." Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was hospitalised after he was shot by a police officer and arrested, told investigators he had been inspired by watching Islamic State videos and began planning Tuesday's attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed against him on Wednesday. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. Should get the death penalty," Trump tweeted. Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, specifically Islamic State, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people. NOTICE OF SALE Case No.: 3:21-cv-00770-SVH BY VIRTUE of that certain Decree of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina heretofore granted in the case of ... NOTICE OF LIEN SALE Extra Space Storage will hold a public auction to sell personal property described below belonging to those individuals listed below at the location indicated: Store # ... NOTICE TO CREDITORS OF ESTATES All persons having claims against the following estates are required to deliver or mail their claims to the indicated Personal Representatives, appointed to administer these... Geekologie has shut down. Thank you to everybody. Now go be happy. 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William Mitchell Hudson, 35, faces life in prison or death by lethal injection if convicted of capital murder in connection with the deaths of Thomas Kamp, 45; Hannah Johnson, 40; Carl Johnson, 77; Nathan Kamp, 23; Austin Kamp, 21; and Kade Johnson, 6. Indicted by a grand jury on three counts of capital murder, Hudson is on trial in the deaths of Hannah Johnson and her father, Carl. In prosecutor Lisa Tanners recounting of the slayings in her opening statement Wednesday, she said Hudson killed Austin, Kade, Nathan and Thomas with several firearms while they were out searching for firewood on Nov. 14, 2015, then returned to the campsite and killed Hannah and Carl Johnson. Cynthia Johnson, Carls wife, was the sole survivor of that nights massacre. Authorities arrested Hudson on Nov. 15 at his mothers house, who had been out of town at the time of the Johnson and Kamp family deaths. Texas Ranger Michael Adcock testified Thursday morning that Hudsons mothers house was a quarter- to a half-mile from the two families campsite. Adcock said investigators found a Remington .380 shotgun possibly used to shoot and bludgeon Carl Johnson and an AR-style rifle hidden under some blankets and clothes on a couch in Hudsons mothers living room. Adcock also said investigators found wet clothes in a washer, along with a pair of camoflauge boots marked with what appeared to be a blood stain. Adcock also said Hannah Johnsons car was parked outside Hudsons mothers home. Prosecutors showed jurors photos of the scene where Hannah Johnson had died. Dark concentrations of blood pooled on the RVs floor and marked the walls, the refrigerator, the shower, the stove door, the sink, the cabinets and even the ceiling. Chris Ledbetter, special agent with the Texas Department of Public Safety, said his office received two cell phones and two DVRs from Hudsons mothers home surveillance system. Shortly before lunch, Ledbetter explained the process of taking data from those electronic devices to give to investigators. The trial resumes at 1:30 in the 361st District Courtroom of the Brazos County Courthouse. Special Prosecutor Lisa Tanner told 14 Brazos County jurors Wednesday morning that she was sorry for what they would soon learn, then recounted in her opening statement a "night of terror" that "ought to live only in the mind of a Hollywood movie screen." On the first day of William Mitchell Hudson's capital murder trial, Tanner -- a prosecutor with the Texas Attorney General's Office -- went on to detail the grisly slayings of six members of the Kamp and Johnson families in Anderson County on Nov. 14, 2015. Both families met up at a campsite in Tennessee Colony on that November weekend on land Thomas Kamp had recently bought from a distant relative of Hudson's, who was then 33 years old and had been staying in his out-of-town mother's house near the Kamp and Johnson families' campsite. Thomas, a 45-year-old general manager of a car dealership, lived in Midlothian with his longtime girlfriend, Hannah Johnson, 40. The Kamp and Johnson families had gathered that weekend in the east Texas community to celebrate the upcoming 24th birthday of Nathan Kamp, one of Kamp's two sons from a previous marriage. Hannah's parents, Cynthia and Carl Johnson -- happily retired and 63 and 77 years old, respectively -- arrived to the Tennessee Colony campgrounds with bolt cutters, which they used to open a gate to get onto the land Thomas had purchased from the Hudson family. Unfamiliar with the property, the Johnsons' RV got stuck en route, causing what Tanner described to jurors as a "ruckus" while they revved the engine and Cynthia, frustrated, yelled at her husband. Tanner told jurors Hudson believed that land was rightfully his and had wanted to buy his family's land, but had been unable to because he didn't have a job or money. So when he heard the commotion of the RV that day from his nearby mother's house, Tanner said, Hudson got angry and questioned who was on "my" land. Hudson arrived on scene and offered to help with the RV, a suggestion the Johnsons relished because they had been about to call a tow truck. They offered to pay him after he got their RV unstuck, but Hudson declined, asking instead to share a beer with them. More family members arrived as the night stretched on: By the evening's end, Thomas Kamp, Hannah Johnson and her son, Kade, 6; Nathan Kamp, 23; and Austin Kamp, 21, had all arrived at the family gathering. Tanner said that as Hudson stayed and drank his beer, the families began to see him as "a braggart, a blowhard." In Tanner's retelling, Hudson told the families that cutting the gate's lock had been disrespectful, that the families were being disrespectful to the Hudson family. The campfire died down, so Thomas, Austin, Kade and Nathan went with Hudson into the woods to get more firewood, while Carl, Cynthia and Hannah stayed behind to get dinner ready. An unknown amount of time passed, but in Tanner's retelling it was enough that the family wondered where Thomas and the boys had gone and decided they would start eating their hamburgers without them. Carl, Hannah and Cynthia initially thought nothing of the gunshots they heard from the woods, thinking the group could be out hunting squirrels -- forgetting, Tanner said, that it was nighttime. It wasn't until Hudson came back on his all-terrain vehicle alone that they started to worry. Tanner said Hannah acted first, running to the RV and telling Carl to follow. On crutches and slower than his nimbler, younger daughter, Hudson is accused of shooting Carl in the hip, which made him drop to the ground "utterly defenseless." Tanner said Hudson fired his shotgun at Hannah, narrowly missing, then beat Carl "over and over again" with the shotgun until he died. Out of ammunition, Hudson entered the trailer, where Hannah had fled. With no back door, Hannah was trapped. "She fought him like a lion," Tanner said of Hannah's struggle for her life. "She was no match." Tanner said Hudson exited the trailer before Hannah died and sat on one of the other families' coolers. Then, he cracked another beer. "But he wasn't done, because Hannah wasn't done," Tanner said, so Hudson returned to the trailer and beat her "till she was dead." Tanner then told the jury that they would be forgiven if they had forgotten about Cynthia, because Hudson had: Cynthia was the sole survivor that night. She hid in the darkness on that moonless, cloudy and stormy night, and stayed, "invisible" behind those camp chairs until dawn. Tanner said she hid from about 9:30 that night until the sun rose on that Nov. 15 morning. No longer hidden by darkness, Cynthia fled into the woods and, remembering she had a phone in her pocket, called 911. Jurors and those gathered in the packed courtroom would hear a recording of that call, where Cynthia, whispering, told authorities she thought everyone else had died in the night. Tanner said law enforcement initially didn't believe the severity of Cynthia's call, because "this kind of thing doesn't happen in a nice little community like that." Anderson County law enforcement eventually came and found Cynthia, Tanner said, and they arrested Hudson at his mother's home. But it wasn't over yet, Tanner continued, because the bodies of the three men and the boy who had gone out with Mitchell to look for firewood were still unaccounted for. Tanner said it took more than 24 hours for a dive team to locate them, hidden in a small pond behind Hudson's mother's house. Tanner then went over each victim's injuries: Austin, 21, had been shot five times in the chest and shoulders; Nathan, almost 24, had been shot in the back; Tom, 45, had been shot in the back of the head, as had Kade, 6. Hudson is charged with capital murder in the six deaths, a crime punishable by either life in prison or death by lethal injection, and is on trial this week in the deaths of Carl and Hannah Johnson. Dressed in an oversized dark suit and a red tie, Hudson remained silent and drank from a foam cup throughout the day's testimony. Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell filed a notice to seek the death penalty in January. Attorneys agreed to a change of venue from Anderson to Brazos County, which Third District Court Judge Mark Calhoon granted. Mitchell said it took about four weeks for attorneys to select 14 jurors from the roughly 180 Brazos County residents who were sent jury summons. Hudson's attorneys, Stephen Evans and Jeff Herrington, reserved their opening statements. Herrington sporadically objected throughout Wednesday's testimony, but the defense team largely remained quiet during the afternoon's testimony, in which six members of law enforcement recounted their roles in the investigation. Emily Parker, who had been a patrol deputy with the Anderson County Sheriff's Office at the time of the slayings, said Cynthia had appeared in shock when authorities located her. Parker said Cynthia had been shaking when they first found her, spilling water from the bottle that law enforcement officers had given her while repeatedly saying, "they're all dead, they're all dead." Parker, who described Tennessee Colony as "a five-way stop and that's it" and estimated about 1,000 people live in the community alongside a prison that houses thousands more residents, said Cynthia's face was swollen when authorities located her, altered by what Parker said she thought were ant bites. The trial resumes at 9 a.m. today in the 361st District Courtroom on the fourth floor of the Brazos County Courthouse. UPDATE: The 14-year-old girl who was the subject of a search by police after she didn't return to her foster family in Hearne on Friday has been found in College Station. She was safe and uninjured. Police said no further details would be released. College Station police are asking the public's help in locating a 14-year-old girl who was last seen at the Post Oak Mall on Friday. According to police, 14-year-old Martha Ruiz attended a seasonal carnival at the mall with friends on Friday. At some point, Ruiz broke off from her group and went inside to go to the food court. That was the last time anyone saw her. At 10:30 p.m. Friday, Ruiz's foster family in Hearne contacted authorities to report her missing. Though she lives in Hearne, Ruiz has friends and relatives in Bryan-College Station. Officers searched the carnival, mall and several places the foster family said she may have run to, but they were unable to find her. She is 5'2" and about 140 pounds. She is Hispanic with brown eyes and brown hair. She has braces on her teeth and a tattoo on her wrist. Anyone with information is asked to call CSPD at 979-764-3600. When Luc Goossens and his family decided to get an Australian shepherd dog for their rural property in Hasselt, Belgium, about 20 years ago, it wasn't an easy task finding one of the pups. Despite the breed's name, it's actually an American dog, and an American breeder traveled to Belgium with a purebred puppy in hand for the Goossens. Now the family has 17 Australian shepherds that produce two litters each year. On Wednesday, Goossens was one of 13 Belgians at the Australian Shepherd Club of America National Specialty shows and trials at the Brazos County Expo -- an event that has drawn more than 1,000 Australian shepherds competing in feats of speed, accuracy, intelligence and obedience. While this is the first year at the American competition that European branches of the ASCA were invited to show off their animals in a special pre-event performance, Goossens said he and his family have brought dogs to compete in the United States for several years in places such as New Jersey and Wisconsin. "We try to participate every year," he said. "We have to be selected for finals, though. My kids were selected for [junior level] finals and had to work all year earning points. ... It's always nice to meet everyone again. We all try to be a big family. The dogs are important, but the people we get to know here are even more important. We've made friendships we've had now for many, many years." The ASCA is celebrating 60 years of international recognition as a breed-specific society, and the National Speciality is hosted in a different American city each year. The event draws owners and breeders from the United States, as well as from Europe, Australia and Africa. Bryan serves as the ASCA's international headquarters, and for the second time in recent history, the major competition has been hosted at the Expo. "We were here in 2014, and we just love the facility," ASCA president Laura Gibson said. "It's the best facility in the whole country for our purposes. We rotate every four years and will come here again in four years. People doing this say this is the best site." About 1,300 black, brown, marbled grey and cream-colored Australian shepherds of varying sizes currently fill the Expo for the event, which kicked off Oct. 27 and lasts through Saturday. Though dogs can be judged by their looks and stature in what is called "conformation," similar to the Westminster Dog Show, a majority of the programs that the dogs compete in have to do with ability. Dogs can participate in herding ducks, geese and cattle; dock jumping into water to retrieve a toy; feats of agility; obstacle course runs; and tests of obedience. By Wednesday night, much of these competitions had already come to a near-conclusion, and many dogs are now being judged at national conformation. "Now they're judging, looking for structure in the dogs, comparing to our standard ideal Australian shepherd," Gibson explained, watching the dogs trot in a circle around an indoor arena Wednesday evening. "They judge the way a dog looks and the way it moves. Does the dog move like they're supposed to? The judges watch them [walk] down and go back. What's the bone structure under each coat?" All shepherds must be registered full-blooded members of their breed, though Gibson pointed out not all of the animals came from breeders, stating that several are from Aussie rescue organizations. There are 318 ASCA-affiliated clubs in the world, and dog owners bring in both breeding canines and spayed/neutered competitors. Renee Watson, an owner from Atlanta, was at the National Specialty with her 4-year-old Aussie, named Degen. Degen has a blue merle coat, with salt-and-pepper black and grey spots, brown marks in certain areas of his body, and white on his nose, mane and legs. So far, he has competed in herding of various farm animals, dock jumping, obedience and agility. He has yet to place highly, but he still has more competitions ahead, Watson noted. Unlike the Goossens, Watson does not breed Aussies, but rather purchases and owns them two at a time. Though the breed is relatively low-maintenance, she noted, they are considered high-energy and need much exercise. She takes Degen and his younger counterpart to obedience and agility classes twice each week, and Degen also attends a herding class once a week. It's all worth the work, though, Watson said, as Aussies are a rewarding dog to own. "They are incredibly loyal," she said. "They are not a 'guard dog,' but they are protective of their people and their surroundings." Watson stated that animal advocates need not worry about ASCA members mistreating their dogs or spawning "puppy mills." "This is a very passionate group of people who really love this breed," she said. "The ASCA is one of few parent organizations of a breed that has stayed strong and viable... [And] for the most part this crowd is the cream of the crop in producing sound, healthy shepherds. We are very concerned about health clearances, making sure the blood line as clear as possible. This is as good as it gets for conscientious breeding." To learn more about the ASCA, visit asca2017.com. DES MOINES (AP) Once the nation's leading oats producer, Iowa growers now struggle to find markets for the crop. That's the dilemma Earl Canfield faced three years ago: He had about 3,000 bushels of oats, but no place to sell them profitably. Quaker Oats in Cedar Rapids, the world's largest cereal production plant, does not take in oats from Iowa growers. And most Iowa livestock operations don't include oats in the feed supply of their cattle, pigs and chickens. With no place else to go, Canfield and his family started a business selling small batches of oats, along with their corn and soybeans, to families feeding horses, goats, cattle, pigs and chickens. "There's a constant perception that we can't grow good oats in Iowa, because we're in the Corn Belt," said Sarah Carlson, Practical Farmers of Iowa's Midwest cover crop expert. "But we've proven that we can." Iowa has led the nation in corn production for 23 straight years, and about 80 percent of the state's 30 million crop acres are covered with either corn or soybeans. Despite that dominance, developing markets for alfalfa, oats and other small grains could help Iowa farmers address some significant environmental problems, including degraded soil and water quality and increased weed resistance to herbicides, experts say. Canfield said more farmers might be willing to break the steady corn-and-soybean cycle if markets for alternative crops were available. "We've had to work hard to get around the lack of markets," the Dunkerton farmer said. "It's been a leap of faith." Quaker Oats buys its oats from Canada, where it can find the quantity and quality the company needs, experts say. But some other companies could be considering a shift. Some large multinational businesses grain, beef, pork and dairy processors are exploring adding oats to the supply chain, driven by the efforts of large retailers like Walmart to become more sustainable. For example, the companies want to prove to customers that their products are grown using fewer fertilizers and chemicals that can contribute to air and water pollution. "There's interest," said Matthew Liebman, an Iowa State University agronomy professor who declined to name the companies. "I won't say there's commitment. But there's interest." Iowa last led the nation in oats production in 1989, but by last year had slid to fifth place. In 1950, Iowa farmers planted oats on about 6.6 million acres, a number that shriveled to 120,000 acres last year, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Production fell from about 271 million bushels 67 years ago to about 3.3 million bushels in 2016. The reasons are numerous: Farmers replaced oat-eating horses with tractors to plow fields following World War II, Liebman said. And the nation turned former ammunition plants into ammonia fertilizer plants, alleviating a lot of demand for manure once supplied by the pigs, cattle and dairy cows that many families raised. Red clover and alfalfa, often grown alongside oats, are legumes that pull nitrogen from the air and "fix it" into the soil, helping fertilize crops that follow them. "The widespread availability of nitrogen fertilizer in the 1950s, and the increased mechanization of crop production, meant that oats for feed and legumes for fixing nitrogen ... went away," Liebman said. At the same time, more research was poured into soybeans, another legume that adds nitrogen to the soil, and more industrial uses for soy protein and soy oil were developed, Liebman said. "Soybeans have largely replaced forages" like oats, alfalfa and other crops, he said. "Soybean acres really came up. Corn acres haven't changed that much." Iowa farmers planted corn this year on about 13.1 million acres, and soybeans on nearly 9.6 million acres. Low corn and soybean prices have sparked farmer interest in growing oats, alfalfa and other crops, said Carlson, the Practical Farmers of Iowa cover crop expert. "It's easier to talk about adding small grains to a corn-and-soybean rotation now than when we had $8 corn," she said. Corn prices have tumbled nearly 60 percent since the 2012 high, trading around $3.50 a bushel nationally, while production costs have been slow to follow. U.S. and Iowa farmers face a fourth year of possible losses, although USDA predicts farmers could eke out a 3.1 percent profit, largely due to livestock revenue. ISU studies show oats typically generate less profit than corn and soybeans, but they also reduce the need for expensive fertilizers and herbicides for corn and soybean crops that follow them, putting a little more money overall $14 an acre in farmers' pockets after the full rotation. Farmers can cut fertilizer costs 80 to 90 percent, said Liebman, who helped lead the long-term Iowa State research. Adding to the benefits: Oats grown with red clover reduce soil erosion and improve soil health, establishing land that better holds water potentially reducing flooding and retains nitrogen and phosphorus, which can otherwise degrade water quality. Providing full field cover, oats and red clover or alfalfa also can reduce pressure from weeds, some of which have become resistant to glyphosate and other popular herbicides. And growers can see an increase in yields for corn and soybeans, which experience less disease. Soybeans, for example, get a 10 percent to 17 percent bump, the research shows. Carlson said farmers can get better prices for oats when they sell them to other growers as cover crops or to horse enthusiasts and small cattle producers as feed. Even breaking even financially, compared to corn or soybeans, "it's a net gain socially," she said. "You've protected your soil asset, cleaned up water and provided habitat" for wildlife. A Union of Concerned Scientists study shows that up to 40 percent of Iowa's farmland could shift to growing oats and alfalfa without disrupting markets: Neither significantly raising corn and soybeans prices nor driving down the value of alfalfa, oats and other small grains. But Iowa farmers would need better markets for that level of adoption, Carlson and Liebman said. "Farmers need to be assured they could get good market prices and not have to haul the crop vast distances," Liebman said. "That market pull is essential." Grain Millers, a Minneapolis company with a large mill in St. Ansgar, buys oats along with wheat, barley, rye and other grains that go into cereal, granola bars, cookies and other products. It wants more oats from Iowa and southern Minnesota growers, said Jessie VanderPoel, who buys grain for the company. Grain Millers recently added more storage so it could expand its local purchases, she said. "We mill many more oats than we can buy in Iowa or the U.S.," VanderPoel said. "Most of our oats come out of Canada. ... And that's the same for any milling company." Iowa farmers, unused to raising oats, are beginning to grow the crop with the required "test weights" an indication of quality that companies like Grain Millers and others want, Carlson and VanderPoel said. "We buy some of our best oats out of Iowa year after year. It just takes a little education," VanderPoel said, adding that the company works closely with farmers interested in growing "good milling oats." Many Iowa farmers have never grown oats, Carlson said. "Our grandpas knew how to grow them, but younger farmers might have to relearn some stuff," she said. "But I'm not talking about growing mangoes," she said. "It's something we have a history with. We haven't lost all our knowledge." And geographically, Iowa farmers have advantages, potentially supplying several mills in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. "We feel it's something that could help farmers environmentally and economically," VanderPoel said. The Union of Concerned Scientists agrees. It says a more diverse crop rotation could save cities and states nationwide $157 billion annually through environmental and health gains that include spending less money to clean nutrients from drinking water. Iowa producers raise tens of millions of pigs, laying hens, turkeys and cattle each year. But oats aren't a large part of the feed they eat, Carlson said. Over time, they have been replaced with soy protein and distiller-dried grains a byproduct from ethanol production that get mixed with corn. Re-establishing oats as a common part of livestock feed is important to build Iowa's small-grains market, Carlson said. Here's why: Farmers who fail to raise food-grade oats need a feed market that can use their crop. Carlson said Tyson, Smithfield and other big meat processors that call the shots on feed for Iowa livestock could make a dramatic shift in what farmers grow with even small changes. "Companies can make that decision ... and change things overnight," she said. In 2014, Canfield said he and his wife, Jane, began talking about ways to add diversity to their crops. "We wanted to look more long-term beyond immediate profits and gains, to farm more sustainably," he said. Canfield, 48, said he's had to "learn how to farm again," relying on fewer fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and fungicides. "We want confidence that what we're doing on the farm helps people for our own health and those who are consuming what we're making on our farms," Canfield said. With the introduction of oats, Canfield shifted to corn and soybeans that are not genetically modified, something that now appeals to his clients. In Canfield's shop, he, Jane and their 18-year-old son Matthew move oats, corn and roasted soybeans through grain mills, then onto a large mixer, along with organic vitamins and supplements, before finally pouring the feed into 50-pound bags. Not all farmers are willing to invest the time needed to market products directly to consumers, Carlson said. Jane Canfield said her husband has spent many hours talking with customers and groups about their fledgling business. And car trips take twice as long, because Canfield stops at each convenience store along the way to leave business cards and fliers on community boards, she said. It's paying off, said Canfield, with business doubling and tripling. In addition to selling feed, the family sells alfalfa and oat straw for bedding and mulch. "I've gone to being a price-setter instead of a price-taker," Canfield said. He hopes to add cattle, pigs and other animals, selling meat directly to customers and eventually using all the grain he grows to feed livestock directly or through his customers. Adding diversity to his crops and farm operation is the best way to provide an opportunity and income for his four children if they decide to join the business. "We're doing it for them trying to be better stewards of the land," he said. With government policymakers around the globe cracking down on diesel and petrol vehicles, the electric car revolution is soon to be upon us. As of 2040, the purchase of new diesel and petrol cars will be banned, forcing the UK population to switch to more environmentally friendly means of transport. However, with the wheels of change in motion the question of whether the country is in a position where sustainable driving by 2040 is actually achievable remains. Far from simply banning the purchase of these gas-guzzlers, there are a number of influencing factors that must be considered when weighing up the viability. Lack of knowledge Before the UK makes the switch we need to review aspects such as the initial cost of purchasing a green vehicle, levels of public awareness on the government-backed schemes available to help make the purchase and the number of charging points currently available in UK cities. Recent research from MoneySuperMarket.com has uncovered the primary factors preventing the British public making the move to driving green. Survey data shows that the most prominent issuesappear to be a lack of education on how electric vehicles work and concerns over the financial cost. The research revealed that 49 percent of the British public have never considered purchasing a green vehicle despite the upcoming laws. In addition to this, 30 percent of those surveyed stated that a lack of knowledge on how electric vehicles work is one of their primary reasons for not making the change. Overall however, price appeared to be the biggest barrier for many, stopping them from making the move to electric. 51 percent of the people surveyed stated that price is currently the biggest barrier to them buying an electric car, with 62 percent unaware of any government discounts and grants available for those looking to buy electric or hybrid vehicles. In fact, the government offers a number of grants and discounts reducing the cost of new green cars and motorcycles. Utilising these benefits can result in a20-35 percent reduction in the initial purchase price of an environmentally friendly vehicle, dependent on the CO2 emissions of the particular vehicle. Economic self-interest "But in Britain UK banks are still propping up coal mines which are driving the climate change we suffer from. This is morally questionable and they have a responsibility to clean up their act." The big four high street banks have all signed up the pledge to support the goals of the Paris Agreement but their investment practices have barely changed. Banks have a vital role to play in providing the crucial lending facilities to companies that do the very opposite of leaving fossil fuels in the ground. Last month former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called on banks to invest a ratio of 2:1 in favour of green investments over brown investments to avoid an economic cliff edge. Speaking at an event on sustainable finance in Europe she said banks needed to do some heavy lifting out of economic self-interest. Bury their heads And this is the crucial point. Not only is it unwise to keep doing something that 80 percent of your potential customer base thinks is immoral, it also will soon make very little financial sense too. Hannah McKinnon, Energy Futures & Transitions Director at Oil Change International pointed out: "The fossil fuel era is coming to an end. "Banks should be looking for every opportunity to shift investments before the ship sinks: along with a worthless portfolio of stranded assets, there will be a massive moral price tag for those that insist on trying to be the last one out. "Financing the climate crisis is an inexcusable ethical decision and a reckless financial one, banks too can decide which side of history they want to be on." And it's not just climate organisations saying this. Last month the editor of The Banker magazine, Brian Caplen warned that banks faced an existential crisis if they continue to bury their heads in the sand. Follow suit "Under clean-energy scenarios, oil majors become rather less blue-chip to lend to than those engaged in the technologies of the future - for example renewable energy, electric cars and insulation," he argued. "In these sectors, there are big opportunities with one estimate putting the investment needed to transition to a lower carbon economy at $1,000bn each year for the foreseeable future. "This figure is not something dreamed up by an idealistically green organisation - it comes from the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, chaired by Michael Bloomberg." Some banks are showing there's an alternative to doing business without fouling up the planet. Triodos don't lend to companies that make more than 5 percent of their revenue from extracting, producing, selling or generating electricity from oil, gas or coal while 23 percent of its loans support renewable energy projects. Maybe with enough pressure from the majority of the public that think it's immoral to profit from climate change the high street banks will follow suit. This Author: Joe Ware is a journalist and writer at Christian Aid. He is on twitter @wareisjoe. To join the Big Shift campaign and write to the CEOs of the big four banks, visit the website. You can also view the spoof bank TV ad that Christian Aid has produced. NEW FAIRFIELD Those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, 2001, say the shattering sadness left by Tuesdays terrorist attack on a Manhattan bike path will not steal their hard-won sense of peace. It is devastating to have a loved one ripped away from you, said John Hodge, a former New Fairfield first selectman whose cousin was killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Our way of fighting back is to do lots of good to counteract that, so the terrorists know that they are not going to win. Hodge, who now runs the Tunnel to Towers Foundation in his cousins honor, was reacting to Tuesdays attack near the West Side Highway, when a man from Uzbekistan drove a truck into a crowd of bicyclists and hit a school bus, killing eight and injuring 11 before police shot him and took him into custody. President Donald Trump called 29-year-old suspect Sayfullo Saipov an animal, and said all of America is praying and grieving with the victims, the Associated Press reported. Fairfield County residents who suffered these debilitating emotions after terrorists flew hijacked airplanes into the twin towers say the way forward after such devastation is to remain hopeful and to live life deliberately. If you dont have hope, you might as well roll up in a ball, because this is really hard and really raw right now, said Dana Noonan, of Greenwich, who lost her husband, Rob, in the attack on the twin towers. There is a lot of darkness out there, and it can suck you in, so you have to fight every day, because there are still a lot of wonderful things in this world. Noonan was brought to tears during an interview Wednesday as she considered the connections between Tuesdays attack and still more devastating attacks 16 years ago. So was a Sacred Heart University graduate who lost his father on 9/11. Obviously, between what we went through then, and what happened Tuesday being close to the Trade Center, it brings everything to the surface, just as bad as an anniversary, said Michael Pascuma, who was a 20-year-old student when his father was killed. It definitely opens up feelings and memories and wounds and a little bit of anger, to be honest. The suspect in the bike path terrorism, who claimed to act in the named of ISIS, came to America in 2010 under the diversity visa program for immigrants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States, according to the Associated Press. Trump called on Congress to eliminate the visa program, the AP said. Pascuma said the political polarization he was seeing over the issue is disheartening at a time when people need to come together in solidarity with the victims families. You have to try to remember the good times and get on with each day, said Pascuma, 36, who lives with his wife on Long Island. I can contain my emotions a little better now than when I was younger because I know now that (venting) them isnt going to help anything. Hodge agreed. You have to think like a person with evil intentions in order to protect yourself from people with evil intentions, and its heartbreaking, said Hodge, whose foundation supports first responders, service members and community causes in honor of his cousin, Stephen Siller, a firefighter who died on 9/11. But we always have to be looking forward and cannot let something like this deter us or take us off course. rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342 NORWALK Mayoral candidate Lisa Brinton on Thursday called upon the city to demand more much more from the state as compensation for disruptions expected from the Walk Bridge replacement. We have been looked over and I think that we need to get more, said Brinton, standing outside the IMAX Theater with the rail bridge in the background. Its an infrastructure project. I think a lot of this is window-dressing and its feel good, but its chump change compared to what we should be getting. Brinton, an independent who is running as a petitioning candidate, welcomed the states plans to replace the theater, pay for a new fence and rail exhibit at Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum and help get Liberty Square properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places as compensation for the bridge replacement, which is expected to begin in 2019. But she added that other businesses will be evicted, and disruptions to the environment along with traffic, noise, dust and the wholesale reconfiguration of the neighborhoods around them will have a huge impact. The current administration has simply played ball with Hartford, trusting that they will make Norwalk whole, said Brinton, who lives in Rowayton. Unfortunately, the state has a poor track record of looking after our city, having taken advantage of Norwalk for years with the Education Cost Sharing formula and so I have no reasons to believe they will look after our best interests now, unless we make a lot more noise. Mayor Harry Rilling, a Democrat seeking a third term, said later Thursday that Brinton is absolutely misinformed about the bridge replacement project. He said his administration has met more than 60 times with the Connecticut Department of Transportation to discuss the project. We have made our case with the Connecticut Department of Transportation and we are at the table on a weekly, if not more-often basis, and were doing what we have to do to protect our community and make sure our businesses are able to sustain during the Walk Bridge project, Rilling said. Its really irresponsible that shes doing this and misinforming the public. Laundry list Brinton called upon the DOT Rights of Way Office and the state Department of Economic and Community Development to help build two new Norwalk schools, reopen a train station in the Wall Street area, insist that Metro-North Railroad invest in Norwalks portion of the New Haven Line, and provide grants to the citys taxing districts to compensate for the permanent removal of income producing customers from their services territories. She wants the state to commit to hiring local labor and businesses for the project, revisit the unwanted lowering of the roadway under East Avenue, provide sound barriers along Interstate 95, and arrange for grants to invest in traffic infrastructure in the affected areas. Binton also asked for a 10-year commitment for prominent placement of Norwalk assets in state tourism, education and economic development marketing plans; state money to analyze the impacts of the Federal Rail Administrations proposed high-speed rail bypass on the area. These are just a few ideas for Norwalk to get ahead of the construction projects, and come out the other side of this project better, stronger, Brinton said. There may be many others, but we need to begin looking at these things now ... on a pro-active basis, rather than sit idly by and give control to the state. She was joined by her campaign treasurer, Deb Goldstein, and fellow Norwalk residents Dave Davidson, Donna Smirniotopoulos and Marjorie Neaderland. Divisive issue The DOTs replacement of the century-old swing bridge with a 240-foot vertical-life structure an estimated $1 billion project has become a divisive topic in Norwalks 2019 mayoral race. Brinton, Republican Andrew Conroy, petitioning Democrat Bruce Morris and incumbent Democrat Harry Rilling shared their views on the bridge replacement during a debate before the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce at the Norwalk Inn & Conference Center on Wednesday morning. Instead of spending a billion dollars, we should be spending something in the neighborhood of $300 million for a fixed bridge with new technology, said Conroy, a former District E councilman. The height between the bottom of the bridge and the water would be greater than the old bridge. Conroy and Brinton have called for replacing the bridge, which carries Amtrak and Metro-North Railroad New Haven trains over the Norwalk River, with a fixed structure. Morris, who has represented the 140th District in the state House of Representatives since 2006, maintains the horse is out of the barn and that elected officials must work with the DOT. At this point, its incumbent upon the mayor, working with the state delegation, to hold DOT to task, to monitor them, to stay in front of them, Morris said. Rilling, Norwalks former police chief, said at the debate that a fixed bridge is not the answer. This is a 125-year-old structure, Rilling said. The structural integrity of the bridge is compromised. Its sitting on wooden pilings. You cannot just weld this bridge shut, you have to replace it. Rilling has asked Gov. Dannel Malloy for a two-phase mitigation plan to help businesses and visitors during and after construction of the new bridge, the ability to repurpose temporary docks that are planned nearby into a public wharf, and funding to complete the Harbor Loop Trail. ST. PAUL Art can be made out of almost anything, according to Bart Vargas. St. Paul students are testing that idea this week. Students at St. Paul High School have been creating geometric shapes out of cardboard and then decorating them however they wish. The art will be hung from the ceiling in the school entrance hallway. Vargas is a sculptor, painter and educator. He specializes in using household scraps and items to make art. St. Paul art teacher Kathy Lemmerman wanted to have Vargas do an in-residence at the school because she thought it would be beneficial to her students. She received a grant from the Three Rivers Arts Council and the Nebraska Arts Council to bring Vargas to St. Paul. Students also conducted an art sale to raise money to bring Vargas to the school. Lemmerman said she booked Vargas through the Nebraska Arts Council website. She had met him before and thought he was a cool person and an amazing artist. Vargas teaches at Metropolitan Community College and at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He attended UNO and completed his masters degree at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Originally from Bellevue, he now lives in Omaha with his wife. He has won international art awards and has been featured in many different states and a few countries. Theres an element of salvage in everything I do, Vargas said. He explained his art to the students as he talked about the project they would be working on throughout the week. He has made globes out of old keyboards and spheres out of plastic bottles. He gets his supplies several ways, including at community cleanups and waste sites. He often paints with house paint because he finds a lot of people dont use what they have left over from a project. Vargas instructed the students to choose from a plethora of polyhedron shapes on a certain website. Those templates would then be made into large polyhedrons from cardboard. He said the students could make a character or other item using the shape or paint and decorate it how they wanted. The art will be displayed beginning Friday. He said he likes using recycled and household items for his art because he can make something new. Not everyone can afford expensive art materials, and that can create a barrier. But Vargas proves that art can be made out of anything. Instead of throwing money at problems, he encourages people to throw their mind at their problems. I really want my art to be for everybody, he said, adding that regardless of age, art belongs to everyone and he wants people to connect with it. Lemmerman said having Vargas at the school is special for the students to actually work with a working artist making money. Im just a guy whos making things out of the things we have, Vargas said. John Wayne, owner of Wayne Cyclery, is a big fan of vintage motorcycles who has been hearing about the Distinguished Gentlemans Ride for a few years now. The annual Gentlemans Ride started in Australia in 2010 and has spread to countries around the world, including the United States, as a way to fight prostate cancer and to promote mental health for men, especially when it comes to suicide prevention, Wayne said. The Distinguished Gentleman theme is to show people that there is a bunch of older men, older people, who are concerned about this, he said. We ride motorcycles, among other things, but were distinguished. The risk of developing prostate cancer and of committing suicide rises as men grow older, Wayne said. Prostate cancer is due to the physical changes associated with growing older, while changes in attitude contribute to the suicide risk for men as they age. As we get older, we realize we havent maybe accomplished what we thought we were going to when we were younger, he said. I know a lot of people and theyre retiring and they dont have any hobbies. They dont know what theyre going to do with their life. Their whole life has been work. So they wonder, What am I going to do now? and they go into depression. Life is not occupied with a job any more at 67 years old, Wayne said. That is way too much time and what am I going to do except get depressed. Over the past five years, the Gentlemans Ride has become linked to the Movember Foundation, which says it wants to stop men from dying too young. The Movember Foundation focuses on preventing prostate cancer, which is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in men, and testicular cancer, which is the most common cancer among men under age 40, along with focusing on mental health for men, with particular emphasis on suicide prevention. Men commit three out of every four suicides. To help raise awareness about these issues, the foundation encourages men to grow mustaches during the month of November, making it into the month of Movember. The inspiration for the Gentlemans Ride was a photograph of the fictional Don Draper from the television series Mad Men. The photograph showed Draper sitting astride a motorcycle and nattily attired in a vintage 1960s suit with a signature 1960s skinny necktie. Wayne said his attraction to the Gentlemans Ride was because of the motorcycles. Ive had vintage BMW motorcycles for as long as I can remember, back into the 70s, he said. Wayne had heard about the Gentlemans Ride but did not believe there were any nearby rides until he learned that people in Omaha had been putting on a Gentlemans Ride for the past three years. He went online to raise money to be used in the fight against prostate cancer and for improved mental health for men. He said on the morning of the Omaha ride on Sept. 24, everyone gathered at a cafe so they could get to know one another before taking a 40-mile ride through the Benson neighborhood and down by the Missouri River. We had a nice time, Wayne said. It was a good, enjoyable event for everybody and the bonus was we actually got to raise quite a bit of money for the cause. He noted that people not only ride vintage motorcycles, but also dress up in vintage clothing for the event. Wayne said that after starting in Australia, the Gentlemans Ride has spread to more and more countries. He talked to the man who began the Omaha ride and learned that it also has been growing. There were maybe a dozen people the first year and there were 30 people the next year and then this year I believe he had about 60 who registered. It was a rainy morning, so there were about 40 to 45 people who actually showed up, he said. Wayne said he has a vintage BMW motorcycle with a sidecar, which is where his wife, Teresa, rode as part of the Gentlemans Ride. He said both he and Teresa would like to be in the Gentlemans Ride in Omaha again in 2018. My wife is not a motorcycle person at all. But she said that is the first time (on a motorcycle ride) she had a fun time with a bunch of really fun people, he said. She really enjoyed it and shes ready to do it again. Wayne said most people in the Gentlemans Ride for Nebraska were from Omaha, Lincoln and the surrounding area, while he and Teresa were the only people from the Grand Island area to take part. But next year he and his wife will almost certainly take some friends along to be part of the ride. Whenever you have a good time, its infectious to other people around you. It makes other people want to do it, too, he said. Plans are underway to build a memorial to law enforcement service animals next to the Nebraska Law Enforcement Memorial in Grand Island. For that to happen, though, people are going to have to buy T-shirts and other apparel that say Back the Badge. The sale of clothing and other items will fund the memorial to law enforcement canines and horses killed in the line of duty. The project was announced Wednesday at Grand Islands Law Enforcement Center. Organizers hope to raise $25,000 to $30,000, said Jarret Daugherty of the Grand Island Police Department, who is chairman of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Memorial Committee. If all goes well, work will begin on the memorial expansion in 18 months to two years, Daugherty said. The addition will be just northwest of the police memorial, which is on State Fair Boulevard. Dedicated in 2009, it features the names of 144 departed officers. A sidewalk will lead from the Nebraska Law Enforcement Memorial to the service animal memorial, which will consist of a pillar, a concrete patio and two benches. Images of a dog and horse will be etched on the pillar. The idea for the salute to law enforcement service animals was triggered by the January 2016 death of Kobus, a Belgian Malinois that worked with the Omaha Police Department. Members of the Blue Knights motorcycle club came up with the idea for the service animal monument. The Blue Knights consist of current and retired law enforcement personnel. The memorial will be separate from the monument to human sacrifice, but will still acknowledge the sacrifices made by the animals, Daugherty said. Much of the funding will come from the sale of apparel produced by TAG Ink and Thread of Lincoln. Matt Anderson, the companys general sales manager, attended Wednesdays kickoff. The company is selling Back the Badge T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts and crew neck sweatshirts, as well as hats, mugs and a doggie bandanna. The short sleeve T-shirt is available for $20 to $28, depending on the size. From the sale of each piece of clothing, $10 will go toward the new memorial. For the smaller items, $5 will be donated to the effort. TAG Ink and Thread raised $5,000 for the Lincoln Police Department on a project. Below Back the Badge are the words honor, duty and sacrifice. Support for the project has already come from eight businesses. They are Tom Dinsdale Automotive, the Bosselman Companies, Kinkaider Brewing Co., Union Bank and Trust, Sams Club, Wave Pizza, Animal Medical Clinic and LaRue Coffee and Roasterie. Some of the clothing will be available at select Pump & Pantry stores, Daugherty said. The items also can be bought at www.backthebadgene.com. For an extra $5, the clothing may be personalized with a loved ones name or badge number. Donations to the cause may be made to www.nememorial.org. The fundraising campaign will run through Feb. 1. Three members of the Blue Knights attended Wednesdays announcement. They were Corey Zimmer of Bellevue, a retired Air Force security officer; Theodore Fitzsimmons of the Douglas County Sheriffs Department and Rich Liddick, whos retired from the Omaha Police Department. He works security part time at Eppley Airfield. About 15 people, including Police Chief Robert Falldorf, were on hand for the event. One attendee was Col. John Bolduc, the new superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol. He was in town for meetings, he said. The Hall County Regional Planning Commission recommended the Grand Island City Council rezone all of lot two in the Lassonde Second Subdivision from R-3 medium-density residential to R-3 SL medium-density residential small slot, which would be the first time such zoning has been used in Grand Island. The property proposed for rezoning is south of Capital Avenue and west of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. The R-3 SL was approved by council this last month, said Regional Planning Director Chad Nabity in his presentation to the commission, who added that the zoning would allow for lots as small as 3,000 square feet. This was a zoning district we specifically created to help create more affordable housing. Nabity said Habitat for Humanity wants to develop the property, with its actual plans calling for creation of lots that would have one housing unit for every 5,000 square feet. He said the area proposed rezoning would allow Habitat to build 22 housing units instead of 17 housing units. They (Habitat) dont have a plat prepared for this as of yet because the rezoning is not approved and why would you pay for the engineering to have the plats drawn up if you dont know that you can actually make it happen, he said. Nabity said Habitat for Humanity wants to avoid any unnecessary expenses, so it is using a step-by-step process and this is the next step in the process. He said if the rezoning is approved, Habitat will create a plat to show exactly how the area will develop. Nabity said sewer and water is available on Capital Avenue, with extension of those services done in accordance with the eventual plat. Dana Jelinek, Habitat for Humanity executive director, told the commission that Habitat is not proposing to build smaller houses as a result of the rezoning. Our houses are just under 1,100 square feet, said Jelinek who noted that Habitat intends to keep building its standard home. In addition to wanting to have smaller lots, Habitat is proposing the rezoning because it makes it possible to fully develop the L-shaped property. In other action, the commission also recommends rezoning the JGMO Subdivision from LLR large lot residential to B-2 general business and rezoning a portion of the Kinkaider Brewing Co., 320-322 N. Pine St., into mixed use. The JGMO Subdivision is south of Lake Street, and west of South Locust Street and the south Walmart Store. Nabity said that if approved, the general business rezoning will simply extend the existing general business zone a little farther south and a little farther to the east. That area is planned for commercial development, he said. Nabity said Urban Island LLC wants to redevelop space at Kinkaider Brewing Co., with the second floor having the space for two two-bedroom apartments, two one-bedroom apartments and an efficiency/studio apartment, with room for another efficiency/studio apartment on the main floor. He said the project also includes commercial/retail space on the first floor. He said the proposed mixed-use development calls for the creation of both residential and commercial development in downtown Grand Island. The commission also recommended rezoning lots 8, 9 and 10 in block 10 of the Packer and Barrs subdivision from R-2 low-density residential to R-3 medium-density residential. Nabity said the medium density residential allows development to occur with 3,000 feet per dwelling unit. Nabity said the entire area is planned for medium-density residential, with the rezoning allowing T.C. Enck Builders to construct a duplex on each of two vacant lots. Proposals for the commission to rezone all of Lot 2 of the Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision from LLR large-lot residential to B2 general business and to approve the final plat for 11.68 acres of Meadow Lane Seventh Subdivision was tabled until the commissions December meeting. During its September meeting, the commission deadlocked 6-6. During that meeting, homeowners near the area proposed for rezoning and development expressed concerns about the impact additional development might have on drainage. The proposed development is north of Highway 34 and west of Shady Bend Road. Nabity said he will be meeting next week with Steve Riehle, Hall County engineer, to discuss the drainage issue. Nabity said Riehle has given him a substantial amount of information about a drainage district or drainage improvement project that was proposed in 2011. Some of the suggested improvements were made and some were not. Nabity said waiting until the December meeting will provide an opportunity to develop some proposals to improve drainage. Hall County Supervisor Jane Richardson, who attended the commissions September meeting, told commission members the area has had drainage issues for many years. Richardson said the proposed rezoning area and development was a balancing act between commercial development and the rights of residential property owners, some of whom have lived in the area for 40 years. She said the commission should take residential property owners concerns into consideration when making a decision on the rezoning and proposed commercial development. Central Health Center Inc. has expanded its services extensively since the organization was first established as a Title X agency in September 1974, known as Central Nebraska Family Planning. In January 1994, it was renamed Womens Health Services of Central Nebraska. As services continued to expand, it was rebranded to Central Health Center in December 2003. Throughout 43 years of proudly serving Central Nebraska as a designated Title X agency through providing reproductive health care and contraceptive services, we have saved taxpayers millions of dollars by providing quality affordable preventive health care services. As we accept all insurance and serve a diverse population, our focus remains consistent, serving those who are uninsured, underinsured and of low income. As of Oct. 12, Central Health Center has taken on its largest rebranding since inception to cover the newly expanded services of family health care and mental health services for women, men and children. Central Health Center has become Choice Family Health Care Inc. to encompass its new mission statement: To provide affordable, caring, quality healthcare and health education to women, men and children. Current and new patients will continue to receive high customer service at affordable pricing both at our Grand Island and Kearney sites. This rebranding will also include the future implementation of a Mobile Health Unit to provide services in rural communities and organizations of minority. As the Mobile Health Unit travels throughout Central Nebraska, its mission will be solely to complement current health care services already in existence in your communities and to ensure everyone has equal access to quality and preventive health care services. Along with this new mission, we encourage you to contact Choice Family Health Care to inquire about the Contraceptive Access Project (CAP) that provides the most affordable contraceptive services in Central Nebraska, coupled with education. Join us for our open house events at 4503 Second Ave., Suite 209, in Kearney from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Nov. 28 and at 217 E. Stolley Park Road, Suite E, in Grand Island from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on Dec. 5. Appetizers, tours and random door prizes will be given out. SIOUX CITY | Sam Clovis, a Northwest Iowan who has been questioned in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 campaign, on Thursday withdrew his nomination to a Department of Agriculture post. Clovis wrote a letter to President Donald Trump, saying he wanted the president to withdraw his nomination to become the chief scientist in the Agriculture Department. "The political climate inside Washington has made it impossible for me to receive balanced and fair consideration for this position. The reckless assaults on you and your team seem to be a blood sport that only increases in intensity every day," Clovis wrote. A CNN report earlier Thursday said the Clovis nomination was imperiled due to his connection to the Russia probe. U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the leading Democrat on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, on Wednesday wrote Clovis with more questions regarding his actions in 2016, when he was a co-chairman of the Trump presidential campaign. Stabenow said the questions need answers, after information surfaced this week from criminal filings that were reported against former campaign officials for Trump, who is a Republican. "The emerging information about his role in the Trump campaigns interactions with Russia raises serious concerns. As we consider his nomination, I will be looking into these facts, along with his questionable qualifications," Stabenow said in a release that also included her questions for Clovis. Clovis, who now is a White House aide to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified last week before a grand jury seated in Washington, D.C., NBC News first reported Wednesday. Clovis, a former Morningside College professor and Sioux City radio talk show host, was propelled into the middle of Mueller's high-stakes probe on Monday with the unsealing of court documents related a guilty pleading by George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos, who was secretly arrested in July for lying to the FBI and pleaded guilty last month to those charges, is cooperating with Mueller's investigation, according to the documents. As national campaign co-chair and senior policy adviser of the Trump campaign, Clovis was asked to form a national security advisory committee. The members included Papadopoulos, who was not approached by the campaign for consultation, other than one meeting he attended in March 2016, Victoria Toensing, the attorney for Clovis, said in a statement to the Journal. In his plea filing, Papadopolous admitted he told Trump and other top campaign national security officials during the March 31 meeting that he had contact with intermediaries for Russia who said they could set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos continued to email campaign officials about a possible meeting with individuals claiming to work for the Russian government who were offering "dirt" in the form of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In an August 2016 email, among the court documents uncovered Monday, Clovis urged Papadopoulos to "make the trip, if it is feasible." To Clovis' knowledge, Toensing said in the statement, all of Papadopoulos' communications with the campaign were "self-generated." Clovis never told Papadopoulos that "a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia," because that was not Clovis' view of Trump's foreign policies priorities, Toensing said. For weeks, Democrats had urged Trump to withdraw the nomination of Clovis, contending his background as an economics professor at Morningside College in Sioux City does not fit for the agriculture post. Also in his letter, Clovis, a military veteran, said, "I have served this nation for 50 years with dignity, honor and integrity and will continue to do so." He added that "it saddens me" that the nomination would not go through to fruition. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Alimah Fauzan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 16:16 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2728a60 3 Opinion village-fund,village,development,development-assistance,community-participation,transparency,democracy,#Democracy Free A village head in Tebo regency, Jambi, was surprised. How can there still be people without latrines? The remark reflected a gap between the elite involved in the village development with the residents in the regency, where sanitation facilities are still in dire need. Village development is not only about giving assistance in form of cash to the poor. There is a common difficulty among village officials to distinguish which programs should be included in infrastructure development, governance, village community development and empowerment. Not surprisingly, their development programs are still focused on infrastructure development programs. In a number of villages in and outside Java, I found that village development programs rarely target marginal groups. According to research by the Institute of Education Development, Social, Religious and Cultural Studies (Infest) Yogyakarta, improving public services has not been a priority of development programs in villages. In December 2014, the law on villages was passed. However, efforts and innovations needed by citizens, especially to access public services and decision making at the village level are still lacking. Accessing public services are still understood merely to serve matters related to administration at the village level -- leading not only to the obvious lack of adequate public services but also community participation in village development. Community participation is crucial to improve public services. Public involvement can be done at every stage, from policy formulation, preparation of service standards, monitoring and evaluation, public service delivery, and awards. One approach is by conducting public satisfaction surveys, which have been proven effective for village administrations to improve their services. Infest Yogyakarta has supported a number of village administrations in shaping their priorities, to include often overlooked community empowerment along with infrastructure development. Improving public services through community participation increases citizens trust in the village administration. People also increasingly realized they have the right to be part of their village development, as reflected in several villages in the regencies of Tebo in Jambi, Banjarnegara, Wonosobo, Klaten in Central Java, Takalar in South Sulawesi, Malang in East Java and Musi Banyuasin in South Sumatra. Many marginalized groups are still neglected from the village development planning process. This fact can also be seen in the documents of the village mid-term development plans (RPJMDesa), working plan of village government (RKPDesa), and village budget (APBDesa). The role of women and other marginalized groups are still mere beneficiaries, rather than active actors in village development in general. Collaboration between village government and civil society organizations is a main key to community empowerment. Instilling the importance of improving public services in a participatory, transparent and accountable manner requires the support of various parties. In Gunung Kidul regency in Yogyakarta, initiatives to encourage participation, transparency and accountability have been conducted by the IDEA and Combine Resource Institute (CRI) associations in collaboration with the regental administration. Among CRI's initiatives is an information system development program for local resource management called Lumbung Komunitas (community barn), which is included in the village information system. Local government support has encouraged villages to open up to various initiatives from civil society groups depending, however, on the village leadership and capacity. Including village government oversight in improving public services, from planning to implementation and reporting stage. *** The writer is a gender specialist at The Institute of Education Development, Social, Religious and Cultural Studies (Infest Yogyakarta). The article is based on her research report with Irsyadul Ibad in Indonesian titled "Government response to transparency initiative and accountability driven by civil society groups in Indonesia". --------------- 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. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin JIS (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta, Indonesia Fri, November 3, 2017 Under the leadership of its new Head of School, Tarek Razik, Ed.D, Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) is vibrant with energy to help its students reach new heights, locally and globally. Indonesias Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) continues to move forward in its efforts to nurture local talents who possess a flair for lifelong learning and who will evolve into global citizens contributing great things to the world, under the leadership of new head of school Tarek Razik, Ed.D. JIS was established in 1951 as the Joint Embassy School as one of Indonesias first private schools to offer an international curriculum. The school changed its name to Jakarta International School in 1978, and was renamed Jakarta Intercultural School in 2014. The school offers four programs early childhood, elementary school, middle school and high school at its three campuses in South Jakarta: the Cilandak campus located on the Jl. Terogong Raya No. 33 and Pondok Indah campus, Jl. Duta Indah, the Pattimura campus in Kebayoran Baru, located on the Jl. Pattimura. According to Razik, the uniqueness of the schools curriculum lies in its inquiry-based approach to learning, a defining characteristic of Western-style education. Tarek Razik, Ed.D, Head of School (Photos courtesy of Jakarta Intercultural School/.) A lot of our teaching is built around inquiry, extending thinking processes and developing critical thinking skills. We want children to ask why why is the sky blue? Then they go out and find answers to that question, Razik told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview. To achieve this, Razik said the school strove to create more problem-based learning projects in which teachers help students to translate the concepts they learned in real life. In a particular class, for example, we discuss respect for different cultures and nationalities. We ask the students to do some research first, then they are presented with different situations where their cultural values might come into conflict with those of another person. We ask them to solve this conflict in a respectful manner, he illustrated. He said the output of this approach was not only quantitative, as measured by the students grade averages or how many students get accepted to prestigious universities, but was also qualitative: They are equipped to become good citizens for the world by applying these thinking and emotional skills. We arent saying we want to be the best in the world, because that implies competitiveness; we want to contribute to the world. Best For The World The world has so many conflicts because people dont show respect. This is an example of how our curriculum feeds our mission and tagline to help students strive to be the best for the world. We arent saying we want to be the best in the world, because that implies competitiveness; we want to contribute to the world, he explained. The schools effort to nurture global citizens involves people from both within and without its campuses. The school has a student body comprising 62 different nationalities, of which Americans, South Koreans, Indonesians, Australians and Britons make up the majority. Its teachers also hail from different countries, with most of them coming from North America. Thanks to advancements in technology and related local facilities, the school is now able to connect its students with their counterparts overseas. Global connection is now become a reality to prepare the students in their development as global citizens. Lets say science students are studying the rainforest. The teacher might use Skype to connect them with a group of students in Brazil living in the Amazon and the students can ask, whats it like living in a rainforest? Razik illustrated. . (Photos courtesy of Jakarta Intercultural School/.) Safe Environment And Professional Development Razik said that inquiry-based learning was actually suitable for students, as children were inherently curious. Teachers, however, face an enormous task in nurturing this trait by providing a safe environment for children to explore and try things, as well as learning from their failures without feeling ashamed. Therefore, I continue to strive to create a safe environment for children, to protect them from cyberbullying, while providing a space where they arent afraid to fail, instilling the idea that failure is OK as long as you learn from your mistakes and grow and move forward, he said. Having recently arrived to his new post in Jakarta after his previous role as the head of the International School of Beijing in China, Razik said the Indonesian culture, which placed high importance on harmonious relationships among people, provided an ideal environment for education. Indonesians are also concerned about deep human relationships, rather than just taking care of business. I like it, because education is about deep connections, he said. JIS provides constant professional development for its teachers, sending them to local and international workshops on inquiry methods. In the old days, teachers told [students] what you needed to know in front of the classroom and would give you a test. Now, teachers are more like facilitators. They have to structure lessons that will extend the learning process beyond content. Our trainings seek to equip them with such skills, Razik said. Pedagogy exchanges for teachers . (Photos courtesy of Jakarta Intercultural School/.) Aside from equipping its own teachers with inquiry-based learning methods, JIS also partners actively with local Jakarta schools in a teacher exchange program to introduce the Western pedagogy approach to Indonesian teachers. To make this goal a reality, the school has just established partnerships with the Emmanuel Foundation and Mentari School Jakarta, as well as launched the Innovative Schools Program (ISP) with the Jakarta Education Agency. The program involves the participation of teachers and principals of about 15 public elementary schools across Jakarta to strengthen their quality of education. Either we bring their teachers here for training or we send our teachers there. Its really an exchange; we also learn a lot about Indonesia from the local teachers, Razik explained. We want our teachers to grow together as Indonesia grows. We want to be supporting this [socio-economic] growth in Indonesia, he added. In order to reach out to a wider segment of Indonesians, Razik was eager to cooperate with relevant national education stakeholders to expand the ISP to schools beyond Jakarta. Key words/ topics : JIS, Jakarta Intercultural School, jakarta international school, life long learning, inquiry based, global citizen Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Glenn Chapman (Agence France-Presse) San Francisco, United States Thu, November 2, 2017 13:49 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2720928 2 Science & Tech Facebook,abuse,#facebook,social-media Free Facebook on Wednesday reported that profits leapt on booming revenue from online ads in the third quarter, topping investor forecasts and buoying shares already at record highs. The leading social network said it made a profit of $4.7 billion in the quarter that ended on September 30, a jump of 79 percent from the same period a year earlier. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg used the update to address criticism of Facebook for allowing disinformation and manipulation during the 2016 US presidential election, hours after the company's top lawyer faced a grilling at a Washington congressional hearing. "Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well," Zuckerberg said. "But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don't bring people closer together. We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms. We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits." Facebook shares that ended the day up 1.4 percent to $182.66 but retreating in after-market trades to $179.25. Investor enthusiasm may have been tempered by rising costs at the California-based internet giant and executives stressing the company is firmly in "investment mode" while predicting ad growth will slow. "They made a ton of money but the Russia investigation is clearly putting a cloud over everything for the moment," said independent analyst Rob Enderle. "Sometimes it just takes a trigger event to cause a bunch of people to take their profit and go someplace else, especially if they have decided this is as good as it is going to get at Facebook for a while." The analyst added that some investors might be worried that the probed into Russia meddling with US politics will result in regulation on social networks that might hurt profitability. Read also: Facebook launches campaign for World Suicide Prevention Day Investment mode Expenses rose to $5.2 billion from $3.9 billion in the same quarter last year, and headcount at the company was up 47 percent to 23,165 employees. "We will continue to invest aggressively in the many opportunities we see ahead," Facebook chief financial officer David Wehner said during an earnings call with analysts. Zuckerberg outlined investment priorities that included video content, which he described as the biggest trend at Facebook. The number of monthly active users at the social network continued to grow, reaching 2.07 billion, an increase of 16 percent from the same time last year. Advertising served up on smartphones or tablets accounted for about 88 percent of revenue taken in from marketing messages in the quarter, Facebook reported. The quarterly earnings report was released as Facebook and other internet titans testified this week before Congress about a Russian-led effort to spread misinformation and sow discord ahead of the 2016 US election. Read also: Facebook forms team to tackle hoaxes in Indonesia New details on meddling Facebook told Congress on Wednesday that the apparent political meddling included use of its image-oriented messaging service Instagram. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch told a hearing that Instagram posts by suspect Russian accounts were seen by some 20 million Americans last year. "We now discovered, in the last 48 hours, 120,000 Russian-based posts on Instagram," Stretch told the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. The latest data on Instagram is on top of the estimated 126 million Americans exposed to Facebook posts from Russian entities seeking to create divisions during the election campaign. "So all told, that gets you to approximately -- a little less than 150 million," Stretch said in response to questioning from Democratic Senator Mark Warner. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California told the hearing which included lawyers for Facebook, Google and Twitter that the companies need to do more to help combat "cyber warfare." "I asked specific questions, I got vague answers, and that just won't do," she told the companies. "You have a huge problem on your hands... You've created these platforms, and now they are being misused, and you have to be the ones to do something about it, or we will." The hearing was the second in Congress this week in which social media and internet firms have been called to explain how fake news and other disinformation was allowed to spread during the election campaign. "I've expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," Zuckerberg said "What they did is wrong and we are not going to stand for it." Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Shatha Yaish (Agence France-Presse) Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories Thu, November 2, 2017 16:43 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272a4c1 2 Art & Culture Banksy,Balfour,Palestine Free Secretive British street artist Banksy held a special event Wednesday to apologise for the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration outside his hotel in the occupied West Bank. The typically surreal event involved 50 children hosted by an actor dressed as Queen Elizabeth II for a British-style tea party. Their party hats were bullet-riddled helmets with British flags on them, while tattered Union Jacks were flown. The queen revealed a plaque carved in concrete saying "Er, Sorry," playing on the common initials for Elizabeth Regina. The apology was etched into Israel's controversial separation wall, which in many areas cuts through Palestinian territory. The children were descendants of Palestinians forced to flee their land in the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel. Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when the British government said it viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". Read also: Banksy work comes top of poll of UK's favorite artworks Palestinians see the document as giving away their homeland, while Israelis see it as helping pave the way to the founding of their country at a time when Jews were facing persecution elsewhere. "This conflict has brought so much suffering to people on all sides. It didn't feel appropriate to 'celebrate' the British role in it," Banksy said in a statement. "The British didn't handle things well here -- when you organise a wedding, it's best to make sure the bride isn't already married." Gemma Bell, a British woman among a group who walked part of the way from London to Jerusalem to apologise for their government's role in Balfour, hailed the work. "It's what we should expect from Banksy -- brilliant, unpredictable, dramatic and really getting that message home." The British government has said it will mark Thursday's anniversary "with pride", with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend a dinner in London with his British counterpart Theresa May. Banksy opened the Walled-Off Hotel near Bethlehem in March, with all the rooms facing directly onto Israel's separation wall. Read also: Slip of tongue fuels speculation on Banksy identity At the time, he said it had the worst view of any hotel in the world. Dozens of his works are found inside the hotel. Wissam Salsaa, the hotel's manager, told AFP they wanted to protest against the British government's attitude to Balfour. "This event is a protest or a commemoration of the disastrous Balfour Declaration that caused a catastrophe for the Palestinian people and a catastrophe for the Middle East," he said. "The British people and government, represented (here) by the Queen, should apologise to the Palestinian people." The wall is one of the most striking symbols of Israel's 50-year occupation, and has become a major focus for demonstrations and art work. Banksy closely protects his identity and was not said to be in attendance Wednesday. Topics : Banksy Balfour Palestine Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin I Wayan Juniarta (The Jakarta Post) Ubud Thu, November 2, 2017 09:12 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a270d612 4 Art & Culture bali-art-scene,#Bali,art,painting Free Three exhibitions showcase Balinese artists diverse interests, viewpoints Three ongoing exhibitions held in conjunction with the 2017 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) are an undisputed testament to the diversity of the islands visual art landscape. Despite its nature as a literary gathering, UWRF has always offered ample space for the visual arts, Mudra Swari Saraswati foundation chairman Ketut Suardana said. The foundation is the organization behind the UWRF and the Ubud Food Festival. A restaurateur who owns Casa Luna and Indus, two of Ubuds established eateries, Ketut is also an ardent art collector, owning an extensive collection of Balinese paintings and sculptures. One of the exhibitions is taking place at Casa Luna. Titled Bali Cosmology: Aesthetic and Educative Art, the exhibit is unique because it features the works of a family of artists: Made Bayak, his wife Komang Kartika Dewi, and their 11-year-old son, Damar Langit Timur. Made (Instagram handle @madebayak) is one of the most influential visual artists of his generation. Born 1980 in Tampaksiring, Gianyar, he is a man of many talents (he moonlights as the guitarist for rap-rock band Geekssmile) and a passionate environmental activist. His paintings and music are the manifestation of his political credo: A fiery opposition against a corrupt state, prejudiced society, greedy investors and ecological destruction. Plasticology, a series of Mades paintings incorporating plastic trash and educational workshops targeting youngsters, has drawn large support locally and abroad. His masterpiece in the ongoing exhibit is Politik Dasamuka(Dasamuka Politic), referring to Dasamuka, the alias of Rawana, the demonic and evil king of Alengka and archnemesis of Rama in the Hindu epic poem Ramayana. It portrays a ten-headed giant with Indonesia imprisoned inside his belly and his six blackened hands bearing the symbols of the countrys political parties. Politik Dasamuka by Made Bayak (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) Some 500 meters to the west, in LittleTalks (@littletalksubud), a charming library cafe overlooking Tjampuhan river, a young painter I Wayan Ariana (@nanoeari_art) tries to shine a light on the monotheistic element of Balinese Hinduism in Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti, an exhibition of paintings on Hindu deities done in Keliki style. Named after a village north of Ubud, the style was conceived in the 1970s by a local farmer, I Ketut Sana. Keliki-style paintings are mostly done on paper with Chinese ink and generally depict a romantic interpretation of daily life in the islands rural villages, the beauty of the islands flora and fauna, as well as Hindu myths and local folklore. It is famous for its rich gradations and extreme detail, both of which demand hours of prolonged concentration from the painter. Balinese Hinduism boasts such a large number of deities that non-Balinese often mistake it for a polytheistic religion. We need to educate them that all those deities are only the manifestations of one ultimate Creator, which we call here Ida Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa, he said. He then pointed out at his painting Acintya (The Incomprehensible One) and stated that humans language and knowledge is so limited and imperfect that it cannot define the limitless and perfect nature of the god. The third exhibition is Candra Sangkala (Chronogram) by Wayan Kun Adnyana (@kunadnyana) at the Neka Art Museum (NAM). Presented as a reinterpretation of ancient reliefs visual codes in contemporary painting, the works on display show an amalgamation of Kuns visual traits of faceless human figures with themes and figures inspired by the islands ancient relief. The works were created following months of extensive research, during which Kun visited Yeh Pulu and Goa Gajah, two historical sites known for their ancient reliefs. I employed five different approaches to move the relief into my paintings, including treating them as a series of two-dimensional pictures that could be cut into parts and repositioned at different places on the canvas, Kun said. Gateway by Kun Adnyana (JP/I Wayan Juniarta) NAMs founder Sutedja Neka said the exhibition marked Kuns maturity as both an artist and a scholar. He is quite unique because he is a scholar he has a PhD in art and now teaches at Denpasars Indonesia Arts Institute (ISI). He is also an active painter, and he frequently writes about art events. His mastery over those three fields is converging in this exhibition, Neka said. The three exhibitions, Suardana suggested, would be a treat for art lovers as a fine example of how the islands visual art landscape is flourishing. This is where the traditional meets the modern, and contemporary issues mingle with ancient legacy, he said. _______________________________ Bali Cosmology: Aesthetic and Educative Art will run until Nov. 17, while Ekam Sat Viprah Bahudha Vadanti and Candra Sangkala will run until Nov. 22 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 10:43 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a27125ce 1 Science & Tech LAPAN,research,science-and-technology,observatory Free The National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Lapan) is set to build Southeast Asia's largest observatory in Timau in the Kupang regency of East Nusa Tenggara, an official said. On Monday, Kupang regent Ayub Titu Eki revealed that plans are already under way in conjunction with Lapan, as reported by tempo.co. The observatory is expected to encourage tourism in the area as well as developing the region as a research and technology center. "Lapan will develop the facility to be a natural tourism site that would be attractive to tourists," Titu said. An advanced telescope measuring 3.8 meters in diameter would be placed in the building, Titu said, adding that it would be the largest in Southeast Asia. Read also: Indonesia to talk with China, Russia about spaceport project Lapan said the mountainous region of Timau is considered a strategic spot for space observation, covering both northern and southern directions. Lapan is in the beginning stages of developing the facility, Titu said, adding that several heavy vehicle units had been being delayed due to severe road damage throughout the Kupang region. "The Kupang regional government has informed the central government to repair the damaged roads because the observatorys construction is earmarked for early next year," he added. In the meantime, he said, Lapan is also currently building a science center in the Tilong area in Central Kupang on an area spanning 40 hectares that would be dedicated to research. (liz/kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Carla Bianpoen (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 09:34 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a270f2d0 4 Art & Culture Jakarta-Biennale,contemporary-art,indonesia-contemporary-art-and-design Free This years Jakarta Biennale will diverge from many of the curatorial practices of its predecessors The Jakarta Biennale, which is set to open on Saturday at Gudang Sarinah Ekosistem in South Jakarta, will this year adopt Jiwa as its artistic concept. Jiwa is a concept that is almost impossible to translate into English, but for this biennale, it could be understood as an all-encompassing energy and creative spirit that flows from the past, or the memory of it, to the present and onwards toward new visions. Read also: Arts Biennale programs to be held simultaneously in three cities Bissu, the androgynous shamans from South Sulawesi who will perform prayers and blessings at the opening of the vernissage evening, are just the beginning of what is in store. Another rare feature will be the inclusion of works that could be considered Balinese art brut (raw art) by artists Ni Tanjung and Dwi Putro Mulyono. Works by acclaimed artists like the late Hendrawan Ryanto (1959-2004), a contemporary craftwork artist, and the late Semsar Siahaan (1952-2005), a great artist and human rights activist, will be on show in revived forms. Senior artists whose works have made significant contributions to the development of art in Indonesia, have also been asked to join in. Enceng gondok berbunga emas (Water hyacinth with golden flowers) by Siti Adiyati (Jakarta Biennale/File) Siti Adiyati, for instance, who was an active member of the Indonesian New Art Movement that made its mark in the 1970s, will revive her installation of eceng gondok or water hyacinths, which grow on water surfaces and hamper the flow of streams and rivers. Siti said her creation, titled Enceng gondok berbunga emas (Water hyacinth with golden flowers), was a portrait of poverty in its increasing reality, like trash floating in all directions of water ways. Today, it stands as a powerful work of deep-felt concern over the euphoria of overwhelming consumerism, which promises an imagined golden time. Marintan Sirait, one of Indonesias first female performance artists, whose notable performance installation from 1990 Membangun Rumah (Building a House) will make a reappearance with an expanded conceptual and deepened spiritual quality. The installation and performance inspires viewers to meditate and retire from the hustle and bustle of the city. The team: Jakarta Biennales artistic director Melati Suryodarmo (second left) poses with curators Philippe Pirotte (left), Annissa Gultom (center), Vit Havranek (second right) and Hendro Wiyanto. (Jakarta Biennale/File) Notably, the biennale will also feature new and existing video works of strong female filmmakers, such as Ximena Cuevas (Mexico), Gabriela Golder (Argentina) and Kiri Dalena (Philippines) together with Indonesians Otty Widasari and Yola Yulfianti. Thai artist Arin Rungjang has made a new six-channel video work inspired by the song Bengawan Solo (Solos river) for the biennale. However, unlike many who think the song has a romantic inkling, Runjang, who found that the songs composer, Gesang, had not at all intended it as a romantic song, seeks to capture the composers sentiment juxtaposed with his personal story. Melati Suryodarmo, the biennales artistic director, said the biennale would also present 21 live performances in the first 10 days. The performances include those performed by internationally-renowned artists, Eva Kotatkova, Alastair MacLennan, Jason Lim, Nikhil Chopra and Ho Rui An. Indonesian performers include Marintan Sirait, Aliansyah Caniago, Ratu Rizkitasari Saraswati. Wood by Jason Lim (Jakarta Biennale/Jason Lim) Melati, the first female artistic director since the biennales inception in 2007, is working with four other curators Annissa Gultom and Hendro Wiyanto of Jakarta, Vit Havranek of Prague and Philippe Pirotte of Frankfurt, Germany. Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani, who is known for combining mathematics with Sufi poetry and geometry in her works, will present a video performance and installation based on Islamic geometry and sand, titled I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered Id forgotten you. I was dreaming. Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak, whose recurrent motif is the breast, will collaborate with Indonesian chef Rahung Nasution in the performance Breast Stupa Cookery. There will also be artworks by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, Indonesian painters Hanafi and Ugo Untoro, as well as by a Russian painting collective of Alexey Kluyjkov, Vasil Aartamonov and Dominik Forman. The biennale program will also include Symposia on Nov. 13 and 14 with keynote speakers from Asia and Europe to be held at IFI and accompanied by performances by Ho Rui An and Choi Ka Fai as well as the launch of three books, consisting of art reviews by Bambang Bujono, essays by Siti Adiyati and the personal diaries of Semsar Siagian. Dolorosa Sinaga (Jakarta Biennale/File) For the biennale, renowned sculptor and educator Dolorosa Sinaga, who continues to engage with social issues through representations of the human body in its female form, will have her studio transplanted at Gudang Sarinah. Read also: Dolorosa Sinaga: A sculptor with heart and soul Her studio is where her jiwa resides, explained Melati Suryodarmo, the biennales artistic director. In addition, Dolorosa has also created 10 sculptures of Indonesias first president, which will be displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics in Kota Tua, West Jakarta. The sculptures reflect Sukarnos various sayings, statements and actions that helped build and shape this country as we know it today. I actually wanted to make a hundred sculptures, said Dolorosa, who lauds Sukarno as the one who made this nation, united its many ethnic groups through the establishment of one Indonesian language and, above all, gave us the countrys principles of Pancasila. _____________________________ For details on the programs, log on to jakartabiennale.net or contact info@jakartabiennale.net Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Pascale Mollard-Chenebenoit (Agence France-Presse) Paris Thu, November 2, 2017 13:30 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a271f952 2 Science & Tech space,#space,animals,NASA Free Sixty years after Laika the dog became the first living creature to go into orbit, animals are still being sent into space -- though these days much smaller creatures are going up. Julie Robinson, chief scientist for the International Space Station programme, explains what we are still learning from animals in orbit. Why no more dogs, cats or monkeys? When those animals were sent into space, it was because people were afraid that mammalian species in general could not survive without gravity, and that people might suffocate. We really didn't know what it might be like to live in space without gravity. Today when we send animal into space we send large numbers of small animals in order to accomplish biomedical research goals. Read also: Chicken sandwich set to be launched in space on July 21 What's going up now, and how do they adapt? Photo taken on February 5, 1964 shows a cat representing the first cat that went into space Felicette with equipment in the rocket Veronique during an exhibition at The Conservatoire national des arts et metiers (CNAM; National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts) in Paris. On October 18, 1963, Felicette, a black and white female cat found on the streets of Paris, was sent into space on a Veronique AGI 47 sounding rocket. (AFP/File) Just as we do with research on Earth, we typically use rodents, fruit flies, fish and other small animals. There have been some scientific studies with snails; we are considering rats for the future. For any experiment we do in space, the astronauts need special training and that is true for animal experiments as well, so they need to know how to operate the habitat and how to do the experiment activities. With mice, launching is a stressful experience that is stressful for astronauts, too. When they come onboard and start floating, they are surprised but pretty soon they learn how to use their habitat, how to move around and drink, sleep and eat in a pretty normal way. Once they are settled, it is a relatively peaceful experience. The fish adapt very quickly. Read also: Indonesian students' tempeh experiment arrives in space What are we learning? Photo of French rocket Veronique in which traveled the rat Hector on February 22, 1961. (AFP/File) The experiments that are done with mice in space are very similar to experiment done with mice on the ground. They are generally targeting areas where we are trying to improve human health such as treatments for osteoporosis and muscle loss. In space, those small animals are floating like humans do, and they lose (...) bone if they don't exercise. Same with muscles because they don't use many muscles. With mice, those disease processus move pretty quickly; it can be useful for developing treatments for bone loss on Earth or for other aspects of ageing. Fish are also important for looking at bone loss and muscle wasting. Generally our research has dual purposes -- We want to reduce the risk of futures explorations beyond Earth's orbit, but we also want to have an impact here on Earth, because a lot of those processus are also happening as we age. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam Thu, November 2, 2017 17:31 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272d198 1 Politics radio,HangFM,Islamic-State,radicalism,broadcasting-commission Free A Batam radio station that Singapore accused of spreading Islamic State (IS) group propaganda has been cleared of the allegation and was granted permission to continue operations. The Riau Islands Broadcasting Commission (KPID) conducted a review of the contents aired by Hang FM and and found no evidence it was airing radical teachings espoused by the terrorist group. The accusation that was made by Singapore is no longer a problem, KPID chairman Azwardi said recently. The commission said Hang FM had changed its method of propagating Islam, adding that it was now more open and no longer promoting radical teachings. The radio station, it said, had repeatedly denounced terrorism in its programs. Hang FM owner Zein Alatas said his radio station was committed to fighting radical teachings. The radio station held an off-air discussion on Aug. 30 themed "Developing Indonesia without Radicalism," presenting local members of National Police, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and KPID as speakers. The radio station was forced to change its contents after being accused by many parties of spreading radical teachings, including Singaporean authorities, who said it spread extremist ideology and radicalized two of its citizens, who had been arrested under the Internal Security Act for allegedly trying to join the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. The city-states Ministry of Home Affairs alleged that Rosli Hamzah, 50, and Mohamed Omar Mahadi, 33, started listening to Hang FM between 2009 and 2010, after which they became interested in armed jihad and IS. (ahw) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 17:58 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272f93a 1 Business bni,president-commissioner,UI,Professor Free State-owned lender PT Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) has appointed an economics professor from the University of Indonesia, Ari Kuncoro, as its president commissioner. Ari replaces Hartadi Sarwono, who was appointed as president commissioner of another state-owned lender, PT Bank Mandiri. The appointment of Ari was approved at a shareholders' meeting. "Professor Ari Kuncoro is the dean of UI's Faculty of Economics and Business. His background as an economics professor will help him in his new position," he said after the meeting in Jakarta. He stressed that Aris appointment would not affect the lender's business direction as it would stick to its business plan that had been approved by the Financial Services Authority (OJK), last year. "The commissioner's job is to supervise; the business plan and operations are handled by the management," he added. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin I Wayan Juniarta (The Jakarta Post) Ubud, Bali Thu, November 2 2017 Three exhibitions showcase Balinese artists diverse interests, viewpoints Three ongoing exhibitions held in conjunction with the 2017 Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (UWRF) are an undisputed testament to the diversity of the islands visual art landscape. Despite its nature as a literary gathering, UWRF has always offered ample space for the visual arts, Mudra Swari Saraswati foundation chairman Ketut Suardana said. The foundation is the organization behind the UWRF and the Ubud Food Festival. A restaurateur who owns Casa Luna and Indus, two of Ubuds established eateries, Ketut is also an ardent art collector, owning an extensive collection of Balinese paintings and sculptures. One of the exhibitions is taking place at Casa Luna. Titled Bali Cosmology: Aesthetic and Educative Art, the exhibit is unique because it features the works of a family of artists: Made Bayak, his wife Komang Kartika Dewi, and their 11-year-old son, Damar Langit Timur. Made (Instagram handle @madebayak) is one of the most influential visual artists of his generation. Born 1980 in Tampaksiring, Gianyar, he is a man of many talents (he moonlights as the guitarist for rap-rock band Geekssmile) and a passionate environmental activist. His paintings and music are the manifestation of his political credo: A fiery opposition against a corrupt state, prejudiced society, greedy investors and ecological destruction. Plasticology, a series of Mades paintings incorporating plastic trash and educational workshops targeting youngsters, has drawn large support locally and abroad. His masterpiece in the ongoing exhibit is Politik Dasamuka (Dasamuka Politic), referring to Dasamuka, the alias of Rawana, the demonic and evil king of Alengka and archnemesis of Rama in the Hindu epic poem Ramayana. It portrays a ten-headed giant with Indonesia imprisoned inside his belly and his six blackened hands bearing the symbols of the countrys political parties. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2 2017 Indonesia will send 23 trade officials to China to attend a two-week workshop to learn about the trade promotion strategies of the East Asian nation. The workshop is slated to run from Nov. 3 to 17 and include classroom sessions and site visits to Chinas export centers and other relevant facilities. The workshop materials have been tailored specifically to cover Chinas efforts to accommodate Indonesias interest in lowering the bilateral trade imbalance, said secretary of the Trade Ministrys directorate general of national export development Ari Satria. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Medan Thu, November 2 2017 French mortar producer Saint Gobain Group hopes to boost sales in Sumatra following the opening on Tuesday of its factory in Medan, North Sumatra. The new facility, built with an investment of 9 million euro (US$104.7 million) from its subsidiary PT Cipta Mortar Utama, is set to produce 180,000 tons of premixed mortar each year. Javier Gimeno, Saint Gobain general delegate for the Asia-Pacific region, said that although the use of mortar in Sumatra had not been significant, the firm considered the island its most rapidly growing market. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura Thu, November 2, 2017 18:37 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a273220c 1 National Papua,smuggling,German,human-skull Free Mimika Police are questioning a German national they say is linked to the finding of three human skulls stored in a package at Mozes Kilangin airport in Papua. The human skulls were detected during an x-ray security inspection at Mozes Kilangin International Airport on Tuesday. The package was stored in a cargo container in a Garuda Airlines flight heading to Makassar, South Sulawesi. We are now investigating two people, including a German national who owns [the human skulls], Mimika Police chief Adj. Comr. Dean Mackbon told The Jakarta Post on Thursday. The police declined to disclose the foreign nationals identity. The document said the package contained ant colonies and traditional Asmat clothing, but the security officers were suspicious, so they decided to open the package and found three human skulls, Papua Police spokesman Sr. Comr. AM Kamal said. Tembagapura Immigration head Jesaya Samuel Henock said transporting human skulls requires permits from many parties, including the Health Ministry. The police are looking into documentation related to the package, he said. (ahw) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marchio Irfan Gorbiano (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 09:54 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2710356 1 Business Trade,Indonesia,China Free Indonesia will send 23 officials from the Trade Ministry to China to study the market in the country as part of a two-week workshop on trade promotion as officials try to reduce Indonesia's trade deficit with the country. The workshops program has been tailored specifically to boost Indonesian exports to China, said the Trade Ministrys secretary general for export development, Ari Satria, adding that the event would take place from Nov. 3 to 17. In addition to attending classes, the officials would also go on site visits to facilities relevant to the goal of the workshop, he added. Data from the Trade Ministry shows that Indonesia posted a trade deficit of US$8.4 billion with China during the period from January to August this year, slightly better than $9.9 billion deficit recorded in the same period last year. Meanwhile, Charge d'Affairs of the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia Sun Weide said the governments of both countries had been communicating to help increase exports from Indonesia to China. Both governments [of Indonesia and China] have been in close communication on how to increase Indonesian exports to China, said Sun, adding that Indonesian companies could export more tropical fruits to China as there was a great market for such commodities in his country. Ari added that the Trade Ministry and the Foreign Ministry had considered opening trade promotion centers in Shanghai to boost exports to the country. (bbn) Topics : Trade Indonesia China Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 13:18 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a271ed0e 1 City kidnapping,South-Korea,Jakarta-police Free The Jakarta Police arrested two South Korean nationals Baik Jongwoon, 40, and Sea Songwoon, 38, on Wednesday for allegedly kidnapping a 10-year-old child, who is also South Korean. Based on the polices initial findings, the two suspects allegedly staged the kidnapping in South Korea and brought the child to Indonesia, kompas.com reported. "We arrested them in two different locations. Baik Jongwoon was arrested at a hotel in Sudirman area, South Jakarta, where the child and another boy were held captive," Jakarta Police violent crimes unit head Adj. Sr. Comr. Hendy F. Kurniawan said. He added that the police then rushed to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, and arrested Sea Songwoon, who was about to return to his country with two girls. They demanded that the childs parents pay a ransom, according to the police. "The childs parents had transferred 150 million won as requested by Jongwoon. The amount is equal to Rp 1.8 billion," Hendy said at Jakarta Police headquarters on Thursday. The South Korean Police first reported the case to the South Korean Embassy in Jakarta, which then contacted the Jakarta Police on Wednesday afternoon. (fac) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 14:02 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2722910 1 City sharia,hotels,jakarta Free Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno promised on Thursday that the city would develop sharia-based hotels to absorb workers who lost their jobs after the closure of the Alexis Hotel in North Jakarta. The city claimed the hotel was a hotbed for prostitution. Sandiaga said the city would cooperate with the Sharia Economic Society (MES) to train the workers and place them at hotels that would be developed to provide sharia-based services. He did not elaborate. He added that sharia-based hotels were mushrooming in various capitals around the globe, namely in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul and Tokyo. We want to make sure that Jakarta is not left behind, he told journalists at City Hall. Sandiaga also announced that he would involve the Alexis Hotels workers in his entrepreneurship training program known as the One District One Center of Entrepreneurship (OK OCE). Topics : sharia hotels jakarta Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 20:09 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2736d1c 1 Politics Jokowi,Joko-Widodo,West-Java,Prabowo-Subianto,electability,SMRC,2019-presidential-election Free President Joko Jokowi Widodo outperformed his former rival Prabowo Subianto in terms of his electability rating in West Java ahead of the 2019 presidential election, according to a study released on Thursday. West Java is the province where he had the hardest time winning votes in the 2014 election. In a survey commissioned by Jakarta-based pollster Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), 25.7 percent of the 820 people polled said they would vote for Jokowi if the election were held now. Prabowo came second in the poll, garnering 22 percent of votes. Meanwhile, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is no longer eligible to run for a presidential seat, ranked third with 1.3 percent of votes. However, the number of undecided voters was high. The survey found 45.5 percent of respondents said they had not yet made a final decision, opening possibilities for a fierce competition among presidential candidates in the countrys most populous province. The survey also revealed that Jokowi is leading in a head-to-head scenario, with Jokowi possibly defeating Prabowo by a thin margin of 48.8 percent to 43.5 percent. Jokowis chance to win in West Java in the next presidential election is getting bigger, SMRC executive director Djayadi Hanan told journalists during the release of the study, which ran from Sept. 28 to Oct. 3. Jokowi lost to Prabowo in West Java in the 2014 election, with 40.22 percent and 59.78 percent of votes respectively. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 18:58 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2733582 1 City toll-road,traffic-management,truck Free Introduced last month, the restriction on trucks with four or more axles from entering the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road from Bekasi in the morning hours, has increased average vehicle speed by 15 percent, according to the Greater Jakarta Transportation Agency. The restriction, which is enforced between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., has increased the speed to 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, from 20 to 30 kilometers per hour previously, said the agency head Bambang Prihartono on Thursday. Even with such a short window of time, the speed has increased by 15 percent, Bambang said, adding that with such a result, the agency would try to restrict trucks from using the toll road from Jakarta to Bekasi next week. However, Bambang said, such a restriction is a short term solution to Jakartas congestion problem, especially toll roads that connect not only commuters but also logistics lanes between industrial zones in Greater Jakarta. We want to ensure that commuters going to their workplaces arrive on time. Further action to solve the existing problem with the trucks requires us to build a new system, he said. In a meeting with the Indonesian Truck Business Association (Aptrindo) and state railway operator KAI, the agency encouraged the business sector to switch from trucks to mass transport, such as trains, as an alternative mode of transportation. So far, only 2 percent of logistics transportation uses trains, Bambang said, train transportation should be cheaper than trucks. The agency has made a pilot project of a new logistic hub near Karawang station in West Java. (dis) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 16:55 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272bd2d 1 National Education,higher-education,Mohamad-Nasir,Research-Technology-and-Higher-Education-Ministry,communications-and-information-technology,Jokowi,Joko-Widodo Free With new challenges faced by the world today, it is expected that leaders of state universities can improve their capacity to manage their education institutions so they can compete in international fora, a minister has said. Rectors or directors of state universities must understand academic-related matters, human and financial resources, student affairs, research and employee prosperity, Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister Mohamad Nasir said when he opened a leadership workshop on Thursday. He further said leaders of state universities must manage to determine priorities in managing their institutions. Dont open too many faculties if it is possible, said the minister in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Thursday. Nasir said the use of communications and information technology could become one way to boost their efficiency. He hoped the workshop could change the mindset of state university leaders in tackling the challenges of managing universities along with the new context of Indonesias higher education development. Citing the instruction of President Joko Jokowi Widodo, Nasir encouraged the opening of study programs that were up-to-date and in line with the needs of the work world. Currently, he said, the work world needed a lot more graduates from certain study programs, such as logistics, mechatronics and retail marketing. The Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry is encouraging universities to open modern study programs that are in line with the development of the new era. After completing their studies, graduates of the study programs will hopefully be able to meet the needs of the working world, opening up job opportunities. (hol/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 13:59 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a27212d5 1 Business purchasing-power,economic-slowdown Free The increased cost of living during a stagnant business period has forced middle-class consumers to purchase cheaper goods to meet their daily needs, fast-moving consumer goods leader Unilever said on Wednesday. On the other hand, high-end consumers continued to purchase premium packaged goods, PT Unilever Indonesia president director Hemant Bakshi told journalists on Wednesday, during a public expo at the company's headquarters in South Tangerang, Banten. He said the changing consumption pattern had caused a shift in consumer segmentation, with middle-class consumers shifting to low-value goods. "[Middle class] consumers are moving toward either smaller-sized and inexpensive products, [while high-end consumers] continue to purchase premium products, Hemant added. Meanwhile, Unilever Indonesia chief financial officer and finance director Tevilyan Yudhistira Rusli said that based on consumer research, the composition of high, middle and low consumers was now 10-40-50, but if the condition persisted, the middle consumer market would decline. "The middle market will decline. To anticipate this, we need to change our portfolio," Tevilyan added. The company was currently intensifying marketing of its second-tier brands, such as Fair & Lovely as an alternative to Pond's, which was marketed to the middle-upper consumer segment, he said. Unilever Indonesia also had plans to issue a premium variant of brands, such as softener Molto. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Jon Afrizal (The Jakarta Post) Jambi Thu, November 2, 2017 16:46 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272bc25 1 National Batanghari,Jambi,police,Mercury,gold-mining,traditional-miners Free The Batanghari Police in Jambi arrested Margayanti bin Arsat, 45, on Wednesday for allegedly selling mercury without permission. The suspect allegedly sold the mercury to traditional gold miners in the regency. Jambi Police spokesperson Adj. Sr. Comr. Kuswahyudi Tresnadi said the suspect had been charged under the 2009 Mineral and Coal Mining Law. He said the alleged illegal practice was discovered to have occurred in Simpang Sungai Rengas in Maro Sebo Ulu district, Batanghari regency. The investigation began after [we received] information that the Sumbar jewelry shop in Sungai Rengas had accepted gold from people conducting illegal mining practices. In addition, the shop was also reported to sell mercury, which is used by traditional gold miners to extract gold from rocks, Kuswahyudi said on Thursday. Read also: Residents warned of mercury pollution Police then followed up the information and conducted an investigation before making the move to arrest Margayati at the shop. Margayati is the owner and dealer of the mercury, Kuswahyudi said, adding that the police had also confiscated three kilograms of mercury. The suspect has been detained at the Batanghari Police station. (bbs) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 21:53 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a273a996 2 Business mortar,factory,sales,sumatra Free French mortar producer Saint Gobain Group hopes to boost sales in Sumatra following the opening on Tuesday of its factory in Medan, North Sumatra. The new facility, built with an investment of 9 million euro (US$104.7 million) from its subsidiary PT Cipta Mortar Utama, is set to produce 180,000 tons of premixed mortar each year. Javier Gimeno, Saint Gobain general delegate for the Asia-Pacific region, said that although the use of mortar in Sumatra had not been significant, the firm considered the island its most rapidly growing market. Read also: Saint-Gobain to launch $45m production facility Last year, our mortar sales in Indonesia reached 80 million and this year, we hope sales will increase to 100 million. We [expect] that the figure will surge by 5.7 percent next year, Gimeno said during the factorys inauguration. Saint Gobain expected the new factory to contribute to its mortar sales starting from next year, he added. At present, Cipta Mortar Utama runs two mortar factories in Jakarta and Gresik, East Java. Special staff to the industry minister, Happy Bone Zulkarnaen, said during the event that the new facility would help Indonesia reduce mortar imports. We appreciate Cipta Mortar Utamas move to raise its production capacity in Indonesia and its plan to build some new factories in several locations until 2020, he said. (lnd) Topics : mortar factory sales sumatra Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) South Tangerang, Banten Thu, November 2, 2017 10:47 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a27134fd 1 Business Unilever-Indonesia,margarine-firm-sale,Performance Free Global fast moving consumer goods firm PT Unilever Indonesia claimed that the plan to sell its margarine division would not affect the Indonesian branchs performance. Unilever Indonesia finance director Tevilyan Yudhistira Rusli said on Wednesday that the company had a strong presence in the country with its Blue Band brand. Introduced to the Indonesian market in 1934, the brand is today a market leader in margarine, but its contribution to the company's sales is not significant. "Blue Band only contributed 1.5 percent to our total sales. It is now the biggest brand in Indonesian margarine market, but the sales are not significant to the company," he said at Unilever Indonesia's headquarters in South Tangerang, Banten. He added that there were three bidders for Unilever's margarine business and the process was ongoing. Unilever is reportedly selling its spread and margarine division as part of a restructuring plan. The company will focus on faster-growing business. The sell-offs began on Sept. 22 when Unilever South Africa Holdings announced the sale of its spread business to investment company Remgro for US$840 million. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 21:42 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a273a37f 1 City Satpol-PP,illegal-levies,thuggery Free The Indonesian Ombudsman revealed on Thursday that some Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) officers had asked for illegal levies from street vendors in six areas in the city in return for permission to conduct their business activities. From the investigation conducted by the Ombudsman, it was revealed that Satpol PP officers had accepted Rp 500,000 (US$36.90) to Rp 8 million per month from the vendors. The Ombudsman commissioner, Adrianus Meliala, said the officers received the money from gangs who backed the street vendors. In Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, for instance, a gang member admitted to cultivating close relationships with Satpol PP officers so that the street vendors he backed were not raided. We also found that there were Satpol PP officers who received the levies at the district office, Adrianus said as quoted by kompas.com. The practice of paying illegal levies was also found to have occurred in the area near Mal Ambassador in Setiabudi, Central Jakarta, where money was distributed to the subdistrict and district office through the neighborhood head. (cal) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States Thu, November 2, 2017 16:19 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2728ff5 2 World shooting-incident,US,guns Free Three people were fatally shot at a Walmart store in Colorado on Wednesday evening, police said, in a country that is struggling with frequent deadly gun violence. There are "(3) confirmed dead," the Thornton Police Department said on Twitter, raising an earlier toll after a woman whom it earlier announced was transported from the scene died. "There is currently NO one in custody," said the department, appealing for "anyone with information" to call. Last month, a gunman in Las Vegas killed 58 people in the country's worst mass shooting in recent history. More than 33,000 gun-related deaths occur annually in the United States, according to a study released this month. Thanks to @NRA lobbyists and lawmakers beholden to them, THIS is what America looks like. THIS is every city, every day. Colorado Walmart pic.twitter.com/TgVgstLqBT Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 2, 2017 While US politicians are quick to enact sweeping policies, including military action, in response to "terrorism" attacks, authorities have taken little concrete action to address the far-deadlier epidemic of domestic gun violence. The inaction is largely due to the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby -- and Republicans who rely on it for funding and other support -- categorically rejecting gun control measures. Another shooting, this time in a Colorado Walmart. No thoughts. No prayers. Just utter DISGUST at the cowardice keeping NRA in business. pic.twitter.com/BH3OyxTP9c BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) November 2, 2017 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States Thu, November 2, 2017 12:49 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a271b11c 2 World trump,terror-attack,New-York-City,capital-punishment Free US President Donald Trump called Wednesday for the man charged with carrying out a New York City truck rampage that killed eight people to be put to death. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the Islamic State jihadist group. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 The president had earlier said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, the US military detention center in Cuba that has been used to indefinitely hold suspected foreign jihadists, a practice that has drawn repeated criticism from rights groups. Investigators said Wednesday that the man who mowed down cyclists and pedestrians in New York the day before had confessed to acting in the name of IS and said that he "felt good" about the killings. Prosecutors have filed charges against Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant, who they said began planning the attack a year ago. The complaint against Saipov listed two counts: provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. It was not immediately clear if he would face further charges. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rossie Scammell (Agence France-Presse) London, United Kingdom Thu, November 2, 2017 17:32 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a272dcee 2 World Britain,cabinet,resignation,sexual-harrasment Free British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon quit the government Wednesday, stepping down from ministerial office in a developing scandal over sexual harassment at Westminster. "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false but I accept that in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," Fallon wrote in a resignation letter to Prime Minister Theresa May. Fallon, who intends to remain an MP, had apologized this week for putting his hand on the knee of political journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer. Appearing on television, she said she did not think Fallon's cabinet resignation was based solely on the 2002 incident. Julia Hartley-Brewer says Michael Fallon once repeatedly put his hand on her knee, but also that the coverage is akin to a witch hunt pic.twitter.com/GlE52ZZGpG Sky News (@SkyNews) October 31, 2017 "I'm assuming there are more allegations to come," she told Sky News. "I doubt very much it's because of my knee and if it is I think that's really mad and absurd and crazy." Fallon did not directly respond when asked by the BBC whether he was worried more stories were about to come out regarding his behavior. "The culture has changed over the years, what might have been acceptable 15, 10 years ago is clearly not acceptable now," he told the British broadcaster. May has called for rules on MPs' behaviour to be toughened and has requested a meeting next week with other party leaders, following the emergence of several allegations of sexual harassment at Westminster. In a letter to Fallon, who was first elected to parliament in 1983, May thanked him for "a long and impressive ministerial career." "I appreciate the characteristically serious manner in which you have considered your position, and the particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others," she wrote. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 13:03 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a271de9c 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Central-Java Free Indonesian Charms Generation (GenPI) Central Java (Jateng) chapter is holding an event called Karetan Market on November 5. According to the Karetan Market committee head Mei Kristianti, the market aims to develop affordable tourism by selling products that are priced below Rp. 10,000 ($0.74). We are creating an off-line event with Karetan Market, however we will still use social media to attract audience and creating a new market. The event will be located at Radja Pendapa, said Mei. The location is 45 minutes away from Semarang, and is located on the edge of a forest. Moreover, the place also exudes a country atmosphere. No entrance fee is required for visitors, the market itself will be available from 06:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. The concept of this market is traditional, tempo dulu (old times). There are also traditional games for kids, said Mei. Read also: A guide to visiting Semarang Apart from shopping, visitors can also do a trekking activity with their families. The trekking distance is divided into three levels: 3 km, 5 km and 10 km. GenPi Jateng head Shafigh Pahlevi Lontoh has made a promise to hold this event every week, We want to create a new attraction, a new destination. We will hold this event every Sunday morning and constantly post it on social media, told Shafigh. Shafigh added that he will make the place kid-friendly by providing traditional games such as egrang, dakon, kelereng (marbles) and gobaksodor. Mei also encouraged the locals to cook traditional cuisines that can be sold at the market every week. Recently, GenPI in Riau Islands hosted an event called Wonderful Malay Fiesta 2017 in Batam that attracted 331 overseas tourists while GenPI in Aceh held an event called Sanger Day Festival 2017. This is a creative solution from GenPI for digital sociopreneruship, said tourism ministry's communication department special staff, Don Kardono. GenPI members consists of young people who have been actively promoting tourism through social media such as blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path and others, Don added. SIOUX CITY | Northwest Iowa's Sam Clovis, a former top official in Donald Trump's presidential campaign, has been questioned in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 campaign, according to media reports. Clovis, who now is a White House aide to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified last week before a grand jury seated in Washington, D.C., NBC News first reported Wednesday. Clovis, a former Morningside College professor and Sioux City radio talk show host, was propelled into the middle of Mueller's high-stakes probe on Monday with the unsealing of court documents related a guilty pleading by George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos, who was secretly arrested in July for lying to the FYI and pleaded guilty last month to those charges, is cooperating with Mueller's investigation, according to the documents. As national campaign co-chair and senior policy advisor of the Trump campaign, Clovis was asked to form a national security advisory committee charged by then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. The members included Papadopoulos, who was not approached by the campaign for consultation, other than one meeting he attended in March 2016, Victoria Toensing, the attorney for Clovis, said in a statement to the Journal. In his plea filing, Papadopolous admitted he told Trump and other top campaign national security officials during the March 31 meeting that he had contact with intermediaries for Russia who said they could set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos continued to email campaign officials about a possible meeting with individuals claiming to work for the Russian government who were offering "dirt" in the form of emails from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In an August 2016 email, among the court documents uncovered Monday, Clovis urged Papadopoulos to "make the trip, if it is feasible." To Clovis' knowledge, Toensing said in the statement, all of Papadopoulos' communications with the campaign were "self-generated." Clovis never told Papadopoulos that "a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia," because that was not Clovis' view of Trump's foreign policies priorities, Toensing said. She added that Clovis "always vigorous opposed" any Russian trip for Trump or staff. If a volunteer made that suggestion, Clovis, "a polite gentleman from Iowa, would have expressed courtesy and appreciation," Toensing said. "There was a strict campaign rule that no one could travel abroad and claim to be representing or speaking on behalf of the campaign," the statement said. "If someone proposed foreign travel in a personal capacity, Dr. Clovis would have had no authority to prohibit such travel." Clovis, who taught economics at Morningside, has been nominated by Trump as the top scientist with the USDA, but his nomination has been vigorously opposed by many Democrats, environmental groups and some ag interests. Critics argue he does not have sufficient academic qualifications for the position and has made past statements that question whether climate change is man made. Clovis scheduled for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee on Nov. 9. In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a member of the agriculture committee, said it's too early to know if Clovis' role in the Mueller investigation will affect his nomination to the USDA post. Grassley noted that Clovis also is cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee's own investigation into Russian interference in the election. Grassley said emails supplied by the Trump campaign show Papadopoulos offered to travel to several countries to meet with Russian officials but never to make a trip to Moscow, as some news organizations have reported, he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 14:02 1840 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2722c7e 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,tourism-promotion,WesternAustralia Free The Tourism Ministry together with Southwest Indonesia Community (SIC) is set to hold an event named Wonderful Indonesia Getaway 2017 on Nov. 4 at Art Geo Cultural Complex, Queen Street Busselton, Western Australia. SIC is an organization of Indonesian people who live in the southwest part of Australia. The event aims to promote Wonderful Indonesia to the people of Western Australia, said the ministry's deputy minister for overseas promotion I Gde Pitana. We will showcase art, dance, theater and music performances as well as [Indonesian] culinary, he added. The event will start at 11 a.m. and end at 4 p.m. and will feature activities and shows such as Harmony Parade, travel expo, handicraft exhibition, fun games, music and dance performances, face painting, food bazaar and fashion show. Read also: Banyuwangi's De Djawatan Benculuk attracts visitors to magical woods Some important guests that are set to attend are Western Australia Tourism Ministry Hon. Paul Papalia, Indonesian Consul General Ade Padmo, Busselton Mayor Grant Henley and a member of Vasse Parliament. Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said that Wonderful Indonesia Getaway 2017 aims to fulfill the ministrys target of attracting 15 million foreign tourists in 2017 and 20 million foreign tourists in 2019. Australia has been growing really great. The [market] size is huge and its also close with our country, said Arief. Geographically speaking, Australia isnt really that far from Bali. The country has even taken over Malaysias position for the number of outbound tourists who come to Indonesia as it is currently in the third spot right after China and Singapore. This year, the ministry aims to welcome 1.8 million Australians to Indonesia. (kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta Thu, November 2, 2017 16:01 1839 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a2727ac1 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,manado,fishing Free Widi International Fishing Tournament (WIFT) 2017 was recently held in South Halmahera, North Maluku, on Oct. 29. Mancing Mania Manado team came out as the winner of the tournament. Earning a total point of 221.35, it took home the President Perpetual Trophy 2017 and a total prize of Rp 100 million (US$7,377). The trophy was given by North Maluku Governor Abdul Gani Kasuba during the closing event held at Laut Babang port, Labuha. Additionally, the tournament also broke three MURI records for the highest number of fisherman boats at an international fishing event with 50 boats; the highest number of overseas participants with 13 international teams, hailing from United States, Timor Leste, France, Switzerland, Malaysia, United Kingdom, New Zealand, India and Singapore; and as the first destination in Indonesia that promotes international fishing tourism. Fifty teams took part in the tournament; 37 of them were local and the rest were international teams. Read also: Recommended evening workouts if you're not a morning person Abdul said that South Halmahera is the biggest fish producer in North Maluku. This puts the province in the 9th spot out of 34 provinces in Indonesia that have the biggest marine resources. The fish production in North Maluku can reach up to one ton. Abdul also said that apart from fishing, North Maluku is also home to tourist objects such as Ternate Sultanate Castle, Mount Gamalama, which is the biggest volcano in Maluku, and Tolukko Castle where visitors can catch the sunset view. The latter is a historic castle on the top of Batuan Beku hill built by the Portuguese. The construction of this castle consists of a mix of river pebbles, coral reef and broken pieces of brick stones glued together using chalk and sand. Initially named Saint Lucas Castle, this place has three watch towers, one underground room, indoor yard, secret passages and a square main room. (kes) Labour activist Bex Bailey has said in an interview with Radio 4 that she was raped at a party event in 2011 and a senior official told her that reporting the incident could "damage" her. She was not advised on how to proceed. Bexley, formerly a member of the party's National Executive Committee, was 19 years-old when the incident happened, the attacker was senior to her but not an MP. She confided in a party official, two years after the event. "I was scared, I felt ashamed, I know that the Labour Party, like any family, loves a good gossip - and I didn't want people to know and I also was worried that I wouldn't be believed if I did. "It took me a while to summon up the courage to tell anyone in the party, "But when I did, I told a senior member of staff, who told me... or it was suggested to me that I not report it, I was told that if I did it might damage me - and that might be their genuine view, it might be that that was the case in which case that shows that we have a serious problem in politics with this issue anyway." Ms Bailey went on to say she had been inspired by the bravery of women who had spoken out recently and that an independent body should be set up to review such claims. "It's important that we need to make sure that this results in actual change in our parties as well as in Parliament, rather than letting it all blow over," she said. A Labour Party spokesman said: "The Labour Party takes these allegations extremely seriously. It takes great courage for victims of rape to come forward - and all support must and will be made available to them. "We would strongly recommend that the police investigate the allegations of criminal actions that Bex Bailey has made. "Labour will also launch an independent investigation into claims that a party employee acted improperly over these 2011 allegations." Ed Miliband, Labour leader at the time echoed these sentiments: "She is showing great bravery and courage in speaking out. Victims must be supported when they come forward. These allegations must be properly investigated by the police and the Labour Party." The treatment of women in politics has came under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks due to allegations of sexual harassment in Westminster. A dossier of incidents has allegedly been collected by researchers. Images courtesy of Bex Bailey's Twitter Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. 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The new bill proposes this policy should be based on production level data in "any of the three preceding years," thus updating current market levels and how much each company should be able to participate in duty-free trading. "This bipartisan bill offers a straightforward approach to modernize outdated trade policy, offering relief from tariffs for our manufacturers," Sen. Ernst said in a statement. Leigh Claffey, a spokeswoman for Ernst, said in an email trade policy has been updated several times by Congress in the past couple of years. The current bill will allow full-year data to be used in trade reviews by the United States Trade Representative, potentially opening up duty-free trade opportunities for Winnebago and similar companies. Claffey added the legislation, while helpful for RV companies, wasn't the only reason for the bill's introduction. "Senator Ernsts goal in supporting this legislation is to help a broad swath of manufacturers across the country, including those in Iowa," she wrote in an email. "(It) was not related to any one company, though the RV industry is supportive of modernizing this outdated language." Ernst is co-sponsor of the bill, along with Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). Claffey said Ernst has worked on more than 20 bipartisan bills thus far this year, and hopes to continue working productively with her colleagues "across the aisle." The bill was introduced by the three senators this past Tuesday, and has been referred to the Senate's Committee on Finance. MASON CITY | A Hanlontown couple is hoping to find dozens of cats at the Humane Society of North Iowa forever homes this fall. Thanks to the generosity of Shanan and Aaron Redinger, the humane society will reduce the adoption fee for shelter cats 6 months and older to $5 a savings of more than $100 from the original adoption fee every Friday in November. The Redingers funded the same promotion two years ago for the shelter and 34 feline adoptions occurred that month. We were very inspired by the success of the previous promotion, said Aaron Redinger. We know that the Humane Society of North Iowa has seen a very large influx of homeless cats all summer and fall, so we are hopeful this adoption promotion will help to find all these cats homes. Humane Society Executive Director Sybil Soukup said there are more than 100 cats available for adoption at the shelter. The adoption fee will cover spay/neuter surgery, rabies vaccine, feline leukemia testing and a veterinarian exam. To qualify for the reduced adoption fee, adoption applications must be submitted between 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on any Friday within November. Applicants must meet all adoption standards and requirements. The Humane Society of North Iowa is a non-profit organization that operates a no-kill rescue animal shelter in Mason City. For more information, call the Humane Society of North Iowa at 641-423-6241 or visit www.hsni.org. I grew up in Mason City, have lived in many parts of our country, and realize how blessed we are to have a great place like Mason City to call home. However, our population is declining and we are experiencing negative trends, so I truly think we have a tremendous (once in our lifetime) opportunity in front of us, to vote Nov. 7 to significantly enhance our downtown. Please vote yes to support the future of our home town. Being a very positive person, I always try to visualize the good side of everything. Take a moment and close your eyes and imagine our downtown in five to 10 years, if the project gets our votes. I imagine a prosperous, wonderful downtown that all residents will want to visit a couple times a week, North Iowa organizations will be holding their conventions, many events being held at the multi-use rec center, and it will be a destination spot for tourists with more shops, restaurants, attractions, and events. Imagine spending a couple of hours downtown hearing great music, smelling great food coming out of new restaurants and bars, shopping at new boutique shops, and even having some fun places to get sweets. Locals and tourists spending their dollars downtown will all result in more jobs. I have talked to developers and investors, and they have stated they will not risk their money with future new developments and renovations downtown if this project doesnt get approved. Also, I have recently been documenting and videotaping many of the positive aspects of our area at to help with promoting Mason City and trying to encourage people to relocate here. Lets all support the future well being of our great Midwest community that we want many others to visit and make home! Brian Randall, Mason City VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Credent Capital Corp. (NEX:CDT.H) (Credent or the Company) announces that director, Gong (Michael) Chen, has resigned as a director of the Company due to other commitments that preclude him from continuing as a director of Credent. Mr. Chen has been a valuable member of the Board of Directors and the Company wishes to thank Mr. Chen for his time as a director of the Company. On behalf of the Board, John A. Versfelt John A. Versfelt President & CEO For further information, please contact: John A. Versfelt Telephone: (604) 527-8146 Email: jav@armc.ca NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, potential mineral recovery processes and other business transactions timing. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. TORONTO, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- McChip Resources Inc. (McChip or the Company) (TSX-V:MCS) is pleased to announce that, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, the Company has entered into a definitive purchase and sale agreement executed on the date hereof with respect to certain of its mineral rights in the Rocanville area of Saskatchewan (the Agreement), as described more fully below. The purchaser, Altius Royalty Corporation (the Purchaser), is a wholly owned subsidiary of Altius Minerals Corporation (TSX:ALS). The Company is the legal and beneficial owner of certain lands in the Rocanville area of Saskatchewan, and pursuant to certain contractual rights, McChip receives rent and royalty payments from the operator of those properties. The Company has agreed to sell all of its right, title and ownership interest in and to the mines and minerals located within the properties to the Purchaser. Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, the Purchaser has agreed to pay $3,000,000 on closing and in addition, an annual royalty of $500,000 for a term of ten years, conditional on certain potash production levels and grades of potash ore being maintained on an annual basis during the term of the Agreement. As stated by the President and CEO of the Company, Richard McCloskey, the sale contemplated hereby provides McChip with immediate inflow of cash and the opportunity to generate guaranteed cash flow on a term basis. About McChip McChip celebrates eighty two years of continual business operations in 2017. Prior to a name change in 1981, the Company operated as Madsen Red Lake Gold Mines Limited. The Company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange and has 5,660,096 common shares issued and outstanding. For further information contact: Edward G. Dumond Corporate Secretary McChip Resources Inc. 416 364-2173 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 news release. Certain statements in this news release constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information contained in forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as are expected, is forecast, is targeted, approximately, plans, anticipates, projects, continue, estimate, believe or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. This news release contains forward-looking information regarding: (i) the expectations relating to whether a transaction will be consummated, including, without limitation, whether conditions to the consummation of the transaction will be satisfied, or the timing for completing the transaction; and (ii) expectations for the effects of the transaction or the ability of the Company to successfully achieve business objectives, including the effects of unexpected costs, liabilities or delays, and if the transaction is completed, the ability of the Company to allocate the net proceeds as stated above. Forward-looking information involves a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which, if incorrect, may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company, including, without limitation, the risks that the transaction as described in the Agreement may not be completed and the parties may be unable to realize on the anticipated benefits of the transaction. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. For additional information with respect to these and other factors and assumptions underlying the forward-looking information made in this news release, see the Companys most recent management's discussion and analysis, as well as other public disclosure documents that can be accessed under the issuer profile of McChip Resources Inc. on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects the Companys reasonable expectations as at the date of this news release and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposed law to recognise universities that have been training teachers without permission from a statutory body, making their alumni eligible for government jobs. The Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the amendment of the National Council for Teacher Education Act, 1993, which will grant retrospective recognition to universities that are found to be conducting teacher education courses without permission of the NCTE, an official statement said. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is the statutory body set up under the act in 1995 to formally oversee standards, procedures and processes in the education system. All institutions running teacher education courses like B.Ed (Bachelor of Education) among others have to now obtain recognition from the NCTE under Section 14 of the Act. The courses of such universities have to be permitted under Section 15. Shah Rukh Khan ringed in his 52rd birthday at Alibaug in style with all his leading ladies in presence. The actor, who was seen as a common man in his movie Fan, has been reminded of his roots several times, especially when he had been detained at several airports in the US. The actor doesnt seem to share a good vibe with the airport officials in the US, who have time and again troubled him for some or the other reason. Latest being, Shah Rukh Khans outing in Los Angeles when he was put through tests by the immigration department. However, he did not lose his cool and went through the entire procedure with calm. This incident happened in August 2016 and SRK himself broke the news on Twitter. After being pulled out by the officials at the airport, Khan tweeted, I fully understand and respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really really sucks. His stay at the airport, however, proved entertaining for him as he managed to find some Pokemons. He had tweeted, The brighter side is while waiting caught some really nice Pokemons. The US envoy to India was quick to apologise to him. The My Name is Khan actor was earlier caught in a similar controversy, when he was detained at the New York airport for reasons unknown, by the US officials. In 2012, Shah Rukh Khan boarded a flight to New York to deliver a speech at Yale University. Little did he know then, that he would be held at the airport for two long hours. Nita Ambani had accompanied the actor in a private plane. The actor, who was supposed to deliver his speech at 2 pm, started at 6 pm and mocked the incident in front of the students. He said, Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kicked the star out of stardom. Officials from the varsity called up the Department of US Immigration and Customs in Washington and told them how upset Khan was over the incident. Another incident happened in 2009, when Khan was detained at Newark Airport in New Jersey for two good hours. This had a lot to do with his last name Khan. His name flashed on the screen and an immigration officer stopped him from going further. His entire hand baggage was checked and despite several attempts by the actor trying to explain the purpose behind his visit, the officer was not convinced. The actor was even kept from using a phone for one hour. However, he was let out after a couple of hours and his team waited for him all that time at the airport. Inside pics: Alia, Deepika, Katrina party with birthday boy Shah Rukh Khan In a blow to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday observed that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government cannot sit on files beyond a reasonable period and they would need Lieutenant Governors approval to govern the national capital. According to media reports, the court said, He (LG) must exercise his power in reasonable time with reasons. SC observes, prima facie, that LG has primacy over Delhi government through a provision in Article 239AA, acording to media reports. Delhi was given an Assembly and an elected government through Article 239 (AA) in the Constitution by the 69th amendment in 1991. The constitution bench was referred to a batch of petitions, by Supreme Court, filed by the Delhi government over the conflict with the Union government. The Delhi government had moved to Supreme Court challenging High Court 2016 ruling that, the Lieutenant Governor was the national capitals boss and had primacy over the elected government. Amid the ongoing tension with Islamabad, India on Wednesday named Ajay Bisaria, currently its ambassador to Poland, as next High Commissioner to Pakistan. The External Affairs Ministry said Bisaria, an IFS officer of the 1987 batch, would take up his new assignment shortly. He replaces Gautam Bambawale, who was recently appointed as the Ambassador to China. Bisaria served as private secretary and aide to then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004 and in that capacity handled a range of defence, economic and foreign policy issues. Fluent in Russian, Bisaria headed the Eurasia division from 2009 to 2014. He helped articulate an ambitious policy vision for India in Central Asia and coordinated Indias approach to six annual Indo-Russian summits. Bisaria also worked on Indias policy for multilateral entities like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral dialogue. He has also served at the World Bank in Washington as Adviser to the Executive Director for South Asia (2004-2008), where he worked on development projects and aid issues, gaining substantial experience in corporate governance and multilateral economic diplomacy. Pakistan also has a new High Commissioner in Sohail Mahmood in India who had recently presented his credentials to President Ram Nath Kovind. The appointment of Bisaria comes at a time when relations between India and Pakistan are at their lowest ebb in the wake of Islmabads continued support to cross-border terrorism and the row over the Pakistan military courts ruling awarding death sentence to former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav on fictitious charges. Bharatiya Janata Partys National President Amit Shah on Thursday flagged off the partys statewide 75-day rally in poll-bound Karnataka at a huge gathering of its leaders and cadres. Shah, who had landed at the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited airport in the morning, was stranded in traffic for over an hour, after which he was flown in a chopper to the party workers gathering at Bengaluru International Exhibition Centre on the citys outskirts. Thousands of party cadres on two-wheelers going to the meeting caused traffic snarls on several of the citys arterial roads leading to the venue. We are conducting the rally till January-end, covering all the 224 assembly segments to bring our party back to power in Karnataka, an official of the partys state unit told IANS here. Nearly one lakh party workers and supporters from across the state gathered in the city to take part in the bike rally from here. The assembly elections are due in April-May, 2018. The BJP came to power on its own for the first time in 2008 but lost to the Congress in the May 2013 assembly election. Coming four days after Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the state on October 29, the rally titled Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra will criss-cross the state in two phases. The rally will cover 17 districts in the first phase and 13 districts in the second phase, which will be flagged by our party leader and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at Hubballi on December 21, said the official. Modi will address the rally on its last day here on January 28. About three lakh cadres and supporters of the party will participate in the twin-phase rally on motor bikes and four-wheelers, with state unit president B.S. Yeddyurappa at the forefront onboard a customised special bus. Yeddyurappa, who was Chief Minister from 2008 to 11, is also a lawmaker in the Lok Sabha from Shivamogga in the states Malnad region. Besides party leaders in the state, several Union Ministers will participate in the rally and address the people on putting Karnataka back on development, as the Congress had failed to deliver on all fronts, said the official. Among the central ministers are D.V. Sadananada Gowda, Anantha Kumar, Ramesh Jigijinagi and A.K.Hegde who hail from the state and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, a Rajya Sabha lawmaker from the state. The partys former Chief Minister in the state Jagadish Shettar, former Deputy Chief Ministers K. Eshwarappa, A.R. Ashok, former Minster and the partys lawmaker in the Lok Sabha from Chikkamagaluru Shobha Karandlaje will also be part of the rally. CALGARY, Alberta, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vogogo Inc. (Vogogo or the Company) (TSX-V:VGO) announces that it has closed, effective October 31, 2017, the non-brokered private placement (the Offering) of units of the Company (Units) previously announced on October 23, 2017. Each Unit was offered at a price of $0.10 and consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (Common Share) and one full common share purchase warrant (Warrant), with each warrant being exercisable to acquire one additional Common Share (a Warrant Share) at a price of $0.13 per Warrant Share, for a period of 24 months following the closing of the Offering. Pursuant to the Offering, the Company distributed a total of 60,000,000 Units for aggregate gross proceeds of $6,000,000. A portion of the Offering, consisting of 2,650,000 Units, has been closed in escrow pending receipt of payment for such Units. The net proceeds from the Offering will be used for general corporate purposes and to augment the Companys cash reserves. Units acquired by placees under the Offering are subject to a four-month hold period, which will last until March 1, 2018 in accordance with applicable securities legislation. Insiders of the Company acquired an aggregate of 7,100,000 Units, which is considered a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (MI 61-101). The Company has relied on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 contained in Sections 5.5(b) and 5.7(1)(a), respectively, of MI 61-101 in respect of such insider participation. About Vogogo Vogogo has provided payment processing and related transaction risk services and continues to own certain rights and software with respect to such services. For information or interview please contact: Gino DeMichele Chief Executive Officer and President 403-648-9292 READER ADVISORY Neither the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. NEWS AGENCIES. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. The words will, anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, intent, may, project, should, and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are founded on the basis of expectations and assumptions made by Vogogo. Readers are cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of such 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 Vogogo. Vogogo does not have any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as expressly required by applicable securities laws. Calling the Congress party a laughing club, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said none of its leaders have condemned P Chidambarams autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir remark and called upon people to help him defeat the rotten ideology of the grand old party. Addressing a public rally in Kangra in the poll bound Himachal Pradesh, Modi said the former home ministers comment was an insult to the countrys brave and vowed to defeat the rotten ideology of the Congress. Our brave soldiers have sacrificed their lives for Kashmir. They have been making sacrifices for protecting the motherland and the Congress leaders are making such statements, Modi said. The sad part is that none of the Congress leaders condemned the statement. If we have such leaders in the country, will we ever achieve a welfare state? added Modi. Speaking at an event in Rajkote on Saturday, Chidambaram said when people in Kashmir ask for azadi most of them want greater autonomy and I think we should seriously examine that question and consider on what areas we can give autonomy to the state. It is very much within the Constitution. Jammu and Kashmir will remain an integral part of India with some amount of autonomy, the former Union Home Minister said. The Congress, however, distanced itself from Chidambarams remark and said that while individuals may have different personal opinions, the solution for lasting peace and prosperity in Jammu and Kashmir lies solely within the framework of the Constitution. Modi further called upon the people of Himachal to give a strong mandate to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and teach Congress a lesson. Ensure that they (Congress) get a major drubbing this time so that they are not left in a position to return to power, Modi said. Congress party has become a laughing club and its rotten ideology of the Congress has to be defeated, he added. Tearing into Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi over his meeting with Chinese envoy during the Doklam standoff, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said someone who doesnt trusts his own elected government possesses no primary knowledge. Without taking the Gandhi scions name, Modi said it was sad and shocking that a person, whose great grandfather, grandmother and father were all prime ministers, doesnt trust his countrys constitution and elected government. He didnt choose to ask the Indian government, the army of India or the external affairs ministry about the happenings in Doklam but went and met the Chinese envoy? Do you trust the Chinese over your own people? asked Modi at a public rally in Kangra in the poll bound Himachal Pradesh. Isnt this a disrespect of the countrys constitution, its elected government, its army and its people? he added. I am sorry to say, those who dont even have such primary knowledge, how can you trust them and believe their promises, Modi said further. In July, Rahul Gandhi had met Chinese envoy to India, Luo Zhaohui amid escalated border tensions between India and China in Doklam leading to widespread criticism. Modi also called the Congress party a laughing club and said that its rotten ideology must be defeated. Elections to the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be held on November 9 and the votes counted on December 18 along with Gujarat. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will on Thursday address three election meetings in poll bound Himachal Pradesh, he said in a tweet. Shall address three election meetings in Baijnath, Mandi and Shimla Rural constituencies in Himachal Pradesh today, he tweeted. Shall address three election meetings in Baijnath, Mandi and Shimla Rural constituencies in Himachal Pradesh today. Rajnath Singh (@rajnathsingh) November 2, 2017 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched an aggressive campaign to wrest power from the Congress in the state with a series of rallies being addressed by party stalwarts led by BJP chief Amit Shah, who at present is on a five-day visit to the state. The BJP has announced Prem Kumar Dhumal as its chief ministerial candidate after reports that the Rajput voters, who can tilt the scales in the assembly elections, could be inclined towards Congress, which nominated rival Rajput and incumbent Virbhadra Singh as its CM face. Elections to the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be held on November 9 and the votes counted on December 18 along with Gujarat. In the 2012 elections to the 68-member assembly, which saw a voter turnout of 73.92 per cent, the Congress won 36 seats, the BJP 26 and Independents six. But in 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won all the states four seats with a vote percentage of 53.85 per cent, while the Congress got 41.07 per cent votes. A constable of 173 battalion of Border Security Force (BSF) belonging to West Bengal was killed due to unprovoked cross-border firing by Pakistan Rangers in the Samba Sector of Jammu division on Thursday. The BSF constable identified as Tapan Mondal received serious injuries and later succumbed while being shifted to the Military Hospital in Jammu. The 25-year-old Tapan belonged to Satui village of Murshidabad district in West Bengal. He is survived by his mother Sumitra Mondal. A spokesperson of BSF said that Tapan was injured when Pakistan Rangers opened unprovoked fire at a BSF patrol at 9.30 am in the Mangu Chak border post in the Samba Sector. The BSF retaliated the fire. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday asked the people of the Himachal Pradesh to vote for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 9 November assembly polls and vote out Congress to end mafia raj that thrived under its five years rule. Hitting the campaign trail in HP from Rehan in Fatehpur Assembly area of Kangra district, Modi said only five demons (Mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia) thrived under Congress regime. These five demons looted the resources of the state and ruined the future of younger generation, he said, such corrupt practices deprived the people of the state from development which was their right. PM Modi likened his narrative with a mythological story wherein the life of demon was kept in a parrot and said the life of these five evils is in EVM button. He urged the electorate to press the right button and kill these demons. The people of the state now have the chance to throw out the corrupt which had looted them in last five years, he said. PM Modi lashed at the Congress for announcing zero tolerance against corruption in election manifesto when the chief minister (Virbhadra Singh) is out on bail in corruption case and said the party has become a laughing stock. Congress has now become an example of decaying thinking which is deeply mired corruption, communalism and casteism, he said. PM Modi said BJPs Congress-mukt Bharat campaign has been launched to uproot the rotten thinking which has become a norm in the grand old party. He also took a dig at former Union minister P Chidambaram for endorsing more autonomy for Kashmir and said many soldiers from almost every part of HP had laid their lives for nation while serving in Kashmir while Congress leaders are insulting their sacrifices. Congress has no right to insult the brave soldiers of the state and their sacrifices, PM Modi said, adding not even a single leader from the party showed the courage to criticise this leader (Chidambaram). He also criticised partys vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting Chinese diplomat amidst the 72-day long Doklam standoff and said he went to meet the Chinese ambassador secretly, instead of asking the elected government. Has the meeting not insulted the soldiers, government and people of the country, he questioned. PM Modi said a person (Rahul Gandhi) whose grandfather, mother and father had been the PM of the country, doesnt believe in government, army and the people of the country. He tried to strike an emotional chord with the people gathered in the rally and said he had a connect with the people of the state as he had served here for many years. PM Modi appealed to the women for ensuring 5 per cent more turnout than men to protect their children from drug menace, which flourished under Congress rule. Our objective for forming government in Himachal Pradesh is not to gain power but to make the state magnificent and divine (Dev Bhoomi) as it was known earlier, PM Modi said. The toll in the transformer explosion in Rajasthans Khatulai village rose to 14 on Friday, with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje ordering a high-level probe into the incident. Union Minister and Jaipur Rural MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who visited the affected families on Friday, termed it a tragic incident and called for a thorough investigation. A transformer had exploded in the Khatulai village near Shahpura town of the state on Thursday, killing five persons and injuring several others. Medical Superintendent of SMS Hospital, D S Meena, said nine persons, who had sustained severe burn injuries, succumbed while undergoing treatment at the SMS Hospital here late last night. Women were performing Bhaat ceremony (pre-wedding ritual) when the incident took place. Five persons had died on the spot and 22 others were rushed to the SMS Hospital. Out of the 22, nine more deaths, mostly that of women, were reported late last night. The casualties also include a pregnant lady. Three persons were discharged and ten are undergoing treatment, DSP Shahpura, Bhag Chand Meena, said today. Rathore visited Shahpura town to take stock of the situation. He also met with those undergoing treatment at the SMS Hospital and assured them of best medical care. It is a tragic mishap. Such a thing should not happen to anyone. Blast in a transformer is a matter of concern and all aspects of it should be investigated, he told reporters. Governor Kalyan Singh prayed for courage to the bereaved family members who lost their loved ones in the mishap. He also wished for fast recovery of the injured. Jaipur district collector Siddharth Mahajan announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh for kin of the deceased. The Jaipur Vidhyut Vitran Nigam Limited (JVVNL) will give Rs 5 lakh to families of deceased and additional Rs 5 lakh will be provided through Chief Ministers relief fund, he said. Congress leader Sachin Pilot called the incident unfortunate and said the explosion took place due to non-maintenance of the transformer. It is a very unfortunate incident and a high-level probe should be ordered to identify the people responsible for the negligence, he said in a statement. He also accused the BJP-led state government of not acting beyond ordering a probe and announcing compensation. The Congress leader said the state government should reveal details of the money spent on replacement and maintenance of equipment. Rajasthan BJP president Ashok Parnami also met the injured victims earlier in the day. Meanwhile, villagers and local leaders protested against the electricity department for alleged criminal negligence. The agitated families also refused to send the bodies for postmortem, until an investigation was ordered and adequate compensation announced. Terror has returned to New York, shattering the overwhelming impression that America ~ alone among the Big Powers ~ has, since 11 September 2001, been spared the bedlam and butchery that have convulsed other parts of the world, including Europe. Sixteen years later, the coincidence must be deeply intriguing as the city ofop New York emerges as the thread that links 9/11 to 11/1. Furthermore, this is the first time that ISIS is suspected to have targeted America for the assailant, Sayfullo Saipov, is believed to be a sympathiser of the Caliphate. Comparisons can be odious; in terms of casualties and the extent of devastation there can be no parallel beyond the place of occurrence ~ in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. A legal immigrant from Uzbekistan, perhaps radicalised while in the US, has mowed down and killed eight people and injured 11 in bustling Manhattan. Predictably, President Trump has called for further immigration restrictions, and has even hinted that the assailant could be sent to the horrifying prison in Guantanamo Bay, which would be preferable to the joke of Americas criminal justice system. He must be secretly thankful to Barack Obama that despite his pledge, he wasnt able to close this institutionalised travesty of human rights. Trump has been suitably robust in his immediate response to the latest outrage; yet there is no mistaking the jarring note. Notably, the President has betrayed varying degrees of concern. Its too soon to talk about gun control, was his breathless reaction to the slaughter in Las Vegas, where a white man killed 59 people and injured 500 some months ago with sophisticated weapons. As the White House appears to be floundering in its essay towards a definition of terror, the administration ought to be acutely aware that terror knows no religion or the colour of the skin or the perpetrators country of origin. Still less does it lend scope for a presidential reaction that is way beyond hypocrisy. Gun-control was virtually ruled out in the context of Las Vegas. In the aftermath of the mayhem in New York, however, the White House is chewing over incarceration at Guantanamo. The contrast is as stark as it is contrived. A note found inside the pick-up truck has been the critical giveaway, with a specific reference to the Islamic State. Whether or not the outrage was an extreme form of mental aberration need not detain us here. Suffice it to register that Saipov has targeted innocents in an echo of the strategy that ISIS has recommended to its followers. The victims include five Argentinans and a Belgian, with two yet to be identified. The nationalities testify to the melting-pot and magnet for visitors that is New York. Sadly, the country is helmed by a President whose very election a year ago is now suspect. New York showcases the tragedy of America. Chinas ambition under President Xi Jinping is clear to be a global leader by the middle of this century. In his report last week to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi said China aspires to be a global leader in terms of composite national strength and international influence. This is part of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation after its century of decline and humiliation from the Opium War of 1840. The country, Xi said at the 19th five-yearly national congress of the party, is now at a new historic juncture in its development. And the new era will be one that sees China moving closer to centre stage and making greater contributions to mankind. These contributions include, among other things, offering its development model as a new option for other countries wanting to speed up their development and taking an active part in reforming the international order. While observers say Chinas aspirations are understandable, there are those both in Asia and the West who worry about what these mean for the rest of the world. Western observers are of the view that China intends to replace the US as the dominant power in Asia and reshape the international order to be more in line with its interests. Chinas ambition to serve as a development model and increase its international influence, together with its endeavour to turn its Peoples Liberation Army into a first-class military force as mapped out in Xis report reinforces the widely held assessment that China harbours a deep-seated desire to displace the United States as the dominant power in Asia, wrote two analysts with the American think-tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, wrote Ms Bonnie Glaser and Matthew Funaiole, Xis highlighting of the building of islands and reefs in the South China Sea as a major achievement of his first term showed China would prioritise strengthening its control over the contested waterway at the cost of rising friction with its neighbours and the United States. Furthermore, during his first term, Xi has sent mixed signals over whether China supported a rules-based international order, taking part in United Nations peacekeeping missions but also rejecting international tribunal findings against its claims to the South China Sea. Xis vision for the future, they suggested, may signal an intention to double down on challenging elements of the prevailing world order that Beijing sees as contrary to Chinese interests. The overarching vision (Xi) laid out should raise alarm bells in Asian and Western capitals, they said. While not disagreeing totally on the issue of the international order, Professor Jia Qingguo, dean of Peking Universitys School of International Studies, said Chinas promotion of reform of the international order is not about Chinas interests alone, but also about making the system more equitable and fair. He added that China is a beneficiary of the international order and that stability of the system is important to it. He pointed out that Xi, in his report to the party congress, also stressed that China would safeguard the stability of the order. He added that the US was the most powerful nation in the world and that it was important for China to handle its relations with the US well. This is important bilaterally for China, and also for safeguarding the international order. As for Chinas growing military might, he contended that a strong Chinese military is not a bad thing. If it is in Chinas interest to safeguard this order, then a strong China is a good thing for the international order, he said. Prof Jia also pointed out that while China needs to be heard on the world stage because of its growing interests all over the world, the international community is also demanding that it plays a bigger role given its growing influence as a result of its economic might. In the past, China could sometimes dodge or keep quiet, he said. But now as its status and influence grow, people expect it to say or do something. On issues like the North Korean nuclear crisis, people expect China not just to speak up but also play an important role, he noted. The US has been pressing Beijing to do more to rein in North Koreas nuclear and missile programmes and the subject is expected to come up when US President Donald Trump visits China next week. Still, there is also disquiet in the Asian region over Chinas intentions as it grows stronger. Over in India, former Indian ambassador to China Ashok Kanthi wrote that the manner in which the Chinese pursued their dream has generated widespread anxieties, including in India. This included Chinas readiness to deploy its economic, military, political and diplomatic clout to advance its interests, defined in increasingly expansive and unilateral terms. In Indonesia, an article in The Jakarta Post pointed to Xis envisioning of a more modern and powerful military for the new era, saying the Indonesian military needed to continue to reform and modernise too, to respond to the changing strategic environment. It talked about the possibility of confrontation with a more affluent and powerful China over the unresolved territorial dispute over parts of the South China Sea near the Natuna Islands. It also raised concern over Chinas Belt and Road Initiative to help build infrastructure in developing countries, saying that while Indonesia should make the most of the financing and development opportunities presented by the initiative, it also needed to ensure that the law of the land prevailed. While there are actions by the Chinese that cause concern, particularly in their neighbourhood, Professor Yang Dali of Chicago University warned against getting into a situation where whatever the Chinese do is necessarily bad. He pointed out that Xi was right in saying that some Chinese practices and experiences may be of value to other developing countries which can learn from them, such as Chinas development of infrastructure and investment in education. He noted, too, that in the area of climate change, China has chosen to play a pivotal and global role that has been welcome. China, he said, has been willing to learn, adapt and react to external criticism, including in the way the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is run. In doing so, China will not only be a global citizen but also play a leadership role that is valuable for the global community, he added. In the East Asian region, Chinas problem is possibly that it has risen so fast that it is not ready for the leadership role that it is playing. It needs to go through a learning period, Prof Jia noted, including accumulating knowledge of international organisations and understanding of the conditions of the region and its history and culture. Both sides, China and its neighbours, have to adjust to each other, he said. China was an ordinary power before now, but is becoming less so. China needs to adjust its view of things and the way it does things accordingly, said Prof Jia. At the same time, countries in the region also need to adjust to Chinas rise. While in the past they may be used to a certain way of dealing with their relationship with China, they now have to use other methods. During this period of adjustment, there may be contradictions and conflict, he said. At the end of the day, he said, Chinas desire is to have good relations with its neighbours because this means China will be more secure and have more opportunities for growth. The same could be said for countries in the region. The question is what kind of relationship is acceptable to both sides and that needs to be negotiated. (The Straits Times/ANN) When I was a kid growing up in India we had a domestic help named Kashi. He would go to the bazaar every morning with a grocery list prepared by my mother. She would also estimate the amount of money needed to buy stuff on the list and give it to Kashi with a few extra rupees. When Kashi returned from the market he would give my mother a detailed account of everything he purchased. My mother would be satisfied if Kashi returned what she calculated as the balance from the initial amount she had given. However, she always suspected that Kashi inflated prices of some items and pocketed some money. She had no choice but to trust Kashi because she had no time to go with him or to verify prices by some independent means. Assuming my mother was right in her suspicion it required two capabilities on part of Kashi: ability to do some basic math in his head and ability to accurately memorise each number. The point of this story is that mathematical skills are ingrained among all Indians even at the lowest social level. The situation is diametrically opposite in the USA where even college-educated kids cannot do simple addition and multiplication without a calculator. Now that I am retired I have plenty of time on my hand and I decided to do occasional private tutoring of high school students in math. It was not for money but I was curious to see what is being taught these days and how. What I have learnt is alarming to say the least. There are two practices widely followed in most American schools these days: A) Text-books have virtually disappeared and have been replaced by teachers notes available only on laptop or tablet computers connected to some school website. Even when text-books exist the teachers do not seem to follow them. B) Before every test the students are given a practice review test with the understanding that problems in the real test would be very similar but with the numbers changed. The idea is that if the students do well in the practice test chances are that they would also do well in the actual test. Gone are the days of emphasis on understanding the concepts involved so that a student can figure out himself or herself how to attack a problem. It is almost like memorising a set of techniques with the guarantee that it would enable them to do all test problems. Also without a text-book it is sufficient for the students to do all the assigned homework problems; there is no reason to go beyond that. The philosophy behind these policies is the conviction that all students need to be taught a minimum level of mathematics even if it means learning only a limited set of manipulations as opposed to in-depth understanding of concepts. To make it even easier for the students, technology behind calculators has been steadily advancing. It is no longer enough to have a scientific calculator with trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions but they should have graphing capability as well as various built-in statistical calculations. All the students have to learn is the order in which to punch the buttons. One major turning point in this dilution of math teaching was the introduction of the so-called CommonCore curriculum during the Obama administration. The idea was to make the math curriculum a standard one across the US and make sure that every student learned, at least to some extent, all the basic concepts. The flip side of this was lack of incentive for brighter students to do anything significantly better. As a result, the overall math competency among high school students suffered and this has been repeatedly documented by SAT scores and other parameters. When the students enter colleges, they shy away from technical subjects and even if they do not, their employers get more mediocre candidates. It is no wonder that USA ranks 25th in math competency among 34 developed nations according to one survey and behind countries like China, Singapore, South Korea and Finland. Silicon Valley industries are flooded with IT engineers from India and China. The ideology involved is not too dissimilar from a wealth redistribution scheme. In the wealth redistribution concept wealthy people are discouraged or prohibited from accumulating excessive wealth, typically through heavy taxation, and that money is spent funding social welfare and entitlement programmes to benefit the poor. Similarly, high schools are devoting their resources to make sure that students at the bottom of the bell curve get enough easy problems to solve so that their confidence is boosted. The brighter students are coasting through the courses and not achieving their potential. To make math teaching political a professor at the University of Illinois, Rochelle Gutierrez, claimed in a recently published article that math education perpetuates white privilege. She pointed out that topics like Pythagorean Theorem formulated by the Greeks suggest that math is European culture. Her article takes my analogy with wealth redistribution one step further. It is equivalent to saying that white people have a monopoly not only on wealth but also on knowledge of math which is a key to almost all professional successes and social status. It is possible that the wealthier people are disillusioned by the quality of math education in public schools and send their children to private schools so that they acquire better math skills. However, the reason has nothing to do with whiteness. The basic deficiency in math cuts across the entire spectrum of American society. Society is paying dearly for this deficiency. Most people live hand to mouth because they do not or cannot even balance their cheque books and do not understand concepts like cash flow and investing. Every year Americans spend billions of dollars to get their tax returns prepared by professional accountants. Ironically tax codes are so complicated that even a person well versed in math would have difficulty in correctly interpreting and applying them. They shell out billions in buying lottery tickets or gambling in casinos because they have no concept of probability. Even rich and educated people get scammed by their accountants or money managers. A majority of the population lacks the mathematical skill to make a sound financial plan for post-retirement lives. A recent shocking report claims that 60- 70 per cent of people in the USA have less than $1000 as retirement savings. Is it possible to reverse this trend? The present political divide will certainly make it difficult. Contrary to Professor Gutierrezs assertion it is the children of eastern Asian and Indian immigrants and not white people who are excelling in math. Perhaps parental expectations, genetic differences and inherent frugality are the reasons. It is quite possible that the social demographic division in professional jobs will soon shift in their favour. They know that math is the path to success whether it is their profession or money management. (The writer, a physicist who worked in academia and industry, is a Bengali settled in America) US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons visit to South Asia, including India, would suggest that the US administrations South Asia policy is coming to grips with its minutiae. With the US Presidents statement on Afghanistan in August as the centrepiece ~ and also regarded as an articulation of his South Asia policy ~ the region has already been visited by the National Security Adviser in April, the US Defence Secretary in September and, now, by the US Secretary of State (23-25 October). While the US Defence Secretary did not visit Pakistan, which he is expected to do shortly, there have been high-level interactions as well as workinglevel visits between the US and Pakistan for the two sides to get a measure of each other. The Secretary of State was on an extended tour to the Middle East, South Asia and Europe where his uneasy relationship with the US President came into sharper focus in terms of his personal effectiveness being called into question through diplomatic snubs both in Saudi Arabia as well as in Pakistan. The South Asia region is facing challenges of uncertainty and instability because of which an assessment of a more engaged US administration with the countries of the region is important. Afghanistan is facing major existential challenges with a resurgence in Taliban military activity casting a shadow on the capital itself. During his unannounced visit to Kabul, Tillerson had the Afghan President and the Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah, come to meet him at the US-controlled Bagram airbase. A degree of political disarray is also palpable in Pakistan where the current Prime Minister, along with his Cabinet, is not seen as someone who is firmly in the saddle for taking the difficult decisions required. The political leadership is unhappy with the Pakistan Armys attempts to mainstream jihadist elements into the political party system. It is being embarrassed, at the same time, by strong words of condemnation of the governments policy on jihadist elements in the US as well as elsewhere. In the context of Southwest Asian developments, India alone has a firm leadership and a strong government to play a stabilising role, especially in Afghanistan. By all accounts, the Secretary of States South Asia visit was largely Afghan-centric, including a strong focus on Pakistans role in making things better. In India, of course, the gamut of issues covered was much broader in that there was a wider discussion on India-US collaboration in the larger Indo-Pacific region, which is seen as fashioning a policy towards China amongst several countries whose assertive policies are considered as destabilising. In that context, defence cooperation as well as broader strategic cooperation with high salience for Indias role was emphasised. On Afghanistan, there was encouragement for India playing a somewhat stronger role in defence and security spheres without any direct force commitment; this open encouragement to India goes beyond the earlier US policy and is certainly anathema to Pakistan and, to a certain degree, of concern to China and others. Geopolitics around that country have shifted considerably with China, Iran, Russia veering towards Pakistan, while Indias growing involvement is seen as supportive of the US objectives and the Afghan leadership. The complexity inheres in the attitude of Pakistan whose denials of support to terrorist elements, including the increasingly violent Taliban with the growing role of the Haqqani network, are not seen as credible. This has invoked stronger critical response from Afghanistan, the US and India. During his brief interaction in Islamabad, lasting nearly four hours, the Pakistan side stated that its own sacrifices in fighting terrorism and promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan are being ignored by the US. On the eve of the Secretary of States visit, the Quadrilateral Dialogue between the US, Afghanistan, China and Pakistan was revived although the outcome of its Muscat meeting, on 16 October, has remained uncertain. In typically hypocritical manner, well understood in India, the Pakistan side told the US delegation that Pakistan will take action if there is credible evidence brought up by the US government. The US Secretary of States message on the necessity for decisive action by Pakistan against terrorist groups was unmistakable and these were stated in Kabul, Islamabad and New Delhi. This, along with the expected deployment of nearly 3000 additional US troops in Afghanistan, with expectations of a matching contribution by the other NATO countries, and a certain fatigue in the US and other participating countries with their longest post-Second World War military engagement, is a strong pointer that US pressure on Pakistan will increase. Tillerson stated publicly he had told the Pakistan side that the US will take unilateral action in case Pakistan is seen to be not doing as expected by the US. He stated, repeatedly, that Pakistan itself faces instability on account of this policy. What form this pressure on Pakistan will take is something which will be observed in India very closely. The US and NATO dependence on their military supply routes through Pakistan has been used by the latter to exert pressure on them on several occasions. The earlier northern supply route, through Russia and the Central Asian countries is no longer possible on account of strained US-Russia relations and a different supply route perhaps across Georgia and Azerbaijan and the Central Asian countries might need to be developed to counter Pakistani blackmail. There is also a somewhat functioning relationship between their intelligence services and the US drones-strike targets inside Pakistani territory. During the Secretarys Islamabad talks, both sides exchanged lists of terrorists wanted respectively, from Pakistan and Afghanistan and he stated, in New Delhi, that the US and Pakistan will have a mechanism for sharing information and for counter-terrorism action. That apart, it is not clear as to what the attitude of Russia and China would be should the US decide to apply strong military pressure on Pakistan on this issue. Moreover, Pakistan is a very big country with nuclear weapons ~ a reference made by Trump in the context of the tense military situation between India and Pakistan ~ and it is unlikely that the US would try to completely isolate it. Despite explicit understanding between India and the US that Pakistan must not allow terrorist camps and freedom for such elements to roam freely on its territory, the coming days will show the extent to which the new US policy will be impacted by these constraints. The US priorities clearly concern the terrorist elements working against Afghanistan as the Indian observers look for similarly strong indications with regard to the terrorist elements working against India. The Pakistan governments decision not to bring terrorism charges against Hafiz Saeed coincided with the successful rescue by Pakistani troops of US-Canadian hostages. Understandably, President Trump, personally, thanked Pakistan but, notably, the US did not make any comment on Hafiz Saeed even though he is an internationally designated terrorist carrying a $10 million bounty on his head. At the same time, there has been expression of interest on the part of the US for resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan. Tillerson, in his Washington speech on India on the eve of his visit, stated, And, we intend to work closely with India and with Pakistan to end, we hope, these tensions along their border as well. As India-Pakistan relations remain tense, the prospects for dialogue still seem remote. However, the US thinking that such dialogue is a factor in the stabilisation of the South-west Asian region is important. India has appointed a Special Representative on Kashmir and there has been a meeting between the Pakistan High Commissioner and the External Affairs Minister. Expectedly, the government has denied that these have a link with either the Afghan peace process or the Tillerson visit. The coincidence is unmistakable. All elements in this chessboard seem to be in place. How things will develop in future remains subject to several imponderables, both within the region and outside it. With these initial moves, the interested governments as well as strategic observers are watching as to how they will be followed further since the US engagement is underpinned by a clear policy. The domestic factors remain important in the context of US diplomacy towards South-west Asia. Its transactional manner, characterised by celebration of small victories, will give Pakistan a space to play its game; or, the strength of an adverse development on the ground will force the US to take stronger, decisive action triggering a possibly strong response from Pakistan, China and Russia. While India should welcome a hardened American position on Pakistan, a critical factor in the resolution of the Afghanistan crisis, there is quite a bit of wait-andwatch involved. The resources of US diplomacy, with possibilities of changes at the top as seen in recent differences between Tillerson and Trump, can also affect the pace and effectiveness of this diplomacy. The prospects of stability in South-west Asia still remain unclear and India will have to be more watchful than ever. (The writer is a former Ambassador) WINNEMUCCA, Nev., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE American:PZG) ("Paramount) announced today that the Company expects to complete the Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) for its Grassy Mountain Gold Project as planned in early 2018. Paramount is undertaking to construct and operate an underground mine to exploit the high-grade gold core at its Grassy Mountain Project located on private ground in eastern Oregon. The PFS will establish the parameters of a mining and milling operation, define capital and operating costs, convert resources to reserves, and advance the project through the permitting process with the Bureau of Land Management, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, and the local agencies of Malheur County. All phases of the work, from resource estimation to mine planning and plant design are on schedule and within budget, said Paramount CEO, Glen Van Treek. Thus far, the technical details of the project are meeting all of our expectations and we are getting some pleasant surprises along the way. For example, preliminary results from our water well monitoring program and piezometers indicate that we should not expect any significant water within the underground mine workings. In May 2017, 15 piezometers were installed in five selected drill holes within the deposit to define water dynamics and to prepare a hydrological model. Initial analysis of over five months of data from these piezometer sensors shows little presence of water within the mineable material, and the water table being below the high grade core of the deposit, is likely below any planned mining activity. This is a very positive development for mine stability and safety and should also contribute to lower mining costs, Van Treek noted. We continue to think that the Grassy Mountain deposit can support a profitable mining operation at or below current gold prices, Van Treek added, and we believe the PFS will provide the proof. About Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. Paramount Gold Nevada is a U.S. based precious metals exploration company. Paramount has a high ratio of ounces of gold in mineral inventory to shares outstanding, providing its shareholders with exceptional leverage to the gold price. Paramount holds a 100% working interest in the Grassy Mountain Gold Project which consists of approximately 9,300 acres located on private and BLM land in Malheur County, Oregon. The Grassy Mountain project contains a gold-silver deposit (100% located on private land) for which a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) has been prepared and key permitting milestones accomplished. For the PEA, click here. Additionally, Paramount owns a 100% interest in the Sleeper Gold Project located in Northern Nevada. The Sleeper Gold Project, which includes the former producing Sleeper mine, totals 2,322 unpatented mining claims (approximately 60 square miles or 15,500 hectares). Paramounts strategy is to create shareholder value through exploring and developing its mineral properties and to realize this value for its shareholders in three ways: by selling its assets to established producers; entering into joint ventures with producers for construction and operation; or constructing and operating mines for its own account. Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements This release and related documents may include "forward-looking statements" and forward-looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements) pursuant to applicable United States and Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable assumptions, estimates, analyses and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. Management believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the completion of a PFS; the quantity and grade of resources included in resource estimates; the accuracy and achievability of projections included in PEAs; Paramounts ability to carry on exploration and development activities, including construction; the timely receipt of required approvals; the price of silver, gold and other metals; prices for key mining supplies, including labor costs and consumables, remaining consistent with current expectations; work meeting expectations and being consistent with estimates and plant, equipment and processes operating as anticipated. Paramounts future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. Words such as "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates" and similar expressions should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: uncertainties involving interpretation of drilling results, environmental matters, lack of ability to obtain required permitting, equipment breakdown or disruptions, and the other factors described in Paramounts disclosures as filed with the SEC and the Ontario Securities Commission. Except as required by applicable law, Paramount disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document. Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. Glen Van Treek, President, CEO and Director Christos Theodossiou, Director of Corporate Communications 866-481-2233 Chinese tech giant Huaweis sub-brand Honor on Thursday launched the Holly 4 Plus smartphone with a 4000mAh battery and 8MP front camera for Rs 13,999, in India. The device available in grey, gold and silver colours, will be available November 3, across all Honor partner stores. Holly 4 Plus has been curated to meet the preferences of our consumers better. The device is another offering with an aim to cater to the diverse Indian market and serve it in the best way possible, said P. Sanjeev, Vice President Sales, Huawei Consumer Business Group India, in a statement. Holly 4 Plus comes with a sleek 8.2mm thin body with a metal finish and a rear fingerprint scanner. It has a 2.5D glass HD quality display and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Octa-Core 64bit processor running on the Android 7.0 with EMUI 5.1 on top. It has 3GB RAM AND 32 GB internal storage and can be expanded up to 128GB. Holly 4 Plus has 12MP rear camera with 1.25 micrometer sensor for low light photography. The 8 MP front camera comes with a beauty mode that helps the consumer click crisper images with speed focus of 0.3sec. Should tourism be promoted in wildlife protected areas? This question is at the centre of an old debate between conservationists and tourism industry.While wildlife authorities, researchers and activists want the protected areas to be left inviolate, Indias rich natural and wildlife resources are a major source of attraction for tourists. Now, contrary to long-held belief, a new study has documented that tourism can be beneficial for conservation of wildlife provided it is regulated and well-managed. The wildlife tourism industry has been unfairly criticised just because of a few unfortunate examples, said Raghu Chundawat, a tiger scientist who looked at the impact of tourism in and around four tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh. Conservation through tourism is a model that should be considered running parallel to several models, Chundawat said. Right now only exclusionary model is in place, where people are completely kept out, he added, noting that this was successful only in some areas. Local benefit The report, The Value of Wildlife Tourism for Conservation and Communities, followed a survey that found that the contribution to the local economy from wildlife tourism in and around tiger reserves is significant. A comparison between villages that benefited from tourism and those that did not showed a very stark difference in the economic development, said Chundawat. For the study, four tiger reserves of Madhya Pradeshwere chosen, two major ones ~ Kanha and Bandhavgarh ~ and two lesser frequented ones ~ Pench and Panna. The survey covered 144 hotels and lodgeslocated around the reserves. In addition, the survey teams also visited the villages in the vicinity of the hotels as well as those with little or no tourism activities. Many of the criticisms leveled at the tourism community are not correct when examined closely, said Zimbabwe-based Julian Matthews, founder of the nature stewardship charity, TOFTigers, which commissioned the study. For instance, 80 per cent of the jobs are held by the locals, 45 per cent of all the direct revenue goes to the local economy and 90 per cent of available accommodation caters to the budget, not luxury, traveller. Speaking along the same vein, Chundawat elaborated, One of the criticisms of wildlife tourism has been that no benefit goes to the people. However, our study showed that tourism has been able to plough back into the local economy around Rs 75 crore, or almost 45 per cent of their total revenue. The local communities benefited mainly through increased employment opportunity. Besides direct employment in the park, guides and safari vehicle owners are from the local community. Moreover, they comprise 80 per cent of the lodge employees. Other benefits include significant upliftment in the areas of education, health and opportunity for small businesses and local markets. Another interesting finding, said Chundawat, was that the advent of wildlife tourism created a tigerfriendly perception within the involved communities bordering the park. Despite events like crop damage, people in tourism-benefited villages embrace wildlife as against the non-tourism villages. It is possible to build tigerfriendly communities. That is the most significant contribution that tourism can do. Tourism potential One of the surprise findings was that the whole industry was catering mostly to budget travellers, who comprise 85 per cent of the visitors. In the early 1980s and 90s, wildlife tourism was almost nonexistent, the study showed. It picked up pace in 2003-04, reaching a peak in 2011-12 before falling sharply again. In fact, one could say wildlife tourism closely followed Indias economic growth chart. However, international visitors have seen a steady decline, for a number of reasons ~ poor infrastructure and difficulty in making bookings being the major ones. Revenue earner The total revenue earned from wildlife tourism in the tiger reserves is calculated at Rs 166 crore. Interestingly, the total revenue from entry fee alone was found to be higher than the Budgetary allocation of the state government and very close to that of the Central government. Environment impact An area of concern flagged by the study is the poor environmental practices by the lodges. This includes disposal of non-biodegradable and plastic waste. Wastage of water and energy was another issue. Some lodges have high halogen lamps, which is not good, said Chundawat. These issues need to be addressed. In conclusion, the study said wildlife tourism in Madhya Pradesh is already proving to be an important tool in funding parks, in nature awareness, in rural poverty reduction and rural upliftment. But some key actions are needed to realize its greater potential for sustainable development and wildlife protection. Ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Pakistan on Thursday and will appear before a court on Friday in connection with the corruption references filed against him by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Sharif landed at Islamabads Benazir Bhutto International Airport at around 8.20 a.m., reports Dawn news. A large number of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supporters and party leaders were at the airport to welcome him. Minutes after landing, Sharif left for Punjab House where he is expected to address a meeting of party workers later in the day. The former leader has alleged that cases against him and his family were being fabricated and that the Panama Papers case verdict became a source of embarrassment for the nation, Dawn news reported. On October 26, the court issued bailable arrest warrants against Sharif after he failed to appear before the court in connection with the three references filed by the NAB. The warrants were issued for the Flagship Investment case and the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment case. The court had indicted Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and her husband Captain Mohammad Safdar on October 19 in connection with a case pertaining to their apartments in London. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges, reports Dawn news. A five-member bench of the Supreme Court on July 28 had directed the NAB to file cases against Sharif and his children in six weeks in the accountability court and directed the trial court to decide the cases within six months. The former premier and his two sons have been named in all three NAB cases, while Maryam and Safdar were named only in the London case. Organization: Abt Associates Funding Source: United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda About Abt: Abt Associates is an international development organization composed of dedicated professionals who provide technical assistance, research, analysis, and practical training services in more than 128 countries. Project: About USAID Vector Control TaskProject: Abt Associates, a major American business and government research, technical assistance, and consulting company, manages the USAID-funded Vector Control Task Order 1. Task Order 1 will support the U.S. Presidents Malaria Initiative (PMI) and USAID to plan and implement an integrated vector control approach with the overall goal of reducing the burden of malaria. Abt has implemented indoor residual spraying (IRS) for PMI since 2009, delivering high-quality IRS programs and gathering the most comprehensive vector control entomological data in the world. Under this contract, Abt will expand entomological monitoring to guide programs focused on insecticide-treated mosquito nets and IRS and continue to assist PMI in reducing the burden of malaria through IRS and capacity building in 22 African countries where malaria is endemic. Abt also will continue to support PMI in IRS monitoring and evaluation, as well as environmental compliance. Job Summary: The Office Assistant will be tasked with a wide range of cleaning and maintenance support to the USAID project office including the cleaning of rooms, furniture and equipment, replenishment of supplies; beverage service, and assigned clerical/administrative tasks. Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience: The ideal candidate for the USAID Project Office Assistant job placement should hold an A level certificate Previous office support / custodial work experience is desired Proven ability to work with minimum direction and supervision. Demonstrated ability to work both as a member of a team and as a team leader, with the ability to accept the inputs of other team members. Strong management and planning skills of project tasks and budgets. Demonstrates leadership and team work and produces high quality work in a timely, cost effective manner and has excellent writing skills. Excellent interpersonal communications and organizational skills. Excellent computer skills, computer software programs, including MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Previous experience with USAID funded programs and/ or other international development experience. English language fluency. How to Apply: All suitably qualified and interested candidates should send their applications to VectorControl_Uganda@abtassoc.com with the position title in the subject line of the email. NB: Documentation required to be considered includes a Cover Page, CV, biodata form, payslip from the most recent position held, copies of educational certificates/degrees, and contact information of at least 3 references we can contact (must include email addresses and phone numbers). Documentation required to be considered includes a Cover Page, CV,, payslip from the most recent position held, copies of educational certificates/degrees, and contact information of at least 3 references we can contact (must include email addresses and phone numbers). find us on our Facebook page For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com orfind us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline TORONTO, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ascendant Resources Inc. (TSX:ASND) (OTCQX:ASDRF) (FRA:2D9) ("Ascendant" or the "Company) announced today that it plans to release its third quarter 2017 results after the market close on Monday, November 13, 2017. Management will host a conference call on Tuesday, November 14, 2017 at 10:00 am EST. Participants may join the call by dialing North America toll free 1-833-696-8362 or 1-612-979-9908 for calls outside Canada and the U.S., and entering the participant passcode 9386218. A recorded playback of the third quarter 2017 results call will be available from 1:00 pm EST on November 14, 2017 until 1:00 pm EST on December 14, 2017 by dialing 1-855-859-2056 or 1-404-537-3406 and entering the call back passcode 9386218. About Ascendant Resources Ascendant Resources Inc. is a mining company focused on its 100%-owned producing El Mochito zinc, silver and lead mine in west-central Honduras, which has been in production since 1948. Since acquiring the mine in December 2016, Ascendant has been focused on a continuous optimization program aimed at restoring the historic potential of the El Mochito mine and growing the asset thereon. To date, the Company has been successful at increasing production and reducing costs with the expectation of free cash flow in the near-term. Ascendant is also focused on expanding and upgrading known resources through extensive exploration work for near-term growth opportunity. With a significant land package of 11,000 hectares and an abundance of historical data there are several regional targets providing longer term exploration upside and further resource growth potential. The Company is also engaged in the evaluation of producing and advanced development stage mineral resource opportunities in North, South and Central America, on an ongoing basis. The Company's common shares are principally listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "ASND". For more information on Ascendant Resources, please visit our website at www.ascendantresources.com. Neither the TSX Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information please contact: Katherine Pryde Director, Communications & Investor Relations Tel: 888-723-7413 info@ascendantresources.com Organisation: Uganda Christian University (UCU) Duty Station: Mukono, Uganda Reports to: Program Administrator Monthly Salary: UGX 567,344/= About UCU: Uganda Christian University was founded when the historic Bishop Tucker Theological College was promoted as a university in 1997. Bishop Tucker Theological College trained clergy and educators during its 84-year history from 1913-1997. The local chief, Hamu Mukasa, granted land for the college to operate in Mukono. International partnerships were part of the Colleges missionary history. The Church Mission Society teamed with Ugandan leaders and others to assure the College had the necessary intellectual and other capital. By the late 1990s, the Church of Uganda sought to have a broader impact on society through the higher education not only of clergy but of other professionals as well. Uganda Christian University was established in 1997. Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities: Serves as a cultural and practical guide to USP students, helping to familiarize them with life in Uganda as well as UCU, Mukono, Kampala and Uganda in general. Engage in formal and informal discussions with students regarding the issues they face in their studies and experiences in Uganda, including faith, Christianity and culture. Travel with students; assist trip leader with preparation, follow-up, and tasks during trip. Complete administrative tasks, such as preparing/processing paperwork and computer related tasks. Work closely between USP and Honors College departments particularly in the coordination and facilitation of USP/Honors College events. Assist Honors College Office up to 10 hours a week to coordinate academic in-service activities such as leadership meetings, practicum sites, academic mentoring, etc. Attend classes when needed, and engage in both content, and provide logistical support and assistance in the classroom, such as helping to set up projector for computer presentations etc. Attend to office errands on campus, in Mukono and in Kampala. Work closely with American Program Assistants and students in planning and implementing activities and events throughout the semester. Supports USP coordinators with the internship requirement of student experience, which involves meeting with Ugandan organization leaders and serving as an internship liaison. Qualifications, Skills and Experience: The ideal candidate for the UCU Uganda Studies Program Intern job opportunity must hold a Bachelors Degree from Uganda Christian University Previous experience working with in a cross-cultural context and with people from different backgrounds. Excellent interpersonal skills especially when dealing with students, visitors and staff Competency in Microsoft Word and Excel Be a Committed Christian with high integrity and work ethics How to Apply: All applicants must answer the following questions and type and print the responses, taking not more than 2 pages, double-spaced: Why do you want to intern with USP? What do you hope to contribute to the program? What do you hope to gain from the internship experience? Send an application letter clearly demonstrating suitability together with updated Curriculum Vitae and three references, copies of Academic and professional certificates and transcripts to: The Manager, Human Resource & Administration, Uganda Christian University, Pilkington Building, P.O. Box 4, Mukono. Uganda Email to: jobs@ucu.ac.ug Deadline: 3rd November 2017 by 5:00 pm find us on our Facebook page For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com orfind us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline Organization: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Project Name: Building Resilient Communities, Wetland Ecosystems and Associated Catchments Project Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda Reports to: Director Environmental Affairs Grade: SB4 About UNDP: The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the United Nations global development network. UNDP advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. The UNDP provides expert advice, training, grant support to developing countries including Uganda with increasing emphasis on assistance to the least developed countries. About Project: The Ministry of Water and Environment in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries and; Uganda National Meteorology Authority is implementing a wetland restoration project in Eastern and South Western Uganda entitled Building Resilient Communities, Wetland Ecosystems and Associated Catchments Project. The USD 44.262 million project is funded by the Green Climate Fund, Government of Uganda and UNDP for 8 years starting 2017 to 2025. Job Summary: The Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist will serve as the main focal person for all monitoring and evaluation related activities for the project. She/he will assist and report to the Director (DEA) regarding the Monitoring and evaluation of project activities implemented by the project. The M&E Specialists responsibility is to coordinate and support implementation of monitoring and evaluation all the project activities to be conducted in accordance with the Logical Framework of the Project. The M&E Specialist will work as part of the PMU (Project Management Unit) under the supervision and guidance of the Project Steering Committee, the Director Environmental Affairs and the Project Management Specialist for the attainment of projects goal. Key Duties and Responsibilities: Monitoring &Evaluation (M&E) plan and associated work plans for each component/activity (as reflected in the results framework) Steer the development of and oversee the review of project levelMonitoring &Evaluation (M&E) plan and associated work plans for eachcomponent/activity (as reflected in theresults framework) Develop TORs for M&E tasks to be carried out during implementation using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Responsible for sourcing data and information for specific M&E needs directly from other agencies, PMU etc (such as budgets, staff capacity and other internal data) particularly for indicators not requiring a survey. Support technical work such as reviewing M&E methods, carrying out training needs, designing M&E tools and advising M&E technical assistance. Manage and participate in evaluations and assessments The M&E Specialist may also serve as the evaluation team member of selected evaluations conducted under this contract. Ensure quality control of M&E outputs (e.g. surveys etc), including by contributing substantively to the design and field testing of the monitoring methodology, review, supervise design and implementation of the survey, participatory data collection methods and protocols, data verification techniques, and other technical evaluation and analytical tasks conducted under this contract. Closely cooperate and coordinate with the communication specialist for the design, quality, development and completion of all assessments, analytical reports, case studies, success stories. Keenly review and provide advice related to log frames and indicators on proposals submitted by the partner. Ensure the incorporation of information on the project level indicators into MWE program level reports and provide recommendations to the PMU Develop and maintain an M&E database for the project and contribute to the maintenance of a database. Maintain a detailed knowledge of all relevant issues impacting his/her field of Monitoring & Evaluation. Work closely with the communication specialist for promoting information sharing on all aspects related to project activities among stakeholders. Ensuring mentoring and training of project team to foster capacity building on M&E knowledge. Support monitoring and evaluation missions commissioned by the donor (GCF and UNDP) Keenly review monitoring and evaluation system/mechanism, process and procedures of the project and forms and formats for project activities under its various components; Regularly monitor project progress through field visit, offer feedback and keep regular communication with related field and centre level staff. during project meeting, Workshops and trainings; Attend, participate and provide necessary inputs for preparation of andduring project meeting, Workshops and trainings; Serve as focal point for providing M &E inputs on Implementation Progress Reports (IPRs); Prepare and submit M&E inputs as per the Results Framework to the consolidated trimester/ annual project implementation progress reports meeting the deadline as per the requirement of project and GCF; Accomplish others tasks related for preparing, monitoring, evaluation and MIS as per the need of project assigned by Project Director. Key Result Areas M&E inputs to Monthly/Trimester/Yearly Project Implementation Progress Report; M&E implementation plan for the project, TORs for surveys Inputs to MWE program level indicators; M&E inputs to good practice case studies Monitoring and Supervision report as per the requirement. Prepared and submit Guidelines/Manuals of concerned fields as per the need of the project. Reports and proceeding of seminars, workshops and training. All reports should be in English and as necessary. As the focal person for the M&E at the PMU, the M&E specialist will work closely with all other members of the PMU Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience: The ideal applicant for the United Nations UNDP Project Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist Green Climate Fund job placement should hold a Masters Degree in Agricultural Sciences, Social Science, Management, Environment Sciences, Natural Science or related field combined with extensive experience in similar responsible position in rural community is considered as equivalent A minimum of five years of work experience in a field related to rural development, livelihoods, agriculture promotion, and planning or project management. Three years of experience in M&E design and implementation at the project level would be preferable. Previous successful involvement with, and good knowledge of, CBOs, I/NGOs and civil society is desired. Willingness to undertake regular field visits in different conditions is required. Computer literacy in Microsoft packages (MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel), GIS and SPSS is an asset. Previous experience in creating and managing performance monitoring plans and leveraging performance monitoring data for improving ongoing project management are under consideration. Knowledge in designing and field testing surveys and other data collection instruments are required. Contribute in indicator development, data collection and analysis, data quality assessments, and/or performance monitoring and reporting. Good knowledge of concepts and framework for monitoring and Evaluation and Result Measurement. Personal Competencies The M&E Specialist should possess excellent technical skills in socio-economic research and project performance assessment. Previous experience in monitoring and evaluation of development project activities. Strong communication and facilitation skills with ability to establish good working relationships with colleagues and stakeholders in a sensitive environment. must be able to respond quickly to requests for information Excellent interpersonal and motivational skills and sensitivity to the local environment as well as the ability to work with minimal supervision. Excellent data analytical skills and interpretation. Must have ability to write clearly and concisely, and have sound quantitative skills in managing, analyzing and interpreting data). Previous experience on planning, monitoring and evaluation of community based projects and having good computer knowledge on database software like MS Excel, SPSS, and GIS will be given priority. Extensive knowledge and understanding of adaptation to climate change; climate resilience would be an added advantage. UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. How to Apply: All suitably qualified and interested candidates who so desire to join the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, in the aforementioned capacity should endeavor to Apply Online by Clicking on the link below. Please further review job requirements and if competent Click Apply Now. th November 2017 Deadline: 8November2017 find us on our facebook page For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com orfind us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline Job Title: Protection Officer Organisation: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Duty Station: Mbarara, Uganda Reports to: Head of Sub-Office About UNHCR: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was established on December 14, 1950 by the United Nations General Assembly. UNHCRs mandate under the Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is to lead and co-ordinate action for international protection to refugees; seek permanent solutions for the problems of refugees and safeguard refugee rights and well-being. UNHCR has an additional mandate concerning issues of statelessness, as it is given a designated role under Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Job Summary: The Protection Officer provides functional protection oversight to information management and programme staff; and supervises protection standards, operational procedures and practices in protection delivery at local or country level. The incumbent also acts as an advisor to senior management in designing a comprehensive protection strategy and represents the organization to authorities, UN sister agencies, partners and other stakeholders on protection doctrine and policy. The Protection Officer is relied upon by the Office to plan, lead and coordinate quality, timely and effective protection responses to the needs of populations of concern. This includes ensuring that operational responses in all sectors are shaped in a protection optic, mainstream protection methodologies and integrate protection safeguards. Another important function of the position is to ensure that persons of concern are involved with the Office in making decisions that affect them, whether in accessing their rights or in identifying appropriate solutions to their problems. To achieve this, the incumbent will need to build and maintain effective interfaces with communities of concern, authorities, protection and assistance partners as well as a broader network of stakeholders who can contribute to enhancing protection. Responsibilities: Key Duties andResponsibilities: Keep abreast with the political, social, economic and cultural developments that have an impact on the protection environment. Facilitate a consultative process with government counterparts, partners and persons of concern to develop and implement a comprehensive protection strategy addressing the specific protection needs of women and men, children, youth and older persons, persons with disabilities, minority groups such as sexual minorities and persons living with HIV/AIDS; Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) priorities with regard to these persons. In operations applying the Cluster Approach, seek to ensure the response of the Protection Cluster is grounded in a strategy which covers all assessed and prioritized protection needs of the affected populations. Assist the senior management to ensure the protection strategy is fully integrated into the Country Operations Plan, the UN Development and Assistance Framework (UNDAF), the Humanitarian Country Teams common humanitarian action plan where applicable. Promote International and National Law and applicable UN/UNHCR and IASC policy, standards and codes of conduct and ensure that all sectors and /or in clusters in applicable operations fulfil their responsibilities mainstreaming protection. Implement and monitor programmes on an AGD basis to address identified protection needs. Offer technical guidance and support to UNHCR and partners on all protection related issues. Oversee and manage individual protection cases including those on SGBV and child protection. Provide legal advice and guidance on protection issues to internal and external interlocutors; ensure legal assistance is accessible to persons of concern; liaise with competent authorities to ensure the issuance of personal and other relevant documents to persons of concern (civil documentation, in particular birth certificates). Oversee and undertake eligibility and status determination ensuring compliance with UNHCR procedural standards and international protection principles. Promote and implement effective measures to identify, prevent and reduce statelessness. Develop and implement a country-level education plan and ensure partnerships are forged with the Ministry for Education, UNICEF and other partners as appropriate. Develop and implement a country-level child protection plan as part of the protection strategy ensuring programmes use a child protection systems approach. Monitor, and intervene in cases of refoulement, expulsion and other protection incidents through working relations with governments and other partners. Implement and oversee Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all protection/solutions activities. Ensure that durable solutions through voluntary repatriation, local integration and where appropriate, resettlement are sought and provided to the largest possible number of persons of concern. Coordinate the design, implementation and evaluation of protection related programming with implementing and operational partners. Contribute to and facilitate a programme of results-based advocacy through a consultative process with sectorial and/or cluster partners. Ensure that the Protection Sector or Cluster has an effective information management component which: provides disaggregated data on populations of concern and their problems; researches, collects and disseminates relevant protection information and good practices to enhance protection delivery. Build the protection capacity of national and local government, partners and civil society to assume their responsibilities vis-a-vis all persons of concern through protection training, mainstreaming and related activities. Coordinate capacity-building initiatives for communities and individuals to assert their rights. Advise and capacitate national authorities, relevant institutions and civil society to strengthen legislation and status determination procedures and mechanisms. Key Result Areas: Approve the protection strategy for endorsement by the Senior Protection Officer, Assistant Representative Protection or the Representative. Chair protection coordination meetings, including Protection Cluster meetings in applicable operations. Intervene with authorities on protection issues. Negotiate locally and as appropriate with resettlement countries and countries of return on behalf of UNHCR. Take review decisions on individual cases. Enforce compliance of staff and partners with global protection policies and standards of professional integrity in the delivery of protection services. Approve expenditures under the UNHCR protection budget. Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience: The ideal candidate for the United Nations UNHCR Protection Officer career opportunity should hold an undergraduate degree (equivalent of a BA/BS) in Law, International Law, political Sciences or related field with good knowledge of International Refugee and Human Rights Law. At least six years experience (5 years with graduate degree (equivalent of a Masters)) relevant professional experience of which 2 years in the field. Excellent knowledge of English and working knowledge of another UN language. Diverse field experience desirable. Good IT skills including database management skills. Completion of the Protection Learning Programme, RSDesettlement Learning Programme. Personal Competencies: Accountability, Teamwork & Collaboration, Communication, Commitment to Continuous, Client & Result Orientation, Organizational Awareness, Managing Performance, Strategic Planning and Vision, Managing Resources, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Planning and Organizing, Awareness How to Apply: All interested Ugandan nationals who wish to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the aforementioned capacity are encouraged to click on the link below and follow the application instructions after reviewing the job details. th November 2017 Deadline: 6November 2017 find us on our facebook page For more of the latest jobs, please visit https://www.theugandanjobline.com orfind us on our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UgandanJobline Exactly four months since India welcomed a new unified tax regime under the Goods and Services Tax, the Centre has been subjected to much criticism due to implementation gaps, confusions on multiple slab rates and migration to online filing of taxes. While the idea of introducing the new tax system was to shift towards a 'one-nation one-tax' regime, GST has become a thorn for the ruling Narendra Modi-government. However, Archit Gupta, founder and CEO of ClearTax, a Bengaluru-based financial technology company that offers software solutions for compliance with direct and indirect taxes, tells THE WEEK in an interview that the current pain-points would ease out and the outlook remains positive for GST in India. Edited excerpts: You've been hand-holding many businesses, including SMEs, to be GST compliant. What do you think are the major bottlenecks in implementation? The major bottlenecks are the same for every businesses: First, there is the need for updating existing technology to become GST-compliant; or purchasing new software where none exists. Second, ensuring timely filing of the three monthly GSTRs. And third, adapting to a digitised economy where billing to return filing is performed online. What's the most common GST-related query that ClearTax has come across? Soon after the launch, the first question every business had was the difference between IGST, CGST, and SGST. Currently, HSN (Harmonised System Nomenclature) Codes dominate the query list, along with details of the Composition Scheme and the penalties for late return filing. How well is the uniform tax regime being adopted and working across states? Any change takes time to seep in; the same is true of GST as well. There is a lot of vigour in the business community and everyone is trying their best to understand the nuances of GST and become fully compliant. There is some confusion, but that was to be expected in such a scenario. The change in law and the role of technology is unprecedented. At the same time, this is a great opportunity for business to go the tech way. From our vantage point at ClearTax, we see that businesses are adapting to the new tax regime albeit the pain points, the government is actively hearing out concerns and working to resolve them. What about the current economic slowdown attributed to shoddy implementation of GST and demonetisation? First, you have to look at demonetisation, which impacted a lot of cash businesses. There was a measured slump with fall of IIP and consumer indices for a while. I think with GST, the challenge most of the businesses had was on how to offload the stocks that they already had, with the transition to the new scheme. But gradually these are going to pick. The outlook remains positive. What is the expected time-period for GST benefits to start reflecting in our economy? We expect the benefits to start reflecting in 1 to 1.5 years from implementation. This is the minimum time required for the economy to stabilise and completely adapt to the new regime. Is there a resistance among small entrepreneurs and freelancers to be GST-compliant? Initially, there was a lot of resistance. But then, if you want to do business, you dont have much choice because GST is now already implemented. The government has been reactive even to the concerns of small business. There is a lot of noise but then people are actually starting to get compliant. The GST council recently brought in a few changes to GST. How effective are these to rectify the existing concerns or challenges? The GST Councils 22nd meeting set new ground rules for businesses with annual turnover below Rs 1.5 crore. This shows that the council is open to discussions and has been listening to the woes of the common people. The recent changes will benefit SMEs and exporterstwo sectors which were finding it especially hard to adhere to GST compliances. The government is cognizant of the challenges faced by them and is working on easing up GST for them. What is your opinion on the adoption of multiple slabs? Isn't that hurting the idea of a unified tax system? We need to have these slabs. We have all sorts of products and different classes of people. It may be hard to comment upon the impact of higher input credit availability and hence, it may be more reasonable and judicious to have more slabs. Some people may suffer because their inputs are coming at a higher cost and the refund may be available only in a few cases and not all. But that is the way to go. For us (India) it might be very hard to manage with one or two slabs, at least in this case where we had multiple tax rates across different states. For at least a couple of years, these slab rates are going to stay. If an IT company has presence all over India, in how many jurisdictions does it has to file GST? Mostly IT companies take registration in a single state and supply services all across the country, in which case, they will have to file GST in only the state where they are registered. However, they will not be able to claim income tax credit on the SGST paid in the other states in this case. If they opt for multiple registrations across states, they will be able to claim ITC and will have to file GST returns in all the states where they are registered. Going forward, what should the government do to fix the existing GST confusions? The government is already doing a lot to spread awareness and bring businesses into the fold. There are notifications on Twitter and other social media platforms, scheduled webinars and training sessions for return filing. Along with this, discussions with community leaders and organisations will also help in easing the situation. In back to back monarchial visits, India will soon host King Phillippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium from November 5 to 11 in their first state visit to the country. At present, India is hosting the King and Queen of Bhutan and their 20-month-old son. The royal Bhutanese couple leaves for Thimpu on November 3. Jan Luykx, ambassador of Belgium, addressing the media regarding the visit of the Belgian royal couple King Philippe and Queen Mathilde from November 5 to 10 | Arvind Jain "For us, a state visit by a monarch is a big deal, because during his reign, a king usually does just one state visit to any country," said Jan Luykx, ambassador of Belgium to India. The two nations are celebrating the 70th year of the establishment of diplomatic ties with each other. Previously, King Baudouin and King Albert II visited India in 1970 and 2008, respectively. The couple will begin their visit with a private visit to the Taj Mahal and then spend a packed four days in Delhi and Mumbai, attending a slew of business meets and seminars. The two countries are likely to formalise 41 deals, ranging from twinning of states like Meghalaya with Walloon to MoUs in clean energy, innovative technology, academic tie ups and heritage link ups. The royal couple will be accompanied by a nearly 130 strong delegation that includes chief ministers of some Belgian states, the minister for foreign affairs and the senate secretary for foreign affairs. Part of the delegation are also 90 CEOs and a 30-members strong academician group. For the Mumbai leg of the visit, there will also be Belgians of Indian origin who are involved in the diamond trade in Antwerp. Commemorating the Indian soldiers who fought and perished in World War I is a big project for Belgium, and the visit will include the release of a book on the Indian contribution, jointly brought out by the two governments. The king will also inaugurate an exhibition on the subject, which will be open to the public from November 13. And while Prince Charles, on an earlier visit, had met the Mumbai dabbawallahs and given them a global spotlight, Queen Mathilde, in Mumbai, will interact with the National Domestic Workers Movement, an organisation started by a Belgian nun Jeane Devos in 1985. A Bharatiya Janata Party rally in poll-bound Karnataka that was flagged off here by party chief Amit Shah on Thursday caused the city's traffic to be held up for over three hours. Thousands of party cadres were on two-wheelers. They were en-route to the Bengaluru International Exhibition Centre (BIEC) on the city's outskirts, where the rally began. The arterial roads leading to the venue, located on the northwestern suburb of the city, on the National Highway towards Tumakuru and other districts, were completely choked. Shah, who had landed in the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) airport here on Thursday morning, was also stranded for over an hour. He was then flown in a chopper to the BIEC gathering. The state-wide rally, titled "Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra", is expected to muster over three lakh activists and supporters of the party on motorcycles and four-wheelers over the coming weeks. Karnataka unit President B.S. Yeddyurappa will be in the forefront on board a customised bus. Celebrating Tipu Jayanthi or indulging in votebank politics will do no good to Karnataka, mocked BJP national president Amit Shah, who was speaking at the launch of the BJP's 'Nava Karnataka Nirmana Parivarthana Yatra' in Bengaluru on Thursday. Slamming the Congress government in the state, Shah charged that the Siddaramaiah government had broken all records in corruption and the BJP's Parivarthana Yatra is to expose this corruption. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is more enthusiastic to celebrate Tipu Jayanthi on November 10 than celebrate Kannada Rajyothsava. Karnataka will not benefit from celebrating Tipu Jayanthi or the votebank politics. Siddaramaiah ji, at least 10 RSS/BJP men have been killed in Karnataka. Do you have an answer for it? You are not worried about national security or safety of Karnataka and that is why you withdrew the cases against SDPI, mocked Shah. With the rally being flagged off, the saffron party kick-started its election campaign for the 2018 Assembly polls. BJP's chief ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday has embarked on the 75-day rally in a specially designed bus, which will pass through all the 224 assembly constituencies in the state. While a bike rally of BJP volunteers from South Karnataka took part in the flagging off of the Parivarthanaa rally, a similar rally is planned to held in Mid-December at Hubli to galvanise supporters from North Karnataka region, before the rally culminates in Bengaluru or Mysuru on January 28, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For the next 80 days, the BJP's chief ministerial candidate and future CM of Karnataka will tour the state to expose the corruption of the Congress government, said Shah, elaborating on why the BJP named the rally as Parivarthana. What do we want to change? It is not the CM, the government, the MLAs or ministers alone. We want to change the status quo in Karnataka, the pathetic condition of the farmers, youth and the law and order situation. We want to replace the corrupt government with a government lead by Modi and Yeddyurappa who can give a transparent and honest governance, said Shah. On the allegations of corruption in the Siddaramaiah government, Shah said Karnataka had been ranked as most corrupt by a media survey. The Siddaramaiah government had misused huge amounts central funds. The Modi government at the Centre has allocated more funds to Karnataka than the UPA. Karnataka's share of funds in the 13th finance commission under the UPA rule was Rs 88,583 crore. This was increased 2.5 times (to Rs 2.9 lakh crore) by us. Karnataka got Mudra loans (Rs 39,000 crore) and funds for SmartCity (Rs 960 crore), Amrut (4,900 crore), Bangalore Metro (Rs 2,617 crore) and Railway projects (Rs 2,197 crore) among others. But these funds have not reached the people. Where did all the money go?, asked Shah. Allegations of corruption surface; recovery of wealth and diaries hint at corruption. One after the other the Congress ministers are caught in scams, be it steel-bridge, real estate mafia usurping 1,500 lakes, the weakening of Lokayuka, or the transfer scam. The Siddaramaiah government has broken all records of corruption, said Shah. Yeddyurappa and other party leaders waving to the crowd during their 'Parivarthana Yatra' in Bengaluru Earlier, Yeddyurappa exhorted the booth level party workers to turn up in large numbers in all districts to make the rally a success. The rally is to strengthen the party and to throw out the corrupt Congress government. The Siddaramaiah government has discontinued pro-farmer and pro-poor schemes launched during the BJP rule. The BJP's schemes like Suvarna Bhoomi, Suvarna Grama, Bicycle for schoolchildren, the Bhagyalakshmi bond for girl child, subsidy for drip irrigation and organic farming have been neglected by the Congress government. The Lokayukta is rendered powerless while Siddaramaiah has constituted anti-corruption bureau to protect the corrupt, he said. Yeddyurappa also said that the chief minister is protecting Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George, though an FIR was filed against him in the DySP M.K. Ganapathy (death) case. Meanwhile, the ruling Congress, which is keeping a close watch on the 'Parivarthana' rally, was quick to dismiss the rally as 'inconsequential'. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who held a meeting of senior police officers told reporters that BJP was taking out the rally to disturb the communal harmony and peace in the state. Siddaramaiah also dubbed the 'Parivarthana' rally as a failure saying, The thin attendance at the rally shows that people are not with the BJP. It has failed on the very first day. We have not stopped anybody from attending the rally. Last time, we had denied permission for bike rally in Mangalore fearing it would disturb communal harmony. But this time, we have not stopped any one. The BJP should undergo Parivarthanaa (transformation) as they are communal and need to become secular. Moreover, look who is talking about corruption. BJP state president was jailed over corruption charges and BJP national president has also spent time in jail, mocked Siddaramaiah. Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani on Thursday said that he was not joining any political party for the 2017 assembly elections in Gujarat, but at the same time, he clarified that he was open to meeting Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to discuss the 17 demands raised by the Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch and other organisations. Mevani alleged that BJP's mentality was anti-dalit and anti-democratic, and that the party was not interested in any talks with dalits. Mevani said the Congress should clear its stand on the 17 demands raised by dalit organisations and for that he was willing to meet Gandhi. For more than a week, there have been speculations in the media about meeting between Gandhi and Mevani. A fortnight ago, state Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki had invited Mevani, OBC leader Alpesh Thakore and Patel stir leader Hardik Patel to join hands to defeat the BJP. While Thakore has since joined the Congress, Patel and Mevani have made it clear that they are anti-BJP. Mevani said that he would meet Gandhi, not for getting a ticket for himself, but for the larger interest of 46 lakh dalits of Gujarat. He said that he would meet Gandhi along with a delegation of representatives from various dalit organisations. The demands include BPL cards, government jobs, five acre land for victims of Una flogging incident, appointing public prosecutor in each district as per the provisions of the Atrocity Act and to compensate the kin of manhole workers who have lost their lives while cleaning manholes as per the Supreme Court guidelines. Even if Congress meets the demands put up by the dalit organisations, Mevani clarified that he will not be contesting the elections or joining any political party. One of their key demands is also to look into the issue where land allotment to landless dalits has remained merely as a promise on paper. China on Thursday blocked a US resolution seeking to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar a global terrorist. Due to lack of consensus at the UNSC committee, the application seeking a ban on Masood Azhar has been rejected, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said. This is the second time Beijing has vetoed the proposal which was first moved by India at the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council in March last year. China did the same to a US proposal backed by France and the UK. It first blocked it in January and then put a technical hold for three months in August. A new resolution will have to be moved now. China has cited lack of consensus among the 15-members of the UNSC and no solid proof against the terrorist who is accused by India of plotting a deadly attack on an Indian airbase in January 2016. India says only China is not in favour of branding Azhar as an international terrorist. The listing of Azhar has become a contentious issue between China and India. In September, China agreed to include Azhar's outfit in a joint statement issued by BRICS members. OTTAWA, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Northern Graphite Corporation (Northern or the Company) (TSX-V:NGC) (OTCQX:NGPHF) announces that it plans to complete a non-brokered private placement of 3.33 million units at a price of $0.45 per unit for gross proceeds of $1.5 million. Each unit will consist of one common share and one half of one common share purchase warrant with each full warrant entitling the holder to purchase one common share at a price of $0.60 per share for a period of two years. The securities to be issued will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of closing and the placement is subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange. It is anticipated that the net proceeds of the placement will be used to: Finalize operational permitting for the Bissett Creek graphite project; Update the bankable feasibility study for the project to reflect a substantial decline in the CDN/US exchange rate, lower oil prices and more competitive equipment pricing, and to integrate some capital cost reduction modifications into the flow sheet; Conduct a pilot plant test of the Companys proprietary purification process which has the potential to provide a substantial competitive advantage in the manufacture of anode material for lithium ion batteries; and Working capital and general corporate purposes. Finders fees will be payable on part of the placement and consist of 6.5% in cash, and warrants equal to 6.5% of the units issued with each warrant exercisable to acquire one common share at a price of $0.60 for a period of one year. This press release is for informational purposes only and shall not be constituted as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the units nor shall there be any sale of the units in any jurisdiction in which such sale would be unlawful. About Northern Graphite Northern Graphite is a Canadian company that has a 100% interest in the Bissett Creek graphite deposit located in southern Canada, relatively close to all required infrastructure. Bissett Creek is an advanced stage project that has a Full Feasibility Study and its major environmental permit. Subject to the completion of operational and species at risk permitting, which are well advanced, Northern could commence construction in 2018 pending financing. The Company believes Bissett Creek has the highest margin, best flake size distribution and lowest marketing risk of any new graphite project, and has the added advantages of low capital costs and realistic production levels relative to the size of the market. Gregory Bowes, B.Sc. MBA, P. Geo., a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101, has reviewed and is responsible for the technical information in this press release. Additional information can be obtained under the Companys profile at www.sedar.com, on the Companys website at www.northerngraphite.com, or by contacting: Gregory Bowes, CEO (613) 241-9959. This press release contains forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of statements that include words such as "could", "potential", "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "plan", "likely", "will" or other similar words or phrases. These statements are only current predictions and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. 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. Ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Pakistan on November 2 and will appear before a court on November 3 in connection with the corruption references filed against him by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). Sharif landed at Islamabad's Benazir Bhutto International Airport at around 8:20am. A large number of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supporters and party leaders were at the airport to welcome him. Minutes after landing, Sharif left for Punjab House where he is expected to address a meeting of party workers later in the day. The former leader has alleged that cases against him and his family were being fabricated and that the Panama Papers case verdict became a source of embarrassment for the nation, said media reports. Read more: PML-N, top leaders hold key meeting in London On October 26, the court issued bailable arrest warrants against Sharif after he failed to appear before the court in connection with the three references filed by the NAB. The warrants were issued for the Flagship Investment case and the Al-Azizia Steel Mills and Hill Metal Establishment case. The court had indicted Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and her husband Captain Mohammad Safdar on October 19 in connection with a case pertaining to their apartments in London. All three pleaded not guilty to the charges. A five-member bench of the Supreme Court on July 28 had directed the NAB to file cases against Sharif and his children in six weeks in the accountability court and directed the trial court to decide the cases within six months. The former premier and his two sons have been named in all three NAB cases, while Maryam and Safdar were named only in the London case. Paul Manafort, who served briefly as Donald Trump's election campaign manager, and business associate Rick Gates are expected to make their first appearances on November 2 before the U.S. judge overseeing a criminal case brought by a special counsel investigating campaign ties to Russia. Manafort, 68, and Gates, 45, who also worked on the Republican's campaign, pleaded not guilty before a magistrate judge on October 30 to a 12-count indictment, ranging from conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the United States and failing to register as foreign agents of Ukraine's former pro-Russian government. Also on Novermber 2, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page is scheduled to testify to the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee behind closed doors about his dealings with Russians. Page has repeatedly denied serving as an intermediary between Trump's campaign and Russia, which had been under U.S. economic sanctions for several years at the time of last year's election campaign. Charges of October 30 were an opening salvo by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigators are probing allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to help Trump. The inquiry also will determine whether or not there was any coordination between Russians and associates of the Trump campaign. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied meddling and Trump has denied potential collusion between his associates and Russia, calling the investigations a witch hunt. George Papadopoulos, another former member of the Trump campaign's small foreign policy team, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and will not face trial. A lawyer for Papadopoulos declined comment.Thursday's hearing will be the first in the courtroom of U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama and has handled a series of high-profile cases over the past few years. Read more: Who is George George Papadopoulos The 2pm hearing is expected to focus on setting bail conditions. Manafort and Gates are under house arrest, released on unsecured bonds of $10 million and $5 million, respectively.Manafort, a longtime lobbyist, political consultant and lawyer, and Gates should be given stiff bail terms because of their "history of deceptive and misleading conduct", their "significant financial resources" and the "potentially significant sentences" they face, prosecutors said in a filing on October 31 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A conviction on conspiracy to launder money alone could carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.Prosecutors also said there was a risk of flight. Manafort holds three U.S. passports and frequently travels abroad. Asked about the information in the filing, Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said on Wednesday his client "looks forward to having these allegations tried before a judge and jury. Kevin Downing, Manafort's lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment ahead of the hearing. It is not clear whether Gates, who was represented by a court-appointed lawyer on Monday, has retained counsel.The charges did not state any direct connections to the Trump campaign or allegations of collusion. Downing said Manafort's work for the Ukrainians ended in 2014, two years before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. Manafort served as campaign manager from June to August. In the October 31 court filing, prosecutors said Manafort and Gates had connections to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs.Downing said earlier this week that there was no evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Reuters The White House retains a list of 20 terrorist groups that it claims are operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is believed to have shared this list with Islamabad, the media reported on November 2. However, the list was not given to Pakistani authorities by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when he visited Islamabad last week. The White House list includes three types of militant groups: those who launch attacks into Afghanistan, those who attack targets inside Pakistan and those who are focused on Kashmir. Top on the list is the Haqqani Network which, the US claims, has safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and uses them to launch attacks into Afghanistan. Pakistan strongly rejects the charge, saying that there were no such safe havens inside the country. The US also identified Lashkar-e-Taiba as one of the largest and most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. The other militant groups in the list include Harakatul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Jundullah, Lashkar-i-Jhanghvi and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. Jabin T. Jacob CHINA is the worlds second-largest economy and one of its major political powers. While it has not been tested in battle for some 40 years, it has the largest military in the world and the second-largest military budget. For nearly 70 years, the worlds most populous country has been ruled by a single political party, the Communist Party of China (CPC), and so when it holds its once-in-five-years national congress, it is an event that the rest of the world, especially neighbouring India, would do well to watch closely. The 19th congress of the CPC began on October 18. The week-long congress reviews the partys work of the last five years, sets guidelines for the coming five years and appoints a new central committee from which will be selected a new politburo and politburo standing committee. General Secretary Xi Jinping kicked off proceedings with a 203-minute-long presentation of a report outlining the achievements of his first five-year term in office and his vision for the future. It is a sign of the power of any general secretary that he is able to introduce new theoretical concepts in the political report that can then subsequently be enshrined in the party constitution. With the exception of Mao Zedong, such concepts have only entered the party constitution after the top leaders lifetime as in the case of Deng Xiaoping or when a general secretary was about to step down from his post as in the case of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Xi has already achieved this goal at the end of just his first term. In fact, several of his ideas are already heavily referenced in the party and state documents and speeches by Chinese leaders. His Chinese dream concept has become a catchphrase both within the country and outside representing a Chinese model of politics and economic development distinct from western ones. At this congress, it would appear socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era is likely to be another phrase that will catch on. Xis report to the congress helps showcase some of his signature campaigns and, in particular, the anti-corruption campaign that has netted hundreds of officials high and low in both the party and the military. Yet, he has also warned the CPC to remain vigilant and committed to a people-centred approach, suggesting, in fact, that corruption and lack of commitment from the party cadre remain serious problems. That said, Xi is certainly one of the most powerful general secretaries of the CPC in decades, given how popular the anti-corruption campaign is and how he has managed to push through long-pending and wide-ranging military reforms. As per party norms on age limits, Xi and his Premier Li Keqiang will continue in the politburo standing committee for another five-year term while five other members will retire. The big question is how many of his own close supporters Xi will be able to bring into the new standing committee that will be announced at the end of the congress. This will indicate whether or not Xi will be able to sustain the wide-ranging reforms of the party, the economy and the military that he has initiated. Power centre: Xi Jinping flanked by former presidents Hu Jintao (left) and Jiang Zemin (right) at the CPC congress | AP On the foreign policy front, under Xis belt and road initiative (BRI), China has already committed tens of billions of dollars across the globe. This includes south Asia where the Indian government remains resolutely opposed to what it has correctly identified as a strategic initiative designed to establish Chinese leadership in the region and the globe. Opposition alone, however, might not suffice as a policy response, especially on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and if Xi comes back stronger in his second term as general secretary, India will need to think up more creative ways than it has at present to both counter and work with the BRI, not just in south Asia, but in its wider neighbourhood. Meanwhile, BRI investments also increase Chinas vulnerabilities beyond its borders. This then creates an additional incentive for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army to increase its presence abroadincluding possibly in Pakistaneven as Beijing constantly declares that Chinas rise would not result in hegemony or in the interference in the internal affairs of other countries as has the rise of all great powers in the past. Nevertheless, if one were to go by Chinas military budgets, Xis frequent exhortations to the PLA to improve its combat capabilities, Chinas territorial ambitions including its illegal reclamations in the South China Sea and its uncompromising stance on disputes ranging from Japan to Bhutan to India, it is difficult to see how Chinas rhetoric can be trusted. Suspicions of China will inevitably increase in the neighbourhood. The China-Japan relationship appears now well and truly irretrievable, given the nature of leaderships on both sides. Even if the economic relationship remains significant, both China and Japan are in the process of seeking alternatives or are in a process of rivalry with each other in several sectors and in emerging markets like India. While China-Russia relations are at the best they have ever been in a long time, this is partly the result of the western economic sanctions against Russia, which leaves the latter with little option but to increase its ties with China. Russia too, however, has a strong and ambitious leader in Vladimir Putin and possibly chafes at the close embrace it has been forced into with China. It certainly has economic and geopolitical reasons to be worried about Chinas increasing ingress into Central Asia under the BRI. The clear line adopted by the party congress against importing western concepts, including western-style democracy to China, is the ideological foundation of a consistent and ever-growing sense of rivalry with the west represented by the United States. This rivalry will inevitably have its impact on global geopolitics including on India-China relations at a time when India-US political and military links are growing closer. The author is fellow, Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah has adopted a wait and see approach to the Centre's announcement of Dineshwar Sharma as its interlocutor for talks on Jammu and Kashmir. Excerpts from an interview: How do you see the announcement of an interlocutor? They have appointed an interlocutor, but what remains to be seen is what mandate he has been given, because the home minister has talked about the legitimate aspirations of people. Now, who is to decide what those legitimate aspirations are? [Chief Minister] Mehbooba Mufti has said the dialogue would be unconditional. If that is the case, then legitimate aspirations will also include the aspirations of the Hurriyat Conference. That will be interesting to see. What do you make of a retired intelligence officer being chosen as an interlocutor? More than the individual it is the process that matters. If the individual comes with the full mandate from the government of India then the process will work. But if there is confusion in the mind of the interlocutor as to what his role is, then the chances of success will be far less. But we need to give the interlocutor some time to show us through his deeds what he intends to do. Then we will arrive at a better conclusion what he is up to. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said that the interlocutor is free to decide whether to talk to the Hurriyat. No. That decision rests with the government of India. The interlocutor represents the government, not himself. The interlocutor has to be given clear guidelines and a clear mandate. He is not coming to talk to people in his individual capacity. The government of India has said it will be a sustained dialogue. It cannot be left to the interlocutor whether he can talk to the Hurriyat or not. What are your expectations from the offer of talks? I am not going to pass judgment on what is and what is not possible. I am ready to give him a chance. Let's see what his mandate is. Everybody knows what the National Conference stands for. We have not shied away from stating what our position is. We need to know the timeframe for the talks. Is it open-ended or is there a timeframe? You have said the talks offer is the defeat of people who believed in the use of force. Clearly it is. You are accepting that it is a political problem. The political problem requires a political dialogue. This is exactly the message we took to the prime minister last year at the height of the agitation. Thank goodness this announcement has come. Now it needs to be followed through. But it clearly shows that the Doval doctrine is not now the guiding light because the Doval doctrine suggests there is no political problem; it is a security problem. What is there to talk for the political parties whose demands are known? If the dialogue is unconditional, and if it is a serious attempt, then we are well within our rights to reiterate our roadmap. Obviously, you cannot have the dismemberment of Article 35A on the one hand and political dialogue on the other. We will be looking to what happens to Article 35A in the Supreme Court because that will also indicate where the Centre stands. I think it is important to remember that the Centre has now made itself party to the case against Article 35A. You cannot talk about a dialogue with stakeholders talking about legitimate aspiration and shy away from defending Article 35A. The BJP may have its own point of view on the article but the government of India is not a political party. Therefore, we will be very keenly watching that. The BJP has refused to return the control of power projects and even talk about revoking the AFSPA. Then what is there to talk about? I understand that sentiment. They have legitimate grounds but it's premature to be wary about this process of dialogue. I will give them a chance to see what their intentions are. So let's wait and see what steps the interlocutor takes, because we have had interlocutors in the past also. Let's see how his mandate differs from the previous interlocutors'. CRESCO, PA, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Net Savings Link, Inc. (OTC: NSAV), announced today that the Company has appointed Mr. Defu Cao as Chief Operating Officer of its Hemp Beer operations in China. Mr. Cao will be personally responsible for overseeing the launch of the Companys Tiger Hemp Beer brand in mainland China, which is scheduled for February 2018, to coincide with the Chinese New Year, The Year Of The Dog. Mr. Cao is currently the head of operations for NSAVs China Joint Venture partner, Blue Candy Brewery, Ltd. (English Translation), which presently has 134 employees and an annual production capacity of 30,000 kiloliters. Due to overwhelming demand and the anticipation of the launch of Tiger Hemp Beer, construction began on a new, state-of-the-art brewery in August 2017 and expects to be completed well before the Chinese New Year. The new brewery will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 kiloliters. China is the world's largest consumer of beer. NSAV also announced today that its subsidiary, Hemp Beer Inc., which markets and distributes Tiger Hemp Beer, has begun the registration process to brew and distribute its beer in the state of California and expects the process to be completed within two weeks. The Company views California and the entire western United States as a huge potential market for Hemp Beer. James Tilton, president of NSAV stated, I am thrilled that Mr. Cao has agreed to lead the China launch of Tiger Hemp Beer. He has a proven track record and since he took over Blue Candy Brewery in 2012, his results have been truly astonishing. Mr. Tilton went on to state, "No one can dispute the potential of Tiger Hemp Beer in China. However, I think we have the opportunity to be just as successful right here in the U.S.A. NSAV's vision is the establishment of a fully integrated technology company that provides turnkey technological solutions to the legal medical cannabis and hemp industries, as well as other areas of the medical industry. Over time, the Company plans to provide a wide range of services such as software solutions, e-commerce, advisory services, financial services, patents and trademarks and information technology. For further information please contact NSAV at 1 (480) 326-8577 or tenassociates33@gmail.com The NSAV corporate email address is info@nsavholdinginc.com The NSAV corporate website can be accessed at http://nsavholdinginc.com The NSAV Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/NSAV_MJTechCo The NSAV Facebook account can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/NSAVHolding This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbors created thereby. Investors are cautioned that, all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the ability of Net Savings Link, Inc. to accomplish its stated plan of business. Net Savings Link, Inc. believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, any of the assumptions could be inaccurate, and therefore, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward- looking statements included herein, the inclusion of such information should not be regarded as a representation by Net Savings Link, Inc. or any other person. The gulf between Britain's exports to the EU and the rest of the world is getting bigger, according to official figures. Booming sales of UK goods and services to non-EU nations jumped 8.3 per cent to 311.6billion last year amid rising demand all over the world from the US and Canada to Chile, Egypt, Pakistan, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand. By contrast, exports to the EU rose by just 2.8 per cent to 235.9billion, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed. It marks the eighth straight year in which exports to the EU have been outstripped by those to the rest of the world. Brexit boost: Sales of UK goods and services to non-EU nations jumped 8.3% to 311.6bn last year A separate report showed British manufacturers started the final quarter of this year firmly on the front foot. Research group IHS Markit said that its index of activity in the sector, where scores above 50 show growth, rose from 56 in September to 56.3 last month. The report found that exports improved to the US, Europe, South America and Australia as the fall in the pound since the Brexit vote last year boosted business. 'UK manufacturers made an impressive start to the final quarter of 2017 as increased inflows of new work encouraged firms to ramp up production once again,' said IHS Markit director Rob Dobson. Britain has now exported more goods to the rest of the world than to the EU every year since 2009. Last year the Brussels trading bloc accounted for 43 per cent of goods and services exports down from 54 per cent a decade earlier. Brexit campaigners seized on the figures, which underlined how Britain is becoming less reliant on Europe for trade, as evidence that the UK can prosper outside the EU. Brexit backer and Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, a supporter of the Change Britain campaign group, said: 'This growth in exports confirms that countries across the globe see 'Made In Britain' as a sign of quality and ingenuity. 'And as our trade with non-EU countries continues to outstrip those to the EU, it highlights the opportunities that await the UK once we take back control of our trade policy and become a beacon of global free trade.' The Department for International Trade said South Korea was the fastest-growing market for the UK since 2010, with exports up 97 per cent to 6.1billion. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said: 'British goods and services are in demand across the globe, and non-EU markets such as South Korea and Japan are becoming more important for UK exports. 'It's a trend predicted by the European Commission themselves, who say 90pc of global growth over the next 20 years will come from outside the EU. 'As an international economic department we will make sure the UK is positioned to benefit, with a dynamic and experienced team to negotiate free trade deals, and more support for British businesses that want to export and international businesses who want to invest in the UK.' The ONS said the EU accounted for 48.2 per cent of goods exports last year but just 36.8 per cent of services exports. By the second quarter of this year, the EU made up 36.4 per cent of services exports. HSBC allegedly ignored warnings about money transfers by the Gupta family Scandal-hit bank HSBC ignored internal warnings about money transfers out of South Africa by the billionaire Gupta family, a peer has claimed. Lord Hain told the House of Lords yesterday that he had asked the Treasury to probe transfers handled by a bank, understood to be HSBC. The Guptas are at the centre of a crisis over allegations they corruptly won contracts and had a close relationship with South Africa president Jacob Zuma. Hain has written to the Financial Conduct Authority and said the bank should face an investigation for 'possible criminal complicity'. HSBC boss Stuart Gulliver said it was responding to enquiries from the FCA and South African authorities. Hit: Schwarzenegger in the FCA advert Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger has sparked more than 1m visits to a watchdog's website over claims for mis-sold payment protection insurance. The likeness of the former governor of California's is being used in a 42million advertising campaign by the Financial Conduct Authority urging people to complain about PPI mis-selling before the deadline in 2019. A TV advert features the actor's head driving around a supermarket on tank tracks and calling for shoppers to 'make a decision' on claiming for PPI. The FCA said its website racked up 1.2m views in the month after it was launched in September and its helpline was called 9,410 times. Lloyds Bank has set aside 18billion to refund customers mis-sold PPI and it received 16,000 complaints a week after the ad was first screened, though the number has since fallen back to 11,000. Millions of Lloyds and Halifax customers were left unable to access their accounts after the online and mobile apps crashed. Panicked users took to social media to demand answers after they found themselves locked out of their mobile apps and online services. Many woke up to the glitch this morning, and were told to use phone banking or find a branch to access their accounts. Lloyds and Halifax customers have been unable to access their accounts after the online and mobile apps crashed Furious users have taken to social media to demand answers after they found themselves locked out of their accounts Lloyds Banking Group, which represents both banks, had told MailOnline it was unclear what was causing the problem, which lasted around an hour. Some people were sent error messages while other customers have been told they don't even have an account with the bank. Jennifer Cobb tweeted: 'why aren't any of your phone numbers working? They either go dead or go to a message saying please hang up.' Another customer wrote: 'Just tried to log into my online account and it's saying I have no accounts?? Also tried to ring you and got cut off??? Help' And Kris Taylor said: 'What's going on? Text saying overdrawn on CC, login system down, try calling, rings then cuts off. Help!' Panicked customers on social media were asking the banks what they can do and when the issue will be fixed Vicki Darbyshire said: 'Same problem here... don't use the account anymore so now worried that someone's robbed my card details and can't login to check.' A spokesperson for Lloyds Banking Group said: 'We apologise for the disruption to the Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland internet banking services this morning. 'This was caused by a technical issue which has been resolved and the service is working normally.' FORM 8.3 PUBLIC OPENING POSITION DISCLOSURE/DEALING DISCLOSURE BY A PERSON WITH INTERESTS IN RELEVANT SECURITIES REPRESENTING 1% OR MORE Rule 8.3 of the Takeover Code (the "Code") 1. KEY INFORMATION (a) Full name of discloser: Sandell Asset Management Corp. (b) Owner or controller of interests and short positions disclosed, if different from 1(a): The naming of nominee or vehicle companies is insufficient. For a trust, the trustee(s), settlor and beneficiaries must be named. (c) Name of offeror/offeree in relation to whose relevant securities this form relates: Use a separate form for each offeror/offeree Imagination Technologies Group (d) If an exempt fund manager connected with an offeror/offeree, state this and specify identity of offeror/offeree: (e) Date position held/dealing undertaken: For an opening position disclosure, state the latest practicable date prior to the disclosure 01/11/2017 (f) In addition to the company in 1(c) above, is the discloser making disclosures in respect of any other party to the offer? If it is a cash offer or possible cash offer, state "N/A" N/A 2. POSITIONS OF THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE If there are positions or rights to subscribe to disclose in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 2(a) or (b) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security. (a) Interests and short positions in the relevant securities of the offeror or offeree to which the disclosure relates following the dealing (if any) Class of relevant security: 10p ordinary Interests Short positions Number % Number % (1) Relevant securities owned and/or controlled: (2) Cash-settled derivatives: 16,726,700 5.82 (3) Stock-settled derivatives (including options) and agreements to purchase/sell: TOTAL: 16,726,700 5.82 All interests and all short positions should be disclosed. Details of any open stock-settled derivative positions (including traded options), or agreements to purchase or sell relevant securities, should be given on a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions). (b) Rights to subscribe for new securities (including directors' and other employee options) Class of relevant security in relation to which subscription right exists: Details, including nature of the rights concerned and relevant percentages: 3. DEALINGS (IF ANY) BY THE PERSON MAKING THE DISCLOSURE Where there have been dealings in more than one class of relevant securities of the offeror or offeree named in 1(c), copy table 3(a), (b), (c) or (d) (as appropriate) for each additional class of relevant security dealt in. The currency of all prices and other monetary amounts should be stated. (a) Purchases and sales Class of relevant security Purchase/sale Number of securities Price per unit (b) Cash-settled derivative transactions Class of relevant security Product description e.g. CFD Nature of dealing e.g. opening/closing a long/short position, increasing/reducing a long/short position Number of reference securities Price per unit 10p ordinary Swap Increasing a long position 3,684,849 1.8159 (c) Stock-settled derivative transactions (including options) (i) Writing, selling, purchasing or varying Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Writing, purchasing, selling, varying etc. Number of securities to which option relates Exercise price per unit Type e.g. American, European etc. Expiry date Option money paid/ received per unit (ii) Exercise Class of relevant security Product description e.g. call option Exercising/ exercised against Number of securities Exercise price per unit (d) Other dealings (including subscribing for new securities) Class of relevant security Nature of dealing e.g. subscription, conversion Details Price per unit (if applicable) 4. OTHER INFORMATION (a) Indemnity and other dealing arrangements Details of any indemnity or option arrangement, or any agreement or understanding, formal or informal, relating to relevant securities which may be an inducement to deal or refrain from dealing entered into by the person making the disclosure and any party to the offer or any person acting in concert with a party to the offer: Irrevocable commitments and letters of intent should not be included. If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (b) Agreements, arrangements or understandings relating to options or derivatives Details of any agreement, arrangement or understanding, formal or informal, between the person making the disclosure and any other person relating to: (i) the voting rights of any relevant securities under any option; or (ii) the voting rights or future acquisition or disposal of any relevant securities to which any derivative is referenced: If there are no such agreements, arrangements or understandings, state "none" None (c) Attachments Is a Supplemental Form 8 (Open Positions) attached? No Date of disclosure: 01/11/2017 Contact name: Triet Leminh Telephone number: 1-212-603-5816 Public disclosures under Rule 8 of the Code must be made to a Regulatory Information Service. The Panel's Market Surveillance Unit is available for consultation in relation to the Code's disclosure requirements on +44 (0)20 7638 0129. The Code can be viewed on the Panel's website at www.thetakeoverpanel.org.uk. MBABANE Court employees were treated to some drama at the Mbabane Magistrates Court when SPTC employee Albany Mdlovu and one of his wives were involved in a physical altercation. SPTC is the Swaziland Posts and Telecommunications Corporation. The couple, married in accordance with Swazi Law and Custom, yesterday brought court proceedings to a halt after picking a fight outside the courthouse. According to eye witnesses, the fight ensued after one of Mdlovus wives, Cebile provoked her husband who is recuperating from a car accident, in full view of the public. The witness alleged that the duo had a heated argument before Mdlovu, who was accompanied by his family members, decided to ignore her. As he sat on one of the court benches, Cebile is said to have followed Mdlovu and removed his eye glasses, which resulted in them falling. Her Defence Counsel Sabelo Bhembe is said to have tried in vain to admonish his client. She tried to trample on the eye glasses but she couldnt as one of Mdlovus companions grabbed them, said one of the women who were present at the scene. She alleged that Cebile then went outside the court premises where Mdlovus car was parked and smashed its windscreen with her high heels. SITEKI Former Swazi TV employee Lenny Shoulder has died. He passed on while undergoing treatment at the Mbabane Government Hospital on Tuesday morning, his family said. According to a family member, Lenny had been admitted to the hospital after suffering a stroke about two week ago. We heard that he was driving when he suddenly suffered a stroke and he was rushed straight to hospital after the incident, said Gogo Triaphina Shoulder from Lennys parental home, at Mzilikazi near Siteki. She added that though Lenny had been seriously ill for the past two weeks, the family was hopeful he would recover. She said the whole family was devastated by Lennys death. He was with us about three weeks ago, during a funeral of a relative. He was always smiling and he never forgot us despite that he spent most of his time around Mbabane, added Gogo Triaphina. The deceaseds sister, Busisiwe Shoulder, said the family was yet to meet to discuss funeral arrangements. She said after the meeting today, she would issue a formal statement to the media. Lenny worked for many years at Swazi TV and he was part of the stations employees who took early retirement some years ago. By the time he retired, he held the position of Marketing Manager and he was also the English news anchor for a while, according to a former colleague. His cousin, Lucy Shoulder, said Lenny would be remembered for his proficiency in the spoken English language. MANZINI It was almost similar to a scene in Django unchained movie when three minors were tethered for allegedly stealing E300. Residents of Boyane, in the Manzini region, were shattered when they discovered three children who were tied to a man late at night on Tuesday. The residents were shocked by the fact that the minors were chained to the man, who followed them with a stick (umzaca), which they first thought was a spear. According to Sifiso Dube, a community police member who was the first to suspect that something was amiss, the children and the man were seen at around 7:30pm. He said he was from church around the area with his brother. When they saw the man, Dube said they were puzzled but feared that he would either hurt them or the children when he was confronted. Consequently, the community police member said they let the man pass them, with the children in tow. A few minutes later, Dube said they came across a car from the direction where the man was headed with the children. Out of worry, the community police member said they enquired from the car driver whether he had seen the man with chained children, and his response was to the affirmative. Meanwhile, calls to nearby residents who would help stop the man were made. Just around that time, another vehicle headed towards the direction of the man approached and the two brothers and other residents stopped it and informed the driver of what they suspected. They then all drove after the man. LOBAMBA The lion has roared. It was yesterday at 6am when His Majesty King Mswati III ordered the immediate reopening of the Swaziland Christian University (SCU). The good news was delivered by the Speaker, Themba Msibi, before a packed House of Assembly yesterday afternoon. The students could not hide their joy and they even clapped their hands in the House of Assembly, something which is against the rules. Equalling the level of excitement of the students were Members of Parliament (MPs) who unanimously shouted Bayethe, WenaWaphakathi. Using Standing Order No.39 (b), Msibi said he had a communication from the Chair. He said the House would remember that a few weeks ago, the MPs had tasked the Speaker and four other legislators to relay the issue of the suspension of the universitys operations to the King. This was after the MPs had called for the immediate reopening of the tertiary institution. I want to report that this morning we were with His Majesty at 6am which was when he commanded that the SCU be reopened, said Msibi. He said the King made the pronouncement in the presence of Cabinet ministers who could also support him. This was when the House ruptured into loud excitement with some MPs rising from their seats as they expressed their joy. Some MPs even recited poems and engaged in a bit of praise singing. Msibi explained that the King had said while the university continued to operate, the various committees tasked with fixing the issues should continue to operate in parallel. Nkhaba MP Menzi Dlamini, who was part of the delegation sent to the King, confirmed what Msibi had said. He said they must continue to address the issues, while the students were in class, said Dlamini. There were 917 students affected by the closure of the university. Dvokodvweni MP Sitezi Dlamini, who was also a member of the select committee, said it was the students who the King was mainly concerned about. He asked us what the students were occupying themselves with while the university was nonoperational, said MP Sitezi. MP Sitezi further thanked Mbabane West MP Johane Shongwe, whom he said was very passionate about the issue from day one. Siyabonga madara, he said. Another member of the select committee, Nkwene MP Sikhumbuzo Dlamini, said the King was happy to learn that Parliament knew that they had to engage him, particularly on matters where the MPs did not see eye to eye with government. I would also like to thank you Speaker for the manner in which you handled the issue, because when we wanted to debate it, you ensured that we did not fight, MP Sikhumbuzo said. He said the King had advised them that they should discuss these issues and investigate them to find the root cause of what had happened at SCU. He said he was also happy that the students had not opted for acts of violence but had remained calm. Khubutha MP Njabulo Mabuza was also full of praises for His Majesty, stating that he had made the right decision. This was a tragedy and something which had never been heard of, said Mabuza. Meanwhile, Minister of Economic Planning and Development Prince Hlangusemphi also confirmed the Kings instruction, stating that he had said although there were problems at the institution, the students should continue with their lessons. Lobamba Lomdzala MP Marwick Khumalo said he was happy that the Kings advice had been sought. It is clear that the King has two ears and listens to both sides of the story, said Khumalo. He said the Kings action was a clear demonstration that His Majesty was above all. He said he was happy that the Speaker and the committee had worked together until the end. Minister of Health Sibongile Simelane said the King had spoken and the various committees were expected to work day and night to fix the problems at SCU. Washington, DC, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Restaurants across the country still have time to apply for the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundations (NRAEF) awards highlighting the stars of the restaurant industry. The awards recognize the restaurant industrys impact on diversity, community service and hospitality in local communities across the country. The awards include the Restaurant Neighbor Award, the Faces of Diversity Award and the Thad and Alice Eure Ambassador of Hospitality Award. The winners will be recognized at a gala awards dinner in Washington, D.C. during the National Restaurant Associations Public Affairs Conference in April 2018. In an industry full of opportunity, we look forward to putting a spotlight on the individuals who make a difference every single day, said Rob Gifford, Executive Vice President of the NRAEF. We are so proud to honor our nominees and recognize how theyve changed their communities for the better. Now in its 19th year, the Restaurant Neighbor Award, founded in partnership with American Express, honors restaurants and restaurateurs for their philanthropic efforts and dedication to their communities. Each year, three restaurants will receive $10,000 to support a charity or community project. Now in its 10th year, the Faces of Diversity Awards partners with PepsiCo Foodservice to honor individuals in the restaurant industry who have achieved the American dream through hard work, dedication, and supporting others to do the same. The Thad and Alice Eure Ambassador of Hospitality Award, sponsored by Ecolab, serves as the premier award for an individual who has shown extraordinary achievement and leadership in the restaurant and hospitality industry. Applicants and nominees have until November 17, 2017 to apply or nominate individuals for the restaurant industry awards. Visit ChooseRestaurant.org/awards to apply. About the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation: As the philanthropic foundation of the National Restaurant Association, the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundations mission of service to the public is dedicated to enhancing the industrys training and education, career development and community engagement efforts. The NRAEF and its programs work to Attract, Empower and Advance todays and tomorrows restaurant and foodservice workforce. NRAEF programs include: ProStart a high-school career and technical education program; Restaurant Ready partnering with community based organizations to provide opportunity youth with skills training and job opportunities; Military helping military servicemen and women transition their skills to restaurant and foodservice careers; Scholarships financial assistance for students pursuing restaurant, foodservice and hospitality degrees; and, the Hospitality Sector Registered Apprenticeship project a partnership with the American Hotel & Lodging Association providing a hospitality apprenticeship program for the industry. For more information on the NRAEF, visit ChooseRestaurants.org. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7dec6fa2-7462-4e47-81b7-620b899a5100 Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/956f759e-a712-4467-a48a-0c1e84fbd338 TOKYO, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mechel PAO (NYSE:MTL) (MOEX:MTLR), a leading Russian mining and metals company, reports signing a framework agreement with a major Japanese universal trading company Itochu Corporation. The agreement stipulates that Mechel is due to supply Itochu Corporation with up to 300,000 tonnes of washed steam coal produced at Southern Kuzbass Coal Companys New-Olzherasskaya Mine. The price will be determined by mutual agreement without reference to any particular formula. Japans major cement and power facilities will be the end consumers of Mechels products. Our company highly appreciates the level of cooperation with our Japanese partners. Over the past two years, we shipped coal to Itochu Corporation on spot contracts, and signing a long-term agreement is a logical next step in our partnership. Today Japans market accounts for about 20% of Mechels coal exports, and we expect to increase this figure in the near future, Mechel Mining Management Company OOOs Chief Executive Officer Pavel Shtark commented. Mechel PAO Ekaterina Videman Tel: + 7 495 221 88 88 ekaterina.videman@mechel.com Mechel is an international mining and steel company. Its products are marketed in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa. Mechel unites producers of coal, iron ore concentrate, steel, rolled products, ferroalloys, heat and electric power. All of its enterprises work in a single production chain, from raw materials to high value-added products. Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Mechel, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We do not intend to update these statements. We refer you to the documents Mechel files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 20-F. These documents contain and identify important factors, including those contained in the section captioned Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in our Form 20-F, that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements, including, among others, the achievement of anticipated levels of profitability, growth, cost and synergy of our recent acquisitions, the impact of competitive pricing, the ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals and licenses, the impact of developments in the Russian economic, political and legal environment, volatility in stock markets or in the price of our shares or ADRs, financial risk management and the impact of general business and global economic conditions. ALBANY FirstLight, the fiber optic data and voice network provider headquartered in Albany, says it has been hired by Cabot Creamery Co-operative to install a 100-gigabit private data network connecting its eight sites across the northeast. The Cabot brand is known for its higher-end cheese, sour cream and butter. It is part of the larger Agri-Mark dairy co-operative. Pianist Emile Naoumoff, who performs Saturday night as part of the Troy Chromatics series, is a living bridge to a woman who shaped the course of 20th-century music like no one else the master teacher Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979). Out of her studio in Fontainebleau, France, she trained several generations of musicians who flocked to her from around the world. The list of great American composers who were once her students is long and impressive and includes Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Marc Blitzstein, Gian Carlo Menotti, David Diamond, Astor Piazzolla and Philip Glass. Naoumoff was Boulanger's final disciple. He began studies when he was 7 years old and she was 84. They worked together for nine years. Today, Naoumoff, 55, is in his 20th year on the faculty of the University of Indiana. He endeavors to pass along to his own students the principles of music he learned from Boulanger, but not necessarily in the same disciplined structure that she imposed. "She was not gentle with me," recalls Naoumoff. "The first thing she taught me were the rules of music, the things to avoid in harmony. She made a subtle differentiation between what is forbidden in musical grammar and what is tolerated." Naoumoff says that his parents were also strict, so much so that once he was with Boulanger, he was "surrounded by a team of vigils." Although he was considered a prodigy, his original music (he began composing at age 5) was not praised simply because it came from a child. More Information If you go Troy Chromatics, feauring pianist Emile Naoumoff Where: Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday Info: http://www.troymusichall.org/ or 518-273-0038 See More Collapse "There was guilt-making in her teaching," says Naoumoff. "She was applying a lot of her own religious connection to the morality of things. You received a gift from God, you are to share it with others and to be ruthless with yourself." Lessons emphasized a thorough understanding of how music works through an emotionally detached analysis of works by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. "We visited pieces of music from a DNA point of view. What made a composer make this choice, go this turn?" he says. Asking questions and instilling a curiosity was essential to Boulanger's technique. "She didn't dispense knowledge like you fill a goblet with a potion," says Naoumoff. "It's more like a philosopher answering questions with more questions. She would question your hearing as a musician, the layered detailed hearing. What do you hear?" Audiences on Saturday night will be hearing more than just a display of Naoumoff's musicality as it was shaped and formed by Boulanger. The program also features music written by Boulanger and by her younger sister, Lili Boulanger, who died in 1918 at age 24. "She never spoke of her own compositions, not even in passing, let alone in demonstration. She never obliged her students to play her music," says Naoumoff. "We knew at some point she composed, but that was two world wars ago." Boulanger's devotion to her sister was well known. She staged an annual concert of Lili's compositions, which was primarily sacred music for voice. Naoumoff believes that Nadia's reticence about promoting her own music came out of a desire to not overshadow Lili's memory. "Ironically or cruelly, she did not value her own music, calling it 'useless music, well written but useless,'" recalls Naoumoff. Today, he makes a point to never play music by just one of the sisters but always by both. Saturday's program features Nadia's "Vers la vie nouvell" ("To New Life") and Lili's Theme and Variations (1913) and "Pie Jesu" (1918). The latter will be performed in Naoumoff's original transcription for piano. The remainder of the program features a number of other transcriptions, including an organ piece by J.S. Bach, orchestral music of Ravel and Tchaikovsky, and an excerpt of the Faure Requiem. Some pianists steer clear of transcriptions, but Naoumoff embraces the form as one more way to communicate, one more link in the chain of musical delivery systems. "I know there are musicians who consider transcriptions as heresy," says the pianist. "A good transcription should be a parallel to the original, not a make-believe or poor translation." Classical music, continues Naoumoff, was once only contained in the score, which remains its purest state. Performers bring it alive, but they also interpret it. With the advent of recordings, listeners no longer had to go to live concerts to experience a piece. That change has reached its extreme with the Internet. "I call it the YouTube University," says Naoumoff, in a mild complaint about his piano students, who rebut his suggestions by citing interpretations by artists they've seen on YouTube. "Students know and compare interpretations, because they're available. But a live performance creates a memory that lasts a lifetime. There, the listener becomes part of the performance." Naoumoff does not completely dismiss YouTube. In fact, he has his own channel (Dafeneo) where he posts a daily improvisation, which he likens to writing in a journal. "Technology is always encouraging us to be more individualistic," says Naoumoff. "I like the idea that we can gather in a room and share something, a homily, a play, a concert. I find that still necessary for humans, to share an emotional experience." In the spring break capital of Cancun, Mexico, hotel occupancy has tumbled 10 percent this year. As bad as that is, over in Los Cabos, on the tip of the Baja California peninsula, it's worse. The airport serving Cabo San Lucas and its lesser-known sister city, San Jose del Cabo, is looking emptier these days. And hotel guests have canceled 35,000 nights of bookings over the next year - collectively a decade's worth of visits for a single traveler. At a time when the weaker peso should be luring American travelers in droves, many are staying away, spooked by a wave of violence that's come dangerously close to tourist hot spots. Gunmen opened fire at a Cancun nightclub in November, and a cooler with two human heads was found on Cabo San Lucas's main hotel strip in June. READ MORE: Cabo San Lucas beheadings: Cartel killings traumatize resort town as heads found in cooler Now Playing: Leaked police body cam footage shows Mexican officers ambushed by a cartel attack. Video: Vocativ But the biggest blow came on Aug. 22, when the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning advising tourists to steer clear altogether. "Group tourism automatically went down the moment the warning hit," said Carlos Gosselin, head of the hotel association for Cancun and Puerto Morelos. Many insurance companies likely won't even consider offering coverage in areas under advisory, hurting conventions and events in the area, he said. Mexico is reinforcing security in popular tourist spots to get the State Department to revise its views, and companies including Hilton Worldwide and Marriott International are spending millions to make guests feel safer. Their motivation is clear: Barclays estimates that a drop in tourism could wipe out as much as 0.5 percentage point from Mexico's gross domestic product growth this year. "Lower tourism activity will definitely have an impact on growth," said Marco Oviedo, head of Latin America economic research at Barclays. "External tourism is one of the most important sources of income in the current account." RELATED: Report: 3 headless bodies left in Mexican street with decapitated heads in sombreros Mexico gets about $20 billion a year from tourism. With murders quadrupling in Los Cabos and doubling in Cancun this year, a chunk of that revenue may be at stake. Quintana Roo, the state where Cancun is located, is the destination of a third of all the nation's international tourists. In Los Cabos, local and federal authorities are teaming up with hotels, time-share companies and the airport operator to step up the area's security. The group is spending $50 million to increase surveillance cameras to cover the 20-mile main stretch that includes hotels, restaurants and public beaches. A new military facility, paid for in part by the private sector, will be built near a highway to respond to any activity spotted on the cameras. It is set to open in the second quarter of 2018. "We understand and appreciate that travelers are more concerned than ever about their safety and security and we have rigorous security procedures in place at all of our hotels in Mexico," Marriott said in an emailed response to questions. "Mexico continues to be a desirable destination for visitors from around the world and we've had very few cancellations for Holiday season due to this matter." But the slowdown in Los Cabos since the travel warning is starting to show in other areas. International passenger arrivals dropped 2 percent in September, the first decline in three years, and compares with a 20 percent average gain for most of this year, according to airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacifico SAB and the Los Cabos Tourism Board. Other factors such as hurricanes and earthquakes in recent months contributed, said Rodrigo Esponda, managing director of the tourism board. RELATED: South Texas Boy Scout leader says more kids are joining cartels than scouting troops American Airlines Vacations, which packages trips to beach destinations in Mexico, said business had been rising about 25 percent from a year earlier - until the travel warning torpedoed demand. Meanwhile, the online-booking site Best Day Travel Group has also seen a slowdown in reservations for the end of the year, said Director Julian Balbuena. Los Cabos is the hardest-hit destination with a 6 percent drop, he said. "We were having a good year for Mexico in particular," said Eduardo Marcos, president of American Airlines Vacations. Gosselin, from the hotel association, said the travel warning went too far and may have been influenced by a shift in U.S. policies toward Mexico following the election of President Donald Trump. There are also signs the alert's effect on tourism is waning, he said, as the peso is still trading about 26 percent below its 10-year average. Marcos also said he thinks bookings will pick back up. Even so, the hotel association is putting up 10 million pesos ($520,600) for a marketing campaign aimed at attracting more American tourists to Cancun hotels, Gosselin said. The move came after hotel occupancy growth fell from a clip of about 2 percent last year to a drop of about 10 percent, he said. "Ninety percent of the economic activity here is tied to tourism," Esponda said in a phone interview from Los Cabos. "That's why security has to improve. We need tourism to continue improving people's quality of life - and it's a shared responsibility." -With assistance from Mary Schlangenstein. Meet Taofeek Abijako, designer in motion. He has his own fashion line, Head of State, featuring vibrantly colored men's street wear with a global mindset. His clothes are on sale at stores in the United States, Canada and Japan. His spring 2018 collection wowed the sartorially savvy at New York's Fashion Week this past July, described by The New York Times as "a startlingly sophisticated show of street wear inspired by post-colonial African clothing, the kind that might have been worn by the fashion-conscious young Malians featured in the classic studio portraits shot by Malike Sidibe or Seydou Keita in the 1960s." He's driven. Visionary. Innovative. Ambitious. Successful. More Information Head of State Clothes by designer Taofeek Abijako Available in the United States and Canada: at American Rag Cie in Los Angeles; at Assembly stories in LA and New York City; at Madison USA in Ohio; at online outlet The Ensign (theensign.us); and at Status in Toronto. Available in Japan : at B&Y United Arrows, WISM, and H Beauty and Youth. Info: headofstateny.com "Make It Float": https://vimeo.com/164436375 Contact Amy Biancolli at 518-454-5439 or abiancolli@timesunion.com or visit the arts blog at http://blog.timesunion.com/localarts See More Collapse He's also 19. No, that's not a typo. Yes, it means he started creating his clothes his whole aesthetic, really while a student at Albany High School, where he graduated just last year. And yes, he realizes how unlikely this all is, how swift and surreal. To use his word of choice: "Insane." How did it happen? How did he get from there to here? That question prompted a long and lively response on Saturday afternoon, when Abijako, who lives in New York City, hit "pause" on his whirlwind life for an interview at the Tierra Farm Store in Albany's Pine Hills. He was home for the weekend, staying at his old bedroom in his parents' house, and in the mood to chat. He had just scored a deal with retailers in the United States and Canada scant months after snaring a similar deal with outlets in Japan (see box for retailers). "Every two months, something happens," he said, shaking his head with amazement. Armed with coffee and an easy laugh, an ebullient, expressive Abijako detailed the rise and rise of a kid who emigrated from Nigeria with his family in 2010. He was around 14 or 15 when it all started when he downloaded architectural programs and began designing "little stuff," then a mall, then a skyscraper apartment complex. He also designed the whole concept driving Head of State, a company that he plans to expand beyond fashion into other realms. "Down the line, I'm looking to introduce furniture design, product design and a lot of stuff," he said. Underpinning all of it is a single, hopeful, wide-embracing philosophy: "Design could save the world, in a way. You know, that's kind of cliche, but I pretty much believe in that." Abijako laughed, but not because he isn't dead serious. He laughed because he realizes just how unlikely this all sounds, and he hasn't even gotten to the part about the white Vans in his closet. He'd forgotten he owned them wearing white isn't his thing when he found them while cleaning his room, decided to paint them, and realized, boom. That's it. That's the answer. That's how I'll pursue my dream. "It clicked for me: 'Wait. I can fund my project by painting those shoes.' " So he did, posting photos online of his hand-customized footwear. "And people wanted it. One (pair) turned into two, and two turned into three, and it got to the point where I set up a website." From those painted-shoe revenues came the funding for his first sample line of clothing, a "capsule collection" of about 15 items showcasing a vision distinctly American and just as distinctly African: boldly colored, hand-painted street wear with a foot on each continent. (But no more painted shoes, alas.) Aden Suchak, a friend from the Youth FX filmmaking program, shot a "lookbook," the assemblage of photos that a designer uses to promote a new collection. (The pair also collaborated on a YouthFX short on Abijako and his clothes, "Make It Float," taking it to the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.) Abijako emailed fashion editors: 15 of them every five days "for, like, a month." No one bit. One night, deciding his friends were his best editor, he posted the lookbook on Twitter and Instagram. The next morning, he was in English class when a friend zapped him a text: "Yo, check Hypebeast right now." His phone wouldn't cooperate, so he borrowed a friend's and, tucking it discreetly under the desk, found his Head of State collection featured smack on the home page of the men's fashion site. About a month later, he got an email from the Japanese retailer United Arrows "and I thought I was getting pranked at first. I thought it was a prank. I thought someone was just messing with me." Nope. "At first they emailed me going, 'Can we visit your studio?'" Abijako laughed again, and loudly. "I'm going, 'Little do they know I'm working out of my bedroom in Albany, N.Y.' " Abijako showed up for his appointment in New York City with three shirts in a backpack. That was it. "Insane." No racks full of clothing. "I had no idea how an appointment like that goes. I had no clue." But he showed them the shirts and pulled out his lookbook, and they pounced, ordering around 800 pieces, 100 of them painted. In January of this year three months after receiving the deposit he delivered the clothes. "I was pretty much locked in my little studio bedroom, suffering from cabin fever and painting clothes," he said, noting that each painted item took a full day to finish. "That was the toughest few months of my life. ... I told myself, 'I will never do this again.' " For his latest batch of clothes, he'll only be painting 10 or 15 pairs of pants. Abijako knows this isn't the usual way of doing things. He had applied to the Fashion Institute of Technology and other schools, but then he decided on a gap year, and he never even checked to see if he was admitted. "Usually this is the process: You graduate high school, you go to fashion school, you get an internship with a fashion house after college." Then and only then do you develop your own portfolio, "and you launch your own brand. So usually 30, 40, is considered young in fashion. "So I skipped the whole process. And you know, I just had a story to tell and I knew how to tell it." He isn't technical, he said. "I don't sew my own clothes. I don't even sew. I don't do any of that. I just put together a sketch, send it over to the manufacturer, and they take care of my technical side." For Fashion Week, Abijako hired a U-Haul, bought loads of granite from Home Depot and deposited it on the floor along with cowries, the mollusk shells once used as currency in parts of Africa. "We were insane," he said. "I can't believe we did that." The one-hour show incorporated audio from Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Fela Kuti, African opera. Among the models was Mohamed Ali Ibrahim, a Sudanese immigrant who Abijako first spied at an Albany High School prom. The reaction in the fashion press was immediate. "I woke the next day, and I was, like, in the top five lists of almost every article." The Times singled him out. Women's Wear Daily. The Fader. "Vogue was the only one that I didn't get press coverage from." No Vogue? "No Vogue." The editor had even attended the show. "But it's all good," Abijako said. After all of his rapid-fire successes, the 19-year-old designer still has something to conquer. "I have one more thing left," he said, a grin cracking his face. And once again, he laughed. abiancolli@timesunion.com 518-454-5439 @AmyBiancolli Albany A former employee of a major state workers union is suing the organization, claiming he was fired after suffering a serious auto accident that forced him to work on a part-time, light duty schedule. John Murphy, who had worked as a political organizer and lobbyist for the Public Employees Federation of white collar state workers, contends in court papers that he was ridiculed, harassed and humiliated after he had to cut back his duties and hours to attend physical therapy sessions following an August 2014 accident. Prior to that, he had received raises and a promotion in 2013, according to court papers. His suit claims the union violated the Americans with Disabilities Act as well as the Family and Medical Leave Act. The complaint names PEF President Wayne Spence as well as several top officials including Christopher Leo, Todd Kerner, Jennifer Topriano and Gregory Amorosi. Murphy couldnt be reached on Wednesday but his lawyer, Ryan Finn of Troys E. Stewart Jones Hacker Murphy law firm, said they are seeking damages that could run over $1 million. PEF spokeswoman Jane Briggs said the union couldnt comment on the ongoing litigation. But she noted that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in February determined there were no violations of federal law. The EEOC is unable to conclude that the information obtained establishes violation of the statutes, the finding states. More details on the matter should emerge when depositions from both sides begin in the case. That could start this winter. With some 53,000 members, PEF represents white collar and technical employees of the state. It is the second largest union of state employees, behind the Civil Service Employees Association. PEF has retained Bond Schoeneck King to defend it. The lawsuit was originally filed in State Supreme Court in Saratoga County but moved to a federal venue as it involved civil rights and the federal Disabilities Act. It comes as another suit, by former PEF President Susan Kent and Secretary Treasurer Carlo Garcia, is in federal court contending that they have been unfairly banned from union activities. That ban stemmed from what union officials said was Kent's and Garcia's mishandling of an embezzlement case by a downstate regional official. rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU SARATOGA SPRINGS - Immigration and Customs Enforcement was back in the city on Thursday, arresting an undocumented 21-year-old Mexican man who was in court for an arraignment on a DWI charge. Daniel Reyes-Ramirez, who has lived in the U.S. since he was 16 years old, was taken away by ICE only moments after he stepped out of the courtroom where his charge was reduced to a traffic violation. His attorney Mark Kokosa was stunned. "My client has no criminal history, no warrants for his arrest," Kokosa said. "He had a BAC of .09, which generally is reduced to a traffic infraction. That's what happened. Daniel is just a kid with a petty charge." Kokosa, who works from an office in Latham, said the incident occurred while city Judge Jeffrey Wait was presiding. Kokosa said that Wait would not let ICE inside the courtroom. "The judge said to the bailiff, so everyone in the courtroom heard, 'you don't work for them, you work for me,'" Kokosa said. While ICE waited outside near security, Wait then reduced Reyes-Ramirez's charge to a traffic infraction. After some back and forth in the judge's chamber, the judge also told Reyes-Ramirez to call his family because the Office of Court Administration had ordered him not to provide Reyes-Ramirez sanctuary in the courtroom. "The judge allowed him to go to a corner of the courtroom so he could tell his family to not look for him tonight," Kokosa said. "The courtroom is a place for justice, for fairness. I don't want it to become a feeding ground. We don't want the court to become a political circus." Judge Wait declined to comment on the matter. OCA policy states that the state court system "permits law enforcement agencies to act in pursuit of their official legal duties in the New York State courthouses, provided that the conduct in no way disrupts or delays court operations or compromises public safety or court decorum." Lucien Chalfen, spokesman for OCA, said that only about 50 people have been arrested by ICE outside of New York courthouses this year. Most of those arrests occurred in New York City. ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls said that ICE only goes to a courthouse after all other options are exhausted. He pointed to the agency's website which indicates that courthouse arrests are likely to be more common. "Now that some law enforcement agencies no longer honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat. Because courthouse visitors are typically screened upon entry to search for weapons and other contraband, the safety risks for the arresting officers, the arrestee, and members of the community are substantially diminished," ICE's website reads. "In such instances where ICE officers and agents seek to conduct an arrest at a courthouse, every effort is made to take the person into custody in a secure area, out of public view, but this is not always possible." This wasn't possible in Saratoga Springs because the courtroom leads to a public hallway where Reyes-Ramirez was arrested in front of court security and City Hall employees. Kokosa says he was told that Reyes-Ramirez will go to Albany County jail and then be transported to Batavia before being deported. His uncle, who was with him and has permanent resident status, immediately called an immigration lawyer. "I've worked with undocumented clients before," Kokosa said. "What am I going to tell them? I'm going to have to tell them if you go to court for a minor charge, you might walk out in shackles and be sent back to another country where you haven't been for years. It's going to scare the bejesus out of people." Mayor Joanne Yepsen was also surprised by ICE's action. "This is another very unfortunate situation," Yepsen said. "The arrest by ICE today in the city's courthouse is another example of the significant change we've seen in how the federal agents are exercising their authority. After having pled guilty to a traffic infraction, he was taken into custody. " Kokosa applauds Wait's efforts to protect Reyes-Ramirez. "He tried to keep the wolves at bay," Kokosa said of Wait. "I have the utmost praise for the judge." Walls said that Reyes-Ramirez will remain in ICE custody pending his removal proceedings. Washington, DC, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On November 3, The Arc will present the prestigious Catalyst Awards to five honorees, all of whom have made extraordinary contributions in the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD). This years winners hail from a wide swath of our society, including one of the most admired companies in the world, the cast of a hit television show, the self-advocate behind Olmstead v. LC and EW, legislators from the states of Indiana and New York, as well as one of our nations most prestigious law firms, all breaking ground in how society perceives people with disabilities. The Catalyst Awards allow us to honor those who are not traditionally recognized within the disability community for their unique and meaningful contributions to our movement. Our award winners are change agents in their respective fields, yet unified by their extraordinary work to promote and protect the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The diversity of the work being recognized is a shining example of how inclusion knows no bounds. Our hope is by honoring these catalysts for change, we inspire others, said Peter Berns, Chief Executive Officer of The Arc. During the third year of this signature event, awards will be presented in five categories. A full list of the accomplishments being honored can be found on The Arcs Catalyst Awards website. Corporate Advocate of the Year Apple was the first technology company to build accessibility features into all its products, including introducing the worlds first touchscreen accessible for the blind and the first accessible consumer wearable with Apple Watch. This commitment continues today as iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad have become the worlds most powerful assistive tools, designed to empower the lives of people who are nonverbal as well as people of all backgrounds including blind or low-vision users, the deaf and hard of hearing, and those with physical and motor challenges. was the first technology company to build accessibility features into all its products, including introducing the worlds first touchscreen accessible for the blind and the first accessible consumer wearable with Apple Watch. This commitment continues today as iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad have become the worlds most powerful assistive tools, designed to empower the lives of people who are nonverbal as well as people of all backgrounds including blind or low-vision users, the deaf and hard of hearing, and those with physical and motor challenges. Self-Advocate of the Year - Recognized nationally as the face of Olmstead v. LC and EW , Lois Curtis is the powerful advocate behind the 1999 landmark Supreme Court decision securing the rights of people with disabilities to live in their community rather than in institutions. - Recognized nationally as the face of , is the powerful advocate behind the 1999 landmark Supreme Court decision securing the rights of people with disabilities to live in their community rather than in institutions. Television Show of the Year Honorees: Speechless , Scott Silveri, 20th Century Fox Television, ABC, and the lead cast of the show . Since its debut in September 2016, ABCs hit television series Speechless has been hailed by television critics and disability rights advocates alike as being one of the most important shows on television. The primetime hit brings the lives and experiences of individuals with I/DD and their families to a whole new audience with honesty and humor. Honorees: . Since its debut in September 2016, ABCs hit television series has been hailed by television critics and disability rights advocates alike as being one of the most important shows on television. The primetime hit brings the lives and experiences of individuals with I/DD and their families to a whole new audience with honesty and humor. Legal Advocate of the Year In recognition of its ongoing commitment to representing capital defendants with intellectual disability, The Arc is honoring the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom, LLP. In recognition of its ongoing commitment to representing capital defendants with intellectual disability, The Arc is honoring the law firm Public Policy Victory of the Year Honorees: Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara (NY), Senator Robert G. Ortt (NY), Representative Tim Brown (IN), and Senator Luke Kenley (IN). Nationally, the shortage of direct support professionals is a priority initiative of The Arc. In 2016, The Arc of Indiana and The Arc of New York collaborated with their state legislatures and successfully advocated for increased salaries for direct support professionals in their states. Victories like these are not possible without the tireless support of elected officials like those being honored. Comcast NBCUniversal is The Arcs National Media Sponsor and lead sponsor of the Catalyst Awards. Comcast NBCUniversal joins The Arc in recognizing the Catalyst honorees for giving a voice to, and advocating for, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We share their commitment in promoting inclusiveness for people of all abilities, said Fred Maahs, Senior Director of National Partnerships for Comcast NBCUniversal. All nominations were reviewed by a formal selection committee comprised of members of The Arcs National Staff, members of The Arcs Board of Directors, prior Catalyst Award Winners, National Conference of Executives of The Arc members, representatives from Catalyst Level Sponsors of this national event, and Peter Berns, Chief Executive Officer of The Arc, serves as the Chair of the Catalyst Awards Selection Committee. Criteria for selection can be found on The Catalyst Awards Website. The Arc advocates for and serves people with I/DD, including Down syndrome, autism, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, cerebral palsy and other diagnoses. The Arc has a network of more than 650 chapters across the country promoting and protecting the human rights of people with I/DD and actively supporting their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes and without regard to diagnosis. Editors Note: The Arc is not an acronym; always refer to us as The Arc, not The ARC and never ARC. The Arc should be considered as a title or a phrase. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e8f1413f-f403-4308-9560-638b07fc0a75 Columbia County Sheriff's Office GREENPORT A Massachusetts man was airlifted to the hospital following a drunken driving crash in Columbia County Wednesday, authorities said. Donand Schumacher, of Great Barrington, was traveling west on Route 9 in Greenport around 7:33 p.m. when his vehicle crossed the center line and struck a guard rail, causing it to roll over down an embankment and come to a rest in an open field, according to Sheriff David Bartlett. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate ALBANY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is pushing new legislation introduced this week to tighten state data security laws in the wake of the Equifax breach earlier this year. The bill would require companies that deal with New Yorkers' sensitive data, no matter where they are headquartered, to adopt "reasonable" administrative, technical and physical protections for data. The data covered under law would be expanded to include biometric data, such as fingerprints used to unlock an iPhone; username and password combinations; and health data covered under federal privacy laws. The Equifax breach exposed the sensitive personal information of 143 million Americans and led to the theft of credit card numbers for roughly 209,000 people, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Under state law, companies must meet data security requirements only if the personally identifying information they hold contains a social security number, according to Schneiderman's office. The bill would allow the attorney general to seek civil penalties against companies found to have inadequate security. It also would expand reporting requirements to include notification of breaches of the additional types of data, as well as disclosing instances when hackers view private data even if they aren't able to download the information. The bill includes flexible standards for small businesses with less than 50 employees and less than $3 million in gross revenue or $5 million in assets, according to Schneiderman's office. For those companies, the new requirements would be tailored to be "appropriate to the small business's size and complexity." "It's clear that New York's data security laws are weak and outdated," Schneiderman said in a statement. "The SHIELD Act would help ensure these hacks never happen in the first place. It's time for Albany to act, so that no more New Yorkers are needlessly victimized by weak data security measures and criminal hackers who are constantly on the prowl." Schneiderman's bill is sponsored by Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, D-Manhattan, and state Sen. David Carlucci, D-Rockland County. In September, Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration proposed new regulations that would require credit reporting agencies to register with the state, subjecting them to strict cybersecurity standards. Under the Schneiderman bill, companies that already are regulated by and compliant with existing or future federal or state regulations, including those from the Department of Financial Services, would be deemed compliant with the law's reasonable security requirement. Certain "certified compliant entities" with independent certification of compliance with government data security regulations would be granted "safe harbor" from enforcement actions by the attorney general, assuming there is no evidence of willful misconduct, bad faith or gross negligence. mhamilton@timesunion.com 518-454-5449 @matt_hamilton10 A chance meeting with one of the world's most famous sailors has given Ballycommon's Nessa Maloney the chance to sail the world with the Clipper Round-the-World Race. The race started in Liverpool, England, and Nessa, daughter of Liam and Deirdre Maloney, left Ireland two weeks ago for familiarisation before joining the Cape Town to Freemantle leg of the race, a distance of 7,651km / 4,754 miles, taking her through some of the roughest waters in the world, the Roaring Forties. She can expect 80-foot swells, boat speeds of well over 30 knots and wind speeds that can reach up to 120km/h or 70mph, if the weather is coming from the wrong direction. Nessa set said from Durban on Tuesday, October 31. Her boat, Visit Seattle, lies in fourth place. However, the Irish Naval Service executive officer, who has acted as second-in-command of the LE Roisin, would not be on board if not for a chance encounter with Robin Knox-Johnston in Derry in 2014 when the race pulled into the famous city. Nessa, who sails out of Lough Derg Yacht Club in Dromineer, bumped into Robin Knox-Johnston during a Beach Boys concert and he inspired her to sign up for The Southern Ocean Leg 3 of the 2017 race. We were in Derry for the visit of the Clipper Race during the Foyle Maritime Festival, recalls Nessa. The captain was invited to a function where Sir Robin was the guest speaker. Knowing I am a sailor, the captain brought me as his guest. I got to meet Sir Robin in person and I must admit, I was star stuck. Not only did we meet but I was honoured to be in his company for the Beach Boys concert in the city. Sir Robin introduced Nessa to Clipper Race Crew Recruitment and Development Director David Cusworth, who convinced her she had to take part. He [David] wanted to know what took me so long to sign up! Now that I have finally taken the plunge I am asking myself the same question! For Nessa, who has always wanted to sail around the world, the Clipper Race was the perfect platform to get a taste of ocean racing. The attraction of the Clipper Race is that it is a race where crew must push themselves to perform as best as they can. I am in awe of the concept of the Clipper Race which allows people to experience the thrill of racing around the world in a one-design fleet. I still hope to sign up for a circumnavigation in the future but for now, I think The Southern Ocean Leg 3 will afford me the opportunity to push myself to the extreme, she says. Working for the Irish Defence Force, and experience in dinghy instruction, around-the-can racing, and deliveries, has given Nessa a head start when it comes to sailing on board a Clipper 70 yacht. The Naval Service has helped develop my leadership skills and this has been a big help when taking charge of deck evolutions on board the Clipper 70. When serving on board a Naval Service vessel, you rely on every single crew member and must operate as a cohesive team. On board the ship, we have a big emphasis on safety and train in damage control, fire fighting, and sea survival. These skills all transfer onto any sized vessel and are defiantly an advantage. Nessa found out during Crew Allocation Day that she will be part of Visit Seattle, skippered by Nikki Henderson. Nikki has an impressive sailing resume and I cannot wait to race with her. Having had a brief stint in Command of a ship, I am all too aware of the responsibility of overseeing a crew. I think these skippers are amazing, she says. Nessas friends, family, and colleagues have all taken a real interest in her Clipper Race adventure, and will be cheering her on during her entire journey. Everyone is extremely supportive. My dad is envious! Everyone wants to know about the boats and the training. My home Yacht Club have already suggested I give a talk afterwards. Everyone in work who has heard are full of questions as to what is involved. I hope my involvement will encourage more to apply! Nessa is expected to next hit land at Freemantle on November 21, having spent three weeks at sea. CLEARWATER, Fla., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On October 30th, Cub Scout Pack 313, chartered by the Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization, celebrated their annual Ichabod Crane Night at Downtown Clearwaters Fort Harrison Park. Cub Scouts participated in a Jack-O-Lantern contest where everyone wins and enjoyed roasting marshmallows. Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop 313 started their Ichabod Crane Night tradition 20 years ago and every year, Scouts get to show off their accomplished Jack-O-Lanterns. This year, Scouts were presented with awards that best fit their hand-carved pumpkins. One Scout received the Most Classic Jack-O-Lantern while others received the awards for the Baddabingi-est Pumpkin and Pumpkin that Most Resembles the Cub Master. L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology founder, was an Eagle Scout himself and looked highly upon Scouting, said Dylan Pires, the Community Affairs Director for the Church of Scientology and Eagle Scout. He accredited many of his life skills to the Boy Scout program. Pack and Troop 313 are open to boys of any faith, as is any troop. Boys in the Scouting program are encouraged to be faithful and loyal, as laid out in the Scout Oath and Law. About the Church of Scientology: The Scientology religion was founded by humanitarian and philosopher, L. Ron Hubbard. The first Church of Scientology was formed in the United States in 1954 and has expanded to more than 11,000 churches, missions and affiliated groups, with millions of members in 167 nations. Based on L. Ron Hubbard's words, "A community that pulls together can make a better society for all," the Church of Scientology regularly engages in many humanitarian programs and community events. To learn more, visit www.scientology-fso.org. Dylan Pires (727) 467-6860 The first ever overall winner of the Grassland Farmer of the Year Award is Eddie ODonnell from Golden, Cashel. The Grassland Farmer of the Year competition recognises those farmers who are achieving high levels of grass utilisation in a sustainable manner. Fourteen farmer finalists, who emerged from over 100 applications, gathered in Teagasc Moorepark, for the awards. The Grassland Farmer of the Year Awards is sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and it is one of the major initiatives as part of 2017 Year of Sustainable Grassland Production. These awards represent the culmination of their efforts and an acknowledgement of their endeavour, skill and excellence in the area of grassland management. I believe that this competition will provide more focus and exposure of how to succeed at grassland to the wider livestock industry, said Minister for Agriculture Creed. Teagasc director, Professor Gerry Boyle said: Teagasc research indicates that grass utilisation can be increased significantly on farm. This competition, with an overall prize fund of 30,000,brings together and recognises the top 14 farmers in the country who are utilising best practice and the latest research on their farms. The Titusville Toy Shop celebrated its 25th anniversary on Wednesday with a brief ceremony. Additionally, two volunteers were honored Randy Gorske (left), RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) director, presented Legacy awards to (right of Gorske), Dr. Ralph Nazzaro and Clyde Courtwright. Titusville Toy Shop Manager Isabelle Hook (far right), received her Legacy award in 2011 for her volunteer service to the toy shop. [November 01, 2017] Leading American, Israeli Cancer Scientists, Medical Doctors to Share Key Research Highlights at City of Hope/Israel Cancer Research Fund Symposium American and Israeli cancer scientists and physicians will meet at City of Hope on Friday, Nov. 10, to share the latest developments in collaborative research projects as part of the inaugural Jacki and Bruce Barron Cancer Research Scholars' Program Symposium. The program, a partnership between City of Hope and the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), supports groundbreaking research between exceptional cancer researchers in the United States and Israel. "The Jacki and Bruce Barron Cancer Research Scholars' Program brings together American and Israeli scientists and physicians who have dedicated their lives to finding better cancer cures," said Steven T. Rosen, M.D., City of Hope's provost and chief scientific officer and the Irell & Manella Cancer Center Director's Distinguished Chair. "City of Hope and ICRF share a deep commitment to laboratory research that will ultimately reach patients who desperately need better treatment options." Rob Densen, president of the Israel Cancer Research Fund, added: "We believe we are in the midst of a watershed era for cancer cures and treatments and the partnership between City of Hope and ICRF scientists has the potential to yield breakthrough research while also exposing the outstanding work that is being conducted by Israel's scientists at all the major institutions in Israel. This special collaboration enables Israeli researchers to be internationally competitive in a community of the most innovative and leading-edge cancer scientists." Highlighting the event will be a presentation by Avram Hershko, M.D., Ph.D., who received the Nobel (News - Alert) Prize in Chemistry in 2004 along with Israel scientist Aaron Ciechanover, M.D., Ph.D., and late American scientist Irwin Rose, Ph.D. Hershko's research enabled researchers to understand how cells destroy unwanted proteins, which otherwise accumulate in cancerous cells. Multiple myeloma, cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis are examples of diseases that can be treated with targeted therapies resulting from the Nobel Prize winning discovery. At the City of Hope/ICRF symposium, which takes place in the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Cancer Immunotherapeutics & Tumor Immunology's Argyros Auditorium, Hershko will discuss "Involvement of the Ubiquitin System in Cancer" at 8:25 a.m. Other highlights include: Developing Novel Therapeutic Approaches for High Risk Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), 9:1 a.m. (ALL), 9:1 a.m. The Intersection of Glucose Signaling, Metabolism and Breast Cancer , 9:50 a.m. The panelists are Victoria Seewaldt, M.D., Ruth Ziegler Chair in Population Sciences, and professor and chair, Department of Population Sciences at City of Hope, and Rami Aqeilan, Ph.D., chairman, Division of Cell Biology, Immunology and Cancer Research at Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. , 9:50 a.m. The panelists are Victoria Seewaldt, M.D., Ruth Ziegler Chair in Population Sciences, and professor and chair, Department of Population Sciences at City of Hope, and Rami Aqeilan, Ph.D., chairman, Division of Cell Biology, Immunology and Cancer Research at Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School. Characterization of the Lung Cancer Microbiome and Its Effects on Response to Treatment, 10:40 a.m. The panelists are Dan Raz, M.D., assistant professor, Division of Thoracic Surgery at City of Hope, and Ravid Straussman, M.D., Ph.D., senior scientist with the Weizmann Institute of Science. Click here for the symposium's full agenda. The Jacki and Bruce Barron Cancer Research Scholars' Program was made possible with a $5 million gift from The Harvey L. Miller Family Foundation in March 2016. The program is named in honor of Jacki and Bruce Barron, Chicago philanthropists who are City of Hope and ICRF supporters. The international collaboration awards grants to City of Hope and Israeli scientists to support basic, translational and clinical research; provides promising, young Israeli scientists with postdoctoral training at City of Hope in California; offers sabbaticals for distinguished mid-career and senior-level City of Hope scientists in Israel and Israeli scientists at City of Hope; and organizes the annual symposium for researchers from the United States and Israel to share research discoveries. About City of Hope City of Hope is an independent research and treatment center for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. Designated as one of only 49 comprehensive cancer centers, the highest recognition bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, City of Hope is also a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, with research and treatment protocols that advance care throughout the world. City of Hope is located in Duarte, California, just northeast of Los Angeles, with community clinics throughout Southern California. It is ranked as one of "America's Best Hospitals" in cancer by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation, diabetes and numerous breakthrough cancer drugs based on technology developed at the institution. For more information about City of Hope, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram. About Israel Cancer Research Fund Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF), a 501(c)(3) organization, is the largest charitable organization outside of Israel solely devoted to supporting cancer research in Israel. Grants issued by ICRF have gone to hundreds of researchers at two dozen leading research institutions, universities, and hospitals across Israel. The efforts of Israeli cancer researchers have resulted in significant cancer breakthroughs and were in the development of breakthrough cancer drugs, including Doxil, Gleevec and Velcade. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171101006767/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 01, 2017] Pratt & Whitney Turkish Engine Center Signs Landmark Maintenance Contract with Turkish Airlines SINGAPORE, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), announced today that the Pratt & Whitney Turkish Engine Center has signed one of its largest maintenance contracts in recent history. Turkish Airlines has selected the engine center, a joint venture between Pratt & Whitney and Turkish Technic, for up to a five-year EngineWise service agreement covering 100 percent of the airline's V2500 and CFM56 -7b engine overhaul requirements. The Pratt & Whitney Turkish Engine Center started operations in 2010 and draws on decades of maintenance experience from both Pratt & Whitney and Turkish Airlines. The engine center is equipped with high-tech, innovative flow lines and the latest machinery to overhaul engines to the industry's highest standards. Demonstrating a high level of quality and safety, the engine center has delivered over 600 engines since 2010. "This agreement is an extension of our long-standing relationship with Pratt & Whitney through our joint venture together," said Bilal Eksi, Deputy Chairman & CEO of Turkish Airlines. "We are confident our customers will benefit from our collaborative efforts." "We look forward to offering Turkish Airlines the same high standard of service that they have come to expect from Pratt & Whitney under our EngineWise service brand," said Joe Sylvestro, vice president, Aftermarket Operations. "This agreement highlights both parties' long-term commitment to high-quality maintenance services for Turkish Airlines. This also marks a significant milestone for Pratt & Whitney as one of the most significant Aftermarket service agreements in recent history and we thank Turkish Airlines for their confidence in our company." About Turkish Airlines Established in 1933 with a fleet of five aircraft, Star Alliance member Turkish Airlines is a 4-star airline today with a fleet of 329 (passenger and cargo) aircraft flying to 300 destinations worldwide with 251 international and 49 domestic. According to the 2017 Skytrax survey, Turkish Airlines, already having a six consecutive years of "Best Airline in Europe" award between 2011-2016, now chosen as the "Best Airline in Southern Europe" for the ninth consecutive times. Having won the "Best Economy Class Onboard Catering" award in 2010, Turkish Airlines also awarded as the World's "Best Business Class Onboard Catering" in 2013, 2014 and 2016, and 2017. Winning the "World's Best Business Class Lounge" award in 2015 and 2017, the global carrier also picked up the World's "Best Business Class Lounge Dining" award for the third consecutive years according to this year's survey results. More information about Turkish Airlines can be found on its official website www.turkishairlines.com or its social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. About Pratt & Whitney Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units. United Technologies Corp., based in Farmington, Connecticut, provides high-technology systems and services to the building and aerospace industries. To learn more about UTC, visit its website at www.utc.com, or follow the company on Twitter: @UTC. This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning future business opportunities. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to changes in levels of demand in the aerospace industry, in levels of air travel, and in the number of aircraft to be built; challenges in the design, development, production support, performance and realization of the anticipated benefits of advanced technologies; as well as other risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those detailed from time to time in United Technologies Corp.'s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Pratt & Whitney Turkish Airlines +1 (860) 565-9600 Office of Media Relations [email protected] T: +90 (212) 463 63 63 11153 / 11173 [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pratt--whitney-turkish-engine-center-signs-landmark-maintenance-contract-with-turkish-airlines-300547910.html SOURCE Pratt & Whitney [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 01, 2017] Asia Sets the Pace in IoT Adoption SINGAPORE, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia's businesses are leading the world in Internet of Things (IoT) adoption, with the number of companies embracing connected devices soaring 200% from 2013 to stand at 36% in 2017, according to a new report by Vodafone. The Report -- the "Vodafone IoT Barometer 2017/18", is the leading global survey of business sentiment relating to investment and innovation in the IoT. One of its key findings shows Asia is leading the way in connected device adoption and more importantly -- globally IoT has hit critical mass and is now being deployed at scale. The report found: 77% of Asia's businesses see IoT as mission-critical to their business businesses see 88% of Asian respondents have increased the use of IoT solutions in the past 12 months in the past 12 months Over half (53%) of Asia's enterprises say IoT has increased their market competitiveness enterprises say 42% of Asia businesses have more than 1000 connected devices and 53% are seeing significant returns on investment When it came to optimism and the future -- Asia businesses message to the world was even clearer: 91% believe IoT will have an enormous or sizeable impact on the wider economy in the next 5 years in the next 5 years 79% believe IoT usage will rise as security and privacy concerns greatly reduce as security and privacy concerns greatly reduce 91% believe cross industry collaboration will generate joint IoT solutions 89% believe AI and machine learning will be commonplace by 2022 Vodafone, Director ofIoT for APAC, Justin Nelson said, "This is a defining moment for IoT. Asia's businesses now see IoT as a core component of their current and future business, and their confidence in it delivering a competitive advantage is soaring. " The Barometer examines four key factors for modern businesses: State of the Market; Business Benefits; Moving Forward; and Future Optimism. The report noted that on top of the overwhelming adoption numbers, the most significant factor was that IoT was increasingly being deployed at scale, and the increased ROI as a result. The report also cited the widening range of benefits that businesses receive -- greater business insights, reduced costs and improved employee productivity topping the list. As far as business benefits go -- improved brand differentiation (42%) and improved market competitiveness (53%) rated the primary benefit, compared to 35% in the Americas and 33% in Europe while the ability to monetise IoT remains on average with the rest of the world at 53%, When asked about the next steps, the surprise finding was the positive framing of IoT security, which rather than being a barrier to IoT deployment, was seen as "giving businesses the confidence to do more." Asia was once again much more positive in this area with 86% of respondents hailing security as an enabler compared to 79% globally, and 83% of businesses stating they have adequate skills to manage IoT security, significantly way ahead of Europe on 70% and the Americas at 65%. As the scale of IoT projects increases the report also notes a rise in connectivity requirements. Businesses are looking to use a mix of technologies from fixed line to low power wide area networks (LP-WAN) depending on the application. Typically, large scale projects use four different connectivity options with mobile and Wi-Fi the two most popular. There is increasing interest in the newer technologies such as Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), with 28% of all companies now considering it and other LP-WAN options, for new IoT projects. The 2017 IoT Barometer research surveyed 1,278 respondents in 13 countries, US, Brazil, Ireland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. About Vodafone Group Vodafone Group is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone Group has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 49 more, and fixed broadband operations in 19 markets. As of 30 June 2017, Vodafone Group had 523.5 million mobile customers and 18.5 million fixed broadband customers, including India and all of the customers in Vodafone's joint ventures and associates. For more information, please visit: www.vodafone.com. SOURCE Vodafone [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 01, 2017] EveryPig App Now Incorporates Machine Learning MIAMI, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- CDB Technologies, LLC is pleased to announce that EveryPig (www.everypig.co), an (AI-assisted) app that helps pig caregivers receive better healthcare from their veterinarians and monitor the health of their pigs, now incorporates machine learning. This new development will allow the farmers and veterinarians using the app to leverage data collection and machine learning models to identify illnesses and recommend potential remedies for the pigs under care. Over time, this technology will bring an unprecedented degree of insight to the pork industry regarding the care and health of pigs. Because the actual people who physically visit the pigs every day are the ones reporting, EveryPig's founder believes that the platform will be an ideal tool to provide fast recognition of domestic and foreign disease outbreaks, which could affect the multibillion-dollar pork export market. In the one year it has been in use, EveryPig has already grown to have 500 active users including many pork production and swine veterinary management companies representing over 1,000,000 pigs under care, without a focus on sales. On the app, farmers who raise pigs enter daily health information regarding the animals and receive real-time responses from veterinarians, often hundreds or thousands of miles away. Reported symptoms, photos and videos straight from the farm are available on the platform's Farmfeed where veterinarians are ready to respond. The Farmfeed helps veterinarians to address outbreaks and diagnose illnesses correctly, faster and more efficiently and communicate directly with the farmers. EveryPig was started in 2016 as a result of an industry insider's frustration over the lack of technological advancement in pork producton. After driving the growth of the business his father started from 30-350+ farms, EveryPig's founder, Chris Bomgaars, felt a calling to do more than continuing to grow the business. He wondered why in today's world, apps exist for almost anything we can think of, but none of them assisted farmers who care for animals that become our food. Bomgaars wanted to improve the way animals are being cared for and respond to consumer demands for more transparency around where their food is coming from. EveryPig does just that. Pig owners also win with the app because it saves pig lives through quicker veterinary response times to health issues, which saves them money. Within a week of its launch, EveryPig helped to detect a hemolytic E-coli outbreak early enough to save hundreds of pig lives. The next month a veterinarian monitoring the Farmfeed noticed abnormal symptoms on a farm and quickly diagnosed a case of Seneca Valley Virus, which likely would have gone undetected. EveryPig's primary focus is providing its users with as much value as possible. To this end, the platform continues to provide as much insight into managing the health of its users' pigs as possible. To support this effort, according to Bomgaars, his near-term goal is to continue to leverage big data best practices and machine learning models to surface insights from the troves of data collected while pigs are under EveryPig's users' care. Bomgaars commented, "I started EveryPig because it was the right thing to do. The opportunity exists because farmers and ag-businesses have been overlooked by Silicon Valley. We work with a very bright network of top swine veterinarians, field managers, and caregivers and their input drives us. Artificial intelligence has always been the target. We aim to use AI to assist these veterinarians in making better decisions for the animals and the consumer who enjoys the product. We believe AI can and will greatly impact the way this industry operates and we intend to lead the charge. At the same time, we have focused on the UI/UX to ensure that the app was easy to use and speaks to the industry in their language. We've come a long ways, and it's going to be a long, fun journey ahead!" CDB Technologies was founded in 2015 by Chris Bomgaars to bring innovation to animal care, particularly in the area of farming and food production. EveryPig is its first product, which was launched in September 2016. In one year it has grown to be utilized by a number of pork production and swine veterinary management companies representing over 1,000,000 pigs under care and has over 500 active users. EveryPig's team consists of the founder, a designer and six developers. Rather than sales, the team's current focus remains on improving their product. Contact: [email protected] Website: www.everypig.co Related Links EveryPig Homepage View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/everypig-app-now-incorporates-machine-learning-300548074.html SOURCE EveryPig [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 01, 2017] REC's High Performing and Low Carbon Footprint Solar Panels to Fuel the Green Building Revolution MUMBAI, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- REC Group, the leading European brand for photovoltaic (PV) panels, stresses the need to explore viable solutions to realize net-zero energy or green buildings in order to attain a carbon-neutral future. The awareness for the added value of green buildings is increasing and becoming a hot topic worldwide. During Greenbuild Expo in Mumbai, November 2-5, visitors can experience the value that REC Group will add to their properties and businesses by empowering sustainable growth. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/557305/REC_Group_Logo.jpg ) The growing adoption of sustainable architecture for buildings is an important global trend for two reasons: 1) Roughly one third of a country's energy consumption is allotted to the building sector. 2) Rooftop solar installations do not require additional space. This makes zero-energy buildings a key driver for the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Energy consumption is one of the most important factors contributing to the carbon footprint of a building. A switch to renewable energies, even partially, has therefore a huge impact on the overall carbon neutrality. Rapid urbanization has meant that there is constant addition of new buildings creating a never-ending demand for energy consumption. This is especially the case in developing nations, creating a huge opportunity to install mass-scale solar rooftop solutions. As a leading industry partner for the residential and commercial rooftop solar market, REC Group offers high performance and low carbon footprint products enabling companies to power their properties and business while contributing to the collective efforts on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. Many countries have already developed an adopted guidelines for minimum requirements for new and existing private and commercial buildings. For example, the European Union requires all new buildings to be nearly net-zero energy by the end of 2020, new public buildings by 2018, as outlined in its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. In the United States, California targets all new residential constructions to be near net-zero energy buildings by 2020 as outlined in the Statewide Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan. In the Indian State of Rajasthan, which is the largest state area wise, the new norms mandate that hospitals, hotels, hostels, lodges, community centers and even residential buildings proposed on plots of more than 500 square meters will be required to make provision for solar infrastructure to light up public spaces and corridors. Solar is a major contributor for LEED Certification of Green Buildings "We will see solar panels not only at ground level or on rooftops, but also fully integrated into net-zero energy buildings, charging our vehicles and even floating on bodies of water," comments Steve O'Neil, CEO at REC Group. "To meet the regulations for green buildings and achieve LEED certification, the use of solar energy plays a significant role. During the past 40 years, each time the solar capacity has doubled, costs dropped by approximately 30%. Solar has become cheaper than retail electricity prices in around 50 countries worldwide. It is becoming part of a larger ecosystem, including storage, transport, buildings, power and infrastructure. Solar will be powering all our needs," O'Neil adds. Recently, REC demonstrated how by utilizing a high-quality solar PV system even commercial buildings can be operated as net-zero energy buildings, helping to increase the property's value. The system was donated to the new Singapore Sustainability Academy (SSA), it will generate over 60,000 kWh of clean energy each year, mitigating 33 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. Learn more about REC's high performance and low carbon footprint product range at Greenbuild 2017: Meet the REC team at the 1st Greenbuild Conference and Expo happening in Mumbai at Bombay Exhibition Centre (NESCO) from 2nd to 5th November. Visitors can experience the value that REC Group will add to their businesses by empowering sustainable growth. Visit REC at booth J 35. About REC Group: Founded in Norway in 1996, REC Group is a leading vertically integrated solar energy company. Through integrated manufacturing from silicon to wafers, cells, high-quality panels and extending to solar solutions, REC Group provides the world with a reliable source of clean energy. REC's renowned product quality is supported by the lowest warranty claims rate in the industry. REC Group is a Bluestar Elkem company with headquarters in Norway and operational headquarters in Singapore. REC Group employs more than 2,000 people worldwide, producing 1.4 GW of solar panels annually. Find out more at http://www.recgroup.com . Media Contact: Agnieszka Schulze, [email protected], +49-89-54-04-6, Head of Global PR, REC Group Shikha Upadhayay [email protected] Manager, Communications & PR, REC Group India [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Lenovo Delivers Solid Revenue Growth in Second Quarter FY 2017/18 Lenovo (News - Alert) Group (HKSE: 0992) (PINK SHEETS: LNVGY) today announced results for its second fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2017. Revenue was US$11.8 billion, a 5 percent increase year-over-year, and an 18 percent increase over the first fiscal quarter. Quarter-to-quarter revenue gains were achieved in all three of its main businesses, namely data center, mobile, and PCs and smart devices, demonstrating that strong execution of Lenovo's three-wave strategy is producing consistently improving results across its portfolio. In the second fiscal quarter, Lenovo's pre-tax income grew by US$104 million, rebounding significantly from the previous quarter's loss. Following last quarter's launch of the most comprehensive portfolio lineup in its history, Lenovo's Data Center Group (DCG), supported by a revamped channel structure and recorded year-over-year revenue gains outside China most notably in Europe and North America for the second quarter in a row. With new Moto phones performing well in key markets, Lenovo's Mobile Business Group (MBG (News - Alert)) also saw year-over-year revenue improvements, with strong shipments momentum in West Europe, North America, and Latin America, and generated solid overall revenue growth for the third consecutive quarter. And Lenovo's PC/Smart Devices Group (PCSD), which was again profitable in all geographies, saw a record-high 21.3 percent market share in its Europe/Middle East and Africa region; launched Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, a new AR product partnership with Disney (News - Alert), and celebrated the 25th anniversary of the iconic ThinkPad at the close of the quarter. Additionally, Lenovo today finalized a joint venture agreement with Fujitsu (News - Alert), wherein the two companies will combine resources - leveraging Fujitsu's capabilities in global sales, customer support, R&D and manufacturing, together with Lenovo's global scale and presence. As Lenovo continues to pursue high-growth opportunities and new partnerships, particularly in key markets, this new joint venture will strengthen Lenovo's PC leadership worldwide, and help support continued profitable growth. "In the last quarter we continued to make progress in transforming our business by executing our 3-wave strategy. We maintained industry leading profitability in our PC business and outgrew the market year-on-year. In our Data Center business our transformation is taking effect with a strengthened sales force, new global channel structure and programs, and new product competitiveness. Our mobile business turnaround is still in progress, and in most markets we saw strong premium to market growth," said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO. "The combination of strong execution and building solid foundations continue to be Lenovo's strength. The turnaround of our business in Brazil is a good example of that. We will continue to invest in building foundation and core competence for the two new growth engines, which will bring stable and sustainable returns." The Company's gross profit increased 0.3 percent year-over-year to US$1.6 billion, which was a 18.2 percent improvement quarter-to-quarter. Gross margin was 13.7 percent a slight quarterly increase. Operating profit increased by US$94 million quarter-to-quarter. Basic earnings per share was 1.26 US cents or 9.85 HK cents. Lenovo's Board of Directors declared an interim dividend of 6.0 HK cents per share. BUSINESS GROUP OVERVIEW Lenovo's PC and Smart Devices (PCSD) business group recorded an impressive year-over-year revenue increase of seven percent, up 20 percent quarter-to-quarter to US$8.4 billion. The average selling price for our PCSD products was up six percent year-over-year, as Lenovo continued to focus on innovation, a higher-value product portfolio, and de-emphasize lower-value offerings. PCSD which includes PCs, tablets and smart devices, was again profitable in all geographies, maintaining its industry-leading profitability at 4.4 percent, as customers continued to take advantage of Lenovo's improved product mix which led to the quarter's improved results. Lenovo's PC shipments were 14.5 million units, flat year-over-year, compared to a slight dip for the overall market. Lenovo's tablet shipments were up 8.9 percent year-over-year to 2.97 million units, in a market that fell 9.4 percent. During the quarter Lenovo and Disney introduced to rave reviews Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, a new augmented reality product that allows fans to experience Star Wars in ways never before possible. Jedi Challenges features a smartphone powered Lenovo Mirage AR headset, Lightsaber controller, Tracking Beacon, and hours of Star Wars gameplay, available this holiday season. Pre-order momentum has been very encouraging. Lenovo also celebrated the 25 anniversary of its iconic ThinkPad, with over 125 million units shipped since its introduction and still going strong with models such as the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. In our Data Center Group (DCG), which includes servers, storage, networking, software and services, we saw solid year-over-year revenue growth in both the North America, and Europe/Middle East and Africa markets. In particular, in North America we achieved a DCG revenue increase of ten percent, as investments in a revamped channel structure, a new product portfolio, sales training and new partnerships continued to drive the transformation of the data center business for the second consecutive quarter. Lenovo also saw improvement in China with a seven percent revenue increase quarter-to-quarter. While the last few quarters in China have been challenging, the improvements that have been put in place including new leadership and an expanded sales force, are helping to turn this business around there and drive new customer wins across hyperscale, big data, and private cloud. Lenovo's global accounts grew strongly again 18% year on year and services bookings grew over 100% year on year setting up a strong foundation for the future. Software Defined Infrastructure showed continued strong growth in the second quarter. Lenovo's data center momentum is evidenced by recent successes in high-performance computing, with continued wins and projects from some of the world's largest customers and universities. Lenovo's Mobile Business Group (MBG), which includes Moto and Lenovo-branded smartphones grew revenue slightly year-over year, and a notable 19 percent quarter-to-quarter, driven by strong momentum for Moto-branded smartphones and the third consecutive quarter of growth. Both Moto G and Moto E models saw year-over-year demand increase significantly, while Moto Z activation increased 18 percent quarter-to-quarter. The attach rate for Moto Mods improved to 37 percent, up from the previous quarter's 30 percent. Worldwide, Lenovo shipped 15.3 million smartphones, a 10 percent increase year-to-year and a 37 percent increase quarter-to-quarter. Included in this total increase were strong performances in Western Europe (shipments up 71 percent), Latin America (up 69 percent) and North America (up 67 percent). In Latin America, Lenovo achieved record market share of 17.7 percent, growing by 6.5 share points year-over-year. Lenovo continued its strategy of protecting its leading position in Latin America by expanding share and improving profit there, while attacking in mature markets such as North America, where we gained 1.7 share points year-over-year, and in Western Europe. Lenovo also continued to pursue healthy growth in key emerging markets such as India, where we grew 14 percent year-over-year and 83 percent quarter-to-quarter. About Lenovo Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$43 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and data center technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode Yoga brands), workstations, servers, storage, networking, software (including ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile solutions), smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Motorola (News - Alert) brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@Lenovo) or visit us at http://www.lenovo.com/. LENOVO GROUP FINANCIAL SUMMARY For the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2017 (in US$ millions, except per share data) Q2 17/18 Q2 16/17 Y/Y CHG Revenue 11,761 11,231 5% Gross profit 1,613 1,607 - Gross profit margin 13.7% 14.3% -0.6pts Operating expenses (1,525) (1,392) 10% Expenses-to-revenue ratio 13.0% 12.4% 0.6pts Operating profit 88 215 -59% Other non-operating expenses (53) (47) 10% Pre-tax income 35 168 -79% Taxation 118 (16) N/A Profit for the period 153 152 1% Non-controlling interests (14) 5 N/A Profit attributable to equity holders 139 157 -11% EPS (US cents) Basic Diluted 1.26 1.26 1.42 1.42 -0.16 -0.16 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171101007025/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] CHICAGO, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- William Blair announced today the appointment of Jason R. Stefanelli to the position of director, Canada. Mr. Stefanelli, with more than 18 years of experience in the investment management industry, will be responsible for bringing William Blairs specialized client service resources and tailored global investment strategies to institutional investors across Canada. Spearheading our efforts in Canada, Jason will have responsibility for William Blairs business development, market research, and consultant relations there. He will lead the education and implementation of William Blairs unique and differentiated equity, fixed income, and alternative approaches, and resulting portfolio characteristics to institutional investors across the country. We are excited to expand our efforts in Canada and continue to deepen our client and consultant relationships, said Dan Charles, global head of business development and client service at William Blair. Mr. Stefanellis experience in the investment management and advisory industry includes working directly with institutional investors in Canada, the United States, and around the world, by building strong relationships with clients and prospects. Prior to joining William Blair, he was director, Pensions & Global Business Development at Cambridge Associates, LLC, in Boston. Jason was also a partner at a premier hedge fund firm covering Canadian and U.S. markets. Prior to that, Jason was a vice president, Business Development at Wellington Management Company, LLP in Boston, where he was responsible for growing its Canadian institutional business. I am delighted to join William Blair Investment Management and build upon its Canadian business by bringing to the market, global investment solutions that focus on maximizing returns at the appropriate level of risk, said Mr. Stefanelli. Todays challenging capital markets place a premium on the need for value-add solutions to meet clients investment goals. William Blairs unique firm culture, privately owned business model, and comprehensive investment strategies are well-suited for the Canadian institutional market. About William Blair Investment Management At William Blair we work closely with private and public pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as financial advisors. We are 100% activeemployeeowned with broadbased ownership. Our investment teams are solely focused on active management and employ disciplined, analytical research processes across a wide range of strategies, including global equity, emerging markets equity, EAFE equity, U.S. equity, fixed income, multiasset, and alternatives. As of September 30, 2017, William Blair manages $73.9* billion in assets. About William Blair William Blair is a global investment banking and asset management firm. We are committed to building enduring relationships with our clients and providing expertise and solutions to meet their evolving needs. An independent and employee-owned firm, William Blair is based in Chicago, and together with its strategic partners, operates in more than 20 offices worldwide. For more information, please visit williamblair.com. *As used in this document, asset amounts refer to William Blair Investment Management, LLC and the Investment Management division of William Blair & Company, L.L.C. unless otherwise noted. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cd055d20-cbd1-4c73-8c78-a5992c502421 [November 02, 2017] Basilea reports on commercial progress of antifungal Cresemba in Europe Cresemba launched by Pfizer in Spain and is now commercially available in all Top-5 EU markets Marketing authorization received for Switzerland Basel, Switzerland, November 2, 2017 - Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that its licensing partner Pfizer recently launched the antifungal drug Cresemba (isavuconazole) in Spain. Pfizer is now commercializing the product in the major EU markets and Austria. In addition, Swissmedic approved Cresemba for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate. David Veitch, Chief Commercial Officer of Basilea, said: "Cresemba's launch in Spain by our licensing partner Pfizer is an important step in expanding the availability of this important treatment option to even more patients across Europe who are suffering from invasive aspergillosis and mucormycosis. These are severe mold infections that predominantly affect immunocompromised patients, such as patients with cancer and after transplantation. In addition, we are very pleased with the progress we have made in transitioning Cresemba to our partner Pfizer. The two organizations have successfully completed the transition of commercialization responsibilities in the markets in Europe where Cresemba was previously marketed by Basilea." In July, Basilea had completed an exclusive license agreement with Pfizer for Cresemba in Europe (excluding the Nordics), Russia, Turkey and Israel. Basilea received an upfront payment of CHF 70 million and is also eligible to receive up to USD 427 million in additional payments upon achievement of pre-specified regulatory and sales milestones. In addition, Basilea will also receive royalties in the mid-teen range on Pfizer's sales. Cresemba is currently being marketed in the U.S. by Basilea's licensing partner Astellas Pharma US; in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Austria by Pfizer; and in the Nordic countries by Basilea's distribution partner Unimedic Pharma AB. About Cresemba (isavuconazole) Isavuconazole is an intravenous (i.v.) and oral azole antifungal, commercialized under the trade name Cresemba. Basilea has entered into several license and distributions agreement covering the Unites States, Europe, Japan, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa region, Canada, Russia, Turkey and Israel. Isavuconazole is approved in the United States for patients 18 years of age and older in the treatment of invasive aspergillosis and invasive mucormycosis.1 In Europe (28 European Union member states, as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) Isavuconazole is approved for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.2, In Switzerland, Cresemba is approved for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of mucormycosis in adult patients who are resistant to or intolerant of amphotericin B and in adult patients with moderate to severe renal impairment.3 Isavuconazole has U.S. and European orphan drug designation for the approved indications. Outside the U.S. and Europe, the drug is currently not approved for commercial use. About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company developing products that address the medical challenge of increasing resistance and non-response to current treatment options in the therapeutic areas of bacterial infections, fungal infections and cancer. The company is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com. Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations +41 61 606 1102 [email protected] [email protected] This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. References 1 Cresemba US prescribing information [Accessed: November 1, 2017] 2 European Public Assessment Report (EPAR) Cresemba: http://www.ema.europa.eu [Accessed: November 1, 2017] 3 Full indication: Swissmedic-approved information for healthcare professionals as of August 2017 Attachments: //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2e64cebd-5ab4-420a-843c-8796422aa1ce [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] SES GS Awarded U.S. Government Satellite Solutions Contract SES announced that the U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA (News - Alert)) Future Satellite Communications Service Acquisition (FCSA) program has awarded SES Government Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, a spot on the Complex Commercial Satellite Communications Solutions contract (CS3). This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005248/en/ SES (News - Alert) GS Awarded U.S. Government Satellite Solutions Contract (Photo: Business Wire) "We are very proud to be part of the CS3 team of awardees," said Pete Hoene, President and CEO of SES Government Solutions. "CS3 gives the U.S. Government and its agencies another contract vehicle to leverage the uniquely scalable and secure end-to-end managed-services SES Government Solutions provides. It will allow the U.S. Government to take advantage of our most innovative offerings including high throughput connectivity on our multi-orbit satellite fleet." Industry awardees will be able to bid on opportunities with a budget ceiling of $2.5 billion. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract vehicle has a ten-year period of performance consisting of a five-year base term plus a three-year and two-year option. CS3 helps to ensure that critical government communications are delivered using the top capabilities available in the market. According to te General Services Administration, CS3 awards were given to the highest technically rated offerors with a fair and reasonable price. Complex solutions can include any combination of fixed and/or mobile satellite services, service enabling authorizations, components, and ancillary equipment such as terminals, teleports, and peripherals. Follow us on: Social Media Blog Media Gallery White Papers About SES Government Solutions SES Government Solutions, a subsidiary of global satellite operator SES, is exclusively focused on meeting the satellite communications needs of the U.S. Government. Leveraging more than four decades of experience in the government SATCOM market, SES Government Solutions offers robust and secure end-to-end satellite communications solutions. Further information can be found at www.ses-gs.com About SES SES is the world-leading satellite operator and the first to deliver a differentiated and scalable GEO-MEO offering worldwide, with more than 50 satellites in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and 12 in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). SES focuses on value-added, end-to-end solutions in two key business units: SES Video and SES Networks. The company provides satellite communications services to broadcasters, content and internet service providers, mobile and fixed network operators, governments and institutions. SES's portfolio includes ASTRA, O3b and MX1, a leading media service provider that offers a full suite of innovative digital video and media services. SES is listed on the Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange (ticker: SESG). Further information available at: www.ses.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005248/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Unilever Chooses Cadalys Concierge to Accelerate Business Success Cadalys Concierge enables Unilever to provide superior internal help desk support to its employees LONDON, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Cadalys, Inc. (https://www.cadalys.com/) today announced that Unilever has selected Cadalys Concierge, empowering Unilever to connect with its employees in entirely new ways. Unilever was searching for a better way to provide its employees with shared services support, including HR, IT, Finance and Strategic Sourcing. Cadalys Concierge is a powerful next-generation help center, built on the Salesforce Platform and integrated with Salesforce Service Cloud that provides a personalized search to get the right information quickly to employees, customers nd partners. Context-based actions help users find the information that they need on their own, improving employee productivity and decreasing the number of calls to the help desk. Unilever is embarking on its three-year strategic roadmap to deploy Cadalys Concierge, beginning with an initial deployment of around 60,000 employees - more than one third of its global workforce. Comments on the News "We are very pleased to welcome this innovative leader in the CPG space as a Cadalys Concierge customer," said Marc Friedman, Cadalys CEO. "Unilever's demonstrated commitment to empowering its employees with faster access to better information, and its commitment to Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) which our application supports, will enable the company to improve productivity. We are looking forward to helping Unilever create a world-class service organization." "Today, everyone and everything is becoming smarter and more connected than ever, and companies that focus on customer success have the best chance of thriving in a connected world," said Tyler Prince, EVP, WW Alliances & Go-to-Market Innovation, Salesforce. "Unilever is leveraging Cadalys Concierge and the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform to transform its business." Additional Resources Like Salesforce on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/salesforce Follow Salesforce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salesforce Become a fan of Cadalys, Inc.: https://www.facebook.com/Cadalys/ Salesforce and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. KCS is a registered trademark of the Consortium for Service Innovation. Cadalys, Inc. is a Salesforce Partner and utilizes the Salesforce Platform to help its Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers achieve more than otherwise possible. Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/595813/Cadalys_Concierge_Logo.jpg [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] 12 ReTech Corporation to Participate in a Wall Street Non-Deal Roadshow. Carson City, NV & Hong Kong, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 12 ReTech Corporation (OTC: RETC), announces that its CEO Angelo Ponzetta will meet with Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 broker dealer representatives in a Non-Deal roadshow starting on November 8, 2017 in New York City. These marketing meetings are the first time that Company Management has ever spoken to Wall Street and were arranged for the Company by Advisory Board Member, Richard J. Berman, as well as Investor Relations advisor Tom Nelson. The meetings are designed to build awareness of our Company and familiarize Wall Street with our goals and metrics for future acquisitions so that they might introduce us to targets that would expand our pipeline. About 12 ReTech Corporation: 12 ReTech Corporation (OTC: RETC) is a publicly listed holding company whose operating subsidiaries develop, improve, acquire and/or license technologies designed to bridge the convergence between real world "Brick and Mortar" stores with effective Online retailing, creating a new, fun and exciting way of transacting C ommerce. For Retailers, our products bring more Consumers into physical and/or online stores, encouraging them to purchase more by improving their overall shopping experiences while lowering both the Retailer's costs of customer acuisition and the costs of employee training. This is Empowered Shopping. We enhance shareholder value by acquiring Micro-Brands that can greatly increase revenue and earnings by applying and using our proprietary technologies. These Micro-Brands give us access to sell our technologies to Major Retailers around the globe. We are the Omni-Channel Solution : throughout history 12 is a "Magic number" and ReTech stands for "Retail Technology". Our subsidiaries 12 Japan Limited and 12 Europe, A.G. operate under the guidance of our main technology subsidiary 12 Hong Kong Limited. Our Micro-Brands operate under the leadership of our U.S. based subsidiary 12 Retail Corporation. For more information about our products, technologies and/or Micro-Brands visit our website at: www.12ReTech.com 12 ReTech Corporation is publicly listed in the United States on the OTC Markets under the symbol: RETC. Safe Harbor: This document contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbors created thereby. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainty, including without limitation, the ability of the Company to successfully implement its turnaround strategy, changes in costs of raw materials, labor, and employee benefits, as well as general market conditions, competition and pricing. Although the Company believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, any of the assumptions could be inaccurate, and therefore, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements included in this letter will prove to be accurate. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward-looking statements included herein, the inclusion of such information should not be regarded as representation by the Company or any other person that the objectives and plans of the Company will be achieved. In assessing forward-looking statements included herein, readers are urged to carefully read those statements. When used in the Annual Report on Form 10-K, the words "estimate," "anticipate," "expect," "believe," and similar expressions are intended to be forward-looking statements. Tom Nelson Ten Associates, LLC [email protected] 1-480-326-8577 (USA) Investor Relations [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Globalstar Announces Third Quarter 2017 Results COVINGTON, La., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Globalstar, Inc. (NYSE American:GSAT) today announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2017. Jay Monroe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Globalstar, commented, Our core business continues to achieve significant financial growth as we expand our subscriber base and execute on opportunities to grow revenue. During the quarter, areas of our country were impacted by several natural disasters. As a satellite communications provider, we provide critical connectivity to individuals, businesses and governmental agencies during the aftermath of these types of tragedies when traditional cellular service is unavailable and disaster recovery efforts are underway. Also, in the near future we expect to deliver new and innovative products that will provide even more options for connectivity in our addressable markets. This quarter, growth in our subscriber base and significant improvement in ARPU contributed to a 19% increase in total revenue. We recorded net income during the quarter due to a non-cash derivative gain resulting primarily from changes in our stock price. Importantly, Adjusted EBITDA increased 68% from the prior year quarter reflecting the operating leverage inherent in this business. Also, our successful common stock offering in October resulted in a significant improvement in our liquidity position. This raise satisfies a requirement from our recently amended senior debt facility and is expected to provide us with sufficient liquidity until at least December 2018. As expected, Thermo continued its financial support by participating in the offering and contributing nearly 40% of the net proceeds, in addition to the $33 million invested in June. We also recently announced two major business development opportunities. We commenced commercial satellite service in Japan, an important market for our mobile satellite products and services, and announced a partnership with the University of Mississippi, where we will construct and operate a new Globalstar ground station as part of the school's new science, technology, engineering and math building. Both initiatives represent new and innovative ways we are expanding our MSS business. Finally, on the regulatory front, we continue to make progress on our international plans to globally harmonize our 16.5 MHz of licensed 2.4 GHz spectrum for terrestrial services. We are engaged in substantive discussions with numerous international regulatory agencies, including several countries where we have filed applications, representing a combined population of over 800 million people. We are pleased with the positive reception to date and expect to receive our first international terrestrial authority approval in the near future. While not large from a population perspective, this imminent initial foreign approval has strong precedential value and we look forward to completing the end of this process in the coming weeks." THIRD QUARTER FINANCIAL REVIEW Revenue Total revenue for the third quarter of 2017 increased by $4.9 million, or 19%, from the third quarter of 2016. This increase resulted primarily from higher service revenue driven by growth in ARPU and total subscribers. An increase in subscriber equipment sales revenue also contributed to this growth. Service revenue increased $4.1 million, or 19%, in the third quarter of 2017 compared to the third quarter of 2016. The majority of this increase resulted from higher Duplex and SPOT service revenue, which increased $1.3 million and $1.6 million, respectively. Higher ARPU propelled this growth with Duplex and SPOT up 22% and 11%, respectively, from the prior year quarter. Changes to rate plans, impacting both new and legacy subscribers, continue to be the primary reason for a higher ARPU across the customer base. The increase from higher ARPU was offset partially by the decrease in average Duplex subscribers, which were down 6% on lower phone sales and activations. Conversely, average SPOT subscribers grew 5%. Also contributing to the increase in service revenue was a $0.7 million increase in revenue generated from engineering services performed under certain government contracts. Subscriber equipment sales revenue increased $0.8 million, or 22%, due primarily to a significant volume of tracking units sold to support disaster recovery efforts following the recent hurricane activity during the third quarter 2017. Lower revenue generated from Duplex hardware sales partially offset this increase as we manage our remaining phone inventory prior to the introduction of a second-generation device. Loss from Operations Loss from operations decreased $4.0 million, or 27%, from $14.8 million in the third quarter of 2016 to $10.8 million in the third quarter of 2017 due primarily to a $4.9 million increase in total revenue, for the reasons discussed above. Higher operating expenses partially offset this increase due primarily to an 11% increase in cost of services resulting from the additional cost to support our second-generation ground network. The cost of subscriber equipment sales also increased from the prior year quarter in-line with higher equipment revenue as discussed above. These increases were offset partially by a 5% decrease in management, general and administrative (MG&A) costs. Net Income (Loss) Net income (loss) fluctuated from a loss of $2.6 million in the third quarter of 2016 to income of $52.4 million in the third quarter of 2017. The primary reason for this change was a higher non-cash derivative gain, up from $11.0 million in the third quarter of 2016 to $78.8 million in the third quarter of 2017. The gain recorded during the third quarter of 2017 resulted from variations in several valuation inputs, including the decline in the Company's stock price from June 30, 2017 to September 30, 2017. The impact from the higher derivative gain was offset partially by other non-cash items, including a gain on equity issuance and tax benefit recorded during the third quarter of 2016. Adjusted EBITDA Adjusted EBITDA increased 68% to $9.9 million during the third quarter of 2017 driven primarily by a $4.9 million, or 19%, increase in total revenue, offset partially by a $1.0 million increase in total operating expenses (excluding EBITDA adjustments). The increase in operating expenses during the third quarter of 2017 resulted from higher cost of services and cost of subscriber equipment sales, offset partially by lower MG&A expenses. Nearly the entire increase in cost of services was due to higher support costs of $0.9 million related to our recently upgraded second-generation ground network. CONFERENCE CALL The Company will conduct an investor conference call on November 2, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. ET to discuss its third quarter 2017 financial results. Details are as follows: Conference Call: 5:00 p.m. ET Investors and the media are encouraged to listen to the call through the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at www.globalstar.com/investors. If you would like to participate in the live question and answer session following the Company's conference call, please dial 1 (800) 708-4539 (US and Canada), 1 (847) 619-6396 (International) and use the participant pass code 45791188. Audio Replay: A replay of the earnings call will be available for a limited time and can be heard after 7:30 p.m. ET on November 2, 2017. Dial: 1 (888) 843-7419 (US and Canada), 1 (630) 652-3042 (International) and pass code 4579 1188#. About Globalstar, Inc. Globalstar is a leading provider of mobile satellite voice and data services. Customers around the world in industries such as government, emergency management, marine, logging, oil & gas and outdoor recreation rely on Globalstar to conduct business smarter and faster, maintain peace of mind and access emergency personnel. Globalstar data solutions are ideal for various asset and personal tracking, data monitoring, SCADA and IoT applications. The Company's products include mobile and fixed satellite telephones, the innovative Sat-Fi satellite hotspot, Simplex and Duplex satellite data modems, tracking devices and flexible service packages. Note that all SPOT products described in this press release are the products of SPOT LLC, a subsidiary of Globalstar, which is not affiliated in any manner with Spot Image of Toulouse, France or Spot Image Corporation of Chantilly, Virginia. For more information, visit www.globalstar.com. Investor contact information: Kyle Pickens [email protected] Safe Harbor Language for Globalstar Releases This press release contains certain statements that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements, such as the statements regarding our expectations with respect to actions by communications regulators, future increases in our revenue and profitability and other statements contained in this release regarding matters that are not historical facts, involve predictions. Any forward-looking statements made in this press release are believed to be accurate as of the date made and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results or developments may differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, and we undertake no obligation to update any such statements. Additional information on factors that could influence our financial results is included in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8-K. GLOBALSTAR, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (In thousands, except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 Revenue: Service revenues $ 26,069 $ 21,952 Subscriber equipment sales 4,389 3,592 Total revenue 30,458 25,544 Operating expenses: Cost of services (exclusive of depreciation, amortization, and accretion shown separately below) 9,315 8,373 Cost of subscriber equipment sales 2,905 2,411 Marketing, general and administrative 9,616 10,077 Depreciation, amortization, and accretion 19,415 19,446 Total operating expenses 41,251 40,307 Loss from operations (10,793 ) (14,763 ) Other income (expense): Loss on extinguishment of debt (6,306 ) Gain on equity issuance 4,272 Interest income and expense, net of amounts capitalized (8,954 ) (8,866 ) Derivative gain 78,840 10,982 Other (314 ) (505 ) Total other income (expense) 63,266 5,883 Income (loss) before income taxes 52,473 (8,880 ) Income tax expense (benefit) 67 (6,303 ) Net income (loss) $ 52,406 $ (2,577 ) Net income (loss) per common share: Basic $ 0.04 $ 0.00 Diluted 0.04 0.00 Weighted-average shares outstanding: Basic 1,169,993 1,080,313 Diluted 1,345,905 1,080,313 GLOBALSTAR, INC. RECONCILIATION OF GAAP NET INCOME (LOSS) TO NON-GAAP ADJUSTED EBITDA (In thousands) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 Net income (loss) $ 52,406 $ (2,577 ) Interest income and expense, net 8,954 8,866 Derivative gain (78,840 ) (10,982 ) Income tax expense (benefit) 67 (6,303 ) Depreciation, amortization, and accretion 19,415 19,446 EBITDA 2,002 8,450 Non-cash compensation 1,230 1,242 Foreign exchange and other 314 505 Loss on extinguishment of debt 6,306 Gain on equity issuance (4,272 ) Adjusted EBITDA (1) $ 9,852 $ 5,925 (1) EBITDA represents earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, amortization, accretion and derivative (gains)/losses. Adjusted EBITDA excludes non-cash compensation expense, reduction in the value of assets, foreign exchange (gains)/losses and certain other significant non-recurring charges as applicable. Management uses Adjusted EBITDA in order to manage the Company's business and to compare its results more closely to the results of its peers. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA do not represent and should not be considered as alternatives to GAAP measurements, such as net income/(loss). These terms, as defined by us, may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other companies. The Company uses Adjusted EBITDA as a supplemental measurement of its operating performance. The Company believes it best reflects changes across time in the Company's performance, including the effects of pricing, cost control and other operational decisions. The Company's management uses Adjusted EBITDA for planning purposes, including the preparation of its annual operating budget. The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA also is useful to investors because it is frequently used by securities analysts, investors and other interested parties in their evaluation of companies in similar industries. As indicated, Adjusted EBITDA does not include interest expense on borrowed money or depreciation expense on our capital assets or the payment of income taxes, which are necessary elements of the Company's operations. Because Adjusted EBITDA does not account for these expenses, its utility as a measure of the Company's operating performance has material limitations. Because of these limitations, the Company's management does not view Adjusted EBITDA in isolation and also uses other measurements, such as revenues and operating profit, to measure operating performance. GLOBALSTAR, INC. SCHEDULE OF SELECTED OPERATING METRICS (In thousands, except subscriber and ARPU data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended September 30, 2017 2016 Service Equipment Service Equipment Revenue Duplex $ 10,576 $ 777 $ 9,303 $ 1,125 SPOT 11,248 1,410 9,662 1,436 Simplex 2,903 2,192 2,294 832 IGO 260 54 238 175 Other 1,082 (44 ) 455 24 $ 26,069 $ 4,389 $ 21,952 $ 3,592 Average Subscribers Duplex 72,468 77,485 SPOT 289,265 276,384 Simplex 314,601 298,186 IGO 36,894 39,318 ARPU (1) Duplex $ 48.64 $ 40.02 SPOT 12.96 11.65 Simplex 3.08 2.56 IGO 2.35 2.02 (1) Average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) measures service revenues per month divided by the average number of subscribers during that month. Average monthly revenue per user as so defined may not be similar to average monthly revenue per unit as defined by other companies in the Company's industry, is not a measurement under GAAP and should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, the information contained in the Company's statement of operations. The Company believes that average monthly revenue per user provides useful information concerning the appeal of its rate plans and service offerings and its performance in attracting and retaining high value customers. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] SkyFidelity to Introduce IoT Smart Home Eco-System at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2018 NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SkyFidelity. Inc/TriCascade, Inc (OTC Pink:SRMX) SkyFidelity, Inc.s subsidiary, TriCascade, Inc.,an Internet of Things (IoT) technology company will formally introduce its IoT Smart Home Eco-System at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada January 7-10, 2018. TriCascades IoT Smart Home Eco-System will include the following device solutions: The SKiQ : The worlds first completely portable Super Router connecting homes, offices, boats, RVs and other locations with 4G/5G/LTE broadband connections using proprietary SIM-based technologies. : The worlds first completely portable Super Router connecting homes, offices, boats, RVs and other locations with 4G/5G/LTE broadband connections using proprietary SIM-based technologies. The SmartOutlet : The worlds first Wi-Fi enabled electrical wall outlet that will provide WiFi extension throughout the home and providing web app based controls from your electrical appliances and devices collecting energy data that will be stored in the Cloud. : The worlds first Wi-Fi enabled electrical wall outlet that will provide WiFi extension throughout the home and providing web app based controls from your electrical appliances and devices collecting energy data that will be stored in the Cloud. The SmartWall Plug : A voice command-enabled wall plug that connects to your Alexa device which will deliver web app controlled on-off commands as well as energy management with energy data stored in the Cloud. : A voice command-enabled wall plug that connects to your Alexa device which will deliver web app controlled on-off commands as well as energy management with energy data stored in the Cloud. The ThermoRing-Smart Thermostat : The first IoT Smart Thermostat that operates via WiFi controlling your HVAC systems from your IPhone or other portable device. : The first IoT Smart Thermostat that operates via WiFi controlling your HVAC systems from your IPhone or other portable device. The Smart Light Switch/Dimmer: The first voice activated Smart Light Switch/Dimmer System that allows you to turn lights on and off utilizing voice commands. TriCascades IoT Smart Home Eco-System will operate almost entirely from the CAT-M LTE and CAT-1 LTE SIM-based systems currently being developed and deployed by the four major telecom carriers. TriCascade will also be demonstrating its new Machine Learning Systems (Artificial Intelligence) which is being created to manage and monitor the energy consumption of the home as part of the IoT Smart Home Eco-System using the Microsoft Cloud based Azure IoT Suite. About CES: The Consumer Electronics Show (abbreviated as CES) is the world's most popular trade fair for the consumer electronics. It is a meeting point for the sector's top experts who present their newest and most innovative inventions and products. Since its first edition in 1967, CES has been shaped as an event which guides the electronics industry trends and the everyday use of hi-tech devices. Thousands of journalists, internet publishers and media representatives will attend the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 in Las Vegas. This cements the status of the event and ensures that a well-presented business will be a global triumph. About SkyFidelity/TriCascade SkyFidelity, Inc.s subsidiary, TriCascade, Inc., an Internet of Things (IoT) technology company has created a 4G/LTE Gateway Hub that provides consumers with the ability to access the internet directly from a SIM-based 4G/LTE Super Router called the SkiQ. The Company has designed this innovative communication device that will disrupt the traditional communications hardware industry, making routers, modems, satellite dishes, set top boxes and media boxes obsolete. By taking advantage of the ability to connect simultaneously from both a fiber/cable internet connection as well as 4G/LTE, the Gateway Hub will replace the need for satellite internet (Hughes Net), Cable Internet (COX, Time Warner, Comcast) and ADSL Internet at a fraction of the cost, while supporting future expansion of 5G networks. TriCascade, Inc. [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Global Missile Composites Market is Likely to Exhibit Attractive Growth Opportunities Over the Next Five Years and Reach US$ 141.8 Million in 2022, as per a New Report From Stratview Research DETROIT, November 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Stratview Research announces the launch of a new research report on Global Missile Composites Market by Missile Type (Ballistic Missile and Cruise Missile), by Component Type (Rocket Motor Case, Radome, Propulsion System, Equipment Section, Airframe, and Others), by Material Type (Ceramic Matrix Composites, Glass Fiber-Reinforced Composites, Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Composites, and Others), by Range Type (Short Range, Medium Range, and Long Range), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World), Trend, Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2017-2022. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160831/402975LOGO ) This report, from Stratview Research, studies the missile composites market in the global defense industry over the period 2011 to 2022. The report provides detailed insights on the market dynamics to enable informed business decision making and growth strategy formulation based on the opportunities present in the market. Global Missile Composites Market: Highlights from the Report As per Stratview Research, the global missile composites market is projected to offer healthy growth and reach an estimated US$ 141.8 million in 2022, which offers an opportunity to the composites industry players to align themselves with the market growth. The author of the market report concluded that high usage of composites in missiles, increasing procurement for missiles propelled by rising defense budget of the developing economies, and an upgrade of missiles with the adoption of new technologies are some of the key factors proliferating the demand for composites in missiles. As per the study, ballistic missile currently accounted for a larger share in the global missile composites market and is projected to maintain its dominance during the forecast period. Increasing procurement of ballistic missiles owing to their precision-striking and long-distance coverage capabilities coupled with the high usage of composite parts is driving the growth of the segment. Based on the component type, rocket motor case is projected to remain the most dominant component in the global missile composites market during the forecast period. There are a wide array of factors bolstering the demand for composites in rocket motor cases including their design abilities to withstand high pressure and thermal loads for effective flight and propulsion system of missiles. Composite has been a perennial choice of material in rocket motor case for increasing the range and payload weight capacity. In terms of material type, carbon fiber composite is projected to remain the most preferred material type in the global missile composites market during the forecast period. The material type is also likely to witness the highest growth during the same period. Carbon fiber offers many advantages over glass fiber including excellent temperature resistance, high strength-to-weight ratio, and low weight. All the major composite applications of missiles are mainly fabricated using carbon fiber composites. Register Here for a Free Sample on the Report In erms of region, North America is expected to remain the largest market for missile composites during 2017-222. This high dominance of North America is primarily due to the high procurement of defense equipment including missiles and presence of large number of manufacturers in the region. Asia-Pacific is likely to witness the highest growth rate during the same period (2017-2022), owing to rising defense budgets. China, India, and South Korea are likely to be the major growth engines of the missile composites market in Asia. The major composite part fabricators for missiles are Meggitt PLC, General Dynamics Corporation, Orbital ATK Inc., Kaman Aerospace Corporation, Matrix Composites, Inc., and San Diego Composites, Inc. These composite part fabricators supply parts to missile manufacturers, such as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. The buyers of missiles include defense departments, government bodies, navy forces, armed forces, and others. Report Features This report provides market intelligence in the most comprehensive way. The report structure has been kept such that it offers maximum business value. It provides critical insights on the market dynamics and will enable strategic decision making for the existing market players as well as those willing to enter the market. The following are the key features of the report: Market structure: Overview, industry life cycle analysis, supply chain analysis. Market environment analysis: Growth drivers and constraints, Porter's five forces analysis, SWOT analysis. Market trend and forecast analysis. Market segment trend and forecast. Competitive landscape and dynamics: Market share, product portfolio, product launches, etc. Attractive market segments and associated growth opportunities. Emerging trends. Strategic growth opportunities for the existing and new players. Key success factors. This report studies the global missile composites market and has segmented the market in five ways, keeping in mind the interest of all the stakeholders across the value chain. The following are the five ways in which the market is segmented: Global Missile Composites Market by Missile Type: Ballistic Missile Cruise Missile Global Missile Composites Market by Component Type: Rocket Motor Case Radome Propulsion System Equipment Section Airframe Others Global Missile Composites Market by Material Type: Ceramic Matrix Composites Glass Fiber Reinforced Composites Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites Others Global Missile Composites Market by Range Type: Short Range Medium Range Long Range Global Missile Composites Market by Region: North America Europe Asia-Pacific Rest of the World Stratview Research has several high value market reports in the composites and advanced materials industry. Please refer to the following link to browse through our reports: Click Here for Other Reports from Stratview Research in the Aerospace & Defense Industry Related premium market reports in the advanced materials industry are: Global Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) Market in Aircraft Engines by Aircraft Type (Commercial Aircraft, Business Jet, Military Aircraft, and Helicopter), by Engine Type (Jet Engine and Helicopter Engine), by Component Type (Static Components and Rotational Components), by Application Type (Combustor Liner, Shrouds, Blades, Nozzles, and Others), by Engine Zone Type (High Pressure, Low Pressure, and Combustor), by Material Type (SiC/SiC, Ox/Ox, and Others), by Manufacturing Process (Chemical Vapor Infiltration, Melt Infiltration, Sintering, and Others), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World), Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2017-2022 Global Aerospace & Defense Composite Ducting Market by Aircraft Type (Commercial Aircraft, Regional Aircraft, General Aviation, Helicopter, Military Aircraft, and Others), by Pressure Type (Low Pressure and High Pressure), By Reinforcement Type (Glass Composites, Carbon Composites, and Other Composites), by Matrix Type (Epoxy Composites, Phenolic Composites, Thermoplastic Composites, and Other Composites), by Application Type (ECS, APU, Avionics Ventilation, and Others), by Manufacturing Process (Mandrel Layup, Rotation Molding, and Others), and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World), Trend, Forecast, Competitive Analysis, and Growth Opportunity: 2017-2022 About Stratview Research Stratview Research is a global market intelligence firm providing wide range of services including syndicated market reports, custom research and sourcing intelligence across industries, such as Advanced Materials, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive & Mass Transportation, Consumer Goods, Construction & Equipment, Electronics and Semiconductors, Energy & Utility, Healthcare & Life Sciences, and Oil & Gas. We have a strong team of industry veterans and analysts with an extensive experience in executing custom research projects for mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies, in the areas of Market Assessment, Opportunity Screening, Competitive Intelligence, Due Diligence, Target Screening, Market Entry Strategy, Go to Market Strategy, and Voice of Customer studies. Stratview Research is a trusted brand globally, providing high quality research and strategic insights that help companies worldwide in effective decision making. For enquiries, please contact: Ritesh Gandecha Stratview Research E-mail: [email protected] Direct: +1-313-307-4176 Please feel free to drop an enquiry with us or ask for a free sample in the below page and our team will get back to you very soon: https://www.stratviewresearch.com/contact.html [November 02, 2017] NSS Labs Adds Emeka Obianwu as Vice President of Vendor Ecosystem AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NSS Labs, Inc., a global leader and trusted source for independent, fact-based cybersecurity guidance, today announced that Emeka Obianwu has joined the company as Vice President of Vendor Ecosystem. In this capacity, Emeka will focus on fostering strategic relationships across the community of security product vendors for security testing, research, and advisory services. Emeka Obinawu has joined NSS Labs as Vice President of Vendor Ecosystem. In this capacity, Emeka will focus on fostering strategic relationships across the community of security product vendors for security testing, research and advisory services. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at //www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/eff8a1e6-fb19-4023-aa34-077f8cfc0ea1 Emeka brings a strong track record of success n forging strategic industry relationships to accelerate growth for leading cybersecurity and enterprise software companies, said Vikram Phatak, CEO of NSS Labs. His expertise in building industry ecosystems around market-leading solutions will be invaluable to our initiatives to capture new market opportunities and advance transparency and accountability in the cybersecurity industry. Emeka has more than 20 years of experience in corporate development, alliances and sales for the enterprise software market. Most recently, Emeka served as Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales at Ping Identity, a role he assumed after the companys acquisition of UnboundID. Prior to that, he served as Vice President of Channels and Alliances at UnboundID, where he was responsible for leading partner, channel, and related market expansion initiatives. NSS Labs has made impressive progress capitalizing on its brand reputation, expertise in security product testing, and innovative CAWS continuous security validation platform, said Emeka Obianwu, Vice President of Vendor Ecosystem at NSS Labs. As we continue to invest in software and advisory services to help enterprises achieve a more proactive cybersecurity posture, our relationships with security product vendors will become even more critical. I look forward to collaborating with the vendor community to deliver on the promise of helping enterprises continuously validate the efficacy of their security controls. Additional Resources: Learn more about NSS Labs Security Product Testing Learn more about NSS Labs Test Policies Learn more about NSS Labs CAWS Continuous Security Validation Platform Follow NSS Labs on Twitter Follow NSS Labs on LinkedIn Read the NSS Labs blog Browse the NSS Labs Research Library About NSS Labs, Inc. NSS Labs, Inc. is recognized globally as the most trusted source for independent, fact-based cybersecurity guidance. Our mission is to advance transparency and accountability within the cybersecurity industry. We empower enterprises by providing them with timely, relevant information on which to base their decisions. Our unmatched foundation in security testing, along with our extensive research and global threat analysis capabilities, provide the basis for our CAWS Continuous Security Validation Platform. CAWS measures the ongoing effectiveness of security controls, providing a real-time score card to help business leaders substantiate their security investments. Businesses can also leverage the threat data delivered by CAWS to strengthen their cyber risk posture and mitigate threats to their operating systems and applications. CISOs, Chief Security Architects, SOC and Threat Analysts, and information security professionals from many of the world's largest and most demanding enterprises rely on trusted insights from NSS Labs. For more information, visit www.nsslabs.com. Contact: Tom Resau W2 Communications Phone: +1 703-877-8103 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Baldwin County Association of REALTORS (BCAR) Launches Black Knight's Paragon MLS System Simultaneously With Solutions from CRS Data, Homesnap and ShowingTime As part of BCARs conversion to Black Knights Paragon MLS System, the Association concurrently implemented solutions from three of Black Knights strategic partners The fully integrated solution provides 2,300 real estate professionals from several states the advanced technology needed to address the emerging needs of todays home buyers and sellers The launch and conversion process received high marks from Association members, continuing Black Knights track record of smooth, on-time system conversions JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Black Knight, Inc. (NYSE:BKI) a leading provider of integrated software, data and analytics solutions that facilitate and automate many of the business processes across the homeownership life cycle, announced today that the Baldwin County Association of REALTORS (BCAR), headquartered in Robertsdale, Ala., has launched Paragon MLS as its primary multiple listing service (MLS) system. As part of the launch, BCAR will also use solutions from CRS Data, Homesnap and ShowingTime three strategic partners of Black Knight. Moving to a best-of-breed system that incorporates the capabilities of these four solutions proved to be an amazing success for us, said Sheila Dodson, CEO of BCAR. Now our members have every tool they need to better serve customers and compete stronger with some of the online real estate portals. Black Knights Paragon MLS system helps real estate professionals more easily manage their businesses and collaborate with clients via a dynamic software platform that can be accessed with PC or Mac computers, tablets and mobile devices. Paragon MLS is known for its intuitive design, multi-tasking capabilities, ease-of-use, professionally branded comparative market analyses (CMAs) and Collaboration Center portal, where real estate agents and their customers can collaborate online by sharing access to the MLS system. For the last five years, Paragon MLS has earned top honors in the annual Clareity MLS Customer Satisfaction Survey for vendors/systems used by 10 or more MLS organizations. BCAR members will be able to access CRS Datas MLS Tax Suite for dependable tax data, detailed maps and robust features on all browsers and devices. MLS Tax Suite offers an intuitive navigational interface to simplify finding property data; enhanced mapping capabilities; home improvement values; and additional search capabilities, such as the multi-county search tool. BCARs extensive communications about the new system launch and member training sessions contributed to a smooth, successful integration, said Nicole Morgan, MLS Sales Executive, CRS Data. Prior to implementation, BCAR provided mandatory hands-on training on its new MLS system and enhanced tax data system to approximately 2,300 Alabama-licensed real estate professionals from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and other states. Although the organization had never mandated training before, BCAR leaders are still receiving accolaes from real estate agents, who have said they benefited greatly from learning how to use the new system prior to launch. In addition to the CRS Data product, BCAR also launched two additional products to complete the integrated solution: Homesnap Pro and ShowingTime. Homesnap Pro, one of the top-rated mobile apps for real estate agents, allows agents to access their MLS data in real time, do their job more effectively and efficiently while they are away from their desks, and collaborate with their clients. Agents in BCAR have responded very positively to the Homesnap Pro app, with 38 percent -- or 1,150 agents -- registering for Homesnap Pro within the first month. This is an outstanding adoption rate for the first month in a new MLS, said John Mazur, CEO of Homesnap. BCAR members will also be able to access ShowingTime, a premier showing software and market statistics service provider to the residential real estate industry. ShowingTime automates the showing scheduling process for MLS organizations and associations, along with real estate offices and agents; simplifies the report-generating process using MLS data; and delivers buyer leads generated from real estate websites. By bringing together some of the best solutions in the industry to complement Black Knights Paragon MLS system, we were able to catapult BCARs technology years ahead to address evolving consumer needs, said Black Knight Data & Analytics Vice President and Real Estate Market Leader Chip McAvoy. The training, roll-out and partnership between all four companies and BCAR has already been incredibly effective, and we believe this multi-vendor business strategy will continue to be highly successful for everyone involved. About BCAR The Baldwin County Association of REALTORS (BCAR) is a professional trade association supporting the success and advancement of over 2,300 Real estate professionals in the Baldwin County area. BCAR supports members through professional education, peer networking, and MLS services. We work for the protection of private property ownership and promote the work of our members in the local community. REALTORS are held to a high standard of conduct by their peers and the National Association of REALTORS code of ethics. About CRS Data For more than twenty years, CRS Data (Courthouse Retrieval System, Inc.) has worked to put powerful, accurate data at the fingertips of its customers. Simply put, the company is dedicated to doing data better. CRS Datas innovative suites, robust data, reliable technology and outstanding customer service are why real estate professionals, MLSs, and bankers across the nation turn to the company for their property intelligence. Visit www.crsdata.com to learn more. About ShowingTime ShowingTime is a leading showing software and market stats service provider to the residential real estate industry. The companys products automate the showing scheduling process for MLSs/associations along with real estate offices and agents; simplify the report generating process using MLS data; and deliver buyer leads generated from real estate websites. From contact to contract, ShowingTime innovatively creates the simplest ways for real estate professionals to connect with buyers and sellers via lead generation, scheduling, call coordination and market data. Visit www.showingtime.com to learn more. About Homesnap Homesnap, the public face of the Broker Public Portal, is the highest-rated mobile real estate app, used by millions of consumers to explore homes and search listings. Homesnap Pro, the professional version of Homesnap, is the fastest-growing mobile app for agents now available to every agent in over 100 MLSs with over 750,000 members. Both are powered by a specialized homes database that combines MLS data, property tax records, census data, geographic boundaries and more. For more details, visit www.homesnap.com. About Clareity Consulting Clareity Consulting was founded in 1996 to provide information technology consulting to the real estate industry and its related businesses. Clareity is an innovative solutions provider committed to delighting its consulting clients. The company is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Clareity provides a wide variety of services to MLS, Associations, brokers, franchises, and software and service companies that serve the residential real estate market including business planning, system selection, public speaking, product reviews, and more. About Black Knight MLS Solutions At Black Knight MLS Solutions, we understand that great products must be equaled with great support. Our customers are involved in every aspect of our business model from product priorities and future enhancements to all aspects of customer support. Each of our customers receives a dedicated support representative to ensure an ongoing understanding of their needs, effective communication and timely execution of change requests. Agent support is available 80 hours/week, including weekends, with a first-call resolution rate over 90 percent. Additionally, we pride ourselves with consistently delivering customer-driven enhancement releases to the Paragon MLS system every six weeks. More information can be found at http://www.BKFS.com/MLS To learn more about Paragon MLS or other market-leading MLS systems and public records data from Black Knight MLS Solutions, please contact Bob Morse at 650.863.4333. About Black Knight Black Knight is a leading provider of integrated software, data and analytics solutions that facilitate and automate many of the business processes across the homeownership lifecycle. Black Knight is committed to being a premier business partner that clients rely on to achieve their strategic goals, realize greater success and better serve their customers by delivering best-in-class software, services and insights with a relentless commitment to excellence, innovation, integrity and leadership. For more information on Black Knight, please visit http://www.blackknightinc.com/. For more information: Media contact: Michelle Kersch 904.854.5043 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] 1st Tribal Lending Products and Pricing Now Available to All Calyx Software Customers DALLAS, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Calyx Software, a leading provider of comprehensive mortgage software solutions for banks, credit unions, mortgage bankers, wholesale and correspondent lenders and brokers, announced today that all Calyx Point users can now access products and pricing information for 1st Tribal Lending programs, regardless of whether they have registered to broker loans with 1st Tribal Lending. 1st Tribal Lending is a division of Mid America Mortgage, a multi-state, full-service mortgage lender. 1st Tribal Lending, which is licensed in 40 states, offers Section 184 home loans to Native Americans who are enrolled members of federally recognized tribes. Properties can be financed both on and off native lands, for new construction, rehabilitation, purchase of an existing home, or refinance. "In todays competitive market, lenders are looking for new niche markets and programs to put their borrowers in homes, said Bob Dougherty, Vice President of Business Development at Calyx Software. "This integration allows 1st Tribal Lending to increase its outreach to Calyxs extensive user base, and, at the same time, provides all Calyx customers, even if they are not yet approved to broker loans with 1st Tribal Lending, access to the lenders loan programs for Native American borrowers." One of the challenges of offering unique programs, like Section 184 loans, is marketing and educating brokers on the guidelines, said Brett Robinson, Managing Director of 1st Tribal Lending. "We are excited to be integrated with Point to help brokers, and ultimately more Native American borrowers. Having easy access to our programs will open up more opportunities for purchases on and off the reservation, site built constructions, manufactured homes, and refinances." To access 1st Tribal Lendings offerings in Point, select Product and Pricing from the Interfaces menu, select 1st Tribal Lending, and click 1st Tribal Lending. About Calyx Software Calyx Software is a provider of innovative solutions to help streamline and simplify all phases of the loan process. The companys loan origination software offerings include Point and PointCentral for banks, credit unions, mortgage bankers and brokers; INK-it, a secure electronic signature solution; and WebCaster, mortgage website plug-ins. For more information call (800) 362-2599 or visit www.calyxsoftware.com. Contact: Campbell Lewis Communications Jessica Ruiz-Krout 212.995.8058 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates has announced that Trimark Commercial Real Estate, based in Walnut Creek, CA, has joined as the latest franchise office in the Bay Area. Trimark Commercial Real Estate is under the direction of Mark Hinkins CCIM, FRICS, President and Managing Broker. Trimark handles acquisition and disposition of all commercial investment property and leasing services for landlords and tenants, offering a locally-focused, experienced and hands-on approach to solving and meeting investor, landlord and tenant real estate needs. Founded in 2016, the firm is now collaborating with the Sperry Commercial Global Affiliate network to expand its Bay Area footprint in 2018. I joined Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates to leverage the business partnerships and technology it provides, which is especially compelling for an independent brokerage office. Now as a franchise, my team can take advantage of the technology platform and expanding regional network, especially as we look to recruit and expand significantly in the Bay Area in 2018, said Hinkins. Trimarks sales and leasing professionals will now utilize the most up-to-date commercial real estate technology available to provide targeted marketing solutions for office, industrial, high street retail, shopping centers, medical office, land, multi-family, NNN, special use and mixed-use properties across the San Francisco Bay Area. An industry leader, Hinkins, who earned the prestigious Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) designation in 2010, recently received the 2017 Susan J. Groeneveld Award of Excellence, given during each program year to the participant from the CCIM Leadership Academy who receives the most votes from their peers in three leadership categories. CCIM Institute is commercial real estates most influential professional organization. As the current economic cycle moves through the later stages of its expansion, we are at a turning point for commercial real estate services firms. Technology and changing business culture has freed the real estate professional from the need to rely on costly traditional brokerage office models, which has allowed them to become more entrepreneurial, added Hinkins. With increasing operating costs and sky-rocketing desk costs now commonplace at traditional corporate brokerage firms, there exists an opportunity for agents and brokers to join a platform of independently owned and operated offices which are redefining commercial real estate brokerage through cost-effective agency methods, reduced desk-costs, increased connectivity, and the rapid absorption of new tools to stay ahead of the industry and to stay in-line with client trends. Hinkins also holds the designation of Fellow with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a professional body that accredits professionals within the land, property and construction sectors worldwide. With this expertise, Hinkins is heading up Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates agreement with a London, U.K based firm to explore marketing and strategic business between the United States, Asia and the United Kingdom and Europe. The addition of Trimark marks the 20th franchise office to join Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates. About Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates, LLC: Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates, LLC will offer the highest level of commercial real estate services available through thoughtful, cooperative, and ethical practices. The firm is headquartered in Irvine with more than 200 sales professionals and 18 affiliate operations across more than 22 offices throughout the United States. Unique to Sperry Commercial Global Affiliates, LLC are a system of tools for affiliates that include a comprehensive real estate intranet and transaction management platform named Sperry CENTRAL and a custom designed marketing support software system called SperryLINK, among other immediate industry advantages. For more information, visit www.sperrycga.com. [November 02, 2017] Saint Jean Carbon is Participating in Two NSERC Grants OAKVILLE, Ontario, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saint Jean Carbon Inc. (Saint Jean or the Company) (TSX VENTURE:SJL) (OTCQB:TORVF), a carbon science company engaged in the design and build of green energy storage, green energy creation and green re-creation through the use of carbon materials is pleased to announce the Company will be participating in two Collaborative Research and Development grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The first grant for $350,000 is for the continued collaborative research and development of modification and scale-up of graphene for supercapacitor applications . The Company will work with the University of Waterloo to develop the supercapacitor. A supercapacitor made with graphene is very similar to a graphene lithium-ion battery, expect for the supercapacitor battery may have a higher rate of charge and discharge . The terms for the grant are divided over three years based on availability of funds; In addition to the funds provided by NSERC the Company will provide $100,000 per year to the University and $50,000 of in-kind support through the supply of materials, processing and engineering. If the project creates intellectual property, knowhow or patents from the collaborative work. The Company and the University engineer(s) will share in the ownership on a 50/50 bases. The second grant for $60,000 over two years to the University of Western Ontario is for the collaborative research and development of luminescent carbon dots for multi-applications. The Company will work with Western University to further the research that was started last year with the development of carbon dots for a variety of applications (as previously announced in press release dated December 20, 2016). The many applications also include the use of dots for solar panels, as the Company continuies to develop energy storage solutions, energy creation is also a very important research field. The term of the grant is for two years. In addition to the funds provide by NSERC the Company will also contribute $15,000 per year to the University and $19,720 per year of in-kind support through the supply of materials, processing and engineering. If the project creates intellectual property, knowhow or patents from the collaborative work. The Company and the University will share in the ownership on a 50/50 bases. Paul Ogilvie, CEO, commented: The continued support of the NSERC via the University of Western Ontario & Waterloo is very valuable to the Company; this support helps greatly as we forge forward with the research & development of carbon material for the green energy storage, green energy creation and green recreation. The Company will provide details of the research results as they become available. About Saint Jean Carbon Saint Jean is a publicly traded carbon science company, with specific interests in energy storage and green energy creation and green re-creation, with holdings in graphite mining and lithium claims in the province of Quebec in Canada. For the latest information on Saint Jeans properties and news please refer to the website: http://www.saintjeancarbon.com/ On behalf of the Board of Directors Saint Jean Carbon Inc. Paul Ogilvie, CEO and Director 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. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, concerning Saint Jeans business and affairs. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects or does not expect, intends budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates 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. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, and are naturally subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ materially. The forward-looking statements in this news release assume, inter alia, that the conditions for completion of the Transaction, including regulatory and shareholder approvals, if necessary, will be met. Although Saint Jean believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. Statements of past performance should not be construed as an indication of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors, including those discussed above, could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this press release, and Saint Jean assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Information Contact : Email: [email protected] Tel: (905) 844-1200 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Lingotek's New Translation Management System Release Includes Several Features to Enhance UI and Streamline Project Management LEHI, Utah, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lingotek | The Translation Network today announced a new release of its Translation Management System (TMS). Version 12.23.0 updates the User Interface (UI) to give users more room to work in the TMS, improves navigation, and provides quick access to all of the users Lingotek applications directly from the TMS. The UI has been designed specifically to provide a consistent user experience across all of Lingotek's apps, while also keeping the navigation intuitive and familiar to users accustomed to the old UI. Lingotek TMS 12.23.0 contains a new app bar, a job metadata field for documents, a locale column for Translation Memories (TM), and a new side bar for navigating within the app. Lingotek continues to add enhancements to our TMS that streamline the entire translation process, said Rob Vandenberg, President and CEO of Lingotek. "The new universal app bar gives TMS users greater flexibility and more convenient access to our industry-leading apps like Vendor Management, our Intelligence Dashboard and others." The new app bar eliminates the need to log into multiple apps across several tabs in the browser. The new UI gives professional linguists and translation project managers simple, easy-to-use access to apps to simplify and expedite project management. The job metadata field provides greater flexibility when organizing tasks and documents, allowing the user to: Group documents by job Link multiple documents to a single job. Filter documents and tasks by job. Take bulk actions on documents/tasks that share a job. The new sidebar in TMS replaces the previous top navigation. From the sidebar, users can access tasks, documents, and all the other features they use in the TMS. The sidebar can be collapsed to provide more room for the user to work. It also remembers your preference, such as collapsed or expanded views. For project managers, the Translation Network takes everything to a new, automated level with automatic notifications sent to translators, real-time collaboration and project monitoring, and continuous cloud updates. Lingotek has the most mature, full-featured, cloud-based translation management system (TMS) on the market, providing users with the industrys most advanced tools for streamlining the translation process. Lingotek's translation management system helps you centralize and translate multilingual content throughout your entire organization. The Translation Network provides businesses with industry-leading translation tools, including vendor management, an innovative in-context workbench, an intelligence dashboard, and more. About Lingotek Lingotek | The Translation Network is the only cloud-based solution to connect all of your global content in one place, giving you the power to manage your brand worldwide. Our industry-leading technology pairs with the best enterprise applications and tech-enabled language services to continuously push dynamic multilingual content to all of your global markets. Lingotek is based in Lehi, Utah--also known as Silicon Slopes--and is funded by Signal Peak Ventures and In-Q-Tel. MEDIA CONTACT Calvin Scharffs Lingotek 801-331-7777 ext. 115 Email: [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Mentor and TowerJazz provide first commercial comprehensive suite of analog constraint checks for enhanced automotive reliability offering WILSONVILLE, Ore., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mentor, a Siemens business, and TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry leader, today announced the availability of a new suite of analog design constraint checks such as device alignment, symmetry, orientation/parameter matching and more, leveraging the delicate analog layout requirements and automotive reliability check templates available for use with the Calibre PERC platform. These checks are added to the already existing ESD (electrostatic discharge), CDM (charged-device model) and power management special checks that are available to mutual customers as part of the TowerJazz PDK offering. Mentor and TowerJazz jointly developed these checks to enable their mutual customers to improve the reliability of their analog design elements, many of which are used in automotive integrated circuit (IC) designs. As the success of an analog design relies on correct layout constraints, having automated PERC constraint checks greatly increases the probability of the product meeting its targeted specifications. The Calibre automotive reliability check templates were developed as an outcome of the German RESCAR 2.0 program, which is focused on increasing robustness of electronic circuits in automotive environments. Member companies Infineon Technologies AG and Robert Bosch GmbH of this program selected the Calibre PERC platform as the electronic design automation (EDA) reliability platform, with the Calibre PERC-based automotive reliability check templates for the verification of essential robustness constraints. TowerJazz is the first commercial foundry to incorporate these RESCAR-developed reliability checks into their standard Calibre PERC design kit offering. These checks enable designers t address the enhanced level of reliability compliance that automotive industry standards, such as the international functional safety standard ISO 26262, are now requiring from the entire automotive supply chain. Even though these reliability checks are targeted at analog design, they can be used to analyze and enhance the reliability of any IC design. TowerJazz will provide customers with Calibre PERC rule decks that perform the new analog constraint checks, designed to address critical analog circuit verification requirements. The Calibre PERC tool makes it possible to automate these complex reliability checks by integrating knowledge of both the physical layout and the design netlist (which defines device types and connectivity). The new suite of analog design constraint checks will be presented at Mentor's User2User Europe Conference in Munich on November 27, 2017 by Ofer Tamir, senior director of Design Enablement, CAD and Support at TowerJazz. "Collaborating with Mentor on a comprehensive suite of analog constraint checks ensures that our mutual customers using TowerJazz automotive processes can produce designs that achieve the highest level of dependability, quality, and robustness," said Ori Galzur, vice president of VLSI Design Center and Design Enablement, TowerJazz. "Adding these checks using the Calibre PERC platform reinforces our focus to support the needs of the growing automotive IC industry and address the enhanced level of required reliability compliance. TowerJazz is the leader in innovation and richness of PDKs across our specialty processes, giving our customers the extra edge in performance and time to market." Adding these analog design constraint checks enables an additional capability for TowerJazz customers' design community for automotive applications. TowerJazz has recently released and discussed a major radar activity, LiDAR and multiple other automotive imaging initiatives, as well as a variety of discrete and integrated automotive power management for a variety of motor control and battery management applications. "Our ongoing work with TowerJazz provides our mutual customers an industry-leading automotive IC reliability environment to satisfy the growing demand in this market," said Carey Robertson, director of circuit verification and reliability marketing, Mentor Calibre. "TowerJazz has once again demonstrated their commitment to being first in providing differentiated solutions for specialty processes." Contact for journalists Mike Santarini Phone: 510-354-7322 E-mail: [email protected] About RESCAR 2.0: The objective of RESCAR 2.0 is the development of a standard procedure which for the first time provides a convenient means to comprehend OEMs' robustness requirements, both prior to and throughout ECU component design, in a reliable and verifiable way. In order to account for the increasing sensitivity of new technologies to their operational environment, three especially robustness-critical issues are dealt with in depth: ageing effects and the influence of both temperature and voltage fluctuations. For more information, please visit https://www.edacentrum.de/rescar/en/content/about-project. Mentor Graphics Corporation, a Siemens business, is a world leader in electronic hardware and software design solutions, providing products, consulting services, and award-winning support for the world's most successful electronic, semiconductor, and systems companies. Corporate headquarters are located at 8005 S.W. Boeckman Road, Wilsonville, Oregon 97070-7777. Web site: http://www.mentor.com. Mentor Graphics, Mentor and Calibre are registered trademarks and PERC is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owner. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mentor-and-towerjazz-provide-first-commercial-comprehensive-suite-of-analog-constraint-checks-for-enhanced-automotive-reliability-offering-300548210.html SOURCE Mentor, a Siemens business [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Perforce Helix Plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio Provides Tighter Integration for Developers MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Perforce Software, a provider of solutions to enterprise teams requiring productivity, visibility, and scale along the development lifecycle, today announced that it has released the latest version of its Helix Plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio (P4VS). This version includes major usability enhancements that take advantage of Microsoft's new extensibility hooks for source control providers to offer users tighter integration in their IDE. P4VS 2017.2, the second Perforce release for Visual Studio 2017 this year, makes it even easier for developers on Helix Core to connect their repositories in Visual Studio. As a result, developers spend less time jumping between tools and more time getting software ready to release. "The latest release aligns with our continued focus on helping teams scale their Agile and DevOps initiatives through increased developer productivity and key integrations with a vast array of tools to support the entire technology development lifecycle," said Tim Russell, CPO at Perforce. Shawn Nandi, Senior Director, Cloud App Development, Data and AI Product Marketing at Microsoft Corp. added, "Leveraging the extensibility webhooks in Microsoft Visual Studio, Perforce's latest release enables our mutual customers to more securely code and collaborate directly within the Visual Studio IDE to stremline their versioning workflows." The 2017.2 release of P4VS allows Visual Studio users to enjoy streamlined workflows, where they can easily connect to their Helix repositories from the start page, add solutions to source control, and view pending changelists through the status bar. Additionally, users don't have to go far to check connectivity to Helix. They can reconcile work quickly and bring up different views. To learn more about the Helix Plugin for Visual Studio (P4VS), visit the Perforce.com website. To download the 2017.2 version, visit the Perforce website at perforce.com/downloads. About Perforce Enterprises across the globe rely on Perforce to build and deliver digital products faster and with higher quality. Perforce offers complete developer collaboration and agile project management tools to accelerate delivery cycles from agile planning tools to requirements, issues and test management, which then link to all source code, binary assets and artifacts for full build and release tracking and visibility. The company's version control solutions are well known for securely managing change across all digital content source code, art files, video files, images, libraries while supporting the developer and build tools your teams need to be productive, such as Git, Visual Studio, Jenkins, Adobe, Maya and many others. Perforce is trusted by the world's most innovative brands, including NVIDIA, Pixar, Scania, Ubisoft, and VMware. The company has offices in Minneapolis, MN, Alameda, CA, Mason, OH, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Australia, and sales partners around the globe. For more information, please visit www.perforce.com. Media Contacts Global Colleen Kulhanek Perforce Software Ph: +1 612-517-2069 [email protected] UK/EMEA Maxine Ambrose Ambrose Communications Ph: +44 1491 412944 [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/perforce-helix-plugin-for-microsoft-visual-studio-provides-tighter-integration-for-developers-300548199.html SOURCE Perforce Software [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Sift Medical Data Closes Seed Round To Launch Artificial Intelligence Driven Healthcare Analytics Platform MILWAUKEE, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sift Medical Data, a Milwaukee-based healthcare technology startup, has closed a seed funding round of $665,000. Funding was led by The Winnebago Seed Fund with additional investment coming from Jeff DeAngelis, President of Northwest Passage Capital. The financing will be used to expand Sift MD's data science team and will allow for further investment in its proprietary healthcare analytics platform. Mr. DeAngelis, along with two directors appointed by the Winnebago Seed Fund, will join Sift MD's Board of Directors. Sift MD provides the first artificial-intelligence driven and vertically integrated platform for Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). Sift MD's healthcare analytics platform holistically leverages medical data from both structured and unstructured sources. Applying machine learning and proprietary text mining technology, Sift MD's platform uncovers key data points that enable revenue cycle management companies to reduce insurance claim denials and increase patient collection rates. "Between their commitment to Wisconsin-based entrepreneurs and their enthusiasm for technology-driven startups, The Winnebago Seed Fund is an ideal partner for Sift MD as we deepen our data analytics toolset and scale or company," said Justin Nicols, Founder and CEO of Sift MD. "We're excited to have partners that align with our vision and can help us grow a powerful healthcare technology company." "Sift MD is a uniquely positioned technology company with tremendous growth opportunity," said David Trotter, Managing Director at The Winnebago Seed Fund. "The platform that Justin and the team are developing is impressive and we're excited to be working together to scale the business." Sift Medical Data is the first startup to be funded by the Winnebago Seed Fund whose goal is to invest in Wisconsin entrepreneurs and grow startups throughout the state. The seed investment in Sift MD will advance the company's technology and reach, and is a positive sign for entrepreneurship in the region. About Sift Medical Data Sift Medical Data is a Milwaukee-based healthcare technology startup led by data analytics experts. Founded in 2017, Sift MD offers revenue cycle management companies and healthcare providers a powerful and fully-integrated analytics toolset that enables them to efficiently score patients, reduce claims denials, increase patient collection rates and capture clinical insights. Sift MD's technology employs artificial intelligence, proprietary text mining technology, and machine learning on claims denials and patient behavior. To learn more, visit http://www.siftmd.com. About The Winnebago Seed Fund The Winnebago Seed Fund is a venture capital fund based in Neenah, Wisconsin, with an emphasis on seed investments in startup companies throughout Wisconsin. The Fund's primary purpose is to generate investor return by partnering with talented entrepreneurs to rapidly grow their businesses. For more information visit http://www.winnebagoseedfund.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sift-medical-data-closes-seed-round-to-launch-artificial-intelligence-driven-healthcare-analytics-platform-300548062.html SOURCE Sift Medical Data [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Global Win-Win Cooperation - "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance Conference Takes Place JINAN, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With "Global Win-Win Cooperation" as the theme, the "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance Conference was held on November 2 at the Inspur Jinan Science and Technology Park, Jinan, China. Attendees include enterprise representatives Peter Sun, Chairman and CEO of Inspur Group; Owen Chan, Senior Vice President of Cisco Systems, Inc., Chairman of Cisco Greater China and Co-Chairman of Cisco China Board; Charles Kiang, General Manager of Technology Partnership of IBM Great China Group; Stefan Merz, SVP Corporate Strategy & Development of Diebold Nixdorf; and Angel Ruiz, Head of Ericsson Media. Three Chinese national financial institutions, namely the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank, and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation also attended the event wtih diplomatic envoys from five countries, including Winnie Natala Chibesakunda, Ambassador of Zambia to China, and more than 200 representatives of companies from other countries to witness the establishment of "B&R" Digital Economy Strategic Alliance. In the keynote speech "Global Win-Win Cooperation", Peter Sun said, "As the initiator of the 'B&R' Digital Economy Strategic Alliance, Inspur hopes to partner with top technology companies in the world and Chinese national financial institutions, help countries along the Belt and Road to solve their insufficient funding and technical problems in informatization construction, and bring the benefits of digital economy development to people there." As China's first Belt and Road integrated platform started by companies, the alliance adopts the cooperation mode of "1+4+3", which means an alliance of Inspur and four global technology giants, Cisco, IBM, Diebold Nixdorf and Ericsson, with support from three of Chinese policy-based financial institutions, the Export-Import Bank of China, China Development Bank and China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation. The platform provides brand new technology and funding solutions of datacenters + cloud services, smart finance, smart home, smart taxation and smart cities for countries along the Belt and Road. Owen Chan, Charles Kiang, Stefan Merz and Angel Ruiz affirmed the achievements of their cooperations. They said, the alliance will bring out their strengths in technologies, products and markets. They will work with Inspur to provide countries along the Belt and Road with advanced technology solutions and to realize the global win-win cooperation. The three financial institutions also promised to provide sufficient financial support for the alliance to promote the digital silk road. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-win-win-cooperation---br-digital-economy-strategic-alliance-conference-takes-place-300548459.html SOURCE Inspur Group Co., Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] NSAV ANNOUNCES NEW CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF CHINA HEMP BEER OPERATIONS AND SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS IN TIGER HEMP BEER LAUNCH CRESCO, PA, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Net Savings Link, Inc. (OTC: NSAV), announced today that the Company has appointed Mr. Defu Cao as Chief Operating Officer of its Hemp Beer operations in China. Mr. Cao will be personally responsible for overseeing the launch of the Companys Tiger Hemp Beer brand in mainland China, which is scheduled for February 2018, to coincide with the Chinese New Year, The Year Of The Dog. Mr. Cao is currently the head of operations for NSAVs China Joint Venture partner, Blue Candy Brewery, Ltd. (English Translation), which presently has 134 employees and an annual production capacity of 30,000 kiloliters. Due to overwhelming demand and the anticipation of the launch of Tiger Hemp Beer, construction began on a new, state-of-the-art brewery in August 2017 and expects to be completed well before the Chinese New Year. The new brewery will have an annual production capacity of 100,000 kiloliters. China is the world's largest consumer of beer. NSAV also announced today that its subsidiary, Hemp Beer Inc., which markets and distributes Tiger Hemp Beer, has begun the registration process to brew and distribute its beer in the state of California and expects the process to be completed within two weeks. The Company views California and the entire western United States as a huge potential market for Hemp Beer. James Tilton, president of NSAV stated, I am thrilled that Mr. Cao has agreed to lead the China launch of Tiger Hemp Beer. He has a proven track record and since he took over Blue Candy Breweryin 2012, his results have been truly astonishing. Mr. Tilton went on to state, "No one can dispute the potential of Tiger Hemp Beer in China. However, I think we have the opportunity to be just as successful right here in the U.S.A. NSAV's vision is the establishment of a fully integrated technology company that provides turnkey technological solutions to the legal medical cannabis and hemp industries, as well as other areas of the medical industry. Over time, the Company plans to provide a wide range of services such as software solutions, e-commerce, advisory services, financial services, patents and trademarks and information technology. For further information please contact NSAV at 1 (480) 326-8577 or [email protected] The NSAV corporate email address is [email protected] The NSAV corporate website can be accessed at http://nsavholdinginc.com The NSAV Twitter account can be accessed at https://twitter.com/NSAV_MJTechCo The NSAV Facebook account can be accessed at https://www.facebook.com/NSAVHolding This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which are intended to be covered by the safe harbors created thereby. Investors are cautioned that, all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, the ability of Net Savings Link, Inc. to accomplish its stated plan of business. Net Savings Link, Inc. believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements contained herein are reasonable, any of the assumptions could be inaccurate, and therefore, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate. In light of the significant uncertainties inherent in the forward- looking statements included herein, the inclusion of such information should not be regarded as a representation by Net Savings Link, Inc. or any other person. Contact TEN Associates LLC 1 (480) 326-8577 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Nintendo Download: Gotta Go Fast! This week's Nintendo Download includes the following featured content: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005839/en/ Sonic Forces will be available on Nov. 7. (Graphic: Business Wire) Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch Sonic Forces - In the darkest of times, the world needs a hero. Fight through a world destroyed by Dr. Eggman and a powerful new villain in Sonic Forces , the new fast-paced action platformer from the team that brought you the Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations games. Sonic Forces lets you speed through rolling ruined landscapes as Modern Sonic, catapult past perilous platforms as Classic Sonic and use powerful new gadgets as your own Custom Hero Character. Sonic Forces will be available on Nov. 7. Nintendo eShop sales: Nintendo eShop on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS Great deals this week! Check out the full list of deals on Nintendo 3DS and Wii U available this week at http://www.nintendo.com/games/sales-and-deals. Activities: My Nintendo Holiday Sweepstakes - Have you signed up for the My Nintendo rewards program yet? If so, you can enter the Nintendo Holiday Sweepstakes, exclusively for My Nintendo members.* Vote for your five most-wanted gifts for a chance to win a prize pack that'll make your holidays bright. For more details, please visit http://happyholidays.nintendo.com/. Not a My Nintendo member? It's easy - and free! - to join here. - Have you signed up for the My Nintendo rewards program yet? If so, you can enter the Nintendo Holiday Sweepstakes, exclusively for My Nintendo members.* Vote for your five most-wanted gifts for a chance to win a prize pack that'll make your holidays bright. For more details, please visit http://happyholidays.nintendo.com/. Not a My Nintendo member? It's easy - and free! - to join here. Sonic the Hedgehog My Nintendo Rewards - The Sonic Forces game arrives Nov. 7 on Nintendo Switch. My Nintendo is celebrating the occasion with Sonic the Hedgehog rewards, including wallpapers, a Nintendo 3DS theme, and 50 percent discounts on some of Sonic's greatest hits! See the full selection of available Sonic the Hedgehog My Nintendo Rewards here. Also new this week: In addition to video games available at retail stores, Nintendo also offers a variety of content that people can download directly to their systems. Nintendo adds new games weekly to Nintendo eShop on the Nintendo Switch console, the Wii U console and the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. Nintendo eShop is a cash-based service that features a wide variety of content, including new and classic games, applications and demos. Users can add money to their account balances by using a credit card or purchasing a Nintendo eShop Card at a retail store and entering the code from the card. All funds from one card must be loaded in Nintendo eShop on Nintendo Switch, Wii U or the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, but can be used in any Nintendo eShop if the systems are linked to a single Nintendo Account. Customers in the U.S. and Canada ages 18 and older can also link a PayPal (News - Alert) account to their Nintendo Account to purchase digital games and content for the Nintendo Switch system both on-device and from the Nintendo website. Once the accounts are linked, users may also use PayPal as a payment option when buying digital content for the Wii U or Nintendo 3DS family systems from the Nintendo website. The Wii Shop Channel offers games and applications and uses Wii Points, which can be purchased via the Wii Shop Channel. Remember that Nintendo Switch, Wii U, Wii, New Nintendo 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS XL, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL, and Nintendo 2DS feature parental controls that let adults manage some of the content their children can access. Nintendo 3DS players who register a Nintendo Network ID gain access to free-to-start games and free game demos from Nintendo eShop, and also get the latest news and information direct from Nintendo. For more information about this and other features, visit http://www.nintendo.com/switch, http://www.nintendo.com/wiiu or http://www.nintendo.com/3ds. Note to editors: Nintendo press materials are available at http://press.nintendo.com, a password-protected site. To obtain a login, please register on the site. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005839/en/ [November 02, 2017] Toast Integrates with SynergySuite to Create a Seamless Operation Solution for Restaurants to Boost Efficiency and Profitability BOSTON, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform and one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the U.S., today announced an integration with SynergySuite, the cloud-based back-office platform. This integration enables customers to combine data from Toasts robust point of sale system with SynergySuites restaurant management software, creating a seamless operating solution with breakthrough intelligence and algorithms. Through this partnership, SynergySuite equips Toast customers with a full set of mobile tools. SynergySuites online platform uses POS order data to help streamline back office operations and improve profitability through intelligent purchasing recommendations, optimized staff scheduling, and food safety monitoring. SynergySuite is delighted to partner with Toast to bring a streamlined solution to restaurant chains. Users appreciate the simplicity of the SynergySuite and Toast systems and are blown away by the valuable information they gain to drive their business forward., said Suzanne Keane, COO and co-founder at SynergySuite. We are looking forward to giving more users access to this great solution. Additional benefits of the Toast and SynergySuite integration include: Lowered food costs with optimized inventory and purchasing: suggested ordering, full recipe management, automatic purchasing, and invoice processing suggested ordering, full recipe management, automatic purchasing, and invoice processing Reduced overtime/oerstaffing costs with time and attendance: manage shift swaps and approvals, maintain compliance, staff records and onboarding checklists manage shift swaps and approvals, maintain compliance, staff records and onboarding checklists Increased food safety procedure monitoring : HACCP compliance reporting, temperature monitoring alerts, and cleaning schedule reminders : HACCP compliance reporting, temperature monitoring alerts, and cleaning schedule reminders Expanded sales analysis and cash management capabilities: real-time business intelligence, daily P&L reports, cash tracking, transaction reconciliation, and variance alerts Toast API Partner Program, which makes restaurant operations simpler. Toast Restaurant POS offers advanced functionality to manage the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, including quick menu modifications, real-time enterprise reporting and labor management on an easy-to-use interface. The platform also features revenue-driving tools including physical and digital gift cards, loyalty programs and online ordering. To learn more about Toast and SynergySuite, please visit: https://pos.toasttab.com/synergysuite-integration About Toast Founded by Steve Fredette, Aman Narang and Jonathan Grimm, Toast is a restaurant technology platform that enables customers to simplify and streamline all elements of their operation and deliver a better guest experience. Toast offers a mobile, cloud-based point of sale system (POS) that easily integrates with front-of-house, back-of-house, online ordering, gift card and loyalty programs, as well as labor and sales reporting. Since launching in 2013, the company has grown to over 500 employees. In 2017, Toast was named one of the worlds hottest cloud computing companies in the Forbes Cloud 100 and it announced raising over $100 million as part of its Series C financing. Learn more at www.toasttab.com. About SynergySuite SynergySuite is a restaurant management software company that provides back-office software to thousands of restaurant employees and owners across the US, UK, and Ireland since 2011. The companys easy-to-use mobile software covers all critical business areas including inventory, purchasing, recipe costing, food safety, scheduling, cash management, human resources, and business intelligence. SynergySuite has delivered between 4% 8% in food and labor cost savings to major restaurant chains. Learn more about SynergySuite at www.synergysuite.com. Contact: Karen DeVincent PR and Branding Manager [email protected] 857-301-6074 [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Lakeland Ranks No. 27 Among Cities With Highest Home Fire Risk, The Hartford Pledges Support According to The Hartford's Home Fire Index, Lakeland, Fla. ranks No. 27 among the 100 U.S. cities with the highest home fire risk. The Index is based on an analysis of the U.S. Fire Administration's National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS)2 and a survey conducted by The Hartford on fire safety and prevention behaviors among the general population. As part of the 70th anniversary of The Hartford's Junior Fire Marshal program, which is one of the country's oldest corporate-sponsored public education programs, The Hartford is donating a total of $20,000 to Lakeland public schools and the Lakeland Fire Department for fire safety education. The donation is part of a larger commitment the company made to all the cities on The Hartford's Home Fire Index. In addition, to the monetary donation, The Hartford will also distribute Junior Fire Marshal educational materials to children in kindergarten through third grade in Lakeland public schools. The Hartford Junior Fire Marshal classroom kit comes with The Hartford's signature red fire helmets, an educator and parent guide and coloring posters designed to introduce fire safety concepts to children. "The Junior Fire Marshal program is part of The Hartford's ongoing commitment to help build safer communities," said Debora Raymond, spokesperson for The Hartford's Junior Fire Marshal program. "We are pleased to be able to bring this program to the city of Lakeland and empower the next generation of children to take an active role in reducing the fire risk in their homes." Many Lakeland residents engage in behaviors that can increase the risk of a home fire according to The Hartford survey. Charging a phone overnight is considered moderate risk, yet charging a phone overnight on your bed, leaving your kitchen with the stove on, or leaving a room with a candle burning are considered high risk. The survey found: 36 percent admitted they had charged a device (e.g., cell phone, tablet, laptop) in or on their bed overnight in the past year - compared with 34 percent nationally, 60 percent said that in the past year, they have left the kitchen while cooking something on a stove - compared with 58 percent nationally 43 percent revealed that they have left a room with a candle lit at least once over the past year - compared with 37 percent nationally. The History of the Junior Fire MarshalProgram The Junior Fire Marshal program was started in 1947 by an employee of The Hartford. Since the program's inception, The Hartford has deputized more than 110 million Junior Fire Marshals. The company's signature red fire helmets have been displayed proudly by generations of children who have learned the basics of fire safety through this innovative and educational program. The program teaches lifesaving lessons such as Stop, Drop and Roll, Go Low in Smoke and Draw a Home Fire Escape Plan. These lessons, along with other fun, engaging and educational activities, help parents and teachers have meaningful and vital fire safety conversations with children and students. Over the years, celebrities such as Ron Howard, Dick Van Dyke, Jack Benny, Jimmy Dean, Mr. Green Jeans and Captain Kangaroo, Carol Channing, Red Skelton, Johnny Carson, Robert Young, Henry "the Fonz" Winkler and Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan have helped The Hartford recognize children who participated in the Junior Fire Marshal program. For more information about The Hartford's Home Fire Index and Junior Fire Marshal Program, visit www.thehartford.com/jfm. 1According to the National Fire Protection Association 2NFIRS is a voluntary reporting system run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency based on data submitted by fire departments from around the country. The data was standardized based on population size and adjusted as needed to reflect the voluntary nature of the data within the system. About The Hartford Home Fire Index The Hartford Home Fire Index is based on a study of the largest U.S. cities with a minimum of 80,000 housing units as reported by the 2010 U.S. Census. The Hartford calculated a rate of residential fires using the number of residential structure fires from the 2014 National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data, dividing by 2010 U.S. Census housing units. The Hartford also conducted a survey on fire safety and prevention behaviors among the general population in late 2016 and in early 2017. Survey respondents (approximately 100 per city) were given a score based on adoption of fire safety best practices. Standardized fire rates and survey scores were averaged to produce a composite score for each city. About The Hartford The Hartford is a leader in property and casualty insurance, group benefits and mutual funds. With more than 200 years of expertise, The Hartford is widely recognized for its service excellence, sustainability practices, trust and integrity. More information on the company and its financial performance is available at https://www.thehartford.com. Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at www.twitter.com/TheHartford_PR. The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., (NYSE: HIG) operates through its subsidiaries under the brand name, The Hartford, and is headquartered in Hartford, Conn. For additional details, please read The Hartford's legal notice. HIG-C Some of the statements in this release may be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We caution investors that these forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results may differ materially. Investors should consider the important risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ. These important risks and uncertainties include those discussed in our 2016 Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Forms 10-Q, and the other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to update this release, which speaks as of the date issued. From time to time, The Hartford may use its website to disseminate material company information. Financial and other important information regarding The Hartford is routinely accessible through and posted on our website at https://ir.thehartford.com. In addition, you may automatically receive email alerts and other information about The Hartford when you enroll your email address by visiting the "Email Alerts" section at https://ir.thehartford.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005836/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] NEW YORK , Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Empire Securities, a national fixed income broker-dealer for institutional investors, announced two new leadership positions with the addition of Thomas ONeill as Vice Chairman and Edward LaScala as Managing Director Regional Sales Manager. Their arrivals mark the latest moves to broaden the companys services for upper tier financial institutions. We are putting people in place who will strengthen our ability to deliver new services and expand our institutional reach," said Joseph Oricoli, Managing Director at First Empire Securities. Tom and Ed are well respected in the industry, and their know-how and relationships will be integral in introducing our brand of service to a new range of institutional investors. ONeill, an industry veteran who was a founding principal of the investment banking and brokerage firm Sandler ONeill + Partners, will develop the firms Debt Capital Markets and Specialty Finance groups. He will be based in the firms Long Island headquarters. LaScala, who most recently led the institutional sales group at Incapital and previously held positions at Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and DLJ, will spearhead growth of the firms institutional trading and sales capabilities for Tier 1 and 2 institutions. Several institutional professionals have already joined the firm. First Empires maturing platform offers us a tremendous opportunity to be part of a company on the upswing, said ONeill. Their reputation for delivering value added services is well known among community banks and credit unions and we are excited to take that dynamic to larger institutions. First Empire Securities launched a growth campaign in late 2015, opening offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis and Jersey City and expanding its asset-backed securities, mortgage TBAs, negotiable CD funding and municipal trading capabilities. Its sister company LPC Services has become a leader in participation and whole loan sales, helping close more than $3 billion in loan deals since the start of 2015. First Empire Securities First Empire Securities is an institutional fixed income broker-dealer providing a broad range of products and services. The companys seasoned traders and financial strategists, state-of-the-art analytical tools and former regulatory examiners all contribute to a full-service approach developed to help institutions improve the performance of their investment portfolios and better manage their balance sheets. First Empire Securities is a member of FINRA/SIPC. First Empire Holding Corp. First Empire Holding Corp. (First Empire) is the employee-owned parent company of First Empire Securities, LPC Services, Balance Sheet Management Services, First Empire CD Management and First Empire Asset Management. Today, our companies work with more than 2,000 institutions across the United States providing a range of services related to fixed income investing, participation/whole loan sales, asset liability management, regulatory consulting and funding strategies. More information can be found at www.firstempire.com. [November 02, 2017] Accenture Launches Connected Digital Hackathon with Expo 2020 Dubai to Develop Digital Solutions That Improve Urban Living Accenture (News - Alert) (NYSE: ACN), in collaboration with Expo 2020 Dubai, is challenging participants from 11 cities around the world to develop prototypes of human-centered digital solutions that help improve the quality of urban living through its first global digital hackathon. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005882/en/ The Accenture Digital Hackathon is a 24-hour event in 11 cities across four continents where talented individuals will prototype digital solutions that help create a truly human city environment (Photo: Business Wire) The 24-hour hackathon will take place simultaneously in Chicago, Bangalore, Dubai, Istanbul, London, Manila, Mexico City, Monterrey, Rome, Shanghai and Singapore on November 11 and 12, 2017.1 Registrations are open to recent graduates, undergraduates, entrepreneurs and individuals from start-ups with expertise in technology development, design and marketing, at accenture.com/digital by November 6. Inspired by Expo 2020 Dubai's theme of "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future," participants will compete on finding digital solutions that organizations can use to address urbanization challenges. Over half of the world's population currently lives in cities and urban areas.2 This trend, which is expected to continue, is raising challenges such as creating truly inclusive environments, improving work and travel conditions in cities areas, and adopting a more sustainable approach to urbanization. The proposed solutions need to meet two requirements: Putting human beings at the heart of the experience; Using latest digital technologies including wearables, artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented and virtual reality, blockchain and the Internet of Things. Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive, Accenture Digital, said: "We are asking people with digital talents to apply their creativity and ingenuity to two game-changing trends - urbanization and digitization. With both, it is people who should come first. Accenture strongly believes that digital experiences have the power to make cities more livable for customers, patients, workers, students, and citizens, but these experiences can only be successful if they are truly human." Gillian Hamburger, Senior Vice President of Commercial at Expo 2020 Dubai said: "World Expos have always been a showcase for innovation. This hackathon, with our Official Digital Services Partner Accenture, is another example of Expo 2020 encouraging innovation and connecting people from around the world to exchange ideas and contribute to the future." Accenture was named Digital Services Premier Partner and Systems Integrator of Expo 2020 Dubai earlier this year to provide technologically advanced and innovative experiences to participants and visitors. Why participate in the Accenture lobal Digital Hackathon? Accenture will award prizes worth up to a total of US$ 80,000 to the top teams in each city, region (Europe & Middle East, North America & Latin America, Asia), and globally. The best works will be determined by a panel of judges of experienced practitioners from Accenture, Expo 2020 Dubai and local sponsors. 3 Expo will select its favorite project from among the three regional winners and shortlist it for the Expo Live "Innovation Impact Grant Programme." The program is expected to provide winning projects with grants of up to US$ 100,000 and a chance to showcase their innovations at the next World Expo. 4 Individual participants demonstrating exceptional teamwork, problem-solving and goal orientation skills whose profiles are in line with Accenture's recruitment plans, may be interviewed for roles in Accenture Digital, or elsewhere in the company. Learn more at accenture.com/digital and follow #AccentureDigiHack. 1 To ensure participants from all cities can connect for a certain amount of time, in Chicago, Mexico and Monterrey the hackathon will start in the late afternoon of November 10. 2 "Globally, 54% of the population lives in urban areas today () [B]y 2045, the number of people living in cities will increase by 1.5 times to 6 billion, adding 2 billion more urban residents." Source (News - Alert): The World Bank, "Urban Development", March 29, 2017 (http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview) 3 For terms and conditions of the Accenture Global Digital Hackathon and its prizes, see https://www.accenture.com/us-en/digital-index. 4 World Expo is a separate event that is not connected to the Accenture Global Digital Hackathon. Expo Live has the sole discretion as to whether or not they choose a winning project and, if so, Expo Live will determine what benefits the selected project will receive. About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions - underpinned by the world's largest delivery network - Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 425,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com Accenture Digital, comprised of Accenture Analytics, Accenture Interactive and Accenture Mobility, offers a comprehensive portfolio of business and technology services across digital marketing, mobility and analytics. From developing digital strategies to implementing digital technologies and running digital processes on their behalf, Accenture Digital helps clients leverage connected and mobile devices; extract insights from data using analytics; and enrich end-customer experiences and interactions, delivering tangible results from the virtual world and driving growth. To learn more about Accenture Digital, follow us @AccentureDigi and visit www.accenture.com/digital. Copyright 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. About Expo 2020 Dubai Expo 2020 Dubai is guided by the belief that innovation and progress are the result of people and ideas combining in new ways. Over the course of six months from October 2020, Expo aims to bring together hundreds of countries and millions of people to celebrate human ingenuity: 'Connecting Minds; Creating the Future'. Between its opening day on 20 October 2020, and its close on 10 April 2021, it is expected that Expo will be visited by millions of people. 70% of all visitors are expected to come from outside the UAE - the largest proportion of international visitors in Expo history. The goal is to create and deliver an inclusive and global Expo with over 200 participants, including nations, multilateral organisations, businesses and educational institutions. Expo 2020 also has an ambitious volunteer programme, which aims to include more than 30,000 volunteers from a wide range of ages, nationalities and cultures and backgrounds. The Expo site covers a total of 4.38 sq. km, including a 2 sq. km gated area. It is located within the Dubai South District, adjacent to Al Maktoum International Airport. Visit: www.expo2020dubai.ae Follow: Twitter: @expo2020dubai | Facebook (News - Alert): @Expo2020Dubai | Instagram: expo2020dubai View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005882/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Locally Grown Nurture Burger Launches on Amazon Fresh, Preliminary Profits go to North Texas Food Bank FRISCO, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nurture Burger, 100% grass-fed ground beef is now available for home delivery in Dallas-Ft. Worth through Amazon Fresh and profits from November sales will be donated to the North Texas Food Bank. Nurture Burger, produced by Frisco-based Nurture Ranch, is 100% grass-fed ground beef, raised in the tall lush dells of the East Texas free range without antibiotics, hormones or grain. Until now, Nurture Burger was not available for consumer purchase. "Nurture Ranch was founded with the mission to improve the food supply through better quality meats. We are proud to be fulfilling our mission by bringing Nurture Burger directly to consumers' homes through Amazon Fresh and supporting the important work North Texas Food Bank does for our community," said Rodney Mason, Nurture Ranch CEO. Nurture Burger is made from sirloin, rib, brisket, chuck and round for a one-of-kind, clean, delicious taste that is lower in calories and saturated fat than traditional beef. Nurture Burger is sold directly to consumers via Amazon Fresh inNorth Texas and to finer restaurants and institutions across the country. Dale Long, North Texas Food Bank interim VP of Operations stated, "We are grateful to Nurture Ranch and all of their customers for supporting the Food Bank. There is a hunger crisis in North Texas as so many of our neighbors don't know where their next healthy meal will come from. This donation couldn't come at a better time, as we prepare for the extra demands of the holidays and colder winter months." About Nurture Ranch Nurture Ranch nurtures traceable, grass-fed beef in the tall, lush dells of East Texas year round without grain, antibiotics or hormones, that is Better In 12 Ways than traditional beef, certified by the American Grassfed Association and so good people ask, "Hey, Where'd You Get That Meat?" For more information, visit: the Nurture Ranch website or on Facebook or Twitter. Nurture Ranch encourages the support of local ranchers and farmers to "Keep on Ranching" for the betterment of the food supply now and for future generations. Nurture Ranch is also a proud member of "GO TEXAN" and promotes and encourages the purchase of Texas nurtured products across the nation. MEDIA CONTACT: Robin Zimmerman, 210-787-9776, [email protected] ? View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/locally-grown-nurture-burger-launches-on-amazon-fresh-preliminary-profits-go-to-north-texas-food-bank-300548491.html SOURCE Nurture Ranch [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Multinational Oil and Gas Company Selects Quorum's Accounting Software Solutions for Enterprise Deployment HOUSTON, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Quorum, the leader in digital transformation for the oil and gas industry, announced today that a leading multinational oil and gas company recently expanded its partnership to leverage Quorum's Revenue Accounting software and Division Order solutions. The additional Quorum solutions integrate with the oil and gas company's existing Quorum portfolio and will support the business's expanded asset acquisition and management footprint in North America. "We are proud one of the leading multinational oil and gas institutions has chosen Quorum Software for seamless and standardized accounting, finance and land management," said Perry Turbes, president and CEO, Quorum. "By expanding their use of our software, the customer will enhance the company's business processes in North America to sustain their leadership position in the energy industry. While we have been partners with this oil and gas company for almost a decade, we're always looking for new ways to support the customers we serve." About Quorum's Oil & Gas Accounting Software Quorum's Revenue Accounting software automates operational accounting for produced volumes, product sales and revenue distribution with some offerings including acuisition and disposition management, volume allocation for well completion and contract valuation and processing. Quorum's Division Order solutions provide comprehensive division order management with automatic document generation, streamlined filings and flexible interest administration. In addition to Revenue Accounting and Division Order, Quorum also supports the oil and gas company's business via the following offerings, all of which are built upon the myQuorum platform, the energy industry's first open standards-based software integration platform that automates workflows and connects people, processes and systems to deliver actionable insights. Land Management with integrated features that provide robust functionality for lease acquisition, GIS mapping, lease management and right of way. Cost Accounting to manage assets and capital expenditures, monitor and approve project budgets, track and bill partners and view well profitability. Plant Accounting to optimize and simplify complex gas plant accounting processes for allocations and settlements, division order and disbursements, contract management, and forecasting. Gathering to gain full visibility into operations with the all-in-one software for customer self-service, allocations and settlements, nominations and confirmations plus reporting. About Quorum Quorum offers an industry-leading portfolio of finance, operations and accounting software that empowers energy companies of all sizes to conquer their most complex business challenges. From the field to the back office, defying complexity is coded in our DNA and our software. This unmatched experience is why Quorum is the choice of eight of the largest public energy companies worldwide, 75 percent of LNG exporters throughout North America and 80 percent of all midstream companies in the United States. Designed for digital transformation, the myQuorum software platform delivers open standards, mobile-first design and cloud technologies to empower innovation at the speed of thought. At Quorum, we're helping visionary leaders transform their business, and the energy industry, for a digital world. For more information, visit www.quorumsoftware.com. Contact: Genevieve Shoemaker, 713-377-6438, [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/multinational-oil-and-gas-company-selects-quorums-accounting-software-solutions-for-enterprise-deployment-300548501.html SOURCE Quorum [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Troxell Announces Mindy Siegel Baggett As Its New Account Executive For The Arizona Territory PHOENIX, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Troxell, a national leader in education technology and collaboration solutions for more than 60 years, is happy to announce Mindy Siegel Baggett as the new Account Executive for the Arizona Territory. She will work closely with school districts in the Phoenix metro area on their education technology needs and initiatives. Mindy is taking over the territory from Terry Hixson, who will retire from the company at the end of 2017 after working for Troxell for almost 31 years. "I am thrilled to be back at Troxell to reconnect with my customers and the Troxell team," said Mindy Siegel Baggett. "It is very exciting to not only be able to assist districts and schools with their traditional AV, but also to partner with districts in finding solutions for their 1:1 initiatives, collaborative learning spaces, STEM programs, asset management, and campus safety needs." "We are ver excited to have Mindy back as one of our Account Executives," said Mark Barber, Troxell's Senior Vice President of Sales. "Her industry knowledge, experience, and skills are an excellent complement to our organization. She's a valuable member of our team and I am pleased to reintroduce her to the Phoenix area." Mindy Siegel Baggett is returning to Troxell as one of the Account Executives after leaving Troxell to move to Washington several years ago. She has over 30 years of experience working with schools and districts. She spent 15 years as a teacher and school administrator, and an additional 15 years in the sales of curriculum and technology. You may contact Mindy Siegel Baggett at her office phone: (602) 437-7240 x4106, her mobile phone: (480) 318-3885, and her email: [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. For Press Inquiries Contact: Raigan Irwin-McCabe, VP of Marketing View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/troxell-announces-mindy-siegel-baggett-as-its-new-account-executive-for-the-arizona-territory-300548248.html SOURCE Troxell [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] KNect365, an Informa Business, Launches ITPro, Adds New Leadership and Extends Beyond its Microsoft-Centric Roots to Meet Information Needs of All IT Professionals SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- KNect365, an Informa business, today unveils ITPro, a new brand and media site serving IT professionals. ITPro addresses the shifting landscape of technology in the workplace and explores a broad range of topics that help IT professionals understand how to solve business challenges with technology. ITPro will build upon its Windows ITPro, SharePoint Pro, SQL Server Pro, Dev Pro and SuperSite for Windows roots, evolving to multiplatform editorial coverage of the full range of technologies used by IT professionals. And it presents the content in a new and more navigable way. It also connects to the annual face-to-face event IT/DevConnections (the 2018 iteration will take place in Dallas) and the Professional Education Online Platform. ITPro broadens its content scope to appeal to the modern IT professional, including Microsoft-specific technologies as well as those on other platforms. ITPro serves the IT community with an online source of daily news, analysis and how-to's about the information technology industry. The new site will focus on topics such as data analytics, cloud and data center operations, collaboration technologies, machine learning, the mobile-first workplace, open source, DevOps, security, software development, and the Internet of Things (IoT). "Our sites are the top destinations for IT professionals and users on the front lines of the new developments in technology operating systems as a service, cloud-first software, mobility as part of workflow and now digital transformation of everyday work. Our new brand reflects the exciting state of technology and business: immediate, multiplatform and productive," said Sue Troy, senior content director for ITPro. "The content reflects the world of IT as it is today, where information flows across different moble and desktop platforms, lives in the cloud, and works to improve data analytics. New topical sections like security reflect growing coverage around one of the largest areas of concern for IT pros and users." Art Wittmann, senior vice president for Content, Technology, Media and Telecom USA, who oversees the brand, said, "ITPro is positioned to provide IT pros with all the information they need to get their jobs done. There is tremendous synergy with our other tech brands, like Channel Futures, Data Center Knowledge and The IoT Institute, and with our Internet of Things World, Container World, IT/Dev Connections and Data Center World events, which will allow us to collaborate to better serve our audiences." A Team of Experts with Deep IT Knowledge The ITPro team brings readers all the information they need to know to do their jobs well. ITPro is led by Troy, who is responsible for overseeing all technology content and forums. She joins the site following a stint as executive editor of ITPro's sister site The IoT Institute. She has more than 25 years in content leadership and management roles for IT-focused outlets at TechTarget and Ziff Davis Publishing. Troy has broad knowledge of IT and its practice areas, with subject matter expertise around IT leadership, digital transformation, storage technologies and channel businesses. She has a special interest in emerging technologies such as IoT, blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence. Lisa Schmeiser, content director, has been reporting on the tech industry for nearly 20 years. At ITPro she focuses on collaboration and mobility. Previously, she served as editor in chief for SuperSite for Windows and continues her role as editor in chief of Windows Secrets. Nicole Henderson, content director, has been reporting on the cloud industry for seven years as an editor and industry analyst. Her focus at ITPro is cloud and security. Previously, she served as editor in chief at The WHIR and content director for Talkin' Cloud. Richard Hay, senior content producer, spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy watching technology inside and outside of the service rapidly change throughout his career. He now writes about the tech that impacts all of us each day in our personal and professional lives. With more than 40 years of journalism and the last 15 years covering tech, Christine Hall, senior content producer, writes about all aspects of IT and has a passion for open source and related topics. For information on ITPro sponsorship opportunities, contact Kathleen Connolly, general manager for Enterprise and Connected Innovation at KNect365, at [email protected]. About Informa ITPro, Channel Futures, Data Center Knowledge, The IoT Institute websites and the IT/Dev Connections, IoT World, Container World and Data Center World show brands are part of Informa which operates at the heart of the Knowledge and Information Economy. It is a leading business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge and events business. With more than 7,500 employees globally, it has a presence in all major geographies, including North America, South America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. MEDIA CONTACT: Sue Troy Email: [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/knect365-an-informa-business-launches-itpro-adds-new-leadership-and-extends-beyond-its-microsoft-centric-roots-to-meet-information-needs-of-all-it-professionals-300548523.html SOURCE ITPro [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] SuperAwesome Launches Kids Connected TV Ad Marketplace NEW YORK, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SuperAwesome, whose technology powers the kids digital media ecosystem for brands and publishers, today unveiled the Kids Connected TV Marketplace, enabling advertisers to safely reach kids across OTT and VOD inventory. Used by hundreds of kids brands to safely engage with the under-13 audience at scale, SuperAwesome's Trusted Content Marketplace already reaches half a billion kids each month across mobile, desktop and online video. The addition of premium kids OTT and VOD content now extends this into a crucial part of kids' new viewing habits. Disney and Nickelodeon saw viewership among children between the ages of 2 and 11 years old drop by 33 percent and 50 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2015, in favor of content on digital platforms (source: Business Insider Intelligence). However, research shows that TV content itself still remains popular with this centennial generation (source: SuperAwesome Insights Report 2017), being consumed across a number of services and platforms in parallel with games and video content. OTT and VOD consumption is subtly different from programmed TV as it allows kids to effectively curate their own viewing schedule. It also removes the phenomenon of channel and ad-skipping. Kids' data privacy rights are becoming an increasingly high profile topic in the U.S. Any digital engagement by brands is required to be compliant with the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). SuperAwesome's 'kidtech' is specifically designed for these privacy requirements and is now used by virtually every brand and agency in the kids' digital media sector. The company's REX technology allows companies to programmatically access the Connected TV Marketplace while ensuring full data privacy for kids and COPPA-compliance for partners. Lillian LeBron, Partner at Beacon Media, the leading U.S. kids media planning and strategy agency, stated that "although kids are shifting their viewing habits from TV to digital devices, the fact remains that they still want to watch TV content. The popularity of TV content for kids remains incredibly high, but they want to watch it on their terms: their choice of time, their choice of device. Engaging across Connected TVs, VOD and OTT is a critical part of any brand media strategy who are trying to reach the under-13 audience." SuperAwesome CEO Dylan Collins stated: "The kids media landscape is being fundamentally reshaped with more and more digital content replacing less and less programmed TV viewing. As the ad platform of choice for every major kids brand and agency, we want to ensure the greatest possible audience reach for our clients: OTT and VOD are a key part of this so we're delighted to announce the Kids Connected TV Marketplace." About SuperAwesome SuperAwesome powers the kids' digital media ecosystem. SuperAwesome's technology is used by hundreds of brands and content-owners to safely engage with over 500M kids every month. The company has pioneered the 'kidtech' market: technology which delivers digital media functionality with a 'zero-data' design to ensure total safety for kids. SuperAwesome has reshaped the kids' digital media landscape with their kid-safe tools and technology including AwesomeAds (the biggest kid-safe ad platform in the world), REX (the first kid-safe programmatic ad filter), PopJam (social content tools for U13 engagement) and Kids Web Services (kids/parent authentication). SuperAwesome was recently named the eighth fastest growing private technology company in Britain (The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 2017) as well as one of Europe's fastest growing companies (Financial Times 1000: Europe's fastest growing companies). The company was awarded a Breakthrough Technology Award at the Campaign Creative Tech Awards 2017 for REX, the world's first kid-safe programmatic ad filter. Led by serial tech investor and entrepreneur CEO Dylan Collins, the company's rapidly growing global team is headquartered in London with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Sydney. For more information, please visit us on the web, our blog, Twitter or LinkedIn. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/superawesome-launches-kids-connected-tv-ad-marketplace-300548470.html SOURCE SuperAwesome [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Move Headquarters to State-of-the-Art Santa Clara Site PALO ALTO, Calif., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced that the company will move its corporate headquarters to Santa Clara, California from its current Palo Alto location by the end of 2018. Over the past two years, HPE has transformed into a smaller, nimbler company, and now has the opportunity to consolidate its Silicon Valley real estate to better meet the companys current needs. HPE plans to sell its Palo Alto building and relocate employees to newer, nearby sites including San Jose, Milpitas and the companys state-of-the-art HPE Aruba offices in Santa Clara, which will become the new global headquarters. The HPE Aruba offices were recently built as a showcase for Arubas intelligent workplace technologies. The building is a next-generation digital workplace that provides innovative tools to enable employees to quickly and efficiently locate each other, find appropriate meeting spaces and use technology to collaborate seamlessly. Over the past two years weve made tremendous progress towards becoming a simpler, nimbler and more focused company, said Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE. Im excited to move our headquarters to an innovative new building that provides a next-generation digital experience for our employees, customers and partners. Our new building will better reflect who HPE is today and where we are heading in the future. In partnership with HP Inc., HPE will continue to jointly support the Founders Office of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, as well as the nearby Hewlett-Packard Garage, where Hewlett-Packard was founded. About Hewlett Packard Enterprise Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry-leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industrys most comprehensive portfoliospanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applicationsour technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive, and more secure. Editorial contacts Kate Holderness, HPE [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Popular Music Show Reaches Milestone, Gives Away Its Archives SYDNEY, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Popular podcast The Vinyl Guide will publish its 100th episode on Monday, Nov. 6! The podcast began in 2015 and has grown to be one of the most popular music podcasts on Apple iTunes, thanks in part to the recent resurgence of interest in vinyl records. Hosted by Nate Goyer, The Vinyl Guide has featured musicians such as current and former members of Deep Purple, Pixies, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Ramones, Genesis, Anthrax, even legendary blues artists, jazz musicians from Blue Note Records and behind the scenes contributors. Guests discuss the records that influenced them and the stories behind the records that changed popular culture. Special guest on Episode 100 will be punk rock legend Henry Rollins, former vocalist for Black Flag, Rollins Band, spoken word artist, author, television host and renowned record collector. To celebrate 100 episodes The Vinyl Guide is committing to making their entire interview archives available for free online and with minimal copyright or artistic restrictions! Nate Goyer explains, "I have hours and hours of interviews with some of the most beloved musicians in history. Literally days and days of audio chock full of fascinating and rarely heard rock 'n' roll tales. I want to make sure everyone has access to them." Maing the files available for public use required removing standard copyright from each interview and replacing it with a 'Creative Commons' license that makes the material open for the public to enjoy and use. Publicly available material in an archive this large will have some potentially revolutionary effects; aside from the availability of all interviews to be downloaded and enjoyed by anyone at any time, The Vinyl Guide interviews can also be traded on file-sharing networks, remixed by sound designers, translated freely into multiple languages, transcribed into magazine and online articles, and many more creative options. Even public radio can benefit as any station may now freely use The Vinyl Guide archives for their broadcasting purposes. "I could be the new nightshift for some of these stations that can't afford a late night DJ," says Nate. High-quality files of all interviews will be available a few weeks after their initial air date. Why is Nate giving away this treasure trove of music history? "Why not?" That's very rock 'n'roll. The Vinyl Guide podcast can be enjoyed anywhere in the world on just about every smartphone and computer. The Vinyl Guide has free listening apps available for Apple and Android, subscribe directly using iTunes or you can use any podcast program or RSS reader. The Vinyl Guide is also on Facebook and Instagram. Related Images image1.jpg The Vinyl Guide Episode 100 image2.jpg The Vinyl Guide Episode 100 image3.jpg The Vinyl Guide Related Links The Vinyl Guide Creative Commons View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/popular-music-show-reaches-milestone-gives-away-its-archives-300548482.html SOURCE The Vinyl Guide [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Industry Leader in Study Startup Releases Updated eBook on Starting Clinical Trials SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- goBalto, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based clinical study startup solutions, announced today the latest release of its popular eBook '10 Steps to Clinical Study Startup.' Since its inaugural release, the eBook has been downloaded over 62,000 times. Clinical trials that get off to a good start are more likely to be successful trials. The study startup (SSU) phase is where this happens, and includes such activities as investigator selection, regulatory and ethics submissions, site trainings and ends with the site initiation visits. SSU is a time-consuming component of a clinical study, a notorious bottleneck, that can contribute to significant delays due to manual and old-school paper-based processes, requiring multiple approvals and hand-offs between sponsor and sites, as well as, between individual team members both at the site and within/between the sponsor, which makes the process a perfect candidate for optimization. But what exactly happens in the SSU phase and how can it be improved? Through years of dialogue with sponsors, contract research organizations (CRO) and sites, we've identified 10 key steps that clinical trial sponsors take to select sites and activate them for a clinicl study. Further, we've pinpointed where the SSU process fails and how to optimize each of these steps so that you can gain a competitive advantage in new drug development. "We are proud to have partnered with numerous thought leaders in the industry in the creation of this latest update," said Jae Chung, goBalto's Founder and President. "Examining all of the steps and pitfalls of study startup it's easy to see why all too often, study startup does not end even as the study progresses through conduct." This eBook will take you step-by-step through SSU. The 10 steps are comprehensive and typical of the study startup process in the United States; however, you may find that the order of the steps vary from company-to-company and study-to-study. Chung added, "Better managing clinical study startup represents a substantial opportunity for sponsors to reduce clinical study timelines, and costs, enabling therapies to get to those in need faster." The eBook is available for download from the goBalto Resource Center, visit www.gobalto.com/resource-center. About goBalto goBalto is the industry leader in cloud-based study startup software for the global life sciences industry, offering the only complete end-to-end platform for starting clinical trials, from site identification, feasibility assessment and selection through to activation, with comprehensive metrics to track adherence to timelines and budget. Committed to accelerating clinical trials through innovation, product excellence, and customer success, goBalto works with four of the top five CROs and more than two-thirds of the top 25 pharmas. Our customers include: Allergan, Covance, CMIC HOLDINGS, Genentech Roche, ICON, INC Research, Novartis, and PSI CRO. goBalto is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Philadelphia and Singapore. For more information, visit www.gobalto.com. Press contact: Craig Morgan 415.671.4372 [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industry-leader-in-study-startup-releases-updated-ebook-on-starting-clinical-trials-300547610.html SOURCE goBalto, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Rustic Pathways Wins Best Youth Tour Operator of 2017 by the Global Youth Travel Awards Rustic Pathways, the leading provider of authentic travel, service learning, and adventure programs, was awarded 2017 Best Youth Tour Operator by the Global Youth Travel Awards on September 28 in Montreal. The Global Youth Travel Awards are presented annually at the World Youth and Student Travel Conference to recognize outstanding performers in the youth, student, and educational travel industry. In addition to winning this year's award, Rustic Pathways also won Best Youth Tour Operator in 2015, and was the runner-up in 2016. "We work hard to ensure that each and every student garners a powerful, truly life-changing travel experience that helps them better understand the world and each other, while positively impacting our community partners around the world," said Rustic Pathways CEO Chris Stakich. "We're proud to lead the student travel industry." More than 11,000 students traveled with Rustic Pathways to 21 countries around the world in 2017. Rustic Pathways' culturally-immersive service and adventure programs are intentionally designed to foster key non-cognitive skill sets that help students succeed academically, professionally, and interpersonally. In 2016, Rustic Pathways introduced its Student Impact Evaluation, a comprehensive measurement tool to assess whether students experienced growth in specific skills as a result of participating in its programs. Students have been found to have experienced growth in every single Student Learning Outcome (SLO) measured, including intercultural competence, self-awareness, and a desire to positively impact the lives of others. About Rustic Pathways Education. Travel. Philanthropy. Founded in 1983, Rustic Pathways believes in the transformative power of travel and offers students more than 100 travel experiences in 21 countries. More than 11,000 students traveled with Rustic Pathways in 2017 across summer, spring break, gap year, college, and Critical Issues programs. These opportunities enabled students to give back to local communities and explore new cultures. For more information, visit www.rusticpathways.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006291/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Momentum Telecom, the leading white-label provider of Business Voice, Broadband Management and Support Services for Service Providers, was named a Calix Innovation Award recipient at this weeks Calix Connexions Innovation and User Conference. Momentum was presented the award for Excellence in Innovation Enablement, and CEO Bill Fox and Director of White Label Sales Colin Scott both attended the conference and received the award on behalf of the company. As Calix expands into new markets and assists cable operators with their transition to fiber deep architectures and their deployment of PON, working with experienced partners like Momentum Telecom is crucial to our success, said John Czeban, area vice president of MSO sales at Calix. By integrating our AXOS DPx DOCSIS Provisioning Connector with Momentums BBX Broadband Management platform, cable operators can take advantage of a solution that will both accelerate and simplify their path to FTTH and software defined access. We are excited to present Momentum Telecom with the first-ever Calix Innovation Award for Innovation Enablement and to continue our partnership as we reduce the complexity cable operators face as they seek to transform their networks. During the Calix Connexions Conference conference, Calix presented their annual Innovation Awards to those companies they believe helped drive new innovations and create better efficiencies. Momentums award for Excellence in Innovation Enablement marked the first time a Calix Innovation award has ever been presented to a partner. It is an honor to receive this award for innovation, especially from such a influential industry partner, said Momentums Bill Fox. Were proud of this award and believe it resonates in the industry as an acknowledgement of our efforts to ensure that all people and businesses have the opportunities and advantages of world-class broadband and voice regardless of where they live or the size of their customer base. Momentum and Calix have been strong collaborators since their partnership began in 2015. Together, the companies have leveraged their industry-leading solutions to equip providers with the tools and ability to provide their customers with the best quality service. For more information about Momentum Telecom or to discuss partnership opportunities, email wl@momentumtelecom.com or call 877-251-5554. Momentum Telecom is a premier provider of Business Voice, BBX Broadband Management and Unified Communications solutions. Momentums solutions offer smart, customizable cloud-based applications including voice, video and collaboration tools that enhance business productivity and efficiency for direct customers and more than 500 nationwide white label and channel partners. Momentum Telecom is committed to delivering best-in-class products backed by a geo-redundant network paired with industry-leading uptime and customer service. Headquartered in Birmingham, AL, Momentum Telecom has regional offices actively serving customers across the United States. To learn more visit momentumtelecom.com or connect with us on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, LinkedIn or visit our blog. At Momentum Telecom, our mission is to enable others to thrive by combining smarter technology with seasoned experts while delivering unmatched customer experience. Media Contact Chesley Vague chesley.vague@momentumtelecom.com 205-978-2470 [November 02, 2017] EOS imaging to Host Symposium During American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) Annual Meeting EOS imaging (Paris:EOSI) (Euronext, FR0011191766 - EOSI - Eligible PEA - SME), the pioneer of 2D/3D orthopedic medical imaging, today announced it will be presenting at Booth #726 and hosting a symposium during the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS) Annual Meeting, being held November 2 - 5 in Dallas, TX. The AAHKS Annual Meeting addresses a broad array of scientific topics such as implant design, outcomes, surgical techniques and complications of primary and revision total joint arthroplasty (TJA) for hip and knee surgeons. The meeting is expected to attract more than 2,000 attendees. The symposium, entitled "How 3D Weight-Bearing Planning from EOS Images Contributes to Improving THA Outcomes", will present the benefits of EOS for total hip arthroplasty (THA) and the Company's hipEOS 3.0 surgical planning software, which received CE Mark in October. hipEOS 3.0 is the latest generation of the surgical simulation and planning software for THA and is part of the EOSapps suite of online 3D surgical planning solutions (spineEOS, hipEOS, kneeEOS). The EOSapps are based on unbiased, weight-bearing EOS images and an accurate 2D/3D patient-specific data set that automatically selects and position implants in 3D, enabling surgeons to identify patients at risk and develops customized plans based on each person's unique anatomy. The current hipEOS release includes a simulation of the patient hip mobility based on EOS functional standing and seated exams. Marie Meynadier, Chief Exective Officer of EOS imaging, commented: "We are honored to participate in AAHKS and to present our solutions to an audience of key surgeons and industry members. Our platform combines today efficient full body, low dose biplanar imaging with online 3D EOSapps that allow physicians to simulate, plan and control the 3D surgical post-operative results. We expect that our tools will help surgeons and healthcare providers improve the quality and efficiency of hip surgeries with better anticipation of the surgical procedures and seamless integration and comparison of pre-op, planned and post-op results. In addition, our 3D personalized plans are unique tools for surgeons to engage in shared decision making with their patients to achieve consent and confidence." The symposium will be held on Friday, November 3, from 7:30 - 9:30 am CT in Grand Ballroom A at the Hilton Anatole Hotel. It will include presentations from several notable surgeons: Dr. Jonathan Vigdorchick, NYU Langone An Introduction to pelvic tilt and dynamic assessment: Why it's important in THA planning to reduce poor outcomes. Dr. Denis Nam, Rush University Medical Center Dislocation multicentric study: Which parameters matter? Dr. David Mayman, Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) How 3D weight-bearing planning anticipates implant size and accounts for patient-specific anatomy. Pr. Jean-Yves Lazennec, La Pitie-Salpetriere hipEOS 3.0: A unique 3D range of motion simulation in sitting and standing positions for optimal implant positioning. About EOS imaging EOS imaging designs, develops, and markets EOS, an innovative medical imaging service dedicated to osteo-articular pathologies and orthopaedics, as well as the associated solutions. The Company is authorized to market in 51 countries, including the United States (FDA), Japan, China and the European Union (EC). It posted revenues of 30.8 million in 2016 and employed 132 people at December 2016, including an R&D team of 43 engineers. The group is based in Paris and has five subsidiaries: in Besancon (France), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Montreal (Canada), Frankfurt (Germany) and Singapore. EOS imaging has been selected to integrate the EnterNext PEA - SME 150 index, composed of 150 French, listed companies on the Euronext markets in Paris. EOS imaging is listed on Compartment C of Euronext Paris ISIN: FR0011191766 - Ticker: EOSI View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006301/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] MotionPoint Opens Madrid Office, Extending Support for European Brands MotionPoint, a leader in technology and services for website translation, localization and optimization, today announced the opening of its European headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The new office positions the company for continued growth in the years ahead and expands its reach in Europe. Headquartered in South Florida and with offices in Madrid and London, MotionPoint enables global organizations to sidestep the expensive and time-consuming tasks historically associated with website translation. Its turn-key solution quickly translates, deploys and operates localized websites that maximize user engagement. David Nix, chief knowledge officer at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, said, "MotionPoint enables us to quickly and cost-effectively interact online with stakeholders in multiple languages. Translation is a key capability for our digital channel and supports Gavi's mission of providing access to vaccines for children in the world's poorest nations. MotionPoint's new Madrid office enures a European presence committed to helping us and other European customers reach a global and culturally diverse audience." Madrid is home to top European talent, which MotionPoint is enlisting for its expansion efforts. Most Madrid team members hold graduate degrees and are fluent in four languages. MotionPoint's Executive Vice President Craig Witt expects the company's current headcount in Madrid to continue to grow monthly throughout the next year, supporting the company's 2018 growth plans. "The European market is booming and Madrid is churning out some of the best and brightest professionals in our space," said Witt. "This is going to be a big year for MotionPoint. We're amplifying our commitment to our European customers to ensure they have the support they need." Along with its 2018 focus on European operations and new business opportunities, MotionPoint will continue to provide website translation, localization and optimization services to nearly 300 global brands across a diverse range of industries. For information about MotionPoint and its technology and service solutions, visit www.motionpoint.com. About MotionPoint MotionPoint solves the operational complexity and cost of website localization. The company's technology and turn-key solution are built to translate, deploy, and operate multilingual websites, optimizing the customer experience across channels. MotionPoint is headquartered in Coconut Creek, Fla. To learn about MotionPoint, please visit www.motionpoint.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006315/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Universal mCloud Appoints Campbell Deacon to Board of Directors Brings Extensive Canadian and International Capital Markets Experience VANCOUVER, Nov. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Universal mCloud Corp. (TSX-V: MCLD) ("mCloud" or the "Company"), a leading provider of IoT-connected, asset-care technology solutions, today announced that Campbell ("Cam") Deacon has been appointed to its Board of Directors, replacing Josh Raffaelli, effective immediately. Mr. Deacon is the former Chair of Echelon Wealth Partners. Mike Allman, Chairman of the Board stated: "We are very pleased to have Cam Deacon join us as our lead independent director and we look forward to the depth of expertise that he brings to the table for us, particularly in regard to our growth plans in China." Allman continued: "On behalf of the entire Board of Directors and management of mCloud, I would like to thank Josh for his strong contributions, and we wish him the very best in his new role with Brookfield." Mr. Deacon is the former Chair of Echelon Wealth Partners, and is currently Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director of PetroMaroc Corporation, and an Independent Director of Pool afe Inc. Mr. Deacon is a former Chairman of Azure Dynamics Corporation, founding CEO and subsequent Director of UTS Energy Corporation, founding Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Deacon Barclays De Zoete Wedd Ltd, a former Chairman of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada and former Governor of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund. Canada's technology sector is a major economic driver and will continue to grow in global importance. Mr. Deacon stated: "This is a very exciting time to be a part of the tech community in Canada, and I believe it's still early days. mCloud is a leading player in the emerging IoT space, and it is an honour to be selected to join its Board of Directors. Furthermore, with the Company placing an increasing focus on China as a major growth opportunity, I look forward to contributing my experience as the Board utilizes its best efforts to help CEO Russ McMeekin and the entire management team execute the mCloud corporate strategy and build shareholder value." About Universal-mCloud Corp. Universal mCloud Corp. ("mCloud") is headquartered in Vancouver, BC with technology and operations centers in San Francisco, CA and Bristol, PA. mCloud is an IoT connected asset care cloud solution company utilizing connected IoT devices, leading deep energy analytics, secure mobile and 3D technologies that rally all asset stakeholders around an Asset-Circle-of-Care, providing complete real-time and historical data coupled with guidance and advice based on deep analytics and diagnostics resulting in optimal performance and care of critical equipment. It's all about the asset. The powerful and secure AssetCare environment is accessible everywhere, 24/7 through standard mobile devices, ruggedized headsets, and web browsers. For more information, visit www.mCloudCorp.com. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release SOURCE Universal-mCloud Corp [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Seasoned Technology Executive Burke Norton Joins as Co-Head/Principal Vista of Perennial Investing and Greg Myers Joins Vista Equity Partners as Global Head of Investor Relations Vista is today announcing the addition of Burke Norton as Co-Head/Principal of Vista Perennial Investing and Greg Myers, Global Head of Investor Relations. As a result of its growth, Vista Equity Partners is developing the capability for perennial investments that focus on longer term horizon opportunities. Burke Norton, an industry veteran with over 25 years of experience in technology, has served as a member of the Executive Committee and as Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer and Chief of Corporate and Government Affairs at Salesforce. Previously, he was Executive Vice President, General Counsel and a member of the Office of the Chairman at Expedia (News - Alert). He was a Partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he represented technology companies in M&A and other corporate transactions. Greg Myers, has over 20 years of investor relations and fundraising experience, most recently as a Partner and Senior Managing Director at Eton Park Capital Management. Previously, Mr. Myers was with Lazard & Co. in London and New York and beganhis career at Merrill Lynch & Co. "We are delighted to welcome Burke to Vista to help co-lead our long term investing," said Robert Smith (News - Alert), Founder, Chairman & CEO of Vista. "Burke has exactly the drive, expertise and track record of execution that we are looking for as we expand our investments in mature enterprise software companies." Smith continued, "Greg is well positioned to help Vista broaden and deepen its investor base at a time when we are seeing heightened demand for investing in Vista funds. We are thrilled to have him join the firm and lead the Investor Relations team." About Vista Equity Partners Vista Equity Partners, a U.S.-based investment firm with offices in Austin, San Francisco, Chicago, and Oakland with more than $30 billion in cumulative capital commitments, currently invests in software, data and technology-enabled organizations led by world-class management teams with long-term perspectives. Vista is a value-added investor, contributing professional expertise and multi-level support towards companies' realization of their full potential. Vista's investment approach is anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions, and proven management techniques that yield flexibility and opportunity in private equity investing. For more information, please visit http://www.vistaequitypartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006385/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] ImagineX Consulting Celebrates 2 Years in Business Denver, CO, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nov. 2, 2017 ImagineX Consulting is excited to be celebrating our second year in business! After launching in November 2015, we have grown rapidly and established the company in the marketplace through our delivery success and client focus. Our two year growth stands as a testament to our team members entrepreneurial drive, passion, professionalism and expertise within the fields of DevOps and Cloud, Adaptive Agile, Cybersecurity, and Technology Consulting. Over the past two years, we have cultivated a distinguished set of best of breed software partners from Cloud to DevOps to Cybersecurity. We have served 40 clients, including 2 Fortune 50, 6 Fortune 500, 8 Fortune 1000, another 2 in the Global 500 and have delivered over 70 successful projects. As ImagineX approaches 40 employees, our delivery teams will continue to provide high-quality innovative solutions that exceed our customers expectations. In addition to our steady growth, we are also honored to have our company recognized by Consulting Magazine. In February 2017, Consulting Magazine identified ImagineX as oneof the 7 Small Jewels to Watch, which stands as a huge credit to all that we have done and are doing as a developing business. Later in the year, the same publication hailed ImagineX as one of the Best Firms to Work For 2017 with regards to company morale. These accolades prove that ImagineX is different from typical consultancies and is a company to keep an eye on for years to come. Most importantly, the ImagineX leadership team would like to thank all our consultants, our clients, and our partners for their support over the past two years. For more details about our history, culture and to hear what people are saying about our two year milestone, please visit the Were having a Birthday page located on our website. About ImagineX Consulting ImagineX Consulting is a technology consulting firm whose mission is to deliver value to clients through a unique blend of modern capabilities powered by progressive methods and old-fashioned work ethic. Our modern technology practices specialize around Software Engineering and Cloud, Adaptive Agile, Cybersecurity, and Technology Consulting. The true exponential power of our capabilities exists at the intersection of these practices. When combined with our pragmatic and adaptive methods, our seasoned technology consultants deliver unprecedented value to the Digital Enterprise on the cutting edge of today's technology frontier. ImagineX Consulting is headquartered in Denver with offices in Atlanta, Raleigh, Washington, DC and Toronto. Our ImagineX Labs are located in Toronto, Canada and Sofia, Bulgaria, and our Cybersecurity center is located in Tel Aviv, Israel. ImagineX Consulting Dave McClelland Director of Business Operations 757-470-8849 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Global A&T Electronics Ltd. Reaches Comprehensive Restructuring Agreement with All Stakeholders GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Global A&T Electronics Ltd. (the " Company ") announced today that on November 2, 2017, it entered into a Global Settlement, Forbearance, and Restructuring Support Agreement (the " RSA ") with its key stakeholders regarding the material economic terms of a consensual restructuring that will strengthen the Company's capital structure while enabling its day-to-day business operations to continue without disruption. The material terms of the proposed restructuring, which are detailed in the RSA, are supported by: (1) approximately 87% of the holders of the Company's 10% Senior Secured Notes due in 2019 issued in February 2013 (the " Initial Notes "); (2) approximately 83% of the holders of the Company's 10% Senior Secured Notes due in 2019 issued in November 2013 (the " Additional Notes "); and (3) the Company's existing equity sponsors. "We are very pleased to secure support for the agreement from more than 85% of all of our noteholders. This is the result of hard work and compromise from all parties. The agreement when implemented will reduce the company's debt principal by nearly 40% and halve our annual interest expenses. This is a very positive step for UTAC. The restructuring, which is expected to close by end of the year will significantly strengthen the Company's capital structure. The consolidation of GATE with its sister company, UMS, as part of the restructuring will also enable us to reap greater operational synergies to better serve our customers," said Dr. W. John Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Consummation of the restructuring (the implementation of which will proceed in accordance with the RSA with the Company's stakeholders) will be subject to execution of certain other definitive documentation (including a new shareholder agreement) and receipt of any necessary governmental or court approvals under applicable law, typical for this type of financial restructuring. During the implementation of the restructuring transaction, there will be no impact on the Company's operations or its ability to fulfill customer, supplier, employee, and other contractual operations. The proposed restructuring's material economic terms contemplate the following: On the effective date, the Company's equityowner, UTAC Holdings Ltd. (" UTAC "), will contribute UTAC Manufacturing Services Pte. Ltd. ("UMS") to the reorganized Company or otherwise cause that entity to guarantee the New Secured Notes (as defined below). "), will contribute UTAC Manufacturing Services Pte. Ltd. ("UMS") to the reorganized Company or otherwise cause that entity to guarantee the New Secured Notes (as defined below). The holders of the Initial Notes will receive approximately $540 illion of the principal amount of the first lien senior secured notes issued by the Company (the " New Secured Notes "). The notes will bear interest at 8.5% per year, have a 5-year tenor, and start accruing interest as of January 1, 2018 (unless the transaction closes earlier, in which case the notes will accrue interest as of closing). of the principal amount of the first lien senior secured notes issued by the Company (the " "). The notes will bear interest at 8.5% per year, have a 5-year tenor, and start accruing interest as of (unless the transaction closes earlier, in which case the notes will accrue interest as of closing). In addition, the holders of the Initial Notes represented by Lowenstein Sandler LLP in litigation pending before the Supreme Court of the State of New York (the " 2014 N.Y. Action ") as of September 10, 2017 , will receive approximately $15 million of additional New Secured Notes and approximately $5 million in cash. (the " ") as of , will receive approximately of additional New Secured Notes and approximately in cash. Further, the other holders of the Initial Notes will receive approximately $5 million of additional New Secured Notes and approximately $5 million in cash. of additional New Secured Notes and approximately in cash. Holders of the Additional Notes will receive in the aggregate approximately $110 million in New Secured Notes and 31% of the common equity of UTAC, which equity interests will be subject to dilution by UTAC's management equity incentive plan. Of that approximately $110 million of New Secured Notes, a holder of Additional Notes that is an affiliate of one of the Company's equity sponsors (the " Affiliate Noteholder ") has agreed that the Company will distribute $5 million of the New Secured Notes that would otherwise be distributed on the effective date to the Affiliate Noteholder to the other holders of Initial Notes as set forth above. In addition, the unaffiliated holders of Additional Notes, in their capacity as shareholders of UTAC, will receive certain minority shareholder protections. in New Secured Notes and 31% of the common equity of UTAC, which equity interests will be subject to dilution by UTAC's management equity incentive plan. Of that approximately of New Secured Notes, a holder of Additional Notes that is an affiliate of one of the Company's equity sponsors (the " ") has agreed that the Company will distribute of the New Secured Notes that would otherwise be distributed on the effective date to the Affiliate Noteholder to the other holders of Initial Notes as set forth above. In addition, the unaffiliated holders of Additional Notes, in their capacity as shareholders of UTAC, will receive certain minority shareholder protections. The consummation of the restructuring, including the contribution of the UMS business, will be subject to dismissal with prejudice of the 2014 N.Y. Action, the 2017 action commenced by certain Initial Noteholders, and all related lawsuits by all other holders of Initial Notes and approval of releases of, and an injunction with respect to, any and all claims and causes of action asserted by all third parties against GATE and its equity sponsors and each of their respective affiliates, whether in connection with the foregoing or otherwise. Consummation of the restructuring will permit the Company to reduce its approximately $1.12 billion funded debt to a total of $665 million and reduce its annual debt service by nearly half, to approximately $56.5 million. The RSA requires the Company to solicit votes from all holders of Initial Notes and Additional Notes in the near future, and to thereafter implement the restructuring through an expedited, prepackaged debt reorganization proceeding in the Southern District of New York. Prior to the date hereof, the Company executed confidentiality agreements with certain holders of the Notes to facilitate discussions with those parties regarding the terms of a restructuring plan to address the Company's capital structure. Pursuant to those confidentiality agreements, the Company agreed to disclose publicly after the expiration of a period set forth in the confidentiality agreements a description of the discussions or negotiations that have taken place between the Company and the Noteholders party thereto concerning a restructuring of the Company, as well as certain confidential information concerning the Company that the Company has provided to the Noteholders. The information included as an exhibit to this press release and certain information posted on the Company's investor website referenced herein is being furnished to satisfy the Company's public disclosure obligations under the confidentiality agreements. The Company is represented by Kirkland & Ellis as legal counsel, Moelis & Company as investment banker, and Alvarez & Marsal as financial advisor. An ad hoc group of consenting initial noteholders is represented by Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, LLP as legal counsel and PJT Partners as investment banker. A second ad hoc group of consenting initial noteholders is represented by Dechert LLP as legal counsel. An ad hoc group of additional noteholders is represented by Ropes & Gray LLP as legal counsel and Houlihan Lokey as financial adviser. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-at-electronics-ltd-reaches-comprehensive-restructuring-agreement-with-all-stakeholders-300548851.html SOURCE Global A&T Electronics Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 02, 2017] Prominent Construction Lawyers Andrew J. Natale and Aaron S. Evenchik Join Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP is proud to announce that nationally recognized construction attorneys Andrew J. Natale and Aaron S. Evenchik have joined the firm's Construction Team effective November 1, 2017. Both Natale and Evenchik's practices are devoted to construction and real estate law. They represent general contractors, design/builders, subcontractors, developers, owners, specialty trades, suppliers, manufacturers, lenders and design professionals in all aspects of construction law. Natale has achieved the highest ranking - Band 1 - in Construction Law in Ohio by Chambers USA and has been named the 2017 Best Lawyers "Lawyer of the Year" in Construction in Cleveland. Natale has served as the Chair of Frantz Ward LLP's Construction Practice Group and was a Founding Partner of that firm. Evenchik also joins Hahn Loeser from Frantz Ward, where he focused his practice on construction and real estate law focusing both on transactional law and litigation. Evenchik was named as a Rising Star by Ohio Super Lawyers (2013 - 2016). Rob Remington, Co-Chair of Hahn Loeser's Litigation Practice and Chair of Hahn Loeser's Construction Law practice, stated "We couldn't be more pleased to welcome Andy and Aaron to our construction team. They are first-rate attorneys with extensive experience in the industry and have built a national reputation for their work with construction clients. As we continue to grow our Construction practice, Andy and Aaron offer us significant additional depth." Hahn Loeser's highly respected Construction Law Practice is currently comprised of more than 20 experienced attorneys who provide counsel in nearly every area of law impacting the construction law industry. Natale received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law in 1989 and his B.A. from the University of Dayton in 1986. He is a member of the American Arbitration Association's Forum on Construction Industry-Panel Member; a member of the Construction Employer's Association; a member of the Ohio Contractors Association; and a member of the Surety Association of Ohio. Evenchik received his J.D. from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in 2001 and his B.S. from The Ohio State University in Civil Engineering in 1998. Evenchik is Chairman of the Developers Council of the Home Builders Association of Greater Cleveland. About Hahn Loeser Hahn Loeser provides the full spectrum of legal services in one firm. With six offices and more than 100 attorneys, we represent Fortune 500 corporations, privately-held businesses, non-profit institutions, governmental entities and individuals across the country and around the world. Our attorneys have been recognized for their commitment to client service and their dedication to providing our clients with strategic solutions that help them attain their business objectives and achieve results. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006739/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Wireless Telecom Group Announces Third Quarter 2017 Financial Results Will Be Released November 9, 2017 Wireless Telecom Group, Inc. (NYSE American:WTT), a leader in wireless communications and RF instrumentation, announced today it will release its third quarter 2017 financial results on Thursday, November 9th, 2017, after the market closes. The Company will host a conference call on Thursday November 9th, 2017 at 5:00 pm EST in which management will discuss third quarter results. To participate in the conference call, dial 800-346-7359 or 973-528-0008. The conference identification number is 290947. The call will also be webcast over the internet at the following URL: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcas/Page/1690/23342 A replay will be made available on the Wireless Telecom website for a limited period of time following the conference call. Wireless Telecom Group, Inc., comprised of Boonton Electronics, CommAgility, Microlab and Noisecom, is a global designer and manufacturer of advanced RF and microwave components, modules, systems and instruments. Serving the wireless, telecommunication, satellite, military, aerospace, semiconductor and medical industries, Wireless Telecom Group products enable innovation across a wide range of traditional and emerging wireless technologies. With a unique set of high-performance products including peak power meters, signal analyzers, signal processing modules, LTE (News - Alert) PHY and stack software, power splitters and combiners, GPS repeaters, public safety monitors, noise sources, and programmable noise generators, Wireless Telecom Group supports the development, testing, and deployment of wireless technologies around the globe. Wireless Telecom Group is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, in the New York City metropolitan area, and maintains a global network of Sales and Service offices for excellent product service and support. Wireless Telecom Group's website address is http://www.wtcom.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006824/en/ NEW YORK, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Milost Global Inc, an American Private Equity firm that is headquartered in New York, is pleased to announce the successful formation of Isilo Capital Partners (Pty) Ltd (ICP) in South Africa and the appointment of Tiny Diswai as the Chief Executive Officer. ICP is a fund management company that is owned and managed by Milost Global Inc. ICP will act as a fund manager to Isilo Fund 1. Milost is also pleased to announce that Isilo Fund 1 will seek to raise a total of $5 billion. The Fund will strictly invest in Africa with ticket sizes from $1 million to $10 million per transaction. ICP will begin its fundraising from November 20, 2017. The Fund seeks to raise 30% of the capital in Africa, 30% in Europe, 30% in Asia and 10% in UAE. Milost is also pleased to announce the appointment of Tiny Diswai as the Chief Executive Officer of ICP. Tiny is a Co-chairwoman of Milost Global Africa (Pty) Ltd, she holds a bachelor of commerce degree and a Masters degree in business Administration. She is a certified Public Private Partnerships Specialist. Ms Diswai has well-rounded experience in the business world ranging from financial management, project implementation and management, procurement, internal audit, general management, lease financing, corporate finance, deal structuring and marketing. She has advised various Government ministries in implementing their privatisation and outsourcing initiatives as well as monitoring the performance of state owned enterprises and advising on corporate governance issues. Ms Diswai has previously been Business Services Manager for Debswana Orapa and Letlhakane Mines and was responsible for the management and implementation of the Debswana Orapa Privatization and Outsourcing Project. She was responsible for identifying non-core operations that could be outsourced and managed the resultant outsourcing process from development of the business plan to final implementation, paying due regard at all times to the companys obligations and privileges (legal, contractual and otherwise). She Coordinated the operational activities of the business services section (which includes catering, guest accommodation, cleaning services, recreational clubs, aircraft and logistics services, retail services, mine secretariat and administration) by determining and managing the key performance areas. She has served as the Country Business Manager for IDM Botswana and was responsible for the overall management of the Botswana Campus as well as its strategic implementation. She led the team that ensured that IDM Botswana became ISO 90001 certified. She was the key liaison between IDM and the government of Botswana as a shareholder. She was responsible for the marketing of the institutions products and services and its overall running. Tiny was involved in the implementation of the Kingdom Group of companies. Was part of the team that co-ordinated the application and subsequent granting of a merchant banking license for Kingdom Bank Africa Limited. She later set up Kingdom Finance, a subsidiary of Kingdom Bank Africa Limited. She was the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) project coordinator and in that capacity she pioneered the feasibility study for the establishment of the centre, the drafting and promulgation of the enabling legislation, the establishment of the centre and the marketing and certification of the first eleven companies to be certified under the IFSC fiscal regime. She was involved in the divestment of a number of BDC investments such as Stockbrokers Botswana, Francistown Milling, Botswana Tyre Corporation and Bothakga. She was also involved in the facilitation of the structuring, placement, issuance and listing of the BDC Bond (The first ever-corporate bond to be issued and listed in the Botswana money and capital markets) as well as the BDC investment in Investec Bank, Metropolitan Life and BECI. She has procurement experience gained while managing the Tenders and Contracts Unit of Botswana Railways and has worked for the government Central Tender Board as well. She has exposure to internal audit work gained while working for the Ministry of Finance and Development Plannings Internal Audit Department. Egerton Forster, Co-founder & Chairman of Milost Global Inc, stated, Milost is excited to create ISILO Fund 1 that will have a seismic impact on the African economy. Its significant to note the incredible opportunity our fund will afford many underserved countries in Africa to help combat inequalities in wealth. Our goal, at Milost, is to be a sufficient resource, not just a source. Global progress, without equity, is global injustice. The definition of Milost is mercy, and our objective is to use Fund 1 to enhance the quality of life for those who have been overlooked. Tiny Diswai, the CEO of Isilo Capital Partners (Pty) Ltd, also stated, We are excited by this new fund. We believe that this fund will assist in growing and plucking the funding gap in Africa. Africa is vibrant and there are a lot of growth opportunities that need funding such as the Isilo Fund will provide. Wr will be sharing our investment strategy and exploring these growth opportunities. We will be offering through Isilo Capital Partners (ICP) creative financing and value creation through our mezzanine financing alternatives to a number if industries across Africa. Mandla J. Gwadiso, Managing Partner & CEO of Milost Global Inc, had this to say, I have known Tiny for ten years now and worked with her for at least three of those. She is of the many black women in Africa that have had to battle with gender disparities in the Board and elsewhere and yet came out wiser and stronger. I am excited to for the opportunity to work with her again. Isilo Fund 1 will open doors for all African businesses that have a compelling story, our goal at Milost is to leave no one out, but to fund businesses that will help to help communities by creating solutions to persisting problems and equal distribution of opportunities and wealth. About Isilo Capital partners (Pty) Ltd ICP is a South African based Private Equity Firm whose focus is entirely on the African market. ICP seeks to invest in smaller sized companies across Africa, with a minimum investment of $1 million and cap of $10 million. About Milost Global Inc Milost Global Inc is an American Private Equity firm that is headquartered in New York City, with more than $25 billion in committed capital. Milost is at the intersection of creative investing and value creation. Milost is also a provider of alternative capital, mezzanine finance, and alternative lending to a broad range of industries across the globe including Technology, Transport, Cannabis, Education, Distribution, Mining, Oil & Gas, Financial Services, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Real Estate, Alternative Energy and Infrastructure Development. www.milostglobal.com Milost Global Inc info@milostglobal.com www.milostglobal.com +1 212 918 4792 t +1 212 225 8246 f 48 Wall St., 11th Floor New York, NY 10005, USA 404 - Page Not Found Sorry, this page was not found. Try visiting our homepage or using the search function in our menu. New York, NY, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- At a black-tie Gala wrapping up its annual Conference and Business Opportunity Exchange, held this year in Detroit, October 23-25, the National Minority Supplier Development Council gave out honors to member corporations and minority business enterprises (MBEs) for their contributions to NMSDCs goals in advancing business opportunities for minority-owned companies of all sizes. Honored as well were ChicagoMSDC, named Regional Council of the Year. Louis Green, NMSDCs interim president, congratulated the honorees, saying, We are pleased and proud to recognize the leaders among our corporate members, and the individuals who work to advance minority supplier diversity and development; and to recognize, too, the outstanding minority business enterprises in our network for their business growth and development, operational success, support of other minority businesses and active participation in the community. Recipients of the NMSDC Corporation of the Year Award were Ford Motor Corporation, AT&T and Toyota, recognizing their world-class leadership in categories including: Policies (supplier diversity is a guiding principle within the corporation); Leadership and Engagement; Procurement (showing increases year-over-year); MBE Development (providing development and contracts to MBEs); International Programs (providing global opportunities for MBEs); and Influence (demonstrating leadership in supplier diversity to other corporations). Other corporations receiving honors for their achievements in minority supplier development included: In the Gazelle category, recognizing rapid growth, there were 5 companies that had growth rates at a pace of 30% or greater, with an aggregate spend of more than $7 billion with MBEs. These companies are Comcast NBCUniversal, CVS Health, Intel Corporation, Nissan and Wells Fargo. In the Development category, recognizing development programs with particular emphasis on professional services and non-traditional categories, are Kaiser Permanente and General Motors. In the Financial category are corporations that have demonstrated a corporate initiative to provide access to capital solutions and unique financial arrangements to minority suppliers to facilitate their business growth and to the expansion of job creation and job retention. Bank of America is honored this year. The Global Link category recognizes corporations that have a robust global supplier diversity and development program. This years awardees are IBM and Ernst & Young. For the Innovation category, NMSDC recognizes a new corporate method, initiative, or process to accelerate and positively impact minority supplier development with particular emphasis on professional services and non-traditional categories. Honorees this year are Procter & Gamble and Apple. These 12 corporations all demonstrated remarkable leadership in supplier diversity, with a combined $35 billion in spend opportunities, shared by more than 3,000 diverse suppliers, spread across 10 industries. ChicagoMSDCs award recognizes an exemplary affiliate council that demonstrates the programs, activities and accomplishments which establish it as a model of organization, operation and success. In accepting, ChicagoMSDCs president Sheila Morgan said, The Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council is honored to receive this award. It is truly a cooperative effort between our Board of Directors, Corporate Members and MBEs. They continually help us deliver innovative and high quality programs designed to build capacity and increase business opportunities for our MBEs. NMSDCs Conference is the nations premier forum on minority supplier development. More than 6,000 corporate CEOs, procurement executives and supplier diversity professionals from the top multinational companies and international organizations, as well as leading Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American business owners, gathered to re-energize their collective efforts to develop and advocate for more vigorous participation by minority-owned firms in global corporate supply chains. For the host city, Detroit, the economic impact generated by the Conference is considerable: $7.5 million total, including an estimate of more than $1 million in state and local taxes and 1,400+ jobs supported. About NMSDC The National Minority Supplier Development Council advances business opportunities for certified minority business enterprises and connects them to corporate members. One of the country's leading corporate membership organizations, NMSDC was chartered in 1972 to provide increased procurement and business opportunities for minority businesses of all sizes. The NMSDC Network includes a National Office in New York and 23 affiliate regional councils across the country. The network also includes five international partner organizations located in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China and South Africa. To meet the growing need for supplier diversity, NMSDC matches its more than 12,000 certified minority-owned businesses to our network of more than 1,750 corporate members who wish to purchase their products, services and solutions. NMSDC, a unique and specialized player in the field of minority business enterprise, is proud of its unwavering commitment to advance Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American suppliers in a globalized corporate supply chain. For more information, visit www.NMSDC.org. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5eb748ec-f560-4d2c-bbba-035d35d33725 Last month, Sony released a new Core bundle of the PlayStation VR headset, which includes a copy of Gran Turismo Sport in the box. The GT Sport PSVR bundle package arrived in Europe on October 18, but Sony neglected to mention a U.S. release date. We didnt think the GT Sport bundle would make its way to U.S. shores, but Sony today revealed that the new kit is coming within days. The GT Sport PSVR bundle is a great deal for anyone looking for a PSVR headset. The package includes everything that you get with the Core bundle, including the PSVR HMD, the extended cable, and the processor box. It also includes a PlayStation 4 Camera, which Sony added to the Core bundle package in August. And you get a copy of Gran Turismo Sport at no extra charge. The new PSVR bundle also includes an updated demo disc with 13 titles to try before you buy. It should be noted that the GT Sport bundle doesnt include the updated PSVR processor box from the upcoming PSVR revision; the headset that comes with the GT Sport bundle is still the original CUH-ZVR1 model. The upcoming revision features CUH-ZVR2, which is compatible with the revised processor box. Unless you have a 4K TV with HDR support, the revised processor box is not necessary. Sony didnt announce the precise release date for the GT Sport PSVR bundle, though it said the kit would land within the next few days and it would be available for $399. The bundle is also coming to Canada for $499 CAD. Bundle Contains:VR Headset (CUH-ZVR1)VR headset connection cableProcessor unitPlayStation Camera (CUH-ZEY2)Stereo headphones (with earpieces)HDMI cableUSB cableAC adaptorAC power cordVR demo disc (rated E-M)Gran Turismo Sport Blu-Ray DiscLens cleaning clothPrinted materials Westside Low Rent Gentrification $3.5M HEDC project bringing coworking, kitchens, culture to Westside A new Center for Urban Enterprise project is expected to help limit risk for Kansas City's low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs, Michael Carmona said. "We're looking at ways they can start and grow sustainable businesses with the little income they have as far as startup capital," said Carmona, director of community and business development for the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation. Kansas City Illegal Housing Hunt Self-storage business owners on alert for people living in units KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A metro man faces charges after allegedly living in a storage unit with his two children. It brings attention to a familiar problem for those who own storage unit businesses in the metro. Doug Esser owns Smithville Self Storage located at 14506 N. 169 Highway in Smithville, Missouri. Po'Folk Rage Over Family Drama Man found living in Lenexa storage unit removed from court after outburst A man found living in a Lenexa storage unit with his children and a cooler filled with human remains was removed from court Thursday after an outburst. Justin Rey, 35, who is charged with child endangerment, argued with the judge, saying his rights were being violated. Kansas City Obamacare Shout Out Samuel U. Rodgers Center ready to help as Health Care Marketplace opens By Melissa Wharton Northeast News Whether you're already insured or not, it may be time to visit the Health Insurance Marketplace to look at their coverage options. The condensed open enrollment for 2018 is open from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15. Happy Rock Road Rage Aftermath Man once suspected in violent Gladstone murder dies in violent car crash Monday in Kansas City that killed another man KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- One of the two men killed in a perplexing car crash Monday on Independence Avenue, was once suspected and tried for the 2012 murder of an AT&T worker. Bryan Middlemas, 40, was driving a gold Honda that crossed the center line and crashed head-on into a black Ford F150 driven by Perry Green, 56, killing him instantly as well. Today's Local Coolness Debate Kansas City Designated A 'Music City' By UNESCO Kansas City is among more than 60 cities around the world that earned "Creative City" distinction from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on October 31. Along with cities in Cabo Verde, Chile, Czechia, India, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Sweden, Kansas City was recognized as a music city. Kansas City Ailing Artist Crowdfunding Apocalypse Meow X: Brandon Phillips shares the story of his condition Back in 2008, the first Apocalypse Meow raised funds for musician Abigail Henderson's treatment, after she was diagnosed with Stage 3 inflammatory breast cancer. The event fetched nearly $20,000; in the spirit of giving back to the community, Henderson started the Midwest Music Foundation to, as she said at the time, "provide musicians with healthcare assistance." Right now we offer old school glamour to tribute toand a bunch of Kansas City MSM links for right now . . .And this is thefor right now . . . As the race for the Unified Government's top job draws to a close, the two candidates for mayor/CEO are drawing distinctions between themselves and their proposed policies. Mark Holland was elected mayor in 2013 and says his re-election would maintain the momentum that his administration has built in Wyandotte County, especially when it comes to job increases, low unemployment and growing household incomes. ONCE AGAIN THE MAYOR'S QUESTIONABLE FASHION CHOICES ARE HIGHLIGHTED BY KANSAS CITY SKEPTICS!!! Kansas City Conservatives and tax fighters are celebratingBut more importantly . . .The video features the Mayor wearing one of his most unfortunate ensemble and kinda makes it seem like the guy asking for the biggest public works project in KC history is doing so whilst adorned in a clown suit.You decide . . . Full statement from Hillary Shields: "Missourians deserve better than anonymously funded commercials filled with false accusations. Our campaign is calling on Mike Cierpiot to denounce this ad and its slanderous content. Republican mega-donors want to distract voters from the real issues facing our state. What really matters, and what I will be focused on every day in the Senate, is whether our government is working for regular families. Can our seniors afford their prescriptions? Do our kids have great public schools? Can hardworking families make ends meet? These are the issues that this campaign should be focused on." Whilst it might not be politically correct, we use the term " pixie " not only becausebut also as one of affection for this feisty political contender and to highlight the difference betwixt her youthful, energetic campaign and the crusty old-school dude opposition that kinda represents some of the most backward politics Missouri has to offer.Take a peek . . .#######You decide . . . Talking Northeast Anti-Crime Tactics Kemper Rehab Team Legal Fight Legal embers flare after St. Joseph fire lawsuit targeted Kemper Arena developer A lawsuit over a burned-out building in St. Joseph has inflicted "reputational harm" to Kansas City-based Foutch Brothers LLC, says a claim by the developer behind Kemper Arena's amateur-sports makeover. In a federal court filing Tuesday, Foutch Brothers claimed the damage to its reputation was intentional and part of an insurance company's efforts to "coerce" acceptance of a low-ball insurance payout on the historic brick structure. Tenuous NYC Connection Platte Co. prosecutor says he was surprised to learn NYC terror suspect was stopped in Platte County PLATTE CITY, Mo. -- Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd held a news conference regarding New York City terror attack suspect Sayfullo Saipov on Wednesday. "It certainly comes as a surprise, when just yesterday, I was watching the horrible acts in New York City unfold, and then, I learned later in the day that we had in fact, prosecuted this man for obviously a minor traffic violation," Zahnd said. Kansas Movie Moment With Local Shorts, Area Filmmakers Have A Moment At The Kansas International Film Festival Kansas Citians who know Bev Chapman from her days as a reporter at KMBC TV are likely to be impressed with her 14-minute documentary film "Soaring Back: Message to the Future." With spectacular footage, it chronicles Kansans' successful efforts to revitalize the area's population of bald eagles. All Things Alford This Holiday Season Fox 4's Mark Alford to emcee mayor's tree lighting, Santa's arrival in Lee's Summit LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. - When Santa arrives in Lee's Summit this month, Fox 4's Mark Alford will be there to welcome him. The morning anchor will be the master of ceremonies when Santa makes his debut for the annual Mayor's Tree Lighting on Nov. 17 in Lee's Summit. Right now we celebrate hottiealong with all of these Kansas City MSM news links served up for tonight. Take a peek:And this is thefor right now . . . This will be mailed to 50,000 plus homes today and tomorrow . . ." Here's an EXCLUSIVE close-up view of the SCATHING mailer COUNTERSTRIKE in digital form. Special thanks to our blog community and denizens of the local discourse . . .After launching a new website and staring in, local tax fighters are now attempting to offer a bit of balance in the mailboxes of local voters . . .It should be a nice break from Question #1 cheerleaders deforesting the Pacific Northwest over the past few weeks with their junk mail.You decide . . . Racist comments written all over car, near KSU campus MANHATTAN, Kan. - The Black Student Union at Kansas State University will be holding an emergency meeting on how to stop racism on campus Wednesday evening. This is following an incident Riley County Police are investigating that could be considered a hate crime. Tagging on near campus has K-State this Kansas college town in a tizzy as another debate about fakery or real life hateration emerges. Take a look: Washington, DC, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In response to the House Ways and Means Committees Tax Reform proposal, U.S. Conference of Mayors President and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued the following statement: The nations mayors strongly oppose the House Republican tax proposal, released today, that fails to preserve the full deductibility of State and Local taxes, commonly known as SALT. More than forty-three million American families use the SALT deduction, representing over 100 million Americans. Any elimination or cap on SALT - especially one that is designed to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy - is simply unacceptable and would put an even greater burden on our hard- working American families and the communities they live in. The proposal repeals the deductibility of state income taxes and sales taxes, while capping the deductibility of property taxes at $10,000. This is an arbitrary proposal that is bad public policy and still subjects millions of struggling middle class Americans to double taxation. Further, this type of overreach and federal intrusion into state and local tax policy--the kind that favors one tax approach over another-- disrespects the sovereignty of states and localities and over-complicates state and local tax policy. State and local taxes fund a large portion of local school district budgets across the country, in addition to public health programs to the poor, such as Medicaid, and essential public services. To subject these state and local taxes to an additional federal tax makes no sense and makes a mockery of our federal system. Since 1913 the federal government has made it a principle to keep these two taxing systems separate. It is ironic that for years many of the same members of Congress who have touted the return of authority to State and local government, would now do the opposite. By taxing our ability to pay for the majority of basic public services Americans receive, they undermine the government closest to the people--all in the name of reform that our children will pay for well into the future. We call on the Congress to preserve the full deductibility of State and local taxes to protect the middle class in cities and counties across America. ### The U.S. Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are nearly 1,400 such cities in the country today, and each city is represented in the Conference by its chief elected official, the mayor. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/usmayors, or follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/usmayors Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6bff21ab-6b13-4ea2-b834-1332e867a4ff The proposed East Med project, officially known as the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline, is considered an extremely challenging endeavor in terms of construction and technological specifications The prospect of securing EU funding and a "better understanding" between Cyprus and Turkey are evaluated as significant factors for achieving the construction of the East Med natural gas pipeline, which would link deposits exploited in the east Mediterranean with west European markets. Israeli analysts well versed with the Netanyahu government's energy policy directly referred to these two factors in comments to "Naftemporiki" last month, while adding that the proven energy reserves comprise a valuable took in exercising policy in the wider region. The proposed East Med project, officially known as the Eastern Mediterranean Pipeline, is considered an extremely challenging endeavor in terms of construction and technological specifications. As previously reported, the plan is to connect the Leviathan deposit in Israeli waters via an underwater pipeline that first reaches Cyprus. The pipeline would then extend from Cyprus to Crete, then on through the Greek mainland - from south to north - before again taking an underwater route towards westwards towards the Italian coast across the Adriatic. Based on initial data, such a pipeline would have annual capacity of 10 billion cubic meters, with the possibility of reaching 16 billion cubic meters. The biggest part of the planned pipeline, extending over 1,900 kilometers, would be underwater and up to a depth of three kilometers. If built, the pipeline would be the deepest in the world. However, high-ranking political sources in Israel told "N" that this project cannot proceed without EU funding, as well as an improvement in the complex and highly problematic relationship between the Republic of Cyprus and Turkey. That "relationship", in fact, doesn't even exist on an official bilateral basis, given that Turkey doesn't recognize the Republic of Cyprus, instead recognizing a Turkish Cypriot pseudo-state that it props up in the 37 percent of the island republic that Ankara illegally occupies with its military. Even though another pipeline connecting the Israeli deposits with mainland Turkey is on the "drawing board", prickly relations between Israel and Turkey's Erdogan-dominated governments over recent years render this prospect as remote. One primary advantage entailed in an east Mediterranean pipeline reaching western Europe - and one that bypasses Turkey - is that this project would enhance Europe's diversification in terms of natural gas supplies, a standing Commission goal. Conversely, other top Israeli energy analysts and executives expressed fears over the high price tag for such a project, and warned that it is also not a priority for the Union. An alternate and more realistic scenario, proponents of this reasoning argue, is for Israel to build its own LNG facilities on its own territory, and possibly another facility on government-controlled Cyprus (Vassilikos site). That would entail exporting liquefied natural gas via tankers to other markets. Read more here. RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report Source: naftemporiki.gr More and more foreign buyers are interested in property across Greece, with the countrys real estate market growing after seven years of stagnation. Real estate experts are witnessing signs of recovery due to the golden visa program, which grants a five-year residence permit renewable for third country nationals who purchase individually or through a legal entity property in Greece valued at a minimum of 250,000 euros, or who have taken out a minimum 10-year lease in hotel accommodation or tourism facilities. The Greek real estate market is now showing signs of stability, with its recovery being more visible. There is growing demand in the sale and purchase as well as in the rental of property, Stelios Samoladas, CEO RE/MAX Greece told Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini. The market is on an upward trend confirmed by Hellenic Statistical Service data of a 25.8 percent rise in the number of sales and purchases in 2015 compared to 2014, he continued. Meanwhile, elite Russians, Chinese and Turkish nationals are mostly taking advantage of the golden visa scheme, with interest focused on popular tourist destinations or city centers, while buyers overall are also interested in small affordable apartments in older buildings. Prospective buyers as well as tenants are interested in residential properties that are affordable and small (1-2 bedroom apartments), about 20 years old in good shape. Nevertheless, there is now also interest in commercial real estate for both offices and stores, added Samoladas. 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: Lemur12 License: CC-BY-SA Source: greekcitytimes.com Bridges bring people and cultures together. The stone bridges of Greece are mostly built in rugged landscapes and stand as architectural masterpieces of superb craftsmanship. They are associated with legends, with local traditions and sometimes even with tragic stories. The rocky paths of Epirus take us past some well-hidden historic stone bridges. To find them, you may need to swim in large rivers, walk along riverbanks or just follow city roads. At times, sheep and goats will lead the way; at others signposts or downhill trails will point you in the right destination! If you are looking for adventure, put on your hiking boots and pack your gear. The journey starts at dawn! But if you are a city-lover and interested in traditional architecture, just follow us! Ioannina Kayak down the Arahthos gorge and pass under the impressive multi-arch Papastathis bridge, or join a rafting party to see the biggest single arch bridge in Greece, in a village near the city of Ioannina. When you are in the town of Ioannina, why not enjoy a long afternoon promenade around Lake Pamvotida? Visit the citys fortress Kastro and wander around the Its-Kale Acropolis to find the Fetihe Mosque built by Ali Pasha during the Turkish occupation. Tour the Archaeological and the Epirus Folklore Art Museums, or visit art exhibitions in the citys galleries. Savour a delicious meal at exquisite dining spots near the lake. Find gifts of fine antique jewelry in the old town, where centuries-old houses and jewelry shops create a unique cityscape. If you are interested in old monasteries or exceptional traditional cuisine, take a small boat and visit the isle of Ioannina, in the northeastern part of the citys lake. Zagorochoria Hike along the Wine Roads of Northern Greece in the mountain village of Zitsa, a place praised by Lord Byron in his famous poem Childe Harold. Theogefiro, a natural stone bridge, is the areas most striking wonder. Tour around the Zagorochoria villages using the bridges as your signposts. Hit the trails that connect the villages Papigo and Mikro Papigo through the Vikos-Aoos National Forest, and have an invigorating swim in the two natural forest lakes. Follow the mountain trails to Kipoi, an ideal mountain tourism destination: cross its two rivers (Vikakis and Baniotikos) using the Kalogeriko (or Plakidas), a three arch bridge with a serpentine deck. Trekking through the Aspraggeli, Dikoryfo, Manassis and Kaloutas villages, you will find the Kaloutas bridge, which used to join the village to the Vissikou Monastery (dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary). Kaloutas In the heart of Vovousa settlement, in eastern Zagori, a single arch stone bridge spans the Aoos river. The village is an ideal destination for bird watching, or other voluntary activities as it is located near the National Park of Valia Kalda, a protected forest populated with rare species of flora and fauna. Arta The city of Arta is located on the banks of the River Arahthos, and its name is associated with a historic bridge. According to an old legend, the chief craftsman had to sacrifice his wife in order to construct this bridge, since otherwise it would collapse every night. The bridge is 145m long and has 12 arches, one for each Apostle. Peer into the past at the citys archaeological sites, which include sections of the ancient walls of Amvrakia, a Byzantine Castle, an open-air municipal theatre and the Faik Pasha Mosque. Visit the citys museums, old churches and monasteries or go on a day-trip to nearby destinations, such as the villages of Vlaherna, or Peta to taste the local tsipouro and traditional cuisine. In the village of Voulyareli, a fairy is waiting for you as she bathes under her bridge, the Neraida (fairy) bridge. Thesprotia Final destination: the prefecture of Thesprotia and the village of Plakoti. Go canyoning at Stena canyon, near the River Kalamas. The river was bridged with a 40m multi-arch bridge, but only one of its side arches still stands on the left bank of the river, while there is a now dilapidated edge pier on the opposite bank. Finally, if youd like to set out on a hiking expedition, discover the ruins of the city Osdina, near the village of Pente Ekklisies (Five Churches), which dates back to late Byzantine times, or visit some old monasteries such as the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour (Metamorfosis tou Sotiros), and the Panagion Monastery, dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. 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: Thiodor2012 License: CC-BY-SA Source: visitgreece.gr Data on Greek Hospitality Industry Performance during Q3 2017 indicate that up to September 2017 arrivals increased by 4.9% y-o-y International arrivals of non-residents at the Athens International Airport increased significantly during August and September compared to the same months last year, according to GBR Hospitality Quarterly Newsletter. Data on Greek Hospitality Industry Performance during Q3 2017 also indicate that up to September 2017 arrivals increased by 4.9% y-o-y. Traffic from all main source markets of the airport increased, but a group of 6 countries Israel, Lebanon, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey and Russia - recorded increases YTD August of up to 97% compared to the same period last year. Because of the increased demand for Athens, performance of the Athenian hotel sector further improved with an increase of RevPAR of 8.5% y-o-y up to September 2017. The airport of Thessaloniki received 11.6% more passengers during Q3 2017 compared to same quarter last year, leading to an YTD September 2017 increase of 14.8% y-o-y. The Thessaloniki hotel sector benefited and improved both occupancy levels and room rates. During Q3 2017 RevPAR increased 15.8% y-o-y, while up to September 2017 an increase of 11% y-o-y was recorded. Except for Karpathos, all other airports at main resort locations increased the number of international arrivals during Q3 2017. During the first three quarters of 2017 international arrivals at the main airports of the Dodecanese increased 7.2% y-o-y (mainly due to Kos), Crete 7.2% y-o-y, Ionian Islands 9.6% y-o-y and the Cyclades (airports of Santorini and Mykonos) 10% y-o-y. The Total Revenue per Available Room of the resort hotels in Greece improved by 10.1% y-o-y during Q3 2017, leading to a YTD Q3 2017 performance of 7.6% y-o-y. Performance of Southern Europe overall remains robust. Rome showed a decline of RevPAR during Q3 2017, but that was because the European Society of Cardiology congress was hosted last year during August, while the event was held in Barcelona this year. Madrid has improved its RevPAR by 19.1% y-o-y up to September 2017, while also Cairo continues its upward trend both in terms of occupancy and ADR levels. Changing brand landscape in the Athens hotel market Todays international hotel brand landscape in Athens consists of Accor (Novotel & Sofitel), Carlson Rezidor (Radisson Blu), Intercontinental Hotels Group (Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental & Holiday Inn), Starwood Hotels & Resorts (the Luxury Collection), Hilton Hotel & Resorts, Wyndham Hotel Group, Melia Hotels International, Best Western and Hapimag. In total, these brands operate currently 18 hotels in Athens with a total of 3,087 rooms. In September, it was announced that luxury hotel chain Four Seasons will undertake the management of the completely redeveloped Astir Palace located at the Athens Riviera. The new hotel will debut as the Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens in May 2018, right in time to host visitors of the international shipping exhibition Posidonia, which will take place in Athens during 4 8 June 2018. The new owners of the former 314room Athens Ledra hotel, Hines and Henderson Park and the Yiannis Daskalandonakis Group, are in discussion with various international brands. However, we could not confirm press reports of a deal with Hyatt, who indeed is looking for a presence in Athens as currently they only operate the Hyatt Regency in Thessaloniki. Home Holdings, the new owners of the Athens Hilton, is also in discussion with international hotel brands for the operation of the hotel including brands of the Hilton Group. The contract with Hilton expires in March 2018. Finally, as is known for a year, Marriott returns to Athens as the 5-star Metropolitan hotel and Accor might open its first Ibis hotel opposite the archaeological museum. Other deals and developments in Athens Lampsa SA (Laskaridi Group), owners of the Grande Bretagne and current operators of the adjacent King George hotel was the highest bidder in the tender for a long-term lease of a property located at Panepistimio St, near Syntagma with an annual lease of 960,000 Astir Palace for 30 years plus an addition of 25%, if the annual turnover exceeds 9 M. The 9-floor property of 13,244 sqm used to house the Agrotiki Bank and is planned to be converted into a 180-room 4-star hotel, to be opened in 2019. The Aviation Share Fund has reached a lease agreement with Stelios Ioannidis for the lease of the former 208-room La Mirage hotel at Omonia Sq. The lease agreement has a duration of 40 years and amounts 28,000 per month. The property will re-open in May 2018 as a 4-star hotel. In August Grivalia Properties REIC announced that Grivalia Hospitality SA has reached a binding preagreement to acquire 80% of Nafsika SA to commercially exploit the Asteria property in the coastal southeast suburb of Glyfada in the "Athens Riviera", which was in operation until 1990. The property is owned by the Hellenic Public Properties Company (ETAD) and the deal will be finalised at the beginning of 2018. Inestia Hospitality, part of the Kokkalis Group, has concluded a deal for the lease of a property located opposite the Old Parliament, central Athens. The agreement involves a monthly lease of 40,000 for the first 20 years with an option for another 20 years. The 4,160 sqm property will be converted into a 45room boutique hotel and will be opened in 2019. In Athens, Inestia Hospitality also operates O&B Boutique Hotel in Psirri and the MET34 Athens Hotel at Mitropoleos St, central Athens. Probank is in the process to sell the former 5-star Iridanus Hotel, which is currently not in operation. The 39-room property located at Peiraios St has a minimum price tag of 6.3 M. Probank is also selling a 2-star property of 24 rooms in Kypseli, further north of Athens. Finally, there are plans for a second hotel at the Athens International Airport. The new unit will be located next to Ikea in the retail park of the airport and will likely be a budget hotel. Tour operators dominate the Greek international brand landscape Preliminary results of the 2017 Hotel Brands Report show that tour operators have enlarged their dominance in the Greek hotel market. In the top 5 of international brands Tui and Thomas Cook obtained the first and second position based on room count. The top position of Tui is based on properties carrying one of the brands of Atlantica, Tui Family Life, Sensimar, Club Magic Life, Club Marmara and Robinson. In August Tui announced that it acquired Stella Polaris SA, a subsidiary of the Greek Karatzis Group and owner of land on the southern coast of Crete, to open a third Robinson Club in Greece. Thomas Cook is active in Greece with its brands Sentido, Smartline, Sunprime, Sunwing and Casa Cook. After Casa Cook Kos and Casa Cook Rhodes, the tour operator announced that a third Casa Cook will be opened in Crete. Cyprus based Louis Hotels operates 9 hotels in Greece of the 4-star category. Starwoord has 9 hotels carrying the brands Sheraton, The Luxury Collection and Westin, while the Intercontinental Group has 4 properties carrying Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Intercontinental. The largest national brand remains Mitsis Hotels with 18 properties and nearly 5,900 rooms, followed by Grecotel with 25 hotels and nearly 5,100 rooms and Aldemar with 7 resort hotels and 2,582 rooms. Helios Hotels is known of its 4 hotels in Crete, the Nafplia Palace and Amphitryon hotel in Nafplio and the Grand Resort Lagonissi in Attica. Sbokos Hotel Group operates 6 hotels in Crete and Rhodes. Substantial investments necessary to maintain course Data up to August 2017 shows that tourism arrivals have increased 9.9% y-o-y, while tourism receipts increased by 9.1% y-o-y to a level of 10.5 bn. It is likely that the target of 14.5 bn of tourism revenues will not be achieved this year, but revenues will bounce back from the 12.8 bn recorded in 2016, when a drop of 7.3% compared to 2015 was noted. Revenue in August was particularly strong with an increase of 16.4% y-o-y. To maintain this growth path, the Greek Tourism Confederation has estimated that 5 7 bn of new investments are necessary. According to press reports 250 project plans budgeted at 900 M have already been submitted to the Ministry of Economy, while other projects of a total value of 3.2 bn are in the pipeline. The tourism sector remains one of the Greek economys main drivers, but there is still considerable work to be done to ensure that Greece finally transitions to a durable and sustained recovery, and to make a clean exit from the current adjustment programme in August 2018, also opening the way for a further restructuring of Greek official debt. Recent recovery of economy remains on track Recent economic data suggests that in Q3 the economy will at least match the 0.5% quarterly pace of GDP growth recorded in the first two quarters of this year. The monthly industrial production data point to a solid expansion in production in Q3, while the Economic Sentiment Indicator noted a three year high at the end of Q3. Meanwhile, retail sales picked up sharply in the early summer. Based on this Oxford Economics forecasts a GDP growth of almost 1% in Q3. However, this year sees further significant fiscal consolidation with tax rises and pension cuts, while the banking sector continues to struggle with 102 bn of Non-Performing Exposures or 50.6% of total loans, of which half of these representing corporate exposures. Banks have committed to cut their overall NPE stock to 66.7 bn by the end of 2019. As a recent example, we note that Eurobank will auction the 343-room Hydra Beach hotel in Ermioni on 15 November 2017 for a minimum price of 19.2 M. 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 GE Power, a global leader that provides technology, solutions, and services across the entire energy value chain, has signed two technical agreements with Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) to promote scientific research and development (R&D) for the power sector in the kingdom. The collaborations will identify innovative solutions to develop and install new systems that will boost gas turbine efficiency and productivity, said a statement from GE Power. The research will also focus on reducing the amount of ash that results from fuel combustion, it stated. Khalid Al Rashed, the executive vice-president of engineering and projects, SEC, said both these agreements were part of SECs ongoing collaboration with GE to promote R&D in the power generation sector. It underlines the commitment of both companies to drive a culture of localised innovation and to identify cutting-edge solutions that will help boost the efficiency of the kingdoms power infrastructure, he stated. "The first agreement aims to promote research that will help reduce the cost of power generation and power plant maintenance. The second will focus on installing a new system of fuel additives in gas turbines to reduce the water-washing cycle and increase capacity by reducing the amount of ash that results from fuel consumption during the power generation process," explained Al Rashed. "The agreements highlight our commitment to leverage advanced technologies to reduce costs and dependence on oil resources, and to meet environmental standards," he added. Hisham Albahkali, the president and CEO of GE Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, said: "We have a long-term relationship with SEC, and are committed to further strengthening it through these technical collaboration agreements." The focus on localised R&D to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the power sector supports the goals of Saudi Vision 2030, stated Albahkali. The new agreements underline our commitment to co-create localised solutions that will support the Kingdoms power infrastructure, he added. Eissa Aqeeli, the president and CEO of GEs Power Services business in Saudi Arabia, said: "We are confident the collaborations will lead to innovative solutions that will benefit SEC and the kingdom not only through greater optimization in resource use but also by nurturing the skills of Saudi professionals in energy-sector research." GE and SEC have long supported the development of Saudi Arabias power generation sector by bringing industry-leading innovations to the country, he added.-TradeArabia News Service Global technology and engineering conglomerate GE said it has completed the construction of the 500/220 kilovolt (kV) Badr substation located in Cairo, Egypt, and also the work on connecting it to the national grid. The gas-insulated substation Badr, located in the north-eastern Cairo Governorate, will dispatch 1.5 gigawatt (GW) of electricity, in response to increased power generation in the area and secure reliable power supply coupled with minimal losses of transferred power. The turnkey substation, which came online at the end of September 2017, will play a strategic role in the upcoming Egypt-Saudi Arabia Interconnection, said a statement from GE. The project links the national grids of both countries from Badr city in Egypt to Madinah and Tabuk cities in Saudi Arabia via a 1,300-km transmission line. The Badr substation will connect 1.5 GW, or 50 per cent of the total exchange capacity of the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company's (EETC) project, which is the power equivalent to meet the needs of more than one million homes. With a difference in peak demand times during the day for each country, the interconnection will help secure stable transmission to meet such needs, said the GE statement. The substation will leverage GE Powers Grid Solutions portfolio, which includes GEs T155 550 kV and B105 220 kV gas-insulated substations. These technologies meet the requirements of the network in terms of power generation, transmission and heavy industry applications. Furthermore, the B105 and T155 are environment-friendly, and contain digital monitoring control and protection capabilities that enable them to be readily integrated into the smart grid. EETC chairman Gamal Abdel Rehim said the Egypt-Saudi Arabia Interconnection is strategic for the country's electricity sector. "We are proud of the work were doing with GE as a key partner and technology provider helping us realise this project. GEs advanced solutions will support us in meeting Egypts growing energy generation capacity and securing reliable power supply with efficient transmission of electricity," stated Rehim. GE is also providing local project management, engineering, design, fabrication, the erection of nine single phase power transformers, site management, testing and commissioning on a turnkey basis. GE will also provide factory and site training for EETCs engineers, as well as the supply of spare parts. Mohammed Mohaisen, the president and CEO for GE Powers Grid Solutions business in the Middle East and North Africa and Turkey, said: "We are delighted to contribute towards Egypts target to upgrade its national electricity grid and proud to collaborate with the Ministry of Electricity and EETC to bring our latest technologies and solutions to address these needs." "The B105 and T155 are both environment-friendly, have proven field reliability, higher availability and can easily be integrated into a smart grid. With an increase in power generation, the need for a more advanced electricity transmission network and Egypts growing industrial sector, these technologies will help address the changing requirements of the countrys grid infrastructure," he added.-TradeArabia News Service Travelport, a leading travel commerce platform, has announced the signing of a new, extended agreement with IATI Travel, based in Turkey. The new multi-year agreement sees Travelport as its preferred travel commerce platform, giving access to global travel provider content and industry leading technology to IATI worldwide. Travelport will support its operations while extending the geographical reach of the partnership to cover Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The companys high performance is powered by Travelport Universal API (uAPI) technology. This aggregates the most comprehensive content from multiple sources, including national and low-cost carriers, branded fares and ancillary services, as well as unique hotel properties, rail and car rental. This provides IATI with access to both unrivalled content and functionality through a single connection. Levent Aydn, chairman of the board, IATI, said: We are impressed by Travelports customer-driven solution which provides highly efficient tools for our agents. We are pleased to have Travelport as our preferred technology partner and have great confidence in its extensive reach and expertise, so we can further focus on expanding our business across the globe. Rabih Saab, president and managing director, Europe, Africa, Middle East and South Asia, Travelport added: We are delighted to support the fastest growing OTA in Turkey as it continues its global expansion. Our partnership with IATI has flourished since 2012 and we are looking to further power its success and expansion across new territories of Germany, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. - TradeArabia News Service PROFILE: Breaking Through: Brynne Kelly, Part 1 As part of the series Breaking Through: How Three Women Took on the World of Trading, Trading Technologies shared with Traders Magazine the second profile installment interviewing female trading pioneers. In the first spotlight, TT spoke with Margie Teller, who navigated her way through the CME trading pits to become a floor trading Hall of Famer. This second profile is with Brynne Kelly, a woman who has taken a far different route through the trading industry via merchant trading. Kara Grygotis: Lets talk about your historyhow you actually got into trading, and the progression of what you were doing from a trading standpoint. Brynne Kelly: People ask me about my background a lot, and I think its partly because they are looking for some sort of recipe and yet, if you hear my background, you will find that none of the ingredients seem to make sense, but somehow the end-product works. I grew up in Minnesota and went to the University of Minnesota. I did a year of my undergraduate studies in England and ultimately graduated with a finance degree. Eventually, I also obtained enough additional accounting credits to qualify to sit for the CPA exam, which I passed. I have always said over the years that its not where you went to school, but what you make of it. I think thats the unique partthe cumulation of experience that I was fortunate enough to get after I graduated. Its interesting to people because my experience was rooted in the merchant side of the business, which is less understood than its counterparts like floor trading or hedge funds. Kara: Can you explain what you mean by merchant? Brynne: Merchant trading is usually, but not always, embedded into a larger company that owns commodity assets. In my case, I worked for companies that are heavily invested in energy assets and operate those assets as their core business. The reason merchant trading evolves at these companies is, in part, due to their experience and level of comfort with physical commodity logistics. Being involved in moving products from point A to point B in the operation of their assets, they see the opportunity to leverage their knowledge beyond asset operation to a trading business that is unencumbered by the day-to-day operations of their assets. In this way, these trading groups are fundamentally based on logistics. This isnt to say that there isnt a lot of risk involved in that type of trading business. In fact, you could argue that there is more risk, since these trading portfolios usually contain a significant amount of off-hub structured transactions that have the added layer of performance risk. Its one thing to lay off risk using liquid futures; its another thing to preserve margin as you unwind financial hedges into delivery. 1 2 3 4 5 next For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: You can opt out of certain types of cookies (e.g. those used in social media sharing) by choosing "I do not accept". The website will still largely function well, but with slightly less functionality in places. To manage your cookie preferences in future, visit the "Cookie Statement" link at the bottom of any page. The 2017 International Industrial Capacity Cooperation Forum and the 9th China Overseas Investment Fair aims to pursue the Belt and Road Initiative and promote international cooperation on production capacity. He Zhenwei, secretary-general of China Overseas Development Association (CODA), a national non-profit social organization, announced on Tuesday that the fair will be held in Beijing from Nov 21 to Nov 22. The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) emphasizes the importance of promoting international cooperation on production capacity and opening up on all fronts. As the report General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered at 19th National Congress of the CPC points out, "openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind. China will not close its door to the world; we will only become more and more open." "General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out at the report that we should pursue the Belt and Road Initiative as a priority to promote international cooperation on production capacity and build up our strengths for international economic cooperation and competition, which highly correspond to the theme of our Fair," He said. "The efficiency of Chinese economy obviously has improved a lot, which can support the international production capacity cooperation and higher-level mutual investment," he added. Dong Bin, chairman of Sino-European Entrepreneurs Summit Committee, said China has become a global investment center and the international capital market shows unprecedented concern and interest to China, which indicates great potential of China's economic and social development. The fair has been successfully held annually for past eight years. He Zhenwei said the fair this year will invite senior officials, business tycoons and professionals all over the world to present and they will interpret the new trend of Chinese economy, and pursue further cooperation on production capacity, including mega projects. Representatives from more than 100 countries and regions, who specialize in key areas, such as equipment manufacturing, infrastructure construction, agriculture, e-commerce, telecommunication and new energy, will also be present. Denver, CO, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nov. 2, 2017 ImagineX Consulting is excited to be celebrating our second year in business! After launching in November 2015, we have grown rapidly and established the company in the marketplace through our delivery success and client focus. Our two year growth stands as a testament to our team members entrepreneurial drive, passion, professionalism and expertise within the fields of DevOps and Cloud, Adaptive Agile, Cybersecurity, and Technology Consulting. Over the past two years, we have cultivated a distinguished set of best of breed software partners from Cloud to DevOps to Cybersecurity. We have served 40 clients, including 2 Fortune 50, 6 Fortune 500, 8 Fortune 1000, another 2 in the Global 500 and have delivered over 70 successful projects. As ImagineX approaches 40 employees, our delivery teams will continue to provide high-quality innovative solutions that exceed our customers expectations. In addition to our steady growth, we are also honored to have our company recognized by Consulting Magazine. In February 2017, Consulting Magazine identified ImagineX as one of the 7 Small Jewels to Watch, which stands as a huge credit to all that we have done and are doing as a developing business. Later in the year, the same publication hailed ImagineX as one of the Best Firms to Work For 2017 with regards to company morale. These accolades prove that ImagineX is different from typical consultancies and is a company to keep an eye on for years to come. Most importantly, the ImagineX leadership team would like to thank all our consultants, our clients, and our partners for their support over the past two years. For more details about our history, culture and to hear what people are saying about our two year milestone, please visit the Were having a Birthday page located on our website. About ImagineX Consulting ImagineX Consulting is a technology consulting firm whose mission is to deliver value to clients through a unique blend of modern capabilities powered by progressive methods and old-fashioned work ethic. Our modern technology practices specialize around Software Engineering and Cloud, Adaptive Agile, Cybersecurity, and Technology Consulting. The true exponential power of our capabilities exists at the intersection of these practices. When combined with our pragmatic and adaptive methods, our seasoned technology consultants deliver unprecedented value to the Digital Enterprise on the cutting edge of today's technology frontier. ImagineX Consulting is headquartered in Denver with offices in Atlanta, Raleigh, Washington, DC and Toronto. Our ImagineX Labs are located in Toronto, Canada and Sofia, Bulgaria, and our Cybersecurity center is located in Tel Aviv, Israel. U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS SHARES UPDATES ON TERRITORY'S RECOVERY PROCESS WITH JOURNALISTS AND TRAVEL LEADERS U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS (November 1, 2017) - The United States Virgin Islands (USVI) shared a message of resilience and recovery last week with travel stakeholders and influencers in Merida, Mexico and Dallas, Texas. Participating at the 24th annual Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) Cruise Conference and Trade Show in Merida, a delegation from the Territory, led by the Department of Tourism, the Virgin Islands Port Authority (VIPA) and The West Indian Company Limited (WICO), updated cruise executives and industry partners on the islands' status for the return of cruise ships in November following back-to-back Category 5 hurricanes in September. Commissioner of Tourism Beverly Nicholson-Doty and the leadership of WICO and VIPA, including WICO CEO Clifford Graham and VIPA Executive Director David Mapp, engaged in one-on-one meetings with executives from cruise industry partners, including Carnival Corporation, Disney Cruise Line, MSC Cruises and Royal Caribbean International. In addition to attending panel discussions and sessions related to the state of the cruise industry, USVI representatives also attended a special FCCA session on crisis management that addressed aspects of the recent hurricanes such as pre-disaster preparation, communications, housing and relief. "As we move from relief to recovery following September's storms, the U.S. Virgin Islands is grateful for the partnership, engagement and support of FCCA and its member lines in helping to restore cruise industry business to our destination," the Commissioner stated. "Attending this conference was an important step in our plans to rebuild." The Commissioner continued: "We know that our cruise product will not be restored to pre-storm conditions when the first ships return to the Territory this week, but we are making tremendous progress. We are counting on our partner agencies and the business community to ensure we are ready for the first calls." Walter Weems, Manager of Network Planning (MIA, Caribbean and Latin America) at American Airlines (AA), meets with Commissioner Nicholson-Doty at AA's Dallas headquarters. A meeting with American Airlines' Caribbean leadership team in Dallas provided an opportunity to review the company's planned service to the Territory from key U.S. cities in the coming months, as well as to share the Department of Tourism's feedback related to recent operations. "American Airlines has been a strong air transportation partner with the U.S. Virgin Islands for many years, and we want to continue working together to ensure that residents and visitors have many, reliable options for travel to and from the destination," the Commissioner said. morning dose. news anchor Laila Muhammad (right) with Commissioner Nicholson-Doty in Dallas. While in Dallas, Commissioner Nicholson-Doty had the opportunity to connect with members of the media, including a live television interview on the syndicated KDAF-TV (CW33 Dallas) " morning dose. " show, where she shared post-hurricane travel and tourism news about the destination. "Meeting the needs of Virgin Islanders, business leaders and leisure visitors from the Dallas area is one of the top priorities of the Department of Tourism," noted Commissioner Nicholson-Doty, adding that travel to the USVI from Dallas, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, has grown steadily in recent years. Commissioner Nicholson-Doty also sat down with Scott McCartney, Travel Industry Editor of the Wall Street Journal's Dallas Bureau, to provide information about the impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria on the Territory's tourism industry, infrastructure and economic activity. The Dallas-area listening public was able to hear news of the Territory's recovery during the Commissioner's broadcast interview with David Rancken on CBS Radio in Dallas. Washington, D.C., Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Temporary Emergency Committee of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service (TEC) will meet November 14 in open session at Postal Service headquarters, 475 LEnfant Plaza, SW, Washington, DC. The public is welcome to observe the meeting beginning at 8:00 a.m. ET in the Ben Franklin Room on the 11th floor. The TEC is expected to discuss the following items: Call to order Remarks of TEC Chairman/Postmaster General & CEO Approval of previous minutes FY2017 10K and Financial Statements FY2018 IFP and Borrowing Resolution FY2019 Congressional Reimbursement Request Quarterly Service Performance Report Approval of Annual Report and Comprehensive Statement Tentative agendas for February 8 and 9, 2018 meetings Adjourn Open session meetings of the TEC of the Board of Governors are available on live audio webcasts at http://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/bog/welcome.htm. Three hours after the conclusion of the open session meeting, a recorded audio file will be available for listening. In compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, the audio webcast will be open-captioned. Financial Briefing Following the TECs open meeting on November 14, Postmaster General & CEO Megan J. Brennan and Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett will host a telephone/web conference call to discuss the financial results in more detail. The call will begin at 10 a.m. ET and is open to the news media and all other interested parties. How to Participate: Important Notice: To ensure your computer is set up to join the event, click on the link www.webex.com/lp/jointest/ US/Canada Attendee Dial-in: 844-340-4622 Conference ID: 2597149 Attendee Direct URL: https://usps.webex.com/usps/onstage/g.php?MTID=e155a3970e3c030d38ac7aa046745d576 If you cannot join using the direct link above, please use the alternate logins below: Alternate URL: https://usps.webex.com Event Number: 993 038 707 The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. # # # Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit the USPS Newsroom at about.usps.com/news/welcome.htm. A complete list of the holiday shipping deadlines and information can be found at about.usps.com/holidaynews. For reporters interested in speaking with a regional Postal Service public relations professional, please go to about.usps.com/news/media-contacts/usps-local-media-contacts.pdf. Follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/usps), Instagram (instagram.com/uspostalservice), Pinterest (pinterest.com/uspsstamps), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/usps), subscribe to our channel on YouTube (youtube.com/usps), like us on Facebook (facebook.com/usps) and view our Postal Posts blog (uspsblog.com). For more information about the Postal Service, visit usps.com and usps.com/postalfacts. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6ca967b3-5838-4170-99d3-bbdf82c6eca2 RICHMOND, British Columbia, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alpha Peak Leisure Inc. (TSX-V:AAP) (the Company) announces that Ms. Teresa Lin has resigned as a director of the Company for personal reasons. The Companys Chairperson, Ms. Yuxiu Zhao, wishes to thank Ms. Lin for her contributions to the Company. About Alpha Peak Leisure Inc. The Company, via its wholly-owned subsidiary, Total Wonder Enterprises Limited, has a 40-year operating and development right with the Hailuo Valley Scenic Area Administration for Swallows Gully, a national scenic location in China encompassing an area of approximately 593km. Located in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan and within a cluster of highly frequented tourist landmarks, Swallows Gully is recognized as one of the most pristine and beautiful scenic sights in China. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF ALPHA PEAK LEISURE INC. Lawrence Tang Lawrence Tang Chief Financial Officer For more information, please contact: Lawrence Tang; Chief Financial Officer Tel: (852) 9334-2863 lawrence.tang@alphapeak.ca 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. HOUSTON, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In its latest report, The New Industry Driver: How the Rise of Autonomous Vehicles Could Impact Future Real Estate Strategy, Transwestern contends that growing adoption of driverless cars, trucks and warehouse equipment could have a significant economic, operational and cultural effect, impacting every sector of the commercial real estate industry. While there are valid concerns about safety, security, government regulation and the potential resistance to give up private cars, the billions of dollars invested by domestic and foreign automakers, countless engineering and design firms, and giant technology conglomerates have made autonomous vehicles a reality, said Jamie Mahoney, Research Analyst in San Francisco and one of the reports authors. While timing of adoption is debatable, a disruptor of this magnitude likely will have implications for office, industrial, retail and healthcare properties and create opportunities to unlock value from real estate. One assumption frequently made in relation to autonomous vehicle (AV) technology is that car ownership will decrease as adoption of AVs through ride-sharing services increases. If this trend comes to fruition, the report predicts some notable changes to the urban landscape: Traffic congestion would be reduced, freeing up space for other uses, such as pedestrian walkways, retail or restaurants. Demand for parking would diminish, causing a re-examination of parking requirements and an opportunity to reposition or redevelop garages, surface lots and underground parking structures. Public transit usage would increase, perhaps complementing first and last-mile ridership from transit stations and enabling employers to attract talent from a larger radius. Adrianna Boursalian, Research Associate in Silicon Valley and co-author of the report, explained that within the office sector, the rise of AVs may add another pawn in the amenities war, especially for Central Business District buildings. Features such as curbside pickup and ride-share lobbies could become more prevalent as building tenants and visitors increasingly demand them as next-generation Class A office conveniences, she said. Transwestern predicts the industrial sector will see the most disruption from the implementation of AVs, particularly when it comes to increasing efficiencies across warehouse operations, logistics and trucking. Furthermore, AV delivery could solve the last-mile problem for many online retailers. If AVs can trim time from the fulfillment cycle as consumers are increasingly demanding, we expect more supply chain disruption among e-commerce players of all types, said Steve Kozarits, Senior Vice President in the industrial services group. This means location and size of fulfillment centers and distribution buildings may need to be reconsidered as developers increasingly design these buildings with more flexibility, decreased surface parking for warehouse workers, and the ability to take advantage of higher floor-to-area ratio opportunities. Shopping center owners and developers should also keep an eye on the AV trend, according to the report. A typical suburban mall sits in the center of an expansive parking lot, usually several times the footprint of the mall itself, as it is the least expensive way to accommodate the parking requirements for mall patrons. As with office properties, vast parking areas at malls may no longer be needed. And when all other factors are equal, malls that have larger acreage currently allocated to parking may be more desirable to an investor looking for a redevelopment opportunity. The full report is available for download at: http://twurls.com/av-report ABOUT TRANSWESTERN Transwestern is a privately held real estate firm of collaborative entrepreneurs who deliver a higher level of personalized service the Transwestern Experience. Specializing in Agency Leasing, Tenant Advisory, Capital Markets, Asset Services and Research, our fully integrated global enterprise adds value for investors, owners and occupiers of all commercial property types. We leverage market insights and operational expertise from members of the Transwestern family of companies specializing in development, real estate investment management and research. Based in Houston, Transwestern has 35 U.S. offices and assists clients through more than 180 offices in 37 countries as part of a strategic alliance with BNP Paribas Real Estate. Experience Extraordinary at transwestern.com and @Transwestern. Attachments: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ff78ea16-4f69-4739-a54d-29ac99cc32e4 Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/46c4b5a6-27a0-4610-a16b-e8029e0c2a62 Tarn Taran: The police have recovered 1,600 liters of liquor from the residence of Rachhpal Singh alias Rinku of the local Noordi Mohalla on Wednesday late evening. Investigating Officer (IO) ASI Bhupinder Singh said the accused ran away from his house. The IO said the accused, with the help of other associates, had been preparing illicit liquor by mixing harmful chemicals in alcohol. The accused has been booked under Sections 61, 63, 1 and 14 of the Excise Act. OC Two held with heroin Amritsar: The special task force has arrested two drug peddlers, identified as Gurpreet Singh of Kasel village and Amrik Singh of Ucha Tehra village in Tarn Taran while one of their accomplices Sukhjit Singh of Kasel managed to escape. The STF recovered 40-gm heroin from their possession. Further investigations are underway to ascertain the source of the contraband. A case under the NDPS Act has been registered against them. TNS Youth fest to kick off today Amritsar: A two-day youth festival of polytechnic colleges will commence at Mai Magho Government Polytechnic College from November 2. College principal Parambir Singh Mattewal said students from 150 polytechnic colleges from across the state would attend the event. He said Lok Sabha member Gurjit Singh Aujla would attend the inaugural function while Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi would attend the concluding event. The college has made arrangements for the successful completion of the state-level event, Mattewal added. TNS Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 1 The police have arrested two juveniles and a youth in connection with two snatching cases, including one that was reported on October 29. The police claimed to have recovered four cellphones, including two iphones, from the accused. A team of the Sector 49 police station was at a naka in Sector 50 when the accused, identified as Sanjay, alias Jaggu, a resident of Burail, Sector 45, and two juveniles were nabbed while riding a motorcycle. A police official said two snatchings reported from the Sector 49 police station area had been solved with their arrest. One of the snatchings was reported in December last year. The motorcycle on which the snatchings were conducted has also been recovered. The juveniles have been sent to Juvenile Home in Sector 25. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 1 Two more snatching incidents have been reported from different parts of the city. One of the accused was nabbed a few hours after the snatchings. The incidents were reported on October 31. In one of the cases, the victim was travelling by an auto when a miscreant snatched her gold chain at the Sector 44/45 light point. According to the police, the victim, Sandeep Kaur, a resident of Kharar, had hired the auto from Sector 23 for Kharar. Sources said the auto stopped at the Sector 44/45 light point when the youth came and snatched the victims gold chain. The sources said the accomplice of the accused was waiting for him on a motorcycle on the other side of the road. The accused then escaped from the spot towards Sector 44. In another incident, a purse was snatched by a pedestrian from a girl. According to the police, the victim, Himani, a resident of Sector 22, alleged that a miscreant snatched her purse from near house number 1515 in Sector 22. The victim was walking towards her PG accommodation when the miscreant, who was on foot, came from behind and snatched her purse. Later, the accused, Paramjit Kumar, a native of Ferozepur, was arrested. Tribune News Service Mohali, November 1 In the double murder case of senior journalist KJ Singh (65) and his bedridden mother Gurcharan Kaur (92), family members of the accused, Gaurav Kumar, a 27-year-old unemployed youth hailing from Bulandshahr (UP), have alleged that the police have framed him by concocting a story. Talking to mediapersons outside a local court here, Gauravs father Satvir Singh said his son was innocent. The police are claiming that he was driving a car when he was arrested. However, he neither knows how to drive nor has a driving licence. He met with an accident a few years ago in UP and has metal rods inserted in both his legs. He even takes assistance while walking. How can he commit the murder of two persons, asked Satvir Singh, a former soldier in the Jat Infantry Regiment. Satvir Singh said his son had studied in an Army school and was brought up with good values. He said, I had sent him to Canada to find work after selling 2 bigha land. He called me up on October 25 saying that he was coming home with money. He said his son was unmarried. Gauravs elder brother, Rajeev Chaudhary (Bablu), who works in a transport company in Noida, said Gaurav told the family members that he was working in a factory in Canada since March 2016. I had dropped him at the airport, he said. We had no information that he had been deported from Canada and had been staying in Kajheri, he said. Defence counsel Navin Saini said the story of the prosecution was false. The police have cooked up a story and framed Gaurav for the murder to save their skin because they were under pressure to complete the investigation. Saini said, If he had committed the crime, why would he stay in Kajheri for a month within the vicinity of 200 metres of the SSPs residence? He said the accused had been planted. The defence counsel said Gaurav had recently returned from Georgia. He said, He had first gone to Canada, but due to problems with his visa, he was deported. The immigration agency, which had procured his visa, told him that they would send him to another country on a work visa. However, Gaurav was sent to Georgia on a tourist visa and hence deported. Remand extended A local court on Wednesday extended the police remand of the accused, Gaurav Kumar, by a day. The police had sought a three-day extension in the remand to recover the blood-stained clothes, which the accused claimed to have dumped in a choe in Kajheri village, where he was staying in a rented accommodation. However, the defence counsel argued that ample time had been given to the police to question the accused for five days. The local court asked the accused to be produced on Thursday. Not allowed to meet him: Family Family members of the accused, Gaurav Kumar, including his father, elder brother and a close relative, said they were not allowed to meet Gaurav in the court. His father Satvir Singh said he had brought fruits for his son, but could not hand them over to him. Tribune News Service Mohali, November 1 A 15-year-old boy, Manraj Singh, who was reportedly suffering from the dengue shock syndrome, died at a private hospital here today. Manraj Singh, nephew of a local councillor, was a resident of Kumbhra village and had recently returned from the USA, where he had gone on a school tour to NASA. The hospital authorities said the boy was suffering from the dengue shock syndrome and was admitted to the hospital yesterday. He was also suffering from appendicitis. According to sources, the victims sister is also suffering from dengue and is undergoing treatment at a local private hospital while their father had recently recuperated from dengue. With Manraj Singhs death, the dengue death count in Mohali this year has risen to five. So far, over 1,800 dengue cases have been reported from the town. Chandigarh: With the dengue count in the city rising to 973, the malaria wing of the Health department, along with the Municipal Corporation, carried out a joint cleanliness drive at Janta Colony in Sector 25 here on Wednesday. Satya Prakash Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 1 Suspecting foul play, the Supreme Court today ordered a CBI probe into the acquisition of 1,400 acres of land in Gurugram by the then Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in 2009. A Bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Mohan M Shantanagoudar asked the CBI to complete the investigation in six months and submit a report. It wondered how initially 1,400 acres of land was notified for acquisition but finally award was passed for only 87 acres on the pretext that the land was required for infrastructure development projects. The rest of land was allotted to various entities, including colonisers and builders, it was alleged. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Terming it a "colourable exercise of power," the Bench said provisions of the Land Acquisition Act had been misused. Haryana Additional Advocate General Anil Grover told the Bench that the Manohar Lal Khattar government had no objection to the matter being probe by the CBI. The matter came up before the apex court after the Haryana Government challenged a Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict, quashing acquisition in one of the cases. The Haryana Governments stand was communicated to the Supreme Court after Advocate General Baldev Raj Mahajan discussed the matter with the Chief Minister in detail. Accordingly, the top court was informed that the Haryana had no objection to handing over the matter to the CBI. However, the state government made it clear to the court that the observations made by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in its January 10, 2014, order regarding external development charges (EDC) should not be treated as binding as this could have a bearing on other cases. The Bench had on Tuesday specifically sought to know the Haryana Governments stand on the issue after advocate Jasbir Singh Malik, representing the landowners, held that poor farmers had to suffer because of misuse of power. Courts cannot be oblivious of the fact that the 1,400-acre land was initially meant to be acquired for development by HUDA and it was finally reduced to 87 acres only for which the award was passed, the apex court observed. Shiv Kumar Tribune News Service Mumbai, November 2 A Haryana Police constable who was arrested last month for running an illegal casino in Gurugram has spilt the beans about a gang war between two outfits which resulted in the murder of a gangster in Mumbai last year. According to police here, Constable Paramjeet Singh who was on the run for more than a year was nabbed by the police in that state after they busted an illegal casino. Singh was running the casino on behalf of local gangsters Binder Gujjar and Manoj Gujjar after he went into hiding, a police official said. Singh was brought to Mumbai last month after his arrest in Haryana and questioned by the Crime Branch here. Police sources say he has revealed plenty of details on the rivalry between the Gujjar gang and alleged gangster Sandeep Gadoli who was killed in a fake encounter here last year. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Police here said Paramjeet Singh had gone into hiding after several of his colleagues were arrested for the murder. He and a partner then set up an illegal casino till his arrest. The arrest of Singh has brought the total number of arrests in the fake encounter case to seven. According to police, a five-member team of Haryana Police shot dead alleged gangster Sandeep Gadoli at the Airport Metro Hotel near the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport where he was holed up. The other four members of the encounter team have already been arrested and a hunt was on for Paramjeet Singh, police said. The encounter team was headed by sub-inspector Pradyuman Yadav who was among the first to be nabbed in the case. The other two persons to be held in the case are Gadolis girlfriend Divya Pahuja and her mother, who the police say, tipped off the Haryana Police team about the gangsters whereabouts. Divya Pahuja was staying in the hotel room along with Gadoli when the encounter team stormed into the room and shot him dead, according to the police. The Gujjars allegedly paid a huge sum of money to Divyas mother Sonia to obtain the whereabouts of Gadoli which they then passed on to the encounter team from Haryana Police. Sub-inspector Yadavs team allegedly smashed some of the CCTVs at the Airport Metro Hotel before shooting Gadoli dead in his room, police said. However, footage from a few cameras that escaped the attention of the encounter team helped nail the encounter team, sources here say. Tribune News Service Jalandhar, November 1 The family of Onkar Singh, who has been stuck in Saudi Arabia, today again met Nawashahr Deputy Commissioner (DC) Sonali Giri, seeking help to get their son back. The DC assured the family that she had sent a letter to the External Affairs Minister for helping out the family. A new video was forwarded to his family around three days ago in which Onkar Singhs friend is seen requesting Swaraj to take action as they would not be able to contact them again. We are unemployed for the past nine months and have no money, said Rana with Onkar Singh sitting beside him. Onkars mother Resham Kaur, a widown, had approached the DC office seven days ago. I want the government and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to help a mother, she had said. Onkar had left for Saudi Arabia five years ago to earn a living and help his family overcome financial problems. He had started earning well, but when he asked for leave to visit his family, his employer, who owns a private company, refused. Around a year ago, his younger brother Jaspreet died. Onkar again sought leave, but failed to get it. Resham Kaur is now living with her widowed daughter-in-law Kiranjit Kaur. Kiran said it was becoming difficult to live as Onkar Singh was the only bread winner of the family. Resham Kaur said the company had not paid her son for the past two years. After the company denied him leave and stopped payment, my son filed a case in a labour court. Later, the company fired him and his friend Rana, she added. Amir Tantray Tribune News Service Jammu, November 2 A Border Security Force (BSF) jawan was killed in sniper fire by Pakistani Rangers along the International Border (IB) in Samba sector on Thursday morning. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The jawan was identified as constable Tapan Mondal (25) of Satul village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. Giving details, a Public Relations Officer of the BSF said that around 9.30 am, Pakistani Rangers suddenly fired on a BSF patrol party. Constable Tapan Mondal was seriously injured in the fire and was shifted to hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries, the PRO said. The BSF gave befitting reply to the fire, he added. Sources said that this was a sniper fire and was aimed at killing the BSF jawan. Tapan Mondal is survived by his mother Sumitra Mondal. ATLANTA - November 2, 2017 - Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) today announced that Vernon J. Nagel, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Acuity Brands, will present at the Robert W. Baird 2017 Global Industrial Conference in Chicago, Illinois, on Tuesday, November 7, 2017. The presentation will be in the format of a fireside chat and is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. Central Time. A live Webcast of the event will be accessible by clicking on the following link http://wsw.com/webcast/baird50/ayi. This event will also be accessible at the Company's website www.acuitybrands.com and a replay of this webcast will be available on the company's website for 90 days following the event. About Acuity Brands Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE: AYI) is the North American market leader and one of the world's leading providers of lighting and building management solutions. With fiscal year 2017 net sales of $3.5 billion, Acuity Brands currently employs over 12,000 associates and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with operations throughout North America, and in Europe and Asia. The Company's products and solutions are sold under various brands, including Lithonia Lighting, Holophane, Peerless, Gotham, Mark Architectural Lighting(TM), Winona Lighting, Juno, Indy(TM), Aculux, Healthcare Lighting, Hydrel, American Electric Lighting, Carandini, Antique Street Lamps(TM), Sunoptics, Distech Controls, nLight, ROAM, Sensor Switch and Atrius(TM). Visit us at www.acuitybrands.com. # # # # # Company Contact: Dan Smith Acuity Brands, Inc. (404) 853.1423 Amir Karim Tantray Tribune News Service Jammu, November 2 A BSF constable was killed in the morning when the Pakistan Rangers attacked a patrol party of the force near the International Border in Samba district. The BSF effectively retaliated and the exchange of fire continued till 2 pm. The martyr has been identified as Constable Tapan Mondal (25) of Satul village in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. He is survived by his mother Sumitra Mondal. Giving details, BSF PRO said around 9.30 am, Pakistan Rangers fired on a BSF patrol party. Constable Tapan Mondal was seriously injured and was shifted to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries, the PRO said. Manguchak, Chilyari, Doliyan and Chachwal villages in the Samba sector saw heavy shelling today by Pakistan Rangers. Sources in BSF said the Pakistani Rangers also suffered damage in retaliatory fire. There are reports that many Rangers were injured but we have confirmation of one Ranger, said a source. The provocation from the Pakistani side has led to an increase in tension in the area and the Samba and Kathua districts ordered the closure of schools in the border belt. We have closed the schools for the day in Rajpura and Gaghwal tehsils near the International Border. The decision will be reviewed tomorrow, said Deputy Commissioner, Samba, Sheetal Nanda. On October 31, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by targeting the Line of Control in the Karmara belt of Poonch district. On October 26, Pakistan fired using small and heavy weapons at the Sher Shakti and Mandhar areas of the Kerni sector. In September, two people, including a BSF man, were killed in Pakistani shelling. Ludhiana, November 1 The sub-regional office of the Employees State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) celebrated Rashtriya Ekta Diwas today. Vigilance Awareness Week is also being observed by the organisation, said the staff. The week started with employees taking a pledge for a corruption free society. A seminar was organised on the premises of the ESIC on the subject My vision- corruption free India. While addressing the gathering PK Narula, director, ESIC, said, All citizens should participate to eradicate corruption from society at large. Gaganpreet Singh Tiwana, Assistant Provident Fund Commissioner said, To remove corruption from government offices all need to be law abiding citizens. Moral values should be inculcated in children so that they become honest citizens of the country. A quiz and a health checkup and awareness programme were also organised to mark Rashtriya Ekta Diwas. TNS Our Correspondent Ludhiana, November 2 Led by functionaries of the 1984 Sikh Katle-Aam Peerat Welfare Society, hundreds of anti-Sikh riot victims held an insaf march (march to seek justice) from Bharat Nagar Chowk to Mini Secretariat where a memorandum was submitted to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the district administration. The protesters have sought action against the perpetrators of mass killing of Sikhs in New Delhi and elsewhere after the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Surjit Singh and Gurdeep Kaur, president and chief of women wing of the society, who led the protest, alleged that even after 33 years of masscre of Sikhs, including women and children, the alleged perpetrators of the crime had not been punished. The successive governments had set up 11 inquiry commissions but none of the accused, including some prominent Congress leaders, had so far been punished, they said. Surjit reminded Modi of his poll promise (during the Lok Sabha elections in 2014) of bringing the culprits to book if the BJP was voted to power. The BJP had promised that if voted to power, the party would set up an SIT (special investigation team) and punish the guilty persons within six months. However, even after passage of three and a half years, nothing worthwhile has been done in this regard, he lamented. In the memorandum submitted to the Prime Minister, the society has demanded that a cash grant of Rs 5 lakh be given immediately to each of some 25,000 families of victims who had migrated to Punjab after the riots and residential flats/accommodation be given to those families which had not been provided this facility. The victims also called for government jobs on a priority to eligible members of their families as a rehabilitation measure. The body of anti-Sikh riot victims also pointed a finger at the SAD-BJP government in Punjab which, they alleged, had done precious little to provide a healing touch to the wounds of the affected Sikh families. Washington, November 2 Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 2008 Mumbai attack case, according to documents seized from a Pakistani compound where the al-Qaeda founder was killed in a US raid in 2011. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Wednesday released 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden. The files include Ladens sons wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born militant. The documents revealed that Laden closely followed news related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications. An Indian Express article titled Omar Sheikhs Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handled Headley was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated November 16, 2009. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) An article Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Ladens computer. A Press Trust of India story headlined Al-Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pakistan Government: Gates, dated February 9, 2010, was also found on Ladens computer. Another article found on his computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) links. The news was published by The Times of India on November 15, 2009. Laden also saved on his computer another PTI article, titled India to send magistrate to US to record Headleys statement. Laden highlighted in yellow some portion of the article titled Pak Major handled Headleys India recce, published on March 16, 2010. The highlighted portion reads, The dossiers also sought the custody of Pakistani terrorist, Ilyas Kashmiri. The documents also revealed that Laden was interested in news related to Kashmir and several terrorists. An Economic Times story US asks Pakistan to find Ilyas Kashmiri dated January 7, 2010 was among the saved documents on Ladens computer. A February 2009 article about Pakistani Kashmiri militants now fighting NATO forces was also found. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of the terrorist organisation. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the CIA put online 470,000 additional files. However, the CIA withheld release of nearly two dozen videos, including the one titled The Story of India stating that they were copyrighted videos. The Story of India is a BBC documentary series about the history of India. The documents also include Ladens personal journal, over 18,000 document files and 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence and imagery gathered or generated by al-Qaeda for a variety of purposes. The CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security, he said. The materials are posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited, the CIA said. The CIA said these materials provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between al-Qaeda and the ISIS, as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al-Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that the terror group faced at the time of Ladens death. Other themes in the materials include al-Qaedas preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the groups attempts to promulgate its message through western media. The documents also provide insight into al-Qaedas efforts to exploit the Arab awakening for its benefit and that of the global jihad, Ladens efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine and the terror groups efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals. The CIA said the information remaining in the Abbottabad collection that had not been released publicly included materials that are sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; materials protected by copyright; pornography; malware and blank, corrupted and duplicate file. PTI Beijing, November 2 China on Thursday blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying it has rejected the move as "there is no consensus". (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UN's list of banned terror outfits. Read: Why does China bat for Masood Azhar ? China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules. The committee is yet to reach the consensus. "The Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact," Hua said. Indian Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement that India was deeply disappointed with Beijing. MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a statement: "We are deeply disappointed that once again, a single country has blocked international consensus on the designation of an acknowledged terrorist and leader of UN-designated terrorist organisation, Masood Azhar. India strongly believes that double standards will only undermine international community's resolve to combat terrorism. We hope there will be realisation that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is short sighted and counter productive, Kumar said. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist after having blocked the move in February this year at the UN. Hua's remarks indicate that China will continue its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhar's listing during the second term of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which began over a week ago. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding on Azhar's listing. In the last two years, China has stonewalled efforts by India to declare Azhar as a global terrorist. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15-nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. PTI/ TNS Smita Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 2 India has expressed deep disappointment at Chinas decision to block consensus on the listing of Masood Azhar as an internationally designated terrorist under 1267 committee of the UN Security Council. Raveesh Kumar, MEA spokesperson, said: We are deeply disappointed that once again, a single country has blocked international consensus on the designation of an acknowledged terrorist and leader of UN-designated terrorist organisation, Masood Azhar. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) The application to proscribe Azhar, put on a technical hold three months ago for the fifth time by Beijing, expired today. The proposal backed by the US, France and the UK seeks to designate Pakistan-based JeM terror group chief and Pathankot attack mastermind Azhar as a global terrorist by the Al-Qaida sanctions committee, but has constantly faced the Chinese veto block. continued on page 7India strongly believes that double standards and selective approaches will only undermine the international communitys resolve to combat terrorism. We can only hope that there will be a realisation that accommodating with terrorism for narrow objectives is both shortsighted and counter-productive, Raveesh Kumar added. Responding to queries, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson had this week cited disagreements on the listing. We believe the committee should follow principles of objectivity, professionalism and fairness and reach decisions by consensus based on solid proof. As for the listing by the relevant country, there are disagreements, the spokesperson said. This despite the recent BRICS Summit declaration in Xiamen in China which named Pakistan-based terrorists and made a strong pitch to counter all manifestations of terror outfits and terror-financing, unlike the previous summit held in Goa. We express concern on the security situation in the region and violence caused by the Taliban, ISIL/DAISH, Al-Qaida and its affiliates, including the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Haqqani Network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, TTP and Hizb ut-Tahrir, read para 48 of the Xiamen declaration. Sahira Naim Tribune News Service Lucknow, November 2 The death toll in the massive explosion that ripped a boiler at the state-run power giant NTPCs Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli district on Wednesday has risen to 30, state Chief Secretary Rajive said on Thursday. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) A rescue and relief operation is being carried out by a National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) team. Officials fear that the number of casualties may go up once the blades of the boiler are cut. More than 200 persons were injured in the explosion that rocked the plant, the officials said, adding that three critically injured were airlifted to Delhi, while six were shifted to Civil Hospital, Lucknow. #WATCH Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi reaches Rae Bareli district hospital to meet those injured in #NTPCExplosion. pic.twitter.com/9hiEjpmkwr ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 2, 2017 Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Union Minister of State for Power R K Singh visited the accident site. Taking a break from his Gujarat election tour, Rahul visited the district hospital and NTPC premises and enquired about the incident from officers present. He was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress state president Raj Babbar. How many workers were working there? he was heard asking officers at the Unchahar unit of NTPC. People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe, Rahul told reporters. Azad demanded a high-level probe by an outside agency to bring out the fact. Rahul also came face to face with Singh during his NTPC visit. When asked about the incident, Singh said there could be two issuesdesign or maintenance. We are looking into both the aspects, he said. On charges that the plant unit was commissioned ahead of time, he said it was not done in haste. The work was completed before March and after two-three months of trial, it was commissioned, he said. Singh also said the compensation by NTPC had been raised from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of the deceased. Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma and UP Power Minister Srikant Sharma also visited Raebareli and met the injured. Gandhi took a break from his ongoing Navsarjan Yatra in poll-bound Gujarat and rushed to Rae Bareli, his mother Sonia Gandhis Lok Sabha constituency, to meet the families of victims of the explosion. The Congress president has expressed shock at the terrible tragedy. Azad said she has been discharged from hospital day before yesterday. Had she been well, she would have visited the families of the victims, he said. Meanwhile, contractual labourers raised slogans on Thursday against the NTPC management. They claimed they had forewarned about the impending disaster at Unit-6 as the temperature near the furnace was steadily rising. Angry locals and family members of the injured have claimed that there was complete absence of medical facilities on the NTPC campus, which led to the spike in the number of casualties. The workers accused NTPC officials of taking away their gate passes. The alleged that gate passes of injured and dead were also removed from their pockets. With PTI Panaji, November 1 Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba today said undermining the maritime disputes resolution mechanisms and muscle-flexing is resulting in a fragile security situation at many places. He also said that to make mutually beneficial use of the seas, it would be ideal if the maritime environment was devoid of all types of threats. He was addressing the inaugural function of the Goa Maritime Conclave which aims to address the maritime challenges in the region. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was also present on the occasion. In order to make mutually beneficial use of the seas, it would be ideal if the maritime environment was devoid of all types of threats traditional or non-traditional both at sea and from the sea," Admiral Lanba said. This paradigm of maritime security is spread over a wide spectrum and involves safety and law enforcement in national maritime zones, and maintaining good order at sea, he said. "The maritime domain is witnessing increasing competition. In this environment, the traditional maritime security concerns primarily appear to rise out of certain trust deficit between countries," he said. "Although conflict resolution mechanisms have been established to address concerns between nations, undermining these institutions by unilateralism and maritime muscle flexing is resulting in fragile security situation," Lanba said. PTI NEW YORK, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Seventy vehicles from Con Edison and Orange and Rockland Utilities arrived today at a shipping terminal in southern New Jersey and will be loaded onto a cargo ship for a trip to Puerto Rico, where theyll be part of the massive campaign to restore power. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/238e5034-d07b-4f7a-bcf0-a69d950a6ed7 More than 100 power line workers, technical specialists and support personnel will head to Puerto Rico next week to help the islands recovery from the ravages of recent hurricanes. We look forward to helping the people of Puerto Rico recover from the devastating impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Many employees at Con Edison and O&R have deep connections with family or friends in Puerto Rico and they all are anxious to help, said John McAvoy, chairman and CEO of Con Edison. Con Edison is working with Governor Andrew Cuomo, the New York Power Authority, the Edison Electric Institute and the American Public Power Association to organize the effort. Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE:ED) is one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues and $49 billion in assets. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers through its two regulated utility subsidiaries, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc., and Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc., and its two non-utility subsidiaries, Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses, Inc. and Con Edison Transmission, Inc. CONNECT WITH US: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConEdison Twitter: https://twitter.com/conedison YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/conedisonny Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/conedison/sets/72157627767618832/ Contact: Media Relations 212-460-4111 New Delhi, November 1 President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday expressed his deep appreciation for Bhutans support in resolving the recent stand-off with China at Doklam. The manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in Doklam is a clear testimony to our friendship, a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said. Kovind, who met Bhutan King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the queen and the prince at Rashtrapati Bhavan, said the security concerns of India and Bhutan are indivisible and mutual. The president conveyed deep appreciation for the king of Bhutans personal involvement and guidance and the support provided by Bhutan in addressing the recent situation in the Doklam area, the statement said. India and Chinas troops were locked in a 73-day stand- off in Doklam, a tri-junction between Sino-India and Bhutanese border near Sikkim, from June 16 this year after Indian Army personnel stopped the Chinese Army from building a road in the disputed area. The president said India and Bhutan share exemplary bilateral relations. Our relations are unique and special. Our bilateral ties are based on utmost trust and understanding. We should do everything to make it a model of bilateral cooperation, which will be noted by others in the neighbourhood, he said. The president said India was delighted to see the rapid progress made in Bhutan while simultaneously preserving its very special culture as well as protecting the environment. India has been happy to share its knowledge, experience and resources with Bhutan. Our development cooperation has been guided by the priorities set by the government and people of Bhutan, he said. Kovind also complimented the king of Bhutan on the successful completion of the first decade of his reign and his vision for a stable, happy and prosperous Bhutan. The royal couple is on four-day visit to India. PTI Lalit Mohan & Ambika Sharma Tribune News Service Dharamsala/Nahan, Nov 2 Prime Minister Narendra Modi today targeted the Congress over rampant corruption and loot of public money and for questioning the Armys surgical strikes and supporting Kashmirs independence. Addressing his first poll rally at Rehan in Kangra, the PM said the devbhoomi (Himachal Pradesh) was afflicted by five demons the forest mafia, mining mafia, transfer mafia, tender mafia and drug mafia and exhorted the people to end these demons by voting for the BJP on November 9. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Ridiculing the Congress promise on zero tolerance to corruption, he said: Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh is on bail and the Congress talks of zero tolerance towards corruption. Will anybody believe that? Describing Himachal as the land of martyrs and soldiers, he sought to strike a chord with ex-servicemen. Statements of Congress leaders (reference to P Chidambaram) supporting Kashmirs azadi are an insult to the martyrs of the state, and their kin should punish the Congress for such utterances, Modi said. He questioned the purpose of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis meeting with the Chinese envoy during the Doklam standoff. Can the country trust such leaders, he asked the gathering. At Dhaulan Kuan in Sirmaur district, Modi said the Congress had been reduced to a laughing club that neither understood the people, nor their issues. The BJP will form the next government under the leadership of PK Dhumal and even the Congress is aware of its imminent defeat, he claimed, alleging that public money, that should have been used for development works in the state, had been plundered by the Congress. Explaining the need for Aadhaar, he said a sum of Rs 57,000 crore that earlier went to bogus beneficiaries had now been saved. He ridiculed the Congress for its criticism of the World Bank report on institutional reforms, ranking India on the 100th spot. The BJPs chief ministerial candidate, Prem Kumar Dhumal, also addressed the gathering. Kangra district has 15 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly. The PM is scheduled to address two more rallies in the district ahead of the November 9 elections. Mumbai, November 2 Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here, fuelling speculations in the political circles. The Sena chief, accompanied by son Aaditya Thackeray, paid a visit to Banerjee in the afternoon at a south Mumbai hotel where she is staying. Both Sena and Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) have been at loggerheads with the BJP and the Narendra Modi government on a host of issues, including demonetisation. Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Banerjee, who is in the city since Tuesday and expected to return to Kolkata tomorrow, met top industrialists and bankers here yesterday as part of a roadshow, ahead of the fourth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit, to be held in Kolkata in January. The Shiv Sena had last year teamed up with the TMC in a bid to take on the BJP over the issue of demonetisation. Thackeray had told mediapersons in November last year that if there was nothing wrong in Prime Minister Modi meeting (NCP chief) Sharad Pawar, then there was nothing wrong if the Sena held talks with Banerjee on a crucial issue. PTI Lahore, November 2 Over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims arrived at the Wagah Railway Station here on Thursday from India to take part in the religious and cultural rituals to mark the 549th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. The Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB), which looks after Hindu temples, churches and gurdwaras in Pakistan, said it would provide foolproof security, transport, accommodation and other facilities to the pilgrims, Dawn reported. The Pakistan High Commission in Delhi said it had issued visas to over 2,600 Indian Sikhs who planned to make a pilgrimage to Gurdwara Punja Sahib. The visas were issued "in line with the Pakistan government's efforts to promote religious tourism and people-to-people interactions", a statement said. Soon after their arrival, the pilgrims left for the birthplace of Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib. The main function will be held at Nankana Sahib on November 4. After that, the devotees will leave for Punja Sahib and return to Lahore on November 9. The pilgrims will leave for India on November 11. IANS Tribune News Service Bathinda, November 1 The Dal Khalsa today took out a march to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. This was the first such march here by the radical Sikh outfit. The Dal Khalsa sought the intervention of the United Nations for international inquiry into the November 1984 pogrom. The call was made at the conclusion of the Sikh genocide remembrance march held by the hardliner group to mark the 33 years of the massacre. Hundreds of activists carrying saffron flags and placards marched on the streets starting from Gurdwara Haji Rattan to Qila Mubarak. Former Takht Shri Damdama Sahib Jathedar Balwant Singh Nandgarh, Panj Pyaras sacked by the SGPC and Gurdeep Singh Bathinda participated in the event. Party president HS Cheema said the perpetrators of such inhuman crimes must be reminded of their horrendous actions and the members of the aggrieved community must remain alert forever. It is for the sufferer to decide as to how to carry forward that bitter past as a reminder to both the victim and the executioner, he added. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 1 While the Health and Local Bodies Departments are busy pointing fingers at each other, more than 9,000 confirmed and 14,000 suspected cases of dengue have been reported across the state. It is the third consecutive year when the dengue virus has affected such large number of people. None of the two departments, mainly responsible for curtailing and treating the disease, is ready to own the responsibility. Dr Gagandeep Singh Grover, nodal officer for Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme, said the Health Department was only responsible for diagnosing and treating the patients. The onus of controlling mosquito breeding lies with the Local Bodies, he said. But even on medical care front, the Health Departments infrastructure is lacking with government hospitals refusing to admit patients till their platelet count comes down to 10,000. Dr Grover claimed that 1,125 beds were reserved for dengue patients in government hospitals and the department had also started diagnostic laboratories at the district level. Incidentally, the Health Ministers own district is one of the worst affected in the state. Around 1,800 cases and one casualty have been reported from Patiala. The situation is such that all beds reserved for dengue patients, including 50 in Rajindra Hospital and 35 in Mata Kaushalya Hospital, are occupied. Now, patients are being kept in general wards under mosquito nets. The patients are struggling to get admitted as the hospitals are only obliging patients whose platelet count is less than 10,000. The situation is not much better at other major towns including Bathinda. Interestingly, Haryana that has similar climate conditions as Punjab has reported just around 1,750 cases. Even last year, the number of cases reported in Haryana was less than one-fourth of Punjab. At the national level, despite having smaller population, Punjab is fifth on the list of states hit by dengue. Experts say more cases will keep coming till the end of November. The onus of controlling dengue lies with the Local Bodies Department in urban areas and the Rural Development Department in villages. Their efforts can be measured from the fact that some of the local bodies, including Malout and Dasuya, floated tenders to purchase fogging machines and medicines only last week. Ideally, they should have been ready with such supplies before April. Till last year, the department was found spraying a wrong insecticide (deltamethrin) to check mosquito breeding. Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu could not be contacted despite repeated attempts. Tribune Reporters Fazilka/Chandigarh, November 1 A local court has issued non-bailable warrants against five persons, including Leader of the Opposition Sukhpal Singh Khaira, in a case under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The others are Khairas personal security officer (PSO) Joga Singh; personal assistant Manish; UK-based Charanjit Kaur, a resident of Bath village (Jalandhar); and Major Singh Bajwa of Bajwa Kalan village (Jalandhar). All have been summoned to be present in the court on November 30 and stand trial under Sections 29, 30, 27-A and 23 of the Act. The court of Additional District and Sessions Judge Sandeep Singh Jossan directed the prosecution to file a supplementary challan against Khaira and the others. The court had yesterday awarded sentence to nine convicts in the trans-border heroin smuggling case that surfaced here in 2015. Khairas name cropped up due to his alleged association with Gurdev Singh, who has been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Gurdev is a former chairman of the Market Committee, Dhilwan. Meanwhile, rival parties demanded Khairas resignation over his alleged links with convicted drug smugglers. Alleging political vendetta, Khaira refused to resign, arguing that other leaders had held on to their posts despite facing court cases. He asked Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, Akali leaders Parkash Singh Badal, Sukhbir Singh Badal and Bikram Singh Majithia to quit party/government posts before seeking his resignation. The state or the national unit of the Aam Aadmi Party has not issued any official statement on the issue, but party sources said they backed Khaira. HS Phoolka, former Leader of the Opposition, said Khaira had been framed, It is astonishing that he has been summoned without any FIR against him or his indictment in any inquiry. This is sheer political vendetta, he said. Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh today, Khaira said the Congress and the Akalis had joined hands to silence him as he had been exposing leaders of these parties. Khaira stated that in case Capt Amarinder and Sukhbir offered to give up their positions to uphold ethics and morality in politics, he would follow suit in five minutes and step down from the post of Leader of the Opposition. Meanwhile, the SAD not only sought Khairas resignation, but also asked AAP convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal to walk the talk by sacking the MLA. AAP, and Kejriwal in particular, had taken the moral high ground on the drug issue before the Punjab Assembly elections. Now that the partys own leader has been summoned in a drug case, let us see if Kejriwal is able to sack a tainted leader, party general secretary Mahesh Inder Singh Grewal said. State Congress chief Sunil Jakhar said there was no political vendetta behind the summoning of Khaira. He has been summoned by a court, not the police or a government official, the Gurdaspur MP said. Alleged links with convict Gurdev Singh, a former chairman of Market Committee, Dhilwan, was among nine persons arrested by the Jalalabad police in 2015, along with 2-kg heroin, 24 gold biscuits, one country-made .315-bore pistol, two Pakistani SIM cards and a Tata Safari. All were sentenced on Tuesday. Khairas name cropped up due to his alleged association with Gurdev Singh. Cong, sad want to silence me "The Congress and the Akali Dal have joined hands to silence me as I have been exposing leaders of these parties. In case Amarinder and Sukhbir offer to give up their positions to uphold ethics in politics, I will follow suit in five minutes." Sukhpal Singh Khaira, leader of opposition Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 2 The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition against the merger of 800 government schools in Punjab. The order came after Punjab Advocate General Atul Nanda told the bench that the petition was filed to favour teachers to be relocated. Nanda said in some schools two teachers were teaching two students. The government as such was paying a monthly salary of more than Rs 1 lakh for two students, who still flunked. Nanda said the petitioner had not moved the department concerned before coming to the high court and the government was willing to look into genuine grievances and issues. The bench also gave liberty to the petitioner to approach the Secretary, Education, if he had any further grievances. Shiv Kumar Tribune News Service Mumbai, November 1 Unveiling Punjabs industrial policy before a gathering of industrialists and businesspersons here today, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh today sought further discussions with entrepreneurs in order to fine-tune the initiatives undertaken by the government. The Industrial and Business Development Policy-2017, unveiled before a gathering of the business community organised by the Chamber of Indian Industry (CII), offers a number of sops to those investing in Punjab. Apart from fixing electricity tariff at Rs 5 per unit for five years from today, the government announced that it would refund the state GST paid by companies investing in Punjab. Other incentives include a one-time settlement of loans taken by companies from the Punjab State Industrial Development Corporation (PSIDC), Punjab Financial Corporation (PFC) and Punjab Agro Industries Corporation Limited (PAIC), according to the policy. The new policy also comes out with additional incentives for companies investing in border districts, extreme border zone and Kandi areas. Addressing the gathering of industrialists, Capt Amarinder Singh said the policy had been framed after consultations with industrial associations and officials. He further promised to do more depending on the feedback received by the government. We are trying to create the right atmosphere here so that you can come and invest in Punjab... We will like to know your views on the policy and will surely incorporate your suggestions, Amarinder Singh said. The policy which takes a comprehensive look at various departments promises a single-window clearance to investors. Special considerations have been given to medium and small enterprises and start-up companies which set up shop in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Amritsar and Patiala. Apart from promising to revamp industrial estates in Punjab, the government seeks to set up technology centres and industrial clusters catering to various sectors of businesses. Among the industries that are being targeted by the policy include manufacturing of e-vehicle, electronics, defence equipment, food processing industries, healthcare, etc. Meanwhile, Rakesh Kumar Verma, CEO, Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion, and Secretary, Industries, Commerce and IT, Punjab, made a presentation on Investment climate policies and investment opportunities in Punjab. Manpreet Singh Badal, Finance Minister, also spoke on the occasion. (With inputs from Chandigarh) GS Paul Tribune News Service Amritsar, November 2 Their prayers were answered after 11 long years as the two Pakistani sisters, along with the India-born daughter of one of them, left for Pakistan via the Attari border on Thursday afternoon. The sisters, who were arrested at the Attari railway station in 2006 for carrying drugs, were released from Amritsar jail in the morning. Fatima and Mumtaz, along with mother Rashida Bibi, were arrested on May 8, 2006, when they were on their way to Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh to meet their maternal uncles. The three women were sentenced to 10 years and slapped a fine of Rs 4 lakh. Fatima, who was pregnant at the time, gave birth to Heena in jail the same year. Rashida Bibi died of ill health in 2008. Heena had been staying in jail with her mother and aunt. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Local lawyer Navjot Kaur Chabba fought the legal battle for them and even approached the PMO in September this year. The three had to stay put in the jail transit camp despite having completed the sentence in November 2015 as they could not cough up the hefty fine amount. Chabba arranged the money through Batala-based NGO, Sarbat Da Bhala Humanity Club, on April 7 this year. Despite that it took seven months for the Union Home and External Affairs ministries to clear their release. Pakistan High Commission counsellor Fauzia Manzoor visited Amritsar in August this year and conferred Pakistani nationality on Heena. Fatima comes from Gujranwala whereas Mumtaz, who is unmarried, is a resident of Sikanderabad. As they left Amritsar for Attari, an elated Heena said, I love India where I was born and received my primary education. I want to become a doctor. I am excited at the prospect of meeting my father, brother and sisters for the first time. If you ask me my nationality, I would say humanity. Though Mumtaz showed traces of resentment against the Indian authorities for implicating them in a false case, Fatima seemed to have made peace with the situation. Fatima thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for expediting their release and Chabba for tirelessly fighting their case, that too without charging them anything. Let bygones be bygones. I am happy to be reuniting with my family after more than a decade, she said. And their lawyer was on cloud nine. It is a true Bandi Chhor Divas for me as I tried so hard to get things going. I am so happy to have won this particular fight, she signed off. And as they were given an emotional farewell here, the two elder women had mixed feelings on their return journey--they did lose their mother in jail, but had the satisfaction of a new entry into the family in the 11-year-old Heena. PERTH, Australia, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Perseus Mining Limited (Perseus or the Company) (TSX:PRU) (ASX:PRU) has completed the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) for its Yaoure Gold Project in Cote dIvoire, West Africa, which has confirmed the high quality of the project, demonstrating that: Yaoure generates attractive economics at a range of gold prices and discount rates: Gold Price (US$/Oz) IRR1 (%) Payback (Months) NPV 5 NPV 10 US$ m A$/sh US$ m A$/sh 1,200 23 35 210 0.26 130 0.16 1,250 27 32 259 0.33 170 0.21 1,300 30 30 302 0.38 205 0.26 1 After tax, ungeared Yaoure is technically very robust and is based on an estimated Ore Reserve of 26.8 Mt of ore grading 1.76g/t gold containing 1.52 million ounces of gold. Technical Parameters Annual Average Years 1-5 Total Life of Mine2 Ore mined Mt 4.61 26.81 Strip ratio t:t 5.4:11 5.1:11 Ore processed Mt 3.3 26.8 Head grade g/t gold 2.27 1.76 Gold recovery rate % 90.1 90.1 Gold production 000 ounces 215 1,367 Unit Operating Costs Production costs US$/oz 670 690 Royalty US$/oz 44 44 Sustaining capital US$/oz 20 25 Average All-in site costs US$/oz 734 759 1 Includes ore mined ex-pit plus ore drawn from decommissioned heap leach pads 2 Total mine life is 8.5 years Development of Yaoure is well within Perseuss funding capacity using internally generated cash from its Edikan and Sissingue Gold Mines combined with an amount of bank debt to fund the up-front development cost of US$263 million that includes US$11 million of pre-stripping costs. Yaoure has good potential for growth, being located on a very prospective tenement package that provides significant potential to incrementally expand Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves and rapidly extend expected mine life through further drilling in and around the planned pits as well as systematic exploration of the surrounding 513 square km land holding. Yaoure is highly likely to create the significant value envisaged by Perseus when the project was studied in detail prior to its acquisition in April 2016. Overview The Yaoure Gold Project is located in a rural area on the southern edge of Lake Kossou, 35 km north-west of the capital Yamoussoukro and 25 km east-north-east of the city of Bouafle in central Cote dIvoire, West Africa. The Kossou hydroelectric power station is 6 km east of the Project. The villages of Angovia and Allahou-Bazi are adjacent to the mine site. Figure 1 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a1066807-6b2f-4500-8966-0e57be7a5eae The Project is comprised of two adjacent open pits (CMA and Yaoure). Ore will also be sourced from three pre-existing heap leach pads close to the ROM pad. Ore will be transported to the adjacent processing plant and waste will be taken to a single, large waste dump between the pits and the adjacent villages. Tailings from the process plant will be stored in a single facility to the south of the process plant. A camp will be constructed for the non-local workforce, with the majority of the workforce expected to come from the five local communities. Figure 2 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7a1a011c-18b5-43e2-8932-eb116dfadcd4 Based on the mining and processing schedules, the key forecast operating statistics for Yaoure are summarised below. Mining cost estimates are based on a competitive Request for Quotation involving five mining contractors currently operating in West Africa. Recoveries and processing costs have been estimated based on a comprehensive metallurgical test work program. G&A and other costs are based on very recent experience at Perseuss other mines in West Africa, namely Edikan in Ghana and Sissingue in Cote dIvoire, as well as from quotes specifically received for the Yaoure Project. Overall, the capital and operating cost estimate has been prepared to an accuracy of approximately +-15%. Table 1: Overview Key Parameters Units Average per year Total Mining Years 1-5 Life of Mine Total ore + waste mined Mt 29.5 164.01 Waste mined Mt 24.9 137.21 Ore mined Mt 4.6 26.81 Mined grade g/t gold 1.92 1.761 Strip ratio t:t 5.4:1 5.1:11 Processing Quantity ore processed Mt 3.3 26.8 Head grade processed g/t gold 2.27 1.76 Contained gold Kozs 239 1,518 Gold recovery rate % 90.1 90.1 Gold production Kozs 215 1,367 Units Average per year Total Operating Costs Years 1-5 Life of Mine Average mining costs US$/tonne mined 3.202 3.312 Average processing costs US$/tonne processed 11.66 11.97 Average general & administration costs US$/tonne processed 3.49 3.45 Production costs US$/oz 670 690 Royalty3 US$/oz 44 44 Sustaining capital US$/oz 20 25 All-in site costs US$/oz 734 759 1 Includes all ore and waste mined ex-pit plus ore drawn from Heap Leach pads. 2 Excludes pre-strip costs. 3 Assumed gold price of US$1,250/oz. The estimated development capital cost is US$262.7 million. Table 2: Development Capital Cost Area Cost Excluding Contingency Contingency Total Cost US$ M US$ M US$ M Distributables 26.2 3.2 29.4 Treatment Plant 69.7 7.5 77.2 Reagents & Services 9.9 1.4 11.3 Infrastructure 49.2 4.8 54.0 Mining 17.9 0.2 18.11 Management 17.7 1.9 19.6 Owners Costs 48.3 4.8 53.1 Total 238.9 23.8 262.7 1 Includes US$11.0 million of pre-stripping costs Mineral Resources Yaoures Indicated Mineral Resource at 2 November 2017 is estimated at 43.1 million tonnes grading 1.39 g/t gold and containing 1.93 million ounces of gold at a cut-off grade of 0.4g/t. A further 46 million tonnes of material grading at 1.0 g/t gold and containing a further 1.5 million ounces of gold is classified as Inferred Resources. Table 3 reports the Mineral Resources by category, deposit and type. The classification categories of Indicated and Inferred under the JORC Code are equivalent to the CIM categories of the same name (CIM, 2010). Table 3: Yaoure Mineral Resources 2 November 2017 Deposit Deposit Type Indicated Resources Inferred Resources Quantity Grade Gold Quantity Grade Gold Mt g/t gold Moz Mt g/t gold Moz CMA Open Pit 24.8 1.81 1.44 16 1.2 0.6 Yaoure Open Pit 16.5 0.81 0.43 30 0.9 0.9 Sub-Total Open Pit 41.3 1.41 1.9 46 1.0 1.5 Heap Leach4 Stockpile 1.8 1.02 0.06 Total 43.1 1.39 1.93 46 1.0 1.5 Depleted for previous mining. 0.4g/t gold cut-off applied to in situ open pit material In situ resources constrained to US$1,800/oz pit shell Heap leach resources are stated at 0.0g/t gold cut-off if the average grade of the heap component is above 0.4g/t Mineral Resources are inclusive of Ore Reserves Numbers are rounded 3. Ore Reserves The Ore Reserve is based on the Yaoure Mineral Resources as at 2 November 2017 and pit optimisation, design and scheduling of the resources. All Ore Reserves are reported in accordance with the JORC Code. The following Table reports the Ore Reserves by category, deposit and type, above variable cut-off grades. The classification categories of Proved and Probable under the JORC Code are equivalent to the CIM categories of the same name (CIM, 2010). Probable Ore Reserves are located within the economic limits of two adjoining open pits that have been designed based on Indicated Mineral Resources that incorporated all available Resource in-fill drilling results, a gold price of US$1,200/oz and mining, processing and general and administration costs derived from a combination of Perseuss operating experience at Edikan and Sissingue, as well as Yaoure specific test work, studies and quotations. The CMA and Yaoure Ore Reserves are based on Mineral Resources estimated using Multiple Indicator Kriging techniques. Ore Reserves contained in decommissioned heap leach pads created by prior owners of the Yaoure Mining Leases have been included in the Ore Reserve estimate. Table 4: Yaoures Proved and Probable Ore Reserves as at 2 November 2017 Deposit Deposit Type Proved Probable Proved + Probable Quantity Grade Gold Quantity Grade Gold Quantity Grade Gold Mt g/t gold Moz Mt g/t gold Moz Mt g/t gold Moz CMA Open Pit - - - 20.7 1.97 1.31 20.7 1.97 1.31 Yaoure Open Pit - - - 4.7 1.04 0.15 4.7 1.04 0.15 Sub-Total Open Pit - - - 25.3 1.80 1.47 25.3 1.80 1.47 Heap Leach6 Stockpile - - - 1.4 1.14 0.05 1.4 1.14 0.05 Total - - - 26.8 1.76 1.52 26.8 1.76 1.52 Numbers are rounded All the estimates are on a dry tonne basis Based on November 2017 Mineral Resource estimate Variable gold cut-off grade based on material type Inferred Mineral Resource is treated as mineralised waste Heap Leach refers to decommissioned heap leach pads established by prior owners of Yaoure 4. Open Pit Mining The chosen method for the Open Pit Reserves is conventional open pit mining utilising hydraulic excavators and trucks. In ore, mining bench heights are 5m with 2.5m flitches to minimise ore loss and waste rock dilution. Waste blocks adjacent to ore are mined on 5m benches, while waste more distant to ore is mined on 10m benches. During the DFS a competitive Request for Quotation involving five mining contractors currently operating in West Africa was completed. The equipment selected by the mining contractors consisted of 24-30, 100 tonne class trucks and a combination of 100-140 tonne excavators for mining in ore and 200-300 tonne excavators for mining in bulk waste. The ore and waste in both the CMA and Yaoure pits is of high strength (P80 UCS>200Mpa) and with relatively widely spaced fractures. Drilling and blasting will therefore be a key component to ensure adequate productivity of mining equipment and optimum fragmentation for ore processing. Closely spaced blast holes and high powder factors have been adopted to ensure that both mining and processing productivity and cost estimates are optimised. Processing Plant and Infrastructure The process plant will be comprised of a primary crusher with a 6MW SAG mill and a 6MW ball mill, pebble crushing and a gravity and CIL circuit with cyanide detoxification. The ore is particularly hard and careful consideration was given to the design of the comminution circuit in conjunction with the mine drilling and blasting. The optimum grind size of 75m was determined from extensive metallurgical test work at a range of grind sizes to optimise cost and recovery. Power will be supplied off the national grid from the nearby sub-station at Kossou via a dedicated 225kV power line. Water will be supplied from a combination of pit dewatering, bores and extraction from the nearby Bandama River. A high quality dual carriageway connects the port of Abidjan to Yamoussoukro, meaning easy access to site during construction and operations. Local roads will be upgraded and/or diverted to allow for the increased traffic and infrastructure. Figure 3 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/53166c90-bbc6-4720-bf1b-0afe2b0de7df Figure 4 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/958d3e71-5f56-4cea-8fa1-b320b9cf5c5a Mining and Processing Schedules Based on the Ore Reserves stated above, the mining production profile for Yaoure is forecast as shown in Figure 5 below. Ore and waste will be mined from the CMA and Yaoure pits along with a small amount of previously processed heap leach ore. The CMA pit is current backfilled with oxide waste. Total material movement from the pits is an average of 26.0 million tonnes per year and a maximum of 31.2 million tonnes per year during the period when the heap leach and CMA backfill is mined in year 1. Mining is completed in the first 6 years of operation, with only rehandling of stockpiled ore thereafter. During the pre-production period, 3.5 million tonnes of waste material is mined to provide construction materials. During the first 6 months of gold production, heap leach ore is fed to the mill while the pre-strip in the CMA pit is carried out. Over the following 5 years the CMA pit is mined in 3 stages, with the highest grade ore fed to the mill and medium and low grade material stockpiled. Following completion of the CMA pit, the Yaoure pit is mined and medium and then low grade ore is fed to the mill from stockpile. Figure 5 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/fdaac2d1-2391-4ed0-aaf8-367819a36ced Careful consideration was given to the vertical rate of advance employed in the schedule as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/49d40434-2e75-4190-b6c2-52c0cd0a587f The mining strategy is aimed at maximising the return on funds employed at Yaoure and the mining sequence of the pits along with mill feed profile has been optimised and scheduled accordingly. The result of this scheduling is that the gold production profile and resulting cash flows from Yaoure are very strong over the first 5 years of production. The processing rate is nominally 3.3 million tonnes per year over an 8.5 year mine life. The average gold production for the first 5 years of the Project is estimated at 215,000 ounces at an average head grade of 2.27g/t and an average metallurgical recovery of 90.1%. The Project is planned to recover 1.37 million ounces over the 8.5 year period. Figure 7 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/96069e3a-46d0-4d09-b787-f1581a564f9a Figure 8 accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/361a1195-feca-44cb-a43b-750450989349 Financial investment metrics and sensitivity analysis Operating Costs Operating costs have been estimated from first principles and are based on firm quotes in the case of goods and services that are common to all three of Perseuss West African projects. In the case of mining, costs are based on the results of a Request for Quotation which resulted in prices being offered by five reputable mining contractors currently operating in West Africa. Drill and blast costs are estimated based on testwork and analysis covering the full range of material types. Grade control costs are estimated based on Yaoure specific requirements and experience from Edikan and Sissingue. Mining costs also include an allowance for mining costs incurred by the owners operating team as well as costs relating to potential costs of a mining contractor. Processing costs include all consumables including maintenance consumables, electricity, fuel, labour and other processing overheads. General and Administration costs include all labour costs, Abidjan regional office costs, HR administration costs as well as all costs associated with the management of the environment, OH&S, security, government and community relations, general administration including insurances and other contracts. Table 5: Yaoure Operating Costs Units Average per year Total Operating Costs Years 1-5 Life of Mine Average mining costs US$/tonne mined 3.201 3.311 Average processing costs US$/tonne processed 11.66 11.97 Average general & administration (G&A) costs US$/tonne processed 3.49 3.45 Production costs US$/oz 670 690 Royalty2 US$/oz 44 44 Sustaining capital US$/oz 20 25 All-in site costs US$/oz 734 759 1Excludes pre-strip costs for construction materials. 2Assumes gold price of US$1,250/oz gold. Capital Costs The total capital cost of developing the Yaoure Gold Project is estimated at US$263 million, including US$252 million for the process plant and all infrastructure with an additional US$11 million for the mining pre-strip which will provide materials for construction earthworks. This sum also includes a contingency of US$24 million representing 10% of the base estimate. Table 6: Yaoure Development Capital Costs Component Cost excluding Contingency US$ million Contingency US$ million Total Cost Including Contingency US$ million Distributables 26.2 3.2 29.4 Process Plant 69.7 7.5 77.2 Reagents and Services 9.9 1.4 11.3 Infrastructure 49.2 4.8 54 Mining 17.9 0.2 18.1 Management 17.7 1.9 19.6 Owners Costs 48.3 4.8 53.1 Total 238.9 23.8 262.7 Sustaining capital costs include stage lifting of the TSF, closure costs, progressive clearing, contractor demobilisation, plant modifications and an annual allowance of 5% of the direct development capital cost of the plant and infrastructure development spread over the life of the mine. The total sum estimated for Sustaining Capital is US$34.7 million which over the current life of mine equates to US$25/oz of gold produced. Cashflow Based on the Yaoure financial model, at a range of gold prices, the Project generates material after tax cash flows as follows: Table 7: Yaoure Cashflow Forecasts Gold Price (US$/oz) Gross After Tax Cashflow1 US$ million Net After Tax Cashflow2 2 US$ million Cashflow (A$ per share3) Annual Average Years 1-5 Annual Average LOM 1,100 457.0 194.3 $ 0.10 $ 0.06 1,150 519.4 256.7 $ 0.11 $ 0.07 1,200 581.7 319.0 $ 0.13 $ 0.08 1,250 643.9 381.1 $ 0.14 $ 0.09 1,300 697.6 434.9 $ 0.15 $ 0.10 1,350 759.4 496.7 $ 0.16 $ 0.11 1,400 821.2 558.5 $ 0.18 $ 0.12 1 Before deducting development capital. 2 After deducting development capital. 3 Assumes A$1.00=US$0.77 Key Investment Metrics and Sensitivity analysis At a range of gold prices and discount rates, the Yaoure Project is expected to generate the following economic outcomes: Table 8: Sensitivity Analysis Gold Price (US$/oz) IRR1 (%) Payback (Months) NPV (US$ million) NPV 5 NPV 10 1,100 15 44 111 50 1,150 19 39 160 90 1,200 23 35 210 130 1,250 27 32 259 170 1,300 30 30 302 205 1,350 33 28 351 245 1,400 36 26 400 284 1After tax, ungeared, real internal rate of return Project Development Funding It is envisaged that the funding required to finance the development of the Yaoure Project will be sourced from a combination of: Internally Generated Cash flow Perseuss Edikan and Sissingue Gold Mines are forecast to generate significant quantities of after tax cash flow at current gold prices that will be available for re-investment in the Yaoure Gold Project development. Bank Debt Perseus has conducted encouraging preliminary discussions with a range of international banks to determine the bank markets appetite for financing a project with Yaoures metrics located in Cote dIvoire. Based on these discussions, it is apparent that debt finance based on a 50:50 gearing ratio is available at either the Project level or at a corporate level. The recently completed project financing of Perseuss Sissingue project has paved the way for the use of project finance as a viable funding mechanism in Francophone West Africa. Potential exercise of warrants. Perseus currently has on issue a total of 130,554,910 warrants to subscribe for ordinary shares in Perseus at a price of A$0.44 cents per share on or before 19 April 2019. While there is no guarantee that any or all of these warrants will be exercised, if they were exercised in full, at current US$:AU$ exchange rates, this would result in additional cash totalling US$44.2 million being available to Perseus to apply to the development of Yaoure. The cash that is potentially available from a combination of the three mechanisms referred to above exceeds the estimated capital cost of development of the Yaoure Project without any requirement for Perseus to raise additional equity finance. In coming months as the capital cost estimate for Yaoure is firmed up through the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) process, Perseus will engage with the banking community and firm up funding arrangements with a view to having sufficient funding in place to enable, subject to Board approval, a commitment to full scale development of the project in the December Half of 2018. Way Forward The next step in the way forward for the Project is to finalise all documentation associated with the Definitive Feasibility Study and NI 43-101 Technical Report. This work is expected to be complete by the end of December 2017. Once documentation is complete, an application will be made to the Minister for Industry and Mines in Cote dIvoire for the granting of an Exploitation Permit for the development of the Project. In parallel, a Mining Convention will be negotiated with the Ivorian government setting out the legal framework for development of the Project and including a guarantee of fiscal stability from the Ivorian government for the life of the Yaoure Gold Mine. In parallel to the above process, Perseus will undertake the FEED study to bring the costs to an accuracy of 10%, immediately after which preliminary construction works may commence. The FEED will be completed following the same proven principles as those used at Sissingue. The FEED is scheduled to be completed by mid-2018 followed by an 18 month construction period, with first gold in 2020. The potential for addition of further Ore Reserves has been identified through conversion of Inferred Resources to Indicated Resources and conversion of near mine targets identified through sterilisation drilling. Identified sources could extend the mine life, with any additions to the Ore Reserve incorporated into the FEED study. To discuss any aspect of this announcement, please contact: Managing Director: Jeff Quartermaine at telephone +61 8 6144 1700 or email jeff.quartermaine@perseusmining.com; Media Relations: Nathan Ryan at telephone +61 4 20 582 887 or email nathan.ryan@nwrcommunications.com.au (Melbourne) Caution Regarding Forward Looking Information: This report contains forward-looking information which is based on the assumptions, estimates, analysis and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management of the Company believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made by the Company regarding, among other things: the price of gold, continuing commercial production at the Edikan Gold Mine without any major disruption, development of a mine at Sissingue and/or Yaoure, the receipt of required governmental approvals, the accuracy of capital and operating cost estimates, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all factors and assumptions which may have been used by the Company. Although management believes that the assumptions made by the Company and the expectations represented by such information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking information involves 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 anticipated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, the actual market price of gold, the actual results of current exploration, the actual results of future exploration, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be evaluated, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents. The Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, the Companys ability to carry on its exploration and development activities, the timely receipt of required approvals, the price of gold, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Perseus does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Competent Person Statement All production targets for the Yaoure Gold Project (YGP) referred to in this report are underpinned by estimated Ore Reserves which have been prepared by competent persons in accordance with the requirements of the JORC Code. The information in this report that relates to Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves for the YGP was first reported by the Company in compliance with the JORC Code 2012 and NI43-101 in a market announcement released on 2 November 2017. The Company confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affect the information in that market release and that all material assumptions underpinning those estimates and the production targets, or the forecast financial information derived therefrom, continue to apply and have not materially changed. Tribune News Service Ludhiana, November 2 Punjab Police have released a sketch of a prime suspect in the killing of a Hindu leader in Ludhiana. The sketch was taken from a video grab taken by Close Circuit Cameras in the area near his house at Basti Jodhewal. Police have also announced a reward of Rs 5 lakh to anyone who identifies the suspect. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader Ravinder Gosain was shot dead by two armed assailants on October 17. Police announced later that they would hand over investigations to the National Investigation Agency. Nine religious leaders five of them Hindus have been murdered in Punjab in the last two years. The latest death came two days ago 15 days after Gosain's killing when Hindu Sangharsh Sena leader Vipan Sharma was shot dead in Amritsar. Jupinderjit Singh Tribune News Service Chandigarh, November 1 Ever since the Congress assumed power in the state, 17 Akalis have been murdered and several others injured, the SAD has claimed. Members of the Congress are allegedly involved in all incidents. Two of the SAD workers were beaten to death. Others were shot dead. The spate of violence against political persons took off during the previous SAD-BJP government. Then, many of the incidents were the handiwork of Akali workers. Now, the alleged perpetrators are Congress workers with Akalis at the receiving end. The SAD is maintaining a daily register of violent incidents against its members. The first incident took place on March 13, within 48 hours of the Congress winning the Assembly elections. Two Akali workers were shot dead by a group of alleged Congress-affiliated truck union. The next day in Gurdaspur, SAD leader Gurbachan Singh Khalsa (80) was killed allegedly by a person considered close to a Congress leader. In May, Akali workers Gurwinder Singh Lali in Chet Singh Wala (Amritsar) and Bikramjit Singh in Fatehgarh Churian (Gurdaspur) were beaten to death. Daljit Singh Cheema, SAD general secretary, alleged: The Congress has unleashed terror on our party workers. We dont hope for justice. The police have not done a fair probe in any of the cases. The Congress, however, accused the Akalis of cooking up charges. State party president Sunil Jakhar said the Congress disapproved any kind of violence, but the Akalis were wrongly attributing clashes or individual cases as incidents of political vendetta. The Akalis have given political colour to incidents arising out of personal rivalries. In some cases, the victims turned out to be Congress workers, he said. A senior police official said, The police act as per the complaint and statement of the victim, besides the circumstantial evidence. If political rivalry is a motive behind a murder, it is mentioned so. But data on political murders is unavailable. Syed Ali Ahmed Tribune News Service New Delhi, November 1 Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal has said he would ask the SGPC to build a memorial to 1984 riot victims in Amritsar similar to Wall of Truth at Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib here. He said this at an ardas samagam at Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib here today, paying tributes to victims on the 33rd anniversary of anti-Sikh riots. Light and sound programme should be organised at the memorial to tell the stories of Sikhs killed in Delhi. Schoolchildren should be brought to the memorial so that they know about the history, Sukhbir said, adding the authorities know those responsible for the killings, but action has not been taken against them even 33 years after the incident. On the occasion, the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) passed two resolutions to get ownership right of flats allotted to victims and get the chargesheet filed in the Nangloi case, in which Congress leader Sajjan Kumar is an accused. Manjit Singh GK, DSGMC president, said the culprits had killed all those sporting turbans. Had the victims of 1984 riots got justice, there would not have been another riots. There will be more walls of truth till the time religion is used for vote politics, he added. Akhil Bharatiya Danga Pidit Rahat Committee president and SAD leader Kuldeep Singh Bhogal threatened self-immolation if the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh Government failed to submit a status report in the Supreme Court on the killing of Sikhs in Kanpur. GS Paul Tribune News Service Amritsar, November 1 The All-India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF) launched a signature campaign at the Golden Temple plaza today, seeking justice for the 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims. Some relatives of the victims also turned up seeking justice that has been long delayed. The signature petition will be submitted to the US President. The aim is to collect 1 lakh signatures till November 26. Even after 33 years, justice eludes us as the culprits escaped scot-free, said 76-year-old Jagdish Kaur, whose five family members were burnt alive by a mob in Delhi. She is the prime witness in a case against Congress leader Sajjan Kumar. At present living in an Amritsar Danga Pirat accommodation, provided under the governments rehabilitation scheme, with his son Gurdeep Singh Gollu, she said, I will keep fighting. I am a witness to the riots. My husband Kehar Singh, then 45, 19-year-old son Gurpreet Singh, cousin Kuldeep Singh (21) brothers Narinder Pal Singh (35) and Raghwinder Pal Singh (25) were burnt alive before my eyes by a mob that barged into our house located in the cantonment area, Raj Nagar, in Delhi, she said. Karnail Singh Peer Mohammad, AISSF president, said that till now, 13,500 signatures had been gathered. The aim was to gather at least 1 lakh signatures till November 26 for the petition, which was available on the White House website. He requested people of all religions to come forward and sign the petition. I hope that our efforts will bear fruit as it was done when the Canadian parliament recognised 1984 killings as a Sikh genocide. We will be organising a camp on November 4 at Sultanpur Lodhi, he said. New York, November 2 US President Donald Trump called for the death penalty on Wednesday for an Uzbek immigrant accused of plowing a truck down a New York City bike path, killing eight people, describing the man as a terrorist. (Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd) Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was hospitalised after he was shot by a police officer and arrested, told investigators he had been inspired by watching Islamic State videos and began planning Tuesdays attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed against him on Wednesday. NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Trump tweeted. Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically Islamic State, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people. Manhattan acting US Attorney Joon Kim said the first count carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, while the second would make Saipov eligible for capital punishment if convicted, if the government chose to seek the death penalty. Additional or different charges could be brought later in an indictment, Kim said. Vehicle assaults similar to the New York attack took place in Spain in August and in France and Germany last year, claiming dozens of lives. Saipov confessed to authorities that he made a trial run with a rental truck on Oct. 22 to practice turning the vehicle and stated that he felt good about what he had done after the attack, the complaint said. The 10-page charging document said Saipov waived his rights to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination in agreeing to speak to investigators without an attorney present from his bed at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. The complaint said Saipov had requested permission to display the flag of the Islamic State militant group in his hospital room. It said he was particularly motivated by seeing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led the campaign by Islamic State - also known as ISIS to seize territory for a self-proclaimed caliphate within Iraq and Syria, exhorted Muslims in the United States and elsewhere to support the groups cause. Investigators found thousands of ISIS-related propaganda images and videos on a cellphone belonging to Saipov, including video clips showing ISIS prisoners being beheaded, run over by a tank and shot in the face, the complaint said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had located another Uzbek man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, wanted for questioning as a person of interest in the attack. US law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, told Reuters that Saipov had been in contact with Kadirov and another person of interest in the investigation, though they did not elaborate. Assault deadliest since September 11, 2001 Tuesdays assault was the deadliest in New York City since September 11, 2001, when suicide hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, killing more than 2,600 people. Of those killed, five were Argentine tourists, who were among a group of friends visiting New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation, one was a Belgian citizen, one was a New York resident and one lived in New Jersey. Saipov allegedly used a pickup truck rented from a New Jersey Home Depot store to run down pedestrians and cyclists along a 20-block stretch of the bike path that runs along the Hudson River before slamming into a school bus. According to authorities, he then exited his vehicle shouting Allahu Akbar - Arabic for God is greatest - and brandishing what turned out to be a paint-ball gun and a pellet gun before a police officer shot him in the abdomen. Saipov lived in Paterson, New Jersey, a one-time industrial hub about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of lower Manhattan. Saipov, seated in a wheelchair, appeared for a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court Wednesday evening before Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses, appointed public defense attorney David Patton to represent him. Saipov did not ask for bail and was remanded to federal custody. It was not immediately clear where he would be held. Earlier in the day, Trump said he would be open to transferring Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where other suspects including alleged September 11 plotters are held. Kim, the federal prosecutor, said there was nothing about charging Saipov in civilian court that would necessarily prevent him from later being declared an enemy combatant. Reuters Islamabad, November 2 Pakistans ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday returned home from London to face trial in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif, 67, had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on October 26 due to his non-appearance in two corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. State-run PTV footage showed Sharif stepping out of a Pakistan International Airline plane after it landed at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad. He was received by senior leaders of ruling PML-N and held a brief consultation with the party leaders at the VIP lounge of the airport. Later, he left in his private vehicle for Punjab House in Islamabad, where he was received by supporters and party workers. He is expected to hold extensive consultations throughout the day about court cases, political situation and party matters. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face bogus cases when he should be with his wife. These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them, he said. The court would resume the hearing tomorrow. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. Maryam and Safdar have already been indicted in corruption cases filed against them by the countrys anti- corruption body National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the Supreme Courts instruction in the Panama Papers case. Earlier, Accountability Court issued bailable arrest warrant against Sharif after he failed to appear in the court in three corruption cases. Three cases were registered by NAB on September 8 against Sharif, his children and son-in-law in the Accountability Court in Islamabad, following a verdict by the Supreme Court. He was indicted in absence in three cases. Maryam and Safdar have been indicted in one case with him, while the court is proceeding separately against his two sons Husain and Hasan who are co-accused in three cases. The court during the hearing on October 9 decided to separate the trial of his sons from Sharif and his daughter and son-in-law. The cases are based on July 28 disqualification verdict of the Supreme Court and to launch three corruption cases against him, his family, and one case against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. If convicted, Sharif can be jailed. PTI Islamabad, November 2 Pakistans ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today returned home from London to face trial before an anti-graft court tomorrow in the corruption cases spiralling from the Panama Papers scandal. Sharif had to step down as the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) after he was disqualified as the prime minister by the Supreme Court on July 28 in the scandal. He went to London last month to be with his ailing wife Kulsoom Nawaz who is battling throat cancer. Sharif was forced to come back to Pakistan after a bailable arrest warrant was issued by the Accountability Court on October 26 due to his non-appearance in three corruption cases related to the Panama Papers scandal. The court would resume the hearing tomorrow. Sharif, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Captain (retired) Mohmmad Safdar have been summoned. Sharif told media in London that he was going back to Pakistan to face bogus cases when he should be with his wife. These are bogus cases but I am going back to face them, he said. Sharifs family alleges that the cases are politically motivated. PTI Yangon, November 2 Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday made her first visit as Myanmar's leader to the conflict-torn region where more than half a million Rohingya Muslims have fled state-led violence that has spiralled into Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades. Her visit to Rakhine state comes as Suu Kyi is under intense international scrutiny for her response to the exodus, which the UN has called "ethnic cleansing", and as her government said it is working on a plan to repatriate those who fled to Bangladesh. Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital, Sittwe, in the morning and headed to restive northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there hasn't been much conflict. "The state counsellor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials," said Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, using Suu Kyi's official title. Government spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyi's plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when security forces in Buddhist-majority Myanmar began what they called "clearance operations" in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by insurgents. The campaign has included the burning of Rohingya villages and alleged widespread rights violations. Fleeing Rohingya have described arson, rape and shootings by Myanmar soldiers and Buddhist mobs that left them no option but to make the dangerous and sometimes deadly journey through jungles and by sea to Bangladesh. The exodus has slowed at some points but has not stopped. At least 2,000 terrified and starving Rohingya huddled in rice paddy fields near one border crossing on the Naf river on Thursday morning. They had waited for more than 24 hours for permission to enter Bangladesh and spent the night in the muddy fields. The global image of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, has been damaged by the crisis and she has come under intense criticism to do more to end the violence and condemn those responsible. Several fellow peace prize winners have publicly condemned Suu Kyi for what they see as her apparent indifference to the plight of the Rohingya. Though Suu Kyi has been the de facto head of Myanmar's civilian government since her party swept elections in 2015, the former political prisoner is limited in her control of the country by a constitution written by the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades. The military has effective veto power over all legislation and controls key ministries, including those overseeing security and defense. The military is in charge of operations in northern Rakhine, and ending them is not up to Suu Kyi. Even when Suu Kyi has spoken on the issue, she has drawn criticism. In a September speech, her first public comments after the current crisis began, she asked for patience from the international community and suggested the refugees were partly responsible, saying more than half of the Rohingya villages had not been destroyed by the violence. Suu Kyi faces a potential domestic backlash if she speaks on behalf of the Rohingya, who have been the target of anti- Muslim rhetoric. Many people agree with the official government stance that there is no such ethnicity as Rohingya and that those in the country have illegally migrated from Bangladesh. Though Rohingya first arrived generations ago, they were stripped of their citizenship in 1982, denying them almost all rights and rendering them stateless. They cannot travel freely, practice their religion, or work as teachers or doctors, and they have little access to medical care, food or education. Myanmar's backers globally have also had to tread carefully, not wanting to undermine Suu Kyi's weak civilian government at a time when the country is just emerging from decades of authoritarian rule. Still, counties such as the US have warned Myanmar about potential repercussions if it doesn't address the crisis, including the risk of attracting international terrorists, scaring off investment, and ultimately stunting its transition to democracy. The government said Tuesday that it is ready to repatriate Rohingya who had fled, but blamed Bangladesh for slowing the process. "We are ready to accept the refugees and to start a verification and scrutiny process, but we have not reached an agreement with the Bangladeshi authorities for repatriation," said Zaw Htay, the government spokesman. He said those who could prove they were residents of Myanmar would be allowed to return. Many Rohingya have no identity documents. Ali Hossain, a top government administrator in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district, said on Thursday that Bangladesh is doing "more than enough" to help the refugees, and placed the blame for delays in the repatriation process on Myanmar. "Myanmar is talking about repatriation but more and more people are still being forced to come to Bangladesh," he said. "There is a situation in Myanmar. We know that, the whole world knows that." "Bangladesh is not playing any tricks here. We are doing our best," he said. AP London, November 2 Britain's Defence Minister Michael Fallon resigned on Thursday over allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour, leaving Prime Minister Theresa May to cope with a forced Cabinet reshuffle. Fallon, 65, stepped down as UK defence secretary saying his conduct may have fallen below the high standards expected amid revelations that he had made unwanted advances towards a journalist years ago. "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false, but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," Fallon said in his resignation letter to May. It remains unclear if it was the particular revelation of Fallon repeatedly placing his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer that triggered his decision to step down or there were other incidents involving an abuse of power that may have precipitated his departure. Hartley-Brewer, at the centre of the allegations that came to light earlier this week, has stressed that she did not see herself as a victim and that the incident had not remotely upset or distressed anyone. "If this is over kneegate, him touching my knee 15 years ago and me not having any issue with it today, this is the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a Cabinet minister ever," she said. The British prime minister in her response to Fallon's resignation letter praised his "diligent service" and welcomed the "particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others". Fallon, described as a Conservative party heavyweight and even tipped as a future Prime Minister, becomes the first victim of a deepening scandal over sexual misconduct in the corridors of political power in the UK. While May is expected to appoint a new defence minister without the need for a very wide reshuffle, the position of another of her senior ministers, First Secretary of State Damian Green, remains precarious after disclosures by an academic and Conservative party activist Kate Maltby. He has categorically denied making unwanted sexual advances towards Maltby but remains under investigation by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood on the orders of Theresa May. Parliament now has to look at itself and the Prime Minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment, Fallon said soon after his resignation. His name had appeared on an unverified list of sexual misconduct, a so-called dirty dossier, circulating in Westminster. It has attracted a mixed response because it implicates MPs who have had consensual affairs with colleagues in the same space as more serious accusations of sexual abuse. The Prime Minister is struggling to contain the crisis and opened parliamentary proceedings on Wednesday with a statement on the issue, stressing that she had been holding a series of meetings to set up a common, transparent, independent grievance procedure. Indian-origin Opposition Labour MP Lisa Nandy challenged her in the House of Commons over her failure to act over sexual abuse cover-up she had informed her about three years ago when May was the UK home secretary. "On three occasions, I asked her [Theresa May] to act and on three occasions she did not," Nandy claimed. May assured the House that she was determined to take firm action and is set to hold a meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn early next week to address the issue across party lines. She has reportedly read the "riot act" to her Cabinet, warning them to ensure exemplary behaviour. PTI Estimados amigos, Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia. Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro. Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras. There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen. You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca. Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt. Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos. Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. Cathy Gautreaux Photo: Louisiana Motor Transport Association The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is expected to soon name Louisiana Motor Transport Association Executive Director Cathy Gautreaux as the agencys next deputy administrator, according to an industry source. An announcement posted on the LMTA website states only that Gautreaux is leaving the association to fill a leadership capacity at FMCSA. The LMTAs executive committee noted that it has already begun a search for Gautreauxs successor, as it is imperative that we have someone in place to get acclimated to the position in preparation for the 2018 Legislative Session next spring. Gautreaux has been employed by LMTA for 32 years, serving as the executive director for the association for 29 years. The deputy administrator is the number-two position at the agency. It has traditionally been filled by a political appointee. However, Daphne Jefferson, the current deputy administrator, who is reportedly retiring soon, is a career civil servant. She was appointed to the post in 2015 after having served just prior as counselor to the chief of staff at the Department of Transportation. The number-two position at FMCSA does not require confirmation by the Senate. Earlier this week, the confirmation process for Raymond Martinez, President Trumps choice to lead the agency as FMCSA administrator, got under way on Capitol Hill with his appearance before the Senate committee charged with vetting his nomination. XPO's growing last-mile business contributed to its success. Photo: XPO Logistics Trucking and logistics provider XPO Logistics Inc. on Wednesday reported income and revenue hit a record-high of any quarter during the third quarter of 2017. C.H. Robinson and Hub Group, however, did not fare as well. "All of our customers are saying fasten your seatbelts," XPO CEO Bradley Jacobs told the Journal of Commerce in an interview, referring to what the company expects to be a very busy peak holiday shipping season. Net income was $57.5 million for the quarter, or 44 cents per share, compared with net income of $13.8 million, or 11 cents per share, for the same period in 2016. While this was below a consensus estimate from a survey of analysts, the more than 300% surge in earnings reportedly marked the eighth straight quarter in which the Connecticut-based company beat year-earlier profits. Revenue was $3.89 billion for the quarter, compared with $3.71 billion for the same period in 2016. Revenue increased year-over-year by $305.1 million, excluding third quarter 2016 revenue of $131.8 million from the North American truckload unit XPO sold off in October 2016. We benefited from positive market dynamics, including e-commerce demand for contract logistics and last mile, growth in intermodal, and a brokerage market that is trending in our favor, said Bradley Jacobs, chairman and CEO. Our diversification is yielding results." The company's transportation segment generated revenue of $2.47 billion in the quarter compared with $2.41 billion for the same period in 2016, which included $131.8 million of revenue from the North American truckload unit it previously owned. Segment revenue was led by increases in North American freight brokerage, less-than-truckload and last mile, and European less-than-truckload, according to XPO. Operating income for the transportation segment increased to $145.2 million in the quarter, compared with $125.4 million for the same period in 2016. XPOs logistics segment generated revenue of $1.46 billion for the quarter, compared with $1.35 billion for the same period in 2016. It said the increase in logistics revenue was led by strong demand for contract logistics both in Europe and North America, partially offset by a decline in managed transportation revenue in North America. In Europe, contract logistics growth was led by e-commerce and cold chain contracts in the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. In North America, the largest gains came from the e-commerce and industrial sectors. Operating income for the logistics segment increased to $77.4 million, compared with $75.3 million for the same period in 2016. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Profit Falls by 7.6% A couple of days earlier, third-party logistics provider C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. reported net income declined in the third quarter by 7.6% from a year earlier. Net income totaled $119.2 million, or 85 cents per share, as total revenue improved 6.3% to $593.8 million. The per share performance beat analysts' expectations. The increase in total revenues was driven by increased pricing and volume growth across all of our transportation services, the company said in a statement. The companys North American surface transportation segment, which includes truckload, less than truckload, and intermodal, reported income from operations slipped 11.8% to $151.4 million as revenue increased 9.6% to $2.47 billion. Its global forwarding segment saw revenue increase 41.3% to $552.1 million and income from operations improve 82.6% to $31.1 million. Robinson Fresh, which includes the buying, selling, and marketing of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other perishable items, saw revenue increase 3.9% to $613.6 million but income from operations plummeted 34.7% to $11.6 million. Hub Group also Sees Revenue Climb as Profit Falls Likewise, multi-modal freight transportation and logistics provider Hub Group Inc. reported a few days earlier an increase in revenue as profits declined as it also had to spend more to find trucks to move freight. Third quarter net income totaled $15.3 million, or 46 cents per share, compared to third quarter 2016 net income of $17.9 million, or 54 cents per share. The latest per share performance was better than Wall Street expectations. Earnings for the third quarter of 2017 were negatively affected by approximately 2 cents per share related to costs and inefficiencies in the rail and dray network in areas directly affected by the hurricanes and consulting costs for a network optimization study, the company said in a statement. Revenue for the most recent quarter was $1,05 billion, compared with $932.8 million for the third quarter 2016. We are pleased with our first $1 billion dollar quarter. As capacity continues to tighten and demand accelerates, we are increasingly confident that contractual rates will strengthen over the upcoming quarters. Our intent is continued focus on improving margins by operating more efficiently, providing excellent customer service and increasing prices, said Dave Yeager, CEO. The Hub segment revenue increased 15% and the Mode segment revenue increased 3%. Operating income for the current quarter decreased to $21.7 million versus $29.9 million for the third quarter 2016. The Hub and Mode segments operating income both declined 27%. Emperor Kangxi (1654 1722), also known as Emperor Kang Hsi, is one of the most beloved of Chinas historic leaders. In fact, he is renowned for his benevolent reign of the country, which was marked by stability, progress and development, both culturally and in terms of his peoples welfare. In stark contrast to other emperors who are depicted as warriors in military uniforms or armour, Emperor Kangxi is most commonly depicted in a gentler, scholarly manner. His love for the literary arts and his devotion to the Buddhist faith inspired him to sponsor many written works, temples, and monasteries throughout China, Tibet and Mongolia, including several temples on the holy mountain of Wu Tai Shan dedicated to Manjushri, the Buddha of wisdom. The Peoples Emperor Emperor Kangxi, the son of Emperor Shunzhi (1638 1661), was the second and longest reigning emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644 1912), also known as the Manchu Dynasty of China. Having survived a war with the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Kangxi became central to rebuilding and development efforts throughout China. His determination and humility highlighted his real love for the subjects of his empire. In fact, it has been recorded that he would spend hours and hours each day sending orders all over his territory to guarantee the improvement of his empire, even working late into the night so that his instructions could be sent off the next morning. Having ascended the Dragon Throne at the tender age of six, he was assisted by regents until he came of age. By the time he finally assumed his rightful place as emperor, Kangxi was well-versed in court politics, having grown up in the imperial court. Emperor Kangxi successfully minimised unrest and nefarious plots internally within his court and throughout the country as a whole. He then turned the attention of his people to the development of literary works such as the compilation of enormous encyclopaedias and the Kangxi dictionary. On a military level, he exerted powerful command over his generals and at the same time, showed care towards the ordinary soldiers. Inspired by and drawing strength from the Buddhist faith, he showed compassion for all living beings that he came across. The Kangxi Emperor is said to have been extremely humble when he interacted with his subjects. His works, attitude and compassionate behaviour earned him the position of emperor both physically and also in the hearts and minds of his people. The Emanation of Wisdom A devoted Buddhist, the Kangxi Emperor was considered progressive in his day as he gave everyone the right to freedom of religion. He is even famously remembered to have given permission for Christian missionaries to carry out their religious activities in China. He was beloved and admired by all and there are even Christian depictions of Emperor Kangxi with a saintly halo. Most incredibly, Buddhist masters have recognised Emperor Kangxi as the reincarnation of the great holy lama Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen and as an emanation of Manjushri, the Buddha of Wisdom. Many considered him to be a special being due to his compassionate nature towards all, his determination to ensure the stability and growth of Buddhism as well as his own personal Buddhist practice. It was Lobsang Tamdin who first recorded this divine connection in his bebum (collected works), where he wrote about a vision he had had of Sakya Pandita, Lama Tsongkhapa and Panchen Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen. It was in this vision that Panchen Lobsang Chokyi Gyaltsen gave a prophecy which Lobsang Tamdin interpreted to mean that as soon as Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen passed away, an emperor of China would be born. This prophecy was later corroborated by an entry in Sumpa Khenpos Chronology of Tibet. Preceded by a marking denoting a birth, the entry reads, The Kangxi Emperor [is born and] becomes famous as the reincarnation of Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen. So, both Lobsang Tamdin and Sumpa Khenpo believed that Emperor Kangxi was the reincarnation of Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen and an emanation of Manjushri. Whats more, they were not the only ones. In the preface to the Mongolian Red Kangyur (1718 1720), a work sponsored by Emperor Kangxi, it states The Bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri, transformed himself into the occupant of the Fearless Lion Throne of Gold to appear as none other than the sublime Kangxi-Manjushri. Amongst countless examples of his faith, the most memorable are his five visits to the sacred mountain Wu Tai Shan and its Gelug temples. He also sponsored His Holiness the 7th Dalai Lama Kelzang Gyatsos entrance into Kumbum Monastery, and even bestowed the golden seal of authority upon him. Out of the many written works he sponsored, a copy of the Dragon Sutra written with gold ink, documenting the concise Prajnaparamita teachings, is still preserved today. Of the temples and monasteries Emperor Kangxi established, preserved or restored, many still exist and are sacred sites of pilgrimage today. These include: CHINA: Guangren Lamasery with its eight special treasures; Ganden Sumtseling, built by the Great 5th Dalai Lama during Kangxis reign, which houses eight gold-covered sculptures of Buddha Shakyamuni; Pule Temple, which is known as the Temple of Universal Joy; and Fayu Temple on Mount Putuo, a sacred site associated with Chenrezig. MONGOLIA: Amarbayasgalant Monastery, the final resting place of Emperor Kangxis spiritual mentor Zanabazar (1635 1723), who was the first Jebtsundamba Khutuktu the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism amongst the Khalkha in Outer Mongolia. The Emperors Last Act As per Imperial Chinese tradition, Emperor Kangxi had many sons in order to continue his bloodline. However, this created a prolonged struggle between the various princes in regards to who should inherit the Dragon Throne and rule over the vast Qing Empire. Kangxi had originally named Prince Yinreng (1674 1725) his heir and crown prince when Yinreng was just two years old. He showered his affection on Yinreng and took great pains to groom him for his future role as emperor. However, Yinreng was eventually disavowed the position after many instances of immoral behaviour and for planning a coup detat, after which he was placed under house arrest. Following these events, the remaining imperial princes were divided into roughly two camps. Some supported the 4th prince, Yinzhen (1678 1735), and were known as the Fourth Lord Party. The others supported the 14th prince, Yinti (1688 1756), and were known as the Eighth Lord Party, since Yinti was the eighth of the royal princes to have been awarded an imperial title. Worried that the issues of succession would destroy not only the imperial court but divide the country as well, Emperor Kangxi instituted a series of reforms that drastically changed the political workings of the empire. Of his 24 sons, some were stripped of their titles, others placed under house arrest, and those who were considered capable were sent on military campaigns to ease political conflict. Rather than name a successor before his passing, Emperor Kangxi declared that he would instead place his instructions inside a box within the Palace of Heavenly Purity in the Forbidden City, which was only to be opened after his death. After having ruled the Qing Empire for 61 years, Emperor Kangxi passed away and was laid to rest in the Eastern Qing Tombs. The Imperial Eastern Qing Tombs Located in Zunhua, Hebei Province in China, the Eastern Qing Tombs are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 125 kilometres (78 miles) northeast of Beijing, the tombs are known to be the biggest, most complete and best preserved of all existing mausoleum complexes in China today. Covering 80 square kilometres (31 square miles) and surrounded by the Changrul, Jinxing, Huanghua, and Yingfei Daoyang Mountains, the complex includes the tombs of: Emperor Shunzhi (1638 1661), the 3 rd Qing Emperor Qing Emperor Emperor Kangxi (1654 1722), the 4 th Qing Emperor Qing Emperor Emperor Qianlong (1711 1799), the 5 th Qing Emperor Qing Emperor Emperor Xiafeng (1831 1861) the 9 th Qing Emperor Qing Emperor Emperor Tongzhi (1856 1875) the 10 th Qing Emperor Qing Emperor 15 empresses 136 imperial concubines Three princes Two princesses Xiaoling: The Tomb of Emperor Shunzhi The tomb at the centre of the complex is known as Xiaoling, the first tomb to be built here. This is where Emperor Shunzhi is buried, together with Empress Xiao Kang Zhang (the mother of Emperor Kangxi), and Imperial Noble Donggo (consort of Emperor Shunzhi, who was posthumously bestowed the title of Empress). The other tombs within the complex mirror the pattern laid out by the central Xiaoling tomb. This layout consists of a spirit road (an ornate road leading to the tomb, with statues and pillars along its route), palaces and offering kitchens. The spirit road at Xiaoling is the most elaborate and includes archways, decorative gates, halls, statues and various bridges, carved with dragon and phoenix designs. The palace section includes halls of various sizes, areas for court officials, various government buildings, ornate gates, memorial towers, stone altar pieces, a precious citadel and even an underground palace. The offerings kitchen, located to the left of the palace section, consists of kitchens where sacrificial food was cooked, and warehouses to store the offerings. Yuling: The Tomb of Emperor Qianlong The tomb of Emperor Qianlong is perhaps the most beautiful of all imperial tombs throughout Chinese history, and includes a series of nine vaults that are separated by four solid marble doors. The marble gates, walls and vaulted ceilings are all carved or painted with Buddhist images such as the 24 Buddhas, the Eight Bodhisattvas, the Four Heavenly Kings, and more than 30,000 words of Tibetan and Sanskrit scripture. The solid marble doors, themselves carved with reliefs of various Bodhisattvas and the Four Heavenly Kings, weigh a staggering 3-tonnes each. Ding Dongling: The Tomb of Empress Dowager Cixi One of the most luxuriously decorated, this tomb includes numerous halls, three of which are embellished with gold-coloured paintings, gilded dragons and carved stone rails. All over the exterior are reminders of the Forbidden City, including corner spouts on the terrace carved as dragons. The interior features are painted in gold on dark wood, in remembrance of the building in which the Empress Dowager spent the last years of her life. Zhaoxiling: The Tomb of Empress Dowager Xiao Zhuang Located to the east of the spirit road leading to Emperor Shunzhis final resting place, this tomb houses the remains of his mother. The Empress Dowager was thought to have played a key role in consolidating authority during the early Qing Dynasty. At first, the tomb was constructed as a resting hall under the direction of Emperor Kangxi, who was her grandson. But Emperor Yongzheng had it converted into a mausoleum in 1725. Jingling: The Tomb of Emperor Kangxi Although Emperor Kangxi is possibly the greatest of the Qing emperors, his tomb is surprisingly modest. However, when considering his character, this is very much in keeping with his humble attitude. He did, in fact, decree that his tomb should be humble and simple. The spirit road, one of the most significant features of Jingling, contains a graceful five-arch bridge and there are guardian figures close to the tomb itself, which are more decorated than those of the earlier tombs in the area. Emperor Kangxis tomb also mirrors his deep faith in the Buddhas and Buddhist teachings. The walls of his tomb are carved with images of the 35 Confessional Buddhas and other Buddhist deities. The construction of Jingling began in 1676 and ended in 1681. Emperor Kangxi had set strict rules for how the tomb should be built and used. This included the proclamation that if the empress died before he did, that she would be buried first but that the door of the underground palace would remain open until the emperor himself was buried. This was in contrast to the usual procedure which would ensure that the doors of the tomb would be shut as soon as the intended occupant was interred. Emperor Kangxis tomb has since become a pilgrimage site for practitioners of the Buddhist faith, owing to his great patronage of the Dharma and the fact that he is considered to be an emanation of Manjushri and a reincarnation of Tulku Drakpa Gyaltsen. Up to this day, offerings of khatas can be seen draped over his tomb in front of his portrait. The layout of Jingling mainly consists of a few structures, including: Stele pavilion Five arch bridge Stone statues Ornamental pillar While so many other rulers throughout history have only thought of themselves, Emperor Kangxi lived his life focused on the welfare of his country. During his reign, peace, harmony, prosperity, literary development and patronage of the Dharma was outstanding, the likes of which have rarely been seen in the world since. His achievements stem from his expert rule of the country, his compassionate attitude and his hard work ethic. He was so beloved by his people that those who lived during his time credited the Kangxi Emperor in their stories, writings, poetry and folk lore, which has since been passed down through the generations. All in all, Emperor Kangxi ruled according to the Buddhist teachings of love, kindness, tolerance, wisdom and hard work. It was during his reign that religion, art, literature, culture and science flourished throughout the Qing Empire. And it is a testament of his political astuteness, scholarship and selflessness that even until the present day, the people of China still continue to regard him as one of the greatest emperors to have ever ruled China. For more interesting information: Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 13 of the Malaysian Copyright Act 1987, allowance is made for fair dealing for purposes such as non-profit research, private study, criticism, review or the reporting of current events. The Operator and author(s) of TsemRinpoche.com, a not-for-profit blog, do not claim ownership on the intellectual property rights of the contents, images and/or videos reproduced in this article. Any subsisting intellectual property rights shall belong to the legal owner of the contents, images and/or videos. (By Tsem Rinpoche and Pastor David Lai) The legendary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary was a mountain climber and an explorer of the Antarctic. He was born on 20 July 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand and lived until the ripe old age of 88. Together with the Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, he made history by being the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, 29,029 feet (8,848 metres) above sea level. Although he became legendary for climbing Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary described himself as a small and rather lonely child during his early years. Hillary grew up in a small village called Tuakau, where he attended Tuakau Primary School. During his childhood in New Zealand, Hillarys father worked as a beekeeper, a profession that he would later pursue as well. On the other hand, his mother was a schoolteacher and wanted to ensure her son attended a good school in the city. So, Hillary travelled to Auckland Grammar School for his secondary education. As a child, he was shy and studious, often burying himself in books, but he soon grew into a lanky teenager, towering at 6 feet 5 inches. At the age of 16, he discovered his love of snow and climbing during a school ski trip to Mount Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park. He also began climbing the Southern Alps of New Zealand while he was still in high school. Hillarys first major climbing expedition was scaling Mount Ollivier, in New Zealands Southern Alps, at the age of 20. While at the University of Auckland, he studied mathematics and science but was also very active and joined outdoor clubs, which allowed him to develop his interest in climbing even further. Despite having serious reservations, he was conscripted into the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II. During military service in the Solomon Islands, he suffered serious burn injuries in a boat accident and returned home to New Zealand. After World War II, he went back to mountain climbing and became determined to scale Mount Everest. It was then that Hillary and his brother Rex, following in the footsteps of their father, became beekeepers, which allowed them spare time to pursue mountain climbing during winter. Soon after, he joined a New Zealand party to the Himalayas and later that year, they joined a British reconnaissance expedition to climb the South Col, which is the sharp-edged notch or pass between Mount Everest and Mount Lhotse. Following this, he received an invitation to join a team of mountaineers planning a historic climb up Mount Everest itself. In the spring of 1953, a base camp was established by the middle of May as a starting point for groups of mountaineers launching their expeditions up Mount Everest. After another pair of climbers failed to reach the top, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out early on May 29 and were standing on the summit of Mount Everest by late morning. The two climbers shook hands in celebration and Norgay embraced his partner while Hillary took photographs. After that, they searched for signs of George Mallory, a British climber lost on Everest in 1924. Just before leaving, Hillary planted a crucifix in the snow and Norgay, who was a Buddhist, made a food offering of chocolates. They spent approximately 15 minutes on the peak before beginning their descent. Hillary made other expeditions to the Everest region during the early 1960s but never again tried to conquer the summit of the mountain. His historic conquest of Everest was announced on the eve of Queen Elizabeth IIs coronation, and the new queen knighted Hillary when he travelled to London. After achieving international fame as the first to climb Mount Everest, Hillary turned to exploration. From 1955 to 1958, he headed the New Zealand group in the British Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which was led by Vivian Fuchs (later knighted Sir Vivian Fuchs). Hillary finally reached the South Pole with a tractor on 4 January 1958, and wrote about his experience in the book, The Crossing of Antarctica in 1958 (co-authored with Fuchs) and No Latitude for Error in 1961. During the Antarctic expedition of 1967, Hillary was among those who scaled Mount Herschel, 10,941 feet (3,335 metres) above sea level, for the first time. In 1968, he traversed the wild rivers of Nepal on a jet boat, and then in 1977, he led the first jet boat expedition up the River Ganges, all the way back to its source in the Himalayas. In 1985, Hillary and the famous astronaut Neil Armstrong flew a small twin-engine plane to the North Pole, a feat that cemented Hillary in the history books as the first person to stand on both poles and the summit of Everest, which became known as the third pole. His autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, that detailed his expeditions and personal life was published in 1975, in which he said that he never anticipated the acclaim that would follow his historic ascent to the summit of Everest. From 1985 to 1988, he served as New Zealands High Commissioner to India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Over the years, he was awarded numerous honours, including the Order of the Garter in 1995. Despite the many accolades and honours over the years, Hillary remained humble and unassuming. His main interest was the welfare of the Himalayan people of Nepal, especially the Sherpas the community that Tenzing Norgay belonged to. With this in mind, he established the Himalayan Trust in 1960 that was tasked with the building of schools, hospitals, and airfields. His dedication to the Sherpas lasted into his later years and was recognised in 2003 during the 50th anniversary celebration of his and Norgays ascent of Everest, when he was given honorary citizenship of Nepal. Sir Edmund Hillary has been hailed as New Zealands most trusted individual, various geographic regions around the world bear his name, and the current five-dollar bill from New Zealand features his image. Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. He passed away on 11 January 2008 in Auckland. Flags were lowered to half-mast in mourning of his passing. The Abominable Snowman The term abominable snowman was coined in 1921, the same year that Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury led the British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition. He wrote about it in his book, Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921, in which he related his experience at the crossing of Lhakpa La, 21,000 feet (6,400 metres) above sea level. There he found unusual footprints that he believed, were probably caused by a large loping grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like those of a bare-footed man. He did however add that his Sherpa guides at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of The Wild Man of the Snows, to which they gave the name Metoh-kangmi. Metoh translates as man-bear and Kang-mi translates as snowman. The abominable snowman was born when Henry Newman, a longtime contributor to The Statesman in Calcutta, in which he wrote under the pen name of Kim, interviewed the porters of the Everest Reconnaissance expedition while they were returning to Darjeeling. Newman translated metoh as filthy and substituted it with the term abominable, perhaps out of artistic license. Thus, the abominable snowman was born and sparked the interest of mountain climbers and explorers of that time. Search For the Yeti Apart from his achievements as a climber and explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary is well-known in history as the first man who searched for the yeti, another name for the abominable snowman. In the 1950s, stories of hairy man-like creatures roaming the snowy peaks of the Himalayas were intensely popular and curiosity surrounding the abominable snowman was so widespread that Hillary was drawn to search for him. A number of footprints were found, indicating that yeti-like creatures were active in remote places in Nepal, Tibet, and the surrounding region. Then in 1952, Hillary along with George Lowe discovered strange hair associated with the yeti on a high pass while in the mountains. In 1953, Hillary found yeti tracks in the Barun Khola range, and the following year, two British members of Hillarys team uncovered yeti tracks down in the Choyang Valley. Hillarys trusted Sherpa friends even related their firsthand sightings of the man-sized yeti. The Sherpas of Nepal knew of several types of abominable snowmen that roamed the Himalayas. Whilst searching for the yeti, Hillary and his collaborator, Desmond Doig, noted that there were several unknown primates said to be living in the Himalayan region but had yet to be discovered by the scientific community. Among the several varieties of yeti, there was one called the Nyalmo. Hillary and Doig first came across the Nyalmo in north-central Nepal. They were said to be, giant-sized (up to twenty feet tall), manlike, hairy, and given to shaking giant pine trees in trials of strength while other Nyalmos sit around and clap their hands. Throughout the 1950s, Hillary was a keen supporter of the possibility of the existence of the yeti. Late in the 1960s, Sir Edmund Hillary, sponsored by the World Book encyclopedia company of Chicago, departed on his famous expedition to Nepal in pursuit of the yeti. During the expedition, he recovered a supposed yeti scalp from Khumjung Monastery and brought it to the West for testing. Hillary explained, The scalp was in the house of a frightening old woman, believed to be a witch, in Khumjung. It has been in the possession of the village for 240 years. Unfortunately, the results indicated the scalp was manufactured from the skin of a serow, a goat-like Himalayan antelope. Since Hillarys time until today, the yeti still evades explorers and mountain climbers, only offering quick eyewitness glimpses together with a steadily growing body of footprint evidence. Along with its North American cousin, the sasquatch, the yeti continues to inspire the imagination of countless bigfoot hunters and researchers around the world. Or view the video on the server at: https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/SirEdmundHillaryInterview.mp4 Video Description: In the 1960s, Sir Edmund Hillary arrived in Europe with what was supposedly the scalp of a yeti from the village of Khumjung in Nepal. Though he had his doubts about its authenticity, he wanted his theories confirmed by scientists. The villagers of Khumjung held the scalp in high regard and thought of it as a good luck charm. Though this particular interview is conducted in French, Hillary was fortunate to have the questions translated into English. At the end of the interview is a drawing of what Hillary believed the yeti looked like. Conclusion Sir Edmund Hillarys life story not only serves as a testament to the determination of the human mind to conquer what was once thought unconquerable Mount Everest, and his compassion to help others his works in bettering the lives of the Sherpas in the Himalayas, but also how the human imagination and search for truth can lead men to new discoveries. Since Hillarys time, the search for the yeti and other related creatures, such as bigfoot, has become a mainstream pursuit. Hillarys preliminary discoveries have inspired a whole new generation of researchers and professors all over the world, including notable names such as Professor Jeff Meldrum from the United States of America and Dr Igor Burtsev from Russia, not forgetting countless generations of amateur yeti/bigfoot researchers and hunters who spend their lives searching for the elusive creatures. With the latest advances in forensic science and technology, many new discoveries continue to point towards the existence of the yeti or bigfoot, and perhaps one day soon will prove once and for all that the yeti really exists. Yeti or bigfoot are well-accepted living creatures that are considered half-human and half-animal. To the Tibetans, Nepali, Bhutanese and people from all over the Himalayas, they are actually considered to be more of an animal, and there is no doubt of the existence of the yetis amongst these people. For many thousands of years people have seen them and there are many stories of these encounters. So, for the modern man, it may seem that this type of large humanoid creature perhaps does not exist, given that people are still unable to find scientific proof of their existence. On the other hand, someone of Sir Edmund Hillarys stature, reputation and fame has put the search for the yeti firmly on the map. No one ever doubted what Sir Edmund Hillary witnessed and recounted. So, the mystery continues since so many people, including of great stature, have seen it. Therefore, we can conclude that although Sir Edmund Hillary did in fact see something in the mountains, it was not a bear or an ape and could possibly well be a yeti of Himalayan folklore. For more interesting information: Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 13 of the Malaysian Copyright Act 1987, allowance is made for fair dealing for purposes such as non-profit research, private study, criticism, review or the reporting of current events. The Operator and author(s) of TsemRinpoche.com, a not-for-profit blog, do not claim ownership on the intellectual property rights of the contents, images and/or videos reproduced in this article. Any subsisting intellectual property rights shall belong to the legal owner of the contents, images and/or videos. The hand-soap dispensers in City Hall bathrooms and Secure Therapy Desks used to shackle prisoners during class on Rikers Island are just a few of the products made by incarcerated New Yorkers, who earn as little as 16 cents an hour in a $50 million-a-year industry. The business is called Corcraft, described on its website as the brand name for the Division of Correctional Industries, operated by the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, known as DOCCS. While Corcrafts operations are largely hidden behind prison walls, a 2014 DOCCS report says Corcraft employs approximately 2,100 inmates and 288 civilians in 14 facilities across the state. Corcraft averages around $48 million in sales annually, according to the 2014 DOCCS report, a figure confirmed by an independent state comptroller report. Revenue from sales goes into the state general fund. According to DOCCS spokesperson Patrick J. Bailey, the average Corcraft inmate wage during FY15-16 was 65 cents an hour or about $1,092 per inmate per year. The lowest Corcraft wage is 16 cents per hour, though some can earn bonuses equal to $1.14 per hour. At these rates, Prison labor is prison slave labor, charges Alex Friedmann, managing editor of Prison Legal News and associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center, a prisoners rights advocacy group. Know anyone else who would work for 65 cents an hour? Friedmann says that if you don't like the term slave labor, then prisoners should be paid a fair wage for their work. Besides the desks and the soap dispensers, Corcraft manufactures a wide-range of institutional products, such as state license plates, soap, street signs, janitorial supplies, metal crowd-control barricades used by the NYPD, wooden benches used throughout the state court system, and office furniture, including the Attica Series Deskan office desk named after the notorious prison, which has a sheet-metal fabrication factory behind its walls. State law requires local governments to purchase commodities from Corcraft if it has a product that satisfies the form, function and utility required. The law, in effect, gives Corcraft monopoly-like power over the state-wide municipal institution market because the law exempts Corcraft from another state law mandating competitive bidding. According to Bailey, New York City is the largest single purchaser of Corcraft products. Cathy Hanson, a spokesperson for the Department of Citywide Services (the city agency responsible for keeping city agencies supplied), tells Gothamist that this fiscal year New York spent more than $15 million on Corcraft items. Doug Turetsky and his colleagues at the Independent Budget Office provided a detailed accounting of city purchases dating back to March 2013, totaling around $41 million. According to Turetsky, at least 26 city agencies have purchased Corcraft products. The purchases ranged from shelves to office furniture to crowd control barriers, Turetsky says, and also include something identified as no competition lockers, file cabinets for an elementary school, coastal storm signs and an ergonomic chair ordered just last monthby the comptrollers officefor $1,017.00. In addition to the comptrollers office, one other elected city office made purchases from Corcraft: The mayorality, according to the IBOs accounting, purchased $139,812.26 worth of office furniture since 2013. A spokesperson for Scott Stringer, the New York City Comptroller, declined to detail the citys business with Corcraft. Natalie Grybauskas, spokesperson for Mayor Bill de Blasio, tells us, State law requires the City to contract with NYS Preferred Source Vendors, which includes Corcraft, if sufficient grounds are met. A soap dispenser in City Hall manufactured by Corcraft (Scott Heins / Gothamist) While the Constitutions 13th Amendment proscribes slavery and involuntary servitude, it contains a loophole: Except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Consequently, says David C. Fathi, Director of the ACLUs National Prison Project, Convicted prisoners can be forced to work for any or no amount of money, and they can be disciplined for refusing to work. Prisoners are not allowed to form unions, Fathi added, and neither are they protected by federal or state minimum-wage laws. Nor do prisoners have a right to workers compensation if they are injured on the job. In New York, prisoners are required to participate in programs as assigned, including vocational programs, industrial programs, and maintenance work assignments in any combination. Refusal to obey an order to work is a violation of prison rules, as is union organizing and action. Both are punishable by solitary confinement and loss of good-time credits. Given the lack of legal protection and the vast power differential between prisoners and their employers, there is a real potential for exploitation and abuse, Fathi says. For example, Fathi adds, prisoners have been killed fighting fires in California and Arizona and perhaps other places. Heather Ann Thompson is a University of Michigan history professor who studies prisons, and is the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book on the Attica rebellion, Blood in the Water. Thompson says compulsory prison labor is an institutional descendant of slavery. Prisoners, like slaves, do not have the right to resist being forced to labor, Thompson explains. Prisoners refer to it as slave labor. They fight against it as slave labor. In 2010 when the Syracuse Post-Standard visited New Yorks maximum-security prison in Auburn to report on Corcrafts license plate franchise, one prisoner working on the assembly line called out that working on the line is slave labor. The practice of requiring prisoners to work, Thompson explained, traces back through the Black Codes that Southern states enacted after the Civil War and the racist convict-lease system that ensuedwhich resulted in some former slaves being rented back to their former masters. In 1871, for example, the Supreme Court of Virginia, in Ruffin v. Commonwealth, referred to prisoners as slaves of the state. Today, Thompson says, the problem here is not labor per se. Prisoners want to work. The problem is exploitation. If in fact they were paying a real wage, and if people were learning an employable skill, we could have a conversation. Chandra Bozelko, who was incarcerated in Connecticut for more than six years, and works today as a journalist, believes comparisons between compulsory prison labor and slavery are wrong-headed. I was grateful for my job, Bozelko says. Even though it was manual labor, it gave me some respite from the unrelenting sameness of sitting idly in a cell. I learned humility and responsibility. People who rail against prison labor and offer group therapy or more classes as alternatives are out of touch, not only with prison life, but with reality. Still, Bozelko conceded, as currently practiced with low wages, it is inherently unfair. Governor Andrew Cuomo has the power to raise prisoners wages, either through executive action or the budget process. Dani Lever, Governor Cuomos press secretary, referred questions about Corcraft back to DOCCS. Asked whether the governor supports raising wages for Corcraft workers, his press office did not respond. The last time New Yorks prisoners were given a pay raise was in 1993, when Governor Cuomos father, Mario, was the governor. DOCCS director of public information, Thomas Mailey, says that the inmate labor program is designed to provide meaningful skills to inmates and provide successful reentry to the community as a performance measure. For someone to insinuate that this is anything other than a rehabilitation program, it simply illustrates their fundamental misunderstanding of the correctional system, he added. Going forward, Fathi, the ACLUs National Prison Project director, says that prison administrators can do a lot to ensure better conditions for those who work inside prisons. But its really up to lawmakers to recognize that incarcerated workers should be protected by the same legal rights as all other workers. The Tulsa County Sheriffs Office has arrested a former detention officer on a complaint of felony lewd molestation of a minor. The arrest marks at least the sixth Sheriffs Office employee accused of misconduct since June. Detention officer Kelby Brooks, 23, was placed on paid leave Aug. 25 when allegations surfaced that he was having inappropriate contact with a teenager. His employment was terminated Wednesday, when he was arrested. He was being booked into the Tulsa Jail on Wednesday evening, the Sheriffs Office said in a news release. Brooks was hired as a detention officer on Sept. 1, 2015. The Tulsa County Sheriffs Office will not hesitate to investigate our employees and request criminal charges when warranted, Sheriff Vic Regalado stated in the release. Violations of the law and the publics trust will not be tolerated by members of this agency, he said. Other arrests involving Sheriffs Office personnel since June include: A detention officer was arrested June 1 on sexual battery complaints after allegedly touching Tulsa Jail inmates inappropriately. A detention officer was arrested June 9 after allegedly sneaking drugs and other contraband into the jail. A detention officer was arrested in late September after being charged with sexual battery of an inmate. A detention officer was arrested Oct. 17 after being accused of hitting an inmate with a radio. A deputy was arrested Oct. 18 after allegedly stealing a dog from a yard in September. Asked about the number of arrests in recent months, Sheriffs Office spokeswoman Casey Roebuck said the department has more than 700 employees. A lot of times its a personnel issue and theres not a lot I can go into, she said, adding, Every one of these employees has passed a vigorous background check. Im not sure what else we can do. We will, without hesitation, investigate any reports of misconduct. facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter Published November 1, 2017 Since 2014, the University of Louisiana Monroe TRIO Program-Educational Talent Search, in partnership with Parks Community Support Services, Inc., has sponsored a Raising Achievement of Male Students (RAMS) mentoring program. The year-round program provides coordinated efforts with area high schools, local businesses and a cross-section of community leaders. The mission of the program is to motivate and academically and socially prepare students from first-generation and income eligible backgrounds to complete high school, enroll in college and graduate from college, as well as, to prepare the student for the changing workforce. The RAMS program provides area high school males with opportunities to excel academically, prepare for college and develop leadership skills necessary to shape the future around them. Core activities include academic and social skills development, effective communications, capacity and network building. Students are provided with a broad array of educational experiences that include recent visits to NASA International Space Center in Houston, Texas, the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, and WWII Memorial in New Orleans. Currently, the program meets one Saturday morning each month at the ULM Activity Center. Approximately 40 male youth from Richwood High School and Wossman High School participate in the program. Additionally, the students are paired with a near-peer mentor to aid in strengthening academic engagement, coursework tutoring, community involvement, and youth development (social engagement). There is no cost to the student. The RAMS mentoring program recognizes that change will not happen overnight it will take a sustained, unyielding effort to aid these young men to develop into tomorrows leaders and community game changers. The ULM TRIO RAMS program and partners believe that by coordinating their efforts to make this program a success, it will have not only a positive effect on the students but will also provide a better-educated community; a better prepared workforce; a self-sufficient individual; and a more productive citizen. For additional information contact the ULM TRIO programs at 342-1097 or Joe Riser, M.Ed. at riser@ulm.edu. Ambassador Affey with Djibouti's Minister for Education, Mr. Moustapha Mohamed Mahamoudi. UNHCR / Nuur M. Sheekh NAIROBI, Kenya UNHCRs Special Envoy on the Somali Refugee Situation has hailed Djiboutis undertaking to host the upcoming Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Regional Conference on refugee education. Last week in Djibouti, Ambassador Mohamed Abdi Affey discussed preparations for the Regional Conference with senior Government officials, including Mr. Moustapha Mohamed Mahamoudi, Minister for Education, and Mr. Hassan Omar Mohamed, Minister for Interior who was accompanied by the Executive Secretary of ONARS (government refugee agency). They thanked the Special Envoy for UNHCRs continuing support, and most especially in the preparation for the Regional Conference. "Djibouti took the lead to address the challenges of education for refugee and host community children within the framework of the New York Declaration and its Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework," said Ambassador Affey in Nairobi. He added that IGAD member states committed to improve the education and skills of refugees in the Nairobi Declaration on Durable Solutions for Somali Refugees and Reintegration of Returnees in Somalia, agreed on 25 March 2017. The Special Envoy noted that some three million refugees currently live in the IGAD region as a result of conflicts in their home countries. Many have been refugees for up to three decades, and the majority have vulnerabilities that stem from their poor socioeconomic and livelihood situations. In these unfavourable conditions, refugees are mostly consigned to levels of participation in education that are far below global targets for universal access. "This critical state of affairs presents an imperative of urgent international action and responsibility-sharing, in the spirit of the New York Declaration, to ensure that refugee children and youth develop the skills to live productive, harmonious and independent lives, by reducing the risk of poverty, and helping them to contribute to the communities in which they live," said Ambassador Affey. The Special Envoy explained that as such the IGAD Regional Conference will contribute to global efforts to improve access to quality education for refugee children and youth in the entire spectrum of formal schooling (pre-school, primary, secondary and higher education). It will bring together regional and sub-regional policy and decision-makers, academics, educationists, bilateral partners and civil society members from IGAD member states to look at ways of improving education services for refugees through inclusion in national systems. The meeting will assess good practices in education service delivery in the region and make recommendations on strengthening sustainable access to quality education for the benefit of both refugee and host community children and young people. "My hope is that the Regional Conference will result in proactive affirmative action active efforts to improve employment and educational opportunities for refugees including through scholarships and vocational training, as well as recognition of certification across countries in the sub-region and beyond," said Ambassador Affey. A recent UNHCR education report entitled Left Behind: Refugee Education in Crisis states that only 61% of refugee children have access to primary education compared with the 91% global average. The situation is much worse at secondary level, where just 23% of refugees are enrolled, compared with 84% globally. Refugee children are five times more likely to be out of the school than the global average. For more information, please contact: Cynthia Nosim Lemayian, [email protected], tel: (+254) (20) 422 2215 The groom is placing the ring on his wife's finger. UNHCR/Slim Khalaf SFAX, Tunisia Dressed in a dark suit and bow tie, his hair neatly combed to one side, 30-year-old Syrian refugee Chawket Cheikh Mohammed smiles warmly as the guests congratulate him and his new wife after their wedding ceremony in Sfax, Tunisias second city. The joy of the day is tempered with sadness for Chawket. Having arrived in the country in 2014 after fleeing brutal fighting in his hometown of Aleppo, he has not seen his own family since the start of the Syria conflict in 2011. Now living in Turkey and unable to secure visas to travel to Tunisia, Chawkets family could not attend the wedding. It is very difficult to get married without your family around you, he said. During the ceremony, it hurts to look around at the guests and not see my loved ones there. Despite the absence of his parents and siblings, Chawket felt fortunate to be marrying his sweetheart Asma, a 22-year-old medical student, having overcome tradition, administrative hurdles and the initial opposition of some of her family members to the relationship. He has also benefited from Tunisias tolerance towards refugees and asylum seekers, and is among the hundreds of Syrian refugees who have been accepted and settled into towns and cities across the country. "I was alone and a foreigner." After initially connecting on Facebook, Asma encouraged Chawket to move to her hometown of Sfax after he struggled to find work in the capital Tunis. They met and became friends, and Asmas father helped him to find a job as a carpenter using skills he learned from his decorator uncle back in Aleppo. As Chawket and Asma grew closer he began to fall in love. She helped and supported me from the start when I was alone and a foreigner in this country. She made me feel that I am special person and not a stranger. But as an outsider he was at first reluctant to express his feelings, aware that most young people in Sfax married from within their own community. When he finally found the courage to propose to Asma, some of her relatives opposed the match. But faced with the couples determination, and with the support of Asmas grandfather in particular, they ultimately secured the familys blessing. Chawkets problems didnt end there, however. As a Syrian refugee, he lacked the paperwork necessary to marry in Tunisia. Having registered as a refugee with UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency Chawket benefited from the humanitarian assistance and legal protection that the organization provides. Temporary residence will help me with work opportunities." With the help of UNHCRs partner the Adventist Development Relief Agency, he was also able to secure a work permit for his carpentry job. This ultimately allowed Chawket to apply for temporary residence in the country, and thus secure the paperwork he needed for the wedding to go ahead. His newfound legal status could also help him achieve his other great wish. Temporary residence will help me with work opportunities, but more importantly it will allow me to invite my family to visit after not seeing them for six years. It has made it possible for me to reunite with them, he explained. As the pair embark on their new life together, Chawket has found a new job training as a pastry chef, and dreams of one day opening a patisserie blending Syrian and Tunisian specialities that reflect his own unique journey. Being married to a woman like Asma, I believe that having been deprived of something my family and home God has compensated me with something even better. Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has urged international leaders to find political solutions to the worlds conflicts if the swelling numbers of forcibly displaced people are ever to return home. In a speech to the UN Security Council in New York, Grandi said that a succession of major new crises had caused massive displacement across virtually all regions of the globe. The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide is now approaching 66 million up from 42 million in 2009, he said. This includes 17.2 million refugees under UNHCRs responsibility a 70% increase since then. The UNHCR chief added: Securing solutions for the millions of people uprooted around the world, and avoiding a repeat of the massive outflows that have taken place over recent years, ultimately rests on political solutions. Grandi cited several ongoing crises, including the cataclysmic conflict in Syria and the violence in Iraq, which together accounted for a quarter of all those forcibly displaced. But new crises had developed, he said, with many unfolding in ungoverned spaces, driven by varying combinations of poverty and underdevelopment, environmental degradation, inequality and persecution. At the same time, situations that appeared to have stabilised, such as those in Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, had been affected by new crises triggering new refugee outflows; while protracted situations as in Afghanistan and Somalia remained entrenched. Grandi outlined several action points for members of the Security Council. First, they needed to support preventative measures to address the causes of conflict and avoid deepening displacement crises. He also praised the vital work of UN peacekeepers in enabling humanitarian work, saying that humanitarian actors and peacekeepers should draw on their diverse strengths to help protect civilians affected by conflict, while at the same time preserving the neutral, impartial character of humanitarian action. Thirdly, the international community needed to build on its work fighting people trafficking and the horrific abuses perpetrated by traffickers, the UNHCR head declared. Although the Refugee Agency was working on the ground to assist the victims of people trafficking and support those in need of international protection, Grandi said resolute action was required, to tackle the horrific abuses perpetrated by traffickers and identify and prosecute them. Without the restoration of peace and security, however, Grandi said it would be impossible for refugees and other displaced persons to return home. Only 500,000 refugees worldwide returned home last year. And very few displacement situations in the last decade have been brought to a definitive conclusion, he said. In particular, security and the establishment of human rights and the rule of law will be essential to the return of Rohingya refugees to Rakhine State in Myanmar. Progress on citizenship for the stateless Rohingya is absolutely crucial, as will be community reconciliation, and investment in inclusive development benefiting all communities, added Grandi. Lastly, Grandi said it was vital to sustain the protection of displaced people while solutions to conflict were pursued, both within affected countries as they work towards greater stability, and in host communities trying to support large numbers of refugees. Ultimately, however, the answer to halting and then reversing the flow of refugees and other displaced people would come from political solutions, Grandi stated - and in this respect, the international community was failing. Have we become unable to broker peace? he asked. I ask this question here, in the Security Council, whose raisons detre are conflict resolution and sustaining peace - because I see the direct impact of these failures, every day, on the lives of tens of millions of people, uprooted and forced to abandon their homes. Weaknesses in international solidarity were also eroding refugee protection, he added. Many refugee-hosting states, particularly those neighbouring conflict zones, keep their borders open and generously host thousands - sometimes millions - of refugees. But certain states often those least impacted by refugee flows, and often wealthy ones have reacted by closing borders, restricting access to asylum and deterring entry. Referring to last years Summit on Refugees and Migrants, which gave rise to the New York Declaration calling for a comprehensive response to the international refugee crisis, the UNHCR chief praised what he said were important steps taken by member states, development institutions such as the World Bank, civil society and the private sector. But a full response to todays massive displacement flows can only be achieved through action to restore security, resolve conflict and build peace, Grandi declared. The worlds rapidly growing population of displaced people were counting on your leadership to help deliver those solutions, he told the Security Council. Media contact: Melissa Fleming, Spokesperson for High Commissioner Grandi +41 79 557 9122 [email protected] Filippo Grandi, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, briefs the Security Council. UN Photo/Manuel Elias NEW YORK Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has urged international leaders to find political solutions to the worlds conflicts if the swelling numbers of forcibly displaced people are ever to return home. Speaking to the UN Security Council in New York, Grandi said that a succession of major new crises had caused massive displacement across virtually all regions of the globe. The number of people forcibly displaced worldwide is now approaching 66 million, up from 42 million in 2009, he said. This includes 17.2 million refugees under UNHCRs responsibility, a 70 per cent increase since then. The UNHCR chief added: Securing solutions for the millions of people uprooted around the world, and avoiding a repeat of the massive outflows that have taken place over recent years, ultimately rests on political solutions. Grandi pinpoints need to end "cataclysmic conflict" in Syria. Grandi cited several ongoing crises, including the cataclysmic conflict in Syria and the violence in Iraq, which together accounted for a quarter of all those forcibly displaced. But new crises had developed, he said, with many unfolding in ungoverned spaces, driven by varying combinations of poverty and underdevelopment, environmental degradation, inequality and persecution. At the same time, situations that appeared to have stabilized, such as those in Burundi, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, had been affected by new crises triggering new refugee outflows; while protracted situations as in Afghanistan and Somalia remained entrenched. Grandi outlined several action points for members of the Security Council. First, they needed to support preventative measures to address the causes of conflict and avoid deepening displacement crises. He also praised the vital work of UN peacekeepers in enabling humanitarian work, saying that humanitarian actors and peacekeepers should draw on their diverse strengths to help protect civilians affected by conflicts, while at the same time preserving the neutral, impartial character of humanitarian action. A Rohingya baby and his mother queue for an aid distribution in rainy Kutupalong refugee camp, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Roger Arnold Thirdly, the international community needed to build on its work fighting people trafficking and the horrific abuses perpetrated by traffickers, the UNHCR head declared. Although the Refugee Agency was working on the ground to assist the victims of people trafficking and support those in need of international protection, Grandi said resolute action was required, to tackle the horrific abuses perpetrated by traffickers and identify and prosecute them. Without the restoration of peace and security, however, Grandi said it would be impossible for refugees and other displaced persons to return home. Only 500,000 refugees worldwide returned home last year. And very few displacement situations in the last decade have been brought to a definitive conclusion, he said. In particular, security and the establishment of human rights and the rule of law will be essential to the return of Rohingya refugees to Rakhine State in Myanmar. Progress on citizenship for the stateless Rohingya is absolutely crucial, as will be community reconciliation, and investment in inclusive development benefiting all communities, added Grandi. Lastly, Grandi said it was vital to sustain the protection of displaced people while solutions to conflict were pursued, both within affected countries as they work towards greater stability, and in host communities trying to support large numbers of refugees. Have we become unable to broker peace? Grandi asks Security Council. Ultimately, however, the answer to halting and then reversing the flow of refugees and other displaced people would come from political solutions, Grandi stated and in this respect the international community was failing. Have we become unable to broker peace? he asked. I ask this question here, in the Security Council, whose raisons detre are conflict resolution and sustaining peace because I see the direct impact of these failures, every day, on the lives of tens of millions of people, uprooted and forced to abandon their homes. Weaknesses in international solidarity were also eroding refugee protection, he added. Many refugee-hosting states, particularly those neighbouring conflict zones, keep their borders open and generously host thousands sometimes millions of refugees. But certain states often those least impacted by refugee flows, and often wealthy ones have reacted by closing borders, restricting access to asylum and deterring entry. Referring to last years UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, which gave rise to the New York Declaration calling for a comprehensive response to the international refugee crisis, the UNHCR chief praised what he said were important steps taken by member states, development institutions such as the World Bank, civil society and the private sector. But a full response to today's massive displacement flows can only be achieved through action to restore security, resolve conflict and build peace, Grandi declared. The worlds rapidly growing population of displaced people were counting on your leadership to help deliver those solutions, he told the Security Council. UNHCR has released USD 500,000 (DKK 3.5 million) from Denmarks Emergency Reserve Fund to provide immediate help to people, who have been forced to flee their homes in Venezuela due to violence, insecurity and lack of basic services. The grants from this fund will provide men, women and children who have fled Venezuela with access to basic services and core relief items in their country of asylum. Considering that we are witnessing high levels of forced displacement, and increasing difficulties in finding funding to provide very much needed immediate assistance across the world, Denmarks Emergency Reserve Fund provides flexibility for UNHCR and its partners to respond to the critical needs of Venezuelans, says Renata Dubini, Director of UNHCR Regional Bureau for the Americas. The number of persons forced to leave their homes as a result of the deteriorating political situation with increased violence and a dire socio-economic situation in Venezuela has increased since 2014. In 2017, nearly 50,000 persons have applied for asylum so far. In comparison, in all of 2016, some 34,000 persons sought asylum. If this years trend continues, the number of Venezuelans in need of international protection will more than double by the end of 2017. The main countries for asylum-seekers in the region are Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Peru. Many have also sought protection further afield mainly in Spain and the United States of America. In interviews with Venezuelans they have stated that they have left for many reasons. They fled insecurity and violence in their areas of residence and were targeted by armed or criminal groups. Some report having left due to concerns that their political or political opinions attributed to them are putting them at risk of retaliation. Many have reported hardship due to the scarcity of food and medicine, the loss of income, and difficulty accessing essential services. Economic hardship has led some to adopt adverse coping mechanisms, including survival sex. Others are reporting that they have been subjected to exploitation and abuse in the countries they have fled to. Many are also concerned over the family they were forced to leave behind in Venezuela, including children, older persons and other family members with specific needs. The funds from Denmark will support UNHCR and partners to strengthen monitoring and profiling activities, which are essential to further identify key protection risks and needs in order to implement an adequate response. UNHCR is particularly concerned about the situation in border areas, where many families are settling temporarily in search of livelihood opportunities. In these areas, people are more at risk of being recruited by armed groups or criminal gangs, including child recruitment. With the funds from Denmark, UNHCR will focus on improving the shelter situation, providing core relief items, psycho-social counselling, access to education, health, and water and sanitation for Venezuelan refugees and asylum-seekers with a special focus on children and persons with specific needs. Indigenous groups living along Venezuelas borders with Brazil and Colombia have also been affected by the situation and been forced to flee from their ancestral lands. The funds from Denmark will be crucial in helping UNHCR in collaboration with governments to provide these groups with proper documentation to access rights, including shelter, livelihoods, and language classes as a first step towards local integration. The 'Regional Processing Centre' on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. UNHCR UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, today reiterates its call to Australia to stop a humanitarian emergency unfolding on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. UNHCR has been monitoring the situation on Manus Island in anticipation of the closure of the Regional Processing Centre and the reduction or discontinuation of critical services and support arrangements. Two staff members are currently on the ground and have had the opportunity to observe the closure process firsthand. This is a brief summary of UNHCRs findings as of 2 November 2017. More than 600 people currently remain at the Regional Processing Centre located on Manus Island. Despite the cutting of water and electricity on 31 October, most have told UNHCR of their intention to remain due to fears for their security if they are forced to move outside. Refugees and asylum-seekers have resorted to storing water in garbage bins and building makeshift rain catchment systems. The last food ration was delivered on 29 October and was only sufficient for less than two days. With the departure of service providers and Australian Border Force, medical support and security services are no longer available at the Regional Processing Centre. If all 600 individuals were to leave immediately, many would not find adequate or sufficient accommodation elsewhere. The East Lorengau Regional Transit Centre was only intended for temporary accommodation and has limited capacity. There is no security fence at 'West Lorengau Haus' or 'Hillside Haus' in the Ward 1 area of Lorengau. UNHCR observed on 30 October that construction of West Lorengau Haus is incomplete. Containers are surrounded by mud and do not have electrical or water connections as yet. Construction is being significantly hampered by rain. UNHCR has met with government authorities, including the Police and the Immigration and Citizenship Service Authority, who have noted that tensions within the local community are on the rise, partly due to the lack of consultation prior to the movement of refugees and asylum-seekers outside of the Regional Processing Centre. Local government officials point to a lack of case workers and interpreters as well as inadequate local hospital facilities as particularly worrying. UNHCR staff have spoken with local community leaders and landowners who describe settlement of refugees and asylum-seekers in the community as inappropriate. Welfare arrangements, including critical torture and trauma counselling services, are insufficient at present for refugees and asylum-seekers on Manus Island. Only four Immigration and Citizenship Service Authority caseworkers are providing assistance to a population of over 700 refugees and asylum-seekers. UNHCR urges the Australian Government to work with the Papua New Guinean authorities to immediately de-escalate an increasingly tense and unstable situation. Australia remains responsible for the well-being of all those moved to Papua New Guinea until adequate, long-term solutions outside the country are found. UNHCR urges Australia to take responsibility and provide protection and safety to these vulnerable human beings. Media Enquiries In Canberra, Catherine Stubberfield, +61 424 545 569, [email protected] November 2 2017 ICA Architects are seeking planning consent from South Lanarkshire Council to build a 118-bed Hampton by Hilton branded hotel within the grounds of Hamilton Park Racecourse.Augmenting existing facilities the hotel will provide guest accommodation for race-goers and takes the form of a rendered linear block with pre-cast reconstituted stone details. Bookended by twin-gabled end elevations under a fibre-cement slate pitch roof to harmonise with the 1926 grandstand.The use of slate is further extended down the facades to a string course at first and third floor level in order to give the impression of a low eaves height.In a statement the architects said: The proposals seek to offer a hotel that sits comfortably within an existing family of buildings in this parkland setting; presenting a contemporary interpretation of traditional forms, detailing and materials to complement the character of the racecourses existing building complex. The orientation of the hotel provides the public areas on the ground floor with direct access to the racecourse.Construction of the the hotel follows hot on the heels of a similar venue at Fountainbridge (Nov. 2, 2017) -- James H. Bray, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has received a five-year, $2.6 million grant to lead a project that will provide mental health services and recovery support to high-risk pregnant, postpartum women recovering from substance abuse. The grant, from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), will fund the program, called Pregnant and Mothers Postpartum Enhanced Recovery-Oriented Residential Services (PAMPERRS). PAMPERRS will supplement services at Houstons Santa Maria Hostel. Santa Maria Hostel is Texas largest multi-site residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment center and one of very few facilities to provide a comprehensive continuum for pregnant and parenting women and their children. Many of the women at Santa Maria Hostel have criminal backgrounds or have an active case with Child Protective Services. Several also have a history of substance abuse and experienced severe trauma from sexual abuse or domestic violence in their lifetimes. A lot of people with mental health challenges, such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, use drugs because they are traumatized, said Bray. This grant will allow us to treat underlying mental health conditions to ensure a more successful treatment for these women. The grant awarded to UTSA will enhance residential treatment programs by providing critical medical and mental health services to women and women with children at Santa Maria Hostel. More than 300 women and 360 children are expected to benefit from this program over the course of five years. The goal of Dr. Brays work is to serve high-risk pregnant and postpartum women who have limited access to quality health services. In addition to both medical and mental health treatment funded through the grant, women at Santa Maria Hostel learn parenting skills, develop job readiness skills, get information about educational and employment opportunities and obtain permanent housing. Counseling sessions are held for these women and their families to connect and communicate, with a strong focus on getting the fathers of the children more involved. The goal is to get women the mental health services they need, address the trauma that led them to seek the substances they did and help them become better parents to their children along the way, said Bray. Bray said UTSA graduate students will accompany him to Santa Maria Hostel and complete evaluations of the program. Bray is also collaborating with staff from the Baylor College of Medicine. Bray joined the UTSA Department of Psychology in August 2017. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and focuses on adolescent substance use, divorce, remarriage and stepfamilies. He has published more than 200 articles in major journal and books and presented his work in 20 countries. UTSA is ranked among the nations top four young universities, according to Times Higher Education. Holocaust Survivor to Speak at UW Nov. 10 As part of the University of Wyoming Holocaust Remembrance Week Nov. 6-10, Holocaust survivor Estelle Nadel will speak Friday, Nov. 10, at 4 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Ballroom. All events are free and open to the public, and sponsored by the recognized student organization UW Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. The foundation strives to educate about Jewish culture and provide Jewish students with religious connection in Laramie. Emphasizing the importance of newer generations to learn about the Holocaust while some survivors are still alive, Nadel will share her story of struggle and survival as a child in hiding in Nazi-occupied Poland. Nadel and her brothers were allowed passage to the United States and arrived in April 1947. She was adopted by a couple in Long Island and lived her high school years in the Los Angeles area. Nadel didnt discuss her Holocaust experience until her daughter-in-law, a teacher, convinced her to tell her story to an eighth-grade class. Since then, she has presented her story to classrooms and communities across the country. Holocaust victims names will be read each day during Holocaust Remembrance Week from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. in the Wyoming Union breezeway near the Copy and Print Center. Those interested in reading names, in 30-minute increments, can sign up online at https://goo.gl/r6D4f8. The process of dehumanization was fundamental to the Nazi destruction of European Jews during the Holocaust. By reading aloud the names of victims during Holocaust Remembrance Week, we restore their humanity, honor their memory and recognize that the 6 million Jewish and 5 million other victims were individual men, women and children, says Jenna Yoches, Hillel president. UW events coincide with Kristallnacht, also referred to as The Night of Broken Glass, a persecution against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria Nov. 9-10, 1938. For more information, email Yoches at jyoches@uwyo.edu. Being immune, insensitive to the happenings in the neighboring state, Tamilnadu Government is in a limbo and paralyzed. They are unaware of having been injected with poison for a long time now. Long before it happened in Kerala, it was the yesteryears Tamilnadu Government that had promulgated the Act, to appoint Archakas in temples without reference to caste affiliations.Although an interim stay was granted by the Supreme Court, to such an act enacted by the DMK Govt., in the year 2006, subsequently in the Final Verdict of 2015, relief was given by the Supreme Court of India. There was no denial of the validity of the Act and it was announced that the established Agama practices could continue. There will always be a group of four or five women constables posted as guards during night. They will enquire the women and children found in the premises. We could even witness a woman constable who gets food for those who are hungry and helpless. Ms Saranya is one of the woman police constables guarding at the entrance of the bus terminus. Many of them who are sleeping here come from outstations. They will leave by morning. Some will sleep here and leave the place in the morning as they have no houses of their own to sleep. There are people who ran away from their homes, being rejected and thrown out of their homes and also those who are in search of job. One will lose sleep after listening to their tragic stories. Just now I enquired a crying girl who ran away from her home in Salem and does not know where to go. She grew up in her uncles home, having lost her parents. She is interested to study but his uncle was not able to send her to school. So she came to Chennai and one of our police constables has taken her to a home in Anna nagar. File photo of an ambulance in New Delhi. (Photo: AFP/Sajjad Hussain) File photo of an ambulance in New Delhi. (Photo: AFP/Sajjad Hussain) Dozens of guests had assembled for the ceremony outside a family home in the western state of Rajasthan when the transformer exploded, spewing hot oil and metal shards. "Four people died on the spot," local police superintendent Rameshwar Singh told AFP. "We are ascertaining the cause of the blast." Singh said several others were being treated for severe burns after the disaster, which triggered protests against the electricity department. Locals said they had raised concerns about the maintainance of the transformer with officials, but nothing had been done. They also said a circuit-breaker failed to work after the blast, exacerbating the disaster as live wires fell onto the crowd late on Tuesday in the state capital Jaipur. Transformers are part of the electricity distribution system and help maintain a uniform current. India's power distribution system is prone to accidents, mostly because of poor maintainance and underfunding in rural areas. Nearly 10,000 people died due to electrocution in India in 2015, according to the most recent data available from the national crimes records bureau. Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje has ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. Step into a little corner of Cuba at a pop-up gallery Friday night located at the back of Ten Mile Creek Brewing on the Walking Mall. As you enter the art installation, you need to step through the blockade -- a cement block arch into the gallery. The block pillars are symbolic of the latest sanctions the U.S. imposed on Cuba, which Cuban citizens call a blockade. Once inside, you find an inviting, brilliantly colored cafe patio inspired by one in Havana. Nearby, stretching across the floor is the island of Cuba, built to scale, with sand, marsh grasses and blue glass pebbles -- the coast sparkling with little blue lights. These are just a few of the creations Helena artist Jennifer L. Thompson built as part of El Susteno, los Refugios y no el Tierno, which means Sustenance, Shelter and No Tenderness. The installation is one stop on the Fall Art Walk that runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday throughout the Downtown Helena area. Thompsons installation will remain open from noon to 6 p.m. daily through Nov. 12. The gallery in the New York Block can also be entered from a door off the alley a few steps down from the Rialto Bar. At 6 p.m. Friday, Cuban-American Jorge Quintana, a state attorney in Helena, will speak about U.S.-Cuba relations, tying Thompsons 3-D installation to current events in Cuba. Cuban beans and rice will be served for a donation that goes to the Martin Luther King Center in Havana to help with hurricane relief. Current regulations imposed by the U.S. are really aimed at stopping engagement between the two countries, said Quintana, who just returned from a Cubans Living Abroad meeting in Washington, D.C., which included speakers from Cuba. Keeping relations open between the two countries is personal for Quintana. He wants his daughter to travel to Cuba and meet her Cuban relatives. For him, the warming of relations between the two countries under President Obama in some ways came too late. The grandfather he longed to meet had died years before. Quintanas visit with him was standing at his grave. Thompson visited Cuba earlier this year with the group Witness for Peace, and it inspired her art, which shes using as an opportunity to share information about life in Cuba. Across from the Havana patio (Thompsons favorite patio in the whole world), she has recreated a bit of the Cuban forest. Hung from the tree branches are vellum scrolls containing numerous snapshot images of people and places she saw. I wanted little shots into peoples lives, she said, adding that she loves the transparent, luminous quality of the photos when printed on vellum. At the far end of the gallery is a large jagged sculpture, No Tenderness. Its red, white and blue and built of broken glass, plexiglass and rebar, appearing to be a shattered Cuban flag. Their flag, she points out, has a lot of similarities to our own -- containing the same colors, as well as stripes and a star. The broken flag has different layers of meaning, she said. It primarily calls attention to the U.S. policy of no tenderness toward Cuba. Thompson drew inspiration from some of the people she met during her April visit to the Caribbean nation. One woman, head of the pedagogical association, had been an alfabetismo in her youth. Under Fidel Castro thousands of young people such as her went into the countryside to educate rural people, teaching them to read. They each carried a large lantern and a backpack of books. They worked in the fields during the day and taught at night. As a result of their efforts, the country went from a literacy rate of 15 percent to 99 percent in five years, said Thompson. Cuban people love education, art and culture, she said. Those who reach success in their careers often give back. A famous volleyball player built a center to teach art and dance, she said. While an artist built a cultural center for the performing arts where Thompson saw Cubas national Tiny Choir of 5-to-8-year-olds perform. Cubans care about the group, she said. I love that. Its very humbling. The festival is spearheaded by Hanoi Doclab and Goethe-Institute Vietnam, with the objective of showcasing independent creative documentaries, experimental, and hybrid films. The event will bring new independent movies from all over the world to audiences, and screen documentary and experimental productions from Vietnam, South East Asia, and Europe. A special highlight of the event is the screening of a short film by the German curator, Birgit Glombitza, from Hamburg. She will talk about contemporary aesthetics and current trends in short films. A string of activities will be launched during the festival, including a new field recording workshop with Ernst Karel,a sound engineering specialist from Harvard Universitys Sensory Ethnography Lab,and a 2-day symposium on "Space, Time,& the Visceral in Southeast Asian Cinema." The event offers a good opportunity for Vietnamese audiences to meet with local and international filmmakers, thus helping promote creativity and the production of high quality cinema. Big shot Hanoi buyers are looking to spread the wealth to the provinces A range of real estate projects have been introduced to Hanois market from Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, Danang and Nha Trang. The projects include The Charm, Sunrise City, Ocean Villas, Hyatt Regency, Olalani, Fusion Alya, Azura and Blooming Park. Talking with VIR at a recent road show to introduce Sunrise City, located in Ho Chi Minh, in Hanoi, Novaland Joint Stock Company marketing deputy director Huynh Du An said many units were sold to Hanoians and those from northern provinces. Meanwhile, a range of other central and southern projects have been rushing into Hanoi. Setia Becamex launched Binh Duong provinces Ecolakes My Phuoc in the capital late last week, a week before TD Group introduced the Costa Nha Trang to Hanoians. This week Singapores Guoco Lands Canary, located at the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park in Binh Duong province, will be unveiled to northern customers. Bringing Ecolakes My Phuoc to Hanois market is one of our key marketing strategies. Hanoians are paying more attention to higher standards of living and are interested in ecological housing, said Khoo Teck Chong, general director of Setia Becamex. VIR was told that for many projects in the central and southern parts, roughly 70 per cent of customers were from Hanoi and other northern provinces. Matthew Koziora, sales director of VinaCapital - developer of the Azura in Danang, said the first 60 units, out of 225, were launched in Hanoi recently. Out of the 40 units sold, 90 per cent of the buyers had come from Hanoi. Hanoi has, according to Koziora, proven itself to be a key market for most new projects in Vietnam, given the demographics of these immediate catchments. While condominium offerings will always be available in Hanoi due to previous pent-up demands, we can see that not all projects will enjoy a healthy sell-through, as was seen 12 months ago. We do see, however, given the price differentials between house and land packages in Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City, that this market will be better received in the current marketplace and over the next six months as opposed to condominium project offerings at this time, Koziora said Ngo Huu Truong, managing director of a real estate agency in Ho Chi Minh City, said many customers from Hanoi and Haiphong had come to Ho Chi Minh City to find out information about new projects there. Demand is real and many projects investors have realised this trend and they are coming to Hanoi to promote their projects, Truong said. He also said the jury was still out on how effective the promotions were. I think that these developers [who bring their projects to Hanoi] have at least seen their target to raise their image and brand names in northern customers, Truong said. Selling health - a new strategy in real estate business Over the past few years, the real estate market has witnessed significant changes in investors business strategy and customers house purchasing trends. In addition to the many necessities of life, the more a society develops, the more demands and desires buyers have. Nowadays, customers not only need a good-quality construction project, but also convenience, modernity, high-class facilities, and ample space to ensure their need to "live well. Therefore, in addition to the necessary standards such as a beautiful location, high-quality infrastructure, and good progress, real estate enterprises are increasingly investing in the living environment. The aim is to take care of residents, especially as the seriously polluted environments in big cities such as Hanoi are exerting an ever-growing impact on the health of residents. Besides, increasingly busy lives mean people do not have the time to take care of their familys health and to refresh themselves. Abundant green living space, with plentiful fresh air and natural light at 5 Seasons Taking these factors into consideration, 5 Seasons is geared towards developing a real estate project that applies healthcare standards to construction design, giving residents a differentiated life experience"Live Healthy"both physically and mentally. "5 Seasons will become a peaceful and healthy private place, in contrast to the bustling, noisy, and dusty city outside the project," Do Manh Dung, director of Project Development of 5 Seasons, said. Complete health protection for residents The 5 Seasons building, part of the TNR GoldSeason project, is built on a total area of 22,000 square metres, 70 per cent of which was reserved for trees, landscaping, and utility. With such low-construction density, in itself a rarity in central Hanoi, the investor embarked on equipping residents with the perfect living space. 5 Seasons is surrounded by a green living space full of natural light. Residents are greeted with a breath of fresh air right on their doorsteps, leading to an ideal space for a leisurely stroll and relaxation. The apartments have also been designed in a way so as to ensure sufficient air and natural light. The spacious style and architecture offer residents a harmonious living space which is fresh and close to nature. The free gymnasium is one of the many exclusive amenities that residents can enjoy A large portion of the area at 5 Seasons has been dedicated to outdoor developments such as the swimming pool, gymnasium, yoga room, recreation room, sauna, and jacuzzi to meet the fitness needs of adults. Children can enjoy the amusement park and engage in various fun and physical activities under the supervision of their parents and the project management team. The community library and Manhattan Park are quiet places suitable for the relaxation of the elderly. In particular, according to investor, these utilities are free for life for all residents. This means people can maintain the health of their entire family without travelling far and having to spend money. Life at 5 Seasons is a life on holiday as all residents relaxation needs will be met within the property itself. From the luxurious reception lobby, storage area, full-service wi-fi, and electronics charging corners to home services such as housekeeping, food services, and home laundry, 5 Seasons offers five-star hospitality services to families. With the aim of ensuring that residents can live in full comfort like in a high-end hotel, 5 Seasons also provides grocery delivery services to allow residents time to enjoy life while still taking care of the meals for their family. "We believe that by placing customer health in focus, the apartments in the project will be welcomed by the market," Dung added. Investigators inspect a the pickup truck after it ploughed into a pedestrian and bike path in New York on Oct 31, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Don Emmert) The driver, who moved to America in 2010, mowed down pedestrians and cyclists over a mile-long stretch of a bike path on Lower's Manhattan's West Side, as children and their parents prepared to celebrate Halloween on Tuesday afternoon. Police shot the 29-year-old suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, in the abdomen after he crashed into a school bus and exited his pickup truck, brandishing paintball and pellet guns. He remains in custody but is expected to survive the shooting. "He's a depraved coward is what he is, and he was associated with ISIS, and he was radicalised domestically," New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN. The governor confirmed "a note that referenced ISIS" was found at the scene. US media said it was written in Arabic and pledged allegiance to the militant group. Saipov also reportedly shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest"). "After he came to the United States is when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics," Cuomo told CNN. "We have no evidence yet of associations or a continuing plot or associated plots, and our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he himself performed." Vehicle rammings have been a frequent tactic deployed by IS sympathisers in the West, including in Barcelona, London, Stockholm and in Nice, where a Tunisian suicide truck bomber killed 86 people on Bastille Day. 'SCARED' Busy life went on Wednesday, although New Yorkers confessed to feeling unnerved by an attack that brought back memories of 9/11 with a stepped up police presence across the city. The New York Stock Exchange observed a moment of silence. "I am scared," said Megan Brosterman, a 38-year-old mother dropping off two children at school close to the scene. "It does bring memories from 9/11. I worked in a building in this same neighbourhood in 9/11. I can't change my routine because of this," she said. "Life goes on." Saipov reportedly moved to the United States in 2010, living in Florida and Ohio, before moving to Paterson, a former industrial hub in New Jersey about 20 miles (32 kilometres) northeast of New York, where he lived with his wife and two children. He struck in broad daylight in the upscale neighborhood of TriBeCa, close to schools and just blocks from the memorial to the 9/11 attacks, when Al-Qaeda hijackers killed more than 2,700 people in New York and brought down the Twin Towers. Five of the eight killed were Argentines, part of a group visiting New York for a school reunion, the foreign ministry in Buenos Aires said. A Belgian woman on a trip with her mother and sister was also killed, Brussels said. One Argentine, a German and three Belgians, were among the at least 11 wounded. President Donald Trump, facing what appears to be the worst militant-inspired attack of his less than one year in office, denounced the culprit as "deranged" and announced a stepping-up of his "extreme vetting program" for foreign travellers. UZBEK LINK He tweeted on Wednesday that the suspect had entered the United States via the green card lottery program supported by opposition Democrats. "We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter)," Trump tweeted. The announcement was met with criticism in New York, a Democrat-run state and city, which has for centuries been a key point of arrival for immigrants and prides itself on the diversity of its more than 8.5 million-strong population. The New York Times said the attacker had previously been on the radar of federal authorities, but it was not clear whether he himself had been the focus of an inquiry or whether he was linked to someone else under scrutiny. In March 2015, two Uzbeks and a citizen of Kazakhstan living in New York were arrested on charges of supporting IS. One of them, who threatened former president Barack Obama, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last week. Uzbekistan, a majority Muslim country that borders Afghanistan and formerly part of the Soviet Union, is a landlocked country racked with poverty, corruption and stifling authoritarian regime. In less than a year, three other men with Uzbek links have been blamed for a deadly nightclub shooting in Istanbul, a Saint Petersburg metro bombing and a truck attack in Stockholm. Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev offered any help to US investigators. US officials said that Saipov had a string of traffic violations and that the truck had been rented in New Jersey. The Isle of Ulva, off Scotland's west coast is up for sale after decades of ownership by an aristocratic family. (Photo: AFP/Andy Buchanan) The remote island of pristine beaches, lush hills and craggy coastlines was put on the market this year after decades of ownership by an aristocratic family. Now the islanders are using a law introduced last year by Scotland's nationalist government to suspend the sale and give themselves time to buy the land, hoping a government fund will help them do so. "I think community ownership is the way forward," said Emma McKie, 33, who remembers a time when a thriving farming community lived on the 12-kilometre (7.5-mile) long island off Scotland's west coast. They are facing a deadline of June 2018 to buy the island off its "laird" Jamie Howard, who put it up for sale for 4.25 million (4.77 million, US$5.60 million). The glossy sales brochure for Ulva offered prospective buyers the unique opportunity to own "one of the finest private islands in northern Europe", when it was first put up for sale in July. Well-groomed tycoons with Russian and Middle Eastern sounding accents began flying in for viewings. McKie said islanders were concerned that any outside buyer may remove the tenants and close off the island. "If you have that kind of money, why would you keep the island open to the public, why wouldn't you keep it for yourself?", said McKie, who runs the island's only cafe with her sister-in-law Rebecca Munro. The Land Reform Act passed by Scotland's pro-independence First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's government allows for the sale of private assets to be suspended to give community bodies the right to buy the land. The 10 million Scottish Land Fund gives annual grants to worthy projects and Ulva's residents are hoping the fund will go over its usual limit of 1 million. The legislation has far-reaching implications in a region where half the land is owned by just 500 people, many of them absentee aristocratic landlords with castles and vast country estates. FROM VIBRANT TO DERELICT Ulva is an idyllic location with views of Ben More mountain and the spectacular Eas Fors Waterfall on the neighbouring island of Mull. Visitors' first port of call when stepping off the ferry from Mull is The Boathouse cafe. "My husband's family go back several centuries on Ulva," said Munro, 30, who is originally from Dumfries on the Scottish mainland. "They would have Christmas parties and there were a lot more children going to Ulva primary school, so it was just a lot more vibrant." The Boathouse attracts around 5,000 visitors a year. But empty cottages, an abandoned church and the disused Ulva Hostel nearby are falling into disrepair. At its height Ulva had a population of over 800 and its decline can be traced back to the Highland Clearances, when landlords conducted a wholesale eviction of Scottish farmers in the 18th century and turned their lands over to sheep grazing. Thousands of Scots emigrated to the British colonies. One of Ulva's most famous sons is Lachlan Macquarie, a high-profile colonial governor in Australia in the 19th century. 'PEOPLE COME TOGETHER' Community purchase of land is not a new concept in Scotland. Residents of the Isle of Eigg, also near Mull, still remember life under their playboy lairds before they did their own form of a community buyout under previous legislation in 1997. Motoring tycoon Keith Schellenberg sold up in 1995, shortly after his Rolls Royce mysteriously caught fire, to a German artist called "Professor Maruma". He tried to turn the island into an artists' retreat until the 60 or so islanders bought him out with the help of an anonymous benefactor. The bulk of Eigg's buyout was provided by that benefactor and the rest was raised through small donations from people all over the world, a significant feat in the days before widespread social media. Eigg's population has almost doubled since the buyout and it now has its own renewable energy grid, fast internet, and an annual music festival. The eight-kilometre long island continues to attract adventurous young souls keen to make a life 30 kilometres from the Scottish mainland. "The community is the reason that I am here," said Eigg's newest resident Nan Fee, 33, who started teaching in the island's primary school in August. "It's just so powerful and people come together. It's unlike anywhere I've ever been." remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Dick. Photo: Michael Buckner/Getty Images On Tuesday, it was reported that Andy Dick was recently dropped from an indie film following allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct. Vulture has since learned that the comedian was fired in mid-October from a separate film for sexually assaulting a crew member, multiple accusations of sexual harassment, and appearing intoxicated. Vampire Dad director Frankie Ingrassia and the films producer, Jed Rhein, confirm to Vulture that Dick was let go from the film on October 18. Two additional sources involved with the production, an actor and a PA, tell Vulture that Dick was fired for grabbing a male sound operators genitals while he was being micd up on the first day of shooting in North Hollywood. He was kissing and biting his neck, says the PA, who witnessed the alleged incident. Rhein, who received three reports of Dicks misconduct, says he personally removed Dick from the set immediately after being informed of the alleged groping. Dicks contract was subsequently terminated; an internal investigation into the allegations is now ongoing, but police are not currently involved. Representatives for Dick declined Vultures multiple requests for comment on these allegations. Dick is also described as being repeatedly inappropriate with the majority-female crew. I saw him being very gross with a lot of women, the actor says. He systematically went woman by woman and just said a bunch of gross things almost mechanically, robotically, and made every single one of them uncomfortable. Ingrassia did not witness this alleged behavior, but says she was notified of his extremely graphic comments. The actor witnessed Dick sexually harassing production assistants and any young women there Hed just launch into it so quickly: Hey whats your name? Oh, you got a boyfriend? I bet hes got a real gross, gnarled dick and Ive got a great dick. You should get with me, the actor says. She would get uncomfortable and leave and then hed call another girl over and do the same thing. Dick allegedly sexually harassed a young female crew member to the point of tears, the PA says. That PA also witnessed Dick praising Harvey Weinstein on set, calling the disgraced producer his hero. (Dick has made four Weinstein films: 2005s Hoodwinked, 2006s The Reef: Shark Bait, 2011s Hoodwinked Too, and 2012s The Reef 2.) Everyone that Vulture interviewed claim that Dick often appeared intoxicated to the point of belligerence and falling asleep. Rhein confirms that Dick requested liquor on set or he refused to go to work. Were talking about a man who clearly is sick. Ive seen sexual predators in my life and this is something different, Ingrassia says. Hes a mess right now. There was not a shred of alertness. Hes very ill. That man was literally not conscious. Dick told The Hollywood Reporter that while on the set of the previous film he was fired from, he took took many Xanax and I was a bit loopy, but claimed to be sober and have a sober companion on that set. Following the alleged groping incident, Ingrassia says she was alerted by her first AD that Dick needed to be removed from set. According to Rhein, only he and the films producer/writer Kathryn M. Moseley had the authority to fire Dick. They enforced the films zero-tolerance policy immediately. As soon as I told him in an expletive to get up and leave, I remember him saying, Oh, Im done? Rheid says. And I said, Yeah youre done. Get up, get out. He kind of just sauntered and staggered a little bit and just walked out the front door in his wardrobe. The next day, an attorney was brought in and the crew and cast were notified that they could report any complaints against Dick to the films lawyers. Rhein says no further allegations have been made at this time. According to Ingrassia, Dick was to play a depressed, sad misfit monster in the film, her feature directorial debut, and that he was hired with the understanding that he was sober. Initially, she says, he appeared that way. When we brought him in to do the first scene, he was really funny and talented, she recalls. His performance on camera made us think he was okay, but the minute we yelled cut, apparently his behavior to some of the crew members was extremely off-color. Ingrassia says she would not have put her team, which boasted a 70 percent female crew, at risk had she known Dick might act inappropriately, adding, This is not the way I wanted my first feature to go down. Its time to teach your parents how to use Netflix, because the streaming service will soon provide them with a way to see Barbra Streisand. Streisand, in true extravagant form, has made a concert film with footage from her recent tour and special guests, including her pal Jamie Foxx. Titled, in full Barbra: The MusicThe MemriesThe Magic!, the special comes out November 22, just in time for your family to watch it all together during Thanksgiving and debate which other Netflix properties Babs enjoys. I can just see her being charmed by American Vandal. Every week Vulture highlights the best new music. If the song is worthy of your ears and attention, you will find it here. Read our picks below, share yours in the comments, and subscribe to the Vulture Playlist for a comprehensive guide to the years best music. N.E.R.D ft. Rihanna, Lemon It seems inconceivable that Rihanna and Pharrells paths had never crossed in the studio. But up until yesterday, that was the case; the two never made a song together. Rihanna now features on N.E.R.Ds first song in seven years and when I say features, I really mean stars. Just when you thought Beyonce had the monopoly on lemonade, here comes Rih rapping her face off on Lemon. I said rapping! Upgrading her flow from Kendricks Loyalty, she spits car references and comes up with a dozen other ways to say shes stuntin. (One line, Tell the paparazzi get the lens right, apparently dates back to at least 2015, so this collaboration was long in the making.) Rihanna is swagger personified, and this song, assisted by swag king Pharrells New Orleans bounce-based beat, is just how swagger sounds. Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett) Marshmello ft. Selena Gomez, Wolves What is it about Selena Gomezs voice that makes her such a perfect companion for a slickly produced pop DJ banger? Is it because she sounds like the ideal mashup between an EDM pleasure algorithm and an actual human being? Is it because she is Top 40 musics master of performative sensuality? Is Selena Gomez a Joi bot companion built for weekend ravers who dont actually know anything about house music but just like to dance? From Zedd to Kygo and now the elusive Marshmello, Gomez has made her DJ collaboration tracks a highlight of her career. Wolves is another pulsing flight into the stratosphere of breezy pop dreams. Gomezs voice sounds like really good advertising, and I am buying the feeling shes selling. I dont do molly, but I do listen to Selena Gomez hypnotically repeat alluring phrases over and over again in electro-pop jams, and that feels like a fair compromise. Jordan Crucchiola (@jorcru) Migos ft. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, Motor Sport Trust the Migos to be raps great mediators. Not that there was really a score to settle between Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. As the two go to great pains to prove on their respectively lethal guest spots on Migos new single, theres no bad blood, at least not between them. (No matter what professional pot-stirrer Joe Budden would have you believe.) Its a shame either of them has to waste breath on manufactured tension, but its also what fuels some of their best work. Cardi rightfully uses her turn as a victory lap, declaring herself the trap Selena inspiration for a new generation of the underrepresented after dismissing any perceived beef with Nicki. If this is Cardis final verse of the year (her debut album seems not quite ready), Ill take it. Nickis throne, meanwhile, has been under siege all year, threatened by both Remy Ma and Cardi. Shes not as direct as Cardi in shrugging off competition because years in this game have taught her to broach the subject more deftly. Nicki only knows one mode and thats attack. Shes not pressed about a single rapper; her concern is greater, like feeling history might disrespect her legacy. To protect it, she delivers a searing verse, performed in various flows, using dizzying multi-meaning wordplay. (Just take a minute to unpack the many layers of Get you lined for that paper like a loose leaf when that strap blow.) That Nicki cant stop telling us how intelligent her verse is shows just how genuinely worried she is people forgot what she can do. DL CyHi the Prince ft. Kanye West, Dat Side Kanye West is a private person. It doesnt seem like Kanye West is a private person because any time he says anything, we argue about if he should have said anything but then he recedes into the background to record new music in Wyoming or whatever. I might not know where Kanye is right at this exact moment (probably still Wyoming or Calabasas), but I do know that he is undoubtedly CyHi the Princes biggest fan. His appearance on CyHis Dat Side a loose, run-on sentence of a verse about how Yeezys are everywhere, how hes the only black guy in his neighborhood, and how fame has made him lonely is well-trod territory for Kanye, sure, but its also a compelling window into where his mind is at and where he might be going next. Sam Hockley-Smith (@shockleysmith) Gorillaz ft. Little Simz, Garage Palace Theres a new deluxe vinyl release of the Gorillaz album Humanz, and it has 14 previously unreleased tracks. So basically Gorillaz has released a whole new album of material for you, and on it is this jewel with U.K. rapper Little Simz. Since Simz is basically an alien and the Gorillaz inhabit their own cross-dimensional plane, get intergalactic with them and listen to Garage Palace. Just beware the heat coming off that Simz flow. JC Rhye, Taste A few months after releasing a pair of new songs in July, Rhye dropped a new loose track last Friday called Taste. A quiet mix of disco, funk, and R&B, Taste could easily fit on their acclaimed debut album Woman, and thats not a problem. Miloshs vocals flow delicately over soft but intricate instrumentation (restrained slap bass, Isley Brotherslike rhythm guitar, synths, and even some woodwinds), solidifying his reputation as the white male Sade. So far, there is no release date for the new project, but the duos upcoming tour dates suggest that it will likely be early next year. Corinna Burford (@coriburford) In the latter part of her Daily Show interview, Hillary Clinton told Trevor Noah, Ive walked in the woods, and that was enough. Im done with that. Im back. And she certainly seemed ready to use her return to the national spotlight to lay out a few things on her mind: Russia, Trump, and the connection to her big loss. This is cyberwarfare, Clinton said of Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election. It is a form of war and weve never had an adversary who attacked us with so few consequences. Clinton also addressed several factors surrounding the investigation into the Trump campaigns possible collusion with Russia. The former secretary of State argued that the FBI should have revealed its investigation into the connection before the election. I know that voters should have had that information, thats something that may have influenced some people, she said. She also shut down attempts to equate her campaigns partial financing of the infamous Trump Dossier with her opponents possible interactions with Russians. She explained: This was research started by a Republican donor during the Republican primary and then when Trump got the nomination for the Republican party the people doing it came to my campaign lawyer and said, Would you like us to continue it? And he said yes. Hes an experienced lawyer, he knows what the law is, he knows what opposition research is. Clinton ended the interview by reaffirming, Im going to keep talking, Im not going anywhere. Kevin Spacey. Photo: Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage Earlier this week, the actor Anthony Rapp alleged that Kevin Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in 1986, when he was 14 years old. After Rapps allegation, Spacey released a statement in which he claimed not to remember the incident in question and also came out as a gay man. Since then, others have come forward with further allegations against Spacey, including the filmmaker Tony Montana, who said that Spacey groped him in public in 2003, and the actor Roberto Cavazos, who said he witnessed Spacey court and inappropriately touch younger male actors at the Old Vic Theatre, where Spacey was the artistic director from 2004 to 2015. After Rapps public statement, a man who was friendly with a member of the New York staff approached the magazine to talk about Spacey. At the age of 14, he says, he began a sexual relationship with the actor, who was then 24, that ended with what he describes as an attempted rape. The man is now a 48-year-old artist living on the East Coast with a long-term partner, and he wishes to remain anonymous. I have worked really hard to have a nice life and feel safe, and Im not giving that up for him, he told me, sitting outside on a park bench. I dont want them to be able to find their way back to me. He first met Spacey in 1981, when the actor was a guest teacher at a weekend acting class he took in Westchester County; he was then a 12-year-old student. Spacey was 22 and working in the New York theater scene. They met again by chance in line at Shakespeare in the Park in 1983, when the student was 14 years old; Spacey had made his Broadway debut in Henrik Ibsens Ghosts the year prior. After that meeting, he says, Spacey gave him his phone number, and the two began a sexual relationship. The former student came forward, he says, because he was enraged at Spaceys response to Rapps story. We have done our best to verify his account of his time with Spacey. We confirmed with two sources that Spacey taught at the acting school in 1981; checked the plausibility of dates and other details in his account; and spoke with people close to the former student, who said that he had spoken about his relationship with Spacey as far back as the 1990s. We also spoke with his current therapist, who confirmed that he began speaking about it in sessions in 2015. And we have confirmed the other abusive relationship the former student discusses. We reached out to Spacey to talk about the relationship. He responded through his lawyer, who wrote in an email, Mr. Spacey absolutely denies the allegations. The following is a condensed and lightly edited transcript of our conversation. We are presenting it as he told it to us because of the nature of the relationship, which is best left to the former student to describe. He entered it enthusiastically as a young adolescent and continued to see Spacey until the unwanted assault. Consent is rarely simple, even among adults. It is especially complicated in the mind of a 14-year-old. This is his account. When did you first meet Kevin Spacey? I went to Saturday acting classes in Westchester County, outside of New York, around 1981. They would bring working theater professionals in to teach us. I was 12, and he taught at the school, maybe just for half a year. He wasnt a known person at that time. He was probably just beginning to be a working actor. What was the school called? It didnt really have a name. It was an hour of movement, an hour of acting, and an hour of musical comedy. It was in a church, and it was a bunch of kids between the ages of probably 11 and 18, singing and acting. When you were at school, did Kevin Spacey give you attention in that way? No. I knew that he knew who I was, but no there was no physical attention. There was no grooming or attention like Lets go out for an ice cream. Was there ever any gossip around the students about him? No. We were not discussing sexuality. I mean, my group was 12. Do you remember what church it was held at? It was housed inside of Saint Thomass Church in Mamaroneck, New York. There were different age groups, and he came and taught acting classes, and then went away. I met him again the summer of 1983, when I was 14, at Shakespeare in the Park. I was waiting on line with my family. I saw him, and he saw me, and while my parents were waiting for tickets, he and I went for a walk. And that didnt strike anyone as strange? No. I had been sexually active for a year then, also with a person ten years my senior a member of my family, my cousin. Throughout that period, Im giving off very obvious signals about my relationship with my cousin. Im wearing his clothes. Im sleeping over at his house. And my parents are in what seems to me a very profound state of denial about whats going on. They know Im gay. I came out to my parents in the eighth grade, when I was 13. Its a shameful moment in the history of my family. But my cousin had sexually abused my older brother when my brother was 11 and he was 17 or 18. He was forgiven by my family and kind of invited back into the fold. My mother told him [to stay away from me]: If you touch [him], Ill kill you. But then I start sleeping over at his house and wearing his clothes, and that goes on really for a year before anybody asks me any questions. Did you feel your relationship with your cousin was consensual? At the time, I wouldve told you that relationship was completely consensual. That we were boyfriends. I wouldve said, Yeah, Im 14, but Im really smart. Im really together. And its normal that 25-year-old men would want me to be their boyfriend because Im a grown-up. Okay, so you are walking with Kevin. Yeah, and were talking. He was kind of in high seduction mode and gave me his phone number and asked me to call him. He said, I want to see you, and I want you to come to my apartment. He said hed always been really drawn to me at the acting classes, but had stayed away because I was 12. So Im like [laughs] now that I was 14. That was probably a 15-minute walk, and then I went back to be with my parents. How did you feel? I felt like Id won the lottery. A little drunk with it and very delighted with the attention. I was like a cute, plump little kid who went through puberty really fast and came out the other side as somebody that grown-ups were looking at and saying was beautiful. If your father has never rubbed your head or patted you, and if you have suspected your whole life that he is actually repulsed by you or just bored by you [laughs], youre hungry. And I had gone through puberty at 11. I had to make this happen. And I was terrified to do that with a boy of my own age. You could be beat up. After you talked in the park, when did you and Kevin first meet? I called him on the phone the next day, and he told me how he was in love with me and wanted to see me. I went and saw him at an apartment he was renting on the Upper West Side. He had a black Labrador named Snake. He mightve been walking that dog in Central Park when we bumped into him that night. We started a sexual relationship that first visit, which mostly involved me fucking him. Did he ever talk about his personal life? There were pictures around his house of Jennifer Jason Leigh. I remember him talking about her as his girlfriend. Did you know if he was sleeping with anyone else? I assumed that he was sleeping with Jennifer Jason Leigh. How did the sexual part start happening? Did you talk? We talked a little bit, but it was more like, You know why youre here, I know why were here. I dont remember a lot of conversation. I remember a lot of physical activity. And how did you feel after the first time with Kevin? Dizzy. What happened afterward? I think we lay around and talked some. I was probably just there for a couple hours. I remember feeling like [I was] cheating, going back and forth between these two men. In your mind, at that age, there was a kind of drama. Oh my God. Im sexually so compelled with this one man. With my cousin, Im beginning to perceive his mental illness and his endless need for me at that time. I was part of a troupe of kids working with the director and writer Liz Swados, and that winter, Liz and I got together and she recognized that I was in a lot of psychic distress. She pursued it to the point where I confessed to her that I was trapped in this relationship with my cousin and wanted to get out, but felt like he would fall apart if I left him. She helped me get out. She gave me the words and explained to me also that 25-year-olds dont have sex with 14- and 15-year-olds, that thats wrong, that I was not the guilty party and I could leave. How many times did you meet up with Kevin after that first meeting? My memory is that we met up three or four more times with, again, proclamations that we loved each other. Also, [he was telling me] that there were producers who were really interested in me as an actor and that he wanted to get me auditions. He talked about some play and how he wanted to get me an audition for it. He hadnt seen me act since I was 12. Did anything come of that? No, it didnt result in anything professional. Did you ever talk to Kevin about his work? I knew at that point he was starting to be a working actor. That was very glamorous to me, that he was having the beginnings of some success in that world. Enough that it seemed like he was going to get me these auditions. That all seemed very believable. When youre 14, a lot of things seem believable, especially if its something nice. I was acting professionally at that time, so thats another part of why all of this made sense to me: I was commuting into New York and acting and making money. You were a working child actor. Of course I have a 24-year-old boyfriend and Im going out to punk clubs. Im lying to my parents about all of this. And Im cheating on my cousin/boyfriend to go see Kevin Spacey. Im very caught up in the drama, and its now early winter. So now Im 15. He was in a different apartment, also on the Upper West Side, and I called him from a pay phone, like you used to do, and said, Im close by. Can I see you? I had like 15 minutes before I had to meet my parents and some family friends for dinner. He told me to come over, and I went to the apartment. And I thought we were going to kiss and tell each other we loved each other and I was going to go. But he wanted to have sex, and this time he wanted to fuck me, which had never happened to me before. He said he wanted to top you? He did not say. He just did. I guess he must have come up behind me and yanked down my baggy jeans, and he goes to fuck me and Im like, No, I dont want to. And he pushes hard, and grabs me, and starts shoving up against my asshole, and it hurts like a motherfucker. I again tell him no, and he tries again. I am strong enough, thank God, both somewhere in my brain and in my body, to get him off of me. Im sturdy, thankfully. I throw him off of me and I run crying down the stairs and out into the street and then suck it all up and go have dinner. Did he penetrate you? No. I dont think so. I know it hurt, so something went somewhere to the point where it hurt, but I remember feeling like I got him. I did not feel like I had been fucked. What would you call it? I always have said, He tried to rape me. I told him I didnt want that, he went again to do it, I told him no, he went again and pushed harder and grabbed me and pushed harder. I dont know how I would see that as anything besides an attempted rape, which I was able to thwart. Did you feel afraid? I dont know that I felt afraid. I felt betrayed, or in danger, or trapped. In some way it was like, Oh, Ive been lured into a trap. I called his number a few days later and there was no answer hes gone, and I do not hear from him ever again. One year later, Im an apprentice at the Berkshire Theater Festival. I see that hes at the Williamstown Theater Festival [Spacey starred in Williamstowns production of Real Dreams in 1984], and I contact him there and say I want to see him. And at the last minute I call him and say, Why didnt you ever call me? Why didnt you ever do anything? I dont want to see you. And what? He was like, Oh, come over. Im going to drive over. I had maintained this weird obsession with him, and I turned it at the last minute and said, I dont want to see you. Dont come. So that was that. And that has been the extent of my contact with him. Kevin Spacey and Robin Bartlett in Williamstowns production of Real Dreams in 1984. Photo: Courtesy of Williamstown Theater/Bob Marshak Did you ever tell your parents? Nope. But then I remember talking to my friends in my early 20s about it, as he started to get prizes and be in plays and later win a Tony. In the late 80s, I remember seeing him in the movie Heartburn, playing the thief, and this rage that he was rising up in the world and that I was going to have to look at this person for the rest of my life. How did you feel about him when you were 14? I was obsessed with him. And how do you feel about those feelings now? You feel things full body, in a way, when youre adolescent, right? And some people never learn, but in adolescence, you certainly dont know yet that a very powerful sexual feeling is not love. You havent found that out yet, and some people dont ever find that out. I was just full of this lust. And thats why, one year later, even after he tried to rape me, some part of me wanted to see him again. When did your thinking around what had happened start to change? When do I start to think of him as a sexual predator? Yeah. I assume you would call him that now. I would call him that to his face. I would call him a pedophile and a sexual predator. When I turned 25, I looked at every 14-year-old boy I could see, to try to understand what those men had seen, because I still on some level thought I had been a tiny adult. That whole year I was 25, I tried to just see the ones who were like six-foot-two, and 200 pounds they all looked like children. They all looked like somebody who was 10 years old four years ago. Nobody looks fuckable. Nobody I couldnt conjure it up. I couldnt conjure up the desire. It was nauseating to think of having sex with them, and that was, I think, certainly when I understood, on a very deep level, these men were fucked up. Up until then, I just thought about him as somebody who had really done me wrong and tried to rape me, but not as somebody who had functioned as a predator. And then, if youre interested in sexual predation, you start to read about it, and you realize all these patterns and techniques, and it all kind of falls within a set of practices. Is that what you did? You read about it? Yeah, like I would talk to psychologists. I know that pedophilia is a sexuality, like homosexuality. You cant necessarily you cant be cured of it. It is in your brain. Thats one of the tragic things about it for those people. You can become someone who does not act on those impulses, but the understanding in the psychological community is thats your sexuality. Thats what youre stuck with. You read and you realize, Oh yeah, they do this thing. My cousin had done it. They make themselves beloved. Theyre charming and helpful and kind so that the community invites them deeper in. They make themselves indispensable, and that also is a double thing. So that when they are accused, people dont believe it. Not him. Mr. Wallace is so great, and he takes the kids camping. So in your view, this is who he is? He is a pedophile. When you look at his statement, you realize also hes profoundly narcissistic. He thinks this is about being caught that hes gay. And then he is spinning it, right? Oh, people like gays now. So Ill throw them that. Ill say Im gay and I will betray my whole community and do something else that conflates pedophilia with male homosexuality. Thats great. Thank you for that. And that was probably the thing that made me want to talk more than anything else. How repulsive that was. Okay. I guess this is speaking a little more generally about relationships that gay men have, and often I think that there are older-younger kinds of relationships. Yeah. My partner now is 11 years older than I am. I mean, some part of me, almost anyone Ive ever been seriously involved with has been older. Whats your question? Do you think that a 14- or 15-year-old is capable of being in a relationship with a man who is a decade older? No. What you need in a relationship, any relationship, involves a power struggle. But you have to start from some kind of equal footing. And a 15-year-old is a child. Everything is already off-kilter. Youre taking from somebody to get this thing you want. What did he take? From me? Yeah. Luckily, I threw him off me. I saved myself in many ways in that minute from the much deeper trauma that wouldve come from having been raped. Thankfully, some part of me was strong enough to be like, Fuck no. Im so grateful to that little 14-year-old, that he didnt say, I have to let him do this or hell stop loving me. What he left me with, more than what he took from me, was a sense that I deserved this. And thats the knot Im still untangling. Every time Ive ever told the story, I am compelled to tell people how seductive I was towards these men. Im compelled to tell people how much I wanted these things because some very deep part of me feels like its lying if I dont say that. If I dont describe how consensual it was. Some part of me takes a lot of work to understand that I can have been the victim of someone and not be a victim. So thats all fucked up in my head. My introductions to love were, Youre a thing. Youre a tasty thing. And if you didnt have that, you would have no worth. Does the question of consent feel complicated to you? Yeah. Sexual abuse is complicated. Its like when youre a kid, right, and somebody accidentally touched your penis with a towel, it feels nice. You cant help that. Like rubbing up against the bed, it feels nice. So if youre little and somebody touches your penis, its terrifying and shameful. At the same time, neurologically, its pleasurable. Youre left with that forever. You cant help it. Teenagers have to be protected from themselves. Children have to be protected from themselves. Thats what adults do. They protect them and they create spaces for them like training wheels where they can begin to get ready. In an ideal world. This is not an ideal world. What made you want to talk about Kevin Spacey now? The low-level guilt that Ive kind of carried all this time of knowing, in my brain, that these people repeat offend. They dont stop. Its never one and done. Pedophiles, sexual predators, thats part of it. So knowing full well that he was continuing to do this, that he was out there at large, has made me feel ashamed. So that makes me want to talk. Im grateful to Anthony Rapp for talking, that opened that door for me. Obviously the most right thing is to put my name and speak, and the second most right thing is to be anonymous and speak. And thats what I can do. If it was 1977 and it was a newspaper, and I didnt feel like the world was going to swarm in through the wormhole of my phone and invade my life and strip me of things, and if I also didnt feel like that was going to become my name I dont want that to be my name. Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Turner Following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, Kevin Spacey is reportedly in the process of seeking professional help. A spokesperson for the House of Cards star told Variety, Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time. Over the weekend, Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp became the first to accuse Spacey in an explosive interview with BuzzFeed News. Rapp alleged that in 1986, when he was 14 years old and Spacey was 26, the older actor attempted to seduce the adolescent at a party by carrying Rapp to his bed and attempting to initiate sexual contact. Spacey responded with a statement in which he came out as gay and claimed he could not remember the incident, but in which he offered his sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior. Since then, others have come forward with additional allegations. Filmmaker Tony Montana alleges that Spacey groped him in a bar, and actor Roberto Cavazos, who performed at Londons Old Vic while Spacey was the artistic director, said that the Tony winner targeted many male actors under the age of 30 with unwanted advances and inappropriate touches. In response to the allegations, Netflix has suspended production on House of Cards season six until further notice. The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences also rescinded Spaceys 2017 International Emmy Founders Award. Laurie Anderson. Its been almost a year since the election of Donald Trump, and Yoko Onos response speaking for many Americans which was a Twitter video of her screaming for 19 seconds. Dear friends, I would like to share this message with you as my response to @realDonaldTrump, she wrote (so far, its gotten 26,325 retweets 34,051 likes). It was this no-holds-barred, bloody murder, hara-kiri, disemboweling scream, remembered Laurie Anderson at the Performa benefit last night, honoring Ono (who was too ill to attend). And in the ensuing year, it keeps me going. The two had become close after Lou Reeds death, when she was pretty lost, she remembers. She began to send the most amazing messages about love and death and memory. She had become my guide, and had taught me an all new way to move through time. The benefit was held in the former Church of St. Thomas the Apostle on West 118th Street, which had been interestingly cut in half a few years back in order to make room for an apartment building, and is now used by painter Julie Mehretu as her studio, and is one of the venues for this years Performa festival. That night, William Kentridge, Gavin Brown, Barbara Kruger, Teju Cole, and Klaus Biesenbach, among others, were in attendance and, of course, in agreement with Anderson, who went on to say that I, like many people in this room, became an artist and joined this community in New York City because I wanted to be free, before challenging the citys creative community to not be discouraged. Marilyn Minter is here and she told me about her idea of on November 8, the anniversary of Election Day, at midnight for everybody to just stick their head out the window and just scream, she proposed, before deciding to give it a trial run that night. Standing before a gong, Anderson announced that Im going to hit this gong and I want you to join me in a scream, and she did, and the whole room let loose. And afterward, they agreed they should try to make it a thing. Minter told me that shed been inspired by a Facebook movement to have a mass scream on the Boston Common. I thought New Yorkers are good at making big noises outside our windows like when the Yankees win the World Series, or when Barack Obama won. You could hear the city cheer. If we scream on our fire escapes, balconies, outside our windows, perhaps we will be loud enough around the city and country that they can hear us in the White House. We are united in preserving our democracy from a toxic narcissistic administration that thrives on chaos. A little primal scream might release our frustration! (The Boston event was canceled for logistical and liability reasons; there is a Facebook event page for another one on Washington Square.) To which, today, Anderson emailed: Yes!! Lets make the scream happen. (Im completely hoarse today.) This season, Mr. Robot has undergone some effective, deserved self-interrogation. Much of this has taken place on the macro structural level narrowing the action, clarifying motives, removing unnecessary subplots and characters but much of it trickles down to the characters themselves. Elliot and Darlene, especially, have come out the other side of their fsociety scheme skeptical and pessimistic. Neither completely believes that the sacrifices they made were worth the result. The world is in chaos. Economic ruin dominates the landscape. People are dead. For what? Eps3.3_metadata.par2 sets the table for the next few episodes, as Whiterose imposes a timetable on Stage 2, forcing Angela and Tyrell to scramble while trying to keep tabs on Elliot/Mr. Robot. Still, its a mild cut above because credited writer Kyle Bradstreet takes the time to examine the regret and fear that have taken hold of the Alderson siblings. In the episodes first scene, Darlene catches a pickpocket on the subway who has taken her wallet. When the pickpocket finally caves and returns the wallet, Darlene only takes a Polaroid from it and tell her to keep the rest. I stole from all of you, she calmly replies. Later, when she meets Agent DiPierro at a bar, she stalls on providing information and forces her to engage in small talk. Maybe Im tired of being a traitor, she says, clearly worn out from the decisions shes made. Maybe I just want to be a normal person for once. Its a luxury that neither she nor Elliot nor anyone who associates with the Dark Army can afford. At night, she prices trips to Budapest, something Cisco brought up once, and dreams of a life she cant conceivably lead anymore. Elliot, however, struggles to keep up with the actions of his split personality. After discovering that Darlene hacked him (but not knowing it was for the benefit of the FBI), he confronts her and she admits that Mr. Robot had attacked her earlier. He knows now that the Dark Army plans to go ahead with Stage 2 and that his actions to impede the plan havent worked. So he and Darlene concoct a plan: Shell stay in Shays old apartment, wait until Elliot falls asleep, and when Mr. Robot wakes up, shell tail him to find out his location. Though Elliot and Darlene reconnect, they have very different outlooks on their past efforts. Darlene was an fsociety leader who committed cyberterrorism and murder to further the cause. But she was taking orders from Elliot, who now struggles with his conflicted feelings toward the revolution. On one hand, hes horrified by the Dark Armys escalation of violence and feels guilty about sending the world into turmoil, but he also knows that theres a part of himself thats excited by this chaos. Mr. Robot might be a separate personality, fully capable of working without Elliots knowledge, but he still comes from Elliot. Hes frightened by the part of himself willing to commit acts of wanton destruction and mass murder, but he also knows that he must be the one to take it down. Its his mess and only he can fix it. Unfortunately, Angela and Tyrell might already have the drop on Elliot. When Mr. Robot and Angela travel to their underground bunker, she reveals to Tyrell that Elliot had been diverting the paper shipments away from New York. Tyrell throws a tantrum, claiming that Elliot no longer has control over the mission and that he no longer views him as a God. Mr. Robot begins to strangle him, but as soon as he lays a hand on Tyrell, Elliot starts to emerge. He recognizes Angela and Tyrell and begins to panic (Please tell me you know whats happening echoes in voice-over), and Angela quickly injects him with some mysterious serum that knocks him out. In the previous two seasons, Angela was first an outsiders outsider, then a citizen struggling to deal with the truth of her mothers death, then a corporate insider trying to game the system from within while doubling as a reluctant revolutionary. But now? Shes a full-blown Dark Army proxy agent whos in way over her head. She scrambles to get most of the records into the city after learning of Elliots covert operation. She quickly has Elliot fired from E Corp, thanks to some greased wheels courtesy of Phillip Price. She claims to have everything under control, but how much is that a front? Its hard to say, but shes still as naive as Darlene and Elliot were back when they were on the frontline. She falls for Irvings assurances that theres an evacuation plan in place so no one will die in the E Corp explosion, but we know the truth: The Dark Army will kill anyone for the greater good. Elliot might be in Angelas custody, but Darlene knows about her involvement now, and Agent DiPierro is still hunting for Whiterose. It might not be a matter of if she takes the fall for this, but when. Orphan Code In case youve had trouble keeping track of the timeline because of all the Trump references, Mr. Robot is still set in 2015. Darlene all but outs DiPierro as gay during their forced small talk. She openly asks her if the FBI frowns on muff divers. DiPierro responds that it keeps things simple. The interrogation scene between DiPierro, her partner Norm (Rizwan Manji), and the fsociety imposter Sasan Nouri (Nuah Ozryel) features all kinds of bad dialogue, e.g. What my partner is trying to say is youre on a path toward Hell, and were not talking the thousand virgins kind, were talking sharing a prison cell with a few Allah-hating Nazis on the daily. In a funny sight gag, Darlene appears to be torrenting Shazaam (1996) Sinbad. For more information, read this Vox article. Music Corner: Elliott Smiths Everything Means Nothing to Me opens and closes the episode. Bruce Hornsbys The Way It Is can be faintly heard in the Red Wheelbarrow BBQ location. If anyone can ID the song playing in the bar scene with Darlene and DiPierro, sound off in the comments. I spend a lot of my time reflecting, in silence, on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, as we all do. Dolores is my favorite person currently on this show, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect she did say something disparaging about Teresa to Danielle. If she hadnt, her reaction to Danielles accusation would have been one of disbelief and confusion (more of a what?), not anger (You motherfucking liar). Nevertheless, Dolores is upset that Teresa trusts her frenemy Danielle more than their decades-long friendship, as she tells Frank and Frankie, who are supposedly fixing a chair. I am not a carpentry expert, but it looks to me more like theyre randomly poking at it with a screwdriver as a transparent excuse to show off their father-son matching quartet of swole arms on camera. Ill allow it. Teresa, Joe, and Melissa have Gorgas Homemade Pasta & Pizza all ready for a friends-and-family tasting event. Well, almost ready. Teresa takes issue with one of the family photos lining the walls, a shot of Joe and Melissa, on the grounds that her brother is covering his face and therefore it is too much a photo of her sister-in-law, her nemesis ever since she dared offer unsolicited parenting advice. Shes only Gorga by fucking injection, says Teresa You Would Think She Would Be Nice Like, Shes an Immigrant Giudice. On her way out the door in a huff, Melissa intentionally knocks over a glass, but it fails to a shatter. Nor does it spill, because it was empty. Three out of ten, better luck next time. I have a soft spot for Melissa, not because but rather in spite of the fact that On Display gets stuck in my head about once every three months. Melissas comment about Teresas pushover tendencies is hardly a relationship-ender, and soon enough, Teresa apologizes. Even Gia, whose emotional age is somehow 20 years older than anyone else on this television program, tells her mother that her siblings need more discipline, especially Milania, a budding tyrant. Meanwhile, Siggy and Michael celebrate their anniversary with dinner at Il Mulino, like this is RHONY or something. Upset over her beloved Joshuas imminent departure for college, she tells Michael she wants to work harder, not cut back as hed requested. Her plan: She wants to host overnight retreats with her friend Vikki [sic], a divorce attorney, once or twice a month. Michael is dismayed by the very idea of his wife spending that much time away from home, although, really, its not that much time away from home. Michael: You seem nice, and I will keep my promise to Siggy that your Bayside, Queens, dealership will be my first stop should I have any Jeep-related needs, but you should probably get a hobby. Margaret is also making career moves, plotting a business trip to Milan to check in on the production of her shoe line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see where this is going. Its not that Im not looking forward to that adventure, its just that after Vickis lifetime-achievement fake heart attack in Iceland it feels like all Real Housewives trips through the end of the year should be cancelled, out of respect. The rest of the episode unfolds as a low-budget horror remake of Big Night, with the entire group descending on the Gorgas new restaurant. Live-in ex-husband Frank is Doloress date, not her increasingly serious boyfriend David, a subject of much gossip by Teresa and Danielle in the, like, 90 seconds before the Catanias arrive. One moment, Siggy is pro-Margaret, pleased to hear her defend Dolores. The next moment, she is shouting at Margaret for not adequately defending Dolores. Suddenly, Siggy is not ready to forgive her. Girl, what? Your beef with Margaret has been legally, incontrovertibly squashed, per the articles of the Great Diner Summit of 2017. You cant unsquash a beef. Once squashed, it is no longer structurally viable. When she does arrive, Dolores doesnt acknowledge Danielle and barely acknowledges Margaret. The men wisely hide in the kitchen, where Papa Gorga has been put to work. That even includes Margarets husband, Joe Omega Joe Gorga is Joe Alpha, obviously, and Joe Giudice is Joe Beta in absentia whom she characterizes as a stage-five clinger. (Discussion question for the class: Is Margaret the DJ Pauly D of RHONJ?) After a montage of people tasting different types of pastas, accompanied by chyrons naming them like theyre minor characters on the show, Dolores and Siggy sit together and loudly complain about Margaret, even after she walks right up to them. Youre one of the ugliest human beings in the world for making fun of me, Siggy screams at Margaret, just as she has been screaming in season-eight teasers and promos now for what feels like three full years of my life. Siggy is her own worst enemy this season. Im sympathetic because shes said that all of these mood swings are the result of a hormone imbalance following her hysterectomy, for which shes sought hormone-replacement therapy. But this is some truly erratic behavior like, get-you-kicked-off-an-airplane erratic behavior. Before she and Michael leave, Siggy smacks her hand in the air in Margarets general direction and aggressively shimmies towards her. As Dolores and Frank head out, Danielle initiates some last-minute shit-talking. Your ex-husband and your boyfriend all live in the same house together, too? she asks, which doesnt really strike me as that inflammatory, in part because it is not strictly true, but Danielle apparently knows her audience. Thats none of your fucking business, Dolores growls, a nerve struck, before Teresa hustles her outside. Excuse me, but is no one going to tell us how the tagliatelle was? Jim Parsons, Matt Bomer. Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images Megaproducer Ryan Murphy is calling on some familiar faces from his television empire for his upcoming Broadway production of The Boys in the Band. Playbill reports the all-star cast includes Broadway veterans Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, and Andrew Rannells, as well as Matt Bomer, who is making his debut on the Great White Way. The limited-run production marks the 50th anniversary of Mart Crowleys ground-breaking comedic drama about a group of gay men at a small party. The play, which opened in a small venue Off-Broadway in 1968, made history with its depiction of the relationships and struggles of gay men in that era and became a sensation. This upcoming production, directed by Tony winner Joe Mantello, is the first time the show will appear on Broadway. It opens at the Booth Theatre on April 30 and runs through August 12. A semi-truck driver will admit to sexually assaulting a 9-year-old while she rode with him on a trip through several states. John Jaycob Fishbaugh, who was 56 when charges were filed in 2016, will plead guilty to sexual assault and indecent exposure, both felonies, under a plea agreement filed in mid-October. Original charges against Fishbaugh were sexual intercourse without consent, sexual abuse of children and sexual assault. Under a joint recommendation, defense and prosecuting attorneys plan to ask for a sentence of 25 years to the Montana State Prison with 10 suspended. The joint recommendation will call for restitution. According to charging documents, Fishbaugh took the 9-year-old girl on a cross-country trip in August 2015 and forced her into sexual contact. Fishbaugh and the girl made stops in Washington, Missoula County, Oregon and Yellowstone County. Fishbaugh originally denied the allegations to law enforcement. Sentencing has been set for Jan. 31, 2018. The Salvation Army Thrift Store is in need of mens clothing. Donated clothing is sold and helps support services for the homeless and people in poverty. Clothing should be clean and free of tears or stains. Drop off donations at the Salvation Army store, 4721 W. Waco Drive, or call 756-7271 to schedule at-home pick up in McLennan County. Baylor grad speaks The Parents Against Crime Coalition will host medical researcher, businesswoman, and Baylor University graduate Zoi Maroudas-Tziolas for her presentation titled Essential Nutrition from Infancy through Adulthood, from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday at the Baylor Clubs Presidents Suite. Lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m. Tickets cost $25 at the door. Arbor Day observance Keep Waco Beautiful invites the public to mark the 139th observance of Arbor Day during its event at 10 a.m. Friday at G.W. Carver Middle School, 1601 JJ Flewellen Road. The ceremony will include planting a tree, reading of a proclamation and presentation of a Tree City USA flag to the school. For more information, call 750-5728 or email kwacob@gmail.com. Brazos Button Club The Brazos Button Club will meet from 9:30 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Bellmead Church of Christ Fellowship Hall, 907 Hogan Lane. Call Kathy May at 715-8439 for further information. Refreshments will be served. Pro-Life Waco Hour #396, the closing hour of the 2017 40 Days for Life Prayer Vigil, from 6 to 7 p.m. Saturday, will feature a re-enactment of the Jericho March on the sidewalks of the Planned Parenthood Mary Ruth Duncan Womens Health Center, 1121 Ross Ave. The march around Planned Parenthood will also feature blowing of a shofar. The march will be followed by refreshments, fellowship and music. For questions, contact prolifewaco@gmail.com or 644-0407. Chemistry Magic Show Mayborn Museum staff and Baylor University professors and students will bring the art of science to life through a variety of activities and demonstrations from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday. A Chemistry Magic Show will follow at 3 p.m. in the museums Governor Bill and Vara Daniel Historic Village. Regular admission to the museum includes the activities. Call 710-1110 for more information. Thirty months after the Twin Peaks shootout and 16 days into the first biker trial, Judge Matt Johnson was forced to delay proceedings Wednesday with another late disclosure of evidence by the city of Waco. Johnson apologized to the jury for putting the trial of Jacob Carrizal off until Monday morning, saying he knows court officials have already missed two predictions about how long the trial would last. Carrizals attorney, Casie Gotro, was set to start presenting the defenses case Wednesday morning. Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday morning after 15 days of testimony from 49 witnesses and the introduction of more than 1,200 pieces of evidence. However, Johnson granted a defense motion to postpone the trial after Assistant City Attorney Judith Benton brought in three recordings the city had not turned over to the McLennan County District Attorneys Office. Carrizal, 35, president of the Dallas Bandidos chapter, is charged with directing the activities of a criminal street gang and two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity. He is the first of 154 bikers indicted in the May 2015 shootout to stand trial. Gotro has said for months, even before the case was transferred from 19th State District Court to 54th State District Court, that she has not been given all the discovery evidence she is entitled to. Even since Carrizals trial started, the state at least twice has turned over evidence to her that she claims should have been given to her long ago. Johnson, and before him, Judge Ralph Strother, ordered the state on numerous occasions to give the defense evidence the law requires it to. Johnsons most recent order instructed the DAs office and all agencies with evidence to go back and review previous disclosures and to turn over anything that to date has not been divulged. The city claimed the withheld recordings were privileged materials because they contain information from confidential informants and the city wanted to protect their identities. Johnson listened to the recordings in his chambers Tuesday morning and ordered the city to turn over the recordings or, in the alternative, the law required him to dismiss the case. Benton told the court the city would waive the privilege claims. Johnson granted Gotros request for a continuance so she could review the recordings. Gotro has not formally requested a mistrial but has mentioned it a couple of times. While the jury wont be coming back until Monday morning, the parties will return to court Thursday afternoon to videotape the testimony of two defense witnesses who will not be available to testify in person later. Their testimonies will be played to the jury during the defenses case. An argument persists regarding just how evil a tax break for the rich might be. Those who believe in this argument are not examining the issue intelligently. They allow their overwhelming empathy for the middle class and poor to define the reasonableness of such a move. Luring U.S. corporations back to America versus outsourcing manufacturing or businesses relocating to foreign vistas provides a reasonable inducement for returning jobs to American workers and shutting off flow of American dollars to other countries economies. That money belongs here first. Our people have a reasonable expectation as well: to be able to provide for their families or reap the reward for hard work and live comfortably. This is the American Dream. No business owner, no matter how rich, should be presumed to have contempt for the poor. After all, its the business owner who provides a pathway for success to the poor. No legal resident in this country should ever feel his or her American Dream is less important or less attainable because he or she might one day be vilified by our society if successful. (God forbid!) At what point will the poor man or woman pass the point when they become rich and are similarly deplored by the political left? Just wondering! The so-called Day Without a Mexican spectacle purported to show how losing Hispanic members of the workforce would impact us all. I get it. The Hispanic population (like any other segment of our society) is essential to the success of our economic framework, whether that person is a waiter at a restaurant or general manager of an established department store. Hispanics are doctors, lawyers and business owners just like Asian people, black citizens or white folks. I understand that. I also understand that the top 10 percent of Americans, whatever their ethnicity, pay two-thirds of the federal income tax. The bottom 50 percent pay just 3 percent of the income tax. Allow me to channel Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone. Consider, if you will, a day without the wealthy business owner! What exactly would happen if business owners all decided to play hooky from work for a day? Lets examine the scenario. Suppose every wealthy business owner decided at the same time to close his or her door for a day. No employee would be able to work. No consumer would be able to purchase goods or services. No contractor would be able to purchase supplies. Get the picture? It doesnt stop there. Workers do not get paid for that day. Deliveries cannot be made, which deprives suppliers from revenue for their needs. Groceries are not available and local restaurants are not patronized. Not only do the workers at your favorite eatery go without wages but no tips. And imagine a police precinct not getting donuts for the day. How many cops would suddenly be in a foul mood? (For my friend in the McLennan County Sheriffs Office, relax this is just playing out a scenario!) Imagine a plumbing emergency at the house (but not in too much detail) or your cable service interrupted for a day. What if the privately held electric corporation shut its door for the day and no electricity was available? What about no telecommunications no cell phones or social media. Perish the thought! All those workers collectively would lose billions of dollars in pay. The loss in tax revenue would similarly amount to billions and maybe even trillions in private-sector revenue loss. For those who need contextual assistance, billions are denoted with the prefix giga-, trillions are tera- in computer network terms. Thats a lot of moola! So exactly what is the viable argument for creating an atmosphere where success in the business world is a penalty-worthy condition? Wealthy business owners do have a legitimate right to shut their doors permanently, take their money and run with it, leaving workers unemployed, their lives upended with no real relief in sight. Consider also that the wealthy, former business owner could cash out all his or her assets and keep the money in a vault on his or her property. No investments, no interest, all money stored for his or her leisure. There is no federal tax for which this individual would be liable. If this money is not being used for anything but the necessities in life, then tax revenue from this individual is massively curtailed. Now consider that every business owner follows suit. What would be the consequences of such an economy without any revenue from the wealthy? Government benefits would be significantly distressed, no pay for government workers. And no pay for government office holders! Consider, if you will...! The McLennan County Republican Partys recent fundraiser featuring GOP congressmen Trey Gowdy and Bill Flores attracted plenty of comments reflecting not only the divide between Republicans and Democrats but one between Republicans. At one point, Flores voiced concern about being attacked by segments of his own party as he works against the forces of socialism and the left. A sampling of thoughts: Matthew Mevis: How about you stop worrying about winning against socialism and the Left. Addressing concerns about policies involving race, gun regulation (not confiscation), equal protection under the law for all people, gender identity, bodily autonomy and the like isnt a game to be won or lost. This aint a Rangers game. How about instead of all that macro-politics jazz you instead focus on legislation that benefits everyone you represent? There isnt some mystery here. You arent being opposed by the Left because were horrible people. You are opposed because youve stopped listening to us. Because you think that the way you live your life is the way everyone should live their lives, and thats just nonsensical. Elli Harris Mevis: Oh, yeah, you know the huge threat of socialism in Waco/Bryan/College Station. How very brave. Hes trying to keep us safe from wild tigers too and look how wonderful a job hes doing! Michael Larsen: I was at this event and I was really struck by the contrast between these two elected officials. Whereas Gowdy took responsibility and blamed himself for legislative failures (for not being persuasive enough), Flores blamed his colleagues in the Senate and the media. Gowdy is concerned about real enemies (ISIS, Russia, Iran, North Korea), but to Flores the enemy is the Left. The solutions to our countrys problems for Gowdy are better civic education, adherence to the Rule of Law and separation of powers. For Flores, its more (presumably Christian) prayer. Interesting contrast. David du Menil: Flores is only there because he is the incumbent without a decent challenger. Trump has been fighting the GOP since he was elected. If Flores wants unity, he has to bend to the will of Trump and the people who voted him in. Anything else will only continue to wipe out the party. Dale Kitchens: The forces of socialism and the left are in the minority in every branch of government and two-thirds of the states. If you cant do your job, then thats on you. Lessie Spindle: As an elected official, you represent your district. That means all of it. They vote you in, they can vote you out. Robert C. Duncan: I see lots of flustered socialists and leftists in the comments. Lessie Spindle: If you see lots of flustered socialists and leftists, you are reusing titles that you or one of your leaders applied to citizens who honorably disagree with your personal beliefs. That is a shame and doubly so in this nation of the free. Rhonda Taylor: I wanted to see Trey Gowdy! Don McFarland: Once again Mr. Flores is quoting the party line. Mr. Gowdy spent millions [of dollars] trying to prove something on Mrs. Clinton. The media does not pick on Donald Trump. He gives them proof of his falsehoods daily. DECATUR A statewide committee formed to address the deadly opioid epidemic on Wednesday came to Macon County, where four deaths so far this year have been attributed to abuse of the substance. The Governor's Opioid Overdose Prevention and Intervention Task Force co-chaired by Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti and Donald Kauerauf, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, held a field hearing for more than two hours at the downtown Macon County Office Building. The discussion included an invited audience of around 100 that included doctors and health care workers, politicians, law enforcement and the Macon County coroner. The task force is looking for information to help it implement the Illinois Opioid Action Plan, which aims to cut the number of opioid-related deaths by one-third in three years. The state had 1,900 opioid overdose deaths in 2016, 14 of which were in Macon County. Kathy Burkham's 23-year-old son Tyler Yount was killed by an overdose involving a cocktail of powerful drugs in 2009. Along with her paramedic husband, Michael, she channeled her grief into creating the Tyler Yount Foundation. It has established a state-certified Naloxone program that has seen more than 400 first responders and others trained to administer the life-saving antidote that reverses opioid overdoses. Michael Burkham told Sanguinetti that, so far this year alone, there had been 164 Macon County emergency calls where Naloxone was used. Out of those calls, 118 were actual drug reversals where somebody's life was saved. The real trick, said Kathy Burkham, is keeping those saved alive for the long term so they don't drift back into drug use. She said addicts needed access to extended care and their families needed access to knowledge and support services so they can work to prevent relapses, which is what had killed her son. As a parent I was lost and completely alone. I didn't know where to turn, she said. I ended up knowing far more (about drug addiction) because my son died then I ever knew when he was alive. I think we need a lot more time to work with our sick children while they are in a long-term recovery program. Some addicts can end up being revived multiple times and Timothy Macken, executive director of the Macon County Mental Health Board, said it may be necessary for society to insist addicts get treatment. Maybe at some point you have to force people to engage in treatment, he said. Dr. Dennis Rademacher, director of the HSHS St. Mary's Hospital Treatment Center, said addiction must be recognized for what it is, a disease. He urged the state Task Force to work to ease legal restrictions on doctors which limit the prescription use of treatment drugs like Suboxone, which helps give addicts their life back. Rademarcher said drug addiction is a terrible malady but it can be beaten with the right treatment and help and a remarkable recovery in health is possible. The day you take your last drop of opiate, the damage will not get any worse, he said. You can't say that about diabetes, hypertension, heart disease or anything else. Tanya Andricks, the CEO of Crossing Healthcare, said the state must also keep a careful eye on the use of prescription opioids if we want to slow the flow of new addicts onto our streets. Because six out of 10 of these folks start with prescription medication, she warned. With all the advice and opinions sounding out across the room, it fell to Macon County Coroner Michael E. Day to offer a sobering assessment of what is at stake if the state can't reach out to save addicts and the families who love them. The average family unit is no match on its own for heroin or Oxycontin, they're too powerful, he said. Once you get these drugs into your system, once you get it in your mindset, it's all too powerful; it will overwhelm whatever family ties you have. We have seen that happen time and time again. The task force is holding hearings across the state. Gov. Bruce Rauner in September signed an executive order to create the effort. Last month, President Donald Trump called the opioid abuse a national public health crisis. On Wednesday, the president called for additional drug courts, more training for doctors and penalties for insurers that dodge covering addiction treatment. More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, most involving a prescription painkiller or an illicit opioid like heroin. Sanguinetti, in her remarks before the start of the meeting Wednesday, said she did not underestimate the size of the job confronting the task force. And she also said we must all face it together because it threatens all of us everywhere. It's a heroin epidemic, an epidemic which has reached national proportions, she added. I would submit to everybody that it is an epidemic that knows no neighborhood, no color, no class; we all know it is an equal opportunity aggressor. Editor: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict first began in the mid to early 1900s, when Jews started to migrate to Palestine, which was largely populated by Arab and Muslims. Because of their different views on borders, rights to waterways, historic religious sites, trading and control of Jerusalem, both parties failed to recognize the other as independent nations. This disagreement caused arguments and most recently, terroristic issues from both sides, mostly over areas they both want to take for their own either for control of land or the major waterways. Israel has occupied the West Bank and Jerusalem since 1967. This is a very important piece of land with access to huge waterways and religious sites. However, the Israelis have been settling on more and more land in the West Bank, making it harder for the Palestinians to create a state of their own on the West Bank. In a recent speech, Donald Trump has come out and said that he has no preference as to whether there is a one state solution or a two-state solution. I disagree because I believe the only way to solve the fighting is a two-state solution, where both the Israelis and Palestinians recognize one another as independent nations. Both parties must trust each other enough to agree to a ceasefire so that they can work out borders, waterway rights, and who gets control over Jerusalem and other important sites. The only way both nations will be satisfied is if they bargain and compromise their way to a solution that will benefit both sides so that after all these years of fighting they can live with tolerance for each other. In order to do this, Israel would have to stop encouraging settlement of the West Bank, which the international community has declared illegal and figure out a way to split it with Palestine in an equal manner. Sophie Bricker, Ashland Editor: Recently, there has been some debate to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and this has caught my attention. In my opinion, the minimum wage was created for the people who have very little skill or experience in the work field. So why would we raise the minimum wage and hurt more people in the long run than the few people that would benefit right away? For example, according to a 2016 PBS Newshour report, in 2015, only 1.8 percent of Americans earned minimum wage or lower. Also, over half of the people making minimum wage, are below the age of 25. The main reason why the youth are the ones that are earning minimum wage is that they are not experienced enough in the eyes of employers to earn more. So why should that 1.8 percent of people deserve a higher pay raise that would eventually hurt the same group of unskilled workers the most? Raising the minimum wage would end up with youth having fewer opportunities to get experience. In fact, the teen unemployment rate as of 2015 was at 15.6 percent, and the African-American teen unemployment rate is at 27.6 percent. This proves that there is a relationship between employers not wanting to hire teens and low-skill workers because of their inexperience. For example, we already have places like Walmart offering self-checkout services because it costs less to own a self-checkout service than it is to have an unskilled teen employee do the same job for more money. Raising minimum wage would help some people get a better life. However, in the long run, it would hurt more people than it would help. We, as a nation, should keep the minimum wage where it is now. Terrence Gude, Ashland ASHLAND The Ashland-Greenwood Elementary library will host a Scholastic Book Fair from Nov. 13 to 17, to raise money for the purchase of books for the Elementary Media Center. Families, teachers, and the community are invited to attend the Book Fair. This years theme is Wild West Book Fair: Saddle Up And Read! The Book Fair will be held daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday, Nov. 13 through Thursday, Nov. 16 and Friday, Nov. 17 from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. The Ashland-Greenwood Elementary is located at 1200 Boyd Street. On Monday, Nov. 13 and Tuesday, Nov. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m., the Book Fair will feature special Family Nights where parents and grandparents are invited to come and see what the Book Fair has to offer. This would be a great time to purchase a holiday gift for the student or students in your family. The Book Fair will offer specially priced books, including new releases, award-winning titles, Nebraska Golden Sower books, childrens classics, interactive software, adult books and current best sellers from more than 100 publishers. Book Fair customers may help the school build classroom libraries and improve childrens reading skills by purchasing books through the Classroom Wish List program where parents can purchase books for their students classroom. Teachers will select books they would like to have in their classroom, place them in wish baskets and parents or students may purchase these books for their teachers. The student can then personalize the book purchase by putting a book plate on the inside cover which will let everyone know who purchased the book and when. There is also an online Book Fair Nov. 6 to 26 and offer an extended selection of books with free shipping to the elementary school. For more information about the online Book Fair go to http://www.scholastic.com/bf/ages or contact Jerry Wendelin, K-5 media specialist for Ashland-Greenwood Public Schools, at 402-944-7083 or e-mail jerry.wendelin@agps.org. WAHOO Ginger Neuhart, the former village clerk accused of embezzling from two Saunders County villages, was in court Oct. 26 for a bond appearance. Neuhart has been charged with two counts of theft and four counts of forgery in connection with missing money from Memphis and Ithaca. The amount of money Neuhart allegedly stole from Memphis nearly $160,000 over a 12-year period was revealed Oct. 19 in a report from the Nebraska State Auditor. Neuhart confessed on Sept. 11 to embezzling funds from Alvo, Ithaca and Memphis, after authorities in Alvo noticed discrepancies with the villages finances. Neuhart faces charges in Cass County for the alleged fraud that occurred in Alvo. The investigation examined all village checks made out to Neuhart dating back to April 2005. The total amount of money missing from Memphis village funds is over $160,000. The amount Neuhart allegedly took between July 2014 and August 2017 is $37,500. In Nebraska, the filing of a felony complaint charging embezzlement carries a statute of limitations of three years, limiting the villages ability to get back the money through criminal court. The State Auditor released a report on Oct. 27 detailing alleged fraud committed by Neuhart in her capacity as Ithaca village clerk/treasurer. A total of $38,000 was paid to Neuhart without authorization from the village board of trustees from July 2014 to August 2017. The auditors office also found an additional $3,000 overpayment to Neuhart dating back to May 2013, which is beyond the statute of limitations. In all three villages, Neuhart allegedly committed the fraud by altering her monthly paychecks. Neuhart was released after her appearance in Saunders County Court Oct. 26, after posting 10 percent of the $5,000 bond. Her next court appearance in Saunders County will be on Dec. 20. In Cass County, where Neuhart was charged with one count of theft by deception, her upcoming court date is Nov. 13. ASHLAND An exhibit that travels across the state to honor Nebraska veterans who died in the War on Terror is making a stop in Ashland. The Remembering Our Fallen exhibit will be at Ashland-Greenwood High School from Nov. 6 to 11 in the commons area near the front doors. It is sponsored by VFW Post 9776, American Legion Post 129 and Ashland-Greenwood Public Schools. The exhibit will be on display during the day on Monday, Nov. 6 to Friday, Nov. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. On Saturday, Nov. 11, the public can visit the display from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Remembering Our Fallen is a photographic war memorial to the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defending our country in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 9/11 terrorist attack. The exhibit contains military and personal photographs of the service members. Bill and Evonne Williams created the exhibit in 2010 after reading about a Nebraska man whose son had died in Iraq. We must remember these American heroes and speak their names when we see their family members, said Bill Williams. We can never forget those who sacrificed everything for our freedom. The Williams have also created state-specific memorials, which travel within the respective states. After completing 19 state memorials, a national traveling memorial was unveiled on Sept. 7 in Washington, D.C. Bill and Evonne Williams founded Patriotic Productions, a nonprofit organization based in Omaha that has flown over 1,500 veterans to Washington, D.C. on Honor Flights over the past several years. ASHLAND This month, several locations in the multi-county Southeast Nebraska Area Team will serve as drop-off sites for the Samaritans Purse project, Operation Christmas Child joining nearly 5,000 U.S. locations collecting gift-filled shoeboxes for children in need around the world. During the projects National Collection Week, Nov. 13 to 20, Saunders County residents will transform empty shoeboxes into gifts of hope filled with school supplies, hygiene items and fun toys. Operation Christmas Child will deliver these shoebox gifts to children affected by war, disease, disaster, poverty and famine. This year, the Southeast Nebraska Area Team hopes to contribute more than 16,706 shoebox gifts toward the 2017 global goal of reaching 12 million children. We are honored to join the nationwide effort to collect gift-filled shoeboxes for children who may have never experienced the true meaning of Christmas, said Regional Director Joe Christian. Through these simple gifts and a message of hope, children learn that God loves them and has not forgotten them. In Ashland, the local collection site is Riverview Community Church, 324 N. 32nd St. Collections times are Monday, Nov. 13, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Tuesday, Nov. 14, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Wednesday, Nov. 15, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; Thursday, Nov. 16, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 17, 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 18, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.; Sunday, Nov. 19, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and Monday, Nov. 20, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Hours subject to change. A full list of area collection locations can be found online. For more information on how to participate in Operation Christmas Child or to view gift suggestions, call 816-622-8316 or visit samaritanspurse.org/occ. Participants can donate $9 per shoebox gift online through Follow Your Box and receive a tracking label to discover its destination. Those who prefer the convenience of online shopping can browse samaritanspurse.org/buildonline to select gifts matched to a childs specific age and gender, then finish packing the virtual shoebox by adding a photo and personal note of encouragement. Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritans Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham. The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to demonstrate Gods love in a tangible way to children in need around the world and, together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and delivered more than 146 million gift-filled shoeboxes to children in more than 160 countries and territories. WAHOO The Saunders County Food Pantry is well-prepared to provide to area families in need. According to Saunders County Food Pantry Volunteer Gene Mercer of Wahoo, the pantry sponsored by the Saunders County Ministerial Association is anticipating a seasonal increase in donations. The peaks are usually in fall and spring, Mercer said. Rev. Don White, president of the Saunders County Ministerial Association, said that November and December also tend to be when donations of food and money are at their peak. This, he said, is due to an uptick of contributions from area high schools, churches, clubs and farm groups. He also credits this due to people having greater feelings of giving during the holiday season. On average, the Food Pantry serves 25 families per month, Mercer said. This has been a fairly stable number over the past year. To receive assistance, families can call area church ministers, who then meet with them at the Wahoo Civic Center. All they have to do is request, White said. White explained that assistance is limited to once per month, with a log being kept of family names and visits. Mercer said that the Food Pantry hands out non-perishable food items. Non-perishable items are what we primarily ask for, Mercer said. Mercer added that some items especially needed by the Food Pantry right now are flour, sugar, canned fruits and canned tomatoes. Mercer also said the Food Pantry appreciates donations of laundry detergent and basic toiletries. Monetary donations are also accepted and are used to purchase items to stock the shelves. Mercer said he is grateful for the widespread support the organization has received from residents and businesses throughout Saunders County. I think its a service that people in the county like to support, Mercer said. White agreed. We just are thankful that the people of Saunders County are extremely generous, White said. Individuals may call area ministers to donate, or may leave food at Wahoo Super, SunMart, Wahoo Civic Center or Wahoo Senior Center. Checks for the Food Pantry may also be taken to FirstBank of Nebraska in Wahoo. NEW YORK Federal prosecutors brought terrorism charges Wednesday against the Uzbek immigrant accused in the truck rampage that left eight people dead, saying he was spurred to attack by the Islamic State group's online calls to action and picked Halloween because he knew more people would be out on the streets. Even as he lay wounded in the hospital from police gunfire, Sayfullo Saipov asked to display the Islamic State group's flag in his room and said "he felt good about what he had done," prosecutors said in court papers. Saipov was brought to court in a wheelchair to face the charges, which could bring the death penalty. Meanwhile, the FBI said it wanted to question a second person from Uzbekistan 32-year-old Mukhammadzoir Kadirov and had found him. A law enforcement official said Kadirov may not have a role in the case, but investigators became suspicious when they couldn't find him as he was one of Saipov's few friends. The official wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity. Saipov nodded his head repeatedly as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter. His court-appointed lawyer, David Patton, said Saipov was in "a significant amount of pain" and asked that he get wound care and a wheelchair or crutches in the federal lockup where he's being held without bail. Outside of court, Patton called for fair treatment of his client. "I hope, given all of the attention in this case and all of the attention that it's sure to continue to receive, that everyone lets the judicial process play out," he said. "I promise you that how we treat Mr. Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us than it will say about him." Saipov, accused of driving the rented Home Depot pickup truck that barreled down a bike path near the World Trade Center memorial on Tuesday, was charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and committing violence and destruction of motor vehicles, resulting in death. Prosecutors said he had 90 videos and 3,800 photos on one of his two cellphones, many of them ISIS-related pieces of propaganda, including images of prisoners being beheaded, shot or run over by a tank. Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, that included Islamic religious references and said, "Islamic Supplication. It will endure," FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. "It will endure" commonly refers to ISIS, Tyree said. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by ISIS videos that he watched on his cellphone and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, Tyree said. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals, the agent said. Saipov even rented a truck on Oct. 22 to practice making turns, and he initially hoped to get from the bike path across lower Manhattan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, Tyree said. He even considered displaying ISIS flags on the truck during the attack but decided against it because he did not want to draw attention, authorities said. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out." In the past few years, the Islamic State has exhorted followers online to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have all seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. A November 2016 issue of the group's online magazine detailed features that an attack truck or van should have, suggested renting such a vehicle, and recommended targeting crowded streets and outdoor gatherings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a militant-monitoring agency. Carlos Batista, a neighbor of Saipov's in Paterson, New Jersey, said he had seen the suspect and two friends using the same model of rented truck several times in the past three weeks. It was not clear whether Saipov had been on authorities' radar. Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. In Tuesday's attack, Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along a bike path, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot in the abdomen after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns, one in each hand, and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic, they said. The attack killed five people from Argentina, one from Belgium and two Americans, authorities said. Another 12 people were injured; nine remained hospitalized in serious or critical condition. Wanted in Rome's guide to the Jazz music venues in Rome. Alcazar Live A new entry on Rome's jazz circuit, this former cinema is now a lively hub for cultural events including music, theatre, art-house films, Sunday brunch, markets and exhibitions, with a bistrot balcony above the main floor, overlooking the stage. Via Cardinale Merry del Val 14, tel. 065810388, website. Alcazar Live Alexanderplatz Rome's premier Jazz club hosts regular concerts by some of the biggest names in Italian and international Jazz. Located in a cellar in the Prati district, this cavernous club has been central to the Rome jazz scene for more than three decades. In addition to live music it offers food and drinks, with monthly or yearly membership available. The club opens at 20.30, and concerts begin at 22.00. Via Ostia 9, tel. 0683775604, website. Alexanderplatz Bebop Jazz is the primary focus of this non-profit cultural association although it also promotes other music genres including Blues, R&B, Latin, Swing and Funk, with regular jam sessions. Located in a 14th-century cellar in the Ostiense neighbourhood, Bebop also serves dinner and drinks. Via Giuseppe Giulietti 14, tel. 3457179871, website. Bebop Blue Jazz You will not hear live music in this tiny shop near St Peter's but you will hear all sorts of Jazz records, from the classic to the lesser-known variety. Blue Jazz is dedicated to Jazz records, both vinyl and CD, and its selection is top notch. Via delle Fornaci 59, tel. 06636357. Blue Jazz Big Mama For more than three decades this lively club in Trastevere has hosted regular Jazz, Soul and Blues acts, both Italian and international, as well as local cover bands playing 1960s rock. Due to its popularity it is advisable to arrive early to get a table. Vicolo S. Francesco a Ripa 18, tel. 065812551, website. Big Mama Casa del Jazz The Casa del Jazz presents all forms of Jazz, from Dixieland to the avant-garde, paying particular attention to figures on the Italian Jazz circuit. It also hosts big names from the international jazz scene, particularly during its summer programme of outdoor concerts. Located in the Caracalla area, the Casa del Jazz is a three-storey villa confiscated from the Mafia, comprising a 150-seat auditorium, a cafe and a restaurant. Viale di Porta Ardeatina 55, tel. 06704731, website. Summer concerts at Casa del Jazz. Photo Luciano Viti. Cotton Club This live music venue in Rome's Trieste district is associated primarily with Jazz, showcasing Italian and international musicians playing traditional, Latin, Fusion and contemporary varieties of the genre. In addition to its busy programme of events, the Cotton Club has a restaurant and wine bar. Via Bellinzona 2, tel. 3490709468, website. Cotton Club Gregory's This well-established Jazz club hosts regular performances by some of the best Italian and international Jazz artists. Located near the Spanish Steps, Gregory's has a restaurant downstairs and concert area upstairs. Good selection of cocktails and whisky. Open for dinner at 19.30, concerts begin at 22.00. To reserve tel. 066796386 or email booking@gregorysjazz.com. Via Gregoriana 54/a, website. Tramjazz Sightseeing, candlelit dinner and live jazz music performed by professionals, all in a moving tram. This night-time musical adventure departs from Piazza di Porta Maggiore at 21.00, taking its guests across town to the Colosseum before returning slowly to its starting point. For information see Tramjazz website while for insights into the experience see Wanted in Rome feature article by Antonio Capaccio. 11 Nov-15 Dec. Rome's Dorothy Circus Gallery, which specialises in international pop-surrealist art, celebrates its 10th anniversary by holding a special group exhibition entitled Pages From Mind Travellers Diaries. The show features a selection of the gallery's stable of pop surrealists from around the world including Britain, Canada, Italy, Russia and the US. The exhibition also coincides with the launch of a new Dorothy Circus Gallery in London. On October 1, 2017 Neptune Aviation Services officially retired the last of their P2V air tankers in a ceremony at the Missoula airport. The company had four of the former submarine hunters on contract that were built between 1954 and 1957 Tankers 05, 06, 14 and 44. Few weeks ago, Neptune Aviations legendary P2V tankers have responded to a deadly firestorm engulfing Northern California just a week out of retirement. Missoula-based Neptune Aviation stated their Tanker 5 and Tanker 14 aircraft have been reactivated. Those P2Vs along with BAE Tankers 2 and 3 are being dispatched to what they call horrific blazes. The company reactivated two of its P2V Neptune aerial tankers to support the United States Forestry Service, The Federal Bureau of Land Management and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in an all out effort to combat the horrendous wild fires devastating northern California s wine country, centered in Napa and Sanoma counties . Neptune Aviation was founded in 1993 as the result of the purchase of Black Hills Aviation in Alamogordo, New Mexico flying converted World War II-era Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress . Shortly thereafter, operations were moved to Missoula, Montana. At that time, 14 vendors and a nationwide fleet of 44 aircraft provided aerial firefighting services under 3-year exclusive use contracts with the United States Forest Service. As reported on USA TODAY, The industry was fueled by a lot of retired [World War II-era] bombers back in the early days, said Neptune P-2 captain Bob Webb in between flights. But as the older B-17s reached the end of their service life, it was time to move on to a new airplane.The company switched to the Neptune, both in airplane choice and name, in the early 1990s, moving to its current home in Missoula in 1993. The reason for the switch of aircraft wasnt exactly romantic. They were just available there was a desert full of em, says Webb. Neptune would go on to fly eleven of the planes through their 24-year run with the company. Most commonly known as the Lockheed P-2 Neptune, the first aircraft flew in 1947 for the U.S. Navy. It served primarily as a long-range submarine hunter and surveillance plane, often staying aloft for over twelve hours on missions along the nations coastlines. Accordingly to Fireaviation.com, Neptune has been operating the P2V air tankers for 24 years. Many pilots and warbird fans enjoy flying, seeing, or hearing the aircraft and the throaty roar of its two 18-cylinder radial engines. When extra power is needed during takeoff or after a 2,000-gallon drop to climb out of a canyon it can enlist the help of two small jet engines farther out on the wings. In 2012 the company started its retirement program for the P2Vs when they pulled two of their seven operational P2Vs from regular service. Greg Jones, Program Manager for Neptune Aviation, said the tankers will be taken to museums across America. Tankers T-05 and T-14 were recalled to service and on duty, while T-02 and T-03 were also expected to be recalled to service shortly to join the fight. Accounting for numerous deaths and a tremendous loss of property, with upwards of 8.5 million acres already consumed, the U.S. Forest Service is already calling 2017 the most expensive fire season in that agencys history. For more information visit www.neptuneaviation.com By Stephen Chapis In December 1945, five TBM Avengers and 14 aircrew members vanished on a routine navigation training flight in the infamous Bermuda Triangle. Almost 60 years later Military Aviation Museum (MAM) pilot Obie OBrien flew TBM-3E Avenger BuNo 53454 into this mythical and mysterious piece of airspace- and lived to tell the tale. FLIGHT 19- THE LOST PATROL On December 5, 1945, a flight of five TBM Avengers, four TBM-1Cs, and one TBM-3, took off from NAS Fort Lauderdale, Florida on an overwater navigation training flight entitled Navigation Problem #1. It was a straightforward flight that had been flown dozens of times before by other flights, including one earlier that morning. The flight plan called for the aircraft to depart Fort Lauderdale, fly 091 degrees for 56 miles and conduct 30 minutes of low-level bombing practice at Hens and Chickens Shoals and then continue on course 091 for another 67 miles. At this point, they would turn on a northerly heading of 346 for 73 miles then turn to 241 degrees for the return leg to Fort Lauderdale. What should have been a 2-hour training flight became a flight into oblivion that forever cemented Flight 19 in the legend and mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. In the 72 years since this tragedy occurred, there have been many theories put forth as to what caused the five TBMs to become lost and forever swallowed by the sea. These theories range from straightforward equipment failure and pilot disorientation to preposterous claims of extraterrestrials and supernatural powers. Whatever the cause; the radio transmissions from the flight members like- cannot see land, we cant find west, everything is wrong, and the final call of it looks like we are entering white water..were completely lost all tell a chilling tale of desperate men flying through a darkening sky and deteriorating weather. The scope of this article is not to rehash the facts and myths in the disappearance of Flight 19, but to tell the history of one TBM pilot who flew into the Bermuda Triangle. EASTERN AIRCRAFT TBM-3E AVENGER- BuNo 53454 The Avenger torpedo bomber was one of the largest single-engine combat aircraft of WWII. In fact, it was so big (How big was it?!) that it could not be built under a single roof once General Motors Eastern Aircraft Division took overproduction. The plant in Baltimore, Maryland produced the tail sections, the electrical and hydraulic systems were manufactured in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and the Tarrytown, New York facility built the cockpits and wings. The finished subassemblies were shipped to the final assembly line in Trenton, New Jersey. Many of the aircraft in the Military Aviation Museum (MAM) collection have a direct connection with the Virginia Beach area and the TBM-3E Avenger is no different. The aircraft was accepted by the U.S. Navy on May 26, 1945, and was assigned BuNo 53454. The aircrafts early history is a little sketchy, but by December 1950 the TBM was assigned to Anti-Submarine Squadron Twenty-Two (VS-22) Checkmates at NAS Norfolk, Virginia. When VS-22 converted to the Grumman AF-2S Guardian in February 1952, 53454 was transferred to VS-801 Diamond Cutters also based at Norfolk. The Avenger deployed aboard the USS Palau (CVE-122) from April through July 1952 when the carrier sailed into the Med with the Sixth Fleet. After this cruise, the squadrons Avengers were once again replaced by the Guardian. In late 1952 the aircraft went through the maintenance facilities at Norfolk and Corpus Christi before being assigned to a training squadron at NAS Kingsville, Texas on January 27, 1953. In February 1954 the Avenger was retired to the storage facility at Litchfield Park, Arizona. It was stricken from Navy records on May 31, 1956, with 1,227 hours total time. On January 18, 1957, Ralph Richardson, president of Yakima, Washington-based Richardson Airways, purchased the Avenger for just over $4,300. Assigned the registration number N7030C the TBM went into the shop for an extensive conversion to a spray aircraft. A major portion of this conversion involved the removal of all military equipment and the installation of an 800-gallon tank in the bomb bay. The associated plumbing system was driven by a hydraulic motor attached to the engines accessory section. Spray booms extending from the trailing edges of the wings with each boom containing 15 spray nozzles. For normal operations the system was activated by an electric switch on the stick, in an emergency pulling a handle on the left side of the cockpit would empty the tank in 20 seconds. On April 26, 1958, the aircraft was flight tested by Gerald Wilson with a payload of 6,400lbs. From 1958 through 1962 Three Zero Charlie served with three other spray companies in Oregon and Washington. In June 1962 it was purchased by Idaho Air Tankers of Boise, Idaho, and began its career as a fire bomber. It flew with this outfit until October 1965 when it was purchased by Charles Reeder of Reeder Flying Services. The TBM was operated by this Twin Falls, Idaho-based outfit as Tanker #13 until 1984. Its Reeder paint scheme was natural metal with yellow trim, and black #13 on the vertical tail and cowl. In 1986, the Avenger was acquired by the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida where it remained until it was acquired by David Tallichets Military Aircraft Restoration Group in Anaheim, California. When the aircraft was purchased by Gary Applebaum in September 1998 the aircraft had been parked in Rockford, Illinois for quite some time. Gary says that even though it was in rough shape the TBM was still an impressive aircraft. Gary hired Sam Pedro to go down to Rockford and work to get the Avenger so it could be ferried to East Troy, Michigan where the aircraft was given a cosmetic restoration and overhaul, which included metalwork, recovering control surfaces, replacing all the hoses, and overhauling the prop. Gary says the last time the engine was overhauled was 1953 while the Avenger was still in the Navy and other than replacing one cylinder and a couple of valves the big Wright was still strong. During his ownership, Gary became acquainted with Richard Zeke Cormier, who flew 75 missions in TBF-1Cs off USS Card (CVE-11) in the Atlantic. Later in the war, Cormier transferred to the Pacific, flying an additional 61 missions in F6Fs, and was credited with 8 Japanese aircraft destroyed and 2 probable. For his actions during the war, Zeke earned five Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Silver Star, and eight Air Medals. In 1953 Cormier became the leader of the Blue Angels and directed the teams transition from Panthers to Cougars. After learning of the accomplishments of this legendary career naval aviator Gary decided to paint the Avenger in the markings of Cormiers aircraft from Composite Squadron One. In 2001, the TBM was acquired by Gerald Yagen and has been displayed at airshows up and down the eastern seaboard for many years. In recent years the aircraft has participated in many naval commemorative flyovers in the Virginia Beach and Norfolk area. These include the commissioning of USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in January 2009, which seems quite apropos since the 41st President of the United States is the worlds most famous Avenger pilot. In the years that followed 454 participated in flyovers at the Virginia Beach Veterans Memorial and the Midway commemoration at NAS Oceana in May and June 2011 respectively. However, the MAM Avenger will probably be most remembered for is when Josh Wilson broke out of formation during the Arsenal of Democracy flyover on May 8, 2015. Just as Wilson was making the turn to fly down the National Mall, a high-pressure hydraulic leak developed in the radio compartment. At the time Wilson thought he heard the word FIRE!, and he immediately broke right out of formation. This break put him on short final for Runway 19 at Reagan National. Wilson made a flawless landing and once the aircraft came to a stop he and his two passengers exited the aircraft with great haste. The leak turned out to be a simple fix and the TBM was flown back to Culpeper that evening and Josh and his passengers had one hell of a hangar story. INTO THE TRIANGLE In July 1976, Commander Charles Joseph OBrien, universally known as Obie, retired from the United States Navy after nearly 30 years of service. During his career as a naval aviator, he logged over 7,000 hours and 625 carrier landings on 20 different carriers in aircraft ranging from the 150mph SNJ to Mach 1.8-capable F8U-1P Crusader. Highlights in his career included 22 combat missions over Korea in F4U-4 Corsairs and photo missions over Cuba and the Middle East in the F8U-1P. In 1980, Obie was invited to fly with the Miller High Life Squadron (now Geico Skytypers) and stayed with the team until he retired from the squadron in 2004. In 2001, Obie was introduced to Gerald Yagen and his Fighter Factory group and soon began flying the SNJ-4, L-5, PT-17, Chipmunk, T-34, TBM, AD-4, and FG-1D. In 2004, National Geographic contacted Yagen about using his beautifully restored General Motors TBM-3E Avenger and a pilot for an episode of Naked Science that centered on the Bermuda Triangle. Obie immediately volunteered for the job simply because flying an Avenger to Florida and back sounded like a lot of fun. On May 25, 2004, Obie took off for the 5-hour flight down to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, with an en-route fuel stop in Glencoe, Georgia. The weather along the entire route was CAVU. The next morning Obie met with the seven-man British production crew. While the crew spent several hours installing the cameras around the aircraft, Obie and the pilot of the PA-32 Saratoga photo plane briefed the flight. Obie recalled the flight in a 2011 interview with the author, I was to navigate by dead reckoning just as the original flight was briefed to do, but I did slip a small GPS in my pocketjust in case. We took off at 1410hrs the same time as the lost flight; I had a very nervous director and soundman in the airplane with me. Flying at 1,500 feet we were just under the base of some scattered clouds, it was a great day for flying. My first checkpoint came up in about 45 minutes and I made my turn to the northwest and for some reason, I recalled what my dear wife, Barbara, said just before I left the house. She said, Do you actually think that a 76-year-old man flying a 63-year-old airplane way out over the ocean is a very smart thing to do? Obie says if he had chosen to answer he would have said Hell yes!, but hes a lot smarter than that. It was just after Flight 19 made their turn to 346 degrees that their situation started to deteriorate, but for Obie, the flight was going quite smooth. He continues, Grand Bahama came into view on schedule, and a little while after I made my turn to 241 degrees for the last leg back to Fort Lauderdale. It was right where I had left it 2 hours ago! It was a great flight that I thoroughly enjoyed. I never saw any UFOs. As a career Naval Aviator Obie doesnt believe in all the supernatural theories that were the cause of Flight 19s disappearance. His take is fairly simple- I would guess that if they flew northeast because the instructor thought he was over the Keys they simply ran out of gas somewhere out there. During the flight back to Virginia Obie said the Avenger suffered a complete radio failure. Hmm, leftover gremlins from the Bermuda Triangle? Maybe. DECATUR Police arrested a suspect Wednesday in the double homicide of two men who were found shot to death in the Park City Mobile Home community on Wednesday. Kwantrevis D. Richardson, 20, faces two preliminary charges of first degree murder, Deputy Police Chief David Dickerson said in a statement. Preliminary charges are subject to review by the Macon County State's Attorney's office. "Detectives have worked overnight and throughout (Wednesday), following up on several leads," Dickerson said. "Multiple search warrants have been executed. The investigation is continuing at this point." On Tuesday, police received a call of shots fired at 10:14 p.m. They found two white males dead in the front room of a mobile home at 3129 Kent Ave. while searching the residence, Dickerson said. Macon County Coroner Michael Day said the two men were found in a Park City residence and "suffered obvious gunshot trauma." Their identities are being withheld pending notification of their families, Day said. He could not immediately provide their ages Wednesday. Dickerson said the police department will be following up on additional leads in its investigation in the next few days. No further information was released Wednesday night. Anyone with information should call the Decatur Police Department Investigations Division at (217) 424-2734 or Crime Stoppers at (217) 423-TIPS, police said. A person working in the Park City office said the mobile home community's management had no comment. The incident comes a little over a month after a pair of home invasions in the neighborhood in which one woman was shot. Three people have been arrested in connection with those incidents. Mikayla M. Melton, 18, and Damon L. Davis, 19, were preliminarily charged with attempted murder and two counts of home invasion in connection with both incidents. Zachary D. Batson, 19, faces preliminary charges of attempted murder and home invasion in the shooting. Officers were first sent to the 3400 block of Kent Avenue, on Park Citys far northeast side on Sept. 20. A 22-year-old woman told police she was confronted at her door by a woman, and two armed men forced their way into her residence. Her dog was able to chase off the attackers, she told police. About an hour later, at 10:44 p.m., officers responded to a call on Delta Circle, where a woman was found to have been shot during a home invasion. She survived her wounds. The victim described how a man and a woman forced their way into her home and demanded money while ransacking her residence. She said she was shot three times while trying to flee, police said. Jeanne Mears, a resident of Park City since 2009 who helps organize neighborhood activities, said she does not feel unsafe and enjoys the people in the community. "Im perfectly secure here," said Mears, 80. "I am not concerned about it at all." Mears said she believes the home invasions and shooting deaths were isolated incidents, not indicative of the overall safety of the neighborhood. Just hours before the shooting, 32 neighborhood children were trick-or-treating in Halloween costumes to celebrate the holiday. We were having a good time, the cute little costumes and cute little kids, Mears said. Mears doesnt live far from where the incident occurred, but she said she didnt hear anything last night. She only found out about the shooting when a friend tagged her in a Facebook post and asked her if she was OK. I think we are all kind of surprised by it because you dont expect these things to happen, she said of her neighbors. But I havent seen anybody who is concerned about it. The recent crime activity doesnt change Mears mind about her neighborhood, and it wouldnt deter her from encouraging others to move there. Ill be here until they put me in a nursing home, she said. Im 80 and Im not afraid. These are the seventh and eighth homicides in Decatur in 2017. Police have made arrests in four: Zachary M. Pherigo, 17, has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder in the Oct. 16 shooting death of his 2-year-old nephew, Justin Lee Murphy Jr. Police arrested three suspects in the murder of 22-year-old Zachary Hubbartt of Windsor, who was found shot to death in the 1200 block of East Condit Street on Aug. 27. Jason A. White and Ryan D. Waters face preliminary charges of first-degree murder, and Autumn D. Billings, faces a preliminary charge of obstructing justice. Demesheo M. Lovelace died after being gunned down in Greenwood Cemetery on July 2. The three suspects in the crime are Darelle Fox, 31, his brother Joseph Fox, 27, and Shawn Eubanks, 25. They were arrested a week later and jailed on preliminary first-degree murder charges. Duan L. Lewis, 23, was arrested March 29 and faces a charge of first-degree murder in the death of a 5-month-old girl. The girl died March 28 after suffering injuries "consistent with shaken baby syndrome" on March 23. Two other cases are active, but detectives said at Oct. 25 inquest hearings that they had no witnesses and were searching for leads in both: James M. Basse, 40, of Decatur, was found in the 1400 block of East Wood Street on Sept. 15 dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Police found Andrian T. Chatman dead in the 800 block of West Decatur Street shortly after midnight on Sept. 26. Woodside Petroleum's Goodwyn Platform, North West Shelf, Western Australia. Dr Livingstone gave evidence that $80,000 in donations from Clubs NSW and the Australian Hotels Association to the Coalition prior to the 2013 federal election directly affected the unwinding of gaming regulations instituted by the Gillard government. He alleged then social services minister Kevin Andrews, a Victorian MP, was recorded at a Clubs NSW function launching the policy that included scrapping mandatory pre-commitment and ATM limits. Professor George Williams. Credit:Andrew Meares "He announced something they would have been extremely happy with or maybe even wrote," he told the committee. Dr Livingstone said the first piece of legislation Mr Andrews put through was am omnibus bill that got rid of the remnants of the former government's efforts at reform. Former social services minister and current Victorian MP Kevin Andrews. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "It suggests the policy is for sale and it smells really bad," he said. Mr Andrews' office has always maintained any suggestion his decisions were influenced by donations was "wrong and offensive". The Property Council of Australia stopped all donations in October last year. Credit:Arsineh Houspian The committee also heard from Melbourne law school associate professor Joo Cheong Tham who said he considered pre-budget briefings of donors a form of corruption and there needed to be restrictions on MPs taking up lucrative private roles in their former portfolios. Former government ministers Bruce Billson, Andrew Robb and Martin Ferguson have all landed plum post-politics jobs in areas they had formal control over. Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie Credit:Alex Ellinghausen "There seems to be a well-trodden pathway of senior cabinet ministers taking jobs in industries that they had responsibility for," said Dr Tham. He said the need for fundamental donations and political influence reform has been apparent for at least a decade. "It has led to an unregulated arms race in elections," he said. The committee heard the mining industry contributed $16.6 million to major political parties since 2007, while big tobacco companies have donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Nationals and Liberal Democrats despite a ban on tobacco donations from both the Labor and Liberal parties. RMIT school of business and law lecturer Yee-Fui Ng said the donations disclosure regime was inadequate and riddled with loopholes. "But it is not just actual corruption that is the issue; even the perception of corruption can damage trust in the political system," she said. Former Independent Commission Against Corruption assistant commissioner Anthony Whealy said there was "an urgent imperative to make changes," and that business has already been turned off by the perception of corruption. "We know something is wrong with the system, they have decided that it is too dangerous," said Mr Whealy, who gave evidence as a spokesman for Transparency International. The Property Council of Australia told the committee it regularly received requests for donations from across the political spectrum but decided in October last year to withdraw from all political donations at all levels of government. "The key reason behind this decision is that political donations have no impact on the success of our advocacy work, which is sustained on the merits of our research and policy activities," chief executive Ken Morrison said. "We believe that political donations regimes must be extremely transparent with appropriate and timely public reporting, and there must be appropriate penalties for any person who seeks to use donations to distort government decision making." One of the country's most prolific donors has taken a similar position. Woodside Energy's senior vice-president Michael Abbott said the company had put an end to all campaign donations after donating more than $1.4 million to the major parties over the past decade. "We formed the view that those contributions would be sufficient and we didn't wish to be making any more," he said. Committee member Senator Jacqui Lambie accused Woodside of basing the decision on "no longer getting value for money". Mr Abbott said the company would continue to contribute up to $100,000 a year through hosting business forums and agreed there was a need for greater transparency across the spectrum. Australian-Chinese entrepreneur Michael Cho says the risks of investing in China are high, but the rewards are too. Cho thinks he can't go too far wrong, over the long term, with dominant players such as Tencent and Alibaba. Volatility That risk was certainly on show when the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index fell from 5200 points in June 2015 to 2800 points by late January last year a fall of almost 50 per cent. It has recovered somewhat, but is still a long way off its peak. That doesn't deter the fund managers who invest in emerging markets. For them, China is even a bigger deal than it was a decade ago. Their biggest positions continue to be in "greater" China which includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. South Korea usually runs second. Enthusiasm for China is even greater now that it's on the path to being a genuine innovator. Tech and ecommerce companies such as Alibaba and Baidu (China's Google), which are listed in the US, and Tencent, listed in Hong Kong, have not only learned from their US rivals but, in some respects, have surpassed them. China "When I think of emerging markets, it's now more about China than it ever was," says Tim Rocks, the chief investment officer at Evans and Partners. "Ten years ago you were buying a bunch of companies with some cyclical upside," Rocks says. "Now, it's much more about tech companies something like half of the world's online shopping occurs in China," he says. "I would argue that we are at the point now where Alibaba is a better company than Amazon it has learned from Amazon," Rocks says. It's not just the techs. "We are still believers in the emerging middle-class consumer story," he says. And that's a story that's going on in India and Brazil as well, he says. Kevin Bertoli, portfolio manager of PM Capital's Asian equities strategies, has big exposures to China but is also finding good opportunities in companies in the rest of Asia, such as Malaysia. Going back more than a decade, Australian investors could easily get access to the China growth story by simply buying shares in BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, he says. China was importing hard commodities at a prodigious rate in order to build apartments, roads and bridges. Asia first Bertoli argues Asia should be the focus for Australian investors as other emerging markets, such as Russia and Brazil, are commodity-driven economies with similarities to Australia. "Australians already have access to great commodity businesses and we don't need to go to Brazil to get those," he says. "What's really growing in the world is Asia," he says. John Birkhold, a partner at Origin Asset Management, prefers China's "world-class" technology companies to its property companies and state-owned enterprises. He is not so keen on India. "It's an attractive market in terms of high growth and lots of interesting stocks, but the market is very expensive," Birkhold says. In August, the International Monetary Fund warned that Chinese corporate debt is at "dangerous" levels and China's sovereign credit ratings have been cut this year. Damien Klassen, head of investments at Nucleus Wealth, says the high levels of debt is a concern to him. "If the Chinese authorities think the economy is growing too slowly they will hit the debt accelerator again," he says. There's also a a demographic headwind with the ageing population, he says. Home bias a threat to returns over the long term It could be a good time to add some exposure to emerging markets, particularly for those investors who have big home biases to Australian shares, says Chris Brycki, the chief executive of Stockspot, an online investment adviser. Over the past 10 years, the US shares have outperformed emerging markets by a huge margin. "If you look at the spread between these two indexes, it's about as extreme as it's ever been," Brycki says. Based on the tendency for returns to revert to the mean, that difference is likely to narrow over the next decade, Brycki says. Steve Sweeney, general manager of emerging markets at investments researcher Lonsec, says Australians are generally too exposed to the local sharemarket. "There's definitely room to have more exposure to the fastest-growing economies in the world", he says. "We recommend a 10 to 20 per cent allocation from within the global equities part of a portfolio, which should add some oomph in investment terms over the long term," he says. Performance figures show that active fund managers find it difficult beat the index. There are exceptions, but generally their returns have struggled to justify their fees. Taxi and Uber prices could rise if the WA government's proposed reforms of the industry, including a 10 per cent levy on total fare revenue, passes through parliament. Transport Minister Rita Saffioti admitted on Thursday that taxi and Uber customer fees could increase if booking agencies pass on the costs, but said she was "hopeful" companies wouldn't pass on the levy to customers. Uber has not responded to the reforms. Credit:AP "[The levy is] not per ride and we are reducing costs in the industry, so I believe in most instances the increases won't be 10 per cent because of the new competition," she said. Ms Saffioti said the percentage levy on the total fare revenue was preferred over a flat fee on individual journeys to avoid shorter trips being heavily affected. The amount of compensation given to West Australian families of deceased workers is among the lowest in Australia. Currently families are paid $308,339 if a loved one dies in a work-related incident compared with $775,600 in New South Wales, $589,000 in Victoria and $493,000 in South Australia. The ones hit hardest by work-related deaths are the families left behind. Credit:Ryan Stuart But the McGowan government has introduced a Bill to boost lump sum payments for partners of workers killed on the job to more than half a million dollars. There are about 20 work-related deaths every year in Western Australia, according to Industrial Relations Minister Bill Johnston, who said those hit hardest by work-related deaths were the families left behind, who still had to try to make ends meet. Tehran: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that Tehran and Moscow must step up cooperation to isolate the United States and help stabilise the Middle East. Iran and Russia are the main allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States, Turkey and most Arab states support rebel groups fighting to overthrow him. Russian President Vladimir Putin steps down from his plane at Mehrabad Airport, in Tehran. Credit:AP Putin met Iranian political leaders in an effort to nurture a warming relationship strengthened since US President Donald Trump threatened recently to abandon the international nuclear deal with Iran reached in 2015. "Our cooperation can isolate America ... The failure of US.-backed terrorists in Syria cannot be denied but Americans continue their plots," Khamenei told Putin, according to Iranian state television. WASHINGTON The U.S. Navy blamed "complacency, over-confidence and lack of procedural compliance" for a destroyer crash that killed a Harristown sailor in August, saying it and another destroyer accident in June that killed a total of 17 sailors were "preventable." "Both of these accidents were preventable, and the respective investigations found multiple failures by watch standers that contributed to the incidents," said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson in a report released Wednesday. "We must do better." The Navy concluded that the crashes resulted from widespread failures by the crews and commanders who didn't quickly recognize and respond to unfolding emergencies. Navy leaders publicly acknowledged those failings in a congressional hearing in September. Harristown sailor Petty Officer 3rd Class Logan Palmer, 23, a Sangamon Valley High School graduate, was an interior communications electrician on the the USS John S. McCain, which collided with an oil tanker near Singapore in Southeast Asia on Aug. 21, leaving 10 U.S. sailors dead and five injured. He loved the Navy, Palmer's brother, Austin Palmer, said in an online message Wednesday, following the release of the report. "He was always there telling me to never give up." Describing his brother as brave, honorable, trustworthy and kind, "he truly embodied what it meant to be an Eagle Scout," Austin Palmer said. Hundreds attended Palmer's funeral Sept. 11 in Life Foursquare Church in Decatur. He was buried with full military honors in Harristown Cemetery. He was posthumously promoted to petty officer 2nd class. The family, including parents Sid and Theresa Palmer, was returning from Washington, D.C., on Wednesday after receiving a briefing on the report at the Pentagon. The family also attended the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the destroyer collisions in September. The 72-page report describes in detail the events leading up to the USS McCain collision, its aftermath on the ship, the harrowing escape of some sailors who had been trapped below deck and the multiple ways in which the tragic outcome might have been prevented. A few minutes before the collision, the commanding officer ordered speed control of the ship to be shifted from one crew member to another, and the steering control was also inadvertently shifted. This caused several minutes of confusion as the crew believed steering was lost, according to the report. The report said the commanding officer and others on the bridge lost situational awareness, and did not understand the other ship's course and speed relative to their own before the collision. Neither of the ships sounded the five short whistle blasts required by the International Rules of the Nautical Road to warn one another of danger, the Navy said. Palmer and the other sailors who died in the collision were all in the same sleeping quarters, from which two sailors were able to escape. The Navy concluded that the space likely flooded in less than a minute after the collision. Several failings were cited by the Navy, including: Substandard knowledge about how to operate the ship control console. The ship's commanding officer disregarded recommendations from his executive officer, navigator and senior watch officer to "set sea and anchor watch teams in a timely fashion to ensure the safe and effective operation of the ship." No one was properly trained on how to correctly use the ship control console during what the Navy called a "steering casualty." Many of the contributing factors leading to the collision resulted from poor judgment and decisionmaking of the commanding officer, the Navy said in the report. That said, no single person bears full responsibility for this incident, the report said. The crew was unprepared for the situation in which they found themselves through a lack of preparation, ineffective command and control and deficiencies in training and preparations for navigation. As a result of the two deadly accidents, eight top Navy officers, including the 7th Fleet commander, were fired from their jobs, and a number of other sailors received reprimands or other punishment that was not publicly released. Among them, the commander and executive officer of the USS John S. McCain were relieved of their duties and reassigned last month. "We are a Navy that learns from mistakes, and the Navy is firmly committed to doing everything possible to prevent an accident like this from happening again," Richardson said. "We must never allow an accident like this to take the lives of such magnificent young sailors and inflict such painful grief on their families and the nation." The USS Fitzgerald and a container ship collided in waters off Japan in June, killing seven sailors. The Navy said Wednesday that collision "resulted from an accumulation of smaller errors over time, ultimately resulting in a lack of adherence to sound navigational practices." In January, the USS Antietam ran aground near its base at Yokosuka, Japan, and in May the USS Lake Champlain, had a minor collision with a South Korean fishing boat. Both Navy ships are guided-missile cruisers. "We will spend every effort needed to correct these problems and be stronger than before," Richardson said. The Associated Press and Herald & Review Staff Writer Claire Hettinger contributed to this story. Rome: The Pope has requested a debate over allowing married men to become priests in the Amazon region of Brazil, in a move that is likely to outrage conservatives in the Church. Pope Francis is to put a partial lifting of priestly celibacy up for discussion and a possible vote by Brazilian bishops after a request by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, president of the episcopal commission for the Amazon, sources told Il Messaggero newspaper. Cardinal Hummes reportedly asked the Pope to consider ordaining viri probati, married men of great faith, capable of ministering in the Amazon where there is a shortage of priests and where evangelical Christians and pagan sects are displacing Catholicism. The request was echoed by Monsignor Erwin Krautler, secretary of the episcopal commission, who also suggested female deacons could be priests. DECATUR A new company could provide commercial flights out of Decatur Airport starting in February after a move by the Decatur Park District board to recommend Cape Air as its next air service carrier. During the park boards regular meeting, commissioners unofficially voted 3-2 in favor of the Massachusetts-based airline replacing Air Choice One as the citys Essential Air Service provider. Park Board President Bob Brilley II said the final vote will take place during a special meeting on Friday afternoon, and the board will make a recommendation to the U.S. Department of Transportation for a two-year contract with the company. Were looking forward to Cape Air. I think the board made a good decision, said board President Bob Brilley II. If we made a bad decision, well change it. Weve got two years to do it. But I dont think we did. Executive Director Bill Clevenger said the boards official vote is taking place on Friday because notice of the vote was not given 48 hours before Wednesdays regular meeting, which is required under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Brilley said the Department of Transportation should make a final decision about the boards recommendation within a month or so. Cape Air was one of three airlines that responded to the park boards request for proposals to provide subsidized commercial air service to Decatur. The others were Utah-based SkyWest Airlines and Missouri-based Air Choice One, which has served as the citys air service provider since late 2009. Air Choice One's most recent contract with the Department of Transportation provided subsidies for three flights to Chicago and three to St. Louis each day. Recognizing customer demand for more trips to Chicago-OHare International Airport, Air Choice One decided to cover the difference for one flight per day making it four trips to Chicago and two to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Despite the fact that the district's relationship with Air Choice One is likely coming to an end, Brilley said he and board appreciated the company's eight years of service to the community. "Air Choice One got us off the ground," he said. "They are a very good airline, and their capabilities are great, but it was just time for a change." Commissioner Stacey Young, Vice President Chris Harrison and Brilley will vote in favor of Cape Air, while Commissioners Jack Kenny and Chris Riley supported SkyWest's proposal. Riley and Kenny said SkyWest's ability to provide jet service to Decatur could have been attractive to many local passengers, but Young said the company's lack of flights to St. Louis could have turned many others away. If SkyWest were chosen, it would have only offered two daily flights from Decatur to Chicago. "More than 30 percent of people utilize our service to St. Louis, while 70 percent use our trips to Chicago," she said. "So 2,500 of our local community people would not have that option to fly to St. Louis ... we'd be losing a hub." With Cape Air, passengers will be able to choose from a similar flight schedule like the one offered by Air Choice One, and the company has expressed a desire to open a ticket agency in Decatur to expand its local presence. Cape Air is also a regional feeder airline for major companies like United, Delta and American Airlines. Through interline booking agreements, passengers who take flights from Decatur to either Chicago or St. Louis will have the option to connect with other flights from Cape Air's partner airlines without purchasing multiple tickets. This also allows Cape Air to transport baggage from a boarding location to a destination without requiring passengers to gather their bags or check them in before transferring flights. As the district looks forward to beginning its new partnership with Cape Air, its primary focus is still to reach the goal of 10,000 enplanements in a year, meaning 10,000 passengers boarding a flight that originates from Decatur. "(Cape Air) told us they're used to dealing with small communities, and bringing their ridership up," Brilley said. "And that's what we want, we want more enplanements." The Essential Air Service program provides more federal money for infrastructure improvements to participating airports that reach the 10,000 enplanement goal within a year. Following deregulation in 1978, EAS was put into place to guarantee that small communities that were served by certificated air carriers before airline deregulation maintain a minimal level of scheduled air service. EAS subsidizes flights to 111 communities that would otherwise have no scheduled service. Qualifying communities are at least 210 miles from the nearest hub airport, according to the Department of Transportation. Brilley said the airport is currently on track to reach 9,000 passengers by the end of 2017 through Air Choice One. He said he's confident that number will continue to grow in the coming years. "(Decatur Airport) has come a really long way in the past couple years," Brilley said. "It really has." The park board also discussed the district's projected property tax levy for the upcoming fiscal year at Wednesday's meeting. Rodney Buhr, the district's chief financial officer, said its levy is expected to bring in $9,564,800. Estimates show its tax rate would sit at $1.15 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation, which Buhr said is the same rate as last year. Owners of a $100,000 home would pay $379.65 in property taxes under the current projection. Buhr said the board is expected to vote on the tax levy at a later meeting. BLOOMINGTON A Macon County sheriff's deputy has been honored by the American Red Cross for saving a motorist from a burning car. Deputy Bart Hickey of Forsyth received the Public Service Award at the the 13th annual Serving Central Illinois Saluting Our Heroes Breakfast on Thursday in Bloomington. Hickey risked electrocution Jan. 23 when he pulled a woman from her burning vehicle as it rested on top of an electrical box on Stevens Creek Boulevard in Forsyth. "The woman's life was at stake," Hickey said. "There was no time to think about what I was doing." The Macon County Board also honored Hickey in February. "Bart is a fantastic example of what we hope every deputy would do if the opportunity presents itself," said Macon County Sheriff Howard G. Buffett. About 540 attended the event held at the DoubleTree by Hilton. The World Customs Organization (WCO) and UNCTAD embarked on a joint mission to Kigali, Rwanda, on 9 - 13 October 2017, in order to assist the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) as it commences work to establish a performance management and monitoring system. The mission, supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) Customs Capacity Building Project, aimed to lay foundations for implementation of the ASYCUDA Performance Measurement Module (ASYPM). Performance measurement in this context means using data contained in an automated Customs clearance system to produce information on specific Customs procedures, including the actions of Customs officers and traders. Several Customs administrations have demonstrated interest in this approach. The use of system data in this way makes it possible for Customs managers to have an overall and objective understanding of their administration in order to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Properly used and understood, these data can also enable Customs to detect and address practices that could be linked to corruption. Experiences during this mission were shared by experts from Liberia, who are implementing the first ASYPM pilot also with the support of the WCO-Norad Project, and by experts from Cameroon, who have undertaken a lot of work on performance measurement systems. The WCO-Norad Customs Capacity Building Project 2012-17 aims at delivering technical assistance to seven countries: Timor-Leste, Liberia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Tanzania and Vietnam. For more information, please contact the Project Manager, Ms. Andrea Hampton (Andrea.Hampton@wcoomd.org) Editor's note: The Herald & Review each day is listing a reason the Decatur region is loved. We're profiling people, places and history that are special to our region and that make it a great place to live. See more here. DECATUR Tate & Lyle is one of the city's most successful businesses and owner of perhaps its most recognizable landmark. Tate & Lyle came to Decatur in 1988, purchasing A.E. Staley Mfg. Co., a longtime Decatur employer. Already successful in the starch business in Maryland, A.E. Staley came to Decatur and purchased a defunct starch making plant in 1909. He made the necessary repairs and improvements and opened the doors for his business in 1912. The business thrived in Decatur, leading to the construction of one of the city's most iconic sights: the A.E. Staley Mfg. Co. Building on East Eldorado Street. The grand office building opened in 1930. This building really is Decatur, said Laura Jahr, director of the Staley Museum, which opened last year to recognize the company's legacy. For Staley, it was crown jewel of his business empire. It represents Decatur's industrial history. Staley built the 14-story neo-gothic structure in 1930 to house his growing agro-industrial business, and it became known as the "Castle in the Cornfields." Many thousands of tourists from all over the country will pass by that building every year and the structure we plan will make them remember 'Staley' and Decatur as nothing else could do, Staley said in a 1928 Decatur Herald article. Tate & Lyle acquired the business in 1988. Its headquarters moved to Hoffman Estates in 2010, but the building still houses operations. The Decatur site includes Tate & Lyle's production operations, an administration building, research and development labs and full pilot plant capabilities, according to the company. It is one of Decatur's largest employers with more than 500 workers. By now, it's already evident the 2018 race for Illinois governor is a contest like no other. The amount of money raised so far has already blown past $100 million. And, even though there are more than five months to go before the March 20 primary, television ads have been airing for weeks in markets across the state. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who doled out tens of millions of dollars of his own money in 2014 and 2016 is ready to do it again. This cycle, his campaign has raised more than $72 million, which includes a $50 million contribution Rauner made this past December. Meanwhile, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, a businessman and wealthy heir to the Hyatt fortune, has devoted $28 million of his own money to the race so far. Both men face primaries, but at least in terms of the money they've raised they're easily outdistancing their rivals. If the two end up going head to head, some analysts are predicting record spending. "It's already pretty unprecedented," said Sarah Brune, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which tracks money in political races and pushes for reform. Big money in the 2018 election cycle isn't confined to the top of the ticket, either. Last year's elections saw 23 state legislative races top $1 million, with five going higher than $5 million, according to Kent Redfield, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois Springfield, who tracks campaign spending. Expect similar spending levels this cycle, experts say. Several central Illinois races look to see plenty of cash spent heading into the election cycle. The committee for state Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur has $113,522 on hand as of Sept. 30, according to the quarterly report submitted to the state board of election. No opponent has officially filed to run against Scherer, though Springfield Ward Alderman Herman Senor and Springfield pastor the Rev. Gary Pierce have both announced their intent to run as Republicans. A committee to elect Senor to the Springfield city council had $2,827 on hand at the end of September, while no committee was listed for Pierce. The four candidates who have announced bids to replace outgoing state Rep. Bill Mitchell in the 101st House District have all created their own committees, though former Decatur city councilman Dan Caulkins has started to pull ahead of his Republican counterparts. Caulkins committee had $25,982 on hand at the end of September, while Piatt County Board Chairman Randy Keiths committee had $7,300 and Cerro Gordo School Board President Todd Henricks had $1,234 on hand during the reporting period, though the latter has since received an extra $6,000 in contributions. A committee for the lone Democrat in the race, Decatur resident Jen McMillin, was registered with the board of election on Oct. 16 and does not list any contributions as of Thursday morning. While his district is considered in play for Republicans, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, will have the benefit of more than one-third of a million dollars behind him. Manars committee had $299,941 at the end of September, but has since received an additional $80,610 to bring his total cash on hand to $380,551. Christian County GOP Chairman Seth McMillan has announced his bid to run against Manar, but no committee for his campaign has been filed with the board of elections as of Thursday morning. Shelbyvilles Christopher Hicks has also announced he will seek the Republican nomination in the race, though his committee listed no contributions or money on hand at the end of September. Redfield points to the potential of a Pritzker candidacy and said, in part, the typical funding sources for Democrats are especially excited about the prospect of having more flexibility that would come with a self-funder at the top of the ticket. "That's what makes Pritzker so compelling is he can self-fund, then people that are funding the Democrats' legislative campaign are not forced to do triage," he said. Not all are fans, of course. A Pritzker rival in the primary, state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, has pointedly asked, "Are we going to have an election or an auction?" Pritzker's campaign has emphasized his experience and devotion to causes like early education. Still, some of his backers in the primary clearly like the idea that he can bring his own money to the fight. In 2016, Republicans broke the Democrats' super-majority in the House, with spending by the governor and a handful of allies fueling the cause. One of the seats the GOP won was in the 71st District, where Rep. Tony McCombie, a Savanna Republican, defeated Democrat Mike Smiddy. The contest cost about $3.6 million, Redfield said. This cycle, it's likely that the race for the seat held by state Sen. Neil Anderson, R-Andalusia, will be a prominent one in the state. Democrats, Redfield said, will most likely play defense outside of Chicago and its suburbs. But the race for the 36th District is likely to be the exception, he said. Anderson already has raised $422,000, according to the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. Gregg Johnson, a longtime union official and one of two Democrats who have announced candidacies for the seat, has raised about $18,000. Those figures will surely go much higher, as parties and labor unions dive in. "I think the Republicans will spend a lot of money defending Anderson," he said. Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Springfield, also notes that there have been a number of Statehouse Republicans who have announced retirements, which opens up seats. That means even more spending down the ballot. "It's all there," he said. Lots of money at the top of the ticket is one thing, but Brune also said that campaigns down the ballot are getting more expensive, too. It's not just the money being shelled out for seats in the General Assembly, either. Local races this year also saw increased spending, notably in Aurora and Evanston, where mayors races were hotly contested. Brune said some contests saw spending between $100,000 and $500,000. "That's a lot of money for a local race," she said. THUMBS UP! To the start of construction of the Nelson Park amphitheater. Christy-Foltz Inc. submitted the low bid for the project, one of the key elements to work at Nelson Park. The amphitheater is expected to be finished in the summer, by July 29, 2018. That would set the stage for a potential fall concert to christen the venue. THUMBS DOWN! To copper thieves. Damages to and thefts of central air conditioning units around the community have been attributed to an increase in the price of copper. That increase means the metal inside air conditioners have a value as scrap. Units can be easy targets because of their location. There are preventative measures, including cages, locking the disconnect box, cameras, GPS units and the website scrapmetalalert.com. We're annoyed and discouraged that the best suggestion to curb the thefts is to take such measures. THUMBS UP! To a safe Halloween evening for trick-or-treaters. We should never take safety for granted, so two thumbs up to all parents who drove slow and walked neighborhoods with their children, and the same to the children who paid attention, got out of the car on the side they were instructed, looked both ways to be sure nothing was approaching, and celebrated an exciting day safely. THUMBS DOWN! To the vandals with the BB gun. There were 19 car widows damaged in an evening of BB gun nonsense earlier this week. That follows 20 windows damaged the same way in August. The events may not be connected, but the victims share in frustration and aggravation. Police are appealing for help from the public in tracking down the culprits. Call 217-424-2734 or Crime Stoppers at 217-423-8477. THUMBS UP! And welcome to Burger Theory. The restaurant is attached to the new Holiday Inn & Suites Decatur-Forsyth. The burger chain is associated exclusively with Holiday Inn hotels. One of its boasts is 24 varieties of bottles and 12 craft beers on tap, and a third of the beers sold are from local breweries. Decatur's restaurant scene is crowded, but quality always finds a way to rise to the top in a community that loves dining out. By West Kentucky Star Staff Nov. 02, 2017 | 03:23 PM | METROPOLIS, IL The Massac County Drug Awareness Coalition is taking its first step to battle the Opioid epidemic with a seminar and Q&A session on November 7th at the Courthouse Annex in Metropolis.Doors will open at 6 pm, and the coalition will share its mission and goals along with statistics from the Illinois Youth Survey.At 6:30 pm, Dr. Patrick Withrow, Director of Outreach at Baptist Health Paducah, will present "Opioid Addiction," followed by Q & A session.At 7:30, April Scales with Egyptian Health Department will provide training for Narcan use, an opioid overdose reversal drug. In October, 2017, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) issued Illinois Naloxone Standing Order, which makes a drug that is able to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose more readily available to first responders and the community. The goal of MCDAC is to educate on the purpose and proper use of Naloxone, commonly called Narcan. Free Narcan kits will be available upon completion of the training.The Opioid Epidemic has become a public health crisis with devastating consequences including increases in opioid misuse and related overdoses, as well as the rising incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome due to opioid use and misuse during pregnancy. The increase in injection drug use has also contributed to the spread of infectious diseases including HIV and hepatitis.For more information about the Opioid Epidemic Town Hall, go to the MCDAC website or call Executive Director, Holly Windhorst st 618-316-4472. On the Net: If readers are still wondering how President Trump won the election, they need to read Jay Ambrose's "Trump helps recovery from Obama" (Oct. 29). One paragraph states "Obama is not crass like Trump. He is highly intelligent, knowledgeable and charming, the problem being that he put those attributes to skillful use in undermining American principles. Some 22 times this constitutional lawyer said it would be unconstitutional to grant temporary amnesty to young immigrants brought here as children, but he did it anyway. His Clean Power Plan would have illegally wiped out state laws. You need a treaty on an Iran deal? Forget that. It involves Congress." Many liberals would like to see the Constitution go away but I believe the majority of the American people still value the Constitution and want it followed as our founding fathers intended. In my opinion there are many other reasons why Trump won the election, and a really big one was the American people was very tired of all the Clinton scandals. Alma Jean Weger, Arthur By The Associated Press Nov. 02, 2017 | 05:17 AM | FRANKFORT, KY Attorney General Andy Beshear has issued a scam alert to warn Kentuckians about fraudulent ads placed in the classified sections of newspapers and online. Beshear says people in several counties have reported replying to classified ads for discounted tractors or pickup trucks that turned out to be a scam. Beshear says those reporting the scams reported the ads appeared normal at first and included a price for the item and a contact phone number. He says once an interested buyer places a call, they don't speak with anyone, but receive text messages or emails. The replies are from someone claiming to be selling the item at a deep discount because it belonged to her late husband, and she's leaving soon for a military deployment. Loading... Daisy Bowie-Sell, WhatsOnStage "This new stage adaptation from John Pielmeier who took the book, rather than the movie as his starting point tries to elbow in all the thrills, jumps and scares an audience might want from a bona fide Halloween show and in the process loses something of the tension of the original. There are absolutely some excellent stage magic tricks from illusion designer Ben Hart, and some of the most memorable moments from the film (Regan's head turning right round is a case in point) are masterfully created. But the pace of the script, which is sparsely written and features no relatable, realistic characters, feels as though it is simply trying to get in all the film's main gross bits, rather than create a play which works. "A mixture of screens and projections are used in certain moments to create a vision of the ghostly demon and the terrible shadows that torment poor Regan. It's these, along with exceptionally loud bangs, crashes and bursts of light, which really make you feel the demonic presence. Ian McKellen voices the demon with a fruity twist, perhaps inappropriately, but his disembodied voice is probably the most rounded character in the entire thing. Adam Garcia and Jenny Seagrove are both fine as Father Damien Karras and Regan's mum Chris, but though there is an attempt at backstory, their roles are see-through." Lyn Gardner, The Guardian "If this production actually managed to deliver the thrills, like a theatrical version of a fairground ghost train, you might forgive the complete lack of characterisation or the uncertainty of tone that leaves the evening awkwardly pitched between the camp and the uncanny. It grinds out the tale with jerky efficiency, like a storyboard on stage that moves not from one scene to the next but one set piece to the next." "John Pielmeier's script goes for melodrama and stock characters, which leaves little room for any psychological depth or nuance in the performances. Jenny Seagrove wrings her hands distractedly as the mother convinced her child is possessed, and Adam Garcia as Father Damien Karras, the priest who is struggling with his own guilt and demons, looks less conflicted than if he is suffering from a mild toothache. Peter Bowles's exorcist, Father Merrin, turns up looking the part but sets about his task with all the urgency of a plumber sent to unblock a drain. Instead of building to a thrilling and terrifying climax the show limps towards its schlocky conclusion." Natasha Tripney, The Stage "Director Sean Mathias has convinced Ian McKellen to provide the voice of the demon. While McKellen clearly had a ripe old time recording his lines, his performance strikes a very different note to the whisky-and-nicotine growl of Mercedes McCambridge in the film. It makes the possessed Regan sound like a potty-mouthed Gandalf." "The demon is also much better behaved here. Instead of hurling furniture, it upsets a single drawer. Regan, almost demurely, spews vomit to the side the bed to which she is lashed instead of unleashing a geyser of pea soup into Karras' face; there's no spider-walk and the levitation scene is abandoned altogether. Budgetary issues afflict the whole production. The famous staircase is another notable absence (along with the surely crucial "can you help an old altar boy" line) and a sight line obliterating black screen covers parts of Anna Fleischle's set during scene changes." "Adam Cork's sound design is reasonably effective and Adam Garcia does a decent job of portraying the conflicted, bereaved Karras; Jenny Seagrove looks suitably distraught as Regan's mother, and Clare Louise Connolly impresses in the demanding role of Regan, writhing, snarling and spitting." Paul Taylor, The Independent "I mean it as a compliment when I say that this show is less scary than the film but that it's perhaps more profoundly disturbing. It offers the pleasure of experiencing a story that you love-to-dread told in another medium that traps the audience in the same space as the characters and demands that the famous "moments" (the projectile vomiting, the swivelling head, the violently shaking bed et al) be conjured up live. Mathias has gathered a great technical team." "Anna Fleischle's shadowy, shuddery set shuts all the outside locations into one hermetic haunted house, with the awful cockpit of Regan's room at its centre. Courtesy of the excellent, creepy projection designs of Jon Driscoll and Gemma Carrington, the wallpaper heaves and its pattern swarms like rats; ghastly images scud across cascades of infernal smoke. Ben Hart's illusions cause drawers to fly through the air, flickering lamps to explode, and the girl to almost slice her arm off. " Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard "Mathias savours the story's occult mood and creates some startling images that make up for the episodic thinness of Pielmeier's script. The walls of Anna Fleischle's set swarm with sinister projections, and illusionist Ben Hart's gruesome effects are truly 'special'." "The result is an entertaining 100 minutes, the theatrical equivalent of a haunted fairground ride not profoundly disturbing, but attractive to theatregoers who like nothing more than to squirm and scream." Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph "We're not short-changed in terms of visceral atmosphere: there's abundant darkness, with bursts too of retina-dazzling light, much unsettling use of projection to suggest scuttling shadows, and Anna Fleischle's set pulls out all the stops in evoking a domicile beset by recalcitrant doors and electrics that go kaput in the night. The checklist of set-piece moments won't disappoint fans of the film coming with realistic expectations: we get projectile vomiting, violent bed-rocking, a dash of levitation and that famous head-rotation, up to a logistically achievable point." "What we get further despite the best efforts of the clunking dialogue to thwart it is a gathering sense of dramatic engagement over 90 minutes. We may scoff at religion, yet the basic mechanics of the show require us to surrender to an idea of the supernatural. Moreover, the contested diagnosis of Regan's monstrous behaviour reflects a cultural battle about femininity: has she truly been taken over by Satan, or is she as the first priest in attendance, Adam Garcia's Damien, suggests manifesting explicable psychological disturbances?" The Exorcist runs at the Phoenix Theatre until 10 March 2018. I have watched Gov. Rauners political commercial on WAND-TV three times now and finally had to speak up. I am having a hard time watching political cronies laugh and degrade our home state of Illinois. I read in the paper that the governor went to Asia this summer to promote business in Illinois. During that visit was he promoting Illinois or Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin? His commercial is a classic example of dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see." If you do a little research, Wisconsins (total) taxes are on par with Illinois. This is still true after Illinois recent tax hike. On top of that, the governor of Wisconsin practically bankrupted the University of Wisconsin with funding cuts. Then he had to go back a couple of years later and add funding after it was obvious the cuts were critically disabling the university. (Sound familiar?) A little research also shows that Indiana is not so great either. There are 92 counties in Indiana and every one of them has a county income tax in addition to the state income tax. Indiana touts its low state income tax but fails to mention its county income taxes. According to Forbes, Illinois average household yearly income is $4,900 to $10,100 higher than these three states. The three governors forgot to mention that in the commercial. I dont agree with everything the legislature in Springfield does, but its time for Gov. Rauner to start working to help get things done and quit running our state down. Jim Wiley, Mount Zion Garo Yegnukian, a defendant in the ongoing Sasna Dzrer trial, fell ill today in a Yerevan court and was taken to hospital. Judge Artoush Gabrielyan said that Yegnukian asked that the trial session continue without him. Yegnukian, whos been held in pre-trial detention in Armenia since July 2016, had declared today that he would refuse to attend future trial sessions because they were harmful to his health. Yegnukians attorney, Tigran Hayrapetyan, said that his clients blood pressure was quite high and that doctors wanted to consult with the judge. A break in the trial was announced. Judge Gabrielyan announced that the blood pressure of another defendant, Khachatur Gichyan, was also high and that he too had been given an injection. Gichyan then said he felt fine and would continue to remain in court. Minnesota remains at risk for another measles outbreak, a top state health official told lawmakers Tuesday. Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health, leveled the warning during a state Senate committee hearing on public health emergency funding. In August, the department declared an end to the states largest measles outbreak in 30 years. Most of the cases involved unvaccinated Somali-American children. Despite a push to increase vaccination rates in the Somali-American community during the summer outbreak, Ehresmann said vaccination rates remain extremely low in the Somali community. Until vaccination rates in the Somali population improve, we are at risk of a similar situation occurring again, she said. Vaccine critics spread false information that the vaccine causes autism, leaving state health officials and Somali community leaders having to battle fear of immunization. Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, said he thinks health officials have been tone deaf to many of the concerns Somali parents have about vaccinations. The comments came as lawmakers received an update Tuesday on the $5 million public health contingency account they created last spring. The state health department made its first request from the fund in July, asking for $613,000 to fight measles, drug-resistant tuberculosis and syphilis. Each outbreak hit a specific minority population. Ehresmann told members of the Senate health and human services committee that more money was needed to reach the affected groups. Communication, outreach and culturally appropriate messaging are really resource intensive, she said, as are financial resources for translation and making sure that youre interacting with the community to get their feedback. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, in Yerevan today, welcomed Nikolay Ryzhkov, co-chairman of the RussianArmenian commission on inter-parliamentary cooperation, and the delegation hes heading to take part at the commissions 30th session. Sargsyan, according to his official website, expressed confidence that the session would be just as constructive as prior ones, and that issues facilitating deeper cooperation between the two countries would be discussed. In 2008, the Armenian government awarded Ryzhkov, the Soviet Unions last Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the countrys highest decoration National Hero of Armenia for his charitable work after the 1988 Spitak earthquake. The Lake Delton Walmart was closed for more than an hour the afternoon of Nov. 1 following a bomb threat called in to the store. Authorities searched the store at 130 Commerce Street and determined it to be safe. The store reopened just after 6 p.m., according to a news release from Lake Delton Police Chief Daniel Hardman. Lake Delton police were assisted at the scene by first responders from the Sauk County Sheriffs Department, Wisconsin State Patrol, Dells-Delton Ambulance Service and Delton Fire Department and Walmart employees. Lake Delton police were dispatched to the store at 4:36 p.m. following a report of the threat, which police said was called in directly to Walmart. A Sauk County Nixle text alert distributed at 5:19 p.m. advised people to avoid the business and a subsequent alert warned recipients to keep out of the area. Wisconsin State Patrol vehicles, their emergency lights flashing, blocked the two entrances to the stores parking just after 5 p.m. Vehicles were allowed to exit but not enter the lot, and a Walmart employee advised passing motorists of the situation. A Nixle alert at 6:06 p.m. indicated the store had reopened. There is not believed to be an imminent danger to the public, and Walmart has returned to normal business, the news release said. Lake Delton police detectives are continuing to investigate the incident, the release said. Hard to keep quiet about how enjoyable the library documentary 'Ex Libris' is 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. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Policy support needed for nuclear growth, conference concludes 02 November 2017 Share Nuclear power remains an important option for many countries in meeting their energy and climate change goals, but investors need clarity and certainty from policy makers, according to Hamad Alkaabi, the UAE Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He was summing up the conclusions of the International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Power in the 21st Century, held this week in Abu Dhabi. Alkaabi (second from right) closes the conference (Image: IAEA/Dean Calma) Alkaabi was president of the conference, which was organised by the IAEA in cooperation with the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and hosted by the UAE government. The event had nearly 700 participants from 68 IAEA member states and six international organisations. In his concluding remarks, Alkaabi said: "While respecting the right of each state to define its national energy policy, the conference recognised that nuclear power remains an important option for many countries to improve energy security, reduce the impact of volatile fossil fuel prices and mitigate the effects of climate change and air pollution, including by backing up intermittent energy sources. "For many countries, nuclear power will have an important role to play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and meeting the targets in the Paris Agreement. Governments should ensure that their national energy policies support their development and climate goals." However, Alkaabi noted that nuclear "is not currently attracting the necessary global investment" to limit the average global temperature increase to 2C as required by the Paris Agreement. He said that governments could provide "clear and consistent" policy support for existing and new nuclear power plants. This, for example, could be by incorporating nuclear power into clean energy incentive schemes and encouraging its development in addition to other clean forms of energy. "Innovations in technology design - including reactor size - as well as in investment and ownership models could facilitate the introduction of nuclear power in more countries," Alkaabi said. "It was further noted that identifying ways to reduce construction times could improve prospects for financing new nuclear power plants." UAE sets example At a side event to the conference, the UAE's nuclear energy programme was showcased as a role model for other countries considering the launch of nuclear power projects to meet their growing energy demands. UAE industry leaders explained how the country has benefitted from the support of and collaboration with the international nuclear energy community in its efforts to develop its nuclear power programme. Four Korean-designed APR-1400 pressurised water reactors are being built at Barakah for the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation. The plant is being built by a consortium led by the Korean Electric Power Company. Construction of Barakah 1 began in 2012, with units 2, 3 and 4 following in 2013, 2014 and 2015. Units 1 and 2, now over 96% and 87% complete, are both expected to start up next year. Units 3 and 4 - 78% and 58% complete, respectively - are expected to start up in 2019 and 2020. When complete, the power station will deliver up to a quarter of the UAE's electricity and avoid the emission of up to 21 million tonnes of carbon annually. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics The First Hegira was an event in the early history of the Islam religion which facilitated the development of Islam in Africa. In the early days of Islam, Prophet Muhammad gained a sizable number of followers who were persecuted by the ruling Quraysh tribe. The members of this ruling tribe observed Polytheism and were opposed to Islam which insisted on the existence of one God. Prophet Muhammad was forced to persuade his followers to flee to exile in Abyssinia. Historical Background The early adherents of Islam were not treated kindly by the neighboring polytheists. The polytheists were opposed to the revolutionary teachings propagated by Islam. Prophet Muhammad insisted that all people were equal regardless of class, race, or privilege, and that it was the responsibility of every human to share their wealth with the less fortunate. Such teachings angered the rulers of the Quraysh because the adoption of Islam would result in the abolishing of the political system which empowered them and gave them enormous privileges. The polytheists began insulting and jeering the Muslims, and they soon adopted physical violence. The early Muslims were further left thirsty and hungry until they orally recognized the divinity of the two primary idols, Lat and 'Uzza. Each leader harassed the Muslims in his tribe by imprisoning them in their houses and preventing them from seeing the Prophet. Some Muslims who were steadfast in their faith faced torture and even martyrdom. These events saddened Prophet Muhammad, and he decided to send them to Abyssinia to save both their lives and faith. Abyssinia was then governed by the Christian ruler the Negus Ashama ibn Abjar who was said to be kind-hearted and just. Abyssinia was the present day Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Migration The Muslims relocated to Abyssinia in two waves. The first group featured eleven men and four women, and Uthman bin Maz'oon was appointed as the leader by the Prophet. The group also included Uthman ibn Affan who would subsequently become the 3rd caliph. One year after settling in Abyssinia, the Muslims heard rumors that the ruling Quraysh had embraced Islam and therefore they headed back to Mecca. However, on reaching Mecca they realized that the rumors were false as the Quraysh had even intensified the harassment of Muslims. The Muslims returned to Abyssinia in a larger group of 83 men and 18 women. Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, who was a cousin to Prophet Muhammad, was the leader this second group. Events In Abyssinia Word reached the Quraysh that the exiles were free to observe Islam in Abyssinia. The tribe sent emissaries to the Negus with presents for him as well as his generals. The eissaries pleaded to the Negus to let the exiles return to Mecca and branded them as "foolish youth" who had created a religion that neither the Abyssinians or the Meccans had witnessed before. The Negus summoned the exiles, and Ja'far ibn Abi Talib informed the Negus of the persecutions they had suffered under the Quraysh, and he also quoted a paragraph from Quran. The Negus wept on hearing the passage and refused to give up the exiles. Among the emissaries was 'Amr Ibn al-'As who went before the Negus the following day and said that the fugutives had proclaimed a dreadful thing concerning Jesus. To this accusation, Ja'far replied that Jesus was "God's prophet, His servant, His word, and His spirit, who was cast on virgin Mary." This answer satisfied the Negus, and the sent away the envoy. End of Exile Most of the Abyssinian exiles made the journey back to Mecca in 622 and participated in the hijra to Medina together with Muhammad. The second group of the exiles arrived in Medina in 628. Bolivia is a country is located in the central region of South America, to the west of Brazil. The country covers a total area of approximately 424,164 square miles and is surrounded on all sides by fives countries: Chile, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. Bolivia and Paraguay are the only two landlocked nations in South America. The country has a population size of approximately 11.41 million. Bolivia has a long history that, according to historical records, dates back to at least 1500 BC. Additionally, the country boasts a diverse geography, which is divided into several ecosystems: tropical savanna, tropical rainforest, the altiplano, arid valleys, and the Andes mountains. Given its interesting history and geographic features, Bolivia is home to several famous tourist sites. This article highlights the 10 most famous tourist attractions in Bolivia. Top Ten Most Famous Tourist Attractions in Bolivia Salar de Uyuni One of the most famous tourist attractions in Bolivia is the Salar de Uyuni, a 4,000-square mile salt flat. At an elevation of 11,995 feet above sea level, the site holds the distinction of being the largest and highest salt flat in the world. The Salar de Uyuni, which is covered in a thin layer of salt, stretches out over an extremely flat surface. Its surface is often covered in a shallow pool of water, and is famous for its reflective abilities. Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca covers an area of 3,232 square miles and sits at an altitude of 12,507 feet, making it both the largest lake in South America and the highest navigable lake in the world. The lake is bordered by Peru and Bolivia, and is dotted with several islands across its surface. Some of the unique islands in Lake Titicaca are known as Uros and are home to indigenous communities. These man-made islands are built of reed and float over Lake Titicaca. Visitors to the lake can also stay with local families on some of the permanent islands. Madidi National Park Another famous tourist attraction in Bolivia is Madidi National Park, located in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The park covers 11,779 square miles and offers a number of ecotourism travel packages for adventurous tourists. The park is most famous for its high level of biodiversity. For example, it is home to 1,254 bird species, which represents 14% of all bird species worldwide. Additionally, Madidi National Park is located close to the Manu Biosphere Reserve in Peru, as well as the Apolobamba and Manuripi-Heath areas. Together, these areas make up one of the largest protected natural areas in the world. Yungas Road Known by many as the most dangerous road in the world, Yungas Road in Bolivia is not for the faint of heart. Adventurous tourists can rent a mountain bike in La Paz, where the Yungas Road begins, and head out on this unpaved path that winds through mountains and along sharp cliffs. The road reaches an elevation of 15,000 feet above sea level and then makes a 4,000-foot drop over approximately 40 miles, as it winds its way into the town of Coroico, near the Amazon rainforest. Oruro Carnival The town of Oruro hosts one of the most famous annual Carnival festivals, known locally as Carnaval de Oruro. The celebration is an excellent way to see a wide variety of traditional, pre-colonial era dances, as more than 28,000 dancers and 10,000 musicians parade through the streets. The most famous of these dances is the devil dance, used to begin the festivities. The Carnaval de Oruro lasts for nearly 20 hours and is attended by almost 400,000 individuals. La Paz La Paz is considered the administrative capital of Bolivia and has a population size of 2.3 million across its entire metropolitan area. Located within the Choqueyapu River Canyon, the elevation of La Paz ranges from 10,710 to 13,313 feet above sea level, making this the highest national capital in the world. One of the most popular tourist activities in La Paz is the cable car system, which offers views across the city and of the mountain tops in the distance. Tiwanaku Tiwanaku is located on the southeastern shore of Lake Titicaca. The site is the remains of an ancient civilization, which researchers believe may have given birth to the Incan Empire. The Tiwanaku civilization was most powerful between 600 and 800 AD, when it had a population of as many as 30,000 individuals. Tourists visiting this site can walk among the ruins and imagine life here during the pre-colonial time. Tiwanaku is home to several pyramids, temples, and monuments, although a large portion of the ruins remains unexcavated. Sajama National Park Sajama National Park lies to the northwest of the town of Oruro and is the oldest national park in Bolivia. The site is popular with tourists as an excellent hiking and wildlife viewing location. The park covers an area of about 300 square miles and includes lakes, cave paintings, and hot springs. Additionally, Sajama National Park has the highest mountain in the country, Nevado Sajama, and the highest forest in the world. Tourists can also visit Curahuara de Carangas, an old colonial church built of adobe. Jesuit Missions in Chiquitos The Jesuit Missions in Chiquitos were established between the 1600s and 1700s by Jesuit priests in what is now the Santa Cruz department of Bolivia. They now include six mission towns, all of which are considered together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tourists usually spend a full day visiting the towns, learning about how European priests worked to convert local indigenous communities to Catholicism. The most popular of these missions is San Jose de Chiquitos. Cerro Rico, Potosi The town of Potosi, located at the foot of the Cerro Rico mountain, was established around the old silver mining industry. Cerro Rico, which means Rich Hill in Spanish, still has a number of old silver mines that can be visited today. The silver from this area has been completely extracted, but the community continues to rely on tin mining. One of the most popular sites to visit here is the Casa Nacional de Moneda, where tourists can learn about the old colonial money minting system. Email Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter Sign Up Free | The WPJ Weekly Newsletter Relevant real estate news. Actionable market intelligence. Right to your inbox every week. Go Thank you for your interest! You will now be receiving our Weekly Real Estate Newsletter. Real Estate Listings Showcase According to ATTOM Data Solutions, distressed home sales -- including bank-owned (REO) sales, third-party foreclosure auction sales, and short sales -- accounted for 12.5 percent of all home sales in Q3 2017, down from 13.5 percent in the previous quarter and down from 14.1 percent in Q3 2016 to the lowest level since Q3 2007."Distressed sales nationally are now the exception rather than the rule, and we would expect the distressed sale share to return to the pre-recession norm of single-digit percentages within the next year given the current downward trajectory," said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions. "Distressed sales have become more localized in nature, with some of the biggest increases from a year ago in markets experiencing regional economic weakness or a natural disaster event that has triggered a jump in foreclosure activity."Among 146 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 and at least 100 distressed sales during the quarter, those with the highest share of distressed sales were Atlantic City, New Jersey (35.2 percent); McAllen-Edinburg, Texas (24.5 percent); Montgomery, Alabama (23.7 percent); Akron, Ohio (23.2 percent); and Youngstown, Ohio (22.5 percent).Metros with the smallest share of distressed sales in Q3 2017 were San Jose, California (3.1 percent); Salt Lake City, Utah (3.3 percent); Austin, Texas (4.1 percent); San Francisco, California (5.2 percent); and Provo-Orem, Utah (5.5 percent).Counter to the national trend, 29 of the 146 metros analyzed for distressed sales (20 percent) posted a year-over-year increase in the share of distressed sales, led by Corpus Christi, Texas (up 33 percent); Indianapolis, Indiana (up 30 percent); Cedar Rapids, Iowa (up 29 percent); Baton Rouge, Louisiana (up 25 percent); Provo, Utah (up 22 percent); and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (up 22 percent).Major metros with an increase in the share of distressed sales compared to a year ago included New York, New York (up 6 percent); Dallas, Texas (up 13 percent); Houston, Texas (up 7 percent); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (up 1 percent); and Phoenix, Arizona (up 6 percent).The median sales price nationwide in the third quarter was $248,000, up 10 percent from a year ago to a new all-time high -- 3 percent above the pre-recession high of $241,900 in Q3 2005. It was the second consecutive quarter where median home prices nationwide were above the pre-recession peak.Median home prices increased to new all-time highs in 55 of 126 metro areas analyzed for home price appreciation in the report (44 percent), including Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, Detroit and Seattle. Median home prices have exceeded pre-recession peaks since the end of the recession in 83 of the 126 metro areas (66 percent).Median home prices are still below pre-recession peaks in 43 of 126 metropolitan areas analyzed for home price appreciation in the report (34 percent), including New York (6 percent below); Chicago (10 percent below); Philadelphia (2 percent below); and Washington, D.C. (3 percent below).Markets with median home prices in Q3 2017 still furthest below the pre-recession peak were York, Pennsylvania (60 percent below); Naples, Florida (24 percent below); Modesto, California (21 percent below); Bridgeport, Connecticut (20 percent below); Mobile, Alabama (19 percent below); and Las Vegas, Nevada (19 percent below).Among the 126 metropolitan statistical areas analyzed in the report, those with the biggest year-over-year increase in median home prices were Ann Arbor, Michigan (up 16 percent); Ocala, Florida (up 16 percent); Salt Lake City, Utah (up 14 percent); San Jose, California (up 14 percent); St. Louis, Missouri (up 14 percent);Other markets in the top 10 for biggest home price increases were Reno, Nevada (up 13 percent); Seattle, Washington (up 13 percent); Las Vegas, Nevada (up 13 percent); Greeley, Colorado (up 12 percent); and Salem, Oregon (up 12 percent).Home sellers in Q3 2017 sold for $58,000 more than their original purchase price on average, a percent gain of 31 percent above original purchase price on average -- the highest average dollar gain and percent gain since Q2 2007.Among 128 metropolitan statistical areas with at least 200,000 people and sufficient historical home sales and price data, those with the highest average percent gain for home sellers in Q3 2017 were San Jose, California (80 percent); San Francisco, California (71 percent); Seattle, Washington (65 percent); Austin, Texas (59 percent); Portland, Oregon (58 percent).Counter to the national trend, 32 of the 128 metropolitan statistical areas (25 percent) analyzed for home seller gains posted a quarter-over-quarter decrease in average percent gains, including San Francisco, California, Santa Rosa, California, Modesto, California, Denver, Colorado, and Boulder, Colorado.U.S. homeowners who sold in the third quarter had owned an average of 8.19 years, up from an average of 7.97 years for homes sold in the previous quarter and up from 7.77 years for homes sold in Q3 2016 to a new record high as far back as ATTOM has data available, to Q1 2000.Among 99 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 and sufficient historical data, those with the longest average homeownership tenure for homes sold in Q3 2017 were Springfield, Massachusetts (12.48 years); Worcester, Massachusetts (12.41 years); New Haven, Connecticut (12.35 years); Boston, Massachusetts (12.25 years); and Bridgeport, Connecticut (12.24 years)."The marked increase in the length of time that Seattle homeowners are staying in their homes is notable -- in 2000, the average home ownership tenure was 5.5 years and today it is more than a decade," said Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate, covering the Seattle market, where the average homeownership tenure of 10.16 years in the third quarter was the 18th longest in the country and a new record high for Seattle. "This would help explain, to a degree, why we are experiencing such a lack of inventory in the Seattle market. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw this number rise further as homeowners choose to stay in their homes and remodel rather than actively compete for a new home."Metro areas with the shortest average homeownership tenure were Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (6.52 years); Detroit, Michigan (7.08 years); Austin, Texas (7.11 years); Denver, Colorado (7.20 years); and Tulsa, Oklahoma (7.23 years).Counter to the national trend, the average homeownership tenure decreased from a year ago in 19 of the metro areas analyzed, including Portland, Oregon (down 1 percent); Cincinnati, Ohio (down 1 percent); Salt Lake City, Utah (down 1 percent); Honolulu, Hawaii (down 2 percent); and Dayton, Ohio (down 1 percent).All-cash buyers accounted for 27.2 percent of single family home and condo sales in the third quarter, down from 28.2 percent in the previous quarter but up from 26.7 percent in Q3 2016 --the second consecutive quarter with a year-over-year increase following 15 consecutive quarters of year-over-year decreases."Across Southern California, home price appreciation, and low listing inventory, are contributing factors demonstrating a pent-up demand for home buyers wishing to take advantage of the benefits associated with homeownership," said Michael Mahon, president at First Team Real Estate covering the Southern California market. With cash transactions accounting for nearly one out of five closed escrow transactions within our market, it is clear consumers continue to leverage all cash offers as a method of offer differentiation, in attempts of purchasing a home. "Among 132 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 and at least 1,000 single family home and condo sales in Q3 2017, those with the highest share of all-cash sales during the quarter were Mobile, Alabama (53.8 percent); Tucson, Arizona (50.4 percent); Scranton, Pennsylvania (49.1 percent); Grand Rapids, Michigan (48.5 percent); and Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida (46.6 percent).Seventy-six of the 132 metro areas analyzed for cash sales (58 percent) posted a year-over-year increase in share of cash sales, led by Grand Rapids, Michigan (up 110 percent); Tucson, Arizona (up 88 percent); Albany, New York (up 87 percent); Modesto, California (up 55 percent); and Chattanooga, Tennessee (up 49 percent).The share of U.S. single family home and condo sales sold to institutional investors (entities buying at least 10 properties in a calendar year) represented 2.7 percent of all single family home and condo sales in the third quarter, up from 2.1 percent in the previous quarter but still down from 2.9 percent in Q3 2016 -- the fourth consecutive quarter with a year-over-year decrease.Among 132 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 and at least 1,000 single family home and condo sales in Q3 2017, those with the highest share of institutional investor purchases during the quarter were Memphis, Tennessee (9.3 percent); Birmingham, Alabama (8.3 percent); Clarksville, Tennessee (6.9 percent); Charlotte, North Carolina (6.6 percent); and Killeen, Texas (6.1 percent).Counter to the national trend, 39 of the 132 metro areas analyzed (30 percent) posted a year-over-year increase in share of institutional investor purchases, including Clarksville, Tennessee (up 48 percent); Charlotte, North Carolina (up 19 percent); Jacksonville, Florida (up 5 percent); Nashville, Tennessee (up 28 percent); and Omaha, Nebraska (up 6 percent).Sales to FHA buyers (typically first-time homebuyers or other buyers with a low down payment) represented 13.5 percent of all single family home and condo sales in the third quarter, down from 14.2 percent in the previous quarter and down from 15.6 percent in Q3 2016 to the lowest level since Q1 2015.Among 132 metropolitan statistical areas with a population of at least 200,000 and at least 1,000 home in Q3 2017, those with the highest share of FHA sales were Ogden, Utah (30.9 percent); El Paso, Texas (29.8 percent); Indianapolis, Indiana (25.9 percent); Salt Lake City, Utah (23.3 percent); and York, Pennsylvania (23.2 percent).Metros with the lowest share of FHA sales in Q3 2017 were Honolulu, Hawaii (2.0 percent); Boulder, Col Another shambolic end to a Scrutiny meeting at Wrexham Council This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 2nd, 2017 A scrutiny meeting ended in confusion and questions over its effectiveness yesterday, with some councillors walking out as the meeting evaporated to its close. Members of the Employment, Business & Investment Scrutiny Committee had been meeting to discuss the impacts the closure of the Communities First programme will have in Wrexham. The Communities First programme, which has been active in Wrexham since its inception in 2001, has seen millions invested into 52 cluster areas across Wales over the past 15 years. However in October 2016 Communities and Children Secretary Carl Sargeant stated he was not convinced that continuing to focus on 52 small areas is the most effective way to deliver for Wales and that he was minded to phase the programme out. Speaking at yesterdays meeting Council Leader Mark Pritchard explained that the council will not subsidise projects operated by Communities First once the scheme ends. He said: The bluntness is we cannot subsidise it. I dont want to be seen to be cruel, I am honest, we havent got money. We cant afford it, when the funding stops Communities First will close in Wrexham. Cllr Brian Cameron, whose ward has received project support from Communities First funding, gave an impassioned speech on the impact losing such services would have locally. Cllr Cameron said: I would like to thank officers for this report. It is very good and goes a long way to highlighting the effects in losing Communities First, it makes depressing reading. We must all be concerned about the huge risks involved in the future. The knock on effect for other agencies, schools, housing, childrens social services is likely to be very severe. The Venture and Gwenfro Valley are likely to close without funding being found. They have both operated for 40 years and 10 years. The Venture acts as a home for health and education services and early years centre. He continued: Finally, if the worst happens and several organisations are forced to close, has there been any analysis of what the likely costs are for the council and if so what this is? Regardless of who is to blame, what are we going to do as Wrexham has a major problem. The questions remained unanswered, with Cllr Pritchard stated that while he wouldnt disagree with any of the comments, most services will likely be at risk as they would not be subsidised by the council. Blunt message from Clr Pritchard on Communities First, TLDR: Welsh Gov stopped funding, Wrexham Council cant afford it, wont subsidise it. Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 Cllr Dana Davies queried how the council would manage the objectives within its tackling poverty strategy once Communities First was complete. The meeting was told by Lead Member for Youth Services and Anti-Poverty Cllr Paul Rogers that work on a new strategy was being undertaken and it was hoped that it would be put to members in the new year. Cllr Pritchard said: We have strategies and policies coming out of our ears. Weve had 52m taken off us and now another 13m. Everything has to be considered by finances. We can only spend what were given. Clr Davies asks if that means Wrexham Council are creating policy that will never ever come to fruition due to the cash not being there. Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 Cllr Davies said: I understand where we are. I also understand that not all 22 local authorities could tap into the funding pot for Communities First, they have their strategies for tackling poverty. It isnt just two specific areas in Wrexham. It is across the county. From that point of view, if we didnt have a Communities First programme, how would have Wrexham have addressed poverty issues in the county? There are lots of strategies in the council. You as Lead Members are the creators of the policies, are you saying youre creating something that will never come to fruition? Cllr Pritchard said Wrexham Council had had a double whammy, with budget cuts for several years and the Minister announcing the end of Communities First. He continued: You said if we didnt have the money, but we did have the money from Welsh Government. There are officers working tirelessly to put plan in place to work with most deprived areas in Wrexham. We deal with poverty on a day to day basis and we continue to do so. It is a double whammy. We have budget cuts for years and the Minister announces in 2016 he is going to close Communities First. That is an impact over 1m, we cant subsidise the services and we wont. I want members to have reality and honesty, we havent got the money. As soon as everyone sits and realises it, the better. Chair Clr Skelland gives anecdote to say when he was Lead Member he had 400 strategies gathering dust & didnt see point in many of them! Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 The meeting was also told of a Legacy Fund which had been announced by the Cabinet Secretary to maintain the most effective aspects of Communities First. Wrexham has been allocated 236,447 for 2018/19 and 2019/20. However there was criticism from the council leader and several members of the committee over the seemingly lack of information from Welsh Government on how the money could be spent. Clr Paul Rogers asks if Welsh Gov not giving firm Communities First guidance is a tactic to set local 3rd Sector v Local Authorities. Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 Cllr Marc Jones called upon the council to push the Communities and Childrens Secretary in the right direction and to firm up the guidance on how the funding could be spent. He added: It is staggering we are not being told what it should be spent on. Thats shameful as far of Welsh Government not giving guidance, they know it is coming to end. To leave services in limbo is staggering. I know from talking so people theyve already lost some services. Cllr Andrew Atkinson queried why members of the community who have previously accessed services provided by the funding are ceasing to engage. Details in the report presented to councillors notes that since the announcements to stop the Communities First funding were made, there has been disengagement from some partners and sections of the community and a drop in usage in some cases. The meeting was told there are two parts to disengagement, the perception of service closure following the announcement in October 2016 and the reduction in staff numbers. Cllr Pritchard said: We have tried to be honest with people. There are individuals working in that area who are losing their jobs. We are closing down this service. I have always struggled with the wording of Legacy Funding. It gives people aspirations that it will be a legacy, and the fund behind it could continue. There is 237k for two years. I know officers have engaged with individuals who work there. We have said when funding ceases we will not subsidise it. It is the closing down of a service area. Cllr Atkinson added: I agree that the language is right about closing down. My point with the Legacy Fund is in someway seeing it as a transition for some services while they explore other grants, some could stand on their own two feet. After nearly two hours of debate on Communities First, there was confusion ahead of the vote on the recommendations put forward, with some expressions of frustration by Councillors after proposed changes to the recommendations were effectively rejected. This was in the context of the first 40 minutes of the meeting that had debated how and what could or could not be scrutinised by the committee. A request had been put forward to look at the recent difficult decisions budget document, as well as a request to scrutinise how Sprouts came to close. That piece of business was tetchy at times between councillors, with Cllr Jones pointing out that councillors had been told in the Executive Board meeting recently to use Scrutiny to inspect decisions independently. The budget is a time sensitive issue, as it comes before the council in the new year, and therefore there is a limited meeting time open to look at it. Queries were raised over the effectiveness and point of the committee if it could not scrutinise what the body wanted in time. Meeting told scrutinising all budget hard as so much info to find, Clr Jones notes info must exist make the budget, if not then even more Qs Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 Cllr Pritchard said he would be very surprised if there was enough time for Council Officers to prepare a report to come back to the committee, with most in the room including ourselves taking that as comment on the time sensitive issue the budget. After it was pointed out the information must exist and be quite fresh for the budget formation, Cllr Pritchard told the meeting he was talking about the Sprouts request. Cllr Pritchard made it clear several times he had no influence over what the committee wished to look at, despite the Chair of the meeting Cllr Skelland calling him to voice his opinion many times. With the peppery nature of the opening of the meeting being mixed with the elongated time in the room, the irritation levels rose in line with the clock ticking towards 6pm. The ending of the meeting can only be described as shambolic, with Cllr Davies effectively walking out prior to the final vote taking place. Others had left beforehand in the usual manner and Cllr Marc Jones also leaving to attend another meeting. Cllr Davies, upon packing up her bags said it was not effective scrutiny and questioned what the committee had spent two hours debating if changes to the recommendations could not be put forward. There were also mutterings of I dont think Ill bother coming again from Cllr Alun Jenkins. The issue was over Cllr Pritchard sticking with the recommendations in the report he had presented, a position he was entirely allowed to hold. Often committees adapt and change recommendations as and when they see fit alongside the person presenting the report, however there was no leeway on offer. Cllr Jenkins appeared to want new recommendations to encompass more recent data rather than the data covered in the reports, however in the mess of the final minutes of the meeting, with councillors talking over each other and over the Officer helping run the meeting, they were effectively ignored. This riled the meeting, as normal practice is to firm up recommendation proposals, and if properly proposed and seconded, vote upon them. As that did not happen the angry exchanges as outlined above, and more, took place. Support for the initial recommendations, including commenting on the reported impacts of Communities First and feedback on the Legacy Fund as provided in the reports appendix, were moved by Cllr Geoff Lowe and seconded by Cllr Atkinson. A reference was made to noting extra requests from the committee, but not as part of the recommendations. A vote for the recommendations took place and was deemed passed despite some committee members being absent, walking out or not appearing to raise their hands to vote or being asked if anyone was against or abstaining as is normal. As with previous meetings in the new timetable format things appeared to be wrapped up overly promptly to meet the demands of the clock and locking up the Guildhall rather than the business of the committee. Annoyingly this meeting was not one of the ones video streamed to the internet (if only to capture the looks of disgust from Councillors as Cllr Graham Rogers took phone calls during the meeting) as we wrote when it was announced some scrutiny meetings would be televised, We strongly recommend having a view of the webcast either live or on the catch-up service as Scrutiny meetings can showcase the best and worst of Councillor work. This ranges from excellent questions and probing of details, right through to farcical moments when we have seen votes taken without members knowing exactly what they are voting for!. Unusual end to scrutiny with councillors leaving before vote question as to why spend 2 hours scrutinising if it doesnt change anything. Wrexham.com (@wrexham) November 1, 2017 The Foxconn deal requires far more scrutiny than has so far been applied to what looks to be a debacle in the making. Cash boost bid to bring towns fantastic and historical buildings back to life This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 2nd, 2017 Some of Wrexhams most historic architectural buildings and landmarks could be brought to life if a funding bid submitted by the local authority is successful. Known for our history as a market town, Wrexham is packed full of fascinating buildings which can often be overlooked in the there is nothing good in Wrexham negativity. In a bid to celebrate the towns heritage, Wrexham Council is now working on a funding bid which if successful could see several of the towns architectural gems brought back into use. The application itself is to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for Townscape Heritage Funding, which will help enhance the distinct historic environment within Wrexham Town Centre Conservation Area. The scheme itself will be focused on some of the strongest historical assets right in the heart of Wrexham town centre. If successful, the Townscape Heritage Scheme would provide funds to building owners to give them the chance to significantly enhance the appearance and usability of their properties through alteration work, reinstating lost traditional features and carrying out essential repairs. A key element of the bid seeks to provide building owners, local people, agents, architects and contractors the chance to train and up-skill in the restoration of older buildings in the town and the use of traditional building skills. Work could also be undertaken with partners to develop a comprehensive and accessible training programme to support the people of Wrexham build their skills and access employment. Another of the negative comments thrown around about the town is the number of vacant shops which have been out of use for some time. Another focus of the funding will be to revive the town centre by bringing vacant buildings and upper floors into new use. In other towns and cities across the UK, this has involved a change of use, splitting larger units into smaller ones and accommodation to help more people live above shops. An application for the funding will be made in December to the HLF and if awarded to Wrexham, work could start on the town centre by autumn 2019. Wrexham Council also say that if the Stage 1 bid is successful, a Stage 2 will go to the HLF in April 2019. Speaking to local business owners last week who were aware of the bid, who told us that although all the town isnt included in the bid, theyre hopeful that it could make a successful impact in Wrexham. Cllr Terry Evans, Lead Member for Economic Performance and Regeneration, said: If successful, this bid represents an excellent opportunity for Wrexham and its future regeneration. Weve a lot of fantastic historical assets within the Conservation Area and the prospect of their being renovated, and those out of use being brought back in to commercial use, is very promising. I certainly hope this bid succeeds, and Im very grateful to the officers involved for all the work theyve put into it. Interested in finding out more about the project? Building owners and occupiers in the Town Centre are invited to an information event at Meeting Room 1 of the Guildhall, Wrexham, between 3pm and 7pm on Monday, November 6. Officers will be on hand to discuss the bid and answer general questions, so if interested, your attendance would be welcome. Focus Wales team win contract for arts and market hub official opening This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 2nd, 2017 A local events company whose annual music festival attracts thousands to the town each year, is to organise the opening event for the opening of Wrexhams new arts and market centre. Neal Thompson and Andy Jones, the team behind FOCUS Wales, have been awarded the contract to deliver phase two of Dydd Llun Pawb (Everybodys Monday) the official launch event of Ty Pawb on April 2nd 2018. Plans for the launch event began earlier this spring when the initial artists commissioned for phase one of the project announced plans to explore the almost forgotten tradition of Dydd Llun Pawb; a unique event to Wrexham dating back to the 1800s. Details released earlier this year, stated: The Dydd Llun Pawb event will mark the opening of the 4.5 million OW/Peoples Market development and the strangest and most wonderful tales that have been gathered tales will be turned into souvenirs to be launched on the day. However due to unforeseen circumstances with the previous contractor the event was partially re-tendered. A Phase Two of the project was advertised on Sell2Wales with one application, Focus Wales, put forward to take the event forward to its final stages ahead of next April. Cllr Hugh Jones, Lead Member for Communities, Partnerships, Community Safety and Public Protection, welcomed the news: I am delighted that Focus Wales has been awarded this contract. Their reputation for professionalism and for their commitment to both Wrexham and the Welsh language are known throughout the arts community in Wrexham and I am sure that they along, with myself and Wrexham Council, welcome them on board this exciting event planned for the official opening of Ty Pawb on April 2nd. FOCUS Wales co-founder, Andy Jones, added: Were pleased to be working with WCBC on this project, and well be putting all of our experience, creativity and energy into delivering an exciting event that the whole of the Wrexham community can enjoy. New custody facilities to be built at towns Magistrates Court securing its future This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 2nd, 2017 The UK Government has revealed proposals for new cells at Wrexham Magistrates Court have been given the go-ahead, following a letter to local MP Ian Lucas. Wrexhams current police station, the iconic tower block on Bodhyfryd, is set to be demolished next summer with the new state-of-the-art headquarters set to be operational by August 2018. Once open the new police HQ building will provide modern custody facilities with 32 cells to detain people arrested in Wrexham and Flintshire. A smaller, town centre base is currently being constructed in the former Oriel Wrecsam in the Library however there is no link to the Magistrates Court raising questions over the future of the courts without cells, as we wrote the link to the police station will remain in place without the police station on the other end. Todays news was revealed in a letter to Wrexham MP Ian Lucas, who has been pushing the Government to make a firm commitment to providing new cells at Wrexhams Magistrates Court after the towns main police station is closed next year. In the letter, a Ministry of Justice official states: I am pleased to inform you that proposals to create new custody facilities at Wrexham Law Courts have cleared internal governance and will now be progressed into a full programme. HMCTS is committed to the continual provision of criminal justice services in Wrexham and the decision to construct new custody facilities at Wrexham demonstrates this commitment. The decision has been welcomed by Mr Lucas, who has been pushing the Government for months to make clear if they intend to build new cells in Wrexham. He said: The news that a decision on building these cells has finally been made is very welcome however long it has taken. The area around Wrexhams Law Courts is set to change dramatically in the next few years, and without a firm commitment form the Government to provide new cells, many in Wrexhams legal profession were concerned that the future of the courts could have been put at risk. Wrexham is the largest town in North Wales, and deserves appropriate services. Government departments need to recognise this, and I am pleased that the Ministry of Justice has made clear its commitment to the town. Wrexhams air quality is compliant with WHO levels on more recent data This article is old - Published: Thursday, Nov 2nd, 2017 Wrexham Council has branded the World Health Organisation (WHO) ranking for Wrexhams air quality as being based on old outdated figures, countering Tuesdays report. On Tuesday we wrote about the WHOs findings, that had Wrexham on the borderline of what is deemed acceptable for fine particles in the air. We asked Wrexham Council if there was any further detail or local comment available on the report findings, and at the time of publication we have not had a response, but have now had comment from Cllr Hugh Jones, Lead Member for Communities, Partnerships, Public Protection and Community Safety. Cllr Jones told us: The list of 44 out of 51 UK towns and cities currently cited in the media is based on World Health Organisation data which, in Wrexhams case, dates back to 2013. The Council has examined the results from its current air quality monitoring and has found the concentrations of measured pollutants are below the air quality objectives, and current published monitoring results indicate compliance with the World Health Organisation levels. This is confirmed in our most recently published Air Quality Progress Report in 2016. As Lead Member Terry Evans tweeted to imply he had question marks over the WHO data itself, and offered the suggestion of greased palms as to why it has not matched his expectations, we asked for comment on the quality of the data being collected in Wrexham. Cllr Jones said: The Council submits an annual report of its air quality data the Welsh Government, who have it independently validated prior to publication on the Councils website (https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/environment/air_quality/reports.htm). The PM2.5 monitor is operated by the Council on behalf of Defra / Welsh Government, who own the site as part of the UK-wide monitoring network. The data from this site is independently collected and validated prior to uploading to the Welsh air quality website (http://www.welshairquality.co.uk). Top pic: Blue skies David Bivins, 23, has filed a lawsuit in connection with an assault by an off duty Detroit City Police officer at a Meijer grocery store at the intersection of 8 Mile and Woodward in Detroit on October 8. At the time, Bivins was waiting for his fiancee to return from the bathroom. It was the couples first outing since the birth of their daughter six days earlier. After an investigation, the Detroit Police Department (DPD) said it would seek charges against officer Lonnie Wade in connection with the assault. The entire incident was recorded on video. Both Wade and Bivins are black. Wade and a pair of store security officers stopped Bivins and his fiancee as they were preparing to leave the Meijer store after purchasing their groceries. Bivins fiancee, Hillary Ross, had stopped to use the restroom in the main lobby of the store as Bivins was rearranging the items in their cart to make them easier to take on the bus. The couple had made purchases from different stores and had made sure to separate the purchases in order be clearly visible to store security. Surveillance footage released by the Detroit Police Department to the local press on October 12 shows how the violent encounter unfolded. Loss prevention officers, who are private security under the employ of the retailer, accompanied by Wade, suspected the couple of shoplifting and began to question Bivins as he was waiting for his fiancee. When she returned, the officer began to question them further, even after Bivins had produced the receipt for his purchase. Ross, indignant at the accusations by the officer, left to return all of the purchased items and demanded a refund. At that point the officer reached around the shopping cart and grabbed Bivins by the collar, pulling, and forcibly detained him. The officer dragged Bivins by his shirt toward the center of the lobby and struck him several times with his baton. The officer then proceeded to drag the victim outside to the store entrance where the beating continued. Onlookers recorded the incident on their cell phones. Bivins later gave a full account of the incident to Detroits NBC affiliate, Local 4 WDIV. Hes just continually swinging at me. He continued, Im asking, Why? Give me a reason. Why are you doing this? The whole time hes just shouting, I told you. I told you. You know what you did. As Wade continued to assault him in the doorway and outside of the front entrance, the officer struck Bivins with such force that he knocked out several of his teeth, while chipping others. My entire front, from canine to canine, are gone, Bivins reported. I am missing a tooth on the bottom. Theyre fractured. They still feel like theyre loose and might fall out. I dont know. Bivins was taken into custody for disorderly conduct. The couple hired prominent Detroit attorney Geoffrey Fieger to handle their case. The lawsuit names Meijer, DPD officer Lonnie Wade, three Meijer security guards, and other DPD officers. It was reported by MLive that while the officer was officially off duty at the time of the attack, he is stationed at the Meijer location in a support capacity in a secondary job that is sanctioned by the police. Detroit Police Chief James Craig initially attempted to justify the use of force against Bivins. In a statement to the press October 9 he claimed that Bivins was very agitated. He sent requests for warrants to the Wayne County Prosecutors Office for charges of disorderly conduct and resisting, which were returned. After preliminary examination of the security footage, Chief Craig revised his statement and recommended that Bivins not be charged, deeming that Wade had used excessive force. There was no indication at the initial contact with the officer that the subject was hostile. Craig said. He had his hands down to his side. We dont know what he was saying. He could have been using profanity. That in and of itself does not warrant an officer using force. The lawsuit being filed on behalf of the couple is claiming wrongful arrest, assault and battery, negligence, and slander. While criticizing the conduct of the officer, the DPD continued to seek criminal charges against Bivins. However, the Wayne County Prosecutors Office declined to pursue the case. Just this past week, the Prosecutors Office reported that DPD was submitting a second warrant review request seeking criminal charges against officer Wade. Bivins trauma is fairly typical of the police violence that is currently rampant across the US. In the vast majority of cases the perpetrators of police violence are never charged and even fewer officers convicted. In another recent case in Detroit, in August, a Michigan State trooper tased 15-year-old Daemon Grimes while he was riding his ATV on the east side of the city, causing him to crash into the rear of a pickup truck. Grimes died in the crash. Fieger has also filed a lawsuit in relation to that incident. The officer involved in the tasing later resigned his post. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, speaking on Fox News Monday night with Laura Ingraham, declared that the Civil War resulted from a failure to compromise. This is a reactionary and discredited interpretation that denies the historical necessity of the struggle that preserved the union, destroyed slavery and, in launching the industrial revolution, gave birth to the American working class. Kelly rehashed several components of what historians have come to call The Lost Cause myth, which centers on the false premise that in 1861 the plantation oligarchyowners of some 4.5 million slavesled the southern states out of the Union and into the Civil War over states rights, and that this fight was conducted by noble figures, epitomized by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Kelly said: Robert E. Lee was an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state. One hundred and fifty years ago, that was more important than countryit was always loyalty to state back in those days. Now its different. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand. The retired Marine generals praise for the leading Confederate general is a provocative reiteration of Trumps defense of the August 11-12 fascist riot in Charlottesville, which took place in opposition to the removal of a statue of Lee from a city park and resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old anti-racist protester run over by a white supremacist. Kellys comments also reprise a comment made by Trump in a May 1 interview with Sirius satellite radio. Why was there the Civil War? Trump asked. Why could that one not have been worked out? I mean, had Andrew Jackson been [president] a little later, you wouldnt have had the Civil War. The repetition of the same claim by Trump and his chief of staff shows that it is not an innocuous mistake. Trump, and even more Kelly, who has been promoted by the media as a moderating influence in the White House and the adult in the room, know full well what they are doing. Their aim, inspired by Trumps former chief advisor Steven Bannon, is to cultivate a far-right, fascistic movement in the United States. The Civil Wars revolutionary and egalitarian essence, which belongs to the whole working class, cuts across this. Its significance must therefore be distorted. Since this attack is waged in the arena of history, it is first of all necessary to set straight the historical record. The Civil War was itself the outcome of decades of compromise. The pattern of what Senator William Seward would in 1858 call the irrepressible conflict was already perceptible to some as early as 1820, including the elderly Thomas Jefferson, who famously wrote that that years Missouri Compromise like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. He continued: I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. These were prophetic words. Beginning with that compromise, by which the entry of Missouri as a slave state was offset by the entry of Maine as a free state, each new territorial acquisition, and every new state that entered the unionincluding all of the lands taken from the American Indians and Mexicoonly raised again, and on a more intense level, the sectional dispute over slavery. By 1861, this had reached an end point. Now, only one compromise was possible that would have appeased the Southern ruling class and averted the Civil War: a legal guarantee, or Slave Code, forever ensuring the inviolability of slavery in all of the United States. In late December 1860, with the Secession Crisis already underway, Mississippi Senator (and future Confederate President) Jefferson Davis, in his Compromise Proposal to the Committee of Thirteen to avert war, proposed precisely this: Resolved, That it shall be declared, by amendment of the Constitution, that property in slaves, recognized as such by the local law of any of the States of the Union, shall stand on the same footing in all constitutional and federal relations as any other species of property so recognized; and, like other property, shall not be subject to be divested or impaired by the local law of any other State, either in escape thereto or of transit or sojourn of the owner therein; and in no case whatever shall such property be subject to be divested or impaired by any legislative act of the United States, or of any of the Territories thereof. The Slave Code would be the law of the land in all federal territories and all future acquisitions, wherever they may beincluding Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua, each of which were targeted for annexation in the 1850s by southern politicians, including Sen. Albert Gallatin Brown of Mississippi, who in an 1858 speech fulminated against Republicans frustrating the expansion of slavery: I want Cuba, and I know that sooner or later we must have it. If the worm-eaten throne of Spain is willing to give it for a fair equivalent, wellif not, we must take it. I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reasonfor the planting and spreading of slavery. And a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring those other states. It will render them less valuable to the other powers of the earth, and thereby diminish competition with us. Yes, I want these countries for the spread of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and rebellious and wicked as the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them. Secession was not, then, an issue of states rightsbut rather the inability, after Lincolns victory in the 1860 election, of the Slave Power to dominate the levers of federal power, as it had done, in alliance with northern Democrats and so-called Cotton Whigs, uninterruptedly since the 1820s. But why did the Southern slaveocracy risk everything by instigating war? Why not accept the Republican Partys promise from its 1860 platform to uphold the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions, a promise reiterated by Lincoln in his First Inaugural: I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. In his The Scorpions Sting: Antislavery Politics and the Coming of the Civil War, Lincoln Prize Winner James Oakes argues that there was a widespread belief, in both the North and the South, that the restriction of slavery would lead to its ultimate extinctiona position originally upheld by the Founding Fathers, whose efforts along these lines, including the Northwest Ordinance and the ending of the transatlantic slave trade, were upended by the emergence of southern cotton as the staple crop of Britains industrial revolution. To stop slaverys further expansion, with an eye toward its endthis expressed Lincolns politics as well as the dominant anti-slavery current within the Republican Party. In his famous House Divided Speech, delivered in 1858 in the wake of the notorious Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, Lincoln said: A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolvedI do not expect the house to fallbut I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as newNorth as well as South. This ultimate extinction was not thought to be imminent, at least not in the North. According to Oakes, abolitionist congressmen such as Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Owen Lovejoy of Illinois thought that full emancipation might take 25 or 50 years. Lincoln thought as many as 100. In 1858, the Chicago Tribune could still predict that no man living would see the end of slavery. Far more than these northerners, the southern oligarchy sensed the imminence of revolutiona word its leaders flung freely at the hated Black Republican Party. They perceived Lincolns victory as a deadly ominous political expression of the Norths more rapidly growing population and economy, as well as its increasing cultural influence. They were convinced that further compromise would only hasten demise. It was time to strike out against the progress of history. Noting this, historian James McPherson in his Battle Cry of Freedom has aptly dubbed southern secession the Counter-Revolution of 1861. But, as he adds, seldom in history has a counterrevolution so quickly provoked the very revolution it sought to pre-empt. By the summer of 1862, Lincoln recognized it was no longer possible to return to the union of 1860. As the abolitionist Frederick Douglass advised, war for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery. Lincolns promise in 1861 to not touch slavery where it already existed gave way, on January 1, 1863, to the Emancipation Proclamation, which turned the Civil War into a revolutionary war. Whether the immediate question was union or emancipation, no one living in those years thought that the war was about anything other than slavery. When Lincoln said, looking back on the wars onset in his Second Inaugural, that all knew that slavery was somehow the cause of the war, it provoked no controversy. It was so obvious as to be a truism. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America, ratified in the spring of 1861, copied much of the American Constitution. But whereas the latter maintained a shamefaced silence over slaverythe word itself did not appearthe Confederate version took care to name it no less than ten times, guaranteeing its sanctity in any future territories acquired. In their various declarations of independence, whatever the precise wording, each of the southern secession conventions joined Louisiana in asserting that the people of the slave-holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. Karl Marx, writing in 1865, observed that this marked the first time in world history that an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe slavery on the banner of Armed Revolt. Indeed, in claiming that the Civil War was a mistake, Trump and Kelly are harkening back to a school of historical falsification created well after the Civil War. First put forward by former Confederates such as Jefferson Davis and General Jubal Early, the Lost Cause became, in all but name, the official narrative of American history in the 1890s, promoted by a wave of elite historians following William Dunning of Columbia University, among them the future American president and liberal icon Woodrow Wilson. Its basic tenets were these: the antebellum plantation system was a pastoral world of contented slaves and chivalrous owners; secession was not about slavery, but states rights; the entire South was united against the War of the Northern Aggression; Lee, the greatest of all American generals, succumbed to the ruthless Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant only in the face of vastly superior numbers; and the brief period of African-American political equality after the war, the period known as Reconstruction during the Grant administration, was the darkest hour of American history. It is no coincidence that this historical revisionism emerged in the 1890s, simultaneous with the consolidation and legal entrenchment of Jim Crow segregation, which became the law of the land in the 1896 Pless y vs. FergusonSupreme Court case. It is also not coincidental that it emerged simultaneously with the eruption of American imperialism in the predatory Spanish-American War of 1898, in which the conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines was ideologically justified, in part, by the concept of the White Mans Burden. Finally, it is not coincidental that this reactionary revisionism of the Civil War was promoted at the same time as the eruption of major and violent working class struggles against the new capitalist order, including, in 1894 alone, the Pullman Strike, the Great Northern Railway Strike and the nationwide Bituminous Coal Strikeevents that accelerated the emergence of socialism in the American working class from the late 1890s on. It was under these conditions that the American ruling class, now unified North and South around the imperialist project, found it convenient, even necessary, to hide the revolutionary and egalitarian essence of the Civil War. Kelly, Trump, Bannon, et al., hope that the Lost Cause myth can play a similar role in 2017. With the backing of Turkey and Iran, Iraqs Shia-dominated central government is expanding its offensive against the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) based in Erbil. Iraqi security forces have already dramatically reduced the territory controlled by the KRG, forcing Kurdish Peshmerga militia to withdraw from Kirkuk and virtually all the other areas outside the KRG that the Peshmerga seized from the Islamic State (ISIS) beginning in 2014. Now, Baghdad appears determined to take advantage of the crisis precipitated by the KRGs failed bid to create an independent Kurdish state to significantly reduce its autonomy within Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has vowed Baghdad will take control of the KRGs external borders, placing all international entry points, including airports, under control of forces loyal to the central government. Baghdad is especially anxious to gain control of the border at Faysh Khabur, which is an important conduit for oil exports and lies at the junction of the borders of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Al-Abadi has also called for the Peshmerga to be dramatically downsized or incorporated into the central governments security forces and says Baghdad should control all oil exports and be empowered to audit the KRGs budget. As the result of last months loss of oil fields near Kirkuk and smaller fields in Nineveh province, the KRG has already seen its oil-export revenue decline by more than half. The Peshmerga have thus far retreated in the face of the advance by the larger, better-equipped Iraqi forces. But Peshmerga commanders are now vowing to choose death over any further retreat, raising the prospect of bloody clashes that could draw in outside powers, including the US. Washington has long patronized the KRG, using it as a tool in its drive to assert unbridled domination over the worlds most important oil-exporting region. However, it opposed Erbils independence bid, as it cuts across its plans. The KRG has pushed Baghdad and Turkey into forging closer ties with Tehran at the very moment when Washington is preparing to dramatically intensify military-strategic pressure on Iran, by intervening more aggressively in Syria and sabotaging the Iran nuclear accord. In recent days, the US military, which has forces embedded with both the Peshmerga and the Iraqi army, has been trying to broker a truce. But the two sides agree on little, other than that Washington, which has enflamed sectarian tensions as part of a quarter-century of ruinous Middle East wars, is not to be trusted. Yesterday, Prime Minister al-Abadi accused the KRG of going back on an accord reached last Sunday to pull Peshmerga back from several disputed areas, including a Turkish border post. If they do not stick to [the agreement] we will do what we want, said al-Abadi, and if our forces find themselves under fire, we will show them the strength of the law. Meanwhile, a KRG government adviser accused Baghdad of having no interest in dialogue, and warned of the mounting drums of war in Kurdistan. On September 25, the KRG held an independence referendum, making good on a plan announced last June. In an especially provocative move, it extended the referendum to the ethnically and religiously diverse areas it controlled outside the official KRG boundaries laid out in the constitution imposed on the Iraqi people under the US occupation. Baghdad denounced the referendum as illegal, and Turkey and Iranboth of which have substantial Kurdish minoritieswarned the authorities in Erbil that they would not countenance the emergence of an independent Kurdish state on their borders. Nevertheless, the KRG government plunged ahead, gambling that Washington, despite its public stance of opposition to the referendum, would push Baghdad into talks and use its influence over its NATO ally Turkey to shield Erbil. The ruling Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which has been led by the Barzani family since its creation seven decades ago, has long enjoyed close relations with Washington and Israel. Moreover, the Peshmerga forged close ties with the Pentagon during the campaign against ISIS in Iraq, with Washington and the US media lauding them as shock troops, while covering up their role in ethnic cleansing along with the even greater war crimes committed by the US military. The Iraqi counter-offensive against the KRG independence bid has roiled the KDP and the Kurdish elite as a whole. On Sunday, the KDPs longtime leader, Masoud Barzani, gave an embittered televised speech from the KRG parliament in which he announced he was stepping down as president, after two elected four-year terms and several years of emergency extensions, the last carried out solely on his own authority. Barzani said, The Peshmerga and all the people of Kurdistan had been stabbed in the back by a poisonous dagger, but claimed the referendums endorsement of independence can never be erased. Deploring the lack of international support for the ethnic partition of Iraq, he said, The world once again showed that the people of Kurdistan have no friends but themselves and the mountains. He went on to lash out against a long list of reputed enemies of an independent Kurdistan, including Kurdish political rivals. His denunciation of Washington was particularly pointed. Our people, said Barzani, should now question, whether the US was aware of Iraqs attack and why they did not prevent it. Even as he accused the US of betraying the Kurdish people, the outgoing KRG president signaled, with a denunciation of Irans support for Shia militia allied with the Iraqi military, that he would be more than willing to enlist the KRG and Peshmerga in a US drive against Tehran. We are befuddled, said Barzani, that we are being attacked by certain people who are on Americas list of terrorists and are using American weapons. Barzani blamed the Peshmergas peaceful withdrawal from Kirkuk on forces loyal to the KRGs second largest party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. While he delivered his speech, some of his supporters were staging a violent demonstration in which they taunted and physically attacked opposition parliamentarians. Pending long-promised elections, the leading role in KRGs government will now be played by the prime minister, Masoud Barzanis nephew, Nechirvan Barzani. Many, however, expect the former president will continue to pull the levers of power from behind the scenes. His son remains head of the KRGs intelligence apparatus. The US State Department has called Masoud Barzanis resignation an act of statesmanship by an historic leader of the Kurdish people and has welcomed the elevation of his nephew. Clearly, Washingtons hope is the withdrawal of the KRG leader most closely identified with the independence referendum will help defuse the crisis. But Washington is increasingly alarmed that Baghdad appears to be giving short shrift to its calls for a strong KRG within a united Iraq. Such calls of course have nothing to do with securing the Kurdish people their democratic rights, but rather maintaining the KRG as a base for US operations inside Iraq and the broader region. Lamenting the recent turn of events, John Hannah, a former top aide to US Vice-President Cheneyi.e., one of the war criminals responsible for the 2003 invasion of Iraqdescribed the KRG as arguably, the greatest success of the entire US project in Iraq. Hannah told the KRG-based and KDP-aligned Kurdistan 24 television network that, while he thinks the referendum was ill-timed, there exists a widespread perception across the Middle East that America opted to stand on the sidelines and watch as one of its most loyal wartime allies was cowed into submission by forces beholden to Iran. Last week, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by US Senator John McCain headlined, We need a new strategy for the Middle East, which deplored the decline in American power in the Middle East and attributed this to a US withdrawal from the regioni.e., a pulling back from direct US military intervention in Syria in 2013 and from confronting Irans malign influence across the Middle East. McCain declared it unacceptable that a US-supported and armed government in Baghdad is getting help from Tehran in rolling back the Peshmerga from Kirkuk and other areas they occupied in the name of countering ISIS. If we keep sleepwalking on our current trajectory, said the Republican war-hawk, we could wake up in the near future and find that American influence has been pushed out of one of the most important parts of the world. That is why Americans need to care about what is going on in the Middle East right now. That is why we need to stick with our true friends, like the Kurds. In recent days, prominent congressional leaders, Democrats as well as Republicans, have implied the possibility of deploying US troops to prevent a massacre of the Kurds. I think we need to intervene, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, told the Washington Examiner. We should make sure there is no massacre, said the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, and I think that if the last resort would be to send troops or safeguards, I think we should consider it. David North, the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, delivered lectures this week on the significance of the Russian Revolution before large and enthusiastic audiences at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and San Diego State University (SDSU). The lectures were sponsored by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). They attracted an international audience of students, workers and intellectuals, with 60 people in attendance at UCSD and some 100 at SDSU. At UCSD, North began his lecture by noting that the postmodernist philosopher and adherent of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, had taught there. He compared the academic landscape of the 1960s and 1970s with that of today, contrasting the considerable esteem within academia for Marxism, historical truth and the October Revolution of the earlier period with the conservatism, historical falsification and outright anti-communism that are promoted on campuses in this period. In the course of his remarks, North outlined the events that give rise to the Russian Revolution and explained why it was the most progressive event to date in world history. He noted the respectful attitude among serious historians and intellectuals a half-century ago toward the Soviet Union, which was seen as an alternative to capitalism and private property. He noted the marked difference in attitude reflected in the bulk of recent commentaries in the bourgeois press on the centenary of the Russian Revolution, which have resorted to lies and slander. At the conclusion of his remarks, North stressed the rise of social inequality throughout the world since the dissolution of the USSR as well as the never-ending wars launched by US imperialism under the bogus banner of the war on terror. He asked his audience, How many of you are concerned about another major war? The vast majority of people in the packed lecture hall raised their hands. Following the lecture, many important questions were raised, including on the nature of Stalinism, on left-communism and on the prospects for revolution in the United States. Many students and young people approached North after the meeting to thank him for his lecture. Informal discussion continued well after the meeting had concluded. The strong attendance and lively discussion following the meeting have sparked increased interest in forming a chapter of the IYSSE at UCSD. Shrimant, a student at UCSD, told our reporters that the lecture was certainly eye-opening, adding, We have these expectations that socialism is flawed, but there is a lot to be discovered and unearthed. Im an international student and people are not that optimistic about how things are going to progress. I think people should be more politically involved and aware. There is a lot of propaganda about how socialism existed, but it is something I would like to learn more about. The following night, North spoke at a forum at San Diego State University on the centenary of the Russian Revolution alongside historian Rex Wade and SDSU Professor Mikhail Alexseev. Wade, professor emeritus at George Mason University, gave a factual account of the events leading to the Russian Revolution and noted the broad and democratic intervention of the masses into political life. North followed with a presentation that also noted the broad support of the masses for the Bolshevik program and expanded on why the revolution holds lessons for the struggle against war and inequality today. The question-and-answer section of the meeting was very lively, featuring questions on the nature of the Putin regime, the evolution of the Soviet Union after 1917 and the role of Lenin in preparing the October insurrection. Many of the students who stayed after the forum spoke with North and thanked him for his remarks. Nick, an undergraduate student, said, Ive been recently getting into socialism and the works of David North. It was a good time to come out and learn more. He added, I think one of the main takeaways of the Russian Revolution was that it was a popular revolution and the people wanted a way out of the war. Its important for the working class to learn from the Russian Revolution to resolve the same crises that are with us today. Joe, also a student, said, The importance of the lecture in the context of today in undeniable. The reason why they were able to go from a bourgeois to a socialist revolution was because of a party that captured the popular imagination. If we dont have a similar party today we can see a relapse into fascism. Melissa, an international relations major, said, I think students and workers should listen to the program of David North. It is valuable information, and seeing so many students at the meeting shows people are willing to have an open ear. When asked about her thoughts on socialism, she said, Socialism has become such a bad word for so many young people, but it only takes a little bit to realize that it isnt so much so if you lend an ear to real politics. I have become interested in socialism because you see so much wealth inequality and now we have a president who wants to go to war. Finding an alternative perspective has been promising. The Socialist Equality Group (SEG) held a public meeting in Wellington on Sunday to discuss the right-wing character of the new Labour-Green-New Zealand First government and the need to build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to lead the working class in the fight against austerity and war. New Zealand First, a far-right anti-immigrant party that received only 7.2 percent of the votes in the September 23 election, finally decided on October 19 to form a coalition government with the Labour Party, ending nine years of rule by the conservative National Party government. The meeting brought together an audience of workers, students and members and supporters of the SEG. In the main report, leading SEG member Tom Peters warned that the working class faced great dangers. With the formation of the NZ First-Labour-Green government a definite political shift has been engineereda shift to the right, towards a more open embrace of US imperialism and militarism. He explained that the election outcome had to be understood in the international context of economic breakdown and the drive to war against China and North Korea. During coalition negotiations following the inconclusive election result, Trumps ambassador to New Zealand Scott Brown gave a televised interview in which he criticised National Party Prime Minister Bill English for saying Trumps threat to rain fire and fury on North Korea was not helpful. Brown stressed the importance of New Zealands role in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance and made clear that the next government would be expected to fully endorse US war plans, as the Australian government has done. Peters explained that NZ First and Labour had been at the forefront of an anti-Chinese campaign for at least the past five years, attacking the government for allowing foreign investment and scapegoating Chinese immigrants for the housing bubble, low wages and other aspects of the social crisis caused by capitalism. NZ First leader Winston Peters, who now occupies the position of deputy prime minister and foreign minister, has repeatedly accused China of controlling the New Zealand economy and called for a McCarthyite inquiry into Chinese influence within the National Party. Tom Peters noted that the Labour Party had also made NZ First deputy leader Ron Mark, a former army officer, the new defence minister. Last year Mark attacked the government for being short-sighted with respect to what it takes to train and prepare for war. He called for an air strike capability and drones to counter Chinas growing presence in the Pacific. The speaker noted that already the new government has announced it will expand a military-run pilot training scheme for unemployed youth, something NZ First and the trade union funded Daily Blog supported. He added that during a NZ First press conference on Wednesday, the party glorified Apirana Ngata, the well-known Maori politician who played a key role in convincing young Maori to fight and die in World War I and II. The SEG rejected any suggestion that Labour was a lesser evil to National. Peters explained that the decision to grant such a major role to NZ First is the clearest indication of the reactionary, anti-immigrant, law-and-order and militarist program of the Labour-led government For 100 years Labour has been a pro-imperialist party that sought to divide the working class by scapegoating immigrants for unemployment and other social problems. Labour has already confirmed it would slash immigration by as much as 30,000 per year, or 40 percent. The new governments right-wing agenda also includes plans to cut tax for many businesses and introduce a work-for-the-dole scheme for unemployed people. To prepare for a surge in the class struggle, new anti-strike laws are being drawn up and 1,800 extra police officers will be recruited, an increase of 20 percent. Very quickly the working class will come face to face with the real agenda of the government, Peters said. We tell workers bluntly that they cannot have any illusions in the Labour-NZ First-Green government. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are the only political organisation making such warnings. The speaker drew attention to the embrace of Labour by a host of liberal commentators and middle class pseudo-left groups connected with the trade unions, including the Daily Blog, the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) and Socialist Aotearoa. The ISO hailed the coalition deal between Labour and NZ First as delivering on a promise of hope and change and ludicrously declared that NZ First was leaning left for now economically. Peters pointed out that the ISO and similar groups internationally had hailed the election of Barack Obama in the US in 2008, and the Greek Syriza government in 2015. Both governments accelerated the assault on workers and handed more power to the military and police. Obamas reactionary policies of never-ending war abroad and austerity at home paved the way for the coming to power of Trump in 2016. The report concluded by urging those present to study the history of the Russian Revolution and the Bolsheviks intransigent struggle against every tendency that sought to compromise with the liberal bourgeoisie. The SEG is campaigning for a meeting to commemorate the Russian Revolution in Auckland on November 25. The meeting will elaborate the lessons of that great event, which must guide the building of a Trotskyist party in New Zealand. The report was followed by a wide-ranging and lively discussion. One audience member, a builder, said it doesnt seem credible that Labour and the Greens would support Trumps threats of war. If they did, the parties would be pilloried by their activist base and wiped out at the next election, he said. In response, a student noted that the 1999-2008 Labour government had sent troops to Bushs criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There were significant anti-war protests at the time, but Labour didnt display much concern about what the protesters were saying, he said. An SEG member added that there had been virtual silence on the danger of war during the election campaign, and none of the parties had ruled out joining a war against North Korea. Peters explained that Labour and the Greens had no connection with the working class and their activist base consisted of upper middle class careerists who supported the parties imperialist policies. A meat worker asked whether the pseudo-left groups supporting the new government could be described as reformist. SEG member John Braddock replied that they could not. He explained that the unions and pseudo-lefts were trying to hoodwink the working class, to sell the illusion that Labour has reforms left in it. It hasnt Bourgeois parties cannot honestly and straightforwardly present what theyre really going to do because the population wont accept it. It has to be covered up. Two audience members asked how the SEG would address workers illusions in Labours promises to address poverty, such as raising the minimum wage from $15.75 to $20 an hour. Braddock replied that this pitiful increase, which would only be reached in 2021, could not be considered a genuine reform. He stressed that such measures had to be exposed, as well as statements by NZ First and Labour leaders that capitalism had failed and needed to regain its human face. The purpose of this pseudo-populist rhetoric was to forestall a social explosion in the working class and buy time for the bourgeoisie to plan deeper attacks. The SEG recommends: Labour Party details coalition agreement with New Zealand First [25 October 2017] US ambassador intervenes in New Zealands political crisis [18 October 2017] No to war and social inequality! For world socialism!Statement of the Socialist Equality Group on the New Zealand election [19 September 2017] The Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU) last week suspended all industrial action while it continues negotiations for new enterprise agreements (EBAs) covering around 850 workers in Pacific Nationals coal and bulk cargo haulage divisions in New South Wales (NSW). In September, workers voted overwhelming for a campaign of industrial action. More than 79 percent of eligible workers participated, underscoring the anger over the companys drive to cut back conditions. The unions decision followed a two-hour conciliation meeting in the Fair Work Commission (FWC) industrial tribunal last Wednesday. The RTBU requested the talks on the pretext that the company withdrew from an agreement to negotiate a single EBA for both the coal and bulk divisions. Earlier, the union lifted an indefinite overtime ban within 24 hours of it being imposed and abandoned two other work bans. A 48-hour stoppage last weekend, the second this month, went ahead to give the impression that the RTBU will press the company hard in the new round of talks. There is considerable frustration among workers over the lack of progress in more than 30 rounds of negotiations in the past 10 months. The FWC insisted there would be not be a single EBA covering both sections of the Pacific National workforce. Nor has the company shifted from its demand for the tearing up of working conditions. Nevertheless, the RTBU called off industrial action as a sign of good faith. The RTBU sought the involvement of the FWC, which the trade unions laud as an independent umpire, to facilitate its efforts to broker yet another set of EBAs along the lines demanded by Pacific National (PN). The FWC is anything but an independent umpire. It is part of the repressive Fair Work Australia regime introduced by the last Labor government in 2009, with the full support of the unions. Since its inception, the FWC has intervened in dispute after dispute, using its extensive powers to terminate industrial action and facilitate outcomes favourable to the employers. The unions involved then declared workers had no choice but to accept the result. The RTBU will no doubt rely on the FWC to carry out a similar intervention if it meets opposition from its members to the deal it eventually hatches with PN. PN is demanding workers accept changes to ramp up the level of labour exploitation and impose ever-greater levels of workplace flexibility. These include the removal of all restrictions on the number of casuals and contract labour hires; a reduction in rostered weekends off; and the abolition of the right of train crews to refuse further work after eight hours on duty. Workers also would be required to work before or after scheduled shift timesarrangements known as lifting up and laying back. While the RTBU claims to be fighting to keep and improve conditions, its set of claims are deliberately lacking in detail, to allow it to more easily hand over concessions to PN. There is no actual pay demand, only a reference to a fair and reasonable wage increase that recognises employees contribution to the company. What is reasonable will be decided in horse-trading during negotiations, linked to trade-offs. The union is calling only for a cap on casual and contract labour, but does not specify the level it will accept. The last EBA signed off by the RTBU in 2014 allowed PN to move to 49 percent casualisation. Workers found out about this only when a union official blurted it out to the media last November. Far from opposing casualisation, the RTBU has facilitated it, by allowing the destruction of hundreds of permanent jobs across PN. These included 120 positions in the companys NSW operations last year, on top of 200 jobs shed in 2014. These job cuts, like those at rival companies, have been achieved through union-sanctioned measures such as voluntary redundancies, redundancy swaps and redeploymentall of which the RTBU has agreed to retain in the new EBAs. PNs attacks are part of a broader offensive by haulage and freight operators to cut jobs, wages and working conditions. The companies want to slash costs at workers expense under conditions of a ruthless struggle for market share as the coal and mineral conglomerates and agribusinesses continuously demand lower prices. Ports and rail corporate group Asciano sold off PN last year to a consortium of international investors. Before doing so, it carried out a cost-cutting drive, featuring severe job cuts, to save between $150 million and $300 million. In 2015, Queensland-based freight-haulage company Aurizon slashed 800 jobs in a restructure to save up to $380 million, after axing 2,000 jobs between 2010 and 2015. Halting the assault on jobs and conditions and ending the scourge of casualisation requires a unified struggle by workers across PNs operations nationally, together with all others employed in the haulage, freight and transport sector who face similar attacks. The RTBU has worked to block such a development. In every instance, it has enforced the anti-strike provisions in the Fair Work laws. These make industrial action illegal except during EBA bargaining periods at individual enterprises. The RTBU, along with all unions, has worked to ensure that all disputes remain firmly within the EBA framework introduced by Labor in the early 1990s, designed to end industry-wide campaigns. EBAs divide workers on an enterprise basis, allowing them to be played off against each other in a downward spiral of conditions. In May for example, PN locked out freight train drivers in its rural and bulk division in the state of Victoria, as part of its drive to impose an EBA that slashed conditions and cut pay. The RTBU conducted no campaign among its members to oppose the lockout, signalling to PN it could conduct similar assaults on other sections of workers. To oppose the attacks by PN and other freight companies, workers need to make a decisive break with the unions and establish new organisations of struggle, such as independent workplace committees. These organisations will fight to unite workers across the sector, turn out to other sections of the working class and begin a discussion on a new political strategy. At the centre of a counter-offensive has to be the fight for a workers government, based on socialist policies, including placing the major mining, agribusiness, rail and infrastructure companies under public ownership and workers control. Australian Senate president Stephen Parry will submit his resignation today to Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, both as president and a member of parliament, after the UK Home Office confirmed that he is a British citizen, as well as an Australian citizen. As Parrys departure demonstrates, what has become, in effect, a nationalist purge of parliament, is far from over. Today, the Australian, Rupert Murdochs flagship, published a list of 21 other MPs whom it claims have not provided documentary proof that they renounced their entitlements to citizenship of other countries before standing for election. Parry, a Liberal Party senator, became the sixth MP since July to be removed for breaching section 44(i) of the reactionary 1901 Constitution, which forbids anyone from even nominating for parliament if they hold allegiance to a foreign power or are entitled to citizenship rights of another country. Like the five MPs disqualified by the High Court last Friday, Parrys entitlement to dual citizenship was tenuous. He fell foul of section 44(i), despite being born in Australia, simply because his father emigrated from Britain in 195166 years ago. Those already removed on a similar basis are deputy prime minister and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and deputy National Party leader Fiona Nash, as well as two Greens senators, Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, who resigned in July as soon as the citizenship furore began, in order to prove their commitment to Australian nationalism. Malcolm Roberts, a Senate representative of Pauline Hansons anti-immigrant One Nation, was also ousted. As with the other disqualified senators, Parry will be replaced by a nominee of his own party. His successor is likely to be Richard Colbeck, a former senator and tourism minister who lost his seat in the 2016 election. The implications of the ongoing disqualification saga are far broader, however, directly affecting the basic democratic rights of millions of people. Dual citizenship has been permitted in Australia since 2002. An estimated half of the countrys increasingly diverse adult population now has, or is entitled to, that status. But in a sweeping anti-democratic ruling, the seven High Court judges last week unanimously applied a strict interpretation of section 44(i) that disqualifies them all from election to parliament unless they formally renounce their dual citizenship rights. The supreme courts judgment was replete with nationalist and patriotic language, demanding unqualified allegiance to Australia and single-minded loyalty, free from any foreign loyalties or obligations. The judges insisted that anyone entitled to citizenship of another country was ineligible to stand for parliament, even if they had no knowledge of that entitlement and had never accepted it. Following Parrys resignation, growing calls are being made throughout the media and political establishment for an full audit of the 226 senators and members of the House of Representatives, and all other candidates in the 2016 double dissolution election, to determine their eligibility. This would be a full-scale McCarthyite-style witchhunt. It would require a genealogical investigation of every candidate, tracing their ancestry back, at least to their grandparents, to see whether the law of any other country potentially bestowed citizenship entitlements on them. So far, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other leaders of the ruling Liberal-National Coalition are rejecting demands for such an investigation, together with the Labor Party leadership. Both parties fear losing more MPs. But several backbench government and Labor members have now joined the chorus, which was first instigated by the Greens in July. Others agitating for an audit include the xenophobic One Nation, Senator Cory Bernardis Australian Conservatives and another right-wing populist, Nick Xenophon. Todays Australian editorial reiterated that demand, which it originally took up in August, reminding its readers that it had declared this time the Greens are right. The editorial expressed alarm that since then time has been wasted and the turmoil has increased. On national television last night, Greens leader Senator Richard Di Natale urged the government and Labor to show some leadership by backing the Greens audit call, in the interests of the national wellbeing and to halt the slide into constitutional crisis territory. Once again, the Greens are proving themselves to be the most loyal servants of the existing political order. Despite the Coalition government losing two key cabinet ministers, and facing the prospect of losing its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives if Joyce fails to regain his seat at a December 2 by-election, there is nothing progressive whatsoever in this purge. None of the MPs are being removed because of their right-wing and anti-working class policies. They are being ousted, on the orders of the High Court, the judicial pinnacle of the state apparatus, for being potentially disloyal to Australian capitalism. The judges explicitly referred to the need to ensure undivided allegiance, and freedom from any overseas military service obligations, in times of war. The nationalist cleansing of parliament has a definite political agenda. It is being conducted under conditions of preparations for the Australian government to join even more catastrophic US-led wars, not just against North Korea but China and Russia, the two powers regarded most by Washington as obstacles to global US hegemony. For more than a year, the media, working hand-in-glove with the US-linked Australian intelligence agencies, has repeatedly mounted frenzied propaganda campaigns against supposed Chinese interference in Australian politics, society, universities and business. A column in todays Australian by editor-at-large Paul Kelly pointed to the underlying connection between the disqualification saga and this promotion of an anti-Chinese and pre-war atmosphere. Kelly denounced any suggestion of amending the Constitution, via a referendum, to remove or modify the requirements of section 44(i), declaring: The most ludicrous idea in the citizenship trauma is the proposal for a referendum to make our parliament truly multicultural by allowing MPs to be dual citizens. The veteran Murdoch editor drew a direct link to a potential conflict with China, asking: How do you feel about having as prime minister an Australian-American dual citizen or an Australian-Israeli dual citizen or, if Beijing changes its policy, an Australian-Chinese dual citizen? The references to the US and Israel were to provide a thin veneer for invoking the prospect of a confrontation with Beijing. Kelly declared the necessity for a powerful sense of sovereigntythat is, xenophobic nationalismand condemned any concession to the ever-more diverse character of the Australian population or popular internationalist sentiment. Any serious push to reverse the import of section 44 would be a social engineering project aimed at weakening Australian sovereignty in the cause of internationalism. Others in the media and corporate elite are expressing alarm at the damage being done to the parliamentary edifice by the political turmoil surrounding the disqualification imbroglio. In todays Fairfax Media outlets, national affairs editor Mark Kenny wrote: The dual citizenship question burning like a subterranean coal fire beneath capital hill, is threatening collapse. A full blown legitimation crisis looms. Confidence between the represented and the representative, is threadbare. This only poses the question of why such a destabilising witch-hunt has been unleashed. It can be understood only as a means of disciplining and re-shaping the political establishment, and acclimatising public opinion, for conditions of war and even deeper accompanying austerity measures and attacks on basic democratic rights. It is increasingly possible that the political crisis could see the Turnbull government fall, wracked by recriminations and rifts over the disqualifications. However, outside the independent intervention of the working class, fighting for an alternative socialist and internationalist perspective, this would only pave the way for the return of yet another right-wing, pro-US Labor government, most likely propped up by the Greens and the various populist formations in the parliament. The author also recommends: The dual citizenship furore in the Australian parliament: What is at stake for the working class? [6 September 2017] The Catalan nationalist parties are working openly with the Popular Party (PP) government in Madrid in return for hoped-for concessions from the European Union. The result of their efforts is to allow the Spanish regime to set a dangerous precedent for imposing its will by police-military fiat, with the full backing of the Socialist Party (PSOE) opposition. Last Friday, the regional parliament of Catalonia voted for independence from Spain and the start of a constituent process to draft a new constitution for a Catalan Republic. Of the 135 deputies in the parliament, 70 from the Democratic European Party of Catalonia (PDeCat), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the pseudo-left Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) voted in favour. The nationalist politicians pledged to resist the threatened invocation of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution by the PP and to oppose attempts by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to oust Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and his regional ministers, dissolve the Catalan parliament and organise snap regional elections. Instead, the nationalists have agreed to participation in the snap elections called for December 21a move that will place a seal of legitimacy on Spains suspension of Catalan autonomy and rule of the region by decree. Puigdemont and other ousted government ministers fled to Belgium, ostensibly to escape prosecution. But while there, Puigdemont repeated his appeals to the EU to intervene in the secession crisis by brokering a deal between Madrid and his deposed government. As a quid pro quo, he acquiesced in Rajoys call for snap elections, which he described as a democratic plebiscite. According to a Radio Catalunya journalist, Ernest Marcia, speaking to the BBC, Puigdemonts endorsement of the elections indicated that secret talks are taking place between Puigdemont and Rajoy, mediated by the EU. In my opinion, Marcia said, something is going on that nobody knows is happening, and probably Europe is intervening Not publicly, they will not recognize anything. But Spain has done something that they didnt say a few weeks ago and Catalonia is accepting the authority of Spain, which is also very strange from the secessionist point of view. There is nothing strange in Puigdemonts actions. The Catalan nationalists aim from day one was to whip up popular support for separatism, in part by exploiting legitimate grievances towards Madrid and the social unrest generated by austerity. But this was focused primarily on an appeal to middle-class layers, based upon demands that relatively prosperous Catalonia stop subsidising Spains poorer regions. Catalonia is Spains richest region, representing a fifth of the countrys gross domestic product. The aim of the separatist parties is to create a new mini-state, or at least accrue the necessary degree of independence to establish direct relations with the global banks, transnational corporations and the EU. The goal is to consolidate Catalonia as a low tax, free trade area based on the stepped-up exploitation of the working class. Their mobilisations on the street were never more than a form of leverage to negotiate greater tax-raising powers and other concessions from Madrid. The Catalan nationalist parties have spent years imposing brutal austerity measures while sending the regional Catalan police to smash up strikes and protests. But once the European Union and its governments pledged support for Rajoys clampdown, a retreat was only a matter of time. On Monday, the PDeCAT and ERC affirmed their abandonment of opposition to the December 21 elections and announced they would field candidates. ERC spokesman Sergi Sabria, while declaring the election illegitimate and a trap, added that nevertheless, we are not afraid of the ballot box. The Catalan National Assembly, whose leader remains in jail on sedition charges, insisted it still only recognises the Catalan Republic and rejected Article 155, only to declare in the next breath it would call a meeting before November 3 to decide on a joint strategy for the December 21 elections. The petit-bourgeois Popular Unity Candidacy, CUP, which kept the ERC-PDeCAT coalition in power while acting as the most intransigent promoters of the bourgeois nationalist cause and hailing its supposed leftist credentials, was even more explicit, cavalier and criminal. The Spanish state has neutralized us with intimidation and fear, it complained. What has happened, CUP spokesperson Benet Salellas concluded, is that there has been an excess of improvisation in some of the actions during the last months. He then reiterated support for Puigdemont, praising him for focussing on Brussels, which supposedly internationalizes the massive violation of human rights, and ended with a pathetic call for him to approve the first republican decrees. The CUPs Political Council is organising a meeting on November 4 to decide whether to support Rajoys elections and register before the November 7 deadline. Those sections of the Catalan-speaking working class that lent support to the nationalists have drawn initial conclusions from the ongoing rout. Reports are that most public-sector workers, including teachers and fire fighters, as well as the regional police, have continued working after earlier indicating backing for a campaign of civil disobedience. The trade union bureaucracy is more than happy to climb down, with Intersindical-CSC declaring Monday that it has called off a threatened general strike. This situation is fraught with dangers. The nationalists first championed a divisive programme that helped create maximum confusiondividing Catalan workers from those in Spain, and dividing Catalan- and Spanish-speakers in the regionat a time of universal opposition to the austerity agenda imposed by Madrid and Barcelona alike. Now, after the PP seized on an opportunity to mobilise the army and civil guard and impose rule by decree, they offer their services as a political gendarme in the hope of striking a new bargain with Madrid and Brussels. The attempt by Madrid and the EU to impose a dictatorial regime, whether or not this is sanctioned by imposed elections, must be opposed by the entire Spanish and Catalan working class. The hand of the PP government has only been strengthened by allowing it to implement repressive and anti-democratic measures that will inevitably be employed against workers throughout Spain. But an implacable struggle against Madrid and its EU backers can be waged only if it is entirely independent of the Catalan bourgeois parties and their reactionary agenda of national separatism. A progressive answer to the crisis confronting the working class of Spain, whatever language is spoken, demands an end to all national divisions through the adoption of the perspective of socialist internationalism. Against a capitalist Spain and the plan to create a capitalist Catalonia, the working class must wage a unified struggle for the formation of workers governments in Spain and throughout Europe as part of the progressive socialist unification of the continent. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used a visit to India last week to promote intensified military collaboration between Washington and New Delhi. In a speech to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) days before his trip, Tillerson spelt out the purpose of his South Asian tour. He declared India would play a key role in the US-led offensive against China. Tillerson claimed that the very international order that has benefited Indias riseand that of many others was increasingly under strain from Beijing. He touted Indias rise as a counterweight to growing Chinese influence throughout the Asia-Pacific. At a press conference in New Delhi last week, Tillerson said India and the US are natural allies, standing shoulder to shoulder against terrorism, with growing defence and economic ties. Tillerson alluded to the US strategy of cultivating India as an attack dog pressing Washingtons interests throughout the region, declaring his support for Indias emergence as a leading power. He committed the Trump administration to continue to contribute to Indian capabilities to provide security throughout the region. Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Saraj signalled her governments full support for this agenda. Saraj hailed the clear vision of Tillersons comments on an India-US global partnership during his CSIS speech. We fully share your strong desire to strengthen this relationship between the two largest democracies of the world, Saraj said. Tillerson also held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. The Indian trip was part of a tour of the region in the wake of the newly-announced South Asian policy of President Donald Trump. This strategy includes escalating pressure on China, and countries in the region with ties to it, such as Pakistan, and an expanded military presence, particularly in Afghanistan. Tillerson also visited Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Afghanistan, Tillerson pointed to the scope of New Delhis partnership with Washington. Our view of the relationship with India is one thats of strategic importance not just for this specific region, he said, but for a free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way from Japan to India. So its a broader relationship. Tillerson reprimanded Indias chief rival, Pakistan. In Islamabad, we were frank to conclude that there are too many terrorist outfits that find safe havens in Pakistan. He said the US was putting in place mechanisms to tackle these outfits. In Pakistan, Tillerson reiterated warnings that the Trump administration would scale back aid if Islamabad failed to crack down on Islamic groups fighting US occupation forces in Afghanistan. While advancing US interests in Afghanistan, Tillersons accusations against Pakistan are also an endorsement of Indias long-time charges that Islamabad sponsors cross-border terrorism. New Delhi has used such claims to promote chauvinism and justify inflaming border disputes with Pakistan, which led to armed clashes last year. Encouraged by Tillersons comments, Swaraj said: US President Donald Trumps policy on terrorism can only succeed when Pakistan takes an action against the terror groups. The US is also using the charge to place pressure on Pakistan to move away from its close ties with China. While in India, Tillerson raised New Delhis diplomatic ties with North Korea and its economic and strategic relationship with Iran. The visit took place in the context of the Trump administrations provocative threats of war against North Korea and moves to scuttle a nuclear deal with Iran signed by the Obama administration. India has already lined up with Trumps aggressive stance against Pyongyang, parroting US denunciations of North Koreas limited nuclear and missile arsenals as a threat to world peace. It has also implemented sanctions against North Korea in line with a UN Security Council resolution moved by the US. Swaraj claimed India has resisted Washingtons demand for an end to diplomatic and economic ties with North Korea. She downplayed those relations, stating that trade between the two nations has reduced substantially to be minimal and that diplomatic relations should remain there so that some channels of communication remain open. With the continuous escalation of US provocations against North Korea, India will likely come under intense pressure from Washington to break off all relations with Pyongyang. Swaraj, however, claimed that Tillerson appreciated the limited character of economic and diplomatic links to North Korea. Tillerson took a conciliatory attitude toward Indias ties with Iran. He said it was not the US objective to interfere with legitimate business activities or agreements that are in place or promote economic development and activity to the benefit of our friends and allies. This stance is contrary to Tillersons warnings to the European powers not to invest in Iran. While in Saudi Arabia on October 22, Tillerson said those who conduct business with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, any of their entitiesEuropean companies or other companies around the globereally do so at great risk. Tillersons soft position on Indias ties with Iran are aimed at boosting New Delhis geo-political influence in the region, to counter Chinas growing clout. India is developing Irans strategically-located Chabahar port and a transport corridor connecting it to Afghanistan. This is aimed at expanding Indian access throughout the oil- and gas-rich Central Asian region. These plans run counter to the attempts by China to economically integrate the Eurasian landmass under its One Belt, One Road infrastructure project. It is not clear whether Tillerson raised proposals to establish an anti-China quadrilateral dialogue by incorporating Australia into the trilateral front involving the US, Japan and India. Tillerson floated the proposal in his CSIS speech. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono however, told Nikkei last Thursday that the Japanese government would propose the move during Trumps Asian tour next week. On a building project that is already nearly $500,000 over budget, the Columbia County Boards Ad Hoc Building Committee on Tuesday considered changes in the courthouse remodeling project that could potentially add even more costs. Shonna Neary of the countys accounting department told committee members that the $45.51 million project is about $464,000 over budget. The overruns also have come from changes requested by court staff, and from additions to the project, such as new climate-control infrastructure, that were not included in the original plans, but which make sense to complete while the buildings interior is being gutted. The two proposed changes discussed on Tuesday both stem from concerns raised by employees of the courts and the countys Building and Grounds Department. The budget for the courthouse renovation calls for a decorative metal fence, with secure sliding gates, for a parking area on the courthouses southeast side, for judges and employees of the district attorneys office. Project Manager Ron Locast, of the Madison-based design firm Potter Lawson, said the fence, as proposed, would cost about $46,500 and thats whats budgeted for it. But court staff members have asked the committee to look into the possibility of building, instead, an opaque fence, so that no passers-by can see, talk to or otherwise bother people entering or leaving their vehicles in the parking lot. The committee made no decision on the opaque fence, largely because they dont know what it might cost. Locast said there are two options for an opaque fence one made of PVC (plastic) material, the other a louvered style made of galvanized steel. The potential problems with the plastic fence are numerous, he said. It would not be durable, especially during winter snow removal, and a matching gate could not be installed, resulting in a gate that looks like a chain-link cyclone fence. Tanner Davis of the Madison-based construction firm J.H. Findorff and Sons said he does not have a price quote for the louvered fence, but its likely that it would be much more costly than the fence that is currently in the plans. Supervisor Barry Pufahl of Pardeeville, chairman of the County Boards Judiciary Committee, asked whether the louvered fence would truly be more secure, especially if a person were determined to pry up the slats to look inside the parking lot. (The secure lot also will be monitored by video cameras.) If somebody wants to peek in, he said, theyll peek in. Judge W. Andrew Voigt said he questioned whether a decorative metal fence would provide sufficient security, and suggested the possibility of forgoing a fence altogether, to save money. Dont spend money on a fence that just looks pretty, and doesnt accomplish what we want it to accomplish, he said. In another courthouse-related issue, Locast said he has learned of potential acoustics problems involving the judges chambers and jury rooms, which might allow confidential conversations to be overheard. Acoustics, Locast said, are something thats really difficult to fix after the fact, so we want to do it right. Building and Grounds Director Cory Wiegel said he has been able to hear conversations in jury rooms through the walls of nearby restrooms. Voigt said its not just a situation where someone can hear voices but not understand what is being said. I could hear what was said, he said. I could even tell who was speaking. Creating a more soundproof environment, Locast said, would entail adding more layers of drywall and ensuring that doors, joints and even electric outlets are sealed to prevent the transmission of voices. The committee approved the acoustical improvements, after hearing that the cost for additional drywall would likely run less than $10,000. For the proposed opaque fence, the committee expects to have more information about pricing when it next meets on Nov. 9. (WTXL) - Several organizations in South Georgia are coming together to fight the nationwide opioid epidemic on a local level. Residents from all over south Georgia are encouraged to attend tonight's town hall. Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital and Aspire Health Group are co-organizing the event. They're also working with State Senators Renee Unterman and Freddie Powell Simms and the Albany-Dougherty County Opioid Task Force. Addiction is a growing crisis, and organizers say there's only one way to fight it, open dialogue. Tonight's town hall will run from 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. in the Imagination Theatre across from the Flint Riverquarium. MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates. Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved. TIFTON, Ga. (WTXL) - The Pediatric Dental Center of Georgia is encouraging people to bring in their Halloween candy to send to troops overseas. The Pediatric Dental Center of Georgia has partnered with Moody Air Force Base in collecting individually wrapped candy to send to our troops. Dentist Luke Webster says this event encourages children to give back and is a unique way of building relationships with the men and women serving overseas. The campaign runs until Friday. You can drop off candy at the Pediatric Dental Center of Georgia, located at 820 Love Avenue in Tifton. MOBILE USERS: Download our WTXL news app on your Apple and Android devices for the latest from South Georgia and North Florida. Also, download our WTXL Weather Now app for Apple and Android devices to get the latest local weather wherever you go. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for additional local news and hourly updates. Copyright 2017 WTXL via Raycom News Network. All rights reserved. A Jackson County sheriffs deputy fatally shot an armed Black River Falls man early Saturday in the town of Komensky, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation. The incident started when deputy Justin Wathke investigated a disorderly conduct and a possible restraining order violation call, according to the agency and Jackson County Sheriff Duane Waldera. Wathke took a statement from a female and then went to talk to Lucas J. DeFord, 27, of Black River Falls. DeFord fled from a traffic stop and drove to the womans house and was shot by Wathke when he showed a gun, according to DCI and Waldera. An autopsy conducted at University Hospital in Madison confirmed the gunshot wound was the cause of death. Wathke, a deputy since 2009, is on administrative leave. He was wearing a body camera during the shooting. DCI will turn over investigative reports to the Jackson County District Attorneys Office for a prosecutor to determine whether the shooting was justified. Waldera said this case is tragic and is a sad end to a disorderly conduct incident. When you get into the situation further, the in-depth history of these individuals involved, it is a very bad thing that occurred, but there is a lot of history, Waldera said. These two people shouldnt have contact, but the male party was so motivated to have contact with this individual that it was at all cost. When you get to that at all cost, you dont know the state of mind. About 25 people from the community demanded answers Monday as they sat outside the Jackson County Courthouse during a peaceful protest about the shooting. The ones that are here have a voice and they wanted to be heard, and I am totally fine with that assembly as long as it is peaceful, Waldera said. Submit An Obituary Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death. Go to form Susan Hillis, far left, passes on the art of lefse making to her daughters, Denise Hillis and Karen Hillis, far right. (Courtesy Sue Haney) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded Wednesday to the harsh criticism lobbed at him by slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's son, Yuval, during a speech he made at his father's memorial service at Mt. Herzl, earlier in the day. After Yuval stated that his father "did not abdicate his responsibilities" and "did not whine," Netanyahu said during a special Knesset session in memory of Rabin: "You'll be surprised, Yuval, but I understand your pain when facing the waves of slander and mudslinging against your father. You turned to me, and I'm accepting the challenge by calling for national reconciliation and unity." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter During his speech at Mt. Herzl, Yuval Rabin spoke of how even under the worst attacks he had known, his father took his responsibilities as the leader of Israel very seriously. Netanyahu at the special Knesset session dedicated to Rabin (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) "Rabin and his wife were not handled with kid gloves. Rabin did not enact legislation, did not abdicate his responsibilities and did not whine. Even when he was under an onslaught of the most hateful attacks conceivable, he was everyone's prime minister. That's not the way things are today." Yuval then stressed that "I'd like to make something perfectly clear: what happened 22 years ago was murder. It was politically-motivated. Its goals were clearly defined, and there absolutely was incitement then. That is a truth we must come to terms with. "We can no longer sit idly by as Yitzhak Rabin is portrayed as a murderer himself who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis. Enough is enough. The vast majority of the victims of the Oslo Accords were murdered by Hamas. That organization was, and still is, a sworn enemy of Israel," he said in an attempt to clarify any possible misconceptions regarding his father. At the time of his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin was a frequent target of the radical right-wing opposition, which labeled him "a traitor of Israel." During his Wednesday speech at Mt. Herzl, Yuval Rabin stated that this kind of violent, accusatory and dangerous political discourse is still very much de rigueur: without directly calling out Netanyahu for past and present moves that have been labeled as blatant incitement, Yuval Rabin posited that not much has changed. "The list of 'traitors' is getting longer with each day. The bank of targets now includes IDF chiefs of staff, heads of the Mossad and artists who hold inconvenient opinions, without anyone to say, 'This stops here, we must stop this madness.'" Yuval Rabin at his his father's memorial at Mt. Herzl (Photo: Mark Yisrael Salem) Netanyahu also spoke at Rabin's Mt. Herzl memorial, choosing to emphasize the need to protect freedom of speech while rejecting violence. "Rabin's murder obliges us to denounce any form of violence, all the more so when it's directed against elected officials. The freedom of argument and expression must be preserved, but woe unto us if that is not the case. We're committed unequivocally to the basic tenets of democracy, and national decisions will be made at the ballot box and nowhere else." While speaking at the Knesset, Netanyahu spoke directly to Yuval Rabin and said, "I've said this many times before, but in light of your touching call to action I will repeat this message with full force: I call us all to come together around the security and state issues shared by most of the public." Turning then to address both of Rabin's children, who were present at the Knesset session dedicated to their father. "Yuval, you shook my hand in 2009, I remember this and I appreciate it. I want to tell a few things from the bottom of my heart, and to you, too, Dalia, after knowing one another from our joint army service. I wish to say to you both: I greatly appreciated your father and greatly liked him, as well. Over the years, we met many times, and when he presented the Oslo Accords (the 1993 peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians), he acted according to what he believed was in Israel's best interests, and I did and continue to do." Netanyahu made it a point to separate his past statements against the late Rabin from the tumultuous rhetoric that engulfed Israel at the time and that eventually led to his assassination. "I disagreed with him, but I saidand this has been endlessly documentedthat he was wrong, not that he was a traitor, but that he was wrong. "I also had many other conversations with him. As the prime minister and head of the opposition such conversations are very frequent, and in them we agreed on many things." Herzog at the special Knesset session (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky) Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog also spoke at the special Knesset session. "Rabin was murdered in what was clearly a politically-motivated murder. The foul murderer didn't hide this when he spoke of the murder before and after it. He wanted to take out and remove the leader of Israel from the path on which he was democratically leading the people. "There's no denying itthe murder came on the wings of a severe public rip regarding the agreement with the Palestinians. The murder was carried on the shoulders of a violent and radical wind, whose zenith was the 'Pulsa D'Nura' (curse) cast (by anti-Rabin protestors) in Zion Square, at the Ra'anana Intersection, at the Wingate institute, in the attacks in front of Yitzhak Rabin's home, in the attacks against his ministers in front on the Knesset, and so on and so on throughout the country. "22 years have passed since those three shots pierced the nation's heart. 22 years that Israeli society have been dealing with ramifications of that swift and bitter Saturday evening of November 4, without finding solace." Herzog continued by stating that "it is the leadership's job to stop the hate and prevent hate mongering. It is its duty not to rip to people to shreds. It is its duty to keep Israel unified and democratic, able to conduct internal arguments and respectfully accept decisions, difficult as they may be, without hate or violence. (To make) hard and painful decisionssomething that Rabin was not afraid ofwhile rigidly maintaining the rules of basic democracy." The Israeli Air Force (IAF) attacked a munitions factory near the city of Homs in Syria on Wednesday night, according to Lebanese reports, prompting the Assad regime to fire an anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile at the aircraft in retaliation. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Lebanese Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen TV network noted there were "unconfirmed reports Israel had attacked a facility in an industrial area in the suburbs of Homs, and that the Syrian anti-aircraft systems responded" to the Israeli attack. Al Mayadeen also reported the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the IAF aircraft from the base of the Syrian army's 72nd Brigade, but missed, with the Israeli fighter jets returning home safely. Pres. Putin meeting with Ali Khamenei (: ) X The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, said the air strike had targeted a military installation. The Observatory cited sources who suggested the facility was a rocket depot, adding it was unknown whether these rockets belong to the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah or the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. A photo posted online after attack, claiming to be of the Israeli strike in Syria Russian broadcasting channel RT Arabic, formerly known as Rusiya Al-Yaum reported the factory, which was reportedly struck four times, was affiliated with Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Al Mayadeen claimed the attack was aimed at a copper factory in the Hisya industrial area, 35 kilometers south of Homs. There were no reports of casualties in the strike. Satellite images of the area before the alleged attack "I can't, of course, relate to reports about the Israel Defense Forces' attack in Syria, but regardless, Israel's position is clear: Smuggling arms to Hezbollah is a red line in our eyes," Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Army Radio on Thursday morning. "Israel has acted in the past and it will act in the future to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah according to intelligence information that we will have," said Katz. He said Israel's "red line" was "against arms smuggling (and) also against Iran's consolidation in Syria" and that it was "prepared to act to deter against our responses." The purported copper factory "I think the other side also understands this clearly and actions that took place in the past for which we did take responsibility, were actions that were according to these lines, these red lines," Katz added. Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli planes were reported to have flown in the commercial mountain range over the Lebanese Mountains, before a massive explosion was heard on the Lebanese-Syrian border. The strike took place as Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Tehran and met with Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier in the day, in an effort to strengthen the Russia-Iran-Syria alliance. Israeli strike in Syria (Archive) Last month, the IDF attacked three Syrian artillery cannons in response to earlier rocket fire at the Golan Heights. The IDF Spokesperson's Office said five rockets had fallen in the northern Golan Heights, four of them falling within Israeli territory. In response, the Syrian Foreign Ministry sent two letters, to the UN secretary-general and to the Security Council president, stating that "Syria warns again of the the grave consequences of such repeated aggressive acts," demanding the UN to condemn Israel's actions. The alleged strike Two days earlier, the IDF attacked a Syrian army post in response to errant fire from intenal Syrian fighting. The IAF has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Lebanese ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, nearly 100 times in recent years. Israeli officials have expressed alarm at Iranian influence in Syria, where Iran-backed groups have played a critical role fighting in support of President Bashar Assad during the conflict that erupted in 2011. Iran's military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory during a visit to Damascus last month. NEW YORK - US President Donald Trump called for the death penalty on Wednesday for an Uzbek immigrant accused of plowing a truck down a New York City bike path, killing eight people, describing the man as a "terrorist." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" Trump tweeted. Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was hospitalized after he was shot by a police officer and arrested, told investigators he had been inspired by watching Islamic State videos and began planning Tuesday's attack a year ago, according to a criminal complaint filed against him on Wednesday. Sayfullo Saipov, right, and an illustration of him in court (Photos: MCT, Reuters) Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization, specifically Islamic State, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles causing the deaths of eight people. Manhattan acting US Attorney Joon Kim said the first count carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, while the second would make Saipov eligible for capital punishment if convicted, if the government chose to seek the death penalty. Additional or different charges could be brought later in an indictment, Kim said. Vehicle assaults similar to the New York attack took place in Spain in August and in France and Germany last year, claiming dozens of lives. During the last few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals. Saipov even rented a truck on October 22 to practice making turns, and he initially hoped to get from the bike path across lower Manhattan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge. Footage of the attack X The 10-page charging document said Saipov waived his rights to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination in agreeing to speak to investigators without an attorney present from his bed at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan. Saipov had requested permission to display the flag of the Islamic State militant group in his hospital room and "stated that he felt good about what he had done" after the attack, the complaint said. He even considered displaying ISIS flags on the truck during the attack but decided it would draw too much attention, authorities said. Manhattan acting US Attorney Joon Kim presenting charges against Saipov (: ) X It said he was particularly motivated by seeing a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led the campaign by Islamic Statealso known as ISISto seize territory for a self-proclaimed caliphate within Iraq and Syria, exhorted Muslims in the United States and elsewhere to support the group's cause. Saipov was also spurred to attack by the Islamic State group's online calls to action and picked Halloween because he figured streets would be extra crowded, the complaint said. Investigators found 3,800 ISIS-related propaganda images and 90 videos on one of Saipov's two cellphones, including video clips showing ISIS prisoners being beheaded, run over by a tank and shot in the face, the complaint said. Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, that included Islamic religious references and said, "Islamic Supplication. It will endure," FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. "It will endure" commonly refers to ISIS, Tyree said. Saipov arrested on the scene of the attack (Photo: AFP) John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out." A November 2016 issue of the group's online magazine detailed features that an attack truck or van should have, suggested renting such a vehicle, and recommended targeting crowded streets and outdoor gatherings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a militant-monitoring agency. It was not clear whether Saipov had been on authorities' radar. Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had located another Uzbek man, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, wanted for questioning as a person of interest in the attack. US law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing, told Reuters that Saipov had been in contact with Kadirov and another person of interest in the investigation, though they did not elaborate. Deadliest assault since 9/11 Tuesday's assault was the deadliest in New York City since September 11, 2001, when suicide hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, killing more than 2,600 people. Saipov allegedly used a pickup truck rented from a New Jersey Home Depot store to run down pedestrians and cyclists along a 20-block stretch of the bike path that runs along the Hudson River before slamming into a school bus. According to authorities, he then exited his vehicle shouting "Allahu Akbar"Arabic for "God is greatest"and brandishing what turned out to be a paint-ball gun and a pellet gun before a police officer shot him in the abdomen. Scene of the attack (Photo: AFP) Of those killed, five were Argentine tourists, who were among a group of friends visiting New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation, one was a Belgian citizen, one was a New York resident and one lived in New Jersey. Trump called Argentine President Mauricio Macri on Wednesday to offer his condolences. Trump tweeted that he spoke to Macri "about the five proud and wonderful men" who were killed. A press statement from the Argentine presidential office said that during the call, Macri reaffirmed his belief that governments must work together strongly against the "scourge of fundamentalist terrorism." Saipov, seated in a wheelchair, appeared for a brief hearing in Manhattan federal court Wednesday evening before Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses, appointed public defense attorney David Patton to represent him. Handcuffed and with his legs shackled, Saipov nodded his head repeatedly as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter. Sayfullo Saipov in court (Photo: Reuters) Saipov did not ask for bail and was remanded to federal custody. It was not immediately clear where he would be held. Outside court, his appointed lawyer said he hoped "everyone lets the judicial process play out." "I promise you that how we treat Mr. Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us than it will say about him," Patton said. Earlier in the day, Trump said he would be open to transferring Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where other suspects including alleged September 11 plotters are held. Kim, the federal prosecutor, said there was nothing about charging Saipov in civilian court that would necessarily prevent him from later being declared an enemy combatant. Terrorist was argumentative and unhappy The slight, bearded Saipov is a legal, permanent US resident. He lived in Ohio and Florida before moving to Paterson, New Jersey around June, authorities said. Birth records show he and his wife had two daughters in Ohio, and a neighbor in New Jersey said they recently had a baby boy. Sayfullo Saipov (Photo: NBC) Saipov was a commercial truck driver in Ohio. He also has worked as an Uber and Lyft driver. In Ohio, Saipov was an argumentative young man whose career was falling apart and who was "not happy with his life," said Mirrakhmat Muminov, a fellow truck driver from heavily Muslim Uzbekistan. "He had the habit of disagreeing with everybody," Muminov said. He said he and Saipov would sometimes argue about politics and world affairs, including Israel and Palestine. He said Saipov never spoke about ISIS, but he could tell his friend held radical views. Lebanese President Michel Aoun told Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai on Thursday that he does not foresee a war breaking out between Lebanon and Israel, because Israel would lose such a war. "All Lebanese are ready to fight against Israel," he said. "It's true that we're a small country, but we've reestablished our national unity, and one of its aspects is based on the resistance of all Lebanese people to anyone who attacks their country." Police arrested on Thursday two suspects who broke into the Tel Aviv Police's Prosecution Department, stealing computers and other equipment. The suspects, residents of Netivot and Bat Yam in their 30s, were apprehended while trying to sell the stolen equipment. The Hisya industrial area south of the Syrian city of Homs, which was attacked late Wednesday in an airstrike attributed to Israel, has been used over the past decade for joint projects of Iranian government companies and Syrian government and private companies, as part of the trade deals between the two countries, intelligence blog Intellitimes has learned. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter According to reports in the Arab world, the target of the attack was a military facility that may have been a rocket depot. Other reports claim the facility was a copper factory. It is yet unclear how the target of the attack is linkedif at allto Iran or Hezbollah, but the industrial area nevertheless has strong ties to Tehran. Satellite images of the area before the alleged attack Among other things, the industrial area contains hangars belonging to Iranian car company Saipa, in which the Iranian government owns 48 percent of the stocks. The Saipa car factory in the Hisya industrial area Saipa and its subsidiaries are controlled by the Industrial Development & Renovation Organization of Iran (IDRO), a government-owned corporation that controls 117 Iranian companies and has been under US sanctions for a long time over its support of Tehran's missile program. The Saipa car factory in the Hisya industrial area Saipa also owns 80 percent of SIVECO, a corporation owned by the Iranian government and a private Syrian company called Hmisho Trading Group. The Iranian-Syrian company's factory in the Hisya industrial area manufactures an Iranian version of Kia vehicles. Assad visits the Saipa car factory in the Hisya industrial area The industrial area contains other Iranian-owned factories manufacturing, among other things, plastic and glass. The glass fibers are used to produce optic fibers and fiberglass, which have different kinds of uses in the military industry, including in the development of aircraft and precision-guided missiles. Satellite images of the area before the alleged attack The metal factories Iran has in the industrial area could serve as a dual infrastructure to produce armaments and as a convenient cover for the smuggling of metals, engines and electronics for the military industry. MADRID - Spanish courts are likely to issue a European arrest warrant for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont after he failed to appear at a Spanish court hearing on Thursday, Spain's top judge said. Puigdemont's lawyer in Belgium, where he has travelled with four members of his sacked cabinet, said the climate in Spain was "not good" and his client wanted to take "some distance"; but he would cooperate with the courts. "If they ask, he will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice," lawyer Paul Bekaert told Reuters. MOSCOW, - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow regarded updated US sanctions on Russia extremely negatively. The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday published an amendment which bans US entities from helping sanctioned Russian oil companies in exploration or production for deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects anywhere in the world. Peskov said extending the original sanctions to cover projects globally was unacceptable for Moscow. TRIPOLI - A Libyan armed group will not extradite the brother of the Manchester suicide bomber who killed 22 people in an attack on a pop concert in Manchester in May to Britain, its spokesman said on Thursday. On Wednesday British police said they had issued an arrest warrant for Hashem Abedi and prosecutors asked Libya to extradite him. "We will not extradite Hashem Abedi to UK authorities," said Ahmad Ben Salim, spokesman of the Deterrence Force, a counter-terrorism group allied to the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, which is holding him. He said there was no legal agreement between Britain and his group for this case to allow an extradition. MOSCOW - Six Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers struck Islamic State targets near the town of Abu Kemal in Syria on Thursday, RIA news agency reported, citing Russia's Defence Ministry. Command centers and weapon depots were among the targets hit in the air strike, Russia's military said, according to RIA. WASHINGTON - The US Justice Department has gathered enough evidence to charge six members of the Russian government in the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers before the 2016 US presidential election, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the investigation. Federal agents and prosecutors in Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco have been cooperating on the DNC investigation and prosecutors could bring the case to court next year, it said. By identifying individual Russian military and intelligence hackers with charges, US authorities could make it difficult for them to travel, but arrests and jailing would be unlikely, according to the Journal report. The IDF Spokesman's Office said Thursday an initial investigation was conducted into the false alarm that woke Israelis in the Greater Tel Aviv area at 2:48am. However, the investigation has not yet concluded whether the rocket alert siren was sounded because of a technical malfunction or because of human error. Senior officials at the state attorney's office, including the attorney general himself, voiced their opposition Thursday evening against a bill that would prohibit the police from presenting a recommendation to indict. This despite the fact that the police does not, actually, recommend indictment, but rather states whether it has found sufficient evidence to justify an indictment. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "We oppose the billboth in terms of content and timing, which is not right," Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said, speaking on behalf of the state attorney's office moments before enetering its offices ahead of a conference. "I will present my position to the government," he concluded. AG Mandelblit, on his way to the conference (Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch) At the conference, many sided with the AG and his position on the Bill. State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan unequivocally supported Mandelblit opinion, saying that "the public must understand that the police and the State Prosecutor's Office are working hand in hand, and if they want justice done, the dialogue between them must be allowed. It is very important to hear the opinion of the investigator in a case. A law that would prevent the State Attorney's Office from receiving recommendations in 30,000 cases would cause legal torture and harm to the public. "Preventing a person who investigated a case from voicing his opinion on it is definitely problematic. This will prolong investigations and will require many more hours of work." "It is my duty and obligation to say what I think about the proposal, how it will affect the work of the police, and in my opinion it will create many difficulties and impair the efficiency of their work," Nitzan added. "Our job is to bring justice to light and we need to be given the tools to do our work, not for our own good but for the benefit of the entire public." State Prosecutor Nitzan, on his way to the conference (Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch) Dorit Beinisch, former president of the Supreme Court, added at the conference that "the matter of police recommendations is the basis for any work on a criminal case, and a criminal case comes with a summary of an investigation and a position taken. "It is hard for me to see how the prosecution works when it does not have the police material with the summaries and the recommendations. "Why is this law important? Is it essential?" Despite the objections of the attorney general, the state prosecutor and Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich, the controversial bill is expected to pass through the Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday. The billpitched by Dudu Amsalem (Likud)in its original draft forbade the police from investigating a sitting prime minister for sex, violence, security and drug offenses until the remainder of their term, as a way to alleviate pressures on him caused by worsening public opinion and coalition distrust, which allegedly hinder his ability to govern and could be brought on by political adversaries. The bill's current draft forbids the police from recommending to the State Attorney's Office to file an indictment against any suspect, limiting them to present only the findings against him. This new version, though, would also have the law apply to current police investigations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These include the illicit gifts investigation, his alleged attempts to sway his media coverage through talks with Yedioth Ahronoth owner Noni Mozes, Netanyahu's alleged push for the Israeli Navy to purchase several German submarines and suspected forgery of meal expenses submitted by the prime minister and his wife, Sara. According to the current proposal, an interrogator who deviates from the directive may face a prison term of up to one year. The ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has described the jailings of several of his former Cabinet members as "a serious mistake." In a speech broadcast late on Thursday by Catalan public TV3, Puigdemont called on Catalans to protest against the Spanish authorities "without violence, peacefully and with respect for everybody's opinions." Puigdemont and several ousted Cabinet members remain in Brussels, where he says they are seeking "safety and freedom" while judges back in Spain investigate them for pushing Catalan secession. The prosecutor has asked the National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant against them. "The fury with which the Spanish government has attacked a beautiful European nation is outrageous and is threatening us all," Puigdemont said, adding that Catalonia's independence is "no longer an internal affair" of Spain. Two New Jersey mosques in the city where the suspect in the New York City bike path terror attack lived are receiving threats. The Islamic Center of Passaic County says it has gotten eight telephone threats to burn the center down and kill its occupants, prompting extra police patrols in the area. NorthJersey.com quotes Paterson Police Director Jerry Speziale as saying the Omar Mosque, where suspect Sayfullo Saipov is reported to have prayed, also received threats. Officials there did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. Saipov, who lived next door to the Omar mosque, is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. His attorney has said it's important to let the judicial process play out. A Spanish judge has issued an arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, his lawyer told Belgian state broadcaster VRT on Thursday. "I have just heard from my client that the warrant has been issued for the president and four of his ministers who are in Belgium," lawyer Paul Bekaert told VRT. "Mr. Puigdemont will stay here. He has said that he will fully cooperate with Belgian authorities during the procedure," Bekaert said. As we approach the holiday season, many Nebraskans are planning their travels. Increased fuel demand is a reminder of how important it is for our country to utilize every available energy source, as more choices for consumers typically lead to lower costs. To broaden our countrys energy portfolio, I have long supported the development and increased availability of biofuels. Early in this Congress, I reintroduced my bill to provide retailers the option of selling E15 fuel year-round. Outdated regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) currently inhibit the sale of E15 during the summer months, which impedes the free market and limits consumers options at the pump. There is no reason E15 should not receive the same regulatory relief extended to E10 decades ago. Retailers should have the prerogative to determine whether to offer this affordable alternative. Reductions in Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) numbers under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) have caused concern for the future of biofuels. Over the last few years, the EPA has proposed targets lower than the standards set by Congress. This discourages investment and growth in biofuel production, despite record harvests showing supply exists. Members of the House and Senate recently wrote to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt asking him to strengthen volume standards in the final rule issued by the agency. I joined more than 20 members of the Congressional Biofuels Caucus in sending the House letter, and both Nebraska Senators were part of the Senate delegation expressing these concerns. On October 19, Administrator Pruitt responded to Congress with assurances the EPA will not pursue reductions in biofuel volumes and will reexamine the issue. This is good news for Nebraska agriculture, consumer choice, domestic energy production, and our economy. As Administrator Pruitt stated in his response, My responsibility as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency is to faithfully administer the laws passed by the U.S. Congress. This Agency must and will respect those laws. What a refreshing departure from President Obamas EPA, which consistently disregarded congressional intent and concerns. President Trump has made clear his support for the RFS, and he is keeping his word on biofuels to Congress and rural America. Representative Kristi Noem of South Dakota also introduced legislation earlier this year to extend the $1-per-gallon biodiesel tax credit for fuel produced in the United States. The bill, of which I am a cosponsor, is a needed approach to incentivize domestic biodiesel production. While we work on comprehensive tax reform in the Ways and Means Committee, this step can help to keep our country moving toward energy independence. Biofuels represent a win-win-win for our economy. They give consumers more options, provide greater stability in the agriculture market, and help reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It is good to see the Trump administration encouraging greater biofuel production, especially with Nebraska as a leader in this area, and I will continue to advocate for responsible development of a wide array of domestic energy sources. Jeff Bernstein's Car-X shop has a new look, new location and plenty of potential customers. He's saddened a bit about leaving the 1000 block of East Washington Avenue after 45 years but knows that the growth and development in that part of the city that forced his move to a spot next door to Ella's Deli is having a positive impact on his business. It also means a cleaner operation with more service bays, a better lounge for customers and more visibility. The 4,100-square-foot shop at 2802 E. Johnson St., is at the corner of North Lawn Avenue but fronts East Washington Avenue, one of the city's busiest corridors that continues to pop with development projects and in turn is driving customers to his shop. "We were already seeing that at the old location and we definitely think it will help our business grow," said Bernstein, 57, whose father started the business in 1972. "The new development just a half mile from here, Union Corners, will help and every other large apartment and retail building going up will help us as well. In the end we know we'll be better off here. It's bringing more people and more energy." Stone House Development purchased Bernstein's property at 1032 E. Washington Ave., for future development and has built the neighboring 11-story, 138-unit Lyric Apartments building. The project also includes 68,000-square-feet of office space and retail space and parking for 373 vehicles on what for decades was home to Madison Dairy Produce Co. A four-story building with 65 units of affordable housing along East Mifflin Street is under construction on the back side of the block and is scheduled to be completed by January. Stone House and Bernstein originally tried working out a deal to move the Car-X shop to the corner of the block but Bernstein said the location would have been more difficult to use in terms of access and parking. His new location is a better fit. "It's much more visible and I think the traffic counts are higher here because a lot of people turn off on East Johnson," Bernstein said. "It's much easier to get in and out of here and we have much more waiting area space." The former location was built in the 1940s or 1950s as a repair shop, according to Bernstein, until his father, Alfred Bernstein, opened the first Car-X franchise in the country. Jeff Bernstein purchased the business from his father in 1999. The company, which started out as primarily a muffler and exhaust business but has transformed over the years into a full service repair and tire center, also has a location on Odana Road and three shops in the Twin Cities. The shop continues to grow its tire business, which is headed into peak season, but also does fleet work for private companies, the city of Madison and state of Wisconsin. Bernstein's new shop sits on the site of a building that had been vacant for nearly five years and was last used by East Side Press. The building was removed and replaced with the Car-X shop that includes eight service bays, six lifts, a new high-tech system designed to quickly diagnose alignment issues and more space for storage. Bernstein expects to hire one or two more employees to add to his five-person staff and is looking at Sun Prairie as a place to possibly add another shop. Construction on the new building, designed and built by Iconica of Madison, was started in April and completed about two weeks before Bernstein had to be out of his old location. He moved his shop on the weekend of Oct. 14 and 15 and reopened in the new location on Oct. 16 after moving inventory, parts, oil, tools and equipment. "This is a fresh, clean, modern look," Bernstein said. "I never realized how much more difficult it would be to move a location versus building a new one. We collected a lot of stuff over 45 years. We did some purging but most this stuff is necessary for our business." YORK A 33-year-old man from Bennington has been charged with felony driving under the influence because his blood alcohol level was allegedly 3 times the legal limit while was driving on Interstate 80 and it was allegedly his third DUI offense. The case against Tyler J. Munn has been classified as a Class 3A felony. He appeared in York County District Court where he pleaded not guilty. A jury trial has been scheduled for January, 2018. According to court documents, a trooper with the Nebraska State Patrol was on patrol when he was notified to watch for a vehicle on Interstate 80 in York County. The reports were that the driver was swerving all over the road, failing to maintain a line. The trooper says in his report he saw the vehicle, which Munn was driving on the shoulder and then crossing lane lines. He stopped Munn and says in his report that in doing so he smelled alcohol. The trooper says that Munn indicated he was going somewhere north of Kearney. The trooper also noted that a background check showed Munn had prior convictions of DUI in Hamilton County in 2006 and in Douglas County in 2016. He conducted a field sobriety test and took Munn into custody. According to court records, it is alleged that Munns blood alcohol level was .285. News Washington, DC - Today, the President announced that he has nominated Indianapolis attorney James R. Sweeney II to fill a judicial emergency on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. According to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, there are a total of 64 judicial emergencies in the following states: New York, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Iowa, North Dakota, Arizona, California, Nevada, Washington, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. If confirmed, James R. Sweeney II of Indiana will serve as a District Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. Jim Sweeney is a partner in the Indianapolis office of Barnes & Thornburg, LLP, where he serves as co-chair of the Federal Contracting, Procurement and National Security Practice Group, co-chair of the Entrepreneurial and Emerging Companies Practice Group, and is a member of the firms Global Services Practice Group and its Internet and Technology Law Practice Group. Before joining Barnes & Thornburg in 1999, Mr. Sweeney served as a law clerk to Judge James L. Ryan of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and as a law clerk to Judge John D. Tinder of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. Prior to enrolling in law school, Mr. Sweeney accepted a commission in the United States Marine Corps, and served on active duty for 11 years, followed by active reserve duty, ultimately retiring as a combat veteran at the rank of colonel. Mr. Sweeney earned his B.S., with merit, from the United States Naval Academy, where he was selected as a Cox Scholar and a Burke Equivalent Scholar alternate, and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Notre Dame Law School, where he served as editor in chief of the Notre Dame Law Review. Mr. Sweeney currently serves as the immediate-past National President of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States. Responding to Mr. Sweeneys nomination, Vice President Mike Pence said, I applaud the nomination of Jim Sweeney to the Federal bench in Indianapolis. Indiana has three Federal district court vacancies, and the seat that Mr. Sweeney has been nominated to fill is one of 64 Federal judicial vacancies designated as a judicial emergency. It is vitally important that the Senate move swiftly to schedule a hearing and a vote on Mr. Sweeneys nomination, as well as the Presidents 50 other pending federal judicial nominees. By nominating outstanding candidates like Jim Sweeney and former Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrettwho was confirmed to an Indiana seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit yesterdaythe President is delivering on his promise to nominate outstanding judges. The American people deserve to have these judges quickly confirmed. The Walmart in Lake Delton was evacuated Wednesday afternoon after the store received a phoned-in bomb threat. The threat was made at about 4:30 p.m. at the store at 130 Commerce Street, with Walmart shutting down while police searched the building and area. The store reopened at about 6 p.m. People were advised to avoid the area while the search was going on by police, Sauk County deputies and the State Patrol. The investigation into the bomb threat is continuing. Arizona News Phoenix, Arizona - Governor Ducey is calling on Congress to pass an extension of the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP) before funding runs out in mid-December. In a letter today to members of Arizonas congressional delegation, the governor asked them to reauthorize the program, known in Arizona as KidsCare. It currently provides coverage to more than 23,000 children. "Because of Congresss inaction on the CHIP reauthorization bill, these families are in limbo, wondering whether their children will lose their health insurance, the governor wrote. "This has never been a partisan issue and should not be one now. There are a lot of things that divide us, but taking care of these kids is something that should unite us. I urge all of you to speak with your leadership, ask them to bring the bill to the floor by December, and vote to continue this program and not pull the rug out from under thousands of Arizona kids. In May 2016, Governor Ducey signed legislation restoring KidsCare. The program had been rolled back prior to him taking office, during the Great Recession. Additionally, the governor is exploring options to extend coverage in the event Congress doesnt act in time, including utilizing dollars at AHCCCS - without a change or lapse in coverage - to keep the program going through the Spring, and then backfill dollars once a bill is passed. Health News Washington, DC - Chelsea Food Services, doing business as Journey Cuisine, a Denver, Colorado establishment, is recalling approximately 28,064 pounds of pork and chicken burritos and wrap products that may be adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes, the U.S. Department of Agricultures Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. The ready-to-eat (RTE) pork and chicken burritos and wrap items were produced on various dates from Sept. 11, 2017 through Oct. 26, 2017. The following products are subject to recall: 8-lb. case containing 16 frozen burritos of KING Soopers BACON BREAKFAST BURRITO with Sell By dates from 03/11/18 to 4/26/18. 8-lb. case containing 16 frozen burritos of KING Soopers CARNITAS POTATO BURRITO (Burrito Carnitas Caliente) with Sell By dates from 03/11/18 to 4/26/18. 8-lb. case containing 16 frozen burritos of KING Soopers CHICKEN QUESO BURRITO with Sell By dates from 03/11/18 to 4/26/18. 8-lb. case containing 16 frozen burritos of KING Soopers SPICY SAUSAGE BURRITO (Burrito Spicy Breakfast) with Sell By dates from 03/11/18 to 4/26/18. 4-lb. case containing 8 sandwich kits of SHAMROCK FOODS GRILLED CHICKEN WRAP with Use By dates from 9/16/17 to 10/31/17. The products subject to recall bear establishment number EST. 19822 inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to retail locations in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Journey Cuisine notified FSIS on Oct. 30, 2017 that one of its products, Burrito Carnitas Caliente, had tested positive for L. monocytogenes during the firms product testing. After a review of the ingredients used in the Burrito Carnitas Caliente, the company determined that four additional products may be affected. There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Consumption of food contaminated with L. monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, a serious infection that primarily affects older adults, persons with weakened immune systems, and pregnant women and their newborns. Less commonly, persons outside these risk groups are affected. Listeriosis can cause fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions sometimes preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms. An invasive infection spreads beyond the gastrointestinal tract. In pregnant women, the infection can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, premature delivery or life-threatening infection of the newborn. In addition, serious and sometimes fatal infections in older adults and persons with weakened immune systems. Listeriosis is treated with antibiotics. Persons in the higher-risk categories who experience flu-like symptoms within two months after eating contaminated food should seek medical care and tell the health care provider about eating the contaminated food. FSIS and the company are concerned that some product may be frozen and in consumers' freezers. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase. Members of the media with questions regarding the recall can contact Journey Cuisines media relations at (872) 825-8640. Consumers with questions regarding the recall can contact the company at (866) 596-2385. Latest News New York - An indictment was unsealed today charging Mirsad Kandic, 36, a legal permanent resident of the United States who left the United States in 2013, with one count of conspiring to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, resulting in death, and five counts of providing and attempting to provide material support and resources to ISIS, including personnel, equipment and false documentation and identification, including one count resulting in death. The defendant was extradited to the United States from Bosnia and Herzegovina yesterday and is scheduled to be arraigned at 2:00 p.m. before U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, New York. Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Dana J. Boente, Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde for the Eastern District of New York, Assistant Director in Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr., of the FBIs New York Field Office and Commissioner James P. ONeill of the NYPD announced the extradition and charges. As part of his support for ISIS, the defendant traveled overseas and, while abroad, recruited and facilitated the travel of foreign fighters to join the terrorist organization, said Acting Assistant Attorney General Boente. The National Security Division will continue to use all its tools to disrupt the flow of foreign fighters and bring to justice those who provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations. As alleged, defendant Kandic abandoned the United States, his adopted country, and joined ISIS, a violent terrorist organization opposed to the U.S. and its interests, stated Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Rohde. From Turkey, he proceeded to recruit others to join ISIS, swelling their ranks and helping them commit terrorist acts such as suicide bombings. Together with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to prosecute ISIS members, as well as other terrorists, to the fullest extent of the law. Ms. Rohde thanked the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the FBI Legal Attaches Office in Sarajevo, and the Department of Justices Office of International Affairs, for their assistance in the investigation and effecting the defendants extradition. As alleged, at the same time Kandic lived freely among us in New York, he expressed a desire to travel overseas to kill or maim U.S. military forces, stated Assistant Director in Charge Sweeney. Kandic eventually put his desire in action when he traveled to Turkey to join ISIS, and from there he set about recruiting others, including Jake Bilardi, to support his cause. Just prior to Bilardi successfully detonating a suicide bomb in Ramadi, Kandic told Bilardi he hoped Bilardis victims organs would implode, and just after the attack, Kandic publicized it on Twitter. Kandic is now back in New York, no longer living freely among us, but rather in federal custody to face justice. As alleged in the indictment and other court filings, prior to November 2013, while living in the Bronx and Brooklyn, Kandic expressed the desire to travel overseas to engage in jihad against U.S. military forces to obtain martyrdom. In December 2013, Kandic traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, and joined ISIS. From there, Kandic recruited individuals from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere, to travel to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq and serve as foreign fighters. In online communications with an associate, Kandic stated he worked in ISISs Border Office in Turkey and was part of a team that conducted background checks of foreign fighters seeking to join ISIS in Syria. Kandic told associates that he traveled to and from ISIS-controlled territory, including Raqqa, Syria, in connection with his work with ISIS. In a recorded voice memo from Kandic to an associate, Kandic stated, I have a lot of Mujahideen in Europe, a lot, and I sent out over 20,000 brothers . . . to Sham. Mujahideen refers to fighters. Sham is frequently used by ISIS members to refer to the region of the Levant, including Syria. One of the individuals Kandic assisted was Jake Bilardi, an 18-year-old Australian citizen who traveled from Melbourne, Australia, to Istanbul, Turkey, in August 2014. A few days before Bilardi flew to Turkey, Kandic sent Twitter messages instructing Bilardi to stand in a particular section of an airport in Istanbul. Kandic informed Bilardi that he would send someone to meet him there. From Turkey, Bilardi traveled to ISIS-controlled territory in Syria and Iraq. Kandic continued to communicate with Bilardi and encouraged him to follow through with his plan to commit a suicide attack in Iraq. In early March 2015, Bilardi informed Kandic via Twitter that he just went to look at my target today for my operation. Kandic replied, May Allah reward you immensely. Kandic later added: May Allah make there [sic] inner organs implode. On March 11, 2015, Bilardi committed a suicide bombing in Ramadi, Iraq. Kandic publicized the attack via Twitter. Kandic also worked to further ISISs media and propaganda operations. Kandic set up and used over 100 Twitter accounts to provide updates about ISIS attacks and territorial gains, which announcements were close in time to when the events occurred. If convicted, Kandic faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Trial Attorneys Jennifer Levy and Jolie Zimmerman of the National Security Divisions Counterterrorism Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Saritha Komatireddy, Tiana A. Demas and J. Matthew Haggans of the Eastern District of New York are prosecuting this case. Living Section Washington, DC - Ask Rusty - College benefits for dependent child - Dear Rusty: I am an older father, having recently been blessed with another child from my second marriage. I started collecting Social Security at my full retirement age and although my current wife is not yet eligible to receive benefits, I now have a young child whose future I need to worry about. So I'm wondering: is there any way Social Security will help pay for my child's future college education when that time comes? ~ Older Father Dear Older Father: Well, Social Security won't pay the tuition for your child directly, but since you're already collecting benefits and have a young child from your second marriage, your dependent child is entitled to up to half the Social Security amount you are collecting. If you haven't already, you should apply for this benefit right away. Then what you may do for your child is take advantage of what some have called a "Viagra College Fund," that is, a Qualified Tuition Plan authorized by Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code. This is often referred to simply as a 529 Plan, and every U.S. state and the District of Columbia, as well as many educational institutions, offers at least one type of 529 plan. You may want to establish a 529 for your dependent child and then deposit their Social Security benefits into that plan. There are two types of 529 plans - prepaid tuition plan and college savings plan. The former allows you to purchase tuition credits at a participating university and the latter simply establishes a savings account to be used for future college expenses. As you might expect, there are plenty of rules governing these plans, and you can find out much of what you need to know at https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/intro529.htm . You are to be commended for thinking so far ahead for your young dependent's future. Your minor child's Social Security dependent benefit could be as much as 50% of your benefit, and will normally continue until they are 18 years of age (or 19 if still a student or disabled), so a substantial amount of college savings could be accumulated in the 529 by the time he or she attends college. Washington: The United States has shared a fresh list of terror groups, which includes the LeT and JeM, with Pakistan and asked Islamabad to take prompt action against them, a media report said on Thursday. The exhaustive list has the names of 20 terror outfits and some are also operating in India and Afghanistan, the Dawn reported citing diplomatic sources. The Trump administration is apparently miffed over the lack of progress in reigning in these groups operating from the Pakistani soil. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who recently visited Pakistan and India, reportedly told a US Senate Committee that Islamabad was willing to target terrorists if provided with specific information about their whereabouts. The list provided by the recent US delegation to Pakistan contained information beyond just names of individuals, Tillerson reportedly said. The future exchange of information would go beyond specific location on any given day of where certain individuals or certain cells may be located, the report quated Tillerson as saying. Top on the list is the Haqqani network which, the US claims has safe havens in Pakistan and launches attacks in Afghanistan. Besides the Haqqani network, the Pakistan-based militant group Harakatul Mujahideen, which primarily operates in Kashmir, also figured in the list. Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which also operates in Kashmir, Jundullah and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are also in the list. The LeT was involved in the 2001 parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attack. The Lashkar-i-Jhanghvi, an offshoot of anti-Shia Pakistani sectarian group, was also named in the list. The US blames this group for committing target killings. Other groups on the list included Harakatul Jihadi-i-Islami, Jamaatud Dawa al-Quran and Tariq Gidar Group, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Indian Mujahideen, Islamic Jihad Union and Al Qaeda in the Indian Sub-Continent. Mumbai: The official Twitter handle of Yash Raj Films shared new stills from the sets of Tiger Zinda Hai starring Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif. Shot at various locations across the globe, Tiger Zinda Hai is a sequel to 2012 blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger directed by Kabir Khan. These movie stills embedded below are from the Austria schedule. Check out the brand new stills from here: .@BeingSalmanKhan shot for tough action scenes braving extreme cold, like a true Tiger. #TigerZindaHai pic.twitter.com/HPr3aM9Fcf Yash Raj Films (@yrf) 2 November 2017 Here, we can see Salman wearing a black cap, brown leather jacket, brown boots and holding axes in his hands. His trademark black-and-white checks scarf can be seen in the foreground. In this still, we can see the actor and the director looking at a one direction with great attention. Both Salman and Katrina are wearing magenta jacket and headgear. The cast and crew braved intense cold snow and bone-chilling weather to shoot for a crucial segment in the film. Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, Tiger Zinda Hai, a spy-thriller revolves around the Tiger an Indian and Zoya, a Pakistani intelligence officer. Each location lent itself to a turning point in the film's story, says director Zafar. Shot across various destinations in Austria, Greece, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and India, the sequel of Kabir Khan's Ek Tha Tiger will bring back Salman and actress Katrina Kaif as intelligence agents Tiger and Zoya, who travel to five different countries, fighting against the odds to fulfill their life-threatening mission. "To meet the scale of the film, we had to travel to four different countries for different reasons. Certain landscapes needed to become a part of the film, so we had to go to Austria to get the snow-covered mountains. We also had to go to Morocco to feature crucial fight sequences of horseback riding. The country's landscape and topography brings a certain texture to these sequences," Zafar said in a statement. "It also has horses trained for some fight sequences, as many Hollywood films like Troy and Mummy Returns. Greece was absolutely picturesque and was the perfect location to shoot the celebratory anthem Swag se karenge sabka swagat'. "Abu Dhabi gave us desert terrain. We got great support from the Abu Dhabi government be it locations, production, army and air-force requirement. They helped us create larger than life action drama sequences. We also shot a couple of scenes in North and South block, Delhi. Overall, each location has huge significance and is part of turning points in the film's script," he added. (With IANS inputs) Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Thursday appointed Ministers to oversee rain relief work here and in neighbouring Kancheepuram with showers resuming in this metropolis and adjoining districts as well. After chairing a review meet at the Secretariat here, Palaniswami named Ministers to coordinate and take up relief work "on a war footing," in affected areas in all 15 zones of Greater Chennai Corporation and Kancheepuram district. Days after naming senior bureaucrats as co-ordinators to all 15 zones of the corporation here to monitor relief work, the State government, in an official release, said IAS officials have been deputed for all districts as well. The Ministers named to monitor relief work here include those holding portfolios of Revenue (R B Udhayakumar), Electricity (P Thangamani), Food (R Kamaraj), Law (C Ve Shanmugam), Fisheries (D Jayakumar). Also, Minsiters for Forest (Dindigul C Sreenivasan), Information Technology, (M Manikandan), Transport (M R Vijayabhaskar) and Higher Education (K P Anbalagan) will be monitoring the relief work in this metropolis. Anbalagan will also take care of Kancheepuram district. In all other rain affected districts too, senior bureaucrats would work with Minsiters hailing from those respective districts for relief work, the government said. A day after two children were electrocuted here, the Chief Minister ordered officials to ensure that 'pillar boxes' (distributing electricity) in streets should be placed at a safe height to avoid its inundation. A leaky wire from the pillar box which was covered in rain water had led to the electrocution. The review meet took stock of steps already being taken and measures needed to be followed for rain relief work. The Chief Minister directed officials to use additional motor pumps to quickly bail out water from inundated areas. He told officials to hold health camps in affected areas to avoid endemic. Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, State Ministers and government officials, including secretaries, to various departments participated in the review meet. Chandigarh: The world`s largest furniture retailer, IKEA, has bid for a 10 acre plot of commercial land in Gurugram, adjoining Delhi, for a whopping Rs 842 crore -- making it the single largest property auction till date by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), a senior officer said here on Wednesday. "HUDA sold an approximately 10 acres of commercial land for Rs 842 crore in the sector 47 of Estate-II of HUDA Gurugram," J. Ganesan, Chief Administrator, HUDA, said here. "The e-auction took place on October 31 (Tuesday). The site was successfully auctioned to IKEA, a multinational group, headquartered in the Netherlands, that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories and considered to be the largest furniture retailer in the world. "This e-auction is single largest e-auction ever in the history of Haryana." The site was put for e-auction three times earlier but had no takers till Ikea bid for it. "This is not a one-off deal as we have planned out auctions of other institutional and commercial properties across the city in the next few months. "Gurugram has seen a reduced demand mainly due to rapidly changing investments scenario in real estate, especially in commercial section. However, we are hopeful to sell more properties and gather handsome revenue for HUDA from the estates of Gurugram," he added. "We plan to auction more such sites across the city and have laid down a well planned strategy for the same," Ganesan said. Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has picked Roh Hee-chan as its new Chief Financial Officer (CFO), putting the executive in charge of one of Asia`s biggest corporate cash piles. The appointment, which Samsung announced on Thursday, came after former CFO Lee Sang-hoon stepped down from the role two days ago after being nominated Samsung`s next chairman of the board. Roh was previously the CFO of Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics. He will oversee some 76 trillion won ($68.31 billion) in Samsung Electronics` holdings of cash and cash equivalent as of the end of September, which rose 8 percent from the June quarter. Roh`s appointment was part of several senior executive promotions announced on Thursday. The appointments included a new head of Samsung`s China business, Hwang Deuk-kyu, but most kept their current roles in addition to being promoted to President. Samsung Electronics named a new generation of top managers this week, replacing the leaders of its three main businesses, and promised to reward shareholders with $26 billion in payouts to 2020. The shake-up was designed to ease investors` concerns about a leadership vacuum following the arrest and conviction of Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee on bribery charges earlier this year. Samsung Electronics` shares have risen around 6 percent in three days since the shake-up was unveiled to a record high of 2.876 million won per share during trading on Thursday. New Delhi: A class 5 student was on Thursday allegedly beaten up by a school teacher for not carrying a required notebook. The incident took place in a Delhi-based Municipal Corporation school. "I was badly thrashed with a pipe by a school teacher. In the past, it has happened with other students too," the student told news agency ANI. Reacting to the incident, the school inspector said, "We are investigating the incident, also speaking to students to verify facts." Earlier on Monday, a 10-year-old student in Pune was allegedly thrashed by his school teacher after he failed to provide the details of his Aadhaar card in school. The beat up was such that the kid had to undergo a surgery following the brutal act. He suffered a serious injury in his knee. The incident took place in Morya Shikshan Sanstha situated in Chinchwad area. In September, a teacher in Kanpur was sacked for mercilessly hitting a student with a wooden duster in the classroom, resulting in a fracture in his hand. The incident took place in Stepping Stones School in the city. The teacher was reportedly angry with the student for chatting with his classmates during the class hour. The evacuation and closure of Southwest Wisconsin Technical College in Fennimore on Wednesday was because a man thought his estranged wife was having an affair with a student at the school, and allegedly made threats to find him and assault him. The Grant County Sheriff's Office said William Howell, 42, of Livingston, was taken into custody at his residence on a tentative charge of disorderly conduct. Howell is believed to have threatened coming to the campus to find the supposed lover in numerous texts he sent to his estranged wife Halloween night. The unidentified wife is a student at the school, along with the unidentified male student Howell accused his wife of having an affair with. According to the Sheriff's Office report, Howell discovered the male student "liked" pictures of his children on Facebook when he looked at the site Halloween night, leading him to believe his wife was having an affair. "He became very angry and began messaging his estranged wife via Facebook and text messages throughout the night," the report said. "These messages included threats to come to the campus and find this male and assault him." Powell, who never went to the campus to confront the other man, went to his estranged wife's apartment at about 7 a.m. Wednesday, confronting her about the supposed affair while allegedly trying to stop her from taking their children to school. "Based on the threats towards a student, school officials made the decision to close the campus, and sent students home while the investigation unfolded," the report said. The school was closed for the day, but reopened Thursday. Southwest Tech President Jason Wood thanked all of the people who responded to the campus during the evacuation. "I want to thank the first responders, Fennimore police and the Grant County Sheriff's Office, who acted quickly, decisively, and effectively," Wood said. "Members of our emergency response team also performed well," Wood said. "Thank you to everyone who quickly left campus as instructed. As always, safety is a priority." Kolkata: As bank customers suffered by waiting in long queues to withdraw their money from November onwards last year, another group of people -- bank employees -- endured the hardship of extended work hours and customer anger. The employees, say bank unions, bore the major brunt of the sudden decision announced on November 8 last year by the Prime Minister. "Banking personnel were rigorously working towards recovery of bad loans before the announcement of demonetisation, but the entire drive of recovery got derailed after the announcement as employees had to work day and night for giving service to depositors," Sanjay Das, Assistant General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers` Confederation, told IANS. The bank unions said that of the more than 100 persons who lost their lives during the demonetisation chaos, over 10 were bank employees and officers. Das said that despite the enormous amount of extra work put in by the employees, very few were compensated. "Over 50 per cent of employees and officers are yet to get their compensation for the extra work they did during the demonetisation period," Das said. According to C.H. Venkatachalam, General Secretary of the All India Bank Employees` Association, the whole experience had left "a big scar in the minds of bankers". He said a million bank employees handling 1,000 million people coming to branches to deposit old notes was certainly a big task. He said the bankers were abused by the general public for not disbursing new notes and diverting the same to others. "The RBI made matters worse by saying that sufficient number of new notes were disbursed to banks," he added. He said the bank managements were not bothered about the problems faced by branch officials. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) also asked bankers to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Officials in the branch were in office till late in the evening. Although some clerical staff, he said, were paid overtime, officers were left out. Pradip Biswas, General Secretary of the Bank Employees Federation of India, said that not only employees but even the banks had not been reimbursed by the government for the cost incurred on recalibration of ATMs. Criticising demonetisation, Biswas doubted that the whole exercise was done to unearth black money as claimed by the government. "The annual report of the RBI revealed that Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99 per cent of Rs 15.44 lakh crore of scrapped notes, came back into the system after demonetisation. Now the question arises: was the demonetisation scheme designed to convert black money into white?" Biswas wondered. He said the government had described it as a fight against black money, funding of terrorist outfits and counterfeit currency. "But all their claims have fallen flat," he said. "The scrapping of notes failed miserably in addressing its objective of striking a blow against the black economy. Instead, the side effect of the note ban has impacted the banking industry adversely," said Das, who is also the West Bengal State Secretary for the union. The massive inflows of bank notes put a strain on the banks` daily operations and banking personnel were not able to focus on credit disbursement, which resulted in potential loss of banks` income, Das said, adding that bank credit growth came down to about 5.1 per cent in 2016-17 from an average of 11.72 per cent in the previous five years. The apex bank too has mentioned that banks` preoccupation with exchange of notes and deposits was one the factors for low credit growth. "Credit growth touched a low in more than two decades on account of factors such as subdued state of economic activity, risk aversion of the banking sector... loan repayment by use of specified bank notes (old notes) and banks` pre-occupation with exchange of notes and deposits following demonetisation," said the RBI`s latest annual report. D. Thomas Franco Rajendra Dev, General Secretary of the All India Bank Officers Confederation, said that, initially, they had welcomed the government`s move. "But it turned out to be a nightmare for the bankers." He said people thought bankers were at fault for not disbursing the new notes, but "the RBI supplied new currencies only to private banks daily and not to government-owned banks". Dev said the government should probe whether new notes found their way into the hands of industrialists and businessmen directly from the currency printing presses. But some senior bank officers differ with the unions about the impact of demonetisation on the economy in the long run. "Right now people are complaining, but one thing is certain that (huge) money has come into circulation. Banks have accessed low-cost deposits and, subsequently, lenders have reduced the lending rates," said Punjab National Bank Executive Director Sanjiv Sharan. One year down the line, economic conditions would improve, and with the government`s thrust on low-cost housing and infrastructure development, credit demand would grow, he added. "For the time being it may seem that demonetisation is disturbing the economy. But in the long run, it will help it," Sharan contended. New Delhi: While working as an employee or employer, wages and offs are the two major factors that matters the most. A survey report revealed, working in Delhi is more remunerative than Mumbai. But if you are an employer, you may prefer to be in country's financial capital due to value added by workers being higher than the wage. But, national capital may provide you with fewer days off than Mumbai. India has risen to 100 from 130 in the Ease of Doing Business rankings, released by World Bank on Tuesday. The rising economy was also rated among the top 10 countries in terms of improvement in the business climate. The rise was attributed to a number of systemic reforms taken over the past three years. The Ease of Doing Business analysis is based on a survey that established a comparision between the earnings and working conditions of 19-year-old cashiers in supermarkets that employ 60 workers across 190 countries. The two cities surveyed in India were Delhi and Mumbai. Below are the key highlights of the survey report. The report shows that a cashier in Delhi supermarket is sanctioned to a monthly minimum wage of USD 217.6 a month (Rs 14,000 aprroxiamately). Above figure turns out to be over 60 percent higher than the Rs 8,650 per month, earning of similar worker with a year's experience in Mumbai. Payment of higher wages may compensate for more working days for workers as Mumbai serves 21 annual paid leaves while Delhi provides only 15. Considering the supermarket's point of view, ratio of the cashier's minimum monthly wage to the value addition per worker was more favourable in country's financial capital. World Bank's estimates shows, in Delhi value addition by worker is roughly equal to the minimum wages while in Mumbai wage is only 60 percent of the value added. Mumbai, when compared to several other developing countries (such as Mexico City($152), Vietnam ($168) and Kuwait ($199)), seem to have much lower wages. Delhi is more expensive than Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Recent rise in wages in China works as a magnetic attraction for companies that operate large factories to other countries in regions including Vietnam, Cambodia and India. Additionally, finance minister Arun Jaitley hailed the World Bank report and said ongoing measures will further improve India's ranking. "The country has made a 30-point jump. A number of measures implemented were not considered this time. In the next report, these and the ongoing work-in-progress will ensure India's ranking improves further. The 190-country ranking, which is run by the World Bank Group, saw India make significant improvements in the availability of credit (ranked 29 vs 44 last year), protection of minority investors (ranked 4 vs 13 last year), tax compliance (119 vs 172), enforcement of contracts (164 vs 172) and insolvency (103 vs 136). Other major factors that drove Indias upward movement on the list included the user feedback system put in place by the Centre and reforms in the corporate income tax and EPFO. Registering property (154 vs 138), getting electricity (29 vs 26) and trading across borders (146 vs 143) were some of the areas where India fared worse compared to the last ranking. The ranking saw India as being among the 10 most improved places to do business. The other nine countries on this list (in particular order) were Brunei, Jerusalem, Thailand, Malawi, Thailand, Kosovo, Zambia, Djibouti and El Salvador. The Doing Business report also noted that growth in small and media enterprises (SMEs) is the only way for India to create enough jobs. In last years ranking, India had risen 25 places in the availability of electricity, from 51 to 26th position. The other significant improvement last year was in contract enforcement, where it rose to 172 from 178. New Delhi: Illegal wildlife trade is an unrivaled, flourishing business and is continually on the rise. The kind of torture and harassment that innocent animals are subjected to in the hands of poachers and traders is unfathomable. As per the WWF, the trade involves hundreds of millions of wild plants and animals from tens of thousands of species. To provide a glimpse of the scale of wildlife trafficking, there are records of over 100 million tonnes of fish, 1.5 million live birds and 440,000 tonnes of medicinal plants in trade in just one year. It is all courtesy illegal wildlife trade that human livelihood and the balance of nature is at stake. Now, the WWF has warned that illegal trade in endangered species is thriving in the Golden Triangle that spans the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. According to a report in Metro News, The vast area is a breeding ground for illegal wildlife trade with 3million worth of goods on display at Myanmars Mong La market alone, WWF said. The trade is driven by tourists from China and Vietnam buying traditional cures containing parts from endangered animals. It is believed that Pangolins are the most illegally traded animals for their scales, which are used to treat asthma, rheumatism and arthritis. More than a million Pangolins have been traded in the past 10 years. A report released by Chinas Public Security Bureau for Forests and the University of Oxford found that the average price for a kilogram of pangolin scales is available for sale for $600. The price of a kilogram of pangolin scales for sale in 2013 was twice the amount as compared to 2008. While elephants are skinned for a stomach ailment cure, bears are killed for bile. Tigers, rhinos, leopards and turtles are also among 10 species facing extinction due to the trade. As per the report, WWF adviser Chrisgel Cruz said: The markets of the Golden Triangle are a shocking and sobering sight, displaying thousands of body parts of some of the worlds most iconic and endangered animals. Governments, law enforcers, NGOs and companies must act now. Nana Pondha: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the fight in Gujarat is between truth and lie. "Truth of Gujarat is one thing and truth of the BJP (presented by the party) is other. The fight in Gujarat is between 'satya and asatya'. Truth of Gujarat is farmers' plight, expensive education and expensive healthcare." He also said, "Prime Minister Modi has police, army, Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Chhattisgarh and other state governments (in his support) but I have truth only. The PM attacked small traders through demonetisation," as per ANI. Regarding jobs the Congress VP said, "Prime Minister Modi promised two crore jobs to youths. Our direct competition is with China. In China, 50,000 youths get employment every 24 hours. Whereas, in entire India, only 450 youths get jobs in 24 hours." "Unemployment is Gujarat's reality," he said while addressing at the Adhivasi Akrosh Sabha at Nana Pondha. Meanwhile, Union Minister of State Jitendra Singh said on Thursday that Rahul and Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) convenor Hardik Patel bonhomie is to hoodwink people of Gujarat. Hardik Patel has said that the PAAS will extend its support to the Congress in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections only if their reservation demand is met. "Few days back when I was asked about Hardik and Rahul bonhomie, I made an observation that one loser trying to clutch on the other loser which might ultimately spell the dome. Now, the nation must question the Congress party that what is their stand on what Hardik says, what is their stand on the OBC quota. And therefore just hoodwinking the people of India, particularly the people of Gujarat on the eve of elections, is not going to work," Singh said. The two-phase Gujarat Assembly elections is scheduled on December 9 and 14. Results will be declared on December 18. (With ANI inputs) Shimla: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the poll-bound Himachal Pradesh on Thursday. PM will address two election rallies here - first in Rehan in the Fatehpur Assembly constituency in Kangra district and another in Dhaula Kuan in Paonta Sahib. The state is slated to go to assembly polls on November 9. Here are the highlights of his speech in Himachal: At Dhaula Kuan rally: - We linked it (govt schemes) with Aadhar, started direct transfer to bank accounts and now Rs 57,000 crore, that was being syphoned off, has been saved: PM - Receipts (for govt schemes) were issued for 10,000 people but in reality, beneficiaries were 5000-6000. Money was released on fake receipts: PM - What is the identity of Virbhadra government? The only answer to this govt, party and party leaders is 'corruption': PM Modi - There are few elections where people pre-decide whom to elect. This is such an election. Congress knows they'll be wiped off: PM Modi in Himachal's Dhaula Kuan Kangra speech: - Even Pandit Nehru used to talk about ending Jan Sangh from its roots. We want Congress-mukt Bharat, to rid the country of such rotten thoughts process of Congress: PM - Congress is no more an institution of Mahatma Gandhi, of those who fought for freedom. It is a party mired in dynasty, corruption..we want rid India of such rotten Congress: PM - Nation is witness to how the Doklam issue was dealt with, but the Congress even questioned that: PM - There is no war in which sons of Himachal have not participated. Today, India is fighting Pakistan's proxy war in Kashmir, says Modi - There are five monsters in Himachal Pradesh which we need to get rid off - Mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia: PM Modi - We had never heard even in ancient times that ruling people helped create demons. But today, it pains to say that Congress government created five demons in 'Devbhumi' Himachal Pradesh. They are now so strong that government in Shimla is dancing on their tunes: PM - My country is such that if you are honest and do some mistake, people forgive them. However, if a person does something with an evil intention, the country never forgives: PM - Congress has become a laughing club. Congress must introspect why the entire country is turning away from the Congress leaders and their party: PM - Himachal Pradesh CM is embroiled in corruption and is out on a bail. Yet, the Congress manifesto says there will be zero tolerance of corruption. Even a child won't believe it: PM Modi - I have worked extensively in Himachal Pradesh. I am very familiar with all cities and know each and every street here, says PM Modi. - PM Modi asks people to vote for BJP on November 9 when Himachal goes to poll. "It is time to bid farewell to those who have looted Himachal Pradesh," he says. #WATCH PM Modi addresses a public rally in Himachal Pradesh's Kangra https://t.co/zNylg2ZHMP ANI (@ANI) November 2, 2017 Jinhone Himachal Pradesh ko loota hai unhe vidaai dene ka avsar aapke paas November 9 ko hai: PM Modi in Kangra pic.twitter.com/mvLaoiCj4e November 2, 2017 - PM Modi tells the crowd that he is confident of BJP leaders winning the Himachal elections to serve the state. - Such a large number of people of Himachal have come with the determination to bring 'lotus' back to the state. I salute all of you by bowing down: PM SHIMLA: Taking a dig at state Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused the Congress-led Himachal Pradesh government of being corrupt with no interest in developing the state. The state Chief Minister and his wife Pratibha Singh were granted bail by a special CBI court in connection with a nearly Rs 10 crore disproportionate assets case in May this year. Attacking Singh in a public rally in Himachal's Dhaula Kuan, PM Modi said, Virbhadra ki sarkar ki kya pehchan hai? Ye sarkar, party aur neta kaise hain? Har sawal ka ek jawab- bhrashtachaar. (What's the identity of Virbhadra government? How's this party (Congress) and its leaders? All questions have one answer corruption). Accusing Congress of looting the state, PM Modi said that people will show them the exit door in the assembly elections scheduled for next month. There are few elections where people pre-decide whom to elect. This is one such election. Congress knows they'll be wiped off. Highlighting the two tenures of Prem Kumar Dhumal, BJP's chief minister candidate for the state, the Prime Minister said, Dhumal got two chances in the state. He helped eradicate violence against women, developed the state. Dhumal, 73, held the Himachal chief minister's chair two times - from March 1998 to March 2003, and again from January 2008 to 25 December 2012. Earlier, addressing a rally in Kangra, PM Modi said that the Congress government has failed on a number of development parameters. "The Chief Minister is embroiled in corruption and yet, the Congress manifesto says there will be zero tolerance for corruption. November 9 will give a chance to people to bid farewell to those who looted Himachal Pradesh," he said. The state will go to polls on November 9. Counting will be held on December 18. Raebareli: The death toll in NTPC power plant explosion went up to 26 by Thursday morning. Few are still feared trapped inside the coal-fired plant. On Wednesday evening, an explosion ripped a boiler in NTPC's Unchahar plant in Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli district. Scores of people inside the premises suffered severe burn injuries. The total number of casualties likely to go up after the blades of the boiler are cut up, said the Uttar Pradesh Police on Wednesday evening. More than 150 ambulances were pressed into relief and rescue work that was affected by a huge ball of dust that rose after the 500-MW boiler (power generating unit) exploded. Nearly 22 victims with severe burn injuries have been sent to Lucknow and 15 victims in Raebareli hospital. Some victims have been sent to Allahabad. Ambulances were ready. Many patients were immediately shifted to Unnao, Balrampur and Pratapgarh, said Dr Talha Shamsi, Raebareli Hospital. Local administration and NTPC officials rushed to the site to conduct rescue operations. Two companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) has been deployed as part of reinforcement. Among those injured, four are from assistant general manager-rank officials. Three of them, first shifted to a private hospital in Lucknow, were being flown to Delhi. One injured died in Lucknow's civil hospital where eight had been admitted. Medical Superintendent Ashutosh Dube said all of them had 80 to 90 percent burns and are in critical condition. According to eyewitness reports, the explosion was so powerful that the employees had little chance to save themselves. "I heard a deafening sound and saw fire. There were bodies all around Unit 6," said Rakesh Pandey, who was at a nearby tea-stall. Initial reports suggest that the blast occurred due to high pressure in a steam pipe of the boiler, said Raebareli sub-divisional magistrate Alok Kumar. Fire engulfed the entire Unit 6, which was recently commissioned and still running on trial. Near about 200 workers were on duty. CRPF and police jawans have been deployed at the plant which has been sealed to check any unauthorised entry. "We do not rule out any human error," said an NTPC official. UP Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma admitted that it was a major industrial accident and said, "Our top priority is to rescue those still trapped and provide best medical care to injured workers. We will certainly fix responsibility and initiate action against anyone found guilty," he said. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter: Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored: PM @narendramodi PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 1, 2017 Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured. On Thursday morning, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi left for Raebareli, the parliamentary constituency of his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. With agency inputs Raebareli: On Wednesday afternoon, life went on as usual at Unit 6 in National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC)'s Unchahar plant. At around 3:30 pm, a sudden abnormal sound emerged. Immediately after, dark bellows of gas and steam were seen escaping into the sky. "I heard a deafening sound and saw fire," said eyewitness Rakesh Pandey, who was at a nearby tea-stall. The explosion triggered panic. Workers, inside and outside the unit ran helter-skelter, trying to escape the massive fire and smoke. There were bodies all around Unit 6, recalls Pandey. The injured were in critical condition, with scalded body parts caused by hot ash and steam. Those present at the accident site claim the explosion was so powerful that employees had little chance to save themselves. By 7 pm, charred bodies of workers, way beyond recognition, were being recovered from Unit 6. The first accident report stated five people dead and at least 40 injured. But authorities knew the numbers were just beginning to come forward. Within 14 hours, the death toll climbed to 26. Over 100 employees were injured. As the fire spread inside accompanied by a huge ball of dust post-explosion, rescue operations became increasingly difficult. As of Thursday morning, several are still feared trapped inside the factory unit. What happened at NTPC Unchahar's Unit 6 on November 1? According to official accounts, the blast took place after a boiler tube exploded at the unit. "The ash-pipe exploded due to pressure at NTPC plant in Raebareli," said the District Magistrate. Inside the power plant unit, exists a boiler which is filled with water in tubes which are heated. This, in turn, creates steam which moves the turbines and generates electricity. The explosion was caused by the ash which got deposited on the furnace and triggered a massive blast. "Ash had piled up in the furnace beneath the boiler, which then led to building up of pressure resulting in the explosion," senior state police official Anand Kumar. Explaining the chain of events, NTPC India`s largest power producer and a Forbes 500 company released the following statement: In NTPC Unchahar, Unit No. 6 at around 1530 hrs on 01.11.2017 there was sudden abnormal sound at 20 mt. elevation and there was opening in corner no.2 from which hot flue gases and steam escaped affecting the people working around the area. Irresponsible authorities? The 1,550-megawatt (MW) plant in the town of Unchahar supplies electricity to nine states. The unit was the sixth at NTPC and was commissioned on March 31 this year. The 500MW unit was still in trial phase, operating since April. Immediately after the accident, local authorities, National Disaster Response Force unit rushed to the spot. A team of senior NTPC officials rushed to the site to aid the rescue operations. Two companies of PAC was also deployed. But insiders say, all this could have been avoided. Workers claim temperatures near the furnace at Unit 6 was steadily rising. Few had forewarned the concerned authorities about an "impending" disaster. Insiders, refusing to come on board, told IANS that said that many dead labourers killed in the blast might still be inside, their bodies buried under the very hot ash that has covered the entire area. Angry locals and family members of the injured claim there was complete lack of medical facilities at the NTPC campus, which led to the spike in the number of casualties. On Thursday morning, contractual labourers started raising slogans against the NTPC management. The Unchahar sub-division is around 40 km away from the main town of Raebareli. The injured were rushed to Raebareli, few later shifted to Lucknow and Allahabad hospitals. More than 50 fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the fire and 100 ambulances, private and government, helped ferry the injured. Political turf Raebareli, the Lok Sabha constituency Congress President Sonia Gandhi, is about 110 kms away from Lucknow. Her son and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi rushed to the site on Thursday morning. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of those killed, Rs 50,000 each to those seriously injured, and Rs 25,000 each to those with less grave injuries. All the injured would be given free treatment at government hospitals, he added. Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya visited the Civil hospital at night to inquire about the injured. PM Modi took to Twitter to offer condolences. Senior ministers - Suresh Khanna and Swamy Prasad Maurya - have been rushed to the site to oversee and coordinate relief and rescue operations, a government official said. NTPC officials said that the number of casualties could go up once the blades of the boiler are cut and the team of experts is able to go inside. A probe has been ordered. Taking a dig at the BJP government, suspended Janata Dal (United) leader Ali Anwar said, "They have saffronised everything in the state. Had the NTPC power plant saffron in colour, the mishap would not have happened at all." With agency inputs New Delhi: Reacting to Kamal Haasan's allegations that 'right-wing Hindus' have started employing terrorism to propagate their 'communal agenda', Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday compared the actor to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed. "There has been a tendency in this country we have seen in the past decade how Sonia Gandhi-Rahul Gandhi led Congress party drew a strategy of maligning the Indian society and Hindu community only to appease the Muslim vote bank. It was done by the former home minister P Chidambaram and Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shindey saying it on the floor of Parliament that there is Hindu terror in this country," BJP's national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said. He added, "Today when Kamal Haasan makes similar comments, he is actually joining the ranks of P Chidambaram, Hafiz Saeed and is possible angling to become an extension of the Congress party," as per ANI. Rao also said by making such remarks all these people have given Pakistan an upper hand. "Haasan also has a close tie with the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala and completely closes his eyes to the kind of violence and red terror that has been perpetrated there. Therefore, he is looking at the issue from a very narrow perspective," he said. "People of Tamil Nadu will reject this type of cheap politics which Kamal Haasan is also trying to play," the BJP leader maintained. What Haasan said about 'Hindu terror' In a column in a Tamil magazine 'Ananda Vikatan' the actor wrote that the right-wingers could no longer say 'show me a Hindu terrorist if you can'. "In the past, Hindu right-wing groups would not indulge in violence, but they would hold a dialogue with the opposite parties on their arguments. But this old tactic was defeated and what they stated to do is use muscle power. They started indulging in violence," he added. Political party announcement not at media's prodding, says Haasan Meanwhile, earlier, the veteran actor had doused his fans' expectations of launching a political party, saying he can't make any such announcement under media pressure. Haasan, 62, had tweeted that public announcements would be made in the 'people's court'. His comment was significant amidst heightened speculation that he may launch his political party soon. Haasan has been active of late with comments on the political situation, both at the national and state level, often being critical of the ruling parties. (With Agency inputs) Beijing: China on Thursday blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN. It rejected the move saying that there was no consensus. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse on Thursday. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. When China earlier blocked move to designate Azhar as global terrorist: A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the JeM chief under the al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. In February this year, China had asked India to provide 'solid evidence' to back efforts to get JeM chief banned by the UN. The then Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang had said at a press briefing, "Our criteria is only one, we need solid evidence. If there is solid evidence the application can be approved. If there is no solid evidence there is hardly a consensus." China had in August extended by three months it's technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding of Azhar's listing. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. (With Agency inputs) The state Assembly approved a measure Thursday that would prohibit state health insurance programs from covering abortions for state workers. The bill died in the Senate in 2013 under opposition from a broad coalition of opponents and indifference from Republican leaders. It remained unclear whether the bill had enough backing to become law this time. Meanwhile, efforts to curb research using fetal tissue obtained from abortions were heard by a Senate committee. Republicans are offering opposing approaches in the face of opposition from the medical and scientific communities, and GOP leaders have said they dont know if consensus can be reached. Time is running short for the Legislature, which has its highest Republican majorities in decades. After next week, lawmakers wont return to vote on bills until January and they are expected to be in session for only a few days before quitting until 2019. Sensing the closing window, anti-abortion groups urged action Thursday on a bill that would ban the use of aborted fetal tissue for research or any other purpose. It would only apply to research on stem cells obtained since January 2017 and there are no criminal penalties for researchers. Facilities that obtain stem cells illegally could face a fine. I believe this bill may reduce incentives for abortions and thereby possibly reduce some abortions, said the measures sponsor, Sen. Terry Moulton, R-Chippewa Falls. The Wisconsin Catholic Conference, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Right to Life and Pro-Life Wisconsin testified in support. The time to act is now, testified Chelsea Duffy with Wisconsin Right to Life. Wisconsin has an extraordinary opportunity to lead the nation by championing research that is ethical, innovative and effective. A coalition opposing restrictions on fetal tissue research called Cures for Tomorrow includes BioForward, representing the states bioscience industry, the Medical College of Wisconsin, UW-Madison, UW Health and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. It will definitely end potential lifesaving research in Wisconsin, UW medical school dean Robert Golden testified. Researchers and biomedical companies will leave the state, Golden said, and ongoing work looking for cures for everything from asthma to Alzheimers disease will be halted. A competing proposal backed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos would target only the sale of fetal tissue and regulate certain research. That doesnt go far enough for the anti-abortion groups that support the other measure. They are registered in opposition to the bill, introduced by Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills. Vos, R-Rochester, said this week that he didnt know if Republicans would be able to reach agreement on a direction. We got to the point where neither bill had the necessary votes to pass in our caucus, which is why the issue kind of fell by the wayside, Vos said. The bill prohibiting Wisconsin state health insurance from covering abortions for state workers is back, even though the impact of such a ban would be minimal. Thats because state health insurance plans currently cover only medically necessary abortions. But state law doesnt define a medically necessary abortion and the bills sponsors want to remove any ambiguity. The measure would allow coverage for abortions only in cases of rape or incest or if a doctor certifies the abortion is needed to save the womans life or avoid long-term damage to her health. Opponents include the Wisconsin Medical Society, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Planned Parenthood and the Wisconsin Alliance for Womens Health. Democrats blasted the bill as an ideological attack on womens health care, but in the end the measure passed 61-35. It goes next to the Senate. Its unclear if theres enough support in that chamber to get the proposal through to Gov. Scott Walkers desk. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, didnt immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Beijing: Reacting cautiously to President Ram Nath Kovind appreciation of Bhutan's support during the Dokalam standoff, China said on Thursday that it wants to see New Delhi and Thimphu developing "normal relations". Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing that both India and Bhutan are China's close neighbours. "We are committed to develop friendly relations with these two countries and also we would like to see India and Bhutan developing normal relations," she said. About Kovind appreciating Bhutan's support in resolving the Dokalam incident, Hua said, "You mentioned about the Indian border troops trespassing incident from June to August. We have talked about our position many times before. I believe we are also clear about that". "We believe that China and India had properly settled this issue through diplomatic means. Consistent with our common interest, we hope India could follow the historical conventions and work with China to ensure the peace tranquillity of the border area," she said, as per PTI. President appreciates Bhutan's support in resolving Dokalam stand-off: In his meeting with King Wangchuck, Kovind expressed his deep appreciation for Bhutan's support in resolving the recent stand-off with China at Dokalam. The manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in Dokalam "is a clear testimony to our friendship", a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said. Our development cooperation has been guided by the priorities set by the Government and people of Bhutan #PresidentKovind November 1, 2017 India and Bhutan should work towards a model of bilateral cooperation, which will be noted by others in the neighbourhood #PresidentKovind President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) November 1, 2017 Security concerns of India and Bhutan are indivisible and mutual #PresidentKovind President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) November 1, 2017 India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in the Doklam area, which is a clear testimony to our friendship #PresidentKovind President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) November 1, 2017 India and China were locked in a 73-day stand-off in Dokalam, a tri-junction between the Sino-India and Bhutanese border near Sikkim, from June 16 this year after Indian Army personnel stopped the Chinese Army from building a road in the area. The stand-off ended on August 28 after both sides reached an understanding on a quick "disengagement" of border personnel. (With PTI inputs) New Delhi: Expressing strong displeasure over China's repeated blocking of UN Security Council's move to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist, India on Thursday said 'selective approach' to the issue will undermine the global efforts to combat terror. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said it was deeply disappointed by China's decision to block the UN move once again. 'India strongly believes that double standards and selective approaches will only undermine international communitys resolve to combat terrorism,' it said in a statement. Without naming China, it further said that once again, 'a single country blocked international consensus' on designating an 'acknowledged terrorist'. It said that it hoped realisation would soon dawn (on China) that 'accommodating terror from a narrow objective is both 'short-sighted and counterproductive'. The MEA reaction comes after China again decided to block the UN move against Azhar. The US, France and the UK have supported India at the UN on the Masood Azhar issue. China had extended its block on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by three months in August after obstructing the move in February. The block was due to expire on Thursday. Justifying the stand, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying had said that the 'technical hold' will allow for more time for parties to deliberate on the matter. In the past two years, China had blocked repeated efforts by India, the US, France and the UK to declare Azhar as a global terrorist, saying that there was no consensus on the issue. China was the only member of the 15-nation UNSC to put a hold on Indias application. By putting Azhar on the UN sanction list, it would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. Azhar is accused of several terrorist attacks in India. Hua said China's stand 'is in accordance with the resolutions and rules of procedure of the Committee.' 'We will remain in constant touch and coordination with the relevant parties on the resolution and rules of procedure of the Committee,' Hua said. We believe that the Committee should follow the principles of objectivity, professionalism and fairness and reach a decision by a consensus based on solid proof, he added. New Delhi: A day after a report once again deemed the Capital as one of the most unsafe places in the country for women, Delhi High Court pulled up Delhi Police for not having CCTVs installed at police stations and for large number of vacancies in the department. The court, while hearing an appeal challenging clean chit given to an employee of CSIR accused of sexual harassment, said it is absolutely mandatory for police stations in the city to have CCTVs. "CCTVs are meant for security and should exist in every police station," the court observed and not only directed that the 192 police stations have cameras but also sought an update on number of CCTVs functional since 2003. Delhi Police was also directed to expedite the process of filling vacancies to provide better security on Delhi streets - especially to women in the city. Results of a survey carried out by Plan India and released on Wednesday showed that while Goa is considered the safest state for women, Delhi was at the bottom with Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi: Reviving the July incident of Rahul Gandhi's meeting with Chinese envoy in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a rally on Wednesday that the Congress vice-president 'lacks primary understanding.' Speaking at a rally in Kangra in election-bound Himachal Pradesh, PM Modi first attacked Congress party in the state on corruption-related issues and then said the party had questioned Centre's handling of the Doklam standoff with China. "The country is aware how the Doklam issue was dealt with but Congress even questioned that. Does someone born in a family which has ruled for decades doesn't believe his own Army and agencies? He met China's envoy and asked about Doklam," said PM Modi in a not-so-veiled attack on Rahul. "Instead of asking Indian diplomats and foreign ministry, you go and ask Chinese envoy. Sorry to say (but) this shows lack of primary understanding." PM Modi was referring to Rahul and Chinese envoy Luo Zhaohui's meeting at a time when Indian and Chinese troops were staring eye-to-eye at one another in Doklam. The Congress first denied the meeting but once photographs emerged, had to retract the denial. "It is my job to be informed on critical issues. I met the Chinese Ambassador, Ex-NSA, Congress leaders from NE & the Bhutanese Ambassador, Rahul had tweeted later. The meeting nonetheless gave fodder to the BJP to attack the party with. On Tuesday though it was not just Rahul's meeting with the envoy from China that PM Modi focused on. "Congress has become a laughing club. The party must introspect why the entire country is turning away from Congress leaders. Their CM in Himachal faces corruption charges and yet their manifesto says zero tolerance for corruption," said PM Modi. The Congress has been in power in Himachal since December of 2012. Voting in the assembly elections in the state will take place on November 9 while counting is scheduled for December 19. New Delhi: Is government making khichdi the national dish? No, it isn't. Reacting to reports of khichdi being made the national dish, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Wednesday clarified that it will only be put for a record entry at Great India Food Street organised by Food Processing Ministry along with the CII. Over 800 kg khichdi will be prepared live on November 4 at the World Food India event in Delhi to create world record and popularise it as brand India food globally. Badal said that the dish has been chosen as Brand India Food because it symbolises the country's unity in diversity. Taking a jibe at media outlets for reporting that the government is planning to designate the dish as the national dish, she said: "#WorldFoodIndia will proudly showcase Indias culinary diversitylooks like today has been a slow news day!" Enough Khichdi cooked up on a fictitious 'National Dish. It has only been put for a record entry in #WorldFoodIndia. Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) November 1, 2017 #WorldFoodIndia will proudly showcase Indias culinary diversitylooks like today has been a slow news day! :) Harsimrat Kaur Badal (@HarsimratBadal_) November 1, 2017 A giant 'kadhai' (frying pan) of the capacity of 1,000 litres and 7 feet in diameter will be used for slow steam- cooking of more than 800 kg khichdi. It will be prepared by renowned chef Sanjeev Kapoor, who has been roped as brand ambassador of the Great India Food Street. Badal also said that khichdi is the wonder staple food of India and is considered the healthiest prepared food in India which is eaten across length and breadth of India by rich and poor. The cooked khichdi will be distributed to about 60,000 orphan children as well as guests present at the event. It will also be distributed to the Heads of Foreign Missions in India along with the recipe. Brand India Khichdi's ingredients and the recipe will be popularised by Indian Foreign Missions throughout the world. The government will ensure that Khichdi is available in restaurants and kitchens around the world, an official statement said. Chennai: Amid speculation over the dates when he begins his political journey, Tamil actor Kamal Haasan has said that right-wing groups resort to violence. In his weekly column, Haasan wrote: "In the past, Hindu, right-wing groups would not indulge in violence. They would hold a dialogue with opponents. But now they resort to violence." Hitting out at those claiming that Hindus cannot be found guilty in terror-related cases, he said, "right wing cannot challenge talk of Hindu terrorists because terror has spread into their camp as well." He also added that "Hindus are losing faith in 'satyameva jayate' and instead subscribing to 'might is right'." Speculation has been rife about when Haasan will launch his own political party. Recently, he had asked fans to be ready for "a big announcement" on his birthday - November 7. However, he later clarified that he will not be launching his party on the day. He had met Arvind Kejriwal at his home in Chennai claiming that he had taken the Delhi Chief Minister's advise on crowdfunding and recruiting "young, fresh faces" for his political party. He had also met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan but clarified after the meeting that he will not join any left or right oriented political party. He had stressed that his colour of choice is not "saffron" - an oblique reference to the BJP and RSS. He made the remarks after meeting here. NEW DELHI: Brother of Nirbhaya December 2012 gang-rape victim is a pilot today. All thanks to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. "The tragedy hurt my son but could not stop him. Now he is a pilot because of Rahul Gandhi," said Nirbhaya's mother Asha Devi. Nirbhaya's brother is currently training with a commercial airline in Gurugram and will soon fly a plane. The Congress leader taught us never to quit approach, said Asha Devi. After the December 2012 incident, Nirbhaya's brother was in complete shock. "Rahul Gandhi was the one who counselled him and motivated him to achieve something good in life to support the family. Rahul asked him to pursue a pilot's training course after completion of school," Asha Devi said. In 2013, he took admission at Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi in Rae Bareli. "When he was studying, Rahul used to talk to him over the phone and during his 18-month pilot's training course, taught him to adopt a 'never quit' attitude," she told India Today. Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra also calls the family often to inquire about their health, added Asha Devi. On Tuesday, the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) issued a notice to Tihar Jail Administration and Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) South District, questioning the delay in execution of death penalty to rapists of 2012 Nirbhaya gang-rape case. The Supreme Court on May 5 upheld the death penalty awarded to all four convicts in Nirbhaya gang-rape case by the High Court. On December 16, 2012, six people, including a juvenile, brutally assaulted and raped 23-year-old paramedic in a moving bus in South Delhi. The victim and her male friend were later thrown out of the bus. On December 29, 2012, the victim succumbed to the extensive injuries in a Singapore hospital. The incident triggered nation-wide protests. The four convicts - Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh - were awarded death sentence. The fifth accused, Ram Singh, committed suicide in jail. The sixth accused, a juvenile, has been released after completing mandatory probation period in a remand home. Amritsar: Pakistani national Fatima, along with her sister Mumtaz and 11 year old daughter Hina, was on Thursday released from Amritsar jail after sepending 10 years behind the bars. Fatima and Mumtaz had been arrested on smuggling charges for which they were jailed. Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she said: "I want the Indian prisoners nabbed in Pakistan to return to their home as well. I thank lawyer Navjot ji and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and salute entire India for their help." Hina, who was born and brought up in the prison said: "I am very happy that I will return to my home and meet my father." Mumtaz also said that everyone helped them in their journey and added that she was happy to be allowed to go back home. Lawyer Navjot Kaur Chabha, who was fighting for the cause said that she took up the case because of Hina. "Hina has been released after a very long struggle. She is the reason I took this stand because the little girl was suffering from no fault of hers. Today is my Diwali," she said. Navjot also thanked the government for intervening and helping in the case. "I had written a letter to the prime minister on Hinna's behalf. This is a matter of extreme delight for us that the Indian Government intervened and released her. Hinna is very happy that she will go to her homeland now and meet her father and the rest of the family," she said. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday addressed a gathering at the silver jubilee celebrations of the Akshardham temple in Gujarat's Gandhinagar. Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister offered prayers and attended cultural programmes at the temple's silver jubilee celebrations following his arrival in Ahmedabad. Children decked up in tricolour costumes performed a welcome dance in the Akshardham complex. "Akshardham Temples are beautiful, ahead of their times. I assure you - you may not enter the Temple as a Bhakt but you will leave as one," said PM Modi. The Prime Minister also inaugurated the Mayur Dwar of Akshardham temple. "Pramukh Swami was never guided by expanding influence for the sake of it. He was more interested in improving lives of people," said Modi. He said, "What was special about Pramukh Swami was that he understood the importance of changing with times and yet retaining a human touch." "Akshardham temples stand out for excellent management and usage of technology. For this, we will always be grateful to Pramukh Swami," Modi added. PM Modi along with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel also performed aarti at the temple. NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump vowed during a phone call to continue jointly fighting terrorism, according to the White House. Modi expressed condolences for the deaths caused by the terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday, the White House statement said on Wednesday. "Modi strongly condemned terrorism, and offered thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families," it said. "The two leaders resolved that India and the United States will continue to fight together against the global scourge of terrorism." Eight people - six of them foreign tourists - were killed when a Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a van into bicyclists and pedestrians near the 9/11 memorial. The attack was linked to the Islamic State (IS) because of statements he made after his arrest, authorities said. FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar: Cristiano Ronaldo to Lionel Messi, stars likely to play their last WC Mumbai: The Western Railway on Wednesday claimed that contrary to its own earlier RTI replies of 40 percent drop in seat occupancy coupled with a huge loss in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector, it was actually a very profitable sector with over 100 per cent occupancy even during off-season. In RTI replies provided to activist Anil Galgali, WR's Chief Commercial Manager Manjit Singh had given detailed figures of the seats going vacant on this sector resulting in losses of almost Rs 30 crore between July-September 2017. However, now CPRO Ravinder Bhakar said that there are nine direct trains and 25 other trains going via Ahmedabad and the total earnings on this sector during that period was Rs 233 crore, against the losses of nearly Rs 30 crore as per the RTI replies, which pertained to number of passengers travelling between Mumbai Central-Ahmedabad and vice-versa. "The information does not include information about en route traffic, passengers from originating station to en route stations, intermediate stations to intermediate and to destination stations between Mumbai Central and Ahmedabad, thereby showing lesser occupancy," Bhakar said. Despite the July-September period being a lean season, he said the occupancy on this sector remained 100 per cent plus on all the 34 trains. Of the nine direct trains, there were 803,150 berths of which actual bookings were 830,978, or 103 percent occupancy Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector and in return direction, the position remained the same. Besides, in the 25 trains going via Ahmedabad, the berth availability was 1,070,710 and actual bookings were 1,230,585, or 115 percent and in return direction, it was even higher at 121 percent. Asked to comment, RTI activist Galgali said it is very strange that the specific RTI query between Ahmedabad-Mumbai, which implied all stations enroute, the number of passengers and revenue records and appropriate information should have been provided. Moreover, he said in the data given under RTI, details of all classes were provided but now that is not available. The RTI reply said that on the 32 trains on Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector, there were 735,630 seats and on 31 trains on Ahmedabad-Mumbai sector, there were 706,446 seats. "Now, the WR is saying the total number of seats on this sector on 34 trains is much higher. Why the huge discrepancy in the figures given by the WR Chief Commercial Manager under RTI and the WR spokesperson?" Galgali said. Under these circumstances, if the replies provided under RTI are wrong, then the WR should initiate stringent action against the persons concerned and Railway Ministry must issue a detailed White Paper on the occupancy and revenue status on this crucial sector where the Bullet Train project is being planned at a cost of over Rs 1 lakh crore, he said. Washington: US President Donald Trump is set to nominate Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell as the head of the American central bank, the White House announced. The President had settled on Powell by October 28 and spoke with him on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency quoted The Wall Street Journal as saying. Trump had recently concluded interviews of five candidates for the next Fed chair, including Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires next February. On Wednesday, Trump said that he planned to formally announce his pick for the Fed chair on Thursday, adding "you`ll be extremely impressed by this person". If confirmed by the Senate, Powell, a lawyer and former US Treasury official, would be the first Fed chair in three decades without a Ph.D. in economics. "He would represent continuity of the Fed system and culture but a break from the predominance of monetary policy as the core background of the chair," Aaron Klein, an economic studies fellow at the Brookings Institution, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying. The appointment of Powell is likely to be well received on Wall Street, as he has never dissented from any monetary policy decision since becoming governor in May 2012. He is widely expected to continue Yellen`s gradual and cautious strategy in tightening monetary policy after taking the helm of the central bank. "The healthy state of our economy and favourable outlook suggest that the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) should continue the process of normalizing monetary policy," Powell said in June at the Economic Club of New York, referring to the Fed`s policy-making committee. "The Committee has been patient in raising rates, and that patience has paid dividends," he said. Srinagar: The district president of BJP youth wing was on Thursday killed by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. Terrorists slit the throat of BJP's Shopian youth president Gowhar Ahmad Bhat. Bhat had played a crucial role in organising first BJP state youth convention recently. Meanwhile, the photograph of the BJP leader has also been released by news agency ANI. A police official said the body of the 30-year-old was recovered from an orchard in Kiloora. He was a resident of Bongam area in Shopian. The police have registered a case and investigations are on, the official said. Meanwhile, a BJP functionary said the deceased was associated with the party. "Bhat was the district president of the BJP's youth wing," party's media in-charge for Kashmir, Altaf Thakur, said here. He said Bhat had been associated with the party for over two years. Earlier in the day, another attack was reported from J&K's Anantnag district which left at least five security personnel injured. As per a report, the terrorists launched an attack on the CRPF patrolling party in the wee hours today. A police official told PTI that militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion CRPF at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 AM. He said three CRPF jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. Later, terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba claimed the responsibility for the attack. (With DNA inputs) Srinagar: A jawan was martyred and a terrorist was gunned down on Thursday while two others are believed to have been trapped in an encounter with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district. Meanwhile, another jawan has been injured in Pulwama's Samboora village. He has succumbed to injuries at the Army hospital. Although the firing has stopped, the cordon and search operations by the Army and police are underway. The body of the terrorist has also been recovered. The Border Security Force (BSF) constable was martyred during a ceasefire violation by Pakistan Rangers along the International Border (IB) in Samba sector. The jawan, identified as constable Tapan Mondal, 25, hailed from Satul village of West Bengal's Murshidabad district. According to BSF, the Indian forces took a dig and caused damage to at least two Pakistan posts injuring minimum two Pak Rangers. At least five security personnel were on Thursday injured in another attack by suspected terrorists in Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir. As per a report, the terrorists launched an attack on the CRPF patrolling party in the wee hours today. A police official told PTI that militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion CRPF at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 am. He said three CRPF jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. Meanwhile, Lashkar-e-Toiba has claimed the responsibility for the attack. Srinagar: At least five security personnel were injured in an attack by suspected terrorists in Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday. As per a report, the terrorists launched an attack on the CRPF patrolling party in the wee hours today. A police official told PTI that militants opened fire on the vehicle of the 96 Battalion CRPF at Lazibal in Anantnag district at 8.30 am. He said three CRPF jawans received bullet injuries while two others were injured after getting hit by broken glass panes of the vehicle. The injured personnel have been admitted to a hospital, he said, adding an operation has been launched to track down the assailants. Meanwhile, Lashkar-e-Toiba has claimed the responsibility of the attack. New Delhi: With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of digitising India, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah launched an application to reach out the netizens. Designated as Siddaramaiah, the app will provide the citizens with information about various governmental projects. Citizens will be able to reach out to the Chief Minister with their suggestions. They will also get a scope of giving their feedbacks. While releasing the app, Siddaramaiah termed it 'the CM's app'. The application can be downloaded on both Android and iPhones. The team that has designed the app will also look into the features of other chief ministers' applications. They will also work on the improvements of these apps. As per reports, the Siddaramaiah app will give the users access to interact with the chief minister and will provide his daily schedule. It is also connected with the Pratidhwani dashboard set up by the CMO, which updates information across departments, the progress of various projects and identifies the deadlines that have been met and missed. The Kerala Police has confirmed that six more youngsters from Kannur have joined the Islamic State in Syria. The police claimed that these youngsters were active workers of the Popular Front of India (PFI) in Kerala. Earlier on October 25, three men - Mithilaj, Abdul Razzak and Rashid - with suspected links to the IS were arrested by the Valapattinam police. The three had been stopped from proceeding to Syria. Police had been tracking their activities since since they were sent back by authorities in Turkey a few months ago. Reports suggest that nearly 100 Indians are fighting for Islamic State mainly in Syria and Iraq. Most of these cases have been reported to police by the families of these youths. In July 2016, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the Assembly that 21 Muslim youths from the state had gone missing over a month, raising suspicions that they had joined the extremist group. New Delhi: The king of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan turns a year older on November 2 and just as he celebrates his 52nd birthday, Twitter exploded with wishes from his family, friends, and fans. Fondly known as King Khan, SRK has a huge fan base who just couldn't keep calm on his special day. SRK's close friends flew all the way to Alibaug for a private party. The pictures of the same were shared by the actor's wife, Gauri Khan and several other guests. B-Town took to Twitter and wished a very happy birthday to the superstar. Here are some of the wishes: To the man who I love on screen & off screen. To the man who exudes charm at will. #HappyBirthdaySrk @iamsrk pic.twitter.com/lju8kjssue Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) November 2, 2017 Happy birthday Gangstaaaaakhan!Your number one fan. Love you @iamsrk pic.twitter.com/oeCHo6KicQ Mahira Khan (@TheMahiraKhan) November 2, 2017 Happy birthday my man and thank you for existing. Love you a lot @iamsrk #HappyBirthdaySRK pic.twitter.com/ty1FWIjP0X Sushant Singh Rajput (@itsSSR) November 2, 2017 Lucky Ali ..!!! Wish you a grand birthday ... as grand as you are ..!!! @iamsrk #HappyBirthdaySRK Juhi Chawla (@iam_juhi) November 2, 2017 #HappyBirthdaySRK ... wishing the ENIGMA .. KING KHAN loads of success, good health & happiness @iamsrk Girish Johar (@girishjohar) November 2, 2017 Wishing the king of romance a very happy bday#HappyBirthdaySRK pic.twitter.com/zVVyUTPwlk Sajid Khan (@SimplySajidK) November 2, 2017 Happy Birthday @iamsrk. May God give you all the happiness in the world. Your love & affection on & off screen is infectious. Jeete Raho.:) pic.twitter.com/CiChN7aXiF Anupam Kher (@AnupamPkher) November 2, 2017 Happy birthday @iamsrk .. love, light, peace .. & thank you for a cracking evening.. shine on!! https://t.co/995KBmWCDu November 2, 2017 A very happy birthday to one of the most charming, caring, considerate people in the world @iamsrk! #NoOneLikeYou #HappyBirthdaySRK pic.twitter.com/a6OssmorC9 Dia Mirza (@deespeak) November 1, 2017 Happiest birthday to my handsome friend @iamsrk .. lov u always pic.twitter.com/9pLerqSsn7 Farah Khan (@TheFarahKhan) November 1, 2017 Happiest bday to a man who makes u fall in love just by his aura and a bundle of energy that can give red bull a run @iamsrk happy bday sir siddharth malhotra (@sidpmalhotra) November 1, 2017 You're the reason I dream. You're the reason I believe in love. Happy bday shah sir @iamsrk! pic.twitter.com/YWrFFPsXSj November 2, 2017 With some iconic romantic films such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai, Mohabbatein, Devdas, and Veer-Zaara to his credit, the superstar continues to give us major relationship goals with his wife, Gauri. On the work front, King Khan is currently busy shooting for an upcoming film of Aanand L Rai. He will play the role of a dwarf and will be seen opposite Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif respectively. Rameswaram: Fourteen Tamil Nadu fishermen were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy when they were allegedly fishing near Neduntheevu in the island nation waters on Thursday. The fishermen from here and Pudukottai district were arrested on charges of poaching fish with banned fishing nets in the exclusive zone of Sri Lanka, Assistant Directors of fisheries department, Manikandan said. The naval personnel also seized three mechanised boats and took them to Kangesanthurai port there, he said. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami had on October 27 urged the Centre to take steps to secure the release of 54 fishermen and 140 fishing boats from Sri Lanka. Kangra: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday granted an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the family of those killed in the explosion at the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli. On Wednesday evening, an explosion ripped a boiler in NTPC's Unchahar plant in UP's Raebareli district leaving 30 people dead and injuring another 80. Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex- gratia of Rs. 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident. PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 2, 2017 PM Modi on Wednesday condoled the explosion at an NTPC plant and assured that efforts are being made to restore normalcy. He took to Twitter to express condolences and said that the situation is being closely monitored. "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli," he wrote on the micro-blogging site. "My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored." While few are still feared trapped inside the coal-fired plant, the total number of casualties is likely to go up after the blades of the boiler are cut up, said the Uttar Pradesh Police on Wednesday evening. Earlier in the day, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi arrived at Raebareli and met victims of the NTPC power plant blast. The incident took place on Wednesday when the ash-pipe exploded due to pressure at the NTPC plant in Unchahar area More than 150 ambulances were pressed into relief and rescue work that was affected by a huge ball of dust that rose after the 500-MW boiler (power generating unit) exploded. Nearly 22 victims with severe burn injuries have been sent to Lucknow and 15 victims in Raebareli hospital. In an addition to the PM's declaration, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also announced an ex-gratia of Rs. 50,000 for critically injured and Rs. 25,000 for those with minor injuries. Among those injured, four are from assistant general manager-rank officials. Three of them first shifted to a private hospital in Lucknow, were being flown to Delhi. One injured died in Lucknow's civil hospital where eight had been admitted. Medical Superintendent Ashutosh Dube said all of them had 80 to 90 percent burns and are in critical condition. With ANI inputs) New Delhi: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday arrived at Raebareli and met victims of the NTPC power plant blast, which has so far claimed lives of as many as 26 people. Rahul, who was on in Gujarat for the third leg of his Navsarjan Yatra, decided to meet the victims of the mishap and take stock of the situation post the blast. #WATCH Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi reaches Rae Bareli district hospital to meet those injured in #NTPCExplosion. pic.twitter.com/9hiEjpmkwr ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 2, 2017 "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon," Rahul announced in his Twitter post on Wednesday. Rae Bareli is the parliamentary constituency of his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. Sonia would not be able to visit her constituency as she is not keeping well. Earlier, Sonia in her condolence message stated that due to her bad health, she was not in a position to visit her constituency to meet the victims. "In your hour of crisis, I stand by you and pray for the speedy recovery of the injured. I wanted to come personally and share your grief but unable to do so as I am not well. I express my sympathies and condolences to the affected families," Sonia said. Expressing her shock and horror at the tragedy, Sonia urged the authorities to provide immediate medical assistance to the injured. She was recently rushed to a New Delhi hospital after she complained of an upset stomach. Rahul is in Gujarat as part of his three-day Navsarjan Yatra ahead of the Assembly polls in the State. He decided to visit his mother's constituency in wake of unfortunate accident in the power plant. Prime Minister Narendra Modi too expressed his condolence on the tragedy and said he was 'deeply pained' by the accident and the situation was being closely monitored. "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored," he tweeted. The NTPC has already initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast while Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is away in Mauritius on a three-day official visit, announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the injured. On Wednesday, a blast at NTPC plant in Uttar Pradesh's Uchahar killed at least 18 and injured close to 100. The death toll rose to 26 by Thursday afternoon. While local administration and NTPC officials rushed to conduct rescue operations, the toll is expected to rise further. Madrid: A judge in Madrid on Thursday ordered ministers of Catalonia`s deposed government to be held in jail pending further probes into their role in the regional government`s quest for independence, prompting calls for protests in Barcelona and other cities. Accused of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds, Catalonia`s former vice president Oriol Junqueras and seven other deposed regional ministers were headed for detention after another day of drama in Spain`s worst political crisis in decades. A ninth former minister, who resigned just before the Catalan parliament declared independence on Friday, was also remanded in jail but will be set free if he pays bail of 50,000 euros ($58,000). Grassroots independence association ANC called "peaceful but firm" protests for 7:00 pm (1800 GMT) in front of the Catalan parliament in Barcelona and city halls around Catalonia. Independence supporters have urged more protests on Friday night and a big rally on November 12 in Barcelona. Pro-independence umbrella group Crida Democracia called for a week of demonstrations.Spanish prosecutors also sought a European arrest warrant for Catalonia`s axed leader Carles Puigdemont, who is in Belgium and refused to show up to be questioned by the same judge. In her ruling, judge Carmen Lamela said she had ordered preventive detention for the former ministers as she believed there was a risk they could escape, given Puigdemont had gone to Belgium. Four other ministers also failed to turn up, and prosecutors asked that they too are arrested. "Let`s not forget the purchasing power of the defendants, which allows them to easily leave the Spanish territory and live abroad," Lamela argued in her ruling. "Let`s remember that some of the defendants have already gone to other countries, dodging possible penal responsibilities."A total of 19 people including Puigdemont, Junqueras and the speaker of the Catalan regional parliament had been summoned to be questioned on Thursday. A hearing of the speaker and five others at the Supreme Court was adjourned until November 9 after their lawyers requested more time to prepare their defence. Tweeting after the order for his detention, Junqueras said: "Every day, do all you can so that good defeats evil in the polls on 21D. Standing tall, with determination and until victory." He was referring to regional elections called on December 21 by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a bid to "restore normality" to a region rocked by the secession bid. "The conflict between Catalonia and the Spanish state won`t be resolved through courts and violence," former Catalan president Artur Mas, in Madrid to show his support, said earlier. "The more fuel and wood you add to the fire, the bigger it becomes." Catalan demands independence date back centuries but has surged in recent years, in part due to a difficult economic situation. Puigdemont`s government organised an independence referendum on October 1 despite a court ban. Spanish police tried and failed to stop it, in some cases firing rubber bullets at people defending polling stations. A declaration of independence by the Catalan parliament followed last Friday, greeted by celebrations on the streets of Barcelona. But that same day, Rajoy`s government dismissed the regional government, imposed direct rule on Catalonia and called the December elections.Marta Rovira, a lawyer and Catalan separatist lawmaker, briefly broke down in tears as she spoke to reporters in Madrid after the announcement of the detentions. "The Spanish state is a failed state, a state that has failed democratically," she said. "I`m convinced we won`t surrender, we won`t, we will fight until the end." In Barcelona earlier Thursday, several hundred demonstrators gathered in front of the regional government chanting "freedom" and "Puigdemont is our president". "(Puigdemont) hasn`t fled, it is a political strategy... forcing the EU to take a stand," said Jorde Segu, 68, a retiree. "He`s a hero," added secretary Lidia Amoraga, 62.Catalans, fiercely proud of their language and culture, remain deeply divided about independence, polls indicate. The European Union, several members of which have disgruntled regions of their own, has swung firmly behind Rajoy. In addition, there are signs of growing divisions in the separatist camp, with many unhappy with Puigdemont, particularly now he is hundreds of miles away. Spain`s central bank also warned Thursday that the region risks suffering an economic recession if the strife continues. New Delhi: Indian and Chinese cities are now notorious for their polluted air which chokes its citizens and are a major cause of premature deaths. Pakistani cities though are not far behind with Lahore almost disappearing under a haze of toxic air in the first couple of November days. Pakistan's second-largest city has reported alarming levels of air pollutants in the last few days and the Air Quality Index (AQI) has hovered around the 225 mark. AQI between 0 and 50 is considered safe while any figure between 200 and 300 is deemed 'Very Unhealthy'. What is more alarming than the alarming level of air pollution though is that the city has not sounded an alert and, according to a Geo TV report, has no effective plan in place to combat the threat. According to the local environmental department, there are a number of reasons for the rise in pollution in Lahore around this time of the year. Waste burning and pollution from seven million vehicles in a city of 11 million are two primary causes. The department has also said that crop burning in India contributes to Lahore's dismal air quality - almost as much as it does in New Delhi. While authorities in India have not been able to aggressively crack down on crop burning in Punjab and Haryana, Pakistani authorities do not seem too perturbed either. Last month, the government in Pakistan's Punjab suggested a few measures including more public awareness, better traffic management and ban on burning municipal waste. On ground level though, the air above remains clogged - much like in Delhi where despite Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) coming into effect, the average AQI has been well over the 300-mark. Meanwhile, residents in both cities - 400 kilometres apart - gradually choke towards a health emergency. The annual hunter sight-in program from the Dane County Sheriff's Office starts Saturday at the shooting range on Highway 19 east of Waunakee. The daily program will continue through Friday, Nov. 17, and costs $10 for the first gun and $5 for every additional gun. The program started years ago to give hunters a chance to sight and adjust their firearms before the traditional nine-day gun deer season starts on Nov. 18. It runs through Nov. 26. The law enforcement training center is at 5184 Highway 19, about midway between the Interstate and Waunakee. No appointment is necessary and the facility is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Only firearms that are legal for hunting deer in Wisconsin will be allowed at the sight-in program. Hearing and eye protection is mandatory and will be provided if the participant doesn't have the equipment. Instructors will be on hand to assist in the sighting and adjusting, and there will also be information about hunting laws, regulations and gun safety. For more information, call the training center, 849-2660. New York: An Uzbek immigrant suspected of killing eight people in New York City by plowing a truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting on behalf of the militant group Islamic State. The suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was hospitalized after a police officer shot and arrested him, ending Tuesday`s rampage, confessed to authorities while in custody that he began planning the attack a year ago, according to the criminal complaint filed against him. The 10-page complaint said Saipov waived his rights to remain silent and avoid self-incrimination in agreeing to speak to investigators without an attorney present from his Bellvue Hospital Center bed in Manhattan. In the course of that interview, the complaint said, Saipov told investigators he was inspired by Islamic State videos he had watched on his cellphone, chose Halloween for the attack because he believed more people would be on the streets, and had originally planned to strike the Brooklyn Bridge as well as the bike path. The complaint also said Saipov had requested permission to display Islamic State`s flag in his hospital room and said he felt good about what he had done. Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation posted an online wanted poster of a second Uzbekistan-born man, named Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, who was described as being sought for questioning in connection with the attack along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. Saipov was charged with one count of providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation, designated in the complaint as Islamic State, and one count of violence and destruction of motor vehicles. New York City police earlier in the day said that Saipov had carried out the attack according to instructions he found posted online by Islamic State, on whose behalf he claimed to have acted. Police also said Saipov had left behind a note extolling Islamic State, also known as ISIS. "The gist of the note was that the Islamic State would endure forever," New York Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller told a news conference. "He appears to have followed almost exactly the instructions that ISIS has put out on its social media channels to its followers." The attack was the deadliest in New York City since Sept. 11, 2001, when suicide hijackers crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, killing more than 2,600 people. Tuesday`s attack injured 12 people, some critically, in addition to those killed. Similar assaults using vehicles as weapons took place in Spain in August and in France and Germany last year. Kuala Lumpur: When Zakir Naik emerged from a prominent Malaysian mosque last month fans swarmed about him, seeking selfies with the Indian Muslim televangelist whose hardline views have sparked a criminal investigation back in his home country. Accompanied by a bodyguard, Naik was making a rare public appearance at the Putra Mosque in Malaysia's administrative capital, where the prime minister and his cabinet members often worship. Naik, who has been banned in the UK, has been given permanent residency in Malaysia, and embraced by top government officials. Critics see Naik's presence in Malaysia as another sign of top-level support for hardline Islam in a country with substantial minorities of Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, and which has long projected a moderate Islamic image. Support for a more politicised Islam has grown in recent years under Prime Minister Najib Razak, especially after he lost the popular vote in the 2013 general election - the ruling coalition's worst-ever electoral performance. Since then, his ruling party has been trying to appease an increasingly conservative ethnic Malay-Muslim base and religion has become a battleground ahead of elections the prime minister has to call by mid-2018. Naik, a 52-year-old medical doctor, has aroused controversy with his puritan brand of Islam - recommending the death penalty for homosexuals and those who abandon Islam as their faith, according to media reports. A Youtube video shows Naik saying that if Osama bin Laden "is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him". Last week, India's counter-terrorism agency NIA prepared charges against Naik, saying he has been "promoting enmity and hatred between different religious groups in India through public speeches and lectures." Bangladesh suspended Peace TV channel, which features Naik's preachings, after some media reports claimed bombers of a Dhaka cafe that killed 22 people last year were admirers of him. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. The Malaysian government accommodates Naik because "he remains a reasonably popular character amongst Malays, who gloss over his more controversial aspects," said Rashaad Ali, an analyst with S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore. "If the government were to kick him out of the country, it causes them to lose religious credibility in the eyes of the public." I rarely talk directly about specific political races, but I live in Virginia where in less than a week there will be the most closely watched election in the nation for governor. It is very close, and the Republican, Ed Gillespie, might well win, even though his Dem opponent, Ralph Northam, leads by narrow margins in most polls. Sound familiar? Sure, but why am I going on about this? It is because even the pro-Dem national media seems to have bought into inaccurate characterizations of Northams positions. Most specifically, Chris Matthews on Hardball just had a guest on and they both were repeating the false claim that Northam supports taking down all Confederate monuments in the state, although accurately noting that this is a tough issue in the Commonwealth that Gillespie has been using to effect against Northam. If Gillespie wins, this issue will be part of it. The problem is that Northams position is not that they should all be taken down, although he has expressed dislike of the Confederate monuments. His position is that this is a matter of local control over locally controlled statues, which is the case. He has said he would take down those at the state level, but there are very few Confederate monuments put up at the state level. As a matter of fact, current state law is against local control, asserting that local municipalities do not have the right to move such monuments. This is a live and hot issue in Charlottesville, where the city council voted to move the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson off public parks. However, they city has been blocked from doing so thanks to court rulings based on current state law. This effort to move the statues is what led to the demonstrations and rioting and death in Charlottesville in August. Of course the latest is that a Latino activist group has been forced to withdraw an ad against Gillsepie since the terror attack in New York yesterday. That ad showed minority children running from a pickup truck with a Confederate flag flying and a pro-Gillespie sign on it. Sure, nasty, but then we did see somebody killed by a Nazi running a car over somebody. Yeah, the ad was pushing the edge, but the hard fact is that the GOP has been running nasty and false ads against Northam relentlessly, which I am sick of seeing, which may be why I am boring everybody with this whiney post. So, the Gillespie ads have been charging Northam with supporting the MS-13 gang, with horrendous photos of prisoners in El Salvador covered with ugly tattoos, with charges that Northam supports sanctuary cities, of which there are a big fat zero in Virginia. There have also been scads of ads from the NRA against Northam, although some of these look sort of silly, at least to somebody like me who does not like the NRA. So they have one where they show Northam saying, I have a D- rating from the NRA, with them then shattering that with False! He has an F! but he was speaking to people against the NRA and he has spoken strongly against the NRA, but clearly the NRA is trying to get its people out to vote. Another worry I have is a supposed boredom reported by WaPo about the race, which is why I worry that this darned New York terror attack and all these statues and NRA ads will get the Trump supporters out while the Northam people sit at home going ho hum like we have seen in so many off-presidential years. I admit that I shall be totally disgusted if the GOP pulls this off with their awful ads and hypocrisy, aided by stupidity on the part of the national pro-Dem media, which would be a really unpleasant reminder locally of what happened nationally a year ago. Barkley Rosser WASHINGTON Beware the low-level volunteer. Virtually unheard of before Monday, when the FBI indicted two of President Trumps campaign staffers, George Papadopoulos is either the key to Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election or a lying low level volunteer, as the president tweeted early Tuesday morning. But contrary to Trumps dismissive, never-heard-of-him shrug, Papadopoulos was also known within the campaign as Trumps foreign affairs adviser. It was within the latter capacity that Papadopoulos tried, unsuccessfully, to arrange meetings between the Trump campaign and Russians close to the Kremlin, ostensibly to learn dirt on Hillary Clinton. He may be the key to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation that led to Mondays indictments of the presidents former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and crimes against the United States. Papadopoulos himself was offered a pre-indictment plea bargain on charges he had lied to the FBI during an earlier point in the investigation. In response to the indictments, Trump has done everything but burn an effigy of Hillary Clinton as distraction or, well, what? In the swamp, one is never sure whether movements beneath the surface are gators or mere shadows. Trumps history has taught us, however, that when hes under attack, Clinton will feel it. Like the Ghost of Election Past, she haunts Trumps dreamscape. But why arent Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus? he tweeted Monday soon after the news broke. Indeed, on Capitol Hill, some Republicans, whove been scurrying away from the indictment news as fast as their little mice feet can carry them, have moved to open an investigation into the Obama-era sale of Canada-based Uranium One, which had licenses to mine U.S. uranium, to a subsidiary of a Russian state-owned energy corporation. A committee composed of representatives from several U.S. government agencies, including the State Department at the time led by Clinton had to approve the sale, which transpired after the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in donations from Uranium One investors. This would probably be a good time to grab a sheet of graph paper and a pencil. Youre going to need them to chart the many possible overlaps in this Venn diagram of Russian propaganda/possible collusion/corruption/sleaze/lies/more lies and wires. As of yet, we have seen no videotape, though its possible Papadopoulos has been wearing a wire in recent months. Also, keep your eraser handy. People have people, you know, and others get fired. Or pardoned. But speculation Trump would pardon Manafort and Gates is probably irrelevant. Manafort and Gates alleged federal crimes almost certainly could not have happened without committing state crimes. State attorneys general could build cases off of Muellers investigation and effectively neuter Trumps power. A president can only pardon federal crimes. The question now is: Whos next? And what bigger fish could Manafort or Gates offer up in a plea that would spare them potentially up to 80 years and 70 years, respectively, in prison? Former national security adviser Michael Flynns name keeps coming up. None of this affirms or even bolsters a case that Trumps campaign colluded with Russia to influence the election, especially given that many of Manaforts relevant business dealings preceded his association with the campaign. All we know for certain is that Russia did influence the election, thanks to astounding testimony by social media leaders Tuesday. Twitter identified 36,746 accounts associated with Russia that generated election-related content. Google found about 43 hours of election content in about 1,100 videos suspected to be of Russian origin. Facebook estimates about 126 million people were exposed to Russian-produced stories leading up to the election. If Trump benefited from these virtual incursions, theres no proof he knew about it. Then again, weve likely only seen the tip of the iceberg, which must loom large to swamp-dwellers. Plus remember, Chicago crime boss Al Capone was brought down not on murder or racketeering, but on tax evasion. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The European Union is one of the main political and trading partners of Armenia, deputy FM Karen Nazaryan said during parliamentary debates of the 2018 state budget draft. Speaking about the 2017 Armenia-EU relations, I have to mention that the agenda was rather busy. High level visits, meetings, political consultations, including with the participation of the president, the PM, the foreign minister, and the parliament took place during the year. The President was in Brussels in the end of February, where he had meetings with the political leadership of the EU, Nazaryan said. The deputy FM says the completion of negotiations and the initialing of the new Armenia-EU framework agreement is an important achievement for Armenia. Recently the designing of the Armenia-EU partnership priority was completed, which along with the comprehensive and expanded partnership agreement will guide the future development of our bilateral cooperation especially in various sectors, he said. Discussions on the Single Assistance Circle document, which will be provided from the EU to Armenia, are also underway and coordinated by the Vice PM. The negotiations over a common aviation zone with the EU have also been completed. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The new Armenia-EU framework agreement is comprehensive and ambitious, which will be an important step for developing relations with the European Union and expanding partnership, deputy FM Karen Nazaryan said during parliamentary debates of the 2018 state budget. Looking ahead, or perhaps by predicting what the signing of this document will give to Armenia, I will mention that under the agreement it is planned to strengthen dialogue between Yerevan and Brussels and create solid foundation for continuing the economic and social reforms, because the strong commitments for democracy, human rights and the rule of rights are at the basis of this document, he said. He added that the agreement is a joint initiative which will further deepen relations in wider circles of the revised European neighborhood policy and Eastern Partnership. With the agreement, a stronger partnership in the energy, transportation and environmental sectors will be creates, as well as active mobility for the benefit of our citizens, he said. According to Nazaryan, the agreement marks a new era in the trading relations between Armenia and the EU. It will contribute to closer economic cooperation by improving the business environment. It will create opportunities for business, investments and creation of new jobs. The comprehensive, balanced and enhanced trading provisions of the agreement will help Armenia to successfully integrate into the European economy, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government approved the draft loan agreement between Armenia and the Asian Development Bank Public Efficiency and Financial Markets Program Subprogram 1. Finance minister Vardan Aramyan said under the agreement it is planned to provide Armenia with a 40 million dollar budget assistance loan. The budgetary assistance credit, unlike targeted programs, enables to finance the most important spending categories of the budget. The loan will be provided with a 15 year re-payment period, three years being privileged, Aramyan said. In particular, it is planned to enhance the fiscal risk management and the state debt with the purpose of improving fiscal discipline and transparency. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan says the rumors that allegedly he and President Serzh Sargsyan have an agreement on him becoming Vice-PM in 2018 are useless. During a press conference today, the PM said that he has answered this question numerously, and as of this moment, after April 9 the ruling party will jointly propose a candidate for PM with its coalition partner. We didnt have similar discussions, therefore walking about some kind of an agreement is useless, the PM said. Asked if he would like to continue serving as PM, Karapetyan said: I have clearly stated that I am ready to. I continue to put my best in the work. I want to serve our country. I am sure that we can definitely have a good country, a reasonable and developing country. He stressed that the ruling HHK partys future actions are clearly formulated. We adopted a new constitution, we are shifting to a new status, where it is clearly formulated how it will happen, he said. Asked if he agrees with some HHK officials that Serzh Sargsyan is irreplaceable as the partys president and the guarantor of Armenias security, the PM said: Regarding Serzh Sargsyans rating as guarantor of security, as a leader with great experience I must say that I fully agree with these statements. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The Investors Club of Armenia will present specific info on investments during the upcoming 10-12 days, PM Karen Karapetyan told a press conference today. When we created the Investors Club, everyone was asking where those investors were. They will soon clearly announce about the investments, during the upcoming 10-12 days, he said. At the same time the PM said he assesses the economic situation as manageable and with prospects. Im not saying that weve solved all problems. Today, in order to bring foreign investors we must first of all create an environment and in this context it is important to activate domestic investors. I think we have changed the background this year somewhat, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian businessmen will use the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway if the proposal will be beneficial, PM Karen Karapetyan said at a press conference when asked whether or not the Armenian side will be able to use the railway. Whether or not well use the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway depends on the proposal. If the businessmen get a beneficial proposal then theyll use it, if not, no, he said. Speaking on the Iran-Armenia railway program, the PM said that first of all it is necessary to calculate what price the rendered services will have after building it and then compare it with the motor vehicle road spending. Business reasoning is required, it isnt an end in itself. We must further study the cooperation flows with Iran, their increase by taking into account the North-South highway and Meghri FEZ factors. We will discuss it when these indicators are there, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The first flight from Kapan airport to Yerevan is planned to take off in May of 2018, Syunik governor Vahe Hakobyan told reporters. We plan to carry out the first flight in May of the coming year. Weve already acquired the aircraft, and everything is ready to re-commission the airport, he said. He added that the aircraft is currently in Czech Republic and will be delivered to Armenia in March 2018. The 5.5 million Euro 19-seat L-410 passenger plane was acquired from a Czech airline. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The agreement which is due to be signed between Armenia and the EU in the end of November aims at deepening cooperation, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview with Russias BFM. First of all its about modernizing our society effective administration, human rights. It almost doesnt relate to the economy. I say almost because really there is one point in the agreement, under which the commitments of this agreement cannot whatsoever contradict the commitments which Armenia assumed earlier, the president said. He said the agreements provisions cannot contradict Armenias commitments before integration unions. Contradictions cant happen here. The laws, agreements, contracts which we sign within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union will be in force in our country, Sargsyan said. The president stressed that there are no material differences here both Armenia, Russia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan are members of the World Trade Organization. I think eventually the EEU will reach the point where it will function under WTO laws, the laws under which currently Europeans work, he said, and once again reassured that the new agreement with the EU doesnt have contradictions with the EEU. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The Goergian side is courteously fulfilling its neighbor and other commitments in trade relations with Armenia with EEU member countries, President Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview with Russias BFM. Currently Armenia doesnt have the opportunity to establish commercial relations with EEU member countries with another way than through Georgia. Initially, people who were dealing with the formation of the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union believed it to be a big obstacle. However, when they calmly analyzed the situation, they understood that this isnt the case, he said. He stressed that it can only be about a technical obstacle, which however can be overcome. Here the only obstacle, certainly is the not quite good road. I mean the mountainous road floods, snowfalls etc. We are currently thinking about building a second road, Sargsyan said, The President also spoke about the need to improve the border checkpoint work in Upper Lars. We regularly raise these issues. On one hand it is necessary to improve the work of checkpoints, on the other hand it is necessary to find alternative options for transporting products to the Russian market, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan held a meeting on November 2 with the delegation of Nikolay Rizhkov, co-chair of the inter-parliamentary committee of cooperation between the parliaments of Armenia and Russia. The delegation is in Armenia for the 30th session of the committee. During the meeting the President mentioned that the current year marks the 25th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Armenia and Russia, and the 20th anniversary of signing the Friendship, cooperation and mutual aid agreement. The president said the Armenian-Russian allied relations stand out with active dialogue in all sectors, wide coordination of foreign policy, active work in international and regional platforms, and close cooperation in the economic, military, defense and humanitarian sectors. The President highlighted the role of parliamentary diplomacy in development of the Armenian-Russian relations. Rizhkov thanked the President for the reception and stressed the need to consistently continue the strengthening of relations on the legislative and executive levels. The co-chair presented the activities of the committee. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Parliaments Deputy Speaker Arpine Hovhannisyan held a meeting November 2 with the delegation of the German parliament led by MP Doris Barnett. German Ambassador to Armenia H.E. Bernhard Matthias Kiesler was also present at the meeting. The purpose of the delegations visit to Armenia is to select the Armenian participants for the International Parliamentary Scholarship 2018 program. Hovhannisyan highly appreciated the program in the context of developing scientific-educational ties. During the meeting the sides also touched upon the peaceful settlement of the NK conflict. The sides attached importance to the role of the young generation in settlement of conflicts and establishment of peace in the region. In this context, Hovhannisyan mentioned Azerbaijans state-sanctioned anti-Armenian policy, which according to her creates obstacles in establishing healthy interactions of the young people of both countries. The parties also discussed womens involvement in political processes, among other issues. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS/ARTSAKHPRESS. I am very happy to be in the Republic of Artsakh and to have the chance to get to know the people living here and their issues, Lars Patrick Berg, German lawmaker from the Baden-Wurttemberg state, member of the Alternative For Germany parliamentary faction said in an interview with ARTSAKHPRESS. The German MP arrived in Stepanakert accompanied by Harutyun Grigoryan, permanent representative of Artsakh in Germany. During my two-day visit I had important meetings both with the political leadership and representatives of the society. I gathered very interesting and useful information. I think cooperation with Artsakh is not only necessary, but it also shouldnt be limited only with private visits of various politicians. I will definitely speak about this during meetings with my colleagues, he said, adding that during the visit he was convinced that very little and wrong information about Artsakh exists in Germany. According to Lars Patrick Berg, during the visit he has seen a developing, peaceful and safe country, which however has a conflict with Azerbaijan. When I wanted to visit Artsakh, my friends in Germany were advising me to drop the idea. They insisted that my security isnt guaranteed, and they were expressing various concerns. But I saw a very different reality and I got convinced that I am located in a very safe country, where people calmly walk around in the streets, and the border where the dangers of the conflict are located, is very far from peaceful settlements. Artsakh has a wonderful nature, very friendly people live here and I will return to Artsakh again with my family, he said. YEREVAN, 2 NOVEMBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 2 November, USD exchange rate up by 0.93 drams to 483.99 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 1.42 drams to 563.46 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.02 drams to 8.32 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 1.62 drams to 640.80 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price up by 145.34 drams to 19871.71 drams. Silver price up by 2.37 drams to 263.6 drams. Platinum price up by 276.32 drams to 14486.95 drams. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. For all potential investors, Armenia presents itself not as a market of 3 million people, but a territory which proposes entry to several major markets, PM Karen Karapetyan told a press conference in response to a question from ARMENPRESS, as to what is his assessment on Armenias economic benefit from the nearly 3 year membership to the EEU. Today, during talks with all potential investors and our partners we say that when you come to Armenia, dont come as into a market of 3 million, rather come to a territory, a country, where we will maximally provide a business environment, security, where, depending on your interests, you can enter the EEU, EU, USA, Iran, Karapetyan said. He reaffirmed that the FEZ with Iran will being functioning in the end of November, which in its turn will ensure a market of 82,5 million people. We are a member of five EEU countries, as a result of which we have the opportunity to enter a 180 million big market with a certain facilitated regime. And the main consumer of the production, services, which we have in our country, are mainly in those markets. In addition, we are the only post-Soviet country which has a GSP+ regime with the EU and GSP with the USA, while being a member of the EEU and CIS, he said. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The President of the National Assembly of Armenia Ara Babloyan received on November 2 Snezana Samardzic-Markovic, Director General for Democracy of the Directorate General (DG) of the Council of Europe, ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia. Welcoming the guest, Ara Babloyan highlighted the cooperation between the Republic of Armenia and the Council of Europe, particularly on the establishment of democracy, protection of human rights and fighting corruption. In the word of the President of the National Assembly of Armenia, as a result of the end of the first phase of the joint programme Partnership for Good Governance (PGG) four national programmes were implemented in Armenia, recording the readiness of our country to carry out the designed initiatives. Ara Babloyan, touching upon the processes following the Constitutional reforms, has noted that Armenia takes the path of democracy, distinctly being differentiated from a number of countries, aspiring decentralization of the power and making transition into parliamentary system of government. The President of the Armenian parliament stated that being an EEU member state, Armenia is ready for open and unconstrained cooperation with different countries of the world. The Head of the parliament has touched upon the draft law on Prevention of Domestic Violence and Protection of the Persons Subjected to Domestic Violence, highlighting the awareness of the public on the bill, as often people have no full picture what the thing is about. Snezana Samardzic-Markovic thanked Ara Babloyan for the reception, emphasizing the cooperation of Armenia with the CoE. Ms Samardzic-Markovic agreed with Ara Babloyans opinion that Armenia really differs from a number of the countries of the region, recording considerable progress in democracy and protection of human rights and impressing the European colleagues. Underlining the importance of the draft law on of Domestic Violence and Protection of the Persons Subjected to Domestic Violence, Ms Samardzic-Markovic expressed hope that it would be passed by the National Assembly of Armenia. At the end of the meeting the interlocutors talked about the issues on protection of the childrens rights and prevention of violence in the EU countries and Armenia. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. The President of the National Assembly of Armenia Ara Babloyan received on November 2 the delegation led by the Co-Chair of the Committee on Cooperation between the RF FA and the National Assembly of Armenia, the member of the RF Federal Council Nikolai Ryzhkov. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the parliament of Armenia, welcoming the participants of the 30th sitting of the Committee on Cooperation between the RF FA and the National Assembly of Armenia, Ara Babloyan noted that this year sees the 25thanniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation: due to that event the Armenian-Russian ally relations have turned into modern phase. The Head of the parliament documented that the lively dialogue at all levels is the pledge of the consistent development of bilateral relations. In Ara Babloyans word, Armenia and Russia, being EEU members, reached the trade-economic cooperation to a new qualitative degree. The President of the National Assembly of Armeia touched upon the Armenian-Russian inter-parliamentary cooperation, observing it as an important element of cooperation. In this context the Head of the parliament has underlined the importance of the activities of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee, which is a demanded platform for open and constructive dialogue for the legislative and executive authorities of the two countries, as well as for the business circles. Ara Babloyan also highlighted the cooperation and the mutual support on the international platforms. Thanking the President of the Armenian parliament for the reception Nikolai Ryzhkov highly assessed over 20-year activities of the Committee on Cooperation. Highlighting the meetings being held twice a year in Russia and in Armenia, he highly assessed the constructive reports of the Armenian and Russian colleagues at the 30th sitting. At the end of the meeting the interlocutors touched upon the progress recorded within the EEU framework and the opportunities of expanding the cooperation. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of obligations and commitments by Armenia Giuseppe Galati (Italy, EPP/CD) and Alan Meale (United Kingdom, SOC) , will pay a visit to Yerevan on 6-7 November 2017. ARMENPRESS reports discussions will mainly focus on recent political developments and on-going reforms with regard to the implementation of the new constitution, the judicial independence and the fight against corruption, as well as further electoral reforms following the 2017 elections. The co-rapporteurs are scheduled to meet with the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the President of the National Assembly, and the Minister of Justice. Talks are also scheduled with the political groups represented in the National Assembly, the Armenian delegation to PACE, the human rights defender, and civil society representatives. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 2, ARMENPRESS. Spain's high court has ordered eight former ministers from Catalonia's dissolved government be detained without bail, as prosecutors sought a Europe-wide arrest warrant for ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, ARMENPRESS reports, citing CNN. Nine ex-ministers turned up to the high court Thursday after being summoned, while Puigdemont and four other ministers failed to show up and are believed to be in the Belgian capital, Brussels. The ninth minister was granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,000). The high court, known as the the Audiencia Nacional, had ordered Puigdemont and the 13 other ministers to appear. The state prosecutor in Madrid later asked the court to issue national and European arrest warrants for Puigdemont and the four other ministers. Puigdemont's no-show was the latest act of defiance from the renegade leader, who has caused consternation in Madrid following the referendum and the Catalan parliament's declaration of unilateral independence weeks later. Puigdemont fled Spain and appeared in Brussels on Monday. On the same day, Spain's state prosecutor announced he was seeking charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds against the deposed president and the 13 ex-ministers. The charges follow Catalonia's October 1 independence referendum, ruled illegal by Spain's Constitutional Court. A spokesperson for Puigdemont said he would remain in Brussels with the other four ministers. ROME, ItalyWhen people leave adult performing, thanks to society's rampant discrimination against anyone who's ever been involved in sex work, the former stars usually go to some trouble to avoid being recognized as their porn personae. For women, this can include cutting long hair, letting short hair grow, changing hair color, wearing different makeup and clothing, even getting breast reductions. For men, it's a bit more difficult, since their on-camera image doesn't differ substantially from their off-camera one. Sure, they can shave or grow a beard/mustache and dress differently, but those modest changes barely disguise the former porn starand one of the most recent examples of that sticky situation is Italian math professor Ruggero Freddi. Freddi has been teaching math to college students at La Sapienza University of Rome for the past couple of years, having earned a master's degree in mathematics after he quit acting in 2013a degree that complemented the master's in computer engineering that he had when he entered the adult industry. But when he recently posted a video of himself flexing his still-buff muscles on Facebook, at least one of his students recognized him as porn star Carlo Masi, and outed him to a newspaper reporter. Fortunately, Freddi was prepared for the possibility that he might someday be recognized as a former performer, and told the Italian publication Republica that he isnt ashamed of his adult industry past. "Some students reposted the photo in a few sites and from there my former life as a porn actor emerged," he told Republica. "To be honest, it wasnt exactly a secret." Freddi had been out as a gay man for several years before he got into porn. After graduating from the university, he tried to get an engineering job, but the market for engineers was flat at the time, and Freddi was unable to find employment in his chosen field. But, "Then I was offered to do a film in the USA. I thought, 'Why not?' A job that helps me earn more and is a more entertaining career," he told Republica. That offer came from Colt Studios in 2004, and since then, Freddi, as Masi, did 13 features for the company, most recently starring in Top Shots and Top Shots 3, which were released in 2014. But while Freddi may have been prepared to be outed, he had no idea what a big deal it would become. "I knew sooner or later something was going to happen, but I didnt expect something so big to happen," he told Gay Star News. "I thought someone would publish something and my students would talk about it for a while, but I wasnt expecting the entire country to actually speak about it." Not only that, but Freddi received attention all over Europe, with several British newspapers and websites having covered the "scandal." Fortunately, though, La Sapienza University hasn't given him any shit about his earlier career. "Im happy and proud of both my careers," he told reporters. "They both reflect part of my personality. I was happy I was a good looking guy and the world recognized this. I am very happy the world recognizes Im a smart guy." Freddi is currently working on his Ph.D. in mathematics. LOS ANGELESiWantEmpire, the newly formed conglomerate that includes iWantClips, iWantCustomClips and iWantPhone, has signed acclaimed Brazilian-born performer Diego Sans as their newest contract star. Sans will also act as the company's brand ambassador and consultant, further enhancing the brands expansion into the gay market. Diego is a passionate performer and advocate for the gay community, so were extremely proud to have him join iWantEmpire, said Jay Phillips Vice President of iWantEmpire. With his popularity, remarkable Brazilian fanbase, considerable talents, and star quality, Diego will greatly augment our visibility and growth in the gay market. As a contract star, Sans will star in all-new clips available only from iWantEmpire. Moreover, in his new role as a brand ambassador and consultant, Sans will help develop content and marketing strategies as well as serve as the face of iWantEmpire in the gay community. He will also make personal appearances and be the focus of marketing campaigns, promotions, and special events to further enhance iWantEmpires brand awareness and visibility. The Brazil-born performer has been among the most popular stars in the industry since his arrival in 2010. His striking looks, passionate performances, and onscreen charm have made him a sought-after talent among gay adult studios. Diego also boasts a large following in his homeland which puts his social media reach well into the hundreds of thousands, and is the proud recipient of three Grabby Awards. I am truly excited to join iWantEmpire and be a part of such an amazing team, Sans said. "I love the fact they are dedicated to producing quality content and working with the best people in the industry. Im excited to share a personal side of myself and let fans and followers get to know and see who Diego Sans really is! iWantEmpire operates a number of adult sites, including the leading amateur, fetish and porn star clip site, iWantClips which offers a truly elite experience. Its other sites are iWantCustomClips, which offers users the ability to direct their ultimate fantasy by choosing the model, outfit, scenario and more, along with the new mobile chat service, iWantPhone. For more on Diego Sans, follow him on Twitter at @RB_DiegoSans. LOS ANGELESThe The iWantEmpire retained fashion photographer Josh Ryan to produce an all-star photo shoot featuring iWantClips performers, including its adult industry contract stars. The images will be used to market the progressive lifestyle brand through the first quarter of 2018 nationwide, in both print and billboard advertisements. The recently completed session features some of the industry's top stars and iWantClips contract performers, Jenna Sativa, who is the 2017 Penthouse Pet of the Year; Tasha Reign, APAC Chairperson, crossover star and award-winning performer; and Riley Reyes, APAC Treasurer, and multiple award-winner, as well as iWC co-founder Bratty Nikki and the networks leading publicity team members. It was such a great experiencing working with Josh and his team to bring our vision to life. A truly wonderful and educational experience for the iWantEmpire team, said Jay Phillips VP of iWantEmpire which operates iWantClips and its sister sites. It was a great couple of days, with mind-blowing results. I am looking forward to sharing our vision with the world, and to producing many more campaigns that blend life, fashion, art, and erotica. Ryan, who is working with iWantClips for the first time, is known for his glamour and fashion photography for Guess, Playboy, Maxim, and other top brands. He has also photographed such celebrities as Nicole Scherzinger, Rachel Mortensen, Joanna Krupa and many others. The photo shoot brought together a talented group of women who are all that iWantClips represents beauty, style, positivity and great sex appeal! said iWantEmpire Marketing Director CeCe Von. It was truly an all-star lineup for an amazing photo shoot! The photos from the shoot will be part of its winter marketing campaign by iWantClips to demonstrate the brands position as a unique destination for erotic content, social interaction and lifestyle components that reach across all genders, preferences, and interests. Square Pie has launched a range of frozen mini pies into Waitrose stores across the country. Proper Little Pies, which are all under 200 calories, come in three variants Chestnut Mushroom & Borlotti Bean, Spinach, Goats Cheese & Sweet Potato and Steak & Ale with an rsp of 3.50. The vegetarian chestnut mushroom pie contains borlotti beans in a vintage cheddar sauce with a crumble top; the goats cheese pie, which is also vegetarian, contains spinach and roasted sweet potato; the steak & ale also has onions, carrots and leeks, wrapped in a flaky pastry. Every pack contains four Proper Little Pies targeting those looking for a snack, a lighter lunch or party occasions. They cook from frozen in 20 minutes. Were delighted to be partnering with Waitrose on our delicious Proper Little Pies, consumers will get the full pie experience they have come to know and love with our Square Pies but all for under 200 calories, said Square Pie founder Martin Dewey. Mini is in for gourmet company Square Pie as it opened a Pick n Mix pie bar in Bristol earlier this year, which allowed shoppers to personalise meals with a choice of six mini pies and dipping sauces. The Bread Factory and Great British Biscotti Co were among the winners at the Food Manufacture Excellence Awards. Craft business The Bread Factory was crowned Bakery Manufacturing Company of the Year, while Dorset-based Great British Biscotti Co collected the SME Innovation of the Year award at the event, held at the Hilton Park Lane, London yesterday (1 November). The Food Manufacture Excellence Awards, run by British Bakers sister title Food Manufacture and organised by William Reed Business Media, were celebrated in front of hundreds of food industry representatives. Judges paid tribute to The Great British Biscotti Cos scale of ambition and praised The Bread Factorys commitment to investing in capacity and a new enterprise resource planning system. The Bread Factorys passion, tenacity and achievement in translating craft bakery to high-scale commercial achievement, shines through this entry and delivered profit directly to the bottom line, said the judges. Commenting on Great British Biscotti Cos win, judges said: This is a true David versus Goliath story, in which our British hero is taking on the might of the established biscotti businesses in Italy. Not only is Great British Biscotti Co opening up global markets for its product range, it is also developing new on-the-go snacking products. Bakery Manufacturer of the Year finalists included Addo Food Group, American Muffin Company, Eric Richmond and Warrens Bakery. The awards were presented by celebrity host and former England Rugby international Matt Dawson, who also hosted the 2016 Baking Industry Awards. Judging by the calibre of entries in this years food and drink manufacturing Oscars, Britains biggest manufacturing sector food and drink manufacturing is well placed to take on the challenge of making the best of Brexits opportunities while minimising its threats, said Food Manufacture group editor Mike Stones. Half of me is reluctant to write something harshly critical about higher education in the United States because I'm such a true-blue believer in, beneficiary of, and insider to the system.I'm an outspoken apostle for the small liberal arts college (SLAC) form of education, a distinctly American institution. But that institution is falling fast into desuetude. Only about 1 percent of the nation's twenty million undergraduates are educated these days in a SLAC. I assert that this form of education ought to be recognized as the gold standard for undergraduate education (rich, poor, white, black, religious, secular, you name it).The comparative advantage of the SLAC's "business model" has been that it is small and intimate. The smallness facilitates face-to-face forms of teaching and learning. It thus showcases an interactive mix of personalism, relationalism, and localism.Much ado has been made about administrative creep and bloat at big universities across the country, the proliferation of vice presidents and deans and assistant directors and supervisors and others with executive-sounding or middle-manager puffed-up titles. That cancerous disease has infected small colleges too, and its damaging effects are particularly pernicious there.An autonomous managerial class has emerged whose immediate and ulterior motives are occupational as opposed to educational (a distinction that ought not to be collapsed), and whose mission is to serve administrative as opposed to teaching purposes. Perhaps worse of all, the managerial model of organization, in trying to bring small colleges into the fold of purportedly national "best practices" is destroying the distinctiveness, the very raison d'etre, of small colleges.For the rapid destruction of the American small college, I could wag my finger at a number of culprits and conditions. But I want to focus my ire here on one main responsible party: their presidents. They bear the bulk of the blame.The board of trustees bears the legal and fiduciary responsibilities for good stewardship, but in fact, the president holds the keys to the Chevy and can drive it pretty much wherever he/she wishes. The president enjoys a great deal of formal and discretionary power and isn't constrained, as would be a CEO of a for-profit company, for overriding concerns about bottom-line profit.If a college president wants to build a big new art museum and can divert the money or debt to do so, he doesn't need much consultation beyond the board and will receive vocal support and functional complicity from the confederacy of at-will, yes-men administrators at his behest. Oh, faculty committees can write reports and hold meetings and make a small ruckus, but the president is in charge and can ignore or squelch the noise below.Here's my saddest revelation: small liberal arts college presidents don't know what they are talking about, and yet they talk as if they do. They are to promote the college as a place of teaching. But they are not teachers. They are to sing the praises of the liberal arts classroom. But most of them have never set foot on a liberal arts college campus before heading one up. Most of them, I dare say after perusing their track records and career choices, would never have sought out a presidency at a SLAC but for the enormous pay and status that now come attached to those jobs.Of the SLAC presidents making more than $400,000 in 2014, 65 percent are not SLAC alums, and 82 percent never taught in a SLAC. A majority never set foot on a SLAC campus, either as a student or a professor. What's more, the less previous experience you have had in a SLAC, the more likely you are to pull down a big salary as one's president. Of the top thirty best-paid SLAC presidents, twenty-one had absolutely no connection to a SLAC before heading one as president.Some of my market-minded friends might at this point lecture me about the irresistible market forces that have compelled these presidents to accept these lavish salaries so prudently offered to them. You want to get the best people for these jobs and thus you have to pay the going rates because these top people are in demand and have options and special experience and ultimately pay for themselves because of their superior managerial and fundraising abilities.They know how to preside over complex institutions and oversee budgets and spreadsheets and to sweet-talk potential donors. Besides, the national executive search firm we hired, whose recruits scrutinized the nominated CVs sent to them, tell us that the applicant pool was rich and wide, but in the end we have to pay top dollar for the right person, which, incidentally works out for a higher finder's fee for the search firm.Turns out on closer inspection, however, that none of these SLAC presidents on the 2014 compensation scale was ever a CEO in the business world (nor do any former SLAC presidents get CEO-business offers upon retiring), so the "market pressures" for ratcheting up salaries come largely from some conjured trajectory from within academe. What the executive selection system has created is a national SLAC president network of climbers, carpetbaggers, careerists-and liars.Small wonder so many colleges are struggling, even as their presidents are paid so handsomely.The most conspicuous change I have seen over my years at Pomona College is that the number of administrators has ballooned. When I arrived in 1990, the catalog named 56 persons as members of the administration, 180 faculty members, and 1,487 students.Cut to 2016. The catalog is no longer printed in hard copy. Everything is on the web, accessed through something called a "portal." Pomona College now has, by my careful count, 271 administrators. The number of faculty is 186, and the number of students has increased to 1,640.The Dean of Students Office has gone from six persons in 1990 to sixty-five in 2016, not counting administrative assistants. The Office of Development, which formerly included Alumni Affairs, counted sixteen persons; now those renamed offices tally forty-seven persons. A few years ago Pomona created a new position, Chief Communications Officer; there are twenty-two persons working for the CCO-yes, we now have twenty-three people working for Pomona's PR!Summary overview: the number of students has increased 12 percent; the number of faculty has increased 3 percent; the number of administrators has increased 384 percent; and tuition has increased 253 percent.Some attribute the mushrooming of administrative positions to an onslaught of federal regulation (e.g., Clery Act, VAWA, ADA, FERPA, Title IV, Title IX) and increased scrutiny by accrediting agencies. Some point to increased competition for students owing to the emergence of ranking services, globalization, helicopter parenting, and so on.The net effect of all these macro-explanations is to conclude that the administrative overthrow of the erstwhile SLAC model was inevitable, and all we can do now is shrug our shoulders, learn to speak the prevailing jargon, and watch reruns of The Office for comic relief.Tuitions are skyrocketing and educational integrity has been compromised because administrators, not educators, now run the show. Tom Campbell 500 years ago this week, a young priest, disgusted with the leadership of his faith selling indulgences - tickets to heaven, if you will - nailed 95 Theses or protests onto the door of a church on All Hallows Eve. Martin Luther's declaration of independence, speaking truth to power, sparked a revolution known as The Protestant Reformation.The world changed in 1517 as a result of Luther's actions. Some changes were positive, others bloody horrible. Reflecting on this history led me to four observations and some questions that North Carolina and our nation might ponder.Let's begin with the power of one. Thomas Jefferson said that one person with courage is a majority. There were doubtless others who thought the hierarchy of the church was misdirected and wrong, but it took one person to be the catalyst for change. Martin Luther sparked the fire of reform.The fire spread rapidly by widespread communication to the masses. Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. By Luther's time printing was widely distributed. Newspapers, radio and television, the Internet and social media have sparked similar reforms today - some positive and some misguided. Minds are changed and actions are spurred by the availability and use of mass media.Reforms are usually messy. Martin Luther deplored the death and destruction that resulted from the Reformation, but movements often take on lives of their own and control is lost. Even if no blood is shed the resultant upheaval usually wreaks havoc, at the least creating great uncertainty.My final observation is of the great resistance to change. Those in power don't like change and will go to great lengths to maintain their power. They want the status quo in political parties, corporations, church hierarchy and even family structures, so as to keep their hold over others. Even those without power don't embrace too much change too fast.Our state and our nation are in a time of reformation, a changing of the guard. Nowhere is that more evident than in politics. If the political culture can be likened to a giant pendulum, swinging to and fro, it is a fact that we have witnessed a decided swing to the right.Questions to ponder are many. Has that pendulum swung too far? Many of us could suggest changes we would advocate for North Carolina, but are there common threads that will unite sufficient numbers to bring about change? Who is today's Martin Luther, the one or several who might have the courage, the wisdom and the charisma needed to lead that change? Right now we don't see one. And will this new reform continue the swing toward the right, move us back to the center or even in a leftward direction?We sense a great unrest among people in North Carolina; most desire a return to times when the climate wasn't so divisive, partisan and angry. The pace of change has escalated so rapidly it seems to occur every few years instead of over decades or generations. Swings in the economy, job uncertainties, changes in power structures at all levels and great upheavals have us longing for calmer waters with less disruption.But the signs clearly portend change. As the 1970s pop song correctly predicted, 5 Causes of Nursing Home Resident Anxiety Unfortunately, for many reasons anxiety happens more often by long-term care residents than by those who live in The DHS's old "IDENT" database is full, with 240,000,000 records in a system designed to hold 200,000,000; so they're paying arms-dealers and erstwhile comic-book superheroes Northrop Grumman $93,000,000 to develop a new system called Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART), which will grow to encompass biometrics for 500,000,000 people, including hundreds of millions of Americans. Many of those half a billion identities are likely to belong to US citizens. An earlier post on Privacy News Online explained how the proposed Building America's Trust Act would require facial recognition to be deployed at US airports "to the greatest extent practicable", while a "biometric exit system" would be established at the busiest airports, seaports and land crossings. The bill would also allocate $125 million to upgrade the automatic license plate readers used by US Customs and Border Protection. These systems will inevitably capture information about millions of Americans. The huge holdings of the new HART database will be widely available to US government agencies. The DHS, which is responsible for Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Transport Security Administration, can share this data with other US agencies including the FBI and Department of Defense. Perhaps even more troubling is the sharing of highly-personal biometric data about citizens between governments. Privacy International points out that the US exchanges biometric data with authorities in the other 'Five Eyes' countries the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Other regions too are increasing the sharing of sensitive information. The programs Obama established to retrain coal miners are going begging in Pennsylvania, undersubscribed because the out-of-work miners they were established to help are convinced that Donald Trump wasn't bullshitting when he promised to bring back coal. Companies are reluctant to locate facilities in former coal country unless there is a trained workforce to hire. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor has received about $2 million since 2015 from the federal POWER program, an initiative of former President Barack Obama to help retrain workers in coal-dependent areas. But the state is having trouble putting even that modest amount of money to good use. In Greene and Washington counties, 120 people have signed up for jobs retraining outside the mines, far short of the target of 700, said Ami Gatts, director of the Washington-Greene County Job Training Agency. In Westmoreland and Fayette counties, participation in federal job retraining programs has been about 15 percent of capacity, officials said. "I can't even get them to show up for free food I set up in the office," said Dave Serock, an ex-miner who recruits in Fayette County for Southwest Training Services. Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining [Valerie Volcovici/Reuters] (Image: Yoshiman6464, CC-BY-SA) (via Naked Capitalism) Women wear traditional gowns while waiting to march into the Kicukiro College of Technology football pitch April 5, 2014 in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) When thinking of global leaders on gender equality, what countries come to mind? Iceland? Check, theyre at top of this years Global Gender Gap ranking. Canada? Not quite there yet. Rwanda? You betcha. In this annual report from the World Economic Forum, Rwanda ranked fourth out of 144 countries for having the smallest gap between men and women. Its the only African country that ranks in the top 10 (there are no North American countries in the top 10). The report looked at four areas that contribute to gender inequality: health, education, economy and politics. Rwanda is first globally for health and survival in 2017. They also ranked third for political empowerment, seventh in economic participation and opportunity and 113th for educational attainment. Since its first year on the ranking, it has closed 82 per cent of its gender gap. Its improvement is largely based on the narrowing of the gender wage gap, and the impressive number of women in parliament; 61 per cent of Rwandas parliamentarians are women, the highest percentage of anywhere in the world. Canada, meanwhile, ranked 16th overall. It wasnt all bad news, though: Canada ranks first among all countries for educational attainment. It also ranked 20th for political empowerment, 29th for economic participation and opportunity, and a distant 105th for health and survival. Even while coming in 16th, its a good-news story for Canada. The country climbed 19 ranks on the 2017 index, breaking into the top 20 for the first time. Trudeaus push for gender parity in his government helped substantially improve Canadas political empowerment score. Canada has closed 77 per cent of the gender gap since the start of the annual report, however that gap has actually increased by 3 per cent since 2015. The low health and survival score comes from the healthy life expectancy of Canadians: the average live expectancy for women is 73.3 years and 71.3 years for men, putting Canada at 113th when it comes to global life expectancy. Because the survey weights the gap between how long a woman versus how long a man lives in the country, the narrow difference in lifespan, actually hurt Canadas rank. Story continues The United States ranked 49th overall, moving down four spots from last year. Globally, it wasnt a good year for closing the gap between men and women. Gender parity is shifting into reverse this year for the first time since the World Economic Forum started measuring it, writes Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman for the World Economic Forum. According to the report, out of the 142 countries covered by the Index both this year and last year, 82 countries have increased their overall gender gap score compared to last year, while 60 have seen it decrease. At the current rate which the gender pay gap is closing, for example, it will take 217 years for women to earn the same as men globally. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - Monsanto Co put on hold the launch of a chemical designed to be applied to crop seeds on Wednesday following reports it causes rashes on people, in the latest instance of complaints about a company product that was approved by U.S. environmental regulators. Monsanto froze plans for commercial sales of the product called NemaStrike, which can protect corn, soybeans and cotton from worms that reduce yields. The company said it conducted three years of field tests across the United States in preparation for a full launch and that more than 400 people used it this year as part of a trial. The delayed launch of what Monsanto calls a blockbuster product is another setback for the company, which is already battling to keep a new version of a herbicide on the market in the face of complaints that it damaged millions of acres of crops this summer. "There have been limited cases of skin irritation, including rashes, that appear to be associated with the handling and application of this seed treatment product," Brian Naber, U.S. commercial operations lead for Monsanto, said in a letter to customers about NemaStrike. Some users who suffered problems may not have followed instructions to wear protective equipment, such as gloves, company spokeswoman Christi Dixon said. The company expected NemaStrike to launch across up to 8 million U.S. crop acres in fiscal year 2018, Chief Executive Hugh Grant said on a conference call last month. The product was "priced at a premium that reflects its consistent yield protection" against worms known as nematodes, he said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did extensive evaluations of the product before approving it for use, according to Monsanto, which has described NemaStrike as "blockbuster technology." The agency could not immediately be reached for comment after hours on Wednesday. "The technology is effective and can be used safely when following label instructions," Monsanto said. The EPA last year approved use of Monsanto's new version of a weed killer using a chemical known as dicamba on crops during the summer growing season. Problems have also emerged with the herbicide since the agency's approval. Farmers have complained it evaporates and drifts from where it is applied, causing damage to crops that cannot resist it. Monsanto, which is being acquired by Bayer AG for $63.5 billion, has said its dicamba herbicide is safe when applied properly and that U.S. farmers failed to follow label instructions. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Norway House Chief Ron Evans believes a day-long meeting between Manitoba chiefs and judges will lead to change. "I certainly believe it will, yes. We came away with that understanding," Evans said on Wednesday, the day after his community hosted the meeting. A group of five Manitoba justices from the Court of Queen's Bench, Evans and nine other chiefs met in Norway House from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday so the judges could hear from First Nations leaders about their concerns with the criminal justice system. Some community justice workers also were present while leaders in other communities watched a live stream of the meeting, Evans said. The visit was a chance for the judges, including Chief Justice Glenn Joyal, to listen to community leaders, the Norway House chief said. "We need to find ways of working in partnership with the courts where we can have some sort of a system set in place, you know, whether it's working through a restorative committee or a justice committee, in dealing with the internal community issues and addressing the problems that we put forward and giving a sense of empowerment back to the community so that they can deal with its challenges." There are offenders who believe the community and the leadership can't do anything about their actions, leaving people feeling powerless, Evans said. "The majority of issues that were raised were about the need to deal with the drug dealers in our community," Evans said. "How can we exercise our collective rights when you're dealing with individual rights?" Evans said the judges have made a commitment to meet with chiefs again and he looks forward to that. "They wanted to listen and start, you know, the long task towards reconciliation," he said. "It was understood right at the start that they were there to listen to the concerns and make a sincere effort to working with us and having more ongoing dialogue." The P.E.I. government will be consulting with Islanders about whether to open up adoption records. "We were hearing from many people all over P.E.I. about the issue and how personal it is to them and how sensitive this issue is to them, so we listened and we took action," said P.E.I. Family and Human Services Minister Tina Mundy. The public consultation is expected to start in early January and is part of a review of the P.E.I.'s adoption program now underway. Though details haven't been determined, consultation could include online surveys, written letters, private meetings, and group meetings, Mundy said. 'It's their right' Advocates, such as Theresa Aylward, have been fighting for more open records on P.E.I. for the past 15 years, working with families touched by adoption. The P.E.I. mother, who relinquished a child more than three decades ago, has been lobbying the P.E.I. government to give adoptees and birth parents unfettered access to birth records. "It's their right," Aylward said. "These are adults, they're not children. These are mothers that never asked to be kept in the dark. For a lot of them, they've lived through shame and guilt. They need closure." Balance of rights and privacy The province said the Adoption Act protects and balances the rights and privacy of all parties to an adoption, including the birth parents, the children and the adoptive parents. Mundy said a reassessment began after the province heard from advocates wanting access to sealed birth records. "We have been reaching out to provinces all across Canada to look at what's working for them, what doesn't work for them, what we might be able to glean," Mundy said. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and P.EI. remain the only provinces to have closed adoption records. Birth records in New Brunswick will be unsealed beginning in April, 2018. Under P.E.I.'s Adoption Act, adoption records can only be disclosed if both parties agree. Story continues 'Right of all individuals' The provincial government offers post-adoption services for adoptees over the age of 18 and birth parents who want to look into obtaining non-identifying information. It may include the physical descriptions of the birth parents, their age and education level, interests, medical histories and circumstances at the time of the adoption. Search registers run by the provincial government also assist adult adoptees and birth families with a search process and/or a potential reunion. Valerie Andrews, executive director of Origins Canada, a non-profit federal organization supporting mothers and adopted children, said she looks forward to more transparency for those involved with adoption. "Opening records doesn't mean a relationship," Andrews said. "Opening records simply means that you obtain the name of your mother or your son or daughter and it's always up to individuals as to whether they wish to have contact with any other person. That remains the right of all individuals." Mundy said all information submitted through the public consultation will be kept confidential. "This is a very sensitive and very personal matter to so many, so we have to ensure that we take our time with this and we make sure that all voices are heard on both sides of the issue," she said. "We will probably take from January to April to make sure all voices around the table are heard. We will come back in maybe late May with some recommendations in hopes that if legislative changes are needed we can work on them over the summer and be ready for the fall session." - MORE P.E.I. News | Island group continues to advocate for proportional representation - MORE P.E.I. News | 'A very positive place': French immersion enrolment increased on P.E.I. Energy Mohawk Valley College to Reduce Energy Costs by Nearly 10% with Newly Completed Solar Farm Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) has completed construction on a solar farm projected to produce 3.5 million kilowatt hours of energy in its first year of operation. The 2-megawatt AC or 3 megawatt DC project is net-metered, meaning that any excess energy the farm produces beyond the needs of MVCC will be measured and delivered to the grid so the college can be compensated by its utility company. The college spends nearly $1 million each year on electricity for its campuses, according to a statement by MVCC President Randall J. VanWagoner in 2015, and the new off-site solar farm is projected to offset those costs by about $90,000 in its first year. "With an electrical service technology program and solar teaching labs, a nearby solar site will provide even more opportunity for students to learn and train with hands-on experience," according to a report in the Utica Observer-Dispatch when the project was announced. "Once [students] graduate and go into the field, they need to have studied solar in some way while they were in college," Matthew Snyder, director of marketing and communications for MVCC, told the paper in 2015. "We are excited about this new venture that is good for our environment, good for our bottom line, and through this partnership, it will benefit our students as well," said VanWagoner, in a prepared statement. Funding for the project came, in part, from a grant provided by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The project was designed and built by groSolar and sited on land owned by the Rome Industrial Development Corp. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram CPJs 2017 International Press Freedom Awards New York, November 2, 2017Four inspiring journalists from Cameroon, Mexico, Thailand, and Yemen will be honored with the Committee to Protect Journalists 2017 International Press Freedom Awards, an annual recognition of courageous journalism. The awardees have covered the news at great risk, including retribution from political leaders, and two have had to flee their homes because of death threats. One of the awardees has been in prison for over two years for reporting on attacks carried out by an extremist group; another was detained twice by military officials and charged with sedition. CPJ will also present broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff, the managing editor of PBS NewsHour, with the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award for her work in advancing press freedom and strengthening the role of women journalists worldwide. CPJ will present the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award annually to an individual who has shown extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom. Originally the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, it was renamed in 2017 to honor the veteran journalist and former CPJ board member who died in late 2016. The awards dinner is open for press coverage. Accreditation requests will be accepted until noon on Friday, November 10. WHAT: 27th Annual International Press Freedom Awards Dinner WHEN: November 15, 2017 6 p.m. 6:30 p.m. Photographs and interviews 7:45 p.m. Award ceremony and dinner WHERE: Grand Hyatt New York at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue WHO: The dinner will be hosted by Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN and CPJ senior advisor. The 2017 dinner chairman is David Rhodes, president of CBS News. Award Winners: Ahmed Abba, a correspondent for Radio France Internationales Hausa service; Patricia Mayorga, a correspondent for the Mexico City-based newsmagazine Proceso; Pravit Rojanaphruk, a critical reporter and press freedom advocate in Thailand; and Afrah Nasser, a Yemeni independent reporter and blogger who lives in exile. Judy Woodruff will be honored with CPJs inaugural Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. ### CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide. Note to Editors: Photos of awardees are available on request. Photos of the awards dinner will be made available following the event. Media contact: Kerry Paterson, Advocacy and Communications Manager Email: [email protected] Phone: (212) 300-9031 Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Since taking office in May, Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno has pledged to end a decade-long battle between the government and the media. But several reporters and editors with whom CPJ spoke said that the anti-press campaign carried out by Morenos predecessor, former President Rafael Correa, has caused lasting damage to journalism in Ecuador. The left-wing Correa, who was first sworn-in as president in 2007, sued news outlets and journalists for defamation. On live TV he tore up newspapers and denounced independent reporters as corrupt hacks and shills for the political opposition. He also signed one of the most restrictive communications laws in the hemisphere, which led to widespread self-censorship, CPJ has found. We had an authoritarian populist government for the past 10 years and that has caused immense damage, Cesar Ricaurte, director of Fundamedios, a Quito-based freedom of speech organization, told CPJ. We now have a whole generation of journalists who think its OK for the government to tell them how to do their jobs. Picking up the pieces from Correas assault on press freedom is like recovering from major trauma, added Arturo Torres, an editor and columnist at the Quito daily El Comercio. The challenge now, he said, is for journalists to stop feeling afraid of the government. Among developments that had a chilling effect on newsrooms was a flood of defamation lawsuits during Correas decade in office. The most high-profile case involved Correas victory in a US$40 million defamation lawsuit against a columnist and the owners of the Guayaquil-based daily El Universo. The verdict threatened to bankrupt El Universo until Correa decided to pardon the newspaper in 2012. But there have been other, less visible legal battles. Torres, for example, was twice sued after publishing a 2008 book about clandestine meetings between Correa administration officials and Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia. Both defamation lawsuits collapsed but Torres said that his US$7,000 in legal costs ate up nearly all of his book royalties. Since then, Torres said, he has put aside book projects about drug traffickers and money-laundering by police officers to avoid future lawsuits. Christian Zurita, a reporter for the investigative news website Mil Hojas, said that Correa changed the way that many journalists approach their jobs and fomented what he described as knee-jerk reaction self-censorship. The low point, Zurita said, came after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck near Ecuadors Pacific coast last year. Despite immediate evidence of widespread death and destruction, Zurita said that many reporters referred only to tremors in their initial dispatches and refused to label the catastrophe as an earthquake until two hours later, when confirmation finally came from the government. Zurita chalked up the timid coverage to a combination of the medias gut-reaction to self-censor, and many journalists fearing action from the government if they spread what could be deemed false news. It seems like journalists have a self-censorship chip implanted in their brains. They think the only way to cover a story is to go to a press conference to get the official version of events, Zurita said. It is going to take a long time to recover from this. The anti-press crusade under Correa has also affected journalists families. Fernando Villavicencio, director of the news website Focus Ecuador, spent months on the lam before seeking asylum in Peru last year to avoid an arrest warrant for what he claims are trumped-up criminal charges. An Ecuadoran judge issued the arrest warrant in November last year on charges of distributing allegedly confidential emails by public officials, the journalists lawyer told CPJ at the time. Villavicencio returned to Ecuador in September, after Moreno was elected, and appeared at a news conference to denounce alleged corruption during the Correa administration. But his arrest warrant remained active so Villavicencio went underground, moving from safe house to safe house in Ecuador, his wife, Veronica Sarauz, said. In an interview at her Quito apartment in mid-September, which at the time was surrounded by police cars in case Villavicencio showed up, Sarauz told CPJ that she had developed heart problems due to the stress and that her husband was also suffering. Fernando cannot continue like this, she said. Hes done nothing wrong. His only crime has been to tell the truth. Villavicencio reappeared in Quito on October 18 and, in lieu of arrest, agreed to wear an electronic ankle bracelet while his legal case proceeds, according to reports. Another journalist recovering from the Correa era is Zurita, whom Correa successfully sued in 2011 over a book that the journalist co-authored about alleged nepotism in his administration. The president in 2012 pardoned the journalist. Zurita told CPJ that he had expected similar media brow-beating under the new administration because Moreno served as Correas vice president. Zurita said that Morenos narrow election victory in a May run-off sent him into a deep depression. I stopped writing for two months. I didnt do anything. I felt totally exhausted, Zurita told CPJ. I was going to follow Villavicencios example and go to Peru. I had purchased plane tickets for my whole family. But in a surprise move, Moreno has broken with his former boss and is reaching out to sectors once vilified by Correa, including opposition politicians and the media. Zurita is heartened by these developments and said his travel plans are now on hold. Ricaurte, of Fundamedios, said that during the Correa years the balance of power shifted from privately owned to state-run media. Facing government harassment and economic turmoil, several independent newspapers and magazines closed. The Correa administration even threatened to dissolve Fundamedios, claiming that the organization was an organ of the political opposition. Correa eventually backed down amid an international outcry, Ricaurte told CPJ. We were getting ready to clean out our desks, he added. At the same time, Correa expanded state media holdings by opening new radio stations, taking over two financially troubled privately owned TV stations as well as two independent newspapers, CPJs 2011 report, Confrontation, Repression in Correas Ecuador found. Prior to Correas presidency, privately owned media accounted for about 70 percent of journalism jobs in Ecuador while state media employed about 30 percent. Now, by Ricaurtes estimate, that ratio has been reversed. The Correa administration turned public media into propaganda organs, causing them to lose credibility and much of their audience, said Andres Michelena, a close aide to Moreno who is now general manager of Ecuadors public media. In an interview with CPJ, Michelena pointed to plunging circulation at El Telegrafo, Ecuadors oldest newspaper, which was acquired by the government in 2008. As the editorial line shifted from independent to pro-Correa he said, daily sales plunged from 50,000 copies to about 10,000 copies. Fernando Larenas, who was appointed editor of El Telegrafo in July, told CPJ that he is trying to reverse that damage by reviving the daily and turning it back into a more traditional newspaper with balanced coverage that will appeal to a broader readership. But, he admitted, after years of the paper essentially producing government propaganda, it will be a tough job. Cabinet approves agreement on cooperation and mutual assistance in customs matters between India and Armenia Published: November 2, 2017 The Union Cabinet approved signing and ratifying agreement between India and Armenia on cooperation and mutual assistance in customs matters. The agreement will be signed by two countries after it is approved by respective Governments. Key Facts The agreement will provide legal framework for sharing of information and intelligence between Customs authorities of two countries. It will also help in proper application of Customs laws, prevention and investigation of Customs offences and facilitation of legitimate trade. The Agreement will help in availability of relevant information for prevention and investigation of Customs offences. It is also expected to facilitate trade and ensure efficient clearance of goods traded between countries. It will enter into force on first day of second month after Contracting Parties notify each other through diplomatic channels after fulfilling necessary national legal requirements for entry into force. The Agreement takes care of Indian Customs concerns and requirements, particularly in area of exchange of information on correctness of Customs value declared and authenticity of certificates of origin of the goods traded between the two countries. Month: Current Affairs - November, 2017 Topics: Cabinet Decisions Customs India-Armenia National Taxation Latest E-Books Indian Army releases Integrated Quarter Master Package Software Application Published: November 2, 2017 Indian Army has formally launched Integrated Quarter Master Package (IQMP) software application for automating various logistics related functions of an Army Unit. IQMP is web based software developed by Army Software Development Centre in association with TCS Ltd. It will replace numerous legacy applications such as Vastra and Quarter Master Package. Key Facts The IQMP software package comprises thirteen modules to automate all logistics functions of Indian Army at unit level. It can be dynamically configured to meet specific requirements of various types of Army units. It is capable of sharing information and data with other software applications in domain of logistics management. Advantages The IQMP software has been developed with aim of bringing speed, accuracy and transparency in handing logistics aspects in unit. It will help in effective logistics management and decision making, thereby assisting Indian Army units to be battle ready all time. It will also play an important role in achieving automation of Indian Army and play important role towards Digital Army in consonance with Governments Digital India initiative. Month: Current Affairs - November, 2017 Category: Defence Current Affairs Topics: Defence Logistics Digital Army Digital India Indian Army IQMP software National Latest E-Books India's ranks 100th in World Bank's Doing Business Report 2018 Published: November 1, 2017 In World Banks recently released Doing Business (DB) Report 2018 titled as Doing Business 2018: Reforming to Create Jobs, India leapfrogged to 100th among 190 countries. India has jumped over 30 ranks to attain 100th spot from 130th position in 2017 Ease of Doing Business Index. Its score also increased from 56.05 in 2017 to 60.76 in Doing Business 2018 Ease of Doing Business Index The Ease of Doing Business Index assesses 190 economies and covers 10 indicators which span the lifecycle of a business. These 10 indicators are: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting minority investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts and Resolving insolvency. Each one of these indicators carry equal weightage. Indias Performance It saw the improvement in 6 out of 10 indicators. They are Resolving Insolvency, Paying Taxes, Getting Credit, Enforcing Contracts, Protecting Minority Investors and Construction Permits. India ranked 103rd in Resolving Insolvency indicator, 119th in Paying Taxes, 29th in Getting Credit, 164th in Enforcing Contracts, 4th in Protecting Minority Investors and 181st in Construction Permits. Key Highlights of Report India figures among top 10 countries Brunei Darussalam, Thailand, Malawi, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Zambia, Nigeria, Djibouti and El Salvador that have marked an improvement this year. These 10 top improvers implemented 53 regulatory reforms making it easier for them to do business. Europe and Central Asia regions continue to have highest share of economies implementing at least one reform as 76% of economies in the region implemented at least one business regulatory reform. India is only country in South Asia and BRICS economies to feature among most improved economies of the DB Report this year. In South Asia region, India was top improver, but was ranked below Bhutan (75). Nepal (105), Sri Lanka (111), Maldives (136), Pakistan (147), Bangladesh (177) and Afghanistan (183) were ranked below India. Month: Current Affairs - November, 2017 Topics: Business Doing Business Report 2018 Ease of Doing Business Economy India National Latest E-Books Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has announced that, pending consultation with Congress, the United States will provide up to $60 million dollars to support a promising and developing regional counterterrorism effort in the Sahel. The assistance will support activities for a joint counterterrorism force that the Group of Five (G5) Sahel states Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger - agreed to set up earlier this year to fight terrorist and violent extremist groups, such as al-Qaida in the Maghreb, ISIS, and associated groups. In a statement, Secretary Tillerson said, Defeating terrorism depends on making sure terrorist organizations cannot have safe havens on any continent This is a fight we must win, and these funds will play a key role in achieving that mission. He went on to say that this pledge, will bolster our regional partners in their fight to ensure security and stability in the face of ISIS and affiliated groups and other terrorist networks. In remarks at a Security Council briefing on peace and security in Africa, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley spoke of the violence that has spread across the Sahel, not only from terrorists, but from criminals who traffic in drugs and human beings seeking to profit from the chaos in the region. She praised the men and women of the armed forces of the G5 Sahel countries, as well as the UN peacekeepers who are serving in the worlds most dangerous peacekeeping mission in Mali. Ambassador Haley promised that the United States will continue its longstanding bilateral support to the G5 members security forces. Speaking of the new pledge of up to $60 million dollars for the joint counterterrorism force through bilateral assistance, she noted that the force will need ongoing support, and that the United States is eager for opportunities to work closely with its partners to make the effort a successful one. Ambassador Haley emphasized, however, that the G5 force must be first and foremost owned by the countries of the region themselves. We expect, she said, that the G5 countries will take on full regional ownership of the force within a period of three to six years, with continued U.S. engagement. This is the approach that will be most effective, in the end, in freeing the region from terror. We welcome this regional ownership of security and stabilization in the Sahel, said Ambassador Haley, [and] we will continue to stand with the people of the region. Pablo Capa plays with his 15-month-old son at his house in Kirkkonummi, Finland. CARLOS MARTINEZ Theres a steady drizzle in Helsinki and the temperature is -9C. In bad weather, 41-year-old social worker Sami Seppila keeps the children indoors. But as soon as they can, they get out for some fresh air. This is Finland, and if youre capable of dressing your child warmly not an easy task, Sami jokes getting out is a blessing. When the rain lets up, they make for a muddy park surrounded by long red brick chimneys, functional Scandinavian houses and a Lutheran cathedral. Sami is alone with his two small children, partly because their mother works late, but mostly because he wants it that way. Sami is one of 4% of fathers who have chosen to take full advantage of their paternity leave. When his eldest child was born four years ago, he took 11 months off to look after him. Now, with his one-year-old, he is planning to take more. Its been the best decision of my life, he booms over the noise of nearby pneumatic drill. Understandable, but that doesnt make it any less unusual even in this corner of Scandinavia where life-work balance and childcare issues are always a step ahead of the rest of the world. It seems that among a population of 5.5 million, fathers like Sami are few and far between. Things take a long time to change, he says. The idea that mothers are the ones who stay home is very deeply entrenched in our culture. This traditional take on post-natal childcare doesnt square with Finlands image as a socially aware country where many women hold positions of responsibility outside the home, and whose secret to success is often said to be its investment in the work-life balance. Sami Seppila with his two sons. I have learned a lot about myself by staying at home, Sami says. Like how to organize myself better lots of things that can be applied to the workplace. Ive also learned to appreciate whats important in life and that doing this is really fun! In theory, Finnish fathers have nine weeks of paternity leave paid at 70% of their salary. The first three weeks can coincide with the mothers maternity leave, but the other six are taken once the mothers 105 days are finished. There are then a further 158 days that the mother and father can share between them. While 70% of fathers take the first three weeks, this drops to 50% when it comes to the second six and only 4 to 5% of fathers take any of the last 158 days. The reasons for this vary, but it is generally agreed that tradition is still a big factor and companies dont always make it easy. Theres also a sense that the system works so well for the mother that it prompts the father to take a back seat. According to Tanja Auvinen, Director of Equal Opportunities and Employment, we have studies showing that in male-dominated jobs, attitudes toward paternity leave are antiquated and conservative. The bosses believe that leave is still for mothers. One of these bosses is the countrys president, Sauli Niinisto, 69. He is about to have a baby with Jenni Haukio, 40. The fact we are expecting a child is a private matter and wont affect official business, he said in a statement. So will he be taking paternity leave? Former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, 76, helped him out by saying that when he was in office this was not an issue, as mothers are chiefly responsible for a child. Attitudes towards paternity leave are antiquated and conservative, bosses believe that leave is still for mothers Tanja Auvinen, Director of Equal Opportunities and Employment Spanish chef Pablo Capo, 41, lives more than 40km from Helsinki in Kirkkonummi, among pine forests and road signs warning about elk crossing areas. Its 3 pm and he is inside his wooden chalet, playing with his 15-month-old toddler. Pablo moved to Finland 14 years ago and had his first child soon after. He is now experiencing fatherhood for a second time with a different partner, and making sure to take his paternity leave. I wanted to nurture a closer bond between us and teach him Spanish, he explains. So its about getting to know him, but also getting to know myself through the experience. His son could go to daycare but, as Pablo points out, as long as he can take care of him, he is better off at home. He casts his mind back to his own childhood. Of course I have a relationship with my father, but he was always at work and he would get home exhausted with neither the time nor the enthusiasm to tend to our needs. I am close to him, but not as close as I hope to be to my son, he says, adding that he believes many Finnish fathers put their careers before their children even today. Still, the Finnish childcare system remains a model for the rest of Europe. In fact, the European Commission has included at least two weeks of paternity leave in its last childcare proposal for member countries. Many dont even have that. Others, like Spain, already have four weeks. Now Finland is going a step further and suggesting that men should take paternity leave whether they want to or not, with the Conservative Prime Minister Juha Sipila agreeing to push the reform through before the 2019 elections. A group of kids study leaves at the Pikel daycare center in Vantaa, Finland. CARLOS MARTINEZ Former Education Minister and opposition MP Krista Kiuru speaks passionately about the need for fathers to take advantage of the paternity conditions available to them. Trusting in freedom and goodwill isnt enough, she says in the Finnish capital, where EL PAIS traveled as part of the Citizens Europe program, sponsored by the European Parliament. Fathers need to be forced to stay at home for at least three months. Kiurus party is proposing a system whereby the mother has three months paid leave, the father has three months paid leave, and finally there is six months that can be shared. But each party has its own take on it for example, the far right is happy with the law as it is. In 2013, when their daughter was one, Juhana Tuunanens wife went back to work and he took four months away from his job at the Foreign Affairs Ministry to be a stay-at-home dad. He would have taken longer if he hadnt been posted to the Finnish Embassy in Madrid. It was probably the best time of my life, says Juhana who is now back in Helsinki. It helped me to understand society better. Some of my colleagues from the ministry said, Isnt it great that fathers do this kind of thing? It surprised me a little but that way of thinking is quite common. Now he is back at work, but he is still able to enjoy his daughter the importance given to a life-work balance means that at 4.30 pm parents are encouraged to go home. Finland is going a step further and suggesting that men should take paternity leave whether they want to or not So why do so few men take full advantage of the paternity leave? According to Johanna Narvi, a researcher at the Institute of Health and Wellbeing, Its not so much the fear of losing their jobs or meeting work expectations as the pile of work they will face [when they return]. When an employer doesnt sort out cover, the father in question has to get on top of his workload before, during or after he comes back. Pekka Pekkala, 46, knows all about this mostly because hes self-employed. He is a communications consultant and has been on paternity leave for two weeks, sharing the care of his two-week-old baby with his partner. His wife walks ahead with the baby stroller while he talks shop on a bench in the Bear Park in Kallio, Once he hangs up, Pekka says his mind is still very much on his work. I enjoy what I do, but we also need money, my daughter needs it, so I have to work, he says. The more I like it, the better it will be for my family and my daughter. But there is no doubt that my family and my daughter are the most important things to me right now. The right to return to work Daycare is different in Finland. Children dont actually go to school until they are seven years old, making it a practical necessity. But the government covers most of the cost. Daycare centers are not cheap. A private one costs between 1,000 and 1,200 a month, with the parents expected to pay around 330. A state-run center is only slightly cheaper and, in other aspects too, theres little difference between them. The average salary for people in their 20s with little or no higher education is around 2,000 a month, while highly educated professionals in their 40s earn 4,000 on average. And if the family has no income, daycare may be entirely subsidized. In the town of Vantaa, 20 km north of Helsinki, the Pikel daycare center specializes in sciences. Little ones between the ages of four and five spend the morning studying the autumn leaves covering the grass in the garden. The teacher gives them a magnifying glass and a lightbox and they get to work. According to teacher Saara Viteli, every child has a right to a place at a daycare center in Finland so there is never any problem for parents getting back to work at the end of their maternity and paternity leave. It is, however, considered advisable for the child to spend the first two years of life at home. When the child has had an environment in which all its needs are answered, they feel secure and are more open to new situations, she explains, adding that they will then allow other adults to teach them to be more independent and take the initiative. In Finland, it has been marvelous the way people have been supported, says Viteli. The daycare system has to go hand in hand with the needs of the parents, who are the ones who are keeping society afloat by working and paying taxes. In return, they can expect services such as daycare education. English version by Heather Galloway. Former deputy premier of Catalonia Oriol Junqueras arrives at the High Court. Fernando Alvarado (EFE) Scroll down for the latest updates High Court judge Carmen Lamela has today sent the deputy premier and seven former members of the Catalan government into custody, while they await trial on charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds. Several members of the sacked Catalan Cabinet appeared in Spains High Court on Thursday morning, but regional premier Carles Puigdemont and four other members of his government who are currently in Belgium did not appear. Santi Vila, the former head of the Catalan business department will have the option of paying a bond of 50,000 to stay out of prison. Vila, who resigned from his post before the Catalan parliament declared independence last Thursday, is the only one who testified during his appearance in court today, according to legal sources. He gave testimony lasting some 45 minutes is also the only one who took questions from someone other than his own lawyer, those sources said. Meanwhile, the High Court public prosecutor has called for an international arrest warrant to be put out for Puigdemont and four ex-members of his cabinet, after they traveled to Brussels on Monday. Meanwhile, the declarations in the Supreme Court of six officials from the Catalan speakers committee, including the speaker of the regional parliament, Carme Forcadell, have been postponed until November 9 after a request from lawyers. The Supreme Court has granted a request made by prosecutors to assign police surveillance to the six officials. Carles Puigdemont attends a news conference in Brussels, Belgium. YVES HERMAN (REUTERS) The former premier of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, is currently in Brussels and has announced he will not return to Spain until he has guarantees of a fair trial. His lawyer in Belgium, Paul Bekaert, who has represented various members of the Basque terrorist organization ETA, stated on Wednesday that Puigdemont would not appear in the Spanish High Court and that his strategy would focus on fighting any attempts at extradition. The sacked Catalan government confirmed later on Wednesday that the former premier, as well as four of his former Cabinet members who are with him in Belgium, would not honor the High Court summons. Puigdemont and 13 members of his government were summoned to appear in the High Court on Thursday and Friday, facing possible charges of rebellion, sedition and misappropriate of public funds. But Puigdemont, as well as former members of the Catalan Cabinet Meritxell Borras, Antoni Comin, Clara Ponsati and Meritxell Serret, failed to appear. So what happens next? Former Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont and ex-members of the Catalan cabinet in Brussels on Tuesday. YVES HERMAN (Reuters) Ongoing cases 1) In the High Court, Judge Carmen Lamela has accepted the formal accusation of rebellion filed by the Spanish public prosecutors office against Puigdemont and 13 members of his former cabinet. The crime carries a possible sentence of 30 years in prison. 2) The former president is also being investigated by the Catalan High Court (TSJC) for disobedience, misusing public funds and making deliberately unlawful decisions as elected officials (known in Spanish as prevaricacion). A European Arrest Warrant? 1) Now that Puigdemont has failed to appear in the High Court, Judge Lamela could draw up a writ ordering hm to be taken into custody. 2) Once this writ has been produced, Spanish judges can issue a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) the European Union equivalent of the old extradition orders. Prosecutors must make a request for this arrest warrant to be issued. 3) This EAW would be handed over by the judge to the Spanish National Police, who will use the SIRENE office part of the EUs Schengen Information System to transmit the warrant to Belgian police. The lawyer for Carles Puigdemont, Paul Bekaert, in his office iin Tielt, Belgium. ERIC VIDAL (Reuters) 4) This mechanism entails the arrest of the individual named in the warrant. A Belgian judge would then be tasked with looking at the handover of that person to Spain. The EAW protocol has been in place in Spain since 2003 and was updated in 2014, partly to include the requirement that the initial request for the warrant comes from prosecutors (previously judges were able to draw up an EAW without involving prosecutors in the process). It was also updated to include the principle of proportionality, meaning that an EAW can only be issued when Spain believes the conditions for pre-trial custody exist in the case of the person named in the warrant. EAWs are carried out between judges of different EU members states, and, as a point of difference with extradition orders, the governments of the relevant countries are not involved. 5) EAWs are regulated in Spanish legislation under Law 23 of 2014 covering the mutual recognition of penal resolutions in the EU. This rule imposes on Spain the obligation to comply with other EU legislation including a 2002 agreement on making the handover of detainees easier. 6. The procedure is fairly straightforward, on paper at least. The judicial system in the country notified usually agrees to the handover of the person named in the warrant in around 60 days. Possible obstacles There are, however, a number of legal avenues that can extend these time frames, according to judicial sources consulted by this paper. 1) This handover could take longer if the judge ordering the EAW has not exhausted all other possible means of questioning the suspect, including via video conference. However, in the case of crimes as serious of rebellion as is the case with former Catalan premier Puigdemont this excuse would carry little weight, according to judicial sources. Why has Puigdemont asked to speak to the courts from Brussels? The lawyer for deposed Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont has said his client intends to speak to the Spanish courts from the Belgian capital via videolink. Although both the former regional premier and his lawyer have said he does not intend to apply for asylum in Belgium, both of waiting to see what action the Spanish justice system takes next. The four former members of the Catalan cabinet still in Belgium Meritxell Borras, Antoni Comin, Clara Ponsati and Meritxell Serret have also asked to make their statements via videolink. They have the same goal: to draw out proceedings and approach the regional elections of December 21 with all options open to the self-professed legitimate Catalan government in exile now on the run in Belgium. 2) Another hurdle thwarting a rapid handover could be the fact that rebellion is not on the list of 32 crimes that are exempt, under European law, from double classification. In other words the crime of rebellion is on the books in both countries. Under Belgian law, rebellion has a slightly different definition from that of Spanish law, according to sources consulted. And even in Spain, the crime is not very well-defined. This could lead to Belgian judges to make an argument that they need to look closely at the subject in question and examine whether, under Belgian law, Puigdemont and fellow members of his government currently in Belgium are actually liable to prosecution. If a judge agrees to the handover of the detainees, those detainees could then appeal. 3) Although the simplified EAW system is based on an elevated level of confidence between EU member states, and on the fact that judicial resolutions in one country will be recognized by others, people named in these warrants can claim and everything suggests Puigdemont will do this that they are afraid their fundamental rights wont be respected in Spain. Article 1.3 of the European legislation of 2002 opened the door to this possibility and has allowed Belgium to stop the handover of various ETA prisoners to Spain in the past. English version by George Mills. Former deputy premier of Catalonia Oriol Junqueras arrives at the High Court. Fernando Alvarado (EFE) More information Catch up on our live blog of Thursdays events here A Spanish High Court judge today ordered former deputy Catalan premier Oriol Junqueras and seven other former members of the regional cabinet to be held in pre-trial custody, after questioning them over their role in their illegal bid to secede from Spain. The entire Catalan government was removed on October 28 after the separatist coalition in power voted to declare independence inside the regional assembly. The central government in Madrid used powers under Article 155 of the Constitution to temporarily suspend Catalonias powers of self-governance, and called regional elections for December 21. Judge Carmen Lamela today decided to hold all eight former officials in custody. They face charges of sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds. These are the former Catalan officials who will be held in pre-trial detention: left to right, starting with the top row, Oriol Junqueras, Meritxell Borras, Raul Romeva, Dolors Bassa, Josep Rull, Carles Mundo, Jordi Turull, Joaquim Forn. The last one,Santi Vila, can avoid prison if he posts bail set at 50,000. Only Santi Vila, the former head of the Catalan business department, has evaded preventive prison, and was instructed instead to post a bond of 50,000. Vila was the only summoned official to take questions from someone other than his own lawyer today. He resigned before the regional assembly voted on the unilateral independence declaration, to underscore his opposition to it. The judge decided that the suspects are a flight risk because of their high incomes and the fact that other former officials who had been summoned to court on the same day instead fled to Belgium including former Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont. Junqueras, Jordi Turull (from the presidency department), Raul Romeva (international affairs), Josep Rull (territory), Carles Mundo (justice), Meritxell Borras (government), Joaquim Forn (interior) and Dolors Bassa (labor) were all due to immediately be taken to jail on Thursday evening. The judge decided that the suspects are a flight risk because the summoned officials fled to Belgium Borras and Bassa were later taken to jail in Alcala de Henares; Turull, Romeva, Rull, Forn, Junqueras, Mundo and Vila were reunited in Estremera after having been earlier held at a number of different prison facilities. Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, the leaders of the pro-independence groups National Catalan Assembly (ANC) and Omnium, are currently being held without bail in Soto del Real prison ahead of trial for sedition charges, based on their role organizing protests during Civil Guard and National Police operations aimed at seizing material destined for the October 1 illegal referendum on independence in the region. In her writ, the judge said today that the suspects actions were premeditated and perfectly prepared and organized. For over two years they systematically ignored decisions issued by the Constitutional Court in their drive for independence, wrote Judge Carmen Lamela. To achieve independence for Catalonia, the accused, according to the judge, made use of the population to encourage acts of public insurrection, disobedience and collective resistance to the legitimate authority of the state, occupying to that effect highways, streets and public buildings and subjecting officers of the law to incessant harassment. Earlier in the day, the High Court public prosecutor requested an arrest warrant to be issued for former Catalan regional premier Carles Puigdemont. The request submitted to the High Court judge in charge of this stage of the case also includes the former Catalan ministers Antoni Comin, Meritxell Serret, Lluis Puig and Clara Ponsati. The High Court public prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for former Catalan regional premier Carles Puigdemont The writ reads: The accused Carles Puigdemont Casamajo has publicly stated his intention to not appear in court and has requested, as have Antonio Comin and Meritxell Serret, to address the court via videolink, without offering any information about their location. In light of the foregoing, the court is called upon to order a national and international search and arrest warrant. Belgian prosecutors said that as soon as they receive the European arrest warrant, they will apply the law. The federal ministry will be the recipient and thus in charge of carrying it out, according to sources familiar with the situation. Spanish diplomats in Belgium said that there have never been any problems with Belgian authorities, and that they expect full cooperation on the legal and police fronts. Puigdemonts lawyers, particularly the Belgian attorney Paul Bekaer, have promised to try to prevent his arrest if an EU warrant comes through. Reaction from politicians was swift to follow news today of the jailing of the eight former members of the Catalan government. On Twitter, the leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, called for freedom for political prisoners. I am ashamed that in my country opponents are locked up. We dont want independence for Catalonia, but today we say: freedom for political prisoners, he wrote. Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau posted on Twitter that it was a black day for Catalonia. The government democratically chosen at the ballot boxes, in jail, she wrote. By RFE/RL Afghan officials say at least eight people were killed and more than 20 wounded after a bomb attached to a fuel tanker exploded in northern Afghanistan. Officials said on November 1 that the blast occurred overnight in the center of Charikar, the capital of Parwan Province, some 60 kilometers north of Kabul. All of those killed were said to be civilians. At least eight of the wounded were in critical condition. "The explosion of the fuel tanker was the result of a sticky bomb but the fire spread to a passing passenger bus," provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman Mamozai said. Wahida Shahkar, spokeswoman for the provincial governor, said the bus was travelling to the Afghan capital, Kabul, and was full at the time of the explosion. In the northern province of Balkh, the deputy provincial police chief, General Abdul Razaq Qaderi, said that a suicide car bomb targeted a district police commander, killing one person. Qaderi said that the target of the attack, Qala-e Zal district police commander Nabi Gechi, and nine other people were wounded. The official said Gechi did not suffer life-threatening injuries. At least three students were said to be among those wounded. No one claimed either attack, which come 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. On October 31, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside Kabuls so-called "Green Zone," where many embassies and the head offices of major international organizations are located, killing at least four people and wounding dozens more. The extremist group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack, which officials said was carried out by a teenager. With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa By RFE/RL Azerbaijan's independent Turan News Agency says prosecutors have dropped all charges against it and its director. The agency said that the Prosecutor-General's Office on November 2 informed the agencys director, Mehman Aliyev, that Turan now can fully resume its operations. Aliyev was also told that all restrictions that had been placed on his movements were lifted. Turan's operations were largely suspended in September after Aliyev was detained in Baku on August 24 on charges of tax evasion and abuse of power. Turan called the charges "trumped-up" and the arrest was widely denounced as a politically motivated stifling of independent media by Western governments and rights groups. Aliyev was released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest on September 12, and Azerbaijani authorities days later reinstated their tax claim against the agency. Turan was established in 1990. It publishes reports in Azerbaijani, English, and Russian, and cooperates with leading international news agencies. President Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled the South Caucasus country of nearly 10 million people since shortly before his father's death in 2003, has been criticized for crackdown on media and civil rights in the former Soviet republic. Azerbaijan is currently ranked 162nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders 2017 World Press Freedom Index. Israeli warplanes bombed a weapons depot near the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "Israeli planes fired rockets at an arms depot in the industrial zone of Hisyah, south of the city of Homs, the observatory's director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP. Syrian television reported "an aggression" by Israel in the region, adding that the national army had "responded". It is not clear whether the target was a weapons depot or a factory or if it was a Syrian facility or belonged to Hezbollah. Reuters quotes a military commander in the alliance fighting for Damascus that a copper factory was hit. He did not mention any casualties. He also said that an anti-aircraft missile was fired by Syrian forces. A senior Israeli minister and a military spokeswoman declined to comment to Reuters, but the minister repeated a threat to hit arms shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah. In recent years, Israel has attacked targets in Syria dozens of times always insisting that arms shipments to Hezbollah is a red line. Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said, "Israel has acted in the past and it will act in the future to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah according to intelligence information that we will have." Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have increased this year, as its patron, Iran has consolidated its foothold in Israel. With reporting by Reuters, AFP By RFE/RL Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the United States is Irans main enemy and that Tehran will never give in to U.S. pressure over the 2015 nuclear deal. America is the main and evil enemy, in the real sense of the word, Khamenei said in a November 2 meeting with a group of students. We will never accept their bullying over the nuclear deal, the Iranian leader said, adding that "standing up and confronting" the United States is the only way forward for Iran. Under the nuclear deal, Iran significantly limited its controversial nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump in October refused to certify that Iran is complying with its obligations under the nuclear accord. Trump also accused Iran of violating the spirit of the deal. Khamenei accused the Trump administration of working to ruin the landmark accord between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France, and Britain. Khamenei, who has the final say in all of Iran's state matters, also criticized Trump for calling Iran a terrorist nation. He said the foolish comments demonstrate that Washingtons hostility is not only toward the establishment, but also towards the Iranian nation. Khamenei made the comments ahead of the November 4 anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran that led Washington to cut its diplomatic ties with Iran. With reporting by IRNA and Fars By RFE/RL's Balkan Service A Macedonian court has convicted 33 men of plotting attacks and clashing with police in a 2015 shoot-out that left 22 people dead, and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms. Amid tight security, the Criminal Court in Skopje on November 2 sentenced seven of the men to life in prison, while the remaining were handed down prison terms ranging from 12 to 40 years each. Four defendants in the case were acquitted. Delivering the verdict, presiding judge Verka Petkovska told the courtroom that the prosecutor provided evidence that the convicted committed or organized acts of terrorism. Defense lawyer Naser Raufi said that he did not expect such heavy sentences, alleging that the trial was staged by the secret services" and calling for an independent investigation. All the defendants, who were ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and Macedonia, denied the charges when the trial opened in February 2016. They protested while the verdict was being read, prompting the judge to order them to leave the courtroom before hearing sentences. The court was under heavy police protection, with helicopters flying over the building. Dozens of members of a special operations unit were also deployed. Eight members of the security forces and 14 gunmen were killed in a two-day shoot-out in May 2015 in the ethnically mixed northern town of Kumanovo near the border with Kosovo. Forty police officers were also injured. The clash occurred during a police raid that followed an attack by armed men on a border post. It was the worst unrest in Macedonia since an ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001 ended with a deal providing greater rights for the minority group. Ethnic Albanians make up about one-quarter of the country's population of about 2.1 million. With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters Deputy commander of the Iranian army had confirmed that Russia have launched cruise missiles from Iranian territory on targets in Syria, with the approval of Irans general staff. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan speaking to Tasnim news agency also said that the missiles were fired from Nozheh base in Hamadan, western Iran based on the unwritten agreement between the two countries and in support of Syria. He did not elaborate when or on how many occasions Russia has fired missiles from Iran. General Pourdastan also spoke the use of Iranian airbases by Russian warplanes. The route for some Russian planes passes over Iran to reach Syria and hit ISIS, he said, adding, only Nozheh base has the capability to provide services to Russian warplanesbut we did not put the airbase under the control of the Russian but their warplanes landed there only to be serviced. The Iranian commander also explained that when Russian warplanes need to land, they have to coordinate with Iran and we give them permission. He claimed that on some occasions they did not have permission and had to return. Previously, Iranian officials had mentioned that Russian planes on some occasions are allowed to use Iranian bases. In August 2016 Russia announced that its warplanes use the Nozheh airbase to attack targets in Syria. Irans defense minister at the time, Hossein Dehqan had criticized Russias announcement calling it an unkind act. The White House late on November 1 called on Russia to stop blocking efforts to renew the authority of a UN investigative body charged with determining who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But the Kremlin on November 2 rejected the U.S. calls, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying urgent and drastic measures must be taken to protect the United Nations body and all activities along this track from U.S. diktat. Russias Foreign Ministry later issued a statement saying that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by phone that it is unacceptable to politicize the work of chemical weapons inspectors in Syria. Authority for the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is due to expire on November 17. At the UN Security Council last week, Russia vetoed a renewal effort led by the United States that would have prolonged the JIM mandate until November 2018. The UN investigative team last week raised Russia's ire by finding that the Syrian government was responsible for an April sarin gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun which killed dozens of people. Russia and Syria have denied the allegation. "This unconscionable attack marks the fourth time that the JIM has confirmed that [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] regime used chemical weapons, underscoring the brutal and horrifying barbarism of Bashar al-Assad and making the protection provided by Russia even more egregious," the White House said in a statement. "Russias attempts to undermine and eliminate the JIM show a callous disregard for the suffering and loss of life caused by the use of chemical weapons, and an utter lack of respect for international norms," it said. "The United States implores the UN Security Council to renew the mandate of the JIM so that we may continue to identify the perpetrators of these horrific attacks and send a clear message that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," the White House said. The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its air strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim excluded by the UN's Commission of Inquiry on Syria chairman Paulo Pinheiro. In vetoing the investigative team's renewal last week, Ryabkov cast doubt on its conclusion that Syria was behind the Khan Sheikhoun attack, saying the investigation involved "dubious witnesses and unconfirmed evidence," according to Russian news agency Interfax. Russia earlier set out why it disputed UN and Western accusations that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April that killed dozens. The Khan Sheikhoun attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to launch missile strikes on Syria's air base in Shayrat, which Western governments say was used to launch the gas attack. After years of arguing over who is behind frequently reported chemical attacks in Syria, the UN council unanimously agreed to create the JIM in 2015. Its authority was renewed for another year in 2016. With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and TASS By RFE/RL The Russian Defense Ministry says Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman have discussed bilateral relations and international security issues during a meeting on November 2. The meeting took place at the Defense Ministry in Moscow, a short statement said. It did not provide further details. Huntsman took up his post in Moscow last month at a time of severe tension between Russia and the United States. Ties are badly strained over issues including Russia's aggression in Ukraine, its actions in Syria, and what the U.S. intelligence community says was a concerted attempt to meddle in the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Receiving Huntsmans credentials at a Kremlin ceremony on October 3, Putin voiced dissatisfaction with state of bilateral relations and said that Russia wants constructive, predictable, and mutually advantageous cooperation," but gave no indication whether Moscow plans to take steps in that direction. Speaking on October 7, the new U.S. ambassador to Russia said that he wants to improve relations with Russia, but he insisted the first step would be for Moscow to return Ukrainian control to territory within its internationally recognized borders. "This is an issue not only with the United States, but with Europe, Canada, and virtually every other developed country," said Huntsman. Moscow illegally annexed Ukraines Crimea region in March 2014 and supports separatists in eastern Ukraine in war that has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014. The United States, other Western countries, and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine. In late July, Russia ordered the United States to cut the number of diplomatic personnel in Russia to 455 by September 1 -- a reduction of about two-thirds -- after the U.S. Congress approved legislation tightening sanctions against Russia.. The United States responded by ordering Russia to vacate its consulate in San Francisco and trade annexes in Washington and New York, steps intended to produce parity in the sizes of the Russian and U.S. diplomatic missions. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) always supports Azerbaijan's fair position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said OIC Secretary General Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen. He made the remarks in Jeddah at a meeting with Mubariz Gurbanli, chairman of Azerbaijans State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, the State Committees press service said Nov. 2. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.2 By Leman Zeynalova - Trend: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will discuss the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger on Nov. 3. Russian foreign minister is slated to meet with the OSCE secretary general on Nov. 3, who will be in Moscow on his first working visit since taking office in July 2017, Spokeswoman of Russias Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said at a briefing Nov. 2. 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, Nov. 2 Trend: It is necessary to put an end to the Armenian occupation as soon as possible, the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be restored, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said at the Trilateral Summit of heads of state Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia, held Nov. 1 in Tehran. The Azerbaijani president said that adoption of norms of international law today in the world is one of the most important issues on the agenda. Unfortunately, in many cases, these norms dont work and are grossly violated, he said. The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a clear example of that. For more than 20 years, Armenia has been keeping under occupation Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding seven districts that are ancestral lands, an integral part of Azerbaijan. In the occupied lands, the population of Azerbaijan was subjected to the policy of ethnic cleansing, one million of our compatriots turned into refugees and IDPs. The president of Azerbaijan noted that influential international organizations have adopted the relevant resolutions regarding the conflict. These include the resolutions of the leading structure of the world, the UN Security Council, which require the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from our occupied lands, similar resolutions adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the OSCE and other organizations, he added. However, Armenia ignores them. The country doesnt comply with the resolutions of the UN Security Council and continues its occupation policy. President Ilham Aliyev noted that in some cases, the UN Security Council resolutions are executed immediately. This is while the resolutions adopted regarding the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have remained on paper for more than 20 years, he said. This is an indicator of double standards. Todays status quo is unacceptable and must be changed. Our refugees and IDPs must return to their ancestral lands. Details added (first version posted on 10:35) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation of Montenegro led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Srdjan Darmanovic. The head of state said that the two countries have very good ties covering various spheres, a high-level cooperation format. President Aliyev recalled with satisfaction his visit to Montenegro, as well as the visits of president and prime minister of Montenegro to Azerbaijan, and spoke about mutual visit of various ministers and other officials and emphasized the importance of all these visits in terms of developing bilateral cooperation. The president said that the two countries cooperate in various spheres, including economy, energy, investments, trade and tourism. Touching upon the memorandum of cooperation in the energy sphere, signed between Azerbaijan and Montenegro, President Aliyev spoke about the successful work being carried out in this field and expressed hope that the memorandum will be very useful from this point of view. He said that Azerbaijan and Montenegro have developed tourism infrastructure, and there is a need for an even greater inflow of tourists in both directions. Minister Darmanovic, for his part, said that this is his first visit to Azerbaijan, noting that the success achieved by the country in a short period made a deep impression on him. The minister noted that he is proud of visiting the monument to the national leader Heydar Aliyev in the Alley of Honor, and stressed that the great leader played a big role in the development of Azerbaijan. Darmanovic added that President Ilham Aliyev successfully continues the national leaders policy and has achieved rapid development of the country. President Aliyev expressed confidence that the Montenegrin ministers visit to Baku will be significant in terms of gaining more impressions about Azerbaijan. Details added (first version posted at 13:21) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: A meeting of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs with Azerbaijans foreign minister will be held in Moscow Nov. 16. FM Elmar Mammadyarov himself made the announcement at a joint press conference with his Montenegrin counterpart Srdjan Darmanovic in Baku. According to the instructions of the head of state, we try to intensify the negotiation process. We are currently studying this issue, he noted. Mammadyarov said that at the last meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents, it was decided to intensify the negotiations. Of course, it is necessary to first intensify them at the level of foreign ministers. This is why the co-chairs contacted our and Armenian sides, and we set the meeting time, 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. Details added (first version posted on 15:55) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Azerbaijans First Vice President Mehriban Aliyeva met with members of the France-Azerbaijan Friendship Group of Frances National Assembly on Nov. 2. Welcoming the guests, Mehriban Aliyeva congratulated Pierre-Alain Raphan on his appointment as head of the France-Azerbaijan Friendship Group and wished him success in his work. Mehriban Aliyeva, who was the head of Azerbaijan-France Friendship Group while being a member of the Azerbaijani parliament, said that the Groups activity gives momentum to the expansion of ties between the two countries. The first vice president said she believes that the potential in the two countries relations will be better used in the future. This will lead to further strengthening of our relations, added Aliyeva. Noting that this year marks the 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and France, Mehriban Aliyeva underlined that the two countries cooperation has been developing over the past years. She said that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to relations with France in all spheres. Emphasizing that the humanitarian sphere is a priority for the two countries, Mehriban Aliyeva noted that great success has been achieved in this sphere in recent years. Touching upon the cooperation in the field of education, the first vice president of Azerbaijan spoke about the large-scale projects implemented by the two countries in this field. She noted that there are French lycee and the French-Azerbaijani University in Azerbaijan that serve the development of the educational system of Azerbaijan, as well as bilateral relations. Reminding that good cooperation was established between different cities of France and Azerbaijan and agreements on sister cities were signed in recent years, Mehriban Aliyeva said that the first steps in this direction were taken in the field of culture. She added that the implemented projects are aimed at promoting Azerbaijan in the regions of France. The first vice president of Azerbaijan praised the steps taken in this area as they have a positive impact on economic relations. Mehriban Aliyeva noted that successful cooperation was established in many areas and added that there is great potential. She expressed hope that the friendly relations between Azerbaijan and France and the two countries peoples will be further strengthened by using this potential. Expressing hope that the first visit of Pierre-Alain Raphan to Azerbaijan would be successful, Mehriban Aliyeva wished him success in the future activity. Head of the France-Azerbaijan Friendship Group Pierre-Alain Raphan, for his part, said that he will work diligently during his term to deepen the cooperation between the two countries. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: The close ties existing between Azerbaijani and Russian peoples are successfully developing today, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said. President Aliyev made the remarks at a meeting with Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of Russia, Co-Chairman of the Bilateral Commission Ilyas Umakhanov and Chairman of the People's Assembly of the Republic of Dagestan Khizri Shikhsaidov. While reviewing the agenda of our bilateral relations at another meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, we found out that there is no a single issue that would need solution, President Aliyev said. During the meeting we just recalled the achievements, namely, the results of our cooperation in the economic, transport, energy and political spheres, the president said. We gave instructions to the relevant organizations to determine the ways for further development of relations. That is, this is such a level of relations when there are no special issues needing to be resolved even at the presidents level." The president stressed that all issues are being solved successfully. "Of course, today Russia and Azerbaijan demonstrate high-level good-neighborly, partnership and reliable friendly relations, President Aliyev said. You, Ilyas Magomed-Salamovich and Khizri Isayevich, play a big role, as I know you are making great efforts and contributing to the strengthening of the Russia-Azerbaijan relations. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Elchin Mehdiyev Trend: The trilateral meeting of the Azerbaijani, Iranian and Russian presidents, held Nov. 1 in Tehran, is a platform important for ensuring stability and security, as well as promoting collaborative environment in the region, Ali Hasanov, Azerbaijani presidents aide for public and political affairs, said in an interview with Trend. Hasanov said the important developments recently taking place in the South Caucasus and the Caspian and Black seas basin, as well as the giant trans-national projects carried out under Azerbaijans leadership had significant impact on the November 1 meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia in Tehran. In the past week, the Azerbaijani president had meetings with almost all heads of states and governments of the region. At those meetings he had important discussions on all pressing issues of the regions political and economic life, as well as on the prospects of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, which is the most important segment of the East-West transportation and communication corridor, and on the support to be provided by this project to the regions countries, to the strengthening of trade-economic ties in the world in general, he said. The trilateral meeting of the Azerbaijani, Iranian and Russian presidents is, first of all, a platform important for ensuring stability, security and promoting collaborative environment in the region, for further development of trade-economic ties, cooperation in energy and transport sectors between the countries, and solution of other pressing issues. It can be said for sure that the heads of states were quite pleased with yesterday's meeting and its results. Delegations of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran discussed current situation and tasks ahead in various spheres, as well as the partnership policy. I think the positive results of the meetings held will manifest in near future. He said the Tehran meeting showed that there are sincere friendly relations between Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia. The mutual respect and fruitful cooperation between the three countries is of great importance for solution of pressing issues of the whole region, and all participants are determined to continue the fruitful cooperation, Hasanov added. I should also note that initiative and leadership of the majority of bilateral and multilateral meetings, held in the region lately, belong to Azerbaijan. The initiative to hold a tripartite meeting of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia, to create partnership between them, as well as the initiative of joint projects that are being implemented or intended to be implemented also came from Azerbaijan, and they have already begun to yield positive results. Therefore, as in all other issues, Azerbaijans leadership at yesterdays meeting was prominent and will remain as such in the future, Hasanov said. I would like to note that the creation of such new formats of cooperation is topical. Along with Azerbaijan-Iran-Russia, there are also the Azerbaijan-Iran-Turkey and Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey platforms. Perhaps, in the future, the cooperation will be continued in the Azerbaijan-Turkey-Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan-Turkey-Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan-Iran-Turkmenistan and other formats. These formats will have a positive impact on consolidation of peace, tranquility, prosperity, trade and economic relations in the region, Hasanov said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov.2 Trend: Etibar Mammadov, who escaped from a train in Bilajari settlement during transportation to Baku Oct.23, was killed in a shootout. The head of the press service of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor Generals Office, Eldar Sultanov, informed about this Trend Nov.2. He said that the official information will soon be disseminated. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Rector of Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) Elmar Gasimov and Director General of SOCAR Methanol LLC Elnur Mustafayev signed a Cooperation Agreement on training of young specialists. The signing ceremony, which took place at BHOS, gathered the Higher School students, teachers and staff members, and representatives of SOCAR Methanol company. Opening the ceremony, BHOS Rector Elmar Gasimov welcomed the SOCAR Methanol LLC delegation led by Elnur Mustafayev and highly praised interest of the company to the Higher School activities and work with students. He emphasized the importance of establishment of cooperation between SOCAR Methanol LLC and the Higher School. Speaking at the ceremony, Elnur Mustafayev informed that SOCAR operates not only in Azerbaijan, but also in other countries including Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Switzerland. In his words, the company carries all activities in compliance with international health, safety, environment and quality standards and procedures. Then Director General of SOCAR Methanol LLC Elnur Mustafayev made a presentation entitled Potential for production of methanol in Azerbaijan. The presentation was delivered in English language and included video materials. Elnur Mustafayev also spoke about importance of training highly-qualified local engineers for national oil, gas and petrochemical industries, as there is high demand for these specialists. As he informed, in July-September this year, fourth-year Chemical Engineering students of the Higher School, namely Simuzar Babazadeh, Heydar Najafov, Murad Ismaylov and Fuad Alizadeh, undertook an internship at the company facilities. We are very pleased with their participation in our operations and plan to invite more BHOS students to do summer internship at SOCAR Methanol LLC, said Elnur Mustafayev. He also expressed his gratitude to the Rector Elmar Gasimov for training of high-qualified young specialists. In conclusion, BHOS Rector Elmar Gasimov extended his congratulations to all Higher School staff members on appearance of a new company among the companies, which already became BHOS long-term business partners. He expressed confidence that cooperation with SOCAR Methanol LLC would be effective and mutually beneficial. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Two people died and one was injured following an operation to detain Etibar Mammadov, who escaped from a train in Bilajari settlement during transportation to Baku Oct. 23, says a joint statement of Azerbaijani Prosecutor Generals Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, issued Nov. 2. According to the statement, Etibar Mammadov was hiding in the house belonging to Ilgar Azimov, a resident of Hajigabul District. Later, it was established on Nov. 1 that Mammadov and Azimov together with Anar Asgarov and Shahmar Bayalizade, residents of Baku, were traveling in Azimovs car on the Baku-Alat road, and a special operation began to detain them. However, the four persons didnt obey the lawful demands of police officers and attempted to flee the scene by starting to fire. As a result of response measures taken by police officers, Etibar Mammadov and Ilgar Azimov were wounded during the shootout and died en route to the hospital. The other wounded person, Anar Asgarov, is being treated in a hospital, and Shahmar Bayalizade, who has no injuries, was arrested. During the police inspection of their car, two Makarov pistols, a big number of cartridges and cartridge cases, a hand grenade, a knife, canned food, medicines, various accessories, clothes and others were found and seized. Investigation and search on this criminal case continue. On Oct. 23, Etibar Mammadov and Ali Aghami, arrested on charges of especially grave crimes, escaped from a train in Bilajari settlement during transportation to Baku, being accompanied by guards. In this regard, a thorough service check was carried out to investigate the circumstances and causes of the incident. After preliminary results of the investigation, 10 people were removed from justice system and three were dismissed by order of the justice minister for negligence in the performance of official duties. Ali Aghami was detained on Oct. 26 in an operation conducted by the Penitentiary Service of Azerbaijans Justice Ministry. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Anvar Mammadov Trend: Decrease of Azerbaijans positions in the World Banks (WB) Doing Business 2018 ranking on a number of indicators doesnt mean that the country doesnt work in these directions, WB expert Maria Gamez told Trend. She said that Azerbaijan carries out a lot of work for development in these areas and achieves rapid growth rates, but the countries of the region are ahead of Azerbaijan on these indicators. In addition, a number of reforms carried out by Azerbaijan fall out the reporting period, and they will be taken into account in the WBs next report, she noted. For example, Azerbaijan lost several positions on Getting Credit indicator, she said. This is explained by the fact that Azerbaijan didnt adopt the law on registration of movable property at the time of writing the report, she added. In other countries of the region, this legislation was applied long ago and bears fruit, she said. In turn, WB expert Klaus Koch-Saldarriaga noted that Azerbaijan also lags behind the region on Dealing with Construction Permits indicator. On average, 16 procedures are required for obtaining a building permit in the region, while 21 procedures are required for that in Azerbaijan, he added. Azerbaijan ranked 57th among 190 countries in the Doing Business 2018. The distance to frontier score stood at 70.19. This is while in the previous report, Azerbaijan ranked 65th and scored 67.07. The rankings are based on the average of each economys distance to frontier scores for the 10 topics included in this years aggregate ranking. This measure shows how close each economy is to global best practices in business regulation. A higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions. Thus, Azerbaijans position in this report has improved compared to the last year's report. The WB said that during the reporting period, Azerbaijan has carried out four reforms, as compared to three during the previous reporting period. Azerbaijan joined the WB Group in 1992. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 2 By Diana Aliyeva Trend: Uzbekistan is interested in intensive resource saving technologies of the US in agriculture, as well as in development of bilateral cooperation in the field of selection of new crops and protection of plants and animals from dangerous diseases, a source in the Uzbek Embassy to the US said in a statement. These issues were discussed by Uzbek delegation in the US Department of Agriculture, according to the source. Representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan visited the US on Oct.23-Nov. 1. During the meeting, the sides also discussed cooperation in the field of innovative and applied agricultural science. The Uzbek delegation visited the universities of Michigan and Ohio, where the delegation got acquainted with the information and consulting centers of the universities, their educational programs, and the scientific base. The University of Michigan signed memoranda of understanding with Tashkent State Agrarian University, Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization, as well as Andijan and Samarkand agricultural institutes. The cooperation will include joint research work, training of Uzbek specialists in agriculture at the University of Michigan. The delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan also held a meeting in the American Councils for International Education (ACIE) organization. The ACIE expressed its readiness to assist in expanding educational ties between Uzbekistan and the US, including in the agriculture sphere. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Ali Mustafayev Trend: Kazakhstans Kyzylorda region will increase the export of meat and dairy products after the construction of a meat-processing plant jointly with Iranian investors, Kazakh media outlets reported. Currently, the region experiences lack of technology, meeting the world class standards, thus there is no possibility to maintain large amount of frozen meat. However the issue is expected to be solved after the construction of a meat-processing plant jointly by the Syr Marjany LLP and the Iranian Inchen Broon Cooperative, Inc. Previously in August, the cooperation between Inchen Broon Cooperative, Inc and the Kazakh KshimbaevAgro resulted with an export of 812 lambs with a weight of 26.5 tons, to a number of countries, including the UAE. The region is expected to export 100 tons of beef and 25 tons of mutton by the end of 2017. The details of the cooperation were discussed by the head of the executive body of the Kyzylorda region K. Kusherbayev with his Iranian counterparts, during his business trip to Iran. The work on expanding the meat export of the region is being implemented under the state program of development of the raw materials and export of processed products from the Kyzylorda region. Details added (first version posted at 13:24) Baku,Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Armenias joining the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is possible only after the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told a joint press conference with his Montenegrin counterpart Serzhan Darmanovich in Baku. A joint company for BTK operations will be set up in line with an agreement with the countries participating in the project, he noted. The official opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was held in Baku Oct. 30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railways peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo. Details added (first version posted at 13:24) Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Armenias joining the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway is possible only after the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijans Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told a joint press conference with his Montenegrin counterpart Srdjan Darmanovic in Baku. Our condition remains unchanged. First and foremost, Armenia must withdraw its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, he said, adding after this, it will be possible to talk about cooperation and good neighborly relations with Armenia. The FM noted that a joint company for BTK operations will be set up in line with an agreement with the countries participating in the project. This company will control cargo transportation via BTK, he added. The official opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was held in Baku Oct.30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railways peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo. 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, Nov. 2 By Azad Hasanli Trend: The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Azerbaijan proceed to the next step of modernization of the countrys legislative basis on bilateral investment agreements, head of the Investment Policies Branch of UNCTAD Jorg Weber told Trend. He noted that UNCTAD and Azerbaijan have already done a lot of work as part of modernization of bilateral investment agreements. Currently, Azerbaijan has more than 50 such agreements with various countries. Weber believes it is very important that investment agreements are consistent with the countrys development strategy. He added that in this context, UNCTAD wants to help Azerbaijan harmonize international obligations with the national policy. A big challenge for Azerbaijan is not only the fulfillment of international obligations, but also the need to ensure that these obligations are not contrary to the countrys development strategy, he noted. Weber cited the agriculture sector as an example, which is one of the priority directions of economic development amid falling oil prices. [In the preparation of investment agreements] it is necessary to take into account in what areas the country has a competitive advantage. Bilateral investment agreements should be flexible enough to allow the country to develop in the direction it wants, he added. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced the names of companies that will take part in manufacturing of domestic cars, the Turkish media reported Nov. 2. Among them are - Anadolu Grubu, BMC, Kiraca Holding, Turkcell and Zorlu Holding. Erdogan said that starting from 2021, Turkey will start exporting domestic cars to the neighboring countries. The Turkish president added that it is also planned to create a special commission, which will supervise the production of domestic cars. I will be the first buyer of a domestically made car, said Erdogan. Turkey ranks sixth in Europe in car production. Models of Ford, FIAT, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Opel, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and MAN are currently assembled in Turkey. Moreover, Turkey manufactures local brands of buses, such as BMC, Temsa and Otokar. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Ali Mustafayev Trend: The Astana International Financial Center (AIFC) and the Swiss company 5EL SA signed a memorandum of cooperation and agreed on the development of a hub of blockchain innovations in Kazakhstan. The parties intend to implement the blockchain technology under the "Bright Chain" title within the agreement, Kazakh media reported. 5EL SA will open the 5EL Blockchain Lab in Astana, assisting the AIFC in the creation of a productive system of innovations and commercial application of technologies. Chairman of 5EL SA Serzh Umansky believes that a long-term partnership with AIFC will provide the commercial use of blockchain technologies in global markets and financial flows within Kazakhstan. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree approving the "List of Imported Raw Materials Exempt From Value Added Tax" on Nov. 2. Among those raw materials are burnt pyrite, aluminum ores and concentrates, aluminium oxide, electrodes used in furnaces, electrodes for electrolysis units, and others. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend Turkmenistan is one of the main suppliers of natural gas in the Central Asian region, being one of the biggest suppliers of natural gas to China, Myrat Archayev, acting head of the Turkmengas state concern, said. Archayev made the remarks at the 22nd International Conference Oil & Gas Turkmenistan - OGT 2017 in Ashgabat Nov. 2. The Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China transnational gas pipeline was commissioned in 2009. At present, there are three branches of that gas pipeline. Turkmenistan annually exports up to 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China via that gas pipeline. The fourth branch is planned to be constructed to increase the capacity of that gas pipeline to 65 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. That branch will be laid along the Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan - Tajikistan - Kyrgyzstan China route. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend Turkmenistans potential hydrocarbon resources have reached 71 billion tons of oil equivalent, of which 53 billion tons account for onshore fields, 18 billion tons offshore fields, Myrat Archayev, acting head of the Turkmengas state concern, said. Archayev made the remarks at the 22nd International Conference Oil & Gas Turkmenistan - OGT 2017 in Ashgabat Nov. 2. Turkmenistan's total natural gas reserves are estimated at 50 trillion cubic meters. According to the independent experts, Turkmenistan ranks fourth in terms of proven natural gas reserves in the world. "Taking into account Turkmenistans geographical location and abundant natural gas reserves, the diversification of the transport infrastructure is the countrys strategic priority for ensuring energy security," Archayev said. Archayev also stressed that the natural gas supply through the pipeline is the most cost-effective and relatively safe way of supplying gas from the producer to the consumer. Taking into account that Turkmenistans proven gas reserves have reached about 10 percent of the world's gas reserves and the current level of gas production has reached only 2 percent of the world's gas production level, Turkmenistan strives to intensify work on the construction of new export gas pipelines. The most active project which is currently being implemented is the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. "We understand that the implementation of this project is not an easy task, he said. This project is aimed not only at meeting the rapidly growing energy needs of Asian countries, but also should further strengthen peace and ensure stability in this region." Turkmenistan started construction of its section of TAPI in December 2015. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 Trend: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on Nov.2 approving a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the energy sector between the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry and the Polish Energy Ministry . The Energy Ministry is instructed to ensure implementation of the provisions of the Memorandum mentioned in the decree after its entry into force, the Foreign Ministry is tasked to notify the Government of Poland on the implementation of the internal procedures required for the entry into force of the Memorandum of Understanding. The MoU was signed on June 27, 2017 in Warsaw. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Turkmenistans Ambassador to Italy Berdimyrat Rejepov has also been appointed as the countrys Ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain by a presidential decree. Construction, energy, gas processing, the creation of an industrial, transport and social infrastructure are the promising areas of the Turkmen-Spanish partnership. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: Official visit of Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov to Tajikistan will start on November 2, the Turkmen government said in a message. Important bilateral documents are expected to be signed following the negotiations with Tajikistans President Emomali Rahmon. The next Turkmen-Tajik summit is intended to consolidate the intergovernmental agreements reached earlier and to identify new priority areas for mutually beneficial cooperation, the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news agency reported. The construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan (TAT) railway project, the implementation of which is called to promote the activation of trade and economic relations throughout the Eurasian continent, is among the joint beneficial economic events. A business forum has been held recently in Dushanbe on the eve of the official visit of the Turkmenistans president. More than 40 intergovernmental and interdepartmental documents have been signed between the two countries to date. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: A lot of work is being carried out to diversify the routes of supply of Turkmen natural gas to the world markets, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said in his message to participants of the 22nd International Conference Oil & Gas Turkmenistan - OGT 2017 that will start in Ashgabat on Nov. 2. The implementation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project is a clear indication of this. I am firmly convinced of the special significance of this project from the economic point of view for neighboring and other states of the region, said President Berdimuhamedov in his meesage. Turkmenistan occupies one of the leading positions in the world in terms of its hydrocarbon reserves. A lot of work has been done in recent years on production, processing, stable and reliable supply of these resources to consumers. Meanwhile, large-scale work on the stage-by-stage development of the Galkynysh field is carried out to provide the TAPI pipeline with natural gas. Turkmenistan attaches great importance not only to its export supplies via pipelines, but also to the deep processing of gas. The country is taking measures to produce highly demanded competitive products from hydrocarbons. Turkmenistan is one of key players on the energy market of the Caspian region and ranks fourth in the world in terms of its gas reserves. Currently, the country delivers gas to China and Iran. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: The international tourism exhibition and conference, Tourism and Travel, is being held in the Caspian tourism zone Avaza, a source involved in the events organization said Nov. 2. According to Turkmenistans State Tourism Committee, heads and specialists of national travel agencies of many countries, foreign investors, analysts and experts of the world tourism industry are taking part in the event. The purpose and goal of the international tourism exhibition and conference is to become a communication and discussion platform for establishing business contacts between representatives of companies in the field of travel business, financial, design and construction organizations, manufacturers and suppliers of tourism goods and services. The forum gathered delegates from more than twenty countries: Russia, China, the United States, the UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Serbia, Italy, Iran, India, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and others. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov Trend: A one-on-one meeting of presidents of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan was held in Dushanbe on Nov. 2, the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news agency reported. Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov arrived in Tajikistan Nov. 2 for an official visit. The two presidents discussed a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation. They called trade, economic, energy, transport and other sectors as priority areas of cooperation and noted the significant role of the Turkmen-Tajik intergovernmental commission in activating and diversifying productive ties. A vivid example of the effective strategic interstate partnership is the implementation of a major joint project for the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan railway, which is important for the whole region, says the report. The two presidents exchanged views on several topical issues of mutual interest of regional and global agenda. Tajikistans President Emomali Rahmon noted with satisfaction the high level of the Turkmen-Tajik dialogue, the reliable basis of which is long historical ties. President Berdimuhamedov, for his part, spoke about the dynamic, constructive nature of interstate cooperation, developing both in bilateral and multilateral formats through authoritative regional and international organizations. The Turkmen leader also expressed confidence that the current this meeting and the agreements to be reached on its results will contribute to strengthening of traditional relations of friendship and brotherhood between the two countries and peoples, will give a qualitatively new impetus to the mutually beneficial Turkmen-Tajik partnership. Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Nov. 2 By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend A signing ceremony of a number of bilateral documents has been held following the Turkmen-Tajik talks in expanded format in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news agency reported Nov. 2. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon signed the joint statement and the strategic partnership agreement between Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Among the signed documents are also the agreement on the principles for the levying of indirect taxation on the export and import of goods, the performance of work and services between Turkmenistan and Tajikistan; the agreement on long-term trade and economic cooperation between the Turkmen and Tajik governments; the agreement on the mutual recognition of documents on education between the Turkmen and Tajik governments and the agreement on cooperation in agriculture between the Turkmen and Tajik governments. Among the other signed documents are agreement on cooperation in civil defense, prevention and liquidation of emergency situations between the Turkmen and Tajik governments; agreement on mutual recognition of construction licenses between the Turkmen and Tajik governments and program of cooperation in culture and art between the Turkmen and Tajik governments for 2018-2020. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 2 By Diana Aliyeva Trend: Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and UN deputy secretary general, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Yury Fedotov at a meeting held in Tashkent Nov. 1 discussed taking coordinated measures to combat drug trafficking, crime and terrorism, the press service of the Uzbek president reported. Joint activities and projects are being implemented within the framework of the road maps adopted in Uzbekistan to expand practical cooperation with the UN, according to the press service. The sides underlined at the meeting that Uzbekistan attaches great importance to deepening cooperation with the UNODC in combating drug trafficking, transnational crime and international terrorism. Yury Fedotov highly appreciated the policy pursued by the Uzbek president to ensure peace, stability and sustainable development in Central Asia, as well as strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with the countries of the region. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 2 By Diana Aliyeva Trend: The relevant agencies of Uzbekistan have confirmed that Sayfulla Saipov, suspected of committing a terrorist attack in New York Oct. 31, is an Uzbek citizen radicalized after he moved to the US, Jahon news agency reported. A driver plowed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Manhattan on Oct. 31, killing eight people and injuring 11 before being shot by a police officer in what officials are calling the deadliest terrorist attack on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. In 2005, Saipov graduated from a vocational college and in 2005-2009 studied in Tashkent Institute of Finances. After graduation he worked as an accountant in Tashkents Sayokhat hotel. Prior to his departure to the US, Saipov had no criminal conviction and in general was not on the radar of the Uzbek law enforcement bodies. Saipov left for the US in 2010 on a diversity immigrant visa. In the last few years, he has been in a civil marriage with a native of Uzbekistan, who was also temporarily residing in the US. Since then Saipov never traveled to Uzbekistan and did not see his parents who still live in Tashkent. While in the US, Saipov did not get registered at the Uzbekistans diplomatic mission, as it should be done in accordance with current legal norms. His neighbors in Uzbekistan described Saipov as a very positive person: he never looked suspicious, always behaved with restraint and friendliness towards others. He was brought up in a well-off family. His parents preached traditional Islam and never had links with any extremist groups. After moving to the US, Saipov became solitary and was radicalized, which was confirmed by the US media outlets. On Nov. 1, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev sent a message of condolences to US President Donald Trump over the terrorist attack in New York. Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed the readiness of the Uzbek authorities to help investigate the terrorist attack. Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 31 By Fatih Karimov Trend: Irans non-oil trade turnover increased by 6.2 percent to $52.527 billion during the first seven months of the current fiscal year (started March 20, 2017), meanwhile the country experienced a negative trade balance of $3.1 billion. Iran's non-oil exports, including gas condensate, reached $24.71 billion during the 7-month period. The figure indicates a fall by 2.17 percent, compared to the same period of the preceding year, Iran's Customs Administration reported Oct. 31. Iran includes gas condensate and some raw hydrocarbon products, like propane, butane, etc. in its non-oil export basket. The volume of the exported goods had reached 68.058 million tons in the 7-month period. During the period, the country exported $4.115 billion worth of condensates. Liquefied propane (worth $809 million), film grade polyethylene (worth $750 million), gasoline excluded light oils and products (worth $725 million) and methanol (worth $661 million) where other top exported goods in the 7-month period (March 20-Oct. 22). The average price for each ton of Iran's non-oil goods in the mentioned period was around $363, indicating a rise of 8.04 percent, year on year. China was the main importer of the Iranian goods during the 7-month period. Irans non-oil exports to China registered a rise by 12 percent and stood at $5.022 billion. Iraq ($4.013 billion, increase of 12.54 percent), the United Arab Emirates ($3.471 billion, fall of 16.11 percent), South Korea ($2.444 billion, an increase of 24.79 percent) and Afghanistan ($1.584 billion, fall of 16.11 percent) were other top importers of Iranian non-oil goods during the first seven months of current Iranian fiscal year. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 1 By Fatih Karimov Trend: Norwegian Offshore Resource Group (ORG) signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to carry out studies at the Caspian Sea oil blocks. The deal was signed by Mohsen Delaviz, Khazar Exploration and Production Company (KEPCO), affiliated with the NIOC, and Jostein Kare Kjerstad, executive director of ORG in Tehran, the NIOC announced Nov. 1. Under the deal, the Norwegian group will carry out studies for development of exploratory 24, 26 and 29 blocks as well as Sardar-e Jangal oil field in Caspian Sea. Iran has offered four projects in the Caspian Sea blocks 24, 26 and 29 as well as Sardar-e Jangal oil field to foreigners for exploration and development. The Islamic Republic divided its exploration area in the Caspian Sea to 46 blocks, 8 of which are of priority. Iran carried out 3D seismic operations in 4000 square kilometers of the Caspian Sea at blocks 6, 7, 8, and 21 from 2003 to 2005. Sardar-e Jangal is located at block 6 with dimensions of 24x6 km in 750 meter water depth. Iran has drilled two exploration wells and reportedly the field holds 2 billion barrels of crude oil, with API of 39. The drilling of the first well in this area went up to a depth of about 2,500 meters. The second well of Sardar-e- Jangal was tested and exploited at 1423 meters west of the first well of this field and up to a depth of about 3 500 meters for exploration / descriptive drilling activity. Iran also announced in 2012 that while drilling a 1,000-meter well below the surface of the Caspian Sea by Amir Kabir drilling rig, the country found a gas field at the depth of 700 kilometers. Tehran, Iran, November 2 By Mehdi Sepahvand Trend: The heads of state of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran met in Tehran on Wednesday as the second leg of a tripartite meeting series, which addresses the international North-South Transport Corridor project aimed at facilitating trilateral trade, oil, transportation, banking, and agricultural cooperation, among others. The first trilateral meeting was held in August 2016, in Azerbaijans capital Baku, where the trio discussed environmental issues and the fight against terrorism, as well as ways of enhancing inter-state commerce, energy production, communications and transportation. It seems that this series of meetings is going to strengthen the trio as a newly emerging economic nucleus, of which new achievements must be expected in the future. Iran and Russia Last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2017), Iran exported $400 million worth of commodities to Russia while the value of imports exceeded $1.5 billion. On the sidelines of the trilateral Tehran event, the head of Russia's state-controlled oil giant Rosneft said the company had signed a roadmap with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to implement strategic projects in Iran. Igor Sechin said that the deal paved the way for legally-binding documents to be signed within a year. The output from the joint projects, with total investments worth up to $30 billion, is seen plateauing at 55 million tons per year (1.1 million barrels per day). In the meantime, Irans biggest trade center Iranians' Trade House in Astrakhan was inaugurated in the southern Russian city in the presence of Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Sanaei this week. The Russian port of Astrakhan is a center for commercial activities of nearly 200 Iranian firms which has turned the port to the largest center of Iranians economic activities in the Eurasian country. Also on Wednesday, Iranian Finance Minister Masoud Karbasian and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, meeting as heads of a joint economic committee between Iran and Russia, announced that Iran-Russia trade grew 70 percent during the past year. They also reviewed cooperation on making investments, expansion of joint railway and marine transportation, agricultural projects, medicine, and oil and gas as favorable cooperation fields. Following the orders of the two countries presidents to enhance economic cooperation in various sectors, after a comprehensive and detailed discussion, we assessed different aspects of a roadmap to bolster economic ties between Iran and Russia, Novak said in that meeting. Iran and Azerbaijan Speaking during a bilateral meeting with Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani noted that the joint construction of the Rasht-Astara railway is an important part of the North-South Corridor, which will be used for transporting goods from the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf, to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. Azerbaijan will launch a pilot run of the Astara-Astara line in December. The railroad is part of the International North-South Transport Corridor, which runs a distance of 8.3 km (5.2 mi) up from its southern border with Iran, into which it extends 1.4 km (0.87 mi) to Irans port city of Astara. The initiative to build the line also includes the construction of a bridge on Astarachay River that stretches along the border. President Rouhani also said the anticipated opening of a regional railway line, known as the Astara-Astara railway, will further expand linkages, literally and figuratively, between the two countries. The Iranian president also hailed the growing ties between Tehran and Baku as "an example of relations for other countries in the region." The leaders of Iran and Azerbaijan have held 10 meetings in recent years, which indicates their determination to deepen relations in all spheres, Rouhani said. Trade between Iran and Azerbaijan has increased by 33 percent in the first nine months of 2017, compared to the same period in 2016, according to President Aliyev who was speaking during the meeting. President Aliyev also called for closer relations with Iran, citing the common history, culture and religion of Iranians and Azerbaijanis as a great asset that links the two nations. The International North-South Transport Corridor will connect India, Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Central Asia and Europe via 7,200 km (4,474 mi) of railway tracks. The new corridor is expected to increase the 600,000 tons per year of commodities currently being traded between Iran and Azerbaijan to five million at the corridors inception, and later to 10 million tons per year. Rouhani for his part called for efforts to enhance economic ties between Iran and Azerbaijan, proposing to use their national currencies in the bilateral trade. In 2016, trade turnover between Iran and Azerbaijan hit $210.8 million. Between January and July of this year, trade totaled $148.9 million, according to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee. Iranian corporate investments in Azerbaijan have been growing as well. Over 500 Iranian companies invested about $3 billion in Azerbaijan's $37.8 billion-economy since 1993. In 2016, Azerbaijans AzEuroCar LLC and Iran Khodro signed an agreement to create an automobile manufacturing facility in Azerbaijans Neftchala Industrial District. The plant, costing around $15 million, is expected to churn out nearly 10,000 cars per year, including brands such as Runna, Samand, Soren, Dena, Peugeot 206, Peugeot 207, Renaults Tondar and Renault Pickup. In a recent interview with Trend in Baku, Karbasian expressed his countrys interest in agricultural cooperation with Azerbaijan, saying Iran is capable of transferring its experience to the neighboring country. Iran has obtained proper experience and technology in agriculture sector, therefore the Islamic Republic is interested in cooperation with other countries, including Azerbaijan, in this regard, he said. The Islamic Republic exported 5.8 million tons of agricultural products worth of $5.686 billion during the last fiscal year (ended March 20, 2017), indicating an increase of 21.7 percent in volume terms and 3.61 percent in value terms. Saying the creation of a special economic zone would exempt Azerbaijan from some regulations, Karbasian added the special economic zone would provide Baku with opportunities to benefit from its investments in Irans Astara. Azerbaijans Economy Minister Shahin Mustafayev, addressing a joint meeting Oct. 26, put forward the proposal on setting up the economic zone. Iran and Azerbaijan also have plans to expand cooperation in other spheres, in particular maritime transportation, power generation and customs services. The sides have also discussed the ways for increasing the working hours of customs services between the two countries with a view to ease transit of goods. The trade between Iran and Azerbaijan made up $400 million over the past eight months, Iranian ambassador to Azerbaijan Javad Jahangirzadeh has recently said. The ambassador underlined that the economic ties are rapidly developing thanks to the efforts of the Azerbaijan-Iran State Commission on Economy, Trade and Humanitarian Cooperation. Russia and Azerbaijan President Aliyev, speaking at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during the Tehran event, said the increase in trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia "indicates to the restoration of our economies." We have met several times this year and our meetings always lead to good results, because we give new momentum to the development of relations. We are very delighted that in the economic sphere, the trade turnover is increasing after certain complex processes, said President Aliyev. This indicates that there is great mutual interest between business entities, and the increase in trade turnover is an indication of the recovery of our economies, the mutual interest. President Aliyev said Azerbaijans relations with Russia are of strategic nature. He noted that Azerbaijan and Russia cooperate in all spheres humanitarian, economic, energy, transportation, military and technical. He expressed satisfaction that the meeting took place as part of the trilateral summit, which is a very important event of global scale. Before the meeting with Ilham Aliyev, Vladimir Putin said there is a strategic partnership between the two countries. He noted that bilateral efforts to develop relations are not in vain. An example of this is the growth in trade turnover: in the first nine months of 2017, this indicator grew by almost 62%, Putin said. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Business magnate and a member of Tehran trade chamber, Asadollah Asgaroladi, has said that the volume of Irans exports to Russia would experience a triple surge over the next year, if the sides remove the existing obstacles. Although Iran and Russia enjoy proper economic ties, the sides have failed to boost the volume of the trade as obstacles still exist, Asgaroladi told Iran's rolling news channels IRINN on Thursday. Elaborating on solutions to remove the obstacles he described shortcomings in banking ties as a main obstacle. We are not satisfied with the banking ties, he said. Then he touched upon the issue of transportation, saying there is a need for air cargo carriers as dairy products expire soon. He also spoke about the issue of visa, urging the Russian government to issue one-year multiple-entry visa for Iranian traders. Asadollah Asgaroladi also believes that launching direct flights between Iran and southern Russia could contribute to boosting the Islamic Republics exports. Iran exported $400 million worth of commodities to Russia over the last fiscal year ending March 20. The value of Irans imports from Russia last year exceeded $1.5 billion. The heads of state of Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran met in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss trilateral ties. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Khalid Kazimov Trend: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sharply criticized the US President Donald Trump over his recent comments against the Islamic Republic. As you witnessed recently, the head of US administration said the Iranian nation is a terrorist nation. You see how foolish this attitude is? He calls a nation terrorist. He does not say the leader is terrorist; he does not say the government is terrorist; he says the Iranian nation is terrorist, the Iranian supreme leader told students during a Nov. 2 meeting in Tehran. Ayatollah Khamenei described Trumps stance as a clear sign of Washingtons hostility towards the entire nation, the leader's official website reported. Speaking about Washingtons possible plans to withdraw from Irans 2015 nuclear deal with the world powers, the leader called on Iranian officials to stand against the US. Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Fatih Karimov Trend: Irans police seized over 1,250 kilograms of narcotics from smugglers in the country's central Qom province. The police forces also arrested four drug smugglers and dismantled four drug-trafficking groups during the operations, the province's police commander, Brigadier General Kazem Mojtabaei, said, the state-run IRINN TV reported Nov. 2. Police forces seized a hunting gun with cartridge as well as 5 passenger cars and 2 commercial cars from the smugglers, Mojtabaei added. Iran is situated on a major drug route between Afghanistan and Europe, as well as the Persian Gulf states. The Islamic Republic shares about 900 kilometers of common border with Afghanistan, over which 74 percent of opium is smuggled. The fight against drug trafficking annually costs Iran about $1 billion, according to the official estimates. According to the statistics, there are about two million drug users in Iran. A senior Israeli minister on Thursday declined to comment on reports that Israeli aircraft had struck a target in Syria the night before but repeated a threat to hit arms shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, Reuters reports. The air strike targeted a factory south of the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday night and the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, a commander in a military alliance fighting in support of Damascus said. The Syrian commander told Reuters that Israeli planes had hit a copper factory in the industrial town of Hisya, 35 km (21 miles) south of Homs and 112 km (70 miles) north of Damascus. The commander did not give details of any casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, said the air strike had targeted a military installation. Israel has acted in the past and it will act in the future to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah according to intelligence information that we will have, said Katz, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus inner circle of ministers. He said Israels red line was against arms smuggling (and) also against Irans consolidation in Syria and that it was prepared to act to deter against our responses. I think the other side also understands this clearly and actions that took place in the past for which we did take responsibility, were actions that were according to these lines, these red lines, Katz added. The Israeli air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Lebanese ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, nearly 100 times in recent years. Israeli officials have expressed alarm at Iranian influence in Syria, where Iran-backed groups have played a critical role fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the conflict that erupted in 2011. Irans military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory during a visit to Damascus last month. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought a major conflict in 2006, have escalated this year. Each side has warned it will unleash devastating firepower in the event of a full-scale war. Russia hopes that all Syrian opposition groups will attend Syrian Congress on National Dialogue, which it plans to host on Nov. 18 in Sochi, Reuters reported on Thursday citing Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. Bogdanov said all the groups including the High Negotiations Committee and the Free Syrian Army would be welcome to attend the event. Chinese President Xi Jinping replied to North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns congratulatory message on Chinas Communist Party Congress, saying he hopes to promote ties between the two countries, North Koreas state news agency said on Thursday, Reuters reports. The friendly exchange is relatively routine, but it comes as China has come under intense pressure from the United States to do more to rein in the Norths missile and nuclear tests, which have raised tensions globally. China has been increasingly frustrated over ally North Koreas weapons tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions, repeatedly calling for restraint and urging all sides to speak and act carefully. Xis message comes days before U.S. President Donald Trump makes his first official visit to Asia, with North Korea high on the agenda. It follows Tuesdays unexpected agreement between Seoul and Beijing to move beyond a year-long dispute over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did not give details of the message from Xi to Kim but confirmed it had been sent to express thanks for Kims congratulatory messages. Many countries had sent messages to China over the congress and, to be polite, China had written back to say thank you to them, she added. I believe this is in the interests of both sides and has important meaning for resolving the present problem we are facing and maintaining regional peace and stability, Hua told a daily news briefing in Beijing. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized the nation's visa system in the wake of Tuesday's truck attack in New York City that left eight dead, blaming Democrats and pressing a 'merit based' program for immigrants to the United States. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based," Trump wrote in a post on Twitter, referring to the Senate Democratic leader, DNA reports. Pope condemns attack: Pope Francis condemned on Wednesday recent deadly attacks in Somalia, Afghanistan and New York, saying militants were abusing the name of God to justify their violence. "I am profoundly saddened by the terrorist attacks in these recent days in Somalia, Afghanistan and yesterday in New York," the pope said in an address to mark All Saints Day, adding that he was praying for the victims and their families. "We ask God to convert the hearts of terrorists and free the world of hatred and of mad murder that abuses the name of God to disseminate death," he said to Roman Catholic faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. A man driving a truck mowed down pedestrians and cyclists in New York on Tuesday, killing eight people. CNN and other U.S. media said the attacker had left a note claiming allegiance to Islamic State and that he had shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - when he jumped out of his truck. U.S. police declined to publicly identify the man, but a source familiar with the investigation said his name was Sayfullo Saipov, 29. CNN and other U.S. media said Saipov had left a note saying he carried out the attack in the name of Islamic State and that he had shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - when he jumped out of his truck. He had emigrated to the United States in 2010 and lived in Florida, other U.S. media reported. An acquaintance of Saipov told Reuters he had originally come from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The shooting happened at a Rewe supermarket in Germany, STAR DAILY reports. Cops confirmed the suspect is on the run after the incident in the Gropelingen area of the north-western city of Bremen. But they said there is no immediate risk to the public. "The background is not clear," the local force said in a statement. Eyewitnesses said a man was shot several times and is seriously injured. They reported a loud dispute between two men before the shooting. "Suddenly one of them drew a weapon and shot around," one wrote on Twitter. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general, today said that the European defence force has the capability to deter a ballistic missile attack from Kim Jong-un's tyrannical regime, STAR DAILY reports. Speaking at a press conference in South Korea, Stoltenberg said should North Korea launch an attack, NATO is ready to hit back with military force. "We have the capability and resolve to deter any attack. That's the way NATO has handled ballistic missiles threats in the Cold War," he said. "NATO is ready to respond [to] and counter any attacks from any direction," he added. His defiant comments come amid fears North Korea may be about to test the dreaded "Juche Bird missile a nuclear warhead strapped to an ICBM. US officals have confirmed that the communist state is working on the advanced ICBM, thought to be capable of reaching the US. In the press conference today, Stoltenberg agreed that North Korea is developing ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US mainland as well as Europe. But despite that severe threat, Stoltenberg said NATO is committed to finding a "peaceful" resolution to the crisis engulfing the Korean peninsula. The NATO chief is currently on a visit to South Korea to disucss security issues posed by the secretive state and its missile programme. On Wednesday, he urged the international community to unite against the global threat in a meeting with Kang Kyung-wha, South Korean foreign minister. South Korea shot two Cheongung anti-aircraft guided missiles around 25 miles and hit a mock target accurately, STAR DAILY reports. It was the nations first live-fire mission since the South Korea-made system was deployed, military officials confirmed today. This comes as North Korea continues to threaten its neighbours with war. Yesterday, propaganda newspaper Rodong Sinmun vowed to devastate South Korea. The Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile (KM-SAM) were among the weapons systems mobilised for the weapon testing yesterday. The other weapons were the mid-range Patriot system, short-range Mistral missiles and Vulcan cannons. More than 300 troops of 10 units under the wing of the command joined the event held at the Daecheon shooting range in South Chungcheong Province. It was a ground-to-air live-fire test aimed at sharpening the capability of countering North Korea missiles fired towards the South. The Air Force flew unmanned aircraft, replicating North Korea warplanes, for the missiles to target. A Patriot missile first intercepted a simulated enemy jet and the Mistral, and the Vulcan shot down another plane approaching the coastal area at a low altitude. Catalonia's former president, Carles Puigdemont, has refused to return from his self-imposed exile and answer charges in Madrid. He and other former Catalan officials could face decades-long sentences if convicted, DW reports. Spanish prosecutors urged a High Court judge to jail eight Catalan leaders after they appeared before the Madrid court on Thursday. Previously, a total of nine Catalan ex-ministers were quizzed in Madrid on possible charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement, the move triggered by the controversial independence referendum. The judge has yet to decide on the prosecutors' request. DW correspondent Charlotte Chelsom Pill reported a pro-independence rally on the streets of Barcelona on Thursday, with protesters expressing their support to Catalan lawmakers in Madrid. Also, the deposed Catalonian leader Carles Puigdemont refused to leave Belgium and appear before the judges on Thursday. "The climate is not good, it is better to take some distance," his lawyer Paul Bekaert told Reuters. "If they ask, he will cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice," the lawyer added. Puigdemont and five of his sacked colleagues fled to Belgium on Monday as charges against them were unveiled. The ex-Catalan president declared he would stay in Brussels so he could act in "freedom and safety." By ignoring the court's summons, Puigdemont is risking an arrest warrant against him. Such a warrant would prevent the Catalan politician from standing in an upcoming snap regional election. Earlier, Spain's ruling Popular Party said there would "probably be an extradition petition to Belgium and Belgian police will detain [Puigdemont]" if he failed to appear on Thursday. However, Puigdemont's former vice president Oriol Junqueras and some of his cabinet colleagues did appear before the Madrid court on Thursday. Other pro-independence politicians also arrived to face a separate Supreme Court probe in Madrid, including the former Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell. The Supreme Court subsequently announced that the questioning of Forcadell and five other regional parliament board members was postponed until next week, on request of their lawyers. Theresa May has promoted Gavin Williamson, her trusted chief whip, to the job of defence secretary to fill the role vacated after Sir Michael Fallon resigned on Wednesday over allegations of sexual harassment, the guardian reports. Williamson, 41, the MP for South Staffordshire, has been responsible for maintaining discipline within the prime ministers fractious parliamentary party since last year. Fallon stepped down on Wednesday night, admitting that his conduct towards women in the past had fallen short of the standards expected of the armed forces, of which he was in charge. Julian Smith, the MP for Skipton and Ripon, who previously served as Williamsons deputy, has been appointed to replace him as chief whip. The new deputy chief whip will be Esther McVey, who won George Osbornes former seat of Tatton in June. She was a Conservative junior minister in the coalition government of 2010-15, before losing her Wirral West seat. Williamson was closely involved in negotiating the confidence and supply deal with the Democratic Unionist party that secured the parliamentary support May needed to govern in the aftermath of Junes general election. It was Williamson and Gavin Barwell, Mays chief of staff at No 10, collectively known as the chiefs, who were called in by the prime minister last week as she discussed how to handle the growing sexual harassment scandal. Many Conservative MPs were surprised by Williamsons rapid promotion, at a time when party discipline is key to the smooth operation of the government. One senior backbencher described it as: Unbelievable. Ludicrous. Astonishing. Some Conservative MPs even suggest May might have made an agreement with Williamson that she will anoint him as her preferred successor once the Brexit talks are completed. I thought the secret of naked ambition was not to make it so obvious, said one former minister. Israeli aircraft have carried out an attack on targets in Syria from Lebanon's airspace, a Lebanese security service source told Sputnik on Wednesday. "According to our information, Israeli aircraft carried out a missile strike on the territory of Syria from Lebanon's airspace in the Beqaa area," the source said. Beqaa Governorate is located in eastern Lebanon, bordering Syria. A Syrian air force source told Sputnik that the Syrian army's 72nd division launched surface-to-air missiles at Israeli planes in the Homs province in response to the airstrike. In mid-October, the press service of Israels armed forces said the Air Force destroyed an anti-aircraft battery in Syria in response to attacks on Israeli planes. The Israeli Defense Force stressed later that it was not looking to escalate the situation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed earlier that Tel Aviv will continue to carry out airstrikes on targets in Syria, saying that IDF would conduct military operations if intelligence data confirms a planned weapons transfer and if the mission is "operationally feasible." Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Iraq called on Turkey to help in restoring the infrastructure of the cities liberated from the control of the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS or Daesh), the Iraqi media reported Nov. 2. Reportedly, Iraq needs investments in the amount of $100 billion in order to restore infrastructure in the cities liberated from the IS. It is also reported that Iraq is ready to hand over to Turkey the contracts for construction of schools, educational institutions, as well as hospitals in the liberated cities. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey is ready to support Iraq in restoration of infrastructure in the cities liberated from the IS. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: Over the past ten days, 283 members of the Islamic State (IS) were detained in Turkey, the Turkish Central Police Department said in a message on Nov. 2. According to the message, 96 detainees are citizens of Turkey, the rest are foreigners. Earlier, the Istanbul police said that 117 operations were conducted in Istanbul against the IS members from August 2016 to August 2017, as a result of which 648 people were detained. It was also reported that 940 people were deported from Turkey as part of the fight against the Islamic State during the period. The message says that 282 detainees had links with the IS and fought as members of armed groups in Syria and Iraq. 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 Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 2 By Rufiz Hafizoglu Trend: The ban on holding mass events in Ankara has been extended for another three months, the citys governorship said in a statement Nov. 2. The decision was made within the framework of the state of emergency in Turkey, said the message. The state of emergency, introduced in Turkey on July 20, 2016 following a military coup attempt in the country, was extended three times for a period of three months each. On July 15, 2016, Turkish authorities said a military coup attempt took place in the country as a group of servicemen announced about transition of power to them. However, the rebelling servicemen started to surrender July 16 and Turkish authorities said the coup attempt failed. More than 250 people were killed during the attempted coup. KYODO NEWS - Nov 2, 2017 - 15:22 | All A female bottlenose dolphin under human care for around 43 years, the longest in Japan, has died at an aquarium in central Japan, according to the facility operator. (Shimoda Aquarium) Nana, whose age was estimated at somewhere between 45 and 47, had lost her appetite since Oct. 4 and was found drowned in the facility's natural cove on Tuesday, according to Shimoda Aquarium in Shizuoka Prefecture. After being hunted off the coast of Ito city in November 1974, Nana lived in the aquarium in the city of Shimoda. By 1994, she had given birth to eight calves. On Oct. 4, her days in captivity reached 15,666, surpassing the previous longest record held by Kamogawa Sea World in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo. "We feel sorry as we were hoping she would live longer. We will use the experience gained by rearing her for this long period to take care of other dolphins," said an aquarium official. At Shimoda Aquarium, the life-span of the majority of the bottlenose dolphins is between 10 and 15 years, according to the operator. [caption id="attachment_4247" align="alignnone" width="620"] Thousands of protesters spill onto 7th Street in San Francisco after President Donald Trump announced ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.[/caption] SAN FRANCISCO A large coalition of U.S. companies, many from the tech sector, sided against the Trump administration in court papers Wednesday asking a federal judge to block the rollback of a program that shields children of undocumented immigrants from deportation. A total of 108 U.S. companiesincluding Google, Facebook, IBM, Twitter and Ubersigned on to an amicus brief in a group of lawsuits challenging the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA. Employment is not a zero-sum game, lawyers for the companies wrote. Dreamers are filling vacancies at companies that cannot find enough workers to fill their needs. And Dreamers wages lead to higher tax revenues and expansion of our national GDPproducing new jobs for all Americans. A team at Mayer Brown, including star Supreme Court advocate Andrew Pincus, were counsel to the brief's signatories. A team from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr led by former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman signed it on behalf of tech clients Airbnb, Square, Twitter and Yelp. The brief cites studies that have found that the rollback of the DACA program could cause lost wages and tax revenues resulting in a $460.3 billion loss in GDP over the next decade, and $24.6 billion in lost Social Security and Medicare tax contributions. It comes as companies are ramping up their support of undocumented workers. Less than a week ago, more than 100 human resources chiefs from major companies sent a letter to Congress pushing action to support renewal of the DACA program. Wednesdays amicus brief claims that the Department of Homeland Securitys decision to rescind DACA rested solely on the conclusion that the program was unlawful. That legal conclusion is wrong, and DHSs rescission of DACA based on it is therefore arbitrary and capricious in violation of the [Administrative Procedures Act], the brief says. (Reuters) - William Ackman said on Wednesday he has bought options to sell shares of Herbalife Ltd as a new way to bet against the nutritional supplement company he has described as a pyramid scheme. The activist investor took a $1 billion bet in 2012 that Herbalife's shares would fall by selling loaned shares which he hoped to buy back cheaper at a later date. Herbalife's shares have instead risen since then, partly due to the company aggressively buying back its own stock. On Wednesday Ackman said that the short stock position has been closed. Usually closing out a short position when a stock price has climbed signals that an investor has taken a loss. The move to options caps potential losses he might incur in the future. "We converted the short stock position and replaced it with outright put positions," Ackman told Reuters. Ackman is sticking with his negative view on the company but seeking to limit the potential losses for his fund's investors if he had held onto the short stock position. Ackman said that potential losses on Herbalife will now be limited to 3 percent of the firm's capital. "We can still lose money but the loss is capped," he said. For years, Ackman has said that the company would eventually crumble under regulatory scrutiny for operating what he has called a pyramid scheme, a claim Herbalife denies. Herbalife's stock price has soared some 50 percent this year and the company has been buying back shares, piling pressure on Ackman's $10 billion hedge fund as the cost to borrow the shares rose. Short positions, in which borrowed shares are sold in hopes they can be replaced later at a lower price, have the potential for heavy losses that increase as a stock's price rises. Put options give the holder the option to sell a stock at a set price. Analysts called it a savvy move and a more aggressive bet against Herbalife's future by limiting losses for his fund and opening the potential for larger returns. Herbalife's stock price has risen in part by its decision to buy back a big chunk of its shares, a move many in the market interpreted as Herbalife trying to pressure Ackman into giving up on his years-long crusade against the company. Herbalife stock dipped 1.7 percent to $71.37 on Wednesday. Pershing Square International, the firm's hedge fund portfolio, nursed small losses for the year through the middle of October after logging double-digit losses in 2015 and 2016. The fund reported a 1.5 percent loss for the first six months of 2017. Pershing Square said in its interim financial report that Herbalife was the fund's biggest loser for that period with a 4.3 percent decline. For much of the last five years, since Ackman first unveiled the position in December 2012, Herbalife has been a thorn for Pershing Square as unrealized losses mounted. While Herbalife has played a major role in Ackman's portfolio in recent years, Ackman quickly turned back to Automatic Data Processing Inc where he is campaigning for three board seats. He hosted another webinar on ADP on Wednesday, aiming to underscore his claim that the company is inefficient. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Meredith Mazzilli and Jeffrey Benkoe) By Michael Erman and Tamara Mathias (Reuters) - Allergan Plc on Wednesday reassured shareholders that it would return to earnings growth in 2019 after losing a major patent ruling last month on its second-most important drug, dry-eye treatment Restasis. Shares of the drugmaker were up around 5 percent at $185.97 in afternoon trading. The drugmaker, which also announced third-quarter earnings, said it will combat generic competition for the drug by expanding its base business, reducing costs and possibly buying back stock. The company added, however, that it has yet to decide on a specific strategy. "We are in the planning stages, and we will be implementing something as soon as we complete our planning," Chief Executive Brent Saunders said on a conference call with investors. "But rest assured, we will do it rapidly." Allergan worked hard in recent years to protect Restasis, which generated about $1.5 billion in sales last year, from generic rivals. It struck a controversial deal with a Native American tribe in September to shield review of the patents by U.S. regulators, drawing the ire of lawmakers and rival drug companies. Last month, a Texas federal judge invalidated Restasis patents on grounds that they cover ideas that are obvious, making it possible for rival generics to hit the market as early as next year. Allergan has appealed the ruling. Allergan said it evaluated its dry eye-related assets as a result of the court order, and took an impairment charge of $3.2 billion related to Restasis in the quarter. It said it expects next year's adjusted earnings to be down as much as 9 percent from this year if a generic competitor to Restasis launches early in 2018. If a rival launches during the second half, the impact on earnings will be more modest, the company said. The company said it expects earnings to grow from 2017 levels by 2019, regardless of whether a generic launches next year. Story continues Allergan's shares hit four-year lows earlier in the day before recovering. Since June, they have lost nearly a quarter of their value. "Even with the Restasis concerns, the stock is oversold," said Kevin Kedra, healthcare analyst at Gabelli & Co. "This is manageable. It's a cheap stock." Including the impairment charge for Restasis and other items, Allergan reported a net loss of $4.03 billion, or $12.07 per share, for the quarter, compared with a profit of $15.15 billion or, $38.58 per share, a year earlier. Excluding those items, Allergan earned $4.15 per share and topped analysts' average estimate of $4.05, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Revenue rose 11.4 percent to $4.03 billion, matching analysts' expectations as the drugmaker benefited from products it acquired over the last year and it sold more of its top-selling Botox treatment. The regenerative medicine business it picked up in its February acquisition of LifeCell and the CoolSculpting business acquired in its April deal for Zeltiq accounted for nearly half of the revenue increase. The company's CoolSculpting products are meant to help people slim down by freezing away fat. (Reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Tamara Mathias in Bengaluru; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Lisa Shumaker) BEVERLY HILLS, CA - OCTOBER 27: Kevin Spacey speaks onstage at the 2017 AMD British Academy Britannia Awards Presented by American Airlines And Jaguar Land Rover at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on October 27, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/BAFTA LA/Getty Images) The fallout from allegations around House of Cards star Kevin Spacey continues. Netflix and production company Media Rights Capital say that they've actually halted production on the show: "MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on HOUSE OF CARDS season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew." They'd already announced yesterday that the sixth season of House of Cards (which is currently shooting, presumably to air next year) will be the show's last. While the companies said they were "deeply disturbed" by actor Anthony Rapp's account alleging that Spacey made a sexual advance towards him when Rapp was only 14, TVLine reported that the decision to end the show had actually been made months earlier. Spacey responded to Rapp's claims by saying that he did not "remember the encounter," but he said, "If I did behave the way he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." Garmin reported a higher-than-expected profit for the eighth straight quarter, selling more of its GPS-based outdoor activity gadgets such as underwater watches, leading it to raise its full-year revenue forecast. The Switzerland-based companys shares were up 3.7% at $58.70 in premarket trading on Wednesday. Garmin said it expects a revenue of $3.07 billion for the full year, above analysts average estimate of $3.04 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue at the outdoor business, which makes wearable devices such as Fenix watches, rose 31.2% in the third quarter ended Sept. 30. The aviation and marine units also buoyed the quarter, offsetting declines in fitness and its auto business. The companys net income rose to $147.4 million, or 78 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $125.1 million, or 66 cents, a year earlier. It reported proforma earnings of 75 cents per share, above analysts estimate of 66 cents. Garmins net sales rose to $743.1 million, above the average estimate of $721.2 million. Apple aapl has designed iPhones and iPads that would drop chips supplied by Qualcomm qcomm according to two people familiar with the matter. The change would affect iPhones released in the fall of 2018, but Apple could still change course before then, these people said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media. The dispute stems from a change in supply arrangements under which Qualcomm has stopped providing some software for Apple to test its chips in its iPhone designs, one of the people told Reuters. Read: Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf Navigates Landmark Deals and Disputes The two companies are locked in a multinational legal dispute over the Qualcomms licensing terms to Apple. Qualcomm told Reuters it is providing fully tested chips to Apple for iPhones. We are committed to supporting Apples new devices consistent with our support of all others in the industry, Qualcomm said in a statement. Read: Qualcomm Files Lawsuits in China to Ban Apple iPhones The Wall Street Journal first reported that Apple could drop Qualcomm chips Monday. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said Apples move is not totally unexpected. Though Qualcomm has for several years supplied Apples modems which help Apples phones connect to wireless data networks Intel intc has provided upward of half of Apples modem chips for iPhones in recent years, Rasgon said. Intel in 2015 bought a firm that would let it replace more of Qualcomms chips in iPhones, he added. Read: Qualcomm Wants a Piece of Your Future Car Rasgon said its too early to say definitively whether Apple fully intends to drop Qualcomm next year because Apple can likely make multiple contingency plans for different supplier scenarios. Apple is big enough that they want to support multiple paths, they can do that, Rasgon said. Samsung (Electronics Co ) did this too. A couple of years ago, Samsung designed Qualcomm out, but Qualcomm didnt even know until it was close to time to ship Samsungs phones, Rasgon said. Ball Corporation BLL reported third-quarter 2017 adjusted earnings of 52 cents per share, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 59 cents. Earnings, however, were up 8.3% year over year. On a reported basis, the company posted earnings of 13 cents per share compared to 9 cents per share recorded in the prior-year quarter. Total revenues increased 5.7% year over year to $2.908 billion in the reported quarter. Revenues fell short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.942 billion. Ball Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise Ball Corporation Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | Ball Corporation Quote Ball Corporations results were driven by improved operating performance, largely in South America, offset by lower-than-expected operating earnings in Beverage Packaging, North and Central America segment due to the impact of multi-plant downtime, higher freight rates and out-of-pattern freight caused by U.S. hurricanes later in the quarter. Operational Update Cost of sales went up 2.8% year over year to $2.34 billion. Gross profit jumped 19.5% year over year to $570 million. Gross margin expanded 230 basis points (bps) to 19.6%. Selling, general and administrative expenses dropped 5.9% year over year to $127 million. Adjusted operating income inched up 0.6% to $313 million from $311 million reported in the year-ago quarter. The company reported operating margin of 10.8%, down 50 bps year over year. Segment Performance The Beverage packagings North and Central America segments revenues inched up 0.4% year over year to $1,080 million in the reported quarter. Operating earnings of $121 million decreased 16.6% year over year. Sales at the Beverage packaging, Europe segment came in at $651 million in the reported quarter, advancing 4.3% year over year. Operating earnings increased 2.8% year over year to $74 million. The Beverage packaging South America segments revenues surged 33.6% year over year to $425 million in the reported quarter. Operating earnings of $78 million recorded a substantial improvement from $60 million in the prior-year quarter. The Food and Aerosol Packaging segments sales came in at $321 million, declining 2.4% year over year. Operating earnings dipped 3.2% year over year to $30 million. In the Aerospace and Technologies segment, sales went up 18% year over year to $241 million. Operating earnings decreased 4.2% year over year to $23 million. The segments backlog came in at around $1.2 billion at the end of the third quarter. Financial Condition Ball Corporation had cash and cash equivalents of $556 million at the end of the third quarter 2017 compared with $645 million recorded at the end of third-quarter 2016. The company recorded cash from operations of $747 million for the nine-month period ended Sep 30, 2017, compared with cash usage of $433 million recorded in the year-earlier quarter. Ball Corporations long-term debt decreased to $7,104 million for the nine-month period ended Sep 30, 2017, from $7,724 million in the year-ago period. Outlook Ball Corporation updated its financial goals for 2017. The company expects its free cash flow tobe in excess of $850 million after capital spending in the range of $550 million. The company reaffirmed its financial goals for 2019. It expects comparable EBITDA to be $2 billion and free cash flow is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion. It also expects to achieve $300 million-plus of run-rate synergies. Ball Corporation continues to make progress on global finance transformation projects and corporate cost-out initiatives with the opening of shared service centers in Belgrade, Serbia, and Queretaro, Mexico. These multi-year activities, coupled with normalized operating conditions in Beverage Packaging, North and Central America segment will help achieve the companys long-term financial goals of $2 billion of comparable EBITDA and in excess of $1 billion of free cash flow by 2019. Further, the beverage manufacturing plant network optimizations in 2018, new specialty beverage can plants in the United States and Spain, as well as continuing aerospace and aerosol growth will support its long-term financial objective. Share Price Performance Ball Corporations share price has underperformed the industry over the past year. The stock has gained 11% compared with 14% growth recorded by the industry during the said time frame. Story continues Zacks Rank and Key Picks Ball Corporation currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Some better-ranked stocks in the same sector are China National Materials Company Limited CASDY, Caterpillar Inc. CAT and Lakeland Industries, Inc. LAKE. All three stocks flaunt a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. China National Materials has an expected long-term growth rate of 20%. Caterpillar has an expected long-term growth rate of 9.5%. Lakeland has an expected long-term growth rate of 10%. Zacks Best Private Investment Ideas While we are happy to share many articles like this on the website, our best recommendations and most in-depth research are not available to the public. Starting today, for the next month, you can follow all Zacks' private buys and sells in real time. Our experts cover all kinds of trades from value to momentum . . . from stocks under $10 to ETF and option moves . . . from stocks that corporate insiders are buying up to companies that are about to report positive earnings surprises. You can even look inside exclusive portfolios that are normally closed to new investors. Click here for Zacks' private trades >> 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 Ball Corporation (BLL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Lakeland Industries, Inc. (LAKE) : Free Stock Analysis Report China National Materials Group Corp. (CASDY) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Stocks recently deemed undervalued include BG Staffing and McKesson, as they trade at a market price below their true valuations. Smart investors can make money from this discrepancy by buying these shares, because they believe the current market prices will eventually move towards their true value. If youre looking for capital gains in your next investment, I suggest you take a look at my list of potentially undervalued stocks. BG Staffing, Inc. provides temporary staffing services in the United States. The company provides employment to 291 people and with the companys market capitalisation at USD $157.84M, we can put it in the small-cap stocks category. BGSFs stock is currently trading at -59% under its actual value of $41.14, at the market price of $16.88, according to my discounted cash flow model. This discrepancy signals a potential opportunity to buy BGSF shares at a low price. Additionally, BGSFs PE ratio stands at around 16.3x relative to its professional services peer level of 26.7x, suggesting that relative to its comparable company group, you can purchase BGSFs stock for a lower price right now. BGSF is also in great financial shape, with current assets covering liabilities in the near term and over the long run. Finally, its debt relative to equity is 104%, which has been falling for the last couple of years showing BGSFs capacity to reduce its debt obligations year on year. AMEX:BGSF PE PEG Gauge Nov 2nd 17 McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) McKesson Corporation provides pharmaceuticals and medical supplies in the United States and internationally. Established in 1833, and currently headed by CEO John Hammergren, the company size now stands at 64,500 people and with the companys market capitalisation at USD $28.15B, we can put it in the large-cap group. MCKs stock is now trading at -39% beneath its intrinsic value of $224.29, at a price of $137.88, based on its expected future cash flows. This discrepancy signals a potential opportunity to buy MCK shares at a low price. Also, MCKs PE ratio is trading at 6.5x against its its healthcare providers and services peer level of 22.9x, meaning that relative to its comparable company group, we can purchase MCKs shares for cheaper. MCK is also strong financially, as near-term assets sufficiently cover liabilities in the near future as well as in the long run. Its debt-to-equity ratio of 66% has over the past couple of years showing its capacity Story continues NYSE:MCK PE PEG Gauge Nov 2nd 17 Evercore Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as an independent investment banking advisory firm in the United States, Europe, Latin America, and internationally. Established in 1996, and currently headed by CEO Ralph Schlosstein, the company size now stands at 1,525 people and has a market cap of USD $3.46B, putting it in the mid-cap category. EVRs stock is now floating at around -37% less than its intrinsic value of $126.9, at a price tag of $80.1, based on my discounted cash flow model. The divergence signals an opportunity to buy EVR shares at a low price. Also, EVRs PE ratio stands at 16.9x relative to its capital markets peer level of 18.8x, meaning that relative to other stocks in the industry, you can buy EVRs shares at a cheaper price. EVR is also in good financial health, with current assets covering liabilities in the near term and over the long run. The stocks debt-to equity ratio of 30% has been falling over the past couple of years demonstrating its ability to pay down its debt. NYSE:EVR PE PEG Gauge Nov 2nd 17 For more financially sound, undervalued companies to add to your portfolio, you can use our free platform to explore our interactive list of undervalued stocks. To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements. The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. Allergan's controversial deal with the Saint Regis Mohawk tribe giving the group the patent rights to one of its key drugs was widely misunderstood, Allergan (NYSE: AGN) CEO Brent Saunders told CNBC. "I think there's a lot of misunderstanding on why we did it," Saunders told " Mad Money " host Jim Cramer in a Wednesday interview. "It wasn't desperation, it was tenacity." In exchange for the patents for Allergan's eye drug, Restasis, and $13.75 million (plus potentially $15 million in annual royalties), the tribe granted Allergan an exclusive license to sell the drug. The deal involving the billion-dollar drug drew widespread criticism , raising concerns that Allergan could now raise the price of Restasis while keeping it under patent protection. A group of hospitals, health insurers and other drugmakers flagged the deal to Congress, asking lawmakers to review it. But Saunders said that it was simply how the pharmaceutical industry works. "I believe that the biopharmaceutical industry is grounded in one thing, and that's intellectual property protection. That's why we invest billions of dollars coming up with cures and treatments because we get a very short period that's protected by patents to sell those drugs," the CEO said.On the other hand, Saunders acknowledged big pharma's duty to patients and consumers."The flip side of that is I have a social contract that says when we are successful, we'll price it responsibly and we'll make them accessible to those people who can't afford them," he told Cramer. "And I think people got confused that said because I believe in strong intellectual property, I don't believe in making medicines affordable and accessible, and one has nothing to do with the other."While Wall Street has turned sour on Allergan lately, Saunders said that leading the company past patent cliffs like this one is just part of the job."Look, we are tenacious. We believe in protecting our shareholders. We believe in protecting our employees and we believe in protecting our medicines, which means our patients," the CEO said.Watch Brent Saunders' full interview here:Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Allergan. Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - VineQuestions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com Allergan's controversial deal with the Saint Regis Mohawk tribe giving the group the patent rights to one of its key drugs was widely misunderstood, Allergan (NYSE: AGN) CEO Brent Saunders told CNBC. "I think there's a lot of misunderstanding on why we did it," Saunders told " Mad Money " host Jim Cramer in a Wednesday interview. "It wasn't desperation, it was tenacity." In exchange for the patents for Allergan's eye drug, Restasis, and $13.75 million (plus potentially $15 million in annual royalties), the tribe granted Allergan an exclusive license to sell the drug. The deal involving the billion-dollar drug drew widespread criticism , raising concerns that Allergan could now raise the price of Restasis while keeping it under patent protection. A group of hospitals, health insurers and other drugmakers flagged the deal to Congress, asking lawmakers to review it. But Saunders said that it was simply how the pharmaceutical industry works. "I believe that the biopharmaceutical industry is grounded in one thing, and that's intellectual property protection. That's why we invest billions of dollars coming up with cures and treatments because we get a very short period that's protected by patents to sell those drugs," the CEO said. On the other hand, Saunders acknowledged big pharma's duty to patients and consumers. "The flip side of that is I have a social contract that says when we are successful, we'll price it responsibly and we'll make them accessible to those people who can't afford them," he told Cramer. "And I think people got confused that said because I believe in strong intellectual property, I don't believe in making medicines affordable and accessible, and one has nothing to do with the other." While Wall Street has turned sour on Allergan lately, Saunders said that leading the company past patent cliffs like this one is just part of the job. "Look, we are tenacious. We believe in protecting our shareholders. We believe in protecting our employees and we believe in protecting our medicines, which means our patients," the CEO said. Watch Brent Saunders' full interview here: Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Allergan. Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBC Want to take a deep dive into Cramer's world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter - Jim Cramer Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Vine Questions, comments, suggestions for the "Mad Money" website? madcap@cnbc.com More From CNBC Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam - AFP or licensors Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam has dismissed calls from an activist investor to break the Swiss banking giant into three, urging shareholders to stick with his three-year turnaround plan after a six-fold jump in third quarter profits. Mr Thiam also took aim at Bitcoin, branding the fast-growing cryptocurrency the very definition of a bubble and of no interest to the lender. The ex-Pru boss has been under intense pressure to drive better returns at Credit Suisse, with two years of losses since he took the helm in 2015 weighing on the groups share price, which is well down over the period. But Mr Thiam said the banks third quarter net profits of Sfr244m (186m) - the first time the lender has posted three consecutive quarters of profits during his tenure - provided ample evidence his strategy was starting to bear fruit. Last month it emerged that Swiss hedge fund RBR Capital Advisors had built a stake in Credit Suisse in order to pursue a campaign for a major overhaul. This included hiving off the investment bank and moving it to New York from Zurich to take advantage of lower regulation costs. We believe in our strategy, its working, Mr Thiam told reporters. We think we are in a better position than people outside the company to make that decision. The only reason today to buy or sell Bitcoin is to make money, which is the very definition of speculation Tidjane Thiam, Credit Suisse He said he plans to meet RBR boss Rudolf Bohli next week. I listen to and respect the views of all our shareholders. Ill see them as I see any investor, he said. Some of RBRs suggestions were considered and dismissed when Credit Suisse devised its three-year plan in 2015, Mr Thiam said. Commenting on Brexit, Mr Thiam said the bank was planning for a range of scenarios for its more than 5,000-strong UK business. He also joined the growing chorus of criticism of Bitcoin, saying its anonymity posed anti-money laundering concerns. He added: The only reason today to buy or sell Bitcoin is to make money, which is the very definition of speculation and the very definition of a bubble. Story continues Strong growth at Credit Suisses core wealth management business fuelled the improved performance, with net new money inflows up 8pc on the previous year. Mr Thiam said the lenders strategy of targeting the worlds super-wealthy was paying off: We really focus on ultra net worth customers As the world performs better more billionaires are being created. He said performance at the firms other two divisions, investment banking and asset management, was resilient. ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam on Thursday expressed caution about Bitcoin, saying the current interest in the crypto-currency could eventually subside. "Bitcoin presents a number of challenges. The first of them is really the anonymity," Thiam told a results news conference. "I think most banks in the current state of regulation have little or no appetite to get involved in a currency which has such anti-money laundering challenges. "From what we can identify, the only reason today to buy or sell Bitcoin is to make money, which is the very definition of speculation and the very definition of a bubble." Bitcoin rocketed above $7,000 for the first time on Thursday, after a more than sevenfold increase in its value since the start of the year. (Reporting by Joshua Franklin, writing by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields) Tesla last week officially confirmed its plans to set up a manufacturing facility in China, and now we know a bit more about what it's planning to do in the key market in terms of production. At the time, Tesla wouldn't say much more beyond than it's "committed to the Chinese market" and interested in exploring manufacturing facilities around the world. Tesla CEO Elon Musk went into a bit more detail on the earnings call for its Q3 results today. "Don't set your watch by this," Musk said, but noted that "there's a rough target of starting production in the next three years, and it would be serving the China market and some of the surrounding region." The factory will produce Model S and Model X, but is intended to build primarily Model 3 and the forthcoming Model Y affordable crossover SUV, Musk said, since "it's really the only way to make the vehicles affordable for China." Asked about total eventual production capacity and scale relative to its existing facilities, Musk said that "it's at least a couple hundred thousand vehicles per year, maybe more." This is still early days for any finalization of plans, and Tesla noted on the call that there won't be any major capital expenditure on the China plant until at least 2019. The Wall Street Journal report confirming the plans for the factory noted it would be located in the free trade zone located outside of Shanghai, and that Tesla aims to retain sole ownership rather than partnering with a local automaker, which is the way current OEMs operate in order to avoid China's 25 percent import tax on foreign carmakers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk called recent media coverage over the companys decision to fire about 700 employees following annual performance reviews ridiculous and that the automaker must have higher standards than its competitors if it hopes to survive. At every company in the world, theres annual performance reviews, Musk said, adding that Tesla has an extremely high standard, and one thats far higher than other car companies. You cant be a little guy and have equal levels of skill as a big guy. Tesla employs 33,000 people. A 700-person cutthe number Musk cited Wednesday during Teslas third-quarter earnings callwould mean Tesla dismissed about 2% of its workers. The San Jose Mercury News reported in October that an estimated 400 to 700 Tesla employees were dismissed, many of whom said the dismissals came with little or no warning. Tesla told Fortune that these cuts were made following the companys annual performance review process. The United Auto Workers filed a complaint against Tesla on Oct. 25, claiming the company fired workers who were trying to unionize. You have two boxes of equal ability, and ones much smaller, the big guys going to crush the little guy, obviously, Musk elaborated. So the little guy better have a heck of a lot more skill or hes going to get clobbered. So that is why our standards are high. Theyre not high because we believe in being mean to people. Theyre high because if theyre not high, we will die. Musk emphasized that in spite of these high standards only 2% of people didnt make the grade, noting that this is a very low percentage. Musk also said reports didnt include that several thousand employees were promoted and almost half those promotions were in manufacturing. In a previous statement sent to Fortune, Tesla said 17% of its employees were promoted, and almost half of those promotions were within its factory in Fremont. A quick look at Teslas career page shows a different, yet related problem: lots of job openings. Its an issue the Musk later addressed in the earnings call, noting that the company is sucking the labor pool dry to fill positions at its factory in Fremont, Calif., and battery factory near Reno, Nevada. Story continues Tesla reported Wednesday that it lost $619 million in the third quarter, its biggest-ever quarterly loss. Those losses were bigger than usual as Tesla tried to speed up production of its more affordable Model 3 sedan. The company said it had $3.53 billion in cash and cash-equivalents as of Sept. 30, compared to $3.04 billion at the end of the second quarter. Last month, Tesla reported that it produced 260 of its new Model 3 electric cars in the third quarter, of which it has delivered 220, dramatically missing Musks prediction that it would produce more than 1,600 cars by September. Overall, the company delivered 26,150 vehicles in the third quarter. Of those, 14,065 were Model S sedans, 11,865 were Model X SUVs, and 220 were Model 3 cars. Brighteye Ventures, a relatively new European VC dedicated to investing in edtech startups, is announcing that it has closed a 50 million first fund. Eyeing up a slice of the estimated $6 trillion annual education market globally, which, arguably has seen modest digital disruption to date, the firm says it will lead or participate in seed and Series A and B rounds for innovative companies "using technology to enhance learning and creativity". Specifically, I'm told Brighteye Ventures is on the look out for companies targeting various educational levels, from K-12 to university to lifelong learning. The VC plans to lead investments in Europe and Israel, and co-invest alongside investment partners in the U.S., while the investment amount will range from 500,000 to 3 million per round. That should see Brighteye, whose LPs consist of unnamed European family offices, back around 20 companies over the next three years. Run out of Paris -- though the fund itself is registered in Luxembourg -- Brighteye Ventures is being managed by Managing partner Alex Spiro with the help of investment partner Benoit Wirz. Spiro (pictured) has a background in childrens media, and is co-founder of childrens publisher Flying Eye Books, and Minilab Studios, an educational app development studio. Wirz is said to bring nearly 20 years experience of developing and investing in edtech, media, enterprise software and other tech companies, most recently at the Knight Foundation. Meanwhile, although the closing is only being announced today, as is often the case, Brighteye Ventures has already begun investing from its fund. In May, the VC firm participated in an $8 million series C round for Epic!, a digital content platform for under 12s, and in August it joined Lightneers $5 million seed round. The latter is a learning games studio based in Helsinki and founded by ex-Rovio executives. To that end, Wirz is talking up Brighteye as "a truly operational VC," claiming that the VC is well-positioned to connect its portfolio companies to clients, educators, advisors and investors in order to "amplify their growth". Representatives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google are set to face hostile questions from Congress about how Russia used their platforms to influence U.S. politics. The problem of unfriendly foreign powers spreading propaganda is not new. It has happened for centuries. What is new, however, is the reach of the Internet and modern social networks and the speed with which they can launch and propagate misinformation campaigns. This duo has made it easy to spread misinformation and target specific communities with detail that was previously unimaginable. Tech companies have denied this is happening while happily raking in huge profits from the misuse of their platforms. Only in the past week did Twitter agree to ban ads from state-sponsored Russian news sites, years after government intelligence agencies and media critics called into question whether those sites were publishing outright lies. The tech giants could have solved these problems years ago with simple technology fixes and filters. This is not rocket science and does not erode free speech. For example, blocking ads published by foreign news agencies targeted to small parts of key election states is a no-brainer; why would RT need to buy ads in a few zip codes in western Pennsylvania for any other reason than to circulate propaganda? And if a new social media account has no websites and does not list physical offices in the U.S. or even in a foreign country, why are you letting it purchase advertising? How did we get here? The stars have actually been aligned for a few years. Social media has become ubiquitous. The Pew Research Center finds that 67% of all Americans get their news from social media at least some of the time. Social and search platforms have won our trust, as well. People actually trust Google more than online media sites, according to a 2016 survey by Edelman. And fake news outperforms real news, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed. There are actually two facets of this problem. One is the political ads, and these are relatively easy to tackle. The tech giants should meet the same standards that media companies are held to, and embrace disclosure. This is the price of being a good corporate citizen. If television networks and radio stations can handle the requirements to disclose purchases, so can the techies. Yes, online ads are automated and poring through multiple layers is not easy. Third-party ad serving systems also make establishing ownership harder. But tying a responsible party to each ad is just another data field that Google, Twitter, and Facebook can require. They can verify this just as they verify the bank or payment accounts of companies they do business with. Story continues And then there is the veracity and intention of the content. This is harder to judge and police, but not impossible. Fake or questionable content has a fingerprint. Google, Facebook, and other tech companies have algorithms to rate which content is highly ranked. Its not terribly difficult to add criteria to determine credibility. This could be a number score based on a dozen or so factors: age of site, DNS records showing internet provenance, where links to the site come from, or if the site been linked to by known fake Twitter bots. Or perhaps Facebook and Twitter could ask why a no-name fake news platform is geo-targeting ads only to Wisconsin. With this number, any link that scores below a certain threshold can be reviewed more closely by human editors before it is highlighted. Some might perceive this as censorship. But it doesnt mean that low-ranked content sites that are legitimate would be blocked permanently. They might just be asked to provide more details in order to get whitelisted. And, in fact, this is not a much different than what the media industry does today. All outlets exercise the right to decide what they allow on their platform. We are not talking about stopping fringe groups from putting up websites. Rather were focusing on identifying them and blocking them from hijacking social media. There is another issue that the tech giants dont want to face up to: They already know that a significant proportion of their accounts are trolls and botsand they can easily delete these accounts. One study estimated that up to 15% of Twitter accounts are bots, not people. If university researchers can figure this out, so can the data scientists at Twitter. But reduced user numbers and engagement rates would hurt Twitters stock price, so it does not want to acknowledge this reality. This is a matter of profits, not rocket science. When it comes to making money, tech companies can always figure out how to solve the most complex of problems. No more excuses. The future of our democracy is at stake. Vivek Wadhwa is a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon Universitys College of Engineering and Alex Salkever is an author, public speaker, and former vice president of marketing at Mozilla. Together they authored The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future. Mark Zuckerberg Harvard Getty Fewer than 9,000 people saw Russian-linked ads purchased through Facebook's Audience Network, which lets marketers deliver ads to other websites and apps, since the beginning of 2016. About 90 online publishers saw revenue from the Russia-affiliated ads that Facebook delivered. The revelation highlights how Russian actors used every part of Facebook's ad business to influence public opinion. Russia-linked operatives looking to sway US politics purchased Facebook ads that were also shown outside of the social network, Business Insider has learned. But unlike the 126 million Americans estimated to have seen Russia-backed posts on Facebook between 2015 and 2017, the number of people who saw Facebook-delivered ads from Russia-linked actors on other sites was relatively small. Since the beginning of 2016, roughly 9,000 people saw Russian-affiliated ads purchased through Facebook's Audience Network tool, which lets marketers deliver ads to other websites and apps. The ads were affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, a so-called Russian troll farm that Facebook recently said was behind roughly 80,000 posts shared on its platform before and after the 2016 US election. About 90 of the fewer than 1,000 online publishers that had Russia-backed ads delivered through Facebook's Audience Network saw any revenue from the ads, according to a source familiar with the matter. The source added that Facebook notified affected publishers on Tuesday, minutes before the company's top lawyer was scheduled to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill about Russia's election meddling through social networks. A Facebook representative confirmed the previously unreported reach of Russia-backed activity on the company's ad platform in a statement shared with Business Insider on Tuesday. "Less than 9,000 people saw one of the ads linked to the Internet Research Agency through the Audience Network," the representative said. "Most impacted publishers saw less than 10 impressions, and the revenue average delivered per publisher was less than $0.10." Story continues While 9,000 people is a small number compared with the 126 million who most likely saw the Russian posts on Facebook, the revelation highlights how Russian actors used every part of Facebook's ad business to influence public opinion. Facebook announced last week that advertisers running federal-election-related ads in the US would be required to verify their identity as well as run disclosures on each ad. The company also said it would allow people to see the ads a Facebook business page is running. NOW WATCH: SCOTT GALLOWAY: Facebook could screen its advertisers, but it doesn't want to hurt profits See Also: SEE ALSO: Twitter will tell Congress that Russia's election meddling was worse than we first thought Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on social media influence in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Nov. 1, 2017. (Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images) WASHINGTON A handful of Republican senators are already asking for significant changes to the Houses sweeping $1.51 trillion tax reform bill released Thursday that lowers income and corporate tax rates while eliminating some popular deductions. But overall, Republicans in Congresss smaller and slower chamber are taking a more deferential tone to the framework than they did on the Houses Obamacare repeal effort six months ago, perhaps signaling that the legislation has a better shot at passing in some form. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said he wanted the bill to include a $2,000 refundable child tax credit, a policy that has been endorsed by White House adviser Ivanka Trump. The House bills child tax credit currently stands at $1,600 and is not refundable. Thats where it needs to be, thats where it has to be, Rubio said of the higher amount. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he was unhappy with how the bill treats pass-through business rates, where some business owners can categorize 70 percent of their revenue as personal wages and the other 30 percent as business income that is taxed at 25 percent. The change is meant to prevent wealthy people from avoiding income tax by only paying the new, lowered 25 percent corporate rate. The issue with the pass-throughs has got to be fixed, its not acceptable, Johnson said. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said his staff was still examining the House bill but that he wants $4 trillion in loophole closures as part of the plan to ensure the tax cuts dont add to the deficit. He also stressed he wanted the tax rate changes to be permanent. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was pleased to see the top rate of nearly 40 percent unchanged for income over $1 million, but declined to comment on whether she supported the overall bill until she had time to examine it further. The bill caps mortgage interest deduction at $500,000, which would disproportionately effect homeowners in states like Maine where many people own second houses. Story continues The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that the corporate tax cuts will cost $2.2 trillion, while various business deduction and exemption eliminations will raise just $1.2 trillion. Overall, House leaders expect the tax plan will cost $1.51 trillion. Multiple Republican senators called the House bill a starting point or first step reminding reporters they will craft their own bill. By and large, the partys response to the bill was far more positive than in the hours after the House released its Obamacare repeal plan, when many senators were more dismissive of the initial framework. This reflects a general understanding in the Republican caucus that they must deliver on tax reform to avoid losing seats and donors in the 2018 midterms. Were going to take them seriously because we want to get it done on the Republican side, and the best way to do that is to make sure we are not becoming adversarial, said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. That has happened before, you know. In an interview with a Wisconsin radio host Monday, Speaker Paul Ryan said House leaders had pre-negotiated the framework with the White House and Senate, after learning lessons from the Obamacare failure. The House passed a repeal bill while the Senate never managed to. I do believe that every American senator understands this, they get this, Ryan said of the importance of passing tax reform. But a lot of convincing and negotiation remain ahead. Republican senators were still learning the outlines of the plan Thursday and many were unable to comment on specific provisions. He didnt pre-negotiate it with me! Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said of Ryan when asked if he knew the outlines of the House tax bill earlier this week. Each individual GOP senator wields significant power, given that Republicans can only lose two votes and pass a bill if Democrats continue to oppose this tax reform effort. And the effort to sell the plan could get complicated as constituents learn about the elimination of popular deductions needed to pay for the lower income and corporate tax rates. Ive been telling all my constituents, look, you gotta understand this is not all gravy, its not all cheesecake, Kennedy told Yahoo News. To get to the cheesecake, you gotta go through the spinach. Its like a big ol piece of cheesecake with a big ol hunk of spinach on top and you gotta eat the spinach first. Read more from Yahoo News: Companies such as Elevate Credit and Bob Evans Farms have a significantly positive future outlook on the basis of their profitability and returns. Investors seeking to enhance their portfolio should consider these financially stable, high-growth stocks. Whether it be a well-known tech stock or a risky small-cap, I believe diversification towards growth can add value to your current holdings. Below Ive compiled a list of stocks with a bright future ahead. Elevate Credit, Inc. design and provides online credit solutions to non-prime consumers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Established in 2014, and now led by CEO Kenneth Rees, the company now has 540 employees and with the companys market capitalisation at USD $341.89M, we can put it in the small-cap stocks category. ELVT is expected to deliver a triple-digit high earnings growth over the next couple of years, driven by a positive double-digit revenue growth of 49.13% and cost-cutting initiatives. An affirming signal is when net income increase also comes with top-line growth. Even though some cost-reduction initiatives may have also pushed up margins, in the case of ELVT, it does not appear extreme. This prospective profitability should trickle down to shareholders, with analysts expecting the company to generate a high double-digit return on equity of 34.36%. ELVTs impressive outlook on all aspects makes it a worthy company to spend more time to understand. Interested to learn more about ELVT? Take a look at its other fundamentals here. NYSE:ELVT Future Profit Nov 2nd 17 Bob Evans Farms, Inc. (NASDAQ:BOBE) Bob Evans Farms, Inc. produces and distributes food products for grocery retailers in the United States. Started in 1948, and currently run by J. Townsley, the company now has 1,021 employees and with the companys market capitalisation at USD $1.54B, we can put it in the small-cap category. BOBEs projected future profit growth is an exceptional triple-digit, with an underlying 28.70% growth from its revenues expected over the upcoming years. An affirming signal is when net income increase also comes with top-line growth. Even though some cost-reduction initiatives may have also pushed up margins, in the case of BOBE, it does not appear extreme. This prospective profitability should trickle down to shareholders, with analysts expecting the company to generate a high double-digit return on equity of 32.81%. BOBEs bullish prospects on both the top and bottom lines make it an interesting stock to invest more time to understand how it can add value to your portfolio. Want to know more about BOBE? Have a browse through its key fundamentals here. Story continues NasdaqGS:BOBE Future Profit Nov 2nd 17 Restaurant Brands International Inc. (NYSE:QSR) Restaurant Brands International Inc. owns, operates, and franchises quick service restaurants under the Tim Hortons and Burger King brand names. Established in 1954, and currently headed by CEO Daniel Schwartz, the company provides employment to 4,300 people and with the market cap of USD $30.00B, it falls under the large-cap stocks category. QSRs forecasted bottom line growth is an exceptional triple-digit, driven by the underlying double-digit sales growth of 16.91% over the next few years. An affirming signal is when net income increase also comes with top-line growth. Even though some cost-reduction initiatives may have also pushed up margins, in the case of QSR, it does not appear extreme. This prospective profitability should trickle down to shareholders, with analysts expecting the company to generate a high double-digit return on equity of 37.87%. QSRs bullish prospects on both the top and bottom lines make it an interesting stock to invest more time to understand how it can add value to your portfolio. Considering QSR as a potential investment? Other fundamental factors you should also consider can be found here. NYSE:QSR Future Profit Nov 2nd 17 For more financially robust companies with high growth potential to enhance your portfolio, use our free platform to explore our interactive list of these stocks. To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements. The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. Incyte Corporation INCY reported strong results for the third quarter of 2017, wherein both earnings and sales topped estimates. Incyte reported earnings of 17 cents per share beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 6 cents but lower than the year-ago quarter reported figure of 19 cents. Quarterly revenues were $381.5 million, up 41.6% year over year and beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $360.2 million. The top line was driven by higher sales of Jakafi in the United States and Iclusig in Europe as well as royalties from sales of Jakavi and Olumiant outside the United States. Incytes shares have moved up 13% in the year so far, compared with the industrys 4.8% gain. Quarter in Detail Jakafi sales grew 36%, year over year to $304 million driven by strong patient demand for both indications. Net product revenue of Iclusig amounted to $18 million, up from $13 million in the year-ago quarter. Product royalty revenues from Novartis AG NVS for the commercialization of Jakafi in ex-U.S. markets grew 36.7% to $41 million. Research and development (R&D) expenses were up to $270 million from $143 million in the year-ago quarter. The increase was primarily due to the expansion of the portfolio as well as upfront and milestone expenses of $209 million related to collaboration and license agreements. Selling, general and administration (SG&A) expenses amounted to $91 million, up 19.7% year over year. 2017 Outlook Updated Based on strong performance so far in 2017, the company upped guidance for Jakafi and now expects revenues in the range of $1,125-$1,135 million, up from the earlier projected range of $1,090-$1,120 million. Iclusig revenues are still expected in the range of $60-$65 million. R&D expenses are now expected in the range of $1,250-1,300 million, up from the earlier forecast of $1,050-1,150 billion due to the acceleration of the phase III plans for epacadostat. SG&A expenses are still expected in the range of $340-$360 million. Story continues Incyte Corporation Price and EPS Surprise Incyte Corporation Price and EPS Surprise | Incyte Corporation Quote Pipeline Update Results from a phase III trial, REACH3 evaluating Jakafi as a treatment for patients with steroid-refractory chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is expected in the first half of 2018. Assuming positive results, Incyte plans to submit a sNDA seeking accelerated approval of Jakafi in this indication in 2018. A phase III trial, GRAVITAS-301, on itacitinib, in patients with treatment-naive acute GVHD, was initiated in July. The phase III trial, ECHO-301, evaluating epacadostat plus Keytruda in patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma is now fully-recruited and data are expected in the first half of 2018. The European Commission approved Olumiant in February 2017 for the treatment of moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis in adult patients who have responded inadequately to, or are intolerant to one or more disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. The drug was approved in Japan too. However, the company suffered a setback when the FDA issued a complete response letter for Olumiant seeking additional clinical data to determine appropriate dosage. The FDA further stated that additional data are necessary to further characterize safety concerns across treatment arms. In August 2017, partner Eli Lilly LLY announced that the NDA will be submitted before January 2018, earlier than anticipated. Concurrent with the third-quarter results, Incyte announced expansion of its collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca PLCs AZN global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune. Both companies will evaluate the efficacy and safety of epacadostat in combination with AstraZenecas Imfinzi (durvalumab), a human monoclonal antibody directed against PD-L1, compared to Imfinzi alone. The two companies will conduct a phase III trial in patients with locally-advanced (Stage III), unresectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has not progressed following platinum-based chemotherapy concurrent with radiation therapy (CRT). The trial is expected to begin in the first half of 2018 and costs will be shared. Our Take Incyte beat both on earnings and sales in the third quarter on strong Jakafi performance. Jakafi sales were driven by patient demand. The increase in sales guidance was also encouraging. Inclusig also performed well and exceeded expectations. Going forward, the label expansion of Jakafi for GVHD will further boost sales. Meanwhile, partner Lilly plans to resubmit NDA for Olumiant earlier than expected. A potential approval will further boost the top-line. Zacks Rank Incyte currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone! It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a $1.7 trillion market. Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 6 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2020. Click here for the 6 trades >> 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 Astrazeneca PLC (AZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Novartis AG (NVS) : Free Stock Analysis Report Incyte Corporation (INCY) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the unusual step of downplaying the companys record $10 billion revenue during Wednesdays earnings call. Instead, he focused on the steps Facebook will take to improve its security after this weeks bombshell admission that 126 million people saw Russian disinformation during the 2016 election. Ive expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust, an indignant Zuckerberg said during his opening remarks, his latest effort to distance himself from when he dismissed such meddling as a pretty crazy idea days after Donald Trumps victory. We build these tools to help people connect and bring us closer together. They used them to try to undermine our values. What they did is wrong and were not going to stand for it. The timing of Facebooks third quarter earnings call was unavoidably weird. Zuckerberg and his fellow executives spoke with investors about the companys big profits mere hours after Facebooks top lawyer finished up a series of appearances before congressional committees, during which senators and representatives repeatedly blasted the company for its role in Russias 2016 interference. While politicians and the public may have permanently linked Facebook with fake news and electoral meddling, theoretically none of that matters in the context of an earnings call, which is all about the companys financial performance has made in the past financial quarter. But Zuckerberg addressed just why he felt moved to discuss Russia during the earnings call. Im dead serious about this, and the reason Im talking about this on our earnings call is that Ive directed our teams to invest so much in security on top of the other investments were making that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward, and I wanted our investors to hear that directly from me, he said. I believe this will make our society stronger and in doing so will be good for all of us over the long term. But I want to be clear about what our priority is: Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits. Story continues As for what that means concretely, Zuckerberg said Facebook will double its safety and security team from 10,000 to 20,000 in the next year. The company will also develop artificial intelligence to better detect bad actors and misinformation, along the same lines as what the company has previously used to detect terrorist propaganda. He also promised ongoing collaboration with the government. The first step is doing everything we can to help the US government get a complete picture of what happened, he said. Weve testified in congress over the past couple of days about the activity we found in last years election. Were working with congress on legislation to make advertising more transparent. Watch here as Senator John Kennedy demands to know how Facebook can possibly track all five million of its advertisers. Congresspeople may have a different read on the companys cooperation over the last two days of committee hearings, as Facebook lawyer Colin Stretch was repeatedly criticized, even yelled at by his questioners for vague, evasive, or incomplete answers. The New York Times has also reported that lobbyists for Facebook and other tech giants like Google and Twitter are privately fighting the advertising legislation, the companies public support notwithstanding. After two days of taking public relations losses in the hostile territory of Capitol Hill, Zuckerberg used the earnings call to try to retake ownership of the international security controversy that has embroiled Facebook. Beyond outlining these new security measures, he attempted to recenter the conversation around building a safer internet in terms of Facebooks loftier, more abstract mission of building a global community. I talked about this last quarter when we changed our mission to focus on building community to bring the world closer together, and thats more important now than ever, he said. And this gets into our roadmap for the next three, five, and 10 years. He then proceeded to sketch out the companys main growth priorities beyond its new focus on improved security. These include the companys growing emphasis on video, a major theme of last quarters earnings call, as well as artificial intelligence and its Oculus virtual reality system. In terms of growth, the company reported nearly 300 million new monthly active users since the third quarter of 2016, with about 150 million of those coming from Asia and the Pacific Rim. However, the overwhelming source of Facebooks $10 billion revenue up from $6 billion this time last year still comes from advertising in the United States and Canada, mean Zuckerbergs pledge to change its security and vetting approach to the platforms ads in the wake of the election is indeed inextricably linked with its future profits. Photos via Getty Images / Paul Marotta Photos via Getty Images / Paul Marotta Written by Alasdair Wilkins More articles by Alasdair Follow Alasdair on Twitter tweetshare More From Inverse Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 1, 2017) - Minnova Corp. (TSXV: MCI) (OTC: AGRDF) ("Minnova" or the "Company"), an advanced-stage mining exploration and gold development company focused on the advancement and re-start of our 100% owned PL Gold Mine in central Manitoba is pleased to announce results of the Feasibility Study ("2017 FS") considering the re-start of the PL Gold Mine initially as an underground mine located near, Sherridon, Manitoba. The FS 2017 was prepared by A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. ("AZM") based on an updated mineral resource estimate prepared by Leon McGarry of CSA Global Pty Ltd. ("CSA"). Currencies reported below are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise specified. Highlights from the Feasibility Study Base Case, which uses a long term gold price of US$1,250 per ounce gold and USD:CAD exchange rate of 1.30, include: Pre-tax Net Present Value ("NP V") at a 5% discount rate of $ 5 5 . 9 million and an Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") of 6 5 %; After-tax NP V at a 5% discount rate of $ 36.7 million and IRR of 53 %; Proven & Probable Mineral Reserves of 2 59 ,000 ounces of gold ( 1.27 million tonnes at 6.34 g/t Au), a subset of the Measured and Indicated Resources of 2 82,5 00 ounces of gold ( 1 . 48 million tonnes at 5 . 93 g/t Au). The 2017 FS excludes Inferred Resources of 301,7 00 ounces of gold ( 1. 84 million tonnes at 5.08 g/t Au) After-tax payback of 1. 5 years after plant start-up; Minimum 5 year mine life, mining and processing 1.2 7 million tonnes, averaging 6. 3 4 grams per tonne ("g/t") gold, and producing 232 , 463 ounces of gold; Underground production amounts to 0.95 million tonnes at an average diluted grade of 7. 00 g/t gold; Total pa yable gold production of 232 , 463 ounces with an average Life of Mine ("LOM") cash cost of US$ 715 per ounce and average AISC of US$ 9 4 2 per ounce; Years 2 to 5 mill feed planned at 788 tpd to produce an average of 4 5 , 637 ounces; Pre-production ( Year -1 ) capital cost of $ 3 5 .3 5 million including a 10 % for contingency, environmental bonds and initial working capital; In Year 1, the projected $1 2 . 5 million capital expenditure is offset by net income of $ 38 . 5 million; Sustaining Capital and Closure Costs of $ 54.16 million over LOM; Opportunity to increase potentially mineable ounces through; a) conversion of inferred mineral resources to the measured and indicated resource categories through further drilling along strike and down dip and; b) expansion and delin e ation of resources on strike to the north of the current resource area, where mineralization has been traced for a further 320 met r es on surface . Gorden Glenn, President & CEO of Minnova commented, "We are very pleased with the feasibility study results. This detailed study significantly de-risks the project and supports that the re-start of the PL mine is economically robust. The low pre-production capital cost, low operating and All-In-Sustaining-Cost's ("AISC"), short time line to production, quick payback of 1.5 years from the start of production and a minimum 5 year mine life offer a significant value proposition for all stakeholders. Our focus on upgrading the PL resource and de-risking the mine development plan positions the company to advance towards production. In addition to seeking a market re-rating as an emerging gold producer we have identified further opportunities to add further value by expanding the potentially minable resource, further enhancing already robust base case project economics. These results mark another significant milestone for Minnova and we can now move forward with strategic plans to seek a partner or independently finance and initiate construction/rehabilitation of the mine and mill infrastructure starting in early 2018 toward achieving initial production in early 2019." Comparison to the July 2014 Preliminary Economic Assessment (the "2014 PEA") The key differences in the 2017 FS from the 2014 PEA include: Updated mineral resource estimate conducted by Leon McGarry of CSA Global Pty Ltd. ("CSA") and based on additional 8,919 metres of infill drilling during the winter-spring 2017 season; Maiden reserve estimate additional delineation drilling supports Proven and Probable reserve estimate of 259,000 ounces of gold in 1.27 million tonnes at a diluted grade 6.34 g/t Au. Revised and more detailed mine operating schedule operating and development schedule targets higher grade mineralization at north end of the deposit and defers refurbishment and future production from area of past production until after year 1; Revised production schedule shorter forecast mine life but based on only Proven and Probable reserves; Updated process flow sheet incorporates new bank of cleaner flotation cells, an intense leach reactor for the gravity concentrate and more detailed refurbishment and upgrade schedules for existing equipment; Addition of a water treatment plant; Addition of Ragged TMF dam expansions and discharge point upgrades; Addition of onsite assay lab services; Addition of a construction and on site mine camp and related site infrastructure; Additional refurbishment and upgrade considerations for the powerline, access road, process plant and mine site; and Updated capital and operating costs based on improved detail, information and quotes. PL Mine Execution and Development The PL Mine re-start plan includes the following: Development, Refurbishment and Pre-Production Year -1 (starts January 1, 2018) Project Economic Assessment The PL Mine was assessed using a discounted cashflow approach with a Base Case long-term gold price of US$1,250/oz and a USD:CAD exchange rate of 1.30. The results of the economic analysis, summarized in Table 1 and Table 2, support re-starting operations. Undiscounted after-tax cash flow amounts to $46.8 million and returns a robust IRR of 53%. Table1: Results of the Economic Analysis IRR Pre-Tax 65% After-Tax 53% Undiscounted NPV ($000) $70,842 $46,827 NPV 5% ($000) $55,903 $36,701 NPV 8% ($000) $48,576 $31,683 Payback 2.5 yrs from start of development 1.5 yrs from start of production Forecast Gold Production AZM estimates total mill feed to be 1.27 million tonnes at an average diluted grade of 6.34 g/t. Of this approximately 0.95 million tonnes at an average diluted grade of 7.00 g/t would be sourced from underground operations and 0.31 million tonnes would be sourced from shallow open pits at an average diluted grade of 4.35 g/t Au. Total recoverable gold production over the LOM is estimated at 232,463 ounces for an average annual production rate of approximately 46,493 ounces of gold (see Figure 1). Cannot view this image? Visit: https://s.yimg.com/os/en-US/homerun/newsfile_64/35fe95953df4b3e90f6a138ec762ca7c Figure 1: Summary of Projected Annual Gold Production, Cash Operating Costs and AISC To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: http://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3654/30161_minnova_enhanced.jpg Table 2: Results of the Cashflow Analysis Undiscounted LOM Total ($000) Discounted at 5% ($000) Discounted at 8% ($000) IRR (%) Gross Sales $377,376 $314,890 $284,148 Less royalties $11,286 $9,417 $8,498 Less selling expenses $1,163 $970 $876 Net Sales Revenue $364,927 $304,503 $274,774 Mining costs $131,751 $109,305 $98,317 Processing costs $39,367 $38,492 $34,535 G&A costs $37,530 $30,925 $27,727 Total cash operating costs $215,861 $178,722 $160,579 Net cash operating margin $204,575 $169,305 $152,081 Initial capital $35,352 $33,668 $32,733 Sustaining capital $54,158 $45,626 $41,384 Net cash flow before tax $70,842 $55,903 $48,576 65% Taxes payable $24,015 $19,202 $16,893 Net cash flow after tax $46,827 $36,701 $31,683 53% PL Deposit Resources The PL gold deposit mineral resource was updated to include an additional 8,919 metres of drilling completed during the winter-spring of 2017. Infill drilling to upgrade Measured, Indicated and Inferred resources from surface to a depth of -450 metres resulted in a maiden Proven and Probable reserve estimate containing 215,000 ounces of gold in 954,000 tonnes grading 7.00 g/t gold. Measured and Indicated mineral resources total 282,500 ounces of gold in 1,481,000 tonnes grading 5.93 g/t gold and Inferred mineral resources of 301,700 ounces of gold in 1,846,000 tonnes grading 5.08 g/t gold. See mineral resource summary in Table 3 below. Table 3: PL Deposit Mineral Resource Estimate as of November 1, 2017 Category Au Cut-off (g/t) Tonnes (Kt) Au Grade (g/t) Contained Au oz Measured 2.5 425 7.53 102,900 Indicated 2.5 1,056 5.29 179,600 M+I 2.5 1,481 5.93 282,500 Inferred 2.5 1,846 5.08 301,700 Notes PL Deposit: The volume of the historical mined areas was depleted from the resource estimate. Grade capping values range from 30 to 45 g/t Au and affected 16 samples. Bulk densities of 2.81 t/m3 were used for tonnage calculations. A gold price of US$1,250/oz and an exchange rate of US$0.80=C$1.00 was utilized in the Au cut-off grade calculations of 2.5 g/t underground. Operating costs of C$125/t. Process recovery used was 95%. Tonnes and ounces have been rounded to reflect the relative accuracy of the mineral resource estimate; therefore numbers may not total correctly. 1 troy ounce equals 31.10348 grams. Mineral Resource tonnes quoted are not diluted. The NI 43-101 mineral resources in this press release were estimated using the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), CIM Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves, Definitions and Guidelines prepared by the CIM Standing Committee on Reserve Definitions and adopted by CIM Council. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and by definition do not demonstrate economic viability. This mineral resource estimate includes inferred mineral resources that are normally considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is also no certainty that these inferred mineral resources will be converted to the measured and indicated resource categories through further drilling, or into mineral reserves, once economic considerations are applied. Mining Reserve Estimate The Mineral Reserve for the Project was estimated by Malcolm Buck, P. Eng., and an independent Qualified Person of AZM. All Mineral Reserves are Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves. The Mineral Reserves are not in addition to the Mineral Resources, but are a subset thereof. The QP has not identified any risk including legal, political, or environmental that could materially affect potential Mineral Reserves development. See mineral reserve summary in Table 4 below. Table 4: PL Deposit Estimated Mineral Reserves as of November 1, 2017 Category Diluted Tonnes (Kt) Au Grade (g/t) Contained Au (Koz) Underground Proven 367 7.77 92 Probable 586 6.51 123 Open Pits Proven 87 4.71 13 Probable 226 4.21 31 Total Proven and Probable 1,266 6.34 259 Using a gold price of US$1,250/oz and an exchange rate of US$0.77 to CDN$1.00. A gold cut-off grade of 4.0 g/t for underground mining and 2.7 g/t for open pit mining. Rounding as required by reporting guidelines may result in summation differences. Both the Mineral Resource and Mineral Reserve Estimates take into consideration on-site operating costs (e.g. mining, processing, site services, general and administration, royalties), metallurgical recoveries, and selling costs. In addition, the reserves incorporate allowances for mining recovery and dilution, and overall economic viability. Mining Model Construction The mine plan developed for the feasibility study considers the re-opening of the PL mine initially utilizing underground mining techniques as the environmental permits for this type of mining are already in effect and valid. The future development of open pits has been factored in and is subject to amending existing Environment Act License 1207E to include open pit mining methods. The relative contribution of open pit and underground feed to the mill has been optimized so as to generate the highest value early in the mine life. This is done to accelerate capital payback and maximize cash flow and hence deliver the highest Net Present Value. The defining variables used for this work are summarized in Table 5 and Table 6 below. Table 5: Parameters used to create the financial model for the PL Gold Deposit Parameter Unit Values Au price US$/oz 1,250 Exchange rate USD:CAD 1.30 Au recovery % 90 Au payable % 99 Selling costs (Au refining, transportation and insurance) US$/payable oz 5 Table 6: PL Gold Mine Estimated Unit Operating Costs Item Unit Operating Costs Underground development and mining costs: Typical lateral development cost $4,243 / m for drift and ramp development Production stoping cost $65.38 / t potentially economic mineralization Underground mine indirect operating costs $43.29 / t potentially economic mineralization Underground haul to mill $3.01 / t potentially economic mineralization Processing & Tailings cost $24.37 / t processed Surface Services & Facilities $14.08 / t processed General and Administration cost $34.72 / t processed Production royalties 3% at PL deposit Projected corporate taxes 15% federal & 12% provincial The initial mine plan is based on a ramp access underground mining operation, approximately 590 tonnes per day to a vertical depth of 150 meters. Access ramps will be driven at a maximum grade of 15% with a 4.5 m by 4.5 m profile to accommodate 30-tonne haul trucks. Underground mining of the mineralized zones will be at a proposed rate of approximately 590 tonnes per day or 216,000 tonnes per year. Open pit mining will supplement underground production for Years 2 to 5 with approximately 190 tonnes per day or yearly production of approximately 68,000 tonnes to 111,000 tonnes of reserves. The proposed mining method is Up Dip Panel Stoping, with stopes developed and mined at the inclination of the ore zones. Mining will utilize Alimak's and slusher's in the stopes and mobile rubber tired mining equipment elsewhere. Underground haul trucks will haul ore directly to surface via the levels and ramp. Mining recovery and dilution factors were applied to each mining shape based on the mining method used. Average external dilution for the production stopes was calculated to be 12%. Levels will vary up to a maximum spacing of 35 metres. Mineralized zone development will be driven using a 4.0 m x 3.5 m profile. All stopes will be backfilled with hydraulic backfill to prevent caving. Mine water and ground water will be collected at the level sumps and pumped to surface to be treated and discharged to the Ragged TMF. The 2017 FS mine plan focusses on accessing and mining higher value material early in the mine life. The plan commences with the mining of lower and main zones at the north end of the PL deposit. Future development of small open pits to access the near surface portions of the orebody would be done using conventional open pit equipment and technologies. The mine would operate 350 days/year. Underground mining would take place on two 10 hour shifts per day basis with four rotating crews. The mill would operate on a two 12 hour shifts per day with two rotating crews. Processing The existing process plant has capacity of approximately 750-780 tonnes per day and has been on care and maintenance since April 1989. The plant included a conventional processing flow sheet comprising crushing, grinding, gravity concentration (jig), flotation and regrinding, Merrill Crowe, leaching and refining for gold recovery to dore bars. The crushing circuit and processing plant buildings and majority of the old equipment exist and will be refurbished or replaced as required. For example the old gravity circuit will be replaced with a Knelson concentrator circuit. In addition the existing Merrill Crowe circuit and one drum filter will be replaced by modern equipment. New additions to the plant will be a new bank of cleaner flotation cells, an intense leach reactor for the gravity concentrate, all equipment for the refinery room, piping and all electrical cabling and mill electrical control systems. A modern process control system will be included in the plant. The initial throughput rate for this study is approximately 590 tonnes per day or 216,000 tonnes per year which will yield a nominal grind (P 80 ) of approximately 110 microns utilizing the existing conventional crushing and grinding circuits. Based on planned tonnage and grade and assuming continuous stable operation, an overall gold recovery of 90% is projected. This recovery estimate would be confirmed by additional test work on samples from a planned test mining and bulk sample program. Infrastructure The PL Mine site has considerable existing infrastructure. The planned re-start of operations envisions the upgrading or construction of the following key infrastructure items: The existing 9 km year-round access road to the processing plant site; Re-establishing the electrical connection to Manitoba Hydro power grid by refurbishing the existing 138kV transmission line located adjacent to the access road; Distribution powerline at 25 kV from processing plant site to the mine portal; Refurbishing and upgrading the existing process plant; Utilizing the existing and past used Ragged TMF by having it listed on Schedule 2 of the MMER; Refurbishment and upgrade of existing administration office, mine dry, maintenance shop and warehouse facilities; Mine operations office and emergency facilities at the mine portals; Tailings effluent water treatment plant; and Process and fire water storage and distribution; The past employed Ragged Tailings Management Facility ("Ragged TMF"), which is presently in the process of being added to Schedule 2 of the Metal Mining Effluent Regulations (MMER), designating the area as a tailings disposal area, will be recommissioned. The Ragged TMF has the capacity to store all of the tailings not placed back underground for the present projected life of the mine, with addition of some dams over the life of the project. Environment, Permits, Reclamation, First Nations and Stakeholder Engagement The PL Mine is a past producing mine that operated under Environment Act License 1207E from late 1987 through April 1989. Development and operations included a portal, ramp, over 7,000 metres of underground workings, construction and operation of a conventional processing plant with a nameplate capacity of 1,000 tonnes per day with over 350,000 tonnes of tailings deposited into the Ragged TMF. As such the area of the mine site has already been environmentally impacted. Our re-start plan maximizes the use of existing infrastructure and is designed to minimize short- and long-term environmental impacts, and to maximize lasting benefits to local communities, employees, and shareholders. The Company's goal is to create a sustainable operation that employs best available technology and practices in all aspects of the design and operation, and considers both the short and longer term effects on the environment and its surroundings. The Company maintains a positive and active dialogue with local communities and First Nations. As we advance towards operations our community and social relations program will continue to focus on maximizing employment and contracting opportunities for local stakeholders. Proposed initial production from underground operations only, at a rate less than 600 tonnes per day does not require any additional permits and is not considered a designated project under item 16(c) of the Schedule to the Regulations. As a result, the company is not required to submit a Project Description under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). Tailings and waste rock have been characterized as having potential for metal leaching/acid rock drainage, and tailings process water is expected to contain residual metals and ammonia from destruction of cyanide solutions. The Project incorporates appropriate design features and mitigation measures consistent with best practices for waste and water management to address these issues. These include a water treatment plant to treat effluent from the TMF during mine operations, water collection ponds to control suspended sediment concentrations in seepage and runoff associated with the waste rock stockpiles and groundwater discharged from the mine, backfilling of all underground development rock and majority of tailings derived from processing into the underground mine as part of the mining process. A full closure and reclamation plan has been filed and accepted with the Manitoba Sustainable Development, Manitoba Environmental Approvals branch. Capital Costs The capital cost ("CAPEX") estimate includes all costs required to develop, sustain, and close the operation for a planned six-year operating life. The construction schedule is based on an approximate 15-month build period. The accuracy of this CAPEX estimate is +/-10% in accordance with the level of detail for a Class 3 estimate. The initial capital requirement in Year -1 for the Project is estimated to be $35.3 million, as detailed in Table 7. This amount includes 10% for contingency, environmental bonds and initial working capital. Year 1, the projected $12.7 million sustaining capital expenditure is offset by net income of $38.5 million. Table 7: PL Mine Capital Cost Estimate Item Pre-production ($000) Production ($000) Total ($000) Year -1 Years 1 - 5 Months 1-15 Months 16 - EML Mine $11,492 $44,385 $55,874 Processing Plant $7,845 $7,845 Tailings Management Facility $1,963 $2,250 $4,213 Infrastructure $5,361 $1,238 $6,600 Owners Costs $6,167 $1,500 $7,667 Contingency $2,521 $4,787 $7,308 Total $35,352 $52,658 $89,510 The Project has a total sustaining capital requirement of $52.7 million. Closure costs amount to $1.5 million net of equipment sales. Start-up capital contingency plus closure bond and working capital amounts to $7.3 million. Financial Analysis and Sensitivities Using a gold price of US$1,250/oz, the study yields a pre-tax NPV 5 % of $55.9 million and IRR of 65%. After-tax NPV 5 % amounts to $36.7 million and an IRR of 53%. The results of the sensitivity analysis for the Base Case are shown in Table 8 and indicate that the project is most sensitive to changes in gold price and head grade, and least sensitive to changes in capital cost. Table 8: Results of Sensitivity Analysis of the Base Case Parameter After-Tax NPV 5 % ($M) Variation of Parameter Relative to Base Case -20% -15% -10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% Head Grade -$24.78 -$9.21 $6.30 $21.68 $36.70 $51.56 $66.40 $81.25 $96.09 Gold Price -$24.97 -$9.36 $6.21 $21.63 $36.70 $51.56 $66.49 $81.38 $96.29 Operating Costs $77.25 $67.19 $56.95 $46.80 $36.70 $26.49 $16.24 $5.84 -$4.66 Capital Costs $50.17 $46.79 $43.40 $40.04 $36.70 $33.37 $30.06 $26.76 $23.46 Technical Report The 2017 FS was prepared and led by A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd., in collaboration with a broad range of industry leading consultants, all Qualified Persons ("QPs") under National Instrument 43-101. The QPs have reviewed and approved the content of this news release. All of the QPs are "independent" of the Company pursuant to National Instrument 43-101. The executive summary of the 2017 FS, prepared by AZM, and subsequently a technical report will be posted on the Company's website www.minnovacorp.com and filed on SEDAR www.sedar.com within 45 days. A copy of the Executive Summary is available on the Company's website. Qualified Persons The feasibility study was conducted under the overall review of Malcolm Buck, P. Eng., and Principal Engineer of A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. of Toronto Ontario with the following Qualified Persons contributing to their respective sections: Brian Leblanc P.Eng., President, A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. Curtis Clarke P.Eng., Principal, Mining Engineer, A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. Malcolm Buck P.Eng., Principal - Mine Evaluations, A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. Alfred Hayden P.Eng., Senior Associate Metallurgical Engineer, A-Z Mining Professionals Ltd. Leon McGarry P.Geo., Senior Resource Geologist, CSA Global Pty Ltd. Chris Buchanan M. Sc., P.Geo., Sr. Geologist, Minnova Corp. The foregoing Qualified Persons have verified that the data from the Feasibility Study is fairly and accurately disclosed in this news release. About Minnova Corp. Minnova Corp. is an emerging Canadian gold producer focused on re-starting the PL Gold Mine and expanding gold resources on its PL and Nokomis gold deposits. The Company has completed a Positive Feasibility Study in support of re-starting the PL Mine at an average annual production rate of 46,493 ounces over a minimum 5 year mine life. The resource remains open to expansion and future surface exploration work programs will target resource expansion. The PL Gold Mine has a relatively short pre-production timeline forecast at 15 months, benefits from a valid underground mining permit (Environment Act 1207E), an existing processing plant, over 7,000 meters of developed underground ramp to -135 metres depth, is fully road accessible and close to existing mining infrastructure in the prolific Flin Flon Snow Lake Greenstone Belt of Central Manitoba. For more information please contact: Minnova Corp. Gorden Glenn President & Chief Executive Officer For further information, please contact Investor Relations at 647-985-2785 or info@minnovacorp.ca. Visit our website at www.minnovacorp.ca Forward Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, among others. statements with respect to the results of the 2017 FS, including but not limited to, gold price assumptions, exchange rate assumptions, cash flow forecasts, projected capital and operating costs, refining costs, royalties, credits, sustaining and closure costs, processing rates, metal or mineral recoveries, recovery methods, mine life and annual operating periods, construction and commissioning period and other anticipated timelines, closure and reclamation plans, production rates, estimated net present values, internal rates of return and payback periods; the Company's potential plans and operating performance; the estimation of the tonnage, grades and content of deposits and the extent of the resource and reserve estimates; potential production and viability of the PL Mine Re-Start Project; environmental approval plans and anticipated timing of receipt of required environmental approvals; opportunities to enhance the value of the PL Mine Re-Start Project, capital cost reduction opportunities and other plans and objectives of Minnova Corp.. These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Although Minnova 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 information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The forward-looking statements herein are made at the date of this release and Minnova Corp. expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Big Void in pyramid An international team of researchers has detected a mysterious, previously unknown void deep inside Egypts Great Pyramid that may be as large as an art gallery space. The anomalous space, known as the ScanPyramids Big Void, showed up on imagery produced by tracking concentrations of subatomic particles called muons as they zoomed through the pyramids stones. We dont know if this Big Void is made by one structure, or several successive structures, said Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute and co-founder of the ScanPyramids campaign. What we are sure about is that this Big Void is there, that it is impressive [and] that it was not expected, as far as I know, by any kind of theory. Tayoubi and his colleagues report the discovery in a paper published online today by the journal Nature. The find raises far more questions than answers: Assuming the void is really there, what purpose might it have served? Are there any methods that could show more detail about the structure? And it is at all possible to get an archaeologist or a robot inside? It will take years of further study and engineering work to answer those questions. But thatd be just a moment in the millennia-old history of the Great Pyramid. The 455-foot-tall pyramid was built on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of present-day Cairo, during the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), roughly 4,500 years ago. It sits alongside two smaller, younger pyramids erected by Khufus successors. Since the 19th century, archaeologists have known about three major chambers within the Great Pyramid: the Kings Chamber, the Queens Chamber and the Subterranean Chamber. Those chambers are connected by several corridors, including a high-ceilinged passageway called the Grand Gallery. The ScanPyramids campaign represents the latest effort to look into whether more hidden chambers remain to be discovered within Egypts pyramids. Over the past couple of years, research teams have used muon detectors as well as thermal imagers to look for anomalies. Story continues Researchers from Japans KEK particle physics lab set up a muon radiography imaging system in the Queens Chamber, inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu. (ScanPyramids Photo) Muons are subatomic particles that are created when cosmic rays hit atoms in the upper atmosphere. The particles zip through earthly materials at predictable concentrations, and by tracking their position and direction, scientists can build up a low-resolution picture of a solid objects interior. The technique, known as muography, has been used to chart the composition of Teotihuacans Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and study underground cavities at ancient sites in Italy. ScanPyramids team includes groups of researchers from Japans Nagoya University and KEK particle physics lab, as well as from the CEA, Frances atomic energy commission. The three groups use different methods to detect muons, in order to verify each others results. Last October, the muographers reported the detection of a void that looked like a short corridor. That void was blocked off from the pyramids north face by as little as a few feet of rock. They picked up an even bigger signature from what is now known as the Big Void, located above the Grand Gallery. Muon signals suggested that the void was at least 100 feet (30 meters) long, with a cross section comparable to that of the 153-foot-long Grand Gallery (which is roughly 7 feet wide and 28 feet high, or 2.1 meters wide and 8.6 meters high). ScanPyramids team members use Microsoft HoloLens headsets to work with an augmented-reality model of the Pyramid of Khufu. (ScanPyramids Photo) Experts dont know whether the Big Void and the north face corridor were ever connected, and they cant say whether the Big Void is a purpose-built interior structure or merely a dead space that was left open during the construction process, perhaps for structural reasons. (For what its worth, the purpose of the Grand Gallery is still unknown as well, although some suspect it was used as an astronomical observatory while the pyramid was being built.) Tayoubi said longer-exposure muography may reveal additional details about the Big Voids structure. Study co-author Hany Helal of Cairo University cautioned that further experiments would have to progress carefully, in a step-by-step fashion. Its important for public opinion to know what is in the pyramid, he told reporters. But its also important for the development of science and technology, and new techniques in technology. Another co-author, French robotics researcher Jean-Baptiste Mouret, is working on the design for a flying robot that could enter an interior space through a 1.5-inch-wide (3-centimeter-wide) hole drilled into the rock. For the moment, we are just in the thinking and designing process, he said. Tayoubi speculated that such a robot could be sent into the short corridor thats close to the pyramids surface. If an exploration has to be imagined, maybe it has to be imagined from this place, Tayoubi said. The researchers emphasized that the current ScanPyramids expedition received the necessary go-ahead from Egyptian authorities on the condition that it would be non-destructive and non-invasive. Any attempt to get inside the hidden voids would face additional scrutiny from those authorities. Its too early now to say that we will use this technique to go in, or that technique, Helal said. Tayoubi, Helal and Mouret are among 34 authors of the Nature paper, titled Discovery of a Big Void in Khufus Pyramid by Observation of Cosmic-Ray Muons. More from GeekWire: Bombardier received a letter of intent for up to 61 new C Series jets - Handout Bombardier said it was on the brink of selling up to 61 new C Series jets today in a potential $4.8bn (3.7bn) deal that will provide fresh cheer to workers at the firm's Belfast plant. The Canadian engineering company said it had received a letter of intent from a European customer that plans to buy 31 of the airliners, with the option to purchase an additional 30 should it wish to. Bombardier chief executive Alain Bellemare said the deal confirms the increasing confidence customers have in the C Series, adding that the firm expects sales momentum to accelerate quickly". The future of the C Series and the workers that build its wings in Belfast had been in doubt after the US decided to slap import tariffs as high as 300pc on the jets, purportedly on the grounds they benefited from UK and Canadian state aid. But it received a lifeline last month when French giant Airbus agreed to buy 50.01pc stake in the C Series programme and bring some manufacturing of the jets to its plant in Mobile, Alabama, which could help them circumvent US tariffs. Mr Bellemare said he was confident the tariffs would not apply. The deal could be worth up to $4.8bn Over 50pc of the content of the C Series is coming from the US, he said. That creates 22,000 jobs in the US today, before we put in an assembly line. There's more US content on the C Series than Boeing has on the 787. It's already largely a US product. Belfast East MP Gavin Robinson, whose constituency includes Bombardier's plant, said the letter of intent was "very welcome news". "The timing too is significant and is a vote of confidence in the joint venture between Bombardier and Airbus," he told BBC News. The news came on the same day that Bombardier revealed a 3pc uptick in quarterly revenues to $3.8bn. Net losses widened 24pc to $117m, but earnings before interest, tax and special items, its preferred measure of profitability, soared 83pc to $165m. We have clearly demonstrated our ability to reduce costs, improve productivity and grow margins, Mr Bellemare said. By Liana B. Baker and Paresh Dave SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc and private equity firm JMC Capital Partners are looking to sell their stakes in a joint venture that operates more than 1,300 free WiFi kiosks fashioned from old phone booths around New York City, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is the latest twist in the project overseen by Daniel Doctoroff, former chief executive of news and data provider Bloomberg LP and former deputy mayor of New York City. He now runs Sidewalk Labs, an urban development unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc. Doctoroff is chairman of a Sidewalk Labs subsidiary that is the top investor in the joint venture. Qualcomm and JMC are working with an investment bank to explore the sale of their stakes in CityBridge, the venture that is behind the LinkNYC WiFi project, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Qualcomm is seeking to exit the venture because it views it as non-core, while the private equity firm JMC is aiming to generate a profitable return on its investment, the people said. Qualcomm and Sidewalk Labs declined to comment. JMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for New York City's Information Technology & Telecommunications Department said in a statement that the city would have to approve any changes and so far "nothing has been presented to us. Any decision we make has to center around continuing the success of the program and ensuring New Yorkers best interests are met. LinkNYC emerged in 2014 as part of a 12-year contract with New York City to replace 7,500 payphone stands and was expected to generate $500 million in revenue for the city's coffers. LinkNYC said on Wednesday that since they launched in 2016 more than 2.7 million people had registered to use the kiosks, which also have phone charging stations and free calling services. Qualcomm and JMC each invested about $25 million into the joint venture in 2014, the sources said. Another $50 million came from an outdoor advertising company and a software firm that were later bought by Sidewalk Labs and merged under the name Intersection. LinkNYC kiosks generate revenue through ad sales. Sidewalk Labs, which already owns more half of the joint venture through Intersection, could be a potential acquirer of the stakes, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Sidewalk Labs declined to comment on its potential interest. Large wireless carriers such as Verizon Communications and AT&T could potentially be good partners as well in the joint venture, according to the sources. Verizon and AT&T could not immediately be reached for comment. Sidewalk Labs' Intersection expanded its network of Internet kiosks to London in June, turning on the first of 1,000 expected to be installed with Britain broadband provider BT and a local advertising firm. On Wednesday, Sidewalk Labs announced plans to open 100 kiosks in Philadelphia without any business partners starting next year. (Reporting by Liana B. Baker and Paresh Dave in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Rent-A-Center, Inc. RCII posted third-quarter 2017 adjusted loss of 15 cents a share wider than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of loss of 8 cents and fell substantially from 11 cents earned in the year-ago period. Total revenue of $644 million declined 7.2% year over year and also fell short of the consensus mark of $652 million, after surpassing the same in the preceding quarter. Total revenue tumbled due to decline witnessed across the Core U.S., Acceptance Now, Mexico, and Franchising segments. Management hinted that hurricane related disruptions also hurt the results. Separately, the company informed that its Board of Directors is exploring strategic and financial alternatives. We note that investors remain concerned about the companys waning top and bottom lines. The reflection of the same is visible from the stocks dismal performance in the bourses. Year to date, shares of this Plano, TX-based company has declined 10.5%, while the industry has advanced 26.9%. Rent-A-Centers adjusted EBITDA plummeted 54.7% to $17.1 million, while EBITDA margin shriveled 280 basis points to 2.6% from the year-ago period. Comparable-Store Sales Performance Comparable-store sales (comps) for the quarter dropped 3.1%, reflecting declines of 5.1% and 6.2% in the Core U.S. and Mexico segments, respectively, partly mitigated by 7.9% increase noted at the Acceptance Now segment. However, it is to be noted that comps for the Core U.S. and Mexico segments have improved 510 and 50 basis points, respectively, while for the Acceptance Now the same has increased 120 basis points on a sequential basis. Consolidated comps for this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock portray a sequential improvement of 430 basis points. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Rent-A-Center is focusing on a new labor model, supply chain initiative and productivity enhancements. These endeavors are directed toward improving the performance of Core U.S. segment, optimizing the AcceptanceNOW business, and enhancing distribution channels as well as integrating retail and online offerings. Story continues Rent-A-Center Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise Rent-A-Center Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise | Rent-A-Center Inc. Quote Segment Performance Revenues from the Core U.S. segment slumped 8.1% to $442.8 million due to continued store base rationalization, unprecedented hurricanes and dismal comps performance. Revenues from the Acceptance Now segment declined 5.2% from the prior-year quarter figure to $184.3 million on account of closures of Conns and HHGregg locations and disruptions caused by hurricanes. These were partly offset by sturdy comps performance. Mexico segments revenues came in at $12.2 million, down 1.7% year over year attributable to lower comps. Finally, total Franchising revenues plunged 10.5% to $4.7 million during the quarter due to fall in the amount of merchandise sold to the franchise partners. Store Update At the end of the quarter, there were 2,406 Core U.S. locations, 1,175 Acceptance Now Staffed stores, 76 Acceptance Now Direct stores, 131 stores in Mexico and 227 Franchise stores. Other Financial Aspects Rent-A-Center, which shares space with McGrath Rentcorp MGRC, AeroCentury Corp. ACY and Aaron's, Inc. AAN, ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $76.2 million, net Senior debt of $99 million, net Senior notes of $538.4 million and stockholders' equity of $237.2 million. During the first nine months of 2017, the company generated $135.4 million of cash from operations. The company incurred capital expenditures of $13.4 million during the quarter. Wall Streets Next Amazon Zacks EVP Kevin Matras believes this familiar stock has only just begun its climb to become one of the greatest investments of all time. Its a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in pure genius. Click for details >> 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 Rent-A-Center Inc. (RCII) : Free Stock Analysis Report Aaron's, Inc. (AAN) : Free Stock Analysis Report AeroCentury Corp. (ACY) : Free Stock Analysis Report McGrath RentCorp (MGRC) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The release of the long-awaited Republican tax bill was pushed back a day as lawmakers hash out the final details of the plan. On Tuesday evening, hours before the bill was originally slated for release, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady said in a statement that the tax writing group is making progress but still working. In consultation with President Trump and our leadership team, we have decided to release the bill text on Thursday, the statement read. We are pleased with the progress we are making and we remain on schedule to take action and approve a bill at our Committee beginning next week. The tax-writing group has kept a tight lid on the particulars ahead of the full release, but broad outlines of the plan have been clear since late September when the White House and leaders in Congress released their unified framework. Republicans made clear they wanted to nearly double the standard deduction for both single and married filers, restructure income tax brackets, increase the child tax credit, repeal the estate tax and eliminate most itemized deductions. A procedural rule will allow Republicans to move their proposed $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress and to the President without support from Democrats, but the lead up to the bills release has exposed fissures within the GOP. Im anxious to see the House bill, Sen. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters on Tuesday. I want to see the product of the Houses hard work and I fully expect once its released that all hells going to break loose. And if it doesnt, then we havent done our job. Last week, 20 House Republicans voted against the budget that paves the way for the tax bills passage because of a proposal to end a deduction for state and local taxes, which is heavily utilized by constituents in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey. In an effort to bring them on board with the bill, the plan would permit property-tax deductions, but cut deductions for state and local income tax. Story continues Our lawmakers in those high tax states really believe their families are being punished most by property taxes, Brady said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. This property tax relief is really conditioned on members of Congress from high tax states who want to see that restored to the code. There has also been some disagreement on how to tax retirement funds. Republicans have floated cutting the amount of pre-tax money individuals can contribute to 401(k) plans to $2,400 down from $18,000 for workers under 50 and $24,000 for workers aged 50+. The cut has been put forward as a way to earn back some of the revenue that the government would lose as a result of tax cuts. President Donald Trump has rejected such a change, tweeting there will be NO change to your 401(k), on Oct. 23. This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays! he said. Trump is also pushing an aggressive timeline for the bill, telling reporters Tuesday he wants to sign something by Christmas. On Wednesday, Trump weighed in on Twitter again suggesting that the House and Senate should consider adding a repeal of the individual Obamacare mandate into the bill ahead of its release. Wouldnt it be great to Repeal the very unfair and unpopular Individual Mandate in ObamaCare and use those savings for further Tax Cuts for the Middle Class, Trump said in a pair of tweets. The House and Senate should consider ASAP as the process of final approval moves along. Push Biggest Tax Cuts EVER. Brady has said that likely will not happen. What I dont want to do is to add things that could again kill tax reform like health care died over there, he told Hugh Hewitt. After a meeting between Speaker Paul Ryan and a group of conservatives on Tuesday, an attendee told TIME that Republicans had agreed to drop the corporate tax rate to 20% from 35% and nix a plan to drop the top-tax bracket from 39.6% to 35%, though it wasnt yet clear how the income threshold for that tax bracket would change. FreedomWorks president Adam Brandon said he felt there were things that still needed to be worked out, mainly on the state and local tax deduction, but he remains optimistic. Were in a position we havent been in an while, he said. Theres a positive momentum building. In the meantime, Democrats have pounced on the bill particularly the state and local tax changes, the 401(k) proposal, and the proposed elimination of the estate tax in their efforts to paint the Republicans plan as tax cuts for the wealthy. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that once the bill is released the GOP will essentially be initiating open warfare on the middle class. They should scrap the emerging framework once and for all. If this bill fails, if they withdraw it, were going to work with them on a good bill that benefits the middle class, he said. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who serves as the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, told TIME the middle class is getting shorted as the GOP looks to pay for its plan. Their problem is they made $4 trillion worth of pledges to the super donors, the folks at the top, he said. They essentially have no pay-fors and now their looking at using the middle class as a pay-for. MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Nov 2, 2017) - Today, Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada pediatric patients join the Upopolis network, an innovative social media platform that helps young patients safely and securely access youth-friendly medical content, and stay connected with other patients as well as their families and friends while undergoing care. Founded and created by Kids' Health Links Foundation (KHLF) and powered by TELUS Health, Upopolis.com is Canada's only private, secure and trusted online social network designed for kids and teens receiving medical care in hospitals and clinics. Upopolis differs from typical social networks by delivering therapeutic benefits for the youth who use it. These benefits include being able to access medical content written in youth-friendly language so patients can better understand their diagnosis and treatment plan; and enabling connections with other patients who share similar diagnoses through public and private discussion groups, which can lead to new friendships, shared experiences and new interests that form a broader support network for the patient. "Shriners Hospitals offer, family-centered supportive care to children and families," says Trudy Wong, Social Worker, "We aim to make it feel as much like home as possible for our young patients and adding a tool like Upopolis is another way we can help reduce the anxiety of a hospital stay and make it as normal and as positive an experience as possible. We wish to empower them to connect with other patients here in Montreal or anywhere across Canada, and learn more about their illness in a way they can easily understand." In addition to remaining securely and privately connected with networks outside of the hospital or treatment centre while undergoing care, Upopolis also provides patients with familiar features of social networking such as personal profiles, newsfeed, instant chat, photo uploading and creating spaces based on common interests and/or diagnoses. "Today, more than 2,500 youth in children's hospitals across Canada have been able to access Upopolis. This is made possible by the overwhelming support of TELUS as our technology partner, as well as our many individual and corporate supporters," said Basile Papaevangelou, chairman and founder of Kids' Health Links Foundation. "Having Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada join our Upopolis family brings us one step closer to our goal of making Upopolis available across the country in every medical treatment facility that serves children and youth. We are excited for the patients to benefit from what the platform offers, and for them to take advantage of the opportunities for connection, collaboration and leadership that Upopolis brings to their hospital experience." KHLF and TELUS Health launched the first Upopolis program in 2007 at McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton. Since then it has expanded to 27 additional hospitals and health organizations across Canada. The Upopolis team and TELUS Health also work together to adapt the program to meet the specific needs of each facility, whether adding French language capabilities or information specific to mental health. "For youth undergoing medical treatment, research shows us that the ability for them to stay connected with their support network, both inside and outside of the hospital, is a significant part of the healing process," said Paul Lepage, President, TELUS Health. "Through Upopolis and our extensive work using innovative technology to drive better health outcomes for Canadians, we are privileged to help youth stay connected to friends, family and others facing similar health challenges, as well as learn more about their health through access to online medical information in a safe and secure environment." About Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada Established in Montreal in 1925, Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada is the only Canadian establishment within the network of 22 Shriners hospitals. This bilingual, short-term, acute care hospital provides ultra-specialized orthopaedic care to children from coast to coast in Canada, the U.S. and around the world. The mission of the hospital is to promote health and provide treatment and rehabilitation to infants, children and young adults with orthopaedic and neuromuscular problems such as scoliosis, osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease), club feet, hip dysplasia, leg length discrepancies and cerebral palsy. The hospital is committed to excellence and innovation in clinical practice, research and education and to ensuring patients and their families are treated in a caring, family-friendly environment. Affiliated with McGill University, the hospital provides clinical experience and teaching for residents and allied professionals within its outstanding new facility on the Glen site. The hospital is present in communities across Canada, thanks to telemedicine, outreach clinics and satellite clinics. Shriners Hospitals for Children - Canada has been helping kids reach their full potential for 90 years and counting. About TELUS Health TELUS Health is a leader in telehomecare, electronic medical and health records, consumer health, benefits management and pharmacy management. TELUS Health solutions give health authorities, providers, physicians, patients and consumers the power to turn information into better health outcomes. For more information about TELUS Health, please visit telushealth.com. About the Kids' Health Links Foundation The Kids' Health Links Foundation was founded by Basile Papaevangelou and his daughter Christina to foster initiatives focused on alleviating the stress, isolation and loneliness for kids and teens undergoing medical care so that they might be better able to overcome traumatic medical experiences. These initiatives include: Upopolis -- targeting healthy connections for pediatric patients; Upedia -- providing resources supporting child life specialists; and UMIND -- connecting professionals dedicated to child and youth mental health. For more information about the Kids' Health Links Foundation please visit: kidshealthlinks.org. Shares of T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ: TROW) and other asset managers rose Thursday after the House Republican tax plan preserved popular retirement savings plans, including 401(k)s. Shares of the company rose 1.8 percent Thursday after slipping about 4 percent over the past two weeks on fears that legislators in Washington were considering reforms to the popular savings plan. Certain Republican lawmakers had toyed with the idea of cutting contribution limits to $2,400 as Congress looked to make up for other tax cuts. Rep. Kevin Brady , R-Texas, a top tax writer in the House of Representatives, said cuts to how much people can contribute were still on the table as recently as last week. The GOP tax plan leaves current contribution limits in place , meaning $18,000 for 401(k) plans for 2017. Those 50 and over can contribute as much as $24,000. Experts were concerned that lowering limits on pre-tax 401(k) contributions would indirectly encourage workers to save less for retirement. Most Americans already save too little for their retirement needs. Shares of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) , Invesco (NYSE: IVZ) and Ameriprise Financial (NYSE: AMP) all traded higher after details of the plan were released. The Republican tax reform plan will also permanently lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. Shares of T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ: TROW) and other asset managers rose Thursday after the House Republican tax plan preserved popular retirement savings plans, including 401(k)s. Shares of the company rose 1.8 percent Thursday after slipping about 4 percent over the past two weeks on fears that legislators in Washington were considering reforms to the popular savings plan. Certain Republican lawmakers had toyed with the idea of cutting contribution limits to $2,400 as Congress looked to make up for other tax cuts. Rep. Kevin Brady , R-Texas, a top tax writer in the House of Representatives, said cuts to how much people can contribute were still on the table as recently as last week. The GOP tax plan leaves current contribution limits in place , meaning $18,000 for 401(k) plans for 2017. Those 50 and over can contribute as much as $24,000. Experts were concerned that lowering limits on pre-tax 401(k) contributions would indirectly encourage workers to save less for retirement. Most Americans already save too little for their retirement needs. Shares of BlackRock (NYSE: BLK) , Invesco (NYSE: IVZ) and Ameriprise Financial (NYSE: AMP) all traded higher after details of the plan were released. The Republican tax reform plan will also permanently lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. More From CNBC Other than some of the biggest earnings reports, last week was particularly eventful in terms of deals and product launched involving Cisco CSCO, Amazon AMZN, Alphabet GOOGL and Facebook FB. Cisco Is Buying BroadSoft Cisco is buying telecom software company BroadSoft for $1.9 billion. The company focuses on cloud-based private branch exchange (PBX), unified communications, team collaboration (called Team One) and contact center services, things that may be expected to improve Ciscos collaboration business (which includes its own WebEx and Spark platforms), immediately adding to its revenue and profits. In the words of Rob Salvagno, Ciscos VP of corporate business development, Collaboration is the first step to business digitization and BroadSoft has partnerships with over 450 telecom carriers in 80 countries including 25 of the top 30 globally to 19+ million BroadSoft business subscribers. BroadSofts portfolio is complementary to our existing on premises and enterprise-centric Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS), as well as Ciscos overall cloud investment strategy. Its no secret that this business hasnt been too well, nor is it a secret that the market is getting increasingly crowded with Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Slack and other startups fighting for share. Cisco needs to beef up its capabilities if it is to compete, particularly against a company like Microsoft, which offers end-to-end solutions. So this acquisition is definitely a step in the right direction. Amazon Launches Business Prime Amazon Business just launched Prime shipping for its customers in the U.S. and Germany with the goal of delivering a broad selection, competitive prices and fast shipping, things that most business users need. Prospective customers can sign on for a 30-day free trial, after which they need to pay annual subscription charges of $499 for companies with up to 10 users, $1,299 for businesses with up to 100 users and $10,099 for those with over 100 users. Adding new users to existing business accounts automatically includes them in the group subscription. Story continues And that isnt all: Amazon seeks to offer better insight and management of the entire procurement process with its purchase analytics, something that is likely to be just as important to business customers as the exclusive pricing and other Prime benefits that go with the program. It does look as if Grainger, Staples, Office Depot and the like are in for some increased competition, although it wont be much of a surprise since Amazon Business has been around for a while (first launched in 2015 in the U.S. as a replacement for Amazons existing B2B brand, Amazon Supply, which launched in 2012). It currently also exists in the UK, India and Japan. Amazon Pharmacy License Sends Ripples Across Market A report from St. Louis Post-Dispatch citing public reports said that Amazon obtained wholesale drug distribution licenses in 12 states (Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, Nevada and Oregon). As a result, drug wholesalers, pharmacy chains and pharmacy-benefit managers (PBMs) like Rite Aid, CVS, Express Scripts Holding Company, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Cardinal Health shares dropped. But Stephen Buck of CNBC says that Amazons current license is for medical equipment, a market in which it is already a player. Moreover, in order to get into the drug distribution business, Amazon will need a "Verified Accredited Wholesale Distributor" (VAWD) license by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). And thats something the leading online retailer doesnt have today. But he agrees that its something that it can easily acquire in a few months for as little as a few hundred million. An Amazon statement said that the company didnt comment on rumors and speculation. Google and Cisco Have a Deal Cisco needs virtualization tools to battle VMwares software defined offerings and Google needs enterprise customers as it fights for share in an infrastructure-as-a-service market (IaaS) dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Microsoft MSFT has from the start been offering hybrid cloud tools (spanning both private and public cloud environments) for customers moving to the cloud but reluctant to move everything there (for regulatory, security or other reasons). Amazon, which on its own has only public cloud tools, recently tied with VMware to fill the gap in its product line. This makes Google and Cisco obvious partners. So Cisco will now be adding Google tools including Apigee, Istio microservices manger and Kubernetes container orchestrator to its HyperFlex hyperconvergence platform and have its considerable salesforce go to market with them. For Cisco, it might stem customer losses to the competition as it moves away from its core business of selling sophisticated high-end hardware. For Google, its immediate exposure to Ciscos huge enterprise and government customer base. As a result, Developers will be able to create new applications in the cloud or on-premises consistently using the same tools, runtime and production environment. The jointly marketed products will be available for some customers in the first half of 2018 before a broader rollout in the second. The revenue share details of the partnership havent been made public. Google also has a similar deal with Nutanix and since the agreement isnt exclusive, Cisco could also have other partners. Facebook Auto Marketplace Facebook Marketplace is partnering with auto dealers like Edmunds, Cars.com, Auction123, CDK Global and Socialdealer to facilitate the sale of used cars in the U.S. so you can buy used cars through not just individuals but also dealerships, thus greatly increasing available inventory. New search filters like year, make, model, mileage, transmission and vehicle type will also help you make a selection. Messenger and determine value based on Kelleys Blue Book estimates. Chatting with the dealers employes through Messenger also enables wants a seamless experience. Facebook also offered details about its ecommerce activity that seem to indicate that it is as big as ecommerce sites like eBay or Craigslist, if not as successful. However, facts like global search volume on Marketplace growing 3X this year, 550 million people visiting formal "buy and sell" groups on Facebook each month, unique conversations between buyers and sellers in the first half of 2017 growing 70%+ over the prior year are encouraging. Marketplace is just a year old and its already available in more than 20 countries. Facebook infuses artificial intelligence into the platform to facilitate item discovery and it must be getting more popular with retailers given that the month of May saw 18 million unique listings on the platform. Other than auto, Marketplace also offers tickets through Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, daily deals through eBay, and retail products from the Shop sections of Pages. Home buying is next on the agenda. Other Stories Corporate Apple Makes Key UK TV Hire: Former Channel 4 content chief Jay Hunt will reportedly take up the role of Apples AAPL creative head of European video operations in January. She will be working with recently hired Sony executives Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. According to the Financial Times, which had an exclusive story on the news, "When she starts at Apple in January, Ms Hunt will play a key role in its international creative development team as it looks to deploy a budget of more than $1 billion for original series over the next year." The FT also reports that Hunt will have a free hand in selecting content, both drama and unscripted programming. This makes sense given her experience in content commissioning at Channel 4, Channel 5 and the BBC. After her resignation from Channel 4, Hunt was broadly expected to join a technology company and most people expected that company to be either Netflix or Amazon, both of which have made some considerable progress with their Originals program. Amazon Studio Head Departs: Following the departure of Amazon Studios chief Roy Price on allegations of sexual harassment, its head of comedy and drama, Joe Lewis is moving on and will be replaced by Sharon Tal Ygudo, who joined Amazon in January after a stint at Fox International. In her new role, Ygudo will be responsible for all scripted content as Amazon doubles down on the production of high-end drama series with global appeal. Amazon is on track to spend $4.5 billion on video content this year and has promised to increase that amount in 2018. Toshiba Chip Unit Sale Update: The Bain Capital-led consortium that includes WDC customer Apple as well as WDC competitors Seagate, Hynix and Toshiba feels that WDC is either misreading or misrepresenting its rights under the JV and that its three JV agreements expire in 2021, 2025 and 2029. It also threatens that WDCs current approach was souring the relationship such that it may not have access to the NAND chips after the expiry of the three contracts. But that is anyway expected since the consortium includes two WDC competitors, which anyway indicates Toshibas attempt to push WDC out of the JV after benefiting from its technology. WDC is also heavily invested in the business having bought SanDisk for a hefty price tag and having followed that up with R&D and other costs. So as things stand now, WDC really doesnt have a choice. It has to go to court. Legal/Regulatory Apple and Samsung Are Back in Court: Certain aspects of Apples iPhone design were copied by Samsung and the courts and jury have agreed that Samsung owes Apple damages. Initially, a jury said the amount should be $1.05 billion, and this amount was argued lower in subsequent confrontations to about $400 million. But another issue remains unresolved; i.e. should Samsung pay the damages on the value of the whole phone or the value of the components that it copied. The Supreme Court has ruled that a penalty based on the value of the whole phone isnt justified. And now, Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California has agreed that a retrial makes sense. But they may just settle out of court to get the litigation out of the way before they take on Qualcomm together. EU Privacy Ruling Goes Against Facebook: Yves Bot, an advocate general of the EU Court of Justice, has said in a non-binding opinion in the capacity of advisor to the court that individual member states of the EU have power to take direct action against multinational operators like Facebook when they suspect illegal data processing has taken place. The thing is, these opinions are usually followed by the court, which could negatively impact Facebook, since it plants cookies in users hardware to track their browsing activity. A Facebook spokesman said, "We respectfully disagree with the Advocate General and await the European Court's decision." Note that a new EU data protection law is in the offing that will make the member state of a multinational companys main establishment (in Facebooks case, Ireland) the sole authority to decide such issues, so this looks like a temporary hurdle for the company. Tech Companies Lobbying In Washington: Google, Amazon, Facebook and Qualcomm QCOM spent $4.17 million, $3.41 million, $2.85 million and $2.2 million, respectively on lobbying in the third quarter. While Amazon spent on tax policy, cloud security and computing, and others, and Qualcomm spent on intellectual property and antitrust matters, Facebook and Google parent Alphabet were more concerned about protections granted by a 1996 law that treated them as platforms rather than content suppliers, thus limiting their responsibility for the things shared on their platforms. The Senate is concerned about sex trafficking and alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections, so it is considering a law that makes the platforms responsible for the content shared. A lobbying group representing companies including Amazon, Google, Facebook has pointed to the AI Principles report presented by The Information Technology Industry Council. The ITI says that we are in the early stages of AI development and estimates that AI will add at least $7 trillion to the global economy by 2025. So governments and society should work together with technology companies rather than force them to disclose their algorithms, which can have undesirable consequences. Microsoft Wins One: Microsoft has dropped a lawsuit against the Justice department, which has been demanding information on its users while imposing gag orders so they cant be informed. The lawsuit alleged that this violated the Fourth Amendment, which grants people and businesses the right to know if the government searches or seizes their property, and Microsofts own First Amendment right to free speech. In return, the Justice department will formulate new policy that will limit the use of secrecy orders and call for such orders to be issued for defined periods and ensure that the secrecy order requests are carefully and specifically tailored to the facts in the case. New Products/Technology Facebook Workplace Expands: Facebook has doubled its Workplace user base to 30K, and it includes illustrious companies like Walmart, Heineken, Spotify, Lyft and Starbucks. Facebook says that the platform is popular with companies of all sizes and is used in more than 70 languages. The company also announced a Workplace chat app for PC, Mac, Android or iOS that will support text-based messaging and group video chat. Workplace is free for nonprofits and the staff of educational organizations, but costs $3 per month per user for the first 1,000 users, $2 per month per user for the next 9,000 users and $1 per month per user after that for everyone else. Facebook Tries Splitting Its Newsfeed: Facebook is testing the effect of splitting its news feed: one focused on friends and family and the other dedicated to the pages that the user has liked. The idea is to force businesses that run pages to pay for inclusion in the friends/family feed. Its just a test, but could have big implications since small businesses, artists, etc arent in the habit of paying for the service. On the other hand, some might have gathered a material number of followers that theyre dependent on, so they might be enticed to pay. But it may not be a good experience for users if they have to check two feeds for stuff that theyre interested in, at least if they dont have a choice. Facebook is testing the thing in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia and hasnt said that there will be a broader rollout, but of course the prospects of higher revenue and more personal sharing by users is attractive. So if the tests show desired results, there will definitely be expansion to bigger markets like the U.S., Indonesia and India. Intel Optane for Gamers: Intels Optane SSD 900P Series are its latest PCIe NVMe 3.0 SSD family for hyper fast storage (read speed of 2.5GBps and sequential write speed of 2GBps) normally required for jobs like 3D rendering and 4K games, but also effective for increasing workstation speeds by up to 4X. Built on the 3D XPoint architecture Intel jointly developed with Micron, the storage devices offer very low latency (less than 10 microseconds) while significantly lowering wear and tear. The two products included in this announcement were a x4 Gen 3 PCIe version in 280GB and 480GB capacities at $389 and $699, respectively and a 2.5-inch U.2 drive in a 280GB capacity at $389. Amazon Key for Prime Members: Amazon has launched a new service for Prime members, if theyre willing to fork out $250 for an Amazon Key In-Home Kit that will include Amazon Cloud Cam and one of several compatible smart locks by lock manufacturers Yale and Kwikset. The installation can be done by the customer or free of cost by Amazon installation services. Thereafter, if the customer clicks on in-home delivery, Amazon will match the location with the driver and unlock the door for delivery while Amazon Cloud Cam records the process. The customer can see the delivery live or later on. Its an interesting proposition, first because it eliminates chances of theft when goods are left on the porch or foyers and second because it literally opens the door for delivery of other services like maids and handymen. So people dont have to stay home when receiving these goods or services. Amazon recently also inked deals with apartment houses that allow it to build lockers where customers might securely receive their goods rather than have them dumped in the foyers. Collaborations And M&A Delta Airlines Chooses Apple: Delta Airlines is standardizing its hardware and it has chosen Apple devices. So its 23,000 flight attendants will now put away their Nokia Lumia 1520 tablets in favor of iPad Pros even as its 14,000 pilots retire their Surface devices to do the same. For Delta, this aligns its devices with other airline partners like Aeromexico, Air France, KLM and Virgin Atlantic thus demonstrating Apples strategy of capturing enterprise customers. Both Microsoft and Delta have said that their relationship continues, which is true enough today since it still uses Microsoft productivity solutions. Apple Acquisition in New Zealand: Apple is buying PowerbyProxi, a New Zealand-based technology company as it goes all out to bring wireless charging to its product line. PowerbyProxi reportedly has 300+ patents and 55 employees and its one of the tiny tuck-in deals that we will never have too many details on. But Samsung was an early investor in the company through Samsung Ventures, which invested $4 million in it back in 2013. The acquisition may prompt Apple to make charging pads/mats/bowls/etc to charge multiple devices at one shot. LG Joins Amazon Prime Exclusive Phones Lineup: LG is bringing its phone lineup including the flagship LG G6 and LG G6+ devices, as well as the LG Q6 and LG X charge to Amazon Prime members at exclusive prices starting at $149.99. The unlocked phones have Android Nougat, powerful processors, high-end specs and other attractive features. Prime Exclusive Phones are offered at discounted pricing for Prime members and include personalized offers. But they also have ads, including personalized deals and product recommendations, displayed on the phones lock screen. Zacks Best Private Investment Ideas While we are happy to share many articles like this on the website, our best recommendations and most in-depth research are not available to the public. Starting today, for the next month, you can follow all Zacks' private buys and sells in real time. Our experts cover all kinds of trades from value to momentum . . . from stocks under $10 to ETF and option moves . . . from stocks that corporate insiders are buying up to companies that are about to report positive earnings surprises. You can even look inside exclusive portfolios that are normally closed to new investors. Click here for Zacks' private trades >> 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 Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report QUALCOMM Incorporated (QCOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc on Wednesday pushed back its target for volume production on its new Model 3 sedan by about three months, saying that while progress fixing bottlenecks was made, it was difficult to predict how long it would take for all production issues to be fixed. The company also reported its biggest quarterly loss ever, below analysts' expectations, sending shares down nearly 5 percent after hours after falling 3 percent in normal trade. Tesla, led by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elon Musk, said it now expects to build 5,000 Model 3s per week by late in the first quarter of 2018 from its original target date of December. Tesla said the main constraint it currently faced was within its battery module assembly line, where the company had to redesign part of the production process. Money-losing Tesla's long-term viability depends on the Model 3, its new sedan that starts at $35,000, about half the price of its flagship Model S. The niche carmaker has made inroads among luxury car buyers with the advanced technology and innovative design in its Model S sedan and Model X SUV. Tesla plans to produce 500,000 vehicles in 2018, mostly Model 3s, a six-fold increase over 2016 levels. But the Palo Alto, California-based company made just 260 Model 3 sedans in the third quarter due to "production bottlenecks," it said. It had planned to build more than 1,500. Model 3 production delays mean postponed sales and exacerbate the company's cash burn, made worse as Tesla pays to fix current manufacturing issues. The problems could also worry the over 500,000 customers who have put down a refundable deposit on the car. Tesla posted a net loss of $619.4 million, or $3.70 per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of $21.9 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 30 percent to $2.98 billion. Excluding items, the company lost $2.92 per share. The company said it had $3.53 billion in cash and cash-equivalents as of Sept. 30, compared with $3.04 billion at the end of the second quarter. Story continues Last month, Tesla reported it delivered 26,150 vehicles in the third quarter, a 4.5 percent rise on the same period of 2016, but added that "production bottlenecks" had left the company behind its planned ramp-up for the $35,000 Model 3. Related Video: Tesla Model 3 volume production delayed 3 months as company posts loss of $619.4 million originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 01 Nov 2017 17:32:00 EDT. After the closing bell today, Tesla Inc. TSLA reported a bottom-line miss on better-than-expected quarterly sales. The -$2.92 per share was a bigger loss than the -$2.45 in the Zacks consensus, whereas revenues of $2.98 billion in the quarter surpassed our expected $2.92 billion. Shares immediately sank 5% on the news, putting Tesla shares in the red year to date. The company's main challenges of late have had to do with the ramping up of its more-affordable Model 3 sedan, which posted a disappointing 222 deliveries in Q3. By now, the plan was to have 1500 or more Model 3s produced per month. In Tesla's letter to shareholders, the company explains the primary bottleneck in production being an issue with the battery module assembly line at Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada, which has required a redesign. Tesla still expects a big ramp-up in Model 3 production, however: 5000 cars per week are expected by the end of Q1 2018. Earlier, an even-more ambitious 10K/week production line was expected for some time in the following year. Model S and X deliveries rose 18% year over year, and including the as-yet paltry output from Model 3, produced north of 26K autos overall in the quarter. Elsewhere, the company looks to make its Solar Roof products a bigger part of the overall Tesla business in 2018, and appears pleased about its Gigafactory 2 ramp-up in Buffalo, NY. Today marks the third loss in the last four quarters for Tesla. Investors clearly are anticipating big things in the future, but the stock also holds a bevy of short positions, with perhaps more to come following this latest earnings miss. That said, Tesla shares are still up over 50% in the past year, and more than 1500% since the company's IPO in 2010. Facebook Beats, Laments Foreign Influence Facebook FB beat earnings on its top and bottom lines after the closing bell, putting up $1.59 per share on $10.33 billion in sales. Its impressive revenue acceleration resulted in 47% year over year growth and 2.07 billion monthly active users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the wake of his company's recent testimony on Capitol Hill whereby Russian influence reportedly affected the 2016 presidential election, suggested profits from future quarters were going to take a hit on security concerns, saying, "Protecting the community is more important than maximizing profitability." Shares are barely up 1% in late trading following the stellar Q3 earnings results. For more on Facebook's earnings results, click here. Story continues For new results on Restaurant stock earnings, click here. For more results on Tech earnings, click here. More Stock News: This Is Bigger than the iPhone! It could become the mother of all technological revolutions. Apple sold a mere 1 billion iPhones in 10 years but a new breakthrough is expected to generate more than 27 billion devices in just 3 years, creating a $1.7 trillion market. Zacks has just released a Special Report that spotlights this fast-emerging phenomenon and 6 tickers for taking advantage of it. If you don't buy now, you may kick yourself in 2020. Click here for the 6 trades >> 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 Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Tesla Inc. (TSLA) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Apple earnings on tap and heres what to expect Wall Street is waiting for Apple (AAPL) to report its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after the bell today. Analysts will want to hear from CEO Tim Cook about demand for the tech giants three new phones: iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X. Theyll also want to hear from Cook about supply issues. iPhone X preorders started last Friday, and within a few hours, the phones shipping date was delayed 5 to 6 weeks. According to Bloomberg, analysts are expecting Apple to report earnings of $1.87 a share on revenue of $50.70 billion. The tech giant is expected to sell 46.1 million iPhones during the quarter, up from 45.5 million a year ago. Apple shares have climbed 5.9% over the past three months. Starbucks store traffic in focus ahead of earnings Starbucks (SBUX) is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter earnings after the bell today, and analysts will be paying close attention to store traffic. Starbucks retuned to 5% global same-store sales growth last quarter, after falling below that benchmark for several quarters. A key area of focus will be growth in China. Starbucks has said that the country will one day surpass the U.S. as the coffee giants largest market. Analysts are expecting a profit of 55 cents on revenue of $5.8 billion, up from $5.7 billion a year ago. Tesla shares sink on wider-than-expected loss Tesla (TSLA) disappointed Wall Street after reporting a wider-than-expected loss during the third quarter as the electric carmaker focused on ramping up production for its Model 3. A big focus in the earnings report was production of the Model 3, after the company disappointed investors last month when it reported it only delivered 220 Model 3s during the third quarter, a fraction of the number CEO Elon Musk had previously predicted. Tesla revised its production targets for the Model 3, saying it now expects to achieve a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by the end of the first quarter of 2018. It originally projected it would reach this ambitious goal by the end of the current quarter. Tesla shares were last trading down 6.9% at $299.03 a share. DOJ reportedly considering antitrust suit against AT&Ts deal to buy Time Warner Time Warner (TWX) shares were halted in early trading on reports that the Justice Department is weighing an antitrust suit challenging AT&Ts (T) buyout of Time Warner, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is also reporting that the DOJ is in settlement talks with the two companies and could reach an agreement that the government will approve. Time Warner was last trading down 4.7% while AT&T was down 0.7%. [caption id="attachment_3535" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Leonard Steven Grasz, senior counsel with Husch Blackwell.[/caption] Steve Grasz, President Donald Trump's nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, pushed back on the American Bar Association's review process in a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. The ABA recently rated Grasz, a senior counsel at Husch Blackwell in Omaha and a former Nebraska chief deputy attorney general, as not qualified for the position. It was the first time the ABA, which routinely rates federal judicial nominees, had publicly given such a rating for a circuit court nominee since 2006. Republican senators chalked the rating up to partisanship in Wednesday's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grasz said during the hearing that while he respected the ABA's process, his experience with the review and interview process was not professional. "I would tell you that the initial interview was conducted professionally and respectfully," Grasz told Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). "The follow-up interview was a completely different experience." The ABA released a statement Monday from Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease partner Pamela Bresnahan, who chairs the standing committee on the federal judiciary, that outlined the organization's process and reasoning for the rating. The group said Grasz received the rating because it appeared his personal biases rendered him unable to make fair decisions as a judge, and that there are concerns about his temperament. The statement said after an initial evaluator, University of Arkansas professor Cynthia Nance, recommended Grasz be rated "not qualified," a second evaluator conducted a supplemental evaluation. That evaluation included an interview with Grasz as well as lawyers and judges who know him. The second evaluator was Fenwick & West partner Laurence Pulgram, of San Francisco, according to the statement. In an email, an American Bar Association spokeswoman referred questions to Bresnahan, who she said plans to testify in a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the ABA's process on Nov. 15. Bresnahan will not give interviews prior to testifying, the spokeswoman added. In an email, Pulgram also said the ABA "will address these or other questions the Committee may have at that time" at the Nov. 15 hearing. A Senate Judiciary Committee spokesman did not immediately respond to questions. During the hearing, Grasz did not name Pulgram, but said in response to a question from Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), that in his second ABA interview, it "was made very clear" the interviewer did not like that he is pro-life. Later, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) asked Grasz if the ABA evaluators asked about his personal opinions. Grasz replied that during the second interview, he was "asked repeatedly" for his "personal opinions on social issues including abortion" and that it "seemed to be a topic of great interest to the reviewer." Grasz also said that during the second interview, the interviewer "repeatedly used, in a negative connotation, the phrase 'you people.'" "And at one point I stopped him, and I said 'Sir, who do you mean by you people?' And he said 'conservatives and Republicans,'" Grasz said. Grasz also said the the evaluator asked where his children went to school. "I was kind of surprised at that question," he said. Flake asked if Grasz could think of any reason the ABA would want to know that. Grasz said no. Grasz's children attend a Lutheran school, Flake noted. The chief executive of an oil refiner controlled by Carl Icahn on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of caving to corn-state legislators in failing to overhaul a federal biofuel program. Jack Lipinski, CEO of CVR Energy (NYSE: CVI) and its limited partnership CVR Refining (NYSE: CVRR) , said Trump also had failed to drain the swamp of special interest influence in government. Lipinski also suggested during a conference call with analysts that Trump would pay a price at the polls for conceding to special interests. Icahn, formerly a special adviser to Trump on regulations, had sought changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard, a program that requires fuel refiners to blend renewable biofuels like corn-based ethanol into gasoline and diesel. Those changes would have benefited CVR Energy, in which Icahn Associates holds an 82-percent stake. The Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. bureau that overseas the Renewable Fuel Standard, last month said it would not pursue several changes to the program that would ease financial burdens for CVR Energy and other small refiners. "Unfortunately legislators closely tied to the biofuel lobby sabotaged EPA's efforts by saying they would hold back EPA nominees until they got their way," Lipinski said during CVR Refining's third-quarter earnings conference call. He was referring to a bipartisan effort to block changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard. He said he was "surprised that the Trump administration caved and failed to drain the swamp as promised."The White House did not immediately return CNBC's request for comment. The EPA declined an offer to respond.The changes were opposed by lawmakers from big farm states, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA."President Trump pledged to support biofuels during his campaign," Sen. Grassley told CNBC in an email. "A strong [Renewable Fuel Standard] is consistent with that pledge and President Trump should be applauded for keeping his word to the country."Lipinski said he could not understand "how the Trump administration capitulated to the senators from Iowa."He noted that the top two corn producing red states, Iowa and Nebraska, have just 11 electoral votes. Meanwhile, two of the most disadvantaged refiners under the program are headquartered in Pennsylvania, he said. Lipinski did not specify which companies he meant, but refiners like Philadelphia Energy Solutions and Delta Air Lines subsidiary Monroe Energy are based in Pennsylvania."If anybody in the White House can do math, Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes," he said.Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, refiners who blend biofuels like ethanol into gasoline generate credits called Renewable Identification Numbers, known as RINs. Smaller refiners like CVR that do not blend ethanol must buy those RINs in order to meet their obligation under the program. Icahn had lobbied for the EPA to shift the obligation to buy credits away from refiners and onto fuel blenders. Analysts told CNBC that CVR Refining appeared to be putting off buying RINs on the view that prices would fall as policy changed. Icahn himself suggested the company was not buying RINs. Icahn's position as the dominant investor in CVR Energy and his unofficial role as an advisor to Trump on regulations drew conflict of interest allegations . Icahn, who argued he was acting in the interest of American energy security, stepped down from the advisory role in August. Lipinski said on Wednesday that CVR has been buying RINs and reports to the contrary are inaccurate.RIN prices fell earlier this year on expectations the policy would change, but rallied back near $1 as those hopes faded. Prices for so-called D6 ethanol RINs were trading around 96 cents to 97 cents on Wednesday, according to Tom Kloza at Oil Price Information Service.On Tuesday, CVR Refining estimated its RINs expense at $235 million to $265 million in 2017. Its total uncommitted biofuel blending cost at the end of the quarter was $127 million, CVR Chief Financial Officer Susan Ball said.While Lipinski argued that cost is "egregious," he said healthy profit margins the result of a wide spread between crude oil and fuel costs more than offset CVR's RIN cost.Lipinski, a long-time critic of the Renewable Fuel Standard, will retire at the end of the year. The chief executive of an oil refiner controlled by Carl Icahn on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of caving to corn-state legislators in failing to overhaul a federal biofuel program. Jack Lipinski, CEO of CVR Energy (NYSE: CVI) and its limited partnership CVR Refining (NYSE: CVRR) , said Trump also had failed to drain the swamp of special interest influence in government. Lipinski also suggested during a conference call with analysts that Trump would pay a price at the polls for conceding to special interests. Icahn, formerly a special adviser to Trump on regulations, had sought changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard, a program that requires fuel refiners to blend renewable biofuels like corn-based ethanol into gasoline and diesel. Those changes would have benefited CVR Energy, in which Icahn Associates holds an 82-percent stake. The Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. bureau that overseas the Renewable Fuel Standard, last month said it would not pursue several changes to the program that would ease financial burdens for CVR Energy and other small refiners. "Unfortunately legislators closely tied to the biofuel lobby sabotaged EPA's efforts by saying they would hold back EPA nominees until they got their way," Lipinski said during CVR Refining's third-quarter earnings conference call. He was referring to a bipartisan effort to block changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard. He said he was "surprised that the Trump administration caved and failed to drain the swamp as promised." The White House did not immediately return CNBC's request for comment. The EPA declined an offer to respond. The changes were opposed by lawmakers from big farm states, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA. "President Trump pledged to support biofuels during his campaign," Sen. Grassley told CNBC in an email. "A strong [Renewable Fuel Standard] is consistent with that pledge and President Trump should be applauded for keeping his word to the country." Lipinski said he could not understand "how the Trump administration capitulated to the senators from Iowa." He noted that the top two corn producing red states, Iowa and Nebraska, have just 11 electoral votes. Meanwhile, two of the most disadvantaged refiners under the program are headquartered in Pennsylvania, he said. Lipinski did not specify which companies he meant, but refiners like Philadelphia Energy Solutions and Delta Air Lines subsidiary Monroe Energy are based in Pennsylvania. "If anybody in the White House can do math, Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes," he said. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, refiners who blend biofuels like ethanol into gasoline generate credits called Renewable Identification Numbers, known as RINs. Smaller refiners like CVR that do not blend ethanol must buy those RINs in order to meet their obligation under the program. Icahn had lobbied for the EPA to shift the obligation to buy credits away from refiners and onto fuel blenders. Analysts told CNBC that CVR Refining appeared to be putting off buying RINs on the view that prices would fall as policy changed. Icahn himself suggested the company was not buying RINs. Icahn's position as the dominant investor in CVR Energy and his unofficial role as an advisor to Trump on regulations drew conflict of interest allegations . Icahn, who argued he was acting in the interest of American energy security, stepped down from the advisory role in August. Lipinski said on Wednesday that CVR has been buying RINs and reports to the contrary are inaccurate. RIN prices fell earlier this year on expectations the policy would change, but rallied back near $1 as those hopes faded. Prices for so-called D6 ethanol RINs were trading around 96 cents to 97 cents on Wednesday, according to Tom Kloza at Oil Price Information Service. On Tuesday, CVR Refining estimated its RINs expense at $235 million to $265 million in 2017. Its total uncommitted biofuel blending cost at the end of the quarter was $127 million, CVR Chief Financial Officer Susan Ball said. While Lipinski argued that cost is "egregious," he said healthy profit margins the result of a wide spread between crude oil and fuel costs more than offset CVR's RIN cost. Lipinski, a long-time critic of the Renewable Fuel Standard, will retire at the end of the year. More From CNBC (Adds comments by Trudeau, British Columbia's Lumber Trade Council , US builders group) By Lesley Wroughton and Julie Gordon WASHINGTON/VANCOUVER, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department, accusing Canada of unfairly subsidizing and dumping softwood lumber in the United States, on Thursday set final duties on imports and Canada said it would appeal the decision, which comes during tense NAFTA trade talks. The duties would impose anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties affecting about $5.66 billion worth of imports of the key building material, the department said. The combined final duty rates range from about 10 percent to nearly 24 percent, lower than a preliminary range of about 17 percent to 31 percent. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denounced what he called the "unjust and punitive" final measures while acknowledging they could have been worse. "We are, I guess, pleased that they are not as bad as they were before but they still represent a burden on forestry workers and communities all across this country," he told reporters in Brampton, Ontario. "We will continue to work with the American administration to resolve this in a negotiated way." British Columbia's Lumber Trade Council called the measures protectionist and said it planned to challenge the decision. "We will be immediately filing appeals of these final duties," Susan Yurkovich, president of the BC Lumber Trade Council told reporters. The appeals, one under NAFTA and the other to the World Trade Organization, will be jointly filed, including the Canadian government and affected provinces, as soon as the rates are published in the U.S. Federal Register, a spokeswoman for British Columbia's Forestry Ministry said. The U.S. International Trade Commission will make a final rule on the issue by Dec. 18. FAILED TALKS The U.S. Commerce Department said exporters from Canada have sold softwood lumber in the U.S. market at 3.20 percent to 8.89 percent less than fair value, and that Canada was providing unfair subsidies at rates of 3.34 percent to 18.19 percent. Story continues The decision follows failed talks to end the decades-long lumber dispute between the neighbors. "This decision is based on a full and unbiased review of the facts in an open and transparent process that defends American workers and businesses from unfair trade practices," U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. The disagreement centers on the fees paid by Canadian lumber mills for timber cut largely from government-owned land. They are lower than fees paid on U.S. timber, which comes largely from private land. Jason Brochu, co-chair of the U.S. Lumber Coalition and president of Pleasant River Lumber Company, said the duties helped "to level the playing field" for U.S. lumber companies, which could now expand production to meet demand. But the National Association of Home Builders denounced the move saying it would drive up lumber prices at a time when communities were trying to rebuild after hurricanes and California wildfires. "This tariff only adds to the burden by harming housing affordability and artificially boosting the price of lumber," said NAHB Chairman Granger MacDonald. "It is nothing more than a thinly-disguised tax on American home buyers, home builders and consumers." The decision is likely to further escalate tensions between the United States and Canada during talks between the United States, Canada and Mexico to modernize NAFTA, which U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw from. In September, the United States slapped preliminary anti-subsidy duties on Canadian jetmaker Bombardier Inc's CSeries jets after rival Boeing Co accused Canada of unfairly subsidizing the aircraft. (Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Eric Walsh in Washington; editing by David Alexander and Andrew Hay) The U.S. Is Reportedly Pursuing Direct Diplomacy with North Korea The United States is pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, according to a new Reuters report, despite U.S. president Donald Trumps belief that its not worthwhile. Until now, the U.S. limited itself to discussions about the release of American prisoners. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last month that hed pursue diplomatic efforts until the first bomb drops. But President Trump has not shared that view, exchanging insults with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un through various media outlets. In the meantime, North Koreaofficially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or DPRKhas continued development on nuclear and missile weapons, despite sanctions from various nations around the globe. This year the nation conducted its sixth nuclear detonation as well as test-firings of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that threaten to reach the U.S. mainland. Discussions have not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance, a senior State Department official told Reuters. China, which has long defended North Korea even as it has maintained relations with the U.S., an important trade partner, supported further discussion between the two countries. We encourage North Korea and the United States to carry out engagement and dialogue, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Police in Colorado plan to seek murder charges against an ex-convict suspected of killing a man, stealing guns from his trailer, then heading to Utah and fatally shooting a student during an attempted carjacking. Austin Boutain and his wife, Kathleen Boutain, were both named as suspects Wednesday in the death of 63-year-old Mitchell Ingle, whose body was found in his trailer Tuesday, Golden, Colorado, police spokeswoman Karlyn Tilley said in a statement. Investigators believe the Boutains met Ingle only a few days before his death, describing their encounters as "chance meetings" at a creek near Ingle's trailer home. Authorities also plan to recommend a murder charge against Kathleen Boutain. Police in Utah describe the couple as drifters who drove Ingle's pickup truck from Colorado to Utah, then gave it to another transient couple after they arrived on Saturday. They're also suspected of taking three guns from Ingle's trailer. Austin Boutain used one of those handguns in the slaying of 23-year-old Chinese computer-science student ChenWei Guo in a canyon near the University of Utah campus, police said. Austin Boutain, 24, told investigators he killed Guo and then fired two rounds at Guo's friend so there would be no witnesses, according to jail booking documents. The friend, a female University of Utah student, told police she escaped after the gunman tried to drag her up a canyon. He narrowly missed her and she called police to report the killing, University of Utah police said. The killing sparked a massive manhunt. Police say Boutain evaded it by crawling over hillsides north of campus, making his way through neighborhoods and into Salt Lake City, where he was spotted by an alert librarian about 15 hours later and arrested. Boutain was booked Tuesday into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of aggravated murder, robbery and other charges. He will likely face charges in Utah first, and then be extradited to Colorado, Golden Police Capt. Joe Harvey said. Story continues No attorney has been listed for him or his wife. Colorado authorities said they also plan to recommend robbery and motor vehicle theft charges against the couple. Boutain admitted to Utah police that he stole guns from Ingle. He said he hid a .44-caliber Ruger handgun used to shoot Guo in a crevice of a brick wall near the Salt Lake City homeless shelter, but when he returned it was gone. He traded a second gun, a .38-caliber Smith and Wesson, for an ounce of marijuana, the jail documents state. The third, a rifle, was found by police at a makeshift camp in the canyon were he'd been living near the university. Investigators from Colorado have also interviewed the husband and wife and say they are the only suspects in Ingle's death. Austin Boutain has a rap sheet that includes drug, car theft and weapons charges in Minnesota and Alabama dating back to his days as a juvenile. He was paroled in May after serving a year and a half in an Alabama prison for being a convicted sex offender and failing to report his whereabouts to police. His parole was transferred this spring to Wisconsin, where he has family, but he skipped and a warrant for his arrest was issued Aug. 31, about a week after he last checked in with his parole agent, according to authorities. Police say Guo, a devout Mormon from Beijing, was in the area popular with hikers with his friend when they encountered Boutain, who'd been staying in the makeshift camp with his wife in the canyon. Kathleen Boutain went to campus Monday to report an assault by her husband, touching off the chain of events that led to Guo's death, police said. ___ Associated Press writers Kathleen Foody in Denver and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report. By Dan Whitcomb Oct 31 (Reuters) - The man accused of killing eight people by racing a pickup truck down a New York City bike path on Tuesday may have worked as a driver and lived in New Jersey after emigrating from Uzbekistan seven years ago, according to authorities and media reports. Few other details about the 29-year-old suspect have emerged since the Tuesday afternoon vehicle rampage in lower Manhattan, blocks from the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the landmark World Trade Center Twin Towers. Police have declined to identify the man but a source familiar with the investigation identified him as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov and said he was not a U.S. citizen. His immigration status was not immediately clear. Saipov was shot by a police officer while attempting to flee minutes after the attack and was whisked away to a local hospital, where he was recovering from an abdominal wound. With authorities saying they believe the attack was a "terrorist event," the lack of disclosure may reflect the nature of the investigation, which is still in its earliest stage. According to CNN and other media outlets, the suspect shouted "Allahu Akbar" - Arabic for "God is greatest" - after leaping from his truck, which had crashed into a school bus as he sped away from the carnage. He also left behind a note claiming he carried out the deadly assault in the name of the Islamic State militant group, according to reports that Reuters could not immediately confirm. Federal officials had become aware of Saipov while conducting an unrelated investigation, the New York Times reported, citing three unidentified officials. The Times offered no further details about the nature of the investigation, when it was conducted, or its outcome. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declined to comment on that report when asked by reporters at a news conference. "It is too early to give you a definitive answer," he said. "HE LIKED THE U.S." Saipov, born in February 1988, moved to the United States seven years ago from Uzbekistan, a Central Asian country that was once part of the Soviet Union. He appears to have lived in Ohio, Florida and New Jersey since then. Story continues An Uzbek immigrant who met Saipov in Florida several years ago told the Times that Saipov worked as a truck driver there but began driving for Uber when he moved to New Jersey. He was a very good person when I knew him," Kobiljon Matkarov told the newspaper. "He liked the U.S. He seemed very lucky and all the time he was happy and talking like everything is O.K. He did not seem like a terrorist, but I did not know him from the inside." The Times, citing sources, reported that Saipov had been living in Paterson, New Jersey, about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of the scene of the attack. He rented the truck used in the attack from a Home Depot in nearby Passaic, just south of Paterson, it said. Police cordoned off an area of Paterson, a one-time industrial hub known for its large immigrant population, early Wednesday morning. About 25,000 to 30,000 Muslims live in the city, giving it one of the highest concentrations of Muslim people in the New York City area. Saipov has a history of traffic violations, according to media reports and court records. In one incident, he was pulled over in central Pennsylvania for pulling a truck trailer that was longer than permitted by law and "operating unsafe equipment", as well as driving with the wrong operators license, state judicial records show. Saipov listed both Paterson and Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, as his addresses. He paid his fine by mail and did not have to appear in court. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Additional reporting by David DeKok in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Mark Hosenball in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Frank McGurty and Paul Tait) Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. House Republicans released their long-awaited redo of the tax code, which they promised would dramatically reduce the federal tax bill for most American households and give a big break to businesses. But as written, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act offers modest tax savings for most middle-income Americans. And it could negatively affect college students and their families, people with very high medical bills, and residents of high-tax areas. "In general, if you live in a low-tax state, if you have an inexpensive mortgage, if you take the standard deduction, youll do pretty well, says Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C. "If you live in a high-tax state with a big mortgage and you itemize, youre not going to do so well." The bill's signature change affecting householdsit nearly doubles the standard deduction and reduces the current seven tax rates to fourwould mean that a four-person household making the median income of $59,000 a year would save $1,182 annually in taxes, according to talking points released today by the House Committee on Ways and Means, which drafted the bill. Those earning just above the new standard deduction levels$18,300 for heads of households, $12,200 for single filers, and $24,400 for couples filing jointlywould pay more tax on ordinary income: 12 percent versus 10 percent, which could offset the savings from the higher standard deduction. The elimination of the personal exemption, currently $4,050 per person, could offset those savings even more. But many people who generally owe federal tax on their returns might end up paying no tax at all, Gleckman said. Wealthy taxpayers would still be subject to the current top tax rate of 39.6 percent. In a boon to the very wealthiest, the bill's sponsors aim to double the basic exclusion on income subject to the 40-percent estate tax to nearly $11 million per person, and repeal the tax entirely in 2024. Story continues Other changes affect fewer taxpayers. For example, families could no longer get a tax credit when they adopt a child. People suffering a catastrophic loss, such as from a home fire, could no longer deduct their losses unless they were in a federally declared disaster area. And a tax credit of up to $7,500 for purchasers of electric cars and plug-in hybrids also would go away. The bill must still be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, not to mention reconciled with a yet-to-be-released Senate bill. Its wide-ranging cuts in revenuemuch due to a major drop in the top corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percentcould cost the Treasury an estimated $1.51 trillion over 10 years, according to the House Ways and Means Committee's analysis. Observers note that many measures in the tax framework might not make it into the final version of the bill. And as written it could have unintended consequences. Because the average person won't be itemizing, "with a higher standard deduction, there's much less incentive to contribute to charities," notes Mark Luscombe, principal analyst with Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting, based in Riverwoods, Il. Here's how the proposed plan could affect different types of households and taxpayers: Likely Winners Middle-income families with dependents. In additional to benefiting from a higher standard deduction, families whose income qualifies them for a child tax credit would get more per child: $1,600, versus $1,000 in the current law. A new $300 credit would be available for each parent and non-child dependent, as well. The credit, however, is scheduled to phase out in 2023. "Broad strokes, I see a lot in the bill for middle- and lower-income taxpayers," says Mark Steber, chief tax officer at the Jackson-Hewitt, the tax preparation company. "Doubling the standard deduction and increasing the child tax credit means more families will be winners." Taxpayers subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax. This parallel taxation system, which mainly affects taxpayers in the $200,000 to $400,000 income range, would be eliminated. Depending on where these taxpayers fit on the new tax bracket scale (see chart below), however, the benefit could be muted. Wealthy taxpayers. With the change in tax brackets, married people filing jointly would pay a tax rate of no more than 35 percent on up to $1 million of income, rather than a top tax rate of 39.6 percent. Likely Losers Students and new graduates. Recent graduates could no longer exclude from taxable income up to $2,500 in student loan interest. The average exclusion is $1,086, a tax savings of $272, noted Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Cappex.com, a website that provides information on college admissions and financial aid. Kantrowitz pointed out that the optics of the change won't look good to voters, which could make it a hard sell. "The actual tax benefit is small, but people are going to focus on that $2,500 figure and say, 'You're making it hard for us to pay our student loans,'" he says. "I would not be surprised if theres a pushback on that." Among other measures to "streamline" higher education benefits, in the House plan's words, is the elimination of a tax deduction for employer-paid tuition assistance. Currently, workers who participate in such plans can exclude up to $5,250 in tuition from income. Employers also would not be able to count on a tax benefit from providing student-loan assistance plans, Kantrowitz notes. "This would pull out the rug from under those efforts," he says. Residents in high-tax areas. State and local taxes, including sales and income taxes, could no longer be deducted. The bill would allow for a property-tax deduction of up to $10,000. Homebuyers taking large mortgages. Deductible interest on a home mortgage would be capped at $500,000, compared with $1 million under current law. That change would affect new purchases only. People with very high medical bills. Medical expenses could no longer be deducted. Currently these expensesincluding long-term-care insurance premiumshave to be very high for a taxpayer to use this break. Only expenses above 10 percent of adjusted gross income can be deducted. But the loss of that tax break could have a major impact on people with chronic illnesses or very high-deductible health plans, says Betsy Imholz, special projects director focused on healthcare at Consumers Union, the policy and mobilization division of Consumer Reports. "Eliminating the deduction could cause a lot of pain." What Doesn't Change Earned income tax credit. This credit for working lower- and middle-income families with dependents, which is as high as $6,318, will remain the same. Retirement savings. Pretax contributions to 401(k) plans will remain essentially the same. Nonetheless, the fact that many more people will face lower tax rates could make pretax savings less attractive to many people, notes Tim Steffen, director of advanced planning at Baird Private Wealth Management in Milwaukee. "This makes Roth-style plans marginally more attractive," he notes. The First Salvo Every U.S. taxpayer could be affected in some way by the proposed new tax rules. The chart below, based on information from the House Committee on Ways and Means and the IRS, details the major changes. Correction: In the section on wealthy taxpayers, an earlier version misstated the amount of income that would be subject to a top tax rate of 35 percent. More from Consumer Reports: Top pick tires for 2016 Best used cars for $25,000 and less 7 best mattresses for couples Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright 2017, Consumer Reports, Inc. Steel Dynamics (STLD) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues. For Immediate Release Chicago, IL November 1, 2017 Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include ExxonMobil Corp. XOM, Chevron Corp. CVX, TOTAL S.A. TOT, ConocoPhillips COP and Valero Energy Corporation VLO. Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1Stock of the Day pick for free. Here are highlights from Tuesdays Analyst Blog: Oil & Gas Stock Roundup: XOM, CVX, TOT Report Strong Q3 Results It was a week where the price of oil spiked to its highest mark in nearly eight months. However, natural gas futures fell sharply. On the news front, integrated majors ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and TOTAL S.A. came up with stronger-than-expected earnings reports, driven by higher oil prices. Overall, it was a mixed week for the sector. While West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained about 4% to close at $53.90 per barrel, natural gas prices slumped 5.6% to $2.752 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last Oil & Gas Stock Roundup here: SLB & HAL's Q3, RIG's New Contract & More.) The U.S. oil benchmark rallied on expectations that OPEC and other major producers will agree to expand their output-cut deal beyond March. The agreement, already renewed once, keeps 1.8 million barrels a day off the market in an attempt to clear a supply glut. Further support came from the U.S. Energy Department's inventory release, which showed steep declines in domestic gasoline and distillate inventories on rising exports. Upbeat third-quarter U.S. GDP data and signs of recovery in global demand growth was also bullish for oil prices. Meanwhile, natural gas futures finished the week down despite a smaller-than-expected increase in supplies. Unfavorable weather forecasts and strength in the commoditys production, induced the drop in prices. Story continues Recap of the Weeks Most Important Stories 1. Energy giant ExxonMobil Corp. posted strong third-quarter 2017 results, courtesy of increased price realizations from liquids and gas and improved margins at the refinery business. Production averaged 3.878 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (MMBOE/d), marginally higher than 3.811 MMBOE/d in the year-ago quarter. Ramp up in Australian projects supported the upside. ExxonMobils downstream segment recorded profits of $1.5 billion, $303 million higher than the July-September quarter of 2016. This improvement was backed by improved margins from refining activities. During the quarter under review, ExxonMobil generated cash flow of $8.4 billion from operations and asset sales. The energy giant returned $3.3 billion to shareholders through dividends. Capital and exploration spending increased 43% year over year to almost $6 billion. (Read more: ExxonMobil Earnings Beat Estimates in Q3, Rise Y/Y.) 2. Smaller rival Chevron Corp. reported strong third-quarter results amid the recovery in commodity prices, production gains and robust refining profits. The company reported earnings per share of $1.03, higher than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 99 cents and the year-ago profit of 68 cents. Chevrons total production of crude oil and natural gas increased 8.1% compared with last years corresponding period to 2,717 thousand oil-equivalent barrels per day (MBOE/d). The U.S. output decreased 2.4% year over year to 681 MBOE/d but the companys international operations (accounting for 75% of the total) was up 12.2% to 2,036 MBOE/d. Exploration costs fell from $258 million in the third quarter of 2016 to $239 million. The company spent $4,456 million in capital expenditures during the quarter, a considerable decline from the $5,175 million incurred a year ago. Roughly 88% of the total outlays pertained to upstream projects. Importantly, Chevron delivered a good cash flow performance this quarter an important gauge for the oil and gas industry with $5,370 million in cash flow from operations, up from $5,311 million a year ago. (Read more Refining, Higher Oil Power Chevron's Q3 Earnings Beat) 3. France-based supermajor TOTAL S.A. reported third-quarter 2017 operating earnings of $1.04 per share (0.88 per share), beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 99 cents by 5%. The outperformance was due to good operational performance, steadily decreasing breakeven production costs, improvement in the realized prices of commodities and new projects ramp ups, boosting production. Despite the impact of Hurricane Harvey on its American operations, favorable refining margins resulted in 18% sequential growth of its Downstream business. The cost reduction initiatives will result in savings in excess of $3.6 billion in 2017.Through its ongoing initiatives to lower operating costs, TOTAL aims to reduce costs by $5 billion by 2020. Cash and cash equivalents as of Sep 30, 2017 were $28.58 billion compared with $24.80 billion as of Sep 30, 2016. Net debt-to-equity ratio was 18% at the end of the quarter, down from 30.6% at the end of third-quarter 2016. TOTAL expects production from the upstream segment to improve 5% year over year. The company continues to work on cost management initiatives and expects to generate cost savings of $3.6 billion in 2017. (Read more TOTAL Beats Q3 Earnings, to Lower 2017 Costs by $3.6B) 4. Upstream energy player ConocoPhillips reported third-quarter 2017 adjusted earnings of 16 cents per share that surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 9 cents. In the prior-year quarter, the Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company had posted a loss of 66 cents. Strong third-quarter numbers were supported by higher oil and natural gas price realizations. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Production from continuing operations averaged 1,226 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (MBOED) in the quarter, as compared with 1,557 MBOED in the year-ago quarter. The deterioration was led by field decline and production outage owing to the impact of hurricanes. As of Sep 30, 2017, the company had total cash and cash equivalents of $6.9 billion and debt of $21 billion, with a debt-to-capitalization ratio of 41%. In the reported quarter, ConocoPhillips generated $1.1 billion in cash from operating activities. The companys capital expenditures and investments totaled $1.1 billion and dividends payments grossed $324 million. ConocoPhillips' fourth-quarter 2017 production guidance is pegged at the range of 1,195-1,235 MBOED, excluding production from Libya. The company slashed its 2017 capital budget from the earlier projection of $4.8 billion to $4.5 billion. (Read more ConocoPhillips Beats on Q3 Earnings, Cuts Capex View) 5. Oil refining and marketing player Valero Energy Corporation posted adjusted third-quarter 2017 income of $1.91 per share that surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.83 and the year-ago adjusted profit of $1.24. Higher throughput margin owing to high throughput capacity utilization supported the strong results. Company-wide throughput margins increased to $10.94 per barrel from the year-ago level of $8.72. Throughput capacity utilization of 92% during this quarter supported the outperformance. Third-quarter capital expenditure totaled $565 million, including $73 million for turnarounds and catalyst expenditure. At the end of the quarter under review, the company had cash and temporary cash investments of $5.2 billion and debt of $8.5 billion. Valero Energy also rewarded shareholders with dividends and share buybacks worth $600 million. (Read more Valero Energy Q3 Earnings & Revenues Beat, Rise Y/Y) Today, Zacks is promoting its ''Buy'' stock recommendations. Get #1 Stock of the Day pick for free. About Zacks Equity Research Zacks Equity Research provides the best of quantitative and qualitative analysis to help investors know what stocks to buy and which to sell for the long-term. Continuous coverage is provided for a universe of 1,150 publicly traded stocks. Our analysts are organized by industry which gives them keen insights to developments that affect company profits and stock performance. Recommendations and target prices are six-month time horizons. Strong Stocks that Should Be in the News Many are little publicized and fly under the Wall Street radar. They're virtually unknown to the general public. Yet today's 220 Zacks Rank #1 "Strong Buys" were generated by the stock-picking system that has nearly tripled the market from 1988 through 2015. Its average gain has been a stellar +26% per year.See these high-potential stocks free >>. Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zacksresearch Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Zacks-Investment-Research/57553657748?ref=ts Zacks Investment Research is under common control with affiliated entities (including a broker-dealer and an investment adviser), which may engage in transactions involving the foregoing securities for the clients of such affiliates. Media Contact Zacks Investment Research 800-767-3771 ext. 9339 support@zacks.com https://www.zacks.com/ Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release. 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 Valero Energy Corporation (VLO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Chevron Corporation (CVX) : Free Stock Analysis Report TotalFinaElf, S.A. (TOT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report ConocoPhillips (COP) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research A wave of Taliban attacks killed more than 200 Afghan Army and police soldiers across Afghanistan last month. In addition, terrorist attacks and infighting between the Taliban and Islamic State (IS) militants have complicated the picture. The recent hike in attacks comes amid an Afghan and U.S. military campaign which is taking a heavy toll on insurgent manpower. To understand the reasons behind the current spike in attacks, independent journalist Bilal Sarwary joined our discussion from the Afghan capital, Kabul. In Washington, Barmak Pazhwak, a senior Afghanistan analyst at the United States Institute of Peace, joined our moderator and RFE/RL Media Manager Muhammad Tahir. I contributed from Prague. Listen to or download the Gandhara Podcast: The views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL. Ambassador Mahmoud Saikal is the permanent representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations in New York City. In an interview with Radio Mashaal, he sketches a positive portrait of his country, which has secured and mobilized international support for restoring peace and stability. RFE/RL: A recent meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), which includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and the United States, ended without a breakthrough. Why is this diplomatic forum not succeeding? Mahmud Saikal: The QCG made progress at the beginning of last year, producing a roadmap. All of us worked hard. A key element was that those Taliban who join the peace process will be welcomed and those who dont will be confronted. That didnt happen [the roadmap was not carried out] by at least one member of the QCG. Instead, in April 2016, the Taliban launched their spring offensive across Afghanistan. We have to revive the spirit of the QCG and do some confidence building. We hope we will make progress during future meetings. RFE/RL: Do you think Pakistan is responsible for the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and can it help bring peace there? Saikal: The world knows safe havens of terrorist groups are in Pakistan. The latest U.S. strategy [announced by President Donald Trump in August] has two strong elements: One, [support for] Afghanistan will continue until conditions change on the ground in favor of the people of Afghanistan and stability in the region. This has been a key wish of the people and the government of Afghanistan. The second element was to address safe havens in Pakistan. For any discussion on a bilateral, trilateral, regional, or global level, this must be addressed. RFE/RL: Have you or the Afghan government ever talked with Iranian and Russian officials in the Taliban context? Saikal: At the UN level, we meet every now and then. We have regular contact with countries of the region. I have been meeting with ambassadors of the Russian Federation, Iran, China, India, and Pakistan. Our appeal to them has been to make sure we all work together to have a healthy dialogue and move together to strengthen the regional and international consensus on countering terrorism, with a special focus on engaging Pakistan in a way that it could become a genuine partner far from duplicity and plausible deniability. Our second point is to strengthen the security and defensive capabilities of Afghanistan so that we could defend our people in the face of ferocious attacks by the Taliban and other terrorist groups. We are making progress. The air force of Afghanistan is coming together; lately, our forces have carried out a large number of air operations. We have our own pilots; we are receiving better aircrafts and helicopters. We recently received the first batch of Blackhawk helicopters [from the United States]. We are also doubling up our commando forces. RFE/RL: Despite all these steps, civilian and military casualties have been on the rise in Afghanistan, and attacks are increasing daily. What could be the reason? Saikal: Since the announcement of the latest U.S. strategy, the level of casualties has gone slightly down. The Taliban have failed to push their offensive. In some areas, the Taliban are very much on the run. We still have one or two months of the so-called fighting season. During the past three years, our security forces have been in charge. Despite the casualties, they have kept Afghanistan united and have denied the Taliban access to populated areas. The Taliban and other terrorists are not able to hold ground for a long time. RFE/RL: Commenting on the latest U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, some analysts think Afghan peace needs a regional solution or consensus. What is your assessment? Saikal: The success of the recent U.S. strategy depends on better coordination in the region. As far as we are aware, the U.S. strategy does include diplomatic initiatives to make sure we bring better coordination among key stakeholders in the region. It also depends on the internal development of Afghanistan how best we perform and how best we address the corruption issue, governance, and delivery of services. Afghanistan has a sensitive geostrategic location. It sits between South and Central Asia, the Far East and the Middle East. It would be naive of us to deny the fact that we need better regional cooperation and coordination. RFE/RL: Following the announcement of the U.S. strategy, Pakistani Foreign Minister Khwaja Muhammad Asif visited China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey to gain regional support. On the other hand, Trump invited India to play a proactive role in Afghan development. Some people think the region could be divided into blocks. Do you think so? Saikal: Our ultimate aim in Afghanistan is to turn the country into an asset for all, a platform of cordiality, a place where regional and global stakeholders could come and complement each other. Given the sensitive geostrategic location, this is what we need. Afghanistan is an independent country. It enjoys good relationships with many countries. Just a few days ago, you saw our success in becoming a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is a sign that Afghanistan is engaged with the international community and our regional and global partners. We view Afghanistan as a country [interested in being] friends with all its neighbors and global partners. We want to live in peace with our neighbors and particularly with Pakistan. Pakistan is a big country and an atomic power. The stability of Pakistan is good for its own people and important for us, too. We feel the time has come that Pakistan could see the problem itself. Leading terrorist figures have been in Pakistan, lived in Pakistan, died in Pakistan, and some have been buried in Pakistan. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of suicide bombers are being trained at Pakistani madrasahs. We simply want Pakistan to see this reality, and lets talk about it. RFE/RL: But Pakistan claims the same: that the Pakistani Taliban have a presence on the other side of the Durand Line in Afghanistan. What is your response? Saikal: That is not true. We have been talking about it since 1994, when the Taliban entered the political and security landscape of Afghanistan. Since then, they have had connections with Pakistan. The names of the Quetta Shura, the Peshawar Shura, say it all. We all know Mullah Muhammad Omar died in a hospital in Karachi. We all know Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur was found and killed in Balochistan. We all know Osama bin Laden was found and killed in Abbottabad, close to the capital city of Pakistan. These are the facts which cannot be denied. Anybody wanting to change the narrative and turn the tables and assuming that we [Afghans] are to blame is making a mistake. RFE/RL: The international community has supported and assisted Afghanistan for a long time. Do you expect that will continue? Saikal: As long as we face a global threat, it is the responsibility of the world to assist Afghanistan. Terrorism is not of Afghanistans making. It is something imposed on us. These terrorist groups have links with Pakistan. I dont think anybody could name a terrorist who comes from elsewhere. Whether they are of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Al-Qaeda, or Daesh [Islamic State], they have all been in Pakistan, trained there, and then went to Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a culture of peace. When we resisted the Soviet invasion [in the 1980s], there wasnt a single terrorist in Afghanistan. We defended our country bravely. Radicalization, violent extremism, and terrorism have been imposed on Afghanistan. They have regional and regional dimensions; therefore, it is the responsibility of the international community to remain engaged in Afghanistan and support Afghanistan because right now we are fighting on behalf of the international community. Our casualties are high. RFE/RL: In October, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan until peace is restored. When do you expect an end to the war in Afghanistan? Saikal: The sooner we address the safe havens the better. The core of the problems we have is the external support to terrorist groups, and that has a lot to do with the policy of using violence and violent proxies in pursuit of political objectives in Pakistan. That is why we welcome the latest U.S. strategy and appeal to the international community and regional stakeholders to pay specific attention to safe havens in Pakistan. New York City terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov lived most of his life with his parents in Beltepa, a middle-class district in the northwest of Uzbekistan's capital that houses high-rise residential buildings and numerous medical facilities. The family of six resided in an apartment, which his parents have since sold, before moving to a house in Uchtepa, on Tashkent's southern outskirts. Saipov, the eldest child and only son, grew up with three younger sisters. Two neighbors in Tashkent contacted by RFE/RL's Uzbek Service on November 1 -- one day after Saipov was apprehended near the scene in Manhattan where a pickup truck, reportedly containing notes pledging allegiance to militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), killed at least eight people when it roared down a bicycle path -- described the Saipovs as very secular and ordinary Uzbeks who dont stand out in any particular respect. His parents are far from religion," one of them said, "They dont even pray. Both individuals asked that their names not be published in connection with the Saipov story. Saipovs 52-year-old father, Habibullo Saipov, and his 50-year-old mother, Muqaddas Saipova, have a small clothing stall in their local Bektopi bazaar. A source in the country's security services, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, told RFE/RL's Uzbek Service that Saipov's mother, father, and a 17-year-old sister were being questioned on November 1. Neighbors say the family owns a car and a private house, both signs of relative prosperity in the Central Asian country, where the average monthly salary is less than $200. Saipovs mother visited the United States in late 2016 and early 2017, according to Tashkent neighbors and Uzbek authorities, spending around two months with her son and his family. A police source in Tashkent said he could not confirm reports that Sayfullo Saipov lived in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh, which has a sizable ethnic Uzbek minority, before moving to the United States. But Saipov moved to the United States, at the age of 22, after he won a U.S. green card through the official Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, also known as the green-card lottery, in 2010. Acquaintances of Saipovs in the United States told RFE/RL that he did not seem to be a religious person when he first came to America. It was several years later that some ethnic Uzbeks in the United States say they noticed Saipov expressing very radical views and becoming aggressive in his behavior, increasingly isolating himself from friends. Saipov and his ethnic Uzbek wife, Nozima, met and married in the United States and have three children, the youngest of whom is 3 months old. Saipov spent several years driving trucks and recently worked as an Uber driver. An Ohio-based ethnic Uzbek man who knew him told RFE/RL that Saipov had expressed interest in possibly returning to his homeland after Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev, during a visit to the United States for the UN General Assembly in September, called on Uzbeks abroad to come home. With reporting by RFE/RLs Uzbek Service NOTE: This article has been amended to correct an inaccurate death toll in the New York terror attack on October 31. English Lithuanian Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-10-31 08:31 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Equity of the Company and the Company's net asset value as of 30 September 2017 was EUR 19,941,795.21 or EUR 1.6379 per share. Investments of the Company to managed companies amounted to EUR 21.9 million at the end of September 2017. Increase in fair value of investments amounted to EUR 5.2 million in nine months of 2017. The cash and cash equivalents of the Company decreased from EUR 3.1 million to EUR 50 thousand in nine months of 2017. The net profit of the Company amounted to EUR 214 thousand. Additional information: The equity capital of INVL Technology, a company that invests in IT businesses, was EUR 19.9 million, or EUR 1.64 per share, at the end of the first three quarters of this year. The latter figure increased 1.1 per cent from the start of the year. The companys investments in the businesses it owns totalled EUR 21.9 million at the end of September 2017 and increased by EUR 5.2 million from the start of the year. The change comprised EUR 5 million allocated for increasing the share capital of the newly established Nordic Cyber Security Oy by acquiring 77.35 per cent of the shares of the Finnish cybersecurity firm Deltagon Group Oy, and EUR 0.3 million of dividends paid out by Inventio UAB (which negatively impacted the value of investments), as well as EUR 0.54 million of growth in investment value due to the positive performance of business holdings. The companys net profit for the first nine months of this year was EUR 214 000. In assessing the business holdings nine-month revenue trends, we see that the investments to-date and work in sub-Saharan African and South Asian markets are giving results. With the new acquisition in Finland, were strengthening our positions not only in the area of cybersecurity, but also in Northern European markets, said Kazimieras Tonkunas, Managing Partner for the closed-end investment company INVL Technology at INVL Asset Management. NRD Companies, a global information technology and consulting group specialized in governance, digital economy infrastructure development and financial sector modernization, had revenue of EUR 4.27 million in three quarters of this year, similar to the same period of 2016 when revenue was EUR 4.24 million, while its EBITDA improved from a negative EUR 278 000 to a positive EUR 213 000. Andmevara, which operates in Estonia and Moldova, had nine-month revenue of EUR 839 000 and a negative EBITDA of EUR 173 000. Since publication of the companys data began on 1 May 2016, when control of the company was acquired, there are no comparable previous-year figures. From May to the end of September 2016, Andmevaras revenue was EUR 569 000 and its EBITDA was a negative EUR 24 000. The revenues of BAIP and Acena, which work in the area of IT infrastructure, grew 15.1 per cent in the first three quarters of this year compared to the same period last year and totalled EUR 8.14 million. Their EBITDA for the nine-month period more than doubled to EUR 491 000 (versus EUR 202 000 in the same period of 2016). NRD CS, which operates in the area of cybersecurity, had revenue of EUR 1.78 million in January-September, which is almost double last years figure for the same period of EUR 893 000. Its EBITDA, meanwhile, increased 4.5 times, to EUR 235 000, from EUR 52 000 in nine months of 2016. Algoritmu Sistemos, which works in the area of solutions for IT-intensive industries, in the first three quarters of this year had revenue of EUR 1.6 million and EBITDA of EUR 154 000. Since publication of the companys data began on 1 April 2016, when control of the company was acquired, there are no comparable previous-year figures. From April to the end of September 2016, Algoritmu Sistemos had revenue of EUR 1.3 million and EBITDA of EUR 304 000. Following INVL Technologys acquisition in late September of a controlling stake in Deltagon Group Oy, which has offices in Finland and Sweden, INVL Technology businesses operate offices in 11 countries: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Moldova, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Bangladesh. To date INVL Technology has invested in the Norwegian company Norway Registers Development AS with subsidiaries NRD UAB and Etronika UAB in Lithuania, Norway Registers Development East Africa Ltd in Tanzania, Norway Registers Development Rwanda Ltd in Rwanda, NRD Bangladesh Ltd in Bangladesh, and the associated company Infobank Uganda Ltd in Uganda. It has also invested in BAIP UAB with its subsidiary Acena UAB as well as NRD CS UAB and Algoritmu Sistemos UAB, all in Lithuania, Estonias Andmevara AS with its subsidiary Andmevara SRL in Moldova, and Nordic Cyber Security Oy established in September this year in Finland with its subsidiary Deltagon Group Oy. On its receipt of a closed-end investment company license in July 2016, INVL Technologys management was assumed by INVL Asset Management a part of Invalda INVL, one of the leading asset management groups in the Baltics. INVL Technology will operate as a closed-end investment company until 14 July 2026. Johnson City, TN, Nov. 01, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Throughout the month of November, you can help a soldier get their best sleep ever when you shop online at BedInABox.com. Their dream team has joined efforts with Soldiers Angels to offer several ways you can help members of the military during the holiday season. Many times, our deployed troops are often stuck in uncomfortable sleeping arrangements that prevent quality rest. This holiday season, we want to help our American service members sleep better by donating a portion of all online sales to Soldiers Angels as well as offering a special on our American-made Curve Pillow, explains Melissa Thomas, Chief Marketing Officer for BedInABox.com. For those who want to participate and send pillows as gifts, BedInABox.com will offer a 15% discount on each Curve pillow sale and collect the orders until November 30. All pillows will be shipped to the Soldiers Angel team to be included in their holiday stocking drive. To send specific soldiers a pillow, customers can also provide the appropriate military mail address for their loved ones to get a pillow in time for the holidays. Knowing that people care for us while deployed makes us have pride in what we do. Soldiers Angels is helping us feel loved when needed, says SPC Bernal, a service member participating with Soldiers Angels. For over 14 years, Soldiers Angels has grown to be the largest volunteer network of any charity of its kind in the country; 97% of all donations provide aid and comfort to the men and women of the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, their families, and a growing veteran population. Thousands of "Angel" volunteers assist wounded, deployed personnel, veterans and their families throughout the year by collecting and donating wish-list items, sending handwritten letters and organizing community events. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/467370f2-acbf-4b20-8041-3859521fd358 Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ea4c4698-3678-4db8-8ea0-9d800f277810 San Antonio and Dallas, TX, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) and its over 200 member Hispanic Chambers throughout the United States has joined forces with FORMEXICO!, an organization established to offer assistance to Mexico following 3 major earthquakes last month. The earthquakes, ranging in force from 8.2 to 6.1 on the Richter scale, inflicted severe damage in large areas of central and southern Mexico. One of the areas most affected by the earthquakes is the State of Chiapas where over 9000 homes were destroyed and another 50,000 homes damaged. FORMEXICO!, with initial support from the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (SAHCC), the oldest and largest Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in the United States, instantly assisted in airlifting much needed food staples and supplies to Chiapas. They also quickly made available an existing Mexico City 24/7 call center free of charge to Chiapas residents in need of immediate psychological and medical assistance. Without hesitation we placed the full weight of our organization behind this early effort of emergency assistance. said Ramiro Cavazos, President of SAHCC. The Chiapas area, located in far southern Mexico, was in dire need of immediate help, and we felt a strong responsibility to put together an immediate response, and to request the involvement of our parent organization, the USHCC. Providing a national scope, the USHCC immediately agreed to join forces with FORMEXICO! to assist families most in need in the replacing of their homes. This effort centers around the rebuilding of structures costing $9000 USD in the Chiapas communities most in need. Funds will also be raised to purchase early detection seismic sensors for installation in approximately 2000 schools and hospitals. Javier Palomarez, USHCC President & CEO, added, We have always been an organization that believes in commerce with a conscience, and that the United States and Mexico share far more than a border. We are delighted to join this important assistance effort to an area of Mexico most in need. We are asking each of our member chambers, business organizations, and corporate partners to join us in sponsoring one family by raising the funds necessary to rebuild one home. FORMEXICO! is an organization established for this exact purpose by long-time Mexico residents and businessmen George Kauss and Hector Navarrete. It was simply unreasonable to not get involved and do what we could to help this beautiful yet extremely marginalized area of Mexico that was devastated by 3 earthquakes, said George Kauss. The Civil Protection authorities in Chiapas have offered an amazingly organized support structure for our effort that is geared towards reaching those families most in need. With the help of USHCC, its members and corporate supporters, we can make a real difference in Chiapas. About USHCC The USHCC actively promotes the economic growth, development and interests of more than 4.4 million Hispanic-owned businesses, that combined, contribute over $700 billion to the American economy every year. It also advocates on behalf of 260 major American corporations and serves as the umbrella organization for more than 200 local chambers and business associations nationwide. For more information, visit ushcc.com. Follow us on Twitter @USHCC. About SAHCC The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is the first organization of its type in the United States, having been originally chartered as the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in 1929. It is the largest Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in the United States. Additional information can be found at www.sahcc.org. About FORMEXICO! FORMEXICO! is a bi-national effort dedicated to identifying large-scale supportive resources on both sides of the border and focusing them on areas of greatest need in times of emergency. Visit www.formexico.org for more information and to make a donation to the Chiapas earthquake relief effort. Attachments: A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f1ee66a6-0996-417a-99c1-fad2af8838a1 OAKVILLE, Ontario, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Saint Jean Carbon Inc. (Saint Jean or the Company) (TSX VENTURE:SJL) (OTCQB:TORVF), a carbon science company engaged in the design and build of green energy storage, green energy creation and green re-creation through the use of carbon materials is pleased to announce the Company will be participating in two Collaborative Research and Development grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The first grant for $350,000 is for the continued collaborative research and development of modification and scale-up of graphene for supercapacitor applications . The Company will work with the University of Waterloo to develop the supercapacitor. A supercapacitor made with graphene is very similar to a graphene lithium-ion battery, expect for the supercapacitor battery may have a higher rate of charge and discharge . The terms for the grant are divided over three years based on availability of funds; In addition to the funds provided by NSERC the Company will provide $100,000 per year to the University and $50,000 of in-kind support through the supply of materials, processing and engineering. If the project creates intellectual property, knowhow or patents from the collaborative work. The Company and the University engineer(s) will share in the ownership on a 50/50 bases. The second grant for $60,000 over two years to the University of Western Ontario is for the collaborative research and development of luminescent carbon dots for multi-applications. The Company will work with Western University to further the research that was started last year with the development of carbon dots for a variety of applications (as previously announced in press release dated December 20, 2016). The many applications also include the use of dots for solar panels, as the Company continuies to develop energy storage solutions, energy creation is also a very important research field. The term of the grant is for two years. In addition to the funds provided by NSERC the Company will also contribute $15,000 per year to the University and $19,720 per year of in-kind support through the supply of materials, processing and engineering. If the project creates intellectual property, knowhow or patents from the collaborative work. The Company and the University will share in the ownership on a 50/50 bases. Paul Ogilvie, CEO, commented: The continued support of the NSERC via the University of Western Ontario & Waterloo is very valuable to the Company; this support helps greatly as we forge forward with the research & development of carbon material for the green energy storage, green energy creation and green recreation. The Company will provide details of the research results as they become available. About Saint Jean Carbon Saint Jean is a publicly traded carbon science company, with specific interests in energy storage and green energy creation and green re-creation, with holdings in graphite mining and lithium claims in the province of Quebec in Canada. For the latest information on Saint Jeans properties and news please refer to the website: http://www.saintjeancarbon.com/ On behalf of the Board of Directors Saint Jean Carbon Inc. Paul Ogilvie, CEO and Director 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. FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, concerning Saint Jeans business and affairs. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects or does not expect, intends budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates 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. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, and are naturally subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances that may cause actual results to differ materially. The forward-looking statements in this news release assume, inter alia, that the conditions for completion of the Transaction, including regulatory and shareholder approvals, if necessary, will be met. Although Saint Jean believes that the expectations represented in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these expectations will prove to be correct. Statements of past performance should not be construed as an indication of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors, including those discussed above, could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Any such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is provided as of the date of this press release, and Saint Jean assumes no obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Information Contact : Email: info@saintjeancarbon.com Tel: (905) 844-1200 jedit wrote: Politician: Now that we are finally cleaning up the industrial pollution in the bay, we must start making the bay more accessible to the public for recreational purposes. Reporter: But if we increase public access to the bay, it will soon become polluted again. Politician: Not true. The public did not have access to the bay, and it got polluted. Therefore, if and when the public is given access to the bay, it will not get polluted. Which one of the following most closely parallels the flawed pattern of reasoning in the politicians reply to the reporter? A- If there had been a full moon last night, the tide would be higher than usual today. Since the tide is no higher than usual, there must not have been a full moon last night. B- The detective said that whoever stole the money would be spending it conspicuously by now. Jones is spending money conspicuously, so he must be the thief. C- When prisoners convicted of especially violent crimes were kept in solitary confinement, violence in the prisons increased. Therefore, violence in the prisons will not increase if such prisoners are allowed to mix with fellow prisoners. D- To get a drivers license, one must pass a written test. Smith passed the written test, so she must have gotten a drivers license. E- In order to like abstract art, you have to understand it. Therefore, in order to understand abstract art, you have to like it. This is an old question with no timer in the original thread. I got it wrong and wanted to share here to see if I can find my mistake. If increase public access > then bay soon polluted Not bay soon polluted > then not increase public access. No public access > bay polluted Public access > then bay not get polluted In 700+ GMAT critical reasoning questions, applying some formal LSAT-style logic can be beneficial. For conditional statements a sufficient condition leads to a necessary condition.This can be diagrammed as Sufficient > Necessary, and from this information, one and only one inference can be made - the contrapositive - which is derived by reversing and negating the terms, e.g. Not Necessary > Not Sufficient. Let's apply this to the reporter in our scenario:Now, the correct contrapositive statement would be:In response, the politician introduces a new conditional statement asserting:However, the politician only does half of the contrapositive, incorrectly negating the terms to produce the conclusion:Now, diagram the answer choices to find one that matches this incorrect negation flaw.A- If full moon last night > then tide higher than usual; Not tide higher than usual > then full moon last night, is a correct contrapositive, so eliminate choice A.B- If stole money > then spending conspicuously by now; Jones is spending money conspicuously > then he must be the thief, is an incorrect reversal of the terms rather than an incorrect negation of the terms, so eliminate choice B.C- If violent prisoners kept in solitary confinement > then increase prison violence; Not violent prisoners kept in solitary confinement > then not increase prison violence, is an incorrect negation that matches the flaw in the given argument. Keep choice C.D- If drivers license > then pass a written test; If Smith passed written test > then drivers license, is an incorrect reversal rather than an incorrect negation, so eliminate choice D.E- If like abstract art > then understand it; If understand abstract art > then like it, is an incorrect reversal rather than an incorrect negation, so eliminate choice E.The correct answer is choice C._________________ As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ By PTI: (Eds: Updating toll) Srinagar, Nov 2 (PTI) Two Army soldiers were killed and a CRPF jawan suffered injuries during an encounter that broke out between militants and security forces in Pulwama district of south Kashmir today, police said. The security forces gunned down a militant in the encounter at Samboora in Pulwama, officials said. Security forces launched a cordon-and-search operation in Samboora village of Pampore area this evening following information about the presence of some militants there, the officials said. advertisement As the security forces were conducting searches, the militants opened fire, they said, adding that a gunbattle ensued as the forces retaliated. Two Army soldiers were killed in the operation, the officials said. A CRPF jawan too suffered injuries. PTI SKL MIJ SMN SMN --- ENDS --- By PTI: anniversary Lahore, Nov 2 (PTI) Over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims from India today reached Pakistan to attend the 549th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev. Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Chairman Siddiqul Farooq welcomed the Sikh pilgrims at Wagah Railway Station. Soon after their arrival, the pilgrims left for Janum Asthan of Baba Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib, the Dawn reported. advertisement The birth anniversary celebrations of Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, will commence from November 2. The main function of the festival will be held at Nankana Sahib on November 4, where the pilgrims will perform sacred rituals. After that, the devotees will leave for Punja Sahib, Hassanabdal. They will return to Lahore on November 9. The pilgrims will leave for India on November 11. Farooq said that arrangements for the celebrations have been finalised by the board and assured that ETPB will provide foolproof security, transport, accommodation and other facilities to the visiting pilgrims. Speaking on the occasion, group leader Sardar Gurmeet Singh said Sikh pilgrims have come to Pakistan with the message of love, peace, friendship and harmony. "Pakistan is the land of Sikh Gurus and Sikhs love this land. We are always welcomed with love and it is a true example of Sikh-Muslim friendship," he maintained. Earlier in the day, Pakistan High Commission in Delhi issued visas to over 2,600 Indian Sikhs for the pilgrimage to Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal. The visas were issued "in line with the Pakistan governments efforts to promote religious tourism and people- to-people interactions," the foreign office said in a statement. Every year, devotees from all over the world gather at Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassanabdal to celebrate Baba Guru Nanaks birth anniversary. The celebrations last for more than a week during which sacred rituals are performed at the Gurdwara and sweets and langar are offered, irrespective of religious orientation. PTI PMS --- ENDS --- New York, Oct 28(Just Earth News): Addressing lawmakers in the Central African Republic, United Nations Secretary-General AntAnio Guterres on Friday stressed the international community's commitment to helping tackle the myriad challenges plaguing the conflict-torn country, and strongly defended the role of the UN peacekeeping force there. I wish to pay tribute to the people's courage, resilience and determination to overcome great adversity, Guterres told the National Assembly in the capital, Bangui, on the final day of his visit to the country. The task of solving this crisis lies first and foremost in the hands of the people of the Central African Republic. Nobody is in a better position to help the country than its own citizens, he added. The UN chief noted that the country's enormous difficulties include insecurity, a humanitarian crisis and slow progress towards development. Armed groups are fragmenting and multiplying. One in four Central Africans is displaced. Development programmes are needed for neglected rural areas. Religion and ethnic origin have been manipulated to create division among communities, severely polarizing a fragile country. The Central African Republic is at risk of sliding back into open inter-communal violence, Guterres said. The UN integrated peacekeeping mission there, known by its French acronym, MINUSCA, will use force when the State's stability is threatened, and each time civilians need protection, but does not favour any religious or ethnic group, he said, adding that their actions can assist in creating a space to build peace through dialogue. However, he said: Nowhere in the world has the use of force alone resolved a conflict. We therefore need not only more peacekeepers, but more political initiatives for peace. Calling on donors to fulfil their commitments to provide humanitarian aid, he stressed the importance of supporting the country's recovery and peacebuilding plan. The National Assembly has a vital role to play in ensuring the efficient delivery of government services, not just in the capital, but at the local level, he said. We are all committed to the return to peace, he said, noting that a cessation of hostilities is undoubtedly important, but there is also a need to bring peace to people's hearts. The Central African Republic has suffered for far too long. As representatives of the people, you have a central part to play in turning the situation around, he told the lawmakers. Noting the historical generosity of the Central Africans who, over the years, have opened their borders to refugees from neighboring countries, the Secretary-General pledged that the UN would continue to accompany and support Central Africans. According to his spokesman, Guterres then travelled to the PK5 area, a traditionally Muslim part of Bangui that has been the site of violence against the community. He listened to the concerns of community leaders, including issues regarding safety and discrimination, as well as the lack of economic opportunities for young people. He also heard from local Christian leaders who spoke of reconciliation. The Secretary-General underscored his deep belief that religious conflicts are often the result of political manipulation and not religious differences, noting that for years, Christians and Muslims had coexisted peacefully in the country. The Secretary-General then held a roundtable with youth leaders and a separate session with women leaders. On his way to Paris, during a stopover in Yaounde, the Secretary-General is expected to meet with the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, to discuss a number of regional and national issues, the spokesman said. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe Source: www.justearthnews.com According to the UN World Food Programme (WFP), on Monday night, a humanitarian convoy of 49 trucks, 41 of which carried food items, reached Eastern Ghouta in rural Damascus, one of the four de-escalated areas where almost 95 per cent of Syria's besieged population lives. Each food ration, containing rice, bulgur wheat, vegetable oil, flour, lentils, peas, salt and sugar, aims to provide 40,000 people in Kafr Batna and Saqba areas for one month. Specialized nutrition supplies have also delivered to about 13,000 children, especially those under five years old for preventing and curing acute malnutrition. There are 420,000 people living in 10 besieged areas in Syria, with the vast majority in Eastern Ghouta and facing severe problems to receive enough food. WFP said that the only entry point to the besieged enclave, the Al-Wafideen checkpoint, was fully closed, which caused less humanitarian access and doubled food price in the area. Meanwhile, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) sent six trucks of humanitarian supplies as part of the convoy. The agency's trucks included health supplies like oral rehydration solutions, medicines for children, vitamins, midwifery and pediatric kits. Hygiene kits, nutrition supplements and high energy biscuits were also including in the delivery. The deterioration of the humanitarian situation in East Ghouta is jeopardizing the health status of boys, girls and mothers. Fran Equiza, the UNICEF Representative in Syria, who participated in the convoy said: Children and mothers are hit hardest by the dire living conditions in the besieged towns of East Ghouta. Photo: UNICEF/UN066024/Almohibany Source: www.justearthnews.com Zaghari-Ratcliffe is currently serving a five-year prison sentence, but is also facing additional charges that could extend her sentence past 20 years. The exact nature of the charges has not been made known to the defendant, her lawyer, or her family in either case. And Johnson referred to the fact of this secrecy in his recent comments, calling it extraordinary, incredible. However, this kind of opacity is actually common in cases against Iranian political prisoners, and a number of US nationals have also been condemned to multi-year prison sentences in the Islamic Republic without having ever had their charges read to them. The case against Zaghari-Ratcliffe appears to have been based simply upon her dual nationality and her affiliation, however loose, with British media. Early in her career, Zaghari-Ratcliffe worked for BBC Media Action, a charitable arm of the British Broadcasting Company. Her husband has explained that her work largely consisted of making travel arrangements for people who to receive training in the pursuit of journalistic activities in areas with limited press freedom, like Iran. Iranian authorities transformed this aspect of her background into claims that she had personally trained journalists on behalf of BBC Persian, with the express intention of helping them to topple the Iranian regime. In fact, Zaghari-Ratcliffe never worked for BBC Persian at all, and she had little contact with actual journalists. Unfortunately, Johnsons comments on her case failed to fully discredit the Iranian account, despite being aimed at defending her. She was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it, he was quoted as saying, apparently accepting Tehrans account of the role she had played while rejecting Tehrans interpretation of that role and its purpose. This is not the only perceived shortcoming in Johnsons statement. According to the Independent, his remarks also included apparent justification for the governments former silence on the case. The Foreign Secretary argued that loud, public campaigns for the release of Western nationals in the Middle East can be counterproductive. As evidence, he pointed to multiple arrests of US nationals, some of which took place after public outcry regarding other cases. Interestingly, Iranian authorities themselves often tell the families of political prisoners not to go public with their cases. This advice tends to be supported by the claim that the cases will be quickly resolved if the families remain silent. Yet in many of those cases, the families end up speaking out months or even years later because their loved ones were falsely convicted in spite of the silence, or because they remained in detention with no sign of progress toward any end. In response to Johnsons remarks about US nationals being taken into custody as reprisal for public campaigns over other cases, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee directly asked the Foreign Secretary whether this meant the Iranians were hostage-takers. Im not going to go as far as to say that, he replied, according to the Independent. While Johnson apparently overstated the extent of Zaghari-Ratcliffes association with the BBC, her husbands account of much looser connections are likely enough on their own to justify her arrest in the minds of hardline Iranian authorities. The renewed attention for Zaghari-Ratcliffes case comes as the UK is also dealing with reports of a targeted Iranian campaign against 152 employees and contributors of BBC Persian. Tehran recently passed a measure barring each of these individuals from conducting any financial transactions in the Islamic Republic, as well as barring any who were in the country from leaving. This prompted the BBC to file a complaint with the United Nations, to which to UN special rapporteurs issued a joint statement on Friday, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran. The Iranian authorities appear to regard any affiliation with the BBC as a crime, the statement read in part. It was authored by special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye and special rapporteur on Irans human rights situation Asma Jahangir. It went on to note that the harassment of BBC Persian reporters was clearly aimed at interfering with legitimate journalistic work. Two days earlier, Jahangir had also presented the UN with her semi-annual rapport on the overall human rights situation in Iran, as noted by CHRI. In it she said that that situation was generally deteriorating, even though there were some hopeful signs, particularly in the form of public statements from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. But these statements have been repeated since his campaign for election to his first term in 2013, yet no recognizable action has been taken to follow up on them. The simultaneous crackdowns on journalists and dual nationals are emblematic of the Rouhani administrations inaction and the regimes terrible human rights record, especially considering that Rouhani himself had repeatedly called for a freer and more open Iranian society while promising that Iranian expatriates could return home without fear of reprisal. Neither the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case nor the recent financial and travel bans on BBC journalists are unique. In fact, a recent video report by IranWire detailed the harassment that BBC journalists had been experiencing for eight years, since shortly before BBC Persian was formally banned. Another report from the same outlet looked specifically at recent instances of harassment, closely coinciding with the new measures and the broader media crackdown. Some of the worst examples include detention and intimidation of journalists families, including elderly parents and children as young as 10 years old. The younger sister of one journalist, Saeedeh Hashemi, was held in solitary confinement for 17 days and forced to call her sister from prison in order to urge her to either give up working for the BBC or begin spying on Western institutions for the Iranian regime. Others have received death threats and threats of termination from their jobs, and IranWire states that there is no sign of this pressure letting up even in the wake of the international attention brought to it by the BBCs formal complaint. However, somewhat contrary to Boris Johnsons remarks on the Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, there is no clear evidence that the newfound attention is causing that pressure to intensify, either. In any event, the BBC complaint and the coverage provided by foreign and dissident outlets like BBC Persian and the PMOI-affiliated Iran National Television helps to expose the extent of Irans efforts to control the flow of media. A CHRI report on Monday pointed out that Mohammad Yazdi, a member of Irans Guardian Council had made notably provocative statements about the extent of the limitations on dissent in Iranian media. He declared that reformist journalists are against the very foundations of the Islamic Republic of Iran if they question a finding by the council, which is tasked with vetting legislation and political candidates for compliance with Islamic law and the will of the supreme leader. He added that the state will stand against them, presumably implying that such journalists could be charged with national security crimes including those that carry the death penalty, like enmity against God. Yazdi was responding to criticism levied by independent journalists against the decision to prevent a duly elected individual from taking his seat on the Yazd city council, on the grounds that he is a member of the Zoroastrian religious minority. IranWire discussed the incident in greater detail, noting that the Iranian constitution ostensibly allows religious minorities to hold office, but also that the Guardian Council has free rein to interpret the constitution in any way it pleases. Strictly speaking, the constitution only allows religious minorities to hold office if they are representing a region in which their religious identity is predominant. IranWire argues that this limitation was imposed by design, on the understanding that religious minorities would shrink in a country where they are systemically discriminated against and where conversion from Islam to another faith is illegal and even punishable by death. On Wednesday, Huffington Post published an article looking at the broader phenomenon behind the disenfranchisement of the Zoroastrian city council candidate, Sepanta Niknam. The article describes how Iranian schools strive to erase minority cultural identities and languages and how religious and ethnic minorities are routinely deprived of civil rights, with the intention of gradually eradicating those minorities. It goes on to explain that this Persianization project has apparently bred more protests by minority groups, putting Iran at growing risk of being the latest country to be fractured by separatist movements. Although it is illegal to own satellite receiver equipment, millions of Iranian households use it to receive banned television networks. When equipment is confiscated by regime authorities, it is often replaced. Along with the recipients of independent and foreign information, the broadcasters themselves have been attacked by he Iranian regime. It is reported that the repression of journalists has escalated over the last few years, coinciding with greater suppression of activists and minority groups. This makes dissenting news outlets more important than ever, as they not only contrast Irans attempt to control the media, but also expose the protests and suppressive activities that go unreported in state-run media. Iran National Television (INTV), or Simay Azadi, as it is known in Farsi, will begin its 22nd public campaign to raise funds for its operations on Friday, November 3rd. INTV is a voice for the Iranian people, and is available to those households that defy the regimes ban on satellite television equipment. Just as the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) have been harassed, interrogated, and reportedly tortured and even executed, so have contributors to INTV for their journalist activities. In fact, violence against INTV journalists is conjoined with violence against PMOI activists, because INTV covers popular protests, which the Iranian regime sees as an affront. INTV has taken on such controversial topics as exposing the conditions of Iranian prisons, in particular the political wards, and the network has become an outlet for Iranian political prisoners to voice their continued opposition to the regime. INTV has grown in popularity among Iranians who believe in a democratic future for their country. Its previous pledge drive ran for 40 consecutive hours in mid-January, and thousands of people, not only in Iran, but throughout the world, contributed to its efforts. Contributions ranged from just a few dollars to many thousands, which displays the socioeconomic diversity of INTVs audience. The pledge drive also highlighted the peoples conflict with the regime over attempts to restrict access to information and domestic communication. On several social media outlets including Facebook, Twitter, and Telegram, as well the networks 84 phone lines, viewers and supporters continued the dialogue regarding INTVs mission. Callers praised INTV as the voice of the voiceless. They cited specific topics of reporting as reasons for their support of INTV, which included the escalation in human rights abuses throughout the country, as well as the enforced public silence over the past crimes of the regime, such as the execution of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988. INTV has played a major role in the campaign for full public disclosure of the details behind the massacre that targeted the PMOI and all organized resistance to the new regime. This past year has seen a dramatic increase in public dialogue regarding that incident, following the release of an audio recording of Ayatollah Ali Hossein Montazeri criticizing his then-fellow regime officials over their role in the killings. While the government attempted to suppress the recording, INTV circulated the extensive calls for justice for the victims, and exposed the locations of mass graves of the victims. INTV also reported on the protests that emerged, and the regimes disdainful response. Most shocking was Mostafa Pourmohammadi, the Justice Minister during Hassan Rouhanis first term as president, who said that he was proud to have helped carry out Gods command of death for the MEK. With renewed public awareness of this issue, another disconnect between the Iranian government and its people has arisen. INTVs contributors and its volunteer staff are prepared to play an important role in the months and years to come in exposing the peoples antipathy to the regime in spite of the risks that may accompany this work. This risk is present for all those who attempt to convey information to the public about the growth and progress of the Iranian Resistance movement and popular dissent. Escalation of governmental crackdown will not silence the dissidence of the Iranian people, especially when there is still an outlet through which they can voice their dissent against the regime, and also see the results of their work as activists. INTVs viewership is growing, and it is hopeful that it will soon be able to guarantee its position as an outlet for another year, with the contributions from its 22nd pledge drive. By PTI: (Eds: Corrects slug and inserts a new last para) New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) BJP president Amit Shah today condoled the death of a leader of the partys youth wing, Gowhar Hussain Bhat, who was allegedly killed by militants in Jammu and Kashmirs Shopian. The body of Bhat, aged 30, was recovered from an orchard in Kiloora with his throat slit. A resident of Bongam area in Shopian, he was the district president of the Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha. advertisement Shah said terrorists cannot stop the youth from choosing a better future. "Pained to learn about the brutal murder of our @BJYM District President Gowhar Ahmed in Shopian, J&K. My deepest condolences to his family. Terrorists must realise that they cannot stop the youth of the valley from choosing a better future for themselves," Shah wrote in a series of tweets. BJP stands firmly with the family of martyr Gowhar Ahmed in this moment of immense grief, Shah tweeted. PTI KR JC today expressed his pain PTI KR 37 replies 137 retweets 337 likes Reply 37 Retweet 137 Like 337 Direct message Amit Shah?Verified account @AmitShah 3m3 minutes ago More 29 replies 139 retweets 333 likes Reply 29 Retweet 139 Like 333 Direct message Amit Shah?Verified account @AmitShah 3m3 minutes ago More JC SK SK --- ENDS --- The previously unseen document, which was released along with 470,000 files recovered in the raid on Osama Bin Ladens Abbottabad compound in Pakistan in May of 2011. The newly-available material provides invaluable insights into the terrorist organization that struck America on September 11, 2001. The Long War Journal, which chronicles the U.S. war on terror, and has advocated for the release of bin Ladens secret cache since 2011, arguing that such transparency would help to better inform the American people, experts and policymakers. Translations by the Long War Journal have shown how Iran offered the Saudi brothers in al-Qaeda everything they needed if they were to carry out strikes on U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This extended to money, arms and training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, the documents reveal. Those who have seen the documents say they provided logistical assistance to al-Qaeda, which facilitated travel for operatives, and provided safe houses for others. Tehran provided safe-haven for prominent ideologue Abu Hafs al-Mauritani and his followers in Iran, prior to the 9/11 attacks. Callum Paton, staff writer at Newsweek specializing in North Africa and the Middle East, says in an article that, Relations were often fractious between the Sunni al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran, even if both recognized they were never in open war that their interests intersect on the issue of their shared classification as an enemy of America. He adds, At one point Al-Qaeda contacted Ayatollah Khamenei directly, demanding the release of prisoners in Iranian custody. Previously released files show that Bin Laden cautioned against being overly antagonistic towards Iran which he described as al-Qaedas main artery for funds, personnel and communication. C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo said last month at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, Its an open secret and not classified information that there have been relationships, there are connections. There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside al-Qaeda. Pompeo added that the relationships between al-Qaeda and Iran, as outlined in the documents released by the C.I.A., will continue be under close surveillance. "The difference between the UPA and NDA - 'The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business'," Arun Jaitley tweeted. That was a response to a tweet posted by Rahul Gandhi, which he wrote based on a Mirza Ghalib couplet. By Mail Today Bureau: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday hit back at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's criticism of India moving up in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business ranking saying the UPA's ease of doing corruption has been replaced by NDA's ease of doing business. "The difference between the UPA and NDA - 'The ease of doing corruption has been replaced by the ease of doing business'," he tweeted. advertisement His response was directed towards Gandhi's tweet earlier in Urdu based on Mirza Ghalib couplet to say the finance minister was deluding himself. "Sabko maloom hai 'ease of doing business' ki haqeeqat, lekin khud ko khush rakhne ke liye 'Dr Jaitley' ye khayal achha hai (everybody knows the reality of ease of doing business, but this thought, Dr Jaitley, is good to keep yourself happy)," Gandhi tweeted. The World Bank report, released on Tuesday, upgraded India's ranking from 130 to 100 this year. Addressing a press conference soon after the ranking was made public, Jaitley had said India is the only major country named for pursuing structural reforms. His colleague, union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, also attacked Gandhi and asked, "How much does Rahul Gandhi understand the ease of doing business? Does he know that it is not an event sponsored by the government or the BJP but a study undertaken by the World Bank?" Meanwhile, department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) secretary Ramesh Abhishek said the government is working with the World Bank to recognise over 200 reforms that will help propel India into the top-50 bracket in ease of doing business. "We have implemented 122 reforms this year," Abhishek said on the sidelines of an event in Mumbai on Wednesday. WATCH | Rahul Gandhi launches scathing attack on BJP in poll-bound Gujarat, calls GST Gabbar Singh Tax --- ENDS --- In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask you enter in the text you see in the image below so we can confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation. Taking a 'prima-facie' view, the Supreme Court observed that the Lieutenant General (L-G) seems to have primacy under the Constitution. By Anusha Soni: A constitution bench of the Supreme Court today started hearing the clutch of petitions regarding the power tussle between the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government and the Centre. Taking a 'prima-facie' view, the Supreme Court observed that the Lieutenant General (L-G) seems to have primacy under the Constitution and the Delhi government cannot act without L-G's concurrence. advertisement The bench noted that Constitution has limited Delhi government's powers and it cannot have a say on public order, police and land. The court observed that difference of opinion between the Delhi government and the Centre "is to be referred to the President for final view". The Delhi government, which has challenged the Delhi High Court's verdict that the Lieutenant Governor is the administrative head of the national capital, argued that constitutional provisions have to be construed harmoniously and elected government must have some sanctity. The Lieutenant Governor cannot exercise his powers to frustrate constitutional mandate to an elected government, the Delhi government told the Supreme Court today. The Delhi government will continue with its arguments in the court tomorrow. In August last year, the Delhi High Court upheld the administrative powers of the Lieutenant Governor in matters of public order, land, police and services including power to appoint civil servants. The high court ruled that Delhi is a Union Territory and the administrative powers of the Delhi L-G continue to be supreme. The Arvind Kejriwal government moved the Supreme Court and sought setting up of a constitution bench to hear its appeal against the Delhi High Court verdict on who heads the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi. --- ENDS --- The Delhi government said its power tussle with the LG needs to be settled at the earliest. By Harish V Nair: The Arvind Kejriwal government on Thursday alleged before the Supreme Court that the Centre through the L-G of Delhi had completely paralysed the function of the government and the situation was such that ministers have to touch the feet of bureaucrats for an advice or get things done. It said the Delhi government vs Lt Governor power tussle needs to be settled at the earliest by clearly defining the boundaries as it was effecting the day-to-day governance of the national Capital. advertisement During the hearing however, the bench remarked that Delhi being a union territory, the Kejriwal government did not have absolute powers and needs the L-G's nod on a large number of matters especially police, public order and land. It also said the governor cannot sit on files beyond a reasonable period and needs to take quick decisions. "Delhi High Court says the L-G of Union Territory of Delhi has greater power than the President and a state governor. That is completely inconceivable," senior counsel Gopal Subramanium representing the Delhi government argued before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra. The bench had begun adjudicating the raging turf war between the Delhi government and the Centre. Kejriwal government has challenged the August 4, 2016 judgment of the Delhi High Court that declared the L-G as the "administrative head" and ruled that he is not bound by the aid and advice of the council of ministers. The Kejriwal government is seeking a judicial declaration on the boundaries of the constitutional relationship between the Delhi government and the Centre, in administering the Capital. During the hearing the bench gave several hints that it was of the view that a harmonious interpretation of Article 239AA was needed to fulfill constitutional mandate for a democratic elected government in Delhi. It will decide on which all issues the aid and advice of the council of ministers need to be taken by the LG and also define the nature of his discretionary powers. Subramanium argued that the L-G is only a figurative head who is bound to act only as per advice of the CM-led council of ministers. "Delhi HC has erroneously concluded that Lieutenant Governor of Delhi is not bound by the aid and advice of the council of ministers. This is against the basic features of the Constitution," government sources said when asked what the line of argument would be. Subramanium also argued that HC's conclusion was result of misreading of the 69th amendment which incorporated Article 239AA into the Constitution in 1991 that gave special powers to Delhi. WATCH | Setback for Kejriwal govt as SC says Delhi govt cant act without L-G's concurrence advertisement --- ENDS --- Apples well publicized iPhone X finally went on sale in pre-orders last week. The device will be available in Apple stores this Friday, November 3. With a starting price of $999, the iPhone X has the highest-price of any iPhone ever offered. Yet Apple said demand for its latest smartphone has so far been off the charts. One of the most-talked about features of the iPhone X is the new front and back-facing cameras. Apple says its TrueDepth technology greatly improves performance for photographs and video. The camera is also trained to recognize faces and expressions. The company says this gives users power to open up the phone just by looking at it. The new Face ID recognition system replaces the Touch ID on other Apple devices that used a fingerprint to unlock the phone. Other smartphones including the latest Samsung Galaxy models also use facial and eye recognition technology to start up the devices. But Apple says its Face ID system operates differently. It works by projecting more than 30,000 dots on the face of users to create a kind of map. An infrared camera then reads these marks to create an image that can be confirmed as having the same appearance. Apple says the system is also designed to continually learn. Each time the face is used to unlock the phone, it is supposed to note any changes, such as facial hair or the person getting older. The system can then remember the changes to keep recognizing the person over time. The company claims its facial recognition is even secure enough to process payments through its Apple Pay service. Many reviews of the iPhone X have been published recently. Some of them included tests of the Face ID system. Reviewers reported successful tests in which the phone recognized the face in different situations and unlocked the device. But most reviewers also said the feature did not work perfectly all the time. One fairly common failure was that the Face ID sometimes did not unlock the iPhone X if the user wore a certain kind of sunglasses. Not surprisingly, wearing any kind of disguise even one covering just part of the face caused Face ID to fail. It was found to work correctly when the user was wearing headphones or a hat. The Associated Presss Anick Jesdanun reported that Face ID also worked in most bright sunlight, although not every time. It also worked in the dark, thanks to the use of infrared sensors rather than just the standard camera, Jesdanun wrote. Thats important when you wake up in the middle of the night. Several attempts were made to trick Face ID into unlocking the phone with a photo of a person instead of a real face. The iPhone X was able to pass these tests by knowing the difference between a photo and a face. Wall Street Journal reporter Joanna Stern tried something a little different. She went to a mask maker and asked for a recreation of her face to see if the iPhone X would be fooled. It was not. Face ID knew it was somebodys face, but it wasnt duped into thinking it was me, she wrote. However, Stern carried out another test involving 8-year-old identical triplets. In this case the phone was tricked. After just one of the boys registered his face, his two brothers were happily able to unlock the phone. Apple has admitted that Face ID could fail when used with young people who look very much alike. The company says the phone can also be fooled by faces of children under 13 years old. Wired magazines David Pierce noted that Face ID does not seem to recognize a face from all positions. My phone's about an arm's length away on my desk, and I have to lean in and stare every time I want it to turn on, he wrote. This can make it impossible for a user to quickly and quietly unlock a phone without being seen by others. This is one reason some reviewers suggested Apple could have kept the fingerprint unlocking system on the latest iPhones. But Pierce found a favorite part of the Face ID was one of its privacy tools. When someone held the phone, it hid any messages until the device could confirm the users face. Apple says its research shows there is only a one in a million chance of another person being able to unlock someone elses iPhone X with Face ID. The company has promised the system will become the new gold standard for all facial recognition. Im Bryan Lynn. Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English. His story was based on reports from the Associated Press, Reuters, and wired.com. George Grow was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story off the charts idiom. extremely popular or successful feature n. an interesting or important part of something unlock v. to free from restrictions; to make available for use project v. to cause something to appear on a surface review n. media report in which the writer gives an opinion about something disguise n. clothes or other things people wear to not be recognized mask n. covering that hides or protects the face dupe v. to trick or fool someone into doing something lean v. move the body in a particular direction stare v. look at something continuously 3 Heavily armed police guard the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in New York, Oct. 31, 2017. New York City's always-surreal Halloween parade marched on Tuesday evening under the shadow of real fear, hours after a truck attack killed several people on a busy city bike path in what authorities called an act of terror. S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Americans are using this FREE kit to protect their retirement accounts (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Americans are using this FREE kit to protect their retirement accounts (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Americans are using this FREE kit to protect their retirement accounts (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit As expected, gaming company Razer is launching its first smartphone. While there are plenty of great phones with speedy processors and high-resolution displays on the market, the Razer Phone has a few special features that help it stand out. On paper it looks like a pretty great phone for folks that need a high-performance mobile device especially given that itll sell for $700 when it hits the streets on November 17, at a time when rivals are charging as much as $1000 for their top-tier phones. In practice though, this is the first phone from Razer unless you count the Robin, which was a mid-range phone produced by Nextbit in 2015, before Razer acquired that company earlier this year. So itll probably be worth keeping an eye out for real-world reviews of the phones to see if it lives up to its promise. The Razer Phone has most of the features youd expect from a high-end phone in 2017, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 64GB of UFS storage plus a microSD card slot, stereo speakers, and dual rear cameras. But the phone also has a few special features. Its 2560 x 1440 pixel screen is a 5.72 inch IGZO display with a 120 Hz screen refresh rate and wide color gamut. Each speaker has its own dedicated amplifier and the phone supports Dolby Atmos audio certified by THX. It also has 8GB of RAM, an 8MP front camera, and a 4,000 mAh battery that the company says offers up to 7 hours of battery life while playing Hearthstone, up to 12.5 hours of run time while watching movies, and more than 63 hours of run time while listening to music. The phone also supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 4+ technology which lets you go from 0 to 85 percent charge in one hour. The Razer Phones rear cameras each have 12MP sensors, but one has a telephoto lens, while the other has a wide angle lens, allowing you to capture a variety of different types of shots. While this isnt technically the first phone with a 120 Hz screen (Sharps been selling some for years), Razer says its phone is the first with a 120 Hz Ultramotion display, which means it includes Razers new G-Sync like technology which synchronizes the phones GPU and display for optimal performance and battery life. At this point you probably dont need a phone with a 120 Hz display or Dolby Atmos sound to play most Android games. But those features could pave the way for a next-gen gaming experience, and they could certainly be useful for using the phone with a virtual reality headset. Razer says its also already working with game developers to get them to offer mobile games that offer higher frame rates to take advantage of the phones screen. The phone has a design thats more than a little reminiscent of the Nextbit Robin if you outfitted that phone with a bigger screen and speakers that are said to be among the loudest on a smartphone. The bezels are a bit large by 2017 standards, but you need something to hold onto while playing mobile games, I guess. Oh, and there are a few things the phone does not have: a headphone jack, waterproof design, or wireless charging. The phone does have a 24-bit DAC that comes into play if you do plug in USB headphones though. Other features include 802.11ac WIFi, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, and support for GSM networks (including AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States). The Razer Phone will ship with Android Nougat software, but an Android Oreo update is coming in early 2018. And the phone features near stock Android software, plus a special version of the popular Nova Launcher for its home screen and app launcher. You can reserve the phone at the Razer website, and Razer is also showing some of the first accessories including a basic case, a rugged case, and Bluetooth earbuds. November 2, 2017 10:45 Smoking cigarettes may cause Crohn's disease, a new study confirms. As The Daily Mail reports, for the first time, researchers found exposure to chemicals in tobacco may increase the risk of developing the agonising condition. South Korean scientists discovered mice who inhaled cigarette smoke showed signs of intestinal inflammation - a sign of Crohn's disease. Cigarette smoking activates specific white blood cells in the lung, which might later move to the colon, triggering bowel inflammation, they found. It provides another reason for smokers to give up the notoriously bad habit, along with their increased risk of lung cancer and heart disease. New treatments, or even a cure, for the debilitating bowel condition may be in the horizon due to the breakthrough findings. Previous research has suggested smoking significantly increases the risk of Crohn's disease. But the mechanism was unknown. One explanation hypothesised was inflammation in the lungs caused by smoking could have a knock-on effect in the intestine. A team of researchers at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, have now confirmed the initial suspicions in tests on rodents. Confirming suspicions Professor Hyunsu Bae, lead researcher, said: 'The airways and the intestinal system have a lot in common. 'Interestingly, in traditional Korean medicine, a connection between the lung and the large intestine has long been emphasised. 'Crohn's disease is more likely to occur in people with airway diseases, suggesting inflammation in the lungs is linked with inflammation in the gut.' Professor Jinju Kim, co-author, added: 'Smokers, especially those who also have bowel disease, should reduce their smoking.' How was the study carried out? For the study, published in Frontiers in Immunology, the mice were exposed to 20 cigarettes a day, six days a week, for a few weeks. Using tests, the researchers then examined the presence of inflammation in the mice's lungs and bowels. Unsurprisingly, compared with mice exposed to clean air, mice exposed to cigarette smoke showed significant inflammation in their lungs. Interestingly, they also suffered from a type of colitis resembling Crohn's disease, which is currently incurable. The researchers found increased levels of mucus and inflammation in the colon, and blood in the faeces of the smoke exposed mice. What did they find? They also found increased levels of CD4+ T cells, a type of white blood cell, which were releasing a pro-inflammatory protein called interferon-gamma. The team next investigated whether these white blood cells and inflammatory protein were responsible for the smoke induced colitis. They repeated the experiment with mice that had very few CD4+ T cells and mice that couldn't produce interferon-gamma. In both cases, the mice did not develop colitis when exposed to cigarette smoke. The team were now confident that CD4+ T cells were responsible for the cigarette smoke-induced colitis. Confirming the theory But they weren't sure if it was possible for these white blood cells to be activated by cigarette smoke in the lungs, and then travel to the colon to cause colitis. To test this, the researchers exposed mice to cigarette smoke, and then isolated CD4+ T cells from tissue near their lungs. They then injected the cells into mice that had never been exposed to smoke. The injected cells migrated to the colon, and the non-smoke-exposed mice developed colitis shortly after. Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter (HealthDay)Liposuction may help people with lymphedemaa painful, disfiguring swelling of the arms, hands, legs or feet. Harvard researchers used the surgical technique to remove fat from just underneath the skin in three people with the condition. Two of the patients had lymphedema as a side effect of cancer treatment. The other one had a naturally developing form of lymphedema. In all three cases, there was improvement in the lymphedema after liposuction, the researchers said. And the improvement appears to be more effective and lasting than expected. One patient has had more than five years of follow-up. "Liposuction is extremely effective at removing fat from underneath the skin, which makes the arm or leg smaller," explained study author Dr. Arin Greene, director of the lymphedema program at Boston Children's Hospital. "And the new data show that the surgery improves lymphatic flow and increases quality of life. It actually allows the underlying lymphatic system to move the fluid," he said. But Greene did have a word of caution. "This is not a cure. It improves lymphatic flow, but people still need to take conservative measures, such as wearing compression garments," he noted. Greene said cancer probably causes about 99 percent of lymphedema cases. Another 1 percent have it due to a developmental problem. The reason people get lymphedema after cancer treatment is because when cancer spreads to lymph nodes, those nodes need to be removed. In this process, part of the lymph vessels attached to the node are also removed. Lymph nodes and vessels are part of the body's immune system. When removed, the body's natural drainage system for lymph fluid is disrupted and fluid builds up, sometimes to extreme levels, according to the American Cancer Society. Radiation therapy also can damage nodes and vessels or cause scarring that blocks drainage. Lymphedema can be very uncomfortable and cause a feeling of heaviness. Skin can feel tight. Wounds may heal more slowly, and lymphedema can cause reduced flexibility, the cancer society says. About 200 million people have lymphedema worldwide, according to the study authors. Treatment typically includes wearing compression garments and getting a special type of massage that helps promote fluid drainage. The study patients who had liposuction only had the procedure on an affected limb. They didn't have liposuction on their hands or feet. However, the two patients who had liposuction on their arm also saw improvement in their hand, and the one who had liposuction on her leg had improvement in the lymphedema affecting her foot. Greene said this was unexpected. He has several theories as to why liposuction was more effective than expected, though he emphasized that none are yet proven. One theory is that by removing the fat, pressure is taken off of the remaining lymph nodes and vessels, allowing them to function better. Another theory is that the fat may make fluid, too, so removing it might mean less overall fluid. Dr. Douglas Roth, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y., was impressed with the study's results. "As a plastic surgeon, I was taught to stay away from areas with lymphedema. The tissue is already compromised, making concerns about complications more significant. These areas need to be treated very, very carefully," said Roth, who was not involved with the study. "But this is definitely a breakthrough in thinking about the treatment of this problem, and it's a brand new procedure that could be very helpful," Roth said. He added that while the procedure hasn't been used for lymphedema in the United States, it has been used in Europe and Australia for about 10 years. Still, Roth said he'd want to see a larger trial on a U.S. population before he would consider it. Greene said insurance covered all three procedures. Roth said insurance companies would likely pay for liposuction done for a medical reason, such as lymphedema. When done on a purely cosmetic basis, liposuction is about $7,000 to $9,000 for the surgeon's fee and the operating room time, Roth estimated. The study was published Nov. 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine. More information: Arin Greene, M.D., director, lymphedema program, Boston Children's Hospital, and associate professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Douglas Roth, M.D., chief, plastic and reconstructive surgery, Northern Westchester Hospital, Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Nov. 1, 2017, New England Journal of Medicine Arin Greene, M.D., director, lymphedema program, Boston Children's Hospital, and associate professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Douglas Roth, M.D., chief, plastic and reconstructive surgery, Northern Westchester Hospital, Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Nov. 1, 2017, To learn more about lymphedema, visit the American Cancer Society. Journal information: New England Journal of Medicine Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Credit: Wikipedia On Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people are #TalkingAboutIt. The popular hashtag is all over the social media platform, denoting tweets on experiences and concerns about mental health conditions. Its goal is to demystify mental illness, promote open conversation and encourage people to seek support. But for many, it can be hard to have those same conversations offline. People often find it tough to communicate what they're going through or to get the help they need. Similarly, it can be difficult for people to figure out the best way to support loved ones. That pressure often is compounded for young people making the transition to college life, which can be overwhelming on its own. "I do think sometimes students don't realize how hard it is, adjusting to college," says Laura Smith, associate dean of students for health and wellness at the University of Texas at Dallas. "You're not the big fish in your classes anymore, you have all kinds of personal stress, you're away from home. ... It sometimes leads to mental health problems, and dealing with this stuff is not easy." For 18-year-olds, college means freedom and novelty and opportunity. But being consumed by future possibilities makes it easy to overlook what's going on in the present. In fact, it's often extremely easy to dismiss small signs of duress. Excessive sleeping (or lack thereof), feeling anti-social, changes in hygiene, and apathy in classes or extracurriculars are some of the more common warning signs of an underlying problem. But it can be hard to see those signs: Sometimes students are actually just tired, or they simply want to stay in for a while. "It's when it all happens at once, or when it turns into a pattern, that it becomes a concern," says Smith. "In these cases, even a minor intervention can make a difference. Say something - it can be any number of harmless things going on, but it can also be significant. It's never a waste of our time to reach out." Students who have been through these issues agree with Smith's reasoning. One second it might seem like benign behavior, but the next, it's not. It's best to address problems when they start cropping up, before they escalate. And if students don't feel comfortable seeking help, many feel that it's the responsibility of university to create safer spaces to talk things out. "I really wish that there was more importance placed on how counseling centers help students, and if schools could fund them more it would make such a difference," says Connie Trinh, a recent graduate of Texas Woman's University. "Counseling services are just as important as academics and sports." Trinh, 27, graduated from TWU in 2015. During college, she began to notice a demand for more mental health services and safe spaces on campus. Partnering with the National Alliance on Mental Illness' Dallas office, Trinh would host various workshops and information sessions on how to handle mental health conditions as a student. 'I WAS IN DENIAL' Trinh used her own story to connect with students who might be facing similar problems, or students who have no idea how to identify what they're going through. There were many factors that played a part in Trinh's severe depression and anxiety: High academic pressures, cultural stigma from her Asian heritage and stressful social situations stand out as some of the most common triggers. "I was in denial," Trinh says. "It wasn't until a mental breakdown that I realized that something bigger was happening." She reached a point where depression began to tint her entire college experience. Panic attacks and depressive episodes were becoming unmanageable on her own. It was only after years of personal strife that she could admit there was a problem, and that reaching out isn't a sign of weakness - in fact, it's quite the contrary. "When you're so anxious and so stressed that the thought of work cripples you, when you can't function normally, if you feel really alone, you can't connect with other people around you - you should address the issue without shame, without any guilt," says Trinh. "You'll find that there are a lot of people out there that genuinely want to help you, that won't judge you or criticize you." Trinh stresses the importance of using all of the resources that colleges have available. Then, if that's not effective or enough, reach out to groups like NAMI, which are dedicated to helping people find affordable help in the Dallas area. She also suggests, based on her experiences, that students who are part of certain marginalized groups on college campuses might face additional stigma or triggers that lead to severe, untreated mental health problems. This includes people of color, low-income, first-generation or those identifying as LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or asexual). NAMI's data supports her observations, with studies having found that LGBTQIA and multicultural communities have less access to treatment, higher levels of stigma about mental health, and often fall victim to insensitive or discriminatory health care systems. "We need to start thinking about mental health just like we think about physical illness," says Lisa Pedersen, the Youth Programs coordinator at the NAMI Dallas branch. "Taking care of yourself is key - all the things that are good for everybody become more important when you're at risk," she says. "Eating healthy, getting exercise, sleeping well, taking nutritional supplements are all positive coping and prevention skills for early symptoms. The sooner you address it, the better." As schools, counselors and students are beginning to promote open conversation and clinical services across college campuses, the aim is to break down social stigmas and provide timely resources for budding young adults. "It can feel really big and overwhelming at first, and it's a process," says Dr. Denise Lucero-Miller, the director of TWU's counseling center. "But I find that once someone has a positive therapy experience, they're kind of hooked for life. It just means recognizing that they can go back to it in the future if they need it." RESOURCES Beyond specific campus programs, college students and others can seek help and information through the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which has a Dallas office. Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 Suicide and Crisis Center of North Texas: 214-828-1000 2017 The Dallas Morning News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Mexican doctors have safely reused donated pacemakers after sterilisation, shows a study presented at the 30th Mexican Congress of Cardiology. The findings create the possibility for patients to receive a pacemaker who otherwise could not afford one. The annual congress of the Mexican Society of Cardiology is being held in Guadalajara, Jalisco from 2 to 5 November 2017. Experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will present a special programme. "There is no report of the number of pacemaker implants per year in Mexico, but we implant close to 150 new pacemakers per year in our hospital," said first author Dr Carlos Gutierrez, a cardiologist at the General Hospital of Mexico "Dr. Eduardo Liceaga" in Mexico City. "According to government reports, more than half of the population in Mexico does not have access to social security or private insurance that covers a pacemaker implant and 44% live in poverty," he continued. "This suggests that many Mexicans cannot afford a pacemaker. Previous studies have shown the safety of reusing pacemakers after sterilisation." The current study included 33 patients with a pacing indication who could not afford a new pacemaker or a battery change. Patients received a reused device at the General Hospital of Mexico in 2011 to 2017. Devices had been donated by relatives of deceased patients and had a minimum of six years of battery life. After confirming that the pacemakers were functioning correctly, they were washed with enzymatic soap and sterilised in an autoclave for 38 minutes. Pacemaker function was rechecked after sterilisation. Patients were 72 years old on average (the age range was 20 to 106 years) and 52% were female. The indications for a pacemaker were sinus node dysfunction in ten patients (30%) and advanced atrioventricular block in 23 patients (70%). Of the 33 patients, 25 received a reused pacemaker. Eight patients already had a pacemaker and received a reused generator (battery). During the implant procedure there was one haematoma which resolved without further complications. There were no complications during the six month follow-up period. Dr Gutierrez said: "This was a small study but it shows that with a thorough and standardised sterilisation process, explanted pacemakers with a battery life of more than six years can be reused safely. This provides an effective option for patients who cannot afford a new device or a replacement battery." "This practice could be implemented in many other centres that have equipment to sterilise and reprogramme pacemakers," continued Dr Gutierrez. "We also need to promote the donation of pacemakers with little use from deceased patients." Dr Erick Alexanderson, President of the Mexican Society of Cardiology, said: "This study has encouraging results which open up the possibility of pacemaker treatment for many more Mexicans who need it." Professor Jose Zamorano, course director of the ESC programme in Mexico, said: "Pacemakers are implanted in many patients across the globe every year. This study highlights a practical way to give access to this life-saving treatment to even more patients who need it." Electron microscope image of synaptic vesicles in the axon terminals of reference motor neurons (left) and Plekhg5-deficient motor neurons (right) at 100,000x magnification. Dysfunctional synaptic vesicles that are degraded in healthy individuals accumulate in Plekhg5-deficient motor neurons and lead to functional loss of synaptic transmission. Such dysfunctional, enlarged vesicles are marked with asterisks. Credit: Peter Heimann Motor neurons are the nerves that send impulses to the muscles to generate movement. Damage of these neurons can cause very diverse diseases, for example spinal muscular atrophy in children or adult amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Both disorders are characterised by muscle atrophy, palsy and ultimately by functional loss of muscles. The respiratory muscles are affected, too. The diseases are presently incurable; but their progress can be slowed down with drugs. Autophagy as a new target for drugs "So far, the development of new drugs has focused on preventing cell death mechanisms and on breaking down the protein aggregates in the affected nerve cells," Professor Michael Sendtner explains; he is the head of the Institute of Clinical Neurobiology of the Wurzburg university hospital. But now Sendtner with his colleague Patrick Luningschror and their team have identified another potential target for future drugs: It is the complex process of autophagy, as the researchers report in the journal Nature Communications. This process makes sure that the impulse transmission between motor neurons and muscles works permanently in normal function. Aggregation of vesicles at synapses The PLEKHG5 gene was the starting point for the new insight. Mutations in this gene are known to trigger various forms of motor neuron disorders. The Wurzburg scientists have now found out that this gene is crucial for autophagy: It controls the degradation of the synaptic vesicles that contain the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and transport the excitation from the nerve to the muscles. When deactivating the PLEKHG5 gene at single motor neurons in a cell culture, autophagy is reduced causing the synaptic vehicles to agglomerate. And in mice disabling this gene triggers a motor neuron disorder which also entails massive vesicle aggregation. Consequences for drug development "The findings deliver substantial evidence that dysfunctional autophagy plays a central role in the development of motor neuron diseases," Sendtner says. He believes that this new finding will have to lead to a rethinking of the development of new drugs with a need for substances that prevent or reduce vesicle aggregation. More information: Patrick Luningschror et al. Plekhg5-regulated autophagy of synaptic vesicles reveals a pathogenic mechanism in motoneuron disease, Nature Communications (2017). Journal information: Nature Communications Patrick Luningschror et al. Plekhg5-regulated autophagy of synaptic vesicles reveals a pathogenic mechanism in motoneuron disease,(2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00689-z Credit: University of Michigan The expansion of Medicaid to provide low-income women with prenatal care in the 1980s and 1990s was a success in improving birth outcomes. Children with mothers who benefited from this program were not only healthier at birth, but also more likely to graduate high school and have higher incomes. In a new study examining how large-scale U.S. health interventions affect later generations, University of Michigan researcher Sarah Miller found that people whose mothers received this prenatal care are now having children themselves with higher birth weights and fewer cases of very low birth weight. From a policy standpointand at a time when Medicaid benefits are being questioned in Washingtonthe study provides evidence that Medicaid programs targeting birth outcomes deliver a high return on the initial investment. "The goal of the Medicaid program was to improve pregnancy outcomes for mother and child, and that was successful," said Miller, assistant professor of business economics and public policy at U-M's Ross School of Business. "Since that generation is of childbearing age now, we wanted to see if there was a downstream gain, and we indeed found that this continues across generations. In fact, it was a substantial impact." Miller, who also is a faculty associate with the U-M Institute for Social Research, and colleagues analyzed the health outcomes among babies whose mothers were born between 1979 and 1986, the period of the most dramatic expansion of prenatal Medicaid coverage. Using data from the Vital Statistics Natality files, they found that a 10-percentage-point increase in a mother's own in utero Medicaid eligibility increased her child's average birth weight by 4.4 grams. It also reduced the incidence of very low birth weightan indicator of premature birthby 0.1 percentage points. The researchers found that later childhood exposure to Medicaid doesn't lead to this persistent health improvement across generationsit's the early intervention that matters. "I think this is an optimistic finding," Miller said. "We tend to see that people with lower incomes, on average, have worse health, and their kids have lower incomes and worse health. This shows that if we do an intervention that targets low-income women and their children, it gives us the leverage to break the cycle of poverty across generations." The research could help shape the discussion over Medicaid benefits for expectant mothers, as it shows that the return on investment is larger than previously assumed. "Overall it makes Medicaid a more appealing investment for the government," Miller said. Credit: CC0 Public Domain A landmark study from The Australian National University (ANU) into the health impacts of living in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation has been published in the international journal The Lancet Public Health. The findings could help bring attention to asbestos hazards in other countries, such as the United States and Canada, where the use of asbestos-contaminated insulation was installed in millions of homes. The study on loose-fill asbestos in Canberra is the first of its kind to demonstrate the health impacts of living in a house with loose-fill asbestos. Study lead author Dr Rosemary Korda said the research found the overall risk of contracting mesothelioma was low. Living in a house with loose-fill asbestos was associated with 2.5 times increased risk of mesothelioma in men. There were no recorded cases of mesothelioma among women living in the contaminated houses. Dr Korda, from the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH), said most other studies into asbestos have focussed on high exposure in occupational settings such as the mining, manufacturing and construction industries. "The ACT Asbestos Health Study examined risks for people who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos, and we found that loose-fill asbestos insulation is very likely to be unsafe," Dr Korda said. "Our findings have important health, social, financial and legal implications for governments and communities in which asbestos has been used to insulate houses." Inhaling asbestos fibres causes mesothelioma, a lethal disease which can take 20 years or more to develop. Asbestos has also be linked to other cancers, including cancer of the lung, ovary and larynx. Dr Korda said the ANU research examined data on more than one million people who lived in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) at any time between 1983 and 2013. The study linked Medicare (universal health insurance) enrolment data, national death registrations and the Australian Cancer Database to compare the incidence of mesothelioma and other cancers in people who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos with the incidence of these cancers in people who had not lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos. The study identified 17,248 people who had lived in around 1,000 houses with loose-fill asbestos insulation over 30 years. In total, 285 current and former residents of the ACT were diagnosed with mesothelioma. Seven of those residents had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation before their mesothelioma was diagnosed. Key findings include: Four more cases of mesothelioma than expected occurred in men who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation; The association between living in a loose-fill asbestos house and mesothelioma was much weaker than that seen in studies where people were exposed to asbestos through their work; and Rates of colorectal cancer rates were elevated in both men (32 per cent higher) and women (73 per cent higher) who had lived at a house with loose fill asbestos. These were higher than expected and might be due to unavoidable limitations in the study's design. The two-year study was commissioned by the ACT Government, to improve understanding of the health risks associated with living in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation. More information: Rosemary J Korda et al. Risk of cancer associated with residential exposure to asbestos insulation: a whole-population cohort study, The Lancet Public Health (2017). Rosemary J Korda et al. Risk of cancer associated with residential exposure to asbestos insulation: a whole-population cohort study,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30192-5 (HealthDay)Patients with autoimmune connective tissue diseases (CTDs) undergoing abdominoplasty have increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) events and need for blood transfusions compared to those without CTDs, according to a research letter published online Nov. 1 in JAMA Surgery. Gustavo A. Rubio, M.D., from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Florida, and colleagues examined whether patients with autoimmune CTDs undergoing abdominoplasties are at increased risk of complications. Data were obtained from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample for patients who underwent abdominoplasty as a primary procedure between January 2006 and December 2011. The researchers found that 537 (1.3 percent) of the 41,030 patients identified had autoimmune CTD, most commonly rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (58.7 and 23.1 percent, respectively). The CTD group had higher rates of medical comorbidities than the non-CTD group. The overall in-hospital complication rate was 14.9 percent postoperatively, which did not differ significantly between the groups. Compared with the non-CTD group, the CTD group had significantly higher rates of hematoma (4.5 versus 3 percent), VTE (1.9 versus 0.9 percent), and need for blood transfusion (13 versus 7.7 percent). The median length of stay was four days for the CTD group versus three for the non-CTD group. CTD status was correlated with increased risk of VTE and perioperative blood transfusion on risk-adjusted multivariate analysis (adjusted odds ratios, 2.12 and 1.75). "Plastic surgeons should be aware of these elevated risks for appropriate patient counseling and informed consent," the authors write. Copyright 2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Flexibility through innovation The 105-metre, 2,365 tonne PKR frigates are designed to undertake a wide range of missions in and around the waters of Indonesia. The two vessels have been/are being been built using a collaborative modular process operating simultaneously at Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding (DSNS) in the Netherlands and PT PAL shipyard in Indonesia. Each is made up of six modules, and for the first vessel four of these were built at PT PAL. The other two were built and fully tested at DSNS in the Netherlands before being shipped for final assembly at PT PAL. The success of the programme rested on the two yards working together with the end client operating almost as a single unit. The strong relationship also allowed the massive technology-transfer programme to proceed smoothly, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands. The first Sigma 10514 delivery follows the completion of three months of crew training. Meanwhile, work is currently proceeding in both the Netherlands and Indonesia on the second vessel in the contract. YEREVAN. In 2018, the automatic electricity grid management system will continue to be introduced in Armenia. Hayk Harutyunyan, Deputy Minister of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources, on Tuesday stated the above-said at the joint debates of the standing committees of the National Assembly, and devoted to draft of the 2018 State Budget. He noted that additional optical cables are planned to be laid for the already-operating SCADA system, and to create an opportunity for data exchange with neighboring countries with the same system. Harutyunyan added that, to this end, 1 billion 75 million drams (about $2.2 million) is planned to be allocated next year. Intelligence agencies have been monitoring activities of the PFI for over a year and a half now and have collected a lot of evidence against the organisation. By Meetu Jain: High-level sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs have told India Today that the groundwork to ban the radical Islamic charity Popular Front of India (PFI) has now been completed and the decision to formally ban this hardline organisation will be announced very soon. The move to ban the PFI was expedited after India Today's path-breaking expose Operation Conversion Factory, which showed leading lights of the PFI admit that they received hawala funding from Gulf countries and ran an elaborate conversion operation. advertisement Speaking to India Today, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said, "We have taken cognisance of your expose and initiated action. No one will be allowed to break the law in this country. After due process of law, action will be taken against those who have been found doing wrong things." MHA sources told India Today that intelligence agencies have been been monitoring activities of the PFI for over a year and a half now and a lot of evidence against the PFI has already been collected. NIA TO QUIZ ZAINABA AGAIN India Today's sting operation showed Zainaba A.S., head of PFI's woman wing accepting the fact that PFI's sister organisation Sathya Sarani has carried out massive conversions. As the report was released, Zainab denied the allegations and called them "baseless". Sources in the government said that the sting report will be an additional material for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to question Zainaba further. During her previous questioning by the NIA, Zainaba was very guarded in her answers and only admitted to being the president of PFI's woman wing and helping the poor. NIA, which is tasked with probing the PFI for terror links, has to collate evidence that will stand scrutiny in the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) court that will initiate the process of banning the group. A FRONT FOR SIMI? Intelligence sources say that at least 20 per cent of those who have left for Syria have an alleged PFI link. "The PFI claims to be working to mainstream the minorities but if that is the case then why is their recruitment and training so secretive," officials point out. In government dossiers, the PFI is viewed as another name for SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) that was banned a few years ago under the UAPA. The top PFI leadership have all been ex-SIMI members and have been accused of hoarding arms and ammunition and distributing literature of groups like the al-Qaeda in the past. advertisement E M Abdul Rahim, ex PFI chairman, was all-India general secretary of SIMI in 1984. E AbuBakr, one of the founding fathers of the PFI, was SIMI Kerala state between 1982 and 1984. P Koya was national executive committee member of PFI and headed SIMI in Kerala in 1978. 'SERIOUS NATIONAL ISSUE' Earlier, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad demanded a detailed probe into the case and action against culprits and raised concerns about working of such NGOs. Applauding India Today's sting on PFI's racket of religious conversions, Ravi Shankar Prasad said that anyone who wants to convert by choice can do that, but forced conversions are a 'serious national issue'. "Why I am specifically complementing India Today is because they did a sting on Hurriyat and its foreign funds. No one from Hurriyat has denied. Second extraordinary initiative is to expose the terror elements in Kerala," he said. Following India Today's expose on forceful conversions by PFI in Kerala, the CM's office has asked for a copy of the report and said that appropriate action will be taken after the report is received. ALSO WATCH: Operation Conversion Factory: Kerala Islamic NGO behind conversion racket? --- ENDS --- advertisement YEREVAN.- The members of the RA MA Armenia-Iraq Friendship Group Arman Saghatelyan, Shirak Torosyan, Aram Sargsyan, Rustam Makhmudyan and Arsen Mikhailov met with the members of the delegation led by the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Council of Representatives of Iraq Abdelbari Al-Zibari, including the abovementioned Committee members, as well as the members of Iraq-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship Group. Talking about the regional problems, the interlocutors highlighted the region being stable and predictable, considered necessary the settlement of the conflicts through peaceful means. The fighting against terrorism was emphasized. In this context Shirak Torosyan has touched upon the issue of the Karabakh conflict settlement and has noted that Azerbaijan by all means with its aggressive policy tries to fail the peaceful settlement of the problem within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship, even moving it to religious plane. Mr Torosyan has stated that Armenia has warm and friendly with numerous countries of the region, especially the Arab countries. In response to that, the Head of the delegation Abdelbari Al-Zibari presented the viewpoint of Iraq, according to which, it is necessary to solve such conflicts through peaceful means, but not in military way. Blinken calls on Armenian Prime Minister to maintain momentum of peace talks with Azerbaijan CNN: NATO aircraft tracked the trajectory of the missile that fell in eastern Poland Armenian MOD refuted another misinformation of Azerbaijani MOD Media: Fire in Istanbul is caused by several explosions, not just one Drone 'allegedly' blows up oil depot in Oryol Oblast Trump officially announces that he will run for president in 2024 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 It took firemen several hours to contain the fire that broke out, on Wednesday at around 10pm, at Avtomatika Factory in Vanadzor, Armenia. The Armenian News-NEWS.am reporter informed from the scene that, during the firefighting activities, there were strong explosions at the fire spots, and the fire was burning intensely. The fire had started at a building of this factory, which has not been operating for many years. Eyewitnesses said it served as a warehouse, where wooden and plastic objects as well as chemicals were stored. The cause of this fire is not known yet. Fortunately, there are no casualties or injuries in the fire. Bangladesh feels that India can set up industries in its economic zones to import products there and reduce the trade gap between the two neighbours. By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Bangladesh Industry Minister Amir Hossain Amu said, Bangladesh is seeking more Indian investments in Bangladesh to minimise trade gap between Bangladesh and India. India can set up industries in economic zones of Bangladesh to import products there that can help reduce trade gap between the two neighbours. "Bilateral trade between Bangladesh and India reached US$7.0 billion in 2016-17 but Bangladesh's trade gap with India is worth more than $6 billion. To reduce this gap, India can set up industries here and imports products from them," said Amu told the opening session of India's engineering exposition here today. advertisement Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) of India has organized the expo at Bashundhara Convention Centre to showcase Indian engineering and technologies. The 3-day expo titled, "India-Bangladesh INDEE", is a flagship engineering exhibition which was designed with a view to enhancing bilateral trade, mutual investment, joint ventures and technology transfer among the businesses of the two countries. Indian Engineering and Technology Expo in Dhaka Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Joint Secretary of India's Industries and Commerce Ministry B S Bhalla, acting president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) Sheikh Fazle Fahim, President of India Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry Taskin Ahmed, India's EEPC chairman T S Bhasin spoke on the occasion. Amu said India is the largest trading partner of Bangladesh in South Asia and there are 3.11 billion dollar Indian investments in Bangladesh. Bangladesh received 88 million dollar (FDI) investment from India in 2015-16, he said, adding that Indian investment is expected to cross 9.0 billion dollar as a number of investment deals were signed with Indian entrepreneurs during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to India. He said Bangladesh will give Indian investors a separate economic zone for their investments in Bangladesh. Harsh Vardhan Shringla said Bangladesh gets priority in bilateral relations of India. Bangladesh has now become an attractive investment place because it has achieved a steady economic growth. Over 100 Indian engineering and technology firms are taking part in the exhibition which will remain open for all from 10am to 7pm. --- ENDS --- YEREVAN. Armenias ruling coalition has not discussed the candidacy of a future prime minister yet, PM Karen Karapetyan assured. After the presidents powers expire on April 9 next year, the Republican Party of Armenia will offer a candidacy of PM, Karpetyan told briefing on Thursday. Asked about the role of incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan, Karapetyan said he agrees with the assessment of his activity as a guarantor of the security and an experienced manager. At the same time, the head of Cabinet does not believe that the economic difficulties would have been less noticeable if the other party were at the helm. We passed this with the least possible losses, Karen Karapetyan assured. During the spring election campaign, the RPA repeatedly assured that Karen Karapetyan will head the government after April 2018, if the ruling party wins. Co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of obligations and commitments by Armenia Giuseppe Galati and Alan Meale will make a fact-finding visit to Yerevan on 6-7 November 2017. Discussions will mainly focus on recent political developments and on-going reforms with regard to the implementation of the new constitution, the judicial independence and the fight against corruption, as well as further electoral reforms following the 2017 elections, including to address vote buying. In Yerevan the co- rapporteurs are due to meet, in particular, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the President of the National Assembly, and the Minister of Justice. Talks are also scheduled with the political groups represented in the National Assembly, the Armenian delegation to PACE, the human rights defender, and civil society representatives. "If we had pictures of everything I've done when I was in high school, I probably wouldn't have been President of the United States," said Obama. By Lipi Upadhyay: The sassy and ever-charming former President of the United States, Barack Obama, has some interesting opinions about the selfie-craze that has engulfed everyone--especially the millennials. While he does smile that gorgeous smile for all his admirers, who stick the front-facing camera to his face, he really doesn't like taking selfies, at all. Picture courtesy: PinterestMy Modern Met Speaking to the audience at the Obama Foundation Summit, in Chicago, the former POTUS established a basic rule that the attendees of the summit weren't allowed to take selfies with him or his wife, Michelle, USA Today reported. advertisement Also Read: Time for a #Cowfie: Kolkata gears up for selfie-with-a-cow competition Obama then further went on to explain his decision, "It may seem trivial, but it's not. I say this because, one of the weird things about becoming president is, I found that people were no longer looking me in the eye and shaking my hand." This isn't the first time the leader has been vocal about his dislike towards millennials' favourite pastime. While giving a speech at DC Benjamin Banneker Academic High School last year, Obama mimicked a millennial to perfection in the act of taking selfie, to reiterate his point Picture courtesy: Pinterest/comedycake.com He further advised, "If we had pictures of everything I've done when I was in high school, I probably wouldn't have been President of the United States." Also Read: Obama Out: 5 life lessons America's calm dad's farewell letter taught us While Obama may not be the president of America anymore, he still rules hearts worldwide with his pearls of wisdom, which he showers every now and then. --- ENDS --- YEREVAN. Republic of Armenia National Assembly (RA NA) Vice Chairperson Arpine Hovhannisyan on Thursday received a German Bundestag delegation, led by Doris Barnett. The objective of the German delegations visit to Armenia is the Armenian participants choice in the International Parliamentary Scholarship program for 2018, the NA informed Armenian News-NEWS.am. The RA NA deputy speaker stressed the effective cooperation between the legislatures of the two countries, the rapprochement of parliamentary relations, and the importance of intensifying mutual contacts. In terms of the development of scientific and educational ties, Hovhannisyan highly assessed the International Parliamentary Scholarship program being sponsored by the Bundestag, and its continuity. In addition, she touched upon the importance of implementing Germany-supported joint programs in some other domains, too. A peaceful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also was discussed in the course of the talk. The sides highlighted the role of the young generation in terms of the settlement of conflicts and establishment of regional peace. In this context, Arpine Hovhannisyan spoke about the anti-Armenian policy being pursued at state level in Azerbaijan, and which, according to her, creates obstacles before the establishment of wholesome contacts between the youth of the two countries. Furthermore, the parties conferred on womens engagement in political processes and regional problems. President Donald Trump said Thursday the suspect in the deadliest terror attack in New York City since 2001 should be executed, and backtracked from an earlier call to send him to the military detention facility at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba because the stateside system is quicker. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system, Trump tweeted. There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Trump on Wednesday said he would certainly consider sending the suspect out of the country to Guantanamo Bay, where terror suspects captured outside the U.S. have been detained. No one arrested in the U.S. has ever been sent to the prison camp and there hasnt been a detainee sent there from overseas since 2008. Eight people were killed and 11 including two children were injured after a truck was driven into a cycleway in lower Manhattan, close to the site of the 9/11 memorial, on Tuesday afternoon. The Uzbek national who plowed through a New York bicycle path was associated with Islamic State but "radicalised domestically," the state's governor Andrew Cuomo has said. The suspect, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, was shot by police at the end of the rampage in lower Manhattan Tuesday but was expected to recover from his wounds. Ex-Bigg Boss contestant Yuvika Chaudhary has slammed the reports of getting married to Prince Narula and said that marriage is not on the cards anytime soon. By India Today Web Desk: A few days back, Bigg Boss 11 contestant Vikas Gupta confirmed Prince Narula and Yuvika Chaudhary's wedding plans on national TV. He said that they will get hitched by the end of this year or the start of 2018. Learning about this news, Yuvika wasted no time and reacted to his predictions. She slammed the reports saying marriage is not on the cards anytime soon. advertisement When Bollywoodlife.com contacted her she said, "I don't know when I am getting married. I really don't know what Vikas said inside the house but I am unaware of my marriage date or month. What is there to hide about marriage. It is such a happy occasion. If I get hitched, I will tell the whole world about it." The two first met each other on the sets of the reality show Bigg Boss. Prince and Yuvika have also appeared together in a music video of the former called Hello hello. --- ENDS --- The notices asked them to explain why contempt action was not initiated against illegal pandals. By Vidya : The Bombay High Court today issued, in wake of the inaction against the illegal pandals set up during Ganesh Chaturthi and Navratri, issued show cause notices to three municipal commissioners including Mumbai Chief Ajoy Mehta. The notices asked them to explain why contempt action was not initiated against them. The three commissioners have also been asked to be present to explain why orders were not complied with. advertisement A division bench of Justices A S Oka and A K Menon issued show cause notices to Ajoy Mehta--commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), N Ramaswamy-- commissioner of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC)--and P Velrasu--chief of Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC). Justice Abhay Oka while looking at a few affidavits filed by the corporations themselves said, "our orders on noise pollution and illegal pandals will be complied with strictly only when some civic chief is sent behind bars." Being critical of the lackadaisical administrative approach, Justice Oka added that the administration tries to find ways to see how they can fail the due processes set up by the court. The corporations had said in their affidavits that illegal ganpati pandals were located and since they had come up already they were not razed as the police protection was unavailable. The court has issued the show cause notices to municipal chiefs of Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation and Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation who have to reply to the notices by November 30. The Mumbai municipal commissioner has to file a reply by next week and be present when the court will take up the case for hearing. --- ENDS --- I'm trying to get through a man called ove but I'm finding it so boring I might quit Reply Thread Link I really liked the sci-fi elements in it, the description of the ships, the cities, etc. Reply Parent Thread Link i love cinder and scarlett. cress was a bit of a trudge and i still haven't finished winter Reply Parent Thread Link i love that series. i hope you enjoy it! Reply Parent Thread Link I did not care for it. Reply Parent Thread Link i looooved cinder. i'm on cress now Reply Parent Thread Link He is truly the worst. I hate that he's the one getting all of the media attention and is like a spokesperson for YA. Awful representative of a great genre, ugh Reply Parent Thread Link it sucks too because Angie Thomas is the rightful Queen of YA! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This so much. I'm so tired of John Green quotes or comparisons to John Green books on the covers of other YA books. Like because John Green likes it, suddenly it's good and worth caring about? Why does this random white dude with a few mediocre books get to decide when a book in a genre dominated by diverse women is worth reading or not? Sorry, I have a lot of feelings about this. Reply Parent Thread Link I started reading The Halloween Man right before Halloween, but I have about half left. It's okay, but I wasn't feeling super duper into it. So on my way home tonight I started The Child Thief (a fucked up retelling of Peter Pan) and it's sooo dark and messed up already. Reply Thread Link I'm still fucking reading House of Leaves and I cannot wait to finish it so that I can not recommend it to everyone I know. Also. Throw it against a wall. Reply Thread Link I don't do hate-reading anymore. it's bad for my stomach! Reply Parent Thread Link lmao. i love that book but i'm sorry you don't like it! do you have much more left? honestly i've stopped reading books that i'm not feeling. i used to always make it a point to finish a book but now idgaf anymore Reply Parent Thread Link I'm invested in the family that lives in the house, nothing would be worse than not finishing the stupid book and constantly wondering about them. At least once I'm finished I will be done with it. Reply Parent Thread Link I don't know why people waste time on books they don't like. Life is too short to read bad books. Reply Parent Thread Link i couldn't get into house of leaves either tbh, i didn't bother trying to finish it tho Reply Parent Thread Link omg that's huge. you should just give it up. remember: our lives are too short and any time you're reading something you hate could be you spending your time reading your next book love. ;_; Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I just Wiki'd that book and was so confused with the description/synopsis of it lol Edited at 2017-11-02 03:44 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Haha whenever I'm buying books online I always consider buying that one Reply Parent Thread Link i flung Catcher In The Rye into a random corner halfway thru cause I just couldn't stand it anymore so i understand! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I'm reading The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans and like... he's a great historian but the book is kinda dry... Reply Thread Link The thousand years of Jacob de Zoet, or one of his YA ones. Reply Parent Thread Link The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas (I think I preferred the former, but the latter is probably the better book), and saw this; 'From Me Flows What You Call Time (2016, to be published in 2114),' which resulted in me looking up this I went to wiki to look at his other books, because I've only readand(I think I preferred the former, but the latter is probably the better book), and saw this;,' which resulted in me looking up this Future Project thing, which is kind of neat. I had no idea such a thing existed. Reply Parent Thread Link The Bone Clocks, mainly bc Cloud Atlas is confusing to get used to first Reply Parent Thread Link I'm reading Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King and while I like it, it really feels like it dragging to get past the set up. Edited at 2017-11-02 03:23 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link The responses to that book in my goodreads timeline has been very interesting Reply Parent Thread Link I think it would be much better if it was a little smaller and less characters. I know it serves a purpose but I'm almost 300 hundred pages in and I still feel like we aren't even half way through set up of the plot and characters that are there and gone in a matter of pages. Reply Parent Thread Link it looks sooooo hefty. I haven't read King so idk - would you say that it's similar in pacing to his other brick-like works? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i always feel weird about white positive space on red negative space & a black graphic design/text. Reply Thread Link I'm almost done Night Film. It's so engrossing I hate having to stop reading. I usually read a few YA books a month because they're nice, quick palate cleansers but I haven't read that many lately. I'm just kinda unenthused about the most recent releases. Reply Thread Link ia, I feel the same way about recent YA releases, so much of the stuff goodreads hypes is just....not good. Tho fwiw I've found that what does work as palate cleansers is YA from my own teen years (Meg Cabot etc types), and the odd children's book, they go by really easily and aren't nearly as frustrating. Reply Parent Thread Link I know what you mean. I've been working my way through the Wrinkle in Time books because I never read them as a kid and I'm finding them delightful. Reply Parent Thread Link Did I recommend you Juliet Takes a Breath yet? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i'm at the halfway point of pachinko but my audiobook is due soon and there are holds on it so i can't renew. i just started the last lara jean book. idk what to make of it so far. someone here rec'd alex approximately and it was good. someone else rec'd eliza and her monsters and i do not like it and will probably not finish it. Reply Thread Link I keep meaning to get to Pachinko. I saw that the paperback version of it is coming out in a bit and it looks beeeautiful so I might just use the last of my gift card to get a discount and buy it. Reply Parent Thread Link Ya I'm enamored w/ the paperback design! Reply Parent Thread Expand Link omg yay, I've been waiting to buy it and now hearing the paperback is coming out soon makes me happy! I entered a goodreads giveaway for it but I doubt I'll win lol I think I've entered a Pachinko giveaway like 5 times. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I wanna get it but I heard it goes from her to her sons and I'm like....why no daughter Reply Parent Thread Link I'm currently reading The Marches, by Rory Stewart. It's about him going on treks in the area around Hadrian's wall (English-Scottish border areas) with his 90 year old curmudgeon dad, and I really like it. Reply Thread Link just read call me by your name and it gave me stalkersarah vibes imo. also, why isn't there a world series post? los doyers are going down bad Reply Thread Link i've been watching the game and i'm sad. Reply Parent Thread Link i love jose altuve so i'm v happy with how this game is going tbh Reply Parent Thread Link https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/108255408.html I think this post is being used for the WS Reply Parent Thread Link YAY, BOOK POST! ooh I haven't heard of any of these! I'm so very clueless about YA. in any given year i'll have maybe 5 titles I know/put on my list. I kept putting it off and now it's nearly due at the library so unless I want to pay fines/return and wait forever again, I have to read a huge chunk of Hillary Clinton's book. I looked at the calendar and realize that it's almost been a year. when I heard about the book it felt like it was too soon but gdi, it's almost been a year. Reply Thread Link I've p much tuned out of the genre over the last few years but Stranger Things is really making me want books etc set in that era/with that feel, the closest I've got to it is Carrie and some RL Stine/Christopher Pike. Reply Parent Thread Link I have the Handmaid's Tale out from the library but I know I'm not even gonna start it before it's due. Back to the 300+ holds list for me. Reply Parent Thread Link Swiss watch brand, Tudor, named Lady Gaga as its new ambassador for its new "Born to Dare" advertising campaign."Lady Gaga has achieved a level of fame and respect few entertainers ever have. This is a result of her unique recipe for success: raw talent, hard work, bold choices and immense gratitude to her fans, her little monsters as she calls them," Tudor said in its statement. "When you try and think of a daring individual in todays popular culture, it is hard to find anyone more fitting the description than Lady Gaga. Behind the glitter and glam, her provocative style and political statements, she is about total showmanship."Source: 1 By PTI: Kings visit New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Enhancing trade ties and bolstering efforts to combat terrorism will be among the key issues that will be discussed during Belgian King Philippes maiden state visit to India next week. India and Belgium are expected to ink 18 pacts in Delhi and nearly 23 agreements in Mumbai in the areas of trade, investment, smart cities, agro-food and animal husbandry during the Belgian King and Queen Mathildes trip to India from November 5-11. advertisement The King will meet President Ram Nath Kovind and hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. The royal couple will also visit the iconic Taj Mahal and in the third and the last leg of their visit, the King and the Queen will be in Mumbai. During his stay in Mumbai, King Philippe will also meet Maharashtra Governor C Vidyasagar Rao. "The underlined theme of this state visit is one about Belgium and India (working) towards an innovative partnership in the 21st century," Jan Luykx, Belgian ambassador to India said, noting that the two nations are completing 70 years of diplomatic ties. Belgium was also among the first European countries to establish a diplomatic mission in India after independence. Luykx, while briefing reporters on the King and Queens state visit to India, said the royal couple will also commemorate Indian soldiers effort of defending Belgium during the First World War and lay a wreath at India Gate. The King will be accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Didier Reynders and other senior ministers and officials. As trade will be one of the key issues to be discussed, the Belgian King will also be accompanied by a business delegation of nearly 90 people comprising CEOs of Belgian companies. India is Belgiums second largest export destination and third largest trade partner outside the European Union. In 2016-17, the bilateral trade amounted to USD 13.28 billion of which exports from India to Belgium accounted for USD 5.65 billion while imports from Belgium accounted for USD 6.62 billion. Ramping up efforts to fight terror will also be one of the key issues to be discussed during the talks. In June this year, Belgium had witnessed an explosion in the Brussels Central train station. "I have no doubt that terrorism will be talked about," Luykx said. Queen Mathilde will also have interactive sessions with experts in the field of Sustainable Development Goals and academics. The couple has made several private visits to India. In 2010, Philippe, in capacity as the Crown Prince, had led a Belgian Trade Mission to India. The visit is significant as kings, monarchs pay only one state visit to any country unlike elected heads of the states. Philippes father Albert II had visited India in 2008 and his grandfather Baudouin visited India in 1970. PTI PR ASK ASK --- ENDS --- advertisement Canada Marks 2017 Patient Safety Week The Canadian Patient Safety Institute is using the week to encourage patients to learn about key questions patients should all their health care providers about their medications. Canadian Patient Safety Week is taking place Oct. 30-Nov. 3, 2017, a national annual campaign when the Canadian Patient Safety Institute reaches out to everyone involved in the delivery of health care in Canada -- patients receiving care, current and future health professionals, decision makers, etc. Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Canada's minister of health, offered congratulations to CPSI "for the tremendous work they do to help facilitate the delivery of the safest care possible for Canadians. Since 2003, the CPSI has been working with governments, health organizations, leaders and health care providers. The CPSI inspires extraordinary improvement in patient safety and quality by developing evidence-informed products, organizing resources, ensuring consistent and effective communications, and celebrating and nurturing successful partnerships." CPSI is using the week to encourage patients to learn about key questions patients should all their health care providers about their medications. Taylor said the Canadian government will continue working with CPSI and other health care organizations, leaders, and service providers to develop safer health systems for all Canadians. "Though I hope no Canadian has to deal with a loved one being hospitalized, it may be the reality for most. As such, I encourage all Canadians to learn more about the importance of patient safety and the role they can play in making care safer for their loved ones," Taylor said. Amsterdam is infamous for being a city of freedom, where you can smoke pot in public, gobble down a "magic truffle" and peruse prostitutes. But apparently pedal taverns are a beer-soaked freedom too far. On Tuesday, a court ruling banned the Amsterdam edition of the pedal tavern, called "beer bike" across the pond (which, I applaud the alliteration, but who really thinks it looks like a bike?). According to the BBC, around 6,000 locals signed a petition last year against the mobile bars and popular party vehicles, calling them a "terrible phenomenon" and complaining about the loud nuisance and drunken disturbances riding through its city center. A ban was instituted soon after the petition, but judges struck it down because it wasn't "properly motivated." A year later, however, the Amsterdam courts determined the motivations were proper enough to deflate the beer bikes' wheels. Sound familiar, Milwaukee? Since the creation of Milwaukee Pedal Tavern back in 2009, the only thing that's raged more than pedaling partiers is heated debate. Some love the bar on wheels, considering it a fun local company that brings even more money to fellow Third Ward and Walker's Point bars and businesses; others, however, have similar complaints to those Amsterdam locals, noting the loud, rowdy and sometimes littering riders. Even the law got involved, making drinks on the device illegal in 2012 before flipping the verdict just two years later and bringing beer back to the tandem bikes. Milwaukee has seemingly adjusted to the Pedal Tavern since those early growing pains, but clearly the concept remains controversial no matter what country you live in. November is National Native American Heritage Month. And there are few places in the Milwaukee area where you can better gain insights into the history, culture and contributions of Native Americans particularly in Wisconsin than at Potawatomi Hotel & Casino, which is owned and operated by the Forest County Potawatomi tribe. The months festivities actually began in October, during the Hunting Moon Pow Wow, an annual event that brings together both Native and non-Native people to celebrate Native American traditions and cultures in a fun, family-friendly and educational environment. And the celebration continues with the annual Native American Heritage Dinner, an event built for food lovers who wish to experience the oft-overlooked heritage of Native American cuisine. This years dinner, which will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7 at Dream Dance Steak, will feature seven courses from Potawatomis excutive chef Michael Christensen who will share his passion for fusing classical French technique with traditional Ojibwe ingredients. "After many years of culinary training and experience, I have learned two things," says Michael Christensen, executive chef at Potawatomi Hotel and Casino. "The best conversations take place over dinner; and Native American cuisine isnt readily available within our community." The dinner will showcase a variety of ingredients native to Northern Wisconsin, as well as the culinary influence brought by European fur traders in the 15th century. It will also highlight elements of Christensens background, not only as a classically trained French chef, but as a member of the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. "This menu is especially near and dear to me as its made up of several distinct pieces of my culture, history and personal experience," he says. "I enjoy fusing ingredients, techniques and culturally relevant flavor combinations together in unique ways that both celebrate the old and embrace the new." Menu The evenings menu includes an amuse bouche of corn blintzes served with huckleberry jam and creme fraiche, followed by seven courses including: Rabbit terrine: leek puree, frisee, pickled mustard seeds, mustard foam Fish consomme: walleye quenell, forest mushrooms Sorbet: strawberry and honey Venison medallions: Ojibwe succotash, wild rice pilaf, mushroom demi-glace Salad: petite greens, pine nuts, seasonal vegetables, cranberries, herb vinaigrette Cheese Plate: Wisconsin artisanal cheeses, dried berries, toasted black walnuts, crostini Dessert: wild rice orange pudding Cost for the dinner is $85 per person (plus tax and gratuity), which includes seven courses and wine pairings. For reservations, call (414) 847-7883. Cant make the Native American Heritage Dinner? Consider attending the Milwaukee Art Museums MAM After Dark event on Nov. 17. The event will highlight Native American culture through song, dance, story-telling and activities. There will also be a performance from Native American hip hop artist Supaman. The event takes place from 7 to 11 p.m. and is free for Milwaukee Art Museum members and $12 for non-members. For more information, or to purchase discounted advance tickets for $10, visit mam.org. Yet another mural adorns a Walkers Point building, this time its a large, colorful mural celebrating diversity on the north exterior wall of Var Gallery & Studios, 643 S 2nd St. The new mural is 32 feet wide by 16 feet high and features the crossed-out word "ignore" replaced with the word "honor" followed by the word "difference." "As we were painting it, we heard so many passersby contemplate its meaning," said the artists, Katie Mullen and Jordan Pintar. "That was our favorite part of the process. So instead of putting up an artist statement explaining it, like wed originally planned to, we decided to continue to leave it up to the viewer." This is the second artist-created mural 88Nine Radio Milwaukee commissioned this year. Earlier this fall, the first mural was completed by Stacey Williams-Ng on the Penfield Childrens Center, 833 N. 26th St. Radio Milwaukee selected and commissioned artists this year for both murals through a Mary L. Nohl Fund grant and with support from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Sherwin-Williams and Empire Painting Wisconsin donated the paint. The murals are part of 88Nines activities recognizing the non-profit stations 10th anniversary this year on air and in the community. "We designed our mural program to create a long-lasting message from 88Nine to our community to celebrate our 10th anniversary," says Marketing Director Alyssa Feuerer. "We are so happy to have this new work in our studios Walkers Point neighborhood to encourage people to be more accepting and empathetic with their neighbors." "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy offor seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom IMAGE_UNTV_NEWS_110117_Undocumented What happened to us there was really traumatic. For me, its not humane, its slavery. We were allowed to sleep for only two hours. We are also not allowed to urinate. Our food was limited. Whatever the food they left, thats what we can only eat, human trafficking victim, Joan Masa said. This has been the bitter experience of Joan Masa as a house helper in Abu Dhabi for 9 months. Masa was a victim of an illegal recruiter in Laguna. The said illegal recruiter offered her huge salary and a good employer But the opposite was what happened. Joan is just among the more than 100 distressed overseas Filipino workers the Philippine Embassy gives assistance to so they could return to the Philippines. The government also gave each of them P15,000 worth of livelihood so they could start their own business. Actually the Philippine government paid for their fare, they were also given fare. These OFWs are victims of human trafficking, DFA Migrant Workers Affairs Usec. Sarah Lou Arriola said. We try to make their lives comfortable, so when they arrive here, they can have something to start new lives, she added. According to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), there are still a lot of undocumented Filipino workers in Abu Dhabi, but they are having difficulty determining their exact number because usually enter the Middle East using tourist visas. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) believes such a system can be avoided if the implementation of the Labor Cooperation Agreement of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the government of Abu Dhabi pushes through. Stated there is decent recruitment of the workers for UAE which means once the UAE Domestic Workers Law takes effect, like what Usec says, maybe in the first quarter of next year, all OFWs going to UAE will strictly undergo the process of the POEA strictly, there will no longer be visit and tourist visa deployment, OWWA chief Hans Leo Cacdac said. Story continues Based on the figures of the DFA, about 700 Filipino in Abu Dhabi were repatriated for illegal working there. Philippine authorities continue to process the repatriation of other distressed OFWs in Abu Dhabi. Joan Nano | UNTV News & Rescue The post Over 100 Filipino victims of human trafficking in Abu Dhabi return to the Philippines appeared first on UNTV News. The Tapanuli Orangutan. Credit: Tim Laman Scientists have long recognized six living species of great ape aside from humans: Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. But researchers reporting in Current Biology on November 2 have now made it seven, based on a collection of evidence showing that an isolated population of orangutans living in Sumatra is actually its own unique species. They've named the new species the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis). Unfortunately, the researchers say, there are only about 800 Tapanuli orangutans left. Those that remain are also under threat from loss of lowland habitat and hunting, which makes this newly discovered species among the most threatened great ape species in the world. "It isn't an everyday event that we find a new species of great ape, so indeed the discovery is very exciting," said Michael Krutzen of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, senior author of the study. "Great apes are among the best-studied species in the world," added Erik Meijaard of the Australian National University. "If after 200 years of serious biological research we can still find new species in this group, what does it tell us about all the other stuff that we are overlooking: hidden species, unknown ecological relationships, critical thresholds we shouldn't cross? Humans are conducting a vast global experiment, but we have near-zero understanding of what impacts this really has, and how it could ultimately undermine our own survival." Prof. Michael Krutzen explains his research. Credit: University of Zurich The new orangutan species lives in the Batang Toru area in North Sumatra, Indonesia. While there had been rumors, no one was sure that this population of orangutans existed until 1997. They live south of what had been the known range for Sumatran orangutans. Earlier studies suggested that the group differed from other orangutans behaviorally and at the genetic level, but it wasn't clear that those differences were enough to support its designation as a new species. The breakthrough came in 2013, when the research team including Meijaard got access to a skeleton belonging to a Batang Toru orangutan killed in a human-animal conflict. Careful studies of the animal revealed consistent differences in its skull and teeth. A sophisticated analysis of 37 orangutan genomes now shows that the deepest split in the evolutionary history of living orangutans occurred more than three million years ago, between the Batang Toru population and Bornean orangutans to the north of Lake Toba. Bornean and Sumatran orangutans separated only much later, less than 700,000 years ago. Behavioral and ecological evidence lends further support for the notion that the orangutans living in Batang Toru are a separate species, the researchers said. Photogrpah of a Pongo tapanuliensis skull. Credit: Nater et al. "The Batang Toru orangutans appear to be direct descendants of the initial orangutans that had migrated from mainland Asia, and thus constitute the oldest evolutionary line within the genus Pongo," said Alexander Nater, also of the Unversity of Zurich. "The Batang Toru population was connected to populations to the north until 10,000 or 20,000 years ago, after which it became isolated." The findings mean that there are now 800 fewer Sumatran orangutans than previously thought. The Tapanuli orangutans are also severely threatened by hunting and the proposed development of a hydroelectric dam that would flood large parts of their best habitat if implemented. That's especially discouraging given that previous analyses suggest a mortality rate of less than one percent per year would still be enough to drive the Tapanuli orangutans extinct. "If even 8 out of 800 animals per annum were killed or otherwise removed from the population, the species might be doomed," the scientists caution. The researchers say the most important thing now is to work with organizations already in the area and Indonesian government authorities to urge support for more effective conservation measures to protect the Batang Toru area. They also want to learn more about the relationship of the Tapanuli orangutan to now-extinct orangutan populations that used to live in other parts of Sumatra. More information: Current Biology, Nater et al.: "Morphometric, Behavioral, and Genomic Evidence for a New Orangutan Species" www.cell.com/current-biology/f 0960-9822(17)31245-9 , DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.047 Journal information: Current Biology Beacons of life could help researchers identify potentially habitable worlds. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk Some exoplanets shine brighter than others in the search for life beyond the solar system. New NASA research proposes a novel approach to sniffing out exoplanet atmospheres. It takes advantage of frequent stellar stormswhich hurl huge clouds of stellar material and radiation into spacefrom cool, young dwarf stars to highlight signs of habitable exoplanets. Traditionally, researchers have sought potential biosignatures as ways of identifying inhabited worlds: byproducts from life as we know it such as oxygen or methane that over time accumulate in the atmosphere to detectable amounts. But with current technology, according to Vladimir Airapetian, lead author of a Scientific Reports study published on Nov. 2, 2017, identifying these gases on distant terrestrial exoplanets is time-consuming, requiring days of observation time. The new study suggests hunting for cruder signatures of potentially habitable worlds instead, which would be easier to detect with current resources in less time. "We're in search of molecules formed from fundamental prerequisites to lifespecifically molecular nitrogen, which is 78 percent of our atmosphere," said Airapetian, who is a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at American University in Washington, D.C. "These are basic molecules that are biologically friendly and have strong infrared emitting power, increasing our chance of detecting them." Present life on Earth tells Airapetian and his team of researchers they should look for atmospheres rich with water vapor and nitrogen, and oxygen, the product of life. Oxygen and nitrogen free-float stably in their molecular formthat is, two atoms of either oxygen or nitrogen bound together in one molecule. But in the vicinity of an active dwarf star, extreme space weather sparks distinct chemical reactions, which researchers can use as indicators of atmospheric composition. Stars like our Sun are turbulent in their adolescence and frequently produce powerful eruptions that fling stellar particles ahead of them to near-light speeds. Unlike our Sun, some yellow and most orange starswhich are a bit cooler than the Sunmay continue to produce these strong stellar storms for billions of years, generating frequent swarms of high-energy particles. When these particles reach an exoplanet, they flood its atmosphere with enough energy to break molecular nitrogen and oxygen into individual atoms, and water molecules into hydroxylone atom each of oxygen and hydrogen, bound together. From there, the reactive nitrogen and oxygen atoms spark a cascade of chemical reactions that ultimately produce what the scientists call atmospheric beacons: hydroxyl, more molecular oxygen, and nitric oxidea molecule made of one nitrogen and one oxygen atom. This illustration shows a star's light illuminating an exoplanet's atmosphere. When starlight strikes the atmosphere, the beacon molecules absorb that energy and send it back into space as strong infrared radiation signals. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Airapetian and his colleagues used a model to calculate just how much nitric oxide and hydroxyl would form and how much ozone would be destroyed in an Earth-like atmosphere around an active star. Earth scientists have used this model for decades to study how ozonewhich forms naturally when sunlight strikes oxygenin the upper atmosphere responds to solar storms, but it found a new application in this study; Earth is, after all, the best case study available in the search for life. Using a computer simulation, the researchers exposed the model atmosphere to the space weather they'd expect from a cool, active star. They found that ozone drops to a minimum and fuels the production of atmospheric beacons. For researchers, these chemical reactions are very useful. When starlight strikes the atmosphere, spring-like bonds within the beacon molecules absorb the energy and vibrate, sending that energy back into space as heat, or infrared radiation. Scientists know which gases emit radiation at particular wavelengths of light, so by looking at all the radiation coming from the atmosphere, it's possible to get a sense of what's in the atmosphere itself. Forming a detectable amount of these beacons requires a large quantity of molecular oxygen and nitrogen. So, if they are detected, these compounds could indicate an atmosphere filled with biologically friendly chemistry, as well as Earth-like atmospheric pressureand thus the possibility of a habitable world, one needle in a vast haystack of exoplanets. This approach is also meant to weed out exoplanets without an Earth-like magnetic field. "A planet needs a magnetic field, which shields the atmosphere and protects the planet from stellar storms and radiation," Airapetian said. "If stellar winds aren't so extreme as to compress an exoplanet's magnetic field close to its surface, the magnetic field prevents atmospheric escape, so there are more particles in the atmosphere and a stronger resulting infrared signal." Airapetian and his colleagues used data from NASA's Earth-studying TIMED missionshort for Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesophere Energetics Dynamicsto simulate how infrared observations of these beacons might appear. The data came from TIMED's spectroscopy instrument called SABERshort for Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometrywhich studies the very same chemistry that generates the atmospheric beacons, as it occurs in Earth's upper atmosphere in response to solar activity. Shown in this artist's concept, NASA's TIMED spacecraft has been observing Earth's upper atmosphere for 15 years, leading to new understandings of how this region interacts with the lower atmosphere below and space above -- and now, how the very same chemistry may play out on exoplanets. Credit: NASA/JHU-APL "Taking what we know about infrared radiation emitted by Earth's atmosphere, the idea is to look at exoplanets and see what sort of signals we can detect," said Martin Mlynczak, a co-author of the paper and the SABER associate principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. "If we find exoplanet signals in nearly the same proportion as Earth's, we could say that planet is a good candidate for hosting life." The SABER data showed the frequency of intense stellar storms is directly related to the strength of the heat signals from the atmospheric beacons. With more storms, more beacon molecules are generated and the infrared signal would be strong enough, the scientists estimate, to be observed from nearby exoplanets with a six to 10-meter space-based telescope in just two hours of observation time. "This is an exciting new proposed way to look for life," said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, a Goddard astrobiologist not connected with the study. "But as with all signs of life, the exoplanet community needs to think hard about context. What are the ways non-biological processes could mimic this signature?" With the right kind of star, this work could lead to new strategies in the search for life that identify not just potentially habitable planets, but planetary systems, as the way a planet's atmosphere interacts with its parent star also has a key effect on its habitability. If promising signals are detected, researchers can coordinate observations with a future space-based observatory such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, increasing the likelihood of discovering such a potential system. "New insights on the potential for life on exoplanets depend critically on interdisciplinary research in which data, models and techniques are utilized from NASA Goddard's four science divisions: heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary and Earth sciences," Goddard senior astrophysicist and co-author William Danchi said. "This mixture produces unique and powerful new pathways for exoplanet research." Credit: Washington University in St. Louis An accurate analog clock tick-tick-ticks with a constant precision and well known frequency: one tick per second. The longer you let it tick, the better to test its accuracy 10 times as long corresponds to a ten-fold improvement in any frequency uncertainty. But is there a faster way to determine a frequency? It turns out there is, in a new discovery published this week in Physical Review Letters by a collaboration between a Washington University in St. Louis professor and graduate student along with a University of Rochester researcher. The speed-up in frequency measurement comes from quantum mechanics. When a quantum bit is used to measure the frequency of a signal, the strange rules of quantum mechanics allow the frequency measurement to be much more accurate. The technique hinges on the ability to put the quantum bit in a superposition of its two quantum states, and then shift these states around in time with the signal. Kater Murch, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, along with graduate student Mahdi Naghiloo and theory collaborator Andrew Jordan of Rochester described the technique as a "quantum magic trick." "It's reminiscent of the magic tricks that involve a ball placed under one of two cups and the cups are shuffled aroundexcept this time, the ball can be under both cups at the same time," Murch said. "The resulting speedup in frequency measurement is astonishing. Now, by measuring for 10 times as long, the frequency uncertainty can be reduced by a factor of 100enabling enhanced resolution of the frequency beyond any other technique of its kind. Earlier theory work published by the Jordan group this year has proven in two separate papers that the technique applied in this paper is the theoretical optimum that quantum mechanics allows." The experiment was completed by using a superconducting quantum system where an external oscillating signal with unknown frequency caused the quantum system to undergo periodic changes. By applying quantum pulses on top of the oscillating signal, the state of the system could be controlled so that the final readout of the quantum system became highly sensitive to the precise value of the oscillation frequency. The underlying physical source of the advantage is related to the fact that the energy of the quantum system is time-dependent, which causes the quantum states corresponding to different frequencies to accelerate away from each other, giving enhanced distinguishability in a given time. This method permitted enhanced resolution of the frequency beyond any other technique of its kind, Jordan said. This work is just one example of how the new field of quantum technologies uses the laws of quantum physics for technological advantage over classical physics, Jordan said. Other examples include quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum simulation. For those fields, the exploitation of quantum physics provides benefits such as a speed up of database search, the factoring of large numbers or the rapid simulation of complex molecules. Such fine-scale measurement of the frequency of a periodic signal is the fundamental ingredient in diverse applications including MRI medical imaging devices, the analysis of light emitted from stars and, of course, clock precision. Accelerating these measurements in a way that Murch and Jordan have demonstrated could have profound impacts in many areas. Murch and Naghiloo used timekeeping and GPS, and such constantly advancing technologies, as examples of the importance of their findings. "Nowadays, most of us carry a phone in our pocket that is capable of telling us almost exactly where we are on Earth using the Global Positioning System," Murch said. "The way this works is that your phone receives signals from several different satellites, and by timing the relative arrival of these signals it infers your position. The accuracy of the timing directly relates to the accuracy of your positiona relationship between timekeeping and navigation that has persisted for hundreds of years. "Well before GPS, a sailor who wanted to know his location would navigate by the stars. In the Northern Hemisphere, the height of the north star will tell you your latitude, but to know your longitude, you need to keep track of the time. As the night goes on, the stars circle around the north starthe height of any star above the horizon is related to the local time, and by comparing this time to a clock set to Greenwich Mean Time, the time difference gives your longitude." Nautical timekeeping underscores the vitality of frequency advances. "In the 1700s, accurate clocks were the main limitation to ocean navigation," Murch said. "The Scilly naval disaster of 1707 one of the worst disasters in British naval historywas widely blamed on poor navigation, prompting the British government to invest heavily in precise clocks. The resulting chronometers transformed marine navigation and greatly accelerated the age of discovery. "Advances in timekeeping continue to have profound impact on technology and fundamental science. Quantum tools, such as the quantum speedup in frequency measurement that we discovered, are necessary to push these technologies forward. This is an exciting time for quantum physics because these quantum resources are increasingly leading to practical advantages over traditional measurement approaches." More information: M. Naghiloo et al, Achieving Optimal Quantum Acceleration of Frequency Estimation Using Adaptive Coherent Control, Physical Review Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.180801 Journal information: Physical Review Letters In response to Chinese aggression of road infrastructure near LAC in Ladakh, Border Roads Organisation constructed the world's highest motorable road going through a pass at a height of over 19,300 feet. Construction there came with a cost as workers faced health issues like loss of memory and high blood pressure. By India Today Web Desk: Border Roads Organisation's Project Himank has achieved another major feat in Ladakh by constructing the world's highest motorable road, passing through Umlingla Top at a height of over 19,300 feet. In response to Chinese aggression of road infrastructure near LAC in Ladakh, BRO constructed the world's highest motorable road. Being close to Hanle, the 86-km-long strategic road connects Chisumle and Demchok villages, located 230 km from Leh, which are a stone's throw away from Indo-China border in the eastern sector. BRO constructs world's highest motorable road in Ladakh advertisement Felicitating the personnel for achieving the feat, Chief Engineer of Project Himank -- Brigadier DM Purvimath -- said that constructing the road at an altitude of over 19,300 feet was a daunting task with life threatening challenges. CLIMATE AND CONSTRUCTION Brigadier DM Purvimath said that the climate at the location is always adverse for construction activities. "During peak summers, temperatures hover around minus 10-20 degrees Celsius, and in winters temperatures dip to minus 40 degrees. Oxygen levels at the altitude are 50 per cent less than in other places," he said. "Efficiency of machines and manpower decline by 50 per cent due to harsh climate conditions and less oxygen levels; the machine operators have to come down after every 10 minutes for oxygen," he said, adding "nobody can survive at the spot for more than an hour without proper training and acclimatising with the place." The brigadier said that the logistics was a major challenge in taking men and machinery at such an altitude. "Taking equipment at such a height, repairing and maintaining it is a major task since the equipment faced lot of breakdowns," he said. The personnel faced huge health problems like loss of memory, deteriorating eyesight and high blood pressure. "Such a construction does not come without a cost, but given the national and strategic importance of the road, our men and machinery worked overnight to meet the targets set out by director general of border roads," Brigadier DM Purvimath pointed out. TAKES YOUR BREATH AWAY The BRO personnel are acclimatised through a tedious process and a lot of training is given before assigning the job, said Commander 753 BRTF, Pardeep Raj, who looks after the road construction of this sector. "Acclimatisation of men is done at three stages - at Leh, Shakti and Numa - before being inducted into the sector. Physical and mental fitness of men are also emphasised upon for working in the area as the working season is limited in the region," Pradeep said. Pradeep added that the planning of work in the area is done long before its execution to achieve the desired results. Captain Bharat Mani Choudhury, the doctor who takes care of health of the jawans in the entire sector said that it is compulsory for GREFF personnel and laborers to acclimatise at three different stages for a period of 16 days before taking over the job. "Blood pressure and oxygen level of each jawan are frequently monitored," he said and added that the facility of oxygen was kept at different places for emergency. advertisement "The personnel are instructed to avoid drinking stream water, consume less spicy foods and take 10 litres of water daily," he said. A DREAM COME TRUE Captain Abhay Partap Singh Negi, OIC 124 RCC, said that it is a proud moment and a dream come true. "It took me three months to settle and acclimatise with the environment. It gives me immense pleasure to drive on the world's highest motorable road," he said. Project Himank has already constructed roads like Khardungla and Changla in Leh by connecting Nubra valley and Durbok valley in the cold desert. The latest feet has made Dungrila (Mana Pass), which is situated at the border between Tibet and India in the state of Uttarakhand, step down as the world's highest motorable road. Dungrila is at an elevation of 18,406 feet and connects India to Tibet through the Zanskar mountain range. advertisement China has already built roads across LAC in the area and the Umlingla Top road will help Indian Army with logistics and transportation. --- ENDS --- Diagram showing iridium attacking a cancer cell by making it produce singlet oxygen. Credit: University of Warwick Cancer cells can be targeted and destroyed with the metal from the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to new research by an international collaboration between the University of Warwick and Sun Yat-Sen University in China. Researchers from the Professor Sadler and Professor O'Connor groups in Warwick's Department of Chemistry and Professor Hui Chao's group at Sun Yat-Sen have demonstrated that iridium the world's second densest metal can be used to kill cancer cells by filling them with deadly version of oxygen, without harming healthy tissue. The researchers created a compound of iridium and organic material, which can be directly targeted towards cancerous cells, transferring energy to the cells to turn the oxygen (O2) inside them into singlet oxygen, which is poisonous and kills the cell - without harming any healthy tissue. The process is triggered by shining visible laser light through the skin onto the cancerous area this reaches the light-reactive coating of the compound, and activates the metal to start filling the cancer with singlet oxygen. The researchers found that after attacking a model tumour of lung cancer cells, grown by the researchers in the laboratory to form a tumour-like sphere, with red laser light (which can penetrate deeply through the skin), the activated organic-iridium compound had penetrated and infused into every layer of the tumour to kill it demonstrating how effective and far-reaching this treatment is. They also proved that the method is safe to healthy cells by conducting the treatment on non-cancerous tissue and finding it had no effect. Furthermore, the researchers used state-of-the-art ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry to gain an unprecedented view of the individual proteins within the cancer cells allowing them to determine precisely which proteins are attacked by the organic-iridium compound. After vigorously analysing huge amounts of data - thousands of proteins from the model cancer cells, they concluded that the iridium compound had damaged the proteins for heat shock stress, and glucose metabolism, both known as key molecules in cancer. The University of Warwick has the UK's most advanced laboratory for this type of highly advanced mass spectrometry, and is a world-class centre of analytical science. Co-author Cookson Chiu is a postgraduate researcher in Warwick's Department of Chemistry, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Bruker. He commented: "This project is a leap forward in understanding how these new iridium-based anti-cancer compounds are attacking cancer cells, introducing different mechanisms of action, to get around the resistance issue and tackle cancer from a different angle." Dr Pingyu Zhang and Dr Huaiyi Huang are Royal Society Newton International Fellows in Warwick's Department of Chemistry. Dr Zhang added: "Our innovative approach to tackle cancer involving targeting important cellular proteins can lead to novel drugs with new mechanisms of action. These are urgently needed. In addition, research links between UK and Chinese academics will not only lead to lasting collaborations, but also have potential to open up the translation of new drugs into the clinic as a UK-China joint development" Peter O'Connor, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Warwick, noted: "Remarkable advances in modern mass spectrometry now allow us to analyse complex mixtures of proteins in cancer cells and pinpoint drug targets, on instruments that are sensitive enough to weigh even a single electron!" Professor Peter Sadler is excited about where this work can lead. He said: "The precious metal platinum is already used in more than 50% of cancer chemotherapies. The potential of other precious metals such as iridium to provide new targeted drugs which attack cancer cells in completely new ways and combat resistance, and which can be used safely with the minimum of side-effects, is now being explored. "International collaborations can greatly hasten progress. It's certainly now time to try to make good medical use of the iridium delivered to us by an asteroid 66 million years ago!" Photochemotherapy using laser light to target cancer is fast emerging as a viable, effective and non-invasive treatment. Patients are becoming increasingly resistant to traditional therapies, so it is vital to establish new pathways like this for fighting the disease. Iridium was first discovered in 1803, and its name comes from the Latin for 'rainbow'. From the same family as platinum, it is hard, brittle, and is the world's most corrosion-resistant metal. Yellow in colour, its melting point is more than 2400 Celsius. The metal is rare on Earth, but is abundant in meteoroids and large amounts of iridium have been discovered in the Earth's crust from around 66 million years ago, leading to the theory that it came to this planet with an asteroid which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Distinguished as a 'Very Important Paper', the research, 'Organo-iridium photosensitizers can induce specific oxidative attack on proteins in cancer cells' is published in the Wiley journal Angewandte Chemie. For thousands of years, people have built civilizations with concrete made from readily available local materials. Just mix and heat, add some sand, stone and water and put it where you want it. Of course, give it time to harden - that is, after you have left your hand print or initials. So it's no surprise that concrete is the world's most widely used building material. Twice as much concrete has been used to build Pittsburgh - and everything else in the world - than wood and steel combined. So says concrete expert Julie Marie Vandenbossche, a University of Pittsburgh civil engineer. But, as it turns out, there's far more to concrete than meets the eye, shoe or tire tread. How these materials glue themselves together, harden and maintain their shape over long periods of time involves common materials and complex chemistry. Various factors influence strength and durability, all the way down to the concrete's concentration of air bubbles. It explains the continuing academic interest in concrete, with Pitt serving as a research mecca, given its team of four notable research scientists devoted to the hard stuff. That team includes Vandenbossche and her husband, Mark B. Snyder, a concrete consultant still associated with Pitt. Add Lev Khazanovich, who holds an endowed chair in engineering and recently arrived from the University of Minnesota with a reputation for developing design methods for high-quality, low-cost concrete pavement. Rounding out the team is another recent addition, Steve Sachs, an assistant professor in civil engineering. Vandenbossche, who holds an engineering Ph.D., said no other university in the nation has as many researchers focused on concrete pavements. Pitt also has an accelerated loading facility - or ALF - working steadily in Pitt's Pavement Mechanics and Materials Lab in Benedum Hall on the Oakland campus. It applies repeated, high-pressure loads on concrete slabs, simulating the physics of heavy traffic. The specialized equipment tests the strength and durability of dowel bars, which are embedded in highway concrete to transfer the load across joints. The ALF is the only such equipment currently being used nationwide to evaluate new, innovative designs and materials for long-life dowel bars, she said. The team also continues studying concrete-pavement dynamics on Route 22 in Murrysville, with computerized equipment recording temperature, expansion and contraction, and traffic pressures and strains, all of which affect its stability and longevity. "We've used it extensively over the last 10 years," Vandenbossche said, "to study how climate changes affect the structure." The university's importance in concrete science was most apparent this past summer when it hosted a U.S. Research Board meeting of its Standing Technical Committee on Design and Rehabilitation of Concrete Pavements in June. That meeting occurred simultaneously with the American Concrete Paving Association's mid-year meeting in Pittsburgh, followed by a meeting of the association's board of directors. "The key to the team here is that we do impactful research in terms of concrete pavement," said Vandenbossche, whose research includes developing concrete overlays. They would allow cheaper repair of highways, much the way new layers routinely are added to asphalt pavement. "The work she's doing on concrete overlays is phenomenal," said Georgene Geary, who headed the standing committee. and currently operates her own consulting firm, GGfGA Engineering. "She's doing research on concrete overlays and better design tools to make sure highways are built right and build to last. Pitt is active on numerous fronts - and surfaces. Snyder was key in convincing the state Department of Transportation to develop specifications for long-life concrete, designed to last 40 to 50 years and as long as 60, rather than the current life expectancy of 20 or 25 years. The ultimate goal is formulating concrete to last a lifetime rather than a generation. Neal Fannin, PennDOT's pavement materials engineer, wrote the state specifications in recent years for long-life concrete that's already being used in building interstate highways. Time will tell, he said, if the long-life concrete mixture will meet expectations. Gradations of stone (aggregate) is key in allowing the concrete to compact better than stone of one size. Better compaction helps prevent slumping of pavement especially at the edges. Also the new concrete involves less cement, which contributes to concrete shrinkage after it hardens. Less shrinkage means more stability, Fannin said. The specs were completed about the time the Southern Beltway project was getting underway from Route 22 to Interstate 79 in Washington and Allegheny counties, he said. But, in fact, the long-life concrete is being used. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that 2.74 million miles of paved roads crisscross America, with 83 percent paved with asphalt. In the United States, there's an estimated 465,800 miles of concrete highways, most of them interstate highways that account for about one-quarter of the total miles driven each year. The truth is, there are limited financial resources for highway construction and southwestern Pennsylvania's hills and rivers require many more bridges than other states, with Pittsburgh alone having about 460 bridges. That's second nationally to New York City (778). When talking apple pie, you need a good recipe. The same holds true for concrete. Portland cement, the most common concrete, is made from "a closely controlled chemical combination of calcium, silicon, aluminum, iron and other ingredients," the Portland Cement Association says. Materials used can include "limestone, shells, and chalk or marl" combined with another large assortment of materials - shale, clay, slate, blast furnace slag, silica sand, and iron ore. Combinations of ingredients are heated at high temperatures - about 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit - "to form a rock-like substance that is ground into the fine powder that we commonly think of as cement," the association states. When mixed with sand, stone (aggregate) and water, and used as intended, the results include strong walls, roads and sidewalks. In some ways, concrete research has progressed with an eye on the rear-view mirror. Ancient Romans were expert concrete makers, having used volcanic ash in its concrete mix. The result is concrete that's lasted 2,000 years, in many cases, with a mix that hardens through time to produce nearly rock-like strength. Flyash, a byproduct of coal combustion in power plants, is Pennsylvania's version of volcanic ash that makes stronger concrete but not nearly as long-lasting as Roman concrete, at least not to date, Khazanovich said. America's oldest concrete, created experimentally in 1891 to build Court Avenue in Bellefontaine, Ohio, was controversial at the time. George Bartholemew had to post a bond to build his street made of "artificial stone." As it turned out, he accidentally happened upon the perfect recipe that Khazanovich attributes to perfect-sized air bubbles - about 6 percent of air by volume - that accommodates expansion and contraction of water and ice during Ohio's freeze-thaw cycle. People, and pavement gurus, now visit Bellefontaine to see the concrete. Air is now added to most outdoor concrete in northern states. Khazanovich, who has a doctoral degree in civil engineering, says governments more than ever must develop and use longer-lasting concrete pavements, which can cost 5 percent to 13 percent more. But in the long run, they cost less, improve ride quality, reduce traffic closures, and reduce the number of accidents associated with construction: "We don't have enough money to build cheap roads," he said. Pitt researchers and Fannin also stress the point that Pennsylvania faces more construction challenges than most states, given a freeze-thaw cycle that's one of the most dramatic in the nation. But Fannin said the long-life concrete is key to better highways: "We want to build roads as cheaply as we can, but the highest quality that we can, so you are always seeking a balance." 2017 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Native to Asia, Sargassum horneri was first detected in 2003 in Long Beach harbor. Credit: Katie Davis Invasive species are can be hugely detrimental to marine ecosystems. Take Caulerpa taxifolia as an example. Dubbed "killer algae" because it crowds out other plants and animals as it colonizes an area with great monotypic stands of vegetation, C. taxifolia displaces rich marine habitats that support a variety of fish and invertebrate life, leaving an area unable to nourish animal life. In 2000, this green alga, native to tropical waters, was found in San Diego County's Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Known to be highly invasive in the Mediterranean, a massiveand ultimately successfuleffort was launched to eradicate it from Southern California waters. Unfortunately, the same has not been true for Sargassum horneri, another invasive alga first detected in 2003 in Long Beach harbor. In the ensuing years, S. horneri, a fast-growing brown alga native to eastern Asia, spread throughout Southern California and crept up to the Northern Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. UC Santa Barbara researchers, who have been conducting long-term monitoring of native kelp forests in marine protected areas (MPAs) around the Northern Channel Islands since 2000, encountered low levels of S. horneri around Anacapa Island in 2009. Five years later, its abundance began to rapidly increase, perhaps partially due to unusually warm waters. Reviewing years of monitoring data both inside and outside of MPAs, the marine biologists noticed interesting community-level patterns and decided to compare them in different areas around Anacapa with varied levels of marine protection. In the oldest MPAa complete no-take zone protected since 1978they saw less S. horneri than in the newer ones established in 2003. Their analysis appears in the journal Ecology Letters. "We found evidence for two distinct ecological mechanismscompetition and herbivoryproviding resilience, but the community states really aren't equivalent," said lead author Jennifer Caselle, a research biologist at UCSB's Marine Science Institute (MSI). "On one hand, in the old MPA, we found a healthy kelp forest outcompeting the invasive and in the fished areas, an urchin barren affording herbivory." Using Anacapa's complex set of protection levels, the investigators compared the historic no-take MPA with two newer MPAs: one that prohibits fishing (i.e., a no-take zone) and one that is a partial-take reserve, allowing lobster fishing. The reference zone was an area completely open to fishing. "The historic MPA has had decades to restore its healthy kelp forests, and resistance to invasion may have resulted from competition with the native algal species, kelps," said co-author Lindsay Marks, a UCSB graduate student in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology whose Ph.D. dissertation focuses on Sargassum. "In areas open to fishing, high densities of herbivores appear to be consuming both the native and the non-native algal species. But in the newer MPAs, which are in transitional states, neither competition nor herbivory was likely strong enough to prevent the invasion of S. horneri." According to co-author Katie Davis, a researcher in the Caselle Lab, this work shows that timing is important. "Only the long-term MPA had enough time to develop a healthy community capable of resisting invasion," she said. "Our analysis shows clearly that the newer MPAs haven't had enough time to develop resilience to this invasion." It is likely, Caselle noted, that the healthy kelp forest developed because the main predators of urchinsCalifornia sheephead and California Spiny Lobsterare protected. Those organisms are in high abundance in the historic MPA, where urchin abundance is low. "Our study shows that resilience does not rely on a single trophic level," Caselle said. "We looked at the entire community, finding top-down pressure from those protected urchin predators. That reverberated all the way through the food web, ultimately providing resistance to an invasive species. In areas outside the MPAs, those top predators are in low abundance and urchins are in high abundance." Today, the S. horneri invasion is extremely widespread in Southern California and in Baja California, with no hope of eradication. "Invasive species are exceptionally difficult to manage once they are established," Marks said. "The lesson we're learning from this study is that there might be value in managing the impacts of an invasive species by keeping our communities healthy. However, the key is preventing future invasions." More information: Jennifer E. Caselle et al. Marine management affects the invasion success of a non-native species in a temperate reef system in California, USA, Ecology Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1111/ele.12869 Journal information: Ecology Letters The next frontier for unmanned military drones may not be solely in the skies. It could be undersea. The U.S. Navy and defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others are increasingly focusing on ocean drones as the next big market for unmanned technology. Lockheed Martin Ventures in September month invested an undisclosed amount in San Diego-based Ocean Aero, a 25-employee startup that is developing the Submarana 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 it's 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." Lockheed Martin Ventures 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." Other companies are betting on ocean drones. Last year Boeing bought a Bay Area startup, Liquid Robotics, which is developing unmanned submarine technology. General Dynamics and L3 Technologies also have acquired ocean unmanned systems firms over the past 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 Martin recently were named finalists in the U.S. Navy's 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 Lockheed's work on the Orca project. But the companies are working together more generally on underwater drone technology, Patten said. "We have a strategic cooperation agreement with Lockheed as part of our recent deal," he said. "They have great expertise in a variety of things." 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 Aero's 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, while the link between the Submaran and the Marlin used acoustic communications. "That communications gateway mission is critical for a ton of folks," Patten said. "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. Its rechargeable lithium batteries allow it to spend months at sea and targets the research and commercial markets. A sister vessel is the same size but can dive 660 feet and maneuver under the surface. Ocean Aero's 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 Defense Department 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. 2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. In this Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017, file photo, a Chrysler Pacifica hybrid outfitted with Waymo's suite of sensors and radar is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to build a self-driving car. AutoNation said Thursday, Nov. 2, that its dealerships will provide maintenance and repairs for Waymo's self-driving fleet of Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to produce self-driving cars for wide use. AutoNation said Thursday that its dealerships will provide maintenance and repairs for Waymo's self-driving fleet of Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. Waymo is Google's automated vehicle technology wing. The agreement will include additional models of vehicles when Waymo brings them on line. Terms of the multi-year deal were not disclosed. Google started off with a fleet of 100 autonomous Pacificas and has announced plans to add 500. Waymo is negotiating with other automakers, such as Honda, about autonomous vehicle systems, the company said. The vehicles likely will be driven for several hundred thousand miles, and they'll need to be maintained to accomplish that, AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said Thursday in an interview. The dealership chain, he said, has maintained more than 40 million vehicles. "As Waymo moves to other markets and also puts other brands in service, we have expertise on any vehicle they want to put into service," Jackson said. Waymo has been partnering with a number of car-centric companies like Avis, the ridesharing company Lyft, and Fiat Chrysler. Since Google first began pursuing self-driving vehicle technology in 2009, a wave of major players have joined the chase. General Motors and Ford, along with other big technology companies, including Apple and ride-hailing service Uber, are developing their own technology. Waymo is in a legal tussle with Uber, alleging that one of its former managers stole its trade secrets and took them along when he joined Uber in 2016. The trial is set to begin later this year. AutoNation Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, runs about 360 dealerships in the U.S. 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Credit: Radboud University Contrary to what cognitive scientists long thought, the adaptive toolbox theory - a theory about human rationality - contains an NP-hard problem which asks for demonic computational powers just like the travelling salesman problem and the Rubik's Cube. Maria Otworowska, Iris van Rooij, and colleagues from Radboud University publish these findings in Cognitive Science. NP stands for nondeterministic polynomial time. The calculation time required to solve any NP-hard problem grows exponentially as the size of the problem grows. For the salesman problem this would be the number of cities, and for a Rubik's Cube the number of squares in the side planes of the cube. The 'adaptive toolbox theory' defines human rationality in terms of a degree of adaptation of decision strategies to different environments. When adapting a strategy to the environment leads to a 'good enough' decision, it is said to be ecologically rational. The two classical theories on rationality (sales man and Rubik's Cube), which are based on logic or probability theory, are notorious for their assumption of such demonic calculation power. It was thought that this did not apply for the adaptive toolbox theory: an advantage, because it makes the theory easier to scale to the real world. But, the Nijmegen cognitive scientists now publish mathematical evidence for the fact that ecological rationality also contains an NP-hard problem, namely in the adaption process itself. The best theory on rationality? "I expect that this finding will make some waves in the field," says last author Iris van Rooij. "There are three groups of rationality theoreticians: logicists, Bayesians, and heuristicists. The heuristicists were in pole position for a long time, so to say, but with our results they have now lost their lead. The question remains open which theory on rationality is the best one. We have to get to work!" Van Rooij believes that the results have far-reaching consequences. Not only for discussions about questions like 'are people rational or irrational," and 'is rationality a viable standard," but also because it opens new research lines on the co-evolution of environment and brain. The article enables advancements in research on rationality in the real, complex world, instead of the artificially simple experiments in the lab. More information: Maria Otworowska et al. Demons of Ecological Rationality, Cognitive Science (2017). DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12530 Journal information: Cognitive Science The ability of graphene to add functionality to common objects has been exploited in footwear with better thermal properties. Developed by Graphene Flagship partners Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy, in collaboration with FADEL, a leading Italian shoe company based in Tuscany, the new GET technology gives the footwear better thermoregulation and freshness. In this innovative shoe, flakes consisting of several graphene layers are added to polyurethane used in the soles. Laboratory tests show an augmented heat dispersion, greater waterproofing and enhanced antibacterial properties. Combining these effects with a ventilation system provided a better user experience. This prototype shoe was presented at the International Footwear Exhibition in Milan. "One of the main properties of graphene is its ability to dissipate heat, so we began to think of combining graphene produced by liquid phase exfoliation into polyurethanethe material used for the sole of the shoe. This created a composite with a heat dissipation 50 percent better than the pure polyurethane material," said Vittorio Pellegrini, Director of IIT Graphene Labs and Chair of the Executive Board of the Graphene Flagship. "We improved the thermal properties with a tiny amount of graphene (around 1 percent) which is significant in delivering a product whose cost is not significantly larger than before." "The Graphene Flagship is a strong accelerator of knowledge, knowhow and technology transfer." said Pellegrini "Without the Flagship, this shoe would have taken many years to develop. We benefited greatly from the ability to share our results and get ideas from other scientists through the Flagship." Dr Kari Hjelt, Head of Innovation for the Graphene Flagship said "We continue to witness the potential of graphene-based technologies to create market disruptions and transformational innovations. Graphene's unique capability to enhance multiple product attributes concurrently can create a competitive edge for many products, as is nicely demonstrated in the present case." Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, Science and Technology Officer of the Graphene Flagship, and Chair of its Management Panel, added "This is yet another example of the steady journey of graphene and related materials from the lab to the factory floor. With an ever increasing number of companies working as partners or associate members of the Flagship, the Flagship is not only pushing the state of the art of graphene and related materials' science and technology, but is also driving the innovation." Further information on the above project, developed by Graphene Labs of IIT and the Italian shoe company FADEL can be found at the website http://www.freshoes.it More information: For more information, see www.freshoes.it Provided by Graphene Flagship Sunrise over the Earth. Hydrofluorocarbons were created to protect the ozone layer, but their stable nature makes them an extremely potent greenhouse gas. Credit: NASA On October 28, Australia ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. Australia is the tenth country to ratify, joining others as diverse as Mali, the United Kingdom and Rwanda in a global commitment to dramatically reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the atmosphere. Once 20 countries have ratified the amendment, it will become binding. HFCs were designed specifically to replace ozone-destroying compounds previously used in air conditioners and refrigerants. Unfortunately, we now know that HFCs are massively potent greenhouse gases thousands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide (albeit released in far smaller quantities). If the Kigali Amendment becomes binding, the hunt will begin for a replacement for HFCs and their uses in industry. In a strange twist, the least environmentally harmful option may well be carbon dioxide. Where do HFCs come from? HFCs are made of carbon, fluorine and hydrogen. They are exclusively synthetic, meaning they have no known natural sources. To understand why they came into existence requires a quick history lesson. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, another class of compounds called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were widely used. CFCs are very stable, which made them ideal for many practical uses, including in refrigeration, foam packaging, and even aerosol cans for hair spray. However, scientists soon discovered that CFCs had a major downside. Because they are so stable, they can survive in the atmosphere long enough to eventually reach the ozone layer. Once there, they break down in sunlight and destroy ozone in the process. The Montreal Protocol was a global agreement developed to stop this harmful ozone destruction. The protocol mandated a time frame to completely abolish CFCs. To replace them, new compounds were developed that do not destroy ozone: HFCs. The usage of CFCs and their replacements, including HFCs, since 1950. UNEP 2011. HFCs: A Critical Link in Protecting Climate and the Ozone Layer But the solution to one environmental problem became the cause of another: these replacements are potent contributors to warming the climate. Why are HFCs so bad? All greenhouse gases work by absorbing infrared radiation, which would otherwise escape into space. But not all greenhouse gases are created equal. The potency of a greenhouse gas depends on three properties: how long it remains in the atmosphere (its "lifetime") how much radiation it absorbs whether the specific wavelength of radiation it absorbs would otherwise be absorbed by something else in the atmosphere (like water). Combined, these three properties can be used to determine the global warming potential for each greenhouse gas. This is a measure of how potent the gas is relative to carbon dioxide (CO). By definition, CO has a global warming potential of 1. Methane, commonly considered the second most important greenhouse gas, has a global warming potential of 34 meaning that 1 tonne of methane would trap 34 times more heat than 1 tonne of CO. The global warming potentials for the three most abundant HFCs range from 1,370 to 4,180. In other words, these gases trap thousands of times more heat in our atmosphere than an equivalent amount of CO. What will replace HFCs? The nearly 200 countries that signed the original Montreal Protocol have unanimously agreed that the climate risks posed by HFCs are too significant to ignore. Developed countries will begin phasing out HFCs in 2019. Developing countries will follow suit between 2024 and 2028. Global warming potentials of five greenhouse gases. The area of each circle represents the global warming potential, calculated for a 100-year time horizon. Credit: Author created/Data from UNEP 2011 report HFCs: A Critical Link in Protecting Climate and the Ozone Layer, Author provided So what will our refrigerators and air conditioners use instead? Several replacements are being considered. Some groups are promoting another class of fluorine-containing compounds called hydrofluoroolefins (or HFOs). These have a short lifetime in the atmosphere and so pose much less of a climate risk. However, environmental groups have raised concern about the potentially toxic chemicals produced when HFOs break down. Another option is to use mixtures of hydrocarbons such as butane. Hydrocarbons pose safety risks as they are highly flammable and may also adversely affect air quality. Ammonia is another alternative that has been used as a refrigerant for a long time but is highly toxic. And, finally, there is the surprise candidate: CO. Although using CO as a refrigerant poses technical challenges, it is non-toxic and non-flammable and a much weaker greenhouse gas than the HFCs it would replace. Strangely, from an environmental perspective, CO may actually be the "best" refrigerant available. A cooler future ahead? The Montreal Protocol has long been considered one of the greatest environmental success stories of all time. It brought together the world's governments and chemical industries to protect the ozone layer. The adoption of the Kigali Amendment will be another feather in the cap of this important agreement. HFCs aren't overly prevalent yet but without Kigali they are expected to grow rapidly. By banning them now, we will avoid their impacts before it is too late. Estimates suggest that phasing out HFCs will prevent up to 0.5 of future warming. Even if this estimate turns out to be overly optimistic, getting rid of the HFCs will be an important step towards achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Goldstein inspects an ancient salt cave; its countless folded layers may hold clues to past climates. Credit: Columbia University Perched on a cliff face in Israel's Negev Desert, close to where the book of Genesis says the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burned with divine fire, geologist Steven Goldstein was excitedly uncovering evidence of events even more ancient. Jackknife in hand, Goldstein carved into soft sediments making up the cliff, exposing layers left year by year going back 70,000 years by a now long-gone lake. Cleaning the face, he pointed out neatly alternating dark and light bandsprimarily mud and light-colored minerals, respectively. The dark layers marked wet times, the light ones dry, that he could read and learn fromin essence a book much older than the Bible. Earlier this year, Goldstein and his colleagues at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory published a study based on similar sediments showing that droughts far worse than any recorded by humans have struck this region. Drilling a core of sediment from below the floor of the nearby Dead Sea, they extracted a record going back 200,000 years. Here they found thick sequences of salt precipitated out during the hottest, driest times, when rainfall in this already sere region apparently plummeted to as little as a fifth of modern levels. This was 120,000 years ago, and again 10,000 years ago, both before the time of the ancient Hebrews and other early civilizations. The study has modern implications. In recent years, human-influenced climate warming has already measurably reduced rainfall and increased evaporation in the Mideast. At the same time, populations are multiplying. The result: worsening water shortages. According to the United Nations, the world's 10 water-poorest countries are all in this regionand continued warming is on track to re-create the high temperatures associated with the past megadroughts by the year 2100. According to another recent study out of Lamont, the ongoing civil war in nearby Syria may have been sparked in part by a record 1998-2012 drought probably stoked by global warming. Israel and its neighbor Jordan, who sit on opposite sides of an uneasy border formed in part by the Dead Sea, already consume practically all available water in the sea's watershed. As a result, the Dead Sea's level is dropping fast. Land along its shores, and the infrastructure there, are collapsing. It could be a symptom of what is facing the wider region. Up to now, climate scientists had projected that rainfall could decline another 20 percent by 2100. But the Dead Sea cores suggest that things could become much worse, much faster. Credit: Columbia University "We see that when this region becomes very warm, there's a big decline in precipitation," said Lamont geochemist Yael Kiro, lead author of the recent study, and a native of Israel. "When we look into what will happen in the future due to climate change, we expect that water resources will decline significantly." Now on a five-day expedition to the Dead Sea shores of both Israel and Jordan, Kiro, Goldstein and colleagues were trying to refine their understanding of what exactly might happen. Surrounded by badlands and sand deserts, the landlocked Dead Sea region is the setting for many Biblical narratives, and other more recent historic events. It is also earth's lowest point on land. Its current shoreline lies about 1,400 feet below sea level; the deepest part of its floor lies another 900 feet down. Fed mainly by the Jordan River drainage, it is a literal dead end for water. It is hot here, and much water that reaches the sea evaporates, leaving behind salt; it is nearly 10 times saltier than the ocean. Precipitated-out salt has built up on its bed and shores for eonsmore in drier times, less in wetter ones. The Jordan River watershed also includes Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. and due to warming-induced changes in storm patterns, the region has seen about a 10 percent decline in rainfall since 1950. Now, the growing populations of the surrounding countries are sucking out practically all the Jordan's declining flow before it reaches the Dead Sea. To make up the deficit, they are tapping the region's declining deep groundwater. Starved of inflow and evaporating faster with mounting heat, the sea's level is now dropping three to four feet a yeara total of about 130 feet since 1950. The team began its most recent trip in Jerusalem, where Kiro and Goldstein met up with Mordechai Stein, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Israel. Piling into a small rental car, they drove through the precipitous Judean Mountains down toward the sea, about an hour and a half away. Along the way, Stein pointed out great swaths of white lakebed sediments draped over more ancient rocks, indicating that the sea's level was about 800 feet higher than it is now, during the cooler, rainier times of the last ice age. Some 20,000 years ago, he said, the sea occupied the entire rift valley through which the Jordan now flows, extending north to what is now the Sea of Galilee. Kiro samples the walls of the cave. Credit: Columbia University It was still morning when we approached the distant, shimmering surface of the Dead Sea. Still a ways off, we pulled up to a concrete-walled ruin. Stein identified it as The Lido, a onetime beachside restaurant. Its curving walls embraced what had been a big open-air dining room, with a little platform in the middle where musicians used to perform. From here, stairs descended to what used to be the beachwhich now was a good mile away across a barren, sunbaked expanse of dirt. The place closed in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and following that, the water level receded. The level had apparently been stable for a long time before that; through a big hole in the wall apparently blown out by an artillery shell, we could see a Roman-era stone pier at the same elevation. Goldstein observed that the water is now probably about down to where it was some 3,700 years ago, during a severe drought recorded in the sedimentspossibly, he said, the same drought said by the book of Genesis to have driven the prophet Abraham to move his family from Canaan to Egypt. Driving south along the shoreline to the foot of Mount Sodom, we disembarked along a barren slope, where past water action had excavated a narrow cave. Following in on foot, we ended up in a stupendous chimney-like chamber that opened to the sky far above. The walls were made of countless alternating layers of mud and salt. The team estimated these to be 6 million to 7 million years oldremnants of the bed of some pre-Dead Sea water body. Standing on tiptoe, Kiro hammered out samples from as high as she could reach, hoping to find clues to these truly ancient climates. A more thorough investigation would probably have to wait, said Goldstein, until someone comfortable hanging from a rope could rappel from the top of the chimney to sample more layers. Jutting from the top of a cliff just down the road was a big natural column of similar-looking sediment, pointing into the sky like a giant finger. A sign along the road below said it was "Lot's Wife"alleged remnants of the Biblical character who looked back on the burning remnants of Sodom and was turned to a pillar of salt. Stein was skeptical. "Actually, look, you can see it's a pillar of salt and mud," he pointed out. At another point, we passed the great fortress promontory of Masada, where 1,000 Jewish defenders committed suicide in the year 72, rather than be taken by a besieging Roman legion. "Those sediments in front of it are 14,000 years old," said Goldstein helpfully. At one turn, the road detoured sharply inland. We pulled off, and walked toward the shoreline. Here, a long stretch of the previously straight asphalt roadbed was crumpling into the ground. Nearby lay the sinking wreckage of a onetime highway rest area and beach resortnow stranded on a cliff about 60 vertical feet above the current water line. The collapse began in the 1990s, when retreat of the sea allowed freshwater to infiltrate and dissolve underground salt layers. The place finally closed a few years ago. A 50-foot deep chasm was now swallowing concrete picnic tables and pathways, and ranks of glacier-like crevasses snaking through the surrounding surface suggested the process would continue. An abandoned gas station, pumps stripped to skeletal insides, awaited its turn. Kiro and Mordechai Stein of the Geological Survey of Israel (top) approach a cliffside deposit in the Israeli desert. Credit: Columbia University The scientists came to a tornado-shaped, seemingly bottomless sinkhole along which the remains of a building foundation teetered. Edging up cautiously, they peered into the blackness. "It's a manmade environmental disaster," said Kiro. "It used to be so nice. Coming here now just makes me sad." She hiked down to the newly formed beach, waded into the shallows and fished out some salt chunks forming on the rocks, to compare with ancient samples. That evening, we passed the sea's southern tip and stayed the night in the resort town of Eilat, along the shore of the Red Sea. Next day we crossed the fortified land border into Jordan, and proceeded back north to check out the sea's opposite shore. In the 112-degree heat, completely barren granite mountains and expanses of sand were broken mainly by military watch towers looking across at Israel. Kiro stopped to dig a out a baggie of sand probably worn off those mountainspossibly useful in pinpointing the sources of sediment in ancient mud layers. No sooner was she done than a truckload of soldiers from the nearest watchtower pulled up and piled out of the tarp-covered back. An officer waited patiently for us to approach. A conversation cobbled from English, Arabic and Hebrew seemed to quickly satisfy him that we were weird but harmless. He simply asked that we please get in the car and continue our journey. Following a preplanned route, we presently found a turnoff onto a dirt road leading to a wadi, a narrow canyon carved deep into the ancient rock. On foot just beyond its mouth, we could hear water gurgling, and came upon the startling sight of flowering trees and tall reeds swaying in the breeze. Scattered hidden springs like this have been used for millennia by farmers and nomadic livestock herders who still roam the area. The team wanted to better understand their role in supplying runoff to the Dead Sea. They pulled out sampling bottles and instruments to analyze water chemistry and other qualitiesa process they would repeat at other wadis over the next few days. At all, it was evident that little to none of the water now reaches the sea; concrete dams channeled their flow into troughs and pipes leading to irrigated lands below. Hardly a new idea; on the way out of this first wadi, we stopped to admire the arched ruins of a Roman aqueduct paralleling the modern pipe. Long ago, it must have served the same purpose, but probably when there was more rainfall and fewer people. In a sample chiseled from a cliff face, alternating layers of whitish sediments and dark ones suggest past dry and wet periods, respectively. Credit: Columbia University The following day in the capital city of Amman, we met Marwan Al-Raggad, a 37-year-old hydrologist at the University of Jordan. Al-Raggad, full of facts and figures, gave us a detailed rundown of Jordan's water woes. Prosperous Israel, he pointed out, is water hungry too, but copes in part through expensive desalination of water from the Mediterranean. Poor, landlocked Jordan, population now 9.4 million, has had no such option. Amman began pumping groundwater in the 1980s, but its aquifers are dropping; he predicts they will run out in 20 or 30 years. A decade ago, Amman residents could turn on the tap any day of the week; now, it is down to just a day or two a week in many neighborhoods. "Except the ones where rich people and diplomats livethey get water 8 to 10 days a week," Al-Raggad joked. People fill rooftop tanks for bathing and washing, he said, but don't dare drink the stuff, because it often looks and smells bad. He estimated that 70 to 90 percent of city residents now drink only bottled water. About 15 percent of the national electricity supply now goes to pumping water, he estimated. Shortages have been exacerbated because Jordan has generously taken in some 1.3 million refugees from the next-door war in Syriaa nearly 20 percent population increase in just a few years. Al-Raggad takes the water shortages personally. He grew up in in Azraq, an oasis village that once had thriving small-scale farms. In the 1990s, when he was small, trees started dying, the earth cracked, livestock diedthe result of intensifying groundwater pumping. The remaining water became saltier, crop yields went down, and many farmers went out of business. "That was why I decided to become a hydrologist, to help my country," he said. "I feel this from a child." With international help, in 2018, Jordan hopes to break ground on a canal to bring water from the Red Sea for desalination. Brine left over from the process would be dumped into the Dead Sea, possibly helping prop up its level. But the project is controversial, because it might cause ecological damage to both the Red Sea and Dead Sea, and will not by itself fill the country's needs. Al-Raggad thinks Jordan will have to buy groundwater from Saudi Arabia, which has bigger, but not endless, reserves. One result of dropping sea level: land along the shoreline is collapsing. Here, a sinkhole swallows the remains of a onetime Israeli beach resort. Credit: Columbia University We drove to the suburbs near the Dead Sea. Here, too, the plunging water table is reshaping the surface. Extensive deep gullies are forming as seasonal rains send surface water rushing over sediments a mile or two from the receding shore. Al- Raggad led us down a path into one gully, but backed off when we heard a pack of wild dogs snarling around the corner. We found another entry further downstream and climbed in. Cutting down neatly 20 to 40 feet through sediment layers like we had seen elsewhere, the gully followed a winding course, with a trickle of muddy water at the bottom. There were discarded appliances, crates, the remains of a building that had fallen in. Dead goats rotted into the mud, exuding a sweet, sickly smell. The geologists loved it; they stopped at several spots to hammer out samples of the conveniently exposed sediments. Referring to the goats, Goldstein said, "See what we do for geology? We're walking through the valley of death." We drove down nearer to the shore, and Al-Raggad talked his way past a couple of policemen on guard there. Here, our gully reached the sea. To get to the water's edge, we had to descend a dozen giant stair steps, each about three feet higheach one a beach line formed over a year or so, marking the severe annual drops of the sea's level. At the bottom, waves lapped up on this year's temporary beach. Plenty of plastic trashmostly water bottleshad washed onto shore. Part of the Dead Seas water comes from small streams trickling through side canyons. In Jordan, the team sampled a series of these to analyze the water chemistry. Credit: Columbia University The Soubre dam is to boost Ivory Coast's power capacity while helping it reach emissions goals President Alassane Ouattara on Thursday inaugurated a huge Chinese-funded dam in southern Ivory Coast designed to boost the country's power capacity by nearly 14 percent. The four-turbine, four-kilometre (2.5-mile) -long Soubre dam is expected to add 275 megawatts of power to the network's present annual supply of 2,000 MW, said Amidou Traore, managing director of the electricity firm CI-Energie. China has provided 85 percent of its cost, estimated at 331 billion CFA francs (500 million euros, $583 million). Construction began in 2013, and the first turbine went online in June. Large dam projects are widely attacked by environmentalists for their impact on river flow, which affects habitat. But Outtara, in his inauguration speech, noted the country's commitments under the 2015 Paris climate-change agreement to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent by 2030, across all sectors. "The Soubre hydroelectric dam, by producing renewable energy, will help us to reach this goal," he said, adding that companies would also get a boost in "competitiveness". The Chinese embassy described the initiative as "emblematic" of bilateral cooperations. A major economy in West Africa, Ivory Coast launched a scheme to rebuild its electrical infrastructure after a bout of violent political upheaval in 2010-11. Production will double by 2020 according to the plan, which foresees investment of nearly 16 billion euros, funded mostly from the private sector, by 2030. As the country's biggest hydro-electric scheme, Soubre will boost the share of renewables in Ivory Coast's energy mix to 45 percent, Traore said. The rest is provided by fossil fuels. 2017 AFP By PTI: Kolkata, Nov 2 (PTI) Road infrastructure company Bharat Road Network Limited (BRNL) today said it has consolidated 100 per cent stake in Guruvayoor Infrastructure by acquiring the remaining 51 per cent shares in the project at a consideration of Rs 97 crore. Guruvayoor Infrastructure is the concession company engaged in design, construction, finance, operations and maintenance of 259.76 lane kilometres of Thrissur-Angamali section of NH47 in Kerala. advertisement "This will give the company access to Rs 100 crore of free cash flow in the project. The transaction is subject to necessary regulatory approvals," a company statement said. BRNL reported a profit after tax of Rs 7.87 crore during the quarter ended September 30 as compared to Rs 0.76 crore in the corresponding quarter of FY17. The companys standalone revenue was at Rs 14.61 crore compared to Rs 3.87 crore during the corresponding period of last year. The company, which got listed recently, announced a 5 per cent interim dividend. PTI BSM JM --- ENDS --- The quest to develop ever-faster and more powerful computers has led to one of the most rudimentary methods of counting being given a 21st century make-over. An international team of researchers, including Professor C. David Wright from the University of Exeter, have developed a nanoscale optical 'abacus' - which uses light signals to perform arithmetic computations. The innovative device works by counting pulses of light - much in the same way beads are used to count when using a conventional abacus - before storing the data. This pioneering new technique could pave the way to new, more powerful computers that combine computing and storage functions in one element - a move away from conventional computers that treat these two functions as separate. The study is published in leading scientific journal, Nature Communications. Prof. C David Wright, an expert in electronic engineering and co-author of the study said: "This device is able carry out all the basic functions you'd associate with the traditional abacus - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - what's more it can do this using picosecond (one-thousandth of a billionth of a second) light pulses". Lead author of the study, Professor Wolfram Pernice from the Institute of Physics at Munster University in Germany added: "In the article we describe for the first time the realization of an abacus which operates in a purely optical way. Rather than wooden beads as found on traditional abacuses, our innovative device calculates with pulses of light - and simultaneously stores the result." The team's optical abacus, which is so small it's essentially invisible to the naked eye, is installed on a photonic microchip that can be easily manufactured. So far, the researchers have succeeded in calculating with two-digit numbers using two photonic phase-change cells, but the extension to large multi-digit numbers simply involves the use of more cells. "Computing with light - and not with electrons, as is the case with traditional computers - means that we can develop much faster systems which can be connected using integrated optical waveguides." adds co-author Prof. Harish Bhaskaran from the University of Oxford. More information: J. Feldmann et al, Calculating with light using a chip-scale all-optical abacus, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01506-3 Journal information: Nature Communications This snapshot of the first milliseconds in the violent merger of two neutron stars, calculated and rendered by associate research scholar David Radice and collaborators, reveals the stars gravitational tidal effects on each other. In the next 10 milliseconds, they will merge into one rapidly rotating massive neutron star, then collapse into a black hole surrounded by a transient disk of material. Credit: Princeton University On Aug. 17, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected the fifth fingerprint of a massive disturbance in spacetime since LIGO began operations in September 2015. Unlike the first four sets of ripples, which reflected collisions between two black holes, the shape of these spacetime distortions suggested a collision between two neutron stars. While black hole collisions produce almost no signature other than gravitational waves, the collision of neutron stars can beand wasobserved up and down the electromagnetic spectrum. "When neutron stars collide, all hell breaks loose," said Frans Pretorius, a Princeton physics professor. "They start producing a tremendous amount of visible light, and also gamma rays, X-rays, radio waves." Princeton researchers have been studying neutron stars and their astronomical signatures for decades. Neutron stars and gamma rays: Bohdan Paczynski and Jeremy Goodman The gravitational waves were the first evidence of the neutron star merger to arrive at Earth, followed by a gamma-ray burst that arrived 1.7 seconds later. The connection between neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts was first identified by Princeton astrophysicists in 1986, said James Stone, the Lyman Spitzer Jr., Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics and chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. "Many of the discoveries announced [Oct. 16] confirm the basic predictions made 30 years ago here in Princeton." He was referring to a set of back-to-back papers by Bohdan Paczynski, the late Lyman Spitzer Jr. Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics, and Jeremy Goodman, a 1983 Ph.D. graduate who studied under Paczynski and is now a professor in the department. In their articles, Paczynski and Goodman argued that colliding neutron stars could be the sources of gamma-ray bursts, a mysterious, short-lived energy source first identified by satellites in the late 1960s. "We both referred to that possibility. Who first floated that idea? I don't know, because we were in constant conversation," Goodman said. "We knew that [neutron stars] must occasionally collidewe knew that because of [Princeton physicist and Nobel laureate] Joe Taylor's work." In addition, Paczynski had realized that most gamma-ray bursts were coming from distances far enough that the expansion of the universe was affecting their apparent distribution. "Bohdan Paczynski was absolutely right," said Goodman. However, his ideas were not immediately embraced by the field. "I remember going to a conference in Taos, New Mexico. Bohdan gave a short talk on his idea that gamma-ray bursts are coming from cosmological distances. I remember these other astrophysicists they were respectfully quiet when he spoke, but regarded him as a bit of a lunatic." He added, "Bohdan Paczynski was a very bold thinker." Neutron stars collide: Joseph Taylor, Russell Hulse and Joel Weisberg The possibility of colliding neutron stars that had prompted Paczynski and Goodman's discussion first surfaced in a 1981 paper by Joseph Taylor, now the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Emeritus. His 1974 discovery of binary neutron stars with his then-graduate student Russell Hulse, who later worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. They showed that the two neutron stars they had spotted were separated by about half a million miles and orbiting each other every 7.75 hours. In 1981, shortly after coming to Princeton, Taylor and then-Assistant Professor Joel Weisberg announced that with precise measurements taken over several years, they had confirmed that the distance and period are changing with time, with an orbital decay that matches Albert Einstein's prediction for energy loss due to gravitational wave emission. The orbit is slowing so infinitesimally that it will take roughly 300 million years for the neutron stars in the Hulse-Taylor binary to collide and merge. "Once the Hulse-Taylor neutron star binary was understood, with subsequent timing experiments showing consistency with general relativity, it was clear that collisions would happen," said Steven Gubser, a professor of physics. "So as we celebrate the first gravitational wave detection of colliding neutron stars, let's also credit Joe Taylor and Russell Hulse for their original discovery of binary pulsars, and for the demonstration that they are in fact neutron stars orbiting each other, just waiting to collide." How stars merge: Steven Gubser and Frans Pretorius Picture a quarter spinning on a tabletop. As friction bleeds energy from the system, the quarter starts to wobble around its outer edge, making a "whopwhopwhopwhop" sound that speeds up (whop-whop-whop-whop) and speeds up (whopwhopwhopwhop) until it's just a blur of sound that rises in pitch into a final "whoooop" as the quarter flattens on the table. That's the demonstration that Gubser and Pretorius provided as they described how black holes (or neutron stars) collidean astronomical marvel that LIGO has now detected five times. At a recent talk for their book, "The Little Book of Black Holes," published by Princeton University Press, Gubser and Pretorius used a disk about three inches across instead of a quarter, so their audience could more easily see and hear the disk's slow but steady increase of speed. "You'd ordinarily think of losing energy as corresponding to slowing down, not speeding up, but you saw with the disk that in fact it can go the other way," said Gubser afterward. "As the disk loses energy to friction, its point of contact moves faster and faster around, and produces that characteristic rising frequency." Whether the colliding objects are neutron stars or black holesor one of eachthe whirling motion and its sound follows the same pattern. As the gravitational wave energy bleeds away, the two objects will orbit each other faster and faster, heading to their inevitable demise. In the case of the collision that LIGO detected on Aug. 17, the two starseach the size of Manhattan and with almost twice the mass of the sunwere ultimately whirling around each other hundreds of times per second, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light before they collided. "Taylor and Weisberg's timing experiment showed the beginnings of this pattern, arising from a slow in-spiral," said Gubser. "The frequency increases very slowly, and that's why it was such an impressive measurement." By contrast, he said, "in the final phase of the in-spiral, the frequency increases rapidly, and you get the kind of 'whoop' or 'chirp' waveform that LIGO saw." What stars create: Adam Burrows and David Radice When stars smash into each other at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, the collision fuses atoms together and creates the elements that fill the bottom rows of the periodic table. "These elementsplatinum, gold, many other less valuable ones that are high up on the periodic tablethey have more neutrons than protons in their nuclei," Goodman said. "You can't get to those nuclei in the same way that we understand elements up to iron being produced, by effectively adding one neutron at a time. The problem is that you have to add a lot of neutrons very quickly." This rapid process is known to physicists as the r-process. For a long time, scientists thought that r-process elements were created in supernovae, but the numbers didn't add up, Goodman said. "But neutron stars are mostly neutrons, and if you smash two of them together, it's reasonable to expect that some of the neutrons will splash out." "The products of this merger could be gold, uranium, europiumsome of the heaviest elements in nature," said Adam Burrows, a professor of astrophysical sciences and the director of the Program in Planets and Life. Burrows and David Radice, an associate research scholar, recently won funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate merging neutron stars and supernovae, which Burrows collectively describes as "some of the most explosive phenomena, some of the most violent, that occur on a regular basis in the universe." Spectroscopic observations from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the wake of the LIGO detection confirmed that heavy metals like platinum, lead and gold were created in the collision of the two neutron stars. The VLT data used to identify these elements, the visible and near-visible wavelengths of light, were gathered in the hours and days following LIGO's detection of the gravitational waves. Once word had begun to spread of LIGO's discovery, the worldwide astronomical community trained their telescopes and other instruments on the patch of sky that the gravitational waves had come from, in what former Princeton postdoctoral researcher Brian Metzger called the "most ambitious and emotionally charged electromagnetic campaign in history, probably, for any transient [short-lived event]." Metzger, an assistant physics professor at Columbia University, was one of the almost 4,000 co-authors on the paper describing the follow-up observations of X-rays, gamma rays, visible light waves, radio waves and more. "This was a really amazing panchromatic discovery of gravitational waves, at basically every single wavelength," he said. The impact on the astronomical community compares to only one other event in his lifetime, said Goodman: the 1987 supernova. Observations of that stellar explosion had provided concrete resolution to countless astronomical questions and theories. "People had been building up this model for supernovae, [a] towering theoretical edifice, and the observational foundations were a little shaky," Goodman said. "Nobody could think of a better model for these things, but then to see it I don't know how to describe it, it's like getting a telegram from God, saying exactly what these events were." The reams of data gathered from the "electromagnetic fireworks" produced by the neutron star merger have had a similar effect, Goodman said. "We had all sorts of speculation but now we have these gravitational waves. It's exactly as we expected for two compact masses!" "This is the future of gravitational wave detection, which is a new astronomy that has been opened," said Burrows. "It's a new window on the universe that has been anticipated for decades, and it's an amazing coming-to-fruition of the ambitions of thousands of scientists, technologists, that actually accomplished what many people thought they could not." More information: B. P. Abbott et al. Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger, The Astrophysical Journal (2017). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa91c9 Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Credit: University of Western Sydney November is Turtle Month, and according to a Western Sydney University researcher it is also an important time to be on the look-out for our river-dwelling friends. Associate Professor Ricky Spencer from the School of Science and Health says November is a very dangerous time for turtles. "Most turtles throughout the country are triggered to nest when the spring storms hit," says Dr Spencer. "They leave the safety of the water to lay their eggs on dry land and in doing so they often come into contact with urban developments, foxes and cars." Dr Spencer is the creator of TurtleSAT (opens in new window) a mobile app and website that encourages citizen scientists and the general community to log their sightings of turtles. Since the app was launched in 2015, more than 5000 sightings have been recorded including indications that thousands of turtles are being killed on roads throughout South-Eastern Australia. "Roads such as The Northern Road in Western Sydney, the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne, and highways throughout the Murray River are major hotspots for turtle tragedy," says Dr Spencer. "Most concerning is that the majority of turtles killed on roads are old females looking for nesting sites for their eggs." Credit: University of Western Sydney Dr Spencer says expanding urban populations, pest animals and deteriorating water quality are leading freshwater turtles a once common, widespread species to become locally extinct. In a desperate bid to halt their decline, Western Sydney University researchers are calling upon the support of passionate volunteers and citizen scientists throughout the country, to download TurtleSAT and continue to report their turtle sightings. "We are essentially calling on the power of the people to save Australian turtles. We want people to watch out for turtles and use the TurtleSAT app to record where they see them," says Dr Spencer. "The European Red Fox destroys more than 95% of turtle nests each year. If you see a hole in the ground with small egg shells nearby, it is a turtle nest record that into TurtleSAT too." Dr Spencer praises the efforts of passionate groups of volunteers, working to ensure that these threatened species remain on the planet. Credit: University of Western Sydney Graham Stockfeld is President of Turtles Australia a volunteer group which records more than 500 turtle nests into TurtleSAT each year and distributes turtle nest protection kits to schools. With the help of Western Sydney University and Charles Sturt University, Turtles Australia are also looking to create a 'Turtles in the Classroom' program where schools will be at the forefront of hatchling turtle releases for conservation. Shane Davies and Kane Durant from Turtle Rescues NSW are part of a team that conduct last-minute rescues as developers drain and fill in swamps and wetlands throughout the Sydney basin. With plans for the airport at Badgerys Creek and further expansion of new suburbs throughout north and south-western Sydney, volunteers from Turtle Rescues NSW will be flat out saving thousands of freshwater turtles over the next decade. "Because most turtles are not currently classified as threatened or endangered, they are pretty much missed in Environment Impact Statements," said Mr Davies. "When developers start dredging wetlands, turtles like Eastern Long-Necked turtles are killed, and when they start pumping the water out, the turtles head onto busy roads, where most get killed." Credit: University of Western Sydney Credit: University of Western Sydney Credit: University of Western Sydney The Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen in the plume of gas and icy material spraying from Enceladus during its deepest and last dive through the plume on Oct. 28, 2015. This graphic illustrates a theory on how water interacts with rock at the bottom of the moon's ocean, producing hydrogen gas. A Goddard team wants to develop an instrument that would reveal even more details about the hydrothermal vents and perhaps help answer if life exists on this ocean world. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Southwest Research Institute NASA scientists and engineers have conceived and plan to build an ambitious submillimeter-wave or radio instrument to study the composition of geysers spewing water vapor and icy particles from the south pole of Saturn's small moon, Enceladus. The team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently received support to advance technologies needed for the Submillimeter Enceladus Life Fundamentals Instrument, or SELFI. This remote-sensing instrument represents a significant improvement over the current state-of-the-art in submillimeter-wavelength devices, said SELFI Principal Investigator Gordon Chin. SELFI is being designed to measure traces of chemicals in the plumes of water vapor and icy particles that emanate from fissures, also known as tiger stripes, on Enceladus, Saturn's sixth largest moon. By studying the plumes, scientists believe they can extrapolate the composition of the ocean that lies beneath the moon's icy crust and its potential to host extraterrestrial life. Enceladus has intrigued scientists since NASA's recently ended Cassini mission discovered the plumes that continuously spew particles, water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases from about 100 sites on the moon's surface. Although scientists initially thought that Enceladus was frozen solid, Cassini data revealed a slight wobble in the moon's orbit that suggests the presence of a global ocean beneath the ice. Saturn's tidal forces appear to pull and squeeze Enceladus, generating enough heat to hold water liquid in the interior and crack the icy shell. This forms fissures from which jets of water spray into space. The question scientists ultimately want to answer is whether life exists in Enceladus or on other icy worlds in the outer solar system. At the bottom of Earth's oceans, hydrothermal vents thrive with life. Does Enceladus have warm hydrothermal vents at the bottom of its ocean that might support life? "Submillimeter wavelengths, which are in the range of very high-frequency radio, give us a way to measure the quantity of many different kinds of molecules in a cold gas. We can scan through all the plumes to see what's coming out from Enceladus," Chin said. "Water vapor and other molecules can reveal some of the ocean's chemistry and guide a spacecraft onto the best path to fly through the plumes to make other measurements directly." "Like Tuning a Radio Station" "Molecules such as water and carbon monoxide, and others, are like little radio stations that broadcast on very specific frequencies that say, 'hey, I'm water, I'm carbon monoxide,'" Chin continued, adding that a submillimeter spectrometer sensitive to these wavelengths is like tuning to a radio station with a specific molecular call-sign. "The spectral lines are so discrete that we can identify and quantify chemicals with no confusion whatsoever," added Paul Racette, a Goddard engineer who serves as the effort's chief systems engineer. Used in space science across all wavelength or frequency bands, spectrometers can analyze the chemical composition of gases and solids in planets, stars, comets, and other targets, telling scientists much about their physical properties. Tuning into the submillimeter band is relatively new due to the complexity of building submillimeter-sensitive instruments. With NASA research-and-development funding, Chin and his team are increasing the instrument's sensitivity with an amplifier to boost the signal in the region around the 557 GHz frequency that has the strongest signal from water. This will improve the ability to measure even vanishingly small quantities of water and traces of other gases, even at the cold temperatures, and explore the whole system of surface vents on Enceladus, Racette said. The team also is creating a more energy-efficient and flexible radio frequency (RF) data-processing system and a sophisticated digital spectrometer for the RF signal. The digital spectrometer will employ high-speed programmable circuitry to convert RF into digital signals that can be analyzed to measure the plumes' gas quantities, temperatures, and velocities. Because of these enhancements, SELFI will be able to simultaneously detect and analyze 13 molecular species, including water in various isotopic forms as well as methanol, ammonia, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, sulfur dioxide, and sodium chloride, the table salt chemical that makes Earth's oceans salty. "SELFI is really new," Chin said, adding he believes the team can sufficiently improve the instrument to propose for a future mission. "This is one of the most ambitious submillimeter instruments ever built." A 3-D rendering shows simulated solar convection realized at different rotation rates. Regions of upflow and downflow are rendered in red and blue, respectively. As rotational influence increases from left (non-rotating) to right (rapidly rotating), convective patterns become increasingly more organized and elongated. Understanding the sun's location along this spectrum represents a major step toward understanding how it sustains a magnetic field. Credit: Nick Featherstone and Bradley Hindman, University of Colorado Boulder After a five-year, 1.74 billion-mile journey, NASA's Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter's orbit in July 2016, to begin its mission to collect data on the structure, atmosphere, and magnetic and gravitational fields of the mysterious planet. For UCLA Geophysicist Jonathan Aurnou, the timing could not have been much better. Just as Juno reached its destination, Aurnou and his colleagues from the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics (CIG) had begun carrying out massive 3-D simulations at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, to model and predict the turbulent interior processes that produce Jupiter's intense magnetic field. While the timing of the two research efforts was coincidental, it presents an opportunity to compare the most detailed Jupiter observations ever captured with the highest-resolution Jupiter simulations ever performed. Aurnou, who leads the CIG's Geodynamo Working Group, hopes that the advanced models they are creating with the Mira supercomputer will complement the NASA probe's findings to reveal a full understanding of the Jupiter's internal dynamics. "Even with Juno, we're not going to be able to get a great physical sampling of the turbulence occurring in Jupiter's deep interior," he said. "Only a supercomputer can help get us under that lid." Aurnou and his collaborators are also using Mira to study the magnetic fields on Earth and the sun at an unprecedented level of detail. Dynamic dynamos Magnetic fields are generated deep in the cores of planets and stars by a process known as dynamo action. This occurs when the rotating, convective motion of electrically conducting fluids (e.g., liquid metal in planets and plasma in stars) converts kinetic energy into magnetic energy. A better understanding of the dynamo process will provide new insights into the birth and evolution of the solar system, and shed light on planetary systems being discovered around other stars. Modeling the internal dynamics of Jupiter, Earth and the sun all bring unique challenges, but the three vastly different astrophysical bodies do share one thing in commonsimulating their dynamo processes requires a massive amount of computing power. With their project at the ALCF, Aurnou's CIG team set out to develop and demonstrate high-resolution 3-D dynamo models at the largest scale possible. Credit: Argonne National Laboratory Stellar research When the project began in 2015, the team's primary focus was the sun. Understanding the solar dynamo is key to predicting solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other drivers of space weather, which can impact the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems, such as satellite-based communications. With access to Mira, the team has performed some of the highest-resolution and most turbulent simulations of solar convection. In a paper published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, they used the simulations to place upper bounds on the typical flow speed in the solar convection zonea key parameter to understanding how the sun generates its magnetic field and transports heat from its deep interior. According to University of Colorado Boulder researcher Nick Featherstone, who is leading the project's solar dynamo effort, the team's findings have been driven by their model's ability to efficiently simulate both rotation and the Sun's spherical shape, which are extremely computationally demanding to incorporate together in a high-resolution model. "To study the deep convection zone, you need the sphere," Featherstone said. "And to get it right, it needs to be rotating." Understanding Earth at its core Magnetic fields in terrestrial planets like Earth are generated by the physical properties of their liquid metal cores. However, due to limited computing power, previous Earth dynamo models have been forced to simulate fluids with electrical conductivities that far exceed that of actual liquid metals. To overcome this issue, the CIG team is building a high-resolution model that is capable of simulating the metallic properties of Earth's molten iron core. Their ongoing geodynamo simulations are already showing that flows and coupled magnetic structures develop on both small and large scales, revealing new processes that do not appear at lower resolutions. "If you can't simulate a realistic metal, you're going to have trouble simulating turbulence accurately," Aurnou said. "Nobody could afford to do this computationally, until now. So, a big driver for us is to open the door to the community and provide a concrete example of what is possible with today's fastest supercomputers." Jupiter ascending In Jupiter's case, the team's ultimate goal is to create a coupled model that accounts for both its dynamo region and its powerful atmospheric winds, known as jets. This involves developing a "deep atmosphere" model in which Jupiter's jet region extends all the way through the planet and connects to the dynamo region. So far, the researchers have made significant progress with the atmospheric model, enabling the highest-resolution giant-planet simulations yet achieved. The researchers will use the Jupiter simulations to predict surface vortices, zonal jet flows and thermal emissions in detail and compare those to observational data from the Juno mission. Ultimately, the team plans to make their results publicly available to the broader research community. "You can almost think of our computational efforts like a space mission," Aurnou said. "Just like the Juno spacecraft, Mira is a unique and special device. When we get datasets from these amazing scientific tools, we want to make them openly available and put them out to the whole community to look at in different ways." More information: Nicholas A. Featherstone et al. THE EMERGENCE OF SOLAR SUPERGRANULATION AS A NATURAL CONSEQUENCE OF ROTATIONALLY CONSTRAINED INTERIOR CONVECTION, The Astrophysical Journal (2016). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/830/1/L15 Journal information: Astrophysical Journal Letters , Astrophysical Journal Policymakers, law enforcement and advocates can now better identify and target modern slavery thanks to the work of human rights experts and researchers whose application of unique statistical methods yields more precise figures on its existence and extent. The groundbreaking work appears in the October issue of Chance, which features a series of articles written by authority figures on the subject of modern slavery. The new methods helped inform the 2016 Joint Global Estimates of Modern Slaverypublished by the United Nations (UN) International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundationwhich estimated 24.9 million people in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. "For decades, though, the prevalence of modern slavery was difficult to quantify with accuracy. Political sensitivities, unwillingness to share data and questionable data collection and analysis techniques led to inaccurate calculations and subsequently poor, if any, tracking and prevention efforts," notes Davina P. Durgana, senior researcher at the Walk Free Foundation and report co-author of the Global Slavery Index. One statistical method gaining worldwide interest is multiple systems estimation (MSE). The method basically involves analyzing three to four concurrent lists of identifiable victims for apparent overlap to estimate a victim population size. "The ongoing lack of transparency, and the lack of data sharing in the study of slavery, is not just a threat to good science; it prevents comparable analyses that might reduce suffering and the extreme human cost," notes Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Nottingham, co-founder of Free the Slavesa nonprofit anti-slavery advocacy organization in Washington, DCand lead author of the Global Slavery Index. "The exploration of the MSE technique to measuring the prevalence of slavery appears to offer a solution to the problem of estimating the extent of slavery in well-developed countries." This method and subsequent findings have been widely accepted by the UN's ILO and International Organization for Migration, as well as advocates and organizations spanning the globe. "MSE and the Global Slavery Index are 'game changers' in the way slavery is measured, benefitting developed and underdeveloped countries with potential for application to other human rights issues," says Durgana. Deployed in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands in 2014 and 2016, respectively, MSE has attracted the attention of the United States government, which is evaluating its feasibility in the context of human trafficking. "Success in the US context would encourage many other developed countries to take similar action and contribute substantially to the information that exists about human trafficking in the US, both domestically and abroad," notes Paul Zador, senior statistician at Westat, Inc. Zador recently helped design a survey and analyzed data of bonded laborers in India, as well as a decades-long period of terror in Guatemala. Supercomputers have helped scientists discover merging black holes and design new nanomaterials, but can they help solve society's most challenging policy issues? At the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (also known as Supercomputing 2017 or SC17) in Denver, Colorado, from Nov. 12 to Nov. 15, undergraduate and graduate students from diverse disciplines and backgrounds will learn how to use advanced computing skills to explore the nation's immigration policies as part of the Advanced Computing for Social Change Institute (ACSCI). The program, which debuted in 2016, teaches students how to use data analysis and visualization to identify and communicate data-driven policy solutions to pressing social issues. Organized by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE, a National Science Foundation-funded organization) and SC17, the project is unique in its application of the world's most cutting-edge technologies to address social change. "The institute will help students realize their leadership potential and increase their confidence in their ability to effect social change, regardless of where their profession takes them in the future," said Rosalia Gomez, TACC education and outreach manager and one of the organizers of the program. "Our goal is to provide students with advanced computing skills and the ability to visualize complex data in a way that is useful to everyone, from those affected by immigration policy to those creating immigration policy," said Ruby Mendenhall, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois and another of the organizers. "It is our hope that students will provide new knowledge about U.S. immigration that can create social change." During the three-and-a-half-day program, students will learn computing, data analysis and visualization skills, and then form teams to tackle critical issues related to immigration. The students take a data-driven approach, analyzing large datasets to derive persuasive arguments for their positions. "These students have so much to offer to the national conversation and debate," said Kelly Gaither, director of visualization at TACC. "Data analysis and visualization provide a vehicle to get to the truth behind the rhetoric. While this is an emotionally charged topic, we can use advanced computing tools to discern fact from fiction and use this as a platform for constructive communication to move us forward." As part of the projects students will also receive mentorship, career development advice, and network with other advanced computing professionals. At the end of the program, the teams will present their analyses to experts in the supercomputing field. Last year, at SC16 in Salt Lake City, Utah, students explored the Black Lives Matter movement and developed arguments advocating greater national unity and an end to police violence against people of color. The majority of student participants were from under-served communities and were first generation college students. "The Advanced Computing for Social Change Institute aims to empower young minds in utilizing unique software and their talents for modeling and analyzing everyday social issues irrespective of their academic major, thus effectively making predictions pertaining to the inspired model," said Stacyann Nelson, a graduate student at Florida A&M University and a part participant and current mentor in the program. Participants in this year's event come from colleges and universities across Colorado, including the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Denver, the Colorado School of Mines, and the University of Colorado Denver. "I am thrilled that several computer science students from the Colorado School of Mines will be participating in this important event," said Tracy Camp, professor of Computer Science at the university. "These types of events are a win-win, as they offer an opportunity for our students to increase their skills and an opportunity for their efforts to impact the world in a positive way. The Colorado School of Mines is grateful that the event is just down the road in Denver." Credit: Macquarie University Combining expertise in quantum technologies and cryptography, researchers have been projecting future dates that quantum computers could jeopardise the security of current cryptocurrencies, a market now worth over USD $150 billion, and assessing countermeasures to such attacks. Macquarie University physicist Associate Professor Gavin Brennen, together with Australian entrepreneur Dorjee Sun and researchers in Singapore and Sydney, has announced a collaboration with blockchain company Hyperchain on providing quantum security to digital currency. The team named Quantum Resistant Coin (QRC), includes researchers A/Prof. Brennen at Macquarie U., Prof. Miklos Santha at CNRS Universite Paris Diderot and Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT), A/Prof. Troy Lee at Nanyang Technological University and CQT, and Senior Lecturer Dr. Marco Tomamichel at UTS. They have just released a whitepaper which finds that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be vulnerable to attacks by quantum computers in as little as 10 years. Such attacks could have a disastrous effect on cryptocurrencies as thieves equipped with quantum computers could easily steal funds without detection, thus leading to a quick erosion of trust in the markets. They also assess the risk of quantum dominated mining in so called Proof of Work protocols which are the basis for verifying transactions in Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies. Leading edge blockchain company Hyperchain, which provides technical services to Hcash (CoinMarketCap.com Hshare with a market capitalisation of over USD $300 million), has now enlisted QRC as technical advisors. They will work with Hcash, Hshare and Hyperchain to make sure that their cryptocurrency is resistant against quantum attacks. "I've been working on the theory of quantum computers for well over a decade and the exciting thing is that now very simple quantum machines, like the Google device, are a reality," says co-author Brennen, who is director of the Macquarie Quantum Science and Technology Centre (QSciTech) where researchers work on quantum science theory and experiment. "Understandably, there is a lot of nervousness in cryptocurrency communities about whether their digital assets will resist future attacks by very fast quantum computers. Our service is providing advice and algorithmic protocols to digital currencies and blockchains like Hcash who want to certify their product will be quantum safe. HCash has put emphasis on quantum security from the start so this collaboration will be a benefit to both teams" Brennen, comments further, "I'm excited to be part of this team joining excellent people working in pure physics and computer science at UTS, CQT, and NTU with Dorjee Sun who is a social entrepreneur. The open environment at Macquarie was key in getting this going, in fact the whole enterprise started with a conversation with Dorjee over coffee and lots of scribbled notes at the Macquarie Hub this Winter." More information: Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them. arXiv:1710.10377 [quant-ph] arxiv.org/abs/1710.10377v1 The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is taking over the murder investigation of ABMSU president Lafiqul Islam. By Munish Pandey: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI ) has taken over the murder of president of All Bodoland Minority Student Union (ABMSU) Lafiqul Islam. He was shot dead in Kokrajhar in August 1, 2016, by two unknown men who came on a motorcycle. According to initial investigations, assailants used AK 47 to kill Islam . Now, a case of murder has been registered by Special Crime unit of CBI Kolkata unit. advertisement Islam was shot in tile shop in Kokrajhar, Asssam. Along with Islam, another person Subhankar Chakravarty also received multiple bullet injuries but survived. CBI has registered case under section 302 (Murder), 326 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapon) read with 34 (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code and 25 (1), 27(3) of Arms Act. This incident fuelled state wide protest. There was an indefinite strike in Kokrajhar called by ABMSU. Under tremendous pressure the Assam Government has transferred the case to CBI. --- ENDS --- From 6pm on Thursday, heavy rains had lashed many parts of the city leading to water logging and slow movement of traffic in many parts of the city. By Akshaya Nath: While the first half of the day saw a respite from the rains, little did Chennai know that the later half of the day will have heavy rains lashing out. The delta region of Tamil Nadu and Coastal Tamil Nadu has been receiving moderate to intense rainfall. "Many parts of southern chennai and delta Tamil Nadu and Costal Tamil Nadu will get heavy rains. On 3 November too the scenario will continue. This is due to the intense low pressure that has been formed in the Gulf of Mannar," said Srikanth, the popular social media handle Chennaiweatherman said in an interview to India Today. advertisement From 6pm on Thursday, heavy rains had lashed many parts of the city leading to water logging and slow movement of traffic in many parts of the city. "The rain is just not stopping. Things are getting worse in this part of the city. The water levels are also increasing around our homes. The cleaning and draining process is just starting," said Shekar a resident of Mudichur. "We have been regularly complaining to the government officials to take necessary step to avoid a flood like scenario. But year after year we continue to suffer," said Swaminathan a resident of Madipakkam. The North east monsoon has just set in but there has been widespread deluge in many parts of chennai and surrounding areas. The government of Tamil Nadu has said that 115 multipurpose shelters have been set up in coastal districts, and Local ministers and 3 senior bureaucrats have been designated for each district to co-ordinate rescue and expedite relief. The government's statement also said that 2 ministers have been designated for each zone in Chennai to expedite relief work and more suction pumps are also to be deployed to clear water logging. With rains expected to continue there is a lot of fear among the masses and in many regions families were seen to been vacating their homes to safer zones. "We don't know where we are going, but we can't stay here. The water has started to deep into the house. We will stay at a hotel nearby and if things worsen will leave for my hometown to Madurai," said Murugan. Meanwhile, the Chennaiweatherman warned, "Don't go out of your residences unless really needed. The rains will continue to lash in many parts of the city." Just drove myself back home, there is water logging in a few places, don't panic just be kind to others and offer help. #StaySafeChennai- Ashwin Ravichandran (@ashwinravi99) November 2, 2017 With the rains likely to continue, so much water logging already is not a great sign of preparedness. Let's not delay and least act now.- Ashwin Ravichandran (@ashwinravi99) November 2, 2017 --- ENDS --- " " Many of the forests in Peru, like the Sacred Valley seen here, are part of the country's national park system, as well as UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. JTB Photo/UIG via Getty Images While a small minority of scientists and other skeptics still debate the "truthiness" of global warming, an overall consensus remains: Thanks to human-caused climate change, the planet is heating at a rate not seen in the last 800,000 years, at least. And while many studies and entire books have investigated the current and future effects of human activity and/or a warming planet, a new report out of the University of Exeter in Great Britain and the University of Queensland Australia is taking a "glass is half full" approach to explain the predicament, and to argue the need to save more tropical forests. Advertisement The study, published in the October 2017 journal of Scientific Reports, estimated how much carbon did not enter the atmosphere because of previous efforts made to preserve vast swaths of tropical forests in South America, Africa and Asia. It's the first study to look at the impact of protected forests on carbon emissions reduction. The study authors focused on the years 2000 through 2012. The areas they studied make up 20 percent of the world's tropical forest, providing habitats for a wide range of species, as well as land for historic sites like the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. According to the audit, protected national parks and nature reserves which the study says make up as much as 15 percent of Earth's total land surface reduced carbon emissions worldwide by a third. In other words, if nothing had been done nothing to protect these lands, and the forests were instead used for fuel or agriculture, climate change would be accelerating at a much faster pace. As a reminder of carbon's part in global warming: One atom of carbon merged with two oxygen atoms transforms into carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that is a leading cause of our warming planet. The study authors, Dr. Dan Bebber of the University of Exeter, and Dr. Nathalie Butt of the University of Queensland, estimate the protected tropical forests in the study prevented 407 million tons (369 million metric tons) of carbon from entering the atmosphere every year from 2000 to 2012. That translates into 1.5 billion tons (1.4 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide. By comparison, Great Britain put out an estimated 381 million tons (345 million metric tons) of carbon in 2016 and that was its lowest carbon-producing year since the 19th century. "Tropical protected areas are often valued for their role in safeguarding biodiversity," Bebber said in a press release. "Our study highlights the added benefit of maintaining forest cover for reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, so helping slow the rate of climate change" The ultimate message of the research findings? Save more forests. And not just because they serve as homes to a wide range of species. Now That's Scary As NASA tracks it, carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere are higher than they've ever been over the course of the Earth's last three glacial cycles a period covering 400,000 years. More than 40,000 unaccompanied Rohingya children are in refugee camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Mynamar, European Union Commissioner Christos Stylianides said Wednesday. The EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management described the refugee crisis as the "biggest" in decades after more than 600,000 Rohingya entered Bangladesh from Myanmar's Rakhine state since late August. "I was shocked during the visit in the camps by the magnitude of what I saw. The magnitude of the influxes in a very short time, it's completely unique." he told AFP during an interview. He said the number of unaccompanied children now stood at "over 40,000". "I think, this figure alone can demonstrate the scale of the problem," he added. Aid agencies have raised concern over the appalling humanitarian crisis in the camps where refugees have faced acute shortages of shelter, water, healthcare and sanitation. "The current refugee crisis here in Coxs Bazar is the biggest in decades and it requires a comprehensive and a coordinated humanitarian response," he told reporters in Dhaka. "The number of people, their needs, their trauma is beyond imagination. The number of children with acute malnutrition is also beyond imagination," he said. Rights activists and UN officials have also expressed worries over the unaccompanied children, saying many risk becoming victims of human trafficking. Stylianides said the EU would advocate, especially to Myanmar's government, to find a political solution to resolve the crisis, and urged Dhaka and Naypyidaw to engage in talks. "The government of Bangladesh and Myanmar should continue to engage in dialogue," he said. The commissioner also criticised Myanmar for not letting media and aid agencies have access to Rakhine. He said the EU was trying to convince Myanmar to deal with the crisis within the framework of international humanitarian and human rights law. The Belgian lawyer hired by sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont is a human rights specialist with a track record of defending suspected Basque militants from extradition to Spain. From his offices in the small town of Tielt, the bald, bespectacled Paul Bekaert has over several decades fought numerous attempts by Madrid to have Belgium send suspected members of the banned armed Basque separatist group ETA to Spain for trial. Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium at the weekend, now hopes to draw on the decades of experience built up by Bekaert -- dubbed "Lucky Luke" by the Belgian press after a comic book cowboy-- as Spain weighs measures to get him back to face charges of rebellion and sedition. "I have more than 30 years of experience with the extradition and political asylum for Spanish Basques, and it's probably because of this experience that he came to me," Bekaert said earlier this week. Bekaert was one of the lawyers for Luis Maria Zengotitabengoa, a suspected ETA member whose extradition from Belgium to Spain was authorised in 2010. Years earlier he succeeded in blocking the extradition of a Belgian couple of Basque origin, Luis Moreno and Raquel Garcia, provoking a minor diplomatic crisis between Belgium and Spain in the 1990s. He has not confined himself to the Basque cause -- he also defended Turkish militant Fehriye Erdal, a member of the extreme left DHKP-C group, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the EU, whom Ankara wanted to extradite to stand trial over a triple murder. - 'Very sensitive' - Bekaert's son Simon told AFP he was "very sensitive about anyone oppressed by the central state or by another state. He believes that if people are being pursued in their own country, they aren't going to get a fair trial." This sensitivity dates back to the so-called "Leuven Crisis" of the late 1960s, when tensions between French and Flemish speakers at Belgium's prestigious University of Leuven led to it splitting into two separate institutions, one for each language. The young Bekaert was "very active" at this period, his son said. "But he is neither a separatist nor a nationalist. He is in favour of Belgian regions having a lot of autonomy." Born in Courtrai, near the French border in 1948, Bekaert spent his childhood in Meulebeke in western Belgium before moving to the modest town of Tielt, a few kilometres away, where he still has his office. It was here that Bekaert met Puigdemont for the first time on Monday after a call from one of the Catalan's aides. "He is following Catalonia with a lot of interest, in the same way that he follows developments in Scotland and Quebec. But that doesn't mean he is in favour of independence," Simon Bekaert explained. He began practising law in 1972, specialising in human rights and asylum cases. Alongside his case work he also worked for the Human Rights League campaign group, serving as an observer in Northern Ireland and the Basque country. Simon Bekaert, who is the socialist deputy mayor of Tielt, described his father as politically "somewhat to the left, but a progressive left". The Dutch Red Cross offered its "deep apologies" Wednesday for failing to do enough to protect and help Jews during World War II, after being sharply criticised by a respected research institute. "The war years are undoubtedly a black stain on the pages of our 150-year history," said Red Cross chairwoman Inge Brakman, regretting the "lack of courage" the organisation had shown during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. "We have offered our deep apologies to the victims and their relatives," she said, adding that the organisation "acknowledges the mistakes made during and after the war". In a study commissioned by the Dutch Red Cross, the Amsterdam-based NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies found there was "a serious shortfall in the help given to persecuted Jews in The Netherlands." "Dutch political prisoners in camps outside the Netherlands also had to go mostly without the help of the Red Cross," the study concluded. The results were presented in a book by NIOD historian Regina Grueter, launched in Amsterdam after a four-year investigation. The organisation's headquarters "made things too easy for the occupiers," said the current Dutch Red Cross director Gijs de Vries. "They never spoke about the persecution of the Jews and docilely followed the occupiers' instructions." The body is now setting up a new ethics committee to ensure the organisation adheres to its principles, and to "learn the lessons of the past." Of about 140,000 Jews known to live the country at the start of World War II, only about 30,000 survived. A total of 107,000 were interned in Camp Westerbork, in the northeast of the country, before being transported to Nazi concentration camps in other countries. Perhaps the best known Dutch victim was Jewish diarist Anne Frank who hid in an Amsterdam house from the Nazis, before being betrayed and sent to Bergen-Belsen in 1944, dying of typhus in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly calls on a reporter during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 12, 2017. (Photo: Susan Walsh/AP) At the White House press briefing Tuesday, spokeswoman Sarah Sanders defended Chief of Staff John Kellys remark that the Civil War resulted from a failure to compromise by both sides. Kelly told Fox News that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country, and that the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand. Historians called this view strange and highly provocative, but Sanders, defending Kelly, told reporters, Because you dont like history doesnt mean you can erase it. An uproar about the causes of the Civil War shouldnt surprise people who have been following Trumps White House. The president, the chief of staff and other senior White House aides have established a pattern of using history especially issues of race and heritage as political weapons, promoting historical myths popular with Trumps overwhelmingly white base of supporters. Using history in the service of politics is not inherently a bad thing. Every politician virtually everybody in elective or appointed office invokes the past at one time or another to advance a policy, justify legislation or score points with voters. Politicians, understandably, view their decisions on hard issues through the lens of their own experiences and their interpretations of the past guide their sense right and wrong. Gen. Robert E. Lee poses on the back porch of the Lee house in Richmond, Va., in 1865. Lee, who led the Confederate forces, surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. (Photo: Mathew B. Brady/AP) And the use of history can indeed illuminate some complicated policy debates. During the 2001 debate over President George W. Bushs trillion-dollar-plus tax-cut plan, for example, Democrats argued that Ronald Reagans 1981 tax cuts ultimately yielded much higher federal deficits, evidence against the proposition that cutting tax rates would stimulate the economy to the point of actually increasing revenues. They werent wrong. During the 2002 debate about the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, some war opponents warned that invading Iraq would lead to another quagmire like Vietnam, a war in which more than 58,000 Americans died. Story continues These are debates worth having. Why did the U.S. lose the War in Vietnam? What were the roots of stagflation in the 1970s? What triggered the economic expansion of the Clinton years? These legitimate questions can illuminate policy discussions, even if they yield complicated answers. But comments about the Civil War coming from the administration constitute something altogether different and even downright dangerous. As Columbia University history Stephanie McCurry told the Washington Post, Kellys remarks track very closely with the Jim Crow version of the causes of the Civil War and all of the major talking points of this pro-Confederate view of the Civil War. Kellys comments are also profoundly ignorant, as Yale historian David Blight succinctly put it. The South seceded and waged war against the North to defend their power to enslave millions of African-Americans, as historians have shown through decades of scholarship. Kelly and Sanderss comments also reflect an ongoing Trump-sanctioned effort to weaponize history to rally white conservative voters on behalf of the most embattled first-term president since the advent of polling. Recall that in February 2016, Trump told CNNs Jake Tapper that he wouldnt reject the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Trump gave as his rationale, I know nothing about white supremacists or David Duke, and he had to study them first before saying or doing anything. (He did eventually disavow Dukes support.) But his refusal was actually a way of invoking the Klans history as a white supremacist organization that conducted a reign of terror against African-Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries to appeal to white Southerners who still harbored racist views. Trump has argued that in the recent past the politicians have sold out the U.S. to foreign countries (Japan and Germany in the 1980s; China and Mexico today), enriching political elites while Americans suffered. When Trump became a leading advocate of the preposterous charge that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., he sent a clear message to some of Obamas most ardent critics (who would become Trump voters): the nations first African-American president was not a natural-born citizen and thus ineligible to be president. Trump was drawing on a shameful history in which white Americans denied the rights of African-Americans, treating them as less than full citizens, to promulgate the idea that an African-American should not be the leader of the free world. Under the Trump administration, history has become more than a reference point in arguments about policy; it has become the equivalent of Teddy Roosevelts big stick, which Trump uses anytime he feels threatened politically. Trump and his team twist facts and distort reality about some fairly basic questions of the American past for the clear purpose of ensuring that Trumps overwhelmingly white base stays loyal to him. It gives cover to a White House under siege from prosecutors, the press and a large majority of the electorate opposed to his conduct in office. White House chief of staff John Kelly listens as President Trump speaks during a meeting on tax policy with business leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Oct. 31, 2017, in Washington. In his three months on the job, Kelly has been credited with bringing order to a chaotic West Wing, but dont call him a moderate. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP) Matthew Dallek, an associate professor at George Washington Universitys Graduate School of Political Management, is the author of Defenseless Under the Night: The Roosevelt Years and the Origins of Homeland Security Read more from Yahoo News: By PTI: (Eds: Updating with more quotes) By K J M Varma Beijing, Nov 2 (PTI) China today blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to list Pakistan-based JeM chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, saying it has rejected the move as "there is no consensus". advertisement A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked Indias move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the Council. The JeM, founded by Azhar, has already been in the UNs list of banned terror outfits. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese Foreign Ministry told PTI here. The comment came as the Chinas technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. The officials comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall Indias application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still absence of consensus on this matter." Defending Chinas consistent technical holds, Hua said Chinas actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. To the follow-up questions, Hua said the Committee has its rules. The committee is yet reach the consensus. "The Committee is yet to reach an agreement. This is a fact," Hua said. China had in August extended by three months its technical hold on the proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist after having blocked the move in February this year at the UN. advertisement Huas remarks indicate that China will continue its policy to block moves by India and other countries led by the US to block Azhars listing during the second term of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which began over a week ago. China in the past had asked India to discuss the issue directly with Pakistan in order to reach an understanding on Azhars listing. In the last two years, China has stonewalled efforts by India to declare Azhar as a global terrorist. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15- nation UN organ to put a hold on Indias application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhis bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. PTI KJV NSA CPS AKJ CPS --- ENDS --- Under a scorching sun, a team of British soldiers and Malawian rangers sheltered under a tree ready to pounce on their prey: poachers. The combined force, armed with rifles and handcuffs, did not encounter any poachers as it patrolled the 530 square kilometre (240 square mile) Liwonde national park in Malawi's south. But the presence of the highly-trained and well-equipped British forces wasreassuring for the rangers who routinely confront gangs of poachers armed with Kalashnikovs. Liwonde, which borders Mozambique, is Malawi's leading game reserve and is home to the southern African country's largest elephant and rhino populations. The seven British soldiers are there to train 35 of Malawi's anti-poaching rangers. Prince Harry is the public face of the project that began in 2016 and earlier this year he visited the park to oversee the relocation of over 300 elephants to the Nkhotakota game park in central Malawi. - 'A poaching crisis' - "We were in a poaching crisis in 2015 in this park... but the situation has now been contained," said Bright Kumchedwa, the director of Malawi's parks and wildlife department. And although the fight against the illicit wildlife trade is far from over -- poaching halved the country's elephant population from 4,000 in the 1980s to 2,000 in 2015 -- gains are being made. "The good news is that we have had only one case of a rhino being poached in two years in this park," Kumchedwa told AFP. "(British forces) are transferring military skills to Malawian rangers to use in conservation... the soldiers are adding value to the training of rangers." Michael Geldard, the British army colonel in charge of the training, described the campaign against poachers as "a game of cat and mouse with danger". "We are here to train rangers how to protect themselves from wild animals and not necessarily to shoot poachers," said Geldard, who is also Britain's defence attache to several African countries. "We are training them how to track down poachers and defend themselves from animals." Kingsley Kachoka, a Malawian who is a sergeant in the British army, told AFP he was delighted to be home "to help my country to deal with poachers". "I hope there will be a change because we are covering more ground in counter-poaching skills." - 'Winning the war' - Malawian ranger Edward Makupiza said that in the past he feared being shot by heavily armed Mozambican poachers who carry assault rifles when they cross the border in to Malawi in pursuit of elephants. "But now after training with the British army, I know how to protect myself and others from danger." Craig Reid runs African Parks, a conservation organisation that manages several game parks under a deal with Lilongwe, and said his team had pioneered the use of cyber-trackers and drones to tackle poaching. "The landscape has changed and we have become much more professional in dealing with poaching," he said. The park also owns a helicopter used to help track poachers. "It's an expensive asset -- but it pays to use it," Reid said. "Poaching is declining dramatically," he said, with officers having seized 27,000 wire snares, 43 kilograms of ivory and 56 rounds of illegal ammunition from poachers between from August 2015 and October 2017 according to African Parks. Patrols at the park have led to the arrest of 130 poachers, most of whom have been sentenced to jail terms of at least six years following a move by the government to stiffen penalties. The maximum sentence is now 30 years. "We are winning the war against poaching," Kumchedwa said. British police investigating the deadly concert bombing in Manchester earlier this year said Wednesday they had requested the extradition of the attacker's brother from Libya. Salman Abedi killed 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb after a concert by pop star Ariana Grande, Britain's worst terror attack in more than a decade. Manchester-born to Libyan parents, Abedi is believed to have travelled to Libya in the run-up to the May 22 bombing. Greater Manchester Police said they have now gathered enough evidence to request and be granted an arrest warrant for the attacker's brother, Hashem Abedi. "The arrest warrant relates to the murder of 22 people, the attempted murder of others who were injured and conspiracy to cause an explosion. "Hashem Abedi is currently detained in Libya and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has now requested that Libyan authorities consider his extradition back to the United Kingdom. "We are grateful for the Libyan authorities considering this request," said the force's Russ Jackson, who is also head of counter terrorism in north-west England. In total 112 people were hospitalised following the Manchester Arena bombing, two of whom remain in hospital. In the days following the bombing, one of the forces that supports Libya's UN-backed unity government posted a picture on its Facebook page of Hashem Abedi after detaining him. "The father, Ramadan Abedi, has also just been arrested," said Ahmed bin Salem, a spokesman for the Deterrence Force, which acts as Government of National Accord's police. Manchester police did not provide details on whether the duo had been continuously held since May, or whether they had been released and subsequently detained. Why people around the world fear climate change more than Americans do Posted on 2 November 2017 by Guest Author Gregory J. Carbone, Professor of Geography, University of South Carolina This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. When asked about major threats to their country, Europeans are more likely than Americans to cite global climate change, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Just 56 percent of Americans see climate change as a major threat, versus an average of 64 percent of Europeans surveyed. Why the difference? Like climate data itself, data regarding public concern for climate change are noisy. Public response can vary depending on whats going on in the news that week. Surveys of these types of surveys find no single explanation for how the public perceives the threat of climate change. Of course, many explanations exist. As a climatologist who has taught university classes and given public lectures on global climate change for 30 years, I find it clear that public concern about climate change has evolved dramatically over the past three decades. In the U.S., now more than ever, it seems tied to ideology. Knowing the facts Does scientific literacy influence responses? Some psychologists think so. Indeed, some surveys show that Europeans have significantly greater scientific knowledge about the causes of climate change than Americans. Its possible that such knowledge translates into a sense of responsibility for mitigating climate change. But having more general scientific knowledge is not as relevant as knowing specifically about climate change. A persons outlook on the world can also complicate matters. Another recent Pew survey found that Americans are more likely to believe they control their own destiny and that they tend to prioritize individual liberty, while Europeans tend to value the role of the state to ensure no one in society is in need. Research on the respective roles of scientific literacy and worldview reaches different conclusions. Psychologist Sophie Guy and colleagues argue that knowing the causes of climate change makes people more willing to accept the reality of climate change or to moderate their ideological opposition to it. Stephen B. Morton/AP Photo By contrast, Yale scholar Dan Kahan and colleagues find that people with the highest level of scientific literacy often use that literacy to retain and justify prior beliefs what they call the polarizing impact of science literacy. In other words: Im smart, Ive read the evidence and it confirms my prior understanding. Climate change reflects a threat not only to ones local environment, but also to ones worldview. Political affiliation When you look more closely at recent survey responses in the U.S., the most striking and consistent finding is that political affiliation influences perceptions of climate change. In the U.S., Democrats report, at consistently higher rates than Republicans, that climate change exists. Merely substituting the term global warming now a politically charged catchword for climate change makes the differences larger. The divide between parties within the U.S. far exceeds the divide found between the U.S. as a whole and Europe. Political divisions also exist in Europe, and public opinion polls in the U.K. and Norway show that party similarly influences the perceived threat of climate change. However, theres some evidence that the U.S. Republican Party is anomalous among conservative parties internationally. In other words, U.S. Republicans are more starkly anti-climate change than other conservative parties internationally. Its possible that the strong two-party system in the U.S. leads to a more binary mode of thinking on this issue that does not accurately represent that of the scientific community. Sociologist Aaron McCright and his colleagues argue that the high number of Americans identifying with the political right explains why the U.S., unlike other wealthy countries, is less concerned about climate change. Closing the gap Some suggest that the political divide has fueled an industry of climate change deniers and skeptics, distorting public perception about climate change science. Science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway argue in their book Merchants of Doubt that denial is about more than the science. Its about political and economic systems that individuals hold dear. It also can result from differences in professional culture or personal values. In the U.S., many of the most vocal skeptics and deniers of climate change emerge from conservative think tanks that revere the industrial capitalist system. In Europe, differences between countries can also be explained by the voices of conservative think tanks and the media, but these voices are more influential in the U.S. than anywhere else because of the two-party system. Partisan clashes about climate change emerge from influential, well-funded sources that wield great influence on Congress, the media and ultimately the public. By contrast, most European countries have more than two parties, and arguably the political influence of corporations is lower. Given the political divide on climate change in the U.S., addressing this 21st-century threat will require creative thinking that recognizes different worldviews and beliefs in climate change. The U.S. House Climate Solutions Caucus is a step in the right direction. Light as a feather and slight as a reed, Lady Bird, the solo directorial debut of actress and screenwriter Greta Gerwig, is well suited to its title. The same cant quite be said of the character Lady Bird, played by Saoirse Ronan. Having pretentiously assumed that moniker at the start of her senior year of high schoolher hopelessly unwhimsical given name is Christine McPhersonLady Bird spends a fair amount of time attempting to convince people, especially her hypercritical and overworked mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), to call her by the new name. Ostentatiously bored with her hometown of Sacramento and way over the fact that she still has another year to go at her all-girls Catholic school, Lady Bird makes no secret of her disdain for most of the people and places around her. She isnt a rebel, exactlyher grades are fine if not great, she shows little interest in politics or partying, and as senior year gets under way, shes still a virgin. But shes a bright, curious, questing free spirit growing up in a town she experiences as dull and stiflingwhich is maybe just a longer way of saying a teenage girl. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In content and structure, Lady Bird is recognizable as a high school comedy. Theres a devoted and dorky longtime friend (Neighbors 2s Beanie Feldstein) who gets thrown over for a prettier, richer, and more popular girl (The Givers Odeya Rush). There are intense serial crushes, first on an earnest theater geek (Manchester by the Seas Lucas Hedges) and then on an arrogant poser who always seems to be reading the same book (Timothee Chalamet of the upcoming Call Me by Your Name). There are school plays to rehearse, dances to attend or skip, and college-application essays to write. (Lady Birds is vetted by her school principal, a kind but unsentimentalized nun wonderfully played by Lois Smith.) The story rhythms of Lady Bird are the rhythms of the school calendar, its beats occasionally a little too familiar. But in the mode of Diary of a Teenage Girl and The Edge of Seventeen, two other recent coming-of-age stories written and directed by women, Lady Bird finds fresh purchase in well-trodden territory by observing the human carnival from a girls point of view. Advertisement Advertisement Everyone shines, but the glow is especially strong in the scenes between Ronan and Metcalf. Among the many details that give weight and specificity to Gerwigs portrait of middle-class American girlhood is the attention she pays to the tenuousness of such categories as middle class. The film is set in 2002 and 2003, just after 9/11 and a few years before the financial crash, but the McPhersons are barely holding on. Lady Birds passive, secretly depressed dad (magnificently underplayed by the stage actor and playwright Tracy Letts) has been laid off and cant find new work, at one point interviewing for the same position as his own son. Her mother, a health care worker, has been forced to take on extra shifts, leaving her in a quasi-permanent bad mood. And Lady Birds older brother still lives at home along with his girlfriend, both of them working as cashiers in a supermarket. In a rare moment of mother-daughter accord, Lady Bird and Marion visit a succession of real-estate open houses, pretending to live in the kind of spacious, elegant home theyll never be able to afford. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Though people in Lady Birds family are rarely nice to each othershe and her mother engage in bitterly protracted battles of will, and her brother and his girlfriend live to mock her lofty aspirations in sardonic near-unison, like a heavily pierced Greek chorusits easy to sense an abiding warmth beneath the surface tension. Gerwig is less interested in high dramatic stakes than in the micro-observation of human behavior: the way her exasperating but endearing heroine at once begs for affection and pushes it away, for example, in a scene where she and her mother shop together for a prom dress, passive-aggressive barbs a-flyin. The editing is fast-paced, at times to the point of glibness; Gerwig has a habit of cutting right on the punchline in a way that can leave you wishing a scene had another beat to breathe. But the cast is so uniformly excellent and the dialogue so naturalistic that no character, even the too-cool-for-school bad boy played by Chalamet, seems like a sitcom-style contrivance. Everyone shines, but the glow is especially strong in the scenes between Ronan, who has been reliably delivering impeccable performances since her big-screen debut at age 12 in Atonement, and Metcalf, an Emmy- and Tony-winning actress whom too many people still remember mainly as Roseannes little sister. Its not clear how autobiographical Lady Bird isGerwig is from Sacramento and graduated from high school around the time the film is setbut the little slice of universe she shows us feels deeply and lovingly observed. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement One of the character Lady Birds most refreshing qualities, rare in an adolescent heroine, is how self-confident she is, even to the point of cockiness. Shes the kind of unapologetically imperfect person who barrels forward in life, secure in the conviction that she has every right to go for what she wants, even before shes clearly formulated just what that might be. Lady Birds writer-director proceeds with a similar self-assurance, but unlike her young protagonist she has both a clear vision of the result she wants and a command of the tools to achieve it. Lady Bird ends with its heroine making a small, uncharacteristically humble gesture that suggests shes finally ready to grow up and become the woman she was meant to be. Greta Gerwig is already there. Everything audiences know walking in to Thor: Ragnarok should tell them that this is a movie intent on breaking its hero. Theres the title, of course: Ragnarok is the apocalypse of Norse mythology, the set of legends from which the Marvel Comics adventurer springs. Theres the trailer you might have seen, in which a deadly foe shatters Thors supposedly unbreakable hammer. Over the course of this third solo outing for the god of thunder, Thor will lose his allies, his freedom, those flowing golden locks, and also something more permanent, but none of these will be the most significant alteration to the character in Taika Waititis zippy, slightly tilted, often joyfully frenzied film: Thor is finally in on his own joke. Self-awareness is now his superpower. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Take the opening scene, which finds Thor trapped in a hellish underworld. I know what youre thinking, he says in voice-over, feigning distress. Oh, no, Thors in a cage. How did this happen? Soon, bound in shackles and hanging from chains, he is confronted by his adversary, a massive demon named Surtur, who begins to monologue in the way cackling villains mustuntil Thor, immobile and slowly spinning, cuts him off, asking Surtur to wait a moment until hes completed the 360-degree turn and has returned to facing him. The old Thor might have punched first, quipped later; this Thor repeats the gag twice, flustering his enemy before he does what thunder gods do. Thor: Ragnarok is a much goofier film than its 2011 and 2013 predecessors, and also a better one. Thats because Chris Hemsworths Thor remains the loutish, happy warrior hes always been but is no longer the movies straight man, a muscled fish out of water. And he has a script and a director that are as funny as he is. With the exception of a brief Earthly pit stop, Waititi sets his film in the stranger, candy-colored corners of Marvels cosmos, where the action is pummeling but gleeful and Jeff Goldblum, playing a minor antagonist, wears floppy sandals and a blue painted-on goatee. Bright, banter-filled, and soundtracked by Led Zeppelin (they couldnt resist that lyric about the hammer of the gods), Thor: Ragnarok feels like it takes place about a star system over from the Guardians of the Galaxy films. Even for the superhero-skeptical, it goes down easy. Advertisement Advertisement Waititis Korg might be the silliest, most likable thing in a movie full of them. The last time we saw Thor was in 2015s Avengers: Age of Ultron, which set him off on a mysterious quest of universal import. Now back on Asgard, the rainbow-hued home of the Norse deities, he learns that his brother, the trickster god Loki (Tom Hiddleston), has squirreled away and supplanted their father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). After a dutiful but fun cameo from Benedict Cumberbatchs Dr. Strange, the brothers find their aging parent, as well as something unexpected: their long-banished sister Hela, the goddess of death, who in Cate Blanchetts devilish care uses every one of her grinning teeth to chew on lines like, Darling, you have no idea whats possible. A deliciously exasperated tyrant, Hela will storm Asgard, but not before tossing Thor into the abyss, through which he will arrive on the planet Sakaar, a junkscape ruled by Goldblums Grandmaster, a hedonistic despot in search of gladiators to fight and die in the arena. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Though a final battle with Hela looms, this detour becomes Ragnaroks centerpiece, and its where the distinctive hand of Waititi, a New Zealander known for his charming, emotionally resonant indies, is most recognizable. Like Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn, Waititi filters sci-fi touchstones through his own oddball lenswitness the Day-Glo Tusken Raiders that take Thor into custodyand airdrops pop-cultural detritus that works precisely because it has no business being there. (In this case, he perfectly deploys Willy Wonkas Pure Imagination for a Tunnel of Terroresque trip.) It is here where we meet the swaggering, frequently sozzled Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson, excellent), an Asgardian outcast whos trying to drown her past in drink, and Korg (voiced in near-falsetto by Waititi himself), a gentle giant of a rock creature who might be the silliest, most likable thing in a movie full of them. And we will re-encounter the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, sympathy-inducing), who has become Sakaars champion, and who will complete the buddy comedy that the film becomes in its second half. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As it turns out, this pairing has real chemistry, even if most of Thor and the Hulks exchanges end with one of them slapping the other into a wall. That the film is so joke-dense, however, does eventually undercut its stakes, especially since this is the 16th Marvel Cinematic Universe filmliterally the 16thwhere the fate of a city, planet, universe, or all of reality is at stake. For all of the gonzo flourishes, Waititi is a fairly conventional plotter and stager of action scenes, and so eventually we must move on to a denouement we dont quite care about, as well as a potentially weighty themeHela might represent the ugly origins that all prosperous societies burythat stays too far out of focus. Theres a great ThorHulk interstellar road movie to be made, but this isnt quite it. Advertisement Advertisement Its those broad jokes and small moments, from a director of small movies, that stick. Thats precisely what has made many of the better Marvel films, which feel like small pictures blown up into big ones, work so well. If you have a rock creature, why wouldnt he make a rock-paper-scissors joke? Of course our heroes will return to Asgard via a portal known as the devils anus. And, why yes, I do want to see Hulk smash a giant serpent. Would that every superhero film had so light a touch. Not every job needs a hammer. Miami-Dade County lost 170,000 cubic yards of sand during Hurricane Irma. Its the latest blow to South Florida beaches in perennial decline. Nearly half the states coast411 miles worth of beachis considered critically eroded. This is due in part to storms and underfunded beach maintenance, but really its a result of unchecked coastal development. Developer-friendly building codes have bunkered more than 100 miles of Florida shoreline behind jetties and seawalls, which hold back water but accelerate beach erosion. Fixed structures make natural coastline movement impossible. Advertisement For years, Florida beach managers have raced to find convenient sources of cheap, offshore sand. But the good stuff is running out. In Miami-Dade and Broward, for example, theres virtually no sand left thats both easily accessible for dredging and suitable for the beach. Currently, the protocol is to truck in the sand from inland mines, a procedure that can cost twice as much as dredging, and creates lots of traffic around the beach. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So Florida engineers and politicians want to do with sand what Americans do for other commodities that are expensive to buy domestically: buy it abroad. Unfortunately for them, thats basically illegal thanks to a provision of a 1986 environmental law that all but bars federal spending on foreign sand. (A crucial chunk of beach restoration money comes from the Army Corps of Engineers.) Advertisement Advertisement After Irma, Florida reps are pushing anew to scuttle that requirement, which would allow Florida counties to buy sand from the Bahamas. Sen. Marco Rubio actually introduced the SAND Act (Sand Acquisition, Nourishment, and Development) at the start of 2017, shortly after a different federal law permitted the study of sand imports. Every member of Congress from South Florida is a co-sponsor. They also have the support of Sandy Cay Development, a Bahamian company that mines sand and aragonite, a calcium carbonate thats already dropped off at the Port of Miami to make cement and glass in the U.S. In the other corner is the U.S. dredging industry, which enjoys a Jones Actstyle guarantee that only U.S.-flagged ships may import sand from the islands. Last year, a dredging company executive told the Naples Daily News that it wouldnt be fair to change the law when so many companies had been built around the current regulations. He also argued that the Florida coast had plenty of sand. (The entire Naples Daily News series on Florida beach erosion is worth reading.) Advertisement Advertisement Even if youre no fan of industry-specific protectionism, its worth considering how Florida got itself into its own mess by approving pell-mell coastal development on vulnerable beachfronts for generations. Letting the state buy its way out now rewards Florida for decades of short-sighted policy. Opening the tap on Bahamian sand would stanch the bleeding of Floridas overdeveloped beaches like a Band-Aid on a head wound. Now that the world faces an extreme global sand shortage, maybe the possibility of sustainable reform lies in protectionist laws like this one, which forces Florida to deal with Floridas problems. Amazon is the company thats most engaged with customers, according to a recent report. And small businesses can potentially learn some important lessons from the retail giant and other big names that focus on customer engagement. Forbes Insights partnered with Pega to compile the list of the 50 most engaged companies, which also includes Googles parent Alphabet Inc., Starbucks, Foot Locker, Alaska Air, FedEx, Southwest Airlines, Marriott, Lowes and Nordstrom. Customer Engagement Examples So what can companies like Amazon, Google and Starbucks teach smaller brands about customer engagement? Those companies dont just market to their customers. They actively involve their customers in those efforts. They collect insights. They repost customer photos. They respond to inquiries on social media. Bruce Rogers, Chief Insights Officer at Forbes Media, said in an email to Small Business Trends, Customer engagement is the new marketing. No amount of advertising, promotion or discounts can overcome a poor experience with the brand, whether its the products or service itself, indifferent customer service or a confusing invoice. Those concepts are important for businesses of any size. Even small businesses will need to compete with the likes of Amazon and Starbucks. And if those big companies do a better job of communicating with customers and keeping them engaged online, small businesses could get left behind. Rogers says, The Forbes Insights research on the topic and the development of its 50 Most Engaged Companies List provides businesses of any size with powerful lessons on what it takes to succeed in todays environment where customers expectations for customer engagement is invariably compared to the likes of Amazon no matter the product category. It takes a well-thought out, personalized approach whether its a face-to-face interaction or contact through social media. It takes a commitment to transparency and honesty in every transaction. And it takes a culture that reinforces the notion that customer loyalty and satisfaction is everyones responsibility. However, some small businesses may have a leg up on larger companies in this area. Small businesses are often more accessible to their customers just because there are fewer team members and processes in place. And businesses that are less set in their ways can be more agile and adapt to customer insights or concerns. Rogers says, Small businesses typically succeed because they were founded on these principles. Larger businesses go awry because they tend to lose sight of these maxims as they grow and create siloed organizations for product development, customer care, marketing and sales and trade off great customer engagement for scale. So essentially, your small business can compete with huge corporations by prioritizing customer engagement even as you scale. Dont lose sight of the importance of communicating with customers in person and online. And always take their opinions and insights into account when making important decisions about your products, services and marketing efforts. Companies like Amazon, Google and Starbucks continue to utilize these methods even though theyve grown well beyond the scope of small businesses. So you can emulate some of those tactics to realize your own customer engagement success. The application was up for review with a "technical hold" placed by China expiring on November 2. By Ananth Krishnan: China has rejected an application at the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar, officials in Beijing said. The application was up for review with a "technical hold" placed by China expiring on November 2. Officials in Beijing told India Today they had "rejected" the application "because of a lack of consensus". Beijing had on Monday indicated it would block the pending application with a "technical hold" it placed set to expire on November 2, saying there was "no consensus" and there were "disagreements" on the matter. India, however, says China is the only one among 15 members of the committee that has opposed the listing. advertisement China reiterated that stand when asked on Thursday if it would block the application. "We raised a technical hold so as to allow for more time for the UNSC committee and all members to deliberate on this matter, but there is still an absence of consensus," said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying. DISAGREEMENTS PERSIST "The committee has its rules of procedure and it has yet to reach a consensus, there are still disagreements. China's actions are meant to ensure that we safeguard the authority and effectiveness of this committee and we will continue to follow the mandate of the committee and rules of procedure, and remain in constant communication and coordination with all members of the committee. It is a fact that the committee is yet to reach agreement." This will mark the second time in two years that Beijing has essentially stymied attempts to list the Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, a move that would have helped cut funding and freeze financial assets, besides exerting pressure on Pakistan to take action. TECHNICAL HOLD After Beijing last year blocked an application made by India, it had this January placed a six-month "technical hold" on a United States, United Kingdom and France-backed application. A second three-month hold was placed in August under the committee's rules that allow members to seek more information. Hua on Monday denied that China was acting at the behest of all-weather ally Pakistan. "I can understand why you raise this question but I cannot agree with what you said [about China supporting Pakistan]. China always upholds the principle of objectivity and fairness and we judge the matter on its own merit. Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism and we support Pakistan in countering terrorism, in accordance with its own national conditions." WATCH: India responds to Pak PM at UNGA, says it has become terroristan --- ENDS --- FlyDubai flies to Dubai three times per week Font size: A - | A + Bratislava airport will offer better connections to world destinations after the Middle Easts largest airline Emirates and budget airline FlyDubai decide to join forces. Emirates and FlyDubai agreed in July to coordinate on network planning, schedules and frequent flyer programmes, and said they would align airport systems and operations. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Bratislava airport, from which FlyDubai flies to Dubai tree times per week during the winter season, may benefit from this cooperation as well. For its passengers this partnership could make traveling to destinations attended by Emirates easier. Read also: Read also: Travellers can fly from Bratislava to 26 destinations in 18 countries Read more Emirates and FlyDubai could use the same terminal at Dubai International Airport after expanding their commercial relationship earlier this year, the head of the airport operator said as cited by Reuters. Earlier in October the airlines announced that Emirates will expand its network to 29 FlyDubai destinations through codeshare flights. Lack of money The problem is that Bratislava airport does not have money for promoting these new connections, the Trend weekly wrote on its website. The Bratislava airport promotes new lines via Facebook, Twitter, on the airport's website as well as a newsletter sent to registered clients. Vienna, just about 60 km from Bratislava, as well as Kosice in eastern Slovakia, which have the same owner, present themselves as airports from which it is possible to fly out into the entire world. Bratislava cannot boasts of many transfer destinations so far. The partnering of Emirates with FlyDubai will extend the number of reachable destinations from Bratislava. The Interior Ministry adopts steps to prevent the abuse of e-signatures, but is criticised for its late response. Font size: A - | A + Though Slovakia is among countries with the quickest growth in digital economy, it is still struggling with the functionality of the electronic services its public authorities are offering. Some 300,000 people will soon see their electronic signatures deactivated and replaced with more secure certificates. The signatures are part of their ID cards with electronic chips that were issued with a serious error. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Interior Ministry replaces the certificates only after the public criticism of the original reaction that the problem is not as serious as it seems. We can only ask why the state did not stop the issuance of certificates immediately after it learned about the error or the first story had been published, without containing mathematical details about vulnerability, Lukas Kosno of the Zive.sk website told The Slovak Spectator. Playing down the problem? With its decision, the Interior Ministry is responding to reports that the qualified electronic signature may be stolen. The electronic signature is often used to sign documents submitted to courts, or for the business register, distrainment proceedings and the transfer of properties. This is possible due to the error revealed by a team of Czech and Slovak cyber-security researchers from Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic in mid-October. Read also: Read also: Electronic signatures will be cancelled en masse Read more They found out that the cryptographic algorithm used in the ID cards is weak and it is possible to learn about the private code from a public one. This concerns mostly the cryptographic algorithm RSA used with a specific security chip made by the German company Infineon, which generates the signature codes. This means that not only Slovak eID cards, but also those in other countries using the certificates are in potential danger. The researchers informed Infineon of their findings in February. At first, the Interior Ministry responded to the problem on October 17 by saying that if people observe security rules they do not have to panic, and that the risk of a security problem is only theoretical. Interior Minister Robert Kalinak (Smer) even called on the public to hack his own e-signature on October 20. Following his statement, the Hacktrophy company published a call to hack his signature, offering a reward at 1,337, as reported by the HNonline.sk website. First charges from special prosecutor show collusion with Russia, and cooperating witnesses. A court artist drawing shows President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, center standing and Manafort's business associate, Rick Gates, in federal court in Washington, Monday, Oct. 30, 2017, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson. (Source: AP/TASR) Font size: A - | A + The more you watch it, the more the trainwreck of Donald Trumps presidency in the US resembles Vladimir Meciars terrifying stewardship of Slovakia in the 1990s. Collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government was confirmed for the first time on Monday when Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller revealed that Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos had attempted to set up meetings between the campaign and the Russians ahead of the November 2016 elections. Papadopoulos had been offered access to thousands of emails hacked by the Russians from the account of Hillary Clintons campaign, and was also encouraged to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin. He has pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, and since July has been cooperating with Muellers team. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement In a separate development, Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, with a variety of economic crimes related to their lobbying for a Russia-friendly former government of Ukraine. Earlier studies have revealed that the annual flow of plastic amounts to 530-1,550 tonnes. Font size: A - | A + Slovak and Austrian experts will try to acquire information on the contamination of the Black Sea with plastic from the Danube River. Within the PlasticFreeDanube project to be launched soon, data will be collected by observing the stretch of the Danube River between Vienna and the Gabcikovo hydroelectric power plant (situated in Trnava Region), the TASR newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Danube River as the main tributary has a direct impact on the Black Sea, said Stanislav Scepan, communications department chief of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), as quoted by TASR. Earlier studies have revealed that the annual flow of plastic into the Black Sea from the Danube River amounts to 530-1,550 tonnes. SAVs specialists in the identification of plastic will be involved in the project, due to last until 2020, Scepan added. The project should include the drawing up of an action plan for combating the contamination of the Danube River by plastic waste and should also contribute towards boosting public awareness of the problem, TASR wrote. People and businesses will stop being postmen between state offices and institutions and will not be obliged to deliver four kinds of documents on paper any more Font size: A - | A + The need to obtain paper documents from many state bodies should be done away with as of May 1, 2018, Vice Prime Minister for Investments and Informatisation Peter Pellegrini (Smer) announced on November 2. After analysing the respective legislation, Pellegrinis office has prepared an amendment to the law on administrative proceedings that should bring about the change. The amendment has just been sent for interdepartmental review. Pellegrinis office expects it to bring savings of as much as 3.5 million to the public and companies in fees, as well as saving 620,000 hours spent obtaining the documents. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Many registers work perfectly already, and we draw our data from them, said Pellegrini as cited by the TASR newswire. In part, thanks to this, we can introduce the first of a number of radical measures that in my opinion will be followed by several others in further waves this year and in the next few years. This way the office of the vice prime minister joined the initiative of Economy Minister Peter Ziga to reduce the red tape for businesses. The aim of the amendment to the law on administrative proceedings is to ban offices and other public institutions in Slovakia from demanding that people and firms should bring them extracts from the Commercial Register, extracts from ownership lists, extracts from the Register of Self-employed Individuals, or copies of criminal records. Read also: Read also: Bureaucracy crushes small and medium companies Read more All these data are currently available to the state, said Pellegrini. The amendment will alter over 147 laws, 68 directives, eight measures and 12 government regulations. This step is very important in order to eliminate pointless red tape and improve the business environment, said Ziga. We tested it during our latest EU fund calls, when ministry clerks obtained plenty of data from available registers, and applicants did not have to provide confirmation. We want to show entrepreneurs that the state can significantly help them with its proactive attitude. The Economy Ministry plans to introduce the second anti-bureaucratic package as early as next year. No connection between his actions and the damage caused to the tax administration was proven. Font size: A - | A + Former head of the tax directorate Miroslav Mikulcik is not responsible for the failure of the information system that collapsed back in 2012. The Bratislava Regional Court confirmed the verdict issued by the district court last October. At the time, both the prosecutor and the injured party appealed the verdict. The recently issued verdict is valid, the TASR newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The proceedings of the first-instance court can be considered as exemplary, the appellate court has not found any procedural mistakes or other evidence and that should be complemented, the chair of the regional courts senate said, as quoted by TASR. The regional court also accepted the lower-instance courts opinion that there was no connection between Mikulciks actions and the damage caused. Read also: Read also: Court frees former head of tax officers Read more Mikulcik, who served in his post during the Iveta Radicova government (2010-2012), faced charges for abuse of duty when administering someone elses property. He was allegedly responsible for the problems accompanying the launch of the KONS information system which was to clarify the system of collecting VAT and other taxes. As a result, the state suffered damages amounting to millions of euros, TASR wrote. The prosecutor claimed that Mikulcik had signed an amendment to the agreement that was disadvantageous for Slovakia as the company IBM had promised to supply specialists to make the necessary changes to the tax system. They were not responsible for the performance of these works, though. As a result, the tax administration collapsed on January 1, 2012, causing the state damage to the tune of 6.208 million. Im glad the court agreed with me, Mikulcik said after the proceeding, as quoted by TASR. The bomb set by Slovakias first eco-terrorist failed to injure anyone The scene of the crime (Source: Courtesy of Police Kosice) Font size: A - | A + The perpetrator, identified by courts only as Ladislav K, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for a bomb attack in the centre of Kosice in 2011 and other crimes, the Kosice District Court decided on November 2, the TASR newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The offender, who sympathises with extremist animal-rights supporters, manufactured a hand-made bomb and set it off in Kosice city centre on December 28, 2011. Loaded with nails, the bomb exploded in a rubbish bin outside a fast food restaurant. It failed to injure anyone only by chance. Originally, Ladislav K. faced charges of terrorism. These charges were later reclassified as public endangerment, extortion, unlawful possession of a weapon, an attempt to cause bodily harm and other counts. Read also: Read also: Man sentenced to 23.5 years for explosion at McDonalds Kosice Read more Back in 2014, both Kosice District Court and subsequently Kosice Regional Court sentenced Ladislav K to 25 years in jail as the first Slovak ever convicted of terrorism. However, the verdict was overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court in April 2016, as the highest instance court established that the crime in question does not fall within the category of terrorism but public endangerment instead. In 2016, the Kosice District Court sentenced Ladislav K to 23.5 years in jail, but the Kosice Regional Court overturned the verdict due to violations of the Criminal Code provisions. Read also: Read also: Court sends Slovakias first eco-terrorist behind bars for 25 years Read more This meant that the District Court on Thursday, November 2, dealt with the case for the third time when it handed Ladislav K the aforementioned 10-year sentence. The verdict is not yet valid, with both the defendant and the district prosecutor filing appeals with the Regional Court. Ladislav has already been behind bars, including time in custody awaiting trial, for six years. S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Under $5 a Share (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Under $5 a Share (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Under $5 a Share (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Under $5 a Share (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Under $5 a Share (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Under $5 a Share (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit China has often warily viewed the close security relations between India and Bhutan, with Chinese analysts routinely referring to Bhutan as a "protectorate" of India. By Ananth Krishnan: China today said that it would like to see India and Bhutan "developing normal relations", with Bhutan's King on a key visit to New Delhi. Both India and Bhutan today reaffirmed their close ties, with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and President Ram Nath Kovind in their talks reaffirming the relationship in the wake of the 72 day standoff at Doklam, near the India-China-Bhutan trijunction. advertisement Significantly, the President had specifically conveyed "deep appreciation for the King of Bhutan's personal involvement and guidance and the support provided by Bhutan in addressing the recent situation in the Doklam area", a statement said. He also said that "the manner in which both India and Bhutan stood together to address the situation in the Doklam area is a clear testimony to our friendship". CHINA's CAUTIOUS APPROACH China has often warily viewed the close security relations between India and Bhutan, with Chinese analysts routinely referring to Bhutan as a "protectorate" of India and blaming Delhi for the unsettled borders between the two countries. Some Indian analysts have seen China's moves into Doklam, where in June it extended a road deep into what India and Bhutan see as Bhutanese land, as seeking to test India's ties with Bhutan and perhaps drive a wedge in the relationship. China reacted cautiously to the King's visit, saying it saw both countries as close neighbours. "Both India and Bhutan are China's important and close neighbours," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying. "We are committed to developing good neighbourly and friendly relations with these two countries and we would like to see India and Bhutan developing normal relations." DOKLAM AND AFTER Hua didn't elaborate on what "normal relations" meant. Amid the standoff in August, the Foreign Ministry in a statement pointed out that China dealt with Bhutan as "an independent and sovereign" state, in a thinly veiled dig at India. The dispute over Doklam, Beijing then said, "has nothing to do with India" and that "as a third party, India has no right to interfere in or impede the boundary talks between China and Bhutan, still less the right to make territorial claims on Bhutan's behalf". "China", it added in a dig at India, "has all along respected Bhutan's sovereignty and independence". China has more recently appeared keen to turn the page on the standoff, particularly after the September meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping at the BRICS Summit in Xiamen. Hua today said, "On the incident of Indian troops trespassing the border, we have stated our position many times before. We believe that China and India properly settled this issue through diplomatic means consistent with our common interest. We hope India can follow historical conventions and work with China to ensure peace and tranquility of the border area." advertisement ALSO WATCH: China's U-turn after BRICS summit: Beijing defends Pakistan on terror --- ENDS --- Career & Technical Education Study: CTE Courses Later in High School May Improve Student Persistence A new study from researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara suggests that taking career and technical education (CTE) courses in the last couple years of high school may improve the chances a student will graduate. "Our findings indicate that CTE course taking, particularly when later in high school, is linked to student persistence and success," said Michael A. Gottfried, associate professor of education at UCSB, in a prepared statement. "This lends support to the idea of further expansion of CTE coursework in high school." The paper, "Linking the Timing of Career and Technical Education Coursetaking with High School Dropout and College-Going Behavior," suggests that, for each CTE course completed in a student's junior year, that student is 1.5 percent more likely to graduate on time and 1.6 percent less likely to drop out. The numbers only improve in the final year of high school, when each CTE course completed correlates with a student being 2.1 percent more likely to graduate on time and 1.8 percent less likely to drop out. "The purpose of CTE courses is to engage students and show how school is relevant to both career and college," said Gottfried in a news release. "As students get closer to the finish line, CTE courses become extremely relevant to them." Conducted by Gottfried and Ph.D. candidate Jay Plasman, the study found "very little" effect from taking CTE courses in the first two years of high school. The researchers also found that CTE course completion at any time during high school had no effect on whether a student attended college directly after graduation. "Knowing how the timing of course taking can make a difference, states and schools can better structure and invest in CTE courses to create stronger high school outcomes," Gottfried said in a prepared statement. For more information visit journals.sagepub.com. By PTI: tell Pb CM Chandigarh, Nov 2 (PTI) There is a clear bid to revive terrorism in Punjab, senior police and intelligence officials told Chief Minister Amarinder Singh who today reviewed the law and order situation in the state, according to an official statement. The officials also told Singh that in several cases handlers of those carrying out terror activities were found to be operating from abroad. advertisement "There is a clear bid to revive terrorism in the state, which could be traced to foreign handlers not just in Pakistan but also in other countries such as Canada, Germany, UAE, Belgium, South Africa, Portugal and Saudi Arabia," the chief minister was informed at the meeting according to the official release. The meeting was called to take stock of steps being taken to curb the spread of divisive and communal forces. Punjab DGP Suresh Arora told the chief minister that since March this year, seven terror modules had been busted and 43 terrorists, radical operatives arrested by the state police. The police has identified 16 foreign handlers affiliated to various militant outfits so far, and as many as 38 weapons, including those pushed into India by Pakistans ISI, have been seized, he said, according to the release. The chief minister gave the security forces a free hand to tackle any threat to the states peace and harmony, it said. The chief minister issued strict directions to the state police and intelligence agencies to go all out to counter the increasing misuse of social media to spread hate campaigns. He also ordered stern steps to break the nexus between terrorists and gangsters, as well as between gangsters and jail staff, to prevent use of prisons by gangsters to carry out their nefarious operations, the statement said. Taking serious note of reports about gangsters operating from prisons, as evident from the recovery of mobile phones and sim cards from jails, the chief minister ordered strict monitoring and directed the home department to take immediate steps to fill vacancies. There was need to instill in these gangsters, a fear of the law, to ensure that the states peace and harmony is maintained at all costs, he said. Punjab ministers Manpreet Badal, Navjot Sidhu and Tripat Bajwa were also present at the meeting. Expressing concern over the recent killing of a Hindu outfit leader in Amritsar, the chief minister ordered the police to expedite the investigations in the case, which the security agencies said was not linked to the spate of the recent targeted killings in the state. advertisement The police officials assured the chief minister that the culprits, who had already been identified, would be caught soon, the statement said. The chief minister also instructed the security agencies to adopt overt and covert measures to effectively counter the online hate campaign by Pakistans ISI and the communal tirade being launched by a section of hardliners belonging to different communities. According to the release the officials told Amarinder Singh that most of the gangsters, who had a free run under the previous regime, had either fled or were behind bars. Investigations showed that some of them were trying to disrupt the law and order either from outside Punjabs borders or from behind the bars, top police officials told the chief minister. The chief minister said that while the law and order situation in Punjab had seen a marked improvement in the past eight months, there was need to tighten the belt further to ensure that people in the state live in an atmosphere of peace, with fear of any kind. PTI CHS VSD ADS --- ENDS --- advertisement Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship. Uber is keen to find a way to cooperate with Vietnamese taxi companies, instead of eliminating them from the market or going against their traditional business model, an Asia-Pacific executive of the ride-hailing app has said. Uber is facing strong protests from conventional taxicabs, who say the California-based transportation technology company is stealing passengers from them, in Vietnam. Local taxi operators in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have repeatedly called on authorities to either ban Uber and a similar ride-hailing app Grab from operating, or at last subject them to the same tax policies and regulations as conventional taxi companies. However, Brooks Entwistle, chief business officer for Asia-Pacific with Uber, has underlined that cooperating with Vietnamese taxi firms is an important part of the companys development strategy. Speaking to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on the sidelines of a media meeting in Singapore on Tuesday, Entwistle said Vietnam is an important and potential market for Uber in the region and the company wants to cooperate with conventional local taxicabs for all parties to achieve mutual growth. The Uber executive added that he is scheduled to visit Hanoi next week to meet with local regulatory bodies with regard to the apps operations in the Southeast Asian country. The upcoming cooperation is aimed at reducing the number of no-passenger cars traveling on the streets and easing traffic congestion, Entwistle said. An Uber driver talks to his passenger in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre He emphasized that Uber wants to work together with Vietnamese taxi firms to achieve business growth, instead of going against them. Last month Uber inked agreements with three major taxi firms in Taipei, allowing cab drivers in the Taiwanese city to use its app, a move which Entwistle said would be applied widely across Southeast Asian cities in the coming time. Tuesdays meeting was jointly held by Uber and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where the latter released its findings on the ride-sharing trend in major cities across Asia. The survey, polling 9,000 participants in Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, suggested that more and more cars will join the traffic flow in Southeast Asian cities in the next few years, worsening gridlocks during rush hours. According to the survey, 81 percent of the respondents in Ho Chi Minh City and 79 percent in Hanoi want to buy a car in the next five years. The two Vietnamese cities also have the worst traffic jams, in terms of time wasted, among Southeast Asian metropolises. For instance, during rush hours in Hanoi, it takes 70 minutes to complete a trip that normally takes only 30 minutes, meaning commuters have to spend 40 minutes on average in a traffic jam. The survey also found that ride-hailing apps have helped lower the number of cars traveling on the streets by 92 percent in Bangkok, 91 percent in Kuala Lumpur and 88 percent in the Philippines. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! An exhibition celebrating the friendship between Vietnam and Russia kicked off on Wednesday in Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the centennial anniversary of the October Revolution. The event, organized on Nguyen Hue Pedestrian Street and Dong Khoi Street in District 1, is part of a series of activities, lasting until November 10, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution (November 7, 1917). The 100 photos depict the revolutionary spirit, the friendship between the two countries, and the beauty of Russia, including its people and famous landmarks such as Lenin's Mausoleum, Red Square, Winter Palace, Lomonosov Moscow State University. It also provides an overview of the development of the iconic October Revolution, and its impact on Vietnams revolutionary movement. The events opening ceremony hosted the citys leaders, officials who studied and worked in the USSR, now Russia, and guests from Russias diplomatic offices. Vice-chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Le Thanh Liem gives remarks at the exhibitions opening ceremony. Photo: Tuoi Tre Delegates attending the event will also have the opportunity to visit sites built with the help of the USSR, including the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Place of Culture, and the Tri An Hydropower Plant. The October Revolution was sparked when Vladimir I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party led the working class in the Soviet Union against the bourgeois government, forming the first socialist state in history. The revolt then inspired revolutionary movements in other countries around the world, including Vietnam. A Vietnamese lawmaker has suggested administrative agencies, public service providers, and public education institutions in urban regions start work one hour earlier than currently, claiming the change would improve congestion, health, and familial ties. National Assembly deputy Nguyen Van Canh proposed changing the current working hours in administrative bodies, public services and public schools in cities during a discussion on socio-economic development on Tuesday. Our work time should start at 8:30 am and end at 5:00 pm with a one-hour lunch break, Canh said at the lawmaking NAs discussion in Hanoi. But production units and non-state enterprises could decide their own working hours to meet their needs. The lawmaker from the south-central province of Binh Dinh claimed that the same working time has been applied in government agencies and administrative bodies in the world and several Asian countries, without elaborating on which ones. Canh explained that the shorter the break, the higher the productivity. Those countries taking a long lunch break have lower productivity than other nations, he said. Within one country, economic growth in those regions that take a long rest is slower than the remaining. The time change would improve traffic, health, family and public relationships, and work discipline, while helping save energy, the NA deputy claimed in the televised discussion. We would no longer see moms hurriedly taking their children to school [so they can get to work on time after that], with the kids holding a loaf of bread and a carton of milk [as a quick breakfast] in their hands on motorbikes, which is both unsafe and harmful to their health. The kids have to get up very early to go to school, with some eating on their way. We should change our work time so that their parents would have more time to take better care of them. The current work time in the public sector in Vietnam is from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm, with a break lasting from one hour and a half to two hours around midday. Canh admitted that such change would be difficult to adapt and have a considerable impact on many citizens, but insisted that it should be considered if benefits could be gained. I suggest the National Assembly and the government take this proposition into account, consult citizens, enterprises and experts, both local and international, and host conferences to evaluate the pros and cons of the adjustment, the parliamentarian said. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A mountain range in the southern Vietnamese province of An Giang is slowly being destroyed by illegal sand exploitation while local authorities claim the illicit operations are nearly impossible to stop. Sand mining at Bay Nui (Seven Mountains), a range of small mountains in Tri Ton and Tinh Bien Districts, An Giang Province, is a 24/7 operation. On the afternoon of October 27, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters arrived at Ngoa Long, one of Bay Nuis seven mountains, and discovered a 7,000 square meter pit dug by outlaw sand miners. Four men at the bottom of the pit were using shovels to fill a nearby truck with sand bound for Ba Chuc Town in Tri Ton District. Similar trucks were spotted along several roads in Ba Chuc, transporting illicitly mined sand from illegal mines to local construction sites. The journalists observed a total of 10 illegal sand mines with a combined area of approximately 50,000 square meters scattered across the base of Ngoa Long Mountain. Three additional mines stretching 25,000 square meters across and 10 meters deep were also spotted near the Ta Miet Pagoda. On-duty guards at the site were charged with notifying miners, trucks, and excavators working the sand mines to flee the area if strangers approached. Dat, a local resident, stated that these sand mines had been in operation for three years, adding that dozens of trucks transport sand from the mines to construction sites in Tri Ton District each day. Each truckload of sand is valued between VND300,000 (US$13) and VND700,000 ($31), depending on quality. A construction foreman in Tri Ton shared that most of the illegal sand mines in the locality are owned by two men named Do and Thon. According to the foreman, Do is the former chairman of the Peoples Committee in Le Tri Commune, Tri Ton District. Aggressive In nearby Tinh Bien District, the sand thieves make slightly more effort to conceal their operations by choosing to carry out the majority of their work after dark. A Tuoi Tre probe uncovered that Nam X. is the man behind most of the unofficial sand mines and trucks wreaking havoc on Cam Mountain and Ngu Ho Mountain at Bay Nui. A truck carries sand illegally exploited at the foot of Ngoa Long Mountain in Tri Ton District, An Giang Province. Photo: Tuoi Tre At midnight on October 28, the reporters followed one of X.s trucks to the foot of Ngu Ho Mountain. Guard posts dotted the path leading to an unlawful sand mine were manned by hired security personnel and sniffer dogs. By 2:00 am, the guards had begun their regular patrol. When the canines detected the smell of strangers, the miners and vehicles were told to abandon the mine while the guards carried out a search for the trespassers. The guards eventually found some of the Tuoi Tre journalists and immediately threatened them. What are you doing here? Is any of you left in the mountain? If we find anyone, we will beat them to death. Get out of here! the thugs shouted at the reporters. The correspondents caught by the guards were able to safely leave the site while members of the team investigating other locations on the mountain were forced to hide until the guards ended their shift at 5:00 am. Hard to catch Nguyen Van Duong, secretary of the Party Committee in An Phu Commune, Tinh Bien District, says that mining by night and heavy security make catching illegal miners red-handed a difficult job. According to Nguyen Thanh Tung, vice-chairman of the Tinh Bien Peoples Committee, the administration has issued no permits for sand exploitation in the locality. We will order the appropriate agencies to investigate and deal with the problem, Tung declared. Meanwhile, Phan Van Suong, chairman of the Peoples Committee in Tri Ton District, said Thon and Do have been fined millions of dong (VND100 million = $4,410) for illegal sand exploitation. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A 90-year-old woman in southern Vietnam is still selling lottery tickets every day despite old age to provide for her elder sister. For those living near the Sa Dec Market, situated in the namesake city in Dong Thap Province, Vo Thi Nguon should be a familiar name. Nguon, 90, sells lottery tickets at the marketplace on a daily basis. She has done this job for over three decades. Many people have advised me to retire considering my age, Nguon said. But if I quit my job, how will I take care of my elder sister? The older sister is 93-year-old Vo Thi Hanh, who once sold lottery tickets with Nguon. However, Hanh now has to stay home over health problems. The two sisters closely bond with each other as they used to sell rice, sugarcane, and eggs to support the family when they were young. Ever since their parents passed away, they have relied only on each other. According to Nguon, she starts her regular day by giving her elder sister a bed bath and making her some milk before going to work. I sell lottery tickets from 8:00 am to 11:00 am and from 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Some locals are aware of my circumstances and have become regular customers, the nonagenarian woman said. A few years ago, Nguon was diagnosed with varicose veins, abnormal heart rhythms, and high blood pressure, which all make it difficult for her to walk around. The elderly woman can only sell lottery tickets at a fixed location at the Sa Dec Market. Whenever it rains, she takes shelter at a nearby florists. Nguon and Hanh are living in a house built by authorities in Ward 2, Sa Dec City. Benefactors have helped the two sisters by providing rice, instant noodles, and soy sauce. However, the aged women only keep a small portion for themselves and donate the rest to local charities and pagodas. The two of us cannot use up the donations. It will be better when we help those less fortunate than us, Nguon said. According to Nguyen Thi Kim Loan, chairwoman of the Peoples Committee in Ward 2, local authorities offer monthly assistance to the two sisters. Philanthropists also contact the administration to provide help every now and then, Loan continued, adding that they will open a savings account for Nguon and Hanh. Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper is receiving donations for Nguon and Hanh. Any support can be provided directly at the headquarters of Tuoi Tre at 60A Hoang Van Thu Street, Ward 9, Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. People living in Vietnam who wish to transfer their donation can wire the money to Tuoi Tres bank account No. 113000006100 at VietinBank, Branch 3, Ho Chi Minh City. Overseas donors can transfer their money to the newspaper via Vietcombank Ho Chi Minh City at account No. 007.137.0195.845 (for U.S. dollars), or 007.114.0373.054 (for euros), SWIFT code: BFTVVNVX007. The description of the transfer should state Nhip cau nhan ai - ma so 106, giup do ba Vo Thi Nguon TP Sa Dec, tinh Dong Thap. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Central weather forecasters have alerted the organizers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Da Nang to the possibility of a storm, rain, and flood from this week as Vietnam is finalizing its preparations for the gatherings which world leaders will attend. The national weather forecast service sent a document to the National Secretariat of APEC 2017 urging it to coordinate efforts to cope with stormy and rainy weather patterns accompanied by floods expected next week during the APEC Economic Leaders Week. A spell of extremely heavy rains will hit Da Nang beginning Friday, the forecast service said, adding that a tropical depression has entered the East Vietnam Sea and will likely develop into a storm as it moves westward. The storm may batter provinces and cities in the south-central and southern regions on Friday and Saturday, weather forecasters said, noting that a cold front will advance southward at the same time. Under the combined influences of the two weather patterns, heavy rains lasting multiple days are expected to hit Thua Thien-Hue, Da Nang, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh, Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa Provinces. Flash flooding and land collapses are highly anticipated in low-lying and urban areas in these localities. A disaster response team will be deployed to Da Nang to prepare for any potential devastation caused by the situation, Hoang Van Thang, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said. APEC is a regional economic forum established in 1989 comprised of 21 member economies, including Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam, among others. Running from November 6 to 11, the Economic Leaders Week is expected to be attended by world leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The Vietnam Maritime Administration (Vinamarine) is seeking approval from local authorities to dump nearly 440,000 cubic meters of mud and sand produced during a dredging project in waters off the south-central province of Binh Dinh. The provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment confirmed on Tuesday that the agency plans to evaluate Vinamarines proposal to sink the waste. According to the maritime administrations request, about 439,000 cubic meters of mud and sand will be dumped into the sea near Quy Nhon City, Binh Dinh, said Dang Trung Thanh, director of the environmental department. The proposed dumpsite lies about 2.5 kilometers from the coastline, Thanh continued. Vinamarine previously asked for permission from the Ministry of Transport to carry out the dredging in order to ensure waters were at a suitable depth for ships entering and exiting Quy Nhon Port. The transport ministry later approved the plan after reviewing the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report. About 439,000 cubic meters of mud and sand was dredged from the sea area near Quy Nhon Port during the project. Vinamarine is now seeking a new location for the sand. Competent authorities in Binh Dinh will carefully review the suggestion before making the decision, according Tran Chau, vice-chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee. He urged the maritime administration and relevant agencies to work with local authorities to assess the plan to ensure it does not affect the local environment. Speaking with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday, Nguyen Xuan Sang, head of Vinamarine, asserted that the waste dumping proposal had been properly examined. Dredging at Quy Nhon Port is carried out on a yearly basis to ensure that large ships can dock safely, Sang added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! When Chris Bath left Seven in 2015 it was always with a view to exploring new horizons. True to her word shes appeared on The Project, Studio 10, Media Circus, ABC Radio, and continued her advocacy work with young journalists. Bowing out from a network contract is a rarity, and no doubt at times rather scary, but it has also been liberating for Bath. I am having an absolute ball as a freelance gun for hire, she told TV Tonight. You can cherry pick your way through what you want to do. A big network contract ties you up to certain things and fair enough too- they pay you a lot of money. So I dont want to talk about that as a criticism. I get it. But being a freelance gun for hire you can go ABC Radio? Cool! Keeping Australia Safe? Why not? Keeping Australia Safe, product by ITV Studios Australia, is a hugely-ambitious follow-up to ABCs 2016 series Keeping Australia Alive. This time the focus moves from health to security, with equal scale and insight. The 6 part series, shot over 48 hours in Australia and overseas, is embedded in over 24 government and private institutions. I cant tell you the language that I used but it went something along the lines of How on earth did you get this access? It blew my mind, Bath continues. I know how difficult it is to get access like this without some media minder hovering every five minutes, policing whats being shot and said. The access is unbelievable. So you are capturing real moments with real people, who tell the story. Im not going to lie, Im sure there is some spin in it. But they shot 3 terabytes of data over 28 days in May with 200 cameras involved. Cameras go on the frontline with state police, the Australian Federal Police, the army, navy, air force, Australian Border Force, corrections and the courts. Tackling everything from cybercrime to terrorism, the series documents both workers and community. Its not just the notion of security that we think of all the time. Theres our troops in Afghanistan where a whole unit has been formed to protect our guys against insider attacks, she explains. Or theres (the question of) how do we keep a growing number of women over 50 who are homeless safe? Or theres Olivia in a Brisbane watchhouse and how to keep people who are mentally ill safe. So it is safety on a whole number of levels. It tries to look at so many different areas of safety and the threats that Australian face on various levels, and whether they are actually real or just perceived. One episode even sees how police combatting Child Exploitation deal personally with the grim job of having to classify child porn. It is one of the most extraordinary parts of the series, Bath reveals. You see someone who is new to the unit and his supervisor is sitting next to him. But he has to view the online sexual abuse of children. You find yourself watching his face, which is otherwise an unremarkable shot, in a room with 2 people and computers. He sees it without sound, and then sound, and the look on his face says it all. I couldnt help but look at him and think How are you going to do this job? I know its necessary and we need it, but it was really compelling. While Bath remains arms-length distance from such confronting scenes, the journalist in her itches to be part of the production process. I suppose the biggest difference is my head isnt on camera. And Im fine with that. I felt really honoured to be asked, to be quite honest. With Sunday Night I was always there for the shoot. But with this I wasnt, so thats a marked difference, and I wasnt there for the cutting process. So thats different to others where Ive been a part of the process. But I would have given my eye teeth to have been! Baths name has more recently been thrown into the mix of potential breakfast hosts to replace Lisa Wilkinson on Today, but says a quick search of previous answers should indicate her position on such notions. I think you will come to the conclusion that I would much rather go to bed with people than have them waking up with me. The only person crazy enough to wake up with me is my husband, she laughs. I have no idea what other people are earning. Asked for her thoughts are on the debate surrounding gender pay parity, Bath suggests most talent dont know what their colleagues are earning. Its confidential in contract. I have no idea what other people are earning. Ive watched this go round and round and I dont know who to believe. I have an abiding suspicion and that doesnt make it fact- that men earn more than women doing the same job in television. But I stress I do not know whether thats fact. But it doesnt matter what industry youre in. Its about choosing the person who is best for the job, paying them accordingly, regardless of whether youre a man or a woman. I dont think what youre paid should be determined on your gender. A skillset is a skillset is a skillset, regardless of gender. Asked for her views on industry allegations since the Harvey Weinstein bombshell, Bath admits it makes her skin crawl. Theres a whole range of issues. You think How many people knew about this? Men and Women? But I dont think asking Why didnt the women speak up at the time? is a valid question. Its so layered and complex and I dont know that victim blaming is the way to go with that, she continues. But I do wonder how many people sat back, and watched it, and condoned it? How many people sat back and did nothing, people in positions of power? People who could have done something, but did nothing? But if you are going to make an allegation against anybody it has to be backed up by fact. Meanwhile gun-for-hire Bath continues with ABC Radio and presenting Keeping Australia Safe. She is happily relaxed as to what the next gig may be and early-morning starts aside, is open to producer offers. You never say never. Keeping Australia Safe screens 8:30pm Tuesdays on ABC. Actor Kevin Spacey is seeking treatment following revelations this week, triggered by actor Anthony Rapp. Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment, his representative said in a statement to Variety. No other information is available at this time. Sinces Rapps claims Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos and American documentary filmmaker Tony Montana have also come forward with allegations while, The Old Vic theatre in London, where Sppacey servied as Artistic Director, is conducting an investigation. Inappropriate behavior by anyone working at The Old Vic is completely unacceptable. We aim to foster a safe and supportive environment without prejudice, harassment or bullying of any sort, at any level, it said in a statement. Production on the sixth and final season of Netflixs House of Cards, in which Spacey plays the lead role of Frank Underwood, has been suspended. In a new statement Netflix and Media Rights Capital said, We view Kevin seeking treatment as a positive step. We continue to take this hiatus time to evaluate our path forward as it relates to the production and have nothing further to share at this time. By PTI: (Eds: with additional inputs) Kangra (HP), Nov 2 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today attacked the Congress for promising "zero tolerance" on corruption when its own chief minister was facing allegations of graft and said the states ruling party had become a "laughing club". Addressing a rally ahead of the November 9 assembly elections, Modi said it was time to rid "Devbhoomi", or the land of the gods as Himachal Pradesh is known, of monsters. advertisement Chief Minister Virabhadra Singh, Modi said, was "out on bail" on graft charges. "I feel the Congress has become a laughing club. The chief minister is himself out on bail... "And he is out on bail on what charges? That of corruption. He is facing serious allegations," Modi said. He asked the crowd whether it could digest the fact that such a chief minister had released the Congress manifesto promising to combat corruption. Even a small child from Himachal would not fall for it, he declared. Targeting Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi for meeting the Chinese ambassador during the stand-off in Dokalam earlier this year, Modi said, ?The leader whose father, grandmother and father of the grandmotherwas PM of India, and who has born and brought up in the ruling family, is acting in an insulting way. ?Isn?t it insulting when these peopleheld talks with Chinese leaders on Dokalam instead of asking the elected government?? The prime minister also brought up Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru with a reference to the Jan Sangh, which he said was created to counter the Congress through the efforts of leaders like Shanta Kumar, a former chief minister of the state and a BJP candidate from the area. ?Pandit Nehru... said they?d uproot and throw away the Jan Sangh during its early years,? Modi said. Continuing his attack, he said it was not the Congress of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters but a party of corruption and dynasty politics. ?Yeh Congress party sadi hui soch ka namoona hai. Hum jab Congress mukt bharat kehte hain, hum iss sadi hui soch ke mukt bharat chahte hai (The party is an example of a rotten thought process. When we ask for a Congress-free India, we want an India free of this thinking)," he said. People across the country were engaged in Swachhta Abhiyan (cleanliness campaign) and were "wiping out" the old party whenever they got the opportunity through elections, Modi said. India would forgive those who work in public life with honesty and make mistakes but not those who do wrong and deceive people intentionally, he said. advertisement The Congress, he added, must introspect on why people were punishing it. "But one needs to have soul to introspect." Modi also accused the Congress of allowing the growth of "danavas" (monsters) in Devbhoomi. "It is time to save Himachal Pradesh from those who looted it...from the monsters," he added. There are, the prime minister said, five monsters in Himachal Pradesh that people need to get rid off -? "mining mafia, forest mafia, drug mafia, tender mafia and transfer mafia?. Exhorting people to come out in large numbers, he said he wanted record polling this time. ?I know we will win anyway, because I have worked in Himachal and know the pulse of the people of this hill state... You have the opportunity to dismiss those who looted the state by pushing the right button on November 9," he said. Making a strong pitch for the BJP, Modi said people should remember Wazir Ram Singh Pathania, a local freedom fighter from the British era, when they cast their votes to bring the "right" party to power in the hill state. advertisement The BJPs chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal also addressed the rally. Kangra district has 15 seats in the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly. The prime minister is scheduled to address two more rallies in the district ahead of the elections. Virbhadra Singh is facing cases related to income tax returns, disproportionate assets and money laundering. The cases are being investigated by various probe agencies. PTI CORR ENM MIN --- ENDS --- By Ori Lewis JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli minister on Thursday declined to comment on reports that Israeli aircraft had struck a target in Syria the night before but repeated a threat to hit arms shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas. The air strike targeted a factory south of the Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday night and the Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, a commander in a military alliance fighting in support of Damascus said. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment but Israel's Channel 10 said the aircraft were not hit and returned safely to base. "I can't, of course, relate to reports about the Israel Defence Forces' attack in Syria, but regardless, Israel's position is clear: Smuggling arms to Hezbollah is a red line in our eyes," Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Army Radio. The Syrian commander told Reuters that Israeli planes had hit a copper factory in the industrial town of Hisya, 35 km (21 miles) south of Homs and 112 km (70 miles) north of Damascus. The commander did not give details of any casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organization that reports on the war, said the air strike had targeted a military installation. "Israel has acted in the past and it will act in the future to prevent arms smuggling to Hezbollah according to intelligence information that we will have," said Katz, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner circle of ministers. He said Israel's "red line" was "against arms smuggling (and) also against Iran's consolidation in Syria" and that it was "prepared to act to deter against our responses." "I think the other side also understands this clearly and actions that took place in the past for which we did take responsibility, were actions that were according to these lines, these red lines," Katz added. Story continues The Israeli air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Lebanese ally, the Iran-backed Hezbollah, nearly 100 times in recent years. Israeli officials have expressed alarm at Iranian influence in Syria, where Iran-backed groups have played a critical role fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the conflict that erupted in 2011. Iran's military chief, General Mohammad Baqeri, warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory during a visit to Damascus last month. Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, which last fought a major conflict in 2006, have escalated this year. Each side has warned it will unleash devastating firepower in the event of a full-scale war. (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam, Sarah Dadouch and Tom Perry in Beirut, writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Nick Macfie) See Also: Americas LTE wireless is a lot slower than many other countries. Source: PXHere You can say a lot of things about the state of LTE wireless broadband around the world, but you definitely cant describe it as America first. A new survey by OpenSignal shows that the U.S. lags other countries in LTE speeds and availabilityand is farther behind than it was in OpenSignals previous report. So President Donald Trump probably wont tweet out these findings. But on the upside, this London firms research does show improvement in the States. And things may get better over the next year or so, thanks to two developments unique to America. Saturation before speed OpenSignals report looks at 50 billion measurements taken by its app running on 3.8 million mobile devices in 77 countries from July 1 through Oct. 1. Those findings prioritize availability: How often does a phone get an LTE (Long Term Evolution, also often called 4G) signal? Even slow LTE downloadssay, 6 megabits per secondbeat 3G service that typically cant get past 3 megabits per second, what old phone-based DSL residential broadband can manage. So OpenSignals LTE metric isnt an unfair one. On that, the U.S. can take a fair measure of pride in having reached 86.94% availability, good for fifth place after South Korea (96.69%), Japan (94.11%), Norway (88.66%), and Hong Kong (87.23%). Availability doesnt mean coverageif an area has a lousy LTE signal but phone users know that and avoid it, the coverage gap wont show up in this metric. But its not divorced from geography either, and the U.S. doing this well when its vastly larger than the top four countries is worth noting. But in the last such OpenSignal report, the U.S. ranked fourth. Then as now, our closest neighbors were a good deal behind: Canada had 81.1% availability and Mexico had 69% availability, compared to 79.52% and 73.5% in the current data. Downloads trending up, just not as much here American exceptionalism, however, takes a beating in OpenSignals findings about LTE download speeds. They have the U.S. in 61st place, at 13.98 Mbps, far below the top three of Singapore (46.64 Mbps), South Korea (45.85 Mbps) and Norway (42.03 Mbps). Story continues Thats also worse than Canadas 29.79 Mbps and Mexicos 22.03 Mbpsand its slightly slower than OpenSignals prior finding for U.S. LTE downloads, 14.99 Mbps. In an earlier, U.S.-only study, OpenSignal found slower speeds at the two largest carriers, AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ), which it suggested were the fault of both carriers unlimited-data plans encouraging more intensive phone use. (Verizons media division, Oath, includes Yahoo Finance.) You shouldnt only take OpenSignals word in these matters. Another site that tracks wireless-network performance through apps on phones, Ooklas Speedtest, found notably better U.S. results in its first-half 2017 report released in September: Average downloads hit 22.69 Mbps, a 19.2% increase from the same period a year earlier. Our results do tend to be a bit more conservative, OpenSignal lead analyst Kevin Fitchard wrote in an e-mail. He cited his employers practice of measuring connection speeds from sometimes-distant servers that, he said, represent the common destinations for web surfing in a country rather than the closest point of presence. That subsidiary of the publishing firm Ziff Davis also tracked upload speeds, a critical metric to anybody whos waited to share a video clip. They hit 8.51 Mbps, just a 4% upgrade from a year earlier. Speedtest has yet to post 2017 data for Canada and Mexico, but its figures from 2016 had their LTE downloads (25.21 Mbps for Canada, 16.19 Mbps for Mexico) bracketing Americas 19.27 Mbps at the time. Whats next for the U.S.? American wireless users, however, have reason for a little optimism thanks to some factors distinct to our market. One is AT&Ts buildout of FirstNet, a long-planned network for priority use by first responders but which will also allow the company to expand its own coverage along the way. That will improve AT&Ts network substantially, said analyst Roger Entner in a phone interview Tuesday. The other is the decreasing odds of Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS) merging. That corporate couplingonce doomed under President Obamas regulators, then seemingly a sure thing under the Trump administrationwould have incurred massive transition costs. In a June 2017 note, Moodys analysts Mark Stodden and John Diaz suggested this massive engineering effort would require taking on $10 billion in debt. Should months of flirting by these firms end in continued separate existences, theyll have to focus on their own networks. T-Mobile has already articulated quite well what theyre going to do, Entner said, noting its announced goal to expand LTE coverage to 321 million Americans by the end of the year. The big question is, what will Sprint do? If, he said, the company takes advantage of continued independence to invest in its own service in the way T-Mobile did after AT&T gave up trying to buy the firm (with help from the sizable breakup fee AT&T paid to T-Mo), we could see a brighter picture for U.S. customers next year. And if not? We can comfort ourselves with the odds that the U.S. can lead the world in rolling out 5G wireless, even if it wont do anything for our smartphones for another two years. More from Rob: Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro. REYKJAVIK (Reuters) - Iceland's president asked the leader of the Left-Green Movement, Katrin Jakobsdottir, on Thursday to form a new government, although it came second in Saturday's parliamentary election. The mandate deals a blow to Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson of the Independence Party who called the snap election in September after less than a year in office as a scandal involving his father prompted a government ally to drop out of his ruling coalition. The Nordic island of 340,000 people, one of the countries hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis, has seen an economic rebound spurred by a tourism boom. But a string of political scandals have hurt trust in government in recent years. The election result showed a Left-Green-led coalition was possible if they joined forces with the Social Democrats, the Progressive Party and the Pirate Party. Together, they would hold 32 of parliament's 63 seats. Jakobsdottir's has said she may try to form a broad-based government. The Independence Party, which has dominated Icelandic politics for decades, fell short of a parliamentary majority. (This refiled version of the story corrects prime minister's first name in paragraph two to Bjarni, not Bjarne). (Reporting by Elias Thorsson; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) A Libyan militia holding the younger brother of the Manchester Arena bomber says it is "ready to cooperate" with a extradition request from the UK. British police called on Libyan authorities to return Hashem Abedi, 20, to the UK after they were granted a warrant for his arrest. The Deterrence Force - an armed militia allied to the UN-backed government in Tripoli - initially rejected the request. However, it now says it is "ready for the next step" if the Libyan attorney general comes to an agreement with British authorities. A spokesperson for the Libyan government said it was "cooperating to process" the extradition request. Greater Manchester Police has said it is "engaged with the Libyan authorities and are grateful for them considering the request". The force added: "It is not appropriate for us to comment further and we must respect the Libyan due process." Hashem Abedi's older brother Salman killed 22 people in a suicide attack at Manchester Arena on 22 May. Both brothers had travelled to Libya in April, before Salman returned alone to carry out the atrocity. Hashem Abedi was arrested shortly afterwards, and has been accused by Libyan prosecutors of helping his brother and collecting materials for the attack. They also claimed that Hashem Abedi was receiving money transferred by his 22-year-old brother the time of his arrest. British counter terrorism police regard Hashem Abedi as a suspect and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is among those calling for him to be tried in the UK. On Wednesday, police revealed that more than 500 people were injured in the terror attack. Officers said among those who survived the blast, 16 were seriously injured - with injuries including paralysis, loss of limbs, internal injuries and serious facial injuries. As part of the investigation so far, 23 people have been arrested, 30 addresses have been searched, 11,000 items have been seized and 16 terabytes of data has been examined. Greater Manchester Police said it took 1,300 statements, with more than 5,000 people referenced in the inquiry. Officers are still working through 16,000 hours of CCTV and more than eight million lines of telephone communications data. SKOPJE (Reuters) - A Macedonian court sentenced 33 ethnic Albanians to jail terms on Thursday, including seven given life sentences, after they were found guilty of plotting attacks and clashing with the police in a 2015 shootout in which 22 people were killed. The 33 were accused of being part of a group of Albanian gunmen involved in the May 9, 2015 shootout with police in the northern Macedonian town of Kumanovo, in which eight police officers were among those killed and dozens were wounded. Some of the defendants were from neighbouring Kosovo, while others were from Macedonia's own Albanian minority. "The evidence offered by the prosecutor shows that the accused committed the criminal acts of terrorism and terrorist organisation," the presiding judge said. The court was under heavy police protection, with helicopters flying overhead. The defendants protested while the verdict was being read, prompting the judge to order 33 of them to leave the courtroom before hearing sentences. The 2015 shootout occurred during a police raid that followed an attack by armed men on a border post. Some of them were former guerrillas from the National Liberation Army (NLA), an ethnic Albanian militia that had fought an insurgency in 2001 in which scores of people were killed. The NLA disbanded in 2002 and some of its former leaders entered the government. Naser Raufi, one of the defence lawyers, said the trial was staged and that he did not expect to see such lengthy sentences. "This calls for an independent investigation," he said. Macedonia, a small ex-Yugoslav republic of about two million people, declared independence in 1991 and mostly avoided the violence that accompanied the break up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, until the clashes with ethnic Albanian fighters in 2001. Albanians are believed to make up around 30 percent of Macedonia's population, living mostly in the northwest near the borders with Kosovo and Albania. (Reporting by Kole Casule; Writing by Ivana Sekularac) The horrific incident occured in Pakistan (Picture: Getty) Police in Pakistan have reportedly arrested eight men after they marched a 14-year-old girl naked through a village as a twisted form of revenge for her brother tarnishing their family honour. Police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the incident took place, claim that the girls brother developed a relationship with a woman outside marriage, prompting a village council to rule that the womans family could disrespect his sister in response. As the girl fetched water on the morning of October 27, a group of men reportedly stripped her and dragged her along the ground for an hour before making her walk around naked for an hour. MOST POPULAR TODAY ON YAHOO UK Donald Trump says Manhattan truck attacker Sayfullo Saipov should get the death penalty Wife who poured boiling water over husbands mistress is jailed for five years This golden retriever mum adopted two leopard cubs and its too adorable Mother and son posed as Christian worshippers to rob elderly women in churches Icelands biggest volcano is about to erupt after being struck by a series of earthquakes The village council, often referred to as a jirga, are illegal in Pakistan but are widespread in areas where the justice system is deemed to be inaccessible or ineffective. It has often been referred to be as tribal rule, after presiding over thousands of so-called honour killings. Only three months ago, a council of 26 men in Punjab province ordered a 17-year-old girl to be raped as direct punishment for a sexual assault that was allegedly committed by her brother. Last week, a 20-year-old woman also reportedly killed 15 people from her husbands family in Muzaffargarh near Multan in an attempt to poison her husband, to whom she had been forcefully married for two months. The High Court has clarified that an investigation agency is not obliged to arrest any accused in a cognisable offence where the sentence is beyond seven years. By Sneha Agrawal: The Delhi High Court in its landmark order has clarified that an investigation agency is not obliged to arrest any accused in a cognisable offence where the sentence is beyond seven years. The relief order came after the HC was put up with a query by a magistrate who wanted to know if the metropolitan magistrate can examine whether the discretion of the investigation officer to arrest or not has been properly exercised while considering the chargesheet at the time of taking cognisance. advertisement The magistrate added that if it is found that the investigating officer has not exercised his discretion lawfully, the charge sheet could be returned for further investigation on the point of arrest. The magistrate added that if it is found that the investigating officer has not exercised his discretion lawfully, the charge sheet could be returned for further investigation on the point of arrest. The query that was put forth had occurred in the background of a case where CBI had filed the chargesheet without arresting the accused in the offences of cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. The accused were not arrested by the investigating agency because it did not consider it necessary. --- ENDS --- By Lidia Kelly WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland plans to bar Ukrainians with "anti-Polish views", its foreign minister said on Thursday, emphasising the nationalist credentials of his ruling party that often talks of the "historic wrongs" inflicted on Poles by their neighbours. Witold Waszczykowski said the policy was a reaction to disrespect shown at a Polish cemetery in the western city of Lviv, which was part of Poland before World War Two. The foreign ministry said lion sculptures at the cemetery's entrances that hold shields inscribed with the Polish phrases "Always faithful" and "To you, Poland" had been covered up with boxes. Waszczykowski said Ukrainians who express anti-Polish sentiments or make it difficult to maintain ageing Polish symbols in Ukraine would be refused visas. He did not say how the policy would be applied in practice. "At the moment, we are launching procedures that will not allow people with extremely anti-Polish views to come to Poland ... Those who demonstrate and use administrative instruments against Poland will also bear the consequences," Waszczykowski told state-run TVP1 television. Poland is home to between 1.5 million and 2 million Ukrainians who left their country seeking jobs after the 2014 Maidan uprising and conflict with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine plunged their economy into recession. Despite Poland's support for an independent Ukraine that can stand up to Russia, tensions over the countries' troubled shared history have risen since the Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Poland two years ago. Poland last year passed a resolution that declared the World War Two-era killing of tens of thousands of Poles by units in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) "genocide". Ukraine rejects that label, saying the killings were tragic and calling for reconciliation and forgiveness. Waszczykowski said Poland's sympathy for Ukraine's struggles with Russia must not push "historical issues" into the background. "It cannot be that geopolitics, that the Russian aggression will be an excuse and that for years we will not settle the issues that divide us," Waszczykowski said. (Additional reporting by Marcin Goettig; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Robin Pomeroy) By Aleksandar Vasovic BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia wants to maintain its delicate balancing act between Russia and the West, its foreign minister said on Thursday, dismissing U.S. calls for it to pick a side. The largest of the states to emerge from the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Orthodox Christian and Slavic Serbia has natural affinity with Moscow, but it is keen to join the European Union. This month, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Hoyt Brian Yee told Belgrade it "cannot sit on two chairs at the same time". His remarks sparked sharp criticism in the Serbian capital. Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, who heads the co-ruling Socialists, once led by late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, said Belgrade would maintain balance with the West, Russia and China. "What we do not want is that someone pulls our own chair from under us ... what is important is to see what is in our own best interest," Dacic told Reuters in an interview. Although the EU is Serbia's single largest trade partner and investor, Russia controls its oil and gas supplies. Moscow has also sought to bolster military ties with Belgrade with the donation of six MiG-29 fighter jets. At Serbia's request, Moscow blocked independent Kosovo from becoming a member of the United Nations. The ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following a bloody 1998-1999 war. It has been recognised by 115 countries including the United States and most EU members, but not Serbia or Russia. Dacic likened Serbia's opposition to Kosovan independence to Spain's rejection of Catalonia's referendum on secession. "If Spain can fight for its concept of Catalonia then we Serbs can fight for our country," he said. Serbia, which cherishes Kosovo as its historic birthplace, and the government in Pristina should seek "a win-win solution" and "an international conference" that would prevent future wars "for a century," Dacic said. Story continues Earlier this year he suggested autonomy and delimitation for Serb areas in Kosovo. "That would be the only possible, realistic and lasting ... solution of the problem," he said in the interview. There are around 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo and most of them, mainly in the north, just outside Serbia, oppose the Pristina authorities. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy) By Alexander Winning JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) is holding hundreds of branch meetings as grassroots members nominate candidates to take over from President Jacob Zuma as party chief in December. The frontrunners are Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former chair of the African Union and Zuma's ex-wife, but with several other senior ANC figures running, the contest is too close to call. The ANC's next leader will probably become president in 2019 given the party's electoral dominance. First they face the tough task of winning back voters disillusioned with Zuma's rule and investors spooked by ratings downgrades. The fractious, sometimes violent, branch meetings start the decisive final stretch of the race to succeed Zuma, whose rule has been marred by corruption allegations and a sharp economic slowdown. Ramaphosa, a former union leader and one of the country's richest people, is viewed more favourably by foreign investors, who help cover the country's deficits. Many of them are unsettled by Dlamini-Zuma's calls to radically redistribute wealth and change the ownership structure of the central bank. Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma's campaign teams did not reply to requests for comment on reports of intimidation and manipulation of the nomination process in some provinces. "The real fight is in December, but psychologically the battle for the soul of the ANC has begun," said Stan Itshegetseng, who chaired a branch meeting in the Diepkloof district of the sprawling Soweto township on Sunday. It took 11 hours for Itshegetseng's branch of over 320 members to nominate Ramaphosa for ANC president, recommend more than 20 other officials for the party's National Executive Committee and agree on a delegate to send to the December party conference. Nominations in the branches matter because they send 90 percent of the more than 5,000 delegates who will vote in December. Branch meetings started last month and are due to end in mid-November. Story continues For a factbox on the ANC leadership contest, see: FACTIONAL BATTLE Unless change comes under the ANC's next leader, some analysts believe the ANC could lose the 2019 election, a once unthinkable scenario for a party that has led comfortably since sweeping to power under Nelson Mandela at the end of apartheid in 1994. As the ANC's electoral majority has shrunk, so the battle for control of the party has intensified between the factions backing Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa. Zuma and the ANC's youth and women's leagues he controls want Dlamini-Zuma, while Ramaphosa is backed by a diverse group of labour unions, communists and ANC members who say the party has lost its way under Zuma. Provincial ANC leaders are split. Carol Sono, a branch member in Diepkloof, said Dlamini-Zuma's stints as health minister, foreign minister and home affairs minister meant she was the most qualified. "It's only because of patriarchy that she wasn't chosen sooner," Sono said. Kedi Saletese, a branch secretary in the Orlando district of Soweto, said only Ramaphosa could tackle corruption and help the ANC reclaim its image as a defender of ordinary South Africans. "Now people see the ANC as a stepladder to enrich themselves. It makes you ashamed to wear an ANC T-shirt," she said. Saletese's branch - like Itshegetseng's in Diepkloof - nominated Ramaphosa on Sunday. The Gauteng province, where Soweto and the country's commercial capital, Johannesburg, are based, is an area where Ramaphosa enjoys strong support. Ramaphosa also polls well in the Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces, whereas Dlamini-Zuma is likely to receive a greater share of votes in provinces including her native Kwa-Zulu Natal and Mpumalanga, where the premier is viewed as a Zuma ally. Earlier this year there was a spate of political killings in Kwa-Zulu Natal, and some officials have expressed concern there could be more bloodshed as the leadership race nears its climax. At the three branches Reuters visited in Soweto on Sunday, there was no sign of violence, though a coordinator for Ramaphosa's campaign said he had been threatened with being "taken out permanently" for his choice of leader. Activists for Ramaphosa and Dlamini-Zuma mingled with party members, urging loyalty before the nominations began. As Ramaphosa supporters emerged victorious from their branch meeting in Diepkloof, they started singing "Things will change". (Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg) BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Voter support for Hungary's ruling right-wing Fidesz party rose to its highest since January 2011 at 40 percent according to an opinion poll published on Thursday, less than six months before parliamentary elections due in April 2018. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party looks like the runaway favourite to win a third straight term, campaigning with a fierce anti-immigrant message, coupled with increased spending on wage rises and promising more money to pensioners. Pollster Median said Fidesz' support rose to 40 percent in October from 36 percent in September, while the main radical nationalist opposition party Jobbik lost some of its support. Jobbik's support dropped to 11 percent from 12 percent, while the Socialists scored 7 percent in October, the same as in September. Among decided voters, Fidesz, which won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2014, was even stronger: its support rose to 61 percent in October from 55 in September, while Jobbik dropped to 14 percent from 16. Endre Hann, managing director of pollster Median, said Fidesz voters showed an unusual determination and willingness to vote according to their survey conducted between Oct. 20 and 24. "And also there is kind of a self-fulfilling process: more and more people feel that the opposition does not have any chance (in next year's election)," he said, adding that the opposition remained fragmented. The Socialist Party's candidate to be prime minister after the 2018 parliamentary election resigned last month, further weakening the leftist party. There is an array of other smaller leftist parties all vying for enough votes to get into parliament. Another pollster, Tarki, said Fidesz' support rose to 39 percent in October from 35 percent in July in the whole population, while Jobbik's support dropped to 10 percent from 11 percent. "The strengthening of the ruling parties is due to some of the uncertain voters choosing them, rather than luring away supporters of opposition parties," Tarki said. According to Median, about 30 percent of voters have no party preference. Tarki put the undecided camp at 34 percent. (Reporting by Krisztina Than, Editing by William Maclean) Brianna Brochu admitted to smearing bodily fluids over her roommates belongings (AP) A white college student is facing hate crime charges after she allegedly smeared bodily fluids onto her black roommates belongings. Brianna Brochu, 18, apparently admitted to police that she had also licked her roommates utensils because she was frustrated with her rude behaviour. Brochu, who was studying at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, also wrote on Instagram that she had placed a toothbrush where the sun doesnt shine but later denied she had done this. The teenager was arrested over the weekend and has been charged with misdemeanour criminal mischief and breach of the peace. West Hartford police are also attempting to add a charge of intimidation based on bigotry or bias. Brochu was a student at the University of Hartford (Google) The victim told West Hartford Police that she has felt ostracised by Brochu, and was ignored by her. After the victim moved into a room with Brochu in October, a fellow student told her about some very concerning posts in the accuseds Instagram page that detailed how she tampered with the victims personal items. Brochu reportedly told police she began to lash out due to a hostile environment caused by [the victims] rude behaviour, not compromising, and posting Snapchat videos of me sleeping and making fun of me snoring. MOST POPULAR TODAY ON YAHOO UK Donald Trump says Manhattan truck attacker Sayfullo Saipov should get the death penalty Wife who poured boiling water over husbands mistress is jailed for five years This golden retriever mum adopted two leopard cubs and its too adorable Mother and son posed as Christian worshippers to rob elderly women in churches Icelands biggest volcano is about to erupt after being struck by a series of earthquakes Brochu apparently admitted to licking her former roommates plate, fork and spoon and smeared her own bodily fluid on the victims backpack, but told police that anything else she bragged about on social media was a lie in an attempt to appear funny. University President Greg Woodward said in a statement that Brochus conduct was reprehensible and confirmed she would not be able to return to her studies. He added: It is clear there is work to be done at our University to ensure that all students feel safe, respected, and valued. Brochu is due in court later this month. In May 2012, constable Dinesh was reportedly murdered with a fully loaded rifle by constable Sunil Kumar. Sunil was held guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment last year. By Sneha Agrawal: A Delhi Police constable who was awarded life imprisonment on the charges of murder of a fellow colleague using an SLR will walk free - as the Delhi High Court has set aside his imprisonment on the grounds that prosecution could not prove that the accused knew that the rifle was loaded. Constable Sunil Kumar was attached to 7th Battalion at the Police Training School, Malviya Nagar Police Lines. In May 2012, constable Dinesh was reportedly murdered with a fully loaded rifle by Sunil. advertisement Last year, Sunil was held guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The prosecution had primarily relied on the testimony of the witness constable Kalu Ram from whose rifle the bullet that led to the death of Dinesh was shot. The court was told that the incident was an accident and he did not know that the rifle was loaded. He told court that the rifle of Kalu Ram was lying on the cot and he had picked it up just to make space for himself to eat his lunch. 'STAND VINDICATED' "My sympathy went out to Sunil as from a bare reading of the evidence in the case, it became clear to me that he had been wrongly convicted and deserved justice. There was no culpability, intention, knowledge or negligence on the part of Sunil. He is an innocent man and what had happened was a pure accident by a young recruit. I am glad our stand has been vindicated," said advocate Shivani Luthra Lohiya. On the other hand, the HC observed that witness Kalu Ram in the first place was not supposed to bring along his rifle at the place of the incident - which was against the rule. "The accused cannot be set to have known that the mere lifting of the rifle would in all probability cause death. The act of lifting the rifle cannot be said to be rash or negligent if the accused did not know the fact. The version of accused Sunil that he merely moved the self-loaded rifle and in that process accidentally pressed the trigger without knowing that it was already loaded," the court observed. --- ENDS --- Genedrive , the near patient molecular diagnostics company, is to launch the decentralised Hepatitis C assay, Genedrive HCV ID Kit, at the upcoming IFCC WorldLab 2017 Congress in Durban, South Africa. Genedrive recently announced that it had signed a distribution agreement with Sysmex Europe GmbH, a subsidiary of Sysmex Corporation, for the Genedrive HCV ID Kit and the Genedrive platform in the EMEA region with an initial focus on Africa. According to Genedrive, the agreement stipulated that both companies would work together on securing required regulatory approvals in individual territories of Africa, with management anticipating commercial traction during the 2017/2018 financial year. Asda s chief executive confirmed plans to step down late on Monday, as the US-owned supermarket continues to flounder among the Big Four. The supermarket - owned by US retail behemoth Walmart - sits at number three among the UKs leading grocers, behind Tesco and Sainsburys but ahead of Morrisons. It slipped behind its orange-hued rival in the last year, continuing to hemorrhage market share as its competitors claw back from a tough few years. Andy Clarke, who has led the grocer through attempts to claw back market share from the other large rivals, as well as the German limited-assortment discounters Aldi and Lidl, said he will be succeeded by incoming chief operating officer Roger Burnley. Burnley is joining the company in October, with Clarke saying he will spend time with Burnley before formally handing over the reins. I said that I wanted to find somebody who had the ability to be my successor and it took us some time to find the right person, the right cultural fit, the right sort of character and leader that can run the business, Clarke told Retail Week. He [Burnley] is a great leader and hes going to be a great colleague. Asda nabbed Burnley from Sainsburys in 2015, where he led retail and operations. He came with some prior experience from Asda, where he was supply chain director during the Walmart acquisition from 1996 to 2002. Clarke did not give any sort of time frame for his departure, saying he is in no rush to move on. Asda posted another heavy slump in sales in May - its seventh consecutive quarter of declines - as it reiterated its focus on a 500m investment in price cuts, dubbed Project Renewal. Last week, chief executive of Walmart International Dave Cheesewright indicated the companys interest in even further price cuts, saying the company was seeking to shift the balance in Asda from protecting profit to protecting share. Fashion retailer New Look posted an uptick in both sales and profits this week, in its first full year under the ownership of South African firm Brait . The high-street chain also outlined a 100m investment plan, that will see it grow its mainland China presence and expand European operations into Germany. Revenue for the full year grew 5.4% to 1.4bn, with a 3.4% increase in like-for-like sales at its UK stores. E-commerce sales were up a significant 27.9%, and its relatively young 92-store China operation managed an 8.8% rise in like-for-like sales. New Looks pre-tax profits grew 16.8% to 59.1m. We want to expand into the German market, chief executive Anders Kristiansen told the Press Association. We have one concession at the moment and well open our first store in October - we ant 75 stores over the next five years. Parent company Brait, which bought New Look for 763.5m last May, has given its blessing to increase investment to 100m from 73m. But Kristiansen did warn the market that the UK retail scene is more challenging than it has been for some time, with poor weather and the fear of Brexit impacting consumers willingness to open their wallets. I dont know exactly how were being affected by the referendum, but it is creating nervousness and uncertainty. But it doesnt worry me because thats retail - thats what he have to deal with, he said, adding that New Look has a solid foundation, a good strategy and a new owner committed to that strategy. Kristiansen said if the referendum returns a remain vote, then it will be business as usual, and it it is out, then it will be a challenge, but we are well hedged. Jacob Rothschilds investment vehicle RIT Capital Partners is no longer interested in acquiring Alliance Trust , it was revealed on Tuesday. The news came a week after Alliance confirmed to the market that it has been approached by RIT. Following careful analysis and constructive discussions with representatives of Alliance Trust, RIT has concluded that it would not be in the best interests of its shareholders to make an offer for Alliance Trust, Rothschild Investment Trust Capital Partners said in a statement on Tuesday. Accordingly [RIT] announces that it does not intend to make an offer to acquire Alliance Trust. If the two well-known UK investment trusts were combined, it would have created an organisation worth upwards of 5bn. Last year, RIT revealed it held a stake of Alliance Trust, before Alliance said in a statement last week that RIT had approached its board with an informal merger proposal. No detailed terms have been provided, it clarified at the time. Investor campaigns have been the theme of relations at Alliance in recent years, with the board receiving a makeover in November at the behest of activist hedge fund Elliott. A 33-year-old man was arrested today by Delhi Police after he allegedly raped his neighbor's one-and-a-half-year-old daughter in front of his own children. By India Today Web Desk: While the nation is reeling with incidents of crime against women, another heinous incident has come to light in the national capital. A 33-year-old man was arrested today by Delhi Police after he allegedly raped his neighbor's one-and-a-half-year-old daughter in front of his own children. The incident took place on Wednesday and the accused was arrested on Thursday. The toddler had gone to the accused person's house to play with his children - a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. advertisement The accused raped the girl while his wife was on the terrace doing household chores. Police said that the girl was raped inside his one-room accommodation in front of his children. The horrific incident came to light after the girl returned home and her mother found her bleeding from the private parts. Sexual assault was confirmed after the girl was taken to the nearest hospital. The police were soon informed about the incident. The accused has been booked under section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault, punishable with a maximum term of life imprisonment). The toddler stayed with her mother, a divorcee, in an outer Delhi colony. While her mother is a homemaker, her grandfather is a labourer. Following the incident, Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal tweeted that she was going to meet the victim at the Sanjay Gandhi Hospital. With inputs from PTI --- ENDS --- Brown County approves Bailey Pro Rodeo as new stock provider Bailey Pro Rodeo out of North Dakota has been selected as the new rodeo stock provider for the Dacotah Stampede Rodeo, a two-day event at the fair. NEW YORK New York City police officer Ryan Nash was responding to a call about an emotionally disturbed person at a high school not far from the World Trade Center when someone reported an accident on the bike path outside. Nash and his partner, John Hasiotis, raced to a gruesome sight: A man in a truck had slammed into a school bus after mowing down people in a bike lane. He was waving guns around and yelling. Nash, 28, told him to drop the weapons and then fired, striking the man once. Nash stopped the attacker, Sayfullo Saipov, in his tracks, but the officer is too modest to admit hes a hero, officials said. He was a hero, said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And the NYPD is not just the leadership, its the men and women who are out there every day who are on the first line, and I think officer Nash really showed how important they are and how talented and how brave. Saipov was actually wielding a pellet gun and a paintball gun, authorities said, but they looked like real guns. Witnesses reported the 29-year-old hollered Allahu akbar, or God is great! in Arabic. Hasiotis and two other officers, Michael Welsome and Kevin McGinn, secured the area, took witness statements and grabbed the guns. And they showed restraint by not firing their weapons into the crowded area, police said. While we mourn the terrible loss of life and the injuries to innocent people, we are proud of, and grateful for, the quick action of a team of police officers who responded to cries for help and took charge of a chaotic and dangerous situation, said police union president Patrick Lynch. Mayor Bill de Blasio and other civic leaders commended Nash for his cool head and said he was a humble officer who felt like he was just doing his job. What he did was extraordinary. It gave people such faith and such appreciation in our police force, de Blasio said. Nash was taken to the hospital for a ringing in the ears and met with Police Commissioner James ONeill. In a typical fashion of an NYPD cop, he thinks what he did was not an act of heroism, ONeill said. He thinks its why he joined the police department. Nash appeared outside a police stationhouse in suburban Long Island a few miles from his home Wednesday and said he appreciates the praise but he was just doing his job. I appreciate the public recognition of the actions of myself and my fellow officers yesterday, although I feel we were just doing our job like thousands of officers do every day, he said. Nash added that due to the nature of the pending criminal case I cannot make any further public statements about the incident at this time. No one answered the door earlier Wednesday at Nashs two-story yellow Cape Cod-style home. Neighbors said he moved in sometime in the past year and largely kept to himself, though he often jogged outside. What he did was amazing, you know, helping to keep anybody else from being killed, said neighbor Dino Cortina. Its just nice to know, nice guy. Cortinas wife, Margie, said Nash kept to himself but was friendly. We feel safer now knowing that theres a hero, you know, in our neighborhood. In Tuesdays attack, Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along the bike path, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus, authorities said. Eight people were killed and 12 injured. ONeill praised the police response to the attack in a departmentwide email. He said the goal of terrorists is to promote hate and divisiveness. But what weve seen here, instead, is that these acts simply strengthen the resolve of New Yorkers and, in fact, all Americans, ONeill said. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Nash fired, striking the man once, not that Nash fired only once. ___ This story has been corrected to show the governor of New Yorks first name is Andrew, not Andre. "We have studied the drone policies of other countries and have tried to come up with the best possible regulation for India," Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said. By Shashank Shekhar: Soon, thousands of aerial photography enthusiasts will be able to operate drones or Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for personal and commercial without any legal hassle. So far, there were restrictions on the sale and operation of UAS, but under the new draft prepared by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), it will now have unique identification numbers. advertisement Minister for Civil Aviation P Ashok Gajapathi Raju said the ministry had conducted its internal consultation and over the next 30 days, it would consult with all relevant stakeholders. Once the public consultations are done, the government will come out with its final regulation on drones in India. Minister of State (MoS) for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said, "We have studied the drone policies of other countries and have tried to come up with the best possible regulation for India. We have tried to strike a balance between security concerns and ease of doing business in the drone industry." The government would classify drones based on their weight into five categories. These are nano, micro, mini drones, small and large drones. According to the DGCA guidelines, Nano drones will be those that will be lighter than 250 grams, micro will be between 250 grams to 2 kg, mini drones will be between 2 kg to 25 kg, small drones will be between 25 kg to 150 kg and large drones will be heavier than 150 kg. There are also restrictions on flying drones 50 km from the international border, beyond 500 meters of the coastline, within 5 km of Vijay Chowk in New Delhi, and from a mobile platform such as a moving vehicle, ship or aircraft. --- ENDS --- WASHINGTON A trove of Facebook ads made public Wednesday by Congress depicts Russias extraordinary cyber intrusion into American life in 2016 aimed at upending the nations democratic debate and fomenting discord over such disparate issues as immigration, gun control and politics. The ads, seen by vast numbers of people, encouraged street demonstrations against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and fostered support and opposition to Bernie Sanders, Muslims, gays, blacks and the icons of the Civil Rights movement. The few dozen ads, a small sampling of the roughly 3,000 Russia-connected ones that Facebook has identified and turned over to Congress, were released amid two consecutive days of tough and sometimes caustic questioning by House and Senate lawmakers about why social media giants hadnt done more to combat Russian interference on their sites. The ads underscore how foreign agents sought to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics. U.S. intelligence services say the Russian use of social media was part of a broad effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to influence voters. Many of the ads show careful targeting, with messages geared toward particular audiences. One ad, aimed at those with an interest in civil rights and their leaders, highlights a man who claims to be Bill Clintons illegitimate son. Another video parodying Trump was targeted at blacks who also are interested in BlackNews.com, HuffPost Politics or HuffPost Black Voices. Though officials at Facebook and other social media giants were initially reluctant to acknowledge Russian success on their sites in swaying popular opinion, company leaders have struck a different tone in recent weeks and disclosed steps to Congress they say are intended to prevent future meddling by foreign agents. In preparation for hearings this week, Facebook disclosed that content generated by a Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users. Company executives said that going forward they would verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about whos behind them. But that did not prevent hours of questioning during two days of hearings, with lawmakers expressing exasperation at the seeming inability to thwart foreign intervention. At one point during a hearing Tuesday, Sen. Al Franken shook his head after he couldnt get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with foreign currency. Several ads touting Facebook pages called Back the Badge, Being Patriotic, Blacktivist, South United and Woke Blacks were labeled as being paid for in rubles using Qiwi, a Moscow-based payment provider that aims to serve the new generation in Russia and former Soviet republics, according to the companys website. Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed, the Minnesota Democrat said. You cant put together rubles with a political ad and go like, Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad? Besides the ads released by lawmakers on the House intelligence committee, Democrats on the panel also released four tweets from RT, a Russian state-sponsored television network, and more than 2,700 Twitter handles active during the final months of the election campaign. Taken together, they show how actual news events and stories helped shape surreptitious Russian messaging. One advertisement cited a real October 2016 news story about a gunmans battle with Boston police officers then used it to attack Hillary Clinton as the main hardliner against cops and to promote Trump as the candidate who can defend the police from terrorists. Three of the tweets referenced Clinton, including one that linked to an RT story about the release of a batch of hacked emails from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. Another featured a video of Clinton falling while getting into a van. What impact will this stumble have on #Hillarys campaign? it read. Some 34,000 Trump supporters were shown an ad calling for Clintons removal from the ballot, citing dynastic succession of the Clinton family as a breach of core principles laid out by the Founding Fathers. Clicking on it took Facebook users to a petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Another, seen by more than 15,000 people and getting some 1,300 clicks, equated Clinton with President Barack Obamas anti-police and anti-constitutional propaganda. Though U.S. intelligence officials believe the social media effort was aimed at aiding Trump, there are other indications it was intended to sow general divisions. One ad promoted a Nov. 12 anti-Trump rally in New York City, titled Not My President. Large anti-Trump rallies actually did take place around the country that day in major American cities. That doesnt mean the Russian accounts planned the events, but rather that they were piggybacking on existing protests and promoting them to like-minded people. Lawmakers said some Russia-linked ads, including one from an account purporting to be linked to the Tennessee Republican Party, were shared not only by ordinary Americans, but by members of the Trump campaign and administration, including Trumps son Donald Jr. and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. Not all of Russias activity was intended to intervene in the election, said Salve Regina University professor James Ludes, who has written on Russias influence on the United States. The ads on divisive issues such as race and gun ownership or even organizing opposing rallies across the street from each other are meant to attack political cohesion and make Americans turn against one another, he said. Its not intended to benefit once candidate or another per se, but raise political temperature, Ludes said. Make us feel like we are coming apart at the seams. ___ Associated Press writers Chad Day in Alexandria, Virginia, Ryan Nakashima in Menlo Park, California, Barbara Ortutay in New York and Matt OBrien in Cambridge, Massachusetts contributed to this report. Police are asking for the publics help in finding 17-year-old Rae-Quan Daniels, according to a police spokesman. Officer Daren DeAguero said Daniels has a form of Down syndrome, suffers from Autism, he does not know his address and has the mental capacity of ten year old. Daniels was last seen by his father at 8:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, as he caught the bus in front of 1011 Marron Ci NE. The Albuquerque Public Schools Police said Daniels attended school today and the bus dropped him off again at home again at 4 p.m. Daniels is described as 5 feet 6 inches tall, 130 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He was last seen in a gray hoodie, tan pants, carrying an unknown colored back pack. Albuquerque Police Department Missing Person Unit: (505) 242-2677 We cant nickel-and-dime our way out of our education crisis as Think New Mexico attempts with its recent report. Two-thirds of New Mexicos students are not reading at grade level, three-quarters cannot do math at grade level, and we have one of the lowest graduation rates in the country. The Albuquerque Journal recently lauded Think New Mexicos simplistic solution to this complex problem: streamline our public schools administrative costs and spend the savings in our classrooms. While this sounds like a good idea on the surface, it falls far short of the actual investment our children need. Not only would this plan fail to supply the infusion of funding necessary to reform education in New Mexico, it does very little to ensure that funding is spent on the kinds of programs and services that we know develop successful students. New Mexicos children are just as intelligent, and capable and as full of potential as children across the country, but they are sorely lacking educational opportunity. The state is starving our public schools, our hard-working teachers have been forced to do more with less, and basic services, such as social workers, nurses, tutoring and classroom materials, are being cut. Families and school districts are fighting this injustice and spent the summer in the courtroom putting the state on trial for failing to provide a constitutionally sufficient education for all of our children. Experts testified that right here in New Mexico, there are programs like quality preschool, summer school, bilingual education and culturally relevant curriculum, that successfully improve educational achievement for our students. While its important to spend money wisely, shaving funds out of districts administrative budgets wont come close to fully funding these supports for all of the children in our state who need them. In 2008, the state Legislature commissioned the American Institutes of Research to conduct a comprehensive study of state education funding. The report found that the states public education system was underfunded by over $300 million. Adjusted to the current date, our schools are underfunded by about $600 million. Currently, higher performing districts do not spend less on necessary administrative costs and more on classrooms than lower performing districts. New Mexicos school districts, which have distinct student populations and range from rural to urban, have disparate administrative needs. More importantly, the actual student outcomes from the high performing districts are only slightly better than the other districts and still have abysmal proficiency and graduation rates. Plus, the states Public Education Department already claims that it is directing more funds to the classroom than ever, but our educational outcomes are as bad as ever. Thats because we dont have the programs in place that our children need to succeed, like preschool, tutoring and summer school. And those programs cost money. Our state leaders must stop giving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest New Mexicans and provide our students with the programs and services we all agree are needed for them to succeed. There is no better investment in the health, strength and prosperity of New Mexico than in education. Its time to hold the state accountable to its obligation to our children. (Editors note: The New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty is suing the State of New Mexico (Yazzie vs. State of New Mexico), saying it fails to provide the resources and programming necessary for all public school students to succeed.) WASHINGTON Has there ever been a covert action that backfired as disastrously as Russias attempt to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign? Granted, we know all the reasons Moscow is gloating: Donald Trump is president; America is divided and confused; Russias propagandization of fake news is now repeated by people around the world as evidence that nothing is believable and all information is as in Russia manipulated and mendacious. But against this cynical strategy there now stands a process embodied by special counsel Robert Mueller, which we will call, as a shorthand: The Truth. Mueller has mobilized the investigative powers of the U.S. government to document how Russia and its friends sought to manipulate American politics. We are seeing the rule of law, applied. Put aside for the moment what the indictments and plea agreement announced Monday will ultimately mean for Trumps presidency. Already, Mueller has stripped the cover from Russias machinations: Trump former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos has confessed that he lied to FBI agents about his contacts with individuals connected to Moscow who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton; Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been charged with laundering $18 million in payoffs from Russias Ukrainian friends. Russian meddling is now advertised to the world. President Vladimir Putin once imagined that Trump would be Russias bridge back from isolation. Not anymore. Next comes the overtly dangerous part: When covert operations are exposed, nations sometimes adopt more aggressive actions. On the continuum of warfare, Russia has been playing somewhere in the middle, between war and peace. Now, as the world focuses on Russian mischief, will the Kremlin move the dial up or down? Putin made some comments last week that worry me. Before a meeting of his security council Oct. 26, Putin announced he was augmenting cyberwar policies to take into account that the level of threat in the information space is on the rise. He proposed additional measures to combat adversaries and protect Russia. To me, that sounded like Putin was doubling down on Russias bid to shape the information space, by whatever means necessary. That was reinforced by his call for a system of international information security, in which Russia would seek to impose new rules for the internet through the United Nations and other pliable international organizations. The potential scope of Russias cyberoperations was highlighted in a little-noticed report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, Russia Military Power: Building a Military to Support Great Power Aspirations. Its conclusion: Russia views the information sphere as a key domain for modern military conflict critically important to control its domestic populace and influence adversary states. The report explains how Russian propaganda strives to influence, confuse and demoralize its intended audience. It describes Russian trolls, bots and cover organizations. Among the major themes of Russian propaganda, the DIA says, is this Steve Bannon-esque message: The Wests liberal world order is bankrupt and should be replaced by a Eurasian neo-conservative post-liberal world order, which defends tradition, conservative values, and true liberty. And remember, this expose of Moscows hidden hand is coming from Trumps Pentagon! Heres the strategic impact of Muellers investigation: He is probing efforts by Russia and its foreign allies to manipulate our political system. He is unraveling a covert action. Trumps protests of witch hunt and fake news use words similar to those from Moscow-controlled media outlets. Perhaps we begin to see a timeline: In March 2016, Papadopoulos met with a Russian-linked professor; in April, the professor said Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton from her emails; in June, Donald Trump Jr., Manafort and Jared Kushner met with a Russian who had promised some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary; in July, Trump was touting WikiLeaks release of documents about Clinton allegedly supplied by Russian cutouts. Trump may or may not have colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign; well leave that question for the lawyers. But if Trump seeks to derail Muellers probe, he is implicitly colluding with Russia now. By many peoples definition, that would be aiding a foreign power, which might be deemed a high crime or misdemeanor. Let Mueller finish his job of exposing Russian manipulation. Email: davidignatius@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group. Consider it a case of dueling data sets, of one group of numbers not telling the whole story. And consider it the latest bad news when it comes to DWI in New Mexico particularly Albuquerque. Last month, my colleague Ryan Boetel reported that fewer vehicles were being confiscated from drunken drivers in the Duke City. Citys DWI vehicle seizures plummet, said the front-page headline Oct. 18. Ryan found that number of vehicles seized by the city shrank from 1,976 vehicles in 2010 to 778 in the 2017 fiscal year, which ended in June. Fewer city cops, tougher DWI penalties and ride-sharing options were cited as possible reasons. And that prompted speculation that perhaps the world and New Mexico had changed, that fewer people are driving drunk, that more are designating drivers and taking Uber or Lyft. And maybe more are. But a look at the carnage that DWI wreaks on our community the number of those killed in such wrecks shows that not enough are. In 2013, according to the New Mexico Department of Transportation and University of New Mexico, 23 people died in wrecks related to alcohol in Bernalillo County. In 2016, the local DWI death toll had more than doubled, to 52. The number of traffic deaths involving victims who did not buckle up also greatly increased in the Albuquerque area. In 2013, nine people who died in crashes in Bernalillo County were not wearing seat belts. In 2016, that number more than tripled, to 29. In fact, there were just and isnt that an awful way to look at it, just? 50 traffic deaths in Bernalillo County in 2013. There were 100 last year. In 2014, the number of traffic fatalities was 69, and in 2015, the number was 64. Each year since 2013, about half of all traffic fatalities in the county have involved alcohol. And the percentage of those not wearing seat belts has steadily climbed from 18 percent in 2013 to 26 percent in 2014 to 28 percent in 2015 and to 29 percent in 2016. Statewide, there were 133 alcohol-related traffic deaths in 2013. The number jumped to 173 last year. And in a scary side note, statewide seat-belt fatalities also went in the wrong direction, from 130 in 2013 to 147 in 2016. Overall, traffic deaths in the Land of Enchantment went from 311 in 2013 to 405 last year. Through September of this year, there were 272 traffic fatalities in New Mexico down from the same period in 2016 but up from 2015. This year, 92 of the traffic fatalities were related to alcohol; ditto for seat-belt fatalities. In Bernalillo County this year, there have been 67 traffic deaths, with 21 involving alcohol, a slightly slower pace than last years numbers. So maybe fewer Duke City drivers are getting behind the wheel when theyve been drinking, more are catching a ride with a sober pal or booking a ride on their smartphones. But in Bernalillo County, the families and friends of the 23 people killed in an alcohol-related crashes in 2013, the 35 killed in 2014 and in 2015, the 52 killed in 2016 and the 21 killed so far this year will undoubtedly tell you far too many drivers are still getting behind the wheel when they shouldnt, and not enough are using designated drivers or ride-sharing services. Not by a long shot. UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to editorial page editor DVal Westphal at 823-3858 or dwestphal@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor. Copyright 2017 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE The Espanola school district has agreed to settlements totaling more than $7.5 million to shut down lawsuits over a former fourth-grade teacher accused of having improper contact with female students. Espanola Public Schools recently agreed to a $4.37 million settlement in the second of three civil lawsuits over the actions of teacher Gary Gregor, 61, who had faced accusations of impropriety at schools in Utah, Montana and Santa Fe before he ended up in Espanola. The new payout comes on top of $3.2 million settlement in 2016 in the first lawsuit involving Gregor, who was fired by the Espanola district in 2010. That suit accused him of twice asking a fourth-grade girl to spend the night at his home, giving the girl gifts including candy and teddy bears and touching her private parts. The suit also alleged a principal failed to report complaints about Gregor. Much of the first settlement still may have to come from the Espanola school districts coffers instead of from insurance. A private insurer covering losses through the New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority continues to dispute payment of about $2.5 million of the loss on grounds that the district knew of potential claims against Gregor before the insurance policy was in place. The issue has been under arbitration for months. Apparently, there is no such dispute over the latest, larger settlement. A claims administrator for the insurance authority said this week that the Espanola school district isnt on the hook for any of the $4.37 million. This whole journey through the justice system for these young women shows that just because something has gone unpunished hidden and covered up for years does not mean that it will remain so, said Cammie Nichols, plaintiffs attorney in the Gregor lawsuits. Evil does not dissipate with the passage of time. The third suit concerning Gregor, on behalf of four more alleged victims, was filed in federal court just last month and remains pending. It accuses Gregor of sexually abusing four girls while a teacher at Espanolas Fairview Elementary during the 2007-2008 school year. Efforts to obtain comment from Espanola school district officials this week were unsuccessful. Accusations against Gregor over the years have raised questions about how he managed to move among different school districts, in different states, after facing repeated accusations of wrongdoing. Allegations against Gregor first became public in New Mexico in 2011 when the state Public Education Department failed to renew his teaching license, following accusations of improper behavior with female students in Espanola. It turned out that he previously had received a PED reprimand for similar actions while working for Santa Fe Public Schools years before. Still, he received a non-critical neutral recommendation from the Santa Fe district when he agreed to leave. Gregor had gotten into trouble with Santa Fe school officials when it was reported that docents at the Museum of International Folk Art observed him fondling girls during a field trip. Before he came to New Mexico, Gregor faced criminal child sex abuse charges in Utah that were dismissed in 1995 for lack of evidence. He also worked as a teacher in Montana where, according to one of the New Mexico lawsuits, he was fired under a school policy barring teachers from after-school activities with students. It was only in April of this year that criminal charges were filed against Gregor, in a case prosecuted by the New Mexico Attorney Generals Office. Gregor faces three counts of rape of a minor, four counts of kidnapping and five counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor. The criminal indictments came a few months after Gregors history was cited in a major series of investigative reports by USA Today on how teachers who sexually abuse children continue to work in schools. Nallely Hernandez, one of Gregors alleged victims, has spoken openly about her case, including appearing on the ABC news program Nightline. On Monday, Gregor was expected to enter a plea in state District Court to the criminal charges but backed out. I will continue to fight for New Mexicos most vulnerable and protect victims from those in positions of power, Attorney General Hector Balderas said in statement afterward. We will move forward with the prosecution of Mr. Gregor and present our case to a jury in January. Nichols, the plaintiffs attorney in the civil cases, has said that the family of the first girl to sue over Gregors action came to her law firm only after police investigated Gregor in 2009 and turned information over to the District Attorneys Office, and nothing was happening, so they became very, very frustrated. In May, the board of the Public Schools Insurance Authority voted to support proposed Pass the Trash legislation to stop districts from being able to allow troubled teachers to resign quietly and move to other districts, according to minutes from a May meeting. WASHINGTON Sen. Tom Udall seems to be having second thoughts about his vote to confirm Ryan Zinke as interior secretary earlier this year. The New Mexico Democrat said Wednesday that Zinke, a former U.S. representative from Montana, misrepresented himself during his confirmation hearing in March and in meetings with him before the vote. Udall made the remarks in a call with reporters to discuss his opposition to oil drilling in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In late May, Zinke ordered the Interior Department to update resource assessments for areas of Alaskas North Slope, including the 1002 area of the refuge, commonly referred to as ANWR. The move was widely considered part of a Trump administration effort to open the federally protected area to oil drilling. He represented, both in the committee when he testified and represented himself to me personally, as a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, so Im very disappointed about how hes performed, Udall said of Zinke. I thought that the best thing to do in terms of working with him after those representations was to show good faith and vote for him. Thats water under the bridge. Im moving forward, and were going to try to hold him accountable on the things hes said. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who also voted to confirm Zinke, opposes opening to ANWR to drilling as well. Congressional Republicans have proposed ANWR drilling to raise revenues that could offset tax cuts. Facebook ads: Heinrich, who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, on Wednesday prompted a top Facebook executive to confirm that Russia purchased Facebook advertisements during the 2016 election, despite President Donald Trumps claim last month that the accusations were a hoax. Facebook Vice President and General Counsel Colin Stretch started a long-winded explanation under questioning from Heinrich, who cut him off. Its a yes-or-no question, Heinrich interjected. I know youre a lawyer, so its hard. Stretch conceded that the existence of Facebook ads generated by Russian trolls working to influence the U.S. election was genuine. The existence of those ads was on Facebook it was not a hoax, Stretch said. Pearce on Manafort: Republican Rep. Steve Pearce, one of President Donald Trumps highest-profile supporters in New Mexico, issued the following statement in response to this weeks indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on money laundering and other charges. No one should be held above the law, Pearce said. The American people deserve to have answers. Michael Coleman: mcoleman@abqjournal.com SANTA FE The New Mexico Supreme Court has been asked to step in and decide whether Gov. Susana Martinez is likely to win the legal fight over 10 bills she vetoed in March. A district judge ruled in August that the governors vetoes were invalid either because she vetoed them too late or failed to meet a constitutional requirement to explain her objections and allowed the bills to become law. But the governor appealed, and she says the bills shouldnt take effect until the litigation concludes. The state Court of Appeals this week asked the Supreme Court to consider the case a procedure intended to resolve important public policy questions quickly. Linda M. Vanzi, chief judge of the Court of Appeals, and one of her colleagues, Judge J. Miles Hanisee, said any ruling they make is almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court. And given the significance of this matter to the public we are disinclined to delay such a review, they wrote. The Supreme Court, however, isnt obligated to take the case and hadnt decided whether to accept it as of Wednesday evening. At issue are 10 bills that passed the Legislature most with broad, bipartisan support during this years 60-day legislative session before the governor vetoed them during a tense standoff over the state budget. The legislation includes bills allowing computer science to count toward a students math and science requirements, allowing industrial hemp to be grown for research purposes and giving local governments more leeway to expand broadband access. Half of the bills passed without any dissenting votes, and the Martinez administration even testified in support of at least one of them. In a three-page order, the Court of Appeals said the governors appeal raises issues of substantial public interest that should be determined by the Supreme Court. The legal questions include whether the bills should have been allowed to take effect even as an appeal is pending and whether District Judge Sarah Singleton followed proper procedures in making her initial ruling, the Court of Appeals said. SANTA FE The second day of former state Sen. Phil Griegos public corruption trial gave the 16-member jury a behind-the-curtain glimpse at how the sale of a historic state-owned building near the Roundhouse was put into motion. But attorneys in the high-profile case disputed a key point that jurors will most likely wrestle with over the coming two weeks: Who was the driving force behind the 2014 property sale? Prosecutors with Attorney General Hector Balderas office tried to establish proof that Griego had instigated the sale in the months leading up to the 2014 legislative session, while not divulging that he might have a financial stake in the deal as a real estate broker. Gordon Meeks, a retired bill drafter with the Legislative Council Service, testified that Griego had directed him to start a green sheet, a confidential file that accompanies each piece of introduced legislation, in December 2013. He said Griego provided him with few details, but he added that the longtime former lawmaker had indicated the property in question would be sold to a Santa Fe family that had been leasing the building for several years. However, Griegos attorney, Tom Clark, sought to portray the deal as one largely driven by the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, which had outgrown the building and had been leasing it. Former agency head John Bemis testified Wednesday that he recalled a brief discussion with Griego at the state Capitol during the 2013 legislative session in which Griego told him the family leasing the building would like to buy it. But Bemis said he sensed no urgency and no demand from Griego during that conversation. And former EMNRD Deputy Secretary Brett Woods later testified he supported the move to sell the 4,700-square foot building. Griego, 69, is facing eight charges six of them felonies for using his position as a legislator to pocket a $50,000 brokers fee in connection with the real estate transaction. If convicted of all charges, which include fraud, bribery and violating the ethical principles of public service, Griego could face up to 23 years in prison and as much as $33,000 in fines. The former lawmaker, who represented a sprawling Senate district for more than 18 years before resigning in March 2015 instead of facing possible disciplinary action, at times appeared to close his eyes during Wednesdays proceedings. Its unclear whether he will be called to testify at his own trial. WASHINGTON In three exhaustive hearings this week, executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google acknowledged that their platforms were used by Russia to try and create division over such disparate issues as immigration, gun control and politics. House investigators released a trove of Facebook and Twitter ads that showed just how extraordinary the cyber intrusion was. The companies admissions and disclosures over the last several months have given congressional investigators one of their first real wins in the Russia probes. The committees have been frustrated by delays and overshadowed by special counsel Robert Mueller since they launched probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election earlier this year. Initially dismissive of Russias threat, all three companies have pledged improvements since lawmakers ramped up pressure and called them to testify. Its unclear what next steps Congress will take. The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, has co-sponsored legislation that would bring political ad rules from TV, radio and print to the internet. Warner calls it the lightest touch possible, but many Republicans have been lukewarm. California Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said he thinks such advertising regulations for social media are inevitable, but noted that many of the fixes will come down to the companies own social responsibility. Congress isnt going to prescribe an algorithm, so there are limits to what we can feasibly do, Schiff said after his committees hearing Wednesday. The few dozen ads are a sampling from more than 3,000 Russia-linked ads Facebook had turned over to the committee. Seen by millions of people, they encouraged street demonstrations against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and fostered support and opposition to Bernie Sanders, Muslims, gays, blacks and the icons of the Civil Rights movement. The ads underscore how foreign agents sought to sow confusion, anger and discord among Americans through messages on hot-button topics. U.S. intelligence services say the Russian use of social media was part of a broad effort to sway the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. Mueller is investigating whether the Kremlin worked with the Trump campaign to influence the election. Many of the ads also show careful targeting, with messages geared toward particular audiences. One ad, aimed at those with interests in civil rights and their leaders, highlights a man who claims to be Bill Clintons illegitimate son. Another video parodying Trump was targeted at blacks who also are interested in BlackNews.com, HuffPost Politics or HuffPost Black Voices. In preparation for hearings this week, Facebook disclosed that content generated by a Russian group, the Internet Research Agency, potentially reached as many as 126 million users. Company executives said that going forward they would verify political ad buyers in federal elections, requiring them to reveal correct names and locations. The site will also create new graphics where users can click on the ads and find out more about whos behind them. But that did not prevent hours of questioning during two days of hearings, with lawmakers expressing exasperation at the seeming inability to thwart foreign intervention. At one point, Sen. Al Franken put his head in his hands after he couldnt get all the companies to commit to not accepting political ads bought with foreign currency. Several ads touting Facebook pages called Back the Badge, Being Patriotic, Blacktivist, South United and Woke Blacks were labeled as being paid for in rubles using Qiwi, a Moscow-based payment provider that aims to serve the new generation in Russia and former Russian republics, according to the companys website. Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed, the Minnesota Democrat said. You cant put together rubles with a political ad and go like, Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad? Besides the ads released by lawmakers on the House intelligence committee, Democrats on the panel also released four tweets from RT, a Russian state-sponsored television network, and nearly 3,000 Twitter handles active during the final months of the election. Taken together, they show how actual news events and stories helped shape surreptitious Russian messaging. One advertisement cited a real October 2016 news story about a gunmans battle with Boston police officers then used it to attack Hillary Clinton as the main hardliner against cops and to promote Trump as the candidate who can defend the police from terrorists. Three of the tweets referenced Clinton, including one that linked to an RT story about the release of a batch of hacked emails from her campaign chairman, John Podesta. Some 34,000 Trump supporters were shown an ad calling for Clintons removal from the ballot, citing dynastic succession of the Clinton family as a breach of core principles laid out by the Founding Fathers. Clicking on it took Facebook users to a petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Though U.S. intelligence officials believe the social media effort was aimed at aiding Trump, there are other indications it was intended to sow general divisions. One ad promoted a Nov. 12 anti-Trump rally in New York City, titled Not My President. Large anti-Trump rallies actually did take place around the country that day in major American cities. That doesnt mean the Russian accounts planned the events, but rather that they were piggybacking on existing protests and promoting them to like-minded people. ___ Associated Press writers Chad Day in Alexandria, Virginia, Ryan Nakashima in Menlo Park, California, Barbara Ortutay in New York and Matt OBrien in Cambridge, Massachusetts contributed to this report. The existing rule under the Representation of Peoples Act only disqualifies politicians sentenced to a jail term of two years or more from contesting elections for six years from the date of release from prison. By Harish V Nair: If the Election Commission has its way before the Supreme Court, convicted politicians like RJD supremo Lalu Yadav and VK Sasikala could face a life ban from electoral politics. Supporting a PIL filed by a Supreme Court advocate and Delhi BJP leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyaya seeking life-time ban on convicted politicians, the EC said such a ban was necessary for the decriminalisation of politics. advertisement Significantly, the Centre has also in principle supported the idea saying it could help in cleaning up politics. The existing rule under the Representation of Peoples Act only disqualifies politicians sentenced to a jail term of two years or more from contesting elections for six years from the date of release from prison. While Lalu was sentenced to five years in prison in October 3, 2013 in a case related to fodder scam, Sasikala was awarded a four-year jail term by the Supreme Court on February 14, 2017 in a disproportionate assets case. Many other politicians of various parties also undergoing trial in cases like A Raja and Kanimozhi of the DMK (2G scam) and Congress leader Suresh Kalmadi (CWG scam). Their fate could also get sealed if they are convicted and the apex court endorses the stand of the EC. SPECIAL COURTS TO EXTRADITE TRIALS Meanwhile, the SC directed the Centre to create special courts to expedite trials of politicians. The bench said the trials against MPs and MLAs must be mandatorily concluded within a year and "this is in the interest of the nation". The SC told the government to finalise a plan and inform the court by December 13. SC wants to ensure that the corrupt politicians should not succeed in prolonging the trial by using their offices. The bench also directed the Centre to place before it details regarding 1,581 cases involving MPs and MLAs, as declared by politicians at the time of filing their nominations during the 2014 general elections. The apex court asked the government to appraise it as to how many of these 1,581 cases have been disposed of within one year and how many have ended either in conviction or acquittal of the accused. Upadhyaya has contended that letting politicians fight polls again was violative of the right to equality under the Constitution. He pointed out in the executive and judiciary, when a person is convicted for any criminal offence, he is suspended automatically and debarred from his services for life. advertisement "However, this rule is applied differently in case of convicted person in a legislature. Even after conviction and undergoing sentence, a convicted person can form his own political party and is eligible to become the office bearer of any political party. In addition, a convicted person is eligible to contest the election and eligible to become a Member of Legislature and even minister after expiry of six year period from the date of conviction," stated the PIL. WATCH | SO SORRY | Sasi ki Kala: Chinamma's gala time in Bengaluru jail --- ENDS --- CHICAGO Homeownership can come with a hefty supply of emotions, paperwork and financial planning. And as one grows more attached to a residence over the years, feelings often deepen as house becomes home and memories start to accumulate. So when terms like gentrification, poverty and low-income housing are bandied about in your neighborhood, you may be somewhat wary. But not so fast. Common misperceptions surround these topics. Myths abound. Here are three such falsehoods and the truths behind them according to experts. Myth 1: Gentrification has as much to do with morals as with economics. Whats the definition of gentrification? Depends who you ask. According to Jason Patch, co-author of the book Gentrifier and associate professor at Roger Williams University, it is the reinvestment into a devalued neighborhood to create a new residential and commercial infrastructure for middle- and high-income residents. But on a recent Saturday afternoon in Chicagos Loop, several passersby had different definitions. When prompted to define the term, people offered a variety of responses and even more opinions flowed when individuals were asked if they considered themselves gentrifiers. All responses carried mixed connotations some expressed indifference, while others expressed frustration coupled with ambiguity. The assignment of the term gentrifier becomes sticky only when we assign moral weight to the term. And many do so, writes John Joe Schlichtman, an associate professor in the sociology department at DePaul University, in Gentrifier. Schlichtman is a co-author of the book, alongside Patch and Marc Lamont Hill. Our interpretation of others gentrification is inevitably and inextricably tied in some way to our understanding of our own housing choices. According to Schlichtman, gentrification need not depend on the misplaced motives of housing consumers. To be a gentrifier is to be a middle-class housing consumer investing in a disinvested area in a period during which a critical mass of others are doing the same. This investment exerts pressure on the neighborhood in the form of rising rents, or perhaps a shift in the nature of local policing, a change in the rhythms of the neighborhood, and so on. Yes, there could be gentrifiers with bad motives out there, but you dont have to have bad motives to be a gentrifier, Schlichtman said in an interview. We need to take the depth of ethical and moral disgust out of the name gentrifier so that we can get people together and say this is something that we are a part of, but its also something that is bigger than us. So how do we move forward? The ripe environment for gentrification today, Schlichtman said, was created by a history of de- words: demarcation, devaluation, deterioration, demolition, defunding and destabilization, among others. (Demarcation refers to the discriminatory practice of redlining, when banks refused to offer home loans in certain communities based on residents race or ethnicity.) All those de-s cut the path of injustice that gentrification fills, so no matter how good your heart is, if you enter into that context you are a gentrifier, he said. You are a part of that critical mass that is exerting economic, perhaps social, perhaps cultural pressure on that neighborhood. Moving away from moral arguments, he said and instead understanding the various strands of de-s in a particular context that makes a home so cheap is an important step on the path to just housing policies. Myth 2: There is more poverty in cities than in suburbs. The Census Bureau released new poverty statistics for the nation last month, which revealed that high poverty rates arent just associated with metropolitan areas. According to Scott Allard, a professor at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington, povertys geography has increasingly moved to the suburbs as evidenced in his book, Places in Need: The Changing Geography of Poverty. The number of poor persons in suburban Chicago eclipsed the number in the City of Chicago in the last decade, and there are no signs of this trend reversing anytime soon, Allard wrote. Seven of every 10 suburban municipalities outside Chicago saw the number of poor residents at least double from 1990 to 2014. More than 40 percent of Chicago suburbs saw their poverty population more than triple during that time. By 2014 there were nearly 17 million poor people living in the suburbs of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, compared to just under 13 million in the cities. Allards data show that suburbs have seen increases in single-parent households, decreases in the number of college graduates and higher unemployment rates. As a result, suburban demand for assistance programs has increased but social service providers dont have sufficient resources to meet the need. How did we miss the shift in the suburbs? I think were not aware of these trends in part because suburbs were created to be exclusive places and therefore no suburb really wants to think they have a poverty problem, partly because it may require them to do something about it but it also may affect their ability to maintain property values or to attract new homeowners, Allard said. Whats interesting, he noted, is that poverty is as segregated in suburbs as it is in cities. How can poverty become a thing of the past both in metropolises and outside their boundaries? Strengthen safety nets, Allard said, such as food assistance and the earned income tax credit, which aids low- to moderate-income working citizens. These supports help people provide for their families with the hope that as they work, theyll be able to advance in the labor market. There are things we know that can make a difference, we just need to scale them and expand them, he said. Its a long game, but I think theres a lot that can be accomplished in the near term to not only combat or fight the pernicious stereotypes on poverty and race and place but also come up with solutions that bring people together. Myth 3: Having low-income housing in your community reduces property values. Just as the context of gentrification keeps changing and the boundaries of poverty keep shifting, so does our understanding of low-income housings impact on its neighbors. Anthony DeFusco, assistant professor of finance at Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, said the effects of new, affordable housing developments on local home prices is a bit nuanced. A 2016 Stanford Graduate School of Business analysis reviewed low-income housing developments nationwide that were funded through the low-income housing tax credit program. The impact of that housing on surrounding property values varied based on neighborhoods economic state and number of minority residents. What the study finds is that the effects of putting one of these in a neighborhood depends on the pre-existing conditions in that neighborhood, DeFusco said. So, he said, if low-incoming housing was placed in a low-income neighborhood, it would actually raise home prices in that neighborhood by about 6.5 percent over a 10-year period a sort of neighborhood revitalization effect, which is what the tax credit program is intended to do. However, if you put a low-income housing development in an already high-income neighborhood, the effect on prices heavily depends on whether the neighborhood has a large or small minority population. In a high-income neighborhood with a small minority population sort of a poster child for NIMBYism, a not in my backyard attitude, DeFusco said you do see declines in prices, not enormous declines, but about a 2.5 percent drop over a 10-year period. You dont see changes in crime rates or things like that, but you do see changes in the composition of who lives there, he said. Building (low-income housing) in high-income neighborhoods with high-minority shares does not seem to have much of an effect. A better approach to affordable housing, DeFusco said, lies in production. Instead of building housing and targeting it to people with income below a certain level, if you just built more housing, and housing was more plentiful overall, prices in general would be lower and would be more affordable for everybody. 2017 Chicago Tribune Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. SEATTLE Seattle is now a full year into its reign as the hottest housing market in the country, an unusually long surge that doesnt look likely to end anytime soon. Single-family home prices across the metro area grew 13.2 percent in August compared to a year prior, easily the most in the nation and twice the U.S. average, according to the monthly Case-Shiller home-price index, released Tuesday. Las Vegas replaced Portland as second behind Seattle after the two Pacific Northwest cities had been the top two markets since last year. Seattle has had the biggest annual home-price gains of any region in the country for 12 straight months. Thats the fifth-longest streak in the country since 2000, and the longest since Phoenix led the nation in home-value increases for 13 months in a row from 2012 to 2013. Seattle has been a national standout like this only once before. From the summer of 2007 through mid-2008, as the U.S. housing market was heading toward collapse, Seattle also topped the country for a year straight, right before home costs plummeted. This time, the trends nationwide look different. During the bubble a decade ago, home costs just about everywhere were soaring at eye-popping rates, similar to what Seattle is dealing with today. Now, Seattle is an outliereverywhere else is experiencing growth thats slightly or moderately above average for that region, while prices here are increasing nearly three times as fast as the historical average. Overall, home costs here are growing at more than double the national rate of 6.1 percent. Thats been the case for the last year. And home prices continue to outpace wage growth, which was 3.6 percent nationally in August. So when will Seattles run as the hottest market end? Probably not anytime soon, given the gap between Seattle and the rest of the country. The second-hottest market, now Las Vegas, saw prices grow 8.6 percent, nearly 5 percentage points less than Seattle. Still, there are signs of at least some slight cooling locally. Compared to just a month ago, prices here ticked up just 0.2 percent, among the lowest rates in the country and the slowest since last winter (although thats typical for us this time of yearwhen adjusted for normal seasonal changes, our month-to-month price growth beats out the national rate). And the year-over-year price growth of 13.2percent was down a bit from the peak surges seen earlier this summer, when costs soared as much as 13.5percent, which had been the biggest jump since the bubble a decade ago. Plus, we are heading toward the slowest time of year for home shopping, when buyers are more likely to avoid bidding wars and prices usually drop a bit from their spring and summer highs. There are early signs that price (growth) may have peaked in Seattle, said Cheryl Young, a senior economist with Trulia. But the Case-Shiller data show the mini-slowdown is happening only for luxury homes and in expensive neighborhoods. Prices for cheaper homes, which are generally in outlying suburbs, are rising at their fastest rate in more than three years. The Puget Sound region continues to stand out for a few reasons: Tons of well-paid tech-job openings have drawn in scores of new residents while fewer and fewer people are selling their homes, leading to intense competition among buyers. Seattle also is among the most coveted markets for foreign investors. And rents here are soaring at close to the fastest rates in the country, with the average two-bedroom rent now topping $2,000, pushing more people into the homebuying market. Jeff Reynolds, a Windermere broker who blogs for urbancondospaces.com, noted this week that there are only five condos available in downtown Seattle for under $500,000, and that price now typically gets you a small one-bedroom. Reynolds found significantly more condos for under half a million dollars in the downtowns of peer citieseven San Francisco has more (although those other cities have larger condo markets than Seattle). Overall, prices here have soared 80 percent since bottoming out five years agoonly San Francisco and Las Vegas have had bigger price increases during that span, and prices nationally grew 46 percent over that time frame. And home values locally are up 20 percent over the old pre-bubble peak a decade ago, behind only Dallas and Denver. The median house now sells for $725,000 in Seattle and $855,000 on the Eastside. Its $450,000 in Snohomish County, and near $315,000 in both Kitsap and Pierce counties. 2017 The Seattle Times Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. LAS CRUCES A multi-agency task force is investigating the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman Tuesday night by a reserve deputy with the Dona Ana County Sheriffs Department. Sometime before 9 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 31, sheriffs deputies and detectives with the Dona Ana County Sheriffs Department Criminal Investigations Division were dispatched to the 5400 block of La Pradera Road after at least two calls were made to 911. One call was from a homeowner in the 5500 block of La Pradera Road who said an unidentified woman had entered his home, claiming that someone was trying to kill her. The second call was from a resident in the 5400 block of La Pradera Road, who said a woman was inside a shed on the callers property. Both calls described the woman as blonde, wearing blue jeans and a red top. Several officers including sheriffs deputies, a reserve deputy and an officer from the Mesilla Marshals office arrived at the scene and approached the shed. The suspect reportedly came out of the shed armed with a sledge ax. According to deputies, the woman closed distance on the reserve deputy a volunteer deputy who has the same authority as a commissioned deputy when in the presence of a commissioned deputy, but does not hold a certificate and is therefor not compensated who fired at least two rounds toward the woman.The name of the reserve deputy has not yet been released. The Mesilla officer reportedly began CPR until medical units arrived. Despite all life-saving efforts, the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Her body was transported to the University of New Mexico Office of the Medical Examiner for autopsy. Detectives say the woman, whose identity is being withheld pending notification of family, is not from Dona Ana County. During the investigation, detectives learned the woman was traveling with a male companion earlier Tuesday. The two reportedly got into an argument. According to New Mexico State Police, officers were notified of a domestic disturbance along Interstate 10 near the area of La Pradera Road, which runs along the interstate just off Fairacres Road. The domestic incident involved a blonde woman wearing blue jeans and a red top, and a male driver of a white crew cab pickup truck. State Police reportedly made contact with the male subject near the intersection of Picacho Avenue and Picacho Hills. The driver, who had a puncture wound to his hand, told officers the woman had tried to stab him, and had exited the truck after the driver pulled over on the shoulder of the interstate. He also told officers the female was reportedly discharged from an El Paso-area mental health facility on Tuesday, and had made suicidal statements. The 47-year-old reserve deputy involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation. Sheriffs spokesperson Kelly Jameson said this is the first time an incident like this has occurred for the department in recent history. The incident is under investigation by the Officer-Involved Incident Task Force, which includes investigators with the Dona Ana County Sheriffs Department, the Las Cruces Police Department, New Mexico State Police and New Mexico State University Police. 2017 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at www.lcsun-news.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. _____ PATERSON, N.J. In the halal bakeries and markets that line Main Street, and in mosques that have been part of the community for decades, a familiar dread has taken hold after the latest terror attack in the U.S. Sayfullo Saipov, the Muslim man accused of using a truck to mow down people on a New York City bike path in the name of the Islamic State group, lived in Paterson. Paterson saw a surge of anti-Muslim harassment after 9/11, particularly after it was learned that as many as a half-dozen of the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field lived or spent time in the city 20 miles (32 kilometers) outside New York. After the rampage on Tuesday that left eight people dead, its the same feeling again, said Imam Mohammad Qatanani, spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, the regions most influential mosque. People here feel they will be blamed as a religion and as a people. Because this guy was a Muslim, Muslims will be blamed anywhere and everywhere. By Thursday, it had already begun. The Islamic Center of Passaic County had received eight telephone threats, prompting police to assign extra patrols to the area. They say theyre going to kill us, theyre going to burn the place down, all using extremely foul language, said the mosques president, Omar Awad. They say, Were going to come rip your beard off.' The New Jersey office of the Council on American Islamic Relations reported threats had also been made against the Omar Mosque, next door to the apartment house where Saipov lived. Mosque officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Tensions have flared within the Muslim community as well, with two men getting into a fistfight at a mosque in a dispute over the cause of Saipovs alleged radicalization. Until this week, Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010 from Uzbekistan, was just one more recent arrival in a city that is home to immigrants from more than four dozen countries. Neighborhoods have been dubbed Little Ramallah or Little Istanbul for their respective Arab and Turkish residents. Peru has a consulate in the city to serve the large number of Peruvians. More than 34 percent of the citys residents were born in another country, according to the Census Bureau. Islamic leaders in the city of 147,000 people estimate Patersons Muslim population at 25,000 to 30,000. Paterson was an engine of the Industrial Revolution, its factories churning out textiles and embroidery that helped earn it the nickname Silk City. But many of the industrial jobs are gone, and nearly a third of Patersons population lives in poverty, the city beset by crime and drugs. It has been in this environment that the Muslim community established itself over decades, with a mix of Arab, Asian, African-American and European members of the faith. The Islamic Center of Passaic County, formed nearly three decades ago in Paterson, draws about 2,000 people for Friday communal prayers. Now, some are afraid they will be made to answer for the actions of a man many leaders of the community say they didnt know. Saipov did not attend the Passaic County mosque, Qatanani said. As for the Omar Mosque, congregants disagreed over whether he prayed there. Ramy Elhelw, 30, of Hoboken, said he never saw Saipov there. This is not somebody we recognize in any way, shape or form, Elhelw said. A person who does something of this nature is a deranged human being. But Abu Mohammed, a 46-year-old Palestinian construction worker and olive oil importer who came to America at 18, said he saw Saipov worship there. While he condemned Saipovs alleged crimes, he also said he understands what can send a law-abiding Muslim down the path of radicalization. Its simple: They see the U.S. terrorizing Muslims left and right for the last 27 years, hundreds of thousands of them, Mohammed said. Thats terrorism, and terrorism creates terrorists. The one who starts the fight is more guilty. Upon hearing Mohammeds remarks to reporters at the Omar Mosque, an elderly man yelled at him and punched him in the face, and they scuffled. The mosque had been targeted by the New York Police Department, which conducted broad surveillance of Muslims in New Jersey, New York and beyond after 9/11, a program uncovered by The Associated Press in 2011. An NYPD report from the surveillance found no evidence of criminal activity at the Omar Mosque. Frank Cagatay, who lives in an apartment building where Saipov had lived, said the latest attack will further damage Patersons reputation. The people that do this cite God in carrying out terrorist attacks, but God never told anyone to kill innocent people, Cagatay said. After 9/11, Muslims in and around Paterson reported that people screamed anti-Muslim insults and threw objects at them, particularly after false rumors spread that people were dancing in the streets to celebrate the attacks. Several Muslims were assaulted, and mosques received bomb threats. Muslim leaders have gone to great lengths to try to ease the hostility by reaching out to law enforcement officials and local residents. Government agencies held job fairs at Qatananis mosque to recruit Arabic-speaking Muslims, and high-ranking political and counterterrorism officials were guests at its annual Ramadan dinner. The local FBI office, which began meeting with Paterson Muslims in 1999, said tips and other information from the Muslim community were extremely helpful after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and they praised local residents who served as translators when investigators conducted interviews. Worries over discrimination against Muslims in New Jersey continue, however, in part because of efforts by some towns to thwart construction of mosques. Many people here worry that President Donald Trumps statements including calling Saipov an animal will inflame tensions. Aref Assaf, a Palestinian active in Patersons Muslim community, said Muslims have been at the forefront of efforts to counter extremism. This guilt by association is hurtful for those of us who are working so hard to see this curse wiped from the face of the Earth, Assaf said. ____ AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll and reporter Deepti Hajela contributed to this report. ____ Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC BEIRUT After watching for years as the United States called the shots in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin is seizing the reins of diplomacy in the Middle East, establishing footholds and striking alliances with unlikely partners. From the battlefields of Syria to its burgeoning relationships with Iran and Turkey to its deepening ties with Saudi Arabia, Russia is stepping in to fill a void left by the United States first under the Obama administration and now in the vastly inconsistent and largely hands-off policies of Donald Trump. Embroiled in controversy at home and loath to engaging in the strife-riddled region beyond fighting the Islamic State group, Trump has largely stayed on the sidelines of attempts to help find a political settlement for Syrias long-running civil war. Those efforts are now led by Russia, in partnership with Iran and Turkey, organizing local cease-fires and creating de-escalation zones that have significantly reduced the violence in the country. Russias role in Syria has raised its international profile and allowed it to claim fighting terrorist groups such as the Islamic State group while it shored up President Bashar Assads government. Moscow has stood by Tehran while Trump has refused to re-certify the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers a stance reiterated by Putin himself Thursday on a visit to Tehran. It has also reached out to Irans Mideast rival Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, promising weapons deals and other investments to the Sunni power house. Bilal Saab, a senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute, said that while Russia has clearly become a more influential interlocutor on Syria, there are clear limits to its overall foray into the region. What Russia offers is transactional, as opposed to strategic. Arms sales are no substitute for deep political rapport, which is what Washington provides, despite lingering tensions with key partners, he said. Still, Putin appears to be positioning himself as Mideast broker, seeking to expand his influence in a region where the U.S. remains the most dominant military actor. SYRIA POWER BROKER Moscows military involvement in the Syrian war since 2015 has propped up Assads forces and turned the conflict in his favor, while Russian mediation earlier this year launched cease-fire talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The talks, sponsored jointly with Iran and Turkey, have brokered local deals that have significantly reduced violence in the war-torn country. This week, Russia announced plans to host Syrian groups and government representatives for political talks on Nov. 18 just 10 days before a new round of U.N.-sponsored talks are to start in Geneva. The invitation has roiled Syrian opposition groups who described it as an attempt to bypass U.N. efforts to resolve the countrys conflict and dictate the terms of any settlement. Russia invited over a dozen groups, a mix of government representatives and political opposition parties, including for the first time the main U.S.-backed Kurdish party now in control of northern Syria. The Syrian Kurdish PYD has previously been barred from participation in political negotiations at the Geneva Talks, at Turkeys insistence. The invitation by Russia has led to speculation that Russia may use the conference to broker a wider reconciliation between Assad and the Syrian Kurds under conditions that preclude long-term U.S. influence in Syria. Russia is accelerating its effort to subvert the Syrian political process by establishing a new diplomatic framework that sets conditions to expel the U.S. from Northern Syria, said an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War this week. Badran Ciya Kurd, an adviser for the Kurdish-led self-administration who met with Russian officials ahead of the invite to Sochi, said Russia supports the Kurdish federal project while the U.S. strategy has been vague. It is not yet clear what their (Americans) strategy is after Raqqa, and we would like to understand, he said, referring to the northern city liberated from Raqqa last month. SHARED INTERESTS WITH IRAN While Iran promised a foreign policy that would be neither East nor West after its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has tilted toward Russia given its antipathy for Washington. Tehran relied on Moscows support to complete its Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2011 and received Russias S-300 surface-to-air missile system in 2016. In that time, Russia and Iran also found themselves fighting to support the embattled Syrian president. The countries regularly coordinate on Syria and have provided overwhelming military and political aid to prop up Assads government and army. On a visit to Tehran on Wednesday, Putin strongly backed Iran and its nuclear deal with world powers, saying Moscow opposed any unilateral change to the accord after Trump refused to re-certify it. Putin made the comments on a one-day trip to Tehran for trilateral talks between Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia, during which he met with both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. GULF CONTRACTS Across the Gulf Arab states, the U.S. has been the guarantor of security since the 1991 Gulf War. In recent years, however, Gulf countries have increasingly looked toward making defense deals with Russia, especially after growing wary of the U.S. detente with Iran under President Barack Obama. In the last weeks alone, Russia has gone big into Saudi Arabia, which supported the Afghan mujahedeen against Soviet troops in the 1980s. King Salman of Saudi Arabia visited Moscow last month and signed multibillion-dollar energy deals with Russia, which also agreed to sell the Iranian rival its advanced S-400 missile system, which Tehran does not possess. Other deals would include Saudi Arabia locally producing Russian anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers and automatic grenade launchers, as well as the latest version of the Kalashnikov assault rifle. King Salmans visit marked the first by any Saudi monarch to Moscow and heralded a new era of cooperation and a thawing in a bilateral relation that has been severely strained since Russias military intervention in Syria on behalf of Assad. CLOSE COOPERATION WITH ISRAEL Israel and Russia maintain a close, if sometimes uneasy, relationship on regional issues particularly when it comes to the war in neighboring Syria. In recent years, the Israeli and Russian air forces have been active in Syrian skies and have maintained, throughout the fighting, a hotline to prevent clashes between their air forces. Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has also held a number of meetings and phone conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the situation in Syria. Still, Israeli officials are concerned about Russias cooperation with Iran. But they also believe that Russian and Iranian interests could diverge as both countries compete for lucrative reconstruction contracts and political influence in postwar Syria. Israeli officials believe that Russia considers Iran a potentially destabilizing force in postwar Syria, and are cautiously optimistic that Russia understands Israels security concerns. Russian and Israeli interests in Syria may not be the same but that doesnt necessarily mean that Russia cannot play a constructive role in Syria in Israels view or that certain understandings cant be reached between Russia and Israel with regard to Syria, said Chagai Tzuriel, the director general of Israels Intelligence Ministry. ___ Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Joe Federman in Jerusalem and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed reporting. The Town of Bernalillo Police Department is asking for the publics help in finding 17-year-old Shara Pinder, according to a New Mexico State Police spokesman. Officer Ray Wilson said Shara was last seen walking from her residence on Calle Damiano, in The Town of Bernalillo, on Wednesday around noon. Shara is an African American female, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 190 pounds, with short black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a yellow wool coat and blue jeans. Anyone with any information is asked to call the Town of Bernalillo Police Department at (505) 891-7226 A Los Alamos man found guilty of downloading child pornography onto his computer and copying it to a hard drive was sentenced to nine years in jail Wednesday. David Rael, 40, was found guilty of three counts of sexual exploitation of children for manufacture, one count of sexual exploitation of children for distribution, and one count of sexual exploitation of children for possession, according to an announcement from the Attorney Generals Office. According to court records, a special agent from the Attorneys Generals Office who worked with the national Internet Crimes Against Children task force searched Raels computer back in 2013 after the task forces software monitoring the online sharing of child pornography led to his computers IP address. First Judicial District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer found Rael guilty in June in a non-jury trial. According to court records, Rael denied being sexually attracted to children or viewing child pornography. Staff from the Attorney Generals Office wrote that he told the special agent during questioning that he watched some of the videos until they became sexual and then got rid of them. My offices number one priority is protecting New Mexico children from sexual predators and violence, Attorney General Hector Balderas said in the announcement. I hope parents in Los Alamos County sleep better tonight knowing Mr. Rael will be off the streets. SANTA FE Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth testified Thursday that he would have asked a lot more questions about legislation authorizing the sale of a historic building in 2014 if hed known the truth at the time that the state would sell the property without seeking competitive bids. And he would have tried to slow down the approval process and get answers to his questions if one of his colleagues, then-Sen. Phil Griego, had disclosed a potential conflict of interest, he said. I was under the impression that this was an arms-length transaction that anyone could bid on, Wirth testified in 1st Judicial District Court, and there was no other relationship there. If hed known that the owners of an adjacent hotel already had first dibs on the property in contrast to what senators were told during a floor debate I would have asked more questions with the goal of slowing it down so we could get all the information before taking a vote, said Wirth, a Democrat from Santa Fe. Wirth was called to testify Thursday by prosecutors who allege Griego used his position in the Legislature to push the sale of the building and later collect a $50,000 commission as a real estate broker. Griego, D-San Jose, resigned after an ethics investigation in 2015. Attorney General Hector Balderas office later filed charges accusing Griego of crimes including bribery, fraud and ethical misconduct. But Griegos attorneys say he did nothing criminal. It was in the states interest to sell the building top officials at the Energy, Mineral and Natural Resources Department testified they wanted to get rid of it and Griego didnt agree to work for the buyer of the building until after the bill had passed the Legislature, they say. Furthermore, he didnt vote on the transaction or apply political pressure to get the sale done, his defense contends. Tom Clark, one of Griegos attorneys, got Wirth to acknowledge that he wouldnt necessarily have changed his vote to approve the building sale if hed had all the correct information at the time. Wirth simply said he would have wanted his questions answered before deciding how to vote. In answering Clarks questions, Wirth also acknowledged that New Mexico has a citizen Legislature the members generally have other jobs or are retired and that its up to individual legislators to decide when to disclose private work that might create the appearance of impropriety. I certainly try to disclose as much as possible when you get in situations like that, Wirth said. Wirth, who works as a lawyer, was a state senator in 2014 but hadnt yet been chosen to serve as the floor leader for Democrats in the Senate. He took up that role this year. The state sold the building without seeking bids because a private company was leasing it from the state and had the right to buy it if the state decided to sell. Griegos trial started Tuesday and is expected to last two weeks or more. SANTA FE Gov. Susana Martinez praised President Donald Trumps administration Thursday for signing off on a directive aimed at increasing the number and complexity of drone flights, a move that could also give states broader authority to test drone operations. The second-term Republican governor, speaking at a news conference in Washington D.C., said drones could help grow New Mexicos private sector economy, which has shown recent signs of growth after several years of stagnation. Unmanned aircraft and systems offer nearly unlimited potential, particularly in a state as large and rural as New Mexico, Martinez said. We see the potential and we welcome the innovation, but it has to be done safely it has to be done right. Martinez was the only governor invited to speak at Thursdays event, which was organized by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Several members of Congress also spoke. While the governor criticized comments made by Trump during last years presidential campaign, she has been largely complimentary of the Trump administration since he took office in January. During her Thursday remarks, Martinez credited the Trump administration for giving more authority to states, saying, Thats something we saw very little of from the previous administration. She also said drones could play a key role in New Mexicos future, citing the states array of federal labs, military bases and research universities. Already, Google has tested solar-powered drones at Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences as it looks for ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air. In addition, some New Mexico-based companies have been developing or marketing drones. However, it was not immediately clear Thursday what type of programs the state might pursue under the new federal directive, which will provide exemptions from current safety rules for states, cities and tribes that are selected after an application process. Some possibilities could include using drones to help with package delivery and emergency inspections, U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said. Current restrictions on drone use include prohibitions on flights over people, nighttime flights and flights beyond the line of sight of the drone operator, according to the Associated Press. The Federal Aviation Administration has registered more than 1 million drones in the past two years most of them belong to hobbyists and there are reportedly more registered drones in the U.S. than there are registered manned aircraft. Journal staff writer Michael Coleman contributed to this report from Washington D.C. By PTI: Houston, Nov 2 (PTI) A wide variety of animal species - including elephants, chimpanzees, ravens and lions - can engage in rational decision-making, a study suggests. These animals exhibit so-called "executive control" when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to achieve them before acting, according to researchers at the University of Houston in the US. advertisement Previous research has shown that animals can remember specific events, use tools and solve problems. However, exactly what that means - whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex - remains a matter of scientific dispute. Language is required for some sophisticated forms of metacognition, or thinking about thinking, said Cameron Buckner, assistant professor at the University of Houston. However, bolstered by a review of previously published research, Buckner concluded that a wide variety of animals - elephants, chimpanzees, ravens and lions, among others - engage in rational decision-making. "These data suggest that not only do some animals have a subjective take on the suitability of the option they are evaluating for their goal, they possess a subjective, internal signal regarding their confidence in this take that can be deployed to select amongst different options," he said. Language remains a key differentiator, and Buckner noted that serious attempts in the 1970s and 80s to teach animals human language found that although they were able to express simple ideas, they did not engage in complex thought and language structures. Ancient philosophers relied upon anecdotal evidence to study the issue, but todays researchers conduct sophisticated controlled experiments. In the new study published in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Buckner offers several examples to support his argument. Matriarchal elephants in Kenyas Amboseli National Park are able to determine the threat level of human intruders by differentiating ethnicity, gender and age, Buckner said. This suggests an understanding that adult Maasai tribesmen sometimes kill elephants in competition for grazing or in retaliation for attacks against humans, while Kamba tribesmen and women and children from both tribes do not pose a threat, he said. In another example, Buckner noted that giraffes are not generally considered prey by lions in Africa, due to the long-necked animals ability to deliver skull-crushing kicks. However, lions in South Africas Selous Game Reserve are reported to have learned that giraffes found in a sandy river bed can get stuck and even trip, making them suitable prey. PTI SAR SAR --- ENDS --- advertisement Todays marketers are working in a complex environment with increasing consumer choice and fragmenting media environment. With mobile becoming central to our lives, people are spending more and more time on mobile and consuming more content on their phones, which has not only led to a very different and dynamic consumer purchase cycle, but has also created an opportunity for businesses to find newer sources of growth. Addressing the needs of industry, Facebook hosted Discover Growth, an event which brought together marketers and advertisers to discuss key strategies focused on growth marketing and how Facebook solutions can help businesses drive growth. Participating in the discussions were Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia Dentsu Aegis Network; Alok Agarwal, General Manager, Marketing Excellence, GSK Consumer Healthcare; and Ambuj Chandna, Head - Retail Liabilities, Investments & Payment Products, Kotak Mahindra Bank. The purchase cycle has completely turned on its head and there is no longer just a single moment which influences the consumers buying decision. Speaking at the event, Sandeep Bhushan, Managing Director, Facebook India and South Asia, said, With over 217 million monthly active users in India most of whom are active on mobile Facebook is at the heart of a mobile-first shopping journey. We want to help all marketers and businesses drive revenue growth by tapping into the shift in consumer behaviour towards mobile, and help them adopt practises to drive both penetration and loyalty. Attendees at the discussion gained an in-depth insight into Facebooks mobile solutions that can help marketers grow and engage consumers at every step of the purchase journey. Some of the top strategies included: Acquiring customers and generate intent - Consumer journey, with the adoption of products and platforms such as mobile, has changed so much, to wait for people to come to them. Brands need to acquire customers on mobile by reaching people earlier in the purchase journey. They can no longer wait for purchase intent, they need to create it. Creativity - With declining attention spans and impatience on the rise, it is imperative to capture attention quickly with compelling short creatives. The short form creative ad formats on Facebook that are built to deliver better experiences on mobile can not just help drive awareness but also generate purchase intent. Measuring what matters - What ultimately matters is measuring what is actually working so that marketers can refine their marketing spends. Facebooks people based measurement solutions can help measure whats working across channels to enable optimised spending to those attributing to the best results. Brands and businesses across industries in India are already taking advantage of Facebooks full-funnel marketing solutions. Brands like Lakme and Magnum have run impactful feed friendly short form creatives on Facebook and seen lifts in Purchase Intent. E-commerce and travel brands such as Jabong, Shopclues, MakeMyTrip have used Dynamic Ads to capitalise on intent and find interested customers. With Facebooks Lead ads, brands like Raymond and Mahindra have been able to drive offline sales, while others like GSK, Vodafone, Mondelez and Myntra have leveraged Facebooks measurement solutions to measure outcomes that matter to them and refine their marketing spends. As of Q2 2017, there were 217 million monthly active users on Facebook and 212 million mobile monthly active users. Navigating the digital world Ashish Bhasin observed, Mobile today has become equivalent to digital. 100 per cent of the businesses are impacted by the internet. Mobile world is impacting the more physical parts of every business... In this area, consumers are leading the marketers like us; they drive the business for us. Ambuj Chandna added here, Almost 60 per cent of our customers are digitally active and almost 80 per cent of those are mobile-only users, which is a big number. There is a large number of transactions happening on mobile. At Kotak, we have observed a dramatic shift in numbers. We have see 30 per cent growth in two quarters. Therefore, it is important to curate product propositions and value propositions for digital services as the formula that applies for physical propositions doesnt apply to digital propositions in terms of banking. Talking about digital technology and Facebook, Chandna also noted, The funnel is becoming very fungible. Spends have increased by 40x and we found the ability of Facebook as a medium to segment customers finely and have been able to do some dynamic content optimisation for our campaigns. On GSKs adoption of digital, Alok Agarwal said that one of the challenges seen in digital in terms of brand management in the FMCG sector has been how to measure outcomes on digital. We have, therefore, invested on creating a parallel brand track as a collaborative with Facebook, which has given us fabulous results, he added. While commenting on building capabilities across agencies and client organisations, Bhasin said capability had never been an issue in India. At the same time, he added, We need to work on the trust deficit. Moreover, there is need for a common agreed industry measurement metric. The Dos and Donts All the industry experts stressed on keeping the focus on consumers. Alok Agarwal remarked, We need to be consumer-centric and use it as a push medium. Use the huge amount of data to make insights and combine them with your representative data and can make really good product propositionsmany creative and measurement tools are possible. Thats the beauty of the platform. You are only limited by your imagination. On the dont part of it, Agarwal added, You should listen to your consumers and be authentic, otherwise the negatives will also get highlighted. Referring to the latest Burger emoji debate, Bhasin also mentioned about how digital platforms can create a dangerous edge under the scheme of things if not handled well in the digital era. He also stressed on a better understanding of the idiom of communication in creative media under the digital domain by the agency and similarly for the entire DNA of the organisation of the brands and creative agencies. Also, listening to young consumers formed part of his Do list. Sandeep Bhushans Do list for using digital effectively for branding and advertising across demographics of mobile users include: Be clear on what you, the brand, want to achieve. Measure only against that. Creative is appropriate to the ad. According to Chandna, the opportunity of data should be used with creativity, While Bhasin maintained that the holy grail of advertising is to create a creative appeal to the targeted customers and not to the rest of the areas. Elaborating on the content strategy for a digital platform like Facebook, Sandeep Bhushan said, Every platform has a certain guideline to most effectively use that. For example, many folks can be accessed through videos of various types like a 360-degree video, short video or a follow-up to a non-video ad. It depends on what your task is, what assets you possess and what you consumer understanding is. Commenting on the smaller agencies and start-ups in India that benefit from Facebook in terms of expertise in digital brand marketing, Bhushan said, Facebook will constantly strive to build an over-all appreciation of the ecosystem and will include several tools of communication and business resources. Client speak Alok Agarwal, General Manager, Marketing Excellence, GSK Consumer Healthcare: For the first time, we measured the reach and impact of an integrated media plan (TV and Facebook) from a single source of measurement on an ongoing basis. We are encouraged by Facebooks ability to drive brand reach and impact. The campaign delivered better results than just TV-only campaigns. For us, Facebook and TV worked better together. Case study link: https://www.facebook.com/business/success/horlicks-india Saujanya Shrivastava, Group CMO, MakeMyTrip.com and Goibibo.com: FB in no time (within a period of 6 months) has become one of the key contributors to our business for orders from retargeting channels. It is heartening to note the level of ownership and spirit of partnership that has led to such effective and impactful campaign. Siddharth Banerjee, EVP Brand Communications & Insights, Vodafone: Partnering with Facebook on the launch campaign for Vodafone Supernet 4G helped us cut through the clutter immediately, build awareness with the right audience and achieve incremental reach over television. With the target audience leaning towards digital, Facebook delivered some of the highest impact across all media vehicles on driving salience and key brand messages. When we speak of womanhood, what comes to mind is a single state of being; as if it were an undifferentiated gender. However, through years, the society has created labels and tags that exists within this gender. The married and the unmarried, the happily married and the divorced, the straight and the lesbian, the proverbial 'complete woman' and the transgender. It seems the womans existence has always been defined with an asterisk mark (conditions). #NoConditionsApply is TOIs campaign to raise awareness to issues concerning Gender Equity across all opportunities, celebrations, ambitions. There has been a lot of talk on why the world needs diversity. Diversity will come through inclusion. And, true diversity and inclusion needs to be reflected not only in opportunity; but also in celebration and festivities. True celebration of happiness necessitates inclusion of one and all. Driving home the message that Festivals should be inclusive celebration, TOI has recently launched a short film on inclusive Shindoor Khela that TOI hosted under the campaign of #NoConditionsApply. Contextualizing to Durga Pujo, which is a mega celebration of homecoming of Shakti (Goddess Durga and a symbol of Feminine Divine) to her maternal home with her sons and daughters, #NoConditionsApply campaign calls for an all-inclusive community celebration. Celebrated as a community gathering on the last day of Durga Pujo (Dashami), Shindoor Khela is a tradition that has been celebrated by married women for hundreds of years. On Dashami (10th day of Durga Pujo), married women come together in praise of Goddess Durga and play with Shindoor (vermilion) by smearing it on each others face and body. Traditionally children and unmarried girls are a part of this social celebration, however the rest of our sisterhood viz. widows, divorcees, transgender, single mom etc. looks on, uninvited. As a part of #NoConditionsApply campaign, TOI joined hands with Tridhara Sammilani one of the prestigious Durga Pujo organizers in Kolkata to host an all-inclusive Shindoor Khela. All women played Shindoor Khela together married, widow, transgender, lesbian, single mother, divorced. This film captures the journey to this inclusive celebration that brings humanity closure and boundaries fade away. The on-ground celebration was recorded in a short documentary format, which is being launched today with the support of Vidya Balan, Rituparna Sengupta and LGBT activist Laxmi Narayan Tripathi. The short documentary sheds light on the way in which we can help our own people feel happy and together, it also features women who were a part of the celebrations, and showcases their joy to be included. Excited to be a part of this campaign actor Vidya Balan said, I am happy to be associated with TOIs #NoConditionsApply campaign as it helps spread the message of social inclusion in the country. Womens rights towards education, professional growth and societal expectations have evolved over the years but we still hold on to some traditions. It is important for women across the country to come together and support their own gender and extend this campaign further by sharing the Sindoor Khela short documentary. Speaking about the campaign, Sanjeev Bhargava, Director, Brand TOI, said, When we talk of gender diversity, we should also talk about diversity within the gender. Discrimination among women, and within women, have been a part of our community since decades. The campaign #NoConditionsApply raises a pertinent issue of gender equity, and the fact that festivals need to be inclusive. Celebrations are meant to be a joyous time for everyone, not to make anyone feel unwanted or uninvited. While we talk about the inclusive Shindoor Khela in Kolkata through this short film, the message is relevant to all festivities across India, and the world at large. During Durga Pujo, TOI launched a powerful slam poetry titled Shindoor Khela: #NoConditionsApply to provoke questions about social inclusion during festivals. Narrated by leading women from Kolkata Rituparna Sengupta, Gargi Roy Chowdhury, Manobi Bandopadhyay and Sohini Sengupta, the slam poetry that presents the point-of-view of the women who have been the on-lookers and un-invited to the festivities. The campaign crossed 1.2 Mn reach in 72 hours and generated more than 5Mn conversations across the social media with many men and women joining in with 2-dot Shindoor during the Shindoor Khela on 30th Sept. #NoConditionsApply is an initiative by TOI that was launched early in 2017, and aims to generate awareness and conversations calling for gender equity across all opportunities, celebrations, ambitions. BancorpSouth Bank and FHLB Dallas Provided Funds A long-abandoned building nestled next to Hot Springs National Park has been transformed into a senior apartment community, thanks in part to a $224,000 Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant from BancorpSouth Bank and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas). The grant was awarded in 2016 to McGrew Properties, an affordable housing agency in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006868/en/ Hot Springs senior community, Rose Villa Senior Living, has now opened, thanks in part to a $224,000 Affordable Housing Program grant from BancorpSouth Bank and FHLB Dallas. (Photo: Business Wire) City management, project and bank representatives gathered to celebrate the grand opening of Rose Villa Senior Living, which opened 17 of 25 units this month. The grant was used for renovating the building, which now serves residents age 55 and older living on fixed incomes. The remainder of the units are under construction and are expected to open in the summer of 2018. Project developer and owner of McGrew Properties, Richard McGrew, said that in his 16 years of rehabilitating properties, this was the most challenging project his team has worked on. The building had been sitting empty for so long, it was in rough shape, he said. All the copper and metal had been stripped from the building. We had about 20 dumpster trucks haul away debris when we started this project. The apartment community is within walking distance of Hot Springs historic Bathhouse Row, and will feature a semi-enclosed courtyard and 25 units, each with a kitchen, living area, bathroom and bedroom. There is a great need for affordable housing for seniors in this area so we were happy to champion the Rose Villa project when we first learned of it, said Evelyn Edwards, vice president and community development grant specialist at BancorpSouth Bank. Rose Villa is a great example of community collaboration and we are proud to support affordable housing initiatives for seniors through the AHP. FHLB Dallas annually returns 10 percent of its profits in the form of AHP grants to the communities served by its member institutions such as BancorpSouth Bank. AHP grants fund a variety of projects, including home rehabilitation and modifications for low-income, elderly and special-needs residents; down payment and closing cost assistance for qualified first-time homebuyers; and the construction of low-income, multifamily rental communities and single-family homes. Richard and Debbie McGrew founded their residential development firm 16 years ago. In that time, they have built or renovated a dozen buildings for affordable housing, primarily serving low- to moderate-income families. Having learned about the AHP grant while serving on an advisory council with a BancorpSouth representative, Mr. McGrew said this is the companys first AHP grant, without which, renovation of Rose Villa Senior Community would not have been possible. Without the grant and the willingness, cooperation and encouragement of the Whittington Neighborhood organization, this project would not be possible, said Mr. McGrew. We believe this will be a great addition to the community by not only cleaning up an eyesore and hazard to the neighborhood but will also offer a very safe and enjoyable community for the future residents. In 2017, FHLB Dallas awarded $7 million in grants to 19 affordable housing projects. The grants will help create 1,108 new or rehabilitated housing units. Arkansas received $429,000 this year for the construction or renovation of 42 units. Since the inception of the AHP in 1990, FHLB Dallas has awarded more than $254 million in AHP and AHP-funded grants to assist more than 47,000 families. We have valued BancorpSouths long-time partnership, said Greg Hettrick, first vice president and director of Community Investment at FHLB Dallas. The completion of this project is another example of their commitment to improving the lives of residents in the communities they serve. About BancorpSouth Bank BancorpSouth (NYSE: BXS) is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, with $14.8 billion in assets. The company operates 234 full service branch locations as well as additional mortgage, insurance, and loan production offices in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas, including an insurance location in Illinois. BancorpSouth is committed to a culture of respect, diversity, and inclusion in both its workplace and communities. To learn more, visit our Community Commitment page at bancorpsouth.com. Like us on Facebook; follow us on Twitter@MyBXS; or connect with us through LinkedIn. About the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas is one of 11 district banks in the FHLBank system created by Congress in 1932. FHLB Dallas, with total assets of $66.4 billion as of September 30, 2017, is a member-owned cooperative that supports housing and community development by providing competitively priced advances and other credit products to approximately 840 members and associated institutions in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas. Visit fhlb.com for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006868/en/ Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas Corporate Communications, 214-441-8445 fhlb.com LIVINGSTON, Calif., Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With the most anticipated meal of the year just weeks away, the countdown to turkey time is on. The Thanksgiving preparation spotlight can make even the most experienced home cooks feel the pressure to perfect their holiday turkey. Family-owned poultry producer Foster Farms is offering tips to help home cooks brine, roast, grill, stuff and carve the perfect bird. Foster Farms' Turkey Tips webpage which includes a turkey roasting/grilling timetable, a step-by-step carving tutorial with slideshow and a delicious stuffing recipe from Foster Farms co-founder Verda Foster will help cooks of all levels prepare a flawless Thanksgiving turkey. A sampling of tips pulled from the webpage include: Brilliantly Brined: Proper brining makes the meat very juicy not salty. Flavor brining is used to enhance the texture and taste of the turkey to its most delicious potential. Use a heavy-duty container that can hold approximately eight quarts of liquid, such as food-grade plastic, stainless steel or glass, when brining the turkey. Do not use aluminum containers, as they are corrosive. Always refrigerate the brine solution, preferably overnight. If it is not cold, the meat will absorb too much salt. For a delicious twist try Foster Farms' Honey Garlic Brine recipe. Proper brining makes the meat very juicy not salty. Flavor brining is used to enhance the texture and taste of the turkey to its most delicious potential. Use a heavy-duty container that can hold approximately eight quarts of liquid, such as food-grade plastic, stainless steel or glass, when brining the turkey. Do not use aluminum containers, as they are corrosive. Always refrigerate the brine solution, preferably overnight. If it is not cold, the meat will absorb too much salt. For a delicious twist try Foster Farms' Honey Garlic Brine recipe. Roasted Perfection and Grilling Guidelines: Always use a meat thermometer. While boneless or ground turkey is fully cooked when it reaches an internal temperature of 165F, bone-in turkey is fully cooked when the meat thermometer reads 180F. For specific roasting and grilling times based on turkey weight and whether it's stuffed/unstuffed, check out the Roasting Turkey and Grilling Turkey webpages. And remember, at altitudes above 5,000 feet add approximately five to 10 minutes of cooking time per pound. Always use a meat thermometer. While boneless or ground turkey is fully cooked when it reaches an internal temperature of 165F, bone-in turkey is fully cooked when the meat thermometer reads 180F. For specific roasting and grilling times based on turkey weight and whether it's stuffed/unstuffed, check out the and webpages. And remember, at altitudes above 5,000 feet add approximately five to 10 minutes of cooking time per pound. Sumptuous Stuffing : Don't stuff the bird too tightly, as this will make the stuffing heavy and harder to fully cook. If you want more of the delicious side dish, bake stuffing covered in an oven-proof dish to an internal temperature of 165F. Verda Foster's tried and true stuffing recipe has been a crowd pleaser for generations Don't stuff the bird too tightly, as this will make the stuffing heavy and harder to fully cook. If you want more of the delicious side dish, bake stuffing covered in an oven-proof dish to an internal temperature of 165F. Verda Foster's tried and true stuffing recipe has been a crowd pleaser for generations Carve It Like a Boss: Stop. After cooking, give that bird at least 20 minutes before carving. To steady the bird, leave the wings on until you've carved both sides of the breast. To remove the wing, slice into the joint, which attaches it to the body, carving as much meat from the body as possible. Stop. After cooking, give that bird at least 20 minutes before carving. To steady the bird, leave the wings on until you've carved both sides of the breast. To remove the wing, slice into the joint, which attaches it to the body, carving as much meat from the body as possible. Kitchen Safety: Remember your ABC's - Always Be Careful - when preparing, cooking and storing turkey. This means thorough hand washing, using separate cutting boards for raw meat, cooking to the proper internal temperature, refrigerating leftovers within two hours of cooking, and following package guidelines during preparation. For complete details, holiday recipe inspiration and more advice, visit www.fosterfarms.com/turkey-tips/. Foster Farms offers a variety of turkey products to meet the needs of today's home cooks ranging from whole body turkeys, tenderloins, and ground turkey, to turkey sausage, patties and marinated varieties. Foster Farms also offers Simply Raised with No Antibiotics products and Organic turkey products including whole body turkeys and organic ground turkey. About Foster Farms Since 1939, West Coast families have depended on Foster Farms for premium quality chicken and turkey products. Family-owned and operated, the company continues its legacy of excellence and commitment to quality established by its founders, Max and Verda Foster. Foster Farms specializes in fresh, all-natural chicken and turkey products free of preservatives, additives or injected sodium enhancers. Based in California's Central Valley, with ranches in the Pacific Northwest, the company's fresh chicken and turkey are produced in or near each region served. Foster Farms also produces delicious pre-marinated, ready-to-cook and fully cooked products that meet the quality and convenience needs of today's home cooks, retailers, warehouse clubs and foodservice customers. The company's commitment to excellence, honesty, quality, service and people is a source of great pride, and, a longtime family tradition. Food safety is Foster Farms' highest priority and the company would like to remind consumers to always follow safe handling, preparation and storage guidelines for the preparation of fresh poultry products. All fresh poultry products should be cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit as measured by a meat thermometer to ensure safety. Visit www.fosterfarms.com to learn more. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/its-almost-turkey-time-foster-farms-serves-up-tips-for-the-perfect-thanksgiving-turkey-300548397.html SOURCE Foster Farms (MACP) In the World Banks 2018 Doing Business Reforming to Create Jobs report, Morocco again ranked number one in North Africa and third overall in the Middle East and North Africa region. Moroccos overall score (67.91) placed it over 10 points above the regional average (56.72) and a strong performer in comparison to Tunisia (63.58) and Algeria (46.71). The report is the 15th annual report measuring regulations that enhance or inhibit business activity and focused on indicators that affect the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. The World Bank report noted a number of noticeable improvements in Morocco and highlighted the countrys progress in starting a business and paying taxes, with improvements stemming from better use of technology for registration and filing. According to the analysis, the focus on building a supportive business environment to attract foreign and domestic direct investment is directly linked to Moroccos capacity for sustainable growth. Morocco is moving steadily towards classification as a Frontier market, increasing the countrys attractiveness to investors, and the World Bank is not alone in recognizing Moroccos progress. Ernst and Young earlier this year ranked Morocco as one of the best business destinations on the continent and Credit Suisse named it one of the top ten countries for investors in frontier markets. In a recent speech to the opening of Parliament, King Mohammed VI alluded to the importance of ensuring that economic growth was inclusive and benefited the greatest number of Moroccans: Moroccans today need balanced, equitable development which ensures dignity for all, guarantees income, provides jobs especially for our young people and contributes to building confidence, promoting stability and ensuring integration into professional, social and family life, a goal to which all citizens aspire. This commitment to equitable, inclusive, and youth-oriented growth was emphasized in last years World Bank report on Morocco and will continue to impact the metrics for ease of doing business for both international and Moroccan entities. Facing the future proactively and for the benefit of all of Moroccans is a keystone of King Mohammed VIs vision for his country, said Jean AbiNader, Executive Director of the Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center. The Doing Business ranking is the latest indicator that Morocco is on the right path and it will continue to work hard and effectively to build its partnerships with local and international companies. The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a US-based independent non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform and educate opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about the US-Morocco bilateral relationship. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102006372/en/ Moroccan American Center for Policy Jordan Paul, 202-587-0855 info@moroccanamericancenter.com We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain. By PTI: By Aditi Khanna London, Nov 2 (PTI) Fake news, a term heavily popularised by US President Donald Trump, been named the word of the year by Collins dictionary due to its widespread use around the world. The UK-based lexicographer found that the use of "fake news" registered a 365 per cent rise in the last 12 months, reflecting Trump?s consistent use of the word in the wake of the 2016 presidential election in retaliation to unflattering media coverage. advertisement Defined as "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting", fake news takes over from Brexit ? which was named the definitive word last year after the June 2016 referendum in favour of the UK?s exit from the European Union (EU). "Fake news, either as a statement of fact or as an accusation, has been inescapable this year, contributing to the undermining of societys trust in news reporting," said Helen Newstead, Collins head of language content. The US President has regularly used the phrase to criticise certain media reports and most recently claimed this week that the "fake news is working overtime" in connection to the investigationinto Russian interference in the 2016 election. But Trump has not been alone in using the term. Both British Prime Minister Theresa May and Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn have included it in speeches, and social media has been littered with accusations of fake news. Other words on the 2017 shortlist included "genderfluid",defined as not identifying exclusively with one gender rather than another;"fidget spinner", the toy being twirled by children around the world; and "gig economy" ? the term for a system of casual, unstable employment that firms like Uber are associated with. Other words that stand out include "antifa", an abbreviation of anti-fascist, "echo-chamber" to describe opinions being reinforced through social media, and Corbynmania ? in reference to the popularity of the UKs Labour party leader. "Much of this years list is definitely politically charged, but with a new president in the US and a snap election in the UK it is perhaps no surprise that politics continues to electrify the language,"Newstead noted. All new words and meanings from the year will be added to CollinsDictionary.com and considered for inclusion in future print editions of the dictionary. PTI AK NSA --- ENDS --- July 12, 2017 Congress rejected the Donald Trump administrations proposed cuts to Middle East aid today, in some cases even voting to increase assistance over the current years budget. While the State Department request for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 sought deep cuts across the board, members of the House foreign aid spending panel made clear they wouldnt be touching aid to key US allies such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. In addition, the House state and foreign operations bill released today makes clear that the administration's proposal to turn some foreign military financing grants into loans is also a nonstarter. Funds appropriated or otherwise made available under this heading shall be nonrepayable, the bill states. The fiscal year 2018 bill specifically sets aside not less than $1.28 billion in total aid for Jordan Trump sought only $1 billion and $150 million in economic assistance for Egypt, twice more than the $75 million called for in the Trump budget. A summary of the House bill, meanwhile, specifies that military assistance to Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco should remain at or above current levels, overriding the administrations effort to zero out Moroccan military aid, which stood at $5 million in the fiscal year 2017 request. Tiny Tunisia, however, is the biggest winner, following an intense push by Tunis and its US allies. While the Trump administration had sought a 61% cut over the current years request (from $140.4 million to $55 million), the House bill instead appropriates not less than $165.4 million for Tunisia. In addition, the bill also backs loan guarantees for Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq. And it seeks more details on the administrations strategy in North Africa with language requiring the State Department to report on its engagement strategy in the region and explain how it intends to prioritize diplomatic engagement and assistance. The House released its bill just days after Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed visited Washington to lobby Congress and the administration against the aid cuts. Chahed discussed US counterterrorism assistance and military support with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on Monday prior to meeting Vice President Mike Pence, but also found time to reach out to members of Congress who were keen to stress the importance of maintaining military assistance to the small North African state. We equally commend American financial assistance that contributed in helping our young democracy overcome our economic and security hardships, Chahed said at an event at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. We remain hopeful that the assistance will be, if not further strengthened, at least preserved in its 2017 levels as Tunisia is going through an exceptional and critical phase in its history. Chahed cited the threat from the Islamic State and other terrorist groups to justify continued US security assistance. Any discontinuation will send the wrong message to those terrorist groups, Chahed told Al-Monitor. Any discontinuation will immediately burden Tunisia at this vulnerable point. The prime minister also warned that cutting military assistance could endanger the United States. Today terrorism is a global phenomenon and what happened in the North Africa region does not stay in the North Africa region, he said. Chahed's outreach to Congress appears to have been largely successful. At a dinner with members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., said that supporting Tunisia is in the national security interests of the United States. The Senate, which has yet to release its version of the foreign aid spending bill, appears to share the sentiment. Speaking at the Heritage event alongside Chahed, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said, I can assure you that the Congress of the United States, Republican and Democrat, will not allow these cuts to take place. McCain said one of his colleagues, a South Carolina Republican who chairs the foreign aid subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, would also act to prevent the cuts. I promise you Lindsey Graham will not let that happen, McCain said. October 19, 2017 A handful of senators are standing up to their House colleagues who want the United States to side with Morocco over the disputed Western Sahara. The Senate spending panel that oversees US foreign aid has included language in its annual appropriations bill that would require the Donald Trump administration to consult with the United Nations before providing aid to Western Sahara, a contested region administered by Morocco. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, the Algerian-backed government in exile that is pushing for a long-delayed independence referendum, welcomed the Senates move. Since Morocco does not have any legitimacy in the territory, it makes sense that Congress should consult with the United Nations, Mouloud Said, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republics envoy to the United States, told Al-Monitor. We are very happy for the language that was adopted by the Senate. This is the logical approach while the country still is not recognized. Senate appropriators released the bill last month around the time the UN appointed former German President Horst Kohler as the special envoy for Western Sahara. Kohler met with representatives of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Algeria on Wednesday after visiting Morocco. Congress since 2016 has required that US bilateral aid to Morocco be made available for assistance to the Western Sahara. While the Senate language still allows the United States to provide assistance to the Moroccan-administered territory, it requires consultation with representatives of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum on the Western Sahara (MINURSO), the UN peacekeeping mission. Advocates of Sahrawi independence fear that allowing the use of US funds in Western Sahara legitimizes Moroccos occupation. The Senate language would act as a bulwark against de facto recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the phosphate-rich territory. The Barack Obama administration chose to implement the congressional mandate by providing grants to Sahrawi civil society organizations and local governance programs. While Said praised the Senates drive to force the administration to consult with MINURSO before issuing grants, he still rejects the premise of the current US grants for Western Sahara. Even these local governance projects, only the Moroccans are benefiting, only the settlers are benefiting, Said told Al-Monitor. Its run by Moroccans for the Moroccan settlers. The UN created MINURSO in 1991 and tasked it with facilitating an independence referendum for Sahrawis after 16 years of armed conflict between Morocco and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, the armed wing of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. To the frustration of many Sahrawis, the vote is more than two decades overdue as the two sides disagree on who is eligible to participate. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., has long led House appropriators in their push to make US aid available in the disputed territory. The congressmans brother, former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., lobbies on behalf of Morocco as the head of Western Hemisphere Strategies. Although Morocco spends millions every year lobbying Congress and the administration to recognize its authority over Western Sahara, this years Senate appropriations bill suggests that Algerias much smaller lobbying efforts on behalf of the Polisario are also yielding some fruit. Algeria pays the firm Foley Hoag roughly $420,000 a year to lobby Congress on the issue. The Sahrawis for their part spent $10,000 on lobbying last year. Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that Foley Hoag was in frequent contact with the offices of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., both this year and last. Graham is the chairman of the foreign aid spending panel, while Leahy is the top Democrat on both the panel and the full Senate Appropriations Committee. Our intent is to support humanitarian and development programs in the Western Sahara in a manner that is consistent with MINURSOs mandate, Leahy told Al-Monitor. For that reason we require prior consultation by the secretary of state with MINURSO. While the full Senate must still vote on its foreign aid bill, the House passed its version of the bill last month. The House version of the bill does not contain the provision on MINURSO consultation. A source involved in the debate told Al-Monitor that Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., a longtime advocate of Sahrawi independence, also pushed the appropriations committee to insert the MINURSO consultation language. Inhofe declined to say so outright. I dont think its appropriate for me to talk about conversations that Ive had with individuals, the senator told Al-Monitor. Thats a violation of courtesy, I think. Not that its that big a deal. Inhofe said that he has visited Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria three times before, most recently in February. Ive watched the plight of these people and its been three decades [since they were] ejected out of their homeland, Inhofe told Al-Monitor. If you havent been there, theres no place more forlorn than that particular part of the desert. November 2, 2017 A campaign launched by the Egyptian government to promote the World Youth Forum scheduled for Nov. 4-10 at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh appears to have backfired after internet activists hijacked the conference hashtag #WeNeedToTalk to highlight human rights abuses in the country under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisis regime. The conferences organizers had hoped the hashtag would encourage interaction among the participants ahead of the forum and promote Egypt as a safe tourist destination. Instead, the activists posted images of security forces assaulting and arresting youths at protest sites and shared portraits of jailed journalists, activists and others who have allegedly been tortured or forcibly disappeared. #WeNeedToTalk about forced disappearances, Amr Bakly, the director of the Cairo Liberal Forum, an Egyptian nongovernmental organization working to spread liberal values and culture among Egyptian youths, posted on Twitter. #WeNeedToTalk about the president who spends more on arms than on education and health care, he wrote in another tweet. Prominent activist Mona Seif, whose brother Alaa is serving a five-year sentence for violating a law banning unauthorized protests, used the hashtag to draw attention to the plight of Amr Nohan, a student jailed for three years for posting a photoshopped image of Sisi wearing Mickey Mouse ears on Facebook. Bahey El Deen Hassan, a human rights defender and director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, meanwhile posted a picture of jailed researcher Ismail Alexandrani with the caption #WeNeedToTalk. Ismail talked! He is in prison because he questioned why some senior military officers had become jihadis. Hours after it was launched, the hashtag became the top trending topic on Twitter in Egypt, unleashing a tidal wave of anti-government criticism that observers said had been provoked by the sheer hypocrisy of the government campaign. Its a fitting response to the governments double standard policies, Rasha El Ibiary, a researcher and assistant professor of political mass media, said of the online onslaught. On the one hand, the government is using social media to encourage young people to discuss their ideas. On the other hand, the authorities are muzzling the media and blocking hundreds of independent news sites. They are also silencing critics by imprisoning, torturing and exiling them. Only one narrative is allowed in todays Egypt: the state narrative, she lamented. The Egyptian government is increasingly using social media to promote its causes and further its interests, but the online state propaganda is often met with skepticism and rebuke from the tech-savvy revolutionary activists who had used social media to organize and mobilize for the 2011 street protests against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The internet is a double-edged weapon; the government needs to realize that the shrinking space for free expression in Egypt has left youth with no option but to turn to social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter as the alternative platform for them to express their grievances and concerns, El Ibiary told Al-Monitor. This is not the first time that an Egyptian government promotional campaign has gone off track. Last year, a publicity stunt by the government to revive the tourism industry backfired after internet activists used the campaign hashtag #ThisIsEgypt to tweet some harsh truths about the country. While some activists had used the hashtag as intended, sharing pictures of monuments and tourist attractions, others showed pictures of garbage-littered streets and posted links to articles about tortured detainees, jailed journalists and ongoing police excesses. Under Sisi, Egypt has seen what rights activists describe as an unprecedented crackdown on dissent that initially targeted Muslim Brotherhood leaders and supporters but later expanded to include an ever-widening range of liberal activists, members of civil society organizations, intellectuals and journalists critical of government policies. Since the July 2013 overthrow of former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, tens of thousands have been imprisoned, according to rights groups who claim that as many as 60,000 political prisoners languish behind bars in Egypt today. The local and international rights groups have also documented hundreds of cases of forced disappearances and dozens of torture cases in the countrys notorious prisons, prompting Human Rights Watch to describe it as a torture epidemic. Sisi has denied the accusations of torture leveled at the police by human rights groups, insisting, We do not practice torture. He has called on the international community to be wary of the information published by rights organizations. At a recent press conference in Paris held after his talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, Sisi responded to a question on the countrys poor human rights record by saying that Egypt was in a different region and the government had other pressing issues to address. He urged reporters not to assess the human rights situation in Egypt, a developing country, by the same standards used to judge human rights in the more advanced countries. When it comes to human rights, I hope that we understand it in its true context of a country in Egypts situation. We are not in Europe, with its intellectual, cultural and human advancement, he said. In recent weeks, a new wave of arrests has targeted members of Egypts LGBT community. Dozens suspected of being gay were rounded up and detained despite the fact that, to date, Egypt has no anti-homosexuality laws. Most of those arrested were detained on charges of debauchery and spreading immorality in the society. A bill criminalizing acts of homosexuality is currently under review by parliament after a parliament member proposed a draft law to that effect in mid-October. If passed, those who are gay as well as those who incite homosexuality would face prison sentences of between one and three years. Besides the social media hashtag, the governments promotional campaign for the upcoming World Youth Forum also includes a video and TV spots portraying the conference as an olive branch. By hosting the conference, Egypt is sending a message of peace to the world, the narrator tells viewers. Giant billboards on Cairos busy streets advertising the forum depict smiling faces of youths from different countries and are meant to show Egypts commitment to promoting multiculturalism and tolerance. It is a far cry from the reality in the country where the pro-government media has persistently fueled xenophobic sentiment and suspicion of foreigners among the public in recent years. Sisi announced plans to host the international youth forum during the national youth conference held in Alexandria last July. Hagar Gamil, a young broadcaster and a participant in the state-run youth leadership program that proposed holding an intercultural dialogue, said she was excited about meeting the participants from more than 80 countries. It will be a great opportunity to discuss the common challenges we all face and exchange viewpoints on issues affecting young people all over the world such as extremism and unemployment, she told Al-Monitor. She also looks forward to sharing her experiences as a young leader in the national youth leadership program and talking about the role of the state in preparing future leaders. While many analysts agree that Egypts national youth leadership program is a commendable initiative as it helps young people develop leadership skills and encourages them to become more engaged in their communities, skeptics argue that the opportunity is only available to a select group of young Sisi supporters. Where are the young pro-reform activists who mobilized the public for the street protests and called for the downfall of the regime six years ago? Many of them are either in jail or living in exile. They are the ones who are capable of effecting real change. Without their participation, the youth conference will be just another talking shop, said Hossam Meneai, a young Egyptian filmmaker and activist who in February 2014 spent a short time in Sisis prisons on charges of spreading false news and threatening the stability of the state. Meneai has since left the country and now resides in Poland. Like many of Egypts young revolutionaries, he wont be attending the youth conference. November 2, 2017 Irans Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed the countrys parliament on the 2015 comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers. Araghchi, a former nuclear negotiator, said his report was a realistic portrayal of the both the economic openings and challenges encountered in the 21 months since the nuclear deal has been implemented. Araghchi said that the biggest challenge since the implementation of the deal has been Americas ill intentions. He added that while the nuclear deal states that all parties must implement the deal with good intentions, the United States has always tried to decrease Irans benefits from the deal. Araghchi said that this challenge was clear," both under the Barack Obama administration and the Donald Trump administration. However, he also said that under the Trump administration, the ill intentions, the breaking of pacts and even the violations of the nuclear deal have increased considerably. Araghchi said that the Foreign Ministry has provided a report to parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Commission on the breaking of pacts by the United States. As examples of some of these actions, Araghchi noted the Obama administrations visa restrictions on those who had traveled to Iran; the delays in issuing licenses for the selling of airplanes; the creating of cumbersome financial and banking regulations; the insistence on increasing non-nuclear sanctions; the increase in the number of Iranian nationals sanctioned; the violent and provocative comments by President Donald Trump; and unconventional diplomatic actions such as Americas Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haleys trip to Vienna to pressure the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding Irans adherence to the nuclear deal. The United States has also blocked scientific cooperation with Iran. According to Science magazine, the United States has prevented Irans participation in the multibillion-dollar fusion experiment in France. Araghchi said that Irans foreign minister and lead negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has written 10 letters to Federica Mogherini the European Unions top diplomat and a coordinator for the countries involved in the nuclear deal that describe the breaking of pacts and the delays by the United States. Araghchi viewed US actions in undermining the nuclear deal as an effort to compensate for signing what they viewed as a bad deal for themselves and a beneficial deal to Iran. However, according to Araghchi, this tactic and especially Trumps decision to not recertify the nuclear deal will lead to Americas isolation rather than Irans. He said that all of the other signatories to the nuclear deal, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, are opposed to US actions especially China and Russia. Despite complaints about the United States, Araghchi added that there have been positive benefits to the nuclear deal including the increase in the sale of oil, the opening of banking channels, and Iranian tankers that are now fully insured. Araghchi said that Iran is not relying on one single country and has also made forecasts for every possible scenario, and they are prepared for every situation. He said that US hostilities and bullying against Iran will continue, adding that Iran will not allow the United States to damage an international agreement that has had many advantages and benefits for them. November 2, 2017 The election of Sepanta Niknam, a Zoroastrian, as a city council member in the central Iranian town of Yazd has become the topic of hot debate on the countrys political stage. While the Guardian Council says religious minorities cannot be representatives of Muslim-majority constituencies, the administration of President Hassan Rouhani and the parliament think otherwise. It should be noted that Niknam has already served one full term as city councilor in Yazd from 2013-2017. However, following his re-election in the May 19 municipal polls, a defeated conservative candidate filed a complaint on the grounds of Niknam's religion, arguing that it was against Iran's constitution for a member of a religious minority to make decisions on behalf of the whole population of a Muslim-majority city. The complaint prompted the Court of Administrative Justice to issue an order suspending Niknams membership to the city council, basing its decision on an earlier letter by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the ultra-conservative head of the Guardian Council, which is the clerical body that vets candidates for elections. So where did the story begin? On April 15, about one month before Irans local and presidential elections, Jannati issued a directive demanding that non-Muslims be disqualified from running in the then-upcoming city and village council elections in localities where most of the population are Muslims. His order was met with different reactions from Irans political groups, with many voicing opposition to such a measure. However, since city council elections contrary to presidential and parliamentary polls are not supervised by the Guardian Council and a parliamentary delegation oversees the vetting of the candidates for these elections, Jannatis directive was never implemented. Thus, many religious minorities participated in the May 19 municipal vote and won, including Niknam. A few months later, on Oct. 9, Yazd City Council Chairman Gholamali Sefid said he had been ordered by the governor of Yazd to suspend Niknams membership to the city council in accordance with a ruling by the Court of Administrative Justice. However, Sefid announced his refusal to implement the order two days later, on Oct. 11, and insisted that he would resign from his post if the suspension was not revoked. Reformists strongly criticized the Guardian Council decision, calling it illegal. Many political figures asked that parliament step in and revoke Jannatis order. Even parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, himself a Principlist, opposed the decision. In a meeting with Yazd city councilors on Oct. 18, Larijani said, I said from the start that we do not approve of this method. In my talks with Ayatollah [Ahmad] Jannati, the honorable secretary of the Guardian Council, I emphasized that local councils should be handled according to the law. The Court of Administrative Justice getting involved in the matter has not been a timely move either, and I mentioned this point to the judiciary as well. Larijani added, If this matter is not resolved, we have no choice other than to refer it to the Expediency Council for a final resolution. Also on Oct. 18, Guardian Council spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei said that Jannatis ruling was unchangeable and its implementation mandatory: Anytime one of the Guardian Council jurists sees a measure that is against Islamic law [Sharia], he can step in and say so. Those who object to this have no knowledge of the laws and want to look at the issue from an expediency perspective. This was not the end of the story. On Oct. 24, hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, Irans former judiciary chief (1989-99) and a current member of the Guardian Council, announced that the jurists in the [Guardian] Council have unanimously voted for the suspension of Sepanta Niknam, the Zoroastrian member of the Yazd City Council. This is a decision that is lawful, in accordance with Islamic laws, definite and nonretractable. No one can revoke this law. He then warned that any attempts to overturn this ruling would be a fight against the principle of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which the establishment surely would not tolerate. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism are each allowed to have a representative in parliament. But what does the Iranian Constitution say about city councils? Based on Article 91 of the constitution, the Guardian Council is responsible for examining the compatibility of the legislation passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament) with Islam. However, Article 94 of the constitution sets a time frame for how long the Guardian Council has the liberty to comment on a piece of legislation. Based on this article, All legislation passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly must be sent to the Guardian Council. The Guardian Council must review it within a maximum of 10 days from its receipt with a view to ensuring its compatibility with the criteria of Islam and the constitution. If it finds the legislation incompatible, it will return it to the assembly for review. Otherwise, the legislation will be deemed enforceable. This is while city council elections were held on May 19, 2017, with results being announced a few days after. With rising controversy, the Rouhani administration was soon pulled into the issue as well. On Oct. 25, Shahindokht Molaverdi, the presidents special aide on citizens rights, said, There is no legal prohibition against Sepanta Niknams membership of the Yazd City Council neither from a citizens rights point of view nor in regard to any other law. Presidential adviser Hesamodin Ashna also criticized the measure on Oct. 26 through a post on his Telegram channel: Those who base Sepantas suspension on Islamic laws [Sharia] or legal reasons are now faced with a difficult challenge. They must clarify their position regarding the three-dimensional identity of Islamic, Republic, Iranian. The words and logic of some Guardian Council jurists, their legal and Sharia discussions have become too common. The quality and political approach adopted to deal with this phenomenon will determine the future of what [our] national identity means and the effectiveness of citizens rights in Iran. Now, while the Yazd City Council has issued a temporary leave of absence for Niknam, differences over whether or not he should be allowed to maintain his post in the council continue to remain in place with various political entities in Iran. November 2, 2017 A few days ago, I went to see the play "Herzl Said" at the Gesher Theater in Tel Aviv, produced to mark the birth of the State of Israel 70 years ago. The play is based on the utopian novel Altneuland ("Old New Land" in German) written by the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, some 120 years ago. In his book, Herzl envisioned Jews and Arabs coexisting and world leaders journeying to the country to learn about peace, tolerance, brotherhood and prosperity. Playwright Roi Chen brings Herzl back to life in 1949, shortly before his remains were brought from Austria, where he died in 1904, to be buried in the old new land (Israel). Herzl is disappointed by the religious nationalism he encounters in the Jewish state founded in 1948. He tries to convince the young Israelis he meets that if they wish, his vision of Jews and Arabs spending their vacations together on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and homosexuals being lovingly accepted by society would come true. As we know, political and social reality in Israel is turning his vision into a dream that comes true for few. Theres no telling what Lord Arthur Balfour would have said to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were he sitting at his side during the Nov. 2 dinner thrown in honor of the Israeli leader by British Prime Minister Theresa May. The event marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration that announced British support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. Judging by the op-ed penned this week by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who tried to imagine what his long-ago predecessor would have thought of the way things turned out, Balfour would not have taken part in the festivities. In the piece published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and the British Telegraph, Johnson noted that the man who 100 years ago sat under the same gilded ceiling stipulated in his declaration that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities, a caveat that has not been fully realized. In his op-ed, Johnson draws a straight line between the 1917 Balfour Declaration to a document compiled by a committee headed by another fellow Briton, Lord Robert Peel, in 1937. (The Peel Commission was appointed by the British government to investigate unrest among Palestinian Arabs and Jews in Palestine.) Johnson described it as a vision of two states for two people. He then fast-forwards to June 4, 1967 the Six-Day War pointing to the border that delineated Israel from the Kingdom of Jordan as the course along which the unfinished business of the Balfour Declaration can be completed. That unfinished business has cost the lives of thousands of Jews and Arabs to date. The violent Arab rejection of United Nations Resolution 181 of Nov. 29, 1947, on the creation of a Jewish state alongside an Arab one wrought a catastrophe for the Palestinian people and gouged deep wounds in the relationship with their Jewish neighbors. On Nov. 22, 1967, 50 years and 20 days after Balfour sent his famous letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, the UN Security Council tried its hand at completing the unfinished business, UN Security Council Resolution 242, that rules out the acquisition of territory by war and demands that Israel withdraw from territory it conquered to secure and recognizable borders, provided official recognition of Israels June 4, 1967, borders, which had until then only been recognized as a demarcation line. However, the Arab states refusal to recognize the State of Israel along with the growth of Palestinian terrorism, and Israels subsequent unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem and the settlement enterprise on which it embarked, once again took the wind out of the Balfour Declarations sails. Ten years after that fateful war (1977), as always in November, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic entrance into the Knesset chamber and provided another opportunity to end the Israeli-Arab conflict. The December 1988 decision by the Palestinian National Council to recognize Resolution 242 and put an end to the armed struggle pushed the door open even wider, but successive Israeli governments preferred to open the door to additional settlements instead. The attempt to change Israels priorities, which began with the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accord with the Palestinians, ended with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin two years later, on Nov. 4, 1995. Twelve years on (2007), once again in November, the Annapolis Conference on Middle East peace convened by President George W. Bush pumped new blood into Balfours vision. In talks held in the wake of the international conference at the famed Naval Academy campus in Maryland, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas succeeded in bridging significant gaps designed to enable realization of the two-state vision. Netanyahu, who took over from Olmert, spares no effort in wiping out any vestige of the Palestinians in the legacy of the Balfour Declaration. He has turned it from a small cornerstone for peace between two peoples into a giant bone of contention. Things went as far as Abbas demanding last year that the Arab League support a lawsuit against Britain, claiming that the Balfour Declaration had been handed to the Jewish people at the expense of his own people. The formula for ending the circle of violence begun with the Balfour Declaration has been in Israels court for 15 years. In March 2002, the Arab League summit decided to present Israel with a proposal recognizing its sovereignty over all the territory west of the 1967 line and to establish with it normal diplomatic relations. That same resolution (Arab Peace Initiative) adopted by the Arab leaders also stipulated that the solution of the Palestinian refugee problem would be based on UN Resolution 194, which Israel would also have to accept. In another historic move, Arab League representatives approved land swaps between Israel and the Palestinians in 2013. The Arab Peace Initiative, which has been ratified every year since 2002, doesnt fall short in its contribution to the Zionist enterprise of the letter sent 100 years ago by the British foreign secretary to Jewish philanthropist Rothschild. Yet it has never been accorded the honor of a special Knesset plenary session, nor was it ever brought up for debate in the government. Once the Balfour Declaration festivities are over, and after Netanyahu spends a weekend in London, he will return to his official residence on Jerusalems Balfour Street. On the street sign across from his house, the following sentence should be etched in bold letters: His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. After all, that is exactly what Herzl said. However, Herzl concluded his book with the words, If you do not will it, a dream it is and a dream it will stay. November 2, 2017 The seventh round of Syrian peace talks, held Oct. 30-31 in Astana, Kazakhstan, failed to produce meaningful agreements in practical terms. Not only that, but the participants final statements give the impression that Moscow is seeking to impose its own resolution of the Syrian conflict not as a moderator, but as a party seeking the long-term survival of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and securing it new legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. The Syrian opposition delegation, led by the Free Syrian Armys Ahmad Berri and represented by such factions as Jaish al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, the Sultan Murad Brigade and others, insisted that Assad comply with the cease-fire, especially in Eastern Ghouta; free prisoners of war and withdraw pro-Iranian Shiite militias from Syrian territory. In the runup to the Astana talks, Russian President Vladimir Putins special representative for Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, expressed hope that this round of the negotiations would make progress in freeing the captives and in humanitarian de-mining activities. Yet final documents on these very issues have never been adopted in Astana. Commenting on the results of the meeting, Lavrentyev said there will need to be additional talks between Damascus and the opposition to adopt the documents. In other words, the negotiators failed to agree on the main stated subjects. Yet as Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran Hossein Jaberi Ansari said, the issue of the prisoner swap has been on the agenda since the fourth round of talks. A source in Russian intelligence, which discreetly oversees the talks in Astana from the Russian side, told Al-Monitor, Over the course of the war in Syria, Damascus and the militant opposition have been independently clinching deals with one another on the release of prisoners, but neither party is willing to concede on this issue within the [more public] Astana forum, so as not to demonstrate weakness. Opposition member Fateh Hassoun said a potential swap was obstructed by the Assad regime and Tehran and asked Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who hosted the talks, to intervene in a future negotiation of humanitarian issues. A final joint statement by the mediating parties Russia, Iran and Turkey is barely different from the previous round's document. Probably the only difference is an agreement to hold an all-Syrian National Dialogue Congress. As Al-Monitor previously reported, Putin brought up the new Russian initiative on the Syrian conflict at a Valdai Discussion Club think-tank event Oct. 19. Initially, the congress was scheduled for Nov. 7-11 at the Russian Khmeimim air base in Syria. Later, the date and venue were changed to Nov. 18 at the Russian southern resort city of Sochi. Lavrentyev told RIA Novosti media that the location was changed for security reasons. The Russian Foreign Ministry first published a list of the 33 invited organizations political movements, parties and unions, including the ruling Baath Party, other Assad-loyal parties, Kurds, and militant and puppet opposition groups. Lavrentyev mentioned the main topics at the upcoming congress will include constitutional reforms and election preparation. He also didnt rule out that the issue of a government of national unity in Syria could be raised. According to the Russian envoy, Moscow believes the Syrians should determine a concrete timeline for parliamentary and presidential elections, but three to six months before this they would have to agree on and adopt a constitution. Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said the National Dialogue Congress is timely. Ahmad al-Jarba, leader of the Syrian opposition movement Tomorrow, which earlier mediated in Cairo between Moscow and the Syrian opposition, said that the presence of opposition forces in the Sochi congress is necessary to settle the political crisis and that the congress will endorse the Geneva talks. Representatives of other opposition groups who had said from the beginning they wouldnt attend the congress if it were held in Latakia, Syria, werent happy with the new venue, either. Mohammad Alloush, a member of the oppositions High Negotiations Committee and a senior official with Jaish al-Islam, said the congress amounts to a meeting between the regime and the regime. Yahya al-Aridi, an opposition spokesperson, called the congress a violation of international law and the previous agreements reached in Geneva. He added, The Astana process showed at one point that it was a misleading platform in that it devalued the Geneva format. We believe the Sochi congress follows the same pattern. Are the Syrian opposition concerns legitimate? To determine this, one needs to look at the list of those groups Russia wants to attend the congress. More than half of them are based in Damascus and by definition have ties with either Russian or Syrian intelligence services. This decorative opposition would be having an equal say with real rebel factions, while only echoing the interests of the current Syrian government. Lavrentyev took a hard line with the opposition. Noting opposition members reluctance to attend the Sochi congress, he said, They have to attend by default. He also said that if they demand preconditions for their participation, Moscow will see it as a sign of refusal to accept a helping hand stretched out to them in their pursuit of an exit from the Syrian crisis. Some Syrian opposition media interpreted the message to mean that those unwilling to come to Sochi will be marginalized, and that the congress is an attempt to reduce the UNs influence in negotiations as well. In addition, the National Coalition for the Revolution and Opposition in Turkey, which is associated with the High Negotiations Committee, said the Sochi congress is a Russian effort to circumvent the international desire for political transition in Syria, The Guardian reported Nov. 1. The coalition will not participate in any negotiations with the regime outside Geneva or without UN sponsorship, a coalition spokesman said, according to the newspaper. Such marginalization could indeed happen, given the view Moscow has of the situation in Eastern Ghouta. Russians characterize the state of affairs in the area as satisfactory, while blaming the occasional provocation on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and even Islamic State militants. Such attempts to publicly shield Damascus look ambiguous. Regime forces have been reluctant to make peace with a large and strong opposition enclave near Damascus and have been constantly attacking Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman which even pro-Syrian government forces recognize. UN representatives have long been pointing to the grave humanitarian situation in Eastern Ghouta. While humanitarian convoys were allowed into the territory shortly before the beginning of this round of the Astana talks, government shelling of the opposition positions continued during the negotiations. Therefore, the Syrian opposition has every reason to presume that Moscows new diplomatic initiative intends to put real and puppet opposition groups on an equal footing to strengthen the Assad regime. Its still unclear how success-emboldened Damascus which can barely agree with the opposition on releasing captives can agree on a new constitution within a few months. Its even more doubtful that it will be possible at this stage to hold elections in Syria without a strong hand guiding the outcome. The next negotiations are scheduled to take place in Astana in the second half of December. Hopefully, this format which, by and large, helped freeze the situation in western Syria will ultimately be built into the Geneva format with no alternative parallel platforms. The FASTags are to be fitted either by the manufacturer of the vehicle or its authorised dealer, as the case may be. By India Today Web Desk: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways issued a Gazette notification today making it compulsory for all four wheel motor vehicles to be sold on or after December 1 to have FASTags fitted on them. The FASTags are to be fitted either by the manufacturer of the vehicle or its authorised dealer, as the case may be. advertisement In an official statement, the ministry said in case of vehicles that are sold as drive away chassis without wind screen, FASTag will have to be fitted by the vehicle owner before it is registered. Necessary amendments have been made to the relevant sections of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989 in this regard, the statement added. FASTag is a programme rolled out by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) on toll plazas on the National Highways. FASTag consists of a device that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for making toll payments directly from the prepaid account linked to it. It is affixed on the windscreen of vehicles and enables people to drive through toll plazas without stopping. FASTag has a validity of 5 years and after purchasing it, the owner of a vehicle only needs to recharge (top up) it as per the requirement. FASTag offers near non-stop movement of vehicles through toll plazas and the convenience of cashless payment of toll fee with nation-wide inter-operable ETC services. A statement issued by the NHAI had said that beginning October 1, all lanes of its 371 toll plazas in the country will become FASTag enabled. One lane in every toll plaza will be a dedicated FASTag lane where no other form of payment will be accepted, it had said. FASTag results in ease of payment as there is no need to carry cash for the toll transactions. It saves time because there is near non-stop movement of vehicles leading to lower fuel cost. FASTag can be recharged online through credit card, debit card, NEFT, RTGS or net banking. SMS alerts are received for toll transactions and low balance. There is also an online portal for the customers. FASTag also has environmental, social and economic benefits. It reduces air pollution and use of paper. It also reduces toll payment hassles. It provides analytics for better highway management. Besides it reduces efforts in the management at toll plaza and central monitoring. In order to facilitate the availability of FASTags, NHAI has launched two mobile Apps - MyFASTag and FASTag Partner. --- ENDS --- advertisement November 2, 2017 The resignation of Ankaras eccentric mayor capped weeks of speculation and more city leaders are thought to be on their way out, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now suggesting the purge could spread to municipalities controlled by the main opposition party. Ankaras Melih Gokcek is one of six mayors from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) forced out by Erdogan since September as the president seeks to combat what he calls fatigue within the party. Previously, the government forcibly removed almost all of the 102 mayors belonging to the pro-Kurdish opposition, appointing unelected administrators in their stead. The ousters mean opposition mayors are mostly from Turkeys second-biggest party, the Republican Peoples Party (CHP). Other political parties mayors are not my responsibility, and they may not see a problem with mayors from their party. But that doesnt mean that these problematic municipalities wont face a legal or judicial intervention, Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Azerbaijan this week. Many problems at certain municipalities have come to my attention, he continued. Parties that want to solve the problems themselves will do what is necessary. Otherwise, the Interior Ministrys inspectors may have to act. All of the municipalities are already being examined and monitored. If anything is caught, an intervention will be carried out. The focus on municipalities, which enjoy considerable financial resources and administrative autonomy, is an attempt to distract voters from more pressing issues ahead of local, parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2019, wrote Etyen Mahcupyan, a former prime ministers adviser, in the pro-government Karar newspaper. With the current trajectory, the chances of [electoral] success on macro matters is very low. There is a retreat in the spheres of rights and freedoms and the Kurdish issue. Foreign policy is jammed and passive, despite efforts to depict otherwise in the media. All of the economic indicators are negative, other than an inflated growth rate and exports [rising] in line with the economic recovery in Europe. So there is a big benefit in the government distancing itself from important issues and reducing it to local issues, Mahcupyan said. Erdogan has pledged to renew the AKP, in power since 2002, after controversial constitutional changes narrowly passed in an April referendum, endowing Erdogan with extensive executive powers. Turks may also be weary of a state of emergency in place since a bungled military coup in July 2016. In the ensuing crackdown, more than 50,000 people have been jailed, about 110,000 people sacked from the civil and security forces and dozens of newspapers and nongovernmental organizations shuttered. The internal purge seems to be compounding the AKP's problems rather than solving them, Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey researcher at St. Lawrence University and a senior nonresident fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy, told Al-Monitor. The party has become too centered on Erdogan's own personality, his concerns, his whims. It has lost the diversity and, with it, the capacity to connect to the grass roots and raise new leadership. A more open, flexible party would be more adaptive and more capable of meeting local needs. More popular than his party, Erdogan appears ready to take such risks. A public opinion survey showed that 44% of Turks approve of the forced resignations some of which have been reportedly accompanied with threats of criminal investigations. In power since 1994, Gokceks tenure was marked by the destruction of swaths of the Turkish capitals architectural heritage, and he earned the dubious accolade of Turkeys leading conspiracy theorist for accusing the United States of engineering earthquakes and involvement in the failed coup. He won re-election for a fourth term in 2014 in a contest riddled with irregularities. News outlets reported Erdogan had threatened Gokcek with a corruption investigation before he stepped down on Oct. 28 on what he said were Erdogans orders. He was followed by Ahmet Edip Ugur, the Balikesir mayor who tearfully denied any wrongdoing when he quit Oct. 30. When your family, when pressure reaches all the way into your home, [when] there are interventions amounting to threats, the situation has gone beyond something I can endure, Ugur said. Ugur only agreed to leave after his wife was detained overnight by counterterrorism police, a CHP lawmaker alleged. Erdogan told reporters he was saddened by Ugurs remarks and denied knowledge of any threats against him. The Balikesir governor released a statement saying reports Ugurs wife had been detained were false. Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbas stepped down in September after his son-in-law was jailed on charges of funding the movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen and the AKP-dominated city council overrode his decisions. Now, Erdogans sights are trained on the CHP. Last week, a prosecutor opened an investigation into a CHP district mayor in the partys stronghold of Tekirdag who called the president a fascist dictator in a video widely shared on social media. Erdogan said he was compelled to take action to prevent others from casting such aspersions. Erdogan's instincts are demonstrably authoritarian. That shows in the way he is attempting to address these issues, Eissenstat said. But it also shows the extent to which he still sees himself as a democrat. He might rule as an authoritarian, but he still wants to win as a democrat. The question is whether he is willing to lose like one. And the answer to that, I think, is probably not. UPDATE: AT&T reached out with a correction of some of the information related to the average pay and benefits of the bargaining units employees presented in the original article. As per a company official: The employees in that bargaining unit currently average nearly $70,000 a year in pay and benefits, with some averaging over $115,000. Thats before taking into consideration our offer, which includes a lump sum payment, retroactive pay increases back to contract expiration in February, annual wage increases with more base pay and less at-risk for retail employees, job security provisions that are unheard of in the wireless industry, and comprehensive healthcare and retirement benefits. Compounded wage increase over the four-year term of the offer will be nearly 10%, and employees in wage progression may see an even greater total increase over the term of the offer. The original story is as follows. Advertisement AT&T has proposed another deal to its approximately 20,000 workers based in several federal states in the U.S. as part of a long-standing negotiation with employees in a bid to settle the discord between the two parties. According to new reports, the offer is supposed to encompass about 7 percent of AT&Ts employees, with the mobile network carrier indicating that the proposal is the ultimate offer it is presenting to those workers. Under the proposed deal, the Dallas, Texas-based telecommunications company would offer $70,000 in average pay and benefits to employees from across 36 states, though some higher positions could earn employees at least $115,000, including retroactive salary increases as far back as February of this year. Although the carrier stated that this offer is final as it is the only open contract on the table currently, AT&T remains open to further discussions with union representatives, which could mean the current offer might change once another talk between the company and its employees takes place. It remains unclear, though, how the workers union responds to the proposed deal or whether they are willing to renegotiate with AT&T regarding the settlement of the rift between them. The discord was triggered by AT&Ts practices of outsourcing its call center jobs to other countries where third-party companies are handling calls, leaving Americans in the United States jobless even as the company generates almost $1 billion in profits every month, according to the Communications Workers of America (CWA). In May of this year, AT&T workers across all divisions nationwide, some 37,000 of them, held a three-day strike after negotiations failed between the two entities regarding several issues that include offshoring and benefits. The strike includes employees from the companys wireless and wireline operations, as well as DIRECTV workers with the full support of CWA, which discussed terms of settlement with the AT&T management in behalf of the employees, though the talks resulted in clashing opinions, thus the strike. The strike led to the closures of hundreds of AT&T stores in major markets such as New York City and Los Angeles, among others, and it remains to be seen how the new deal could help settle the ongoing strife. Google has continued to expand the roster of supported languages for its Google Assistant by adding in some new languages to the list: Spanish and Italian. That means if you are residing in countries where Spanish is the mother tongue such as Spain or Mexico, or just being spoken casually like in the United States, you can now start speaking to Googles digital assistant by simply saying OK Google, play some music, for example. Meanwhile the Italian support for Google Assistant is available now in Italy, though it remains unknown whether the language support also applies to other territories where Italian is the native tongue. Eugene Chow, Program Manager for Google Assistant at the Mountain View, California-based search giant, said in a blog post published on Wednesday that the goal of the expansion for the language support is to help people perform and complete their tasks regardless of the language they use to speak through the aid of Google Assistant. Last April, Google announced that the Actions on Google platform for the Google Assistant and future connected devices that use the voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) companion was set to expand the language support from American English to other languages in the future. Then most recently, Google Assistant was officially launched in Italy where Android users are now able to speak to the digital assistant in Italian, ask queries and get a fluent Italian reply in return. The personal assistant has learned Italian after Google worked with native speakers in the country in an effort to collect numerous samples of Italian speech as part of the process of incorporating support for the Italian language to Google Assistant. Prior to that, at the end of 2016, the search giant made Google Assistant available in Hindi, which is the most widely-spoken language in India where Google is aiming to expand its user base in a major way. The language support for Spanish and Italian on Google Assistant is expected to hit Android devices that run the Android 6.0 Marshmallow version or higher over the next few weeks, so it pays to wait for the update to land on your device. The newly announced HTC U11 Plus is actually the original Google Pixel 2 XL codenamed Muskie which was scrapped by the Alphabet-owned company in June in favor of an LG Electronics-made alternative known as Taimen which ended up becoming todays Pixel 2 XL, The Verge reported on Thursday, citing an insider familiar with Google and HTCs recent collaboration. The Android flagship that the Taiwanese original equipment manufacturer announced some hours back wasnt as refined as it is now when presented to Google for approval earlier this year, but many of its core aspects including slimmer bezels, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner thats a rarity for HTC devices, stereo speakers, and a pressure-sensitive frame remained the same. HTC was presumably unwilling to have its research and development resources committed to Muskie go unused, which appears to have prompted the company to revise the device and launch it under its own brand. Apart from having a larger battery than the Pixel 2 XL, the U11 Plus also utilizes a traditional LCD panel over an LG-made POLED one, with their 6-inch diagonals, QHD+ resolutions, and 18:9 aspect ratios being the same. The cameras of the two phablets are also different, with the U11 Plus succeeding the imaging systems of the original U11 and the Pixel 2 XL and its smaller counterpart having new systems which were in part developed by Google. HTC didnt officially confirm that the U11 Plus is a repurposed Pixel 2 XL concept and almost certainly never well, though it remains to be seen how effective will the company be at continuing to innovate in the mobile space after it sold a significant portion of its engineering talent to Google. Many of the same people who designed both the Pixel 2 and the rejected Pixel 2 XL concept are set to change employers by early 2018, with Google paying $1.1 billion for that privilege and the sum also providing the company with the rights to use HTCs patent portfolio. The latest development sheds more light on the fate of Muskie and the complex Pixel 2 project that included three tech giants and numerous prototypes, having resulted in what are widely regarded as some of the best Android smartphones ever created. Taiwanese phone maker HTC just announced its two new additions to the U11 lineup, having officially unveiled the U11 Plus flagship and U11 Life mid-ranger. The actual availability details of the two devices are somewhat confusing and some limited information on the matter has so far been shared by several divisions of HTC, as well as Google. In terms of the high-end device, the HTC U11 Plus will become available for pre-orders in the United Kingdom on November 20th, starting at 699, or just over $925. The British unit of the company didnt elaborate whether both memory configurations of the handset will be live for advanced orders from that date, though it did state that only the Ceramic Black variant that can be seen above will initially be offered in the U.K. No firm release dates have yet been provided by the company, though its previous product launch patterns suggest that the U11 Plus should officially hit the market come early December, with HTCs pre-order periods usually lasting for around two weeks. The handset was also announced in Amazing Silver and Translucent Black, though its still unclear which markets will receive these two color options. HTCs German, Italian, French, Spanish, and Croatian websites are all already advertising the Android flagship, suggesting that it will eventually become available for purchase in those countries. The same goes for most other members of the European Union, as well as Switzerland and Norway, though neither the United States nor Canada is apparently set to be among the first to receive the U11 Plus, should that even happen. The press releases sent by the North American division of HTC earlier today contained no mention of the U11 Plus and were solely focused on the U11 Life, suggesting that the OEM is either planning to debut its new flagship in the U.S. and Canada at a later date or is skipping these two markets entirely for some reason. As for the prices in European countries, the figure revealed by HTC U.K. suggests that consumers across the Old Continent will likely be able to purchase the U11 Plus for around 800, though it remains to be seen how much will the ultra-premium version with more RAM and storage space cost. Two of South Koreas largest tech giants Samsung and LG are now said to be locked in a newfound competition to secure autonomous vehicle technologies. Reportedly, both companies have begun making new investments in various driverless car businesses in an attempt to secure and push forward the development of new technologies required for self-driving cars, and while Samsung appears to have a head start in this area, LG is reportedly looking into acquiring an Austrian automotive lighting system company with a 1 trillion won ($896 million) investment. The company made no official announcements in this regard, but nonetheless, industry watchers expect the competition between the two Korean tech giants to continue and intensify. According to a report from BusinessKorea citing anonymous industry sources, Samsung Catalyst which was funded by Samsung Strategy & Innovation Center in 2013, together with SoftBank Ventures Korea recently made a joint investment in Israeli startup Innoviz Technologies. The startup is building solid-state LiDAR systems for self-driving cars, a technology that is crucial for level three to five autonomous vehicles, giving them the ability to map their surroundings. LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and unlike conventional radars, it relies on sensors and a pulsed laser to determine the travel time between the targeted object and the sensor itself. Innoviz Technologies also reportedly raised a total of 91.43 billion won ($82 million) from Magna International Inc. and Delphi Automotive PLC, both of which are reportedly planning to supply sample units in January 2018 before pushing the LiDAR system into mass production beginning in 2019. In addition, Samsung in September announced an investment of 100 billion won ($89 million) in TTTech, a developer of autonomous/advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) based in Austria, shortly after establishing a 340 billion won ($300 million) Automotive Innovation Fund. Meanwhile, reports indicate that LG recently made a considerable investment in the United States, becoming one of the eleven companies to back the University of Michigans testing and research facility called Mcity, along with brands including General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Delphi, DENSO Corp. and Honda Motor Company. According to industry watchers, this move should place LG inside the Mcity Leadership Circle, which in turn should allow the company to intensify the exchange of autonomous technologies. Furthermore, a different report suggests that LG is looking into acquiring Austrian automotive lighting company ZKW Group with a trillion-won investment, though no official statements on the matter have yet been issued by the firm in any capacity. RHA has announced a number of new headphones over the last few months including a wireless version of the MA650 during IFA 2017. Following which, RHA has today announced a new version of the RHA MA650 designed with Android users in mind. These are the MA650a and are now available to buy online. In terms of the price, these headphones are designed to be an affordable option although the price does differ slightly depending on where the buyers is. Those based in the UK can expect to pay 49.95, while buyers in Europe will be liable for 59.95, and those in the US can pick these headphones up for $59.95. One of the key selling points with the RHA MA650 is that these headphones are designed to work specifically with Android devices. While these are wired headphones, the cable is where most of the Android functionality comes into play. As well as sporting a 3.5mm jack plug, the RHA MA650a also come with a control unit which is fully compatible with digital assistants. So not only does the control panel acts as a more convenient means of adjusting the volume, playing/pausing/skipping tracks, but the included microphone acts as the main Assistant-related control. In addition to providing support for hands-free calling as well. According to RHA, the included mic is capable of controlling the volume through an Assistant, as well as performing web searches and dictating text. As these are Android-wide compatible headphones, they are not specifically designed for Google Assistant and should work just as well with any Android-based digital Assistant. Assistant-support aside, the RHA MA650 line in general are headphones designed to perform as these headphones make use of a 380.1 custom dynamic driver which the company states is capable of performing across the frequency board and is in particular capable of delivering at the lower end. The listening experience is also said to be heightened due to the companys Aerophonic design which looks to channel sound to the listener. The general build quality is made up of high-grade 6063 aluminium coupled with a woven-style cable. Of course, while these are designed to work with Android, due to their 3.5mm connection, they are also usable with any device sporting a 3.5mm port, including laptops and tablets. Although those powered by Android and boosting Assistant capabilities will see a return in the number and quality of the features on offer. In either case, the RHA MA650a headphones are now available to buy directly from RHAs official store. Samsung China has initiated a beta testing for its proprietary Bixby Voice digital assistant in the Chinese language in an experiment that is set to wrap up by the end of November. As part of the beta testing, some 15,000 individuals were asked to join and take part in the beta testing in which they have to use Bixby Voice as their personal assistant constantly so that the artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital assistant will be able to advance its Chinese language learning. It should be pointed out, however, that while the experiment involves several participants who use Chinese as their native language, only those who use the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus or the Galaxy Note 8 licensed in mainland China are able to join the beta testing. Test participants are required to submit error reports while they are using Bixby Voice, and they encounter some sort of bug in the process. The South Korean original equipment manufacturer uses a gamification model to conduct the beta test in which participants can earn points by simply submitting feedback that helps to improve the digital assistant. Participants can get 10 points by just using Bixby Voice five times, and the amount of points are likely to increase as long as they use the digital assistant more often. If you are one of the participants of the test, you can keep track of your points by clicking on the Bixby button and sliding to the left of the display in order to open the Bixby home page and proceed to the My Bixby page. Loads of prizes await those who could provide the best feedback during the gamified test, including the Samsung Gear S3 Frontier One, Samsung Gear 360 and the Gear VR. The top 900 users who can accumulate the most number of points will be able to receive Samsung points amounting to 100 yuan, which is transferrable to payment cards. The beta testing for the Chinese version of Bixby Voice comes a few months after the Korean phone maker rolled out the digital assistant on a global scale, though the personal companion only supported the English and Korean languages at the time. Samsung, nonetheless, vowed to expand the language support for Bixby Voice, and the addition of the Chinese support marks the fulfillment of that promise, to some point, at the very least. In the first phase, 250 of 500 workers will leave Mumbai for Surat on November 5 and answer queries of voters during a door-to-door campaign. By Mustafa Shaikh: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leaving no stone unturned to win maximum support and sweep the Gujarat Assembly election. Over a month ahead of the Assembly election in the state, a team of 500 workers (mostly women) is all set to campaign in Surat. Workers are being trained to address and answer queries of voters during a door-to-door campaign. advertisement India Today attended one such brainstorming session carried out by BJP Minority Morcha vice-president Haider Azam at its Bandra office. In the first phase, 250 workers will leave Mumbai for Surat on November 5. "There are 12 Assembly seats in Surat. We are targeting constituencies with 25,000-50,000 Muslim voters. We will meet trustees of Madrasas to understand their issues and campaign at each booth," said Azam. One of the challenge can be the absence of Muslim candidates from the BJP list, but that has not hampered the morale of workers. "Seat distribution is decided by the parliamentary board. For a worker it is important that the party wins. We will campaign on issues related to education, employment, business and security for Muslims. Others are trying to deviate from these issues by focussing on topics like gau raksha. Our experience tells us that business of Muslims is doing well in Gujarat and the state is riot-free since the last 15 years," the Morcha president added. "We are encouraging people to show open support to parties. Our campaigns have been successful till now. We record issues of each constituency and give it to the candidate so that work is done to improvise on them," a worker from the Mahila Morcha of BJP said. ALSO WATCH | Gujarat Assembly polls: Ground report from Ahmedabad --- ENDS --- Its all about ballot boxes and well have to go back to the polls. Ballot boxes have always been the objective of the pro-independence camp, even when thousands of people were defending them on October 1 in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Well have to go back to the polls to send a crystal clear message that allows us to bring stability back to Catalonia and regain our institutions by listening to the voice of all the people. At some point we will need to analyse how we lost our home rule and we gained a symbolic declaration that was not magical, as few dared to say in public. We will continue to live through dark times. Spains judicial machine is on, implacable and humiliating As things stand today, the vote called by Madrid is an opportunity. In the meantime, we will continue to live through dark times. Spains judicial machine is on, implacable and humiliating. Two pacifists will remain in jail charged with sedition and the entire Catalan government has been summoned to answer to charges of rebellion, even though the only violence that we have seen has come from Spain and the far right. Part of the government is in Brussels while the rest holds meetings outside the Catalan administration, where no official business is conducted, to the impotence of many public employees who have loyally stood by the Generalitat for four decades. After years of conscientious, civic-minded rallying, the general public are entitled to some good sense and transparency. There is zero trust in the State, but we also need to rebuild confidence at home to continue supporting a long-term project for a better country, without improvisation and with dignity, at a time as dramatic as the one we are going through. By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: The ruling BJP has made the upcoming two-phase Gujarat election a matter of prestige. Party president Amit Shah, who hails from Gujarat, has launched 'Mission 150' and set a winning target of three-fourths of the 182 seats in the state Assembly. Shah has reiterated that when Narendra Modi was the Gujarat chief minister, the party had bagged 127 seats in 2002. Therefore, now when Modi is the prime minister, the party should garner 150 seats. advertisement On the other hand, principal opposition party the Congress has launched an offensive against its rival. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has taken the lead in seeking to puncture the BJP government's 'Gujarat model of development' by alleging joblessness and decelerating economic growth. 3 DECADES OF POWER STRUGGLE Having remained out of power for 27 years in the western state, the Congress' aim is to dislodge the BJP and establish its rule once again. The Congress had won the last election in 1985. It lost the March 1990 Assembly election fought under the then chief minister, Madhavsingh Solanki, father of the incumbent Gujarat Congress chief Bharatsinh Solanki. The BJP has been in power in Gujarat for almost 22 years now, since 1995. The party was out of power for a brief period of about 18 months when the state came under President's Rule in September 1996. It was followed by Shankersinh Vaghela splitting the party and forming government with Congress' support the same year. He was replaced with Dilipbhai Parikh in 1997. However, the 1998 election saw the return of the BJP under Keshubhai Patel. BJP'S REDUCING SEATS AND VOTE SHARE As against the Congress, the BJP has set an ambitious target of not just winning the state election but also registering an unprecedented victory. The BJP has won three consecutive Assembly elections under Modi's leadership. Modi took over as the Gujarat chief minister replacing Keshubhai Patel in October 2001. In the 2002 Assembly election, the party won 127 seats and garnered 49.8 per cent of the votes. It is the highest number of seats the party has ever won in the state. In the 2007 Assembly elections, fought again under Modi as the chief minister, the BJP won 117 seats. Besides the number of seats, BJP's vote share also saw marginal decrease to 49.1 per cent. In the last election fought under Modi as chief minister in 2012, both the BJP's seats and vote share reduced further. While the party won 115 seats, its vote share reduced to 47.85 per cent. Hence, between 2002 and 2012, which saw three Assembly elections, the BJP lost 12 seats and 1.95 per cent of vote share. advertisement CONGRESS' IMPROVING PERFORMANCE Though the Congress lost all the three Assembly elections since 2002 when Modi was the chief minister, the number of seats it has won has witnessed a steady increase. The vote share, however, has not followed a similar trend. But the party has succeeded in maintaining a base vote share of 38 per cent. In 2002, the Congress won 51 seats getting 39.3 per cent of votes polled. In 2007, the number of seats it won increased to 59. However, its vote share marginally decreased to 38 per cent. The 2012 election saw a further increase in the number of seats the Congress won. While it bagged 61 seats, it garnered 38.93 per cent of votes. As a result, between 2002 and 2012, the Congress increased its number of seats by 10. Though its vote share fell from 39.3 per cent in 2002 to 38 in 2007, it again rose to 38.93 in 2012. TRENDS Going by the trends, it should not be surprising if the BJP's seats and vote share reduce further and those of the Congress witness an increase. advertisement However, the BJP seeks to beat the trend by invoking 'Gujarati pride'. In the process, it also attempts at weathering the anti-incumbency following 22 years of rule. On the other hand, the Congress has launched an unprecedented offensive against the BJP with Rahul Gandhi taking the lead on the ground and on social media. It is giving a final push to ensure that its seats and vote share increase. As far as the electoral surveys are concerned, they indicate a win for the BJP. However, they too do not give 150 seats to it. In such a situation, it will not be a surprise if the BJP's seats slide further down from 115, which it had won in 2012. --- ENDS --- In the continuing saga of Berkshire Museums planned art sales through Sothebys, a second lawsuit and motion for an injunction (following close upon these) have today been filed by a new set of complainants in a different court. Both legal challenges, to my mind, fail a crucial testthe need to argue convincingly that the sales would violate explicitly stated donor intent. The museum this afternoon issued this press release regarding its reply to the first lawsuit, filed today. The press release essentially reiterates the museums previous justifications for its salesthat the board undertook an exhaustive, diligent and inclusive process to address urgent and serious financial challenges threatening the future of the museum by developing a new vision for the museum and funding to support that plan and that there are no restrictions on the works offered for sale. The museums brief also argues that only the Attorney General, not the plaintiffs in the lawsuits, has legal standing to challenge the sales. The complaint filed today in Massachusetts Superior Court Department of the Trial Court in Boston was drafted by art-law expert Nicholas ODonnell of Sullivan & Worcester, the Boston law firm. He represents James and Kristen Hatt, who are members of the museum, and Elizabeth Weinberg, who canceled her membership in response to the deaccession plans. ODonnells complaint is supplemented by expert affidavits from Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (who has previously weighed in on this controversy here), and Stephen Sheppard, economics professor at Williams College (who has previously found fault with the museums financial analysis). The other lawsuit, filed Oct. 20 in Pittsfield by Foley Hoag, the Boston law firm, holds a major trump card: The complainants include members of the family of Norman Rockwell, two of whose paintings, donated by the artist himself, are the star lots of Sothebys planned series of Berkshire Museum sales. But neither lawsuit includes what I regard as a crucial element for a successful legal (as distinguished from ethical) case: As Ive previously stated, I believe that the litigants would have to argue, with convincing evidence [emphasis added], that the sales would violate explicit donor intent. To qualify as convincing evidence, the no-sale stipulation ought to be in writing. The closest we get to that isnt good enough, in my opinion (and probably in the courts): Attached as an exhibit to the filing by the Rockwells and others is a Sept. 23, 1958 letter to Norman Rockwell from Stuart Henry, then director of the Berkshire Museum, which thanks the artist for donating Shuffletons Barber Shop. He states that the museum is delighted to have it for our permanent collection [emphasis added]: As the author of a Nov. 2, 2005 NY Times op-ed pieceFor Sale: Our Permanent Collectionand of a lengthy May 1990 ARTnews articleHow Permanent is the Permanent Collection? (no link)I am well aware that when it comes to a museums permanent collection, whats here today may be gone tomorrow. Even the staunchest defenders of museum ethics believe that there are legitimate reasons for disposing of permanent collection works, as enunciated by the Association of Art Museum Directors in its Policy on Deaccessioning. A thank-you note to a donor for giving a work to the permanent collection doesnt constitute a promise that it will remain there forever. Both lawsuits also argue that the planned sale would violate the 1871 state statute that established the Berkshire Athenaeum, forerunner to the Berkshire Museum. That statute, the litigants say, required that the Athenaeums objects be displayed in the state. Im guessing that reasonable lawyers will disagree on how ironclad those provisions were in the 19th century, let alone in 2017. Im also guessing that the 21 works withdrawn from the planned Sothebys sales may have been the ones acquired by the Athenaeum. According to the brief filed today by sale opponents, the Athenaeums property is explicitly restricted as follows: No part of such real and personal property, or such gifts, devises or bequests, shall ever be removed [emphasis added] from the town of Pittsfield. Does that mean nothing can be loaned to other museums exhibitions, even within the state? This stipulation is stringent to the point of absurdity. In any event, the museums brief argues that the statute doesnt restrict its right to sell property. On Tuesday, I asked the both the museum and Sothebys to explain what criteria were used for selecting the 19 works that are still destined for the Sothebys auctions. As yet, Ive received no reply. One of ODonnells chief arguments (in the words of his blog post on the lawsuit) is that the Berkshire Museums planned sale of the most important works of visual art in its collection was announced without any meaningful opportunity for its members or the community to participate in the decision or voice their concerns. While Im a big proponent of giving the museums constituents advance notice of possible deaccessions, thats not common practice. I dont think the argument will wash. In the end, I believe it will all come down to donor intent. The only way to pin that down would be to peruse the documents conveying to the museum each of the artworks targeted for sale. The person with the best shot of prying those loose from the registrars files is the Attorney General, who is still reviewing the situation. As reported Tuesday in the Berkshire Eagle, the AGs office has been seeking guidance from experts on the issue of donor intent. Dont get me wrong: I think that a museums using artworks as trading chips to reduce deficits, fund capital projects and increase the endowment is deplorable. But I think that the only way to force this issue, so that such proceeds are used only to enhance the collection (in accordance with established professional guidelines), is through the power of strong public opinion, an intervention by the Attorney General or, better yet, new laws or regulations such as what was enacted in 2011 in New York. The court hearings for both lawsuitsone in Pittsfield, one in Bostonare scheduled for Wednesday. Unless one is postponed, this should be an interesting logistical challenge for the museums and auction houses lawyers. On a personal note: Ill be traveling, not blogging, over the next few days. I may manage a few relevant tweets (which you will see in my blogs righthand column) or an update to this post, if needed. Amazon Gold Box Deals For November 2, 2017 The 7 Best Deals On Amazon Today 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. The holiday season is upon us, and we'll be here the whole time bringing you the best of Amazon's 1-day Gold Box deals. 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Thankfully, these takeout-style containers are perfectly sized for a hearty lunch, so you can cook ahead and stack these in the fridge before the workweek starts. They're also BPA free, making them microwave and dishwasher safe. $16.99 at Amazon.com Want to see the biggest sales and best deals beyond Amazon? How about exclusive coupon codes? The Acquire by AskMen newsletter collects all the best live deals and trending gear everyday and delivers them conveniently right to your inbox. Sign up today. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use. Congress leader K Raju was clicked walking into the Sardar Patel museum with footwear on while instructions outside the museum clearly stated that no footwear were allowed inside. By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: While both the Congress and BJP are claiming the legacy of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Congress leader K Raju ran into controversy when he walked into the Sardar Patel Museum in Bardoli with his footwear on. The Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel Museum is situated next to the Sardar Niwas in Bardoli. The museum has clear instructions written outside the premises that footwear must be removed before entering the museum. However, Raju not only entered the museum with his supporters with footwear on, but also got himself 'felicitated' in front of the bust of Patel again with his footwear. advertisement Both BJP and Congress has been engaged in a war of words on the legacy of India's first Home minister, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel. During Sardar Patel's birthday, BJP organised the 'Run for Unity'. PM Modi while addressing the crowd said that, "Some people tried to ensure the contribution of Sardar Patel is forgotten", clearly hinting at previous governments. Meanwhile, the Congress party has accused BJP of 'rewriting history' by marking the struggle of leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel as their own. --- ENDS --- Free newsletter Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole. Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer. Bird & Bird has announced a co-operative agreement with AllBright Law Offices in China, one of the countrys top 5 domestic law firms.The deal will give AllBright and its clients access to Bird & Birds 28 offices in 19 countries including Sydney and Singapore. It will also operate its first European representative office based in Bird & Birds London location.For Bird & Bird it means a stronger presence in the Chinese market with access to AllBrights 18 offices. It fits with the firms Asia Pacific expansion which has seen 5 offices open over the past decade with 5 co-op agreements."I am very excited to be working alongside AllBright as we evolve our presence in the Chinese market, said Justin Walkey, Chairman of Asia Pacific at Bird & Bird. We have a strong China platform and our new relationship with AllBright will allow our global network to support the many Chinese companies expanding out into other international markets."Latham & Watkins has added three partners to its practice in Spain including the former co-chair of DLA Piper.Juan Picon will assume the role of managing partner of the Madrid office and is joined by fellow corporate partners Ignacio Gomez-Sancha, and Jose Antonio Sanchez-Dafos. The three have worked closely together for years.The teams addition will build on Lathams marquee practice in Spain over the last decade with a focus on private equity funds, investment banks and international corporates.Keith C. Wetmore, former chair and chief executive partner of Morrison & Foerster has moved into legal recruiting.He is joining international legal profession recruiter Major, Lindsey & Africa in San Francisco to seek out the next generation of law firm talent."During my tenure, I hired over one hundred lateral partners and counselled hundreds of partners annually on their professional development," said Wetmore. "I'm looking forward to building on this passion as both a career consultant to lawyers and a strategic advisor to firms in my new role with Major, Lindsey & Africa." SUV HVAC TDI This seemingly extremely tight niche carved open by the Bavarians at BMW proved to be very successful, so the rest of the bunch had to scramble quickly and come up with their own models. Mercedes was first, but its comparable effort looked more like a makeshift solution: the GLE Coupe has the air of a mutant about it.Audi played the waiting game, and it looks as though it's going to pay off. There is still a lot we don't know about the Q8, Ingolstadt's new flagshipmodel, but based on what has transpired so far, it sounds like we're looking at a winner.That's because the sleeker SUV is based on the very competent Audi Q7 model. It could be argued that the one thing that kept the Q7 from being a great vehicle was its exterior design, and that's where the Q8 should score extra points. After all, that's what a sloping roof and a much more stylish rear end, as well as a bigger radiator grille do to a car's design.The 2019 Audi Q8 will lose some of its sibling's practicality, but unless you make a habit out of moving house every week and are too cheap to rent a truck, you'll probably never feel the trunk is smaller. We can't say the same thing about the taller persons sitting in the back, though - depending on the height and hairdo, some might be scraping the headliner.Based on the number of spy photographs of the 2019 Audi Q8 we've had, it's pretty clear the German manufacturer has been showing its testing phase a lot of attention. And why wouldn't it considering this is going to be the SUV equivalent of the A8 limousine?Thanks to all those spottings we know it is going to have the same taillight design as the new A7 (in that a light strip will run the entire width of the vehicle). We've also seen most of its dashboard and can safely say it'll use two central displays (one for infotainment and another for the more mundanefunctions) as well as the Audi Virtual Cockpit, which is fancy talk for a digital instrument cluster.The powertrains are expected to carry over from the Q7, with a few additions. We'll likely get a 3.0-liter V6s burning both gasoline and diesel, as well as a 4.0-liter V8unit on the SQ8 model. A hybrid system is also going to make its way on the production version of the Q8, but the one we'll all be waiting for is the RS version, which is supposed to receive a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 mill with at least 600 hp.That's because the Q8 doesn't share its platform with just the Q7, but also Lambo's upcoming Urus. We can't say if that's a compliment to the Audi or a millstone around the neck of the Lamborghini, but if the Bentley Bentayga can pull it off with being a redesigned Porsche Cayenne, why couldn't the Lamborghini Urus do the same? Instead of telling it as it actually is, the British division of the Japanese automaker argues that this decision will open a new chapter for Subaru. By that, Subaru actually means that it would rather use its limited funds to focus on new models, platform and powertrain technologies included. One of those models is a seven-seat utility vehicle , but thats a story for another time.It should be noted the go-faster Scooby will soldier on in other markets, including the U.S. and Japan, until the next generation of the WRX STI comes along in 2020 at the earliest . Priced at 33,995 and available to order, the WRX STI Final Edition is limited to 150 examples kitted with lots of goodies.Dubbed as the most capable WRX STI sold in the UK and a fitting tribute to its legacy, the Final Edition boasts electronic control of the Multi-Mode Drivers Control Center Differential. The 19-inch wheels house larger Brembo brakes with yellow-painted calipers, which Subaru argues they improve fade resistance, brake performance, and offer a consistent pedal feel under braking.The redesigned front bumper features a blacked-out lower grille and a large opening to help the turbocharged boxer engine keep cool. The C-shaped headlights flank the hexagonal grille, while the front doors feature Final Edition insignias. The cockpit, on the other hand, flaunts a numbered plaque.High-gloss black plastic inserts, heated body-hugging seats, red stitching, and red seatbelts round off the highlights of the Final Edition. From a technological standpoint, the multi-function display at the top of the dash is larger than before at 5.9 inches. The infotainment system, meanwhile, now includes DAB radio and a parking camera. First, the 301-mph top speed is mind-boggling by all accounts, more so when you bear in mind the $1.6 million Venom F5 is entitled to wear license plates. Converted to 484.4 kilometers per hour, the top speed is just as impressive as the way the Venom GT's successor accelerates to 249 mph (400 km/h) and breaks to naught. As per its maker, the Venom F5 needs less than 30 seconds.Made from carbon fiber, the twin-turbo V8-powered hypercar tips the scales at 2,950 pounds (1,338 kilograms). Drive is sent exclusively to the rear wheels by a 7-speed single-clutch paddle shift transmission, and the force-fed V8 is rated at more than 1,600 horsepower. Aerodynamics? The Venom F5 has some of those too, boasting a drag coefficient of Cd 0.33 thanks to active aero trickery."We've designed F5 to be timeless so that in 25 years it will still have a level of performance and design that will be unmatched," explains John Hennessey, founder and chief executive officer of Hennessey Performance Engineering. Similarly to the almighty Chiron , the F5 is also shod in specially developed Michelin Pilot Cup 2 rubber. But the Hennessey isnt limited like the Bugatti.Mr. Hennessey explains that tire technology isnt a limiting factor for the Venom F5 because the newcomer is far from close to the load specification of the Pilot Cup 2s at high speed. By comparison, the Chiron has a lot of heft to it, with the lightest specification coming in at 4,398 pounds (1,995 kilograms).Different from the Venom GT in every way imaginable, the Venom F5 was made possible with the help of technical partners Shell and Pennzoil. Hennessey plans to build 24 examples of the breed, which makes the F5 far rarer than the Chiron. Rick Perry speaks with Jim VandeHei and Chuck Todd at an Axios/NBC energy policy event Thursday morning in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chuck Kennedy / Axios Energy secretary Rick Perry joined an Axios/NBC event this morning, helping us drive the discussion about the administration's energy policy priorities in 2017. Perry told Axios' CEO and co-founder Jim VandeHei and NBC's Chuck Todd that he thinks climate change is real and humans "have an impact on it," but that "I still think the science is out on" whether humans cause 100% of it. Yes, but: The scientific consensus is that human activities have been the primary driver of the warming trend since the mid-20th century. On nuclear power: "It's zero emissionsAre we smart enough to deal with the waste? I think we are. That's a political issue." The reasoning behind revitalizing the coal industry: "If you can guarantee me that the wind's going to blow tomorrowthen I'll buy into that. But you can't...Our job is to make sure the electricity's on." About the future of energy: "The holy grail of energy may be in a national laband it's about battery storagebattery storage changes the world." On Puerto Rico response: "We were slow getting [electricity] back if we use Florida and Texas as your model," but Puerto Rico is different. The House GOP tax plan keeps the 39.6% tax-rate for the wealthiest Americans ($1 million income for married couples), caps the mortgage interest deduction for newly purchased homes at $500,000 (down from $1 million), and will allow only $10,000 of property tax to be deducted, according to a summary released this morning. Why it matters: Lawmakers are finally seeing the full details of the proposal this morning. Already some Republicans had expressed concerns and powerful lobbying groups like homebuilders had expressed opposition. What comes next: Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters this morning he expects an analysis of the bill from the Joint Committee on Taxation later today, but expects it will meet the goal of increasing the deficit by no more than $1.5 trillion. Other details: Individual taxes: Increases standard deduction from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals and $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples. Individual tax rate brackets:25 percent rate starting at $90,000 for married couples, $45,000 for individuals (everyone below that pays a 12 percent rate).35 percent rate starting at $260,000 for married couples, $200,000 for individuals.39.6 percent rate starting at $1 million for married couples, $500,000 for individuals. Expands the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $1,600 and provides a credit of $300 for each parent and non-child dependent. Makes no changes to deductions for charitable contributions. Elimination of student loan and medical expense deductions and the adoption tax credit. Doesn't change contribution rules for 401(k)s. Repeals the state and local tax deduction, but people can write off the cost of state and local property taxes up to $10,000. Repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax. Doubles the estate tax exemption immediately and repeals the tax in six years. Business taxes: Lowers corporate tax rate to 20% and lowers rate for pass-through entities (often small businesses that report taxes as individuals) to 25%. There are two approaches to pass-through guardrails. The simple approach allows businesses to classify 70 percent of income as wages and 30 percent as income. The second option allows business owners to have more income classified as business income, rather than wages. Interest deductibility capped at 30 percent of interest. International taxes: One-time tax on U.S. companies' repatriated foreign profits; 12 percent rate on cash and a 5 percent rate on illiquid investments, per the WSJ. Eight year repatriation payout. Go deeper: Sign up for Axios newsletters to get our Smart Brevity delivered to your inbox every morning. By PTI: By Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 2 (PTI) The White House said today it has not called for inclusion of Uzbekistan in the travel ban list, but did not rule this out altogether in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attack which was carried out by a legal immigrant from the Central Asian country. "That (travel ban) may be something thats looked at but that isnt something that we have called for at this time, but certainly havent ruled it out," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters during her daily news conference. advertisement Responding to a series of questions, Sanders defended the decision not to originally include Uzbekistan in the list of countries that are part of the travel ban. "Weve outlined multiple times before, those were determinations made by several factors. In large part, Congress helped play a role in determining a lot of those factors, in placing specific priorities on different countries. And that would be the reason that they werent a part of that," she said. "There are a lot of different criteria that the US uses to determine which country should be on there (in the list), and they havent been determined as one of the countries yet. But Im saying that hasnt been ruled out either, she added. In view of the terrorist attack by a legal immigrant who came to the United States through diversity visa, Sanders underscored the importance of extreme vetting. According to her, some of the specifics for extreme vetting may include enhancing the collection and review of biometric and biographical data and improving information sharing with partner nations and foreign law enforcement and intelligence services. Hours after the terrorist attack, Trump directed the Department of Homeland Security for "extreme vetting". Trump also supported the idea of sending the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, to Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention center. "He wasnt necessarily advocating for it, but he certainly would support it if he felt like that was the best move," Sanders said. But American Civil Liberties Union, opposed both extreme vetting and sending the terror suspect to Guantanamo. "Trumps reaction to the tragedy in New York represents a trifecta of unconstitutional and wrong-headed policies. His call for more extreme vetting and an end to the diversity visa program ? which will unfairly target Muslim and African immigrants ? would double down on his Muslim ban and anti- immigrant policies," said ACLU executive director Anthony D Romero. "Sending Saipov to Guantanamo or treating him as an enemy combatant would violate due process and the rule of law...Guantanamo was shown long ago to be an epic failure. Its a shame that Trump is using this attack as a platform for pushing his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim agenda," he said. advertisement Several lawmakers are supporting Trump on the issue. Congressman Mike Rogers said no amount of political correctness from Democrats and the liberal media elite will stop violent Islamic terrorists from trying to kill Americans. "The attack in New York City yesterday is evidence that everything President Trump is advocating for is exactly right and needed. We must have extreme vetting. We must reform our broken immigration system especially by getting rid of the visa lottery program and chain immigration. And we must secure our borders and that starts with building the wall. Words and feelings wont keep us safe. Actions will," Rogers said. Congressman Scott DesJarlais, said shocking it is that the country continues to ignore threats of Islamic terror. "Federal authorities were aware of the attackers terrorist connections, before he rammed his truck into a peaceful crowd," he said. "The Orlando and San Bernardino killers also displayed clear warning signs. But open-borders zealots and radical judges deny Americans our most basic right to security. Our refugee and immigration systems must reflect that priority. Extreme vetting and travel bans are common-sense, constitutional measures to protect the United States. Frequent attacks must not become a way of life," DesJarlais said. PTI LKJ CK --- ENDS --- advertisement Scientists have probed Egypt's mysterious Great Pyramid of Giza with tools of modern particle physics and say they have discovered a hidden "void" within its ancient walls. The large space is roughly 100 feet long and situated above the pyramid's Grand Gallery, according to a report published in the scientific journal Nature Thursday. Why it matters: The study suggests that modern advances in technology could lead to new discoveries and help create a better understanding of the ancient world even in well-studied places, like the Great Pyramid, built around 2500 B.C. and considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Context: Scientists involved in the study said this is the first significant internal structure found within the The Great Pyramid since the 19th century. But many archaeologists have questioned whether the discovery offers any new information, per the New York Times, arguing the void was likely empty space designed to prevent the structure from collapsing, as documented in the construction of the ancient monuments. "They found nothing," Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian government minister and head of the scientific committee appointed by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to review the work, told NYT, noting that such construction gaps were known for at least two decades. "This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero." Details of the study, per NPR: Mehdi Tayoubi, co-director of the ScanPyramids project, and his team investigated the pyramid using a type of imaging technique that involves muons subatomic particles that move through matter to see through into the structure. "We tried to do for the pyramid what a doctor can do with X-rays," he said. After uncovering the void, the team used two muon-detection methods to confirm their findings. "The good news is the void is there. Now we are sure that there is a void. We know that this void is big," says Tayoubi. "I don't know what it could be. I think it's now time for Egyptologists and specialists in ancient Egypt architecture to collaborate with us, to provide us with some hypotheses." What's next: Tayoubi said he's interested in whether small robots might be able to enter the newly-discovered chamber through tiny cracks or holes and provide more information. The skeletons of a chimpanzee (left), modern human (center) and neanderthal (right) on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Photo: Dima Gavrysh / AP The slow and steady migration of humans from Africa into Europe was enough to kill off the existing Neanderthal population there, according to a new study in Nature Communications. Why it matters: "For decades, modern human scientists assumed there must have been something wrong with the Neanderthals or something right with us that led to their extinction," the Washington Post reports. But researchers found that although natural selection may have had a role in the survival of modern humans, Neanderthals would have gone extinct regardless. "It's a subtle distinction but it's important," scientist Oren Kolodny told the Post. The backdrop: For a time, around 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals and humans co-existed in Europe. To figure out why humans survived but Neanderthals went extinct, researchers built a computer model of interactions between populations of the two species. The model showed that, in 12,000 years, the Neanderthal population became extinct, even without added factors of climate change or selective evolutionary advantages in humans. The Armenian government will amend its bill aimed at combatting domestic violence in response to criticism voiced by conservative members of the ruling Republican Party (HHK), Justice Minister Davit Harutiunian said on Wednesday. The bill drafted by Armenias Justice Ministry would introduce criminal and administrative liability for specific cases defined as domestic violence. It would also obligate the state to protect female victims by providing them with special shelters or banning their violent spouses from approaching them and even their children. The proposed legislation is strongly backed by womens rights groups campaigning for much tougher government action against the practice. But it has met with fierce resistance from some conservative groups and nationalist public figures. Several senior HHK figures have added their voiced to the criticism. Eduard Sharmazanov, a deputy parliament speaker and the HHK spokesman, demanded on Wednesday that the Justice Ministry revise provisions of the bill that contradict traditional Armenian family values. There are many contentious clauses that require explanations, he told reporters. Sharmazanov complained that the bill is vague on psychological violence and economic violence defined by it. Tell me, what is psychological violence? he asked. If my [underage] daughter or my son says that he or she wants to smoke and I dont let them do that, will they be able to say that my dad subjects me to psychological violence? Sharmazanov said the authors of the bill must also clarify who would be running the special shelters financed by the state. Harutiunian said, meanwhile, that some provisions of the draft law will be specified in order to address concerns voiced by the critics from the HHK and other groups. But he made clear that the amendments will not be significant. In that regard, the minister stressed the importance of making psychological violence in Armenian families an administrative or criminal offense. Successful countries are the ones which promptly react to psychological violence so that it does not escalate into physical violence, he said. A senior representative of the Armenian police called for the passage of the bill when she spoke at parliamentary hearings in Yerevan on October 17. The police recorded 3,571 cases of domestic violence from 2012-2016. According to the Yerevan-based Womens Resource Center, more than 50 Armenian women have been beaten to death and murdered otherwise by their husbands or other relatives in the last five years. The leadership of the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has held no discussions yet on who will be the countrys prime minister after President Serzh Sarkisians final term ends in April, Prime Minister Karen Karapetian said on Thursday. Karapetian also reiterated his desire to retain his post, saying that he has had more successes than failures since taking office in September last year. Sarkisian has still not clarified what he is planning to do after his decade-long presidency, which will be followed by Armenias transformation into a parliamentary republic. Two Yerevan newspapers claimed earlier this month that he and Karapetian have agreed that Sarkisian will become prime minister while Karapetian will take over as deputy prime minister in April. Karapetian denied those claims at a news conference. After April 9, the Republican Party of Armenia will propose the prime ministers candidacy together with its coalition partner [the Armenian Revolutionary Federation,] he said. We have had no such discussions. That is why it is simply fruitless to speak of any agreements. As regards Serzh Sarkisians reputation and rating as a guarantor of [national] security, as an experienced leader, I fully agree with those assertions, he added, referring to statements made by senior HHK figures. Asked about his own political future, Karapetian said: I have made it clear that I am ready [to remain prime minister.] Remember that? Im continuing my work, focusing on that work as much as I can. What do I want to do? It may sound a bit pretentious but [I want] to serve my country. And Im sure that we can definitely have a better country. The HHKs governing board headed by President Sarkisian gave a positive assessment of Karapetians one-year tenure in September. It said that his cabinet has sped up economic growth and attracted substantial investments in Armenia. The 54-year-old premier, who is the ruling partys first deputy chairman, spent most of his press conference defending his track record with statistical data and reform measures taken by his cabinet. He cited faster economic growth recorded in Armenia this year and stood by the government forecast that it will accelerate to 4.5 percent in 2018. Im sure that we are on the right track, he said. Karapetian also claimed that he is on course to fulfill his pledges to attract this year $850 million in funding for various business projects in the country. He said that nearly half of those investments were made in January-August. The figure includes investments from foreign and domestic entrepreneurs as well as government grants and loans to Armenian businesses, he said. Opposition politicians and other critics will dismiss Karapetians claims. They say that living standards in the country have not improved during his tenure. A senior diplomat reaffirmed on Thursday the Armenian governments intention to sign later this month an agreement aimed at significantly deepening Armenias relations with the European Union. As the president of the republic has stated, we are ready to sign the agreement in November, said Deputy Foreign Minister Karen Nazarian. Our colleagues from the European Union assure us that the process is moving forward according to plan. I just dont know what else can be said to allay existing concerns related to this issue, Nazarian told lawmakers in Yerevan. Johannes Hahn, the EU commissioner for European neighborhood policy, confirmed on October 27 that the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is due to be signed during or on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels scheduled for November 24. In an apparent reference to Russia, Hahn suggested that the EUs and Armenias neighbors do not object to the deal. Nazarian hailed the CEPA as an ambitious document that will boost not only political but also economic links between the EU and Armenia. The agreement also heralds a new period in commercial relations between Armenia and the EU, he said. It will contribute to closer economic cooperation by improving the business regulatory environment. It will also create opportunities for investments and new jobs. The 350-page agreement stipulates, among other things, that Armenia will gradually approximate its economic and financial regulations and policies to those of the European Union, as appropriate. Yerevan will regularly report to Brussels on the progress made with regard to approximation specified by several annexes to the agreement. This regulatory harmonization would cover business regulation, agriculture, transport, environment, consumer protection and even energy. 2 November 2017 15:17 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Shopkeepers in Armenia periodically face different challenges in doing business, which eventually leads to protests in Yerevan and other cities of the country. Another such protest took place in front of the Armenian Parliament early this week. Shopkeepers of the Arinj and Surmalu shopping centers demanded from the authorities to amend the Tax Code and free them from unnecessary paperwork, which is an additional tax burden. The protesters noted that they do not avoid paying taxes, but now their burden will increase. As the merchants noted, the tax service employees demand from them to provide a document on the movement of each imported good. This is unnecessary red tape that requires involvement of additional workforce. I need to transport goods from my warehouse to my sales point, or deliver them to the warehouse, and I have to spend eight hours to register all of this. I am tired, I beg you, let an employee from the government come and work with us all day, let him register every transported goods, protester Karine Gevorgyan said. We want the paperwork to be reduced, we have to keep a separate employee to count each product. They want to keep us under control every minute, she added. This is not the first mass protest of Armenian merchants. During the April protests in front of the Government and Parliament buildings, the protesters claimed that the Armenian tax authorities terrorized them by carrying out inspections at their shops and demanding their documents or bribes. Last year, the traders demanded lower rents as they were not able to pay at the rates that the Armenian authorities established. Under the current economic conditions, Armenian government had better not to impede the doing business, but on the contrary, to motivate entrepreneurs, in order to reap the benefits for the Armenian economy as a whole. However, it seems that the Armenian government aims to completely destroy the countrys economy. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 10:05 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 62 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on November 2. 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. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 17:20 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Armenian armed forces located on nameless heights of the Berd district opened fire at Garalar village of Azerbaijans Tovuz district at 12:30 (UTC+4) on November 2, said the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry in a message. The message says that Armenians were using heavy weapons. Immediate measures were taken by units of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in order to prevent the expansion of scope of the provocation, said the ministry. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 10:38 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway project is the restoration of the ancient Silk Road, Azerbaijans Deputy Prime Minister Abid Sharifov said on November 1. He made the remarks in Baku at an event dedicated to the 94th anniversary of Turkeys independence. Sharifov noted that the BTK railway will make it easier for a number of countries to enter world markets and increase the volume of traffic between Europe and Asia. Touching upon Azerbaijani-Turkish relations, he said that the two countries have great potential for cooperation. Turkey always supports the Azerbaijani people on the main problem of our country, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he noted. Currently, cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey is developing in all spheres. I want to note the sixth meeting of the Azerbaijan-Turkey High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council, held yesterday in Baku. A number of important documents were signed during the meeting. It once again shows that Azerbaijani-Turkish relations have great potential, Sharifov added. The sixth meeting of the Azerbaijan-Turkey High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council was held on October 31 with the participation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 12:00 (UTC+04:00) By Trend A business forum titled Role of Private Sector in Commercialization and Development of Science will be held in Azerbaijan on March 1-2, President of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Akif Alizadeh has told a Presidium meeting in Baku. The forum will be held with joint organizational support of the National Academy of Sciences, Azerbaijans Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication, and the American Chamber of Commerce. The purpose of holding the forum is to expand business activities of scientific institutions of the National Academy of Sciences and develop science. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz By PTI: (Eds: Updating with background) Dhaka, Nov 2 (PTI) The Hindu chief of newly-launched Bangladesh Janata Party (BJP) representing minority communities in the Muslim-majority country has gone missing, his family claimed. Mithun Chowdhury and another leader of the party, Ashik Gosh Asit, are missing since October 27 night, Chowdhurys wife Sumona claimed at a press conference yesterday. advertisement She alleged that the two were picked up by some men in civilian clothes who introduced them as members of a law enforcement agency from Dhaka city?s Farashganj area at mid- night, prominent Bangla daily Prothom Alo reported. She sought intervention of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the home minister in ensuring her husbands safe return. "I want my husband back. At the very least, I want to know where he is taken to,? Sumana said. She alleged that the local police station did not register a general diary when she went to complain about abduction of her husband and the party leader. However, the office-in-charge of the Sutrapur police station, K M Ashraf Uddin, denied allegation that the police did not receive the complaint. ?None from the family came to us,? he was quoted as saying by the daily. Chowdhury, 42, launched the Bangladesh Janata Party (BJP) on September 20 to represent non-Muslims in Bangladesh. Chowdhury, also president of Hindu-Buddhist-Christian- Adibasi Party, led the process of floating the party bringing 50 different organisations under the BJP banner. At the launch of the party, he had claimed that his party has been formed with the blessing of Bharatiya Janata Party, local media had reported. He had said that his party would not be involved in any sort of religion-centric politics; rather, it would work on national issues. He had also claimed that his party was going to be a major political force of Bangladesh in the future. Bangladesh has seen a string of brutal attacks on minorities and secular activists by Islamists. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh in recent months targeting minorities, secular bloggers, intellectuals and foreigners. PTI PMS AKJ PMS --- ENDS --- 2 November 2017 11:43 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The opening of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway once again demonstrated to what extent Azerbaijans geopolitical position strengthened in the international arena, said President of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Akif Alizadeh. He made the remarks at a Presidium meeting on November 1. Alizadeh noted that the BTK project provides access to Europe and the Silk Road route for Azerbaijan. The BTK railways opening is a grandiose historic event. This is one of Azerbaijans biggest victories in the 21st century, he said. The official opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was held in Baku Oct.30. The BTK railway was constructed on the basis a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. The railways peak capacity will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At an initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 10:13 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations addressed a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in pursuant to the The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, Protracted conflicts in the GUAM area and their implications for international peace, security and development, The rule of law at the national and international levels and other relevant agenda items of the 72nd session of General Assembly. In the letter, Armenias policy of aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan and its consequences, international legal responsibility of Armenia for wrongful acts, resolutions and decisions of UN Security Council and other international organizations, as well as humanitarian and other aspects of the conflict, illegal economic and other activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and third party responsibility for such actions with fundamental facts were explained in detailed manner and in this context, groundlessness of Armenias assertions was exposed once again. The letter was circulated as the document of UN Security Council and General Assembly (A72/508-S/2017/836). The full text of the letter in two UN official languages (English/Russian) can be accessed here. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 12:31 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Armenias destroying ancient religious and cultural monuments, belonging to the Islamic world, in the occupied Azerbaijani lands is unacceptable, said Deputy Chairman of Pakistani Senate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri. He was addressing a meeting with Azerbaijan's Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Alizade, Azerbaijani Embassy in Pakistan told Trend. At the meeting, it was noted that the support of Pakistani Senates Committee for Foreign Affairs for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, its recognition of the Khojaly genocide and acceptance of resolutions demanding immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories are highly appreciated by Azerbaijan. Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri said that Pakistan considers Azerbaijan a fraternal country, and noted the importance of strengthening unity and cooperation among Islamic countries, adding a perfect example of this is the Pakistani-Azerbaijani relations. The sides also exchanged views on the organization of high-level mutual visits, as well as expansion of cooperation in economic and humanitarian spheres. 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. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 12:46 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations has addressed a letter to the Secretary General of the organization on Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The letter was sent in accordance with The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, Protracted conflicts in the GUAM area and their implications for international peace, security and development, The rule of law at the national and international levels and other relevant agenda items of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly. The letter explained in detail the consequences of Armenias policy of aggression and occupation against Azerbaijan, international legal responsibility of Armenia for wrongful acts, resolutions and decisions of the UN Security Council and other international organizations in connection with the conflict. The letter also exposed humanitarian and other aspects of the conflict, illegal economic and other activities in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan and third party responsibility for such actions, as well as the groundlessness of Armenias claims. The letter numbered A/72/508-S/2017/836 was circulated as the document of UN General Assembly and Security Council. 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. Until now, 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. --- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 13:33 (UTC+04:00) By Trend A meeting of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs with Azerbaijans foreign minister will be held in Moscow on November 16. FM Elmar Mammadyarov himself made the announcement at a joint press conference with his Montenegrin counterpart Srdjan Darmanovic in Baku. According to the instructions of the head of state, we try to intensify the negotiation process. We are currently studying this issue, he noted. Mammadyarov said that at the last meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents, it was decided to intensify the negotiations. Of course, it is necessary to first intensify them at the level of foreign ministers. This is why the co-chairs contacted our and Armenian sides, and we set the meeting time, 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. Story still developing --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 13:37 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) always supports Azerbaijan's fair position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said OIC Secretary General Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen. He made the remarks in Jeddah at a meeting with Mubariz Gurbanli, chairman of Azerbaijans State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, the State Committees press service said on November 2. Story still developing --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 17:58 (UTC+04:00) By Rashid Shirinov The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) always supports Azerbaijans just position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said OIC Secretary General Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen. He made the remarks in Jeddah at a meeting with Mubariz Gurbanli, Chairman of Azerbaijans State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations, the Committee reported on November 2. During the meeting, the sides noted the high level of relations between Azerbaijan and OIC, held a wide exchange of views on expanding cooperation and other issues of mutual interest. Gurbanli noted that Azerbaijan as a member of the OIC is distinguished by its initiative, always fulfills its obligations and conducts work in accordance with the principles of the organization. He also stressed that in all international organizations where Azerbaijan is represented, the country protects both its own state interests, and the Islamic culture, and the common interests of the Islamic world. The head of the State Committee further said that Azerbaijans experience in the relations between the state and religion can serve as an example for other countries. Gurbanli also noted that representatives of all religions live in peace and tranquility in Azerbaijan, and the country contributes to interreligious dialogue and deepened partnership. Noting that this year was declared the Year of Islamic Solidarity in Azerbaijan, Gurbanli informed Al-Othaimeen about numerous activities that the State Committee and the Caucasian Muslims Office held and to be carried out in future, both in Azerbaijan and internationally. In this context, the head of the State Committee invited Al-Othaimeen to the final international conference to be held in December. OIC Secretary General, in turn, remembered his visit to Azerbaijan in May this year, and stressed the unambiguous and unchanging position of the OIC on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that the organization always supports Azerbaijan's fair position in this issue. The head of OIC also noted that the growth of Islamophobic trends in the world is troubling the Islamic states, and stressed in this regard the importance for Muslim states to work in a single direction. -- Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 1 November 2017 21:00 (UTC+04:00) By Trend The increase in trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Russia indicates to the restoration of our economies, said President Ilham Aliyev at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on November 1. We have met several times this year and our meetings always lead to good results, because we give new momentum to the development of relations. We are very delighted that in the economic sphere, the trade turnover is increasing after certain complex processes, said President Aliyev. This indicates that there is great mutual interest between business entities, and the increase in trade turnover is an indication of the recovery of our economies, the mutual interest. President Aliyev said Azerbaijans relations with Russia are of strategic nature. He noted that Azerbaijan and Russia cooperate in all spheres humanitarian, economic, energy, transportation, military and technical. He expressed satisfaction that todays meeting took place as part of the trilateral summit, which is a very important event of global scale. This cooperation is based on deep historical roots, mutual interests of the two countries on international arena, and mutual support, said the Azerbaijani president. The head of state expressed confidence that the important issues, to be discussed at the trilateral summit, will give a new impetus to the strengthening of relations. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 10:20 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran and Baku are determined to strengthen and deepen bilateral ties and cooperation. At a meeting with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in Tehran on November 1, Rouhani pointed to trilateral cooperation between Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia, saying that Tehran and Baku have demonstrated a proper pattern for bilateral and regional cooperation, Iranian presidential website reported. Saying that the ties between Tehran and Baku have been growing over the recent years, he called for further expansion of relations between the two countries. President Rouhani further touched upon cooperation between the two countries in transportation and described the inauguration of the Astara (Iran)-Astara (Azerbaijan) railway as a significant step in bilateral ties. Rouhani also spoke about the significance of the issue of using national currencies in bilateral trade, adding the central banks of the two countries are capable of carrying out bilateral trade through national currencies. Speaking about regional developments, the Iranian president highlighted the need to establish peace in Syria and Yemen through diplomatic talks. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 10:21 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan should coordinate their efforts in the production of hydrocarbons. Russian President Vladimir Putin made the remark at a press conference following the results of a trilateral meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Iranian President Hassan Ruhani in Tehran on November 1. "Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan are major producers of hydrocarbons. But this does not mean that we must compete, this means that we must coordinate our efforts," said Putin. He noted that coordination of actions within the framework of OPEC has already yielded positive results. "This would not be possible if the countries that are not members of the cartel did not join this work. The same goes for the Organization of Gas Producers. We also cooperate here and will continue to cooperate, "Putin said. Putin also stressed that Russia confirms its readiness to supply gas through the pipeline transport systems of Azerbaijan to the north of Iran, which may be economically expedient for the partners. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz After Honeypreet, Vipassana Insan is likely to be arrested by Haryana police soon in connection with Panchkula violence, in which more than 30 people were killed. By Manjeet Sehgal: Dera Sacha Sauda chairperson Vipassana Insan is likely to be arrested, sources in Haryana Police said, in connection with Panchkula violence following conviction of Sirsa-based sect's chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim in a rape case. His close confidante Honeypreet has already been arrested on the charges of hatching conspiracy to incite violence in Panchkula in August. Police sources said that Vipassana would be arrested for hiding information and faking her illness to avoid police questioning. Vipassana reportedly told police during questioning that she was not present in the August 17 meeting at Sirsa headquarters of Dera Sacha Sauda. advertisement The meeting was chaired by Honeypreet. Police investigation has now revealed that Vipassana was present in the meeting where the decision had been taken to ask the followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim to gather at Panchkula on the day of pronouncement of verdict by the CBI special court in the case of rape and sexual exploitation of two former sadhvis. It had been decided at the meeting, according to police sources, that if Gurmeet Ram Rahim was acquitted in the 15-year-old case, they would conduct a satsang at a park in Panchkula. But, in the event of his conviction, associates of Gurmeet Ram Rahim including Honeypreet and Vipassana decided that the followers would be instigated to create troubles. THE 'CONSPIRACY' MEETING While Vipassana denied having attended such a meeting, the police found that the location of her mobile phones matched with those of Honeypreet, fugitive Dr Aditya Insan and 20 others. They all are now suspected to have played a part in Panchkula violence. The police have not revealed the names of all Dera functionaries present in the meeting saying that investigation is still on. But, the sources said that police have conclusive evidence to prove that Vipassana Insan attended the meeting. Around two dozen top Dera functionaries attended the meeting, where they were entrusted with specific tasks to carry out depending on the verdict of the Panchkula CBI court on August 25. Names of Panchkula Dera in-charge Chamkaur Singh and Dr Aditya have also cropped up as functionaries responsible for inciting violence, in which more than 30 people lost their lives in the city. Police sources have also confirmed that the "deployment" of supporters was also vetted by the top Dera gang members, who wore provided with guide maps of important Panchkula locations where the concentration of the followers was higher. VIPASSANA IN PECULIAR SITUATION The Haryana police want to present Vipassana Insan as approver to nail Gurmeet Ram Rahim, Honeypreet and their Dera empire. Sources say that if Vipassana agrees to turn approver, she may be saved from arrest. But, the officials are worried that if she turns approver, the Dera "goons" may target her for challenging the empire of Gurmeet Ram Rahim. advertisement The new caretaker team of Dera, Jasmeet Insan and Gurdas Salwara are also apprehensive about Vipassana Insan's arrest. At a meeting held on Tuesday inside Dera headquareters at Sirsa, Jasmeet would take the position of caretaker in case Vipassana Insan is arrested by police. VIPASSANA AS CUNNING AS HONEYPREET? Vipassana may have feigned ignorance about the wrongdoings of Dera Sacha Sauda chief and Honeypreet Insan but police investigation has exposed her role in the entire episode. The police believe that Vipassana Insan had full knowledge about the cash, properties and valuables. She used to sign cheques on the directions of Honeypreet Insan. She had also knowledge about the controversial August 17 meeting but gave confusing answers to Panchkula police during her questioning on October 13. Police investigations have also revealed that Vipassana helped Honeypreet reach Sirsa from Rohtak on August 25. Police sources said that Vipassana was aware about Honeypreet breaking the biometric locks of Dera offices including the controversial cave. Honeypreet Insan is suspected to have decamped with cash, jewellery and others valuables from Dera on August 28 before going underground. ARREST SOON? Haryana police will now examine the medical certificates submitted by Vipassana Insan, who repeated avoided questioning claiming that she was unwell. Vipassana had been summoned by the police at least five times, but she appeared before them only twice. She produced medical certificates for her illness for October 10, 12 and 16. advertisement Vipassana Insan is likely to be questioned by Haryana police in Sirsa soon. Sources said that she would be questioned in connection with August 25 violence and for allegedly faking illness and helping Honeypreet Insan escape. --- ENDS --- 2 November 2017 10:28 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Iranian President Hassan Rouhani addressing a joint press conference with Russian and Azerbaijani counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev, expressed hope for further expansion of multilateral ties. He thanked Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin for attending the trilateral summit in Tehran and added that the next round of the trilateral meeting between the three countries will be held in Russia. Briefing journalists about the details of todays trilateral talks, he said the sides discussed economic issues of the three countries as well as regional issues, including the issue of establishing peace and security in Syria and fight against terrorism. Highlighting friendly ties between the three nations, the Iranian president said the transit route between Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia will connect Asia to Europe. Speaking about the North-South transportation corridor, he said Irans southern port city of Bandar-e Abbas will be connected to Helsinki through Azerbaijan and Russia. He added that the sides have decided to facilitate the economic ties between the three countries. Calling for facilitation of economic cooperation, he stressed on the use of national currencies in trade transactions between the three countries. He added that there are various opportunities in fields of energy for trilateral cooperation. Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran trilateral meeting was held in Tehran with participation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on November 1. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 12:15 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Turkeys Ombudsman Office intends to establish an Association of Ombudsmen of Turkic-Speaking Countries, the Turkish media outlets report. The decision to establish the Association was adopted following consultations with Azerbaijans Ombudsman Office. In this regard, it is planned to hold a meeting with ombudsmen of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in late 2017. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 11:26 (UTC+04:00) By Trend Iraq called on Turkey to help in restoring the infrastructure of the cities liberated from the control of the Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS or Daesh), the Iraqi media reported on November 2. Reportedly, Iraq needs investments in the amount of $100 billion in order to restore infrastructure in the cities liberated from the IS. It is also reported that Iraq is ready to hand over to Turkey the contracts for construction of schools, educational institutions, as well as hospitals in the liberated cities. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey is ready to support Iraq in restoration of infrastructure in the cities liberated from the IS. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 11:57 (UTC+04:00) By Rufiz Hafizoglu/ Trend Radical Islamic currents in the Arab world mainly appeared after the Islamic revolution in Iran as a defense mechanism against the spread of the revolution. In late October, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman stressed that an end will be put to all radical currents soon and Saudi Arabia will return to moderate Islam. Following the Saudi princes statement, a number of Arab media outlets wrote that women will be allowed not to wear a headdress in the new city of Neom, envisaged in the Saudi Vision 2030. However, the Saudi authorities neither confirmed nor denied this information. Turkey perceived the Saudi princes statement about "moderate Islam" ambiguously. For example, Ravza Kan, member of the foreign policy commission of the Turkish parliament and the ruling Justice and Development Party, said that Islam does not need moderation. "For the first time the term "moderate Islam" was used by leader of the Gulen movement (FETO), Fethullah Gulen," she said. The "moderate Islam" project is mainly directed against Iran and no matter how the Saudi prince tried to introduce the concept, there are many obstacles to its implementation. First, the use of the term "moderate Islam" testifies to Saudi Arabias recognition of the fact that it was an adherent of "radical Islam". Secondly, Islamic currents and teachings which are beyond Salafism are considered in Saudi Arabia beyond Islam. Thirdly, how will the relations between Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran develop after "moderate Islam" as according to Salafi teachings, Shia Islam is considered to be beyond Islam? Moreover, if Saudi Arabia with "moderate Islam" is open to all religions of the world, then what will be the further status of Mecca and Medina cities, to which only Muslims are allowed? "Moderate Islam" in Saudi Arabia also means the beginning of a revival of Arab nationalism. Meanwhile, in August 2017, Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr visited Saudi Arabia. During the visit, al-Sadr met with the Saudi prince. Although al-Sadrs visit to Saudi Arabia was not greatly covered by media, the visit was important, given a number of anti-Iranian statements made by al-Sadr. For example, al-Sadr always urged the Iranian authorities not to interfere in Iraqs internal affairs. Despite Iran is also an ideological center for Shia Arabs, there is a number of disagreements between Arab Shia Muslims and Iranian Shia Muslims. These differences are mainly related to ethnicity. Undoubtedly, if Saudi Arabia returns to "moderate Islam", this will lead to an ideological split among the Salafis and will give an impetus to new growth of radicalism. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 14:12 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Uzbekistan and the United States might cooperate more closely in the sphere of agriculture. Uzbekistan is interested in intensive resource saving technologies of the U.S. in agriculture, as well as in development of bilateral cooperation in the field of selection of new crops and protection of plants and animals from dangerous diseases, a source in the Uzbek Embassy to the U.S. said in a statement, Trend reported. These issues were discussed by Uzbek delegation in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to the source. Representatives of the Uzbek Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources visited the U.S. on October 23-November 1. During the meeting, the sides also discussed cooperation in the field of innovative and applied agricultural science. Uzbekistan's economy depends heavily on agricultural production. Last year the volume of gross agricultural production in Uzbekistan reached 47.4 trillion soums. As of January 1, 2017, the number of operating farms exceeded 132,000 and dekhkan farms - 4.7 million. In total, 8.2 million tons of grain, 2.9 million tons of potatoes, 11.2 million tons of vegetables, over 3 million tons of fruits and berries, 1.7 million tons of grapes, 2 million tons of melons and 2.9 million tons of raw cotton were produced in the country last year. Because of the risks associated with a one-crop economy as well as from considerations of food security for the population, Uzbekistan has been trying to diversify its production of other agricultural products, while reducing cotton production. During the visit, the Uzbek representatives attended the universities of Michigan and Ohio, where the delegation got acquainted with the information and consulting centers of the universities, their educational programs, and the scientific base. The University of Michigan signed a memorandum of understanding with Tashkent State Agrarian University, Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization, as well as Andijan and Samarkand agricultural institutes. The cooperation will include joint research work, training of Uzbek specialists in agriculture at the University of Michigan. The delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan also held a meeting in the American Councils for International Education (ACIE) organization. The ACIE expressed its readiness to assist in expanding educational ties between Uzbekistan and the U.S., including in the agriculture sphere. The ACIE is a non-profit organization which designs meaningful international experiences that create informed and empowered global citizens. The organization establishes partnerships with governments, institutions, and organizations to create educational programs across the worldparticularly in strategically important regions vital to international relations, economy, and security. In 1974, the ACIE developed the first exchanges between scholars from the Former Soviet Union and the United States. Today, the organization supports collaborative education between the United States and Africa, Asia, Eurasia, the Middle East, and South America. Their academic and professional programs are backed by thorough research and practice that ensures their quality. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 13:52 (UTC+04:00) By Trend A lot of work is being carried out to diversify the routes of supply of Turkmen natural gas to the world markets, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said in his message to participants of the 22nd International Conference Oil & Gas Turkmenistan - OGT 2017 that will start in Ashgabat on November 2. The implementation of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project is a clear indication of this. I am firmly convinced of the special significance of this project from the economic point of view for neighboring and other states of the region, said President Berdimuhamedov in his meesage. Turkmenistan occupies one of the leading positions in the world in terms of its hydrocarbon reserves. A lot of work has been done in recent years on production, processing, stable and reliable supply of these resources to consumers. Meanwhile, large-scale work on the stage-by-stage development of the Galkynysh field is carried out to provide the TAPI pipeline with natural gas. Turkmenistan attaches great importance not only to its export supplies via pipelines, but also to the deep processing of gas. The country is taking measures to produce highly demanded competitive products from hydrocarbons. Turkmenistan is one of key players on the energy market of the Caspian region and ranks fourth in the world in terms of its gas reserves. Currently, the country delivers gas to China and Iran. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 15:36 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Uzbekistan and Afghanistan are keen to further boost regional cooperation. Afghanistans President Ashraf Ghani intends to visit Uzbekistan in the near future to sign a number of memorandums on cooperation. Cooperation in the field of railway communications will be one of the main topics for discussion, Uzbek media outlets reported. The two sides intend to discuss the issues of economic cooperation and the possible participation of Uzbekistan in several joint projects, including in the field of transportation. The talks will focus on the launch of a railway line from Mazar-i-Sharif to Balkh province, through the four provinces of Afghanistan, to Herat. Uzbekistan may become a part of this line. The deputy head of Afghanistan's railway administration, Abdul Bari Seddiqi, noted that the implementation of the project will allow Uzbekistan to gain direct access to Iranian ports. The project will increase trade between Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran and China. Another line will be built from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kunduz. Earlier, Uzbek Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov said that the exact date of the visit hasnt been determined yet. The minister added that Afghanistan should not remain isolated from the region, and should become a part of the process of establishing peace, stability and prosperity. Afghanistan is a small player in terms of international trade. Its total international trade in 2016-2017 financial year stood at just over $7 billion, out of which some $ 6.5 billion ($ 6534 million) are Afghanistans imports while exports are a mere $596 million. During this period, only three countries namely Iran, Pakistan, and China contributed around half of Afghanistans total imports, each exporting goods worth more than $1 billion to the country. Adding the exports of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan ($621 million and $399 million respectively) to Afghanistan, Kabul imports more than 60 percent of its total imported goods from just five neighboring countries. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 2 November 2017 18:04 (UTC+04:00) By Kamila Aliyeva Russia's Energy Ministry and the Iranian Ministry of Oil signed a memorandum on supporting the project aimed to deliver natural gas from Iran to India on November 1. This was stated by Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak on November 2, RIA Novosti reported. "The agreement that was signed yesterday is aimed primarily at implementing projects related to gas production in Iran and the supply of this resource to India through Pakistani exclusive economic zone along the bottom of the Persian Gulf," he said in an interview with Russia 24 television channel. It is quite real that it will enter into practical stage in the near future, according to Novak. Yesterday, Novak said that Russias energy giant - Gazprom - plans to produce natural gas in Iran and will build a 1,200 kilometer gas pipeline from Iran to India. Specific deposits in Iran will be determined as part of the feasibility study for the project. Construction is expected to start next year, according to the minister. Novak didnt disclose how much it will cost but said it will be significant, as the pipeline will include an underwater part that will pass through the Persian Gulf. In June, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee Vitaly Markelov reported that the company signed memorandums with Iran on the possibility of participating in the development of four fields in the republic - Farzad-A, Farzad-B, North Pars and Kish. In mid-June, Gazprom's deputy chairman of the board, Alexander Medvedev, said that the company was discussing gas supplies to India. He noted that the use of exchange transactions involving China and Iran is not excluded. In May, Deputy Energy Minister Yury Sentyurin reported that Russia and India are considering various options for Russian gas supplies to the country. In particular, in addition to the construction of a pipeline, gas may be supplied through swap operations, including with the participation of Iran, as well as in the form of LNG from the Gazprom portfolio. He also noted that India has indicated its gas deficit in the amount of up to 25 billion cubic meters per year. Iran's proven gas reserves amount to 33.5 trillion cubic meters of gas. However, the country lacks necessary export infrastructure to realize gas sales. Under sanctions, Iran was banned from the global financial system, preventing the development of its oil and gas fields and necessary infrastructure. Irans gross gas output stands at 285bn m3/yr. The country plans to increase this volume to about 440 bcm/y by 2021 after full operational of South Pars and starting gas production from other projects like Kish gas field. The country recently signed a multibillion-dollar gas deal with Frances Total for investment in Phase 11 of South Pars. This deal is the Islamic republic's first one with a European oil company in more than a decade. Within a 20-year period, 335 billion cubic meters of soar gas will be extracted from the phase. Once processed, 315 billion cubic meters of sweet gas, 290 million cubic meters of gas condensate, 2 million tons of sulfur, 14 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas and 12 million tons of ethane will be produced. The Phase 11 is expected to bring $84 billion worth of revenues for Iran, based on the current price of crude oil. --- Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Recognizing the health system would experience declining revenues during the coming years, officials at New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System sought to change the address of its Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine, a clinical and laboratory research tower in New York City, and its adjacent residential apartment complex in 2011, The Wall Street Journal reports. In a 2011 letter to the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, Mount Sinai officials said by changing the building's address to incorporate its proximity to Fifth Avenue, officials would be able to secure higher rents to help the medical school and health system survive federal budget cuts and declining reimbursements, the report states. "A key indicator to successful residential developments is the address," wrote Donald Scanlon, CFO and chief of corporate services at New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System, according to The Wall Street Journal. "The marketing of a 'Fifth Avenue' address will exponentially affect the leasing rate and the overall revenue performance of this development. This project's success and cash flow are critical to the success of Mount Sinai and its economic viability." The Manhattan borough president's office approved the change in address in December 2011 on the condition a sign be posted on the building's exterior wall providing directions to its Fifth Avenue entrance. The Leon and Norma Hess Center and adjacent apartment complex officially opened in December 2012. The center houses The Friedman Brain Institute and The Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, among other departments. The apartment complex houses 229 residential units, with 20 percent of the units (46 apartments) reserved as affordable housing. Recent monthly rents for the apartment units ranged from $4,600 per month for a one-bedroom unit to $12,000 per month for a three-bedroom unit, according to The Wall Street Journal. Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review reached out to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for comment and will update the article as more information becomes available. Steward Health Care, a 36-hospital system based in Boston, is suing state officials for demanding financial information, according to The Boston Globe. Steward has incurred more than $300,000 in fines for failing to submit years of financial information to the Massachusetts Center for Health Information and Analysis, an agency that collects financial information from Massachusetts health systems. Steward has not paid the fines and argues in a lawsuit filed Friday that the agency does not have authority to demand and collect the financial information. "CHIA has, for four successive years, demanded that Steward hand over financial statements containing confidential business information that CHIA has no statutory authority to collect and no apparent will to keep private," Steward said in court documents, according to The Boston Globe. CHIA collects information about hospital revenues, profits, losses, debt and other details much of which is already posted online to monitor the healthcare industry in Massachusetts. Steward filed heavily redacted annual financial reports for 2014 and 2015 with CHIA and reported no information for 2016. According to The Boston Globe, Steward is the only organization that has repeatedly failed to submit the financial information to CHIA. An attorney representing Steward told The Boston Globe the health system has submitted financial information about its hospitals to the state. However, Steward argues CHIA does not have authority to demand information about the health system's physician practices, home healthcare services and mobile medical imaging services. More articles on healthcare finance: California hospital suspends all services, notifies 524 employees of possible layoffs Tenet reports $366M net loss, plans to cut 1,300 jobs 10 hospital closures so far in 2017 According to sources in the state government, an advisory has been issued to the police and administrations of major cities to monitor illegal migrants who claim to be natives of West Bengal, but originally belong to Bangladesh and Myanmar. By Rajat Rai: Apart from posing a security threat to India, especially in its eastern states bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar, illegal migrants are also set to disturb political equations in local body elections in Uttar Pradesh. According to sources in the state government, an advisory has been issued to the police and administrations of major cities to monitor illegal migrants who claim to be natives of West Bengal, but originally belong to Bangladesh and Myanmar. advertisement The local body elections in UP begin on November 22 and the results will be declared on December 1. According to the information available with the state government, nearly two lakh illegal migrants live in Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi and Kanpur. Surprisingly, most of them possess Aadhaar cards, ration cards, voter ID cards, and according to local intelligence inputs, they are also involved in criminal activities. As per as the records of the Local Intelligence Unit (LIU), there are nearly 90,000 illegal migrants living in various parts of the city and are involved in petty jobs like rag picking and garbage collection. Over 90 per cent of them are minorities and don't speak or understand Hindi. Last month, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed the police to identify, verify and deport 'foreign nationals' living in the state. After the directions of the CM, the police held an intensive drive and it was revealed that their grandfathers had illegally entered India and in the course of time became Indians. Earlier in 2011, a drive was conducted in Lucknow on the directions of the then DGP Vikram Singh, and it was found that over 25,000 illegal migrants were originally natives of Bangladesh. The police, however, also feel helpless to take action against these migrants. "These illegal migrants enjoy political shelter because they are abundant in numbers, enough to influence election results," a senior police officer told MAIL TODAY on the condition of anonymity. --- ENDS --- Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems has sold Merit Health Northwest Mississippi, a 181-bed hospital in Clarksdale, to Clinton, Tenn.-based Curae Health. This is the second hospital CHS has divested this week. On Tuesday, CHS sold Highlands Regional Medical Center, a 126-bed hospital in Sebring, Fla., to Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare. CHS divested the hospitals as part of a turnaround plan the company put into place last year, which involves selling off 30 hospitals to trim its debt load. With the sale of Merit Health Northwest Mississippi completed, CHS continues to operate nine hospitals in Mississippi. More articles on healthcare industry transactions: Quorum sells 72-bed Alabama hospital CHS divests Florida hospital to HCA Rice Memorial board OKs partnership with CentraCare, ACMC Health Medicaid beneficiaries in Idaho will no longer receive nonemergency medical transportation through Veyo, an Uber-like rideshare organization. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said Veyo terminated its contract with the state, effective March 5, 2018. In Veyo's Sept. 6 termination letter obtained by The Spokesman-Review, the firm's President Josh Komenda wrote Idaho put "significant, non-contractual restrictions on Veyo's model, at great expense to Veyo." Idaho awarded Veyo a three-year contract for $70.4 million to transport Medicaid patients to the state's hospitals last July. Six months later, Idaho House and Senate Health and Welfare committees held public hearings, during which Veyo users issued several complaints. Care providers and clients, among others, alleged Veyo rides were late or did not show up, among other inconsistencies. The state said it is "confident" it will contract with a different nonemergency transportation provider before its agreement with Veyo concludes. Roughly 100,000 nonemergency medical transportation trips transfer Idaho Medicaid beneficiaries to Medicaid-covered services monthly. More articles on patient flow: Immigration agents detain 10-year-old patient at Driscoll Children's Hospital: 9 things to know Florida Hospital Oceanside to remain closed for 18 months 3rd Michigan medical facility temporarily closes due to water issues A patient being transported from Charleston (W.Va.) General Hospital to one in Bluefield, W.Va., assaulted one EMT and left the ambulance driver on the side of the highway as he hijacked the vehicle, according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. Scott Marshall, 40, voluntarily committed himself to Charleston General Tuesday and was on his way to another hospital when he claimed he began hallucinating and believed he was being kidnapped. He assaulted the medic in the back of the ambulance, and when the driver stopped the vehicle to check on his partner, Mr. Marshall got into the driver's seat and sped off. The driver was left on the highway, while the other medic remained in the back. While driving, Mr. Marshall called 911 to report he had been kidnapped. Charleston Police intercepted the ambulance and arrested Mr. Marshall before taking him back to Charleston General. After being discharged, he was brought to South Central Jail in Charleston. A district judge tossed a lawsuit filed by Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare against Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut Wednesday, according to a Hartford Courant report. In early October, Hartford HealthCare sued Anthem over allegations the insurer changed its emergency care reimbursement policies after the two failed to reach a provider agreement a week prior. As a result, as many as 60,000 Anthem members lost in-network access to Hartford HealthCare's facilities Sept. 30. In its lawsuit dismissed by Chief U.S. District Judge Janet Hall, Hartford HealthCare alleged Anthem pressured the system to concede "catastrophically" low reimbursement rates by refusing to pay its hospitals directly for emergency care, the report states. The lawsuit claimed Anthem is paying patients directly for emergency care, and the patients then have to turn around and pay Hartford HealthCare, according to the allegations. Hartford HealthCare argued the practice, which it claims is in "retaliation" to the contract impasse, is illegal, delays payments and burdens patients. Its lawsuit called for Anthem to resume direct payments to Hartford HealthCare immediately. However, Judge Hall determined Anthem's actions did not violate law. A Hartford HealthCare spokesperson told Hartford Courant, "The judge today dismissed our lawsuit. Hartford HealthCare is reviewing the written opinion before we consider our options." An Anthem spokesperson did not immediately respond to the publication's request for comment. More articles on payer issues: CMS proposes ACA benefit changes for 2019: 7 things to know What's looming behind the proposed CVS Health-Aetna deal Health Partners Plans names Geralynn Boone VP of Medicare clinical operations: 5 takeaways Four spine surgeons discuss the key non-clinical lessons they have learnt over the course of their career. Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses. Next week's question: What are the biggest innovations in spinal deformity care in the last 5 to 10 years? Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, Nov. 8, at 5 p.m. CST. Question: What are the most important non-clinical lessons you learnt during your career? Vladimir Sinkov, MD. Spine Surgeon at New Hampshire Orthopaedic Center (Nashua): The most important and hardest lesson for me was finding the proper balance between work and family life. It is easy to get sucked in into long hours of work early in the career as you are just trying to build your practice, learn new operative techniques and market yourself. A spine surgeon's life is stressful, and it is important to find an outlet and enjoy life sometimes. Make sure to make time for what is important for you outside of the clinic and the operating room. It will make you a better person and a happier, better clinician. Gerardo Zavala II, MD. Director of Spine Surgery at St. Luke's Baptist Hospital (San Antonio): It takes a village. Often in medicine, and in particular surgery, a surgeon has developed a strong sense of individuality to survive medical school, internship and residency. We as surgeons need to let others help us. Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: Three things first, connect with your patients and your referring doctors. Second, talk things out. Whether you are dealing with patients, families or your colleagues, words and I mean spoken words work best. In an era of texting, emails and Twittering, the subtle interpersonal interactions and body language can defuse nasty situations, make hard conversations easier and impart confidence in your abilities to others. Third, engage the staff and get to know your scrubs and circulators. Go to the holiday party and get together, unwind. When you show your human side it is remarkable how much more comfortable the staff will be around you, and how much further they are willing to go to help you get your cases done and get you home. Richard Kube, MD. Founder and CEO of Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): There have been several. I think the greatest have been communications and strategic planning. We need to consider what we are saying and how people hear us when we speak or write. I try to educate staff regarding what I feel is important and try to tailor my messages to the situation. Tone can be used to create desired effect as much as the content of the message itself. Getting out of my own head and really trying to hear the message from other vantage points has helped me communicate and in turn negotiate or debate a position. Strategic planning has improved with the accumulation of experience dealing with people. It is a lesson that is ongoing and never ending. I am always learning from people by seeing how they act and react in certain situations. It helps to anticipate, which enhances one's ability to strategically plan whether it is a purely business development issue or whether it is a patient in a challenging situation I am trying to manage. Both instances require patience and the ability to look past one's self and try to see what it is the other person desires and try to provide it for him or her. These lessons will continue to be learned throughout the rest of my life. ein Google-Unternehmen Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern. neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke. Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten. Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Developing countries like India can meet the climate targets under the Paris Agreement by catalysing trillions of dollars in private investment through policy reforms and innovative business practices, World Bank arm IFC said in a report today. The report said renewable energy, off-grid solar and energy storage, agribusiness, green buildings, urban transportation, water, and urban waste management as the sectors that can bring about a crucial difference to catalyse private investment. advertisement Already, over USD 1 trillion investments are flowing into climate-related projects in these areas, but trillions more could be triggered by creating the right business conditions in emerging markets, the report added. "In India, ambitious targets and multiple reforms across sectors by the Government have steered the country towards exceeding its Nationally Determined Contributions target." As part of the Paris Climate Agreement, India has targeted to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions up to 35 per cent by 2030. This, the report said, presents India an attractive and emerging market for climate business that will accelerate the market for climate-friendly solutions. "India is in the midst of a climate change revolution. It is making significant accomplishments in achieving its pledge to the Paris Agreement," said Jun Zhang, IFC Country Head for India. IFC will continue working closely with businesses, investors, and governments to further support the goals set by the country, he said. The Indian government has expanded its National Solar Mission because of a successful 13 GW capacity creation for solar power markets in 2017. The new target of 175 GW of installed solar energy by 2022 is five times the original target. And it has now become the worlds 4th largest wind power generator, with a target to install 60GW of by 2022. The government also recently announced a commitment to end the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2030. "The private sector holds the key to fighting climate change," said IFC CEO Philippe Le Houerou. The private sector has the innovation, the financing, and the tools. "We can help unlock more private sector investment, but this also requires government reforms as well as innovative business models?which together will create new markets and attract the necessary investment. This can fulfil the promise of Paris," Houerou said. PTI KPM MR --- ENDS --- The VTB establishes a platform where complicated cases of cancer patients are discussed through a multipoint video conference to get opinions on diagnosis and treatment. The Government of Maharashtra, National Cancer Grid, Tata Memorial Centre, the Government of Indias Department of Atomic Energy, and Tata Trusts recently organised Maharashtras first Virtual Tumour Board (VTB) meeting, connecting the states government medical colleges to provide access to expert opinion to cancer patients from the states remotest corners from a multi-disciplinary panel of cancer experts from across the country. The VTB launch witnessed participation from 13 government medical colleges, Tata Memorial Hospital and other hospital members of the National Cancer Grid. The inaugural session took place in the presence of Shri Girish Mahajan, Honble Minister for Medical Education, Maharashtra. Shri Girish Mahajan, Minister of Medical Education, Government of Maharashtra said I would like to thank Tata Trusts, Tata Memorial Center and the National Cancer Grid for this initiative. The Tata name has been associated with cancer care across the country for a long time. Tata is not only a business name but is also associated with health care. We are now able to start cancer care centers on the basis of the work done by the Tata hospitals both in this state and across the country for which we are grateful. Through these colleges and the virtual tumour board, people in the remote areas of our state can now get an accurate diagnosis, proper and affordable treatment. Mr. R. Venkataramanan, Managing Trustee, Tata Trusts, said, There is an acute shortage of skilled manpower, especially oncologists, in the country to provide adequate care to the 14.5 lakh new cancer cases every year. Today, we move beyond our conventional ways of working and remote care models like this will go a long way to promote use of technology to decentralize cancer treatment and hence enable access to high quality cancer care in the state's remotest corners. Tata Trusts are pleased to partner With the Govt of Maharashtra and be working with the medical colleges in making this happen. Burzis Taraporevala, CFO and Company Secretary, Tata Trusts, said, The National Cancer Grid which was started about 5 years ago is responsible for connecting various hospitals towards improved cancer care. In these five years, we have through Internet connectivity and bandwidth connected about 120 hospitals and cancer care units. This virtual tumour board allows 40 or 50 of these cancer hospitals and centers to come together to discuss these cases and arrive at a conclusion as to the most effective and affordable treatment for the patient. This is the first time in history that this kind of grid has come about and the role of Tata Trusts is to see that through proper bandwidth and connectivity skills and care are improved, such that there is affordable and accessible care and at the same time the care is of good quality. This pioneering effort by the Maharashtra Government aims to provide both evidence based cancer care and upgrade skills and knowledge of clinical staff, in line with the Prime Minister, Mr. Nardenra Modi, and the Chief Minister, Mr. Devendra Fadnavis thrust to enhance research capability and capacity in the sector. The initiative is being led by the National Cancer Grid (NCG), an initiative of the Tata Memorial Centre and Department of Atomic Energy, which is a network of 124 major cancer centres in the country with the mandate of establishing uniform standards of patient care for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, providing specialized training and education in oncology and facilitating collaborative research in cancer. Tata Trusts are providing the National Cancer Grid centres and the Government Medical Colleges in Maharashtra with high bandwidth enterprise level connection. This will enable the colleges to fully utilize and benefit from various NCG initiatives including the Virtual Tumour Board, NCG Digital Library, e-resources and publications to name a few. The VTB comprises of experts from the fields of medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology, anaesthesiology, pathology, imaging technology as well as others leading government-run and private hospitals. The VTB establishes a platform where complicated cases of cancer patients are discussed through a multipoint video conference to get opinions on diagnosis and treatment. The discussions are web-based and conducted every Saturday where some centres present the cases while others give their opinions. This enables hospitals even in remote areas to access opinions from leading experts in the country. The ultimate goal is to eventually reduce the need for patients to travel to major cities while contributing to the garnering of knowledge for developing contextual, locally appropriate, peer reviewed protocols, policies and guidelines for the state and for the nation. Indias National Mental Health Programme is building 22 centres of excellence in the field of mental health The President of India recently inaugurated the 21st World Congress of Mental Health organised by the World Federation for Mental Health in partnership with Caring Foundation and other institutions in New Delhi. Speaking on the occasion, the President said that the World Congress of Mental Health is taking place in India for the first time. And it has come here at an appropriate moment. Mental health issues are acquiring a serious magnitude in our country. Our National Mental Health Survey 2016 found that close to 14 per cent of Indias population required active mental health interventions. The President noted that those living in metropolitan cities and those who are young whether in the productive age group, or children and teenagers are most vulnerable to mental illnesses. In India, we have a young population, with 65 per cent of our people below the age of 35. And our society is rapidly urbanising. This leaves us staring at a possible mental health epidemic. The biggest obstacle that mental health patients have to encounter is stigma and denial. This leads to the issue being ignored or simply not discussed. We need to talk about mental health issues and treat ailments such as depression and stress as diseases that can be cured not as guilty secrets that must be pushed under the carpet. A major gap in combating the mental health challenge is that of human resources. India is a country with 1.25 billion people but just 700,000 doctors less than one million. In the field of mental health, the scarcity is even more acute. There are only about 5,000 psychiatrists and less than 2,000 clinical psychologists in our country, he added. Ram Nath Kovind said that Indias National Mental Health Programme is building 22 centres of excellence in the field of mental health. In parallel, the District Mental Health Programme has already covered 517 of the approximately 650 districts in India. It is taking the conversation about mental health to the grassroots of our society. The President expressed happiness that the World Congress will have sessions on yoga, meditation and traditional approaches to mental health. He stated that the example of yoga is very instructive. When people talk about yoga, they generally refer to its physiological benefits. However, the mental, psychological, and cognitive benefits of yoga are equally worthy of our study. He looked forward to feedback on the deliberations of the special session planned on the role of yoga in battling anxiety and depression and in preventing the onset of mental health problems. Is AMR Modern-day FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER? Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) continues to pose a significant public health problem in terms of mortality and economic loss. The rising AMR is a matter of huge concern that needs to be tactfully handled and health authorities of several countries, including India, have formulated action plans for its containment. Significant efforts by the government, an active involvement of startups and diagnostic players is a good start. The question remains, whether this will be enough. For Feedback, please email us at: communications@mmactiv.com By PTI: Jammu, Nov 2 (PTI) Indian and Kazakh armies today began a 14-day joint exercise in Himachal Pradesh to strengthen bilateral relations and exchange skills and experience. This is second joint military exercise between the two countries. The first edition of "Prabal Dostyk" was held in Kazakhstan in 2016. "A 14-day joint training exercise Prabal Dostyk-2017 between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army commenced today with an opening ceremony at Bakloh in Himachal Pradesh," a defence spokesman said. advertisement The joint exercise is aimed at enhancing the military ties between the two countries and achieving interoperability between the two armies, he said. "The training contingents comprise a platoon strength from 3rd Battalion of the 11th Gorkha Rifles of the Indian Army and a similar strength of the Kazakhstan Army," the spokesman said. Senior military observers of both the countries would also witness the validation phase of the joint exercise. He said the exercise sought to acquaint the forces with each others operating procedures in the backdrop of counter- insurgency and counter-terrorism operations under the UNs mandate. "The overall aim is to enhance the existing military relationship between the Indian Army and the Kazakhstan Army and achieve synergy for joint conduct of operations as and when the requirement arises," he added. Personnel of both contingents were hopeful of a fruitful learning experience and that the training would go a long way in enhancing ties between the people of the two countries. The Indian troops participating in the joint exercise underwent extensive training in counter-terrorism and low intensity conflict operations at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School, Vairengte, he added. PTI AB AAR --- ENDS --- Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 02/11/2017 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Wheat Citys new police chief is veteran officer and longtime Brandonite, Wayne Balcaen. Balcaen has been with Brandon Police Service since 1990 and in that time, has worked in many different operational and administrative roles. Most recently, he served as deputy chief of support services. It is a huge honour to serve the community that I grew up in, and has supported me and my family over the years, Balcaen said. Now Im able to give back at a new level. Jillian Austin/The Brandon Sun Wayne Balcaen has been named the new chief of Brandon Police Service. Balcaen was born in Winnipeg, and spent the first four years of his life in Germany. When his father was posted to CFB Shilo, the family made Brandon home. I have been a Brandon boy ever since, he said. Balcaen has been acting chief since Chief Ian Grant retired in early October. Balcaen is the 19th chief in BPS 135-year history. Im actually feeling very energized, and looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead, he said. My greatest benefit is the staff that we have here are absolutely unbelievable, and it makes the job very easy. Mark Frison, chair of the Brandon Police Board, stated that the board recently refreshed the strategic plan for the organization and Balcaen is a great fit to lead the service in pursuit of that renewed direction. Balcaen said his first duties included meeting with the police board this week, and getting started on 2018 budget planning. In the coming weeks he will be reaching out to community partners and organizations to re-establish relationships and do necessary introductions. The police service plays a vital role in our city and I am proud to see Chief Balcaen emerge as the new chief, said Mayor Rick Chrest in a press release. I look forward to the collaborative spirit Chief Balcaen will bring to community initiatives, such as community mobilization, as well as with departments within our City of Brandon team. jaustin@brandonsun.com Twitter: @jillianaustin By PTI: By Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 2 (PTI) An Indian national has been rearrested after he was released from prison following the completion of his 10 years term as authorities believe that he poses threat to public safety. Jerald Peter Dsouza, 58, was arrested by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers after he was released from a private jail where he served sentence for using the internet to induce a minor, who he believed to be a 13-year- old girl, to engage in criminal sexual activity. advertisement Dsouza remains in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), federal authorities said yesterday. He was convicted in US District Court, Eastern District of California, in March 2009, ICE said. "ICE places a high priority on identifying, arresting and removing foreign nationals with criminal records who pose a threat to public safety -- whether theyre in the United States legally or illegally," said William P Joyce, acting field office director for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in El Paso. PTI LKJ CK MVV --- ENDS --- In the eighties it was automatic teller machines. In the nineties it was mass branch closures. In the naughties, it was offshoring. Now, automation and fintech loom as the great finance sector job-killers, with fears that more jobs could follow the 6000 in cuts announced by National Australia Bank on Thursday. For bank employees, it is a time of "massive upheaval and change" in the words of the Finance Sector Union, which says it has real concerns that more large-scale job losses are coming. NAB's 6000 job cuts, to come over the next three years, amount to about 18 per cent of its full-time equivalent workforce - the most dramatic change to employee numbers publicly announced by a major bank in recent years. "The finance industry is really at a crossroads," says FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano, who wants more details of the bank's career transition program, to be called "The Bridge", and the 2000 new jobs NAB says it will create as it "reshapes" its workforce with a focus on more automated processes. NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn says that, where possible, the bank will retrain staff with the "aptitude and commitment" to do so, and expects that some of the job losses will come from natural attrition. They turned up in droves, lists ready, with one thing on their mind - Haigh's Chocolates. More than 150 people queued to be the first in Canberra's first ever store of the Adelaide chocolate company, with a steady stream of customers continuing through the morning. Alister and Simon Haigh at the opening of the first ever Canberra Haigh's Chocolates store at Canberra Centre on Thursday morning. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong Managing directors Alister and Simon Haigh were in-store for the launch, and said they were excited to finally expand to Canberra. "We've had lots of requests to get here and we've been looking for a while for the right site and this came up less than three months ago now, so it's been a bit of a rush, but it's come up fantastically," Alister said. Another student has come forward to make allegations against Sydney teacher Simon Phillips following his arrest for indecent assault, a court has been told. Mr Phillips, 51, was arrested on Wednesday over allegations he inappropriately touched four girls at a primary school on Sydney's lower north shore, where he was a temporary teacher, between January and October this year. Detectives arrest Simon Phillips at Russell Lea on Wednesday. Credit:NSW Police He successfully applied for bail with strict conditions at Burwood Local Court on Thursday, appearing via audio-video link with uncombed brown hair and wearing a green prison jumper. The court heard a further alleged victim, from another school, contacted Crime Stoppers on Thursday morning after Mr Phillips' arrest was publicised. With China flexing its muscle in the seas, India now guards every entry and exit point of the Indian Ocean, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Sunil Lanba has said. By Sudhi Ranjan Sen: India now guards every entry and exit point of the Indian Ocean - one of the most militarised regions of the world with at least 100 warships, including those of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (Navy), prowling at any given time, Chief of Naval Admiral Sunil Lanba told India Today in an exclusive interview. The Navy Chief spoke to India Today on the sidelines of the Goa Maritime Conclave, a first-of-its-kind initiative. "As China's aggression in the Ocean grows, India has formed a new grouping of friendly countries and navies in the Indian Ocean to explore areas of mutual interest and cooperation. The idea is to explore what more we all can do to protect our common interest", he said. advertisement In 2017, at least 14 Chinese warships and submarines, including nuclear submarines, criss-crossed the waters of the Indian Ocean. "Our assessment indicates that Chinese deployment in our areas of interest is unlikely to increase immediately", Admiral Lanba told India Today. Earlier, inaugurating the conclave, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman warned about the presence of "extra regional" powers in the Indian Ocean. She also made a categorical mention of "colonial era" land - border disputes spilling over into the oceans. "We must take steps to protect India's interests. India must dovetail its deployments and surveillance missions to be aware of what and who is around", the Chief of Naval Staff said. NEW NAVAL DIPLOMACY FUND In an attempt to strengthen the bond between Indian and friendly navies, a new "Naval Diplomacy Fund" has been created, the Navy Chief told India Today. The fund will allow India and the Indian Navy to provide small warships and naval patrol vessels to smaller countries. India trains soldiers and officers and men of friendly navies. For instance, India trains Vietnamese submariners among others. Vietnam has been opposing Chinese claims in the South China Sea. MORE COORDINATED PATROLS WITH FRIENDLY NAVIES POSSIBLE Besides deploying warships along the Malacca and Sunda Straits - the two main entry points from east into the Indian Ocean Region and a natural choke point - India also carries out coordinated patrols with Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand among others. "Frequency of patrols and the numbers of assets used can be increased", Admiral Lanba told India Today. COOPERATION AND COORDINATION WITH FRIENDLY COUNTRIES TO COUNTER CHINA "China recently opened its first off-shore base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. However, Sri Lanka has assured India that its ports, especially Chinese-built Hambantota Port, will not be used by military purposes, Admiral Lanba told India Today. He added, "We will continue to work with like-minded navies to protect our interests". WATCH VIDEO | India must dovetail its surveillance missions in the Indian Ocean Region: Navy chief --- ENDS --- Should State of Origin day already a sacred day for Queenslanders be a public holiday in Queensland? Melbourne gets two extra public holidays: one for the AFL grand final and another for Melbourne Cup Day next Tuesday. The Queensland Greens have proposed that the day of game three of the State of Origin should be a public holiday to make Queenslanders healthier. State of Origin fans would have more to celebrate if game three was made a holiday in Queensland. Credit:AAP Queensland has won every State of Origin series since 2006, except in 2014. A male teacher at an independent girls' school in Melbourne's north-east has been suspended as police investigate historical sex abuse allegations. Victoria Police confirmed the Box Hill sexual offences and child abuse investigation team are investigating allegations of child abuse at an eastern suburbs school between 1981 and 1983. The teacher has been stood down and is now on leave. Credit:Phil Carrick On Wednesday the teacher was suspended by the Victorian Institute of Teaching. The man has been stood down from his current position at Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar but the incidents of assault allegedly occurred during his time teaching at Mount Scopus Memorial College in Burwood. Aaron Pajich's body was found in the backyard of an Orelia home in June 2016. Autism advocate Bob Johnson also addressed the media, saying the women abused Aaron Pajich's trust and naivety. "They took advantage of someone who, you know, typically was just looking for friendship, easy to be exploited, not able to read the motivations of other people," he said. Aaron Pajich's stepmother Veronica Desmond and family friend Joanne Burke outside court. Credit:Heather McNeill "It's sometimes tough living when you've got no protection from people who want to take advantage, to manipulate, to use and abuse and it's sadly too common a story for autistic young people." The accused women, who were housemates, murdered the 18-year-old and buried him underneath a freshly laid concrete slab in their Orelia backyard on June 13, 2016. Jemma Lilley, left, and Trudi Lenon blamed each other for Aaron Pajich's death. The court heard a "vulnerable" Mr Pajich, who had Asperger's syndrome, was targeted and lured to the house by Lenon, who knew the teenager through her 14-year-old son. She invited Mr Pajich to meet her and Lilley at Rockingham shopping centre around 9am on June 13. Police forensic officers at the Orelia home where Aaron Pajich's body was found. Credit:Nine News Perth Mr Pajich was dropped at the centre by a friend and farewelled her by saying 'Goodbye and God bless'. It was the last time he was seen by family or friends. Aaron Pajich's body has been found in Orelia. Credit:WA Police CCTV footage showed the teenager leaving the shops with the accused pair and security footage from their home showed the three entering the Broughton Way house around 10.30am. "Mr Pajich did not ever emerge from that house alive," state prosecutor James McTaggart said in his opening address to the jury. "The state's case is that Aaron Pajich was brutally and violently murdered at the hands of these two accused. "Either both Ms Lilley and Ms Lenon jointly murdered Aaron Pajich, or one aided the other." Mr Pajich's body was discovered around a week later buried in the pair's backyard garotted with multiple stab wounds to his chest and neck. The home's loungeroom had a large section of carpet cut out, concealed by a couch, and police found multiple blood stains and knifes at the property. Both women denied murdering Mr Pajich and blamed each other. Lilley claimed she was unaware Mr Pajich had been killed and that Lenon must have murdered him and concealed the crime while she was taking a three-hour nap in the next room. Lenon however admitted witnessing Lilley stab Mr Pajich to death, claiming she helped conceal the crime out of fear. Both originally lied to police and told detectives they had not seen Mr Pajich the day he went missing but later admitted he had visited their home. During the trial, the jury heard how Lilley was obsessed with serial killers and knives, and had told a friend she wanted to kill someone before she turned 25. She often referred to herself as SOS, a serial killer character she created for a book she wrote as a teenager in 2007. Lenon met Lilley three months before Mr Pajich was murdered, and the pair moved in together in May developed a dominant / submissive relationship. Lenon once described Lilley as a "literal psychopath" who was "unnerving but addictive". A day after Mr Pajich's murder, Lilley sent Lenon a message saying, 'I'm seeing things I haven't seen before and feeling things I haven't felt before', to which Lenon replied: 'You're welcome SOS'. When news Mr Pajich was missing first broke days later, the two women sat in a bedroom in the middle of the night and read articles about him together. "I enjoyed that," Lilley text Lenon shortly after the housemates returned to their respective rooms. Lilley, who took the stand for five days during the trial, claimed messages between her and Lenon about killing someone were role-play for a new book she was writing. She claimed she was in character when she wrote Lenon a long message 13 days before the murder. "I feel as though I cannot rest until the blood or the flesh of a screaming, pleading victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor, until all the roads and streets are streamed red and abandoned, and the fear in the back of everyone's minds and on the tongue of each human that's left standing is SOS," it read. "I cannot shift this belief that the world has become not only ready for me, it needs me to be ready." Lenon replied: "It's definitely time. I am ready. You are ready". It was beers and cheers on Thursday night as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk swooped into Bundaberg to rally the party faithful at a bar and grill overlooking the Burnett River. Labor is clinging on by a sliver in the marginal sugar town, with its sitting MP Leanne Donaldson. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk greets the Labor faithful at MP Leanne Donaldson's campaign launch in Bundaberg. Credit:Darren England/AAP Ms Donaldson, who resigned as agriculture minister over unpaid council rates and inadvertently driving her car while unregistered in November 2016, holds the most marginal seat still in the red for Labor, with a margin of 0.5 per cent. Only the currently Labor-held seat of Pumicestone is narrower, having switched to notionally LNP, following the electoral redistribution. Germany, the Western nation most welcoming to refugees in the recent crisis, now needs to control immigration more tightly to contain far-right extremism, according to its head of state. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who arrives in Perth on Friday for his first visit to Australia, said that a reason for the rise of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Deutschland was "the increased number of refugees". German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he hoped to "take experiences and knowledge from Australia back to Germany - on dealing with migration and integration". Credit:Cliff Owen "The main thing now is to reassure people that rule-of-law processes work," Germany's former foreign affairs minister and former member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party told Fairfax Media. Steinmeier called Donald Trump a "hate preacher" when he was running for the US presidency. While not wanting to repeat that description, the German president did say that he remains concerned about polarisation in American society. Eric Fleming stops by to express his condolences in front of a bike memorial on the New York path where eight people died. Credit:AP "I think it's important to do what we always do and not let this [attack] deter us because that's exactly what the terrorists want you to do," said Mrs Black, who has lived in Manhattan's West Village for almost two years. "I ride my Citi bike from my home to the my coffee shop every day - I'll keep doing it." Jimmy Drake holds a picture of his son Darren Drake, a project manager who would ride along the Manhattan bike path listening to audio books. Credit:AP Mrs Black, who has two children, aged 11 months and two, admits she was shocked when she first heard of the attack because - if not for Halloween - she would have likely come into the direct path of the terrorist. "I took the afternoon off because it was Halloween and my kids are young and I wanted to take them trick or treating, but usually I leave work at 2.30pm and so would have been on the path in this spot as it was all happening." Australian woman Jo Black, who has lived in New York for two years, said she would have been on the path on Tuesday if it wasn't Halloween. Credit:Ellen Connolly But she refuses to live in fear. "I was just thinking as I rode along how lucky I am to ride these streets every day. It gives me a lot of joy and is so much more fun than the subway which is not that safe." A child reacts as a woman holds an Argentinian flag next to her during a candle-lit walk to remember the victims in New York. Credit:AP Her defiance would likely have been shared by Nicholas Cleves, the only New Yorker to die in the attack. Mr Cleves, who lived two blocks from the path where his life ended, grew up biking around Manhattan. In Washington Square Park, a vigil was held to celebrate his life. Defendant Sayfullo Saipov, right, appeared in court on Wednesday. Credit:AP "Nicholas Cleves was a fine young man starting out a successful career, struck down way earlier than he should have been," Jim Burnham, a family friend, told old reporters outside the family's building. He was a software engineer, and his boss, Alex Silverstein, the owner of Unified Digital, said he was fascinated by the ever-changing technology and often spoke enthusiastically about the Tesla stock he had bought. Crime scene investigators walks slowly down the west side bike path on Wednesday. Credit:AP "He is like the future of programming and software, and now he's gone," said Mr Silverstein. "I feel like I've been robbed." "When you stop living your life, they have won," said Soraya Hamdoun, a New York businesswoman. Credit:Ellen Connolly The other American victim Darren Drake, 32, of New Milford, would routinely cycle along the Hudson River during his work breaks, listening to audiobooks about ancient history. "He loved reading. He loved exercising on a bike; he loved his job," his father, Jimmy Drake, told The New York Times. Mr Drake said his son would return to his parents' home where he lived every night, entertaining them with facts from his audiobooks. The others killed were five Argentinians who travelled to New York from Rosario, a city northwest of Buenos Aires, to celebrate their reunion. A video emerged on Wednesday showing the five men smiling and jubilant as they rode along the bike path on a sunny Autumn day under blue skies. On Thursday, flowers were left at the site in Chambers St, a sombre reminder of the eight lives lost and the risk of terrorism. Hannah Lynch, who lives nearby, said the attack was simply "too close to home" and she wants to move from the city. "When it's on your doorstep like this, it makes you very anxious," she said. "I want to feel safe. My husband thinks it's the safest place in the world because we're right near the World Trade Centre but I feel very anxious." She thinks of how lucky she and her two-year-old daughter came yesterday of being in the crossfire. "I was taking my daughter to the doctor and crossed the highway only 10 minutes before it all happened," Mrs Lynch said. "I wasn't going to leave the house today but you can't stay inside," Mrs Lynch told Fairfax Media as she walked back from the park through police and international media crews. "It's entirely up to the government representative to decide whom the talks should be held with," Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh told India Today By Rahul Kanwal: The Centre has given "full freedom" to its Jammu and Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma to decide stakeholders for talks to resolve the protracted crisis in the valley, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said Thursday. "Whatever he does or doesn't is to be decided solely by Dineshwar Sharma," the home minister told India Today when asked whether any talk was possible with the Hurriyat leaders. advertisement "It's entirely up to the government representative to decide whom the talks should be held with. He has been given no specific brief. He has all the freedom to decide who he wants to talk with." Sharma, a former director of the IB, was appointed the central interlocutor late last month for a sustained dialogue with stakeholders in J&K in a bid to restore peace in the state. "Mr Sharma, the representative of government of India, hasn't been sent with his hands tied. He's been given full freedom to hold talks and come out with a definite decision," the home minister remarked while on an election tour to Himachal. The move to appoint Sharma as a central interlocutor was driven by the government's intent to explore ways and means to resolve any possible "grievances" in the valley, Singh insisted. "I believe that no problem can solely be resolved through force, whether police or military. People's grievances should also be examined. If there is any grievance that could be resolved, we will try to resolve them. That's why, we have appointed an interlocutor," he said. "The interlocutor will go there, talk to people and give us his report." DEEPER ANALYSIS Singh disagreed with the Hurriyat accusations that Sharma's appointment was an eyewash, saying the unrest in the valley warranted a deeper analysis for a possible resolution. "The truth is if there are any problems, they should be resolved. What are the reasons that lead to such situations? That's why we have appointed an interlocutor of the government of India to go into the depth." Asked if he had already identified issues in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh noted that the Centre was willing to examine any problems that could be amicably addressed. "If there is any grievance that could resolved, they should be resolved if it lies in the interest of the people of J&K and in the interest of the state." The Centre's decision to name Sharma as the new interlocutor came after local delegations in J&K suggested to the home minister during his latest tour to the valley that a special representative be appointed for talks, Singh said. advertisement "It's only after that the government decided to appoint a representative and Dineshwar Sharma was chosen (for the job)." The home minister, however, clarified that the process for starting negotiations wasn't timebound. "This all depends on how long does it take for talks (to start). We have set no timeframe for this. The sooner talks could start, the better it would be." Asked about Pakistan's repeated attempts to interfere in Kashmir, he said, "It's not that we depend on Pakistan to establish peace here. Pakistan is a neighbouring country. It should not interfere in India's internal matters. Jammu and Kashmir was, is and will remain integral part of India." WATCH | NEWSROOM | Kashmir interlocutor has full freedom to decide stakeholders for talks, says Rajnath Singh --- ENDS --- Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Its a suite deal for seniors! The new owners of a lavish former hotel in Brooklyn Heights will convert the property into the boroughs first luxury senior-living complex, according to reps for the buyers who purchased the building from the Jehovahs Witnesses. The religious organization on Wednesday announced the sale of its 16-story building at Clark and Willow streets to Florida-based investment group Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors, which bought the opulent digs for $200 million. The out-of-town firm is partnering with Watermark Retirement Communities, an Arizona-based company that manages elder housing, to convert the 285-unit structure into high-end living for oldsters, renaming it The Watermark at Brooklyn Heights. Its new owners did not reveal specific details of their plan for the property, but it will be the first of its kind in Brooklyn. Two other pairs of developers are erecting similar complexes in Manhattan that include amenities such as farm-to-table dining and a care staff that can book tickets to Broadway shows, according to a Bloomberg report. And the building, which was built in the 1920s, is no stranger to extravagance. It used to be the Leverich Towers Hotel, a luxurious lodge where Dodgers players stayed during home games, before the Witnesses bought it for a little under $2 million in 1975 and turned it into a dormitory for members. Its not the first area hotel sold by the Jehovahs Witnesses, which relocated its headquarters from Brooklyn to upstate New York and offloaded several properties the organization acquired since it arrived in the borough in 1909. In 2007, the religious group sold the former Standish Arms Hotel which is now a luxury condo complex and then hawked the nearby Bossert Hotel, a historic lodge that is being reborn as a swanky inn following its years as housing for Witnesses members. It was announced today that Bank of Ireland and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) are partnering on new monthly research, the Bank of Ireland Savings and Investment Index. The Index, which launches in the coming weeks, will delve into how consumers view the savings environment and their sentiment towards saving in the future. On the investments front, the Index will uncover where people are investing their money, how they feel about the amount they invest and whether they think its a good or bad time to invest. The new partnership will see Bank of Ireland take ownership of and further enhance this long-running ESRI research. The original Index, the Nationwide UK (Ireland) Savings Index, launched in January 2010 and focused solely on consumer sentiment towards saving. The new Index adds insights into consumer attitudes towards longer-term investment intentions and will also look at how difficult or easy it will be for consumers to live comfortably during retirement and how financially prepared they are. Speaking about the new Index, Head of Bank of Ireland Investment Markets, Brian Vaughan said, "It is timely and appropriate to partner with the ESRI and establish the Bank of Ireland Savings and Investment Index. As the largest financial services group in the country we believe that its important to assess and track what consumers think about savings, pensions and investment. The newly established Index will also provide perspective on how people view retirement and how financially prepared they feel they are for the future." Senior Research Officer at ESRI, Conor OToole added, "We are delighted to be partnering with Bank of Ireland on the Savings and Investment index and we are particularly looking forward to the addition of the investment component and the additional analytical insights into consumer behaviour. We think this will be a very valuable addition to our understanding of the household sector in the Irish economy." Source: www.businessworld.ie Facebook Inc faced harsh criticism in Washington on Wednesday over its failure to prevent Russian operatives from using its platform for election meddling, but the earnings report it issued hours later showed just how insulated its business remains from political risk. The social network said its quarterly profit soared 79% and revenues were up nearly 50% in the third quarter as marketers poured money into Facebook's advertising offerings, whose power to target and influence users has actually been showcased by the election scandal. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg condemned Russia's attempts to influence last year's election through Facebook posts and advertisements designed to sow division, and repeated his pledge to ramp up spending to confront the problem. Zuckerberg said that spending would include 10,000 additional people to review content on the network, though based on past practice many of those people will be contractors. The spending would hit profits, Facebook said, with expenses expected to grow by 45% to 60% next year. "What they did is wrong, and we are not going to stand for it," Zuckerberg said of the Russians, on a conference call with analysts. The company's share price, which hit a record $182.90 earlier on Wednesday, initially rose in after-hours trading, but later fell into negative territory on discussion of the higher spending. Shares have gained almost 60 percent this year. "While the investigations into Russian activity on the platform have been getting a lot of attention, they're not detracting from Facebook's power as an ad platform," analyst Debra Aho Williamson of research firm eMarketer said in an interview. The political storm in the United States over how Facebook, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google handle false news stories and political manipulation of their services gathered strength this week as three separate congressional committees held hearings. Zuckerberg did not appear at the hearings. But lawmakers threatened tougher regulation and fired questions at Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, excoriating the company for being slow to act and slow to share what it knew with Congress. The chief executive told analysts that legislation to force disclosure of election ads "would be very good if done well." In a series of disclosures over two months, Facebook has said that people in Russia bought at least 3,000 U.S. political ads and published another 80,000 Facebook posts that were seen by as many as 126 million Americans over two years. Russia denies any meddling. Facebook's total advertising revenue rose 49 percent in the third quarter to $10.14 billion, about 88 percent of which came from mobile ads. Analysts on average had expected total ad revenue of $9.71 billion, according to data and analytics firm FactSet. Facebook in the third quarter gave advertisers for the first time the ability to run ads in standalone videos, outside the Facebook News Feed, and the company is seeing good early results, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg told analysts. "Video is exploding, and mobile video advertising is a big opportunity," Sandberg said. More than 70% of ad breaks up to 15 seconds long were viewed to completion, most with the sound on, she said. Facebook executives, though, declined to give details on the performance so far of Watch, a video tab the company rolled out two months ago. "It's too early to be talking about any stats there," Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said in response to an analyst question. Zuckerberg said Facebook would be spending heavily in making the Watch tab a place where "people want to talk and connect around," rather than a spot to passively consume programs. The 49% increase in total ad sales in the latest quarter compares with a 47% rise in the prior quarter and a 51% jump in the first quarter. Facebook has been warning for more than a year about reaching a limit in "ad load", or the number of ads the company can feature in users' pages before crowding their News Feed. Advertisers seem unfazed, though, spending heavily as the social network continues to attract users. The average price per ad rose 35 percent. The nearly 50 percent jump in ad revenue "is phenomenal, especially when for the past few quarters they've been trying to bring that expectation way, way down. Yet it keeps going up," Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth said. Of the Russia scandal enveloping Facebook publicly, Feinseth said: "In the bigger picture, I don't think it's a really big factor." The company's performance was strong in comparison with smaller social media firms Snap Inc and Twitter, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said. "Facebook grew revenues by $3.3 billion year-over-year for the quarter. This is more than Twitter and Snapchat generate combined for the full year," he said. Facebook said about 2.07 billion people were using its service monthly, up 16% from a year earlier. Net income rose to $4.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, from $2.63 billion, or 90 cents per share. Analysts on an average were expecting the company to earn $1.28, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Total revenue increased 47.3% to $10.33 billion beating analysts' estimate of $9.84 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Tesco's then UK managing director did not alert the British retailer's chief executive to possible problems with its 2014-15 half year accounts, despite having opportunities to do so, a London court heard on Thursday. Tesco CEO Dave Lewis was giving evidence at the trial of three former senior executives of Britain's biggest retailer who are accused of fraud and false accounting in 2014. Christopher Bush, 51, who was managing director of Tesco UK, Carl Rogberg, 50, who was UK finance director, and John Scouler, 49, who was UK food commercial director, all deny any wrongdoing and have pleaded not guilty. The case centres on Tesco's Sept. 22, 2014, announcement to the stock exchange that its profit forecast had been overstated by 250 million pounds, mainly due to booking commercial deals with suppliers too early. Lewis replaced Philip Clarke as Tesco CEO on Sept. 1, 2014. He told the court he first became aware of issues with the accounts on Sept. 19 when he was notified by Tesco's chief legal counsel Adrian Morris. Lewis said he was presented with a paper which the court has heard was commissioned by Amit Soni, a senior accountant at Tesco who is described by the prosecution as a whistleblower in the case, and said he reacted with "surprise and shock". "The thing that was unique to this paper was the indication that the numbers that had been declared (on Aug. 29) had a potential misstatement within them," Lewis told the court. "What was new was the proposition in here that 246 million of income had been included in the first half of the year that on the basis of this paper was deemed to be questionable." Lewis said that between joining Tesco on Sept. 1 and notification on Sept. 19 he had met Bush on a couple of occasions and there had also been executive committee meetings that Bush had attended, but no issues with the accounts had been raised. "(It was) not until the morning of the 19th that anyone raised (it) with me," he said. Soni told the court last month that Bush was read out "almost word by word" the paper detailing the hole in the accounts on Sept. 16. Soni said Bush told him the paper would have to be discussed with Lewis. Tesco's Sept. 22 disclosure saw its shares tumble and plunged the company into the worst crisis in its near 100-year history. Lead prosecutor Sasha Wass told the court last month that all three defendants were well aware that a hole in Tesco's accounts was "spiralling out of control" in the first half of 2014 but connived to conceal their failure to meet targets. No charges have been brought against Clarke. The trial is expected to last beyond Christmas. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Zhao Kezhi is best known as the firefighter who was dispatched to Hebei province in 2015 to contain the fallout from the downfall of Zhou Benshun, the disgraced former provincial party chief. Photo: Visual China Former Hebei party secretary Zhao Kezhi has become the secretary of the party committee in Chinas police force as part of a reshuffle of senior officials following the conclusion of the Communist Partys 19th National Congress last week. The Partys Organization Department, which oversees personnel changes, has not made an official announcement about Zhaos appointment, but he hosted a meeting of senior party officials within the colossal Ministry of Public Security on Tuesday, according to a post on the ministrys official website. Zhao also reportedly attended a meeting of the Committee of Political and Legal Affairs the same day, a unit under the partys Central Committee that is now headed by his predecessor Guo Shengkun. The powerful committee oversees the judicial system and the police in China. Zhao, who turns 64 in December, is best known as the firefighter who was dispatched to Hebei province in 2015 to contain the fallout from the downfall of Zhou Benshun, the disgraced former provincial party chief who was sentenced in February to 15 years in prison for accepting more than 40 million yuan ($6 million) in bribes from 2003 to 2015. Zhao was party secretary of the southwestern province of Guizhou before he was sent to Hebei. He relinquished the post in Hebei last week and was succeeded by Wang Dongfeng, who was previously the mayor of the northern port city of Tianjin. Zhao is likely to also be made a government minister to run the Ministry of Public Security under Chinas cabinet, the State Council. His predecessor was both the party chief and minister of the police force. Contact reporter Li Rongde (rongdeli@caixin.com) After a few slow months, Chinas securities regulator has given the green light to even fewer listing applications following a reshuffle of its stock issuance approval committee last month. Applications from 25 companies have been reviewed since the committee held its first meeting on Oct. 17, with an approval rate of 64%. This is down from 84.8% during the first half of 2017. In the latest IPO review session on Tuesday, two out of six applications were approved by the Issuance Examination Committee of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), according to a CSRC statement. The statement spelled out why some of the applications were rejected. It said a window-maker and a home textile producer were rejected due to improper accounting practices and the misdeeds of major shareholders, respectively. Another applicant, a medical device supplier, didnt meet environmental-protection requirements, the statement said, although the company exceeded the minimum profitability the commission requires. In late September, the review committee was expanded to 66 representatives, up from 60, with 34 of its members coming from within the CSRC. The members also include securities lawyers, brokers and regulators from various parts of the securities sector. The selection of committee members is strict. Each member now cannot serve more than two terms, down from three terms previously. Each term lasts for one year. Contact reporter Leng Cheng (chengleng@caixin.com) By India Today Web Desk: Irrfan Khan is all set for his next collaboration with the comedy group AIB. After starring in Bollywood Party Song and Dank Irrfan, the actor is gearing up for his next with the popular group of comedians. The actor will be a part of AIB's Indian political satire titled The Ministry. The show will premiere on Amazon Prime Video in 2018. The Ministry's plotline will revolve around an actor, who after hitting the rock bottom, is offered a place in the ministry. The show has been scripted by AIB's co-founder Gursimran Khamba. advertisement "Irrfan told us that he wanted to be part of this show when he first heard about it. But because of certain complications, it didn't work out. Then one night I met him at a party where he took me aside, stared into my eyes and said 'I want this.' And we all know how hard it is to resist Irrfan's eyes," The Indian Express quoted Khamba as saying. --- ENDS --- If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Only 1.5 percent of Syrian refugees granted refugee status by Western countries in 2016 were Christians. The charity Barnabas Fund said the United Nations has failed miserably to protect those refugees of which many are Christians. "This is shocking behavior by the U.N. and U.K. officials," said Barnabas Fund's Martin Parsons in an interview with Express. "In 2005 the U.N. adopted the responsibility of states to protect citizens from genocide and crimes against humanity. These statistics show that it has failed miserably in this. Christians and other minorities have been treated shamefully by the U.N. And the U.K. has outsourced its own responsibilities in spite of repeated representations." According to figures recently released from the charity, Christians make up about 10 percent of Syrias population. In the United States, only 125 of the 15,479 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. were Christians. In the United Kingdom, the country sheltered more than 8,000 refugees in 2015 and 2016, but only 70 were Christians. There were only 22 Yazidis, another religious minority. The United Kingdoms Home Office responded to the numbers this week, saying: We are clear that our scheme will prioritize the most vulnerable refugees, and that is why under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees identifies people using established vulnerability criteria. "We are working with the UNHCR and other partners to reach groups that might be reluctant to register for the scheme for fear of discrimination and unaware of the options available to them. These groups include all religious minorities." Many Christian organizations have said that these promises are not helping other believers enough. "We don't see anything. It's not happening," William Hollander, who partners with persecution watchdog Open Doors in Iraq, told The Christian Post in October. "The big frustration for the Christians and everybody at the moment is that [they] are being betrayed by the political powers. Photo courtesy: Getty Images Publication date: November 2, 2017 'Bad Boys' TV spin-off lands pilot commitment at NBC The planned "Bad Boys" spin-off may soon appear on network television. Only a few days have passed since reports surfaced about a television spin-off series based on the movie "Bad Boys." In that few days, it has also been confirmed that a pilot commitment has been ordered by NBC and development of the spin-off will move ahead. Variety has reported that the rights to the television pilot were secured by NBC, outbidding other networks for the property and thus securing the project. Although there are no reports on what the title of the still-in-development spin-off will be, network executives are hoping that Gabrielle Union can channel the successful vibe of the movie franchise and translate it to TV ratings. Brandon Sonnier and Brandon Margolis will both be serving as writers and executive producers of the show alongside "Bad Boys" film producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Other details about the show are also starting to surface. Union's character, Sydney Burnett, has left Miami and moved to Los Angeles after a successful career as DEA agent. She is partnered with Nancy McKenna who thinks that Burnett may be hiding something else and becomes concerned for her and their work as LAPD detectives. This character concept seems like a throwback to the odd-couple dynamics in "Bad Boys." If that's the case, it could be a gender-switched TV version of the film franchise and could potentially capture the same feel as the movies. It can be remembered that Sydney appeared in "Bad Boys II" as Martin Lawrence's sister. Her introduction in the film was not only to create friction between the characters of Lawrence and Will Smith but she also served a powerful female character. Not only was Union's character able to hold her own against the male leads, but she was also instrumental in bringing down the Russian mafia and the Cuban drug cartel. 'Black Panther' plot spoilers, rumors: is Wakanda the location of the last Infinity Stone? There are six Infinity Stones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Over the course of 17 films, fans have already been introduced to five of them, with the Soul Stone being the final one left to be located. Early speculations pointed out that the last gem would be discovered in "Thor: Ragnarok." Some believed Hela (Cate Blanchett) has it, while others theorized it is hidden behind Odin's (Anthony Hopkins) eye patch. However, the Taika Waititi-helmed movie did not introduce the Infinity Stone. Instead, it positioned itself as a standalone film within the MCU, as promised. Now that those theories have been proven false, many are wondering where the Soul Stone might be currently hidden in the MCU. So far, there are still five movies before the culmination of the franchise's present storyline: "Black Panther," "Avengers: Infinity War," "Ant-Man and the Wasp," "Captain Marvel," and "Avengers 4." However, since "Infinity War" would see Thanos trying to amass the Infinity Stones for a gauntlet that would grant him dominion over space, time, and all reality, the Soul Stone will more likely debut on the big screen before the third "Avengers" film. That being said, it is safe to assume that the gem would make its appearance in the next Marvel movie, "Black Panther." According to ScreenRant, the Soul Stone could be somewhere in Wakanda, a small African nation where T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) reigns. It is not too much of a stretch for the gem to be in Black Panther's hometown because the place is tied to something profoundly alien. The publication says it is a site of an ancient meteorite impact, which brought vast reserves of Vibranium, the metal Captain America's (Chris Evans) shield and T'Challa's suit are made of. It is possible that the cosmic body may have also brought an Infinity Stone with it when it crashed on Earth. The power of the Soul Stone can also explain Wakandans' different attitude toward death and afterlife. In "Captain America: Civil War," T'Challa told Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) after the murder of his father, "In my culture, death is not the end. It's more of a stepping off point." T'Challa and the Black Panthers before him can communicate with the spirits (or soul) of those who previously bore the title and have since passed on. This connects to the Soul Stone's ability to grant its owner access to souls of the dead in an idyllic, heaven-like pocket universe. Whether or not the final stone is in Wakanda remains to be seen, but fans will know for certain once "Black Panther" hits theaters on Feb. 16, 2018. "Avengers: Infinity War" will follow three months later, on May 4, 2018. 'Enough is enough': Head of Church in Jerusalem warns of attempts to drive Christians out of Old City The peace of Jerusalem is being undermined along with open access to the holy Christian sites by the prospect of legislation which, if left unchecked, would be 'catastrophic,' the head of the Church in the Holy City has warned. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III, widely seen as the most senior Church figure in the Holy Land, issued the stark warning about the ability of religions to worship in peace side by side. He said 'enough is enough' at a press briefing in London today as part of an international tour to gain support for the position of the Church inside the Old City of Jerusalem. The Patriarch was speaking at Westminster Cathedral immediately after meeting Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and having met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and other faith leaders. Theophilus has been raising 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. In July, 40 members of the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, signed a proposed bill that 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. The Patriarch, who also visited king Abdulla II of Jordan, last month 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.' He told journalists today: 'We have the great honour to be with you representing the Christian communities from the Holy City of Jerusalem, the cradle of Christianity as well as our Church which traces its roots back through one unbroken line to the very birth of Christianity in the first century...We have been mandated by all the Church leaders in the Holy Land to share our story and raise awareness of the challenges we are facing as a Christian community in Jerusalem.' 'Recently we have seen the emergence of a trend that threatens to undermine the Christian presence and destabilise the peace of the Holy City of Jerusalem. The "Status Quo" rule that has guaranteed the rights of Jews, Christians and Muslims to live, flourish and thrive together in Jerusalem for centuries is in grave danger. This code, that has safeguarded our religious freedoms and provided access to the most holy places for all people, is being dangerously undermined. If we do not act soon it will be too late. And the outcome will be catastrophic. 'Before, we stood silent, bearing patient witness to a harsh campaign against us and against our Church. Every day we face false accusations, suspicion and slander. Our detractors target our heritage and our integrity. Today, our calling and commitment to the Lord means We can accept this no longer and this has lead us to break our silence and simply say: enough is enough.' The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem faces discord on two fronts: one from Palestinian Christians who believe what the Patriarch's team insist are false reports claiming that the Church has sold property to the Israelis or 'Jews'; and the other from extremist Israeli settlers who want to drive non-Jews out of the Old City. A spokesperson for the Patriarch today claimed that the bill in the Knesset was 'linked' to settlers, who show no sign of being 'reigned in' by the current Israeli government led by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By chance, the Patriarch's visit coincides with a five-day trip to the UK by Netanyahu which begins today, to 'celebrate' the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. 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'. The British Prime Minister Theresa 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'. In response to the bill proposed in July, 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.' The Patriarch concluded today: 'We pray to God Almighty to strengthen us and our brethren in these harsh and difficult times. We thank God for all who care for us enough to write and share our story. May God crown all our efforts with success, so that justice is done and God's richest peace and blessing can reside with us all.' Forget Russia collusion claims Trump's presidency is 'God giving the US a chance' says evangelical leader Robert Jeffress The senior evangelical leader and backer of Donald Trump, Robert Jeffress, has vigorously defended the US President following growing claims of collusion over Russian meddling in last year's presidential election. Jeffress, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church, Dallas, issued a statement in response to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's indictments of Republican operative and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Richard Gates, which were announced on Monday. The 12-count indictment included conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, being an unregistered agent of a foreign principal, making false and misleading statements and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign banks and financial accounts. Jeffress said: 'Months of investigation and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars have yielded absolutely no evidence of any collusion between President Trump and Russia. The president's supporters are smart enough to understand that the Russia investigation is no more than an attempt by the left and some in the Republican establishment to paralyse President Trump and to prevent him from enacting his conservative agenda. I predict that nothing short of a picture showing President Trump holding a flashlight while the Russians are breaking into our voting machines will diminish the president's strong support from Evangelical Christians.' Manafort and Gates have both pleaded not guilty to the charges. The Kremlin has denied it meddled in the election campaign to try to tilt the vote in Trump's favour. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign. Jeffress continued: 'It should not be forgotten that evangelical Christians voted for President Trump by the largest margin in history. For many Christians, President Trump's election not only represented God giving America another chance, but perhaps a last chance to reverse our nation's downward death spiral. 'That's why exit polling indicated that much of this strong support was due to his commitment to nominating conservative federal judges and Supreme Court justices and his vow to protect the unborn from being slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers commitments many evangelicals believe he has spent the past year fulfilling despite obstructionism from Congress. 'And that's why, with the President at my side last week at a Republican fundraiser, I said, "Mr President, those of us who are your supporters cannot allow that obstruction of your agenda to happen, and with God's help, we will not allow that to happen."' Former child soldier in Lord's Resistance Army receives peace award A former child soldier who was sexually assaulted and forced into Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) will be awarded for her role in peace building in Uganda this week. Angela Atim Lakor will receive the Marsh Award for Peace-making and Peace building from the prestigious Wilton Park in London after she co-founded the Watye Ki Gen charity, which translates as 'we have hope'. The group supports females who have returned from the LRA and their children and aims to help women fight the stigma associated with being a LRA survivor. When they return to their villages the association with LRA affects every area of their lives from employment to their children's education. After she escaped the infamous LRA Angela was supported by World Vision's Children of War Reintegration Centre which has helped reintegrate nearly 15,000 former child soldiers and children born in captivity in the past decade. Erica Hall, World Vision UK's Technical Policy Lead on Child Protection, said: 'Children are vulnerable in the face of conflict. Recent UN figures show that there were at least 14,500 grave violations against children in armed conflict last year, including recruitment, sexual violence and abductions.' HBO to air Kit Harington's 'Gunpowder' miniseries in December "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington is coming back to HBO way earlier than the rest of the North as he stars in the miniseries "Gunpowder." Cable channel HBO has announced that it will air the three-part thriller produced by BBC One. "Gunpowder" is based on the 17th-century true story about Guy Fawkes Day, an annual event celebrated in the United Kingdom every Nov. 5. Also known as Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Day commemorates the discovery of a plot to blow up the House of Parliament in London in 1605. Harington plays the role of Robert Catesby, a devout Catholic who was the center of the conspiracy against the government. At that time, Protestants were running England and were openly prosecuting Catholics. Despite this, Catesby refused to denounce his religion, which brought him "to the edge of financial, social and psychological ruin." Apart from being the main protagonist, Harington is also a co-executive producer of the show. It is one that is particularly personal for the actor, being a descendant of Catesby himself. "Three years ago, Daniel West and I conceived and began developing 'Gunpowder' with Kudos and Ronan Bennett," said Harington in an official statement. "We are now thrilled to share this unique story with the U.S. audience. I can't think of a better place to do that than my home at HBO." The pay cable, for its part, said it is "delighted" to give Harington a stage to showcase a project that is really close to his heart. "Kit's passion for and belief in 'Gunpowder' are evident in every frame of the miniseries," said Kary Antholis, HBO miniseries and Cinemax programming president. Apart from Harington, "Gunpowder" also stars Peter Mullan, Mark Gatiss and Liv Tyler. It will premiere on Dec. 18, 10 p.m. EST, with the next episodes airing on the following nights at the same time. After the India Today expose of the Popular Front of India (PFI) that jolted the nation, proving its involvement in mass proselytizing and illegal financing, the Kerala Police now says they've identified six PFI activists who've joined the Islamic State. Some of the PFI activists Kerala Police is claiming to have joined ISIS By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan: Kerala's Popular Front of India (PFI), a non-profit organisation, has been under NIA investigation. The PFI was accused of brainwashing Hindu women and marrying them off to Muslim men. The organisation, however, denied this accusation. The PFI was also accused of being involved in hawala funding and murderous assaults, and had allegations of having links with the Islamic State. advertisement An India Today investigation -- Operation Conversion Factory -- secured startling confessions of the non-profit organisation's top functionaries about mass proselytizing, illegal financing and about its ultimate goal to turn India into a theocratic Islamic state and exposed PFI. Now, the Kerala Police claims to have identified six PFI activists from Kannur district who have joined the Islamic State. Kannur DYSP said that all six men were active as PFI activists in the state. Police said that these men managed to move out of India, possibly to Syria, with fake passports. The six men identified are Abdul Ghayoom, Abdul Manaf, Shabeer, Suhail and his wife Rizwana, Safwan. Here are some details of the four men identified by the Kerala Police - 1) Abdul Kayoom - from Kannur's Kuttiatoor. - went to Syria on April 8, 2017 2) Abdul Manaf PP - from Kannur's Valapattanam. - went to Syria using fake passport, had contact with Shajahan, met members of Shajahan group in Istanbul. 3) Shabeer - from Valapattanam. 4) Suhail - from Valapattanam. - is Shabeer's relative. 5) Safwan - from Kannur's Pappinissery OPERATION CONVERSION FACTORY IMPACT Union Minister Ravishankar Prasad said PFI should be banned and the exposed leaders should be prosecuted. "Your investigation shows that there is a PFI, the Popular Front of India, which is having an organised racket employing people who are owning it up on your channel that they are creating a radical group by some kind of psychological brainwashing," said law minister and BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad. "These NGOs that profess that they stand for peace, profanity stand exposed today at your channel. That's a great job you have done. My greetings and congratulations to you," said Prasad. "I have to point out that unfortunately none of the reporting that has come out in the papers, one finds that they haven't caught the the gist of the argument which thankfully your channel seems to have through this entire exercise in a very very good manner caught," said BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli. --- ENDS --- advertisement More UK cathedrals targeted for Luther-style protest warning Church 'in crisis' over gay relationships A campaign targeting cathedrals around the UK is spreading off the back of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. A list of 'declarations' reminiscent of Martin Luther's 95 theses is being pinned to cathedral doors by a group of priests in protest at what they see as the Church of England's increasingly liberal approach to same-sex relationships. London's St Paul's Cathedral and Southwark Cathedral were the first to have the Southwark Declaration, a list of affirmations promoting conservative Anglican theology, attached to their doors on Tuesday night. Then on Wednesday night Rochester Cathedral and Hereford Cathedral were also targeted in what is becoming a nationwide campaign. It follows on from the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation on Tuesday which marked the day Luther, then an Augustinian monk, allegedly nailed his 95 Theses, or criticisms of the Church, to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral in Germany. Christian Today understands the campaigners are deliberately focusing on cathedrals which they perceive to have a liberal slant. Hereford Diocese last week passed a motion calling for official liturgy to bless gay couples and forcing the Church of England to publicly debate the decision. Rochester Diocese was included because it has hosted LGBT Eucharists and has draped the rainbow flag from its altar. The traditionalist stunt hopes to pressure bishops into maintaining a conservative approach to same-sex relationships and warns the CofEis 'corrupt' and in 'crisis' because of its softening stance. The document, which has been signed by more than 60 priests and was first published in 2015, calls on bishops 'to regain the confidence of Bible believing Anglicans' in order 'to avoid a rupture in the Church'. They write: '500 years ago Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses to a church door in Germany. He did it because the Church had become corrupt. Today a Declaration is being fixed to a cathedral door here in England because the Established Church in our land is becoming corrupt.' The document warns 'practice on the ground has already changed' in reference to allowing Church leaders to be in committed same-sex relationships and warned it was 'weakening and destroying the Church'. The actual declaration contains five 'affirmations' surrounding conservative theology. 'Peaky Blinders' season 4 air date news: Shelbys to return this November The Shelbys are definitely back. The British gangster drama "Peaky Blinders" is set to make a return to BBC Two. After a 17-month hiatus, the show is set to air its fourth season on Nov. 15. The release date announcement comes about a month after "Peaky Blinders'" first trailer for the upcoming season was launched. The creator of the series, Steven Knight, has said that season 4 will be the best that "Peaky Blinders" has to offer. Season 4 is set to start with Cillian Murphy's character Tommy Shelby receiving an ominous letter on Christmas Eve and concluding that he and his gang, the Peaky Blinders, are in mortal danger. As their enemy flanks them on every front, he decides to make a run for his country house and return to where he began in Small Heath, where a fight for survival waits for him. It can be remembered that in the third season, Tommy achieved apex nihilism. The series, set in 1924, saw the Shelby family build their empire and slowly ascend the steps towards high society from their humble beginnings in Birmingham. The show is produced by Caryn Mandabach Productions and Tiger Aspect. "Peaky Blinders" has also added Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody, alongside Aidan Gillen who appeared in "Game of Thrones" and "Happy Valley's" Charlie Murphy, to beef up its roster for season 4. The cast members that will be reprising their roles include Helen McCrory, Paul Anderson, Joe Cole and Tom Hardy. The new season of "Peaky Blinders" will also mark the reappearance of Charlotte Riley as May Carleton. As of press time, there is no information yet on when the show will air in the United States on Netflix, but "Peaky Blinders" normally streams once the show has ended its run in the United Kingdom. Pope Francis is fostering 'confusion' in the Church, says senior Catholic theologian before quitting A senior Franciscan theologian has resigned his role advising US Catholic bishops on doctrine after writing to the Pope over the summer and attacking the 'chronic confusion' of Francis's pontificate. Father Thomas Weinandy, a member of the Vatican's International Theological Commission, has resigned his position as a consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) committee on doctrine, following the publication of a letter written by him to Pope Francis claiming that the current papacy 'fosters within the faithful a growing unease'. Weinandy, who previously served as executive director of the USCCB's Secretariat for Doctrine, sent the five-page letter to Pope Francis on July 31. Weinandy told the Catholic news website Crux that he sent the letter after a powerful experience of discernment convinced him that 'Jesus wanted me to write something' that would 'be of help to Pope Francis, to the Church, and to the faithful'. Yesterday James Rogers, the chief communications officer of the USCCB, said that 'after speaking with the General Secretary of the Conference today, Father Thomas Weinandy...has resigned, effective immediately, from his position as consultant to the USCCB Committee on Doctrine. The work of the Committee is done in support of, and in affective collegiality with, the Holy Father and the Church in the United States. Our prayers go with Father Weinandy as his service to the Committee comes to a close.' Weinandy's letter, which was published by Crux yesterday, made five claims: the Pope's pontificate had fostered confusion, diminished the importance of doctrine in the Church's life, appointed bishops who teach and act in harmful ways, fostered a culture of fear among bishops, and caused faithful Catholics to lose confidence in the papacy. Weinandy also expressed his 'love for the Church and sincere respect' for the office of the Pope and said he hoped that by recognising 'darkness, the Church will will humbly need to renew herself, and so continue to grow in holiness'. Father Thomas Petri, the academic dean of the pontifical faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that Weinandy 'is a theologian of the highest caliber' and that the 'letter to His Holiness is quite obviously written with a deep filial piety and loyalty to both our Holy Father Pope Francis and to the Church'. Petri added: 'I think, charitably what he believes is on many people's minds. Many priests are confronted daily by members of the lay faithful expressing confusion and concern in reports they read or hear about Pope Francis and his advisers.' Chad Pecknold, professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, agreed, saying Weinandy 'is arguably the most distinguished Franciscan theologian working in the English language today'. Pecknold told the CNA: 'He is a theologian centered in the Church, and not at all at her outermost fringe. So his letter carries the weight of the center. 'Rather than presume to correct, Father Weinandy describes the current situation, and informs the Holy Father that what seems to many like 'intentionally ambiguous' teaching has led to confusion, leading some of his own advisers to publicly advance error....There is something admirable about the impassioned plea of a son of St Francis writing to Pope Francis, in truth and love, as a son to a father. His love for the Pope is evident throughout his appeal.' Pecknold called Weinandy's letter 'deferential,' but nonetheless told the CNA that 'it is certainly reasonable to ask whether it should have been published in the media'. Jacob Wood, theology professor at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, expressed a similar concern. 'If Father Weinandy's intention is fraternal correction, publishing his letter might not be the best way to go about it,' Wood told the CNA. 'It is easy for our intentions to get warped when treated in the mass media by people who don't share the perspective of faith. There does exist some danger of scandal.' Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the USCCB, issued a statement yesterday afternoon 'on the nature of dialogue within the Church' which he said was brought about by the publication of Weinandy's letter and his resignation. DiNardo said that theological debates are often the subject of media attention, which 'is to be expected and is often good'. However, DiNardo added that theologians and bishops should make every effort to interpret the Holy Father's teaching charitably, and that all Catholics should 'acknowledge that legitimate differences exist' among Catholics, 'and that it is the work of the Church, the entire body of Christ, to work towards an ever-growing understanding of God's truth'. Rowan Williams and Christian Aid lead charge against banks who profit from 'climate chaos' Rowan Williams has urgently questioned the morality of British banks profiting from projects that cause climate change and called for them to shift their investments away from fossil fuels 'that contribute to climate chaos'. The former Archbishop of Canterbury's comments come as a new ComRes poll shows that 80 per cent of the British public agree that it is morally wrong for banks to profit from investments that pollute the environment. Four in five people (80 per cent) also say they do not want banks to invest their savings in projects that damage the environment, while 77 per cent agree that banks should be stopped from doing so. Last week Barclays announced profits for the year to September of 3.4bn, up 31 per cent compared to last year. Lloyds announced profits for the same period of 4.5bn, up 38 per cent, while RBS announced a profit of 1.3bn for the same period. HSBC reported profits for the year to date of 11.3bn, a rise of 40 per cent. Dr Williams, who is chair of Christian Aid, said: 'This year we have seen extreme weather displacing millions of people in South Asia and bringing death and destruction in the Caribbean and the United States. These communities count the cost in lives lost. But British investors, including banks, continue to count profits from just those fossil fuel investments that contribute to climate chaos. 'The latest surveys make it plain that an overwhelming majority of the British public do not want their savings invested in holdings that damage our global future and that they expect bank CEOs to take personal responsibility for making sure that their investments are ethically and environmentally responsible. 'Our call today is for the chief executives of our major banks to make clear and time-specific commitments to reducing and ultimately replacing fossil fuel investment, and to shift towards climate solutions. The moral case is clear, and the public increasingly recognise this. The urgency is mounting.' The ComRes polling also found that: 78 per cent agreed that investing in companies which cause dangerous climate change is morally wrong no matter how profitable it is; 81 per cent of people felt bank chief executives should take responsibility for ensuring their banks' investments are not causing environmental damage ,with over 55s the largest group in support of this at 85 per cent; and 85 per cent of people think it is morally wrong to profit from investing in projects which will cause harm to children's futures. The comments from Dr Williams and the ComRes findings coincide with a new report published by Christian Aid, which shows how the UK's high street banks are profiting from some of the dirtiest fossil fuel projects around the world, while communities in South Asia, the Caribbean and the US are still paying the price for this summer's extreme weather events. The report, called The Big Shift, contains case studies from Colombia, East Africa and Indonesia and reveals that Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS are all funding the companies behind the Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia, the coal from which generates nearly the equivalent carbon pollution in a year as Colombia's entire national emissions. This is despite a commitment from the four banks to deliver the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below two degrees. Christian Aid said: 'In fact, two years on from Paris, there's been no substantive change in the banks' lending policies or actions.' Christian Aid's report shows that despite the falling costs of renewables, the world is still investing over three times more in fossil fuels than renewables, and that if this trajectory continues the global economy will have funneled a staggering $23 trillion into fossil fuels by 2050. 'This would sink the Paris Agreement's targets and cause untold misery to people around the world who are suffering from the impacts of climate change, with the poorest already bearing the brunt,' Christian Aid said. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), private banks have a key role to play in reversing the needed investment gap and making the shift to renewables. The agency concludes its 2017 World Energy Investment report by saying: 'Investment in new low-carbon generation needs to increase just to keep pace with growth in electricity demand growth, and there is considerable scope for more clean energy innovation spending by governments and, in particular, the private sector.' The IEA recently released a report showing that renewables will give more people in the developing world access to electricity than coal. In September, the editor of The Banker Magazine, Brian Caplen, warned that banks faced an existential crisis. 'Under clean-energy scenarios, oil majors become rather less blue-chip to lend to than those engaged in the technologies of the future for example renewable energy, electric cars and insulation,' he said. 'In these sectors, there are big opportunities with one estimate putting the investment needed to transition to a lower carbon economy at $1000bn each year for the foreseeable future. This figure is not something dreamed up by an idealistically green organisation it comes from the Financial Stability Board's Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, chaired by Michael Bloomberg.' Christiana Figueres, the former General Secretary of the UNFCCC, last month called on banks to invest a ratio of 2:1 in favour of green investments over brown investments to avoid an economic cliff edge. The Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, who leads the Province of Southern Africa which recently decided to divest all its fossil fuel investments on climate change grounds, responded to the Christian Aid report by saying: 'Climate change is hurting people in the developing world first and worst. In response to this we are divesting from fossil fuels and can no longer profit from pollution. But in Britain UK banks are still propping up coal mines which are driving the climate change we suffer from. This is morally questionable and they have a responsibility to clean up their act.' Christian Aid said that as part of its 'Big Shift' campaign more than 25,000 contacts have been made with the CEOs of the big four high street banks asking them to move their investments out of fossil fuels. To sign up to the campaign visit www.christianaid.org.uk/bigshift. Watch Christian Aid's spoof bank TV advertisement: Was this Christian student really expelled from university for expressing biblical views? A devout Christian who was thrown off his university course after he described homosexuality a sin on Facebook would not have been dismissed if he had engaged with officials rather than launching a campaign, the judge's ruling reveals. Ngole, a 39-year-old post-graduate student from Barnsley in south Yorkshire, was expelled from the University of Sheffield's professional social work course after posted 'the Bible and God identify homosexuality as a sin', adding that 'same-sex marriage is a sin whether we like it or not. It is God's words and man's sentiments would not change His words'. After the High Court rejected his judicial review, Ngole said he was deeply 'disappointed' said it 'supports the university's decision to bar me from my chosen career because of my Biblical views on sexual ethics'. Andrea Williams, chief executive of the campaign group Christian Concern of which the Christian Legal Centre, who represented Ngole is a part, said the ruling 'shakes the foundations of freedom' in the UK. 'Rulings like this show that society is becoming increasingly intolerant of Christian moral values. Christians are being told to shut up and keep quiet about their moral views or face a bar from employment,' she said. 'Unless the views you express are politically correct, you may be barred from office. This is very far from how a free and fair society should operate.' But Rowena Collins Rice, deputy high court judge, said his Christian views were not the issue and the whole incident was 'not inevitable' and could have been avoided if Ngole had engaged with officials' concerns. 'What troubled the University here in the first place was not the religious motivation or the religious content of the student's...postings,' she wrote in her judgement made public on Wednesday. 'It was how they could be accessed and read by people, service users included, who would perceive them as judgemental, incompatible with service ethos, or suggestive of discriminatory intent.' She added: 'What troubled the University more, though, was the apparent refusal of the student to take an active interest in that concern about perception. He seemed either to deny the possibility of such a perception or to deny that it should be taken seriously.' She went on: 'The potential for rapid escalation was obvious. The more the student insisted on the paramount importance of his faith and his freedoms, the more concerned the University became that he was simply unwilling or unable to see and deal with the concern. 'He was not looking at the matter in anything like the way a trainee social worker needed to. And the more concerned the University grew, the more the student felt it was simply against him and against his world view, so the more he felt he needed to insist on respect for his rights, and the more disengaged he became. The outcome became increasingly inevitable. 'It was not inevitable from the beginning. This was a deeply regrettable, and fundamentally unnecessary, course of events. There is not, after all, an obvious incompatibility between deeply held religious views on the one hand, and social work on the other.' She added: 'Those worlds are eminently reconcilable. Reconciliation is the everyday norm in practice. This is a case about a singular failure of reconciliation.' The professional panel that made the initial decision said it 'had serious concerns about Mr Ngole's suitability' following 'Mr Ngole's lack of insight and Mr Ngole's apparent inability or unwillingness to reflect on his actions', rather than the views he expressed. They added his media campaign, launched through Christian Concern, was 'further demonstration of a concerning lack of professional judgment'. The panel said: 'Our position is that this indicates an inability or unwillingness on the part of Mr Ngole to appreciate or accept that the FPC decision related to his poor judgment and lack of insight and reflection as to how his comments could be perceived, rather than the specifics of the views expressed.' A spokesperson for Christian Concern told Christian Today it was 'ridiculous to blame Felix' for his attitude. 'They restricted his freedom of expression. They agreed that is what has happened. And it is they who are pursuing it through the courts and stopping him doing what he wants to do which is helping people.' The spokesperson added: 'The university is in an untenable position and I think the judgement is trying to defend that.' Nearly one million new immigrants will settle in Canada between 2018 and 2020, under what Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen has labeled the most ambitious immigration levels in recent Canadian history. The ambitious target has been set in the governments new multi-year Immigration Levels Plan, which was tabled in the House of Commons on November 1. Economic migrants will make up the majority of new permanent residents admitted to Canada, with most economic newcomers set to immigrate through the Express Entry immigration selection system. Targets for the economic categories generally as well as Express Entry specifically will increase every year until 2020. The move to a multi-year plan deviates from previous plans rolled out annually, which have set targets for the upcoming year. After consulting with provincial governments and the business community, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) moved to a longer-range forecast in order to allow stakeholders to plan for appropriate service levels and use of resources. This historic multi-year immigration levels plan will benefit all Canadians because immigrants will contribute their talents to support our economic growth and innovation, helping to keep our country at the forefront of the global economy, stated Minister Hussen at a press conference in Toronto. Under the plan, 310,000 new permanent residents will settle in Canada in 2018. This target will be increased to 330,000 newcomers in 2019, with a further 340,000 to settle in 2020. Express Entry and PNPs Of all these newcomers, around 565,000 will be admitted through the economic programs, with close to a quarter million to arrive through one of the federal economic programs managed under Express Entry. Throughout 2017, IRCC has made it increasingly clear that Express Entry is now the main driver of economic immigration, with more Invitations to Apply (ITAs) issued so far this year than over the two previous years together. The increased target intake for Express Entry candidates in 2017 was a contributory factor towards a decrease in Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) cut-off thresholds this year, as an increased intake places downward pressure on CRS cut-off thresholds. Whereas the lowest score drawn in 2016 was 450, the lowest score drawn so far this year for Federal Skilled Worker Class (FSWC) and Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates was 413, with even lower record low thresholds for Federal Skilled Trades Class (FSTC) candidates (most recently a threshold of 241 in a draw that took place just hours before IRCC tabled its multi-year plan). An even higher target intake for 2018 and beyond may contribute towards even lower CRS cut-off thresholds. Express Entry target admissions Year Target Target Increase 2017 71,700* 2018 74,900 3,200 (4%) 2019 81,400 6,700 (9%) 2020 85,800 4,400 (5%) *This does not include the target number for the Atlantic Immigration Pilot Program (AIPP) Another 184,000 or so economic migrants and their accompanying family members will be admitted through the Provincial Nominee Programs (PNPs), which allow provinces and territories to nominate individuals based on their ability to settle into the provincial labour market. As has been the case since 2015, certain enhanced PNP streams will be aligned with Express Entry, while other base streams will allow provinces to welcome new immigrants from outside the Express Entry pool. An enhanced provincial nomination is the single most valuable factor under the CRS, as it results in 600 additional CRS points and an ITA at a subsequent draw from the pool. PNP target admissions Year Low High Target Target Increase 2017 49,000 54,000 51,000 2018 53,000 57,400 55,000 4,000 (8%) 2019 57,000 63,500 61,000 6,000 (11%) 2020 62,000 68,500 67,800 6,800 (11%) Next year may bring even more PNP activity than in 2017, which itself has been a busy year on this front. In January, 2018 Alberta is set to join other provinces and territories in offering an enhanced Express Entry stream, though the exact criteria for that stream remains unknown at this time. Over recent months many provinces have taken a more hands-on, dynamic approach to their Express Entry-aligned PNP streams. Ontario, for example, has targeted candidates in certain occupations, notably in Information Technology (IT). Saskatchewan has expanded its in-demand occupations list, Nova Scotia recently reopened its popular Express Entry Demand stream, and British Columbia launched a Tech Pilot, with certain IT/tech occupations prioritized through its streams, including its Express Entry stream. Growing the economy Among the other economic programs, the province of Quebec will welcome 94,000 skilled workers and business immigrants over the next three years, and Canada will continue to welcome business immigrants through its federal programs, with more than 2,000 federal business immigrants persons and their family members to be admitted by the end of 2020. Family reunification and refugee settlement remain important Other key highlights from Canadas multi-year Immigration Levels Plan include a target to reunite around 265,000 spouses, common-law partners, dependent children, parents, and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents through the Family Class programs, with a slight increase in the overall Family Class targets year-on-year. Family Class target admissions Low High Target Target Increase 2017 80,000 86,000 84,000 2018 81,000 89,000 86,000 2,000 (2.4%) 2019 82,000 91,000 88,500 2,500 (3%) 2020 82,000 96,000 91,000 2,500 (3%) Since coming into office in late 2015, Canadas Liberal government has made family reunification a priority, with measures to reduce processing times, bring in more immigrants through the Parent and Grandparent Program (PGP), and an extension of a successful work permit pilot program allowing sponsored spouses and common-law partners in Canada to work while their applications await a decision. Canadas long-standing tradition of resettling international refugees will also continue, with a target to approve around 43,000 refugees for permanent residence in 2018. A further 45,650 refugees may be settled in 2019, with a target for 48,700 more in 2020. A look at 2018 The overall economic picture shows that Express Entry is set to be the main source of economic admissions in 2018. Family Class admissions will increase slightly compared with last year, from 84,000 to 86,000, as will the number of refugees resettled in Canada, from 40,000 to 43,000. A further 3,500 individuals are set to obtain permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds in 2018. Building for the future Last week the government of Canada released new details on the immigrant make-up of the country, based on data gathered during the 2016 census. Around 22 percent of Canadas population is now made up by first-generation immigrants, all of whom settled as permanent residents and many of whom have since gone on to become naturalized citizens of Canada. Many more residents are in Canada on temporary status, such as on a work permit or as an international student. By 2036, the share of Canadas population made up by immigrants is projected to reach as high as 30 percent of the overall population. Number and proportion of foreign-born population in Canada, 18712036 The governments latest Immigration Levels Plan builds on a gradual increase in the target intake over recent years. In 2011, the then-Conservative government set an overall target of around 250,000, with subsequent plans showing a gradual increase in the target year-on-year. This Immigration Levels Plan shows that the government is serious about growing the country for the benefit of all, but it is doing so in an incremental way. At a time of global unrest and the coming to power of less progressive governments in many developed countries, Canada is showing that there is another way to do things. A progressive, incremental approach working with business and public stakeholders, with the support of elected representatives, is the right approach, says Attorney David Cohen. For individuals and families around the world, including some already in Canada, this Immigration Levels Plan may be the blueprint that allows you to make Canada your new permanent home. With the federal government and provincial counterparts tweaking their programs and strategies on an ongoing basis, it is important to get an evaluation of your options and remain vigilant for changes over the course of 2018 and beyond. To find out if you are eligible for immigration to Canada through one of the many programs currently available, please fill out a free online assessment. To find out if you or your spouse, partner, dependent(s), parent(s) or grandparent(s) is/are eligible for sponsorship under the Family Class, please fill out a free online family class assessment. 2017 CICNews All Rights Reserved The Islamic States self-declared caliphate may be all but dead and buried in Iraq and Syria, but it thrives in the minds of the frustrated faithful like Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan, who self-radicalized in America, police say, and decided a year ago to bring the jihad home. A lawful permanent resident of the U.S., Saipov may have spent time in Paterson, Tampa, and Cincinnati, but fellow Uzbeks and other Muslim neighbors in those cities were not his community. Saipovs real community is like-minded jihadis in America and around the world, the estimated 40,000 defeated foreign fighters in the destroyed caliphate, many of whom are now returning to their countries of origin7,000 of them to Europe alone. It also includes his fellow online wannabe holy warriors who may never have used their passports or brandished a weapon. This virtual jihad nation has been gaining strength as its geographic counterpart in the Middle East shrinks. According to police accounts and a criminal complaint filed in New York on Wednesday, Saipov left a handwritten note in the van that he had rented in Passaic, New Jersey, and abandoned after his deadly rampage killed eight and wounded 12. No god but god and Mohamed is his prophet and Islamic supplication. It will endure, the note read, according to investigators. Filled with new and stunning details about New Yorks worst terrorist attack since 9/11, the federal complaint sheds new light on the mind of a volunteer member of the global jihad. After being read his Miranda rights, Saipov not only confessed that he was inspired to act in the name of the Islamic State but also boasted that he felt good about his carnage. Had he not been forced to leave the rental van after colliding with a school bus, he had intended to continue on to the Brooklyn Bridge, where he would have killed more people. He asked that an ISIS flag be hung in his hospital room, the complaint states, a request the police ignored. He told the FBI that he was spurred to act a year ago after watching many of the 90 videos and 3,800 images found on one of his two cell phones, particularly a video in which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader and self-declared caliph, demanded to know what Muslims in the U.S. were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq. Two months ago, Saipov selected his weapon of choice, a rental van, and his target dateHalloween, when many New Yorkers would be out celebrating. He left little to chance. On October 22, he rented another vehicle for a dry run, practicing the swerves and turns he would use to mow down innocent pedestrians and bicyclists on the Hudson River bike path between West Houston and Chambers Street. At a press briefing at 1 Police Plaza Wednesday morning, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism John Miller said that, based on the note and other evidence found at the scene of the crime and elsewhere, Saipov had followed the Islamic States online playbook to a T. Later, Saipov himself appeared in a wheelchair before a federal judge in Lower Manhattan. Represented by a pubic defender, he was not required to enter a plea. The police are still searching for another suspect, an Uzbek man who may have accompanied Saipov shortly before the rampage and texted him on his cellphone after the attack. In remarks before a cabinet meeting Wednesday, President Donald Trump called Saipov an animal. Announcing that he was asking Congress to repeal the Diversity Lottery Program that let Saipov and some 50,000 other foreigners enter the U.S. each year, Trump said that he would consider sending Saipov to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where alleged terrorists captured on foreign soil are kept without the protections afforded U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. Even as the federal complaint was unveiled in Lower Manhattan, Trump called the legal system used to try terrorists a joke and a laughing stock. But U.S. prosecutors have never lost a terrorism case in the civilian-justice system. The militarys problematic attempted prosecutions of Gitmo detainees, by contrast, have been repeatedly delayed. Whats known about the Saipov case so far highlights the enormity of the terrorist challenge facing America and other Western democracies in this latest stage of the war on terror. Saipovs attack, said Matthew Henman, associate director of Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Center in Britain, underlines the continuing vulnerability of soft, civilian targets to attacks that require little technical or operational capability. Saipovs Central Asian origins should not be surprising, says Mitch Silber, the NYPDs former director of intelligence analysis. By the time I left the department in 2012, he said, we were already looking at these communities. While he regretted seeing New York hit, it was only a matter of time before a terrorist succeeded, even in a city so heavily patrolled and surveilled. Given what we know right now, you couldnt have stopped [Saipov] from renting a truck or driving for Uber. But a vehicular attack also suggested a degradation of the terrorists capabilities, Silber maintained. Were not talking about a WMD attack, or even an attack with a gun. There are limits to how much damage the truck will cause. Another intelligence veteran disagreed. He called Saipovs attack a stark achievement. Among jihadis, Saipov will be seen as a hero, he warned. He achieved what 100 others had failed to do. By striking in the heart of the apostate, he demonstrated that New York is not invulnerable, that its porous. He will inspire others in the global jihad to try to strike here. He threaded the needle, and he will be followed. New York City will have to renew its commitment to vigilance as it enters this new stage in its history as a target for international terror. Judith Miller is a City Journal contributing editor and author of The Story: A Reporters Journey. Photo by St. Charles County Department of Corrections/Getty Images We were having a small family pizza party to celebrate my birthday when my brother-in-law looked up from his cell phone. Terrorist attack in New York, he said. He handed me the phone. I read the brief summary. Yet another jihadist had mown down people with a truck. There was mention of a bike path. Where in New York City is there a bike path? I wondered aloud. Nobody answered. I didnt expect an answer. We were in Norway, and I was the only New Yorker in the room. My partner and I went home. Usually, when I hear about a terror attack, I bite the bullet and turn on CNN. But I didnt trust myself not to explode at the sound of Wolf or Christiane or Anderson whitewashing a jihadist attack on my hometown. So I opened my laptop and found a Fox News live stream on You Tube. Watching the coverage, I thought about my father. He died in April 2000. On 9/11, I found myself feeling glad that he hadnt lived to see it. The son of Polish immigrants, hed lived his entire life in New York City. He loved the city, and loved America, which, for him, in a world of tyranny and peril, was the great, good placefree, safe, civilized. September 11 would have shaken his worldview. I thought about George W. Bush, who, after 9/11, could have sent police into every mosque in the country, closed those containing so much as a single page of jihadist propaganda, expelled every dicey imam, changed U.S. immigration policies, and led an honest effort to educate the nation about our enemy. Instead, even as he committed our military to a naive effort to democratize the undemocratizable, he played Islam-apologist-in-chiefa role that Barack Obama gladly inherited. Thanks to them, and to American media and schools, young people today have learned to see every act of jihadist terrorism as a burden primarily for innocent Muslims, whobecause their noble religion has been hijacked yet againtremble in their homes in fear of a backlash. I thought about the great Mayor Rudy Giulianiwho, from the get-go, got it all rightand about the lamentable Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is less concerned about probing potential terrorists than about investigating critics of Islam (and who, to the citys shame, will probably be reelected next week). And I thought about my sister and niece, both of whom live in New York. The aforementioned bike path, it turned out, runs right past Stuyvesant High School. A Fox News reporter interviewed a Stuyvesant student, a girl, whod seen body bags and mangled bicycles. My father went to Stuyvesant. My niece, born a few months before my father died, graduated from there in June. After learning the location of the attack, I checked Facebook. My sister had already posted about it. My niece, she wrote, was worried about her friends at Stuyvesant. Later, my sister noted that those friends were, one by one, marking themselves as safe. This is one definition of what it means to grow up in the post-9/11 world: you just know, in the same way that you know how to cross the street or tie your shoes, that when theres a jihadist attack in your vicinity, youre supposed to go onto social media and mark yourself as safe. The day after the attack, I called my sister. She said that my niece had been petrified yesterday, but that this morning she had said: Imagine being a Muslim student at Stuy today. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images Audio Transcript Brian Anderson: Hello, I am City Journal editor Brian Anderson. Thanks for joining us for the 10 Blocks Podcast, featuring urban policy and cultural commentary with City Journal editors, contributors, and special guests. Seth Barron: I am Seth Barron, the associate editor of City Journal. Joining me today is Judith Miller. Judy is an adjunct fellow here at the Manhattan Institute, a Pulitzer prize-winning contributing editor for City Journal, and a Fox News contributor. Judy, thanks for joining us on 10 Blocks. Judith Miller: Thanks very much, Seth. Seth Barron: So, we are going to talk about the whats, I guess, come to be known as the Halloween terrorist massacre that happened yesterday in lower Manhattan. Judy, fill us in on what we know so far and what the developing news is. Judith Miller: Well, weve learned a lot more about the perpetrator of this Halloween horror, Seth. We have learned that he was not on the NYPDs radar. That we learned today from John Miller, the Deputy Secretary of Counterterrorism for the NYPD, who told us that even though there were people who were on the NYPDs radar, that is who were under surveillance, and he was he knew them and he was in their circle, he, himself, had never been either under FBI or NYPD investigation as a subject of inquiry. That is very important. We also learned that he was radicalized here, domestically. That is what you and I had assumed yesterday as were writing, but we learned today that he had decided within the last few weeks to carry out this terror attack because he had been planning it for a few weeks. We also learned that from the time that he purchased, or rented, his van, his Home Depot van in Passaic, New Jersey, it took roughly an hour for him to get across the bridge and down to the scene of his crime and to mow down eight people and wound twelve. So, he didnt go home and have a peanut butter sandwich. He went immediately from the rental company into New York to commit this crime. Seth Barron: Now, was it so, was it a spur-of-the-moment type of thing, or did he plan it? Judith Miller: No. He had been planned this had been planned for several weeks, according to John Miller. And Miller also told us more today about the note that he had left, which was he left a note in Arabic, which is kind of interesting, since he is an Uzbek national, and then the note basically said something to the effect of the caliphate will never die, a reference to the Islamic caliphate that was declared by ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which is now shrinking and dying by the day. But, tens of thousands of frustrated, furious, holy warriors are returning from the battlefield to their home countries, and those are the people we are worried about. Seth Barron: Now, this man, Sayfullo Saipov, the terrorist in this case, was he, in fact, an ISIS fighter? How did he get to the United States? What was he doing here? Judith Miller: He came in in 2010 under something known as a diversity visa, which is basically a lottery system which lets about 50,000 a year into the country, and by all accounts, at least according to an interview I heard this morning with the head of the BBCs Uzbek radio division, he was thrilled to have been admitted to the United States. There was no indication of any radicalization. The NYPD believes that he was radicalized here, domestically, and understanding how that process happened, how fast it happened, what is known as the flash to bang ratio, is going to be very crucial in the days ahead. Seth Barron: Now, I know that the NYPD has conducted, historically, surveillance and investigation into, you know, local Muslim communities, but you are saying he wasnt on their radar, but some of his associates were. What was the milieu in which Saipov, you know, presumably became radicalized? Judith Miller: We dont know yet. The FBI and the NYPD, working through the Joint Terrorism Task Force, are going over his social media postings, interviewing his family and his three children. We dont know the specific spark, or how it happened, or whether or not he was part of an informal or formal group, but what we do know is that he attended a mosque which has long been on the NYPDs radar, which is the Omar Mosque in Paterson, New Jersey. Now, this mosque was, at one point, directly surveilled by the NYPD as of 2005, we know this from court documents, as a problematic place, as a place that was of deep concern, terrorism concern, to the NYPD and the FBI. But, that, the NYPDs ability to monitor things that go on in New Jersey was severely limited when Muslim groups responded to an Associated Press series of articles saying that the NYPD was surveilling New Jersey Muslims, and people there got hysterical. And, to be fair, Mike Sheehan, who was the Counter Terrorism Director for NYPD under Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, pointed out that the New Jersey Police Union was also very upset that NYPD cops were actually doing the investigations. They put pressure on then Governor Corzine and on Governor Christie to curtail and to limit the NYPDs reach into New Jersey. Now, the reason that thats important is not that Im not saying that the New Jersey cops and the detectives dont know how to investigate terror, but what I am saying is that the people who are best at this, by all accounts, and who have the best data on it and the best understanding of the radicalization process are clearly the NYPD cops. So, if you say you cant operate in New Jersey, we dont know to what extent after the New Jersey political establishment shut down the NYPD there, we dont know to what extent the NYPD continued, on the sly, to do things, but we do know that a major focus of investigation for the NYPD was limited. Seth Barron: I see. Now, youve been following the terrorist threat, and the Middle East, and radical Islam for a long time, for a substantial portion of your career, and there have been several, I dont know, a couple of dozes cases terrorist attacks that were thwarted since 9/11, in New York City by the NYPD. You know, Ive seen different numbers on this. And this is really the most successful such attack since 9/11. Judith Miller: Right. Seth Barron: Is this a victory for ISIS and the radicals, or what does this mean? What does this portend? Judith Miller: Well, I think yesterday, when it first happened, you and I agreed that in some respects it was kind of a failure for them and for its perpetrator, because one, he was shut down so quickly, it could have been so much worse had he been able to run amok, had he after hitting the school bus in which people were injured and got out of his car, had he been permitted to go on killing people had he had automatic weapons, which he didnt have, that he could have continued mowing people down. So, in that respect, it was a failure. And he didnt get his wish, apparent wish, we dont know this yet, but we will soon, his apparent wish to become a martyr for Islam, which is what the jihadis goal ultimately is if you cant live in a caliphate. Hes lived. He was shot, we now learn, not in the stomach but in the buttocks or the hip, and he is going to be questioned and he is going to be brought to justice. That being said, it is the opinion of people I respect and trust who have followed counterterrorism for much longer than I have, even, that this was a definite victory for the jihadi movement. And they will claim it as such even if they havent yet claimed responsibility for it. Look, when you disrupt a city like New York, when you mow down people on a bike lane, the most innocent of places during a Halloween event, which is semi-sacred in New York, you have carried out a major terrorist attack blocks from the World Trade Center. You have told the world New York is not invulnerable. And youve encouraged other likeminded jihadis to come here and try and outdo what youve done. So, it puts a focus, yet again, on New York as the nations number one terrorist target, and he was able to carry out what hundreds of others tried to do and failed at. He was actually able to stage a first-class, low-cost vehicular attack that is going to be claimed as a huge victory by the jihadis. So, yes, this is a success for them. Seth Barron: Wow. So, where does that leave New York and the NYPD going forward? I mean, how exactly can police prevent a loan wolf renting a car, stealing a car, and running people down? It seems like its a thats a really, that would be a very hard thing to do. Judith Miller: Well, one thing that did not happen under President Obama, despite a lot of rhetoric, was we did not develop a serious counter-radicalization program. In other words, we really need to understand the people who are carrying these acts of terror out. We need to understand how they radicalized, how quickly they radicalize, how to deradicalize them, and almost no money, and no time, and thought, and programs are in existence that are deemed really exceptionally effective in this area. But, two, intelligence, intelligence, intelligence. Its like the real estate, location, location, location. You need information about who is where in your city, who is planning what, who is acting suspiciously, what are the areas of radical Islamic and other hate-filled, ideologically motivated peoples and groups? You need all of that. And there is tremendous I think the longer, the farther away we are from 9/11, the harder it is to remember that that kind of constant vigilance often requires walking a very thin line between the protection of civil liberties and the protection of our city. And, in recent years, I think that we have grown more sensitive to prospective or actual violations of our privacy rights at the expense of the city. So, you have to, once again, remind the NYPD that we do support them and that what they do in the name of protecting us, as long as its not a violation of our constitutional rights, is in our interests and we are in favor of it. Seth Barron: So, I mean maybe this question is too general, or too specific, what motivates someone like Saipov? Where, I mean, because we keep hearing this has nothing, you know, from a certain segment of the political spectrum here, well, this has nothing to do with Islam. This is, in fact, anti-Islamic Judith Miller: Well Seth Barron: but you know, I mean, clearly Saipov doesnt think so, and it seems like theres probably millions and millions of people around the world who dont think so, either. What is the motivation here? Judith Miller: Well, this, I think, you know, as someone who has looked at this problem, really, since the early 90s, I was the bureau chief in Cairo, and I concluded that these waves of radicalization and militancy in Islam are actually, they are episodic throughout Islam. They are as old as the religion itself. And we are going through a huge such wave right now. We are it has been ongoing for about 50 years, and it can be expected to last quite some time. This is a generational struggle we are involved in by people who think that their religion and their what is known as the straight path the straight path is the only way that Muslims should live. Now, these people represent a tiny, tiny portion, but of a very large religion, 1.5 billion people. So, even a tiny slice of them who believe that and believe that violence is justified in the name of their faith, pose a true challenge, security challenge. Not just for us, but for Europe, for all of the nations where these movements, these radical movements have taken root. I think part of the challenge for us is to understand that these people are a minority and that, two, as the NYPD reminded us today, hate crimes only serve to drive a wedge between that community and the rest of society. What you want to do is reach out to those people and say you are a part of the solution, you are part of us, and make sure that the people who believe what the perverse and perverted interpretation of Islam believe do not become the kind of mainstream, because thats the real danger. And thats why you have to be very careful about how you treat Muslims. If you make them feel like the enemy, they will respond like the enemy. Seth Barron: Well, Governor Cuomo today, you know, he was talking about, for instance, the diversity visa lottery, and he was making the implicit argument that if we were to curtail the diversity visa lottery, or bring in fewer immigrants from, you know, the Muslim world, then well, thats what the jihadis want, because that is like driving a wedge. But, at the same but to me it seems like well, what they really want is to bring as many of their likeminded followers here as possible, so which is it? I mean, is it really true that we have to make as nice as possible? I mean, because since 9/11, Muslim immigration to the United States has shot up. Judith Miller: Has shot up, exactly. Seth Barron: And it doesnt seem like it has necessarily done a lot. Judith Miller: Look, I think that I am in favor of open, a lot more open immigration than we have, but I am also in favor of knowing who is in our country, and I find it outrageous that we have 600,000 people here, an estimated 600,000 people who are believed to have overstayed their visas, whose whereabouts are unknown to the FBI and law enforcement. Before we start completely turning over our immigration system, and I think I would have to think about how I feel about the lottery, because Im not sure its a good idea at this point, I think I want to say lets do something about learning who is in our country, because I dont think you can really talk about national security unless you know who is where, and who is doing what in your country. And thats a challenge that goes far beyond just knowing where the 1% of Americans who happen to be Muslim, Muslims reside. Thats a question of knowing who is here for what possible reasons. Lets just remind ourselves most terrorism in this country is carried out not by radical Islamists, but by rightwing white supremacists and rightwing groups. Those are FBI statistics that you can check. So, I believe in acting against all people who promote hate crimes, whether they are Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, white supremacists, it doesnt matter to me whatever they call their religion, they are if they pose a violent challenge to America, America needs to confront them, and law enforcement needs to confront them. But, we will have a problem in the coming years with this, with the returning jihadis. Now, we have a very small number of them, only a few hundred. Europe has many, many thousands of people who are returning from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. They have a much greater problem than we do. On the other hand, we are the heart of the apostate, as the jihadis see us, and therefore we are target number one. So, we cannot relax, we cannot remain passive or indifferent to this threat. We are going to have to live with it for a long time and try to balance our desire to protect society against the preservation of our civil liberties. Seth Barron: A grim message. Judy, thanks so much for joining us here on 10 Blocks. Again, I am Seth Barron, associate editor of City Journal, and thanks very much for listening. Brian Anderson: You can subscribe to this and other Manhattan Institute podcasts in the iTunes store. The audio edition and transcript is available on our website, www.city-journal.org. This is City Journal editor Brian Anderson. Thanks again for listening to the 10 Blocks Podcast. By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Kolkata-based FMCG firm ITC, as part of its efforts to diversify into new areas of agri business, has launched a new brand "Farmland" to mark its foray into the fresh fruits and vegetables segment. The company today launched four variants of potatoes and would introduce apple by the next quarter under Farmland brand. advertisement "We are introducing potatoes in Delhi. It would be available in seven metros in the next 12 months," S Sivakumar, ITC Group Head Agri Business and IT. Besides, the company is also working with farmers to produce climate-controlled farm products mainly the leafy vegetable as it aims to introduce one new product in every quarter. On the introduction of new products, he said, "You would see dehydrated onions in some time and some other dehydrated vegetables (and) fruits, it will take little bit more time." There would be one new product every quarter, Sivakumar said adding that the company has plans to bring fresh apples and dehydrated onions. He, however, clarified that dehydrated products would not come under the Farmland brand. "Not Farmland for sure, we might use any existing brand, which is for processed. Farmland is essentially for fresh and processed would be a different brand," he said. The Indian fresh fruit and vegetable market is estimated to be around Rs 5 lakh crore, and of that potato is around Rs 70,000 crore. The company has introduced potatoes in four variants as - natural low sugar potatoes, potatoes with antioxidant, baby potatoes and French fry potatoes. "Potatoes are the largest consumed vegetable in the world and in India. We believe that Farmland potatoes with their quality and taste in different variants will resonate well with Indian consumers who today have distinct tastes and preferences," he added. The company is tapping its traditional FMCG channel to tap the neighbouring stores, modern format trade channels and online channels. The company is also expanding its ITC Masterchef brand by adding more metro cities in its network. "In the last quarter, it was in Delhi and Hyderabad and now also available in Bengaluru and Kolkata. All metro would be added," he said. In the first phase, the company will target metro markets and its products will be sold at 10-15 per cent premium over local prices. PTI KRH MKJ --- ENDS --- Investment firm Rathbones has been unveiled today as the new headline sponsor of the Charity Awards, Civil Society Medias annual event to recognise excellence in the charity sector. Rathbones is one of the largest managers of charity investments, with 4.3bn under management on behalf of 1,200 charities. Andrew Pitt, head of charities - London at Rathbones, said: We are thrilled to be working in partnership with Civil Society Media as sponsors of the Charity Awards. The awards celebrate leadership, good governance, innovation and excellence. As investment managers we do everything we can to support the work that the sector does and promoting best practice is an important part of our relationship with charities. Julian Chislett, chief executive of Civil Society Media, said: Were delighted to welcome Rathbones on board. They have a great empathy with the sector and a deep knowledge, and we look forward to a long partnership with them. The Charity Awards, now in their 19th year, are the longest-running awards in the sector. Ten awards are given to charities which show excellence in their fields. A lifetime achievement award is given out in memory of Daniel Phelan, founder of Civil Society Media. This year the overall winner was the Clink Charity, which trains prisoners in catering to reduce re-offending. The Daniel Phelan Award was awarded to Lynne Berry, chair of Breast Cancer Now. Rathbones takes over the headline sponsor from the Charities Aid Foundation, which remains involved with the awards as a supporter sponsor. Applications for the Charity Awards open on 1 December. To register your interest click here Charities which spend money on back office costs have once again come in for criticism. David Ainsworth argues that charities need to spend more, not less, away from the front line. Last week, I read some parts of the recent book by Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company. She levelled criticisms at many targets, and one of them was charities which spend too much on overheads. The idea that low overheads equals high efficiency is hardly a new idea. Charities know that their supporters want donations to go directly to the cause and have historically been reluctant to spend cash on the back office, and keen to display this hair-shirt, low-cost approach. Its time to put an end to this low-overhead culture. Charities, not donors, are the experts on whats best for beneficiaries. The sector does not need cash arriving at the front line with no clear idea on how best to spend it. Caroline Fiennes, the researcher into efficient giving, says that charities with higher overheads are consistently shown to deliver better results. And this makes sense. Essentially, service delivery = people x process x technology. You can have the best staff you like, but if they do not have clear direction, dont have clear frameworks, and dont have the right tools, they are going to struggle to achieve meaningful results. People are expensive People will almost always be the most expensive and important part of the process. But its vital to make them as effective as possible. The charity worker should meet the beneficiaries armed with everything they need. And that means good offices, good transport, good HR, good IT, good training, and good financial planning. And sufficient reserves, as well, while were at it. It means someone needs to have thought really thoroughly about the best place to deploy that person, and the best channel for them to use to communicate. And about exactly what result they are trying to achieve, and for who, and why. It means exhaustively examining the question Is there a better way? Which British institution has the highest overhead in charitable terms? Probably the armed forces. If you put cash into the army most of it doesnt get to the front line. It gets spent on training, equipment and transport. And management overhead. All that cash wasted on generals and colonels and majors. And on tanks and planes and guns. Imagine if we applied the same rule to soldiers that some people seem to want to apply to charity workers. We would end up with a model more like the Russian army in the Second World War, which got many soldiers to the front line very quickly indeed. The trouble was that most of them didnt know how to fight, and only half of them had a gun. Overhead, in short, equals efficiency. We tend to blame donors for the low overhead state that charities have found themselves in. Actually, though, the little research into donor viewpoints - by consultancy nfpSynergy - shows that donors are quite comfortable with the level of overheads charities do spend, which is around 20 per cent. In fact, theyd be comfortable with more - around 30 per cent. The trouble is that donors think charities spend 50 per cent. You can see why theyre upset. Its not just individual donors, of course. Institutional funders have also taken a strong stance on this. And in many cases charity workers themselves and trustees, who are often coming to the sector for the first time are opposed to any spending on support costs. So we need to start making the case that core costs are a good idea. The phrase "on the cause" is probably particularly unhelpful here. In a well-run charity, the phrase is meaningless. Whether it reaches beneficiaries, or gets spent on staff who raise funds, or support beneficiary-facing roles, it still goes on the cause. Fundraising communications I think the biggest single factor here is probably fundraising communications. Rather than articulating to donors what is actually needed, fundraisers have - rightly for them - tended to concentrate on what they know will reliably extract cash. So charities narrative has tended to cast beneficiaries as helpless victims, and has promised that donors cash will all go to the front line. These tactics work in the short term but in the long run arguably do more harm than good. Charities need to articulate a holistic approach to comms, which doesnt just focus on obtaining cash, but on overall, long-term reputational benefits. If no one is articulating what charity is actually like and how it actually works then other stakeholders will have little idea. But of course, people do want to know that cash is well spent. And so they should. At the moment, we arent telling them, so they are defaulting to a simple model, and measuring inputs the amount spent. I think it would be a good idea to have some external method of grading charities efficiency and delivery. Rather than focusing on inputs, we need to measure outcomes. Ive previously advocated for more focus on public benefit, rather than cash, when auditing a charity, as well as some form of impartial external scrutiny. In the end, charities need to change their activities and do whats best for beneficiaries not what looks best to a casual observer and clearly make the case for why they do so. The staff of El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora, the two most important Spanish-language newspapers in Puerto Rico, felt their work had taken on a new sense of urgency after Hurricane Maria hit the island on September 20. The islands badly damaged electrical grid and limited cell phone service meant that the newspapers were the only ways for many Puerto Ricans to get their news. But just over a month after the hurricane hit, the staff learned on October 26 that 59 of their fellow employees (including 27 reporters, editors, and graphic designers) would not be coming back after a round of layoffs by Guaynabo-based GFR Media, the parent company of both newspapers. And rumors circulated that they wouldnt be the last ones to go. ICYMI: Headlines editors probably wish they could take back Given the timing, the move infuriated journalists, says Manuel Rodriguez Banchs, an attorney for the union that represents them. Print has been very important since the crisis, he tells CJR. Its clear that El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora have become a lifeline for Puerto Ricans: A company Facebook post had even bragged that the newspapers had managed to keep post-hurricane circulation near pre-hurricane levels of nearly 120,000 copies for El Nuevo Dia and almost 68,900 for Primera Hora. After the storm hit, the reporters scrambled to cover its aftermath, informing readers about the extent of damage, where to access medical assistance, how to apply for FEMA aid, and when to expect restoration of water and power. They acted as a conduit between elected officials, aid workers, and the public. Meantime, company executives were preparing to cut staff and employee benefits. The company invited union representatives to a meeting on September 29. We thought we were going to talk about ways to support our colleagues. But when we got to the meeting, they told us about their cash flow problems, and presented us with a list of their proposals, Rodriguez says. They were going to dismiss 50 percent of the staff. And they said they wouldnt consider any other alternatives. The role of the newspaper in society is to inform and give voice. And increasingly, that role is under threat in Puerto Rico. Sign up for CJR 's daily email In a post on Facebook, GFR Media Board President Maria Eugenia Ferre Rangel says it was the unionnot GFRthat was unwilling to negotiate terms. She added that given the reality of the islands fiscal crisis, GFR had no choice but to let employees go. Sincerely, were left with no other options, she wrote. When contacted by CJR by phone and email for additional comment, GFR referred questions to another El Nuevo Dia executive, Farasch Lopez Reyloz, who declined to elaborate. ICYMI: Newspaper rocked by plagiarism scandal Rodriguez wasnt entirely surprised about the cuts; after all, he has played a key role in contract negotiations in the lead up to the December 31, 2017 expiration of unionized journalists collective bargaining agreement. The plan management proposed was consistent with actions GFR Media had been taking for years. They eliminated the circulation department of El Nuevo Dia in 2007, he recounted, and earlier this year, in May and June, the company also eliminated staff. The papers together now employ 43 journalists, Rodriguez says. The staff cuts have come in waves, and the prospect of sudden unemployment is a cloud that hangs constantly over El Nuevo Dia and Primera Hora staffers. The journalists protested the staff cuts on Twitter, where they changed their bios to include the line Bajo amenaza de despido (Under threat of dismissal) and tweeted about GFR using the hashtag #AlguienTieneQueContarlo (#SomeoneHastoTellIt). In addition to the staff cuts, GFR proposed cuts to employee benefits. Among them were proposals to eliminate the paid hour allowed each employee for lunch or dinner, to reduce the annual Christmas bonus to a sum that was the minimum required by law (2 percent of an employees salary, but not to exceed $600), and to reduce the number of vacation and sick days. In addition, GFR outlined a two-pronged plan for reducing remaining employees hours: imposing a mandatory four-week period of non-payment, as well as reducing shifts to six hours. To journalists, the terms seemed impossible. As it was implementing its staff reduction plan, GFR was also throwing its weight behind a feel-good, post-hurricane campaign called Unidos por Puerto Rico, or United for Puerto Rico, which is accepting hurricane recovery and relief donations. Millions of families have been affected by Hurricane Marias landfall in Puerto Rico, a representative posted on the company Facebook account. United, we can help our beloved island get back on its feet and become the country we all love. Helping our neighbor, we help ourselves. Were counting on you! Journalists, other newspaper staff, and supporters took to Twitter to call the company out for what they viewed as a hypocritical stance. RELATED: News outlet goes on lockdown ahead of Hurricane Irma GFR, which is privately held, has seen its revenues fall, from about $180 million in 2014, to $170 million in 2015, according to the English-language newspaper Caribbean Business. But, as Rodriguez notes, GFR remains a profitable company. Theres no doubt every business in Puerto Rico is going to lose revenues post-hurricane, he adds, but GFR admitted that its insurance will cover payroll expenses. While it makes staff cuts at its newspapers, GFR is expanding its real estate portfolio in the US and Latin America. In a statement to CJR, the company says the new division was in the works before the hurricane: The launch of Kingbird Properties is a continuation of the diversification of Grupo Ferre Rangels portfolio that has been happening over the past decade. Grupo Ferre Rangel and the Ferre Rangel family remain wholly committed to Puerto Rico and its continued development. As the newspapers staffs are thinned, their ability to inform readers, both on the island and beyond, will be strained to capacity, Rodriguez says. And as more mainland US reporters pack up their notepads and cameras and return to New York newsrooms, leaving a sudden news vacuum, the role of Puerto Rican journalists to continue reporting on the ground will become even more important. The role of the newspaper in society, says Rodriguez, is to inform and give voice. And increasingly, that role is under threat in Puerto Rico. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Julie Schwietert Collazo is a bilingual journalist, editor, fact-checker, and translator who covers Latin America and the Caribbean for a number of outlets. Read other Survival Stories from around the country. In the summer of 2015, I attended a happy-hour event in Little Haitia low-income community in Miami, Florida, established as a safe haven for Haitian asylum seekers in the 1980s. I had just returned from graduate school, and I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that well-to-do hipsters were just blocks from some of my Haitian family. Years ago, many of those same hipsters would have thought twice about going out in Little Haiti. Considering a Zillow study that projected Little Haiti to be South Floridas hottest neighborhood in 2017, perhaps I should have expected as much. I was born and raised in Miami, where Ive witnessed firsthand the gentrification of what were once predominantly black and brown neighborhoods. Here, climate change is the latest force to contribute to the displacement of people of color. When I was approached by Danielle Belton, editor in chief of The Root, to work on a series about the connections between climate change, gentrification, and their impacts on Miamis black communities, I was all in. I wrote in the Color of Climate series that climate is a threat multiplier that intensifies the challenges facing those individuals and communities marginalized by race, income level and immigration status, just to name a few. Climate gentrification expands upon conventional gentrification by focusing on environmental concerns, like rising sea levels, as central factors in driving out, and oftentimes pricing out, people living in areas that were previously thought to be less valuable. Racist housing practices drove black people in Miami to create their own communities where they could, which happened to be on higher ground. Now, higher ground is a commodity that residents of black neighborhoods believe to be driving their displacement. Sign up for weekly emails from the United States Project In Miami, access to the sea was always something the rich wanted. But fear of rising sea levels is changing that. Miami Beach, whose population is significantly wealthier than that of Little Haiti, sits just five feet above sea level. Little Haiti, however, sits approximately 10 feet above sea level; the same is true for a number of other predominantly black communities situated more inland. The historical impacts of redlining and segregation in South Florida still manifest themselves to this day. Historically, because of segregation and racism, black people were forced to move away from the beach, Valencia Gunder, a community organizer for New Florida Majority, told me. They didnt want us on their pretty beaches. The historical impacts of redlining and segregation in South Florida still manifest themselves to this day. Racist housing practices drove black people in Miami to create their own communities where they could, which happened to be on higher ground. Now, higher ground is a commodity that residents of black neighborhoods believe to be driving their displacement. Climate gentrification brings some Miami neighborhoods full circle. Many black residents must grapple with contemporary challenges posed by climate change as those challenges meet with the racist limitations placed on previous generations. Where climate change disproportionately affects a city, journalists should examine the circumstances and histories that help to explain why. Concerns over gentrification are playing out here before a backdrop of climate change. The firsthand experiences of some residents, shaped by race and class, are not debatable. After publishing Color of Climate, I moderated a Miami panel about climate gentrification. During the discussion, many black residents spoke up about the pressures they feel from developers and investors to moveor else be movedfrom their neighborhoods. For many individuals and families, such pressures add to the daily distress of making ends meet. There has been some debate as to whether climate gentrification is happening in Miami. A commercial real-estate investor told me he hasnt seen investors refer to sea-level rise or climate change. However, he added, thats the kind of thing that people keep to themselves, too. You dont really want to give away your motivations. Concerns over gentrification are playing out here before a backdrop of climate change. The firsthand experiences of some residents, shaped by race and class, are not debatable. Climate is a human thing, Gunder told me during an interview. Its not just science. And human beings are complicated. As reporters consider the impact of climate change on local communities, its crucial that they provide context and examine how previous social, racial, and economic policies shaped those communities to date. They should listen to, and tell, the stories of marginalized communities through an intersectional lens by adjusting for the multiple spaces people occupy. The shifting demographics of a neighborhood may be indicative of climate changes impact. They should not be ignored. Survival Stories is a series of local climate change dispatches. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jessica Moulite is a Social Media Reporter/Producer at Fusion Media Network. Her journalism has appeared in The Root, Fusion, Rise Up, GlobalPost, Neon Tommy, and more. You can find her blogging with her sisters at Daily Ellement. Drought conditions across much of Maine may have contributed to the large numbers of trees that toppled during a storm that walloped the Northeast this week, officials said. The storm cut power to nearly 1.5 million homes and businesses in the region at its peak. It left more Mainers in the dark than even the infamous 1998 ice storm, but the long-term effects will likely be much different. Because of dry conditions, the trees roots werent healthy, and ground conditions along with foliage that remained on the trees made them more susceptible to wind, said Peter Rogers, acting director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency. Virtually all of New England is either experiencing a moderate drought or abnormally dry conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The driest conditions are along the coast, where the wind gusts were the strongest. It was kind of a perfect storm, Rogers said. Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage will be touring storm-damaged areas on Wednesday. He had declared a state of emergency on Monday, the day the storm peaked during the early morning hours. Maines two major utilities were still reporting more than 200,000 customers without power early Wednesday morning. But they said favorable weather and extra crews will allow them to complete the task of restoring power this weekend. Other states in the Northeast are also still cleaning up from the storm. Chris Gamache, chief of the New Hampshire Bureau of Trails, said all-terrain vehicle trails in the state took a direct hit. Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo said utility National Grid was probably caught a little flat-footed by an unexpectedly strong storm. The scope of the damage in Maine made comparisons to the 1998 ice storm inevitable. According to the Maine Emergency Management Agency, that storm resulted in six deaths and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to public utilities, private property and the forest industry. All 16 Maine counties were declared federal disaster areas. Tree limbs fell from the weight of the ice during that storm, while this storm took down entire trees, said Tom Hawley of the National Weather Service. Many people affected by that disaster also were affected by this weeks storm. Roger Pomerleau turned his business into a makeshift shelter after the ice storm, allowing employees of his home furnishings store to use the washing machines and refrigerators while their homes were without power. This time around, the Hallowell, Maine, resident is the one waiting for the power to come back on. But he and others who suffered through both storms said this one will likely be less of an ordeal. The temperature is in our favor right now. Those were cold temperatures back then, Pomerleau said. Freezing temperatures. Sump pumps werent working, cellars were filling up with water. Very different now. (Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, Marina Villeneuve in Augusta, Maine, and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency spent $35.1 million on renting two emergency generators to help power blacked-out San Juan, Puerto Rico. But a group of engineers says existing infrastructure could have been used more effectively at a fraction of the cost. The mobile turbine generators, fully connected as of last week, bring some 50 megawatts to the partially idled Palo Seco plant west of the capital. Thats intended to stabilize power supply, at least in neighborhoods where distribution lines are intact. Yet the Puerto Rico Professional College of Engineers and Land Surveyors said a better alternative was to turn on some of Palo Secos existing facilities to provide at least five times more power, according to a report delivered to local lawmakers and an interview with the organizations president. Members of the group toured the plant Oct. 19 with a Senate delegation led by Larry Seilhamer, vice president of the body and an engineer by training. About 70 percent of Puerto Ricans are still without electricity, including vast swaths of the capital of around 350,000 people. Pablo Vazquez Ruiz, president of the engineering college, said last week that the new generators will probably be insufficient for Puerto Ricos most populous and economically important region. Were in an emergency, Vazquez Ruiz said. Were spending a lot of money with this, and were not supplying enough power to the metropolitan area. The generators were rented through a contract with Weston Solutions, a West Chester, Pennsylvania-based disaster response company. FEMA provided funding to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for such projects, and the Army Corps in turn assigned the contract to Weston. Power Flashpoint The provision of power six weeks after Hurricane Maria has become a flashpoint in a difficult and politically sensitive recovery. The engineers findings come as federal lawmakers scrutinize a $300 million contract that Puerto Rico gave to Whitefish Energy Holdings LLC when it was a two-employee Montana-based company. In addition to the companys tiny size, it has attracted attention because its previous known contracts were a fraction the size of the Puerto Rico deal, and it is based in the small hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Zinke and Whitefish have denied he played any role in the deal. The uproar prompted the commonwealth to request the contracts cancellation. The concerns about Palo Seco reflect broader questions about FEMA money. In June, Inspector General John Roth warned of the agencys continued failure to manage disaster relief funds adequately, in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Like much of the infrastructure of the bankrupt Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, the Palo Seco plant is in decay. In August, the utility announced it would shut down its four boiler-and-turbine units as long as six months for repairs by General Electric Co., and rely on power from other plants for San Juan. Corrosion in structural framing posed a current imminent threat to the safety of personnel, according to a report by West Islip, New York-based Island Structures Engineering PC, a sub-consultant. Pictures in the report showed rust and other degradation to the structures, which were built in the 1950s and 1960s and sit just yards from the Bay of San Juan. Mothballed Equipment But Puerto Rican engineers now say the crisis should prompt the government to revisit its decision. If nothing else, the government should demand that GE which is charging about $5 million provide an accelerated timetable that focuses on the most essential tasks, Vazquez Ruiz said. He said one boiler could be running safely in less than two weeks, and two could be going in three weeks. Another apparently usable boiler was disabled to connect the rental generators, Vazquez Ruiz said. Why would you spend that taxpayer money when you could fix this with the money already paid to GE, said Vazquez Ruiz, a former Army Corps deputy district engineer whose responsibility included oversight of Puerto Rico. Ramon Rosario, Puerto Ricos public affairs secretary, told reporters last week that the government would consider the engineers findings. But in an emailed statement Tuesday, Rosario said the government considered the Island study conclusive, based on a more thorough inspection by a company that had been monitoring the plant for years. By comparison, he said, the College of Engineers report was based on a visual assessment over a few hours. He also said the engineers didnt evaluate the plant when the machinery was turned on, referencing a disclosure in the report itself. They did not do other necessary tests, he said. Katie Jackson, a GE spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement that the companys scope of work at the Palo Seco power plant is limited to repairing the boiler structure. She didnt address the question of whether the job could be accelerated, but said the company anticipates exploring other opportunities to help. Jeffrey Hawk, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers in Puerto Rico, said the generators were rented to execute a mission assigned by FEMA, which is funding much of Puerto Ricos recovery efforts. FEMA referred questions on the matter to the Corps of Engineers. Prepa didnt respond to a request for comment. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said the engineers study should be taken seriously. I respect the College of Engineers, she said. They have no political agenda. They are licensed engineers, so they wouldnt be saying something should work if something does not work, because their reputations are at stake. Meanwhile, the idled plant has angered residents eager to return to normalcy. On a recent day, graffiti on a cement wall outside the plant read: Turn it back on! Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Property damage claims from a series of deadly October wildfires now exceed $3.3 billion, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said Tuesday. The figure represents claims for homes and businesses insured by 15 companies and is more than triple the previous estimate of $1 billion. Jones said the number will continue to rise as more claims are reported. The amount of claims now reported means that the fires caused more damage than Californias 1991 Oakland Hills fire, which was previously the states costliest, with $2.7 billion in damages in 2015 dollars, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. Forty-three people were killed in the October blazes that tore through Northern California, including the states renowned winemaking regions in Napa and Sonoma counties. They destroyed thousands of buildings as more than 100,000 people were forced to evacuate. It was the deadliest series of fires in California history. The fires are now nearly contained. Several dozen buildings were also damaged or destroyed in fire in Southern Californias Orange County. Behind each and every one of these claimsare ordinary people, Californians who lost their homes, lost their vehicles, in some cases whose family members lost their lives, said Jones, a Democrat who is running for attorney general. Jones said there were just over 10,000 claims for partial home losses, more than 4,700 total losses and about 700 for business property. There were 3,200 claims for damaged or destroyed personal vehicles, 91 for commercial vehicles, 153 for farm equipment and 111 for watercraft. The figures do not reflect uninsured losses, including public infrastructure and the property of people who were uninsured or underinsured. Meanwhile, a man facing arson charges for a wildfire that destroyed two homes south of the San Francisco Bay Area had an ominous message for a prosecutor during a court hearing Tuesday: Youre next. Marlon Coy, 54, uttered the words while glaring at Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeffrey Rosell while he explained four of the felony charges Coy is facing, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported . Coy pleaded not guilty to charges of arson of a nondwelling, arson causing bodily injury and being a felon in possession of a firearm, the newspaper reported. Witnesses saw Coy start the fire on October 16 near a property in Santa Cruz County connected to someone with whom he had a dispute, sheriffs officials said. Coy was arrested in possession of jewelry and a bicycle that was taken from a home that was burglarized while under evacuation, according to sheriffs officials. (Associated Press writer Sudhin Thanawala contributed.) Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Body of Gowhar Ahmad Bhat was found with throat slit under mysterious conditions in Kiloora area of Shopian. By India Today Web Desk: A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth activist was allegedly murdered in Kashmir's Shopian district on Thursday. Body of Gowhar Ahmad Bhat was found with throat slit under mysterious conditions in Kiloora area of Shopian. Unidentified assailants had slit his throat. Sources said that there were torture marks on the youth's body. The incident was confirmed by the Shopian SSP. advertisement The top cop added that they have launched an investigations to track down the culprits. With inputs from Ashraf Wani --- ENDS --- CMU Volunteers To Package 150,000 Meals for Madagascar November 02, 2017 Event: Nearly 900 Carnegie Mellon University volunteers will package 150,000 dehydrated meals scheduled for shipment to Madagascar, an African nation facing a deadly plague outbreak. This is the third year the university has partnered with The Kraft Heinz Company Foundation and the global hunger-relief organization Rise Against Hunger to host the community service event. CMU's Office of Student Leadership Involvement and Civic Engagement, Partners Allied in Civic Engagement and Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity recruited students, staff, faculty, alumni and their families, including children as young as four, to package the meals in assembly-line style. The World Health Organization has reported more than 1,300 suspected cases of plague in Madagascar since August, including 93 deaths. Plague is endemic to parts of Madagascar; however, the current outbreak has reached the country's most populated cities, which are less prepared to handle cases. A majority of cases are pneumonic, spreading directly from person to person. Rise Against Hunger responds to emergencies in the U.S. and abroad by delivering food assistance, nutrition, water filters and hygiene kits to those displaced by natural disasters and man-made crises. The organization's meals, comprised of rice, soy and vegetables, include a micronutrient packet developed by and donated through The Kraft Heinz Company Micronutrient Campaign. The powders in the packet contain 19 of the meal's total 23 essential vitamins and minerals, which help to prevent iron-deficiency anemia and other health issues. When: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 4. Where: Wiegand Gymnasium, Jared L. Cohon University Center, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213. Parking is available in the East Campus Garage, located next to the Cohon University Center and Gesling Stadium. By PTI: (Eds: With fresh inputs, reax of Army spokesperson) By Manash Pratim Bhuyan New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) The Army has finally clarified that the junior commissioned officers (JCOs) are gazetted officers and cancelled a seven year-old note describing them as "non-gazetted" officers, a move that will benefit over 64,000 personnel. The decision by the Army two days back comes amid growing resentment among a large section of its officers over the controversial issue of rank-parity between them and their civilian counterparts in the service headquarters. advertisement In an official note, the Army headquarters has cancelled a communication issued in response to an RTI application in July 2011, which had categorised the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, according to documents accessed by PTI. Highly placed official sources said the Army committed a "major mistake" in 2011 while classifying the status of the JCOs and now the Army headquarters has removed the ambiguity, making it "abundantly clear" that JCOs are gazetted officers. The 2011 note had triggered widespread outrage among the JCOs, some of whom made a series of representations to the Army headquarters to withdraw it. The clarification will benefit over 64,000 JCOs who are ranked in three categories -- Naib Subedar, Subedar and Subedar Major. Asked how the Army headquarters made the "mistake" in 2011, classifying the JCOs as non-gazetted officers, a senior Army official said there are separate definitions of officers and the JCOs in the manual of military law and it could have been a case of misinterpretation of the rule book. The issuance of the letter is also seen as a message by the Army to the government to address grievances of a section of the Army personnel over what they call "disparity" in the current pay band. The controversial issue of status equivalence between military officers and those from the Armed Forces Headquarters-(AFHQ) cadre was discussed at the recently concluded Army Commanders conference which favoured immediate removal of the alleged discrepancies. Defence Ministry sources had also said that it was examining the entire issue of rank-parity between military officials and civilian officers in the AFHQ cadre, asserting that "no false" equivalence will be allowed. When asked whether the Army headquarters will send a fresh communication to the RTI applicant who had filed the query about the status of the JCOs in 2011, Army Spokesperson Col. Aman Anand said, "The matter is being examined as per the RTI regulations in force." There has been growing resentment among the military officers who have been insisting that the current status equivalence was flawed and that the government must address their concerns. As per the current pay structure, the subedar majors and subedars are part of the pay band for gazetted officers but there has been discrepancies there as well, said an official. advertisement The Naib subedars whose number is around 55,000 get salary under non-gazetted category, he said. The matter is among the main issues being examined by the Army as part of anomalies in pay and allowances of its personnel. Last year, then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had set up a high-level committee to look into the issue. PTI MPB PYK VJ ASK --- ENDS --- When Chris Moran took over the internal venture fund of Lockheed Martin in June 2016, the nation's largest defense contractor had already been investing in start-up technology companies for nine years. More than $100 million had been invested in 22 separate companies since the fund launched in 2007. But Moran, as the new executive director and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, was on a slightly different mission. Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 jet in Fort Worth, Texas. Mike Fuentes | Bloomberg | Getty Images Up until last summer, Lockheed Martin Ventures had typically tailored its investments to companies in the later stages of development. Moran has refocused the company's funding to target earlier-stage start-ups and get in at the ground level of young companies that might still be trying to figure out their business paths but are generating innovating technology in the process. So far this year, Moran's Ventures division has invested in start-ups working in several key areas. Among them: Terran Orbital, a manufacturer of nanosatellites; Cyberreason, which makes cybersecurity software; and Peloton Technology, a maker of autonomous technology for trucks that raised a $60 million round in April that included Lockheed funding. All told, Lockheed Martin Ventures has funded companies to the tune of $20 million over the last year. While much of the venture capital activity in the United States is concentrated in Silicon Valley, in recent years a sector of the economy with closer ties to Washington, D.C., than San Francisco has been upping its investments in start-up technology companies America's defense industry. That includes tier-one contractors like Northrop Grumman and Boeing , in addition to Lockheed Martin. There are several reasons why. For one, half of American defense contractors believe that the fields they play in unmanned technology, cybersecurity and satellites are ripe for commercial-sector disruption, per a recent McKinsey survey. And by partnering with start-ups moving quickly in fields that have commercial and military applications, such as autonomous technology and cybersecurity, defense contractors gain access to promising new technology that it can turn around and offer to their own customers: the Pentagon and other government agencies. "We're investing in commercial tech and trying to find dual-use applications in defense. We're honestly hoping that the commercial business scales that business," Moran said. More from CNBC Disruptor 50: China's blueprint to crush the US robotics industry Investors pour billions in outer space start-ups Airbnb service for satellites In recent years, it's become all the more important for the U.S. defense industry to tap into America's commercial tech sector. Over the past several years, China has been encouraging businesses owned by its government or with close government ties to invest in American companies building artificial intelligence and robotics technology, not only for the gains the country hopes to make in its own commercial economy, but also for potential military applications. "It is a concern. We don't want to see these type of defense-oriented technologies leave the country," said Moran. The government has known for quite a long time that interesting things happen out in the commercial space. Chris Moran vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures Yet looking to the commercial sector is not new for the U.S. Army. The Department of Defense has the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known by its acronym, DARPA. The U.S. intelligence community has In-Q-Tel. Arsenal Venture Partners manages a fund that invests in businesses for the U.S. Army, something the Army created last decade as a result of the Army Venture Capital Initiative. What is different now is a more pronounced turn to Silicon Valley. Defense contractors have traditionally looked at themselves as the innovation for the U.S. military, but looking to commercial technology start-ups has been an increasingly growing activity for them. Among defense companies, Lockheed Martin has been the most active dealmaker since 2014, according to research from CB Insights. In three years the company has made 15 investments and M&A deals. "Defense contractors are investing in start-ups as a sort of outsourced R&D," said Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights. "Advances in areas ranging from drones to satellites to autonomous vehicles all have implications in the defense industry, and it would be foolish to think that any single organization has the talent and expertise to do all of these things well." Intelligence and surveillance As Moran points out, partnering with commercial start-ups by investing in them allows Lockheed Martin to be vertically integrated in a number of areas, like satellites and autonomous technology, which in turn affects the efficiency and affordability of the technology the company can offer. Small satellites can provide repairs, course correction and assist with decommissioning of larger satellites. Source: Tyvak Take Lockheed Martin's investment in Terran Orbital this summer as just one example. On the defense side, there are missions in space that can be achieved by launching several smaller, cheaper satellites instead of one big satellite. Once those smaller satellites are positioned in orbit, they can transmit images with good-enough resolution to indicate that maybe an existing, high-resolution satellite should be pointed in a certain direction. This type of "tipping and cuing" is valuable for the Pentagon when it comes to intelligence and surveillance. "That's finally at the point where it will become possible. But without all these innovations in small satellites, that would have been a dream," said Moran. Moran's small satellite example underscores why it's valuable for contractors to enter into more investment partnerships with the commercial start-up sector. It's often the case that smaller companies, operating on lean start-up principles, are able to move rapidly, test out new technologies, and scale them up at a substantially lower price point that it would cost a large defense contractor. Right now, for instance, there are more opportunities in the commercial sector for self-driving cars but that doesn't mean advances in autonomous technology aren't things the U.S. defense industry also wants a piece of. "The reason the private sector is moving faster is because the total adjustable market is huge," said Maynard Holliday, a senior engineer and analyst at the RAND Corporation. "It used to be flipped the government, the Department of Defense, was the big customer." As a result, the U.S. government has also stepped up its investments. In 2015 the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, was founded. It's a government entity that makes capital investments to commercial companies working in areas that have direct applications to Department of Defense problems. As for Lockheed Martin Ventures, Moran said more investments are planned, especially in the areas that the Department of Defense is most interested in: artificial intelligence, autonomy, cybersecurity and space. "The government has known for quite a long time that interesting things happen out in the commercial space," said Moran. "It's part of the government's realization that things are happening at a high rate of speed and that we need to play in that space." India's Ajay Piramal of Piramal Group named Asia Business Leader of the Year SINGAPORE, 2 November 2017 - CNBC, the world's leading business and financial news network, today announced the distinguished winners of the 16th Asia Business Leaders Awards (ABLA) at a gala ceremony held at the Shanghai Marriott Hotel City Centre. The annual awards recognize the region's top business leaders for their vision, competence and achievement in six categories. The 2017 winners are: Asia Business Leader of the Year Award Ajay Piramal of Piramal Group (India) Asia Disruptor of the Year Award Alex Hungate of SATS Ltd (Singapore) Asia Talent Management Award Rizalina Mantaring of Sun Life Financial (The Philippines) Corporate Social Responsibility Award Dr Tan See Leng of IHH Healthcare Berhad (Singapore) Lifetime Achievement Award Guo Guangchang of Fosun International (China) China Business Leader of the Year Award Zhu Zhaojiang of Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Ltd (China) CNBC awarded the 2017 Asia Business Leader of the Year award to Ajay Piramal, Chairman of Piramal Group for transforming the company into one of India's foremost business conglomerates, operating in 30 countries and having a brand presence in over 100 countries. On receiving his award, Ajay Piramal, Chairman of Piramal Group said: "I am honored to receive the CNBC Asia Business Leader of the Year Award 2017. At the Piramal Group, our business is driven by our purpose of Doing Well and Doing Good and it is the single most important factor for our performance and success. I would like to dedicate this award to all our employees and stakeholders across the globe who share the same passion of impacting lives through business." Internationally-acclaimed concert pianist, Lang Lang also took part in the event, presenting the 2017 CNBC ABLA for Corporate Social Responsibility. Lang Lang also introduced 11-year-old piano prodigy Wu Siyu, a beneficiary of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation, who performed live for ABLA guests during the Gala Dinner. KC Sullivan, President and Managing Director at CNBC International, said: "I'd like to congratulate this year's impressive group of award recipients. The ABLAs, now in their 16th year, continue to mark out exceptional leaders and provide inspiration to aspiring business executives across this dynamic region." To be awarded an ABLA, nominees go through three judging phases. The first includes a quantitative data analysis of company performance. In the second, judges conduct face-to-face interviews to assess the candidates' leadership capabilities before the third and final round where overall winners are selected by an expert panel. The presenting sponsor of ABLA 2017 is SIXCAP; with national media partner Caixin Media; knowledge partner Chicago Booth and research partner DDI. Profiles of the 2017 ABLA winners and shortlisted candidates are available at abla.cnbc.com/nominees More information on ABLA 2017 is available at abla.cnbc.com Note to Editors: The transmission times for the 16th Asia Business Leaders Awards are as follows. CNBC Asia Thu, 23 November 1900 SG/HK time Sat, 25 November 1800 SG/HK time Sun, 26 November 1900 SG/HK time Media Contact: Mike Cheong Communications Manager, CNBC Asia Pacific D: +65 6326 1123 M: +65 9852 8630 Mike.Cheong@nbcuni.com About ABLA CNBC pioneered the annual Asia Business Leaders Awards (ABLA) in 2001 to salute and recognize remarkable business leaders, who through strength, innovation and foresight induce positive changes in an evolving corporate Asia. These business leaders are recognized annually at the awards ceremony which is broadcast globally. Now in its 16th year, ABLA is the region's premier business leadership awards event that brings together some of the best-known personalities in the corporate world today. 84 business leaders from around the region have been publicly recognized through ABLA for their vital business contributions. The ABLA is organized by CNBC with The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Development Dimensions International (DDI) as Knowledge and Research partners. About CNBC CNBC is the leading global broadcaster of live business and financial news and information, reporting directly from the world's major financial markets via three regional TV networks in Asia, EMEA and the US. CNBC.com is the preeminent financial news source on the web featuring video, real-time market analysis and dynamic financial tools. CNBC serves the world's most powerful audience of CEOs, senior executives, the financial services industry and private investors and is available in more than 409 million homes worldwide. CNBC is a division of NBCUniversal. For more information, please visit www.cnbc.com President Donald Trump on Thursday doubled down on his call that the man charged with carrying out the terrorist truck attack that killed eight people in New York this week should be put to death. "Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Trump said in a tweet. Trump also said it may be complicated to send the suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system... ...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! Hours earlier, Trump sent this midnight tweet: NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY! Yet by weighing in on his preferred outcome for the case, Trump may have made the job of prosecutors more difficult. The attack Tuesday killed eight people. Saipov, a 29-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan, was shot and apprehended by police. He was charged Wednesday with one count of providing material support to terrorists and one count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle causing death. Within minutes of Trump's midnight tweet, lawyers on social media began to comment on what impact it could have on Saipov's prosecution. "Mr. President, we all know he should get the death penalty. But when *you* say it, it makes it harder for DOJ to make that happen," wrote former Chief Asst. U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy on Twitter McCarthy tweet: Mr. President, we all know he should get the death penalty. But when *you* say it, it makes it harder for DOJ to make that happen. National security lawyer Mark Zaid wrote, "This is called potentially tainting jury pool & could impact alleged perpetrator's ability to secure fair trial. SMH #Unpresidential Zaid tweet: This is called potentially tainting jury pool & could impact alleged perpetrator's ability to secure fair trial. SMH #Unpresidential Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti accused Trump of helping the alleged terrorist. Renato Mariotti tweet: Trump helped the terrorist with this tweet. Now prosecutors will have to spend time dealing with motions that the jury pool is tainted. During a Cabinet meeting earlier Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. justice system was "a joke and it's a laughingstock" because it did not deal more harshly with terrorism suspects. "We also have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They'll go through court for years. And at the end, they'll be who knows what happens," Trump said. "We need quick justice and we need strong justice much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it's a laughingstock." The president also said he would support trying Saipov in the military justice system, which typically processes foreign terrorism suspects, at Guantanamo. Despite Trump's derisive comments about the civilian criminal justice system, Saipov was charged in civilian court. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated that defending its 2 billion users from fake news, hate speech and other unwanted content may put a serious dent in the company's profit margins. "I want to be clear about what our priority is," Zuckerberg said on Wednesday after the company reported third-quarter earnings. "Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits." CFO David Wehner later forecast that higher security costs, combined with investments in original video content, would drive up operating expenses between 45 percent and 60 percent in 2018. Sales, meanwhile, are expected to increase 30 percent next year to $51 billion, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Facebook's stock price, which initially rose after revenue and profit topped estimates, dropped below Wednesday's close when the company revealed its spending plans. Facebook is under fire for its role in the 2016 election. During three separate congressional committees, executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google were asked about how their platforms were abused by Russian propagandists to influence American voter behavior. "Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," Zuckerberg said. "We build these tools to help people connect and bring us closer together. And they used them to try to undermine our values. What they did is wrong and we're not going to stand for it." Just a week after Saks Fifth Avenue-owner Hudson's Bay announced a deal to bolster the company's financial condition, the department store operator came back under fire Wednesday. Austrian investment firm Signa Holding submitted a bid for Hudson Bay's German department store, Galeria Kaufhof. The offer valued the department store at roughly 3 billion euros, according to sources familiar with the situation. Hudson's Bay confirmed the offer, saying it would review it, though it noted its "European business is an important element of the [the company's] strategy." The sources asked not to be named because the information is confidential. Signa declined to comment. Signa, which also owns Germany's second largest department store, Karstadt, tried to buy Kaufhof in 2015, but ultimately lost out to Hudson's Bay. Separately on Wednesday, Hudson's Bay's activist investor, Land & Buildings Investment Management, took issue with its recent play to infuse liquidity into the company. The retailer sold its Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building for $850 million (1.075 billion Canadian dollars) to WeWork Property Advisors and a minority stake of preferred stock to Rhone Capital for $500 million (CA$632 million). The latter deal was dilutive to common stock shareholders. Rhone's investment gives it the right to convert its preferred stock into common stock, which will increase its number of shares and thereby decrease other shareholders' ownership. The deal also requires Rhone to vote in support of Hudson's Bay's board nominees, said Jonathan Litt, chief investment officer at Land & Buildings. Litt has written to written to the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ontario Securities Commission to take issue with the transaction and ask for it to be submitted to a vote of Hudson Bay's minority shareholders. "This sequence of events begs the question of why Hudson's Bay felt compelled to raise capital through a dilutive share issuance when there appear to be superior sources of capital available," Litt said. Land & Buildings has urged Hudson's Bay to go private or redevelop its real estate assets. It revealed a 4.3 percent stake in Hudson's Bay this summer. People look at a Tesla car at a showroom in Beijing. Tesla is setting a "rough target" of producing cars in China in about three years, said CEO Elon Musk. Musk told analysts Wednesday that Tesla's planned factory in China will likely focus on making Model 3 sedans and Tesla's planned crossover vehicle, Model Y, for China and for some surrounding countries, Musk said. Manufacturing Tesla's lower-priced models close to their markets will ensure their affordability, Tesla said. The company plans to make a "couple hundred thousand cars per year" in China, Tesla said. Tesla said it will not be spending major capital in the region until 2019. The news comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla had struck a deal to build a factory in Shanghai. Musk delivered the details on the plans on a conference call following the release of Tesla's third-quarter results, which were worse than analysts expected. While the company plans to expand its international presence, analysts have expressed concerns over production delays with Tesla's Model 3 sedan, and over amount of money Tesla is having to spend to grow its businesses in autos and renewable energy. "Tesla is learning what traditional automakers have long known mass vehicle assembly is complicated and expensive," said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Autotrader. "A continued delay in Model 3 production and bigger losses were not the news hoped for with Tesla's earnings report." Shares of Tesla were down about 5 percent in extended hours trading. Conservative activist Laura Loomer was banned from the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft on Wednesday after unleashing an anti-Muslim tweetstorm in the wake of the New York City attack on Tuesday that killed eight people, the companies said. Loomer released numerous posts on Twitter about Muslims on Tuesday and Wednesday, accusing passersby in hijabs of enjoying the attack in New York and complaining that taxi and ride-sharing companies hired extremists. "Someone needs to create a non-Islamic form of @uber or @lyft because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver," tweeted Loomer, who briefly worked for the right-wing news site Rebel Media. "I'm late to the NYPD press conference because I couldn't find a non Muslim cab or @Uber @lyft driver for over 30 min!" she wrote in another Twitter post, referring to a Wednesday news conference about the attack in New York. Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant suspected of plowing a truck into cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path, had been a driver for Uber, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Saipov was charged in federal court on Wednesday with acting on behalf of the militant group Islamic State. Loomer's comments about Muslims and Muslim drivers caused an uproar on the social media service. By Wednesday evening, Uber, which Loomer had previously criticized as anti-Semitic, said she would not be able to use the service. "Ms. Loomer was banned for violating our Community Guidelines," Uber spokesman Matt Kallman said in an email. Her Lyft account was also deactivated, said Scott Coriell, a spokesman for that ride-sharing service. Loomer was quick to respond, again using the Twitter platform to say that Uber was trying to "ban a conservative journalist for addressing legitimate safety concerns." She did not respond immediately to a request for further comment submitted through her Facebook page. In June, Loomer disrupted a performance of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" because the character of the assassinated Roman dictator was costumed to resemble U.S. President Donald Trump. President Donald Trump (C) and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) meet at the Oval Office of White House in Washington, D.C., on May 10, 2017. A strong majority of Americans approves of FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, according to a new poll from The Washington Post and ABC. The poll, which surveyed 714 adults across the country, found that 58 percent approve of the way Mueller is handling the investigation, compared with just 28 percent who disapprove, the Post reported Thursday. What bodes worse for Trump is that more than half of Americans surveyed say they think that the charges brought so far against former campaign chair Paul Manafort, his associate Richard Gates and former advisor George Papadopoulos will not be the last of it. In perhaps the most damning indicator of the public's view of the investigation, 49 percent of overall respondents say they think Trump himself committed a crime related to the subject of Mueller's investigation. Fifty-three percent say the charges made public Monday represent broader wrongdoing by people involved in the presidential campaign versus 28 percent who say the charges will stop there. Manafort, chairman of Trump's presidential campaign for several months in 2016, was charged along with Gates in a 12-count indictment, which includes allegations of laundering millions of dollars and acting as an unregistered foreign agent over the course of many years. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his connections in Russia. Documents released by the special counsel Monday describe his efforts to connect the Trump campaign with high-level Russian officials, the Post reported. The Post-ABC poll results appear to be heavily skewed in accordance with respondents' prior political leanings: 78 percent of Democrats approve of the way Mueller is handling the investigation, for instance, whereas just 38 percent of Republicans approve. That said, people across the aisle tend to be more aligned in supporting the case against Manafort and Gates, the Post reported. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats approve of that case. Read more about the results of the Washington Post-ABC poll here. India Today team went on a reality-check near the lake regions and here's what was unraveled after Kamal Haasan slammed Tamil Nadu civic authorities after their poor preparations washed off with the incessant rains. By Akshaya Nath: Kamal Haasan warned the state government via Twitter yesterday, pointing out a few lakes that are in the surrounding regions of the Chennai. After his comment, India Today's team went for 'rain-check' and found shocking situations of the lakes which were overflowing water which was entering into the nearby houses. Not even three days into the monsoon, the state has worsened for the ones who reside near the lakes. advertisement Here's what Kamal Haasan had tweeted: The South-West and North-West parts of Chennai are on the verge of getting submerged. It won't take much time for Selayur lake, Kuduvanjeri-Nandhivaram belt lake, and Narayanapuram Mudichur lake to overflow. Neither the water conservationists, nor the people know these facts. They know the water entry point or the draining point. To be more specific, the facts were hidden so that the land could be encroached, which is the bitter truth. A building which was blocking the path for water to flow from Nanmangalam to another lake was to be demolished as per court in 2015 itself. Even then, the law is being breached. The media should help in creating awareness among the people in that region and help them voice their sufferings. Prevention is better than cure. Let's wake up. The first point was the Nanmangalam Lake, where the water levels have increased and moved 20 meters towards the main road. The water levels in the region are brimming and the houses close to the lake are already touching the water levels. "There have been several complaints given to the local panchayat office but no action is being taken, the water levels are increasing and seeping into houses. They should have de-silted the lake and also increased the depth of the lake. But, the government didn't do any of it. They are only concerned about themselves," said Ponraj, a resident of Nanmangalam. At Salaiyur, a locality in east Tambaram, the situation was observed to be worse than Nanmangalam as the sewage water got mixed with the lake water entered the nearby houses. It was a sorrowful sight to see the families trying to safeguard their belongings from the lake water. Neighbouring to this lake, is the Tambaram Air Force base camp, what the government is doing to ensure the safety of the 1000 plus residents in this area is now a big question. With the monsoon just setting in, intense rains are expected to hit the city and neighbouring areas. The ill preparedness for the monsoon is clearly staring at the government in its face. Keeping in mind the situation, claiming a better preparedness than UK and US has become the butt of all jokes after an AIADMK leader commented on how the government is handling the rain-situation. --- ENDS --- advertisement Giants of commerce have been honored by the CNBC Asia Business Leaders Awards year in and year out since the event was founded 16 years ago. This year's crop of winners lived up to the tradition. The soft-spoken chairman of an Indian conglomerate, an airport technology guru from Singapore, and a charity-minded health care CEO from China were among those selected from dozens of applicants to claim an ABLA at a gala event in downtown Shanghai on Thursday night. The awards will be broadcast multiple times, first on November 23 at 7 p.m. Singapore time (6 a.m. ET and 12 p.m. GMT). Asia Business Leader of the Year Award The top award this year went to Ajay Piramal, the man at the helm of Piramal Group. The Indian conglomerate has seen revenue pop by 34 percent in 2017 and net profit leap by 38 percent. "I am extremely grateful and humbled by this" award, he told CNBC backstage after accepting his ABLA. Piramal said he credits his company's success to a handful of seemingly simple, but critical decisions he and his early team made when he took over Piramal Group back in the late 1980s. "We were fortunate to realize that pharmaceuticals was a good business to go into in India in 1988," he said. "But the most important thing is that we always ran an ethical and value-based company. So the best partners always came to us globally, and the best talent." The number of employees at Piramal Group has mushroomed from 2,000 in the year 2000 to 15,000 today, and the company has increased operations to 30 countries. Along the way, it has expanded from textiles to more far-flung industries that include not just pharmaceuticals but financial services, real estate and packaging, among others. Piramal Group engages in philanthropic work, and Chairman Piramal said those efforts are part of the company's success. His Piramal Foundation operates widely on the subcontinent, spearheading initiatives in health care, water, education and female empowerment across 21 Indian states. Looking ahead, Piramal has set a goal of achieving a market capitalization of $20 billion by 2020. To get there, Piramal developed a program to select a pool of high-performing managers, and a separate initiative that includes a one-year intensive leadership development program. Asia Disruptor of the Year Award Alex Hungate embraces technology with a vengeance. SATS is the main ground-handling and in-flight catering service for Singapore's widely praised Changi Airport. Hungate has transformed the company into a pioneer when it comes to tech initiatives. In 2014, Hungate automated some of SATS' central kitchen operations, reducing required labor by 80 percent. In 2015, he automated the company's entire cutlery cleaning and sorting process, yielding a 36 percent boost to productivity. Perhaps most impressively, Hungate convinced more than 300 freight carriers to adopt a single system called eAcceptance that's designed to process cargo export clearances. Winning an Asia Business Leaders Award means "we can encourage my colleagues to move even faster" on new technology adoption, which Hungate said is increasingly necessary in today's fast-changing environment. SATS retrains staff and gives them opportunities to increase their skills as technologies emerge. His efforts have boosted SATS' profits by 7.1 percent through productivity increases alone. Next up for SATS: Hungate told CNBC that he wants to digitize the shifting of passengers on and off aircraft, as well as the movement of baggage. Asia Talent Management Award Rizalina G. Mantaring has hired more than 1,000 employees for Sun Life Financial. But it's what she's accomplished with those staff once they're on board that is most impressive. Mantaring, who is CEO and country head for the Canadian financial services firm's Philippines operations, believes in a multi-pronged development approach that includes leadership programs including one in cooperation with Duke University and encouraging employees to participate in industry associations and the development of policy for the wider industry. Mantaring creates special projects for employees judged to have the most potential. A full 65 percent of Sun Life executives in the Philippines were promoted up through the ranks rather than brought in from outside. Sun Life is a notably diverse company in the Philippines, and Mantaring told CNBC offstage that the company's stringently neutral hiring process is the key. "We never ask people about age. We never ask them their marital status," she said, and that's why the company "has a diverse workforce." "You know the golden rule: always do unto others as you would have them do unto you," she said. "People follow you when they know you have their best interests at heart." Corporate Social Responsibility Award Dr. Tan See Leng believes that if people are going to be healthy, they need to have access to proper medical care and they have to understand that healthcare. As managing director and CEO of IHH Healthcare Berhad, Dr. Tan has spearheaded charitable works related to healthcare access, awareness and education. Since 2012, IHH has provided free health screenings in remote areas; the company gave services to 5,000 people at 54 events last year. "We transform lives," Dr. Tan said. "When you have that kind of drive or calling, it works out well for everyone." On the awareness front, IHH reached more than 20,000 people in Turkey with a campaign on healthy lifestyles. With regard to education, the company endowed a gift of 6 million yuan ($909,000) that has so far provided scholarships to 59 medical students at the National University of Singapore. Winning an ABLA from CNBC "is a positive affirmation of my many hard-working colleagues who are trying to give the underprivileged a chance in life," he said backstage. Country Business Leader of the Year Award Zhaojiang Zhu may be Chinese, but he also knows Africa. The founder and CEO of Shenzhen Transsion Holdings boasts a whopping 40 percent market share in the mobile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. The company has sales in 58 countries, and its revenue skyrocketed from $316.33 million in 2014 to $1.77 billion last year. Zhu credits the company's success to his commitment to a long-term strategy; interestingly, he pledged to terminate any product line no matter how well it sells if it begins to attract negative consumer feedback. Shenzhen Transsion's three Africa mobile brands all rank among the most admired by African consumers, according to a recent survey. Zhu admitted being taken aback by winning an ABLA. "I feel a little bit surprised I never thought I could get this kind of award," he said afterward. Lifetime Achievement Award "A currency serves as a predictable store of value, and serves as a medium of exchange that's pretty stable in value as well bitcoins aren't that there yet, they're still trying to find stability so it's more of a commodity than it's a currency," he told CNBC on Thursday during the 2017 Barclays Asia Forum in Singapore . Bitcoin , despite the large amount of interest it has attracted, has not achieved the kind of stability a currency should possess, Allianz Chief Economic Advisor Mohamed El-Erian said, adding that he agrees with the notion that the cryptocurrency is more of a commodity. Last month, El-Erian said bitcoin's value should be half of the $4,000 it was fetching. Since then, the cryptocurrency has surged past $6,000, representing a rally of over 500 percent this year. Cryptocurrencies in general are from government and large organizations, with bitcoin seeing the most debate among commentators and regulators across the world. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called bitcoin a "fraud," while billionaire Peter Thiel said people are "underestimating" it, saying it has "great potential." Bitcoin recently received a nod from CME, the world's largest futures exchange, which announced this week that it plans to launch bitcoin futures by the end of this year. But El-Erian remained skeptical. He said those buying into bitcoin may be assuming that it will be widely adopted by institutions and central banks, but they could be wrong. "My major concern over the long term is: Is the assumption in the pricing about adoption consistent with reality? That's the issue that investors should ask if they're holding bitcoins for a couple of months," he said. CNBC's Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report. The reason? Participants felt the good looking people were entitled to good jobs. Researchers from the London Business School conducted a study with over 750 participants who were each given a photo of an attractive person and a photo of a less attractive person and asked to theoretically "hire" one for a job. The study found that participants were less likely to choose attractive people for less desirable jobs. But new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that attractive people may not always be better off. Being attractive tends to pay off. Studies suggest that good-looking people are more likely to get hired , promoted and elected to public office . Study co-author Margaret Lee, a doctoral candidate in organizational behavior at London School of Business told Quartz, "We found that people perceive attractive individuals to feel more entitled to good outcomes than unattractive individuals." Since participants felt the better looking people would want higher quality jobs, attractive people ended up getting passed over for jobs like warehouse worker, housekeeper or customer service representative. Part of the reason for this phenomena is that participants did not want to subject nice-looking people to jobs that they think are not enjoyable. But those assumptions could be hurting those in lower socioeconomic classes, explains Lee. "Our work suggests that we may need to think differently about low-level jobs," she told Quartz. "Jobs that are considered to be less desirable are typically those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, including a disproportionate number of people who might be particularly vulnerable if they become victims of discrimination." A previous study conducted by psychologists at the University of Essex and the University of Cambridge found similar evidence of bias against attractive people. Their research found that scientists who are perceived as attractive are less likely to be seen as "good scientists" who conduct sound research. In an interview with "Live Science," Ana Gheorghiu, one of the study's authors, said, "I was very surprised that attractiveness could be a negative quality." Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook Don't miss: Robert Mercer, a billionaire supporter of President Donald Trump and former White House senior counselor Stephen Bannon, is stepping down as co-CEO of the quant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, according to a memorandum to employees on Thursday. Mercer, 71, said he will leave the role on Jan. 1 but stay at the firm in a research role. He is also selling his personal stake in the right-wing news outlet Breitbart News to his daughters. Peter Brown will continue on as CEO of the hedge fund. In the memo, Mercer responds to unidentified misinformation he says has been published about him. "Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group," Mercer wrote. "Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant." But Mercer also says he regrets associating himself with the polarizing former senior editor of Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos, and is in the process of distancing himself from him and severing all ties. Mercer donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates and PACs during the 2016 election. Meanwhile Renaissance Technologies' founder, James Simons, tends to support Democrats. Mercer's Renaissance co-COE Brown is also a Democrat supporter whose wife, Margaret Hamburg, was commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the Obama administration. Bannon returned to Breitbart, which he helped found, after he left the White House this summer and he and Mercer are said to be close. But in his memo to employees, Mercer says the two don't always see eye to eye. "I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon's," he said. Renaissance manages $50 billion of assets. Here is the text of his memo: Dear Colleagues, During the past year, I have been the object of a great deal of scrutiny from the press. I have declined to comment on what has been written about me, imagining that with time the attention would dissipate. Because that has yet to happen, I have decided to correct some of the misinformation that has been published about me. It is not my intention to impose the views I describe below on anyone else. My goal is simply to explain my thinking, the very essence of which is that all of us should think for ourselves. I believe that individuals are happiest and most fulfilled when they form their own opinions, assume responsibility for their own actions, and spend the fruits of their own labor as they see fit. I believe that a collection of individuals making their own decisions within the confines of a clear and concise set of laws that they have determined for themselves will advance society much more effectively than will a collection of experts who are confident in their knowledge of what is best for everyone else. This is why I support conservatives, who favor a smaller, less powerful government. A society founded on the basis of the individual freedom that flourishes under a limited federal government has no place for discrimination. Of the many mischaracterizations made of me by the press, the most repugnant to me have been the intimations that I am a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group. Discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, creed, or anything of that sort is abhorrent to me. But more than that, it is ignorant. The press has also intimated that my politics marches in lockstep with Steve Bannon's. I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him. However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon's. Without individuals thinking for themselves, society as a whole will struggle to distinguish the signal of truth from the correlated noise of conformity. I supported Milo Yiannopoulos in the hope and expectation that his expression of views contrary to the social mainstream and his spotlighting of the hypocrisy of those who would close down free speech in the name of political correctness would promote the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today. But in my opinion, actions of and statements by Mr. Yiannopoulos have caused pain and divisiveness undermining the open and productive discourse that I had hoped to facilitate. I was mistaken to have supported him, and for several weeks have been in the process of severing all ties with him. For personal reasons, I have also decided to sell my stake in Breitbart News to my daughters. I would also like to inform you of a decision I have reached with respect to my role at Renaissance, an organization I adore with colleagues whom I deeply respect and admire. I am 71 years old, the same age that Jim Simons was when he retired. I do not plan to retire, but I do plan to relinquish my management responsibilities. Peter Brown and I have been Co-CEOs for the past eight years. On January 1, 2018, I will step down from my position as Co-CEO and resign from the board of directors. I will continue with the firm as a member of its technical staff, focusing on the research work that I find most fulfilling. Peter will continue on as CEO, and I will provide him with my counsel whenever he feels that I can be helpful to him and to the company where I have spent so many wonderful years. RLM Michael Bloomberg, (right) founder of Bloomberg LP, and Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, at the 10,000 Small Businesses (1OKSB) Partnership Event in London on Dec. 14, 2016. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein joked Thursday that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could be the one to draw the United States together. Blankfein asked Bloomberg during an on-stage discussion at Goldman Sachs' Sustainable Finance Innovation Forum when the next presidential election will begin. "In 15 minutes?" Blankfein joked. The former mayor said it would start right after the mid-term elections, which would indicate which party was ahead. Bloomberg then described how the emerging candidates were being pulled to the political right and left. "A whole bunch of people have dropped out of both of these parties," he said. "We know where that middle is, Mike," Blankfein then joked. "I'm going to need about 63 million of you," Bloomberg said. "In New York City, if I had 90 percent approval rating when I left, it still meant 840,000 people still hated me." Bloomberg was mayor of New York City for three terms and considered running as an independent candidate in the 2016 presidential election. He decided not to run for fear a three-way race would give Trump a better chance at winning. Bloomberg still heads his financial data company and Bloomberg Philanthropies and is the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. Blankfein has indirectly criticized President Donald Trump on Twitter. Blankfein's first tweet on June 1 said the Trump administration's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement was a "setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world." Subsequent tweets have also trolled Trump's plans on infrastructure spending. Separately Thursday, as the Republicans rolled out their tax proposal, Blankfein said in a Reuters report that a good U.S. tax plan will have "stimulative elements" and could get the U.S. to higher than 3 percent GDP. The initial reading on third-quarter U.S. GDP last week showed better-than-expected 3 percent growth. Former Goldman Sachs president and COO Gary Cohn is now the White House's chief economic advisor. Blankfein is one of the CEOs scheduled to travel with Trump to China on Friday. CNBC's Christina Wilkie contributed to this report. Hardy closed the gates to the company and a security guard stood outside handing his newly-unemployed employees their possessions as they arrived at the site. Providing no specific explanation or his departure, Hardy added, "This is my time! I am quitting to pursue my dream of not having to work here." "There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough," The Guardian reports Hardy writing in a memo to his employees. "I have had enough and realise I cannot work with you, the people I employ, a moment longer." After 13 years in charge of Nippybus company in Somerset, England, boss Sydney Hardy delivered a foul and unexpected note to staff announcing he was shutting down the company. "Everybody's got mortgages and bills to pay," bus driver Steve Atkins tells The Guardian. "I've had to ring up and cancel all my direct debits. There's no way I can cover them." On the most challenging or unfulfilling days at work, a move like Hardy's might seem awfully tempting. But leaving a company without fair warning will not only impact your staff, it can ruin your professional reputation. According to Gina Belli of PayScale, burning bridges with colleagues can have a negative and lasting impact on your career. "Although it might be tempting, resist doing anything that will sour your relationship with your soon-to-be-former coworkers," Belli says. "You never know when the connections you've made there could come in handy." Instead of leaving without proper notice, Belli says you should think about your future career plans and how it's not unlikely for you to cross paths with a current co-worker or boss. "Even if you're changing careers entirely, or moving to a new location, you really don't know what the future holds," she adds. At 57 years old, Hardy may not be unduly concerned about future employment but he certainly won't be able to call any of his old Nippybus colleagues for a reference. Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook. Don't miss: How to answer the interview question, 'What are your co-worker pet peeves?' Middle manager who retired with a Reply All email tirade shows how not to quit a job Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, gestures as he speaks in the senate in Madrid, Spain, on Friday, Oct. 27, 2017. Angel Navarrete | Bloomberg | Getty Images Before the Catalonia crisis, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's popularity ratings were in the doldrums. But his leadership during the Catalonia constitutional crisis has given him and his Partido Popular (PP) a boost. Over the last month, Rajoy's government has been uncompromising with Catalonia's separatists following the region's illegal independence referendum on October 1. Last Friday, Rajoy imposed direct rule on the region, sacking the local government and calling fresh elections for December. The latest opinion poll suggests that Spanish voters appear to be pleased with Rajoy's decisive leadership. A survey by Sigma Dos on October 31 showed that the popularity of the PP had risen since September, giving it a 5.4 percentage point lead above rival Socialist party PSOE, up from a 4.4 percentage point lead in September. The poll also showed that support for the anti-establishment Unidos Podemos an alliance of Podemos, United Left and other left-wing parties had fallen significantly from a 19.5 percent share of the vote in September, to a 15.3 percent share in October. A good crisis Economists including Citi's Antonio Montilla believe that the Catalonia crisis has been good for Rajoy, so far. "I think the Catalan crisis has strengthened Rajoy's position. His image among Spanish voters has recovered significantly in recent weeks relative to the negative perception of the heavy police response (during) the illegal October 1 Catalan self-determination referendum," Montilla said. watch now Although the pro-independence movement in Catalonia has been a thorn in the side of the Spanish government for decades, tensions came to a head in October when the Catalan government held a referendum on independence despite a ban by Spain's constitutional court and attempts by Madrid to stop the vote. The vote took place regardless and there were violent scenes of Spanish police trying to stop voters from entering polling stations, leading to criticism of the Spanish government. Apart from staunch supporters of independence, public sympathy largely turned against Catalonia when a majority in its parliament voted to defy Madrid and declare independence. Spain quickly responded by enacting Article 155 of the constitution, stripping the semi-autonomous region of its powers and imposing direct rule. The regional government was sacked and Rajoy called fresh elections for December 21. Montilla said that the key reasons for the PP's boost in popularity were due to the Catalan side pushing ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, a move not popular in Spain, and the ability of Rajoy to gather support from PSOE opposition leader Pedro Sanchez for the activation of Article 155, he said, an option that he said was usually seen as "politically toxic" in Spain. 'Political win' for Rajoy? As it stands, Spain's chief prosecutor has called for criminal charges to be leveled against the pro-independence leadership for rebellion, sedition and embezzlement. Following the call for charges, deposed Catalan President Carles Puigdemont travelled to Belgium on Monday, saying that he was not trying to escape justice but wanted to put the Catalan issue at the heart of the European Union. He refused to return to Spain following a court summons that required him to testify in Madrid on Thursday and a warrant for his arrest could now be issued. If Puigdemont and his colleagues are found guilty of the most serious charge of rebellion, they face up to 30 years in prison. , Spain appears to have gained the upper hand over the separatist movement. Montilla said that Rajoy's position had "probably strengthened even further in recent days following the U-turn by the Catalan pro-independence leaders." watch now Once known primarily for cheap manufacturing, China is fast becoming a major tech innovator. It is now not only a major magnet for U.S. venture capital investment, but also a dominant force in innovation as demonstrated by the fact that the country just set a new record for filing the most patents, ever. The Boston Consulting Group just released a massive report showing that Chinese unicorns are now reaching the $1 billion valuation mark faster than their American counterparts, and will soon overtake those in the U.S. There is such a hotbed of tech activity in the region that China could soon rival and even potentially overtake Silicon Valley as the world's tech powerhouse. While many credit such a surge to the country's market size or government support, the true secret weapon seems to be the strategic and innovative mindset with which the Chinese actually approach the business of technology. What's that mindset? It comes down, broadly, to three factors: A tendency to collaborate with other firms rather than compete with them. An approach to hiring that avoids some of the legacy baggage that U.S. firms are only now dealing with, like gender discrimination. An attitude toward product cycles that emphasizes the next iteration of a product, rather than staying attached to a currently successful one. "China missed the Industrial Revolution but it is definitely a co-architect of the Information Age, said Arvind Sethumadhavan, CIO at Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific. The collaboration is evident among juggernauts like Alibaba, Tencent and Dji, which by now are all well-known success stories. But now they are not only expanding into new arenas, but also combining forces unlike their U.S. counterparts giving themselves staggering investment power and reach. That collaborative spirit in this case means there's a huge capital base that can be used to power new innovations at rapid pace. Beyond just having a lot of money to invest, Chinese tech has managed to avoid some hiring issues currently plaguing Silicon Valley. For example, while controversy over diversity has plagued companies like Google and Uber, ride-share mammoth DiDi Chuxing which beat Uber in China via such new moves as mobile pay discount partnerships with Tencent for ride-share business is leading with the introduction of its Women's Network program earlier this year. The program has not only yielded significant numbers of women in many of the company's senior management positions, but the company also boasts women in over 37 percent of the company's tech positions, including product managers, engineers and data scientists numbers much higher than Silicon Valley tech firms. But the real growing strength comes from companies that are quietly building businesses focused on having an ongoing global impact, rather than thinking beyond current product iteration. One example: Shenzhen Onething Technologies a shared economic cloud computing company is generating millions of dollars after just a couple of years, thanks to such customers like video behemoth Panda.TV. The company recently held court at the SXSW conference, and its new perspective toward video will enable it to compete globally in just a few months. Given the massive storage that will be needed for all the AI-based computing and VR offerings, there will soon be ceiling issues. In an interesting move to anticipate and beat this problem, Onething is the first company in its category to offer content delivery networks (CDNs) of "infinite node," meaning it collects idle home bandwidth to overcome that problem. Another company, OxyLED, is becoming a leader in smart home design and lighting. "We simply thought about how to create new lighting solutions leveraging technology that were easy to install and looked different," said Nick Niu, OxyLED GM. watch now CNBC's Jim Cramer knows that sentiment matters when stocks are constantly being driven higher by a raging bull market. But the "Mad Money" host also knows that sentiment is extremely difficult to measure. So Cramer has started asking people why they don't like the market. So far, he's been met with a cacophony of eye-opening answers. related investing news Pro Picks: Watch all of Tuesday's big stock calls on CNBC One major reason Cramer has heard is that people can't afford to invest in the stock market, despite Cramer's advice to start with small investments and build on their gains. Often times, Cramer asks if they like their iPhones. When they say they do, he asks why they wouldn't go buy shares of Apple . "They typically screw up their faces and say, 'I don't know. I have no idea.' Well, let me tell you something. The company that is Apple reported tonight and it was one of the greatest blowouts I have ever seen," Cramer said. "Spectacular revenue growth, amazing earnings, a re-acceleration in China, bountiful services stream, and you just try getting an [iPhone] 10. Just try." Cramer said that he was proud of his faith in Apple CEO Tim Cook, adding that so many people are "oblivious" to Apple's stock and the plays that benefit when it soars, like Broadcom . "No one got Apple right except for us," he said. "What a shame, as this company, with a market cap approaching what could be $1 trillion, could have made fortunes for people if they would just understand that you can own not trade, but own a piece of this amazing company." Playing payments Pau Barrena | Bloomberg | Getty Images Cramer has been following the bull market in payment processing and the rise of digital transactions for a while, pounding the table on plays like Visa and PayPal . But there are more ways to play the global cash-to-credit shift besides credit card companies and payment processors, so Cramer decided to analyze Global Payments , an international merchant acquirer that enables retailers to accept electronic payments. "The stock of Global Payments has rocketed up more than 48 percent year to date, so good that, yes, I'm kicking myself. I wish I had highlighted it earlier," he said. "These guys own the client relationships in the payments business and they're the ones who set pricing. They also have some e-commerce, cross-border and gambling-related solutions." Vouching for Facebook and Tesla Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Getty Images After negative reactions to Facebook's and Tesla's respective earnings reports on Wall Street, Cramer made a somewhat contrarian call. "You know what? I think the stocks of these two companies could reverse and go higher after a couple of days of selling," the "Mad Money" host said. "It has to do with the way they handle their conference calls after they report their earnings, and how they approach their investor bases and make their promises." Cramer began with Tesla. The automaker posted a larger-than-expected loss in the third quarter due to production problems with its Model 3 sedan. Elon Musk, Tesla's outspoken CEO, tried to mitigate analysts' concerns on the conference call, acknowledging the production issues but saying that, once they're fixed, Tesla could become a production machine with the highest profitability in the industry. The Street responded in kind, sending shares of Tesla down nearly 10 percent on Wednesday. But individual investors could respond differently, Cramer said. Dominion Energy CEO talks Facebook deal Data centers comprise one of the hottest areas in the market, so hot that even utilities like Dominion Energy are reaping the benefits, Dominion Chairman and CEO Tom Farrell told CNBC. "We did a deal with Facebook," Farrell told Cramer on Thursday. "They're going to open a very large data center in central Virginia and we did a special rate, we constructed a special rate that we would be able to provide them and other large industrial customers for data centers in particular that will power the data centers completely from renewable energy." Facebook's data center will be powered entirely with solar energy, Farrell said, adding that Dominion's data center business will only be ratcheting up in the future. "We did a different kind of a deal, but also very creative, with Microsoft about a year ago to bring a data center of theirs here as well," the CEO said. "More than half the internet traffic in the United States runs through our service territory and we provide the electricity for all those data centers. We've already opened 11 new ones this year." Federal Realty CEO: No one tenant can tank our business The difficulties that the retail sector has been having have managed to seep into investors' feelings about retail-based real estate investment trusts, or REITs. But Don Wood, the president and CEO of shopping center REIT Federal Realty Investment Trust , told CNBC that the stock market's bad action shouldn't reflect on his company. "First of all, diversification is certainly in your business, certainly in our business critical. So when you do look at the income streams from Federal, you absolutely see no one tenant that makes up more than 3 percent of the earnings base," Wood told Cramer on Thursday. With office, retail, residential and lifestyle facilities in its portfolio, Federal Realty has hedged strongly against any one tenant's potential damage, Wood said. "The idea is that no one tenant can throw us off our game. It needs to be a collusion of a whole lot. And so far, we haven't seen that," the CEO said. "The bottom line is, if you were to liquidate this company asset by asset, you'd do a heck of a lot better than what it's trading for, even after today. So that says something to me." Lightning Round: Two thumbs up for EXAS After negative reactions to Facebook's and Tesla's respective earnings reports on Wall Street, CNBC's Jim Cramer made a somewhat contrarian call. "You know what? I think the stocks of these two companies could reverse and go higher after a couple of days of selling," the "Mad Money" host said. "It has to do with the way they handle their conference calls after they report their earnings, and how they approach their investor bases and make their promises." Cramer began with Tesla. The automaker posted a larger-than-expected loss in the third quarter due to production problems with its Model 3 sedan. Elon Musk, Tesla's outspoken CEO, tried to mitigate analysts' concerns on the conference call, acknowledging the production issues but saying that, once they're fixed, Tesla could become a production machine with the highest profitability in the industry. The Street responded in kind, sending shares of Tesla down nearly 10 percent on Wednesday. But individual investors could respond differently, Cramer said. "There's a retail investor cohort who actually cares about different things," Cramer said. "You gotta have faith, and individual investors, they've got just that when it comes to the stock of Tesla. They believe in Tesla, which is why they'll soon come in to buy the stock because they love the car and they don't care about things like profit or gross margins or earnings per share." Musk's followers tend to forgive his over-promising and under-delivering, even if the analysts who cover Tesla don't. Cramer said that he could see Tesla's stock withstanding another round of financing on the faith of its fans. Facebook's third-quarter earnings report beat analyst estimates, but the company's situation is different, Cramer said. The social media giant's management tends to under-promise on conference calls, like in 2016 when they said they expected Facebook's ad revenue growth rate to "come down meaningfully." After this quarter, shares of Facebook fell on the company's statements that countering bad actors like Russian hackers on its platform will significantly impact profitability. "Facebook's stock was up 4 [basis] points before [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg said that and added, 'protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,'" Cramer said. "I think this comment's just like the ad slowdown comment. It's done to temper expectations as well as make it clear to Congress that Facebook's good actors." So, even as neither conference call inspired much near-term confidence, Cramer pointed to the statistics: Tesla's stock is up 50 percent for 2017 and Facebook's stock is up 58 percent. "They both have their narratives, one hopelessly upbeat, the other ridiculously downbeat, and both work longer term even with the short-term pressure they're under," the "Mad Money" host said. "Two different strategies, same stock results a few weeks later, as the stocks first go lower and then climb right back up again." Kamal Haasan has hit out at the right-wing saying they cannot challenge anyone saying there are Hindu terrorists, because there are! Kamal Haasan -- Ulaganaayakan or universal hero for his fans -- has been making national headlines for months now, mostly for controversial statements. Haasan, who has been hinting at his entry into Tamil Nadu politics, met different influential political party leaders in the last few months. This includes Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Delhi CM and Aam Aadmi Party Chief Arvind Kejriwal. advertisement Now, Kamal Haasan is all set to take on the trolls online and the media offline for he has made another controversial statement. He said the right-wing cannot challenge anyone saying there are Hindu terrorists because terror has spread to the Hindu camps too. WHAT EXACTLY DID KAMAL HAASAN SAY? Hitting right where it hurts for the right-wing, Kamal Haasan said, "In the past, Hindu, right-wing groups would not indulge in violence. They would hold a dialogue with opposing parties on their arguments. But this old tactics was defeated and now what they do is using muscle power." "They started indulging in violence," Haasan said. Kamal Haasan said, "Right-wing cannot challenge anyone saying there are Hindu terrorists because there terror has spread into their camp as well. Such terror activities are not going to help them in way." Haasan's statement comes at a time when his fans and leaders of all major political parties are awaiting the 'grand announcement' he is to make on November 7, on his birthday. "Truth alone triumphs has now become strength alone triumphs. This has made people inhuman," he said. Kamal Haasan, who met Kerala CM and senior CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan in September, did not lose out on an opportunity to create more suspense about this entry into politics. He said, "Tamil Nadu will become an example for social justice once again, for today, Kerala shows the way. Congratulations!" When he met Vijayan, he has said that saffron is not his colour. Will he launch his own political party based on the Communist Party principles? We will have to wait and watch! --- ENDS --- watch now Credit Suisse boss Tidjane Thiam staunchly defended his record as CEO of Switzerland's second-largest bank Thursday, despite calls from an activist investor for the lender to break up. In recent weeks, a relatively small but top-performing activist hedge fund announced an ambitious plan to break up Credit Suisse. RBR Capital Advisors, led by outspoken trader Rudolf Bohli, said it hoped the bank's management would break the lender into three parts. When it was put to Thiam that the level of returns investors could expect from the bank at present were below the industry standard, he replied, "Why am I here? Why was there a change? Why are we engaging in this big restructuring program? It's because things were not optimal." Tapping into investor impatience with the bank's three-year turnaround project, RBR Capital Advisors called on Credit Suisse to split into an investment bank, a wealth manager and an asset manager in order to support share prices. Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam delivers a speech during the annual shareholders' meeting of the Swiss banking group on April 28, 2017 in Zurich. MICHAEL BUHOLZER | AFP | Getty Images Credit Suisse has outperformed several European peers over the past 12 months, though its share price to date is barely half the level it was when Thiam took over in July 2015. And while the bank's earnings rose considerably in the three months through September, the Zurich-based lender still has a way to go to deliver the level of returns investors might hope for from a banking behemoth. "It doesn't happen overnight, it's a big restructuring but as far as restructuring's go, this one is really progressing at an enormous pace," he added. Thiam gets first profit hat-trick The lender is currently in the second phase of its three-year restructuring program. It plans to focus on wealth management over investment banking and settle legal cases. Credit Suisse posted a near six-fold year-on-year rise in third-quarter net profit on Thursday, beating analyst expectations. The results mark the first time the lender has posted three consecutive profitable quarters under the guidance of Thiam. The bank reported 244 million Swiss francs ($244 million) in third-quarter net profit, significantly above the 41 million Swiss francs posted for the same period last year. watch now The most comprehensive version to date of the GOP's long-awaited tax plan came a little earlier than many expected Thursday morning but not too soon for Democrats to immediately plant a flag of staunch opposition. Among other changes, the summary details of the proposal outline large increases of the standard deduction for individuals and families, as well as raising the child tax credit and doubling the estate tax while scheduling its repeal in six years. The bill would also permanently lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, sources told CNBC. In a time of stark polarization in Congress, Democrats didn't bother waiting for the full text of the bill before taking their criticisms public. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., an especially outspoken critic of both the opposition party and President Donald Trump's administration, said the plan is essentially designed to transfer money from poor to rich, from Democrat to Republican, and away from government programs generally. Chris Murphy tweet 2 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, branding the plan with the hashtag #BillionairesFirst, called the proposal "disastrous" in a tweet. At a press conference Thursday, Pelosi said the GOP plan would constitute a "catastrophic transfer" of wealth to the rich from the middle class. Pelosi tweet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, using similar language as his colleague in the House, said the plan will raise taxes on the middle class and serve the wealthiest Americans most, according to reports. Chuck Schumer tweet Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm described the tax plan as a "giveaway to the ultra-rich winners of the ovarian lottery" in a tweet. Jennifer Granholm: Here's the tax giveaway to the ultra-rich winners of the ovarian lottery: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont and former Democratic presidential candidate, went a step beyond a pugnacious tweet by posting a nearly four-minute video discussing the plan. Warren said the biggest beneficiaries of the GOP plan will be large banks and multinational corporations. "Estimated to be number one on the list is Wells Fargo. Remember our friends from the fake accounts scandal?" she asked Sanders. "The socially conscious institution?" He joked. Warren/Sanders video tweet And Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., chided his opponents while responding to a report that an unnamed House Republican thinks the tax proposal "sucks." Ted Lieu Tweet To be sure, members of high political office were far from the only ones weighing in on the Republicans' tax code overhaul. Political PACs, activist websites and political advisors with varying degrees of affiliation with the Democratic Party all took a swing at the GOP plan. An activist group supporting Sanders, for instance, took a hard jab at the plan while sounding off on another Trump-related headline this time that Sam Clovis, a questionably credentialed nominee to head the Agriculture Department, had withdrawn his nomination. Bernie Sanders tweet Clinton advisor tweet Ben Wikler, MoveOn.org tweet President Donald Trump speaks to business leaders as Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin (L) looks on during a Roosevelt Room event October 31, 2017 at the White House in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump will be characteristically pleased with himself when he hears that one of his favorite phrases, "fake news", has been named "word of the year" by dictionary publisher Collins. Announcing the winner, U.K.-based Collins Dictionary said the term "fake news" saw an "unprecedented" rise with usage of the term increasing 365 percent since 2016. Defining "fake news" as meaning "false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting," Collins said the word had come top of its annual assessment of the most used words in the English language and will now have its own entry in next year's dictionary. The term has become synonymous with Trump who has used the phrase repeatedly to criticize the media, particularly during his now infamous Twitter rants, and what he perceives to be inaccurate reporting. Tweet: Tweet: Helen Newstead, the head of language content at Collins, said that much of this year's list of words was "definitely politically charged." "'Fake news', either as a statement of fact or as an accusation, has been inescapable this year, contributing to the undermining of society's trust in news reporting: given the term's ubiquity and its regular usage by President Trump, it is clear that Collins' Word of the Year 'fake news' is very real news," she said. Trump appeared to claim in a recent interview that he had coined the phrase, reportedly telling Mick Huckabee (who also ran for the Republican presidential nomination) in an interview that: "I guess other people have used it (the term 'fake' in conjunction with 'media') perhaps over the years, but I've never noticed it. And it's a shame. And they really hurt the country," he said. However Collins, which is part of the HarperCollins publishing empire and has published dictionaries since 1819, said on Thursday that the association of "fake" with "news" started out in the field of comedy, as exemplified by shows such as Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Chris Morris's "The Day Today." Then, around 2005, the term began to be applied to false news stories that were circulated with malicious intent rather than as satire. "During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign pundits noted the large number of websites broadcasting false stories about the candidates under the guise of news. Then in January 2017 Donald Trump dismissed reports from the CNN news agency about his alleged links with Russia as 'fake news'. Claims that potentially damaging stories were 'fake news', and enquiries into the proliferation of such stories were a major part of the news agenda in 2017," the dictionary publisher noted. Recently, Musk posted images to his Instagram account from the Gigafactory, including a picture and video of him and his colleagues roasting marshmallows and drinking whiskey on the roof at night. He explained on Twitter that camping atop the Gigafactory was faster than getting to a hotel in Reno, the nearest town of any size. "I really believe that one should lead from the front lines and that's why I'm here." "I always move my desk to wherever well, I don't really have a desk, actually. I move myself to wherever the biggest problem is in Tesla," said Musk. Musk was hosting the call from the Gigafactory, Tesla's battery production facility in Nevada, because that is where he has been working day and night to correct production delays, he said. Elon Musk disappointed Wall Street investors in the most recent quarter and Tesla stock is taking a pummeling Thursday as a result. But during Tesla's earnings conference call with analysts on Wednesday, there was a notable theme: Musk presented himself as a leader who's out on the field alongside his employees. Indeed, on Wednesday's call, Musk said he has been at the Gigafactory all hours of the night. "I am personally on that line, in that machine, trying to solve problems personally where I can," Musk said. "We are working seven days a week to do it. And I have personally been here on zone 2 module line at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, helping diagnose robot calibration issues. So I'm doing everything I can." In July, Musk predicted that getting the production of Tesla Model 3 ramped up would be "manufacturing hell." On Wednesday, he likened the experience to "Dante's Inferno," admitting that it was emotionally taxing. "Let's say level nine is the worst, OK? Well, we were in level nine," he said. "I was really depressed about three or four weeks ago when I realized that we're kind of in level nine," he said. "I was sort of quite down in the dumps." But things are looking up. "We're now in level eight and I think we're close to exiting level eight," said Musk. "Now I can see sort of a clear path to sunshine. So I feel really pretty optimistic right now." It's not the first time Musk has publicly talked about his roller coaster of emotions. At the end of July, Musk said the reality of being a successful, high-profile tech CEO is "great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress." The recent stress of Tesla's production schedule for the Model 3 falling behind (much to the dismay of analysts) is partially because a key subcontractor did not deliver as expected. Musk said on the call that he and his team were putting in overtime work to correct the miss. However, it's not the first time Tesla has missed production estimates. Musk has a history of setting projections the company then doesn't meet. In any case, "[A]t the end of the day, everything is our fault and my fault most of all," admitted Musk. "If we pick the wrong subcontractor, we're the fault. So, I don't want to just be externalizing responsibility." Musk's stories about working long hours, elbow to elbow with his employees may be in part a strategy to mollify investors unhappy with Tesla's missed targets. But it's also is a smart leadership move. Research has found that the top positive influence on a typical worker's level of job satisfaction is bosses who have the technical skill set to complete the work they ask their subordinates to do. Among American workers, "it's considerably more important for employee job satisfaction than their salary (even when pay is really high)," the authors of the research told the Harvard Business Review. The study focused on 35,000 randomly selected employees and workplaces in the U.S. and Britain. Musk showing his emotional side is also important when it comes to leadership. Legendary Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has espoused its value. "I think the leader today has to demonstrate both transparency and vulnerability, and with that comes truthfulness and humility and obviously the ability to instill confidence in people, and not through some top-down hierarchical approach," he said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. See also: Hate your boss? Science says they may be missing this key trait 13 inspiring quotes on leadership and success from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz This is the No. 1 trait of great leaders, says a Wharton professor who's studied thousands of executives The Food and Drug Administration is likely to take new actions on opioids that may be "disruptive" and "uncomfortable" to drugmakers, the agency's commissioner said Thursday. In addition to seeking to treat opioid-addicted patients with alternative medications that don't produce a high, the FDA says it will look at ways to reduce exposure to the drug. That includes new ways of packaging and distribution. "For example, it's possible that a defined, short-term supply of medication could be packaged in a manner that limits the number of pills dispensed," the FDA said in a statement Monday. When asked whether drug companies would fight the new packaging guidelines, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Thursday "potentially," because it could cost companies more money to package the drugs. "We're at a point in this crisis that we're going to have to think of ideas and taking actions that are going to be more disruptive and are going to be uncomfortable to some parties," Gottlieb told "Squawk Box." "But we have to take more vigorous action to get ahead of this." President Donald Trump's rhetoric on North Korean nuclear aggression has been widely criticized for being too inflammatory, but former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he believes the Republican's underlying message is inherently the right one. "I know there are some different interpretations on what President Trump has been saying, but his underlying message has been clear: While he's ready to engage in dialogue, such North Korean behavior will never be tolerated," Ban told CNBC on Thursday. The president has "shown a strong message of deterrence ... It is the right message," he said on the sidelines of the Barclays Asia Forum. In early October, Trump publicly declared that diplomatic talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were a waste of time even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Washington had active lines of communication to Pyongyang. The possibility that Kim's regime may soon be capable of attaching a nuclear warhead to an intercontinental ballistic missile has unnerved the White House, which said in April that its official North Korea policy was "maximum pressure and engagement." Under current rules, a taxpayer can pass up to $5.49 million to heirs tax-free. For married couples it's nearly $11 million. Above that amount, beneficiaries must pay a federal estate tax of 40 percent. (Currently, there are also 15 states and the District of Columbia that assess an estate tax, according to the Tax Foundation.) One aspect of the new tax plan unveiled Thursday introduced by House Republicans calls for killing what the GOP refers to as the "death tax." Under the new proposal, coined the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the estate tax exemption will double and then be repealed as of 2024. In addition, there would continue to be a "step-up in basis," which means if you inherit shares of stock, for example, and turn around and sell those shares, you wouldn't pay any capital gains taxes either. "That's a double win for the beneficiaries," said Bill Smith, managing director at CBIZ MHM. "It would be hard to argue that's a benefit for the middle class." Because of the sky-high threshold, only the wealthiest Americans now pay the federal levy. The Tax Policy Center estimated there were about 11,310 estate returns filed and about half of those were taxable for 2017. Still, the amount of tax collected on those returns was just under $20 billion, the Tax Policy Center said. However, any tax code changes could just as easily be undone in the next election cycle, said Brad Dillon, a senior wealth planner at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York City. "Since the ancient Egyptians there's been some form of an estate tax," he said. "We'll plan as though there will be an estate tax [again] at some point." The estate tax has been on a roller coaster since first imposed in 1917, when 10 percent was levied on portions of an estate exceeding $5 million. At its peak in the 1940s, it charged 77 percent on portions of more than $10 million, then 70 percent for amounts over $5 million from 1976 to 1982. U.S. President Donald Trump (C) greets Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella before a meeting of the American Technology Council in the State Dining Room of the White House Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images Technology company cash Apple: Total of $261.5 billion in cash plus marketable securities -$246 billion of that cash, 94 percent of the total, was outside the U.S., as of August Microsoft: $133.0 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments totaled as of June 30, 2017 -$127.9 billion was held by foreign subsidiaries and would be subject to material repatriation tax effects. Cisco: $70.49 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments - $67.5 billion held by various foreign subsidies, as of July 29, 2017 Oracle: $66.08 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities as of May 31, 2017. - $54.4 billion held by foreign subsidiaries, $47.5 billion of which is considered "indefinitely reinvested in [Oracle's] foreign operations outside the United States" Still, technology stocks didn't get too big of a boost after details of the tax reform plan were released. Analysts have widely expected a tax holiday with rates of 10 percent for repatriation, consistent with earlier proposals by President Donald Trump's administration and campaign. The state and federal corporate income tax is around 38.9 percent, according to federal budget proposals. watch now "This [is] a knee jerk reaction as the tech bulls were hoping for a bigger boost around repatriation and the potential tailwinds for cash rich tech giants such as Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, and Oracle among others," wrote Daniel Ives, chief strategy officer and head of technology research at GBH Insights. "Repatriation was a major potential catalyst that the reality did not meet the optimism the Street was hoping for." CNBC reached out to Apple and Cisco for comment on the new tax proposals. Oracle and Microsoft declined to comment. Immediately following last year's election, Baird analyst Will Power cautioned that the Trump administration's policies still might have mixed implications for companies like Apple. He noted that Apple "could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of a potential cash repatriation tax holiday or change in corporate tax rates," Apple could also be hurt by any policies that favor American manufacturing over foreign supply chains. Broadcom, for instance, cannot repatriate foreign earnings to the U.S. and would not benefit from a lower related tax rate, Kessler wrote, because of an international domicile in Singapore. In 2016, California-based Broadcom merged with Singapore-based Avago, and the newly formed company was legally organized in Singapore. President Trump said on Thursday that Broadcom aims to move back the United States. "America is again the best place to lead a business with a global footprint," Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan said. Reuters and CNBC's Fred Imbert and Christine Wang contributed to this report WATCH: Here are the winners and losers from GOP's tax reform bill Dozens of CEOs and other corporate leaders are tagging along with President Donald Trump when he heads to China next week, including a number of corporate big-wigs, mega-donors and Republican leaders. A few of those attending include Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Steve Mollenkopf of Qualcomm , Shane Tedjarati of Honeywell , Andrew Liveris of DowDuPont , and Kevin McAllister of Boeing , according to a list obtained by CNBC. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker will also be joining the president. The president, who ascended to office based on his experience in the private sector, has made efforts to leverage the corporate world while in office. A council of top business executives disbanded over the summer after the president appeared to equate torch-bearing white nationalists with protesters demonstrating against them. The head of that council was Andrew Liveris, who will be joining the president in China. The president will be touring Asia from Nov. 5 to Nov. 14, including stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. A priority of Trump's Asia tour will be bolstering trade with some of the United States' top business partners. The visit will take him to an ASEAN summit in the Philippines and an APEC summit in Vietnam. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters in September that the administration is "looking forward to a very good session including a lot of American CEOs and we hope there will be some very good deliverables." Here is the full list of CEOs and other leaders joining the president in China: When President Donald Trump lands in China next week, he'll be joined by more than two dozen business titans representing American energy, industrial, financial services and agricultural industries, according to a list obtained by CNBC. An attendance list submitted to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a state banquet held in honor of Trump's November visit included Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf, Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco and Air Products CEO Seifollah Ghasemi. Division heads from Boeing and General Electric were also included. An application posted by the Department of Commerce in September touted the trade mission as a way to connect with high-level officials, encourage market access and promote investments. Five people familiar with the planning said the White House homed in on companies that could announce "done deals": multibillion-dollar export announcements that would have the effect of chipping away at the U.S. trade deficit with China. "The Chinese are always willing to play ball with regard to concrete purchases," said Bruce Hirsh, principal at Tailwind Global Strategies and a former official at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton administrations. "The bigger question is whether they're willing to deal with broader trade problems." It's the broader trade problems that could prove thorny when they arise in bilateral talks. In briefings with reporters, senior administration officials have said the president will continue to stress the need for China to remove barriers to investment for U.S. companies and rebalance the "colossal" deficit. Trump highlighted the U.S. trade deficit with China which stood at $347 billion at the end of 2016 in a Wednesday meeting with Cabinet officials at the White House. "We have trade deficits with China that are through the roof. They're so big and so bad that it's embarrassing saying what the number is. But you know what the number is," Trump said. "I don't want to embarrass anybody four days before I land in China, but it's horrible." Traditionally, foreign trips carry quid pro quo announcements where each country can secure a win. Early proposals by China that were rebuffed by the White House were said to include broader, long-term access to the financial markets, a follow-up to prior objectives the two countries negotiated that allowed U.S. banks to underwrite bonds and apply for licenses to process payments. As a result, a rough draft of the CEO delegation included a handful of high-octane Wall Street executives, according to five people familiar with the planning. "It's very ripe for opening," said Stephen A. Orlins, president of the National Committee for United States-China Relations. Orlins said the financial services industry was low-hanging fruit, given the Wall Street background of the Trump administration, and the fact that further access for U.S. banks in capital markets and insurance would end up hastening the maturity of China's markets. "They'd get a big win from making what appeared to be concessions, but the winners are ultimately Chinese corporates and the Chinese public." In an Oct. 30 briefing with reporters, China's ambassador to the United States, expressed cautious optimism talks between the world's two largest economies would be mutually beneficial. "I think the two teams have already spent a lot of time and a lot of energy on" economic and trade cooperation, Ambassador Cui Tiankai said, according to a transcript of a briefing. "I am confident that there will be a significant outcome, or what we call deliverables, on the economic and trade front." By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) may face action, including a ban under an anti- terror law, for its alleged links with subversive activities, a charge denied by the outfit. A government official said that action against PFI is likely after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) submitted a report on the group to the Union home ministry claiming that it has been involved in terror acts, including running terror camps and making bombs, and it was a fit case to be banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). advertisement However, a home ministry spokesperson remained non- committal over the possible action against the PFI saying the ministry would not like to comment on an individual organisation before taking any action. "Until criminality of any organisation is proved on the basis of available evidence, we cannot make any comment on any organisation," the spokesperson said. The cases which the NIA cited for PFIs alleged involvement in terror acts are: chopping of a professors palm in Keralas Idukki district and organising a training camp in Kannur from where the NIA allegedly seized swords, country- made bombs and ingredients for making IEDs. It also mentioned the murder of RSS leader Rudresh in Bengaluru and the alleged plans to carry out terror attacks in South India by involving another outfit, Islamic State Al- Hindi. The government official said that the PFIs alleged involvement in terror activities in South India has been documented and action against the outfit may include banning it under the UAPA. The NIA has prepared the report on the PFI after conducting a detailed probe. Earlier, PFIs national executive council member P Koya had strongly refuted the NIA claims, saying the agency had never approached the outfit to know about its activities, if there has been any investigation at all. "The activities of the PFI were not anti-national but more nationalistic. We have never run any terror camps nor involved in any terror act. There is no reason to call us a terror group unless you want to label us a terrorist organisation," he told PTI earlier. Koya said there have been just 10 cases against PFI in its 25 years of existence and it was "normal" for any organisation. He claimed that at least 100 people were killed in the clashes between the RSS and CPI(M) in Kerala in recent times yet the two groups were never called as anti-national. The PFI reportedly has presence in 23 states and the strongest in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. PTI ACB RT --- ENDS --- advertisement Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., center, appears during an a announcement in the Capitol's Rayburn Room on tax reform with Republican House and Senate leaders on September 27, 2017. Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images Republicans really want to cut the corporate tax rate. It's the centerpiece of every plan they have released, and they've spent weeks floating wildly unpopular ways to pay for it. There's just one problem: It's really unpopular even among Republican voters. Just 60 percent of registered voters think corporations pay "too little" in taxes, according to a September poll from Morning Consult and Politico, surveying a little under 2,000 Americans. A more recent Morning Consult and Politico survey from October found only 39 percent of Americans think it should be part of the tax plan with 59 percent of Republican voters supporting it. Another poll from Pew Research Center showed that 53 percent of Republicans think corporate tax rates should either be raised or stay the same. Read more from Vox: The House Republican tax bill, explained We're becoming numb to terrorism. That might be a good thing. Here's what Trump's opioid commission wants him to do But confronted with these numbers, House and Senate Republicans seemed unfazed. "Who cares?" Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) said before I had a chance to say what the polls showed. Others said they didn't believe the numbers. "I don't believe that poll," Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) said. "I don't believe it. It's in all of our best interest to have these tax cuts for corporations..." Lowering the corporate tax from its current 35 percent to 20 percent, as Republicans are proposing to boost economic growth, is costly the Tax Policy Center estimates it would cost the country $2 trillion over the next 10 years. But it also has potential to be politically expensive. James Wallner, a fellow at the conservative R Street Institute think tank and former executive director of the Senate Steering Committee, tweeted that it "isn't ideal" for the GOP that only 59 percent of Republicans support cutting the corporate tax rate the proposal's popularity will likely drop more as more details emerge about the various ways Republicans plan to pay for cutting the corporate rate, Wallner pointed out. "Those aren't polls of my constituents," said Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), who sits on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. If there is a political cost to this proposal, one thing is clear: Republicans either don't believe it's true or they just don't care. Vox interviewed eight congressional Republicans Wednesday about the unpopularity of the corporate tax rate. Transcripts of those conversations follow, lightly edited for length and clarity. Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY): "Who cares?" Tara Golshan There have been a series of polls showing that the corporate tax rate cut Chris Collins Who cares? Tara Golshan is among the least popular parts of the bill. That 60 percent of Americans don't want to see a corporate tax rate cut. Chris Collins Because they don't understand. They are being sold a bill of goods, and they don't understand it. Tara Golshan Okay. So you are just going to tell constituents that they just don't get it? Chris Collins I tell them that all the time. I'm going to say: Do you want a bright future for your children and grandchildren? To participate in a $40 trillion economy? And they all say, "Absolutely, yes." And I say, here's the way we are going to get there: We are going to get more investment by small companies on Main Street and pass-throughs. We are going to get corporations bringing jobs back, and I think that's a good thing oh, it's a great thing. And to do that, we have to be competitive. What does that mean? Twenty percent is simply competitive. Canada is at 15, Ireland is at 12.5, Europe's at 20. They're like, okay. They don't understand. If they hear that if I poll this: The average corporate tax around the world is 20 percent, the United States is the highest-taxed country developed country at 35 percent, 40 percent over, so there is an incentive for corporations to put their jobs offshore, would you favor making the corporate rate more competitive with the rest of the world? That would poll 95 percent yes. Tara Golshan Okay Chris Collins But if you ask a question and that's how they do it do you support cutting the corporate tax rate 40 percent from 35 to 20, the gut instinct is going to be no. You have to put it in context. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): "I'm more focused on the substance than the perception of it" Tara Golshan Are you concerned at all that polls are showing the corporate tax rate cut is not popular among Americans? Bob Corker Eh, I want to see what these guys come out with. Currently, I don't really think anyone really knows what the full context of this bill is. So I don't really want to comment until we see the actual language. I know they've got a really tough row to hoe in just pulling this all together themselves. So I'm more focused on the substance than the perception of it. Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO): "Those aren't polls of my constituents" Tara Golshan Are you concerned at all that a majority of Americans don't want to see the corporate tax rate being lowered? Jason Smith I don't know where you got that percentage. Tara Golshan There are a number of polls from Politico/Morning Consult and Pew Jason Smith I would love to see those polls, because those aren't polls of my constituents. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY): "It would be interesting to see an accurate poll of 100 million Americans" Tara Golshan There has been a series of polls that came out recently that said most Americans don't want to see a cut to the corporate tax rate are you concerned about selling this bill seeing that the 20 percent seems to be fixed? Lee Zeldin Oh, I haven't seen that poll. Tara Golshan There was Pew and Morning Consult. Lee Zeldin I know that I have seen a strong interest from people back home wanting to improve the business climate. They want to see our jobs and businesses from overseas to come back, for our jobs and businesses over here not to leave, and a more competitive corporate income tax rate. I support lowering our corporate income tax rate. While in all of our districts across the country, there will be people on both sides of the issues like this, I have certainly seen more support for reducing the corporate income tax rate than keeping it where it is. Tara Golshan Right now, these numbers are showing about 53 percent of Republicans either want it to be raised or stay the same. When selling this idea, do you see that as becoming a problem? Lee Zeldin What I have come in contact with would reflect different numbers. So it would be interesting to see an accurate poll of 100 million Americans. But sometimes the polls get done of 1,000 [people]. But from what I have heard I have come across a lot more support than opposition to reducing the corporate income tax rate. Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX): "I don't believe that poll. I don't believe it. It's in all of our best interest to have these tax cuts for corporations..." Tara Golshan There was a series of polls that came out recently that said most Americans don't want to see a cut to the corporate tax rate Mike Conaway What? Tara Golshan Sixty percent of Americans don't want to see a cut to the corporate tax rate. Mike Conaway Okay. Tara Golshan You seem shocked. Mike Conaway I don't believe that poll. I don't believe it. It's in all of our best interest to have these tax cuts for corporations, so that they will have more money to invest in their business and pay their workers. That's a weird poll. So I'd challenge the premise of the question. Tara Golshan I can send it to you. There's one from Politico/Morning Consult and one from Pew. They're all saying I think it was 53 percent of Republicans either want to see it raised or stay the same. So are you worried at all for when you have to sell this plan? Mike Conaway No, if we campaigned for a year and half for tax cuts for corporations and individuals and I didn't hear any pushback. Whatever these polls are whatever the basis of them that is a pretty unique to have a 180 switch from the campaigning we did that won the presidency, kept the House, the Senate on the premise of tax cuts. Tara Golshan Specifically corporate tax cuts? Mike Conaway We talked the entire time about corporate tax cuts as a part of tax reform. Tara Golshan So when you are talking to your constituents, they are saying specifically they are excited about corporate tax Mike Conaway Yes. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC): "I don't know that competitiveness is a polling issue" Tara Golshan There was a series of polls that showed that majority of Americans don't want to lower the corporate tax rate. And I was wondering what you made of that? Mark Sanford Well [Gets into elevator.] [I'll answer at the] next vote. Is that fair? Tara Golshan No, I won't be here at the next vote. Mark Sanford I don't know that competitiveness is a polling issue. Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR): "If fully explained, I think what they want to see is growth" Tara Golshan I was just wondering whether you have any concern that the majority of Americans don't want to see a lowering of the corporate tax rate. Greg Walden I don't know that if fully explained, I think what they want to see is growth and jobs in America. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): "I think that we have to be realistic with how we deal with the economy" State-owned Swedish energy company Vattenfall has signed a 10-year deal to power Microsoft's international data center operations in the Netherlands using wind power. Microsoft will receive all the energy output from a new onshore wind farm to be built approximately 40 kilometers north of Amsterdam, Vattenfall said in an announcement Thursday. The Wieringermeer wind farm will begin producing renewable energy from 2019, it said. It was recently announced that Vattenfall would invest over 200 million euros ($233.06 million) to "repower and expand" the Wieringermeer facility, which will be home to 100 windmills. These will collectively generate around 1.3 billion kilowatt hours of renewable electricity, equivalent to the consumption of roughly 370,000 homes. In its own announcement, also released Thursday, Microsoft said that the wind farm would be built and operated by Nuon, part of Vattenfall. "Investing in local clean energy to power our local data center is a win-win for our business and the Netherlands," Brian Janous, Microsoft's general manager of energy, said in a statement. "Microsoft is committed to bringing new renewable energy sources online to power our data centers." Microsoft is one of many tech giants looking to embrace clean energy. In October, Amazon announced that its biggest wind farm to date was operational. The business said that Amazon Wind Farm Texas, which is located in Scurry County, would add over 1 million megawatt hours of clean energy to the grid annually. The tax plan unveiled today by Republicans in the House of Representatives could lead to a housing recession, according to National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard. Howard said his members were "irate" about a proposed plan to slice the mortgage interest deduction in half, to a maximum of $500,000. "There are seven million homes on the market right now that are more than $500,000. Those houses are automatically going to be devalued," he said. "What we've seen is that when house values start to go down, it spreads to the next market after that, and another market, and the next thing you know you have a housing recession." Immigration remains a daunting policy concern as the United Kingdom tries to envision a future outside of the European Union. But hopes that Britain and the EU can reach a deal addressing the nation's migrant population could be in vain, according to a leading academic. For one, "no conceivable Brexit deal will involve expelling" Eastern Europeans currently residing in the U.K., said Paul Collier, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Oxford. Many are keeping an eye on how Prime Minister Theresa May handles the issue in upcoming rounds of Brexit negotiations. May has pledged to "re-take control of the U.K.'s borders," which includes measures like implementing a migrant registration system. Her hands could be tied, however, when it comes to handling the millions of non-citizens already living and working in the country. A downed power line and the remains of a home and a car are seen in the Larkfield-Wikiup neighborhood following the damage caused by the Tubbs Fire on October 13, 2017 in Santa Rosa, California. Facing costs from the recent Northern California wildfires, PG&E on Thursday trimmed this year's earnings forecast and said it is continuing to cooperate with agencies investigating the fires. PG&E, the San Francisco-based electric utility, has already been sued in connection with last month's deadly wildfires in complaints that allege negligence and violations of various utility and safety codes. The wildfires, which started Oct. 8, damaged or destroyed more than 14,700 homes across several counties in Northern California and resulted in the loss of 43 lives. "It is premature to discuss any potential liability for the recent wildfires given that there has been no determination of the causes of any of the fires," PG&E CEO and President Geisha Williams said during the company's earnings conference call Thursday. PG&E trimmed its 2017 forecast for GAAP earnings per share to a range of $3.54 to $3.79, from a prior range of $3.36 to $3.56. It left the non-GAAP range of $3.55 to 3.75 per share unchanged, and that compares with the Street's forecast for earnings of $3.67 per share, according to Thomson Reuters. PG&E said the change in guidance was "primarily due to the reinstatement of the company's liability insurance following the Northern California wildfires, as well as an increase in the expected third-party claims associated with the [2015] Butte fire." Jason Wells, chief financial officer of PG&E, said during the conference call that the company's current forecast for costs related to restoration and repairs following the recent Northern California wildfires ranges from $160 million to $200 million. The company plans to seek recovery for its restoration activities through the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates utilities in the state. However, the CFO refused on the call to speculate on any potential timing for liability recognition in the wildfire catastrophe, citing an ongoing state probe. Indeed, the cause of the Northern California wildfires remain under investigation by Cal Fire, a spokesman for the state agency told CNBC on Thursday. The official didn't have an estimate of how long the probe will take although previous wildfire investigations sometimes have taken more than six months. PG&E said Thursday it was "fully cooperating with Cal Fire and the CPUC in their investigations of these fires." Also, it said in those instances where fire investigators or the utility "identified a site potentially involving our facilities," the company submitted incident reports to the CPUC but added that these reports were "factual in nature and do not reflect a finding of cause." Previously, PG&E had acknowledged in an Oct. 13 regulatory filing with the SEC it was being investigated by Cal Fire, indicating that the probe includes "the possible role of power lines and other facilities" of its utility subsidiary. Some previous California wildfires have been blamed on fallen trees sparking electrical lines, or down power lines. During the call, Williams said the utility's service area "experienced a wind event without precedent, with some recorded wind gusts exceeding 75 miles per hour." She also said the area in the wildfire region had "trees weakened by years of drought and other environmental factors." That said, the CEO added: "This was an extraordinary confluence of events, and right now is simply too early to make an assumption about liability." An attorney specializing in wildfire lawsuits said last month PG&E could potentially be on the hook for up to $6 billion in damages if found liable for the deadly Northern California wildfires. That's partly because utilities in California face liability under what's known as inverse condemnation as well as for negligence claims for wildfire and other damaging incidents caused by such things as power lines or other utility equipment. "California is one of the only states in the country where the courts have applied inverse condemnation liability to events caused by utility equipment," Williams said on the call. Added the CEO, "We don't believe that inverse condemnation is an appropriate doctrine, nor do we think it is appropriately applied to regulated utilities. We would challenge its application, if that were to be the case in these events." The utility has previously indicated it has about $800 million in liability insurance for potential losses in connection with the wildfires. PG&E's general counsel, John Simon, told analysts Thursday at least nine lawsuits have been filed against the company in connection with the recent wildfires. "There may be others to come," he said. Earlier this year, a California judge ordered PG&E to pay damages in connection with the 70,000-acre Butte fire, a 2015 incident that burned more than 920 structures and caused two fatalites. Cal Fire investigators found the 2015 blaze got "sparked by a tree that came into contact with a Pacific Gas & Electric Company powerline." More than 2,000 plaintiffs have sued PG&E in connection with the Butte fire. Earlier Thursday, PG&E said it earned $1.12 a share in the third quarter on a non-GAAP basis. That was better than the 91 cents per share analysts were expecting, according to Thomson Reuters. The company earned 94 cents a share, excluding items, in the year-ago period. However, PG&E's operating revenue fell to $4.52 billion, lower than both the Street's forecast for $4.82 billion and its year-ago revenue of $4.81 billion. In trading, PG&E stock was down fractionally in light trading, but it has lost 17 percent since the wildfires. "Don't expect any heroics, but we do believe we can, by getting the foundations in place and doing the right things, continue to progress our Pizza Hut U.S. performance," CEO Greg Creed said during an earnings conference call Thursday. "So I just feel good about the performance we are making, the steady progress we are making. We are making the brands more distinctive, more relevant and easier. And I think all of that is going to help us get to the long-term goal." Shares jumped more than 7 percent on the news. The pizza chain has been a major drag on the company's earnings, prompting some to suggest that executives divest the brand. However, the company's strides in the third quarter to bolster Pizza Hut sales seem to be paying off. Yum Brands on Thursday reported third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat analysts' expectations, helped by improved performance at its Pizza Hut division. All three of Yum's brands, which also includes KFC and Taco Bell, beat expectations for same-store sales growth during the quarter, according to StreetAccount. Taco Bell reported same-store sales growth of 3 percent, above Wall Street estimates of 2.5 percent; Pizza Hut saw growth of 1 percent, exceeding forecasts of a 0.7 percent decline; and KFC posted a 4 percent gain, beating a projected 2.7 percent. This marks Pizza Hut's fifth consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth. "YUM has begun the turnaround of domestic Pizza Hut, attempting to stabilize results to reduce drag on earnings," Stifel analyst Chris O'Cull wrote in a research note Thursday. In April, Creed said the company would invest $130 million toward upgrading equipment, improving restaurant technology and boosting advertising through 2018 at its Pizza Hut restaurants. The company struck a deal with franchisees in May for the effort and, in the second quarter, it reported a $12 million charge related to investments in digital initiatives at its pizza division. Pizza Hut has already launched a loyalty program and announced that it will hire 14,000 delivery drivers by the end of 2017. The company declined to say how much of the investment money has gone toward these two initiatives. In the third quarter, the company said it spent about $10 million on incremental advertising at the pizza chain. This was included Yum's operating profit, the company said. This isn't the first time that Yum has had to revitalize one of its brands. In 2015, the company announced that it would invest $180 million into KFC to help boost deflated sales. The chicken chain has seen 13 quarters of same-store sales growth since the third quarter of 2014. The company said third-quarter net income from continuing operations rose to $418 million, or $1.18 per share, from $218 million, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, Yum earned 68 cents a share, a penny ahead of what Wall Street was expecting, according to Thomson Reuters. Revenue fell to $1.44 billion from $3.31 billion a year ago, reflecting the spinoff of its China business last November. Analysts predicted the latest quarter's revenue would be $1.39 billion. "I think we're making progress," Creed said. "I think we're doing all the right things." Flanked by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), President Donald Trump speaks about tax reform legislation during a meeting with members of the House Ways and Means Committee in the Cabinet Room at the White House, November 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Getty Images The Republican tax plan starts with big advantages, and big problems that make the outcome of the debate uncertain. Let's start with the advantages. American business wants it to pass. Corporate executives, who complain the top U.S. rate of 35 percent hobbles them against foreign competitors, get a large cut to 20 percent. Unincorporated "pass-through" businesses get a 25 percent top rate, down from the 39.6 percent they can now face under the individual tax code. Republicans believe deeply in tax cuts, both as a means of limiting government and as a tool for boosting economic growth. They control both Congress and the White House and operate under rules that allow them to enact their plan without a single vote from Democrats. Moreover, those Republicans increasingly see tax cuts as a matter of political survival. With their business donors and voting base already dispirited over failures on other issues such as health care, botching tax cuts trigger a collapse that hands Congress back to Democrats in 2018 elections. watch now That doesn't eliminate their problems, which remain substantial. The GOP holds narrow majorities and faces significant ideological divides. Leaders can only lose two Republican senators and still pass the bill, which makes any individual objection significant. The congressional budget plan permits the tax bill to boost the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That's too much for some fiscal conservatives who worry about the federal debt including Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona who criticized the plan Thursday. The plan gives businesses tax cuts more than three times as it gives individuals, and early analyses suggest some individual taxpayers would actually pay more. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida on Thursday said he wants the child tax credit, which would rise from $1,000 to $1,600 under the plan, to go up even more. Regional opposition could also be decisive. There are 35 House GOP members from New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California states that would be hit by the plan's elimination of the federal deduction for state income taxes. That's more than enough to sink the bill if they hold together in opposition. Specific sectors of the economy can also cause trouble. Homebuilders and Realtors have announced their strong opposition over new curbs on the value of tax deductions for mortgage interest. And as Republican leaders try to surmount these obstacles, public support for the plan is weak as the debate gets underway. In this week's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, just 25 percent of Americans called the plan a good idea, 14 percent said it would reduce their tax bills, and 19 percent said it would give the economy a big boost. Another challenge is the political weakness of the most important single voice in the debate President Donald Trump. His approval in the NBC/WSJ poll fell to 38 percent, its lowest point this year. The president has sent mixed signals on his preferences for the bill. He has strained relations with Republican leaders to begin with. Asked about prospects for progress on the bill recently, House Speaker Paul Ryan noted that Trump is heading off for a 10-day trip to Asia. He said he was joking. WATCH: Sen. Warren explains why she's against GOP tax plan By PTI: genes in Bt cotton seeds Mumbai, Nov 2 (PTI) The Maharashtra government today recommended CBI probe into the presence of `herbicide tolerant genes in certain varieties of Bt cotton seeds. Bt cotton seeds with herbicide tolerant genes are not allowed to be sold in the country, but during a probe of recent pesticide poisoning deaths in Maharashtra, it was found that such seeds are available in the market. advertisement "After the tragic incidents of pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal district (which is part of a `cotton belt), a detailed study was done by the Central Institute of Cotton Research," a statement from the chief ministers office said here. Among other things, the report noted that herbicide tolerant genes are found in the Bt cotton seeds of five companies, which is not permissible under the Environment Protection Act, 1986, it said. A First Information Report has been registered against these five companies at Nagpur, the CMO statement said. "But it is also found that such type of seeds are being produced in many other states too, and due to the seriousness of the issue, the Government of Maharashtra has sent a request to the Government of India seeking a detailed CBI inquiry," it said. PTI MM KRK --- ENDS --- "Make no mistake about it. These mechanisms will be expensive, but they are necessary to preserving the integrity of online platforms as trusted forums." First, companies should verify and disclose the identities of online advertisers. The American public has the right to know when they're viewing paid content and deserves to understand who is putting up the money to sponsor those messages. During Tuesday's hearings, Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana addressed this issue bluntly: "I don't believe that you have the ability to determine the identity of all of your advertisers," he told attorneys for Facebook, Google, and Twitter. "You're good, but you're not that good." Overcoming the skepticism of Senator Kennedy will require that social media firms roll up their sleeves and dig into records to confirm the identity of advertisers. Second, the content of advertisements also requires careful scrutiny. Advertisements from new advertisers should be reviewed by a human trained to identify blatantly false and misleading advertisements - prior to their publication. This single control will prevent propaganda purveyors from simply creating new advertising accounts each time they are shut down. Make no mistake about it. These mechanisms will be expensive, but they are necessary to preserving the integrity of online platforms as trusted forums. Recent estimates place the size of the online advertising market at $83 billion this year. Surely, there's some room in that budget for the staff required to screen advertisers and advertising content. In fact, according to a report in Wired magazine, Google has had a similar model in place since 2004. The company hires a virtual army of content screeners to view YouTube videos searching for offensive content. Their goal? To make sure that paid advertisements don't wind up running alongside offensive content, potentially tarnishing the reputation of their corporate customers. It's time to take this same approach to protect society from misleading and dangerous advertisements. Social media companies find themselves at a crucial crossroads. They may choose to apply their considerable talent and wealth toward the goal of creating what Sean Edgett, attorney for Twitter, described to Congress as "a safe, open, transparent, and positive platform." Or they may decide that rigorous screening of potential customers is not a justifiable investment. Will Google, Facebook, Twitter, and their counterparts take these steps? While it would be ideal, history tells us that self-regulation rarely works in the absence of government oversight. That's why we have the FTC, FDA, and other watchdog agencies. Social media platforms would be wise to heed the warning issued by Senator Dianne Feinstein during Wednesday's hearings: "You have to be the ones to do something about itor we will." Senator Feinstein is right. The American people are watching. Do the right thing. Commentary by Mike Chapple, academic director of the Master of Science in Business Analytics program and associate teaching professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. Follow him on Twitter @mchapple. For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. If Russian interference on internet platforms isn't affecting tech's bottom line, it doesn't mean executives at Facebook, Twitter and Google aren't concerned about it. "There's an extraordinary amount of soul searching inside these companies about what's happened," former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Thursday. Revelations of Russian meddling on Facebook , Twitter and Google have put the tech giants on their heels, still struggling to fully understand the scope of the foreign campaign and publicly promising to be better. Costolo said internal debates have sprung up around where and how to deploy resources. Facebook said this week it would to 20,000. "These things are always an arms race," Costolo said. "There's already an extraordinary amount of money spent on security, abuse and spam inside these companies." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday the company was prioritizing security over profits a declaration Costolo said was likely more about optics than anything else. "They've done a pretty good job of nailing down maximizing profits and so they can move onto some of the other issues they're facing," he said. Costolo said any increase in security efforts would be unlikely to affect Facebook's profitability. He anticipated that much of the increased security would result from redirecting existing resources. Facebook, Twitter and Google sent representatives to Capitol Hill this week where they were grilled by members of Congress on their inaction and inability to contain the foreign threat. Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih talks to journalists during a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, November 30, 2016. Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday that he was worried about future energy security, especially in Asia, because of strong demand growth, and reiterated his country's support for a global oil supply cut pact ahead of an OPEC meeting later this month. "I am concerned about future energy security especially in Asia, where demand is rising much faster than the industrialized economies. Without the higher investment levels... energy security may be fatally compromised," Falih said in a speech in Bangkok. Falih said the oil market's supply and demand balances continued to tighten and global oil inventories are falling, while compliance with the OPEC-led pact to curb supplies has been "excellent". The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets next on Nov. 30 in Vienna. Two Democratic senators recently created a fictitious group to prove just how easy it is to target specific people with fake news. Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota built a group on Facebook and named it "Americans for Disclosure Solutions" which has the acronym ADS. The senators then paid Facebook to show ads to journalists and staffers on the Hill. The news was first reported by Axios. According to data provided to CNBC by Senator Warner's office, $20 was enough to reach 1,369 Hill staffers in under 24 hours. An additional $20 allowed the fake Facebook group to target 1,407 Washington, D.C.-based journalists, a spokesperson for the Senator's office explained. "That's a pretty good ROI you can see why this would be so appealing to the Russians, and anybody else who is trying to target Americans in order to sow division and discord," a spokesperson in Senator Warner's office told CNBC. "There are no existing policies in place to prevent running nefarious ads on Facebook. Despite registering ADS on Facebook as a "Political Organization," we were able to run an ad campaign without providing basic information necessary to ensure compliance with federal, state or local election laws, such as campaign contact information, candidate ID, etc." "Online political advertising represents an enormous marketplace, and today there is almost no transparency. The Russians realized this, and took advantage in 2016 to spread disinformation and misinformation in an organized effort to divide and distract us," Senator Warner said. "Our bipartisan Honest Ads Act extends transparency and disclosure to political ads in the digital space. At the end of the day, it is not too much to ask that our most innovative digital companies work with us by exercising additional judgment and providing some transparency." The Senators were making a point: They could easily create a group and spread any narrative without having to prove who they were or what they stood for. This is what Russian-linked operatives were allegedly doing ahead of and during the U.S. presidential campaign, and why Facebook, Google and Twitter representatives testified on Capitol Hill this week. The House Intelligence Committee recently published several of the ads that Russian-controlled groups were posting. Facebook was not immediately available for comment. Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell reported a near 50 percent rise in net profit for the third quarter. Net profit attributable to shareholders on a current cost of supplies (CCS) basis, used as a proxy for net profit, came in $4.1 billion, versus $2.7 billion in the same quarter a year ago. This compared to a company-provided analyst consensus of $3.6 billion. It also beat the Reuters estimate which was $3.569 billion. Shell said the earnings reflected higher contributions from its downstream and upstream operations (which refer to both the refining division and exploration units) and its integrated gas unit. Here are the key third-quarter metrics: Cash flow from operating activities: $7.58 billion, down 11 percent from a year ago. Net income attributable to shareholders (on a current cost of supplies basis and excluding exceptional items) $4.1 billion, versus $3.569 billion expected by Thomson Reuters. Shell announced a $0.47 dividend per share. Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said that "Shell's three businesses all made resilient contributions to this strong set of results." He said the earnings were evidence of Shell's "growing momentum" which, he said, strengthens his "firm belief" that the company's strategy is working. The best seats aboard the world's biggest passenger jet just got better and fewer. Singapore Airlines on Thursday unveiled new seats for its Airbus A380, its first major cabin overhaul in a decade. The highlight, however, was the new first class: six suites, down from 12, which were redesigned to feature beds that sit perpendicular to the windows and a wall that can come down to join, should you want to, say, relax with a travel companion. The new A380s will seat 471 people. In addition to the six suites, there will be 78 business class seats on the upper deck, and 44 premium economy and 343 regular economy class seats on the main deck. The revamp is the latest step in an arms race to appeal to wealthy travelers who will shell out for some of the rarest real estate on board. While many carriers like Delta and United are designing their premium cabins for frequent business travelers, a few international airlines provide spacious first class suites, such as Etihad, which offers a three-room suite it calls "The Residence." Singapore Airlines' answer to that starts flying next month from Singapore to Sydney. Here's what the new A380 interior, four years in the making, looks like: By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 1 (PTI) Maharashtra Tourism Minister Jaykumar Rawal today demanded a ban on Sanjay Leela Bhansalis upcoming film "Padmavati", and said the state government would be writing to the Censor board on the issue. The film has kicked up a controversy as some organisations in Rajasthan have accused it of distortion of history. Speaking to reporters here, Rawal said he was a descendant of the clan of Rawal Ratan Singh, Rani Padmavatis husband. advertisement "History and historical references are being twisted in this film. A legal disclaimer is being inserted just to save ones skin. "I have told Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis how facts are being twisted and passed off as history. You cannot take liberty with history and the film needs to be banned. We even intend to move the Centre over the Rajput communitys demand for a ban on the film," Rawal said. Rawal, who hails from Sindkheda in Dhule district in north Maharashtra, said, "The sacrifice of Rani Padmavati, who along with 16,000 royal women committed Johar (self- immolation) rather than be captured by Alauddin Khilji, is a matter of great pride for us. "To this day we teach our girls about the valour of our Rani Padmavati. We are direct descendants of Rawal Ratan Singh and Bappa Rawal," he added. "There are many from the Rajput clan in Maharashtra. Sanjay Leela Bhansali has many other subjects to make films on. I wonder how an actor like Ranveer Singh agreed to play the role of Alauddin Khilji. Rani Padmavati never indulged in dancing, let alone in public," Rawal said. He has apprised the chief minister of the sentiments of the Rajput community, and the state government would write to the Censor board demanding a ban on the film, the minister said. The film, starring Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor and Ranveer Singh, is slated for release on December 1. PTI MM KRK SMN --- ENDS --- The National Federation of Independent Business said Thursday it opposes the tax plan proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives. "This bill leaves too many small businesses behind," CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement. "We are concerned that the pass-through provision does not help most small businesses. Small business is the engine of the economy. We believe that tax reform should provide substantial relief to all small businesses, so they can reinvest their money, grow, and create jobs." Meanwhile, Todd McCracken, CEO of the National Small Business Association, said in a phone call with CNBC that he was still unsure whether his organization would support the bill. The nonpartisan Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council said in a statement that it sees the legislation as an opportunity to modernize the tax code. The group said it supports certain provisions in the proposal, such as the repeal of the estate tax and its expensing provisions. The group's chief economist, Ray Keating, noted that they are still reviewing some areas of the legislation where the organization has concerns. The groups have all been pushing hard for tax reform. The House bill, titled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, would slash the number of income tax brackets from seven to four: 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent and 39.6 percent. The bill is also expected to raise the child tax credit to $1,600 from its current maximum of $1,000. It's also expected to preserve popular retirement savings plans, such as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts. Business Roundtable said Thursday it would support the plan. "If we are serious about growing the economy, creating jobs and increasing wages for all Americans, this country needs a modernized tax code. It is that simple," said Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan Chase and chairman of Business Roundtable. A Spanish judge has issued a European arrest warrant for Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four members of his ousted cabinet, according to Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. All are currently in Belgium, and failed to attend a High Court hearing in Madrid on Thursday. A further eight former Catalan ministers were remanded in custody as part of the ongoing investigation into the Catalonia region's independence bid. A ninth, Santi Vila, who left the cabinet before last week's independence declaration and has been pushing for a negotiated solution with the central government in Madrid, was released on bail. The nine leaders had appeared for questioning at the court. The High Court had issued a summons Wednesday for Puigdemont and 13 of his colleagues to appear. The summons came after Spain's chief prosecutor called for charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement to be brought against Puigdemont and other members of the Catalan government and parliament for their roles in a pro-independence movement and declaration of independence. Instead, Puigdemont and four of his colleagues traveled to Brussels in Belgium and hired a lawyer. Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Puigdemont said he was not in the Belgian capital to escape justice but to "put the Catalan issue at the heart of the European Union." Puigdemont's lawyer Paul Bekaert told Reuters that his client would not travel to Spain where the political climate was "not good," but would cooperate with Spanish and Belgian justice. A decision on a warrant for his arrest is expected to follow the testimonies of the remaining nine members of Puigdemont's sacked cabinet who have appeared in court. If Puigdemont is arrested it would make it unlikely that he could participate in regional elections, called by Spain after it sacked the Catalan government last week, on December 21. - Reuters contributed to this report. Sprint and T-Mobile are working to salvage their proposed merger, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing sources. Sprint shares jumped 5.3 percent in after-hours trading, while shares of T-Mobile rose 3.3 percent. Last week, reports surfaced that SoftBank was planning to break off negotiations over disagreements on which side would control the combined company. SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, was reportedly hesitant to give up control of Sprint. But CNBC's David Faber reported that SoftBank was not preparing to give up just yet. The proposal from earlier this year was for a stock-for-stock deal that would give Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent, control. The telecommunications companies could reach a deal within weeks, the WSJ said. Read the full WSJ story here. Shares of T. Rowe Price and other asset managers rose Thursday after the House Republican tax plan preserved popular retirement savings plans, including 401(k)s. Shares of the company rose 1.8 percent Thursday after slipping about 4 percent over the past two weeks on fears that legislators in Washington were considering reforms to the popular savings plan. Certain Republican lawmakers had toyed with the idea of cutting contribution limits to $2,400 as Congress looked to make up for other tax cuts. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, a top tax writer in the House of Representatives, said cuts to how much people can contribute were still on the table as recently as last week. The GOP tax plan leaves current contribution limits in place, meaning $18,000 for 401(k) plans for 2017. Those 50 and over can contribute as much as $24,000. Experts were concerned that lowering limits on pre-tax 401(k) contributions would indirectly encourage workers to save less for retirement. Most Americans already save too little for their retirement needs. Shares of BlackRock , Invesco and Ameriprise Financial all traded higher after details of the plan were released. The Republican tax reform plan will also permanently lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. Love Cork Screw, a wine label in Chicago Illinois, is seeking a brand ambassador. The company's mission is to make quality wine more accessible and less intimidating to consumers. As one of a few African-American female vintners, owner Chrishon Lampley and her publicist, Ikeda Lockhart are in search of someone who would be a passionate spokesperson and knowledgeable representative for the brand. Salary: $40,000 Check out the clips above to get a sneak peek. About The Job Interview "The Job Interview" takes an inside look at the world where the words you say, the clothes you wear, and even the expression on your face can mean the difference between success and failure. Each half-hour episode of this observational series brings viewers into the room as a real employer conducts real interviews with real candidates only one of whom will land an offer. The Job Interview Series Premiere November 8 | Wednesday 10P ET/PT Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is working hard to meet the demand for its flagship iPhone X smartphone in an interview with CNBC's Josh Lipton and Jim Cramer after the company's earnings report on Thursday. An Apple representative said that between 200 and 500 people were waiting in line in front of some of the first Apple Stores where the iPhone X on sale Friday, including stores in Australia, Singapore and Japan. Cook also noted that the company's wearable devices business is going strong. "The wearables business, which is largely the Watch and AirPods, are now the size of a Fortune 400 company and really coming out of nowhere if you really think about when we started this business," Cook said. No. 400 on the Fortune 500 list is Calpine, which had $6.7 billion in annual revenue, according to Fortune. Separately, investor and former Apple analyst Gene Munster estimated that the Watch alone makes up about 3 percent of Apple's revenue, or about $7 billion a year. Here's the full transcript. Tim Cook: We just finished a spectacular year, fiscal year 2017, and we had a strong end to it. We had record Q4 revenues of $52.6 billion, which was above the high end of our guidance and up 12 percent year on year. It's the fourth consecutive quarter that we've had accelerating revenues. Geographically, Americas, Europe and the rest of Asia Pac all hit record revenues for Q4, for the September quarter, and we've returned to growth in greater China from strong iPhone, Mac and iPad unit and market share gains. If you look at products, we shipped almost 47 million iPhones, which was more than we had expected, and we saw double-digit iPhone gains in a number of emerging markets, like the Middle East, central and Eastern Europe, India, Mexico, mainland China -- yeah, I can't forget that one -- which we're very proud of. Also, I should've said earlier our total revenue in India doubled year on year, and so that the initiative on India really has a lot of traction. From a services point of view, we had all-time quarterly results of $8.5 billion in revenue, up 34 percent year on year. The App Store hit another record, Apple Music also had a spectacular quarter, and if you look at our total paid subscriptions, which includes the Apple-branded and third-party branded services we now hold 210 million subscriptions, putting us among the top subscription holders in the world. That's up 25 million in just the last 90 days. The Mac had its best year ever in 2017, and its best Q4 ever, as we ended the year. Our product line that we refreshed in June, particularly the notebook line, has been very, very well received, and we picked up share again around the world. Over 60 percent of Macs were sold to people who are new to Mac, and the largest component of that by far are switchers from Windows. IPad also grew double digits for the quarter, and this is the second consecutive quarter of iPad growth. The new product line here has also been well received with iPad Pro and iPad and iOS 11, which added a number of productivity kinds of things, multitasking, drag and drop, Files, etc., to the iPad experience. The Apple Watch was up over 50 percent in units for the third consecutive quarter, so the momentum here continues, and we couldn't be more excited about the Series 3 and how it's being received and sort of the cellular function that is clearly a game changer for the Watch. The wearables business, which is largely the Watch and AirPods, are now the size of a Fortune 400 company, and really coming out of nowhere, if you really think about when we started this business. From a new product point of view, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, when we started shipping those, they instantly became the top two selling iPhones in our line and have continued to be every week since the launch. IPhone X, from an order point of view, is off to a very strong start from both the direct orders and the orders that our channel partners, primarily carriers, place on us. The manufacturing ramp, which I know has been the subject to much discussion, is going well. Our output is increasing every week, and I think it's going particularly well considering that it's the most advanced iPhone we've ever made, and it has a number of new technologies in it. The first stores open in about one hour from now in Australia and that's sort of the firing gun for sales to begin for November 3, and we could not be more excited about it. The place is really buzzing about that. Our revenue guidance is very strong, it's $84-87 billion, and keep in mind that the quarter that we're comparing against had 14 weeks in it versus this quarter has 13 in it, so you have to add 8 points to sort of normalize it to get a normalized growth rate, so you would come out then at the low end we're accelerating again on revenue growth. Let's see. I think that's it. Any questions? Josh Lipton: Regarding the iPhone X, Tim, we know the delivery window got pushed out very quickly. Cook: Yeah. Lipton: Is demand for that phone above what you've seen in previous years? Because I know Apple said it was off the charts, which to me sounds like you're saying higher than ever. Is that the right way to think about it? Cook: There's nothing to compare it to is the real answer to that, because it has no predecessor product. It's not replacing something that existed, and so there's not a compare other than a compare to sort of our forecast internally, and so in some ways I'm not sure if any language I've put on it is terribly meaningful for you. What we can say, and you can see that from our quotes, is we were quickly backlogged, to say the least. Now, however, as I mentioned, the ramp is going better, and we're hoping to decrease those quotes in the next day or two -- some. Now, there will still be a wait, but we're working as hard as we can to get as many out there as soon as possible. We know that a lot of people want these in time for the holidays, and so you can bet that we're trying to do that. Lipton: To the ramp, Tim, as you mentioned, there were a lot of rumors of productions problems with the X given as you said all the new technology in this phone. Is that just for your noise, or were there any more production challenges that with previous models? Cook: We knew that this was going to be a challenging product. It's challenging because it's so advanced and because it sets the roadmap for the next decade, we knew it would be challenging. From my point of view -- I've been through lots of iPhones and lots of ramps as well -- the way I would really describe it is it's going well. And we're happy with where we are and what you want to see in a ramp is every week you're doing better, and that's what I see. And so a lot of the noise in the system sometimes cannot be accurate, as you probably know. Lipton: And do you expect the iPhone X to come into supply-demand bounds within roughly another quarter as other models have? Cook: I don't know is the answer to that. I don't know. And so we'll see. This one is harder to read. What I mean by that is we have three iPhones for the first time, we have a staggered launch for the first time. And so there's a number of things we've never experienced before. We put our best judgment in the guidance that we're going to provide in an hour or so -- the $84 to $87. And we'll see how we do. But we believe it's going to be our best quarter ever. Lipton: And how does the iPhone X demand in China look relative to previous models that were priced lower? Would you say demand for the iPhone X in China is off the charts too? Is that how you'd describe it? Cook: We haven't started selling in China yet. So we start in a few hours, I guess, so we'll start getting a read. China takes indications of interest. That's my word for it -- versus a hard pre-order. In general, the channels sell the vast majority of the units. And so the indications of interest are really good. Lipton: Two more questions, Tim. The fight with Qualcomm continues. We got news today, Qualcomm is suing Apple, alleging breach of contract, trying to help rival Intel. There are also these reports that Apple has now designed devices for 2018 that don't use Qualcomm components. Is that accurate, Tim? Cook: On the second one, I wouldn't comment on it because it's a new product thing and we just do not comment on new products, as you know. On sort of the lawsuit, the macro lawsuits, there's lawsuits going back and forth. If you back up and look at this, what is happening is that the KFTC has found Qualcomm guilty and fined them in the past few weeks. The Taiwan justice department has found Qualcomm guilty and fined them. The U.S. FTC sued them and has a suit going on. The EU is investigating them. And so I think it's pretty clear that there are problems there. What do you think? Lipton: We talk a lot about how much Qualcomm needs Apple. But doesn't Apple need Qualcomm if it wants to keep selling top-of-the-line devices in the future? Cook: No. No. Lipton: Fair enough. A final question. House Republicans unveiled their plan to overhaul the tax code today. It includes lowering the corporate tax rate to 20 percent. You suggested to Lester Holt that the tax reform could encourage Apple to hire more people. When you think about that, Tim, how many more people, and what kinds of jobs do you have in mind? Cook: Well, what I believe is that on a more macro basis, I think it's great for the U.S. economy to have tax reform. There are two things going on today. One is U.S. domicile companies pay a lot domestically. Secondly, if you are multinational and you have earnings, you make money offshore, which more and more people will over time. The only way to bring that back to the U.S. and invest in the U.S. is to pay 40 percent on it. And people aren't going to do that. And so I think that you wind up having a huge investment in the United States by passing tax reform. Will we do more in the U.S.? Yes, we've been doing more in the U.S., right? We're putting up a data center up in Iowa. We're out training people in community colleges to learn to code. We hired 10,000 people or so in the U.S. last year. We just put another huge store in Chicago and continuing to expand our footprint. Lipton: So what you're saying, Tim, is you don't know if you'll come into supply and demand balance with the X within roughly a quarter? Cook: I don't know. Lipton: There are some who say listen, if that delay is too long, then there's the risk of some consumers saying, You know what, I'm going to go with what I can get my hands on -- the 8, the 7, switch to a rival or just wait for the new phone to roll out? What's your answer to that? Cook: I want people to buy what they want. And so if they want to buy an 8 or an 8 Plus or a 7 or a 7 Plus, then I'm good with that. I want them to be an Apple customer. And we want to earn that, so we want to sell them what they want, and if they want an X, I can tell you we're working just as hard as we can to make as many as we can as fast as we can. It's just hard to say with certainty when supply hits demand. This is something, again -- we're in uncharted territory in terms of three phones, staggered launch -- and releasing it halfway through the quarter, basically. We're five weeks into a 13-week quarter already. However, look at the guidance. The guidance is unbelievably strong. We're talking about our best quarter ever. And we're talking about the low end of the guidance I think the growth rate is 7 percent, and that's 7 compared to 14 weeks, so it's really 15. And so that's pretty good. Jim Cramer: I just wanted to get some color on China because it's a very big deal to be able to say you're taking share. A year ago we were worried about China. It sounds like something's happened to make it so that China is terrific. I'd love to be able to tell that story. Cook: The real story that's happening there is that it's broad-based. That it's the iPad doing well -- that's China responding to our new lineup on iPad. The Mac is doing well -- that's China responding to our new Mac lineup. Services are really doing well. That's the ecosystem being stronger and stronger particularly on iOS. So that's iPad and iPhone. IPhone had a great quarter in China, the best for quite some time from a year on year point of view. Our initiative from a market point of view to focus on tier 2 cities is paying off. Before we were focused on major Tier 1 cities. We've put quite an effort in over time to focus more on Tier 2. And we saw really nice growth in Tier 2 cities last quarter. The other thing that's happened -- currency which happened to be a big drag in China, was only a 1 point drag last quarter, so some of that headwind has subsided. And then secondly, and this is also very important, is if you remember, I talked about Hong Kong until you were probably sick of hearing me talk about it. Hong Kong was still a headwind last quarter but much much, much less than it has been. And that's not necessarily because Hong Kong is doing a lot better, it's because we're comping now to a weaker Hong Kong number. And so you've got the Hong Kong improving on a relative basis, but more importantly, all of the products, which is our lifeline, are being received very well in China. We're thrilled on getting the iPhone X in there. Which is about to happen. Cramer: Some people are saying, Oh, wait, a second, the 8, X-- I'm really confused. How could Apple be doing well if they've got two out there. It sounds like from this number that it's a great strategy. I'm trying to figure out how you knew it'd be a great strategy, and why it's working. Cook: Well, if we could do anything we wanted to, we would have obviously shipped 8, 8 Plus and X on the same day. But we felt like the most important thing for us to do was to announce them on the same day so we wouldn't have customers buy an 8 and then we announce the X and ship it and they go, Oh, you hosed me, I would've bought a X. So we announced all of those. Obviously there are some people over time that delay to play with all three before they decide. A fair number have decided I want the X and they're waiting for the X. But that's the reason that we did the stagger. It wasn't a marketing thing. It was we weren't ready to ship -- we were still working on it. We accelerated the date at which we were initially planning to do iPhone X. And that's how we got here and we're going to learn a lot. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the plenary session at the G20 Summit on July 7, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. Trade tensions between the world's two largest economies are heating up ahead of President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, with the American leader calling the U.S. trade deficit with China "embarrassing" and "horrible" on Wednesday. The comments follow trade-related disputes in the last week, highlighting friction between the two economic giants as they prepare to go to the negotiating table. There's just one problem: North Korea. "The key priority for the U.S. is to maintain good economic relations with China since the U.S. wants to strengthen joint co-operation with China to tackle the key geopolitical threat from North Korea's aggressive development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program," Rajiv Biswas, chief economist for Asia Pacific at IHS Markit, told CNBC. That is why the U.S. has avoided taking "harsh trade measures" against China, he added. But there still have been some actions against Asia's largest economy. Last weekend, the Commerce Department acted on aluminum foil, on Chinese imports. Beijing responded swiftly and strongly, saying it was "strongly dissatisfied" with a U.S. decision that was based on a "serious distortion" of facts. Still, selective duties like that are not the same as "blunt bilateral trade measures that could endanger the overall bilateral geopolitical relationship with China," Biswas added. Activists have complained that multinational pesticide companies see India as a market to compensate their losses in Europe. By Kiran Tare: The Maharashtra government has sought a probe by the Central Investigation Agency (CBI) into the presence of banned herbicide tolerant gene in five varieties of BT Cotton seeds. The request comes almost a month after 48 farmers and labourers died because of poisonous pesticides in Vidarbha . "After the tragic incident of pesticide poisoning in Yavatmal district, a detailed study was done by Nagpur based Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR) and the report is submitted to the state government," stated a release issued by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' office. advertisement "As mentioned in this report, herbicide tolerant genes are found in the BT Cotton seeds of five branded companies and it is not permissible under the provisions of Environment Protection Act 1986." CICR's six teams comprising 24 scientists including the acting director of the institute VN Waghmare had visited most parts of Yavatmal district for the study. The report was submitted to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that is probing the farmers' deaths due to insecticide. "FIR has been registered against those five companies in Nagpur," the release stated. "It is also found that such types of seeds are being produced in many other states also. Hence, the government of Maharashtra has sent a request to Government of India for a detailed CBI inquiry into this." Anti-genetic engineering activist Vandana Shiva, upon visiting Yavatmal a few days ago, had blamed international seed maker companies for the pesticide deaths arguing that the market for the herbicide tolerant (HT) variety is shrinking in Brazil, US and Europe and India is being eyed as a market to compensate. She had also alleged that the HT cotton variety seen in the fields is being pushed into the market by these companies as it is in their interest that the seed spreads through illegal channels paving the way for them to eventually bring it legally into the Indian market. The 48 deaths were reported after spraying mixture of multiple pesticides to control pests on the Cotton crop. At least 800 farmers had to be hospitalised for various ailments including temporary loss of vision. The government has announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the families of the deceased. According to eminent farm activist from Vidarbha, Kishor Tiwari, 48 farmers lost their lives till now due to inhalation of toxic pesticides in various regions of the state. The deaths of farmers and farm labourers in the suicide prone belt of Yavatmal district had also prompted the opposition to flay the government over the incidents and demand compensation. advertisement ALSO WATCH: Maharashtra government to take money from banks for waiving off farmer loans --- ENDS --- If You Go Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote, an MU graduate and professor at the University of North Carolina, will give a lecture on how Kiowa artists' paintings and dance performances helped represent their identity within American culture. When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday Where: Tate Hall 22 on MU's campus The event is free and open to the public. Windows 10 breached the 70% share barrier last month when calculated as a portion of Windows-only desktops and laptops, putting the operating system on track to account for three out of every four Windows PCs by the end of January. According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10's share jumped by 2.8 percentage points, the most since January, and ended October on 64% of all systems. When figured as a fraction of Windows-only machines, Windows 10 accounted for 72.2%, a record for the five-year-old OS. This second number is the more important of the pair, as it provides the most accurate representation of Windows 10's position within the business universe, where runs-on-Microsoft remains central. (Windows 10's percentage of only Windows PCs was larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows did not power every system last month. In October, Windows was the OS on 88.8% of all PCs worldwide, up one-tenth of a percentage point from September. Of the remaining 11% and bits, all but a picayune 10th of a point ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS.) Windows 10 has been piling up the share this year, pandemic and business chaos be damned. Through the first 10 months of 2020, Windows 10 has added 10.7 percentage points of share, representing a 20% increase. Meanwhile, Windows 7 took a dive almost as steep as Windows 10's climb. Windows 7 lost 2.4 points of share, plummeting to 20.4% of all personal computers, representing 23% of Windows-only PCs. The downturn was the largest one-month decline since January 2020 and the final number was a record low for Windows 7 on its post-2015 swan song. So far this year, Windows 7 has shed 9.2 points of share, which represents a 31% decline in the operating system since January 1. Windows 10 shoots for 80% by mid-2021 The major changes to Windows' shares upended the forecasts Computerworld made as recently as a month ago. Windows 10's prognostication skewed upwards compared to the one issued at the beginning of October. By April, Windows 10 should account for more than 78% of all Windows, up two percentage points from the previous prediction. Come June 2021, Windows 10 should own 80% of all Windows editions, a point above the former forecast. On the other hand, Windows 7's decline-of-doom will continue. The now-retired OS will slip under the 20% mark (of all Windows) in February 2021, two months sooner than had been expected. And by August, the operating system should be below 15%, two points lower than the forecast of a month ago. (At the end of January 2021, near the one-year anniversary of its retirement, Windows 7 will account for about 20% of all Windows, a couple of points under October's estimate.) Elsewhere in Net Applications' numbers, Linux rebounded after two consecutive months of losses, adding seven-tenths of a percentage point and bringing its total share up to 2.2 points. While that was below its peak of 3.6 points in June and July 2020, it put paid to the Computerworld theory that the sudden growth of the OS (Net Applications tallies all distributions) was little more than the aftereffects of an open-source daydream. As Linux again jumped, macOS took a drubbing, losing 1.3 points a one-month record to end up licking its wounds at 8.4%, the lowest mark of the last three years. Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications' clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions of those browsers to measure global operating system activity. Or it used to. At the same time it published October's share numbers, Net Applications announced that it was pulling the plug on its OS metrics. "October 2020 is the last month of data," the company said. "Why? An upcoming change in browsers will break our device detection technology and will cause inaccuracies for a long period of time." The change Net Applications cited would remove much of the agent string information used not only to compile analytics such as operating system share, but also by advertisers and/or scammers to "fingerprint" individuals so that they can be more thoroughly tracked as they conduct their online lives. Computerworld has not yet decided whether to continue the "Windows by the numbers" series, and if so, which alternate data source might be used. Stay tuned. Im a firm believer that PowerShell knowledge is required if you work in Windows administration. Thats become especially true over the last three to four years as Microsoft has invested a good deal of time and energy into expanding the universe of things that PowerShell commands can accomplish. Ive been on the PowerShell train for years now so much so that I wrote a book to help beginners learn it. As PowerShells reach has expanded, Microsoft has allowed the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) and other graphical user interface (GUI) tools for managing Windows environments to grow somewhat long in the tooth. But PowerShell is not always the best tool for the job, and according to Microsoft, IT administrators have argued that GUI tools are still key for Windows administration. After all, if you want to use the command line, you can go with Linux. Windows was supposed to be point and click all along. To this group, Microsoft says: Fear not we now have something superior to the in-the-box GUI tools you know well. Enter the new web-based GUI tool for managing Microsoft Windows Server, codenamed Project Honolulu. Now in technical preview, it can manage Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 and future versions, all through a web browser. (Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome are currently supported.) It can even handle the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server, making this a no-brainer way to get a free hypervisor deployed in environments that dont need a full-fledged copy of Windows Server without trying to manage through Hyper-V Servers cryptic command-line interface. Lets take a look at how Honolulu works, how its built, what it can do, and perhaps most important, what is isnt. These days, Microsoft is supposedly all about services about getting you to use and subscribe to its software, regardless of what platform you prefer. That's why it's especially hard to understand the convoluted mess the company's creating with its Android Office apps and their wildly inconsistent support on Chromebooks. Let me back up for a minute: Last week, I published a guide to the essential Android apps for Chromebooks. Google officially took the beta label off its Play Store on Chrome OS effort with the launch of its Pixelbook this month a change visible not just on the Pixelbook but on any Chromebook with Play Store access and that seemed like a fine time to assess which Android apps actually enhance the Chrome OS experience in a meaningful way. Not surprisingly, several Microsoft titles made the list ranging from the core Android Office apps to Outlook and OneNote. I tested them all on both the Pixelbook and the Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA, and they installed without issue and ran like a charm. Then, after the story went live, weird things started happening. [UPDATE: See the bottom of the page for the latest twist in this ongoing saga.] First, numerous readers reached out to tell me they were unable to install some or all of the Microsoft Android apps on their own Chromebook devices fully Play-Store-supported systems like Samsung's Chromebook Pro and Plus, Google's second-gen Chromebook Pixel, and Acer's Chromebook 14 for Work. Some folks couldn't install any of the Microsoft apps, while others could install some of the titles but not others (with baffling combinations, too, like on the aforementioned Acer system which apparently allows users to install Word, Excel, and Outlook but not PowerPoint or OneNote). Then something even stranger happened: Someone told me they'd had the core Office apps installed and running on the Chromebook Flip C302CA, just as I did but when they uninstalled one of the apps by mistake, they realized they couldn't reinstall it. The app was now flagged as being "incompatible" with their laptop. I tested this on my own Flip unit, and sure enough, something changed very recently: Despite the device having been on Microsoft's whitelist for Office app support since its launch this summer, the Chromebook Flip C302CA is suddenly and inexplicably now "incompatible" with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Play Store won't even show them if you search from the device itself and won't let you install them if you try pulling them up from an external browser window. JR What in the world is going on here?! [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] Digging deeper into Microsoft's Chromebook chaos If all of this sounds oddly familiar, it should. As it turns out, similarly strange things started happening with Microsoft's Android Office apps and Chromebooks last November. Back then, a Microsoft spokesperson explained it thusly: Our strategy has not changed. Office for Android is supported on Chrome OS devices via the Google Play Store. While Google Play on Chrome OS is in beta, we are partnering with Google to deliver the best experience for Chromebook users and plan to make the apps available on all compatible devices by general availability. Well, guess what? It's been a year. Google Play on Chrome OS is now out of beta. Yet the shenanigans continue. Here's the most bewildering part of all: Having its Android Office apps broadly available across Chrome OS would ostensibly be a positive thing for Microsoft something that'd fit perfectly into its current plan of pursuing service-oriented users across all platforms. The company has even configured its apps to be fully functional only for users with active Office 365 subscriptions on devices with 10.1-in. screens or bigger, which includes almost all Chromebooks. So in other words, no one's getting any freebies. If anything, the apps' availability on Chrome OS would only serve as an extra incentive for people to subscribe because such a subscription would bring the full native Office experience to a Chromebook device. And lest you think this whole scenario is in any way normal, I've yet to encounter a single other Android app that has device-specific restrictions for Chromebook compatibility. In my experience, if an app works with Chrome OS which most do, aside from titles that inherently require phone-specific hardware or environments to operate then it works with any Play-Store-supporting Chromebook. This arbitrarily evolving mixed-bag approach is both unusual and illogical. It creates a poor and confusing experience for users and makes Microsoft look well, I'll let you fill in that blank. [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] I asked Google if it had any insight into what was going on with this situation, since it was supposedly "partnering" with Microsoft to work on these apps during the Play Store beta period last year. A spokesperson sent me the following statement: We want to ensure that customers have access to their favorite apps and games on all Chromebooks, through Google Play. We hope to continue to work with Microsoft to make Office available on all other Chromebooks soon. "We hope." Hmm. I've contacted Microsoft and followed up multiple times throughout the week to try to get an explanation. If/when I receive any further info about what's happening or when it might be resolved, I'll update this page with details. In the meantime, if you're looking for a desktop-caliber and Office-compatible editing suite for your Chromebook beyond what's available in a web-based program like Google Docs or Microsoft's own limited Office Online offering your best bet is to go with a third-party Android Office alternative like OfficeSuite Pro. And if you are able to install Microsoft's Android Office apps on your Chromebook now, for the love of Goog, hang onto 'em. Avoid uninstalling the programs or resetting your device at all costs because as Microsoft continues to remind us, it can't currently be counted on for consistency. But hey, some progress is better than no progress, right?! Microsofts ongoing record of shoddy response to Surface Pro problems continues unabated. This time, the Surface Pro 4 (born October 2015, superseded June 2017) takes the limelight: Complaints about shaky screens and dead Type Covers abound. Were seeing a repeat of the all-too-familiar pattern of Surface denial, aided and abetted by clueless, paid, outsourced support personnel on the Microsoft Answers forum. Surface Pro 4 shaky screen If you havent yet seen the shaky screen problem, look at this YouTube video submitted by DimkaSuperStaR 18 months ago. The Microsoft Answers forum has been flooded with complaints about the problem. I wrote about it six months ago and again three months ago. When a new post appeared on the subject just last week, what was Microsofts response? The screen issue that you are experiencing might be software-related, and could be addressed by installing all the latest Firmware and drivers on your device. and Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Our Engineers are looking into this and working hard to get this resolved as soon as possible. Please keep checking Windows Update often for the fix. The exasperated original poster ended with this conclusion: There is no fix for this. Please accept your responsibilities. I am being asked for 400 for a replacement after only 18 months of use from this item. Clearly it is not "fit for purpose" under UK / EU law. I would like a replacement laptop please and not be charged for your mistakes. Thank you... Now I am not only being asked to pay 400 for a replacement but someone else rang to tell me to "reimage" my device for which I now have to go and buy an 8GB USB stick and follow instructions in an email which will no doubt take hours. As I am not a computer expert this is appalling advice from Microsoft and no doubt I will be forced to take the laptop to a repair shop at even more expense. Why would @microsoft ask customers to perform reimaging to clear a hardware issue? @microsoft are not taking responsibility because they care about money more than people (of course). I will take them to court over this because unethical behaviour must be publicized and will help to encourage them to change their actions. Customers must vote with their feet and switch to other providers. @microsoft when will you learn to be brave and to be honest with your customers to preserve their loyalty and your profits? The problem is so clearcut and pervasive that an enterprising Surface Pro 4 owner posted a form (on Google Docs, of course) asking for input about the shaky screen problem from individual SP4 owners. The response 179 responders, at this writing is telling. Half (50.4 percent) say they didnt contact Microsoft support they just put up with it. Nearly all (93.9 percent) report that the issue hasnt been resolved. [ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] Theres a highly uncomplimentary (and decidedly NSFW) thread on the topic on Reddit. Is there a solution to the shaky screen problem? I dont know, and it looks like Microsoft doesnt know, either. There are reports that it goes away, sometimes, randomly, only to reappear all too frequently. This much I know for sure: Firmware, drivers and a system refresh dont fix the problem. Anyone who tells you that they work clearly doesnt know what theyre talking about. Dyspeptic Type Covers I wrote about this problem in August and it seems to be a common problem with both the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4. Poster S2tink on AskWoody echoes a common complaint: I am having the same issue with my surface pro 3 type cover. One day it worked perfectly (about a week and a half ago, now). I went through all of the suggested trouble shooting suggestions. I finally called Microsoft a week ago for [support]. I have completely wiped my surface, done a hard reset, done a recovery from usb drive, updated AGAIN to 1703 et al, and the type cover STILL isnt being recognized, and no filter showing up in device manager. My husband has a surface as well, with an identical type cover. I attached mine to his surface, and it works perfectly. An anonymous poster points to this analysis from Jonny Lin at Driver Easy, saying the second (of four) fixes mentioned there worked for her. The official Microsoft Answers forum, once again, overflows with complaints. CDLeePatrick posted a tale of woe on July 22 and the complaint line is now 24 pages long. MVP Barb Bowman puts it this way: I'm a MVP/Community Moderator and do NOT work for Microsoft. If I had the power to do so, I'd replace tablets for everyone with a SP3 that has a non working battery (myself included) and every SP4 with a dead keyboard and/or shaking screen syndrome. I email a contact at Microsoft EVERY.SINGLE.DAY about these type cover issues on SP4 (and a few on SP3). All I ever got back was the work around I posted which was supposed to be specific to non US typecovers. If I had a magic wand, I'd use it for sure. But I don't. (And Microsoft wonders what caused people to give bad ratings to Consumer Reports.) I, too, have a Surface Pro 3 with a completely dead battery. It lasted three years. Bowman offers two different workarounds in that Answers thread. The first is to disable the Type Cover port in the UEFI BIOS. The second is an eight-step process that involves removing drivers, running a clean reboot, then re-installing the drivers. Neither approach works in all cases. Will Microsoft fix the problems? Heaven knows. But you can save yourself a lot of headache by ignoring the bad advice. And if youre thinking about shelling out 400 for a replacement, consider Microsofts track record. Join me in shaking an angry fist at the clouds on the AskWoody Lounge. The Shiv Sena has not been on good terms with the BJP lately, and is believed to be eyeing political alliances outside the saffron party. By India Today Web Desk: To paraphrase an old adage, there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, only permanent interests. That was perhaps the underlying message that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought to send across as she met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aditya in Mumbai today. The Thackerays are the old-time allies of the BJP, and currently rule over Maharashtra, where their Shiv Sena has been reduced to a junior partner. Recently, the Sena has not been on good terms with the BJP, and is believed to be eyeing political alliances outside the saffron party. advertisement Mamata, who is in Mumbai since Tuesday, met the Thackerays at a hotel in south Mumbai. No statement from their parties on what transpired in the meeting has come out. --- ENDS --- Ben Roback is a Senior Account Executive at Cicero Group and a member of the US Embassys Young Leaders UK programme. Donald Trump travels to Asia later this week, in what is shaping up to be a critical visit in his presidency. Having been willing to offer rhetoric around the America First principle, the President has been less forthcoming in enacting his foreign policy vision. At home, his policy approach has been acutely described by Richard Hass, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, as the Withdrawal Doctrine, having chiseled chunks out of President Obamas legacy. But on the world stage, Trumpism has so far been less easy to pin down. With North Korea posing an ongoing existential threat and the future of the Iran deal in the balance, world leaders will hope to learn much more from this trip abroad. His twelve-day visit his longest yet includes Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and of course China, whose leader the President was recently quick to praise following his extraordinary elevation. Trump has already billed the visit as a potentially historic trip amidst rising tensions with North Korea, the stakes could not be higher in the most geopolitically tense hotspot in the world. The itinerary contains a standout omission, as the White House revealed that Trump would not visit the DMZ, the infamously guarded buffer zone that dissects North and South Korea. With the exception of George HW Bush, every American president since Ronald Reagan has visited the DMZ, leading to assumption that Trump would follow suit. But owing to what the White House described as insufficient time on the schedule and a desire to focus messaging on the relationship with South Korea, the DMZ will be avoided. Despite that, North Korea will loom large over conversations in Seoul and Beijing, though many live in fear about response what the next little rocket man tweet could prompt. Having leant on China to limit its trade with Pyongyang, bilateral talks with the Chinese could quickly shift to the ongoing possibility of a major trade war between the two nations. In Manila, Trump will have his first in-person meeting with President Rodrigo Duerte, the firebrand leader whose own disregard for convention makes Trump look positively cordial. The White House framed the trip by describing a warm rapport between the two. Fighting his own domestic opioid crisis at home, the president could lavish further praise on Duertes anti-drug campaign, having said on a call in May that he was doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem. The meeting between two of the worlds most frank and candid leaders could prove to be another thriller in Manila. The meetings will give us a better idea of whose ideology is winning the fight to shape the White Houses view of its global responsibilities. China hawks with the ear of the President, like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, have been fighting moderate aides who warn against a US-China trade war. Navarro will not attend the trip, prompting the assumption that the talks could be more conciliatory and cooperative in tone. If youre not first, youre last? The gut feeling behind America First that globalisation and global American leadership has left too many Americans behind as an afterthought is clear and evident, but its practical implication remains something of an unknown. We might assume that whilst the policy means American interests are always put first, some foreign allies are still more strategically important than others. The Asia pacific region remains a clear foreign policy priority. The very sight of Air Force One touching down will reassure regional leaders with the exception of Beijing, whose aspiration for regional expansion is threatened by ongoing American leadership in the region. Leaders in Asia will be relieved that Trump has not followed through on some of his more extreme election campaign promises to abandon allies who did not pay their way in terms of defence spending. The very presence of an American president is at least a reassuring start for those who consider China to be at the forefront of an emerging new world order. In a briefing call with reporters, a senior White House administration official stressed that the trip underscores a commitment to the US alliance abroad, whilst promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific region. Without the daily influence of Fox & Friends, the President showed more message discipline on his first foreign visit. White House aides concerned by the distraction of Twitter outbursts will hope for the same this time around. Domestic politics in Washington has barely had a chance to pause for breath in recent weeks and months, and the Asia visit comes within the context of three major ongoing political developments: First, the legislative agenda has now been dedicated to delivering tax reform, which will require near unanimous Republican discipline and support from Capitol Hill through to the White House. Second, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has sent out a major signal that his investigation means business, with charges brought against three members of the Trump campaign team in the investigation into possible Russian collusion. Third, a devastating terrorist attack in New York, the callous nature of which will be all too familiar to readers in London after the attack on Westminster Bridge, presents a new challenge to an administration that was reluctant to look for legislative solutions to the terror attack in Las Vegas. All of this provides a complex backdrop to the presidents trip to Asia. The stakes could hardly be higher the world is watching. Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Policy Adviser to the Conservative Party. He runs Brexit Analytics Today is the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain promised to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, territory it had taken over from the declining Ottoman empire and where, since the end of the previous century, the Zionist movement had begun to organise a community of Jewish immigrants as part of its plan to create a nation state for the Jewish people. Also today, Carles Puigdemont, Catalonias answer to David Ben Gurion (Anna Gabriel is most clearly the homologue of Zeev Zhabotinsky) finds himself in Brussels, a fugitive from Spanish justice under a charge of Rebellion having arranged for the Catalan parliament to declare unilateral independence. Both movements appeal to the principle of the self-determination of peoples: the idea that a people should govern itself, and not be under the control of an entity it considers foreign. On its face it sounds eminently reasonable, but immediately raises just the thorny political questions it is supposed to solve. The most obvious is what is to count as a people? Trying to define a nation is a fools errand (Golda Meirs rhetorical Who are the Palestinians? I am a Palestinian! didnt age well). Language isnt the help it appears to be. The Irish speak English. Many Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian. It doesnt mean they want to be ruled from Moscow. A very large proportion of Catalans dont, in fact, use Catalan on a daily basis, and the major Spanish language publishers are, it turns out based in Barcelona, not Madrid. Then theres the apparently small matter of where the state should be located. Only the Zionist movement faced this choice directly. The Third Zionist Congress debated establishing the Jewish state in Africa instead of the Middle East. Palestinians, trying to be clever, sometimes propose it. But we can be sure that Tanzanians and Ugandans would have been every bit as opposed to Zionist pioneers moving into their territory. It would not have served the Jews well to have fled the Tsar and Hitler to end up at the mercy of Idi Amin. But Catalans face this question indirectly. Barcelona is strongly against independence. Yet a Catalonia independent against the wishes of its historic capital would breed endless tension, while one that excluded it would be absurd (and prone to irredentist attempts to recover the city). Peoples, unfortunately, are not neatly organised around the territories their national movements want to claim. Others the Spanish, the Palestinians have equal and opposite rights to self-determination, recreating the problems in mirror image. Sometimes compromise is possible autonomy, partition, or even power sharing but not always. It is hardly unknown for reasonable compromises to be rejected for political reasons. Worse, one sides victory, with mathematical inevitability, generates a defeat on the other side to be avenged. Far from resolving a conflict over territory, a claim to self-determination is much more likely to start one. But and it is an important but this doesnt make self-determination wrong. It isnt always right or reasonable to avoid a conflict: the Jews, in particular had to fight for statehood against enemies determined to finish the job the Nazis started. The Arabs of the Palestine of the British Mandate (it would be the Zionists efforts to create the State of Israel that would forge their identity as specifically Palestinians) resented the immigration of Jews who wanted radically to change the character of where they lived and resisted it violently. The Catalan movement is far less bloody. But its more extreme elements oppose the migration of foreign Spaniards, who dont want independence. If the fate of territory depends on the composition of its population, it assumes the highest political importance. The tragedy of self-determination is not that it is too hard to achieve but that its too easy to assert. A group that claims it doesnt end a conflict. It begins one. The relevant question is whether that conflict is justified. Hearing of the ceremonial defrocking of Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish soldier framed as an Austrian spy, Theodor Herzl concluded that Jews couldnt trust their protection to assimilating within European society. The decades that followed proved his fears right. As Hannah Arendt wrote in her account of Eichmanns trial, when they want to persecute you, they first make you stateless. But Catalans dont face persecution (let alone the Holocaust). Their language is taught in schools. Their version of history lavishly subsidised by the regional government. Their argument with Madrid is over the amount of autonomy and public spending, and the number of red and yellow stripes on the flag. The Balfour Declaration was one of the kinder acts of British imperialism. Without it there would have been no Israel and nowhere for the survivors of the Holocaust, or the Jews of North Africa and Iraq, Iran and Yemen, to escape to. Zionism is self-determination of necessity. The conflict of which the Balfour Declaration was a part could not be avoided. But the Catalan nationalist effort is self-determination of choice, creating new wounds without reason. If a Minister is guilty of bullying, harrassment or abuse, he should resign or be fired by the Prime Minister if he or she is unwilling to go. Did Michael Fallons conduct fall into any of those categories? We dont know. The interview that has accompanied his resignation suggests that he may have treated other women in the way that he treated Julia Hartley-Brewer. The facts of that matter are that he put his hand on her knee. The incident took place 15 years ago. He has since apologised. And in Hartley-Brewers own words, no-one was remotely upset or distressed. Furthermore, not a single person has publicly come forward to date to complain about the fomer Defence Secretarys conduct. On the evidence available, he wasnt Sir Harvey Fallon or Sir Michael Weinstein. The allegations convulsing Westminster in the wake of the Hollywood producers behaviour that, remember, is why they have burst into riotous life are an surreal jumble of The criminal (they include at least one rape claim). The serious (because bullying, harrassment and abuse are so whether sexual in nature or not). The trivial if distasteful (such as making a pass which shouldnt have been made) And the completely untrue (such as the false claims about Rory Stewart). Now it may be that Fallons conduct, at some point in the past, fell into one of the first two categories and that he either volunteered to quit or was instructed to do so. It may also be that more facts will emerge. But I put to you, ladies and gentlemen of the ConservativeHome jury, that it is at least possible that Downing Street has got itself into a right old panic, and concluded that something must be done. If so, Theresa May has set a precedent that she may come to regret. Admittedly, one should have some sympathy with Number Ten. It is trying to negotiate codes of behaviour that are contested in ways that they werent even ten years ago with mind-bending and pocket-stretching consequences for employers, and others in positions of responsibility. On balance, the change is for the better. For example, women should not have to put up with the kind of office banter that is mercifully less common now than it was fairly recently. But our public culture should surely also be able to find that essential for life, let alone sanity a sense of proportion. The world must be peopled! cries Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing. Quite so. The business of relations between the genders or within them, come to think of it must carry on, with all its joys, pain, blunders, hesitations and regrets. The Prime Minister is not responsible for policing all these, for which relief she will be duly grateful. But what will she now do if some other woman comes forward to say that some other Minister made an uninvited advance the best part of 20 years ago? Or, for that matter, if a man does so? The Port of Santos is hoping to bounce back as the main homeport in Brazil. It posted 471,702 cruise passengers last season, far from a peak of 1,220,830 guests in the 2010-2011 cruise season. Traffic for 2016-2017 was also off 36 percent year-over-year following a decline in the South American cruise market. Port officials expect a possible further reduction this season. We know that less ships are coming, but we are working on planning the next season as best as we can," said Clevelend Lofrano, director of market relations at the CompanhiaDocas do Estado de Sao Paulo (CODESP), the authority that manages the port. We are meeting with Concais (the cruise terminal administrator), the Navy (whose cay is also used by cruise ships) and all other involved parties. We want to improve our services even further. And we believe that well be able to meet all the demand for the next season," he added. The 2017-2018 season is expecting to come in at 87 calls, with 11 ships in the region, and one two-call day expected. By comparison, the port had nine cruise ships in a single day in 2008. Local regulations now call for a maximum limit of six ships at once, which also helps keep cargo operations flowing smoothly and ensuring an optimal experience for cruise passengers. We are making efforts to make sure that the port of Santos is able to attend well all the areas it serves, including the cruise business," Lofrano added. One of the most popular segments in my keynotes and workshops is The 5 Rings. This is a set of tactics I originally developed to help martial artists access the underlying power of any effective technique or style. These tactics work just as effectivelymaybe even more so, in leadership. The most difficult tactic to master is borrowing. Understandably, the concept of borrowing is very popular when I present to CU groups! However, in this case were not taking about how to increase lendingits about how to maximize the productive output of everyone in your organization. Heres an example from self-defense: Instead of blocking, (opposition), you step inside the arc of a punch, intercepting the strike without diminishing or even deflecting its power. Then, with expert timing and position, you turn your hips adding your power to energy you borrow from your attacker. You blend your power with his and wham! Hes flat on his back. This type of technique requires expert balance, focus and timing. Youve got to master control of combined forcesboth yours and your attackers. Borrowing is the art of recognizing and exploiting opportunities to combine the energies of those around you, plus your own, to create an exponentially more powerful outcome. That is obviously a powerful and attractive concept to a leader! In our self-defense example, you borrow the physical energy of an attacker. Leaders can borrow energy from an adversary toobut borrowing can also be an effective tactic when youre dealing with entrenched opposition from allies, such as fear of change or resistance to innovation. You can borrow from the people who are with you as well as those who might be against you. Its similar to leverage in that youre multiplying force by utilizing material and human resources to the best advantage, but borrowing involves a higher level of understanding, tactical expertise, and timing. With leverage, you can literally jam a bar under a rock and pry it out. With borrowing, youve got to position yourself in exactly the right place at exactly the right timeand move in precise harmony with the forces around you. You could employ other tactics to manage change or deal with threats or challenges: Opposition: This is the top down approachcommand and attempt to control. Issue the orders and just make sure people carry them out. If they dont like the changes, they can leave. How do people generally react under those conditions? What damage does this do to the culture and credibility of the organization? Deflection: Youve all done a great job and we appreciate your efforts and suggestions, but the company must move in a different direction. Really? Does anyone truly believe that kind of statement, even if its true? Leverage: A simple application of leverage would be to call in key players of your management team and representatives from the front lines and solicit their input. Now youre starting to leverage the expertise and perspectives of the people on your team to help ease the transition. Borrowing gives you the best ROI. That is, the most output power for every ounce of input energy invested. If I want to borrow the power of my attackers punch, Ill try to draw him into telegraphing the punch. I want him to throw a big punchone that will give me more power to use against him! In leadershipinstead of waiting to respond to inevitable opposition, you proactively solicit maximum input from those who may fear or resist the change. And make it personal! Ask these questions: How will this change impact you? How will it affect your performance? How can you help us implement this change most effectively with the least amount of pain? Create allies early in the process who will give honest feedback and support key decisions along the way, unless they see a better course of action, in which case you will welcome their suggestions and sincerely consider their opinions. As I said, this borrowing requires expert balance, focus and timing. Balanceyou have to be well grounded and know as much about what youre proposing and the possible outcomes before you embark on any significant change. Focuspay attention to all the possible implications and impacts and concentrate your efforts where they will produce the most positive results. Timingengage stakeholders early in the process and adjust to any shifts, reactions or changing conditions and circumstances in real time, as they happen, throughout the entire process. Borrowing is about getting all energies working in the same direction. In an organizational setting, this guiding force is usually the vision. At first this may come from the founder. Later the organization vision can evolve to include input from many parties at every level. The organizations vision should be a living thingevolving and adapting to keep the organization relevant, responsive to changing conditions, new challenges and opportunities. It is the vision that keeps the organization, its processes and most important, its people all moving in the same direction. When you employ borrowing, talents, skills, intentions and creativity are all moving toward the same objective. Each individual contributes and those contributions multiply. The resulting output power is exponential. Could the banking industry revisit the financial crisis of 2008? According to a 52-page analysis from McKinsey entitled, The Phoenix Rises: Remaking the Bank for an Ecosystem World, that is what banks and credit unions must be prepared for if there isnt an increased focus on digitalization and a new perspective on what constitutes the banking ecosystem. Bottom line, the threat from digital technology players like Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba and Google is accelerating, and banks could be relegated to commodity providers in less than a decade if the industry doesnt rethink how it delivers financial services. McKinsey estimates that fully digitizing, along with significantly improving skills in digital marketing and analytics, could add $350 billion to the banking industrys bottom line over the next three to five years. In addition, if the banking industry could find ways to compete effectively with big tech companies like Amazon, Alibaba and Tencent, an ROE between 9% and 14% is possible by 2025. Alternatively, if the financial services industry does not rethink distribution, and if retail and corporate customers switch their banking to digital companies at the same rate that people have adopted new technologies in the past, the industrys ROE, absent any mitigating actions, could fall by roughly 4 points, to 5.2 percent by 2025. This is close to the levels experienced in 2008, during the worst of the 2008 financial crisis. A few years ago, in the audience at a local tech conference in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia (the home of Thomas Jeffersons University of Virginia), I was joined by co-workers from the small app-development group where I was a partner and the only woman employee. The panel discussion was about how to attract tech talent to smaller communities, and was comprised of about five leaders from area tech companies. Not surprisingly, all men. During the Q&A, a woman sitting behind me asked what specifically their companies were doing to attract female tech talent. The silence was awkward, and their attempted answers were not great. I tweeted my chagrin. Immediately someone tweeted back to invite me to a women in technology happy hour that same evening. Turns out, it was the woman behind me whod ask the great question, Kim Wilkens. She was starting Charlottesvilles Women in Tech (CWIT) group. I was all in. Trump announces his 2024 presidential run as GOP debates future Donald Trump announced he will run for the White House, even as weak midterm showings prompt debate about whether the GOP should move past him. Sayfullo Saipov mowed down pedestrians with a pickup truck in Manhattan on Tuesday. Charges of terrorism have been brought against the 29-year-old attacker who was inspired by ISIS propaganda. By India Today Web Desk: The attack in Manhattan on Tuesday, a few hours before the annual Halloween parade, led to 8 deaths and 11 people being injured. The New York Police called the attack as one of the deadliest since the September 11 attacks on Twin towers. Latest reports said that US federal authorities have brought in terrorism charges against the 29-year-old attacker. advertisement New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio termed the attack as a "terrorist attack". In a press conference, Blasio said, "based on information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians." The suspect was driving a pick up truck and mowed down several pedestrians in a bicycle track in Manhattan. He then rammed the truck into a school bus and started running up and down the highway shouting "Allahu Akbar" with a pellet gun and a paintball gun in his hands. Here's what we know about the attacker of the Manhattan attack: The attacker has been identified as a 29-year-old Uzbek citizen Sayfullo Saipov. Saipov is a legal resident of the United States and came to US in 2010 from Uzbekistan. Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, in the truck that included Islamic religious references and said, "Islamic Supplication. It will endure", FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. "It will endure" commonly refers to ISIS, Tyree said. Though no direct link to ISIS was found, materials in Saipov's truck pointed towards an ISIS connection. Investigators later found out that Saipov was inspired by ISIS videos. "In particular, Saipov was motivated to commit the attack after viewing a video in which [ISIL leader] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi...questioned what Muslims in the United States and elsewhere were doing to respond to the killing of Muslims in Iraq," the AlJazeera reported. Saipov rented the pick-up truck from New Jersey. He rented the truck around 9 days before the attack to practice the route from New Jersey over the George Washington bridge and on to West side of Manhattan, a police report claimed. According to federal investigators, Saipov started planning the attack about a year ago and wanted to inflict maximum damage and chose Halloween as their will be more people out on the streets. According to New York Times, the investigators found videos of ISIS fighters killing prisoners and also videos of how to make explosives. They also found photographs of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Saipov was shot after he stepped out of the truck after attacking pedestrians. He was taken to the hospital and said to be critical. Later, Saipov was produced in court where he arrived in a wheelchair. One of the reports also claim that Saipov requested the ISIS flag be hanged in his hospital room. Saipov had apparently started driving an Uber around six-months ago, the CNN reported. Uber said that no discrepancies were found in Saipov's background check, but they are cooperating with the investigators. --- ENDS --- We use a range of cookies to give you the best possible browsing experience. By continuing to use this website, you agree to our use of cookies. You can learn more about our cookie policy here, or by following the link at the bottom of any page on our site. See our updated Privacy Policy here. Two recent opinion polls on the Gujarat election gave the BJP, on average, around 120 seats in the 182-seat Assembly. Thats five more than the party won in the 2012 Assembly election. The Congress was projected to win around 55 seats, six fewer than in 2012. A closer look reveals interesting nuggets. One of the opinion polls concluded that if Patidar leader Hardik Patel enters into a seat arrangement with the Congress, the BJP would lose up to seven seats, bringing its tally down to around the level of the last Assembly election. But with the fiery Patidar leader threatening to cut into Congress votes if it does not extend reservations to all OBCs and not just EBCs (as the Congress has declared), the BJP could gain from vote cannibalisation. Chances The Congress knows it is unlikely to win Gujarat in 2017 but seeks to chip away at the BJPs majority. With opinion polls showing a BJP sweep in Himachal Pradesh, the Congress is girding itself for bad news on December 18 when counting takes place. Keeping the BJP to below 110 seats in Gujarat would be a balm. It will also be a good omen for Rahul Gandhis incipient elevation as president of the party. What are the Congress chances of restricting the BJP to below 110 seats? Slim. The Congress lays great store by its rainbow coalition of Dalits, Patidars, OBCs and Muslims (DPOM). Together these groups comprise over 60 per cent of the Gujarat electorate. But there are already fissures among the Patidars. Several mid-level Patel leaders have joined the BJP. Aplesh Thakors OBCs (who make up 40 per cent of Gujarats population) could pose a bigger problem for the BJP though Prime Minister Narendra Modis own OBC status will be deployed during the campaigning to stem the flow of OBC votes to the Congress. Dalits, while only 7 per cent of Gujarats electorate, could also cause problems for the BJP. There have been frequent atrocities against Dalits in the state in recent months. Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani may turn of to be a wild card in the elections. The BJP has to deal with yet another factor: rising anger among the trading community over GST. Traders are the BJPs bread-and-butter voters and the Congress hopes to wean enough of them away over the flawed implementation of GST. The sops offered by the BJP including the self-serving decision to reduce tax on khakra, a Gujarati snack staple will not assuage the anger. As one Gujarati computer peripherals trader told me: We hate GST, especially the cumbersome online filing and complicated tax slabs on different components in a single product like a computer printer. So will he vote for the Congress in December? A look of resignation crosses his face. No, despite all this I will still vote for Narendra bhai. Setback That encapsulates the mood of voters across Gujarat. They dislike GST, were hit by demonetisation and suffered during the floods. Farmers are in distress, Dalits angry and Patidars resentful. But when it comes to the crunch, they will vote for Gujarati pride which means Modi. On a visit to Surat and Vadodara, this sentiment was starkly evident: Its the first Assembly election since Narendra bhai became prime minister and we will stand by him, was the common refrain. Warning bells though are sounding across the state. Farmer distress is real; so is Dalit alienation. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP rode a Modi wave and swept all 26 parliamentary seats in the state with 59.10 per cent vote share. That was a sharp rise over the 47.90 per cent vote share it received in the 2012 Assembly poll. The Congress won 38.90 per cent vote share. It has been unable to reduce the 8-10 per cent vote share gap that the BJP has enjoyed since 1995. It is unlikely to do so in 2017, though the BJP is taking no chances. Modi will campaign extensively across the state. So will party leader Amit Shah and for the first time a phalanx of senior non-Gujarati ministers like Sushma Swaraj. Mistakes Rahul Gandhis aggressive swing through the state has rattled the BJP enough to target him continuously. That could be a tactical mistake. The more the BJP targets Rahul individually, the more he gains in stature. With a sassy new IT and social media head, Rahuls Gabbar Singh Tax (GST) barb and other bon mots are gaining traction. Alas for the Congress, the average Gujarati remains unmoved by social media one-liners. Gujaratis are a pragmatic people. They want development. The shower of new projects, including the Narmada dams raised height, power plants and the ferry service linking Saurashtra to South Gujarat are what matter to them. Women are the other invisible ace up the BJPs sleeve. When he was CM, Modi assiduously wooed women voters with a slew of women-oriented schemes. One of the most popular is the law that exempts women from property registration charges if the property is in their name. Other schemes for girl students have over the years built up a formidable womens constituency for the BJP, a factor largely overlooked by most observers of state politics. This December, while the Congress focuses on disenchanted Dalits, Patidars, OBCs and Muslims, the women of Gujarat could be the Y factor that tips the election decisively in the BJPs favour. ServiceNow, Inc. provides enterprise cloud computing solutions that defines, structures, consolidates, manages, and automates services for enterprises worldwide. It operates the Now platform for workflow automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation, performance analytics, electronic service catalogs and portals, configuration management systems, data benchmarking, encryption, and collaboration and development tools. The company also provides information technology (IT) service management applications; IT service management product suite for enterprise's employees, customers, and partners; IT business management product suite; IT operations management product that connects a customer's physical and cloud-based IT infrastructure; IT Asset Management to automate IT asset lifecycles; and security operations that connects with internal and third party. In addition, it offers governance, risk, and compliance product to manage risk and resilience; human resources, legal, and workplace service delivery products; safe workplace applications; customer service management product; and field service management applications. Further, it provides App Engine product; IntegrationHub enables application to extend workflows; and professional, industry solutions, and customer support services. It serves government, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, IT services, technology, oil and gas, education, and consumer products through direct sales team and resale partners. It has a strategic partnership with Celonis to help customers identify and prioritize processes that are suitable for automation. The company was formerly known as Service-now.com and changed its name to ServiceNow, Inc. in May 2012. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Cenovus Energy Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas in Canada, the United States, and the Asia Pacific region. The company operates through Oil Sands, Conventional, Offshore, Canadian Manufacturing, U.S. Manufacturing, and Retail segments. The Oil Sands segment develops and produces bitumen and heavy oil in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. This segments Foster Creek, Christina Lake, Sunrise, and Tucker oil sands projects, as well as Lloydminster thermal and conventional heavy oil assets The Conventional segment holds assets primarily located in Elmworth-Wapiti, Kaybob-Edson, Clearwater, and Rainbow Lake operating in Alberta and British Columbia, as well as interests in various natural gas processing facilities. The offshore segment engages in the exploration and development activities. The Canadian Manufacturing segment includes the owned and operated Lloydminster upgrading and asphalt refining complex, which upgrades heavy oil and bitumen into synthetic crude oil, diesel fuel, asphalt, and other ancillary products, as well as owns and operates the Bruderheim crude-by-rail terminal and two ethanol plants. The U.S. Manufacturing segment comprises the refining of crude oil to produce diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, asphalt, and other products. The Retail segment consists of marketing of its own and third-party refined petroleum products through retail, commercial, and bulk petroleum outlets, as well as wholesale channels. Cenovus Energy Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. China has reiterated its opposition to sanctioning Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar, with Beijing later today set to block an application to list the JeM chief at the UNSC sanctions committee. By Ananth Krishnan: China on Thursday reiterated its opposition to sanctioning Pakistani terrorist Masood Azhar, with Beijing later today set to block an application to list the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief at the United Nations Security Council sanctions committee. Beijing had on Monday indicated it would block the pending application with a "technical hold" it placed that is set to expire on November 2, saying that there was "no consensus" and there were "disagreements" on the matter. advertisement India, however, has said that China is the only one among 15 members of the committee that has opposed the listing. China reiterated that stand when asked on Thursday whether it would block the application. "We raised a technical hold to allow for more time for the UNSC committee and all members to deliberate on this matter, but there is still an absence of consensus", said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying. "The committee has its rules of procedure and it is yet to reach a consensus. There are still disagreements. China's actions are meant to ensure that we safeguard the authority and effectiveness of this committee and we will continue to follow the mandate of the committee and the rules of procedure, and remain in constant communication and coordination with all members of the committee. It is a fact that the committee is yet to reach an agreement." BEIJING BLOCKS AZHAR's LISTING AT UNSC COMMITTEE FOR SECOND TIME This will mark the second time in two years that Beijing has essentially stymied attempts to list the Jaish-e-Mohammad leader, a move that would have helped cut funding and freeze financial assets, besides exerting pressure on Pakistan to take action. After Beijing last year blocked an application made by India, it had this January placed a six-month "technical hold" on a United States, United Kingdom and France-backed application. A second three-month hold was placed in August under the committee's rules that allow members to seek more information. Hua on Monday denied that China was acting at the behest of all-weather ally Pakistan. "I can understand why you raise this question but I cannot agree with what you said [about China supporting Pakistan]. China always upholds the principle of objectivity and fairness and we judge the matter on its own merit. Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism and we support Pakistan in countering terrorism, in accordance with its own national conditions." WATCH VIDEO | China to again block application seeking ban in UN on JeM terrorist Masood Azhar --- ENDS --- By PTI: By Aditi Khanna London, Nov 1 (PTI) British Prime Minister Theresa May today spoke to US President Donald Trump to express her condolences over the terror attack in New York and called for an international approach to tackle poisonous terrorist ideology online. During her phone call with the US president, May told Trump that the UK stands ?shoulder to shoulder? in the fight to defeat the evil of terrorism. advertisement "The Prime Minister said she was deeply shocked and saddened by the loss of life and that her thoughts and prayers remain with all those affected. "She reiterated that the UK will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in defeating the evil of terrorism," the Downing Street said in a statement. "The two leaders noted the very strong intelligence and security co-operation between our two countries. The prime minister and President Trump also discussed the need for an international approach to tackling poisonous terrorist ideology online,? it added. Earlier, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan had denounced the "despicable and cowardly terrorist attack in Manhattan". "My heart goes out to the victims and their families. New Yorkers are strong and resilient ? I know they will not be cowed by this assault on the innocent, and on our shared values and way of life," said Khan. Opposition Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, also expressed his "solidarity" with those affected in a tweet soon after the attack. Eight people were killed and 11 were injured after a truck was driven into a cycleway in lower Manhattan, close to the site of the 9/11 memorial, on Tuesday afternoon. The suspect, 29-year-old Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov, was shot in the abdomen by police after he exited the truck in what has been described as the deadliest terror attack in the city since September 11, 2001. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Programme," a (Democrat Senator) Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based,? Trump said in the wake of the attack. PTI AK PMS --- ENDS --- The following companies are subsidiares of HP: 3Com, 3PAR, ABB CADE, AOME Holdings Ltd., Albacore Holdings Jersey Ltd, Alpha Holding One B.V., Alpha Holding Two B.V., Anatolus Holding B.V., Apogee, Apogee Corp, Apogee Corporation Ireland Limited, Apogee Corporation Jersey Limited, Apogee Corporation Limited, Apogee Europe Limited, Apogee France Holdings SAS, Apogee France SAS, Apogee Germany Holding UG, Apogee Group Limited, Apogee Rentals Limited, Apollo Computer, AppIQ, Applied Optoelectronic Tech, ArcSight, Arnon Holding B.V., Arteis, Artivision Technologies, Aruba Networks, Atos Origin, Atos Origin Middle East group, Autonomy Corporation, Avantek, BAS - Burosysteme GmbH, BT & D Technologies, Balreed Digitec Group Limited, Balreed Digitec North Limited, Balreed Digitec SE Limited, Balreed Digitec UK Limited, Bamberga Holding B.V., Bitfone Corporation, Bluestone Software, Boonton Radio, Bristol Technology Inc., Bromium, Bromium UK Limited, CEC Europe Service Management, CGNZ, CaLan, China HP Co. Ltd Hangzhou Branch, China HP Co. Ltd., China HP Co. Ltd. Chengdu Branch, China HP Co. Ltd. Guangzhou Branch, China HP Co. Ltd. Jiangan Branch, China HP Co. Ltd. Nanjing Branch, China HP Co. Ltd. Shanghai Branch, Choose Packaging, City Docs Limited, City Docs Solutions Limited, Colorado Memory Systems, Colubris Networks, Colubris Networks, Compaq Cayman Holdings Company, Compaq Cayman Holdings General Partnership II, Compaq Information Technologies, Compaq Information Technologies LLC, Computing and Printing Global Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Computing and Printing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Consera Software, ConteXtream Inc, Convex Computer, David Vision Systems GmbH, Dazzle, Digipro Limited, Division, EDS (Electronic Data Systems), EEsof, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, ElseWare, Eon Systems, Eucalyptus Systems, Eunomia Holding B.V., ExcellerateHRO, Exstream Software, Extreme Logic, F&M Scientific Corporation, F. Smith & Co Office Equipment Limited, F.L. Moseley Company, Flame Holding B.V., Fortify Software, Four Pi Systems, GNA Biosolutions GmbH, HP Austria GmbH, HP Belgium BV, HP Bilgisayar ve Baski Teknolojileri Limited Sirketi, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda. - Branch 01 Tambore, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda. - Branch 2 Sorocaba, HP Brasil Industria e Comercio de Equipamentos Eletronicos Ltda. - Branch 3 Porto Alegre, HP Canada Co. HP Canada Cie, HP Canada Licensing L.P., HP China Holding B.V., HP Chongqing Co. Ltd, HP Chongqing Manufacturing Export Procurement and Settlement Co. Ltd, HP Colombia SAS, HP Computing and Printing Middle East FZ-LLC, HP Computing and Printing Nigeria Ltd, HP Computing and Printing Systems India Private Limited, HP Computing and Printing d.o.o., HP Deutschland GmbH, HP Deutschland Holding GmbH, HP Europe B.V., HP Europe B.V. - Abu Dhabi Branch, HP Europe B.V. Regional Dubai Branch, HP Europe BV Amsterdam Meyrin Branch, HP Finland Oy, HP France Holding SAS, HP France SAS, HP Global Trading B.V., HP Global Trading B.V. Kazakhstan Branch, HP Health Solutions Inc., HP Health Solutions Spain Sociedad Limitada, HP Hewlett Packard Group LLC, HP Inc AP Hong Kong Limited, HP Inc Argentina S.R.L., HP Inc Bulgaria EOOD, HP Inc Chile Comercial Limitada, HP Inc Costa Rica Limitada, HP Inc Czech Republic s.r.o., HP Inc Danmark ApS, HP Inc Gulf, HP Inc Hong Kong Limited, HP Inc Magyarorszag Kft., HP Inc Peru S.R.L., HP Inc Polska sp. z o.o., HP Inc Romania SRL, HP Inc Slovakia s.r.o., HP Inc Thailand Ltd., HP Inc Tunisie SARL, HP Inc UK Limited, HP India Sales Private Limited, HP Indigo B.V., HP Indigo Ltd, HP Information Technology R&D Shanghai Co. Ltd, HP International Pte. Ltd., HP International Pte. Ltd. Taiwan Branch, HP International Sarl, HP International Trading B.V., HP International Trading B.V. Puerto Rico Branch LLC, HP Israel Ltd, HP Italy S.r.l., HP Jade Holding LLC, HP Japan Inc., HP KSA Ltd., HP Korea Inc., HP Licensing Holding LLC, HP Luxembourg S.C.A., HP Malaysia Manufacturing Sdn. Bhd., HP Nederland B.V., HP New Zealand, HP Norge AS, HP Onyx Holding L.P., HP PPS Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., HP PPS Australia Pty Ltd, HP PPS Costa Rica Limitada, HP PPS India Operations Private Limited, HP PPS Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., HP PPS Maroc, HP PPS Philippines Inc., HP PPS Sales Sdn. Bhd., HP PPS Services India Private Limited, HP PPS Singapore Sales Pte. Ltd., HP PPS Sverige AB, HP Pakistan Private Limited, HP Panama Sales and Distribution S. de R.L., HP Print Services Ireland Limited, HP Printing Korea Co. Ltd., HP Printing Shandong Co. Ltd., HP Printing and Computing Solutions S.L.U., HP Printing and Personal Systems Hellas EPE, HP Production Company Limited, HP Puerto Rico LLC, HP R&D Holding LLC, HP R&D Singapore Pte. Ltd., HP Schweiz GmbH, HP Scitex Ltd, HP Singapore Private Limited, HP Solutions Creation and Development Services S.L.U., HP South Africa Proprietary Limited, HP South Africa Trust, HP Taiwan Information Technology Ltd., HP Technology Holdings LLC, HP Technology Ireland Limited, HP Technology Israel Ltd, HP Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd, HP Technology Vietnam Company Ltd, HP Trading Kunshan Co. Ltd., HP Trading Shanghai Co. Ltd., HP Trading Shanghai Co. Ltd. Dalian Branch, HP Trading Shanghai Co. Ltd. Zhangjiang Branch, HP UK Development Limited, HP US Digital LLC, HP USA Manufacturing LLC, HPCP Computing and Printing Portugal Unipessoal Lda., HPI Bermuda Holdings LLC, HPI Brazil Holdings LLC, HPI Federal LLC, HPI J1 Holdings LLC, HPI Luxembourg LLC, HPQ Holdings LLC, Heartstream, Hewlett-Packard A.O., Hewlett-Packard Angola Lda., Hewlett-Packard Company Archives LLC, Hewlett-Packard Copenhagen B.V., Hewlett-Packard Development Company L.P., Hewlett-Packard Enterprises LLC, Hewlett-Packard G.K., Hewlett-Packard Global Holdings B.V., Hewlett-Packard Global Investments B.V., Hewlett-Packard Industrial Printing Solutions Europe BV, Hewlett-Packard Ireland 1 Limited, Hewlett-Packard Ireland Holdings Ltd., Hewlett-Packard Japan Holding B.V., Hewlett-Packard Japan NK Holdings C.V., Hewlett-Packard KSA Ltd. Qatar Branch, Hewlett-Packard Lisbon B.V., Hewlett-Packard MENA FZ-LLC Libya Branch, Hewlett-Packard Mercator B.V., Hewlett-Packard Sunnyvale B.V., Hewlett-Packard West Indies Limited, Hewlett-Packard World Trade LLC, Hiflex Software, HyperX, IBRIX, IndiGo, Indigo America Inc., Iseo Holding B.V., Kale Holding B.V., Kale Holding B.V. Puerto Rico Branch LLC, Knightsbridge Solutions, Kopiervertrieb Rhein-Ruhr GmbH, Lefthand Networks, Limited Liability Company HP Inc, Logoworks, Lyra Holding B.V., MacDermid ColorSpan, ManageOne, Manzana Bidco Limited, Manzana Holdings Limited, Melodeo, Mercury Interactive, Metrix Network Systems, NUR Macroprinters, Neoware, Nihon HP Nin-I Kumiai, Novadigm, NuView ManageX, OOO Hewlett-Packard RUS, Office Perfection Limited, OneFlow Systems Limited, Opelin, Opelin, Open Skies, Opsware, Opsware, Optimization Systems, Optotech, OuterBay Technologies, OuterBay Technologies, PERSIST Technologies, PIXACO, PROLIN, PT Hewlett-Packard Indonesia, Palm, Palm, Peregrine Systems, Perigee Holdco UK Limited, Perigee Midco UK Limited, Perseus Holding B.V., PipeBeach, Poly, PolyServe, PrinterOn America Corporation, Printware Limited, Qosnetics, RLX Technologies, Regor Holding B.V., SPI Dynamics, Samsung Printing Solutions, Scitex, Scitex Vision, Scope Communications, Security Force Software, Shunra Software, Shunra Software, Silverwire Holding, Simpress Comercio Locacao e Servicos Ltda, Snapfish, StorageApps, Stratavia, Synstar, Tabblo, Talking Blocks, Tall Tree Insurance Company, Technology Partners, Telegra, Teradici Corporation, Teradici Inc., Teradici UK Limited, The Danwood Group Limited, The Technology Partners, Tower Software, Tower Software Engineering Pty Ltd, Transoft Networks, Trellis Software & Controls, Triaton, Trinagy, TruLogica, Trustgenix, VeriFone, Verifone, Versatest, Vertica Systems, Vital Technology Pte Ltd, Voltage Security, VoodooPC, Xact Document Solutions Limited, and Xera-Logic Group Limited. Read More Houlihan Lokey, Inc., an investment banking company, provides merger and acquisition (M&A), capital market, financial restructuring, and financial and valuation advisory services worldwide. It operates in three segments: Corporate Finance, Financial Restructuring, and Financial and Valuation Advisory. The Corporate Finance segment offers general financial advisory services; and advises public and private institutions on buy-side and sell-side transactions, leveraged loans, private mezzanine debt, high-yield debt, initial public offerings, follow-ons, convertibles, equity private placements, private equity, and liability management transactions, as well as advise financial sponsors on various transactions. The Financial Restructuring segment advises debtors, creditors, and other parties-in-interest related to recapitalization/deleveraging transactions. It also provides a range of advisory services, including structuring, negotiation, and confirmation of plans of reorganization; structuring and analysis of exchange offers; corporate viability assessment; dispute resolution and expert testimony; and procuring debtor-in-possession financing. The Financial and Valuation Advisory segment offers valuations of various assets, such as companies, illiquid debt and equity securities, and intellectual property. It also provides fairness opinions in connection with M&A and other transactions, and solvency opinions in connection with corporate spin-offs and dividend recapitalizations; and other types of financial opinions. In addition, this segment offers dispute resolution services. It serves corporations, institutions, and governments. The company was incorporated in 1972 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California with offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know A Hot Tech Company With Strong Patents & Partners (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know A Hot Tech Company With Strong Patents & Partners (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know A Hot Tech Company With Strong Patents & Partners (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine The 3-Stock Retirement Blueprint (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit By PTI: New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Satya Nadella, the India-born CEO of tech giant Microsoft, will be in India next week on a two- day visit to promote his book Hit Refresh. Nadella, who will be in India on November 6-7, will visit Hyderabad and Delhi and engage with government officials, industry leaders, students and academia among other stakeholders, a Microsoft spokesperson told PTI. advertisement "The two-day trip is focused on the book. His (Nadella) engagements include meetings with customers and industry leaders across sectors, union government and employees," the spokesperson added. The company has also lined up a public event on the book with a diverse audience comprising students, academia, startups and community influencers. Hyderabad-born Nadella, who took over as Microsoft CEO in February 2014, has chronicled his personal journey, the ongoing transformation at the Redmond-based company and the wave of technological changes in his book Hit Refresh that was launched in September. The book carries a foreword by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. It will also be available in three Indian languages -- Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil -- later this month. All proceeds from the book will go to Microsoft Philanthropies. PTI SR ANZ SA --- ENDS --- Watts Water Technologies, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells products, solution, and systems that manage and conserve the flow of fluids and energy into, through and out of buildings in the commercial and residential markets in the Americas, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa. The company offers residential and commercial flow control products, including backflow preventers, water pressure regulators, temperature and pressure relief valves, and thermostatic mixing valves. It also provides heating, ventilation, and air conditioning and gas products, such as boilers, water heaters, custom heat, and hot water solutions; hydronic and electric heating systems for under-floor radiant applications; custom heat and hot water solutions; hydronic pump groups for boiler manufacturers and alternative energy control packages; and flexible stainless steel connectors for natural and liquid propane gas in commercial food service and residential applications. In addition, the company offers drainage and water re-use products comprising drainage products and engineered rain water harvesting solutions for commercial, industrial, marine, and residential applications; and water quality products that include point-of-use and point-of-entry water filtration, conditioning, and scale prevention systems for commercial and residential applications. Further, it provides smart mixing system under the IntelliStation name. The company sells its products to plumbing, heating, and mechanical wholesale distributors and dealers, as well as original equipment manufacturers, specialty product distributors, do-it-yourself chains, and retail chains; and directly to wholesalers and private label accounts. Watts Water Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1874 and is headquartered in North Andover, Massachusetts. 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. 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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. 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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. Read More By PTI: (Eds: With correction in headline, intro) Ahmedabad, Nov 2 (PTI) Prime Minister Narendra Modi today visited the iconic Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar to attend an event to mark 25 years of its existence. In a series of tweets, Modi said he remembered Pramukh Swami Ji Maharaj, the guru and head of the Swaminarayan Sanstha, an international Hindu socio-spiritual organization. advertisement The prime minister said the Swami was "someone who I interacted with closely and whose guidance as well as blessings I always value". His twitter handle also carried photographs of the temple. "Akshardham temples stand out for their magnificence, exceptional management and the way they have used latest technology," he wrote. He said the Swaminarayan family has distinguished itself through its impeccable service and care for humanity. PTI NAB SK DIP --- ENDS --- Nandgaonkar said that if Indian Railways and the BMC fail to keep railway bridges and roads hawker-free, then MNS may file a contempt of court suit against the authorities. By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray and party leader Bala Nandgaonkar today met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over the illegal hawkers issue and work related to development in Kalyan and Dombivali. Speaking to the media outside the CM's residence, Nandgaonkar said that if Indian Railways and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) fail to keep the railway bridges and roads hawker-free, then MNS may file a contempt of court suit against these authorities. advertisement MNS had forcefully evacuated hawkers outside Dadar station as they had blocked the roads and caused trouble for the commuters. A similar action was taken by the party in other parts of the city as well. Meanwhile, the Shiv Sena had alleged that the MNS is acting on behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its B team to cut their votes. Replying to the allegations levelled against the party, Nandgaonkar said, "MNS is an individual party and contests elections individually. These allegations are false and baseless. Let the government do its job and we are doing our job." On Wednesday, MNS workers had attacked Congress workers for organising a protest outside Dadar station to show their support towards the hawkers. Cracking the whip on illegal hawkers in the city, the Bombay High Court had on Wednesday restricted hawking to designated zones only while banning the activity on foot and rail overbridges and within 150 metres of railway stations. ALSO WATCH | Mumbai: MNS workers clash with hawkers in Malad, FIR against Congress' Sanjay Nirupam --- ENDS --- Brookfield Asset Management is an alternative asset manager and REIT/Real Estate Investment Manager firm focuses on real estate, renewable power, infrastructure and venture capital and private equity assets. It manages a range of public and private investment products and services for institutional and retail clients. It typically makes investments in sizeable, premier assets across geographies and asset classes. It invests both its own capital as well as capital from other investors. Within private equity and venture capital, it focuses on acquisition, early ventures, control buyouts and financially distressed, buyouts and corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, convertible, senior and mezzanine financings, operational and capital structure restructuring, strategic re-direction, turnaround, and under-performing midmarket companies. It invests in both public debt and equity markets. It invests in private equity sectors with focus on Business Services include infrastructure, healthcare, road fuel distribution and marketing, construction and real estate; Industrials include manufacturers of automotive batteries, graphite electrodes, returnable plastic packaging, and sanitation management and development; and Residential/ infrastructure services. It targets companies which likely possess underlying real assets, primarily in sectors such as industrial products, building materials, metals, mining, homebuilding, oil and gas, paper and packaging, manufacturing and forest product sectors. It invests globally with focus on North America including Brazil, the United States, Canada; Europe; and Australia; and Asia-Pacific. The firm considers equity investments in the range of $2 million to $500 million. It has a four-year investment period and a 10-year term with two one-year extensions. The firm prefers to take minority stake and majority stake. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. was founded in 1997 and based in Toronto, Canada with additional offices across Northern America; South America; Europe; Middle East and Asia. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Citizens Bank, National Association that provides retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, corporations, and institutions in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking. The Consumer Banking segment offers deposit products, mortgage and home equity lending products, credit cards, business loans, wealth management, and investment services; and auto, education, and point-of-sale finance loans, as well as digital deposit products. This segment serves its customers through telephone service centers, as well as through its online and mobile platforms. The Commercial Banking segment provides various financial products and solutions, including lending and leasing, deposit and treasury management services, foreign exchange, and interest rate and commodity risk management solutions, as well as syndicated loans, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and debt and equity capital markets services. This segment serves government banking, not-for-profit, healthcare, technology, professionals, oil and gas, asset finance, franchise finance, asset-based lending, commercial real estate, private equity, and sponsor finance industries. It operates approximately 1,200 branches in 14 states and the District of Columbia; 114 retail and commercial non-branch offices in national markets; and approximately 3,300 automated teller machines. The company was formerly known as RBS Citizens Financial Group, Inc. and changed its name to Citizens Financial Group, Inc. in April 2014. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. was founded in 1828 and is headquartered in Providence, Rhode Island. By PTI: Hyderabad, Nov 2 (PTI) With the TDP facing a crisis in Telangana following the exit of key leaders, party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today told party activists to focus on strengthening the organisation and leave the task of strategy to him. Naidu attended the general body meeting of the TDPs Telangana unit here. advertisement Naidu, who shifted his base to Vijayawada where the permanent capital city of Andhra Pradesh is coming up, visits Hyderabad occasionally. His participation in the general body meeting came against the backdrop of the Telangana units Working President and MLA A Revanth Reddy and several other party functionaries joining the Congress a few days ago. TDP had won 15 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat in Telangana in the 2014 assembly and general elections, respectively, but 12 MLAs and the lone MP have shifted loyalty to the ruling TRS since then. With Revanth Reddy quitting the party, the TDP is now left with only two MLAs in the state. He told the workers not to think much about the next elections. "You cannot move ahead if you think from today onwards about what happens in the next elections. BJP and TDP became NDA partners before last elections. Both fought together. Since you will have a doubt (about future), if I dont tell you anything, there is some confusion there. But that is ok. Certain things should not be said in politics," he said. The TDP chief said he would provide direction to the activists and asked them to work for strengthening the party. "I too have experience...What to speak and what to do when and what strategy to follow, you leave it to me. You keep faith in people. Work with the partys flag. It is my responsibility to give you direction and strategy from time to time," Naidu said. He said he will take the views of all and that a plan of action would be prepared for strengthening the TDP. Recalling the contribution of TDP, he said the party worked for people whether it was in power or not. TDP founder N T Rama Rao made stellar contributions for the welfare of people and it was during the partys rule that Hyderabad made giant strides in development. The city emerged as a "knowledge city" with a greenfield international airport and major institutions like Indian School of Business (ISB) coming up due to the initiatives of the then TDP rule, he said. The IT sector grew in Hyderabad because of the initiatives of the TDP government, Naidu said. PTI SJR NSK --- ENDS --- 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. Read More CynergisTek, Inc. provides cyber security, privacy, and compliance services in the United States. The company identifies, measures, and tests security and privacy risk of organization, as well as verifies and validates their programs to meet compliance and business objectives through IT audits, technical testing, and risk and program assessments; develops policies, procedures, and playbooks to help build out a risk management program; and verifies the processes, people, and technology are working effectively. It also provides insights to the ROI of an organization's security investment; resources to help organizations prioritize, implement, and execute initiatives to strengthen their security and privacy programs; and on-going management and oversight organization's security and privacy programs to address or give alerts when an issue arises. It serves primarily in the healthcare industry, as well as education, financial services, government, internet and media, and manufacturing industries under the CynergisTek, Redspin, and Backbone Consulting brands. The company was formerly known as Auxilio, Inc. and changed its name to CynergisTek, Inc. in September 2017. CynergisTek, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is based in Austin, Texas. The following companies are subsidiares of Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft: ABFS I Incorporated, ABS MB Ltd., Alex. Brown Financial Services Incorporated, Alex. Brown Investments Incorporated, Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft mbH, Ambidexter GmbH i.L., Argent Incorporated, BHW - Gesellschaft fur Wohnungswirtschaft mbH, BHW Bausparkasse Aktiengesellschaft, BHW Holding GmbH, BT Globenet Nominees Limited, Bainpro Nominees Pty Ltd, Baldur Mortgages Limited, Bankers Trust Investments Limited, Bayan Delinquent Loan Recovery 1 (SPV-AMC) Inc., Berkshire Mortgage Finance, Betriebs-Center fur Banken AG, Better Financial Services GmbH, Better Payment Germany GmbH, Borfield Sociedad Anonima, Breaking Wave DB Limited, Cardales UK Limited, Cardea Real Estate S.r.l., Cathay Advisory (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cathay Asset Management Company Limited, Cathay Capital Company (No 2) Limited, Cedar (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., Chapel Funding, China Recovery Fund LLC, Consumo Srl in Liquidazione, D B Investments (GB) Limited, D&M Turnaround Partners Godo Kaisha, DB (Barbados) SRL, DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Asing) Sdn. Bhd., DB (Malaysia) Nominee (Tempatan) Sendirian Berhad, DB Alex. Brown Holdings Incorporated, DB Aotearoa Investments Limited, DB Beteiligungs-Holding GmbH, DB Boracay LLC, DB Capital Markets (Deutschland) GmbH, DB Cartera de lnmuebles 1 S.A.U., DB Chestnut Holdings Limited, DB Corporate Advisory (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., DB Delaware Holdings (Europe) Limited, DB Direkt GmbH, DB Elara LLC, DB Energy Trading LLC, DB Equipment Leasing Inc., DB Equity Limited, DB Finance (Delaware) LLC, DB Global Technology Inc., DB Global Technology SRL, DB Group Services (UK) Limited, DB HR Solutions GmbH, DB Holdings (New York) Inc., DB IROC Leasing Corp., DB Impact Investment Fund I. LP., DB Industrial Holdings Beteiligungs GmbH & Co. KG, DB Industrial Holdings GmbH, DB Intermezzo LLC, DB International (Asia) Limited, DB International Investments Limited, DB International Trust (Singapore) Limited, DB Investment Managers Inc., DB Investment Partners Inc., DB Investment Partners Limited, DB Investment Resources (US) Corporation, DB Investment Resources Holdings Corp., DB Investment Services GmbH, DB London (Investor Services) Nominees Limited, DB Management Support GmbH, DB Nominees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB Nominees (Jersey) Limited, DB Nominees (Singapore) Pte Ltd, DB Omega BTV S.C.S., DB Omega Holdings LLC, DB Omega Ltd., DB Omega S.C.S., DB Operaciones y Servicios lnteractivos Agrupacicm de lnteres Econemico, DB Overseas Finance Delaware Inc., DB Overseas Holdings Limited, DB Print GmbH, DB Private Clients Corp., DB Private Wealth Mortgage Ltd., DB Re S.A., DB Service Centre Limited, DB Service Uruguay S.A., DB Services (Jersey) Limited, DB Services Americas. Inc., DB Servizi Amministrativi S.r.l., DB Strategic Advisors Inc., DB Structured Derivative Products LLC, DB Structured Products Inc., DB Trustee Services Limited, DB Trustees (Hong Kong) Limited, DB UK Bank Limited, DB UK Holdings Limited, DB UK PCAM Holdings Limited, DB US Financial Markets Holding Corporation, DB USA Core Corporation, DB USA Corporation, DB Valoren S.a. r.l., DB Value S.a.r.l., DB VersicherungsManager GmbH, DB Vita SA., DB lmmobilienfonds 5 Wieland KG i.L., DB lo LP, DBAH Capital. LLC, DBCIBZ1, DBFIC Inc., DBNZ Overseas Investments (No.1) Limited, DBOI Global Services (UK) Limited, DBR Investments Co. Limited, DBRE Global Real Estate Management 18 Ltd., DBRMS4, DBRMSGP1, DBUK PCAM Limited, DBUSBZ1 LLC, DBUSBZ2 S.a. r.l., DBX Advisers LLC, DEBEKO lmmobilien GmbH & Co Grundbesitz OHG, DEE Deutsche Erneuerbare Energien GmbH, DEUKONA Versicherungs-Vermittlungs-GmbH, DEUTSCHE BANK AS., DI Deutsche lmmobilien Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, DISCA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, DWS Alternatives France, DWS Alternatives Global Limited, DWS Alternatives GmbH, DWS Asset Management (Korea) Company Limited, DWS Beteiligungs GmbH, DWS CH AG, DWS Distributors Inc., DWS Far Eastern Investments Limited, DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA, DWS Group Services UK Limited, DWS Grundbesitz GmbH, DWS International GmbH, DWS Investment GmbH, DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., DWS Investment S.A., DWS Investments Australia Limited, DWS Investments Hong Kong Limited, DWS Investments Japan Limited, DWS Investments Shanghai Limited, DWS Investments Singapore Limited, DWS Investments UK Limited, DWS Management GmbH, DWS Real Estate GmbH, DWS Service Company, DWS Shanghai Private Equity Fund Management Limited, DWS Trust Company, DWS USA Corporation, Deposit Solutions, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Capital Holdings New Zealand, Deutsche (Aotearoa) Foreign Investments New Zealand, Deutsche (New Munster) Holdings New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Access Investments Limited, Deutsche Aeolia Power Production Societe Anonyme, Deutsche Alternative Asset Management (UK) Limited, Deutsche Asia Pacific Holdings Pte Ltd, Deutsche Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Australia Limited, Deutsche Bank (Cayman) Limited, Deutsche Bank (China) Co. Ltd., Deutsche Bank (Malaysia) Berhad, Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA, Deutsche Bank (Uruguay) Sociedad Anenima lnstitucien Financiera Externa, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, Deutsche Bank Americas Holding Corp., Deutsche Bank Europe GmbH, Deutsche Bank Financial Company, Deutsche Bank Holdings Inc., Deutsche Bank Insurance Agency Incorporated, Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., Deutsche Bank Mutui S.p.A., Deutsche Bank Mexico. S.A., Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, Deutsche Bank Polska Spelka Akcyjna, Deutsche Bank Representative Office Nigeria Limited, Deutsche Bank S.A, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Deutsche Bank Securities Limited, Deutsche Bank Societe per Azioni, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware, Deutsche Bank Trust Company National Association, Deutsche Bank Trust Corporation, Deutsche Bank. Sociedad Anenima Espanola, Deutsche CIB Centre Private Limited, Deutsche Capital Finance (2000) Limited, Deutsche Capital Hong Kong Limited, Deutsche Capital Markets Australia Limited, Deutsche Capital Partners China Limited, Deutsche Cayman Ltd., Deutsche Custody N.V., Deutsche Domus New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Equities India Private Limited, Deutsche Finance No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Foras New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur lmmobilien-Leasing mit beschrenkter Haftung, Deutsche Global Markets Limited, Deutsche Group Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Deutsche Group Services Pty Limited, Deutsche Grundbesitz Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH i.L., Deutsche Grundbesitz-Anlagegesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Deutsche Holdings (BTI) Limited, Deutsche Holdings (Grand Duchy), Deutsche Holdings (Luxembourg) S.El r.l., Deutsche Holdings Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 2 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 3 Limited, Deutsche Holdings No. 4 Limited, Deutsche India Holdings Private Limited, Deutsche India Private Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services (Ireland) Limited, Deutsche International Corporate Services Limited, Deutsche International Custodial Services Limited, Deutsche Investments (Netherlands) N.V., Deutsche Investments India Private Limited, Deutsche Investor Services Private Limited, Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd., Deutsche Leasing New York Corp., Deutsche Mexico Holdings S.a. r.|., Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Group Limited, Deutsche Mortgage & Asset Receiving Corporation, Deutsche Nederland N.V., Deutsche New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Nominees Limited, Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG, Deutsche Overseas Issuance New Zealand Limited, Deutsche Postbank, Deutsche Postbank Finance Center Objekt GmbH, Deutsche Private Asset Management Limited, Deutsche Securities (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Securities (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities (SA) (Proprietary) Limited, Deutsche Securities Asia Limited, Deutsche Securities Australia Limited, Deutsche Securities Inc., Deutsche Securities Israel Ltd., Deutsche Securities Korea Co., Deutsche Securities Mauritius Limited, Deutsche Securities SA. de C.V.. Casla de Bolsa, Deutsche Securities Saudi Arabia, Deutsche Services (Cl) Limited, Deutsche Services Polska Sp. z o.o., Deutsche StiftungsTrust GmbH, Deutsche Strategic Investment Holdings Yugen Kaisha, Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, Deutsche Trustee Services (India) Private Limited, Deutsche Trustees Malaysia Berhad, Deutsche Wealth Management S.G.I.I.C. SA., Deutsche lmmobilien Leasing GmbH, Deutsches lnstitut fur Altersvorsorge GmbH, Durian (Luxembourg) S.a. r.l., EC EUROPA IMMOBILIEN FONDS NR. 3 GmbH & CO. KG i.l., Elizabethan Holdings Limited, Elizabethan Management Limited, European Value Added I (Alternate GP.) LLP, Fiduciaria Sant Andrea S.r.l., Finanzberatungsgesellschaft mbH der Deutschen Bank, Funfte SAB Treuhand und Verwaltung GmbH & Co. Suhl "Rimbachzentrum" KG, G Finance Holding Corp., German American Capital Corporation, Grundstucksgesellschaft Frankfurt Bockenheimer LandstraBe GbR, Grundstucksgesellschaft Miesbaden LuisenstraBe/Kirchgasse GbR, Hollandsche Bank-Unie, ISTRON Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungs-GmbH, IVAF l Manager S.a.r.l., Immobilienfonds Buro-Center Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben I GbR, J R Nominees (Pty) Ltd, Joint Stock Company Deutsche Bank DBU, Jyogashima Godo Kaisha, KEBA Gesellschaft fur interne Services mbH, Kidson Pte Ltd, Konsul lnkasso GmbH, LA Water Holdings Limited, LAWL Pte. Ltd., Leasing Verwaltungsgesellschaft Waltersdorf mbH, Leonardo lll Initial GP Limited, MEF I Manager. S. a r.|., MIT Holdings Inc., Maher Terminals Holdings (Toronto) Limited, Morgan Grenfell & Company, MortgageIT, MortgagelT Inc., MortgagelT Securities Corp., OOO "Deutsche Bank TechCentIe", OOO "Deutsche Bank", OPB Verwaltungs- und Treuhand GmbH, OPB-Oktava GmbH, OPB-Quarta GmbH, OPPENHEIM Capital Advisory GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Manager GmbH, OPPENHEIM PRIVATE EQUITY Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, PADUS Grundstcks-VermietungsgeseIlschaft mbH, PB Factoring GmbH, PB Spezial-lnvestmentaktiengesellschatt mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, PCC Services GmbH der Deutschen Bank, PT Deutsche Sekuritas Indonesia, Pan Australian Nominees Pty Ltd, Plantation Bay. Inc., Postbank Akademie und Service GmbH, Postbank Beteiligungen GmbH, Postbank Direkt GmbH, Postbank Filialvertrieb AG, Postbank Finanzberatung AG, Postbank Leasing GmbH, Postbank lmmobilien GmbH, Quantiguous, R.B.M. Nominees Pty Ltd, RREEF, RREEF America LLC., RREEF China REIT Management Limited, RREEF European Value Added I (G.P.) Limited, RREEF Fund Holding Co., RREEF India Advisers Private Limited, RREEF Management LLC., RoPro U.S. Holding Inc., Route 28 Receivables. LLC, SAB Real Estate Verwaltungs GmbH, SAGITA Grundstucks-Vermielungsgesellschaft mbH, SAPIO Grundstucks-Vermietungsgesellschaft mbH, Sal. Oppenheim, Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie. Beteiligungs GmbH, Sharps SP l LLC, Stelvio lmmobiliare S.r.l., Suddeutsche Vermeigensvewvaitung Gesellschaft mit beschrenkter Haftung, TELO Beleiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Tempurrite Leasing Limited, Thai Asset Enforcement and Recovery Asset Management Company Limited, Treuinvest Service GmbH, Triplereason Umited, VOB-ZVD Processing GmbH, WEPLA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Wealthspur Investment Ltd., World Trading (Delaware) Inc., lmmobilienfonds BuroCenter Erfurt am Flughafen Bindersleben II GbR, lmmobilienfonds Wohn- und Gescheftshaus Koln-Blumenberg V GbR, and norisbank GmbH. Read More By PTI: (Eds: With correction in headline, intro; adding a para after para 9) New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Two middle-aged men, who have suffered serious burn injuries in the NTPC boiler blast in Uttar Pradeshs Rae Bareli, were today admitted to the Safdarjung Hospital, doctors said. More people, who have sustained grievous injuries in the incident, are likely to be brought for treatment at the hospital as well the AIIMS, a senior official of the health ministry said. advertisement "Two middle-aged men have been admitted in the Safdarjung Hospitals burn emergency department," Dr Rajendra Sharma, Medical Superintendent of the Safdarjung Hospital said. Meanwhile, police said, a green corridor facility was given to two ambulances belonging to a private hospital for ferrying the NTPC blast burn patients. The injured were taken from Gurgaon to Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi, covering a distance of 21 kms in 24 minutes. The ambulances had left Gurgaon at 07:31 pm, they said. All necessary arrangements have been made at the AIIMS Trauma Centre and the Safdurjung Hospital "as directed by the Union Health Minister", the official said. "About nine patients are likely to be shifted here today," he added. Minister of State for Health Anupriya Patel visited the Safdarjung hospital tonight to oversee and ensure that the blast burn patients get the best treatment and care. Earlier in the day, the NTPC said in a statement the toll in the massive explosion in the boiler at the state-run power giant NTPCs Unchahar plant has reached 29, while 85 are being treated at hospitals in Rae Bareli and Lucknow. According to an official statement, a senior officer of the state-run power corporation was among those killed in the accident. Union Health Minister J P Nadda is in regular contact with the state authorities, the health ministry official said. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad, had announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the family of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured, besides Rs 25,000 for other injured workers. The NTPC has initiated a probe to ascertain the reasons behind the blast. In a statement, the NTPC has said that at unit number 6 of its Unchahar plant, there was a sudden abnormal sound at 20-meter elevation around 3.30 on Wednesday afternoon. The 1,550-MW plant supplies electricity to nine states, according to officials, and employs around 870 people. PTI PLB SLB KND DIP --- ENDS --- According to the preliminary inquest, the safety measures at the NTPC boiler were found to be deficient and could be one of the major reasons behind the blast. By Rahul Shrivastava: Did the 30 workers at Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station in UP's Raebareli die because the boiler was put in operation in a rush? Were all the safety measures and procedures in place? The Power Ministry has strongly denied the tragedy that has hurt the image of one of India's finest public sector undertakings, titled a Maharatna. But, top power engineers who rushed to the plant said that the preliminary inquest showed safety measures were deficient. advertisement A senior engineer preferring anonymity explained, "The high casualty due to the boiler burst is one of the five sways. There were nearly 300 workers in the boilers' vicinity which is quite unusual for regular operations of a boiler. The large numbers were there because work was on to create the boiler safety systems. "A senior official went to the extent of saying that some work on boiler insulation was on, a fact not confirmed by NTPC. Another senior engineer, an old hand at thermal power plants, said that the boiler blast took place due to huge pressure fluctuation. "Modern boilers have failsafe safety mechanisms against pressure fluctuations and reasons which cause it. It's visible that things were not in place," he said. Explaining the complex technical elements involved, he said that the blast possibly was triggered in one of duct connected to the boiler. The duct transfers ash of burnt coal. Preliminary inquiry also revealed that the ash pipe in the duct connected to boiler got choked. NTPC, which launched a probe into the incident, admitted this fact and said the accident could have taken place due to "excess ash deposition" in the furnace. Engineers and workers present on the accident spot at that time also told the seniors that coal powder pumped into the furnace developed, what in thermal power plants jargon, is called a "clinker formation" which ultimately choked the valves. Those present, reportedly say, that workers were pressed into service to break the "clinkers". "It's possible that during the attempt to break the clinkers, the coal supply for maintaining boiler pressure got disrupted. It's possible that the coal supply disruption and ash accumulation disturbed the boiler pressure." said, an engineer. Top sources admitted that at these plants, normal boiler pressure of +/-5 mmwc has to be maintained. "But, the boiler pressure rose to +350 mmwc. Eyewitnesses said that the huge boiler had started vibrating before bursting from corner number 2," he said. Following the expert advice, NTPC today, shut down its 500 MW. While NTPC and Power Ministry officials refused to comment on the preliminary findings officially and maintained that all safety measures in place, contractual workers protesting at the NTPC plant claimed that they had warned about the rising temperature near the furnace. advertisement NTPC UNIT SHUT DOWN In a regulatory filing in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the NTPC said, "This is to inform that Unit 6 (500 MW) of Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, Rae Bareli, is under shut down after an accident in the evening of November 1, 2017. The other five units of the station are operating normally." The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast here in Uttar Pradesh rose to 30 today with more injured workers succumbing to their burn injuries, officials said. A massive explosion took place in the boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many workers were trapped when a fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. While Power Ministry officials denied that Unchhahar explosion took place as there was hurry in starting operations, its fact that the boiler was set up in record time of mere 30 months. The unit was commissioned in March and COD (commercial operation date) done in September. Commercial operations are declared in presence of independent engineers who check machinery for 72 hours before declaring COD. NTPC engineers don't have a role at this time. But, this is first time that a brand new unit has exploded and BHEL engineers are at site to figure out why," the officials said. advertisement Union Power Minister RK Singh and UP Power Minister Shrikant Sharma visited the NTPC today to take stock of the situation. --- ENDS --- The death toll in the massive explosion that had ripped a boiler at the NTPC's Unchahar plant has risen up to 30, informed Rajiv Kumar, UP chief secretary. By India Today Web Desk: Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh today said that the death toll in the NTPC boiler explosion in Raebareli rose to 30. The massive explosion at NTPC's Unchahar plant on Wednesday caused injuries to scores of people. On Thursday, Union Power Minister RK Singh said that the next of kin of those killed in the explosion will get a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh. The Uttar Pradesh state administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. Officials confirmed that NTPC too had ordered a probe into the incident. This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. advertisement "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," said Singh. HERE ARE TOP 10 DEVELOPMENTS Prime Minister Narendra Modi today approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime minister's office said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, termed the incident as gory and saddening. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, termed the incident as gory and saddening. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi today met the workers injured in the boiler explosion at the NTPC plant here as his party demanded that a judicial inquiry be ordered into the incident that left 26 persons dead. Taking a break from his Gujarat election tour, the Congress vice president visited the Gandhi family pocket- borough Raebareli to meet those injured in the explosion and said his party will demand a probe into the incident. The office of Rahul Gandhi tweeted, "Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident." Rahul and other opposition leaders descended on the accident site demanded a judicial probe into the blast. Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Rajiv Kumar said in Lucknow that the number of patients who have come to the state capital were "substantially burnt" and doctors and medical staff were giving them the best possible treatment. He said the state government will ensure that there is no shortage of medicines at the hospitals. The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government over the death of 30 people. Expressing its concern over the incident, the Commission said in a statement today that a "high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident, which involves the right to life". Power Minister RK Singh also met NTPC chairman and managing director Gurdeep Singh. The duo visited the site of the incident and also met injured persons who were admitted in various hospitals in Raebareli. A green corridor was created to bring patients to the national capital, considering the seriousness of their health condition. Two persons, out of the several injured, were admitted to the Safdarjung Hospital, said officials. ALSO WATCH | 16 killed, over 100 injured in boiler explosion at NTPC plant in Raebareli --- ENDS --- The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. 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Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. 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Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Textron: AAI Corporation, AAI Services Corporation, ALSTOM Gears, Able Aerospace, Able Aerospace Services Inc., Able Engineering & Component Services, Aeronautical Accessories LLC, Airborne Tactical Advantage Company LLC, Arctic Cat, Arctic Cat ACE Holding GmbH, Arctic Cat France SARL, Arctic Cat GmbH, Arctic Cat Inc., Arctic Cat Production LLC, Arctic Cat Production Support LLC, Arctic Cat Sales Inc., Arctic Cat Shared Services LLC, Arctic Cat UK Ltd., Arkansas Aerospace Inc., Avco Corporation, Aviation Service servis letal doo Ljubljana, Aylesbury Automation, B/K Navigational Equipment sro, BELL TEXTRON ASIA (PTE.) 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Ltd., Kautex (Chongqing) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Guangzhou) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Pinghu) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Shanghai) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex (Wuhan) Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., Kautex Corporation, Kautex Craiova srl, Kautex Germany Holding GmbH, Kautex Inc., Kautex Japan KK, Kautex Shanghai GmbH, Kautex Textron (UK) Limited, Kautex Textron Benelux BVBA, Kautex Textron Bohemia spol sro, Kautex Textron CVS Limited, Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG, Kautex Textron Iberica SL, Kautex Textron Management Services Company de Puebla S. de RL de CV, Kautex Textron Portugal Produtos Plasticos Sociedade Unipessoal Lda., Kautex Textron de Mexico S de RL de CV, Kautex Textron do Brasil Ltda., Kautex of Georgia Inc., Kaywood Products Corp., Klauke, LCI Corporation International, LLC Textron RUS, Maag, McCord Corporation, Mechtronix, Medical Numerics Inc., Midland Industrial Plastics, MillenWorks, MillenWorks Themed Technologies, MotorFist LLC, OPINICUS Simulation and Training Services LLC, OmniQuip International, Opinicus, Optical Boring Co., Opto-Electronics, Opto-Electronics Inc., Overwatch Systems, PEINER Umformtechnik, Pipistrel, Pirelli Tyres - General Rubber Goods (GRG) division, Premiair Aviation Maintenance Pty Ltd, Progressive Electronics, Ransomes, Ransomes Inc., Ransomes Investment LLC, Ransomes Jacobsen France SAS, Ransomes Jacobsen Limited, Ransomes Limited, Ransomes Pensions Trustee Company Limited, Replacement Part Solutions LLC, Response Technologies LLC, Rotor Blades Limited, Sukosim Verbindungselemente, TRU Simulation & Training Spain SL, TRU Simulation + Training Inc., TRU Simulation + Training LLC, TekGPS Engineering Srl, Textron Airland LLC, Textron Atlantic LLC, Textron Aviation Australia Pty. 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Ltd., Textron UK Pension Trustee Limited, Textron Verwaltungs-GmbH, Turbine Engine Components Textron (Newington Operations) Inc., United Industrial Corporation, Westminster Insurance Company, Williams Machine & Tool, and Zhenjiang Bell Textron Aviation Services Limited. Read More By PTI: (EDs: Incorporating related series) Rae Bareli (UP), Nov 2 (PTI) The toll in the explosion at NTPCs Unchahar plant climbed to 29, with nine more deaths reported today, even as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders descended on the accident site and demanded a judicial probe. Union Power Minister R K Singh also arrived at the site to oversee relief measures in what is one of the worst tragedies at a power plant in recent history and even came face to face with Rahul Gandhi at one point. advertisement Singh announced Rs 20 lakh ex-gratia for the next of kin of those killed in the accident. The Centre also ordered a probe by the NTPCs executive director into the incident while the state administration ordered a magisterial probe. "Twenty nine persons have succumbed to injuries and 85 were being treated at hospitals in Rae Bareli and Lucknow," the NTPC said in an official release. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, took a break from campaigning in Gujarat and met the victims and their families. The Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat is represented by his mother, Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. His office tweeted, "Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident". I was sad to see the pain of victims of the NTPC incident and their families should get better compensation and government jobs, while the injured should get all possible help, the Congress vice president said. Rahul Gandhi was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and UP Congress chief Raj Babbar. Azad claimed that a judicial inquiry was important as in the case of a government probe, facts could be concealed. Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma tweeted, "The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the accident. The committee headed by executive director of NTPC will submit its report in 30 days." During his visit to the site, Rahul Gandhi was heard making enquiries about the number of workers deputed at the plant. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," he said while speaking to reporters. Meanwhile, Union Power minister Singh announced a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of those killed observing that the earlier ex-gratia was not enough. "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," he told reporters. advertisement This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime ministers office said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad on an official tour, has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded a probe by a retired high court judge into the boiler explosion. The families of the deceased should be given a Rs 50 lakh compensation, while those injured should get Rs 10 lakh, senior SP leader Ahmed Hasan said. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, said, "Our priority at this point in time is that proper treatment should be ensured to the injured persons. We stand by the families of those dead in their hour of grief. Teams of NTPC and NDRF have already arrived here." advertisement Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government over the blast. Expressing concern, the commission in a statement said that a "high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident, which involves the right to life". It said there was need to ensure that such tragedies do not recur. A detailed report is expected from the government within six weeks, the rights panel said. The NTPC in an official release said that Unit No. 6 (500 MW) of the plant was under shutdown after the accident. However, five other units of 1,050 MW capacity were operating normally. PTI NAV ABN SMI KKS ADS --- ENDS --- Koppers Holdings Inc. provides treated wood products, wood preservation chemicals, and carbon compounds in the United States, Australasia, Europe, and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Railroad and Utility Products and Services (RUPS), Performance Chemicals (PC), and Carbon Materials and Chemicals (CMC). The RUPS segment procures and treats crossties, switch ties, and various types of lumber used for railroad bridges and crossings. It also provides rail joint bars to join rails together for railroads; transmission and distribution poles for electric and telephone utilities; and pilings. This segment also provides railroad services, such as engineering, design, repair, and inspection services for railroad bridges. The PC segment develops, manufactures, and markets copper-based wood preservatives, including micronized copper azole, micronized pigments, alkaline copper quaternary, amine copper azole, and chromated copper arsenate for decking, fencing, utility poles, construction lumber and timbers, and various agricultural uses; and supplies fire-retardant chemicals for pressure treatment of wood primarily in commercial construction. The CMC segment manufactures creosote for the treatment of wood or as a feedstock in the production of carbon black; carbon pitch, a raw material used in the production of aluminum and steel; naphthalene for use as a feedstock in the production of phthalic anhydride and as a surfactant in the production of concrete; phthalic anhydride for the production of plasticizers, polyester resins, and alkyd paints; and carbon black feedstock for use in the production of carbon black. The company serves the railroad, specialty chemical, utility, residential lumber, agriculture, aluminum, steel, rubber, and construction industries. Koppers Holdings Inc. was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By PTI: (EDs: adding detail; nine patients to be brought to be Delhi) Rae Bareli (UP), Nov 2 (PTI) The toll in the explosion at NTPCs Unchahar plant climbed to 29, with nine more deaths reported today, even as Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders descended on the accident site and demanded a judicial probe. Union Power Minister R K Singh also arrived at the site to oversee relief measures in what is one of the worst tragedies at a power plant in recent history and even came face to face with Rahul Gandhi at one point. advertisement Singh announced Rs 20 lakh ex-gratia for the next of kin of those killed in the accident. The Centre also ordered a probe by the NTPCs executive director into the incident while the state administration ordered a magisterial probe. "Twenty nine persons have succumbed to injuries and 85 were being treated at hospitals in Rae Bareli and Lucknow," the NTPC said in an official release. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, took a break from campaigning in Gujarat and met the victims and their families. The Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat is represented by his mother, Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. His office tweeted, "Labourers have said that the accident took place due to negligence and that there should be a judicial probe into the accident". I was sad to see the pain of victims of the NTPC incident and their families should get better compensation and government jobs, while the injured should get all possible help, the Congress vice president said. Rahul Gandhi was accompanied by senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and UP Congress chief Raj Babbar. Azad claimed that a judicial inquiry was important as in the case of a government probe, facts could be concealed. Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Shrikant Sharma tweeted, "The Centre has constituted a committee to probe the accident. The committee headed by executive director of NTPC will submit its report in 30 days." During his visit to the site, Rahul Gandhi was heard making enquiries about the number of workers deputed at the plant. "People are saying that it (the plant unit) was run early (before schedule). It should not have been run that way. We will demand a probe," he said while speaking to reporters. Meanwhile, Union Power minister Singh announced a compensation amount of Rs 20 lakh to the next of kin of those killed observing that the earlier ex-gratia was not enough. "I am of the view that the ex-gratia which was earlier announced was not enough. Rs 20 lakh compensation will be given to the next of kin of those who died in the accident, while the seriously injured will get Rs 10 lakh and those who sustained minor injuries will be given Rs 2 lakh," he told reporters. advertisement This amount is in addition to the compensation provided under the workmen compensation rules, he said. In addition, Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved an ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," the prime ministers office said on Twitter. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who is abroad on an official tour, has also announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the families of those killed and Rs 50,000 for the grievously injured besides Rs 25,000 for the other injured workers. Opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) demanded a probe by a retired high court judge into the boiler explosion. The families of the deceased should be given a Rs 50 lakh compensation, while those injured should get Rs 10 lakh, senior SP leader Ahmed Hasan said. Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma, who visited the accident site, said, "Our priority at this point in time is that proper treatment should be ensured to the injured persons. We stand by the families of those dead in their hour of grief. Teams of NTPC and NDRF have already arrived here." advertisement Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued a notice to the UP government over the blast. Expressing concern, the commission in a statement said that a "high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident, which involves the right to life". It said there was need to ensure that such tragedies do not recur. A detailed report is expected from the government within six weeks, the rights panel said. The NTPC in an official release said that Unit No. 6 (500 MW) of the plant was under shutdown after the accident. However, five other units of 1,050 MW capacity were operating normally. Meanwhile, arrangements were made to for nine persons who received serious injuries in the blast in Rae Bareli yesterday to be brought to AIIMS and Safdurjung hospitals in New Delhi, a senior health ministry official said. advertisement All necessary arrangements have been made at the AIIMS trauma centre and the Safdurjung hospital "as directed by the Union health minister", the official said. "About nine patients are likely to be shifted here today," he added. Union Health Minister J P Nadda is in regular touch with the state authorities, he said. PTI NAV ABN PLB SMI KKS ADS ADS --- ENDS --- The NTPC has shut down the power plant unit where an explosion killed 26 people at Unchahar in Raebareli district of Uttar Pradesh. By India Today Web Desk: The National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) today shut down its 500 MW unit at its Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station in Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh. The Power producer decided to shut down the unit following an accident yesterday that claimed the lives of 26 people. Meanwhile, the power ministry officials have denied that the explosion in the power unit took place due to "hurry" allegedly shown in starting the operations. advertisement On the other hand, contractual workers protesting at the NTPC plant claimed that they had warned about the rising temperature near the furnace. NTPC UNIT SHUT DOWN In a regulatory filing in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the NTPC said, "This is to inform that Unit 6 (500 MW) of Feroze Gandhi Unchahar Thermal Power Station, Rae Bareli, is under shut down after an accident in the evening of November 1, 2017. The other five units of the station are operating normally." The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast here in Uttar Pradesh rose to 26 today with more injured workers succumbing to their burn injuries, officials said. A massive explosion took place in the boiler unit in Unchahar town on the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. Many workers were trapped when a fire erupted in the boiler and a huge ball of dust rose after the blast, making the rescue operations difficult. WHAT CAUSED EXPLOSION? The NTPC has launched a probe into the incident, which it said took place due to "excess ash deposition" in the furnace. The state government has also ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. A group of contractual workers, employed with the Unchahar power station, staged a demonstration at the power plant. The contractual labourers raised slogans against the NTPC management. The protesters claimed that they had warned about an impending disaster at unit six as the temperature near the furnace had been steadily rising. The power ministry officials today denied that Unchhahar explosion took place as there was a hurry in starting operations. The officials said that there was no demand in September so there was no need to rush. "Unit was commissioned in March and COD (commercial operation date) done in September. Commercial operations are declared in presence of independent engineers who check machinery for 72 hours before declaring COD. NTPC engineers don't have a role at this time. But, this is first time that a brand new unit has exploded and BHEL engineers are at site to figure out why," the officials said. MINISTERS VISIT NTPC PLANT Union Power Minister RK Singh and UP Power Minister Shrikant Sharma visited the NTPC today to take stock of the situation. Meanwhile, the compensation amount to the next kin of those killed in the NTPC blast was increased to Rs 20 lakh each. Those who are seriously injured would get an ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh each, other injured would be given Rs 2 lakh each. advertisement Prime Minister Narendra Modi also approved ex-gratia payment of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of those killed in an explosion in the NTPC power plant in Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli district. "Prime Minister @narendramodi has approved an ex- gratia of Rs 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident," PMO India said on Twitter. (With inputs from Meetu Jain in New Delhi and agencies) --- ENDS --- PetroChina Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in a range of petroleum related products, services, and activities in Mainland China and internationally. It operates through Exploration and Production, Refining and Chemicals, Marketing, and Natural Gas and Pipeline segments. The Exploration and Production segment engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of crude oil and natural gas. The Refining and Chemicals segment refines crude oil and petroleum products; and produces and markets primary petrochemical products, derivative petrochemical products, and other chemical products. The Marketing segment is involved in marketing of refined products and trading business. The Natural Gas and Pipeline segment engages in the transmission of natural gas, crude oil, and refined products; and sale of natural gas. As of December 31, 2021, the company had a total length of 26,076 km, including 17,329 km of natural gas pipelines, 7,340 km of crude oil pipelines, and 1,407 km of refined product pipelines. The company is also involved in the exploration, development, and production of oil sands and coalbed methane; trading of crude oil and petrochemical products; storage, chemical engineering, storage facilities, service station, and transportation facilities and related businesses; and production and sales of basic and derivative chemical, and other chemical products. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. PetroChina Company Limited is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation. Quotient Technology Inc. operates as a digital media and promotions technology company that offers power integrated digital media and promotions programs for brands and retailers. The company's Quotient Promotions platform offers digital paperless, print promotion, and cash back rebates, including Coupons.com website and mobile applications; brand and retailer websites and mobile applications; and third-party publishing websites and mobile applications. It also provides Quotient Retailer Promotions Platform that uses consumer data and insights to distribute personalized and targeted media and promotions for retailers of grocery, drug, mass merchant, dollar, club, and convenience merchandise; and Quotient Media Platform, which provides targeted advertising solutions that enables brands to reach shoppers before, during, and after their shopping cycles with digital media campaigns. It also provides Quotient Retailer Performance Media Platform that uses retailer's consumer data to drive sales and enhances the shopper experience; Quotient Analytics provides campaign analytics and measured sales results to brands and retailers; Quotient Consumer Properties; and Quotient Retailer Media Services. It serves approximately 900 consumer packed goods, representing approximately 2,500 brands, including various food, beverage, personal care, and household product manufacturers; retail partners representing various classes of trade, such as grocery retailers, drug, mass merchant, dollar, club, and convenience merchandise channels; and consumers visiting its websites, mobile properties, and social channels. The company was formerly known as Coupons.com Incorporated and changed its name to Quotient Technology Inc. in October 2015. Quotient Technology Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. provides reinsurance and insurance products around the world. The company was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Bermuda with offices in Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US. The company operates through two segments that include multiple underlying businesses and investment vehicles. The two main segments are Property and Casualty & Specialty. The company operates through intermediaries that include DaVinci Resinsurance Inc, Top Layer Reinsurance LTD, and RennaisanceRe Syndicate 1458 among others. Top Layer Re is the first major venture and was started in 1999. It is a joint venture with State Farm targeting high layers of the US reinsurance business. DaVinci Re was formed in the wake of 9/11 to assist with capacity and it was given added capacity in the wake of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. Medici was formed in 2009 and is an open-ended fund intended to spur investment in the catastrophe bond market. The Property segment writes catastrophic insurance policies to insure insurance and reinsurance companies against natural and man-made catastrophes. These include but are not limited to hurricanes, floods, freezes, and terrorism. The Casualty & Specialty segment provides a wide range of consumer products including business insurance, malpractice insurance, liability insurance, workers' compensation, mortgage insurance, and health insurance among others. Among RenaissanceRes Specialty businesses is capital management. The firm offers 6 investment vehicles and has more than $11 billion under management making it the #1 ILS or insurance-linked asset manager in the US. In regards to its credit ratings, the firm and all of its vehicles carry an A or better rating from every credit rating agency. The CIA released a massive trove of material recovered by US forces during the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden a decade after the 9/11 attacks. By India Today Web Desk: Osama bin Laden, the dreaded Al Qaeda chief who lived out his last few years in a secret hideout in Pakistan, seems to have spent his time watching Tom and Jerry videos, filling up pages in his personal journal, and studying his own life in the form of biographical documentaries. And, in contrast to popular imagination, Osama bin Laden did not seem to have entirely given up on his terrorist activities. He was in contact with the wide network of his group Al Qaeda and, interestingly enough, even watched movies based on conspiracy theories about the major mayhem that he masterminded - the infamous September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. advertisement This and much more was revealed last night when the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States of America's premier spy organisation released a massive trove of material that was recovered by US special forces during the May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden a decade after the 9/11 attacks. The CIA had previously released the books that were stored at bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout. Yesterday, the agency released mostly digital files that were stored in one of the several devices used by the slain Al Qaeda chief. Today we released nearly 470,000 files recovered in 2011 raid on Usama Bin Ladins compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.https://t.co/QZcoAu3uEw pic.twitter.com/Dn8awV9ndn- CIA (@CIA) November 1, 2017 The information in the CIA repository contains never-before-seen videos of Osama bin Laden's son Hamza as well as an over 200-page journal believed to contain the terrorist mastermind's thoughts and reflections. Here are some of the biggest discoveries and details that have emerged from the CIA's Osama bin Laden files: TOM & JERRY VIDEOS Among the many, many videos the CIA made public were episodes of the internationally popular cartoon show Tom and Jerry. Of course, it will probably never be known whether the Tom and Jerry episodes were for bin Laden's personal consumption or for that of his family, who stayed with him at his Pakistani safe house. Osama Bin Laden appears to have had 138 episodes of "Tom and Jerry" downloaded ....There are over 160 episodes in existence. pic.twitter.com/A4fBFWrnGq- Gene Park (@GenePark) November 1, 2017 HAMZA'S WEDDING One of the most interesting materials among the CIA's Osama files is an hour-long video showing bin Laden's son Hamza. The video is from Hamza's wedding and, according to an Associated Press report, bin Laden's son is seen sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard and sitting on a carpet with other men. The video shows Hamza and the men surrounded by bowls of bananas and apples, bottles of cola, sweets and tea. Hamza is seen smiling, revealing his dimples, and while Osama himself is not seen, a man notes that the "father of the groom, the prince of the mujahedeen" is overjoyed about his son's marriage and his happiness will "spread to all the mujahedeen", the AP report said. Images sourced from lengthy video of Hamza's wedding day: #OBLdocs pic.twitter.com/erYTtA6Yr2- Long War Journal (@LongWarJournal) November 1, 2017 advertisement 9/11 TRUTHER VIDEOS Osama bin Laden had a strange way of checking up on his inhumane handiwork - the 9/11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in the US, birthed America's "war on terror", and changed the nature of terrorism in the world forever. Among the video files recovered from bin Laden's Abbottabad hideout was a movie series called 'Loose Change'. The series explores and argues in favour of several conspiracy theories that have surrounded the 9/11 attacks. Think, 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams'. THE HATE FOR WESTERN LIFE & SHAKESPEARE According to a report in The Guardian, which citied entries in Osama's personal journal, bin Laden visited the United Kingdom as a teenager. There, bin Laden visited the home of the world renowned playwright William Shakespeare and, according to The Guardian report, was left unimpressed. "I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didn't allow me to form a complete picture of life there," the UK daily quoted bin Laden writing in his journal. "We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeare's house. I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society. Click here to Enlarge Reuters file photo of former US President Barack Obama and other top officials watching the May 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden advertisement THE ILLUMINATI The 9/11 conspiracy theories weren't Osama bin Laden's only tin foil hat moment, apparently. He also seemed to have an interest in The Illuminati, a supposedly secretive organisation consisting of some of the most elite personalities of the world. Its existence is disputed even as conspiracy theorists advance claims that the group secretly controls the entire world. Osama bin Laden had with him documents about The Illuminati, the CIA release from last night shows. It must be noted that The Illuminati had also crept up when the agency released Osama's books a few years ago. Osama Bin Laden also had a lot of interest in the "Illuminati". Here's one such image: #BinLadenDeclassified pic.twitter.com/UEJVUwWAd0- F. Jeffery (@Natsecjeff) 1 November 2017 advertisement BIN LADEN WAS STILL AL QAEDA CHIEF According to a report in the Long War Journal, an American website focussed on covering the war on terrorism, the CIA's release provides more proof that Osama bin Laden, while hiding in Pakistan, hadn't entirely broken contact with his terrorist group the Al Qaeda. According to the report, bin Laden was in touch with his subordinates around the world and memos that are part of the CIA files talk about the various committees and lieutenants who helped him manage his terrorist group. NARCISSIST OSAMA Among the films and documentaries that Osama bin Laden watched were a few that were about himself. 'In the footsteps of bin Laden', a CNN documentary, and 'Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?' a 2008 comedy/war film. Per CIA press release, copyright restricted files found at bin Laden compound included Pixar's Cars, Final Fantasy VII, and Resident Evil pic.twitter.com/t7Fx8F08kd- Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) November 1, 2017 --- ENDS --- By PTI: By Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 2 (PTI) Osama bin Laden closely followed developments in Kashmir and the trial of Pakistani-American terrorist David Coleman Headley in the 2008 Mumbai attack case, according to documents seized from a Pakistani compound where the al-Qaeda founder was killed in a US raid in 2011. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) yesterday released 470,000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead Laden. advertisement The files include Ladens sons wedding video and diaries left by the Saudi-born militant. The documents revealed that Laden closely followed news related to the arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Headley and was a regular reader of some of the top Indian publications. An Indian Express article titled Omar Sheikh?s Pak handler Ilyas Kashmiri also handledHeadley was found from the computer of Laden in Abbottabad. The article was dated November 16, 2009. An article Fears of air-borne terrorists strikes in India, UK published in Sri Lanka Guardian was also found in a separate file on Laden?s computer. A Press Trust of India story headlined Al-Qaeda helping Taliban to destabilise Pakistan Government: Gates, dated February 9, 2010, was also found on Ladens computer. Another article found on his computer was about the coded communications between Headley and his Harkat-ul-Jihad- al-Islami (HuJI) links. The news was published by The Time of India on November 15, 2009. Laden also saved on his computer another PTI article, titled: India to send magistrate to US to record Headleys statement. Laden highlighted in yellow some portion of the article titled Pak Major handled Headleys India recce, published on March 16, 2010. The highlighted portion reads, "The dossiers also sought the custody of Pakistani terrorist, Ilyas Kashmiri." The documents also revealed that Laden was interested in news related to Kashmir and several terrorists. An Economic Times story US asks Pakistan to find Iyas Kashmiri dated January 7, 2010 was among the saved documents on Laden?s computer. A February 2009 article about Pakistani Kashmiri militants now fighting NATO forces was also found. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of the terrorist organisation. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the CIA put online 470,000 additional files. However, the CIA withheld release of nearly two dozen videos, including the one titled The Story of India stating that they were copyrighted videos. The Story of India is a BBC documentary series about the history of India. The documents also include Ladens personal journal, over 18,000 document files and 79,000 audio and image files, which include practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence and imagery gathered or generated by al-Qaeda for a variety of purposes. advertisement "The CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security," he said. "The materials are posted in the original Arabic and in as close to the original form as possible, modified only so the files cannot be edited," the CIA said. The CIA said these materials provide insights into the origins of fissures that exist today between al-Qaeda and the ISIS, as well as strategic, doctrinal and religious disagreements within al-Qaeda and its allies; and hardships that the terror group faced at the time of Ladens death. Other themes in the materials include al-Qaeda?s preparations to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the group?s attempts to promulgate its message through western media. The documents also provide insight into al-Qaeda?s efforts to exploit the Arab awakening for its benefit and that of the global jihad, Laden?s efforts to maintain unity within the group and among its affiliates despite disagreements over tactics and doctrine and the terror groups efforts to rehabilitate its tarnished image among Muslims due its mistakes and negative media portrayals. advertisement The CIA said the information remaining in the Abbottabad collection that has not been released publicly includes materials that are sensitive such that their release would directly damage efforts to keep the nation secure; materials protected by copyright; pornography; malware and blank, corrupted and duplicate file. PTI LKJ PMS NSA --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: From the sets being vandalised to the posters being burnt, Padmavati has faced a lot of roadblocks. More trouble lies in store for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's magnum opus. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants a temporary stay on the release of Padmavati, The Indian Express reports. The party will soon write to the Election Commission, Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and the Central government requesting the same. advertisement The BJP's concern is that the film might contain a romantic sequence between Rani Padmini (played by Deepika Padukone) and Alauddin Khilji (played by Ranveer Singh), which would hurt the sentiments of the Kshatriya community. "We are writing to the ECI, CBFC and the Centre, seeking to stop the film's release for a temporary period till the issue is resolved," BJP spokesperson IK Jadeja told the publication on Wednesday. While he told The Indian Express that the move was completely unrelated to the upcoming election, he told IANS that they were seeking a stay till the Gujarat Assembly election. "The state is set to witness elections and in such an environment it is imperative that there is no controversy related to any community," Jadeja said. Meanwhile, senior Congress leader and national spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said, "With elections round the corner, a Minister from BJP has written to the Election Commission seeking a ban on 'Padmavati' till the elections are over. It is your government, write to the PM." He demanded a special screening for community leaders and said that if they express any objections, cuts should be made to Padmavati accordingly. "Also just postponing the release will not assuage the feelings of a community. We demand that if there has been distortion of history as claimed, the movie should not be released at all," Gohil added. Padmavati, which also features Shahid Kapoor, is slated to release on December 1. ALSO WATCH: Sanjay Leela Bhansali attacked, Padmavati set vandalised in Rajasthan --- ENDS --- S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Under $5 a Share (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Under $5 a Share (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit S&P 500 3,991.73 DOW 33,592.92 QQQ 289.39 Retiring Soon? 8 Facts About Retirement You Need to Know Under $5 a Share (Ad) Three Penny Stocks Making Big Moves In November Agilent Remains In Buy Range Ahead Of Next Week's Q4 Report Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Dont Chase Walmart Higher, Wait For Extra Low Prices Russian airstrikes reported in cities across Ukraine Invest in Smart Home Tech with Superior Patents (Ad) Stocks gain ground after wholesale inflation eases in US The Latest | UN Climate Summit By PTI: Mumbai, Nov 1 (PTI) Paramount Pictures will distribute Sanjay Leela Bhansalis "Padmavati" in international markets. The period drama, starring Deepika Padukone in the lead role of Rani Padmavati, Ranveer Singh as Sultan Alauddin Khilji and Shahid Kapoor as Maharawal Ratan Singh, is slated to release worldwide on December 1. Bhansali became the first Indian to direct an opera in Paris and Rome with ?Padmavati?. The opera made its debut at the 51st Spoleto festival, and will now be retold in the form of a visual cinematic extravaganza. advertisement "We are thrilled to be partnering with Viacom18 Motion Pictures on this exciting new release. Padmavati, has all the makings of a hit film and we are excited to bring Sanjays incredible vision to audiences across the international market place," said Megan Colligan, spokesperson of Paramount Pictures. Ajit Andhare ? COO, Viacom18 Motion Pictures, the producers behind the movie, said the collaboration with Paramount will help take the movie to new places. "This is a first ever such collaboration with Paramount Pictures releasing a Viacom18 Hindi feature across international markets. We are breaking new ground with Padmavati, its marketing and release strategy. With Paramount coming on board, we will take the film to a whole new level globally," Andhare said. PTI BK BK --- ENDS --- A day after Ravi Shankar Prasad applauded India Today's sting on Popular Front of India's racket of religious conversions in Kerala, Rajnath Singh today said that action will be taken in national interest. By Rahul Kanwal: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today vowed appropriate action on India Today's expose of large-scale conversions and hawala funding at Kerala's Popular Front of India (PFI). "We have taken cognizance of it. We had been getting some information before. Whatever lawful and appropriate action is possible, it will be taken based on some more information," Singh said. advertisement The home minister added, "Specific action can't be said of (disclosed) now. Whatever action is lawful and is found to be appropriate will be taken. I believe the nation too would be satisfied that no one would be spared if found to be involved in illegal and anti-national activities. That's our government's clear policy." ON INTERLOCUTOR'S APPOINTMENT When asked whether any talks were possible with the Hurriyat leaders, Singh said that the Centre has given "full freedom" to its Jammu and Kashmir interlocutor, Dineshwar Sharma, to decide stakeholders for talks to resolve the protracted crisis in the valley. "Whatever he does or doesn't is to be decided solely by Dineshwar Sharma. It's entirely up to the government representative to decide whom the talks should be held with. He has been given no specific brief. He has all the freedom to decide who he wants to talk with," Singh said. Sharma, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau, was appointed the central interlocutor in October for a sustained dialogue with stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir in a bid to restore peace in the state. "Dineshwar Sharma, the representative of government of India, hasn't been sent with his hands tied. He's been given full freedom to hold talks and come out with a definite decision," the home minister remarked while on an election tour of Himachal Pradesh. The move to appoint Sharma as a central interlocutor was driven by the government's intent to explore ways and means to resolve any possible "grievances" in the valley, Singh insisted. "I believe that no problem can solely be resolved through force, whether police or military. People's grievances should also be examined. If there are any grievances that could be resolved, we will try to resolve them. That's why we have appointed an interlocutor," said the home minister. "The interlocutor will go there, talk to people and give us his report," added Singh. SINGH QUASHES HURRIYAT'S ACCUSATIONS He disagreed with the Hurriyat accusations that Sharma's appointment was an eyewash, saying the unrest in the valley warranted a deeper analysis for a possible resolution. advertisement "The truth is if there are any problems, they should be resolved. What are the reasons that lead to such situations? That's why we have appointed an interlocutor of the government of India to go into the depth," the home minister said. Asked if he had already identified issues in Jammu and Kashmir, Singh noted that the centre was willing to examine any problems that could be amicably addressed. "I am not saying there already are some (identified) grievances. What I am saying is if there are any grievances that could resolved, they should be resolved if it lies in the interest of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and in the interest of the state." The centre's decision to name Sharma as the new interlocutor came after local delegations in Jammu and Kashmir suggested to the home minister during his latest tour to the valley that a special representative be appointed for talks, Singh said. "It's only after that the government decided to appoint a representative and Dineshwar Sharma was chosen (for the job)." The home minister, however, clarified that the process for starting negotiations wasn't time-bound. "This all depends on how long does it take for talks (to start). We have set no time frame for this. The sooner talks could start, the better it would be," he said. advertisement Singh expressed hope that the Centre's move wouldn't end up in failure as happened on three occasions before under previous governments. "How can we say that if it didn't happen three times before, it won't succeed this time as well?" asked the minister. "I am definitely hopeful that's why the government of India has appointed its representative. We wouldn't have if there was no hope." NO THIRD POWER CAN INTERFERE He also rebutted claims that the decision was aimed at pacifying Washington. "We don't take decisions under pressure. No third power can interfere in internal affairs of India," Singh said. Asked about Pakistan's repeated attempts to interfere in Kashmir, he warned Islamabad to stay out of India's domestic issues. "It's not that we depend on Pakistan to establish peace here. Pakistan is a neighbouring country. It should not interfere in India's internal matters. That said, I am confident we will come out with a solution. Jammu and Kashmir was, is and will remain integral part of India." The home minister credited intelligence agencies for successful operations against high-value terror targets. advertisement Incidents of stone-pelting in the valley, he said, have come considerably down. "We take that in a positive spirit. People are gradually realising stone-pelting is not the solution to the problem," Singh said. WATCH | Rajnath Singh to India Today: Action against Popular Front soon, guilty won't be spared --- ENDS --- The move comes amidst reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the Chancellor of the university, has been invited to preside over the annual convocation. By Indrajit Kundu: Rabindranath Tagore's Visva Bharati University in Shantiniketan is embroiled in a fresh controversy, this time over the management's decision to set up a 'goshala' (cowshed) with 200 cows. The plan, set afoot by current Vice-Chancellor (V-C) Swapan Kumar Dutta, has been opposed by a section of faculty members terming it an "appeasement policy". The move comes amidst reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is also the Chancellor of the university, has been invited to preside over the annual convocation. advertisement According to the V-C, dairy farms were actually started by Tagore himself. "As an agricultural scientist it was of obvious interest for me. I looked upon all the farms available and found that the dairy farm was non-functional for more than two decades. So we wanted to revive them in order to realise Tagore's dream. We want to expand the farm so that we can meet the requirement of about 80-90 litres of milk per day for our school children," Dutta told India Today. PLAN OPPOSED But Dutta's plan is facing resistance from within the university with the Visva Bharati University Faculty Association (VBUFA) opposing the move. "In our perception, it is an appeasement policy of the officiating Vice-Chancellor, who would like to be appointed as a regular V-C by appeasing the central government. He is not bothered about the faculty members not having quarters or living in quarters that are in abysmal state, much worse than his proposed cowsheds," alleged Sudipta Bhattacharya, VBUFA president. Like Bhattacharya, other faculty members too claim that money for the V-C's pet project was being allocated out of the university's own funds and there are other more pressing issues that need to be addressed than building cowsheds. "Dairy farming course requires ten cows, not 200! Still, if he can arrange funds from UGC for his project, we don't mind. But at a time when there are insufficient rooms for laboratories at Siksha Bhawan, anthropology building is in a dilapidated condition and comparative literature faculty member do not have proper rooms, such a step would be a wasteful expenditure," said Bikash Chandra Gupta, another faculty member. At present, Visva Bharati does run a BSc Agriculture course which includes animal husbandry and dairy farming. Some also allege that during his one-and-a-half year tenure, the V-C had invited several politicians rather than academicians to deliver lectures with an aim to fulfilling his personal interests. Founded in 1921 by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore in Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati was declared a central university and an institution of national importance by an Act of Parliament in 1951. However, questions have been raised about the standard of academia in recent times with the institute being embroiled in several controversies. advertisement Visva Bharati has slipped to the 19th spot from 11 in the all India ranking of universities conducted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. SUPPORT FOR V-C'S PLAN The Bengal BJP has welcomed the Vice-Chancellor's move terming it a positive step. "A Goshala always existed there. They are now trying to revamp it. So how is it saffronisation?" asked BJP leader Rahul Sinha. "There is a nefarious attempt to hinder every positive work using the garb of saffronisation. What is problematic about the colour saffron? It is the colour of our national flag. Saffron is the symbol of renunciation and we should be proud of it," Sinha added. When asked about the development, Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee said, "It is a central government institute. It is their jurisdiction and we have nothing to do with it." --- ENDS --- Rahul Gandhi is in Raebareli meeting the blast victims and checking out the plant site. By Supriya Bhardwaj: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is in Raebareli meeting the victims and family members of deceased due to NTPC explosion. Rahul reached Raebareli, which is the constituency of his mother Congress President Sonia Gandhi, around 9:45am and hit the ground running. As many as 26 people have been confirmed dead so far while more than 200 others are reported injured in the boiler blast at NTPC unit in Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli. The incident took place on Wednesday evening. advertisement Rahul first visited the post mortem house and then the district hospitals, Symhans and Niramal hospital. After the hospital visit, he is heading to the NTPC explosion site where other senior Congress leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad, Raj Babbar, Sanjay Singh and Pramod Tewari will be joining him. Rahul Gandhi is later scheduled for Fursatganj airport, where he will be flying back to Gujarat today itself. Initial information had suggested that Rahul would be accompanied by his sister Priyanka Gandhi but sources had that she is with their mother Sonia Gandhi, who is in Delhi and currently not well. Sonia Gandhi has asked Congress cadres to help in rescue operations and provide every possible help to the families of the injured. --- ENDS --- Combined processing capabilities will enable designers to create higher resolution displays for 4K and beyond. MONTREAL -- November 01, 2017 -- Hardent, the leading expert in VESA Display Stream Compression (DSC) technology, today announced a collaboration with Arm to deliver an interoperable VESA DSC IP solution for the new Arm Mali-D71 display processor. Hardents VESA DSC IP cores, combined with the processing capabilities of the Mali-D71 processor, will enable designers to create 4K+ displays for next-generation mobile and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) applications. Developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), DSC is an industry-wide compression standard for display applications that offers visually lossless, ultra-low latency performance. By reducing transmission bandwidth by up to 3X, the DSC algorithm enables higher resolution video to be carried on transport interfaces such as MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI) and DisplayPort1.4. Using DSC compression to handle the increased pixel data required for higher resolution displays reduces power consumption, system costs, and electromagnetic interference (EMI). DSC was initially developed with mobile devices in mind and has, since its release in 2014, seen widespread adoption from the mobile industry. With the emergence of new display-based products, such as AR/VR headsets, other industries are now leveraging DSC compression in order to support the bandwidth requirements associated with creating immersive higher resolution displays. Each industry has its own unique transport and display requirements, explains Alain Legault, VP IP Products at Hardent. Whether it is the increased colour depth needed for HDR10 mobile content, or faster frame rates for AR/VR applications, VESA DSC provides a scalable solution to meet the demands of current and future display products. The Mali-D71 display processor offers a brand-new architecture that supports all major industry display standards including VESA Display Stream Compression. Mali-D71 is optimized to support display resolutions of up to 4K, the higher performance requirements (up to 4K120FPS) needed for VR applications, and HDR10 content. Compression is a key requirement for developing higher resolution displays for next-generation applications, including premium mobile VR displays, said Vassilis Androutsopoulos, senior product manager, Client Line of Business, Arm. Collaborating with Hardent ensures compatibility between Hardent DSC IP cores and the Mali-D71 processor, providing designers with access to ecosystem solutions supporting the high-performance, low-bandwidth requirements for these applications. Hardents VESA DSC encoder and decoder IP cores have undergone a series of detailed tests to ensure optimized performance with the Mali-D71, and reduce the complexities of integration and porting. A live demo of Hardents VESA DSC encoder and decoder IP cores integrated with the Mali-D71 processor will be shown at the Arm Tech Symposia events in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen. A series of compressed vs. uncompressed HDR10 video content will be shown side-by-side to highlight the visually lossless compression quality of VESA DSC. For more information about VESA Display Stream Compression IP solutions, contact Hardent. About Hardent Hardent is a professional services firm providing IP products, electronic design services, and training solutions to leading electronics equipment and component manufacturers throughout the world. Hardent works across a wide variety of industries to develop high-complexity electronic products, improve engineering processes, accelerate products' time-to-market and provide expert training solutions. GMS Express program aims to reduce the amount of time required to get an Android device through Googles compatibility certification tests. Google and MediaTek have partnered up to announce GMS Express, a new program designed to provide approved Android software solutions, including Google Mobile Services (GMS) and Google Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) certification, to device makers. Google has some requirements in place to assure that Android APIs and hardware functionality is consistent across all Android devices. After designing and manufacturing an Android device, it needs to pass through Googles compatibility certification tests. The process can take up to three months to complete and the manufacturers are in a limbo until then with their time, money and resources stuck. It is so because its not allowed to ship with Google apps pre-installed if it fails the certification tests. The GMS Express program aims to reduce the time taken for the certification process from three months to one month or even less. This means that the OEMs can make their devices come to market quicker and at a lower cost. Device makers will also be able to build devices using MediaTek SoCs that will come pre-installed with GMS, which includes Gmail, Google Play, Google Search and more. Android has enabled a healthy ecosystem of diverse OEM manufacturers who deliver compelling devices at all price points throughout the world, said Jim Kolotouros, VP, Global Android Partnerships at Google. We are excited by MediaTeks leadership in connection with the GMS Express program, and enabling the OEM ecosystem to develop high-quality devices more quickly, more cheaply, and more easily. The OEMs with MediaTek chipset will also receive frequent security patches to reduce risks of their device being hacked. End consumers will now have a secure and compliant version of Android across devices due to the easier certification process. MediaTek has become the first SoC manufacturer to support Googles GMS Express program. Xiaomi's new selfie-centric smartphone is expected to be part of Redmi series and might compete with similar offerings from Oppo and Vivo. The company is also expected to announce stable version of MIUI 9 today. Xiaomi is all set to launch a new selfie-centric smartphone in India today. Interestingly, the launch is happening on the same day when Oppo announces its selfie-centric F5 smartphone. Xiaomi, the second largest smartphone maker in the country has been focussing on selling smartphones that cater to value for money segment. With this new selfie series, the company is entering a domain dominated by the likes of Vivo and Oppo. While Xiaomi was initially anticipated to launch the Mi Note 3, the tweets confirm that the new device will be part of the Redmi series. The launch event starts at 12PM IST and will be streamed live on the company's website. Manu Jain, Managing Director, Xiaomi India tweeted that the company is planning multiple surprises for the launch of 'Best Selfie' smartphone. Xiaomi's repeated use of 'Best Selfie' smartphone shows that it wants to Vivo's V series and Oppo's F series. While there is no clarity on the specifications or camera features of the new device launching today, it is expected to run stable version of MIUI9 out of the box. The company is expected to release stable ROM of its MIUI 9 based on Android Nougat today. The new version of MIUI brings redesigned interface and has been available in the form of beta since July. The new stable ROM arriving today will be for Xiaomi smartphones used outside China. The new three features launched with MIUI 9 include image, smart assistant and smart app launcher. At MIUI 9 launch, Xiaomi said these features will only be available in China but it is expected to be made available globally today. The most noticeable improvement is expected to come in the form of faster app launch times thanks to dynamic resource allocation. A Counterpoint research indicated that Xiaomi's market share has grown two percent at the end of third quarter and is inching closer to dethroning Samsung as the market leader. The company's Redmi Note, Redmi and Redmi 4A remain the top three smartphones in the country and with the new selfie series, Xiaomi would be hoping to grab the market share currently owned by the likes of Oppo, Vivo and Gionee. The United Nations-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (UN-OPCW) released last week its latest report on the Khan Sheikhun sarin gas attack on April 4, 2017 in Syria which had killed over 100 civilians. By Santosh Chaubey: The United States has come down heavily on Russia for raising questions over a United Nations report that has blamed Syria's dictator Bashar al Assad for using chemical weapons to kill innocent civilians. The United Nations-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (UN-OPCW) released last week its latest report on the Khan Sheikhun sarin gas attack on April 4, 2017 in Syria which had killed over 100 Syrians including children and women concluding that it was indeed the Assad regime that had released the poisonous gas. advertisement The report by the UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), a body of experts formed by the UN Security Council unanimously, said "the panel was confident that the Syrian Arab Republic was responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhun on 4 April 2017" which was instantly countered by Russia, one of the few allies of the Syrian dictator. Rejecting the JIM report and the experts behind it, Russia had said the panel of experts had failed to meet the norms of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in case of Syria with serious lapses and an inept investigation concluding that "a thorough reading of the report showed it to hardly be professionally prepared and it was rather amateurish and was generally based on speculations and selective use of facts." Slamming the Russian stand, The White House said, "Russia's attempts to undermine and eliminate the JIM show a callous disregard for the suffering and loss of life caused by the use of chemical weapons and an utter lack of respect for international norms." Calling the Russian bluff, The White House said this April attack was the fourth time the JIM confirmed use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime "underscoring the brutal and horrifying barbarism of Bashar al-Assad" and that protecting such a dictator by Russia even more egregious. Refuting the Russian demands of a new set of rules for chemical weapons investigators in Syria, the US "implored the UN Security Council to renew the mandate of the JIM so that it may continue to identify the perpetrators of these horrific attacks and send a clear message that the use of chemical weapons will not be tolerated." Last month Russia had vetoed a proposal in UNSC to extend the JIM's work in Syria but later on had said that it would soon come up with its motion to set norms for JIM's extension. THOUSANDS KILLED IN SYRIAN CHEMICAL ATTACKS Thousands of Syrians lost their lives in chemical attacks. Though under international pressure, in 2013, Syria signed the Convention on Chemical Weapons that bans production, storage, use and transportation of chemical weapons, it has been alleged that Syria never disclosed its full chemical arsenal for international inspection and destruction. advertisement And these allegations are not baseless. An ABC News report earlier this year, quoting the White House, listed about at least over a dozen chemical attacks in Syria since 2012. These include the chemical attack of August 2013 in Aleppo which killed around 1500 people and left thousands crippled with symptoms of nerve gas attack. There was an international hue and cry but the responsibility could not be affixed. Also, a BBC report in May this year, based on intelligence documents, said Syria was still making chemical and biological weapons at three sites. The report further said that both Russia and Iran were aware of it. Also, a Human Rights Watch report published the same month said there was evidence of use of nerve gas by Syria in multiple chemical attacks. After Assad's chemical attack on April 4 in Idlib city's Khan Sheikhun, the US had launched a missile attack on a Syrian airbase that was reportedly used to launch the Idlib chemical attack. It was the first direct US military attack on Syria. Syria had then denied its hands and Russia had strongly defended it. On the contrary, it blamed the Syrian rebels for the attack, like it does every time. advertisement ASSAD'S STRENGTH: RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN'S SUPPORT Ignoring the global calls for isolating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Putin has been standing firm to support him, morally and militarily. Russian fighter jets pounding Syrian rebels and Islamic State bases are a regular occurrence. Almost all major western nations are against al-Assad. If he is standing tall even after that, it is because of Russian support only. Assad got another big world power in his favour when China, in August 2016, announced to join Russia in providing humanitarian assistance and military training to Syria. In February 2017, Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council Resolution aimed to impose more sanctions on Syria for using chemical weapons. Then Syria has Iran's support. Shiite Iran has a religious connect to defend the Syrian government of Alawites, a Shia offshoot, and strategic interests in defeating Syria's Sunni rebels. --- ENDS --- advertisement Event-driven marketing technology company Mporium Group announced the appointment of Aleksander hrn as its chief technology officer on Thursday, with immediate effect. The AIM-traded firm said hrn was most recently the co-founder and CTO of Cxense, a position that he held for the past seven years. Prior to that, he worked for Microsoft's Bing web search engine as its principal software development engineer. hrn was also previously the chief scientist for Fast Search & Transfer. where he worked on search technology and computational linguistics. Mporium said he holds a PhD in computer science from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and serves as an adjunct professor at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. hrn is also a member of the Technology Advisory Board at Unacast. We are delighted to announce Aleksander's appointment as CTO; he is a world-class talent that will contribute significantly to our strategy, our technical execution and our management bandwidth, said Mporium chief executive Nelius De Groot. Having known Aleksander for a number of years, we have been extremely impressed by his capabilities and are thrilled that he is joining the senior management team at Mporium. De Groot said hrn has a deep knowledge of Mporium's target markets, and is hugely enthusiastic about the potential of the business with a strong working relationship with the management team. Aleksander brings a wealth of valuable expertise that will facilitate our ambitions of further extending Mporium's artificial intelligence capabilities. AI is already a key differentiator for the Mporium business and Aleksander's appointment will significantly strengthen our capabilities in this regard. Representatives for Facebook , Twitter and Google received a dressing down from senators in the US on Wednesday for not doing enough to stop Russian interference in last years presidential election. Facebook said earlier this week that at least 126m people had seen posts created by Russian operatives on the social networking site. Lawyers for the three companies appeared in front of a cross-party hearing to answer questions from senators on Tuesday. "You just don't get it," said California Senator Dianne Feinstein. "What were talking about is a cataclysmic change. What were talking about is the beginning of cyber-warfare." Mark Zuckerbergs company said its profits would be affected by investments in making its platform more secure as a result of battling so.called 'fake news'. "Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well," said Mr Zuckerberg. "But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that dont bring people closer together." The company trumped analysts expectations in its third-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, with earnings per share up 24% to $1.59, with net income up 79% year-on-year to $4.7bn. Nine former members of the Catalonia regional government have appeared at a high court hearing in Madrid to answer charges of rebellion. Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont is not among those who have travelled to Madrid to face the courts, after refusing to leave Belgium until he receives "guarantees" on his charges. Local authorities organised and carried out an independence referendum in the region on 1 October, even after Spain's constitutional court declared the vote illegal, which was marred by violence . Judges were expected to decide on Thursday whether former deputy president Oriol Junqueras and eight other members of the government should go to jail while an investigation into their actions proceeds. They were also set to announce what the consequences are of Puigdemont and four others' 'no-show' would be. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona on Sunday in support of Spanish unity, while pro-independence groups called for acts of civil disobedience by civil servants. Previously, Madrid had called for elections in Catalonia on 21 December, with polls suggesting nationalist parties might lose their overall majority in the local parliament. Donald Trump has called for the suspect in Tuesdays terror attack in New York to be given the death penalty, as the fallout from the incident continues. Sayfullo Saipov is alleged to have been responsible for driving a truck down a cycle path in the city on Tuesday in an attack which left eight people dead and many more injured. The Uzbek native was shot at the scene of the crime by police and later told the authorities he was inspired by militant group Islamic State. Trump had initially said the US should send Saipov to Guantanamo Bay, before revising his thoughts via Twitter. "Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system," Trump wrote. "There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Legal experts have argued that Trumps statements could jeopardise the case against the alleged attacker, potentially inviting prejudice and thus an unfair trial. Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system... Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017 Lancashire Holdings scrapped its special dividend after hurricanes and earthquakes sent the insurer to a loss in the third quarter and the first nine months of the year. The company swung to a net operating loss of $139m (105m) in the three months to the end of September from a $40.1m profit a year earlier. That drove it to a loss of $82.9m for the first nine months of the year from a $98.1m profit a year earlier. Lancashire sells insurance and reinsurance for the property, energy, marine and aviation industries. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the Mexican earthquakes wreaked damage that affected Lancashire's customers, causing losses for the company. Alex Maloney, Lancashire's chief executive, said: "The last couple of months have witnessed a series of damaging hurricanes in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and US coastal regions and two significant earthquakes in Mexico. These have tragically devastated and disrupted lives and livelihoods, wreaking havoc in communities and businesses. At such times Lancashire expects to pay losses, and this is reflected in our results for the third quarter and the year to date." The company said it would not declare a special dividend, which was 75 cents a share last year, to conserve capital but it will pay a standard ordinary dividend. Maloney said Lancashire's estimated net losses are in the range the company would expect for such catastrophes. He said pricing for risk had become too lax across the industry in the absence of major catastrophes and that pricing would now return to more sustainable levels. He said: "The likely change in underwriting conditions affords us an opportunity to deploy the capital which we hold more advantageously, both to service the needs of our clients and their brokers and to continue creating long term value for our shareholders. The company's shares fell 5.3% to 719p at 09:00 GMT. Royal Dutch Shell 's third-quarter profit beat forecasts, rising by almost half to $4.1bn (3.1bn) as Britain's biggest oil company benefited from rising oil prices. Net income for the three months to the end of September, based on current cost of supplies, rose 47% to $4.1bn, outstripping the $3.6bn average analyst forecast. The Anglo-Dutch company said profit rose at its downstream, upstream and integrated gas businesses. It gained from higher oil and gas prices, stronger demand for refining and chemicals and increased production from new fields. Like its UK rival BP, Shell came under pressure when oil prices more than halved from $110 a barrel in 2014 to less than $30 a barrel in early 2016. The company has cut costs and sold assets as oil has staged a partial recovery to trade at around $60 a barrel. Ben van Beurden, Shell's chief executive, said the upstream business, which finds and drills for oil, generated almost half of Shell's $10bn cash flow from operations at an average Brent oil price of $52 a barrel. Van Beurden said: Shells three businesses all made resilient contributions to this strong set of results. This competitive performance is further evidence of Shells growing momentum, and strengthens my firm belief that our strategy is working. Net debt was down to $67.66bn from $77.85bn a year ago. Shell's strengthening finances prompted broker Hargreaves Lansdown to call for the company to stop paying dividends in shares. Nicholas Hyett, an equity analyst at Hargreaves, said the scrip dividend had allowed Shell to make the payout while conserving cash but with the company under less pressure it is diluting shareholders. He said: "A strong cash flow performance this quarter is likely to increase calls for management to scrap a scrip dividend policy that is seeing it issue almost $1bn of new shares to shareholders every quarter. That cant come soon enough for us." Earlier in the week, Shell completed the sale of a package of UK North Sea assets for up to $3.8bn as it continued to trim the massive debt pile built up by the acquisition of BG Group last year. The price of the deal, which was announced back in January, includes an initial consideration of $3bn and a payment of up to $600m between 2018 and 2021 subject to commodity prices, with potential further payments of up to $180m for future discoveries. Shell also completed the sale of its entire Gabon onshore oil and gas interests to Assala Energy for a further $628m. The FTSE 100 was up 0.7% to 7,536.82 in afternoon trade on Thursday as the pound tumbled after what was considered a dovish rate hike by the Bank of England. Heavily-weighted miners were among the top gainers, with Antofagasta, BHP Billiton and Anglo American all higher. Oil giant Shell gushed higher as its third-quarter profit beat forecasts, rising by almost half to $4.1bn (3.1bn), benefitting from rising oil prices. Net income for the three months to the end of September, based on current cost of supplies, rose 47% to $4.1bn, outstripping the $3.6bn average analyst forecast. Standard Chartered was in the black after Deutsche Bank upgraded the stock to 'hold' from 'sell', saying the downside is now more limited. "However, we were already US$200-400m below consensus revenues forecasts for 2019/20 going into 3Q17 results, and consequently our downgrades are more limited," said DB after the company's results on Wednesday. Going the other way, Randgold Resources was on the back foot as it posted a drop in profit and production for the third quarter, but said it was on track to meet its 2017 guidance. Profit fell 41% compared to the second quarter to $602m, with production down 9% to 310,618 ounces, as total cash cost per ounce rose 17% to $667. In the nine months to 30 September, however, profit was up 22% on the corresponding period a year ago, while production was 11% higher. BT Group was under the cosh as the fact it maintained its interim dividend failed to impress, after it reported a drop in first-half sales and profits. FTSE 100 - Risers Mediclinic International (MDC) 600.00p 3.99% Antofagasta (ANTO) 993.00p 2.37% BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,434.50p 1.95% Royal Dutch Shell 'A' (RDSA) 2,405.50p 1.95% Anglo American (AAL) 1,494.50p 1.77% Rio Tinto (RIO) 3,716.00p 1.74% Hammerson (HMSO) 530.00p 1.73% Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) 2,347.00p 1.69% Old Mutual (OML) 194.60p 1.57% Standard Chartered (STAN) 715.40p 1.48% FTSE 100 - Fallers Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 7,010.00p -6.16% BT Group (BT.A) 250.40p -3.88% Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 278.00p -2.28% Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 67.07p -2.27% Rentokil Initial (RTO) 327.50p -2.09% Persimmon (PSN) 2,805.00p -1.85% easyJet (EZJ) 1,326.00p -1.70% Convatec Group (CTEC) 188.70p -1.62% ITV (ITV) 159.50p -1.54% Kingfisher (KGF) 304.70p -1.49% London's FTSE 250 was up 0.2% to 20,370.70 in afternoon trade on Thursday as investors digested a widely-expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve - the first in a decade. Howden Joinery was the standout gainer as it said trading was good, as the kitchen supplier defied concerns about the UK property market. Reporting on the period mid-June to the end of October, Howden said revenue rose 8.2% from a year earlier, reflecting higher sales. The company also said it was on track to meet the board's expectations for the year. Ladbrokes Coral ripped higher following news that online gambling company GVC Holdings has sold its Turkish business, in a deal that could clear the path for a takeover. Intu Properties was on the front foot after saying it expects another year of rental income growth after a solid third quarter, although some analysts were concerned about the potential industry "shockwaves" for the shopping centre developer by the impending discounted stake sale at a rival. The group agreed 73 leases between 1 July and 2 November for 13m of annual rent, which is up 5% above previous passing rent, though down from the 7% growth in the first half of the year. On the downside, Electra Private Equity, Dunelm and Ashmore were weaker as they went ex-dividend, while Playtech tanked after saying its performance for the full year will be around 5% below the bottom end of market expectations due to a slowdown in Asia and challenges with its Sun Bingo contract. Acacia Mining lost its shine as chief executive Brad Gordon and chief financial officer Andrew Wray both jumped ship just days after the miner's parent company caved in to the Tanzanian government in the midst of a months-long dispute over gold exports. Lender CYBG was under the cosh after saying it will recognise a 39m pre-tax charge in its full-year income statement as it increases its provisions for legacy conducts costs by 403m. Centamin retreated despite reporting record gold production of 156,533 ounces for its third quarter, which was a 26% increase on the second quarter and 5% higher than the same period last year. Risers Howden Joinery Group (HWDN) 450.50p 9.21% Ladbrokes Coral Group (LCL) 132.90p 4.64% Intu Properties (INTU) 221.80p 4.41% Tullow Oil (TLW) 191.90p 3.28% IMI (IMI) 1,275.00p 3.07% Kier Group (KIE) 1,086.00p 2.94% Pets at Home Group (PETS) 181.40p 2.60% Royal Mail (RMG) 378.90p 2.57% Investec (INVP) 532.00p 2.11% Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 431.20p 2.08% Fallers Electra Private Equity (ELTA) 975.50p -47.75% Playtech (PTEC) 762.00p -22.35% Acacia Mining (ACA) 174.40p -4.29% CYBG (CYBG) 303.10p -4.02% Softcat (SCT) 526.00p -3.49% Paragon Banking Group (PAG) 463.10p -3.14% Ashmore Group (ASHM) 376.00p -3.09% Dunelm Group (DNLM) 696.00p -3.06% Centamin (DI) (CEY) 139.00p -2.66% Redrow (RDW) 648.50p -2.26% Indigenous Disability Awareness Month British Columbia Published: 2017-11-02 - Updated: 2017-11-17 Author: Social Development and Poverty Reduction | Contact: gov.bc.ca Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A Additional References: Library of Disability Awareness Publications Synopsis: Indigenous Disability Awareness Month is an opportunity to recognize the challenges that face Indigenous people in B.C. who live with disabilities. British Columbians are invited to celebrate the contributions of Indigenous people with disabilities as government has proclaimed November Indigenous Disability Awareness Month. advertisements Main Digest British Columbians are invited to celebrate the contributions of Indigenous people with disabilities as government has proclaimed November Indigenous Disability Awareness Month. Acting on a recommendation from the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society (BCANDS), B.C. became the first province in Canada to dedicate November to Indigenous people with disabilities in 2015, along with the Metis Nation British Columbia and BC First Nations Summit. The Assembly of First Nations, the Council of Yukon First Nations and the Province of Saskatchewan all recognized and proclaimed the month in 2016. "Indigenous Disability Awareness Month is an opportunity to recognize the challenges that face Indigenous people in B.C. who live with disabilities," said Shane Simpson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. "When we eliminate the barriers, we can create opportunities for greater inclusion and build communities where everyone is welcome." The government is committed to building a better future for people with disabilities. To help make B.C. a truly inclusive province, government is working with BCANDS, Indigenous communities, people with disabilities and their families to reduce barriers that affect them. "BCANDS promotes greater awareness of the need to build an inclusive and accessible province for Indigenous people," said Scott Fraser, Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. "Recognizing Indigenous Disability Awareness month helps give voice to Indigenous people with disabilities, many of whom often feel like they are alienated from the initiatives, programs and services that have and will impact their current and future disability and health-related needs and well-being." "Raising awareness of the many challenges faced by Indigenous people with disabilities is an important step towards changing attitudes, opening doors and creating a more inclusive society," said Neil Belanger, executive director of BCANDS. BCANDS is unique as the only stand-alone organization in Canada serving Indigenous people with disabilities. The not-for-profit charity has been providing Indigenous disability and health services and programs throughout the province for 26 years. In April 2017, BCANDS made a presentation to the United Nations International Committee on the Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities in Geneva. BCANDS made recommendations to the committee to help address barriers experienced by Indigenous people and their families in Canada. Quick Facts: Approximately 334,000 British Columbians, between the ages of 15 and 64 years, self-identify as having disabilities. People with disabilities are twice as likely to live in poverty compared to people without disabilities. There are 203 First Nations in British Columbia. Approximately 270,000 Indigenous people live in B.C., roughly 6% of the population. (Source: Statistics Canada Census 2016, B.C. Profile). There are significant health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Indigenous people in B.C. have higher prevalence of diabetes, infant mortality, youth suicide and lower life expectancy than non-Indigenous people. (Source: Provincial Health Officer's Report - First Nations Health and Well Being, Interim Report, 2015). Learn More: View the proclamation: www.bclaws.ca/civix/document/id/proclamations/proclamations/IndDisAwrMnth2017 For more information on the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disability Society: www.bcands.bc.ca For more information about British Columbia's Accessibility plan: https://gov.bc.ca/Accessibility Disabled World is an independent disability community established in 2004 to provide disability news and information to people with disabilities, seniors, their family and/or carers. See our homepage for informative news, reviews, sports, stories and how-tos. You can also connect with us on Twitter and Facebook or learn more about Disabled World on our about us page. advertisements Disabled World provides general information only. The materials presented are never meant to substitute for professional medical care by a qualified practitioner, nor should they be construed as such. Financial support is derived from advertisements or referral programs, where indicated. Any 3rd party offering or advertising does not constitute an endorsement. Cite This Page (APA): Social Development and Poverty Reduction. (2017, November 2). Indigenous Disability Awareness Month British Columbia. Disabled World. Retrieved November 16, 2022 from www.disabled-world.com/disability/awareness/bc-indigenous.php Permalink: Indigenous Disability Awareness Month British Columbia By PTI: envoy on India-EU Summit New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) Security cooperation was strengthened during the India-EU Summit, Belgian envoy to India Jan Luykx said today, but admitted that no real progress was made on the free trade agreement. Luykx said he considers the India-EU Summit, held here last month, a "success" barring the the much-delayed free trade pact (FTA). advertisement He also indicated that Belgium was in favour of the India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA), as the proposed FTA is known. "In the field of trade negotiations, the Summit has not really led to any results. On the other hand, as far as I am concerned, the Summit did mark progress between India and the EU in several important fields, especially in the area of security cooperation," Luykx said. During the India-EU Summit held in early September, both sides adopted a declaration to counter terrorism and discussed ways to strengthen their cooperation in the key areas of trade and security. However, there was no major headway on the free trade pact. Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, had said that "only when the conditions are right we resume (talks)". Luykx said the Summit had a broad agenda and FTA was one of the main issues. PTI PR ASK ASK --- ENDS --- By Allison Guy Rosa Rojas has some unusual neighbors. Sometimes, when she looks past her front yard to the sea, she spots a blue whale passing by. Rojas owns a cluster of guest cabins in Punta de Choros, a quiet, 450-person settlement seven hours north of Santiago. If not for the sea, Punta de Choros wouldnt exist. The scrubby, moon-gray desert surrounding the town doesnt offer much to sustain human life. But the ocean here is as generous as the land is dry. Shellfish beds churn out valuable clams and abalone. Whales and penguins lure in tourists. We have so many things to protect, Rojas said. Its not just the sea, its not just the land. Its the water, the flowers, the wetlands, the birds. For years, Rojas, Oceana and other allies have battled to keep heavy industry from steamrolling Punta de Choros and nearby fishing villages. In 2013, the area faced its biggest challenge yet. Mining company Andes Iron unveiled a $2.5 billion plan to transform the landscape with vast mines, a desalinization plant and commercial port. It was the fight of a lifetimeand its not over yet. A fisherman searches for razor clams near Punta de Choros. Oceana / Claudio Almarza The Last Cleanest Coast All of Chiles coastline once teemed with wildlife and seafood. Now, Punta de Choros is an anomaly. Aside from a few small mines, La Higuera, the municipality that contains Punta de Choros, has escaped the industrial overgrowth that bedevils other parts of the country. The waters are unspoiled because big business has left them untouched, said Josue Ramos, a third-generation fisherman and the president of the La Higuera Fishermans Cooperative. Like many residents in Punta de Choros, he hand-harvests bushels of abalone and razor clams from the towns cold waters. Shellfish from this area are worth a lot because the ocean is so clean. Export companies fight over the product we harvest and sell it outside of the country, Ramos said. In this area there isnt contamination like in other areas in Chile. Though most folks in La Higuera fish, tourism is gaining importance. Since 1998, annual visitors have jumped from 900 to 60,000. Its easy to see why. The area is one of 37 global hotspots for biodiversity, home to rare desert and ocean life. Strong currents drive nutrient-rich water to the surface, nourishing fish, giant kelp, otters and 80 percent of the worlds Humboldt penguins. When rains come, as they did this August, the wind-scoured islands of the National Humboldt Penguin Reserve erupt with pink flowers and green leaves, said filmmaker Cristobal Diaz de Valdes. It becomes magical. Ten years ago, a tide of contamination threatened to wash over the penguin islands and the rest of Punta de Choros. Everything that makes this place uniquethe whales, the abalone, the peoplewas in danger of disappearing. The desert landscape of Punta de Choros. The penguin islands are visible on the horizon. Oceana / Claudio Almarza Broken Promises When Andes Iron submitted its proposal in 2013, it was not the first time that industry had eyed the mineral-rich region. Starting in 2007, three coal-fired power plants were slated for construction in La Higuera, until the president of Chile relocated them in 2010 following a vocal campaign. Andes Irons Dominga project was notable for the scale of its disruption. Two open-pit iron and copper mines would punch holes in the face of the desert. An industrial port and desalinization plant would rise above the areas unspoiled coves. Other big changes would tag along: highways, cargo ships, droves of outside workers. In Chile, once you have one project, said Liesbeth van der Meer, the head of Oceana in Chile, there are usually many other projects associated with it. The locals who had campaigned against the coal plants were aghast. The visual clutter of ships and 2-kilometer jetties would spoil the views that tourists travel to appreciate. And their concerns werent just aesthetic. Diaz de Valdes, who has campaigned to protect La Higuera since 2007, said that the ship traffic, noise and pollution would drive away whales and hurt penguins. No wildlife, no tourists. La Higueras famous shellfish were at risk too. The brine pumped into the ocean from the desalinization plant might kill sensitive abalone and razor clam larvae, Diaz de Valdes said. And Ramos was concerned that the mercury and cyanide used to process ore in the mines could seep into drinking water and filter into the ocean. For us, as fishermen, its an accursed project, he said. It would kill the entire marine ecosystem. Andes Iron promised jobs and income. But people in La Higuera said they only needed to look to northern Chile to know their future. There, local people are still poor, and poorly educated, despite a glut of mines and industrial projects, Rojas explained. Companies everywhere are the same, she said. They give money to some people, they give presents, they offer many things. And when they get what they want, they forget all about what they said. Locals say they only have to look elsewhere in Chile to know that heavy industry doesnt bring good jobs. Oceana / Claudio Almarza Split Down the Middle It took Andes Iron another three years to evaluate the projects environmental impact. Oceanawhich had campaigned against the coal plants in 2010 and had been pushing to permanently protect La Higuera since thenexamined the environmental impact report and saw something strange. Andes Iron said nothing about how a sudden onslaught of cargo ships would affect the National Humboldt Penguin Reservea significant oversight. Under Chilean law, if an industrial project is found to have omitted key information from its impact report, the government is required to reject it right off the bat. To confirm its suspicions, the Oceana team approached an environmental evaluation expert to review the impact statement. He was dismayed by Andes Irons work. He said this is incomplete, this is a very bad project, theres not enough scientific information, van der Meer said. In October 2016, Oceana published an 80-page report detailing reasons why the Dominga project should be rejectednot only because it overlooked the effects of ship traffic, but because of inadequate mitigation measures and other legal flaws. Oceana presented the report to the senate and parliament, who concurred with its findings. Despite this, the Environmental Evaluation Service of Coquimbo, the region where La Higuera is located, recommended the project for approval to a commission of regional officials. After their vote, the officials were split down the middle, leaving the governor of Coquimbo to decide. Many assumed that the governor, Claudio Ibanez, would side with mining interests. Mining, after all, is a major economic force in Coquimbo. But Ibanez had visited Punta de Choros before, van der Meer said. He didnt want to be responsible for destroying the penguins nesting islands, one of the oldest marine reserves in Chile. On March 9, the governor cast the deciding voteagainst Andes Iron. In August, the project headed for a final vote with a committee of national ministers, and was again rejected. It was a huge shock, van der Meer said. Mining is the motor of our economy. We have never before rejected a project, mining or otherwise, on environmental principles. South American marine otters, an endangered species, thrive in La Higuera. Oceana / Eduardo Sorenson Other surprises followed. President Michelle Bachelet publicly supported the national ministers decision. Chile needs development to go hand-in-hand with care for the environment, she said, in an August speech. It is my promise to the future. Angered by what they saw as an anti-economy stance, the finance and economy ministers resigned just days after. Andes Iron appealed the final rejection. The project is now headed to Chiles environmental court. The fight continues. But its clear that the campaign to protect La Higuera has changed Chiles national conversation. Politicians are being forced to consider the consequences of unchecked development. And corporations are now aware that Chiles civil society has the power to galvanize thousands. The day the national ministers rejected Dominga was a rare time for celebration. Oceana organized an impromptu thank-you march in La Serena, the capital of Coquimbo. Since the vote happened months earlier than anticipated, van der Meer expected a low turnout. To her surprise, more than 900 fisherman and other supporters arrived, some after traveling for hours. They love what they have, they understand what they have, van der Meer said. It was a very happy moment. Development, Not Destruction Though Andes Iron may never drill in La Higuera, it left its mark in other ways. They divided families, groups, social unity, Rojas said. Our work now is to reestablish families and friendships. One way to do this, she said, is by making sure that everyone can earn a decent living. Rojas, along with Ramos, Diaz de Valdes and van der Meer, have high hopes for eco-tourism. We need to make clear that we are pushing for sustainable growth, van der Meer said. Its not just about penguins and whales. Its about the community. And then there are those pristine shellfish plots. Unlike the mines, which had a working life of just 26 years, the abalone and clams will produce as long as fishermen can protect them, van der Meer said. We cant dismiss that they are doing something that is going to last forever. There are still big challenges on the horizon. Even if the environmental court terminates the Dominga project, theres no guarantee that another mining company wont arrive next year with blueprints and promises. A vibrant underwater landscape in La Higuera. Eduardo Sorensen / Oceana To prepare for this, Oceana is working with scientists and local advocates to put the brakes on big industry, permanently. Theyre currently campaigning to get La Higuera declared a mixed-use protected area, one that would allow sustainable fishing and responsible tourism while shutting out mines and mega-ports. The change cant come soon enough. We cant keep fighting all our lives, Rojas said. We need to protect this forever. By PTI: not official Mumbai, Nov 2 (PTI) A Shiv Sena leader compiled a booklet titled "Ghotalebaaz BJP" listing "scams" of BJP ministers and distributed it among the party leaders yesterday. The development could further strain the already frosty relations being shared by the two uncomfortable allies even though a Sena leader today clarified that the booklet was not compiled officially by the Uddhav Thackeray-led party. advertisement A Sena leader today said the booklet was distributed after the meeting got over last evening and Thackeray had already left the place by then. The 56-page booklet lists 20 "national scams" of the "transparent BJP" from the time it came to power at the Centre and also the "scams" that were allegedly "committed by the party leaders, besides the quantum of scams during the BJPs tenure from 1999 to 2004". On the proceedings of the meeting, Sena MLC Neelam Gorhe said Thackeray asked the cadres to further increase the organisational strength upto the booth level and ensure that the loan waiver scheme, announced under the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji maharaj, is implemented without any hiccups. Interestingly, Sena had recently hit out at the BJP-led state government over "hasty" implementation of the Rs 34022 crore loan waiver scheme for farmers. The BJP-led government in Maharashtra, of which Sena is also a part, recently completed three years in office. Though Sena seems attempting a damage control by stating that the booklet was not an official compilation, the opposition NCP latched onto it to attack the BJP. "The BJP, which always talks about transparency and high morals, has been bared by its own ally. If the BJP still shares power with the Sena after it has laid bare all the facts about corruption of its ministers. There will be none other than the BJP which will be perceived as being so helpless for power," Malik told reporters. The Sena has stepped up its attack against its senior ally after the BJP inducted Congress renegade and ex-Shivsainik Narayan Ranes outfit in the NDA fold. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had earlier confirmed the reports that Rane, who recently left the Congress to float Maharashtra Swabhiman Paksha, would be inducted into the government in the next Cabinet expansion, expected to take place before the Winter session of Maharashtra Legislature in December. Fadnavis had said that people may not like Sena playing a "double role" in politics, a dig aimed at the frequent attacks by the Sena on the BJP while continuing to be in government. PTI MM NSK --- ENDS --- advertisement By Julie Dermansky Early morning skies Wednesday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were alight from a fire that started around 2:30 a.m. at an ExxonMobil refinery. The blaze, though contained before the sun came up, is a reminder to the surrounding community of yet another danger of living next to refineries and chemical plants. Exxons refinery is located along the stretch of Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans known as Cancer Alley due to the high number of chemical plants and refineriesand illnesses possibly connected to emissionsalong the rivers banks. Exxon issued a statement to CBS affiliate WAFB while the fire smoldered, saying the community was not impacted by emissions from the refinery fire and that air quality readings were below detectable limits. Mary Lee Orr, executive director of The Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), questions the possibility of making such a determination so fast. Her group has been working with Cancer Alley communities, helping to reduce their exposure to pollution from the areas oil and petrochemical industry. Exxons Baton Rouge refinery is adjacent to one of the companys eight facilities named in a settlement reached with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) and announced Oct. 31. Last year LEAN filed a lawsuit against an Exxon chemical facility in Baton Rouge, next to the refinery that caught on fire Wednesday. That suit alleges the facility has been violating the Clean Air Act by failing to report pollution releases correctly. Lisa Jordan, director of Tulane Universitys Environmental Legal Clinic and representing LEAN in this case, said it is too early to say how the recent agreement between the federal government and Exxon will impact their own case. Jordan said LEANs case encompasses a broader range of issues than those in the one recently settled. According to the DOJ, the settlement resolves allegations that ExxonMobil violated the Clean Air Act by failing to properly operate and monitor industrial flares at their petrochemical facilities, which resulted in excess emissions of harmful air pollution. #Exxon Settles Air Pollution Lawsuit, Will Pay $2.5 Million in Fines, $300 Million for Technology Upgrades https://t.co/VagH3bwonE @350 EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 1, 2017 It requires Exxon to install and operate air pollution control and monitoring technology to reduce air pollution from 26 industrial flares at five facilities in Texas and three in Louisiana, at a cost of about $300 million. In addition, the company must pay a civil penalty of $2.5 million. Some environmental groups have described the fines as a slap on the wrist, but LEANS technical adviser Wilma Subra believes the settlement is substantial. The amount of money to be spent on air pollution improvements is a positive step in the right direction, she told me. However, Subra is concerned that the air pollution monitoring devices in the agreement will only monitor benzene, which is known to cause cancer. In her view, Exxon should be required to monitor a whole host of other potentially harmful chemicals it is emitting. The instances of pollution cited in the recently settled suit do not include emissions from any of Exxons Texas facilities affected by Hurricane Harvey. Subra pointed out that the pollution incidents at Texas refineries and chemical facilities following the hurricane show that industry has no method for controlling pollution when hurricanes hit, something she hopes industry will change soon. Exxons Baytown, Texas, operation was among the eight industrial facilities included in the recent settlement. It was also one of the plants that reported pollution releases due to Hurricane Harvey. In this case, the refinerys roof sank due to the storms heavy rains, which resulted in the release of hazardous gasesincluding volatile organic compounds and benzene above permitted levels, according to the New York Times. Or also sees the agreement between Exxon and the Trump administration as a positive step toward protecting Cancer Alley communities. But sadly, in the short term, the agreement wont help the community, she told me. It will take time to implement the new pollution reduction devices. And though EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt stated that this agreement shows, EPA is dedicated to partnering with states to address critical environmental issues and improving compliance in the regulated community to prevent future violations of the law, the agency under Trump has been racing to undo its previous work. Recently Pruitt announced a measure to repeal former President Barack Obamas EPA policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, a plan Trumps EPA has concluded would have substantial health benefits. Furthermore, a list of potential names for the agencys Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee includes a sizable increase in industry representatives and consultants, as reported by the Intercept. On that list are two scientists who have worked for Exxon, indicating the oil and gas giant could have greater influence over EPA science and policies in the future. Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog. The U.S. Department of Agricultures Forest Service released a recommendation Wednesday to lift former President Obamas uranium mining ban in the watershed of the Grand Canyon. The move was made in response to President Trumps sweeping energy independence executive order in March to ease regulatory burdens on energy development. This appalling recommendation threatens to destroy one of the worlds most breathtakingly beautiful regions to give free handouts to the mining industry, said Allison Melton, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. The Trump administrations willingness to sacrifice our natural treasures to polluters knows no bounds. But this reckless, shortsighted proposal wont be allowed to stand. Amber Reimondo, Energy Program Director with the Grand Canyon Trust, had similar sentiments. The Forest Service should be advocating for a permanent mining ban, not for advancing private mining interests that threaten one of the natural wonders of the world, Reimondo said. The Grand Canyon and the people and communities that depend on it cannot be left to bear the risks of unfettered uranium mining, which is what will happen if the moratorium is removed. The 20-year ban was issued in 2012 by former Interior Sec. Ken Salazar. It prohibits new claims for mining in the region, which includes more than one million acres of public land adjacent to the Grand Canyon. The ban, however, does not restrict existing mines, four of which continue within just a few miles of the rim of the Colorado River. Reimondo noted in a blog post that it is currently unclear what part of the ban the Forest Service intends to revise. It could mean shrinking the duration of the ban, set to expire in 2032, or reducing the acreage included in the ban, or both, she wrote. Grand Canyon Trust The Hill reported that the federal government does not get any royalties from uranium mining since it is regulated as hard-rock mining, but Republicans, industry groups and some local leaders have pushed for mining to spur local economic activity. Uranium mining would have brought in nearly $29 billion to our local economy over a 42-year period, the board of supervisors of Arizonas Mohave County wrote in June to Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke, whose Bureau of Land Management agency owns some of the land. This ban took away much needed growth and jobs from our area. However, the Center for Biological Diversity warned that past uranium mining in the region has polluted soils, washes, aquifers and drinking water. Abandoned uranium mines, including more than 500 on the Navajo Nation, still await clean up. This is a dangerous industry that is motivated by profit and greed with a long history of significantly damaging lands and waters. They are now seeking new mines when this industry has yet to clean up the hundreds of existing mines all over the landscape that continue to damage our home. We should learn from the past, not ignore it, said Havasupai Tribal Chairman Don E. Watahomigie. The Kaibab National Forest south of Grand Canyon National Park comprises crucial wildlife habitat for mule deer, cougars, elk and pronghorn, said Kim Crumbo of Wildlands Network. Considered sacred by Native Americans, the forests ponderosa pine, woodlands and wild creatures are vulnerable to the industrial impacts of mining and increased truck traffic should the mineral withdrawal be revoked. Polls show that 80 percent of Arizonans as well as a number of environmental organizations and native tribes support permanent protection of Arizonas iconic landmark. One million acres of public lands around Grand Canyon were protected from destructive uranium mining due to significant public support and recognition of what is at riskGrand Canyons watershed, its wildlife, and so much more, said Sandy Bahr, director of Sierra Clubs Grand Canyon chapter. Now, the Trump administration wants to stomp all over the public and the publics lands by rescinding these important protections. Doing so will put at risk Grand Canyons waters and wildlife, as well as the economy of northern Arizona, for the short-term profits of foreign mining companies. We must keep these protections in place. By Pete Stauffer Its a simple choice, really. Do we want our National Marine Sanctuaries to be used for recreation, education, fishing and ecological protection? Or do we want to hand these ocean gems over the oil and gas industry so they can expand offshore drilling off our coasts? For the past six months, the federal administration has been studying this very question. Following the Trump administrations Executive Order: The America First Energy Strategy, the Department of Commerce began a review of five National Marine Sanctuaries (including all four off Californias coast) and six Marine Monuments to determine if these sites might be exploited for energy development. As part of the process, they invited the public to share their thoughts on the matter. The input received was unequivocal: dont mess with our sanctuaries! According to an analysis by the Marine Conservation Institute, roughly 99 percent of public comments collected at regulations.gov expressed support for maintaining Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments as they currently exist. In all, nearly 100,000 citizens spoke out on the issue, demonstrating broad and diverse support for sanctuaries including Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, Cordell Bank and the Greater Farallones. Moreover, seven coastal counties in California, from Ventura to Humboldt, passed resolutions affirming local government support for Sanctuaries. This brings us to the secret report. On Oct. 25, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross submitted his recommendations to President Trump on National Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments based on the agencys review of the issue. The only problem? No one from the public is allowed to read it. Yes, thats right. Despite a review process ostensibly based on public input, the administrations plans for our National Marine Sanctuaries are being kept a secret. One might assume that no action will be taken against Marine Sanctuaries, based on the overwhelming public support expressed. Yet, given the recent news that protections for National Monuments will be scaled back by the administration, following similar (and equally overwhelming) public sentiment expressed, its clear that the risk is very real. Add the fact that the report is being kept under wraps, and the urgency of the matter becomes even more clear. Thats why people who value Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments need to speak out and contact their members of Congress. While the administration may be intent on opening Sanctuaries and Monuments to oil and gas development, our federal representatives can fight back to protect these designations. Please pick up the phone and call your representatives today! Find your members phone numbers here: Senate and House. The Surfrider Foundation is proud to be part of a national coalition working to defend our countrys Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments from attacks by the current administration. We will continue to fight to protect these special places, including Marine Sanctuaries off California and the Northeast Canyons & Seamounts Marine Monument, whose designations our members worked so hard to support. Visit our Save our Marine Sanctuaries campaign page. Nestle, the biggest food company in the world, announced Thursday it will only use eggs from cage-free hens for all its food products globally by 2025a major step in the global cage-free movement, animal rights advocates said. The company said the transition will happen in Europe and the U.S. by the end of 2020, with the rest of the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania to follow by 2025. Our purpose is to enhance quality of life and contribute to a healthier future. This includes ensuring decent welfare standards for animals that are reared for the ingredients used in our products, Nestle said in its announcement. Switching to cage-free supplies worldwide requires time and investment. We will manage this in a sustainable and cost effective way during the implementation period, ensuring consumers continue to access affordable high quality foods throughout. We look forward to working with our suppliers, farmers, civil society and customers to drive progress. The Swiss transnational food giant sells everything from bottled water to baby food. The new cage-free policy will affect Nestle products and brands such as Gerber, Nesquik, Butterfinger, KitKat, Wonka, Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisine, Stouffers, Dreyers and Haagen-Dazs. A company spokesman told Reuters that tens of millions of chickens would be positively affected by the switch. The move was made after Nestles close conversations and collaboration with members of Open Wing Alliance, an international coalition of farm animal protection organizations launched by The Humane League in 2016. The Humane League commends Nestles commitment to its progressive timelines for these groundbreaking animal welfare policies, which will serve as the benchmark for all other food companies worldwide, said David Coman-Hidy, president of The Humane League. This is a historic moment for farm animal welfare, and we believe it marks a tipping point for monumental progress in reforming the worst practices in factory farming. Major brands including Wyndham Worldwide, Sodexo, Walmart, Aldi, Kroger, Dunkin Donuts and Dennys have already committed to eliminating cages from their supply chains. The Humane League hopes that Nestles commitment will spur other food companies, restaurants and grocers to take similar steps. As EcoWatch mentioned previously, although the label cage-free has its problems, the food industrys overall shift to cage-free eggs is a big step for animal welfare. The vast majority of eggs that we see in the U.S. come from hens confined in battery cages. These hens cannot spread their wings, they cannot walk around or express other normal hen behaviors. They may never see the light of day. The Humane League is hoping to eliminate the use of cages around the world and is pressuring global companies to end the practice, Coman-Hidy told EcoWatch last year. After surviving two Category 5 hurricanes this fall, the Caribbean resembled something of a war zone, according to Virgin Group founder Richard Branson. And so what the island nations of the region need now is a post-war plan for redevelopmenta plan hes calling the Disaster Recovery Marshall Plan, named after the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. The plan will be focused on bringing a green energy revolution to the region, Branson told Reuters. The Caribbean spans 2.8 million square miles and is home to 37 million peoplemany of whom live in poverty. While poverty levels on islands like Jamaica, Barbuda, Dominica, and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands vary widely, the region as a whole has struggled to build strong economies, according to the Caribbean Development Bank. The billionaire inventor and businessman, who owns a private island in the Caribbean where he rode out Hurricane Irma with his staff, is working with global leaders including the International Monetary Fund to help rebuild the islands, according to the report. Branson is insisting that the islands rebuild their energy grid on sustainable, renewable sources rather than fossil fuels. Another storm could strike within the coming weeks, Branson told a meeting of leaders in Washington earlier this month. The Caribbean must seize the opportunity and take the leap from 20th-century technology to 21st-century innovation. The Washington meeting was hosted by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, according to the Digital Journal. Branson is the owner of a wind energy company that already operates in the Caribbean, according to the UN-backed website Climate Action, which noted that solar and wind energy is cheaper and easier for island nations to obtain than importing fossil fuels. At the meeting in Washington, Branson said the destruction on his own Necker Island and neighboring islands was like that of a nuclear blast, according to Digital Journal. Now, the inventor and CEO hopes to forge an international fund for the island nations by working with government and business leaders. Branson already met with the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, and together the pair are working on debt relief options for the islands, according to the Journal. The Marshall Plan was a $13 billion planor about $132 billion in modern-day moneycreated by the U.S> to help rebuild Western European countries, the Digital Journal reported. We want to move the Caribbean countries into clean energy and make them more sustainable, which will make dealing with hurricanes much easier, he said. The Caribbean Heads of State agree with one voice that this is a good idea. Global Citizen campaigns on the United Nations Global Goals, including bringing sustainable energy to countries around the world. You can take action here. Reposted with permission from our media associate Global Citizen. By William H. Funk Proposed funding cuts to environmental programs in President Trumps proposed 2018 budget have drawn anxious attention from around the world. But while the biggest numbers deal with rolling back the Obama administrations climate change initiatives, more subtle withdrawals of federal support from lesser known international programs threaten the continued existence of some of the planets most iconic animals. President Trumps 2018 budget proposes a 32 percent across-the-board shrinkage of U.S. foreign assistance, affecting hundreds of sustainability, health and environmental programs. As comparatively paltry as a few million dollars retracted here and there from a $1.15 trillion federal budget may seem, for those desperately striving through underfunded programs to preserve the worlds wildlife, the loss of monetary and moral support from the U.S. could be devastating. And wildlife wouldnt be the only victims. The societal havoc wreaked by unchallenged trafficking cartels, and the loss of important tourist income due to vanished elephants, lions and giraffes resulting in abandoned safaris, could directly impact poor communities in Africa and Asia. It remains to be seen if the U.S. Congress will embrace Trumps draconian cuts for 2018. But even if the legislature disallows the reductions next year, the administration still has between three and seven years left to run. And it seems unlikely that the president will shift very far away from his professed America First policies. An elephant in Tanzania. USAID programs have helped fund community conservation programs and ranger equipment and training in Africa. Trumps budget would slash funding to many such programs. nickandmel2006 / flickr Less money to curb the illegal wildlife trade The U.S. State Department is tasked with administering the Presidential Taskforce on Wildlife Trafficking, co-chairing that body with USAID, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Department of Justice. This interagency coalition justifies its mission this way: Wildlife trafficking is an international development issue because it undermines security, rule of law, and our efforts to end extreme poverty. Through the auspices of the State/USAID interface, the U.S. has applied a multi-pronged approach to combat global trafficking. That includes anti-poaching workshops utilizing SMART technology for rangers in Central and East Africa; helping strengthen wildlife laws in Kenya and Mozambique; working with major American and African airlines to train staff to detect and intercept trafficked goods; and initiating a cultural shift by reaching over 740 million people across Asia through the Internet, TV spots, and installations at airports to reduce wildlife product demand. If Trumps budget is approved, the State Departments budget for all this will be more than halvedfalling from $90.7 million to $40.9 million. USAIDs biodiversity program, which in FY2017 spent $265 million in conservation efforts across fifty countries in a mission to protect natural landscapes and wildlife while enhancing U.S. economic and security interests, would see its expenditures shrink to less than a third of that amount, to $69.9 million. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service white rhino monitoring program in Nakuru National Park, Kenya Karl Stromayer / USFWS In 2015, USAID programs helped fund community conservation in northern Kenya, reduced poaching of elephants and rhinos by 35 and 78 percent respectively, and invested in training, equipment, education and new outposts for rangersthe men and women on the front lines of the wildlife wars. One result: rangers in Central Africa patrolled up to 50 percent more territory than the year before and apprehended more than 400 poachers thanks to wider deployment of the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART), a system of ranger-based monitoring techniques and technologies. Under Trumps budget, the USFWSs International Species programfocusing on African and Asian elephants, great apes, migratory birds, tigers, rhinos and sea turtleswould go from a 2017 budget of $9.15 million to being completely zeroed out. With that cut, significant anti-poaching, community engagement, habitat protection and wildlife management programs would vanish from poor countries whose priorities generally place conservation far down the list. Under Trumps plan, the cash-strapped USFWS would see its 2018 budget decreased by $202.9 million compared to 2017. A black rhino. U.S. wildlife conservation efforts have contributed much to the preservation of animals worldwide in past years. Those efforts are now threatened by the Trump administration. John and Karen Hollingsworth, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Environmental groups have petitioned for several species imperiled by criminal wildlife trafficking to be protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including giraffes, pangolins and African elephants. Such listings would curb Americas role in the trade of these species body parts, among other benefits. But proposed funding cuts make it likely that the Trump administration wont act on these petitions. While it may be difficult to accept, this is the way the world will look if the president of the U.S. successfully moves his proposed budget through Congress. Calls to congressional offices failed to shed light on how many and how much of Trumps reductions will show up in the 2018 budget to be approved by the House and Senate. A snow leopard. Already underfunded international conservation efforts could be seriously undermined by Trumps 2018 budget if it is approved. Sujit kumar Mahapatra America First puts wildlife last According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, funding to protect new species under the Endangered Species Act would be cut by nearly 17 percent under Trumps budget, which would severely hinder the USFWS from progressing with its seven-year plan that allows the agency to prioritize over 350 species for listing decisions. The proposed Department of the Interior budget slashes one million dollars each from the African Elephant Conservation Act and Asian Elephant Conservation Act; the African Elephant Conservation Act was funded at $3 million in 2016 and 2017, and would now be funded at $2 million; the Asian Elephant Conservation Act was funded at $2 million and would now be funded at $1 million. These cuts couldnt come at a worse time. African elephants are currently being slaughtered for their ivory at the rate of eight percent of their total population per year, or nearly 30,000 annually. Interiors conservation programs provide technical and financial assistance to range states to protect elephants and their habitats, with money for elephant population management, public education, and anti-poaching activities. The USFWS website details some of the important projects that have been funded in the past and are now on the budgetary chopping block. The USFWS Conservation and Enforcement Budget would likewise be cut, from around $182 million for 2017 to $166 million in 2018. While this may not seem like a huge reduction, it is being sliced from a budget that is already far too small to do the job. This funding is critical to protecting species imperiled by the illegal wildlife trade, and enables U.S. investigations of wildlife crimes, helping put traffickers in jail; regulating the wildlife trade; and helping Americans understand and obey wildlife protection laws. Species that will be most hurt by this cut would likely be those for which the U.S. is a major market, including elephants (the U.S. is the second largest international market for trafficked wildlife, after China). In a reply to an emailed query, U.S. Senator and former vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine (D-VA) said that he would strongly oppose the presidents 2018 budget plan, noting that in 2013, the U.S. joined 21 nations in launching Operation Cobra, a successful multinational strategy designed to tackle illegal wildlife trading in Africa and Asia. Kaine also pointed to President Obamas Executive Order 13648, aimed at improving coordination with other governments in combating trafficking. Both of these pledges of American leadership to confront the international wildlife crisis are now on the table for defunding. A pangolin scale burn in Cameroon, Africa, supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Pangolins are believed to be the most heavily trafficked wild mammals in the world, with as many as one million being poached from the wild during the last decade. Linh Nguyen Ngoc Bao USFWS Special Agent Steve Oberholtzer discusses ivory trafficking with reporters. In the past, the U.S. has worked diligently to combat the illegal wildlife trade. USFWS Empty coffers mean empty forests To put all of this in perspective, Congress only provides approximately three and half percent of the funding that the USFWSs own scientists estimate is needed to recover species, according to a Center for Biological Diversity report on endangered species spending. This amount, however meager and inadequate, is now in the crosshairs of an administration whose antipathy for wildlife, natural landscapes and environmental protection is manifest in its many administrative actions. The Trump budget would cut the Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund, which allows state and federal partners to recover currently listed species, by $34 million, a 64 percent reduction. His budget also reduces funding for foreign endangered species like elephants, rhinoceros and tigers by 19 percent, and reduces the funding for the listing program by 17 percent. Currently 500 plants and animals are waiting for consideration for protection. Carter Roberts, president of the World Wildlife Fund, said that the 2018 budget in its current form would be a calamitous abandonment of American pledges to assist poor countries struggling to preserve our common wild heritage. These cuts will turn back the clock on advances made in combating common global challenges like food and water security, wildlife trafficking, and climate change, he said, urging passage of a budget that more closely aligns with Americas long-held humanitarian and conservation values. Robertss appeal is echoed by other leading conservation groups, including the Wildlife Conservation Society and The Nature Conservancy, whose president Mike Tercek explained that, American investments in international conservation support sustainable livelihoods, political stability and good governance in difficult regions of the world, thereby supporting our own national security and economic objectives. Pulling back on these commitments, he said, would be prohibitively costly, harming our last remaining rhinos, snow leopards and sea turtles, but also undermining governmental accountability and due process in the developing worldcritical to combatting the persistent state corruption that underlies the tragic success of international trafficking networks. An 1895 photo of a young but dead Javan Rhino in Ujung Kulon; the hunter is Charles te Mechelen. Donald Trump Jr. is an avid big game trophy hunter in an era when conservationists are battling fiercely to protect the worlds fast vanishing wild animals. Blasting away at the wild world Fortunately for declining wildlife, the president does not have the final say on the U.S. budget. That remains for the House and Senate to decide, a decision that theyve already once delayed this year. But the news out of Congress thus far isnt all that good. Environmental groups are blasting pending House spending legislation, E&E News reported on Sept. 7, warning that proposed budget amendments in the House would undermine environmental protections, making major funding cuts aimed at the Interior, EPA and Commerce Department work on protection and conservation. As of this writing, the State Departments International Conservation Programs project, which this year allotted a mere $7 million to some of the most important wildlife organizations on earth, including the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and its indispensible Red List of data on thousands of species, would be totally defunded under Trumps plan. The jurys still out on what the final 2018 budget will look like (with a vote not likely due until early December), but its clear that the current administration and many in the GOP dominated Congress are advocating an abandonment of long-held, fundamental domestic and international American tenetsespecially helping the disadvantaged and taking a stand for treasured wild animals the world over. Meanwhile, those who continue to assert these values, do so from a self-declared position of wanting to help others, of being on the right side of history, and of fulfilling our obligations across the globe. For the planets most spectacular and endangered wildlife, public participation in the seemingly mundane wrangling over budgetary priorities has never been more important. Rhino mother and calf grazing in Kaziranga National Park, India. With so much wildlife at risk globally, Trumps proposed reductions to U.S. international wildlife conservation programs couldnt come at a worse time. Deepraj Reposted with permission from our media associate Mongabay. The online site GreatSchools.org has released a massive expansion of its school-ratings system, intended to provide more nuance about school quality by highlighting student test growth, achievement gaps, school climate, and course offerings. The expansion comes as GreatSchools and other school-ratings sites ride skyrocketing popularity, and as states work to incorporate more multifaceted measures into their own school accountability systems. But the changes also respond to ongoing concern by education and fair housing advocates that test-focused school-ratings sites can push users to overly simplistic or even stereotypical judgments of schools. [Ratings-site data] often gets used at the individual levelIm going to talk to my friends and pick a school thats right for my childrenbut these data need to be about how we can improve a system ... not individual winners and losers, said Rebecca Jacobsen, an associate professor for education politics and policy at Michigan State University who studies how parents interpret and use education data. GreatSchools previously provided ratings based primarily on test scores and parent feedback for more than 130,000 public and private pre-K-12 schools nationwide. As simple as they were, those ratings were used widely by parents and real estate-related companies, some of which linked to the ratings on their websites. Beginning Thursday, the site will also rate schools based on student growth from year to year, and, for secondary schools, on graduation rates, Advanced Placement offerings and enrollment, and students average performance on college placement tests. It also includes an equity rating, based on whether there are achievement gaps for students from racial minority groups, those in poverty, and those with special needs, as well as on how students in those groups fare compared to similar students statewide. The revamped site also uses federal civil rights data to flag schools that show high rates of student absenteeism or disproportionate discipline for different groups of students. What we really want is for people to see the top-line data and dive in and explore it more, said Adam Gorski, GreatSchools lead data scientist. We hope it will more accurately reflect whats going on in a school besides just its demographics. The new ratings, which were piloted in California this summer, will be launched in 42 more states and the District of Columbia this week. The remaining statesAlaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermontwill be updated once the site has additional school data. Were looking at how can we turn the data into information thats really designed to help parents to make sense of itand whats the insight on what you can do about it, said Matthew Nelson, the president of GreatSchools. Quick Analysis The San Francisco-based nonprofit GreatSchools mirrors the rise of other social media review services like Yelp. Its growth has been spurred by unprecedented access to school accountability data online, including its partnerships with real estate sites and the Housing and Urban Development Administration, which shares the school ratings with families who use housing vouchers. GreatSchools has expanded from 44 million users in 2013 to more than 50 million users today. John Luedemann is one of those users. Two years ago, he and his family faced a move from Houston, Texas, to Houston County, Ala., a few months before his daughter Morgan was scheduled to start kindergarten. How Are Schools Evaluated? The online school-ratings site GreatSchools.org has redesigned its 10-point evaluation system, to incorporate more measures of student growth, academic access, and efforts to reduce disparities among different student groups. Here is a breakdown of what goes into the new rating: Academic achievement: Includes the websites pre-existing evaluation of state test scores in math, reading, and science for tested grades, as well as a new measure of student growth, based on either state-reported growth measures or an in-house measure of cohorts of students from year to year. Includes the websites pre-existing evaluation of state test scores in math, reading, and science for tested grades, as well as a new measure of student growth, based on either state-reported growth measures or an in-house measure of cohorts of students from year to year. College Readiness: Includes state and federal data on a schools four-year high school graduation rate, average ACT/SAT college placement exam rates, and the percentage of high school graduates who meet entrance requirements for local state university systems. Includes state and federal data on a schools four-year high school graduation rate, average ACT/SAT college placement exam rates, and the percentage of high school graduates who meet entrance requirements for local state university systems. Advanced Coursework: Includes the average number of advanced courses each student takes in core academic subject categoriesEnglish; science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); social studies; and foreign languagesas compared to the state average. Includes the average number of advanced courses each student takes in core academic subject categoriesEnglish; science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); social studies; and foreign languagesas compared to the state average. Equity: Includes how low-income students and those from traditionally disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups in that state perform on state tests as compared to students from more traditionally advantaged groups in the school, as well as the same student groups statewide. This section also includes data on achievement for students with disabilities, but they are not included in the overall rating. Includes how low-income students and those from traditionally disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups in that state perform on state tests as compared to students from more traditionally advantaged groups in the school, as well as the same student groups statewide. This section also includes data on achievement for students with disabilities, but they are not included in the overall rating. Environment: Includes the demographics of the school, average teacher-student and counselor-student ratios, average teacher experience, and parent reviews. This section also flags schools with high or disproportionate rates of student absenteeism or school discipline. We had no family there, no connection there, no previous knowledge of the schools. You kind of have to start from scratch with nothing to go on, Luedemann said. So Luedemann narrowed his search based on the GreatSchools ratings available through his home searches on Zillow and other real estate sites. There was a pretty big discrepancy; a handful that were 7 and above, and then the rest were like 4; there was an obvious fall-off on GreatSchools 10-point scale. I tried to drill down more ... but I dont remember there being a whole lot more. Critics point to divides like the one that Luedemann found for Dolthan, Ala., as a downside of the sites previous, primarily test-score-based school ratings, which they argue can be a better proxy for a schools race or poverty demographics than for school quality. Lisa Rice, the executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Association, noted that some of her groups civil rights investigations had found real estate agents describing the same schools using different metrics to white and Latino home buyers, recommending a school to Latino parents that they had panned to white parents. The information they are providing gives only a small snapshot of each school, and no one should make a decision to send their child to a school based only on the data in these websites, Rice said. Luedemann agreedhe and his wife visited both neighborhood and magnet schools in the area before finally settling on a list of homesbut he said the site can help provide a baseline for parents who are new to a school system, either because they have young children or are entering an area. Jacobsen said she has found that providing accurate, high-quality information about schools can help parents make better decisions about their childrens education. In a study of parents reviewing school data, Jacobsen found participants used differentand often more detaileddata to analyze a school they were familiar with than they did for one they had never heard of. When good additional data gets added, weve found people begin to match the experiences of parents with children who actually attend the school, Jacobsen said. She cautioned, however, that when multiple, detailed ratings are presentedparticularly number ratingsparents are more likely to get confused or rely only on the top-line score on a ratings site. Both Jacobsen and Rice argued for more practical information on review sites that would allow parents to have conversations about school improvement. Launching Conversations GreatSchools, at least, seems to be trying to move in that direction. Nelson noted that GreatSchools expanded reporting also will include more tips for parents on how they can talk to school administrators about flagged problems, such as high chronic absenteeism for a particular student group. Eva Orbuch, the lead community organizer for the San Francisco Bay-area advocacy group Innovate Public Schools, said she has started using the sites expanded data in workshops with mostly low-income and monolingual Spanish parents. The equity rating has been very helpful, she said. The low-income number is often a big difference from the overall number, and thats often a big wake-up call for people. While Californias state education site also provides student achievement data, Orbuch said the private data site has been easier for parents to use on their phones while meeting with administrators. I work in schools where there is sometimes an extreme achievement gap between white and nonwhite students she said. Now that the parents are regularly using data, I can see how empowered they are to say no, the school really is not making growth here. ... It does complicate our work, but it has definitely provided a lot more questions for parents to ask and feel like theyve done their homework in talking to schools. A new Tel Aviv University study solves a critical piece of the puzzle of human deafness by identifying the first group of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the auditory system. "The research on long non-coding RNAs is crucial to understanding how gene expression and regulatory elements influence the auditory system," says Prof. Karen Avraham, Vice Dean of TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine. "How do changes in these inheritable parts of the genome contribute to deafness? There is a need for new approaches and entry points to gene therapy. Knowing more about how genes are controlled may help devise strategies." Prof. Avraham led the study together with Dr. Igor Ulitsky of the Weizmann Institute of Science. The results were recently published in Scientific Reports. As much as 98% of the human genome is "non-coding" -- it does not code for protein. RNAs contained in this non-coding part act as regulatory molecules and have a large impact on gene expression: where in the body and when during development or adulthood genes are expressed. One type of these RNA molecules, long non-coding RNAs, has been linked to a wide range of diseases and inheritable conditions such as cancer and celiac disease. "Ours is the first report describing lncRNAs on a comprehensive level in a model of human deafness. This work provides a resource to look further into some of the lncRNAs and study their exact function in the inner ear -- a key first step towards a potential cure," Prof. Avraham says. According to the study, identifying the lncRNAs that play an unknown role in regulating genes involved in deafness will have an impact. "Recessive mutations causing disease -- and deafness -- continue to prevail, especially in the parts of the world where marriages take place between relatives, such as in the Middle East; this is known as 'consanguinity,'" Prof. Avraham says. "LncRNAs are situated beside deafness genes, suggesting they direct and regulate these genes. By further examining these lncRNAs down the line, we may be able to help the hard of hearing, young and old alike." The researchers performed state-of-the-art next generation sequencing (NGS) on a model of human deafness to identify the critical lncRNAs. "We generated a whole-genome lncRNA profile to recognize differentially expressed lncRNAs in developing inner ear organ systems," Prof. Avraham explains. "The resulting catalogue, which contains over 3,000 lncRNAs, summarizes for the first time their expression patterns across the auditory and vestibular systems. We focused our attention on three genes out of these lncRNAs. They were selected because of their proximity to genes related to hearing and deafness." The researchers are currently performing experiments on specific lncRNAs to reveal their precise functions within the inner ear sensory epithelium. "There are still a considerable number of unsolved inherited deafness cases, despite the use of NGS," Prof. Avraham concludes. "This was what first led us to start an effort to identify novel genomic regulatory elements to explore the noncoding portion of the genome. Identifying such players can eventually assist in isolating pathogenic variants or regulatory elements that can be at the root of human hearing and balance disorders." ### American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) supports Israel's most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. For three years in a row, TAU ranked 9th in the world, and first in Israel, for alumni going on to become successful entrepreneurs backed by significant venture capital, a ranking that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,400 patents have been filed out of the University, making TAU 29th in the world for patents among academic institutions. By India Today Web Desk: Bollywood's King Khan threw a big bash for his family and close friends on his 52nd birthday at his Alibaug bungalow last night. Shah Rukh khan, who turns 52 today, celebrated his big day in the company of his special people. While the actor's family - wife Gauri and daughter Suhana reached Alibaug last afternoon, by evening his buddies too started pouring in. advertisement From Alia Bhatt to Katrina Kaif to Deepika Padukone to Karan Johar, SRK's friends from B-Town were present to ring in his 52nd birthday bash . After partying till wee hours, Alia, Deepika, Karan, Farah Khan, Farhan Akhtar and Sidharth Malhotra are back in Mumbai. It was only few months ago that the news of Alia and Sidharth's break-up spread like wildfire. But the two shut their detractors by coming together for Diwali bash. And now they were spotted together at SRK's birthday bash. Shah Rukh Khan, on the other hand, will return to Mumbai in the afternoon to address the media. Later in the day, he will greet his fans outside Mannat. (Photos: Yogen Shah) ALSO WATCH: Sidharth Malhotra opens up on his relationship with Alia Bhatt --- ENDS --- A landmark study from The Australian National University (ANU) into the health impacts of living in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation has been published in the international journal The Lancet Public Health. The findings could help bring attention to asbestos hazards in other countries, such as the United States and Canada, where the use of asbestos-contaminated insulation was installed in millions of homes. The study on loose-fill asbestos in Canberra is the first of its kind to demonstrate the health impacts of living in a house with loose-fill asbestos. Study lead author Dr Rosemary Korda said the research found the overall risk of contracting mesothelioma was low. Living in a house with loose-fill asbestos was associated with 2.5 times increased risk of mesothelioma in men. There were no recorded cases of mesothelioma among women living in the contaminated houses. Dr Korda, from the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH), said most other studies into asbestos have focussed on high exposure in occupational settings such as the mining, manufacturing and construction industries. "The ACT Asbestos Health Study examined risks for people who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos, and we found that loose-fill asbestos insulation is very likely to be unsafe," Dr Korda said. "Our findings have important health, social, financial and legal implications for governments and communities in which asbestos has been used to insulate houses." Inhaling asbestos fibres causes mesothelioma, a lethal disease which can take 20 years or more to develop. Asbestos has also be linked to other cancers, including cancer of the lung, ovary and larynx. Dr Korda said the ANU research examined data on more than one million people who lived in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) at any time between 1983 and 2013. The study linked Medicare (universal health insurance) enrolment data, national death registrations and the Australian Cancer Database to compare the incidence of mesothelioma and other cancers in people who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos with the incidence of these cancers in people who had not lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos. The study identified 17,248 people who had lived in around 1,000 houses with loose-fill asbestos insulation over 30 years. In total, 285 current and former residents of the ACT were diagnosed with mesothelioma. Seven of those residents had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation before their mesothelioma was diagnosed. Key findings include: Four more cases of mesothelioma than expected occurred in men who had lived in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation; The association between living in a loose-fill asbestos house and mesothelioma was much weaker than that seen in studies where people were exposed to asbestos through their work; and Rates of colorectal cancer rates were elevated in both men (32 per cent higher) and women (73 per cent higher) who had lived at a house with loose fill asbestos. These were higher than expected and might be due to unavoidable limitations in the study's design. The two-year study was commissioned by the ACT Government, to improve understanding of the health risks associated with living in a house with loose-fill asbestos insulation. ### The study was led by the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU, in collaboration with the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, the Sax Institute in Sydney and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in Canberra. The research in the Lancet Public Health will be available at . Anyone with health concerns about living in a house with loose-fill asbestos should contact their doctor. For media assistance and to arrange interviews, contact the ANU Media Team on +61 2 6125 7979 or at . ALEXANDRIA, Va. (November 2, 2017) - Policymakers, law enforcement and advocates can now better identify and target modern slavery thanks to the work of human rights experts and researchers whose application of unique statistical methods yields more precise figures on its existence and extent. The groundbreaking work appears in the October issue of CHANCE, which features a series of articles written by authority figures on the subject of modern slavery. The new methods helped inform the 2016 Joint Global Estimates of Modern Slavery--published by the United Nations (UN) International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation--which estimated 24.9 million people in forced labor and 15.4 million in forced marriage. "For decades, though, the prevalence of modern slavery was difficult to quantify with accuracy. Political sensitivities, unwillingness to share data and questionable data collection and analysis techniques led to inaccurate calculations and subsequently poor, if any, tracking and prevention efforts," notes Davina P. Durgana, senior researcher at the Walk Free Foundation and report co-author of the Global Slavery Index. One statistical method gaining worldwide interest is multiple systems estimation (MSE). The method basically involves analyzing three to four concurrent lists of identifiable victims for apparent overlap to estimate a victim population size. "The ongoing lack of transparency, and the lack of data sharing in the study of slavery, is not just a threat to good science; it prevents comparable analyses that might reduce suffering and the extreme human cost," notes Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery at the University of Nottingham, co-founder of Free the Slaves--a nonprofit anti-slavery advocacy organization in Washington, DC--and lead author of the Global Slavery Index. "The exploration of the MSE technique to measuring the prevalence of slavery appears to offer a solution to the problem of estimating the extent of slavery in well-developed countries." This method and subsequent findings have been widely accepted by the UN's ILO and International Organization for Migration, as well as advocates and organizations spanning the globe. "MSE and the Global Slavery Index are 'game changers' in the way slavery is measured, benefitting developed and underdeveloped countries with potential for application to other human rights issues," says Durgana. Deployed in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands in 2014 and 2016, respectively, MSE has attracted the attention of the United States government, which is evaluating its feasibility in the context of human trafficking. "Success in the US context would encourage many other developed countries to take similar action and contribute substantially to the information that exists about human trafficking in the US, both domestically and abroad," notes Paul Zador, senior statistician at Westat, Inc. Zador recently helped design a survey and analyzed data of bonded laborers in India, as well as a decades-long period of terror in Guatemala. Specific articles in this special issue of CHANCE include the following: "Unlocking the Statistics of Slavery" by Kevin Bales, professor of contemporary slavery, University of Nottingham, and lead author of the Global Slavery Index "The Challenge of Counting Victims of Human Trafficking" by Maarten Cruyff, Department of Methodology and Statistics, Utrecht University; Jan van Dijk, emeritus professor of victimology, International Victimology Institute of the University of Tilburg; and Peter G.M. van der Heijden, professor of statistics for social and behavioral sciences and head of the Department of Social Sciences, Utrecht University "Modern Slavery--from Statistics to Prevention" by Fiona David, lawyer, criminologist and executive director of global research, Walk Free Foundation "Fighting Slavery Through Statistics: A Discussion of Five Promising Methods to Estimate Prevalence in the United States" by Davina P. Durgana, senior statistician and report co-author of the Global Slavery Index, Walk free Foundation, and Paul L. Zador, senior statistician, Westat, Inc. "Using Surveys to Estimate the National Prevalences of Modern Slavery: Experience and Lessons Learned" by Jacqueline Joudo Larsen, criminologist and senior research manager, Walk Free Foundation, and Pablo Diego-Rosell, senior consultant, Gallup "Strategies to Estimate Global Prevalence of Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation" by Sheldon X. Zhang, professor and chair of the School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Kyle Vincent of Simon Fraser University "Measuring Vulnerability and Estimating Prevalence of Modern Slavery" by Jacqueline Joudo Larsen and Davina P. Durgana "The Politics of Data Reporting: A Triangulated Solution for Estimating Modern Slavery" by Davina P. Durgana and Graham K. Brown, professor of international development, head of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia "The Birth of Statistical Graphics and Their European Childhood" by Howard Wainer, statistician and author of Truth or Truthiness: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction by Learning to Think Like a Data Scientist The term "modern slavery" encompasses slavery, forced and compulsory labor and forced commercial sexual exploitation. It is the act of recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining a person for compelled labor or commercial sex acts through the use of force, fraud or coercion. ### Members of the media can obtain a complimentary copy of CHANCE by emailing jill@amstat.org. About the American Statistical Association The ASA is the world's largest community of statisticians and the oldest continuously operating professional science society in the United States. Its members serve in industry, government and academia in more than 90 countries, advancing research and promoting sound statistical practice to inform public policy and improve human welfare. For additional information, please visit the ASA website at http://www.amstat.org. About CHANCE CHANCE is a publication of the ASA designed for anyone with an interest in using data to advance science, education, and society, highlighting sound statistical science. CHANCE is a non-technical magazine, representing a cultural record of an evolving field, intended to entertain as well as inform. For more information: Jill Talley Public Relations Manager (703) 684-1221, ext. 1865 jill@amstat.org Scientists have long recognized six living species of great ape aside from humans: Sumatran and Bornean orangutans, eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. But researchers reporting in Current Biology on November 2 have now made it seven, based on a collection of evidence showing that an isolated population of orangutans living in Sumatra is actually its own unique species. They've named the new species the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis). Unfortunately, the researchers say, there are only about 800 Tapanuli orangutans left. Those that remain are also under threat from loss of lowland habitat and hunting, which makes this newly discovered species among the most threatened great ape species in the world. "It isn't an everyday event that we find a new species of great ape, so indeed the discovery is very exciting," said Michael Krutzen of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, senior author of the study. "Great apes are among the best-studied species in the world," added Erik Meijaard of the Australian National University. "If after 200 years of serious biological research we can still find new species in this group, what does it tell us about all the other stuff that we are overlooking: hidden species, unknown ecological relationships, critical thresholds we shouldn't cross? Humans are conducting a vast global experiment, but we have near-zero understanding of what impacts this really has, and how it could ultimately undermine our own survival." The new orangutan species lives in the Batang Toru area in North Sumatra, Indonesia. While there had been rumors, no one was sure that this population of orangutans existed until 1997. They live south of what had been the known range for Sumatran orangutans. Earlier studies suggested that the group differed from other orangutans behaviorally and at the genetic level, but it wasn't clear that those differences were enough to support its designation as a new species. The breakthrough came in 2013, when the research team including Meijaard got access to a skeleton belonging to a Batang Toru orangutan killed in a human-animal conflict. Careful studies of the animal revealed consistent differences in its skull and teeth. A sophisticated analysis of 37 orangutan genomes now shows that the deepest split in the evolutionary history of living orangutans occurred more than three million years ago, between the Batang Toru population and Bornean orangutans to the north of Lake Toba. Bornean and Sumatran orangutans separated only much later, less than 700,000 years ago. Behavioral and ecological evidence lends further support for the notion that the orangutans living in Batang Toru are a separate species, the researchers said. "The Batang Toru orangutans appear to be direct descendants of the initial orangutans that had migrated from mainland Asia, and thus constitute the oldest evolutionary line within the genus Pongo," said Alexander Nater, also of the Unversity of Zurich. "The Batang Toru population was connected to populations to the north until 10,000 or 20,000 years ago, after which it became isolated." The findings mean that there are now 800 fewer Sumatran orangutans than previously thought. The Tapanuli orangutans are also severely threatened by hunting and the proposed development of a hydroelectric dam that would flood large parts of their best habitat if implemented. That's especially discouraging given that previous analyses suggest a mortality rate of less than one percent per year would still be enough to drive the Tapanuli orangutans extinct. "If even 8 out of 800 animals per annum were killed or otherwise removed from the population, the species might be doomed," the scientists caution. The researchers say the most important thing now is to work with organizations already in the area and Indonesian government authorities to urge support for more effective conservation measures to protect the Batang Toru area. They also want to learn more about the relationship of the Tapanuli orangutan to now-extinct orangutan populations that used to live in other parts of Sumatra. ### This work was financially supported by the University of Zurich, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, the A.H. Schultz Foundation, the UZH Research Priority Program ''Evolution in Action,'' the Arcus Foundation, Australian National University, an ANU Vice Chancellor Travel Grant, Australia Awards Scholarship-DFAT, an ERC Starting Grant, EMBO, Fundacio Zoo Barcelona, the Julius-Klaus Foundation, MINECO/FEDER, the Gates Cambridge Trust, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Zurich. Current Biology, Nater et al.: "Morphometric, Behavioral, and Genomic Evidence for a New Orangutan Species" http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31245-9 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.047 Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com. Study finds six months of dual antiplatelet therapy may be non-inferior to twelve months in STEMI patients receiving drug-eluting stents DENVER - November 1, 2017 - The first trial to evaluate the safety of dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) for less than 12 months in ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) found six months of DAPT was non-inferior to 12 months of DAPT among patients treated with second-generation drug-eluting stents (DES). Findings were reported today at the 29th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. International guidelines recommend 12 months of DAPT for STEMI patients after primary PCI with DES due to ongoing atherothrombotic risk. While longer duration DAPT therapy reduces the risk of ischemic events, it is also associated with a higher risk of major bleeding which can sometimes be fatal. Second-generation DES have a lower stent thrombosis risk than their predecessors, questioning the need for an extended duration of DAPT. DAPT STEMI was a prospective, randomized trial designed to evaluate whether six months of DAPT was non-inferior to 12 months of DAPT in event free patients at six-month follow-up after primary PCI. The study enrolled 1,100 STEMI patients who underwent primary PCI with a second generation zotarolimus-eluting stent. Those who were event free at six months and agreed to continue with the study (N=870) were randomized to single antiplatelet therapy (SAPT, N=433) or DAPT (N=437). Baseline and procedural characteristics were similar in both arms. The study's primary endpoint was a patient-oriented composite of all-cause mortality, any myocardial infarction, any revascularization, stroke, or thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) major bleeding at 18-month follow-up after randomization (i.e. two years after primary PCI). The primary endpoint occurred in 4.8% of the SAPT group versus 6.6 % for the DAPT group {HR 0.73; 95% CI (0.41-1.27); P= 0.26; Pnon-inferiority=0.004}. The incidences of the individual components of the primary endpoint were as follows: Mortality: 0.7% in SAPT vs. 1.4% in DAPT {HR 0.51; 95% CI (0.13-2.02); P=0.33} Myocardial infarction: 1.8% vs. 1.8% {HR 1.02; 95% CI (0.38-2.71); P=0.97 Revascularization: 3.0% vs. 3.9% {HR 0.87; 95% CI (0.42-1.83); P=0.72 Stroke: 0.7% vs. 0.7% {HR 1.02; 95% CI (0.21-5.03); P=0.99 TIMI major bleeding: 0.2% vs. 0.5% {HR 0.51; 95% CI (0.05-5.57); P=0.58 "For the first time in the modern DES era, this trial indicates that STEMI patients, similar to stable angina patients, may not benefit from prolonged DAPT therapy beyond six months as currently recommended," said Elvin Kedhi, MD, PhD, Head of the Interventional Cardiology and Clinical Research and Innovation at Isala Hartcentrum in Zwolle, The Netherlands. "This sets the stage for further dedicated research on this important topic." The DAPT STEMI trial was funded by Maasstad Cardiovascular Research. Dr. Kedhi reported receiving consulting fees/honoraria or institutional grants from Medtronic, Abbott, Meril and OrbusNeich. ### About CRF and TCT The Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF) is a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to helping doctors improve survival and quality of life for people suffering from heart and vascular disease. For over 25 years, CRF has helped pioneer innovations in interventional cardiology and educate doctors on the latest treatments for heart disease. Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) is the annual scientific symposium of CRF and the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. Now in its 29th year, TCT features major medical research breakthroughs and gathers leading researchers and clinicians from around the world to present and discuss the latest evidence-based research in the field. For more information, visit http://www.crf.org and http://www.tctconference.com. Guadalajara, Mexico 2 November 2017: Mexican doctors have safely reused donated pacemakers after sterilisation, shows a study presented at the 30th Mexican Congress of Cardiology. The findings create the possibility for patients to receive a pacemaker who otherwise could not afford one. The annual congress of the Mexican Society of Cardiology is being held in Guadalajara, Jalisco from 2 to 5 November 2017. Experts from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) will present a special programme. 1 "There is no report of the number of pacemaker implants per year in Mexico, but we implant close to 150 new pacemakers per year in our hospital," said first author Dr Carlos Gutierrez, a cardiologist at the General Hospital of Mexico "Dr. Eduardo Liceaga" in Mexico City. "According to government reports, more than half of the population in Mexico does not have access to social security or private insurance that covers a pacemaker implant and 44% live in poverty," he continued.2 "This suggests that many Mexicans cannot afford a pacemaker. Previous studies have shown the safety of reusing pacemakers after sterilisation." 3-6 The current study included 33 patients with a pacing indication who could not afford a new pacemaker or a battery change. Patients received a reused device at the General Hospital of Mexico in 2011 to 2017. Devices had been donated by relatives of deceased patients and had a minimum of six years of battery life. After confirming that the pacemakers were functioning correctly, they were washed with enzymatic soap and sterilised in an autoclave for 38 minutes. Pacemaker function was rechecked after sterilisation. Patients were 72 years old on average (the age range was 20 to 106 years) and 52% were female. The indications for a pacemaker were sinus node dysfunction in ten patients (30%) and advanced atrioventricular block in 23 patients (70%). Of the 33 patients, 25 received a reused pacemaker. Eight patients already had a pacemaker and received a reused generator (battery). During the implant procedure there was one haematoma which resolved without further complications. There were no complications during the six month follow-up period. Dr Gutierrez said: "This was a small study but it shows that with a thorough and standardised sterilisation process, explanted pacemakers with a battery life of more than six years can be reused safely. This provides an effective option for patients who cannot afford a new device or a replacement battery." "This practice could be implemented in many other centres that have equipment to sterilise and reprogramme pacemakers," continued Dr Gutierrez. "We also need to promote the donation of pacemakers with little use from deceased patients." Dr Erick Alexanderson, President of the Mexican Society of Cardiology, said: "This study has encouraging results which open up the possibility of pacemaker treatment for many more Mexicans who need it." Professor Jose Zamorano, course director of the ESC programme in Mexico, said: "Pacemakers are implanted in many patients across the globe every year. This study highlights a practical way to give access to this life-saving treatment to even more patients who need it." ### When metals are pressed to built a product, a lot of things happen to their microstructure. How strong, resilient, heatproof and chemically homogeneous an end product is in the long run, for instance a turbine blade, depends very much on the thermomechanical loads during production. But for high-performance alloys, like those used in transport, many detailed questions are still open. "We know that thermomechanical processes play an important role in the design of products made of high-performance materials. Nevertheless, controlling the desired properties of an alloy using specific process parameters and process routes is still a challenge for the industry and a hot topic in metal research," says Maria Cecilia Poletti, materials researcher at TU Graz's Institute of Materials Science, Joining and Forming. Maria Cecilia Poletti heads the "Christian Doppler Laboratory for Design of High-Performance Alloys by Thermomechanical Processing", which was opened today, 31st October 2017, at TU Graz. Economics minister Mahrer: Competitive advantages through basic research "High-performance alloys play an important role for technological progress in lightweight construction and in the automotive sector," says economics and science minister Harald Mahrer. "In this CD lab, the foundation for practical applications will be laid, from which important branches of industry in Austria will benefit. The interplay between science and economy provides a perfect basis to carry out research along the needs of companies." Cast or wrought in the "alloy kitchen" All kinds of alloys are exposed to thermomechanical stress in their production process: cast alloys in follow-up treatment and wrought alloys during processing. In the case of alloys which are cast in a mould, internal tensions develop while the workpiece cools down. This can lead to undesired bending of the workpiece, reducing performance. Heat treatment through heating up after quenching reduces the mechanical tensions in the microstructure of the workpiece and increases the strength of the material due to microstructural modifications. Wrought alloys are firstly cast, but are repeatedly deformed at high temperatures to give both a shape and essential microstructural modifications. The word "wrought" is related to processes where plastic deformation is developed - like forging, rolling or extrusion. Like kneading dough, the metal is deformed to give a final shape. "In the framework of the CD lab, we want to gain a deeper understanding of the development of the microstructure during thermomechanical processes. This is because the invisible form of the microstructure has the biggest effect on the thermomechanical properties of the part in use, for instance, in the landing gear of turbine disc of an aircraft," explains Maria Cecilia Poletti. "Just like with a good cooking recipe, we want to know exactly what ingredients, quantities, temperatures, sequences and times are needed to obtain in the end a product with exactly the properties desired." Focus on non-ferrous alloys The focus of the new CD lab is on non-ferrous alloys, such as titanium, nickel or aluminium alloys for components and their processing steps. The CD lab team will characterise, describe and model the physical phenomena that occur in metallic materials during their industrial production and subsequent application, and will develop physically based multi-scale models that can be applied in general for various alloys and processes. To do this the researchers will use different methods, from experiments in the lab to modelling, and from microscopy to x-ray studies. The industrial partners for seven years are the metal producer Nemak, with head offices in Mexico and Linz, which produces cast-aluminium parts for the automotive industry, and BOEHLER Schmiedetechnik GmbH, with head office in Kapfenberg, which specialises in the field of titanium and nickel based wrought alloys. Around three million euros will go into the CD lab from the two industrial partners and the Christian Doppler Society for a period of seven years. ### About Christian Doppler labs Christian Doppler laboratories engage in application-oriented high-level fundamental research. In this context, distinguished scientists co-operate with innovative enterprises. Christian Doppler Research Association is internationally recognised as a best-practice example for the promotion of this co-operation. Christian Doppler Laboratories are jointly financed by the public sector and the participating private companies. The most important public sponsoring agency is the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy of Austria. To the website of the Christian Doppler Research Association: http://www.cdg.ac.at/en This research topic is anchored in the Field of Expertise "Advanced Materials Science", one of the five strategic research foci at TU Graz. Contact: Maria Cecilia POLETTI Assoc.Prof. Dr.techn. TU Graz | Institute of Materials Science, Joining and Forming 43-316-873-1676 cecilia.poletti@tugraz.at OHSU study indicates clinical outcomes for deep brain stimulation while patients are asleep are on par or better than surgery while awake Deep brain stimulation is a long-established surgical procedure that eases the effects of Parkinson's disease and essential tremor through pulses from tiny electrodes implanted in the brain. Currently, most surgeons around the world conduct this surgery while the patient is awake. You read that right: It's considered standard clinical practice to keep a patient awake for the four to six hours it takes to implant electrodes into specific areas of the brain that control movement. Yet technological improvements in imaging have enabled neurosurgeons at OHSU to accurately map the brain before and during the procedure. This allows them to conduct the surgery while the patient is fast asleep. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist, or a brain surgeon, to tell you that patients prefer it," said Kim Burchiel, M.D., professor of neurosurgery in the OHSU School of Medicine. The question is, do the clinical outcomes measure up? New research indicates the answer is, yes. A clinical outcome trial of 69 people who underwent DBS surgery at OHSU, published in the journal Neurology, indicates that those who underwent the procedure while asleep experienced better clinical outcomes in terms of communication, cognition and speech. Further, there was no demonstrable difference in improvement of slowed movement, muscle rigidity or tremor between those who underwent asleep-DBS versus those who were awake during the procedure. Lead author Matthew Brodsky, M.D., an associate professor of neurology in the OHSU School of Medicine and medical director of OHSU's deep brain stimulation program, was specifically interested in improvements related to speech. Although deep brain stimulation can dramatically improve motor function beyond what medications can offer, loss of speech fluency is a common side effect. Brodsky hypothesized that the cause may be due to the fact that awake-DBS requires surgeons to place multiple microelectrodes into brain tissue to identify the location and borders of the targeted region. Patients were tested for speech fluency following their procedures. "Patients undergoing asleep-DBS had improved speech versus patients undergoing awake DBS, whose speech fluency predictably worsened," Brodsky said. Burchiel, a co-author on the paper, noted that OHSU stopped doing awake surgeries as of January 2011. The study compares patients who went through awake-DBS in 2010 with those who went through the asleep-DBS more recently. Burchiel performed the surgery in each case. "If the patient's outcome is not better or at least the same as awake-DBS, then you shouldn't be doing it," Burchiel said. "This article is really a watershed because we're in a position to say, why would you ever do an awake surgery if you can get the same results or better when the patients are asleep - and the patients' satisfaction is dramatically better?" Although OHSU is in the minority right now, Burchiel believes there will be a stampede to asleep-DBS among neurosurgeons worldwide within the next few years. Burchiel carved out a reputation more than 25 years ago as the pioneer of deep-brain stimulation, as the first physician to conduct the surgery in the United States. The surgery is now conducted in roughly 100 medical centers nationwide, including OHSU. The waking version of the procedure involves the use of microelectrode recording, or MER, to identify the target for placing the stimulating electrode within the brain. This occurs while the patient is awake, to answer questions and validate effectiveness. However, these microelectrodes effectively require the neurosurgeon to send probes into the brain at least twice - once to map the territory with the MER and once to place the battery-powered electrode that will be left in the brain. "With asleep-DBS, there's really just a single pass into the brain," Brodsky said. "We haven't had a single patient ask to have this done while they're awake. To the contrary, we've had people come from all over the country to undergo asleep-DBS." Caitlin Evans was one of those patients. The 56-year-old Seattle resident underwent deep-brain stimulation surgery in September, and she has no recollection of the procedure after anesthetization in the operating room. Twenty days later, after clinical staff programmed her electrode, she experienced immediate relief from the dystonia that had hobbled her since her Parkinson's diagnosis in 2013. Once the electrode began working, she and her husband, Patrick Higgins, set out for a stroll across a Willamette River bridge near OHSU's south waterfront campus. "I walked comfortably for the first time in five years," she said. Evans realizes the procedure doesn't cure Parkinson's but only treats symptoms of her disease. Over the long term, she has reason for confidence that that OHSU's scientists and physicians will further improve outcomes. "Hopefully this will last a few years and I'll get to enjoy myself," she said. "Meanwhile, these guys will figure out how to fix me." In the meantime, the latest evidence points toward the benefits of DBS while patients sleep. "Eliminating MER will reduce risks without compromising outcomes, shorten the procedure duration, and reduce its costs," wrote Tipu Z. Aziz, FMedSci, and Marwan Hariz, M.D., Ph.D., in an editorial in Neurology that accompanied the study. "Asleep surgery is certainly better for patients." ### The research in this study was funded in part by Medtronic. Removing electronic media from the bedroom and encouraging a calming bedtime routine are among recommendations Penn State researchers outline in a recent manuscript on digital media and sleep in childhood and adolescence. The manuscript appears in the first-ever special supplement on this topic in Pediatrics and is based on previous studies that suggest the use of digital devices before bedtime leads to insufficient sleep. The recommendations, for clinicians and parents, are: 1. Make sleep a priority by talking with family members about the importance of sleep and healthy sleep expectations; 2. Encourage a bedtime routine that includes calming activities and avoids electronic media use; 3. Encourage families to remove all electronic devices from their child or teen's bedroom, including TVs, video games, computers, tablets and cell phones; 4. Talk with family members about the negative consequences of bright light in the evening on sleep; and 5. If a child or adolescent is exhibiting mood or behavioral problems, consider insufficient sleep as a contributing factor. "Recent reviews of scientific literature reveal that the vast majority of studies find evidence for an adverse association between screen-based media consumption and sleep health, primarily delayed bedtimes and reduced total sleep duration," said Orfeu Buxton, associate professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State and an author on the manuscript. The reasons behind this adverse association likely include time spent on screens replacing time spent sleeping; mental stimulation from media content; and the effects of light interrupting sleep cycles, according to the researchers. Buxton and other researchers are further exploring this topic. They are working to understand if media use affects the timing and duration of sleep among children and adolescents; the role of parenting and family practices; the links between screen time and sleep quality and tiredness; and the influence of light on circadian physiology and sleep health among children and adolescents. ### Other authors on the manuscript include Anne-Marie Chang, assistant professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State; Lauren Hale, from the Department of Family, Population and Preventative Medicine at Stony Brook Medicine in New York; Monique LeBourgeois and Lameese Akacem, from the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder; and Hayley Montgomery-Downs, from the Department of Psychology at West Virginia University. HOUSTON - (Nov. 2, 2017) - Pillared graphene would transfer heat better if the theoretical material had a few asymmetric junctions that caused wrinkles, according to Rice University engineers. Rice materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and alumnus Navid Sakhavand first built atom-level computer models of pillared graphene -- sheets of graphene connected by covalently bonded carbon nanotubes -- to discover their strength and electrical properties as well as their thermal conductivity. In a new study, they found that manipulating the joints between the nanotubes and graphene has a significant impact on the material's ability to direct heat. That could be important as electronic devices shrink and require more sophisticated heat sinks. The research appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Researchers who study or are working to make pillared graphene have primarily viewed two characteristics of the theoretical material: the length of the pillars and their distance from each other. The new study suggests that a third parameter -- the nature of the junction between the graphene and nanotubes -- should also be considered. A seamless connection between flat graphene, the atom-thick form of carbon, and round nanotubes requires adjustments to their characteristic six-member carbon rings. The simplest way is to give half the rings at the junction an extra atom. Six seven-member rings alternating with six six-member rings allow the sheet to make a 90-degree turn to become the tube. But that's not the optimal configuration for heat transport, according to the Rice team. It found that replacing six heptagons with three octagons would facilitate the turn while slightly stressing the graphene. That would wrinkle the graphene sheets' top and bottom while not significantly changing transport at the junctions. The researchers intuitively expected the wrinkles to lower thermal transport and were surprised to find that thermal transport across the "in-plane" graphene became faster with wrinkles. They determined that having fewer rings in the junctions between nanotubes and graphene meant less scattering of heat-carrying phonons, which kept them onboard for the bumpy ride. Measured along the longest plane, models with the octagons were nearly 20 percent better at transporting phonons than those without. "Our results show that subtle features such as this junction configuration have a significant impact on thermal transport," said Shahsavari, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering. "Given the current needs in thermal management and device miniaturization in many nano- and microelectronics, this study provides a new degree of freedom to play and improve thermal transport." The researchers thought phonon transport through the nanotubes, which they already knew was slower than in graphene, might be slower still under the influence of the octagons, but the altered interface didn't appear to have a significant effect. "The reason lies in the geometry," Shahsavari said. "The lower the number of non-hexagonal rings in the junction (for example three octagons versus six heptagons), the lower the number of undesirable rings and thus lower phonon scattering and improved thermal transport." Because the junctions can adopt many different geometries depending on the radius and chirality of the nanotube, there are many more potential configurations to be modeled, he said. ### Rice University and the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported the research. Computing resources were supplied by Rice's NSF-supported DAVinCI supercomputer administered by Rice's Center for Research Computing and procured in partnership with Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology and resources supported by the National Institutes of Health, an IBM Shared University Research Award, Cisco, Qlogic and Adaptive Computing. Read the abstract at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.7b16162 This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2017/11/02/wrinkles-give-heat-a-jolt-in-pillared-graphene/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews Related materials: Pillared graphene gains strength: http://news.rice.edu/2015/09/14/pillared-graphene-gains-strength/ Multiscale Materials Laboratory home page: http://rouzbeh.rice.edu/ George R. Brown School of Engineering: http://engineering.rice.edu Rice Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: http://www.ceve.rice.edu Rice Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering: https://msne.rice.edu Image for download: http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/11/1106_PILLARED-1-WEB-1eec6xu.jpg Heat transport through pillared graphene could be made faster by manipulating the junctions between sheets of graphene and the nanotubes that connect them, according to Rice University researchers. (Credit: Illustration by Lei Tao/Rice University) Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,879 undergraduates and 2,861 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for quality of life and for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for happiest students by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview. Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput are giving us some serious relationship goals. By India Today Web Desk: Bollywood's hottest couple, Shahid Kapoor and Mira Rajput, have posed together for the cover of a magazine. The two are clad in royal attire, and are giving us some serious relationship goals. Shahid also shared a photo of Mira from the photoshoot on his Instagram account. Mira looks sultry in her ethnic avatar. #hellomira A post shared by Shahid Kapoor (@shahidkapoor) on Nov 1, 2017 at 9:41am PDT advertisement We totally love that neckpiece, Mira! ??????????????????????????????????? A post shared by Mira Rajput Kapoor (@mira.kapoor.fc) on Oct 31, 2017 at 12:15pm PDT On the work front, Shahid will be seen in Padmavati , which will hit theatres on December 1. ALSO WATCH| Exposed: Karni Sena thugs holding Padmavati hostage --- ENDS --- Official website of the Russian Science Foundation reports that a group of scientists from Siberian Federal University and Krasnoyarsk Scientific Center of the SB RAS has developed a bioluminescent enzymatic test system for assessing the toxicity of carbon nanomaterials. Its distinctive features are simplicity, fast reaction speed and high sensitivity. The results of the study are published in the journal Toxicology in Vitro. The scientists proposed using the bioluminescent reagent "Enzymolum" to test the toxicity of nanomaterials. "Enzymolum" is a unique enzymatic system of several molecules isolated from marine luminous bacteria. The intensity of the luminescence of the reagent varies under the action of various additives. Scientists have tested the ability of commercial nanomaterials, such as various carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, to suppress the luminescence of the enzymatic system. The greatest inhibitory effect was observed for multiwalled nanotubes. It should be noted that such an action was fixed at concentrations of nanomaterials exceeding those expected in the environment. However, with the increase in their application, we can expect an increase in the concentrations occurring in nature. According to Elena Esimbekova, an Associate Professor of the Department of Biophysics at the School of Fundamental Biology and Biotechnology of SibFU, a researcher at the Institute of Biophysics of the Krasnoyarsk Scientific Center of the SB RAS, the development of nanotechnology has led to the widespread use of nanomaterials in various fields of industry. At present, artificially created nanoparticles, primarily on the basis of carbon, are actively used in the production of medicines, cosmetics and in the food industry: ""We have been developing the 'Enzymolum' test systems over the past ten years. Today it is an easy-to-use technology. Reagent is a small dried disk with enzymes included in them. Each of the disks is designed to carry out one measurement. Disks can be stored for a long time without loss of properties. The analysis itself takes 2 or 3 minutes. After that, you have a result -- whether the solution of the studied sample affects the glow of the biological material. Based on this it can be concluded wether there is potential toxicity. The test system has already been tested for the ability to quickly determine the presence in the environment of such toxicants as heavy metals or pesticides. We predict that the molecular express-biotest 'Enzymolum' will be widely used in different spheres."" The research was carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation in the framework of the project "New methodology of complex express assessment of soil quality and contamination based on enzymatic bioluminescent systems". ### A team of SUTD researchers profiled the human red blood cell proteome and discovered which proteins were changed during the maturation accounting for the transition in shape and deformability of reticulocytes. Red blood cells are formed in the bone marrow from haematopoietic stem cells via a complex process known as erythropoiesis. Towards the end of this process, immature red blood cells also known as reticulocytes (multi-lobular and spherical) undergo dynamic re-arrangements to yield highly deformable biconcave erythrocytes (also known as normocytes), which performs gaseous and nutrient exchange throughout the body. However, molecular mechanisms underpinning these remarkable morphological and bio-mechanical transformations remained largely unknown. Through quantitative profiling of protein composition and imaging, a research team lead by Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) Assistant Professor Rajesh Chandramohanadas is now able to explain this intriguing biological phenomenon. Reticulocytes form a small proportion of human peripheral blood, often less than 2% of the total red blood cells. Therefore it is difficult to purify them in sufficient quantities and quality for large-scale experiments. To circumvent this problem, SUTD researchers purified young reticulocytes from cord blood (which contains ~ 4% reticulocytes) from normal term pregnancies. A magnetic selection protocol using an antibody against transferrin receptor was used to isolate immature red blood cells. To reduce sample complexity and increase overall coverage, these cells were again fractionated into membrane and soluble samples. Thereafter, a sophisticated quantitative mass spectrometry technique was employed which resulted in the identification and quantification of more than 1800 proteins. This is by far the most comprehensive information on protein composition for human red blood cells. The team carefully analysed this large dataset and short-listed certain proteins such as talin and tubulin, which dramatically changed between immature and mature blood cells. Although such proteins are known to confer stiffness to biological cells, these proteins were confirmed as residues that remained in the reticulocytes from precursor cells. The researchers then looked at the abundance of other proteins that are responsible for maintaining cellular architecture, such as a group of proteins called spectrins. Although the overall amount of spectrins remained comparable between reticulocytes and normocytes, the arrangement of these proteins were drastically different in reticulocytes as observed through microscopy. Filaments that formed spectrin-based network shrunk by roughly 20% during maturation, and this could account for the transition in shape and deformability of reticulocytes. This research was published in top Haematology journal British Journal of Haematology, and its first authors are postdoctoral fellow Dr. Trang Chu and research assistant Mr. Ameya Sinha from SUTD. The research team also comprised of immunologists, biochemists and clinicians from various organizations such as Astar-SIgN (Laurent Renia and Benoit Malleret), KK Hospital (Jerry K. Chan) National University of Singapore (Bruce Russell), NTU (Sze Su Kwan and Navin Verma) and Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (Francois Nosten). Principal investigator Prof Chandramohanadas said: "This robust dataset on the protein composition of human red blood cells could help promote understanding of pathological conditions that affect blood cell maturation and function. Furthermore, these results will facilitate targeted analysis of interactions between blood cells and infectious agents- such as Plasmodium vivax malaria parasites which only infect young human reticuocuytes." ### Invasive species are can be hugely detrimental to marine ecosystems. Take Caulerpa taxifolia as an example. Dubbed "killer algae" because it crowds out other plants and animals as it colonizes an area with great monotypic stands of vegetation, C. taxifolia displaces rich marine habitats that support a variety of fish and invertebrate life, leaving an area unable to nourish animal life. In 2000, this green alga, native to tropical waters, was found in San Diego County's Agua Hedionda Lagoon. Known to be highly invasive in the Mediterranean, a massive -- and ultimately successful -- effort was launched to eradicate it from Southern California waters. Unfortunately, the same has not been true for Sargassum horneri, another invasive alga first detected in 2003 in Long Beach harbor. In the ensuing years, S. horneri, a fast-growing brown alga native to eastern Asia, spread throughout Southern California and crept up to the Northern Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. UC Santa Barbara researchers, who have been conducting long-term monitoring of native kelp forests in marine protected areas (MPAs) around the Northern Channel Islands since 2000, encountered low levels of S. horneri around Anacapa Island in 2009. Five years later, its abundance began to rapidly increase, perhaps partially due to unusually warm waters. Reviewing years of monitoring data both inside and outside of MPAs, the marine biologists noticed interesting community-level patterns and decided to compare them in different areas around Anacapa with varied levels of marine protection. In the oldest MPA -- a complete no-take zone protected since 1978 -- they saw less S. horneri than in the newer ones established in 2003. Their analysis appears in the journal Ecology Letters. "We found evidence for two distinct ecological mechanisms -- competition and herbivory -- providing resilience, but the community states really aren't equivalent," said lead author Jennifer Caselle, a research biologist at UCSB's Marine Science Institute (MSI). "On one hand, in the old MPA, we found a healthy kelp forest outcompeting the invasive and in the fished areas, an urchin barren affording herbivory." Using Anacapa's complex set of protection levels, the investigators compared the historic no-take MPA with two newer MPAs: one that prohibits fishing (i.e., a no-take zone) and one that is a partial-take reserve, allowing lobster fishing. The reference zone was an area completely open to fishing. "The historic MPA has had decades to restore its healthy kelp forests, and resistance to invasion may have resulted from competition with the native algal species, kelps," said co-author Lindsay Marks, a UCSB graduate student in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology whose Ph.D. dissertation focuses on Sargassum. "In areas open to fishing, high densities of herbivores appear to be consuming both the native and the non-native algal species. But in the newer MPAs, which are in transitional states, neither competition nor herbivory was likely strong enough to prevent the invasion of S. horneri." According to co-author Katie Davis, a researcher in the Caselle Lab, this work shows that timing is important. "Only the long-term MPA had enough time to develop a healthy community capable of resisting invasion," she said. "Our analysis shows clearly that the newer MPAs haven't had enough time to develop resilience to this invasion." It is likely, Caselle noted, that the healthy kelp forest developed because the main predators of urchins -- California sheephead and California Spiny Lobster -- are protected. Those organisms are in high abundance in the historic MPA, where urchin abundance is low. "Our study shows that resilience does not rely on a single trophic level," Caselle said. "We looked at the entire community, finding top-down pressure from those protected urchin predators. That reverberated all the way through the food web, ultimately providing resistance to an invasive species. In areas outside the MPAs, those top predators are in low abundance and urchins are in high abundance." Today, the S. horneri invasion is extremely widespread in Southern California and in Baja California, with no hope of eradication. "Invasive species are exceptionally difficult to manage once they are established," Marks said. "The lesson we're learning from this study is that there might be value in managing the impacts of an invasive species by keeping our communities healthy. However, the key is preventing future invasions." ### Humans may have gathered them for 15,000 years before cultivating the fruit as a crop UCI UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE NOTE TO EDITORS: PHOTO AVAILABLE AT Irvine, Calif., Nov. 2, 2017 -- About 22,000 years ago, as the ice sheets that consumed much of North America and Europe began retreating, humans started to consume a fruit that today brings joy to millions of wine drinkers around the world: grapes. That's what University of California, Irvine evolutionary biologist Brandon Gaut and UC Davis plant biologist Dario Cantu believe occurred. They compared the sequenced genomes of wild and domesticated Eurasian grapes and found evidence that people may have been eating grapes as many as 15,000 years before they domesticated the fruit as an agricultural crop. "Like most plants, grapes are typically considered to have been cultivated around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, but our work suggests that human involvement with grapes may precede these dates," Gaut said. "The data indicate that humans gathered grapes in the wild for centuries before cultivating them. If we are right, it adds to a small but growing set of examples that humans had big effects on ecosystems prior to the onset of organized agriculture." The study appears online in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Today grapes are the most economically important horticultural crop in the world, but in reviewing the evolutionary data, the scientists found that populations of the fruit steadily decreased until the period of domestication, when grapes began to be grown and harvested for wine. The long decline could reflect unknown natural processes, or it may mean that humans began managing natural populations long before they were actually domesticated. Gaut said the study data also suggest that the altering of several important genes during domestication was a key turning point for the fruit. These genes included some involved in sex determination and others related primarily to the production of sugar. These changes helped define grapes as we know them today and probably contributed to the spreading of the crop throughout the ancient world. In addition, the researchers discovered that modern grape genomes contain more potentially harmful mutations than did the fruit's wild ancestors. These accumulate due to clonal propagation, which is reproduction by multiplication of genetically identical copies of individual plants. Grapes have been reproduced by clonal propagation for centuries, as it allows genetically identical cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay varieties, for example, to be grown around the globe. The identification of these potentially harmful mutations may prove useful to grape breeders. ### Yongfeng Zhou and Jaleal Sanjak of UCI and Melanie Massonnet of UC Davis also contributed to the study, which was supported, in part, by the Albert & Elaine Borchard Foundation, J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, E. & J. Gallo Winery and the Louis P. Martini endowment in Viticulture. The researchers declare no conflict of interest. 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 http://www.uci.edu. Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists. A portable holographic field microscope developed by University of Connecticut optical engineers could provide medical professionals with a fast and reliable new tool for the identification of diseased cells and other biological specimens. The device, featured in a recent paper published by Applied Optics, uses the latest in digital camera sensor technology, advanced optical engineering, computational algorithms, and statistical analysis to provide rapid automated identification of diseased cells. One potential field application for the microscope is helping medical workers identify patients with malaria in remote areas of Africa and Asia where the disease is endemic. Quick and accurate detection of malaria is critical when it comes to treating patients and preventing outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease, which infected more than 200 million people worldwide in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Laboratory analysis of a blood sample remains the gold standard for confirming a malaria diagnosis. Yet access to trained technicians and necessary equipment can be difficult and unreliable in those regions. The microscope's potential applications go far beyond the field diagnosis of malaria. The detailed holograms generated by the instrument also can be used in hospitals and other clinical settings for rapid analysis of cell morphology and cell physiology associated with cancer, hepatitis, HIV, sickle cell disease, heart disease, and other illnesses, the developers say. In checking for the presence of disease, most hospitals currently rely on dedicated laboratories that conduct various tests for cell analysis and identification. But that approach is time consuming, expensive, and labor intensive. It also has to be done by skilled technicians working with the right equipment. "Our optical instrument cuts down the time it takes to process this information from days to minutes," says Bahram Javidi, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the microscope's senior developer. "And people running the tests don't have to be experts, because the algorithms will determine if a result is positive or negative." The research team consulted with hematologists, and the algorithms used with the instrument are able to compare a sample against the known features of healthy cells and the known features of diseased cells in order to make proper identification. "It's all done very quickly," Javidi says. How the Device Works When it comes to identifying patients with malaria, here's how the device works: A thin smear from a patient's blood sample is placed on a glass side, which is put under the microscope for analysis. The sample is exposed to a monochromatic light beam generated by a laser diode or other light source. Special components and optical technologies inside the microscope split the light beam into two beams in order to record a digital hologram of the red blood cells in the sample. An image sensor, such as a digital webcam or cell phone camera, connected to the 3-D microscope captures the hologram. From there, the captured data can be transferred to a laptop computer or offsite laboratory database via the internet. Loaded with dedicated algorithms, the computer or mobile device hardware reconstructs a 3-D profile of the cell and measures the interaction of light with the cell under inspection. Any diseased cells are identified using computer pattern recognition software and statistical analysis. Red blood cells infected with the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite exhibit different properties than healthy blood cells when light passes through them, Javidi says. "Light behaves differently when it passes through a healthy cell compared to when it passes through a diseased cell," Javidi says. "Today's advanced sensors can detect those subtle differences, and it is those nanoscale variations that we are able to measure with this microscope." Conventional light microscopes only record the projected image intensity of an object, and have limited capability for visualizing the detailed quantitative characterizations of cells. The digital holograms acquired by UConn's 3-D microscope, on the other hand, capture unique micro and nanoscale structural features of individual cells with great detail and clarity. Those enhanced images allow medical professionals and researchers to measure an individual cell's thickness, volume, surface, and dry mass, as well as other structural and physiological changes in a cell or groups of cells over time - all of which can assist in disease identification, treatment, and research. For instance, the device could help researchers see whether new drugs impact cells positively or negatively during clinical trials. The techniques associated with the holographic microscope also are non-invasive, highlighting its potential use for long-term quantitative analysis of living cells. Conventional methods of testing blood samples for disease frequently involve labeling, which means the sample is treated with a chemical agent to assist with identification. In the case of malaria, red blood cells are usually treated with a Giemsa stain that reacts to proteins produced by malaria-carrying parasites and thus identifies them. But introducing a chemical into a live cell can change its behavior or damage it. "If you're doing an in vitro inspection of stem cells, for instance, and you introduce a chemical agent, you risk damaging those cells. And you can't do that, because you may want to introduce those cells into the human body at some point," Javidi says. "Our instrument doesn't rely on labeling, and therefore avoids that problem." ### The holographic microscope was developed in UConn's new Multidimensional Optical Sensing & Imaging Systems or MOSIS lab, where Javidi serves as director. The MOSIS lab integrates optics, photonics, and computational algorithms and systems to advance the science and engineering of imaging from nano to macro scales. A comprehensive report on the MOSIS lab's work with 3-D optical imaging for medical diagnostics was published last year in Proccedings of the IEEE, the top-ranked journal for electrical and electronics engineering. Joining Javidi in this research are graduate students Adam Markman, Siddharth Rawat, Satoru Komatsu, and Tim O'Connor from UConn; and Arun Anand, an applied optics specialist with Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Vadodara, India. The microscope research is supported by Nikon and the National Science Foundation (ECCS 1545687). Students are supported by the U.S. Department of Education, GE, and Canon fellowships. Other sponsors that have supported Javidi's broader research work and the MOSIS lab over the years include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the U.S. Airforce Research Lab, the U.S. Army, the Office of Naval Research, Samsung, Honeywell, and Lockheed Martin. He has collaborated with colleagues from numerous universities and industries around the world during his time at UConn, including research facilities in Japan, Korea, China, India, Germany, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain, among other countries. Javidi is working with colleagues at UConn Health, including medical oncology and hematology specialist Dr. Biree Andemariam and her staff, for other medical applications. UConn's tech commercialization office has been involved in discussing potential marketing opportunities for the portable digital microscope. A prototype of the microscope used for initial tests was assembled using 3-D printing technologies, lowering its production costs. The quest to develop ever-faster and more powerful computers has led to one of the most rudimentary methods of counting being given a 21st century make-over. An international team of researchers, including Professor C. David Wright from the University of Exeter, have developed a nanoscale optical 'abacus' - which uses light signals to perform arithmetic computations. The innovative device works by counting pulses of light - much in the same way beads are used to count when using a conventional abacus - before storing the data. This pioneering new technique could pave the way to new, more powerful computers that combine computing and storage functions in one element - a move away from conventional computers that treat these two functions as separate. The study is published in leading scientific journal, Nature Communications. Prof. C David Wright, an expert in electronic engineering and co-author of the study said: "This device is able carry out all the basic functions you'd associate with the traditional abacus - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - what's more it can do this using picosecond (one-thousandth of a billionth of a second) light pulses". Lead author of the study, Professor Wolfram Pernice from the Institute of Physics at Munster University in Germany added: "In the article we describe for the first time the realization of an abacus which operates in a purely optical way. Rather than wooden beads as found on traditional abacuses, our innovative device calculates with pulses of light - and simultaneously stores the result." The team's optical abacus, which is so small it's essentially invisible to the naked eye, is installed on a photonic microchip that can be easily manufactured. So far, the researchers have succeeded in calculating with two-digit numbers using two photonic phase-change cells, but the extension to large multi-digit numbers simply involves the use of more cells. "Computing with light - and not with electrons, as is the case with traditional computers - means that we can develop much faster systems which can be connected using integrated optical waveguides." adds co-author Prof. Harish Bhaskaran from the University of Oxford. ### The study was funded by the German Research Foundation and the UK's EPSRC. The risk of oversharing in conversation -- or providing a listener with too much irrelevant detail - increases as we age, research suggests. The risk of oversharing in conversation - or providing a listener with too much irrelevant detail - increases as we age, research suggests. Tests carried out on a group of 100 people show the thinking skills that influence how we respond to people's points of view deteriorate with age. Linguists used a series of computerised listening and visual tests to assess thinking skills in the group, whose ages ranged from 17 to 84 years old. The team tested how participants' attention skills - the ability to concentrate on one thing and ignore another - influenced their ability to consider a partner's perspective in conversation. The researchers, from The University of Edinburgh and Northwestern University in Illinois, completed two listening tests to assess two types of attention skills. Firstly, they tracked inhibition - the ability to focus and ignore distracting information. Then they monitored switching - the ability to shift focus between two different sounds and filter relevant information. Researchers asked participants to describe one of four objects to a partner who could only see three of the objects. The researchers found older participants were more likely to mention details about the hidden object, revealing irrelevant information to their partner. The team found an age-related decline in attention switching skills, and that this ability determined how older adults responded to their partner's perspective. For younger adults, their ability to filter distracting information was what determined their ability to consider others' perspectives more effectively. Lead researcher Madeleine Long, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, said: "The study identified two attentional functions that influence whether we consider another's point of view and how that changes as we age. This is particularly important for older adults who are more susceptible to revealing private information. "We hope these findings can be used to design targeted training that helps older adults improve these skills and avoid embarrassing and potential risky communicative errors." ### The study is published in the journal Cognition. Link to study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002771730241X) For further information, please contact: Joanne Morrison, Press and PR Office, tel +44 131 651 4266, email joanne.morrison@ed.ac.uk A vaccine combining centralized ancestral genes from four major influenza strains appears to provide broad protection against the dangerous ailment, according to new research by a team from the Nebraska Center for Virology. Mice protected by the unconventional vaccine survived exposure to lethal doses of seven of nine widely divergent influenza viruses. Those that received higher doses of the vaccine didn't even get sick. In contrast, mice that received traditional flu shots or nasal sprays all sickened and died when exposed to the same viruses. The deadly pathogens were able to evade the immune responses triggered by the traditional vaccines. While it is too soon to say the approach could be successfully used in humans, it appears to be a promising avenue toward a universal flu shot, according to lead researcher Eric Weaver, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Weaver said the study is the first to report on whether a universal flu shot could be created by using a combination of multiple genes shared at the ancestral level by flu strains circulating today. "The ultimate goal is to be able to vaccinate once and provide lifelong protection," Weaver said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 40 million Americans contracted influenza during the 2015-16 flu season and 970,000 people were hospitalized for the ailment. The agency estimated that vaccinations prevented about 1.9 million illnesses and 67,000 hospitalizations. "To put this in other terms, our current influenza vaccine programs and technologies reduce influenza infections and hospitalizations by 4.75 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively," Weaver said. "There is no doubt that there is a need for more effective vaccine technologies." Yet because the influenza virus mutates rapidly and because people, animals and birds often carry the virus without displaying symptoms, it's been difficult to develop a vaccine with long-term effectiveness. The conventional influenza vaccine platform uses weakened or dead versions of the influenza virus to stimulate immunity against hemagglutinin (HA), a spike-shaped protein that extends from the surface of the virus and attacks cells. According to a 2013 Clinical Microbiology Reviews article, the challenges of the conventional approach include predicting which flu strain will circulate in coming years; manufacturing and delivering safe, timely and adequate supplies; and poor responsiveness among the elderly, who often are the most vulnerable to influenza infection. Conventional vaccines have been shown to be less than 60 percent effective when they're successfully matched to the currently circulating strain. They're far less effective when mismatched. "An ideal influenza vaccine would be inexpensive, provide long-lasting immunity, require few immunizations and would work against all variants of the virus," Weaver said. Some experts say it could take until 2020 or 2025 before a universal flu vaccine is available. Pursuit of a universal influenza vaccine has been difficult. Scientists are trying various approaches to better match vaccines to multiple viral strains. Other strategies include developing vaccines aimed at the virus's protein coat, other proteins have been found to be identical in multiple flu strains, or the stalk of the hemagglutinin protein rather than its head. These approaches have shown promising results. However, Weaver said his study is the first to report the use of multiple centralized HA genes, identified using protein sequence analysis programs, to provide the greatest level of cross-protective immunity possible. In the article published Nov. 2 in Scientific Reports, Weaver and his colleagues Amy Lingel and Brianna L. Bullard detail an approach they say is "scalable and translatable to humans and may provide the foundation for complete and long-lasting anti-influenza immunity." The idea arose from past research led by Dr. Bette Korber at Los Alamos National Laboratories to discover the ancestral genes for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and to pinpoint when that virus jumped from monkeys to man. Weaver was involved with that effort while a post-doctoral researcher at Duke University School of Medicine. He and his colleagues decided to try a similar concept with the influenza virus, synthesizing genes that are central to influenza's phylogenetic tree. Instead of using weakened or deadened flu virus, his experiments at the Nebraska Center for Virology have used replication-defective Adenoviruses - which cause the common cold - that have been altered to carry what he calls consensus genes for H1, H2, H3 and H5 influenza strains. The vaccine is no longer capable of causing cold symptoms, but is still able to safely deliver the influenza vaccine genes. "Our idea is that these centralized antigens can set up a foundation of immunity against influenza," he said. "Because they are centralized and represent all the strains equally, they could provide a basis for immunity against all evolved strains." ### Weaver's research is funded by a National Institutes of Health grant. Using computer simulations, University of Oregon researchers find that knowing all possible mutations isn't enough to predict where a protein will go EUGENE, Ore. -- Nov. 2, 2017 -- University of Oregon scientists theorized that they could manipulate a protein one mutation at a time and predict its evolution. They sought to prove it. And failed. They do think, however, that they've found a fundamental truth underlying unpredictability in a biological system. Basic physical limitations make uncertainty the norm, they reported in a paper published online Oct. 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "While we got a surprising negative result, we were able to say why," said Michael J. Harms, a professor in the UO Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and scientist in the Institute of Molecular Biology. "That is a positive. Our simple study provides confirmation of what many people in the field have observed repeatedly -- unpredictability. It appears it is universal." The research was a digital affair, done with computer simulations designed by UO doctoral student Zachary R. Sailer. He and Harms created a simple lattice protein, using an approach previously created in the Harms lab, with a random sequence of 12 amino acids. They then ran evolutionary simulations to optimize stability, a physical property of the protein. The goal was to use the effects of all 228 mutations known to be associated with the starting protein to predict these simulated trajectories: which mutation would occur, when, over time. The ability to project ahead faded fast after the first two mutations. After that, the anticipated trajectories went astray amid a growing number of rerouting probabilities. "The quality of your information actually decays over time," Sailer said. "As mutations accumulate, the effects of the mutations that you measured start to change so that you can't predict where you are going." In their paper, Sailer and Harms suggest that physics, particularly thermodynamics, is at play. Each mutation alters the protein in a small, but nonlinear way. This means that the effect of each mutation depends on all mutations that occurred before. "I think that what we showed, fundamentally, is that even if you know a lot about a system, about a protein, you cannot predict how it evolves because of the physics of the system," Harms said. "There are physical rules that limit evolution and its predictability." How proteins evolve is a fundamental question in evolutionary biology, from both a philosophical perspective, to learn more about the machinery of biological systems, and for clues that might lead to improved or better drugs. "Practically," Harms said, "our research may help us learn how to prevent the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria." Almost all bacterial borne infections are developing resistance to antibiotics, creating a leading public health concern around the world. "Rather than studying the effects of all individual mutations," Sailer added, "maybe we should study random combinations of many mutations. Such an approach might help us predict the evolution of resistance." Work is underway in the Harms lab to test for this possibility on real proteins. "We're building computational tools that let us analyze antibiotic resistance datasets, and we are getting hints that a combinatorial approach does work," Harms said. "It's more complicated than studying individual mutations, but our work shows the individual approach is unlikely to work." ### A fellowship to Harms from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded the research. The UO also provided additional research funds to Sailer. Sources: Michael J. Harms, assistant professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Institute of Molecular Biology, 541-346-9002, harms@uoregon.edu, and Zachary R. Sailer, doctoral student, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Institute of Molecular Biology, 541-346-9003, zsailer@uoregon.edu Note: The UO is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. There also is video access to satellite uplink and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews. Links: About Michael Harms: http://molbio.uoregon.edu/harms/ Harm's Lab: https://harmslab.uoregon.edu/ Institute of Molecular Biology: http://molbio.uoregon.edu/ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry: https://chemistry.uoregon.edu/ PITTSBURGH, Nov. 2, 2017 - Embedding a decision support tool in the hospital electronic health record increases detection of acute kidney injury, reducing its severity and improving survival, according to new research from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC. The results, published today in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, address one of the most costly and deadly conditions affecting hospitalized patients, providing evidence that computers analyzing changes in renal function can alert doctors of acute kidney injury before the condition is obvious clinically. "Acute kidney injury strikes one in eight hospitalized patients and, if unchecked, it can lead to serious complications, including the need for dialysis and even death," said senior author John Kellum, M.D., professor of critical care medicine and director of the Center for Critical Care Nephrology at Pitt's School of Medicine. "Our analysis shows that implementation of a clinical decision support system was associated with lower mortality, less need for dialysis and reduced length of hospital stay for patients diagnosed with acute kidney injury, among other benefits." Acute kidney injury is common in hospitalized patients, particularly those in intensive care units and older adults, and refers to a sudden episode of kidney failure or damage that happens within a few hours or days. It causes a build-up of waste products in the blood that can affect other organs, including the brain, heart and lungs. While kidney function is monitored using simple blood tests, subtle changes can elude or delay detection of a problem. Failure to recognize and manage acute kidney injury in the early stages can lead to devastating outcomes for patients and increased costs to the health care system. Benefits of earlier detection of acute kidney injury include earlier intervention to mitigate loss of kidney function, and reduced hospital and long-term health care costs as a result of avoiding progression to severe and permanent kidney damage. In 2013, Kellum's team released a computer program within the electronic health record system across 14 UPMC hospitals. The program monitored levels of blood creatinine, a standard measure of kidney function, over time and analyzed changes in those levels. If the levels rose too high or fast, the program fired an alert in the patient's electronic health record informing doctors that acute kidney injury could be present. It also helped determine the stage of injury based on changes from the patient's baseline kidney function. To determine what effect, if any, the computer program was having on physician behavior and patient outcomes, Kellum and his colleagues analyzed records from more than half a million patients admitted to UPMC. They started a year before the alert system was deployed, and continued for two years after. Patients with acute kidney injury had a small yet sustained decrease in hospital mortality of 0.8 percent, 0.3-day shorter length of stay and a decrease of 2.7 percent in dialysis rates. Even after adjusting for age and severity of illness, these changes remained highly significant. In absolute terms, the changes are small, but given the annual frequency of acute kidney injury in hospitalized U.S. patients of about 12 percent - or 2.2 million people - these results would translate into more than 17,000 lives and $1.2 billion saved per year. "Ultimately, we see this as confirmation that a fairly simple clinical decision support system can make a difference," said co-author Richard Ambrosino, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of clinical decision support and reporting at UPMC's eRecord. "More sophisticated systems are possible and should have an even greater impact." Kellum, who also is associate director for acute illness at Pitt's Institute for Precision Medicine, plans to make improvements to the clinical decision support application in the future. "Working with pharmacists to adjust patient medications and machine-learning experts to better predict which patients will be at greatest risk for adverse events, my team and I hope to make an even greater impact on patient outcomes," said Kellum. "Incorporating protein biomarkers and even genomics into the system could one day revolutionize patient care, not just for acute kidney injury, but for other illnesses." ### Additional authors on this study are lead author Mohammed Al-Jaghbeer, M.D., at Pitt during the study, now of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation; Dilhari Dealmeida, Ph.D., of Pitt; and Andrew Bilderback, M.S., of UPMC. This research was funded by UPMC and Pitt. Contact: Allison Hydzik Office: 412-647-9975 Mobile: 412-559-2431 E-mail: HydzikAM@upmc.edu Contact: Wendy Zellner Office: 412-586-9777 Mobile: 412-973-7266 E-mail: ZellnerWL@upmc.edu About the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine As one of the nation's leading academic centers for biomedical research, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine integrates advanced technology with basic science across a broad range of disciplines in a continuous quest to harness the power of new knowledge and improve the human condition. Driven mainly by the School of Medicine and its affiliates, Pitt has ranked among the top 10 recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1998. In rankings recently released by the National Science Foundation, Pitt ranked fifth among all American universities in total federal science and engineering research and development support. Likewise, the School of Medicine is equally committed to advancing the quality and strength of its medical and graduate education programs, for which it is recognized as an innovative leader, and to training highly skilled, compassionate clinicians and creative scientists well-equipped to engage in world-class research. The School of Medicine is the academic partner of UPMC, which has collaborated with the University to raise the standard of medical excellence in Pittsburgh and to position health care as a driving force behind the region's economy. For more information about the School of Medicine, see http://www.medschool.pitt.edu. About UPMC A $16 billion world-renowned health care provider and insurer, Pittsburgh-based UPMC is inventing new models of patient-centered, cost-effective, accountable care. UPMC provides more than $900 million a year in benefits to its communities, including more care to the region's most vulnerable citizens than any other health care institution. The largest nongovernmental employer in Pennsylvania, UPMC integrates 80,000 employees, more than 30 hospitals, 600 doctors' offices and outpatient sites, and a 3.2 million-member Insurance Services Division, the largest medical insurer in western Pennsylvania. As UPMC works in close collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences, U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks UPMC on its annual Honor Roll of America's Best Hospitals. UPMC Enterprises functions as the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC, and UPMC International provides hands-on health care and management services with partners on four continents. For more information, go to UPMC.com. http://www.upmc.com/media By PTI: (Eds: Updating with suspects arrest) By Lalit K Jha Washington, Nov 2 (PTI) A gunman today walked into a Walmart store in Colorado and opened indiscriminate fire, killing three persons including a woman before fleeing in a car, police said. Police used surveillance video to identify the suspect as 47-year-old Scott Ostrem. He was arrested about 14 hours after fleeing the store. advertisement The incident, which took place inside the supermarket store in the US state of Colorados Denver suburb, sent policemen into a tizzy as it happened hours after an-ISIS inspired Uzbek national killed eight people in New York. Television footage showed officers taking him into custody about 8 kilometers away from the Walmart after pulling over his car. The shooting appears random and there are no indications that it was an act of terror, Thornton police spokesman Victor Avila said. The two men died inside the store while the woman died later at a nearby hospital. Hundreds of emergency responders ringed the Thornton Town Centre shopping complex for hours after the shooting was reported around 5 AM (IST). The Walmart is part of the centre. "Multiple parties" were down, Thornton police said in a tweet. An hour later, the Thornton Police Department tweeted, "At this time this is not an active shooter". Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line at the Walmart when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didnt want to get killed," he said. US President Donald Trump has called for an immediate implementation of tougher "extreme vetting" procedures after the New York terror incident near the World Trade Centre. Eight people were killed and 11 others injured as the truck driven by Uzbek national Sayfullo Saipov carved a path of destruction through several blocks of Lower Manhattan. Saipov, before being shot at by the police, crashed the truck into a school bus and left the vehicle brandishing imitation firearms. It was the the worst terror attack on the city since 9/11. PTI LKJ CK NSA CPS AKJ PMS --- ENDS --- The recent uproar about seats on a British Airways flight crawling with bedbugs is only one of the unintended consequences that urbanization worldwide has on evolution, say Marc Johnson, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and Jason Munshi-South, who is an associate professor of biological sciences at Fordham University. "As we build cities, we have little understanding of how they are influencing organisms that live there," says Johnson, who is also director of the University of Toronto's Centre for Urban Environments (@CUE_UofT). "It's good news that some organisms are able to adapt, such as native species that have important ecological functions in the environment. But it can also be bad news that the ability of some of these organisms to adapt to our cities might increase the transmission of disease. Bedbugs, for example, were scarce two decades ago, but they've adapted to the insecticides used to keep them at bay and have exploded in abundance worldwide." In the first study to take a comprehensive look at the way urbanization is affecting evolution, Johnson and Munshi-South reviewed all existing research studies about urbanization and evolution and synthesized the results. "Traditionally, we've thought about evolution as a long-term process driven by environmental pressures and the interactions between species. But now there is a new driver that is rapidly changing many other species, which is how they interact with humans and our built environment", says Munshi-South. "Humans and our cities are one of the most dominant forces of contemporary evolution now." The study raises questions about which native species can persist during urbanization and whether those that adapt will influence the health of ecosystems and human beings. Loss of habitat and urban barriers (roads, buildings, etc.) pose challenges to all kinds of species and some may adapt in undesirable ways. The researchers assessed various means of genetic adaptation, such as mutation, the movement of genes through dispersal, neutral evolution and adaptive evolution through Darwinian natural selection, concluding that the urban environment has an impact on each of these mechanisms of evolution. Their work touches on mammals, plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and viruses, identifying evolutionary impacts on species as diverse as the common blackbird in Europe to white clovers and white-footed mice in North America. Populations of white-footed mice in New York City, for example, became differentiated from each other after urbanization, due to their isolation in various parks. "We've created a novel ecosystem that no organism has ever seen before," said Johnson, noting that their study, published Nov. 3 in the journal, Science, is a "wake-up call for the public, governments and other scientists." He and Munshi-South suggest that we need to think carefully about how we're altering our environment in unintended ways when we build cities, influencing the evolution of species that may, in turn, influence our lives. A number of organisms, such as rats, urban lizards, cockroaches, pigeons and bedbugs, have evolved to depend on humans. There are now mosquitoes, for example, that have evolved to live in the London Underground stations and adapted so that they no longer need to feed on blood to produce eggs. They also have no need to become dormant during the winter. Unfortunately, these mosquitoes can carry a number of diseases and are now found in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, too. Our healthcare systems may be required to adapt in response. Johnson and Munshi-South suggest that when we're planning cities, we need to think about the impact our designs have on native species and whether we can design them to "be kinder to ourselves and the environment," considering ways to conserve native species and mitigate the prevalence of disease-carrying pests. Given that species are evolving so rapidly in response to urbanization, the outdoors also becomes a classroom that offers an opportunity to see examples of evolution firsthand. Urban evolution can be used as a tool to educate city dwellers and others about the reality and importance of evolutionary biology. "People who don't believe in evolution need not go further than their backyards to see evidence of it," Johnson said. ### Contact: Marc Johnson, UTM Associate Professor of Biology Director, U of T Centre of Urban Environment 905-569-4484 Marc.johnson@utoronto.ca http://www.evoeco.org/ Jason Munshi-South, Fordham University Associate Professor of Biology 646-581-1469 jmunshisouth@fordham.edu http://www.nycevolution.org/ Gina Vergel Director of Communications, Fordham University 646-579-9957 gvergel@fordham.edu Nicolle Wahl Associate Director, Communications, UTM 905-469-4656 nicolle.wahl@utoronto.ca About the University of Toronto Mississauga Founded in 1967 and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is one of three campuses of the University of Toronto - Canada's largest and most prestigious research-intensive university. U of T Mississauga offers highly sought-after degree options, transformative research and strong ties to its local community. The 225-acre campus is located along the Credit River in the heart of Mississauga - Canada's sixth largest city and part of the Greater Toronto Area. Home to approximately 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and over 1,000 faculty and staff, the campus has 17 academic departments, and offers 156 programs in 92 areas of study. About Fordham University Founded in 1841, Fordham is the Jesuit University of New York, offering exceptional education distinguished by the Jesuit tradition across nine schools. Fordham awards baccalaureate, graduate, and professional degrees to approximately 15,000 students from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, the Gabelli School of Business (undergraduate and graduate), the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences, Education, Religion and Religious Education, and Social Service, and the School of Law. The University has residential campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan, a campus in West Harrison, N.Y., the Louis Calder Center Biological Field Station in Armonk, N.Y., and the London Centre in the United Kingdom. Two renowned chemists at The University of Texas at Arlington are among those honored as the best and brightest analytical scientists in the world by The Analytical Scientist magazine. Daniel Armstrong, Robert A. Welch Distinguished Professor, and Purnendu "Sandy" Dasgupta, the Hamish Small Chair in Ion Analysis, are included in the magazine's fifth annual Power List edition, which this year is comprised of Top 10 scientists in 10 categories: Separation Scientists, Spectroscopists, Mass Spectrometrists, Giants of Nano, Pharma Pioneers, Omics Explorers, Public Defenders, Inventors, Mentors and Leaders. While a handful of scientists are included in more than one category, Dasgupta and Armstrong are the only honorees from Texas universities to make the prestigious 2017 Power List. Armstrong was ranked No. 5 in the Mentors category and No. 7 in the Separation Scientists category. Dasgupta was ranked No. 7 in the Inventors category. "Congratulations to Dr. Dasgupta and Dr. Armstrong for being included in this very prestigious group of analytical scientists," Morteza Khaledi, College of Science dean, said. "It shows the high regard which their peers have for them. With their contributions, they have achieved a level of excellence attained by few scientists. Their work has had and continues to have a major impact in a variety of fields, here in Texas and around the world." This year is not the first time Armstrong and Dasgupta have appeared in The Analytical Scientist's Power List rankings. Armstrong ranked No. 16 in the magazine's inaugural Power List of the top 100 most influential people in analytical sciences in 2013, and he was No. 8 in the 2015 list, which ranked a Top 20 and listed 80 other leading figures in the field. Dasgupta was included in the 2015 field of top 100 noted scientists, executives and consultants from institutions around the world. "I was always broadly interested in many aspects of science," Armstrong told The Analytical Scientist when asked why he went into the field. "However, I quickly found out that to effectively investigate any interesting problem, one had to have the right tools and techniques - and often these didn't exist or were inadequate. It became apparent that the invention/development and understanding of such innovative approaches was often more elegant than the problems they were used to solve." Armstrong is considered the "father" of micelle and cyclodextrin-based separations and has nearly 700 publications, including 29 book chapters and 28 patents. The Scientific Citation Index named him as one of the world's most highly cited scientists. He was inducted to the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, was named a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2013 and was admitted as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry in 2009. Among the many other awards he has received are: the Wilfred T. Doherty Research & Service Award from the DFW Section of the ACS, the ACS Award for Separation Science & Technology, induction to the UTA Academy of Distinguished Scholars, the UTA Distinguished Record of Research or Creative Activity Award, the Dal Nogare Award for Separation Science and the ACS Award in Chromatography. Armstrong came to UTA in 2006 after previous stops at Texas Tech University, University of Missouri-Rolla and Iowa State University. He received his doctorate in chemistry from Texas A&M University in 1977. "Convincing others something is a good idea when you know in your heart you can't distinguish a good idea from a bad one," Dasgupta told The Analytical Scientist when asked what makes a good inventor. "Your head convinces you otherwise." Dasgupta is recognized as a pioneer in the field of ion chromatography whose inventions have become modern cornerstones of the field. He has published more than 400 papers and holds 29 patents. He was named an IEEE Fellow. Among the numerous awards Dasgupta has received are the Talanta Medal, the Tech Titans Technology Inventors Award, the Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry from the Eastern Analytical Symposium, the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry's J. Calvin Giddings Award for Excellence in Education, the Stephen Dal Nogare Award in Chromatography, the Wilfred T. Doherty Research & Service Award from the DFW Section of the ACS, the ACS National Award in Chromatography and the Outstanding Achievement Award in Ion Chromatography. Dasgupta came to UTA in 2007 after previously working at the University of California at Davis and Texas Tech University. He received his doctorate in analytical chemistry, with a minor in electrical engineering, from Louisiana State University in 1977. ### For 2017, The Analytical Scientist's editors asked readers to nominate the best and brightest analytical scientists across 10 categories. The nominees were whittled down to the final Top 10s by a judging panel comprised of top industry and academic scientists, and the editorial team. In 2014, the magazine presented a "Top 40 Under 40" Power List, which included Kevin Schug, UTA's Shimadzu Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry. James H. Bray, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has received a five-year, $2.6 million grant to lead a project that will provide mental health services and recovery support to high-risk pregnant, postpartum women recovering from substance abuse. The grant, from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), will fund the program, called Pregnant and Mothers Postpartum Enhanced Recovery-Oriented Residential Services (PAMPERRS). PAMPERRS will supplement services at Houston's Santa Maria Hostel. Santa Maria Hostel is Texas' largest multi-site residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment center and one of very few facilities to provide a comprehensive continuum for pregnant and parenting women and their children. Many of the women at Santa Maria Hostel have criminal backgrounds or have an active case with Child Protective Services. Several also have a history of substance abuse and experienced severe trauma from sexual abuse or domestic violence in their lifetimes. "A lot of people with mental health challenges, such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, use drugs because they are traumatized," said Bray. "This grant will allow us to treat underlying mental health conditions to ensure a more successful treatment for these women." The grant, awarded to Bray, will enhance residential treatment programs by providing critical medical and mental health services to women and women with children at Santa Maria Hostel. More than 300 women and 360 children are expected to benefit from this program over the course of five years. The goal of Dr. Bray's work is to serve high-risk pregnant and postpartum women who have limited access to quality health services. In addition to both medical and mental health treatment funded through the grant, women at Santa Maria Hostel learn parenting skills, develop job readiness skills, get information about educational and employment opportunities and obtain permanent housing. Counseling sessions are held for these women and their families to connect and communicate, with a strong focus on getting the fathers of the children more involved. "The goal is to get women the mental health services they need, address the trauma that led them to seek the substances they did and help them become better parents to their children along the way," said Bray. Bray said UTSA graduate students will accompany him to Santa Maria Hostel and complete evaluations of the program. Bray is also collaborating with staff from the Baylor College of Medicine. Bray joined the UTSA Department of Psychology in August 2017. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and focuses on adolescent substance use, divorce, remarriage and stepfamilies. He has published more than 200 articles in major journal and books and presented his work in 20 countries. ### Aimin Liu, Lutcher Brown Distinguished Chair in Biochemistry at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has published research demystifying a decades-old medical case. The article, which appeared in Molecular Genetics and Metabolism, explores the first confirmed human case of 2,3-dioxygenase deficiency. "Dr. Liu's study is an important step forward in understanding hypertryptophanemia and is sure to have a tremendous positive human impact," said George Perry, dean of the UTSA College of Sciences and Semmes Foundation Endowed University Chair in Neurobiology. "His work is a vital part of our brain health research efforts and an example of the exciting, innovative research UTSA is known for." Liu, a UTSA biochemist, specializes in metabolism, the body's process to convert food to energy. His expertise also includes biosynthesis, enzymology and protein biochemistry. The UTSA researcher collaborated with Patrick Ferreira, a medical geneticist at Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to document the case. Ferreira contacted Liu in 2015 seeking a better understanding of metabolic disorders he had followed in a female baby born in 1986. Using advanced instrumentation techniques in his UTSA laboratory, Liu concluded that tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase deficiency was the explanation for the patient's conditions: chronic hypertryptophanemia, characterized by an excess of tryptophan, and its subsequent hyperserotonemia, a condition caused by excessive serotonin. Both disorders are rarely reported in the medical literature. Their case is now the first confirmed report of human tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase deficiency. Tryptophan, an essential amino acid, is necessary for normal growth and is a precursor to the neurotransmitters serotonin and melatonin. Serotonin plays a critical role in the central nervous system and controls many of the body's functions. Melatonin is derived from serotonin and has a critical role in the body's sleeping cycles. "We are dedicated to conducting this intense research because of the impact it can have on people struggling with these conditions," he said. "The advanced labs we have at UTSA combined with our devoted students is what make these types of discoveries happen." Liu hopes that the discoveries he, Ferreira and his UTSA students made will lead to the development of medications that could help people with metabolic disorders like the one they studied. "It was very moving to be involved in a study that could result in a person, or multiple people, benefitting from our work," Liu said. "It's a wonderful example of laboratory work making a difference in the everyday world." ### UTSA is ranked among the nation's top four young universities, according to Times Higher Education. An accurate analog clock tick-tick-ticks with a constant precision and well known frequency: one tick per second. The longer you let it tick, the better to test its accuracy --10 times as long corresponds to a ten-fold improvement in any frequency uncertainty. But is there a faster way to determine a frequency? It turns out there is, in a new discovery published this week in Physical Review Letters by a collaboration between a Washington University in St. Louis professor and graduate student along with a University of Rochester researcher. The speed-up in frequency measurement comes from quantum mechanics. When a quantum bit is used to measure the frequency of a signal, the strange rules of quantum mechanics allow the frequency measurement to be much more accurate. The technique hinges on the ability to put the quantum bit in a superposition of its two quantum states, and then shift these states around in time with the signal. Kater Murch, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, along with graduate student Mahdi Naghiloo and theory collaborator Andrew Jordan of Rochester described the technique as a "quantum magic trick." "It's reminiscent of the magic tricks that involve a ball placed under one of two cups and the cups are shuffled around -- except this time, the ball can be under both cups at the same time," Murch said. "The resulting speedup in frequency measurement is astonishing. Now, by measuring for 10 times as long, the frequency uncertainty can be reduced by a factor of 100 -- enabling enhanced resolution of the frequency beyond any other technique of its kind. Earlier theory work published by the Jordan group this year has proven in two separate papers that the technique applied in this paper is the theoretical optimum that quantum mechanics allows." The experiment was completed by using a superconducting quantum system where an external oscillating signal with unknown frequency caused the quantum system to undergo periodic changes. By applying quantum pulses on top of the oscillating signal, the state of the system could be controlled so that the final readout of the quantum system became highly sensitive to the precise value of the oscillation frequency. The underlying physical source of the advantage is related to the fact that the energy of the quantum system is time-dependent, which causes the quantum states corresponding to different frequencies to accelerate away from each other, giving enhanced distinguishability in a given time. This method permitted enhanced resolution of the frequency beyond any other technique of its kind, Jordan said. This work is just one example of how the new field of quantum technologies uses the laws of quantum physics for technological advantage over classical physics, Jordan said. Other examples include quantum computing, quantum sensing and quantum simulation. For those fields, the exploitation of quantum physics provides benefits such as a speed up of database search, the factoring of large numbers or the rapid simulation of complex molecules. Such fine-scale measurement of the frequency of a periodic signal is the fundamental ingredient in diverse applications including MRI medical imaging devices, the analysis of light emitted from stars and, of course, clock precision. Accelerating these measurements in a way that Murch and Jordan have demonstrated could have profound impacts in many areas. Murch and Naghiloo used timekeeping and GPS, and such constantly advancing technologies, as examples of the importance of their findings. "Nowadays, most of us carry a phone in our pocket that is capable of telling us almost exactly where we are on Earth using the Global Positioning System," Murch said. "The way this works is that your phone receives signals from several different satellites, and by timing the relative arrival of these signals it infers your position. The accuracy of the timing directly relates to the accuracy of your position -- a relationship between timekeeping and navigation that has persisted for hundreds of years. "Well before GPS, a sailor who wanted to know his location would navigate by the stars. In the Northern Hemisphere, the height of the north star will tell you your latitude, but to know your longitude, you need to keep track of the time. As the night goes on, the stars circle around the north star -- the height of any star above the horizon is related to the local time, and by comparing this time to a clock set to Greenwich Mean Time, the time difference gives your longitude." Nautical timekeeping underscores the vitality of frequency advances. "In the 1700s, accurate clocks were the main limitation to ocean navigation," Murch said. "The Scilly naval disaster of 1707 -- one of the worst disasters in British naval history -- was widely blamed on poor navigation, prompting the British government to invest heavily in precise clocks. The resulting chronometers transformed marine navigation and greatly accelerated the age of discovery. "Advances in timekeeping continue to have profound impact on technology and fundamental science. Quantum tools, such as the quantum speedup in frequency measurement that we discovered, are necessary to push these technologies forward. This is an exciting time for quantum physics because these quantum resources are increasingly leading to practical advantages over traditional measurement approaches." ### The study was funded by: National Science Foundation grants DMR-1506081 and PHY-1607156; Office of Naval Research No. 12114811; and Army Research Office No. W911NF-15-1-0496. This research used facilities at the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering at Washington University. Murch also acknowledged support from the Sloan Foundation. Andrew Jordan's earlier papers: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14695 https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.020301 A viral photo of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has led to a full blown war of words between deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and former deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav. By Rohit Kumar Singh: It's a full blown war of words that has triggered between deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and former deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav over a viral photo of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with a hooch accused JDU leader, Rakesh Singh. Defending the Bihar CM, Modi has said that JDU has taken stern action against the JDU leader and sacked him from the party but RJD has failed to crack down on mafia don and RJD leader Shahabuddin despite several murder cases pending him. advertisement "The JDU leader who was the main accused in the Bhojpur hooch tragedy has been sacked from the party within 24 hours and no action against Shahabuddin who is involved in many murder cases and his telephonic conversation with Lalu from inside the jail going viral", tweeted Sushil Kumar Modi, deputy Chief Minister. Modi questioned, why has the RJD supremo not sacked Shahabuddin from the party national executive despite multiple murder cases going against him. He further defended Nitish maintaining that Lalu and Tejaswi should look back on what was their response when topper scam mastermind Baccha Rai's photo with Lalu and journalist Rajdev Ranjan's murder accused Md. Kaif photo with Lalu's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav had gone viral. Reacting to Modi's stinging tweets, Tejaswi hit back questioning why was Modi being a BJP leader defending Nitish Kumar like a JDU spokesperson? He further took jibe at Modi saying that he should not forget self styled godmen like Asaram Bapu, Baba Ram Rahim, Nityanand and Falahari Baba who have close links with the BJP. "Are you the spokesperson of the JDU? Should I remind you about Asaram Bapu, Baba Ram Rahim, Nityanand and Falahari Baba who are all rape accused? Don't run away from my questions because I know you are a "rannchod", tweeted Tejaswi Yadav, former deputy CM. --- ENDS --- Two men bound for Singapore were apprehended at Kolkata's Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport for allegedly trying to smuggle out over one lakh US dollars. By Mail Today Bureau: The Central Industrial Security Force security staff at Kolkata airport found something unusual in laptop chargers of two passengers. On detailed scanning, they found a total of $ 1.10 lakh currency hidden in 11 power adaptors. Two men bound for Singapore have been apprehended at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport for allegedly trying to smuggle out over one lakh US dollars clandestinely. advertisement The CISF on Wednesday night intercepted two passengers - Sajjad Ali, 24, and Mohan Basu, 51, - who were held during the X-ray scanning of their baggage. CISF personnel detected suspicious images of laptop charger-like items and hence they were chosen for detailed frisking. A total of US$ 1,10,000, hidden in 11 power adapters, was recovered from their baggage. The two have been handed over to Customs authorities for further investigation. The value of the seized USS is over Rs 72.43 lakh. The men were supposed to travel to Singapore. However, their intention of carrying a large amount of foreign currency concealed in chargers could not be verified. --- ENDS --- This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse you are agreeing to our use of cookies. More information here. By Susan Crowell / Editor I told some friends last month that we were working on a three-week series on opioids and drug addiction in rural counties. It might be, I added, the most important thing Ive ever done in my 30-plus years at Farm and Dairy. Some of you may think the subject of drug addiction doesnt belong in the pages of Farm and Dairy. You read this newspaper because it shares the stories of farm families, of agriculture, of rural life not to read about the opioid epidemic that litters the pages of your local daily newspaper. But I think youre wrong. Its exactly because we share the stories of farm families and of rural life that we cant ignore the issue. Were not immune to its ravages. We all need to know more about this problem thats right in our midst, whether you live in a city or on a farm. We all need to fight stereotypes that people with an addiction are low income, or the products of a single-parent home, or didnt go to church when they were growing up, or any other false impression of someone who might be fighting a substance abuse battle. Last year, more than 55,000 people died in the U.S. from an unintentional overdose. Thats more people than a capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium. Thats more deaths than 2016 traffic fatalities. Or, as the Presidents Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis described it, its like the September 11 terrorist attacks happening every three weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasnt published the 2016 numbers yet, but I read one source that puts the number of deaths as high as 65,000. Yet the majority stay silent. If you dont understand opioids, you may think people who are battling addiction simply need to try harder or make better choices. Its not that easy. From the very first time you take an opioid painkiller something as innocuous as a Vicodin/Percocet pill after knee surgery your brain changes. Thats because opioids change how the brain works. And once the cycle begins, you cant turn off your bodys physiological response through sheer will alone. You cant just stop using drugs for a few days and be cured. Its an ongoing, everyday struggle toward recovery, even if youve been sober for five years. This weeks focus is How We Got Here. Read about Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, to get an idea of how the drug problem probably got started in your county, too. Next week, we look at the ripple effects the impact on a community, tax dollars and the family. Finally, in the Nov. 16 issue, well try to find hope, and the ways you all play a role in a solution. That solution may seem insurmountable. Huge. But we know that every action step a community takes every action step an individual who cares takes is a step in the right direction and makes a big difference. We know the solution involves public health, the medical community, healthcare delivery system, law enforcement, education, local and statewide elected officials, devastated families, and those in treatment and recovery. It involves you. We hope you will visit our website and the special landing page we have created for the series: www.farmanddairy.com/ruraladdiction. In addition to the stories, we also share videos with some of our subjects, as well as an interactive timeline and glossary. Please check back each week, and share these stories in your social media circles to help us spread our message: Every life is worth saving. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Sterman Masser, Pennsylvanias largest potato producer, knows consumers arent reaching for five- and 10-pound bags of raw potatoes like they used to. Growing its business means adding more new and convenient products, so the company is eyeing a new spot in the grocery stores produce department: the ready-to-eat, precut fruits and vegetables section. The national supplier is building upon its history of innovation to solve several problems. For example, cut potato flesh browns in 10 days a fraction of the shelf-life of a raw, whole potato. Students in Penn States College of Agricultural Sciences are working on finding solutions to that problem, plus the challenge of winning consumers over to a new product. About 75 Penn State agribusiness students recently visited the companys potato distribution facility near Sacramento, Pennsylvania, and Keystone Potato Products, in Hegins. Tour At Sterman Masser, potatoes are processed into ready-to-use products, such as its Side Delights Steamable line of triple-washed and precut potatoes, available in seven varieties and sold in 1.5-pound, microwaveable pouches. After the tour, student Kayli Kumanchik, a senior agribusiness management major, was thinking about trendy flavor profiles for new products and the healthy profit margins that could be made from convenience-based food products. Jared Rice, a senior agribusiness management major, was impressed that the business was family-owned and by the sheer size of the operation and each facility. The Keystone facility can produce 8,000 pounds of finished product per hour. Getting students out on a real-world case study allows them to see how companies execute against their goals and strategies to stay relevant in a constantly changing consumer environment, said Dan Azzara, Alan R. Warehime professor of Agribusiness and director of the colleges Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. The students saw examples of how Sterman Masser is innovating to bring new, more-convenient products to market and to protect the environment and save on energy use. Zero waste The Keystone processing facility is a zero-waste enterprise. It, for example, converts methane from a nearby landfill to produce its own power and operates its own water treatment facility. Sterman Masser was one of the first growers to use pivot irrigation on potato crops. For their agribusiness management assignment, students gathered information on potato growing and storage, Sterman Massers supply chain, and the companys existing lineup of value-added potato products, including A Cut Above fresh-cut, low-water potatoes sold ready-to-bake into potato wedges, oven fries and chips. Potatoes were grown throughout Pennsylvania in 1910. Potato production in other states expanded as producers added irrigation systems. Now, Pennsylvania is within the top 15 potato-producing states. The state is number one in processing potatoes for snack food and chip processing. Students were surprised to learn that Sterman Masser sources potatoes from outside of Pennsylvania and that it handles 20 varieties of potatoes. The company grows 10 percent of its potatoes and sources from East Coast states from Florida to Maine, plus Michigan, Oregon and Washington. Sterman Masser farms 6,000 acres. Its potato packaging and warehouse operations pack and distribute more than 350 million pounds of potatoes each year. Innovation For Rick Roush, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, the day-trip was a goal realized. He has been eager to demonstrate to students how a traditional business can innovate to be a leader in its category. Innovation doesnt always mean a home run or gee whiz invention, Roush noted. Innovation can be an integration of many things, he said. Everything at Sterman Masser has been used somewhere else, but the Masser family spotted it, put it to use and combined many innovative things in one facility, in one very traditional business. Focusing on innovation is one of the colleges strategic goals, along with helping students to think like and consider becoming entrepreneurs regardless of whether they own the company. Students can take entrepreneurship and agribusiness classes and tap other resources, such as pitch competitions and mentoring, through the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. Spud bus Aboard the spud bus, students learned about growing and handling potatoes from professor Barbara Christ, an expert in potato breeding and disease management. Known informally as the spud lady, Christ is a former interim dean of the college, former head of the Department of Plant Pathology and currently a special assistant to the deans. Students also saw a machine called Spudnik, which can gently dig potatoes from the field 12 rows at a time, and met Keith Masser, company chairman and CEO. Were trying to take potatoes to that next level and stay relevant, said Dave Masser, also a College of Ag Sciences alumnus. He explained that the 10-pound bag of potatoes is fading fast as people gravitate to smaller amounts, a shift confirmed by the students who think of 10-pound bags as something their parents buy. Suppliers are trying to appeal to Millennials and the next generation behind them with quick, easy-to-prepare products. The goal is to take the knife out of the equation, so the purchased potato can go from the refrigerator to the skillet, said Masser. Place Your Advert Register or sign in to advertise your job 'Food is rotting in the fields and still we see no action', according to the deputy president of the NFU. Minette Batters has demanded urgent action on seasonal labour decline, as she spoke at the NFU Norfolk AGM at Easton and Otley College. The NFUs labour providers survey reveals that there was a 29% shortfall in seasonal workers for horticulture businesses in September, raising the average shortfall for the year to 11%. The survey also shows that the number of returning workers to farms, a critical source of the workforce, fell to 16%, its lowest level all year. The returnee rate had been as high as 65% in January. The NFU has thus underlined the need for the re-introduction of a Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme to combat the labour shortfall, something Prime Minister Theresa May has pondered over. We knew five years ago that we would be facing a shortfall, but then we had Brexit and that massively exacerbates everything, said Mrs Batters at the AGM. Are we seeing fruit and vegetables rotting in the fields? Yes we are. Fruit and veg is rotting in the fields and still we see no action. We absolutely need a commitment to SAWS by 2018. We are making a compelling case, but we need the government to act. A previous seasonal agricultural workers scheme was scrapped by Theresa May when she was home secretary, after Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU. The CLA, a rural organisation which represents around farmers, said that reducing access to migrant labour for farming, horticulture and tourism jobs will have "devastating consequences" for the rural economy. The dairy industry has called for greater transparency in the results of animal welfare schemes across the sector. At the World Dairy Summit in Belfast on Thursday (2 November), it was heard that customers of dairy companies such as retailers, restaurants and coffee shops are increasingly demanding information and transparency on animal welfare standards. Dr Jennifer Walker, Director, Dairy Stewardship, of Dean Foods Company, a leading manufacturer of dairy produce in the United States, told the summit that guidelines produced in many schemes do not include sufficiently specific outcomes that can be audited. Dr Walker told the Summit: "There is a need for standardised industry acceptance of what animal welfare standards should look like. Measurable outcomes that can be audited are an essential part of this process." Dr Walker said consumers want to feel good about issues such as animal welfare but the priority should be 'what is good for the cow'. Luc Mirabito, team leader for the International Dairy Federations guide to good animal welfare practices in dairy production and expert in the World Organisation for Animals (OIE) former Animal Welfare Working Group, said: It is vital that the dairy industry evidences that farmers are doing their utmost to ensure high standards of animal welfare. The practical use of an animal welfare management system in a farm environment is a powerful tool to demonstrate good animal husbandry practices. To help achieve this objective, OIE standards and general principles can be used as a relevant and valuable starting point. On a global scale, the vision is to reach a world where the welfare of animals is respected, promoted and advanced, in ways that complement the pursuit of animal health, human well-being, socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. While both leaders maintained that their meeting did not revolve around politics, Uddhav said that they share similar views on GST and demonetisation. By Vidya : Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today called on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee but both leaders maintained that their meeting did not revolve around politics. "This was my first meet with her. There were no political discussions held but we share the same views on issues like demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST). This was the first meet, let's see how things shape up," Uddhav said after the two-hour long meeting. advertisement The Shiv Sena president was accompanied by his son Aditya Thackeray for the meeting held at Trident hotel in the city. Uddhav also revealed that discussions were held regarding a possible joint sister cities venture between the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Mamata, who is in Mumbai since Tuesday, has met industrialists and businessmen over investments on projects in Kolkata. WATCH | Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray meets West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in Mumbai --- ENDS --- Defra Sectreary Michael Gove has suggested the UK will need to set up an independent regulator with powers to hold the government to account on environmental issues after Brexit. He said there are "strong and powerful" arguments for a new environmental regulator, to ensure standards are upheld post-Brexit. Speaking to the House of Lords energy and environment committee, Mr Gove explained that theres a responsibility on my department to address the so-called governance gap when the UK leaves the EU. Environmental groups have previously warned that Brexit could lead to poorer environmental standards, but the Defra Secretary's reassurance will likely calm fears. Some pro-Brexit MPs have argued that the UK should reserve the right to thin out environmental rules which they believe undermine UK competitiveness. Currently, the European Commission has wide control over environmental matters, including the enforcement of laws covering air pollution, chemicals, wildlife and water quality. It has the power to bring infringement proceedings against governments suspected of breaching rules. Food production concerns Mr Goves ever increasing commitment to a 'green Brexit' is likely to raise concerns among some farmers that the government is prioritising the environment rather than the need for smooth food production. However, he said: As we reform the system of agricultural support we have at the moment, we can have a system that incentivises both better care for the environment and also better innovation in food productivity. Mr Gove has said Brexit would mean leaving behind the EU's 'environmentally damaging and socially unjust' Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In terms of the growing issue of the need to improve UK soil health, Mr Gove has said the UK will see the "fundamental eradication of soil fertility" because industrial farming has "damaged the earth". He has thus been encouraging farmers to adopt techniques such as minimum tillage, which could improve soil health. He has also previously said that farm subsidies should be awarded to farmers who promote environmental measures which encourage innovation. The Welsh agricultural industry is "fast running out of patience" with the UK government and the EU over slow Brexit talks. NFU Cymru President Stephen James has also urged the UK Government to avoid a no deal Brexit scenario that could have severe implications for Welsh farmers. Speaking at NFU Cymru Conference 2017, Mr James warned that farming businesses will suffer if a deal securing an economic relationship with the EU cannot be reached. Mr James maintained that the only sensible option for Brexit negotiators was for the UK to remain a part of the Customs Union, at least until a time where a comprehensive free trade agreement can be reached. Addressing the conference on Thursday (2 November), Mr James said: With less than a year and a half until our departure from the EU, farmers and growers are fast running out of patience with both sides over the Article 50 negotiations. The time has come for both the UK and EU governments to acknowledge that businesses and individuals across Europe will suffer if a deal securing an ongoing and closely-integrated economic relationship is not reached. 'Deeply troubling' Mr James said a no deal scenario would have "severe implications" for the industry. He said that even the thought of such a prospect is "deeply troubling". With the majority of our food exports going to the EU any impact of a no deal on farming and food production would have severe knock-on effects, not just to our sector but to the wider economy of Wales that relies on a thriving food and farming sector, he said. The UK Government must secure a free trade agreement with the EU, which maintains tariff free trade in agricultural goods between the UK and EU, and also avoids costly and disruptive non-tariff barriers. If such an agreement cannot be reached by March 2019, then transitional arrangements, which allow us to continue to access our largest and closest export market, must be put in place. In my mind the only sensible option is for us to remain in the Customs Union until such time as a comprehensive free trade agreement is agreed between the EU and the UK. Re-think the vision Regardless of the challenges which lie ahead for the Welsh agricultural industry, the conference heard how opportunities are there to develop and grow the Welsh brand. When we leave the EU there is an opportunity to look at how we can ensure that we use a far greater share of Welsh and British food in our schools, our hospitals and within the military, said Mr James. Agriculture is, of course, one of the sectors which has been most impacted by EU legislation. Brexit presents us with the opportunity to re-think regulation and articulate our own vision for the new regulatory landscape. This is an opportunity for us in Wales to create a new agricultural policy framework that helps to achieve our vision of a productive, progressive and profitable farming industry that delivers jobs, growth and investment for Wales. UK sheep breeders can now export genetics to US Gauri Was Irresistible For Shahrukh Khan According to Bollywood Hungama, ''Shahrukh Khan, then 18, saw the 14 year old Gauri at a party but was too shy to make a move. However, she was irresistible for SRK and he managed to strike up a conversation with her and on his third meeting with her, he got her phone number.'' They Drank Cola On Their First Date ''The date was October 25, 1984. Their first date lasted just five minutes, in the upscale Panchseel Club, located in Delhi's enclave of Panchsheel Park. Both sat by the pool and nervously sipped colas'." Shahrukh Asked Other Girls To Call Gauri's Home "It would have been awkward for Shahrukh Khan to call Gauri in her home. So he would make other girls ask for her. They would address themselves as Shaheen', which Gauri would recognize as code for SRK! Both would meet at parties and occasionally, they would wander at the sprawling Jawaharlal Nehru University campus.'' King Khan Made History Notes For Gauri ''Shahrukh Khan would make history notes for Gauri and also teach her how to drive. They would hug for few moments and then go back to their respective homes.'' Shahrukh Asked Gauri Not To Wear White Shirts ''But soon, cracks developed in this cute love story. SRK became possessive who would order Gauri not to wear white shirts, as they might be transparent, or leave her hair untied, as they might be too striking. Swimsuits were a big no-no.'' Shahrukh Tried To Impress Gauri's Aunty "The bigger challenge was to convince Gauri's parents about this Hindu-Muslim union. The couple began their mission' by softening up the least aggressive member of Gauri's family, Neeru aunty.'' Shahrukh Was Ready To Turn Hindu For Gauri He tried to impress her by showing her his awards and certificates and even said that he's ready to turn Hindu. He said, "I will become a Hindu and change my name to Jitendra Kumar Tully. Gauri's Father Told Him To Leave The Party After Hearing His Name But how will I get uncircumcised?" Despite these jokes, Neeru liked Shahrukh and revealed to her husband Tejinder about SRK-Gauri love affair. Tejinder suggested that Shahrukh come to their house party. At the bash, many guests recognized him as the guy in the serial Fauji'. Gauri's father, Ramesh, asked him his name. At first, he hesitated but then blurted out. On hearing his Muslim identity, Ramesh asked him to leave immediately. Shahrukh Borrowed Suits For His Wedding Gauri's mother Savita too was aghast. Tejinder meanwhile tried to convince Ramesh and Savita. The parents also realized that Gauri is adamant and hence they relented. On October 25, 1991, the wedding took place in which SRK wore suits borrowed from Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman's costume department. They married in court followed by a traditional Hindu wedding. "He (SRK) danced at his wedding, longer and harder than anyone else. I Can Leave Films For Gauri Reportedly, He was told by producer F C Mehra to postpone his wedding until their film Chamatkar released. SRK suggested that he would quit the film instead. I Love Her Body Anupama mentioned a 1992 Stardust article in which he said, "My wife comes first. And I can tell you this much that if ever I am asked to make a choice between my career and Gauri, I'll leave films...I mean I would go insane but for her.'' ''She's the only thing I have...I love her body. I am hooked to her." Here's The Picture They posted this picture and wrote, "Some cakes are just a Little extra special ... #ediblefabric #ballgown #guesswho #happybirthdayaishwarya #happybirthash #chocolatecake #dollcake #microbakery #mumbai #teamaishwaryara #mumbaibaker." What Aishwarya Did On Her Birthday Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's birthday was marked by low-key celebrations. The actor visited Siddhivinayak temple along with Brindya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan and Aaradhya Bachchan. Religious Aishwarya Aish never misses to take the blessings of Siddhivinayak on her special days. The diva also visited the temple on her wedding anniversary. Aishwarya Always Does Some Charity Work On Her Birthday A source had informed a daily, "Last year, she had sponsored the surgeries of 100 children with cleft palate. This year, she will feed underprivileged children.'' Why No Party Was Organised This Year? Aishwarya Rai Bachchan lost her father in March this year. The actress was very attached to her father and hence no bash was organised this year. Abhishek & Aaradhya Had Ordered Aishwarya's Favourite Cake A source had told Mid-Day "Abhishek and Aaradhya have ordered Aishwarya's favourite cake, which will be cut when the Bachchan family gets together in the evening.'' The Source Had Also Informed ''Aishwarya will drop Aaradhya to school in the morning, and then head to her mom Vrinda Rai's Bandra apartment. The mother-daughter duo will spend some quality time together." On The Work Front Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will get busy with the shooting of Fanney Khan very soon. He's Akshaye Khanna Recently, while interacting with Karan Johar as a part of 'Ittefaq' promotion, Akshaye Khanna said he finds Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, the sexiest and said, "I can't take my eyes off her every time I meet her." We Feel You, Akshaye He further said, "I have done two films with her. She might be used to be people looking at her. For me, it's embarrassing. I am not used to not being able to take my eyes off somebody. You just keep staring at her like a lunatic." Sonakshi Agrees With Akshaye Even Sonakshi echoed his views and said, "Not only guys. Even I am not able to take my eyes off her. She is damn stunning." Meanwhile, Aishwarya Turned 44 Yesterday On a similar note, the stunning beauty turned 44 yesterday (November 1, 2017) and yeah, it's tough to believe that even in her 40s she can give any model, a run for money. She Visited Siddhivinayak On the eve of her birthday, she visited Siddhivinayak temple in Dadar, Mumbai and was seen seeking blessings along with daughter Aaradhya Bachchan and mother Brinda Rai. Aishwarya, On The Work Front On On the professional front, she will be next seen in Fanney Khan alongside Anil Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao. Nihar Forgot His Cue: Kangana Talking about the accident, Kangana reveals, "I was doing a sword fighting scene with three men. (Laughs) I guess Nihar (Pandya, who plays Rao Saheb) forgot his cue and he hit on my head." It Was A Bad Accident: Kangana "There's no way of avoiding something so unfortunate like this. Especially, when it's choreography related. The coordination of the various elements is difficult. It was a bad accident. It exposed my bone and my face was full of blood." Kangana On Being Hit By The Sword Earlier talking about this mishap, Kangana had said, "There's something about being in character. You cannot be a warrior without adopting the body language and the demeanour. When the metal sword hit my head, I felt it." Kangana Got 10 Stitches On Her Head "I saw blood streaming down my face. There were stains on my dress. I asked Nick (Powell, Hollywood action director) whether I needed stitches." "He said yes. I asked how many. He said around 10. I asked him to take me to the hospital, to the best plastic surgeon." What A Bravo! "Nick and my producer, Kamal Jain found it amusing that it was me who was guiding them. Usually, I'm scared of blood. But in this case, I wasn't." Kangana Considers The Mishap A Good Sign "Perhaps, I'm romanticising it but there was a certain high in having a real-battle scar. A queen's life is always associated with luxury and glamour. But when you talk about Laxmibai, she was the general of an army." Kangana On Laxmi Bai "She was an extraordinary woman. How many battles she fought in the prime of her youth! She was like a killing machine'. So it would be a shame to try to get into character superficially through clothes, make-up, hairstyles and jewellery." Rough & Tough We hear that Salman has filmed some tough action sequences in the brutal weather of Austria. A A crucial chapter in Tiger Zinda Hai plays out on this remote, snow covered, visually stunning mountain scape. Filming here was nothing short of a massive challenge for the entire crew. A Challenging Task! Director Ali Abbas Zafar says, "What we see onscreen might look a lot easier than it actually is! Sometimes, sequences like the ones shot in Austria can be difficult to achieve. For a significant chapter in Tiger Zinda Hai, we had to film in a place that had a certain amount of aloofness and isolation. We found that spot in the mountains of Austria, a place where time seemed to stand still and frozen". Salman Khan's Dedication Since the shoot here was scheduled during winter, temperatures at minus 22 degrees Celsius brought practically impossible challenges. Zafar continues, "Shooting here meant dealing with unexpected situations. Literally a lot of pain had gone behind this sequence. Salman developed a health issue, but he still trained to film here and delivered on a tough action sequence. And we shot a really beautiful love song here. We had expertise on our side, since we worked with an international crew that has worked on the latest Bond film, Spectre. In the end, as a team, we are fairly satisfied that we managed to film here successfully." The Power Of Five This Ali Abbas Zafar directorial has been shot in five different countries- Austria, Greece, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and India to capture a gripping, explosive and entertaining story. How Katrina Turned Into A Spy The actress plays an elite intelligence agent, tackling hand-to-hand combats and adapting to a different set of mannerisms for her character. She even trained with real agents for her role. Salman's Deadly Weapon In Tiger Zinda Hai, Salman would be seen tearing down his opponents with a massive machine gun- MG 42. Recently Pooja Bhatt had confirmed that a sequel to 1991 superhit film 'Sadak' is in offing with Sanjay Dutt playing the lead. Well now, the actor has finally sealed the deal and Pooja who had been a part of Sadak is quite excited about this latest development. She took to her Instagram page and posted a picture making the announcement. The actress captioned the picture as, "And the smile says it all! Thank you @maheshfilm for the most heartfelt screenplay with a narration to match! #Sadak2 is certainly your ode to @duttsanjay if ever there was one! This story immortalises Ravi and especially his overwhelming love for Pooja... a much needed love story for the 'unfeeling' times we live in! #Sadak2 #puresoul . Well, Pooja dropped a hint that Sanjay Dutt would be reprising his role of Ravi. But will we get to see Pooja too as a part of this flick or will some new actress step into her shoes? Talking about Sadak 2, Pooja had earlier revealed that the sequel will deal with the topic of depression. She had said, "We are making 'Sadak 2' in which we are showing Sanjay Dutt in his true and present time (Sanjay Dutt is Drug Abuse Survivor) so we are dealing with issue of depression in that film but we are making a commercial film." The movie will also mark the comeback of Mahesh Bhatt as a director. Bharti & Harshs Wedding Card The wedding card, Bharti says, is really gorgeous and she can't describe in words. Bharti added, "It goes perfectly with the venue of the wedding. It has the beach feeling to it." Bharti & Harshs Wedding Venue Bharti and Harsh's wedding will happen in Goa. It will be a three day affair and the duo will be personally taking care of their guests! Bharti & Harshs Wedding Programmes They will be organising two to three functions in Mumbai. On November 21, at Harsh's house, there will be a Mata Ki Chouki and another one will be at Bharti's house on November 29. Bangle ceremony will happen on November 27. Bharti Singhs Wedding Dress About her wedding dress, Bharti was quoted by TOI as saying, "For the wedding, I am wearing a Fuchsia Pink lehenga which will have a detailed work. My wedding lehenga will have a bride story." Bharti further added that she is yet to finalise her jewellery. For The Cocktail Party "For the Cocktail party I will be wearing a blood red gown designed by Ashish and Shefali and the reception and bangle ceremony outfits will be designed by Neeta Lulla. Harsh will wear Bottle Green suit for the cocktail party. Harshs Wedding Trousseau Bharti added, "Harsh will wear a Royal blue Sherwani for the wedding, Black Tuxedo for reception." Salman Khan & Shahrukh Khan On Guest List Coming to the most important part, the guest list! Bharti says that guest list is too long. She added, "I will be personally inviting Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Karan Johar, Madhuri Dixit, Malaika Arora for the wedding." Will Kapil Sharma & Krushna Abhishek Attend? She said, "Krushna will be there. Kapil bhai will be done with the promotions of his film (Firangi) by November 24, so I am hoping he will be able to make it for the wedding." Honeymoon Plans Bharti and Harsh will be heading to Europe for their honeymoon. Bharti says, "We are dying to go to Spain, Barcelona, France, Rome." By PTI: By Aditi Khanna London, Nov 2 (PTI) Britains Defence Minister Michael Fallon resigned today over allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour, leaving Prime Minister Theresa May to cope with a forced Cabinet reshuffle. Fallon, 65, stepped down as UK defence secretary saying his conduct may have fallen below the high standards expected amid revelations that he had made unwanted advances towards a journalist years ago. advertisement "A number of allegations have surfaced about MPs in recent days, including some about my previous conduct. Many of these have been false, but I accept in the past I have fallen below the high standards that we require of the armed forces that I have the honour to represent," Fallon said in his resignation letter to May. It remains unclear if it was the particular revelation of Fallon repeatedly placing his hand on the knee of journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer that triggered his decision to step down or there were other incidents involving an abuse of power that may have precipitated his departure. Hartley-Brewer, at the centre of the allegations that came to light earlier this week, has stressed that she did not see herself as a victim and that the incident had not ?remotely upset or distressed? anyone. "If this is over kneegate, him touching my knee 15 years ago and me not having any issue with it today, this is the most insane, absurd and ridiculous resignation of a Cabinet minister ever,"she said. The British prime minister in her response to Fallons resignation letter praised his "diligent service" and welcomed the "particular example you wish to set to servicemen and women and others". Fallon, described as a Conservative party heavyweight and even tipped as a future Prime Minister, becomes the first victim of a deepening scandal over sexual misconduct in the corridors of political power in the UK. While May is expected to appoint a new defence minister without the need for a very wide reshuffle, the position of another of her senior ministers, First Secretary of State Damian Green, remains precarious after disclosures by an academic and Conservative party activist Kate Maltby. He has categorically denied making unwanted sexual advances towards Maltby but remains under investigation by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood on the orders of Theresa May. "Parliament now has to look at itself and the Prime Minister has made very clear that conduct needs to be improved and we need to protect the staff of Westminster against any particular allegations of harassment," Fallon said soon after his resignation. advertisement His name had appeared on an unverified list of sexual misconduct, a so-called dirty dossier, circulating in Westminster. It has attracted a mixed response because it implicates MPs who have had consensual affairs with colleagues in the same space as more serious accusations of sexual abuse. The Prime Minister is struggling to contain the crisis and opened parliamentary proceedings on Wednesday with a statement on the issue, stressing that she had been holding a series of meetings toset up a "common, transparent, independent" grievance procedure. Indian-origin Opposition Labour MP Lisa Nandy challenged her in the House of Commons over her failure to act over sexual abuse cover-up she had informed her about three years ago ? when May was the UK home secretary. "On three occasions, I asked her [Theresa May] to act and on three occasions she did not," Nandy claimed. May assured the House that she was determined to take firm action and is set to hold a meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn early next week to address the issue across party lines. advertisement She has reportedly read the "riot act" to her Cabinet, warning them to ensure exemplary behaviour. PTI AK NSA --- ENDS --- In the past few years, Southwest Airlines (LUV 2.36%) and Alaska Air (ALK 1.25%) have been arguably the two most successful U.S. airlines. Southwest and Alaska have achieved enviable margins through a combination of low fares and an unrelenting focus on efficiency. However, the two carriers' fates diverged in the third quarter. Southwest Airlines posted another strong quarterly profit. Meanwhile, Alaska Air stumbled, reporting a significant year-over-year decline in its profitability. The discrepancy can be traced back largely to how these two airlines performed in California. Southwest Airlines stays strong Last quarter, Southwest Airlines was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. In total, the storms reduced the company's revenue by about $100 million. Nevertheless, revenue per available seat mile (RASM) declined just 0.5% year over year. Meanwhile, unit costs increased by a modest 2.5%, excluding special items. As a result, Southwest was still able to report a solid operating profit of $871 million last quarter (again excluding special items). That was down from $972 million a year earlier. Southwest Airlines' strong results were notable for two reasons. First, it incurred lots of storm-related disruption -- unlike Alaska Air, which has a minimal presence in Houston and Florida. Second, Southwest has major operations in several of United Continental's (UAL 0.02%) hub cities, many of which were plagued by fare wars last quarter. Most other carriers with a broad national footprint reported steep profit declines in the third quarter. For example, United's adjusted operating income plunged more than 30% year over year. Compared to that baseline, Southwest's results were quite commendable. Alaska Air didn't fare so well Alaska Air posted a 2% year-over-year increase in its adjusted earnings per share last quarter. However, the company acquired Virgin America last December, boosting its revenue by roughly a third, so it ought to be posting much stronger earnings growth this year. Alaska's cost performance was fairly good last quarter. Non-fuel unit costs crept up by a mere 1%. However, RASM declined 1.6% year over year. (Both of these statistics include Virgin America's Q3 2016 results as part of the comparison.) That's why adjusted pre-tax income declined 13% year over year on a combined basis for Alaska Airlines and Virgin America. Considering that Alaska's largest base of operations is in the Pacific Northwest -- far from the epicenter of the recent fare wars -- and the company didn't face a big hurricane-related headwind, this profit decline was disappointing. The weakness can be traced to one region: California. It's all about California On Alaska's third-quarter earnings call last week, management indicated that the company faced severe pricing pressure in California. The weakness affected both transcontinental flights from California to the East Coast and short-haul flying within California. As a result, while RASM was roughly flat in "legacy" Alaska Air markets last quarter, RASM fell by about 8% on routes acquired in the Virgin America deal. During the earnings call, some analysts questioned whether the weak results mean former Virgin America customers are defecting to other airlines. Alaska's management doesn't think so, noting huge growth in the number of loyalty program members and co-brand credit card holders. Some of the weakness may stem from United Continental having hubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Virgin America's two main bases. As a result, the former Virgin America network is exposed to the industry fare wars. Additionally, Alaska's growth in California is provoking competitive responses by other carriers, including Southwest Airlines. Southwest has added flights in California several times in the past year in order to protect its market-leading position there. The combination of more flights (in some cases) and more competitive pricing in California is surely adding to the pressure on Alaska Air. Interestingly enough, Southwest Airlines said its RASM in California was only slightly worse than the system average last quarter. This reflects the loyalty of its customer base -- but also its geographical diversity. Southwest is an important player at virtually every major airport in California, unlike Virgin America, which was heavily concentrated in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Alaska Air executives aren't satisfied with the company's performance in California right now. They will likely cut the carrier's capacity in some underperforming markets in the near future. In the long run, Alaska Air is still well-positioned to succeed in its new California markets, but it looks like the current turbulence will continue into 2018. Scientists worldwide are looking for ways to heal diseases using stem cells. These cells offer the potential to develop new types of therapies and drugs. Stem cell material also holds the key to researching diseases in a way that was not possible before. If researchers are to achieve meaningful and transferable results, there must be an increase in the cell material to be examined. In addition, the latest studies show that 3D cell models reflect the conditions in the human body much more accurately. The generation of these cell aggregates takes place primarily under sterile conditions in droplet-shaped nutrient solutions. In the future, it will be possible to complete this process cheaply and reliably. As part of the LabBag project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV have pooled their expertise to develop a miniature laboratory in the form of a plastic bag. Inside this bag, human induced pluripotent stem cells (see box) in other words, artificially produced stem cells are able both to grow and to form 3D aggregates in a sterile environment. These cells can be used by the pharmaceutical industry as patient- or disease-specific test systems for drug development and research into active ingredients. Quickly creating hanging droplets without manual pipetting Until now, stem cell aggregates have been generated by using pipette feeder robots (which are expensive to purchase and maintain) or by means of manual pipetting (which is labor- and time-intensive). Manual pipetting in petri dishes requires a lot of practice, and there is also the risk of contamination. The laboratory in a bag developed by Fraunhofer researchers aims to reduce the costs of labor and materials while also significantly increasing cell yield and process reliability. Simply by shaking the transparent bag, it takes just a few seconds to produce several hundred hanging droplets of nutrient solution, virtually automatically. The droplets function as mini-bioreactors in which cell aggregates are able to form. First of all, the nutrient solution containing the stem cells is poured into the bag. The bag is rotated once and then returned to its initial position. During this process, the droplets remain suspended on round hydrophilic spots. The cells sink to the bottom of the droplets, where they bind together and fuse to form a defined 3D aggregate. We have coated the polymer film of the bag with two different coatings, explains Dr. Michael Thomas, project manager and scientist at Fraunhofer IST, whose team is responsible for the coating of the polymer film. A hydrophobic, water-repellent base layer ensures that the nutrient solution containing proteins flows over the surface and doesnt stick to it. However, the second layer consists of 150 hydrophilic round spots, each with a diameter of 5 millimeters. The solution gets caught on these spots, thus creating the droplets. To functionalize the surface of the film in such a specific way, the Braunschweig researchers make use of atmospheric pressure plasma processes. In this method, physical plasma is generated in a gas gap between two electrodes by applying alternating voltage. This plasma is then used to treat the surfaces of a wide variety of materials. One of the outstanding feature of LabBag is that the resulting cell models can even be frozen in the bag. Unlike with manual pipetting, there is no longer any need to transfer material into a separate cryogenic vessel. How to optimize cryopreservation that is, the freezing of cells falls within the remit of Fraunhofer IBMT. In addition, this institute has responsibility within the project for growing stem cells as well as for characterizing and analyzing the 3D aggregates. We are focusing on growing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), since these have the potential to develop into any cell in the body as well as into any tissue or specific type of tissue. Unlike embryonic stem cells, they dont provoke any ethical controversies either, says Dr. Julia Neubauer, biologist at Fraunhofer IBMT. Stem cells become specialized in their shape and capabilities so as to accomplish certain tasks, and this makes it possible to develop patient-specific drugs. Dr. Neubauer and her colleagues are focusing on the differentiation into heart muscle cells, and have actually already differentiated iPS cells into cells of this type successfully. High-quality 3D cell models grow within 72 hours Every drop has a volume of approximately 20 microliters, and the size of the 3D cell model is around 400 micrometers. By varying the diameter of the spot on the surface of the bag, the size of the aggregates can be adjusted so as to achieve a targeted expansion of the biological portfolio. At present, Dr. Neubauer and her team need roughly 72 hours to produce aggregates in hanging droplets. We describe our LabBag as a mini GMP laboratory where GMP is short for good manufacturing practice, for which it meets all the requirements. The closed, sterile nature of the system makes the risk of contamination very small. Ultimately, we can produce better cell models for drug research and thereby avoid experiments on animals, Dr. Neubauer stresses. The team plans to integrate sensors for controlling the process. Fraunhofer IVV in Freising and its branch lab in Dresden were responsible for creating the bag. They took charge of the choice and development of the materials used, including the seal, as well as of designing the bag and its underlying technology. We conducted a lot of tests relating to issues such as permeability, the quality of microscopic analysis, biocompatibility, and resistance to temperature and chemicals. After all that, we decided on polymer films. Previously we had identified 15 groups of polymers, and we examined eight of these, says Dr. Cornelia Stramm, scientist at Fraunhofer IVV in Freising. Andrea Liebmann, from Fraunhofer IVV in Dresden, adds, The list of requirements for the LabBag was very demanding. It needed to be highly transparent and adequately retain its shape; it had to be sealable and stackable; it needed to be capable of being sterilized and undergoing cryogenic freezing. The bag also had to offer single-handed operation (self-opening) and good accessibility for the exchange of nutrient solutions. To satisfy these high requirements, we developed a partially automated test rig to produce the bags. Since it is cost-efficient to make the LabBag, it represents an attractive alternative to traditional approaches. A prototype of this patent-pending disposable bag will be presented November 13-16 at the joint Fraunhofer booth at the MEDICA trade fair in Dusseldorf (Hall 10, Booth G05/H04). The mini GMP laboratory offers the pharmaceutical industry and also smaller laboratories with no clean room technology the opportunity to grow high-quality cell models for drug research without incurring high investment costs. Nikon shuts down a camera assembling facility in Eastern China News oi -Vijeta Nikon, announced today that it had to shut down a factory in Eastern China that was responsible for assembling Nikon 1 series of interchangeable lens cameras. One of the largest manufacturers of optics and imaging products, Nikon, announced today that it had to shut down a factory in Eastern China that was responsible for assembling cameras. The instance reminds us that rise of smartphones is eventually killing all the other standalone gizmos available in the market including the music players, cameras and navigation devices. Operations at the factory had stopped a while back and now the employees of the workplace will be dismissed. The factory used skills of 2,200 workers who worked on assembling the Nikon 1 series of interchangeable lens cameras since 2002. Nikon has announced that the employees of the factory will be compensated at higher standards than required to meet the Chinese law. Nikon's spokeswoman Luan Xiaofei stated, "We will move some production lines elsewhere, with Thailand being one of the destinations. But none of the plants will produce the same models of cameras we used to make in Wuxi." "We foresee that there will be more plant closures by multinationals in China in the coming future," said Li Jin, chief researcher with the China Enterprise Research Institute, a government-backed think tank in Beijing. "It will cost jobs, but such multinationals left behind a trained labor force which could be used by newcomers on the higher end of value chain." Nikon said it remains committed to China, and its operations in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces that make components for cameras are unaffected, according to its spokeswoman Luan. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications By PTI: opportunity: CSE New Delhi, Nov 2 (PTI) The UN climate change conference, which begins next week in Bonn under the shadow of the recent US pullout from the Paris pact, should be seen as an "opportunity" and "call for greater action", a green body said today. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said countries, including India, must work towards preparing a "fair, strong, ambitious and effective" rule book of the Paris Agreement. advertisement The 23rd meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is scheduled to begin in Bonn from November 6. "Over the past 25 years, the US has been an obstruction to an ambitious climate deal. Today, we are in a state of climate crisis, with the world reeling from a series of climate change-induced extreme weather events," the Delhi-based body said. "The US withdrawal should be taken as an opportunity and a call for greater and more ambitious action, and not a call for inaction," said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of CSE and head of its climate change programme. The upcoming climate summit also marks the 25th year of the signing of UNFCCC. "Bonn meeting is the first climate meeting post the United States pullout. Parties, including India, must work towards preparing a fair, strong, ambitious and effective rule book of the Paris Agreement," the CSE said. The US had recently announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal that was agreed upon by over 190 countries. "It is crucial to ensure that the US does not continue to keep the world hostage to its inaction. The rest of the world must come together to make sure the US does not obstruct or dilute the agreement any further," Bhushan said. At Bonn, parties would negotiate the rules and guidelines for provisions under the Paris Agreement, namely transparency framework, New Market Mechanism, facilitative dialogue (FD) and global stocktake (GST). Other key agenda includes finance which has always been a bone of contention between developed and developing countries. The rich nations are often accused of failing to fulfil their mandate of providing finance and technology to the developing world to address climate change. The Green Climate Fund (GCF), constituted to support developing countries, needs to fulfil the mandate of USD 100 billion by 2020, CSE said. At the end of the summit, parties must come up with a draft rule book to be finalised by 2018, as per the mandate, it said According to a research published in 2016, CO2 concentration in the earths atmosphere was 403 parts per million (ppm), the highest ever. advertisement 2016 was also the warmest year on record with the developing world been the worst hit. Among the top 10 countries representing the global vulnerability index, nine were from the developing world, indicating their limited capability and capacity to withstand climate fury, CSE said. This year, India had a below-normal monsoon, with central India facing severe droughts, it added. PTI TDS PLB SRY --- ENDS --- HTC U11 Life and U11 Plus announced: Specs, features and more News oi -Chandrika As expected, HTC today announced the launch of two brand new smartphones; U11 Life and U11 Plus. As expected, HTC today announced the launch of two brand new smartphones; U11 Life and U11 Plus. The U11 Life will be available for purchase in the US exclusively through the T-Mobile and the HTC's website starting from the today. As of now, the company has not clearly announced the global release date of the U11 Life. The HTC U11 Plus, on the other hand, will be initially available in Taiwan and China. The phone will go on sale in Taiwan coming weekend, while Chinese customers will be able to buy the handset from November 11 onwards. HTC is yet to reveal the pricing of the U11 Life and U11 Plus. HTC U11 Life Starting with the HTC U11 Life, it brings the flagship features and design to the premium-mid range category. It has a "Liquid Surface" design and a 5.2-inch 1080p Super LCD display. Notably, U11 Life is the first Android One smartphone that runs on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. There is another variant of the smartphone that runs on Android 7.1 Nougat OS with HTC's own UI on top. The company claims that it will be updated to Android Oreo within 30 days from the launch. The smartphone features the same Edge Sense feature with a squeezable frame that is seen on the U11. Under the hood, the U11 Life is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor. The chipset is teamed with 3GB/4GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB of internal storage depending on the region. In terms of optics, the smartphone features a 16MP camera on the back with 4K video recording support. Up front, there is a 16MP f/2.0 sensor that can shoot videos in 1080p. It packs a 2,600mAh battery to keep the lights on. What's more, the device supports Google Assistant as well as Amazon Alexa and has an IP67 certified body for water and dust resistance. With the purchase of the U11 Life, buyers will also get the USonic noise cancellation ear buds in the box. On the connectivity front, the HTC U11 Life offers Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou and a USB Type-C port. The smartphone also features a fingerprint scanner that is embedded into the home button at the front. HTC U11 Plus U11 Plus is the high-end smartphone for those who want to step up their game. The smartphone comes with a 6-inch LCD display that carries support for WQHD+ resolution. This means the display has the screen resolution of 1,4402,880 pixels along with an aspect ratio of 18:9. The smartphone has been launched in two memory variants. The basic one with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, while the higher one will feature 6GB RAM and 128GB of native storage. Since there will be a microSD card, the storage space can be further expanded. Powering the HTC U11 Plus is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor that is present in all the current flagship smartphones. In terms of optics, the smartphone features 12MP rear-facing camera with f/1.7 aperture and dual-LED flash. Likewise, there lies an 8MP selfie camera at the front. The U11 Plus has the same camera hardware and software as the flagship U11. When it comes to software, the smartphone arrives pre-installed with Android 8.0 Oreo operating system. While for battery, it uses a 3,393mAh battery that might not seem big enough given its large 6-inch screen. HTC has optimized the Edge Sense feature on U11 Plus to offer more customizable experience to users. As such, it has a feature called Unique Edge Launcher. The U11 Plus also comes with an IP68 certified chassis and USonic ear buds in the box. Moreover, the smartphone is said to deliver 30% louder audio as compared to the U11. Talking about the design, the HTC U11 Plus has minimal bezels, but it is nowhere near a fully bezel-less phone. The smartphone is offered in Silver and Ceramic Black color options. Additionally, there is a Translucent color variant, which allows you to see its innards through the rear panel. Best Mobiles in India Samsung starts rolling out Android 8.0 Oreo Beta update for Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ News oi -Samden Sherpa Currently, the Android 8.0 Oreo Beta version is available in South Korea, U.S. and the U.K. Samsung has just announced that it is launching Samsung Experience 9.0. beta, as part of the Galaxy beta program. However, as part of Samsung Experience 9.0, the company has also started rolling out the developer version of Android 8.0 Oreo for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Currently, the Beta version is available in South Korea, U.S. and the U.K. Users in South Korea, who have purchased the Samsung device from carriers like SKT, KT, and LG U+ will be getting the updates. As for U.S. users, the beta update is available for devices on Sprint and T-Mobile network or unlocked version. And finally in U.K. users who have purchased the devices from the open market or the update will be available on operator unlocked versions. The file is being rolled out as an OTA file. It is about 1.4GB in size and comes with a build number of G950USQI1ZQJJ. Notably, installing a Beta version can cause some issues on your device. Some of the issues that can arise include data fluctuations, Wi-Fi stops working amongst others. Before installing the update make sure to backup all the important data and files as well. More importantly, do not use this device as your primary smartphone with the beta version. Having said that, interested users can download and test the Android 8.0 developer preview by enrolling to Samsung Member or Samsung+ application. Once registered, the user will get the firmware over-the-air. The handsets will receive regular over-the-air (OTA) updates of all builds of Android 8.0 Beta. Besides, it is expected to go on for another two months before the final firmware is released publicly. While Samsung is yet to confirm the release date officially previous reports have suggested that it might actually happen in early months of 2018. SamMobile has also reportedly got hold of the official changelog of the Android 8.0 Oreo update from a T-Mobile Galaxy S8. Further, the publication has said that the update will be coming to Germany, Spain, France, Poland, China, and India later. No exact timeframe has been given though. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Xiaomi Redmi 5s alleged price leaks; to cost around Rs. 8,000 News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Xiaomi Redmi 5 is nearing its launch. The upcoming Xiaomi Redmi 5 is hitting the rumor mills every now and then revealing all the possible details ahead of its official announcement. The recent information that has been let out seems to be pretty interesting as its pricing has been leaked. As per a Chinese report spotted by MyDrivers via GizmoChina, the Xiaomi smartphones with the model number MDT1 and MDE1 those were spotted on the TENAA database have received the 3C certification. Apparently, the certification has revealed that these smartphones to be launched by Xiaomi will support 5V/2A charging. It is said that they will support all the carriers operating in China. The report further reveals that these phones will be manufactured by Wing Tech ODM and launch as Redmi 5. Furthermore, the report goes on revealing that the alleged Xiaom Redmi 5 will boast of a 5.7-inch display with HD+ resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. It is tipped that this smartphone will be launched with the Snapdragon 450 SoC. From the existing speculations, the Redmi 5 is said to feature an 8MP rear camera and a 6MP selfie camera on board. Along with the Redmi 5, the company is said to launch another device called Redmi 5 Plus that is likely to feature a 5.7-inch display with FHD display. This smartphone is likely to feature a 13MP dual camera setup at its rear. When it comes to the pricing, the Redmi 5 base model with 3GB RAM and 16GB storage is said to be priced at 799 yuan (approx. Rs. 7,800). The higher-end model with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage will be priced at 899 yuan (approx. Rs. 8,800), claim the speculations. On the other hand, the Redmi 5 Plus is believed to cost 999 yuan (approx. Rs. 9,800). Speculations are rife that the Xiaomi Redmi 5 lineup will be announced in the company's home market China on November 11 that is the Singles' Day online shopping festival. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Specifications: Qualcomm Snapdragon 435! Redmi Y1 has a metal uni-body and boasts a 5.5-inch IPS HD Display. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4Ghz. The handset gets 3GB of RAM coupled with 32GB ROM. The smartphone support microSD card for memory expansion to 256 GB. Redmi Y1 runs Android Nougat 7.0 out-of-the-box. The smartphone runs MIUI customized user interface. The smartphone has a 16MP front camera with a single LED flash. The rear camera is a 13MP snapper and it also gets a single LED flash. The device has a 3080mAh battery. Form factor: A bit heavy yet comfortable to use! Redmi Y1 has rounded edges on the sides. The front panel of the device comprises of three touch capacitive buttons which are respectively for switching to the home screen, to the previous screen and for multitasking. The front camera along with the earpiece and ambient light sensors rests on top. The volume rockers and lock/unlock toggle is on the right side edge while the SIM tray is on the left side. The rear panel of the handset has the primary camera at the top left corner with LED flash right next to it. The fingerprint sensor rests in the center of the rear panel. The speaker grill lies at the base edge surrounding the micro USB 2.0 port while the top edge houses the 3.5 mm audio jack. Redmi Y1 offers a comfortable grip which makes it easy to hold in hands and use with one hand as well. Although it's a bit of a challenge to reach every corner of the smartphone while using it with just one hand. Camera: Responds well in low light conditions Redmi Y1 has a front facing camera which responds quite well in low light conditions and captures well saturated and well-lit pictures. It certainly captures great pictures for the price point it has been introduced in the country. The rear camera is a 13MP snapper with phase detection autofocus which is pretty quick. The rear camera is not as keen on quality as much the front camera is and hence the quality of the images is compromised. However, this does not mean that the quality is extremely low, it still is one of the most competing rear cameras in the price segment. The low light performance of both front and rear camera are also great. Performance: Quick switching between apps! Although it would be too early to judge the performance of the device I can assure you that the device will perform smoothly. Switching between apps was quick and also apps opened up without too much of a lag. Of course, an elaborate and extensive performance test is due for the device but the first impression it left was satisfactory enough. Conclusion: A catch in its price segment! Redmi Y1 has raised the for smartphones in the sub 10K price segment and it certainly has some great features that will make it popular among consumers. It leaves an overall impression of a more than average Android smartphone. We will provide you and in-depth review of the device soon enough. Keep an eye out on our smartphone review section. Mi Pad 3's successor is in the works; confirms Xiaomi CEO News oi -Chandrika Barely 6 months after the launch, the Mi Pad 3 is no longer available for buying. Xiaomi had launched the Mi Pad 3 without much fanfare in April this year. Barely 6 months after the launch, the device is no longer available for buying. Naturally, the rumor mill started claiming that the Chinese company may release its successor soon. Proving the speculations right, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun has now confirmed via Weibo that the company is indeed prepping a next-generation tablet. Unfortunately, he has not given out any information on the release date of the Mi Pad 4. The CEO also remained tight-lipped about the specs and features of the upcoming device. Hopefully, we will some information in the following days. Talking about its predecessor, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 flaunts a 7.9-inch retinal display with 2,0481,536 pixels resolution and PPI of up to 326. The tablet is powered by a MediaTek processor with a clock frequency of 2.1GHz under its hood. The processor comes along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of non-expandable storage space. The tablet packs a large 6,600mAh battery, which is said to last up to 867 hours of standby and 12 hours of multimedia consumption. It also supports 5V/2A fast charging. Mi Pad 3 gets its interface from the MIUI 8 based on Android OS. In terms of optics, the Xiaomi tablet features a 13MP camera with an aperture of f/2.2 on the rear, while on the front there is a 5MP selfie shooter. The connectivity suite of the Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 offers Wi-Fi 802.11ac dual antenna band, Bluetooth 4.1, and a USB Type-C port. The Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 carries with a price tag of just 1,499 Yuan (approximately Rs. 14,700). Via Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications U.S. Department of Defense Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Press Operations Release No. NR-379-17 November 01, 2017 Department of Defense Releases Budget Figure for 2017 Military Intelligence Program (MIP) The Department of Defense released today the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) appropriated top line budget for FY 2017. The total MIP budget, which included both the base budget and Overseas Contingency Operations appropriations, was $18.4B billion. The department has determined that releasing this top line figure does not jeopardize any classified activities within the MIP. No other MIP budget figures or program details will be released, as they remain classified for national security reasons. http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1360019/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S.-led Coalition's Support to Continue After Raqqa's Liberation, Official Says By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, Oct. 31, 2017 The Syrian Democratic Forces' Oct. 20 liberation of Raqqa, Syria, exposed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's lies and cowardice and the evil of its ideology, Army Maj. Gen. James B. Jarrard, commander of Special Operations Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, told Pentagon reporters today. Briefing the press via teleconference from Baghdad, the commander said despite ISIS's defeat in Raqqa, the terrorist organization still exists, and the U.S.-led coalition will not back off from supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces. And, "together, the coalition will continue [its] support to the SDF as they liberate the remainder of areas along the Euphrates River to the border with Iraq," Jarrard said. The SDF began their push to liberate Raqqa June 6. ISIS Overpowered "This multireligious and multiethnic alliance of Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Yezidis, Armenians and Turkmen -- which also includes female fighters and commanders -- overpowered, entrenched the enemy and demonstrated courage and tenacity in the face of significant losses," he said. Precision coalition air support and ground artillery enabled the SDF's advance and minimized civilian casualties in the process, Jarrard emphasized. "[ISIS] has no capital and no physical caliphate," he said. "[ISIS] is running out of places to hide. [ISIS] terrorists are running away from our partners in the coalition. Their leaders are in hiding. Raqqa was freed by Syrians. Raqqa will be secured by Syrians. Raqqa will be governed by Syrians." SDF: 'Phenomenal' Jarrard congratulated the SDF on "a phenomenal record" since it began prosecuting the campaign against ISIS in Syria. "They continue to amaze us as we watch them and the sacrifices that they continue to endure to assist the world in eliminating this area of Syria from the evils of [ISIS]," he added. Clearing every building in Raqqa will take several months of tough work, the OIR commander said, adding that providing internally displaced persons with water, food and shelter will also take time. The Raqqa Internal Security Force is an indigenous partner force that provides local security to prevent ISIS's reemergence, he said. It answers to the Raqqa Civil Council, and as it grows, the RISF eventually will assume control of Raqqa from the SDF. "For the people of Raqqa, at the moment it is still unsafe for them to return home. Although the city is void of [ISIS] fighters, hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of [ISIS] improvised explosive devices, bombs and booby traps remain. Sadly, civilian deaths have already been reported among some of those who have tried to return," Jarrard said. The clearance process will take time as teams assess, identify and remove explosive hazards. In the coming weeks, the SDF will be the holding force as it continues to clear explosive hazards from the city, preparing to turn over Raqqa's security to the security force in the near future, he added. "Civilians will be allowed back in the city once conditions are safe. The RCC is leading the way in providing advice to Raqqa is about when they may be able to return home," Jarrard said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Officials Release Details of Latest Strikes Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, Nov. 1, 2017 U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 13 strikes consisting of 18 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Syria In Syria, coalition military forces conducted eight strikes consisting of nine engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Abu Kamal, a strike destroyed an ISIS training center. -- Near Dayr Az Zawr, seven strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units and destroyed three fighting positions and an ISIS vehicle and suppressed a fighting position. Strikes in Iraq In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted five strikes consisting of nine engagements against ISIS targets: -- Near Qaim, four strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and damaged an ISIS supply route and destroyed a command-and-control node, a weapons cache, an ISIS headquarters and a vehicle. -- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed four ISIS-held buildings. Previous Strikes Additionally, eight strikes consisting of 16 engagements were conducted in Iraq and Syria on Oct. 30. -- In Syria, near Shaddadi, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position and an ISIS vehicle. -- In Syria, near Dayr Az Zawr, six strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed a vehicle-borne bomb and four ISIS lines of communication. -- In Iraq, near Qaim, a strike destroyed 10 ISIS supply routes. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said. The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said. The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Army Engineers continue significant progress in Puerto Rico hurricane recovery operations By Lisa Hunter (USACE) November 1, 2017 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- On Sept. 20, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. The Category 5 hurricane wreaked havoc and destruction across the island, taking out electrical and communications infrastructure, as well as severely damaging thousands of buildings and homes. The National Response Framework designates the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the lead agency for Emergency Response Function 3, Public Works and Engineering. Under the function, Corps employees provide temporary generator power to critical facilities, inspect critical facilities, clear roadways and remove debris, and install temporary roofs on homes that were damaged during the hurricane. As the hurricane made landfall, a small contingent from USACE had already deployed to Puerto Rico, to provide support following Hurricane Irma. They rode out Hurricane Maria and immediately started laying the groundwork for what would be one of the largest disaster responses in the Corps' history, in terms of the magnitude of the mission and number of personnel involved. On Sept. 24, Mobile District's commander, Col. James DeLapp and 13 employees from the Corps' Mobile and other USACE districts boarded a military flight for San Juan, an advanced party that would set up the Corps Puerto Rico Recovery Field Office and assess the missions. In less than a month, the USACE mission and manpower have grown exponentially. "We have taken on missions that the Corps doesn't usually do during a disaster response," DeLapp explained. "At the request of FEMA and the Governor of Puerto Rico, USACE is assisting with the repair to Puerto Rico's power grid and with emergency repairs to Guajataca Dam. "Our planning and response teams have flawlessly executed their missions and are taking bigger and bigger strides to assist the people of Puerto Rico to return to normalcy as soon as possible," DeLapp said. By the numbers: The Power Planning and Response Team, personnel from USACE's Albuquerque District and Soldiers from the 249th Engineer Battalion have installed 364 generators at critical facilities and have another 41 installations in progress, according to Reginald Bourgeois, the mission manager for the Temporary Power Team. Each generator is supporting a critical function. For example, one generator is providing power for the Guaynabo Hospital, a 150-bed facility that sees 40,000 patients a year. Two others are supporting the water pump stations in Manati, Puerto Rico, providing fresh water for a 44,000-resident community. In total, the team has installed generators to support 48 hospitals, 190 water-treatment plants, and 44 wastewater facilities, as well as 30 emergency services centers and the 9-1-1 call center. The Debris Planning and Response Team, personnel from USACE's New Orleans District, working with more than 220 locally hired contractors have cleared miles of debris from roads and have picked up and properly disposed of more than 62,542 cubic yards of debris, according to Jasmine Smith, the mission manager for the Debris Team. FEMA has allocated up to $255 million for debris removal. The team has been tasked to complete debris removal within 39 of the 78 municipalities in the territory. Debris removal consists of the pickup, hauling and disposal of construction and demolition (building materials, furniture, metals, etc.) vegetative debris, household hazardous waste, and white goods (refrigerators, dryers, stoves, etc.). Another aspect of the Recovery Field Office's mission is the temporary roofing initiative, known as "blue roofs" because of the blue plastic material used. The blue roofs are designed to provide temporary protection from the elements so the residents may return from hurricane shelters, safely inhabit their homes and reduce the chance of further damage from the elements. Hurricane Maria damaged the roofs of thousands of homes, hospitals and other critical infrastructure across Puerto Rico, according to Kevin Slattery, the mission manager for the Blue Roof Team. So far, $105 million has been designated for the program. To be eligible for a temporary roof, the homeowner/landlord must legally agree to allow the Corps' contractors access to the property by signing a Right of Entry form. The team then assesses the home to see if the structure is eligible for a temporary roof. The Blue Roof Team has already collected more than 17,293 Right of Entry forms; conducted nearly 15,380 assessments; and installed more than 3,986 temporary roofs, Slattery said. The Recovery Field Office is overseeing several other missions, including one that is a unique assignment for the team: performing emergency repairs to the Guajataca Dam, located near Isabella, Puerto Rico. The spillway of the Guajataca Dam was significantly damaged by Hurricane Maria's heavy rains. The dam provides flood-risk management and water supply to approximately 350,000 people. At the request of FEMA and the Governor of Puerto Rico, the Corps' Puerto Rico Recovery Field Office has coordinated to perform emergency repairs to the dam. Working with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the agency that owns the dam, and units from every branch of the Department of Defense, the Corps has overseen emergency repairs to prevent further erosion in the dam's spillway and installed pumps that have returned water supply to the communities below the dam. Over the past few weeks, the Corps team of engineers assessed the damage to the dam and embarked on the emergency repairs, which included placing 505 jersey barriers, weighing between 4,000 and 5,000 pounds each; and 1,300 "supersacks," 3,000-pound sacks filled with sand and rock. Once the emergency repairs are completed, the Corps is assisting the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority in developing a plan for long-term repairs. "This has been a massive response to a massive disaster," DeLapp said. "It's hard to understand how catastrophic the damage is until you see it for yourself. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Puerto Rico. But, more than that, we are here working to help Puerto Rico recover as quickly as possible." "We are picking up debris, installing temporary roofs, providing emergency power to hospitals, other critical facilities, and getting water and wastewater plants up and running," DeLapp said. "We started with a couple of dozen soldiers and civilians who were either already here or managed to fly in on a military flight when most commercial flights were still unavailable. Now, we have close to 600 soldiers and civilians deployed to Puerto Rico. Our numbers are growing exponentially and the number of local contractors we're employing is growing exponentially. And, we're not leaving until we've done everything we can to help the residents of Puerto Rico return to normalcy." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Canada - AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov Transmittal No: 17-57 WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2017 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Canada for AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) for an estimated cost of $140 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on October 30, 2017. The Government of Canada has requested a Letter of Offer and Acceptance for the procurement of up to thirty-two (32) AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air-to Air Missiles (AMRAAMs), up to eighteen (18) AMRAAM Captive Air Training Missiles (CATMs); up to four (4) AMRAAM Non-Development Item Airborne Instrumentation Unit (NDI-AIU); up to two (2) AMRAAM Instrumented Test Vehicles (ITV); up to seven (7) spare AMRAAM guidance units; up to four (4) spare AMRAAM control sections for use on their F/A-18 aircraft. Included in the sale are containers; storage and preservation; transportation; aircrew and maintenance training; training aids and equipment, spares and repair parts; warranties; weapon system support and test equipment; publications and technical documentation; software development, integration, and support; system integration and testing; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support; and other related elements of logistics and program support. The estimated total cost is $140 million. This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by helping to improve the security of a NATO ally which has been, and continues to be, a key democratic partner of the United States in ensuring peace and stability. The missiles will be used on Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) fighter aircraft. This proposed sale of defense articles and services is required to enable RCAF fighters to optimally fulfill both North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) and NATO missions and also meets the U.S. Northern Command's goals of combined air operations interoperability and standardization between Canadian and U.S. forces. The RCAF will have no difficulty absorbing these missiles into its inventory. The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region. The prime contractor will be Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, AZ. The Government of Canada has advised that it will negotiate offset agreements in conjunction with this sale. Implementation of this proposed sale will not require the assignment of any additional U.S. Government or contractor representatives to Canada. There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale. This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded. All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov. -30- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Qatar - F-15QA Construction, Cybersecurity, and Force Protection Infrastructure Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov Transmittal No: 17-22 WASHINGTON, Nov 1, 2017 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Qatar for support of its F-15QA multi-role fighter aircraft program for an estimated cost of $1.1 billion. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale today. The Government of Qatar has requested support of its F-15QA multi-role fighter aircraft program to include design and construction services, new parking/loading ramps, hot cargo pads, taxiways, hangars, back shops, alert facilities, weapons storage areas, hardened shelters, squadron operations facilities, maintenance facilities, training facilities, information technology support and cyber facilities, force protection support facilities, squadron operations facilities, other F-15QA related support structures, construction/facilities/design services, cybersecurity services, mission critical computer resources, support services, force protection services, and other related elements of logistics and program support. The estimated cost is $1.1 billion. This proposed sale supports the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States. Qatar is an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Persian Gulf region. Our mutual defense interests anchor our relationship and the Qatar Emiri Air Force (QEAF) plays a predominant role in Qatar's defense. The proposed sale improves Qatar's capability to operate and sustain its F-15QA aircraft. A robust construction, cybersecurity, and force protection infrastructure is vital to ensuring the QEAF partners can utilize the F-15QA aircraft to its full potential. Qatar will have no difficulty absorbing this support into its armed forces. The proposed sale of this construction, cybersecurity, and force protection infrastructure will not alter the basic military balance in the region. The prime contractor for construction, cybersecurity, and force protection infrastructure will be determined through competition. The purchaser typically requests offsets. Any offset agreement will be defined in negotiations between the purchaser and the contractor. Implementation of the construction, cybersecurity, and force protection aspects of this notification include the establishment of a construction office in Doha with as many as ten (10) U.S. Government civilians which will adjust in size as case workload varies. Anticipated contractor footprint for this effort is approximately fifteen (15) to fifty (50) personnel, which may vary based on phases of construction and establishment of required services. There will be no adverse impact to U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale. This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded. All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov. -30- NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Secretary General arrives in the Republic of Korea NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 01 Nov. 2017 - 02 Nov. 2017 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg began a two-day trip to the Republic of Korea on Wednesday (1 November 2017) for talks on common security challenges and deepening the Alliance's partnership with Seoul. Meeting with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, the Secretary General praised the Republic of Korea's contributions to NATO's mission to Afghanistan and efforts to combat piracy off the Horn of Africa. The two also discussed shared concerns over North Korea. Mr. Stoltenberg condemned North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile tests, which he said undermine regional and international security. Following their meeting, the Secretary General and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha signed a new partnership programme between NATO and the Republic of Korea. This will promote political dialogue and practical cooperation in a number of priority areas, including non-proliferation, cyber defence and counter-terrorism. Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Stoltenberg visited the National Assembly, meeting with a delegation led by Speaker Chung Sye-Kyun. The Secretary General also laid a wreath at the Seoul National Cemetery in tribute to the thousands of South Koreans who gave their lives in defence of their homeland. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Navy Transfers RHIBs to Hellenic Navy Navy News Service Story Number: NNS171101-19 Release Date: 11/1/2017 3:24:00 PM From NSA Souda Bay Public Affairs NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY SOUDA BAY, Greece (NNS) -- U.S. Navy and Hellenic Navy personnel gathered at Marathi NATO piers to commemorate the transfer of four ridged-hulled inflatable boats (RHIB) to the Hellenic Navy based on an Excess Defense Articles (EDA) grant, Oct. 31. Section 516 of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) of 1961 authorizes the Department of Defense to transfer EDA to foreign governments. Under the FAA, military departments determine what is or is not excess. RHIBs are typically used for modernization of partner forces, and are transferred at a reduced price based on the condition of the equipment or as a grant. Cmdr. Matt Zublic, assigned to the Office of Defense Cooperation in Athens, Greece, explained that since the U.S. Navy received new security boats; these boats could be EDA granted to the Hellenic Navy. "It was in the best interest of the United States to EDA grant these boats to the Hellenic Navy," said Zublic. "They served the purpose of security patrols for the U.S. Navy, now they will do the same for the Hellenic Navy." Zublic further explained that transferring these formerly U.S.-owned boats to the Hellenic Navy means that our military partner increases their fleet of small patrol boats by four, and the U.S. Navy benefits from having a military partner that has boats fully inter-operable with the equipment used by U.S. harbor security at Naval Support Activity Souda Bay. To otherwise dispose of these boats would mean that they would have to have been stripped of their parts and transferred for disposition aervices through the Defense Logistics Agency. Naval Support Activity Souda Bay extends the war fighting capability by providing, operating and sustaining superior facilities and services dedicated to combat readiness and security of ships, aircraft, detachments and personnel. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NMCB 11, EODMU 2 Complete R-ADR During Exercise Bold Alligator 2017 Navy News Service Story Number: NNS171101-12 Release Date: 11/1/2017 2:10:00 PM From NMCB 11 Public Affairs Office ATLANTIC, N.C. (NNS) -- Sailors assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 11 and Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit (EODMU) 2 conducted rapid airfield damage repair (R-ADR) proof-of-concept tasking as part of exercise Bold Alligator 2017 (BA17) at Marine Corps Outlying Field (MCOLF) Atlantic, Oct. 27. The team successfully identified and repaired 30 craters in 14 hours, significantly ahead of schedule. The exercise emphasized command and control integration while experimenting with new techniques and technologies. The interoperability training between the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) enterprise, Expeditionary Warfighting Development Center (EXWDC) and subordinate units will help establish new tactics and procedures to improve the way R-ADR is conducted in the future. The Damage Assessment Team (DAT) identified craters, spalls, potential unexploded ordnance and the initial evaluation of each location. The crew then determined a minimum-operating strip based on the size and type of aircraft using the runway. EODMU 2 Sailors flew an unmanned aerial system to identify potential unexploded ordnance and specific crater locations during the airfield assessment. The 67 Seabees from NMCB 11 analyzed the data, then planned and executed the repair. "Having EOD feeding us data was absolutely helpful," said Engineering Aide 1st Class David Lawlor. "Being able to gather real-time imagery makes the process of identifying craters and spalls so much faster, and it seems to be much more efficient." Once the DAT completed the assessment of the airfield, they relayed the information to the Emergency Operating Center (EOC) to rapidly formulate a plan to repair the damage in the safest, most expeditious manner. "This exercise tested 'Lucky Eleven's' ADR readiness, skill and knowledge in locating and repairing airfield damage," said Equipment Operator 1st Class Kevin Rapier. "I think we did a great job, and I'm proud of what my team accomplished." Since its inception during the early days of World War II, R-ADR, or rapid runway repair as it was formerly known, has been one of the Seabees' core competencies. During the Vietnam War, the ability to keep runways operational to launch and recover aircraft was vital to mission success. The United States faces potential threats around the globe where Seabees may be called upon for mission-critical R-ADR. NMCB 11, based in Gulfport, Mississippi, provides general engineering, disaster relief, humanitarian assistance and civil support to Navy, Marine Corps and joint operational forces through planned deployments and contingency response. EODMU 2, based at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia Beach, provides operational explosive ordnance disposal capability as required for location, identification, rendering safe, recovery, field evaluation and disposal of all explosive ordnance, including chemical and nuclear weapons. Bold Alligator 2017 was designed to improve Navy-Marine Corps amphibious core competencies, along with coalition, NATO, allied and partner nations. These partner nations see exercises such as this as a necessary investment in the current and future readiness of their forces. BA17 will take place Oct. 18-30, ashore along the eastern seaboard. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tanker explosion kills 15 in northern Afghanistan Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 06:54PM At least 15 people have been killed and dozens more wounded after a bomb attached to a fuel tanker exploded in northern Afghanistan. The blast occurred on Wednesday night in the center of Charikar, the capital of Parwan province, which is located some 60 kilometers north of the capital Kabul. The casualties were caused when a bus caught fire after the sticky bomb blew up the nearby fuel tanker. A security official said the bomb destroyed two tankers, setting off an explosion that engulfed the bus, burning many passengers to death. Waheeda Shahkar, a spokeswoman for the local governor, said the death toll was at least 15, with 27 wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest deadly attack. Earlier Wednesday, a car bomb targeted a district police commander in the northern province of Balkh, killing one person. Also on Tuesday, multiple casualties were reported after a bomber blew himself up in the diplomatic zone of Kabul. The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for the bombing. The Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan before the US-led invasion in 2001, have increased attacks on security forces and foreign troops over the past few months. The militants have warned that there will be no letup in their attacks until foreign forces fully withdraw from Afghanistan. Afghanistan still suffers from continued violence despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops in the war-torn country. Taking advantage of the chaos, Daesh has also emerged in Afghanistan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Catalan leader not to return home soon, his lawyer says Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 02:33PM The leader of Spain's Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, will not return home soon to face prosecution over his attempt to separate the region from Madrid, his lawyer says. The separatist leader would not be back in Spain to appear in a court hearing on Thursday and Friday over his charges of rebellion, sedition and breach of trust, said the lawyer, Paul Bekaert, late on Tuesday. Puigdemont was quite sure that his return to Spain from Belgium, where he has been since last week when a crackdown on separatists began in Catalonia, would further complicate the situation in Catalonia, the lawyer said. "He has not told me, but as the situation now stands, I don't see him going back to Spain in the coming weeks," Bekaert said in an interview hours after Puigdemont himself said he was seeking special legal guarantees from Madrid to return home. Puigdemont has clashed with the Spanish government since a referendum of independence was held in Catalonia on October 1. He has insisted that the vote, which came with a turnout lower than 50 percent of eligible voters, gave his administration the mandate to declare independence from Spain. The separatist leader and his allies in the parliament finally issued the declaration on Friday only to give Madrid the excuse to take over control of the region and dismiss the regional government. Puigdemont then flew to Brussels with a group of his close associates. He is now wanted by the Spanish High Court, along with 13 other former members of the Catalan government. If he does not appear in the hearing in Madrid to testify on his charges, he could not stand a fresh election called for Catalonia on December 21. Puigdemont said in his news conference on Tuesday that he had no plans to seek refuge in Belgium. He said he would return and contest the elections if the government gave him the guarantees. He also called on the Catalans to maintain their momentum for independence, saying, however, that the road to democracy would be long. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hamas begins ceding Gaza border crossings to PA under reconciliation deal Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 08:53AM The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has reportedly begun handing over control of the border crossings in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority (PA) under a newly struck reconciliation agreement. Witnesses said Wednesday that PA employees had moved into the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border as well as the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings on the frontier with the occupied territories as Hamas members packed up equipment and departed on trucks. Hisham Adwan, director of information at the Hamas crossings authority, confirmed that PA employees would take full control of the Gaza border. Nazmi Muhanna, the PA's top official for border crossings, formally received control of the Rafah crossing from his Hamas counterpart. Both Palestinian and Egyptian flags are flying at the Rafah crossing. The development came under a preliminary reconciliation deal signed between the rival factions Hamas and Fatah in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, last month in an attempt to end a decade-long split that has crippled Palestinian statehood aspirations. Under the agreement, the Fatah-led PA, based in the West Bank, is to resume full control of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip by December 1. In exchange, the Palestinian Authority will lift its restrictions on electricity supply to Gaza. The fresh Hamas-Fatah reconciliation efforts have enraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that the regime would not accept "imaginary appeasement where the Palestinian side is reconciling at the expense of our existence." Netanyahu's office also announced that Tel Aviv would not hold talks with a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas unless the group meets a range of conditions, including disarming and recognizing the Israeli regime. The Palestinian leadership has been divided between Fatah and Hamas since 2006, when the latter scored a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in Gaza. Hamas has ever since been running the coastal enclave, while Fatah has been based in the autonomous parts the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Previous reconciliation attempts by the two sides to form a power-sharing unity government in Gaza and the West Bank have failed. In September, however, Hamas said it had accepted key reconciliation conditions offered by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and underlined its "desire to achieve national unity." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi Arabia ramps up deadly bombings in Yemen Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 08:23AM As many as 29 civilians have been killed and several others injured as Saudi warplanes dropped bombs on Yemen's extreme northwest. One of the strikes hit a marketplace in Sahaar District of the province of Sa'adah in the early hours of Wednesday, killing 27 people and injuring nine others, the al-Masirah television network reported. The death toll is expected to rise as a search operation is still underway at the site of the attack. A vehicle was also targeted by Saudi fighter jets in the province's al-Dhaher District, killing two more civilians. Over the weekend, 10 Yemeni civilians lost their lives in Sa'adah and the province of Ta'izz during similar air raids. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of its allies have been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime. More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign. Last month, the United Nations blacklisted the coalition for infanticide during its war on Yemen. The annual blacklist, released by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on October 5, said the actions of the Riyadh-led alliance in Yemen "objectively led to that party being listed for the killing and maiming of children." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. No Longer Releasing Data On Afghan Casualties Amid Uptick In Violence RFE/RL November 01, 2017 The U.S. military for the second time in eight years is withholding information about casualty and attrition rates in the Afghan army and police force at the request of the Kabul government, a watchdog agency says. The decision to withhold the casualty figures comes as a report by the Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that casualties have been increasing as the Taliban gained ground in the last six months. The U.S. military previously provided figures on the Afghan military's manpower and the state of equipment to SIGAR to be included in its quarterly reports. But SIGAR said that for the latest report, the Pentagon told its inspectors that the data belonged to the Afghan government and it must therefore "withhold, restrict, or classify the data as long as the Afghan government has classified it." SIGAR head John Sopko criticized the decision, saying it will "hinder SIGAR's ability to publicly report on progress or failure in a key reconstruction sector," where more than 60 percent of the roughly $121 billion in U.S. spending in Afghanistan since 2002 has gone -- training and equipping of Afghan security forces. There was no immediate comment from U.S. forces in Afghanistan or the Kabul government. This is the second time such data has been withheld as classified since the watchdog agency began reporting in 2008. SIGAR said the first time was for the January 2015 quarterly report, which came after the withdrawal of U.S.-led NATO combat forces from Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The latest decision to classify the information comes at a time of what SIGAR said are increasing casualties among Afghanistan's armed forces and civilians. SIGAR's quarterly report in July found what if called "shockingly high" casualties, with 2,531 members of the Afghan security forces killed and 4,238 wounded between January and May 8. Casualties also soared by 35 percent in 2016, with 6,800 Afghan soldiers and police killed, according to SIGAR. While the number of military casualties was not updated in SIGAR's October 31 report, it found a 52 percent increase in civilian casualties from coalition and Afghan air strikes in the first nine months of 2017 compared with the same period in 2016. U.S. forces have increased air strikes recently as part of a new strategy aimed at reversing Taliban gains and forcing the insurgents to seek peace talks with the Afghan government. Under the strategy, the United States has committed 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 11,000 already there, to train and assist Afghan security forces in their battle against the Taliban. As of August, SIGAR said 13 percent of Afghanistan's 407 districts were under Taliban control or influence, up from 11 percent in February. That means an additional 700,000 Afghans came to live in districts where the Taliban has at least some influence. In total, about 43 percent of Afghanistan's districts are either under Taliban control or being contested by the Taliban, 3 percent more than six months ago, SIGAR said. With reporting by AFP, dpa, and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-no-longer-releasing -data-afghan-casualties-uptick-violence-taliban- increase-control-sigar-sopko/28827564.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Lawmakers Release Russia-Linked Facebook Advertisements RFE/RL November 01, 2017 U.S lawmakers have released a batch of Facebook ads linked to Russia's efforts to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election and stir up emotions on sensitive social issues. The release of the ads by the House Intelligence Committee on November 1 came as Facebook and other social media platforms came under increasing pressure for not doing enough to block Russian interference on their sites and prevent meddling in the 2016 election. Some of the ads released apparently took opposing sides on social or political issues. One ad called on readers to "Support Hillary. Save American Muslims!" It had a photo of a woman in a hijab next to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to Republican Donald Trump. Another ad urged viewers to "like and share if you want burqa banned in America," claiming that the person under the full-body covering could be a terrorist. One video ad parodying Trump targeted blacks who also indicated they were interested in sites such as BlackNews.com, HuffPost Politics, or HuffPost Black Voices. Some of the ads used broken English and had several punctuation mistakes. 'Influence Campaign' U.S. intelligence officials concluded in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" targeting the 2016 election, aiming to undermine confidence in U.S. democracy, tarnish the reputation of Clinton, and help Trump. Facebook, Google, and Twitter have said they found thousands of ads bought by Russia-linked accounts, including some paid for in rubles, and that they say were potentially seen by some 126 million people. Lawmakers released only a sample of the thousands of the ads purchased by Russians, many of them by an organization known as the Internet Research Agency. Panel members said other ads were being examined and would also be released. Facebook said the Russia-led effort to spread misinformation also used the Instagram social network, which the social network owns. A top Facebook executive told a congressional committee on November 1 that Instagram posts by suspected Russian accounts were seen by some 20 million people in the United States in 2016. "We now discovered, in the last 48 hours, 120,000 Russian-based posts on Instagram," the executive told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing with representatives from the social media giants. A day earlier, Democratic Senator Al Franken chastised the social media executives, saying, "People are buying ads on your platform with rubles. They are political ads." "You put billions of data points together all the time. ... Google has all knowledge that man has ever developed. You can't put together rubles with a political ad and go like, 'Hmmm, those data points spell out something pretty bad?'" Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI, and at least two congressional committees are investigating Russia's actions during the campaign and whether there are any links to the Trump team. Trump denies any collusion with Russians, while the Kremlin denies that it interfered in the U.S. election. With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-senate- facebook-advertisements-russia-linked- election-meddling/28829929.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia Says It Won't Extradite Suspect In Montenegro Alleged Coup Attempt RFE/RL November 01, 2017 Russian authorities say they won't hand over a Montenegrin man to his home country where he is suspected of involvement in an alleged coup attempt. Russia's Prosecutor-General's Office said in a November 1 statement that it rejected a request by Montenegro's Justice Ministry to extradite the person, whom it identified as Ananije Nikic, because he had earlier been given refugee status by Moscow. Montenegro issued an arrest warrant for Nikic in February 2017. He was detained in Russia's southern region of Rostov in April 2017 and held on extradition remand for several months. Authorities in Montenegro say Serbian and Russian nationalists plotted to occupy parliament during the country's October 2016 parliamentary elections, assassinate then-Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, and install a pro-Russian leadership to halt Montenegro's bid to join NATO. The Kremlin has denied claims that "Russian state bodies" were involved in the alleged plot. Fourteen suspects in the case are currently on trial in Podgorica. Over two days of court testimony ending on October 27, Aleksandar Sindjelic, a key witness in the trial, implicated a purported Russian secret-service agent in organizing the coup attempt aimed at blocking the Balkan country's NATO accession. Sindjelic identified Eduard Shishmakov as a key organizer and financier of the alleged plot to overthrow the government during parliamentary elections in October 2016. Prosecutors have argued during the trial that two Russian military intelligence operatives for the Kremlin, Shishmakov and Vladimir Popov, organized and coordinated the coup attempt from neighboring Serbia. In addition to the charges handed down to the 14 defendants of creating a criminal organization with the aim of undermining Montenegro's constitutional order, Shishmakov and Popov have also been charged with terrorism. The two are being tried in absentia. Defense lawyers will get their chance to question Sindjelic when the trial resumes on November 7. The defendants also include pro-Russian Democratic Front opposition lawmakers Andrija Mandic and Milan Knezevic, nine citizens of Serbia, one other Montenegrin, and the two Russians. Montenegro became NATO's 29th member on June 5, marking a historic turn toward the transatlantic alliance amid protests from Montenegro's political opposition and Russia, which has long opposed any further enlargement of the Western military alliance. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-extradite- montenegro-coup-suspect/28829550.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Beijing Quietly Building Naval Ports, Aircraft Bases in Disputed South China Sea Sputnik News 03:46 01.11.2017 China continues to quietly dig in on disputed islands in the South China Sea, according to recent satellite images analyzed by an American think tank. The new land reclamation and construction initiatives have been military in nature, converting the islands into naval and air bases. New Chinese facilities have been discovered on Islands such as Tree Island, a tiny island.08 square miles in area in the Paracel Islands group. The archipelago is disputed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, with some sections also claimed by Malaysia and the Philippines. Elsewhere, on the Spratly Island group, China has been building runways, leading to accusations that they intend to turn the islands into airbases. Vietnam has also accused China of using their existing facilities for naval and coast guard deployments in the region. The economically and strategically key maritime region is the subject of numerous competing territorial claims, but has slipped from the headlines in recent months as far more attention has been lavished on North Korea another flashpoint in East Asia. Bonnie Glaser, a China security expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Reuters that China has "built these extensive facilities and both Chinese civilian and [Chinese military] experts have always made it clear that when the strategic time is right, they're going to start using them more fully." "I think it is a question of when, rather than if, China will start to assert its interests more forcefully in the South China Sea and that is likely to be at a time of China's choosing." China considers the entirety of the South China Sea to be their sovereign territory, and have become increasingly willing to assert that claim as their military grows in size and strength. Earlier in October, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the 19th Communist Party Congress and praised the "steady progress" of Chinese construction and land reclamation in the disputed sea. Although the US has no land claims in the South China Sea, US Navy warships are a frequent sight in the region due to the American policy of maintaining freedom of the seas a pet issue of the United States for over a century through Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs). The policy dictates that the US will protect the right of states to freely navigate through international waters, which they say include the South China Sea a tacit rejection of China's territorial claim. The FON policy has been a major sticking point in US-China relations since 2015, when the US stepped patrols around artificial and reclaimed Chinese islands. Both sides accuse the other of endangering peace in the South China Sea: the US calls the Chinese construction provocative militarization, while China argues that the US operations are a meddlesome violation of their sovereignty. The issue is likely to be discussed between Xi and US President Donald Trump during Trump's planned visit to Asia in November. "We remain concerned about tensions in the South China Sea, in particular those caused by land reclamation and militarization of disputed outposts and the willingness of some to resort to coercive tactics to assert their claims," said Michael Cavey, a U.S. State Department spokesman, in a statement. "We have consistently called on China, as well as other claimants, to refrain from any further land reclamation, construction of new facilities, and militarization of the disputed features." Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang defended Chinese construction to Reuters. "You can't say that the construction on our islands and reefs in the South China Sea and the building of necessary defensive facilities is an expansion of military deployments," he said. "We believe that at present the situation in the South China Sea is generally good, and all relevant parties should work hard together to protect the peace and stability of the South China Sea." The RAND Corporation, a US-based think tank with close ties to the US government, ranked the South China Sea as the second biggest flashpoint between the world's two largest economies and military powers: below the Korean Peninsula but above Taiwan. This is despite degrading relations between China and Taiwan, another territory that China claims sovereignty over, despite objections by the island state. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Deadly Navy Collisions in Western Pacific Were 'Avoidable:' Top Navy Officer By Carla Babb November 01, 2017 Two collisions involving U.S. Navy destroyers and commercial vessels in the western Pacific earlier this year were "avoidable" and happened due to lax standards and poor preparation, according to the Navy's top officer. In a report made public on Wednesday, the Navy concluded that "numerous failures" on the part of leadership and the crews contributed to the deadly events. They included failing to plan for safety as well as failures in adhering to sound navigation practice and executing basic watch procedures. "Both of these accidents were preventable," Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said. "We must do better." The destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker in August off Singapore, leaving 10 U.S. sailors dead and five injured. The USS Fitzgerald, another destroyer, collided with a container ship in waters off Japan in June, killing seven sailors. The collisions prompted the Navy to conduct reviews of its worldwide operations. Before the reviews concluded, Richardson blamed the high pace of operations, budget uncertainty and naval leaders who put their mission over safety for the deadly incidents. Richardson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in September that a failure of leadership throughout the service was the main contributing factor in the Navy's lack of readiness. "I own this problem," Richardson testified. The review found that during the incident involving the USS John S. McCain in the Straits of Singapore, the crew lost situational awareness in a busy maritime area due to mistakes in the operation of the ship's steering and propulsion system. The crew also failed to follow what the review called "the international nautical rules of the road," a system of rules governing vessel maneuvers when risk of collision is present. In addition, watchers operating the ship's steering and propulsion systems were found to have insufficient proficiency and knowledge of those systems. During the USS Fitzgerald incident southwest of Japan, the Navy found that the "watch teams" on the Fitzgerald's bridge failed to carry out basic maritime procedures. They also failed to notify the ship's commanding officer when approaching nearby vessels, as required by Navy regulations, and they too failed to adhere by the international nautical rules of the road to remain clear of approaching vessels and, if possible, avoid crossing ahead of them. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ethiopian Troops Enter Somalia, Back Offensive Against Al-Shabab By Mohamed Olad Hassan November 01, 2017 Hundreds of heavily-armed Ethiopian troops have crossed into Somalia, reportedly to assist a Somali government offensive against al-Shabab militants. Residents in the border town of Dolow, in Somalia's Gedo region, say they saw at least 30 vehicles carrying Ethiopian troops crossing into Somalia late Tuesday. Witnesses who spoke to VOA Somali on condition of anonymity estimated that 1,000 Ethiopian soldiers entered Somalia. One resident said the troops were riding military vehicles and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns. Ethiopia has thousands of troops in Somalia as a part of AMISOM, the African Union force fighting al-Shabab. Regional authorities contacted by VOA on Wednesday confirmed the new Ethiopian military movements. "The Ethiopian troops as a part of AMISOM have already been in the region, and their current movement is part of the response to the Somali president's call for a massive attack on al-Shabab militants," said Mohamed Husein al-Qadi, the deputy governor of Gedo region. Local residents say they have not seen such heavy Ethiopian troop movements since 2016, when Ethiopian troops, who were not part of AMISOM, vacated a series of military bases, sparking fears of a militant resurgence and a possible setback for African Union efforts to stabilize Somalia. The report of the new Ethiopian troops crossing into Somalia came as Somali government troops and their African Union allies prepare for a large-scale offensive against al-Shabab militants, according to multiple witnesses and government officials. In advance of the offensive, the Somali government's top leaders and the leaders of Somalia's federal member states are meeting in Mogadishu for a second day to resolve political differences over the recent Saudi Arabia-Qatar diplomatic dispute. During the opening of the forum Tuesday, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed threatened to retaliate for the truck bombing of a busy Mogadishu intersection on Oct. 14 that killed more than 300 people. Al-Shabab did not claim responsibility for the blast, but officials blamed the group and few Somalis doubt the accusation. Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire vowed Wednesday to defeat al-Shabab as he spoke at a graduation ceremony for more than 300 Somali National Army soldiers. The soldiers were trained at a military base in Mogadishu run by the United Arab Emirates. Khaire said the troops signal the government's commitment to "liberating our country from al-Shabab, the terrorist group. We have a full confidence that these troops will return the image of Somalia by eradicating the terrorists." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Heads to South Korea Amid Heightened Tensions on the Peninsula By Steve Herman November 01, 2017 President Donald Trump is heading to Asia for a 12-day, five-nation tour with heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula and new polls showing Americans consider North Korea to be the most immediate threat to the United States. Trump is scheduled to visit South Korea (Nov. 7-8), the North's rival, for the second stop of the trip. During the trip, talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and other world leaders are expected to center on questions about how to deal with Pyongyang's ongoing development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. "Our goal is not war, but rather the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea, last Friday. No trip to DMZ for Trump The U.S. president will not go to the DMZ and peer into North Korea, eschewing a highly symbolic photo opportunity made by about half of his predecessors since the Korean War. "It would have had to have been the DMZ or Camp Humphreys," according to a senior administration official. "No president has visited Camp Humphreys and we thought that that made more sense in terms of its messaging, in terms of the chance to address families and troops there, and to highlight really, at President Moon's invitation South Korea's role in sharing the burden of supporting this critical alliance." The official characterized DMZ visits, something three members of the Trump Cabinet have done this year, as "becoming a little bit of a cliche, frankly." It will be the U.S. Navy, instead, that is likely to provide the timely backdrop representing America's commitment to protect South Korea. Trio of aircraft carriers expected Three U.S. aircraft carriers, around the time of the president's presence on the peninsula, are expected to engage in their first combined exercise in a decade, displaying to Pyongyang the deterrence power of the world's largest Navy. There is increasing anxiety on both sides of the Pacific about what Trump views as necessary to achieve his administration's vow to eliminate the threat to the United States posed by Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction. "I think we will come down to a point where I liken it to a kind of a Cuban Missile Crisis there's a finite time period where we have to make a decision, whether it's political or military, that really will change the political landscape of the Korean peninsula," says Jae Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Behavior questioned The U.S. president and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently have had an unprecedented, highly charged exchange of rhetoric. "The insults traded back and forth decrease the legitimacy of the United States and of the United States president," former U.S. Acting Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Thomas Countryman told VOA. "It bothers me to see an American president sink to the same level of insults and threats that we have seen from the North Koreans over many years." Some in South Korea, including the main opposition conservative party, are pushing not only to have American tactical nuclear weapons brought back to the country but also for U.S. support to allow Seoul to possess its own nuclear arsenal. "If the two countries push forward with redeploying tactical nuclear weapons, I'm certain it'll not only show the people of the two countries the solidarity of the alliance, but also prevent Kim Jong Un from having further desires to provoke," Liberty Korea Party Chairman Hong Joon Pyo said (Oct. 26) at the National Press Club in Washington. Nuclear weapons OK with South Koreans Polls show 60 percent of South Koreans favor building nuclear weapons and nearly 70 percent want the reintroduction of American tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use, which were withdrawn in 1991. "You sense the anxiety, you sense the fear, you sense that this is something different that the Koreans are facing. And so, as a result, I think they have latched on to this idea that tactical nuclear weapons may provide that kind of security to them and they haven't thought through all the messy issues that come with it," Ku, the U.S.-Korea Institute director, tells VOA. President Moon is ruling this out. "According to the joint agreement by the two Koreas on denuclearization, North Korea's nuclear state cannot be accepted or tolerated. We will not develop or possess nuclear weapons either," Moon told the National Assembly in his state of the nation address Wednesday. Trump will address the National Assembly before flying from South Korea to Beijing. There, he will discuss the heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula with Chinese President Xi Jinping. China is North Korea's only remaining significant ally. China has expressed frustration with its smaller but increasingly provocative neighbor, but Trump is expected to request that Beijing apply even more pressure on Kim Jong Un. "They've done more than I think many expected they would do," a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. "That said, there is clearly more that China could do that would go beyond the U.N. Security Council resolutions given that the vast majority of North Korean external trade flows in and out of China." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Presidents of Sudan, South Sudan Confer in Khartoum By Waakhe Simon Wudu November 01, 2017 South Sudan President Salva Kiir flew to Khartoum on Wednesday for a two-day summit with his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, to talk about economic issues in the once-rebel-controlled former Unity State. The minister in the office of the president, Mayik Ayi Deng, who oversees Kiir's activities, told reporters at Juba International Airport upon the president's departure to Khartoum Tuesday morning that Kiir was happy to accept Bashir's invitation and hoped to settle unresolved issues with Sudan this week. "One is the resumption of oil in former Unity State; second, they are going to discuss the issues concerning the border for trade between the two countries; and, third they are going to discuss the issues concerning trade itself," Deng said. Resuming oil production in former Unity State could significantly boost South Sudan's rapidly deteriorating economy. Ninety-eight percent of the country's economy relied on oil in previous years. Production in the former Unity State stopped when fighting broke out in late 2013. A peace deal signed in August 2015 has been violated many times over by both warring parties, and pipelines there have remained dormant. Defense Minister Kuol Manyang, Petroleum Minister Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth and Information Minister Michael Makuei flew to Khartoum last week ahead of the talks to hammer out deals on many issues ahead of the summit, including how to demarcate a common border and redeploy forces away from the border zone. Joint deployment Juba-based Eye Radio reported defense ministers from both Sudan and South Sudan agreed to deploy joint forces along the border and open crossing points that have been closed to traders for several years. Deng said Kiir's visit was aimed at enforcing the 2012 cooperation agreement, which covers demarcation, oil disputes, citizenship and the final status of the disputed Abyei region but was never implemented. During last week's visit to Juba by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, Kiir's adviser on foreign affairs, Nhial Deng Nhial, called on Washington to help the two countries improve relations. "There were some very complicated matters that arose during the negotiations that led to conclusion of the comprehensive peace agreement in 2005, and the government of the United States played an instrumental role in helping break some of the deadlocks, especially the issues of Abyei," Nhial said. Nhail said it was "in the same spirit" that Kiir hoped the U.S. would stay engaged in Sudan-South Sudan relations. Nhial added that the United States had already invested "a lot" in terms of resolving the conflict over Abyei. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Officials Detail DoD Support During Unprecedented Hurricane Season By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2017 Defense Department officials told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee yesterday how DoD has supported federal, state and local officials in responding to the unprecedented series of hurricanes this year. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria put tremendous strain on all levels of government and service members of all components stepped up to save lives, restore critical services and help those affected transition to recovery, said Robert Salesses, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense integration and defense support of civilian agencies. For the hurricanes, DoD's main support was to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the department also supported other federal agencies such as the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy and Transportation. Service members also supported agencies at state and local levels. "DoD is well prepared and has forces and capabilities ready to act immediately to sustain lives in the aftermath of disasters," Salesses said. "DoD ensures a high level of preparedness by continually enhancing integrated planning, improving our training and conducting joint exercises between our federal, state and local partners." Full Support Before all three storms, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis directed the department to provide full support to life saving, life sustaining operations. "Based on this direction, DoD postured significant capabilities -- Navy ships, strategic airlift, helicopters, medical teams and logistics -- prior to each of the hurricanes' landfall to assist the citizens of Texas Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands," Salesses said. So far, he noted, DoD has accepted 311 mission assignments from FEMA and other federal partners. "Federal forces conducted search and rescue, evacuation operations, provided damage assessments, surveyed and made repairs to open airports and seaports," Salesses said. Military units cleared critical roadways, transported life-sustaining commodities, provided fuel distribution, conducted assessments of civilian hospitals and provided medical support to include evacuating patients back to the continental United States, he said. U.S. Transportation Command has flown more than 2,800 flights in the past two months in support of hurricane operations, Salesses said, with more than 1,900 flights in support of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These flights brought in first responders, such as FEMA's urban search and rescue teams and HHS' disaster medical teams, and relief supplies and equipment, he said. The flights also evacuated hundreds of residents and patients. "The Defense Logistics Agency has provided millions of gallons of fuel, over 850 generators, more than a 100 million meals, and millions of liters of water and life sustaining commodities," Salesses said. "The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted flood mitigation operations in Houston and Puerto Rico, conducted maritime port surveys and openings along with the U.S. Coast Guard, installed temporary roofs to enable people to stay in their homes, provided temporary emergency power to over 550 critical facilities." Tens of thousands of Army and Air National Guard personnel, working with the respective governors from the affected states and the supporting states conducted search and rescue, evacuation operations, commodities disruption, and other critical support operations, he said. They are still serving in some of the affected areas. Corps of Engineers Army Maj. Gen. Ed Jackson, deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the Corps supports FEMA for public works and engineering. This includes providing temporary emergency power, temporary roofing, debris management, infrastructure assessment, critical public facility restoration and temporary housing. The Corps also assists state and local entities with implementing advanced measures that prevent or reduce storm event damages. "And we repair damage to authorized federal projects and work with states and municipalities to rehabilitate and restore eligible nonfederal flood infrastructure to prestorm condition," Jackson said. The Corps uses preordered contracts that can be quickly activated for missions, such as debris removal, temporary roofing and generator installation. "This year, the Corps supported FEMA-led federal response and recovery operations in support of multiple events, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria," he said. As of yesterday morning, the corps had completed about 1,000 assessments and 550 temporary generator installations across the Caribbean, Jackson said. "The Corps has completed over 1,300 temporary roofing installations in Florida and is on track to complete the mission by Nov. 3," he said. "We also have completed over 6,000 temporary roofing installations across the Caribbean, including over 2,000 in the U.S. Virgin Islands and 4,000 in Puerto Rico." Power remains a huge problem in Puerto Rico, the officials said. "The Corps is partnering with [the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority] in this effort and has established a general officer, senior executive-led task force as well as three area offices on the island to oversee work and provide technical assistance," Jackson said. "The Department of Energy has embedded experts in our team and continues to assist in our efforts," the general continued. "Within two weeks of receiving the mission assignment, the Corps awarded contracts for large-scale, temporary power generation to stabilize the grid in San Juan and for additional line repair assets that will assist ongoing efforts by PREPA to complete the mission as quickly as possible." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Votes Against UN Measure to Lift Economic Embargo on Cuba By Margaret Besheer November 01, 2017 The United States voted Wednesday against ending its nearly 60-year-old economic embargo on Cuba at the U.N. General Assembly. The shift back to a "no" vote, came a year after Washington abstained for the first time under former President Barack Obama's administration, which was working to normalize ties with Havana at the time. Obama's efforts included making an historic trip to the island nation and reopening an embassy there. "No doubt there will be some here who do not understand how we can take such opposite positions, separated by just 12 months," U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the General Assembly. She then went on to say that as long as the Cuban people are deprived of rights and freedoms, the United States would not allow trade revenue to "prop up the dictatorial regime." Symbolic Vote For the past 26 years, the U.N. General Assembly has held an annual vote condemning the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which was imposed during the Cold War. The United States is traditionally isolated, with only Israel joining it in opposition. That was the case again this year, with 191 countries supporting ending the embargo and only the United States and Israel opposing it. "The United States does not fear isolation in this chamber or anywhere else," Haley said. "As long as we are members of the United Nations, we will stand for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms that the member states of this body have pledged to protect, even if we have to stand alone," she said. She criticized the annual vote as "political theater," noting that the General Assembly does not have the power to end the embargo, only the U.S. Congress does. Haley then went on to address the Cuban people directly, saying many of them were hopeful about the opening up of bilateral relations and that U.S. friendship towards them would not change. "What you probably don't know is that your government responded to this gesture of good will, not by joining in the spirit in which it was offered, but by expanding its politically motivated detentions, harassment, and violence against those who advocate for political and economic freedom in Cuba," Haley said. Strange sonic attacks President Donald Trump has blamed Cuba for mysterious sonic attacks that sickened and injured 24 U.S. diplomats and others earlier this year in Havana. U.S. investigators still do not know exactly who and what caused the injuries, but 15 Cuban diplomats were expelled from Washington in retaliation. Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, dismissed Trump's charges, saying of the administration, "they lie when they talk of attacks or incidents." He noted that the Americans lack "the slightest proof" and that the investigations have not finished. "Without any conclusions from on-going investigations available, the U.S. government has adopted new political measures against Cuba which further tighten the blockade and affect bilateral relations as a whole," he said referring to steps taken by President Trump in June that include new travel restrictions. Of the embargo, Rodriguez warned that Trump would be "one more (U.S.) president implementing a policy that means a return to the past." U.N. member states overwhelming support lifting the embargo, saying it is the main obstacle to Cuba's economic and social development. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US quietly pursuing diplomacy with North Korea despite Trump rhetoric: Report Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 07:25PM The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea despite US President Donald Trump's public assertion that such talks are a waste of time, according to a report. Joseph Yun, US negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang's United Nations mission in New York City, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a senior official from the US State Department. The report comes at a time when an exchange of insults between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fueled fears of a military conflict. "It has not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance," said the senior State Department official. Among the points that Yun has made to his North Korean interlocutors is to "stop testing" nuclear weapons and missiles, the official said. The official's comments were the clearest sign that Washington was directly discussing issues with Pyongyang beyond the release of American prisoners, despite Trump having dismissed direct talks as pointless. However, despite the reported dialogue, there does not appear to be an improvement in relations between the US and North Korea. US Defense Secretary James Mattis warned last week during a visit to South Korea that the threat from North Korea had "accelerated" and warned of a "massive military response" if Pyongyang uses nuclear weapons against Washington or its allies. Trump, who has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if necessary, leaves on his first trip to Asia next week, including a stop in South Korea to meet President Moon Jae-in. A CNN poll released this month found that Americans are growing more concerned about how Trump is handling the escalating situation. More than six in 10 say Trump's responses to North Korea's threats have been more reckless than responsible. An NBC News/SurveyMonkey survey released Wednesday showed that 72 percent of surveyed Americans fear the US will get involved in a major war, possibly with North Korea, during Trump's first term in office. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Indian Ocean Could Be Heading for 'Complexities' if Chinese Presence Not Reduced Sputnik News 18:15 01.11.2017 The Indian Navy plans to soon execute its scheme of "mission-based deployment" involving ships, aircraft and submarines beyond its immediate neighborhood for providing a sustained presence and visibility in the Indian Ocean region. New Delhi (Sputnik) The interpretation of India's two-front war scenario with China and Pakistan is fast changing to "China" (in the north) and "China and Pakistan" (in the west). In this backdrop, New Delhi has expressed deep concern over Chinese projects in its backyard, which include infrastructure development, as well as the development of naval outposts, which India views as an attempt by Beijing to militarize the Indian Ocean region (IOR). Nirmala Sitharaman, India's minister of defense, told the Goa Maritime Conclave that the increased presence of Chinese submarines and military bases has created complexities in the region. The three-day Goa Maritime Conclave is being attended by the navies of 10 countries of the IOR, including India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Maldives, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, the Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand. "We have also witnessed extra-regional nations maintain a near-permanent presence within the region on one pretext or the other. In order to sustain such a presence through an operational turnaround, these countries, which are extra-regional, are creating naval outposts as well as dual-use infrastructure in the region. This sort of militarization increases the complexities for the countries of this region," Sitharaman said at the occasion. Sitharaman's statement is being viewed in the light of the prevalent situation in the IOR, which has witnessed the deployment of the highest ever number of Chinese submarines this year and the opening up of a Chinese military facility in Djibouti. China is also developing the Gwadar port of Pakistan, and India fears that that port would also be put to dual-use by China as a trade route as well as a military base; particularly considering Beijing's maritime interest in securing the sea route from Gwadar and the fact that China has invested more than $45 billion in the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). "One can claim with the considerable assertion that the future of the world will be shaped, to a large extent, by the political and economic interactions between the stakeholders in the IOR," the Indian defense minister cautioned. Meanwhile, Admiral Jayanth Colombage, a former Sri Lankan Navy chief, has said that there is an undeclared maritime cold war in the Indian Ocean region. He has also warned that the single worst maritime security threat in the region is maritime blindness. "57 percent of shipping does not report position accurately, 40 percent fishing is illegal," Admiral Jayanth Colombage said. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India to Boost Target Detection Capability of Its Warships With Advanced Sonars Sputnik News 15:19 01.11.2017(updated 15:26 01.11.2017) The deal for supplying nine active towed array sonar (ATAS) systems for Indian warships is most likely to be bagged by a foreign vendor, as a similar system being developed by India's state-owned Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO) is still not ready. New Delhi (Sputnik) India has started the process of equipping its warships with active towed array sonar (ATAS) systems, which are essential for detecting enemy submarines. The Defense Acquisition Council (DAC) under the chairmanship of Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has cleared a proposal for the procurement of nine ATAS systems. Presently, Indian warships are using bow-mounted sonar or hull mounted sonar systems, which are considered less effective. "The DAC approved a $70 million proposal to procure nine active towed array sonar systems for frontline warships. This will help in submarine detection capabilities," an official who wished to remain anonymous told Sputnik. The financial approval for the purchase of the ATAS systems comes at a time when most of India's warships, including anti-submarine warfare capable corvettes, frigates and destroyers, lack offensive capabilities in the absence of such sonar systems. The recently commissioned INS Kiltan and two other corvettes the INS Kamorta that was delivered in July 2014 and the INS Kadmatt that was delivered in November 2015 do not have their primary weapons and sensors to detect, locate, track and classify all types of sub-surface targets like torpedoes, mines, and submarines. "The active towed array sonar [system] is vital for the Indian Navy, as most of the warships do not possess capabilities to detect submarines in the Arabian Sea, where the warm, shallow waters confound conventional hull-mounted sonars," a senior navy official told Sputnik. The ATAS system is towed behind a submarine or ship on a cable that extends deep below the surface and has no trouble in detecting sonar waves, as in the case of conventional sonar systems due to the difference in temperature at the surface and deep below the surface where submarines usually lurk. As the presence of Chinese submarines in India's backyard will certainly increase in the coming years, it is crucial for the Indian Navy to equip all its warships with effective sonar systems. Most of India's warships are not equipped with the ATAS system, as the country had stalled the import of these devices in the mid-1990s after the state-owned DRDO promised to provide similar systems locally manufactured. However, as the DRDO has failed to develop the system even after 20 years, the Indian government in 2014 decided to take the import route. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India May Launch Second Nuclear Submarine by Early 2018 - Atomic Energy Dep't Sputnik News 14:12 01.11.2017(updated 14:17 01.11.2017) A senior Indian official has told Sputnik about the launch terms for the country's second nuclear submarine. ABU DHABI (Sputnik) India will launch a second nuclear-powered submarine by the end of this year or the beginning of 2018, Sekhar Basu, the secretary of the country's Department of Atomic Energy, told Sputnik. "A nuclear-powered submarine, the second one, will take some time [to launch]. This year, maybe early next year," Basu said Tuesday on the sidelines of the nuclear conference in Abu Dhabi organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In mid-October, Indian media reported that the second Arihant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, INS Aridhaman, was set to be launched in November or December. INS Arihant, the first Indian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, was first revealed in 2009 and commissioned in 2016. The Indian Navy has another nuclear-powered submarine in active service, the Russian-built INS Chakra, leased to India for 10 years. On Reactor Deal With Westinghouse According to Sekhar Basu, India intends to continue talks on the nuclear reactor deal with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, once the US-based company has overcome its financial difficulties. "Everybody has some problems, every company has some problem or other, once it is sorted then we will start," Basu said on Tuesday. The company was also discussing the project with Russia's Rosatom, as well as France's EDF with no contract finalized as yet, he added. In June 2016, New Delhi and Washington agreed to begin preparatory work for the potential construction of six Westinghouse-designed AP-1000 reactors in India's Kovvada on the southeastern coast of the country as part of the Indian-US Civil Nuclear Agreement. Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in March after exceeding the budget by about $13 billion for the construction of two nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina. Most recently, Westinghouse Vice President Krish Rajan said that the company was expecting to be out of bankruptcy by early 2018 and that the bankruptcy filing was unlikely to impact the project in India. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran, Russia, Turkey emphasize on Syria's unity, territorial integrity ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Wed / 1 November 2017 / 12:04 Tehran (ISNA) Iran, Russia and Turkey as guarantors of the observance of the ceasefire regime in the Syrian issued a joint statement at the end of the seventh round of Syria peace talks in Astana. Here is the full text of the joint statement by Iran, Russia and Turkey on the international meeting on Syria in Astana: The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Turkey as guarantors of the observance of the ceasefire regime in the Syrian Arab Republic: - welcoming progress in the implementation of the Memorandum on the creation of de-escalation areas in the Syrian Arab Republic of 4 May 2017 during the past six months; - reaffirming their strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic; - emphasizing the significant reduction of violence on the ground in Syria as a result of measures taken to strengthen and maintain the ceasefire regime, including launching the de-escalation areas and creating the security zones: 1. Emphasize progress in the fight against terrorism and elimination of DAESH/ISIL, Nusra Front and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaeda or DAESH/ISIL as a result of the launch of the de-escalation areas and reaffirm their determination to take all necessary measures to continue the fight against them within and outside the de-escalation areas. 2. Underline that the Syrian crisis has no military solution and should be solved only through the political process on the basis of the implementation of UNSC resolution 2254 (2015) and call upon the conflicting parties to benefit from the emerging favorable conditions on the ground with a view to stepping up efforts to advance the political process underway in Geneva. 3. Agree to discuss in consistence with the UN-led Geneva process the Russian Federation`s proposal to convene a Congress of the national dialogue about which the Russian side shared information with the guarantors. 4. Emphasize the need for the conflicting parties to take confidence building measures, including the release of detainees/abductees and the handover of the bodies as well as identification of missing persons, to create better conditions for political process and lasting ceasefire. 5. Underline the necessity to further increase the international humanitarian aid to Syria, to provide rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access to all those in need and in this regard remind of the relevant provisions of the Memorandum of 4 of May 2017. 6. Reaffirm their determination to continue implementing the provisions of the Memorandum of 4 May 2017 and other decisions adopted earlier within the framework of the Astana process. 7. Express their sincere gratitude to the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, His Excellency Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Kazakh authorities for hosting in Astana the 7th high-level International Meeting on Syria. 8. Decide to hold the next high-level International Meeting on Syria in Astana in the second half of December 2017. End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia plays leading role in safeguarding Iran nuclear deal, says Rouhani Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 05:24PM Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has underlined Russia's role in safeguarding the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). "Russia plays a significant and instrumental role in reinforcing and safeguarding the JCPOA and [ensuring] the implementation of the deal by all sides," Rouhani said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Tehran on Wednesday. He highlighted the JCPOA as a multilateral agreement, saying protecting the deal would contribute to peace and stability in the region and across the world. Touching on the issue of terrorism, Rouhani said cooperation between Tehran and Moscow has made a considerable contribution to the anti-terror campaign in the region, and underlined the need for keeping consultations and cooperation in the final stages of battling terrorism. Rouhani said that cooperation between Tehran and Moscow was key to settling tensions, including the crisis in Syria. "The Islamic Republic of Iran deems instability to be detrimental to all countries, and supports promotion of stability and security in the region. Cooperation between Iran and Russia has been proven to consolidate peace and security in Syria, he said. Describing Russia "as a strategic partner, friend and neighbor," Rouhani also called for further expansion of economic and trade ties with Moscow, adding that Tehran welcomed investment of Russia's private sectors in projects aimed at developing Iran's infrastructure, including in the energy, industries and transportation sectors. Putin, for his part, said Iran and Russia maintained good cooperation in the fields of energy, economy, peaceful nuclear energy and transportation. The Russian president said that Russian companies were keen to join development projects and that Moscow saw no limit to the expansion of relations with Tehran. He also described the JCPOA as a good agreement that helps global peace and stability, and described "some countries'" refusal to remain committed to the terms of the nuclear agreement as "unacceptable". "Unilateral dismantling of the JCPOA under any pretext is not acceptable," Putin added. The Russian president also said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was the only body entrusted with verifying Iran's commitment to the deal. He also underlined the need for Iran, Russia and Turkey to continue cooperation on Syria within the framework of the Astana talks aimed at ending the crisis in the Arab country. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US to blame for possible Iran deal collapse: Russia Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 02:46PM The United States will be responsible for the possible "collapse" of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers, a senior Russian diplomat says, warning Washington against undermining the landmark agreement by imposing more sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters on Wednesday that the recent anti-Iran escalation in the US Congress was threatening the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). "The situation is deteriorating, as the sentiment in the US Congress is highly anti-Iranian," he said, referring to a flurry of anti-Iran bills under consideration by US lawmakers. "The responsibility for the potential collapse of the JCPOA will rest entirely on the American side." In addition to a purely partisan Republican push to undermine the JCPOA in Congress, an overwhelming majority of US lawmakers from both sides of the aisle continues to advance a series of other legislation to put extra pressure on Tehran. The Russian diplomat's comments came a day after the US Treasury Department introduced new sanctions against Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as part of US President Donald Trump's new aggressive strategy against Iran. 'Iran deal needs no amendments' Trump unveiled his new anti-Iran approach last month by refusing to certify the Islamic Republic's commitment to the nuclear deal. He also claimed that the JCPOA had "serious flaws" that Congress needed to fix. Ryabkov stressed that the agreement was balanced and did not need any amendments. "No changes, amendments or corrections to the current agreement are possible, as it is a very well-measured and delicate balance of interests and compromises," Ryabkov said. "Just like other JCPOA participants, we believe that the key objective now is to fully implement what has been achieved." Under the multilateral deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countriesthe US, the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany Tehran agreed to limit certain parts of its peaceful nuclear program in exchange for the removal of all nuclear-related sanctions. US trying to undermine Russia-Iran ties Referring to Washington's extension of sanctions against Moscow and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ryabkov said Iran and Russia needed to stay together in the face of hostile actions by "ill-wishers." "Iran is our neighbor, partner and a friendly country," he said. "Under the current circumstances, as both our countries are subject to the ongoing pressure of our ill-wishers, including the United States... it is even more important to maintain contacts and cooperation in every field." The diplomat said Moscow and Tehran must counter Washington by reducing dependence on the US dollar and the American banking system. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia censures unilateral US sanctions on Iran's IRGC Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 10:11AM Russia has denounced fresh sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), saying they violate international law. Asked about the US bans targeting the IRGC, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday, "Our approach to unilateral sanctions is universal. We consider such practices illegal, contrary to international law and the basic principles of interstate communication." The American statesmen, he added, have "turned sanctions into a key tool of their foreign policy." During a speech last month, US President Donald Trump authorized the Treasury Department to impose further sanctions on "the entire" IRGC for what he claimed was "its support for terrorism." On October 31, the Treasury released the names of IRGC individuals and bodies on its blacklist. Senior Iranian officials have censured hostile US measures against the IRGC. Shortly after Trump's speech, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani reacted to US measures against the IRGC, saying the nation would stand by the elite force. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also took to Twitter on October 14 and emphasized that Iranian people from all walks of life strongly supported the defenders of the country and the region against terrorism. Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, who is the chief spokesman for Iran's Armed Forces, also slammed Trump's speech and said, "The IRGC is today more powerfully disrupting US leaders' filthy schemes one after another, and on the rest of this path, many things remain unsaid, [but] the Trump administration will see their outward manifestations all in good time." The IRGC, a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, has been effectively providing advisory military support for the elected governments of Iraq and Syria in their battles against various groups of extremist militants. Some of those militant groups receive logistical, financial, and other forms of support from the US government, particularly in Syria, where Washington has attempted but failed to have the Syrian government toppled. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran starts construction of two new nuclear power plants Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 07:28AM Iran has started the construction of two new nuclear power plants in the southern province of Bushehr in a joint project with Russia's Rosatom energy firm. In an agreement between the senior officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and Rosatom, phases two and three of Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant will begin supplying electricity to Iran's power grid in 10 years. According to the general director of the Rosatom, Iran and Russia will jointly build the two plants on the northern coast of the Persian Gulf. "Twenty percent of the entire phase two and eighty percent of its building construction will be done by the Iranian side. We have signed an agreement to build eight power plant blocks and these blocks could be built in other parts of Iran," said Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev at a Tuesday press conference with the AEOI chief Ali Akbar Salehi in Bushehr. Salehi also expressed hope that the second phase of the project will finish in seven years and the third two years later. The AEOI chief also elaborated on the benefits of the project for Iran, saying, "The first phase of Bushehr nuclear power plant is now operational and as a result, some 11 million barrels of crude oil is saved annually. The production of electricity by a 1,000-megawatt plant will also help diminish up to seven million tons of gas emissions every year." Salehi underlined Iran and Russia's resolve to maintain and strengthen their nuclear cooperation, adding, "The Bushehr nuclear power plant is a symbol of strategic cooperation between Iran and Russia." He pointed to Iran's plan to produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity and said, "Since the cost of constructing a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant is $5,000 billion, we need to invest $100,000 billion to build nuclear power plants with a capacity to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity." The ceremony to inaugurate the project came a few days after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Secretary General Yukiya Amano visited Iran, and once again confirmed Tehran's compliance with the agency's charter and the 2015 nuclear deal with six world powers. Iran says that the project will be conducted within the framework of the Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Salehi said the implementation of Iran's nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has played a positive role in making the project come to life. Each of the two new phases will produce 1,057 megawatts of electricity. Combined with phase one, Iran will produce some 3,300 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity in a decade. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran fighter jets practice carpet-bombing amid drills Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 06:49AM Overnight, fighter planes with the Iranian Air Force have conducted carpet-bombing of mock enemy positions amid the aerial maneuvers in the central province of Isfahan. Flying at low altitude, Iran's Sukho-24 and Phantom aircraft practiced the bombardment technique, which features dropping a large number of bombs on enemy targets in an area with the aim of causing uniform destruction. The Air Force's F-4 planes were also backing up the overnight mission by releasing flares to light up the drill zone. Brigadier General Massoud Rouzkhosh, the spokesman for the drills, said this stage of the maneuvers also witnessed aerial refueling of Phantom combat planes at low altitude under the air cover of F-14 jets. Meanwhile, Sukho-24-to-Sukho-24 refueling was also performed for the first time at low altitude, the general added. The two-day drills, codenamed Fada'ian-e Harim-e Velayat 7 (Death-defying Defenders of Velayat's Sanctuary) 7, began on Tuesday morning. The event enlists the services of all Iranian airbases, with the Shahid Babayi Airbase in Isfahan Province playing the central role. Also joining the drills are MiG-29 and Sa'egheh (Lightning bolt) fighter bombers, alongside interceptor aircraft, manned and unmanned reconnaissance planes, Boeing 707 and 747 cargo planes as well as logistical aircraft. The aircraft drilled air-to-surface and surface-to-air firing, test-fired highly-destructive air-to-air munitions, and practiced aerial fire control and surveillance as part of the drills' first stage. They also fired laser-guided, television-guided, radar-guided, and thermal missiles, as well as 500-pound (226-kg), smart and precision bombs. According to Rouzkhosh, the exercises carry the message of security, stability, friendship, and lasting peace for the countries of the region. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Putin Offers Support For Iran Nuclear Deal, Hails Cooperation On Syria RFE/RL November 01, 2017 On an official visit to Tehran, Russian President Vladimir Putin has vocally backed the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, and hailed cooperation with Iran on the Syrian conflict. Putin was on a one-day trip to the Iranian capital on November 1 for trilateral talks between Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia -- a meeting largely focused on improving transport links, trade, and energy cooperation between the three Caspian states. However, the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and Syria's civil war loomed large as Putin met with Iranian President Hassan Rohani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters. Russia is one of the signatories to the landmark nuclear accord under which Tehran agreed to curb its atomic program in exchange for sanctions relief. 'Serious Flaws' U.S. President Donald Trump refused to recertify the deal in October and has threatened to withdraw the United States if what he calls serious flaws in the accord cannot be fixed by U.S. lawmakers and U.S. allies. Trump slammed Tehran for what he said are violations of the "spirit" of the agreement, in part for its continued testing of ballistic missiles and its support for extremists in the Middle East. The European Union and the other parties to the deal -- Russia, Britain, China, France, and Germany -- have all urged Trump not to pull the United States out of the agreement. Putin told Khamenei that Moscow opposes "any unilateral change" to the nuclear accord, according to a statement from the supreme leader's office. "We oppose linking Iran's nuclear program with other issues, including defensive issues," he was also quoted as saying. Joint Statement In a joint statement released after their meeting, the presidents of Iran, Russia, and Azerbaijan said that all parties to the deal "should strictly abide by their obligations," according to the Russian state news agency TASS. On Syria, Putin praised cooperation with Iran as "very productive," saying that Moscow and Tehran are "managing to coordinate our positions on the Syrian issue." Speaking after talks with Rohani and Khamenei, the Russian president said that the situation in Syria and peace talks to resolve the crisis were developing positively. He also stressed that no one country could resolve the Syrian crisis on its own. Moscow and Tehran have given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crucial military and diplomatic backing during the more than six-year war, which began with a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. Rohani said that cooperation between Tehran and Moscow is necessary to "bring stability and peace to Syria" and to "fight against regional terrorism." 'Stepping Up Cooperation' Khamenei said during his meeting with Putin that Tehran and Moscow need to step up cooperation to isolate the United States and restore peace in the Middle East, Iranian state media reported. State television quoted the supreme leader as saying, "Full resolution of Syria's crisis needs strong cooperation between Iran and Russia ... Our cooperation can isolate America ... This cooperation will restore stability in the region." The United States says Iran is creating obstacles to peace and criticized Russia's role in a war that has killed more than 220,000 people since 2011, according to UN estimates. Ahead of Putin's arrival, Russia's armed forces chief of staff, General Valery Gerasimov, met with his Iranian counterpart, General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, and discussed defense and security issues, Iranian state television said. Putin's visit came a day after representatives from Russia, Iran, and Turkey discussed the Syrian conflict in Astana, Kazakhstan, and pledged to bring Assad's regime and its opponents together for a "congress" to jump-start peace efforts later this month. 'Congress Of National Dialogue' A statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry website listed 33 Syrian organizations invited to a "Congress of Syrian National Dialogue" in the Russian city of Sochi on November 18. However, two main Syrian opposition groups -- the Syrian National Council and the High Negotiations Committee -- rejected the proposed conference, the dpa news agency reported. There have been seven rounds of Astana talks, which began in January and are sponsored by Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The Astana talks have run parallel to negotiations taking place in Geneva with the backing of the United Nations, and the congress plan appears to be Moscow's attempt to force the pace in a bid for a political settlement. On the economic front, the Iranian, Russian, and Azerbaijani leaders agreed on November 1 to increase cooperation in the oil and gas industry, including in production as well as oil and oil-products swaps, the joint statement said. Railway And Road Projects Rohani, Putin, and Azerbaijani President llham Aliyev also discussed railway and road projects. During Putin's visit, Russia's state-owned Rosneft oil firm and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a road-map deal to develop joint projects in Iran worth up to $30 billion, Russian news agencies reported. Rosneft head Igor Sechin was quoted as saying that the two sides were looking to seal binding deals within a year to work on a "whole series of fields, oil, and gas." Moscow and Tehran have had close political and economic relations. Russia has aided Iran's nuclear energy program, making a major contribution to the construction of its first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr, where Moscow is now helping build two more reactors. Putin made previous trips to Iran in November 2015 and in 2007. Aliyev hosted a similar three-way meeting in August 2016. The next such summit is to be held in Russia next year. With reporting by Reuters, dpa, AP, AFP, Interfax, and TASS Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-russia- azerbaijan-nuclear-deal-commitment-r ohani-putin-aliyev/28829780.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Putin, Aliyev Hold Talks With Iranian Leaders In Tehran RFE/RL November 01, 2017 Russian President Vladimir Putin has held talks with Iran's leadership on the Syria crisis, the landmark 2015 international nuclear agreement, and energy cooperation. Putin, on a one-day visit to Iran on November 1, met with President Hassan Rohani before heading into talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's ISNA news agency reported. No details were made public immediately after Putin's meeting with Rohani. Rohani, Putin, and visiting Azerbaijani President llham Aliyev were also set to hold a trilateral meeting. Aliyev, who hosted a similar three-way meeting in August 2016, arrived in Tehran earlier on November 1 and held a first separate meeting with Rohani. Iran, Russia, and Azerbaijan share the Caspian Sea, and railway and road projects are expected to be discussed at their meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters on October 31 that "Syria-related issues will be on the agenda of the Russian-Iranian bilateral talks." He did not elaborate. Russia and Iran back President Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria's more than six-year war, while the United States and Turkey back differing rebel groups. Russia is also one of the signatories of the 2015 international accord under which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump refused to recertify the nuclear deal in October and has threatened to withdraw the United States if what he calls serious flaws in the accord cannot be fixed by U.S. lawmakers and U.S. allies. The European Union and the other parties to the accord -- Russia, Britain, China, France, and Germany -- also have all urged Trump not to pull the United States out. Speaking in Moscow on November 1, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the deal must be preserved and that new sanctions should not be imposed on Iran. He called Trump's demands for changes "unrealistic." Russia has also aided Iran's nuclear energy program, making a major contribution to the construction of its first nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr, where Moscow is now helping build two more reactors. Putin made previous trips to Iran in November 2015 and in 2007. Ahead of Putin's arrival, Russia's armed forces chief of staff, General Valery Gerasimov, met with his Iranian counterpart, General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, and discussed defense and security issues, Iranian state television said. The visit comes a day after representatives from Russia, Iran, and Turkey discussed the Syrian conflict in Astana, Kazakhstan, and pledged to bring Assad's regime and its opponents together for a "congress" to jump-start peace efforts later this month. A statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry website on October 31 listed 33 Syrian organizations invited to a Congress of Syrian National Dialogue in the Russian city of Sochi on November 18. There have been seven rounds of Astana talks, which began in January and are sponsored by Russia, Turkey, and Iran. The Astana talks have run parallel to negotiations taking place in Geneva with the backing of the United Nations, and the congress plan appears to be Moscow's attempt to force the pace in a bid for a political settlement. But representatives of the Syrian opposition in Astana cast doubt on the plan. Yehya al-Aridi, a spokesman for the Syrian opposition, called the suggestion "a fake message" on Syria. With reporting by Reuters, dpa, Interfax, and ISNA Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia -iran-putin-rohani-khamenei- talks-tehran/28827836.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iraqi Military Accuses Kurds of Breaching Agreements With Baghdad Sputnik News 21:56 01.11.2017(updated 21:58 01.11.2017) The Iraqi military has commented on the situation in the region amid the ongoing conflict between Baghdad and the Kurdish autonomy. CAIRO (Sputnik) The the Iraqi army joint command accused the leadership of the Kurdish autonomy of breaching all previously reached agreements with Baghdad. "The leadership of the region and its negotiating team on Tuesday night completely abandoned the agreed draft, which they discussed with the federal delegation. It became clear that they were just stalling for time," the Joint Command said in a statement. According to the statement, throughout the negotiations, the Kurdish autonomy carried out the redeployment of its troops and the construction of new defensive fortifications in order to impede the advancement of the federal troops. "If armed groups associated with Erbil launch rockets, shells, open fire on federal troops, leading to casualties among servicemen, they will be attacked, " the Iraqi military warned. The conflict between the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces has erupted after the Kurdistan Regional Government held a referendum on independence on September 25. Baghdad has opposed the referendum and launched the offensive to recapture the Kurdish-held disputed areas of the country. Last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi ordered a 24-hour suspension of military operations in the country's north to enable the deployment of federal forces in all disputed areas and along the country's borders. Since then, the temporary ceasefire has been extended. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korea will not develop or own nukes: President Moon Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 06:50AM South Korea's president says his country will never "develop or own" atomic weapons but will also never recognize North Korea as a nuclear state. "A push by North Korea to become a nuclear state cannot be accepted or tolerated," said President Moon Jae-in in an address to the South Korean parliament on Wednesday. "We also will not develop or own nuclear" arms, he said. Moon also repeated his stance that the United States would have to obtain South Korea's prior approval before launching any military action against North Korea. "There should be no military action on the peninsula without our prior consent," he said. "We will not repeat the tragic history like colonization and division during which the fate of our nation was determined regardless of our will." That position is based on South Korea's knowledge of the fact that any US military action against the North would elicit massive North Korean military fire on South Korea as retaliation. Moon said Seoul would continue to work for peace. He also said that Seoul's approach was "based on the joint declaration to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula declared by both Koreas" in 1992. China to work to bring about denuclearization Meanwhile, China announced it would work with Seoul to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a Wednesday statement that Beijing and Seoul would continue to use diplomatic means to address the tensions with North Korea. On Tuesday, Lee Do-hoon, South Korea's representative for former nuclear talks with North Korea, had met with his Chinese counterpart, Kong Xuanyou. During that meeting, the two sides discussed North Korea as well as means to normalize Seoul-Beijing ties, strained by South Korea's deployment of a US missile system. Seoul said both sides had agreed to continue close cooperation to restart denuclearization talks. Tensions have been running high over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. The United States, which has substantial military presence in the region, has threatened the North with military action numerous times. Pyongyang, too, has issued its own threats. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is due to visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines during his first Asia trip this month. Talks on North Korea are expected to dominate Trump's tour of the region. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korea Pledges Not to 'Develop or Own' Nuclear Weapons Sputnik News 17:48 01.11.2017(updated 19:16 01.11.2017) South Korean President Moon Jae-in has commented on the possibility of his country developing its own nuclear weapons amid the ongoing tensions around North Korea. He has also spoken against Washington's unilateral military actions on the Korean Peninsula, adding that Seoul will continue to work to reach peace. "A push by North Korea to become a nuclear state cannot be accepted or tolerated," Moon said in an address to the Parliament on Wednesday. "We also will not develop or own [a] nuclear" arsenal. His statement came as the North recently conducted its sixth and by far most powerful nuclear test and carried out several missile tests. The intense development of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile program has triggered increased security concerns on the Korean Peninsula. Although Seoul once wanted to obtain nuclear weapons in the 1970s, Washington persuaded the country to give up such plans. The United States stationed tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Some in South Korea have argued that if the US does not agree to return its weapons, Seoul should develop its own nuclear arsenal to restrain Pyongyang's ambitions. In his address, the South Korean president, however, stressed that Seoul's approach to the crisis would be "based on the Joint Declaration to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula declared by both Koreas" in 1992. The 1992 deal stated that Seoul and Pyongyang would not develop nuclear arsenals on the peninsula. Two years later, the US and North Korea reached a denuclearization framework agreement, which, however, collapsed in 2002 and Pyongyang resumed its nuclear program. The North conducted its first atomic test in 2006 and after Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2011 Pyongyang has been intensely developing its missile and nuclear capabilities. This year has already marked a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea, which has resulted in a new spike in tensions over the peninsula and a war of words between Kim and US President Donald Trump. Tensions escalated further as Trump warned of "fire and fury" against North Korea and a "calm before the storm," referring to a military solution to the crisis. Meanwhile, the South Korean president insisted in his address that there could be no US military action in the region without Seoul's agreement. "There should be no military action on the peninsula without our prior consent. We will not repeat the tragic history like colonialization and division during which the fate of our nation was determined regardless of our will," Moon said. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Serial Deliveries of Russian A-100 AWACS Aircraft to Start in 2020 Sputnik News 14:28 01.11.2017(updated 15:06 01.11.2017) Russia plans to start serial deliveries of the cutting-edge A-100 AWACS at around the same time as the S-500 system. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Serial deliveries of Russia's state-of-the-art Beriev A-100 airborne early warning and control (AWACS) aircraft will begin in 2020, according to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. As he has previously disclosed, two aircraft are set to be created a flying laboratory and a prototype. "In line with the plans, serial deliveries of A-100 aircraft to the troops will begin in 2020," Shoigu said. The Beriev A-100 aircraft was constructed on the base of the Il-76MD-90A (Il-476) transport aircraft. It is expected that A-100 will replace the Beriev A-50 Mainstay AWACS aircraft, which is currently in service of the Russian Air Force. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Beriev A-100 is superior to the foreign analogues and is capable of tracking over 300 targets. The aircraft can also monitor air, ground and surface pictures. At approximately the same time, the deliveries of another leading Russian defense innovation, the advanced S-500 air defense systems are expected to start, as Deputy Commander of Russia's Aerospace Forces Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumenny stated previously. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian army targets Israeli jet over Homs Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 08:54PM The Syrian army has targeted an Israel jet with a surface-to-air missile over the country's Homs province. A Syrian army commander was quoted by Reuters as saying on Wednesday night that the Israeli jet was targeted after it bombed a copper factory located to the south of the central province of Homs. However, Israel's Channel 10 claimed that the aircraft returned unscathed to its base after bombing the factory in the industrial town of Hisya, 35 km (21 miles) south of Homs and 112 km (70 miles) north of the capital Damascus. The Syrian commander did not say whether the Israeli strike had caused any casualties. During the past few years, Israel has frequently attacked military targets in Syria in what is considered as an attempt to prop up terrorist groups that have been suffering heavy defeats against Syrian government forces. Back in April 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially admitted for the first time that the regime's military had conducted strikes in Syrian territory. Damascus says Israel and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups operating inside the Arab country, while the Tel Aviv regime's military carries out such sporadic strikes against Syrian government forces. The Israeli regime has even set up field hospitals to treat wounded militants evacuated from Syria. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Opposition rejects Russian initiative to hold congress on Syria crisis Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 10:45AM The Syrian opposition has rejected an initiative put forward by Russia during the latest negotiations in the Kazakh capital, Astana, to hold a congress, which would bring together Syria's warring sides in Sochi later this month. Members of Syrian opposition High Negotiations Committee and the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC) told Reuters on Wednesday that they do not approve of the plan, saying they would issue a joint statement later to express their opposition to the plan. SNC spokesman Ahmad Ramadan said the plan seeks to circumvent the UN efforts to mediate Syrian peace talks in Geneva, adding, "The Coalition will not participate in any negotiations with the regime outside Geneva or without UN sponsorship." The Astana peace process has been underway since January with the mediation of Iran and Russia, the Syrian government's allies, and Turkey, which supports armed opposition groups. The latest round of the talks came to an end on Tuesday, with the three guarantor states agreeing on the Russia-proposed congress. A joint statement published on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website at the end of the Astana talks listed 33 Syrian organizations invited to a "Congress of Syrian National Dialogue," which is to be held in the Russian city of Sochi on November 18. Russia says the key task of the event is to pave the way for constitutional reforms. Turkey against Kurdish presence Despite Turkey's approval of the Syrian congress plan, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that the country opposes the invitation of the representatives of the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) to the talks. Ibrahim Kalin's remarks came a day after a senior Kurdish official said that Russia had invited the Kurdish-led authorities in northern Syria to a proposed congress of Syria's rival parties in November. Kalin noted that Turkish and Russian officials had discussed the issue, and that he had held meetings of his own to "solve the problem on the spot." More checkpoints for Idlib The latest round of Astana talks focused on humanitarian issues in Syria as well as the situation in Idlib Province. Elaborating on the agreements in the seventh round, Iran's top negotiator at Astana talks Hossein Jaberi Ansari said on Tuesday that each of the three guarantor states had agreed to set up 12 checkpoints in Idlib, where a de-escalation zone has been formed. Jaberi Ansari noted that the three guarantor states agreed on continuation of the fight against Daesh and al-Nusra Takfiri terrorists and their affiliates, settlement of the Syrian conflict through political channels and delivery of humanitarian aid to all the areas across Syria. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia slams 'amateurish' UN report on Syria's Khan Shaykhun incident Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 07:18AM Russia has criticized a recent United Nations report blaming the Syrian government for a chemical attack on the town of Khan Shaykhun, saying it is an "amateurish" document and based on selective data. In a joint report sent to the UN Security Council on October 26, the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' Joint Investigative Mechanism held the Damascus government "responsible for the release of sarin" gas at Khan Shaykhun in Syria's Idlib Province on 4 April 2017 that left more than 80 people dead. The Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN said in a statement on Tuesday that the UN investigation into the incident was conducted with "major violations of high standards set by the Chemical Weapons Convention." "After reading the report carefully, it is hard to call it professionally prepared. Rather, it is amateurish and is based mostly on assumptions and selective use of facts," the statement read. It also noted that Russian experts will continue "studying technical aspects of the report" and release their assessments "soon." Syria's Foreign Ministry has categorically denied the content of the joint report as "falsifications of the truth" that distorts the information on what happened at Khan Shaykhun. Also reacting to the report was Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who said the UN document contained "many inconsistencies, logical discrepancies, using doubtful witness accounts and unverified evidence." He further stressed that certain countries were seeking to use the report to "resolve their own strategic geopolitical issues in Syria." Following the Khan Shaykhun incident, the Western countries rushed to blame it on Damascus, with the US launching a missile attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria's Homs Province on April 7. Washington claimed that the air field targeted in the missile raid had been the origin of the April 4 gas attack. Damascus denied the accusation of being behind the incident and described it as a fabrication" to justify the subsequent US missile strike. Syria turned over its entire chemical stockpile under a deal negotiated by Russia and the United States back in 2013. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Opposition Won't Participate In Russian-Sponsored Congress RFE/RL November 01, 2017 The Syrian National Coalition (SNC), the main Western-backed political opposition group fighting the Syrian government, says it opposes a Russian-sponsored congress of Syrian groups, calling it an attempt to circumvent the UN-backed Geneva peace talks that aim for a political transition for the war-torn country. Turkey and Iran on October 31 endorsed Russia's proposal to host talks between the Syrian government and its opponents next month in Sochi to try to move the war-torn country toward a political settlement. The congress proposal was one of the few notable outcomes from the seventh round of talks on Syria held in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on October 30 and 31. "The coalition will not participate in any negotiations with the regime outside Geneva or without UN sponsorship," SNC spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told Reuters. The Astana talks that began in January have run parallel to UN-sponsored negotiations which despite backing from Western and Middle Eastern powers have largely stalled. "Russia's call for a conference for Syrians in Sochi is an attempt to circumvent Geneva and the international desire for a political transition in Syria in accordance with UN security council resolutions," the Turkey-based SNC said. A joint statement released by Russia and Iran, the Syrian government's main backers, and Turkey, which backs its armed opponents, agreed to the "initiative of Russia" to host Syrian government representatives and opposition groups in a face-to-face meeting on November 18 without any representatives from the West. The Russian Foreign Ministry's website listed 33 Syrian organizations invited to a "Congress of Syrian National Dialogue," including Kurdish groups that previously have been left out of peace negotiations though they currently control at least a quarter of Syrian territory. While Russia has been the strongest backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a six-year civil war that has killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, it hopes to attract rebel groups to the Sochi gathering. Russia's chief negotiator for Syria, Aleksandr Lavrentyev, urged opposition factions to participate "without preconditions" in the meeting, which he said would touch on constitutional reform and aim at creating a democratic, secular state. "If someone is against these principles...they will of course not go there," Lavrentyev said. "But then we think they will risk being sidelined in the political process." Lavrentyev has also expressed hope that United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura would take part in the Sochi meeting, but the UN official did not immediately say whether he would go. "We want to emphasize that this event should be part of the international community's efforts to find effective mechanisms for political settlement," Lavrentyev said. Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja'afari said his government was ready to participate. But representatives of the Syrian opposition in Astana were wary of the plan. Yehya al-Aridi, a spokesman for the Syrian opposition, said the proposed congress was "really worrying" and it is unclear who would join in. Aridi said he feared the congress will be used as "fabricated" evidence of reconciliation to mislead both Syrians and foreign countries. "We told Russia, 'First stop killing our children'," said another rebel representative, Yasser Abdelrahim, who brandished what he said were photos of dead rebel children at the plenary session in Astana on October 31. Kurdish groups were open to the proposal, however. "We are studying the issue and our stance has been positive so far," Badran Jia Kurd, an adviser to the administration that governs Kurdish-led autonomous regions of Syria, told Reuters. While the Astana talks have had some success establishing limited cease-fires and no-conflict zones amid ongoing battles, the Geneva talks so far have not led to either lasting cease-fires or political settlements. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on October 31 suggested that the congress plan, like the Astana talks, is an attempt at reviving the stalled Geneva negotiations. In light of the "slowing in the efforts made as part of the Geneva process," Lavrov said, "we believe it is necessary not to hesitate but rather to seize the initiative." The conflict in Syria is expected to be high on the agenda when Russian President Vladimir Putin travels to Tehran for talks with Iranian President Hassan Rohani on November 1, the Kremlin said. With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, and TASS Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-turkey -endorse-russian-plan-host-syrian-peace-talks- without-west/28827630.html Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwan thanks U.S. for reaffirming bilateral ties ROC Central News Agency 2017/11/01 15:04:18 Washington, Oct. 31 (CNA) Taiwan's top diplomat in Washington expressed his gratitude to the United States on Tuesday for reaffirming the solid relationship between the two sides on many occasions ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's trip to China in November. The U.S. has discussed the trip with Taiwan through multiple channels and publicly praised robust Taiwan-U.S. relations, said Stanley Kao (), Taiwan's representative to the United States. "Taiwan can rest assured," he said, referring to concerns that Trump might compromise U.S. support for Taiwan to secure China's help on other issues. Noting that bilateral relations between Taiwan and the U.S. involve many areas, Kao said communication and contact channels are open between the two countries. "There is absolutely no problem" communicating with each other, said Kao after a press conference marking the expansion of U.S. and Taiwan trusted traveler programs -- the U.S. Global Entry program and the Taiwan e-Gate program. Taiwan passport holders are allowed to join the U.S. Global Entry program starting Nov. 1, while U.S. travelers will be able to use e-Gates for speedy immigration clearance at Taiwan's airports. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Managing Director John Norris, and Laura Stone, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, also attended the news conference. McAleenan said the reciprocal treatment signaled the strength of U.S.-Taiwan partnership ties, while Norris said it reflected the deep and solid relations between the two sides. (By Rita Cheng and Evelyn Kao) Enditem/ls NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2 trillion over next 30 years: Report Iran Press TV Wed Nov 1, 2017 05:55PM Modernizing and maintaining the US nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will cost over $1.2 trillion, a 25 percent increase from previous estimates, according to a report by the US government. The annual cost of modernizing the arsenal would rise from $29 billion in 2017 to $47 billion in 2027, before peaking at around $50 billion a year in 2030, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. Congressman Adam Smith, a member of the Armed Services Committee in the US House of Representatives, said, "Congress still doesn't seem to have any answers as to how we will pay for this effort, or what the trade-offs with other national security efforts will be." US President Donald Trump has said he wants to ensure the US nuclear arsenal is at the "top of the pack," saying the American military has fallen behind in its weapons capacity. Trump in January directed US Defense Secretary James Mattis to conduct his own review of the US nuclear forces. The results could be published in the coming months. The Trump administration is working on a new nuclear weapons policy that would end the post-Cold War disarmament and allow Washington to expand its arsenal, new reports suggest. Trump and his top national security advisers discussed the matter in September at the White House, where the first draft of the new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was presented, The Guardian reported Sunday. Among the elements being considered under the expansion plan are new low yield warheads for ballistic missiles as well as sea-launched cruise missiles. The CBO report warns that Trump's proposal would increase the total bill for the US arsenal yet further. "Pursuing nuclear modernization will be challenging in the current environment," the report said, adding that it would compete with parallel ambitions to upgrade the Navy and the Air Force, and increase the size of the Army. This is while any growth in America's nuclear weapons stockpile amounts to a breach of international disarmament treaties signed by every US president since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The administration of former US President Barack Obama laid out plans for renovating the country's nuclear weapon arsenal, a reversal from his 2009 Prague speech that laid out his agenda for further nuclear disarmament. The US currently has an arsenal of about 7,000 nuclear warheads, second only to Russia, which has a few hundred more. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Russian company that makes customized iPhones with a golden plaque of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin now launched the iPhone X Tesla with a solar panel on the back. This is the second Caviar-modified Apple flagship this year after the meteorite-coated iPhone X in September. According to the company, you just need to leave your phone laying on its face, and the back gathers sunlight to charge the device. The body also has PVD coating and shockproof plate. There is also a golden plate next to the camera setup because why not. The company directly replaces the glass body with a titanium one. It also has 24K gold rims around the back edges and the camera bump. iPhone X Tesla front and back Caviar says the self-charging iPhone X is inspired by three great scientists Nikola Tesla, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, although we doubt any of them would have such a questionable fashion choice for a handset. The launch of the regular iPhone X is tomorrow, but the Tesla version release will be announced additionally. We hope you have a hat to hold on to, because the price of the modded phone with 64 GB storage is RUB259,000 or $4,445. If you want 256 GB, you have to shell out RUB274,000 or $4,700. Source (in Russian) Google Assistant is now officially available for major Spanish-speaking markets: Mexico, the US, and Spain. The company promised more Google Assistant languages during the Made By Google event and today, Italian joins Spanish as the newest languages that Google Assistant supports. The two new languages will support a wide variety of queries for weather, local places, money or unit conversions, sports, games, jokes, calendar, and searching for flights. Google has also included fun questions like What makes you happy?, Can I call you Siri? and other quirky Easter eggs as per Googles usual self. Google Assistant in Italian and Spanish will automatically roll out to Android smartphones running Marshmallow, Nougat, or Oreo (version 6.0 and up). Markets where the Google Pixel 2 is available will also see Google Assistant arrive for their supported language, thus enabling the Active Edge feature, which prompts you for a Google Assistant voice command. Source (English) (Espanol) HMD Global has confirmed that they currently have no plans to launch the Nokia 7 smartphone in India. The confirmation came directly from the company's Chief Marketing Officer Pekka Rantala. His exact word were "Nokia 7 is designed for Chinese consumers, so currently we've no plans to bring it to India". The phone was launched last month, with China becoming the first market to get it. The Snapdragon 630-powered handset starts at CNY 2,499 (around $377 or 320) and goes up to CNY 2,699 ($407 or 345) depending on the model you purchase. Via These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. London is a beautiful city and it gave us an opportunity to take a bunch of great sample photos with the newly introduced Razer Phone. We used the main camera, tried HDR mode, tested the tele photo camera and snapped plenty of selfies (some of which in HDR as well). We'll break down the images by category. Photos The Razer Phone features a 12MP camera with a bright f/1.8 lens. We have daytime shots, indoor shots and even a few night photos. Outdoor photos offer plenty of detail, though there's a warm tint and the colors are a tad oversaturated. The colors are pleasing if not always accurate. The camera tends to underexpose the shadows when it hits the limits of its dynamic range. Razer Phone camera samples: main camera, no HDR HDR That's what HDR mode is for! With its help, the camera improves the handling of the darker areas of the image quite noticeably. The noise is visibly reduced, though the image appears softer too. The HDR mode also restored some extra detail in the highlight areas - parts of the sunlit clouds in the sky would have been lost without it. We did notice that the camera narrows the contrast of the image a bit as the whites are capped at around 94% brightness. Razer Phone HDR test: On Off You can use our new comparison tool (the button to the right of the thumbnails) to check out HDR and non-HDR photos side by side. Telephoto The telephoto camera promises 2x zoom - a hybrid system akin to the Huawei Leica cameras. What we didn't particularly like was that the zoom slider is smooth throughout - there's no way to go to exactly 2x and avoid interpolation. Still, none of our tele shots turned out sharp, they look like they've been digitally upscaled. Razer Phone telephoto test: Wide-angle Telephoto Selfies The selfie camera has an 8MP sensor and an f/2.0 lens. The lack of autofocus means some photos came out slightly blurry, but most of them look quite fine for an 8MP shooter. Razer Phone selfies Since the sensor has a limited dynamic range, we resorted to our good friend the HDR mode. Again we see improvements in both shadows and highlights. Razer Phone selfie HDR: On Off Video When we have more time (and a better Internet connection), we'll take a closer look at the 4K video recording of the main camera. For now, you can feast your eyes on this short clip, but we warn you to turn the volume down - Scottish pipes are not exactly quiet. When we think of depression we often imagine someone sad and lethargic, hunched over, with no energy to LIGHTNING REVIEW: Treadway shines in 'Dial M for Murder' Scott Treadway as Wendice (right) and Michael MacCauley as Swann shine in Dial M for Murder at the Flat Rock Playhouse. Where would Miss Marple be if you handed her the murderer on a silver platter without her having to solve the case through meticulous attention to the smallest clues? In Dial M for Murder playwright Frederick Knott turns the usual formula for a murder mystery on its head, letting the audience know from the start who to blame. The fun is watching the facade of homicidal husband Tony Wendice crumble as his perfect plan to murder his wife develops ever-larger cracks. When the final key turns and the door opens to expose him as the killer, his smile hides a shattered ego. Scott Treadway, a 34-year veteran on the Playhouse, is superb as Wendice. Loose-limbed and casually refined, Treadway gives his character exquisite manners that almost obscure his reptilian nature. He is the fawning husband, the back-slapping mans man and the good citizen just wanting to cooperate. But Treadway also gives Tony an oily sheen that becomes especially dark when turning the screws on his old college acquaintance Charles Swann, aka Lesgate, in order to persuade him to kill Tonys wife Margot. Michael MacCauley, another Playhouse regular, has one major scene as Swann and he makes the most of it. MacCauley manages to make an unsavory character sympathetic as the audience is caught up in his initial uneasiness. The uneasiness morphs into disgust that finally becomes resignation when he realizes the vice-like grip with which Wendice has him. When Swann picks up the money we know he is doomed. Because Tony Wendice is such a snake, the relationship between Tonys wife Margot and her American writer friend Max Halliday seems innocent by comparison. Their relationship is not explicitly spelled out, but its clear there is chemistry and a not-so-innocent history between them. Vivian Smith plays Margot effectively as a woman who keeps her feelings bottled up. Max (Will Repoley) just wants more than anything to be her corkscrew. The opening scene of the play is underwhelming as Margot and Max sit together and discuss their relationship in terms almost as formal as the elegant furnishings in the room. Smith gives Margot the straight-shouldered posture of a dutiful wife trying to pretend she has all she wants and needs. Repoley, in his 14th Playhouse production, gives Max a reciprocal stiffness that unconvincingly hides his disappointment at having to play second banana in her life when he knows he is first in her heart. As the play progresses, it becomes apparent that the opening scene is intentionally stiff and bland to set a baseline for the relationship that allows the audience to track the growing passion between the two as events unfold. It was fourteen years after Dial M for Murder was first produced that the detective series Columbo aired on TV with the same formula of revealing the identity of the murderer at the beginning followed by an hour of Peter Falk picking at the threads of the case until he had created a web from which the perpetrator could not escape. As Detective Hubbard, the Scotland Yard detective assigned to the case, Peter Thomasson decided to play his character in the manner of Peter Falk. He was kinetic in his movements with a good deal of hand waving and head scratching, addressing the men as sir and tenaciously hanging on until he had it all figured out. It is a much different style than the proper and precise way Hubbard was portrayed in Alfred Hitchcocks movie version. A case could probably be made that Columbo borrowed from Knotts dramatic innovation, so Thomassons portrayal is a legitimate choice, and he did us the favor of giving only a hint of a Scottish accent without taking it too far. It was just hard not to think of Columbo as he played the role. As mentioned, the staging is elegant and the formality and symmetry mirror perfectly the state of the Wendice marriage that is more about appearances than genuine love. The fireplace with smoke was a nice touch. The costuming was adequate, but Vivian Smiths wig was distracting it was so unnatural. That should be an easy fix. All in all, Dial M for Murder is a strong performance by an ensemble cast that lives up to the reputation of the Flat Rock Playhouse. In closing, there is an interesting aspect of Frederick Knotts life as a playwright to consider. He wrote only three plays. In addition to Dial M for Murder there was Write Me a Murder and Wait Until Dark. On the strength of these three plays he lived a comfortable and contented life in Manhattan. When Knott died in 2002 at age 86 his obituary in the New York Times quoted his wife as saying, He hated to write, and He wrote only for money. Rarely does a purely mercenary effort shine so brightly. Police Accountability Boards starting work in most Maryland counties Mandated by state law after the killing of George Floyd, Police Accountability Boards have begun work in the majority of Maryland counties. H igh prices and a shortage of stock; the two key problems faced by Londons home-buyers this year are also a sadly familiar story for renters. With the average rent in London closing in on the 1,500-a-month mark it is little wonder that the GMB union calculates that the average earner in the capital now has to spend more than half their monthly earnings on rent. The latest research from Countrywide found that rents in the capital rose 2.1 per cent in the past year. Meanwhile the number of available properties has plummeted, as higher taxes have driven investor landlords out of the market. Buyers have responded by moving out of London in record numbers. And, even with the higher costs of commuting factored in, renters are following in their wake. BRIGHTON: IDEAL FOR THE FOOTLOOSE AND CHILD-FREE For those who suffer from a Fear of Leaving London, Brighton is the city by the sea option. 2,000 a month: a delightful two-bedroom house in Victoria Street, Brighton For a start it feels familiar, and although it is tiny compared with the capital, it is large enough to have neighbourhoods with distinctly different characters. Paul Dryden, lettings manager at Brand Vaughan, says many of his London clients work flexi hours, which has freed them from the daily commute. He suggests renters should look to either the east or west of Brighton city centre, depending on whether they want a laid-back way of life or something a bit more buzzing. The relaxed option to the west is pretty, genteel Hove, with its streets of Regency houses and thriving range of cafes and restaurants. On the other side of the city is Kemptown, a seething mass of bars and boutiques, where streets running down to the seafront give renters that sought-after view of the water. 2,300 a month: a three-bedroom flat on the seafront at Marine Parade, Brighton Compared with living in Londons Zone 1 or 2 the prices are a steal. A two-bedroom flat in Hove would cost around 1,250 to 1,300pcm, while a similar property in Kemptown would be a little cheaper at 1,150 to 1,200. If you do want the sea view, however, you will pay an extra couple of hundred pounds a week. Dryden moved to Brighton five years ago with his then girlfriend (now wife) and found making friends easy neighbours chat to one another and the couple have a dog, which, he says, means they get to know everyone on the dog walk. It is a lot more relaxed than London, nobody would ever blank you in Brighton. The commute: from 59 minutes to Victoria. Annual season ticket: from 3,832. CAMBRIDGE: IDEAL FOR FAMILIES It is universally acknowledged to have some of Britains best schools, which makes Cambridge a no-brainer for families. Cambridge is also breathtakingly beautiful, walkable, cycle-friendly, and booming. Boom town: Cambridge is breathtakingly beautiful, walkable and cycle-friendly / Getty Images/iStockphoto Things have changed a lot in the past 10 years, says Alex Bloxham of Bidwells estate agents, who regularly rents homes to London commuters. The restaurants and general social life has vastly improved, there have been some big leisure complexes built. It is a good place to live. House prices have also boomed an average property in the city now costs 425,500 but renting is considerably cheaper than in the capital. For those who plan to commute to London being close to the station is going to be a priority, which means all roads lead to south Cambridge. 1,950: a four-bedroom period townhouse in Victoria Street, Cambridge, less than a mile from Cambridge station, close to the city centre For those who want a no-hassle new-build there has been a huge amount of building along the M11 corridor, particularly around Trumpington. A four- bedroom family house would rent for around 1,700 to 1,800pcm. A more London experience is to be found around Mill Road, also in the south of the city. One of the most cosmopolitan, interesting and real areas in this gorgeous tourist honeypot of a city, it has plenty of local restaurants, cafes and food shops and is an easy walk or bike ride to the city centre. The community comes together every year for Mill Roads Winter Fair, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors. A three-bedroom period terrace would rent for around 1,500 to 1,600pcm around the same as a two-bedroom flat in a far-flung London burb. The commute: from 51 minutes to Kings Cross. Annual season ticket: from 5,100. GUILDFORD: FOR THE SWIFTEST COMMUTE Guildford is popular for a reason. This great-looking market town has swift train links to the capital, a family-friendly vibe and of course access to the glories of the Surrey Hills. And unlike some other commuter dormitory towns it feels lively. Great-looking: Guildford offers a family-friendly vibe with a lively leisure scene / Alamy Stock Photo We have got two giant leisure centres, three theatres which do a lot of stuff for children, some really good independent restaurants and cafes, says Tim Pacey, lettings manager at Foxtons. The high street is very boutiquey and high end but it also has all the main high street shops. The crime rate is very low and people feel safe and secure. Added to this, Guildfords schools are great there is a trio of Ofsted-outstanding senior schools to choose from and commuting time is about the same as if you live in Zone 3 or 4. Now the bad news. Homes to rent within a 10-minute walk of the station carry a premium; a three-bedroom house will cost around 1,750pcm. However if you are willing to live a little further away, Pacey recommends suburbs like Stoughton or Burpham, both around two miles north of the town centre, where a similar property would cost 1,500pcm. 1,350 a month: a three-bedroom end of terrace house, just over a mile from Guildford station, with a garage and off-street parking Around half of Paceys renters are London commuters. Some are renting while they house hunt, others are saving desperately for a deposit. I think all my tenants ultimately are looking to buy. The commute: from 44 minutes to Waterloo. Annual season ticket: from 3,496. At Magnuson Worldwide, America's fastest growing hotel brand, we are proud to announce the branding of the Magnuson Grand Desoto. Located off I35 and 11 miles from Downtown Dallas and 22 miles from Arlington, the Magnuson Grand DeSoto is near the Dallas Convention Center, Cowboys Stadium, Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Hurricane Harbor. Formerly a Clarion Hotel, Magnuson Grand Desoto will upgrade its market position to attract travelers via an affiliation with Magnuson Worldwide's international portfolio of over 1,000 hotels and state-of-the-art, global distribution platform. The Magnuson Grand DeSoto offers guests free breakfast, free high speed internet access, and free parking. There is an indoor pool, whirlpool, fitness center, a relaxed restaurant and a lounge bar. The hotel also has a business center, guest laundry facilities, and meeting space. Hotel website The Kempinski Hotel Bahia Estepona has announced the appointment of Francisco Sa Teixeira as the new Director of Sales & Marketing. Coming from the Kempinski Doha in the Middle East to the Beach Resort in Spain, Sa Teixeira takes the helm for the day-to-day operations of the Sales and Marketing departments, as well as focusing on achieving the companys strategic goals. He is committed to building on the hotels strong performance record and tapping into new markets to stimulate demand and enhance revenue. Sa Teixeiras career started in operations at Hilton group and he quickly progressed through the ranks, working at the Sheraton, and Hoteis Real Group in Portugal representing nine 4* and 5* hotels including the famous Villa Italia in Lisbon. He joined the sales department at Kempinski Doha in 2014 where he was quickly promoted to Director of Sales. Sa Teixeira holds an Executive Masters in Hotel Management from ESHTE and Universidade Catolica Portugal and has studied at the HEC Paris, and Cornell University in the US. In addition to his native Portuguese language, he also speaks fluent Spanish, English and French. When not working, he loves to travel and is a sport freak loving surfing and mountaineering. Chef John Kujundzich joins Canyon Ranch wellness spa + fitness Las Vegas, Nevada, with more than 15 years of experience. Originally from California, Chef John comes to wellness brand from the Red Rock Resort and Casino where for the past four years he served as Assistant Executive Chef, responsible for the culinary operations of 11 restaurants and catering. Prior, he was a member of the culinary team that opened The Wicked Spoon at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Chef Johns experience also includes the opening of OM: Modern Asian Kitchen in Tucson, Arizona, and working as a Banquet Chef and Chef de Cuisine at Hotel ZaZa Houston. Chef John is a graduate of the California School of Culinary Arts where he obtained an Associates Degree in Culinary Arts, Le Cordon Bleu Certificate. Perhaps most impressive is how Chef John began his culinary career, in the United States Marine Corps. During his six plus years of service, he held the position of Chief Cook while stationed at Camp Pendleton, California and served overseas in support Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, eventually rising to the rank of sergeant. In his new position, Chef John will oversee the acclaimed Canyon Ranch Grill and The Canyon Ranch Cafe and will direct special events. ALPHARETTA, GA. Nov. 2, 2017 The Rainmaker Group (Rainmaker), a leading provider of cloud-based hospitality revenue management software, today announced that Angie Dobney, the company's vice president of pricing and revenue management services, will participate in a panel discussion at the 18th Annual TribalNet Conference & Tradeshow, which will be held Nov. 6-9 at the Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel & Spa. The company also will sponsor the conference's opening night 'Meet & Greet' event. Dobney will take part in the panel discussion entitled, 'Gaming/Hospitality Data & Analytics: Translating to More Revenue'. In this session, a group of industry professionals will discuss technology that makes complex data more understandable, tools that drive better decision making, and analytics best practices. The session will take place Tuesday, Nov. 7, at 11 a.m. Dobney, who has an extensive background in the hospitality industry, helps hotels and casinos uncover new revenue opportunities. Her expertise spans the unique challenges related to revenue optimization, and she is a frequent industry speaker on the topics of strategic pricing and data-driven revenue management. During the three-and-a-half-day conference, Rainmaker will offer demonstrations of its award-winning revenue optimization suite, which includes the guestrev revenue management solution, the grouprev group pricing solution, the revcaster rate shopping tool, and the revintel business intelligence application. Many of the country's leading tribal gaming properties rely on Rainmaker's groundbreaking software solutions to drive profitability and outperform their competitors. "We look forward to participating in this year's TribalNet Conference and Tradeshow," said Tammy Farley, president of The Rainmaker Group. "We've experienced considerable growth in tribal gaming over the last few years, and we are deeply committed to the success of our customers in this market. TribalNet is always a great event for both vendors and attendees, and we anticipate another exceptional conference." On TribalNet's opening night, Rainmaker will sponsor the conference's 'Meet & Greet' event at SALT Tacos y Tequila, located a few steps from the hotel. The event, which will be held Monday, Nov. 6, from 4:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m., will give attendees an opportunity to network while enjoying southwest food and drinks, flamenco dancers, and casino games. TribalNet is the industry resource for Native American technology professionals, connecting tribal IT leaders with solutions specific to their market. The organization provides a variety of tools and educational opportunities to its members, including an annual conference, a bi-annual magazine, online resources, and year-round training, that enable tribes to build solid industry partnerships and make well-informed technology decisions. TribalNet, headquartered in Portage, Mich., was founded in 1999. Visit Rainmaker at TribalNet 2017, Nov. 6-9, at the Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel & Spa, Booth #303. About Rainmaker The Rainmaker Group, a Cendyn company, is the premier provider of revenue and profit optimization solutions to the hospitality industry. Rainmaker's intelligent profit platform helps hotels, resorts and casinos optimize revenue, drive increased profitability, save valuable time & outperform competitors. As part of Cendyn, Rainmaker offers a complete set of software services for the industry, aligning marketing, sales and revenue teams to optimize their strategies and drive performance and loyalty across their business units. To learn more about Cendyn and its suite of hotel revenue management and profit optimization solutions, visit LetItRain.com or www.cendyn.com. About Cendyn Cendyn is the leading innovative cloud software and services provider for the hospitality industry. With a focus on integrated hotel CRM, hotel sales, and revenue strategy technology platforms, Cendyn drives sales, marketing and revenue performance for tens of thousands of hotels across the globe. The Cendyn Hospitality Cloud offers a complete set of software services for the industry, aligning marketing, sales and revenue teams to optimize their strategies and drive performance and loyalty across their business units. With offices in Boca Raton, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, London, Munich, Singapore, Sydney, Bangkok and Tokyo, Cendyn proudly serves clients in 143 countries, delivering over 1.5 billion data-driven, personalized communications on behalf of their customers every year. For more information on Cendyn, visit www.cendyn.com. Dana Glaze Marketing Manager 470-440-2041 Hotel Okura Co., Ltd. ("Okura"), a leading Japanese hospitality company, and Trinity Investments, LLC ("Trinity"), a Hawaii-based private real estate firm with an extensive background in hospitality, are pleased to announce an exclusive joint venture (the "Joint Venture") to create NIKKO STYLE, a fresh new upscale select service hotel brand that will be introduced throughout Japan. NIKKO STYLE will be operated by Okura Nikko Hotel Management Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Okura. The new hotel brand will launch under Okura Nikko Hotel Management's esteemed Nikko Hotels International umbrella and cater to both business and leisure travelers looking for a new lifestyle experience at affordable cost. The Joint Venture intends to capitalize on the transformational tourism shift occurring in Japan by filling the significant void in the select service category in the country, but also distinguishing itself from other select service hotels with upscale lifestyle features and the renowned Okura attention to detail. Current plans entail opening NIKKO STYLE hotels in the major metropolitan and regional areas throughout Japan, including Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe and Fukuoka, as well as Hokkaido and Okinawa. Following the establishment of the brand and operations in Japan, the Joint Venture plans to take the product into select markets in Asia, North America and Europe. NIKKO STYLE will offer a comfortable and inviting atmosphere that encourages guests to work, relax and socialize. Whether local residents or international travelers, guests are welcome to meet, gather and connect through interactive culture, cuisine and creative experiences. The hotel will also feature the latest technological innovations so travelers can stay connected at all times. Benefitting from strong brand recognition and established sales, marketing and distribution channels, the Joint Venture is supported by a sustainable competitive advantage. Toshihiro Ogita, President of Okura, stated: "NIKKO STYLE will be our first lifestyle brand targeted at a new class of premium business and leisure guests. We are delighted to partner with Trinity and its rich traditions in the global hotel business. We look forward to working with Trinity to offer sophisticated new hospitality services and exceptional hotel experiences that meet the discriminating tastes of premium guests." Sean Hehir, President and CEO of Trinity, remarked: "Japan's hotel inventory is arguably the most underserved amongst developed countries worldwide, with little segmentation by major brand companies into the upscale select service space where branding and value-driven price points will be highly attractive to the country's new visitor demographic. This collaboration with our long-standing partner Hotel Okura on NIKKO STYLE will serve to fill this void, allowing for the rapid penetration of a new but familiar brand throughout Japan and then, utilizing our respective companies' worldwide networks, into selective gateway cities in other Asian countries, North America and Europe." About Okura Nikko Hotel Management Nikko Hotels International Nikko Hotels International (NHI) is a luxury hotel brand providing facilities and services to meet a wide variety of guests' needs in urban centers and popular resort destinations worldwide. The NHI brand emphasizes fine luxury, gracious hospitality and international culture. Service in the spirit of Japanese hospitality is a distinguishing feature of all NHI properties, both in Japan and overseas. Please visit www.nikko-jalcity.com/brand/nhi for more information. Okura Nikko Hotel Management Co., Ltd. Okura Nikko Hotel Management Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Hotel Okura Co., Ltd, operates three hotel groups: Okura Hotels & Resorts, Nikko Hotels International and Hotel JAL City. Founded in October 2015 to consolidate and strengthen its hotel management business, Okura Nikko Hotel Management aims to become the top Japan-based hotel operating company by developing an international portfolio of properties through hotel management contracts. Please visit www.okura-nikko.com for more information. Keiko Okano Bridge Global Strategies 212.583.1043 x11 Okura Nikko Reporting to Editor-in-Chief Anne-Marie Curtis, Kenya will adopt a more fashion-focused deputy role that reflects the new brand strategy, says Hearst. She will oversee the generation of editorial content for the magazine, continue to lead the curation of creative fashion features, and act as an overall guardian for the brand and its tone. Kenya joined ELLE in 2015 as Acting Content Director and was later appointed Fashion Features Director. Prior to joining ELLE, she led the launch of the digital fashion sector at Metro International, after working as the papers Global Style Director for five years. In addition, she was formerly a contributing editor for Vogue Italy, and has written for titles including The Guardian and the American editions of Vogue, Marie Claire and InStyle. She began her career at Jane magazine. Kenya Hunt, Deputy Editor and Fashion Features Director, ELLE UK, says; As a long-time reader of ELLE and admirer of Anne-Marie Curtiss work, Im very excited to take on this role during such an exciting new chapter for the brand. ELLE has always been an innovative and progressive title and its thrilling to have the opportunity to push this forward during a dynamic time for media. Anne-Marie Curtis, Editor-in-Chief, ELLE UK, says; Kenya is extremely creative and intelligent and possesses an innate understanding of ELLE that reflects our new strategy. I look forward to working closely with her and drawing on her valuable fashion expertise to implement our vision for the brand. Kenya has officially commenced her role. This Indian Heritage Hotels Presidential Suite Costs 14 Lakh Per Night; Check Out Businesses must be prepared for the extra costs that Brexit will bring, former World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy has said. Mr Lamy said he agrees with the push for businesses to prepare for the worst. "If you're a business in the car industry, the airline industry, the food industry, you can do a simulation as to what would it mean if the UK exits in May 2019 on WTO terms," Mr Lamy told the Irish Independent, on the margins of a Brexit event organised by AIB. "But for sure it will have a cost so we have to prepare for this cost. Your bottom line will be affected anyhow, and then you need to take your options on where you want to invest in five or ten or 15 years to come." Enterprise Ireland chief executive Julie Sinnamon has said firms have been in denial, and warned that they must start planning for a hard Brexit. Mr Lamy also told this newspaper that there there will be some form of border post-Brexit. "There will be a friction. You cannot have your cake and eat it," he said. "We have removed borders to reduce costs. That's why we did it. There will be a cost. And then the question is for whom? The consumer will have to pay the cost," he added. Mr Lamy said Britain will be on a "slow, painful, bumpy road to recognising reality, which is that Brexit is not a good thing", adding: "I never thought it was a good thing. I think it was a mistake." "It's not a question of negotiating the best deal. It's a question of negotiating the least damaging deal. And once you look at it this way, I think it becomes easier." In his address to the AIB event at the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham last week, Mr Lamy said it was impossible to have a 'no border' solution, claiming it was a "fairy-tale". "Borders are necessary to check and to police. I personally believe that there is no 'no border' solution," Mr Lamy said. An artists impression of the proposed Bonham Quay scheme which will overlook Galway Docks. Developer Gerry Barrett's ambitious plans for the development of over 26,000 sq m of Grade A office space overlooking Galway Docks in Galway city centre have been given the green light by the city's planners. Arranged across four blocks ranging in size from 4,820 sq m to 11,845 sq m, Bonham Quay will upon completion provide sufficient space to accommodate some 2,600 employees. The scheme, which will be delivered by Mr Barrett's company, Edward Capital, is projected to carry a total development cost of approximately 104m and is expected to create in the region of 500 full-time construction jobs. The original scheme proposed for the site has been revised substantially by Mr Barrett's design team. Its public realm space has been reconfigured to ensure permeability with the city centre and its historic street pattern. All 3,700 sq m of Bonham Quay's public squares and plazas have been designed to be adaptable, allowing them to be used for both impromptu and organised events such as 'pop-up' markets, performances and outdoor cinema screenings. The most significant revision of the plan will see the creation of a larger dedicated arts/cultural facility which will be available for use by corporate clients and local community partners and arts groups alike. As well as its provision of state-of-the-art office and cultural spaces, Bonham Quay will include a further 2,005 sq m of retail units and restaurants Welcoming Galway City Council's decision to approve the development, Mr Barrett said: "Bonham Quay is a new departure for Galway. The creation of a new urban quarter will stimulate significant employment in Galway city and its environs and will have a ripple impact in the broader national economy." Mr Barrett said he expects there to be significant opportunities for Galway and its surrounding areas post-Brexit given the city's ease of access to both Dublin and Shannon Airports. He said: "The reaction from the market has been very encouraging and we have already had strong interest from UK-based firms wishing to relocate to cities like Galway. "The quality of lifestyle in Galway is also sure to be a huge attraction for foreign direct investment and their employees". Edward Capital has retained major international architect-led design practice BDP as architects for the project, BDP continue to design and deliver many major workplace schemes across Ireland, the UK and internationally for clients such as Google. Agents Cushman & Wakefield have been engaged by Mr Barrett to ensure that Bonham Quay is aggressively marketed both nationally and internationally. Given the shortage of supply of modern floor plate offices that are flexible enough to cater for sophisticated multinational occupiers, the agents believe that the proposed development will see strong interest from existing and prospective occupiers. Cushman & Wakefield believe this development given its superb City Centre location, high-calibre design and flexibility in terms of layout will attract strong interest from existing and new occupiers to the Galway market. Bonham Quay Development will finally deliver new office space in an area that has seen demand outstripping supply in recent years. Galway City Council's approval of the project is welcome news for Mr Barrett and for Edward Capital. The developer is currently locked in a bidding battle with his biggest creditor, Deutsche Bank, for a number of his major assets, including the five-star G Hotel, after they were placed in examinership. Spare a thought for the lads in Glanbia's PR department. If they aren't getting it in the neck from farmers about the latest scheme to lock in loyalty through feed purchases, they're fighting a backlash from the country's usually mild-mannered meal millers. In the case of the latter, you can understand why the merchants of the Irish agri-business world are up in arms. They thought they were made up when ballooning post-quota milk production resulted in rocketing feed demand. Despite all the guff about producing milk from grass, I don't know any farmer that can do it without having a few tonnes of meal in reserve. When you factor in an extra 400,000 cows over the last couple of years there's suddenly a lot of extra mouths to feed. And it's not just the additional cows that need feeding. All those boney Friesian bull calves are chomping their way through mountains of feed as farmers try to turn them into respectable burgers. No wonder the country's private feed millers have sunk at least 20m into shiny new facilities over the last few years. Quinns of Baltinglass is the latest to announce an upgrade to bring another 50,000 tonnes of ration to the market. This comes hot on the heels of Grennans investing serious loot into a plant capable of churning out 180,000t, Liffey Mills sticking in another 50,000t line and Bretts giving its storage facilities a serious revamp. Those figures might also explain why the merchants are so upset with Glanbia's most recent fixed milk price scheme. It had the added twist of offering dairy farmers a 30/t discount on feed bought from their mills, but only if the farmer committed to buying all their feed from Glanbia for the next five years. Following a hue and cry from its supplier base, Glanbia backed down and included an opt-out after two years. Every farmer I talked to roundly dismissed the meal offer as an attempt by the co-op to counteract the improving competition, and possibly the growth of increasingly professional farmer buyer groups. Despite this, Glanbia claims that its feed allocation of 25,000t for the scheme was over-subscribed, and is now closed to further offers. Counter-offer The offer spurred some innovative responses -particularly from Grennans with its counter-offer of 31.5c/l to its customers for a fixed-price contract for up to 20pc of their milk going to Glanbia. It tops the Glanbia offer by 0.5c/l. That move was a tad too brave for the liking of other merchants. They cited the task of trying to claw money back from farmers if the price falls below 31.5c/l as being less than appetising. However, the alternative of sitting on their hands is also unappealing for millers. They believe that Glanbia is simply using a 70m war chest of cash left over from the spin-out of co-op shares to cross-subsidise both the price the co-op is paying farmers for their grain and milk, and the price that those same farmers are paying for their meal inputs. They point to the 14/t 'top-up' that Glanbia shareholders get on their grain deliveries. This is up from 5/t two years ago. Dairy farmers also got a co-op 'sponsored' top-up of 1c per litre during the worst of the price collapse last year. There are other feed rebates available to drystock farming shareholders which, according to the processor, is all coming out of Glanbia Ireland 'resources'. Glanbia claimed that the 30/t rebate was simply what it is able to offer its farmers on the back of marketing and production efficiencies achieved in recent years. If it was a one-trick feed-merchant-pony that wouldn't stack up since industry norms for costs in either marketing or production are not much more than 20/t. But Glanbia has many more strings to its bow. So a 30/t is small beer in the greater scheme of things. A spokesman for the processor was adamant that none of the money left over from the share spin-out is being used here. But maybe that's beside the point. Even if only some of the rebates that are being used to subsidise the price that Glanbia is paying or charging farmers, it raises the age-old problem of why 'dry' shareholders' funds should be used to prop up active shareholders' prices. Or even worse, why shareholders' funds are being used to undercut the competition. This would be my real concern if I was a co-op shareholder. It's all too easy for management at Glanbia to be able to dip into these spin-out leftovers to cover up poor trading decisions or to simply buy market share. Nobody is any the wiser and management looks good because 'the company is going from strength to strength'. For future spin-outs -which will surely come - co-op shareholders should be much more cautious about agreeing to leave millions of their equity in the hands of company bosses whose remit is to maximise the bottom line. As for the merchant millers that dot the regions? If they are waiting for the money to dry up they have a long wait in front of them. Glanbia is a wealthy entity and that wealth will be dribbled out to shareholders over the coming decades just as Kerry has done over the last 30 years. Instead they will just have to accept that co-ops will always use their strength in numbers and wealth to limit competition and keep their members happy. It's not personal, it's just business. Time for the merchant princes to get brave or get out. An estimated 23pc of cows in the liquid milk herd are taking a long holiday every winter. That was one of the key messages from dairy specialist Joe Patton at the Teagasc Winter Milk conference in Navan where he encouraged farmers to consider split calving patterns as an alternative to the traditional spring calving method. Late spring calvers are productive at peak, while cows calved in September and October provide a more sustainable milk supply through the year, said Mr Patton. "Late spring calvers or summer calvers peak high when there's a peak production in factories and drop really quickly, whereas October calvers give us sustained milk production through the year. "If you take the number of litres from November to February, a June calved cow will give you 2,200 kilos of milk and an October calved cow will give you 3,200 kilos," he said. He added that if you have a liquid milk contract feed costs for September/October calved cows are less than late spring calved cows and that late spring calved cows should not be used just to meet a contract. "You need fewer October calvers than you do late calvers to fill the contract. The annual feed costs of a June calver has the same feed costs of an October calved cow but we need more June calvers to meet our contracts. "On a whole farm basis it's cheaper from a feed point of view to have fewer October calvers than it is to allow spring calvers to become lax and left on," he said. Mr Patton added that there are further benefits of looking into the optimal calving patterns rather than relying on late spring calvers to fill contracts. "September to November calved cows drive good milk production through the winter, whereas with May-August calved cows there are issues of low solids and being over conditioned. "We should not be using stale, straggler cows from the spring to fill our contracts. It would make more sense to have fewer herds using more September/October cows to supply that type of milk. "It's important we start talking about calving pattern. We have to start measuring these things. "We have to be conscious that there are targets and efficiencies to be gained from the optimal pattern," he said. Mr Patton went on to discuss examples of optimum calving patterns depending on the type of liquid contract a dairy farmer has. "If we take a 50pc contract what we're looking at is two compact blocks centred on early February calving and starting in early October with a finish in about 10 weeks. We are hollowing out the middle of the year and during the summer months are free to produce plenty of milk. "If you have a 70pc contract, to achieve that we would have to start a little earlier. Start around September 10 with about 55pc calving in autumn overall," he explained. However, in the case where farmers are on 25pc contract models, he questioned whether calving in autumn was worth it. "This 25pc contract is an interesting group. We're talking about 100 cows needing to calve 15 calves in the autumn for the optimum. "If you're in a situation where you're calving 15 cows or less in the autumn you have to start asking questions about critical mass and if it is worth your while? You need to decide what's the best for your farm," he said. Mr Patton added that if we want to increase our milk production and overall efficiency, that fertility and culling empty cows should be focused on more by dairy farmers. "We have to start looking at culling like it isn't such a bad thing. We need to start looking at culling and replacing those stocks with better fertility genetics coming through,"he said. While there are plenty benefits to split calving, Mr Patton explained that it involves four extra hours of labour per cow as it is a more complex system. At present the number of winter milk farmers in Ireland stands at 1,700, which is 10pc of dairy farmers. This is compared to 3,359 producers registered in 2001. On average farmers receive a 7.5-8c per litre premium for producing winter milk, which for most is not enough. While Mr Patton said that it could be worthwhile bringing in a scheme to increase the producers of winter milk in Ireland, he stressed that since there's no shortage of liquid milk through the winter that there may be no point in "robbing Peter to pay Paul" "As it stands whatever value is available to fund a scheme would have to be returned by the market. Winter milk can't be paid premium unless there's increased production," he said. He added that spring calving is fine but that co-ops should start discussing the possibilities of split systems with farmers. Facebook is to create several hundred new jobs in Ireland next year. The tech giant CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed there will a substantial jobs boost in the higher end of the hundreds during a meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar today. Ireland is home to Facebooks largest office outside of Silicon Valley, employing 2,200 people in Dublin and Cork. It is understood most of the new jobs will be in Dublin which is home to the social media companys international headquarters. Speaking after his meeting with Mr Zuckerberg and other executives, Mr Varadkar said: They have confirmed they are going to expand their operations in Ireland. That was very positive announcement that Facebook is very committed to Ireland, very happy with their operations in Ireland, and are going to increase their employment levels and roles in Ireland by several hundred next year. When Facebook opened its first offices in Ireland in 2009 it employed just 30 people. The jobs come on top of a recent announcement that Facebook are expanding a data centre in Clonee, Co Meath. Mr Varadkar said the jobs would be expanding on existing facilities. They indicated that there will be several hundred additional roles in Ireland next year. We werent able to disclose the exact figure but its certainly in the higher end of the hundreds, he said. Gareth Lambe, Head of Facebook Ireland said: "As the home of our international headquarters, Ireland is an important part of Facebooks story and one of the most vibrant tech communities in the world. "We are delighted that our Irish operations will be growing in 2018 with hundreds more jobs across all our teams. We also recently announced that we are expanding the Clonee Data Centre which will keep construction crews busy well into 2020, further demonstrating our long-term commitment to investment in Ireland." Having a fast, strong broadband connection is so important for us that we would consider moving home for a better service. According to the results of a recent Pure Telecom survey, half of Irish adults who experience inadequate broadband speeds would be prepared to relocate for an improved connection. For those respondents who have broadband, three-quarters said that they are happy with their speeds, with 88pc maintaining that their home broadband speeds have remained the same or improved in the last 12 months. Paul Connell, CEO, Pure Telecom, said that the results show that the internet plays a massive role in peoples lives. "Many of the people affected by poor access live in rural Ireland. We need to help our rural communities thrive not drive them into towns and cities because of internet problems," he said. "We hope that the National Broadband Plan will be announced and rolled out quickly so that people can access quality internet services no matter where they live." The survey of just over 1,000 Irish adults also revealed that the average person spends 6 hours, 20 minutes per day using their broadband connection at home a total of 44 hours, 23 minutes per week. "With the rise of applications like intelligent personal assistants, as well as online streaming and TV viewing, people are spending a significant amount of their time at home online even downloading content as they sleep in some cases," said Mr Connell. Earlier this year, Pure Telecom signed a 35m deal with wholesale telecoms provider Open Eir, the wholesale arm of Eir. The deal will allow Pure Telecom to offer almost two million customers high-speed broadband and phone services via Open Eir's network. Pure Telecom said its customer base rose 25pc last year from 2015 to reach 42,500. INM Technology Editor Adrian Weckler with Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Frances Fitzgerald and Stephen Rae, Group Editor-in-Chief, INM, at the Dublin Information Sec 2017 seminar in the RDS. Photo: Tony Gavin There is a "huge opportunity" for Ireland to be at the leading edge of the emerging cyber-security industry, Tanaiste and Enterprise Minister Frances Fitzgerald told delegates at a leading industry conference in Dublin yesterday. The cyber-security industry employs around 6,000 people here, and the top five worldwide security software companies have operations in Ireland, Minister Fitzgerald said at the Dublin Information Sec 2017 cyber-security event hosted by Independent News and Media (INM). The ever-increasing threat from hackers means there is an opportunity to create a self-sustaining cyber-security ecosystem here, one where indigenous small and medium enterprises and multinationals could work together, the Tanaiste said. This represents a chance to make Ireland a real centre of excellence in this space, she added. The keynote speaker at the event, Jeanette Manfra, who is US Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cyber Security and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, told delegates that "industry is really on the front lines on this The challenge for industry is to understand systemic risk from a cyber perspective." Delegates at Dublin Information Sec, sponsored by eir Business, a Cisco Gold Partner, heard a panel of Irish and international cyber-security specialists highlight risks and propose solutions to security breaches and infection. The event was chaired by Adrian Weckler, Technology Editor at INM. Expert sessions included: looking inside the head of a hacker; improving an organisation's security health; response and defence; GDPR; Brexit; the US government approach to cyber-security and managing risk; and whistleblowing. Ethical hacker Mike G told business leaders bluntly that employees remain the big risk to data systems. "The weakest part of security is us," he said. Mike G, who helps organisations fight cyber threats, said that humans are very easily hacked while bad systems design and insecure policies leave individuals people and organisations vulnerable. Spoofing texts, calls and emails are among the most common ways in which people and companies can get hacked, he said. The outgoing chief information officer at the HSE and chief officer at eHealth Ireland, Richard Corbridge, said staff in Ireland had worked through the weekend in May this year in response to the so called WannaCry ransom attack, which targeted medical systems across Europe, notably the NHS in Britain. "With WannaCry it was clear we had to act quickly. "Had something like this landed on a Sunday night in autumn with flu and the week ahead it could have taken years [for the HSE] to recover," he said. "We mobilised 38 people to work the weekend and made sure the elements under threat were protected," Mr Corbridge said, but the biggest fear for him was whether individual hospitals and GPs would be impacted. "The worst case scenario for the HSE was that we lost any hospitals - the Irish healthcare system cannot afford for any hospitals to close their doors," Mr Corbridge told the audience. Preventative measures taken by the team that weekend included taking down the external email for the whole of the HSE to protect it from WannaCry. In the end only one HSE facility, in Wexford, was affected, he noted, adding that after the incident the HSE has a better way of handling such events. AIB has spent months assembling some 3.76bn worth of non-performing exposures as it attempts to drastically reduce its burden of bad debts amid waning tolerance for the problem from the European Central Bank. US private equity giant Bain Capital is expected to compete for AIB's multi-billion euro of non-performing loans when the bank fires the starting gun on the much-anticipated Project Redwood deal later this month. AIB has spent months assembling some 3.76bn worth of non-performing exposures as it attempts to drastically reduce its burden of bad debts amid waning tolerance for the problem from the European Central Bank. Boston-based Bain, which backs Broadhaven, the Dublin-based alternative financier, is the latest buyout firm to be linked to the looming sale, with Oaktree, Cerberus, CorVal, Deutsche and Goldman Sachs all tipped to enter the race. There have been conflicting signals, however, about Lone Star's interest as the distressed debt firm is scaling back the number of staff servicing its Irish exposures - a move widely interpreted as an indication of its dwindling demand for local non-performing loans. The anticipated launch of Project Redwood comes as investor appetite for soured debts in Europe remains robust as lenders rush to offload stacks of bad loans after the ECB signalled it was prepared to adopt a tougher approach to force banks to confront the issue. Last month Bain, in partnership with Oceanwood, a London-based hedge fund, snapped up 600m of non-performing assets from the Spanish regional lender, Liberbank for a reported 42c in the euro. AIB is expected to suffer a relatively hefty discount on Project Redwood, which is predicted to sell for close to 2bn, a discount to face value of 46pc. The portfolio is a mix of impaired loans, including buy-to-let mortgages, SME loans, and revolving facilities as well as commercial real estate developments, construction loans and debts tied to land and residential developments. A draft document outlining all the loans earmarked for sale, and seen by the Irish Independent, shows the bank is considering selling some 2,712 buy-to-let mortgages that carry a gross value of 702m. A total of 1242 commercial investment loans with a face value of 941m are likely to be included as are 600 impaired loans linked to land, worth 693m. The document showed 2,762 revolving facilities could be sold, with the gross value of these set at 97m. A total of 674 residential investment loans, worth 350m may be shunted into Project Redwood, along with 430 residential development loans, allocated a gross value of 371m. Aircraft maintenance provider, Dublin Aerospace, is to create 150 new jobs over the next three years. The roles will be across the areas of engineering, avionics technicians, structures and composite technicians, painters and aircraft operatives. All 150 jobs will be based at the companys Dublin operation. Supported by Enterprise Ireland, the expansion of Dublin Aerospaces workforce is part of the companys strategy to double its turnover by 2023. "Since our start-up in 2009 with just 18 staff, our annual turnover has risen from 7m to 46m last year and we have been profitable since our second year in operation" Conor McCarthy, chairman of Dublin Aerospace, said. Mr McCarthy went on to say that the increases in turnover for all three of the companys business units; aircraft overhaul, landing gear and auxiliary power unit services last year had given the business the confidence to create the roles. Meanwhile Julie Sinnamon, Enterprise Ireland CEO, described the announcement as a "significant milestone for the company" that cemented the companys future success and anchorage in Dublin. The news was welcomed by An Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Frances Fitzgerald TD who noted the importance of the aviation sector for Ireland, which contributes more than 4bn to the Irish economy. "My Department, through Enterprise Ireland, continues to support Dublin Aerospaces stellar growth," Minister Fitzgerald said. Irish communications firm Hume Brophy has announced the acquisition of Madaket+Co, a communications consultancy firm with operations in New York and Hong Kong. Hume Brophy, which specialises in public relations, public affairs, investor relations and corporate and financial communications, will establish its first full-time base in Hong Kong through the deal. The six member team of corporate and financial communications specialists in Hong Kong will join Hume Brophys existing 12-strong Asia team, headquartered in Singapore and led by Asia managing director Martin Reidy. Day-to-day operations in Hong Kong will be led by Thomas Kwan, who assumes the role of director at the Hong Kong office. The acquisition of Madaket+Co, with its Hong Kong and US offices, adds geographic reach to Hume Brophys practice, which already covers London, Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt, Singapore and Dublin. "This acquisition is a strong statement of intent to continue building an international, independent communications and corporate affairs firm. Bringing Madaket into the Hume Brophy network strengthens our offering across the worlds three biggest capital markets and gives us strong, deep and expert-led teams in every key global hub," Conall McDevitt, CEO of Hume Brophy, said. Founded in 2005 by John Hume and Eoin Brophy, the company has 120 employees drawn from various backgrounds including media, advertising, marketing, investor relations, professional services and industry association backgrounds. In addition, the company is supported by a global panel of senior consultants, including former editors, journalists, regulators, European Union commissioners, members of the European Parliament, national parliamentarians, government ministers and, special advisers and officials. Markets continued to brush off concerns over Catalonias independence bid, pushing Spains IBEX up 0.5pc. Photo: Irochka - Fotolia European stocks surged to two-year peaks yesterday, lifted by resilient company earnings and record highs set in Asia and New York, though a 6pc slump in Standard Chartered shares kept the banking sector under a cloud. By 10am, the pan-European STOXX 600 rose 0.6pc to 397.43 points, a level last seen in August 2015. Some of that was down to Germany's DAX index which, playing catch-up after Tuesday's holiday, jumped 1.3pc to hit a fresh record high. Markets continued to brush off concerns over Catalonia's independence bid, pushing Spain's IBEX up 0.5pc. The European benchmark is enjoying its fifth straight day of gains and rose almost 2pc in October, having also taken a cue from global markets which have been propelled higher by hopes of US tax cuts, economic recovery and a robust tech cycle. "Economically everything looks good at the moment," said Jonathan Bell, chief investment officer at Stanhope Capital. Bell cautioned, however, that while investors were riding the rising wave, markets could be vulnerable to monetary policy changes. The day's top performer was British drugmaker Indivior which soared 11.5pc after US authorities recommended approval for an opioid addiction drug. The stock has risen about 24pc already this week. "On our view (the recommendation) substantially increases the probability of approval ... which is material given its importance to future growth prospects," analysts at Jefferies told clients, rating the stock a Buy. A fellow drugmaker, Denmark's Novo Nordisk, lost 2.8pc after publishing third-quarter results and warning that new legislation in some US states could hurt business in its key market. Still on the earnings front, forecast-beating third quarter results drove up shares in Finnish tyre maker Nokian Tyres by some 6pc, while bookmaker Paddy Power jumped 4pc to three-month highs. The latest earnings season has rekindled some worries for Europe's banking sector. While BNP Paribas shares extended the previous day's 2.7pc fall due to disappointment in its fixed income trading operations, Standard Chartered was yesterday's biggest loser early in the day, with its biggest daily fall in three months. The Asia-focused lender posted a 78pc rise in pre-tax profit, but this was overshadowed by higher expenses and flat revenues. Shares in Austria's Raiffeisen bank also fell 2.1pc. (Reuters) Shares in Smurfit Kappa were up 3.39pc yesterday after well received financial results for the first nine months of the year. Revenue was up 4pc to 2.1bn during the period, boosted by wider economic growth in core markets including Western Europe. However, higher input costs hit profits, which fell 9pc year-on-year to 170m in the three months to September 30. Cardboard box maker Smurfit Kappa said that it would continue to offset cost pressures through further corrugated price recovery and efficiencies and left its full-year forecasts unchanged. During the third quarter, Smurfit Kappa acquired a corrugated plant outside Moscow, its first in Russia outside St Petersburg and making the business the largest international corrugated packaging producer in the country. The Moscow site includes capacity to double the size of the new plant, CEO Tony Smurfit told the Irish Independent. Smurfit Kappa also agreed to buy a box business in Greece in the period, and is eyeing further acquisitions, including in the UK, he said. The UK will remain an important market regardless of Brexit, Mr Smurfit said, but added that all businesses, including his own, are looking for greater certainty about future trade conditions and want to avoid a so-called hard Brexit. "Anything that hurts the ability to trade is bad for business," he said. As well as expanding by geography, the business is also pushing into higher value areas - including eSmart, a packaging services brand aimed at online retailers that provides logistics, packaging and customer experience. The new service is already available to customers in all of the markets where Smurfit Kappa operates, Mr Smurfit said. Reality TV star Ferne McCann has announced the birth of her daughter while the newborns father is on trial accused of carrying out a nightclub acid attack. The presenter and ex-The Only Way Is Essex performer, 27, made the announcement of the arrival of her first child on Instagram on Thursday evening, saying the girl came a week early. Ex-boyfriend Arthur Collins, 25, is on trial alongside 21-year-old Andre Phoenix after more than a dozen people were injured at the Mangle E8 nightclub in Dalston, east London, in April. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference The pair were out celebrating the news of her pregnancy when the corrosive substance was launched into the air during a row in the crowded club, Wood Green Crown Court has been told. Announcing the birth, McCann wrote: Wellcome to the world my darling. Didnt expect to see you a week early. Im so in love & bursting with pride. Its a girl. Collins, of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, admits throwing the substance but insists he did so having snatched it out of another mans hand who he thought was going to spike someones drink with it. He denies five counts of grievous bodily harm (GBH) with intent, and nine counts of actual bodily harm (ABH) against 14 people. Expand Close Arthur Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Arthur Collins Phoenix, of Clyde Road, Tottenham, north London, denies four counts of GBH and two counts of ABH. The trial resumes on Monday. Kevin Spacey is seeking treatment in the wake of an historical harassment allegation against him by actor Anthony Rapp. Star Trek: Discovery actor Rapp recently told online publication BuzzFeed that Spacey had placed him on a bed and climbed on top of him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. A representative for House Of Cards star and former Old Vic artistic director Spacey said: Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment. No other information is available at this time. We need your consent to load this Social Media content We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. Manage Preference The statement comes as production was halted on the sixth season of hit drama House Of Cards. Online streaming service Netflix and show producers Media Rights Capital (MRC) said in a statement the suspension would continue until further notice. MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on House Of Cards season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew, they said. The decision to pause production came before a second actor made allegations against Spacey. Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos wrote on his Facebook page that he encountered Spacey at the bar of Londons Old Vic, where Spacey was at the helm from 2004 until 2015, and said he had encounters that had been on the verge of being called harassment. Spacey responded to Rapps allegation with a statement posted on Twitter on Monday where he said he was beyond horrified by the claim. He added that the story had made him address other personal matters and that he chooses now to live as a gay man. Video of the Day The Old Vic has said it is deeply dismayed over the Spacey allegation involving Rapp and asked anyone who needed to make a complaint to contact it on confidential@oldvictheatre.com. Hundreds of Tom Hanks fans from around the UK flooded to a London bookshop to meet the actor as he signed copies of his debut book Uncommon Type. Excited readers said they were keen to discover a new insight to the Oscar-winning actor, whose own family experiences inspired some of the tales in his compilation of short stories. The Forrest Gump star attended the ticketed event at Piccadillys Waterstones store on Thursday morning, hours after closing Londons Literature Festival with a talk at the citys Southbank Centre. The two events marked his only public appearances during his current UK trip to promote the book. Expand Close Tom Hanks greets fans at Waterstones. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Tom Hanks greets fans at Waterstones. Matt Ashdown, who travelled with his girlfriend from Haywards Heath, West Sussex, for the event, told the Press Association: I feel very lucky. Tom Hanks is one of my favourite actors. It will be really nice to have a bit of an insight into his life. Amy McCaw, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, said: Somehow, with Tom Hanks, I can just imagine his voice through the stories. I have been watching his films all through my life and I was really interested to see the elements of his own experiences that he has brought to the book. He seems like such a warm, genuine, charming and really intelligent guy, and even a bit self-deprecating, willing to make fun of himself. Another particularly devoted fan even added: Ive been waiting for years to see him, Ive even got a tattoo of Forrest Gump. Speaking to a rapt audience on Wednesday night, Hanks told how he had considered his relationship with his own four children when penning the collection of tales. Expand Close London Literature Festival / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp London Literature Festival Video of the Day The 61-year-old said: I have three boys and one daughter, and I get along with each of them very differently. But I know absolutely for certain that they will need other people in their lives to spur them along. I just need to be the one to tell them, You will figure this out, you will be okay. He explained the theme of typewriters runs throughout the book and his passion for the old-fashioned machines had led him to collect more than 160 of his own. But he confessed his attempt to write part of the book on one of them turned into a complete disaster. Commenting on his literary influences, he confessed his love for the novels of late Irish author Maeve Binchy, sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke and everybody in his life who encouraged him to write. Passing on the message to his fans, he said: You should never throw anything away that you have written. It may become worthwhile. A man who set fire to a Dublin apartment complex, causing 1.25 million in damage and leaving 25 people temporarily homeless, has been jailed. John McGovern (25) set fire to the Station Hill apartment complex at Clongriffin, Dublin last November after a vicious attack on his girlfriend when he was was out of his mind on drugs and drink, a court has heard. Passing sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today, Judge Karen O'Connor said McGovern was at very high risk of reoffending, but noted he was making good use of his time in custody and trying to find a way to rehabilitate himself. She suspended the last 12 months of a six and a half year prison sentence. McGovern, of Shangan Terrace, Ballymun, Dublin, pleaded guilty to one count of arson causing damage to a number of apartments at Station Hill apartment complex at Clongriffin and to one count of assault causing harm to his partner Grainne O'Brien on November 1 last year. Judge O'Connor said arson was considered a very serious offence by the courts because it was impossible to control the outcome, and that McGovern had placed the lives of the residents at risk. She said the financial loss to some of the residents due to the destruction of their property had been considerable, but also that they had been inconvenienced and lost their homes temporarily. The judge said Ms O'Brien had suffered a vicious attack that was frightening and physically painful when her child was present. She acknowledged that McGovern had had a very difficult upbringing including parental alcohol abuse, time spent in care when he was a child, and mental health issues suffered by both his mother and himself. Garda Alan Roche told Ronan Kennedy BL, prosecuting, that McGovern and Ms O'Brien, who had had a tumultuous relationship, were drinking heavily throughout the Bank Holiday weekend. On the Tuesday morning after the weekend, Ms O'Brien woke up in her apartment in the Station Hill complex to see McGovern throwing a hoover at her face. He then jumped on the bed and started kicking and punching her in the legs. McGovern left the apartment shortly afterwards and went to the Travel Lodge in Ballymun where he continued to drink alcohol and took controlled drugs. Ms O'Brien's ex-partner came to the apartment that afternoon, bringing their young child with them. He said Ms O'Brien had a black eye, split lip and was missing a tooth. While he was there, McGovern returned to the apartment in a very agitated state, the court heard. He threatened to fight Ms O'Brien's ex-partner, causing him to flee the building. Ms O'Brien left shortly afterwards, leaving her son in the apartment with McGovern. She ran to a neighbour's home and asked her to call gardai. Her son left the building shortly afterwards and joined his mother in the neighbour's house. Ms O'Brien then saw her apartment was orange and on fire, the court heard before she saw McGovern on the other side of the nearby train tracks yelling, Look at your gaff Grainne, I'm after setting it alight. McGovern caught a train to Raheny Station, where he was arrested after he was seen acting erratically and scraping a knife off the metal chairs. When questioned by gardai, he initially blamed the fire on his partner and her ex-boyfriend. He has 26 previous convictions including theft, public order offences and escaping from custody. The court heard 14 fire trucks were called to the scene of the fire, which took four-and-a-half hours to get under control. All of the residents were evacuated and no-one was injured. Six homes were completely destroyed and others were badly damaged due to water. A victim impact statement from the building owner, Jim Gannon, said the damage to the property amounted to 1.25 million. 25 people, including children, were left homeless for some time after the fire, including a family with a young child suffering from cancer. A number of victim impact statements were handed into court outlining the distress and financial hardship the fire caused to the occupants. One man, a single parent, described how he and his daughter lost all their furniture. He said his daughter was deeply affected and distressed by the fire and it took them months to get their lives back on track. Another woman described how she experienced depression and anxiety as a result of being made homeless. Sean Guerin SC, defending, said his client failed to take his prescribed anti-psychotic and anti-anxiety medication in the days leading up to the incident. He said that, along with the alcohol and drug consumption, led to a cocktail of reasons why McGovern was out of his mind. He said as a result, McGovern did not realise the extent of damage the fire would cause to the building. He handed up a letter of apology from his client, in which McGovern described the fire as the worst mistake of my life. If I could turn back the clock, I would, he said. He described his actions as completely irresponsible and unacceptable and extended his apologies to the affected residents. McGovern had a troubled childhood and came from a chaotic, disordered, volatile and physically violent background, Mr Guerin said. He has been in custody since the incident and was responding well to the regime in custody. He was now drug-free and eager to continue making progress, Mr Guerin said. Judge O'Connor backdated the sentence to November 1, 2016 and ordered McGovern to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for two years. He was also ordered to remain under the supervision of the Probation Services for two years and attend programmes as directed. A Limerick businessman has settled, on confidential terms, his High Court action against "X-factor" contestants Jedward and their parents over an alleged merchandising agreement. Patrick Joseph Noonan had claimed losses totalling some 625,000, mostly arising from the design and production of Jedward wristbands, jigsaws, boardgames and websites, but including 250,000 for loss of opportunity to sell a Jedward board game to another party. Identical twins John and Edward Grimes, aged 26, from Dublin and known as Jedward, were in court with their parents John Grimes and Susanna Condron when the settlement was announced. The twins wore identical purple jackets, black tops and black trousers. Jedward got to the finals of The X Factor in 2009, represented Ireland twice in the Eurovision song contest and appeared in "Celebrity Big Brother". Today, as the case was due to enter its second day, Mr Justice Donald Binchy was told by Desmond Murphy SC, for the parents and twins, there had been substantial developments overnight and a document required to be scrutinised by the parties. Mr Murphy and Patrick OReilly SC, for Mr Noonan, asked for time and the judge adjourned the proceedings to noon. Before noon, before the judge and lawyers re-entered courtroom No 25, the twins came into the near empty courtroom. As a small number of fans watched from the public gallery, one of the twins spoke into a microphone, announcing: Jedward has entered the building. When the court reassembled soon afterwards, Mr OReilly said the case had been compromised on confidential terms between the sides. The judge agreed to adjourn the matter to December 12 to enable the terms be concluded. He congratulated the sides on settling the case and said he wished everybody well. Mr Noonans case was against the parents, whom he alleged acted as agents for Jedward in a number of meetings from August 2011, and the twins themselves. The defendants denied the claims. In a preliminary objection, they argued the case was bound to fail because no legal relationship existed between Mr Noonan and them and there was never any intention to create a legal relationship. Without prejudice to that objection and denial of liability, the defendants pleaded, insofar as they and Mr Noonan were involved in a joint venture and two companies SSA Ltd and NSD Media Ltd were used to further that venture, any claim by Mr Noonan could only be maintained against the companies and not against the defendants. The parents denied they acted as agents for Jedward, denied they made representations to Mr Noonan as alleged and denied any contractual relationship with him. They also denied the alleged losses and pleaded, if loss was sustained, Mr Noonan failed to mitigate that In his action, Mr Noonan alleged it was agreed at meetings involving both or one or other of the parents, allegedly acting as agents of their sons, he was to be reimbursed for costs relating to sourcing and developing Jedward merchandise. A civil engineer with various business interests, Mr Noonan got to meet the Grimes family as a result of knowing John Geehan, a first cousin of the twins father John Grimes senior, the court heard. In evidence, he said he first met the twins and their mother at his home in Limerick in August 2011 and, in a memo of that meeting, described them as lovely lads (hyper). His understanding was he would be working for them and he would get paid, he said. He spent money personally on the merchandise before the two companies were set up and understood he would be paid for what he spent, he said. It was also claimed, in anticipation of an exclusive merchandising contract between the twins and a UK company, Bravado, expiring about April 2012, the defendants directed Mr Noonan to start work on developing and sourcing Jedward branded merchandise to be sold by the two companies after expiry of the Bravado arrangement. Mr OReilly said Mr Noonan paid for the items but had not received one cent for them and Jedward had not made their best efforts to promote the merchandise. His side knew certain items were sold and nothing was remitted to his client, counsel added. Former senior Anglo Irish Bank official Tiarnan O'Mahoney has been cleared of conspiracy charges. The ex-chief operations officer at the now-defunct bank was formally acquitted of all counts against him at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court yesterday morning. Judge Martin Nolan directed a jury to acquit Mr O'Mahoney after his trial collapsed on Tuesday. Mr O'Mahoney (58), of Glen Pines, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, had pleaded not guilty to conspiring to destroy, mutilate or falsify books and documents affecting or relating to the property or affairs of Anglo Irish Bank Corp PLC. He also pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Court to conspiracy to defraud the Revenue Commissioners, who were conducting an investigation into bogus non-resident accounts which may have been liable for deposit interest retention tax (Dirt). The offences were alleged to have occurred between March 25, 2003, and December 31, 2004, and referred to eight named bank accounts, all of which were allegedly connected to Anglo's former chief executive Sean FitzPatrick. Mr O'Mahoney, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and purple-and-green tie, did not address the court during the two-minute proceedings. The decision to direct an acquittal came after the defence argued that the prosecution had not proved the necessary connection between the accused and Aoife Maguire, former assistant manager at Anglo Irish Bank. Judge Nolan concluded that the case was "too tenuous" to go to the jury, and a conviction would be "perverse". Judge Nolan said there was every reason to be suspicious of Mr O'Mahoney's activities in October and November 2003, and his subsequent dealings with gardai. But in the absence of formal evidence of conspiracy with Ms Maguire, this was not enough. He said evidence demonstrated that Ms Maguire was a mere conduit for more powerful voices and was being "directed". Judge Nolan said the evidence showed that the defendant had an insight into the relevant accounts, and he made enquiries from other employees in relation to the deletions made to the accounts. He said it was obvious that the person who benefited from the deletion of the accounts was Mr FitzPatrick. "Sean FitzPatrick used the accounts to deal in Anglo shares in a prohibited period. "For a petty reward he breached the rules in relation to insider trading," Judge Nolan said. Mr O'Mahoney declined to comment on the case when he left the court building. [November 01, 2017] IBM Brings Cloud-native Environment to Private Clouds ARMONK, N.Y., Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new IBM Cloud Private software platform to help companies unlock billions of dollars in technology investment in core data and applications and extend cloud-native tools across public and private clouds. IBM Cloud Private software is designed to enable companies to create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds to accelerate app development. The new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud. IBM also announced new container-optimized versions of core enterprise software, such as IBM WebSphere Liberty, Db2 and MQ widely used to run and help secure the world's most business-critical applications and data. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across IBM Cloud private and public clouds and other cloud environments with a consistent experience. An airline, for example, could use IBM Cloud Private to bring a core application that tracks frequent flyer miles into a private cloud environment and connect it to a new mobile app in the public cloud. A financial services firm could use it to keep customer data in-house as it works to meet its security and regulatory requirements while taking advantage of new analytic tools and machine learning in the public cloud to quickly identify investment trends and opportunities. Enterprises to Spend More Than $50 Billion a Year on Private Clouds While public cloud adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace, organizations, especially in regulated industries such asfinance and health care, are continuing to leverage private clouds as part of their journey to public cloud environments to quickly launch and update applications. IBM estimates companies will spend more than $50 billion globally starting in 2017 to create and evolve private clouds with growth rates of 15 to 20 percent a year through 2020, according to IBM market projections. "Innovation and adoption of public cloud services has been constrained by the challenge of transitioning complex enterprise systems and applications into a true cloud-native environment," said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President for IBM Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research. "IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernization to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform." Hertz, Ilmarinen Transforming IT with Private Cloud The Hertz Corporation, one of the top car rental companies in the world, believes both public and private cloud is critical to achieving its technology objectives. "Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centers," said Tyler Best, Hertz Chief Technology Officer. "A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud are essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud. Hertz is an early adopter of both public and private IBM cloud and we could not accomplish our technology goals without private cloud as part of our overall cloud portfolio." Ilmarinen, a Finland firm responsible for the pensions covering approximately 900,000 Finns, has started a pilot project with IBM Cloud Private and plans to be in production in early 2018. "Ilmarinen is excited about the capabilities in IBM Cloud Private as a flexible, compliant cloud-native platform that it can deploy and manage behind our firewall for creating new applications and modernizing traditional workloads," said Jani Itkonen, Production Manager, Ilmarinen. IBM Cloud Private Provides Flexible Platform with Support for Enterprise Developers Innovations used in IBM Cloud Private are designed to simplify cloud management, accelerate app develop and maintain security across cloud environments. Key features include: Cloud Management Automation Streamlined management across cloud environments to help launch, monitor and manage services and help ensure consistent security protocols. Streamlined management across cloud environments to help launch, monitor and manage services and help ensure consistent security protocols. Security & Data Encryption Security Vulnerability Advisor to scan containers across the cloud to surface potentially serious issues and weaknesses; Ability to encrypt all data in flight and provide for strict access control by users within a cluster. Security Vulnerability Advisor to scan containers across the cloud to surface potentially serious issues and weaknesses; Ability to encrypt all data in flight and provide for strict access control by users within a cluster. Core Cloud Platform Includes a container engine, Kubernetes orchestration, Cloud Foundry and essential management tools surrounding developer runtimes, which are fully integrated and automated. Includes a container engine, Kubernetes orchestration, Cloud Foundry and essential management tools surrounding developer runtimes, which are fully integrated and automated. Infrastructure Choice Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix software. Compatible with systems from leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Lenovo and NetApp, as well as IBM Systems, including IBM Power Systems, IBM Z and IBM Hyperconverged Systems powered by Nutanix software. Data and Analytics Integrations with database services, such as IBM Db2, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, to leverage data and gain business insights. Integrations with database services, such as IBM Db2, PostgreSQL and MongoDB, to leverage data and gain business insights. Application Support & DevOps Tools Containerized versions of software and development frameworks, including IBM WebSphere Liberty, Open Liberty, MQ and Microservice Builder, as part of software bundles; Optimized management and DevOps tools, including APM, Netcool and UrbanCode, which can be added for a separate fee. IBM also offers cloud deployment, management, brokerage and storage services to help clients manage multiple clouds and can help clients with migration of applications to IBM Cloud Private. More details on Cloud Private can be found in the product overview. IBM Cloud Private Reinforces IBM Commitment to Open Source IBM Cloud Private is another significant step in IBM's support for organizations to create, deploy and manage apps in the cloud environment of their choice. IBM and Google recently announced an effort to create and open source the Grafeas project to help developers with security of containers. Last month, IBM released Open Liberty, a new lightweight, open-source version of its WebSphere Liberty Java application server, to make it easier for developers to get apps up and running in any cloud environment. IBM also is a founding member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which hosts Kubernetes and Cloud Private is in compliance with its interoperability conformance tests. To get started with IBM Developer Journeys as they relate to Kubernetes, please visit: https://developer.ibm.com/code/journey/ For more about IBM Cloud Private, visit here. For more about IBM Cloud, visit here. Contact: Joe Guy Collier IBM Media Relations [email protected] +1 248 990 4707 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-brings-cloud-native-environment-to-private-clouds-300547053.html SOURCE IBM [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] One of Dublin's most feared criminals was behind bars last night - but is expected to be back on the streets on bail within days. Jason 'Buda' Molyneaux (26) - who has 122 previous convictions - was yesterday handed a nine-month jail sentence after he was caught driving without insurance as well as possessing alprazolam tablets. Molyneaux is an associate of the Hutch mob and was previously interviewed by gardai investigating the killing of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy in Tallaght in 2014 but was released without charge. Prison officers surrounded Molyneaux yesterday in Dublin's Criminal Courts of Justice, where he pleaded guilty in separate cases in both the circuit and district courts. Sources said this precaution was taken because of threats against the well-known criminal as well as fears of Molyneaux himself. Molyneaux yesterday asked District Court Judge Anthony Halpin to sentence him as he has been on remand in Cloverhill and "has concerns about being on remand in that prison". It is understood that these are about threats that he has faced from gangland rivals since he was imprisoned last week. At Dublin District Court, Judge Halpin set recognisances for an appeal. This means that Molyneaux is expected to be released in the coming days once a cash bond has been raised. Molyneaux pleaded guilty before Dublin District Court to driving without insurance on Buckingham Street Lower, Dublin 1, on July 14 last year. He also admitted possession of alprazolam tablets, worth 300, after he was taken to Store Street Garda Station and searched. Expand Close A heavy Garda presence as the remains of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy. Photo: Collins / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A heavy Garda presence as the remains of Michael 'Mad Mickey' Devoy. Photo: Collins Molyneaux, of North William Street, North Strand, Dublin 1, further admitted careless driving and handling stolen property in Liberty Park, Dublin 1, on December 20, 2016. In that incident, the court heard Molyneaux was riding a push bike on the footpath. Gardai spoke to him, telling him it was an offence, but Molyneaux took off at speed, nearly colliding with a female pedestrian, who was forced to jump out of the way. When he was stopped by gardai in Foley Street, Molyneaux admitted the bike did not belong to him and he did not know who owned it. Earlier yesterday, in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Molyneaux received a two-year sentence suspended for two years after he admitted possession of a screwdriver for use in a theft and being a passenger on a stolen motorbike. The incident took place at East Wall Road, Dublin 1, on May 9, 2016. The college student, whose motorbike was stolen on April Fool's Day, initially thought it had been taken as a joke, the court heard. Molyneaux was arrested after a supermarket security guard contacted gardai about two suspicious men who were riding around a car park. The loss of the bike for owner Matthew Leonard was an enormous inconvenience, the court heard, and a journey to college that had taken him 30 minutes by motorbike took him two hours by bus. The victim, who was in the final year of a masters at the time, also believed that the loss of his bike impacted on his studies, and was partly why he had to repeat the last semester of his masters. Judge Karen O'Connor described the offence as "particularly horrible". The judge ordered Molyneaux to pay 1,000 compensation to Mr Leonard and imposed a two-year sentence, which she suspended for two years. His co-accused, William Baker (34), was sentenced earlier this month and received a two-year suspended sentence. He was ordered to pay 2,000 compensation to Mr Leonard. Baker, like 'Buda', is also a well-known associate of the Hutch gang, who have been involved in a feud with the Kinahan cartel for over two years. Mitigation evidence in Molyneaux's favour was heard at yesterday's sentencing hearing. Defence counsel Dean Kelly said the defendant picked up the bulk of his previous convictions in his late teens, when he had "difficulties at the lower end of drug experimentation". Mr Kelly said Molyneaux's last conviction was a public order matter in 2016 and he had "improved greatly in recent years". He said the defendant's father worked as a lorry driver and died in 2012. His mother previously worked as a cleaner, and Molyneaux lived at home with her and his sister. He also has a young son with an ex-partner, the lawyer said. A Dublin man has been jailed for stealing two valuable cars and having 28,000 worth of cannabis. Wayne Gilligan (22) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the theft of two family cars from a house in Swords on January 3 2016. Gilligan of Foxdene Avenue, Clondalkin also pleaded guilty to possession for sale or supply of 28,600 worth of cannabis at his home on January 9th 2016. Judge Melanie Greally noted the significant impact the theft had on the car owners, which including leading them to be fearful for their personal security. She imposed a four year sentence but suspended the last 18 months. Judge Greally said that Gilligan's serious drug addiction meant that he kept extremely menacing company, had incurred significant debts and received death threats. She said she was giving him credit for his early guilty plea in relation to both offences, his young age and his co-operation with the gardai during their investigation. Judge Greally said she accepted that the offences were committed in the context of addiction and debt, coupled with the fact that Gilligan knew his life was in danger. She said the defendant, who has been in custody for 20 months has made significant attempts to recover from his drug addiction and to reform his life. Judge Greally directed that Gilligan take up a bed in Coolmine Residential Centre for addiction treatment when one becomes available. A Dublin man who was arrested on suspicion of a fatal stabbing told gardai that he was acting in self defence after two "lads" attacked him. Donal Colgan (66) formerly of Killarney Court, Killarney St, Dublin 1 has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not guilty to the murder of 44-year-old David Sheridan outside Luigi's chip shop on the North Strand Road, Dublin 1 on August 17/18, 2014. His plea was not accepted by the State and he is on trial at the Central Criminal Court. A man jailed for the armed robbery of more than 1.1 million worth of diamond rings and watches from a Galway jewellers has had his prison sentence cut on appeal. Lithuanian national Irmantas Paulauskas (39), of no fixed abode, had pleaded not guilty to robbery of 1.1 million worth of stock from Hartmann jewellers on William Street, Galway city, as well as possession of an imitation firearm with a silencer fitted on the same occasion on February 11, 2015. He was found guilty by a jury at Galway Circuit Criminal Court and was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment by Judge Rory McCabe on May 12, 2016. Paulauskas lost an appeal against his conviction today but successfully appealed his sentence with the three-judge Court of Appeal holding that a distinction should be made because the robbery involved imitation firearms rather than actual loaded guns. Giving judgment, Mr Justice George Birmingham said four males, including Paulauskas, entered the jewellery shop at 10.42am on the morning in question dressed in dark clothes, wearing gloves and with their faces partially covered. The raiders were carrying imitation firearms and lump hammers, the court heard. Approximately 90 seconds later, the same four men, having held the shop up at gunpoint, left the premises with diamond rings and watches worth 1.139 million. Mr Justice Birmingham said a number of civilians witnessed the robbery and its aftermath. They saw a number of men walking single file from the scene and decided to follow them. Fortuitously, there were a number of gardai in Galway city centre that morning, the judge said. They saw a male moving quickly with a phone to his ear who, it turned out, was a civilian in contact with gardai, reporting to them what was going on. The detectives spoke to this civilian and they proceeded. Paulauskas and another suspect were apprehended, restrained and arrested after a struggle. Two other suspects were arrested a little later as they were awaiting for a bus from Galway to Dublin. A follow up search recovered the stolen jewellery bar one diamond ring which was subsequently handed in to gardai by a member of the public who said she had found it on Dock Road. The prosecution case was that Paulauskas and his co-accused were caught in the act or all but caught in the act. The defence emphasised the absence of DNA or forensic evidence and submitted that the case was essentially one of visual identification. Under cross examination, the civilian witnesses accepted that, while they had been in active pursuit and were observing the individuals throughout, there was a period of some seconds no more than 10 seconds - when Paulauskas had turned a corner and was out of sight. The trial judge warned the jury to be careful in considering this aspect of the case. He said history had shown there were plenty of cases of mistaken identity. Paulauskas' barrister at trial, Brendan Browne BL, asked for a specific 'Casey' warning on the facts of the case and in response the trial judge said he had already indicated that there was a gap in the identification and that he had warned the jury in a non-stereotypical fashion. The Court of Appeal viewed the trial judge's warning to the jury as adequate despite submissions from Paulauskas' senior counsel, Damien Colgan SC. Mr Justice Birmingham said it was not a classic identification case and, in truth, it was a caught in the act or hot pursuit case. It was a very strong case, the judge said. Paulauskas was apprehended wearing glasses, a black hat, gloves and was in possession of silver coloured handcuffs. He had engaged in a struggle with plain-clothes gardai and subsequently gave the explanation that he thought he might have been getting kidnapped. Various items of clothing he was wearing when arrested were put to him and his response was not mine. Nothing to do with me. Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice John Edwards and Mr Justice John Hedigan, said the Court of Appeal was satisfied that Paulauskas' conviction was safe and his conviction appeal was dismissed. Turning to the question of sentence, Mr Justice Birmingham said Paulauskas' accomplices had pleaded guilty to the offence and were given sentences of eight years imprisonment. In Paulauskas' case, there was no plea and no expression of remorse. Even at the sentence hearing there was no willingness to accept belatedly the jury verdict, Mr Justice Birmingham said. He had a significant previous criminal record including an eight-year prison sentence imposed for grievous bodily harm. Mr Justice Birmingham said it was a very serious offence. It was obviously planned and pre-meditated. It must have been a terrifying experience for the members of staff who were held up, the judge said. The rewards that would have been achieved had the robbery been successful were very considerable more than 1 million worth of jewellery. In those circumstances, the case had to be met with a very significant sentence indeed. Mr Justice Birmingham said the court paid some attention to the fact the robbery involved imitation firearms rather than actual loaded guns. He said robberies involving actual loaded firearms were in a graver category than what the court was dealing with here. It seemed it was proper to draw some distinction, he said. For that reason, the court felt some limited accommodation was appropriate. The Court of Appeal identified 13 years as the starting point for the sentence rather than 15. As in the Circuit Court, one year was discounted from the starting point due to the fact that imprisonment was more difficult for foreign nationals, leaving Paulauskas with a net sentence of 12 years. Let it be said clearly and without equivocation that the use of imitation firearms is a very serious matter. By definition, those to whom the firearms are produced don't know that the firearms are real or otherwise, Mr Justice Birmingham said. A jury has convicted retired surgeon Michael Shine of indecently assaulting two young male patients in a hospital in the mid 1970s. Mr Shine (85) of Wellington Rd. in Dublin had pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to eight charges of indecently assaulting six patients at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and at his private clinic, both in Drogheda, Co Louth, on dates between 1964 and 1991. On Wednesday the jury of four men and eight women acquitted him of a number of these charges. Just before midday today, having deliberated for just over six hours, the jury of four men and eight women returned majority guilty verdicts on the outstanding counts. These charges alleged that Shine assaulted two teenage patients on dates between 1974 and 1976. Shine admitted attending to these patients but denied that anything inappropriate was done during his medical examinations. One victim was aged around 15 or 16 in 1976 when he attended at the hospital with an in-growing toenail. The second victim, who was in his mid teens at the time, told the trial that he told himself for years that there was nothing improper about what the doctor did. Judge Cormac Quinn remanded Shine on continuing bail until December 1 for sentencing. The six complainants were all teenage boys at the time they allege Dr Shine touched them in their genital areas while treating them for injuries such as cuts to a knee, an injury to a finger and an injured toe. On Wednesday the jury found Shine not guilty of four charges which cover alleged offences against three teenagers on dates in 1964, 1970 and and 1976. Shine has denied ever seeing these patients and there were no medicals records to confirm that he had seen them on the dates of the alleged assaults. During the 12 day trial Judge Quinn directed the jury to acquit Mr Shine of one count of indecently assaulting one of the complainants on a date between 1988 and 1991, after a defence application. A High Court challenge against RTE's plans to air a report into the rented accommodation sector in Ireland has been withdrawn. The action was brought by the Green Effect Technology Limited T/a Global Academics, and its directors Mr Jason Orr and Mr Joshua Cantwell against the national broadcaster and journalist Barry O'Kelly regarding tonight planned broadcast on the RTE Investigates programme. The company had sought an injunction preventing restraining both RTE and Mr O'Kelly from broadcasting or publishing anything about the applicants, their business, their economic relations and any references to their property until all investigations into him have been concluded by all the relevant authorities. The application, which RTE and Mr O'Kelly opposed, was due to be heard before Mr Justice Paul Gilligan at the High Court on Thursday. However shortly before the judge was set to view the programme Pat O'Connell SC for the plaintiffs said that after considering a sworn statement from Mr O'Kelly in reply to their action his clients were withdrawing their action. Paul O'Higgins SC, appearing with Joe Jeffers Bl, for both RTE and Mr O'Kelly said his clients were entitled to their legal costs on the highest scale possible on grounds including that RTE had gone to great lengths to respond to the injunction application made on the eve of the broadcast. Mr Justice Gilligan, in agreeing to strike out the proceedings agreed that the public purse should not be put to any expense awarded RTE its costs on the solicitor-client basis. The Judge noted that the applicants had delayed until the day before RTE's broadcast before bringing their application. He also noted that the defendants failed to avail of offer to discuss the proposed broadcast with RTE in early October. The applicant's lawyers had also informed RTE in mid October that they intended bring injunction proceedings but did not do so at that particular time. On Wednesday evening the Judge granted the applicants permission, on an ex parte basis, to serve short notice of the proceedings on RTE and Mr O'Kelly. The company previously told the High Court that it provides services to foreign students visiting Ireland such as information and orientation and language services. This the company and the directors had sought the injunction claimed the broadcast completely undermine their rights, including their right to privacy and to earn a living. They also claimed the broadcast will portray them as being unquestionably guilty of certain offences in respect of a property it has used as an office and had previously used for temporary student accommodation at 79 Old Kilmainham Road, in Dublin. They had also asked the court for an order restraining the broadcast until the completion of investigations by the relevant authorities. RTE denied the claims and argued that there were no grounds for the court to grant an injunction against it. Half way through the second year of my degree in English and French, with half my friends eagerly anticipating Erasmus and the other half preparing for the shackles of final year, I found myself between a rock and a hard place. I felt I was too introverted to fare well on Erasmus (and too lazy to organize it in time), and petrified by the prospect of graduating in a years time with a piece of paper, broken French, and no idea what I wanted. For me, taking a year out before final year to work as an Assistante de Langue in a secondary school in the south of France turned out to be the best decision I could make. I lived in an apartment with two very cool French guys so my French was improving all the time, I made great friends with lots of other Language Assistants from all over the world, and I definitely learnt as much from my vibrant students as they learnt from me. I worked only twelve hours per week over four days, making around 800 per month (leaving me ample time and funds to travel and party). The contract stretched over seven months (October 1st to the end of April). I would usually take half the class in a separate room (up to 12 students), or work alongside the teacher. The primary function of an assistant is to help the students with their spoken English, so mainly I just encouraged conversation and motivated them with games or topics that interested them. Some teachers spoon-fed me activities to do with the students, others gave me free rain to plan my lessons. It was incredibly rewarding to see the students enthusiasm to have a new, young, fun teacher in the classroom. They bombarded me with questions about life in Ireland, the education system, our festivals and traditions, my drink of choice, and in turn they gave me an invaluable young persons perspective of the French culture. Heres how it works: If you have completed a minimum of two years of University in any discipline, have a working knowledge of the language, and are aged between 20 and 35 (this may vary from country to country); you are eligible for the program. (Its a popular path to take in place of Erasmus, or in the years following your graduation from College when youre getting on your feet). In the application, you chose whether youd like to work in a primary or secondary school, and state your first, second and third choices of regions. When your application has been considered and you have been accepted, you will be informed of the region and the school in which you have been placed, and the choice is yours whether you take it or leave it. The closing date for applications varies from country to country, generally its February-March time, so its good to be thinking ahead over the Christmas holidays. You will make in and around 800, again depending on your country of choice. With thanks to Campus.ie [November 02, 2017] Huawei Partners with Intel to Build a Supercomputing Cluster for Technical University of Denmark(DTU) SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- For almost two centuries DTU, Technical University of Denmark, has been dedicated to fulfilling the vision of H.C. Orsted - the father of electromagnetism - who founded the university in 1829 to develop and create value using the natural sciences and the technical sciences to benefit society. Today, DTU is ranked as one of the foremost technical universities in Europe. High-Performance Computing Propels Materials Research DTU promotes promising fields of research within the technical and the natural sciences, especially based on usefulness to society, relevance to business and sustainability. DTU focuses on basic science that has significant challenges and clear application prospects, from atomic-scale materials analysis to quantum physics and renewable energy. As the material application environment becomes increasingly complex, laboratory research for materials performance analysis has become even more challenging. DTU aims to understand the nature of materials by developing electron structural theory, and design new functional nanostructures through new-found insights. These studies require the analysis of the structure, strength, and characteristics of new materials, involving intensive, complex numerical computation and simulation tests on material and energy. This will produce a vast number of computational data. Therefore, High-Performance Computing (HPC) resources that can accelerate performance modeling and solving are particularly important to research in this field. In order to speed up the process from discovery to application of new materials and maintain a leading edge in research, DTU plans to expand and upgrade its supercomputing cluster, Niflheim, which is deployed at the Computational Atomic-scale Materials Design (CAMD) Center. Combining the Best of Both Worlds: Huawei X6800 High-Density Server and Intel OPA Network The existing Niflheim cluster at DTU was built from 2009 to 2015, and was capable of a peak computing capability of only 73 TFLOPS. Te cluster was equipped with previous generation and even earlier computing product hardware. The oldest products had limited processor performance, small memory capacity, with low-bandwidth but high-latency computing network. The old cluster was failing to meet the growing demands of computing-intensive simulation tests. As a result, the cluster became a bottleneck since the CAMD center needed research efficiency improvements. DTU wanted to deploy a new supercomputing system to give the Niflheim cluster a boost in computing resources and performance, and meanwhile also prepare the cluster for future technology evolution as well as cluster-scale expansion. DTU has carefully studied various solutions in terms of overall performance, product quality, and service capabilities, and through an EU tender finally selected Huawei and Intel as the vendors to help the university build a new-generation computing cluster with their innovative technologies and computing products. Solution Highlights Supreme Performance, Leading Computing Efficiency: Nodes configured with Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 series processors, up to 845 GFLOPS compute power per node; Nodes configured with 256 GB DIMMs and 240 GB SSDs, eliminates I/O bottlenecks, and improves data processing efficiency with high-speed data caching; Leverages the Intel Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) to build a two-layer fat-tree fabric, delivers bandwidth of up to 100 Gbit/s, and end-to-end latency as low as 910 ns; Power Supply Units (PSUs) and fan modules shared by multiple nodes, enhanced with Huawei's Dynamic Energy Management Technology (DEMT) to lower system energy consumption by over 10%. High-Density Deployment, Easy to Manage and Expand: 4U chassis configured with eight 2-socket compute nodes, delivers computing density twice that of traditional 1U rack servers, significantly improves rack space utilization; Supports aggregated management network port for unified management, meanwhile reduces cable connections; Adopts a modular design, and supports hot swap for all key components, greatly improves Operations and Maintenance (O&M) efficiency. New-Generation Niflheim Cluster Expedites New Material Discovery and Application The new-generation Niflheim cluster went live in Dec. 2016. The new cluster helps more researchers carry out research and analysis on new materials and new energy, but also provides a great leap in feedback speeds of test results. It has enabled new levels of scientific research progress and strength, helping DTU generate new innovation capabilities in the field of material analysis. The Niflheim cluster delivers a computing power of up to 225 TFLOPS, which is three times the level of the original system; Substantially shorten the materials' analysis time, enabling researchers to discover and apply new materials more quickly; With flexible expandability, the cluster can seamlessly expand up to 112 nodes without requiring additional new cabinets. To date, 197 companies on the Fortune Global 500 list and 45 of the top 100 enterprises have chosen Huawei as their partner for digital transformation. To know more about Huawei helping enterprises achieve digital transformation, please visit http://e.huawei.com/topic/leading-new-ict-en/index.html?utm_campaign=lni17-minisiteen&utm_medium=hwdc&utm_source=ebghome-en&source=eebghq175155l View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/huawei-partners-with-intel-to-build-a-supercomputing-cluster-for-technical-university-of-denmarkdtu-300548406.html SOURCE Huawei [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] One of the properties seen by RTE Investigates An RTE Investigates programme highlighted some of the shocking slum-like conditions within the Irish private rental sector. A property on Old County Road in Crumlin - where a bed was advertised at 250 per month - housed 40 occupants living in cramped conditions. Rooms were packed with bunkbeds squeezed in end-to-end, specially designed to squeeze the maximum number of people into the room. Tenants draped towels from their beds as curtains for privacy. There were just two showers between the 40 tenants. Expand Close One of the properties seen by RTE Investigates / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp One of the properties seen by RTE Investigates "You don't expect those things in a first world country," said one former tenant. Temperatures of 30 degrees were recorded in one of the bedrooms. Even the sitting room was used as a makeshift bedroom with someone sleeping on a mattress on the floor. There was one kitchen in the property. Tenants said it was a constant battle to keep it clean. Bags of rubbish quickly piled up in the small courtyard at the back of the house. Read More Electrical wires were left exposed. There were bars on the windows in toilets and bathrooms. Mould and the remains of dead flies were visible on the ceiling. What's most shocking was the lack of fire safety regulation. Robert Knox, a building engineer said it was a "gross abuse of the occupants". Expand Close Beds inside one rental property seen by RTE Investigates / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Beds inside one rental property seen by RTE Investigates "They're living in extreme danger... this building could go up at any time." In another property in Cobh, County Cork, a tenant had been paying 125 per week for sub-standard accommodation. There was no hot water, ceilings were damp, electrical sockets were exposed and there were mice in the house. A woman renting a property in County Louth for nine years was living with mould and a hole in the roof which caused rain to trickle down around ceiling lights. Another example of chronic overcrowding was shown in Dublin, where a property housed 60 tenants. It was also in breach of fire safety refulations. Mr Knox described the conditions as "the worst he had ever seen". Expand Close Some of the cramped living conditions / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Some of the cramped living conditions Read More There were 23 girls sharing a property with just one shower between them. One bedroom housed 16 bunkbeds. Following the undercover investigation, Dublin Fire Brigade closed three multiple occupancy buildings in Dublin in breach of multiple fire safety standards. The dangerously overcrowded buildings, located in Crumlin, Kilmainham and Rathmines, housed more than 120 tenants. Figures released to RTE under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that only four percent of rental properties were inspected last year and of those that were inspected, more than two thirds were not compliant with the regulations. Kilkenny, Louth, Offaly and Limerick city and county scored a 100 percent failure rate. The figures show that the overall non-compliance rate for the country stands at 69 per cent. Read More Aideen Hayden, from Threshold said on the programme: "What we are seeing, the case studies we are seen in the programme illustrate that the situation is becoming significantly worse. "It is a failure of regulation and it is a failure on the part of those people who have responsibility for regulation and it is a failure on the part of the government in relation to funding the enforcement of this regulation. "These are situations that should not be tolerated in a humane society and it is an absolute failure on our part as a people." A High Court challenge against RTE's plans to air RTE Investigates: Nightmare To Rent was withdrawn today. The first Director of Public Prosecutions Eamonn Barnes has died. The Office of the DPP said it notes his passing on Thursday "with the deepest regret". Eamonn joined the Attorney General's Office in 1966 following a period in private practice as a barrister. He was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions in early 1975 the passing of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1974. Eamonn served as Director until his retirement in September 1999. "I, along with my colleagues, had the greatest admiration for Eamonn Barnes as a public servant and as Ireland's first Director of Public Prosecutions," Claire Loftus the current DPP said. "He set up this Office, asserted its statutory independence, and established the highest prosecutorial standards which we still adhere to today. I join with the staff of this Office in extending our deepest sympathies to Mr. Barnes' children and extended family." Eamonn Barnes was instrumental in the foundation of the International Association of Prosecutors in 1995 and served as its President from 1996 until his retirement. The Association now has organisational members in 171 countries around the world. Minister Charlie Flanagan TD said he was saddened to hear of the death of Eamonn Barnes. "He served the State with considerable distinction in that role for 25 years, establishing the unquestioned independence of the position from Government," he said in a statement. "I extend my sympathies to his family, friends and former colleagues." Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire speaks to the media outside Stormont House in Belfast where he said that preparations are being made for the UK Government to impose a budget on Northern Ireland by the end of the month. Photo: PA Preparations are being made for the British government to impose a budget on Northern Ireland by the end of the month, with no end in sight to the deadlock at Stormont. Northern Ireland is "sliding towards" direct rule as a result of the latest breakdown in talks at Stormont, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned. Although the Taoiseach said there "really isn't a huge gap" between Sinn Fein and the DUP, he acknowledged the situation is worrying. British Secretary of State James Brokenshire insisted the move stopped short of direct rule, and that he would abandon the idea if the DUP and Sinn Fein could reach a deal. But Mr Brokenshire said Northern Ireland would begin to run out of money by the end of November. "No government could simply stand by and allow that to happen," he said. The DUP and Sinn Fein have failed to meet Mr Brokenshire's deadline for a power-sharing deal, with Stormont effectively in limbo since January. Expand Close Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Coveney. Photo: Steve Humphreys / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Coveney. Photo: Steve Humphreys Irish language rights and other cultural issues are major sticking points. Now there are concerns the impasse will affect the North's ability to ready itself for Brexit, with knock-on effects for the Republic. However, it is understood that British Prime Minister Theresa May remains committed to a 1bn (1.1bn) investment in Northern Ireland, despite the continued deadlock. The British government is expected to stand by the controversial deal struck by the Tories in return for DUP votes at Westminster. "The money that has been promised as part of the confidence and supply deal is for the people of Northern Ireland and we are committed to delivering on that undertaking," a source said. Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who was involved in the talks, said London was acting reluctantly and delaying a threatened budget as late as possible. In statements yesterday, Mr Coveney and Mr Brokenshire also noted the importance of the Good Friday Agreement. Mr Coveney, who visits Britain today to meet ministers including David Davis and Philip Hammond, will stress the importance of remaining flexible during Brexit negotiations to preserve "the hard-won peace" on this island. He will also insist that any Brexit deal must keep the soft Irish Border. Amid the fallout over the Stormont deadlock, Sinn Fein's Northern leader Michelle O'Neill said the problems had been "compounded by the Tory-DUP pact". But DUP MP Gregory Campbell accused Sinn Fein of "rank hypocrisy" over the deadlock. "We want devolution. Arlene Foster has led our talks team and is rightly frustrated that government is being held back by a narrow political agenda," he said. "We received an overwhelming mandate to ensure any deal was fair. That mandate has to be respected, just as we respect the mandate of others." The crisis has also prompted renewed calls for MLAs' pay - 49,500 (56,422) a year - to be cut. Mr Brokenshire said he was taking advice on the issue. Chemotherapy significantly harms the fertility of female cancer patients' children, new research has shown. Scientists found that the offspring of women who underwent the treatment prior to becoming pregnant had a 70pc worse likelihood of having a child themselves. The effects of the intensive drug on a patient's ability to reproduce are well known, but this new research is the first of its kind to indicate the damage is inherited by the next generation. Experts believe that chemotherapy medication, which enters the blood stream and is pumped around the body, may alter the genetic expression of inherited germ line cells. It strongly suggests that the impact of chemotherapy may be greater on eggs than on sperm. The same effect was not recorded in the children of male cancer patients, a contrast likely to be explained by the fact sperm constantly regenerates, whereas a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have. Women treated for cancer while still at a reproductive age are increasingly being encouraged to preserve their fertility by cryopreserving. However, previous research in the UK has indicated that the service is not routinely being offered by the NHS and that young male cancer patients are more likely to be offered sperm freezing because it is simpler and cheaper. The small study by the University of Utah found that children born to mothers after they had received chemotherapy had 72pc fewer children of their own compared to the general population. By contrast, children born to fathers who had undergone the treatment only had 2pc fewer children than the general population. Impact Dr Daniel Williams, President of the US Society for Male Reproduction and Urology, said: "These two studies highlight the importance of offering pre-chemotherapy fertility preservation services to all reproductive-age cancer patients who want to have children and grandchildren in their future. "Although the studies do not distinguish between different types of cancer and different chemotherapy regimens, it strongly suggests that the impact of chemotherapy may be greater on eggs than on sperm," he said. ( Daily Telegraph London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] US President Donald Trump says he is "starting the process of terminating" the diversity lottery programme in response to Tuesday's terror attack in Lower Manhattan. His actions play right into the terrorists' hands. While defiant New Yorkers insisted on taking their children trick-or-treating as planned, Trump used it as an excuse to pull America further away from its values as a nation built on immigration and opportunity. "President Trump, instead of politicising and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing us together," Senator Chuck Schumer said. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov (29), originally from Uzbekistan, mowed down and killed eight people, injuring 13 others. He did not have an extensive criminal record pointing to him aligning with jihadist terrorism. Yet his attack bears the hallmarks of the attacks Isil has been calling for all over the world. While Isil has suffered substantial military defeat in Syria and Iraq, resulting in the collapse of its Islamic caliphate, it still wields significant influence, particularly among willing jihadists who bear both a strong desire to avenge "injustice" and also become martyrs. Saipov's modus operandi was the type of terror attack that is very difficult to prevent through forceful means. It requires an approach to counter-terrorism that deals with communities and prevention of radicalisation before it occurs. Unlike "micro-managed" attacks which are orchestrated and managed by senior commanders of Isil, including financing, training of attackers, choice of date, time, targets and location, such as the one Paris in November 2015, this involves a person acting largely alone. He or she pledges allegiance to Isil right before they commit their attack in order to be accepted as a martyr, according to terror expert and former member of M15 and M16, Aimen Dean. They use crude methods such as a vehicle as a weapon, to kill as many people as possible. Part of Isil's radical ideology involves the intent to cause harm to the daily life of proud New Yorkers and others; by instilling fear and disrupting and dividing communities; in particular separating Muslim communities from the rest of the society they live in. Mr Trump is also considering sending the suspect in Tuesday's attack to Guantanamo Bay prison. And so he reopens old wounds, reminding the world of the grave mistakes made by the Bush administration during the early days of the so-called 'War on Terror', when barbaric torture practices were legally sanctioned on many innocent detainees. On legitimate suspects, such as the 9/11 attacker Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the long-term ill-effects of the torture on mental and physical health is one of the reasons why trials so far have been unable to proceed. President Obama tried to close 'Gitmo' down as he said it "undermines" national security because terrorists use it as a propaganda tool to attack the US. If Trump refills it with more, it'll sow even more division. [November 02, 2017] Circadence Partners With the University of Colorado Boulder and MD5 for 2017 cyberBUFFS Hackathon Circadence Corporation, a market leader in cybersecurity training and assessments, today announced it has partnered with the University of Colorado Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science and MD5 to host the 2017 cyberBUFFS Hackathon on Nov. 3-4. The event aims to foster an interest in cybersecurity skills and careers for university students at all levels of cyber proficiency. Unlike previous cyber events, cyberBUFFS Hackathon participants will leverage the Circadence Project Ares next generation training platform, which takes cybersecurity training out of the classroom and into an immersive, interactive real-world environment. Three training sections - minigames, battle rooms and full-scale cyber missions - focus on concepts at all skill levels and offer self-directed opportunities to build on cyber proficiencies through active learning. Artificial intelligence (AI) compoents, powered by IBM (News - Alert) Watson, provide on-demand support and feedback to players, while also serving as dynamic opponents to enhance the challenge. Automated scoring enables both the player and supervisor to track professional and cyber skills development, while a live leaderboard adds excitement and fosters competition during the gaming experience. "According to Gartner (News - Alert), there will be 1.8 million unfilled cybersecurity positions by 2022, and to meet the imminent and growing need for more skilled professionals, we must reach students early and show them the many benefits a career in cybersecurity offers," said Mike Moniz, co-founder & CEO for Circadence. "The Project Ares platform was built by gaming and cybersecurity workforce development experts, so not only is it highly effective at training on cybersecurity skills, the attractive user interface and gamified approach are ideal for engaging students." The event will begin at 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3, with an opening ceremony, pizza party, demo of Project Ares and TriviaLoot Challenge. On Saturday, Nov. 4, students will kick off the competition by earning experience points through minigames, and then move onto battle rooms as they improve their cyber abilities. During the final level of competition, participants will go head-to-head in putting their newly developed skills to the test during live cyber missions. During the competition, eight winners will be selected based on performance and experience points earned within the training platform. During the closing ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 4, winners will be awarded prizes, including gift cards, sweatshirts and other items. The grand champion will earn a $500 scholarship. Space is limited, and pre-registration is required. More information is available online. About Circadence Circadence Corporation is a market leader in next-generation cybersecurity education and training. Circadence's ecosystem is the first fully immersive, AI-powered cybersecurity training and assessment platform for government and enterprise organizations. Circadence's solutions modernize outdated and largely generic cybersecurity training with an advanced online gaming platform that delivers persistent, immersive and real-to-life experiences that match and adapt to a contemporary threat environment. For more information on Circadence, visit www.circadence.com/. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171102005438/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Latifa Ibn Ziaten, mother of French paratrooper Imad Ibn Ziaten who was killed by Mohamed Merah, arriving at the courthouse in Paris (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) Eric Dupond-Moretti, lawyer of Abdelkader Merah speaks to reporters at the courthouse in Paris (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) A French court has convicted a French-Algerian man of terrorism ties, but found him not guilty of complicity in his brother's deadly attacks on a Jewish school and French paratroopers. Abdelkader Merah was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Paris court after a tense and emotional trial over his younger brother Mohammed's killings of three Jewish schoolchildren, a teacher and three paratroopers in the southern Toulouse region in 2012. That marked the first of what became a wave of attacks in France by homegrown Islamic extremists. The trial was the only opportunity for families of victims to seek public justice because Mohammed Merah was killed by France's police special forces after a 32-hour televised standoff in Toulouse in March 2012, days after his deadly rampage. Abdelkader Merah, now 35, was accused of radicalising his younger brother, but has always denied helping Mohammed prepare the attacks. After eight hours of deliberations, the five professional magistrates convicted Merah of a lesser crime - taking part in a criminal terrorist association with his brother and others - b ut acquitted him of the most serious charge, complicity in the terror murders of Mohammed. Presiding judge Franck Zientara said there is no proof Abdelkader Merah helped his brother perpetrate or prepare for his nine-day shooting spree. He said: "Abdelkader Merah shared his brother's motives but none of the elements in the case file or at the trial shows that he knew of the targets and crimes of his brother." The verdict was calmly received by the victims' families who were sitting on the first benches inside the courtroom, even if disappointment and sadness were reflected in the tears of mothers of two murdered soldiers. However outside the courtroom the defence lawyers were greeted by boos and shouts from part of the audience, who had come in large numbers to attend the verdict hearing. Some of the plaintiffs' lawyers also expressed disappointment at the partial acquittal. Co-defendant Fettah Malki, a 35-year-old Algerian national who moved to France as a child, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after also being convicted of taking part in a criminal terrorist association. He was found guilty of providing weapons, ammunition and a bulletproof vest that Mohammed Merah used during his rampage and the standoff with the police. Malki has maintained he was unaware of his friend's deadly terror plot. The public prosecutor had asked for the maximum sentences for the two defendants: life imprisonment with 22 years before any possible parole for Merah, and 20 years in prison for Malki. Both the prosecutor's office and the two defendants have 10 days to appeal the verdict. The Toulouse shooting spree was to mark the start of an era of homegrown jihadi violence in France. The period since the 2012 attacks has seen an upsurge in deadly attacks in the country, many of them carried out by young Muslim people born and radicalised in France. AP Demonstrators gather outside the Catalonian Parliament to protest against the court ruling A pro-independence demonstrator holds up four fingers symbolising the four stripes of the Catalonian flag during a demonstration in Barcelona, Spain (AP/Manu Fernandez) Ousted Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has described the imprisonment of several of his former Cabinet members in a probe over the region's push for independence as "a serious mistake". In a speech broadcast late on Thursday by Catalan public TV3, Mr Puigdemont called on Catalans to protest against the Spanish authorities "without violence, peacefully and with respect for everybody's opinions". Mr Puigdemont and several ousted Cabinet members remain in Brussels, where he said they are seeking "safety and freedom" while judges back in Spain investigate them for pushing Catalan secession. The prosecutor has asked the National Court judge to issue an international arrest warrant against them. "The fury with which the Spanish government has attacked a beautiful European nation is outrageous and is threatening us all," Mr Puigdemont said, adding that Catalonia's independence is "no longer an internal affair" of Spain. The ousted leader reacted to the events at Spain's National Court in Madrid as thousands of protesters took to the streets to protest at the jailings. Eight of the nine were jailed without possibility of bail while they are investigated on possible charges of sedition, rebellion and embezzlement following the regional parliament's declaration of secession from Spain last week. Bail of 50,000 euros (44,000) was set for the ninth. Protests were called for Thursday evening, and thousands gathered in Catalan towns including Tarragona, Lleida, Girona and Barcelona. The jailed politicians called for all protests to be peaceful and for their supporters to avoid any show of violence. Mass protests in favour of independence in Catalonia have so far been peaceful. Under Spain's legal system, investigating judges can order the detention of suspects while a comprehensive probe, sometimes taking months, determines if charges should be brought. Lawyers said the defendants were serene and wanted the people of Catalonia to stay calm. Defence lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said the decision "lacked justification" and was "disproportionate". He is representing former regional vice president Oriol Junqueras and four other ousted members of the Catalan Cabinet. Van den Andreu, the lawyer defending other ex-members of the regional government, said whether his clients were jailed "was already predetermined" before they appeared in court. Both lawyers said they would appeal the judge's order. AP Mr Puigdemont reacted on Twitter to the jailing of nine members of his former Cabinet, posting that "the legitimate government of Catalonia has been jailed for its ideas". He tweeted the government's "furious clamour" had sent the officials to jail. "The serene clamour of the Catalans is of freedom," he wrote, posting a photo of protesters in Barcelona. 'On March 25, they killed five youths, and left a child wounded - he lost his arm," says Guimer Quiro, the leader of a small Afro-Colombian community which recently joined the ranks of Colombia's seven million displaced people. "After that, what with the wave of violence that is sweeping through the area, we decided we better move to the nearest city, Buenaventura." Their story, and that of the other indigenous and Afro-descendent communities who live along the banks of the San Juan River, is the story of many millions of ordinary Colombians. It is a story of unrelenting physical and economic violence, entrenched inequality, and the persistent failure of the state to deliver rule of law outside of major cities. Looking out over the waterway, the busiest cocaine trafficking route in the world, Quiro adds with a certain resignation: "It's a strategically important channel - large quantities of drugs and weapons are trafficked here. The FARC used to be here, but now it is more the paramilitaries and the National Liberation Army." Expand Close The FARC camp in Puerto Asis. Photo: Luke Holland / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The FARC camp in Puerto Asis. Photo: Luke Holland For these, the poorest and most marginalised sectors of the population, Colombia's newfound peace has had little impact. Some time has passed since the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, to give them their full name, were causing problems in the area, and for many, the withdrawal of FARC has only thrown open the door to paramilitary gangs. When the Colombian government agreed a peace deal with the country's largest insurgent group last year, the international community offered enthusiastic congratulations. The accord was narrowly rejected in a plebescite, however, and despite being pushed through parliament with some hasty revisions, the deal is still regarded with either pessimism or outright hostility by many. Among the rank and file of FARC itself, and among its leadership, there is a strong sense that there is no turning back, however. Having decommissioned their weaponry, and decamped to 26 transitional encampments around the country, they have launched a new political party and are clearly determined to pursue their Marxist-Leninist political project by peaceful means. "We are not demobilising," Gabriel Angel, one of the organisation's leading intellectuals, corrects me when we meet in Bogota. "Demobilisation suggests giving up the fight. If you read the Havana agreement from beginning to end, you won't find the term 'demobilisation' once." Of course, reading the agreement is no small undertaking. At 360 pages, it dwarfs the Good Friday Agreement in terms of both scope and ambition, tackling everything from transitional justice to land redistribution and the rights of ethnic minorities. The level of detail in the accord is small surprise to those familiar with FARC, an organisation which has travelled a long road from its founding in the hills of Tolima half a century ago to its embrace of mainstream politics today. Soaring poverty The insurgency was born of an uprising against conservative and liberal elites that had agreed to take turns governing, rather than be held to account by an electorate, some 50 years ago. That elite's pursuit of large-scale industrial farming, forcibly evicting thousands of peasant farmers from their land, drove soaring poverty and popular anger throughout the 1960s, creating fertile ground for some form of armed resistance. Expand Close Special envoy: Eamon Gilmore / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Special envoy: Eamon Gilmore Against this backdrop, a young communist activist called Manuel Marulanda Velez declared an independent "Republic of Marquetalia" in the foothills of the Andes in 1961. Three years later, when the new 'state' was crushed by a force of 16,000 Colombian soldiers, its core members retreated further into the mountains where they formed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. In time, FARC would become a sophisticated and formidable military and political actor, controlling an area of the country larger than Switzerland. Before long, the conflict came to be characterised by ruthlessness and viciousness on both sides. While FARC's involvement in kidnappings, extortion and numerous human-rights atrocities fuelled popular outrage, its members would become both victims and perpetrator of serious abuses. Most notably, after agreeing to abandon violence and enter mainstream politics under a previous round of peace negotiations in 1985, over 4,000 members of the new party - called the Patriotic Union (UP) - were systematically exterminated by state forces and paramilitaries, leading to widespread suspicion that the talks had been little more than a ruse designed to draw them out of the shadows. The extermination of the UP would also set a new marker in the noxious relationship between state security forces and paramilitary gangs that continues to afflict Colombia to this day. The rise of 'paramilitarismo' would reach its zenith under the administration of the hawkish Alvaro Uribe, who swept to power in 2002 on a promise to crush the FARC once and for all. Backed by billions of dollars in military and financial support from the US, the Harvard-educated politician led an aggressive and sustained military campaign that significantly weakened FARC. As part of a devastatingly pitiless strategy, his administration actively promoted the development of private militias to combat the insurgents. These paramilitary gangs, generally answerable to nobody but their paymasters, would pursue a reign of terror in large swathes of the country, leading to a quagmire of brutality that many fear will be exacerbated now that FARC has dearmed. Indeed, the UN estimates that such paramilitaries are to blame for 80pc of the killings in Colombia's civil conflict, with the rebels being responsible for 12pc and state security forces the authors of the remainder. Throughout his administration, Uribe was dogged by relentless accusations of ties to drug traffickers and paramilitaries, and numerous corruption investigations were opened against his regime. Perhaps the most notorious of the controversies was the 'false positives' scandal, which saw upwards of 3,000 innocent civilians - mostly children and youths - murdered by state security forces and presented as enemy combatants killed in battle in order to access incentives such as promotions and extra time off. Current President Juan Manuel Santos dramatically veered away from his predecessor's bellicose policies when he took over in 2010. The pragmatically-minded Santos, recognising that military progress had largely stalled and that the underpinnings of the conflict would eventually have to be dealt with if a lasting peace was to be achieved, instead sought negotiations with FARC. The former defence minister, who was himself caught in the blast of an IRA bomb in London in 1974, had monitored Northern Ireland's peace process closely and opened the door for negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement to cross the Atlantic and share lessons learned. Expand Close The predominantly Afro-Colombian Puente Nayero community in Buenaventura. Photo: Luke Holland / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The predominantly Afro-Colombian Puente Nayero community in Buenaventura. Photo: Luke Holland Over the course of four years of talks in Havana, a succession of politicians, activists, and negotiators from Northern Ireland and the Republic travelled to both the Colombian and Cuban capitals to help facilitate the talks. Of course, this wasn't the first time Northern Irish political actors had meetings with FARC. The 'Colombia Three' - IRA members Jim Monaghan and Martin McCauley along with Sinn Fein representative Niall Connolly - were arrested in Bogota in 2001 and charged with training FARC members in bomb-making. While the men succeeding in making a clandestine return to Ireland, a subsequent investigation by the US House of Representatives affirmed they were just one of a series of IRA 'delegations' that travelled to Colombia; a claim that was verified by former FARC officers in discussions with this journalist. The IRA connection remains a toxic issue among the 'guerrilla', with many rank-and-file FARC members vehemently opposed to the strategy of targeting civilians through remote detonations. While the Irish are now considered a more benevolent presence by all sides, not least due to the work of Eamon Gilmore, EU Special Envoy for the peace process in Colombia, the detente is far from secure. There is widespread concern over what might happen should Alvaro Uribe's ironically-named Democratic Centre Party, which campaigned vigorously against the deal, win power in general elections scheduled for next March. "The peace is still very fragile - it's like a new tree; you plant it, you have to give it time to take root, and in its early days you have to have a wooden frame around it to protect it from the winds and make sure it grows," explains Mr Gilmore. "In a way that framework around the Colombian peace process is the support of the international community. We're very conscious of the importance of international support over the next year, particularly given the elections next year. It is quite possible that those elections may produce an administration that was on the 'No' side of the referendum." Dubious claims When the peace agreement was rejected, albeit by the narrowest of margins, in the plebiscite, it was widely observed that those who lived in more affluent urban areas, who were relatively untouched by the country's long history of violence, had rejected the deal, while the rural population, which had borne its brunt, had voted overwhelmingly in favour. In the wake of the vote, it also became clear that some of the 'No' campaign's key claims were dubious at best. These included that that FARC members would not only go unpunished, but would also receive huge sums of public money, and that 'gender ideology' and 'homosexuality culture' would become a part of school curriculums. Indeed, one of the architects of the opposition campaign, Carlos Eduardo Velez, sparked a nationwide outcry when he admitted their strategy had been based on fuelling popular indignation rather than dealing with policy realities. President Santos is now racing to advance implementation of the agreement sufficiently that any rollback would become politically unfeasible for whomever wins the forthcoming elections. Thus far, this has proved difficult, however, with opposition forces effectively impeding progress, and diluting the content, of the myriad legislative provisions required to implement the deal. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence against human rights defenders, and increasingly against former FARC combatants, is soaring. "We've handed over our arms, and we're pursuing politics by legal means, but the Colombian people's problems and their needs remain unmet," observes former FARC combatant Leonardo Rojas when we meet in the Incononzo transition camp, a few hours outside Bogota. "If this isn't resolved, the problem of violence - the resistance of the Colombian people - may be reborn in other revolutionary armies. "I don't even want to think about the possibility of the government failing to fulfil its commitments," he adds. "We've been at war for very a long time." Four hundred kilometres away in heavy humidity of Buenaventura, a young indigenous man looks out over the river that paramilitaries will no longer allow him to fish, and expresses a similar weariness and apprehension. "You can tell the narcos' boats by the size of the engines, and by the times at which they pass," he says . "No-one else has engines that big, and no-one else dares to move goods down the river at night." It would be a mistake to confuse his fatigue for apathy, though. Straightening his back, he continues: "But we'll keep resisting; we've been resisting oppression here for 500 years." US president Donald Trump used Twitter to say the man accused of a truck attack in New York deserves the death penalty (AP/Evan Vucci) US president Donald Trump has backed away from his threat to send the suspect in the New York bike path attack to Guantanamo Bay. He acknowledged in an early morning tweet that the military judicial process at the Cuban detention centre takes longer than the civilian federal court system. But Mr Trump called again for the man to be executed, which could complicate the case for prosecutors and give defence lawyers a chance to argue the president's tweets hurt their client's right to a fair trial. Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that the case against Sayfullo Saipov, 29, "should move fast. DEATH PENALTY". He had tweeted on Wednesday night: "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" His comments broke with longstanding tradition against presidents publicly commenting on criminal cases. Mr Trump on Wednesday, in seemingly off-the-cuff responses to reporters, said he would consider sending Saipov to Guantanamo, a notion the White House later reinforced by saying it considered Saipov to be an "enemy combatant". Authorities say Saipov was inspired by the Islamic State group when he veered into a city bike path in Manhattan on Tuesday, killing eight people. But just a few hours later, the government filed federal terrorism charges against the Uzbek immigrant, signaling an intent to prosecute him within the US. The one-two developments marked a sharp disconnect between the president and his administration. Mr Trump said he would love to see Saipov prosecuted at Guantanamo, but tweeted that there is "also something appropriate" about keeping him "in the home of the horrible crime he committed". The Obama administration made a similar argument in trying to move the five men accused in the September 11 2001 attacks from Guantanamo to New York for trial in a civilian court, an effort that was derailed by political opposition. Those cases are bogged down in pretrial litigation at Guantanamo and are likely years from resolution. With the filing of federal charges against Saipov, there was little indication that the threat of Guantanamo was anything more than tough talk. No one held within the US has been sent to Guantanamo since the detention centre opened in January 2002 to hold suspected members of al Qaida and the Taliban. Still, elected officials routinely raise the prospect of doing so after attacks as a way to signal toughness in the fight against terrorism. Just seven men have been convicted either by trial before military commission or through plea bargains, including four whose convictions were later overturned on appeal or invalidated. Mr Trump said during the campaign that he wanted to fill Guantanamo with "bad dudes". But the Justice Department last week opted to send a man accused of playing an instrumental role in the 2012 Benghazi attacks to federal court in Washington to face charges, not Guantanamo. AP A visitor takes a picture of a paining by Max Liebermann at the exhibition Gurlitt: Status Report in Bonn, Germany (AP/Martin Meissner) Some 250 art works that a reclusive collector hid from the world for decades, including pieces likely looted from Jewish owners under Nazi rule, are going on show at a German museum. The paintings being shown from Thursday at Bonn's Bundeskunsthalle are from the huge art collection hoarded by late collector Cornelius Gurlitt. It includes works by Albrecht Duerer, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro. Authorities first stumbled on the art, stored in Mr Gurlitt's Munich home, while investigating a tax case in 2012. The exhibition focuses on works of art believed to have been taken from their mostly Jewish owners as part of Nazi persecution and on works whose provenance has not yet been established. The Bonn show is part of a double exhibition titled Gurlitt: Status Report. A parallel show in the Swiss capital Bern features some 200 works from the collector's trove, mostly from artists who were defamed by the Nazis as "degenerate". The art on display in Bern includes expressionist works by artists such as Otto Dix and Franz Marc. It is the first chance for the public to view any of the paintings and other works from the 1,500-piece collection that belonged to the estate of Mr Gurlitt's father, the Nazi-era art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. The Bonn show, subtitled Nazi Art Theft And Its Consequences, aims to put the works into their historical context. It tries to shed light on Hildebrand Gurlitt's life and also focuses on the fate of Jewish artists, collectors and art dealers who fell victim to the Nazi regime. The works cover a broad time span, from Lucas Cranach via Carl Spitzweg and Edgar Degas to Max Beckmann. Among the highlights are Monet's Waterloo Bridge and the marble sculpture Crouching Woman by Auguste Rodin. Mr Gurlitt, who died in 2014, had hidden away more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and a further 250 or so at a property in Salzburg, Austria. His will bequeathed the works to the museum in Bern. A German government-backed foundation is working with it to ensure that any pieces looted from Jewish owners are returned to their heirs. That has been a slow and painstaking task. So far, experts have identified six works as definitely having been looted by the Nazis - the latest of them last month. Researchers determined that the Portrait Of A Seated Young Woman by Thomas Couture belonged to Georges Mandel. Mr Mandel, a Jewish French politician, was murdered in 1944. That piece is among those on show in Bonn. The curator of the Bonn exhibit said that a lot of work still remains to be done regarding the provenance of much of the collection. "The origin of more than 50% of the art pieces has not yet been solved,"Agnieszka Lulinska told the German news agency dpa. The Bonn exhibition runs until March 11. The Bern exhibition runs until March 4. AP Sayfullo Saipov appeared in court in a wheelchair and was ordered to be detained (St. Charles County Department of Corrections/KMOV via AP) The suspect in the deadly New York truck attack was inspired by Islamic State online videos and plotted his attack for two months - even renting a truck ahead of time to practice turning it, authorities say. Federal authorities said, as they brought terrorism charges against Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, that he chose Halloween for the attack because he thought there would be more people on the streets. US president Donald Trump said on Twitter that he "should get (the) death penalty". After his trail of terror was halted by a police bullet, he asked to display the Islamic State flag in his hospital room, saying "he felt good about what he had done," authorities said. Brought to court in a wheelchair, Saipov was held without bail on charges that could bring the death penalty. Separately, the FBI was questioning people who might have information about his actions before the attack, including a second Uzbek man. The charges against Saipov, 29, came just a day after the attack near the World Trade Centre killed eight people. Investigators in multiple states raced to retrace Saipov's steps and understand his motivations, which they said were illuminated by a note he left by the truck: "Islamic Supplication. It will endure." The phrase "it will endure" commonly refers to the Islamic State group, and Saipov had a mobile phone loaded with the group's propaganda, an FBI agent said in the criminal complaint. Handcuffed and with his legs shackled, Saipov nodded his head as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter. Outside court, his appointed lawyer, David Patton, said he hoped "everyone lets the judicial process play out". "I promise you that how we treat Mr Saipov in this judicial process will say a lot more about us than it will say about him," he said. The FBI released a poster saying it was looking for one of Saipov's associates, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, only to announce less than 90 minutes later that it had found him. A law enforcement official said Mr Kadirov was a friend of Saipov's and may not have any role in the case. Saipov did not have many friends, the official said. A married father-of-three and former commercial truck and ride-hailing driver, Saipov began planning an attack a year ago and settled on a truck assault a couple of months ago, according to the criminal complaint. During the last few weeks, Saipov allegedly searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and rented a truck to practice turns. He chose a route along a lower Manhattan highway and initially hoped to continue to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge, the complaint said. Ultimately, Saipov sped down a bike path on a riverfront esplanade in a rented truck for nearly a mile on Tuesday, running down cyclists and pedestrians, before crashing into a school bus, authorities said. He was shot after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic, they said. Knives were found in a bag he was carrying and a stun gun inside the truck. In the past few years, the Islamic State group has exhorted followers to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have all seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. The fact that a note was left at the scene was significant, because it showed he was following their instructions to the letter, NYPD Intelligence and Counterterrorism head John Miller said Thursday on CBS This Morning. "He was following the Isis instructions, which says: If you're going to do this, you need to claim credit for Isis or we won't know you're one of us. And to yell it out, post it online or their magazine even suggested leaving leaflets - and this seems to touch on that last piece," he said. Saipov's court appearance came hours after Mr Trump said he would consider sending him to the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba - an idea the White House reinforced by saying it considered Saipov to be an "enemy combatant". Detainees at Guantanamo accused of supporting militants have faced military tribunals, rather than trials in the US legal system. By afternoon, though, Saipov was in federal court facing charges that include providing material support to a terrorist group. Mr Trump's administration could, at least in theory, still send the suspect to the US base in Cuba later, though such a step would be unprecedented. As well as calling for him to get the death penalty, Mr Trump also suggested eliminating the 1990s visa lottery programme that Saipov used to come to the US in 2010. Mr Miller said Saipov had never been the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI or New York police, but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. He said on Thursday Saipov appeared to be the only suspect, but cautioned the investigation was relatively fresh. In a report by Radio Free Europe on Thursday, Saipov's family, who live in Uchtepa, on the outskirts of Tashkent, were described as very secular and ordinary, and living a comfortable life. Citing neighbours of the family, the report says Saipov's parents run a small clothing stall in a local market, and own a car and their own house. The attack killed five people from Argentina, one from Belgium and two Americans, authorities said. Twelve people were injured. City leaders vowed New York would not be intimidated and said Sunday's New York City Marathon would go on as scheduled, with increased security. AP Sayfullo Saipov appeared in court in a wheelchair and was ordered to be detained (St. Charles County Department of Corrections/KMOV via AP) An Uzbek immigrant accused of a deadly truck attack on a New York cycle path has been charged with providing material support to a terrorist group and violence and destruction of motor vehicles. Suspect Sayfullo Saipov was charged on Wednesday in a criminal complaint following the Tuesday afternoon attack that killed eight people near the World Trade Centre. He appeared in the New York federal courthouse in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled, and was ordered to be detained. His lawyers said they were not seeking bail, and Saipov did not enter a plea. A judge set his next court date for November 15. Federal prosecutors say the man was "consumed by hate and a twisted ideology" when he attacked people on the cycle path on Tuesday. He is charged with providing material support to the Islamic State terrorist group. Prosecutors say he was stopped by a "brave" police officer, who shot and wounded him Tuesday. They say he had been planning the attack for months. The FBI had said earlier on Wednesday that another person was wanted for questioning over the attack that left at least 12 people injured. The bureau had issued a poster seeking the public's help with information about the man, but at a news conference later, FBI assistant director in charge Bill Sweeney said: "We've found him, and we'll leave it at that." He did not elaborate on why authorities were seeking the man, who was born in Uzbekistan. The authorities said Saipov watched Islamic State videos on his mobile phone and picked Halloween for the attack because he knew more people would be out on the streets. Afterwards, as he lay injured in hospital, he asked to display the IS flag in his room and "stated that he felt good about what he had done," prosecutors said in court papers. Saipov left behind knives and a note, handwritten in Arabic, that included Islamic religious references and said "it will endure" - a phrase that commonly refers to IS, FBI agent Amber Tyree said in court papers. Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by IS videos and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago, the agent said, and he even rented a truck on October 22 to practise making turns. John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out". In the past few years, the Islamic State has exhorted followers online to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. England, France and Germany have all seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016. A November 2016 issue of the group's online magazine detailed features that an attack truck or van should have, suggested renting such a vehicle and recommended targeting crowded streets and outdoor gatherings, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a militant-monitoring agency. Carlos Batista, a neighbour of Saipov's in Paterson, New Jersey, said he had seen the suspect and two friends using the same model of rented truck several times in the past three weeks. It was not clear whether Saipov had been on the radar of the authorities. Mr Miller said he had never been the subject of a criminal investigation but appears to have links to people who have been investigated. In Tuesday's attack, Saipov drove his speeding truck for nearly a mile along a cycle path, running down cyclists and pedestrians, then crashed into a school bus. He was shot in the stomach after he jumped out of the vehicle brandishing two air guns, one in each hand, and yelling "God is great!" in Arabic. AP Never-before seen video of Osama bin Laden's son and potential successor was released by the CIA in a trove of material recovered during the May 2011 raid that killed the al Qaida leader at his compound in Pakistan. (AP Photo/Mazhar Ali Khan, File) Video of Osama bin Laden's son and potential successor has been released by the CIA as part of a trove of material recovered during the May 2011 raid that killed the al Qaida leader at his compound in Pakistan. The previously unseen video offers the first public look at Hamza bin Laden as an adult as, until now, the public has only seen childhood pictures of him. In recent years, al Qaida has released audio messages from Hamza bin Laden, who is expected to rise to prominence in the jihadist movement and is being closely watched as the rival Islamic State organisation suffers setbacks in the Middle East. One hour-long video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed moustache but no beard, at his wedding. A man chanting Quranic verses can be heard in the background and bin Laden, sporting a traditional white headdress, verbally accepts his marriage to his bride "on the book of God and the example of the prophet. Peace be upon him." "Takbeer!" the others shout, marking his marriage with a kind of religious hooray. It was the fourth trove of documents, images and computer files recovered during the raid of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, with earlier materials released in May 2015, March 2016 and in January of this year. The CIA said the nearly 470,000 additional files offer insights into the inner workings of the terrorist organisation responsible for the September 11 attacks and detail its clashes with the Islamic State group, a spin-off of al Qaida's operation in Iraq. They also shed light on hardships that al Qaida faced at the time of bin Laden's death. Included is a 228-page, handwritten personal journal of bin Laden and about 79,000 images and audio files, including practice reels of public speeches. Also included in the material is information about how al Qaida planned to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the network's efforts to spread its message through Western media, to exploit the Arab uprisings in 2011. In addition, documents covered bin Laden's quest to keep his organisation together amid disagreements over beliefs and operational tactics and the organisation's work to burnish its image with fellow Muslims amid negative media. The CIA said there are still unreleased files, including materials that are sensitive to national security, protected by copyright, and blank, corrupted and duplicate files. Not all the material, however, was of a serious nature. There was a video known as Charlie bit my finger depicting a boy and his baby brother who bit his finger. There also were YouTube videos about crochet, including one entitled "How to Crochet a Flower". And bin Laden's video collection included Antz, a 1990s animated adventure comedy about an ant colony, Chicken Little and The Three Musketeers. Also in the collection were Where in the World is Osama bin Laden and several National Geographic programs: Kung Fu Killers, 'Inside the Green Berets and World's Worst Venom. AP The man suspected of driving a truck into a Manhattan bike path, killing eight and injuring 12, followed instructions posted by Isil on social media "almost to a 'T'," the New York police department has revealed. Although officials said they had uncovered no formal links to Isil, or any other international extremist groups, the suspect planned his attack for weeks and carried it out in the name of Isil, according to NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism John Miller. Police identified the suspect in the attack as 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov, who was born in Uzbekistan and immigrated to the US in 2010. He is currently being treated in a New York hospital, after being shot by a police officer during the attack. "He did this in the name of Isil," Mr Miller said at a press conference yesterday. "Along with the other items recovered at the scene [were] some notes that further indicated that." The notes, the commissioner said, were hand-written in Arabic and read: "Islamic State will endure forever." Mr Miller said the suspect appeared to have followed instructions that Isil members had posted on social media, teaching followers how to carry out such an attack. Isil has released detailed instructions on carrying out vehicle attacks like those seen in Nice, Barcelona and London. The group has named crowded streets as prime targets, and declared murdering civilians permissible under Islam. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN that Mr Saipov appeared to have been radicalised domestically, and followed the "lone wolf" model of attackers who were trained online, rather than in a training camp. Members at a mosque near Mr Saipov's New Jersey home told 'The Independent' that they had seen him around, but that he was not a regular attendee. Mosque president Ibrahim Matarihe said the suspect was "not associated with the mosque". Mr Saipov had never been a suspect in FBI or NYPD investigations, according to Mr Miller. Authorities are now looking for ties between the suspect and others who had been named in investigations. At the press conference, Mr Cuomo called the suspect a "depraved coward" who had failed in his goal to terrorise the city. The day after the attack, Mr Cuomo noted, "people got up; they went to work; children went to school". "That's what makes New Yorkers special," he added. "That strength, that resilience, that ability to be undeterred in the face of ugliness." Authorities have stepped up security throughout Manhattan in the wake of the attack, deploying officers and explosive-detecting dogs to subway stations and tourist attractions across the city. But Mr Cuomo told CNN that authorities had no evidence yet of continuing or connected plots. "Our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he himself performed," the governor said. Authorities say Mr Saipov rented a truck in New Jersey and drove it to lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon. From there, he allegedly ploughed the truck through a footpath in the Tribeca neighbourhood, appearing to target cyclists and pedestrians. The attack ended when Mr Saipov's vehicle ran into a school bus, authorities said. The suspect exited his vehicle, allegedly brandishing a paintball gun and pellet gun, and was shot by police. The attack killed eight people, six of whom came from countries other than the US. Five were visitors from Argentina, and one was from Germany, NYC Fire Department commissioner Dan Nigro said. A dozen other people suffered injuries, spanning from a bilateral amputation to severe head trauma. Police say heroin was found in a child's trick-or-treat bag in West Virginia. Oak Hill Police Chief Mike Whisman told news outlets that the three-year-old girl's mother found a dark substance wrapped in a glove, and called police. Preliminary results from a field test revealed it was heroin. No one was hurt. The mother, Stacey Norris, told WOAY-TV she initially thought the glove was the result of someone playing a joke. Actor Dustin Hoffman takes a picture as he attends The Meyerowitz Stories photocall during the Cannes Film Festival. Photo: Getty Images Hollywood's widening sexual harassment scandal has now engulfed Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman. The veteran star came forward to apologise for allegedly sexually harassing a 17-year-old intern in 1985. Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleges in a column in the 'Hollywood Reporter' that the now 80-year-old actor groped her on the set of TV movie 'Death of a Salesman' and "talked about sex to me and in front of me." Hoffman issued a statement yesterday, apologising for "anything I might have done [that] could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am." Meanwhile, six women including actress Olivia Munn, accused director Brett Ratner of sexual assault or misconduct in a 'Los Angeles Times' report yesterday. Ms Munn also complained about onset behaviour, alleging that while visiting the set of Ratner's 'After the Sunset' in 2004, he masturbated in front of her in his trailer. Munn described the incident, without naming Ratner, in a 2010 collection of essays. Representatives for Ratner didn't immediately respond to queries. Ratner directed the 'Rush Hour' film series, 'Red Dragon', 'X-Men: The Last Stand' and 'Tower Heist'. Warner Bros, which has a first-look deal with Ratner, said in a statement: "We are aware of the allegations in the 'LA Times' and are reviewing the situation." The 'LA Times' report describes other encounters where Ratner aggressively pursued actresses, sometimes following them into a bathroom. Ratner and Hoffman are the latest Hollywood figures to face allegations of misusing their power to harass actresses, a list that now includes producer Harvey Weinstein and writer-director James Toback. Harassment allegations have also been levied against actors Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Piven. Police in Beverly Hills on Tuesday announced they had launched criminal investigations over complaints received about Weinstein and Toback. Weinstein also is being investigated for sexual assault or rape by police in Los Angeles, New York and London. Weinstein has denied engaging in any non-consensual sexual contact. His representative, Sallie Hofmeister, had no comment on the Beverly Hills investigation. The department said late on Tuesday that it was investigating Weinstein and Toback after receiving "multiple complaints," although the department did not specify the nature of the complaints. Dozens of women, including actresses Selma Blair and Rachel McAdams, alleged that Toback sexually harassed or assaulted them. A father and his scared daughter, who were customers inside Walmart, are escorted out of the parking lot and away from the scene of the Walmart store where a shooting occurred inside the store, Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017, in Thornton, Colo (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via AP) A man has been arrested on suspicion of walking into a suburban Walmart in Colorado in the US and opening fire with a handgun, killing two men and a woman. Thornton police said 47-year-old Scott Ostrem was arrested on Thursday morning, about 14 hours after he fled the Denver store in a car. Authorities used security video to help identify him. Police spokesman Victor Avila said on Wednesday night that the shooting appeared random and there are no indications it was an act of terror. Two men died inside the Walmart, which is about 10 miles (16km) north of Denver in a busy shopping centre. The woman died later at a hospital. The shooting forced customers to hide or flee and police reported "multiple parties down". They advised people to stay away from the area as dozens of police cars and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. Mr Avila said a man nonchalantly entered the store and fired a handgun into a group of people before fleeing in a car. "This is a very heinous act," he said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act." Aaron Stephens, 44, was in the self-checkout line when he heard a single shot followed by two more bursts of gunfire before people started running for the exits. "The employees started screaming. Customers were screaming. They were running like crazy, and I ran out too because I didn't want to get killed," he said. Guadalupe Perez was inside the store with her young son when she heard what she thought was a balloon popping. A Walmart employee told her someone was shooting, and then Ms Perez saw people running away yelling: "Let's go. Let's go. Leave the groceries." "You see all these things in the news and you go through it, it's scary," she said. "But thank God we're OK and nothing happened to us." Special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were helping police in the investigation. Ragan Dickens, a Walmart spokesman, said the company was working with investigators. Neighbours described Ostrem as a hostile loner who often carried a shotgun in and out of his third-floor apartment. Residents of the Samuel Park Apartments building where Ostrem lived described him as a rude man who kept to himself. Most of the building's tenants talk to each other, but Teresa Muniz said Ostrem never returned her greetings and swore at people for sitting on exterior stairways and leaving laundry in communal machines. "He didn't seem to have anybody," she said. "Being angry all the time. That's what he seemed like, always angry." She said she sometimes saw Ostrem carrying a shotgun or a bow and set of arrows to and from the building. Gerald Burnett, a 63-year-old retiree who lives in a first-floor apartment, said: "He's the type of person if you said 'good morning,' he wouldn't say nothing. If you greeted him, he wouldn't say anything back. I just learned not to even talk to the clown." As the Senate prepares to conduct hearings into how Russian actors may have influenced US elections, it is important that elected officials demand full transparency from the large digital-platform companies - Google and Facebook. Russia's use of digital platforms to manipulate the 2016 election revealed the power these companies now have over political life, as well as the ways they have dodged the responsibilities that such power brings. To date, the bulk of public attention has focused on Facebook. But this is not just a Facebook story. This is as much, if not more, about America's gatekeeper to news and information, and by far the world's dominant digital advertising platform: Google. As Congress convenes hearings aimed at shedding light on Russia's attempts to interfere in the election, it is crucial that lawmakers demand from Google the full accounting that it has yet to provide voluntarily. The notion that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election, but generally neglected Google is, on its face, absurd. Moscow is many things, but ignorant of the digital ecosystem isn't one of them. And Google sits astride the digital world as a colossus. Google accounts for more than 79pc of all desktop search traffic and more than 96pc of all mobile search traffic worldwide. Thanks to its dominance, as well as its influence of the technological infrastructure that delivers ads to other sites across the web, Google now accounts for more than 40pc of all digital advertising in the United States. In 2016, Google generated $79.4bn (68.3bn) in digital ad revenue worldwide. Google is also the owner of YouTube, which delivers one billion hours of video per day, and reaches more Americans aged 18 to 49 than any cable network. So when Russia devised a plan to use digital platforms to interfere in the elections, Google could not have been peripheral. Yet we may never actually know how many political ads Russia or other foreign entities placed on Google during the 2016 election, because, while television stations and cable operators are subject to a wide array of federal oversight, no such rules apply to the king of search. Why? Because some years back Google told the Federal Election Commission that ads on its platform are character-limited and, therefore, should be eligible for a regulatory exemption originally designed for things such as pencils and buttons, that are physically too small to carry printed disclosures. Obviously, there is no physical limitation on a Google ad. Google simply prefers shorter ads. The FEC exemption was granted and the floodgate opened for any entity on the planet to place a political ad on Google with no disclosure requirements at all. So when Google claimed Russian agents spent less that $100,000 (86,000) on ads, how does it know the sum wasn't larger? Google never had to ask whether an ad was political in nature, nor the identity of the purchaser of that ad. The company needs to explain how it determined that number. Jason Kint is chief executive of Digital Content Next Pope Francis stands next to marble crosses at the American military cemetery in Nettuno, Italy (Stefano Rellandini/Pool Photo via AP) Pope Francis has described war as "the destruction of ourselves" during visits to a military cemetery and the site of a Nazi massacre in Rome. He laid flowers on 10 graves as he marked the Catholic All Souls' Day commemorating the dead. Francis saw the graves of 7,680 American war dead buried in the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery. It also commemorates 3,095 people who went missing in campaigns to liberate southern and central Italy, from Sicily north to Rome, during the Second World War. The Pope suggested the sight of the arcs of white headstones would stand as a call for peace, saying "no more war, no more of these useless massacres". He said that humanity has not learned, or has not wanted to learn, the lessons of war. He said: "How often in history, when men think of making war, they are convinced of bringing a new world, they are convinced that they are making spring. "It ends in winter; ugly, cruel, a reign of terror, of death." Calling for prayers for all the dead, the Pope made special mention of those "who are dying in the battle every day". He referred again to what he has called "a war of pieces", the many eruptions of violence and attacks around the globe. Francis has a second stop planned at the Ardeatine Caves, the site of one of the worst massacres of Nazi-occupied Rome. AP Rohingya Muslims carry their young children and belongings after crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue) Aung San Suu Kyi arrives in Sittwe, Rakhine state, on her first visit as Burma's leader to the conflict-torn region (AP) Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi visited the conflict-torn area of northern Rakhine state for the first time since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled the area. It comes as her government said a repatriation plan was underway for those who left to nearby Bangladesh when violence broke out. Ms Suu Kyi arrived in the state capital Sittwe and headed to northern Rakhine where many Rohingya villages were located. During a 2015 election campaign, she visited southern Rakhine, where there has not been much conflict. "The state counselor just arrived but she is heading to Maungdaw, northern Rakhine, with the state officials," said Tin Maung Swe, a deputy director of the Rakhine government, using Suu Kyi's official title. Spokesman Zaw Htay would not release Suu Kyi's plans for the trip until later because of security concerns. More than 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when Burmese security forces began what they called a "clearance operations" in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by insurgents. The UN has said the response has been disproportionate and amounts to ethnic cleansing. The campaign has included the burning of Rohingya villages and accusations of widespread rights violations. Fleeing Rohingya have described arson and rape and shootings by Burmese soldiers and Buddhist mobs. Ms Suu Kyi has come under intense criticism from the international community to do more to end the violence and condemn those responsible AP New Delhi, Nov 2 (IBNS): The twenty-third meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is scheduled to begin in Bonn, Germany, from November 6. The upcoming climate summit marks the 25th year of the signing of UNFCCC. However, the Bonn meeting will be the first COP after the Trump administration-effected US pullout from the Paris Agreement. Even after the pullout, the US would continue to participate in the climate talks till 2020. New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said the US withdrawal should be seen as an opportunity for action, and not inaction. The US withdrawal should be taken as an opportunity and a call for greater and more ambitious action, and not a call for inaction. The rest of the world must come together to make sure the US does not obstruct or dilute the Agreement any further, said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of CSE and the head of its climate change programme. Bhushan was speaking at a pre-COP23 media briefing organised by CSE at New Delhi recently. At Bonn, Parties would negotiate the rules and guidelines for many provisions under the Paris Agreement, namely transparency framework, New Market Mechanism, facilitative dialogue (FD) and global stocktake (GST). While transparency framework (monitoring and reporting of climate actions and support) and New Market Mechanism (carbon markets) are expected to be built on and/or take the learnings of similar mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, FD and GST are meant to assess the progress of climate actions. Other key agenda actions include loss and damage, adaptation and finance. Finance has always been a bone of contention between developed and developing countries, with the rich countries failing to fulfill their mandate of providing finance and technology to the developing countries to address climate change. The Green Climate Fund (GCF), to support developing countries, needs to fulfill the mandate of US $100 billion by 2020. Parties also need to come up with clearly defined guidelines on how to report on adaptation actions domestically. At the end of the Summit, Parties must come up with a draft rule book to be finalised by 2018, as per the mandate. It is crucial that the rule book for implementation of Paris Agreement be fair, effective, strong and equitable and under no circumstances should the global community allow the US to dilute the Paris Agreement further, said Vijeta Rattani, climate analyst, CSE. According to recently published research, in 2016, CO2 concentration in the earths atmosphere was 403 parts per million (ppm), the highest ever. 2016 was also the warmest year on record. The developing world has been the worst hit. In the list of top 10 countries representing the global vulnerability index, nine were from the developing world, indicating their limited capability and capacity to withstand climate fury. This year, India had a below-normal monsoon, with central India facing severe droughts. On an average, climate impacts cause a loss of about 1.5 per cent every year in the GDP in India. The South Asian floods in August this year in India, Nepal and Bangladesh left 1,200 dead. Developed countries have not been immune either -- in the US alone, 15 weather and climate disaster events in 2017 caused losses exceeding US $1 billion each. The UN Emissions Gap Report 2017, which was released recently, warns that the emissions gap needs to be closed by 2030. If the world fails to do that, limiting the temperature rise to the 2 degree Celsius target, as endorsed in the Paris Agreement, seems highly unlikely. Considering that the poor are the biggest sufferers of the impacts of climate change, it is ironical that issues central to developing countries such as adaptation, loss and damage and agriculture are highly marginalised at COP and fails to draw finance from developed countries. India, itself a victim of climate impacts, must shift its negotiating strategy to focus on real issues that affect its own people, said Rattani. Even though climate change requires global efforts, the burden of addressing climate change cannot continue to be on developing countries. Urgent and ambitious climate action is needed but it needs to be equitable and other developed countries of G-20 must come forward and set a positive tone, said Chandra Bhushan. Image: COP23/Twitter New Delhi, Nov 2 (IBNS): President Ram Nath Kovind, on Thursday, inaugurated the 21st World Congress of Mental Health, in New Delhi. The Congress has been organised by the World Federation for Mental Health in partnership with Caring Foundation and other institutions. Speaking on the occasion, the President said that the World Congress of Mental Health is taking place in India for the first time. "Mental health issues are acquiring a serious magnitude in our country. Our National Mental Health Survey 2016 found that close to 14 per cent of Indias population required active mental health interventions," the President said. The President noted that those living in metropolitan cities and those who are young whether in the productive age group, or children and teenagers are most vulnerable to mental illnesses. "In India, we have a young population, with 65 per cent of our people below the age of 35. And our society is rapidly urbanising. This leaves us staring at a possible mental health epidemic", he said. The President said that the biggest obstacle that mental health patients have to encounter is stigma and denial, which results in the issue being ignored or simply not discussed. "We need to talk about mental health issues and treat ailments such as depression and stress as diseases that can be cured not as guilty secrets that must be pushed under the carpet," the President said. President Kovind pointed out that a major gap in combating the mental health challenge is that of human resources. India is a country with 1.25 billion people but just 700,000 doctors less than one million. In the field of mental health, the scarcity is even more acute. There are only about 5,000 psychiatrists and less than 2,000 clinical psychologists in India, President Kovind said. The President said that Indias National Mental Health Programme is building 22 centres of excellence in the field of mental health. In parallel, the District Mental Health Programme has already covered 517 of the approximately 650 districts in India. The President expressed happiness that the World Congress will have sessions on yoga, meditation and traditional approaches to mental health. He said that the example of yoga is very instructive. President Kovind looked forward to feedback on the deliberations of the special session planned on the role of yoga in battling anxiety and depression and in preventing the onset of mental health problems. "When people talk about yoga, they generally refer to its physiological benefits. However, the mental, psychological, and cognitive benefits of yoga are equally worthy of our study. It is vital to tap into our wealth of traditional knowledge and link its learning to modern research on mental health," he said. Image: Rshtrapatibhvn/Twitter Image: twitter.com/OfficeOfRG New Delhi/Lucknow, Nov 2 (IBNS): The death toll in the NTPC boiler blast in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district has reached 25, reports said on Thursday. The fatal accident took place on Wednesday, injuring over 100 people. Condoling the loss, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said he will be visiting the accident spot. Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon. Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) November 1, 2017 "Due to the unfortunate NTPC accident, I will visit Rae Bareli tomorrow morning. Will join Gujarat Navsarjan Yatra in the afternoon," Ganhi had tweeted on Wednesday night. An enquiry has been set up by NTPC Management to investigate the reasons for the accident. "All possible measures are being taken to provide immediate relief to the families of affected people in close coordination with the district administration," the statement added. President Ram Nath Kovind condemned the incident and tweeted: "Anguished by loss of lives in power plant mishap in Raebareli. Condolences to bereaved families. Govt is helping injured." Sharing his thoughts about the incident, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Modi tweeted: "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored." Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the families of the deceased, Rs 50,000 for the seriously injured and Rs 25,000 for those with minor injuries. Image: twitter.com/OfficeOfRG 'Will expose the reality of how Pakistan treated me': Singer Adnan Sami | Amazon likely to lay off 1000 employees amid losses: Report | Akhil Giri repeat offender, Mamata Banerjee didnt reprimand him: BJP after Bengal CM's apology | Joe Biden raises objection to China's 'coercive aggressive actions toward Taiwan' in his first meeting with Xi Jinping | As Hemant Soren faces ED, Jharkhand prepares for two huge reforms Rehan, Nov 2 (IBNS): Ahead of the assembly election in the state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Rehan in Himachal Pradesh on Thursday to hold a rally, media reports said. Modi called the incumbent Congress as the "laughing club" while speaking at the rally. He also said it is the time to save the state from the clutches of the Congress. The election is scheduled to be held on November 9. The result of the poll will be out on November 18. The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named Prem Kumar Dhumal as its chief ministerial candidate for the assembly polls in Himachal Pradesh. Dhumal had earlier served the state as the chief minister two times in his career. The name was announced on Tuesday by BJP president Amit Shah. Dhumal will contest from Sujanpur seat. The Congress released their manifesto for the upcoming Himachal Pradesh assembly election, scheduled to take place this month, on Wednesday. The Congress is presently ruling the state under chief minister Virbhadra Singh. Image: twitter.com/BJP4India Lucknow, Nov 2 (IBNS): The NTPC tragedy has claimed the lives of 30 people, the media quoted the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh as saying, on Thursday. On Wednesday, a boiler blast in the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plant in Unchahar in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli district left several dead and many injured. Meanwhile, according to a tweet from the Prime Minister's Office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi " has approved an ex- gratia of Rs. 2 lakh each for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. PM has approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to the accident." On Wednesday, the PM had tweeted, "Deeply pained by the accident at the NTPC plant in Raebareli. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover quickly. The situation is being closely monitored & officials are ensuring normalcy is restored." An inquiry has been set up by NTPC management to investigate the reasons for the accident. A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into NTPC power plant blast in Rae Bareli, the Times of India reported on Thursday. According to local reports, the blast occurred while cleaning the boiler. "All possible measures are being taken to provide immediate relief to the families of affected people in close coordination with the district administration," the statement added. President Ram Nath Kovind condemned the incident and tweeted: "Anguished by loss of lives in power plant mishap in Raebareli. Condolences to bereaved families. Govt is helping injured." Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the families of the deceased, Rs 50,000 for the seriously injured and Rs 25,000 for those with minor injuries, media reported. According to media reports on Thursday, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi arrived in Rae Bareli to meet the victims of the blast. Putting his Gujarat tour on hold, Rahul Gandhi flew in from Surat to reach the Rae Bareli hospital. His mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi represents the constituency in Parliament, but have not been able to visit owing to her poor health, media reported. New Delhi, Nov 2 (IBNS): The Supreme Court of India, on Thursday, agreed to hear a petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar Act on Friday, according to media reports. The petitioner challenging the constitutional validity requested an urgent hearing as the SC is scheduled to hear similar pleas on Friday, media reported. The Central government's order to link the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) number, popularly known as the Aadhaar Number, with a host of services, including bank accounts, mobile phone numbers, etc., has raised a huge debate in the country. Those against the linking see it as a threat to privacy. Some of the petitioners have appealed to the top court that the linking is "illegal" and "unconstitutional". Recently, media reported that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has refused to link her phone numbers with Aadhaar and even dared the authorities to disconnect the line. On Wednesday, media reported that Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma said that he is yet to enrol himself for Aadhaar as he shared peoples concerns over the right to privacy. Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, Nov 2 (IBNS) : Playing the patriotism card in the run-up to the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi of having no faith in the country's army and holding talks with China on the Doklam stand-off, reports said. Modi, who was addressing a rally at Dhaula Kuan in Kangra, also took a customary dig at the Congress, asking the people to save Himachal Pradesh from a party that symbolises "Bhrashtachaar (corruption), "Pariwaarwaad (family rule) and "Jaatiwaad (caste politics). PM Modi also accused the Congress and its top leaders of questioning the BJP government on matters "that any Indian would be proud of." "The entire nation is witness to how the Doklam issue was dealt with, but the Congress even questioned that," he said. "...Someone born in a family which has ruled for decades doesn't believe his own Army and agencies? Instead, he meets China's envoy and asks about Doklam," the Prime Minister said in an obvious reference to Rahul Gandhi. Gandhi had met with Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui in July this year, which the party later admitted inviting taunts from the BJP. "Isn?t it insulting when these people held talks with Chinese leaders on Dokalam instead of asking the elected Government?" he asked. Indian armed forces and Chinese troops stood face-to-face in the tri-junction area at Doklam in Bhutan after China embarked on a road building project. India's contention was that the Chinese move was causing threat to national security, while Beijing alleged that Indian troops had trespassed into the Chinese territory. He said the Congress "has become a laughing club" as the party is no more that of Mahatma Gandhi or of freedom fighters, "but a party of corruption and dynasty politics." Asserting that the BJP is going to wrest power from the Congress in Himachal Pradesh, Modi assailed Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, pointing out that he is out on bail in a corruption case. "Five monsters - Mining Mafia, Forest Mafia, Drug Mafia, Tender Mafia and Transfer Mafia - have flourished in Himachal under the Congress...time to get rid of them," Modi said. The BJP has projected Prem Kumar Dhumal as a Chief Ministerial candidate. Himachal Pradesh, which has 68 assembly seats, votes in a single phase on November 9. Votes will be counted on December 18. Image: twitter.com/OfficeOfRG Chennai, Nov 2 (IBNS): Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan, who is eyeing a political career, has said the right-wing groups can no longer deny Hindu terrorism, media reports said. Haasan said this in his column published in a Tamil magazine. Speaking about terrorism, Haasan said: "The right wing cannot challenge talk of Hindu terrorists because terror has spread into their camp as well." "Hindus are losing faith in 'satyameva jayate' and instead subscribing to 'might is right" he said. The actor's comments came as a reply to Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan who asked Haasan about what he implied to say by recent communalism that is a threat to the peaceful co-existence of Tamil Drividan tradition. Reacting strongly to Haasan's comments, RSS ideologue Rakesh Sinha tweeted: ".@ikamalhaasan must apologise for hurting Hindu civilisation ,defaming it , trying to create provocation for his petty political end." .@ikamalhaasan must apologise for hurting Hindu civilisation ,defaming it , trying to create provocation for his petty political end. Prof Rakesh Sinha (@RakeshSinha01) November 2, 2017 "Is @ikamalhaasan trying to revive denounced narrative of Hindu terror under influence of a terrorist outfit in TN nd ally of PFI, Al Umma?" Sinha said in a follow up tweet. Is @ikamalhaasan trying to revive denounced narrative of Hindu terror under influence of a terrorist outfit in TN nd ally of PFI, Al Umma? Prof Rakesh Sinha (@RakeshSinha01) November 2, 2017 Haasan's joining in politics is speculated over last few months as the actor has been critical of the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. He has also said that he is not a saffron person, distancing from the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was seen to meet Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal weeks ago. He was also seen to be present at an event organised by the principal opposition party of the state, DMK. The actor has also shared the stage with DMK leader MK Stalin at the same event. The surrender by rebels took place in Sheohar and Gaya district of Biharthe state once infamous for Maoist violence, the deadliest being the Laxmanpur-Bathe in Jehanabad in which 58 Dalit villagers were killed in December 1997. We were tired of hollow Maoist ideology and realized that nothing could be achieved by fighting from forests. There was no social life for us and we were not able to provide education to our children. So we decided spend normal life in the society by surrendering before the police, Bullet Singh, one of the rebels who surrendered, told the media. Of the total rebels surrendering before the police, 14 were quite active in the various parts of the state, police said. Police said the rebels returning to the social mainstream would be rehabilitated as per of the government policy. thebiharpost.com Srinagar, Nov 2 (IBNS): A throat slit dead body of youth leader of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was found in Kashmir's Shopian district on Thursday evening. According to reports, the body with visible torture mark and throat slit was found in Killora in Shopian of South Kashmir The deceased has been identified as Gowhar Ahmad. Police official said that police have taken cognizance of the incident and investigations has been initiated. (Reporting by Saleem Qadri) New Delhi, Nov 2 (IBNS): China on Thursday blocked the move to have terrorist Masood Azhar, who heads the Jaish-e-Mohammed, blacklisted by the United Nations. India, with support of the United States, France and UK, has been taking attempts to get Masood Azhar added to a UN list of groups with ties to terror organisation Al Qaeda. China, which is a member of the UN Security Council, has the right to veto. On Thursday, the country rejected the move stating "there is no consensus" on Masood Azhar's role in terror attacks in India. The proposal, first introduced by the Trump administration in January this year, wanted the UN to designate Azhar a global terrorist, but was put on a technical hold by China, a permanent member of the UNSC, who used its veto power. The United States had the backing of the United Kingdom and France. China, who has been blamed for being selective in its approach towards fighting terrorism, has said that there isn't enough evidence against Azhar to ban him. However, experts have opined that the move has been conceived by the Communist nation to keep India under check, which in recent times has fostered a stronger bond with the United States. Srinagar, Nov 2 (IBNS): Two soldiers and a terrorist were killed in an ongoing encounter in Pulwama in South Kashmir, police said. According to sources, Army, Special Operation Group of Jammu and Kashmir Pollice and CRPF acting on a tip off information, cordoned off Samboora village of Pampore Thursday evening. "As joint team of forces intensified the searches at suspected spot, the hiding terrorists opened fire on party, triggering off an encounter," police official said. Official further added, during fierce gunfight, one terrorist was killed while two army personnel lost their lives after receiving serious injuries. Meanwhile sources told IBNS that trapped terrorists whose numbers are not confirmed by the sources have managed to escape from the encounter site taking advantage of darkness. The search operation is still on in the area. (Reporting by Saleem Qadri) Canberra, Nov 1 (NITN): When you think of travelling to Australia, a few key spots to visit spring to mind: Bondi Beach, the Great Barrier Reef, and of course Uluru - which commonly was known for many years as Ayers Rock. Tourists come in droves to visit the grand scale of Uluru, the sandstone rock which is famous for its red glow. But according to the BBC, from October 2019 nobody will be allowed to climb the 348-metre-high natural structure. The landmark decision came after the board of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, where the rock is situated, voted unanimously against allowing tourists to scale it. The decision was made for a reason; Uluru is a sacred site for Aboriginal Australians, and to allow visitors to climb it has long been deemed disrespectful to the indigenous population. For a long time now, locals have requested that visitors don't climb up the site formally referred to as Ayers Rock, but this has consistently been ignored. That's despite signs being placed at the beginning of the climbing path urging tourists not to proceed. Speaking about the decision, Anangu Aboriginal man and chairman of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Sammy Wilson said: "It is an extremely important place, not a playground or theme park like Disneyland. If I travel to another country and there is a sacred site, an area of restricted access, I don't enter or climb it, I respect it." So while the views might be beautiful, it's something visitors should know they don't have the right to access, and this new rule will enforce that for the benefit of the local indigenous people. Abu Dhabi, Nov 2 (IBNS): Etihad Airways has announced the suspension of one of its flight services to the United States -- Abu Dhabi-Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) -- effective Mar 25, 2018, following American Airlines unilateral decision to terminate its codeshare agreement with the airline. Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways Chief Executive Officer, said: The unfortunate decision by American Airlines to terminate a commercial relationship that benefited both carriers has left Etihad with no choice but to suspend flights between our Abu Dhabi home and Dallas/Fort Worth. We are open to American Airlines reversing its decision to cancel our codeshare agreement so that Etihad Airways can continue the route and together protect and support American national interests and global connectivity while driving commercial value for both airlines. Etihad Airways had invested heavily in the DFW route since its launch in December 2014, the company said. The route commenced with three flights a week and was upgraded to a daily service in February 2017, providing travellers in the US and across the airlines network with access to more US cities through American Airlines primary hub. More than 235,000 travellers have flown on the route since its launch, according to a company released. Almost half of Etihad Airways DFW customers connect on US codeshare flights operated by American Airlines. Baumgartner added, The cancellation of the Dallas route is one of several adjustments that we are making to our US network in 2018 in order to improve system profitability. Further changes are possible as we monitor the full impact of the American Airlines codeshare cancellation on summer 2018 bookings. Etihad Airways is grateful to the state of Texas, its authorities, including the Mayors offices in Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW International Airport, local businesses, the travel trade, and the travelling public for their partnership throughout the years of our operation. According to independent research by Oxford Economics, in 2016, Etihad Airways contributed US$3.8 billion to the US economy, supported more than 30,000 American jobs, and brought 280,000 additional visitors to the United States. These visitors, who travelled from growing markets historically ignored by US carriers and partners, contributed US$1.9 billion to the US economy and supported an additional 22,000 American jobs. Etihad Airways is also a major customer of widebody aircraft built by the Boeing Company, with firm orders for 71 GE-powered Boeing 787s and 25 Boeing 777Xs, both of which will support the airlines fleet renewal programme. All of the airlines First Class seating, as well as The Residence on the Airbus A380, is built by US based aircraft cabin interior manufacturer B/E Aerospace, now part of Rockwell Collins. In 2012, Etihad Airways also signed a deal valued at more than a billion US dollars with aviation computer technology provider Sabre Airline Solutions. Etihad Airways currently operates 42 non-stop flights a week to five US gateways Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, New York and Washington. Additionally, Etihad Cargo operates twice weekly Boeing 777F freighter services to and from Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus, Ohio, and Tucson, Arizona. This partnership proves that the private sector can make significant contributions toward inclusive and sustainable development, said Miroslav LajAak, the President of the UN General Assembly, welcoming the signing in Bahrain. I also welcome the parties intention to share knowledge around investment and entrepreneurship for development to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he added. LajAak arrived in the capital, Manama, Wednesday to attend the ongoing WEIF 2017, organized by UNIDO in partnership with the Government of Bahrain. In his remarks at the signing ceremony, LajAak noted that the hosting of the 2020 edition of WEIF in Dubai is further proof of the regions interest and commitment to encourage all stakeholders to work together with UNIDO to strengthen the implementation of the SDGs through promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation. This years WEIF, as well as the one in 2015, have been held in Manama. Prior to his arrival in Bahrain, the President of the General Assembly was in Paris, France, where, among other engagements, he addressed the Leaders Forum of the 39th UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) General Conference, held under the theme of SDGs and the role of UNESCO in the multilateral system, Tuesday. We need multilateralism more than ever before [] If we want the next generation to be born into a better world, we only have one option. And that is strong multilateralism, with the UN System at its core, LajAak said in his remarks at the occasion. While in Paris, LajAak also held meetings with senior officials from the European Union, Bosnia and Herzegovina and France, and discussed issues including his priorities for the 72nd session of the General Assembly, climate change, sustainable development, biodiversity and regional matters, according to a news release from his Office. UN News is in Manama, Bahrain, covering the Forum and its associated events. Follow @UN_News_Centre and @UNNewsArabic for up to date news and highlights from WEIF 2017. Photo: UN News/Vibhu Mishra Source: www.justearthnews.com In the resolution, the Assembly reiterated its call to all UN Member States to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures not conforming with their obligations under the UN Charter and international law, which reaffirm freedom of trade and navigation. The Assembly once again urges States that have and continue to apply such laws and measures to take the necessary steps to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible, the resolution added. The resolution enjoyed favorable votes from 191 of the 193 UN Member States. The United States and Israel opposed the text. Last year, these two countries, for the first time in the 25-year history of the annual review of the issue, abstained in the vote rather than rejecting the text. UN Photo/Cia Pak Source: www.justearthnews.com Washington, Nov 2 (IBNS): The New York attacker who killed eight people and injured 11 others, should get death penalty, said US President Donald Trump. "NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" the US President's tweet read. Trump said on Wednesday he would try to abolish Diversity Visa Lottery Program of USA that enabled the Uzbekistan born terrorist to settle down in America legally. "The terrorist came into our country through what is called the 'Diversity Visa Lottery Program,' a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based," Trump told media and tweeted. Five Argentine and a Belgian were among the eight dead in the Manhattan terror attack. The five member Argentine group that were killed in the truck attack were celebrating the 30th anniversary of their high school graduation, the Argentine Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday. The ministry has identified them as Hernan Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernan Ferruchi. Trump also spoke to Argentine President Mauricio Mecri about the incident and expressed his condolences. "Just spoke to President Macri of Argentina about the five proud and wonderful men killed in the West Side terror attack. God be with them!" another tweet read. The suspect, Sayfullo Saipov, 29, became a US citizen from Uzbekistan reportedly through the diversity visa program. Local media reports quoting authorities said the suspect was associated with ISIS". Thornton, Nov 2 (IBNS) A day after the New York attack which left eight dead, three persons, including a woman, were killed in a shooting inside a suburban Denver Walmart in Colorado on Wednesday night, reports said. "Shooting just occurred at Walmart, 9900 Grant St, multiple parties down. Please stay away from the area," Thornton Police Department said in an earlier tweet. Dozens of police cruisers and emergency vehicles raced to the scene. The men died at the store, and the woman died at a hospital. Reports quoted police spokesman Victor Avila as saying that a man nonchalantly walked into the the store and fired a handgun into a group of people before fleeing in a car. No one has been arrested. According to authorities, the wanted suspect is a white man who wore a black jacket, maroon shirt, and blue jeans "This is a very heinous act," Avila said. "We don't know exactly what the motive of the person was, but it was certainly a terrible act." The spokesman said there is currently no indication that the shooting was an act of terror. Earlier on Wednesday, a man in rented pickup truck drove onto a busy bicycle path near the World Trade Centre memorial, killing at least eight people and injuring several others in what the mayor called a particularly cowardly act of terror. Justice is a cornerstone of a free society. It dissuades those who threaten freedom of expression and emboldens those who stand to defend it, said Irina Bokova, the Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in her message for the International Day, observed annually on 2 November. The date was chosen in commemoration of the assassination of two French journalists in Mali on 2 November 2013. This is why injustice against journalists is so costly for all societies, she added. From 2006 to 2016, at least 930 journalists were killed. In 2016 alone, some 102 journalists were killed in the line of duty. Worryingly, more than nine out of 10 cases, the perpetrators are never brought to justice. We must ensure justice is done for every journalist killed, she declared. Journalists must be defended through concerted action by Governments, supported by the UN, working with all relevant actors, from international regional organizations, judiciaries and media to private companies, academia and civil society. This partnership for action was embodied UNESCO's recent Multi-Stakeholder Consultation, held in Geneva to strengthen implementation of the UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity. On Wednesday in Geneva, two UN experts warned that the world is witnessing a downward spiral of attacks on journalists, spurred on by hate speech even from senior politicians. Speaking on the eve of International Day, the Special Rapporteurs on arbitrary, summary and extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, and on freedom of expression, David Kaye, said that when authorities fail to follow up such attacks with independent and impartial investigations, the killers and their allies achieve their objectives. The attacks need to stop, so too does the public demonization of reporting and specific media outlets and reporters by political leaders at the highest levels, they added. UN Photo/Sylvain Liechti Source: www.justearthnews.com New York, Nov 2(Just Earth News): The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh) perpetrated serious and systematic violations in Iraq that amount to international crimes during the nine-month battle for Mosul between the terrorist group and Iraqi Government forces, a United Nations report has concluded. Those responsible must answer for their heinous crimes, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, citing the execution-style killing of civilians, the suffering inflicted on families, and the wanton destruction of property, largely during the period from November 2016 to July 2017. The report, issued on Thursday by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), documents mass abductions of civilians, the use of thousands as human shields, the intentional shelling of civilian residences, and indiscriminate targeting of civilians trying to flee the city. In July 2017, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and affiliated armed groups retook the city which had fallen under the control of ISIL in June 2014. The report finds at least 2,521 civilians were killed during the nine-month military operation, mostly as a result of ISIL attacks, including 741 people who were executed. The report notes that since 2014, at least 74 mass graves had been discovered in areas previously held by ISIL in Iraq. Additionally, as of 26 October 2017, the Civil Defence Corps reported that they had recovered the remains of 1,642 civilians from underneath rubble in Mosul. The report recounts that early in November 2016, in areas of Mosul under ISIL control, members of the group used loud speakers to announce that residents of areas retaken by the ISF were considered as legitimate targets because of their failure to fight against Government forces. The UN Secretary-Generals Special Representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said evidence shows that ISIL committed mass atrocities against civilians and Mosul itself, a city they claimed as their capital, but for which, in reality, they sought its ultimate and deliberate destruction. Daeshs reign of terror has spared no one, inflicting untold suffering on unarmed residents whose only guilt is that they lived in the areas under ISILs control, he said. Their evil acts did not stop at killing and terrorizing residents, as they wantonly destroyed cultural and religious monuments, including the citys iconic leaning minaret Al-Hadba, in total disregard of history and Islam, the religion this terrorist organization falsely claimed to represent, Kubis added. The report calls on the international community, including the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council, to take action to ensure that those responsible for international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are held accountable. The report also urges Iraqi authorities to investigate alleged violations and human rights abuses by ISF and associated forces during the military operation. It recorded 461 civilian deaths as a result of airstrikes during the most intensive phase of the ISF-led offensive from 19 February. Photo: OCHA/Themba Linden She will visit regional capital Sittwe and other towns affected by the Rohingya crisis. This is Suu Kyi's first visit since violence broke out in August. At least 600,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh ever since violence broke out in Myanmar, which has sustained criticism from human rights watch dogs for alleged ethnic cleansing. Among the displaced Rohingya, Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar has been a hotspot, as the place has sheltered as many as 400,000 refugees. Bangladesh, which has received overwhelming refugees in the past three months, is now mulling voluntary sterilization. Suu Kyi, who too has been criticised for keeping tight lipped about the violence, finally broke her silence in September and slammed the 'iceberg of misinformation' which has been spread on the internet. Prior to it, in his opinion piece for The Guardian, British author and political commentator George Monbiot had penned: "Few of us expect much from political leaders: to do otherwise is to invite despair. But to Aung San Suu Kyi we entrusted our hopes. To mention her name was to invoke patience and resilience in the face of suffering, courage and determination in the unyielding struggle for freedom. She was an inspiration to us all." "By any standards, the treatment of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, is repugnant. By the standards Aung San Suu Kyi came to symbolise, it is grotesque. They have been described by the UN as the worlds most persecuted minority, a status that has not changed since she took office," he added. Criticising Suu Kyi for her lackadaisical attitude and questioning her ability to handle the situation, the columnist said: "So far Aung San Suu Kyi has been insulated by the apologetics of those who refuse to believe she could so radically abandon the principles to which she once appealed. A list of excuses is proffered: that she didnt want to jeopardise her prospects of election; that she doesnt want to offer the armed forces a pretext to tighten their grip on power; that she has to keep China happy." Image: Wallpaper Markham, Nov 2 (IBNS): Investigators with the York Regional Police Major Collision Investigation Unit are seeking witnesses following a serious collision in the City of Markham. The collision took place at 10.35 a.m. on Wednesday. York Regional Police responded to a two-vehicle collision in the area of Kennedy Road and 14th Avenue. When officers arrived on the scene, they determined that a silver Mercedes had collided with a hydro pole and a median then struck a blue Ford Escape. The driver of the Mercedes, a 73-year-old man from Markham, was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. The driver of the Ford Escape was not injured. The investigation is ongoing and any witnesses who have not yet spoken with police, or anyone who may have dashcam footage of the collision are being asked to come forward by the police. York Regional Police is asking anyone with information to contact the Major Collision Investigation Unit by calling 1-866-876-5423, ext. 7704, or to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS, or leave an anonymous tip online at www.1800222tips.com, or text your tip to CRIMES (274637) starting with the word YORK. General information The Coles County Council on Aging offices are located at the LifeSpan Center, 11021 E. County Road 800N, Charleston (northeast of Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center). The telephone number for the center is 217-639-5150. The numbers for the programs are: Coles County LSVP, 217-639-5155; Telecare, 217-639-5166; Family Care Giver Resource Center, 217-639-5168; and Dial-A-Ride, 217-639-5169 or 1-800-500-5505. Peace Meal Lunch at LifeSpan is served at noon. Peace Meal Lunch at LifeSpan Nov. 6-10 Suggested donation for lunches is $3.50 for those over 60, and $6 for those under 60. Monday No Peace Meal today. Call 217-258-2420 to register for Lunch and Learn. Tuesday No Peace Meal today. Wednesday Beef and noodles, mashed potatoes, Harvard beets, whole grain wheat (1), cranberry oatmeal cookie. Thursday Ham and beans, copper carrots, cornbread, applesauce. Friday Pork chop in gravy, mashed potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower, dinner roll, cake with fruit. Calendar of events Nov. 6-10 Bingo: If you are interested in playing Bingo at your LifeSpan Center on our newly scheduled Bingo days, please call your LifeSpan Center Welcome Desk and register in advance 217-639-5150. Registration is required in order to secure a spot for bingo games. Monday 10-11:30, WITS Fitness brain exercise class; 11-11:45 a.m., Zumba; 11:30 a.m., Lunch and Learn, call 258-2420 to register for lunch, no regular Peace Meal served today; 1-2 p.m., Heartland Line Dancers. Tuesday 9-10 a.m., mens coffee group Mattoon Health Care; 9-10 a.m., Arthritis Foundation exercise class; 10-10:45 a.m., chair yoga; 10 a.m.-1 p.m., Veteran Benefit Fair; 10:30-11:30 a.m., bingo with Arbor Rose; 11-11:45 a.m., Zumba Gold Toning Class; NO Peace Meal Lunch at LSC; 1 p.m., Movie LifeSpan Family Theater; 1-3 p.m., Mattoon/Charleston Art Guild new members welcome; 2-3 p.m., Tai Chi. Wednesday 9-10:30 a.m., Caregivers, Coffee and Conversations, call to register; 10:30-11:30 a.m., Bible study; 11-11:45 a.m., Zumba Gold; noon-12:30 p.m., Peace Meal Lunch at LSC; 12:30-3:30 p.m., card games with Lifes Journey Senior Living; 1-3 p.m., ladies game of pool for all ages; 1 p.m., Movie LifeSpan Family Theater; 2-3 p.m., Qigong Tai Chi; 3-3:30 p.m., Balance Class. Thursday Happy Birthday, November Babies! Birthday cake provided by Adams Funeral Chapel. Birthday presents sponsored by Villas of Holly Brook and Reflections Memory Care. 9-10 a.m., Arthritis Foundation exercise class; 10-10:45 a.m., chair yoga; 10 a.m.-noon, Ella York, Asst. Attorney General; 10:30 a.m., bingo with Brookstone Estates; 11-11:45 a.m., Zumba Gold Toning Class; 11 a.m.-noon, Memory Loss support group; noon-12:30 p.m., Peace Meal Lunch at LSC; 1 p.m., movie LifeSpan Family Theater; 2-3 p.m., Tai Chi. Friday 11-11:45 a.m., Zumba Gold; 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Lunch with a Lawyer, call to register; noon-12:30 p.m., Peace Meal Lunch at LSC; 1 p.m., Movie LifeSpan Family Theater. Dial-A-Ride Ottawa, Nov 2 (IBNS): In the wake of the reports of sexual harassment of several actresses by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, a poll which was carried out few days ago found majority of Canadian women had experienced an "unwanted sexual pleasure", media reports said. The poll, conducted by Abacus, found around 53% of adult women who were surveyed had experienced "unwanted sexual pleasure". One of the questions which was asked by the surveyor was "Lately there have been stories in the news media about sexual harassment of women in Hollywood. Have you ever personally experienced unwanted sexual pressure?", to which five percent of the surveyed women had "very often" and seven percent of experienced "unwanted sexual pleasure" "often". Among the rest of the surveyed women, 41% said they had to bear such experience "occasionally". Twelve percent of the respondents, including men and women, said the sexual harassment is "really quite common" in workplaces while 44% of the surveyed people said such activities are "infrequent but does happen". Less than 44% of the respondents said such incidents do not occur in the workplaces. However most of the surveyed people, 63% of men and 77% of women, said the harassers didn't face any consequences for their activities. Chair of Abacus Data, Bruce Anderson said the numbers which were found in the research are striking. The survey was conducted between Oct. 20 and Oct. 23, keeping the Weinstein issue in mind. Anderson said the timing of the survey was intentional because "the Weinstein news was perhaps a bit of a tipping point in the debate about this kind of behaviour in society and in the workplace". Joining the list of actresses who had alleged Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein to sexually assaulting them, Italian-American actress Annabella Sciorra made a fresh accusation against the producer of raping her in 1990s, media reports said. In an interview to a media, Sciorra said Weinstein had "shoved" her onto bed and the two had sexual intercourse which was non-consensual. "He shoved me onto the bed, and he got on top of me, Sciorra alleged in an interview with the New Yorker. I kicked and I yelled," she told the reporter. However, the actress kept the entire the whole incident a "secret" because of he fear that her career would be affected. Montreal actress Erika Rosenbaum too went public about her alleged sexual harassment complaints against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, saying the latter had harassed her years ago. The Montreal actress, who was so far mum about the sexual harassment, going back to mid 2000, reached out to the original reporter, Jodi Kantor, to share her own experience. Rosenbaum said she was shaken to hear the experiences of other actresses, including one Canadian, which were similar to her own experience. Revealing her experience to the media, the Montreal actress said that Weinstein approached her aggressively thrice when she was in her early 20s, at a time she was pursuing her career in Los Angeles. During the third occasion, Rosenbaum alleged the producer held lher by the back of her neck and masturbated while standing behind the actress. Weinstein, however, denied any such allegations. After the reports have surfaced, #MeToo had flooding the social media for some days as tens and thousands of women have bared their hearts to reveal their own ugly experiences. American actress Alyssa Milano, on October 15, wrote a post on Twitter and asked her followers to retweet it with a reply 'me too' if they were sexually harassed or assaulted , to imply the "magnitude of the problem". Milano tweeted to say: "If youve been sexually harassed or assaulted write me too as a reply to this tweet." The urge to retweet by the actress has sparked the hashtag as several women started to write on social networking sites #MeToo and some of them even shared their own experiences. (Reporting by Suman Das) He is hailed as the king of Bollywood, romance, wit and what not. He has fans all over the world. Fans from Malaysia are traveling all the way to Mumbai to wish the superstar a happy birthday. Shah Rukh Khan is synonymous to love for many. I sell dreams, and I peddle love to millions of people back home in India who assume that Im the best lover in the world. Shah Rukh Khan. Today as he turns 52, the entire nation is sending him wishes and love, including Aamir Khan, one of his good friends. Aamir has the sweetest birthday wish for SRK, and fans, including us, cannot stop gushing over it. onlookersmedia.co Heres Aamirs warm birthday wish for Shah Rukh Khan. Dear Shah Rukh, wishing you a many happy returns of the day. May you always have good health and may you continue to rule our hearts for all time to come. Have a great day and a wonderful year. Love A. On his birthday eve, he organised a lavish star-studded party. Just like every year, in the evening, he will celebrate the day with media as well. (Also Read: Shah Rukh Khan's Full FamJam Birthday Party At Alibaug Was Perfect In Every Sense Of The Word) We wish you a very happy birthday, Shah Rukh Khan! Mumbai is boring. Delhi is better in terms of fashion. Kolkata is richer culturally, a friend of mine from an Eastern state of the country recently told me. Every Mumbaikar would be mildly offended at this statement made by anyone. Having lived in Mumbai all my life, I too, have wondered, what it would be like to live in another city and perhaps comment on the shortcomings of the city I would be living in. Yes, it is crowded. Yes, it lacks space. Yes, the streets are unclean. but I will never stop loving Mumbai for simply existing. It is quite easy for people to make these statements, but what they do not realise that once they have lived in Mumbai, it will always keep a make a space in their hearts and that space could be a good or a bad one but it will never cease to exist there. Non-Mumbaikars might find Mumbai dry, tedious and not as culturally developed as their hometown. However, nobody can deny the fact that the experience - whether good or bad - this city will give you, no other city in the world will! We took a ride in a helicopter to look at the city from up above. The experience was breathtaking! Ride Credit: Accretion Aviation 1. SOMEWHERE ABOVE MAHIM CREEK 2. SKY ABOVE, CREEK BELOW 3. MAXIMUM CITY 4. CARTER ROAD FRINGING THE CITY 5. BUILDINGS IN BANDRA SEEM LIKE MINIATURE FROM ABOVE 6. THE LAND'S END: TAJ LANDS END CAN BE SEEN JUST BEFORE THE SEA LINK BEGINS 7. THE MARVEL STRUCTURE OF MUMBAI - BANDRA WORLI SEA LINK 8. TINY BOATS SCATTERED NEAR THE SEA LINK 9. THE SKY HIGH BUILDINGS NEAR WORLI, THE WORLI PROMENADE BORDERING THE LAND 10. THE SEA FACING SIDES OF WORLI 11. THE HOLY SHRINE OF HAJI ALI SITTING ON THE ISLET 12. THE DARGAH OF HAJI ALI UP CLOSE 13. RACING ABOVE THE MAHALAKSHMI RACE COURSE 14. TINY VESSELS DOTTING THE MAHIM BAY 15 NEHRU SCIENCE CENTRE AND PLANETARIUM AND, HERE'S THE VIDEO: Kerala Police have confirmed that six more youngsters from Kannur have joined ISIS in Syria. Police said all the youths were active workers of Popular Front Of India (PFI) in Kerala. ANI The PFI has been in the eye of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies for some time now for its alleged roles in religious conversions and promoting extremist ideology among Muslim youths. PFI activists were also behind the 2010 attack on TJ Joseph, a college professor for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad. The police revelation also comes days after the arrest of five suspected ISIS recruiters from Kannur. The ringleader of the recruitment is said to be a 52-year old man identified as UK Hamsa or 'Taliban' Hamsa. Indiatimes It was not immediately clear whether the youths were recruited by the group linked to Hamsa. According to the National Investigation Agency, nearly a 100 Indians, many of them from Kerala have left India to join ISIS. It's heartbreaking to see the rise in cases of animal abuse these days. Only a year ago, a heartless video of two Chennai medical students who flung a puppy of a roof went viral. Seems like this wasn't the last time. In yet another horrifying incident of cruelty against animals, a Vellore student threw a month-old puppy from the terrace of his house, killing the pooch on the spot. Facebook/Shravan Krishnan According to reports, the brutal act was carried out on 24th October by 21-year-old Vishesh Igneyar, a mechanical engineering student from a reputed college in Vellore. Facebook/Shravan Krishnan Animal Welfare worker Shravan Krishnan who rescued Bhadra, immediately got notified about the incident and he rushed to spot along with two of friends. In a Facebook post, Shravan shared the message he received from the college students who were taking care of the puppy that was killed. According to the message, "Vishesh, already had a history of torturing the street puppies by placing them at high heights and waiting for them to fall down." Shravan also shared the screen shot of message he sent on Whatsapp after killing the puppy, he wrote," 1 down, 1 more to go, doggy tales" Facebook/Shravan Krishnan Read the full post below: Another case of cruelty committed by a young student from a reputed college in Vellore. We received a message from a few students that one of their college mates had thrown 2 puppies from his terrace and kill them. Dinesh Baba, Nishanth Nichu and I immediately rushed to to Katpadi K1 station, Vellore. A FIR has been lodged. The body of the dead pup will be exhumed and sent for PM. Message we received For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love. We took in a 1 month old puppy who was attacked by other big street dogs, badly bruised. We got him vaccinated, fed him daily and were so thankful for his presence in our lives. He was a small bundle of love and in no time everyone in the house got attached to him. Sadly, one unfortunate day he wandered out of the house and reached the house of Vishesh Iyengar. This person, Vishesh, already had a history of torturing the street puppies by placing them at high heights and waiting for them to fall down. This animal, Vishesh , took the puppy to the terrace and threw him off and the puppy died on the spot. Upon investigation from his neighbours we got to know that our puppy wasnt the only one he had killed and just a day ago he had thrown another black puppy off the terrace. Also, after killing the first puppy he posted on a whatsapp group 1 down, 1 more to go, doggy tales and upon questioning by the group members he openly admitted that he had killed a puppy. With his message it is clearly evident that he already had plans of getting his hands on the other puppy (our pet). The excuse he gave for killing the two puppies: It peed on my clothes dude Through his Whatsapp messages it's evident that he did not need any excuse to do what he had planned. What is even more devastating is that this person has no remorse, no guilt and no shame and to make it worse he said, "its just a dog, I didnt kill a human." With an additional height of 18 metres, the proposed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the sea off the Mumbai coast is set to become the tallest statue in the world. The Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) has approved the governments application to increase the height from the earlier proposed 192 metres to 210 metres. An expert panel of the MoEF had in September sought the MCZMA recommendations regarding the proposed change of height. Originally planned at an estimated cost of Rs 3,6000 crore, the memorial is now expected to cost around Rs 4,000 crore. BCCL/ File The memorial which will span around 16 hectares will have a temple, hospital and a museum dedicated to Shivaji. Currently, the Spring Temple Buddha statue, which stands at 208 metres in China, is the worlds tallest statue, followed by the Laykyun Setkyar standing Buddha in Myanmar which has a height of 130 metres. The Trump Administration is "considering" India's request for armed drones for use in the Indian Air Force. reuters/representational image "Yes, yes," the administration official told PTI when asked about India's pending request about the purchase of armed drones as part of its armed forces' modernisation drive. The Indian Air Force (IAF) believes the armed drones would help strengthen its defence capabilities significantly. Early this year, the IAF had requested the US Government for General Atomics Predator C Avenger aircraft. It is understood that IAF would need 80 to 100 units making it approximately a whopping $8 billion deal. reuters/representational image The Trump administration's consideration in this regard comes months after a successful meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump at the White House on June 26, during which the US announced to sell 22 unarmed Guardian drones to India , which would add the Indian Navy's surveillance capabilities in the strategic Indian Ocean region. "We are at ways to, in terms of Foreign military sales, but really also in defence cooperation broadly how to strengthen our relationship and cooperation," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official was responding to questions on defence relationship and India's quest for high-tech defence equipments and technologies from the US as part of its long overdue armed forces' modernisation drive running into several hundred billions of dollars over the next decade. reuters/representational image Previous Obama administration had designated India as major defence partner and the Trump administration has accelerated the process of considering Indian requests. "The US Navy and the Indian Navy have been cooperating for many years on counter piracy efforts, on ensuring freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean and the and Red Sea and the Persian Gulf," the official said. "I think that (defence) cooperation is only going to increase based on the need for it to increase and the kind of trust that we are building through personal relationships and through a fundamental understanding that our interests aligned so clearly," the official said. reuters/representational image Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said that in keeping with India's status as a major defense 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. He did not mention about armed drones. He, however, said "the proposals the US has put forward, including for Guardian UAVs, aircraft carrier technologies, the Future Vertical Lift program, and F-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft, are all potential game changers for our commercial and defence cooperation." China has again blocked another bid by the US, France and the UK to declare Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief and Pathankot terror attack mastermind Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the United Nations. According to a PTI report, it has rejected the move saying, "there is no consensus". UN has already targeted and banned the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the terror outfit founded by Azhar. "China has rejected the move as there is no consensus," sources in the Chinese foreign ministry said. The comment came as the China's technical hold on a proposal by the US, France and Britain to list Azhar as a global terrorist was set to lapse today. Last year in March, China was the only member in the 15-nation UN organ to put a hold on India's application with all other 14 members of the Council supporting New Delhi's bid to place Azhar on the 1267 sanctions list that would subject him to an assets freeze and travel ban. Earlier in August, China had extended by three months its technical hold on the US, France and UK-backed proposal to list Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN after having blocked the move in February this year at the United Nations." Also Read: NIA Names Pakistan-Based Masood Azhar And Three JeM Terrorists In Pathankot Attack Charge Sheet Pathankot airbase attack File photo A veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, China has repeatedly blocked India's move to put a ban on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief under the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the Council. The official's comment indicates that China will veto the application in the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council to allow it to lapse. This is the second year in succession that China has blocked the resolution. Last year, China had done the same to stall India's application before the same Committee. Earlier, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a media briefing: "we raised a technical hold so as to allow more time for the committee and its members to deliberate on this matter. But there is still an absence of consensus on this matter." Defending China's consistent technical holds, Hua said China's actions are meant to ensure and safeguard the authority and effectiveness of the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council. Also Read: US, UK And France Back India's Demand To Ban JeM Chief Masood Azhar In UNSC, China Backs Pak "We will continue to follow the mandate of the Committee and its rules of procedure and remain in constant communication and coordination with the members of the Committee," she said. When Apple announced its new FaceID feature on the iPhone X, it made sure to quell peoples privacy fears by insisting that all image processing would happen locally. Therefore, their faces wouldnt be available to hackers that managed to break into their iCloud. Unfortunately, it seems theres another way that strangers can get their hands on your facial data anyway. According to Reuters, the thousands of third party app developers for iOS will gain access to certain bits of facial data in order to build features for the iPhone X, like the newly introduced Animoji. Reuters Apple will allow these developers to take certain face data off the phone on the condition in the contract that they agree to seek the users permission first, and promise to not sell it to another party. When developers gain this permission, they can store a map of the users face, as well as over 50 kinds of facial expressions, and store it on their own remote servers for use. And that is the exact problem Internet privacy advocates have with this. Allowing developers to store this kind of sensitive data calls into question just how well Apple is safeguarding its customers privacy and safety. Meanwhile, Apple says that its security measures including reviewing apps before they are published on the store, auditing existing apps, and kicking offending developers off the App store are effective. The data developers get access to cant unlock the iPhone X by itself, but its still unclear just what a dedicated troublemaker could do with it. REUTERS The privacy issues around of the use of very sophisticated facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone have been overblown, Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters. The real privacy issues have to do with the access by third-party developers. Basically, experts are worried that Apple cant really control what developers do with that face data once it leaves a persons phone. They could just turn around and sell it to marketers, and no one would be the wiser. Apple does have a pretty good historical track record of holding developers accountable who violate their agreements, but they have to catch them first - and sometimes thats the hard part, Stanley added. It means household names probably wont exploit this, but theres still a lot of room for bottom feeders. Gold (GC) Weekly Doji Near Key 1800 Level Tradable Patterns - Tue Nov 15, 11:21PM CST Gold (GCZ22) is consolidating a second straight day just below the psychologically key 1800 whole figure level and the 38.2% Fib retrace of the March to October slide. GC is at risk ahead of the weekend... GCZ22 : 1,779.6 (+0.16%) GLD : 165.50 (+0.35%) The Ongoing Coffee Plunge Best Weather Inc. - Tue Nov 15, 6:08PM CST Jim Roemer's video tells about the recent hail damage in Brazil and how he called the major down-move in coffee prices during the last two months. KCH23 : 159.50s (-4.43%) JO : 46.00 (-3.05%) Cotton Rallies on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Nov 15, 4:22PM CST 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 : 89.14 (+0.45%) CTH23 : 87.26 (+0.33%) CTK23 : 85.98 (+0.16%) Wheats Gain on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Nov 15, 4:22PM CST 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 : 817-0 (-1.36%) ZWH23 : 837-6 (-1.21%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.6241 (+1.42%) KEZ22 : 955-2 (-0.80%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.2132 (+0.74%) MWZ22 : 965-0 (-0.92%) Hogs Gain on Tuesday Barchart - Tue Nov 15, 4:22PM CST 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 - Tue Nov 15, 4:22PM CST 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%) Between Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, natural catastrophes are top of mind for many Americans. Yet, the nations exposure to catastrophic risk is not limited to wind and waves. Earthquakes, like hurricanes, are costly catastrophes that cast a shadow of potential destruction over the regions they afflict. To manage that risk, insurance can help businesses and residential property owners alike recover in the wake of sudden and substantial ground movement. Yet according to new research by the R Street Institute, if Congress moves forward with a collection of tax proposals designed to target cross-border insurance transactions, Americans living in the dangerous New Madrid Seismic Zone will be forced to pay $740 million in higher premiums over the next 10 years for the exact same coverage they buy today. The New Madrid Seismic Zone spans an eight state-region in the U.S. heartland, but its earthquake risk is primarily concentrated in three states: Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee. While the system of faults is familiar to those who live on and around it, it is relatively unknown to people elsewhere in the country. The last truly massive event to strike the New Madrid zone occurred between December 1811 and February 1812. Over that period, the then-sparsely populated region was struck by seven quakes of between 6.0 and 7.5 magnitude, along with more than 200 aftershocks of between magnitude 4.0 and 6.0. Contemporary descriptions of the event tell of the Mississippi River running backward for several hours and fissures in the ground opening up as long as 5 miles. The number of people living atop the New Madrid Seismic Zone now runs into the millions, yet the risk of a significant earthquake is no less than it was at the dawn of the 19th century. In Missourihome to the town of New Madrid, for which the zone is namedhome buyers long have been required by mortgage lenders to buy earthquake insurance. Yet as the cost of policies has gone up, the takeup rate for the coverage has gone down throughout the region. That problem bears attention, but before things can get better, its necessary to ensure that they do not get worse. As Congress looks to take on comprehensive tax reform, theres a real fear that the cost of property insurance in places like New Madrid could be driven up by new taxes levied on international reinsurance transactions. Reinsurance is commonly thought of insurance for insurance companies. Primary insurers, the ones that sell earthquake policies to consumers and battle for market share during prime time with ads that range from heartfelt to goofy, buy reinsurance to make sure they have the capital necessary to pay all of their claims in the event of a major disaster. The reinsurance market helps insurers around the globe to spread their risk in ways that minimize the chances that they will be forced pay out on multiple disasters at the same time. This also allows them to offer their products for less than they otherwise might. When primary insurers pay less for reinsurance, consumers pay less for the insurance they purchase from primary insurers. Among the taxes that Congress is considering are proposals that would limit primary insurers ability to deduct the cost of cross-border reinsurance transactions. If such a plan is passed as part of tax reform, consumers would find it harder to purchase the type of home and earthquake insurance they need to have peace of mind that, if the worst occurs, they will be able to rebuild. There also is the concern that, if earthquake insurance grows less available and affordable, even fewer homeowners will opt to purchase it. This could shift the risk onto the backs of taxpayers as mortgage loans held or guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could be left without any security if the big quake comes. Congress would be wise to avoid applying new taxes to cross-border reinsurance transactions. For those who live in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, it could hobble the region for decades. Topics Catastrophe Reinsurance Earthquake For independent agents, errors and omissions (E&O) allegations can surface any day or week but the risk is heightened in the days following natural catastrophes. After the storm passes over and the claims start to come in, the risk for the insurance agent rises, according Insurance Journals Academy of Insurance Director Patrick Wraight. After the winds die down and rains subside, the claims questions and denials begin and agents can find themselves thrust into uncomfortable situations between their customers and their carriers. Thats when the agents errors and omissions insurance kicks in, Wraight said recently in an Academy webinar on agency E&O exposures following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. The leading cause of agency E&O claims for years has been an agencys failure to procure coverage. E&O insurers fully expect to see an uptick in such claims given this years highly active hurricane season. In 2017, given the number of hurricanes, some errors and omissions carriers will see a spike in this issue, especially around flood and windstorm coverage, Mark R. Angelucci, resident senior vice president and E&O segment leader for Utica National Insurance Group, told Insurance Journal. We do expect to see an increase in claims against agents after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, agrees Robin LaFollette, head of financial and professional claims in North America for Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. Even before a natural disaster is over, clients contact their agents to begin the process of filing a claim and to ask questions about what their policies will and will not cover. E&O is not the main agency concern during a disaster, of course. But having a proper disaster plan helps assure that there are procedures in place to properly serve clients and minimize mistakes during a stressful time for everyone. LaFollette notes that agents must have a plan for mitigating the impact of natural disasters on their own operations and providing services to their clients in a post-catastrophe environment. Just like their clients, agents are at risk of sustaining damage to their operations in a natural disaster, she said. For instance, after Katrina many agents lost all paper files and computers to flooding. Agents should make sure they have critical documents in electronic form backed up on a remote server or in the cloud so that they can be accessed after a flood. Disaster Risk Management According to Insurance Journals 2017 Agency E&O survey, 36.2 percent of respondents believe its important to have an errors and omissions risk management plan specific to handling business related to natural disasters but only 17.1 percent reported actually having such a risk management plan in place. Swiss Res LaFollette says that every agency should have a contingency plan for how it will provide critical services if its office is without power or, worse yet, cannot be accessed at all. Its wise for agents to consider ahead of time whether they should purchase a generator to provide power, she said. They should also have a contingency plan for temporary office space and temporary employees to help with the high volume of claims that their clients will report after large natural disasters such as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Agents should also check their E&O policies to see if they have catastrophe extra expense coverage that will reimburse them for some of these expenses, LaFollette said. Agencies must have their own disaster recovery plans because they are in the unique position of needing to operate their businesses post-catastrophe, Uticas Angelucci told Insurance Journal. That is exactly the time that many of their customers need them the most. Angelucci recommends that every agency address at least three areas. First, a plan should include a complete list of customers and carriers claim-reporting phone numbers as well as backup locations if their offices are unable to be used, Angelucci said. (Utica National recently developed a tool to assist agents in developing this list.) The second piece involves documentation of the pre-catastrophe binding restrictions of the agencys carriers. This, he said, includes knowing and documenting the submission status of risks needing coverage that were submitted pre-catastrophe so that there is no confusion about whether coverage was in-force or not. This can include payment requirements and knowledge of coverage afforded by wind pools or by the National Flood Insurance Program. For example, some states wind pools only provide building, not contents coverage. The third piece involves documentation of customer procedures. If you are writing risks in hurricane-prone areas, each risk should be advised about the availability or lack thereof of flood coverage, the flood limits, and the deductible if the coverage is written, he said. For homeowners policies, if a carrier offers different hurricane deductibles or limits roof coverage, this must be explained to the insured, and his or her decision about deductibles, limits, etc., must be memorialized back to the insured via a letter or email. These coverage areas seem to drive the most frequent post-catastrophe E&O claims, according to Angelucci. Coverage Offers According to LaFollette, many post-hurricane E&O claims involve nonexistent or inadequate flood or wind coverage, a lack of contingent business interruption coverage, or off-site power failure coverage. Agents can reduce their exposure to these claims by offering their clients policies that cover the kinds of damage we see after a hurricane, she said. It is very important that the agent document his file with evidence that he offered the policy together with the clients response, especially if the offer was rejected. This is the most powerful defense to an E&O claim. Angelucci agrees that it is important for agencies to effectively communicate the outcome of discussions on coverages offered, limits available and coverages declined. Email and work-processing systems make this process as easy as it has ever been, Angelucci said. It is also the most effective way to do business. Policyholders need to understand what they are buying does for them, and conversely, what it doesnt. Quality E&O Product Whether before or after a storm, agency owners never expect to have an E&O claim. We dont want to have them, we dont expect to have them, but we have them, said Angela Schroder, president of U.S. E&O Brokers, a retail insurance brokerage based in Houston that exclusively markets E&O policies nationwide for insurance agents and brokers. Insurance agents E&O protects agencies, the owners, their families and their employees from financial harm. It is their lifeline for what they do every day, said Schroder. You could have a catastrophe at any time in the United States, not just a hurricane, she said. It could be something else and thats why coverage is important every day, not once a year. Agents get it. According to Insurance Journals 2017 Agency E&O Survey, the vast majority of agency owners (89.2 percent) purchase E&O coverage. That was up from 83.5 percent in IJs 2016 survey. Agency owners, too, need to understand the E&O coverage they buy and understand that right after a disaster may not be the best time to shop around for a new policy. Right now, the agency E&O market is stable and competitive, with good availability of markets for quality accounts, according to Schroder. This scenario drives some agents to shop around, which Schroder says is not always a good idea in a post-catastrophe environment. Schroder said she has seen agents shopping their E&O in storm-hit locations. They should just be happy with the policy they have. If theyre not happy with the policy they have, they shouldnt have bought it last year! She worries about agents in Texas, Louisiana and Florida. If your E&O comes up in the next two or three months, Im not sure you really should be changing carriers. You just had a hurricane, she said. Schroder admits that even agency owners dont always read their policies and whats covered. Theyre not reading the endorsements. Theyre not reading what lines of business are covered or not covered. Or that theres no punitive damage coverage or that certain perils are excluded, she said. In some cases, agencies may be purchasing lower cost E&O coverage that doesnt even meet the financial responsibility of the state theyre licensed in, according to Schroder. If you have a corporation and thats how you are doing business, that corporation needs to be the named insured, she said. There are quite a few policies that will only list the agent and not their entity, and that may not meet the financial responsibility requirements. Whats most important is buying an E&O product that covers the agencys exposures, she said. Are they buying a quality product? Or are they just buying a product that, at the end of the year, they might save $500 or $600 or $1,000? Or did they actually buy an E&O product that will cover them in the event that they have a lawsuit against them or a suit against their company? Policy forms vary, according to Schroder. These policy forms do matter, she said. You have to read whats covered. A lot of times, well say, You got a quote and its $500 less. Great. But did you read the policy? Did you read the exclusions?' she said. While many agencies are lucky enough to avoid E&O claims, many others will find themselves facing an E&O allegation at some point. According to Insurance Journals 2017 Agency E&O survey, nearly half of the survey respondents (43.1 percent) have had an E&O claim in the past 10 years. Another 14.3 percent had an E&O more than 10 years ago, while 42.7 percent reported never having an E&O claim. Insurance Journals Agency E&O Survey collected more than 300 responses from agency owners nationwide via an online survey in September 2017. Demotech Inc., Insurance Journals official research partner, assisted with analysis of this years survey results. For more information, contact Andrea Wells at: awells@insurancejournal.com. Across America, the tides are turning in favor of the cannabis industry. While the federal government continues its policy of prohibition, most U.S. states have legalized cannabis to some extent. This rapid shift has created an explosion of revenue in the cannabis sector. Publicly released tax revenue data from the states of Colorado, Washington, and Oregon demonstrate that the industry is growing exponentially. This growth will reignite in 2018 when Californias recreational law takes effect. The limited data shows that just one sector of the industry is a multibillion dollar opportunity, and retail sales do not include growers, processors, transporters or laboratories. By 2021, the total economic impact of cannabis is estimated to exceed $20 billion nationwide. Insurance Fails Industry Due to federal prohibition, the insurance market continues to fail the cannabis industry. By far, the biggest insurance challenge facing cannabis companies is securing insurance that insures cannabis operations. Carriers frequently challenge coverage for claims arising out of cannabis-related losses, and courts often side with carriers. This holds true regardless of whether the cannabis company is operating legally within the states cannabis laws or not. A large and growing body of case law supports the position that because the object of the insurance contract is illegal, a carrier may deny coverage for a cannabis business. This justification has been used to deny coverage for landlords who lease their premises to cannabis companies. Presumably, this justification would be a strong weapon in denying coverage to doctors who file malpractice claims for damages related to prescribing medical cannabis. At least one court in Arizona held that because cannabis is illegal at the federal level, all contracts executed by a cannabis company are null and void. This sweeping holding applies to purchase sale agreements, employment contracts, and, of course, insurance contracts. Judges are generally split as to whether insurance contracts for cannabis coverage are valid. Tracy v. USAA generally held that although a homeowner was legally growing marijuana in his home pursuant to state law, coverage was properly denied because the contract was contrary to public policy. On the other hand, Green Earth Wellness Center, LLC v. Atain Specialty Insurance arrived at the exact opposite result and upheld coverage based on the ambiguity of cannabis law between state and federal court. While Green Earth has had a handful of cases following its reasoning, a schism remains in federal court and is unlikely to be resolved by Congress or the Supreme Court in the foreseeable future. Consequently, a multibillion dollar market lacks any meaningful risk management. This problem is best resolved through captive insurance. Captive Market Captive insurance is formalized self-insurance. The concept has been around for decades and generally involves a situation where an insured determines that it can self-fund its risk management more efficiently than market solutions. Almost every Fortune 500 company has a captive insurance company, and the concept is rapidly spreading through the middle market. Agents and brokers should be aware of how captive insurance can be used to provide a profitable solution to the cannabis industrys risk management problem. Cannabis insurance raises several legal considerations. Chief among them is whether cannabis insurance is legal. The answer is yes. The McCarran-Ferguson Act, passed in 1945, enshrined the precept that insurance is the business of the states. The licensing, regulation and execution of insurance laws is a plenary power of the states. With the notable exception of healthcare, this doctrine has been undisturbed for decades. In addition, the Tenth Amendment precludes the federal government from forcing states to criminalize activities. While the federal government may encourage and cajole states to take certain actions, states have the right to pass, or decline to pass, their own legislation. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) prohibits the possession, production or use of cannabis. So, is there an issue with a state issuing an insurance license to a cannabis captive? The answer is no. The CSA specifically provides that states are free to pass their own laws regarding cannabis, so long as states laws do not create a positive conflict with federal law. The term positive conflict has been narrowly interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, the Supreme Courts narrow treatment of this phrase is the chief reason why the Department of Justice declines to prosecute state decriminalization laws the DOJ would lose. While the legal field is complex, the issues can be narrowed. States possess the power to issue insurance licenses regardless of the federal governments opinion of the insured. The CSA prohibits marijuana, but permits states to regulate the field so long as states laws do not create a conflict with the goals of Congress. The mere issuance of a cannabis captive insurance license does not impair Congress goal of preventing the cultivation, use or possession of cannabis. Consequently, the states may license a cannabis captive. However, the power to regulate insurance rests with the states. This means that states may either license or decline to license cannabis captives. Most state insurance departments decline because many insurance commissioners prefer not to invite controversy to their department. Others simply do not want cannabis affiliated with their states. Only a handful of domiciles are available for cannabis captives. Two of the largest cannabis markets, Washington and California, do not have captive insurance laws. Captive insurance companies may only be licensed in states with captive insurance legislation permitting their existence. As a result, many prospects for cannabis captives may have to incorporate their cannabis captives in foreign domiciles. This results in the captive being treated as a nonadmitted insured in the state in which the risks are located. This raises the issue of procurement taxes (also called direct procurement or direct placement, depending on the jurisdiction). The rules regulating procurement taxes vary by state. Washington, taking a potentially unconstitutional position, maintains that no individual may purchase insurance from an unauthorized, unlicensed insurer. These procurement issues are generally resolved by paying the state the procurement tax fee. However, Washingtons prohibition requires any cannabis captive insuring Washington residents to use a fronting company. This adds additional costs to operating the captive. These hurdles are common legal issues encountered by qualified captive managers every day. Thus, the real issue for brokers and agents is not whether cannabis captives are legal, but whether they make sense for the insured. When Is a Captive Ideal? In general, captive insurance is ideal in situations where the market fails the insureds. Where insurance is too expensive, fails to cover proper risks, or is simply unavailable, insurance professionals should be aware of the potential value of captive insurance. Ideal candidates include cannabis companies with positive cash flow, relatively few claims and strong risk management practices. Companies require capital to establish their own captives, and the more risk assumed by the captive, then the more capital necessary to fund the reserves. Additionally, captive insurance companies should ideally insure multiple entities. The IRS would prefer large numbers of insured entities to secure proper risk distribution. While captive professionals differ on the precise number of insured entities necessary to form a captive, the model is better suited for middle-market companies with large operations. If a captive is not a good fit for an individual operation, then several cannabis companies can pool their resources to form a group captive. A full analysis of risk distribution and the ways to structure a captive are beyond the scope of this article, but competent captive managers have multiple solutions to bring to the analysis. Agents and brokers should be wary of the risks placed into the captive. The most common risks should include general liability and property insurance. However, there is case law indicating that a cannabis captive may insure against criminal liability, which is a potential lifesaver in the event of a federal raid. Landlords renting to cannabis companies may want to consider self-insuring their property risks through a captive because carriers have an enviable track of wins against insureds on those grounds. Finally, doctors prescribing medical marijuana should consider captives to cover gaps in their malpractice coverage. Many malpractice carriers are likely to deny coverage in the event of a loss related to the prescription of cannabis. The cannabis industry is ready for captive insurance. Agents and brokers need to know that the traditional carriers are generally failing the cannabis industry, which is a good time to consider captive insurance. Proper structure of captive insurance companies can be complex, so insurance professionals should consider speaking to a captive manager when identifying a potential cannabis captive opportunity. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously affirmed a decision by the states Superior Court that although ill-will or malice is one factor that can be used to assess insurer bad faith, it is not a prerequisite for policyholders to prevail in bad faith claims. This comes as the state Supreme Court for the first time considered the elements of a bad faith insurance claim pursuant to Pennsylvanias bad faith statute. In its decision, the court adopted the two-part test laid out by the Superior Court in a 1994 case Terletsky v. Prudential Property & Cas. Ins. Co. The test states that in order to recover in a bad faith action, the plaintiff must present clear evidence that the insurer did not have a reasonable basis for denying benefits under the policy and that the insurer knew of, or recklessly disregarded, its lack of a reasonable basis. Background While working for the United States Postal Service (USPS), Appellee LeAnn Rancosky purchased a cancer insurance policy as a supplement to her primary employer-based health insurance, according to Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Max Baer in his published opinion. The policy was issued by Appellant Conseco Health Insurance Company (Conseco). The policy contained a waiver-of-premium provision, which excused premium payments if Rancosky became disabled due to cancer more than 30 days after the policys effective date and if she was disabled for more than 90 consecutive days beginning on or after the diagnosis. It also required Rancosky to send a physicians statement with the date of the diagnosis, the first date of her disability period and the expected date, if any, that the disability would end. Indeed, on Feb. 4, 2003, Rancosky was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She did not return to her job with USPS, yet remained on her employers payroll for several months due to unused vacation and sick days, the opinion document said. In April 2003, Rancosky attempted to obtain waiver-of-premium status by submitted waiver-of-premium forms along with the required physician statement. However, she didnt realize that the physicians statement inaccurately stated her date of disability began April 21, 2003. Since Rancosky believed her premium payments had been waived, her final payment came from her June 24, 2003, payroll-deducted premium. Over the next two years, Rancosky experienced recurrences of cancer and continued to submit claims to Conseco. During an audit of its payroll-deducted premium policies in early 2005, Conseco apparently discovered for the first time Rancosky had ceased making payments on her policy in June 2003. Conseco deemed her policy to have lapsed as of May 24, 2003, the date to which her final payroll-deducted premium payment extended her coverage, the opinion document added. Following another recurrence of cancer, Conseco denied Rancoskys claim for further benefits based upon her failure to pay premiums. Conseco did not investigate to clarify the discrepancy between Rancoskys claimed disability date and the physicians statement incorrectly indicating the start date, the opinion document said. Bad Faith Lawsuit Rancosky subsequently brought a suit against Conseco, alleging breach of contract and bad faith. Though the trial court found that Conseco was sloppy and even negligent in its handling of Rancoskys claim, it ultimately found in favor of Conseco on the bad faith claim, the opinion document said. In particular, the trial court concluded that Rancosky failed to demonstrate that Conseco lacked a reasonable basis for denying benefits under the cancer policy because she did not prove that the insurer acted out of a motive of self-interest or ill-will. Rancosky eventually appealed to the Superior Court, arguing the trial court misapplied the two-part test for bad faith claims established in the 1994 Terletsky case. While Conseco argued that the meaning of bad faith includes whether the insurer had a subjectively improper motive, Rancosky argued that self-interest and ill-will are probative and that knowledge or recklessness is sufficient. Because Conseco failed to conduct any investigation and instead accepted the incorrect information from Rancoskys physicians, the Superior Court determined Conseco lacked a reasonable basis for denying Rancosky benefits. In a published opinion, the Superior Court agreed with Rancosky, vacated the trial courts judgment regarding Rancoskys bad faith claim and remanded for further proceedings on that claim. Supreme Court Decision In its Sept. 28, 2017, decision regarding this case, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that the Superior Courts two-part test laid out in the 1994 Terletsky case presents an appropriate framework for analyzing bad faith claims in Pennsylvania. Additionally, the Supreme Court held that proof of an insurance companys motive of self-interest or ill-will is not a prerequisite to prevailing in a bad faith claim. It affirmed the previous judgment of the Superior Court, which partially vacated the trial courts judgment and remanded for further proceedings. Upon remand, the Supreme Court noted that the trial court should consider again whether both portions of the Terletsky test have been met. Drones may already be impacting the world of workers compensation. Fewer workers on communications towers are falling to their deaths, according to Todd Schlekeway, executive director of the National Association of Tower Erectors. Schlekeway, who was speaking at a panel in October at the Drone World Expo in San Jose, Calif., was citing an OSHA study of 135 deaths on communications towers recorded since 2003. He was moderating a panel on how drones, or unmanned aerial systems, are transforming the communications industry, along with Thomas Camp, in business and product development with Verizons innovation program, Christopher Moccia, executive vice president of telecommunications for Measure, and Art Pregler, UAS program director for AT&T. The OSHA study shows that after a spike in deaths in 2013 and 2014, when a massive amount of communication tower building took place to keep up with an explosion in cellular demand, the number of deaths have been falling. There were four deaths in 2015, seven deaths in 2016 and two deaths so far this year, although there were some recent deaths that have yet to be reported, according to Schlekeway. He noted that there are more than 308,000 cell sites and towers in the U.S. With demand for more towers, and maintenance required of all of those towers, Schlekeway and his fellow panelists said drones are increasingly important in helping to keep workers safer. Drones are being used often to check out towers for natural hazards like bee hives and raptor nests, to look for infrastructure defects that could injure or kill someone ascending a tower, and to determine what tools will be needed when workers get to their destination high in the air to save trips up, the panelists said. Drone Insurance The lone insurance presence with a booth at the expo was BWI Aviation Insurance, a Corona, Calif.-based broker specializing in drone and other aerospace coverage. Wesley Ellish, who was working the booth with a few fellow brokers, said they decided to take a spot at the expo in hopes of selling polices and educating drone users on the need for insurance. It kind of seems like insurance is on the backburner for some of these guys, Ellish said. She said that while several attendees who stopped at the booth felt insurance was the last of their worries, they were able to give dozens of quotes for basic liability policies to offer drone operators coverage. Quotes were given to a mix of operators, ranging from startup companies to companies that were already considered mid-sized with growing fleets of drones, but by far the class of business that showed the biggest interest in buying drone insurance were instructors, she said. Topics California Legislation Workers' Compensation Severe weather pounded the Northeast region with powerful winds and drenching rains early Monday, leaving nearly 300,000 without power. Southern New England appeared to suffer the brunt of the storm damage overnight. Eversource reported more than 155,000 Connecticut customers were without power around 6:30 a.m. Monday. National Grid also reported more than 141,000 customers were without power in New York state, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. About 22,000 customers were without electricity in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey as the powerful wind and pounding rain swept through and caused a number of delays for commuters. National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Dellicarpini said there were reports of downed trees and power lines around the region and roads that were impassable in spots due to flash flooding. The Meriden Humane Society in Connecticut put out a call for volunteers on its Facebook page Sunday night to help deal with flooding in its dog kennels. A couple of hours later, the humane society thanked the volunteers who turned out to help dig a major trench to drain water away from the building. We are beyond humbled at the outpouring of support from our community, the human society wrote on its Facebook page. Thanks to all of you, our dogs will be sleeping very comfortably and most importantly very dry! Flash flood and high wind warnings were issued across the region. Dellicarpini said parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts saw wind gusts of up to 70 mph or more. Conimicut Light on Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island reported a wind gust of 81 mph. The same storm system also caused problems earlier Sunday in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. WABC-TV reported a driver trapped in high water in Newark, New Jersey, had to climb out of his car window to escape. I didnt know it was that deepjust put the window down and got out, he told the television station. Dellicarpini said the storm was expected to continue through the early morning hours Monday in southern New England before moving north to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The storm began making its way up the East Coast on Sunday, which also was the fifth anniversary of Superstorm Sandy. That 2012 storm devastated the nations most populous areas, was blamed for at least 182 deaths in the U.S. and Caribbean and more than $71 billion in damage in this country alone. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics New Jersey Allstate is suing one of its former agents in United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, alleging the agent breached a one-year non-compete clause by misusing Allstates confidential information and trade secrets. Defendant Abner Joseph executed an exclusive agency agreement (EA Agreement) with Allstate around December 3, 2014. In the contract, he agreed not to compete with Allstate from any office or business within a mile of his Allstate Exclusive Agency for one year after the EA Agreements termination, according to Allstates complaint. Joseph also agreed, upon termination of his EA Agreement, to transfer all phone numbers to Allstate that he used to conduct business under the EA Agreement. He also acknowledged that a failure to comply with the duties and obligations he owed Allstate under the EA Agreement, including not competing with Allstate within one mile of his former Allstate Agency location, failing to transfer all telephone numbers Joseph used to conduct Allstate business, and using and/or failing to return all confidential Allstate information, would be a breach of the EA Agreement, the complaint says. Unfortunately, Joseph refused to honor this obligation by setting up a competing agency in the very same office as his former Allstate Exclusive Agency, and then lying about it to Allstate by claiming that he was only operating a tax business out of his former Allstate Agency location, alleges the complaint, filed by Allstates attorneys, Erik W. Weibust and Dawn Mertineit of law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Allstate, a corporation with its principal place of business in Northbrook, Ill., appoints independent exclusive agents through its Exclusive Agency Program to sell Allstate products. The corporation and its customers trust Allstate Exclusive Agents to safeguard and protect their private information from unauthorized use or disclosure, according to the complaint. This includes information relating to their personal data, date of birth, social security numbers, types of policies, amount of insurance, premium amounts, description and location of assets and property, claims histories, insurance needs, pricing information and other insurance coverage information. The complaint states that it is believed Joseph owns and operates Damelia Insurance Agency, which serves as an Allstate competitor. It suggests that Damelia Insurance Agency provides both personal and business insurance products and services, including the same products and services that Joseph sold on behalf of Allstate. It also alleges Damelias phone number is the same phone number Joseph used on behalf of Allstate, and since June 1, 2017, more than 50 Allstate customers have cancelled their policies with Allstate. According to the complaint, this number is significantly higher than Allstates normal cancellation rate. In addition to allegedly operating a competing insurance agency, the complaint also suggests Joseph neglected to transfer all phone numbers to Allstate that he used to conduct business under the EA Agreement and is instead using the numbers to support his competing insurance agency, as well as misappropriating Allstates confidential information and trade secrets in violation of the EA Agreement and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act. This comes after Allstate sent Joseph a 90-day termination notice in February of 2017 informing him that the EA Agreement was terminated effective June 1, 2017, and he must cease representing Allstate as of that date. The Termination Notice stated Allstate was terminating the EA Agreement because Joseph failed to obtain required Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) licenses within the contractually required time frame. On May 31, 2017, Allstates field sales leader, Rick DiBattista, traveled to Josephs office to retrieve any Allstate materials and Allstate customer information and to gain access to the Allstate phone numbers, as is customary, according to the complaint. The complaint adds that DiBattista provided another copy of the Termination Agreement to Joseph at that time. Joseph, however, claimed he did not have any hard copies of Allstate materials or Allstate customer information and refused to provide any information that would allow Allstate to retrieve the phone numbers, the complaint states, adding that Allstate has since made multiple other attempts to remind Joseph of his obligations under the EA Agreement. Allstate explains in the complaint that it had been inside Josephs Exclusive Allstate Agency several times before May 31, 2017, and had seen hard copies of Allstate materials and customer information sitting on Josephs desk. This led Allstate to believe Joseph kept hard copies of Allstate customer information after May 31, 2017, in order to compete with Allstate and to solicit its customers and prospective customers on behalf of his competing insurance agency. In addition, DiBattista instructed Joseph to place a sign in the store to redirect Allstates customers to another Allstate Exclusive Agent because Josephs EA Agreement was terminated. In response, Joseph told DiBattista that he would not put up the sign and would tear down any signs DiBattista placed in the store after he left, the complaint says. In October 2017, this suit was filed by Allstate against Joseph for breach of contract, interference with advantageous relations and violations of the DTSA. Through this action, Allstate is asking that the court order Joseph to cease competing with Allstate out of his current office location or any other location within one mile for one year, to transfer Allstate phone numbers back to the company and to cease using or disclosing, as well as immediately return, all confidential information and trade secrets. Allstates customer relationships and goodwill are threatened with irreparable harm by Joseph operating a competing insurance agency out of his former Allstate Exclusive Agency location the complaint says. The harm to Allstates confidential information and customer relationships is neither knowable nor easily calculable in terms of monetary damages. Joseph declined to comment when contacted by Insurance Journal as the case is ongoing. Topics Lawsuits Agencies Massachusetts After Superstorm Sandy flooded the first floor of his New Jersey home with 4 feet of water, Rich Bindell shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to a contractor he knew was approved by the state and had done other work in his town. Five years after the storm, the construction project remains unfinished and the contractor faces up to 10 years in prison after admitting this month to scamming more than 30 homeowners and employees out of about $1.9 million. James Jaime Lawson is one of more than 200 people charged in New Jersey with $11 million worth of Sandy-related fraud in a list that continues to grow five years after the storm. Most of those cases involved homeowners filing fraudulent applications for relief funds, but others have been contractors like Lawson. Others including engineering companies and mortgage brokers have been charged with fraud in New York after authorities say they scammed federal loan programs after the storm. Prosecutors and victims say their experience after Sandy in choosing contractors who saw opportunity in chaos can provide lessons to residents in Florida, Texas and Puerto Rico after recent devastating storms there. The cases involving contractors defrauding victims, to me, are the worst of the worse, Attorney General Christopher Porrino said. Youve got people down and out trying to put their lives back together. Its like getting hit twice. Complaints started coming in about a month after Sandy, said Sgt. Mark Malinowski of the Ocean County prosecutors office economic crimes unit. The county was one of the states hardest hit by Sandy. Malinowksi believes people let their guards down when theyre using government grant money to pay for repairs. Its different than taking money out of their personal checking accounts, he said. Bindell contacted contractors to get price quotes and through word of mouth he learned about Lawson in the summer of 2015. He did some jobs in town and I went to look at them. He was cheaper than the other guys and he was listed as an approved contractor, Bindell said. The nearly $150,000 project would take six to eight months to complete, Bindell said he was told. However, it took Lawson almost a year to complete the plans and Bindell said when he started work, Lawson was fined for elevating the home without a permit. The project sat while Bindell and his family, in their rented home, reached out to Lawson by phone and texts. It was then Bindell received a call from an adviser with the governments Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation program, which had revoked Lawsons permit for lack of insurance. Bindell received much of his money back from the government, but is still out about $20,000 from the scam. He then had to tap into his retirement savings and use a home equity loan to come up with the extra $160,000 to fix the work Lawson had started. The project to raise the house and repair flood damage is ongoing, and he has been renting a home elsewhere with his wife and two children since. Based on his experience, he advises other storm victims to take their time rebuilding. Id do my own background check. Dont take the states word for anything, he said. Make sure the contractor is not taking on so many jobs. Porrino has written attorneys general in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico with the identities of some of the fraudsters. You have to be really skeptical, Porrino said. Anytime youre paying in advance for service, youre at risk. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Fraud Contractors The husband of a former manager of a motel in New Yorks Thousand Islands region has been charged with setting a fire that destroyed most of the business in September. State police say theyve charged 41-year-old Francis Babcock, of Alexandria Bay, with arson. Troopers say he started the Sept. 13 fire that burned down a large section of the Boardwalk Motel in the village of Alexandria Bay, a popular tourist destination on the St. Lawrence River. No one was injured. WWNY-TV in Watertown reports that Babcocks wife was a manager at the motel, but police say no clear motive for the arson has been determined. Village police say images from the motels surveillance cameras helped lead to the arrest. Babcock is being held in the Jefferson County Jail on $20,000 bail. It wasnt clear if he has a lawyer. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics New York A series of safety scandals at Japanese companies have put the countrys lionized factory floor under scrutiny as manufacturers struggle with increased pressure on costs, stricter enforcement of standards and growing competition. With margins squeezed by a stagnant domestic market and rivalry from China and South Korea, many factories have cut costs, reducing their reliance on workers in lifetime employment in favour of labourers on temporary contracts. As they have done so, safety scandals have erupted across the countrys much-vaunted manufacturing sector, with Subaru Corp. on Friday joining Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. in admitting it failed to follow proper vehicle inspection procedures. Earlier this month, Japans third-largest steelmaker, Kobe Steel Ltd, said its workers had tampered with product specifications for years, leaving companies around the world scrambling to verify the safety of cars, planes, trains and electrical goods. Unable to easily lay off regular employees, full-time employees with permanent contracts and pay scales based on seniority that formed the heart of Japans post-war workforce, companies have increasingly come to rely on non-regular workers temps, part-timers and short-term contract workers. These non-regular workers allow companies to cut costs and adjust their workforce, said Koji Morioka, emeritus professor at Kansai University and an expert on workplace issues. But it has led to a de-skilling of the factory floor, lowering standards and increasing the likelihood of wrongdoing and accidents, he said. The use of these disposable workers is greatly increasing, Morioka said. The loss of experienced, skilled workers on the factory floor is becoming more and more risky. The share of non-regular workers in the labour force has risen from 20 percent in the early 1990s to a record 37.5 percent last year with the proportion in some companies higher still. The pay gap is stark, with regular workers last year on average paid 321,700 yen ($2,830) monthly compared with 211,800 yen for contract workers. Companies are failing to produce the skilled workers needed to ensure standards are met in areas like safety at a time when scrutiny is intensifying around the world and lapses are met with greater criticism, said Parissa Haghirian, professor of Japanese management at Sophia University in Tokyo. There is a real human resource problem, she said, with the traditional model of hiring workers straight out of school or university, teaching them on the job and rotating them between departments no longer functioning well. AFTERTHOUGHT With the ratio of companies complaining of labour shortages at a 25-year high and with firms needing specialists but failing to produce them internally, competition for skilled workers is likely to become more fierce, Haghirian said. I predict high performers will leave more quickly leaving companies in trouble because these people traditionally would stay and drag everyone else along, she said. Japanese companies are not alone in being caught up in scandals, with European and U.S. companies caught cutting corners and manipulating results in areas like vehicle emissions tests to the sale of meat. But the Japanese firms face questions over whether they can adapt quickly enough. Some Japanese makers have taken the attitude that because the factory floor is well run, quality control and inspection can be applied as an afterthought, said Tadashi Kunihiro, a lawyer who is a director and auditor on company boards. Companies, he said, were not placing their most skilled workers in quality control roles. While safety lapses have been going on at some companies for years or even decades, the decline of the lifetime employment system has likely sapped the loyalty of workers who are more likely to raise concerns themselves, Kunihiro added. Improving transparency at companies has been a key plank of Prime Minister Shinzo Abes corporate governance reforms through measures such as boosting the number of outside directors. But experts question whether such reforms can do much to prevent safety scandals occurring in the first place. Even if there are more outside directors, if there is cheating on the factory floor there is no way they will be able find out, a senior executive in the aluminium industry said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Even executives dont know whats happening on the factory floor, he said. Executives are guilty of becoming too detached from the operational side of the business, said Toshiyuki Shimegi, president of Porsche Japan. There is a need for more micromanagement, he said on the sidelines of the Tokyo Motor Show. They are missing the hands-on approach. (Reporting by Sam Nussey, additional reporting by Aaron Sheldrick, Ritsuko Shimizu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan) Topics Manufacturing Singapore wants to bolster its status as a wealth management and foreign-exchange center as part of plans to create more financial-sector jobs and mitigate the effect of rapid changes in technology. In a plan unveiled Monday, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said it aims to create 4,000 net new jobs in financial services and financial technology, and achieve real growth in the sector of 4.3 percent annually, faster than the overall economy. With technology transforming the way financial services are produced, delivered, and consumed, it is critical that Singapores financial sector also transforms, to stay relevant and competitive, the MAS said in a statement. Banks around the world are cutting jobs as the industry is transformed by digital technology, and the application of artificial intelligence and robotics. Vikram Pandit, who ran Citigroup Inc., has predicted some 30 percent of banking jobs will disappear over the next five years. Wealth Hub The MAS listed three elements to its so-called industry transformation map for financial services. It said Singapore aims to be: A leading international wealth management hub. The MAS said its working with the industry to develop Singapore as a centre of excellence for wealth management technology and innovation. An Asian hub for asset management, and a place where more funds are domiciled A global foreign exchange price discovery and liquidity center in the Asian time zone. Singapore is currently the third largest foreign-exchange center globally. The MAS said it will encourage key participants to anchor their matching and pricing engines here, to enable market participants to benefit from better liquidity and greater efficiency in executing FX transactions. Singapore is projecting a 4.3 percent annual growth rate for the financial sector through 2020, higher than the planned overall economic growth of 2 percent to 3 percent included in a set of national strategies unveiled in February. The financial sector accounts for about 13 percent of Singapores gross domestic product and employs around 200,000 people. Assets under management grew 7 percent last year to S$2.7 trillion ($1.9 trillion), according to MAS data published in September. Its a good time to set financial sector priorities because the macro-economic environment is improving, said Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.s Chief Executive Officer Sam Tsien. That being the case, it is even more important for us to get the infrastructure ready, so that we have the people, the technology and the regulatory-facilitating facilities, Tsien said in an interview Monday. The MAS is also working with the industry to: build private market funding platforms to attract a wider network of investors; become a full service Asian infrastructure financing hub; become a leading center for Asian fixed income; ttract global capital for Asian insurance and risk transfer; and create common utilities including for electronic payments, digital ID and electronic know-your-client checks. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Tech Talent Swiss Re has appointed Jason Richards as head Casualty Reinsurance. At the same time, Nicola Parton was named head P/C Business Management, and James Shepherd was appointed head of L&H Business Management. Richards will lead the Casualty Reinsurance team, starting Nov. 1, 2017. He will be succeeded by Parton, currently head Primary Lead Strategy & Client Engagement for Corporate Solutions. Her new role begins on Dec. 1, while Shepherds L&H appointment was effective on Oct. 1, 2017. Richards has spent 23 years at Swiss Re (including 11 years at GE Insurance Solutions prior to the merger in 2006) in functions touching many aspects of reinsurance. In his current role as head P/C Business Management, he has developed a strong knowledge of core P/C in-force portfolio from a claims, reserving and retro operations perspective and has been heavily involved in large P/C transactions, said Swiss Re in a statement. He has an interest in technological developments that enable Swiss Re to provide new solutions for clients, said Swiss Re, noting that he led the fintech initiative for Swiss Res reinsurance business. Richards graduated from the University of Bath in 1992 with a bachelors degree in business administration. He will remain a member of Swiss Res Reinsurance Management Team reporting to Moses Ojeisekhoba, CEO Reinsurance, and will continue to be based in Copenhagen. Parton has more than 20 years experience in the re/insurance industry. Before leading the implementation of the primary lead strategy, she served in various claims leadership roles, including head of Corporate Solutions Claims. During her time at Corporate Solutions, Parton also led a number of business initiatives to support client retention and portfolio management strategies. She also led the development of Claims Commitment, a claims service approach now viewed as a differentiator in the market, the company said. Parton will become a member of the Reinsurance Management team reporting to Moses Ojeisekhoba and will continue to be based in London. She graduated with honors from the University of Auckland in 1996 and is admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court in New Zealand. She practiced law in New Zealand and, upon relocating to the U.K., joined a London law firm focusing on insurance before joining Swiss Re in 2003. In his new role, Shepherd will be responsible for managing Swiss Res in-force portfolio of Life & Health reinsurance business. This includes claims management, technical accounting, portfolio management, run-off, auditing, reinsurance operations and reserving. Swiss Re said that Shepherd has built a wealth of experience in the industry having started his reinsurance career in 1987 with Victory Re. He joined Swiss Re in 2006 with the GE Insurance Solutions acquisition, having been part of the GE Global L&H Executive team. After 10 years as a Swiss Re client manager and underwriter in multiple markets, Shepherd moved through roles in technology, business services, contracts, technical accounting claims operations and project management, before becoming chief operating officer of the reinsurance business in 2011. Shepherd is a British citizen, living in Zurich. He holds qualifications with the Chartered Insurance Institute and Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK. He continues as a member of the Reinsurance Management Team, reporting to Moses Ojeisekhoba. Source: Swiss Re Topics Claims Reinsurance Property Casualty Casualty Swiss Re A Missouri educator awarded $500,000 over claims that she was sexually harassed by her superintendent is suing again, alleging that school board members poisoned her effort to find a new job. Jodi Heckler was principal of an intermediate school in the Reeds Spring School District near Branson. She resigned in March as part of a settlement agreement. Amid a national reckoning of sexual harassment, Hecklers case has angered some residents living within the boundaries of the school district that educates about 1,800 students, with some calling for the ouster of superintendent Mike Mason. The initial lawsuit said Mason sent unwanted text messages, repeatedly stopped by Hecklers office, and in one instance, lifted her shirt from the back. She complained to the districts Title IX coordinator who concurred that Masons actions amounted to sexual harassment, the lawsuit said. The school board signed off on the $500,000 settlement in March, with Mason admitting no wrongdoing. At the same meeting, the board voted 6-1 to extend Masons contract and give him a raise. The one dissenting vote was cast by the lone female board member. In April, about 650 people signed a petition calling for Masons removal. But the board has taken no action to remove Mason. School district spokesman Ben Fisher declined comment on the lawsuits but said the district wants everyone to know that it is steadfastly committed to providing an environment that is free from discrimination and harassment for all students and staff. A phone message seeking comment from school board president Earl Johnson was not returned. Heckler, 45, said in a second lawsuit filed in July that despite a sterling job performance record that included awards and other recognition, she struggled to find a new job. The suit said she applied for more than 60 jobs before finally being hired as a fifth-grade teacher. The suit said Hecklers job search was hurt because at least two board members made disparaging and derogatory statements, rumors, spoke ill of, and in general bad mouthed her in retaliation for the harassment claims against Mason. The Missouri Commission on Human Rights agreed that Heckler had a right to sue the district again. The district has responded by suing the commission as part of an effort to halt the second lawsuit. A court hearing is scheduled for Dec. 1. Hecklers attorney, Jay Kirksey, said the districts lawsuit is without merit. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Missouri Authorities are blaming a manure runoff from a dairy farm for killing about 60,000 fish in eastern Iowa. The farm is situated about three miles east of New Vienna. The fish kill was reported Oct. 9 after fish carcasses were spotted in two creeks downstream in Dyersville. The Iowa Natural Resources Department has issued a notice of violation to the owner, John Hoefler, and is expected to seek restitution for the fish. Among the dead were minnows, white suckers and creek chubs. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Agribusiness Iowa Professional Endodontics P.C., a dental surgery practice based in Southfield, Mich., with three locations, has been sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for allegedly firing an employee because of her age. According to the EEOC lawsuit, Karen Ruerat had been employed as a receptionist for Professional Endodontics for over 37 years when she was fired four days after her 65th birthday due to a company policy that mandated retirement at age 65. Such alleged conduct violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The EEOC filed suit (Case No. 2:17-cv-13466 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The EEOC is seeking injunctive relief prohibiting Professional Endodontics from discriminating against other employees based on age, monetary relief including back pay and liquidated damages, and other affirmative relief for Ruerat. Source: EEOC Topics Lawsuits Michigan Managing general agency and surplus lines broker, J.M. Wilson, has hired Brian Kane as assistant property/casualty underwriter in its Arlington Heights, Illinois, office. Kane has more than 17 years of experience in the insurance industry working as a group underwriter. His responsibilities will include assisting underwriters on a wide variety of commercial property and casualty risks, as well as quoting new and renewal business and servicing accounts for independent insurance agents in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Source: J.M. Wilson Topics Underwriting Property Casualty Property Illinois Casualty Nebraska judge has sentenced a former insurance agent to at least six years in prison for bilking clients out of nearly $160,000, saying he felt heartsick for the victims. The Lincoln Journal Star reports the Lancaster County judge noted on Tuesday the seriousness of a felony theft by deception charge when deciding against probation for Raymond Sanchez Jr. Investigators allege Sanchezs clients in Lincoln gave him money to buy annuities, but that Sanchez instead deposited the money into his personal account. One victim says she and her husband lost more than $40,000 in the scheme. She says shes disappointed in the sentence because she was hoping for restitution. Sanchez says he wants to eventually pay the money back so he can face all his victims again. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Agencies Fraud Nebraska A new study by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) found that Wisconsins medical payments per workers compensation claim were higher than typical for 2015 injuries evaluated as of March 2016. While growth in Wisconsins workers compensation medical payments per claim slowed in the past several years, medical payments were still increasing at a faster rate than other states that WCRI studied. The study, CompScope Medical Benchmarks for Wisconsin, 18th Edition, examined the costs, prices, and utilization of workers compensation medical care in Wisconsin in comparison with 17 states. The following are among the WCRI study findings: In 2015, Wisconsins workers compensation medical payments per claim with more than seven days of lost time were 61 percent higher than the median study state; medical payments per all paid claims were 46 percent higher than typical. These results reflect a widening gap between Wisconsin and the median study state compared with prior editions of the CompScope report, which showed Wisconsins average medical payments as being closer to the median study state. Substantially higher prices paid for nonhospital medical services were a factor contributing to higher average medical payments. Utilization of nonhospital medical services in Wisconsin was among the lowest of the study states. Payments per claim for nonhospital services increased 3 percent annually from 2010 through 2015, driven more by price increases than utilization. Similarly, hospital outpatient payments per claim increased 4.7 percent per year, on average. Increases in payments per service contributed to this trend; there was little change in utilization of hospital outpatient care. In 2015, Wisconsin had among the highest percentages of claims receiving hospital outpatient care, due primarily to a higher percentage of workers receiving radiology, physical medicine, and office visits from hospital outpatient providers. The study also mentions other WCRI research that found injured workers in Wisconsin reported higher rates of satisfaction with their medical care and among the lowest percentages of problems accessing medical care. Overall total costs per all paid claims were lower than typical in Wisconsin, driven largely by fewer workers losing time from work after an injury, substantially lower indemnity payments per claim, and shorter duration of temporary disability benefits. WCRI studied medical payments, prices and utilization in 18 states, including Wisconsin, looking at claim experience through 2016 on injuries that occurred mainly in 2010 to 2015. Source: WCRI Topics Workers' Compensation Wisconsin Tired of living with hurricanes, tornadoes or floods? Head to Portland, Salt Lake City or Providence. Or California. Yes, California. Portland, Oregon is the safest place to live to avoid hazardous weather; three of the other safest places are in California. Florida and Texas dominate the other extreme the riskiest places. BestPlaces, a company that analyzes data and ranks locations on various criteria, revealed the Top 10 Safest Places to avoid natural disasters. The firm looked at 30 years of data of hazardous weather trends and eight risk factors weighted by severity and frequency of the threat. The most important risk factors were tornados and hurricanes, then flooding and earthquakes, and drought, hail, wind and wildfires were considered less impactful. We created this list to help the many people who are worried or fed up with the danger and recovery after natural disaster, says Bert Sperling, founder of BestPlaces.net. Even just the threat of an event can be very disruptive, which can happen several times annually. Sperling acknowledges that some people might be surprised that several California places rank in the top 10, given the earthquake risk on the West Coast. We considered the risk from a major earthquake to be less than that from hurricanes or tornados, he explains. Its entirely possible that one could spend a lifetime in California and never be impacted by an earthquake, while hurricanes and tornados can occur regularly. Also, the analysis was done on data collected before this seasons deadly hurricanes and wildfires, BestPlaces confirmed for Insurance Journal. The BestPlaces rankings are based on the frequency and severity of hazardous weather events over the last 30+ years, analyzing the tracks and locations of serious storms which caused injury and damage. Governmental agencies providing the raw data include NOAA, USGS, and NCDC Storm Events Database. Bestplaces.net also compiles other location data including cost of living, crime, schools, and other metrics to help people decide where to live. Of the 50 largest metros in the US, the top 10 safest places to avoid natural disasters include: 1 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA 2 Salt Lake City, UT 3 SacramentoRosevilleArden-Arcade, CA 4 San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA 5 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA 6 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA 7 Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI 8 Richmond, VA 9 Providence-Warwick, RI-MA 10 Columbus, OH And the top 10 riskiest places for natural disasters are: 1 Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL 2 Austin-Round Rock, TX 3 Oklahoma City, OK 4 Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX 5 Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 6 Birmingham-Hoover, AL 7 Memphis, TN-MS-AR 8 Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 9 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ 10 New Orleans-Metairie, LA Topics California Catastrophe Natural Disasters USA Hurricane Earthquake American International Group Inc. on Thursday sued Walt Disney Co. to avoid having to reimburse the parent of ABC News for part of a settlement of a meat producers defamation lawsuit over a product that critics call pink slime. In a complaint filed in a New York state court in Manhattan, AIG Specialty Insurance Co. urged a judge to reject Disneys $25 million reimbursement demand, related to its larger June 28 settlement with Beef Products Inc. (BPI), under an insurance policy that excluded coverage for claims alleging malice. Thursdays lawsuit stemmed from BPIs lawsuit against ABC and reporter Jim Avila over reports in March and April 2012. According to the privately held South Dakota company, these reports falsely implied that BPIs lean, finely textured beef was not safe, nutritious or even meat. AIG said in its lawsuit that Disneys policy covered some defamation claims, but only if the company had first found an outside lawyer to say the statements it planned to broadcast were acceptable. The New York-based insurer accused Disney of trying to create coverage where none exists. AIG filed its lawsuit nine days after Burbank, California-based Disney sued the insurer in Los Angeles federal court, seeking to send the dispute into arbitration. Lawyers for Disney in the Los Angeles case did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment. ABC and BPI did not disclose terms of their settlement, which ended a jury trial. But in an Aug. 8 regulatory filing, Disney said it had incurred $177 million of costs, in addition to what insurance covered, to settle litigation during the second quarter. Several media reports have said the BPI settlement was for a larger amount. BPI had said ABCs reports forced it to close plants and lay off several hundred workers. It had sought $1.9 billion of damages, which could have been tripled to $5.7 billion under a South Dakota food products disparagement law. The New York case is AIG Specialty Insurance Co. v. American Broadcasting Companies Inc. et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 656581/2017. The Los Angeles case is Walt Disney Co. v. AIG Specialty Insurance Co., U.S. District Court, Central District of California, No. 17-07598. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Richard Chang) Topics Lawsuits Carriers New York U.S. health insurer Aetna Inc failed to provide any hints on reported merger talks with CVS Health Corp when discussing quarterly results on Tuesday and laid out obstacles to 2018 earnings growth, sending its shares lower. The company reported a better-than-expected third-quarter profit despite a decline in revenue related to a scaling back of its Obamacare individual insurance business, which Aetna expects to lose about $200 million on this year. Aetna said it expects member medical spending to stay low this year, a trend that has benefited the health insurers and dragged down hospital revenues, and that the moderated spending would likely continue into 2018. The No. 3 U.S. health insurer did not provide a 2018 revenue or profit forecast, but executives said on a conference call with analysts that 2018 earnings growth would be hindered by a reinstated industry-wide 3 percent health insurance tax, which represents a hit of 25 cents per share. Aetna shares were down about 0.5 percent in afternoon trading [on Oct. 31]. Evercore ISI analyst Michael Newshel called out the comments about 2018 in a research note, saying that Aetna will be better positioned to return to its long-term revenue growth target of mid- to high-single digits in 2019. The commentary suggested that upside is limited for 2018 earnings based on the current consensus, which is for earnings of $10.14 per share, Leerink analyst Ana Gupte said. Aetna Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini started the call by declining to comment on rumor or speculation, referencing last weeks reports that pharmacy CVS Health offered to buy Aetna for more than $200 per share, or more than $66 billion. CVS currently has a contract to manage much of Aetnas drug benefits. Bertolini said that the company would make a decision about the contract internally by the end of this year, and a public decision by mid-2018. Aetna rival Anthem Inc recently announced it would stop using drug benefit manager Express Scripts Holdings and manage more in house and through CVS. Executive Order Aetna has mostly pulled out of the individual markets under Obamacare for 2018 because of instability, with enrollment below expectations and premiums soaring. In 2017, it said it still expects to lose money on the business. Bertolini said the company would consider reentering the individual market when it stabilized. Bertolini said Aetna is considering relaunching short-term, one-year transition insurance plans for individuals, in line with U.S. President Donald Trumps executive order of earlier this month. Such plans are restricted to three months under former President Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.. Republicans want to roll back Obamacare, which established key benefits that almost all individual insurance plans must offer and set up an online market where more than 10 million people buy their insurance. Current transition plans do not provide these benefits. Net Income Up The company said net income rose 39 percent to $838 million. Revenue dipped 5 percent to about $15 billion, partly due to Aetnas reduced presence in the Obamacare business. The insurer said its medical benefit ratio, the percent of premiums spent on claims, fell to 81.4 percent in its commercial business from 83.8 percent a year earlier. It said that it expects its overall medical costs to rise 5.5 percent in 2017. Excluding items, Aetna earned $2.45 per share, beating analysts average estimate of $2.09, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Aetna said it now expects adjusted earnings for 2017 to be about $9.75, up from its previous estimate of $9.45 to $9.55 per share. (Additional reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) Related: Topics Mergers & Acquisitions USA Trends Profit Loss QBE North America, an operating division of QBE Insurance Group Ltd., announced a strategic program underwriting alliance with managing general agent Professional Risk Facilities (PRF), designed to offer coverage for miscellaneous errors & omissions (E&O) cover, media liability, tech E&O and cyber. This coverage will be written on an admitted basis through QBE North Americas A.M. Best A rated insurance companies. The arrangement was brokered by Stamford, Conn.-based TigerRisk Partners. The parent company of PRF is ARC Excess & Surplus (ARC), a wholesale broker that was established 30 years ago to meet the needs of small- to medium-sized businesses seeking management & professional liability insurance solutions. The new program will run in parallel with QBEs existing commercial E&O offering, and is written on an admitted basis nationwide. It will be accessible from a specialized network of wholesale distribution partners, and will generate a maximum revenue of $5 million. QBEs internal Commercial E&O team will handle accounts with revenue over $5 million, along with complex accounts generating less than $5 million in revenue and/or falling outside of PRFs class-of-business authority, the company explained. Were excited to announce our alliance with PRF to offer a suite of commercial E&O products to the marketplace, said Erin Fry, senior vice president, Specialty Programs, QBE North America. QBE is a globally strong, integrated specialist insurer. Our partnership provides us with a new opportunity to offer errors & omissions coverage to the industry. We look forward to serving the liability needs of this market, affirmed Stephen Cavallaro, manager of PRF. Source: QBE Topics Insurance Wholesale Specialty insurance broker AmWINS Group reported that it has completed the previously-announced acquisition of 15 insurance programs from Willis Towers Watson. Terms were not disclosed. The programs, product expertise and underwriting talent that we are acquiring from Willis Programs will expand and diversify our underwriting division and support our long-term growth strategy to provide niche programs for our retail clients, said M. Steven DeCarlo, CEO of AmWINS, when the deal was announced last month. The programs will become part of AmWINS Program Underwriters (APU), a managing general agency specializing in affinity and program management that currently underwrites 20 programs with more than $150 million of premium and has locations in Camp Hill, Penn; Charlotte, N.C.: Dallas, Tex.; and Farmington, Conn. The 15 acquired programs have a team of more than 115 employees with offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Burlington, Vermont; Tampa, Florida; Detroit, Michigan; Denver, Colorado; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Hartford, Connecticut. Among the people from Willis Programs who will be joining AmWINS are Debbie Stanley, chief operating officer; Jim Kelley, underwriting officer; Dan Curran, underwriting officer; Bo Adams, MountainGuard program manager; and Tim Hendrickson, MountainGuard program manager. AmWINS said decisions on offices for the combined program business would be made after the acquisition closes. The complete list of the 15 programs that are part of the transaction is as follows: MountainGuard: for ski resort operations in the U.S. and Canada. DealerGuard: for franchised auto, truck, and RV dealers as well as large independent auto dealers. RecycleGuard: for businesses with primary operations in recycling or document destruction. ResortGuard: for businesses engaged in the operation of destination resorts, master planned communities and large scale recreational planned communities. Health Care: for medical facilities, medical equipment providers, and home health/hospice providers. WorkCompGuard: offers brokers a wide variety of workers compensation programs designed around specific classes of business and client size. FeedLot & Dairy: for farms with cows producing milk for bulk sales and cattle feeding operations. CAR-PAC: for franchised auto, truck and RV dealers. PizzaGuard: for pizza delivery restaurants. Rent-ItGuard: for the equipment rental industry. MAPP: for metalworking and plastics manufacturers. Lawyers Regional: provides lawyers professional liability to law firms. UtilitySure: for the natural gas distribution industry. WellGuard: for the groundwater industry. WorkTruckGuard: for the trailer manufacturing and truck aftermarket industry. The sale will still leave Willis Towers Watson with some program business. Willis Towers Watson continues to manage a handful of select insurance programs and we will be transitioning these businesses to a new underwriting platform, the company told Insurance Journal. AmWINS has more than 4,300 employees in 12 countries and handles more than $14 billion in annual premium placements. Related: Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Auto Underwriting Willis Towers Watson In laying out the interim committee charges for the next legislative session, which will begin in January 2019, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus focused on Hurricane Harveys impact on the state. Almost every House committee received at least one charge related to the states recovery from Hurricane Harvey, according to an announcement released by Straus on Oct. 23. Committees are to study the issues assigned to them and report their findings to the House before the next session begins. This is an opportunity for the Legislature to better understand the impact of the storm, to evaluate the response of state agencies and to prepare for future disasters, Straus said in announcing the interim charges. Hurricane Harvey will impact just about every major issue in the next legislative session, and the House should be fully prepared for that moment. In total, Straus issued more than 230 interim charges. Those that may affect the property/casualty insurance industry in the state include: House Committee on Insurance Examine the effect of Hurricane Harvey on the insurance market in Texas. Include an evaluation of the status of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and Texas FAIR Plan Association, and of the impact of Harvey on the ability of these residual markets to achieve their statutory goals and meet the needs of their policyholders. Examine possible gaps and vulnerabilities in insurance coverage brought to light by Harvey and recommend ways to address these issues. Study the coverage provided by the most common homeowners insurance policy forms in Texas, and methods to provide more clarity to Texas consumers about this coverage and the possible need for endorsements or other types of insurance. Study the use of appraisal processes under property insurance policies in Texas, including the effects of court decisions on the use of these processes and the impact of their use on insurers and policyholders. Examine the impacts of changes in prescription drug coverage and drug formularies on patients, particularly those with chronic conditions. Evaluate recent efforts in Texas and in other states to enhance transparency regarding the practices of pharmacy benefit managers. Review Texas financial responsibility laws for automobile insurance, including the minimum liability limits required by state law. House Committee on Business & Industry Evaluate the adequacy of the workforce currently available to the industries responsible for rebuilding the states key infrastructure as well as residential and commercial properties damaged by Hurricane Harvey. Specifically, examine the labor needs within the construction industry and skilled trades and determine if local or state licensing requirements and regulations are an unnecessary barrier to the ongoing success of post-Harvey recovery. Review all existing law concerning consumer rights and protections, including but not limited to statutes that address deceptive practices, landlord/tenant agreements, and homeowner/contractor disputes. Determine whether the provisions offer adequate guidance and protections in disaster and recovery situations. Review the increased use of third party data gathering, particularly individual background information and history, by Texas employers and businesses. Examine the standards for accessing, providing, and updating accurate background information used for employment purposes. Study the impact of data breaches or theft on Texas consumers and businesses. In particular, study the consequences of recent data breaches and subsequent mitigation efforts. Review the existing standards of risk as well as the current best practices in securing sensitive and personal information held or used by private industries. Determine if existing rules and regulations offer adequate consumer protection while allowing continued economic success for businesses in the state. Monitor the status of the Texas workers compensation system, including existing policies on compounded pharmaceuticals and designated doctor assessments. Review recent trends in employer participation in the system. Source: Texas House of Representatives Topics Texas Hurricane Several rural hospitals have filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oklahoma, alleging the insurance company plans to slash provider reimbursement rates. The lawsuit alleges that the four hospitals met with the insurance provider on Oct. 3 to discuss their contracts, but that the company ignored follow up messages. One hospital alleges the companys proposed reimbursement rates would be cut by 30 percent for all services except those delivered in an emergency room, The Oklahoman reported. BCBS, which holds the greatest share of Oklahomas insurance market, has not publicly confirmed the rate proposals. The company declined to comment on the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the hospitals in Prague, Fairfax, Haskell and Drumright. It alleges that, BCBS, through its actions and behavior, is attempting to drive critical access hospitals out of business in favor of driving business to large metropolitan hospitals and related services. Randy Simmons, CEO of Prague Community Hospital, said the proposed rates wouldnt allow his hospital to continue serving BCBS patients. The four hospitals successfully sought a temporary restraining order that prevented their contracts from expiring Sunday. A hearing in the case is scheduled later this week. We want to make sure all the parties comply with the provider agreement, and these hospitals get a fair opportunity to enter into negotiations with BCBS as set forth in the agreement, said Peter Brolick, attorney for the hospitals. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Oklahoma Stephens Insurance LLC, an affiliate of Stephens Inc., has hired industry veterans Leigh Ellis and Will Ogilvie in its Houston office. Ellis joins Stephens as a senior vice president in the commercial property/casualty practice with expertise in advising large commercial accounts. Ellis will develop Stephens Insurances Houston book of business in property/casualty and establish a personal lines market for Stephens in the region. Prior to joining Stephens, Ellis spent seven years at Marsh & McLennan Agency and began his career working for American General Fire and Casualty Co. Ogilvie will serve as vice president of the life/health benefits practice of Stephens Insurance in Houston. In this role, he will work with business leaders to identify opportunities to improve employee benefit programs and administrative services, and tailor customized solutions for each clients business goals. With 16-years of experience in the insurance industry, Mr. Ogilvie joins Stephens from Ascende, an EPIC Company. He also previously worked for DirectPath LLC and RS Investments. Stephens Insurance is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, and has more than 170 associates throughout a network of offices in Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Dallas, Austin, Jackson, Houston and Birmingham. Source: Stephens Inc. Topics Property Casualty Property Casualty Louisianas attorney general is trying to take control of a lawsuit filed by Gov. John Bel Edwards administration accusing pharmaceutical companies of worsening opioid abuse in the state. The Advocate reports that Attorney General Jeff Landry wants to expand the lawsuit. He also wants to hire Mike Moore, the former Mississippi attorney general who shepherded a national action against tobacco manufacturers in 1990s that settled for billions of dollars. Landrys office filed a document Monday evening asking the Baton Rouge-based state district court to allow the attorney general to supersede the Louisiana Department of Health. The health departments lawsuit, filed Sept. 27 in Baton Rouge against more than a dozen pharmaceutical firms, accuses the companies of an orchestrated campaign to flood Louisiana with highly-addictive opioids to boost their profits. The lawsuit seeks damages for payments made through the Medicaid program for what it describes as excessive opioid prescriptions and for treatment costs tied to opioid abuse. Landrys office says the issue is larger than its impact on the Medicaid program and the lawsuit should include broader allegations, such as increased costs to the states criminal justice and education systems, the impact on social services and the loss of workforce productivity. Chief Deputy Attorney General Bill Stiles estimates opioid-related costs to the state at about $160 million annually. The subject of the suit, the opioid crisis in Louisiana, is a matter of state interest which has far-reaching effects beyond the burdens placed on our healthcare resources, Landrys office wrote in the court filing. Edwards, a Democrat, and Landry, a Republican, have repeatedly clashed since taking office in 2016. Landry is seen as a possible challenger to Edwards in the 2019 election. The attorney generals office says it was unaware of the lawsuit until the Edwards administration filed it, clashing with efforts underway by Landry for similar litigation. The attorney general had asked Moore to help Louisiana put together litigation against the drug manufacturers and distributors like Moore had done in Mississippi and Ohio. Attorneys general in eight other states have filed lawsuits raising similar legal issues. Im hopeful we dont get into a technical fight about who has the authority to bring a case, Moore said. Its tough enough going after these big industries without having a sideshow in your own state. Edwards executive counsel Matthew Block said he and the attorney generals office had been in discussions before Landrys latest court filing about the attorney general helping out with the administrations lawsuit and bringing on Moore as an adviser. The governor wants to collaborate on the lawsuit, Block said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Louisiana Arkansas opened a 45-day comment period Monday on whether highway officials should let motorists drive at higher speeds and within minutes had elicited confessions from drivers who wrote that, while they themselves speed, other drivers are going even faster. Legislators this year approved raising interstate highway speeds to 75 mph and said motorists on other highways should be allowed to go faster, too, if engineering studies show it can be done safely. The Arkansas Department of Transportation had said previously it appeared higher speed limits would be appropriate, but has now posted its ideas online and will take public comment through Dec. 13. With the speed limit being 60 I have people passing me when Im driving about 64, looking like theyre driving about 80, a motorist from Hoxie wrote. If you raise the speed limit, people are going to think they need to drive 90 or faster. Please dont raise it. Highway department spokesman Danny Straessle said motorists who note in their remarks that they exceed the speed limit wont be prosecuted for their comments: I think they have to be observed by law enforcement for that to happen. Eleven other states have raised their speed limits to 75 mph, while neighboring Texas and six other states have limits at 80 mph and up. Straessle said those 18 states generally have long stretches of straight, flat roads through unpopulated areas. Much of Arkansas is hilly, with plenty of truck traffic. More than half of the 40,000 vehicles that travel daily between Little Rock and Memphis, Tennessee, are 18-wheelers. If the limit is raised to 75, they will be going 85-90. Im on the interstate 3-4 times a week and it feelis like Im in a NASCAR RACE, another motorist wrote. Straessle said a highway department study showed that 85 percent of the states drivers travel at 71 mph or less in 70 mph zones. Traffic engineers recommend that speed limits be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed, according to the state agency. If the state Highway Commission approves all elements of the plan, limits on urban interstates and rural multi-lane highways would climb to 65 mph in places, while other rural highways could see 60 mph limits. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Arkansas Authorities say a Florida woman had her SUV driven into Grand Lagoon and then pretended the vehicle had been stolen. The News Herald of Panama City reported Saturday that 65-year-old Debra Jenkins was charged with insurance fraud. She was arrested after a man spotted a submerged SUV in the waters. The Bay County Sheriffs Office said in a report that a stick was found inside the vehicle on the drivers floorboard to possibly hold the gas pedal. Jenkins initially told authorities that the SUV had been stolen the night before. According to an arrest report, Jenkins later told police that she and a friend had devised the plan to get rid of the vehicle and claim the insurance money. Its unclear if she has a lawyer. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Florida General Motors has agreed to a $13.9 million settlement with Orange County, Calif., after prosecutors accused the auto giant of concealing serious safety defects to avoid costly recalls and part replacements. The lawsuit, filed in 2014, accused GM of deceptive business practices and unfair competition. It alleged the automaker marketed its brand as safe and reliable while failing to disclose defects including power steering, air bag and brake problems. As a result of the failures, at least 124 people died and 275 were injured, according to the Orange County Register . Earlier this month, GM agreed to pay $120 million to resolve claims from 49 states and the District of Columbia over faulty ignition switches. The California Attorney Generals Office received $7 million in the settlement. In a Friday statement obtained by the Register, the company said: GM has reached a constructive settlement with Orange County, Calif. to resolve claims filed by the Orange County district attorney regarding the companys advertising of vehicles that were subject to certain recalls in 2014, including the ignition-switch recall. Prosecutors said GM trained its staff to never use the words defect or stall and routinely chose the cheapest part supplier without regard for safety. The lawsuit said the company also discouraged employees from addressing safety issues, according to the newspaper. Over five months in 2014, GM was forced to recall 17 million vehicles in 33 recalls for various defects, officials said. Since 2014, GM has taken important steps to help ensure the safety of its vehicles, including a new organizational structure dedicated to global vehicle safety and a robust Speak Up for Safety program, the companys statement added. The settlement in Orange County was approved by a judge last week. We must protect our consumers from businesses that put profits over people by keeping cars on roads safe and avoiding preventable accidents, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. We must also encourage all businesses to be fair and live up to safety standards, and must not allow those engaging in unfair practices to punish those businesses that dont cut corners by compromising safety. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits California Farmers Insurance has filed a lawsuit in California against a pair of former employees and the Automobile Club of Michigan alleging the theft of trade secrets. The suit alleges violations of the California Trade Secrets Act, unfair competition, breach of fiduciary duty and other charges. It seeks damages to be named at a trial, a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction preventing the defendants from using Farmers trade secrets. The suit filed on Monday in Los Angeles County superior court alleges that Venkatesh Kamath, former director of personal lines auto IT for Farmers, left the L.A.-based carrier and took trade secrets with him to Auto Club Michigan. It also accuses Shohreh Abedi, a former chief information officer of Farmers, of recruiting Kamath to get that information to use at Auto Club Michigan. Both now reportedly hold executive titles with Auto Club Michigan. Spokespersons for Auto Club Michigan did not immediately return requests for comment for this story. The attorneys that filed the suit on behalf of Farmers wouldnt comment, nor would Farmers spokespersons. According to the suit, Farmers in 2015 began undergoing an update of its claims handling and policy servicing systems using Guidewire Software when Kamath gained access to highly sensitive and confidential information pertaining to the Guidewire roll out plan and Farmers business operations. Abedi oversaw the initial phases of the Guidewire project for Farmers and then left for Auto Club Michigan, eventually recruiting Kamath, the suit alleges. Abedi, who is now at the helm of Auto Clubs transition to Guidewire, was involved in selecting Guidewire for the Farmers transition, according to the suit. Abedi was Kamaths superior and acquaintance, the suit states. Farmers is informed and believes, and thereon alleges, that Abedi has persistently recruited Farmers employees and contractors since her departure from (Farmers) and that several Farmers employees and/or contractors have joined the Auto Club as a result of these efforts, the suit states. The suit alleges that days before starting a job with Auto Club, Kamath copied more than 6,400 files from his Farmers computer to a storage device. While some of the items were personal in nature, a substantial portion of the materials were not, including trade secret information relating to the Guidewire project and Farmers core insurance business, the suit states. The suit alleges that the copied files go to the core of the Guidewire project and reveal how Farmers is customizing and utilizing the Guidewire software to fit its particular needs and objectives. Farmers is alleging that Abedi and the Auto Club intentionally recruited Kamath to obtain know-how and customization in implementing the Guidewire technology, and to obtain Farmers confidential trade secrets and proprietary information relating to its Guidewire project. Farmers is further informed and believes, and thereon alleges, that Kamath secured employment from the Auto Club based upon the representation (and Abedis knowledge) that he had access to Fanners IT files and confidential information relating to the Guidewire PolicyCenter project and other confidential, proprietary information, and that such information could be utilized to benefit the Auto Club, a competitor of Farmers, the suit states. The suit is Famers Insurance Exchange and Farmers Group Inc. V. Venkatesh Kamath; Shohreh Abedi; The Auto Club Group; Automobile Club of Michigan Dba AAA Michigan. Topics Lawsuits California Auto Michigan Agribusiness Googles self-driving car spin-off is accelerating efforts to convince the public that its technology is almost ready to safely transport people without any human assistance at all. Waymo, hatched from a Google project started eight years ago, showed off its progress this week during a rare peek at a closely guarded testing facility located 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. Thats where its robots complete their equivalent of drivers education. The tour included giving more than three dozen reporters rides in Chrysler Pacifica minivans traveling through faux neighborhoods and expressways that Waymo has built on a former Air Force base located in the Californian Central Valley city of Atwater. The minivans smoothly cruised the roads, drivers seat empty and passengers in the back, at speeds of up to 35 mph. By contrast, the Waymo-powered minivans that have been driving volunteer riders in the Phoenix area still use safety drivers to take over control if something goes wrong. But Waymos real goal is to get to the point where people in cars are nothing but passengers. Waymo CEO John Krafcik told reporters that the company will be making some cars and freight trucks totally driverless fairly soon, though he didnt provide a specific timetable. We are really close, he said. We are going to do it when we feel like we are ready. Since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009, dozens of established automakers such as General Motors and Ford Motors have entered the race, along with other big technology companies, including Apple and ride-hailing service Uber. The competition is so fierce and the stakes so high that Waymo is currently suing Uber , alleging that one of its former managers stole its trade secrets and took them with him when he joined Uber in 2016 as part of an elaborate scheme. The trial in that high-profile case is scheduled to begin in early December. Waymo is hoping to infuse its technology into ride-hailing services such as its current partner, Lyft, and big-rig trucking companies. It also intends to license its automated system to automakers such as Fiat Chrysler Automobile, which is already using it in 100 Pacifica minivans. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics California Google A California lawmaker said he plans to introduce a bill that would require workers compensation for police officers injured while responding to crimes committed out of state. The proposal by Assemblyman Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, is in response to off-duty officers who responded to the Las Vegas shooting being denied workers comp, the Orange County Register is reporting. More than 200 California police officers were attending a country music show on Oct. 1 when Stephen Paddock fired into the festival crowd, killing 58 people and wounding more than 500, the Register reported in an article this week. Many of those officers reportedly helped people to safety, performed CPR and assisted local authorities, while some California officers were shot while responding, according to the article. Related: Topics California Legislation Dallas, TX, November 2, 2017 Michelle Frymire has joined U.S. Risk, LLC as Chief Financial Officer. Frymire will be responsible for Finance, M&A and Development, and Human Resources. Frymire brings to U.S. Risk more than 25 years of experience in the finance industry. She spent 14 years in the airline industry with both American Airlines and Continental before becoming Vice President of Finance at Delta Air Lines. Frymire then served as Chief Financial Officer of Starwood Vacation Ownership in Orlando, Florida for five years, before accepting the CFO role for TruGreen Lawncare at The ServiceMaster Companies. Frymire later served as VP of Financial Planning & Analysis at ServiceMaster, where she played a key role in ServiceMasters successful IPO in 2014. Most recently, Michelle served as CFO for Service King Collision Repair, a Blackstone portfolio company, where she oversaw significant growth in the business and the development of the Finance, M&A, Development, and Procurement functions. I am pleased to be joining U.S. Risk at this exciting time in the companys growth, said Frymire. I look forward to working with the entire U.S. Risk management team worldwide to continue the success of the company. Randall Goss, CEO of U.S. Risk, said, Michelle is the ultimate professional with a broad-based financial background. Her immense talent will be fully utilized as a key member of the U.S. Risk management team. In addition to Michelles overall financial responsibilities, she will play a leadership role in driving U.S. Risks continued rapid growth through the implementation of both organic and acquisition strategies. We are very happy to have her as a part of our team. Frymire holds a degree in Economics from Austin College and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. About U.S. Risk Insurance Group, LLC U.S. Risk Insurance Group, LLC (www.usrisk.com) is a leading international specialty lines underwriting manager and wholesale broker headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Operating 16 domestic and international branches, it offers a broad range of products and services through its affiliate companies, which include U.S. Risk Underwriters, U.S. Risk Brokers, U.S. Risk Solutions, U.S. Risk Financial Services, Oxford Insurance Brokers, Ltd. (UK), James Hampden International Insurance Brokers Ltd. (UK), Antarah FZE (UAE), and UNIS Insurance A.G. (Zurich). Media Contact Randall Goss Chairman and CEO U.S. Risk Insurance Group, LLC randall@usrisk.com 800.232.5830 Topics USA Burma Bangladesh Rejects Accusation of Delaying Rohingya Repatriation Rohingya gathered on the shore of Bay of Bengal on the Myanmar side in early October before fleeing to Bangladesh. / Min Aung Khaing / The Irrawaddy YANGON In response to Myanmars accusation that Bangladesh was delaying the Rohingya refugee repatriation process in order to get international aid money, a Bangladesh representation said the director-general of Myanmars State Counselor Office was ill-informed of the process. More than 600,000 Muslims have fled northern Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Rohingya militant attacks on police outposts triggered military clearance operations in the region. Myanmar has been preparing for the repatriation of those who fled the country, and discussions with the Bangladeshi government are underway. Last month, both sides agreed to cooperate to restore stability in restive Rakhine State but failed to reach an agreement over the repatriation of refugees. On Tuesday, U Zaw Htay, the director-general of the State Counselor Office, told media that Myanmar was ready to begin the repatriation process any time, based on the criteria of the 1993 agreement with Bangladesh that covered the return of Rohingya refugee to Myanmar. We are ready to start but the other side hasnt agreed yet, and the process has been delayed, he said, before linking the delay to hundreds of million dollars raised so far by the international community to help build refugee camps for the Rohingya on the Bangladeshi side. Currently they have got US$400 million. Over their receiving of this amount, we are now afraid of delays to the program of deporting the refugees, he told media on Tuesday. They have got international subsidies. We are now afraid they would have another consideration as to repatriation, he said. Md. Reyad Hossain, the First Secretary of the Bangladeshi Embassy in Yangon, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that it appears that U Zaw Htay is ill informed of the process. He explained that Bangladesh handed over a revised paper on the repatriation to the Minister for the State Counsellor Office U Kyaw Tint Swe in Dhaka on 2 October. Myanmar responded on 20 October to the draft, which Bangladesh is now examining, he said. In a meeting in Naypyitaw on Oct. 24, the countries home ministers agreed that an arrangement to bring back the Rohingya to Myanmar would be finalized within the next few weeks, which would lead to a Joint Working Group preparing the Term of Reference (TOR) for taking back the refugees. Hence, the process of consultation is on and it is wrong to blame any side at this stage, said Md. Reyad Hossain. Bangladesh had to seek international monetary assistance to meet the formidable humanitarian challenge created due to Myanmars action in the Rakhine State, said the first secretary. He said Myanmar could expect this kind of monetary support and much more from the international community if it agreed to resettle and integrate the Rohingya into Myanmar society. This, however, depends upon Myanmars sincerity to find durable and inclusive solutions, said the first secretary. Burma DASSK Visits Northern Rakhine in Unprecedented Trip Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at Sittwe Airport before boarding a military helicopter for her first trip to northern Rakhine State on Thursday. / Min Aung Khaing / The Irrawaddy SITTWE, Rakhine State Myanmar State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi flew to conflict-torn northern Rakhine State for the first time since Muslim militant attacks on police outposts in August triggered a brutal military crackdown that has seen an exodus of more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh. The Irrawaddy witnessed her speaking to local young people at state capital Sittwe Airport in the morning before embarking on a flight to northern Rakhine, where she will visit Maungdaw Townshipthe focus of much of the recent violence. It will be her first official visit to northern Rakhine. The State Counselors Office director-general U Zaw Htay told The Irrawaddy the leader is on a one-day visit to the area, adding that more details of the trip would be published soon. The State Counselor arrived in Sittwe around 8 a.m., and met with about 12 young people at the airport. She was accompanied by businesspeople Zaw Zaw of Max Myanmar Group, Nang Lang Kham of KBZ Bank, and Pyae Phyo Tayza of Htoo Group of Companies, who all made lavish donations for her development program named the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine. The governments humanitarian assistance plans for northern Rakhine were discussed during her 30-minute-long meeting with young Arakanese and Arakanese sub-ethnicities Mro, Khami and Diagnet. After the meeting, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi headed to Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships, where the stateless Rohingya have fled their homes and crossed into Bangladesh since the Aug. 25 attacks. Locals of Sittwe and Maungdaw told The Irrawaddy they were not told of her visit in advance, and saw large security forces deployed in their areas. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is likely to meet Arakanese and Rohingya Muslims during her visit, according to locals. The State Counselor last visited Rakhine State during the 2015 election campaign. The Irrawaddys Htet Naing Zaw contributed to this report from Naypyitaw. Burma Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Meets Arakanese and Rohingya on Rakhine Trip Daw Aung San Suu Kyi leaves Sittwe on Thursday afternoon on the completion of her day-trip visit to Maungdaw. / Min Aung Khine / The Irrawaddy YANGON Myanmars State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met both Arakanese and Rohingya communities during her first trip to troubled northern Rakhine State, the scene of Muslim militant attacks and military clearance operations since August. On an unannounced trip to the region, the State Counselor visited four areas in Maungdaw Township, according to Rakhine State chief minister U Nyi Pu. Most of the militant attacks on police outposts were focused in the township on Aug. 25. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims from Maungdaw and the surrounding towns and villages fled to Bangladesh since the attacks, bringing testimonies of indiscriminate killing, rape and arson by security forces and local Arakanese. At least 30,000 Arakanese and Hindus were internally displaced by the violence. Several Maungdaw residents told The Irrawaddy that her motorcade drove around downtown and the market area but did not hold any meetings with local people. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi then met villagers at Pan Taw Pyin village in southern Maungdaw later in the morning, according to locals. She told villagers through an interpreter that she was there to see progress of village resettlement plans. Most of the homes were torched during the clearance operation, according to the village administrator U Annawar. Human Rights Watch estimated 288 Rohingya villages have been destroyed since Aug. 25, according to satellite data. U Annawar quoted the State Counselor as saying to dozens of Muslim villagers who gathered to see her: Please tell me frankly what you need. We all have to try out for a peaceful living. I want your children to have a good education for their better future. If you have any difficulties, please let me know. The villagers replied they had no questions to ask her, added U Annawar. The leader also visited Khone Taing village, an ethnic Mro settlement where militants killed six Mro and burned down some 40 homes on Aug. 28, according to the village administrator. U Maung Hla, Khone Taing village administrator, told The Irrawaddy that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and union ministers arrived in two helicopters. She asked me about the situation of the village resettlement process and the elderly also talked about the difficulties of their daily lives. About 100 residents came to see Suu Kyi but most of them could not speak well in Burmese. Suu Kyi had a brief separate meeting with Mro women, he said. The rest of the villagers are so happy to see her, said U Maung Hla. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Taungpyo sub-town in northern Maungdaw in the afternoon but there was no meeting with residents or administrative officials, according to a General Administration Department official. Joined by several union ministers and businesspeople, the State Counselor walked along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border bridge and visited the police headquarters in Kyeekan Pyin, which was attacked by Muslim militants in October last year. Muslim administrative official Kyaw Than of Ah Nauk Pyin village in Rathedaung Township said residents had heard about the State Counselors visit on Thursday but it was unclear whether she would come to Kyaw Than during the one-day trip. We would like to see Mother Suu and the entire village is so excited to meet her for the first time, said U Kyaw Than. He would ask Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for freedom of movement and citizenship cards if she visited, he said, adding that his village had received rice and other commodities donated by the Turkish government after diplomats toured the region last month. The Irrawaddys reporter Min Aung Khine contributes to this report from Sittwe, Rakhine State. Burma Religious Affairs Minister Assures Arakanese Buddhists Over Rohingya Repatriation Religious Affairs and Culture Minister Thura U Aung Ko meets Arakanese Buddhist monks in Sittwe on Oct. 31, 2017. / Min Aung Khine / The Irrawaddy SITTWE, Rakhine State Union Minister for Religious Affairs and Culture Thura U Aung Ko told Arakanese Buddhist monks not to worry about the repatriation process of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh during a meeting in Rakhine State capital Sittwe on Tuesday. The minister visited the abbots of Pathein and Dhamma Thukha monasteriesboth based in Sittweand said Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would keep the interests of the country and people at the forefront despite international pressure to repatriate the refugees. More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims fled military clearance operations marred by allegations of extrajudicial killings, rape and arson that the UN described as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. The operations followed Muslim militant attacks on police outposts in northern Rakhine on Aug. 25. U Aung Ko assured the abbots the government would accept only those refugees holding valid documents and who meet criteria listed in a 1993 agreement on repatriation between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been drawing up detailed plans to protect the interests of the country and ethnic Arakanese, he told the abbots. He said Myanmar would not open several centers to verify and take back Rohingya refugees as demanded by the Bangladeshi government, but would open only one center. The senior monks said ongoing measures from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are acceptable, but urged the minister to be as good as his words in handling the crisis. The abbots refused to accept Muslim refugees back in Rakhine State if the refugees demanded Rohingya ethnicity. Many people in Myanmar reject the term Rohingya and instead refer to the community as Bengalis. The abbots also suggested starting repatriation only after border fencing is complete. Human rights organizations and media have reported that since the Aug. 25 attacks roughly 604,000 people have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where they have joined more than 300,000 who fled previous outbursts of ethnic violence over the past three decades. With thousands of Rohingya crossing the border each day, the number is expected to pass 1 million Rohingya refugees altogether in Bangladesh. U Zaw Htay, director-general of State Counselor Office, has called the these figures impossible. The Myanmar Police Force chief asked the Bangladeshi home affairs minister during the latters visit to Myanmar last month to provide a list of Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps. But the Bangladeshi government has not replied yet, said U Zaw Htay. If we get that list, it will be easier for us to verify them. We have immigration documents to check if they have lived in Myanmar or not. So, it would be easier to check them against the documents if we get the list, said U Zaw Htay. According to the 1993 agreement, refugees must have lived in Myanmar, or if they were born in Bangladesh, one of their parents must have been born in Myanmar, and must want to return voluntarily. Following the meeting between the Myanmar and Bangladeshi home affairs ministers last month, Union minister for Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, U Thein Swe, said the two governments would amend some of the criteria in the 1993 agreement. Myanmars opposition party the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) then said it would take legal actions against any changes to the criteria it finds unacceptable to citizens. Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko. Last month, a particularly frightening Wi-Fi vulnerability became public. The vulnerability, which was discovered by two researchers at Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, is key reinstallation attacks (KRACK). The scary thing about KRACK is that it attacks the WPA2 security standard itself, not any particular device or system. Thus, large parts of the Wi-Fi landscape are at risk. There is good news in that KRACK, according to the experts, is not too difficult to fix. The question to consider now is whether this indeed is being done. The answer seems to be that the wireless sector indeed is taking KRACK seriously. It is also acting with haste, which has not always been the case. For instance, eWeek reported today that Apple has updated the iOS and macOS operating systems to address the problem. The story says that Mathy Venhoef, one of the researchers who discovered the vulnerability, has been working on the problem with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team/Coordination Center (CERT/CC) since late August. Many major players, such as Samsung, Intel and Microsoft, had patches in hand at the time KRACK was made public. Another example of a company reacting quickly to KRACK is Rockwell Automation. Threat Post reports that the company has patched its Stratix wireless access point. Indeed, most major vendors in the commercial and industrial controls sectors have addressed the problem. This piece dates Venhoefs communications with vendors even earlier. It says that his outreach on the problem began in July. Consumer-facing gear is also being updated. For instance, Droid Life points to an update to the Galaxy S and S8. There are other reports of companies doing what is necessary to combat KRACK. The bottom line is that the industry is reacting proactively and seems well on the way to blunting the threat. This is good news on the specific and general levels. Of course, the immediate goal of protecting users against a vulnerability in the standard is a major effort. On the higher level, the reaction is gratifying. It demonstrates that the channel through which information and, eventually, fixes flow is in better shape and is more responsive than it was a few years ago. Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk. New Zealands largest telco Spark is claiming a competitive edge as the first Internet service provider to secure Telecommunications as a Service (TaaS) certifications for three of its newest services. Spark says the certifications include two government networks (GNet) and a meeting room service that enables geographically dispersed teams to connect via high-quality video. TaaS enables government agencies to collaborate nationwide and deliver citizen-centric focused services in telecommunication and security, and every service solution undergoes revision by the New Zealand Information Security Manual to ensure secure and efficient service solutions are provided. Sparks client chief security information officer, Ian Hurst says he believes the recent accreditation has given Spark a competitive edge as the first certified provider to gain certification for Meeting Room Services and GNet joining its existing portfolio. In the eyes of our customers, this TaaS certification is a personal recommendation from an independent source. Being able to run a national network and Trans-Tasman services requires rigour and assurance oversight. Spark is constantly driving innovation without impacting the core capability or quality of our services. The awarding of certification by lead agency Department of Internal Affairs comes after Spark signed up its 100th TaaS customer earlier this year. Sparks general manager for South Island Sales, Richard Adams, says that Spark is committed to investing in leading-edge services so our customers, investors and clients, both business and private, have confidence in the level of services offered, which is constantly measured against the best standards. These TaaS certifications serve as recognition of Sparks investment to ensure our services are meeting the highest standards and making it easier for our customers to focus on what they do best. It also proves that we are offering the best customer experience. Before TaaS was established in 2015, Spark gained five other certificates including for Infrastructure as a Service and Desktop as a Service. IBM today announced its new IBM Cloud Private software platform, which it claims will help companies unlock billions of dollars in technology investment. IDC research indicates 83% of Australian organisations are already either evaluating, deploying or embracing enterprise private cloud architecture. IBM estimates the average growth for the private cloud market in Australia and New Zealand will be about 21%, over a four-year period to 2020. Yet, while a brand-new company today could be cloud-native on day one, the reality is enterprises have a lot of built-up legacies. There are core applications and data to consider, and the necessary infrastructure to support these. IBM says its new platform will assist Australian businesses on their cloud adoption journey, by allowing companies to extend cloud-native tools across public and private clouds, supporting such core data and applications, via containers, microservices and APIs. Innovation and adoption of public cloud services has been constrained by the challenge of transitioning complex enterprise systems and applications into a true cloud-native environment, said Arvind Krishna, senior vice-president for IBM Hybrid Cloud and director of IBM Research. IBM Cloud Private brings rapid application development and modernisation to existing IT infrastructure and positions it to be combined with the services and experience of a public cloud platform. The idea behind IBM Cloud Private software is that companies can create on-premises cloud capabilities similar to public clouds, accelerating app development. The new platform is built on the open source Kubernetes-based container architecture and supports both Docker containers and Cloud Foundry. This facilitates integration and portability of workloads as they evolve to any cloud environment, including the public IBM Cloud. IBM also announced new container-optimised versions of core enterprise software, such as IBM WebSphere Liberty, Db2 and MQ. This makes it easier to share data and evolve applications as needed across IBM Cloud private and public clouds and other cloud environments with a consistent experience. An airline, for example, could use IBM Cloud Private to bring a core application tracking frequent flyer miles into a private cloud environment and connect it to a new mobile app in the public cloud. A financial services firm could use it to keep customer data in-house as it works to meet its security and regulatory requirements while taking advantage of new analytic tools and machine learning in the public cloud to quickly identify investment trends and opportunities. Global car rental company, The Hertz Corporation, believes both public and private cloud is critical to achieving its technology objectives. Private cloud is a must for many enterprises such as ours working to reduce or eliminate their dependence on internal data centres, said Tyler Best, Hertz chief technology officer. A strategy consisting of public, private and hybrid cloud are essential for large enterprises to effectively make the transition from legacy systems to cloud. Hertz is an early adopter of both public and private IBM cloud and we could not accomplish our technology goals without private cloud as part of our overall cloud portfolio. To further encourage the adoption and progression of private cloud technology locally, IBM Cloud Garage Melbourne opened in the Melbourne CBD this week, offering developers access to DevOp microservices on the IBM Cloud Private platform. IBM Cloud Garages serve as a hub where developers, product managers and designers can come together to build on IBMs cloud platform, providing access to more than 150 APIs and services available. These include cognitive intelligence, IoT tools, blockchain and cloud data services. In Melbourne, the IBM Cloud Garage is co-located with the Melbourne Accelerator Program, an initiative designed to fund startups and foster greater collaboration, hosted by Melbourne Universitys Carlton Connect Initiative. It is one of nine IBM Cloud Garages around the world including New York, San Francisco, Austin, London, Toronto, Nice, Tokyo, and Singapore. Thousands of police officers in Victoria are being equipped with iPad minis and iPhones with a mobile app from the Motorola-owned app developer Gridstone. Victoria Police have now begun to deploy its new Motorola Solutions mobility service to 10,000 officers in a managed services contract worth $50 million. The contract is for a minimum of five years with the potential to extend to 11 years. The new mobility service is designed to increase situational awareness, safety and productivity on the front line for VicPol officers, and is initially being delivered to 59 transit police and Protective Services Officers in the outer-Melbourne area of Werribee. Motorola Solutions, which acquired Gridstone last year, says its complete, end-to-end managed service will enable Victoria Police members to focus on core policing activities rather than managing the technology. Motorola says the mobile app will give the police personnel a technological edge in their daily work to protect community safety. The deployment of the technology includes 24x7 monitoring and device management as well as device support, repair and replacement services and Motorola says the solution will ultimately help officers to save time by reducing manual administration tasks, freeing them up to spend more time policing in local communities. Motorola Solutions vice-president and managing director Steve Crutchfield said the service met the specific needs of Victoria Police and supported its plans for future innovation. Frontline officers will gain access to data when and where they need it most, helping them to manage their essential daily tasks with increased efficiency and safety, Crutchfield said. The mobile application delivers critical information to officers for improved decision-making. For example, it can alert officers about potentially dangerous suspects. Eventually, the application will free up officers time, enabling them to complete administrative tasks in the field instead of back at the station. According to Crutchfield the mobility service also lays a foundation for Victoria Police to add improved functionality and innovation over time. In todays world, emergency services are dealing with more complex threats and higher community expectations. Technology innovation can help to address these challenges and bring transformational benefits to public safety. Telstra has selected Australian-listed parking business Smart Parking as its preferred supplier of parking technology, allowing the telco to offer the parking companys technology to its "smart cities" customers. The agreement with Smart Parking (ASX:SPZ) is part of Telstras wider smart cities initiative and contracts have been signed for parking sensor installations in five Australian council regions. Telstra began the deployment of smart city Internet of Things technology starting with the city of Joondalup in Western Australia in May and the technology includes sensors that monitor temperature, humidity, pollution, light, vehicle activity and noise levels in a city in order to make it smarter. Telstra says it has chosen Smart Parking as its preferred supplier of sensors for the provision of real-time parking information to city residents and visitors and, to date, five contracts have already been signed with: City of Joondalup: 120 sensors installed. City of Casey: 904 sensors set for installation in November. Cairns Regional Council: 224 sensors set for installation in November/ December. City of Greater Geelong: 209 sensors set for installation in December. Broken Hill City Council: 105 sensors set for installation in December. Smart Parking has negotiated a special Purchase Order agreement with Telstra which sets the rates and conditions of contracts. This agreement will now allow Telstras Government and Smart City sales people to offer Smart Parkings solutions to all their customers across Australia. Smart Parking chief executive Paul Gillespie said, We are delighted to be working with Australias largest technology company. Joining forces with Telstra further validates the effectiveness our technology and accelerates the rollout of our cutting-edge parking solutions. While Smart Parkings management business continues to thrive, our technology division is growing fast and is becoming a major player in the burgeoning Internet of Things and smart city space. Smart Parking announced in August that it had has secured a new contract valued at approximately $800,000 with Hobart City Council in Tasmania. Under the contract, Smart Parking is partnering with Australian Parking and Revenue Control in Hobart and providing 2100 sensors that give motorists real-time data on available parking spaces. Hobarts meters are the first in the country to accept payment by ApplePay. Signing of the Hobart contract coincided with Smart Parkings announcement of its continued expansion in New Zealand with a contract extension at Hamilton City Council. Adyen says it is "the payments platform choice for the world's leading companies", with this platform choosing to add eftpos, giving merchants and their customers more payment choices. eftpos today announced Adyen "had completed its connection to the eftpos payments network and could now offer Australian merchants the ability to accept eftpos CHQ and SAV transactions at Point of Sale (POS)". eftpos acting chief executive Paul Jennings noted Adyen was "leveraging the eftpos Hubs payment processing and settlement capabilities to offer cost efficient, real time eftpos CHQ and SAV transactions to merchants and consumers at POS and, when available, it would also offer eftpos payments on digital channels". He said: Adyen provides a global payments solution and its important that eftpos CHQ and SAV transactions, as the most widely used debit network in this country, are now available to Adyens merchant customers in Australia." Now, if you think that Adyen joined as a member of eftpos recently, it actually did so back in 2015 "with a view to launching eftpos acquiring services and competing in the Australian market". It is now November 2017, so it has taken some time, but Michel van Aalten, Adyen country manager of Australia and New Zealand, said that as "a leader in unified commerce, Adyen was delighted to work with eftpos to offer merchants a full range of local cards for point of sale systems in Australia". Van Aalten added: The expanded partnership will enable Australian businesses to offer more payment options. By tapping on the same processing platform, fast-growing Australian merchants can also ensure customers enjoy a consistent experience globally." The eftpos system, famously known for asking consumers to press the CHQ or SAV buttons on payment terminals, "is the most widely used debit card system in Australia, accounting for around two billion CHQ and SAV transactions in 2017 worth $130 billion". Adyen states it "delivers frictionless payments across online, mobile, and in-store", serving "more than 4500 businesses, including 8 of the 10 largest US Internet companies" globally, including massively well known brands such as "Facebook, Uber, Netflix, Spotify, L'Oreal, MJ Bale, Freelancer, Kogan.com" and many others. "Findings from the SophosLabs 2018 Malware Forecast show that attacks on Mac, iOS, Android and Linux have increased over the last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we've seen Windows hit the hardest by malware, followed by an explosion in Android malware and continued efforts to infect Mac computers and iOS users. A trend that is only due to continue into 2018, as hackers seek to follow the users of most value, regardless of the systems they use," Sophos vice-president of product Marty Ward told iTWire. "In fact, Australia is already number three in the world for malware on the Mac platform; ahead of Japan, Russia, China and Germany. With this in mind, Mac and iOS users in particular must remember that most ransomware is proliferated via social engineering, in particular via phishing emails, which are not specific to a particular operating system. Users must update their systems regularly, create backup copies of their data and deploy real-time threat protection in order to stay protected." While admitting that "It's impossible to predict the future with 100% accuracy", the security vendor thinks four current trends will persist into next year. Ransomware WannaCry and Cerber accounted for almost 90% of malware attacks blocked by Sophos between April and October. WannaCry's success was largely due to its ability to worm its way from one computer to another. The vulnerability it relied on has largely been patched, but Sophos is concerned that there will be further leaks of exploits used by government agencies, which will be used to drive fresh attacks in 2018. "For the first time we saw ransomware with worm-like characteristics, which contributed to the rapid expansion of WannaCry. This ransomware took advantage of a known Windows vulnerability to infect and spread to computers, making it hard to control," said Sophos security researcher Dorka Palotay. "Even though our customers are protected against it and WannaCry has tapered off, we still see the threat because of its inherent nature to keep scanning and attacking computers. "We're expecting cyber criminals to build upon this ability to replicate seen in WannaCry and NotPetya, and this is already evident with Bad Rabbit ransomware, which shows many similarities to NotPetya." The significance of Cerber is that it is ransomware as a service (RaaS), and its creators are actively developing it to circumvent defensive measures. "This Dark Web business model is unfortunately working and similar to a legitimate company is likely funding the ongoing development of Cerber. We can assume the profits are motivating the authors to maintain the code," said Palotay. Windows malware will continue to predominate. Android malware Ransomware "remains a big problem for Android users", Sophos said. SophosLabs expects to process 10 million suspicious Android apps by the end of 2017, an increase of more than 17% over 2016. And the number of "threats" found on Google Play during the first nine months of the year doubled to 32, including what appeared to be highly-targeted malware designed to monitor phone activity and exfiltrate app data. Other examples of Android malware included click fraud, DDoS bots, and ransomware. Some ransomware actually encrypts files, others just lock the screen until a PIN is purchased and entered. "One reason we believe ransomware on Android is taking off is because it's an easy way for cyber criminals to make money instead of stealing contacts and SMS, popping ups ads or bank phishing which requires sophisticated hacking techniques," said SophosLabs security researcher Rowland Yu. "It's important to note that Android ransomware is mainly discovered in non-Google Play markets - another reason for users to be very cautious about where and what kinds of apps they download." Mac malware Almost all of the Mac malware detected by Sophos falls into the "potentially unwanted programs" rather than full-blown malware. This includes applications such as MacKeeper and TuneUpMyMac. Of that small proportion of 'real' malware, the most common examples are adware (programs that deliver additional advertising within a web browser), but the company also " intercepted several examples of Mac ransomware." Interestingly, south-east Australia was one of the global hot spots for Mac threat activity, according to Sophos. Windows threats You've probably heard this before, but old vulnerabilities are still being exploited because Windows systems aren't being patched properly. The second most common Windows Office exploit takes advantage of a vulnerability that was fixed in 2012. Others in the top ten date back to 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, and even 2010. But the current frontrunner is CVE-2017-0199, which was addressed in April 2017 and exploited relatively quickly after it became public knowledge. This vulnerability was even used by malware-creating tools that were made available free of charge. "We expect to see increasingly easier exploits distributed on the Dark Web," said Sophos, predicting "chances are better than average that attackers will target companies that are slow in installing" the October 2017 fix for CVE-2017-11826 affecting Office 2010 and other Microsoft software. The SophosLabs 2018 Malware Forecast is available here. With the Australian ISDN drawing to a close, why should companies look to SIP as the best strategy for implementing business voice? It might seem a long way off, but the eventual shut down of the Australian ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) will be here sooner than you think. By 2022 Telstra will discontinue supporting its ISDN products due to the supporting technologies and platforms nearing the end of their lifetime. As the NBN continues to roll out across the country, what should businesses be doing in preparation for the switch? What Services Will Be Switched Off? ISDN is a digital network technology that carries voice and data services over the public switched telephone network. Telstra will cease the sale of ISDN2, ISDN2 Enhanced, ISDN10/20/30, DDS Fastway, Megalink and Frame Relay products by 30th June 2018, with a final disconnection date expected by 2022 which is when the products will no longer exist. While businesses using these products can expect plenty of early warning leading up to the exit, the clock is definitely ticking for companies relying on ISDN to find an alternative solution. Thankfully, a solution exists and it is cheaper and more efficient than ISDN. SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) the technology that enables voice over IP, is the future of business voice. How To Make The Move From ISDN To IP Voice A SIP Trunk is the digital equivalent of a traditional phone line. A SIP Trunk needs to connect to a PBX a device that provides the brains behind the phone system that enables multiple users to share lines. You will need to decide whether to host your PBX in the cloud or at your premises. Learn more about cloud Hosted PBX options, or use this article to help you decide which PBX model is right for you. The Advantages Of IP Voice Over ISDN SIP offers a number of key advantages over ISDN, which are covered in greater detail in a report available for download, 6 Major Advantages IP Voice has over ISDN. One of the major components, and directly relatable when switching from ISDN, is the ability to deliver HD calls (ISDN quality or better) over a converged voice and data network service. Download the free report now. The VoIP Quality Myth One of the biggest myths surrounding VoIP technology is that the quality is not up to the standard of ISDN. This popular misconception is in large part due to the nature of the Internet being a big, unsecured and unregulated interconnection of traffic. Voice services can suffer when the latency high or bandwidth is restricted. These issues are easily overcome by using an appropriate connection at your office; high speed fibre optic connections are able to offer immense bandwidth while maintaining incredibly low latency, ideal for voice traffic. Transferring voice over the Internet will always introduce risk, as the public connection cannot be monitored and controlled. That is why, at Over the Wire, we converge our private data networks with our voice platform. This enables us to apply Quality of Service (QoS) rules onto managed routers ensuring voice traffic has the highest priority on the network, and that it is delivered directly to our voice core never leaving our infrastructure or traversing the public Internet before reaching the telephony network. What To Do Next With the imminent cessation of ISDN, switching to sophisticated SIP technology should be a business priority. At Over the Wire, our solutions unite voice, data and security through a single, end-to-end service provider. We can help organisations of any size achieve a higher level of productivity. We offer a free bill analysis of the cost and benefits of your current business voice system and can advise if there is room for improvement. To find out more, reach out to a member of the Over the Wire team today. About Over the Wire Over the Wire (ASX:OTW) is a Telecommunications and IT solution provider, specialising in converged voice and data networks, data centres, and hosted infrastructure solutions for corporate clients. We are a service provider with a difference; our voice and data network services leverage our MPLS core network spanning from Perth to Auckland, and complement our cloud, data centre hosting, and IT managed services capabilities, to not only give businesses an alternative, but an end-to-end solution partner to work with, and to look after their IT communications needs, with support available 24 hours a day. Learn more about us by calling on 1300 689 689 or visiting us at https://overthewire.com.au/ The National Australia Bank is shedding 6000 jobs over the next three years despite reporting a massive full year net profit of $5.3 billion for 2017, and putting the decision to slash staff down to the impact of new technology and digital transactions on traditional roles. Ironically, despite the impact of technology and the decline in traditional roles, the NAB has tried to sweeten the news with its announcement that 2000 new digital high tech positions will be created in the bank. According to chief executive Andrew Thorburn, who announced the job cuts on Thursday, the banking industry is under pressure to reshape its workforce and "as transactions move to digital channels, and this is driven by our customers, we will need fewer people". Thorburn says the creation of new digitally-focused jobs means the actual net loss of jobs across the NAB will be around 4000, and as 60% of its business moves online over three years. The $5.3 billion net profit announced by the NAB increased by more than 1400% on 2016, while redundancies are expected to cost the bank up to $800 million. The 2016 profit of $352 million profit was primarily the result of the NABs sales, at a loss, of its UK and life insurance businesses. The NAB chief says the job cuts are part of the banks plan to achieve $1 billion in annual savings through automation of processes previously performed manually. And the cost cutting also includes a reduction in the number of products offered by the bank, and changes to its branch network. Thorburn flagged the closure of some bank branches, but the opening of new branches in the growth corridors in western Sydney and Melbourne. Seeking to checkmate its rivals, those who pre-order Huawei's Mate 10 before 14 November in Australia will also get a bonus 360 Panoramic VR Camera worth $179. There's no sign yet of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, but the equally powerful Huawei Mate 10, which has the traditional fingerprint reader on the front, the Kirin 970 AI-powered ARM processor, the advanced dual-camera system and more is now availabl for pre-order at Vodafone. You're able to pre-order it today from Vodafone here on a range of plans and payment options. iTWire covered the Mate 10 and 10 Pro keynote event here. Huawei posted a highlights video of the keynote announcements, and that is embedded at the end of this article. The pre-order availability announcement comes a day before the iPhone X officially becomes available at retail, highlighting the intense competition in 2017 between Apple and all of its Android-based competitors, from Huawei to Google, from Samsung to LG, from Motorola to Oppo and everyone else in between. As noted above, those who choose to pre-order with Vodafone before the 14th of November will also get a bonus Huawei 360 Panoramic VR Camera worth $179. Huawei notes its 360 Panoramic VR camera "has dual 13MP lens cameras in a back to back configuration to deliver 360 photos and video as well as VR". "Supporting Panorama, GIF, Fisheye, Planet and VR modes, the camera is extremely portable weighing only 30 grams and slots into any smartphone with a USB Type C port. The camera also draws power from the device it is plugged into, removing the need to recharge the device separately." Key features of the Mate 10 are as follows: Big Screen 5.9, 2K LCD screen in 16 x 9 format. The brightness has been pushed to 730 nits to increase readability in bright daylight conditions. Power The Mate 10 has a class leading 4000 mAh battery and the worlds first safety-certified fast-charge systems (TUV Rheinland). The fast charge is one of the fastest available, capable of delivering 58% battery charge in 30mins which should get you through a full day (depending on usage). Cable and SuperCharger come included in the box. Camera The Mate 10 includes the latest Huawei camera module, recently rated 97 by DxOMark Mobile ranked number two of all smartphones for camera performance. The module, once again co-engineered by Leica, includes dual cameras (20 + 12 megapixels), a 4 in 1 hybrid focus, dual ISP, Summilux-H lenses, 3D panorama setting and an industry leading 1.6 aperture which should drive exceptional low light performance. Artificial Intelligence The Huawei Mate 10 is powered by the Kirin 970, the worlds first smartphone chipset with a neural processing unit (with artificial intelligence) built into the system architecture. But what does that mean for the consumer? AI will drive better all round CPU/GPU performance, power efficiency and performance over time (lifespan) but it also enables features such as the camera assistant which through scene recognition can adjust camera settings or advanced AR applications such as the bespoke Microsoft translator. Boston, October 31, 2017 RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, announced today that registration for the 12th Annual RISI European Conference has opened. This years program will take a deep dive into the global economy, trade uncertainty, and Europes growing markets. The Conference will take place March 5-7, 2018 in Barcelona, Spain at the Catalonia Barcelona Plaza Hotel. Delegates can expect a two-day conference program, plus a one-day packaging seminar, featuring RISIs team of experts and high-level industry leaders addressing key forest product market trends in Europe. A packaging seminar on March 5 will kick off the Conference focusing on growing packaging markets, machine conversions, and containerboard and boxboard outlooks for the European region. Day One of the main conference program will begin on March 6 and will cover CEOs, the Economy and Trade Uncertainty. The European CEO of the Year will deliver the keynote speech and then join a lively CEO Panel discussion with the heads of Europes top performing companies. Following a report on the Global Economy, we will hear from a trade official about what changes are in store, partially resulting from Brexit negotiations and the cancelled TTIP. Delegates also can potentially expect discussion of recovered paper dynamics and the effects Chinas new policy may have on the packaging market. Day Two on March 7 will feature a theme of Sustainability, Food Safety and the Future. It will lead off with an expert view on sustainability within the industry, followed by a panel of cross-industry experts discussing safety and quality of food products. Further presentations will give us insights into where we are headed in logistics, industry investment, and technology. Speakers will also weigh in on e-commerce and the Amazon effect. RISI experts will also provide key market outlooks including pulp, containerboard, and specialty papers. The 2017 Conference attracted more than 200 delegates from over 130 companies, traveling from 26 countries. A strong turnout is anticipated in Barcelona in 2018. Delegates will have multiple opportunities to network during lunches, breaks, and an exclusive cocktail hour. For more information about the European Conference or to register, click here. About RISI (www.risi.com) RISI is the leading information provider for the global forest products industry. The company works with clients in the pulp and paper, packaging, wood products, timber, biomass, tissue and nonwovens industries to help them make better decisions. Headquartered in Boston, MA, RISI operates additional offices throughout North and South America, Europe and Asia. Reddit Email 107 Shares John Feffer | ( Foreign Policy in Focus) | ISIL* is on the decline, but the catastrophic political divisions in Iraq and Syria that gave rise to it are no closer to being mended. The Middle East today is enduring a replay of World War II with the Islamic State in the role of Nazi Germany. Having seized much of Europe and parts of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany reached the peak of its expansion by the fall of 1942. Then, stopped at Stalingrad and unable to overwhelm Britain, the Nazis began to fall back, and the war turned into a race between the Soviet troops marching from the east and the Allied soldiers surging from the west. After the war, as a result of the competition between these two sets of armed forces, Europe would remain divided for the next half century. The Islamic State likewise reached its peak expansion in mid-2014 when it controlled large chunks of Iraq and Syria. It has experienced a rise and fall even more precipitous than the Nazis. By mid-2016, a mere two years later, it had already lost 45 percent of its territory in Syria and 20 percent of its territory in Iraq. Today, with the fall of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the Islamic State has dwindled to a swath of land around the border of the two countries. Once a state of 11 million people with an economy worth about $1 billion a year the size of Great Britain, the population of Greece, the economic output of Gambia ISIL is now little more than the several thousand fighters desperately fending off attacks from all sides. From the west, the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad is attempting to retake as much of Syria as it can. From the east, Iraqi forces and Kurdish peshmerga operating under the cover of U.S. air support have been steadily ejecting the would-be caliphate from Iraqi territory. In both Iraq and Syria, significant divisions exist among the anti-ISIL fighters. Indeed, the lands encompassing Iraq and Syria would be lucky to experience the frozen hatreds of a Cold War in the wake of the fall of the house of ISIL. The shrinking of the caliphate will more likely lead to a new level of fighting over the future structure of both Iraq and Syria and, more ominously, the dispensation of the region as a whole. In Syria It not only feels like 1945 in Syria, it looks that way as well. After months of saturation bombing, the cities that ISIL once controlled look like Germany after it had been reduced to rubble in the final months of World War II, as the Allies and the Soviets tightened their vise grip on the Nazis. Thanks to the help of both Russia and Iran and to its ruthless aerial campaign, the Syrian government has managed to regain 60 percent of the country. Syrian forces have continuously bombed civilian targets, such as hospitals. Of the 1,373 attacks on civilian infrastructure in 2016, for instance, Syrian and Russian forces were responsible for 1,198. Last month, September, registered the largest number of casualties for 2017, with nearly 1,000 civilians killed, including over 200 children, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Assad regime has specialized in the comparatively low-tech barrel bombs, which maximize civilian casualties, dropping nearly 13,000 of them in 2016. The U.S.-led coalition, meanwhile, has been equally brutal in its effort to dislodge the Islamic State from its capital of Raqqa. The city now looks like Dresden after the firebombing of World War II, as the Russian government has rightly pointed out. According to Syrian activists, over 1,000 civilians died in the bombing. The third leg of brutality in Syria is Sunni extremism. True, ISIL is on the decline. But other militant forces aspire to kick Assad aside, keep the Kurds down, and beat back the Americans, Russians, and Iranians. After several name changes, the latest collection of al-Qaeda-like factions in Syria which may or may not maintain a link to al-Qaeda itself is the Levant Liberation Committee (Tahrir al-Sham or HTS). With its ISIL rival shrinking daily, HTS could emerge as the insurgency of choice for those who hate Assad as well as anything associated with the Americans. Large tracts of ISIL territory in Syria were thinly populated desert, but the caliphate possessed some jewels in their crown. This weekend, on the heels of the liberation of Raqqa, U.S.-backed militias took over the Islamic States largest oil field. Syrian government forces were reportedly within a few miles of the strategic asset, but were pushed back by ISIL fighters. The Syrian Democratic Forces that took over the Omar oil field are led by Kurds, but some of the soldiers are also Arab. Although the SDF as a whole is putatively fighting for a secular democratic Syria, the Kurds are more pragmatically trying to gain leverage to safeguard their gains in the north where they have established the de facto autonomous region of Rojava. Hatred of ISIL has been the lowest common denominator for a broad range of actors in Syria, from American neocons and Syrian generals to Kurdish militias and al-Qaeda sympathizers to Kremlin geopoliticians and Hezbollah. ISIL has been a knife stuck deep into Syria. Theres no argument that the knife is life threatening. But remove it, and Syria risks bleeding out. In Iraq On his recent swing through the Persian Gulf, where he failed to get Qatar and Saudi Arabia to kiss and make up, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also made some especially ill-conceived comments about Iraq. Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIL is coming to a close, those militias need to go home, he said. There arent any Iranian militias in Iraq. The Popular Mobilization Forces that have played a major role in pushing the Islamic State out of Iraq are largely Shiite, but they also contain Sunnis and Christians. Many of the brigades in this coalition force have links to Iran, but at least one major unit so far has been incorporated into the Iraqi army. In other words, the so-called Iranian militias are already home. Theyre Iraqis, after all. Tillerson also said, Any foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home, and allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their lives with the help of their neighbors. Was Tillerson announcing that all U.S. soldiers currently in Iraq 5,262 according to the Pentagon, but possibly as high as 7,000 are about to go home? If so, everyone in the media and the U.S. government seems to have missed this second mission accomplished announcement. Thanks largely to the United States and its earlier decision to invade and occupy the country, Iraq faces the same kind of fragmentation problem as Syria. Iraqis have divided loyalties. Now that the acute threat of ISIL has passed, the fissures in Iraqi society are once again widening. Consider the ongoing conflict between Kurdistan and the central government in Baghdad. The residents of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq went to the polls last month and overwhelmingly endorsed independence. The central government immediately went on the offensive, putting economic pressure on the wayward province and sending army units to seize the disputed oil-rich region around the city of Kirkuk. With ISIL on the decline, anti-Kurdish sentiment can unite the rest of Iraq. As Juan Cole points out, the Kurdish move brought out Iraqi nationalism even in the Shiite militias that helped the Iraqi army retake Kirkuk. In retrospect, Kurdistan President Mahmoud Barzanis bid to use the independence referendum to boost his own political fortunes was, according to veteran Kurdish politician Mahmoud Osman, a miscalculation. It may revive Iraqi nationalism and thwart Kurdish aspirations. Or it could trigger more centrifugal forces. With ISIL on its way out and the U.S. military presence relatively modest, Iraqis may well turn back to their post-invasion preoccupation of fighting each other to the point of the countrys dissolution. After ISIL The war against ISIL is like a matryoshka nesting doll from hell. The campaign against the caliphate is inset in the larger Syrian civil war and the Iraqi federal conflict. These are in turn nested within a larger confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. And this regional tug-of-war is itself part of an even larger competition for influence between the United States and Russia. Now, imagine giving this matryoshka doll to a six-year-old child prone to tantrums. Enter Donald Trump. He has done just about everything he can to make a bad situation worse short of destroying the doll with nuclear weapons. He has antagonized the Iranians at every turn, encouraged the worst tendencies of the Saudis, done little to keep Iraq together, made no effort to push the warring sides in Syria back to the negotiating table, and pursued a woefully inconsistent policy toward Russia. Yes, the looming defeat of ISIL is to be cheered, but the costs have been huge. Theres the enormous loss of civilian life and the destruction of ancient cities. Theres the uptick in ISIL attacks abroad. Iraq remains fragile, though the Kurds have offered to freeze their independence vote. Syria is no closer to an end to its civil war, though more rounds of peace talks are set to begin shortly. Human rights violations by the Assad government continue, though the first trials have taken place in Europe to hold those responsible for those violations. Most importantly, no one is tackling the nested conflicts in the region. The first step is to take the matryoshka doll out of Donald Trumps hands. Give him something else to play with, perhaps another tour of his favorite campaign stops in the United States. Then let some real adults the UN, the EU, Jimmy Carter? grapple with the post-ISIL realities of the Middle East. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 1, 2017) - Palamina Corp. (TSXV: PA) today announced the nomination of Alistair Waddell to the board of directors and appointed Donald Mc Iver and Yury Valdivieso to senior management positions. Donald McIver joins Palamina as its new V.P. of Exploration and Yury Valdivieso as Exploration Manager for Peru. Andrew Thomson, President and C.E.O. of Palamina Corp. stated, "Palamina continues to add to the discovery team with a view to defining a significant gold deposit in the Puno Gold Belt in south eastern Peru. Alistair Waddell was formerly responsible for global greenfields exploration while at Kinross Gold Corp. and Donald Mc Iver and Yury Valdivieso were the lead geologists in the discovery and development of the Ollachea gold deposit in the Puno Gold Belt." Alistair Waddell is a geologist with over 20 years of diverse resource industry experience, including senior roles with both junior and senior mining companies providing a broad vision of many aspects of the business. He was a founder and former President and CEO of TSX-V listed GoldQuest Mining Corp. principally focused on exploration in the Dominican Republic. More recently, he was Vice President - Greenfields Exploration for Kinross Gold Corp. responsible for global greenfields exploration. Alistair brings with him excellent experience and a broad knowledge of Latin America including Peru where he lived and worked for over three years. Donald Mc Iver is a South African geologist, has a M.Sc. in Exploration and Economic Geology, is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM), as well as of the Society of Economic Geologists (FSEG). Don is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and is a member of the SEG Board of Trustees. Don has accumulated extensive experience over a career spanning more than 30 years in the fields of production and exploration geology in Southern Africa and the Americas, as well as in the recognition of potential economically mineable assets and the resource development thereof. Donald has tremendous experience in managing teams, budgets and logistical issues and has had significant exposure to the management of community relationships in Latin America. Don was the V.P. Exploration for Minera I.R.L. from 2005 to 2015 and instrumental in assembling and leading the geological discovery team and subsequent resource development of the Ollachea Gold deposit located in the department of Puno, Peru. Yury Valdivieso is a Peruvian geologist with 30 years of experience in the Peruvian and South American mining and exploration industry. Yury has a M.Sc. in economic geology and mineral resources with 10 years' experience in orogenic gold deposits. He is a member of the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG), the Geological Society of Peru (SGP) and the College of Engineers of Peru (CIP). Yury has been part of the discovery team on several important epithermal gold and orogenic gold deposits. He additionally specializes in safety, health and environment management as well as negotiation with communities and management of community relations. Principally an exploration geologist, he also has significant experience in mining geology in Peru. Yury became a member of Minera I.R.L. senior management during the discovery and development of the Ollachea Gold deposit located in the department of Puno, Peru. Palamina granted a total 220,000 stock options to purchase common stock to the nominated director and newly appointed officers at an exercise price of $0.17, for a term of 5 years, pursuant to the Company's incentive stock option plan. Palamina's management team and Board of Directors would like to thank former V.P. of Exploration Steven T. Priesmeyer for his tireless efforts and solid guidance. Steve will remain a consultant to Palamina and we wish him great success in his new position as V.P. Exploration at Revival Gold Inc. About Palamina Corp. Palamina is directed by a group of proven mine finders focused on securing mining assets in the America's with the potential to host significant gold deposits. Palamina has acquired the application rights to five areas in the Puno gold belt and one project in the coastal I.O.C.G. belt in Southern Peru and holds 100% interest in one exploration project in Mexico. Palamina has 22,574,713 shares outstanding and trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol PA. MONTREAL, Nov. 02, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ALGOLD RESOURCES LTD. (TSXV:ALG) (the Corporation) today announced results of expanded metallurgical tests results from drill core samples at the Tijirit project (Tijirit) in Mauritania, and these tests continue to demonstrate Tijirits exploration and mining potential. Following the positive testworks results completed in 2016 (see Press Release dated January 18, 2017), Algold conducted additional metallurgical work which consisted of grinding and cyanidation testing at SGS Lakefield. Metallurgical testing were carried out at SGS Lakefield Laboratory (Ontario) on 16 composites using diamond drill hole core samples collected from the Eleonore (South, Central, North), Sophie II, and Lily Zones. The Eleonore composite was characterized by quartz veins associated with meta-sediments, metavolcanics or porphyries units. The Sophie II composite was made up of quartz veins within banded iron formation (BIF) and amphibolite and the Lily composite was made up of metasediments. Each composite weighted between 3 kg and 10 kg. Recovery of gold amenable to gravity separation followed by cyanidation of the gravity tailings was conducted with the following results. Those tesworks have been conducted based on the same optimum conditions which were determined during the first program (2016-2017). Sample CN Feed Size P80, m % Au Extraction / Recovery Au Head, g/t Zone Test Grav + CN No. Calculated Direct S10 ELEONORE_N 10 68 96,7 0,77 0,82 S11 11 69 95,2 3,66 4,36 Zone Average 69 96,0 2,22 2,59 S12 ELEONORE-S 12 70 97,4 1,16 0,12 S13 13 69 97,2 0,70 0,70 Zone Average 70 97,3 0,93 0,41 S14 14** 173 86,2 6,25 8,84 S15 ELEONORE-C 15 68 99,4 11,2 11,5 S16 16 82 98,8 2,16 0,18 108 99,1 * 6,54 6,84 Total Average 73 * 94,5 2,27 2,37 *without CN-14 ** CN-14 is being repeated. Sample CN Feed Size P80, m % Au Extraction / Recovery Au Head, g/t Zone Test Grav + CN No. Calculated Direct S1 1 75 91,4 3,50 4,15 S2 SOPHIE 2 64 96,2 0,65 1,66 S3 3 64 95,8 0,57 0,49 S4 4 88 91,2 0,72 0,43 Zone Average 73 93,7 1,36 1,68 S5 5 75 91,4 0,86 1,22 S6 6 75 93,1 1,00 1,16 S7 LiLy 7 61 92,5 0,66 0,50 S8 8 82 95,1 1,43 0,88 S9 9 78 93,9 1,07 0,95 Zone Average 74 93,2 1,00 0,94 These expanded metallurgical tests are very encouraging and confirm and build on the tests completed in 2016-2017. The testworks wich were performed on a larger number of samples continue to show that gold is easily recoverable at Tijirit said Francois Auclair, Algolds President and Chief Executive Officer. These strong results, indicating 99% recovery along with the ongoing programs, should enable Algold to expand the metallurgical work, focusing on the process and recovery optimization in 2018, further advancing the Tijirit project. Head grades for each of the composites were as follow (Fire Assays): Composites Sample ID Hole ID Au ELEONORE-N S10 974 T17DD003 0.82 S11 975 T17RD068 4.36 ELEONORE-S S12 981 T16RD041 0.12 S13 977 T16RD140 0.70 ELEONORE-C S14 986 T17DD011 8.84 S15 987 T17RD085B 11.50 S16 991 T17RD085B 0.18 SOPHIE S1 959 T16DD09 4.15 S2 962 SCD7 1.66 S3 964 SCD8/9 0.49 S4 960 SDC5 0.43 LILY S5 951 LCD2/3 1.22 S6 955 LCD4 1.16 S7 957 LCD5 0.50 S8 958 LCD5 0.88 S9 969 LCD6 0.95 Quality Assurance / Quality Control (QA/QC) Analytical work was carried pout at SGS Lakefield. an ISO/IEC 17025 Certified Laboratory. Analytical work for drill core and chips, geochemical samples and rock chip samples is carried out at the independent SGS Laboratories Ltd. in Bamako, Mali. The 50 g fire assay with ASS finish analytical services are accredited by SANAS and are carried out with a quality assurance protocol in line with ISO 17025:2005. Samples are stored at the Corporations field camps and put into sealed bags until delivered by a geologist on behalf of Algold to the laboratory in Bamako, Mali, where samples are prepared and analyzed. Until the end of 2016, samples were analyzed at ALSs facility in Loughrea, Ireland. Beginning in 2017, samples are analyzed at SGS Laboratory, Bamako. Samples are logged in the tracking system, weighed, dried and finely crushed to better than 70%, passing a 2 mm (Tyler 9 mesh, US Std. No.10) screen. A split of up to 1,000 g is taken and pulverized to better than 85%, passing a 75-micron (Tyler 200 mesh) screen, and a 50-gram split is analyzed by fire assay with an AA finish. Anomalous samples greater than 5 g/t Au are re-analyzed by 50 g fire assay with gravimetric finish. Selected samples may be re-analyzed using a 1 kg cyanide leach (Bottle Roll) using LeachWELL or the 1 kg screen fire assay method. Blanks, duplicates and certified reference material (standards) are inserted to monitor laboratory performance during the analysis. This press release has been reviewed for accuracy and compliance under National Instrument 43-101 by Andre Ciesielski, DSc., PGeo., Algold Resources Ltd Lead Consulting Geologist and Qualified Person, and Alastair Gallaugher, C.Geo. (Chartered Geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London), BSc. Geology, Algolds Exploration Manager in Mauritania, Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Andre Ciesielski has further approved the scientific and technical disclosure in the news release. ABOUT ALGOLD Algold Resources Ltd is focused on the exploration and development of gold deposits in West Africa. The board of directors and management team are seasoned resource industry professionals with extensive experience in the exploration and development of world-class gold projects in Africa. Toronto, Canada / TheNewswire / November 1, 2017 - Savary Gold Corp. (TSX-V: SCA) ("Savary" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an updated and increased Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate for its Karankasso JV Project in Burkina Faso totalling 12.3 million tonnes (Mt) grading 2.03 g/t gold for 805,000 ounces. The majority of the estimated Inferred Mineral Resources is comprised of open pit constrained Mineral Resources in six different zones using a 0.5 g/t cut-off grade and a small amount of underground Mineral Resources using a cut-off of 2.0 g/t that are situated beneath two of the open pit zones. Highlights of the Inferred Mineral Resources Estimate: Pit constrained of 11.9 Mt grading 1.97 g/t gold for 757,000 ounces* Underground of 0.42 Mt grading 3.57 g/t gold 48,000 ounces* All mineralized zones remain open in at least two directions with modelled mineralization extending beyond the pit constrained Mineral Resources at all zones. 70% of the pit constrained Mineral Resources occur within a 6.5 km radius where potential still remains for the discovery of additional Mineral Resources * See Notes on Open Pit Mineral Resource Estimation on pages 3 and 4 Don Dudek, Savary's President and CEO commented: "The program focused on expanding three of the six zones with the largest of the three, Diosso, returning 74% more pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources compared to the 2015 Estimate. Mineralization continues to extend beyond pit-constrained limits at all zones. The new higher-grade underground Mineral Resource warrants further testing and expansion and are indicative of the upside potential of the project. Even with the increase in Mineral Resources, the methodology used to estimate the Mineral Resources was more conservative utilizing tighter mineralized envelopes and in estimating the potential Mineral Resource losses related to artisanal mining. We plan to continue to systematically expand the new and existing mineralized zones while exploring the remainder of the extensive mineralized corridor that transects the Project." The Karankasso Property (the "Property") is located approximately 300 kilometres southwest of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital city (see Figure), and 60 kilometres east of Bobo Dioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina Faso. The Property can be accessed by a paved highway with both rail and grid power coming within approximately 50 kilometres. During the period from May 6, 2016 to July 4, 2017, 183 reverse circulation drill holes and 14 diamond drill core holes were completed on the Property for a total of approximately 23,170 metres of drilling. Approximately 72% of the holes were drilled to extend known zones with the remaining, testing and discovering new targets. For the current Mineral Resource, Savary compiled and interpreted the drill data to create an updated set of wireframes which where provided to P&E Mining Consultants Inc. for validation, refining and subsequent Mineral Resource estimation. Mineral Resources have been estimated for six areas: Kien East, Kueredougou, Kueredougou West, Diosso (includes Diosso, Kueredougou West Trend and WTN zones), Karangosso and Serakoro 1 West, with all but one of the zones, in the northern half of the property (see Figure 1). Approximately 27% of the pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources are oxidized saprolite and sap rock with the remainder of the Mineral Resources in fresh rock. The Kien East Zone is the largest of the six deposits containing approximately 3.8 million tonnes of pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources grading 1.68 g/t totalling 204,000 ounces (see Figure 2). The Diosso South Zone area, is the second largest zone with estimated pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources of 2.5 million tonnes grading 2.18 g/t gold totalling approximately 176,000 ounces. The Kueredougou Main Zone is the highest grade containing 0.6 million tonnes of estimated pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resources grading 2.51 g/t gold totalling 55,000 ounces (see Figure 3). The above Mineral Resources are at reported at a 0.5 g/t gold cut-off. Resource Estimation utilized 3D constraining wireframes, capped 1m composites (capped between no capping and 20 g/t gold) and inverse distance cubed (1D3) grade interpolation. Mineral Resource depletion, due to artisanal mining activity, was estimated for all zones using the following parameters: Kueredougou Main Zone - artisanal shafts were measured with a new depletion wire frame created resulting in an additional loss of approximately 30,000 ozs of gold compared to the 2015 Mineral Resource Estimate Diosso South Area - Saprolite - 50% removed Kien East: Northwest trending vertical lenses - Saprolite - 50% removed; Kien East shallow dipping lenses - no significant artisanal mining Karangosso - no artisanal mining Serakoro 1 West zone area - no artisanal mining Kueredougou West Zone - no significant artisanal mining Updated preliminary metallurgical test work indicates a range in estimated gold recoveries of 92 to 97% for oxide, 90 to 95% for sap rock and 80 to 91% for fresh rock (see Table 1). A summary of average and assumed recoveries is presented in Table 1. This summary represents only preliminary metallurgical data derived from a combination of timed bottle roll analyses of assay pulp composites over 72 hours to more rigorous grind and controlled gold extraction from both a bottle roll and CIL over a 48 hour period. Initial samples utilized assay pulps that were ground to 80% passing 75 microns. The latest tests utilized historic core and reverse circulation chips that were ground to 86% passing 80 microns. Six samples were ground to +94% passing 38 microns and demonstrated that gold recoveries can be improved by 2 to 7% with finer grinding. Some samples were noted to contain carbon but are considered anomalous or erroneous as the host rocks are dominantly intrusions and altered volcanics that should not contain any such carbon material. Additional metallurgical work, using fresh drill core samples will be utilized in the future studies. Table 1 - Metallurgical Summary - Assumed Percentage Gold Recoveries by Zone Zone Saprolite Sap Rock Fresh Kien 92 90 82 Kueredougou 92 90 84 Kueredougou West 92 90 81 Diosso 94 90 80 Diosso (WTN Zone) 92 90 80 Diosso (West Trend Zone) 92 90 80 Karangosso 97 95 90 Serakoro 1 West 97 95 91 The mineralized zones are structurally-controlled and hosted by a variety of sediment, intermediate volcanic, potassic granite and diorite porphyry. Hydrothermal alteration minerals comprise a mixture of quartz vein, sericite, carbonate and pyrite with local fuchsite, arsenopyrite and tourmaline. A summary of the of the pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resource Estimates, within a constraining pit shell, is presented in Table 2 with Mineral Resource Estimate details for each deposit, presented in Table 4. Cut-off grades at both, 0.5 g/t and 1.0 g/t, are presented with the Mineral Resource at a 0.5 g/t cut-off grade chosen as the base case. Optimized pit depths range from less than 90 metres for the Serakoro 1 West Zone to approximately 195 metres depth at the Karangosso Zone where locally higher grades have drawn the pit deeper with the rest of the pits dominantly being less than 100 metres deep. Table 2 - Pit Constrained Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate and Sensitivity Summary* Zone Gold Cut-Off Mineralization Type Tonnes Au g/t Au oz Summary 0.5 g/t Saprolite 1,768,000 1.69 95,800 Sap Rock 1,546,000 1.75 87,200 Fresh 8,610,000 2.07 573,900 Total 11,924,000 1.97 756,900 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 1,249,000 2.08 83,400 Sap Rock 1,141,000 2.11 77,300 Fresh 6,840,000 2.41 529,900 Total 9,230,000 2.33 690,600 *Notes on Open Pit Mineral Resource Estimation: Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimate of Mineral Resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing, or other relevant issues. The Inferred Mineral Resource in this estimate has a lower level of confidence that that applied to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of the Inferred Mineral Resource could be upgraded to an Indicated Mineral Resource with continued exploration. The Karankasso Property Mineral Resource Estimates were prepared by Eugene Puritch, P. Eng., Yungang Wu, P.Geo. and Antoine Yassa, P. Geo. from P&E Mining Consultants Inc., Qualified Persons under NI 43-101 who are independent of the Company The Mineral Resources in this press release were estimated using the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), CIM Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves, Definitions and Guidelines prepared by the CIM Standing Committee on Reserve Definitions and adopted by CIM Council The gold price used in this Mineral Resource Estimate was the Sep 30/17 approximate two-year trailing average of US$1,250/oz. Gold recovery ranges from 80% to 97% with an average of 85% and mining costs were US$2.00/tonne for waste and $3.00 per tonne for mineralized material. Processing and G&A costs combined were US$18.50/tonne. Pit optimization slopes were 50 degrees. Bulk densities used for the Mineral Resource Estimate varied by deposit with ranges as follows; Saprolite 1.75 to 1.98 t/m3, Sap Rock 2.20 to 2.45 t/m3 and Fresh Rock 2.70 to 2.80 t/m3. The effective date of the Mineral Resource Estimate is October 5, 2017. Underground Inferred Mineral Resources totalling 47,900 ounces grading 3.59 g/t contained within 415,000 tonnes were determined for two zones (see Table 3). Both zones have returned multiple intercepts of higher than average grade. At Kueredougou, intercepts containing from 48.00 g/t to 83.35 g/t gold intercepts over 4 metres occur in a structural intersection. At Karangosso, an intercept below the pit limits returned 6.73 g/t over 7 metres and 3.82 g/t over 13 metres. Table 3 Underground Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate* Zone Cut-offAu g/t Tonnes Au g/t Au Ounces Karangosso 2.0 246,000 3.95 31,200 Kueredougou 2.0 173,000 3.02 16,800 TOTAL 419,000 3.57 48,000 *Notes on Underground Mineral Resource Estimation: Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimate of Mineral Resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing, or other relevant issues. The Inferred Mineral Resource in this estimate has a lower level of confidence that that applied to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of the Inferred Mineral Resource could be upgraded to an Indicated Mineral Resource with continued exploration. The Karankasso Property Mineral Resource Estimates were prepared by Eugene Puritch, P. Eng., Yungang Wu, P.Geo. and Antoine Yassa, P. Geo. from P&E Mining Consultants Inc., Qualified Persons under NI 43-101 who are independent of the Company The Mineral Resources in this press release were estimated using the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), CIM Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves, Definitions and Guidelines prepared by the CIM Standing Committee on Reserve Definitions and adopted by CIM Council. The gold price used in this Mineral Resource Estimate was the Sep 30/17 approximate two-year trailing average of US$1,250/oz. Gold recovery ranges from 80% to 97% with an average of 85% and mining costs were US$50/tonne Processing and G&A costs combined were US$18.50/tonne. Bulk densities used for the Mineral Resource Estimate varied by deposit with ranges as follows; Saprolite 1.75 to 1.98 t/m3, Sap Rock 2.20 to 2.45 t/m3 and Fresh Rock 2.70 to 2.80 t/m3. The effective date of the Mineral Resource Estimate is October 5, 2017. Figure 1 - Location of Mineral Resource Zones Table 4 - Pit Constrained Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate and Sensitivity Details by Zone* Zone Au Cut-Off Mineralization Type Tonnes Aug/t Au oz Karangosso 0.5 g/t Saprolite 317,000 1.75 17,900 Sap Rock 195,000 2.04 12,800 Fresh 1,604,000 2.35 121,100 Total 2,116,000 2.23 151,800 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 235,000 2.12 16,000 Sap Rock 141,000 2.55 11,500 Fresh 1,246,000 2.81 112,500 Total 1,622,000 2.68 140,000 Diosso South Area 0.5 g/t Saprolite 424,000 1.75 23,800 Sap Rock 378,000 2.05 25,000 Fresh 1,706,000 2.31 126,900 Total 2,508,000 2.18 175,700 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 292,000 2.20 20,600 Sap Rock 284,000 2.48 22,600 Fresh 1,286,000 2.82 116,500 Total 1,862,000 2.67 159,700 Serakoro 1 West 0.5 g/t Saprolite 208,000 1.66 11,100 Sap Rock 83,000 1.38 3,700 Fresh 110,000 1.28 4,500 Total 401,000 1.50 19,300 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 160,000 1.93 9,900 Sap Rock 69,000 1.50 3,300 Fresh 97,000 1.34 4,200 Total 326,000 1.66 17,400 Kueredougou West 0.5 g/t Saprolite 430,000 1.89 26,100 Sap Rock 507,000 1.76 28,700 Fresh 1,516,000 1.99 97,000 Total 2,453,000 1.92 151,800 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 342,000 2.18 24,000 Sap Rock 405,000 2.02 26,300 Fresh 1,264,000 2.24 90,900 Total 2,011,000 2.18 141,200 KueredougouMain 0.5 g/t Saprolite 16,000 1.90 1,000 Sap Rock 19,000 2.10 1,300 Fresh 641,000 2.54 52,200 Total 676,000 2.51 54,500 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 12,000 2.30 900 Sap Rock 15,000 2.52 1,200 Fresh 492,000 3.06 48,500 Total 519,000 3.03 50,600 Kien East 0.5 g/t Saprolite 372,000 1.33 16,000 Sap Rock 364,000 1.35 15,800 Fresh 3,033,000 1.77 172,100 Total 3,769,000 1.68 203,900 1.0 g/t Sensitivity Saprolite 208,000 1.79 12,000 Sap Rock 228,000 1.69 12,400 Fresh 2,455,000 2.00 157,400 Total 2,891,000 1.96 181,800 * See Notes on Open Pit Mineral Resource Estimation on pages 3 and 4 QA/QC Comments Savary's procedure for handling reverse circulation drill chips comprises initial riffle splitting of the rock chips from one metre drill length samples into approximately 2.5-kilogram samples, as well as description and logging into a database. A duplicate 2.5-kilogram sample, prepared at the same time as the assay sample, is kept as a reference for each sample. NQ-size core assay samples are first logged into a database and then are sawn in half with half of the core submitted for analysis; the length of the core samples depends on logged geological controls with samples varying from 0.3 metres to 2.0 metres in length. A sample duplicate and assay blank was inserted sequentially every 5 to 14 samples and an assay standard was inserted every 29 to 34 samples. This results in 8% of the assayed samples being reference/blank/control samples. Blanks and duplicates were preferentially inserted in visually mineralized zones to better test the assay results. This sampling procedure was periodically reviewed by Savary's President and CEO, and the Company QP, Don Dudek, P. Geo. All assay samples were collected at site by staff from SGS Burkina Faso SA ('SGS') from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso where sample preparation and analysis were performed. Each sample was dried, crushed to 75% passing 2 mm and then split to 1.5 kg by rotary splitter. This split was pulverized to 85% passing 75 microns. Fifty grams of the pulverized material was analysed for gold via fire assay with an atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) finish. SGS operates according to ISO 17025 standards and institutes a full Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) program consisting of insertion of internal blanks, standard reference material, repeats and reject splits which in total account for up to 25% of all determinations conducted. All standards and blank control samples returned results within expected ranges. Closure of JV Agreement The Company also announces that on September 29, 2017 it formally closed its previously announced (see September 11, 2014 news release) Karankasso JV Project with Sarama Resources Ltd. pursuant to which the JV company now controls a 688 square kilometre property in the highly prospective Hounde belt. The Property is 69.5% owned by Savary and 30.5% owned by Sarama, with Savary acting as the operator. About Savary Gold Savary is a Canadian exploration company is focused on exploring and developing the Karankasso Gold Project in Burkina Faso. The Company holds a 69.5% joint venture ownership and is the operator of the project with Sarama Resources Limited. The Project is located within the Hounde Greenstone Belt, which hosts Semafo's Mana mine, Roxgold's Yaramoko Mine, Endeavor's Hounde Mine (under construction). The Project contains an Inferred mineral resource estimate of 12.3 million tonnes (Mt) grading 2.03 g/t gold for 805,000 ounces. For additional information please visit our website at www.savarygold.com. Qualified Persons The Mineral Resource Estimates in this press release were prepared by Eugene Puritch, P.Eng., Yungang Wu, P.Geo. and Antoine Yassa, P.Geo., of P&E Mining Consultants Inc., each an independent Qualified Person, as defined by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). Mr. Puritch has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release. Don Dudek, P.Geo., President and CEO of the Company and a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. Ask any Portuguese and theyll agree Alentejo is the gastronomic soul of Portugal! So said our guide Ruben as we set off on our taster tour of the region. But since hes also the Communication Manager for the regions tourism promotion agency, I took his words with a pinch of salt, categorising them as the boast of one who loves his home region with a passion. Of course, thats true and he does but as our time in Alentejo continued, I quickly came to realise that hes absolutely right. Alentejo is the gastronomic soul of Portugal! Representing a third of the land area of Portugal, Alentejo is situated in the South of the country, just above the Algarve. Bordered to the North by the River Tejo and to the East by Spain, to the West it meets the Atlantic Ocean. Although an extensive region, it is sparsely populated and predominantly agricultural, producing beef and pork, cheese and dairy, cereal grains, olives and olive oil, and of course, wine. The landscape during our mid September visit was golden, the grasslands parched after two unusually dry years, but at other times of year it is lush and green. The damming of the River Guadiana to create Lake Alqueva just fifteen years ago revitalised the regions agriculture, providing a reliable source of water for irrigation as well as a tourist attraction in its own right its the biggest man-made lake in Europe. The dam also generates renewable energy for the region. Since the dam was built, a great many new farms and wineries have been established in the area, and many older businesses have expanded and diversified. During our three day itinerary, we explored gloriously beautiful landscapes and villages, visited several wineries, enjoyed fantastic cuisine and stayed in three charming and beautiful properties, enjoying a feast of traditional Portuguese food. It really is a great destination for a Portugal road trip. Read on for a taste of Alentejo. I knew that Portugal is a major producer of cork, but hadnt appreciated that fully half of the worlds supplies are produced here, much of that within the Alentejo. Cork is grown and harvested across the Alentejo but processing is centred in Azaruja, just to the north of Evora. Much of the countryside we drove through was covered in trees, most of them olive or cork. Because the cork bark can only be extracted every 9 years, the trees are marked with large white numbers to show the year they were last harvested. Our first stop after the obligatory coffee and pastel de nata (custard tart) break and a quick pause for photographs of cork was at Herdade de Sao Miguel. We are visiting the modernist head quarters at Pimenta estate, strikingly clad in a coat of cork, a material which provides insulation as well as beauty. During our tasting, General Manager Nuno Franco tells us about the history of the winery. Herdade de Sao Miguel was established by owner Alexandre Relvas in 2000, after he purchased the Sao Miguel estate in 1997.Hailing from Angola, Relvas was already running a successful plastic packaging business but had no background in Portuguese agriculture. After buying the estate, he planted almost 100 hectares of cork trees. After a random chat to a wine producer in a local bar, he decided to add 10 hectares of wine grapes, more for fun than as a commercial enterprise. After making a decision to turn the wine project into a business, another 90 acres of grapes were planted, focusing on traditional local Portuguese grape varieties Aragones (better known outside Portugal by its Spanish name, Tempranillo), Trincadeira (also grown in the Douro where its known as Tinta Amarela) and Alicante Bouschet, a variety that originated in France but is widely grown in the Alentejo. Initially, they sold their grapes to other wineries. In 2003 they built the first of their own wineries, at Sao Miguel, a small scale operation to process their own grapes. Their wines were well regarded from the start and in 2007 they opened a larger state-of-the-art winery at the Pimenta estate. Today they can vinify 3 million kilos across the two wineries, and produce approximately 4 million bottles a year! As they expanded the business, they purchased additional vineyards and now grow grapes in three of Alentejos five wine regions many more Portuguese varieties such as Antao Vaz, Antao Vaz, Touriga Nacional and Trincadeira plus grapes that were not traditionally grown in the region before such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Moscatel and Syrah. Later, we visit the winery proper and learn about vinho de talha (translated as amphora wines or clay pot wines) a technique developed and spread by the Romans and recently experiencing a rebirth in the regions wineries. More on this to come in a dedicated post soon! After our quick visit to the production area, we tasted a range of wines including some made in the regular (modern) way and some talha wines. One of the characteristics of Alentejo wines is their low acidity levels, a factor of the schist terrain in this region. For me, this is absolutely great news, as for the first time I can ever remember, I found myself genuinely enjoying dry wines! We started with whites. I liked both the Ciconia and the Herdade de Sao Miguel Colheita Seleccionada, both blending Antao Vaz, Verdhello and Viognier. Both of these wines are very keenly priced, especially if you pick them up locally. I would describe them as crisp and easy drinking, the Ciconia having more fruit to it and the Colheita Seleccionada rather more citrus as well as a hint of oak from its 3 months in new oak barrels. We also tried the Art.Terra Amphora Branco vinho de talha, a striking yellow in the glass and with intense umami flavours and much more acidity than the two regular whites. This was made from grapes descended from the Arinto variety. Next, we tried the red counterparts for the Ciconia and the Colheita Seleccionada. Again, these were very easy drinking reds, the Colheita Seleccionada in particular having a richly fruity character. The last tasting was the Herdade de Sao Miguel Reserva, made from Alicante Bouschet, Aragonez, Cabernet Sauvignon and Touriga Nacional grapes this wine had the most wonderful blackcurrant aroma and a rich, full-bodied flavour. I bought a bottle home for Pete, so hopefully hell enjoy it! Our first dinner of the trip was at Mercearia Gadanha, a combined grocery shop and restaurant in Estremoz. The menu offers regional Portuguese classics, often with a modern twist and presented in a beautiful and bang-up-to-date style. The setting itself is warm, welcoming and treads the perfect line between rustic and elegant. As a child in Brazil, Gadhanas head chef Michelle Marques dreamed of a career in journalism, but she changed her mind after taking a cookery class during a trip to Italy. From there she enrolled in a professional course at the School of Hospitality and Tourism of Portalegre before going on to set up a gourmet wine and food shop, to which the restaurant was added in 2013. Although every dish we were served was fantastic, for me it was the starters and desserts (which we shared between the table) that really wowed. My favourites starters were the croquetes de borrego (lamb croquettes with roasted garlic mayonnaise), fresh foie gras with bravo de esmolve apples and the queijo de cabra, pera, mel e noz (goat cheese gratin with pear pickles, honey, nuts and thyme ice cream). All the desserts were magical but I particularly loved a passion fruit mango ice lolly served with fresh fruit and sorbet. That night we slept in the delightfully quirky rooms of Casa do Terreiro do Poco in Borba. After running a successful antique shop in along Borbas Rua dos Antiquarios (a street known for its antiques shops), Rita and Joao Cavaleiro Ferreira decided to open this beautiful hotel in a historic local property which they carefully restored. All the rooms, located in a few different buildings, are very individual and decorated using pieces of furniture and art collected over the years. My room was lovely comfortable and beautifully decorated, with both local and global pieces that created an eclectic charm. I loved that a huge flock of birds chitter-chattered loudly to each other as they swooped in and out of the branches of a nearby tree at sunset, and the peaceful quiet when they went to sleep. But what made me fall hopelessly in love with the place were the romantic little corners and courtyards; full of lush greenery, some plants laden with flowers or fruit, dotted with a few well-placed antiques including some huge talha, a stone bench and a stone rabbit! The place was fairy-tale gorgeous and I wish Id had time here to sit and enjoy these spaces more, not to mention the inviting pool and pavilion. Breakfast was served in an ornate dining room furnished with more of Rita and Joaos antiques, lots of fresh bread, home made jams, local cheese and charcuterie, cake and yoghurt, and piping hot scrambled eggs. With very little time to spend in Borba, I got up early and enjoyed a short but lovely walk in the quiet still of the morning. This is what Alentejo towns and villages are about for me, the simple and beautiful white-washed architecture with splashes of colour at the bottom and around doors and windows, and the slow and gentle awakening and pace of life. From Borba we made our way to Monzaraz, an absolutely stunning castle and village on top of a hill. Strategically significant (you can see the once-much-contested border with Spain from the hilltop), Monzaraz offers stunning views out in all directions, including over the dammed River Guadiana and resulting Lake Alqueva. Part way up, we stop to admire the views (of course) as well as a striking artwork by artist Joaquim Inacio Coelho Neves Cardoso. Installed in 2015, the three rows of cut out silhouettes represent the local Cante Alentejano tradition, a local vocal choral style that has been declared an intangible cultural asset by UNESCO. Noticing three people foraging beneath a tree, I approached to find out what they were doing. As I watched, the elderly gentleman used a stick to gently shake the tree branches; two women carefully kept their balance scampering up and down the steep slope, stooping to collect the fruit of the tree. Seeing my interest, one of the women quickly explained they were almonds and cracked one open for me to taste. It was creamy soft and sweet! Continuing upwards we entered the village of Monsaraz, quickly charmed by the whitewashed buildings, cobbled streets and glimpses of beautiful landscape below. The bright blue sky and fluffy clouds were the perfect backdrop to the sun-drenched buildings. I wish wed had longer to explore here, as theres plenty to see and Id happily clamber (slowly) through every little street. We made time to stop in the former school building, now a shop run by Ervideira, a local winemaker with some unusual products in their range. Looking after the shop was a lady who went to school here, one of the last to do so before the school was closed. I love that the blackboard and other details from the school have been retained. Invisivel is an utterly captivating wine! Having virtually no colour, it is indeed virtually invisible, and looks like pouring water into the glass. More surprising still is that its made from Aragones (a red wine grape most commonly known as Tempranillo outside of Portugal). The producers describe using only the tears of the grape; the grapes are pressed very lightly and the first 10 percent of juice extracted, free of staining from the skins, is used to make this wine. The rest of the juice, pressed afterwards, can go to their other wines. I was convinced this water-like wine was little more than a gimmick, but actually, thats not the case at all! Invisivel is crisp, citrusy with a hint of grassy herbiness and a little ripe fruit at the end. Bought a bottle home with me because its just so cool! The other unusual Ervideira wine is their Vinho da Agua for which the bottled wine is aged 100 feet under the waters of Lake Alqueva for 8 months. Much like in a cellar, the lake bed is cool and theres very little variation of temperature, but perhaps its the pressure that makes the difference? Its certainly not the water or lack of oxygen, since the corked bottles are sealed with wax before submerging. And there is definitely a difference, as we discovered when we tasted the same vintage of the same wine not aged under water, against the wine which had. We found that while both wines were ready to drink, the water wine had a mellower, more rounded and complex flavour, akin to a wine that had aged a few years longer. Certainly an interesting experiment, and worth trying both yourself if you are able to visit. Advised of my deep love for dessert wines, we were also invited to taste the winerys dessert wine, a deliciously sweet, fruity and bright offering, and available in an unusual short fat bottle. From Monsaraz we headed down to the lake itself, stopping for lunch in the Amieira Marina the restaurant offers a range of regional dishes including starters of quail eggs in a herby dressing and luscious prawns in their shell in an intense spiced tomato sauce. For our mains we enjoyed stewed pork loin with migas (a savoury bread-stuffing), superbly tender octopus with potatoes, garlic, coriander and olive oil and a codfish pastry with prawns and tomato. Desserts, though we were almost too full to eat them, included an incredible sericaia (egg pudding) served with super-sweet preserved Elvas plums. Luckily for us, Ruben had booked one of the coveted outdoor tables, protected by the shade of sail cloths overhead, and with a beautiful view out over the lake and marina. Groaning from our big lunch, we headed out for a quick pootle on Lake Alqueva in one of the boats available for hire from the marina. The boat had a small double bedroom and bathroom below, a little kitchenette and seating area above, and a tiny deck out back. On the way to our home for the night, we took a quick detour through Salvada, a parish in Beja, to admire the typical village streets and the mazing art deco architecture of the Cine Monumental, just next to a small church. With the setting sun painting it gold, it was quite a sight. Our home this evening was a small winery with onsite accommodation. Herdade do Vau is a peaceful spot, especially in the hours of sunset and sunrise, when the light wraps the winerys whitewashed buildings in a coat of gold. The terrace offers views out over the classic Alentejo landscape, and theres a pool too. Like many in the region, the winery is young, production began only ten years ago. The country house was rebuilt in 2012, originally as a home for the owners family, but little used and so repackaged as a hotel instead. That said, staying here is not-at-all hotel like, with just a handful of rooms and a couple of apartments. Rooms vary enormously; some are spacious and light-filled with attractive furniture whereas I found my room somewhat prison-cell like; the extreme scarcity of furnishings incommodious rather than minimalist chic. Simple, traditional, home-style meals are taken at the communal table in the main lounge area and accompanied by the estates wines. The next morning, we headed to Quinta do Quetzal in Vidigueira, a stunning modern winery with some unusual touches. First is the way the wine is made. Inspired by ancient traditions, the winery uses a gravity-based system cleverly built into a hill, grapes are delivered directly to the roof of the winery, where they are fed through holes that drop them straight down into the fermentation tanks, which likewise use gravity to transfer the wine from tanks to barrels on the floor below. Likewise, the cellars are underground, providing a naturally cool temperature for aging. More unusual is the onsite modern art gallery, integrated into a new, custom-built restaurant, shop and art centre building that sits on the slope below the winery itself. Quetzals owners, Cees and Inge de Bruin, are collectors and patrons of contemporary art and they, together with their daughter Aveline de Bruin, have created and curated the exhibition space to bring something new to the region. After our winery tour and a guided visit to the gallery, we sat down for a wine tasting with matching food cooked by the estates head chef, Pedro Mendes. Reto Jorg, the general manager, responsible for the estate and winery as well as development of brand awareness across key markets, talked us through the tasting as he related the estates history, natural ethos and connection with art. . We tried a wide range of wines including whites, a rose (rare in Portugal), reds and dessert wines, some bottled under the Quetzal label and others under the winerys Guadeloupe brand (named for a tiny chapel on the estate). Reto explained how the local mountains create a unique microclimate here that particularly favours the Antao Vaz until recently, grown almost exclusively in the Vidigueira area. Its a grape that thrives on hot days and cold nights, its thick skin protecting it against the daily temperature swings. Today the winery showcases Antao Vaz in several of its wines, but also uses Alfrocheiro, Alicante Bouschet, Aragonez, Arinto, Cabernet Sauvignon, Roupeiro, Syrah and Trincadeira grapes too. The Cabernet Sauvignon, Reto admits, is to give the winery an In with the American market, who tend to reach for familiar grape varieties, but can then be introduced to other wines in the range after theyve enjoyed the Cabernet Sauvignon. America, and the Netherlands (from where the owners hail) are both major markets for the estates wines. Quetzals dessert wines, called rich white (Antao Vaz) and rich red (Alicante Bouschet), respectively, were both rich, wonderfully sweet and full of fruit aromas and flavours. The restaurant space was drenched in light from floor to ceiling windows along the length of the space, and lifted by the bright colours of a custom-commissioned tile mural on the back wall hand-painted by artisan tile makers using traditional methods but featuring a contemporary design based on work by a French artist Dishes served during the tasting were a celebration of local traditions and ingredients. Savoury highlights included crunchy toasts topped with local cheese and uvada (rich, sticky grape molasses), sausage croquettes with a parsley mayo, battered green beans with sweet pepper sauce (the dish that inspired Japanese tempura), super thin slices of black pig fat known as petalas de toucinho (literally, bacon petals) and a salad of mushrooms, coriander and ham. Desserts included a pumpkin and ginger pudding with cinnamon crumble, a salted chocolate ganache with caramelised hazelnuts, siricaia a moist, yolk-rich cake with plum jam, and my favourite an orange cake with orange sorbet and basil. At the end of the visit, we had time for a quick visit to the shop which sells the full range of wines as well as other local food and drink produce. A chance discussion in the car leads to a brief extra stop in Cuba, the true birth place so it is claimed of Christopher Colombus, known locally as Colon. We dutifully hopped out of the car, posed with the imposing statue (after which I insisted on the others doing the same) and continued onwards to our final overnight of the trip. Herdade da Malhadinha Nova is an incredible place, one of the most inviting places Ive stayed. A beautifully refurbished country house, this low rise building sits within the Malhadina Nova estate, looking out across vineyards and farmland. The hotel is a gem. The rooms are simply and attractively decorated, with gorgeous bathrooms and Bvlgari toiletries. They are wonderfully comfortable and calming. Mine looked out onto the back terrace and the green and gold landscape beyond. I also loved the public lounge area; homely but with more designer flair than most homes Ive visited and it offered the perfect spot to have a drink from the bar, sit and read a good book, catch up with friends new and old Just outside the double doors was the terrace, where tables were set for outside dining. Beyond these lay an inviting turquoise pool and the entrance to the hotels spa, which we sadly didnt have time to try another reason Im super keen to go back. As well as the winery, hotel and restaurant (in a separate building to the hotel), the estate is home to a stud farm where they breed thoroughbred Lusitano horses a heavily muscled, intelligent breed known for its agility and competitive performance as well as a cattle farm and a pig farm where they breed and raise purebred Alentejana cattle and the Alentejo Black Pig, both known for their superb quality. They have groves of Galega olive trees too, from which they press their own olive oil. The main restaurant wasnt open on the night of our visit, so dinner was served instead on the terrace, an altogether more charming affair. The October nights were quite chilled and we all wrapped up in blankets as we dined by romantic candlelight. The cooking was refined and elegant, making very good use of the estates own beef and pork, supplemented by fresh vegetables, fruit and dairy of the region. Like all the wineries we visited, Malhadha Nova is a young one, just ten years old. But they have been winning accolades since the moment they launched. One of the touches I particularly loved was the use of drawings by the children (when they were younger) on the labels for each wine, an exhuberant cow, a sheep munching orange flowers and little children at play. Because of my deep and abiding love for dessert wines, I asked if I could taste their Late Harvest, made from the Petit Manseng grape, and was rewarded with a terrific explosion of flavour from this stunningly rich, deeply fruity pudding wine. Its a very strong competitor against the dessert wines of South West France that are typically made with this grape. My three nights in Alentejo gave me a wonderful taste of the region, but like all good appetisers, have left me with a huge hunger for more. This is a region thats just perfect for a road trip, and I hope to return for a longer visit soon, with Pete Drinks in tow to fully appreciate the wineries. In the meantime, I hope my trip report has given you a good introduction to the pleasures of Portugals beautiful gastronomic soul and you are considering planning a trip of your own! Save for later on Pinterest: Depending on which part of the Alentejo region you are visiting, you can fly in to Faro to the South or Lisbon, just West of central Alentejo. We travelled with TAP Portugal which runs several flights a day between UK and Portuguese airports and offers a reliable, comfortable service. Flights from London to Lisbon start at 42 one way including surcharges and taxes. Kavey Eats visited Alentejo as a guest of the Alentejo Tourist Board. Find out more at the Visit Alentejo and Visit Portugal websites. You can now donate to Kiwiblog A group dedicated to telling the world about Japan's crime of forcing women into sexual slavery for its troops during World War II holds a press conference at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Oct. 31. It came the same day UNESCO's International Advisory Committee postponed listing the victims' records on its "Memory of the World" register. The banner reads: "We condemn the Japanese government's diplomatic efforts to undermine culture and politically influence UNESCO's Memory of the World listing." / Yonhap By Ko Dong-hwan South Korean activists and survivors of Japan's forced sexual slavery during World War II have expressed anger at UNESCO's decision Tuesday to postpone listing the records of the women, mostly Koreans, on its "Memory of the World" register. UNESCO's International Advisory Committee (IAC) said the issue must be "reconciled between the involved parties" before a listing. At a press conference at the Northeast Asian History Foundation in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Tuesday, the civic group said it will keep campaigning until the records of the so-called "comfort women" are acknowledged and listed on the register. The group said the reason for the postponement a new UNESCO article that all records of colonization, wars and government violence must be reconciled between involved parties is unfair. It said the article will prevent countries victimized by war crimes from registering their evidence. "When UNESCO stated the necessity of reconcilement, they virtually took part in historical reinterpretation," the group said. It accused the U.N.'s cultural organization of violating its own articles. The civic group said the Japanese government used its financial clout to lobby for the article. Japan is the second-biggest contributor to UNESCO, behind the United States. The group said South Korea's former Park Geun-hye administration had not effectively countered the lobbying and cut funding for the group's campaign. New research looking at the density of particles called muons has found an empty space (shown in this illustration) more than 98 feet (30 meters) long right above the pyramid's Grand Gallery. A large void has been discovered inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, thanks to cosmic rays. If the large space turns out to exist, its function which could be anything from new chamber to sealed-off construction passage is likely to be the source of much archaeological debate. An international group of researchers reported today (Nov. 2) in the journal Nature that by tracking the movements of particles called muons, they have found an empty space more than 98 feet (30 meters) long that sits right above the granite-walled Grand Gallery within the massive pyramid. The Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu's pyramid, was built during that pharaoh's reign between 2509 B.C. and 2483 B.C. No new rooms or passages have been confirmed inside the pyramid since the 1800s. "The void is there," said Mehdi Tayoubi, the president of the organization Heritage Innovation Preservation and a leader of the ScanPyramids mission, an ongoing effort to bring new technology to bear on Egypt's most famous structures. [In Photos: Looking Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza] Scientists with ScanPyramids found what seems to be a large void right above the granite-walled Grand Gallery (shown here) in the Great Pyramid. (Image credit: ScanPyramids mission) However, the announcement met some skepticism within the Egyptology community. "It's very clear what they found as a void doesn't mean anything at all. There are many voids in the pyramid because of construction reasons," said Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist and former Egyptian minister of antiquities and director of excavations at Giza, Saqqara, Bahariya Oasis and the Valley of the Kings. Blank spaces Tayoubi and his colleagues have a somewhat unusual approach to the pyramids. They deliberately avoid involving Egyptologists in the scanning stages of their project, preferring to come to the pyramids with a "fresh, and maybe a naive eye," Tayoubi told reporters. The idea, he said, is to avoid preconceived notions on what should be present in favor of cold, hard physics data. The team discovered the mystery void using muon particles, which form when cosmic rays interact with Earth's upper atmosphere. A shower of these particles falls on the planet constantly, zinging through ordinary matter at close to the speed of light. Muons can penetrate stone, but as they travel through a dense object, they lose energy and eventually decay. Thus, measuring the number of muons flowing through an object from a particular direction can reveal the density of that object. If there's a void inside the object, more muons than expected will penetrate. [Photos: Amazing Discoveries at Egypt's Giza Pyramids] The researchers used three different detection methods to measure muons in and around the Great Pyramid. They started with nuclear emulsion films developed by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan, which are like ordinary camera films except they capture the movement of not just visible light, but highly energetic particles. A second method, using particle detectors called hodoscopes, was developed by researchers from KEK, a high-energy accelerator research organization in Japan. Both of these detectors were placed in areas inside the pyramid. A third method, which uses argon-gas-based detection of muons, was installed by scientists from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) outside the pyramid walls. Each method of muon detection has pros and cons, Tayoubi said. Emulsion films are very precise, but last for only about 80 days of measurement, for example. The two electronic devices offer measurements that are not as precise but can run for longer periods of time, gathering greater amounts of data. Construction controversy All three detection methods returned the same result: There is an empty space where none was expected to be. The Great Pyramid has three known chambers: A subterranean chamber, a Queen's Chamber, and higher up, a larger King's Chamber. These are connected by several corridors, including the massive Grand Gallery, an empty hallway 28 feet (8.6 m) tall, 153 feet (46.7 m) long and just over 3 feet (1 m) wide. The Great Pyramid at Giza is the world's largest pyramid. (Image credit: Vladimir Korostyshevskiy/Shutterstock) The newly detected void seems to sit right above the Grand Gallery, though the research team can't yet pinpoint its precise orientation or shape. "We should be very cautious at this time in going too far beyond the observation of the void, because this void needs more research of its orientation and dimension in order to be able to conclude something more precise," said Hany Helal of the University of Cairo, the coordinator of the ScanPyramids project. In 2016, the same researchers reported that they'd found void space behind the north face of the pyramid. Reactions to the new announcement within the Egyptology community were mixed. "The void can be another chamber or a gallery, an aerial shaft, or an architectural fault that was sealed off," said Monica Hanna, an archaeologist, Egyptologist and founder of Egypt's Heritage Task Force, which focuses on protecting ancient sites. Hanna said nondestructive methods of studying the pyramids were a valuable way to investigate the original design of the pyramid without having to destroy parts of the structure. Hawass was more dismissive. "We have to always be very careful about the word void, because the Great Pyramid is filled with voids," he said. The builders of the pyramid set stones of varying size and shape in its core, Hawass said, so the whole structure is riddled with gaps. The original designers of the pyramid also left sealed-off construction tunnels. Identifying these voids has more to do with publicity than with advancing knowledge of the pyramid, Hawass said. "It has nothing to do with any secret rooms or anything inside the Great Pyramid," Hawass said. He said he and his colleagues on the committee that reviews findings from Giza plan to author a paper explaining what they prefer to call "anomalies" from an Egyptology standpoint. Tayoubi and his colleagues, however, argue that the void is not the result of uneven construction, because even blocks of varying size and orientation would have absorbed the muons they observed. "From an engineering point of view and from a structural point of view of analysis it cannot be an irregularity," Helal said. However, there are no plans at this point to investigate the void in person. There is no way to access the void through existing corridors or chambers, and Egyptologists no longer approve of destructive methods of studying pyramids and other ancient structures. It may be possible to put additional muon detectors inside the King's chamber for a view of the void from new angles, Tayoubi said. "We want more data in the Great Pyramid," he said. "The question is a question of means and partners and how we can continue." Original article on Live Science. Pity the male woolly mammoth: These poor creatures were more likely to meet their end in natural traps falling through thin ice, tumbling into holes or getting stuck in mudflows than their female counterparts, a new study finds. Researchers made the discovery after determining the sex of 95 woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) whose remains were found across different parts of Siberia. In all, 66 of the specimens (69 percent) were male, while just 29 (31 percent) were female, they found. The woolly mammoth lifestyle may be the cause of this skewed sex ratio. Inexperienced male mammoths were more likely to travel alone, away from the herd, so perhaps it's no surprise that these males were more likely to stumble into danger and die as a result, the researchers said. [Image Gallery: Stunning Mammoth Unearthed] But there is an upside to these pachyderms' untimely deaths: Being buried in a natural trap such as a bog, crevice or lake tended to preserve their remains for thousands of years, allowing researchers to discover and study them. "Most bones, tusks and teeth from mammoths and other ice age animals haven't survived," study researcher Love Dalen, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said in a statement. "It is highly likely that the remains that are found in Siberia these days have been preserved because they have been buried, and thus protected from weathering." A mammoth tusk on Wrangel Island, off the northeastern coast of Siberia, where mammoths didn't go extinct until about 3,700 years ago. (Image credit: Patricia Pecnerova) The discovery is part of a larger, long-term project researchers are undertaking to study the genomes of woolly mammoth populations. Some of the analyses required knowing the sex of the mammoths, and the results were unexpected, the researchers said. "We were very surprised because there was no reason to expect a sex bias in the fossil record," lead study researcher Patricia Pecnerova, a doctoral student of bioinformatics and genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said in the statement. "Since the ratio of females to males was likely balanced at birth, we had to consider explanations that involved better preservation of male remains." The findings suggest that, like modern elephants, woolly mammoths had matriarchal hierarchies. As such, mammoth herds of young and female mammoths were likely led by an experienced adult female, the researchers said. Male mammoths, also like modern elephants, likely lived in bachelor groups or spent time alone, engaging in risky behavior, they said. "Without the benefit of living in a herd led by an experienced female, male mammoths may have had a higher risk of dying in natural traps," Dalen said. This discovery that seven of every 10 mammoths found in natural traps were male sheds light on the socioecology and behavior of these extinct animals, the researchers said. It's also a reminder that uncovered specimens don't necessarily represent a random sample of a species, they noted. The study was published online today (Nov. 2) in the journal Current Biology. Original article on Live Science. A pair of physicists announced the discovery of a subatomic event so powerful that the researchers wondered if it was too dangerous to make public. The explosive event? The duo showed that two tiny particles known as bottom quarks could theoretically fuse together in a powerful flash. The result: a larger subatomic particle, a second, spare particle known as a nucleon, and a whole mess of energy spilling out into the universe. This "quarksplosion" would be an even more powerful subatomic analog of the individual nuclear fusion reactions that take place in the cores of hydrogen bombs. Quarks are tiny particles that are usually found clinging together to make up the neutrons and protons inside atoms. They come in six versions or "flavors": up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm. Energetic events at the subatomic level are measured in megaelectronvolts (MeV), and when two bottom quarks fuse, the physicists found, they produce a whopping 138 MeV. That's about eight times more powerful than one of the individual nuclear fusion events that takes place in hydrogen bombs (a full-scale bomb blast consists of billions of these events). H-bombs fuse together tiny hydrogen nuclei known as deuterons and tritons to create helium nuclei, along with the most powerful explosions in the human arsenal. But each of those individual reactions inside the bombs releases only about 18 MeV, according to the Nuclear Weapon Archive, a website devoted to collecting research and data about nuclear weapons. Thats far less than the fusing bottom quarks 138 MeV. [Beyond Higgs: 5 Elusive Particles That May Lurk in the Universe] "I must admit that when I first realized that such a reaction was possible, I was scared," co-researcher Marek Karliner of Tel Aviv University in Israel told Live Science. "But, luckily, it is a one-trick pony." As powerful as fusion reactions are, a single instance of fusion on its own isn't at all dangerous. Hydrogen bombs derive their enormous power from chain reactions the cascading fusion of lots and lots of nuclei all at once. Karliner and Jonathan Rosner, of the University of Chicago, determined that such a chain reaction wouldn't be possible with bottom quarks, and, before publishing, privately shared their insight with colleagues, who agreed. "If I thought for a microsecond that this had any military applications, I would not have published it," Karliner said. To spark a chain reaction, nuclear bomb makers need large stockpiles of particles. And an important property of bottom quarks makes them impossible to stockpile: They wink out of existence just 1 picosecond after they're created, or in about the time it takes light to travel half the length of a single grain of salt. After that time span, they decay into a far more common and less energetic kind of subatomic particle, known as the up quark. It might be possible to generate single fusion reactions of bottom quarks inside miles-long particle accelerators, the scientists said. But even inside an accelerator, one couldn't assemble a large enough mass of quarks to do any damage out in the world, the researchers said. So theres no need to worry about bottom quark bombs. [7 Strange Facts About Quarks] The discovery is exciting, though, because it's the first theoretical proof that it's possible to fuse subatomic particles together in ways that release energy, Karliner said. That's brand-new territory in the physics of very tiny particles, made possible by an experiment in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the massive particle-physics laboratory near Geneva. Here's how the physicists made this discovery. At CERN, particles zip around a 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) underground ring at near light speed before smashing into one another. The scientists then use powerful computers to sift through the data from those collisions, and strange particles sometimes emerge from that research. In June, something especially strange turned up in the data from one of those collisions: a "doubly charmed" baryon, or a bulky cousin of the neutron and proton, itself made up of two cousins of the "bottom" and "top" quarks known as "charm" quarks. Now, charm quarks are very heavy compared to the more common up and down quarks that make up protons and neutrons. And when heavy particles bind together, they convert a large chunk of their mass into binding energy, and in some cases, produce a bunch of leftover energy that escapes into the universe. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature] When two charm quarks fuse, Karliner and Rosner found, the particles bind with an energy of about 130 MeV and spit out 12 MeV in leftover energy (about two-thirds of the energy of deuteron-triton fusion). That charmed fusion was the first reaction of particles on this scale ever found to emit energy in this way, and is the headline result of the new study, published yesterday (Nov. 1) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab). The even more energetic fusion of two bottom quarks, which bind with an energy of 280 MeV and spit out 138 MeV when they fuse, is the second, and more powerful of the two reactions discovered. So far, these reactions are entirely theoretical and haven't been demonstrated in a lab. That next step should come soon though. Karliner said he expects to see the first experiments showing this reaction at CERN within the next couple years. Editor's Note: This article was updated to correct a statement saying that top quarks make up neutrons and protons. Up and down quarks make up protons and neutrons. Originally published on Live Science. by Ted McConnell , Featured Contributor, November 2, 2017 In advertising, we discover data, nurture it, harvest it, organize it, analyze it, and sell it. Still, theres a nagging question: Are we baking a marvelous cake with not-so-marvelous ingredients? Maybe the backlash against digital targeting is not because targeting is a bad idea, but because it has been badly executed by the industry. The quality of targeting data is in the news, which stands to reason since programmatic media rely mainly on data to decide whether to buy an impression. Its now known that data is the big differentiator, secret sauce, and strategic weapon of media suppliers and advertisers alike. Data is what connects the marketplace. Online, data is usually derived from behaviors, and online derived segments are basically lists of people who did those behaviors. We massage them, but by the time they go to traffic, they are still just lists. The issue is: What does a behavior mean? Meaning is an issue because online behaviors are an imperfect predictor of attitudes, and so are demographics. Despite that, we liberally infer attitudes from behaviors and demographics. A viewing behavior that indicates intention to buy a Ferrari might just be a teenager playing around at Ferrari.com. advertisement advertisement Discussing the quality of data, the industry is now using a nutrition label metaphor, which seems apt. So lets dig deeper. Origin, istic, Time, Inference Foodies adore talking about origin. Likewise, modelers and planners want to know the provenance of a defined segment. An Auto Trader view of a 2010 Kia is a good pedigree, while a Twitter view of that same car may be less indicative of a potential buyer. Also, as with food, data goes rotten with time. Intention is fleeting. Interest sticks around for longer, but maybe not much. Demographics, the canned tomatoes of targeting, last a long time. Behaviors last forever because they are historical facts, but the attitudes inferred from them can last for seconds, or decades, or possibly never existed at all. Should data have an expiration date? Buyers also glom on to the terms deterministic and probabilistic. These are soft layers of abstraction like organic, or artisanal. I mean, the teenager checking out the Ferrari would be called deterministic, but a modeled billionaire in Dubai would be called probabilistic. Who is more likely to buy a Ferrari? What matters is the value of the audience, not the method of derivation. North of Provenance To work, the data-as-nutrition metaphor needs some important information not normally available: Whats in the package? Food declares what it is on the package, and that can be visually verified (usually!). Data, not so much. In fact, to the user, data is just a big pile of numbers. Gold or snake oil, who can tell? We need to know whether audience composition is, in fact, what it is assumed to be. Do auto intenders intend to buy an automobile? How, indeed, does a planner choose from thousands of possible segment choices? To do that, we must pull back the veil. Did they have that condition? Are they that demographic? Do they harbor that attitude? After that, we need to know if those elements predict purchase. The key to media quality is what portion of the audience was likely to be persuadable. Call that target density. In programmatic delivery, this is mainly a function of data quality. In the advertising supply chain, moms with babies in diapers quickly become females 22 to 35 -- or, online, people who looked at a page about baby stuff. But half the people who looked at baby stuff were shopping for a baby shower. Even I look like a mother when I shop for a baby shower. This is surrogacy, and sometimes (sadly) its all we have. If our target is people who like ice cream, maybe no targeting is needed -- everybody likes ice cream, right? So the density of a target in the general population is a nice way to understand whether a specific segment was worth it. In any case, when data segments are certified to contain the audience that they claim to contain, and when campaigns can be efficiently measured against real attitudes, not surrogates, media will become more accountable. Newly published research concludes that inflammation in our 40s and 50s might be linked with increased brain shrinkage decades later. The ties between inflammation and dementia grow stronger. Share on Pinterest Inflammation and dementia are linked in a new study. As the population becomes steadily older, the number of people living with dementia is increasing. In 2006, 26.6 million people worldwide had Alzheimers disease, which is the most common form of dementia. By 2050, that figure is expected to quadruple. To put that into perspective, that equates to 1 in 85 people. There are currently drugs available to treat dementia, but they are only able to reduce symptoms. There is no cure. One of the major problems facing researchers is that dementia takes many years to develop, and, during this development phase, there are often little or no symptoms. This means that dementia is nearly always caught at an advanced stage. It is therefore difficult to work backward in order to understand the exact causes. Certain risk factors are known for instance, individuals who have one copy of the apolipoprotein E ( ApoE ) e4 gene are at an increased risk of Alzheimers disease, as are people who smoke and those with high blood pressure and diabetes but these do not provide the full picture. Inflammation as a risk factor for dementia One growing area of interest for dementia researchers is inflammation. Some scientists believe that inflammation earlier on in life could set up a cascade of events that, over time, might lead to brain shrinkage and dementia. Inflammation has been linked to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. Its relationship with depression has also recently come to light. If inflammation can have consequences for brain function, it is possible that it could have a long-term impact on the structure of the brain, too. Previous research has already suggested a link between inflammation in midlife and dementia as an older adult. For example, a study of 1,050 people as part of the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study concluded: These data support the view that inflammatory markers may reflect not only peripheral disease, but also cerebral disease mechanisms related to dementia, and that these processes are measurable long before clinical symptoms appear. Most recently, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, set up a study to examine this potential relationship. Their findings are due to be published this week in the journal Neurology. The team which was led by Keenan Walker, Ph.D. measured the levels of five biomarkers for inflammation in the blood, such as white blood cell count. Their study included 1,633 participants, who were aged 53, on average. After an average of 24 years, their brains were scanned and they completed a range of memory tests. New research from the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas has identified two potential new treatments for autism spectrum disorder, targeting the impact of a faulty gene on neural communication. Share on Pinterest A new study has revealed that a gene linked with autism plays a different role than the one that had been accepted so far. Autism which is often used as an umbrella term for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by repetitive behaviors, impaired social communication, and very focused interests. According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 1 in 68 children in the United States have been diagnosed with ASD. Treatments for ASD are often focused on addressing the behavioral symptoms and helping people with the disorder to learn better communication strategies. So far, relatively few efforts have targeted the biological causes of autism. Now, researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas are exploring the route of learning more about these biological factors in order to address them directly. The study, led by Dr. Craig Powell, has identified two potential treatments that could restore the neurotransmission processes affected by the absence of a gene known as KCTD13. Dr. Powell and team published the results of their research in the journal Nature. Missing gene impairs brain function The KCTD13 gene encodes a protein with the same name, and previous studies have linked its expression level with abnormal brain size, arguing that [b]oth the loss and the gain of [the chromosomal segment that contains this gene] confer a significant risk of autism and developmental delay. Dr. Powell and colleagues research, however, revealed that KCTD13 plays an entirely different role: it is not tied not to brain size but to synaptic transmission, or neurotransmission. This is the neurons ability to transmit information. [W]e were quite surprised that the Kctd13 deletion did not result in increased brain size, increased embryonic cell proliferation, and changes in migration, Dr. Powell told Medical News Today, explaining that he and his team were expecting to confirm the results of previous studies. The researchers also identified drugs that may be able to reverse the faulty connectivity that comes as a result of this genes deletion. The deletion of this gene impairs brain function in a major way, and we found a way to repair the damage. But we have more work to do before we try these treatments on people. The findings give us a clue as to what pathways are altered and where to look. Dr. Craig Powell Dr. Powell and team used mice to investigate what the KCTD13 protein actually does, as well as what role it plays in autism. In their experiments, they deleted the gene that encoded the protein in mice, and noted that its absence halved the number of synaptic connections in the animals brains. The researchers noticed that in the absence of KCTD13, the levels of a protein known as RhoA increase, which impairs synaptic transmission. In its normal expression, KTCD13 helps to regulate this protein, allowing neurons to communicate freely. The Belle City Brassworks Brass Bands annual Brass Spectacular performance on Sunday, Nov. 5, will offer fast and intricate selections along with guest performer Marty Erickson and this years fresh crop of high school musicians in BrassaNova. The concert is set for 3 p.m. Sunday at Park High School. Erickson was the principal and solo tubist with the U.S. Navy Band for 26 years and was the principal E-flat tubist with the Brass Band of Battle Creek for 20 years. Hes also served on the faculties of Penn State University and Eastern Michigan University. Erickson currently teaches tuba, euphonium and chamber music at the Conservatory of Music at Lawrence University and performs with the Lawrence Brass faculty brass quintet. Hes also the principal tuba with the Fox Valley Symphony Orchestra Brassworks director Doug Johnson said hes got some interesting pieces lined up thatll allow Erickson to show his stuff, such as George Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue with Erickson playing the solo thats usually played on clarinet. Its going to be fun hearing a tuba do the same solo, said Johnson. Its fun doing things we dont normally do. You dont think of the tubist as a jazz musician or as a soloist. Johnson said Erickson will also bring a bit of performance panache. Hes going to bring a lot of energy and make it fun for everybody thats on stage and in the audience to enjoy music for musics sake, he said. Hes just a fantastic showman, performer, educator and teacher. This also will be the first performance of this years BrassaNova, a group of southeastern Wisconsin high schoolers, who will join Brassworks for three pieces. Im looking forward to the energy of the students and the energy that Marty Erickson will bring, said Johnson. Johnson said he especially looks forward to the grand finale where Brassworks, BrassaNova and Erickson will perform Closer Walk With Thee. Its the great combination of people we have there, said Johnson. We will have students and adults on the stage from 14 to 85 (years old). Tickets for the 3 p.m. Sunday show in the Park High School theater, 1901 12th St., are $10 for adults and $8 for students. Tickets may be purchased in advance at Schmitt Music, 1409 Washington Ave., Racine, or Pacettis Maestro of Music, 5905 Sixth Ave., Kenosha. The Blue Jays have announced some roster trimming moves. Right-handers Bo Schultz and Cesar Valdez were outrighted along with outfielder Darrell Ceciliani. Schultz, 32, underwent Tommy John surgery late in camp, so hes unlikely to be ready to participate fully in Spring Training. That said, he ought to have a chance of pitching for much of the 2018 season. Schultz, who owns a 4.54 ERA over 67 1/3 career MLB frames could either sign early or wait and put on a showcase once hes ready. Valdez, whos also 32, has sparse MLB experience but has functioned as a depth swingman option. He has pitched well at Triple-A over the past two seasons since returning from a few years in the Mexican League. As for Ceciliani, the 27-year-old has spent the past two seasons in the Toronto organization but hasnt earned much time in the majors. A shoulder injury kept him out for much of the 2017 season, and Ceciliani struggled badly (.156/.198/.169) in the 81 plate appearances he was able to take at Triple-A. An arrest warrant has been issued in the US for actress Rose McGowan for possession of a controlled substance. It follows an investigation into belongings left on a United Airlines flight from LA to Washington Dulles airport in January. The belongings reportedly belonged to McGowan and had traces of a controlled substance. Washington police obtained the warrant on February 1, spokesman Rob Yingling said. The authorities say they have been trying to contact McGowan so she can appear in court in Virginia. McGowan, 44, is among the most prominent accusers of Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood mogul facing multiple allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Writing on Twitter on Monday, Ms McGowan hit out at the arrest warrant, asking, Are they trying to silence me? McGowan has accused Weinstein of raping her at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. She received a $100,000 (76,000) settlement after the incident, according to a New York Times report. Through a spokesperson, Weinstein has denied any non-consensual sexual acts. According to the New York Times, someone approached Ms McGowans lawyer in September to offer $1 million in exchange for her signature on a non-disclosure agreement regarding Weinsteins conduct. She told the Times she countered with a request for $6 million, but withdrew the counter-offer when the newspaper published allegations against Weinstein from several women. UK police said on Tuesday they were investigating sexual assault allegations against Weinstein from seven women between the 1980s and 2015. New York police are also investigating claims against the 65-year-old, including rape and sexual assault. Numerous allegations have been made against the movie mogul by women, including actresses Angelina Jolie, Mira Sorvino and Gwyneth Paltrow. Minister of Tourism, Culture & Creative Arts, Catherine Abelema Afeku, has applauded the Ghana Heritage Conservation Trust (GHCT), managers of the canopy walkway at the Kakum National Park, for its enviable safety record. She stated that two decades of existence of the eco-tourism facility, located at Abrafo-Odumase in the Hemang Lower Denkyira District of the Central Region, without any incident is highly commendable and described GHCT as a pacesetter in safety management. GHCT, a non- governmental organisation, manages the Kakum National Park and is responsible for the daily maintenance of the canopy walk way. It also manages some monuments, including the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, Fort Saint Jago at Elmina, which are recognised world tourists sites. Mrs Afeku made the recommendation in a speech read on her behalf at a colourful durbar to inaugurate a children's park and an animal viewing zone at Abrafo. Organised by the GHCT, the new sites aim at giving tourists interesting varieties of new packages to sustain their interests. The occasion was also used to solicit technical and financial support for an exhibition centre restoration project. The children's park which has a large playground, a mini walk-way, two sculptured antelopes and a resting area will also host other social activities, while the animal viewing zone will offer visitors the opportunity to see and feel different wildlife species in their natural habitat. Mrs Afeku explained that the tourism sector contributes about 7.1 percent to the gross domestic product and an estimated GH6 billion to the nation's economy, and therefore, more enabling environment would be created to encourage private sector participation to boost activities in the sector to rake in more revenue. The development of tourism and the expansion of tourist facilities is one way of creating employment opportunities for our unemployed youth and a major source of revenue generation for the rapid development of the economy, she indicated. Hiplife musician Captain Planet, of music trio 4x4, has disclosed that he was detained in America on his first visit. He revealed this during an interview with Doreen Andoh on Cosmopolitan Mix on Joy FM. Captain Planet, whose real name is Jeff Silvanus Dodji Dovo Negro, shared his experience when he first visited the United States of America. The Suhum-born rapper revealed that he was detained for two hours in the US because of his name. He explained further that he had to wait for that long while the immigration authority in the United States contacted Ghana to find out if he was truly Ghanaian. Upon his return back to Ghana, the musician said he was compelled to drop a part of his name to avoid having the same problem subsequently. When I came to Ghana I was so upset I had to take some of the names out, he said. Captain Planet also confirmed rumors that his wife is older him. My wife is older than me but it doesnt change anything, he said Captain Planet, who is the leader of hiplife trio 4x4, recently released a latest hit Obi Agye Obi Girl which features Kofi Kinaata. Talking about his motivation for his recent track, he said, My inspiration came from hearing stories of breakups from friends and also, some of them are from movies that Ive been watching. The rapper concluded that he decided to write the song after listening to all these stories. Less than a month after its released Obi Agye Obi Girl has become an anthem among music lovers. Accra, October 19, 2017 - The Design Market is a premier, seasonal market that features talented designers, artists and makers from across the African continent. The second edition will take place on November 4th and 5th in Accra, Ghana. At the Design Market, visitors will have the opportunity to meet and shop directly from great designers from all over Africa, discover one-of-a-kind goods, and support local entrepreneurship. The weekend-long market will take place at Luxury Living, curator of furniture, decor and lifestyle accessories from Ghana, across Africa and the globe. The Tea Room upstairs offers a collection of luxury teas, herbal infusions and tea time accessories that tell a uniquely African story. In addition to a unique shopping experience, the Design Market offers an event along with music, cultural exchange and a wide selection of specialty foods and beverages. The Design Market is produced by Dabira, a company founded and led by Charlotte Ashamu, an economic development specialist and recipient of the Mo Ibrahim Leadership Fellowship awarded annually by billionaire, Mo Ibrahim. We want to showcase home-grown African design talent. Our goals are to help designers and small businesses grow, to inject money into the local and regional economy, and open peoples eyes to the fact that amazing, quality products are made in Africa," said Charlotte Ashamu. The Design Market will feature a curated exhibition of top-quality designers and products ranging from fashion to home decor to furniture. In total, over a dozen emerging and established designers from five countries in Africa will showcase their work. They include: Furniture designer and fine artist, Hamed Ouattara, from Burkina Faso, who transforms recycled metal into artistic homeware collections. His collections have been showcased at Design Miami, the premier global venue for design held alongside Art Bassel. Ghana based womenswear label, Nadrey Laurent, renowned for its unique and striking designs worn by top African celebrities such as Yemi Alade. . Leading Nigerian womenswear fashion designer, Yinka Fashola of Moofa, and founder of the Moofa School of Fashion Design. Ghana's Studio Badge, a design studio that produces an exciting range of furniture, lighting and lifestyle products that celebrate the beauty of local Ghanaian wood. The trendy footwear brand, Nio Far, created by Senegalese designer, Milcos Badji, using traditional textiles and unique patterns. Sole Inspiration, an exquisite line of leather accessories and furniture made in Ghana. Nigerias Ty Tys, a range of mens neckwear and accessories all hand-made using aso-oke, a traditional Nigerian textile. Contemporary ready-to-wear womens fashion brands, Yalerri, Needlepoint and Atunnise Clothiers, made in Cote dIvoire and Nigeria respectively, incorporating African prints. Two of Ghanas new, cutting-edge fashion accessories brands, Myth House, which designs one-of-kind bags made of metal mesh, and Vasties, creators of stylish sunglasses for all ages. Selassie Tetevie of Ram Designs, a Ghanaian furniture designer renowned for his unique pieces such as traditional musical instruments transformed into sofas and chairs. Guests at the Design Market will also have the opportunity to discover specialty foods and beverages made locally in Ghana. The featured chef is Jeff Luno of Wood, who fuses his French flair with local ingredients to create an unforgettable culinary experience. Earlier last month, the government launched the restoration of nursing trainee allowance with a joyous and a colourful ceremony at the Sunyani Nursing and Midwifery Training College. This was an exciting moment for student nurses and parents alike as students have endured hardship since the cancellation of the allowance by the previous government in 2014. But even before the restoration of the allowance, most student nurses may have budgeted for what they would use the monthly allowance of Ghc400 for. As most nursing students are young people, purchasing items like the latest phones, trendy outfits, designer shoes and bags among others may be top of the list. However,it will be unwise to waste allowance on the above as there are profitable ways to use the allowance effectively. Remember it's important to invest in your future. Here are 5 ways to use your allowance profitably School Fees - Nursing Colleges in Ghana charge very high fees with first year students paying as high as Ghc 4,300 hostel included. You can imagine the difficulties the average Ghanaian parent would go through to raise such an amount. Student nurses can support their parents by depending on the allowance for their upkeep and buying school items so parents can have a breathing space to concentrate on the next school fees. Investment - Students can invest in treasury bills with some part of the allowance or save money for personal initiatives. Entrepreneurship- For those who want to start their own businesses because of the flexibility in their schedules, this is the time to save enough to get started even before you graduate from school. Some nurses have become successful business owners even before they graduated from school because they started implementing business idea while in school. So while their colleagues are calling on government for jobs, they are comfortably placed in their own businesses. School business - I don't know if it is allowed for students to do petty trading on campus. However, if it is allowed in your school, you can invest in selling stationary, provisions, phone credit among others. These items maybe in high demand as it is sometimes difficult for students to go outside the school to access these items. Learn a vocation- With your allowance, you can enroll in a fashion design, hairdressing, beadmaking or a makeup class.and have these as a side job for extra income. Threatened by the 6th North Korean nuclear test, the international society seeks various ways to respond to the provocation that ever increases the probability of international conflicts. On September 17th, government officials, chief justices and civil society representatives discussed global peacebuilding measures in Seoul. Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), an international NGO under the UN ECOSOC, hosted the 3rdAnnual Commemoration of the World Alliance of Religions Peace (WARP) Summit from September 17th to 19th with the theme of constructing collaborative governance for development and implementation of the Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War (DPCW). The 5th HWPL International Law Peace Committee Meeting was held as a part of sessions to draw action plans to build peace projects in cooperation between governments and civil society. For the purpose of the meeting, Facing the news around the world regarding the nuclear test, we from different parts of the world, discuss peace at this moment. There is nuclear test on one side. A discussion for peace is being held on the other side. Now we HWPL hold peace events in many countries. And North Korea will be the final destination of our work of peace. Rather than just watching, all of us without exception should work together for a world of peace, said Chairman Man Hee Lee of HWPL. Regarding cooperation with government for peacebuilding, Rt. Hon. Hrant Bagratyan, Former Prime Minister of Armenia, said, In order to receive support from the state level, the head party and also the ministers of each ministry, I introduced the DPCW and its importance at a conference meeting. The reason that I could do this was not only because this declaration and HWPLs peace work is beneficial to a specific level of society but is a definite tool to bring peace to all of us. H.E. Samuel Hinds, Former President of Guyana suggested establishment peace zones with an example of the Declaration of the Indian Ocean Peace Zone that prevents any actions that threaten peace in the region, especially in military terms. He emphasized, The establishment of such a zone of peace, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, aims at the establishment of a permanent world peace based on equal rights and justice for all mankind. This is consistent with the fundamental purpose of the Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War. The DPCW was drafted by experts in international law and HWPL in 2016 to advocate peacebuilding efforts through international cooperation with participation of individuals from all sectors including government, civil society, religion, education, media. 02.11.2017 LISTEN Being a paper Presented at a Two-Day Workshop Organized by the Ministry of Information & Orientation on the 25th -26th October 2017 Yenagoa Bayelsa State INTRODUCTION: Let me thank the Honorable Commissioner for Information and Orientation and his formidable team for putting together this workshop. It is an opportunity to build our capacities to be more effective and efficient on the job. The Honorable Daniel Iworiso-Markson assumed office only about three weeks ago and in line with the policy thrust of the Restoration Administration, he has today demonstrated one of the priority objectives of the administration that of human capacity building. Just as a good pilot must have a compass to direct him/her to a safe destination, policies and programmes are the drivers of good governance. Recognizing that this is an in-house workshop/training, I have stripped this paper bare of all scholarly gravity, believing that it is a mere in-house conversation. The overriding goal of any government is to seek the welfare and happiness of her citizens. This explains why democratic countries all over the world seek a transparent, accountable, participatory and effective government anchored on the rule of law. Good governance, howsoever it is understood, within the context of democratic rule is driven by policies and programmes. It is the implementation of good policies and programmes that creates development or lack of it. The Asia Dragons took a quantum leap from Third World to first World because they implemented good policies. A policy is a statement of intent, which is implemented as a procedure or protocol. A policy is a document that outlines what a government is going to do and what it can achieve for the society as a whole. Public policy a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given problem in society. Public policy is an attempt by government to address a public issue by instituting laws, regulations, decisions, or actions pertinent to the problem at hand. One crucial difference between policies and programmes is that programmes are short-term interventions that create temporary solutions to a given problem while policies covenants we collectively choose to live by, as articulated in legislation and regulation. Again a project as a temporary undertaking to create a unique product or service. A project has a defined start and end point and specific objectives, which when achieved brings the project to a completion stage. A programme, implies a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing the projects individually. A programme may also include elements of on-going, operational work. So, a programme comprises multiple projects and is created to obtain broad organizational or technical objectives. There are many differences between a project and a programme including scope, benefits realization, time, and other variables. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organization. They may be subjective and objective decision making . Policies to assist in subjective decision making usually assist senior management with decisions that must be based on the relative merits of a number of factors, and as a result are often hard to test objectively, e.g. work-life balance policy. In contrast policies to assist in objective decision-making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested. They are called password policies. A project by definition has a beginning and an end (or at least one hopes so certain programmes, while having a beginning may not have an end. A classic example of one of these types of programmes is an annual construction programme. PROJECT PROGREMME POLICY A project is a temporary entity established to deliver specific (often tangible) outputs in line with predefined time, cost and quality constraints. A project should always be defined and executed and evaluated relative to an (Executive) approved business case which balances the costs, benefits and risks of the project. The project business case should be managed under change control. Projects yielded tangible outcomes whereas programmes do not. There are more stakeholders in carrying out programmes than projects. Projects have a starting point and an end point but that may not be the case with programmes. Whereas the implementation of programmes may be fluid. Projects yield short term dividends and such dividends are measurable. This may not be the case with programmes. Public policy making refers to the process of making important organizational decisions, including the identification of different alternatives such as programmes and choosing among them on the basis of expected outcomes. Policies can be understood as political, managerial , financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK The Conceptual framework of this paper is anchored on the Pareto Principle.More generally, the Pareto Principle is the observation that most things in life are not distributed evenly. It can mean all of the following things: The Pareto principle is named after economist VILFREDO PARETO, which specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. The principle states that 20% of the invested input is responsible for 80% of the results obtained. Put another way, 80% of consequences stem from 20% of the causes; this is also referred to as the "Pareto rule" or the "80/20 rule." This principle serves as a general reminder that the relationship between inputs and outputs is not balanced. For instance, the efforts of 20% of a government could yield 80% of the results. In terms of personal time management, 80% of your work-related output could come from only 20% of your time at work. In Pareto's case, he used the rule to explain how 80% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the country's population. 20% of the input creates 80% of the result 20% of the workers produce 80% of the result 20% of the customers create 80% of the revenue 20% of people take part in policy formulation, which yields 80% of the outcomes. 20% of policies lead to 80% of unintended consequences, leading to policy failure. For a top Civil Servant, all you need to do is to identify the critical 20% to work with. The 20% becomes your think tank while the whole Organization is aware of the policies that are being implemented. After all, too many cooks spoil the broth. CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD POLICIES Good policies have certain characteristics. Some of them include: Assumptions are clear and explicit. There is linkage to organizational direction. Due process in the development stage has been observed. Stakeholders have been included in the development. Public interest has been given a high priority. Organizational expectations have been met. The policy is likely to be both efficient and effective. Outcomes are stated in measurable terms. There is a capacity to evaluate outcomes. It has been appropriately funded with resource. There is clear accountability. It follows all appropriate laws. It is enforceable. It is historically informed. Ideas have been tested prior to implementation. There are many policy making models: Incremental; Group Theory; Elite Model, Market Exchange Model, and the rational model. This is not the thrust of our discussion.. These models do not need elaboration. TYPES OF POLICIES: Public policies can be categorized into six or more Typologies. Some of them are discussed below: a) Constituent policy: A constituent policy is connected mainly to development of new departments, internal distribution of funds and rules for public servants. That is why, such a policy is either structural or procedural. b) Distributive policy: This policy enables government to provide public goods such as hospitals, schools, roads, transport, public buildings services, to all in the nation with the help of public fund. In Bayelsa State, the provision of Boarding Schools and General Hospitals is a good example. Distributive policy does not create competition for the goods and services since they are owned by the government. 3. Regulatory Policy: Regulatory policies prescribe do's and don'ts for different groups to prevent individuals from becoming their victims. It tends to create losers and winners by allowing one group to enjoy more freedom than the other. Although regulatory policies tend to garner a lot of criticisms, they do compel certain groups to behave and maintain qualities. In Bayelsa State, any child hawking pure water and other goods will be arrested. This policy is to encourage increased school enrolment and curb child labour. Another is prohibition of drunk driving: This is done to keep roads free of fatal accidents 4. Redistributive policy: Here, benefits are transferred from to another to eradicate social issues such as poverty for the sake of equality. Redistributive policies have been used many times to favor the rich over the poor. Sometimes the policy does not have much to do with allocation of finance. That is why redistributive policies have always been most controversial. Pay As You Earn, PAYE seeks to take more money from the rich to provide social amenities for the poor. The Education Development Trust Fund is another example. It is the most controversial Policy [7] 5. Substantive Public Policy: These are the policies concerned with the general welfare and development of the society like provision of education and employment opportunities, economic stabilization and enforcement of No Work No Pay among others. It does not cater for any particular segment of society but formulated in accordance with the Constitution to maintain stability. 6.) Capitalisation Public Policy - These policies are related to financial subsidies given by the State to business undertakings. It is not directly linked to public welfare but it does contributes but indirectly to public welfare. It is basically infrastructural and development policies for government to maintain optimal level of functionality. [8] THE PUBLIC POLICY CYCLE A cycle divides the policy making process into a series of stages, from a notional starting point at which policymakers begin to think about a policy problem to a notional end point at which a policy has been implemented and policymakers think about how successful it has been before deciding what to do next. The image is of a continuous process rather than a single event. [9] Identification of problems: Policies emanate from the problems of society and policies are predicated on those problems. Identifying a problem is critical because it will dictate the type of policy that will address. Agenda-setting: Having identified the problem there is a need to call government attention and that of stakeholders to the problem. The Agenda-Setting stage can include leaders of thought, lobbyists and other influential citizens, all of whom may be private citizens. It involves state and non-state actors. Agenda setters may also be involved in consultation to obtain refined ideas and informed opinions. Generally, many policy decisions are initiated, supported, or influenced by the public servant. The support of public servants is necessary for the smooth implementation of the policies. Policy formulation: Setting objectives, identifying the cost and estimating the effect of solutions, choosing from a list of solutions and selecting policy instruments. Legitimation. Ensuring that the chosen policy instruments have support. It can involve one or a combination of: legislative approval, executive approval, seeking consent through consultation with interest groups, and referenda. Implementation. Establishing or employing an organization to take responsibility for implementation, ensuring that the organization has the resources (such as staffing, money and legal authority) to do so, and making sure that policy decisions are carried out as planned. Implementation goes with budgeting. Evaluation. Assessing the extent to which the policy was successful or the policy decision was the correct one; if it was implemented correctly and, if so, had the desired effect. Evaluation is necessary to identify policy gaps. Policy maintenance, succession or termination. Here, decision is taken if the policy should be continued, modified or discontinued. The cycle is simple and understandable. It can be applied to all political systems. The emphasis on cycles highlights the fluidity of policymaking. There is also a wide range of important studies based on the analysis of particular stages such as the top-down versus bottom-up approaches to the study of policymaking. In the words of David Hackworth If a policy is wrongheaded feckless and corrupt I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed. Indeed Makinde (2005) observed that in Nigerian there are usually no comprehensive policy standards and procedure (p.63). A DISCUSSION OF SOME OF THE POLICIES OF THE RESTORATION ADMINISTRATION State of Emergency in Education ( to address the educational disadvantages) The Problem of Insecurity --- Operation Doo Akpo (to address the problem of insecurity in the State. The Child Rights (Act) domesticated Governor Seriake Dickson said I am delighted that the new Child Rights Law will offer protection for children in Bayelsa State, I stress that anyone caught violating the rights of children will be prosecuted according to the provisions of this new law. This law was domesticated following the alleged kidnap of a teenager Ese Oruru to a State in Northern Nigeria. Building of institutions for the physically challenged in Opolo among many other initiatives. Friday Konyefa Foundations intervention in training 220 female children Implementation of Free Education The Foreign Scholarship Scheme Anti-Cultism Law ( imprisonment for 10 years) Integrated Security Management System Boarding School System Clock-in System ( Work Ethics) to change attitude to work Bayelsa State Motorcycles Operations (Prohibition) Bill, 2012 (August 15th, 2015 10.Bayelsa State Salary Fraud And Related Offences (Prohibition) Bill, 2012 (August 15th, 2015 Bayelsa State Symbols And Songs Bill, 2012 (Flag and Coat of Arm) Bayelsa State Fiscal Responsibility Bill 2012: Transparency Briefing Izon-Ibe Microfinance Bank ( Promote SMEs) Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (Amendment) Law, 2012 Bayelsa State Emergency Agency Bill, 2012 ( The Great Flood) Boarding School and Feeding of Students: ROLE OF THE CIVIL SERVICE IN POLICY IMPLEMENTATION The requirements of the civil service are that it shall be impartially selected, administratively competent, politically neutral and imbued with the spirit of service to the community. Gladden The Civil Service is characterized by: Professionals 2. Hierarchical Structure 3. Rules and Regulations 4. Salaried Permanence 6. Formalistic Impersonality 7. Merit-based 8. Division of labour/work 9. Career system 10. Neutrality 11. Anonymity Simply put, Civil Service is the permanent executive, clearly distinguished from political executive. Whereas the political executive is the minister, the elected one; the permanent executive is the administrator, the selected and appointed one. Civil servant is the one who provides expert advice in policy formulation owing to his expertise and competence, and in turn implement as well. The role of the Civil Service in the policy making process include: Offer professional advice to the political class on policy making Implement the policies of Government in the best interest of the people and in accordance with the Public Service Rules. To stay away from politics thereby assert its neutrality Insist that the right thing should be done. This can be done without prejudice to partisan politics. Head Committees and interpret Memos Analyze the success index of policies before they are implemented. OBSTACLES TO POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: Failure to undertake PEST and SWOT analysis ( Political, Environmental, Social and Technological factors) Strength Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Lack of accurate Data/Statistics for planning Lack of adequate funding or under-budgeting Politicization of policy implementation Plan Indiscipline Lack of Stakeholders Buy-in Bureaucracy ---This is caused by Civil/Public Servants Non-inclusivity of critical Stakeholders in Planning Defective Agenda Setting and lack of Consensus Not carrying out Cost-Benefit Analysis Over-ambitious and unrealizable policy goals: RECOMMENDATIONS: Political will: Political will should be the factor to government formulation strategies. Political will means support for a policy by top government functionaries. This is because government sometimes formulates policy but lack the political social and economic will to implement it. Needs of the people: In formulating a policy, the policy formulators require a good and thorough understanding of the local needs and problems of the people. Emphases should be given so the needs of the people, their capacities and total commitment programs. Stakeholders: In policy formulation, stakeholder must first be identified by taking more account the interest of the stakeholders. Government policy depend on the agencies of government for support and government should show position attitude to the policy by ensuring adequate measure to empower the stakeholder, civil society and other interested parties with the required prerequisite information on the policy for their benefits. Specific target group: One could say that no single government policy plan is sufficient to meet the needs of the people. It is often better to target specific groups for a better policy implementation. Use of Experts to formulate Policies: This will reduce the policy failure index. Periodic capacity building of Civil Servants who are charged with the responsibility of implementing policies. Policy formulation and implementation should be taught as a refresher course for the top echelon of the bureaucracy. Policies should be all-inclusive and policy outcomes measured. Certain policies should be pilot tested before they are implemented on a state-wide basis. And CONCLUSION: There are at least four ways in which globalization is affecting the policy formulation in each country. Firstly, thanks to social and electronic media, small issues which a decade or so ago could only find place in the back page of a national newspaper become breaking news in major global channels creating advocacy and sympathy movements in different parts of the world. Secondly, with the rapidly globalizing world, global issues like environmental degradation, climate change, and other issues which were only discussed in the corridors of power are being debated in the drawing rooms of countries and creating strong advocacy movements among the population. Thirdly, centers of actual power and decision making are shifting from local to global level with the outreach of domestic interest groups to their sympathizers in international organizations, multinational corporations and those in the governments of global powers. Lastly, non-state actors are increasingly penetrating those domains which were the exclusively reserved for the domestic state machinery. There is a preponderant influence of nongovernmental actors in the formulation of domestic policies The implication is that most of the domestic policies we formulate are benchmarked by international organizations, to which we are signatories. Let it be known that Public policy is a study in imperfection. It involves imperfect people, with imperfect information, facing deeply imperfect choices - so it's not surprising that they're getting imperfect results. You have been indulgent and I thank you. References: Allison, Graham. 1971. Essence of Decision. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. Anderson, James E. 1979. Public Policy-Making. 2nd Edition, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bardach, Eugene. 1977. The Implementation Game: What Happens After a Bill Becomes a Law. Mass: MIT Press, Cambridge. Barrett, S.M. (2006) Implementation studies: time for a revival? in Budd, L., Charlesworth, J. and Paton, R. (eds) Making Policy Happen, London, Routledge/Milton Keynes, The Open University (Course Reader). Barrett, S. and Fudge, C. (2000) Policy and Action, London, Methuen. Chukwuemeka S. (2013) suggest that mere formulation of policies should become not the major issue in Nigeria but rather their effective implementation. Benin: University Press Developing Nations (2013) The Case of Nigeria. Singaporean Journal Business and Management Studies. Vol 1 No 8.p.34-43, Singaporean Donahue, J.D. (1989) The Privatisation Decision: Public Ends, Private Means, New York, Basic. Ebienfa, K.I. and Paki, F.A.E. The Nigeria State And The Politics Of Public Policy Implementation, Journal of Social Science and Public Policy, 2013, Vol 3, March.p.1-14 Fischer, F. (2003) Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Okoli,F.C and Onah,F.O.Public Administration In Nigeria: Nature, Principles And Applications. Enugu: John Jacobs Classics Publishers, 2002. Klijn, E.-H. and Koppenjan, J.F.M. (2006) Public management and policy networks: foundations of a network approach to governance? in Budd, L., Charlesworth, J. and Paton, R. (eds) Making Policy Happen, London, Routledge/Milton Keynes, The Open University (Course Reader). refer: http://publicadministrationtheone.blogspot.in/2012/07/organisations-theories-systems.html Marris, P. and Rein, M. (2011) Dilemmas of Social Reform: Poverty and Community Action in the United States, 2nd edn, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. Newman, J. (2005) Enter the transformational leader: network governance and managerial agency, Sociology, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 71734. Nutley, S. and Webb, J. (2000) Evidence and the policy process in Davies, H., Nutley, S. and Smith, P. (eds) What Works? Evidence-based Policy and Practice in Public Services, Bristol, Policy. Rhodes, R.A.W. (1997) Understanding Governance, Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity and Accountability, Buckingham, Open University Press Ezra F. Vogel, The Four Little Dragons: The Spread of Industrialization in East Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). ( Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong (China) and South Korea Osborne, D. and Gaebler, T. (1992) Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Boston, MA, Addison-Wesley. : http://publicadministrationtheone.blogspot.in/2012/07/process-techniques-of-decision-making.html Lipsky, M. (2010): Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York, Russell Sage Foundation. Ugwuanyi, B.I. and Chukwuemeka, E.O. Obstacles to Effective Policy Implementation By Public Bureaucracy In Developing Nations: The Case of Nigeria. Singaporean Journal Business and Management Studies. Vol 1 No 8.p.34-43, 2013 Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5562525 article http://publicadministrationtheone.blogspot.in/2012/07/process-techniques-of-decision-making.html Budd, L., Charlesworth, J. and Paton, R. (eds) (2006) Making Policy Happen, London, Routledge/Milton Keynes, The Open University (Course Reader). in http://publicadministrationtheone.blogspot.in/2012/07/process-techniques-of-decision-making.html Chukwuemeka (2013) suggest that mere formulation of policies should become not the major issue in Nigeria but rather their effective implementation. Ibadan: Longman Publishers Idumange J.A. (2017) A concept Paper on the Public Policy Cycle Yenagoa-Bayelsa State. Source: Bayelsa State House of Assembly, Amarata - Yenagoa Newman, J. (2006) Joined-up government: the politics of partnership in Budd, L., Charlesworth, J. and Paton, R. (eds) Making Policy Happen, London, Routledge/Milton Keynes, The Open University (Course Reader). at:https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jakesulliv763475.html?src=t_public_policy Ghanas former Ambassador to the United States has criticised President Akufo-Addo for failing to take action against the High Commissioner to South Africa, over the diplomats recent comments. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah says the Presidents silence over George Ayisi Boatengs embarrassing remark that New Patriotic Party (NPP) members are his priority when it comes to job opportunities, is worrying. He forgets that the salary he draws every month is not at the NPP headquarters, the residence of the High Commissioner in South Africa is for the government of Ghana, the car he drives is funded by the Ghanaian taxpayer so he cannot make that comment, he said. Addressing members of the student wing of the governing NPP, the Tertiary Students Confederacy Network (TESCON), in Kumasi Mr Ayisi Boateng said they are his priority when it comes to opportunities. This government is doing its best to create job opportunities and me for instance, I told my people over there [that], it is because of NPP that Im here, so the NPP man is my priority". His comments have attracted condemnations from sections of the public with some calling for him to resign or be sacked. But he is also getting some support from his party members. Wading into the controversy, Mr Spio-Garbrah said he does not see anything wrong with helping party members who have helped a politician to win power, but emphasised excluding others is wrong. This is the kind of thing that a good president will come out within 24 hours to take action for people to know that this man [president] is really defending the people of Ghana. When you swear an oath at the Independence Square, it is to defend Ghanaians and not NDC or NPP, Mr Spio-Garbrah said. The former Trades Minister in the John Mahama administration also criticised what he described as the politicisation of the public service. Another Minister had said public servants who are not NPP should be removed from Ghanas public service, he said adding, politicisation of the public service is a big problem in the Akufo-Addo government. Today, in the police service almost everybody knows who is NPP and who is NDC, the same with the Ghana Armed Forces which should be a very neutral body but most people there know who is NDC and NPP supporter, he said. Describing it as an unfortunate development in the countrys political history. Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim | [email protected]oyonline.com Exclusive distributor of Renault vehicles in Ghana, Premium Motors has solidified its position in the market by commissioning a technology-rich showroom and two new SUVs. The new showroom, located at Atiko Junction in Accra, fitted with the latest state-of-the-art equipment is aimed at enhancing the power of the automobile consumer. It re-echoes Renaults mantra, Passion for Life. Renault Ghana CEO, Jihad Hijazi told Myjoyonline.com Tuesday, the facility was designed for tomorrows buyer. It is a showroom that is full of innovation, designed for the savvy consumers to come and experience the product itself before they purchase it, he testified about the facility christened Renault Store. The showroom is clean and has an uncluttered space with a 3D Configurator as well as colour pallet that affords consumers the opportunity to design vehicles to their specification. The Renault Store gives consumers a sneak peek at the micro-elements of the vehicles they will like to purchase and delivery is done right inside there. Renault Ghana CEO, Jihad Hijaz Mr Hijazi captured the experience when he said: we are selling you not just a product to take you from A to B, but a product you will be passionate about. Renault vision for Ghana The Renault experience is a piece of the grand vision of the global brand aimed at bringing comfort to families around the world. The Renault Group made up of a crucial alliance is globally the most sought after brand by automobile users, selling more than other vehicles. A passionate Mr Hijazi said the vision of the brand is to maintain the best position and to ensure that it provides very safe and affordable solution for anyone who wants to buy a vehicle in the country. Renault Kadjar and Koleos Renault has confirmed its commitment to its new focus by introducing two new SUVs onto the Ghanaian market. The Renault Kadjar and Koleos were also unveiled at the grand opening of the high-tech showroom. Renault Kadjar Mr Hijazi referred to the two new vehicles as the Cinderellas of the market. He explained the value that the consumer gets from the products is worth more than what others are offering in the market. It is not a car that we are selling, it is an emotional tool, he told the reporter. Renault Koleos The Renault Kadjar Dynamique is a five-seater SUV with a 1,200cc Turbo Charged and GDI 4-Cylinder Petrol Engine. It consumes less fuel which means that on an average, consumers will be able to save about 40 percent on fuel. The Renault Koleos Dynamique is also a five-seater SUV with 2,500cc CVT and MPI 4-Cylinder 175hp Petrol Engine. Renault Koleos Engine The two vehicles have blind spot detection systems, tire pressure monitoring systems, navigations systems and very fancy lightening mood that helps the user to change the mood of the vehicle. The theme of the dashboards could be changed to digital, depending on the needs of the user. They have hands free parking system that helps the user to bark some instruction for the vehicle to automatically park. Renault Koleos These specifications among others cost from $30,000 to $40,000 but the equivalent in the market will not cost less than $90,000, Mr Hijazi said. Solidifying the brand The two new vehicles and the high-tech showroom help to solidify the brand Renault in Ghana. Renault Ghana Marketing Manager, Shirry Borketey Manison is optimistic the brand face-lift will help to drive sales for the company. Renault Ghana Marketing Manager, Shirry Borketey Manison This year our vision was to make the brand visible and make it acceptable in the country by introducing new modules, he expressed satisfaction in the work done so far. He talked about the Logan, Sandero and SUV modules, which he said are moderately priced for every profession and age bracket. In terms of payment plan, Mr Manison said the company has put in place a team of credit officers, whose job it is to determine the credit-worthiness of clients. When you walk in, we will access your credit worthiness and if you qualify you do part payment and the rest is spread over a year, he said of consumers who might not be able to make full payment. With a giant vision to make vehicle ownership in the country an easy one as well as churning out products that are emotional, Renault Ghana CEO is confident the brand has come to stay. Renault is here to stay. We are here to serve every Ghanaian, Mr Hijazi said. Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | [email protected] | Instagram: @Realbrakopowers The Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo, has directed all Judges to with immediate effect begin the wearing of the symbolic wigs during court sittings. The directive by the Chief justice also instructed judges to ensure they are fully attired in robes alongside the wigs. According to an internal memo from the judicial secretary to all judges, sighted by Citi News, the directive is to preserve the tradition and the uniqueness of the work of Judges and the legal profession. It also explained that, the wearing of the wigs will enhance the security of judges and also provide them the needed protection and anonymity. Her ladyship Sophia Akuffo, also indicated that, the new directive is aimed at restoring the formal nature of court proceedings, and eliminate what she describes as the creeping casualness in the judicial system. The directive is one of the notable decisions taken by the Chief Justice since her appointment in June 2017. I'm against lawyers advertising on social media Sophia Akuffo The Chief Justice nominee, Justice Sophia Akuffo, in June 2017 during her vetting, said she does not endorse the practice of lawyers advertising their services on social media . According to her, the practice is distasteful and amounts to 'touting', a behavior unacceptable by the bar. Sophia Akuffos conservative leanings She said, Personally, I believe that dignity of the Bar is as important as the dignity of the judiciary, and the idea of lawyers touting themselves on social media is personally distasteful to me. But that aside, the law is there clearly against touting because touting is an improper conduct on the part of the lawyer. By: Fred Djabanor/citifmonlne.com/Ghana 02.11.2017 LISTEN Accra, Nov 1, GNA- The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has said it has not suspended the issuance of emergency entry visa to any category of person. A statement signed by DSI Amoako-Atta, the Acting Head of Public Affairs and copied to the Ghana News Agency, noted that the GIS continues to issue emergency entry visas (EEV) to all foreign nationals in accordance with conditions in Regulation 4 of the Immigration, 2000 Legislative Instrument (LI) 1691. The statement said the attention of GIS was drawn to a report circulating in a section of the media that issuance of EEV to some category of foreign nationals had been suspended. It said the media report had created some anxiety and the apprehension within the public and the business community. GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Nine communities have received a total of $75,000 to promote education, agriculture and economic growth at the local level, under the United States Ambassador's Small Grants Program. Ambassador Robert P. Jackson, honoured the grantees, on Tuesday, at a signing ceremony at the Embassy in Accra, and praised the communities for developing sustainable, high-impact, community-supported projects. A statement issued by the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy, quoted Ambassador Jackson as saying: 'As grantees, you are joining a distinct group of communities and organizations throughout Ghana. 'You have demonstrated that you can unite your political, civil society, religious and business leaders to provide for the needs of your community with a little extra assistance from the U.S. Government. But in reality, the real efforts are yours, and we are honored to be your partner.' The beneficiaries include the Nerebehi Integrated Community Centre for Employable Skills (ICCES) Training Center in the Ashanti Region, which would use the fund for the construction of an electrical workshop; and the Misthy Cee Development Center in the Ashanti Region, which would also use its share for the completion of a school dining hall. The Ampabame Community, also in the Ashanti Region, would complete a primary school and a Junior High School with its allocation; while Keba Africa would purchase new furniture and learning materials for the Castle Road Special School, in Accra. The Zimnuopare Community, in the Upper West Region, would complete a classroom block with its fund, while the Ebongapar Women's Group in the Upper West Region, would reconstruct a shea processing facility with its allocation. The statement said three organisations received grants to buy new gari processing equipment and stoves. They are Nyamebekyere Women's Gari Processing Association in the Brong Ahafo Region; Premier Agribusiness Association in the Eastern Region and Miyingor Farmers Group in the Volta Region. The Ambassador's Small Grants and Special Self-Help Program has provided support to grassroots development efforts, since 1964. Over the last three decades, the U.S. Embassy in Accra has distributed more than $2.3 million in such grants to support community development projects. Communities interested in learning about the Small Grants Program should visit the U.S. Embassy Ghana website for more information, the statement said. GNA Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Nana Adjei Boateng, has pledged the government's resolve to go the extra mile to build a society that works not just for few privileged Ghanaians but everybody. He said it was not going to let the people down - betray their trust and confidence. Addressing a grand durbar of the chiefs and people of the New Juaben traditional area held in Koforidua to climax their Akwantukese festival, he said the Nana Akufo-Addo-led Administration would keep faith with them. The event coincided with the 25th anniversary of the installation of the Omanhene, Daasebre Oti Boateng. The Deputy Minister called for the people to give strong backing to the government as it worked hard to implement its development agenda - free senior high school (SHS) policy, one district, one factory, planting for food and jobs and the construction of warehouses. He gave the assurance that every election promise they made to the people would be kept. Dr. Paa Kwasi Ndoum, Founder of Ndoum Group of Companies, asked all to support local businesses to grow. He said it was in the best interest of everybody and the economy that these businesses flourished - to create jobs and wealth. He spoke of the readiness of his Group to assist in the implementation of the government's one district, one factory policy. Daasebre Oti Boateng drew attention to the need for the universities to re-align their programmes to fit the demands of industry. Their products should be globally competitive, resourceful and innovative to drive the nation's development. GNA By Benjamin Akoto, GNA The REDD+ Government and Finance Integrity for Africa Project, has ended with limited capacity at the grassroot level being identified as a major gap that hindered the project. Explaining this, in Accra on Tuesday, Mr Micheal H. Okai, the Project Coordinator said with the absence of capacity, it became difficult for community members to understand and link their livelihoods to climate change. "This also made it impossible for community members to change their livelihoods to mitigate the effect of climate change," Mr Okai stated at the REDD+ end of project and stakeholders meeting. He therefore, advocated the trainings, group farming activities as well as better sensitisation measures to help address the challenge in the future. Other challenges he noted were limited engagement with Parliament, no REDD+ pilot project, inadequate information on REDD+ and the linkages, inadequate multi-sectorial approach and language barriers to disseminate information about REDD+ change. Going forward, Mr Okai called for collaboration among stakeholders, sustainability, awareness creation and linkages, anti-corruption frame and safeguard towards the REDD+ project. The REDD+ Governance and Finance Integrity for Africa Project which was launched in Ghana on July 22, 2014 had the overall objective of improving anti-corruption policy and practice in REDD+ finance and governance in Ghana. The basis behind REDD+ was that developing countries should be financially compensated for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation, the sustainable management of forest and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. The three-year project being implemented in partnership with Transparency International Berlin, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe and some outreach activities in central African Republic, Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo was funded by the European Union. To strengthen citizen's engagement to increase the demand for transparency, accountability in REDD+ governance and finance policy development and monitoring were among some of the problems the project sought to address. Mrs Linda Ofori-Kwafo, the Executive Director of Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), said the project achieved more than the target stakeholders set for themselves, and that formed the basis for the close-out meeting for ideas and successes achieved to be shared and plan for the future. Some participants who spoke to the Ghana News Agency attributed some of the challenges of the project to slow coordination among Forestry Commission and REDD+ Coordinators who were not innovative enough for the project. They called for the forum for a continuous engagement. GNA By Elsie Appiah-Osei/Doris Amenyo, GNA 02.11.2017 LISTEN Mrs Sophia Ophelia Adjeibea Adinyira, a Supreme Court Judge, has recommended the amendment of Ghana's criminal laws to make defilement a first degree felony. 'Section 101 of Act 29 does not describe defilement as a felony, yet the sentence is severer than that of rape, which is described as a first degree felony, this encourages settlement out of court as section 73 of the Courts Act, 1993, Act 459 promotes reconciliation in criminal cases where the offence does not amount to felony and not aggravated in degree,' she stated. A felony of the first degree is the most serious classified offense you can commit. Mrs Adinyira made the call on Tuesday in Accra during a panel discussion at the National Consultative Meeting on the Review of the Children's Act, Juvenile Justice Act and Related Laws. The meeting was organised by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection under auspices of UNICEF, as part of efforts to address gaps in the laws relating to children Ghana. Other panel members were Mrs Sheila Minkah-Premo, a Legal Consultant and Mrs Susan Sabaa, the Executive Director of Child Research and Resource Centre (CRRECENT). Mrs Adinyira said section 14 of the Children's Act, 1998, Act 560 was not described as a misdemeanour. She explained that the sentence of a maximum option of a fine of 250 penalty units or maximum one year imprisonment or both provided in section 15 of the Acts was less severe, which needed to be reviewed to conform with section 109 of Act 29. She said sexual offenders especially child molesters should be put on a special list on the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) platform/website. Mrs Adinyira, who served as a member of the United Nations Appeal Tribunal from 2009 to 2016, said the protection of the rights of a child was not only the responsibility of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, but a multi-sector responsibility. 'Our over arching goal should be to encourage a collaborative approach between public authorities, non-governmental agencies and families in responding to child abuse and neglect and in the provision of social services,' she said. She said in Accra, Kumasi and Tema, specialise Gender Based Violence Courts had been established to handle criminal cases involving violence against women and children. She said in other parts of the country, child victim cases were heard by the regular criminal courts, adding that the judges and magistrates sitting in these courts had received continuous judicial training education. Mrs Minkah-Premo said Ghanaians had the responsibility to ensure that children were born, brought up in a protected home and were able to reach adulthood. She said there were a number of issues which were very critical to children, which the nation's current legislation did not deal with citing, 'one of those issues is the issue of surrogacy'. Surrogacy is a method or agreement whereby a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy for another person or persons, who will become the newborn child's parent(s) after birth. Mrs Minkah-Premo said it was very important that government passed a law to address the issue of surrogacy. Mrs Sabaa called for the passage of a law on parenting to ensure that parents did not run away from their responsibility of taking care of their children. GNA By Iddi Yire/Stella Opokuwaa Asare, GNA The Coalition of Civil Society Organizations in Youth Development in the Northern Region has appealed to the government to take immediate steps to inaugurate the Board of Directors for the National Youth Authority (NYA) to work towards ameliorating the plight of the youth. The Coalition said the immediate inauguration of the Board of Directors of NYA would trigger the implementation of the NYA's new Act (Act 939) and awaken youth development across the length and breadth of the country using the various structures. A statement by the Coalition signed by its Acting Convenor, Miss Vera Jawol Magan and issued to the GNA in Tamale on Wednesday to mark this year's Africa Youth Day, said 'It is against this background that delay of the inauguration of the NYA Board is an issue of great concern to the Coalition'. Members of the Coalition include Youth Empowerment for Life (YEfL), Centre for Active Learning and Integrated Development, Youth Network for Sustainable Development, Youth Alive, Youth Opportunity Partnership Project, NORSAAC, Centre for Development and Policy Advocacy, and Empowering and Transforming Communities. The Africa Youth Day (AYD), celebrated on November 01, every year, is dedicated to the struggle to seek recognition of the youth as key agents for socio-political change and economic growth in all aspects of the African society. The Africa Union proclaimed and instituted the Africa Youth Day in 2006 to ensure that African youth continue to strive for ownership in Africa's development. This year's event is on the theme: 'Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investment in the Youth', and it is to further highlight the importance of young people as the main contributors for a sustainable development of the continent. The statement said 'Our concern is anchored on the fact that NYA is currently operating under a new Act (Act 939) and a functional Board is urgently needed to implement the Act by taking the needed decisions/steps to immediately reverse challenges confronting the youth of Ghana'. It also called for the drafting and adoption of the Legislative Instrument (LI) for the new Act saying this was critical to accelerate the functionality of the Board as well as instigate development initiatives that would go a long way to benefit the Ghanaian youth most especially the vulnerable youth. It added that 'We are of the considered view that vulnerable youth of Ghana will not fulfil their aspirations without full implementation of the NYA Act as well as adoption of the LI.' The Coalition expressed confidence in the leadership of President Nana Akufo-Addo saying it believed that speedy inauguration of the NYA Board would add impetus to fulfilling the great dreams the President had for the youth of the country as well as satisfy international statutory requirements. GNA By Albert Futukpor, GNA Ghana's Ambassador to Denmark, Her Excellency Mrs. Amerley Ollenu Awua-Asamoa, has appealed to skilled Ghanaians in Denmark to return home as often as possible, to support Ghana's development Agenda. Speaking to Citi Business News in Copenhagen, at a reception by her office to welcome four Ghanaian journalists on a press trip at the invitation of the Danish Government, Her Excellency Mrs. Amerley Ollenu Awua-Asamoa, said Government's policy of diaspora engagement is aimed at attracting Ghana's high quality manpower to help bring home the needed investment to drive the governments industrialization agenda. Looking at the government initiative or policy on diaspora engagements where we think most of the Ghanaians in the diaspora are intellectuals and have been here for some time, we need them to come home to help build the economy. And in that sense, as far as our Mission is concerned, we want to engage the diaspora, collaborate and network with them to bring investors back home. We want them to bring their skills and technical know-how to assist the Ghanaian community. Forming partnerships with foreign countries is a win-win situation, and we believe they know our culture very well, so if they have any skills, this is the time to come and assist in transforming Ghana. The Ambassador also expressed optimism that the visit of the Queen of Denmark to Ghana would go a long way to strengthen the Ghana beyond Aid agenda. We are very excited that the Queen is visiting Ghana because it's very historic. She ha s never been to West Africa, and she has selected Ghana and so it means a lot to us. It's a big privilege for us. And looking at it from the perspective that Ghana is moving from aid to trade, and Denmark is also transiting from aid to trade as far as her development partners are concerned, for us, it's a very positive idea he noted. Expensive visas making trips home difficult Ghanaians in Demark However, speaking at the residence the Ghanaian Ambassador, a Ghanaian IT Consultant in Denmark, Kwame Owusu Danquah, blamed the high cost of visas for their inability to come home often to contribute their quota to national development. Bernard Avle interviews Ghanaian IT Consultant,Kwame Owusu Danquah. Kwame Owusu Danquah, who's also the President of the Ghanaian Akan community in Denmark, thus called on the government to ease the cost of acquiring visas for people of Ghanaian descent to enable them and their families return to the country with ease. Most of us have acquired other nationalities although our heart is Ghanaian and we would very much like to come to Ghana. We come [to Ghana] often, but another thing is that, the government should help us to come more often by reducing the visa fees which are quite expensive. Speaking to Citi FM's Bernard Avle who's in Denmark alongside three other journalists ahead of a visit by the Danish Queen to Ghana, Owusu Danquah said persons like him remained Ghanaian at heart despite having acquired other nationalities. If you and your wife and two children are coming, it is very expensive, Mr. Danquah noted further. He pointed to the example of India as one country that makes it easy for its citizens in the diaspora to contribute immensely to the country's economic fortunes, and said if the government opens the doors, we will come. We are ready and we have a lot of resources. We would like to contribute. We are Ghanaians and we would like to come back [home], Mr. Danquah affirmed. Danish queens visit Citi FMs reports from Denmark come ahead of the official State Visit of Denmark's Head of State, Her Majesty the Queen Margrethe II, from November 23 to November 24. The 3-day press trip to Denmark was organised for four selected Ghanaian journalists, including Citi Breakfast Show host, Bernard Koku Avle. The press trip will be capped with a press conference with Queen Margrethe II. The Queen, on her eventual historic visit to Ghana, is expected to be accompanied by a Danish business delegation within three focus sectors, namely food & agriculture, sustainability, maritime, infrastructure and railways. By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/citifmonline.com/Ghana Minority Members of Parliament are urging Ghanaians to disregard a public apology purported to come from under-fire Ghanas Ambassador to South Africa, George Ayisi-Boateng, following criticisms for his recent partisan comments. According to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Minority spokesperson on Communication, Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini, the apology does not come across as genuine or even authored by Mr Ayisi-Boateng. The apology is a contrived statement from the Flagstaff House, not from him [Geroge Ayisi-Boateng] and Ghanaians must reject the apology letter, he stressed. The Sagnarigu legislator adds, If the apology is duly from his heart it shouldnt have taken the Flagstaff House to intervene before the apology letter [was released]. Related story: Embattled diplomat retracts, apologises for divisive comments ABA Fuseini was speaking to Afia Pokua, host of Adom FMs current affairs programme, Burning Issues, on Wednesday evening. ABA Fusieni After a relentless thumping on social media, the High Commissioner to South Africa had cause to retract and apologise for declaring at a New Patriotic Party (NPP) event that he will put the interests of the members of the governing party ahead of other Ghanaians. Former diplomats and other respected Ghanaians did condemn the comments as unbecoming of a diplomat. George Ayisi-Boateng told members of the Tertiary Students Confederacy Network (TESCON) that This government is doing its best to create job opportunities and me, for instance, I told my people over there [that] it is because of NPP that Im here so the NPP man is my priority. I told them when NDC was in power it was Kwesi Ahwoi who was there, now we are in power, so Ayisi-Boateng is here with you. My topmost priority is the problems of an NPP person before any other Ghanaian, take it or leave it. This declaration did not go down well with a section of Ghanaians when it was publicised, with many calling for him to step down or be sacked. Initially, Mr Ayisi-Boateng defended his comments, claiming that his comments were taken out of context. He had the backing of Acting Chairman of the NPP, Mr Freddy Blay. However, his defence further fueled the public criticism, and caused other influential Ghanaians to join calls for him to step down. Also contributing to a discussion on Burning Issues on the apology letter, a leading member of pressure group, OccupyGhana, Nana Sarpong Agyemang Badu, said the apology was not enough. The President must fire him, Nana Sarpong said.